The Phoenix Darkness (38 page)

“The darts killed them all, as far as I could
tell,” said Ali. “I saw smashed helmets, faces ripped apart, holes
torn clean through the climate suits, and bodies with exit wounds
that didn’t look like what you’d expect from bullets. Hell, I saw
one hole that had torn clean through a man’s femur, shattered the
bone and apparently kept on going.”

“And that was just the stuff we had the
stomach to see,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro. “Don’t get me
wrong, Commander,” he said, now looking her squarely in the eyes.
“I’m as brave as any man. But those weren’t men down on that deck
no more, sir. They were
something else
…I tell you, ghosts
haunt those corridors.”

“Thank you,” said Summers, realizing she
wasn’t going to get much else useful out of them until after they’d
had full physical and psychiatric exams. “Just one more thing,” she
said. “How did you come across Lieutenant Iwate?” she pointed to
Shen.

“We found him floating there, only thing
still alive,” said Rodriguez.

“Still alive how?”

“Not sure.” The man shrugged. “He had taken a
dead man’s climate suit and helmet, but the thing was ripped open.
It couldn’t have protected him; not much anyway. But he kept
moving, pushing from wall to wall, until he found this panel. He
started fiddling with it. I thought he’d gone mad.”

“We
all
thought he’d gone mad,” said
First Lieutenant Ferreiro. “The next thing we know, the emergency
hatch blows and we can get up to deck five. That man could hardly
move, so we had to heave him up there. Shortly after we’d all
gotten up, the hatch sealed. Then these medics arrived,” he pointed
to the two men that’d carried Shen into the infirmary, now busy
helping to operate on him. The entire infirmary looked like a
packed zoo with so many people running about performing one urgent
task or another.

“At first, the medics looked afraid to
approach us,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro, continuing his
account. “Then we start taking off our climate helmets ‘cause the
suits showed the air was safe. Then one of the medics gets brave
and tells us we’re not welcome, that there’s some kind of war going
on between Special Forces and the crew. I took him and looked him
right in the eye and I told him, ‘
There ain’t no Special Forces
no more,
’ they’re all dead.”

“I see,” said Summers, now understanding.

“We followed the medics,” said Rodriguez,
“helping them when we could, and then when we got here, Ferreiro
told us—”

“
First Lieutenant
,” interrupted First
Lieutenant Ferreiro, obviously trying to enforce some kind of
discipline with his men. Summers quietly approved.

“Anyway, the
First Lieutenant
, he
tells us to unpack our guns and put our hands over our heads before
we enter, just in case, you know?” said Rodriguez. “That way nobody
would feel threatened by us.”

“Or shoot us,” added Ali. He looked around,
watching the many medics attend to the two injured. “Not that I see
many soldiers on your side of this supposed war…No offense,
Commander.”

“Thank you for your report,” said Summers. “I
want you to stay here. Stay out of the way and be quiet. Once one
of the medics has time and these two patients have been fully
treated, have yourselves checked out,” she said
authoritatively.

“Yes,
ma’am
,” they replied.
Why
ma’am?
she wondered,
they know full well the correct address
is sir
. In fact,
sir
had lost its masculinity to become
a gender neutral form of military address ages ago…

Only then did she realize their eyes, when
not staring off into space or staring into hers to convince her of
the ghosts they’d witnessed, had been nonetheless glued to her,
checking her out from top to bottom. Now they shared smirks and
nods of approval between themselves, not so subtly communicating,
either. She half expected them to start whistling.
Oh, if they
do
…she felt a flash of anger and remembered how much she
sometimes hated the effect she had on men.

Instead of berating them, though they
deserved it, she walked away and approached Shen. There was less of
a bustle around him now, and it seemed that whatever treatment, or
twelve, they were administering to him, the situation was now under
control. He even started to look a little more like himself, much
of the swelling reduced and a bit of color returning.

“What’s he got?” asked Summers.

“What hasn’t he got?” replied Dr. Andrews.
“We’re treating him for hypothermia, decompression sickness,
hypoxia,
even embolism
!” Summers didn’t know what half those
conditions were and preferred not to ask.

“Will he be all right?” she asked.

“I’m feeling better already,” said Shen,
turning his neck so he could see her. This caught her by surprise,
as she’d assumed that he, like Nimoux, was unconscious. Certainly
he’d seemed unconscious when they’d carried him in.

“I’ve honestly never seen a case like this in
my entire life,” said Dr. Andrews. “Nor have I ever read of one…”
he then leaned in and whispered to Summers in a voice which was
barely even a whisper. “By rights, he should be dead a hundred
times over.”

“And yet, here I am, in the flesh,” said
Shen, as though he’d heard them. Yet Summers knew that to be
impossible. Even
she
had only
just
been able to hear
Dr. Andrews’s whisper.

“I don’t know just what in hell went on up
there on deck four,” said Dr. Andrews. “But I have a feeling there
are a platoon of scientists that will want to study it when we make
port somewhere.”

“I share your feeling, Doctor,” said
Summers.

“Speaking of platoons,” said Dr. Andrews. He
nodded subtly toward the four soldiers who, like Summers had
commanded, were standing out of the way, waiting. “What’s their
situation? Are we in danger here?”

“No, we’re not in any danger here,” said
Summers. She then pointed to the guns on the floor. “Have one of
your people collect and secure those. Our men in arms won’t be
needing them any time soon.”

“Are they our prisoners, then?”

“No; actually I haven’t decided what to do
with them,” said Summers. “Evidently, they didn’t even know about
the order
given, for crew to resist against this ship’s
soldiers. It makes sense, they were on deck four at the time and
there wasn’t any air, so they couldn’t have heard the loudspeakers
or the klaxon. When they got safely back to deck five, they
encountered your medics, who explained the situation to them, and
these four surrendered outright. I don’t think we’re in any danger
of mutiny from them.”

“And the rest of the soldiers? May I assume
my infirmary will be swarming with wounded any time now?” asked Dr.
Andrews. “As soon as I heard those alarms and got word about a
possible intruder, I put all my medics onto duty so we’d be
ready.”

“And I’m glad you did,” said Summers, happy
there'd been enough medical personnel to handle Nimoux’s and Shen’s
injuries. Although, truth be told, if this was indeed
all
of
the
Nighthawk
’s medical personnel, they were lacking in that
department too. Summers made a mental note of it. “But I don’t
think there will be waves of injured soldiers making their way down
here.”

“Oh?” Dr. Andrews looked puzzled.

“According to them,” she nodded subtly toward
the four soldiers, “There was nobody alive when they got down to
deck four. Nobody except for Shen, here.”

“What about any personnel behind sealed
doors?”

“That…we will know soon enough. Once we
regain atmosphere on deck four and get a patch over that hull
breach,” said Summers, thinking it was a fair question. “But,
unless some of those systems failed, anyone sealed in their
quarters or wherever else should still have atmosphere and be fine,
provided the seals held in all places. And sealed quickly enough…”
She did not relish the thought that, other than the apparently
wiped out Special Forces garrison, there could be more casualties
on deck four, more crew members whose names would go on the wall…
leaving more vacancies in each shift. All three of them: White,
Red, and Green, had each already been chiseled down to skeleton
size. Summers doubted they could afford to lose any more crew.

“Hopefully, no one was in the corridor near
the breach when it happened,” said Dr. Andrews. Summers nodded,
thinking,
hopefully no one was in the corridor at all, anywhere.
Next to the breach or not, they still would have been sealed out
with no atmosphere and the very real possibility of evacuation into
space
.

“So, who’s responsible for taking out our
garrison of mutinous soldiers?” asked Dr. Andrews. “Did they give
you a report on the other bodies?”

“They claim there were no other bodies.
They’re mad, though,” said Summers, excited for her engineers to
secure the deck and patch it so the truth could finally be known.
“The way they talk, the whole place is haunted by ghosts and some
phantom killed their brothers in arms.”

“They’re not mad,” said Shen, apparently with
some difficulty.

Dr. Andrews went to him and instinctively
tried to shush him. “You need to be resting,” he said. “Don’t try
to talk.”

Summers caught Dr. Andrews by the arm.
“Wait,” she said, curious about what she’d just heard. “Let him.”
She knew it was probably detrimental to Shen’s health to force him
to speak, but if he wanted to anyway and he had something important
to say, she doubted letting him say it would be the single thing
that broke the man’s chances at recovery.

“Those men didn’t see him, but I did!” said
Shen, much more loudly this time. If anything, he spoke too loudly
for comfort. Summers didn’t want to interrupt him, though, even if
it did sound almost like shouting.

“He was fast and he came alone,” Shen
continued. His eyes were locked with Summers’ and his brown irises
seemed almost to show a little red in them as he spoke. “There was
no stopping him. It was like he knew things before they happened.
When our soldiers engaged him, he was always ready. And he
slaughtered them.”

“Slaughtered them how?” asked Summers, having
a difficult time imagining entire squads of trained soldiers, armed
with powerful carbines, being slaughtered by any lone man, no
matter how well trained or ferocious.

“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.