The Phoenix Project

by Kris Powers

  “Your concerns are unwarranted,” Linda said.

  “So you say.”

  “Regardless of our future abilities Prime Counsel, our current abilities are beyond dispute. We can and will defend ourselves.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “Then understand that we will not be budged on this. Understand that you will take Outpost Fourteen only by force.”

  “I do understand, Prime Minister. In light of your stance, which I assume is unmoving—”

  “It is,” Ahmed said for Linda.

  “Then we will give you a forty—eight hour reprieve. You will have time to reflect on this situation as will we.”

  “Thank—you Prime Counsel, however it is unlikely that this extension will change our minds,” Linda said.

  “We will see.”

  “My compatriots and I will contact you in forty—eight hours, Prime Counsel.”

  “Yes. Consider your position, Minister.”

  The circular screen darkened and receded back into the ceiling.

  Elliot stood by Joshua’s chair on the large rectangular bridge. They handed reports to each other, all involving the construction of their new home on Earth’s surface. Madison had fled to her quarters with her shift done for a moment’s peace after a hectic day. The two remaining senior officers still had a few more minutes before the end of their shift. Joshua gave Elliot the last report for the day. Elliot barely registered the words before taking his electronic pen to the link and slashing his signature across the bottom. He handed it back to Joshua who witnessed the signature with his own and gave it to one of the many adjutants that had become a cloud of work around them that afternoon.

  Elliot put his hand out for another one on reflex.

  “You just got the last one.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah,” Joshua replied with an amused smirk.

  “With three minutes to spare,” Elliot said, looking at his watch. “Thank God.”

  “You looked about ready to split in two.”

  “I still am.”

  “I thought so. It’ll be good to get you off my ship and back on a base.”

  “I’m such a pain in the ass you want me off your bridge and off your ship?”

  “Nah, Madi wasn’t peeing on your leg. You’re always welcome here.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Elliot asked.

  “You know.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve never spent more than a couple of hours on a ship since,” Joshua stopped at the stifling sensation of having his foot caught in his mouth. “Since ten years ago. Sorry, Eli.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Elliot said through stiff lips.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I said don’t worry about it,” he said giving Joshua’s shoulder a friendly push with his left fist. “My shift’s over. It’s time to turn in.”

  “It’s only five in the afternoon. Why don’t you come and join Madi and me for dinner?”

  “I’m a little more tired than I thought. I think that I’ll just head in for the night. Some other time?”

  “Sure.”

  Elliot turned away and headed towards the rear exit of the buzzing bridge. Once he was out of Joshua’s sight, he exhaled a long breath of air.

  “I’m a horse’s ass,” Joshua said to himself.

  Elliot dragged his feet through several corridors, pausing on the way to enter a lift which took him to his temporary quarters aboard the Endeavour. Lily’s face flashed across his mind’s eye. Elliot quickened his pace towards his quarters in spite of his fatigue. Joshua was right. He never spent more that a couple of hours on a ship now whether it was a warship or a liner. All at once, he realized what had been draining his energy these last few days.

  He opened the doors to the dark interior of his quarters and stumbled to the bedroom in the dark. He touched the mattress to ensure it was where he believed it to be and collapsed onto it. He half—heartedly made a brief struggle to find comfort before finally stopping in the best position on the dark sheets.

  Her face flashed across his mind again. In an effort to prevent the memory from further intruding on a good night’s sleep, Elliot threw a pillow over his eyes and tried to relax.

  Then his memory flashed to Lillian’s smile and the whole experience flooded back on him.

  He crossed his arms over the pillow and tried to sleep.

  Nadine awoke in her quarters covered in sweat. She grabbed a clock which displayed 7:04 AM. She was on duty in less than an hour. She fell back into her wet bed in relief. The damp sheets confirmed reality in contrast to the nightmare she had just endured.

  In her dream, Nadine had confided her misgivings to Catherine. She was talking to the Prime Counsel of her discomfort with getting involved with a Defensive. Catherine regarded her with a frighteningly intense stare, but Nadine just kept babbling out her confession. Once she had finished, Catherine lunged at her. Nadine narrowly avoided her attack and fled from her office. She looked over her shoulder to see that Catherine had claws gleaming on her wrinkled hands. Her skin had turned white and her eyes had taken on the cloudy blue hue of death.

  As she reached the door to her quarters, Catherine leaped on top of her and tore at her clothes. Nadine had screamed in terror as Catherine’s rank breath blew across her face. Her razor claws tore at Nadine’s skin, removing it with every graze. Nadine’s terror climaxed as she lay in a pool of blood marked by the increasing bits of skin collecting in it.

  In desperation, she grasped the door knob with bloody hands and managed to open it. She pulled herself away from the Monster Catherine and slammed the door. Pain contorted a face that was now nothing more than a blood soaked mess. Nadine slipped on her wet, red feet and left prints across drawers and closet doors. All of her clothes were gone.

  She saw a Coalition flag on her wall and grabbed it as a growling came from beyond the locked doors of her quarters. Nadine wrapped herself in the white, red, and gray striped flag. Nadine lay weeping on the floor while she heard the sound of paws marching back and forth outside the door.

  Nadine cringed when she heard the cry of a baby from beneath the flag. She lifted the flag to see a mewling baby by her side. In empathy for the whimpering child she lifted it to her breast and kept it close to her to protect it from padded feet outside the door.

  To her surprise, the baby stopped its wailing at her comfort and looked into her eyes.

  “What have you done?” it said in the deep rumble of a demon’s voice.

  It was then that she had had woken up in her bed. The words the demonic child had said to her repeated themselves over and over again in her mind.

  “Only a dream,” was what she said to herself to remove the horror of that vivid nightmare. Nadine couldn’t get the image of that baby with a disturbing distortion of its features mouthing those words to her.

  With a trembling hand, she grabbed her bathrobe off the floor and headed for the shower.

  The military balance of 2299 was preserved through decades of cold war. The populace of both nations had become comfortable with the guarantee of mutually assured destruction should any war begin. Families watched the Interplanetary News Network while eighty battle groups watched over the Alliance’s interests. One hundred and twenty battle groups comprised the Coalition fleet. Each group had forty ships while the Alliance had eighty. As one can see, simple math would lead one to believe that there was no balance here: the Alliance was outnumbered.

  What is the real answer to the equation?

  The Alliance was a generation ahead in technology.

  The Dawn of a New Century

  by Matthew Finny

  Chapter VI

  Forty warships slowed to a tiny fraction of the speed of light as they neared Outpost Fourteen. A wide, thousand yard long box of a carrier occupied the center of the battle group. Maria’s flagship, the Excalibur, led the sphere of ships in standard formation.

  “Outpost Four
teen is intact and signaling,” her communications officer said.

  “Acknowledge the signal, Mister Hennessy.”

  “Yes Ma’am. We have audio only; no video.”

  “Excalibur, this is Outpost Fourteen,” an anxious voice said over the bridge’s speakers. “We suggest you redirect your sensors to the local coordinates of seventeen, four hundred twenty—one, by three hundred nineteen.”

  “Acknowledged Fourteen. Do as he said,” she directed to her officer at the science station.

  The viewer changed from the image of Outpost Fourteen’s silhouette of a flashlight with attached sails to one of space with a small cloud of green specks occupying it.

  “Zoom in.”

  The ship’s computer magnified the image and revealed the cloud to be a fleet of ships resembling hers but with a deep olive color. The Coalition carriers contrasted theirs, resembling tall upright boxes. The older designs of the Coalition warships had sharp edges and elongated necks.

  “Coalition warships,” she exhaled on her breath. “There’s more than one battle group out there. How many warships does the science officer record?”

  “One hundred and twenty.”

  “Three battle groups?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. There are three carriers at the center, nineteen cruisers, thirty—eight destroyers, and sixty frigates. They’re sitting just beyond the outpost’s weapons range.”

  “Get me Fleet Admiral Nelson,” Maria directed to her communications officer. Admiral Nelson appeared on the primary monitor a moment later.

  “Maria, what’s your report?”

  “Three battle groups, just beyond weapons range.”

  “What’s their status?”

  “Their shields are up and they have armed weapons.”

  “I see,” Nelson said, putting a finger to his lips while he considered his options. “Proceed to a set of coordinates that will place you between their fleet and the outpost. Allow a distance of one million clicks between your battle group and their fleet.”

  “That is within weapons range, Ronnie.”

  “I am aware of that. Await further orders from me while I consult with the Senate. Maria, do not fire a single shot before they do.”

  “Yes, Sir,” she said. He nodded and ended the conversation with a press of a button on his desk.

  “You heard him men. Take us a million clicks from the enemy and hold position.”

  The fleet changed its heading and moved out towards their destinations.

  “Orders?” her helmsman asked once they arrived.

  “Hold position and maintain status.” Maria regarded the view of one hundred and twenty dark boxy ships. “I’ll just sit here with my thumb up my ass,” she whispered to herself.

  “We have need of you.”

  “Do tell,” Peter said.

  “I swear we should have had you garroted when you were young,” Alexander said, chewing on his bottom lip, “or disemboweled. I would take a certain level of personal satisfaction from your screams for mercy.”

  “I’d never do anything to give you pleasure, Councilor.”

  “Just because you’re her son doesn’t give you this amount of leeway. You are a failed sensitive unlike the others. I remember your file said you were too sociopathic to be psychic.”

  “So my mother told me. Do you want to read me Mother Goose now?”

  “I can’t see you enjoying something like that. Dante’s Inferno would be more appropriate. Catherine must have been drunk when she expelled you from her womb.”

  “A demon begot from another demon. Give her my love. Now what do you want?”

  “The particle warhead is a definite threat to us. Since you are fortuitously on the Excalibur, you are in a prime position to affect change,” Alexander said.

  “Is this what the oracle has seen?”

  “Despite your personal behavior, you do have the experience we need to be in a crucial place at a crucial time.”

  “We are out on the edge of the solar system, in case you didn’t know.”

  “Yes, but after this the Second Battle Group is the force assigned to protect the warhead once it is operational.”

  “And what am I supposed to do then?” Peter asked.

  “If I interpreted what I saw correctly then you will be the lever that moves a mountain. Does that interest you?”

  “Why would you tell me something like that? It’s out of character for you.”

  “I have plans for myself and if they help you, well every silver lining has a cloud.”

  “This will displease Catherine in the end?” Peter asked.

  “Oh, it will.”

  “Then I’m in,” Peter replied.

  Alexander gave him a wry smirk and deactivated the channel.

  “The deadline has passed,” Napoleon said, glancing at the timepiece strapped to his wrist.

  “There is no further communication from the Prime Ministers?” Catherine asked a nearby acolyte standing near her chair. The woman shook her head in answer.

  “What will we do then?” Victoria asked from her seat opposite Catherine.

  “How long would it take for our ships to be in position for the assault?”

  “They can be ready to start their assault in less than an hour,” Napoleon said from his chair.

  “Instruct General Henderson to consolidate his fleet and prepare to take Outpost Fourteen.”

  Three ships flashed into existence outside the solar system. Alliance and repaired Coalition sensor platforms transmitted their new data.

  A transmission was received aboard the Endeavour within a minute of the event. Elliot broke onto the bridge out of breath.

  “Commander?” he gasped at the on duty communications officer.

  “Admiral Nelson for you.”

  “Put it on the main monitor.”

  Elliot regarded the larger than life representation of Fleet Admiral Nelson on the main screen.

  “Eli,” Nelson said. “I’ll get to the point since this is an emergency situation. We have detected three ships near the position of the collapsed wormhole. We have no other battle groups available to look into this. We need you to investigate immediately.”

  “Do you think it’s alien, Ronnie?”

  “Keep that to yourself, Eli. Reserve your judgments until you get there.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Oh and Eli, the Coalition has these sensor readings as well. They’re sure to send their own ships to investigate.”

  “Understood.”

  “I don’t want a confrontation and I don’t want anyone firing on Coalition ships. We’ve got enough trouble right now, as it is.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Good luck,” Nelson said and closed the channel.

  The Third Battle Group left orbit jumping to a speed one hundred times that of light and headed for the area near the collapsed wormhole.

  Joshua and Madison burst onto the bridge, their navy blue uniforms having been hastily thrown on.

  “Eli, we heard about Fleet Admiral Nelson calling.”

  “I’m taking temporary command of the battle group.”

  “You are?” Joshua asked.

  “Nothing personal, Josh. Orders from the brass. Something has appeared in the vicinity of the collapsed wormhole.”

  “Like what?”

  “Three ships.”

  “Alien?”

  “We don’t know. That’s why we’re going.”

  “When do we arrive?” Madison asked.

  “We’ll be there in thirty seconds.”

  The ship exited to sub—light with the rest of the warships of the Third Battle Group close behind. Three small blue starships of gentle curvature with two sets of wings joined at their tips glided across the star field.

  “Identify,” Elliot ordered from his corner.

  “The computer can’t identify the ship profiles,” the science officer said.

  “Send a signal.”

  The tactical officer behind him int
errupted. “Captain, a Coalition battle group is approaching.”

  “Where?” Joshua demanded.

  “Directly behind us, Sir. A General Nadine Hanover wishes to speak with you.”

  Nadine had received only a stunningly quick order from her communications line instructing her to depart immediately with the Alpha Two Battle Group. Two officers were already waiting at the door of her office and nearly manhandled her to a shuttle. They rushed her to the Coalition Warship Yamato in orbit. The aging flagship’s olive colored hull enlarged in the window at a frightening rate. She barely had time to stand before the officers grabbed her again in haste for the bridge.

  The doors barely got out of her way once surprise began to turn to anger at her sudden abduction. The commander of the group, a relatively young Brigadier General named Ronald Park turned around from his center chair on the compact bridge. The area was reasonably well lit but did not dispel the claustrophobia of a cluttered command center of consoles and impeding support posts.

  Park stood up from his command chair.

  “General, welcome to the Yamato,” he began before she cut him off.

  “Why was I taken from my office without any information?”

  “I’m sorry, General. I did not give the command to transport you here. The orders came directly from the General of the Air Force and were marked as urgent.”

  “I want to see those orders.”

  “Yes Sir,” he replied and handed a link to her. She perused the document and then looked up to the now superfluous one—star General.

  “I’m taking command,” she said to Park and walked away. She folded the link and put it into the right pocket of her dark navy trousers. “Helm, set a course for the coordinates of the collapsed wormhole.”

  “Set,” the helmsman answered after tapping a few buttons.

  “Execute, push the engines to one hundred and ten percent.”

  The ship and its surrounding group jumped to many times the speed of light.