The Black Hole (The Deep Black Book 5), page 1
The Black Hole
The Deep Black, Book 5
James David Victor
Fairfield Publishing
Copyright © 2019 Fairfield Publishing
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Thank You
1
The cell walls were slick with what must have been some sort of fungus. The dark, moist room was a breeding ground for it. The air filtration system sucked water out of the air and piped it to a recycling station in the sub-basement, but it didn’t do much if the pipe was cracked and poured the stale air into Ayala’s cell, like a giant holding her in cupped hands and breathing on her.
She’d been in this particular dump for at least a week now. She had been moved so often that it was getting hard to keep track. Though she could say with all certainty that this was among the worst of her prisons.
The giant’s breath had started to clog her lungs and grow thick in her throat. Her chest rattled, and her breath came out as a wheeze. Green slime dripped from a crack in the ceiling and ran down the walls, which were solid concrete—no windows. Not that there was anything for her to look at. Her hood had slipped as the guards escorted her from the ship. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed her new home. A derelict mining station. A creature of jagged metal, eaten through by salt, gnawed on by time and neglect.
She felt a kinship with it.
They were out in the Deep Black. They were moving her further from Central. A little further from home with each transfer.
The small window on the bottom of her cell door slid open. A metal tray with slop that looked too similar to the slime running down the wall skidded across the floor, coming to an eventual stop when it hit her ankle.
The skin bruised in seconds. She cursed herself, her fragile body, weakened by months of dark holes and slop for food—when she was fed at all—and torture. Hot blades raked across her skin. Hours of questioning and mind games. The solitude.
“Eat,” a voice yelled from the other side of the door. The guards were compassionate in the beginning, when they still had some respect for her, when they knew who she was. They’d been rotated out so many times, the newcomers wouldn’t know her at a glance anymore.
“Fast,” the voice added. “You’ve got a visitor.”
Ayala’s heart thumped against her ribs, which were painfully obvious through her skin. She reached for her face, running the tips of her fingers over the scars that sealed her left eye shut. A reminder of the last time she had a visitor.
She imagined a bed of fresh greens and charcoal-roasted chicken with a pineapple glaze. It was summer in her mind. She sat beside a lake, waves gently lapping against the shore. A dog chased ducks away from their blanket, which was covered in the remnants of their picnic. Her companion’s golden hair falling over her shoulders, the failing sunlight glistening in her eyes. She didn’t have a name. Ayala didn’t want to give her one. She didn’t want the woman to become too real. Real things could be taken away, broken, killed.
Ayala’s stomach clenched. She shoveled the food down, hoping to swallow it before the taste hit her. She banged on the door as hard as her starved muscles allowed. The panel at the bottom of the door slid open, and the guard took her tray.
“Step back,” the guard said.
Her knees screamed. Her ankles, her toes, her hips. Every joint struggled against her own insignificant weight. She was no threat to the people keeping her here. Not physically. They knew that. The orders, the restraints—they weren’t intended to shackle her physically.
The door creaked open when she pressed herself against the back wall. Two guards entered. One kept his rifle trained on her as the other bound her wrists behind her back. Fresh waves of fire shot up arms.
Even the dim lights in the corridor outside her cell were enough to burn her eyes. She squeezed them shut and waited for the tears to wash away the pain. A rifle muzzle stabbed into her back, urging her forward.
She shambled forward like the living dead. They traveled fifty meters at most. By the time the guards sat her down in a carbon copy of her cell, save for the metal table in the center of the room, she was struggling for breath.
They shackled her to a ring mounted in the center of the table. The door sounded like the death knell of a large land mammal as it slowly closed.
The lights flickered overhead, something Shay now understood to be deliberate rather than a defect. It put her off balance, though balance was not something she had anymore, and not just as a result of her myopic vision and weak limbs.
Everything was tilted—being sucked toward a darkness so black that vision, whether with one eye or two, could not detect it. She had found it hard to stand long before her current imprisonment, back even before Parallax, but only now did her legs actually begin to give out.
Boots. The rhythmic tapping of boot heels on the march. She was in the academy suddenly. Days of naïve idealism, if there was any other kind, when she thought she had the power and the right to actuate change, to fight for something so grand that only a war could birth it.
Some still lived in those days.
The door took an eternity to open. An endless death song sounded in the cell and forced its way into Ayala’s ears.
Colonel Maria Tirseer sat across from Ayala. Even in this level of hell, she was buttoned up, dictated by regulation and adherence so strict it bordered on reverence. She worshipped at the feet of protocol and plausible deniability, the duality of her militaristic religion.
“Shay,” she said, taking pleasure in the use of the familiar. “I hope you’re well.”
Her expression gave nothing away, but Ayala knew her well enough to notice the subtle changes in her voice. A tremble in the otherwise steady timbre. A slight elevation in pitch. She enjoyed this.
Ayala had witnessed Tirseer interrogate many people throughout her long career. It was a business interaction. She needed something that her prisoner had. She found a way to trade for it or extract it. Then the interaction was done. This, Tirseer was relishing.
“Quite,” Ayala answered with a smile and nod. “The accommodations are even better than the previous. You really shouldn’t put yourself out.”
The nearly imperceptible twitch at the corner of Tirseer’s mouth told Ayala that she had irritated the colonel. That would sustain her more than her daily tray of slop.
“Anything for you,” Tirseer said. “An officer of your standing deserves nothing but the best. Well, former standing.”
Like a needle under Ayala’s fingernail.
Tirseer produced a tablet from the leather bag at her feet. She entered her authorization code, pressed her thumb to the screen, and the mini-computer came to life.
An ache flared in Ayala’s gut. Those small things about her former life cut more flesh from her bones than anything else. Those little amenities she took for granted, that had meant nothing in the moment, meant everything to her now. Being able to access the net, connect to everything through the United System servers from anywhere in the galaxy. Information at her fingertips.
She knew nothing now. Her location. The status of the war. Whether the war even waged still. Her place in any of it.
Tirseer soaked in Ayala’s despair, seeping from the former admiral like waste from a cracked sewer pipe. She scrolled through the tab with feigned leisure…until even Tirseer’s stone expression showed the slightest sign of microfractures.
She laid the tab flat and spun it around for Ayala to see. Ayala, for all her exhaustion and waning will, refused to look at it. She was mostly a creature of spite now. No honor, no lofty goal to fight for other than making Tirseer eat dirt.
“Though I appreciate the time out of my cell,” Ayala said, “I think I’d rather watch the slime roll down my wall than look at anything you have to show me.”
Tirseer nudged the tab closer.
The muscles in Ayala’s neck burned. They tired of holding her head so high.
“We’ve discussed much during my visits,” Tirseer said. “I’ve learned all I need to about the Navy’s internal politics and operations, ship deployments, the status of fringe groups. I’m not here to discuss those. There’s something else I want to talk about.” The weight in her voice pulled Ayala’s chin down.
The image on the tab was a cold knife in Ayala’s gut.
“I want to talk about the Void.”
2
Fair winds and following seas.
The words were carved into the wall above his door, so they were the last thing he saw before stepping out of his cabin and into his ship. The last thing he read before putting on the mantle of captain.
A reminder.
The door slid open and the charged air of the corridor hit him in the face. His quarters, all the crew’s quarters, were on the bottom deck along with engineering. The charge made his head swim for a second. He marched through the daze, undeterred. It had been almost debilitating when he first acquired the ship. The first month was spent doubled over with nausea. He nearly sold the ship or gutted it and rearranged the layout, but his engineer assured him there would be no long-term health effects.
Speaking of…
“Mornin’, Captain.” Alenna Byrne clapped Hepzah on the back as she passed. She had to squeeze between him and the wall to fit through the narrow corridor.
Hep would have pulled away if there was space. He didn’t welcome the touch, but that was no fault of Byrne’s. He shirked away from most physical contact. She had no such compulsion. Quite the opposite.
“Engine’s running like a lubed-up dream,” she said. “Give ya the full report at morning brief.”
Byrne was the first crewmember Hep had recruited after acquiring the Fair Wind. For months, he was the only member of the crew, pacing its empty halls by himself, quietly contemplating next steps, charting his course.
He now thought fondly of those times.
He shook his head, trying to knock those thoughts aside. He didn’t dislike the bustle of the Fair Wind. After so many long months of gathering his crew and setting his ship to be as close as possible to the vision he held in his mind, it felt like home. Like the home he never had. The home he wished all the dirty pirate ships he bounced to and from would have been. But he did sometimes miss the solitude afforded by being a deckhand.
He didn’t want to feel ungrateful. He had it. Everything he wanted. He closed his eyes and saw the words in his mind.
Fair winds and following seas.
The rest of the crew would soon emerge from their bunks. Hep walked as briskly as he could without breaking into a run down the corridor to the lift.
The Fair Wind was a small clipper. Fast and maneuverable, it was the perfect type of vessel for traders and transporters. Hep knew he wanted a ship that would sell itself. He wasn’t a people person, the kind of smooth talker that could convince a potential client to hire him if they had any reservation at all. That was…well, not him.
When a client said, “There’s a hundred traders bidding for this job. Why would I hire you over any of them?” Hep wanted to point to his ship as answer.
It would navigate safely and quickly though asteroid fields, mine fields, junk fields, and warzones without risking the cargo. And it would be delivered on time. Always on time.
He didn’t want a warship.
Still, he wasn’t naïve. He knew that with the breakout of the war, he’d need the ability to defend himself. The Fair Wind had defensive and offensive capabilities—enough to survive an engagement with the Navy or the Byers or pirates. Survival was the objective. Not destruction.
The lift was cramped and empty, which he welcomed. It felt comforting. It jumped up to the only other level of the small ship, and then shifted to the slide. It clipped along fast enough that Hep felt his guts pressed against his back. In all, it was a short trip from his cabin to the command center of the ship.
The lift door opened directly onto the bridge—a small command center with enough space for only those needed to run the ship, five people at most.
Byrne was already at her post running diagnostics on the ship, as Hep knew she would be. As chief engineer, she was thorough and wholly dedicated. “Morning, Cap’. Veer off for a trip to the head on your way? I’m half done with my morning checks already.” As a person, she was brusque and sometimes offensive. But her engineering skills outweighed any character flaws.
Hep wasn’t surprised to see Byrne at her station. She seemed to take pleasure in being the first to report for duty. She at least enjoyed reporting before Hep. It was the other officer on deck that surprised him: his first officer.
“Sigurd. You’re here early.”
Sig didn’t look up from the local scanners. “Something I wanted to check on.” It came out mostly as a grunt with a little voice underneath.
When Sig did not elaborate, Hep prompted some explanation. “Care to expand a little?”
Sig scratched his chin, head still down, looking like he hoped that if he stared at the map hard enough, he could transport himself to one of the little blips. “Faint radio signature. Akari picked it up last night. Said it was cutting in and out.”
“Anything to worry over?”
Using his thumb and forefinger like a pincer, Hep zoomed in on the location of the signature. “The signature cut out completely an hour ago. Last came from near this location. No SOS. No personal message. Probably just a satellite on the fritz, sending out the signal that it needs repair.”
Hep raised the list of known operators in the sector. They were sailing through disputed territory, though the Byers Clan would likely take it soon enough. They had already tipped the scales in their favor, but independent operators like Hep still worked the area. They posted satellites to boost their comm signals. One of the most common contracts the Fair Wind picked up was collecting derelict satellites for scrap merchants.
“The Cannery Crew, maybe?” Hep said, scanning the list.
Sig shook his head. “They bugged out a couple days ago. After Byers split that Navy cruiser in two. They saw the winds change, and they’re not well-liked by the Byers.”
Hep shrugged. “Do your best to identify it, but don’t waste too much time doing it.”
Sig nodded but didn’t answer verbally.
“I’ll help him with it,” Akari said as she entered the bridge. Akari Morris seemed both the most qualified to be on the ship and the most out of place. She came from a family of sailors. Her father was an officer in the United Navy, and her mother had been a captain in the fleet of a small planet along the edges of the Deep Black before they were co-opted. Akari was more at home on a ship than she was on any planet, but her Navy upbringing sometimes clashed with her current setting.
“Rendezvous in the comm lab after the briefing,” Akari said to Sig.
“Was hoping to eat breakfast first.”
Akari didn’t respond, but Sig knew what she was thinking. Mission critical operations take priority over all personal matters, including eating. It wasn’t officially Navy protocol, just one of those sayings that got drilled into you during your first tour.
“But I guess I could eat in the comm lab.” He looked away from Akari, not wanting to see her cringe at the thought of crumbs falling on her console.
Hep browsed through the agenda that Alenna had prepared. “Anything else?”
Items turned red and then faded away as Alenna addressed them. Billing completed for the previous cycle. New work orders issued. Threat assessment for the sector.
“Byers will push the Navy out by the end of this billing cycle.” She raised her calendar on the monitor. The final day of the cycle was highlighted in yellow. Two weeks away. “Navy ship movements show that they’re well aware how screwed they are. They’re pulling out without much fuss. I don’t anticipate hostility on their way out.”
Hep nodded. “Then we should follow suit. Wrap up any loose ends then plot our course for the next cycle. Work up an updated job roster.”
“On it, Cap’,” Alenna said with an exaggerated salute.
The crew split, each taking to their tasks.
Hep sat in his captain’s chair in the center of the bridge. It still felt odd to him, the leather against the skin of his forearms, the controls at his fingertips. The authority.
The rest of the morning passed routinely. They collected two satellites, worked up a work plan for their final days in the sector, and plotted their next steps after pulling out. Quiet. Easy. Two things Hep had also failed to grow used to. He hated admitting it to himself after everything, but he was growing tired of it—the quiet. He couldn’t remember wanting anything other than a normal life since he was left alone on the street. He finally had it. And it was boring.
