The Phoenix Requiem (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 7) (34 page)

By then they had reached a position distant enough from the planet that the
Nighthawk
should have picked them up on its scopes and made an attempt to hail them. Yet no hail came. And, as Calvin examined the view out the windows, searching for running lights, or anything that might be a ship, all he saw was blackness.

“You there,” Calvin pointed to First Lieutenant Ferreiro. “Check the Ops readouts and tell me what you see. If you don’t see anything, begin a full scanner sweep.”

“Uh, all right,” said the man, looking confused. He jumped up and went to the terminal as Calvin directed. Meanwhile, Calvin began repositioning the ship; perhaps he had gone to the wrong coordinates, he thought, though he felt quite sure that this was the rendezvous point.

“I don’t see anything here,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro.

“Then do the scan,” said Calvin, unhappy that he’d needed to repeat the order.

“Yes, sir,” the soldier replied.

Calvin began ticking off boxes in his head as he attempted to make sense of the situation.
Ship not in visible range. No hail from the
Nighthawk
. The
Nighthawk
not in expected position. Nothing visible on our short-range scanner
…

Hmm…
something was very peculiar, he decided.

“What is problem?” asked Nikolai.

“I’m having trouble finding our ship,” said Calvin, remaining certain that, although this was unexpected, there was no reason to think anything had gone wrong.

“Why not try to hail it?” asked Nikolai. “Send it a message, you know?”

“Because I can’t hail a vessel I can’t detect,” said Calvin. “Not with these instruments.”

“Don’t you have identifier code or something?” asked Nikolai.

“That’s not a bad idea,” said Calvin, wondering if he could force the annoyingly simple Comms system on the pod to transmit to a location based on an identification code, rather than a coordinate set. As Calvin set to task trying to program the Comms panel to do that very thing, he glanced briefly at First Lieutenant Ferreiro and asked, “Hey, how are you coming with that scan?”

“Almost finished, sir,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro. “Got it. I’m detecting several objects.”

Calvin knew that could mean anything, asteroids, debris, space junk. “Filter out everything that is clearly not the
Nighthawk
’s size.”

“I don’t know how to do that, sir,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro. “I’m sorry.”

“Here,” said Calvin, slightly annoyed. He turned his attention to the Ops controls and forced the scanner to filter out everything obviously too large or two small to be the
Nighthawk
. That greatly reduced the number of results. He scanned through them eagerly, almost nervously.

Come on, come on
, he thought.

Nothing.

He expanded the range of the scan and tried again. This time it came back with a result that made him think he’d found the
Nighthawk
; the size seemed a bit off, but the materials detected definitely implied a starship, but, as he got the scanner to project an image of it, he discovered it wasn’t the
Nighthawk
. To make things even stranger, it was a Rotham ship. Stranger still, Calvin recognized the design; it was an unusual design, but he was certain he had seen it before. Then it dawned on him—a Hunter ship.
What is a Hunter ship doing in the Forbidden System?
he wondered. The fact that a Rotham ship would be here, apparently holding position, probably waiting for something, and it could sit there, cavalierly, without the Polarians losing their shit and sending everything to attack it, or, for that matter, without that damned energy vortex—
Custos
—trying to destroy it; none of it made any sense. But that was a mystery he could not solve, not today. Besides, he had a much more important ship to locate, and he was determined to do so.

He expanded the scan even further and waited, as the minutes passed, for the results to appear. “Whatever money the designers who made this thing spent on thrusters, they obviously got by scrimping on Ops equipment,” said Calvin, to nobody in particular.

“Thing is slow. But have patience. It will finish,” said Nikolai. He leaned back in his seat, trying to make himself as comfortable as possible. As he did, Calvin resisted the urge to begin anxiously pacing around. Mostly because there wasn’t enough room in the pod for him to pace anywhere.

He wondered briefly if Nimoux would have engaged the stealth system for any reason but, even from stealth, the
Nighthawk
should be able to scan and detect Calvin’s pod, especially since they had been given specific instructions to do so. Another possibility he briefly entertained, then swiftly rejected, was that his mission on the Forbidden Planet had taken so much time that the
Nighthawk
had given up on them and withdrawn from the system. A final hypothesis that came to mind, one he could not immediately dismiss, but still found it to be lacking, was that the presence of the Hunter ship might be a related event to the apparent disappearance of the
Nighthawk
. Whatever the case, hopefully, he would know the answer soon. If they did not find the
Nighthawk
, Calvin wasn’t prepared for what he would do next. He decided not to worry about that until if and when he had to.

Eventually the results were returned. Calvin flicked through them quickly, this time audibly urging the computer to show him what he wanted to see. “Come on, come on,” and then he saw it. “There!” he said, pointing to the generated output.

Detected Object 30112000. Composition: Various Alloys and Synthetic Materials; Prediction: Starship; Expected Classification: Frigate. Coordinates: See Below.

“That has to be it!” said Calvin. He then set the Comms system, which had failed to send a message using the
Nighthawk
’s identification information, to transmit a message to the coordinates he fed it from the Ops terminal. Fortunately, in case the
Nighthawk
moved from that position, the comm-scanner was able to connect a message to anything within a certain spherical distance away from any specific coordinates.

“Hailing the
Nighthawk
,” said Calvin, eager to feel his boots back aboard his ship. The
Nighthawk
was his home and he was more than ready to return to it.

He waited. And waited. The hail continued to send, repeatedly, but no answer from the other end. It was as if the
Nighthawk
was refusing to reply to the call. But why would they do that? Calvin wondered. And then it hit him, the
Nighthawk
had been embattled with
Custos
when last he saw it; perhaps they had needed to drain energy from all systems, including the communication transmitters, in order to boost the shields!

“I’m thinking they can hear us, but they cannot respond to us,” said Calvin. “So I am sending them a message manually,” he began typing, knowing that, even with severe power limitations, the ship could almost certainly receive text-based communications, since they required the littlest amount of energy to receive. He informed Nimoux that they had arrived at the coordinates, and were ready for retrieval. And then ordered him to begin maneuvering the
Nighthawk
according to a vector he assigned. His plan was to move the pod along the same vector, and the two would meet in the middle, saving time.

After a few seconds a reply came, text only.
B%^$# En route. #@ NOT #@!^&

“What the hell?” said Calvin, as he read the message, wondering why it had come in so garbled. There was no explanation he could think of, either someone was having some fun at the keyboard or else they were drunk. Either way, the important part of the message had gotten through, the vessel was
en route
.

“Okay, now we’re talking,” said Calvin, resisting the urge to let out a cheer. Knowing that the
Nighthawk
was still out there, not destroyed, and not gone from the system, was a huge relief. He took the flight controls and began maneuvering the pod until it was set to the same vector he had assigned the
Nighthawk
, and then he fired up the sublight thrusters, pushing them all the way to maximum. Of course he would have to slow to a near total stop for the docking operation, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t speed things along for the time being.

“And we are on our way,” said Calvin. He glanced up through the ceiling window, which, based on the pod’s design also made it, essentially, the bow of the craft. In fact, the pod a unique and clever artificial gravity system that kept passengers in their normal positions, how they would want to be oriented during a landing or takeoff, but, in space-flight, gave them the impression that they were standing or sitting sideways, in comparison to some other object, as the ceiling of the ship was what led the way.

“In just a few moments, gentlemen, you will see some lights appear right there,” he pointed toward the window where only stars could be seen. “Somebody keep any eye out for me; let me know when you see the ship.”

“I’ll do it, sir,” said First Lieutenant Ferreiro.

“That’s fine,” said Calvin, returning his attention to the flight controls. “For all I care, all of you can do it.”

After a few seconds, Nikolai spoke up. “I see something. But it is no
Nighthawk
.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Calvin. He looked up to see for himself. There was indeed something there, he saw it almost immediately; the thing, whatever it was, appeared like a large, bright star, although it flickered, and seemed to grow in size as they approached, as if it was following their exact same vector. “Oh, God dammit,” said Calvin, realizing what it was. “It’s that damned energy vortex.”

“I see the ship now,” said Nikolai. “Forward running lights are on. Now off. Now on again.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Calvin. He looked up and all he saw was the
Custos
energy vortex, seeming to blink in and out of existence, apparently moving toward them, and then seemingly away; it was almost random in its behavior—or so it seemed.

And then he saw what Nikolai meant. With a flash, there were small but bright white lights. They shined directly at them, approaching rapidly; they
had
to be the
Nighthawk
’s running lights…there was simply nothing else they could be. But then, after a second, the lights went out. Another two seconds later, and the lights flicked on again.

Meanwhile the pod and the
Nighthawk
continued to close-in on one another, approaching at full speed. Calvin wondered if this turning on and off of the lights was supposed to tell them something. Perhaps to help the pod identify the
Nighthawk
’s spatial positioning?
No, that can’t be it
, thought Calvin,
the pod’s sensors were more than adequate for that
. Still, it was strange behavior, and did almost seem like some sort of code or effort to convey information.

Calvin watched it closely, as the vessels continued to approach each other; both the
Nighthawk
, and
Custos
right on its heels, were easily visible to the naked eye through the ceiling window. The lights continued to blink, as Calvin watched them, searching for some kind of pattern, any kind of pattern, he began to notice things. For instance, the lights weren’t simply switching on and off, they were doing so at varying rates, the speed between each switch changed; at first, it seemed to be almost random but, after he had watched it for more than fifteen seconds, he realized the same apparently random pattern repeated itself. Then began to do so again.

Calvin shook his head, “I don’t get it,” he said, “Maybe they’re trying to warn us about the
Custos
energy-vortex?” he suggested, shrugging his shoulders. No one replied. And even Calvin decided that could not have been the message, since they could plainly see
Custos
for themselves, they simply had to look out the window. Calvin’s plan for dealing with the hostile entity was to dock quickly with the
Nighthawk
, get everyone aboard as fast as possible, and then signal the
Nighthawk
’s bridge, probably using a deck Comm panel, to jump immediately into alteredspace.

That should work
, he told himself, returning to the flight controls and getting things prepped to slow the craft and begin a docking operation, now that the vessels were getting so close together. As he began making the necessary adjustments, he noticed that a second message had been sent to them from the
Nighthawk
. The timestamp indicated that it had been sent immediately after the first message; Calvin had simply failed to notice it. He opened the message only to discover that it was even more garbled than the first had been. There were no recognizable characters within the body of the message at all, just boxes, boxes and some other weird symbol Calvin did not recognize, and until this point had no idea keyboards could even generate.