The Phoenix Darkness (20 page)

“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, some 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.