The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  “I hope that’s a good thing,” Delphyne said, making her best attempt at officer banter.

  Dontay led her past a row of freighters of various sizes, dock workers unloading cargo, and sailors hollering over the roar of engines. He stopped at the elevator. When the door opened, he stepped inside and bade her to follow. A pinch in Delphyne’s gut warned her against it. It told her that this man’s smile was really the smile of a snake, slithering up her leg, whispering in her ear before sinking his fangs into her neck.

  “It’s a very good thing,” he said through his snake’s smile.

  Delphyne ignored the pinch in her gut, even as it grew into a knot that twisted her insides as the door closed.

  Central was the largest space station ever built. Forty levels, over a hundred thousand people, its own modes of public transit, five levels dedicated solely to growing and cultivating food, another level to recycling water and oxygen, it was a nearly self-sufficient city. Some food was shipped in, like the fish Delphyne had the displeasure of accompanying, but Central produced enough on its own that it could survive without external subsidies for years. Central even had its own police force, which greeted them as the elevator door slid open on level twenty-two, the administrative level.

  “These fine gentlemen will escort you to your first stop,” Dontay said. “A new appointment on Central comes with a great deal of paperwork, I’m afraid.” With that, he slithered away, leaving Delphyne with her police escort.

  It was protocol for new persons without the proper credentials to be accompanied by Central Security Forces on certain levels, the administrative level being one of them. But that did not ease Delphyne’s feeling that her monitoring had only been passed from one hand to another. She wondered if this was her life now—if she’d transitioned from relative freedom to wearing a tight leash in the blink of an eye, without the proper time to adjust to her new reality.

  The security force flanked her as they navigated the corridors. They made no small talk, which suited Delphyne, as she was too many steps ahead to adequately maintain any conversation. They entered the chief administrator’s office and told her to sit in the not-too-comfortable chairs, where she could only look at the dull stock photographs of birds flying over a lake and listen to the soft, almost nonexistent music. She thanked them and sat.

  She waited for over an hour, naming the ducks in the photograph, writing lyrics to the endless loop of background music, before signing her way through an inch-high stack of paperwork. Massaging her wrist, Delphyne thanked the clerk her for the kind welcome, and went on her way. Newly credentialed, Delphyne no longer required an escort. She received one anyway.

  “Finished already?” Dontay was waiting outside the administrator’s office as she exited.

  “Already?” Delpyne feigned sarcasm. “It felt like I was in there for ages. I thought it’d be time to fill out my retirement paperwork before I finished.”

  Dontay laughed. A snake’s hiss. “You finished quicker than most. I remember when I started my post here. I transferred from a ground unit on Titan moon. My hand cramped so bad for a week after I signed my papers that I couldn’t salute properly. I thought the colonel would have me courtmartialed.”

  They shared a laugh. It felt cold.

  “Please.” Dontay swept his arm in a gentlemanly manner. “Allow me to show you to your cabin.”

  Delphyne nodded with the air of a noble lady, and the gesture made her feel sick. She felt eyes on her as they walked, though she didn’t know whether they were real or imagined. They followed her as they exited the administrative level, as they traveled up to the thirtieth level, and as they walked through the enlisted sailors’ bunk room and past the officers’ quarters. Dontay finally stopped at her new cabin, a special section separated from the rest, designated for members of the joint unit to which she was now assigned.

  “Settle in,” Dontay said. “I’m sure you’re tired from the travel. I’ll have some food sent to you, so you won’t need to brave the mess hall on your first night. I’ll come collect you in the morning and escort you to the first day of your new assignment. Good night.”

  “Good night, Sergeant.” Delphyne hated how pleasant he was. She wanted to gouge his pretty eyes out.

  As soon as she was alone, she allowed her mask to slip, but not all the way. She doubted she was truly alone. Her cabin was likely riddled with hidden cameras. Bugged, at least. Either way, Tirseer was probably listening in. She rubbed her eyes, hiding her face, and allowed some tears to flow. The walls felt like they were pressing in on her. She’d moved from the small confines of a midsize ship like the Royal Blue to the largest space station in existence, and now she felt claustrophobic.

  This is the only way, she told herself. The only way to make sure they’re safe. She wiped away the tears before showing her face. She took several deep breaths and steeled herself. Then she dressed, had dinner when it arrived, and went to sleep.

  She counted to six thousand after lights out. Then she slid out of bed, moving like a snake shedding its skin, inching her body from under the blanket and onto the floor. She retrieved the bag she’d stashed under her bunk and removed the contents—a hooded sweatshirt, an aerosol can filled with her own creation, and a collapsible baton.

  The corridor was silent save for the hum of the lights. She knew the security protocols by heart, the patrol patterns and guard shifts, having accessed and studied them before leaving the Blue. They were not hard to find deep in the annals of Naval Academy procedural texts. She moved like a novice dancer in the midst of a very rigid and technical routine, counting the steps as she moved, anticipating her next move rather than feeling the dance, moving to the music.

  She hadn’t far to go. The stairwell between the level’s main bunk room and the cabins reserved for her joint operation was a hundred meters away. She reached it without incident and began her ten-floor climb to the top level. Even having spent the majority of her Navy career aboard a ship and little of it at Central, she knew the reputation of level forty just as any other sailor. The rumors swirling around level forty were as broad in scope as they were numerous. Secret labs, posh suites for hosting lavish parties with foreign dignitaries, weapons testing facility. One of the more interesting theories suggested that the entire level was the operating system of the United Systems’ most powerful weapon, the Central station itself, which morphed into a massive cannon capable of destroying planets.

  The truth didn’t live up to the intrigue. The classified schematics for Central were among the intel dump Bayne had Hep steal from Centel. She’d studied them thoroughly. Level forty was mission control. Every active mission was run and monitored through level forty. It contained the most sophisticated communications and tracking systems and a massive black block database. It wasn’t networked to anything outside level forty. Still exciting, but not super weapon exciting. This was where the minute details of every mission ever conducted by the United Systems—whether it was Navy, Protectorate, or the intelligence divisions, past and present—were kept.

  Delphyne paused outside the door at the top of the stairs, catching her breath and steadying her heart. Once she passed through, she knew she would never be able to turn back. But she would never have anything to turn back to if she didn’t open the door. “No turning back,” she whispered to herself.

  She shook the aerosol can, readying it. She extended the baton. Then she opened the door. Two guards immediately inside the door. She sprayed one in the face while cracking the other across the knee with the baton. The spray was like a mix of pepper spray and napalm, something of her own design. It stuck to the victim’s face and burned his eyes, incapacitating him for up to an hour. She clubbed them both in the head, knocking them unconscious.

  The roaming patrol would respond to the commotion in less than thirty seconds. She ducked into a shadowy corner and waited. Two guards appeared twenty-seven seconds later, rifles raised. One tried to call it in. Delphyne broke his wrist before he could activate his
comm. She sprayed the second guard as he wheeled on her. Then she dropped them both.

  The third patrol was stationary, posted at the other end of the level, ordered never to leave the master console. They were far enough away that they wouldn’t have heard anything. She had time to move slowly and carefully. She ducked below consoles and weaved between the monitoring stations until the last patrol was in sight. They were heavily trained to be still and observant, to take in every detail around them without lapsing into boredom. The space between them was wide open. She wouldn’t be able to approach unseen, and they would gun her down before she got close.

  Unwilling and unable to allow doubt to cripple her, Delphyne scanned the area for her solution. She quickly found it. Popping open the electrical panel of the nearest terminal, Delphyne removed a slender metal pin she kept in her hair to keep it up. Her hair fell down around her shoulders. She traced a red wire from the top of the terminal to the power source at the bottom and jabbed the pin into it. Sparks shot out, the terminal’s last gasp.

  The guards muttered to each other in tight, urgent tones. A tense silence followed. Then footsteps.

  Working feverishly, Delphyne rewired the terminal, getting the power working again and rerouting it all to the small unit she placed on the floor. She snuck around the corner, timing her movement, waiting for the guard to get close enough that his vision would be obscured by the terminal. He searched the area, his interest piqued by the guts spilling out of the terminal. When he picked up the unit to investigate, the power surged through his body. He dropped in a heap on the floor. Caught in the alarm of the moment, the second guard forgot his orders and left his post. As he bent over to check on his comrade, Delphyne clubbed him on the back of the head.

  Adrenaline coursing through her, Delphyne scanned the area, using her temporary hyper-focus to her advantage. Then she struggled to calm herself long enough to remember her next steps. She collapsed her baton and willed herself to continue.

  Standing in front of the master console felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, so she jumped and began typing. She remembered scanning through the intel cache with Mao just months ago as they tried to gain some insight into Tirseer’s plans. It all seemed too obtuse without context. Inferni gave them context. Details from the cache took on new meaning. The stories began to take shape. One detail in particular.

  The Void.

  It was only mentioned a few times, but the tone, the details surrounding it, led Delphyne and Mao to believe that it was significant and possibly related to a growing threat. Above all, it could be Tirseer’s motivation. The sooner Delphyne understood it, the sooner she could help end the war and Tirseer’s reign. And this was the only place, deep in the belly of the beast, where she could go to understand.

  The volume of data at her fingertips was staggering. Almost crippling. If she didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, Delphyne would have frozen. Knowing her end goal allowed her to find a path and follow it.

  Unfortunately for her, Delphyne reached exactly the point she intended. The end.

  The file for the Void was buried under dozens of subheadings and tucked inside even more folders. But she found it. Opening it was like carving open a star—beautiful at first, a brilliance that evoked the spark of creation, but which quickly bloomed a heat powerful enough to melt her eyes. It gripped her. She couldn’t stop reading no matter how hard she struggled. Finally, after reaching the last period of the file, having not blinked through the entirety of it, she pushed herself away, eyes burning with tears. “Impossible.”

  A series of groans dragged her back from the brink of infinity and dropped her hard back on level forty, where she was in the midst of committing treason. The tips of her fingers burned as she held firm to the digital fire. She knew she couldn’t keep it, but she couldn’t allow Tirseer to take it from her. She needed to give it away.

  Already logged into the system, and knowing the black channel source codes by memory, it took seconds for her to open a black channel, and a few seconds more to record her message and encode it with everything they would need. As she sent it away, she hoped it would be the lifeline they would need to weather this storm and not an anchor tied around their ankles.

  Several angry voices yelled at her from behind. She barely heard them, the implications of what she’d just read, the consequences of what she’d just done, ringing too loudly in her head. The guards yanked her arms behind her back and forced her to her knees. Their voices were muffled, but she understood their sentiment.

  Her life was over.

  9

  The bridge of the Royal Blue flashed red with alarms that Mao had never seen before. Officer Graeme was rendered mute by the intensity, frozen like an animal in the crosshairs.

  “What is happening?” Mao yelled. “Graeme!”

  The timid comms officer snapped out of his stupor. “Sir, sorry, sir. It’s an Omega-level alert, sir. A system-wide threat.”

  “Issued by who?”

  “Omega-level threats can only be issued by Central Command, sir. This is coming directly from Colonel Tirseer.”

  “Refresh me on the Omega-level threat protocol, Officer.” In all Mao’s years of service, he had never seen an Omega threat issued. The protocol didn’t exist during the warlord days. It wasn’t issued during the pirate campaigns and not during the current war. For all he knew, this was the first.

  “The target of the alert becomes the top and only priority for all active Navy ships,” Graeme said, reciting the protocol from memory. “All inactive Navy ships are called to duty. All sailors on leave are recalled. All sailors on reserve are activated. All orders are issued directly from Central Command.”

  Mao’s blood went cold. “Have any orders been issued?”

  “Yes.” Graeme’s voice went as cold as Mao’s blood. He seemed reluctant to share the attached orders, but he was not one to question. He played an audio message attached to the alert.

  “To all active Navy ships, this is Colonel Maria Tirseer, Supreme Commander of all military branches of the United Systems.”

  A sound of disgust escaped Mao’s mouth before he could think to silence it. He knew that, in Admiral Ayala’s absence, Colonel Tirseer was the acting head of the Navy as well as her regular duties as leader of the Protectorate, but she was never granted such a title as supreme commander. Such a title had never existed until this moment.

  “This is an Omega-level threat alert,” Tirseer continued. “Central Command has been infiltrated by the enemy. Worse, a traitor. She has leaked highly-classified intel to her cohorts, who intend to use that intel to strike at the heart of the United Systems. This enemy is in possession of the greatest threat we have ever seen, capable of untold destruction. Capable of the destruction seen at the Inferni Cluster. This enemy is responsible for the death of thousands of our fellow sailors, and they are not done yet.

  “But they have made a mistake. In leaking this intel, the traitor, whose name will be wiped from history, has led us straight to the enemy, the Fair Wind. We’ve embedded a tracking code in the data. The whereabouts of the threat are attached to this message. It is the duty of every Navy ship to hunt them down and bring them to justice. You have your orders. Good luck.”

  The message cut off, and the silence that filled the bridge felt like a demon spawned from the comm that drifted about stealing people’s voices and choking them to death. Mao turned white, looking like a corpse though his mind raced like he’d been injected with adrenaline. That message had gone out to every ship in the Navy. Countless warships, all with Hep’s coordinates, out for his blood. They would capture him, take him and his crew to Tirseer. She would execute him in a dark room and make him disappear. She would take Sigurd and use him as a weapon, harness whatever had taken control of him and use it to take control of everything. Every ship in the Navy was altering course right now.

  No, not every ship. Not yet. Not if he made the decision to become a traitor. Infinity passed in seconds. His crew look
ed to him, waiting to see what he would turn them into.

  “Course, sir?” Roker asked. A simple question thick with implication. She asked again.

  “Hold course,” Mao commanded. “Officer Graeme, contact Captains Bigby and Medviev. I’ll take the call in my quarters.” He made to leave, but Roker stopped him.

  “Sir, I believe I speak for the crew when I say that you can take that call here on the bridge.”

  He met her eye and saw resolve. He nodded. “I’ll take the call on the bridge, then.”

  Bigby’s face appeared on screen first. Mao was alarmed to see how much he’d changed in just the day since he’d seen him. Bigby’s eyes shone with excitement that spread throughout his features. The muscles in his jaw and cheeks were taut with energy that sparkled in his smile. “Figured I’d be hearing from you.”

  Medviev joined the call a moment later. “This is an awkward time to be talking,” she said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Mao studied the background of Medviev’s screen. “You aren’t on your bridge?”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t sure what kind of call this would be.”

  “Do you trust your crew?”

  “Of course,” she said. “But I won’t jeopardize their future without first knowing why and assessing the risks for myself.” Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t look to be on your bridge either, Captain Bigby.”

  The once again youthful captain smiled. “I’m not. It’s a long story.”

  “One that we don’t have time for right now,” Mao interjected. “Things are moving very fast, and if we don’t act immediately, we will lose our chance to act at all.”

  Medviev snickered. “Then don’t waste any time being vague, Mao. Tell me what it is you want.”

  He detailed his plan as quickly as he could without leaving anything out. He watched the emotions chase each other across Medviev’s face. Bigby’s only shone the one.