The Phoenix Requiem (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 7) (33 page)

“We use special grenade,” said Nikolai, holding it in his hand lovingly, as though it were an egg about to hatch. “We have problem. We use grenade. Problem gone. Simple, yes?”

“Yes,” Calvin agreed, nodding eagerly, and wondering what the hell they were waiting for if they still had a grenade all this time. He also was curious to know what made this strange-looking grenade “special.”

“Okay, I go handle problem now,” said Nikolai, and he stood up. The moment he did, he drew fire from the enemy, but the beam rifles proved too inaccurate from this distance, or else the shooters too inept, or, for all Calvin knew, Nikolai somehow deflected the beams away with his sheer force of will.

Calvin watched as Nikolai bent down a bit, held the grenade with both hands, and then began a full out sprint toward the enemy, drawing the pin as he did so. He only went a few steps before throwing it down the corridor, and immediately dove to the ground for cover once the grenade had left his fingertips. Calvin watched it sail through the air, landing almost perfectly in the center of the six Polarian soldiers who blocked their way. Even they seemed not to recognize what it was, or what was happening, until the very last instant. 

Once they did, they immediately scrambled, trying to rush away in all directions, but they had waited too long. The grenade went off in a massive explosion of shrapnel, one far greater than a standard frag grenade would have produced. The sound of the concussion echoed all the way down the corridor, almost deafeningly loud—even from Calvin’s distance. He blinked, in a state of near total disbelief, then saw that, where there had been six armed enemies moments before, impeding their hope of escape, now there was simply a gruesome display of strewn-about body parts; some unrecognizable pulp that, Calvin concluded, must have been flesh and organs; fragments of bones; the tattered remains of uniforms; bits of broken and splintered metal; and, most palpable of all, enough blood splattered everywhere it looked like the owner of the corridor had hired the worst contractor ever to paint the walls, floor, and bits of the ceiling.

“Problem gone. Let’s go,” said Nikolai, getting back to his feet and waving for the rest of them to hurry along. Calvin made a quick check to see that their captive was still well in hand, his arms bound behind him, and he was. Two of the surviving members of Calvin’s team had a grip on him as they moved, quickly, toward the exploded corpses, in the direction of the pods.

As he walked through the puddle of blood, trying not to tread on any fragmented body parts, he was even more disgusted by the sight of it—and the smell only made things worse. He resisted the urge to retch as he passed, hoping the image hadn’t been permanently burned into his brain.

That is definitely something I never want to see again
, he thought. As a hazard of working in Intel Wing, he had, in fact, seen even worse displays. There wasn’t much that could top the effects of a grenade on an alien. But the fact that the victims had been aliens, somehow made it a little easier to stomach.

Even though Calvin would be the first to state that Polarians and Rotham were people just as surely as humans were, all life of such intelligence must be considered a person, he knew that, he believed that, he accepted that, and, on more than one occasion, he’d even preached that while finding himself in an unwanted argument with a human supremacist or two over the years.

But, despite his liberal nature, open mind, and whole-hearted commitment to equal rights among intelligent, empathetic life, wherever it existed and whatever it was, there was still a part of him that was biased in favor of humanity. And not just politically—which he could justify—but biologically too. He probably wouldn’t admit to it, but he knew, on some level, that, if he had to choose to save a human child or an alien child, he would choose the human child every time. And it was that extra level of attachment he had for human life, that extra sensitivity, that made sights such as this one—despite all its copious blood and gore, with body parts strewn about—not nearly so revolting to him as seeing the same thing with human victims. But even those images paled when compared to the very worst things he had seen. The worst of the worst that he had ever been forced to examine pictures of, for a case, had always involved children, human children—it was those images, and not this kind of stuff, that did sometimes give him nightmares.

Fortunately, they were able to exit the structure, go into the woods, and find the pods without any further violence. Their group had taken enough casualties that it made little sense to take both pods when they could all easily fit into just one. On top of that fact, the other pilot had been one of the casualties, leaving Calvin as the lone survivor qualified to fly either of the two pods.

“Okay, everybody inside this one, now.
Move, move, move
,” ordered Calvin, after unsealing the hatch. One by one they shuffled in: first Nikolai; then the captive was lifted and shoved through; then each of the two soldiers assigned to guard the captive filed in; then came First Lieutenant Ferreiro—who was the last surviving member of the mercenary party Raidan had sent to the
Nighthawk
; then the remaining seven Rosco soldiers got inside, also one by one; and finally, making sure he was the last left, Calvin climbed in and sealed the hatch.

“All right, gentlemen,” said Calvin, taking the controls. “Let’s get the hell off this rock.” He retracted the landing grips, set the stabilizers to their proper position, activated the Ops display next to him, set it to automated so it would alert him to any objects in their flight path, should any appear, and did one quick pre-flight check—knowing that if something seemed wrong with this pod they could simply take the other—fortunately everything looked good. “All right, everybody hold onto something,” said Calvin, and he engaged the thrusters.

With a surprisingly eager lurch, the pod leapt into the sky and ascended rapidly through the lower atmosphere into the higher atmosphere.

Calvin had only minimal knowledge of pods such as this one, but he had always sort of written them off as amateur star craft. But suddenly he found himself rethinking his opinion. It was comfortable; much roomier on the inside than one would assume from the outside; the top-half of the circular wall surrounding them was all windows, so you could admire the sights; even the ceiling was windowed, so, once you had freed yourself from whatever planetary object you’d been stuck on; it was all stars and open space, everywhere you looked, except at the floor. Unfortunately, by necessity, the bottom of the craft could not also be transparent. Most of all, Calvin liked the amount of power the designers had packed into such a tiny vessel. The thing really moved. It was almost
fun
, though he was loath to admit it.

As an added benefit, there was no sky traffic to compete with whatsoever and no possibility of a mid-air collision. He could maneuver the craft as directly, or as wildly as he pleased, and there was no danger at all. He supposed that was one advantage of flying away from a planet so reclusive that its name was literally The Forbidden Planet—or whatever the Polarian equivalent of that was.

Feeling the pod climb ever upward, and the amount of thrust hurtling them away from the ground at such intense speed, not to mention the excitement of the winds buffeting the craft around, jostling it just enough to remind you that you’re alive…this is what piloting was, Calvin thought. True piloting. It should feel free, and liberating, and light-hearted, and even a bit dangerous. This reminded him of so many years ago, when he’d begun his training as a pilot, and why he had done it in the first place. And, though there were many reasons, perhaps the most important one had been that he’d expected piloting to be, well, a lot more of this. Not the kind of boring, button-pushing, joyless experience you got helming a starship. That robbed the profession of all its simplest and purest pleasures. There was no wind throwing you about, no storms to fight, no gravity to wrestle with, no sense of orientation to ever make you question whether or not you were upside down, no sensation of danger that any given flight might be your last because your vessel could actually fall. No, starship piloting was all about minimizing risk, following exact procedure, and never, ever, feeling that surge of adrenaline you get when you punch the thrusters on a little craft like this one to escape a planet’s gravity. Sure, a starship could go unfathomably faster than a tiny planet-going pod such as this one, but in a starship, even at full speed, there was nothing there to make you feel like you were moving at all.

Calvin let out a sigh, enjoying the moment, trying to forget—just for an instant—the dreaded weight of the recent past, and its many losses…Miles, Rain, and probably Rez’nac too by now, not to mention the soldiers who had fought and died alongside him in the Alcazar. Though he tried to steer his thoughts toward something less miserable, whether it be simple emptiness, or perhaps something positive, it didn’t work; the less he tried to think of the tragic and the grim, the more his mind became fixated upon it.

He simply could not stop thinking about Miles and Rain, and, as his thoughts wandered, he even thought of Monte, the old doc, and the times they had shared together…the list of friends and loved ones he had lost in the recent past seemed kilometers long.

And, to top it all off, he still had no answer for his mother’s disappearance. Although he clung to hope that she remained alive and well, somehow—perhaps she’d met someone, fallen in love, and spontaneously and deliberately run off with him, or something like that, something happy—it nonetheless bothered him, in part because he had learned never to assume the best when the evidence implied the worst, and secondly because it ate at him inside not to know the answer; not to know what had truly happened.
Had she been taken? If so, by whom? Was she still alive? If so…where was she? And how was she? Did she need him?
It positively destroyed him inside whenever the thought crossed his mind that she could still be out there,
somewhere
, alive, but in desperate need of his help, and, because he had no knowledge of any of it, he was powerless to come to her aid.

These thoughts quickly took whatever joy he had felt from flying the pod and sent it far away, banishing it to some place so distant it felt as though he would never be happy again. As if he would never truly completely overcome the losses he had sustained and the emptiness that now had become such a big part of him.
Where once people had stood, occupying a piece of me
, he thought,
now there are so many vacancies, how could it be possible not to feel so hollow? So very…empty?

“Hey, Calvin,” said Nikolai, who was seated on Calvin’s left, about two feet away. “You all right?”

“Of course I am,” said Calvin. “I’m just trying to get us back home, and out of this God damned pod.”

“Okay, all right, easy, it was just a question,” said Nikolai. “It’s just…you don’t look too good. I thought you might be sick or something.”

Calvin nodded. “I might be.”

What was depressing him the most was the sudden realization he had that, even if he succeeded at everything from this moment onward, returned to the
Nighthawk
, got back inside Imperial space, saw Kalila on the throne restoring order to the Empire and eliminating all of the corruption that he’d fought against all this time…even if every tiny detail from here on out went exactly perfectly, the best he could hope for was to be on his
Nighthawk
again, where, inevitably, he would feel almost completely alone.

It would never be the same without Miles. Anand was long gone, and insane, and God knows what happened to him. Shen and Sarah were gone; perhaps they would come back, perhaps not, but Calvin considered it unlikely, for some reason, that they would return. And now, whenever he went to the infirmary for any reason, not only would there be no Monte to swap stories and jokes with, there would also be no Rain.

Rain, more than anyone Calvin had ever met, had seemed to know exactly how to look at the bleakest and darkest of things and find the light inside them. Now she too was gone and however she had done it, whatever her talent had been, that force inside her that had filled her with such light, life, and positivity, it had gone with her. If there was some secret to happiness, Calvin didn’t know it. And Rain had never taught it to him. How could she have? Their time together had been cut far too short. Just like his time with Christine…and, truthfully, so many others.

Calvin shook his head. His feelings of despair shifted into feelings of anger, directed at himself.
I’m not going down this road any longer
, he thought, giving himself a mental reprimand.
Yes, I’ve experience tragedy. Yes, I have suffered. Yes, there have been sacrifices along the way. But that isn’t my fault and there is nothing I can do to change it. That’s simply how life is. You take what you are given. Sometimes you can make something more out of it, sometimes you can’t. And, sometimes, when you do make the most of it, something else comes along and steals it away from you. But, God dammit, I’m not going to let this beat me. I have to hope and keep hoping. I don’t know in what exactly. But I will see this through!
 

The time had come to bring an end to all of it…all the suffering, and all the darkness, and all the lies. He had sacrificed much trying to fight for the future of the Empire, and for what he believed to be right, and those he loved had sacrificed even more. Some of them had made the ultimate sacrifice. And some, he knew, perhaps even himself, may yet make that sacrifice too. But he owed it to them, and himself, not to give up, or give in, no matter what happened. No matter what darkness and evil and corruption remained out there, he would play the cards he held, as best he could, and then the chips would fall where they may. That was the truth of life. He wished there were a better answer, or some way he could save and protect all the good from all the evil, but there wasn’t, and he couldn’t. And that was simply something he just had to get past. Because if he didn’t, then he could never move on. And perhaps it was that, most of all, that sensation of entrapment, where no progress is made, that most crippled him inside. Well, no more.
Come what may, I’ll be ready.