And he slept like a baby.
At least, until recently.
“Bayne.” He spoke the name like a curse. Hate lit like a fire in his gut, burning through his entire body. He felt the heat of the Black Hole as it exploded, cooking him inside his spacesuit as he shielded Bayne.
He cursed himself for ever having been so stupid. Nothing good came of putting someone else above himself. Hepzah. Parallax. Bayne. He’d put his trust in a handful of people throughout his life, and he never got anything for it except cut up, burned, and tossed in prison.
Only a handful of people had put their trust in him. Their lives had turned to ash. His chest ached as he thought of Kurda.
Wilco shot up from his bunk as pain surged through his cybernetic limbs. The nerve endings needed to be recalibrated every few months or they started a bioelectric feedback loop that felt like he was being stabbed in every cell in his body. Trapper had learned the basics of it years ago. With his empathic abilities, he made the perfect technician—someone capable of doing the job and easing Wilco’s pain at the same time.
But he hadn’t seen Trapper in weeks. The monk had disappeared into the bowels of the Mjolnir shortly after they docked.
Wilco paced his cabin, eyes closed, humming a tune he remembered from childhood. He’d forgotten the words, but the song brought some comfort.
A chime from his desk threw off the tune. A reminder that he had something on his agenda today. He wasn’t an official member of the United Navy—if the Navy even officially existed anymore—but he was forced to live the regimented life of a Navy sailor, much to his irritation. He was summoned frequently, had appointments set for him, attended strategy meetings and war councils, was assigned chores, and more. It was hell. But he was not given the option of refusing. If anything, not being enlisted in his current situation was a negative, heaping upon him drawback after drawback and affording him none of the benefits of service.
“Dammit,” he grumbled as he brought up his agenda on the desk screen. His day was packed with planning meetings and briefings. As one of only a handful of people who had firsthand knowledge of the chaos currently tearing the United Systems apart, he was required to be at just about everything meant to move the situation toward a satisfying conclusion.
His mask stared up at him from his desk. Red light danced across it. He ached for it, wanted to don it and melt away into the persona of Wilco the Pirate Lord. But Rear Admiral Milton Klepper, commander of the Mjolnir and probably the highest-ranking surviving officer in the Navy, forbid it. Wilco had called the admiral a goddamn bureaucrat, and then spent a week in the brig with the promise of more permanent incarceration for the next infraction.
Wilco left his cabin feeling naked, exposed, and raw. He reflexively touched the scarred half of his face as he walked down the hall.
“Stop it.” Akari emerged from her cabin as Wilco approached, summoned for the same meeting.
Everyone who had firsthand contact with the Void had been housed in the same unit. Easier to compartmentalize information, the muckety-mucks said. Easier to keep secrets, was what they meant.
“Mind your business,” Wilco said without malice.
“It’s fine.”
Wilco took that to mean his face was fine, a sentiment with which he wholeheartedly disagreed, though he appreciated Akari’s candor. She was among the few people he’d met on this damnable ship who he actually liked. Probably because she wasn’t Navy. She was blunt, straightforward. “What’s this one about?”
“Mission brief.”
“What mission?” Wilco’s heart leapt at the thought of a mission. He hadn’t left the Mjolnir since his arrival. None of them had. He needed to stretch his sword-arm.
“Don’t know. Hence the brief.”
Wilco smiled, taking Akari’s brusque answer as playfully sarcastic even if it wasn’t meant as such.
The living quarters were on the lower levels of the Behemoth-class carrier. Despite being nestled between engineering in the bowels of the ship and the carrier level that housed all of the Mjolnir’s fleet, it was relatively quiet. Too quiet for Wilco’s liking. He was used to the roar of life that was living on a mid-size cruiser. He was used to the noise of war from the time he was a child. This quiet, this peace, was unnerving.
“It’d best be an exciting one,” Wilco said as he and Akari entered the lift. He said this knowing he’d full well accept a mission to deliver food to a mining colony if it got him off the ship and to a place where he could feel the solar winds whipping past.
The lift door slid open on the top level to reveal a bustling corridor. The top level was the command center and was busy at all times. There was not a moment when the command center was not fully staffed. Though the Mjolnir was a cruiser, it had taken on the role as the new Central Command for the United Systems, since the fall of the old Central. Captains and admirals busied about with important tasks like filing reports and saving the universe from a newly-discovered alien threat.
Wilco preferred the quiet solitude of the residential level rather than this sort of noise, the self-importance of rank, the urgency on full display.
“Executive conference room,” Akari said.
Wilco squealed with delight. “The one with the coffee maker? Fantastic.” He rubbed his hands together. “I wonder if they’ll have donuts.” The Mjolnir was created with extravagance in mind, a way for the Navy to show off its might and for the United Systems to parade its wealth. From the massive scope of the ship’s destructive force to the ornate lighting fixtures in the corridors, the Mjolnir made a statement. Wilco’s favorite statement? The fresh donuts.
His excitement ebbed when he and Akari entered the executive conference room. The collective stare was like a hot blade in his gut. He reached for his face, hoping to find his mask having miraculously materialized. He was naked.
Captain Selvin Bigby gestured for them sit. He stood at the head of the long, oval table. Wilco silently obliged, taking a seat between Alenna Byrne and Captain Zaya Medviev.
“Now that we’re all here,” Bigby said, making his irritation known, “we can begin.”
Wilco looked at his nonexistent watch. “Am I late? I’m almost certain that I am not late.”
Hep’s jaw clenched on the other side of the table. His face scrunched the way it always did when he was trying to silently tell Wilco to shut up. The assemblage, Wilco knew, was utterly humorless, so he did not press the issue.
Bigby cleared his throat, trying to suppress the smile fighting to form on his face. Perhaps the assemblage was not completely devoid of humor. “As I was saying.” He pressed a button on a handheld controller that lit a square space on the wall and displayed a map of the sector. “Let’s begin.”
The map zoomed in on a grayed-out area of the map in the bottom left quadrant. It was a small section, big enough to house a few dwarf planets at most. It was a section whose name they all knew.
“The Shallows?” Medviev said the name as if it would explode the moment it left her mouth. “You’d have us chasing down legends at a time like this? Searching for lost treasure?”
A round of disgruntled murmurs circled the table. Weeks of plans had been tossed around, most absolutely useless, some containing a mote of sensibility, but none bearing fruit. They had lost all patience for frivolity.
“Don’t waste my time,” Horus said.
“What makes you think it’s a waste of time?” Hep asked.
“I’ve read everything there is to read about the Shallows?” Horus bristled at the skeptical looks. “What? I read. And none of it leads anywhere. There’s no way into the Shallows, and no way anyone could have deposited a load of treasure, so there’s no reason to go looking.”
“Do you honestly think I’d call you all here to talk about treasure?” Bigby said. He tilted his head and flashed a rakish smile, as if to acknowledge that the idea was not as farfetched as he’d like it to be. “Legends aside, the realities of the Shallows are what I want to discuss. Lik
e Horus said, there is no known way in, which would make it the perfect vault.”
“Thought we weren’t talking about treasure,” Horus said.
“You can keep more than treasure in a vault,” Bigby said.
The room fell into a contemplative silence. Wilco was finally the one to break it. “You trying to say that Bayne is in the Shallows?”
“Recently-acquired intelligence suggests that he is.” Bigby swiped the map aside to reveal a picture of a regal-looking man. His hair was slicked back. His face was smooth, like he’d taken great pains to look much younger than he was. The attempt to appear youthful was obvious but not unsuccessful. His eyes shone with an intensity that made the icy blue stare more than intimidating—it was frightening.
For the first time since beginning the meeting, their host spoke. Rear Admiral Milton Klepper was an unpleasant man in every regard. He stank of cigar smoke. His body was audible at all times, constantly humming with the rumbles of digestion. He was disgruntled about everything. He was a cantankerous water buffalo. “Cantor Byers? Your intelligence comes from Cantor Byers?” As disliked as he was, his outrage was largely agreed upon.
“We’re at war with him,” Medviev said. “Why are you even communicating with him?”
“Are we at war with him?” Bigby said. “Does any of that matter now?”
“The entire conflict was orchestrated by Tirseer,” Byrne reminded the group. “So she could use the Void to control everything. And now the Void is a more dangerous threat to both sides.”
“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t real,” Medviev said. “Thousands of people have died on both sides. A more powerful enemy coming along doesn’t magically erase that.”
“Maybe not,” Bigby said. “But it will magically erase us if we let it.”
Admiral Mara Jeska had been leaning against the back wall, shrouded in shadow, hoping she would have no need to intervene. Her face had begun to show how tired she was. Of the politics. The in-fighting. All of it. She was a Deep Black captain. She should have been out sailing the unexplored, daring the unknown, not locked in a conference room arbitrating.
“Times have changed,” Jeska said. “When this war with the Byers Clan started, we were living in a different universe, a simpler universe. Wars were fought for power, for money. We knew why an army moved their fleet to a certain location. We knew what to expect when we encountered an enemy. The universe is more complicated now.”
Medviev stood. “Have you forgotten everyone that died at Inferni, Admiral? On Central?”
Wilco braced for the impact. Mara Jeska would never be so tired as to allow a subordinate to disrespect her in such a way.
Jeska stepped out of the shadow, her hand instinctively reaching toward her blaster. “Mind your tongue, Captain, before I burn it out of your mouth!”
Mao shot up from his chair. “Admiral!” The force in his voice shocked Jeska back into her body, having taken momentary leave of it. “We in this room are responsible for shepherding the United Systems back from the back of total chaos. What hope do we have of doing that if we cannot even keep order around this one table?”
Jeska locked Mao in her sights. “Sit down.”
Mao swallowed hard as he sat. Quiet took the room. As the silence dragged on, Wilco grew restless in his chair. It felt like spiders were crawling up his legs. It was all he could do to keep his body still; he couldn’t have been expected to also control his mouth.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Wilco blurted out. “Let the Byers goons throw themselves against the Shallows until they crack it open. Then we can fly in and plunder what we like.”
The divided room unified in their disdain for him.
Jeska dropped into a chair in the corner. “Captain Bigby, continue.”
Bigby nervously cleared his throat and tried to remember where he left off. “Right. The Shallows. Cantor Byers.” He fumbled through some notes until something clicked in his head. “Oh, yes, that’s right. Byers says his intel network has been ordered to infiltrate the highest traffic spaceports in each sector since Central went down. He wanted to gain as thorough an understanding as he could as to what happened.” Bigby cleared his throat again. “So that he could mount a counteroffensive.”
Medviev threw up her hands.
“We’re at war,” Bigby said in defense of Cantor’s actions. “We would have done the same if his main headquarters suddenly went dark. The fact that he was honest about it shows how willing he is to set hostilities aside.”
“Or how stupid and desperate he believes us to be,” Medviev said.
“I agree with Captain what’s-her-face,” Klepper said. “It’s a damn foolish thing to accept help from an enemy.”
Jeska visibly tensed. Others followed suit, ready to explode at the strike of a match.
To Wilco’s surprise, Hep stood, silently, and made for the door.
“I don’t recall dismissing anyone,” Jeska said.
“What’s-his-face thinks he runs things, eh?” Klepper said. “Wants to sit in the big seat? My ass is already keeping that seat warm, boy.”
Jeska shot up from her chair, her ire now directed at the admiral. “You may command this ship, Rear Admiral, but I command this navy.”
Hep continued toward the door. Byrne and Akari joined him.
“Looks like your navy is experiencing a mutiny,” Klepper said.
“What the hell are you doing, Captain Montaine?” Jeska barked.
“Leaving,” Hep said.
“You don’t have clearance to leave,” Klepper said. “Your ship can’t take off.”
Jeska rolled her eyes.
“I can better spend my time cleaning air filters than listening to you all bicker.” Hep didn’t even turn to address them.
Wilco could not help but be impressed. Countless near-death experiences seemed to have finally toughened the weak-kneed whelp.
“And how do you think we should proceed?” Jeska’s question drew an audible gasp from several at the table and a barking guffaw from Klepper.
“What position is this boy in to advise us?” Klepper’s voice was that of an old man arguing with a cashier at a checkout. “He’s not Navy. A goddamn pirate, last I read on the intel reports.”
“A salvager,” Hep corrected. “Licensed. And I’ve seen more of this enemy firsthand than anyone else here. I’ve talked with the Void, the thing controlling Ayala. I know Bayne. I’ve sailed with him. I’ve fought him. I’ve been on the frontlines of everything from the very beginning. That’s my position.”
Wilco caught a laugh in his throat. It turned it into a barely-believable cough, convincing no one and causing Klepper’s cheeks to burn red under his ample mustache.
Byrne, Akari, Horus, and Dr. Hauser all stood from the table.
Klepper grumbled like a disturbed troll.
“Enough,” Jeska said. “Your point is made.” She gestured for Hep and the others to sit. “The bickering will cease. But discussion will not. Captain Medviev makes a valid point. We have been at war with Byers for years. We’ve lost friends to them. The sudden emergence of a new enemy does not erase such things and it does not breed trust. We will need assurances that Byers is legit in his offer, that this is not a ruse. I suggest we send an envoy.”
Curious glances passed around the table. None seemed ready to throw their hat in the ring. Wilco couldn’t care less about a diplomatic ass-kissing trip, but he desperately wanted off the Mjolnir. “I graciously offer my services.”
The glances only grew more curious. Klepper snorted with a sudden intake of indignation. “I hardly know you, boy,” the admiral said, “but I know enough to declare that an absolutely crappy idea.”
Wilco was not offended. He agreed with the rear admiral, for the most part. Wilco didn’t have the best diplomatic reputation. He was not cordial and couldn’t care less about protocol. He was prone to bloodshed and making matters worse. But he really wanted off the ship. “We’re meeting with a man with whom we are at war. Whoever g
oes needs to suss out whether Cantor’s intentions are true. Who better to detect deceit than a known deceiver? Unless there’s someone among us more practiced in lying than me?”
He scanned the room. Each set of eyes returned an offended glare when he looked at them.
“I object,” Mao said. “With every fiber of my being. There are none among us better at lying and deceiving and stabbing in the back than he. Of that, at least, he is right. But he can’t be trusted. Until Central fell, he was our enemy. He worked hand-in-hand with the Void. He is, in part, directly responsible for this entire apocalypse. He has good men’s blood on his hands.”
“And women,” Wilco added. “Let’s not be exclusionary.” Wilco cleared his throat as he stood from the table. “All of this is quite true. I have on many occasions tried to kill all of you. And, in many instances, I regret having failed.” He looked at Horus. “Some, I’ve grown to appreciate as people deserving breath.” He looked at Akari. “Regardless, in the spirit of embracing our former enemies to combat total annihilation, I am your best shot at this. Cantor Byers is a ruthless businessman. He’s amassed a fleet to rival the Navy with the sole purpose of securing his own riches and building an empire with his name. He is a profiteer who would burn down planets if it meant improving his bottom line. He is a pirate with all the appropriate licenses and permits. And who better to parley with a pirate than a pirate?”
Jeska chewed on her thumbnail.
“You can’t be considering this,” Klepper said.
Jeska stabbed him through the gut with her eyes. “He’s right.” Klepper’s mustache twitched. He smiled, thinking Jeska was referring to him. “Cantor is ruthless and deceptive with a mind for tactics that rivaled Maria Tirseer’s. But he is also pragmatic. Like any good businessman, he knows when to cut his losses. We need to send someone who can appeal to his sensibilities in that regard.”
Mao cleared his throat. “Admiral, respectively, I have been on away missions with Wilco before. To Ore Town. He only makes things worse.”
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 67
