Tirseer sat back, upright, and said nothing.
Ayala closed her eyes. She tried to recall the Void mission parameters. The details of the regular reports, the final findings. Tapping into a hidden wellspring of vigor, she opened her eyes and mirrored Tirseer’s confidence. “The cluster. It’s reappeared.”
The intelligence professional’s steely glare faltered slightly. “The details on the cluster were minimal.” Tirseer’s voice carried some desperation.
The dynamic shifted. Ayala measured her words before delivering them. “We sent probes. Our mandate was to focus on mapping the interior to see if there was anything worth mining inside. But once we got the scans back…” She let her words dangle, like a worm on a hook.
“Those scans.” The desperation in Tirseer’s voice peaked. “They are not in the final report.”
Weakened from malnutrition, Ayala’s racing heart set the room spinning around her. The scale on which they sat tilted wholly in Ayala’s favor. She needed only stay conscious to take advantage of that fact. “I suspect you already know who has them. Or, at least, you have some idea. Enough of an idea to war over it.”
The characteristically controlled demeanor of the colonel cracked and showed what Ayala always believed lurked underneath: a rabid ferocity. Tirseer swallowed hard, shoving the surge of anger back down.
Ayala jabbed her finger into one of those cracks before it had time to fully close. “You were the fiercest advocate for Central’s close relationship with the Byers Clan. You thought the partnership would allow you access to Byers enough to find out what they did with the intel. When diplomacy didn’t work, you engineered a war with them?”
“Chaos is the perfect smokescreen.”
Tirseer’s candor caught Ayala off guard. She stumbled, allowing the colonel to tip the scales back in her favor. “The reports showed that Central contracted the Byers Clan to launch the probes. They were the only ones with the tech to penetrate the cluster. When the scans didn’t appear in the final report, I concluded that Byers retained ownership through some sort of intellectual property agreement. An agreement that solidified your and Central’s place in history as absolute failures.”
Calm washed over Tirseer as she stood, like slipping on a formal gown, forcing herself to transform. “I now have the opportunity to correct that mistake. And you have the opportunity to help me do that. To correct your mistake.”
Ayala shifted in her chair but said nothing. She weighed one path against the other. Life and death.
“Byers has been searching for the cluster since it disappeared,” Tirseer said. “Now that it has returned, surely you can see that war was inevitable. Cantor Byers will destroy everything in his path to get what he wants. I will do the same. The Void is the most pressing threat to the United Systems. If Byers gets control of it, he will wipe us out and place himself at the center of a new empire.”
Ayala forced herself upright, to appear in control of her body. “What makes you think it can be controlled?”
9
“What the hell just happened?” Hep’s voice came out as a yell though he had not intended it. “Where is the puddle jumper? Why isn’t Sig answering? Someone answer my damn questions!”
Akari cleared her throat, whether to muster the steel to speak or to alert Hep to his outburst, he wasn’t sure. “The comm channel is still open, Captain. He just isn’t responding.”
“That in no way makes me feel better, Officer Akari, thank you very much.” He paced around his chair, staring at the floor through his fingers. “Any sign of hostile ships? Was he attacked? Did he hit an asteroid? I want some answers. Launch a probe immediately. Get me eyes on Sig’s ship. And all hands to battle stations.”
The crew scurried about the bridge, prepping themselves and the ship for a fight. Hep was lost in his head. Running through scenarios, cursing himself for letting his XO and friend fly blind into the unknown. He stopped pacing as he stood behind his chair. He looked at it like a hiker crossing a feral dog in the wilderness.
“We are battle ready, sir,” Akari said.
Hep pressed the comm button on his collar with his thumb. “Where are we on the probe, Byrne?”
“Ready to launch in two minutes, Cap’. Getting it into position now. Just—” Her voice died.
“Byrne?” Panic pierced Hep’s chest, along with the sudden realization that everything was falling apart. “Byrne, what happened?”
“Look out the window.”
Hep leaped off the command platform and ran to the viewport at the front of the bridge. “What am I looking for? Anything on scans?”
“A small ship,” Akari answered. “Looks to be the puddle jumper, sir.”
“Looks to be? Is it or isn’t it?”
Akari squinted at her monitor. Hep couldn’t understand why it was such a difficult question to answer.
“It is.” Her answer lacked finality.
“What?” Hep probed.
“The energy signature is different. Same registration number. Same comm frequency. But it’s radiating something. Initial scans can’t determine the composition, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. Forwarding it to the lab. Perhaps the techs can break it down.”
“Start decontamination protocols in the shuttlebay,” Hep ordered. “Lock onto the puddle jumper and fire a tether. Reel him in.”
Hep broke into a full sprint as soon as he was off the bridge and didn’t stop until he reached the shuttlebay. He entered as the tether reeling in the puddle jumper neared its end. The yellow deck lights swirled, alerting all present to the opening of the bay doors. Once the small ship was inside, the doors closed again. The airlock stayed shut, sealing the little ship off from the rest of the Fair Wind as the decontamination protocols went into effect.
Everything appeared normal. The puddle jumper looked the same. It was wholly intact. No visible damage. But the vein in Hep’s neck pulsed as violently as if he were about to watch a friend pulled from a burning building.
“What’s the word?” he asked Byrne.
“Everything seems normal. Ship is running fine. All systems are operational. We just have to wait until decon is done before we can get the skinny from Sig.”
Hep pressed his face to the airlock window, hoping and fearing to get a glimpse of Sig. He couldn’t see the pilot, who was instructed to wait inside the puddle jumper until the exterior of the ship was scrubbed and scans for known contaminants were completed. The process would take another thirty minutes.
Hep spoke into his comm. “Anything from the lab?”
“No,” Akari answered. “It’ll be another couple hours at least until they have anything to share. The energy signature isn’t in the database. Breaking it down won’t be easy.”
Hep turned from the window and pressed his back to the airlock door. The back of his neck grew hot, like someone was watching him.
Byrne stood in front of him, alternating between flashing him an empathetic smile and looking over his shoulder at the decontamination efforts in progress. “He’s fine. You ever known of anything that could knock Sig out? That time we took that salvo job in the Norse sector of the Rim, I watched him outdrink a Vike, and, when the Vike got his man-baby feelings hurt, they took turns punching each other in the face. Not sure why, seems like a barbaric way of handling strong emotions, but men are weird. I don’t know. Anyway, Sig spent the night in the medbay getting his face patched back together. He was laid up a day or two, but he didn’t die.” She flashed a reassuring smile. Or what she thought was a reassuring smile.
Hep was about to excuse himself when he noticed her face contort. Her misguided smile turned down, pulled into a look of disgust. She barely stifled a scream. Hep followed her eyes as they looked past him. The exterior decontamination procedure was complete. A team clad in full decon suits opened the cockpit of the puddle jumper to begin the decontamination of its pilot. They stepped back as Sig climbed from the small ship, their faces likely mirroring the look on Byrne’s beneath thei
r helmets.
The scene before him didn’t register at first, didn’t solidify in Hep’s mind as real. He felt like he was witnessing a dream come to life, something close enough to reality but morphed by some nightmare logic. Sig stumbled as he walked. His eyes were wide with surprise, like he didn’t know where he was. Slowly, they narrowed with recognition. “Where’s the captain? I need to speak with the captain.”
Hep stared, unmoving. Sig’s skin had turned the color of ice covering a lake in winter—a beautiful, light blue. As Sig spun, desperately searching for him, Hep reached for the panel next to the airlock window. He pressed the comm button. “I’m here, Sig.”
10
Internal gravity was at maybe sixty percent. Fifty, more likely. That made combat trickier. Regular gravity and zero gravity battle were trained for. They were known quantities. Battling in anything in between meant adjusting on the fly. Adjusting on the fly meant a far greater likelihood of dying.
And the man in the mask seemed wholly capable of fighting in any gravity. It could have been the mask, the intimidating visage, a complete mirage. The memory it elicited could have been painting pictures in Delphyne’s mind.
“Who are you?” she commanded of the stranger.
He tilted his head playfully. “You don’t recognize me, Lieutenant?”
She shook her head, trying to convince herself. “You aren’t him. Parallax is dead.”
“How could he be dead and stand before you? Maybe I’m a ghost.” He pulled the sword free from the sheathe on his back. Delphyne felt the tip of the black blade in her heart. “Maybe I am the master of death.”
The man’s mere presence marked him as a clear threat. No one would be here who didn’t fully intend to be. No one would intend to be in a situation like this without some confidence he could exit with his life. Which left Delphyne with a terrifying thought…
Could this one man have been responsible for the destruction of this entire ship?
Croft and Byron didn’t seem to share her fear of the masked man. They inched toward him, each moving further into his periphery, Croft up the left, Byron the right. As it stood, Horne sat between Delphyne’s team and the masked man. Croft and Byron were trying to get a clear shot.
The masked man wasn’t impressed. He pulled his pistol, hand moving faster than Delphyne could follow. He pointed it at Byron and leveled his sword at Croft. “Not so sneaky, boys. Don’t be so foolish to think I wandered in here all by my lonesome. There’re guns on you right now.”
“Bullshit,” Croft said. The words barely left his mouth before a laser blast struck the floor.
“Each successive shot will work their way up your body, starting with your knees. Then come the sensitive bits. Trust me, the owner of that rifle is quite the shot.” The masked man rested his sword on his shoulder, like a farmer resting as he tilled a field.
Delphyne eyed the sword, certain that what she was seeing was quite impossible. The knot in her gut was very real, regardless of the delusion standing before her. It grew from her belly to her mind, twisting that in knots as well. She couldn’t plan her way out of this until she was able to think clearly. She couldn’t think clearly unless she talked her way through the problem.
“You aren’t him. He’s dead. But you share his flair for the dramatic.”
The masked man paced the bridge, the mag-locks on his boots sounding out a robotic rhythm. Croft and Byron followed him, trigger-fingers twitching.
“Even some of his cadence and body language. You knew him.”
The masked man stopped. The image projected on his mask changed from red and black, the smiling face of a lion, to blue and white, the angry snarl of a dragon. “Tread carefully, Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant. You know me as well. As a lieutenant. Not as executive officer of the Royal Blue.”
His mask flashed back to the happy lion as he resumed pacing. “A promotion? Congratulations.” He pointed the black blade at Horus. “And what about you, Horus? Admiral, perhaps? Do I stand in the presence of the new chancellor of the universe? Apologies to the rest of you. I’m not familiar. And I don’t think we’ll have the time to get properly acquainted.” He pointed his sword at Captain Horne. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Delphyne stepped toward Horne, looking past the captain at the façade, the copy of the dead pirate lord. “But we are acquainted.”
“Like ghosts and those they haunt.”
A sudden jerking motion in Delphyne’s periphery. She jumped away from it, deactivating her mag-boots and floating to the other side of the bridge before setting back down. Only once she landed did she realize what the motion was. Horne had reached for her, like a Venus flytrap for a mosquito that had set down on its leaf.
His head rolled to the side, his dead eyes set on Delphyne. “Captain Horne?” She hoped for a response, and hoped against one, afraid of what would come out of his mouth.
“Horne is dead,” the masked man said. “That thing ain’t him.”
Horne squirmed in his chair. He wretched about like he was in the throes of a seizure, a choking sound reverberating in his throat. His knuckles snapped. His fingers dislocated his muscles spasmed so hard. He lurched to his feet and stood like a tree swaying in a stiff wind. He fell into a rhythm, stopped seizing, and stared at nothing. His skin, tinted blue just seconds ago, now glowed as it became darker.
“What in all the hells?” Horus pulled a foot-long metal rod from his belt. With the press of a button, the end sparked, and a solid construct of energy formed that resembled the head of a massive war hammer.
The bridge distorted through Delphyne’s tear-hazed vision. She tried to blink them away, unable to wipe them. Everyone backed away until their backs pressed against a wall or console. Except the masked man. He did not move. “You’ve seen this before.”
“Aye.” He twirled his sword as he stepped toward Horne.
“What is it?” Delphyne pressed. “What happened to him?”
Her questions did nothing to slow the masked man’s approach. “Don’t know. Doesn’t much matter to me. Only thing that matters is what happens if I don’t put this here—” He pointed to the tip of his sword. “—through that there.” He pointed at Horne’s heart.
Delphyne tried to retake her position between the masked man and Horne, but a pair of hands appeared from the shadows and pinned her arms behind her. The soft buzz of a respirator filled her ear as her captor pressed his facemask to the side of her head. “Hold up there, love.” The man’s voice was delicate even through the mechanical hum. His grip wasn’t strong, relying more on finesse than brute force.
“Stop!” Delphyne yelled. “He is a captain of the United Navy. You cannot just kill him.”
“I can kill him just as easily as I can kill anyone. And, captain or not, he can die just the same.”
“Wilco!” The masked man froze in place, confirming Delphyne’s theory. “You can’t do this. Whatever grudge you have against the Navy, this is a death sentence for you. There’s no keeping your head on your shoulders if you kill him.”
“Ain’t about a grudge.” He raised his sword. “Not killing him will be a death sentence for all of us.”
Delphyne yelled at the gathered party, sailors and pirates who seemed content to stand by and watch a Navy captain be murdered. “Do something! Letting this happen will get you all court-martialed.”
Graeme fidgeted with his sidearm. The tech probably hadn’t fired it since basic training. Roker stared at Horne, studied him, tried to understand what she was looking at. She was frozen until she could force the information to make sense. Croft and Byron took Horne to be more of a threat than Wilco. Their weapons never strayed from the thing that Horne was becoming. Horus, for all his bluster and selfishness, was the only one to move.
“The threat of court-martial don’t mean a damn to me, nor do your orders, Lieutenant. But I don’t reckon your dear old captain will take kindly to the murder of the man we’re tasked with saving. If he still is a ma
n.” Horus hoisted his hammer. Another of Wilco’s pirates emerged from the shadows along the periphery of the bridge. Horus saw him coming. He swung his hammer and smashed the pirate’s left shoulder, a move that left his back to Wilco.
Sensing an opportunity, Wilco rushed forward. Desperate, Delphyne slammed her head backward, hitting her captor’s faceplate—not enough to hurt him, but enough to disorient him long enough for Delphyne to slip free. Croft and Byron used the sudden burst of activity to duck behind cover, hopefully breaking the hidden gunmen’s line of sight.
All the adrenaline in four bodies wasn’t enough to push Delphyne’s fast enough through a half-gravity environment. She clawed from the devastated console just inches out of her reach, hoping to avoid snagging a jagged piece of metal and puncturing her suit. She watched, helpless, as Wilco closed in on Horne, thrusters on the bottom of his boots propelling him. He readied his black blade, took aim, and stabbed.
But the blade did not find its target. The target found his blade. Horne spun around and grabbed the blade with his hand. The blade sliced through Horne’s containment suit, breaching it, exposing him to the oxygen-deprived environment, but it seemed to have no effect on him. Horne shoved the blade into the floor as easily as if he were slicing bread. Then he grabbed Wilco by the throat. He pulled the pirate close and screamed into the façade of Wilco’s mask. A heartbreaking shriek, as it left little doubt in Delphyne’s mind that, whatever had happened to Horne, he was no longer human.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 43
