“I suspect you might be as well,” Bayne answered. “Tirseer won’t be happy about what happened here.” He looked past the cuts and bruises and saw her for the woman he remembered.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “For my part in what happened to the Rangers. To you.”
He pushed her toward Sig. “Save it for your deathbed.”
They disappeared into the miner. Calibor followed wordlessly.
Delphyne tried to walk past him. He tried to let her. But they both felt a tug between them, something they knew they couldn’t stretch beyond a breaking point. They needed to acknowledge it to sever it.
She stopped and looked him in the eye. “I can’t say this is how I ever imagined this going, Captain.”
“Me either, Lieutenant.”
“You could still come with us.”
He shook his head. “Tirseer wants all evidence of the Ranger massacre and whatever she’s been doing in the shadows erased. And I want her erased. Besides, I’m not a Navy man. Only reason I lasted as long as I did in the uniform is because I had people like you at my side.” He straightened the Navy pin on her lapel. “You do it justice. Thank you for your service, Lieutenant.”
She threw her arms around him. “I think you can call me Anisa.”
“Take care of Mao, Anisa.”
She marched quickly onto the miner.
Horus clapped Bayne on the shoulder with enough force to knock Bayne over. He fell into the side of the miner as Horus entered.
Hep was the last. “You’re going to do something stupid, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. What about you?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Hep stuck out his hand. “You saved my life, Captain Bayne. Thank you.”
Bayne shook his hand. “Do something with it.”
Hep’s eyes shot wide as they registered movement behind Bayne. The twitching display of Parallax’s mask. He looked like a demon rising.
Hep and Bayne locked eyes one last time. Then Bayne shoved the boy into the miner and shut the door.
22
The floor vibrated as the miner rumbled to life.
Parallax stood like a wilted flower, barely able to keep himself up against a gentle breeze. Bayne felt like a breeze was blowing straight through him, chilling him from the inside out. The two men, finally alone, finally as they should be, faced each other.
“Take it off,” Bayne said. “That fracking mask.”
Parallax wheezed. The mask display flickered and flashed a red and black swirl. It looked beautiful for a moment. Like a gas cloud. He dropped it to the floor. His face was scarred and bloody, twisted with anger and bitterness.
“There he is,” Bayne said. “That’s the man you are. Stop pretending you’re still the man you were.”
“No, that man died,” Parallax said. “I know that. They killed him. Butchered him like a cow who stopped milking. This?” He pointed to his face. “This is the man who clawed out of his grave. This is the animal who’s come to see them all cut to pieces. But you. You damned pig. You just laid down and showed them your belly, invited them to slit you open.”
“Enough theater.” Bayne’s strength almost failed him. He stumbled on his first step forward, almost falling on his blade, but he planted his foot and fire shot through his muscles. He shot forward.
Parallax squeezed the handle of his sword. But he did not raise it.
Not even when Bayne drove the black blade through his gut.
The warmth of Parallax’s blood ran over Bayne’s hand. Parallax dropped his sword. He grabbed Bayne’s wrist, like an old man looking to steady himself. “Put…me in my chair.”
His voice was calm, honest. He sounded like the man Bayne knew as a child.
Bayne, still holding his sword, took Parallax by the back of the head with his other hand and guided him the few steps back to the captain’s chair. He set Parallax down.
“This.” Parallax rested his hands on the arms of the captain’s chair. His fingers lay on the controls for the monitor, the comms, the brain of the ship. He looked out the view port, past the gathered fleet intent on destroying him, to the deepest edges of space, to the frontiers yet found, to the freedom in infinity. “This was all I ever wanted.”
He coughed, and blood spilled from his lips.
Bayne drove the blue blade through Parallax’s heart. “Me too.” He ran his fingers down Parallax’s face, closing the dead man’s eyes. “Fair winds and following seas, Captain Kyte.”
The pain and fatigue found Bayne as the adrenaline faded. He could barely stand. The blood loss made his head swim. He struggled to the nav officer’s display. He watched as the ships fled Ore Town, flying close to the shield. One minute until they reached it. One minute until the shield dropped. Until the fleet targeted the Black Hole.
Bayne opened a comm channel. “Mao.”
“Yes?”
“Take care of the Blue.”
A pause. Bayne pictured Mao on the bridge, sitting in the chair. “I will, sir.”
Bayne’s legs would no longer support him. He transferred the battlefield display to the main monitor before falling against the console. He slid to the floor.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Mao.”
“Fair winds and following seas, sir.”
A smile overtook Bayne. Warmth spread from his chest to the far reaches of his body, pushing the chill out.
The comm channel went dead.
Bayne watched the display. The ships sailed closer to the shield. The Blue began to maneuver away from the opening. Mao would put as much distance between the ship and the Black Hole as he could before the rest of the fleet fired on him. He wouldn’t risk his crew for something so foolhardy. He would be a fine captain.
He realized suddenly that he wasn’t alone on the bridge anymore. He wondered if some of the whispered tales about Parallax were true. That he was a wraith come back from the dead.
“Don’t move, you traitorous piece of junk.” It wasn’t Parallax but his men. Two of them. Cesar and Tink, the two who accompanied Bayne on the salvage mission.
Tink aimed his blaster at Bayne’s head while Cesar checked Parallax.
“Dead,” Cesar said.
“Then so is he,” Tink answered.
Bayne watched the monitor. He breathed easier the further away the Blue sailed. Then he closed his eyes.
He didn’t hear anything. Didn’t feel anything.
Until the hand squeezed his shoulder.
“Captain,” the voice said. “Can you walk?”
Bayne slid further down in a growing puddle of his own blood. He looked up at Wilco.
The boy, too, was covered in blood. That of Cesar and Tink. He’d come up from behind, stabbed his dagger into Tink’s neck. Then he yanked the black blade from Parallax’s gut and shoved it into Cesar’s throat. A weapon of convenience.
“Don’t worry,” Wilco said. “Don’t need to walk far.”
Bayne saw the spacewalk suit on the floor behind Wilco. The boy was already wearing one. Wilco began to hurriedly slide the suit over Bayne’s legs.
An alarm sounded overhead. The shield was down.
Wilco secured Bayne’s suit. He cradled Bayne’s head as he placed the helmet and secured that, too.
If Bayne had any feeling left in his body, he would have felt spite for the boy. Bayne saw in Hep everything that he wanted to be when he was a child, a young man, a man. He saw in Wilco who he actually was. Bitter. Angry at the universe. He found peace in violence. He was warmed by the spilled blood that covered his skin.
He wanted to tell Wilco to leave him, but he couldn’t speak. He wanted to make Wilco stay with him, to do what little he could to wipe their kind from the world, but Wilco lifted him off the floor and trudged toward the hole the miner had made in the hull.
“Hold tight, Captain.” Wilco deactivated the shield patch and opened the sucking wound in the ship.
Wilco righted them, pulling them out of an uncontrolled spin, and activated his thrust
ers. They shot like a missile away from the Black Hole. Bayne craned his neck as much as he could and watched. The fleet moved into position, cautiously, expecting resistance. Then they opened fire.
A reserved attack. Maybe they were giving Parallax the opportunity to surrender. The attack hit the bow. The cores in the bowels of the ship remained intact.
Wilco punched the chest of Bayne’s suit, activating the thrusters and giving them an added boost.
The fleet was still. The Navy ships had formed the front line. The Byers ships were trying to outmaneuver, to get around them. Ayala was back in command. She must have ordered them to stand down.
Minutes passed.
The black swallowed Bayne and Wilco a little more, digested them. And then the black died. A sudden flash of light spilled across infinity, briefly painting everything in luminescence. A hot wind slammed into them seconds later and sent them spinning into the abyss. Wilco clawed at Bayne, trying to keep hold of him.
Bayne slipped away.
And then the darkness closed in around him. Wilco was gone. Everything was gone. He was cast adrift in the Deep Black.
Epilogue
Three years later…
Red light flooded the bridge. It accurately conveyed the urgency of the matter but did little in the way of allowing the crew to react effectively. She couldn’t see a damn thing.
“Byers frigate off our bow, Captain,” Officer Graeme yelled. “One minute and twenty-two seconds until they are within target range. Scans say their weapons systems are active.”
“Open a ship-wide channel,” the captain said. “This is Captain Mao. We are about to engage a hostile vessel. All hands to battle stations. Lock this ship down.”
It was coming up on the thirtieth month of war. The crew of the Royal Blue was well-versed in battle procedures. This would be the third Byers frigate they’d engaged in the last week. But there was a difference between procedure and routine. This would never feel like routine.
“Sir, we have target lock,” Graeme said. “Should we open fire?”
Captain Mao was about to give the order when the XO interrupted.
“Captain!” Her voice was elevated by surprise.
“What is it, Delphyne?”
Something on the battlefield display caught her attention. An energy signature. A familiar one. One she hadn’t seen in nearly two years. “A ship on our tail, sir. Just came out of nowhere.”
“Byers?”
“No, sir,” she answered. “A Ranger ship. The Fair Wind.”
Mao’s face twisted in confusion.
“Sir, the Byers frigate just initiated a hard burn,” Graeme said. “They’re gone.”
Mao cursed. “Open a channel. This is Captain Taliesin Mao of the UNS Royal Blue. You had better have a damn good reason for entering this battlefield and an even better reason as to why I should not open fire on you immediately.”
“Easy, Mao,” a voice responded over the comm channel.
Delphyne couldn’t keep the smile off her face.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Identify yourself,” Mao snapped.
“Such a stickler for protocol,” the voice responded. “This is Captain Hepzah Montaine of the Fair Wind. It’s good to see you again. And I could use your help.”
The Black Hole
The Deep Black, Book 5
1
The cell walls were slick with what must have been some sort of fungus. The dark, moist room was a breeding ground for it. The air filtration system sucked water out of the air and piped it to a recycling station in the sub-basement, but it didn’t do much if the pipe was cracked and poured the stale air into Ayala’s cell, like a giant holding her in cupped hands and breathing on her.
She’d been in this particular dump for at least a week now. She had been moved so often that it was getting hard to keep track. Though she could say with all certainty that this was among the worst of her prisons.
The giant’s breath had started to clog her lungs and grow thick in her throat. Her chest rattled, and her breath came out as a wheeze. Green slime dripped from a crack in the ceiling and ran down the walls, which were solid concrete—no windows. Not that there was anything for her to look at. Her hood had slipped as the guards escorted her from the ship. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed her new home. A derelict mining station. A creature of jagged metal, eaten through by salt, gnawed on by time and neglect.
She felt a kinship with it.
They were out in the Deep Black. They were moving her further from Central. A little further from home with each transfer.
The small window on the bottom of her cell door slid open. A metal tray with slop that looked too similar to the slime running down the wall skidded across the floor, coming to an eventual stop when it hit her ankle.
The skin bruised in seconds. She cursed herself, her fragile body, weakened by months of dark holes and slop for food—when she was fed at all—and torture. Hot blades raked across her skin. Hours of questioning and mind games. The solitude.
“Eat,” a voice yelled from the other side of the door. The guards were compassionate in the beginning, when they still had some respect for her, when they knew who she was. They’d been rotated out so many times, the newcomers wouldn’t know her at a glance anymore.
“Fast,” the voice added. “You’ve got a visitor.”
Ayala’s heart thumped against her ribs, which were painfully obvious through her skin. She reached for her face, running the tips of her fingers over the scars that sealed her left eye shut. A reminder of the last time she had a visitor.
She imagined a bed of fresh greens and charcoal-roasted chicken with a pineapple glaze. It was summer in her mind. She sat beside a lake, waves gently lapping against the shore. A dog chased ducks away from their blanket, which was covered in the remnants of their picnic. Her companion’s golden hair falling over her shoulders, the failing sunlight glistening in her eyes. She didn’t have a name. Ayala didn’t want to give her one. She didn’t want the woman to become too real. Real things could be taken away, broken, killed.
Ayala’s stomach clenched. She shoveled the food down, hoping to swallow it before the taste hit her. She banged on the door as hard as her starved muscles allowed. The panel at the bottom of the door slid open, and the guard took her tray.
“Step back,” the guard said.
Her knees screamed. Her ankles, her toes, her hips. Every joint struggled against her own insignificant weight. She was no threat to the people keeping her here. Not physically. They knew that. The orders, the restraints—they weren’t intended to shackle her physically.
The door creaked open when she pressed herself against the back wall. Two guards entered. One kept his rifle trained on her as the other bound her wrists behind her back. Fresh waves of fire shot up arms.
Even the dim lights in the corridor outside her cell were enough to burn her eyes. She squeezed them shut and waited for the tears to wash away the pain. A rifle muzzle stabbed into her back, urging her forward.
She shambled forward like the living dead. They traveled fifty meters at most. By the time the guards sat her down in a carbon copy of her cell, save for the metal table in the center of the room, she was struggling for breath.
They shackled her to a ring mounted in the center of the table. The door sounded like the death knell of a large land mammal as it slowly closed.
The lights flickered overhead, something Shay now understood to be deliberate rather than a defect. It put her off balance, though balance was not something she had anymore, and not just as a result of her myopic vision and weak limbs.
Everything was tilted—being sucked toward a darkness so black that vision, whether with one eye or two, could not detect it. She had found it hard to stand long before her current imprisonment, back even before Parallax, but only now did her legs actually begin to give out.
Boots. The rhythmic tapping of boot heels on the march. She was in the academy suddenly. Days of
naïve idealism, if there was any other kind, when she thought she had the power and the right to actuate change, to fight for something so grand that only a war could birth it.
Some still lived in those days.
The door took an eternity to open. An endless death song sounded in the cell and forced its way into Ayala’s ears.
Colonel Maria Tirseer sat across from Ayala. Even in this level of hell, she was buttoned up, dictated by regulation and adherence so strict it bordered on reverence. She worshipped at the feet of protocol and plausible deniability, the duality of her militaristic religion.
“Shay,” she said, taking pleasure in the use of the familiar. “I hope you’re well.”
Her expression gave nothing away, but Ayala knew her well enough to notice the subtle changes in her voice. A tremble in the otherwise steady timbre. A slight elevation in pitch. She enjoyed this.
Ayala had witnessed Tirseer interrogate many people throughout her long career. It was a business interaction. She needed something that her prisoner had. She found a way to trade for it or extract it. Then the interaction was done. This, Tirseer was relishing.
“Quite,” Ayala answered with a smile and nod. “The accommodations are even better than the previous. You really shouldn’t put yourself out.”
The nearly imperceptible twitch at the corner of Tirseer’s mouth told Ayala that she had irritated the colonel. That would sustain her more than her daily tray of slop.
“Anything for you,” Tirseer said. “An officer of your standing deserves nothing but the best. Well, former standing.”
Like a needle under Ayala’s fingernail.
Tirseer produced a tablet from the leather bag at her feet. She entered her authorization code, pressed her thumb to the screen, and the mini-computer came to life.
An ache flared in Ayala’s gut. Those small things about her former life cut more flesh from her bones than anything else. Those little amenities she took for granted, that had meant nothing in the moment, meant everything to her now. Being able to access the net, connect to everything through the United System servers from anywhere in the galaxy. Information at her fingertips.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 38
