The Phoenix Conspiracy (48 page)

To Calvin's surprise, there was only
one prisoner in this detention block who wasn't from his ship. It
was a rotham in grey prison garb with long black hairs on his chin
that seemed out of place on his scaly-like skin.

"Let me out too," the rotham said
desperately.

Miles looked like that was
the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "You wish,
lizard
."

"I'm telling you, I know things that
can help you."

Calvin was intrigued. "What do you
know?"

"Anything you want, just get me out of
here."

"Why is the Rotham squadron here?"
Calvin pressed him.

"I'll tell you once we're safely away
from here," said the rotham.

"Tell me now."

"We don't have time for this," said
Pellew.

Calvin knew he was right. "Very well,"
he turned briefly to look at him. "How many weapons do we
have?"

"Eight," said Pellew. "My carbine, two
pistols, the XO's sub-machinegun, also two Rotham rifles and two
Rotham pistols off the guards here."

"Distribute them to Special
Forces," said Calvin. He wanted a firearm for himself, but knew his
best chance,
everyone's
best chance, was to put their resources into their
most capable hands. Summers relinquished her weapon without
complaint.

"Ready, sir."

"Everyone conscious and able to
move?"

Pellew did a quick check.
"Affirmative."

"What about the rotham?" asked Shen.
"He could be useful."

"He's a waste of space," said Miles.
"Drop him. Or give me one of those guns and I'll do it
myself."

"Bring him along," said Calvin, making
a snap decision. He reasoned the rotham didn’t represent much risk
and could prove useful

"Whatever you say," said Miles.
Summers unlocked the rotham's cell.

"You won't regret this," the rotham
said.

"Don't speak unless spoken to," said
Miles.

"What's your name, rotham?" asked
Calvin.

His reply was impossible to
understand, though it sounded vaguely like Alex.

"I'm going to call you Alex," said
Calvin.

The rotham, now Alex, didn't seem
offended.

"Good. Fall in line with the others.
We'll let you come with us so long as you don't do anything stupid
and you don’t slow us down." He turned to Pellew. "We need to take
a defensive position."

"I agree completely. We won't be able
to escape on the Nighthawk, even if we could take it and blast a
hole in the hangar doors we’d just get shot down. We have to defend
somewhere and wait for the Fleet."

"Why don't we hold here?" asked
Rose.

"It's a deathtrap," said Pellew,
citing several of its weaknesses. "It didn't work for them," he
gestured toward the fallen guards, "and it won't work for us. We
need to move, now."

"Where to?" asked Calvin. "Did you see
anything on your way in, somewhere we could hold out?"

"Not for this many people," said
Pellew.

"Does anyone know anything about
Rotham ships?" asked Calvin. "You, rotham, I mean Alex, any bright
ideas where a good holding spot would be?"

"I don't trust him," said
Miles.

"Have any better ideas?" Calvin
whirled to face him, though he didn't trust Alex either.

Shen spoke up. "Maybe. The blueprints
of alien ships are well kept secrets, but our agents learn things
from time to time. Unfortunately, you can never be sure what you
have is up to date. I had to study designs of a ship like this back
at the academy. But that was several years ago."

"Give me the short
version."

"The most defensive positions are main
engineering and the bridge," said Shen. "But those are also the
hardest to take for the same reason. Especially on a ship designed
to repel full-on marine invasions involving hundreds of
soldiers."

"So...?"

"The auxiliary bridge," Miles blurted
out. "Every Rotham ship C-class and above has a secondary bridge in
case their main bridge gets blown away. I don't know where it is,
but since the real bridge is on the other side of the ship, my
guess is the secondary bridge is far away from that. Like, say,
around here. If we can find it, that would be an awesome place to
hold out."

Calvin looked to Shen.

"My thoughts exactly," said
Shen.

"See, Summers, I'm not useless," Miles
made a face at her.

"Alex," said Calvin. "Where is the
secondary bridge?"

"Two decks above us and a little to
stern and starboard, right below main engineering."

"That's good, we can use that," said
Calvin. "Hopefully they'll think we're going for engineering and
divert soldiers from the secondary bridge to there. What do you
think, Pellew?"

He nodded. "Better than waiting around
here another moment."

"What about the Major?" asked Summers.
"Are we going to just abandon him?"

"I don't want to," said Calvin. "But
we have no choice, we don't even know where he is.” He looked at
Alex. “Where is the Inquisition Room?”

Alex said nothing for a moment. Then,
“you won’t be able to save your man. Getting to the Inquisition
Room involves going through most of the local garrison. You’ll all
die trying to save one man who is almost certainly dead
already.”

It was a harsh statement but Calvin
had expected nothing less. “So we have to look to ourselves," he
said.

"The Major would insist we go on
without him and take a good tactical position," said Pellew. "If he
knew we put ourselves at risk to try and help him, he'd kill us—if
the rotham didn't."

Calvin gave the signal and Pellew
ordered the group to move out. His soldiers took up the front
position, and cleared the hall. The crew followed in a wide column,
as fast as they could. Calvin stayed up front with
Pellew.

"Where's the beacon?" asked
Calvin.

"Safely hidden," Pellew nodded toward
a small alcove.

"We should get it," said
Calvin.

"No we shouldn't."

"It's mission critical; we have to
protect it."

"I agree with Calvin," said Summers,
to his great surprise. "We should keep it with us. If nothing else,
the signal might be better coming from the auxiliary
bridge."

"And if we take it, they may capture
the beacon and destroy it. All our eggs would be in one
basket."

"If they capture the beacon," said
Calvin. "Then we won't need it. Because we'll already be dead. The
whole point of it is just to alert the Andromeda and all friendly
ships that we're aboard."

"As you wish," Pellew waved for one of
his men to clear the nook and take the beacon. "It's in the
bottom-most crate on the far side."

Their leading soldiers reached an
intersection and went prone as blasts of energy came from the left.
Pellew raised his hand to halt the group while his soldiers mounted
a counter attack. Two men kept the enemy's attention with sporadic
but strategic fire while another army-crawled farther into the open
with some kind of scoped Rotham rifle.

"Clear," he called back. He and the
other soldiers jumped to their feet and continued forward. Pellew
and the soldier with the sub-machinegun covered the sides while
everyone else ran for the ladders. Calvin stayed with Pellew and
took a long look down the adjoining hallway.

Three Rotham soldiers were dead on the
ground. "Routine patrol team, I'm guessing," said Pellew. "They
weren't expecting us." Calvin saw three rifles among the
bodies.

"Miles, help me grab those weapons."
He bolted for them, hearing Miles thunder behind.

"It's wide open, I can't cover you out
there," Pellew called after him.

"No risk, no reward," Calvin replied.
He reached the fallen enemies and scooped up the weapons, with
Miles' help.

The closer look at the splattered
alien brains and empty eyes was something Calvin could have done
without. With some revulsion he wiped their fluids off the guns
with his own shirt. At least it wasn't nearly as bad as seeing dead
humans.

"Okay, let's go." He looked up,
surprised to see Pellew had come along in an attempt to cover him,
despite this inferior position.

They ran, Pellew facing backwards,
weapon keenly aimed at the distance, expecting to see Rotham
soldiers charging them at any minute. Calvin distributed the
weapons to more Special Forces soldiers—again fighting the
temptation to keep one for himself. Miles too looked hesitant to
relinquish his, but did as ordered.

"Look at that," said Pellew. Calvin
glanced up to where Pellew was pointing his carbine. A security
camera.

"They must have thousands of those to
keep tabs on a ship this size," said Calvin. "I wonder how long
it'll take someone to notice us."

"They probably already—" Pellew's
words were lost to the sound of gunfire as their sergeant’s
sub-machinegun blasted toward a group of rotham approaching from
behind.

Pellew and three other soldiers, those
most recently armed, moved to the rear and opened fire on the
enemy, who took cover and returned fire. It was too far away for
either side to be very accurate but the size of Calvin's group made
them an easier target. A fiery blast hit a young blond crewmember.
She was dead before she hit the ground.

One of the unarmed soldiers, a field
medic, moved to check her vitals. But there wasn't much
point.

"Make yourselves small," said Pellew,
not looking back. He scored a hit of his own on the killer, who
collapsed.

By now, half of Calvin's
group—including the leading four soldiers—had begun climbing the
ladders, which were three across. They just needed a bit more time.
He didn't know what he could do, except go prone like the others
and cover his ears.

He looked back at his fallen
crewmember, a young woman new to the ship, and felt a wave of both
remorse and anger. He hadn't known her well, but she was more than
just a face and a name. It saddened him to see her dead, knowing
she was supposed to marry in only a few months.

The lights turned red and a roaring
klaxon filled the air.

"Well they're onto us now," said
Calvin, no one could hear him, though. His voice was lost to the
sounds of fighting and the alarm.

He crawled all the way to the ladders.
It was almost his turn to go up.

Both sides exchanged fire from
positions of relative safety and Calvin wondered why the Rotham
side wasn't being more aggressive, using smoke canisters or
flashbangs, or sniping them with superior weapons.

Then he saw why. More forces were
arriving. A surge of Rotham soldiers, Teldari, with helmets and
combat vests. They charged from the side hallways like a swarm of
bees. Weapons leveled and blasting, flowing like an organic tidal
wave. Their fire was clumsy, hard to be accurate at a run, but they
closed in fast.

Pellew and his men, now in a crouched
position to keep very steady, managed to overheat their weapons in
a spray of automatic and concentrated fire meant to maximize
casualties. Never before had Calvin seen such expert shooting.
Twelve or more rotham fell wounded or dead, including a lead
commander; it was enough to stall their advance.

But two Special Forces soldiers were
hit, one in the chest and one in the head—Calvin saw them both
recoil. As soon as their hands went limp around their weapons,
other soldiers scooped up their armaments and took their
places.

He heard a scream as a narrow beam of
light grazed Monte's forearm. It torched his fair skin, blackening
it, and his eyes went wide with pain. But he managed to keep his
feet and most of his composure.

Calvin yelled at him. "Are you all
right?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Monte lied. A
field medic came over and tried to treat him but Monte shrugged him
off. "Oh leave me alone, you." Then, like a tough old bird, he
moved for the ladders—wincing as he went up.

As the remnants of the Teldari's first
wave regrouped with what was sure to be the second wave, Pellew and
his men scooped up additional weapons from the enemy's failed
offensive and passed them to the other soldiers, arming the rest of
them. In this retrieval process another soldier was lost. A
youthful black-haired boy. His blood soaked the ground. Calvin
grimaced but couldn't look away.

He was about to start climbing when he
heard something slide across the ground. It was a conventional
handgun. He picked it up and looked back to see Pellew nod at him,
and then return to fighting. Now ordering his men into a tactical
retreat to the ladders.

Calvin pulled back the slide—making
sure there was a bullet in the chamber—then started his
ascent.

The ladders were fixed to the walls of
what was a very large, very long cylinder running through most of
the ship's decks—which were about a hundred in total, many more
than Calvin was used to. He had to be careful climbing
one-handedly, while also holding a pistol. Above him, his crew was
already shuffling onto the higher deck and, presumably, taking up a
defensive position.