The Phoenix Requiem (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 7) Read Online Free Page A

bases, or patrol ships sweeping the asteroid sphere—but nothing happened. So far so good.
    “Waypoint two achieved,” said Jay. “Altering course for waypoint three.”
    Waypoint three had Calvin the most nervous of all, as it brought the Nighthawk within only a few MCs of a small dwarf planet, and required the ship to tightly travel around it, almost entering orbit momentarily, as the maneuver was executed.
    “One minute and forty-seven seconds until we reach waypoint three,” announced Jay.
    Calvin rubbed his clammy palms together and stared at the 3D display, completely fixated on it—and forcing the thought of invisible mines as far away from his mind as he possibly could.
    “One minute,” said Jay, after what felt like eternity. The dwarf planet was visible out the window now. It had a rugged moon-like beauty to it; it was grey and rough and covered in craters. If there were any Polarian-built installations, they were too small to see, on the other side of the planet, or else buried beneath the surface. Calvin preferred to imagine the planet was entirely abandoned, except for some outdated, automated guns that would never detect the Nighthawk in a million years.
    “Fifty seconds,” said Jay, as the planet moved out of sight from the window. “Forty seconds…thirty seconds…twenty—” Jay paused abruptly.
    “What is it?” demanded Calvin, knowing something had gone wrong. But no alarms were flashing, and they were all still breathing, so he couldn’t imagine what.
    “We’ve struck something,” said Jay. “We’re not moving.”
    Calvin felt his heart sink. “What is it? How bad is the damage?” he fired off the questions like machine gun rounds.
    “Not some thing ,” said Cassidy. “We’ve been caught by a tractor beam.”
    “A tractor beam?” asked Calvin. “How were we detected?”
    “I’m not sure we were detected,” said Cassidy. “More like we set off some kind of proximity trap and a tractor beam automatically engaged. It has a firm lock on us.”
    “We need to move before someone real actually sees us,” said Calvin, grateful that the trap they’d stumbled upon hadn’t been a mine. “Reverse course.” Tractor beams had their uses, but as far as technologies went, they were fairly primitive as far as having much tactical use.
    “Aye, sir, reversing course,” said Jay. The ship began to move, but was stopped again almost immediately.
    “What now?” asked Calvin.
    “We’ve stumbled upon another tractor beam,” said Cassidy. “It has halted our reverse motion.”
    “Angle the ship and try to free us,” said Calvin, thinking even two tractor beams shouldn’t be able to hold the nimble Nighthawk .
    “Aye, sir,” said Jay. Then, a moment later. “No luck.”
    “What do you mean no luck ?” asked Calvin, more perturbed than alarmed.
    “We can’t move the ship,” said Cassidy, in Jay’s defense. “It’s more like we’ve triggered a tractor field than a couple of tractor beams.”
    “A tractor field ?” asked Calvin.
    “They are tractor beams, in the strictest sense,” said Cassidy. “But there are so many of them, and all focused on us, coming from seemingly every direction…it’s like an entire field is holding us in place.”
    Calvin started to feel a bit more alarmed, but he comforted himself in the knowledge that tractor beams, even a field of them, were still a primitive technology, and there wasn’t a tractor beam in the galaxy that could keep a ship from jumping into alteredspace. If they did a controlled, very short jump, they should be able to break free. The only difficulty would be to avoid returning to normal space and colliding with one of the asteroids, but Calvin’s plan for that was for them to jump backwards and then attempt their approach again, this time changing course enough to avoid the tractor beams.
    “Standby to jump into alteredspace on my mark,” said Calvin, knowing it was the only way out.
    “Are you mad?” asked