The Phoenix Darkness (24 page)

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!”