The Phoenix Project (60 page)

    
“Good. We’re leaving,” Catherine replied,
and entered the shuttle.

    
“How big is this installation?” Nadine
asked.

    
“Too big,” Elliot replied, while they moved
down empty corridors. Elliot held a scanner in his hand relaying the base’s
scans directly to the device. “With so many people, I doubt we can locate him.”

    
“Where are we going then?” Nadine asked as
Elliot led her into a lift. He punched a command into the small panel fixed to
the lift wall and it jumped into motion.

    
“To the warhead room. It’s our best bet at
the moment.”

    
“How many of your personnel are leaving?”

    
“Everyone but the guards at the warhead
access points and the people in the room itself,” Elliot replied.

    
“That will make things easier.”

    
“Hmm,” Elliot said and scrutinized the
scanner’s readings. “Most of the people have already left the base or are at
exit points like the garage.”

    
Nadine stayed silent while Elliot scrutinized
the results.

    
“Stop the lift!”

    
Nadine slapped the appropriate button on
the panel and waited for an explanation. He moved the scanner’s display so both
of them could examine it.

    
“Look: all of these people are moving out
of the base and this is the Warhead Room. Notice anything?”

    
“There’s one life sign by itself over
there,” Nadine said, pointing to one blip on the small screen.

    
“Exactly.”

    
Elliot changed the lift’s path to one that
would deposit it near the life sign.

    
Peter stood in a small room that served as
the access point to the communications system. The control room personnel
would not question the head of the communications department’s presence and
they were already gone, anyway. He entered his lockdown code into the system.

    
Elliot heard his earpiece crackle to life
and a panicked voice issued from it.

    
“How?” Nadine heard Elliot ask and felt her
stomach tighten in anxiety.

    
“There is nothing you can do?” he asked the
person on the other end and listened to the response.

    
“I’ll try to stop it from the command
center,” Elliot said and hung up on the caller.

    
“What’s wrong?”

    
“All of the command codes have just been
invalidated. I need to go to command and see if I can do something from there.”

    
“I’ll get to Peter.”

    
“Are you sure? He is your brother and what
if,” Elliot began.

    
“He’s also trying to kill billions of
people. I’ll stop him,” Nadine finished. The lift stopped at its destination
and Nadine got out with her pistol ready.

    
“I need to get back,” Elliot said from
inside the lift. “Good Luck.”

    
Peter smiled in satisfaction now that he
had full command of the warhead. He entered in a series of commands and
authorization codes that would activate the device. The computer flashed a warning
and asked for a countdown time limit.

    
Peter entered in ten minutes and pressed
ENTER. He would need the time to leave the base and find shelter elsewhere. A
signal to the Coalition forces would alert them to his status as a citizen and
he would be allowed through. He had hidden away a small two—seat sub—light
shuttle in one of the underground garages. Getting it out of the base would
mean making use of its limited weapons, but it was the only way to ensure that
no one else commandeered it.

    
The computer acknowledged the request with
an affirming beep and a ten minute counter appeared on the screen.

    
“ENTER CODE FOR FINAL ACTIVATION,” appeared
on the screen. He entered in nine of the ten digits of the authorization code
and was about to input the last one and press ENTER when a voice halted his
progress.

    
“Stop!” he heard from behind him. Although
he was Nadine’s brother, she had never met him. They were both born in
artificial wombs using the eggs harvested from Catherine before she had entered
menopause.

    
“No,” he said and entered the last digit.
He readied himself to swing around while drawing his sidearm. He would take
down the interloper and make his escape. Nadine threw all of her mind’s
abilities towards him but found her attempts to freeze him deflected by a
consciousness that felt like it was made of titanium. The shock from the
rebound of her mental forces caused her to stagger back and Peter, having felt
the rebuffed assault looked up in realization of who was standing behind him.

    
“Nadine!” he exclaimed with pleasure. “The
sibling who managed to take my place at Catherine’s side. I’m glad to see
another one of her children has disappointed her.”

    
“This PBP is set to kill, Peter. I am
familiar with MERA techniques and I already know about your sidearm. Believe me
you won’t have the chance.”

    
“I don’t care,” Peter sneered.

    
“Stop this now. If you dislike her as much
as I do, why even bother doing this?”

    
“I do this because I hate her. One day
you’ll know just how much.”

    
Peter moved a finger to press the ENTER
key. Nadine saw the movement and discharged a lethal burst into his back. He
writhed in pain as he felt his life slip from him. His knees buckled and he
began to slip to the floor. With one last burst of energy, his finger stabbed
the ENTER key.

    
To Nadine’s horror, she saw the ten minute
counter’s color change from green to red and begin to tick down.

    
Ten minutes, zero seconds.

    
Nine minutes, fifty—nine seconds, Fifty—eight.

    
Nadine raced to the console now vacated by
her estranged brother but found she could do nothing. She turned on one heel
and raced for the lift in hopes that Elliot might be able to reverse the
detonation order.

    
“Were you able to stop the countdown?”
Nadine asked once she entered the command center. The multistory command room
was eerily quiet as all of the tasks were autonomously handled by the advanced
tactical computer buried in the basement below it.

    
“I’m trying,” Elliot said. He frantically
worked at a large free—standing console near his seat.

    
“Do your command codes work at all?”

    
“Yes and no. I can access everything except
for the warhead. When it comes to that system, all of my command codes are null
and void.”

    
“I tried to stop him, Elliot.”

    
He turned from the station and faced her.

    
“What happened?”

    
“I’m an Elite Aggressive of MERA. I
should’ve been able to snap his neck with a thought. He possessed something I
never saw before. He couldn’t attack me but I couldn’t stop him either. It was
like trying to break down a brick wall with a baseball bat.”

    
“He
had
something?” Elliot asked.

    
“I shot him to try and stop him, but he
activated the sequence anyway.”

    
“I know,” Elliot said and tapped a screen
on the console showing the countdown: seven minutes and seventeen seconds. “You
did everything you could.”

    
“What do we do now?”

    
“I’ll keep trying.”

    
She watched him frantically attempt to
break the command codes used by Peter to no avail. His further attempts became
interrupted when they heard a piercing alarm from a station on the left wall of
the command center. The label “Threat Analysis” was marked across its top.
Elliot left his beleaguered work and attended to the station in the vacant
center.

    
“The Coalition has broken through perimeter
defenses on the coast. They’re heading here.”

    
“How long?” Nadine asked.

    
“Less than a minute. I’m arming the base.”

    
Twenty Coalition ships resembling different
sizes of olive colored birds of prey with elongated necks flew in with several
dozen fighters to capture Phoenix
base. The three large domes of the base each had three outward facing heavy
plasma beams that opened up the moment they approached. Nine of their frigates
broke up as the beams ripped through the very center of their hulls.

    
PBCs of varying sizes began to spew emerald
flame at the approaching vessels. Olive, jet like fighters were destroyed and
the shields of both the Coalition warships and the Alliance base were heavily taxed.

    
“I’ve got the east approaching fighter
group,” Nadine said next to Elliot. They both did their best to defeat the
approaching ships and gain time for the escaping personnel.

    
“Alright I’ll handle the destroyer trying
to destabilize our South shield.”

    
“Have any of those ships fired on the
escaping soldiers?”

    
“No, they seem to be focused on the base,”
Elliot replied.

    
“Do any of your people stand a chance?”

    
“If they can get to the mainland, there are
a number of underground bunkers they can take shelter at.”

    
“What about us?”

    
“With less than five minutes? We could
never reach the mainland in time. We are in the most heavily fortified room in
the base; it should afford us some protection.”

    
“I hope so,” Nadine said.

    
Two more Coalition ships exploded above the
base. Their fighters were mowed down by secondary fire.

    
“Only nine ships left. We can handle them.”

    
“I wish that was the only problem. Look at
the sensor scans,” Elliot said. Nadine glanced at a display in the upper right
corner of the station.

    
“Shit!”

    
“Another enemy wave coming in and one more
standing by.”

    
“Can we handle them?”

    
“Our shields are down to half power,”
Elliot said.

    
“So they’ll disable our shields and weapons
and then invade the base.”

    
“For another three minutes.”

    
“Then we’ll keep giving those people more
time to get away from here.”

    
Over the next two minutes the Coalition
warships continued to bomb the base with torpedoes, and blast after blast from
their PBCs until the shields collapsed. Elliot managed to activate the primary
plasma cannons one last time. The bright beams collapsed the hulls of another
half a dozen ships before they were disabled. The secondary and lesser turrets
were destroyed in short order until the base fell silent.

    
“They’re landing ground forces,” Nadine
said.

    
“I see them. I’m activating the base’s internal
defenses.”

    
Nadine stepped away from the console and
let out a long sigh of relief having arrived to the end of her tactical duties.
“So is there anything more we can do?”

    
“No, the internal defenses are automated.
They could hold Coalition forces off for an hour, but in this case they only
need to for one minute,” Elliot replied.

    
“So what do we do?”

    
“I can’t stop the warhead.”

    
“I mean what do
we
do?”

    
“Come here,” Elliot said not with the voice
of an awaiting lover but with the voice of a loving companion. He changed the
screen to show the light of the morning sun and led Nadine to the center of the
four—storey command room. They embraced each other and waited for the end.

    
“How long?” Maria clutched the arms of her
command chair. The requirements of the two mile long battleship required three
decks worth of space for the bridge in order to accommodate the requirements of
a miniature city in space. The command center glowed in white with silver
displays. Over a hundred people were needed to man its freshly polished
stations.