The Phoenix Project (30 page)

    
“Holy!”

    
“Same to you,” he said, wide eyed.

    
“You look so different!”

    
“So do you!”

    
“I know I look disconcerting,” she said.

    
“I bet I do too.”

    
“No, you look handsome.”

    
“You look so alien,” he replied.

    
“Like a Ferine?”

    
“No, exotic.”

    
“Well, thank—you,” she said with a hint of
modesty.

    
“How do you conceal yourself in the fleet?”
he asked while he chewed on a piece of roast beef.

    
“Probably the same as you do. Some of my
history was manufactured and I wear the contacts.”

    
“But you would have a great deal of contact
with MERA. Wouldn’t that arouse suspicion?” he asked.

    
“I started at the academy and had little
contact with MERA officially. I conveniently became an adjutant to a MERA
government official when I graduated. After that, my frequent communication
with them was easily understandable to everyone. You?”

    
“Pretty different for me. I had the same
experience with the academy, but was supposedly very “religious”. So I was in
contact with them twice or even three times a week as part of the congregation
and received my lessons then. To distance myself and give my independence more
credence, I “left” the congregation over a decade ago. The Cooperative contacts
me occasionally in repeated attempts to repatriate me.”

    
“That’s when they give you orders?” she
asked.

    
“We’re more decentralized than that. I’m
updated with current news. Occasionally, they’ll request that I look into
something.”

    
“What if you refuse a request? What do they
do then?” Nadine asked.

    
“Everything they have ever requested has
been reasonable. I’m usually curious enough about the situation that I’d look
into it anyway.”

    
“Even if they hadn’t asked?”

    
“Not always. If I were to refuse, I imagine
they’d make a lot less requests of me. I want to do it though, why? Can you
refuse an order from MERA?”

    
“I could.”

    
“But?”

    
“I wouldn’t go over well,” Nadine replied.

    
“How so?”

    
“It just wouldn’t. Let’s change the
subject,” she said.

    
“Okay. How do you feel showing your real appearance
to a Defensive?” he asked and sipped at his brandy.

    
“Oddly at ease, I feel like I’m not hiding
myself from the enemy,” she said and sputtered at her slip of the tongue. “I
didn’t mean—”

    
“No,” Elliot chuckled, “we have been
enemies for a long time. You were just speaking the truth.”

    
“I hope that we can change that,” she said
while she ate the last bite of her meal.

    
“I hope to see you more often. More
brandy?”

    
“Sure,” she said and pushed her empty glass
towards the bottle.

    
Maria sat on the witness stand, boiling
from the heat of the day and cross—examination. After two days of establishing
events leading up to the trial, they had finally put her on the stand this
morning. Her single eye glowered at the prosecution attorney.

    
“You did give the order to take your ship
into enemy lines?”

    
“Yes,” she replied as the courtroom lights
glittered off of her face plate.

    
“Could you have won the battle by means
other than to plunge the aforementioned
Excalibur
into danger?”

    
“I doubt it.”

    
“Please answer the question: Yes or no? Was
it possible?”

    
“Yes, but,”

    
“Thank—you. Now your plan of action was to
charge enemy lines and destroy the three Coalition carriers before they could
launch their full compliments of fighters, correct?” he asked. His short dirty
blond hair looked as though it had been plastered to his head.

    
“That’s correct.”

    
“Tell me, did you think of escape for your
ship and crew? Was that part of you plan?”

    
“Of course, all carriers have weaker
shields that can be penetrated from a moderate distance with our primary
cannons. Once that was accomplished, we would turn and head back to our lines.”

    
“Couldn’t you have fired from behind our
lines?”

    
“Yes but,”

    
“Thank—you. Now,”

    
“Objection: Calls for speculation!” her
attorney interrupted. “Commander Myers is well aware of a plasma cannon’s
maximum effective range.”

    
“Sustained,” the judge said.

    
“Fine. Admiral Peterson, how confident were
you that you would make it back to our lines if your plan succeeded?”

    
“Very confident.”

    
“You were one hundred percent sure?”

    
“Of course not, there aren’t any guarantees
in matters like this,” she replied.

    
“Then why take your ship in?”

    
“Nothing can be certain, Commander, as you
would know if you were ever on the field of battle. There is always some risk
involved,” she replied.

    
“Clearly more than you realized.”

    
“Objection: Argumentative!” her lawyer
said.

    
“Withdrawn. Admiral Peterson, once you
engaged the fleet, you used a torpedo spread from supporting ships to mask your
approach?”

    
“That’s correct,” she replied.

    
“Why not use them again to cover you on the
way back?”

    
“By then, I was beyond their range.”

    
“Yes, why did you go beyond their range?” the
prosecution asked.

    
“We were unable to destroy the third
target,” she replied.

    
“And why is that?”

    
“A frigate managed to intercept the shot.”

    
“What exactly was your order at that time?”

    
“I ordered my weapon’s officer to divert
all remaining power to the shields and set weapons to automatic.”

    
“And then?”

    
“I gave the order to abandon ship,” she replied.

    
“Because you knew that the ship would not
make it back to our lines.”

    
“Yes, I would not sacrifice my crew,” Maria
said.

    
“Very courageous.”

    
“Objection: Badgering!” her lawyer
exclaimed.

    
“Sustained. Commander Myers, please keep to
the facts,” the white haired judge ruled.

    
“Yes, Sir. Once your crew left the ship,
what did you do?”

    
“I took the helm.”

    
“You set a course for where?” Myers asked.

    
“I set a course for the carrier but the
course would not lock. I had to guide her in manually.”

    
“You had already decided to ram the ship?”

    
“Yes.”

    
“Why?”

    
“As I said before, there was no other way,”
Maria replied.

    
“What about the primaries?”

    
“They had another four minutes before they
recharged.”

    
“Why not wait?”

    
“The rest of their fleet was already
closing in to block our target.”

    
“You could have taken your ship in and used
secondary weapons. Simulations have shown the last carrier’s shields would have
failed in less than two minutes,” Myers said.

    
“Too long. The
Excalibur
was already
taking heavy damage.”

    
“Of course. What did you do next?” Myers
asked.

    
“Once the computer could auto—navigate, I
took the emergency escape pod in the command chair.”

    
“Doesn’t the captain go down with the
ship?”

    
“That axiom hasn’t been observed in
centuries,” she said.

    
“Not a traditionalist, Admiral?”

    
“That depends on your terminology,” she
replied.

    
“Your plan was, forgive me, untraditional.”

    
“That’s why it worked.”

    
“Why wouldn’t a more conventional battle
strategy have worked?”

    
“They planned to surround us using a very
old battle plan,” she replied.

    
“Why not just take the bait?”

    
“I wanted to win the battle, not lose it.”

    
“Oh? Holding back and not falling for the
ruse you so easily saw would have lost you the battle?”

    
“Not necessarily, but knowing their trap,”

    
“Thank—you Admiral,” he said and crossed
back to his table.

    
“I’m not finished.”

    
“Yes, you are.” He fiddled with a few links
lying there before he continued. “Did you consider other ways of approaching
this conflict?”

    
“No. Any other decision would have lost the
battle,” she replied.

    
“One hundred percent sure?”

    
“No, of course not.”

    
“Admiral, you used the command capsule to
escape. There was a small chance the automatic navigation may have failed,” Myers
said.

    
“A miniscule chance,” Maria admitted.

    
“But there was a chance. Nothing is one
hundred percent sure, you have said so yourself.”

    
“I believed the chances were negligible.”

    
“So you abandoned the ship with your crew?”

    
“Yes,” Maria replied.

    
“Why not be a martyr? By prematurely
abandoning your ship, you ensured you could bask in everyone’s adulation.”

    
“Objection: Argumentative!” her lawyer
exclaimed.

    
“I did not prematurely abandon my ship!”
Maria replied. “I have the scars to prove it.”

    
“All the better. You have the battle trophies
to show your colleagues.”

    
“Objection: Badgering!”

    
“That’s enough, Commander,” the judge said.

    
Commander Myers smiled briefly at Maria and
returned to his seat. “I have no further questions for this witness, but I
would like to reserve the right to recall her.”

    
“Granted.”

    
“Redirect, Your Honor?” her lawyer asked, rising
from his chair.

    
“Objection!” the prosecutor exclaimed.

    
“It is permitted.”

    
“I decide whether or not it’s permitted,”
the judge said.

    
“Yes, Your Honor.”

    
“Go ahead Commander Dixon, but remember that
you have your limits.”

    
“Would you say you were desperate to win
the battle when the enemy frigate intercepted the shot?” Dixon asked Maria.

    
“No, I wanted to ensure the safety of our
forces.”

    
“When you made the decision to cross into
enemy lines, was that a snap decision?”

    
“No,” she replied.