***
When the bridge contacted him, saying they’d found something, Calvin had them send a copy of the information to his office. Buried deep in the Rotham ship’s debris were two things: a tiny datadisk and traces of isotome—an extremely rare, unstable compound found in only one place in the galaxy.
Since he was no physicist, he would let his lab ponder over the relevance of the isotome while he accessed the data from the disk on his computer. It was a recording, and he played it over and over.
“If you’re hearing this message, then you haven’t disappointed me, Calvin Cross.” It was a software-disguised voice, exactly like the one he’d heard in his quarters on Praxis just before the trial. “But I must warn you,” it went on. “If you come after me, as some hope you will … they will come after you. And they will find you. They always do. If you’re smart, you’ll go home now and live a long, peaceful life. Because if you don’t, and you see what I’ve seen… that’s one step too many. And there’s no going back from that. Believe me, I know.”
It changed to a man’s voice with a flat intonation. “I stop shiny sunsets. I find pale blue lights always.”
The first part, the warning, was bone-chilling. But didn’t really tell him anything, except someone—other than Raidan—wanted Calvin dead if he kept going. Someone, Calvin assumed, who was connected to CERKO, and the attack against him on Aleator. For all he knew, he’d crossed that line already, whatever it was. And, regardless of any risk to himself, it was more than just duty that drove him to keep pursuing Raidan; it was who he was as a person. He had to know.
The second part of the message was even more interesting than the first. Perhaps because it made no immediate sense.
He took the clip of the man’s voice and ran it through the database. He wasn’t sure what the limits of the software were but knew, sometimes, voice recognition was possible. This man, who sounded vaguely like Raidan, had no official match in the database. Or rather fit a list of over three hundred thousand potential matches. Calvin searched the results for Asari Raidan’s name and found it. Raidan wasn’t the closest match, but he did make the list. The voice could belong to him. The computer listed the probability at less than 30 percent, but Calvin’s intuition told him it was closer to 100.
“What are you trying to tell me, Raidan?”
Calvin thought of the final statement itself: I stop shiny sunsets. I find pale blue lights always. And tried to solve it like a riddle. “Something that stops sunsets and sees pale blue lights …” He turned this over in his mind.
The obvious answer seemed to be the night. It came when the sunset was over, perhaps “stopping it,” and the “pale blue lights” could be stars. Night from the point of view of a planet.
Or maybe it could be a moon. A moon would stop the sunset briefly during a solar eclipse, and it might be a good vantage point for seeing stars, depending on its position relative to the local sun … but that answer seemed even weaker than the first. And it also depended on “pale blue lights” meaning the stars, which was a thin supposition at best.
“Nighttime,” he said aloud, tapping his fingers on his desk. Even if that were the answer, it didn’t buy him anything. Nighttime could occur anywhere in the galaxy, and there was nothing specific about it to link it to Raidan.
Maybe Raidan had left this clue to throw him off. Give him something distracting to slow him down. But that didn’t feel right. If Raidan had wanted to distract Calvin, he would have offered him a false lead. Something to chase. Not taunt him with a riddle. No, Raidan was definitely trying to tell him something. But what?
Calvin wondered if the exact phrase itself was useless and the real message was buried within the words, like a code.
So he wrote out the words and played around with them for some time. Rearranging the letters. Searching for patterns.
“I find pale blue lights always …”
A normal person, Calvin thought, would probably phrase it as I always find pale blue lights, not I find pale blue lights always. The order of the words felt more awkward this way. Therefore, the order probably was deliberate and might then be the cipher.
He started by taking only the first letter of each word, the simplest way he could imagine burying a code. “I-S-S-S-I-F-P-B-L-A.” The ISS at the beginning seemed like a prefix identifier for an Imperial starship, which excited him. But disappointment set in when he realized ISS SIFPBLA didn’t really fit the Empire’s naming conventions. He tried turning the latter part around and was equally unimpressed with ISS ALBPFIS.
He considered the possibility that it was scrambled but, ultimately, decided using the first letter of each word in the clue wasn’t the correct cipher. He tried using the last letters, which came up with an equally worthless answer: IPYSIDEESS. Again he wondered if it was scrambled but couldn’t come up with anything better than I SEE SPY IDs.
This is a waste of time, he realized and tapped his intercom. “Deck four auxiliary,” he said, unsure who was manning the post at this hour.
“Yes, sir. Midshipman Hughes standing by.”
“I’m sending you a short code for text analysis. I don’t think it’s very complex. Either you or the computer should be able to find a coherent message inside it without much trouble. When you do, send the result to my computer and contact me either in my quarters, my office, or on the bridge.”
“Yes, sir.”
Calvin typed the message and transmitted it to Hughes, adding, “Let me know once you’ve figured out what the deal is with that isotome we picked up from the debris.”
“I already have some preliminary results on that, Captain.”
“Go ahead.”
“Isotome is an extremely rare compound stable only in the Xenobe Nebula Region. It cannot be synthetically produced, and no one has devised a way to retrieve it without it breaking down into simpler elements, until now.”
Most of this went over Calvin’s head, who hadn’t studied chemistry beyond the What is an atom? course. That and two classes on how to weaponize chemical compounds. At any rate, the fact that the Rotham ship was carrying isotome was more interesting to him than how they managed to keep it stable outside the nebula.
“What I want to know, Mr. Hughes, is why someone would be transporting isotome in the first place? Isn’t it supposed to be useless?”
“There’s no known utility for isotome. It’s violently reactive, unstable, and until now it’s never been retrievable. Honestly … antimatter is more stable.”
“So nobody buys it or uses it for anything?”
“Correct.”
“That we know of …” Calvin muttered to himself. “All right, what about as a novelty? It’s extremely rare. Maybe someone would purchase it as a trophy or part of a collection or something. Or it could be vital to some kind of scientific study.”
“I really don’t know, sir.”
Calvin realized he wasn’t getting anywhere with this. He dismissed Mr. Hughes and terminated the call with “If you find out anything else, or decode that message, let me know right away.”
Now only one piece of evidence remained—the data the Harbinger stole from Brimm Station. If only there were some way to get it.
He tapped his comm again, this time to the quarters of his chief engineer, First Lieutenant Andre Cowen. “Andre, sorry to wake you up, but I have a quick question for you.”
“Go ahead, Calvin. I was awake anyway.” The croak in his voice betrayed his polite lie.
“Is there something on our ship that, if broken, would take about an hour to repair? A repair that might be easier to do while docked than afloat in open space?”
“Well, there are thousands of systems on the ship, and almost anything is easier to fix at port, but all our systems are operating perfectly, why?”
“I was just thinking it’d be very convenient if we had to make a pit stop at Brimm One. You know, so their resources could help diagnose and fix our problem.”
“Are you asking me to sabotage ou
r beautiful ship?”
“Would it be too much trouble?” Calvin was glad he was thoroughly trusted by most of his crew.
“Come to think of it, I thought I noticed a few shorts in the electrical wiring and some trouble with a few of the superconductors. Or, at least, there will be as soon as I get dressed and down to engineering.”
“Good, just don’t let anyone know it was you.”
Andre’s laugh crackled over the speakers. “Of course. I have my reputation to maintain.”
“Thanks.” He redirected the comm to the bridge. “Mr. Rose,” Calvin said, waiting for a reply.
“Rose here, sir.”
“I just heard from engineering,” said Calvin, adding to his devious plot, “that some of our fuel cells are tainted.”
“Our instruments indicate everything’s fine.”
“Just … take my word for it,” said Calvin.
Rose got the hint. “Now that you mention it, the fuel cells could be better.”
“I want you to make a pass around Brimm’s most distant moon and dump 60 percent of our fuel on the far side.”
“Why there, sir?”
“It’s very important that Brimm doesn’t see us dump the fuel. They must think our fuel is low anyway.”
“Their sentry ships will notice it.”
“But not for a while.”
“Should we stop our scan and get to that right away?”
“No, finish the scan, and then go around the moon at a slow pace, nice and cool. Tell Brimm we’re doing a complete scan of the system. In the meantime I’ll contact the commodore, and let him know we need to dock soon for a resupply and repair.”
“I’ll see to it.”
Calvin knew the senior staff of Brimm One wouldn’t want the Nighthawk to dock with their station, especially if it put their “sensitive information” at risk. But he figured he’d created enough reasons to demand a short linkup with their docking bay, and, hopefully, he could get someone inside.
Now it was just a matter of selecting the right person for the job.
The Phoenix Conspiracy Page 29
