The Phoenix Darkness

by Richard L. Sanders

  Chapter 19

  “You mean to tell me, not only is Captain Pellew dead, and his men dead, but that they were beaten by a mere solo operative?!” Raidan had been sitting during this conversation, but now he stood and began to pace, unable to make sense of this news.

  “That’s the way Summers reported it to me,” said Tristan, whose face looked surprisingly neutral on the other end. “Of course, she may have been lying, though I detected no deceit in her voice.”

  “No, if it came from Summers, then it’s true,” said Raidan, feeling the urge to rip his hair out. “And the weapon?” He knew the answer before it came.

  “Gone.”

  “Pellew gone. His men gone. The isotome weapon gone. All by a single, solitary, lonely operative. How is it possible?” Certainly Raidan had never heard of such a skilled operative. Even the Advent Elite couldn’t have managed such a thing.

  “Was it a Remorii?” That was the only conclusion which made any kind of sense. Probably one of the bastards from the Enclave was behind it, just as Raidan had feared.

  “No; evidently it was a normal human being, like yourself,” said Tristan.

  “How do they know?”

  “I am merely reporting what I heard. I wasn’t there; I cannot speak for them.”

  God dammit!

  “Do you have any further instructions for me?” asked Tristan, who seemed not nearly as enraged by this as he should have. Raidan knew his temper was boiling hot. His mistake in trusting Pellew may have just doomed the human species.

  “Just get back here,” said Raidan, his tone filled with icy rage. He terminated the call, still unable to believe the news he’d heard. Pellew and all his men, killed, by one man! A man who then absconded with the last known isotome missile, now leaving fifteen unaccounted for. And we have exactly none.

  That’s it then, he thought. There goes our last hope of survival!

  He snatched up the whiskey bottle and hurled it against the bulkhead, spraying glass and whiskey everywhere in a terrible smash. A flake of glass even bit into his arm, but Raidan didn’t care.

  Now there is no nuclear option, no threat of mutually assured destruction. Now the Rotham, poisoned by the Rahajiim, can use their isotome weapons against us undeterred!

  And what are we doing to prepare for them? We’re waging bloody civil war on ourselves! Even now the order had been given for all ships loyal to the queen to assemble at waypoint 556.1. Preparations were being made by both sides to fight another spectacularly costly battle, this time at Ophiuchus. Even Raidan and his people had been called into action.

  “Un-god-damned-believable!” he shouted, and then flipped his cedar desk upside down in a rage.

  It was at that precise moment Mira Pellew entered. She gave him and the mess a once over. “Bad news, I take it?”

  Don’t look so happy, he thought. “You could say that,” said Raidan.

  “Ah,” said Mira, then she looked him in the eyes. “I suppose there is only one matter of recourse after this, then…?”

  “Yes, we’ll impose the bloody Forum,” he said, his words still forceful and angry. “Direct all your people accordingly!”

  “And what of the queen’s order to gather at minor star 566.1?”

  “Ignore it.”

  Mira smiled a dark smile. “Now this is the Raidan I remember. It’s about time!” With that, she left, leaving Raidan alone to think about what he’d just committed to do and how he no longer had any choice. A firm hand was required, and all that had been shown was a soft one. Even so, by imposing the Forum together, that made his mutual cooperation with Mira one monumental step less essential and brought them both one step closer to war. Now their overlapping agendas only touched on a single point.

  When the time comes, I’ll be ready, he promised himself.

  ***

  By some miracle, the shuttle made it into alteredspace…mostly. There were chunks missing from the aft armor plating, and a piece of hull was gone on the starboard side, fortunately not enough to cause a breach. Part of their alteredspace drive was missing, forcing them into a very shallow jump with no ability to go deeper. But they'd made it, all of them, and nearly all the shuttle had avoided getting scrambled.

  “That’s got to be one for the history books,” said Calvin, staring happily out at the pure blackness in the windows.

  “My God, that was the craziest thing I have ever witnessed,” said Rafael.

  “I’m still shocked it worked,” said Calvin. He must have timed it just perfectly. “I doubt even Sarah could've made a jump like that.”

  “Well, let’s not challenge her to give it a try,” said Rafael.

  “Check our scopes; make sure nothing is following us,” said Calvin. The last thing he needed after that miracle jump was for some faster ship to overtake them and force them back into normal space.

  “Scopes are empty,” said Rafael. “Just like you’d hoped.”

  Calvin wanted his alteredspace jump signature to be partially inside the hangar of the supercruiser itself, leaving the Rahajiim fleet with a very poor image of where the shuttle had actually gone. Their entire escape depended upon it, since the fleet had a great many interceptors, all of which could easily have caught up to them by now if only they’d known the coordinates.

  “Rafael, if you’ll do the honors. I do believe we have a message to transmit.”

  “One step ahead of you, Calvin,” the one-eyed man had already plugged the data disc into the shuttle’s computer and, after entering the best encrypted channels available, began transmitting their data to the Nighthawk, including their intended destination and the strange zigzag pattern Calvin was going to take to hopefully avoid the Rotham patrols.

  “I trust I can leave you to handle things here,” said Calvin, wanting to go check on his other passengers.

  “I’ve got it under control,” said Rafael.

  “Oh, and use the medkit over there and do something about that scratch of yours,” said Calvin. Rafael was already intimidating enough to look at with the eye-patch, he didn’t need blood coming out of his forehead, even if it had clotted.

  “Right. Thanks.” Rafael grabbed the medkit.

  “Don’t mention it.” Calvin exited the cockpit and entered the main hold, where the crew remained strapped in exactly as he’d left them.

  “What’s it look like out there, Cal?” asked Miles.

  “Smooth sailing,” Calvin replied with a smile. “We’re in alteredspace.”

  “Already?” Miles sounded shocked. They all looked a bit surprised. The lack of windows in the main hold meant they hadn’t been clued in to the fact that the ship had jumped.

  “Yes, already,” said Calvin.

  “How many ships are pursuing us?” asked Rez’nac. “And how long until they intercept us?”

  “No ships. At least, none on our scopes. So hopefully there won’t be an interception,” said Calvin.

  “You outran the fleet?” Miles was astonished.

  “Well, yes and no,” said Calvin. “It’s a bit nuanced; I’ll get into it later.” He decided not to alarm his crew by telling them of the massive risk he'd taken to enable their escape. “How about you, Rain; you holding up over there?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Congratulations on getting us off that ship and away from the fleet. Although, I must admit, I always believed you would do it somehow, one way or another.”

  “Thanks,” said Calvin, feeling a little embarrassed. “But it was a team effort, really. The important thing is we got out alive, in mostly one piece, and we got the intelligence we came for. We’re transmitting it to the Nighthawk as we speak.”

  “Huzzah,” said Miles, pumping a fist in the air. For the first time in a while, he showed a glimmer of his mirthful side. Calvin was glad to see it.

  Calvin spent the better part of an hour with his crewmates, talking to them, trying to help them decompress from the stress of everything they’d just experienced. It helped him too, if he was being h
onest. Eventually, though, he found himself wandering back to the cockpit to take the pilot’s chair and peruse some of the intelligence they’d collected.

  Annoyingly, this shuttle didn’t have a proper computer which could translate the Rotham files into human for him, so he’d have to wait until he was on the Nighthawk to read them properly. But he was able to click through the images, seeing lots of faces and schematics, and even a few tactical maps. Eventually, he found the map which showed the attack plan for Thetican System where the Rahajiim were planning to strike first. He couldn’t make much sense of the notations or any of the writing, but he did understand the positions of the ships and what their deployment pattern indicated.

  “It looks like they intend to blitz Thetican System,” said Calvin. “Their attack plan involves a tight, fast-moving formation that expects to encounter planetary defenses and local starships only.”

  “That’s because they don’t know that we know they're planning to attack there,” said Rafael.

  “Which means,” said Calvin. “If the Imperial ships are positioned correctly, an ambush could be set. That tight formation, although fast, is vulnerable at the flanks.”

  “I’ll be sure to send along your recommendation when I transmit this data to the queen,” said Rafael. Then he looked up. “You do want me to send all of this to the queen, don’t you?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” said Calvin. He looked back at the intel and found himself thinking about what Rafael had uncovered about this mysterious human even the Rahajiim had been unable to identify. “Who do you think the mysterious human is?” asked Calvin. “The one who seems to have frustrated the Rahajiim so much.”

  “Could be anybody, as far as I’m concerned,” said Rafael. “Maybe it was Zane Martel. He seemed to have connections with them, of a sort.”

  “Maybe,” said Calvin, wondering. He had the nagging suspicion that whoever it was, he was still out there, alive, and still a potential danger. “Do you think it could be White Rook?”

  “Head of the Organization?” asked Rafael. He considered it for a moment. “Might be. Though the Organization was also so focused on the Phoenix Ring threat that they didn’t even know about the Rahajiim until you discovered them.”

  “Or so it seemed, anyway,” said Calvin. He considered many other prospective candidates and dismissed them one by one for various reasons. Raidan, Tristan, Queen Kalila, Caerwyn Martel, Brinton Martel the elusive father of the notorious Martel brothers, Admiral Harkov, Director Edwards, Lafayette Nimoux…nobody seemed to fit the profile. More than likely it was someone else, he concluded; someone new.

  “Hey, take a look at this,” said Rafael.

  Calvin turned his head to see what looked like a star chart on Rafael’s screen. It showed a few stars, but most of the chart was blank. Calvin recognized it after a few seconds. He was looking at a picture of Polarian Forbidden Space, a place so sacred to the Polarians, and so religiously defended, that neither the Advent nor Intel Wing had successfully penetrated it. Everyone pointed telescopes at it, and so they knew a little about the stars and planets which were there, but the Polarians had used technology of their own that interfered with the telescopes, so the knowledge they did have was considered imperfect at best.

  “Why do they have a star chart of the Forbidden Space?” asked Calvin.

  “Good question,” said Rafael. “But there is a whole lot about it here. Not many specifics, I don’t think the Rahajiim actually penetrated the Forbidden Space, but I believe they made contact with somebody from there, somehow. There is an enormous group of files that reference either the Forbidden Space, the Dark Space, the Council of Prelains, and even the High Prelain himself. And something else here called The Dark Ones.”

  That name rang a bell for Calvin and he suddenly remembered Rez’nac had referred to dark things hidden deep in Polarian space, including the replicants which he had referred to as the Faceless Ones. Maybe he knows something, thought Calvin.

  “Hey, Rez’nac!” shouted Calvin. “Get in here.”

  “And there are more references here that are related,” said Rafael. “Something they used called Qi’laqin, however you say it. At first I thought it was a person, but now I’m getting the sense it is a thing, or a group of things.”

  The name sounded familiar to Calvin, but he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it had been used in one of Rez’nac’s ritual chants Calvin had witnessed.

  Rez’nac arrived, seeming to loom tall over Calvin’s shoulder. Calvin swiveled his chair to face him and, feeling uncomfortable with the height difference, decided to stand also.

  “You summoned me,” said the Polarian warrior.

  “Yeah, I want your take on some of this stuff,” said Calvin. “Rafael, show him the charts.”

  Rafael showed him the star charts.

  “I’m sorry,” said Rez’nac. “But I cannot speak of such things.”

  “I thought you had fallen out of Khalahar?” said Calvin, not wanting to reopen a wound for Rez’nac, but rather hoping to convince him to share what he knew.

  “I am a fallen one, a dark one,” he said, “that is true. But even in that state, there are secrets I must not betray.”

  “Dark one?” asked Calvin. “Rafael, bring that up.” Rafael pulled up a series of documents. Unfortunately, they were in Rotham and made as little sense to Rez’nac as they did to Calvin, so Rafael tried to explain.

  “Here, and in many other places, it talks a great deal about something called the Dark Ones, what does that mean?”

  “I am forbidden to speak of it.”

  “But you just a moment ago referred to yourself as a dark one,” said Calvin. “So is that what the Dark Ones means? Wayward Polarians who have lost their Essence?”

  Rez’nac looked at him and did not reply for a few seconds. Then he said simply, “No.”

  “There’s a lot more here,” said Rafael.

  “If you would forgive me,” said Rez’nac to Calvin, bowing respectfully, “I wish not to speak of these things.”

  Calvin was frustrated, but tried to understand. He wished he could talk some sense into Rez’nac and make him realize that, Polarian religious values aside, his knowledge could help crack these Rahajiim files and might end up saving a great many thousands or millions of people. He was on the cuff of granting Rez’nac permission to go when Rafael said something which caught Rez’nac’s interest.

  “Here, they’re talking about the High Prelain.”

  “The High Prelain?” asked Rez’nac. “What do they say of him?”

  “It’s a bit vague and muddled, mostly just a few references, but he’s somehow instrumental to all of this,” said Rafael. “On some level, he’s got to be involved.”

  “The High Prelain, involved with the Rahajiim?” asked Rez’nac, his voice sounding angry. “It is blasphemy and lies!”

  “Hey, easy there, I’m just the messenger,” said Rafael. “There’s also talk about the Council of Prelains here too. Someone had something to do with them.”

  “I cannot believe such filth,” said Rez’nac.

  “Is it possible,” said Calvin, getting Rez’nac’s attention back on him, “that the Dark Ones, combined with the Rahajiim, might have somehow tricked the High Prelain or otherwise deceived the Council of Prelains in some way?”

  At first Rez’nac looked appalled by the question, but then seemed to genuinely consider it. Eventually, he gave Calvin his answer. “Yes.”

  “If that’s the case, then obviously we have to do something about it,” said Calvin.

  Rez’nac nodded his head. “If the Council is deceived, if the High Prelain is deceived…that would be a great danger to the galaxy. No one would be safe.”

  “Sounds like the kind of thing we need to investigate,” said Rafael.

  “He’s right,” said Calvin. “But in order to do that, we need some information. Like, who are the Dark Ones?

  Rez’nac looked confused and hurt by all of this, and Calvin could tell his mind was ra
cing, as if the thought that the High Prelain or the Council of Prelains, or both, might have been deceived had turned his world completely upside down.

  “You may sit if you like,” said Calvin. He didn’t expect the large Polarian to take him up on his offer; in the past, he’d always preferred to stand, but this time he sat. Sat and pondered as if lost deep inside his own head. Calvin gave him time, not wanting to interrupt whatever thought process was going on. Eventually, Rez’nac spoke.

  “Since the beginning, when the Essences created the Polarians, there have always been deviants, those who rejected the Essences. These were the first Dark Ones, the Qi’laqin you have encountered, they are the spawn of these early Dark Ones.”

  “Qi’laqin?” asked Calvin.

  “The Faceless Ones.”

  And then Calvin remembered: Qi’laqin had been the word Rez’nac had used to describe the replicants.

  “The deviants who choose to go astray are not fallen ones, they are marked. From the beginning of their lives, they are Dark Ones, and always they have been cast away. Ever since the first of them left the light of the Essences and chose their own path, this has always been so.”

  Calvin was eager for Rez’nac to skip past the mythological mumbo jumbo and get to the relevant stuff, but he remained respectfully quiet.

  “There have been times when the Dark Ones have banded together and tried to slaughter the Polarians of the light, those who fall the Essences, those of the blue. And every time, the Dark Ones have been driven back. This is the true purpose of the Dread Fleet.”

  Now that was a reveal Calvin had not expected, and found very interesting. So somewhere out in Polarian Forbidden Space there was a competing offshoot of the Polarian species which would wage war against the Polarians from time to time. That was why the Dread Fleet could be called forth, rallying Polarians of different stripes and loyalties behind the same banner for the common cause of war. It was to defeat the competing species…