The Phoenix Reckoning (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 6)

by Richard Sanders

  “Your Majesty?” asked Sir Daniel, sounding shocked. Her people had scarcely believed her when she had briefed them on the existence of replicants. Now she was naming well-known, high ranking personnel as replicants; no wonder it came as such a shock to Sir Rolland.

  “Did I ask you to stand around questioning me?” she gave him a harsh look.

  “No, Your Highness,” he said, bowing apologetically and then hurrying along.

  “As for you, Sir Andris, you are to command the return of the ISS Andromeda and arrest her captain.”

  “Arrest Vice Admiral Harkov?” he asked, incredulously.

  “Must I always repeat myself?” asked Kalila, annoyed.

  “No, Your Majesty.”

  “It must be done with discretion, so do not make your intentions clear until your men have boarded the Andromeda, and make sure to bring plenty of them.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “You are to do the same for Captain Lafayette Nimoux.”

  Sir Andris looked immeasurably shocked at the mention of Nimoux, a national hero, and looked about to speak when, upon reflection, he thought better of it.

  “I would prefer these arrests occur simultaneously,” said Kalila. “So one does not alarm the other. If either party resists, kill them.”

  “And what shall I do once they are in custody?” asked Sir Andris.

  “Immediately give them the Xinocodone treatment,” said Kalila. “If either of them survive the treatment, they may be released.”

  “And the crews of those ships?”

  “Give them the treatment as well,” said Kalila. “However, they are a lesser priority.”

  “The ISS Andromeda is part of the Fifth Fleet and so it is under Sir Gregory’s command, not mine,” said Sir Andris.

  “Then you had better get with Sir Gregory and tell him to order the ship back here, where you can board it properly, haven’t you?” She disliked having to instruct her advisors on minor details that should be obvious to them. Fortunately, such occasions seemed rare.

  “Yes, Your Highness. At once.”

  “Sir Belfast, I require you to make a list of the ships in greatest need of repair and resupply—and I mean all our ships, not just those that remained loyal during the civil war,” said Kalila. “You are to disperse them as necessary across all Imperial systems with the proper shipwrights, docks, engineers, supplies, personnel, and so on, so that our warships are ready for war again as soon as possible.”

  “Of course, Your Highness,” said Sir Belfast. “But, if I might ask one question. Does Your Highness anticipate war? The distress calls from Polarian space have become silent. It’s possible the threat is gone.”

  “They’ve become silent because the Dread Fleet has slaughtered them and no one remains alive to send out a distress call,” said Kalila. This seemed to properly terrify Sir Belfast.

  “I’ll see to it without delay,” he bowed and left.

  “As for you, Captain Adiger, I require your assistance on the task I am currently working on.”

  “Anything for you, My Queen,” replied her loyal captain.

  “I am splitting up the fleets and squadrons into new units, mixing and combining fleets that fought against us with fleets that remained loyal. I want our naval officers and soldiers to forget about the recent civil war as quickly as possible. We must, from here on out, remain unified.”

  “I could not have said it better myself, Your Majesty,” said Captain Adiger.

  “I wish to remove command of the most important fleets from the knights who were disloyal, not to punish them so much as because I no longer trust them,” said Kalila. “However, I want to charge them with assignments that remain important, at least in title, so they will not feel punished, but also limit the amount of damage they could do, should any of them remain disloyal.”

  “A wise decision.”

  “I thought so,” said Kalila. “I require you to help me come up with these new positions and titles, and to also help me reassign our warships to their new squadrons and squadron commanders. I expect our loyal knights to pick up the slack left behind by the disloyal knights. It will mean more work for them, when battle comes, but I believe it is the right thing to do. Don’t you agree? Tell it to me true!”

  “I do agree, Your Highness,” said Captain Adiger.

  “Excellent,” said Kalila. “Then let us begin.”

  ***

  They weren’t just restricted to the cargo bay. Tristan had made it clear that Shen, and also Sarah, were free to wander the ship, so long as they remained away from the bridge and Main Engineering. “It’s nothing personal,” Tristan had assured them. “Those are the rules for everyone and fair is fair, no?” Shen hadn’t known whether to believe Tristan or not—in fact, Tristan seemed to have made it a sort of art form as to whether not he could be trusted, and gauging exactly how far he could be trusted was beyond challenging.

  Shen’s natural suspicions were that there was something on the bridge, or in Engineering, or both, that Tristan did not want either Shen or Sarah to see. Perhaps human prisoners for the Remorii to feast on. Or perhaps it was one of the dreaded isotome weapons. Shen hoped it was neither, and even forced himself to believe that it was neither, but he remained suspicious of Tristan’s motives, while still having a sort of vague faith that what he was doing was the right thing.

  Am I crazy? Shen wound up asking himself far more frequently than he would have liked. Whenever his thoughts drifted there, and he thought of the hundreds of deadly Remorii all around them, and the fact that they were aboard Tristan’s ship, headed for the most dangerous world in the Empire, and that he’d brought Sarah along too…it all seemed to add up to the conclusion that Shen was a perfect idiot. And that he had probably killed them both.

  But then he would remember the dreams, and the feelings, he recalled that horrible noise that had haunted him, and how he had even become incapacitated on the Nighthawk’s observation deck, as if his body were crying out in desperate hunger for something but he had no idea what. Then Tristan came along, and somehow, despite everything rational, it all had clicked and made some kind of sense.

  I have to be here, he reminded himself. For better or worse, I have to be here.

  He looked down at Sarah, who was stretched out over one of the bedrolls, staring up at the ceiling, and Shen’s heart both skipped a beat and seemed to sink down into his stomach. He had this crazy attraction to Sarah, it was indescribable, it was something wild, something deep, there was a feral quality to it, but also an intellectual passion. He cared about her on such a deep level that it frightened him to speak to her about it; he feared her rejection and believed that if she knew just how much he liked her, it would frighten her away. Kill any tiny, budding, hopeful little plants of affection for him that were growing inside her.

  She shouldn’t be here, Shen thought. He knew the danger that was coming. He even accepted that this was his destiny. But it never should have been hers. I believe I’ve killed her, he thought miserably. And yet knowing she was here, and that she had chosen to come here because of Shen, because she had feelings for him, that was the greatest feeling in the galaxy. Better than a storm of dopamine or a rush of serotonin or any other feel good experience Shen could imagine. Perhaps that was exactly what he was feeling, a simple, neurochemical process that made him feel pleased, and alive, and happier than he had ever dreamed possible. But, as he looked at Sarah’s beautiful body and thought about her exquisite face, her cunning smile, her dancing eyes, the way the light bounced off her hair just so…the physical attraction he felt was maddening. The bond was stronger than gravity, more powerful than magnetism, and even more binding than the color force.

  At least…Shen hoped so. He knew what his feelings were on his side. And Sarah had seemed to share his feelings, both by kissing him as she had, and by choosing to come here as she had, but still…Shen could not be certain. He did not want to come onto her too strongly. To have reached this point and crossed th
e divide, he doubted he could survive ever losing her.

  And yet I have brought her here. Likely to die with me. A pointless death on the surface of Remus Nine, he thought.

  “Tell me,” said Shen, when he had grown tired of his own thoughts and the silence. Sarah sat up and looked at him. “Why did you do it?” he asked.

  “Do what?” she asked.

  “You know what,” said Shen. “Volunteer. Choose to come here.”

  “Why do you think I did it?” she replied, as if the answer were obvious. Then she asked a question of her own. “How about you tell me this,” she said, “your feelings, how you look at me, how you touch me…” she hesitated but did not break eye contact with him. “How much of that is the real you?” she asked. “And how much of it is…the change.”

  Shen was taken aback by the question. “All of it is me,” he said at once. “I mean, maybe the confidence, that is something new. But, Sarah, I have always wanted you. That has always been true,” he looked at her earnestly. “How I feel for you…that might be the last part of me that is the true, original, authentic Shen.”

  She smiled. Apparently satisfied by the answer. Shen wanted to say more, though he felt a little worried that he had come on too strongly, but before he could say another word, Tristan appeared, as if from nowhere.

  “How are my two favorite passengers holding up?” asked the lycan.

  “What do you want?” asked Sarah, apparently uninterested in Tristan’s pretense of politeness.

  “Well, all right then, right to the point,” said Tristan. “I like that.” He looked from her to Shen and pointed down at her. “Never let this one get away.”

  “You heard her,” said Shen. “What do you want?”

  “Obviously we’re still quite a way out from our destination, but once we get there, I can’t have the two of you not knowing what the plan is. Especially since you’re both going to play very important roles in this.”

  “Is that so?” asked Shen, folding his arms.

  “If you don’t, it’s your funeral,” said Tristan calmly.

  “All right,” said Shen. “What do we have to do?”

  “So the basics go a little something like this.”

  ***

  It was White Shift again by the time they arrived at the Charred Worlds. There was nothing there, no station to make port at, no other starship with which to rendezvous, but Calvin wanted the Nighthawk to drop out of alteredspace anyway.

  “Dropping out of alteredspace,” he announced from his new seat at the pilot’s station. Other than his brief foray as pilot of the Wanderer, and minor stints using small craft, it had been a good long while since Calvin had sat the helm of a starship. The Nighthawk’s controls were different than the vessels he had trained on, and yet still somehow familiar. And not just because he had taught himself to fly the ship—in case Sarah ever became incapacitated—there was something more to it. The whole feel of it. It was simply intuitive to him. The controls, the yoke, the navigation and communication displays, everything was ergonomic and efficient and just right. The headset was his only complaint, but no ship was perfect.

  “Why are we stopping here?” asked Summers. She remained in the XO’s chair, even though the CO’s chair was vacant; this she did, Calvin knew, out of respect for the fact that even though Calvin sat at the helm, Calvin still had command of the deck.

  “I want you to see something,” said Calvin. “I want you all to see something.”

  He brought the ship around, accelerating to a good sublight speed, and positioned the Nighthawk directly toward the nearest of the planets. It was too small to see out the window, at least for now, but the binary stars were visible. One was white, the other blue; the first looked about the size of a tennis ball, the second was much larger but appeared roughly the same size, due to its farther distance.

  “Cassidy,” said Calvin. “Do a broad scan of the system. Now that we’re officially inside Polarian space, let’s make sure no one else is here.” He doubted any traffic would be moving through this system. It would be like routing freight through a graveyard. Still, from this point onward, Calvin knew the value of caution. Even when that caution seemed a bit on the extreme side.

  “Broad scan complete,” said Cassidy. “No starships detected.”

  “Just as I thought,” said Calvin.

  “Just as we all thought,” said Summers, folding her arms. She still had not forgiven Calvin for allowing their chief pilot and chief Ops officers to leave the ship, and, in her terms, go along with some of Raidan’s hooliganism.

  Calvin turned the ship and moved directly toward the nearest planet. This system was unique in that it had once contained so many habitable planets. Some of them were naturally habitable, others had been aggressively terraformed by the Polarians until they could live on or near the surface. Now, though, all that lived here were ghosts. Ghosts and memories. And the echo of a slaughter like the galaxy had never seen.

  “Here we are,” said Calvin, maneuvering the Nighthawk into a close flyby of what had once been the icy, but livable, planet Ceti Omega V. In case the view out the window didn’t properly show all the details, Calvin ordered Cassidy to display the surface of the planet on the 3D display.

  “Rather cold looking for being one of the charred worlds,” said Miles.

  The planet remained icy and cold, but as the Nighthawk moved and the 3D display adjusted, the beginning of ruins could be seen. Metal and cement debris, much of it scorched black or exploded into countless pieces. Almost nothing was recognizable. There were foundations left behind of crumpled and burned buildings, most of the formerly glorious buildings now sat in heaps of debris like ancient burial mounds. The winds and snows had shifted and buried much of it, but the evidence of butchery remained.

  “Holy shit,” said Miles.

  “Holy shit is right,” said Calvin, maneuvering them away from Ceti Omega V and toward Ceti Omega IV, which had been a jungle planet with billions of people once living on its surface.

  When they arrived, Calvin positioned the ship so they could see the planet out the window, what once had been vibrantly white, green, and blue, was now charcoal black. The result of every tree and plant, along with every building and person, being set ablaze almost simultaneously. The fire had burned out of control. The terror had been unlike anything anyone could imagine, Calvin was sure.

  “It’s just like Gemini,” said Summers incredulously, as she gazed at the 3D display, observing the destruction—much of which had been covered in dirt from windstorms. However, the evidence of civilization, and its violent and sudden ruination, had not been completely erased by the natural processes of these worlds. And, Calvin suspected, they wouldn’t be for many centuries in the future.

  “It’s worse than Gemini,” said Calvin, and he swung the ship around to showcase the southern hemisphere of Ceti Omega IV from close orbit. “What you see there is the ruins of the Mathaki People, a tribe of Polarians that tried to split off from the main religion. They lived for decades in peace and built a great civilization, complete with state of the art infrastructure for their time. Then, when the Dread Fleet came, it is said that the ships answered no hails, offered no quarter, made no demands, they simply opened fire. Not stopping until all the Mathaki People had been slaughtered, man, woman, and child, and their great works and mighty infrastructure reduced to the ashes and rubble you see before you now. All told, on just this planet, four billion Polarians died.”

  He took them on a brief tour, from planet to planet, showcasing the desolation and ruins left behind. One would think, by the looks of them, these planets had long gone extinct of all life millennia ago. But it had been merely one hundred years.

  Calvin felt it important that his senior staff see this carnage, so that they understood just how unforgiving and brutal an enemy they were dealing with. Although he had deliberately refrained from inviting Rez’nac up to view the destruction, Calvin wasn’t sure if the Polarian warrior would praise the righte
ous extinguishment of religious deviants or condemn the slaughter of billions of innocents. Unsure which side he would take, Calvin opted to leave him out of it.

  To the humans, though, the message was clear. If we fail. If the Dread Fleet cannot be stopped, then this will be us. This is humanity’s future. This is the Empire’s fate. Unless we find a way to change that.

  Calvin would have said those words, but by the expressions of pallor on the others’ faces, he knew to do so would have been redundant. And so, after showcasing Ceti Omega I and doing a flyby of the nearer star, he set course for alteredspace and jumped the ship, knowing that his officers understood the stakes.

  ***

  Red Shift. Finally. Calvin had been so eager to relinquish the pilot’s position, and the bridge, that he’d caught himself counting down the minutes for the last hour. Eventually, once the relief crew arrived, Calvin surrendered his station with a smile and announced that he was going to get some rest.

  Although quite exhausted, it wasn’t rest that he wanted. It was Rain. She had been in his every other thought since they’d put the Charred Worlds to their stern, and he couldn’t help how excited he felt to see her again.

  Was I like this with Christine? He asked himself, as he punched the elevator button for the infirmary’s deck. As sad as it was, he did not actually remember. Ever since Rain had forced Calvin to confront his feelings about Christine, and admit out loud that her death was not his fault—something he was slowly accepting, but had a long way to go—the memories of her had faded a bit. Not in a bad way, though. More like in the way that a bruise fades over time, taking some of the pain with it as it shrinks away.

  When he arrived, Calvin eagerly entered the infirmary. Currently there were no patients being treated and Rain was the only physician on staff. Charitable as she was, she must have sent Dr. Andrews and everyone else away to rest, keeping them on call in case she needed them. Which, unless something went catastrophically wrong with the stealth system in the next few hours, she wouldn’t.