The Phoenix Darkness

by Richard L. Sanders

  “Attention all military personnel, this is Captain Jason Pellew, commander of Special Forces. Now hear this. Now hear this. Kilo Protocol is active. I repeat, Kilo Protocol is active! This is not a drill!” Pellew let go of the intercom and looked back up at Nimoux, who he expected to see standing against the far wall with his hands held high. But instead, the fool was seated at the Ops console, rapidly entering commands.

  What on earth does he think he’s doing? wondered Pellew, who stood up to see just what was going on. He couldn’t quite tell what the former Special Forces captain was up to, but he knew he was up to no good.

  “Oh, for God’s sake…” he mumbled, unable to believe the ridiculous amount of resistance he’d received on the Bridge, and was still apparently receiving, in the form of whatever the hell this was…

  Pellew turned the firearm away from Summers’ head briefly and then aimed it at Nimoux.

  ***

  Almost there. Almost there Almost there. Nimoux could hear Pellew was done with his broadcast but, with any luck, he’d have just a few more seconds to finish disabling all the safety protocols. Just a few more clicks…

  There was a loud report, but Nimoux was barely able to make sense of it. He felt a searing pain rip through his back and stomach, and for a moment was paralyzed with agony. But he blinked away the blackness covering his eyes and continued to type, knowing he had just another few keystrokes to press. Then it could all be over.

  He felt lightheaded as he tried to continue to work, but his ability to focus started to slip. His vision became blurry and the pain grew from agonizing to excruciating. It was even hard to breathe. Each breath was short and fast and full of searing pain.

  He tried to finish his task. Knew he had to finish his task. Struggled; couldn’t remember his task…Despite himself, he slumped to the ground, pressing his hands instinctively over the large, gaping hole in his stomach where the bullet had exited. He tried to control the bleeding and felt the world seem to spin. Everything blinking in and out, black and white. Nothing made sense anymore…

  ***

  Summers screamed as she heard the gunshot and then, through unbelieving eyes, she watched as Nimoux slumped over to the side, collapsing to the ground. Still alive, but struggling, fading as the blood poured out of his back and stomach.

  This is all my fault, thought Summers. And despite herself she felt tears form in her eyes. Tears of mourning for Nimoux, worried he might die, but also tears of wrath and vitriol for Pellew, to whom she’d given far too long a leash. Now his murderous, psychotic ways had gone much too far, and because of it there was a live isotome weapon on her ship, a ship she no longer controlled, and Nimoux, the hero of the Empire, lay bleeding on the Bridge floor, probably dying.

  “God damn you, Jason Pellew,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  He shoved her forward, tossing her near the fallen, bleeding Nimoux. Her head struck the Ops console on her way down, nearly knocking her unconscious. “Don’t blame me, bitch,” said Pellew. “I didn’t want to do that. I tried for the peaceful option. I tried it and tried it. But you and your boyfriend had to be too noble to see reason. Well, sometimes there’s a fine line between nobility and stupidity.” He looked down at her in disgrace and then walked away, starting to send other orders through the intercom, many of which Summers didn’t understand, some of which she did. But even those she tuned out, and all she could do was stare up at Pellew…stare through wet, blurry eyes and wonder just when he’d become the monster before her. Or had he been this monster all along?

  When his eyes met hers again and saw her wounded expression, so full of loathing, it must have made him uncomfortable, because he snapped at her. “Tend to him,” he barked at her, pointing to Nimoux. “Before he bleeds out.”

  She wanted nothing more than to get her hands on one of the stunners by the flight controls and then bash Pellew over the head with it using all of her might, like he’d done to poor Mr. Roy. For the mere provocation of him trying to stand in between Pellew and Summers; that was all. The crime of trying to protect his CO from a madman. And now he was unconscious. For all Summers could tell, Mr. Roy might be dead too.

  She sniffled, crawled to Nimoux, and began to do all she could to treat his wound. The bullet had cut through him cleanly; it wasn’t trapped in his body, at least. But, unfortunately, that left him with wounds which were bleeding copiously. Nimoux had lost consciousness, gripping his exit wound firmly, slowing its bleeding. So Summers made it her first priority to stop the bleeding from the entrance wound. Then she would tend to the exit wound as best she could.

  As she did, Pellew made adjustments to the ops console, no doubt undoing whatever plan Nimoux had been trying to execute, and then Pellew summoned soldiers and crew to the Bridge to replace the wounded White Shift. Sarah seemed to be all right, but she sat in terror, her back against the wall, staring at Pellew with a look of absolute petrification on her face.

  “Stop looking at me,” Pellew yelled at her. But she was clearly too afraid to understand, so he turned away. “What a mess, what a mess.”

  The elevator opened soon after and several people filed in. It was the replacement crew, who looked like ghosts once they saw the state of the Bridge. They were escorted by two more of Pellew’s soldiers and clearly none of these new arrivals, no matter how horrified, wanted to be heroes and risk receiving a dish of the same. So they took their stations dutifully and pretended as though nothing was wrong.

  Pellew then gave orders to his soldiers. “Patch that one up then take him and her to the corner and lock them up.” Summers couldn’t see Pellew, but she knew he was talking about her and Nimoux. “Then one of you take that one and lock her in her quarters. I don’t expect much of a fight from her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you need me, I’ll be in the CO’s office. I have to make a call.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “If anyone resists, or if any of these crewmen try to be heroes, show them what happens to heroes.”

  “With prejudice, sir.”

  ***

  Shen awoke to find himself on the floor of the observation deck. The lights were still out, and the view out the window was that of stars and little else, yet his eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he could see the features of the room, the few that there were.

  His rubbed his head, which throbbed with a slight pain and sat up, wondering just how long he’d been out.

  At first, he didn’t remember how he’d gotten here, but then his memory slowly returned. He recalled the ringing in his ear, the loud, painful noises accompanied by an awful hiss, and that somehow those sensations had gone away when he’d wandered here into the solitary darkness.

  He thought back on his sleep and realized, with some measure of relief, it had been the first dreamless sleep he’d had in a great long time. More importantly, it’d been the first time he hadn’t been taken into some nightmare where Tristan was there, trying to bring him closer, to make him join something. Or accept something, a thing which was always unclear and out of reach. And in each of those dreams Shen resisted the call, feeling at first repulsed by it, whatever it was, and later, as the dreams kept coming, the sense of repulsion had faded, but Shen continued to resist nonetheless out of sheer rebelliousness.

  Now, though, he'd slept his first good sleep in what must have been weeks. And he’d done so here, of all places, on the cold metal floor of the observation deck, with no one around.

  He got to his feet and stared out the window once more. Instead of the empty void that had been here, there were twinkling stars. Some bright and near and others barely a white dot, countless light years away.

  “We’ve stopped somewhere,” he realized. And he scratched his head, trying to remember what the discussion had been on the Bridge before his episode. If he remembered it, he’d no doubt have a guess as to where they were.

  But he did not remember. His circumstances of leaving the Bridge and winding up here seemed like a haze.
And so he let it go, accepting it was all right for him to be here instead of at the Ops post, at least at present, and that whatever was happening was happening, for better or worse.

  He looked to the stars with a sense of childlike wonder, seeing in them an incandescent beauty he realized now he only too rarely took the time to appreciate. Stars, massive nuclear powerhouses that they were, lived finite lives just as he did, just as everything did. Yet of what they had they freely gave, pouring out warmth and light all around them. The largest stars, ones able to create the heavy elements inside their might furnaces, were the fathers of all life, Shen knew. And for each element-rich world which existed, where life had eventually sprang to be, there had before it been a massive star that had built all the ingredients and then, in an epic explosion of martyrdom, spread them out as debris, which slowly coalesced in time to form the planets and all the building blocks needed to create all that was complex.

  Even the stars themselves have their purpose, he realized. Then he looked down at himself, at his clumsy, overly-strong hands, and his part-human, part-Remorii body, which seemed to feel no pain, and Shen wondered if something as unnatural as him had some purpose too. Like the stars that burned and gave and died, creating something new in the wake of their deaths, or if he was the opposite of all things beautiful in nature, a perversion of it, a synthetic combination of natures which had been hybridized into something foul and dangerous.

  There was no answer to that question. Or, at least for now, there seemed to be none.

  He stared back into the stars once more and thought about Sarah. His mixed feelings for her remained strong. Their friendship, which now felt more like a memory than a reality, had been his everything for so long. And the thought of being near her each day, serving together, playing cards together, and simply being around each other, that had been the rush of anticipation which had made it so easy to get out of bed and dress himself each day. And yet, Shen, the romantic who pined for her affection, who wanted nothing more than to have and to hold her, seemed like he had died on Remus Nine. And Shen wondered if that part of him still remained somewhere, buried deep down inside, or if he had evolved into this new thing, incapable of love and romance, unable to feel those kind of profound affections a man often felt for a woman, or a man for a man, a woman for a woman, and so on.

  “It’s just the dopamine,” he muttered, almost silently. Thinking of how love itself was essentially little more than a chemical process happening in a person’s brain. “Rushes of dopamine, and the attraction to novelty…it’s a wonder any relationships manage to work beyond a year or two…”

  Still, bleak outlook aside, he still did feel something for Sarah, something which seemed warm and almost pleasant, although he could not describe what it was. Perhaps she could help him understand it, he wondered. Or perhaps, better still, he should continue to keep his distance from her, allow her to move on and have a life, to find genuine love, rather than be drawn to him out of pity and guilt. Most importantly, she’d be safe that way.

  “She should be safe. She needs to be safe,” he whispered, now placing the palm of his hand against the window’s surface, feeling its coolness.

  A time is shortly coming, he realized, when he would have to choose once and for all whether he could accept his life for what it had become, and everything that went with it, including perhaps even more changes yet to appear, or if he should put himself out of this world gently, exiting the stage as quietly as he had entered it, having had, and mostly enjoyed, the best life he’d known how. Perhaps it hadn’t been a great life, certainly not an enviable life, but it had been a life.

  What was true above all else was that he could not continue to go on feeling divided within himself. As a man, or monster, living, and trying to survive and better himself, yet passionately hating himself. Even fearing himself.

  Shen did not know which side he would choose. More importantly, he did not know which side he should choose. He believed his friends wanted him to live, to move forward somehow, but they were naïve enough to think he was, or would be, normal again. They refused to see the changes he’d experienced, the changes he likely would continue to experience. And as the old Shen continued to fade, replaced by whatever new being he was becoming, he did not know that he would remain someone who could be their friend, or even be safe around. Perhaps one day he would lose his higher reasoning altogether, and be no more than the automaton Remorii that had wounded him on Remus Nine. Violent, murderous creatures who acted on pure instinct and lived only to kill, and must kill to survive.

  I will not let that happen to me, he thought. But other than ending it all, which he still felt an aversion to doing, he wasn’t sure exactly how he could prevent it. He supposed only time would give him the answers he needed.

  Feeling a renewed measure of peace, and with the ringing and buzzing in his head long gone, he decided it was time to leave the observation deck and either return to duty or head to his quarters, depending on the time. He approached the door and pressed the button.

  It did not respond.

  That’s odd, he thought.

  He pushed it again, still nothing. Something must be wrong with the circuitry.

  He opened a panel and tried pulling the emergency latch but, no matter how hard he pulled, the latch would not give way. Eventually, he bent the thing through sheer force of strength. I’ll have to fix that, he knew. He bent it back as best he could, knowing a proper repair would still be needed.

  He tried pushing the buttons again, which still failed to respond. So he went to the deck’s comm panel and attempted to summon the Bridge. It made no sound and seemed unable to connect. He tried to communicate with Engineering to the same effect.

  I’m trapped in here, he realized. And then it occurred to him the ship was under some sort of lockdown, with all non-essential doors, including, no doubt, many crew quarters, having been forcefully locked and sealed.

  But why? Is the ship in distress? Have we been boarded? Is there a mutiny going on?

  Despite himself, he thought of Sarah and felt a feeling, concern. He began to beat against the door with all his strength, yelling, “Let me out of here!”

  Chapter 9

  The Harbinger had finished repairs, as had most of the rest of his group. Raidan no longer commanded a squadron in the queen’s navy, his squadron having been annihilated in the attack on the Apollo Yards, but some starships from the Organization, remnants of other Groups who had lost their leaders or otherwise become disorganized, had been ordered into the formation of a new Group, giving Raidan command of some seven warships, including his own.

  He remained in Taurus system for now, though, awaiting the arrival of his other ships, only two of which were in the system with him. And he spent his time strategizing his next several moves. There were a few clear options in front of him, some more palatable than others, but should the first efforts fail, the second ones, no matter how unpalatable, would be necessary. He was convinced of that.

  Mira Pellew had also become a frequent visitor to his office and was a constant reminder of “what we may have to do,” a fact she reiterated so often Raidan half believed the woman hoped push would come to shove and they would be required to act as they’d discussed. For Raidan’s part, he still hoped things could be worked out in a better, more peaceable way, but he had to admit with the way things were going, he needed to plan to exercise Mira’s option, because it might be the very last move he would ever have the chance to make during this war. And he’d be damned if the Empire fell under his watch.

  Mira’s visits, which were superficially polite, carried tremendous undertones of danger and, in the silent subtext of her words as she shared her plans and urged him to take particular actions, there was always the unspoken subtext that she saw Raidan as an enemy, an ally of convenience for the time being, but in the larger picture Raidan, like others, was an obstacle to be eliminated. Although her words disguised this motive, Raidan was no fool and he knew, as certain a
s he liked whiskey, Mira was his enemy. And the more they discussed their plans, which Raidan maintained hope were merely fallback plans, the more convinced he became that Mira Pellew was a profoundly dangerous woman, one neither to be trusted nor trifled with easily.

  It was minutes after one such meeting that Raidan finally got the call he’d been expecting, one long overdue. He knew who it was when the call arrived. The message used all of the pre-arranged security protocols and encryption methods and, more importantly, the signal had been sent directly to him. So, despite his communication equipment’s utter inability to pinpoint the signal’s source, he knew exactly who was sending the message and roughly from where.

  “It’s about time I heard something from you,” said Raidan. “Report.”

  “Zander didn’t have fifteen isotome weapons,” came Pellew’s voice through the headset.

  “Dammit. Then where are they?”

  “No one knows for sure, but I did find evidence on his ship that the weapons had been there—and recently. But he managed to move them off before we could overtake him. My guess is he’s handed them over to the Rahajiim.”

  Raidan felt his fist growing tighter as he considered the implications of this. If the Rahajiim did have those weapons and they were planning an invasion into Imperial space, as Calvin and Tristan had both warned, then as many as fourteen Imperial star systems were vulnerable to utter obliteration and Raidan wasn’t sure how to counter such a threat.

  “What became of Zander?” asked Raidan. He hoped his old comrade and former Group leader had been taken alive. Raidan would enjoy putting the man to questioning, and torture if necessary, to get out of him the fine details of his recent transaction.

  “He’s dead,” said Pellew. “There was nothing I could do. His own crew mutinied, by the look of it. They were dead by the time we boarded the ship. I set charges throughout the Duchess and reduced it to dust, Zander’s corpse along with it.”