The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  He would surrender nothing. “No pirate has ever been invited aboard the bridge of my ship.”

  Tirseer’s eyes glinted with cold recognition, a smile the only way she knew how. “Of course.” She faced the window and Wilco on the other side. Bayne expected to see nothing in front of her but was relieved to note that she did have a reflection. “I am grateful at times for intriguing circumstances such as this. Such an interesting tour you’ve had. A Byers Clan mining outpost overtaken and covertly held by pirates. An altercation with the most notorious pirate in the system. Returning with two young pirates in tow. Your crew shaken and distressed.”

  “My crew is fine,” Bayne interjected.

  Tirseer said nothing, but the shiver in Bayne’s spine crept along the nerves at the base of his skull. They watched Wilco. He began to squirm and fidget with his hands. The cocky façade was cracking.

  Hep’s voice sounded in Bayne’s ear again. “Ghoster is running. Two minutes.”

  Bayne clutched at his hip again, wishing he had his swords. He’d sooner fight with blades than mince words. “I saw something when I was out in the Black,” Bayne said. “Not far from Ore Town. It’s not on any of the charts, and I couldn’t find mention of it in any records.” He turned from the glass and stared into Tirseer’s cold eyes. “A ship graveyard.”

  He watched for a reaction, a tell, something to show that Tirseer knew what he was talking about. Nothing.

  “Dozens of ships. Maybe more. Scorch marks. Definitely attacked, but I couldn’t find record of a battle in that region.”

  “Were you able to identify any of the ships?” Tirseer asked.

  Bayne felt like a street kid again, carefully measuring every bit of information let loose from his lips. “No, I wasn’t. I didn’t get close enough.”

  The colonel folded her arms in front of her. “A shame,” she said. “That would have made tracking the source of the conflict rather easy. Every Navy ship logs its flight paths and altercations. It would only be a matter of finding that ship’s logs.”

  Unless they were scrubbed, of course. “And if the conflict was the result of…” He searched for the right word. “Clandestine operations?”

  A flicker of a smile on Tirseer’s face, the ghost of an emotion. “Then the details of such operations would be confidential, known only to those who conducted it and those who authorized it.”

  The silence fell on them again. It felt like a gradual increase in gravity, slowly crushing Bayne, until Hep interrupted it.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Bayne said to both the colonel and Hep. “I’ll be going, then.”

  Colonel Tirseer spoke at Bayne’s back as he stood in the doorway.

  “I hope you find the answers to your question,” she said. “I will investigate when I’ve some time. Another intriguing thread to your story. I love to untangle a web.”

  Bayne left before the shiver spread to his brain and he was frozen indefinitely. He felt sorry for leaving Wilco at her mercy, but there was nothing he could do for the boy now.

  “Coming your way,” Bayne said to Hep through comms.

  4

  “You’re really going to join up?” Captain Alexander Kyte never asked a question to which he didn’t already know the answer. He didn’t like stepping out on a ledge, making himself vulnerable, even if it was only in getting an answer he didn’t expect.

  “It’s the only way I can keep my ship.” Bayne couldn’t look his former captain and mentor in the eye. The man that plucked him from a life of starvation and hustling on the streets, took him from obscurity and put him among the stars.

  “It won’t be yours,” Kyte said, his voice tight with frustration. Worse, disappointment. “It’ll belong to the Navy. You will belong to the Navy.”

  It was comforting to be aboard the Supernova again. It would always hold an honored place for Bayne, the first home he’d had since his parents died. Still, it was the nostalgia that soothed him. If he were to open himself to the truth of it, the ship felt different than he remembered. Colder.

  “I’m not getting any jobs,” Bayne said. “With no money coming in, I can’t feed my crew. A few have already jumped ship. I won’t be able to keep it in space soon. What good is having my own ship if I can’t fly it?”

  “You find a way!” Kyte snapped. “We all find a way. We give in here and that’s it. The Rangers are done. Suicide with a pen.”

  Bayne shrank under the weight of Kyte’s anger more than he had from any warlord’s torpedo. “You still have the Supernova. The others still have their ships. No one’s forcing you to join.”

  Kyte paced the length of his quarters, black rum sloshing in his glass. “You’re trading in everything we just fought and bled for.”

  “I thought we just fought so we could each choose our own path,” Bayne said, pushing back against the weight. “That’s what I’m doing.”

  Kyte’s eyes were red with rum and rage. “You think this is really a choice? Like you said, it’s this or starving, floating dead. It’s the same for everyone else. No one’s joining out of ideology. They’re joining out of necessity. And that’s no choice at all. It’s cowardice.”

  Bayne marched for the door. “I won’t stand here and be called a coward.”

  A dagger stabbed into the door, an old oaken relic Kyte had taken from Earth. Ever the nostalgic sort. “You’ll stand there and listen to every word I have to say, be them praise or damnation.” Kyte yanked the dagger free with his cybernetic hand. “The reason we’re all starving out here is because the Navy is regulating shipping and trade and damn near everything else. Taxing the hell out of merchants. Subsidizing the likes of the Byers Clan and other such conglomerates. They’re choking us out. Haven’t outlawed the Rangers because we just saved their asses and it’d be bad form, but they’re making it damn near impossible for us to survive as we have. They’re killing our way of life.”

  The desperation in Kyte’s voice stabbed at Bayne’s chest. He was a stalwart, a hero to a lost child, mentor to a growing man. To see him sink was to mourn the loss of a hero. “So forge a new one,” Bayne said. “That’s what it’s all been about.” Bayne left the room, and his friend, and never saw him again.

  The glow of the monitor had begun to burn colorful circles into Bayne’s vision. He hadn’t blinked since he opened the files Hep had copied from the Centel records room. Scrolling endlessly, his eyes screamed at him for relief. Reluctantly, he obliged.

  Bayne poured a glass of rum and leaned back in his chair. He let the liquor sit in the back of his throat a moment before swallowing, savoring the sweet burn. He shut his eyes tight, watched the lights dance across the backs of his eyelids, felt the tears run down his cheeks as they washed away the pain.

  Hundreds of pages of documents and not a bit of useful information. Manifests, logs, personnel records, payroll. Boring, bureaucratic nonsense. The bones of any of the Central agencies. Nothing yet specific to Intelligence. And it had been hours already.

  Another set of eyes would help, but there was no one. He’d already committed treason in stealing these records. He would not subject a member of his crew to the same charges, if there were any that would agree to help and not immediately turn him in.

  He needed a break. Noticing the time, he realized why. It was the middle of the night. He’d been going for hours, putting nothing but more rum in his belly and paranoid thoughts in his head.

  As he lay down on his bunk and rubbed his still burning eyes, he saw Admiral Ayala’s face. He didn’t seethe as he thought he would. Didn’t imagine screaming at her until she cowered and admitted to her plotting and lying and deceiving. He felt pity. Pitied her as he did Captain Kyte those years ago. Both looked so tired and beaten down. Stepped on by a system they vowed to defend, a system they bled for because they believed in it. Kyte may have wanted others to believe his motives more self-serving, and Ayala may have passed her actions off as duty, but both were idealists, and both suffered for that.r />
  But the look of defeat on Ayala’s face was more poignant in its subtlety. She was expressly forbidden from dissent, whereas it was fundamental to Kyte’s lifestyle. She risked much in showing her fatigue, especially to a man with a reputation for insubordination.

  He should have taken joy in it, but Bayne felt uneasy, just as he had while watching Kyte spiral the last time they spoke aboard the Supernova. Another rock in his life was beginning to crack.

  Bayne woke an hour later, a cold sweat on his brow. He crawled out of bed and dug back into the records Hep had stolen. His mind splintered, half focused on the task at hand while the other half flickered from memory to memory. His earliest days aboard the Supernova, cleaning bunks and emptying trash. His first day as a commissioned officer of the United Navy, struggling between bitterness and the sense of pride at seeing himself in uniform. Captain Kyte tapping him to join his first away team. Admiral Ayala commending him for running his first successful mission, a joint mission with the White Dwarf, the ship she captained before her promotion to admiral. Leave on Baccuniae. Camaraderie among the Navy captaincy.

  His life split in two. Both halves shriveling in the light.

  So fragmented was his attention that he almost didn’t realize what he was looking at until he’d skimmed past it. He flipped back a screen to look more carefully at the information he’d half-read.

  At first glance, it looked like a standard command protocol for a meet and greet op. The sort that were arranged when hosting or escorting dignitaries from other systems or higher-ups from influential groups like the Byers Clan.

  The names of whoever the Navy was meeting were redacted, but the date matched the approximate timeframe Bayne had pinpointed as to when the other Rangers went dark. And it seemed an easy enough cover for an ambush.

  Operation Welcome Mat.

  Bayne sifted through the details. Secure a meeting place. Secure the designated exfiltration route. Backup routes. Establish defensive positions along the routes. Communication protocols.

  Troop assignments.

  Bayne suddenly remembered something Colonel Tirseer had said. If he knew the names of any of the ships destroyed during the conflict, he could find the operational details. Only the ships destroyed weren’t Navy ships, no log of them would exist, but the ships that did the destroying would be catalogued.

  He cross-referenced the names of the ships listed in the detail with currently serving Navy ships. Twelve of them. They were all decommissioned shortly after the mission. Crew manifests were redacted. A roadblock, but a sure signal that Bayne was on the right track.

  He downed his glass of rum and set about having another. As the pour reached its mark, Bayne remembered something. Something so obvious he cursed himself for not noticing earlier. One of the decommissioned ships, the White Dwarf. His first mission. It was a joint run to the smallest moon of Entropolis. A fugitive warlord had established a foothold there. He didn’t offer much resistance, but the exercise allowed Bayne the opportunity to meet the White Dwarf’s captain.

  They flew that mission before the Rangers went dark. That captain was still flying the Dwarf during Welcome Mat. And he was handpicked by Ayala to succeed her.

  Bayne needed to find Captain Elvin Horus.

  Now it was simply a matter of finding the man. With any luck, he’d be stationed at Central right now. A man with his connections, handpicked by the admiral to take over her ship, possible party to a black op that would disgrace the entire United Systems… They’d want to keep him close. Probably a rear admiral at this point.

  General personnel rosters and ship assignments didn’t require the same amount of subterfuge as confidential Intelligence records. They were a matter of public record and could be accessed on the main hub.

  Horus had taken an early retirement. Much too early to walk away from a promising Navy career with a paved path to leadership. Unless you’ve got a heavy conscience.

  Bayne dove back into the Intelligence files. With a solid place to start, other pieces began to fall into place. He was fairly certain, and turned out to be correct, that Central Intelligence kept tabs on Navy officers after retirement, especially ones with sensitive knowledge. For once, he was grateful for the gross invasion of privacy.

  It seemed that Horus was eager to leave the Navy but not content to sit on his porch and watch the sun rise. He took a job with the Byers Clan. That was a common transition, Navy to Byers. That clan liked having people with Navy connections. He was stationed on Triseca Station, a Byers Clan headquarters.

  Bayne’s mind raced, piecing together cover stories and excuses. Then the comms rang.

  “Admiral Ayala has summoned a meeting of the captaincy, sir,” Delphyne said. “In one hour.”

  “An hour?” Bayne said with disbelief. “What time is it?” He looked at the clock. He’d already missed breakfast. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be there.”

  He took a clean uniform from the hanger in his closet. As he buttoned it, his fingers passed over the stars on his lapel, the medal on his chest, pinned there by Admiral Ayala. He felt as much pride as the day she put it there. Then his eyes fell on the lavender chest peeking out from under his bunk. He felt the imaginary weight of the two swords on his hips.

  Each piece of metal carried equal weight. Each added to a load dragging him under.

  5

  Bayne felt like he had a hound on his heels, the way Mao walked, the burn Bayne felt from the XO’s eyes staring into the back of his head. Hungry eyes looking for a vein to sink into. It was customary for executive officers to accompany their captains to these sorts of meetings. Bayne would sooner leave Mao on the ship and get through this alone if he could, but he couldn’t afford the appearance of discord among his crew, not with Ayala yet to complete her assessment.

  Still, he needn’t suffer Mao’s relentless gaze. He stopped abruptly and turned on his heel. Mao was already standing at attention, as if he anticipated the move.

  “Sir?” he said.

  The formality in his voice drove Bayne mad. “I need you to act accordingly.”

  The insinuation seemed to insult the stoic man. “I have never acted in any other fashion.”

  “You know what I mean,” Bayne said. “I need you to appear like you don’t disapprove of every action I take.”

  “Sir, I—”

  Bayne raised a hand to silence him. “I know some of the things I’ve done lately have made you uncomfortable. I’ve put you in the unfair position of choosing between following orders and following protocol. I recognize that and I’m sorry for it. And I’m going to ask you to do it again.”

  Mao’s jaw tightened.

  “If there was ever a time when you trusted me to serve the best interests of the Navy and the people of the United Systems and my crew, then I’m also asking you to trust that I’m doing that now.” He wasn’t so sure that he was. He was fifty percent sure that he was only serving his own interests.

  The tension eased in Mao’s face, an almost imperceptible micro-movement. “What are you asking me to do?”

  “Just smile and nod.”

  “Do I have to smile?”

  “No, I don’t know why I said that. Nothing would seem more unnatural.”

  Mao couldn’t resist the tug at the corners of his mouth. “What are you dragging me into, Captain?”

  The levity of the moment dissolved. Bayne didn’t know exactly what he was dragging Mao into, but he knew that it could get them both killed. Or, worse for Mao, get him court martialed and dishonored.

  “I’m just trying to figure out the truth,” Bayne said.

  Mao nodded. He returned to the stoic man of discipline, though the bitter edge was gone. He may have been acting, but Bayne liked to hope the moment of honesty, or at least vulnerability, had won Mao over. At least for now.

  Meetings of the captaincy were unpredictable. At times, Bayne fought the urge to fall asleep. At others, he fought the urge to leap from his chair and bludgeon a fellow captain with his boot. It all
depended on the topic at hand. He suspected this meeting might tend toward the latter.

  The room, a conference room with a round table at the center big enough to seat the twenty-five members of the United Navy Captaincy, was half full. The captains milled about, chatting with one another, some smiling, but only few doing so genuinely. Most tended to avoid Bayne. Not maliciously, but more because they were naturally drawn to the captains with whom they had more in common. Those from prestigious families who attended the Naval Academy. Those who rarely sailed far from the core planets.

  Only a few welcomed assignments in the Deep Black as Bayne did. One such captain was Mara Jeska. Her hair was short and scrunched up with tight curls. Her eyes were a deep green that made any room she was in feel like a sun-drenched meadow. Her voice was loose and tinged with disdain for the whole affair she would be forced to sit through.

  “Drummond,” she said. “Fresh out of the Black. How’d the tour go?”

  Bayne shrugged. “About the same as always.”

  Jeska laughed. “Sure. Judging by those bloodshot eyes, I’d wager you’re telling the truth. As much as I hate being back here, each tour out there gets a bit harder. I spent my first week back after my last tour hungover as hell. Still have a bit of a headache and I’ve been back nearly a month.”

  That thought gave Bayne some comfort. Not that he wasn’t the only one who occasionally drowned his worries in rum, but that, for a time, he was the only Navy ship out in the Black. That sense of solitude used to worry him. He had an anxiety attack his first tour. The thought of being out there, so alone, so far from help, set his heart racing and skipping. It was the return trip that did it now.

  “When are you headed out next?” Bayne asked her.

  She shrugged. “Don’t know. We’ll see what this meeting yields. Rumor has it something’s got the council shaken. Figured with the timing of your return, you’d know something about it.”