The Phoenix Project (55 page)

    
Nadine appeared to accept it with solemn
pride as did the rest of the honorees. The truth was that she found herself
falling into a black hole. Her future was assured but she began to experience
the dread of the realization that something she had sought after all her life
no longer meant anything to her. All she could think as the rest of the table
basked in the light of MERA’s acclaim was:
I don’t belong here anymore
.

    
Nadine sat in her chair for the rest of the
evening and numbly listened to speech after speech as she ate a well prepared
meal. She barely remembered how the food tasted or even what the meal consisted
of. She only knew that she found herself in tears in her bed again that night.

   
Aides scurried about the Alliance Parliament near London in a near frenzy.
Links that had fallen on the floor in the main lobby were forgotten. The
evacuation left no time to go back and retrieve them.

    
Fleet Admiral Nelson carefully avoided
sprinting aides as he marched to the Prime Minister’s main office. The doors
were open with the customary guards at the entrance, but the interior was a
different story.

    
The normally calm atmosphere of the office
with its three couches in a horseshoe arrangement was the only thing that
remained the same. The walls were now bare and several people hurried around
the room , continuing to remove anything of value.

    
The five Prime Ministers sat on the couches
and were each attended to by an aide working to settle all necessary matters
before they left the main office for the last time. Linda Simon looked up for a
moment and saw the Admiral. She smiled warmly and left the comfort of her couch
to greet him.

    
“Admiral,” Linda said, “how are things
going on your side of things?”

    
“Just making a final stop on the way to New York. I wanted to
see how my bosses are coming along.”

    
“Pretty well. We should be on our way
within the hour. Is the
Achilles
still transporting us to Mars?” she
asked.

    
“Yes, there aren’t any changes to the
operation. I just wanted to stop in and see how all of you were doing.”

    
“Bucking for a promotion?”

    
“Have one in mind beyond Fleet Admiral?”

    
“A good man,” she replied and grasped his
arm.

    
“Thank—you, Ma’am. Is there anything I can
do for you?”

    
“Get the First Battle Group to Mars,” she
replied.

    
“I can certainly try.”

    
“How is the rest of the Admiralty doing?”

    
“About as well as anyone would expect. We
leave for Mars at the same time you do. We’ve decided to consolidate the battle
group for this venture. The First will leave Earth at nine hundred hours on the
dot tomorrow. We should be in Mars orbit by Nine oh five.”

    
“Is there any change with the readiness of
the enemy fleet?” Linda asked.

    
“They’re still scheduled to launch about
fifteen minutes after our fleet launches.”

    
“Will I see you again before tomorrow?” Linda
asked.

    
“I’m afraid not, but I will see you on
Mars.”

    
“I’ll see you then,” she said and returned to
the storm of activity surrounding the three couches.

    
Admiral “Ronnie” Ronald Nelson smiled,
nodded at the group of ministers and retreated to the warm evening air outside
the complex. He walked to an awaiting shuttle bound for New York where the rest of the Admiralty
waited.

    
He boarded the shuttle and felt the
disbelief of the body as the craft became airborne. Once in the sky, he took
his link from his right breast pocket and opened it. Nelson tapped a few
virtual buttons on the display and made a request for an uplink to the
Excalibur
.

    
His high placed priority codes brought him
directly to the attention of Maria aboard her flagship. She greeted him with
the usual cold look that she seemed to give everyone these days.

    
“Fleet Admiral, to what do I owe the
pleasure?” she asked.

    
“Good to see you too Maria, I just wanted
to check in and see if you were ready to leave yet?” Nelson asked.

    
“Admiral, I have already voiced my
displeasure over this,” she replied.

    
“It’s already been decided Maria. Commander
Phelps has accepted the promotion to Commodore and will take command of the
Second Battle Group.”

    
“I volunteered to stay behind,” she said.

    
“And he volunteered first. Now I want you
off that ship by eight hundred thirty hours tomorrow morning at which time you
will join the rest of the Admiralty at New
York for evacuation.”

    
“Yes, Sir.”

    
“There’s one more thing,” Nelson said.

    
“Yes?”

    
“I want you to stop in at Phoenix Base on
your way and pick up Elliot.”

    
“I think Eli can take care of himself,” Maria
said.

    
“Yes he can, but right now all of our
shuttles are being used to capacity. I need you to share yours so that Elliot
can be brought to New York
once he’s finished his affairs at the base.”

    
“Yes, Sir. Is there anything else I can do
for you?” she asked, coldly.

    
“Yes there is: lighten up. You’re
depressing your crew.”

    
The comment brought a few hastily covered
snickers from her bridge crew before Nelson smiled and deactivated the link.

    
He relaxed in the cabin, already homing in
on New York,
and enjoyed a few minutes of silence. He would soon have to wade through a
small crowd of Admiralty gathering to leave the planet for Cartise, where they
would continue the fight on another front.

    
Eventually, he saw the rising spires of the
city and felt the shuttle settle onto the roof of the large Alliance Fleet’s
Headquarters in New York.
As soon as he exited the shuttle an adjutant shoved a report into his hand
after a quick salute.

    
“What’s the news, Commander?”

    
“We have most of the Admirals assembled
now. We’re still expecting a few who have experienced some delays.”

    
“How many are still on their way?” Nelson asked.

    
“Twenty—three. They will arrive over the
next twelve hours.”

    
“Twelve hours,” Nelson said and looked at
the sun closing in on the horizon. “It’s hard to believe that I’ll be looking
at a different sky in just a few days.”

    
Admiral Nelson took a moment to watch the
setting sun and enjoyed its splendor. He knew he would never witness another
one on Earth. After a minute of looking at the horizon, made picturesque by
the city’s towers climbing up to meet it, Nelson walked to the small box of an
entryway to the building. The rest of the Brass was waiting for him on a lower
floor. They would spend the night waiting to embark aboard the
Hood
which would then convey them to Mars along with the rest of the senate.

   
“I’ll keep your seat warm,” the recently promoted
Commodore Ben Phelps said to Maria in the shuttle bay of the
Endeavour
.

    
“You know that you’ll be keeping it warm
for quite some time. Just remember that General Order Thirty—Eight goes for
everyone, including you.”

    
“Yes Ma’am. Don’t think that I won’t obey
that order the moment it’s given,” Phelps replied.

    
“I will see you again.”

    
“If it was anyone else saying that, I
wouldn’t believe them.” Ben’s intention was to give her a handshake, but Maria
surprised him by saluting him instead. He returned the salute and watched while
she boarded her shuttle in an empty bay. All of the other ship’s shuttles had
been commandeered by the fleet for the numerous transfers occurring across the
solar system.

    
Maria’s shuttle rose off the deck and
exited the bay through the open end protected from decompression by a force
field. She guided her shuttle just above the silver ring made of the remains of
the Moon and then down to the American
Sea near the center of the North America. The Phoenix Base stood out as three
massive domes connected by long rectangular buildings. She landed her shuttle
on one of the many pads occupying the large space inside the interconnected
domes.

    
Within a minute she was stepping onto a
tarmac outside the base. It took her a few minutes to find the command center
inside one of the domes. Elliot was in the center seat of the four story
situation room directing a massive effort to tie up all of his affairs in the
next half—hour.

    
“You appear to have your hands full,” Maria
said.

    
“And then some.”

    
“Will you be ready to go in about fifteen
minutes?”

    
“I think so. Is it already eight—thirty?”
Elliot asked.

    
“Eight thirty—five. The
Hood
takes
off from New York
at nine. We need to be onboard or Nelson will have both our heads.”

    
“I think I’ll be done in time,” Elliot said.
He examined one of the innumerable reports he had to sign.

    
“I’ll wait,” Maria said, and sat on a small
bench behind the command chair at the back of the large room.

    
Nadine was already up and dressed when an
attendant rang her doorbell just before eight—thirty in the morning to tell her
the Council requested her presence immediately. The beginnings of bags under
her eyes were appearing again. Some carefully applied makeup hid the dark
patches under each eye, but the fatigue couldn’t be entirely concealed.

    
She walked to the large set of double doors
guarded by rifle toting soldiers. Nadine entered the dim room and the future
she had condemned herself to. Catherine beamed at her entrance and smiled at
the other eleven in the circle of chairs evenly spaced within the twelve sided
room.

    
As was the tradition of an appointed member
to the Order of the Coalition, Nadine stood in front of the seat of her
sponsor.

    
“It wasn’t a great secret was it? I take it
you’re ready to receive your new position?” Catherine asked.

    
“Yes, Catherine.”

    
“Nadine, I am one hundred and ten years old
now,” she said with a wistful smile. “No other Prime Counsel has been in office
for this long. I will be the first to retire from my office rather than
continue on until my death. I will take an apprentice and over the next ten
years gradually transfer all of my duties to that person. I want that person to
be you.”

    
“I,” Nadine began and found that she had
fallen short of words. Alexander scowled at her from his chair.

    
“I know it’s a lot to take in at once. I
wish we had the time to allow you to acclimatize to this news, but I need you
to begin taking new duties at once.”

    
“Of course.”

    
“Excellent. I need to bring you up to date
on the current situation.”

    
“I’m ready.”

    
“We have managed to enable our fleet to
launch early. The new fleet launches and the war starts at ten minutes to
nine,” Catherine said.

    
“I see. What motivated this decision?”

    
“We have analyzed the numbers. With an all
out attack at the new time we can likely secure the Alliance fleet, but we knew that the long
range projections of casualties would be unacceptably high.” Catherine produced
a link and handed it to her. Nadine took the link and looked at the numbers
herself.

    
“Eight billion,” Nadine said once she
reviewed the latest series of projections.

    
“Yes, and you will notice that includes two
billion of our own citizens.”

    
“I take it you have a solution to minimize
losses,” Nadine said. Catherine smiled again to her council as proof and pride
in her future successor.