The Phoenix Conspiracy (24 page)

"The last thing we want to do is spook
Brimm Station by flashing our teeth. Now power down our weapons,
that's an order."

"Yes, sir," he didn't seem happy but
he complied.

“Jay, bring us out of alteredspace ten
million mc's from the planet. Cassidy, put us at alert condition
two, all hands standby." The trim woman at ops acknowledged him and
her lithe fingers fluttered over the controls. She was a quiet one
and since Calvin spent most of his time with White Shift—his senior
officers—he hadn't yet gauged her skill or picked up much about her
personality. He didn't know how far he could push her so he didn't
completely trust her yet and suspected she might not trust him
whole-heartedly either.

"Coming out of alteredspace... now,"
said Jay. The windows were still black except for the burning
yellow sun in the distance which obscured all the stars.
"Proceeding on direct course to the station at standard heading,
the planet should be visible soon."

"Display it," said Calvin. A projected
image of a simple blue and white planet appeared. It had very
little land and seemed almost completely oceanic. In a simple orbit
was a medium-sized station. If it was damaged from the Harbinger's
attack it didn't show it.

"Incoming message from Brimm
One.”

"Play it on the main speakers and
display visual if we're getting that feed."

The image of a middle-aged
blue-and-black uniformed man, with the sapphire emblem of full
Commodore, materialized on an alternate display. His light hair was
carefully styled and the room he was broadcasting from, a private
office, looked immaculately clean and organized.

"IWS Nighthawk, you're sure a sight
for sore eyes."

"I understand you've been having some
trouble here," said Calvin. "Any information you can give me will
help us greatly."

"We already transmitted our official
report to you, Intel Wing, and Fleet Command. But if you have some
questions, I'm happy to answer them."

"The Rotham ship," said Calvin. "Who
was on it?"

"I can't release that information, I'm
sorry..." he seemed to squint. "Lieutenant Commander."

"I understand," Calvin lied, still
thinking the treaty was stupid. "I hear the Harbinger stole some of
your data. It would help us immensely if we could analyze
it."

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant Commander, that
data is sensitive in nature and I'm not authorized to release
it."

“Who is?"

"I can't help you there
either."

Typical...
"You understand," said Calvin, "that the less
information we have, the less likely we are to track down the
Harbinger and prevent any future incidents. We also won’t be able
to return the abducted Rotham crew."

"I
can
tell you this, the information
taken from our computers is not relevant to where the Harbinger is
going. In fact, we can't seem to figure out how it could possibly
be valuable to those criminals at all. Shipping reports. Personnel
manifests. Personal logs. That sort of thing."

"If it's so trivial why can't you
release it?"

It's complicated and I'm not at
liberty to go into the details. Has to do with international
politics. But our sentry ships have studied the Harbinger's exit
signatures and know it is heading toward the Iota
System."

"I'll have to verify that escape
vector for myself.”

“I assure you it is
correct.”

Calvin smiled.
“Nevertheless.”

“Any other questions?"

"Yeah I have a few more. Your security
garrison consists of what, a few hundred marines and other
officers?"

"Six hundred and ten."

"How large was the party that boarded
your station?"

"About fifty men and
women."

"So if you knew the Harbinger was
headed for your station and about to board, why couldn't your men
contain them in the hangar platform? Clearly you have the
firepower."

"That was just it," the Commodore
looked embarrassed. "We sent all available units to hold off the
hangar platform but the Harbinger didn't dock with us in a
conventional way. It hooked itself to the port arm of our base,
near where our computer hard drives and main terminals are stored,
and more-or-less cut its way in. I've never seen anything like it
and somehow they managed not only to cut through the hull of our
station but they also sealed the hole to their jetways so their own
people could board without pressure suits.

Calvin did not find this surprising.
As an Intel Wing member he’d known about recent progress in
ship-to-ship breaching technologies.

The Commodore continued, "when they
cut the hole, we evacuated that deck, not knowing they would keep
everything from being blown out into space, letting them come
aboard unopposed at first. By the time we could scramble some teams
to engage them it was too little too late. They got what they
wanted and left. What's really strange is that they set up a
portable forcefield to keep our broken hull intact without losing
too much pressure or more than fifteen percent of our atmosphere on
that deck."

"So they didn't actually want to hurt
anyone or cause any permanent damage," said Calvin.

The Commodore frowned and said
nothing.

"How did the Harbinger get past your
shields?"

"They fired a barrage of high-impact
missiles. We fired back but a lot of our defense systems have been
undergoing maintenance this past week."

"I don't see any damage to your
station."

"They used pulsar
torpedoes."

“That’s a technology meant to disable
and not destroy,” said Calvin. “Almost like they meant you no
harm.”

"I wouldn't say that, they did injure
several of our people and three of ours are dead from the
encounter."

"I heard that was
friendly-fire."

"I admit," the Commodore paused for a
deep breath. "The circumstances of the soldiers’ deaths are unclear
and there have been accusations of friendly-fire, but nothing has
been confirmed officially. The report you're referring to is the
opinion of the commander on the ground and isn't necessarily
representative of our station's findings."

"I see," said Calvin. "And the
invaders used non-lethal weapons?"

"It appears that way, though three of
our soldiers did die."

"You said that already."

"Well, it looks like we're done here,"
the Commodore said.

"One more thing, sir," said Calvin.
"Can you transfer us the coordinates of the Rotham ship's
wreckage?"

"Our ships have already combed through
it trying to recover the cargo, and before you ask—no, I'm not
authorized to tell you what the cargo was. We recovered what we
could, the rest is debris. You won't find anything."

"So is that a yes you'll give us the
coordinates or a no I'll have to sweep the system for it
myself?"

"Yes, we'll send them over, but you're
wasting your time."

"Maybe, maybe not. Thanks for your
help, Commodore." Calvin nodded to Jay and he terminated the call.
"Set a course to those coordinates. Cassidy, get a deep scan
ready."

"Yes, sir."

"Why are we going there if it's just a
waste of our time?" asked Patrick. He turned the defense post's
chair to show his disapproval to Calvin face-to-face.

"Because we need to know what was on
that ship," said Calvin. "And our scanners are more precise than
anything they have on their system patrol craft. If they did miss
something, we might find it.”

"Shouldn't we be chasing after the
Harbinger?"

"It's got a four hour head start. Iota
is what, eleven hours from here?"

"Thirteen," said Jay.

Calvin continued. "Even at top speed
we couldn't overtake them. At best, we'd shave off two hours from
their head start. And if we did catch them what could we do? We
couldn't dream of taking on a dreadnought that many times our
size."

"Intel Wing seems to disagree,"
quipped Patrick.

"What are you talking
about?"

"I should have informed you
immediately, sir, I apologize.” Lieutenant Commander Rose said. "We
got the order a little while ago. If we find the Harbinger we're to
shoot it on sight. No waiting for reinforcements and no attempts to
contact it and bring it in peacefully. We're to send a report to
Intel Wing and Fleet Command and then engage the ship immediately.
Focusing on its alteredspace initiator engines."

So Princess Kalila had been right. The
Admirals had decided losing the Nighthawk was worth it if it meant
a shot at disabling the Harbinger. "If we find it we'll do what we
have to do," said Calvin, but he had no intention of attacking the
Harbinger. Suicide didn't sound very appealing. "But until then,
our first duty is to investigate and you'd do well to remember
that, Patrick," he eyed the young defense officer sternly. "So put
your trigger finger away and use your brain. If you were Raidan,
why would you attack a Rotham ship in Imperial space?"

Patrick shrugged. "Any number of
reasons. There's not enough information to make any kind of
informed conclusion, especially if you consider the fact that
Raidan's reasoning skills are probably not as good as my own. So
he's more likely to make irrational decisions, and irrational
decisions are the hardest to predict since they border on
randomness. Bottom line, I have no idea."

"Good, then you have something to keep
busy thinking about," said Calvin. "In the meantime, since I'm
awake anyway, I'll be in my office. Make sure you scan the debris
thoroughly, Cassidy," he pointed at her.

"Yes, sir."

***

When the bridge contacted him, saying
they'd found something, Calvin had them send a copy of the
information to his office. Buried deep in the Rotham ship's debris
were two things. A tiny datadisc and traces of Isotome—an extremely
rare, unstable compound found in only one place in the
galaxy.

Since he was no physicist, he would
let his lab ponder over the relevance of the Isotome while he
accessed the data from the disc on his computer. It was a recording
and he played it over and over.

"If you're hearing this message, then
you haven't disappointed me, Calvin Cross." It was a computer
generated voice, exactly like the one he’d heard in his quarters on
Praxis just before the trial.

“But I must warn you," it
went on. "If you come after me, as some hope you will …
They
will come after you.
And they will find you. They always do. If you're smart, you'll go
home now and live a long peaceful life. Because if you don’t, and
you see what I’ve seen… that’s one step too many. And there's no
going back from that. Believe me, I know."

It changed to a man’s voice
with flat intonation.
"I stop shiny
sunsets. I find pale blue lights, always."

The first part, the warning,
was bone-chilling. But didn't really tell him anything, except
someone—other than Raidan—wanted Calvin dead if he kept going.
Someone, Calvin assumed, who was connected to CERKO, and the attack
against him on Aleator. For all he knew he'd crossed that line
already, whatever it was. And, regardless of risk to himself, it
was more than just duty that drove him to keep pursuing Raidan; it
was who he was as a person. He
had
to know.

The second part of the message was
even more interesting than the first. Perhaps because it made no
immediate sense.

He took the clip of the man’s voice
and ran it through the database. He wasn't sure what the limits of
the software were but knew, sometimes, voice recognition was
possible. This man, who sounded vaguely like Raidan, had no
official match in the database. Or rather, fit a list of over three
hundred thousand potential matches. Calvin searched the results for
“Asari Raidan” and found him. He wasn’t the closest match but he
did make the list. The voice could belong to him. The computer
listed the probability at less than thirty percent but Calvin’s
intuition told him it was closer to a hundred.

“What are you trying to tell me,
Raidan?”

Calvin thought of the statement
itself, "I stop shiny sunsets. I find pale blue lights, always."
And tried to solve it like a riddle. "Something that stops sunsets
and sees pale blue lights..." He turned this over in his
mind.

The obvious answer seemed to
be
the
night
. It came when the sunset was
over, perhaps 'stopping it', and the "pale blue lights" could be
stars. Night from the point of view of a planet.

Or maybe it could be a moon. A moon
would stop the sunset briefly during a solar eclipse and it might
be a good vantage point for seeing stars, depending on its position
relative to the local sun... but that answer seemed even weaker
than the first. And it also depended on "pale blue lights" meaning
the stars, which was a weak supposition at best.