The Phoenix Darkness (22 page)

“We’ll have to take control of the auxiliary
lab. The doors are large enough and there is sufficient space for
this in there.”

“What about the analysts there?” asked the
staff sergeant.

Pellew had thought of that too. “We’ll have
to take them below to SFHQ. Keep them occupied for now.”

“And if they try to leave?”

“Then we simply won’t let them. What do you
think Kilo Protocol is for, anyway?”

Chapter 8

The longer they waited to hear from Pellew’s
team, hearing nothing but silence, the more suspicious the
situation seemed, at least to Nimoux. Looking around at the others,
he believed he was alone in this. The helmsman, a
distracted-looking dark-haired woman seemed more depressed to him
than anything else; clearly she was somewhere inside her own head
right now. As for the rookie at the defense station, he was silent
and idle, probably feeling lucky to be sitting on the White Shift.
Nimoux doubted the man, Mr. Roy, had much experience in these sort
of situations and he seemed perfectly content to sit and wait,
deferring to the command officers to detect and deal with anything
that may’ve gone sour with the current mission. Even Summers, who,
unlike the others, sat up straight, alert and vigilant, hadn’t said
anything to indicate she was suspicious something had gone wrong,
or that Pellew and his men were up to something. But Nimoux’s
internal alarm bells were ringing loud and clear.

Perhaps it was because he used to be a
Special Forces commander and had led boarding assaults of his own,
but he knew keeping regular contact with the host ship was about as
high a priority as possible. And yet, long into the assault
mission, they’d been listening to nothing. Static. Dead air.

“Commander,” said Nimoux, deciding to speak
up once again.

“Yes, Captain?”

“In my experience, there are both good and
bad kinds of silence.”

“And you think this is a bad kind of
silence?” asked Summers. She looked tense, and Nimoux suspected she
was at something of a loss for what to do. She hadn’t wanted to
reach out and contact Pellew for fear he was attempting some sort
of stealth approach and the sound of the radio would give him away,
but she also worried something had happened to him, such as the
possibility Zander’s crew had overpowered the
Nighthawk’s
soldiers and now they were just sitting ducks. Nimoux suspected
neither.

“Yes, Commander,” he said, turning his chair
to face the center of the Bridge. “In my experience leading
missions of this sort, the only two reasons why an away team would
refuse to report in would be if something terrible has happened to
them and they are unable to report in, such as loss of
communication equipment, jammed signal, or total defeat in battle.
Or, they could report in, but they choose not to do so because they
have information which they do not wish to report.”

“Which do you suppose it is?” asked Summers,
seeming genuinely concerned.

“I believe it’s the latter. I don’t think the
former is possible unless Zander had set a very clever ambush for a
boarding party he could not know would be coming; I believe it’s
impossible Pellew and his forces were overwhelmed inside the
Duchess
. And, even if they had lost ground, it’s even less
likely their communications equipment would have been destroyed in
the first engagement. Same goes for a total loss of all personnel.
Even in steady retreat, a team can radio their command ship in nine
out of ten instances.”

“So then you believe Pellew and his men
discovered something and they are choosing to delay informing us
about it for some reason?” asked Summers. It was clear she took his
advice seriously, but also that she found his concern, at least in
this instance, a touch paranoid. “You
really
don’t trust
Captain Pellew, do you?”

“I admit, I do not,” said Nimoux.

“Duly noted, Captain,” said Summers. “And
what would you have me do?”

“Contact him. Demand a response, an update,
something. If for no other reason than to remind him it’s his
paramount duty to communicate information back to his host ship,
especially if he’s our eyes and our ears on the enemy vessel.”

Summers nodded. “Perhaps you’re right.”

“Missive from the computer on deck four,”
said Sarah, interrupting them. “The hatch has been sealed.” That
could only mean everyone inside the
Duchess
who was coming
aboard the
Nighthawk
had come aboard.

“See what I mean?” said Nimoux. Clearly
Pellew and his men had returned to the ship, unless the very
unlikely case in which Pellew’s forces had been wiped out and now
the
Nighthawk
had been counter-boarded. But Nimoux dismissed
this possibility, which meant Pellew had had ample opportunity to
keep the Bridge appraised of his discoveries and activities and
he’d chosen not to.

“
Well
,” said Summers, looking enraged
at last. She tapped her intercom line which broadcast throughout
the ship. But, before she could speak, the elevator door slid open.
All heads turned to see Pellew, along with two soldiers, as usual,
enter the Bridge. “
Mister Pellew
,” said Summers, angrily.
“Why in hell did you fail to maintain regular contact with us? We
haven’t heard a word from you since you boarded the
Duchess
.
For all we knew you could have been killed!”

“I’m sorry about that,” Pellew said
innocently. “I had a communications failure with my equipment, and
so I ordered ODB to maintain regular contact with the Bridge. Since
they failed to do so, I’ll have to have words with those damn
mercenaries. My apologies, Commander.”

Summers looked at him, clearly tempted to
believe him. After all, it would explain the situation and, as
she’d put it herself, Pellew never failed to get the job done that
they needed. She glanced at Nimoux, as if asking him what he
thought. Nimoux narrowed his eyes, indicating he was hardly
convinced.

“Make sure you discipline them accordingly,”
said Summers, apparently choosing to give Pellew the benefit of the
doubt or else not knowing what other options she had.

Nimoux turned back around to face the Ops
console and decided to do a quick scan. He had records indicating
the mass of the
Nighthawk
before the mission had occurred,
so he decided it wouldn’t hurt to scan the ship’s mass now to see
if anything suspicious, such as an isotome weapon, had been brought
aboard.

“Now, Captain,” said Summers. “Please
immediately give us a report as to what you found over there.”

Nimoux listened to the report while casually
glancing at his Ops display, awaiting the results of the scan.

“It was the damndest thing, Commander,” said
Pellew. “We stormed the ship and met no resistance. Then we took
the Bridge and finally found the crew, but most of them were dead
before we’d even gotten there. Apparently, they’d had some kind of
a row and started killing each other. By the time my boys got to
them, there were only a few still alive. They opened fire on us, so
we put them down. The entire crew was dead in hardly a flash.”

As Nimoux listened, he wondered if these
details were true. If he knew Pellew’s character, he did not doubt
the crew was dead if Pellew said they were dead, but it could just
as easily have been Pellew himself who’d ordered their execution
rather than this tale of a self-destructive crew. Which, to Nimoux,
certainly seemed too odd to be true, though he had to admit it
wasn’t too odd to be possible. And it seemed a bit too creative for
Pellew to come up with on the fly and tell with such apparent
candor. Then again, he’d had ample time to invent whatever story he
wanted…

“Did you find the isotome weapons and destroy
them?” asked Summers, interrupting Pellew’s story. Clearly she
wasn’t interested in the play-by-play but rather in the ultimate
point. As far as Nimoux was concerned, good for her.

“We searched the ship, Commander,” said
Pellew.

At that moment, Nimoux’s scan completed and,
just as he’d suspected, there was a notable divergence in the mass
of the
Nighthawk
before the mission and after. Specifically
that it had gained 226.796 kilograms.

“
And
?” asked Summers.

“There was only one hold, and I’m sorry to
report to you that it was empty.”

“It couldn’t have been empty,” said Nimoux,
unable to resist speaking up. “We know they picked up at least one
weapon; we saw them bring it aboard their ship.”

“That’s just what I was getting to, Captain,”
said Pellew. “The hold was utterly empty except for the one
weapon.”

“Damn…” said Summers. And a kind of fiery,
determined hope which had been glowing in her eyes since they’d
begun their chase of Zander puffed out in an instant. “So we
haven’t ended the isotome threat once and for all.”

“Sadly, no,” said Pellew. “And what’s worse,
we did find evidence the entire complement of isotome weapons
had
been in the hold recently. Which means it’s already been
handed off to the Rahajiim by now, or worse.”

Summers dropped her head into her hands, no
doubt taking this news as a personal failure. After all, she’d been
charged with finding and destroying those weapons before they fell
into the hands of an enemy who was likely to use them and now, by
all accounts, assuming Pellew was telling the truth, it was too
late.

“What have I done…” mumbled Summers, in an
unusual loss of self-composure. Nimoux felt the instinct to go to
her, to try to comfort her and convince her that this hadn’t been
her fault. She’d acted as expediently and diligently as she
possibly could have, given the information she knew. But now,
unfortunately, was not the time for such emotional condolences.

“So then, what did you do with the solitary
isotome missile inside the cargo hold?” asked Nimoux. Picking up
where Summers should have.

Pellew looked nervous for a moment. It was
almost nothing, a mere flash of a second, a quick glance to the
side, and then it was gone. And he was able to answer the question
with full confidence, even managing to look Nimoux in the eyes, no
doubt picking up on the fact that he was being challenged. “We
destroyed the weapon, of course,” said Pellew. “That was the whole
reason we went over there. Well; mission accomplished.”

“I see,” said Nimoux, rising to his feet.
“Then please explain to me, why is the
Nighthawk
’s mass now
over two-hundred kilograms more than it was before your mission
began?” This caused heads to look back at Pellew curiously. Even
Summers lifted her head and seemed confused.

“Computer’s margin of error,” said Pellew
with a shrug.

Nimoux shook his head. “Nice try, but wrong.
You probably don’t know this, but the instruments are much more
pinpoint accurate than that. So there can only be one explanation:
you brought something back with you. Something about the weight of
a small missile…”

Summers glared at Pellew. “You
didn’t
…”

Pellew’s face went red and, not being a
trained Intel Wing operative, apparently was fast running out of
lies. “All right, all right, you got me,” said Pellew. “We brought
the missile aboard the ship, but
only
the debris of it! It’s
still destroyed, just like I promised. I only kept the refuse and
broken parts because I thought they’d be useful for study by Intel
Wing.”

Nimoux raised an eyebrow, highly doubting
this. “And where did you store this missile debris?”

“It’s in the auxiliary analysis lab on deck
four,” admitted Pellew. “Being analyzed.”

“Why would you withhold this information from
us?” demanded Summers. She too was standing up, her face red with
anger.

“Believe it or not, Commander, I thought you
would not approve.”

“You’re damned right I don’t approve,” she
said.

“Well then, lucky for me I’m not under your
chain of command,” said Pellew. “I unilaterally brought the
destroyed ruins of the missile aboard the ship because of its
potential strategic value. As the commander of the ship’s defense
force, that is my right.”

“But the analysts in that lab, and the lab
itself, belong to my chain of command,” said Summers, fuming. “And
I will not have them wasting their resources studying a weapon
whose secrets are best lost to the ages. The sooner they’re
forgotten, the better.”

“Well this is all a very moot point,” said
Pellew. “Since the scraps of the missile, upon first examination,
have proven to be utterly worthless. I’ll happily get rid of it
whenever we make our next stop.”

“Yes, you will,” said Summers. “I’ll
personally see to it that it happens.”

Pellew shrugged. “You’ll get no argument from
me. Hell, you can carry all that rubbish off the ship with your own
two hands for all I care.” He glanced at each of the soldiers on
his flanks. “Tell her how heavy that stuff was; we’d love your help
moving that crap out of here. We wish we’d never brought it
aboard.”

“Yes, what he said,” said one of the
soldiers. The other merely nodded.

Nimoux had had enough of this charade. “Lt.
Winters,” said Nimoux, getting the attention of the ship’s pilot
who had, until then, been seeming to enjoy watching the conflict
escalate between Summers and Pellew.

“Yes, Captain,” she said, immediately
alert.

“Please contact the auxiliary lab on deck
four. Ask them to confirm they have possession of missile debris
and that they’ve conducted an initial analysis of the
components.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and she tapped a few
buttons, then adjusted her headset microphone.

***

“
Wait
,” said Pellew, “Sarah, Nimoux,
Summers, everyone, just cool it for one second!” Obviously this
situation was unraveling fast, all because of that damned Lafayette
Nimoux.
I should have left his ass to rot on that prison
world
, thought Pellew.
Now all the thanks I get for the
rescue is him being a total thorn in my side.
Pellew honestly
didn’t know what had caused the Intel Wing captain, who until
recently had been their
enemy
, to get such a large stick up
his ass in regards to Pellew. Probably he was butt-hurt over all
the bald jokes Pellew had made.