The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  “Tasked by me.”

  Horus shrugged. “Just the same. I got a job. I’d prefer to do it unencumbered.”

  Bayne sniffed. “That rum on your breath doesn’t count as an encumbrance?”

  “Opposite.”

  Bayne clapped Horus on the shoulder as he stepped around him. “Consider your duty fulfilled. I am not dead.”

  “Due respect, sir,” Horus said, falling in line behind him. “It ain’t you I worry about displeasing.”

  Bayne knew that. He knew who the crew looked to now. Most of them, anyway. “Mao is XO, not captain.”

  “Yeah, but he’s been real unpleasant lately, and making my life, in particular, a fresh piece of hell.”

  They walked past a crowd of miners on break, passing a bottle between them as they made a stack of metal crates their temporary hangout. Their faces were smeared black. Their eyes were yellow. But, even as sad a lot as theirs, they looked on Bayne with pity.

  “I’ll speak with him,” Bayne said.

  Horus stopped at the edge of the dock. “Then I think I’ll stay out here.”

  The Royal Blue looked out of place in the line of ships docked at the edge of Ore Town. And it was dreadfully out of place. In the company of rusted mining trawlers, frigates stolen from every conglomerate that dared operate in the Deep Black, and battleships with the insignia of everything from the Navy to known pirate captains. It was a collection of stolen ships. Though, technically, the Blue had that in common.

  Bayne had signed his ship over to the Navy when he enlisted. And he’d stolen it back when he deserted.

  The landing platform lowered when he approached. Wilco was on it to welcome him. “You smell like warmed-over ass.”

  Bayne smacked him upside the head as he walked past.

  Wilco jogged after him. “Didn’t think you were coming back this time. Fourteen hours, thirty-nine minutes by my count. Longest bender yet by nearly an hour.”

  “I wasn’t on a bender.”

  “Sure. And that ain’t rum on your breath and blood on your knuckles.”

  Bayne looked at his hands. He didn’t remember hitting anyone. “Where’s Mao?”

  “Where do you think?”

  Bayne altered his course, opting to skip his cabin and make straight for the bridge. The protocols of Navy life were deeply ingrained in him even if he didn’t fully appreciate some of them. The ones dictating physical appearance were the easiest to dismiss, though it may not have been appreciated by the rest of the crew.

  Mao practically growled when Bayne stepped onto the bridge. He, too, had begun to take liberties with Navy protocols. Taliesin Mao was the most rigid person Bayne had ever met. Seeing him fail to stand at attention or salute when the captain entered the bridge was jarring. Bayne doubted he would ever get used to it. And he wondered why it bothered him so much.

  “You couldn’t at least brush your teeth first?” Mao stood like he was blocking Bayne’s path to the captain’s chair, though that wasn’t Bayne’s intended destination.

  “No,” Bayne answered. “I want an update.”

  “On?” Mao’s expression remained one of stone.

  “Everything.”

  The not-so-subtle tug of war between captain and XO was familiar to the crew by now, though that’s not to say it didn’t still make them uncomfortable. The tension grew so thick in the air that it was hard to breath.

  Mao finally broke the stare-down. He returned to his console and projected several deep-space surveillance feeds and reports on the main monitor. The report was a battle in the war of wills between Mao and Bayne.

  Bayne knew there was nothing new to report, but he made Mao do it anyway. They’d launched several probes three weeks earlier after petitioning Parallax for the right to do so. And therein lay the source of the conflict.

  “The corridor is clear,” Mao said. “No signs of any ships since the last reporting. It would seem our intentions were made clear.”

  He referred to the battle with Navy Captains Horne, Jeska, and Bigby. A battle from which the Royal Blue narrowly escaped. The Navy would have tracked the Blue’s escape route. They knew where Bayne ran to. Who he ran to.

  “Never hurts to reiterate them.” Bayne stepped up to Mao, tipped up on his toes to meet his XO’s eyeline.

  His intentions with Mao were likewise made clear. Bayne had had Mao and Sig escorted off the bridge after that battle. They objected to Bayne’s proposed course of action. Bayne didn’t take kindly to being objected to. Mao was out of the brig now because he asked. He expressed his desire to serve, not out of loyalty to Bayne but to the ship and its crew. He knew they had a better chance of making it through this alive with him on the bridge, checking the captain’s brash impulses.

  Graeme interrupted before any reiterating could be done. “Sir, he’s calling.”

  Mao’s expression never changed, but his tone sharpened. “Better heel to.”

  Being full of rum did nothing to help Bayne temper the aforementioned brash impulses, making the fact that he didn’t drive his fist into Mao’s face all the more impressive. “Tell him I’m on my way.”

  Bayne felt Mao’s stare plunging daggers through his back.

  Ore Town revolved around the main compound. The tallest building in town, it towered over the squat, two-story buildings by ten stories. A relic of the days when this outpost was controlled by the Byers Clan. An ominous and audacious structure, like a master with a whip standing over the miners. Bayne still didn’t know how long Parallax had controlled Ore Town. He had burrowed his way in like a tick and slowly sucked the place dry of any Byers influence. But that relic still stood tall. And that was where Parallax had chosen to establish himself.

  Bayne couldn’t believe that he was the only one who saw the hypocrisy in that. The man who fancied himself a revolutionary—creating Ore Town as a haven for pirates, the displaced, and the disenfranchised—looking down on them from the same position as those that had oppressed them.

  It was all a mask, Bayne knew. A piece of theater. That was all Parallax was.

  Bayne and Wilco stepped off the elevator and into the main compound’s penthouse. It was a luxury apartment and control center. Monitors lined one of the walls, control panels that allowed Parallax access to compound security and planetary security systems. He could control the docks, the infrastructure of the outpost—anything and everything.

  A second wall was lined with weapons. Trophies. Swords from different time periods, classic weapons that he had begun collecting when he was a Ranger.

  Those items seemed like the only honest thing in the room.

  The third wall was entirely glass, overlooking the docks. Bayne understood why Parallax would set up shop here. Ore Town was a pit, but it seemed beautiful from up here. Everything seemed beautiful from high enough up. Or, at least, the ugliness wasn’t as visible.

  Wilco flopped onto the couch in the center of the room facing the windows and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. “This is what I’ve been waiting for.”

  Bayne kicked him in the ankles.

  “The hell?”

  Bayne didn’t respond to Wilco’s outrage. He let the kid stew in it. There weren’t many on his crew who welcomed this change. There were a few who actively opposed it. There was only one who seemed happy about it.

  “You’re gonna fault me for enjoying the view?” Wilco walked to the window. He threw his arms open to the world outside. “Look at it. Everyone doing what they want. Living by whatever rules they please.”

  Bayne took Wilco by the chin and pulled his eyes down to the ground, to the road cutting through the center of town that led to the mines. Faces smeared black streamed past on the way to start their shift. “Look closer.”

  Wilco pulled his face away. “Just doing their part. The mine funds this place. Allows Ore Town to exist.”

  Bayne threw his arms wide to the luxury around them. “Allows this to exist.”

  “What’s your deal?” Wilco’s voice took an
edge. “I thought you wanted this?”

  Bayne paced along the wall of monitors, studying them. “I do. Doesn’t mean I stop seeing it for what it really is.”

  “And what’s that?” Parallax entered the room from a door in the back corner that connected to his living quarters. “What is this, really?”

  His voice echoed from behind his red and white kabuki-style mask. Bayne had seen him without it only once, inside the corpse of the ship once belonging to Ranger captain Alexander Kyte.

  “A show,” Bayne said.

  Parallax glided through the room, a graceful ghost, and sat at his desk. He pulled a bottle of rum and three glasses from the top drawer. “I do love a show.” He filled each glass with two fingers of black rum then fanned them out, not drinking and not serving. It was hard to tell where he was looking from behind his mask, but Bayne felt Parallax’s eyes on him.

  The silence felt laced with threat, the quiet of a stalking wolf the moment before he sinks his teeth into the rabbit’s neck.

  Parallax walked around the front of his desk and sat on the edge. He pointed out the window, at Ore Town spread out in all its irony. “You are correct, in a way, dear Drummond. This is a spectacle. Because it needs to be. What I’m trying to build here is a threat to everything that exists—the United Systems, the Byers Clan, and all likewise conglomerates. They want you to think this is impossible, a naïve dream. How better to prove them wrong than with a beautiful show?”

  Bayne pinched the bridge of his nose and let out an exaggerated sigh. “What do you want?”

  Parallax tilted his head. “Well, that’s a broad question.”

  “With me. Right now. Why did you call me here?”

  The pirate folded his hands in front of him. He looked like a grade-school teacher about to proceed with his lesson for the day. “You brought your ship and crew here seeking refuge. Which I was more than happy to provide. Our last several meetings may have ended poorly, but I have nothing but love and respect for you, Drummond. Regardless, room and board are not free. It can’t be. Optics, you see.”

  “The show.” Bayne intended it as a jab, but Parallax didn’t receive it as such.

  “Exactly. You may have turned your back on the Navy, but, until six weeks ago, your job was to hunt me and my people down. They know you as that enemy. Allowing you safe harbor without you first proving yourself will bring about a discord that I cannot afford right now. The good folk of Ore Town must know where you stand.”

  “I stand here because I have nowhere else to go.” Bayne’s defense felt half-hearted, which surprised himself.

  It did not seem to surprise Parallax. “That façade is precisely what we must do away with. It is false, and it will serve only to breed discontent, and probably murder. Your crew are endangered by your stubbornness and lack of will.”

  “I’ll show you the force of my will.” Bayne reached for his hip before realizing there was nothing there to reach for.

  Parallax’s chuckle echoed in his mask. “You have the will to act, but no resolve. You change with the breeze. Are you Navy? Are you a pirate? Are you a Ranger? Those decisions have been made for you. Circumstance dictates who you are. It’s time for you to dictate your circumstances.”

  Bayne crossed his arms and turned back to the window. He saw the Blue in the distance. If he could dictate his circumstances, he would be on that ship right now, sailing unknown parts of the universe, settling his own moon. He grew increasingly impatient with the presence of others, even of those who professed to be his allies. He would sooner dispatch them all to the other side of the galaxy.

  “I have a job for you,” Parallax said. “Something to prove your resolve, to assuage the folk of Ore Town.”

  Bayne’s eyes and mind remained on the Blue.

  “What job?” Wilco asked.

  Parallax tilted his head toward the boy, observing him as though he were an oddity, something his mind didn’t fully comprehend. “A heist. A Byers Clan caravan will be passing through the Orlan Strait in three days. You are going to rob it.”

  2

  The stench of liquor and body odor hung in the air after Bayne left the bridge. The odors themselves didn’t make Mao sick, but the idea of them, what they represented, did. The comportment of Naval officers, especially captains, was crucial to maintaining the integrity of the United Navy. On and off duty, Taliesin Mao made it his priority to reflect well on the institution to which he’d dedicated his life.

  That dedication now seemed in vain. He felt like he was the only one who cared about the rules, about integrity, anymore. Just that morning, he’d broken up a fight between an ensign and an engineer. Both were drunk. He would have thrown them in the brig, but the crew was so thin that every last hand was needed to sail the Royal Blue. Not that he believed it would be sailing anywhere anytime soon.

  They hadn’t lifted off since landing six weeks ago. The captain had given no such orders to, but Mao believed, even if Bayne wanted to, they would not be allowed to leave. They were prisoners.

  Speaking of.

  “You have the bridge,” Mao said, stepping down from his console.

  Graeme looked anxiously about the bridge, to the two other sailors aboard. “To whom are you speaking, sir?”

  “It doesn’t really matter, Officer Graeme. Call me if something happens.”

  The halls were eerily quiet, the way they’d been since landing, but Mao would never grow used to the quiet. On a ship that typically housed over two hundred, and now only a few dozen, the silence and stillness was haunting.

  The galley was a mess. Crew now had the responsibility of cooking for themselves, a task few had done since before enlisting. Fewer of them seemed to know how to clean up after themselves.

  Mao assembled a plate of bread and salted meat, with a few pieces of dried fruit. The pantries were growing increasingly bare. Their host/captor sent weekly rations, but the variety was minimal and the quality, poor. Though, in that regard at least, Mao believed the crew fared no better than the rest of Ore Town.

  The brig wasn’t guarded. If he wanted to, Sigurd probably could have broken free. But he would have nowhere to go. He would still be marooned, surrounded by pirates, a sailor without a captain.

  Moa handed the plate of food through the horizontal slot in the bars. Sig took it without a smile or acknowledgement. He wasn’t much for either these days.

  “How are you faring, Chief?”

  “Don’t call me that,” Sig said around a mouthful of bread, reacting as though insulted.

  “Sigurd. How are you?”

  Sig stopped chewing but didn’t swallow. “You’ve asked me that every day for six weeks, Mao. What are you expecting me to say?”

  Mao shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m just trying to maintain some normalcy.”

  “Nothing normal about any of this. Surrounded by pirates, and I’m the one who’s locked up.” He took a bite of dried apricot. Some of the tension eased from his jaw with the sweet taste.

  “I could get you out,” Mao said.

  “So I can do what? Sit on the ship with my thumb up my butt? Worse, be Parallax’s lackey? I’d rather rot in here.”

  Mao sat on the chair outside the cell. He folded one leg over the other and laid his hands in his lap. “Then perhaps we should talk about something else.”

  The words were heavy, thick. They barely fit through the bars of Sig’s cage. Sig sat on his bunk, back against the wall, and popped another dried apricot in his mouth. The sweetness was a jarring distraction from his current habitat. “Like what?”

  3

  The hum of the Royal Blue’s engines was a symphony. Layers of music on top of each other, woven together, an elaborate tapestry that could be thrown over the sky and be a more beautiful thing to look on.

  But Bayne only heard it in his dreams now. The ship ran on auxiliary batteries only, plugged into power stations on the docks. The engines hadn’t fired since they set down.

  The engines on the schooner Parallax
had assigned him were like silverware dropped down the stairs. The ship accommodated a crew of thirteen. It might have fit more, but Bayne doubted it could have lifted off with the added weight. The hull was pocked with rust from sitting in drydock too long. The internal systems rattled like the lungs of an asthmatic. The quiet shrieking that came from inside the control panels made Bayne think the entire system was about to short-circuit. But it was only rats, startled by the unexpected surge of power.

  “What in the sticky hell is this?” Wilco looked about the bridge like he’d wandered into a morgue.

  “This is the Rabid Dog,” Bayne answered.

  “Needs to be put down,” Wilco said. He sniffed. “I think it may have already been, actually.”

  Bayne walked the bridge, running his fingers along the dusty surfaces of the control consoles until he came to the captain’s chair. “A ship is only as effective as the sailors aboard it.” He spoke then to Ensign Caller, a man of twenty-five with short, dusty hair and eyes as round as moons. “Get the bridge cleaned up and suitable to sail. We leave in four hours.”

  “Aye, sir,” Ensign Caller said. He relayed the orders to the two sailors at his side, and they immediately set to work.

  Wilco followed Bayne off the bridge, through the narrow corridor to the rear of the ship, the loading bay. Delphyne was already there, seeing to the preparations. She had sorted gear into eight piles. Spacewalk suits, blasters, ammo packs. “The gear for the away team is ready.”

  “Well done, Lieutenant.”

  She shot him a warning look.

  “Delphyne,” Bayne corrected. “Good job.” The titles they carried as sailors of the United Navy were received as insults now, reminders of a life they would never get back.

  The stink of Elvin Horus emanated from a stack of crates in the rear of the bay. Bayne smelled him before he saw him emerge from the boxes, hair and clothes disheveled.

  “You gonna be sober in four hours?” Bayne asked.

  “Sober enough.”