Deckhands rushed to greet the shuttle with wide eyes and trembling trigger fingers. Kurda took them all off their feet with a shockwave from her gauntlets the moment the shuttle doors opened. Trapper subdued the remaining deckhands with efficiency. Wilco accessed a computer port near the bay entrance with ease. The system wasn’t even encrypted. He found the schematics for the ship.
“Got our destination,” he said to the others. “On me.” He forced himself to keep his sword sheathed, fighting the desire to rob Hep of his new family. He kept the endgame in mind. Hep’s crew was even more ineffectual than Mao’s. This rabble was a salvage crew, not trained as soldiers, but that was no reason for them to piss themselves during a battle. They operated in battlefields during wartime at the edge of civilized space. There was no excuse for them not being able to defend themselves. Wilco pitied them. Almost as much as he disdained them.
He wasted no time in reaching his destination. Wilco had been wanting to see him again for some time, to speak to him, to learn from him. He stood outside the door, thinking about what to say, actually nervous for the first time in years. He smiled as he waved the keycard lifted off the unconscious guard and stepped into the brig.
Sigurd turned to face him, confusion in his eyes. Disappointment swelled in Wilco. “You aren’t the one I came to see.”
“Who the hell are you?” Sigurd said, adopting a defensive posture. “You don’t look like Byers troops. Have we been boarded?”
Cloak drifted past Wilco and stepped to the cage. Sig looked at Cloak’s mask like it was a mirror. The subtle shift in Sig’s face, the relaxing of his jaw, the emptying of his eyes, brought the smile back to Wilco’s mouth. “There he is,” Wilco said.
“I know you,” Sig said, looking at Cloak.
Wilco waved the card in front of the cell’s lock. “We can talk about that later. Right now, you’ve got some work to do.”
The cell door slid open. What once was Sigurd stepped out.
18
Four UNS frigates and a Titan-class destroyer. Four Byers gunners, three destroyers, and two frigates. Any way he looked at it, Hep didn’t plan to leave this battlefield. The two opposing forces were seconds away from opening like two dams, waves crashing into each other and drowning everything nearby. He watched the screen and waited for the opening salvo, waited to see which force would live on after he died. He honestly didn’t much care who it was. He cursed them both equally.
Though he would have liked to talk to Mao and Delphyne one more time.
“Sir,” Akari said. “We’ve just gotten a report from the brig. The prisoner has escaped.”
Hep burst into a full sprint before the words fully left Akari’s mouth. He didn’t think about how reckless and stupid it was to leave the bridge in the middle of a fight. He thought only of Sig and the cold feeling he got when in the presence of his former friend. Like he was talking to a ghost, or a god.
He found a barely-conscious guard getting to his feet outside the brig. The man pointed toward the shuttlebay, and Hep changed course without slowing. He slid to a halt, his breath stopping before his feet, when he saw Wilco standing guard with his people outside the airlock.
“Well, fancy meeting you here,” Wilco said, the colors on his mask shifting like oil on the surface of a puddle. “Ship’s a bit rocky. You need me to take the helm and show you how to sail?”
Hep drew the blue blade from his hip. Wilco drew the black blade from his back. “Don’t pull that thing if you don’t intend to use it.”
“Where’s Sig? What did you do with him?”
Wilco stepped aside, allowing Hep to see the airlock behind him. “I set him free.” Wilco waved his people aside as Hep rushed forward and pressed his hands to the glass.
Sigurd stood inside the airlock, arms outspread as though waiting for something.
“Don’t,” Hep said.
“It’s the only way,” Wilco answered. He nodded to the one in the robes, the one he called Cloak.
The sucking sound of air emptying in the vacuum of space threatened to pull everything out of Hep’s stomach. He watched his friend be sucked out of the ship. He turned away to avoid watching Sig suffer the few seconds he’d still be alive, and to shove his sword in Wilco’s gut.
Wilco parried the thrust with ease and drove his cybernetic fist into Hep’s nose. He grabbed Hep by the hair and rammed his face into the glass. Hep struggled, trying desperately to turn and slice Wilco open before the battle outside killed them all. Through the blur of tears, he saw Sig was in the same pose as he was moments before, arms outstretched, upright. He did not struggle. He moved like he was in control of himself despite the vacuum.
Sig began to glow, to radiate, a fierce blue light that made him look like a star. It built and pulsed. And then it spilled out. In one quick and terrifying flash, the energy shot from him and swallowed everything in light. Hep shut his eyes against the awesome display. When he opened them again, Sig looked to have gone limp.
Wilco released him. Hep secured a helmet and tether and leaped out of the airlock. He shot toward Sig, terrified of what he would find, even more afraid of what he did find. Sig was still alive and showed no signs of distress. He was just unconscious. As his gazed widened beyond the impossible fate of his executive officer, Hep noticed the space around him, the space that was once filled with nearly a dozen ships, all poised to engage in a hellacious battle.
The Navy and Byers ships were destroyed, some torn to pieces, some just listless like they’d been disabled but still largely intact. Only the Royal Blue, Fair Wind, and Bucket were still operational.
Hep dragged Sig aboard.
Byrne was already talking with Mao when Hep made it back on the bridge after depositing Sig in sickbay with Dr. Hauser. He welcomed the chance to be away from Hauser and her questions, as if he had any answers to any of them, though Mao didn’t offer much of a respite.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Hep answered.
“Do you have a weapon system on that ship that you failed to mention?”
“It didn’t come from us.”
“Then where? How do you explain that we are the only ones left standing?”
Hep explained what he saw. Even he didn’t believe what he was saying. The comm was silent a long while. When Mao finally answered, his voice was full of authority. “Power down your ship and prepare to be boarded.”
“Excuse me?”
“You are harboring the man responsible for the destruction of several Navy ships. We’ve yet to count the dead, but it may number in the hundreds. I will be taking custody of him.”
“Like hell,” Hep said.
“Stand down,” Mao repeated, “and prepare to be boarded.” He left no room for a response, cutting off the call.
Hep felt the eyes of his crew on him, waiting for him to give the order. Most of them likely wanted him to give it.
“Don’t do it.” The man was not a member of his crew. He should be in the brig. Wilco leaned against the wall, casually twirling his dagger.
“We don’t have a choice,” Byrne answered, offended by Wilco’s presence. “We’ve been ordered by a Navy ship to stand.”
“This ain’t a Navy ship,” Wilco said. “What you do is your prerogative.”
“They’ll blast us out of the sky,” Byrne said.
“You think they’ll risk that after the display they just witnessed? You’ve got the most powerful weapon they’ve ever seen on board.”
“He’s not a weapon,” Hep said.
“Will be if they get hold of him,” Wilco said. He holstered his dagger and pushed off the wall, propelling himself toward Hep. He spoke so only Hep could hear. “I know you think Mao’s your friend, but this is above him. Tirseer wants that thing in your sickbay. After they figure out what happened here, the Byers Clan will be coming for him too. You want either side getting hands on him?”
The thought left Hep cold. “What do you care?”
“I’ve go
t reasons,” Wilco said. “None of which concern you at the moment.”
Hep bit the inside of his lip, hoping the pang of pain would offer some clarity. “Get us out of here.”
Byrne’s eyes went wide. “They’ll shoot us down before we can make it into a hard burn.”
“No, they won’t,” Hep said. “Mao won’t.”
Byrne spun up the engines. A black channel comm came through a second later. “Do you know what you’re doing?” Mao said.
“No,” Hep said. “But I aim to figure that out.”
The Fair Wind shot away, devastation in its wake.
Epilogue
The echo of fire was gone from her bones now. Ayala could move freely without fear of the stabbing pain in her muscles, without the deep ache in her joints. She had been fully restored to life. If anything, she felt better than she remembered feeling before the months of torture. Her knee had been bothering her, an old injury from her days playing soccer in the academy. Even that was gone now.
Pacing in her cell felt like a luxury. She could move. She had the space to do so. She didn’t trust that would last long, so she took full advantage, clocking in miles of walking inside her ten-by-twelve room.
The door suddenly slid open, and a black-clad soldier appeared in the doorway. One of Tirseer’s operatives, technically an enlisted man, but his service records would be hard to find by any but the colonel herself. She had an off-the-books army at her command. He gestured for Ayala to follow, and she did.
Judging from the layout, they were inside a small black site, planet-side. No redundancy systems. No safeguards against depressurization or loss of oxygen. Which meant they were likely somewhere near the core of the United Systems, a small moon around one of the supply planets, most likely. Ayala had been waiting for this. Since nursing her back to health, Colonel Maria Tirseer told her that she would be leading a very vague mission against a very vague enemy. No specifics, only that Tirseer had a plan. Ayala’s head swam as the soldier led her into sickbay. Trauma roared back. Her body remembered every horrible thing done to it.
Tirseer rose to greet her. They shook hands over a body lying on a table. It was burnt beyond recognition in most places, limbs missing, but alive. Tubes snaked in and out of him. Metal clamps were affixed to him, roaming over him like prairie animals, grafting on synthetic skin.
“What is this?” Ayala said, pointing to the body.
“This is part one of the plan,” Tirseer answered. “This is Wilco.”
The Void
The Deep Black, Book 6
1
A wave of heat and blue energy ripped through the hull like it was made of tissue paper, then threw away the scraps as if they weren’t worthy of blowing one’s nose. The energy moved with a will, a destination. It didn’t feel like a living thing to Ensign Jeffers, the way a person senses a bat moving overhead in the darkness, an innate awareness of nearby life. It felt like a force, like a storm wind, but a force being wielded. A lightning bolt hurled by a vengeful god.
Ensign Jeffers remembered his grandmother, the worry in her eyes, as she spoke about the tornadoes that ripped through her childhood home in Oklahoma. Superstorms that carved canyons into the earth, the new wave of primordial tempests that reshaped the planet the way they did before humans walked it. She chalked it up to God, how he was responsible for breathing the storms into existence as punishment for mankind losing its way as he once did with the flood. Jeffers had written the stories off as relics of an ancient and mostly forgotten religion, the rantings of a half-senile old woman. But those stories were now ripping through his ship like a feral cat into an alley garbage can.
He affixed his helmet just seconds before the bridge lost pressurization and half his crewmates were sucked into the void. He activated his mag-boots and secured himself to the floor. Ensign Lamore slammed into him on her way out. They locked eyes for what seemed like an entire conversation, in which she was able to convey all her regrets and hopes and things she never said that she now tasked Jeffers with relaying to her friends and family. And he was able to tell her that he was sorry for his role in her rookie hazing and promised that he would tell her mom she was sorry she didn’t write more. Then she was gone, and he knew he would never tell her mom she was sorry, and he felt guilty for lying about his regret for her hazing. It had been his idea, and he regretted none of it.
Captain Morse was strapped in her chair, unconscious and without a helmet. He took labored steps toward her, struggling against the pull of the vacuum. With each step, he was certain he would reach her, secure her helmet, save his captain’s life, and activate the emergency shield netting to save the ship. He would receive medals and commendations and a promotion. He would have subordinates and would be ruthless in extracting every ounce of privilege afforded his rank, whether by the articles of the Navy or by unofficial understanding. No one would say no to him, an officer, a war hero, fast-tracked to the captaincy for acts of valor.
His boot stuck to the deck, just three paces from his brightest future. A shimmering blue light interrupted his path. Frantic blurs of light like an electrified spider web coalesced into one solid form, that of a person. It looked to Jeffers like a person he knew in his teenage years: Lily Hempstead. He’d pined after her throughout all of his school years, wrote her poetry, even daring once to slip one into her locker. He had watched from around the corner as she discovered it and laughed over it with her friends and then threw it in the trash. She wouldn’t have said no to him if he were a war hero, returning home with medals on his chest. She couldn’t say no to him. No one could.
“You wish to subvert the free will of your species?” The voice was like stereo feedback in the ensign’s brain, screaming static and wailing frequencies, but clear and smooth at once. The message was heard, and it was excruciating. “No, not all. Just some. Those you deem lesser.” The light being that could be Lily Hempstead leaned to the side, like a dog wondering after a given command. “You wish to exert your will, but you willingly follow a path that requires blind obedience. Odd.”
The being extended its hand into Jeffers’s chest. The same fire in his head exploded in his heart. His screams echoed inside his helmet. All his hopes of heroism and dominance lit like dry prairie grass and a brushfire engulfed him. Inch by inch, it swallowed him, and he felt himself burn away until only the light remained.
He was no longer Ensign Jeffers. The new being moved through the sucking void with ease, as if the explosive loss of atmosphere was no concern at all. It drifted through the bridge, past the dying crew, those who chose to strap into their seats before affixing their helmets, slowly suffocating. The creature felt their fear, their hopelessness, their regret. It was palpable, but little more than in the Jeffers being that it inhabited now. Those feelings seemed to always be present in this species, no matter the proximity to death.
The being stopped at the ship’s main computer terminal and studied the technician as he gasped for his final breath. For some reason, it felt compelled to allow the technician to die before untethering his harness and allowing him to be sucked out of the gaping hole in the hull it had created upon entry. Perhaps it was some emotional residue left over from the body’s original inhabitant. The compassionate spark of the species. No matter. The technician died and was soon vacated. The being touched its hand to the terminal, or rather, it touched the ensign’s hand to the terminal. The sensation of feeling was still new. Information sparked to life and danced across the being’s new sense of vision. Data became visible, tangible. The being could hold it, feel it, consume it. It took seconds to find what it needed.
A voice caught the being by surprise and elicited another emotional response, another echo from the ensign.
“UNS Pelletier, this is Captain Taliesin Mao of the UNS Royal Blue, do you copy?” The voice was fraught with concern. “Captain Morse, are you there?” The being looked to the woman strapped in the chair at the center of the bridge, clearly a position of power. It drifted to the woman
’s side. Her name was sewn onto her lapel, as though she might forget it. “Captain Morse, please respond.” The voice grew more frantic.
The being bent its host at the waist, growing increasingly impatient with its physical limitations, especially viewing the world in such a focused manner through the two soft orbs called eyes. It missed the collective awareness of the Void. The Morse woman’s face was frozen in a state of panic. That was the death mask she chose to wear. Disappointing for a person of supposed authority and reverence. It unclipped the tether on her seat and watched her get sucked out of the ship.
An echo of the collective awareness pinged inside the host’s brain, a group of neurons transmitting a signal they were not designed to carry. The result was painful—another drawback of occupying a host—but it was fleeting.
The message was received. They had what they needed.
The energy pooled in the belly of the host, the thing called Ensign Jeffers. Another surge of pain. But this brought with it a sense of relief, a sense of impending end. The flesh melted away, and the being was set free in a flash of heat.
2
Uniforms. Buttoned-up jackets, high-laced boots. The face of a person who needs to ask permission to go to the bathroom. Doesn’t matter what master you served, Navy or businessman overlord, as soon as you put on that uniform, you weren’t a person anymore. You were a tool.
The Elmore Syndicate didn’t have a strict dress code—no rulebook dictating what their soldiers wore, how they wore it, how often they needed to press their pants—but they had an informal uniform. A gang uniform. Black canvas pants and tactical boots. Repurposed spacewalk jackets reinforced with lightweight armor plating. Those jackets would survive extreme heat and cold and shrug off some medium-range blaster fire. They carried the same weapons: a sidearm on the hip, pulse rifle slung over the shoulder, and a collapsible baton tucked in a holster on the small of their backs. The man who ran the syndicate was rumored to have been a Deep Black operative, one of Tirseer’s best, until he either washed out or rebelled, depending on which story you heard.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 48
