The Phoenix Requiem (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 7) (50 page)

“Captain,” asked Mister Demir, “Do you have any idea just what in the hell that thing is? Because the rest of us are stumped.”

“I still think it looks like a snail,” said Mister Gates. “A big, giant, metallic space snail.”

“Okay, everybody, listen up,” said Raidan, in a voice that everyone on the bridge had learned long ago to take very seriously. It wasn’t a voice he used often but, when he did, that meant
shut the hell up and do what he says
.

Raidan had their complete attention. “Okay, first things first, everyone is going to do exactly what I say, when I say it, and there will be no interrupting me with questions, is that clear?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” they replied.

“All right, next thing, I will explain what that
thing
is, but trust me, you’re going to wish you didn’t know. But, before I say anything else, we need to take care of business. Because now the clock really is ticking.”

“Understood,” said Mister Watson, and the rest nodded, acknowledging him.

“Okay, Mister Gates, I want you to transmit two urgent, maximum priority messages. The first is an order to the remains of the Organization’s flotilla. Tell any surviving ship, that hasn’t already left the system, to urgently and immediately intercept the
Harbinger
and form up on our flank.”

“And when they ask why?” asked Mister Gates.

“Remember, no questions, and no interruptions,” said Raidan. “Just give them the order. Tell them it is direct, it’s from me, and that everything depends on them following it. Whatever they say, whatever excuses they make, don’t take no for an answer. We need those ships, so you and your staff talk to them and keep talking to them until they agree to assist.”

“Aye, sir,” said Mister Gates, he then motioned for his staff to hurry and get to work.

“All right, message number two, I’ll take care of that one, I just need you to make sure I’m broadcasting to the entire defense force when I give you the signal. Think you can arrange that?”

“Yes, sir, definitely.”

“Good. Next, Mister Watson, set an intercept course for those strange looking ships, maximum possible speed.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mister Watson. He got to work.

“Now, Mister Demir, I want you to have every gun that can be made operational to get operational in the next sixty seconds.”

“Okay,” said Mister Demir, with a look of uncertainty.

“Make sure that every gun and every missile launcher is prepped and ready. When we act, we may not have much time. So we can’t waste a second on those guns once we’re in the thick of it; we need them primed now!”

“Yes, sir,” I’ll take care of it. He and his staff started sending orders to the gun crews below, along with the maintenance staff to see if the disabled guns could be resurrected that quickly.

“Mister Ivanov, you have two very important responsibilities. The first is to keep a perfect accounting of the exact positional coordinates for every single ship that matches that image up there. You will then feed those coordinates, constantly, to the defense station. Mister Demir, have one of your people make certain that the gun crews prioritize targets fed to them by coordinate.”

“Yes, sir,” both Mister Demir and Mister Ivanov said.

“As for your second responsibility, Mister Ivanov, you are to prepare a hierarchy of systems from which to draw power, when we need it, in order to keep whatever shields we have up as much and as long as possible. You will even take it from life support if you have to. You will not, at any point, draw it away from our targeting systems or anything else used to launch missiles or fire the guns. You will also need to keep at least one scanner online so we can track those targets. Everything else is fair game. Whatever you do, keep the shields up as high as you can, for as long as you can, until there is literally nothing more that you can do.”

“Yes, sir, will do,” said Mister Ivanov.

Raidan then walked back to the command position and switched on the transmitter. He gave Mister Gates a look, as if to ask,
am I broadcasting
? Mr. Gates nodded and gave him a thumbs up.

Raidan cleared his throat and then spoke. “This is a general order to all ships in this system. I repeat this is a general order to all ships in this system. Now, I know I’m not Fleet Commander Arkwright, but if he were still here, I know he’d want you all to listen to me. And here is why:

“There is an urgent crisis and we must all respond to it. With all haste, set an intercept course for my vessel, the ISS
Harbinger
,
immediately
, and form up along one of my flanks. Make certain your weapons and shield systems are online and functional. If you only have enough power for one or the other, choose weapons. 

“If you scan the formation of the Dread Fleet, you will discover that the majority of the fleet is holding position and that only a squadron of ships,” just then he noticed Mister Ivanov hold up two fingers. “Excuse me, only two squadrons of ships are on the move,” Raidan corrected and Mister Ivanov gave him the thumbs up sign. “Those ships will look strange to you if you scan them, but maybe there are a few people here who remember them besides me. They are called devastators, and you probably don’t recognize them because they’ve been banned by treaty for decades.

“A devastator is a slow-moving assault ship that has no value whatsoever in ship-to-ship combat. Not only is its slow rate of speed such a liability, they have no weapons that can be used to target other starships. Why then are they such a threat that they had to be banned by treaty?

“Because a devastator is designed with only one purpose, a purpose that it is mercilessly efficient at executing. And that purpose is to slaughter the population of an entire planet within an hour. What would normally take a massive fleet days to do, can be done by a squadron of devastators within twenty minutes. Don’t believe me? Search the general network with your ship’s computer and find results on devastators. But don’t take too long, because, if we do not act now, and eliminate those devastators, immediately, then we’re all going to have front row seats for the ruthless mass-murder of billions of people, including children and babies.

“Not only must we stop those devastators at all costs, we’ve got to do it before they have time to fire so much as a single shot. One strike from one devastator can completely destroy a city of sixty-seven million people. No survivors. An entire one-shot volley from a squadron of devastators will eliminate a third of Capital World’s dense population.

“Some of you might say, and you’d be partially right, that Capital World is doomed anyway. Why risk your life taking out devastators when the rest of the fleet can simply bomb the planet anyway? And will. Well, here’s the thing, if the devastators are gone, then not only will it take the fleet much, much longer to destroy the population of Capital World, there is also the chance—and it’s a pretty good one—that, after the bombing is over, that some people will have survived.

“But if you sit idly by and let the devastators do it now, then everyone on the surface of the most populated planet in the galaxy will die in less than one hour. And you’ll have to spend the rest of your life trying to sleep at night, knowing the worst tragedy in the history of the galaxy occurred right in front of you, and you chose to do
nothing
to avert it! Well, I, for one, am not going to let it happen. But I need help.

“So, captains, commanders, admirals, proxitors, the Nau, anyone who is still out there, with a ship that can help, I urge you. I implore you. No, I beg you to help me intercept and destroy those devastators. When we die, all that is left of us is a record of the choices we made while we were alive. Right now, as we speak, my warship is fast closing in on the devastators, I intend to eliminate as many as I possibly can before they stop me. That’s my choice and I’m proud of it. It is without a doubt the best choice I have ever made. Now that I’ve made my choice, it’s time for you to make yours. What do you want to be remembered for?” he ended the transmission.

“Weapons range, now, sir,” said Mister Demir.

“Focus all fire on one devastator at a time,” said Raidan. “I want to take them out, not just spread the damage around.”

“Sir,” said Mister Ivanov, “I should probably warn you that a large group of battlecruisers has locked onto us and will intercept us within fifteen seconds.”

“I don’t care about them,” said Raidan. “Mister Ivanov, you keep our shields up. Mister Demir, whatever you do, no matter what hits us, you eliminate those devastators; is that clear?”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

CHAPTER 19

Tristan sat in the command position of the
Arcane Storm
. He had ordered the ship to shadow Raidan and had assisted Raidan and the
Harbinger
at every turn. He had even helped with the bold but ultimately pointless effort to eliminate the Polarian devastators.

There had been a fight. And the
Harbinger
, the
Arcane Storm
, most of the rest of the Organization’s ships, and some twelve others had made a brazen attempt to charge the devastators and lay waste to them before they laid waste to the planet.

The fight had begun quickly and it had ended quickly. All seemingly in a flash. The
Harbinger
, for its part, managed to take out a third or more of the devastators, all the while ignoring fire from a host of angry battlecruisers. Tristan and the
Arcane Storm
had used what firepower they had to try to interrupt the battlecruiser attacks against the
Harbinger
. The most effective thing they did proved to be missile interception work, since the
Harbinger
had all of its guns completely concentrated on the devastator starships. That left the dreadnought incredibly exposed.

This duo had worked for a time, and, within seconds, their allied ships had joined in. Some tasked with distracting or fending off battlecruiser attacks, others tasked with trying to help destroy the devastators.

By the end of it, when their ships were taking the worst beating they’d ever taken, the final few devastators slipped just beyond their clutches. The battlecruisers destroyed the other ships, and managed to cripple both the
Harbinger
and, with some leftover firepower from their attack run, crippled the
Arcane Storm
as well.

“We tried our best,” said Tristan aloud to no one. Because no one remained to hear it. He looked around at the empty bridge, every station currently manned by either a corpse or a ghost. There was a haunted aura about the place that, in the face of imminent death, Tristan rather liked.

“We tried our best,” repeated Tristan, shaking his head. The sheer and utter lunacy of it all, the fact that any of them had tried to take on the Dread Fleet, and then by the end, it was Tristan and Raidan together, with some few other allies, practically singlehandedly trying to stop the Dread Fleet’s plan for the annihilation of Capital World—a place that didn’t even like them!

As if the Dread Fleet was going to simply sit there and allow that to happen.
Oh no
, thought Tristan, trying not to laugh too much at the absurdity of it all. “Did you hear that?” he asked his crew. None of the corpses or the ghosts replied. For that matter, the entire bridge was dark, no lights on at all, not even a single system was functioning. The hull was practically holding itself together with glue at this point, or so his Ops officer had described it just before the rest of the crew had abandoned him.

“You know, technically, they didn’t maroon me here,” said Tristan, starting to feel dizzy. “I could have gone with them in the escape pod. There was enough room. But honestly, why?”

Even though he thought he’d been talking to someone just then, he suddenly remembered no one else was there. Well, no one except for the corpses and ghosts, none of whom replied.

Now…he waited to die. The battlecruisers that had disabled the ships had gone, but were certain to reappear. Tristan knew it. And, when they did,
goodbye ship
, he thought.

Well, if I’m dead anyway
, he thought, still feeling woozy from being struck by something on the head. I might as well give myself a posthumous promotion. He ripped the rank insignia bar off his naval officer’s uniform and drew a new one from his pocket. It symbolized
admiral
.

“There we go,” said Tristan. “That’s better. Looking good,
admiral
. Why thank you,
admiral
.” He let out a snort. “I hope they bury me in this,” then he laughed again. “What am I saying? I’m in space. Bury me? Ha! I’ll be in a million pieces.
Annnnny
second now.”

He looked out the windows, but saw nothing, nothing but the similarly crippled
Harbinger
. In fact, were Tristan to guess, the
Harbinger
looked like it was somehow in even worse condition than the
Arcane Storm
.

He got up from the command position, feeling even dizzier and stranger than he had before. Part of him knew it, part of him knew there was something wrong. But the rest of him, the rest of him simply laughed. Everything had gone so hilariously, tragically wrong!

“
Ahh
, the cruelty of life,” he said, stumbling as he tried to walk, “Always good for a laugh.” He chuckled some more, then had to wipe his eyes which had filled with tears. Yet he could tell they were not happy tears. Somehow, he could just feel it. The wrongness. The bridge seemed to spin and he stumbled until he found a chair to hold onto, which he clutched for dear life, feeling like he might fall all directions simultaneously, everything spun and spun. And then, a few seconds later, it stopped.

The feelings of mirth seemed to have disappeared along with it. It was like, suddenly, he was completely lucid again. The severity of the situation hit him like a brick—for that matter the top of his head felt like someone had dropped a brick on him literally.

His memories were somewhat incomplete. He remembered his crew leaving. He remembered the stand the
Harbinger
and the
Arcane Storm
had attempted, side by side, just before both vessels became too crippled to fight back—or do anything. Now the ships simply drifted in space, as if in a catatonic state, waiting for the enemy to come back around and end their misery.

Dear holy God
, thought Tristan,
did I really not get into the escape pod?

He was finding it harder and harder to breathe. And why all the head pain? He wanted to know. He still could remember glimpses of the battle; they had charged the column of devastators, firing furiously at them. Then Tristan had the
Arcane Storm
’s gun’s redirected to intercept the missiles…then all he could recall were just bit and pieces. Fragments.
The others died. We made a stand, and failed. Now I’m here…and apparently an admiral.
He noticed that the insignia pin had changed on his uniform.

There was a spike in the pain and it felt so intense that it completely overtook him. His knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor, now in near total agony.

It’s bad enough I have to die
, he thought.
Must I also die in such pain?

Then he remembered there was still another escape pod. The surviving crew had only needed the one. One of them,
someone
, he couldn’t remember who, had even told him he should take it. Tristan vaguely remembered discussing it, but the details were so foggy.

He decided to make a go for that last escape pod.
They’ll probably just shoot me down
, he thought.
But what’s the harm in trying
? He got back to his feet and attempted to make a run for it, and immediately discovered what the harm was in trying. After three steps, he collapsed, again overcome with agonizing pain.

Oh, how cruel
, he thought, lying there in pain,
to remember there’s another perfectly good escape pod and yet not be able to reach it. It’s not even that far away
…

He considered trying to crawl for it; perhaps, if he were lucky enough, he could make it in time. Probably not. It probably would be a whole lot of pain for an entirely pointless effort. Then again…it might mean living a little longer…
but do I even want to live longer?
he found himself wondering.

Decisions, decisions
…

***

Raidan sat in the command position of his ruined, dying starship. The
Harbinger
, it had been a good ship. Loyal and strong. Faithful until the end. It only had ever let him down once, by failing to destroy all of the devastators before becoming crippled. His attack had forced the devastators to temporarily retreat—delaying their attack—but the outcome would be the same. Billions of deaths—deaths that he would only have delayed anyway, the more he thought about it. Yet he sat here, impaled by a sharp piece of debris that had broken loose from some fixture somewhere and stabbed clear through him and into the chair. Pinning him to the one spot on the ship that was supposed to be the most powerful and yet, in this moment it felt the exact opposite.

Of everyone on the bridge, he had it the best, he supposed. Or the worst, depending on one’s outlook. The bridge was in shambles. Most of the systems were on fire, even now, with the fire suppression system attempting to put them all out; it was like being trapped in a hazy, smoky cloud, and it just kept getting harder and harder to breathe.

The rest of the bridge crew, they had died, or else had attempted to get to one of the escape pods on the lower decks. Raidan hadn’t bothered. Perhaps he should have; perhaps then he wouldn’t have been stuck to this spot by this damned flying debris.

But, when he’d made the decision, letting the few that were still mobile attempt to flee the ship, he had decided, if he was going to die, he’d rather go out standing on the bridge of his ship. The two of them living and dying together. He would
not
die in some escape pod that happened to run afoul of a fighter-drone.

But dying in this chair didn’t seem like much fun either. He knew he was dead—before all the systems failed and the ship became completely crippled, he’d gotten a good long glance at the damage report display. Everything was red, everywhere. Multiple hull breaches. Some contained, some not.

He supposed a few systems must have remained online. After all, the fire suppression system seemed to be operating at full blast, trying to drown out the huge electrical fire that has consumed every station on the bridge, along with two division chiefs.

The pain was bad, being stabbed by something and then trapped by it was one of the more painful things ever to have happened to him. But, as bad as the pain was, the smell was even worse. All the synthetic materials used in the various bridge terminals and consoles, now were all melted. The odor was hideous.

Not how I planned to die today, he thought, looking around at the smoky bridge, then down at himself and the metal rod rammed through him; it had taken him just below the shoulder and through the armpit.

Probably a good spot to be stabbed
, he thought,
if I was going to still be alive afterward!

The final moments, before all of
this
had happened, had occurred so quickly it had taken him some effort to work through what all had happened, which was an exercise he’d chosen to do to pass the time until either the battlecruisers returned to finish the job, or else the
Harbinger
—which was already beginning to buckle—completely came apart. It also helped distract him,
slightly
, from the pain.

As best as he could remember, the
Harbinger
was taking intense fire from the battlecruisers, which, by then had managed to destroy the rest of the ships assisting him, except for the
Arcane Storm,
which, in true Tristan fashion, both protected the
Harbinger
by intercepting most missiles bound for it, but also the
Arcane Storm
had positioned itself so that, in order to attack it, a ship, from most angles, would have had to somehow shoot through the
Harbinger
. It had been Tristan’s way of “minimizing the size of my target” he’d called it, when Raidan had asked him why he was using the
Harbinger
as a literal shield for his starship.

That was probably the last banter we ever had, come to think of it
, thought Raidan. Any communications between ships afterward, before Comms had gone completely offline, had gotten serious. The very last one, Raidan remembered clearly, had been a message to the
Arcane Storm
and whatever other ships remained—if any by that point. In the case of the
Harbinger
and the
Arcane Storm
, both still had working guns, just no ability to control where they were floating. To Raidan, that loss of flight control had been crushing, because otherwise he probably would have managed to finish off the rest of the devastators.

He remembered how angry he was when he’d sent the message. How much he’d felt like he’d had a grip on those devastators, and just when he’d gone to tighten it, they’d somehow slipped through his fingers like sand. That anger led to a lot of cursing, much of which ended up being broadcast to the other allied ships, any part of the defense force that was still intact—including the queen’s War Room, and all the squadrons and fleets that still remained, but had chosen
not
to engage the devastators with him. Then, mid-curse-filled rant, he was alerted to the inbound swarm of battlecruisers homing in on them, like birds of prey, Raidan had boldly declared then, still broadcasting to the
Arcane Storm
, the other ships, and the queen’s War Room, “This is our last stand!
Make them remember our names!
”