The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set

by James David Victor

Elias shrugged. “Don’t know. I observed the bonding process with Ayala and Bayne. I took part in it, guided it when I could. I had no hand in Sigurd’s transformation. I have no data. I have no idea.”

  Hep pulled his shoulders back and pressed his chest out.

  Elias recognized the implicit threat. “Why would I lie? Sigurd is a wildcard.”

  “How does Bayne stop Ayala?” Hauser asked.

  Elias shrugged again. Wilco stepped past Hep, hand on the hilt of his sword. Elias stepped back, hands up in a useless attempt to defend himself. “This is cutting edge science. I have no peers in this field. There is no one else in the systems who has observed what I have observed. I have nothing to base a hypothesis on until I personally gather data. Anything else would be pure conjecture.”

  “Then best guess,” Wilco said as he drew his sword.

  “Proximity,” Elias said. “They are two halves of one whole. They are made to counteract each other. Put them together and see what happens.” Elias cleared his throat as he eyed Wilco’s sword. “I will say this: those three are the foci, the main hubs through which the Void acts and controls the element as it spreads. Any disruption in them should ripple outward and disrupt the element as it exists separate from them.”

  “Kill Ayala and kill the horde of space zombies,” Wilco said. “Got it.” He sheathed his blade and left the room.

  Hep watched him leave. He studied the tense muscles of Wilco’s back, wondering whether the drawn blade was an empty threat, a gesture, or a promise. “How do we wake Bayne up?”

  “He’s like a battery,” Elias said. “He’s drained. We need to recharge him.”

  “How?”

  A frantic voice over the ship’s comm interrupted them. “Battle stations! All hands to battle stations!”

  7

  The bridge was flooded with the red warning lights that signaled impending attack. Mao dug his fingers into his command chair until his joints screamed. He’d only just issued the command for all hands to be at the ready, but he couldn’t wait. The Blue needed to move.

  “Get us in front of the Mjolnir,” he ordered.

  “Sir—”

  “Just do it!”

  He couldn’t allow the hesitance in Delphyne’s voice to trigger his own. The Mjolnir was the last bastion for the United Systems. It was the last hope they had of mounting a counteract, the home of the remainder of its fleet and command structure. If it fell, the systems fell.

  Hep and Wilco ran onto the bridge.

  “You two better have good news for me,” Mao said.

  “News,” Wilco said. “Don’t know if it’s good.”

  “What’s happened?” Hep said.

  “The Void fleet pulled back,” Delphyne said.

  “Sounds like cause for a party, not a red alert,” Wilco said.

  “They left one ship behind,” Mao said.

  Hep knew which one before being told. “The Black Hole.”

  Mao nodded.

  “Still, I don’t understand the alarm,” Hep continued. “It was a powerful ship before Parallax blew it to hell. Even if the Void patched it back together, it couldn’t stand against our fleet by itself.” Hep was puzzled by the worried faces of the bridge crew. “Right?”

  “It’s not the ship we’re worried about,” Mao said. “It’s the captain.”

  The main screen lit up. There stood a commanding figure, eyes empty and cold, radiating a calculating malice, an indifference to the destruction and death that lay before him. He seemed the kind of man who could purge a planet to save a galaxy without a second thought. He was not the man that Mao knew.

  Sigurd stood silent, an expectant silence, as if waiting for a response to a question.

  “He called for our immediate surrender,” Mao said. “If we stopped resisting, he promised we would be allowed to live under the Void’s rule. Keep fighting and die.”

  “They know we have Bayne,” Wilco said.

  Mao narrowed his eyes at Wilco. “Explain.”

  “Sig could wipe out half our fleet with a single attack,” Wilco said. “We’ve seen him do it. So why doesn’t he? Because if he’s anything like Bayne, it would leave him drained and useless. Vulnerable to a counterattack from Bayne. They can’t be sure they’d take him out in Sig’s attack because they don’t know where he is.”

  “Are we sure they even want to take him out?” Delphyne said. “What if they just want him back?”

  Wilco shrugged. “Still, the only way they get him without risking killing him is if we surrender.”

  “And we know for certain that we lose any chance of defeating the Void without Bayne,” Hep added. “And that the Void will have no qualms about wiping us out once they have him.”

  Mao stared at the main screen, at Sigurd, his once security chief and friend, standing like an enemy general at the head of an invading army. “Bayne is useless as he is. Even still, he’s the only thing keeping us alive. Smuggling him away from here will only remove the Void’s incentive for sparing us. But unconscious, we can’t use him to fight back. We’re stuck.” He regretted voicing that as soon as he said it. A captain should not allow his crew to know his doubts. He should always project strength and confidence.

  “Seems to me like this is the perfect opportunity for us to do what we do best,” Wilco said. When met with skeptical glances, he replied, “Bluff.”

  “Is that what we do best?” Horus asked. “I thought stumbling ass backwards into something somewhat resembling success is what we do best.”

  Wilco continued. “We blow some smoke up Sig’s ass until we get Bayne charged up. Then he can go all sparkly space god and blast the Void into nothing.”

  “If he’s even capable of such a thing,” Byrne said.

  Delphyne’s knuckles turned white as she clenched her fist and tried to bite her tongue. Mao watched her struggle and knew why she shook. With a silent nod, he invited her to speak.

  “Is killing Sigurd the only way to stop him?” Her desperation was like a bright light in the others’ eyes, forcing them to look away. “We don’t know enough about what was done to him. There could be a way to reverse it. We could get Sig back.”

  Mao forced himself to meet Delphyne’s eye, like staring into the sun. “We cannot risk hoping for something that may not be possible. Sigurd has the potential to decimate this fleet singlehandedly.” He shook his head. “No, he is not Sigurd anymore. We can’t think of him as the man we knew.”

  “How can I think of him as anything but?” Delphyne’s eyes welled with tears.

  Mao pressed his chin to his chest before looking up again, having to force his own tears back. “It’s time we mourn our friend. We need to let him go, finally. He and Ayala both. They are lost.”

  Delphyne’s lip quivered for only a moment before she clenched her jaw and swallowed her grief.

  It was impossible for Mao to keep his thoughts from his crew now, written plainly on his face. He pressed onward. “Do you have any suggestions as to how we might buy the time we need?” he asked Wilco.

  “I could probably come up with a few.”

  “Take Horus and Bigby and figure it out. You have ten minutes.” To Hep, he said, “Go back to Elias and figure out how we wake up Bayne. You have twenty minutes.” To Delphyne, he said, “Get Admirals Jeska and Klepper on the line.”

  Admiral Mara Jeska was a force. She was stern and powerful, solid in her beliefs. He did not question her or those she trusted. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

  “I understand this may sound reckless—”

  “This is so far beyond reckless. I’ve learned to accept reckless from you lot. This is suicidal.”

  Mao cleared his throat, trying to create as clear a path as he could toward explaining himself. “Sigurd and, we assume, Ayala have the capability to decimate our fleet on their own. The only reason they haven’t is because they won’t risk harming Bayne in the process. They need him, and that gives us leverage. This is how we use it.”

  The
holographic image of Jeska paced away. Even as a projection she took up most of the room with her presence. “What do you need from us?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” Mao swallowed hard, expecting a harsh reaction. “We’re building the plane as we fly it, Admiral. All I can suggest is that you have the fleet ready to move. If this doesn’t work, if they reclaim Bayne, they will have no reason not to attack.”

  Klepper growled. “Seems like a damn fool move, if you ask me.”

  “No offense, Rear Admiral,” Jeska said, “but no one asked you. Your position on the matter is noted.”

  Mao didn’t need to have been part of those conversations to know how they went. Klepper was known even before this war with the Void for his isolationist stance. He advocated often that the United Systems should maintain a strong border and focus its resources inward. Of course, his view of what was the United Systems was also narrower than most. His border would have been around the central planets, separating them from the Deep Black and everything in the frontier. In this instance, Klepper likely advocated abandoning the Black Border and allowing the Void to spread unchecked through Byers space. It was idiotic to think that a legitimate plan. The admiral was as famously shortsighted as he was isolationist.

  “We will have the fleet at the ready to move in whichever direction is needed,” Jeska said. “Hopefully, that direction will be forward, Captain Mao.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mao said.

  The communication ended. When the holographic projections of the admirals faded, Mao was alone. He allowed himself no time to wallow in it, knowing the longer he sat by himself, the more he would begin to second guess his choice.

  “Wilco,” Mao said into his comm. “Time’s up.”

  8

  If this was life in the Navy, Wilco may have enlisted earlier. Of course, this was the Navy in the midst of chaos. Separate the two, and Wilco knew it was the chaos he preferred. It was something in which few people could discern nuance. Chaos was disruption, destruction, lawlessness, disorder—but each of those existed on a spectrum. They were only considered a threat by those who needed order, who needed to maintain what was built. To those who wanted a life on the solar winds, who wanted to sail the celestial seas with no one barking orders at them, who wanted to build something of their own, chaos was a fertile field ready for planting.

  To flourish in chaos was seen as some sort of evil. Admirals and captains threw you in the brig for it. Local constables hanged you from the gallows. But, in Wilco’s mind, chaos was far more natural than the order those people tried to impose on the universe. People like him and Parallax were far more reasonable in their embrace of chaos than those like Tirseer or Ayala. Tirseer had brought civilization closer to the brink of destruction than Parallax ever could because she’d fought like hell for order and control. She’d tried to yoke the universe, and the universe put her in her place.

  Wilco’s personal attitude toward the balance of order and chaos made him question what he was about to do. But, in the face of extinction, nothing mattered beyond survival.

  “You ready?” he asked Bigby.

  Bigby shrugged. “Honestly, don’t know. So, yes?”

  “Good enough.” Wilco stepped out of the shuttle. Horus and Bigby followed. Speaking into his comm, Wilco said, “We’re ready.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Mao responded.

  “You’re not going,” Wilco said. He took a great deal of pleasure in issuing orders to the captain. He smiled wide under his mask. “Not part of the plan, which I have expertly crafted as per your suggestion.”

  “Order. As per my… Never mind. I need to be briefed.”

  “Time’s getting a little tight, isn’t it?” Wilco said.

  “If you think I’m letting you off this ship without a detailed description of your plan—”

  “Relax, Captain,” Wilco said, his voice dripping with spiced honey. “If a brief is what you desire, then a brief is what you shall have.”

  Bigby shook his head as Wilco ended the call. “Why do you antagonize him? I’ve watched you in action, in times of crisis. You’d make a great officer. If we survive this, Captain Mao could get you a commission.”

  “Maybe that’s why I antagonize him. To ensure that never happens.”

  Bigby’s pulse was so strong, it moved the fabric of his tightly-buttoned shirt. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. I should have expected as much from you.”

  Wilco feigned insult, dramatically clutching his heart. “You wound me, Captain. My plan may seem blunt and inelegant, but I assure you, the finesse required will make all the difference.”

  “I see no room for finesse here.”

  “And that is why you are not going.” Wilco zipped the flight suit up to his neck and secured his sword on his back. He slapped Mao on the shoulder. “I’ll do you proud.” He ascended the gangplank of the small shuttle.

  Bigby fumbled for words as he stared at Wilco’s back, desperately hoping to find some that made sense of the moment. It was someone else who found them.

  “Good luck.”

  Wilco turned to see Hep standing next to Bigby. “I won’t need it. But your sentiment is appreciated.” He entered the shuttle and closed the doors before he could look back at them. He wanted nothing to shake his resolve or theirs. It was not lost on him how desperate they all must be to go along with this plan, to trust him as they were. He launched from the shuttle bay.

  The Black Hole hung like a desiccated corpse in the space between the two warring fleets. A hunk of meat dropped in a clearing, bait for the wolves. Wilco set course for it. Seeing the ship again set sweat rolling down his brow. He could feel the fire again eating away his flesh, melting his muscle, transforming him.

  His comm lit up.

  “Identify,” the cold voice said.

  “Sig? That you, old boy? Have to say, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  “Wilco. What is your intention?”

  “Very much. I’ve sowed my intentions in every acre of this field, and I do believe it’s time to do some reaping. Permission to come aboard. I have something for you.”

  “Granted. You’ll be permitted one minute to prove to me your purpose here before I reduce you to atoms.”

  “That’s mighty generous of you.” The hangar bay of the Black Hole opened like the maw of some great beast. Wilco realized that it wasn’t the original bay as he remembered it. This new opening led directly onto the bridge of the ship. There was no airlock, no shield. It opened the bridge directly into space.

  He piloted the shuttle in. As he set the ship down, Wilco was struck with a rogue wave of doubt. He couldn’t believe Mao had agreed to let him do this. It was the truest testament to the desperation and chaos around them that Wilco had seen. He would have been thrown in the brig for the mere suggestion of it just weeks ago. To deny the thrill of it would have been dishonest, but there was also no denying the pressure. That was what Wilco loved about times like this—he could put a knife in someone’s back and then disappear into the madness. He could accomplish everything he’d hoped to without attracting a spotlight. Now, he was the single focus of all the attention in the United Systems.

  Mao was a fool.

  Wilco marched down the gangplank, his chin high. Sigurd was the only one on the bridge. Maybe he was the only one on the entire ship. It made no difference whether there was an entire army aboard or not, Sigurd was the only one who mattered.

  “Your minute begins now,” Sigurd said.

  “And I won’t even need to use it all.” Wilco stepped aside and gestured toward the shuttle. “If you’ll allow me?”

  Sigurd nodded. Wilco disappeared up the gangplank. He was never a man to pray to anything. There was no instance in his life that led him to believe in anything greater out there that guided the course of the universe. He had trouble believing there was any greatness in people. More often, they seemed to stumble into their accomplishments, walking blindly through the dark and lucky enough to fall in the
right hole. But now, Wilco felt compelled to seek out a guiding hand or watchful eye or whatever it was that a deity was supposed to offer.

  He thought of the scabbard on his back. At least he had his own shining sword should no god decide to intercede on his behalf. Exacting judgment was something he was capable of on his own.

  He keyed a code into the small control panel on the head of the long metal crate. The mini magnetic coils on the bottom activated, causing the whole thing to levitate. He pushed it with ease down to the gangplank and presented it to Sigurd. If the man was capable of surprise anymore, he might have shown it then. But, then again, maybe he was expecting this. Maybe he’d always known this was how it would go. Maybe he was the all-seeing being Wilco had just prayed to in his moment of weakness.

  “And there you go,” Wilco said, pointing to the unconscious form of Drummond Bayne lying on the floating crate. “Everything you ever wanted.”

  The expression on Sigurd’s face was unchanging. “You could not even comprehend what it is we want.” He surveyed Bayne, ensuring he was everything he was promised to be. “Good. Tell your people their unconditional surrender will be accepted once Bayne is transported back to Central.”

  “To Ayala, yeah? She’s the one calling the shots?”

  Sigurd shook his head. “You can cease your attempt at sowing division immediately. The Void is nothing like humanity, we cannot be so easily turned against our own.”

  “I was trying no such thing,” Wilco said. “Just trying to sort out who’s who and saying what.” He tapped the metal of his arm. “I’m not as patched into the mother brain or whatever as you and all those zombies following you around.”

  “A crude term to describe them,” Sig said, something like defiance in his voice. “We have reanimated your dead, restarted cellular activity, and turned them into something wholly different. The Void sees the building blocks of the universe and uses them toward our own purposes. To describe what we create in such base terms only demonstrates your limited imagination.”

  Wilco shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’ve never been the most creative.” He paced around Bayne, putting the unconscious captain between him and Sigurd. “What is it you need this guy for anyway? You and Ayala seem powerful enough on your own.”