The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  He took a shaky breath and considered how odd it was that he could sort the dead he knew into categories.

  “If this was meant to be a rescue, I think I was better off in danger.” Elias ran his hands down his shirt, straightening out the wrinkles.

  “Hepzah, to the war room,” Delphyne said over comms.

  “What do I do with Elias?”

  “Throw him in the brig.”

  Hep smiled. “Gladly.” He grabbed Elias by the collar, to which the doctor protested, to which Hep didn’t care. Elias may have been some sort of genius scientist and their only hope of defeating the Void, but he was also a sociopath and the reason the Void existed. Hep would sooner kick him out the airlock if he wasn’t so necessary.

  Mao and Delphyne stood at the head of the long conference table in the war room. To Hep’s surprise, Wilco sat next to the them rather than brooding against a back wall. Byrne and Akari were the only others in the room.

  Mao gestured for him to sit. “Excellent work retrieving Elias and getting him safely aboard. Truly commendable.”

  “I’m not interested in commendations.”

  Wilco’s scarred face twisted up in a smile.

  “How bad is it on the Mjolnir?” Hep asked.

  Mao motioned to Delphyne, who produced a tablet from which she read. “Only initial reports so far. About twenty-five percent of the starfighters from the level one hangar were docked at the time of… They were lost. All personnel present at the time were killed. There will be no way of knowing how many exactly until they’re able to compile logs and cross reference—”

  “XO,” Mao interrupted.

  She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “Damage was contained to the level one hangar. The hangar itself is completely sealed right now, but could be made operational again in a few days. No Void soldiers moved beyond the initial breach point. The Mjolnir is safe. For now.”

  “Calibor gave us a chance,” Mao said. “So let’s assess just how viable a chance that is. Update on Bayne.”

  “Still unconscious,” Hep said. “Whatever he did to upgrade the ship really took it out of him. I don’t think Hauser knows what to make of him.”

  Mao exhaled through an iron gate of a clenched jaw. “Elias will examine him.”

  “He’s the monster who turned Bayne into this,” Hep said. “Ayala and Sig too. He’s responsible for all of this.”

  “And he’s the only one who understand how any of it works.” Mao’s voice was without sympathy. “We no longer have the option of moral purity here. I don’t think we ever did. I wanted to believe that was a viable path, the only path for the Navy. Believing that has led to tragedy again and again. Right now, we do what we must. And we must work with this monster to defeat worse monsters. Tell Dr. Hauser to prep for Dr. Elias’s arrival. He gets whatever he needs, including an armed escort at all times.”

  Wilco and Hep both volunteered.

  “Fine,” Mao said. “Your orders are to keep him on task and alive.” Before Wilco could object at being given orders, Mao said, “We are past pretending you two are not members of my crew. Whether officially or not, I am your captain, and you will do as you’re told.”

  Neither Hep nor Wilco rebutted.

  “Get Bayne conscious,” Mao continued, “and then find out how he can supposedly kill the Void. Until then, while it remains safe, we maintain our position here and leave the fighting to others.” The words burned his throat. It felt like hiding, allowing others to die in his stead, something he had grown grossly tired of. “Dismissed.”

  Hep and Wilco left for the med-bay. They walked silently through the corridors. It was not a tense silence, the sort that had plagued their interactions for years now. It was a silence born of fatigue. They were so tired. Hardly would they catch their breaths from fighting one battle when they were confronted with news that would shatter most people. I know you just barely escaped these space zombies but, surprise! The man who saved you from a life of piracy only to kind of push you back to a life of piracy, the man you thought dead, is actually alive and seems to be a space god.

  They were reeling. Another blow, and they would certainly fall, maybe never to get back up.

  “Captain,” Byrne said before Mao and Delphyne could leave the conference room. “I have something to discuss.”

  Mao cast a quizzical glance in the direction of Hep and Wilco.

  “I thought it best to bring up after they left,” Byrne said.

  “Bring what up, Officer Byrne?”

  “I sorted through the signatures that we collected from the swarm of Void ships. Our assumption was right, there were too many ships in their fleet to have come from the Syndicate or the battle at Central alone.” Byrne cleared her throat, steeling herself. “I cross-referenced a sample of signatures that didn’t match Syndicate or Byers records or the active roster for Central. Some of the names popped. They were from the data we stole from Colonel Tirseer, the black ops files.”

  Mao’s breath caught in his throat. He suspected what she was about to say, knew it somewhere deep inside, but he made her say it anyway. “Get on with it, Officer Byrne.”

  “I pulled one name in particular that I thought would interest you: the Supernova.”

  A sharp pain emerged in between Mao’s ribs so that it hurt for him to take a deep breath. Every time he tried, it felt like being stabbed in the lungs. “The ship of Ranger Captain Alexander Kyte, later known as Parallax.”

  “Aye, sir,” Byrne said. “The other names I pulled also matched those of Ranger ships.”

  “The Void went to the ship graveyard.” Mentioning that place stabbed harder at Mao’s side. “Where the Navy betrayed the Rangers who helped defeat the warlords and secure peace in the systems. The site of the Navy’s greatest betrayal.”

  Byrne continued, stepping around that landmine. “From what little analysis we were able to conduct from the battle at Central, it looks like the Void infects ships the same way it does people. It takes over their core operating systems, whether they’re alive or not.”

  “So we’re not only fighting the corpses of our dead friends,” Delphyne said, “but the corpses of dead ships, too?”

  Byrne nodded. “I was only able to analyze a portion of the signature data. I think it’s safe to assume there will be ships from other locations too. Anyone the Void has crossed up until now. Any person, any ship it kills becomes part of it. Any dead thing it finds in the wild becomes part of the Void.”

  Mao paced the length of the table, his eyes narrowed and pointed down. “I don’t doubt your analysis, Byrne, but I think it’s omitting something. The Void is not mindless. It does not consume wantonly. It grows for a purpose. It acts with intention. With Ayala under its control, it has access to a vast wealth of knowledge. It knew of the Ranger ship graveyard. It knew of its significance, the impact the Supernova would have.”

  “You think it’s playing head games?” Delphyne said.

  “I think it would be foolish to assume the Void does anything with only one purpose in mind. The Ranger ships add to its arsenal and potentially neutralizes our greatest asset. Drummond Bayne served on that ship. He had an intense connection with its captain. And an even more intense fallout.”

  Delphyne sighed. “I guess I’ll let you tell Bayne the news then.”

  “Assuming he wakes up,” Mao said. He squeezed the bridge of his nose until the pain there was more than the stabbing into his ribs and forgot the urgency of not taking a full breath. “Call Jeska and Klepper,” he said to Delphyne. “I want to brief them.” To Byrne he said, “Keep sifting through those ship signatures. Catalogue them as best you can. The fleet could use the data to formulate a strategy.”

  Mao sunk into his chair, trying to reconcile with the unsettling hope that Bayne never woke. He might rather face extinction than break this news to his old captain.

  6

  Time, like so many of the things Bayne once thought of as unbreakable laws of nature, meant very little to him now. He
did not know how much time had passed since he died and was brought back. He did not know if those things had even occurred only once. He thought he might have died more than once and come back just one more time than that.

  The laws of physics were more like suggestions now. Ones that Bayne no longer wished to take into consideration. The weaselly doctor—the one with the hungry eyes and dead smile, Elias—had been coaxing Bayne along. Teaching felt like the wrong word. He wasn’t a teacher, he was a scientist. Bayne wasn’t a student, he was a subject. He was prodded when he was stubborn, manipulated when he was weak-willed, challenged when he felt prideful. Anything Elias could do to get a reaction so that he might jot some notes down on his tablet.

  After a sufficient journal had been recorded, the control group was expanded. It was hard to explain the feeling Bayne had when he entered the large empty room that had been the maze to his mouse to find another person that was not Dr. Elias. That rat was the only human Bayne had seen since first opening his eyes after the battle at Ore Town. Panic at first, an intense fight or flight response, though Bayne did not wish to do either of those things. He recognized this person. He also did not recognize this person. Bayne felt like he was looking at a photograph of someone he once knew through a thick fog.

  The person seemed to mirror him, head tilted to the side, a puzzled expression.

  “I know you,” Bayne said. A voice inside him whispered in a language that his brain translated to mean brother, but that word didn’t feel right. “Good to see you, Chief.”

  “Captain,” Sigurd answered.

  Hep moved the scalpels and other sharp instruments out of Dr. Hauser’s reach. Wilco tried to give them back to her. She seemed only seconds away from strangling Dr. Elias given all her means of stabbing him had been moved out of reach. “If you’re half as good a xenobiologist as you are a pain in my ass, then I think we’ll have Bayne up and running in no time.”

  “I am,” Elias said. “And the fact that you think we could have this man ‘up and running in no time’ tells me you are a backwater hack with a scalpel who has no business commenting on the achievement lying on your table.”

  “Your achievements have threatened the entire United Systems.”

  “The entire universe, more likely,” Elias said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to belittle your achievement,” Hauser growled.

  Hep grabbed her shoulder as she tried to lunge at Elias. “When’s he going to wake up?”

  Elias rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. Maybe in a minute. Maybe a day. Maybe never. He is the first and only of his kind. A being like him has never been observed. I could only hypothesize as to what he did to your ship.”

  “Not the only of his kind,” Wilco said, menace in his voice.

  Elias laughed. “Oh, you and he are nothing alike. He is a successful bonding of a genetically-modified microorganism of unknown alien origin. He was created to be the next evolution of humanity, a savior. You are…” He studied Wilco. “…a rough draft. I would have crumpled you up and thrown you in the garbage, but the colonel thought she could use you.”

  Hep chopped down into Wilco’s forearm, knocking the blade just off course enough to stick into the wall three inches to Elias’s right. Elias laughed at the attempt, only serving to further enrage Wilco.

  Hep shoved Wilco toward the door, grabbed him by the collar, and shook him until he snapped out of his rage and looked Hep in the eye.

  “We need him,” Hep said. “Until the Void is beaten, we need him. After that, by all means, do what you will to the man.”

  That seemed to catch the doctor off guard.

  Wilco seethed a moment longer before relenting. Hep turned back to the doctor. “Explain.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it,” Hep said. “What you did to Bayne and the others. What the Void is. Why you created it. How we kill it.”

  Elias looked pleased with himself, like a celebrity being asked for his autograph. “That could take some time, and I highly doubt you’d understand the science. It’s really quite brilliant and cutting edge—”

  “Dumb it down,” Hep said.

  “This sort of high-level evolutionary science can’t be told in a picture book for—”

  With one quick movement, Wilco grabbed the scalpel and put it against Elias’s throat. “Do your best.”

  Elias smiled. “A very rough draft indeed. Of course, I suppose I could give you the elevator pitch.” He gestured to the blade still pressed to his neck. “Not under these circumstances, however.”

  With Herculean effort, Wilco pulled the blade away from Elias’s throat, but not without leaving the doctor with a not-so-subtle warning. Elias winced as Wilco nicked him. Chuckling, Elias wiped away the drop of blood beading on his neck. He stuck his finger in his mouth and sucked the blood off like it was a dab of grandma’s soup, the best thing he’d ever tasted.

  “I was contracted by Colonel Tirseer as part of an off-books operation. Something so top secret that the entire thing was compartmentalized, even among her top brass. She was the only one who knew the real scope of the project. I knew the science, what it was she wanted me to build, but I wasn’t aware of the politics. I didn’t care how she planned to use it or what pieces she needed to maneuver to make it happen. All I cared about was the science.”

  Wilco yawned exaggeratedly. “This is the elevator pitch?” Hep hadn’t noticed Wilco replace his mask.

  Elias bristled at the interruption. “Tirseer discovered, through one of her many Deep Black exploratory missions, a new building block of reality. The very basic components of matter as we know them follow certain strict rules. Depending on how they are charged, negative or positive, how they are arranged, they express themselves in determined ways. They have limits.

  “This new element did not seem to have rules. It was fluid, adaptable. Solid one moment and, without external stimulus, a gas the next. It seemed to have a will, possess an intelligence, its change was not an expression of chaos, but of intention. I was tasked with finding a way to harness that adaptability.”

  “To weaponize it,” Wilco said.

  Elias shrugged. “The greatest scientific innovations always become weapons one way or another. But to focus on the destructive applications over the constructive ones would be naïve. I could reshape the universe with this element.”

  “You don’t think that’s destructive?” Hep said. He waved his question away before it could be answered. “Never mind, I don’t care. What did you do with the element?”

  “I needed a way to interface with it, to communicate with its innate intelligence, if I was to find a way of controlling it. I tried machines to limited success. The element did not seem to like bonding with mechanics. It preferred biologics.”

  “You experimented on people,” Dr. Hauser said. “You violated countless laws and treaties.”

  Elias waved away the accusation. “Ignorant. I began with plant life. It bonded quite greedily. I theorized then that the element had existed primarily in the vacuum of space and had rarely crossed paths with biological life. It was curious. So I fed its curiosities.”

  Wilco irradiated the med-bay with a palpable heat, an energy like a reactor, poisoning the air.

  “The element was too greedy in the beginning,” Elias continued. “It burned through several hosts before I decided to change course. I starved it, and it quickly learned that it must control itself if it was to get what it desired. I began bonding it again at a slower pace. A little bit at a time. A skin graft here. An arm there.” He pointed at Wilco.

  Hep stepped between them, breaking the doctor’s line of view. “So Wilco isn’t a full bond with the Void?”

  “A rough draft,” Elias repeated. “He is bonded with it superficially, in a way similar to how he is bonded to the mechanical limbs that I also gave him. For which he has still failed to show proper gratitude.”

  Hep pressed on before Wilco could react. “Then what did you do to the others? Ayala and
Sig and Bayne. They are bonded more than superficially?”

  Elias laughed. “Oh yes. Quite. Ayala and Bayne are both fully bonded with the Void. I was able to manipulate the bonding slightly, but, for the most part, I only nurtured the traits that the element chose to express itself. The Void, too, like any naturally occurring being, requires equilibrium—creation and destruction. It bonded with those two and chose each as an avatar of sorts, a vessel through which to ensure balance. It chose Admiral Ayala as its avatar of death and Drummond Bayne as its avatar of life. Each is counterbalance to the other. When I observed this, I thought it wise to nurture those traits in Captain Bayne to give him just the slightest of edges. I know, it is most unlike a scientist to intervene in such a manner, but what can I say? I’m a forward thinker.”

  Elias poured himself a glass of water from pitcher on Dr. Hauser’s desk, taking a break from his self-obsessed dissertation. “I’m afraid I can’t take credit for your Chief Sigurd however. He was a happy accident. But the key to moving forward into some very exciting territory. Once I get the chance to study him, of course.”

  “If you can’t take credit for him, then who can?” Hep pressed.

  Elias sipped his water. He seemed, for the first time, reluctant to speak. “This is where the experiment takes on a life of its own. The element that I was nurturing in my lab, under carefully supervised and controlled conditions, escaped. Reviewing the circumstances after the fact, I realize that it was no accident. The Void sought to escape. It established itself near the Inferni Cluster, forming a colony, growing in both size and intelligence. When Sigurd entered…” He shook his head. “I can’t say what it thought exactly. If it took him as a threat, it would have exterminated him. I think it viewed him more as an opportunity, a chance to do some of its own experimentation.”

  “What does that mean?” Hep’s voice had lost what little patience he had.