The Phoenix Reckoning (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 6) (27 page)

“I’ve had years,” said Calvin.

“But you still believed it was your fault she died,” said Rain.

Calvin remained silent. That much was true, he supposed, but he didn’t see why it mattered.

“You hung onto that guilt, and onto her, for years, in a way that was very unhealthy.”

“But you helped me to free myself of that,” said Calvin. “See, you
are
great for me.”

“And when I die, which I will soon,” she said in a voice of deep acceptance, “who will help you get over my death?”

“That won’t be for a very long time,” argued Calvin. “Besides, people mourn. We mourn and we heal. That doesn’t mean we should deprive ourselves of what beautiful things we can have now.” He looked at her earnestly.

She looked back at him with a slight, sad-looking frown. “Calvin part of why you’re such a great guy is also why we can’t be together,” she said. “If I weren’t sick, it would be different. We would be great together.”

“I don’t mind that you’re sick,” interjected Calvin. “I can help you. I can be there for you!”

Rain shook her head. “If we gave in to…our feelings, yes, it would be pleasant, and beautiful, for a while. But then when I go, you’ll be left behind. And I will be yet another Christine. You will feel guilt for my death, even though you couldn’t stop it. It’s just who you are,” she said, obviously sincere. As much as he wanted to tell her she was completely wrong and being ridiculous, a part of him wondered if it were true.

“I could never do that to you,” said Rain. “I refuse to. I will not leave you like that.”

“And you’d give up all that we are—all that we could be—because of that?” asked Calvin.

“Not all that we are,” said Rain. “But all that we could be…I’m afraid so.”

Calvin shook his head. “No, no, no. This makes no sense. The truth is, we’re all probably going to be dead in a few days or weeks anyway. We’re going into Polarian Forbidden Space—no one has ever returned from there,” he said desperately. “We are likely headed toward a very quick, tragic end. Why shouldn’t we try to enjoy the love that we could have until that happens?”

“Calvin, I know you, you’re a survivor. You will find a way out of this,” she insisted faithfully. “And you’ll take as many people on this ship with you that you can, maybe even all of them. You will make it through this.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I
do
know that.”

“You
can’t
know that,” insisted Calvin.

Rain just looked at him with a soft, sad smile. “But we can be friends. Great friends. And I will be there for you as much as I can, to help you save the Empire.”

“So, friends then?” asked Calvin, almost unable to believe he was saying the words.

“Friends,” said Rain. “Loyal friends.”

CHAPTER 12

It was strange, even though the humans had not been his people, and in the end, had ultimately abandoned him to die on a Rahajiim supercruiser, Alex still thought of himself as the crude name the humans had given him—Alex. He shared this knowledge with none of his associates; to the Advent, he was still his given name Ol’ixe, rank Proxitor.

He supposed he could not blame the humans for betraying him in the end; it was merely payback for what Alex had done to them—which had been to turn them over to the Advent—and payback was a concept that the humans, although primitive, seemed to understand at nearly the same level as the Rotham. Reciprocity. It was a cornerstone of natural selection; without it there could be no cooperation, and without cooperation there would be no social order, nor any progress. But reciprocity worked in both directions, and when one reaped negativity toward someone, then one often harvested negativity in return. Alex had been a fool to believe the humans would let him go along with them on their nearly ill-fated escape. And, truth be told, he was lucky they had decided to let him keep his life. In fact, by stranding him on the Rahajiim supercruiser, although momentarily a desperate situation, they had done him a tremendous favor.

The humans had made their escape attempt, absurdly jumping into alteredspace while only mere meters away—if that—from the supercruiser’s hangar, evidently preferring a swift death. Meanwhile, Alex had been free and alive on the supercruiser. He had needed to eliminate a low ranking technician and replace him, posing as a shipmate so lowly that no one would look twice at him—while also remaining out of sight as much as he could. This gave him the advantage of not being hunted by the Teldari, who assumed all the fugitives had been killed in the Action Information Center, or else had attempted to jump away on the drone control ship, so they didn’t know to be looking for him.

Alex then used his time to return to the AIC as part of a cleanup crew, again no one asked any questions and he made eye contact with no one, and, while he was there helping to remove bodies and scrub blood from the carpets, he had discreetly put in an order for one of the drone fighter craft in one of the supercruiser’s hangars to be transferred to one of the fleet’s mobile launching platforms. At that point it had been a game of slipping away from the AIC, getting to the hangar without drawing suspicion, and then getting inside the auxiliary maintenance hatch of the drone starfighter before it was automatically removed from the supercruiser and launched into space.

All of this, he had managed to do. And then, when he was inside the drone starfighter, which nobody knew, since Rotham fightercraft were automated, he had manually disabled and sabotaged part of the vessel’s sublight drive while it was travelling between the supercruiser and the mobile launching platform. Since the fleet had, evidently, been in some tremendous hurry to launch and begin their attack on the humans in Thetican System, the fleet decided that leaving one automated but broken starfighter behind meant next to nothing and so, after about thirty minutes, the fleet jumped away. This left Alex and his gently sabotaged short range, automated fightercraft alone. Just as he had planned. After that, it had merely been a matter of contacting his Advent allies over secured kataspace frequencies, using secure Advent codes, and then awaiting retrieval, which came about three hours later.

“You’re alive?” had been the Nau’s reaction, once Alex had exited the retrieved starfighter and stepped out onto the deck of the Advent starship.

“I am alive,” he had told them. He knew the mission he had been sent on had been a suicide mission by intent, and so he had spent the past several hours concocting the perfect reason for why he remained alive, when his allies had all been slaughtered, and yet he was not a coward or a deserter because if it.

“How is this possible?” the Nau had asked, somewhat suspiciously.

“We did not know if our transmissions were getting through,” Alex lied. “And so one of us had to survive in order to relay the information we discovered, just in case the transmissions failed.” It was a simple enough lie and one Alex told in such a deadpan manner that he nearly believed it himself.

The Nau and other Advent officers had no trouble accepting this. They informed him what he already knew—that the transmissions had come through loudly and clearly—and that even as they spoke the data was being combed through and analyzed by the best Advent analysts available.

“You are a hero,” the Nau had praised him. And, like anyone would do in his position, Alex had taken the compliment in stride and smiled, glad his escape was not something that he would have to explain further.

Because of the sensitivity of the data that the Advent team had extracted, and its many implications, the Advent had decided to make their move against the Rahajiim as quickly as possible. As such, after a short debriefing, in which Alex told the Nau that the humans had died honorably, helping the Advent until the very end—a lie he hadn’t been quite sure why he had felt motivated to tell—the Nau had proven eager to give Alex his next assignment. There had been no time for rest, recuperation, or recovery. It was already onto the next thing.

“The Rahajiim have made their moves; now it is time for our countermoves, if we are to save our Republic.”

This conversation had led to a briefing, a re-outfitting of gear, a relocation to the surface of Ro itself, and ultimately to here.

He carved his way through a window using a special glass cutter and slipped inside the estate of Senator Hexupor T’rin Ze’lo. Disguised as one of the servants, and careful not to make eye contact with the house staff, he slipped through the corridors and up the grand staircase to the suite of honor itself.

The Advent had decided that the information they had collected from the supercruiser—which many of the Advent’s best operatives had died for—was enough to put a stop to the Rahajiim once and for all. “Their day is over,” the Great Nau had said. That had been music to Alex’s ears. Now, as a fully re-instated Proxitor of the Advent, he knew his task and made his approach. Upon reaching the top of the staircase, he allowed one of the housekeepers to pass by before slipping inside the grand entrance to the suite of honor. Once he’d gained entrance, he cable-tied the doors shut and then snuck up behind the senator’s personal servant and, using a chokehold, crushingly pressed against the man’s windpipe until he was thoroughly incapacitated.

There
, thought Alex.
That ought to guarantee us the privacy we need for this little chat
. He then opened the door to the senator’s study and confronted Senator Ze’lo himself.

“I asked not to be disturbed,” the senator said angrily, not yet turning to see who had intruded upon him. He sat in a large padded chair, with a hot beverage on his desk, and an electronic pad in his hands, ostensibly reading. Whether he read for pleasure or was perusing the minutes of the previous day’s session made no difference to Alex. What was important was that they were alone. Alex took a moment to search the room for any obvious signs of cameras or microphones, and, although he couldn’t be perfectly certain none were disguised somewhere, he was happy to see that there appeared to be no recording devices in the room—just like he had planned, based on the estate’s blueprints, which the Advent had supplied him before sending him to make this approach.

“Turn around slowly,” said Alex. “And, I cannot emphasize this enough, do
not
make any loud noises.” Alex withdrew his concealed T-67 pistol and pointed it at the senator as the man swiveled his chair around. At first, the senator looked infuriated. How dare anyone disturb a man of his importance? And then, upon seeing the weapon, he looked positively petrified.

“What in Ro’s name do you want, you thug?” asked the senator, slowly rising to his feet and raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I haven’t got any money.”

As if
, thought Alex, not that it mattered. He hadn’t come for money. “I am here, Senator Ze’lo, because you, sir, are a member of the Rahajiim.”

“How
dare
you accuse me of treason within my own home!”

“This is how I dare,” said Alex, waving his pistol slightly, just enough to remind the senator who had the power in this conversation. “Also because of this,” Alex withdrew a small thumbdrive from his pocket and slid it across the desk to the senator.

“What is that?” asked Senator Ze’lo.

“Plug it in,” commanded Alex, waving the pistol from the thumbdrive to the electronic pad. The senator did as he was bid. “Now, read it,” said Alex.

He waited about five minutes, just long enough for the senator to see, in plain Rotham, that there were very incriminating documents. An opaque paper trail, movement of funds between suspicious parties, ultimately for the senator’s benefit, and other details that clearly identified the senator as either a member of the Rahajiim or else a very powerful sympathizer. Upon seeing these incriminating documents, the senator removed the thumbdrive and crushed it with his hands.

“You’ll never be able to prove any of it,” he said.

Alex nearly laughed. “If you think that was the only copy we have, you are quite wrong, sir.”

“
We
?” asked the senator. And then it clicked. “You’re no common thug. You’re a member of Advent!”

“I knew you weren’t completely stupid,” said Alex, noting the senator’s defiance seem to immediately give way to a sense of fear. “Even as we speak, the Advent are prepared to expose you and all of your cohorts to the rest of the Republican Senate,” said Alex.

“You mustn’t,” said the senator, pleadingly. “It’s lies. They forced me. They threatened me. I swear to you, I am a loyal citizen of the Republic. I would never conspire. They threatened to kill my family. My wife! Even me!” he continued rambling like this for some time before Alex interrupted him.

“If you’re a loyal citizen of the Republic, then you and I don’t have to have a problem,” said Alex.

“Oh, thank you, thank you. You are wise,” said the senator. “Very, very sharp. I could tell that about you right away. You are clearly a very intelligent—”

Alex interrupted, “Here’s the deal,” he said, knowing the house staff will have realized the door to the master suit was locked by now and likely would be contacting the authorities soon.

“Anything. Anything you want. Anything I can do to prove my loyalty,” the senator rambled.

Alex removed another thumbdrive from his pocket and slid it across the table. “On that device is a Bill. You are going to introduce it during the next session of the Senate.”

“Yes, yes, of course, anything,” said the senator, plugging the drive into his electronic pad and beginning to read. His expression changed from subservient to horrified. “You can’t be serious,” he said, looking up desperately at Alex. “If I read this…they’ll kill me!”

“Or I could just kill you now,” said Alex, waving the pistol.

“Point taken,” said the senator. “But you have to understand the position you are putting me in…the Rahajiim…they are not forgiving; they will torture me. They will slaughter my loved ones!”

“That is why the Rahajiim must be stopped and you, Senator, are going to be lauded as a hero for helping to stop them,” said Alex. “It’s either that or you will be thrown to the wolves with them. Think it through; the Rahajiim have nothing left to offer you. The Advent is taking them down, immediately. Many, many senators are going to go down with them. Some will be arrested, others will be executed, I think we both know there is enough here: financial contracts, gifts, quid-pro-quo favors, and so on to make certain you get the vice.” Alex deliberately named the vice, which was only one form of Rotham capital punishment, but it was the one that seemed to strike fear in the hearts of people most easily.

“And if I introduce this legislation,” said the senator. “I will not myself be taken down? I will receive a full pardon?”

“Better than a pardon,” said Alex. “The Advent will make sure that nobody ever knows what a filthy sellout you are.”

“But the Rahajiim, if they get to me first…you’re asking me to be a martyr.”

“Either a martyr or a traitor, the choice is yours,” said Alex. “However, if you do your job, and we do ours, there won’t be any Rahajiim to fear anymore. We are taking the bastards down. The only question remains, when they do go down, are you going down with them?”

“So, if I do this, you will guarantee my safety?” asked the senator.

“There are not guarantees in life,” said Alex. “Except for the guarantee that if you don’t do this, then I will personally come after you and make certain you are on the receiving end of brutal justice,” he shot the senator the deadliest, most fearsome look he could. “And believe me, Senator, you would not be the first senator whose blood I had to wash off my boots.”

“I take your point, sir.”

***

At Rez’nac’s request, Calvin brought the
Nighthawk
to a stop near a bright blue supergiant star that the
Nighthawk’s
computer identified only as B9-T301. Rez’nac, however, insisted that the star’s true name was something else, something in Polarian that roughly translated to
Sacred Fountain
. He told Calvin that there were many such stars that bore that name. When he had seen the flight plan and noticed how closely the
Nighthawk
intended to fly near
Sacred Fountain
, the Polarian had positively begged for Calvin to stop the ship there and go into orbit.