The Phoenix Crisis (17 page)

“
No,” said Ryker as he
watched the transport. Its altitude and speed were steady. “More
likely heading past, just to the outskirts. Over by Lone Hill
District. Looks like someone is setting fires over there,” he moved
the binoculars until he caught sight of the pillars of smoke. They
weren’t large, but they were growing. “My guess is they want to put
a stop to it.”

“
Starting fires, you say?”
asked Tank. “Well how about that… this time it wasn’t even us who
done it.” He was one of the bigger and more experienced men—and
like many of the others he’d kept the nickname he’d earned in
prison, back when they’d all been doing time together on Andricus
Penal Colony.

Ryker lowered the binoculars and looked back
at his men. They were armed like him, in guerrilla style with lots
of weapons and ammo hanging off of them. They stayed low and kept
out of sight, hiding in the debris and abandoned buildings as Ryker
had ordered. The last thing he needed was to be spotted by one of
the King’s transports.

“
That’s the hundred and
tenth one I’ve seen today,” said Micah. He was wiry and thin but
despite his featherweight appearance he was perhaps the strongest
man Ryker had ever met, and easily the most vicious. He took a long
draw from his cigarette and then tossed it to the ground, crushing
it on the blacktop with his boot.

“
That makes about twenty
thousand or so men, just in this area,” said Vulture. “Far more
than our forty-seven.”

“
And what we’ve seen today
is just a drop in the bucket,” said Ryker. He looked up at the sky.
A few ships could still be seen, but nothing like the blanket of
vessels that had swarmed the skies of Renora earlier that day.
Massive interstellar troop-carriers had encircled the planet in low
orbit, blocking the blue sky like an ocean of metal clouds. And
from them a seemingly endless ocean of Tritan Planetary Landers
poured—far larger than the Foxtrot Transports now zooming
around—and like the rolling tides they came, wave after wave,
descending on the broken world and dumping off troops in numbers
barely fathomable.

“
How many did you say landed
here?” asked Micah.

“
Last I heard from Mister
Martel, it was about forty or fifty million troops,” said Ryker. He
looked back into his binoculars and started tracking another
Foxtrot Transport, this one was flying a bit higher than the last
and was heading the other way. By the look of it, it’d already
dumped off its cargo of Imperial Marines.

“
Shit
…”said Micah. He spat on the ground.

“
Forty or fifty million…”
said Vulture with awe. “Even with every man in every cell here… we
can’t… we’re only about thirteen thousand.”

“
And the population of
Renora is over nine billion,” said Ryker. “Fifty million troops
won’t be nearly enough, not when we’re finished. Thirteen thousand
of us, split into two-hundred and fifty cells, covering almost
three hundred major cities… it’ll be like swatting flies. Like
swatting fifty-million pointless, meaningless, son-of-a-bitch
flies.”

“
So what do we do now?”
asked Vulture.

“
For now we lie low and keep
our eyes on the enemy. Listening. Studying their positions. Waiting
for the shock of the military invasion to be heard from pole to
pole. By tomorrow every person on the planet with even half a brain
will know about the military invasion. And in two days the entire
galaxy will know.”

“
And when we’re done
waiting?” asked Vulture.

“
When we’re done waiting… we
raise hell like the universe has never seen. Renora will burn, and
the galaxy will burn with it.” 

***

Calvin stood in the corridor by the hatch.
He wore tight-fitting civilian clothes, including a common jacket,
and had a luggage bag next to him. In it were clothes and basic
travelling essentials for two people.

Kalila stood next to him. Her hair had been
lightened—not quite to a bright gold like Summers’—and her skin had
been lightened as well. It hadn’t been very dark before but a lot
of the elegant olive-color that suited her so well had been hidden
by whitening cream. The lenses in her eyes made them a watery
blue—like Rain’s—and she wore jeans and a sleeveless shirt. She
looked far too casually dressed to be a member of the royal family,
particularly a high-ranking princess, but Kalila had insisted on
jeans for their tactical usefulness should things go wrong. Calvin
agreed. And as he looked at her. Seeing her in all the wrong
clothes, with all the wrong coloring to her hair, eyes, and skin;
she looked nothing like herself yet the sight of her still made him
melt. And he wished, more than anything in the universe, to be a
simple common civilian, married to this simple, common civilian
woman, on their way back from a wonderful vacation—ready to return
to their common jobs and common concerns. To be removed from all
the chaos, all the danger, and the responsibility. True he would
miss the intrigue of the spy-game. But if it meant having love, and
family, and peace of mind… he doubted anything in the universe
could be more desirable.

“
Docking operation
complete,” Cassidy’s voice could be heard over the loudspeaker. She
was on the bridge with Summers, who had command.

“
You kids ready?” asked
Pellew. He stood there with rifle in hand to ensure they got aboard
the Ice Maiden securely.

“
Looks like it’s time,” said
Kalila She smiled up at Calvin and he returned her
smile.

“
I suppose so.” He grabbed
the handle of the luggage truck and looked at the hatch, waiting
for it to unseal. He wondered what the Ice Maiden would be like,
what sort of people were her crew, and if they could really be
trusted.
If not
…
Calvin had a pistol smuggled onto his person, but knew it would do
little good against extreme resistance. And that he’d have to ditch
it before they went through Imperial Customs. Mainly he was
bringing it because he was suspicious of the Ice Maiden’s
crew.

The hatch began to unseal with a hiss and
Kalila tightened her grip on the satchel slung around her shoulder.
The movement drew attention to the gleaming golden ring on her
finger and its two-and-a-half carat’s worth of diamonds. They were
as fake as the operation—being cubic zirconium—but still Calvin
liked seeing the shiny piece of jewelry on Kalila’s finger. Knowing
that he too wore a wedding band, though his was a plain piece of
tungsten.

The hatch finished opening and revealed the
star-barren innards of the Ice Maiden’s main corridor. The tiny
civilian vessel only had two decks, and was crewed by less than
five people at any given time. Two men were standing at the
entrance, an older man with a moustache with white patches that
seemed to have gotten away from him, and at his left was a young
man with an almost mercenary look to him. Calvin narrowed his eyes
and studied the strangers. Trying to ascertain if either would be a
threat to Kalila.

“
Welcome aboard the Ice
Maiden, Your Highness,” said the older man. He gestured for them to
come aboard, and ordered the young man next to him to help with the
baggage. An offer Calvin declined. There was truly only the one bag
and Calvin had it well in hand.

Kalila led the way and Calvin followed. Once
they were aboard the other ship, Pellew saluted Calvin and closed
the airlock. The older man sealed the airlock from the Ice Maiden’s
side.

“
Thank you for having us
aboard, Reginald,” said Kalila.

The older man bowed deeply. “It is my great
honor, Your Highness.”

“
From now on you must
address us as our cover identities,” said Kalila. “This is Mr.
David Green,” she gestured toward Calvin. “And I am Mrs. Ava
Green.”

“
Married couple, eh?”
Reginald asked, he raised a curious eyebrow as he sized them up,
looking almost eerily intrigued.

“
That’s right,” said Kalila,
and she took Calvin’s free hand in hers.

Reginald cracked a smile. “I’d put you two
love birds in our honeymoon suite, I would. Except that there won’t
be no time—we’re just a few hours from Capital World. And we ain’t
got no honeymoon suite.”

“
That’s fine, just take us
to the bridge,” said Kalila.

“
Aye, I can do that, the
bridge is a bit cramped though. Don’t think you’ll be comfortable.
Guess you could rough it for a couple hours if it pleases you, I
s’pose.”

They followed Reginald down the corridor and
to the right. The younger man took up position behind them and
Calvin watched him the best he could out of the corner of his eye,
feeling apprehensive about him. Perhaps it was just because his
tactical instincts had taught him not to expose his back to strange
mercenaries.

Reginald’s word had proven true, the bridge
was indeed small. Calvin had to leave the luggage bag behind, and
even without it he, Kalila, Reginald, and the ship’s pilot all
together made for crammed conditions. There wasn’t even room for
the young mercenary, so Reginald had dismissed him to the lower
deck to attend to his duties.

“
There you have it,” said
Reginald. He pointed to the window straight ahead, which made up
all of the bridge’s stern wall and about half of port and
starboard. The view was of total blackness, not a star in sight,
suggesting they were already in alteredspace. “I told Ruby here to
jump the ship the moment you was safely aboard,” Reginald smiled at
his pilot. She was middle-aged, though younger than Reginald, and
overweight. Her hair had a slick, greasy texture and was tied back
behind her head. Her face, which may have once been beautiful, now
carried a coarse roughness to it, not unlike a gamers’ catching
mitt, and she seemed to be made of toughened leather.

“
At your service, Your
Highnesses,” Ruby bowed her head once.

“
They’re to be called Mr.
and Mrs. Green,” Reginald quickly explained. “No
Your Highnesses
here.”

“
Beggin’ your pardons then,”
said Ruby.

“
No apology necessary,” said
Kalila.

“
I know she ain’t much but
the Ice Maiden is tried and true,” said Reginald. He gestured
toward the captain’s seat, the only chair on the bridge—even Ruby
had no chair and was forced to pilot the ship from what looked like
a misappropriated bar stool. “I offer you the captain’s chair, Mrs.
Green.”

Kalila let go of Calvin’s hand and
gratefully sat down. She thanked Reginald who then excused himself
from the bridge—giving Ruby instructions to summon him when they
were going to drop back into normal space, or if there was any
trouble.

Calvin sized up Ruby, searching her with his
eyes for weapons or any sign of hostile intent. She seemed like a
tough old bird but he doubted there was a malicious bone in her
body. Deciding that Kalila was probably safe with just Ruby around,
Calvin decided to slip away from the bridge and find the computer
mainframe. His Intel Wing training took over and he wanted to tap
into the ship’s logs and records, to make sure there was no sign of
something shady in the works. A part of him naturally feared that
Reginald and his crew were planning to double cross Kalila, and
turn her in to the authorities—and therefore the Phoenix Ring—in
exchange for some monetary compensation. As Calvin looked at around
at the insides of the tiny, mostly pathetic ship, he almost
wouldn’t blame Reginald for any such ambitions. If he truly knew
the worth of Kalila to the Phoenix Ring, he could probably
negotiate for his own battleship in exchange for delivering her.
Hopefully he wasn’t so clever, or so self-serving.

It didn’t take long for Calvin to find the
computer mainframes. By using a method that Cassidy had briefed him
on, he was able to bypass the traditional log-in methods and access
a backdoor in the software. He lacked even a hundredth of the
knowledge and skill Shen had with such computer wizardry, but
Cassidy’s directions had been fairly straightforward and Calvin had
his Intel Wing training.

A crew member walked past and asked Calvin
what he was doing. Calvin knew there was no point in hiding, and no
way to truly disguise the fact that he was accessing the
mainframe—and in attempting to do so he would only encourage
further suspicion. So he pretended as if nothing was out of the
ordinary whatsoever.

“
Just sending a message,”
said Calvin with complete nonchalance.

“
You can do that from the
bridge, mate,” said the crewman. Calvin didn’t even turn his head
to see the other man, he just kept at the task at hand.

“
Bridge is too crowded,”
said Calvin. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“
Aye.”

“
Then you’d better get to it
and stop harassing me, or else Reginald will hear of
it.”

This seemed to work and the crewman left.
That was one of the benefits of being in the field surrounded by
civilians, they didn’t have the security-mindedness and suspicion
that was drilled into military professionals from the very
beginning.

He combed through the last of the available
logs and, while he did find an extensive shipping history and
learned that Reginald had a strange obsession with cheese—with over
forty communiques exchanged with cheese suppliers and distributers
over the last two months—there was no indication that he was
overtly or discretely in contact with anyone who might be
interested in capturing Kalila.