The Phoenix Darkness (44 page)

Damn, that one almost had my name on
it
, he thought. He raised his pistol and crawled prone to the
consoles just in front of him, then got onto his knees. He had a
window to pop his head up and survey the scene for a second and
then dive back down, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he hesitated
when he meant to check his surroundings. The nearness of the energy
beam which had just about ended his life was affecting him and he
knew it.

It was a fluke
, he told himself.
Only a fluke. I have to keep my head in this fight.
Metaphorically and physically
…

He was startled to feel a tap on his
shoulder. He spun, ready with his weapon, and was surprised to see
Rain. She knelt next to him, clearly having crawled here too.

They spoke at the same time.

“What are you doing here?”

“Are you all right?”

In response, he went first. “You should be
back in cover. Why did you move?”

“I came to check on you,” she said. Then she
touched his head with both hands and turned it so she could more
easily see where the fire had charred his hair. Calvin noted Rain
had brought no weapon with her, no doubt she’d left it safe in
cover…

“It’s nothing,” said Calvin. “Don’t worry
about it.”

“It’s not nothing,” she said. “But it’s not
bad, I admit. Some minor first degree burns on your scalp, but just
in a couple of spots.”

“Keep your head down,” Calvin insisted, still
hearing the noise of violence as energy weapons continued to blast.
He forced himself to pop his head up and take a quick peek. He saw
one of the last Teldari in plain view, so Calvin decided to aim and
fire. He missed. The Teldari took note of him and Calvin ducked.
Another heat beam blasted his direction, this time over his head by
a good twelve inches.

“Don’t move,” he whispered to Rain, “and
whatever you do, stay down.”

She nodded.

Calvin crawled to the left, not wanting to
pop up in the same spot twice, and then poked his head out. He
aimed his pistol in the direction of where the Teldari soldier had
been, only to see his mutilated corpse. Rez’nac was standing there,
fully on his feet as if he believed himself beam-proof. He was
soaked in blood and had a knife in his hands. It looked small, no
doubt taken from one of the fallen Rotham, and Rez’nac looked like
he’d personally cut through an army of a thousand Rotham. He was
covered head to toe in their blood and, as his chest heaved up and
down, breathing heavily, he still managed to stand there looking
triumphant as all hell.

Calvin was about to yell at him to get down
when he realized the fighting had stopped. The smoke was clearing
and the whining of energy blasts was now less than an echo. He
could still hear them in his imagination, but the fight was over.
They'd prevailed. He climbed to his feet and looked around, just to
be sure, and watched as the surviving Advent Elite, still in their
Dendari uniforms, checked the corpses of the fallen enemies, now
and again stabbing them with their knives, just to ensure they were
dead.

In total, there had been many more Teldari
here than anticipated. Calvin counted at least twenty Teldari
uniforms, each with its own gruesome corpse, and that number didn’t
include the many staff officers and technicians who had also been
slaughtered, plus a total of only nine fallen Dendari. The Advent
Elite had lived up to their name and reputation and had, mostly
singlehandedly, won the battle. Though Calvin and his people had
taken out some, certainly Rez’nac slaughtered his fair share. And
despite all the blood he was soaked in, Calvin was reasonably sure
none of it was his. At least none of it looked Polarian.

“This was a glorious victory,” said Rez’nac
when his eyes met Calvin’s.

“Looks like it,” said Calvin. He then turned
to check on his people. Miles had stayed down during the fighting
and was unharmed. Rain also remained out of the fight and had no
injury. Rez’nac appeared to have no injuries, but Calvin could
never be sure with him. As for Rafael, he looked like he’d taken a
small wound from a knife. He’d gotten up close with the enemy,
considering where he stood, and by the looks of it he’d chosen to
fight alongside the Advent Elite. Now he sported a cut upon his
face. It looked superficial, though painful, and Calvin doubted
Rafael had been the intended target of the knife. More than likely
it had glanced off something else and sliced him.

Everyone is alive
, thought Calvin with
intense relief.
Now there’s no time to waste
.

“Alex, Rafael,” said Calvin and he moved
toward the center of the control room. True to his word, Alex, who
thankfully was still alive, found them a suitable console which
hadn’t been ruined in the fighting and decrypted the terminal.

“Have it,” said Alex. He returned to help his
own people who had taken control of several terminals. They were
quickly aggregating data for themselves and speedily broadcasting
it out into space, no doubt to the destroyer, which, by now, should
be a safe distance away from the fleet. The speed at which they
worked, and their obvious desire to retrieve as much data as
possible, was what Calvin wanted also.

“Get everything you can,” he said, as he
turned to Rafael.

“I will.” Rafael plugged in the disc and
began accessing files.

“
Humans
,” shouted one of the Advent
Elite. “Guard the door!” he pointed at the elevator. Calvin did not
want to anger the Advent Elite, but he also wasn’t about to give up
the chance to mine all this data.

“Rez’nac, Miles, watch the door,” he said.
The two of them obeyed, pointing rifles in the direction of the
door from positions of relative cover. Calvin could see Miles was
deeply unhappy. Perhaps the Advent’s torture had really gotten to
him? Calvin made a mental note to talk it out with Miles later when
they had the chance.

For now, Calvin turned his attention back to
Rafael’s efforts and the computer station. Everything was in Rotham
and so Calvin had no idea what sort of stuff was coming up. Now and
again there’d be a schematic of a ship or a picture of a face, but
otherwise he was utterly clueless. Rafael, for his part, was too
focused to give Calvin a play-by-play commentary of everything he
found, though he did mention a few significant finds.

“There are a
lot
of documents here
referring to some unidentified human who is apparently heavily
involved in all of this.”

“Really?” asked Calvin, intrigued. “Do they
give a name?”

“No name; it seems the Rahajiim themselves
don’t know who he is.”

“Or she,” said Calvin.

“Touché, or
she
. It looks like they
were trying very hard to unmask this person, though, and may have
even gotten close. Look, here’s something interesting.”

Calvin looked, but all he saw was Rotham
gibberish.

“The early reports refer to this mysterious
human in a relatively positive or neutral way. Then, after about
here, the reports become very negative. I think whoever it was must
have double-crossed them or something.”

“Very interesting,” said Calvin, racking his
brain to come up with possible candidates of who such a person
could be. White Rook was an obvious candidate, not that that helped
him much, since he’d never been able to unmask her identity.
Perhaps Raidan? It would come as a surprise, but didn’t seem
impossible.

“Here we go,” said Rafael. “This is the gold
right here.”

“What is it?”

“There are some fairly detailed military
plans here, including plans of attack inside Imperial space. There
are numbers of ships, even names of ships assigned to the campaign.
Some documents mentioning the Alliance and the Enclave; those will
be useful. Oh, and get this, the plans have been adjusted to
account for the destruction of the Apollo Yards. Apparently, the
primary target system has changed now that the yards have been
removed as a threat.”

That
, more than anything else was what
he needed to get to Kalila. If he could tell the queen when and
where the Rotham were going to be when they launched their
invasion, and what ships would be involved, the queen could mount a
stunning defense.

“How imminent is the attack?” asked Calvin,
knowing he would have to escape and get clear of the fleet before
he could transmit this intelligence. Otherwise, the fleet would
know and change its plans.

“It looks like the fleet congregated here
is
the attack force,” said Rafael. “And judging by the
roster here, they’re only missing about three ships. So they could
attack any time…”

“And the intended target?”

“Thetican System. Now that they have control
of Renora and the Apollo Yards are gone…”

“It’s the perfect foothold for establishing
control of The Corridor,” said Calvin, thinking it suddenly seemed
so obvious. Whereas before Thetican System seemed like such an
unlikely target because it had no obvious natural resource or
anomaly to take advantage of. But its positioning, absent the
Yards; that was huge!

“They expect only minor resistance,” said
Rafael. “They're going to hit the Thetican System hard and fast
before the Empire has time to determine what the target is and
marshal a response capable of repelling the invasion. Thetican will
fall long before that happens. Then, from that point, there are
plans to strike several systems. They even have a plan here labeled
contingent
for attacking Capital World itself.”

“Make sure you get it all,” said Calvin. He
looked around and saw the Advent Elite were still at their
stations, essentially doing the same thing. Except they had the
luxury of broadcasting their data out to their command ship, so
they didn’t have to worry about escape in order to hold onto the
newly uncovered intelligence. In fact, Calvin was certain none of
them, except for Alex, planned to escape at all. They would just
keep mining and transmitting data until more Teldari arrived and
overwhelmed them. The thought made Calvin anxious, and he knew no
matter how juicy the intel was that they were collecting, they
had
to move soon or they’d be trapped here with the Advent
Elite and this would be their grave.

“Apparently, the fleet is primarily waiting
for the arrival of
k’tcha
, whatever that is, before
launching the attack. And it is listed here as…'
delivery
imminent'
.”

Delivery of what?
Calvin wondered. And
then it hit him. “The isotome missiles,” he whispered, “they must
be waiting for the isotome missiles!” If so, that meant Summers had
failed in her mission to find and destroy them. Calvin worried
about the
Nighthawk
and hoped it and all aboard were safe,
despite this apparent failure.

“You know something, I think you’re right,”
said Rafael. He smeared blood on his hand as he wiped his brow,
stopping it from dripping into his only eye. “It says here the
delivery is being made by the Enclave…”

At the mention of the Enclave, Calvin felt a
surge of intense fury pour through him, but stowed it away knowing
it couldn’t help him here. He needed to escape this deathtrap if he
was ever going to deal with those bastards once and for all.

“We need to go,” said Calvin. “We’ve already
overstayed our welcome.” He could sense it. There would be trouble
here soon, and he needed to get his people out
now
before it
went down.

“I only wish I could broadcast all of this,”
said Rafael in frustration. “Like they’re doing.” But it was
impossible. The communications transmitters were locked down by
forms of encryption even Alex hadn’t known, or so he’d claimed, and
besides, the Advent Elite were unlikely to happily share the AIC’s
transmitters, which they were using to rapidly offload as much data
as they could.

“
Come on
,” said Calvin. “We’re out of
time.”

Rafael finished up and retrieved the disc. As
he held it, he looked at Calvin sternly with his one eye, “One of
us
has
to survive. No matter what, this disc gets to the
queen.”

Calvin nodded. “Now let’s
go
so we all
survive.”

***

Alex would continue helping the Advent until
the last possible moment. He knew the others were more than willing
to remain behind, gathering intelligence until they were found and
killed, which could be very, very soon. Alex, on the other hand,
had every intention of getting away, or trying to, with the humans.
And so, as he hurriedly located important data and sent it to the
queue for transmission, he kept a vigilant eye on Calvin, watching
him for any sign he and his people were going to bail. Calvin had
seemed tolerant of Alex joining their escape, but he’d made it
clear it was Alex’s duty to keep up and not get in the way. Alex
took that to mean, “
You can come with us, but we’re not going to
tell you when we’re going, or where
.”

Some of the information he uncovered was so
fascinating it almost made him lose track of his need to keep an
eye on Calvin. There were numerous mentions of Polarian Forbidden
Space, with conflicting reports regarding alleged contacts from
that region. The reports themselves conflicted as to whether these
contacts were useful allies or backstabbing enemies. Other
documents mentioned the High Prelain himself, though usually only
in passing.

Of particular importance to the Advent’s
mission was the evidence they’d found involving the senate. There
were papers implicating extortion rackets and bribery operations
influencing several key senators. Of course, bribery was nothing
surprising. Bribing senators had existed since the dawn of
representative government and was, in fact, its primary flaw. But
knowing which senators were taking Rahajiim bribes,
that
mattered.