After the failure of Black Widow, CSN Fleet Admiral Amanda Jenkins, along with the newly-appointed Admiral Elliott Parks, divided the navy down the middle, delegating one half to the defence of the Helios Confederation and the other half to an aggressive assault on the Pandoran forces. The offensive arm was driven by two primary objectives: the first, to find a way to bring about a decisive end to the Pandoran army’s advances and prevent an increasingly likely victory; the second, to once again attempt to apprehend Zackaria. Both were near-impossible goals to achieve, but we had to at least try. There were no alternatives.
Parks divided the White Knights into two parts, taking Dodds, Enrique and Chaz with him as he went on the offensive, and leaving Estelle and me under the command of Commodores Aiden Meyers and Sima Mandeep. His reasoning behind the split was two fold. First, with five team members, he preferred to take three ATAFs on the offensive, rather than just two. Second, Parks was sensitive to social politics. He knew Enrique and I had finally cemented our relationship after the incident on Mythos, and with Dodds and Estelle’s past to consider, Parks didn’t wish to risk any of our relationships negatively influencing one another. And while he permitted us as much contact with one another as we wanted (or, at least, as much as we each had time for), he wanted us to stay apart. This was hard on me in the first few months, and I regularly entertained thoughts of abandoning my defensive position and heading off to join Enrique on the frontline. If we were going to die, then we should do it together. Estelle dissuaded me as did Enrique. He knew that I would want to be by his side, but urged me to stay where I was and continue to perform the duty required of me, for the sake of us all.
If it had been hard on the five of us, then I can only imagine what it had been like for Parks himself. A perpetual bachelor for all the years I’d known him, he had married Sima Mandeep in a low-key ceremony only one day before leading the frontline forces into Independent space and making runs against predetermined enemy targets. Only a handful had been in attendance at the wedding. He didn’t want a fuss made, and Mandeep, despite belonging to a large family, seemed happy with the arrangements. Parks refused to allow Mandeep to accompany him for the same reasons he presented to us. Chaz made no real comment, other than to say that Parks’ actions and strategic decisions didn’t surprise him in the least. He would know, too – he had barely seen Vanessa at all over the past ten years. Their relationship survived, though. Their love for one another was that strong.
*
By late 2624, it became clear that the war was going very badly for the allies. More than ninety-five percent of the known galaxy had been lost, and the surviving forces and peoples had retreated to the inner systems of Helios. With such huge numbers arriving, safety and refuge was only offered to those who were willing to stand and fight the approaching Pandoran army. Few refused.
In September of that year, Parks turned his attention to focusing exclusively on the hunt for Zackaria – a last ditch attempt to end the war before the human race was lost forever. Ordering the remainder of the frontline allied forces to return to the inner Confederate systems, he took a small fleet, led by CSN Griffin, deep into Imperial territory. It was a dangerous and extremely risky move – the core Mitikas systems were thought to be filled with hundreds upon thousands of starships, all commanded by members of the Pandoran army who had yet to depart. Parks thought the danger was worth it. If Zackaria could somehow be found – even negotiated with – it might be possible to hash out some compromise.
And though Parks never openly admitted it, it was clear that he and Jenkins were even prepared to secede, should that be Zackaria’s final demanded. It was the third time a real effort had been made to locate and apprehend the admiral, but after several months of searching, he was nowhere to be found.
As October and November came and went, the Pandoran army continued to close in on Sol, sacking Temper, Indigo, Rex and Gabriel with the same unrelenting power they had turned against the rest of the galaxy, bulldozing through whatever stood in their way.
By December, they were approaching Alpha Centauri, the closest inhabited system to Sol and where the CSN were preparing to make their penultimate stand.
All hope, it seemed, was lost.
But, as the old saying goes: it is always darkest before the dawn; in the final forty-eight hours of the war a discovery was made that heralded a chance of victory. It was a small one, but a clear one, if only it could be exploited. Therein lay our greatest challenge, as so many of us had sunk into hopelessness, accepting that we had lost the war already; so much so that not even this tiny glimmer could revive us.
And what good is hope, when you have long since stopped believing in it?
II
— Seven Years Later —
Upon blasted, broken and ash-covered ground, Dodds trudged. The earth was hard as stone, cracked like glass. Things crunched beneath his feet – the charcoaled remains of flora and fauna that had been incinerated in the firestorms that had swept the land. All around him was black, grey and desolate, as though the fires had burnt away the very colour of the world. Only the sky above was different, billowing red clouds tumbling towards the horizon, like a turbulent sea.
A trail appeared before him, beckoning him onward. He followed. He knew this road. He had walked it before, many, many times as a younger man, growing up in the south of Ireland. He recognised the lie of the land as he went, the hints of fields, once framed by stone walls and wooden fences, the road winding its way between them. Wheat, various vegetable plantations and orchards had stood here once. Now, there was nothing but charred ruins.
He continued onward past them, following the road on its seemingly endless route towards the horizon, until he came to a path that intersected it. It led off to the right, becoming a well-worn track. Dodds halted there, his eyes coming to rest not far along the path, on a person lying face down in the dirt. The body was wearing a CSN flight suit. Dodds approached, rolling the body over and seeing the name tag on the front. ‘Dean’. The face, however, was not that of the pilot who had run away from the CSN all those years ago, but that of Enrique Todd.
“Enrique,” Dodds shook the body, trying to rouse the man. But Enrique lay still, his eyes closed. His body was mutilated by multiple stab wounds perforating every limb, leaving wicked red slashes all over the near skin-tight suit. Dodds then became aware of a building that had suddenly appeared beside him, almost out of thin air. It was a large white farmhouse, with a small set of steps leading up to the porch. Just above the front door, a window stood half-open. He sensed someone peering out at him from up there, though he couldn’t see anyone. That had been his bedroom window, once, he realised, and it was through it he had first spotted Patrick Dean.
He became aware of several more figures close by, they, too, having seemingly materialized from nowhere. Two women lay at the foot of the porch steps, both in their mid-thirties, one with mousey-brown hair, the other with silky black. Kelly and Estelle. The body of a tall, muscular black man lay not far from them. Chaz. Like Enrique, all three wore CSN flight suits, the name tags reading ‘Dean’, with the words ‘Yellow Dogs’ and the emblem of a golden retriever just below it. And like that of Enrique, their bodies were covered in wounds.
Dodds stared for a moment before he sighted a boot resting on Chaz’s body. It belonged to a man who sat hunched over on the top step of the porch, one who carried with him the air of a hunter, one once proud, but now long weary of this particular game, glad that it was finally over. Though surrounded by his prizes, the man did not smile. Troublesome opponents these had proven, ones that had stretched him to breaking point. He was clothed in an Imperial naval uniform, decorated to the nines. The man’s face was old and wrinkled, his eyes a dull grey. Old, yet distinguished.
Jason Zackaria held a dagger in one hand, as he observed Dodds with a look that suggested he had been waiting at the porch for a long time. He said nothing for a while, continuing to hold Dodds with that fixed look, toying with the dagger in
his hand. The weapon was quite ornate in appearance – more like something that belonged on a wall, than something meant to kill.
“I know you,” Zackaria said eventually, rising to his feet, adjusting the dagger in his grip to hold it more purposefully. “You’re the last one, Simon Dodds.”
Dodds said nothing, his eyes flicking from the bodies, to Zackaria, to the dagger. The blade and handle were untarnished and bright, as though they had been vigorously cleaned, so that they might be unspoilt for this one final act. Zackaria continued forward, eyes locked on his target, stepping over the bodies and making an unhurried advance towards Dodds.
“You’re the final one,” Zackaria said. “The last one I must kill to complete the Mission.”
Dodds started to back away, moving up the dirt track, but his feet caught and he toppled over. He landed on something soft – another body, this time naked. It was one of many strewn as far as the eye could see, replacing the once ash-covered ground with a multitude of colours from varied skin tones. Some fresh corpses, some decaying.
Dodds pulled himself to his feet as Zackaria twirled the dagger. “You don’t have to do this,” he said, finally finding his voice. “Can’t you see you’ve won already?”
“Not yet,” Zackaria said, shaking his head slowly. He sprang forward, taking hold of Dodds and placing the knife by his throat. “But I have now.”
The grip was immense; Zackaria’s arms like steel. Dodds could do no more than grasp weakly at them. “Please … don’t,” he started.
“I gave the others to my men,” Zackaria said, his grip tightening further. He turned Dodds to face the farmhouse and the bodies of his former team-mates. “But they left you for me, so that I alone might have the pleasure of killing you.”
Dodds struggled against the man, trying to extricate himself and pull away from the knife blade already digging into his throat. It proved futile, Zackaria’s grip unbreakable. “Please—” Dodds tried again.
“And now,” Zackaria smiled as he spoke, “the Mission is complete.”
Dodds felt the remorseless slash of the dagger, the tearing open of his throat and the hot flow of blood as it began to rush down his neck from the gaping wound. He felt Zackaria’s grip ease. Dodds’ knees became weak as he clasped his hands to his throat, attempting to stem the flow of blood.
But it was all for nought; Dodds’ world turned to black as his life ebbed away.
*
Dodds woke covered in sweat, and was immediately consumed by an inescapable feeling of utter dread and foreboding. He opened his eyes. No, they were already open. Had he somehow gone blind? His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he found himself in his quarters on Griffin. As with most of the rest of the ship, there were no windows in the quarters, only a smattering of night lights to alleviate the absolute gloom that would otherwise fill the small room.
Dodds lay in the bottom of one of two bunk beds occupying the somewhat cramped interior. Chaz and Enrique normally slept in the other bunk bed, but neither of the two men were anywhere to be seen – the bunks they normally occupied were empty. Dodds wondered if he was still dreaming, about to wander endlessly the corridors of a deserted and desolate ship until he finally, truly woke. Or until someone found him. He shook that thought away quickly.
“Lights,” he croaked, but the darkness remained, the computer system apparently unable to understand his words. He tried again to issue the command, but the sound that came was unrecognisable even to him. His throat was parched, he could tell as much simply by swallowing. He reached for the bottle of water he kept near his bunk, seeking a cure. He fumbled his grip and the bottle spun away from him, tipping over onto the floor. The cap burst off and the bottle began leaking out much of its remaining contents. Dodds lunged for it, but managed to save it only as the last few dregs were glugging out. He drank what was left – not even a mouthful, and quite warm at that – then let it drop back down onto the floor. He mustn’t have replaced the cap properly after the last time. He recalled waking in the night, after only an hour of sleep, far too hot and needing a drink. Too eager to get his head back down, that was the problem.
Why? he wondered. To return to those dreams, dreams in which he found his friends and family dead? Zackaria and the Pandorans haunted his sleep, as did Anthony Hawke. Zackaria and the soldiers would stalk him, like bringers of death. Hawke would hound him, grinning and gloating, emphasising his faults and failures, and speaking of a better time when Dodds was dead and gone. His mother and father, Elliott Parks and others who had touched his life, crept in from time to time, though it did little to lift his spirits. He could never remember what any of them had said, only a feeling of disappointment. The few times he did find Estelle, Kelly, Chaz or Enrique in his dreams, they never spoke or acted supportively, and only brought him lower. No, there was no longer any solace to be found in sleep. Sleep for him was a broken, cheerless affair, as it had been for the last three years. Waking refreshed and with a settled mind was something that had long since been lost to him.
Of all those who populated his sleeping hours, two were noticeably absent – Poppy Castro and Stefan Pitt. Dodds didn’t know what had happened to their immediate families, but given the state of the galaxy he guessed that they had all been reunited in death. He hoped they had found peace together.
Lucky them.
He sank back onto the bed and looked about the quarters. How long had he spent within these same four walls? Three years at least. Yet not as long as the time they had been fighting the campaign against the Pandoran forces. That had lasted seven years now. He was tired of it, so very tired of all of it. But it was clear it would end soon, and he had little doubts about the final outcome.
He looked down at the puddle of water creeping across the floor. He tried not to think of the galactic map he had seen not so long ago of a red pool, representing the Pandoran army, spreading out from Mitikas and overwhelming everything in its path. It had painted a grim picture indeed, and that image had been accurate before Black Widow. Afterwards, the galactic map had been magnitudes worse, and had finally convinced him that the war was well and truly lost.
He wondered what the time was, and looked about for his Kyllini. He spotted it on the floor, surrounded by water. He whisked it to safety and dried it off on his sheets, hoping that any water that had managed to work its way inside wouldn’t cause any damage to the delicate circuitry. After giving it a few shakes to remove any excess liquid that might still be clinging to it, he placed a finger tip on the screen, authenticating himself and bringing the Kyllini out of its sleep mode. The screen lit up, displaying the date and time according to Griffin’s own clock. 0644. It was later than he normally woke these days.
The Kyllini PDA was normally the first thing he reached for when he woke, checking both the time and looking expectantly for the little message indicator, notifying him of a communication from Estelle. There was none today. He had written back to her yesterday, late in the afternoon, just before they had commenced jump. Normally she wrote every day. Perhaps today she hadn’t found the time.
He studied the Kyllini for a moment, remembering the day the five Knights had each bought one, the day that Parks had decided to divide the team and take the three men deep into enemy territory. Kelly and Enrique had suggested it, wanting to keep in contact with one another as much as possible, and without having to wait for the messaging rooms to become available. They predicted that there would be big queues and long waits to make use of those facilities. They hadn’t been wrong. The five had located a telecoms stockist on Watership Orbital, in the Angel system, who had been offering all his stock at knock-down prices – to get rid of it, make a profit and run while he still could. The PDAs were just what the five had been looking for.
Each device was palm-sized, fitting snugly into their hands. They were capable of many multimedia functions, though most importantly creating and receiving messages. Each was equipped with a camera, allowing video to be recorded and transmitted from the dev
ice. It was perfect, and after some discussions with the tech teams aboard Griffin and Leviathan, they had been able to hook them into the ships’ comms systems and make use of the broadcast channels. They had all kept in touch this way for the past three years, sending each other everything from short text messages, to recordings of themselves, to footage they had filmed of victories. They hadn’t sent many of those.
Dodds looked through his inbox to the last message he had received from Estelle, resting at the top of the screen.
“You’ve probably already heard, but I wanted you to know that we’re falling back to the defence of Alpha Centauri. I’m over my food poisoning, so am once again back on the field. I hope you are keeping well. I will see you soon.”
Short and to the point, like a lot of her messages of late. She mostly sent him text messages now, hardly ever recording video. He looked back over the past messages.
“Are you awake?” she had written one night.
“Yeah,” he had replied, though it had actually been the soft vibration of the device under his pillow as it had received the message that had roused him. “What’s up?”
The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy) Page 90
