The Phoenix Conspiracy

by Richard Sanders

  ***

  It wasn’t more than ten minutes after he’d sent his report that Calvin received the very message he feared most from Intel Wing.

  “You are ordered to change course and make port at CC-Platform B in the Xerxes System immediately.” The director’s face looked strangely blank over Calvin’s viewer as he spoke.

  Calvin’s heart sank, and he was almost speechless. He’d half expected this reaction, but the other half of him, the better half, tried to deny it was even possible. He loved the Empire, and now, to one degree or another, he was sure it had been corrupted. Infiltrated. Compromised.

  He snapped back to attention and tried to play his part, feeling sick and more like an actor than a person. “What for?” he asked, feigning surprise.

  “You’ll be briefed there. See you soon.” The director faked a smile and terminated the call before Calvin could say another word.

  Of course he knew what it really meant. He was now a liability instead of an asset. They were going to take him out of the picture. Dump him off on Xerxes, the closest system with an Intel Wing presence, and then transfer command of the Nighthawk to someone more dependable. Maybe they’d even take the ship off-line while they filtered through the crew and sorted out who was reliable and who wasn’t. He wondered if another Intel Wing ship had already been given the Harbinger assignment. For all he knew, more than one ship had been tailing it the whole time.

  “So they want me to go to Xerxes with my hands in the air and tail between my legs,” he said. Of course he’d made up his mind years ago that, if he ever were in a situation like this, and knew he was about to get burned and lose everything, he wasn’t going down without a fight.

  He figured he had a little time to decide his next move, since Xerxes and Abia were in the same direction. But once his ship didn’t make the course correction toward Xerxes in about an hour, Intel Wing would know he’d gone rogue and would do everything they could to stop him.

  So his first move came right out of the basic playbook for war. Disrupt communications. He stood up and ran out of his office onto the bridge.

  Summers looked surprised to see him, or at least surprised he was moving that fast. He didn’t care though. If he did this right, she wouldn’t be a threat anymore, but he had to get her off the bridge first. He waved her out of his seat and took the command position.

  “Summers, I need you to go belowdecks and check in with engineering.”

  “All right,” she said. “But why don’t I use your comm switch to call them?” She seemed tense.

  “Because I need you to pick up something for me,” he lied.

  She seemed to catch onto this.

  Ordering the XO to run and fetch something wasn’t going to fool anyone. Everyone knew it was an excuse to get her off the bridge.

  “Why not have someone who’s already there bring it up?” she asked, folding her arms.

  “Because it has sensitive information that I can’t trust with just anyone,” said Calvin.

  Summers raised a curious eyebrow.

  Calvin had no idea what this object was going to be.

  “What is it?” she asked. “I need to know what it is if I’m going to get it.”

  “Just ask Andre, the chief engineer. He’ll tell you.”

  “All … right,” she said cautiously. “I’m on my way.” She stepped into the elevator, and it whisked her away belowdeck.

  “Good lord, I thought she’d never leave,” said Miles.

  “What’s up, Calvin?” asked Sarah.

  “We may be getting some unfriendly messages in the near future. I don’t want to hear them,” said Calvin. “Until I say otherwise, we’re going to have complete radio and kataspace silence. Comms between decks will stay online, but no contact outside the ship will be allowed.”

  Sarah tapped her nose. “All right, I think I can handle that.”

  “And, just in case,” said Calvin as his heart started beating faster, “Shen, help me lock it out with our command codes.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Shen, and he opened the systems’ command prompt while Sarah began shutting down things. Together, Calvin and Shen used their respective codes as CO and Senior Officer of Operations to jointly lockout the kataspace connector so it couldn’t be reactivated without the use of an equal or higher set of command codes, which Summers didn’t have.

  “That ought to do it,” said Calvin. “Continue flying toward Abia and act like business as usual.” He tapped the comm to engineering.

  “Andre here.”

  “It’s Calvin. You’re going to see the XO in there very soon. She’ll ask you for something to bring back to the bridge. Give her some random datadisk.”

  “Will do. May I ask why?”

  “Need-to-know basis. Sorry, friend,” said Calvin.

  “All right,” said Andre. He started to speak again but one of his junior officers interrupted him. A moment later his voice returned. “The kataspace connector linkups and receiving beacons have been switched off?”

  “That’s correct,” said Calvin. “As a matter of security.”

  “Let me guess,” said Andre. “Need-to-know basis again?”

  “That’s right.” He didn’t want to keep Andre in the dark; he was someone Calvin trusted. But he didn’t want to explain the situation over the comm into a room he couldn’t see, where anyone could be listening. “Meet me in my office a bit later, Chief. When you have things nailed down over there. We have some things to discuss.”

  “Will do.”

  Calvin’s next call was to Special Forces. But before he could call them, they called him.

  The major didn’t sound angry, or rather, not angrier than usual, but there was a kind of alertness in his voice. Clearly shutting down all outside communications was a pretty big deal and, as chief of security and direct CO of a third of the people on the ship, he expected to be in on the decision to do it. The trouble was, unlike most of the ship’s crew, the major and his soldiers were not people Calvin knew well enough to trust with the details. He’d have to invent something.

  “Why are you shutting down all outside communications, Mr. Cross?” His deep voice came across as more gritty and gravely than usual.

  “Well, hello to you too,” said Calvin, taking a moment to solidify the story he’d prepared for the major.

  “I’m waiting,” said the major. When Calvin didn’t reply right away he added, “… for an answer.”

  Calvin’s story relied on the most clichéd of excuses—it’s a security threat—and that was especially dangerous since security was the major’s realm of expertise. But nothing else seemed to make sense. He decided to invent a kind of security risk the major—and Summers—would never have heard of before, because it didn’t exist.

  “There are several small prototype … feeler probes,” said Calvin, coughing to buy himself a few more seconds to iron out his exact phrasing. “As I said, feeler probes that Raidan and his contacts have deployed in order to protect themselves. They send our ship false messages, and, when the false messages are repeated back to them, they can covertly determine our position so the Harbinger can outmaneuver us indefinitely”—he paused—”but, if we isolate all the comm systems and lock them out, that tactic won’t work. And instead it’ll give Raidan a false sense of security.”

  Calvin waited, wondering if the major would buy it. He didn’t know how convincing he sounded over the comm line, but he was satisfied that his story was the best he could come up with in so little time. He couldn’t help but notice Shen roll his eyes and crack a smile.

  “All right,” said the major. “So why haven’t we been doing this before now?”

  “Because we didn’t know about it until now,” said Calvin. “In fact, if you will check the comms records, you’ll see we got a message from Intel Wing a few minutes ago. They were giving me this new intelligence.” It was true that the ship kept track of transmissions and how long they lasted, but no data as to the contents of the messages were ev
er recorded. Since, almost always, it was for select ears only. Calvin was the only person on the ship who knew what the message really had been about.

  “Understood. HQ out,” said the major.

  The call terminated, and Calvin breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I take it that’s not quite the real reason,” said Shen.

  “What makes you say that?” Calvin smiled.

  “Because that kind of technology doesn’t make any sense.” Shen sat back and folded his hands behind his head. “I know it’s cutting edge and experimental, blah, blah, blah, but”—he shook his head slowly—”it wouldn’t work.”

  “Okay, you’re right,” Calvin admitted. “Here’s the real reason. The fleet, or someone, has its hooks deep inside Intel Wing, and they’re willing to give us up in order to keep us from getting to Abia. Whatever Raidan wants us to find there, someone else obviously doesn’t. When I reported that we decided to head to Abia, they told us to make port at Xerxes.”

  “Xerxes?” asked Miles. “That place is a rotting hellhole.” He reclined his chair and put his feet up on the console.

  “And if we go there, they’ll take this ship apart, interrogate us, and hold us there until they’re convinced none of us are bad assets.”

  “But we are bad asses.”

  “Miles, not now,” snapped Calvin.

  “Oh, come on. It can’t be as bad as all that,” said Sarah. “Are you sure?”

  Calvin nodded gravely. “I’m sure.”

  “It makes sense,” said Shen. “From their perspective. If whoever is calling the shots wants Raidan reigned in because he knows something they don’t want to get out, and if that something is in Abia, then they’d be motivated to stop investigators—like us—from getting there.”

  “So why’d they sic us on Raidan in the first place?” asked Sarah.

  “Here’s how I see it,” said Calvin. “They definitely want the Harbinger taken down. It’s a liability for someone. We were hired to find it and help mitigate that threat. But during that process, we became a threat ourselves.”

  “Because we didn’t stop the Harbinger by launching into some bozo suicide attack?” asked Miles.

  “That and because we’re asking too many questions. Our going to Abia instead of Zendricun,” said Calvin, “proves to someone that we are more interested in solving the mystery than taking down Raidan. Now, if they do have something to hide, and there is a vital clue in Abia, then we are a serious threat because we are trained. Moving us to Xerxes is a way of mitigating us. And then whoever is pulling the strings can divert other resources to handling Raidan. We were a convenient tool yesterday. But today we’re part of the problem.”

  “So why don’t we just play nice and then go to Abia later?” asked Miles. “You know, fake ’em out. Go to Zendricun, maybe stay a few days, have a few drinks, and then sneak over to Abia when no one’s looking.”

  Calvin laughed. “Thanks for cheering me up.”

  “I wasn’t joking,” said Miles, sitting up. “Why do we have to go to Abia now?”

  “Because whatever is in Abia might not be there later,” said Calvin. “Besides, it’s too late now. We’ve shown our cards.”

  No one spoke for a few seconds. Then, just as Shen opened his mouth, the elevator door slid apart, and Summers stepped onto the bridge. “Here is your mysterious datadisk,” she said.

  “Thanks,” said Calvin. He moved to take it from her, but she kept it out of reach.

  “It’s blank,” she said.

  “What?” he asked, trying to think of some excuse for why it might still be important.

  “I figured, since you trusted me to go all the way down to get it, that it implied I had clearance to see what was on it. But it’s blank. And not just erased blank. It’s never been formatted.” Her gaze probed his, and he knew she saw through him.

  He snatched the disk from her hand. “The data isn’t on the disk. It’s in the disk,” he said dismissively, as if she were stupid. When, in reality, nobody really understood what he meant. Including himself.

  He went into his office and pretended to carefully look over the disk until his door slid shut. Once he was alone, he locked the disk in a drawer and collapsed in his chair with a sigh.

  Other ships would be looking for him now. And all his faceless, nameless enemies knew he was going to Abia.