The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  “Everyone ready?” Bayne asked.

  Mao and Delphyne both answered in the affirmative.

  Bayne pushed the floating tools aside and reached to the bottom of the crate where the grapple and a blue, fist-sized cannister had been tied down. He removed the straps holding them down. “Greenlight,” Bayne said. He popped the top on the blue cannister, and a cloud of white mist shot out.

  At that, each cog in the plan began turning.

  Callet flipped the switch on the ship’s power, initiating the ignition sequence. Mao took the helm. Sigurd was at the ready by the airlock.

  “Sixty seconds, sir,” Callet said.

  Bayne was already in motion. He loaded the grapple into the muzzle of the sniper rile and took aim at the closest of Parallax’s watchers. They would assume the cloud was a coolant leak, buying him the seconds he needed to take the shot.

  Through the sniper rifle’s scope, Bayne saw the personal craft in more detail. A few meters of target in an infinite sea of nothingness. A millimeter off and the whole thing was blown.

  He aimed for the canopy of the cockpit, a thin shield of plastic that kept the pilot from death. He aimed through it, and squeezed the trigger.

  The gas canisters in the rifle popped, propelling the grapple like a missile, towing the length of cable behind it. Bayne followed its path through the scope, careful not to tug or alter its course. It struck its target, and struck true. The grapple pierced the canopy and the pilot on the other side. A fine red mist floated through the new hole.

  There was no time to revel in his perfect shot. If the other watcher hadn’t seen that, he would know soon that something was wrong. Bayne cinched his end of the cable through a pulley mounted on the front of his suit and bolted it to the hull of the Royal Blue. He deactivated his mag-clamps and pressed his feet together.

  “En route,” Bayne said.

  Free of the need to steer his flight, Bayne focused instead on the second watcher. He peered through the scope again, catching sight of the small vessel to his left. It wasn’t moving. No sign that the pilot suspected anything, but at that distance, what could Bayne really tell? Could he risk not taking the shot? Could he risk taking it? A miss, and the pilot alerted Parallax. Did any of that matter, or did Bayne just want to take it to see if he could?

  Regardless of motive, Bayne decided the shot needed to be taken. He adjusted the rifle from projectile to standard mode and took a deep breath. Both eyes open. Factoring in motion and speed. Pilot in his sight.

  And he pulled the trigger. A soundless flash tore across open space and through the pilot. Bayne’s heart leapt. He wished he had a bottle of rum and a crew to raise it to. The guilt at so readily dismissing his own crew for one that would toast such a reckless action had only just begun to set in when Bayne slammed into the first watcher vessel.

  He got wrapped up in the shot, in the excitement of the challenge, and forgot that he was racing toward a very solid hunk of metal. His shoulder screamed. He bounced over the top of the ship, but didn’t go far thanks to his tether. Black spots danced at the edge of his vision, at times blending together into one blanket of darkness.

  “Captain Bayne?” a voice echoed in his helmet. “Sir, are you all right?” It was Mao. He sounded far away. He was far away. Bayne shook the fog out of his head, remembered where he was. “Thirty seconds,” Mao said.

  That was all Bayne needed to hear to kick his muscles into gear. He drew both swords from their scabbards and stabbed them into the hull of the watcher ship. Activating his mag-clamps, he latched onto the ship and pried the canopy off using the swords like crowbars. He sliced the harness and dragged the pirate out, letting the void take him.

  Bayne pulled himself into the cockpit and located the communication controls. As Wilco suspected, the comms of the small vessel were networked to that of the Black Hole, being too small to house its own long-range relay. Bayne took a small, black box from a pocket on his suit and plugged it into the jack on the comms system.

  “It’ll piggyback off the Black Hole’s relay signal,” Callet had told him while still aboard the ship. “It’ll send out an encrypted SOS. Only UNS ships will be able to decode it. I buried it pretty deep in their communications code, so the Black Hole shouldn’t notice it.”

  A green light blinked on. “Box is hooked up,” Bayne said. “I’m coming back. Be ready with the airlock.”

  “Aye, sir,” Sig answered.

  Bayne pushed away from the ship and pressed his feet together. Fifteen seconds until the Royal Blue’s systems keyed up and Parallax realized their ruse. Fifteen seconds to get into the ship before it took off without him, dragging him through space at speeds fast enough to rip his skin off his bones.

  He flew away from the two dead bodies, not a thought for their fate, mind focused only on the Royal Blue and the crew inside who he still hoped to keep alive. “Okay, Sig,” Bayne said. “Do it.”

  At that, a ring of light appeared on the side of the ship. The airlock opening. Bayne still needed to make one more impossible shot. He gripped the pulley on his chest that kept him tethered to the topside of the ship and pulled.

  The cable floated away. Bayne was free. He pointed his feet up at a slight angle, adjusting several times in the first few seconds to find the right trajectory.

  And there it was. The open airlock was straight ahead, and he shot at it like a bullet. Ten seconds. The ship was keyed to take off as soon as the power was restored to the thrusters. It was leaving in ten seconds whether he was inside or not. Likely, at this proximity, the thrusters would cook him in an instant instead of leaving him to float until his mind broke and he wished for death.

  Five seconds. The airlock was in reach. Four. Three.

  Bayne slammed into the airlock floor. Sig punched the button, closing the door.

  “He’s in,” Sig shouted.

  The Royal Blue rumbled to life. Mao’s steady voice came over comms, but it was not so steady. “All hands, brace for impact!”

  8

  The airlock exploded. Flames licked the floor around Bayne for a second before the sucking vacuum extinguished them.

  “All hands to battles stations,” Mao shouted over comms. “We are under attack. Repeat: all hands to battle stations.”

  Bayne activated his mag-clamps with inches left of floor before the endless black. “Belay that order, XO. The weapon systems are offline.”

  Mao cursed into Bayne’s ear. Not a good sign.

  “Continue with the plan. Get us out of here and get a damage team to the hangar bay.” Bayne pulled himself up the airlock wall and gripped a red handle about waist height. With a pull, an emergency shield patch appeared over the gaping hole in the hull.

  “All hands,” Mao said, his voice uncomfortably shaken. “Hold on to something.”

  The air filled with a familiar metallic taste, the one that preceded the activation of the light drive. Then came the lurch in Bayne’s guts and the taste of bile on the back of his tongue. It felt like it lasted forever, but in truth was only half a minute.

  When the ship stopped, time appeared to as well. Bayne didn’t breathe. Sigurd didn’t move. All stood still.

  “Clear,” Mao said. And time resumed.

  “Get me out of here,” Bayne ordered Sigurd as he pulled his helmet off. He ripped the rest of the suit off as soon as he was out of the airlock. The damage team entered the hangar bay as Bayne was leaving. “Stay with them,” he said to Sigurd. “Make sure this gets secured quickly. Then ready an away team for when we land. Have Patch prep the shuttle.”

  “Aye,” Sig answered.

  Bayne ran to the bridge, ignoring the inappropriate desire clawing at the back of his head to smile. He could have died. His entire crew could have died. Why was he having so much fun?

  “Status report.” Bayne burst onto the bridge to find a scene of two parts chaos, one part eerie calm. That one part was Mao, still sitting in the captain’s chair.

  “What?” Mao said, looking like he was
waking from a dream. Bayne repeated himself, something he could not remember ever having to do with his XO, and Mao snapped out of his haze. “Everything according to plan, as far as we can tell.”

  “Aside from the hole in the ship,” Bayne said.

  “Yes. Aside from the hole in the ship.” Mao brought up a readout on the display screen, a monitor of the message Bayne implanted in the watcher ship. “The SOS is repeating on all UNS frequencies. The Black Hole has yet to discover it. We were also able to use that uplink to the Black Hole to mask our trajectory. Hopefully, they assume we jumped back toward Central as was programmed in our nav computer.”

  “And the ship?” Bayne asked.

  “The damage is localized to the hangar bay,” Mao said.

  “Well done, XO.”

  Mao seemed relieved and surprised at that. He stood from the captain’s chair, straightened his jacket, and said, “The bridge is yours again, captain.” He seemed even more relieved at that.

  Bayne attempted to sit in his chair, seemingly unaware that he was still wearing the dual swords on his waist. He must have removed the belt from his spaceflight suit and reapplied it without knowing. He removed it and handed it to a passing ensign with instructions to place it in his quarters.

  “Lieutenant,” Bayne said. “Make contact with Ore Town. Inform them that we will be maintaining a presence in orbit while the XO brings the shuttle planet-side. We’ll need access to their long-range communications relay. Once the shuttle has landed, they are to put all planet-wide defense systems on high alert.”

  Delphyne seemed on edge, a trait that Bayne quickly realized the rest of the bridge crew seemed to share. The past hour was such a blur already that Bayne had forgotten that it was a sudden spike of adrenaline amidst a stream of relative calm. It must have felt like a jagged interruption, an altogether unpleasant one for most of them. They did not welcome it as Bayne had.

  “Before you do that, Lieutenant, open a ship-wide channel.” Bayne stood, and addressed the bridge crew as he addressed the entirety of the ship. “Attention, please. This is your captain. First, it is my pleasure to inform you that we are alive, and the ship is intact.” He smiled at Mao. “Aside from a small hole. We will be landing shortly on the mining outpost called Ore Town, our original destination, to make needed repairs and take a much-needed breather.” He stepped down from his post and walked to the front of the bridge, underneath the viewport so that all could face him.

  “Second, let me say how incredibly proud I am of all of you. We just faced the biggest threat in the system and lived to tell of it. Parallax may be the only threat left in the system because of the fine work you’ve done for years now, but our fight with him is not done. While he sails these spaceways, he is a threat to all. So, remain vigilant and be proud.”

  Bayne remembered then that his message reached two who were not members of his crew. Two who may have deserved more praise than any other aboard, but received only skepticism.

  “Ore Town has cleared the shuttle to land, sir,” Delphyne said, her mood noticeably improved.

  “Then take us in.” Bayne’s mind seemed elsewhere. He marched away to find it, ordering Mao to follow. “The bridge is yours, Lieutenant.”

  The two walked the length of the main corridor before either spoke.

  “I feel your eyes on me, XO,” Bayne said. “And hear your teeth grinding as they keep your comments at bay. Let them loose already.”

  “That was the most reckless display from a captain that I’ve ever seen,” Mao said, his voice tight. “You could have been killed. And don’t think I didn’t see that shot.”

  “Impressive, wasn’t it?”

  “It was reckless. It may very well be the reason the Black Hole caught on. Who knows if that pilot managed to get a communication off before he died? You put us all at risk.”

  The thought had occurred to him. “The mission was a success.”

  “I’ve never known you to use survival as the only measure of success.”

  The captain stopped at a plain metal door. Mao didn’t seem to realize where they were, or maybe didn’t care. When he was steady on a path of thought, there wasn’t much that could derail him.

  “It is the only one that matters in this instance,” Bayne said. “Had we engaged in standard protocol, we would be dead, and Parallax would be free to roam the spaceways, doing as he’s done for half a decade. Now, we have a chance to finally end him.”

  Mao noticed what door they stood by now, and his eyebrows raised. “You think they will have some say in that?”

  “It’s only because of them that we survived this far.” Bayne rapped on the door with his knuckles. There was a rustling on the other side and a slurry of curses.

  “Do you not think it’s odd how knowledgeable they are of Parallax’s tactics?” Mao asked.

  “I do think it’s a tad odd,” Bayne said, coloring his growing irritation at Mao’s questions with a double-edged smile. “Figured I might ask them about it.”

  The door opened to reveal Wilco’s pale face, still full of sleep. “Eh?”

  “If you don’t mind,” Bayne said to Mao.

  Mao took a half-step back and gestured for Bayne to enter. He followed the captain in. Wilco still seemed to be unaware of what was happening, but not all that concerned either way. He shuffled back to his bed and fell on it.

  Mao cleared his throat, preparing to remonstrate the boy, but the captain stopped him. The other boy had sat up on his bunk and taken notice.

  “Hepzah,” Bayne said, taking a step toward him. “Go by Hep, right?” The boy nodded.

  “I just wanted to say thank you.” Bayne felt awkward standing there, like a solitary tree out in the wind, but he could tell the boy felt just as uncomfortable. He practically shook, his arms wrapped tight around himself.

  Bayne took another step knowing it would put Hep off. “If it weren’t for you and your friend, this ship and everyone on it would have been destroyed.” No change on the boy’s face. Not even the thought of saving dozens of lives could shake him from his shell. “I’ve researched Parallax extensively, studied his encounters, the few firsthand accounts of his combat tactics that exists. I’ve never come across anything detailing the use of single-pilot vessels to monitor ships before.” Bayne sat on the edge of Hep’s bunk. The boy froze. “How did you know?”

  Hep’s eyes seemed to empty as Bayne watched. The color and life drained away as the boy tried to sink into the wall and disappear.

  “Spent time on his ship,” a slurred and muffled voice said. Wilco rolled over, rubbing his eyes. “Slaves get passed around. Kinda the nature of the business.”

  “You were a slave aboard the Black Hole?” Bayne asked. “There have been no records of Parallax keeping slaves. In fact, I’ve read a few things that suggest he is anti-slavery.”

  “Guy’s a pirate,” Wilco said. “He’s pro-money and anti-everything that doesn’t make him money.” Wilco sat up and let out a protracted yawn, treating all in the room to a clear view of the back of his throat. “Them records you study don’t seem too complete.”

  Mao bristled. The disrespect for protocol must have set his hair on end. Bayne signaled his XO to remain quiet with a subtle gesture of his hand.

  “Maybe they aren’t,” Bayne said. “So maybe you can help fill them in.” Wilco only shrugged dismissively as he scratched his hindquarters. “Or maybe you should start by filling me in on your story. Maybe we’ll stumble on something else in there that will save our lives somewhere down the line.”

  “Slaves on one ship, then slaves on another,” Wilco said. “Ain’t much of a story.”

  Bayne turned to Hep. “The same for you?”

  “Same for us both,” Wilco said, sending a not-so-subtle signal of his own. “Always been together.”

  “Have you always been slaves?” Bayne asked.

  “Nah,” Wilco said. “Miners before that.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of Bayne’s mouth. Wilco seemed to not
ice it before it even formed. “Excellent,” the captain said. “We could use someone with some mining experience. XO Mao here will be leading an away team onto a mining outpost. He isn’t much of a people person. He could use a liaison to help him navigate the people.”

  “Yeah, well, I ain’t much for liaising.” Wilco made to lie back on his bed. Bayne’s hand shot forward faster than the boy thought possible and snatched him by the sleeve.

  “You’ll do your best,” Bayne said, mustering his most congenial tone. “XO Mao will show you to the armory where you can prep for departure.”

  Wilco seemed to finally wake from his perpetual drowsiness. He studied Bayne’s face, probably looking for another tic or sign that would give away the captain’s motives. But he saw nothing and, perhaps, learned the captain’s real motive in that. He shrugged and followed Mao.

  Bayne refused to meet Mao’s eye, knowing what he’d see there—frustration and disbelief. He would deal with those later. When Hep stood to follow, Bayne put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Not you.”

  9

  Bayne was determined to sit in silence. He would not be the one to break it. Maybe it would make the boy uncomfortable and shake some information loose. Maybe it would put the boy at ease and open him up to share, but even after an hour, all it did was make Bayne antsy.

  Hep stared out the viewport of the upper level lounge as if they were on the deck of a sea ship and he was watching a changing ocean or seabirds swoop and dive. He stared at the debris field like it was a school of fish frozen in ice.

  Bayne had wanted to dispatch a science team to study the field. It wasn’t on any charts and there was no mention of it in logbooks he had read. Cursory examination showed it to be a ship graveyard. He could spot hunks of hull and fuselage. But there were no documented battles of this magnitude this far out in the Deep Black. Maybe it was just a junkyard.

  “You hungry?” Bayne finally said. “I’m hungry.” He stood over the tray of food he had taken from the mess, sorting through the various pieces of fruit and dried meats. He settled on a slice of Ionium deer jerky. It wasn’t good. Ionium deer jerky was notoriously gross. He had the cooks stock a little of it out of nostalgia. He tore a chunk off and returned to the viewport to watch the nothingness as he gnawed on the salty meat.