*
Parks felt like a man returning to the exclusive club from which he’d been previously barred, as he stepped back onto the bridge. Many of the crew rose from their seats and presented smart salutes, though Parks was certain that some had been half-expecting him to be striding down the aisle overtly mad, perhaps with two bread sticks wedged up his nose, or literally barking. As he reached the front of the bridge, Liu looked around and extracted himself from the captain’s chair, acknowledging Parks’ return.
“Admiral,” he said, saluting.
Parks returned it. “Permission to return to duty, Captain?” he said.
“Granted,” the helmsman said, smiling. “Welcome back, Captain.”
“Thank you for all your work during my absence, Ali,” Parks said. “Return to your posts,” he added to the bridge crew, who were still eyeing him closely. “What’s the latest?” he asked, looking back to Liu.
“We’re currently in jump, heading towards the Kethlan system, with our destination as the planet Kethlan itself,” Liu said, gesturing towards the frontal viewport, where the cross-dimensional transit was quite visible. Everything was as expected; the familiar blue clouds of the jump space tunnel were present, the conduit itself stretching off seemingly into infinity.
Parks could just about make out seven craft in front of Griffin – the Knights, along with the four other starfighters he had requested, leading the way.
“Any issues I should be aware of?” Parks asked.
“Nothing in the past half-hour,” Liu said.
“What’s our ETA?”
“Approximately another eighteen minutes.”
Hell, he’d cut that a little fine. A good thing there weren’t any urgent issues that needed addressing. Tunstall had given him the all-clear quite quickly after he’d arrived, confirming, as Parks had always suspected, that he was fatigued and that the doctor simply wanted him to rest for a while. It had done him good, he admitted.
“Good man,” he said to Liu, “Thank you once again. Please return to the helm. How far out from Kethlan are we positioned to emerge?” he added, once Liu had returned to his regular post.
“About one hundred thousand kilometres out, as originally planned, sir,” Liu said. “We’re staying well away from planetary dispatch points.”
“Good. The last thing we want to do is drop out of jump right next to their ODPs.” And everything else that’s probably waiting for us there, he added to himself. “Who is leading the escort wing?”
“Commander Koonan, sir,” Liu said. “I figured that since he is the only person who has ever been in Imperial space before, he may prove a somewhat better decision maker than Dodds or Todd.”
There wasn’t exactly much in it, as far as Parks was concerned, but he understood where Liu was coming from. Out of the three, Koonan seemed most level-headed. Todd was exhibiting a sense of ambivalence, sometimes seeming neither here nor there. He no longer appeared to care whether the allies won or lost, and was just mechanically doing what he could with the time and resources that were available to him. Dodds was clearly in a cycle of depression. Had he not been an ATAF pilot, Parks might well have suspended him from the flight roster.
“Are our escorts and the fleet aware of our exit strategy?” Parks asked.
“Yes, sir. Should our arrival into Kethlan result in us encountering an overwhelming enemy presence, then we will prepare to execute a jump out of the system.”
“And all are aware that we’ll need to hold them off for at least ten minutes to allow the engines to wind down to a point where they’re safely usable again?”
“Everyone has acknowledged the dangers posed by multiple successive jumps. But having said that, in the face of an overwhelming enemy force are you sure you wouldn’t want us to run an emergency jump, anyway?”
Parks couldn’t help but chuckle, “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d rather avoid another unnecessary stop over in Phylent, Mr Liu.”
*
Those eighteen minutes passed quickly for Parks, who spent the time getting back up to speed with the bridge’s crew. When the time came to drop out of jump, he returned to the captain’s seat to await the result of his decision to head to Kethlan. He didn’t hope that if he were wrong he would live to regret it.
“Approaching the Kethlan system,” Liu called to the bridge. “Disengaging from jump in ten seconds.”
There was tension in the man’s voice, a tension that seemed to radiate from all those present. Indeed, it felt to Parks as though all the members of Griffin’s crew were holding their breath. He felt his grip tighten on the arm rests as the information was relayed to the fleet, and a short time later Liu disengaged the engines. The blue clouds of jump space slipped away, Kethlan and the surrounding stars rushing forward to meet them …
… and the scene that greeted Parks almost caused him to swallow his tongue.
Scattered all around them, stretching all the way towards the huge marble-like orb that was Kethlan, were innumerable ships, of multiple configurations. Hundreds of thousands wouldn’t have been an exaggeration. Likely many, many more.
In only a few seconds, Parks counted dozens of frigates, landers, corvettes, rocket boats, fighters, bombers, at least five dreadnoughts right there in front of them, as well as what looked like a half-constructed carrier. He didn’t have time to check properly, his eyes were too busy darting over everything else. He heard one of the escort pilots swear over the open channel, then saw the seven fighters ahead of them instantly break formation to take evasive actions, moving into what looked like attack patterns.
“Well, it was nice knowing you guys,” Enrique Todd’s voice came.
Parks swallowed. “Mr Liu, I thought you said we were set to exit jump one hundred thousand kilometres out from Kethlan?” he said, looking towards the planet. Judging from the size of the planet in the frontal viewport, it looked as though they had. But all those ships! There surely could not be so many that they stretched out for that distance?
“We have, sir,” Liu said. “Unless these readings are wrong, we are still one hundred and four thousand kilometres from Kethlan.”
“Griffin, this is Koonan,” the man’s voice came over the bridge’s comms. “We are preparing to break and engage enemy targets. Please advise on withdrawal strategy.”
Parks reacted immediately, ordering the fleet to take evasive action and move themselves into the open, away from the huge cluster of ships that seemed to pack every available inch of space around them. “Give me a threat assessment,” he called, once Griffin was headed for open space where it could stand and fight.
“Nothing yet, sir,” he heard. “Enemy forces appear to be holding position.”
“Griffin, enemy forces have not yet responded to our arrival,” Koonan said. “Please advise.”
Parks studied the scene beyond the frontal viewport, seeing the multitude of vessels continuing to hang exactly where they had been when the allied fleet had first entered the system. Even though they had arrived barely a minute earlier, experience had taught Parks to expect an instant response from the Pandoran army, a rush of incoming ships to intercept and take down their adversaries, within a matter of seconds. What was taking so long?
He moved to Liu’s console, walking gingerly, almost afraid that his very footsteps might be the detonator charge that brought the scores of enemy vessels surging toward them, and looked over the radar display on the man’s console. As expected, it was littered with red markers and vessel labels. Strangely, however, they all appeared to be remaining static, only shifting on the screen as a result of Griffin’s own manoeuvres, not budging even a fraction of an inch of their own accord.
“Your display is accurate, Captain?” Parks found himself needing to ask.
“Yes, sir,” Liu said. “I could run a diagnostic if you want?”
“No,” Parks said, then called to the bridge to confirm whether the other radar technicians were seeing the same thing. They were.
&n
bsp; “Dodds, Enrique, hold position,” Koonan’s voice came as the two ATAFs raced off towards a stationary set of mixed class starfighters, not far from them. “The rest of you, fall back to my position. Do not fire, unless fired upon. Griffin, please respond. Should we engage targets?”
“Hold your position,” Parks started.
“Captain,” Weathers looked up from her console, before Parks could continue. “I’m receiving communications requests from the fleet captains.”
“Bring them up,” Parks said. Several holographic projections sprang into existence, the imagery feeding in from the bridges of the other vessels of the fleet. The expressions on the faces of the captains seemed to be a match for Parks’ own.
“Admiral,” the captain of Agent 57 began, “what … what’s going on?”
Your guess is as good as mine, Parks thought. He saw that Agent 57 was weaving its way through the never-ending cluster of enemy capital ships that dotted the immediate area, moving completely unchallenged between them. Guns remained silent on both sides.
“Do they think we’re one of them?” Agent 57’s captain asked.
“No,” Parks said, “they would’ve responded to the presence of the ATAFs.” He looked again to the scene beyond the frontal viewport and the radar systems, both of which still showed the opposing vessels doing nothing but holding position. Were they damaged? No, they didn’t even appear to be drifting. The captains of Colonel K and the Goon Sunrise had started to converse with one another, suggesting that it might be best to exit the system as quickly as possible, while they still had the chance.
“Give me a status report on the nearest vessels to us,” Parks requested.
“Shields are down, weapons systems down, life support active, engines down … although they appear to have fired recently,” came the report.
To stop them from drifting off, Parks reasoned. Likely, that was due to an automated system, designed to keep the vessels in place and prevent collisions with one another as they waited for … for whatever it was they were here for. “Widen the scan,” he said.
“Same for all others,” the report came back.
Parks was baffled. What the hell was going on?
“We’re receiving similar readings,” the captains of the fleet reported. “There is no activity from any craft close by.”
Now Parks was completely stumped. For a time he struggled with a decision as to how to handle this quite unexpected situation. Eventually, he ordered the fighter escort to stand down and the fleet to seek out the least densely populated area of the system. As before, they did so unchallenged, their hosts seemingly oblivious to their arrival.
“Should I prepare jump engines, Captain?” Liu asked.
“No,” Parks shook his head. “Get some cameras on those ships,” he said, tired of squinting out the frontal viewport. “Maybe they’ll help us to figure out what’s going on over there.” Why hadn’t they reacted? What was going on? Was it a trap? Memories of Dragon surfaced, and he found himself hesitant to give any other orders. Maybe the best idea truly would be to turn around and get the hell out of there. “Karen, are you intercepting any communications between vessels?”
“No, sir,” Weathers came back to him.
“Have any vessels activated weapon systems or any other components since our arrival?”
“Not as far as I can tell.”
Curious. “Tracking systems? Is anything scanning us?”
“I’m detecting a handful of tracking systems at maximum scan range,” Liu eventually confirmed.
Here was the trap. “Where?” Parks asked.
“From the ODPs circling Kethlan.”
The confusion returned. “Are they attempting locks?”
“No, sir,” Liu said. “We’re well out of their firing range.”
“Why are you just sitting there?” Parks asked out loud. “Why aren’t you attacking us?” He became aware that everyone was looking to him to explain what they were seeing. But, frankly, he was all out of answers. If this truly was a trap, designed to lure them into a false sense of security before attacking, then the enemy had already passed up several chances. Perhaps they were planning to spring their attack once the fleet moved closer to the planet? No. Again, that made no sense. If they were going to destroy the fleet, then why wait for them to spend several hours negotiating the minefield of warships that lay in wait? Were they planning to capture them at a more opportune moment? He was beginning to doubt that. They outnumbered the four allied craft by many hundreds to one. Why wait?
He clutched at some straws, wondering if the CSN vessels were somehow invisible to visual and electronic detection, due to some unexplainable phenomenon that had taken place during their exit from jump. The straws broke as he remembered Liu confirming their detection by Kethlan’s orbital defence platforms. He racked his brain some more. Nothing. He looked about the bridge and then to the holographic displays of puzzled faces. “I’m open to suggestions,” he admitted.
“Admiral.” It was Dodds. “I’m not sure whether this means anything, but as we were coming back I gave some of the fighters a flyby and took a look at the pilots.”
“You noticed something unusual?”
“You could say that – they were all just sitting there, not moving at all. They didn’t even look at me, no matter how close I came.”
“Not at all?”
“No, sir. I got in as close to the bridge of one of the landers as I could and it appears that it’s the same story in there, too.”
“And you have an opinion of why you think that might be?” Parks wanted to know.
Dodds was silent for a moment, as if reluctant to provide an answer. “Well,” he said, “to tell you the truth, sir, I think it’s because they’re all dead.”
IV
— Ghost in the Machine —
Dodds adjusted his ATAF’s course, to pass closer to the bridge of an Imperial frigate. He moved as close as he could to the warship’s meagre viewport and peered inside. As with the lander, there were soldiers within, some helmeted, some not. Most were slumped at consoles, while others were sprawled out across the floor. Had it not been confirmed that life support in every vessel was still operational, Dodds may have thought that they had suffocated.
“Dodds, be careful,” Chaz’s voice came over his intercom.
“I’m just investigating,” Dodds responded. Chaz being acting wing leader, Dodds was aware that the man could have ordered him back. He hadn’t yet, though. Perhaps he was just as curious as Dodds himself. “Have they come up with a decision of what they want to do?”
“Not yet,” Chaz responded. “Parks wants to remain here, until we work out what’s been going on. You can carry on for the moment. Just don’t go too far.”
“I won’t,” Dodds replied. He pulled away from the frigate, accelerating back towards a small group of fighter craft. There was a great mixture of fighters there, many of Imperial design, but others that had clearly been seized from Independent worlds.
He once again moved in close, nosing himself between two craft that rested more or less side by side. Given what he’d come to know of the Pandoran army, he’d have expected them to have presented a more uniform, tighter formation. This, by comparison, looked untidy. One fighter was tilted at an angle that suggested it was drifting and tumbling ever so slightly. Unlike the warships, the fighters didn’t possess any sort of sophisticated course correction mechanics. Thrusters and dampers would be there to allow for the kind of space flight required by the craft themselves, but nothing as refined as the automatic flocking heuristics that were used to keep some craft in place alongside one another.
He looked upon the pilots within the pair of fighters he had pulled up by, seeing, as with the ones before, the two slumped in their seats as if they were asleep. Surely all these soldiers couldn’t be playing dead. An idea came to him.
“How about I push one of these fighters back to Griffin or the Goon Sunrise, for us to take a look at the pilot?” Dodds
broadcast to the fleet. It wouldn’t be hard to do. Tedious without the aid of a tether-like device that Estelle and Kelly now used, but not too difficult.
“That’s a definite no, Dodds,” Parks responded. “The last thing we want is to bring one of those fighters aboard and for it to explode on the flight deck.”
Dodds could understand the man’s reluctance to do such a thing. Both Griffin and Grendel’s Mother had suffered at the hands of a starfighter that had gone up on their flight decks, the latter being all but destroyed when a series of bombs, rigged to the hijacked craft, had gone off.
“I’m putting together a boarding team to perform a more thorough sweep of the vessels and bring back some evidence of whatever has caused this,” Parks went on. “We have to consider that they might be under some sort of self-induced hibernation or suspended animation that we’ve never seen before. In the meanwhile, please scout the area. A range of about three hundred kilometres should be enough for now. Report back the second you encounter anything unusual.”
“Acknowledged,” Chaz answered. “Right, spread out. Larkins, Fowler, Leeson, Mistry – sweep the zones closest to the fleet. Enrique, you and Dodds take the midfield. I’ll cover the perimeter.”
The team divided as Chaz had requested, the ATAFs pulling away from the fleet and the four fighters they had entered the system with. Dodds passed a great number of fighters as he went about his task, still floored by the sheer weight of their presence.
So, this is the remaining strength of the Pandoran army? he thought to himself. It was a lot. To think that Admiral Zackaria was preparing to throw all this against the allied forces. Had he done so, the war would’ve ended years ago. And this, he was well aware, was maybe still just a fraction of what remained. But what had happened? He could hardly believe how far the numbers stretched, the craft appearing ever more heavily packed together the closer to Kethlan they got. Was this how Black Widow had been? He couldn’t recall. That had been a rush, total chaos and something his mind seemed to have blotted out and decided he was better off not remembering.
The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy) Page 93
