The Phoenix Conspiracy (31 page)

"But the Andromeda is more
maneuverable."

Miles laughed. "Bah, who needs that?
The Harbinger’s weapons are still deadlier even if it can’t get in
a full broadside."

Sarah threw up her hands in a gesture
of apathy. "Well whatever."

"Once again we're wasting
our time," said Summers. She looked at Calvin as if to say
handle this
.

“Speaking of delays,” he said. “The
Harbinger was also later arriving at Aleator than we’d expected.
Sarah, I asked you to look into that. Could the Harbinger have
rendezvoused with someone during that time?”

“If it did,” said Sarah. “It met with
an unregistered ship. There are no stations close enough for him to
have stopped at—and no one reported seeing the Harbinger—and as for
ships… there was one semi-promising lead but it didn’t pan
out.”

“Why not?”

“The Liberty Sun was flying by at
about that time, it’s an old frigate the Sixth Fleet
decommissioned, disarmed, and sold to a human shipping
company.”

“A civilian corporation owns a
warship?” asked Miles.

“What used to be a warship,” said
Sarah.

“Who knows how it’s outfitted now,”
said Miles. “It could still be a warship, illegally I
mean.”

“Anyway,” said Sarah. “The company
that purchased it is owned by MXR.”

“That does sound promising,” said
Calvin. Their web of mysteries seemed to be getting even more
tangled.

“But there’s no way the
Liberty Sun could have met up with the Harbinger. Because while the
Harbinger was late getting to Aleator, as we know, the Liberty Sun
was
not
late
getting to its destination.”

“Maybe the records were forged to make
it look like it had arrived on time,” said Calvin.

“Except that it was visually accounted
for,” said Sarah.

“I see…” Suddenly what sounded very
promising seemed almost worthless. “I guess we’re back to the
working theory that Raidan was trying to conform to someone’s
schedule and arrived at Aleator at a pre-determined time. One that
gave him enough of a window to make sure he wouldn’t be
late.”

“There was one other thing I
discovered,” said Shen. “It’s not conclusive but I think it’s
important.”

“Yes?” asked Calvin.

“According to flight data we got from
Brimm, the ships Raidan attacked—all of them—were scheduled to pass
through the same point at nearly the same time."

Calvin became excited. "Where's the
bullseye?"

"Abia System."

Calvin had never heard of it. "What's
in Abia?"

"Seemingly... nothing. A small
outpost, more of a supply depot than anything else, fifteen people
staff it. There’s also a dwarf planet that’s too cold to colonize.
I don’t know why anyone would want to go there, but that’s the
place.”

“Maybe because it’s somewhere deep in
the Empire that nobody would be watching,” suggested
Calvin.

Summers was obviously getting bored
with this conversation. "How's the scan of the system coming?" she
asked, now hovering over Shen's console. "Have we isolated the
Harbinger's heading yet?"

“I’ll check the computer,” he
replied.

"I don't think it'll matter," said
Calvin while Shen analyzed the ship's findings. "I know where the
Harbinger is going."

Summers raised an eyebrow.
"
Where
?"

The fact that she
asked
where
before
how
told Calvin she was more interested in finding Raidan than
anything else. "He's heading for Abia System,
obviously."

"What?” Because the rotham ships were
passing by there? That’s ridiculous.”

“And,” interjected Sarah. “I just
realized something. Aleator, Brimm, Iota, Abia… think about
it!”

“What?” asked Summers, now looking as
much baffled as she was annoyed.

“See it?” asked Sarah. “Raidan went to
Aleator, Brimm, and Iota in that order. If he goes to Abia next
that completes the pattern.”

“Abia,” said Calvin.

“What are you talking about?” asked
Summers.

“Ah
,” said Shen, now getting it. “The first letter of each place,
it spells out Abia.”

Summers rounded on Calvin.
"
This
is the work
of Intel Wing?"

He shrugged. “It’s a clever discovery.
But more important is the fact that those ships were scheduled to
pass through that system. That alone is worth checking
out.”

“No it isn’t.” Summers folded her
arms. “Just because ships Raidan attacked we going by Abia doesn’t
mean that Raidan is going there.”

She was right. But he still wanted to
investigate Abia and that meant convincing Summers the Harbinger
would be there. And for all he knew, maybe it would.

"I've found their heading," said Shen.
"Zendricun Alpha."

Damn!

"
See
," said Summers. "Not Abia. Now we
know where to go. Would you do the honors or shall I?"

Calvin knew what she meant. She wanted
him to order a new heading and leave right away. The problem was
Zendricun was more than a day's flight in the wrong
direction.

"Not yet," he said. "I haven't checked
the status of the below deck teams and the ship as a whole." This
was true, he wanted some updates on cracking the coded message
Raidan had given him, and he wondered if they'd gotten anything
else useful from the mountain of data they'd stolen from Brimm. It
would buy him a little more time to think of a compelling reason to
go to Abia.

"We can do that on the way," said
Summers.

Miles apparently decided it
was his turn to speak. "Part of me wants to agree with you,
bosslady," he said. "We're still owed a shore leave and hitting up
Zendricun sounds pretty nice. Beaches, booze, babes in
bikinis...
but
since the idea is coming from you, I have to disagree with you
on principle," he smiled. "You understand?"

"Excuse me?” asked Summers, she
shifted her attention.

Miles looked her up and down.
"Although, speaking of bikinis, you should consider wearing one. It
might be enough to um... sway me to your side."

As Summers began berating Miles,
Calvin took the opportunity to check in with the lower decks.
"Please give me some good news," he said as much to himself as he
did to the comm. He imagined the junior officers below scrambling
to get their notes together to make a proper report.

"We came up with a few
possible answers to the coded text message you sent us." Calvin
remembered it verbatim.
I stop shiny
sunsets. I find pale blue lights, always
.
“But I wanted to do a complete analysis before
reporting.”

"What's the best candidate?" asked
Calvin. He'd hoped a single solution would be ultimate and
convincing, but he'd take what he could get. Maybe the fact that
multiple solutions seemed possible meant it hadn't been a coded
message after all. Or maybe they needed a better cipher.

"The best we’ve come up with so far is
this. Starting on the top line, if you take the first letter of the
first word, then the second letter of the second word, then the
third letter of the third word, and the fourth of the last word you
get; I.T.I.S."

"Okay..,” said Calvin. "Itis..." it
didn't ring a bell.

"But," said the officer over
the comm. "Continuing that pattern through the whole clue doesn't
go anywhere. You get words without enough letters, and if you skip
over those the result is just garbage.
But
if you reverse the pattern for
the second line, take the last letter of the first word, then the
second to last for the second word and so on, the complete clue is;
I.T.I.S.I.N.A.B.I.A."

Calvin saw the answer right
away.

"It is in Abia," he said.

"It's a really simple cipher, but
that's the most coherent, strongest solution we’ve
found."

Perfect.

"Thanks," said Calvin. "Keep working
on it, but I think that's the one."

"Yes, sir."

He closed the channel and looked at
Summers with a broad smile. Apparently she'd finished berating
Miles who was looking the other way. "Did you hear that?" he
asked.

"What?"

"The coded message says 'It is in
Abia."

"The riddle we found in that
debris?"

"Yes. We cracked it and that's what it
says."

Summers looked skeptical.

"It's true," said Shen, "they just
forwarded me their report."

"So then you agree we have to go to
Abia," said Calvin.

"No," said Summers.

He was afraid of that. "Why
not?"

"Several reasons: one, our mission
isn't to follow clues; our mission is to hunt down Raidan. And we
know where he's headed. Zendricun Alpha. Abia is in the wrong
direction. Two, that answer might not be the solution to the code.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Three, the code might be a ploy by
Raidan to throw us off his trail."

"I honestly think," said Calvin, "that
this is Raidan's way of reaching out to us. The messages he's sent,
his warning, the code. He wanted us to board that ship…"

"Which would have only served to delay
us even more, and maybe even provoke the war with the Rotham
Republic that he seems to want." .

"Or maybe he's onto something big and,
for whatever reason, he can't tell us what he knows directly. He's
giving us hints to push us in the right direction of discovering it
on our own."

"Or maybe," said Summers. "We have
orders from every admiral in the military and every controller at
Intel Wing to track down Raidan and try to disable his ship for
capture. Is that what this is about, Calvin? You're afraid to take
on the Harbinger directly?"

"There's nothing wrong with a little
fear. Nature gave it to us to keep us alive," said Calvin. "But no,
that isn't what this is about. This is about getting to the bottom
of it and finding the answers to everything. It's who I am and what
I do."

"What you're
supposed
to do is follow
orders, and our orders couldn't be clearer," she said, her tone
hardened but her face relaxed to an icy cool. She didn’t want to be
provoked into showing anything but pure, rational objectivity but
Calvin knew better. She wasn't just a zealous officer trying to
follow orders; she had some kind of vendetta against Raidan. It
showed ever so slightly in her shimmering beautiful
eyes.

"It's funny you mention orders," said
Calvin. "Because, last I checked, I give the orders around here."
Before she could retort he turned to Sarah. "Set course for Abia,
fastest safe speed. Let's get to the bottom of this." He was
certain they'd find something in Abia and that whatever it was
would be worth letting go of Raidan to find.

"Yes, sir," said Sarah and she set to
task.

"You're right, I spoke out of line,"
said Summers. Her voice had calmed but her eyes hadn't. "It's my
duty to follow orders, just like it's my duty to send a report to
the Fleet."

"Tattle-tale, tattle-tale..." Miles
whispered just loud enough to be heard.

"You go ahead and send your
report," said Calvin. "In fact, it's time I sent one of my own."
They stared at each other for a few seconds, neither wanting to
blink or back down. Eventually, though, Calvin stormed off toward
his office to organize his thoughts. "I'll be doing that now. You
have the deck,
Commander
."

Chapter 20

Calvin stewed quietly, tapping his
fingers against his desk over and over. He thought about turning on
some music but decided it'd be too distracting. Instead, he sat
there in silence, head buzzing while he debated what to
do.

The ship was heading toward
Abia; he felt good about that decision.
It
, something, was in Abia. And he
wanted to know what
it
was before
it
left, whatever the consequences were.

Raidan had made it clear as
crystal that he wanted Calvin to go there, for whatever reason.
Probably to see something important. And Calvin wasn't about to let
that opportunity slip through his fingers because Summers wanted to
keep hounding the Harbinger. Especially since, if he caught up to
it, he'd have to invent some new excuse for why he refused to
attack it
again
.
Since the obvious one didn't seem to be working—that it was
tactically insane.

Summers was wrong. Everyone was wrong!
Raidan wasn’t a lunatic trying to start a war, and he wasn’t a pawn
in some corporate game either, he was part of something much
larger. Why else was the Fleet behaving so strangely? And why else
would Princess Kalila act so threatened?