The Phoenix War Read Free

“the sooner they get this
over with, the sooner we can go home.” He tried to sound
reassuring, but anxiety pierced his words.
    The next thirty seconds passed in eerie
silence. All Tamara seemed able to hear was the thumping of her own
heart. She resisted the urge to stand up and pace about nervously.
She didn’t want to add to her colleagues’ anxiety, however, so she
refrained.
    The elevator door slid open and four towering
Polarians entered with heavy footsteps. Tamara stood to receive
them. She found herself face-to-face with the lead Polarian’s
chest. She craned her neck to look him in the eyes.
    “You are Tamara Baxter?” he asked, his dark
eyes seeming to shimmer ever so slightly in the bridge’s light.
    “Yes… yes, I am,” she said, as strongly as
she could. “And these,” she pointed, “are my colleagues. Erik
Davidson and Isabella—”
    “I do not care who they are,”
interrupted the Polarian leader.
    “How… how may we help you, sir?” asked
Tamara, her throat tight. Back on the planet’s surface, the
Polarians almost never spoke to them, so she’d never gotten used to
interacting with them. Back then they’d been like fearsome statues,
a part of the ominous background. Oh how I wish these were mere
statues …
    “You are the one who developed the weapon,
yes?” asked the lead Polarian, gazing at her intensely with those
coal eyes.
    “We all worked on—”
    “But you , you were the one who divined
how to do it, yes? You were the one who was gifted with this
knowledge?”
    It took her half a heartbeat to figure out
what the Polarian was saying. “Yes,” she answered cautiously. “The
science of the isotome weapons was based upon my theories of—”
    “Good,” he said. She noticed then just how
sharp and jagged his teeth were. She gulped at the sight of them,
but tried to overpower her instinctive urge to flee. My instinct
to run from him and his predator teeth is a primal one , she
reminded herself, an evolved fear that is no longer relevant. I
should not be afraid.
    “Then you are the one who will tell me,” he
said.
    “Tell you what?” asked Tamara.
    “The weapons,” his eyes narrowed, as if
studying her carefully. “Can there ever be more of these
instruments of destruction?”
    She was taken aback by the question. “I
suppose so, if more isotome is found.”
    “You could make more?” he raised an eyebrow.
Perhaps this seemed to contradict something else he’d been told.
Tamara realized then what the confusion was likely about.
    “No, nobody can make more of the weapons as
things currently stand,” she said. “The Xenobe Nebula Region was
the only place in the entire known galaxy where stable isotome has
ever been found. And all of that has been mined—”
    “So, no more weapons?” his eyes narrowed
again.
    “No more weapons,” she said. “Unless new
isotome is found one day, otherwise no, there will never be another
isotome weapon.”
    The Polarian seemed to understand this. He
looked away from her and nodded to his fellow soldiers. And, for
the briefest instant, Tamara thought that was the end of it. That
they were free to go.
    Something crunched loudly against the
terminal behind her, followed by a blood-curdling scream from
Isabella. Tamara whirled around. The sight made her gasp.
    Oh god! Tamara tried to scream but the
words wouldn’t come out.
    Erik was dead. He’d been forcefully thrown
against the terminal. He lay crumpled over the bent helm control,
his head cracked open like an egg. Revealing grey-matter and broken
skull fragments drenched in a river of blood and other bodily
fluids.
    Another of the Polarian soldiers seized
Isabella by the throat. She struggled to break free but was
hopelessly outmatched in a contest of strength. The Polarian lifted
her by the neck, as if she were a weightless ragdoll, and—if that
didn’t do irreparable harm to her—the jagged knife he slipped along
her throat did. Opening her carotid artery. Blood gushed and