The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy)

by Sweeney, Stephen

  “I first met Vanessa when I was piloting an interplanetary shuttle between Layton and Greenberg, in the Rex system,” he was saying. “She smiled at me and thanked me for the journey. I smiled back at her and told her that I was just doing my job and looking after my passengers. She looked back at me twice as she walked away down the boarding tunnel.

  “I saw her about a month later, when she was making the journey back the other way. We talked a little longer that time. She told me that she was a travel writer and had been doing some extra research into places to stay around Greenberg. She’d apparently forgotten to visit one of the major locations and needed to go back again. She described herself as being a bit of a scatterbrain at times.

  “After that encounter, I felt a little empty. For those few minutes we talked, I felt that I’d really clicked with her. I thought I’d never see her again, but two days later she was back on my shuttle. I jokingly asked her what she had forgotten to find out this time, and she responded, “what you like to drink at the bar”.”

  Enrique chuckled. “Aw, man. That’s cheesy.”

  “Very,” Chaz said, though there was a twinkle in the man’s eye and an amused smile on his face. “We began dating, finding ways to work around our jobs and spending as much time with each other as possible. I felt so very comfortable when I was with her. It was so easy to just be myself.

  “As things got more serious between us, I decided that she deserved better than what my meagre salary could pay. I don’t know why. She always told me she wasn’t a material person and didn’t really care for expensive bags, shoes or jewellery. A humble home, with a loving family around her, was all she desired.” The big man sighed and fell silent for a moment.

  “You didn’t go and rob a bank, did you?” Enrique said, a little listlessly. Kelly gave him a couple of pats on the arm, indicating to him to be quiet.

  “Probably would’ve caused less hassles if I had,” Chaz said. “As a sideline to piloting, I began trading in starship parts. In my line of work, it wasn’t hard for me to know where to get them. It started off simple and easy – selling small components for Darts, moving up towards the frames, fuselage, fins and other body parts. Vanessa was completely unaware of what I was doing; she was still travelling and writing, and was sometimes away for up to a month at a time. I would fly out to meet her whenever that happened, so we could still spend time together.

  “As my second job went on, I was approached by people who wanted to get hold of extras; things that shouldn’t be available to the public, such as military-grade comms systems, experimental jump drives, overloaded particle cannons, that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, Chaz,” Kelly said. “You should’ve walked away.”

  “I know, and I was going to. But then Vanessa told me she was pregnant. You have to understand – she was the only woman I had ever truly loved – she was my princess, my absolute world. I didn’t want to give her, or our unborn child, anything less than they deserved. You know how it is, when you meet that one person who you’ve been looking for your whole life. You just know that they’re the one.”

  Dodds looked to Kelly, who was listening intently to everything Chaz was saying. Kelly nodded and looked down to Enrique, who had his eyes closed. He looked as though he had fallen asleep.

  “And, if I’m honest, all I ever wanted in life, too, was someone like her. We married and she gave birth to my first son, Matthew. I was over the moon, but I still wanted to give them more. Love makes you do stupid things. So I began supplying more high-risk equipment, trading on the black market and acquiring items taken from CSN and UNF craft, and other non-publicly listed equipment.

  “Then one day I hit the jackpot – I learned about a bunch of TAFs and a Ray that had been lost over the moon of a planet in the Northern Provinces of the Confederacy, deep within a canyon. I had no idea how they got there, but I knew that if I could salvage, repair and adapt them, I could make enough money in one go to retire. If Vanessa was ever to ask, I would just tell her that I had won the lottery.”

  “But that sort of work could take years.”

  Chaz nodded. “I realised that several months into the project. I knew that I was never going to be able to adapt and repair them as easily as I had first thought. So instead, I decided to strip them down and sell them for parts. I found some buyers and made preparations to move the fighters off-planet.

  “I had only just hauled the first one up when the CSN arrived and arrested me. Apparently they’d been tracking me for months, watching what I was selling and to whom. I thought I had been very discreet about it, but I guess one of my regular buyers must have been an informant.”

  “So they threw you in prison?”

  “Not immediately. They took me to a military outpost. I was so ashamed – I was a criminal, charged with selling on military secrets and undermining the security and safety of the Confederacy. But more than anything, I was terrified that they were going to sentence both me and Vanessa, and take our son away from us.”

  “Why would they throw Vanessa in prison?” Kelly said. “What did it have to do with her?”

  “Nothing,” Chaz said. “But that was the way my mind was working. My worst fear was that they’d ship me off to one of the labour colonies on Titan, or that Vanessa would be made to see out her sentence in a system as far away from me as they could get, and that Matthew would be sent to a foster home.

  “I actually fought my way out of the holding cells, taking one of the guards hostage in the process and using him as a bargaining chip to get to the landing jetties. I commandeered an executive transport and made it all the way to the jumpgate, before they sealed it off and brought me down with mag cannons.

  “Commodore Parks was the first face I saw when they brought me back in. I still remember what his opening line was – Congratulations, Mr Koonan, it appears that you’re just the man we’ve been looking for. I didn’t know what he meant until they coerced me into working for the CSS.”

  “But when they had you working for them, why didn’t you just run?” Kelly asked. “You must’ve had plenty of opportunities, such as back when we were in the ATAFs, going to Arlos. We were cloaked. You could’ve gone anywhere.”

  “I thought about it, but at the end of the day I had nowhere to run to. I would’ve run out of air long before I managed to get to civilization. I would only have been able to get so far – probably would’ve made it to the jumpgate and then suffocated en route to the nearest inhabited star system. And I would have been heading towards Independent World space, which we all now know is deserted. Besides, Estelle would’ve probably put a stop to my attempts.

  “I knew it was better to remain where I was. At least I would be able to get back home. The Confederation would have caught up with me, anyway – they always do.”

  “So, you did try before?”

  Chaz nodded. “Many times. The first was when they told me what they wanted me to do for them – become a spy in Mitikas. The second was a couple of weeks into my assignment. Barber actually caught up with me on that one. There were other occasions when I tried to escape with Vanessa. They had roped her into working for their intelligence services. Because of her incredible amount of travelling, her experience was apparently of great benefit to them. We’d hoped it would serve us just as well when we came to plan our flight.

  “The two of us devised a number of possible escape plots – when to do it, where to go, what to do once we got there. The plans never went very far. Either the CSS would grow suspicious of Vanessa or they would catch us. It was always difficult to attempt to move Matthew, too. They kept as close an eye on him as they did on the pair of us. I stopped trying shortly after that.

  “Parks was appointed to keep tabs on me, and when I was assigned to the White Knights he told me that the ATAF project was the last thing that I would need to do. I had no idea what he meant at the time, but it’s pretty clear now. After we failed the initial evaluations at Xalan, I thought that I could finally go free and ge
t back to my old life. I couldn’t believe he had the gall to then ship me off to the border.”

  Kelly nodded, but said nothing more.

  Dodds noticed that some others, close to where Chaz was sitting, seemed to be listening to the story. Estelle, too, was close by, although she sat more or less with her back to him. He caught her gaze in the reflection of the window for a moment, but made no gesture. Neither did she.

  Chaz went on, “Vanessa wrote a number of books about her travels. When we first met, she never seemed to be without a notepad. She’d even pull it out halfway through a date, to jot down some notes. I’ve read almost all of her books now. Reading about her adventures and her travels makes me feel close to her.”

  Dodds found himself nodding. It made sense now – all of the books that he had seen Chaz reading were travel writing. He never read anything else.

  “Parks,” – Chaz spoke the name like it were a thorn in his side, ever painful and working its way a little deeper every day – “would deliver me messages from Vanessa whilst I went about the assignments given to me. Occasionally these were in the form of video messages, but most often she sent me letters.”

  The big man reached into his jacket and withdrew a folded piece of paper from a zipped, inside pocket. As he unfolded the tatty paper and smoothed it out, Dodds recognised it as what Chaz had been using as a bookmark back on Ifrit.

  “She wrote me this one a few weeks ago, saying that I was going to be a father again.” His voice grew quiet and he sat for a time, saying nothing but looking down at the words written on the pages. “She’ll be having our second son in about three months.”

  “And you were still willing to sacrifice yourself for the sake of the ATAF mission?” Kelly said.

  “If you’ve ever been in love, then you’d believe me when I say I would do anything for my family,” Chaz answered, before lapsing into silence. His eyes were focused on the letter he held in his hands.

  Dodds shifted his attention back to the soft reflections of the glass in front of him, taking in what was going on around him. Many other members of Griffin’s crew also sat around in the bar, their moods sombre. Pilots, mechanics, security personnel and other commissioned officers chatted quietly to one another. The occasional raised voice filling the air. Word was out – the truth of the Pandoran threat was common knowledge up and down the ship. Soon it would spread to every corner of the galaxy and chaos would ensue. Already he had heard that some Independent worlds were beginning to see mass migration in response to the news. But to where all those people thought they were going, Dodds couldn’t say.

  Estelle had remained sat by herself, a glass of water in hand, while Chaz had spoken. She had barely drunk a sip of it since the bartender had handed it to her, seemingly too lost in her own thoughts to care for it. With Chaz’s story over, she rose and began to drift around, before she came to stand by Dodds. She watched him closely for a time, but he didn’t acknowledge her.

  “Hey,” she said eventually.

  “Hey,” Dodds said, without taking his eyes off the scene outside. Estelle sat down next to him, joining his watch. His eyes shifted from the inky-black of space, to her reflection in the window. Estelle sipped at her water. There they sat for a time, without speaking.

  “Which … which one do you think is Sol?” Estelle asked eventually. She was making a poor attempt at concealing the sudden shakiness in her voice.

  “I don’t know,” Dodds said after a time. “But if things keep going the way they are, I don’t think it will be long before we find out.”

  Estelle’s expression suddenly turned sad and Dodds felt her hand seek out his, fingers intertwining and holding tight as they looked out into space, two figures looking toward the stars, toward an uncertain future.

  Dodds still couldn’t think clearly, one thought pushing all the others aside. Somewhere out there the Pandoran forces were gathering; a wholly unstoppable legion, led by a man who almost certainly couldn’t be reasoned with. How could they all so blindly follow the selfish, violent and intolerant whim of men long-dead? How could anyone? Was there not one little shred of humanity left within them? Clearly not. If only the Senate had seen fit to forgive the emperor for their perceived transgressions against them, how different things might be. Forgiveness, that most important attribute of humanity, of the strong. Was not everyone deserving of it?

  Apparently not.

  The Pandorans would come and they would destroy, feeling no fear, no guilt, no shame and no pity for those they slaughtered. The galaxy would fall and there would be no stopping them. It was only a matter of time.

  “Simon,” Estelle said, her voice cracking. “I’m scared.”

  “I know, Estelle, I know,” Dodds said, squeezing her hand tight. So am I.

  Book Three : The Attribute of the Strong

  I

  — In Times Gone By —

  An excerpt from A GIFT FROM THE GODS by Kelly Taylor

  24th December 2624

  By the year 2621, the Pandoran army had ravaged a good two-thirds of the known galaxy and had continued their advance towards Confederation space. This was a major tipping point in the war, as the outcome of the infamous Black Widow operation became the game changer. So much had hinged on its success; so much faith had been put in its accomplishing its goals that when it appeared as though the Pandoran army had been crushed, there were few to advocate caution. We were all too happy and confident that we had won already.

  After the failure to halt the Pandoran war machine, panic set in and both the Helios Confederation and the surviving Independent worlds immediately began mandatory conscription. Unfortunately, this only made matters worse, as infighting and desertions became rife. Racial attacks within allied units became near uncontrollable in places, and more than a few engagements against the Pandoran forces were lost as a consequence of being underprepared and caught off-guard. We became so caught up in our own internal struggles that we failed to face up to the external forces acting against us. The Pandorans had no such problems – they continued to act almost as a singular entity, with only one direction and one goal in mind, as had been laid out by the Senate.

  Of the desertions, the bulk were made up of surviving members of the Independent worlds. They saw no sense in continuing to battle a seemingly unstoppable enemy or in aiding foreign worlds in their own futile struggles. Backstabbing and treachery were as big an enemy as the black-clad Pandoran soldiers themselves. Some worlds clearly had no loyalty to one another – often those that had never joined the IWC or UNF, although loyalty was still lacking even in some of those that had.

  Those who fled took their chances in the uncharted stars. What became of most, I cannot say – many ships were never recovered. There is a possibility that some may have survived to settle on habitable planets, or had commandeered vessels large and efficient enough to be self-sustaining for many years. This, however, is doubtful, as the emergence of jump technology had led to a decline in the need for such craft. The generation ships, those colossal vessels that had once been used to seed the human race amongst the stars, had long since been retired, existing now only as museums, as historical and cultural artefacts. Of the few ships of the evacuees that were found, many of the occupants had perished while under the control of SA hibernators. It is thought that some ships escaped with full military-grade stasis modules aboard, but, again, this was never confirmed.

  Three categories of people emerged in the latter part of the war: those who fought, willing or not; those who ran away; and those who went towards the enemy, not to battle them, but with a different goal altogether.

  They chose to surrender.

  Throwing themselves upon the mercy of the Senate, they asked for their lives in return for their services and loyalty to the Mitikas Empire, promising to help them to complete the Mission. Mostly, these renegades were those who had been forced to abandon their own worlds, after seeing them ravaged by the Pandoran army’s nuclear and orbital strikes. Witnessing a world o
nce known and loved annihilated in a firestorm might drive any man to the brink.

  Locating a Pandoran convoy or detachment, the defectors would travel towards it, their shields down, their weapon systems offline, broadcasting their message of surrender. Some even went as far as to don the dress of long lost Imperial Houses – Tollaha, Annex, and Hersa, to name a few – adorning their vessels with the Houses’ banners, flags and standards, as well as symbols of the Mitikas Empire. Their messages promised their eternal support to the Senate, until the day they died.

  All appeals were rejected – the Pandoran forces would board the craft and dispatch the crew mercilessly, without a single word or pause for consideration, before assimilating the vessel into their ranks. Often, the ships would be deemed permanently lost, only for them to then show up in combat only a few weeks later, outwardly similar, but with the original occupants dead and gone. We lost some good vessels that way, including two entire frigates – TPA Homestead and TPA Farrier – from the former Republic of Stunea. The crews fled simultaneously, during the preparations for the defence of the inner belt of the non-aligned systems, only a few hundred light years from the Confederation-Independent border. When the invading Pandoran fleet showed up, we found ourselves facing off against Homestead and Farrier, only a few days after they had stood shoulder to shoulder with us, holding the line.

  Yet the manifest pointlessness of surrender did not seem to influence the desperate. Similar acts of yielding were even attempted face to face on battlefields; but however high or clearly the white flags were held, no one was ever accepted into the Pandoran ranks. With twenty billion soldiers already backing their cause, there was little need for new recruits.

  *

  By the beginning of 2622, Fleet Admiral Jason Zackaria had successfully mobilized close to half of the Pandoran soldiers stationed in Imperial space, making judicious use of all the craft that had been liberated from the many Independent worlds, as well as the vessels acquired in combat and those that had been surrendered to them. It became increasingly rare for any craft to be destroyed, if it could instead be used as a transportation system for the army. I saw firsthand evidence of the extremes the Pandorans would go through to accommodate the troopers into the transports – once landed, the doors would jaw open to reveal thousands of soldiers, multicoloured attire now outnumbering black suits, men and women packed in so tight that there was room for little else. The nanomachines inhabiting their bodies would have kept the men and women in those transports as still as statues, locked in position for hours on end, with no need to move until the time for deployment came. After this, the transports would jump back to Imperial space and pack in more passengers, repeating the process over and over, ferrying the Pandoran army across space, closer to the Confederacy, closer to Sol, closer to Earth.