The Phoenix Requiem (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 7)

by Richard Sanders

  “We tried our best,” said Tristan aloud to no one. Because no one remained to hear it. He looked around at the empty bridge, every station currently manned by either a corpse or a ghost. There was a haunted aura about the place that, in the face of imminent death, Tristan rather liked.

  “We tried our best,” repeated Tristan, shaking his head. The sheer and utter lunacy of it all, the fact that any of them had tried to take on the Dread Fleet, and then by the end, it was Tristan and Raidan together, with some few other allies, practically singlehandedly trying to stop the Dread Fleet’s plan for the annihilation of Capital World—a place that didn’t even like them!

  As if the Dread Fleet was going to simply sit there and allow that to happen. Oh no, thought Tristan, trying not to laugh too much at the absurdity of it all. “Did you hear that?” he asked his crew. None of the corpses or the ghosts replied. For that matter, the entire bridge was dark, no lights on at all, not even a single system was functioning. The hull was practically holding itself together with glue at this point, or so his Ops officer had described it just before the rest of the crew had abandoned him.

  “You know, technically, they didn’t maroon me here,” said Tristan, starting to feel dizzy. “I could have gone with them in the escape pod. There was enough room. But honestly, why?”

  Even though he thought he’d been talking to someone just then, he suddenly remembered no one else was there. Well, no one except for the corpses and ghosts, none of whom replied.

  Now…he waited to die. The battlecruisers that had disabled the ships had gone, but were certain to reappear. Tristan knew it. And, when they did, goodbye ship, he thought.

  Well, if I’m dead anyway, he thought, still feeling woozy from being struck by something on the head. I might as well give myself a posthumous promotion. He ripped the rank insignia bar off his naval officer’s uniform and drew a new one from his pocket. It symbolized admiral.

  “There we go,” said Tristan. “That’s better. Looking good, admiral. Why thank you, admiral.” He let out a snort. “I hope they bury me in this,” then he laughed again. “What am I saying? I’m in space. Bury me? Ha! I’ll be in a million pieces. Annnnny second now.”

  He looked out the windows, but saw nothing, nothing but the similarly crippled Harbinger. In fact, were Tristan to guess, the Harbinger looked like it was somehow in even worse condition than the Arcane Storm.

  He got up from the command position, feeling even dizzier and stranger than he had before. Part of him knew it, part of him knew there was something wrong. But the rest of him, the rest of him simply laughed. Everything had gone so hilariously, tragically wrong!

  “Ahh, the cruelty of life,” he said, stumbling as he tried to walk, “Always good for a laugh.” He chuckled some more, then had to wipe his eyes which had filled with tears. Yet he could tell they were not happy tears. Somehow, he could just feel it. The wrongness. The bridge seemed to spin and he stumbled until he found a chair to hold onto, which he clutched for dear life, feeling like he might fall all directions simultaneously, everything spun and spun. And then, a few seconds later, it stopped.

  The feelings of mirth seemed to have disappeared along with it. It was like, suddenly, he was completely lucid again. The severity of the situation hit him like a brick—for that matter the top of his head felt like someone had dropped a brick on him literally.

  His memories were somewhat incomplete. He remembered his crew leaving. He remembered the stand the Harbinger and the Arcane Storm had attempted, side by side, just before both vessels became too crippled to fight back—or do anything. Now the ships simply drifted in space, as if in a catatonic state, waiting for the enemy to come back around and end their misery.

  Dear holy God, thought Tristan, did I really not get into the escape pod?

  He was finding it harder and harder to breathe. And why all the head pain? He wanted to know. He still could remember glimpses of the battle; they had charged the column of devastators, firing furiously at them. Then Tristan had the Arcane Storm’s gun’s redirected to intercept the missiles…then all he could recall were just bit and pieces. Fragments. The others died. We made a stand, and failed. Now I’m here…and apparently an admiral. He noticed that the insignia pin had changed on his uniform.

  There was a spike in the pain and it felt so intense that it completely overtook him. His knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor, now in near total agony.

  It’s bad enough I have to die, he thought. Must I also die in such pain?

  Then he remembered there was still another escape pod. The surviving crew had only needed the one. One of them, someone, he couldn’t remember who, had even told him he should take it. Tristan vaguely remembered discussing it, but the details were so foggy.

  He decided to make a go for that last escape pod. They’ll probably just shoot me down, he thought. But what’s the harm in trying? He got back to his feet and attempted to make a run for it, and immediately discovered what the harm was in trying. After three steps, he collapsed, again overcome with agonizing pain.

  Oh, how cruel, he thought, lying there in pain, to remember there’s another perfectly good escape pod and yet not be able to reach it. It’s not even that far away…

  He considered trying to crawl for it; perhaps, if he were lucky enough, he could make it in time. Probably not. It probably would be a whole lot of pain for an entirely pointless effort. Then again…it might mean living a little longer…but do I even want to live longer? he found himself wondering.

  Decisions, decisions…

  ***

  Raidan sat in the command position of his ruined, dying starship. The Harbinger, it had been a good ship. Loyal and strong. Faithful until the end. It only had ever let him down once, by failing to destroy all of the devastators before becoming crippled. His attack had forced the devastators to temporarily retreat—delaying their attack—but the outcome would be the same. Billions of deaths—deaths that he would only have delayed anyway, the more he thought about it. Yet he sat here, impaled by a sharp piece of debris that had broken loose from some fixture somewhere and stabbed clear through him and into the chair. Pinning him to the one spot on the ship that was supposed to be the most powerful and yet, in this moment it felt the exact opposite.

  Of everyone on the bridge, he had it the best, he supposed. Or the worst, depending on one’s outlook. The bridge was in shambles. Most of the systems were on fire, even now, with the fire suppression system attempting to put them all out; it was like being trapped in a hazy, smoky cloud, and it just kept getting harder and harder to breathe.

  The rest of the bridge crew, they had died, or else had attempted to get to one of the escape pods on the lower decks. Raidan hadn’t bothered. Perhaps he should have; perhaps then he wouldn’t have been stuck to this spot by this damned flying debris.

  But, when he’d made the decision, letting the few that were still mobile attempt to flee the ship, he had decided, if he was going to die, he’d rather go out standing on the bridge of his ship. The two of them living and dying together. He would not die in some escape pod that happened to run afoul of a fighter-drone.

  But dying in this chair didn’t seem like much fun either. He knew he was dead—before all the systems failed and the ship became completely crippled, he’d gotten a good long glance at the damage report display. Everything was red, everywhere. Multiple hull breaches. Some contained, some not.

  He supposed a few systems must have remained online. After all, the fire suppression system seemed to be operating at full blast, trying to drown out the huge electrical fire that has consumed every station on the bridge, along with two division chiefs.

  The pain was bad, being stabbed by something and then trapped by it was one of the more painful things ever to have happened to him. But, as bad as the pain was, the smell was even worse. All the synthetic materials used in the various bridge terminals and consoles, now were all melted. The odor was hideous.

  Not how I planned to die today, he
thought, looking around at the smoky bridge, then down at himself and the metal rod rammed through him; it had taken him just below the shoulder and through the armpit.

  Probably a good spot to be stabbed, he thought, if I was going to still be alive afterward!

  The final moments, before all of this had happened, had occurred so quickly it had taken him some effort to work through what all had happened, which was an exercise he’d chosen to do to pass the time until either the battlecruisers returned to finish the job, or else the Harbinger—which was already beginning to buckle—completely came apart. It also helped distract him, slightly, from the pain.

  As best as he could remember, the Harbinger was taking intense fire from the battlecruisers, which, by then had managed to destroy the rest of the ships assisting him, except for the Arcane Storm, which, in true Tristan fashion, both protected the Harbinger by intercepting most missiles bound for it, but also the Arcane Storm had positioned itself so that, in order to attack it, a ship, from most angles, would have had to somehow shoot through the Harbinger. It had been Tristan’s way of “minimizing the size of my target” he’d called it, when Raidan had asked him why he was using the Harbinger as a literal shield for his starship.

  That was probably the last banter we ever had, come to think of it, thought Raidan. Any communications between ships afterward, before Comms had gone completely offline, had gotten serious. The very last one, Raidan remembered clearly, had been a message to the Arcane Storm and whatever other ships remained—if any by that point. In the case of the Harbinger and the Arcane Storm, both still had working guns, just no ability to control where they were floating. To Raidan, that loss of flight control had been crushing, because otherwise he probably would have managed to finish off the rest of the devastators.

  He remembered how angry he was when he’d sent the message. How much he’d felt like he’d had a grip on those devastators, and just when he’d gone to tighten it, they’d somehow slipped through his fingers like sand. That anger led to a lot of cursing, much of which ended up being broadcast to the other allied ships, any part of the defense force that was still intact—including the queen’s War Room, and all the squadrons and fleets that still remained, but had chosen not to engage the devastators with him. Then, mid-curse-filled rant, he was alerted to the inbound swarm of battlecruisers homing in on them, like birds of prey, Raidan had boldly declared then, still broadcasting to the Arcane Storm, the other ships, and the queen’s War Room, “This is our last stand! Make them remember our names!”

  Immediately afterward had been the final exchange of fire between the starships. It didn’t go well for the Arcane Storm or the Harbinger, although it went even worse for three or four of the battlecruisers, which were completely destroyed. As for the Harbinger and the Arcane Storm, they lost the rest of their systems and both of them sustained enough hull damage that neither could survive.

  Then, evidently, they left us for dead, thought Raidan. It made sense, why waste the ammunition when both the ships had lost their systems and were irreparably tearing themselves apart, inside and out? Not to mention losing atmosphere and, wherever atmosphere remained, everything was probably on fire! At least based on what Raidan had seen, that was the case. He didn’t want to think of how little oxygen remained on the bridge now that the fire had consumed so much of it.

  Some of the crew managed to escape—or, at least, tried to. Raidan definitely remembered giving permission to his bridge staff to make a run for any remaining escape pods, if they so wanted to. As for him, he chose to remain with the dead and the dying, and he stayed on the bridge. A fitting end for Raidan and the Harbinger; they came into this fight together, they ought to go out of the fight together too. In fact, he had been just about to stand when he’d gotten impaled by the…what the hell is this thing anyway? wondered Raidan as he tried to stare down at it and get a good look. As near as he could tell, it had been some kind of fixture, probably something cosmetic, or maybe it was some kind of a separator, there would really be an irony in that, wouldn’t there, thought Raidan. For the fragment of a separator to do the exact opposite and force him and the chair to become one.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the creaking and groaning of what had to be failing metal. For an instant, he thought the time had arrived, that the ship was about to collapse inward on itself, but the Harbinger remained strong, a few moments longer anyway.

  Well since I’m a dead man, anyway, thought Raidan, I’m not going to die here, like this, stuck to this damn chair.

  With a great deal of effort and a whole lot of pain, Raidan tugged the debris out from both the chair and himself, only to discover it was some kind of warped piece of metal that could have come from just about anything. He tossed it aside, then used his right hand to put pressure on the wound, it hurt—a lot—but he wanted to stymie the bleeding. And though every bridge had at least one medkit standard, he couldn’t find either of the two he knew for certain were on the bridge. Then again, the force created by the collision, or whatever else it had been, had been enough to break the bridge into shambles, hurl crewmen across the room, and spray debris in all directions, both pinning the captain to his chair and slicing about an inch deep into Mr. Gates’s skull.

  It didn’t help his hunt for the medkit that the bridge was still quite smoky, although it seemed the fire suppression system had eventually won out against the fire; nothing on the bridge was burning, even though it still smelled like burned plastic everywhere.

  Feeling lightheaded, either from the lack of oxygen due to the fire, or else from a lack of blood—he wasn’t sure which—Raidan stumbled forward until he reached a surface that could support him. It happened to be the portside window. It had a massive crack across it, though whatever had caused it had failed to penetrate all the way through.

  Raidan wasn’t too surprised, the transparent materials they used on starships had incredible strength. That would have been bad, he thought, examining the crack, and imagining what the explosive decompression would have been like. Then again, who says it would have been worse than what actually happened?

  Mister Gates had been sliced by debris that cut through his skull and into his brain; Mister Ivanov and Mister Fredrickson had both burned to death at their stations; Mister Watson had actually drawn a sidearm and shot himself in the head, soon after they’d lost flight control. Just before he did, he had rambled something about not wanting to explode or get captured. Commander Mason and Mister Demir both managed to get off the bridge, at least, Raidan had last seen them making a run for the ladders, hoping to get to a lower deck and use an escape pod. Had it worked? Raidan had no idea. For all he knew, since there was no starfighter cover anymore, the Dread Fleet’s drones were assigned to hunt and destroy the many hundreds of escape pods that were probably floating all throughout Capital System.

  Raidan squinted and thought he saw something through the window, out in space. It was hard to tell for sure what it was, because the Harbinger’s running lights were all deactivated or destroyed, and they were at the wrong angle to benefit from any light coming from the local sun. However, he knew he could see something, because there was a large blank spot where the stars could not be seen and the color was less black and more of a dark grey. Yeah, there’s something there, thought Raidan. It was either a ship that had lost power or else the corpse of a ship that had been destroyed but hadn’t blown completely apart.

  Could that be…is that the Arcane Storm? he wondered. There was no way to confirm it but, from what he could tell regarding its size and shape, it fit the profile. He even recalled from the tactical display, when last it had worked, that Tristan preferred to keep the Arcane Storm on the Harbinger’s port flank, and close, to avoid enemy fire that was mostly coming from the Harbinger’s starboard side, or else aft.

  Are you in there, Tristan? Raidan wondered. Are you alive?

  He took his now blood-saturated right hand and pressed it up against the glass, as if to say goodbye. Or hello. The gestu
re meant both. So, too, did Raidan, when he thought about it.

  It was goodbye. After a long and twisted journey together, that began out of mutual self-interest and continued throughout the years because of promises made and kept, debts owed and paid, but, above all, loyal friendship. So loyal, in fact, that Tristan had followed Raidan here, to this deathtrap of a battle, when he must have known the whole time that neither of them were likely to survive this battle. And yet fighting for Capital World had been that important to Raidan. And so it somehow also became that important to Tristan too.

  Sure, he had come up with his reasons and excuses for why he had to do what he did—he always had them ready to roll out when asked, almost like they’d been pre-prepared—but at the end of the day, he was always there and he always had Raidan’s back. It didn’t matter what Tristan said, “Raidan owes me this, so protecting him is really just protecting my investment,” or, sometimes the reverse, “I’m helping protect Raidan to repay the debt I owe him.” It worked either way, because, the bottom-line truth of it was loyalty. If Tristan did not have loyalty, then Raidan did not know who did.

  Now that their ships were failing, with slowly collapsing hulls, and Raidan was bleeding and choking on the lack of air, and Tristan, well, for all Raidan knew, Tristan was dead already, over on the other starship. So this was goodbye. Death is the end, the last step on the journey, reflected Raidan. And so the hand gesture he was making on the window was a wave goodbye. You take your path into that last, final darkness, thought Raidan. And I’ll take mine.

  But also, no one really knows what—if anything—happens when you die, thought Raidan. Raidan did not believe in an afterlife, and he still didn’t believe in one. Or a god, for that matter, since the concept of god seemed purely illogical. If for no other reason than the infinite regress one made when trying to figure out where “god” came from. Raidan had always said, if one observes the marvels of the universe and asks, “Where did all this complexity come from?” and answers it with “God,” that was no different than answering it with “An even greater and higher order of complexity,” which then must also be explained to have come from a yet greater still form of order with even more complexity, and so on, ad infinitum.