The Phoenix Darkness

by Richard L. Sanders

  “Will he recover?” asked Summers, point blank.

  “Hopefully, he will,” said Dr. Andrews, evasively. “But I can’t make any promises. The hemorrhaging is under control, but there are a lot of variables still to worry about.” He looked at her. “I’m sorry, Commander, I’m not trying to distress you…”

  He was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Summers looked behind her and was shocked to see Shen arrive, not looking very healthy. He seemed pale, like Nimoux, only he shivered and one of his arms and one of his legs seemed outrageously swollen. He leaned against one of two medics who, together, were helping to carry him in.

  “Oh, God, what now?” said Dr. Andrews as he rushed over. Two more medics joined him; it was clear he’d gotten his entire staff on alert. They began to do everything from putting a blanket around Shen to taking his temperature to a host of other things Summers could only guess at. She would have kept watching, but her attention immediately leapt to the presence of four Special Forces soldiers marching through the door. She felt her heart accelerate and she glanced around for anything, a scalpel, a chair, whatever she could use to resist and defend herself.

  But the soldiers did not look hostile. On the contrary, they entered with their hands over their heads. They wore climate gear, but had shed the helmets somewhere along the way, and though they had weapons strapped to them, none of the guns had a magazine loaded inside it. Summers recognized one of the men as Pellew’s right-hand man. She approached him.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked. Not quite sure where else to start.

  “Forgive us, Commander,” he said. “We only wanted to make sure this one,” he pointed at Shen, who’d been moved to an infirmary bed, “made it back in one piece.”

  “Does this,” she pointed at the man’s hands resting upon his head, “mean you soldiers surrender to the crew, and abandon your mutiny?”

  “It does, sir,” he said, sounding genuine. “To be honest, we were only following Pellew’s orders when we took the ship,” he looked ashamed for the hostility he'd so recently shown her, and no doubt expected her to punish him befittingly. Summers was just glad some of the soldiers seemed to have been persuaded into joining the crew’s side of the mutiny, and without violence to convince them. Maybe Cassidy’s announcement put the fear of God into them, she thought.

  “Do you speak for these, your men?” asked Summers, looking at the other three.

  “I do,” said the lead soldier. Summers looked at each of the others, clearly wanting to hear it from them. Each of them answered affirmatively.

  “Aye, he does.”

  “We surrender.”

  “I never wanted to be fighting y’all in the first place.”

  “Then I command you to put your weapons on the floor, as well as your magazines and any ammunition you have on your persons,” she said.

  They complied, laying their rifles and magazines on the ground of the infirmary. This action, more than anything they’d said, proved to her their motives were sincere. It filled her with an intense sense of relief.

  “What is your name?” she asked the lead soldier.

  “First Lieutenant Ferreiro, Commander,” said the lead soldier.

  “And your names?”

  “PFC Rodriguez, sir.”

  “Lance Corporal Ali, sir.”

  “Private Merrill, sir.”

  So one officer and three enlisted. By the look of them, not one had been a member of the Nighthawk’s original complement of Special Forces soldiers. These men were mercenaries taken aboard ship from the Harbinger itself. Sure they’d been drilled and trained by Pellew since then, but none had seen any real action except for possibly today. Would they be much use against the others? she wondered.

  “And what about the rest of your men?” she asked. Glancing toward the door. “Do you speak for them too? Or do they fight for Pellew?”

  “Pellew’s gone, Commander,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro.

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  “The rest of the men, they’re gone too,” he said. “We’re all that’s left.”

  “All that’s left of what?” Summers was baffled. Surely they didn’t mean they four were all that was left of a garrison of more than twenty soldiers.

  “Commander, Rodriguez and I left the Bridge and went to deck four to find Captain Pellew, like you suggested. Ali and Merrill did the same, except they left from Engineering. In teams of two we combed deck four, meeting up in the middle, nearly shooting our own comrades out of fear.” He spoke as if he’d seen a ghost. The others looked similarly somber and, almost reverent.

  “Fear of what?” asked Summers. Wanting to finally know just what the hell had gone on down there on deck four.

  “You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro.

  “I command you to tell me,” said Summers. Technically, she couldn’t give commands to the Special Forces garrison, but since they'd mutinied against her and now surrendered to her, she felt that gave her the authority to command them. If not as soldiers, then as prisoners.

  “We found some of our men there, dead, just floating in the null gravity,” said Rodriguez, when the First Lieutenant seemed momentarily unable to speak.

  “Signs of a battle,” said Summers, not terribly surprised. There had been an intruder, after all.

  “Not signs of a battle,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro. “Signs of a massacre! A bloody slaughter. Our men were like sheep in their white climate gear, suspended like that, hanging at all sorts of angles. Blood drops hung everywhere, whole clouds of them.” Summers could see some of the blood had stained the climate gear these men wore; she’d assumed they were from their own injuries, but now she thought the blood was from these so-called clouds.

  “And what of the enemy?” she asked. “Did you recognize their bodies? Were they human? Did you count the corpses?”

  “There was no enemy,” said Rodriguez, not making eye contact. He stared forward and downward, at the floor, as if seeing through it and reliving the experience. “All throughout the corridor our soldiers’ bodies, in bloody tatters, hung about like balloons. And nowhere to be found was a single enemy. Whatever they’d been…whoever they were, they’d been ready for us.”

  Summers felt an eerie chill snake up her spine and shuddered involuntarily. “Who could have done something like that?”

  “We have no idea,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro.

  “Well, what did the corpses look like?” asked Summers, grimacing at her own question. “Trajectory paths of bullets, slash marks from knives or claws…” she thought of Tristan. “Surely there must have been something.” The story reminded her of one Calvin had told her long ago, in the privacy of the CO’s office, about when his ship, the ISS Trinity, had allegedly been haunted by vampires. Strigoi, he had called them. But vampire-like beings seemed to defy physics; Calvin described them as horrifying monsters who slaughtered his crew and killed the love of his life. He’d been one of only a few to escape the nightmare. Had this been the same thing? she wondered. And, if so, had these soldiers been infected? Would they transform into terrifying monsters, or else into wretched, slowly dying corpses…

  “There wasn’t much to mistake it,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro. “They’d been shot and torn to pieces by some kind of high-power rifle.”

  “More like a dart gun,” said Ali. “I got a look at one of the projectiles, I would have brought it with us, but it was stuck in the wall.”

  “A dart that got lodged into the bulkhead?” asked Summers, disbelieving.

  “That’s right.”

  “No, surely it would have broken apart on impact, or else ricocheted like a bullet,” she shook her head.

  “I saw it with my own eyes,” said Ali. “And so did Merrill.”

  The one called Merrill, who seemed like the strong, silent type, only nodded. He too had difficulty making eye contact with Commander Summers. Whatever these men had seen, they we
re clearly traumatized. She didn’t doubt running into one's own companions’ corpses could do that to a person, but she also suspected maybe the time spent in the null gravity without any atmosphere had gotten to them. Perhaps something had affected them that their suits had proven insufficient to protect them from?

  “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 cas
ualties 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.