The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  “That’s why he will not go alone,” Jeska said.

  Mao’s stomach turned, knowing what she was about to say.

  “You will be accompanying him. Along with a small team. Captain Mao carries the authority of the United Navy, and Wilco, the backhandedness and guile of a pirate. We need both right now.”

  “I’d like to accompany them,” Hep said.

  Wilco scoffed at the notion. Hep still considered himself Wilco’s babysitter. He wanted to curse in the fool’s face.

  “No,” Jeska said. “I have another mission for you. I’ll send for you when I’m ready to discuss the details.”

  Jeska dismissed them and fell into her chair, seemingly exhausted by the entire ordeal.

  As the others flooded out of the room, Wilco extended his hand to Mao. “Sailing together again. Would you like to be captain this time or shall I?” Mao swatted his hand away as he walked past. “You’re right. You should probably do it. My guile works best when not constrained by the protocols of the captain’s chair.”

  Wilco grew uncomfortable suddenly when he realized that everyone had left, leaving him alone in the room with Admiral Jeska. He respected the woman. Her gruff nature and hardened attitude were uncommon among the muckety-mucks who typically wore labels like captain and admiral, unless they also wore the label of pirate. But he was also well aware that she did not like him and had the ability to make his life unpleasant or end it altogether.

  He cleared his throat and shuffled from side to side, having made the mistake of meeting Jeska’s eye. “Appreciate the vote of confidence, Admiral. Won’t let you down.”

  “I know you won’t. Because I have all the confidence in the world in Captain Mao.” She groaned as she pressed her palms into her eyes, then stood as she dropped them, swaying a little. “I know you to be exactly who you say you are—perfect for this job, because you are conniving and manipulating and self-serving. Just because you are on this ship, don’t make the mistake of assuming you are in a different position than Cantor Byers. I do not accept your help blindly. I do not trust you. But the current circumstances do not allow me the luxury of keelhauling you.”

  The emptiness in Wilco’s gut surged. It urged him to reach for his hip. He may have listened if his blades still hung there. Instead, he smiled. “Get some sleep, Admiral. You look like hell.”

  Wilco turned just in time to hide the smile slipping from his face. He wasn’t able to bring it back before he stepped outside to find Hep blocking his path. “You going to lecture me? I should start charging people for using me as a punching bag.”

  “It’s not like you haven’t given everyone reason.”

  All pretense dropped from Wilco’s voice. “What do you want?”

  “We’re in real trouble.” The desperation in Hep’s voice was not surprising, but the honesty was. It was pure. “This isn’t like anything we’ve faced together before.”

  “We haven’t faced anything together in a long time.”

  “Running from street gangs, warlords, pirates, the Navy. Until recently, we were always running from something. Then we found something. Running our own ships. Our own teams. We can’t run from the Void.”

  “Who’s running?” Wilco tried to step around.

  Hep stopped him with a hand to the chest. “Running a game while we’re trying to stay alive is the same thing.”

  Wilco slapped Hep’s hand away. “Staying alive is the only game. We’re all playing it. And we’re all losing.” Wilco pushed past Hep.

  Hep called after him as he walked down the hall. “You ever realize that we only stopped running once we split up?”

  Wilco kept walking.

  2

  The bridge of the Mjolnir was as big as most ships Hep had seen. His ship, the Fair Wind, would have fit neatly inside. As expansive as it was, housing as many officers and technicians as it did, the bridge was relatively quiet. It managed a library-like atmosphere, people whispering to each other, a voice at full volume feeling like a trespass.

  “This way please,” the spritely deck officer said, greeting Hep at the door. Hep followed her a hundred yards from the one side of the deck to the other, walking through clusters of workstations where satellite techs monitored movement in the sector and comms officers coded messages to relay to the fleet.

  Few looked up from their work. Klepper was a taskmaster, an old school drill sergeant type who liked to instill fear in his sailors rather than earn their respect. The added presence of Admiral Jeska only heightened the tension. Plus, the looming threat of impending annihilation from an enemy they didn’t understand.

  “You can wait here,” the deck officer said, her small hands folded in front of her. “The admiral will be with you shortly.” She left Hep with the sense he would shortly be receiving bad news.

  He hadn’t had much occasion to speak with Jeska since the fall of Central. Not that he interacted with her much beforehand, but he got the sense that she was being intentional about their distance now. He wasn’t one for ego, but Hep knew he’d played a part in everything that had brought them to this point, the Navy toward the brink of defeat, potentially facing a war on two fronts, the systems under an alien threat. He couldn’t shake the feeling that, had he never boarded the Royal Blue and never met Captain Drummond Bayne, none of this would have happened.

  An arrogant thought. Even Bayne did nothing to welcome the threat of the Void. Tirseer welcomed that into the systems. Even without her help, maybe the threat still would have come. He spiraled into a sucking abyss of what-if.

  “Captain Montaine.”

  The formality took him off guard. He felt like a scolded child. He hoped it was meant as a sign of respect. “Admiral.”

  Mara Jeska climbed the half-dozen steps to greet Hep on the top of the command platform, which housed the captain’s chair and a hub of navigation and operational controls. “Thank you for coming.”

  He wanted to say, “I didn’t know I had a choice,” but it sounded like something Wilco would say. He opted for, “Of course.”

  She gestured toward the center of the command platform, which was a tennis court-sized, raised area at the front of the bridge, occupied by a dozen of the highest-ranking bridge officers on the ship. At the center of the platform was a round table, large enough to seat all of them. Jeska pressed a button on the table. It appeared to do nothing at first, but then Hep heard the faint hum of static.

  “A privacy shield,” Jeska said. “So we can speak freely.” The shield was an invisible wall that kept their conversation in and unwelcome ears out.

  The level of discretion made Hep uncomfortable. He felt like he was in the waiting room at a doctor’s office, expecting the results of an exam he knew he’d failed.

  Jeska sat. “I’m not stupid.”

  It was clear the admiral was tired, but Hep suddenly wondered whether that fatigue was affecting her mind. “I don’t—”

  “I know the risks of partnering with Byers. I know the risks of not partnering with Byers. I’ve weighed them all.” She watched Hep’s eyes dart around the bridge. “You can speak freely.”

  “Admiral—”

  “Speak freely.”

  Hep cleared his throat. “Why are you telling me this? I’m not one of your sailors. I have no skin in this game. I’m a salvager now.”

  Jeska laughed. “You’re a goddamn fool if you actually believe that. You have been on the frontlines of this entire goddamn mess from the beginning. You don’t get to decide to sit the rest of it out because you’ve found yourself a job.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “And I don’t think you’re stupid either. Not stupid enough to believe that you’re a nobody in all this, a watcher from the periphery, at least. You know you’ve got a role to play. So, what’s with the hemming and hawing? You afraid of what’s coming? Or are you afraid of who you’re becoming?”

  Hep looked at his hands. “A little of both?”

  “Good enough for me. Personally, I’m terrified. That’s how I know it’
s time for some bold moves.”

  “Like sending Wilco as a diplomatic envoy?”

  She smiled. “Exactly. And sending you on a black op.”

  Hep’s breath caught in his throat. “What?”

  “We can’t sit on our hands and wait for Wilco’s mission to maybe succeed or maybe bring everything crashing down around us. The Void has control of the former top-ranking officer in the United Systems and, presumably, all of the information in her head. It’s got a massive space station and a fleet. It became a hostile power overnight with the ability to wage a devastating war. There is nothing to indicate the pace of its aggression will slow. We can’t wait.” She folded her hands on the table. Her back went rigid. “I need you to find us a way into the Shallows.”

  Hep went cold, the core of him freezing over. “That… Haven’t people been trying to do that for generations? What makes you think I could?”

  The smile on Jeska’s face was unsettling. “We have a lead on someone who might be able to help. A writer.”

  “A writer?”

  “One of my favorites, actually. Thornton Mueller.”

  A scene flashed in Hep’s memory. Him sitting by a fireplace. It was the cold season and the power was out. That happened a lot in the later days of the warlord campaign, as the fighting drew nearer to home. He must have been five, six maybe. He was on the floor, laying on his belly, staring at the crackling flames as he listened to his father read from one of his favorite books, The Last Voyage of the Swallowtail.

  “The pulp author?”

  “He wrote some of the greatest adventure stories in history. Including a novel that no one remembers called Curse of the Deadly Shallows.”

  “You think that’s about the Shallows? But it’s just a story.”

  “An accurate one. It was written when the Shallows were still little more than a ghost story. There was no research done. No data. Only after the first few expeditions did it become clear how accurate the details in his story were. He did his research. He went to the Shallows.”

  “Is he even alive still? Those stories are so old.”

  Jeska bristled at the accusation. “Not that old. The Shallows have always interested me. I’ve kept tabs on Mueller over the years, in the off chance I would get the time to pursue researching it.”

  The idea of Admiral Mara Jeska poring over her favorite dog-eared copy of an old pulp novel made Hep want to smile. He repressed the urge because the real version of Jeska, who appeared ready to crash the ship into an asteroid at any given moment, was much angrier than the fantasy version who loved things like stories.

  “You want me to track Mueller down and see what he knows?” Hep shifted in his chair. “If you don’t mind me asking, Admiral—”

  “Speak freely.”

  “Why send me? As crazy as it sounds, I understand sending Wilco to parley with Cantor Byers. But he’s being accompanied by your best. I’m not Navy.”

  Jeska smiled. “Exactly. The Navy is on high alert. I can’t send them off on mission like this when they need to be here, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. And the details of this mission would be demoralizing, to know that I’m using manpower to hunt down an old novelist in the hopes that he has the key to the Shallows when we’re facing war on two fronts. This needs to be discreet.”

  Hep took in a long breath. “Okay.” A spark of bravery caught in his chest. “On one condition.”

  Jeska glowered at him.

  “I get to take my own ship. And my own crew.”

  “Agreed.” Jeska extended her hand, and Hep accepted. “Gather your crew, Captain Montaine. You set sail as soon as possible.”

  3

  “I don’t know why you’re all so bristly. This is a wonderful day to be alive.”

  None of the others seemed to share Wilco’s exuberance. They glowered at the control panels and each other. None were happy to be on this mission.

  “Agreed.” Save for Bigby, who somehow managed to keep a positive attitude at all times, even with the end of all things looming on the horizon. “Adventure awaits.”

  Wilco leaned against the wall of the hangar, considering Selvin Bigby with equal parts admiration and skepticism.

  The others remained quiet, probably silently cursing Wilco and Jeska for putting this plan together. Wilco attributed the reluctance from some as merely a lack of momentum. They’d been stuck on the Mjolnir for weeks, relegated to waiting in their rooms, told they needed to keep their hands off while also being told they were too relevant to be far from the focus of decision-making. They were too important to do anything.

  “Come now, sourpusses, it wouldn’t hurt for you all to be a little more like dear Captain Bigby here.” Wilco pushed off the wall and strutted down the center of the hangar, addressing the gathering. “Optimism. Hope. That’s what this mission is about.”

  “This mission is about securing valuable intelligence and possibly forming an alliance.” Mao would be the one to stomp on Wilco’s attempt at mustering enthusiasm. He was an eternal buzzkill. “Whatever else you hope to gain here, I will ensure you don’t.”

  Wilco put his hand to his heart like Mao’s words wounded him. “Ulterior motives? Me?”

  Akari shot him as much of a smile as she ever did, a slight uptick of the right corner of her mouth. The small movement made her eyes shine exponentially.

  “I assure you,” Wilco continued, “that I have only the best intentions. I am here as a diplomat, a peacemaker, a deal-sealer—”

  “A blowhard and a liar.” The voice hit Wilco in the gut. Once so common, a soothing voice in his ear… He had not heard it in weeks.

  Trapper Mayne entered the hangar, his staff slung over one shoulder with a bag hanging on the end of it. He’d once moved with deliberate purpose, the way a priest walked up the aisle on his way to deliver a sermon. Being a monk, even a disgraced one who had been banished from his order, Trapper always moved with the same intention. Not now. He had a swagger that Wilco recognized, though it was totally foreign on Trapper Mayne.

  “What are you doing here?” The bravado of a moment ago was gone from Wilco’s voice. Only honest surprise.

  “I asked him to come,” Mao said.

  Now, Wilco really did feel wounded. “I see. You aim to use this man’s empathic monk skills to control me, do you?”

  Mao looked stunned. “Is that a thing you can do?”

  “Not exactly,” Trapper said.

  “He’s the only one who seems to know what might be happening inside your head,” Mao said.

  “Control by another means,” Wilco said.

  The gathering fell quiet. Trapper dropped his bag to the deck with a thud, and then he dropped his staff like it was a mop handle and let it clang on the floor. The gestures meant nothing to the others, but Wilco knew the staff held a great significance to Trapper. It was the weapon of his order, given to him when he took his vows. It was his most sacred possession. To see him treat it with such carelessness was unsettling.

  Bigby clapped his hands. “This is the team, then?”

  Mao nodded.

  “Good. Then I’ll give the tour.” Bigby led them onto the Glinthawk. He spoke of the ship the way parents do their children—beaming pride, and an intentional blind spot for all its flaws. Though, to be fair, there were few. It was a beautiful ship. A small cruiser, needing only a crew of a dozen, built to run blockades and maneuver deftly through congested space. Bigby regaled them with stories of battles in the Nielsen asteroid fields, a supply run in the Deep Black, and hunting down warlords in the days of the Rangers.

  He ended the tour in the war room. “As you surely noticed, we are the only crew aboard,” Bigby said. “Engineers rigged the main systems with a basic AI protocol, so I can run the ship on a skeleton crew. This mission is hush-hush. Admiral Jeska doesn’t want word of a potential alliance with Byers getting out to the rank-and-file until we’ve got something concrete to show for it.” The others acknowledged with silent nods. “Get settled in and get s
ome rest while you can. We shove off in an hour. It’s a three-hour trip to the rendezvous. There won’t be much opportunity for rest once we’re underway.”

  Bigby nodded to Mao as he left the room, signaling the other captain to join him. This left Wilco, Akari, and Trapper alone in the war room. Akari walked around the table in the center with all the intention of an old man through his garden, inspecting his roses. She regarded the technology as though it were a delicate thing of great beauty, running her fingers over each panel and monitor as though trying to get a sense of them.

  She did not notice all the tension in the room. She didn’t care much for the intricacies of interpersonal relationships. She understood them and recognized them and possessed the self-awareness to navigate them, she just couldn’t be bothered to invest in them more than she needed to. Those who didn’t know her well would have classified her as a curmudgeon. Those who knew her called her solitary or a recluse. She didn’t consider herself any of those. She did not dislike people and felt no need to hide from them. She just preferred to observe rather than participate.

  Trapper could not be oblivious to the emotions in a room if he wanted to be. Right now, he wanted to be. He’d wanted to cut himself off from other people’s feelings since the fall of Central. He shifted uneasily, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He had been forcibly pushed out of his monastic order, had more recently chosen to leave more of it behind, but he still had some habits. He meditated without thinking. That was his reason for seeking out the monks in the first place. He had been a street kid like Wilco, coming up in a war-torn city, fighting others like him to survive. It made him angry, and he had given into that anger for a long time. It consumed him. It led him to do terrible things.

  When he reached young adulthood, his rage led him to its ultimate conclusion. He’d become a warlord. He did not have a ship, but he ran his small fiefdom like a tyrant. He killed. He walked across the bodies of the dead to take what he wanted. Eventually, that anger hollowed him out, and he went searching for a cure. There was no cure, only treatment. After years of living with the monks, the anger still ate at him, still lay dormant in his belly. They saw it. They felt it. And, so, he left.