An explosion reflected off Dodds’ canopy and he looked around to see that the transport craft that had been attached to the port had been destroyed. Immediately, the port had begun to vent through a hole that had been torn in its side. As it depressurized, air, bodies and other materials could be seen tumbling out from within. A black-suited figure spun out with them, the soldier making futile attempts to stop itself from drifting further into space. Dodds caught the cyan outline of an ATAF just as it faded from view.
“Just making sure,” Chaz said.
As they hurtled away from the port, Dodds saw that the black-suited body of the soldier was still wriggling, doing so a lot longer than he thought normal. But by then Dodds wasn’t surprised by what he’d seen – he half-expected the warrior to somehow start after them, catching up with the group despite the cloak and speed of the ATAF.
It was some time before the soldier’s limbs did eventually stop their flailing, but by then Dodds wasn’t surprised by what he’d seen. It wouldn’t have surprised him if the soldier had made an attempt to chase after them, cloaked or not.
*
“He would make an excellent politician,” Estelle said to Dodds. She had spent some of the return journey to Griffin questioning Chaz and attempting to ascertain an explanation for his behaviour at the starport. As expected, he hadn’t been very forthcoming with answers, and Estelle had soon given up. She would get the explanation she was after once she had submitted a report. No doubt senior command would be very interested in Chaz’s actions. She would get closure eventually, even if it took months.
“Managed to answer the question without actually answering it?” Dodds said.
“Precisely.”
“I’m just grateful to be out of there,” Dodds said. He, too, had many questions of his own; he knew none would be answered anytime soon. Most worrisome of all, Chaz’s statement – They’re a mistake. If that was a mistake, he didn’t want to think what the original intention had been. The past few hours had been unlike any he had experienced in his entire life.
The journey continued in relative silence, the five pilots happy to take a breather from their recent experiences. Returning to Griffin, Dodds felt as though he was waking from a terrible nightmare; albeit one with many memorable cuts and bruises.
XXVII
— Friends Like These —
“Captain.”
Parks looked up from his musings to see Liu swinging around in his seat, relief clear in his eyes. “Yes, Commander?”
“Sir, scanners are indicating that CSN Ifrit has just jumped into the system and has started making her way toward our position. Based on their current velocity, she should be with us in a little under thirty minutes.”
Parks joined the helmsman by his console. Sure enough, the medium-range radar was showing a green marker travelling towards the centre of the display, the label CSN_IFRIT-CB-A floating just above it.
“Thank God,” Parks said. He felt some of the pressure that had been weighing down upon him starting to lift. In the hours following the Knights’ departure, Parks had overseen the crews’ attempts to bring the ship back up to a manageable, working condition. It hadn’t been easy, but with a lot of effort they had succeeded in restoring shields, engines, jump drives and some weapons systems. While they wouldn’t be able to fend off any major attacks or launch fighters, they were at least in a position to return home. Now, with the advent of Ifrit’s arrival, all that remained was to await the Knights’ return. Parks may not have managed to secure the recapture of Dragon, but he could at least take solace in the fact that he had prevented valuable information from falling into the hands of the Enemy. He had every confidence that the Knights would do just fine in completing their assignment. That much was something to be thankful for.
He turned to Weathers, who had taken the place of O’Donnell as CCO on the bridge. “How are the comms systems?”
“Mostly functional, sir,” Weathers said. “We’re still experiencing some limited performance over internal channels, but ship-to-ship communications are operating perfectly.”
“Good. Once Ifrit is close enough, send them a welcome message on short-range broadcast only. Relay our current status to them and let them know we are ready to leave as soon as the White Knights return.”
He retired to his seat, to await Ifrit’s arrival. Their fellow carrier was travelling towards them head-on, and from where he sat, Parks was able to see various aspects of the ship springing into greater detail as it drew closer.
But as Ifrit bore down on Griffin’s position, Parks started to grow uneasy and couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. The ship couldn’t have been more than about fifty kilometres out; well within visual range and devouring the distance at a rapid pace. From the look of things, Ifrit would be on top of them much sooner than Liu had originally predicted. He subconsciously sat a little further forward in his seat.
“Karen,” he said, looking to Weathers, “has Ifrit acknowledged our HELO?”
“Not yet, sir. Should I send it again?”
“No,” Parks shook his head. “First recheck the comms systems. Mr Liu, perform a full systems diagnostic. Let’s be sure we didn’t somehow miss their response, before we begin bombarding them with repeat broadcasts.”
“Yes, sir,” Liu said. Then, a minute later, “All tests have completed successfully.”
“Comms are still functioning correctly, Captain,” Weathers added. “Though, it might have been a glitch in the system.”
Parks wasn’t so sure. “Send the greeting again,” he said. Weathers complied, but there was still no answer. Ifrit’s form continued to increase as it closed the distance between the two ships, showing no signs of slowing. It was barely a few kilometres from them now.
What the hell was going on, Parks wondered, rising from his seat and walking to the front of the bridge. What are you up to, Anthony?
As if in answer, consoles up and down the bridge began to whine, and Parks knew immediately that his worst fear had been confirmed. He looked to Liu, just as the helmsman turned to him, the former look of relief wiped clean, now replaced by one of panic.
“Captain, Ifrit is readying weapons!” he said.
“Red alert!” Parks called. “Full power to shields!”
The words had barely left his mouth before Ifrit’s guns opened up. Bright green light from bolts of plasma, intermixed with thick red beams of laser fire burst forth from the carrier’s cannons, the tiny blue and cyan particle trails of missiles more or less lost in between. The opening volley hit Griffin’s shields hard and the already struggling power generators were quick to buckle to the intensity of the onslaught.
Parks found his seat just as an enormous spray of luminous splinters erupted from Griffin’s bow, signalling both the collapse of the shielding and the vulnerability of the vessel to the hail of fire that followed.
“Return fire!” Parks barked. For what it’s worth.
Griffin’s own cannons trained themselves on Ifrit, but their efforts were futile at best, the ship never having fully recovered from the battle that had crippled it hours earlier. The rate of return fire Griffin was able to muster was nothing compared to that which Ifrit continued to pour on.
The attack was like nothing Parks had ever experienced in his life – explosions scorched the bow and topside of Griffin, the impact of concentrated plasma bolts ripping holes in the already vulnerable hull. All about the bridge crew were thrown to the floor as the carrier jerked with the unrelenting attack, Parks himself only just managing to remain in his seat. Beyond the frontal viewport he witnessed one of the two plasma accelerators affixed to the front of the carrier explode, the turret snapping apart and the mount breaking free, spinning off into space. Multicoloured crystalline shapes were venting all over. Missiles seemed to be detonating everywhere. Debris tumbled about from where the attacks had shredded the more exposed and less well protected parts of the carrier. If Parks had considered his ship a mess before, then it w
as nothing compared to what he was looking at now. The emblem of the griffin, residing across the topside of the carrier, stretching away from the bridge, was scarcely recognisable, terribly blackened and charred.
Parks braced himself. He wondered how it might all end. Would he see the frontal viewport shatter and be wrenched from his chair, out into space? Would he become engulfed in flames as the bridge exploded, spending several torturous minutes cooking in agony and begging for death? Or would he hear only a sudden loud bang, see his world go black, and then nothing more?
Whatever it was, he was certain he’d be finding out soon enough …
There came the anticipated snap. Darkness descended.
It took Parks a moment to realise that Griffin’s power had failed, lights shutting off, plunging the ship into near-darkness. Computer arrays and consoles had followed in their stead. Some shorted out and exploded, adding to the causalities that had already built up during Ifrit’s barrage, smoke once again threatening to fill the bridge and suffocate its occupants.
Half-light soon spilled forth from the emergency systems, alleviating the momentary gloom. It was aided by the small electrical fires that had sprung up from some of the consoles, creating a smoky orange ambience about the bridge, pockets of flickering blue light from sparking electrics dancing across operating terminals. Crew members darted about to find firefighting equipment.
With their power cut, Griffin’s weapons fell silent. Parks readied himself for Ifrit’s impending finishing blow. It was then that he noticed that his ship had stopped rocking, and that missiles and plasma bolts were no longer raining down upon them.
He blinked. Ifrit had stopped firing. “Mr Liu …” he started, staring out at the vessel that had moments before threatened to bring about an end to Griffin’s services to the navy.
“They … they’ve stopped firing,” Liu confirmed.
Why? Parks wondered. When Ifrit had ignored their greetings but continued forward, he knew something was amiss. Though he had been grateful for the carrier’s arrival, going by the information that Turner had relayed to him Ifrit was many hours late. By this time he would’ve expected to see Leviathan instead. Dammit, Aiden, where the hell are you?
“What’s our status?” he asked Liu.
“It looks worse than it actually is, Captain,” Liu said, working at his console. “The power outage is temporary and is only affecting certain systems. We’ve lost shields, weapons, engines and a handful of other dependent systems, but life support and comms are still working. We can be fully restored in a few minutes.”
Parks hesitated. “No, wait,” he said, “don’t bring us back online yet, Lieutenant.” He was unable to shake the feeling that it wouldn’t be wise for them to stop playing dead just yet.
Weathers’ console started to jingle in front of her. She exchanged an uneasy look with Parks, before acknowledging it. “Sir, Ifrit is attempting to establish communications,” she said.
So, now they want to talk. “Put them on.”
The holographic screen sprang up at the front of the bridge, the quality of the transmission in a comparable state to how it had been just after the Imperial fighter had crashed onto the flight deck. As Parks stood up and walked closer to the projection feeding in from Ifrit’s bridge, he heard a number of intakes of breath. Whilst the audio was crackling, and the image resolution poor and suffering from tearing, the projection lost none of its impact.
Fleet Admiral Zackaria sat in the captain’s chair, like a king upon his throne, his face serious and stern. Just ahead of him, on his right-hand side, stood Hawke, his expression blank.
“Anthony …” Parks began, before finding further words difficult to come by. The shock in his voice was palpable. With Ifrit’s attack, Parks had thought of only two people who could’ve been in command of the ship – Zackaria or Rissard. The thought of Hawke, alive and well aboard the carrier, had never occurred to him. Now, the sight of both Zackaria and Hawke, stood side by side, as allies, almost floored him.
“This is where we part ways, Elliott,” came the scratchy voice of Hawke from the holographic image. “I just wanted to take this opportunity to bid you farewell. It would be quite ungracious of me to kill such a worthy opponent, without first offering him the opportunity to find out whom he had lost to.”
Hawke’s face had changed a lot since Parks had last seen him – his skin looked fresh and healthy, his eyes were bright, and his facial hair was completely gone, as if he had just had a clean shave.
“My God, man! What are you doing?” Parks said, flabbergasted.
“My part to ensure the continued success of the Mission, Commodore,” Hawke said. He spoke in a matter-of-fact manner, as if there was nothing unusual or surprising about it.
“The mission?” Parks said. “What mission?”
Hawke nodded, or, at least, what appeared to be a nod. “The Mission – For the honour of the Senate and the glory of the imperium, as is the duty of every citizen of Mitikas. A duty I am forever bound to obey.”
As Parks continued to stare, open-mouthed at the image that jumped, froze and tore before him, the pieces of a great puzzle began to fall into place. Links formed in his mind, everything finally starting to make perfect sense. The Enemy had intercepted and boarded Dragon. How wasn’t important, but he hazarded that at the time it hadn’t come with Hawke’s consent. Though they had fought hard to hold back the invaders, Dragon’s crew had succumbed to the boarders and the Enemy had made their way to Hawke himself. Something else had happened then, a point that Parks still struggled with, but in the end it had led to Hawke’s treachery. The man had then been beaten, starved and thrown into an escape pod, where he had been left to drift for the allied forces to find. It was meant to look as though he had run away, or had been saved by his crew, so that he alone might be able to tell of the fate that had befallen Dragon, and therefore aid the Confederation in its recovery.
But instead, he had been working against them.
“You gave them Dragon, didn’t you?” Parks concluded. “That’s why you survived; you tried to bargain and they took it. They wanted a man on the inside.”
“That’s correct, Commodore,” Hawke said.
Parks felt his world collapse. Hawke had been under Enemy control for over six months. How much information could he now give them? What had he told them already? It seemed not to matter any more; the Enemy had tricked them and now they had both Dragon and Ifrit.
Dragon. Ifrit.
Dragon …
Ifrit…!
Something occurred to him. He had to stall for time. “Anthony, listen; we can talk this through,” he began. “Please, allow me to come aboard and speak with the admiral. We can work something out, a solution that will meet both our goals. We can end this without any further loss of life. I … I throw myself upon the mercy of the Senate,” he added, giving a theatrical little bow as he did so. To the rest of the crew it must’ve looked and sounded absurd, so very melodramatic.
“There will be no discussions,” Hawke said. “There has been too much talk already.”
Oh, but you like talking, Anthony, Parks thought. Especially when you’re winning.
The holographic image had stopped updating, and while the audio was still quite clear, the video transmission appeared to have stopped completely. Parks couldn’t be certain that the same loss would be true of Ifrit, but he had to risk it. He was sure that Hawke would continue his gloat undeterred by the sudden loss of visuals. All he had to do was lure him into it.
“Your plans won’t work, Anthony,” Parks said. “There are too many flaws, too many assumptions. We’re already well prepared to exploit those weaknesses …” He started to back away from the static holographic image, beckoning towards Liu with one hand. Liu rose from his seat, silently indicating his readiness to assist as soon as he was prompted further.
“It will work just as Fleet Admiral Zackaria described it,” Hawke said. “The ATAFs will join our frontline forces and we will use
them to fulfil the Mission.”
“It’s not your mission to fulfil, Anthony!” Parks retorted. “Listen to me; you are not one of them.” He shuffled Weathers out of her seat, gesturing for her to keep quiet. He quickly took her place, his fingers racing across the surface of the console she had occupied, Liu providing visual prompts as the plan began to come together. Parks went on, “You were born a citizen of the Helios Confederacy, the Confederation. You are an enlisted officer within the CSN, one of the strongest and most well-respected naval fleets in history. You have spent a good part of your life with the service, and your time and dedication hasn’t gone unnoticed. You have a wife and one daughter, who has recently been accepted to study law at Cambridge University, thanks to your own efforts to never give up on her and motivate her to achieve her dreams.”
“The Mission is more important than any of those things,” Hawke’s voice came. “All that you speak of is an affront to the rule of the Senate, and all those who oppose the Senate must be eradicated, as decreed by the Senior Magistrate. It’s time for you to accept the truth, Commodore – you have failed. You never were the man that Fleet Admiral Turner believed you were. Too much store is put into the weak, into the lenient, into the modest and the humble. That is why Emperor Adam had to be removed from his Seat, for allowing too many others to dilute our history and culture …”
Parks didn’t hear the rest, he was working too feverishly. He was thankful that Hawke had taken the opportunity to crow, though he knew that time was short, and at any moment Ifrit could finish Griffin off. He heard a new voice speak over the comm link’s still-active audio channel. The words were unrecognisable and seemed not to be directed at him. It sounded as though Zackaria had grown tired of the exchange.
“Time’s up, Commodore,” Hawke announced.
“Captain, Ifrit is readying accelerators!” Weathers called from Liu’s console.
Parks didn’t need computer readouts for that kind of information, not from where he was sitting. At this range, he could quite clearly see the green lights running the length of the weapons’ turrets beginning to illuminate as they charged. Griffin was mere seconds away from destruction. He looked up from the console towards the carrier ahead, where he knew both Hawke and Zackaria would be staring back at Griffin, preparing to witness its final few moments of service. Parks, however, wasn’t quite willing to give them that pleasure just yet. His fingers hovered just above the console’s screen, where a single confirmation request lay waiting.
The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy) Page 40
