The Phoenix Requiem (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 7) (43 page)

“We’re dead,” someone screeched. “We’re all dead!”

Calvin was afraid that the man was right, as much as he wished it was not so. By now, every additional second was like some kind of gift and everything could, and would, end, at any moment. It was a terrifying prospect. An almost unacceptable reality. And everyone seemed to react to it differently.

Two of the soldiers, who must have been religious in some form or another, knelt and prayed to their deity, out loud, pleading and begging for mercy, but said that, if this was the creator’s will, then they would accept it. Others shouted. One man even appeared to cry. The rest remained silent, some seemed resigned, others clenched their teeth and fists, angry, but with nothing to say nor anyone to say it to.

Nikolai took Calvin’s hand and shook it. “My pleasure and honor two serve with you one more time.”

“The honor was all mine,” Calvin replied automatically.

“Thank you,” said Nikolai, letting go of Calvin’s hand. He then found some lonely spot in the semi-crowded pod and sat down and closed his eyes…clearly waiting for the end.

As for Calvin, he wasn’t quite sure how to react—at first.

Initially, anger and despair came at him in waves; he hated
Custos
, hated it for everything it had done, and hated it for relentlessly hunting them all down—now on the verge of killing them with a single blast of energy. Then, the reality of his entrapment set in, and Calvin felt the despair overcome him. He had looked the Reaper of Souls in the face before, on several occasions, and placed dice with him. And every single time, Calvin had managed to pull through the victor. Until now. This time, there was nothing he could do. And now the Reaper and he were not merely gazing into one another’s eyes; this time the Reaper and he were shaking hands, as though a deal had been struck. Calvin thought of an old-fashioned ticking clock, then imagined that each tick represented one day…who could have guessed that his clock would stop so soon? Before he had even seen the age of thirty years old…

He once more entertained the idea of forcing his way onto the Hunter ship, thinking, perhaps, it could survive long enough for Calvin and his men to commandeer it and then jump the system before
Custos
had entirely pulverized it. And yet, somehow, Calvin knew it was such an impossibility that he could not so much as make himself even believe that that plan could work, much less achieve it.

And his soldiers agreed with him. Yes, many were angry, all seemed upset, but none were racing to try and burst through the Hunter ship’s hatch. No, this is the end.
Custos
had both the pod and the Hunter ship surrounded. And, while the Hunter ship’s stealth technology was certainly impressive, Calvin knew for a fact that it couldn’t take many strikes from
Custos
, if any. The
Nighthawk
at least had shields meant for combat, and even it had been destroyed. The Hunter ship, for all he knew, had no shields at all. It didn’t need them.

Calvin decided to do like Nikolai and find a vacant spot on the floor and close his eyes. Trying to find some way to be calm about what was happening. Or rather…what he knew was coming. He felt a shiver shoot through him. And he was quivering slightly. He took deep breaths to calm himself further, then tried to take comfort in the knowledge that he had done his best to get the pod to the Hunter ship and use it as a solution to save all of his men and himself. But, truthfully, the moment
Custos
reappeared, some small part of him had known, even then, that it was all over. Continuing with the plan, docking, trying to capture the Hunter ship and flee somehow before
Custos
overtook them…they never had a chance. Those actions had merely been dance steps, nothing more. And now the dance was over.

He thought of something his mother had said to him once when, as a child, he’d lost a game—he couldn’t remember what—all he remembered was how upset he felt over losing because he’d been so sure that he had not made any mistakes. That was when his mother told him what had proven to be a profound truth that he’d witnessed all over the galaxy, including within his own life. “
Son, it’s possible to do all the right things, and make no mistakes, and still lose. Life can be like that sometimes. You can’t always control what happens.
”

He’d told her she was wrong then, probably very rudely; he hadn’t been very old at the time. And now he was here, feeling much the same way, as though he had tried to do everything right, to make no mistakes, to do the best he could with whatever he had, and yet the summation of all of that had resulted in him being here…surrounded by some kind of energy-vortex entity that would destroy them at any second. He didn’t know what
Custos
was waiting for, perhaps for them to attempt to flee once more, or perhaps feeding somehow on all their anxiety as they waited, uncertain whether they had seconds or minutes left to live.

One thing was certain,
Custos
had proven to be as powerful and terrifying as Rez’nac had described it. Calvin could still hear Rez’nac’s voice as he recalled the words: “
Custos
is a vengeful Essence.”

Vengeful
, yes, thought Calvin, though he believed the word
cruel
described it even better.

Calvin took a deep breath, tuned out the yelling and panicking of the others, and simply closed his eyes. Yes, he was afraid. No, he did not want to die. Despite everything that had happened and everything he had lost, he still wanted to go on living. But, if this was the end, and surely it was, he decided he would accept it as peacefully as he could. There was no way to fight it. No means by which to resist. There was only the compelling weight of inevitability.

Calvin remained silent, eyes closed, waiting, certain that the thing, whatever it truly was—Polarian god, or artificial construct, or something else unknown and not yet explained—would destroy them soon; no doubt it was growing tired of hovering around them, inflicting terror upon them before delivering them to death.

More seconds ticked by, but it felt like an eternity of waiting as he remained silent, trying to feel peaceful, yet feeling his heart racing.
Nothing can change the inevitable
, he told himself, in an effort to feel a little bit better.

Calvin’s only hope now was that, as soon as the darkness took him, that it would not truly be the end of his existence. That death was not the total cessation of all ability to ever experience anything again. It probably was, unfortunately. Nothing else seemed to make any sense—not that life and sentience had ever made much sense to him either. And so, by all measures of probability that he knew, because of the absence of believing in any suggested hypothesis, he expected that death probably was the end. And his mortal brain just simply grasped the concept of the universe continuing to exist without him. But he knew also that he would be lying to himself if he felt certain of anything when it came to death.

I realize now that I do not know the answer
, he thought, still waiting, as
Custos
seemed to enjoy having them in its clutches, able to destroy them all within a millisecond, and yet holding back for some reason…as if to give them false hope only to steal it away in flash of its god-like wrath.

Maybe there is something more to life and death,
Calvin continued pondering
. Of course, maybe not. I suppose either I’m about to find out if there is or, if there isn’t, then I will never know it
.

Noises distracted him. It sounded a bit like a cheer. And someone yelling, “That’s right, you chicken shit, you’d best be running!”

Calvin woke from his thoughts and opened his eyes, only to see blackness and stars out the windows…no sign of
Custos
. He stood up and only then could he see the energy-vortex; it had apparently chosen to leave them alone and go on its way. Now it was so distant it seemed barely more than a blinking flash of yellow, just larger than a star. Then it seemed gone completely.

Okay
…thought Calvin. That made no kind of sense. Certainly
Custos
had not shown such mercy—or possibly disinterest—in the
Nighthawk
. No it had hunted the stealth frigate, chasing it wherever I went, striking at it repeatedly, until it was no more.

So why treat them any differently? And then Calvin’s eyes fell upon their captive, who sat in one of the seats, completely expressionless, staring at nothing in particular, but still somehow his eyes appeared to be extremely fixated.

You
, thought Calvin,
You’re the reason Custos did not destroy us, aren’t you?
It had to be that; nothing else made any sense.

While his men continued to react: “It spared us!”; “It was God’s will!”; “Divine intervention.”; “Hell, I don’t even believe in God, but…thank you, God.”; “Do you think it’s coming back?”; “If it wanted us dead, we would be dead already.”; And so on. Calvin approached the captive, having to push two of the soldiers gently aside to get close to him.

“You,” said Calvin, kneeling so he could meet the captive’s gaze. “You know the answer, don’t you?”

The captive looked at him, his facial expression remained blank, as if deliberately refusing to betray any of his thoughts.

Calvin asked again. Same reaction. Calvin changed the form of his question. Same reaction. Calvin then asked a series of different questions, but the captive refused to so much as utter one word.

Calvin had never been a professional interrogator, but he had gone through some training as part of his enlistment in Intel Wing. One thing he did remember was, when dealing with a non-cooperative, the best tactic was not the one most everybody initially jumped to. And that was to make threats of consequences, usually violent threats, or else committing actual violence, as methods of changing the non-cooperative into a cooperative.

Things such as smashing fingers with a hammer, removing—or threatening to remove—appendages, one by one, applying electrical torture, keeping the non-cooperative in solitary confinement for an extended amount of time, waterboarding, and so on, none of it had proven to be an effective way of getting good intelligence. It usually worked at getting you information, but, more often than not, that information was either made up on the spot—because the non-cooperative is afraid of the threats you are making so they say whatever pops into their heads to avoid the consequences of your threats—or else the information is true, but outdated. The tactic just wasn’t very good. It was medieval, it was simple, it seemed like it should work, but somehow it just proved, time and again, to produce bad information.

So Calvin went with another approach, the one he’d been taught. And that was to try to connect with the non-cooperative and form some kind of bond, some kind of trust relationship.

The captive knows he is a captive; he knows he is powerless to get things he wants, or to protect or provide for loved ones elsewhere in the galaxy. Often, if the Intelligence Specialist developed some kind of rapport with the prisoner, enough that the Specialist could promise to deliver on something for the prisoner that the prisoner valued, such as making sure his kids got into school, or paying the rent for his wife’s house, or helping to evacuate his family from a dangerous area, or even something as simple as bringing the prisoner better food and providing him with more luxuries.

Train them to think you are their friend, the only one they have in here—locked away—or, if not their friend, the person they can trust the most. Then, and only then, will they start to let the information they have slip out. Good interrogation was not about compulsion or force; it was more like…a quid-pro quo relationship. At least, that was what Calvin remembered from Intel Wing training. So he chose to try to engage the prisoner some other way.

“You must be pretty bored sitting here, waiting, not sure what will happen next,” said Calvin, in a friendly tone. “Well, I’m pretty bored too. So, how about we play a game?”

The captive’s face remained expressionless except for his eyes, his eyes looked at Calvin like he was crazy. Calvin did not react.

“How about I guess why
Custos
left us alone, and you tell me if I am right or wrong. If I never get it right, you win. But if I do, then you have to tell me, so I know I won. Sound fair?”

The captive still looked at him like he was crazy. But Calvin persisted, wishing then that he had actual interrogation experience and not just some one-day lecture on theories and methods.

“Okay, my first guess,” said Calvin. “
Custos
left us alone because of you. Because it detected you onboard somehow and did not want to destroy you; therefore, it determined it could not destroy this pod. Am I correct?”

The captive refused to cooperate.

“I’m right,” said Calvin, in a light-hearted tone. “Come on, just admit it. I won the game.”

Irritation appeared in the prisoner’s eyes but, to Calvin’s surprise, the captive actually spoke something. It wasn’t much, just one word. “No.”

Well that just proves he will talk if you engage him the right way
, thought Calvin, then he thought that coming up with the right way, whatever it was, would likely prove difficult.