The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  “Get in there and open that comm channel,” Bayne said to Hep.

  “Don’t you move,” Mao said.

  Both commands came with added weight, laced with threat. Hep didn’t move. He couldn’t have if he wanted to.

  “Hepzah,” Bayne said. “If you don’t open that comm channel before we come out of this hard burn, Jeska will find us. If she doesn’t fire first, if she ends up taking us prisoner, none of us will not make it to Central alive. You know that. You know what Tirseer is capable of and willing to do.” He glanced over his shoulder at Hep. “What do you think she’ll do to you? The one who stole data from under her nose. The one who betrayed her to save my life. All her problems would be gone if you’d just done what you were told. The colonel doesn’t strike me as the forgiving type.”

  “Don’t you dare do that,” Mao said. This time, the warning wasn’t meant for Hep. It was aimed at Bayne. “Don’t you manipulate him like that. He’s a kid still. He has a chance at living a normal life after all this.”

  “Now who’s lying?” Bayne said. His hands slipped down to his hips. His fingers danced on the tips of his sword handles.

  Mao’s fingers crept around the handle of his baster. Sig rested his hands on the body of his rifle. Delphyne didn’t move.

  “Don’t make me do this,” Mao said.

  “I’ve never made you do anything,” Bayne said.

  Every second brought another micro-movement toward a point of no return. Where the crew ripped itself apart. Where the hopes of a new life were run through with blue and black blades and shot through the head with a blaster.

  A blaster rifle muzzle appeared from a branching corridor and pressed nearly to Sig’s temple. “Hands up, Chief.” Wilco smiled and winked, though it was unclear to whom. Sig raised his hands. Wilco slid the chief’s rifle off his shoulder.

  “You’re making a mistake here, Wilco,” Mao said.

  “No, I’m not.” Wilco’s voice held no hesitation. “Now, put your hands up too, XO.”

  Mao’s eyes narrowed on Bayne. “No. Not this time.” He pulled his blaster free of its leather holster, and time fractured. At times seeming like it sped up and, at others, like it slowed to a stop.

  Mao’s movement drew Wilco’s eye. Sig took advantage of that by throwing his elbow back and hitting Wilco’s wrist, loosening his grip on the rifle and throwing him off balance. Sig followed through by turning his whole body and driving his fist into the side of Wilco’s head. Wilco managed, barely, to raise his shoulder and absorb some of the blow. If he hadn’t, Sig would have broken his jaw.

  Bayne never looked away from Mao. And he wasted no movement. He threw his body forward, falling into a lunge and ducking beneath Mao’s gun. He drew the black blade and sliced it across the space between him and Mao quicker than a muzzle flash.

  Hep’s breath caught in his throat. He was afraid to let it out, afraid to let time continue for fear of witnessing the aftermath of that slash. But his lungs began to burn, and he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  Hep exhaled.

  Mao’s blaster fell to the floor in two pieces. But Mao did not. He was unharmed.

  Bayne continued his lunge, closing the distance between him and Mao in less than a second. As he moved, he twirled Malevolent so that the blade pointed back, away from Mao. Bayne drove the butt of the handle into Mao’s gut.

  Mao wheezed as the air was forced out of him, but he didn’t fall. Hep never pictured the XO as much of a fighter. He was a man of protocol, of rules and regulations. Hep just assumed that precluded him from knowing how to throw a punch. Hep was wrong.

  Mao had a significant reach advantage over Bayne. He was taller than the captain by nearly half a foot. Mao fell back a step as he struggled to catch his breath. He caught Bayne in the forehead with a quick jab and managed to keep Bayne back. He threw a few more quick punches to maintain the distance. Then he closed it, heaving all his power into a thrust to Bayne’s chest. The punch connected square in the center of Bayne’s sternum. Now the captain was the one struggling for breath.

  Mao threw his whole body at Bayne, driving his shoulder into Bayne’s midsection. Hep dove out of the way, barely avoiding being sandwiched between the two men as they slammed into the wall.

  The men disappeared in a flurry of punches and elbows and knees. They no longer seemed to care about blocking, or even winning. They just wanted to hurt each other.

  Wilco and Sig had begun their own descent into fury. Wilco was on top of Sig, one knee pressed into Sig’s chest while the other pinned his arm down. Wilco dropped punch after punch into Sig’s face, his fists coming away bloodier each time.

  The twisted look on Wilco’s face sent a bitter chill down Hep’s back. He’d seen glimpses of it before. In the orphanage. On the streets after they’d escaped. Serving under Parallax. Hep always told himself that it was just something Wilco needed to do to survive. Hep was grateful for it because, whatever it was, he didn’t have it, and he would have died without it.

  But Hep had a feeling that he was seeing it on full display now. Nothing to hinder it. Nothing to temper the rage and glee.

  A quick muzzle flash and the boom of blaster shot shook them all from their fury. They looked up to see Delphyne holding Sig’s rifle. She’d put a hole in the ceiling.

  “You all done acting like a bunch of foolish stars-be-damned children?”

  The anger in her voice surprised Hep as much as the smoking gun in her hand.

  “The Navy wants us dead. The Byers Clan wants us dead. You’re making it easy for them. We’ve all got disputes here that need settling, but now is not the time to settle them. We fired on Navy ships. They won’t give us the chance to do it again. They will fire on us as soon as they see us. We need somewhere to lay low, collect ourselves, and figure out our next move.”

  She looked to Hep. “The captain’s got an idea for a place like that. I suggest you make that call.”

  He nodded and entered the comm room. He was thankful to have been given an order by someone with a gun. It alleviated him of the problem of making a choice. Had Bayne subdued them, had Mao gained the upper hand—

  Hep had no idea who he wanted to win, who he wanted to follow.

  18

  He took no pleasure in seeing his friend defeated. If it even was Mao who had been defeated. Bayne didn’t feel particularly victorious, having his XO’s blood on his knuckles. Delphyne was the one with the gun. But she didn’t look at all pleased by this outcome either.

  “Lieutenant,” Bayne said. “Seeing how you’ve gone and taken charge of this situation, might I recommend putting Mao and Sig in the brig? Just until we’ve landed, and things have settled a bit.”

  The words tasted like metal coming out of Bayne’s mouth.

  “No,” Delphyne said. “Not the brig. They can return to their quarters. And they can stay there for a time.”

  Mao pinched the bridge of his nose. “I suppose that’s a kindness for which I should thank you.” It sounded more like a question than anything else. Mao’s attempt at sarcasm got lost somewhere.

  Sigurd was silent. Both seething and broken, being at the business end of Delphyne’s blaster. Just an hour ago, he thought he’d never see her again. Now, she was locking him up. The dizzying emotions must have been nauseating.

  Wilco picked up the blaster rifle that Sig had knocked from his hands. None seemed too pleased at him being armed. Bayne wasn’t sure whether he was or not. He was glad to have a gun solidly in his corner, but he couldn’t deny there was a side to the boy that had begun to show recently that gave him reservations. A wildness.

  Before Wilco and Delphyne escorted Sig and Mao away, the XO locked eyes with Bayne. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Drummond. Watch that you don’t become exactly what you think you’re fighting.”

  Bayne shook his head but said nothing as Mao and Sig were walked away. Mao still had no idea what Bayne was fighting. Mao was still thinking like a sailor, a man with orders that came from a su
perior that served a system with good intentions. A system that functioned as all who served it believed it was meant to.

  But Bayne knew better now. He’d had the realization, the moment that Parallax told him he would.

  He entered the comm room.

  Hep stood from the comm station and nodded to him. “It’s ready.”

  Bayne nodded and, with a gesture, bade Hep to leave. The boy obliged without a word, but wore a sad expression as he walked.

  The call was queued up. All Bayne needed to do was press the button to put it through. His stomach fluttered. This was the only option. That didn’t mean it was a good one. That didn’t mean he trusted whoever answered his call.

  “Coming out of hard burn in one minute.” Graeme’s voice was steady as it came over Bayne’s personal comm.

  “Continue with the discussed route,” Bayne answered. He pressed the comm button. “This is Drummond Bayne to the administrator of the Ore Town colony.” He was answered with static. “Ore Town, do you copy? This is Drummond Bayne of the Royal Blue.” He swallowed hard before continuing. “I come under my own banner. That of a Ranger captain. I no longer sail for the United Navy.”

  Bayne’s throat tightened. He had just thrown his relationship with his entire crew into the void for this. Risked everything on this. And, now, no answer. Left to drift in the Black on his own, sucking for breath, freezing from the inside out. He thought of everything that could have been, had things gone differently. Had his parents never died. Had he never joined the Rangers. Had he chosen to stay a Ranger and not join the Navy. A web of what-ifs spreading out into infinity.

  Would he have ever sailed the stars? Would he have been the kind of man who carved his own path, who followed orders blindly, who kept his head down, punched his clock and came home to a smiling family? Ate dinner around a table. Held a tiny hand in his as his baby took her first breaths. Laid down next to his wife at night.

  “I figured I would be hearing from you eventually.” But the voice on the other end of the comm cut that web. What-ifs didn’t matter anymore. The decision was made. There was only one path forward.

  “Hello, Alex,” Bayne said as he raised a view screen.

  The chuckling visage of Alexander Kyte appeared. “Hello, Drum.”

  The whole thing felt surreal. Running from the Navy. Fighting his own team. Talking to Parallax like they were old friends. Bayne felt like he had slipped into an alternate reality.

  Alexander Kyte, former Ranger captain, current pirate lord known as Parallax, kicked his feet up on his desk. “What can I do for you?”

  “I could use a safe harbor.”

  Kyte smiled.

  The Royal Blue made for Ore Town the second it dropped out of hard burn. With Mao off the bridge, and knowledge as to why having already spread among the crew, none dared say a word. Not even when they entered the small moon’s atmosphere. Not even when they docked. Not even when the most famous pirate in the system greeted them on the landing pad.

  “Did you really need to wear the mask?” Bayne asked.

  Parallax spread his arms. Bayne imagined he was smiling beneath the red and white kabuki-like mask. “This is my real face now.”

  A contingent of armed pirates marched up behind Parallax. He waved them forward. They swept around Parallax and then around Bayne and headed for the Blue. Bayne’s eyes narrowed on Parallax.

  “No need for alarm,” the pirate assured. “I’m sure you can appreciate me confiscating your weapons. Your last visit here didn’t exactly endear you to my people.”

  Bayne relented. He looked back to his people, to Delphyne and Hep and those he hoped were still his people. He nodded, tried to assure them that this was okay, that they weren’t entering one prison in hopes of avoiding another.

  The pirates disarmed the crew then escorted them away.

  “We have accommodations ready for them,” Parallax said. “An empty miners’ barracks. Nothing as luxurious as Central, I’m afraid.”

  “Better than a brig,” Bayne said. Despite himself, Bayne already felt a sense of ease washing over him. On the home world of a notorious pirate, watching his people marched away by thugs…and he felt better than he had in a long time.

  “Something is different about you,” Parallax said, eying Bayne up and down like a piece hanging in a museum. His eyes fell on the blades hanging on Bayne’s hips. “They’ve served you well, haven’t they?”

  When Parallax first gave the twin blades, Benevolence and Malevolence, to Bayne, the pirate told him that they meant something, that they would provide Bayne an understanding of the world that he had been lacking.

  And Bayne finally realized it. Two blades, named for two very different motivations. The system Bayne operated in as a sailor in the Navy, the system that tried to shoehorn all of existence into its box, functioned on the simple basis that everything was done in the name of one of these two motivations.

  The pirates were dark, vengeful, malicious sorts. Malevolence. The Navy was honorable, good, a protector. Benevolence. But it didn’t matter in what name those forces acted—they were still blades whose only function was to kill.

  “They have,” Bayne said.

  “Good.” Parallax gestured to the world around him. “Then welcome home.”

  Pirate Bayne

  The Deep Black, Book 4

  1

  The three men sitting around the table wanted him dead. Bayne had no illusions about that. They were aching for a reason. It was only a matter of determining how they planned to do it, or rather, how they would attempt to once their tempers got the better of them. If they had any aptitude for planning, they wouldn’t be so angry right now.

  The one-eyed man sitting to Bayne’s right slapped down his tile. A green star. Idiot. The man with the braided beard had pulled that same tile from the pot three turns ago. May as well give him the hand.

  The man with the scarred cheek smirked. A bluff. He had nothing, but he fancied himself a master manipulator. Flashing fake tells, pulling tiles he didn’t need, slapping down ones that got him nothing to throw the others off his strategy. All that did nothing to hide the fact that he had no strategy at all.

  Bayne swallowed a half glass of rum with one gulp. He was past the point of it burning, his throat well seared from the liquor and his mind dulled to pain. The rest of his senses were dulled as well. Not that he needed them to take the pot.

  He palmed his tile before his turn, knowing exactly what the two others would play. Their attempts at unpredictability made them painfully predictable. He slammed it down—the black sun. The three men knew something had just happened, something bad for them, but took a second to figure out what.

  It was a second too long for Bayne to tolerate. “You lose. Again.” He waved for a refill of his drink. “You just want to open your wallets and let me rummage through? Be easier, I reckon, than going through the motions of this game.”

  He smiled, knowing that would be the final straw.

  One Eye stood, knocking his chair over. He clumsily drew the sidearm on his hip, fumbling it like a drunken five-year-old. Bayne kicked him in the side of the knee before he could wrap his finger around the trigger. One Eye dropped like a sack of rocks and slammed his chin on the table.

  Cheek Scar preferred blades. Seeing him flourish them around like he was twirling batons in the marching band led Bayne to believe he was responsible for his own scars. Bayne pushed back from the table as a six-inch dagger came slashing at his chest. He threw his empty glass at Cheek Scar’s face, the smashing glass adding to the ugliness.

  Bayne felt compelled to stand for Braid Beard. Not that the man presented more of a threat than the others, but Bayne wanted to stretch his legs. And he did so, but he also kicked the table into Braid Beard’s gut. As the man doubled over, Bayne grabbed his head and slammed it down into his own piss poor pot of tiles.

  All three men writhed on the liquor-soaked floor. A crowd didn’t even bother to gather. Not in this place. It was The Croo
ked Crow, the seediest bar in Ore Town. They had gawked the first time Bayne stepped through its doors, still wearing his Navy insignia, but he’d torn them off weeks ago, and the patrons of The Crooked Crow had grown used to his presence and the carnage that came with it.

  The waitress arrived with his fresh drink as he gathered up his winnings. He dropped the lion’s share of it on her tray, took his drink in one swallow, and stepped over the bleeding bodies.

  He sprinkled the remainder of his winnings over them, like dropping feed to the pigs. “Have a round on me, mates.”

  The other patrons swarmed them, picking the credit chips off before they could register what had happened.

  Bayne kicked the door and winced against the light outside. Day had broken when he wasn’t watching. He stumbled through the narrow streets of Ore Town, the stench of mine gases and garbage turning his stomach. He stopped in an alley and leaned against the wall, his back sliding down through the grime until he sat on the cracked stone road.

  Each breath only brought him closer to vomiting. He refused to be sick in an alley, like a bum. Like a pirate on leave.

  He pressed his back against the wall until he was on his feet and stumbled back to the docks.

  A thick shadow fell over him as he exited the commercial district and found the wider spaces of the docks.

  “You ain’t been cleared to leave the ship.” Elvin Horus’s voice was as thick as his neck. His beard had grown into tangles, and his eyes were bloodshot.

  “I don’t need clearance to leave my own ship.” Bayne’s path forward was blocked when Horus stepped to the side to cut him off. “You denying me clearance to come back aboard?”

  Horus’s fingers twitched. “No, sir. Just reminding you that there are people in Ore Town who’d rather see you dead than walking around. Most of them, actually. I was tasked with keeping you safe. Can’t do that if I don’t know where you are.”