The Phoenix Crisis (11 page)

“
Yes,” said Calvin. “I do
want to know about that. But I have a few other concerns that ought
to be addressed first.” He considered how to broach the subject.
Somehow it was difficult to ask Kalila a challenging question,
especially one that seemed to question her integrity and character.
There was just something about her that was difficult and
intimidating and… he simply did not want to upset or displease
her.

“
Why did your ship slaughter
all those people on Renora?” asked Summers. Her voice was bald and
uncompromising, and she did nothing to sugar-coat the issue or be
gentle. Kalila looked surprised—she was probably not used to being
addressed in such a way—but she kept her cool.

“
My ship did not attack
Renora,” she replied.

“
I’ve seen countless
broadcasts that clearly show the Black Swan, an alpha-class
ship—one of only a handful in the whole Empire—bombing and
slaughtering the people and infrastructure of Renora,” said
Summers.

“
It is very suspicious,”
added Calvin, wanting to take a part in this discussion—and wanting
to remind himself that Kalila owed him some answers if he was going
to even consider helping her. True he’d sworn an oath to the crown
and it was his duty to serve the royal family, but not at the
expense of the well-being of the Empire.

“
I’m glad you bring up the
matter,” said Kalila, “for that is why we must go to Capital World
with all haste. And why I have need of your help in doing
so.”

“
And we should aid and abed
a fugitive of the Empire because?” Summers raised an
eyebrow.

“
Firstly because you
yourselves are fugitives,” said Kalila. “And you know first-hand
that you are undeserving of the title. You know—we both know—that
there is something rotten that has infiltrated our military. That
perverse influence has summoned ships to hunt and pursue you, so
that you will not expose it. For the same reason they have planted
a false flag at Renora, framing me and my vessel for a brutal
attack, which we did not take part in, in order to discredit me and
cast doubt upon my family. The very family that raised humanity out
of the broken ashes, from fledging disunited colonies into a
single, powerful civilization—and has shepherded it ever since.
They wish to challenge my father. That is why they attacked Renora
in my name.”

Calvin considered her words. The idea that
Renora had been attacked as a way of destabilizing the throne,
possibly to create a vacuum of power that would allow the Phoenix
Ring to seize the throne, did fit very snug with the facts he
already knew, and with the information Raidan had already given
him. However making the entire galaxy believe the Imperial colony
had been attacked by the Black Swan was no meager task.

“
If it was not you and your
ship that attacked Renora—which I am inclined to believe,” said
Calvin, not wanting to upset the princess or give her cause to
distrust him, “then how did they do it? I’ve seen the broadcasts
myself; the ship seemed in every way to be the Black Swan. It had
all the right markings, and all the right firepower.”

“
Let me ask you this,” said
Kalila. “Did you ever hear a broadcast that included any voice
messages from myself or my crew during or before the
attack?”

“
No,” Calvin admitted. “The
reports are that the ship maintained radio silence as it approached
the planet and commenced bombing.”

“
Which it did because the
people on that ship who did the bombing were not my people. We were
somewhere else. That ship was not the Black Swan. It was another
ship, made in secret, designed to the exact specifications as my
ship. Meant in every way to seem like my ship. To make any observer
believe they are looking at my ship. But if we were ever in the
same place, trust me you’d be seeing double.”

“
I want to believe you,”
said Calvin. “But I need proof.”

“
And a lot of it,” added
Summers.

Kalila nodded. “As you should. And the
evidence that I have with me is complete and convincing. It has
taken some time to collect, but it will acquit me not only in your
eyes but in the eyes of the Assembly and the Imperial public.”

“
That’s a bold claim,” said
Summers.

“
A bold truth,” said Kalila.
“I intend to go to the Assembly floor and acquit myself, my House,
and my crew before the entire Empire. That will frustrate our
enemies’ plans, and hopefully buy us enough time to identify them
and
expose
them. We
will root out their festering influence and excise it from the
military, the government, and the Empire. Then all will again be as
it should.” Her dark eyes shimmered in the office lighting and
Calvin was taken in by them. They were unflinching, unyielding, and
uncompromising. Calvin had zero doubt that Kalila spoke her words
sincerely.

“
That sounds like a pretty
good plan to me,” said Calvin. To strike against the enemy in their
own house, and purge the Empire once and for all of the Phoenix
Ring and all the corrupt elements that had taken hold, that was a
worthy goal if ever Calvin had heard one. And it would also mean a
chance to find out what had happened to Rafael and, hopefully, come
to his aid.

“
I’d like to see this
evidence that is so convincing,” said Summers.

“
And see it you shall,” said
Kalila. She reached into the pocket of her civilian clothing and
withdrew a tiny data disc. “This disc is the key. On it is
everything we need to make our case before the Assembly. It must be
kept safe at all costs.”

“
Before you start planning
your case before the Assembly, perhaps you’d better first make your
case here,” said Summers.

Kalila ignored Summers and looked deeply
into Calvin’s eyes. “Here, Calvin,” she handed him the disc. He
took it from her gingerly and held it. It was so tiny and yet it
represented so much, if it could do what Kalila claimed it would.
“I want you to hold onto it,” she said. She reached out and placed
a hand on his wrist. He felt a spark at her touch. “Calvin I am
trusting you with this. In your hand you hold my fate, my family’s
fate, and the fate of the Empire.”

Suddenly the tiny disc felt very heavy.

“
Can I trust you?” she
asked.

He nodded. Too stunned to speak.

“
Enough dramatics, let’s see
this evidence,” said Summers. “If it is as strong as you claim,
then you have my full support. I am ever a servant of the Empire.
But if it is not, if there is room for even a shred of doubt, then
I will not be able to trust you. And I think it is only fair that
you know that I intend to advise Calvin, in such a case, not to
trust you either.”

Kalila smiled. “Then I have nothing to worry
about. And I look forward to counting you among my strongest
supporters.”

With a surprising amount of reluctance,
Calvin pulled his hand away from Kalila’s tender touch and inserted
the disc into his computer terminal. The princess got up from her
chair and walked around the desk so all three of them could get a
good look at Calvin’s display.

On the disc were several file groups. Kalila
coached him through the different screens. “This is the one that
took the longest to obtain,” she said as Calvin pulled up documents
ostensibly taken from the Secure Polarian Archives. It was a
network of military and other secrets within the Confederacy that
even high-ranking political leaders had no access to, it was the
exclusive domain of the Prelains and anyone they considered worthy
of such knowledge and access. For Kalila to have obtained it, she
would have to have a spy very highly placed in the Polarian
Religious circle. Or else have had tremendous success finding a
highly established Polarian who was also susceptible to being
bribed or blackmailed—two things the Polarians were generally
considered immune to.

“
As you can see here, these
documents were acquired from ‘
an unnamed
source’
eight years ago,” she said. The
data before them appeared to be extraordinarily detailed schematics
of the Black Swan and other advanced Imperial ships. Calvin wasn’t
a ship-builder but as far as he could tell everything was here in
such cumbersome and complete detail that the information could be
used to build an exact replica of the Black Swan—so long as the
builder had the considerable resources to do so.

“
And after this was
acquired,” continued Kalila, “another anonymous party arranged for
construction of the ship to begin. The process was done in secret
at a shipyard in Eos Minor and took approximately seven years to
complete.”

“
How do we know you didn’t
fabricate these documents?” asked Summers.

Calvin thought that was a fair question,
though it did show a little bit of Summers’ inexperience working
with these kind of classified materials. Not only would it be
extremely difficult to fabricate Polarian documents with such
perfection, it would be nigh impossible to fabricate the Black
Swan’s design schematics. Even if the engineers at Kalila’s
disposal were clever and they used the Black Swan as a medium and
tried to infer its design schematics from studying the ship, it
would be a cumbersome and difficult process that would take
considerable time and inevitably result in a product that was not
exact. And the inevitable imperfections in the schematics they
fabricated and the actual schematics themselves, no matter how
tiny, would be pounced upon once Kalila released these documents to
the Assembly and the public in an effort to acquit herself. If
these schematics were not the genuine article, Kalila was only
putting a nail in her own coffin. Therefore Calvin believed they
were genuine. He also doubted Kalila had access to classified
military designs and if she’d made any effort to acquire the
schematics of her ship, certainly those efforts would have been
noted. So, all things considered, Calvin was convinced the most
plausible explanation was that Kalila had indeed acquired these
documents through her Polarian contact circle, which meant that
military secrets were being leaked to the Polarians and a replica
Black Swan—one of the fiercest ships in the galaxy—had been
constructed.

“
You can see these markings
here,” Kalila said. She went on to coach Summers through several of
the subtle indicators that demonstrated the documents were of
Polarian origin. The review gave Calvin flashbacks of his Intel
Wing training.

“
I see,” said Summers, still
sounding a bit skeptical once Kalila was finished.

“
There’s more,” said Kalila.
She guided Calvin to another set of documents, these were Imperial
documents and were certain to be more familiar to Summers. “Here
are all of my ship’s logs, including all of our destinations in the
past year. Here are the computer records, indicating every course
and heading input into the navigation system over the last year…
there is a lot of data there but if you run a cross-check on all of
these coordinates you’ll find that the ship hasn’t been anywhere
near Renora in recent memory. The last time it was even within a
light-year of that system was nine standard months ago. See,” she
brought up one of the data points. Calvin took her word for it for
now, as far as he could tell she was speaking the truth, but he
would have the Nighthawk’s computer crunch the numbers for him when
he got the chance—just to be sure.

“
And as for the time of the
attack on Renora, observe these logs,” said Kalila. She then
brought up not only a dataset marking the ship’s tracked positions
while the Renora attack was taking place—which showed the Black
Swan was indeed nowhere near Renora—she also brought up footage
from the ship’s own cameras that showed images of space and stars
that corroborated the computer’s claim of where the Black Swan
actually was. “These star configurations, in this pattern, clearly
indicate that we were at Theos One. Not Renora. If we were at
Renora these star patterns would be completely
different.”

Calvin nodded. By this point he was entirely
convinced. And not just because he wanted to believe the princess
was innocent, but because this was actually a healthy amount of
compelling evidence.

“
I’d still like to have the
operations chief check over all of this data, as well as the
Nighthawk’s computer, to assess the likelihood that any of it was
tampered with or outright fabricated,” said Summers.

“
Of course,” said Kalila. “I
insist.”

But it wasn’t to Kalila that Summers was
speaking. Her eyes were on Calvin. “Sir, with your permission?”

“
Granted,” said Calvin.
“Have Cassidy do a thorough analysis of this data and make a
complete report to both of us regarding the probable authenticity
of this information. In the meantime maintain present course and
speed.”

“
Yes, sir,” Summers said.
She bowed her head once to the princess and then swept away. The
door slid closed behind her.

“
I don’t think that one
likes me very much,” said Kalila.

Calvin smirked. “I’ve been there before. But
don’t worry, for as cold and icy as she is, Summers is completely
dependable. And in her own strange way she grows on you.”

“
Indeed.”

Kalila continued going through the various
documents, even though Calvin was already convinced of her
innocence. He tried to focus as best he could, but it was difficult
when she was standing right next to him, brushing up against him.
He could smell her light but splendid perfume and it, combined with
her proximity, made him melt a little inside.