The Phoenix Conspiracy Read online

  "Our ships have already combed through it trying to recover the cargo, and before you ask—no, I'm not authorized to tell you what the cargo was. We recovered what we could, the rest is debris. You won't find anything."

  "So is that a yes you'll give us the coordinates or a no I'll have to sweep the system for it myself?"

  "Yes, we'll send them over, but you're wasting your time."

  "Maybe, maybe not. Thanks for your help, Commodore." Calvin nodded to Jay and he terminated the call. "Set a course to those coordinates. Cassidy, get a deep scan ready."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Why are we going there if it's just a waste of our time?" asked Patrick. He turned the defense post's chair to show his disapproval to Calvin face-to-face.

  "Because we need to know what was on that ship," said Calvin. "And our scanners are more precise than anything they have on their system patrol craft. If they did miss something, we might find it.”

  "Shouldn't we be chasing after the Harbinger?"

  "It's got a four hour head start. Iota is what, eleven hours from here?"

  "Thirteen," said Jay.

  Calvin continued. "Even at top speed we couldn't overtake them. At best, we'd shave off two hours from their head start. And if we did catch them what could we do? We couldn't dream of taking on a dreadnought that many times our size."

  "Intel Wing seems to disagree," quipped Patrick.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I should have informed you immediately, sir, I apologize.” Lieutenant Commander Rose said. "We got the order a little while ago. If we find the Harbinger we're to shoot it on sight. No waiting for reinforcements and no attempts to contact it and bring it in peacefully. We're to send a report to Intel Wing and Fleet Command and then engage the ship immediately. Focusing on its alteredspace initiator engines."

  So Princess Kalila had been right. The Admirals had decided losing the Nighthawk was worth it if it meant a shot at disabling the Harbinger. "If we find it we'll do what we have to do," said Calvin, but he had no intention of attacking the Harbinger. Suicide didn't sound very appealing. "But until then, our first duty is to investigate and you'd do well to remember that, Patrick," he eyed the young defense officer sternly. "So put your trigger finger away and use your brain. If you were Raidan, why would you attack a Rotham ship in Imperial space?"

  Patrick shrugged. "Any number of reasons. There's not enough information to make any kind of informed conclusion, especially if you consider the fact that Raidan's reasoning skills are probably not as good as my own. So he's more likely to make irrational decisions, and irrational decisions are the hardest to predict since they border on randomness. Bottom line, I have no idea."

  "Good, then you have something to keep busy thinking about," said Calvin. "In the meantime, since I'm awake anyway, I'll be in my office. Make sure you scan the debris thoroughly, Cassidy," he pointed at her.

  "Yes, sir."

  ***

  When the bridge contacted him, saying they'd found something, Calvin had them send a copy of the information to his office. Buried deep in the Rotham ship's debris were two things. A tiny datadisc and traces of Isotome—an extremely rare, unstable compound found in only one place in the galaxy.

  Since he was no physicist, he would let his lab ponder over the relevance of the Isotome while he accessed the data from the disc on his computer. It was a recording and he played it over and over.

  "If you're hearing this message, then you haven't disappointed me, Calvin Cross." It was a computer generated voice, exactly like the one he’d heard in his quarters on Praxis just before the trial.

  “But I must warn you," it went on. "If you come after me, as some hope you will … They will come after you. And they will find you. They always do. If you're smart, you'll go home now and live a long peaceful life. Because if you don’t, and you see what I’ve seen… that’s one step too many. And there's no going back from that. Believe me, I know."

  It changed to a man’s voice with flat intonation. "I stop shiny sunsets. I find pale blue lights, always."

  The first part, the warning, was bone-chilling. But didn't really tell him anything, except someone—other than Raidan—wanted Calvin dead if he kept going. Someone, Calvin assumed, who was connected to CERKO, and the attack against him on Aleator. For all he knew he'd crossed that line already, whatever it was. And, regardless of risk to himself, it was more than just duty that drove him to keep pursuing Raidan; it was who he was as a person. He had to know.

  The second part of the message was even more interesting than the first. Perhaps because it made no immediate sense.

  He took the clip of the man’s voice and ran it through the database. He wasn't sure what the limits of the software were but knew, sometimes, voice recognition was possible. This man, who sounded vaguely like Raidan, had no official match in the database. Or rather, fit a list of over three hundred thousand potential matches. Calvin searched the results for “Asari Raidan” and found him. He wasn’t the closest match but he did make the list. The voice could belong to him. The computer listed the probability at less than thirty percent but Calvin’s intuition told him it was closer to a hundred.

  “What are you trying to tell me, Raidan?”

  Calvin thought of the statement itself, "I stop shiny sunsets. I find pale blue lights, always." And tried to solve it like a riddle. "Something that stops sunsets and sees pale blue lights..." He turned this over in his mind.

  The obvious answer seemed to be the night. It came when the sunset was over, perhaps 'stopping it', and the "pale blue lights" could be stars. Night from the point of view of a planet.

  Or maybe it could be a moon. A moon would stop the sunset briefly during a solar eclipse and it might be a good vantage point for seeing stars, depending on its position relative to the local sun... but that answer seemed even weaker than the first. And it also depended on "pale blue lights" meaning the stars, which was a weak supposition at best.

  "Night time," he said aloud, tapping his fingers on his desk. Even if that were the answer, it didn't buy him anything. Night-time could be anywhere in the galaxy, and there was nothing specific about it to link it to Raidan.

  Maybe Raidan had left this clue to throw him off. Give him something distracting to slow him down. But that didn't feel right. If Raidan had wanted to distract Calvin, he would have offered him a false lead. Something to chase. Not taunt him with a riddle. No, Calvin thought, Raidan was definitely trying to tell him something. But what?

  He wondered if the exact phrase itself was useless and the real message was buried in the pattern of the words, like a code.

  So he wrote out the words and played around with them for some time. Re-arranging the letters. Searching for patterns.

  "I find pale blue lights, always…"

  A normal person, Calvin thought, would probably phrase it "I always find pale blue lights," not "I find pale blue lights, always." The order of the words felt more awkward this way. The order could be the cipher.

  He started at the top by taking only the first letter of each word, the simplest way he could imagine burying a code. "I,S,S,S,I,F,P,B,L,A." The ISS at the beginning seemed like a prefix identifier for an Imperial starship, which excited him. But disappointment set in when he realized ISS SIFPBLA didn't really fit the Empire's naming conventions. He tried turning the latter part around and was equally unimpressed with ISS ALBPFIS.

  He considered the possibility that it was scrambled but, ultimately, decided using the first letter of each word in the clue wasn't the correct cipher. He tried using the last letters, which came up with an equally worthless answer. IPYSIDEESA. Again he wondered if it were scrambled but couldn't come up with anything better than SAY DIE PIES.

  "This is a waste of time," he realized and tapped his intercom. "Deck four auxiliary," he said, unsure who was manning the post at this hour.

  "Yes, sir. Midshipman Hughes standing by."

  "I'm sending you a short code for textual analysis. I d
on't think it's very complex, either you or the computer should be able to find a coherent message inside it without much trouble. When you do, send the result to my computer and contact me either in my quarters, my office, or on the bridge."

  "Yes, sir."

  Calvin typed the message and transmitted it to Hughes, adding, "let me know once you've figured out what the deal is with that Isotome we picked up from the debris."

  "I already have some preliminary results on that, Captain."

  "Go ahead."

  "Isotome is an extremely rare compound stable only in the Xenobe Nebula region. It cannot be synthetically produced and no one has devised a way to retrieve it without it breaking down into simpler elements, until now.”

  Most of this went over Calvin's head, who hadn't studied chemistry beyond the What is an atom? course. That and two classes on how to weaponize chemical compounds. At any rate, the fact that the Rotham ship was carrying Isotome was more interesting to him than how they managed to keep it stable outside the nebula.

  "What I want to know, Mister Hughes, is why someone would be transporting Isotome in the first place. Isn't it supposed to be useless?"

  "Basically. There's no known utility for Isotome. It's violently reactive, unstable, and until now it's never been retrievable. Honestly... anti-matter is more stable."

  "So nobody buys it or uses it for anything?"

  "Correct."

  "That we know of..." Calvin muttered to himself. "All right, what about as a novelty. It's extremely rare. Maybe someone would purchase it as a trophy or part of a collection or something. Or it could be vital to some kind of scientific study."

  "I really don't know, sir."

  Calvin realized he wasn't getting anywhere with this, he dismissed Mister Hughes and terminated the call with, "If you find out anything else, or decode that message, let me know right away."

  Now only one piece of evidence remained—the data the Harbinger stole from the Station. If only there were some way to get it.

  He tapped his comm again, this time to his Chief Engineer, First Lieutenant Andre Cowen's quarters. "Andre, sorry to wake you up but I have a quick question for you."

  "Go ahead, Calvin, I was awake anyway." The croak in his voice betrayed his polite lie.

  "Is there something on our ship that, if broken, would take about an hour to repair? A repair that might be easier to do while docked than afloat in open space?"

  "Well there are thousands of systems on the ship and almost anything is easier to fix at port, but all our systems are operating perfectly, why?"

  "I was just thinking it'd be very convenient if we had to make a pit stop at Brimm One. You know, so their resources could help diagnose and fix our problem."

  "Are you asking me to sabotage our beautiful ship?"

  "Would it be too much trouble?" Calvin was glad he was thoroughly trusted by most of his crew.

  "Come to think of it, I thought I noticed a few shorts in the electrical wiring and some trouble with a few of the superconductors. Or, at least, there will be as soon as I get dressed and down there."

  "Good, just don't let anyone know it was you."

  Andre's laugh crackled over the speakers. "Of course, I have my reputation to maintain."

  "Thanks." He redirected the comm to the bridge. "Mister Rose," he said, waiting for a reply.

  "Rose here, sir."

  "I just heard from engineering," said Calvin, adding to his devious plot, "that some of our fuel cells are tainted."

  "Our instruments indicate everything's fine."

  "Just... take my word for it," said Calvin. Rose got the hint.

  "Now that you mention it, the fuel cells could be better."

  "I want you to make a pass around Brimm's most distant moon and dump sixty percent of our fuel on the far side."

  "Why there, sir?"

  "It's very important that Brimm doesn't see us dump the fuel. They must think our fuel is low anyway."

  "Their sentry ships will notice it."

  "But not for awhile."

  "Should we stop our scan and get to that right away?"

  "No, finish the scan, and then go around the moon at a slow pace, nice and cool. Tell Brimm we're doing a complete scan of the system. In the meantime I'll contact the Commodore and let him we need to dock soon for a resupply and repair."

  "I'll see to it."

  Calvin knew the senior staff of Brimm One wouldn't want the Nighthawk to dock with their station, especially if it put their "sensitive information" at risk. But he figured he'd created enough reasons to demand a short link-up with their docking bay and, hopefully, he could get someone inside.

  Now it was just a matter of getting the right person for the job.

  Chapter 16

  Shen sat at his desk in his quarters clicking through a slideshow of pictures on his computer. Next to him sat the remains of a microwaved cheese sandwich experiment that had turned out to suck. Not far away were a litter of pastry crumbs and candy wrappers. The coup-de-grace was the half-empty glass bottle of soda that was so orange it almost glowed in the dim light.

  Shen wasn't too overweight, in his opinion. After all, if he were, he wouldn't be allowed in Intel Wing. But, despite the yearly fitness exam, he knew he fell into the barely-acceptable BMI range by only a razor thin margin.

  But he found food comforting and wasn't particularly satisfied with his appearance even when he'd been thinner. As he continued clicking through pictures he stopped on one of himself with Sarah. The contrast between them was glaring.

  She was beautiful of course, attractively thin with nice thick lips curled into a smile under shining chocolate-brown eyes. Her hair poured down her face stylishly and he couldn't help but imagine the sweet scent of whatever it was she put on every day.

  And then there was him. Untucked shirt, unkempt hair, a little more belly than he'd like to see, and the pale round face of someone uncomfortable in front of a camera. His goofy expression didn't help things either. He looked like an obese deer frozen in headlights with about as much personality as a ghost. For the millionth time he wished he were as witty, sharp, and attractive as Sarah was, so she could see something in him, something more than friendship. Though that seemed laughably impossible.

  At least they were friends; he did have that... if nothing else. But that just enabled him to be close enough to her to realize what he was missing out on. He couldn't get her out of his head and some loud, masochistic part of himself demanded he make his intentions clear. At least let her know he was interested. Then, when she inevitably rejected him, he could maybe find some closure to his burning emotions. But he couldn't think how to begin.

  Send her flowers, maybe? Women like flowers, right? Too bad flowers aren't exactly standard on a military starship.

  He considered giving her a card or, perhaps best of all, a letter. But all of these seemed like inadequate gestures and though the thought of doing something tickled him inside, it also terrified him. And because of that fear, talking to her directly was out of the question.

  He closed the slideshow and stood up to sweep his food mess into the garbage. He wanted to be a neat person, but somehow his room just got away from him. Like the eleventh wonder of the universe, he just couldn't figure out how it happened.

  His panel started flashing and chirping so he hustled over to answer it. "Shen here."

  "It's Calvin," his CO's voice filled the room sounding scratchy. The low bit comm system always irked Shen who knew it wouldn't be that expensive to put in something better. "I have a pretty important mission for you."

  Shen became excited. "What is it?"

  "We're cruising near Brimm Station and not long ago the Harbinger forced entry and stole a bunch of data off the station's hard drives. I want you to make a copy of all that data and get it aboard our ship."

  It took Shen a second to catch up with what Calvin was saying. "So... I take it they don't want us to have this data, which is why you want me to steal it instead of asking
them for it."

  "No rust on you."

  "And you're pretty convinced we need this data."

  "If the Harbinger stole it then we need it, because we need to know why they took it." Calvin sounded resolute, and since Shen considered himself a loyal friend of Calvin's he would do all he could for him. But wasn't exactly sure how to begin.

  "I'll do what I can."

  "Is there some way for us to link up with their computers from here and hack in to get the data?"

  Shen sighed. Typical management, always expecting more from software and hardware than it could actually do. Just because computer expertise looked like magic didn't mean it was. "You've been watching too many movies, Calvin."

  "All right, I suspected that but I had to be sure. Which is why I have a plan B. How about if I get you aboard their station? What would you need to pull this off?"

  Shen thought for a minute. "Okay, first off I'd need some kind of external device I can hook up to their system physically to download all the material. How much data are we talking about here?"

  "The report said 'several terabytes'."

  "OK that's no problem, I can use my own thumbkey," his eyes automatically darted to its place plugged into his linkup. "But the main problem is that I need access to their system. I'm guessing it requires some kind of secure log-on I'd have to get past in order to run searches and copy data."

  "Can't you just hack your way around that?"

  Again, too many movies. "It's not quite that simple, Calvin. A really good security framework might take years or even decades to break through. And for just one guy, I might spend my whole life trying to do it and never succeed."

  "So what's your idea?"

  Shen ran a hand through his mussy hair. "What kind of time window do I get?"

  "About an hour."

  Considering it would take several minutes to download the data, and maybe just as much to find it, let alone find a computer hooked up to the right server, he didn't like his chances. "I'm not going to lie, it's pretty grim. This may not be possible."