Bayne moved to intercede. He crossed into her path and slashed at her with the two blades that had materialized in his hands. She, likewise, generated a shield from nothing, blocking the strikes. The shield exploded like a firecracker, not generating enough force to cause Bayne damage, but enough light to blind him temporarily. When the lights were gone from his vision, Ayala had darted around him.
Bayne and Ayala seemed to exist on a different layer of existence than the rest. Time flowed in odd-shaped waves. They were at times moving so fast the others could not detect them and in the next moment moving so slowly that the universe seemed to revolve around them. An awareness of Hep and Wilco bloomed in Bayne’s head. Regardless of how he and Ayala moved through time or time moved through them, he knew where the two were in relation to him. He blocked countless attempts from Ayala to kill them. She grew increasingly desperate with each thwarted attack.
“Why?” Bayne asked. “Why the sudden hatred for them? What’s changed?”
“I can’t believe we are made from the same thing,” Ayala said.
Something else blossomed in Bayne’s mind: an understanding of himself on a deeper level. He knew then that he was both human and Void and what that meant. He knew the Void. He knew that it was an organism as old as the universe, one of the original building blocks of reality. The Void was born at the center of everything, the heart of the Big Bang. It was a primordial force. It kept the universe in balance in those first millennia when it fought so hard to tear itself apart. The Void stitched it back together every time the fabric of reality started to unravel. It was a sentient thing, but spread so thin across existence that it never coalesced into a thinking being the way humanity understood them to be. Until the universe got smaller. Life bloomed. It grew and spread. It consumed planets. It spread across the stars. And some began to tread into territory that wholly belonged to the Void.
Humans. They meddled with things they didn’t understand. These babies, having barely taken their first breaths, tried to understand the oldest mysteries of creation. They thought it their right to know. They made the universe a smaller place. The Void pulled together, inching away from the growing shadow of man, until it too became smaller. It coalesced. It thought. It planned. It would restore the balance that humanity disrupted. It would stitch existence back together as it always had.
But it was different now. Even before it was violated by humans in the way Dr. Tobin Elias had dared to, it was changed by the man’s influence. It thought like man. It behaved like man. It was bitter like man. It lost sight of its purpose.
Bayne understood. He knew what he was. He knew what Ayala was. He knew what Hep and Wilco must become.
Ayala, still blinded by her desperation, moved with singular focus. She didn’t see Bayne on her heels. He stabbed down with both his blades, piercing the back of Ayala’s legs. “You won’t touch them,” Bayne said.
She struggled, the blades tearing at Ayala’s flesh, but doing nothing to dissuade the Void within. “Neither will you.” She arched her back at an impossible angle and let out a bellow. Energy rolled off her like a wave, taking shape and forming elongated tentacles of red energy. Her form morphed into a creature that could wield them. Bayne imagined she was something like a kraken from old legends. When the transformation was complete, Ayala was a massive creature, her body twenty feet tall with six tentacles twice as long. Her entire form glowed the same red, an energy construct like anything she or Bayne conjured.
She slammed two of her tentacles down onto the deck. The shockwave knocked everyone off their feet. Elias crawled toward her. Everything that he was had been cracked in two. He thought himself a preeminent scientist, the man who would be credited with the most significant scientific discovery in twenty lifetimes. But he knew nothing. The Void played with him. It dangled answers in front of him and then yanked them away, like he was a cat chasing yarn.
“Tell me,” he begged. “How long did you observe us? Why? Why are you here? What else can you—” His voice, like his body, was ripped in two. Ayala gripped him with two tentacles and pulled his torso in one direction, his legs in the other. She threw him into space where he would drift forever, frozen and alone.
“We need air support!” Bayne yelled. Comms didn’t work inside the cluster, but he wasn’t using comms. Mao didn’t respond—he couldn’t—but Bayne knew his message got through. “When the Blue makes her approach, you all need to be ready. Everyone take a tentacle and keep it busy. It won’t do to have her slapping the Blue out of the sky.” Bayne reached his hands out to the cloud of energy around them, separating them from Mao. He concentrated, and a narrow lane opened. “Now!”
Each standing member of the team charged the kraken. Hep dove and rolled under a tentacle. Wilco activated his boot thrusters and leapt over one then came down, driving his blade into it and pinning it to the deck. Horus smacked one out of the air with his hammer as it tried to wrap around him. Sig ran, a blaster in each hand, peppering a tentacle with unrelenting fire. Bayne took the other two. He conjured a set of chains and willed them to constrain one tentacle. He stabbed both of his blades into the second and held firm, keeping it in place with his strength alone.
Mao’s voice sounded from all around them. “Coming in hot. Targeting the monster, I assume?”
“Yes, please,” Bayne said.
The Blue fired two cannon shots that struck the kraken’s center mass. The thing screeched and howled, a symphony of discordant sounds. A spiderweb of cracks snaked outward from the point of impact.
“Again!” Bayne yelled.
Another round of blasts struck the kraken in the same place.
Bayne reached out from the center of himself. He felt his strength ebb. He took what little he had left and conjured more chains, pinning the rest of the tentacles and freeing the others to attack. He didn’t need to relay his wishes. Hep, Wilco, Horus and, Sig all knew what to do. They attacked, all striking the kraken. Energy seeped out from the growing cracks. Blinding light. Searing heat.
Everything went white.
16
He swore he was in the middle of something. Hep felt like he’d nodded off in the middle of a task. His head snapped up and he had completely forgotten what he was doing. Wilco seemed just as confused. His typically devilish smile was crooked, half of it weighed heavy with concern. His smile. His face. There was something different about his face.
Wilco ran his fingers down one half of his face. The skin was smooth to his touch. And that concerned him even more, though he didn’t know why. Something was missing. They were both sure of it.
They looked out at the sun bouncing off the surface of the water as it rose. Their stomachs were tight with worry, but they were aware of the reason for this. There was unpleasant business at hand. A traitor to be dealt with.
She stood on the edge of the of the ship, hands bound behind her, chin high. She also seemed confused. Not by the fact that she was a prisoner, but by something else entirely. By everything else.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Your sentencing,” Hep said. “Captain’s found you guilty. Says your punishment is ours to decide.”
“Is that right?” she said.
“Aye,” Wilco said. “Says we can do whatever we want with you. I say we drop you to the sharks. My mate here says we should lock you up.”
“What is the world without law and order,” Hep said.
“Much more fun,” Wilco said.
A rhythmic, heavy thud sounded on the deck behind them, growing closer. The captain had come to oversee. “And that’s why I leave it you. You have a balanced approach.”
They turned to see Captain Drummond Bayne dressed in his finest. Blue waistcoat with red fringe. His hat with the gold feather. The scabbard for his cutlass emblazoned with opals and rubies.
“You going somewhere, Captain?” Hep asked.
“Aye,” Bayne answered. “It’s about time I take my leave. I’ve sailed my course.”
“Who w
ill captain the ship?” Hep asked.
“I leave her in your hands. Both of you.”
Wilco laughed.
“It’s no joke,” Bayne said. He snapped his fingers. With a flash of realization, Hep, Wilco, and Ayala all saw through the illusion. “My time on this ship is done.”
“What does that mean?” Hep pressed. “Where are we?”
Ayala struggled against her binds, her form flashing between that of the human admiral and the kraken she had become. Able to hold her human form, she said, “The end. It’s time, boys, for you to take the helm. Do it, Bayne. Hurry.”
“Good to see you again, Shay,” Bayne said. Then to Hep and Wilco, “I’ve done some soul searching, as it were. Connected to the Void, to its vast consciousness, I understand now what it is. Elias never understood. It’s more than a new element. More than a building block. It’s a natural force, essential to the foundation of the universe. Elias manipulated it only as much as the Void allowed. It wanted to bond with a host. It just picked the wrong hosts. It sought out to correct the imbalance in the universe by tipping the scales back to even. It sought out two avatars, one to champion order, one to champion chaos. Two people who pushed and pulled against each other, tipping the scales a little in their direction, but always checking each other in the end. Ayala and I, we had that push and pull, but, in the end, we were broken. We had been pushed too far to the extreme. We could no longer check each other.”
Ayala thrashed again, flickering between kraken and human. “No more time. Do it now.”
“You two are the avatars the Void needs,” Bayne said, putting a hand on Hep and Wilco’s shoulders. “Naturally inclined toward order and chaos. You have both been pushed to the extreme, but you still checked each other in the end. Together, you balance the scales.” Bayne waved his hand, and the blue and black blades materialized in Hep and Wilco’s hands. “Unfortunately, we don’t have much in the way of time here. No time to hash this out. You either take the helm or this ship crashes into the rocks. Left unchecked, Ayala will regain her strength. She’ll march across the systems wiping out everything. Or we defeat her somehow. And then I lose control and chaos consumes everything. It has to be you.”
Hep and Wilco looked at each other. They had a silent conversation the way they did when they were kids, when they were in the middle of a crowd and needed to decide which pocket to pick.
Wilco shrugged. “Want to be space gods?”
Bayne sighed. “You’ll have your work cut out for you,” he said to Hep. He pointed to the blades. “Now, before we miss our window. Do it now. Let’s have some fun.” He held his arms out wide and looked up to the sky.
Ayala tucked her chin to her chest. “I’m glad it’s you.”
Hep plunged his blade into her gut. Wilco ran his blade through Bayne. Both erupted in violent explosions of light. The construct crumbled around them. The deck of the ship cracked under them to reveal the previous construct of the Needle, which was now beginning to break.
Bayne and Ayala were gone. Sigurd and Horus stared at Hep and Wilco, mouths agape.
“No time to explain,” Hep said. “You need to go.”
“We need to?” Sig said. “What about you?”
“He said no time to explain,” Wilco said. He waved his hand and a bubble materialized around Sig and Horus.
“You forgot someone,” Hep added. He waved and the bubble grew to encapsulate Bigby’s body. “Take him home. Bury him proper. The highest honors the Navy has.”
Wilco pushed outward, and the bubble began to move away from them toward the Blue.
“And, Sigurd?” Hep said. “It’s time you welcomed some balance into your life, yeah? Find your counterweight.”
Before Sig could answer, Wilco flicked his wrist, and the bubble was gone, thrust into the cargo bay of the Blue.
“Go,” Hep said, and he knew Mao could hear him. “This cluster will collapse and when it does, everything in this sector is ash. Go. Fair winds.”
“And following seas,” Wilco added.
The engines fired, and the Blue was gone.
The construct collapsed completely. Wilco and Hep floated in the open. “This will be a hell of a thing,” Wilco said.
The Inferni Cluster collapsed in on itself, the power of three suns compressed together, and then burst outward like a new big bang.
Epilogue
There were few things that made Taliesin Mao more uncomfortable than pageantry. He was a strait-laced man who appreciated protocol and procedure. Pageantry, even if it proceeded with a certain set of rules, had a habit of running wild. And this sort of pageantry was guaranteed to.
A glass appeared in his face. It sloshed with a black liquid, and the smell curled the hairs in Mao’s nose.
“Drink,” Delphyne said.
He knew better than to refuse her today. He took the glass, clinked it to hers, and they both swallowed them down. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait until after? When this is over?”
“I won’t make it through without,” she said, quickly pouring another. “I can’t stand these sorts of things.”
“Is that right?”
“This was all his idea.” Her mouth broke into a schoolgirl smile. “People wouldn’t know because he plays at being so stoic, but Sig loves stuff like this. He’d be the belle of the ball given half a chance every time.”
They swallowed another shot of rum.
“And now I will need a few more of these to erase that image from my mind.” Mao laughed. Once it came, he didn’t want it to stop. It had been too long. Before the Void, before the war with the Byers Clan, and before Parallax even, he had become consumed with Navy life, with living the code of a Navy sailor. He’d forgotten what it was to have fun.
“No more for you,” Delphyne said. “You’ve got lines to remember.”
Mao wiped the tears from his eyes and fought to catch his breath. “If you don’t mind me saying, XO, you look beautiful.”
Delphyne looked down at herself, a straight white gown, decorated with her commendations.
“I do, don’t I?” She hooked her arm around his. “Captain? Do me the honor?”
He hooked his arm around hers. “It would be my greatest pleasure.” The double-doors opened before them. The music played. Down the aisle, they spied Sigurd waiting at the altar. Mao felt a tremble run through Delphyne. He gripped her hand and stepped forward.
They walked together toward the future.
Thank You For Reading
Thanks for reading the Deep Black Boxed Set. I hope you enjoyed all the twists and turns. I had a lot of fun writing all of it.
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