The Phoenix Darkness (59 page)

“Yes, sir, at once,” said Captain
Valentine.

As they dragged Mira away, she made one last
strange plea for her survival. “Raidan, you want me alive. I know
things you don’t. You believe yourself to be the puppet master now
that you control the Organization. But you know
nothing
.
You’re just another puppet on so many strings!”

Raidan briefly rethought his order to kill
her. Perhaps interrogating her first would be the prudent thing to
do, then kill her. But after considering it, he dismissed the idea.
Mira is only pretending to know secrets I don't
, thought
Raidan.
It's a stall tactic to keep her alive, to give her loyal
followers time and opportunity to free her so she can try again to
capture the Bridge, and me, and the Organization. I will not allow
her the possibility
.

About two minutes after the soldiers had
dragged Mira away, kicking and screaming, a blood-soaked Tristan
arrived. He bent over, resting on his knees, looking more exhausted
than Raidan had ever seen him.

“It’s about time you got here,” said
Raidan.

Tristan nodded. “Looks like you have
everything under control.”

“By sheer luck,” said Raidan, still pondering
whether it had been his bribes or something else which had
motivated Captain Valentine to switch sides. He wondered how far he
could trust her. “And with no thanks to you.”

“I got here as soon as I could,” said
Tristan. “Main Engineering was crawling with Mira sympathizers. And
the lower decks…there’s a bloody war going on down there!”

“How does our side fare?” wondered Raidan,
thinking perhaps he needed to reseal the Bridge.

“Our side is winning,” said Tristan.
“
Now
.” Raidan didn’t doubt the tide below had turned in his
favor in no small part thanks to a rampaging, maniacal Lycan let
loose among the pro-Mira fighters.

“Glad to hear it,” said Raidan.

“So, what now?” asked Tristan. The bright red
glow of his eyes began to fade and he looked less a muscular beast
and more a human with each passing second. His uniform was in
tatters and covered in blood.

“I trust that blood is mostly the enemies’
and not yours,” said a mildly concerned Raidan.

“Of course,” said Tristan. “I barely took a
scratch or two.”

“Good. Now I’d like you to go below and make
certain Captain Valentine and her squad have followed my orders and
executed Mira Pellew. If they haven’t, then kill her yourself. And
then kill Captain Valentine and her squad.”

“Done,” said Tristan.

“Then get yourself cleaned up.”

“Will do. What about you?”

“I'm going to get some of the officers below
to get their asses up here. I'll address the Organization in ten
minutes, once I have proof Mira is dead. With her out of the
picture, the other Group Leaders will have no choice but to follow
me. They know if they do differently, the
Harbinger
will
destroy them.”

“And after that?”

“After that, our happy reunited fleet will
make for Capital World at full speed. And I’m going to make a
special broadcast; it will explain everything.”

Tristan nodded, then hurried away, eager to
fulfill Raidan’s orders. In the meantime, Raidan went to inspect
the state of the Bridge and to ensure there weren’t more enemy
soldiers hiding in ambush. He picked up a carbine from one of the
dead soldiers on the Bridge and began his thorough search, kicking
each enemy corpse he came upon, to make certain they were, in fact,
deceased. The last thing he needed were enemies who played dead and
then rose from their apparent graves only to shoot him in the
back.

Chapter 25

Calvin and Summers were in the infirmary,
standing next to Nimoux’s bed. He sat there, still under doctor’s
care, but he’d awoken. Which, according to Dr. Andrews, meant he
was probably out of the woods.

“I’d like to keep him here a little longer
before discharging him,” the doctor had said. “He’s still hurt and
the wound will take some time to heal. But he should recover.”

“I have to admit, I’m a little surprised to
find you on my ship,” said Calvin, now knowing who the mysterious
fourth patient was, the one he hadn’t been able to see.

“I’m as surprised as you are, Lt. Commander,”
said Nimoux with some difficulty. He was sitting up and looked
ready to begin unplugging himself from all the equipment and return
to duty. The only things stopping him were Calvin’s orders for him
to obey the doctors and a medic, who stood over him, attending to
his needs.

“Summers told me about the camp,” said
Calvin, thinking it eerie as hell that those replaced by replicants
had been incarcerated and eventually slaughtered, with only Nimoux
managing to escape.

Apparently, much had happened in his absence.
Not only was there a sizable hole on deck four, currently patched
but not repaired, but Captain Pellew had actually shot Nimoux
shortly before he, and all of his men but four, had been
slaughtered by a solo operative or else blown out into space. That
too had seemed like a shocking, almost unbelievable story, and had
there not been so much testimony and evidence to corroborate it,
Calvin wasn’t sure he would believe it.

“When Shen described what he saw on deck
four,” said Summers, bringing up another mystery to Calvin, just
how the hell had he survived such an experience? “You spoke in your
brief state of consciousness. It sounded like you could identify
the intruder. I must ask you, Captain, do you know who it was?”

Nimoux did not answer right away. He closed
his eyes, took a deep breath, and Calvin momentarily thought the
man had lost consciousness again. Just as he was about to hail the
attending medic, who was currently discussing something with Dr.
Andrews, Nimoux spoke.

“I cannot say I know who he was for sure,”
said Nimoux. “And if he was who I think he was, then that is very
surprising. Very surprising indeed.”

“Surprising why?” asked Summers. “You
described the man perfectly, according to Shen. To me, that says
your guess was correct.”

Nimoux took another deep breath. “I only made
my guess because I can think of no one else who could have
performed such a feat successfully. To defeat the entirety of this
ship’s soldiers, both mercenary and highly trained Special Forces,
and successfully steal the isotome weapon…I can only believe one
man is capable of such a thing.”

“Who was he?” asked Calvin. “Can you give us
a name?”

“I can,” said Nimoux. “But I believe more
explanation is necessary.”

“We’re all ears,” said Summers.

“Very well,” said Nimoux, letting out a sigh
and inhaling another deep breath. He closed his eyes again for a
moment, apparently in deep thought. As if lost in another time, or
another life. “You know how nobody has ever successfully entered
Polarian Forbidden Space and returned?”

“Yes,” said Calvin. Everybody knew that. What
lurked in that darkness was one of the galaxy’s greatest unsolved
mysteries.

“Well,” said Nimoux, “that’s not entirely
true.”

“What?!?” asked Summers and Calvin at the
same time.

“Once there was a mission, ten years ago,
with the specific intention of sending in a small expert team to
perform reconnaissance and report on what they found. The mission
was so top secret it was code Dark Black Black.”

“What does that mean?” asked Summers.

“It means, if anything happened to them, such
as getting captured, the Imperial government would deny all
knowledge of their existence and there would be no negotiation for
their return or any rescue mission. If you go Dark Black Black,
you’re on your own.”

“Exactly right,” said Nimoux. “The selection
process was also kept deeply under wraps. I’m not sure who made the
choices or how exactly they were made, but my name was one of the
ones that came up.”

“Are you telling me you’ve been inside
Polarian Forbidden Space?” asked Calvin, thinking Nimoux’s
knowledge, if so, would be a tremendously valuable resource for the
upcoming mission.

“No, I haven’t,” said Nimoux, to Calvin’s
dismay. “And I’ll get to that in a minute.”

“Anyway, I was selected for this mission,
along with a handful of other candidates. There were ten of us, but
they needed to weed us down to five. We didn’t know what the
mission was, or any of its details, as they put us through rigorous
trials of intelligence, physical stamina, and combat ability. Based
on the tests, I believe they recruited from the pool of those who
had experience in Special Forces and Intel Wing. But I never got
that confirmed.”

“So, did you make the final cut?” asked
Summers.

“Actually, no,” said Nimoux. “But it turned
out to be a very good thing.”

“Why is that?” asked Calvin.

“Because none of the five they sent ever made
it back. At least that we know of.”

“Okay…” said Calvin, “then how do you even
know that was what the mission was?”

“I pieced it together. One time I confronted
the selection officer, never did get her name, and asked her about
the inherent risks of such a mission and, in the likely case the
team was caught, how that might create a diplomatic incident.
Anyway, they denied everything I asked them, but I got scrubbed
from the mission, even though I tested in at number three. I took
that as confirmation of my suspicions.”

“So, this intruder, he was one of the ones
selected?” asked Summers.

“I believe so. If I’m right, he was the one
who tested into the number one spot,” said Nimoux. “His name was
Lucious ‘the Moth’ Black.”

“The Moth?” asked Calvin.

“Each member of the team had a moniker
assigned to them. His was ‘the Moth.’ I have to tell you, not only
did he test in at number one, none of the rest of us came in
anywhere near his results. I’ve never in my life, including all my
years in Special Forces, seen a person with greater tactical
awareness. Once we did a drill where numbers two through five went
against him in a mock battle, and he beat us. I was astounded.”

“So, based on his skill, you think he was the
one who defeated Pellew and all of Special Forces and the rest of
the garrison?” asked Calvin.

“I don’t know who else could have done
it.”

“What happened to the team?” asked Summers.
“You said nobody made it back.”

“No one is certain what happened to the team.
Once they got into Polarian Forbidden Space, they started sending
back some very strange reports. Not long after that, the second in
command sent back a mostly incoherent report and then complete
silence after that. All contact lost.”

“You say
mostly
incoherent,” said
Calvin. “What was the coherent part?”

“As near as we could tell, Lucious had turned
on his own allies and begun slaughtering the rest of the team. It
was classified as a murder-suicide with no survivors, and then
buried under so many layers of top secret classification no one
would ever find it.”

“So you think he didn’t commit suicide,” said
Calvin. “You believe he survived and, serving some kind of strange
agenda, boarded our ship, slaughtered our soldiers, and stole the
isotome weapon no one should have known was aboard the ship?” The
whole thing sounded a bit on the unlikely side to Calvin, but
Nimoux seemed convinced. And he wasn’t a person whose opinions
could be dismissed lightly.

“In essence, yes,” said Nimoux. “There was a
rumor among the other five of us, those who didn’t make the cut. We
theorized, based on another part of the message which may or may
not have been white noise, the Moth hadn’t gone insane so much as
he’d gone native. Somehow, he was pulled in by the Polarian
religion.”

“But humans aren’t allowed in the Polarian
religion,” said Summers. “Because we do not have souls, or
something to that effect.”

Calvin thought of what Rez’nac had said, how
there was a schism in the religion and apparently one sect wanted
to remain loyal to the traditional Essences, while the other wanted
to press some kind of monotheistic change. Perhaps Lucius
the
Moth
Black had been pulled in by the latter, though Calvin
couldn’t understand why.

“Is that what you believe happened?” asked
Calvin. “That he went native? That he found God among the Polarians
and that, somehow, meant he had to slaughter his team and vanish
off to who knows where?”

“I’m not sure what I believe,” said Nimoux.
“Not without more information. But it is a possibility.”

“If he stole our isotome weapon because of
some kind of religious zealotry,” said Calvin, “that means he’s
probably not working in concert with the Rahajiim, or the
Enclave.”

“True,” said Summers. “But if he’s
religiously committed to using the weapon, then there’s no telling
what he might do with it, or who he might hurt.”

“I agree with the Commander,” said Nimoux,
clenching in obvious pain. “In Lucious’s hands the isotome weapon
is a dangerous threat, at least as much as it would be had the
Enclave or the Rahajiim acquired it. If he took it, then I expect
him to use it. Though I cannot guess at where or why.”

Calvin considered that for a moment. He
decided he would have to ask Rez’nac who the enemies of the
Dark
Ones
were, aside from other Polarians, and which system they
would be likeliest to destroy if they acquired such a weapon.

“What do you suppose triggered him to snap
like that?” asked Summers. “Assuming your theory is correct.”

“I can’t feign the slightest hypothesis,”
said Nimoux. “Although, it is often said that not only is Polarian
Forbidden Space stranger than you dream, they also say it is
stranger than you
can
dream. If that’s true, then it could
have been anything. It might even be something that affects one or
more of us once we get there. Who can say for sure?”