The Phoenix Darkness

by Richard L. Sanders

  “What is it; can we tell?” asked Summers. “Display it, if possible.”

  “I can’t tell, but I suspect it’s an isotome missile,” said Nimoux.

  “My suspicion as well,” said Summers. With a blink, a 3D model of the image appeared on the display; Nimoux adjusted the magnification so they could get a good look at it. It did indeed appear to be a small payload-carrying missile.

  “The Duchess has slowed to dock with the object,” announced Nimoux.

  “If we clear for action and arm weapons, do we have time to target and destroy it before they can bring it aboard?” asked Summers.

  “Negative,” said Mr. Roy from the defense post. “We don’t have enough time.” Summers wondered momentarily if she should have dismissed Mr. Roy beforehand and simply managed the defense post herself, no doubt she was more practiced with it, having trained as a defense officer before entering command.

  “He’s right,” Nimoux added, unknowingly coming to Mr. Roy’s rescue. “The Duchess has already managed to dock with the object. They’re bringing it aboard.”

  Summers felt a rush of adrenaline. She couldn’t allow them to have that weapon, or any weapons. And if the entire inventory of the galaxy’s isotome weapons were indeed aboard that starship, maybe she should take advantage of the opportunity before her and eliminate it, and them, for once and all.

  “Opinion, Mr. Nimoux?” she said, trusting his judgment the most of anyone present. “Should we clear for action and destroy the Duchess? We could minimize the risk of a boarding operation…that it could go wrong or the Duchess could escape.”

  Before Nimoux could speak, however, Pellew interrupted loudly from her left side. “Now hold on just a minute there, itchy trigger finger,” he said. His failure to respect protocol grated against her nerves, but she decided trying to correct him was a waste of her time. “I already told you my boys and I can take that ship easily, with minimal risk,” he said.

  “And I appreciate your insight,” said Summers, hiding her annoyance. “But I was asking Captain Nimoux for his.”

  “I actually agree with Mister Pellew on this one,” said Nimoux. “If I recall, one of our objectives was to visually account for the isotome weapons as we destroy them. Sending a boarding party is the only way to achieve that. And, from what I can tell, the Captain’s judgment about the ship is correct; it likely has a crew of fewer than twenty and probably no professional soldiers. It should be easily taken, once disabled.”

  “There, see, now you’re not so bad after all,” said Pellew, giving Nimoux an approving nod. “And to think I’ve been keeping these two extra soldiers around just because I don’t trust you…”

  So that was why they were always with him, thought Summers. Out of fear of Nimoux; ridiculous! True, Nimoux had probably been a very lethal member of Special Forces back before his Intel Wing career began, but that didn’t make him a threat to the ship, or to Captain Pellew personally.

  “Uh, no offense, Captain,” said Pellew.

  “None…taken. I suppose.”

  “Let’s not waste another moment, then,” said Summers, chomping at the bit to rid the galaxy of these isotome weapons, a service which felt long overdue.

  “The Duchess has finished bringing the isotome missile aboard and is again on the move, apparently clearing for a jump to alteredspace.”

  “That’s our cue,” said Summers. “Clear for action! Mr. Roy, charge our energy weapon and disable the Duchess’s engines and propulsion. I want them dead in space. If they have any weapons, eliminate those too.”

  “Aye, sir. Disengaging stealth.”

  “You can use the guns too, but no missiles; I don’t want the ship destroyed.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Sound General Quarters. And Pellew, you’d better get yourself and your men below.”

  “On it. Remember, deck four hatch,” he said as the elevator door closed and he disappeared below.

  ***

  “There is a ship off our starboard stern!” yelled Jasmine from her console.

  Zander felt his heart jump to his throat. What? Who could have known he’d stashed the last isotome weapon here? Was it the Enclave? Had Anton followed them?

  “Imperial markings,” said Jasmine. “It’s an attack frigate! Phantom class!”

  “Intel Wing…” said Rolland, looking up at Zander. They were all looking at him, shocked, terrified, and desperate for answers. His brain spun circles, trying to give them some.

  “Shields to maximum,” he ordered.

  “Shields have been raised,” said Rolland.

  “They have locked onto us!” said Jasmine, practically yelling. The distress in her voice was unsettling to the rest of the crew. All who were on the Bridge were looking to her, and then to Zander, and back, their faces like ghosts.

  The lights blinked and it seemed they’d lost power, only to have it return a moment later.

  “We’ve been hit by their energy weapon. Shields at thirty-five percent!”

  Dear God, that was only one hit, thought Zander. He felt the almost uncontrollable urge to urinate, but he knew he had to remain strong in front of his crew or all hell would break loose.

  “All power to shields! Take it from life support if you have to,” he barked. “Helm, accelerate to full, get us the hell away from them.”

  “Trying to! But they’re gaining on us, Captain!”

  “Shields full strength aft! Don’t waste any shield power on our bow,” he said, mind still spinning.

  “Full aft!”

  The light blinked again, and power took longer to come back online.

  “That’s the end of our shields,” said Jasmine. She looked up at Zander with fire in her eyes, like this surprise encounter was all his fault.

  “Goddamn Empire…” he muttered. Honestly, where did they come from? Weren’t they too busy with their idiotic civil war to waste time following around the likes of him? Apparently not…

  “Jump, dammit! Jump!” he yelled.

  “I’m trying,” said Jasmine. “But I can’t. The alteredspace drive can’t engage for twenty more seconds!”

  “We’re not going to last twenty more seconds, you bloody woman!” he yelled.

  The lights flickered and several systems went down. “We’ve lost primary and secondary power to all flight systems,” said Rolland, checking the damage. “The stern armor is gone, minor damage to life support. We could lose gravity any second.”

  “Jump! Jump!” he cried, knowing it was hopeless.

  “Our flight systems are offline, our alteredspace drive is destroyed…” said Jasmine.

  “We cannot jump, sir,” said Rolland.

  “Return fire!” snapped Zander. If he were going down, he’d at least go down with a fight.

  “It’s a trap!” said Jasmine, she stood up and pointed at Zander. “You! You led us into a trap!”

  “Oh, come off it, woman!” he said. Then, to Rolland. “What’s wrong with you, man? Return fire!”

  “I can’t, sir! The guns are gone!”

  “You brought us here!” said Jasmine, moving closer to him, a look of murder in her eyes. “You knew they’d be here! You led us into a trap!”

  Zander felt his fingers curl around his handgun. “Now this is no time for us to be arguing; we’re about to be boarded,” he said. But he was ignored.

  “Yeah, she’s right!” said another of the crewmen. Two other added their voices, following Jasmine’s lead. “You brought us here. Before and then back!”

  “Yeah! What kind of game are you playing us for, Zander? You’d cheat our buyer and now you’d cheat us too!”

  “He’s made some kind of deal with the Empire, he has!”

  “Silence, the lot of you!” he yelled. “I’ll deal with you mutinous dogs later, but for now we have a ship to defend!”

  “You’re the traitor!” said Jasmine, now only feet away from him. Her hands curled around the blade of her knife. The other crewmen were coming closer as well, so
me of them had guns and seemed willing to use them to back her up.

  “I’ll hear no talk of that!” said Rolland, he drew his gun and pointed it at Jasmine. “I’ll light up the next man who calls our captain a traitor!”

  “Don’t you fools see we’re about to get boarded?!?” Zander cried in vain.

  Jasmine looked at his face and then spat in his eye. “Goddamn you, Zander. You’ve murdered us all!”

  ***

  “The Duchess is disabled, Commander,” said Mr. Roy.

  “They didn’t put up much of a fight, did they?” mused Summers, wondering why they hadn’t so much as fired a shot. Had they not made such a diligent effort with their shields, although futile, she would almost have suspected they’d been ignorant they were under attack. “Move us into position to dock.”

  “Moving to position now,” said Sarah. “Slowing to five MCs per second and rolling twenty degrees.” She brought the Nighthawk so close to the stalled Duchess that Summers actually gripped her armrests with white knuckles out of momentary concern the two vessels would collide. But they didn’t. True to her reputation, Sarah was an expert. And she knew how to handle the Nighthawk better than likely anyone in the galaxy. “Now decelerating…Aaand we’re in position, hatches aligned. We’re attached.”

  “Very good, Lieutenant,” said Summers. She then tapped her line to broadcast on all decks so Pellew and his men could hear her on deck four. “You’re all clear, Captain. Don’t forget to take the charges to detonate those weapons.”

  “We’ve got them here.”

  “And remember to count those missiles!”

  ***

  Nimoux waited at the Ops station along with the rest of the Bridge crew, waiting for results to come back regarding the boarding operation. Like the others, he profoundly hoped these isotome weapons Summers had told him about, which allegedly could darken stars and annihilate entire star systems, would be found and destroyed. But that hope wasn’t the only thought occupying his mind.

  Since he’d been taken from the brig and raised to the position of Acting XO for the Nighthawk, a position he felt honored to keep until he could reclaim command of his own ship the Desert Eagle, he’d been treated with a great deal of respect from the Nighthawk’s crew, despite being their pursuer not so long ago and having worked against them. Most of the crew had been admirably capable of understanding he’d been a victim of bad information during that endeavor, and his efforts against the Nighthawk then hadn’t been personal. Additionally, it seemed Commander Presley’s implicit faith in him made for a solid reference of character among the others, who evidently had little trouble adjusting to his presence and even taking his commands. It probably didn’t hurt that his name carried a certain reputation among Imperial circles but still, the Nighthawk crew’s fast acceptance of him had been humbling and, for the most part, universally true with one noteworthy exception.

  Captain Jason Pellew. A man whose respect for protocol and the rules of proper officer conduct, along with his understanding of the rules of polite society, seemed to be rather thin at best. No matter, Nimoux had worked with all types before, and he certainly wasn’t so vain that he needed to be liked by everyone. A little hostility might even be healthy, from time to time, to remind oneself of one’s imperfections, which was always useful in helping to find one’s center.

  A quest Nimoux felt ever engaged upon the path of trying to reach, even if, as he greatly suspected, the center could never truly be obtained. The quest for it was a kind of peaceful, healthy exercise in its own right. And without his meditation and his yearning to remain as close to center as possible, Nimoux did not understand how he could live with the guilt which still haunted him for his own crimes, specifically for his actions on the Altair mission. Believing the end goal justified the tragic means, he’d fired his pistol nine times, deliberately killing three of his own officers. He hadn’t wanted to make that choice, and never, not for an instant, felt any pleasure, or even a semblance of peace, in his decision. He’d merely been caught between blowing his cover and ruining the mission or else killing good people, friends, who he’d known hadn’t deserved it. Worst of it all, he’d never been punished for his actions. Never had to seek peace through some kind of penitence. No, instead of punishment, they’d given him a damn medal and allowed him to stand in a place of honor at the officers’ funeral. Standing there and pretending, before the deceased’s families, he’d done all he could to save them rather than telling the black truth that he’d in fact been the one to put them there. Even worse, he couldn’t even remember their faces. It was a pain he carried, a pain he accepted he would always carry. And that pain, ever since, had helped form a better honed, larger moral compass by which to conduct himself. To see it any other way would have crushed him into an oblivion of depression and, more than likely, suicide.

  Which was why Captain Pellew was such an enigma to Nimoux. He’d made certain to read up on the Nighthawk’s current staff, to update his knowledge about them, almost as soon as he’d accepted the uniform and put on the symbol of XO. In his quick study of the crew, Pellew had proved the most interesting subject. Not because he was abrasive and rude to Nimoux ever since Nimoux had been aboard the ship and remained so, that didn’t truly bother Nimoux. Instead it was the unclear loyalties under which Pellew seemed to conduct himself. Sometimes for the greater benefit, true enough, like when he’d helped Calvin regain command of his starship before he could be dragged off to some Intel Wing black site to rot uselessly. The irony that Calvin had been directly fighting against Summers, who now sat the command chair, was far from lost on Nimoux.

  But it wasn’t just Pellew’s loyalty to people and causes that seemed fluid and unpredictable to Nimoux, it was also the man’s fluidic loyalty to morality itself. Whether Pellew had some kind of oddly specific code by which he lived, if he was an ends-justified-the-means type of man, or if he held to some kind of nihilistic chaos, whereby nothing truly mattered but what was best for himself, Nimoux honestly could not say. And that random element, that unpredictable variable which had been a constant part of his behavior, was something very alarming to Nimoux and caused him to be extremely distrustful of the Special Forces captain.

  Pellew was a man who had fought for Calvin, for reasons which had never been fully explored and yet, upon encountering an Alliance ship in the DMZ and needing to take it, he’d instantly thought to evacuate her crew to die in space and shown not the slightest remorse for such an action. In fact, by Summers’ own reports, he’d defended his choice as not only necessary, given the circumstances, but actually ideal. It was an unhealthy mind, one far from center, that was able to have such callous disregard for life, especially human life, and yet Pellew remained, ostensibly an ally. Always working, however dark his means, on the side of Calvin’s effort to uncover the conspiracy which had taken root inside the Empire, but why? Nimoux could think of no reliable motive for Pellew. And so, to him, Pellew was a wild card, an element of chance, not something to be depended upon.

  “Commander Presley,” said Nimoux at last, deciding to break the silence.

  “Yes, Captain?”

  Currently there were no soldiers awkwardly stationed on the Bridge, they were all with Pellew for the boarding operation, so Nimoux knew this might be his only opportunity to speak freely on the subject. “Might I trouble you with a question?”

  “By all means, Captain.”

  “It’s about Captain Pellew,” said Nimoux.

  “What about him? If it’s about his rude behavior toward you, I intend to speak with him about that. He’s a representative of the command staff of this ship and ought to conduct himself…”

  “No, it isn’t that,” said Nimoux, truthfully. He’d long accepted the fact of his imperfection and, more to the point, the reality that while some would inevitably gravitate toward him and respect him, others, perhaps just as many, would resent and criticize him for equally the same reason. People were different, and differences brewed distrust and, mor
e often than ought to be, distrust and fear.

  “In that case, I’m all ears.” Summers looked intrigued and, for a moment, Nimoux almost regretted bringing it up. Surely the Commander had far too many important things to concentrate upon at the moment and now was hardly the ideal time to distract her with some new concern, particularly one which was essentially unfounded. But, because he’d gone this far, and the Commander’s unusually attractive face seemed so inquisitive, Nimoux continued.

  “I find myself too curious not to ask,” he said. “And forgive me if this is an inappropriate question, but…how much do you trust Captain Pellew?”

  Summers’ eyes widened and then she seemed to really give the inquiry serious thought. It was another fifteen seconds before she even attempted a reply. “Well,” she said, “I suppose it’s like this. I find Mr. Pellew, as a man, to be unlikable. No, it’s worse than that. I find him to be contemptable. But as an officer in performance of his duties, protocols and niceties aside, he has proven himself to be both a capable soldier and an efficient ally.” She looked satisfied with her response, but Nimoux found it lacking.

  “With respect, Commander, I don’t believe you answered my question.”

  Summers blinked and Nimoux could tell she wanted to protest, to claim she had answered his question, but at the same time realized she, in fact, had not. “Why don’t I answer your question with a question first?” she said.

  “Ask away, Commander.”

  “Why are you asking me this? Has Pellew done something, or said something, which has given you cause to doubt his loyalty? Because if so, that is something I need to know about right away.”

  “No, Commander, nothing concrete. More of an…intuition. I find myself having a difficult time trusting the man and wondered what caused you to trust him, if in fact you do.”

  “I don’t know how or why I trust him,” said Summers, seeming surprised by her own admission. “We sort of inherited Pellew as Special Forces commander when Major Jenkins was killed in action. Since then, Pellew has done the job, mostly, I suppose, because Calvin retained his services. And, although Calvin has more than once taken issue with Pellew’s methods, there has yet to be a time when the man hasn’t gotten the job done we needed.”