The Phoenix Darkness

by Richard L. Sanders

  “I don’t know exactly, it looked like he had some kind of rail-based E&M gun, kind of like the railguns on Polarian starships except miniaturized. His was no bigger than a shotgun! I don’t know how it was possible. The source of energy he needed…I couldn’t even identify it…”

  Summers wasn’t interested in the weapon itself, despite whatever tactical implications it might have should they encounter this mysterious assailant in the future. So she tried to steer Shen back on course. “Are you sure he was alone?”

  “Yes, he was definitely alone. And the way he moved, like he always knew just what to expect, like he could see seconds into the future…I’ve never seen anything like it. He even used the null gravity to his advantage. Where our soldiers floundered and struggled to keep their attitude normal with the ground, this man ignored special directions altogether. Floor, ceiling, walls, none of it meant anything to him. He would walk on the ceiling, soar from bulkhead to bulkhead, moving with the grace and poise of…a god. I don’t know how better to describe it. I only saw one fight. He took on seven soldiers all at once. They came at him from two directions and he slaughtered them with ease. His faster thinking, quicker, more fluid movements, and his superior weapon…there was no stopping this man!”

  “You said he walked on the ceiling?”

  “Only briefly. Mostly he walked on the ground. A little on the bulkheads too, if it fit his purpose.”

  “How did he walk in the null gravity?” asked Summers.

  “The same way our soldiers walked along the ground: using magnetic boots. Except he’d obviously had a lot more practice with them. And I suspect he had a switch in his mouth he could use to activate and deactivate the magnetism of the boots. Maybe there was some kind of harmony between the E&M fields of his weapon and the magnetism of his boots.” Shen began prattling off various scientific laws and questions and started rambling wildly about the possibilities. Summers needed to steer him back on course once more.

  “You’re sure it was just the one person, and you know he used some kind of railgun and superior training, athleticism, or whatever, to defeat our soldiers in battle,” said Summers, “apparently killing them to a man?” she thought of Pellew and wondered if the deadly Captain Jason Pellew had really gone down so easily as that.

  “It was just one intruder, yeah,” said Shen. “As for killing our people to a man, I don’t know; I didn’t see it all. But I don’t doubt his ability to do so.”

  “What about Captain Pellew?” asked Summers, still anxiously convinced he was somewhere on the Nighthawk ready to cause more trouble. She didn’t know if the feeling came more from paranoia that Pellew would continue to frustrate her efforts or out of respect for the man’s combat abilities, which she had seen firsthand in Abia, and the belief a man of his talents couldn’t have so easily been dispatched.

  “I remember thinking I saw him fighting hand-to-hand with the intruder. I was far away, so I couldn’t see for sure, but it looked like Pellew’s climate helmet was broken. Then, kind of suddenly, there was a second decompression event. Not an explosive one, just a rapid one. I think, when that happened,” Shen paused. “Mr. Pellew was blown out into space.”

  “And the intruder also?” asked Summers, hopefully.

  “No, the intruder had returned to his ship. I believe he caused the second decompression by detaching part of his ship from the Nighthawk’s hull, re-exposing the breach.

  “How could there have been another decompression event,” asked Dr. Andrews, “if there’d already been one? You can’t have air pressure if there’s no air.”

  “The atmosphere and gravity had been largely restored,” said Shen. “I don’t know how or why.”

  “I see,” said Dr. Andrews, looking puzzled.

  Summers was more interested in the intruder himself than the atmosphere of the deck. “But what was the intruder doing here?” she asked. “And where did he go?”

  “That’s clear enough,” said Shen. “He came for the isotome missile. I don’t know how he knew we had it, that it was on that deck, or even where on that deck. But by the time I saw him, he already had it. There was a chain affixed to it which was slowly pulling the missile along. He could control the chain, sometimes stopping its motion in order to let himself fight our soldiers. I don’t know how he did that. Somehow he must have had a way of communicating with a retracting mechanism on his ship and that was pulling the chain…”

  As Shen again went off on a tangent regarding various scientific possibilities, Summers momentarily zoned out, feeling a crushing sensation in her heart. The upside of all of this violence, the failure of the mutiny, all the chaos, even the possibly fatal injury of Nimoux, had been that now, maybe, just maybe, she could destroy the isotome missile stashed in the deck four auxiliary lab. But if the intruder had taken it…

  “How did he move the missile with only a chain?” asked Summers.

  “The missile was floating in the null gravity,” said Shen, “The chain needed only to pull it.”

  Dammit, she thought. Pellew, you damned fool, if only you’d destroyed the weapon when you had the chance…

  “How did you see him?” asked Dr. Andrews, still paying keen attention to Shen’s every detail. “If this man had such perfect situational awareness, as everything seems to indicate, why, then, did he not see you?”

  “I—” Shen paused, sounding a bit like a child caught up in the snag of a pesky, poorly thought out detail of a tale he was spinning. “Well, it’s no use lying about it. I was in the observation deck. When the alarm happened, and the door sealed…I broke the door.”

  “You what?” asked Summers.

  “Don’t ask me how, I don’t know how; it should have been impossible,” said Shen. “And don’t ask me why, either; I don’t remember why. I doubt I was acting much on reason at the time. But I beat my hands and fists against the door, and then I pried at it, trying to force it open. And then, with a bang, it just did.”

  Neither Dr. Andrews nor Summers could believe what they were hearing.

  “You don’t have to believe me; once you get down to deck four you can see for yourself. The evidence is all there,” said Shen, very matter-of-factly.

  “Okay, setting aside our skepticism,” said Dr. Andrews, “how did you survive? You should have lost consciousness in about ten seconds!”

  “That one, sir, is a medical mystery, and so I shall defer to you,” said Shen, sounding impatient and unhappy, clearly not enjoying being a specimen under a microscope. Summers knew the answer to that likely would need to be uncovered by Dr. Rain Poynter, should that red-headed hussy ever return to the ship. So Summers decided to again shift the questioning back where it needed to be.

  “Where were you when you saw the intruder?” asked Summers. “And how did he not see you?”

  “I was hanging from a fixture on the ceiling, just outside the observation deck,” said Shen. He looked at Dr. Andrews and quickly added, “don’t judge. I doubt you would have done any differently.”

  “Then what happened?” asked Summers.

  “Well, then he came along, right beneath me, his chain pulling the missile, him walking along beside it. I couldn’t hear anything, but I imagined the clank of his magnetic boots as he stepped forward, step after step, with surprising dexterity, all things considered.”

  “So that’s it? You just hung from the ceiling, he didn’t notice you, and you watched him from there?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, he did notice me,” said Shen. “He even raised his railgun and pointed it directly at me.”

  “Yet you survive when apparently no one else does?” asked Dr. Andrews.

  “Did he fire at you?” asked Summers.

  “No. He spared me. I don’t know why, I suspect even he doesn’t know why. One second he’s raising his weapon and aiming it at me, like killing me is the obvious, natural thing to do, like it’s something automatic. And believe me, to this guy, killing is automatic. Then, one second later, he’s lowering his weap
on and moving on, leaving me completely alone.”

  “Maybe he assumed the lack of atmosphere would do the job for him and he wanted to save the ammo,” suggested Summers.

  “Could be,” said Shen. “But it felt like something different to me, I dunno what. I can’t really describe it. But it really felt like he wanted to kill me and then, in the blink of an eye, he didn’t. Like he’d changed his mind and thought I deserved to live, if I could.”

  “Amazing,” said Dr. Andrews, shaking his head, seeming now to somehow simultaneously disbelieve what he was hearing and yet trust Shen’s account of it. “Exposure to vacuum would explain a great many of the symptoms you’ve presented…”

  Summers wasn’t interested in the medical mystery so much as the intruder who had stolen the isotome weapon. Perhaps if we can identify him we can catch him, she thought. Then destroy the weapon and maybe him along with it, if he is indeed so dangerous. She knew she couldn’t send her four remaining soldiers to do the job, no, she’d have to prevail in this contest ship to ship. But then, how could she? The intruder’s ship had managed to sneak up upon a stealthed Nighthawk and literally cut a hole in her belly before the intruder’s vessel could even be detected. How could she possibly bring the Nighthawk up against that? But if she didn’t, what of the isotome weapon? What of the billions of people it would almost certainly be used against?

  “Shen, did you get a good look at this intruder?” asked Summers.

  “Yes,” he said. “I got a look right at his face when he pointed his railgun at me.”

  “What was he?”

  “Human for sure,” said Shen, thinking back. “He seemed to be in his mid-thirties. He had—”

  “Black hair,” croaked a voice. Summers suddenly realized it was Nimoux. He was awake! “Pale skin,” Nimoux continued, as two medics rushed to his side, to check on him. “A narrow face, and these death-black eyes…irises such a shade of dark brown they might as well be black.” He started coughing.

  “Why, yes, yes that’s right,” said Shen.

  “Nimoux, you’re up,” said Summers, racing to his side.

  Nimoux, however didn’t look at her, he didn’t seem to be looking at anything. His eyes continued to stare at the ceiling and he acted as if all he could hear was Shen. “Just as I suspected,” he said. And then, like a lamp switching off, he was gone. Not dead, the equipment clearly showed heart and brain activity. But whatever part of him that had sparked consciousness vanished away, leaving him as comatose as he’d been seconds earlier.

  “Is he all right?” asked Summers, pressing Dr. Andrews urgently. Dr. Andrews, for his part, was examining the patient, the medical equipment, and trying to find out exactly that.

  “I think it’s a good sign that he was awake,” said Dr. Andrews. “But I’m not sure what made him lose consciousness again so quickly…I’m hoping his body is just very exhausted.”

  “Yes, let's hope it is only that,” said Summers. She needed Nimoux back. She couldn’t quite describe the feeling; it went beyond concern for a valuable comrade, or even that of a trusted friend; she simply needed him back. He had to be okay.

  “He knows him,” said Shen loudly from his bed. “Don’t you guys get it? Lafayette Nimoux knows who the intruder was!”

  That did seem to be true. Provided Shen’s memory of the intruder’s description was accurate.

  Come back to us, Nimoux, thought Summers. We need you. Despite herself, she found herself wishing Dr. Rain Poynter were here to help revive Nimoux. For that matter, she wished Calvin were here. He should be here. She couldn’t keep doing his job for him and pretending to know what to do with the Nighthawk. Maybe you would have found a way to destroy that missile, she thought, feeling equal parts guilt and rage that this intruder, whoever he was, had absconded with the one isotome missile she’d managed to actually track down.

  Summers supposed she'd better return to the Bridge. After all, that was her place and Cassidy could not be relied upon forever. On her way out, she heard Shen call.

  “Sorry about before, Commander,” he said, quite loudly. “I don’t know what came over me, but it won’t happen again.”

  She looked back at him quizzically, then she remembered. Shen had needed to be dismissed from the Bridge mid-operation; it had been very abrupt and against all protocol. Honestly, Summers was surprised she’d forgotten. But she considered herself a forgiving person; Shen had been through a lot since then, and provided valuable intelligence to boot, provided it didn’t turn out he had simply gone insane.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Summers, “and you’re invited to return to duty as soon as you’re able. Provided you don’t rush the healing process.”

  “Thank you, Commander.”

  Chapter 16

  Caerwyn stood in the throne room. Gathered before him were the reigning patriarchs and matriarchs of the highest ranked nobles still living on Capital World. Most had come voluntarily by invitation; a few had been blackmailed or bribed into attendance. The presence of each of them helped to lend legitimacy to what he was doing. Even more important than the heads of each family were the nobles who served in the Assembly. Again, he had taken the necessary measures to compel their attendance and, in no uncertain terms, his people made it clear to them they were to act appropriately. Solemn when solemnity was required and celebratory when the deed was finished.

  Caerwyn stood with his back to the royal throne. All eyes of the Empire were on him, he knew. At least a dozen cameras were pointed at him and the broadcast was being sent live to every home on Capital World, to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, and everywhere in between. No Imperial citizen would be ignorant, Caerwyn had decided. All must know of what was happening here this day. Today was a red-letter day, and a first in Imperial history.

  “Today,” said the Supreme Judicator, beginning the ceremony. She was the highest ranking member of the Capital World Supreme Court, and, like the heads of the noble families, she had been adequately persuaded to ensure her full cooperation. “We are honored to gather as friends, countrymen, brothers, sisters, and citizens of this glorious Empire, to raise before us a new sovereign. A leader, a father, a patron, a monarch who will bear the heavy burden that is this crown,” she lifted the ceremonial crown for all to see. “We are here, united, as one people, with one purpose, to witness and accept the vows of our new king, solemn oaths of fealty, guardianship and duty to us all.”

  There were cheers. Off camera, there were signs that indicated it was time to cheer, and men standing ready to make certain the crowd complied. They did. And when the signs asked for silence, the throne room fell silent enough one could have heard a pin drop upon the great marble floor.

  “Who is he that would be our king?” asked the Supreme Judicator, “and accept this heavy burden?” Again raising the crown for all to see, most especially the cameras.

  “Here I stand,” said Caerwyn, remembering his role in this ceremony. It was a farce, a puppet show, showmanship for the benefit of the common people of the Empire, but it was necessary.

  “If you would be our king, and accept this tremendous burden,” said the Supreme Judicator, now facing Caerwyn, her back to the crown. “Then kneel before your people.”

  Caerwyn knelt.

  “What is your name, sir?”

  “I am Caerwyn Martel, of the noble Martel family,” he said. “One of the Great Houses. A founding house of the Empire.” Like most nobles, his status was the result of his ancestors, long ago, choosing to support the first king quickly and faithfully. Caerwyn did not miss the irony that now he waged bloody war against that king’s great-great granddaughter.

  “You, Caerwyn of House Martel,” said the Supreme Judicator. “Be you compelled to kneel here?”

  “No man nor woman compels me. I kneel here of my own free will.”

  “And be you of sound and able mind?”

  “Yes, Supreme Judicator. I am of sound and able mind.”

  “Are you willing to take the Oath?”


  “I am willing.”

  “Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the People of this great Empire and all her territories, according to our respective laws and customs?”

  “I solemnly promise so to do,” said Caerwyn, taking a moment to remember the phrasing exactly.

  “Will you, in your power, cause Law and Justice, and Mercy, to be executed in all of your judgments?”

  “I will.”

  “Will you, to the utmost of your power, maintain the great and longstanding traditions and laws of our Empire?”

  “I swear it.”

  The Supreme Judicator then turned to face the crowd. “And do you, People of the Empire, accept this man to be your king and sovereign, Guardian of the law and Protector of the realm?”

  The people cheered their assent, just as the signs and armed men off camera directed them to do until they were instructed to be silent.

  The Supreme Judicator then approached Caerwyn, crown still in her hands, and spoke. “As you have sworn before these witnesses, before all the souls of the Empire, and before any gods that may be; and as these subjects of the Empire have accepted you to perform this providential task and execute this most solemn of duties; I now hereby place this crown upon your head.” She put the ceremonial crown on top of Caerwyn’s head. They’d taken measurements of his head before designing the damned thing, so it fit snugly and perfectly, just as it was supposed to. “Now arise, sir, as King Caerwyn Martel, First of Your Name, Successor of King Hisato Akira, Sovereign of the Empire, and Defender of the Realm. Arise and accept your people even as they accept you.”

  He climbed slowly to his feet, trying not to grin from ear to ear, knowing he must appear stately and kingly, serious but not grim. He stood tall and proud, crown upon his head, and raised both hands high in the air. The crowd cheered loudly and raucously, roaring their approval, just as they were directed to.