The Phoenix Crisis (4 page)

“
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.”