“It started a war. It holds no relevance beyond that.” Even Mao wasn’t swayed by his own words. The same empty words distributed daily by Central for the first year of the war. Before all mention of Ore Town ceased completely. It was barely a footnote now. Merely the spark that ignited long-simmering tensions. Not the ideological implosion that all who were there knew it to be.
Delphyne stared through Mao, like she was trying to burn a hole in the hull. “If I thought you truly believed that, I would resign right now.”
Mao didn’t refute her.
Her eyes focused on Mao’s. He was struck by how volatile they were. A star going nova one moment, a serene spacescape the next. No longer the steady moons on the horizon. “I’m not some naïve child. I don’t think of Bayne as some folk hero. I knew him better than most. I know how flawed he was, how broken, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have a point.”
Mao continued the ideological discussion with himself long after it became clear how unsafe it was to have aloud. Was the United Navy right in its siege of Ore Town? Was Parallax right in seizing it to begin with, in attempting to create his utopia free of Navy and Byers control? Was there any freedom left in the systems? And down he would plunge into the abyss of doubt and endless reflection.
Mao pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping to dam the tide of thoughts. “Acknowledging such is akin to treason.”
“And that’s okay with you?”
“That’s irrelevant. This is no longer Drummond Bayne’s ship. But I fear his influence remains.” He met Delphyne’s nova eyes. “If needed, I will scrub the Blue of that influence. He will no longer affect how I or this crew carries out our duty.”
With a look, he dismissed his XO, who left with heavy feet and a fiery gaze.
Mao sank into the chair at the head of the briefing room table. Bayne’s shadow fell heavy on the ship. It fell even heavier on Mao. The man had been his friend once. Maybe not in the end. Though Mao liked to think that he and Bayne could have mended their tattered relationship given the chance. He scoffed at the thought. What possible chance could have arisen even if Bayne was still alive?
Mao didn’t allow himself to think of Bayne as an enemy. Parallax was his enemy. Bayne committed treason. He betrayed the Navy. He went rogue. But Mao wouldn’t classify Bayne as his enemy. Maybe Tirseer was. A colonel in the United Protectorate. A military leader of the United Systems. Mao’s black and white world was suddenly blindingly flush with color.
Morale onboard fluctuated like a cosmic storm. Clouds of gas bursting and contracting, searing and freezing from one second to the next. It was at a low now. The crew had wanted to put the Inferni Cluster behind them and advance to the welcome promise of shore leave ahead. Mao told them they would all get a week’s leave after this mission. Stupid mistake. Never dangle something like that; it can always be taken away.
Making the situation worse was that the crew had nothing to do but wait. Horne and the Forager were doing all the work.
Delphyne’s run-in with Mao still stung. Despite all her frustration, she still respected Taliesin more than anyone. His stalwart adherence to protocol ruffled some—it had been the main source of conflict between him and Bayne—but she admired it. Bayne always dismissed it as the easy way out of a moral dilemma. Delphyne saw it differently. She knew Mao to be a moral man, a man of staunch belief. To be able to subjugate those beliefs in the name of duty was far from easy.
Still, it was a pain at times.
The eyes on the bridge seemed heavier than the mood. Three hours had passed since Calibor told them to stay put. Three hours of staring down at the tips of their own noses, hoping for something to happen, anything to break up the monotony.
When something finally did happen, Delphyne cursed herself for wishing away the uneventful hours.
Captain Horne appeared on screen, his face distorted by static and urgency. His voice came through in broken spurts. “…peat, this is Captain Horne…immediate assistance…”
Delphyne jumped to her feet. She looked to the captain’s chair, forgetting that Mao was in his cabin getting some much-needed rest. “Alert the captain. Graeme, clean up this transmission.”
“Aye,” Graeme answered.
“Captain Horne, repeat your message,” Delphyne said. “What is your status?”
The screen flickered. The image pulled together, holding the view of the Forager bridge like a bomb about to burst.
Blood streamed from a cut above Horne’s left eye, coloring half his face red. Sparks rained down from the ceiling behind him. The Forager bridge was cast in the dull glow of emergency lighting.
“We are dead in the water,” Horne said. “Engines are offline. Weapon systems are down. No idea what hit us, but it came hard and fast. No warning. Nothing. Just…” His voice trailed off. His eyes glossed over.
“Horne,” Delphyne said loudly. His eyes refocused. “Escape pods.”
“They wouldn’t survive the cluster. The Forager’s shielding is the only thing keeping us alive. The pods would implode at the first gravity well they encountered. Or melt from radiation surges.”
“Lock on to the Forager’s location.” Had she the time, Delphyne would have relished the authority in her voice, savored how it felt on her tongue. “And ready all rescue boats.”
“Belay that,” came a more authoritative voice from behind her.
“Captain on deck,” Delphyne said.
Mao stepped onto the command platform and studied Horne’s face. A grim look passed between them. “You have no visual on the enemy?”
“No,” Horne answered. “Our scanners are wonky. The rat bastards must be hiding somewhere in the cloud. They know what they’re doing.”
A knot tied in Delphyne’s gut. She knew the protocol. She knew the orders playing in the back of Mao’s mind.
“Alert the force commander,” Mao said. Acid surged in Delphyne’s belly. “Then get engineering on some workable solutions.” He looked to Horne. “We’ll pull you out. Hang tight.”
Horne acknowledged with a nod then ended the transmission.
Mao’s voice dropped to a whisper. “XO, hold off on alerting Calibor. Just for a few minutes.”
She could see the unease in the lines forming around his eyes. “Aye, sir. The cluster has been wreaking havoc on our comms. It may take a while to recalibrate and ensure a secure transmission. Operational security is of the utmost importance.”
The unease only flared. Delphyne called for Graeme to follow as she marched off the bridge.
“Is something wrong, XO?” Graeme asked in his trembling voice. “I can patch a call through to the Illuminate on the bridge.”
“We aren’t calling the Illuminate. I need your help with something else.”
4
There have been few ships in the Systems whose reputation exceeds that of its captain. The Screw Loose was known for navigating the Strait of Altoor, the only ship of its time deft enough to avoid the explosive and dense asteroid fields. The Grandeur, a truly desperate-looking hunk of metal, was fondly remembered as the most ironically-named ship. One could look at it sternly and expect it to fall apart, but it proved crucial in the Battle of Harper’s Bay in the later days of the Ranger Wars.
You’d be hard-pressed to find any who could list either ship’s captain. It was the machine that loomed large. The captain was merely a passenger.
The Black Hole didn’t exactly fit that category. Its captain was equally infamous, but the ship itself was wrapped in its own mythology. Its time with Parallax was just one era in its legendary saga. Aside from its size, being among the largest on record, it sported the most destructive battery of weapons known. Its arsenal alone violated arms treaties just by existing. Using it turned every crewmember into the most wanted criminals in the United Systems. Some believed the ship predated the formation of United Systems, dating even before the Ranger Wars and the reign of the warlords. Its time with Parallax, and its end, were only slivers of its history.
; But that was the power of mythology. Spinning a story from a grain of truth until it’s so expansive you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t.
And that was why Hep didn’t order Sig to sickbay for observation. “Say that again, Chief?”
Sig scratched at a scar on his chin. “The Black Hole. The transmission is coming from the Black Hole.”
Hep waited for the punchline. It didn’t come. “You care to explain a little? Like maybe how in the hell that could be possible? I seem to remember that ship blowing up, destroying an entire moon and almost wiping out an armada. I remember because I was in that armada at the time. You were too, as I recall.”
Sig put up a hand, halting Hep’s rambling. “Akari ran the signal through the database three times. It came back a match three times. That transmission is coming from the Black Hole. Can’t say how, just that it is.”
Hep paced the bridge, weaving across the floor like a drunk. Sailors stepped out of his path as he showed no sign of taking their existence into consideration. “That’s not— I mean, it just isn’t…” He spun, throwing his arms out in a fit of exasperation. “How? I mean, just how? I saw it explode. I felt the heat from its core as it melted down.”
“Maybe its comm system survived the blast,” Akari offered. “Or part of it, at least. Enough to maintain a signal.”
“Even if that were the case,” Hep said. “Ore Town is leagues away, damn near the other side of the system. How did the ship get way out here?”
No one offered an answer.
Hep sunk into himself as he paced the command platform. Of his crew, only he and Sig had been at Ore Town. Only they had seen the behemoth that was the Black Hole. The devastation that it caused both in life and death. The others knew it by reputation only, and reputation had a way of clouding people’s judgment.
“We need to investigate this,” Akari said.
“No.” Hep’s command rang with finality. But his crew’s judgment was fully infected by lore.
“We need to understand how this is possible,” Akari returned.
“You need to understand how this is possible,” Hep answered. “I do not. I need to get out of this sector before the Byers Clan floods in.”
Sigurd stepped in close, pressed his shoulder to the captain’s, and spoke so only he could hear. “Your chambers?”
Hep nodded. “Byrne, you have the bridge.”
He shouldn’t have agreed to meet in his cabin. His cabin was the one place aboard the Fair Wind where work did not enter. Hep had been adamant about that from the beginning. He needed a place to himself, a place that was meant for rest and rest alone. He was breaking his own rule.
“We need to follow this.” Sig’s jaw was tight and voice grim.
Hep stared down at his desk, at the bottle of black rum sitting on it. He’d bought it on a whim from a market in the Alloy Belt. Nostalgia. He wasn’t a drinker.
Sig’s jaw didn’t slacken. The rest of his body only followed suit. “Track the signal. If it really is the Black Hole—”
“It isn’t.” Hep felt more like he was reassuring himself rather than stating fact. “It can’t be.”
“We’ve seen strange things out here.”
“Strange. Not impossible.” Hep ran it over in his head. The explosion. The blinding light followed by sudden, all-encompassing darkness. Nothingness. Bayne gone. Wilco…
“The engine cores.” Sig stroked his chin, reminding himself of the most important detail. “That many in the belly of the ship. You’re right. I don’t see how anything could have survived a blast like that.”
Was Sig some sort of master manipulator or was it just human nature to be contradictory? “But you’re right,” Hep relented. “The signal. We can’t just ignore it. But we go in with our eyes open. This isn’t a rescue mission. That wasn’t an SOS. If I were to guess, somebody is running Parallax’s colors up the pole, seeing who responds.”
“Trying to rally any surviving pirates?”
Hep shrugged. “Either that or it’s a trap of some kind. They cloned the signal and are dangling it out there to see who bites. Maybe some remnants of Parallax’s fleet out for revenge. Either way, I want a full assault team ready by the time we track the source.”
Finally, Sig relaxed. The thought of gearing up put him at ease.
“Get Akari working on tracking it.”
“Aye, sir.” Sig only ever called Hep ‘sir’ when he agreed with the order Hep gave at the time.
Why was Sig so determined to track this signal? Sigurd probably wanted to find that it was a rallying call, Hep thought. He wanted to find a nest of pirates, the last few in the system, and eradicate them like they were rats in the wiring. He’d lost something in the battle of Ore Town, though he would hardly admit it. Sig didn’t talk about the fight, let alone the aftermath.
And that was fine with Hep. He preferred the ordeal be forgotten. At least, left unspoken.
He dreamed, that night, that he was floating in space. Half-dream and half-memory, dredged up from the pits of his mind, inhabited by a stew of things he tried to forget. He floated past his dead parents. Hep only knew them to be his parents because it was woven into the narrative of the dream, something he just knew to be fact. His parents’ actual faces had long since faded from memory. Even had he remembered them, these two people were little more than charred corpses.
He pushed his way past the debris, charred and jagged scraps of hull, the ripped apart innards of a ship. The cables and circuits mingled with sinew and flesh, moist pieces that once held a large creature together. He felt the heat seep through his suit, like he was wading through a swamp, all moist air. Machine and animal had merged. Hulking behemoths of metal and bone swam through the cosmos of this dreamscape, in another unseen part of it. Here, they were all dead, and in pieces.
He was searching for something. Not just a scrapper like he was in the waking world, picking through the wreckage for something useful. He was wading through this cemetery with something specific in mind. Something not dead.
A chunk of bloody hull drifted out of his path to reveal the small, whole body of a man ten meters away. He looked like a shadow, silhouetted by the star shining behind him. Urgency coursed through Hep’s body. It urged him forward, but urgency in dreams was always counterproductive. The more he tried to rush forward, the less able he was to do so. He spun in place like a rodent on a wheel.
The man came to him instead, sensing his desperation. As the figure neared the floundering captain, the shadow took form. Hep recognized the suit, the contrast of red and black, the colors of Parallax’s fleet. Color drained from them only to return as a cold blue, the color of ice. The helmet’s faceplate was frosted over, hiding the face of the man inside. The arm shot forward, hand tightening around Hep’s throat.
Hep’s suit was gone. He was exposed to the void. No, he was inside now. Fleshy steel walls surrounded him. He had been swallowed. The shadow undid its helmet with its free hand. It dropped to the floor with a wet sound. The shadow’s face was both familiar and new, a patchwork, a combination of people Hep had known. Every person he had lost to the void. Every person lured away by the darkness.
The shadow stabbed forward, piercing Hep’s chest with its hand, grabbing his heart and freezing it.
Hep woke gasping, his shirt caked to his back.
The comm chimed on his desk. “Go.”
“Akari traced the signal,” Sig said. “The source is a few hours from our present location.”
Hep looked at the bottle of black rum, stared at it like it was an idol, a god statue that held some answers. “Set a course. Then gather your team in the briefing room.”
The bottle haunted him. So many ghosts he had to contend with. It was time to put at least one of them to rest.
5
Oliver Graeme was nothing if not predictable. In a time when it seemed like absolutely nothing ever was, it was a comfort to know exactly how he was going to react in any situation.
“No. No, I wo
n’t do that. I can’t. It is one hundred percent against protocol.”
Delphyne smiled. So comforting. “So is disobeying a direct order from a superior.”
Graeme’s eyes darted from side to side as he sorted out the logic. “Not if the direct order is unlawful. A subordinate has the right, the duty, to disobey and report breach of protocol up the chain of command.”
Delphyne placed her hand on Graeme’s shoulder. He winced like the gesture burned. “Graeme. Oliver. Ollie. The next rung up the chain of command is Captain Mao. Do you think I’d act against his orders?” She continued before he had a chance to answer. “You’d have to jump up another level. Report this to force command. And you know as well as I do that Calibor is an ass and a puppet. He’s Tirseer’s man. They’re looking for a reason to ax Mao and replace him with another of Tirseer’s people. Do you want to serve under her thumb?”
“Colonel Tirseer is Interim Director of the United Navy.”
“Exactly. Interim. Tirseer is the Director of the Protectorate. A ground soldier. Black ops. A spy who speaks deception as a second language. You listen to the chatter. You’ve heard how things have changed since she took charge. The protocols are changing.”
In the months since her appointment, Colonel Maria Tirseer had dragged the Navy from the black and white world of mission protocol into the gray area of espionage. Some among the admiralty thought her brand of leadership was exactly what was needed during wartime. Brutal, uncompromising. But there were others who longed for the leadership of Shay Ayala. Someone who clung to the ideals upon which the United Systems were founded, as lofty as they seemed, while your shipmates were getting sucked into the void through a hull breach.
Oliver Graeme was one of those people. He was a stickler for protocol, but he was also an idealist. “I do not wish to serve under the likes of Calibor.” He spoke with complete confidence, but something still seemed to cause him discomfort, like a morsel caught in his throat.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 40