Ranger Bayne

by James David Victor

  It lifted with the sound of Admiral Ayala’s voice. “Captain Bayne.” The change in her voice was subtle, but terrifying. Every interaction Delphyne ever had with the admiral could be characterized as nothing but professional, dictated by protocol, guided by her commanding presence. She was steel, always. But there were cracks in her voice now. The most minuscule break in something typically flawless was glaring.

  “Thank the stars,” Bayne said. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make contact. All the channels are down. It’ s critical that we—”

  “Silence,” Ayala commanded. She did not yell or even raise her voice all that much. She was a wolf mother snipping at her cub, teaching him his place in the pack, scolding him for stepping out of line.

  Bayne waited for something further, but nothing came. Delphyne could almost hear Ayala’s teeth grinding together.

  “Ma’am, I—” Bayne’s attempt to speak was again cut off.

  “How dare you.” Ayala said. “After everything the Navy has done for you, after everything I’ve done for you, you betray us like this.”

  A knife stabbed into Delphyne’s chest. The initial relief at making contact was gone. Delphyne felt like she was being crushed again. Their final lifeline was severed. Now they really were adrift.

  Bayne seemed affected in a different way. “You can’t be stupid enough to believe that?”

  Ayala’s voice came like a cannon shot, a sudden burst of force, but died just as quickly when Bayne cut her off.

  “To believe I’m a Parallax plant? That I’ve, what, been behaving like a model officer to ingratiate myself to Naval Command? Been performing like an ambitious soldier hoping to work my way up the chain of command, put myself in a position of power to topple the whole apparatus? You’re the only one at Central who can stand me. What sense does that make?”

  Ayala was quiet. Her breathing was steady but shallow. “The evidence is piling against you, Drummond.”

  “It usually does in a frame job,” Bayne said.

  “A history of breaking protocol, like at Ore Town. Taking a secret meeting with Parallax, which you’ve never reported. Stealing confidential information from Centel. Your actions on Triseca.” Ayala stopped abruptly, like skidding to a halt at a cliff’s edge.

  Bayne seemed intent to push her over the edge. “What actions?”

  “You killed an executive officer and kidnapped a Byers Clan employee.”

  “Hix killed Valoriae,” Bayne said. “I’m sure he left that out of his report. She was one of Tirseer’s black operatives, too, by the way. Ask the colonel about that. And, if anything, I saved Horus’s life.”

  Ayala sighed. “You always have an answer for everything. You can’t talk your way out of this, Bayne. You need to come in. That’s the only way we settle this. If not for your sense of duty, or for me, then for your crew. If you make us hunt you down, I can’t guarantee they all survive.”

  Delphyne’s fingers began to ache. She hadn’t noticed her grip tighten on the arms of her chair or her knuckles turn white. She recognized the look in Bayne’s eyes. The fire burning in them. It was an all-consuming flame that quickly spread back into his mind and ate all rational thought.

  “That’s a lovely invitation,” Bayne said through clenched teeth. “I’m sure you’d lay out quite the welcome mat.” His emphasis on those words clearly meant something, but the meaning was lost on Delphyne. “The same one you laid out for the Rangers after the war?”

  Static filled the bridge.

  When Ayala spoke, her voice was tight. “I don’t know what you’ve read in that stolen intel, but I can assure you it is only a partial picture.”

  “I learned everything I needed to know before I took that intel.”

  The admission made Delphyne squirm.

  “I learned it all from people who witnessed it firsthand.” Bayne clenched his jaw again, like he was trying to hold back the rest of what he wanted to say.

  Silence filled the bridge again. Bayne paced, seemingly having a conversation with himself. When he finally spoke aloud, his eyes were red, his voice wavering. “Everything you’ve done for me?” he said, echoing Ayala. “You systematically dismantled my way of life until I had no choice but to abandon it. Then you massacred my people. As far as I’m concerned—”

  The line went dead. No, not dead. Muted. Neither party could hear the other. Bayne’s burning eyes fell on Delphyne.

  “Lieutenant,” he snarled. “What the hell did you just do?”

  She swallowed hard. She didn’t know what she just did. Well, the technical aspect she knew of course. She was the one who pressed the button. Buy why she did it, that was an instinct. She knew in her bones before she knew in her mind that Captain Bayne was about to cross a line for all of them that could not be uncrossed.

  “Sir,” she said, a tremble in her voice. “I think you should take a break.” That came out wrong.

  Bayne closed the distance, half the bridge, between them in just a few steps. “Come again?”

  “That’s not... I didn’t... What I meant was...”

  “That you need to take a breath,” Mao said. He nodded to Delphyne, reassuring her that it was okay for her to do the same. Then he spoke to Bayne again. “We are in a delicate position. It’s clear the admiral believes us, or at least you, to be traitor. We have found ourselves in the middle of something that we don’t understand. Something deep and complicated. If we thrash and struggle, we may find ourselves further entrenched in it.”

  Bayne paced between Mao and Delphyne. “What do you suggest, XO?”

  Mao studied Bayne. He knew the captain better than anyone. The subtleties of his body language, the things he said by not saying them. If anyone could guide Bayne through this, it was Mao. “We need to keep communication with the admiral open. We can only tell our side of the story if she’s willing to listen to us. It does us no good to antagonize her further.”

  Bayne tensed. “And how do you suggest we do that?” His tone suggested that he already knew the answer.

  “Surrender.”

  Bayne said nothing. He looked at no one, taking no counsel now but his own. “Delphyne,” he said without looking at her. “Unmute the admiral, please.”

  Mao nodded at her so that Bayne could not see. She unmuted the call.

  “Admiral,” Bayne said.

  “Thought you hung up on me, Drummond.”

  “You can’t guarantee the safety of my crew if we run. Despite your assertions to the contrary, I don’t believe you can guarantee their safety if I surrender. Some members of my crew have seen things that Tirseer won’t risk getting out into the open.”

  “Bayne, if you’re serious about this conspiracy, I can—”

  He cut her off. “Your house is infested, Admiral. I will not step foot there again until it’s taken care of.”

  A beat passed between them, then the admiral responded. “Am I to take this as a declaration of your defection?”

  Bayne looked at each member of his crew, looked them each in the eye. He lingered on Delphyne. She squirmed under his gaze but did not look away. The fire in his eyes had burned down to reveal of bed of red-hot embers, glowing like suns.

  “Until you get your house in order, until you can ensure that my people will be safe, you can consider it a declaration of independence.” He reached across Delphyne and ended the call.

  5

  Present…

  Opening a black frequency wasn’t as easy as pressing a button. It was intentionally difficult. The level of difficulty could range depending on a set of parameters decided upon while establishing the connection. Delphyne had explained all of this to Hep before she left. He had a working understanding of it, which was hopefully enough to establish contact. He had yet to test his working knowledge.

  He’d learned his way around the communications room. When the comms officer left, Delphyne had the most experience with the comm equipment. When she decided to leave, it was an equal split between the remainder of the crew
who had the best chance at learning to operate it. Hep volunteered, hoping to find a way to make himself useful.

  Delphyne was a good teacher. Patient, understanding, able to communicate complicated concepts in a simple manner. Hep missed her. She had a calming presence on the ship. She was also one of the few people he genuinely liked talking to besides Wilco. And he had seen less and less of Wilco since Triseca.

  Wilco found a way to make himself useful. He was willing to get his hands dirty. All too willing. And that was rapidly becoming an important asset.

  Running the comm room was important but also thankless. The only recognition was negative, when a link could not be established. A successful call was expected and, therefore, not receiving of compliments. No one took into account the intricacies of connecting two systems lightyears apart, through solar flares and magnetic storms and radiation fluxes. And that was for everyday communication. That didn’t account for the added difficulties of a black channel call. Scrambling the frequency. Bouncing the signal off abandoned satellites. Piggybacking off other signals. All while keeping the call secret and untraceable.

  But the things that made the process difficult were the reasons Hep enjoyed it, even if it was thankless. It was a puzzle, a code that he needed to decipher. It kept his mind busy, off other things.

  Hep spoke into his comm. “Graeme, how long until we have cover?”

  The new nav officer answered in his unusually specific manner. “Six minutes and thirteen seconds. Twelve seconds. Eleven.”

  “Thank you,” Hep said. He was elbow deep in the guts of the comm array frequency generator, the device responsible for coding all outgoing calls. That was the most important part in establishing a black channel—scrambling the frequency. It wasn’t a one-time action; the Navy, and probably the Byers Clan, and whoever else could afford the systems, ran descrambling software, so the frequency needed to be altered several times during the call. Hep had already established the initial frequency and was now plotting out secondary and tertiary signals, but they needed physical cover to place the call.

  The Royal Blue was currently en route to the Mazzokeen Cluster, an asteroid field formed from the remains of a dead planet. Mazzokeen’s core was a particularly volatile mix of radioactive elements that eventually doomed the entire planet to an explosive end. But now, it provided the perfect camouflage for Hep to establish his black channel. The radiation would confuse Navy sensors. If they were able to trace the call to its source, the cluster would provide them cover.

  “You in here?”

  Hep recognized Wilco’s voice even with his head inside a metal box. “Here.”

  Wilco appeared at Hep’s feet, stooping down to look into the open panel of the frequency generator. “This looks fun.”

  It was, but Wilco meant so sarcastically, so Hep didn’t answer.

  Wilco didn’t seem to notice. “Cap wanted me to make sure you’re good to go.”

  “I’m good.”

  But Wilco did notice the terseness in Hepzah’s voice. He fell back into a sitting position. “You seem tetchy. Are you tetchy?”

  Hep wanted to kick out and hit Wilco in the chest, listen to him wheeze. But that would have meant losing the configuration he’d worked so hard for. “You checked. I’m good. You can go.”

  “Yeah,” Wilco said. “Definitely tetchy.”

  “Just let me do my job,” Hep said. “Don’t you have someone to stab or some legs to break or something?”

  “The hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. I fix the comm array. You kill people. We’ve all got our jobs.”

  Wilco leaned onto his elbows so he could see Hep’s face half-hidden in wires. “I’m going to venture a guess and say you’ve got a problem of some kind.”

  His laidback persona filled Hep with fire. “I thought we were getting away from it.” Silence filled the room. “From killing. From death. From the constant fighting.”

  “What else is there?” Wilco said as a matter of fact. “That’s all there’s ever been. What makes you think there can be anything else?”

  Hep chewed the inside of his cheek. He had almost got everyone killed because he believed there could be something else. He was inches from selling Bayne to Tirseer in the hopes she would allow him and Wilco a quiet life somewhere, that maybe they could know some peace. It was a fantasy. He wouldn’t even know peace if it bit him on the butt, it was such a foreign concept. That was why fantasies were so dangerous—people are more willing to kill for them than they are for the truth.

  But in the end, he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t destroy the reality for the dream. The dream was a lie, anyway. Tirseer never would have allowed him and Wilco to walk away. Bayne allowed him to stay, to be a member of the crew. Hep thought that was forgiveness at first. But would Bayne allow him to walk away? Was this just a different way of keeping him prisoner?

  Would Wilco go with him?

  “One minute and seven seconds,” Graeme said over the comm. “Six seconds. Five.”

  “Thank you,” Hep said, ending the Graeme’s countdown. “Just let me know when the captain gives the order.”

  Wilco said nothing. He watched as Hep readied to connect the call. Wilco had always been the talker, and Hep had no problems with that. He would sooner lean against the wall and listen and let Wilco speak for the both of them. But Wilco didn’t seem to do that anymore. He spoke only for himself. And now, when they were alone, silence fell on them like a heavy blanket on a hot night, stifling and uncomfortable.

  Hep used to like the silence. He was comfortable there, no matter who else was there with him. They would squirm and try to wriggle free of it. Hep soaked in it. But now, when it was just the two of them, his gut pinched, and he wished another person was there with them.

  “Make the contact.” Bayne’s voice came over comms, a sudden relief from the silence. “Echo-twelve-echo.”

  “Aye,” Hep said. “Patching you through.” He made the last of the frequency connections and pressed the red button on the control panel. “We’re broadcasting, Captain.”

  “Start the countdown,” Bayne said.

  They could only broadcast on one frequency for a minute. Longer than that and they risked the signal being traced.

  “Delphyne?” Bayne’s voice sounded over the comm. It rang with sadness. “Do you copy?” She didn’t answer. He asked again, and again, no answer. The minute passed.

  “Changing frequency,” Hep said. He unplugged connections and made new ones. Once the signal changed, he crossed the words “echo-thirteen-echo” off his list.

  Bayne continued calling her name to no answer. Another minute. Another change in signal. Another minute. Another change.

  The tone of Bayne’s voice did not change. He continued to call into the darkness with a steady timbre. Hep knew it was not the same for the rest of the crew. None had truly realized how important Delphyne was until she was gone. She was a valuable officer, occupying one of the few spots on the away team, which was reserved for those who could think on their feet, assess and solve unsolvable problems, and handle themselves in a firefight. That alone meant her absence left a hole in the crew’s readiness.

  But it was the loss of Delphyne the person, not the officer, that was felt more day to day. She had a way of breaking the tension that no one else aboard had. And there was loads of tension that needed breaking.

  “Changing frequencies,” Hep said as another minute ticked by.

  Wilco sighed. “This is pointless. She ain’t answering.”

  “You tell the captain to let it go, then. Because I’m not.”

  Wilco snorted. “I’ll let Mao do it.”

  They both laughed.

  “Why are we wasting our time, anyway?” Wilco asked. “Delphyne jumped ship. She obviously doesn’t want anything to do with us.”

  “Bayne must have a reason,” Hep said. “He doesn’t do much without one. Something to do with that broker.”

  “Don’t see how that could be
if she’s hiding out on some forest moon somewhere.” Wilco pulled a dagger from his boot. “I’ll get whatever information that broker’s got in his head.”

  Hep winced at the thought of Wilco digging his knife into anyone. They were no strangers to violence. They’d nearly grown immune to it during their lives as pirates. They had every reason to. Their lives were violence. Killing to survive. But Hep had grown tired of it. The idea of putting a blaster in a man’s face made him ill.

  Wilco didn’t have the same reservations. The further Hep tried to step away from the life of a pirate, the closer Wilco seemed to get. At this point, Hep didn’t know where else to step. Even if he could get off the Royal Blue, he would only be walking into the life of a fugitive. Which would only mean more violence.

  The countdown neared zero and another change of frequency.

  He reached to unplug the first of the connections when a voice sounded over the comm.

  “Shut this channel down,” Delphyne said. “You’re going to get me killed.”

  6

  Three Months Ago…

  Only once did Delphyne remember the entire crew being gathered at the same time, and that was for the funeral of the former Chief of Security Albert Tengaar. A beloved man. They put the ship into drift and gathered together to mourn.

  It was also the only time Delphyne remembered Bayne crying.

  She wished he was crying now. It would have been a more welcome emotion than the anger flaring in his eyes. Sadness could be just as unpredictable as anger, but it tended to slow people down. Bayne had not stopped since they fled Triseca.

  His unpredictability was coming at breakneck speeds.

  The mess hall barely accommodated everyone. Most were standing. There was seating for more, but some couldn’t sit if they wanted to. Delphyne was one. Sigurd was another.

  He stood at her side, his shoulder touching hers. There was a time when that was all she could have focused on. But, like her, Sigurd was somewhere else. Like Bayne, that somewhere else was someplace angry.