The Phoenix Conspiracy

by Richard Sanders

  ***

  The Rodeo Den Casino was everything it claimed to be. Bright lights, lots of noise, smoke everywhere—all kinds of explicit drug use—and crowds of people representing every culture and kind of alien. Calvin heard so many different languages he couldn’t tell them apart, picking up bits and pieces from a few but not enough to get by on. Fortunately most everyone spoke human since the Roscos did their business transactions exclusively in human.

  Calvin didn’t draw much attention as he strolled past the tavern and around some of the casino tables. Several of the games were electronically projected, but most weren’t. The majority of the players—basically swindlers anyway—thought the house could rig the software, so the gamblers demanded physical dice and card games.

  Calvin hoped to pick up gossip about the Harbinger’s visit. He hung around groups of people long enough to catch the drift of their conversations but not long enough to be noticed. If their topics were uninteresting or he felt he’d overstayed his welcome, he’d slip away and get lost in the crowd.

  He liked the bars and lounges most because they were natural gathering points, and no one would raise an eyebrow if he stayed for long periods. But, unfortunately, not much interesting gossip was making the rounds. Mostly these areas were trolled by liars who spent their time arguing over bets, complaining about losses, or bragging about their supposed conquests. Many of the details, if believed, were sickening.

  Calvin rarely spoke unless spoken to, and, when people realized he was alone, they’d sometimes come over and badger him for money, either by begging or trying to intimidate him. It reminded him of the backstreets of Capital World. He knew how to look a thug squarely in the eyes and seem deadly; mostly they left him alone. He relied on body language and cold expressions to avoid drawing attention rather than arguing back or making threats of his own.

  Once in a while he’d reach into his jacket pocket—as if to draw a weapon. This seemed to work, even though it was a bluff. Firearms and knives were banned on Aleator One by the Roscos, and, if caught with one, the perpetrator would be beaten and locked up. But since the environment was so dangerous anyway, it was no secret that many people here—and probably most—had a weapon stashed somewhere on their person, like his two ghosts did. The Roscos and their soldiers didn’t do pat-downs or searches, so smuggling was easy.

  Calvin was about ready to leave for the lower decks when he spotted someone in an Imperial uniform enter and take a seat at a card table. The blue coat and black sash were ripped in places and severely dirty, and it hung too loosely on the man’s wiry body to have been fitted for him. But it may have come from the Harbinger, Calvin thought.

  The uniformed man bought his way into the game and waited for the hand to finish. Calvin approached cautiously and scrutinized him. He seemed very chatty with the player to his right, who didn’t hesitate to reply. They knew each other and made no effort to mask that fact; Calvin suspected they were passing information in code. He approached the table and took the only available seat.

  “What’s the buy-in?” asked Calvin.

  “Two hundred Q with a max of one thousand.”

  “Put me down for two hundred.” Calvin took the bills from his wallet, which he’d kept in his front pocket on a chain—otherwise it would’ve run off by now.

  “Two hundred it is.” The hand finished, and the dealer passed out new cards. Calvin kept his cards facedown, aside from a quick peek. They were terrible. Good thing he wasn’t here to make a profit.

  From his position, he had some trouble listening in on the conversation because of the casino’s noise. But he caught bits and pieces.

  “They said it would be all day,” the uniformed man said.

  “I told them it wouldn’t,” the player on his right replied.

  The dealer spoke up. “Jacobi, it’s to you.” The uniformed man nodded and passed in his chips, calling the bet.

  So his name is Jacobi …

  Everyone called after the initial raise—keeping the bet relatively low, at nine Q to call. Calvin decided to stay in, even though his odds of winning the pot were less than one in a thousand. He didn’t want to draw attention by being the guy who folded early. Overly cautious gamblers didn’t fit in at joints like this.

  The next set of cards was passed out, and Calvin’s odds of winning decreased even further. But that wasn’t what disturbed him; it was the fact that Jacobi and his friend hadn’t resumed their conversation. Calvin stayed calm, perfectly placid on the surface, but inside his head spun circles trying to figure out whether or not he had some kind of tell, like he seemed too interested in them or that he didn’t belong. Maybe he was trying too hard to avoid eye contact.

  “Fifty to call,” the dealer said. The player just ahead of Calvin had raised the stakes dramatically.

  “I’m out.” Calvin pushed his cards toward the dealer. Folding right after a huge raise wasn’t unusual; the other player had done him a favor.

  Jacobi looked up from the table and turned to Calvin. “You,” he said. “I know you.”

  Calvin’s stomach turned over. “I doubt it,” he replied, smoothly as ice.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Depends who’s asking.”

  “Don’t you know who I am?”

  Calvin hesitated; it was hard to see Jacobi’s expression behind his mat of greasy long blond hair. But he doubted he was a Rosco. “Should I? It’s not like you’re a Rosco.” Every Rosco he’d ever met dressed sharp, wore expensive clothes, and kept a clean appearance. If a member of the family dressed and looked like Jacobi, it would be an embarrassment to them, and they’d correct it.

  “You still haven’t told me your name,” said Jacobi.

  Calvin raised an eyebrow and sat back. “Why should I? I don’t owe you anything.”

  The dealer raised his arms. “You girls take this outside. I’m cashing you both out. You’re interrupting the game.”

  “Fine,” said Jacobi.

  Calvin just nodded as his cash was passed back to him.

  Jacobi shot him a look of death as they both stood up.

  “Look, man,” said Calvin. “I don’t exactly go around telling Imperials my name.” He pointed to Jacobi’s uniform, even though it clearly didn’t belong to him. “Bad for business.” Calvin shrugged and turned away, not wanting to draw any more attention. Jacobi might be his best lead, but Calvin couldn’t blow his cover. Especially if a real Rosco spotted him—that was the last thing he needed.

  “Hey, wait,” Jacobi called from behind. “You’re Rex Malone, aren’t you?”

  Calvin stopped dead in his tracks. That was his undercover name, which he hadn’t told anyone since he’d boarded the station. Maybe Jacobi had seen his fake ID somehow … maybe when I opened my wallet to pay the buy-in? But that seemed unlikely.

  Calvin turned around slowly and spoke cautiously. “That’s right. And if you think you’re going to take me in, you’ve got another thing coming.” For authenticity Calvin had had his staff fabricate several crimes on Rex Malone’s record. Since he was a fictitious person anyway, might as well make him look like a crook in a crook’s nest.

  “No, no, easy, easy,” Jacobi said, walking closer.

  Calvin slipped a hand into his jacket, again pretending he had a pistol.

  “I know you’re only reaching for a lighter, aren’t you, Rex?”

  “Something like that.” He didn’t like where this was heading.

  “Let’s just keep it civil, okay?”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Jacobi. And I think I have something of yours.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah. Why don’t you come with us, and we’ll take you to it.” Jacobi motioned, and three other men approached Calvin from all sides, keeping their distance.

  His heart quickened, but he forced himself to appear calm. “Maybe another time, Jacobi. I have some money to make.”

  “I’m afraid we must insist,” Jacobi said, and the men c
losed in.

  One put a hand on Calvin’s shoulder. “Why don’t we go for a stroll? What do ya say?”

  Calvin glanced to the side and spotted his ghost, who was now standing up. He’d blended into the throng of people looking on.

  “Okay, let’s go,” said Calvin.

  “That’s more like it.” Jacobi led the five of them across the casino floor, through a back door, and down a few narrow hallways. Eventually they came to a stop.

  “What’s this about? I know you guys aren’t Roscos, not even close.”

  Before they could answer, gunfire sounded from around the corner. As Calvin turned to see, Jacobi grabbed Calvin and threw him against the wall. He tensed, throwing his arms out defensively as he tried to wrestle his way free from the other men. But their hold was too strong and they quickly pinned him against the wall with such pressure he could hardly breathe. Jacobi faced him down.

  “I know you’re military,” said Jacobi. “And I know why you’re here. Let’s just say you never should’ve come.” He pulled out a pistol, and Calvin struggled more, wondering how he’d been compromised.

  “Don’t you want to make a deal?” asked Calvin, his mind racing.

  “No chance,” said Jacobi as he screwed on a silencer. “I’ll see you in hell.”

  So this was the end … cold sweet death… something Calvin had tried to ignore his whole life. He closed his eyes and waited, thinking at least now he’d be able to solve mankind’s greatest mystery.

  Three shots whistled. He felt nothing.

  The arms around him slackened and let go. Calvin opened his eyes to see the three thugs dead on the ground; Jacobi stood opposite him with a smoking pistol.

  “Hurry up, let’s go, Calvin,” he said. “We don’t have much time.” He grabbed Calvin by the shoulder and ushered him back the way they’d come. Calvin followed instinctively, and their jog became a sprint.

  “What the hell just happened?” Calvin’s mind went into shock.

  “Those men were working with CERKO. They want you dead.”

  As they turned the corner and bolted down another hallway, Calvin caught sight of three more men on the ground, dead by all appearances … one was his ghost, who’d apparently managed to kill the other two. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  “Come on,” Jacobi urged.

  Calvin bent down and scooped up his ghost’s pistol. “Looks like six shots left.”

  “Hurry up. We’re in serious danger here.” They sprinted again.

  A noise ahead made Jacobi stop dead in his tracks, turn about-face, and bolt the opposite way. “They’re faster than I thought. Come on!”

  Calvin followed close behind. “Who is? And who are you? What’s your interest in all of this?”

  “I’m not Intel Wing or navy.” Jacobi led him to an adjoining hall. “And Jacobi isn’t my real name either.”

  They turned the corner just in time to see a man and woman open fire on them with submachine guns. Jacobi was shredded immediately; he collapsed without so much as a scream. A stray bullet tore Calvin’s shirt and grazed his arm, burning his skin. He was otherwise unscathed, because Jacobi had taken the bullets for him, like an involuntary human shield.

  Calvin raised his handgun and returned fire blindly while scurrying back around the corner. He heard the sound of reloading, and a part of him thought to go back around the corner and engage them, maybe take them down before they could finish. But his limbs wouldn’t cooperate, and the urgency of self-preservation took over. He sprinted down the corridor trying to remember his way back to the nearest public place. But, before he reached the end of the hall, another pair of unknown soldiers appeared.

  He went prone, somewhat concealed by the darkness as their muzzles flashed, peppering the walls with holes. He raised his pistol to shoot back, but all that happened was the click of an empty magazine, and his slide popped back.

  “There he is. He’s on the ground,” one of them said. The soldier had barely finished his sentence before screaming and dropping to the floor. Something large was on top of him, digging at him with claws. Then, in a flash, it flew past Calvin and knocked down the other soldier with a powerful swipe, tearing him apart in seconds.

  Two more soldiers—the ones that’d slain Jacobi—opened fire immediately at the monster’s silhouette, which seemed as much creature as man. It roared in pain but managed to duck their next volley and sail across the corridor in only a few leaps. Those two also died in the same gruesome, lightning-fast fashion.

  In the dim hallway, Calvin made out the red eyes of a lycan as it finished clawing through the last gunman. Impossible. It was Tristan. Calvin could see the resemblance now. Sure the man was somewhat hairier, and he’d grown claws that’d been brought to bear, but otherwise he looked the same. No snout or true wolf features showed.

  Several men with handguns came from the other side of the corridor and opened fire on the werewolf. Calvin guessed there were ten or more. Tristan’s gaze locked with Calvin’s for a brief instant, as if to say something, then he vanished away into the darkness, leaving a trail of blood.

  The newest arrivals ran up to Calvin and lowered their weapons. Calvin recognized a middle-aged goateed face with a bulbous nose that Calvin hadn’t seen in a long, long time. “Grady Rosco.”

  “Calvin Cross, why didn’t you tell me you were here?” Two of Grady’s men helped Calvin to his feet.

  “It wasn’t exactly convenient.”

  “You can gimme the details in a minute,” Grady said, then to his men he added, “Let’s move!”

  The mob of sharply dressed soldiers formed a ring around Calvin, and rushed him down the corridor and up the stairs to a protected office, where four large guards with automatic weapons stepped aside and opened a door to a small lobby.

  “Wait here,” Grady told the others. He unlocked a second door which revealed a small but luxurious office. He waved Calvin inside and shut it, leaving them alone. “Please, take a seat.”

  “All right,” said Calvin cautiously; he pulled a chair from the table. Grady sat opposite him.

  “You know, I’m disappointed.” Grady shook his head. “That a friend of my family would come to my home without paying me a visit.”

  “Like I said, it wasn’t convenient.” Calvin’s father, before disappearing, had had past dealings with the Roscos, but Calvin’s mother had kept Calvin as far away from the Roscos and their underworld as possible, so Calvin had rarely interacted with the crime family face-to-face.

  “You know, you almost died. I’m embarrassed, Calvin. Embarrassed that you were attacked in my house. Someone will die for this, I promise you.”

  “Someone already has. Lots of people.”

  “Do you have any idea how much that would have dishonored my family?” Grady paused to offer Calvin a cigar. When he refused, Grady lit one for himself and continued. “If a most honored guest were murdered here? Do you have any idea? You really should have told us, then we could have protected you.”

  “I didn’t expect I’d need protection.”

  “Any idea who’s got it out for you?”

  “No.”

  “People smuggling automatic weapons into my house and several dead in my hallways … This isn’t the way we do business on Aleator One! My family is going to get to the bottom of this, and any information you have would be worth a lot. A lot of Q, if you catch my drift.”

  The way Grady was talking, asserting his ownership over Aleator One, made Calvin assume that Grady had moved up the chain. He was a Rosco cousin, one of the family, but not one of the bosses, putting him maybe twelfth on the totem pole—or so it had been the last time Calvin had been here. He could only guess what Grady had done or who he’d rubbed out to climb the ladder to third or fourth.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have any information. Maybe you can tell me how that many people could have such powerful weapons on Aleator One.”

  Grady shrugged. “I have no idea. But I promise you, when I do, I’ll let you know. It
’s the least I can do.”

  “Good,” said Calvin, hoping to wrap this up. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Wait,” said Grady, sitting forward with a sense of urgency. “There’s still a matter of unfinished business.”

  This was exactly the reason why Calvin hadn’t told the Roscos that he was coming.… That and it would look bad to the fleet if they found out Calvin had underworld connections, especially if it was Summers Presley who pieced it together.

  “I already told you,” Calvin insisted. “We’re even. You just saved my life. If anything I owe you.”

  “Don’t insult me,” said Grady. “We barely manage to protect you from a bunch of two-bit punks on my station, in my own house, and you call that a display of our gratitude? Oh, no, no, no. That’s an embarrassment. It’s shameful that we didn’t get those guys first. Shame. You hear me? Not thanks. And if it were, it still wouldn’t be thanks enough, not even close. Not after what he did for us. The family is very much indebted to you.”

  “Indebted to my father, not to me.”

  “We can’t do anything for him now. The debt passes to you. We owe him, so we owe you. He would want what’s best for his son. And we don’t like being in debt. Name anything and it’s yours. Anything.”

  Calvin wasn’t comfortable. He didn’t know the extent of his father’s dealings with the premiere criminal family in the galaxy, and Calvin didn’t want to be associated with them. He could be clever and underhanded if he needed to, like his father, but he had too much of his mother in him to relish those talents. He’d also grown up resenting Aleator and the Roscos for stealing his dad from him. When his friends spent time with their fathers, Calvin hadn’t even known his. The last thing in the world he wanted was to validate that by benefitting from his dad’s mistakes. But he couldn’t explain that here, and, even if he found the words to try … the Roscos would never understand or accept that.

  A part of him wanted to name something random just to placate them, like a book collection, but he knew they’d never accept his offer unless it was something grandiose, and anything grandiose would draw too much attention. Plus there was nothing in the galaxy they could give him that he couldn’t already get for himself. “Okay, I know what I want.”

  “Anything.”

  “I want you to stop feeling indebted to me. I want us to call it even. I forgive you the debt.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You said anything.”

  “Don’t insult the Rosco honor, Calvin. Let us do you a favor. Need us to muss someone’s hair? Get someone out of the way?”

  “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I need.”

  “What about …” Grady lowered his voice. “I understand you’ve developed a taste for some magic.”

  About a year before, Calvin had stayed two nights on Aleator during a shore leave to meet an old friend who was now an Imperial fugitive. During that stay, he’d accidentally left a bottle of equarius in his room. Apparently the Roscos had done their housekeeping.

  “What would you say,” Grady continued, “to a lifetime supply of that stuff?”

  “No thanks.” It would be bad enough if Calvin were caught using equarius for recreational purposes, but to have his drug use linked to a well-known criminal outfit would be profoundly worse. “I already have a guy for that.”

  “We can take care of that too.” Grady took out his pistol and set it on the table. “Just say the word.”

  “The word is no.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Calvin.” Grady sat back in his leather chair. “But I’m sure when you do think of something, you’ll let me know.”

  “Well, there is one thing,” said Calvin, after a moment’s hesitation.

  Grady perked up and leaned forward.

  “This is off the record.” Calvin’s eyes narrowed.

  “This whole place is off the record.”

  “I’m looking for a ship. I want to know if it spent any time here in the last few days.”

  “What ship?”

  “It’s called the Harbinger. A big ship, first-rate Imperial crew, you couldn’t miss it.”

  “Harbinger, you say …” Grady stroked his goatee. “That would be Asari Raidan’s ship, would it not?”

  Actually the real captain was a woman named Jane Simmons, but Calvin pretended otherwise. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Big spender, on time, uses cash, doesn’t ask questions. Not the kind of customer I’d have anything to say about. We don’t like to pry into people’s affairs, you know.”

  Calvin resisted the urge to roll his eyes. I bet you don’t.

  “But you don’t waltz into our system with a first-rate stolen Imperial ship with a thousand-man crew and not escape our notice.”

  “I thought you’d know something.” Calvin wagged a finger at him.

  “You understand that normally I wouldn’t be at liberty to say.” Grady smiled. “But, seeing as you’re a friend of the family”—he lowered his voice—”the ship entered the system yesterday. It kept its distance and didn’t make port, but it launched a small shuttle with maybe twenty people aboard. They spent some money, met up with some other people discreetly, and left long before you arrived.”

  “Can you tell me where they went?”

  “Their heading was the Brimm System. But if they changed course, there’s no way I could know.”

  “You didn’t follow them or anything?”

  “There was no need. Their money was good. They kept the peace, followed the rules, and left without any trouble.”

  Calvin knew the answer to his next question but wanted to see Grady’s reaction. “You knew the ship was stolen. Had you reported its arrival, the Imperial government would have paid a handsome bounty.”

  “Reported it?” Grady laughed. “Not interested.”

  It was like Calvin had expected. Aleator wouldn’t get involved, not because the Harbinger was too powerful to deal with—which it was—but because someone on the station had a vested interest in Raidan’s welfare or, more likely, Raidan’s money. But knowing Grady as well as Calvin did, he doubted it was Grady himself.

  “What can you tell me about the people the Harbinger crew met with on your station? Can you give me their names?”

  “Yeah, I could, but it wouldn’t do you any good. They’re all fake. Most of the people who come here don’t exactly have bona fide paperwork. That’s why they come here.” He shrugged. “But I can tell you this, they were all ex-Imperials. No aliens, no outer-kingdom humans from god-knows-where inside the DMZ, and—of course—no Roscos. Just former Imperials.”

  “Thanks,” said Calvin as he stood up. “Does that make us even?”

  “No. But it’s a start.”