The Phoenix Darkness (47 page)

“Just get back here,” said Raidan, his tone
filled with icy rage. He terminated the call, still unable to
believe the news he’d heard. Pellew and all his men, killed, by one
man! A man who then absconded with the last known isotome missile,
now leaving fifteen unaccounted for.
And we have exactly
none
.

That’s it then
, he thought.
There
goes our last hope of survival!

He snatched up the whiskey bottle and hurled
it against the bulkhead, spraying glass and whiskey everywhere in a
terrible smash. A flake of glass even bit into his arm, but Raidan
didn’t care.

Now there is
no
nuclear option,
no
threat of mutually assured destruction. Now the Rotham,
poisoned by the Rahajiim, can use their isotome weapons against us
undeterred!

And what are we doing to prepare for them?
We’re waging bloody civil war on ourselves! Even now the order had
been given for all ships loyal to the queen to assemble at waypoint
556.1. Preparations were being made by both sides to fight another
spectacularly costly battle, this time at Ophiuchus. Even Raidan
and his people had been called into action.

“Un-god-damned-believable!” he shouted, and
then flipped his cedar desk upside down in a rage.

It was at that precise moment Mira Pellew
entered. She gave him and the mess a once over. “Bad news, I take
it?”

Don’t look so happy
, he thought. “You
could say that,” said Raidan.

“Ah,” said Mira, then she looked him in the
eyes. “I suppose there is only one matter of recourse after this,
then…?”

“Yes, we’ll impose the bloody Forum,” he
said, his words still forceful and angry. “Direct all your people
accordingly!”

“And what of the queen’s order to gather at
minor star 566.1?”

“Ignore it.”

Mira smiled a dark smile. “Now this is the
Raidan I remember. It’s about time!” With that, she left, leaving
Raidan alone to think about what he’d just committed to do and how
he no longer had any choice. A firm hand was required, and all that
had been shown was a soft one. Even so, by imposing the Forum
together, that made his mutual cooperation with Mira one monumental
step less essential and brought them both one step closer to war.
Now their overlapping agendas only touched on a single point.

When the time comes, I’ll be ready
, he
promised himself.

***

By some miracle, the shuttle made it into
alteredspace…mostly. There were chunks missing from the aft armor
plating, and a piece of hull was gone on the starboard side,
fortunately not enough to cause a breach. Part of their
alteredspace drive was missing, forcing them into a very shallow
jump with no ability to go deeper. But they'd made it, all of them,
and nearly all the shuttle had avoided getting scrambled.

“That’s got to be one for the history books,”
said Calvin, staring happily out at the pure blackness in the
windows.

“My God, that was the craziest thing I have
ever witnessed,” said Rafael.

“I’m still shocked it worked,” said Calvin.
He must have timed it just perfectly. “I doubt even Sarah could've
made a jump like that.”

“Well, let’s not challenge her to give it a
try,” said Rafael.

“Check our scopes; make sure nothing is
following us,” said Calvin. The last thing he needed after that
miracle jump was for some faster ship to overtake them and force
them back into normal space.

“Scopes are empty,” said Rafael. “Just like
you’d hoped.”

Calvin wanted his alteredspace jump signature
to be partially inside the hangar of the supercruiser itself,
leaving the Rahajiim fleet with a very poor image of where the
shuttle had actually gone. Their entire escape depended upon it,
since the fleet had a great many interceptors, all of which could
easily have caught up to them by now if only they’d known the
coordinates.

“Rafael, if you’ll do the honors. I do
believe we have a message to transmit.”

“One step ahead of you, Calvin,” the one-eyed
man had already plugged the data disc into the shuttle’s computer
and, after entering the best encrypted channels available, began
transmitting their data to the
Nighthawk
, including their
intended destination and the strange zigzag pattern Calvin was
going to take to hopefully avoid the Rotham patrols.

“I trust I can leave you to handle things
here,” said Calvin, wanting to go check on his other
passengers.

“I’ve got it under control,” said Rafael.

“Oh, and use the medkit over there and do
something about that scratch of yours,” said Calvin. Rafael was
already intimidating enough to look at with the eye-patch, he
didn’t need blood coming out of his forehead, even if it had
clotted.

“Right. Thanks.” Rafael grabbed the
medkit.

“Don’t mention it.” Calvin exited the cockpit
and entered the main hold, where the crew remained strapped in
exactly as he’d left them.

“What’s it look like out there, Cal?” asked
Miles.

“Smooth sailing,” Calvin replied with a
smile. “We’re in alteredspace.”

“Already?” Miles sounded shocked. They all
looked a bit surprised. The lack of windows in the main hold meant
they hadn’t been clued in to the fact that the ship had jumped.

“Yes, already,” said Calvin.

“How many ships are pursuing us?” asked
Rez’nac. “And how long until they intercept us?”

“No ships. At least, none on our scopes. So
hopefully there won’t be an interception,” said Calvin.

“You outran the fleet?” Miles was
astonished.

“Well, yes and no,” said Calvin. “It’s a bit
nuanced; I’ll get into it later.” He decided not to alarm his crew
by telling them of the massive risk he'd taken to enable their
escape. “How about you, Rain; you holding up over there?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Congratulations on
getting us off that ship and away from the fleet. Although, I must
admit, I always believed you would do it somehow, one way or
another.”

“Thanks,” said Calvin, feeling a little
embarrassed. “But it was a team effort, really. The important thing
is we got out alive, in mostly one piece, and we got the
intelligence we came for. We’re transmitting it to the
Nighthawk
as we speak.”

“Huzzah,” said Miles, pumping a fist in the
air. For the first time in a while, he showed a glimmer of his
mirthful side. Calvin was glad to see it.

Calvin spent the better part of an hour with
his crewmates, talking to them, trying to help them decompress from
the stress of everything they’d just experienced. It helped him
too, if he was being honest. Eventually, though, he found himself
wandering back to the cockpit to take the pilot’s chair and peruse
some of the intelligence they’d collected.

Annoyingly, this shuttle didn’t have a proper
computer which could translate the Rotham files into human for him,
so he’d have to wait until he was on the
Nighthawk
to read
them properly. But he was able to click through the images, seeing
lots of faces and schematics, and even a few tactical maps.
Eventually, he found the map which showed the attack plan for
Thetican System where the Rahajiim were planning to strike first.
He couldn’t make much sense of the notations or any of the writing,
but he did understand the positions of the ships and what their
deployment pattern indicated.

“It looks like they intend to blitz Thetican
System,” said Calvin. “Their attack plan involves a tight,
fast-moving formation that expects to encounter planetary defenses
and local starships only.”

“That’s because they don’t know that we know
they're planning to attack there,” said Rafael.

“Which means,” said Calvin. “If the Imperial
ships are positioned correctly, an ambush could be set. That tight
formation, although fast, is vulnerable at the flanks.”

“I’ll be sure to send along your
recommendation when I transmit this data to the queen,” said
Rafael. Then he looked up. “You do want me to send all of this to
the queen, don’t you?”

“Yes, absolutely,” said Calvin. He looked
back at the intel and found himself thinking about what Rafael had
uncovered about this mysterious human even the Rahajiim had been
unable to identify. “Who do you think the mysterious human is?”
asked Calvin. “The one who seems to have frustrated the Rahajiim so
much.”

“Could be anybody, as far as I’m concerned,”
said Rafael. “Maybe it was Zane Martel. He seemed to have
connections with them, of a sort.”

“Maybe,” said Calvin, wondering. He had the
nagging suspicion that whoever it was, he was still out there,
alive, and still a potential danger. “Do you think it could be
White Rook?”

“Head of the Organization?” asked Rafael. He
considered it for a moment. “Might be. Though the Organization was
also so focused on the Phoenix Ring threat that they didn’t even
know about the Rahajiim until you discovered them.”

“Or so it seemed, anyway,” said Calvin. He
considered many other prospective candidates and dismissed them one
by one for various reasons. Raidan, Tristan, Queen Kalila, Caerwyn
Martel, Brinton Martel the elusive father of the notorious Martel
brothers, Admiral Harkov, Director Edwards, Lafayette Nimoux…nobody
seemed to fit the profile. More than likely it was someone else, he
concluded; someone new.

“Hey, take a look at this,” said Rafael.

Calvin turned his head to see what looked
like a star chart on Rafael’s screen. It showed a few stars, but
most of the chart was blank. Calvin recognized it after a few
seconds. He was looking at a picture of Polarian Forbidden Space, a
place so sacred to the Polarians, and so religiously defended, that
neither the Advent nor Intel Wing had successfully penetrated it.
Everyone pointed telescopes at it, and so they knew a little about
the stars and planets which were there, but the Polarians had used
technology of their own that interfered with the telescopes, so the
knowledge they did have was considered imperfect at best.

“Why do they have a star chart of the
Forbidden Space?” asked Calvin.

“Good question,” said Rafael. “But there is a
whole lot about it here. Not many specifics, I don’t think the
Rahajiim actually penetrated the Forbidden Space, but I believe
they made contact with somebody from there, somehow. There is an
enormous group of files that reference either the Forbidden Space,
the Dark Space, the Council of Prelains, and even the High Prelain
himself. And something else here called
The Dark Ones
.”

That name rang a bell for Calvin and he
suddenly remembered Rez’nac had referred to dark things hidden deep
in Polarian space, including the replicants which he had referred
to as the Faceless Ones.
Maybe he knows something
, thought
Calvin.

“Hey, Rez’nac!” shouted Calvin. “Get in
here.”

“And there are more references here that are
related,” said Rafael. “Something they used called Qi’laqin,
however you say it. At first I thought it was a person, but now I’m
getting the sense it is a thing, or a group of things.”

The name sounded familiar to Calvin, but he
wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it had been used in one of Rez’nac’s
ritual chants Calvin had witnessed.

Rez’nac arrived, seeming to loom tall over
Calvin’s shoulder. Calvin swiveled his chair to face him and,
feeling uncomfortable with the height difference, decided to stand
also.

“You summoned me,” said the Polarian
warrior.

“Yeah, I want your take on some of this
stuff,” said Calvin. “Rafael, show him the charts.”

Rafael showed him the star charts.

“I’m sorry,” said Rez’nac. “But I cannot
speak of such things.”

“I thought you had fallen out of Khalahar?”
said Calvin, not wanting to reopen a wound for Rez’nac, but rather
hoping to convince him to share what he knew.

“I am a fallen one, a dark one,” he said,
“that is true. But even in that state, there are secrets I must not
betray.”

“Dark one?” asked Calvin. “Rafael, bring that
up.” Rafael pulled up a series of documents. Unfortunately, they
were in Rotham and made as little sense to Rez’nac as they did to
Calvin, so Rafael tried to explain.

“Here, and in many other places, it talks a
great deal about something called
the Dark Ones
, what does
that mean?”

“I am forbidden to speak of it.”

“But you just a moment ago referred to
yourself as a dark one,” said Calvin. “So is that what
the Dark
Ones
means? Wayward Polarians who have lost their Essence?”

Rez’nac looked at him and did not reply for a
few seconds. Then he said simply, “No.”

“There’s a lot more here,” said Rafael.

“If you would forgive me,” said Rez’nac to
Calvin, bowing respectfully, “I wish not to speak of these
things.”

Calvin was frustrated, but tried to
understand. He wished he could talk some sense into Rez’nac and
make him realize that, Polarian religious values aside, his
knowledge could help crack these Rahajiim files and might end up
saving a great many thousands or millions of people. He was on the
cuff of granting Rez’nac permission to go when Rafael said
something which caught Rez’nac’s interest.

“Here, they’re talking about the High
Prelain.”

“The High Prelain?” asked Rez’nac. “What do
they say of him?”

“It’s a bit vague and muddled, mostly just a
few references, but he’s somehow instrumental to all of this,” said
Rafael. “On some level, he’s got to be involved.”

“The High Prelain, involved with the
Rahajiim?” asked Rez’nac, his voice sounding angry. “It is
blasphemy and lies!”

“Hey, easy there, I’m just the messenger,”
said Rafael. “There’s also talk about the Council of Prelains here
too. Someone had something to do with them.”

“I cannot believe such filth,” said
Rez’nac.