The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  He tracked blood across the cold rock of Shayle’s surface as he walked toward Roker. She scrambled for her blaster but couldn’t seem to get ahold of it. Finally managing to find the trigger and squeeze off a shot, the blaster bolt went straight into the ground at Wilco’s feet. It didn’t slow him. He stood over her, a statue of a man, a marble replica. He reached down and grabbed her by the collar. Lifting her off the ground with one hand, he let her dangle for a long second. She squirmed and screamed, kicked him and hit him and spit at him. If he were any other man, if he were a man, he would have dropped her. She would have escaped, returned to the Royal Blue, become XO, and been captain of her own ship in a few years. Her engineering prowess would have impressed those at Central, and she would have been tapped to head up the Special Projects Division where her genius would have been put to use improving the lives of every citizen of the United Systems.

  As it was, Wilco was not any other man. He was not a man. A surge of heat rushed from the center of Wilco’s chest, through his arm, and into Natalia Roker. It lit her on fire from the inside out and, within seconds, turned her into a charred husk.

  Wilco walked back toward the gangplank of the Fair Wind. Trapper and Hep had both gone white. As Wilco passed, Hep’s ghostly face turned into that of a demon. He lunged at Wilco, driving the butt of his sword handle into Wilco’s mask so hard it cracked. The mask face flickered with a distorted mass of red and blue until it died altogether and turned black. Another blow and the mask fell to the ground.

  The shock on Hep’s face stirred something in Wilco. His true self began to stir, to push back against the emptiness. Wilco’s face was burned and scarred, but that wasn’t what prompted the twisted look of horror. It was the iridescent blue that snaked across his face, just beneath the skin, and the black eyes where the emptiness was as visible as it was felt.

  “What happened to you?” Hep asked.

  “He was resurrected,” came a voice from the gangplank, “as something new.” The voice was like a chorus, many voices in one, none more distinct than any other. Cloak descended the gangplank, drifting like a ghost. “It is time for us to leave.”

  Wilco reacted like a dog given a command. He walked away from the dead bodies without regard.

  Hep grabbed at his arm, the one he’d just run his blade through. “No, not until you—"

  Wilco swatted him away like fly. Hep lifted off the ground and landed meters away, all from a single slap. Horus had regained consciousness. He was barely cognizant, but he saw enough for his instincts to take over. He drove his fist into Wilco’s gut. Wilco did not flinch. He grabbed Horus by the shirt and punched him in the face, the bones of Horus’s nose and cheeks exploding. He dropped Horus in a bloody heap.

  A sudden rush of hot, charged air washed over Wilco. Cloak looked past him at the source of it. It raised its hand and pointed at the ship that had appeared over the complex. A shuttle.

  “Attention, this is Lieutenant Jackson of the UNS Illuminate. I order you to—”

  The shuttle exploded. The trail of heat and light from Cloak’s hand to the now-destroyed ship lingered in the air like smoke after a fireworks launch. The burned remains of the ship crashed onto the roof of the complex.

  Cloak waved Wilco forward as it turned and returned up the gangplank. He followed without a word, just a glance at Hep, whose face was flush with blood and fire. Wilco had his assassin. He had his ship. Now it was time to use them.

  12

  The scene before him made no sense. The mangled bodies. The shuttle wreckage. A warzone. The devastation did not match the force present on Shayle. It was like the power of a nuke coming out of the barrel of a gun.

  Hep, wrapped in a blanket, shivered as he stared ahead, eyes glossed over, bloodshot. It was not the cold that made him shake. The heat inside the Royal Blue had pushed away the chill. Whatever he had seen was shaking him apart.

  Mao watched him from the other side of the cell wall. Hep didn’t seem to realize where he was. Maybe he didn’t care. When the Blue landed, and Mao found all that carnage, Hep just sat there. As they put the cuffs on him, he did not resist. As they ushered him at blaster point, he did not resist. He was hollowed out. Mao believed that Hep couldn’t have been responsible for what happened, but Calibor didn’t care for conjecture.

  Sailors were dead. His shuttle was destroyed. Those responsible were gone and had taken Sigurd. Hep had a price on his head regardless, but the blame for this was now being laid at his feet as well. And not only his feet.

  After the Illuminate touched down on Shayle, Calibor immediately locked everything down. Two more ships arrived, disgorged a platoon of sailors, and turned the mining station into a command center. Two Navy commandos approached Mao and informed him that they would be escorting him to Commander Calibor. Mao knew then what his meeting would entail.

  Calibor paced the command tent they’d established in the main cavern of the mining station. The contours of his body were completely hidden beneath the large jacket he wore. He did not stop walking when Mao entered, flanked by commandos. He seemed afraid that if he stopped moving, his muscles would freeze in place. “This was your last failure. I’ve briefed Colonel Tirseer of the situation. She, like me, has come to the conclusion that you suffer from more than just mere incompetence. She has reasoned that this must be the work of sabotage. Treason. You are to be immediately stripped of your rank as captain and placed under arrest. You will be transported to Central along with your comrades to await trial and, I suspect, swift judgment.” An edge of pity seemed to creep into Calibor’s voice. But it may have just been the cold.

  Mao could have pleaded his case, begged Calibor to see the situation for what it was, smoke and mirrors, looming tragedy, but he did not want to waste his breath. Instead, he just nodded and allowed the commandos to escort him away, to seal him inside the brig of his own ship.

  Anger flared in Mao only to be squelched by regret and then swallowed by a dozen other emotions, each one regurgitating the other only to be swallowed itself. He felt, looking back, like his path had been chosen for him from the very beginning. He was trying to captain a ship down a river with no tributaries, his course chosen from the start. Yet he’d always had his eyes set on the horizon, like he had the entire world before him, waiting for him to explore. His face burned with shame. He was a fool to believe in such childish ideals still, or ever. After all he’d seen, he realized now that to ever believe he had a choice was just blind stupidity.

  The ship rumbled as the engines fired and started their final journey. They would arrive at Central in a matter of days and be summarily executed for treason, their bodies dumped in airlock and jettisoned into space.

  Mao slammed his fist into the shared cell wall, breaking Hep’s daze. The young man rose slowly from his cot and turned to face Mao, who was suddenly struck with the memory of when they first met. The memory brought a rush of fresh anger with it, and then shame at wishing they’d never met. “You didn’t kill them.” He said it as a statement, but the current of question was strong.

  Hep shook his head.

  “Who did?”

  Hep’s eyes were blank a moment before focusing sharply on Mao, his pupils narrowing to knife points. “It was Wilco. But not Wilco.” He explained what he’d seen, how Wilco was changed, how he was like Sigurd but also different. And how Cloak destroyed the shuttle. Mao’s gut tightened. He was tired of hearing impossible stories and being expected to believe them, to hinge his life and career on accepting them as reality.

  “Okay,” was all Mao could say. Then, with a rush of new determination fed by a volcano of anger, of being tired of the river he’d been forced to sail, all the indignation he’d swallowed for so many years, of the pride he’d been forced to suppress and subjugation he’d been yoked with, he said, “Be ready to move.”

  The words rattled in Hep’s mind a second before he registered their significance.

  The ship broke through the atmosphere of Shayle and left the carnage b
ehind. Only to sail straight into more carnage. Minutes later, the remainder of Calibor’s fleet behind them, the Royal Blue rendezvoused with the Brightstar. Mao, Hep, Horus, and the rest of Hep’s crew were escorted from their cells to the shuttlebay to await transfer.

  The Brightstar and Royal Blue docked, securing to each other with docking clamps and extending a vacuum-sealed bridge between them. The commandos guarding the prisoners seemed anxious, eyes darting wildly about the bay, shifting their weight from foot to foot. Subtle gestures, but commandos were known for their steel. “Did you know we were transferring these guys?” one commando asked another.

  “Not until I got the order a few minutes ago, same as you.”

  The first guard looked around the room as though he was expecting someone to jump out at him. “We’re barely off Shayle. Why didn’t the Brightstar just come and pick them up? Why put together an escort just to move them a few klicks and hand them off to someone else?”

  “Who cares, man? Let’s just dump them, and then they’re someone else’s problem.”

  “No,” the first commando said. “Something’s weird. I don’t like this.”

  The officer put in charge of the Royal Blue, Lieutenant Miles Harris, walked around from behind them and stood at the bay doors. “Let’s get these scum off my ship,” Harris said, making a point to smile at Mao. The bay door opened to reveal several commandos and an officer waiting on the other side.

  “Prisoner transfer,” the Brightstar officer said.

  Lieutenant Harris waved for the commandos to usher Mao and the other prisoners forward. Mao felt Hep’s expectant eyes searing into the side of his head.

  The nervous commando stopped the prisoners at the mouth of the connecting tunnel. “Sir,” he said the Harris. “I don’t think—”

  “No, you don’t,” Harris snapped. “You do. Others tell you what to think.”

  With a sneer and painfully-muffled grumble, the commando urged Mao and the others forward. They stepped into the tunnel and into the custody of the crew of the Brightstar.

  Halfway through the tunnel, the Brightstar officer said, “Wait,” and everyone stopped. “I didn’t sign the transfer paperwork.” Everyone halted.

  That was when the Bucket appeared from the thick of an asteroid belt and rammed into the connection tunnel. Cracks appeared in the tunnel wall, the thin layer that separated everyone inside from a terrible death. The commandos from both ships started to scream and yell commands that no one followed. In the chaos, Mao kept his head. He got on his hands and knees and waited. He looked through the floor and waited.

  The Bucket moved like a drunk man as it positioned itself below him. Horus bellowed in delighted surprise to see his ship alive and well. As well as she’d ever been, at least. A circular hatch on the roof of the Bucket slid open and a tube shot out, slamming like a battering ram into the tunnel. The force knocked everyone off their feet. The tube formed a vacuum seal, creating a very convenient escape route.

  Mao stomped on the floor, shattering the already-devastated portion. The opening now clear, he grabbed Hep and threw him in. Then went Hauser, Philips, Akari, and Byrne. Horus swung his meaty fists in wide arcs, knocking the disoriented sailors back. Mao jumped in. Horus boomed down after him. The hatch closed. The Bucket rocketed away.

  “Hot damn, is it good to see you!” Horus dropped to his knees and kissed the floor.

  Mao ran for the bridge, ignoring the looks of confusion. He burst on to the bridge, knowing who he’d find, but still surprised when he did.

  “Got your message,” Bigby said, grinning wide. “Took a little last-minute tweaking, but Medviev and I altered the plan just fine.”

  The others caught up a second later, breathless, confused, tired, terrified. “What the hell is happening?” Hep asked. “Who’s this guy?”

  “Bigby,” Horus bellowed. “What are you doing with my ship?”

  Bigby looked from Horus to Hep to Mao. “So, who gets to be captain?”

  13

  The others were uncomfortable. She made them uncomfortable. As did he, Wilco. The one called Trapper Mayne had not taken his eyes off her since takeoff, but she was aware that his attention was solidly on Wilco. His was concern for Wilco, but suspicion of her. She did not fully understand why there was a difference.

  “I signed up to kill one very high-profile person for you all,” Edi Shankar said, pacing the bridge. “But all this is a bit too crazy for me.”

  “You didn’t sign up for anything,” Wilco said. “You were conscripted.”

  Part of Cloak remembered the boy as he was and remembered that he was always troublesome. Unchecked bravado that constantly endangered himself and all those around him. His ego was a mask that hid deep insecurities and a resentment toward life itself. He dwelled on the things he did not have that he believed he should, the things of which people had robbed him—wealth, happiness, power. It was an unattractive quality in a person, but necessary in a vessel. It allowed him to understand.

  As it had with her, the one now called Cloak. She left the bridge, left the others to their squabbles. Wilco would assuage their worries and get them on track to complete the next part of the mission. She would worry about Wilco’s concern later.

  The brig of this ship was small but capable, though she did not like keeping him there. He did not deserve to be treated like a prisoner, but he was not bonded yet, and that time was tumultuous. He needed to be there for his safety and that of everyone. She stood outside his cell and watched him sleep.

  He must have felt her eyes on him. He rolled over to look at her. “You,” he said, recognition showing on his face. “I know you.”

  “Yes,” Cloak said as she reached up and swept the hood back from her head and removed her mask. “You know me.”

  Sigurd sat up on his cot. The depths of human emotion showed on his face, one chasing away the other until it stopped on delight. “Admiral.” Her heart sank. He recognized her vessel. He would be in this state for some time yet, not yet bonded, two beings in one body. “Admiral Ayala.”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  He stood. “Am I going to be in here much longer? I thought I heard Hep say something about a doctor. Is Hep here?”

  “He isn’t, but you heard right. There is a doctor at Central.”

  “Are we going to see him?”

  “We are. We have much business there.”

  The Syndicate

  The Deep Black, Book 7

  1

  The great expanse of the Black Border was littered with the wreckage of ships and people. Scraps of hull had been torn from devastated ships. Pieces of sailors were left to drift among the debris. It was a graveyard for machines and humans.

  The border was the center of the war now. All hostilities between the United Systems and the Byers Clan were focused on this stretch of space, the invisible wall between the two superpowers. Crossing to one side meant an open road straight to Central. Crossing to the other mean a straight shot to Helgund Station, the Byers center of operations that orbited Moribar at the edge of the Deep Black. Whoever took the Black Border took the war. Whoever took the war took the system and shaped the future for billions of people.

  Through that mass of death and power flew the Fair Wind. Wilco’s knuckles ached as he squeezed the helm, navigating the ship through the wreckage, hoping to avoid the eye of probes from either side. He chose to keep the call sign. The ship was on the registry of wanted ships for both sides, he knew, but the name had grown on him. And, sailing through the border, it didn’t matter what name was splashed across the hull. If you weren’t Navy or Byers, you were getting blasted.

  Trapper had urged him to change it. But it suited him.

  “You sure this lane is open?” Wilco turned to Edi Shankar, who sat in the navigator’s chair next to him.

  Shankar stared off into the nothingness. “Yup.”

  “We are navigating through a warzone,” Wilco said. “I’d appreciate a little more certainty.”

>   “Yup.”

  Wilco threw his glove, hitting Shankar in the side of the head. The former warlord and long-incarcerated criminal jumped. “The hell, my man?”

  “The hell, indeed. I’m sailing through a graveyard. I’d rather not take up permanent residence here. What say you at least pretend to care about the situation?”

  “I don’t pretend.”

  “The hell you don’t,” Wilco snapped. “You’re a snake.” Wilco had plucked Shankar out of a syndicate prison cell where he’d spent the majority of his years since the war against the warlords ended. He’d tried to use his former position to control the smuggling in the Deep Black, putting him at odds with several other power players, most of whom eventually merged into one entity, the Elmore Syndicate, under the leadership of Compton Elmore. Shankar refused to acknowledge the changing times, instead acting the snake and trying to double-cross the syndicate.

  “This is true,” Shankar said. “But I don’t pretend to be anything else.”

  “You pretend to have wisdom.”

  “Nope, I don’t. I honestly believe myself to be a wise man.”

  “Then you are stupider than I thought.”

  Trapper Mayne entered the bridge, moving almost silently to Wilco’s side. “She wants to know how close we are.”

  Wilco bristled at the mention of ‘her.’ “Tell her to sit herself in a corner and shut up.”

  Trapper stood like a quickly-petrifying tree, turning to stone at the thought of saying such a thing to her.

  Wilco was grateful in that moment that Trapper could feel what Wilco felt and did not act on what he said. “Tell her it should just be another day if we don’t hit any more unforeseen roadblocks.”

  “These are totally foreseen roadblocks,” Shankar said. “That’s the point. They’re only roadblocks if you can’t get through them, and I always know how to get through them. And then they become smokescreens.” Shankar was a man who was constantly impressed with himself, though Wilco never understood what warranted that. He seemed to stumble his way into whatever success he managed to garner, and then just as quickly stumbled out of it. Still, he had a skill that Wilco needed. As pompous and bumbling as he was, Edi Shankar had the uncanny ability to appear at your back with a knife in his hand.