The Phoenix Project (10 page)

    
“I’m over, you win,” Lathiel said.

    
Ranik took the chips from the
center of the table and got up to pour himself another drink. He opened a small
coral blue cabinet on one wall and pulled out a bottle of Ruby Brandy.

    
“Would you like another?”
Ranik asked while he poured himself a glass.

    
“Anything to pass the time.”

    
“I don’t know what’s worse,”
Ranik said, as he sat down with two glasses of glowing liquor, “the waiting or
your poor playing.”

    
“I’ve got another twenty
sterling that says you’re wrong.”

    
“Done,” Ranik said. He watched
Lathiel shuffle the cards. “I wonder: what do you think they’ll be like?”

    
“Who?” Lathiel asked as he
dealt the first two cards.

    
“This new species. I’m a
little worried about what kind of people they are,” he said. Ranik looked at
his card lying face up on the table. “Another card.”

    
“I just hope they’re
friendly.” He gave Ranik a second card. Lathiel put one in front of himself as
well.

    
“That’s what has me worried.
You saw the sensor data. Their Faster Than Light drives are inferior to ours.
We can get to their system in a few days and it would take them how long?”

    
“About a decade.”

    
“A decade,” Ranik repeated and
looked at the two cards in front of him. “I’ll take an alternate.”

    
Lathiel nodded and removed the
second card from Ranik’s hand only to replace it with another from the deck. He
took a look at his hand and decided to keep what he had.

    
“What’s your point?”

    
“That’s how far behind us they
are in propulsion. But did you look at the sensor data on their weapons
systems?”

    
“It has to be at least fifty
years beyond ours.”

    
“Closer to a hundred and I’m
concerned about that. Next card.”

    
“They may have a lot to teach
us,” Lathiel said. He took another card from the deck and placed it with
Ranik’s hand. Ranik looked at his cards and pondered his next move.

    
“Do you think they can teach
us about war?”

    
“If they could outfit our
ships with their weapons,” Lathiel began.

    
“Then we would have a
considerable advantage over the Nevargh. Yes, I’ve thought about that.”

    
“It would strengthen us
considerably.”

    
“I’ll hold with this,” Ranik
said. Lathiel took another card for his hand. “What if they don’t want to part
with their technology? What if they don’t want to part with us?”

    
“I’ll keep these. I take it
you mean that we’re going into a trial, right?”

    
“Next card. Yes, we do have
something to answer for. No matter how unintentional our actions, we’ve still
put them in danger.”

    
Lathiel placed a third card in
front of him.

    
“I’ll take an alternate.”

    
“Two is the maximum.”

    
“I know.” Ranik received a
different card. “I’ll stay with this.”

    
He had twenty—four. Lathiel
took another card from the deck and placed a ten with his other cards, for a
total of twenty.

    
“There isn’t just that, Lathiel.
Advanced weaponry can mean advanced hostility. Do you have any idea what their
reaction to us will be?”

    
“We still need to make
amends,” Lathiel said, and took another card from the deck. He placed a six on
top of his cards. “I’m over.”

    
“You should have alternated
with that first ten.”

    
“I thought I could handle it.”

    
“You’re too cautious.”

    
“Another game?”

    
“Do you have any money left?”
Ranik asked with a feline smile.

    
“Some.”

    
“It’s my turn to deal the
cards,” Ranik said. Lathiel handed him the deck and he began to shuffle the
cards for another round.

    
“No Ma’am,” a soldier repeated
as a small woman attempted to enter into a hatchway on the bottom deck of the
AWS
Endeavour
. Now even the warships of the orbiting battle groups had
been ordered into transport duty as more and more people became desperate to
leave the prairie states. “You can take one suitcase with you, not two.”

    
“I’ve got everything in my
life in these two bags!” the woman exclaimed.

    
“I’m just following the rules,
Ma’am.”

    
“I’ll pay the baggage fee,”
the woman said, nonchalantly. Maria stifled a laugh while she watched from a
terrace overlooking their boarding guests.

    
“This isn’t a Space—Liner,
Ma’am. Please leave the bag behind or leave the line.”

    
The woman looked at the
officer, incredulous at the perceived lower class treatment of her presence.
She huffed at the stern response and threw one of the bags to the metal deck
with a loud smack.

    
“Thank—you, Ma’am. Welcome
aboard,” the soldier said. He motioned for her to advance into an interior room
as more clamoured to board the ship behind her.

    
“I’ll write to my Senator,”
she shouted over her shoulder. “My tax dollars pay your wages, you know.”

    
Maria admired the Petty
Officer’s patience as he ignored the remark and moved on to the next person in
front of him. Long lines of people entered the ship which sat on a large
farmer’s field in the state of Nebraska.
The central prairie states were nearly abandoned. The government had
subsequently turned all of its focus on the outer states. The other ships of
the Second Battle Group were spread out across some hundred square miles of
land. Frantic people were rushing in from the nearby city of Omaha to board the makeshift transports.

    
Maria left the scene and
travelled to the top of the ship by elevator. She didn’t go to the Officer’s
Lounge, which had become a temporary hostel, but instead found an outer hatch
to the sunshine outside. She walked out onto the hull and looked out around
her. To the east and west, Maria saw the silhouettes of the
Trafalgar
and the
Destiny
. She discerned rising smoke in the Omaha skyline where protests to the
evacuation had become riots. The decision to let the fires burn seemed to have
sobered the resisting population’s belief that this was some sort of conspiracy.

    
The protests began the night of
the announcement for the mass evacuation. Mobs grabbed large three foot square
links and stuck them to what ever stick or post they could find and marched
across every city and town hall in the Midwest.
The angry crowds turned to rioting once the ships arrived to take them away
from their homes. Police and the Military clashed with the protestors while the
sensible half of the population grabbed what they could and boarded the
evacuation craft.

    
Some of the dissenters decided
to leave once the fires continued to burn and more ships took off with their
friends and neighbours aboard. However, of the ten or so thousand that gave up
and left, several hundred thousand stayed despite the threat of what was
coming. Politicians were dumbfounded when decades of telling their supporters
that their rivals had an “agenda” backfired. Many of their most ardent
believers actually dug in expecting a secret army to come in and take their
homes away from them.

    
All of the local stations went
dark, one by one, until only the Interplanetary News Network remained on the
airwaves. At first they were convinced that the mass evacuations and panic
across the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado
were deliberate fakes to scare them. Once the power was shut down and the last municipal
employees left, there was a sudden outcry for help. Fear gripped the remaining
populations as reality began to sink in. Frantic calls went out by wireless
devices to the government for a rescue.

    
With the civilian vehicles now
on their way out of the system, the government realized all that was left were
the fleet ships to evacuate them. Maria had to break orbit and land under the scrutiny
of Coalition destroyers tracking their every move and twitch. Now she watched these
refugees boarding her ship with the same resistance as before. They wanted to
survive but resented being taken from their homes and saw the military as being
somehow responsible.

    
Maria couldn’t blame them,
though. If she was ordered from her childhood home or any other place she
cherished she would probably have put up a fight as well.

    
“Quite a pretty sight isn’t
it?” Benjamin Phelps asked from behind her.

    
“Except for the smoke. How did
you know where to find me?”

    
Her new first officer smiled
at the question as he joined her in looking out on the horizon. The thirty
decks of the ship only partially obscured the crowds waiting to board the
Excalibur
.

    
“I’m a good first officer and
your earpiece is still on.”

    
“Oh,” Maria said and thumbed
the device at her ear off. “What’s the situation?”

    
“We should be able to take off
in another four hours.”

    
“Have you ever been there?”
Maria said while she looked at the distant city of Omaha.

    
“I was stationed there when I
was a Lieutenant for a few years.”

    
“What is it like?” Maria
inquired.

    
“A little smaller than a few
of the cities I’ve been to. Have you ever had a Reuben Sandwich?”

    
“A what?” Maria asked.

    
“They’re good, so are the
people. I didn’t think I’d ever get around to visiting the city again just
because of life. I never thought that I wouldn’t go back because it wasn’t
there anymore.”

    
“There may be more than a few
cities that end up like that in a few hours.”

    
“Ma’am, may I speak off the
record?”

    
“Yes,” Maria replied.

    
“You’re an admiral. Have you
heard anything more about this alien weapon? Is it really going to hit Earth?”

    
“Our scientists have revised
their data. They’re saying that the amount of energy the Moon can absorb is
beyond their ability to calculate,” Maria replied.

    
“What does that mean?”

    
“It means that they don’t
know.”

    
“I think half the population
is thinking that,” Phelps said. He took his hat off in the strong breeze and
briefly checked his dark curly hair to ensure that it wasn’t tousled.

    
“What about the other half?”

    
“They’re probably pissing
themselves right about now,” Phelps replied.

    
“I don’t blame them.”

    
“Just as long as you don’t
join them, Ma’am.”

    
Maria smiled at the remark and
turned to the middle—aged officer. “I think we just might get along,
Commander.”

    
“Thank—you, Ma’am.”

    
“Why aren’t you a Captain by
now, Phelps? You should be.”

    
“Who ever said that I wanted
the job?”

    
“Well, I guess it’s not for
everyone,” Maria said.

    
“That doesn’t mean that I
couldn’t do it, Ma’am. I just never wanted to.”
 

    
“Now that’s an interesting
statement,” Maria said.

    
“I just don’t know why anyone
would want to make decisions that end people’s lives on a scale like you do. It
just doesn’t hold any interest for me.”

    
“I guess I can see that. Would
anything convince you to take a promotion?” Maria asked.

    
“The end of the world.”

    
“The Moon’s not enough?”