The Phoenix Conspiracy (51 page)

In no time, the vessel was dead in
space. At that point, the Harbinger changed angle and disappeared
from view out the window.

"How are things down there, Pellew?"
Calvin yelled down.

"All clear so far," he said. "Haven't
seen another wave yet."

"Why aren't they attacking us?" asked
Miles.

"I think," ventured Pellew, "the
soldiers have been moved to prepare for an invasion."

Shen hopped up then and wobbled up the
ramp to the raised platform. The field medic moved to stop him but
Shen just glared at the medic until the man moved aside.

Unopposed, Shen went to the nearest
functioning console and, after using it for a few seconds, said
"it's true. The Harbinger has docked with this ship and cut and
sealed several openings. They've begun a boarding
operation."

"They must have detected our beacon,"
said Summers.

"It's not all good news," said
Shen.

"
What
?"

"The auto-destruct just got
enabled."

"How much time do we have?"

"Several minutes," said Shen. "It
takes awhile to heat up the central core to where it can explode.
They don't have enough weapons left to simply detonate them and
wipe out the ship."

"Several minutes is still not much
time," said Calvin. He looked to Pellew who nodded. They couldn't
stay here.

"Self-destruct... damn the masochistic
moron who invented that dumbass feature," said Miles, followed by a
string of progressively stronger profanities.

"Shen, can you find out where the
closest boarding point is that the Harbinger's soldiers have
breached?"

"Yeah," he typed away. "Two decks
above us, about mid-starboard."

While Pellew and his men cleared the
outside, Calvin and Summers argued.

"Let's go help out the Harbinger's
men," said Calvin.

"No," said Summers. "The Nighthawk is
closer."

"They're almost equally close," said
Shen. "But she's right. Maybe we can save the ship..."

"Maybe…” said Calvin. He wanted to
save his ship, more than almost anything, but he was worried the
launch bay would be sealed off and the Nighthawk couldn't blow its
way out fast enough to fly away. Not to mention, if the tractor
beam system were somehow still online, they might not be able to
escape at all.

"We've got to decide now!" said
Shen.

He was right, Calvin knew he was
right. "All right, let's go for the Nighthawk," he said. Hating
that the situation wasn't clearer. "It damn well better be flyable
still." He imagined the Rotham data-mining the hard drives and
tearing out systems to find every secret the Nighthawk had to
offer. Hopefully they hadn't had enough time to do lasting
damage.

They left, carrying their wounded.
Leaving their dead. As fast as they possibly could.

And though they couldn't feel it, they
could hear the ship shaking. Booming sounds echoing along the
halls, with the screeching of warping, twisting metal. Some of the
bulkheads were burning hot, deeply saturated with fiery red. "What
are they doing to their poor ship?” asked Sarah.

They hadn't gone far when a squad of
heavily armed Rotham soldiers spotted them and opened fire. They
had little choice but to drop and shoot back, trying to keep moving
on their hands and knees in the other direction.

Pellew ordered everyone to stay low
while he talked to Alex—who still seemed cooperative—about a
separate path, and Calvin wondered if it wouldn't be best to just
storm the enemy and keep moving forward. Time was a serious issue.
Their losses would be heavy, and regrettable, but better that some
survived than none.

A rocket-propelled-grenade soared
through the air and exploded into a bulkhead nearby, sending
shrapnel shooting everywhere. A thin piece grazed Calvin's arm,
cutting him lightly. And his ears rang from the report. Everyone
broke into a panic and began standing up. The first who did was cut
down by energy fire.

"Covering fire!" Pellew yelled, while
waving for everyone to run down a side hallway. He and his soldiers
rose to their knees and unleashed a barrage of thundering gunfire
back at the enemy, trying to force them into a more limited
position.

Calvin scrambled to his feet and heard
the faint words "help, help," barely coherent, and almost
completely lost under the noise of weapons fire. He spun to see a
soldier, one of the field medics, sprawled on the ground, writhing
in agony, struggling to get to his feet. Several large pieces of
shrapnel were stabbed into his shoulder, stomach, and
leg.

While others scurried all around,
Calvin double-backed and ran to the wounded soldier. As gently as
possible, but hastily, he helped him to his feet and put his arm
around his shoulder. And together, like an awkward three-legged
animal, they ambled forward. Trying to escape the raging firefight,
which was quickly ending as Pellew and his men
retreated.

The ship creaked and rumbled and
Calvin looked up to see several cracks and burn marks in the
ceiling and bulkheads. He and the wounded man were falling behind,
and their backs would soon be exposed to the enemy, who would
certainly come around the corner soon.

"Wait up!" Calvin yelled ahead. Pellew
turned and, catching sight of Calvin, sprinted back to help. But,
before he could close the distance, they heard an explosion and saw
a brilliant flash.

The artificial gravity gave out for an
instant and Calvin felt himself fly free, blown to the side as a
small explosion ripped the wall next to him. Debris crashed into
his side, bruising his ribs. The soldier he was helping was sent
the opposite way.

Calvin landed hard on his back a
second later, the backup gravity system now online. Despite the
pain, he got back to his feet resiliently. Wiping dust from his
stinging eyes and face. When the haze cleared, he found himself on
the wrong side of a debris pile where a major bulkhead had
collapsed, revealing a mountain of metal, fireproofing insulation,
and electrical wiring that had started a small fire which ate the
precious oxygen. A human arm stuck out of the pile, its owner
certainly crushed. Calvin dug it out just enough to confirm the man
was dead.

"Calvin!" He heard the muffled shout
through a small hole in the shifted debris pile.

"Yeah I'm here," he replied. He tried
to find a way through but most of the debris was too heavy to move
and there was no hole large enough for his body to get
through.

"You'll have to go around," said
Pellew from the other side. "I can't get to you." Calvin could
barely hear him.

"Okay," said Calvin. "Go on without
me."

Then he heard Miles. "I'm
coming."

"No!" said Calvin. "Just go. I'll find
another way. Pellew, you and Summers have command. Now
go!"

At that, Calvin about-faced and
ran.

He had no concept of the ship's layout
and, knowing that between a squad of enemy soldiers and a mountain
of debris, the only ways back to the lower ladders were impassible,
he'd have to come up with something else. His intuition told him
there would be a set of emergency ladders on the opposite side of
the deck. Most ships had similar features. It was worth a
try.

His heart raced and footsteps
thundered, and somehow he managed to ignore the mind-shattering
pain that shot through his body.

He didn't dare pass the corner where
the Rotham squad had been. Instead, he went around, trying to cut
corners wherever he could. Defenseless against whatever he ran
into. Luckily, the deck seemed to have been evacuated and he saw no
one.

It turned out, there was an emergency
ladder hatch like he’d thought. But, after unsealing it, he
realized it was damaged. The section leading down was crushed by a
collapsed bulkhead making the only passable direction upwards—away
from the Nighthawk.

So, without another thought, he
scrambled up, now hoping to meet up with the Harbinger's soldiers.
Trying not to assess the probability of success. At least death
would be swift.

"Two decks above us about
mid-starboard," he remembered Shen's words. At two decks he stopped
climbing and ran.

It looked like a crew-quarters deck,
except on fire. The bulkheads and floors wouldn't burn, but several
of the cheap doors were ablaze along with bodies—mostly rotham,
which littered the floors in droves. He began coughing immediately
and tried to stay low as he continued forward. On the distant side
of the corridor he saw muzzle and energy flashes and the remains of
a Rotham contingent in full retreat as camouflage-clad human
marines swarmed the deck.

He didn't have to go far before he ran
into a marine master sergeant.

"Friend," said Calvin.
"Human."

"Who are you?" The soldier lowered his
weapon once he spotted Calvin's somewhat tattered black-and-silver
uniform.

"Calvin Cross," said
Calvin.

"Where's your crew?"

"They're not coming. And this ship is
about to blow. Autodestruct is active."

The master sergeant spoke into his
radio and his superiors instructed him to escort Calvin and begin a
full retreat back onto the Harbinger. They began a speedy
withdrawal.

Calvin was constantly surrounded by
dozens of soldiers as he ran for what he now recognized to be a
gaping hole in the most distant bulkhead; an attack jetway had been
crudely sealed to the breach to maintain air pressure. They
practically dragged him inside and, once they'd all come aboard,
the master sergeant sealed an emergency hatch and cut the jetway
loose. Through a small window, Calvin watched the jetway tumble
away into open space as they departed, putting some distance
between them and the Rotham ship. His view was limited, but he kept
searching for a glimpse of the little black Nighthawk flying away.
But never saw it.

"This is going to be close," the
master sergeant said.

Calvin held his breath, waiting for
the Rotham ship to rip itself apart in a spectacular display of
fireworks. But, when it finally did happen, it was over practically
before it began. One moment a drifting crippled warship and the
next a rotting black husk, pieces thrown thousands of kilometers
apart. Many of which must have crashed against the Harbinger's
hull.

When they all realized they were still
alive, Calvin and those around him let out a cheer and he felt
himself relax a little. The pain in his ribs returned to full
strength, as if just given permission. And only then did he fully
realize...

He was on the
Harbinger
.

The master sergeant grabbed Calvin by
the shoulder and looked him squarely in the eyes. "Come with
me."

"Where are we going?"

"To the bridge. The Captain wants to
see you."

Chapter 31

The Harbinger seemed even more massive
inside than outside.

Calvin, closely escorted by two
marines—and a medic who had hastily patched Calvin’s light flesh
wound—walked through a maze of endless grey corridors. They passed
dozens of busy personnel along the way. Most were occupied with
whatever tasks they'd been given, but very few were too busy to
pause and give Calvin a curious look. He couldn't help but wonder,
as he saw their wondering faces, if they knew even less about what
was going on than he did.

But then he remembered these were
people who'd helped the Harbinger illegally escape with a condemned
military prisoner. They had to know something. Either that or
Raidan truly was a master of manipulation. It was hard to be
completely sure of anything.

Somehow the steel-grey
everything of the Harbinger felt much more bleak than the
Nighthawk, which was mostly black inside and out. And Calvin wasn't
sure if it was because he was a stranger here, and possibly a
prisoner, or if it was some other reason. The grim faces? The large
number of soldiers? The vacant blankness of every wall? Maybe some
combination of these factors. Perhaps it was everything. Perhaps
the Harbinger was
designed
to look and feel grim, deadly, and ruthless. If
so, it worked perfectly. Calvin couldn't suppress a chill as he
walked, stomach twisting in knots, feeling cool air pour from the
vents.
This is it. The Harbinger. The
elusive Raidan. Everything.

A part of Calvin's mind wanted to be
afraid, to be alert and on his guard. But a much louder part was
glad to be there. Rescued from the Rotham ship. Believing that,
once and for all, he'd finally find the answers to his
questions.

At long last the elevator came to a
halt and Calvin guessed the entire journey had been more than ten
minutes. The door slid open, revealing a very large, very
rectangular bridge. Lights from dozens of computer screens glowed,
brightening the otherwise dark room, and a view of the Liberty
Sun's port side blocked out most of the black sky. The stars
themselves were lost in the Liberty Sun's bright lights shining
through the windows. In front of them were two silhouetted persons.
Calvin guessed one was Raidan.