The Phoenix Darkness (31 page)

“You never answered my question,” said
Blackmoth, sensing the evil within the soldier as he held him.
This one should have been given to the void long ago
…
No
wonder the galaxy is in such dire need of purification
.

“I’m not afraid of you or anything else,”
said the soldier, resiliently.

“Not even the void?”

“
Especially
not the void,” the soldier
swung his head backward, crashing his helmet against Blackmoth’s
and then, while kicking Blackmoth in the shin with his heavy metal
boot, he desperately tried to break free. It was no use.

Blackmoth ignored the pain in his leg. It was
irrelevant, as was the life of this pathetic creature here before
him. As were the lives of the many billions of such creatures which
had populated and polluted the One True God’s beautiful galaxy.

He released the soldier’s arm, but still held
him by the throat. The soldier twisted, trying to take advantage of
his now free arm, readying to strike Blackmoth as hard as he could.
But Blackmoth struck first, slamming his fist directly into the
soldier’s helmet with full force, cracking it open. Shards of
transparent metals sliced into the soldier’s face, like shrapnel,
and he let out a scream of terror, but to Blackmoth, it was
silent.

With both hands, Blackmoth picked up the
soldier and heaved him, tossing him to the ground where he rolled
to a stop right next to the breach in the
Nighthawk
’s hull.
He lay there, broken and beaten, but still trying to fight. He
struggled to get up, unsuccessfully, and swore at Blackmoth with
every colorful word he knew.

Blackmoth ignored him and went to the cockpit
of
Hunter Four.
He pressed a button and, with a snap
followed by a loud bang, withdrew the seal that had been acting as
a patch over the large breach in the
Nighthawk
’s hull.

What atmosphere there had been vanished,
blowing rapidly out into space and taking the soldier along with
it. He spun as the air took him; in a blink he spiraled past the
windows of
Hunter Four
and disappeared into the
darkness.

“And now one more has been given to the
void,” said Blackmoth. “Two-thousand three-hundred and
seventy-one.” He thought of all those he’d slain here today and
combined the number with the many lives he’d already taken. So many
sacrifices in the name of The One True God, a name he was unworthy
to speak, and yet that number was nothing before such a tremendous
intelligence as The One True God. He demanded far more. The galaxy
itself must be baptized with blood. “And so it will,” said
Blackmoth. “And so it will.” He looked out the window into the
blackness, seeing only a few stars; not many were bright enough to
be seen over
Hunter Four
’s docking lights. He stared at
those stars, imagining them winking out one after another as the
One True God’s fury became known.

“Fodder for the storm,” he said. Then he
closed his eyes and said a silent prayer for his sins and those of
the soldiers he’d just slain. Not for forgiveness of sins; neither
their sins nor Blackmoth’s could be forgiven. Merely a prayer of
acknowledgement, of humility, of submission to that great power
which stood, greater than all others, with a maw the size of
infinity, that power who commands the void, a vast pit without end.
Neither could be sated. Neither could be filled.

“My brothers,” he said, still staring at the
darkness and thinking of the dead soldiers. “In His name—a name no
mortal has worth enough to speak, may you find absolution in the
never-ending void. And know that, as this universe passes away, we
shall meet again. So says I, the Harbinger of Darkness.”

That last soldier had been something foul.
Hubris clothed in the flesh of a man no stronger than the others,
no more talented, no more able to resist the Will of the One True
God. And now he was no different than any of the others, another
lost in the void clenched by the fist of death from which there is
no escape. Blackmoth’s only regret with that man was that he had
only suffered ten seconds before losing consciousness. “I should
have made you bleed,” said Blackmoth. “I should have taken from you
one drop at a time until you were all out. You should have been my
hourglass, a timepiece of blood, counting down the hours and
seconds until the fourth destruction. Until the dawn of the
darkness…”

Blackmoth fell silent for a moment as he
recalibrated the extractor and turned it back on. It warmed to
life, turning and coiling once more.

“Two-thousand three-hundred and seventy-one,”
he repeated.

The loss of atmosphere had returned the
Nighthawk
’s deck to its proper state of null gravity,
allowing the missile to float once more as the retractor slowly
reeled it in.

When the missile arrived, he gently secured
it, then sealed the cockpit and detached
Hunter Four
from
the
Nighthawk
.

Soon after, he plunged into the depths of
alteredspace.
The time is coming
, he thought, feeling the
electricity of anticipation flowing through all of his veins.
And when the moment is ripe, all shall tremble before the might
of The One True God
.
Five destructions there shall be. I am
the fourth.

***

Shen didn’t know what the hell was happening.
First he’d been trapped inside the observation deck. Then, after
miraculously forcing the doors apart, he’d found himself on deck
without gravity or atmosphere where he’d clung in terror to a
ceiling fixture for the better part of five minutes before he could
get himself to move.

During that time, he saw an intruder guiding
some sort of missile on a chain, a missile that looked suspiciously
like ones he, Pellew, and Calvin had destroyed on Remus Nine. But
that made no sense; there was no isotome missile aboard the
Nighthawk
! Then again, the stranger himself had made no
sense. A man’s face inside that helmet, Shen had seen it clearly,
nothing special about him except he’d pointed a railgun at Shen
and, just when Shen believed fate had chosen to write the ending to
his story for him, the man lowered the gun as if in an act of mercy
and proceeded onward.

What happened after that, Shen had no idea.
Even with his improved hearing he couldn’t hear sound in a vacuum.
But by the looks of it, there'd been a fight…a bad one, more like a
massacre.

He lost count of the number of corpses he ran
into as he glided, pushing himself from wall to wall. He constantly
was bumping into one dead soldier or another and swimming through
clouds of blood droplets and other gore he didn’t even want to try
and identify.

So much death…so much carnage…

For a minute there, the gravity, atmosphere,
and lights had returned. And Shen used that chance to spring for
the hatch, thinking all had been restored. He was eager to get to
the Bridge to find out just what the hell had happened. And then,
as instantly as it had returned, the atmosphere blew out of the
ship again, bullying him over and sending him floating into a
bulkhead, the artificial gravity a thing of the past.

Back to this, he thought. And he kicked off
the bulkhead and toward the nearest wall in a series of maneuvers,
which slowly but surely were getting him to that hatch.

How he remained conscious in these conditions
was a mystery he didn’t know the answer to. It was deathly cold,
his legs and arms had swelled up like balloons, and he couldn’t
breathe. He needed to breathe; his body kept trying to breathe. But
there was no air, not even nitrogen, to take into his lungs.

I should be dead
, he kept thinking
over and over, but somehow he wasn’t. He even managed to make it to
the hatch. He pressed the control to open it.

Nothing.

He pulled the emergency lever.

Still nothing.

Damn, I have not come this far to die here!
He gritted his teeth and tried to bang on the hatch, to force it
like he had the observation deck doors, but it was no use. He
lacked the strength now, and there was nothing to prop himself up
against in the null gravity. The harder he pushed on the hatch, the
farther away it sent him, hovering downward.

Nevertheless, determined, he pushed himself
off the floor and hovered back up to the hatch, hell bent on
finding some way to reach the other side. For, although his body
had proven incredibly, even miraculously, resistant to the deathly
effects of vacuum exposure so far, he could feel himself getting
weaker, sicker, and knew if he didn’t get back into an atmosphere
soon he would die. Whether he had seconds or minutes left, he
wasn’t sure.

Chapter 12

“Proxitor Ol’ixe, again you seek audience
with me. What favor is it you wish of the Nau this time? Do you
wish to be rewarded for bringing us these human spies, or is there
some other matter troubling?”

Alex wasn’t quite sure what to say. He even
found himself surprised to be standing here, in the Nau’s own
quarters, having disturbed him from his sleep.
This was not the
right time
, he thought. But as he’d tried to walk to his own
quarters to catch some sleep, he’d walked through the extraction
corridor. The rooms themselves were closed, but none was so
perfectly sealed that it trapped all the noise. The screams and
cries of his human companions had disturbed him with each and every
step. And, although he’d tried to reassure himself that by saving
their lives he owed them nothing, he still felt a miserable,
sour-like ball of emotion weighing him down in the pit of his
stomach.

Guilt
was the word the humans used.
The Rotham had no proper word to describe it. Rather they
characterized the feeling as a symptom of illness rather than the
conditioned response to a betrayal of one’s community.
But
they’re not my community
, he’d tried to insist to himself.
They are humans, I am Rotham. I was their prisoner!

Still, here he was, ready to advocate on
behalf of the humans once again. A gesture which would likely prove
fruitless and only serve to weaken him in the eyes of the Nau. This
particular Nau was a high-ranking Advent commander and no doubt
already looked down upon Alex for his past failures, including his
capture by the Rahajiim.
Persuading him will not be easy
, he
thought.

“Yes, Great Nau, I am here again. Please
forgive my intrusion at this sleepiest hour.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” said the Nau,
indicating he was in an agreeable mood, though they both knew there
had
been something to forgive. An interruption such as this
was certainly unconventional and, even under best circumstances,
disrespectful.

“Still, you have my most humble apologies all
the same,” Alex bowed his head.

“Then I accept them. Now, tell me, what
business has brought you here? Or is it pleasure you seek?” It was
no secret among the members of Advent that Alex was one of the few
who preferred the company of other Rotham males. The Nau too was
one, but that wasn't what had brought him here.

“I've come to ask for the extractions to
desist,” said Alex, deciding to go for the straightforward
approach. “I believe all useful intelligence has been extracted
and, should there be any gaps, I believe my own knowledge can fill
them.”

The Nau folded his arms but, rather than
looking upset, he seemed amused. “So, the long lost Proxitor has
developed affections for the humans. Tell me, which one is it?
Certainly it can’t be the Polarian. Or
can
it?” He looked
intrigued. Cross-species romances were very uncommon, considered a
taboo almost universally, although only technically illegal in the
Polarian states, however this was
not
the direction Alex had
hoped to go with this conversation. “Tell me, Proxitor, which of
them has captured your affection?”

“All of them, sir.”

The Nau’s eyes widened so much they
threatened to burst apart. “
ALL
of them? So then my ship’s
capture of yours must have spoiled quite the party!”

“No, Great Nau, you misunderstand me. I only
meant that—”

“Come now, Proxitor, have you lost your sense
of humor? I jest with you. Of course I know what you mean. You’ve
been with the humans long enough to become soft. To develop some of
their…empathy, yes, that is the word. And so, as you know they
suffer, a part of you suffers with them. Isn’t that right?”

“Why, yes,” said Alex. Surprised to hear his
feelings so well described when he himself could not find the words
for them.

“You needn’t worry; the sickness will pass in
time,” said Nau T’orrna. “Soon you will recall those creatures in
there are not people like you and me; they are cretins.”

“Cretins?”

“Why, yes! Did you know the human females can
produce offspring for nearly forty years! And that the humans
practice breeding well into their old age? And you thought
your
proclivities were a matter of discomfiture! And let’s
not forget the Polarian; he’s a tribal warrior from a race of
brutes and barbarians. A culture trapped like a relic in time,
frozen with one foot in the present building starships and
exploring the galaxy, and the other foot trapped in the Bronze Age,
paralyzed by myth and superstition, belief in gods and bogeymen and
magic. And let’s not forget where their hands are!”

“Where are their hands?” asked Alex, not
quite sharing the Nau’s enthusiastic species-ism. Of course Alex
thought his species the superior one, but so did all the others.
That did not necessarily make it so.

“Why, they’re holding the pike of course,”
said Nau T’orrna. “With your head upon it. Remember, these are
tribal killers and conquerors. And the humans are little better;
they are a perverse and self-absorbed species. Each human spends
all his thoughts every day obsessing over his own status and
appearance so as to impress the other humans, but they themselves
are doing the same thing. And so the whole enterprise is for a
hilarious nothing!”