The Phoenix Project (3 page)

    
On the dark side of Earth,
Nadine Hanover stood in a damp holding cell deep beneath the Headquarters of
the Modern Enterprise Religious Aggregate. She had not bothered to wear her
contact lenses, since the prisoner was aware of her true nature. The woman
cowering in the corner of the room futilely thumped at her head with clenched
fists. She couldn’t bear to look into Nadine’s all white eyes and instead
stared at the floor while her mind was raped for information.

    
As the woman began to sob
uncontrollably, Nadine withdrew her consciousness from the wretched lump on the
floor. Now that Nadine had what she needed, she turned away and left the room,
closing the heavy door behind her.

    
She walked through several
dim, depressing corridors before reaching the lift that would take her into the
main portion of the building. Nadine thought briefly of her father as the lift
passed Detention Level E.

    
MERA's central complex was an
impressive construction of distinctly Gothic buildings sitting on the east
coast of what was once known as Russia. Great arches
and towers surrounded a central stone building with a unique twelve—sided dome
sitting at the top of the structure.

    
The elevator deposited Nadine
on the top floor. She passed through grand corridors adorned with wooden
fittings and low, wrought iron benches. Finally, she stopped at a relatively
small set of dark mahogany doors closely guarded by two sentries armed with
particle rifles.

    
Nadine nodded to them and
confidently strode through the entrance to the inner chamber of the Council of
Twelve. A group of a dozen elderly men and women were dressed in long, dark
robes. They sat in high—backed mahogany chairs within the twelve sided stone
room.

    
“I take it your interrogation
is finished?” Prime Counsel Catherine asked. She had once been beautiful, but
that was decades ago. High cheek bones now sagged next to a hawkish nose and a
small wrinkled mouth sat over a wizened chin. In contrast to her aged, white
skin, her silver—white hair glistened from careful attention.

    
"May I present my
findings?" Nadine asked.

    
The wrinkled old female speaker
of the group smiled through her pristine teeth.

    
"Go ahead."

    
"The agent Lisa was sending
intelligence to the Alliance,
as you suspected. We would be best advised to tell the Coalition's Encoding Branch
that Code Four Seventy One has been leaked to the Alliance,” she stated.

    
"Is that all?” Councillor
Alexander asked.

    
"Yes. We caught her
before she had the opportunity to do any real damage."

    
“And what of Lisa?” Catherine asked.

    
“I had to cause some minor
brain damage to ensure that she wouldn’t remember me.”

    
“What would you recommend we
do with her now?” Catherine asked in a rare act of consultation.

    
“She won’t remember anything.
I’d recommend letting the Alliance
have her back. They’ll think twice after trying this again once they’ve seen
the results of planting spies at MERA Headquarters.”

    
"A practical
suggestion," Catherine said.

    
“If you feel it’s unwise, she
can be sequestered here indefinitely.”

    
“No,” Catherine said, “you
misunderstood me. The suggestion was a good one. The Alliance will not try this again after seeing
one of their spies lobotomized. I would enjoy seeing their faces once she’s
found wandering the streets of New
York.”

    
“If there is nothing else, my
alter ego should have finished her report to you by now. I should return to my
command of Battle Group Alpha Two.”

    
“We need to speak with you on
a few points before you go,” Catherine said. “We have new orders for you.”

    
“Of course, my Teacher.”

    
"I saw a coming calamity
last night as I wandered in the future,” Alexander said. “At a crucial point a
member of the military will be called on to take part in some very sensitive
negotiations. They won’t assign you to that position.”

    
“No they won’t, but we aren’t
going to give them a choice. We are elevating you to the rank of Lieutenant General
in the Diplomatic Branch of the Coalition's fleet. The current General will be
removed."

    
“Thank—you, my Teacher.”

    
“Be careful, Nadine. You will
meet a dangerous man in these negotiations,” Catherine said.

    
“May I ask who he is?”

    
“Vice Admiral Elliot
Fredericks.”

    
“Is he a Defensive?” Nadine
asked.

    
“Very astute, my student. Yes,
he is a Defensive and he studied under Michael DePietro, among others. I’ve
never known any Aggressive who has been able to pierce his mind,” Catherine
replied.

    
“I’ll be careful.”

    
“He has concealed his identity
from the rest of the Alliance
military, the same as you have from ours. You won’t be able to point him out by
black irises,” Catherine said.

    
“I understand.”

    
“In the meantime, something
near the borders of the Solar System has attracted our attention. We thought
the Alliance
had destroyed some of our sensor platforms, but as it turns out, there is an
anomaly out there of unknown origin,” Catherine said.

    
“That’s incredible.”

    
“Isn’t it? We have the
possibility of first contact with another intelligent species. Even if this
isn’t the case, we need someone out there we can trust.”

    
“When should I leave?” Nadine
asked.

    
“Immediately,” Catherine replied
as a guard gave her a link with coordinates. “Take a shuttle back to the battle
group and depart for the coordinates indicated on that link. Return and report
to us once you have done a proper analysis.”

    
Nadine nodded and left the
room at a motivated pace. Once the doors closed, Catherine focused her
attention on Alexander.

    
“I wish you could have been
more specific. That one is incredibly valuable to us. One day, she will replace
me as Prime Counsel.”

    
“I believe I interpreted the
symbols correctly,” Alexander said.

    
“And Nadine must be there when
the, what did you say they were, Alexander?”

    
“Cats. They were docile cats,”
Alexander replied.

    
“When these “cats” come to
Earth.”

    
“What are these cats supposed
to be, Alexander?” Napoleon asked from his left.

    
“They could be a play on the
idea of pets. Perhaps servants of some kind that arrive here and cause
upheaval,” Alexander said.

    
“Well, this will ensure we are
well prepared,” Catherine said. “Now, it’s time we returned to our schedule.”

    
The Twelve returned to their
regular activities, deciding on legislation and policy for the Coalition.

    
MERA, the Modern Enterprise
Religious Aggregate, and the Cooperative can trace their roots back to several
different religions of the twentieth century that eventually found it necessary
to amalgamate into their current form. MERA was an agreed upon unification of
the old Catholic, Protestant, and Islamic faiths and became the dominant
eastern religion. The Cooperative came from the old Buddhist, Native and Hindu
religions and formed the dominant western religion.

    
No one knows exactly why so
many major religions decided on this action but it has been speculated that
internal monetary problems forced the mergers.

A Retrospective on Twenty—Third
Century Religion

By Crassus Bixby

Chapter II

This was a problem that Lathiel was unsure he could overcome. A large,
heavy alloy beam had fallen across his chest, pinning him to the floor of the demolished
command center.

    
“Ranik?” Lathiel called out in
a hoarse voice. He realized how dehydrated he was and wondered how long he had
been unconscious. He craned his neck to look around him and saw a few flashes
of flame flickering against the far wall where the main monitor was. As best as
he could see, a long crack ran down the center of the screen. He looked over to
his console and noticed that it had been battered by something heavy. The
likely perpetrator had him pinned to the floor.

    
“Ranik?” Lathiel called out
again. The rest of the room was a post—apocalyptic battle scene from the old
legends of his race. The walls were warped from quakes and blackened by fire.
He wished that he had listened to his family now and had continued the work his
grandfather had begun. His family studied Null Space in an attempt to learn its
secrets from afar.

    
He would have happily spent
more time analysing data with his father and brother but the war had
intervened. He had taken up the defence of his people by leading the expedition
to repair and reactivate the doomsday weapon that their ancestors had abandoned
a millennium ago.

    
Lathiel knew that this
immense, ancient weapon wouldn’t fire again. Never would their ancestors come
to rescue them again in their time of need. Presently, he heard the sound of
movement from somewhere to his left.

    
“Ranik? I hope it’s you,”
Lathiel said to the sound of moving debris nearby.

    
“Cousin,” Ranik replied. His
head became visible once a piece of melted plastic fell out of the way.

    
“Are you alright?”

    
“I’m better than the rest of
this place,” Ranik rasped through a dry throat. “I could use a drink.”

    
“Can you move?”

    
“Yes,” Ranik replied and
struggled up off the floor. He walked to where the young Ferine’s voice originated.
He took a look at the beam across his chest for a moment before shaking his
head. “Youth never manage to stay out of trouble.”

    
“Just move the beam, please.”

    
Ranik let out a brief chuckle and
then placed both hands on one end of the severed support. He huffed with effort,
realizing just how heavy the beam really was.

    
“Maybe you should go and get
some help,” Lathiel said.

    
“You don’t want to know what’s
left of the rest of this place. I don’t think there’s anyone else alive in here
to help.”

    
Lathiel fell silent at the
news and watched as Ranik wrapped both of his arms around the beam and pulled
upwards. To his relief, the beam moved off his chest with barely a scrape to
his spotted skin. Ranik hefted the collapsed support in the safest direction,
which was unfortunately Lathiel’s station. The beam’s added weight was more
than it could handle and the console crumpled to the floor.

    
“Thanks,” Lathiel said. The yellow
eyed Ferine lent him a hand to help him up. “Is anything still working in
here?”

    
Ranik looked around the room
before responding. “I don’t think so.”

    
“We need to get to a working
station and assess the damage.”

    
Ranik took a scanner from his
belt. He was gratified to see that it still functioned and moved it around in a
semicircle to gather data. “There’s some power readings in that direction,”
Ranik said, pointing toward a wall.

    
“The medical bay is there.
Let’s go,” Lathiel said. It was then that he realized that the fire he saw
flickering on the wall wasn’t coming from the doorway but from the lift
entrance beyond it. Tongues of flame licked the cracked doors of the elevator.

    
“It is coming from the med—bay,”
Ranik confirmed from the information displayed on his scanner. “Five decks
below us.”

    
“It’s the stairs whether we
like it or not,” Lathiel said, nodding towards the burning elevator shaft. They
wrenched open a pair of doors next to the lift and saw a stairway coiling down
into the dark.

    
They felt their way to the
floor ten flights of stairs below them. Both of them were too concerned with
falling down the concrete steps to indulge in conversation. Lathiel finally
heard the sound of success from Ranik’s lips and shortly afterwards a ray of
light pierced the darkness.