Rain went and retrieved a portable scanner and then began comparing a reading she’d taken from a tissue sample to some of Rez’nac’s blood that had been taken when he’d been inoculated for Hylacre Disease.
“And I don’t blame you,” said Rez’nac, keeping his attentive focus on Calvin. Occasionally his eyes would dart to the strange alien corpse and in those black opals Calvin could see a kind of fear. Something that all the many zombies of Remus Nine had failed to elicit from the mighty warrior. “There are dark regions deep in our space, places where no one may go. The Faceless Ones come from there. When the first Essences blessed the galaxy with Polarian life, they originated too. But, in time, over thousands of years, they defied the purpose of their existence and became lost. They ceased to be our brothers and went off on their own. There, in those black, dark places they found—places forbidden to all—they were changed. Unable to commit to the purpose they had once been given, they were damned to have no purpose at all. No identity. No face.”
Calvin realized quickly that Rez’nac meant the Faceless Ones had a part in the Polarian Creation Myth. Calvin wondered if the disparate species could have evolved from the same origin.
“He’s telling the truth,” said Rain, looking at the results on her scanner. “At least, about the deceased sharing genes with Polarians. I wouldn’t call the deceased a Polarian but undoubtedly he and Rez’nac here share a common ancestor.”
Rez’nac balked at this. “We were brothers. Our kind and his. But we are not descended from the same line! My people are from the mightiest Essences! Khalahar! Formali! Roqir! He and his kind came from the darkness!”
“Okay, okay,” said Rain, “I meant no offense. Just that you evolved from the same—” she paused. “You know what, never mind.”
However the strange creature came to be, it was entirely possible that they lived in the deep regions of Polarian space that Rez’nac spoke of. It was no secret that vast portions of Polarian space were unchartered and unexplored, particularly to non-Polarians. Even the planet where their great spiritual leader, the High Prelain, lived—the Forbidden Planet—was off limits to all but the most choice Polarians. And any attempt to reach that planet by so-called unworthy souls, such as the Rotham attempt made during the Great War, had created a rallying cry across the Polarian Confederacy that swelled their armies with soldiers and resulted in tremendous bloodshed. So the farthest depths of Polarian space still guarded many mysteries that neither Intel Wing nor the Advent had ever managed to unlock… so far as Calvin knew.
“Rez’nac,” said Calvin, again looking down at the body. “I find it interesting that this Faceless One was able to have such a human-like face when we met him. So convincingly human that it even fooled you and all of your men.”
“The Faceless Ones have a dark gift. They can steal faces from others.”
Calvin thought of the doppelganger Raidan had seen aboard the Harbinger, the two Raidans together, side by side, nearly exact in every determining way. Raidan had called them replicants. “Can the Faceless Ones steal any face they wish?”
“A Faceless One may only ever steal one face during its life, and he must take in some of the essence of that person before he can steal his face.”
“That explains why there is token genetic material in the corpse not original to the organism,” said Rain. She put on new gloves and moved over to the corpse where she dug through the goo-like substance, which now seemed as much fluid as solid in places, and she produced what looked like a small piece of excised bone fragment and tissue.
“So whoever that bone fragment belongs to,” said Calvin, “this bastard took his face, and probably his identity.” He tried to sort out what that implied. If an Enclave agent had been a replicant, did that mean he’d truly been a Phoenix Ring agent posturing for the Enclave? Or did it mean the Enclave had access to replicants as well? Perhaps given to them by the Phoenix Ring. And how was the Phoenix Ring extracting these Faceless Ones from the forbidden, unexplored nether regions of Polarian space? Were they sending expeditions to extract them? Were Polarians cooperating with the Phoenix Ring, perhaps giving them Faceless Ones, or were the Faceless Ones venturing out and getting captured?
“It would be wisest to avoid these creatures if you can,” said Rez’nac. “They are said to bring misfortunate on all those they cross paths with.”
“How did he die?” asked Calvin. “Was it from injuries Tristan gave him during the last interrogation?”
“No,” said Rain. “He seemed to be recovering from those injuries all right, but he was in pain so I administered Xinocodone. The usual dose for a person of his size and weight—or at least what used to be his size and weight at the time—there wasn’t much risk. I certainly didn’t expect this outcome. But, after running some tests, it looks like he had a reaction to the drug and it made him revert back to what I assume is his original state, killing him in the process.”
“Equarius kills replicants?” asked Calvin. “Well I’ll be damned.” The pain-killer that had haunted his life, and nearly poisoned him to death, had a new strategic use. “I want everyone on the ship administered a standard single dose of equarius.”
“Excuse me?” asked Rain.
Calvin gave her a telling look. “There are more creatures out there like this one, more Faceless Ones. I was once warned by Raidan that some of these creatures—he called them replicants—have been switching places with important people inside the Empire. Given the nature of their natural camouflage they could be anywhere. And, until now, there was no good way to test for replicants. Now there is. Test everyone. I’ll see to it that all personnel and everyone aboard are given orders to report here.”
Rain’s pretty blue eyes met his, testing him, but she didn’t dissent. “All right. But only one dose. The last thing I want on my hands are more recovering equarius addicts.”
Calvin felt the sting of that but let it bounce off him. “Now the question of what to do with the body.” He didn’t like the idea of it being out in the open to unsettle the crew and take up space in the infirmary.
“We should destroy it. Or better yet, shoot it out into space,” said Rez’nac. “The sooner we’re clear of it the better.”
“Actually I was hoping to send it over to the lab for further study. It can safely be kept frozen in a secure storage container over there,” suggested Rain.
Calvin nodded. “As you wish. But only you will have access to it. I don’t want it on display for everyone to gawk at.”
“Of course.”
As Calvin turned to leave he felt a small hand touch his arm. He turned back to see Rain looking up at him. “Calvin,” she said, stopping him from leaving.
“Yes?” he looked at her curiously.
“Are we ever going to have that drink?” she gave him a faint, almost teasing smile. And he could tell she could use the break and would benefit from the diversion. In truth, so would he.
“All right,” he said. “How about now?” He didn’t have a lot of time—he needed to send the Arcane Storm on its way and then give the order to meet up with Kalila—but he supposed he could spare a few minutes.
Chapter 3
The computer beeped, interrupting Nimoux’s meditation. With a patient breath he cleared his head and uncurled himself from the lotus position. Heavy and perplexed thoughts weighed on his mind. It was something of a personal weakness that he felt off-balance and disharmonious with himself when the picture before him was so very unclear. Ever more he found himself thinking about Calvin Cross and the message the rogue had sent him, accusing the Empire of corruption and conspiracy. Nimoux was not in a position to judge the veracity of the specific accusations, but the feeling they gave him—the intuition that something odd was going on—seemed unshakable.
He moved to his computer terminal and sat down. He glanced over the results of the latest analysis, the screen glow brightly in the dim environment. It was the latest in a series of analyses he’d been doing in his spare time, when not
on watch. And with each new tidbit of information, an increasingly interesting puzzle was taking shape.
The data had come from the Desert Eagle’s sweep of Abia System with her new advanced scanners. Nimoux and his crew had been given the assignment recently—though it felt like ages ago—to wipe that area of space clean and destroy any recognizably large pieces of starship debris. Nimoux and his staff had followed their orders and now not so much as a floating bolt remained in Abia to be identified. The information wasn’t gone though. Even though the ruined hulls of the obliterated starships were now space dust, his computers had recorded a great deal of the information. And though, probably, he’d been expected to delete the information, Nimoux found himself instead combing through it intensely. Finding golden nugget after golden nugget.
“ISS Barracuda…” he whispered as the computer positively ID’d a fraction of a battleship’s hull and matched it to the list of ships branded by Intel Wing as “missing”. So far the remains of three Imperial destroyers and two Imperial battleships had been identified, and every one of them occupied a space on the Company’s ever-growing “missing ships” list. Nimoux suspected that the list of AWOL vessels, which at a glance was frighteningly long, wasn’t quite so lengthy after all. It made him start to wonder how many of the ships had been destroyed, and what was motivating the Company to cover up the fact of their destruction, rather than pursuing the truth.
Among the pieces of debris and refuse that the Desert Eagle had scanned were several unidentifiable fragments that belonged to alien vessels. Their schematics, markings, and other information wasn’t in the Imperial database so confirming the ID’s wasn’t possible—although files kept in the Intel Wing archives gave Nimoux some pretty good guesses as to the identities of the alien ships—and from what he could, tell they were Rotham in origin. And not just any run-of-the-mill Rotham ships either, military vessels. Warships. Not unlike the fleet he’d seen in Imperial space swooping down on Remus System.
As much as Nimoux was afraid to admit it, he couldn’t escape the conclusion that the Rotham Republic and the Empire were at war. Ever since the ceasefire signed at the end of the Great War and the re-creation of the DMZ, the rival powers had continued to wrestle with each other using discrete means: espionage, sabotage, financial pressure, and such tactics, but Nimoux had never expected—and had certainly never heard—that the political powerhouses had resumed their shooting war. He wondered if the firefight in Abia had been only one of many such incidents invisible in the darkness, kept quiet by both the Imperial government and the Republic.
What a strange thing to cooperate on…
The Desert Eagle and the squadron of ships under Nimoux’s temporary command moved silently through alteredspace. Technically their standing orders were still to hunt down the renegade Nighthawk but after witnessing the Rotham fleet in Imperial space firsthand—with its combined strength of over thirty warships—Nimoux’s priorities had changed. Currently he’d ordered his ships to a strategic position that brought them closer to the regions of the Empire patrolled by the Fifth and Sixth Fleets, the forces of the Empire responsible for securing the border to the DMZ. Nimoux believed that even now the Fifth and Sixth Fleets were being scrambled to respond to the Rotham invaders, and that his squadron would soon be called into play to assist. Certainly that was the only reasonable response to the threat.
And he knew the Fleet and Intel Wing were aware of the threat. The instant his forces had safely jumped away from Remus and the inbound Rotham fleet, Nimoux had sent urgent and repeated messages to the Fleet and Intel Wing informing them of this new intelligence—that so many Rotham ships had crossed the DMZ and been spotted inside Imperial space.
What he could not understand was that the Fleet and Intel Wing hadn’t seemed to react to this news. The messages they sent him back were variations on the same theme: “Situation under control. Continue standing orders.”
Nimoux wasn’t sure what to make of it. Did they not care? Or were they simply trying not to involve him? The more he thought about it, the more Calvin’s message came to his mind—warning him of conspiracy and corruption. And Nimoux would feel a chill trace his spine. Then he’d think of the names of the ships that haunted the “missing” and “AWOL” lists like ghosts, silent and dead.
The comm panel next to his computer console beeped. He tapped it. “Nimoux here.”
“Pardon the interruption, Captain,” said the voice of his 2O who currently had the deck. “But we just got the results back from the probe you dispatched to the Xenobe Nebular Region.”
It took a second for Nimoux to even remember that he’d sent a probe. The last thirty hours or so had rattled him pretty thoroughly. “Yes, go ahead,” he said, remembering that the probe was in response to Calvin’s claim that weapons somehow manufactured from isotome were being made and sold, and that they had the potential to devastate entire star systems. Since there was only one spot in the known galaxy that had stable deposits of isotome, and the amounts there had been well cataloged by survey and science teams, any discrepancy would be immediately detected.
“According to the probe’s report… there isn’t any isotome in the Xenobe Nebular Region.”
Nimoux felt a shockwave ripple through him and his eyes grew wide, but he kept the surprise in his voice to a minimum. “The isotome has been completely removed?”
“Or destroyed,” his 2O said. “The data from the probe has no information as to what happened to the isotome, just that it’s gone. Even trace amounts have been removed.”
“Any indication when this happened?”
“The last survey of the region was six weeks ago, so it must have been in the last six weeks.”
Unless the survey team had been fooled, or their results fictionalized... “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir.” The communication ended.
Nimoux did a search of the information he had available—everything from the Intel Wing archives to common news broadcasts, and found nothing about missing isotome, massively destructive weapons, or an ongoing war with the Rotham Republic. There was plenty of speculation about the missing ships, now that Intel Wing had released the list of missing ships to the public but it was all only speculation, and most of it not very logically reasoned, Nimoux found.
Nimoux dressed into his uniform and then, using his console, sent a communique to Capital World, office of the Director of Intel Wing. He was put through to Director Edwards without delay. Edwards didn’t seem surprised to be hearing from Nimoux, they’d spoken several times in the past few days.
“Do you have a report for me on the IWS Nighthawk, Captain?”
“No sir, not yet,” said Nimoux, his voice apologetic. “I do have new findings that you should take an interest in. I will forward all of my data you, Intel Wing Command, and the Fleet, but the short version is this: the isotome in the Xenobe Nebular Region is gone. Either mined or destroyed. Some rumors persist that it is a component in weapons of mass annihilation.”
Edwards gave Nimoux a very neutral look through the display. He seemed neither surprised nor upset by this news. “I’ll look into it,” he said gruffly. “As for you, continue your mission. I expect updates about the Nighthawk within twenty-four hours. Mister Cross has been a fugitive long enough. Take him down. Edwards out.”
The screen went blank.
Nimoux frowned and wondered what the right thing to do was. He’d passed along the information and spread the word. Intel Wing and the Fleet had been given fair warning about the Rotham war fleet, and now the isotome, but was it enough? He had half a mind to take his squadron and head directly to Capital World and inform the Assembly of all of this personally.
Clearly there was a war going on in the shadows and for some reason no one wanted to shine a light on it.
***
“Calvin… may I ask you something?” Rain looked into his eyes. They were seated on chairs in her quarters on either side of a small coffee table she’d brought aboard with th
e rest of her things.
“Please do,” he said, lifting his glass to take another sip. Because he didn’t drink alcohol—he could pick up on the taste of ethanol from a mile away and had always hated it—his glass was full of a rich dark grape juice. Rain on the other hand was taking tiny sips from her glass of red wine. She limited her alcohol intake since she had to return to duty immediately afterward.
“How are you holding up?” Her wide eyes looked into his and there was the hint of the tiniest smile on her pretty face. Her unkempt hair was as red and as wild as ever, barely kept in line behind her head by a single elastic band, and her whole demeanor showed that, despite how fatigued she was, she had a fighter’s spirit and wouldn’t admit to any weakness.
“What do you mean?” asked Calvin.
“With everything. You’re dealing with a lot. You ran into your estranged father, you’ve had more than your share of Remorii to deal with, and you’ve lost people under your command recently—including your friends. On top of it all you’ve been fighting one of the hardest habits in the galaxy to break.”
“Wow, when you put it like that, I feel like I should be passed out on the floor somewhere, more dead than alive,” Calvin shook his head once and then finished his drink.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I just—I don’t want you to take on too much by yourself. I’m here for you, if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” said Calvin, not quite sure how to respond. It was true that he’d been feeling pretty haggard lately and that he typically kept his complaints to himself. And he was sure that Rain was right, that it was healthier to vent and share one’s concerns with other people, but Calvin also knew his habits weren’t about to change. So he decided to change the subject. “So tell me… has there been any change in Shen’s condition?” He asked the question without flinching, but inside he felt a great deal of turmoil at the thought of his friend fighting in vain against the toxins ravaging his body. First Christine and now Shen, those god damned Remorii…
The Phoenix Crisis Page 3
