The Phoenix Darkness (21 page)

“Commander Presley,” said Nimoux at last,
deciding to break the silence.

“Yes, Captain?”

Currently there were no soldiers awkwardly
stationed on the Bridge, they were all with Pellew for the boarding
operation, so Nimoux knew this might be his only opportunity to
speak freely on the subject. “Might I trouble you with a
question?”

“By all means, Captain.”

“It’s about Captain Pellew,” said Nimoux.

“What about him? If it’s about his rude
behavior toward you, I intend to speak with him about that. He’s a
representative of the command staff of this ship and ought to
conduct himself…”

“No, it isn’t that,” said Nimoux, truthfully.
He’d long accepted the fact of his imperfection and, more to the
point, the reality that while some would inevitably gravitate
toward him and respect him, others, perhaps just as many, would
resent and criticize him for equally the same reason. People were
different, and differences brewed distrust and, more often than
ought to be, distrust and fear.

“In that case, I’m all ears.” Summers looked
intrigued and, for a moment, Nimoux almost regretted bringing it
up. Surely the Commander had far too many important things to
concentrate upon at the moment and now was hardly the ideal time to
distract her with some new concern, particularly one which was
essentially unfounded. But, because he’d gone this far, and the
Commander’s unusually attractive face seemed so inquisitive, Nimoux
continued.

“I find myself too curious not to ask,” he
said. “And forgive me if this is an inappropriate question, but…how
much do you trust Captain Pellew?”

Summers’ eyes widened and then she seemed to
really give the inquiry serious thought. It was another fifteen
seconds before she even attempted a reply. “Well,” she said, “I
suppose it’s like this. I find Mr. Pellew, as a man, to be
unlikable. No, it’s worse than that. I find him to be contemptable.
But as an officer in performance of his duties, protocols and
niceties aside, he has proven himself to be both a capable soldier
and an efficient ally.” She looked satisfied with her response, but
Nimoux found it lacking.

“With respect, Commander, I don’t believe you
answered my question.”

Summers blinked and Nimoux could tell she
wanted to protest, to claim she had answered his question, but at
the same time realized she, in fact, had not. “Why don’t I answer
your question with a question first?” she said.

“Ask away, Commander.”

“Why are you asking me this? Has Pellew done
something, or said something, which has given you cause to doubt
his loyalty? Because if so, that is something I need to know about
right away.”

“No, Commander, nothing concrete. More of
an…
intuition
. I find myself having a difficult time trusting
the man and wondered what caused you to trust him, if in fact you
do.”

“I don’t know how or why I trust him,” said
Summers, seeming surprised by her own admission. “We sort of
inherited Pellew as Special Forces commander when Major Jenkins was
killed in action. Since then, Pellew has done the job, mostly, I
suppose, because Calvin retained his services. And, although Calvin
has more than once taken issue with Pellew’s methods, there has yet
to be a time when the man hasn’t gotten the job done we
needed.”

“I see,” said Nimoux, believing he understood
better now, but still feeling strongly that Pellew was a liability
to the integrity of their cause, if not an outright danger. But
with nothing to substantiate it, and this being a less than ideal
time to have the discussion, Nimoux decided to shelve the
matter.

***

When the hatch had blown and his men stormed
the
Duchess
, Pellew had expected little resistance. Nothing
his teams couldn’t handle, in fact nothing that would give his
teams any meaningful trouble, but still he’d expected
some
resistance.

Instead what they’d found were a number of
empty decks and no organized resistance awaiting them whatsoever,
so his soldiers cleared the decks and the rooms, one by one,
swiftly.

“ODB, keep your eyes peeled for an ambush,”
he said over the radio. Pellew himself commanded ODA and together
the joint force, although consisting mostly of half-trained
mercenaries rather than proper Special Forces soldiers, managed to
capture section after section of the ship with the discipline of an
invading army.

And yet still no resistance.

It wasn’t until Pellew’s team reached the top
of deck, with only ladders leading to platforms above, that the
first evidence of arms fire could be heard. It came from directly
above and so Pellew ordered his men into positions of cover until
he could ascertain the enemy’s position, then decide on the best
angle of attack.

“Gunfire on the uppermost deck, forward
section,” he radioed to ODB. “See if you can get around behind and
flank them.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” came the reply.

But as Pellew listened closely to the sounds
of the gunfire, trying to pinpoint where they originated and which
ladders were under threat of fire, he got the distinct and
confusing impression that the gunfire was localized to the upper
platforms alone, with none of it concentrated on the invasion force
below. Either the enemy was firing randomly, perhaps thinking to
scare the invaders, or else…

They’re fighting among themselves
,
Pellew realized, as he heard the thud of a body drop on the
platform above. This left him with two choices: wait it out letting
his enemies kill themselves and spare any risk to his own men, or
else storm them suddenly, from all sides, and overwhelm them in a
blitz of unexpected firepower which clearly they were unprepared
for.

Being an impatient man, Pellew chose the
latter and relayed his instructions accordingly.

“Move, move, move!” he ordered over the
radio. His men immediately sprinted up the ladders, rifles on their
backs and sidearms in hand, so they’d be ready to fight the instant
they got to the top. Pellew joined them.

He was fourth up the ladder on his side but,
by the time he reached the Bridge, the fight was already over. His
men had made short work of the survivors, killing everyone they
found like he’d ordered, but the majority of the casualties
suffered by the crew of the
Duchess
had clearly been
self-inflicted. And not in a pact of desperate suicide, either.
They hadn’t swallowed their own bullets out of fear they’d be
captured or killed by the Imperial soldiers they knew were coming.
Oh, no, what they’d chosen to do with their precious little time
and weapons had been to slaughter each other.

Pellew stepped over the corpses; a crewman
who’d been shot in the head, another that’d taken double-barrel
buckshot to the chest, not pretty. Even the captain himself,
Zander, was lying in a pool of his own blood. Only his corpse
showed several lacerations and stab wounds rather than any obvious
ballistic entry wounds. Next to him were the shot-up remains of
what had once been a strikingly beautiful, curvaceous, dark-skinned
woman. She’d taken a nine-millimeter to the head, which rather
negatively affected her sex appeal, but her dead fingers were still
wrapped around a bloodied knife which, clearly, had been Zander’s
demise.

“Unbelievable,” said Pellew, taking in the
scene in its entirety. Clearly the crew and its captain had its
issues of discipline problems, but for them to come to a head in
such a way, under such circumstances, was unlike anything Pellew
had ever seen before. And he’d seen his share of the brutal and
gruesome, the worst of which, until now, had been the time he’d led
a team to storm a wanted criminal freighter and gone aboard only to
find the ship's only occupants, a family of seven including
children, had shot themselves, preferring death to capture. That
was an image that’d stuck with him for a while, mostly because he’d
been a rookie then, but this, this was mayhem of a sort he’d never
heard of before. And, despite the mutilated corpses soaking in
puddles of their own blood and the general gruesomeness of the
scene, he couldn’t help but let out a laugh.

“Looks like they did themselves in, sir,”
said First Lieutenant Ferreiro.

“You can say that again,” said Pellew, gently
nudging Zander’s head with his boot. Making certain the curiosity
before him was, in fact, dead.

“What are your orders now, sir?” asked
Ferreiro. “Shall we contact the
Nighthawk
, inform them of
our successful capture?”

“Not yet,” said Pellew. “Instead, I want you
to put an extra bullet into each one of these,” he glanced around
at the many corpses. “Just to make certain none of them surprises
us from behind a few minutes from now.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. First Lieutenant
Ferreiro had come aboard the
Nighthawk
along with the other
mercenaries, but quickly proven himself to be the exception. Not
only could Pellew trust him to perform whatever duty he asked of
him, Ferreiro also showed quick mastery at skill of arms, had a
natural instinct for tactical awareness, and shown himself to be a
natural leader, proving to be a great help to Pellew in keeping the
other, surlier mercenaries in line. And together, they’d turned the
disorganized rabble into a relatively streamlined fighting unit.
And so Pellew had awarded Ferreiro with the rank of First
Lieutenant and given him command of ODB, keeping ODA, and the
overall command, for himself.

“As for me, I’m going to go blow open the
main cargo hold,” said Pellew. “Let’s get a count of those
weapons.”

“Be careful, sir, there might be an ambush of
them waiting for you in there,” said Ferreiro.

Pellew looked back down at the self-imposed
slaughter of the
Duchess
’s crew and smirked. “Somehow, I
doubt it.”

“
Still
…” said Ferreiro.

“Don’t worry, I’m taking ODA with me.”

Pellew left the upper platforms of the Bridge
and headed for the cargo bay, the doors of which his team had
spotted on the way in on deck one, conveniently not far from the
main hatch. He radioed his team to meet him there and, by the time
he arrived, several soldiers were waiting, including the staff
sergeant who'd been tasked with carrying the explosive charges.

“Plastique along the edges, the frame, and
the center,” commanded Pellew, and his men set the explosive goop
just as he instructed. “Not too much, we want to blow the door, but
not damage anything on the other side. Better too little than too
much.”

When the plastique was set, he ordered his
team safely around the corner and then lit the charges himself. He
gave himself a fuse of twelve inches and found it more than enough
to get to safety himself and then wait, somewhat impatiently, for
the door to finally go. After a moment, it did. There was a loud
bang followed by the sounds of metal shrapnel soaring into the
bulkhead and clattering against the floor.

“Okay, let’s move,” said Pellew. He led the
team, weapons drawn in case Ferreiro had been right and an ambush
did await them, then stepped through the smoke and into the cargo
hold. What he saw surprised him.

There was no ambush, no surprise there, and
the hold was large enough to easily hold all fifteen at large
isotome missiles, but instead of isotome missiles, they found a
whole lot of nothing. Just empty space and some indications, like
scratches on the floor and some dried-up fluid, that the other
isotome weapons had been here, and recently, but were gone now.

The only consolation was the existence of one
isotome missile, the one the
Duchess
had plucked from empty
space not long ago.

“Shall we set the charge and radio the
Nighthawk
? Let them know we only found one weapon?” asked
Ferreiro, who only now was catching up to them, along with his
soldiers from ODB.

“No,” said Pellew, looking at the missile. It
was a thing of beauty in its own way. It wasn’t conventionally
beautiful, wasn’t sleek nor did it have a mirror-shine or elegant
curves, or any comely designs. If anything, it was a boxy,
dirty-looking thing. But for all the potential it carried, as a
weapon and a deterrent, and as the one thing in the galaxy which
could somehow disrupt the stars themselves…stars that burned like
great glowing gods, conceited and untouchable, scattered throughout
the cosmos, and yet this tiny thing held the secret to their
undoing. It reminded Pellew of an ancient myth he’d learned as a
school child, of a sword so sharp it could cut the skin of an
immortal titan.
This
was the living embodiment of that
sword.

“What would you have us do, sir?” asked
Ferreiro.

“We’re bringing it aboard the ship. Tell the
Nighthawk
nothing for now. ODA, help me carry this through
the hatch and inside the
Nighthawk
. ODB, use the charges and
set them throughout the ship on a timer.”

“Yes, sir,” his men replied. ODB went about
setting charges in the ship’s most vulnerable areas, such as
Engineering. ODA managed to carry the heavy missile through the
blown cargo hold door and up and through the
Nighthawk
’s
hatch on deck four, the one Pellew had deliberately chosen to use
for the assault because it was actually large enough to stuff the
missile through it, albeit barely.

Once they got the thing onto the floor of the
corridor of the
Nighthawk
’s deck four, his men wanted to
know where they were ultimately supposed to lug it. Pellew knew
there was no way he could get it in the elevator and down the
ladders to secure it in SFHQ on deck one, so the weapon would have
to remain here on deck four. Since Commander Presley herself had
quarters on this deck, along with a few other officers, although
not many, and the forward section boasted the observation deck,
which was a reasonably popular place for crewmen to visit, that
left only the aft section of the deck for hiding the weapon.