The Phoenix Conspiracy Read online

  "Ready, sir."

  "Everyone conscious and able to move?"

  Pellew did a quick check. "Affirmative."

  "What about the rotham?" asked Shen. "He could be useful."

  "He's a waste of space," said Miles. "Drop him. Or give me one of those guns and I'll do it myself."

  "Bring him along," said Calvin, making a snap decision. He reasoned the rotham didn’t represent much risk and could prove useful

  "Whatever you say," said Miles. Summers unlocked the rotham's cell.

  "You won't regret this," the rotham said.

  "Don't speak unless spoken to," said Miles.

  "What's your name, rotham?" asked Calvin.

  His reply was impossible to understand, though it sounded vaguely like Alex.

  "I'm going to call you Alex," said Calvin.

  The rotham, now Alex, didn't seem offended.

  "Good. Fall in line with the others. We'll let you come with us so long as you don't do anything stupid and you don’t slow us down." He turned to Pellew. "We need to take a defensive position."

  "I agree completely. We won't be able to escape on the Nighthawk, even if we could take it and blast a hole in the hangar doors we’d just get shot down. We have to defend somewhere and wait for the Fleet."

  "Why don't we hold here?" asked Rose.

  "It's a deathtrap," said Pellew, citing several of its weaknesses. "It didn't work for them," he gestured toward the fallen guards, "and it won't work for us. We need to move, now."

  "Where to?" asked Calvin. "Did you see anything on your way in, somewhere we could hold out?"

  "Not for this many people," said Pellew.

  "Does anyone know anything about Rotham ships?" asked Calvin. "You, rotham, I mean Alex, any bright ideas where a good holding spot would be?"

  "I don't trust him," said Miles.

  "Have any better ideas?" Calvin whirled to face him, though he didn't trust Alex either.

  Shen spoke up. "Maybe. The blueprints of alien ships are well kept secrets, but our agents learn things from time to time. Unfortunately, you can never be sure what you have is up to date. I had to study designs of a ship like this back at the academy. But that was several years ago."

  "Give me the short version."

  "The most defensive positions are main engineering and the bridge," said Shen. "But those are also the hardest to take for the same reason. Especially on a ship designed to repel full-on marine invasions involving hundreds of soldiers."

  "So...?"

  "The auxiliary bridge," Miles blurted out. "Every Rotham ship C-class and above has a secondary bridge in case their main bridge gets blown away. I don't know where it is, but since the real bridge is on the other side of the ship, my guess is the secondary bridge is far away from that. Like, say, around here. If we can find it, that would be an awesome place to hold out."

  Calvin looked to Shen.

  "My thoughts exactly," said Shen.

  "See, Summers, I'm not useless," Miles made a face at her.

  "Alex," said Calvin. "Where is the secondary bridge?"

  "Two decks above us and a little to stern and starboard, right below main engineering."

  "That's good, we can use that," said Calvin. "Hopefully they'll think we're going for engineering and divert soldiers from the secondary bridge to there. What do you think, Pellew?"

  He nodded. "Better than waiting around here another moment."

  "What about the Major?" asked Summers. "Are we going to just abandon him?"

  "I don't want to," said Calvin. "But we have no choice, we don't even know where he is.” He looked at Alex. “Where is the Inquisition Room?”

  Alex said nothing for a moment. Then, “you won’t be able to save your man. Getting to the Inquisition Room involves going through most of the local garrison. You’ll all die trying to save one man who is almost certainly dead already.”

  It was a harsh statement but Calvin had expected nothing less. “So we have to look to ourselves," he said.

  "The Major would insist we go on without him and take a good tactical position," said Pellew. "If he knew we put ourselves at risk to try and help him, he'd kill us—if the rotham didn't."

  Calvin gave the signal and Pellew ordered the group to move out. His soldiers took up the front position, and cleared the hall. The crew followed in a wide column, as fast as they could. Calvin stayed up front with Pellew.

  "Where's the beacon?" asked Calvin.

  "Safely hidden," Pellew nodded toward a small alcove.

  "We should get it," said Calvin.

  "No we shouldn't."

  "It's mission critical; we have to protect it."

  "I agree with Calvin," said Summers, to his great surprise. "We should keep it with us. If nothing else, the signal might be better coming from the auxiliary bridge."

  "And if we take it, they may capture the beacon and destroy it. All our eggs would be in one basket."

  "If they capture the beacon," said Calvin. "Then we won't need it. Because we'll already be dead. The whole point of it is just to alert the Andromeda and all friendly ships that we're aboard."

  "As you wish," Pellew waved for one of his men to clear the nook and take the beacon. "It's in the bottom-most crate on the far side."

  Their leading soldiers reached an intersection and went prone as blasts of energy came from the left. Pellew raised his hand to halt the group while his soldiers mounted a counter attack. Two men kept the enemy's attention with sporadic but strategic fire while another army-crawled farther into the open with some kind of scoped Rotham rifle.

  "Clear," he called back. He and the other soldiers jumped to their feet and continued forward. Pellew and the soldier with the sub-machinegun covered the sides while everyone else ran for the ladders. Calvin stayed with Pellew and took a long look down the adjoining hallway.

  Three Rotham soldiers were dead on the ground. "Routine patrol team, I'm guessing," said Pellew. "They weren't expecting us." Calvin saw three rifles among the bodies.

  "Miles, help me grab those weapons." He bolted for them, hearing Miles thunder behind.

  "It's wide open, I can't cover you out there," Pellew called after him.

  "No risk, no reward," Calvin replied. He reached the fallen enemies and scooped up the weapons, with Miles' help.

  The closer look at the splattered alien brains and empty eyes was something Calvin could have done without. With some revulsion he wiped their fluids off the guns with his own shirt. At least it wasn't nearly as bad as seeing dead humans.

  "Okay, let's go." He looked up, surprised to see Pellew had come along in an attempt to cover him, despite this inferior position.

  They ran, Pellew facing backwards, weapon keenly aimed at the distance, expecting to see Rotham soldiers charging them at any minute. Calvin distributed the weapons to more Special Forces soldiers—again fighting the temptation to keep one for himself. Miles too looked hesitant to relinquish his, but did as ordered.

  "Look at that," said Pellew. Calvin glanced up to where Pellew was pointing his carbine. A security camera.

  "They must have thousands of those to keep tabs on a ship this size," said Calvin. "I wonder how long it'll take someone to notice us."

  "They probably already—" Pellew's words were lost to the sound of gunfire as their sergeant’s sub-machinegun blasted toward a group of rotham approaching from behind.

  Pellew and three other soldiers, those most recently armed, moved to the rear and opened fire on the enemy, who took cover and returned fire. It was too far away for either side to be very accurate but the size of Calvin's group made them an easier target. A fiery blast hit a young blond crewmember. She was dead before she hit the ground.

  One of the unarmed soldiers, a field medic, moved to check her vitals. But there wasn't much point.

  "Make yourselves small," said Pellew, not looking back. He scored a hit of his own on the killer, who collapsed.

  By now, half of Calvin's group—including the leading four sol
diers—had begun climbing the ladders, which were three across. They just needed a bit more time. He didn't know what he could do, except go prone like the others and cover his ears.

  He looked back at his fallen crewmember, a young woman new to the ship, and felt a wave of both remorse and anger. He hadn't known her well, but she was more than just a face and a name. It saddened him to see her dead, knowing she was supposed to marry in only a few months.

  The lights turned red and a roaring klaxon filled the air.

  "Well they're onto us now," said Calvin, no one could hear him, though. His voice was lost to the sounds of fighting and the alarm.

  He crawled all the way to the ladders. It was almost his turn to go up.

  Both sides exchanged fire from positions of relative safety and Calvin wondered why the Rotham side wasn't being more aggressive, using smoke canisters or flashbangs, or sniping them with superior weapons.

  Then he saw why. More forces were arriving. A surge of Rotham soldiers, Teldari, with helmets and combat vests. They charged from the side hallways like a swarm of bees. Weapons leveled and blasting, flowing like an organic tidal wave. Their fire was clumsy, hard to be accurate at a run, but they closed in fast.

  Pellew and his men, now in a crouched position to keep very steady, managed to overheat their weapons in a spray of automatic and concentrated fire meant to maximize casualties. Never before had Calvin seen such expert shooting. Twelve or more rotham fell wounded or dead, including a lead commander; it was enough to stall their advance.

  But two Special Forces soldiers were hit, one in the chest and one in the head—Calvin saw them both recoil. As soon as their hands went limp around their weapons, other soldiers scooped up their armaments and took their places.

  He heard a scream as a narrow beam of light grazed Monte's forearm. It torched his fair skin, blackening it, and his eyes went wide with pain. But he managed to keep his feet and most of his composure.

  Calvin yelled at him. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine, I'm fine," Monte lied. A field medic came over and tried to treat him but Monte shrugged him off. "Oh leave me alone, you." Then, like a tough old bird, he moved for the ladders—wincing as he went up.

  As the remnants of the Teldari's first wave regrouped with what was sure to be the second wave, Pellew and his men scooped up additional weapons from the enemy's failed offensive and passed them to the other soldiers, arming the rest of them. In this retrieval process another soldier was lost. A youthful black-haired boy. His blood soaked the ground. Calvin grimaced but couldn't look away.

  He was about to start climbing when he heard something slide across the ground. It was a conventional handgun. He picked it up and looked back to see Pellew nod at him, and then return to fighting. Now ordering his men into a tactical retreat to the ladders.

  Calvin pulled back the slide—making sure there was a bullet in the chamber—then started his ascent.

  The ladders were fixed to the walls of what was a very large, very long cylinder running through most of the ship's decks—which were about a hundred in total, many more than Calvin was used to. He had to be careful climbing one-handedly, while also holding a pistol. Above him, his crew was already shuffling onto the higher deck and, presumably, taking up a defensive position.

  About halfway to his destination, he craned his neck to see two Rotham crewmembers on the ladders on the opposite side, several decks above. They had energy pistols and opened fire on his crew.

  Calvin aimed his handgun with one hand, keeping his other firmly glued to the ladder and returned fire. He was a decent shot with a pistol, but one-handed while dangling made it hard to steady his aim, and as brass jacket after brass jacket ejected, falling out of sight, he couldn't hit his mark. But he did get their attention.

  A firefight ensued.

  His enemies had even more trouble being accurate than he did, since they weren’t trained soldiers, and their weapons burned marks all over the place. Not even singing his hair.

  He took a moment to steady a more careful aim, certain he'd lined up the iron sights perfectly. But his shot ricocheted off the bulkhead uselessly with a spark and a ping. His enemy's return fire was even farther off mark. Or so he thought... until he realized they'd switched targets.

  Just as the Nighthawk crew members directly above him were reaching their destination, they came under fire again from the two rotham. In the chaos, a beam clipped Monte’s good arm and he lost his already weak grip on the ladder. He slipped off the railing and plummeted, yelling all the way down. Calvin watched, horror struck, as his friend fell fifty decks to his death.

  Seeing it... he felt his own grip weaken for a minute as hot white mindless wrath consumed him. Raging inside him! But he forced himself to keep control, knowing that heightened emotions would only hinder him, cause him to lose concentration, and now he had to be objective. Compartmentalize. Mourn tomorrow. Focus today. It wasn't easy, but he kept his cool and stayed logical, made possible by years of training.

  He climbed a little higher and fired again. His first two shots missed but a third hit one of the rotham in the chest. The alien’s grip slackened and he, like Monte, slipped off the ladders and plunged to his death. But he did not scream. Simply stared up with empty eyes until he was gone.

  The second rotham started scrambling higher up the ladder. Calvin wasn't about to let him escape. He took careful aim and fired—a narrow miss. “Damn!” He muttered, realizing his pistol’s slide had stuck back.

  A silenced carbine whined from below. The rotham's head exploded and his corpse flew off like a ragdoll.

  "Move it, Calvin," Pellew shouted from below.

  "Nice shot," was all Calvin could say. He avoided looking down knowing that, despite his concentrated effort not to, it would be easy to think of Monte and let his emotions get the best of him. They burned, wanting to be set free. But he remained objective. Focused now on how everyone above him had already reached their destination deck.

  "Do you have any more rounds for this handgun?" asked Calvin.

  "Yeah I have another clip," said Pellew, now at his side. He passed it over and Calvin awkwardly reloaded the gun while he ascended.

  They reached the deck together and saw the small army of crew and soldiers in a defensive posture. They'd cleared the area and were watching the adjoining halls. Exchanging sporadic fire with hostiles out of sight.

  The remnants of a firefight were clear. The ground was blood-soaked with two dead bodies, both human. One a medic and the other an engineer. Conversations he'd had with them in the past flashed through his mind. He couldn't help but think of how their futures were completely erased now. Both had been young, like he was. But, like Monte’s death, he forced it from his mind. They were casualties. That happened in war. He couldn't let himself get distracted.

  "We have to keep moving," said Calvin.

  After consulting with their Rotham friend, who'd managed to keep up and stick with them, they had a better idea of the location of the secondary bridge. Pellew split the group into two and sent them along different routes.

  "We shouldn't split up," said Summers.

  "In these narrow hallways numbers are a liability," Pellew waved his men forward. "We're just a bigger target that's easier to trap, and our angles of attack are more limited. We crowd each other out; we're much better covering more angles and more ground."

  She didn't argue further and they moved, quickly as they could. Those with weapons took the lead—a gamble that they wouldn’t be attacked from the rear. As he ran, Calvin remembered to pull back the slide of his handgun just as they reached a large intersection.

  There was a large firefight again as the enemy, already placed around the corner, attacked. Pinning Calvin and his people back. They couldn't cross the intersection without sustaining heavy losses, but they had to get across somehow. They all looked to Calvin and Pellew for solutions.

  "How many?"

  "Ten or more. All armed soldiers."

  "W
e can't just run past them?"

  "No."

  "We can't wait here either, they could take us from behind."

  Calvin looked to Pellew whose only answer was to stay in cover and wait for their other group to take the enemy from the rear.

  Calvin did as ordered, but moved to the back of the group to keep his eyes on the path behind them. The handgun wasn't a very effective weapon at a distance, as he'd proven, and he only had one magazine, but figured it was better than nothing. If the enemy did come from behind he could warn the others, try to resist, and if they were overwhelmed it was best to die quickly.

  Several seconds passed, maybe a minute, maybe two. Calvin couldn't be sure. All he knew was that he could hear his heart pounding in his ears while nothing seemed to be happening. He dared a quick glance back to see Pellew facing opposite him, crouched against the corner, ready to blast anyone who came around.

  It was almost too much to take. The silence. The tension. Knowing that the longer they waited the more likely it was they'd be flanked. Their enemy had already reported to the other hostile detachments via radio, Calvin was sure. It was only a matter of time. He and his crew would have to do something. Act. Double back? Try to find another way around? They couldn't just storm forward, Pellew was right about that. They'd be mown down in either a massacre or a mutual bloodbath.

  And then he heard it. The popping of automatic fire from around the corner. A Human submachine-gun. Joined quickly with the whine of Rotham weapons.

  After giving it just a second, long enough for their enemies to change their focus from this group to the other, Pellew ordered his soldiers to move around the corner with him and go prone immediately.

  One was killed in the effort, Calvin winced to see him, face black, uniform on fire. The rest were able to engage the enemy.

  The firefight lasted only a few more seconds before Pellew shouted the all clear and Calvin and the others moved forward. Calvin split from them and ran to Pellew, who stood amidst a pile of corpses. Mostly Rotham. But a few humans too. Calvin's group had only taken the one loss. But he counted three bodies among the other human group—which had come to their rescue.