The Phoenix Conspiracy by Richard Sanders

Author:Richard Sanders
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Captain Anderson arrived in no time. She was a thirty-something year old woman with curly dark hair wearing a minimally decorated flightsuit. She held her helmet tightly against her side in one hand and saluted with the other. He saluted back and waved for her to sit down. When she did, he got a closer look at her.

Her eyes were steel grey and her face was firm and unbending; Calvin recognized her kind. A leader who meant business and wouldn’t accept any grief for any reason. He wondered if Anderson and Summers would get along or if they’d see each other as rivals for tightass of the universe.

“Captain Anderson reporting as ordered, sir.”

“Thank you, Captain, please take a seat.”

She did and somehow managing to look less comfortable sitting than standing.

“I understand you were in charge of the action against the Harbinger. I have a few questions.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who fired first?” Calvin paid close attention to her eyes, wanting to make sure she was completely honest with him.

“We did. We had orders from the top to follow a shoot-on-sight policy.” She didn’t hesitate. In fact, she didn’t seem bothered at all. She was an officer doing her duty and felt no need to apologize for it. Calvin doubted she was knowingly involved in any kind of conspiracy, if there was one.

“Walk me through the whole engagement.”

“The ship showed up at about 0400 L.T. and six million mc’s out with a basic heading and speed, similar to a Winske approach.”

“Toward the base?” asked Calvin who, not being a pilot anymore, wasn’t sharp on his maneuvers.

“Yes, the Harbinger immediately activated its communication dampening technology and then flew directly toward the base where three Rotham ships were in a holding pattern. They’d just left the dock, you see, and were preparing to clear the system and jump to whatever their destination was. This was all scheduled.”

“Do you know what their destination was?”

“No, that was classified.”

Calvin frowned, he’d expected that. “Go on.”

“When the Harbinger arrived, we had five sentry ships on a basic patrol pattern with three corvettes as support and that’s all. The ships were in a cluster pattern supporting each other, so they couldn’t cover a lot of area. I made that call, because knowing the Harbinger’s firepower I felt that, individually, these ships were no match for it.”

“Makes sense.”

“I wish the General had been as understanding,” Anderson said. Calvin resisted smiling, the ground forces always seemed to hate being subject to navy commanders for interstellar defense. “Anyway, the problem was that, when the Harbinger arrived, our defense force was patrolling the wrong side of the station. The Harbinger was able to close most of the distance before our ships could get around the planet and intercept it. By then, it was too late to cut through its shields and disable its engines, given the weak firepower of the corvettes and sentry ships. These aren’t capital ships, sir. They just don’t have the punch you need to get through those shields.”

Calvin was more

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.