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

BOOK: The Phoenix Requiem (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 7)
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He gazed at the darkness and wondered about death. Thinking that perhaps there was something beyond life, and perhaps not. For the most part, humanity, himself included, had accepted it as the likeliest possibility that death was the end. It made little sense, logically, to believe that a person could essentially survive their own death. But still, Rain had believed there was something more—or at least had seemed to. Calvin wondered if it was that crazy after all. Or if it was truly naïve, wishful thinking, and nothing more.

“I’ll never forget you,” he said, as he pressed his palm against the glass. He felt a tear well up in his left eye, but he blinked and fought it back.

He wondered if he was cursed. First Christine and now Rain. Why was it the women he developed the strongest feelings for had to be ripped away from him so soon and so young?

And Rain was yet another example of someone who had sacrificed herself in order to protect Calvin. That list began with Jacobi, but didn’t end there; Shen had put himself in harm’s way to protect Calvin, and so had several others.
Why?!
He wondered, loudly inside his own head.
Don’t you fools know that I’m not worth it?!

He felt helpless and ashamed. Their deaths were his fault—at least to an extent—and now Rain, who had been the glow of optimism that continually buoyed his spirits, and who had helped him exorcise his darkest demons—was gone. For good.

He stood there feeling empty for some time. Not sure what to think. Not sure what mattered anymore. The universe was a cruel, unforgiving place. If it could steal away Rain from him—from everyone—then surely there couldn’t be a God. Not a kind God anyway…

Still, despite his aching heart and the pangs of guilt that came with it, accompanied by dozens of
if onlys,
Calvin did manage to make a sort of peace. More like a truce with his emotional wounds—a ceasefire.

“I promise you, Rain,” he whispered, as he stared deeply through the window into the darkness of the infinite beyond. “Wherever you are.
If
you are. I will make the most of this gift you have given me.”

 

***

 

Queen Kalila was in the War Room on Capital World. The structure was in a bunker, deep underground, designed to withstand orbital bombardment—at least for a while—but, should the Dread Fleet reach Capital System unopposed, then nowhere would be safe—not even here.

“And we have confirmed their trajectory?” Kalila asked, turning to the closest of the many advisors that were with her.

“Yes, Your Highness,” the man said. He was a knight, Sir McTavish—one of the knights she’d inherited from Caerwyn Martel once the civil war had ended—she would have preferred to have Captain Adiger at her side, advising her, but she knew he was better off commanding the ISS
Black Swan
, a dreadnought that would greatly help their cause—considering how outnumbered and outgunned the Imperial military was when embattled against the Dread Fleet.

“The Dread Fleet, although moving slowly, is on a direct course for Capital System. We are, I’m afraid to say,” the knight spoke anxiously, “Their next victims.”

“We’re not victims yet,” said Kalila, gazing over the 3D displays and strategic readouts, trying to find some kind of advantage she could leverage.

She had done the obvious things: consolidate her forces, order her fleets and squadrons to jump to Capital System at once—and she had re-organized all the broken and fractured fleets into new fleets, with new, better commanding officers—but improving the broken shambles of what had once been a polished war-machine that was the envy of the galaxy and now had become so fragmented took more than just reorganization to return it to glory. If anything, she felt like she was merely spreading things around to make them look fuller and more robust than they actually were.

Now, with the Apollo yards destroyed—her own fault—the Empire could not quickly rebuild its lost warships. With the heavy losses sustained in that action, along with the Battle of Thetican System, including massive losses by both the Imperial and Rotham fleets to the destruction of the local star; the loss of Imperial forces at Ophiuchus, and now, most recently, the failed effort to stop the Dread Fleet at Centuria…her forces were running excruciatingly thin. Kalila had ultimately been forced to make the unfortunate decision to withdraw her ships from Centuria—leaving them to their terrible fate—but not to do so was to leave many squadrons of the Imperial Fleet to face certain death. And as for the damage they had inflicted upon the Dread Fleet itself, by all accounts, it truly seemed no worse for wear.

Damn them
, she thought.
Damn them all!
The Dread Fleet was not something she could understand; in fact, Kalila contended that it defied all understanding. It was not a political power, neither did it seek to establish a political foothold, or raid a world for wealth and treasure, neither did they make distinctions between military and civilian targets. It was more like a horde of bees—terrible, terrible bees—that surrounded a colony, no matter how peaceful, and then went completely berserk upon it in every possible way, leaving behind bones, dust, ash, and little else. These were ships that seemed to outnumber the very stars themselves, some of them mighty warships, others mere trading vessels equipped with basic laser arrays, but what mattered was that they acted together, and that the swarm of them was too great, and too numerous to account for. These were all of the ships of the Polarian Confederacy; any starship owner, no matter how petty his station, would come forth and answer the Call of the Reckoning in order to fulfill his or her religious duty, and such was the method by which they had swelled their ranks. Armed with those numbers, and the secrets of the Polarian Phalanx shield-pooling technology, they were more than a match for probably anything the galaxy had ever seen. It had been fortunate during the Great War that the Dread Fleet had never been called forth by the Council of Prelains to assembly, otherwise that war might have ended much differently—and certainly would have been far bloodier.

It is not the Dread Fleet itself that is so dangerous, Kalila decided. It was their philosophy. They were, as she would describe them,
True Believers
. Any being, especially any being capable of violence against another being, who is willing to accept a conclusion with absolute certainty—and who has arrived at that conclusion by no logical process or through discovery of no evidence; such a person cannot likewise be swayed by any evidence, or any logical thought process, and these people simply act, with little or no reflection as to the morality of their behavior. More specifically, their morality is handed down to them, through the simplest of channels, and they, in turn pass it along as far as it will go, and dissent, questioning, and doubt—the three pillars of science—are ruthlessly stamped out, or else outright ignored. The followers of the Dread Fleet were
True Believers
, thought Kalila. They had to be. When they destroyed civilian spacecraft or bombed populated planets into oblivion, they did not need to justify inwardly to themselves or wrestle with their consciences about the reality of those violence choices. No, instead they could defer the thinking to the Prelains, and have faith that if the Prelains had declared that the Essences wanted a galactic purge, then a galactic purge was necessary—and nothing would be allowed to stand in their way.

Well, dammit, I’m going to stand in your way, thought Kalila. She had made her mistakes; she had made friends, both good and bad, both loyal and disloyal, along the way during her rise to power. But, now that the throne was hers, she intended to save humanity by any means necessary. Even if it cost her own life. She would do it. She had to. She owed the Empire that much. She owed Hisato that much. And she owed it to Genjiro, Kanna, and Azumi as well. For all that had happened. For all that had been done. It was the least she could do. Save the Empire. Or, if that proved impossible, at least be a stronger leader than her father had been. God rest his soul—if there be any God…

“I admire your optimism, My Queen,” said Sir McTavish from her side. Only then did she realize that he had been watching her this whole time, trying to study what she was studying on the strategic outputs, as if he believed she had unlocked some kind of silver-bullet strategy, or was on the cusp of doing so, and, when she did, he wanted to be the first to hear of it. Unfortunately, no such luck. She decided to let his compliment meet no response.

“I need the rest of Fleets Four and Six to understand that they fall under the jurisdiction of Fleet Three,” said Kalila. “See to it that there is no miscommunication, and make it happen.”

“Would that be the original Fourth and Sixth Fleets or the new ones?” asked McTavish.

“The old ones,” said Kalila, partly annoyed. She disliked having to repeat herself, or needing to explain the obvious. Though she knew she shouldn’t be too hard on the knight, he was here, like her, working strange hours, robbing himself of sleep, and trying to do all he could to help protect the capital of their precious Empire—its very heart and soul. Because, and of this Kalila hadn’t the slightest doubt, should Capital World fall, the Empire would soon disintegrate ever afterward. It would be the beginning of a long and bloody end. Something she would do anything, risk anything, and try anything to prevent.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said the knight, and he got about his orders, relaying the respective commands to the Fleet Admirals and other ranking officers who still had ships that could reach the system in time.

“All fleets have been consolidated and reorganized,” Sir McTavish reported some time later. “They are on their way here now, everybody who can, making alteredspace jumps so deep, in some cases, it borderlines on lunacy.”

“Good,” said Kalila. “Get them all here. I needed them here yesterday.”

“They’re coming, I promise you, Your Majesty.”

“And the Dread Fleet is coming, I promise you that, Sir Knight.”

He bowed respectfully, indicating that he had not meant to get her hackles up.

“Excellent work,” said Kalila, deciding to be more gentle with him; the man had proven faithful—now that Caerwyn was gone—and he seemed to work hard. Not to mention, every so often, he came up with a strategic insight all on his own. That had helped her in her deployment plans of where to position which fleets inside Capital System. Unfortunately, Raidan, in ending the civil war, had destroyed Capital System’s static defenses. Truth be told, they would have mattered little in such a massive battle, but their presence had always served to boost the morale and false sense of security that the citizens below felt. Now that sensation was gone and, as her ministers reported to her, the state of panic on the surface had reached a fever pitch, and riots, looting, and fires were only a matter of time, once the civilians realized that all starports had been closed down, or else temporarily commandeered by the military—which they were quickly realizing.

“We will stop the Dread Fleet here,” said Kalila, pointing to the 3D display. “We will hold them in place with these forces and then strike at them with a vanguard from around the planet, trapping them in.”

“But we’ll still be outnumbered and outgunned,” pointed our Sir McTavish.

“Not to mention that phalanx shield, spoke another advisor.”

Kalila had been trying to think of how to deal with that. “Is the shield generated in any central location?” She thought maybe, just maybe, she could knock out the generator, and take away the Dread Fleet’s greatest advantage—second only to the vastness of its numbers.

“Negative, My Queen,” said the tactical advisor. “The shields are pooled, not generated; they are generated from each individual ship.”

“That means we’ll have to get in there, up close and personal, to do the damage we need to do,” said Kalila. She was no expert in the exact science of interstellar combat—though she had commanded a few battles.

“You are correct, My Queen,” said the advisor. “Our beam weapons, many that we have, will all be rendered useless until and if the entire sum of the Polarian fleet’s shields are eliminated. So, assuming their shields remain up, they will only be vulnerable to standard guns and missiles.”

“And ramming,” said Kalila. Her advisors looked at her like she was crazy. Perhaps she was, a little. “I just mean, if it comes to that…that’s an option,” she said.

“Yes, I suppose so,” the advisor agreed. “That still leaves us in the delicate position of being vulnerable individually to the enemy’s beam weapons, not to mention the sheer magnitude of them.”

“If they are bunched up, our missiles should be more effective,” said Kalila.

“Perhaps, some of them,” admitted the advisor. “But the more ships that detect an incoming missile, the higher the chance that one or more of those ships will incinerate the missile before it gets close enough to impact or detonate.”

Kalila nodded. “Well, we’re going to hit them with everything we have, and there is no retreating from here, so it will have to be enough.”

“To be completely candid with you, Your Majesty, I don’t believe it is enough. Not by a tenth. It may be time to reach out to the international community and seek the aid of—”

“Of the backstabbing, treacherous Rotham?” asked Kalila, remembering the role they had played in the Great War all too well, despite her youth at the time.

“Even with Rotham help,” said Sir McTavish, “It doesn’t tilt the odds enough in our favor for us to prevail. It doesn’t even make the odds even enough to make it a contest. We’re still as good as dead.”

BOOK: The Phoenix Requiem (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 7)
11.15Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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