The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  “The hell’s gotten into you, old man?” Hep said. “Common practice to pull guns on visitors?”

  “It’s not common practice to have visitors,” the old man said. “People come here to die in peace, not socialize.”

  “Just tell us where to find Mueller and we’ll be on our way,” Byrne said.

  “What do you want with him?” The old man crossed his arms defiantly.

  Byrne cocked an eyebrow, a thought blossoming. “Are you him? Thornton Mueller?”

  The old man chewed on his lip. When he didn’t seem to enjoy the taste of it any longer, he said, “You come to kill me?”

  Byrne and Hep exchanged a confused look. “Why would you say that?” Hep asked.

  “Because the only people who’ve come looking for me the last few years are folks who mean to kill me.”

  “Who?”

  “That woman. What’s her name? Tirseer.”

  The information swirled in Hep’s mind. He tried to make sense of it. “Colonel Maria Tirseer of the United Systems Central Intelligence?”

  “I don’t have a damn clue who she is,” Mueller said. “The guy just told me her name was Tirseer.”

  “What guy?” Byrne said.

  “Some fella named Bayne.”

  Hep squeezed his eyes. “I think I need to sit down.”

  Byrne let out a slow, steady breath. “Sir, Mr. Mueller, would you mind starting from the beginning?”

  Thornton Mueller, once best-selling pulp author who had since faded into obscurity, regaled Hep and Byrne with a tale that could have been put on the page and sold as fiction. Long after the royalties from his last books had dried up, Mueller was approached by a man who claimed to be a former Ranger captain. He came to retrieve information from the writer, intrigued by a book of his, “Curse of the Deadly Shallows,” in which Mueller told of a daring pirate captain who found the secret to navigating the long-thought impenetrable Shallows. He stashed his treasure trove inside and was never heard from again.

  “I told him it was just a story,” Mueller said, “but he was certain there was some truth to it.”

  “Is there?” Hep prodded.

  “A kernel, I suppose. I interviewed a scientist, some bloke who served on one of the latter expeditions to the Shallows, who said they had a breakthrough. He claimed the Shallows was a pocket of energy, like a dense mass of radiation or some such thing, with an empty space in the center. That’s the reason they were studying it, because it was energy acting in a way they’d never seen before, not because they were trying to reach the treasure inside. That all got mixed up after the book came out. Anyway, this bloke said they found a way to disrupt the energy field so they could pass through it.”

  Mueller rubbed his temple like he was trying to remember. “There were two asteroids near to Shallows that gave off odd energy signatures. Theory was they were connected. So the bloke took samples from each. When they came together, they emitted a new signature, one that disrupted the Shallows. I remember he showed me the samples.”

  “Do you know what they were called? Or where to find them?” Hep realized the prospect was outlandish, for this old man to know where to find something he only glimpsed years ago.

  “I did once. I told that Ranger fellow about them. He’d probably know where to get some.”

  Hep deflated. “He’s actually the reason we’re looking for the samples. We think they’d help us find Bayne.”

  “Who’s Bayne?” Mueller said.

  Hep deflated some more. The old man was starting to slip away. “The Ranger captain.”

  Mueller shook his head. “No, that fella’s name was Alex or something. Kyte. Alexander Kyte.”

  Hep’s head swam. His breath forced its way out of his lungs.

  “Parallax,” Byrne said.

  “Don’t know anyone by that name,” Mueller said.

  Before Byrne could explain, Hep interrupted. “Do you remember what the samples looked like? What color were they?”

  “Oh, that I do remember. One was black, but, like a black I’ve never seen, almost like a piece of a black hole. And the other was—”

  Hep drew his sword. “Like this?” He showed Mueller the blade, the blue metal that looked to swirl like it was alive if you stared at it hard enough.

  “Yeah,” Mueller said, his voice sounding far away. “Like that.”

  Hep sheathed his blade and began to pace the room, assembling the chronology in his mind. “Alexander Kyte, when he was still a Ranger, came looking for information about the Shallows. He got his hands on those asteroid samples and made these two blades, keys to get through the energy field. Bayne inherited the swords when Parallax died. Then he gave them to me and Wilco. Tirseer must not have known what the blades could do. She would have taken them from us when she had the chance.”

  “That fella, Kyte, he told me that Tirseer would be coming for me. He helped me relocate, hide. Told me to change my name and move on should I ever get the feeling someone figured me out. Of course, that only added to the mystery and allure of the Shallows. Hiding just made more people want to seek me out.”

  “Call the others,” Hep said to Byrne. “We need to get to Wilco.”

  As if he had been listening in, Horus hailed on the comm. “We got ourselves a problem here.”

  “It’s okay,” Byrne answered. “We found Mueller. Head back to the ship.”

  “That’s not the trouble I’m talking about. We’ve got company.”

  The front door of the administrative building burst into splinters, and two men wearing familiar insignia stormed in. Without hesitation, Hep shot one in the chest with the sawed-off scattershot he’d confiscated from Mueller. Byrne shot the second in the forehead as he charged them.

  Hep stooped down to study the dead men. He looked at the insignia on their shirts. “Elmore Syndicate.” If only it was the syndicate. Thugs, he could handle. But all of the syndicate were killed at the battle of Central. “The Void.”

  5

  There was never a more inconvenient time to get an itch on your nose than when your hands are bound behind your back. Wilco could ignore it no longer, so he pressed his face to Bigby’s shoulder, hoping to pressure would push his mask against his nose and relieve his discomfort.

  The nearest of Mr. Grey’s operatives kicked Wilco in the chest. “Get back!”

  Wilco wheezed and fought to catch his breath. “Just looking for some relief.”

  “Hope I helped,” the operative said.

  Despite his arrogance, the man had helped. The scuffle offered Wilco the cover he needed to fall back on the splinter of metal he’d spied on the floor minutes earlier. The operatives had shuffled all the crates out of the way, but they neglected to clean with the eye of a man held captive. Through those eyes, any scrap is a potential tool. He palmed the shard.

  “Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?” Mao asked Mr. Grey.

  “Captain Taliesin Mao,” Mr. Grey answered. “Revered captain of the United Navy. A man disappointingly lacking in foresight.”

  “Not us,” Mao shot back. “The people you sold us out to.”

  “Admiral Shay Ayala.” Mr. Grey’s mouth turned up in a delighted smile. “I must say, I’ve been in this business for decades, brokered deals between pirates and businessmen. I even negotiated a labor contract for some frontier schoolteachers once. But to be offered a contract by the Navy top brass to sabotage its own parley… That one surprised me.”

  “Because Ayala isn’t Navy anymore,” Mao said. “She’s…something else. She’s been corrupted.”

  Mr. Grey’s smile widened. “Corrupt people are my best customers.”

  Wilco felt a tug in his gut and heard a whisper in the back of his mind. The Void was near. An operative whispered in Mr. Grey’s ear. His smile tightened into a straight line. “Watch them,” he said of the captives. The door slid open and shut again behind Mr. Grey as he left. Three guards remained to watch the Navy and Byers prisoners.

  “Whatever
internal strife you’ve brought me into,” Amelia said, “I don’t appreciate it.”

  “As I said,” Mao repeated. “The Royal Blue is no longer under Navy control.”

  “And neither is your admiral? I find that hard to believe.”

  “And I find it hard to believe that you would be sent as the Byers representative to this parley without having been briefed on some of the details of what happened at Central,” Mao said. “It’s understood that your father has an extensive intelligence network. I’m sure he has a few paid eyes and ears inside the Navy.”

  Amelia did not refute the accusation.

  “Perhaps we could continue the parley portion of this affair once we are not being held at blaster point?” Wilco said.

  Mao clenched his jaw and stared at Wilco like he was trying to see through his mask and read his scarred face. When the attempt failed, he relented, offering a silent nod of approval.

  Wilco stood, pressing his knees together. The guards immediately aimed their blasters at his chest. “I feel compelled to inform you that, if not allowed a moment to relieve myself, we will all be forced to endure the unfortunate smell of a man who’s pissed himself. Perhaps a few moments; I had a lot of coffee this morning and no opportunity to use the toilet. One can never predict when he’ll be held captive.”

  “Down,” a guard said. He stepped to Wilco, one hand on his blaster and the other extended forward to secure the upstart. Once the guard grabbed his shoulder, Wilco dropped like his legs gave out. He twisted as he fell and drove the metal shard into the guard’s thigh. He dragged it down through the man’s flesh as he fell to the floor.

  The scream preceded a burst of chaos. The other two guards in the room scanned frantically for the cause of the pain. The rush of blood across the floor as it sprayed through the air only fanned the flames of panic. Mao, having spent enough time with Wilco at this point to know when he was up to something, wasted no time taking advantage of the confusion. He kicked the feet out from under the guard nearest him. Bigby then drove his knee into the man’s face. Akari moved with a swiftness and grace that none had ever seen. Typically seen behind a console in engineering, few ever bothered to consider whether she was capable of such physical feats. As she rose, she kicked the remaining guard in the groin. As he hunched forward in agony, she drove her knee up into the man’s face.

  Wilco plucked his makeshift knife from the screaming guard’s thigh and silenced him by driving it into his throat, which Wilco considered rather skillful having done it with his hands bound behind his back. But that would do nothing to stem the coming rush of people who wanted them dead. The noise of the scuffle was certainly heard by Mr. Grey and his remaining men. The Void-infected sailors only bolstered their numbers, and, judging by the twisting of Wilco’s gut, there were quite a few of them.

  Wilco sat on the floor beside the dead guard. He fumbled with the cluster of keys dangling from the man’s belt, but quickly managed to find the one he needed and freed himself. He did the same for the others.

  Bigby only managed to free one of his wrists before the door began to slide open. Three sets of black boots were visible in the opening. Wilco dove toward the door. With all the deftness of a butcher, he reached out and cut one across the calf then stabbed down into the boot of another. Bigby jabbed a rod into the door’s gear system, locking it in place, opened about a foot.

  “Here!” Mao shouted. He had started moving the crates from the back wall, pushing them forward to create a barrier behind which they could take shelter and revealing the door that had been blocked.

  Amelia ordered her entourage to help. The three of them rushed to Mao’s aid.

  The operative with the bleeding foot fell to the ground. He slid the barrel of his blaster under the door and fired indiscriminately. One of the shots struck a Byers man in the heel. As he fell, another shot struck him in the head, killing him instantly.

  Wilco dove onto the operative’s gun. He pulled up on the man’s hand until his wrist snapped. Wilco took the blaster for his own, firing several shots—including one into the man who used to own the gun.

  The remaining members of the Navy and Byers delegations huddled behind the makeshift wall. Wilco fired backward, only hoping to keep the enemy from entering, not thinking he’d actually hit anyone.

  Mao and the Byers men moved the last crate out of the way.

  “Wait,” Mao said, stopping Amelia’s righthand guy from opening the door. “Mr. Grey knows this door is here. There may be men stationed on the other side.”

  “Listen to him,” Amelia said, answering her man’s unasked question. “What do you propose?”

  Mao closed his eyes. His gift for tactics was unrivalled among his class of Navy graduates. There were only a few others who could match him, but he recognized his shortcomings in the area of creativity—and he recognized when someone else had particular talent for it.

  “Wilco,” Mao said. “Any ideas?”

  Luckily, Wilco didn’t take the opportunity to gloat. “Moi?” Much. “I could probably come up with a few.”

  For the first time, Amelia’s stoic expression cracked with concern. And a bit of amusement. “Whenever you’re ready,” she said.

  Wilco lifted his nose, just now registering the strong odor in the air. This was a research center. A self-contained complex. They would have had a generator, a lot of machines to run, and they would have needed fuel to run them. He pried the top off a crate and marveled at the dozen plastic jugs inside. He picked them up one at a time and shook them. Most were all but empty. One had an inch or so of liquid inside. He tossed the jugs to the others. They followed his lead, dumping the contents on the floor until a puddle stretched in a thin line from one end of the room to the other.

  Without a word spoken between them, Bigby and Mao knew the plan. Bigby waited with his hand on the rod that he’d shoved in the gear system. Mao waited by the back door.

  Wilco nodded. Bigby yanked the rod free and ran for the back door. As the door opened, Wilco opened fire, spraying in a wide swathe at the expanding opening. The enemy outside scattered. Wilco slid back a foot at a time. Thinking them in a last-ditch effort to flee, the enemy stationed outside the back door attempted to breach. The first through the door was met with a rod to the face. Mao took the bludgeoned man’s weapon and shot the next man in the gut before he could enter.

  Wilco shot the puddle of fuel on the floor. It sparked and erupted, a wall of flame forming the middle of the room. Wilco entered a full retreat, following the others out the back door. Exiting the small building, Wilco found himself standing in an abandoned lot about the size of a tennis court, surrounded by broken chain-link fencing.

  Mao handed the gun to Bigby, who posted up at the corner of the building and waited for the enemy to come after them. Wilco kept his pointed at the now-closed back door.

  “Now what?” Akari said.

  “We need to get to the Glinthawk and get out of here,” Wilco said.

  “No,” Mao said. His voice was tight with something that Wilco had not heard in it before—personal aggrievement. He stared through the building, eyes narrowed to sword points, cutting through everything in his way. “I want my ship back.”

  Wilco spun to face Mao, his face spread wide with shock and excitement. “Taliesin Mao, you surprise me. Are you suggesting we throw caution to the wind and embark on a mission of great peril that has little tactical merit but is of great personal importance?”

  Not even Wilco’s obnoxious verbosity could draw Mao’s intense stare from its target. “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” Amelia said. “But it sounds like you want me to risk myself and my men to resolve a grudge.”

  “You don’t need to accompany us,” Mao said. “Use our attempt as a distraction, an opportunity for you to get to your ship and take off.”

  Amelia leveled a skeptical stare at each of them before finally landing on Trapper Mayne. “Monk, you have not said anything.”

  T
rapper cocked his head, surprised that she recognized him as a member of a monastic order. “I’ve had nothing to say.”

  “I know what your order can do,” Amelia said. “And of the code you all live by. I can trust your word.” Wilco opted not to tell her that Trapper was excommunicated from his order. “Can I trust these men?”

  Trapper clenched his jaw as he looked from Mao to Wilco. The silence was heavy. “Yes. I am bound by no vows to follow them but do so regardless. They have earned my loyalty.”

  “Good enough for me,” Amelia said. She scoffed at the curious glances. “There’s a reason I am not favored among my father’s children. I place little value in the obstinance of my brothers, resisting the help of those capable out of pride or blind devotion. What’s your plan, Captain Mao?”

  6

  The skimmer had a top speed of fifty miles-per-hour. Given the ragged state of the machine, it barely managed forty before it shook to the point of falling to pieces.

  “Everyone check in,” Hep ordered. Each team responded. They had seen the Void-infected syndicate soldiers but had not made contact. They remained hidden, waiting for an opportunity to flee unseen back to the Fair Wind.

  “Keep your heads down,” Hep said. “We’ll let you know when we’ve reached the ship. If you can’t make it to us, we’ll come to you.”

  “I wish I brought a pen.”

  In all the excitement, Hep had forgotten that Mueller had decided to tag along. Hep didn’t have the time or energy to refuse the old man, especially since Mueller didn’t seem like the sort to listen. Hep justified it by telling himself that Mueller could still have some valuable information locked away in his aging brain.

  “Just keep your head down,” Hep said. “Can you connect with the ship?”

  Byrne was already working on it. She was hunched down in the front passenger seat, tapping feverishly on her tablet. “Just networked with the Wind.”