“Well, now that is the picture of a motley crew if I’ve ever seen one,” the unidentified silver fox said as he surveyed everyone present in the CIC in turn. “You all seem to be getting along famously.”
“State your name and business in the Grendel system, sir,” Susan clapped back in irritation. “Or we’ll have to assume your intentions are hostile and respond accordingly.”
“The Grendel system is my business, Captain Kamala. Both literally and figuratively. My name is Tyson Abington, CEO of Ageless Corporation, majority stakeholder in the planet we mutually orbit, and one-twelfth of the bosses who hold your contract.”
A corner of Susan’s mouth curled up into a vicious sneer. The universe had handed her a gift. The once-in-a-lifetime chance to properly shove one of these empty sport-jackets into their proper station.
“Grendel has recently undergone an abrupt change of ownership, Mr. Abington. You may hold the legal papers, but I currently hold all the nuclear missiles, and you’re transmitting from what my drone integration officer tells me is a ship that’s broken medical quarantine, giving me complete authority under the CCDF Charter to reduce you to your constituent atoms if I feel like it. So, let’s start over. Why are you here, and what, if anything, can you do for me?”
Tyson, if he was indeed who he claimed to be, had the cheek to smirk and lean back while he considered the threat to his life she’d just laid down. He crossed his fingers over his flat stomach, then brightened. “I apologize, Captain Kamala. You’ve obviously had a busy time out here and don’t need some company bigwig barging in. I came on too strong; it’s a personal failing.”
“I’ve no doubt of that.”
Tyson held up a hand—not to silence her, but a request for a pause. “We are not a plague ship. In reality, we’re the Nexus-flagged Taipei. We traded IDs with the Preakness to escape Lazarus undetected. I assure you, there is none of the Teegarden contagion onboard this ship. And even if there was, I’m sitting next to the woman who’s going to cure it.”
Susan tugged at an earlobe. “You had to escape your own planet, Mr. Abington? I find that strains my suspension of disbelief.”
“It’s been a strange couple of months. The fact you’re sitting there with Xre on your bridge who are not shackled or otherwise under guard tells me you’ve come to some sort of realization, yes?”
“That would be an understatement.”
“And the absence of the task group the fleet sent out here to avenge your ‘death’ means the real story is quite a bit more complicated, right?”
“Actually, we absorbed part of that task group,” Susan said, brimming with pride at the improbable feat. “The part we didn’t eradicate.”
“Fascinating.”
“That doesn’t alarm you, Mr. Abington? Because a normal person would be spooling up their rings to get the ever-loving fuck out of here by now.”
Tyson actually snorted in amusement. “They would indeed. That’s why they’re normal. But we aren’t, are we, Captain? Or your, our, new friends. I think not.” The man in the perfectly tailored suit, with the perfectly coifed hair, let out a sigh that he’d been holding in for a week.
“As implausible as it seems, Captains, we three have a common enemy. I believe they set you on a collision course as part of a campaign to see my transtellar fall. And I need your help unmasking them so they can be brought to justice.”
“And I suppose you have a plan to bring that about that our forces are somehow critical to.”
“Well, now that you mention it, I very much need to get to Ceres to ask some questions of a citizen there.”
Susan’s head shook involuntarily as if she’d been physically struck. “I’m sorry, did you just say you wanted our help to invade the Sol system?”
Tyson held out his hands and smiled in a gesture that was equal parts accommodating and placating. “‘Invade’ is such a loaded word. ‘Infiltrate’ may better fit the circumstances. But yes, Captain Kamala. I’m going to Earth, and you’re coming with me.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It’s customary at this point in writing a novel to spend a page or so acknowledging all the people other than oneself whose time and talents went into helping bring it into the world. People like agents, editors, cover artists, beta readers, significant others, and other authors whose own words were the foundation on which a new story was built.
And just as in my five previous books, all of these people deserve credit and appreciation. But I’ve banged on about them five times already and they know who they are.
Instead, I want to use this space to acknowledge all the people who have inspired me in the years since this book was written. You see, the first draft of In the Black was completed in 2017, before it took a somewhat circuitous road to publication. At the time, I knew I wanted to talk about certain issues growing in importance, like the expanding wealth gap, the different reality inhabited by the superwealthy, the privatization of the military, and the corporatization of space.
What I didn’t know in 2017 was how timely a potential deadly pandemic and the competence of the government response would be when Black finally hit the shelves. It was a lack of imagination that led me to believe even a narcissistic ass like Tyson Abington would recognize the potential threat to his planet and immediately enact science-based measures to contain and defeat it. Wow was that naive, huh?
Anyway, since writing this book, a series of Earth-shattering crises have arisen as a direct result of leadership failures in America and beyond. The COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting worldwide recession, and history-making Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality have all left indelible marks on the entire human village. Life may never return entirely to “normal” again, instead forging ahead to create a new normal that protects and affirms the importance of everyone.
This reckoning was decades in the making, and was only exacerbated by generations of leaders making empty gestures and paying platitudes to problems we’ve all seen coming from a very long way off. But it’s also elevated a new era of protesters, politicians, and creatives who’ve emerged as beacons of hope and change.
It’s these people who are inspiring me today as I write the next chapter of Susan Kamala’s, Tyson Abington’s, and Thuk’s journey, and it’s them I want to acknowledge here. Every NYC doctor, nurse, orderly, janitor, and EMT who worked double shifts for weeks at a time as coronavirus ravaged one of the greatest cities on Earth. Every crafter who turned their sewing machine into a DIY face-mask factory. Every small business owner who drained their savings to keep their employees paid during lockdown. Every employee who pressed on through the uncertainty of making rent. Every last person who grabbed a mask and a cardboard sign and marched in a thousand cities all across the world to demand an end to police brutality and racial inequality with a backdrop of record-breaking unemployment and pandemic.
Science fiction, at its core, imagines a future where we all lived through this to build something better, together. That’s its foundational premise in many ways. And it starts today, with you, and all of us. You are the heroes, now. You are who we’ve been waiting for.
Don’t give up the ship.
TOR BOOKS BY PATRICK S. TOMLINSON
THE BREACH
Gate Crashers
Starship Repo
INTERSECTION SPACE
In the Black
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick S. Tomlinson lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When not writing sci-fi and fantasy novels and short stories, Tomlinson is busy developing his other passion: stand-up comedy. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Acknowledgments
Tor Books by Patrick S. Tomlinson
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
IN THE BLACK
Copyright © 2020 by Patrick S. Tomlinson
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Andrian Luchian
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-30275-5 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-30276-2 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250302762
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: 2020
In the Black Page 33
