“Target disabled,” Kelly reported, as she saw running lights on the Breaker suddenly extinguish, signalling the vessel’s systems termination. “Engines down, weapons systems down, jump dri …” The words caught in her throat. Oh no! Something was wrong.
“Kelly, wh …” Estelle started, before she swore, seeing the exact same thing as Kelly had.
On the threshold of the point, the Breaker was yanked into the conduit. Or, at least, what had once been the conduit. With nothing left to support and maintain the dimensional transit, the whirlpool-like entrance snapped shut, the Breaker only just having crossed it. Kelly waited for the explosion as it was destroyed in the closure. Something else happened. Instead of being crushed, disassembled or pushed into the unknown, the ship was suddenly catapulted at enormous speed in the direction of its original heading. Away from Sky, towards the convoy.
Towards the jumpgate.
“After it!” Estelle ordered, streaking past Kelly in a vain attempt to catch the tumbling vessel. “We have to try and grab it with our tethers!”
Kelly did so, speeding after Estelle’s ATAF, pushing her fighter as fast as it could go. The Breaker was faster, much faster. Something on the ship exploded, jettisoning a stream of crystalline particles in its wake. More puffs and bursts followed, the Code Breaker almost starting to fall apart before her eyes. Sparking components and blooms of explosions began to dot the ship. It was clear that it was going to go up at any moment. Kelly could think now only to finish what had been started and to shoot the vessel down completely. Something told her that not even a plasma bolt would catch it in time.
She theorised what must have happened. The entry and then sudden and unexpected disengagement from the aborted jump’s transitional dimension had left the Breaker in a state where its speed was tied to that other worldly place, usually reserved only for jump space, the containment field collapsing and not properly reverting the Breaker to its rightful behaviour. Indeed, the Breaker appeared to be fluxing.
The Breaker slid onward, still at that incredible velocity, far faster than either she or Estelle could hope to travel. Its destination was somehow aligned with the active jumpgate, as if the jump point were drawing it forward, like a giant magnet. The Breaker missed the convoy that Kelly had been escorting, the colonists continuing on towards the jump point like obedient cattle, now only a few kilometres from the gate. Kelly found she was holding her breath. She swore that the Breaker had at one point passed straight through one of the vessels. Perhaps the Breaker would flux through the gate, too. Or maybe it would simply speed down the conduit towards Sol.
She found she was wrong on both counts.
As it crossed the threshold of the jump point, the Code Breaker went up, a near-blinding flash that forced Kelly to look away. When she looked back, she saw the ship was gone … and so too was the jumpgate. Opening a jump point within or near another jump point had been known to cause similar explosions. The Code Breaker must have been caught somewhere between those two states. What had attracted them to one another, Kelly couldn’t say. All she knew was that the gate was gone, the convoy had been heavily damaged, and there was now no way for them to escape.
Estelle swore, and Kelly swung around to look towards the vessels that hung in orbit around Sky. More would be on their way up, and many more were still on the ground. How could they now get these people to their destinations? They were all dependent on the jumpgate.
“This is bad,” Estelle said, “really bad.”
Kelly opened her mouth to speak. Her console got there first, whining a warning that she immediately recognised. She looked to her radar, seeing those familiar and unsettling markers beginning to pop into existence.
“de Winter, Taylor, please join the frontline defence forces, immediately,” Meyers requested.
“Sir, the evacuation—” Estelle began.
“I’m afraid we’re out of time, Commander.”
Kelly looked in the direction of the allied fleet, seeing them mobilising. Some way ahead of them, she saw the portals of the jump space conduits forming.
The Pandorans had arrived.
VI
— Kethlan —
The Orbital Defence Platforms hadn’t proven difficult to take down. After all, Dodds mused, you can’t shoot what you can’t see. Under the veil of the ATAFs’ cloaking devices, the White Knights had flown ahead of the allied fleet and taken the automated defences on directly. It was rare for him to use the cloak these days. In the often-chaotic battles against the Pandoran army, using the cloak meant collisions with allied and opposing fighters increased dramatically. It also made the job of the battle coordinators that much harder, unable to track the ATAFs’ movements on the field. The constant fluxing and ghosting of the fighter’s shields as he fired his guns also made the system hardly worth bothering with. Not that the ODPs were any more aware of his presence.
The platforms did little as Dodds rained down multiple plasma bolts on them, wearing down their shielding and hammering away at their armour until they eventually went up. Each platform would respond to the attacks brought against them and their neighbours, but at most would merely turn their guns in the direction from which the attacks had originated, never returning fire. Some of the platforms wouldn’t even do that, and only continued to point their weapons at Griffin and the fleet, which held position just outside the defence platforms’ range. Even though each ATAF was clearly visible as they fired their guns, the ODPs appeared oblivious to their presence. Dodds had a theory about this – the computer systems had registered the plasma impacts on the shields, as well as their armour, but their internal radar systems had been unable to make what had attacked them a target. A human would have picked up on the ghostly appearances of the ATAFs as they had discharged their weapons and the cloak had reacted, and may well have presented the three pilots with a certain amount of challenge. But these defence systems were one hundred percent automated, and never designed to handle situations such as this.
As each ODP fell and the Knights moved closer to Kethlan, the fleet would follow, sneaking in behind one of the multitude of vessels that littered the area around the planet, using them as cover for their approach. It seemed that even if they did move into weapons range, the ODPs would keep their guns stood down, detecting some of their own vessels resting between them and their target. The accuracy assessment from that distance likely told the systems not to risk the shot, lest it strike a friendly ship.
All the better for the fleet, Dodds concluded.
Missiles wouldn’t have suffered any issues tracking and hitting them, though. Why didn’t they fall back on those? Dodds wondered. His answer came in the form of an exchange between Griffin and Colonel K – the platforms didn’t actually appear to have any missiles loaded. Clearly, the Pandorans had relieved them of their stock, finding the armaments more useful on the frontline than in the defence of the planet. And besides, when you were armed with a plasma accelerator, you normally didn’t really need anything more to back you up.
More elements of Kethlan’s surroundings came into view as Dodds approached. He could make out what appeared to be the remnants of the planet’s orbital ring. It had been shattered into many pieces, the largest chunk probably comprising no more than one thousandth of the original structure. If that. Even this was a sizeable portion, given the scale of the ring; it was a feat of engineering that never failed to impress, but the Pandorans had clearly shown it the same respect as they had Xalan’s ring. The ring here must’ve been packed full of offensive weaponry, making the Seat of the Emperor one of the most heavily fortified planets in all the galaxy. It had done little good.
Despite the advantages granted to them by the ATAFs, the task of clearing away the ODPs took several hours to complete, the Knights needing first to approach the planet and then eliminate the platforms themselves. Despite this, it was one of the simpler tasks that Dodds had undertaken over the past twelve months, and one that, strangely, he found himself enjoying. Perhap
s that was because he knew that the hard part came next …
*
“Beta Squad’s been taken out!” Chaz announced, relaying to the rest of the shuttle what the captain had just told him.
The shuttle collectively swore, and Dodds grabbed at the restraining harness as the craft suddenly rocked. He then felt it bank hard, before it began diving.
“That’s two of us now!” Enrique said to Dodds, raising his voice.
“They were both heading to the north side of the palace,” a bald woman responded. “I warned them it was too dangerous to set down so close.”
Dodds looked at the woman as the shuttle gave a heavy lurch, remembering seeing her on the odd occasion over the years. He forgot her name, but was sure that Chaz knew her from somewhere. He wished he could see what was happening beyond the inside of their transport. A boom came from towards the rear of the craft, accompanied by the heaviest jerk yet.
“We’re coming under fire!” Chaz called over the clamour. He paused, hand over his earpiece, straining to hear. “Right, got it,” Chaz responded to the captain. “We’re going to put down further south than was planned,” he said once more to the shuttle. “It’s too hot up the other way. We’ll land on the other side of the river and make the rest of the journey on foot. Right, check your gear. Eight minutes till touch down.”
The shuttles were en route to the surface of Kethlan, planning on setting down in Capitis Duname, the capital city, where the Senate had once convened the Forum, and near the palace where Crown Emperor Adam III had held his throne.
It was winter here, and Duname was gripped by what was said to be one of the coldest winters in the past thirty years. According to the pre-drop briefing, the current temperature was -8°c. Local time, around mid-afternoon. It was expected to drop to between -12°c and -18°c as evening came, and plummet towards -24°c at the coldest part of the night. The drop teams had been dispatched with furs in readiness.
The orbital scans had revealed more, however. There was a great deal of movement on the surface, a significant contrast to the largely static environment the fleet had crossed to reach the planet. It appeared that, while the Pandoran soldiers in the many vessels that surrounded Kethlan were mostly dead, a fair few of them were alive and well on the ground. They were fighting, too. Fighting each other.
“How could that be?” Parks had asked the conference room, during the pre-drop meeting. “Are they at odds with what they are being ordered to do?”
“Perhaps these are actually loyalists of the Emperor?” Liu had suggested.
“Doubtful,” Chaz had said. “Kethlan was taken years ago. Anyone who wasn’t slaughtered by the Pandoran forces would’ve succumbed to infection from the nanomachines.”
“A rebel group, perhaps?” Weathers had offered. “There may be many more groups around the Empire. There would be a number of people living here who wouldn’t be Mitikans, immigrants and such. It’s possible they could’ve escaped attention from the invading forces and set up underground bases?”
“A good theory, Karen,” Parks had said, “but I doubt they could’ve hidden for this long against that.” He gestured at the window, allowing the swash of vessels now floating behind them to illustrate his point.
Dodds had eventually come up with what had become the accepted answer. The man that had walked past him in the Machine Infernale had completely ignored him. It had seemed that, though the man was well aware that something or someone was blocking his way, he had not recognised Dodds as a threat. Something had failed to register, and he had simply tottered into the storeroom, where he had collapsed and died. Tunstall had concurred. As the degenerative effects of the broken nanomachine’s work had gripped the Pandorans and spread about their bodies, their memory and ability to think would have become impaired. This was what had happened to all those the doctor had examined, their higher brain functions being impacted, leading them to suffer from bouts of dementia, followed by seizures and strokes. It was most likely why Dodds had been ignored, and not an entirely unreasonable explanation as to the infighting that was occurring on the ground. The soldiers were hallucinating and unable to act in a rational manner.
The meeting was adjourned, all those present at least somewhat satisfied with the reasoning. Plans had been drawn up for transports to drop down to the surface, Parks reluctantly ordering Chaz to act as one of the descending squad leaders, taking Dodds and Enrique him. By the looks of things, threats to their lives would be minimal, with the Pandoran soldiers far more interested in eliminating one another, than engaging foreign invaders. Dodds hoped that he was right. If not, they would be finding out very soon.
“Ten seconds,” Chaz called to the shuttle. “When we’re down, get outside and search for immediate cover. We’ll be putting down riverside. Conditions are overcast, with light snowfall. We’re out of here the second we hit the ground. Expect a few feet of snow.”
Dodds saw that people around the shuttle were rechecking their gear, some banging their helmets to ensure they were fastened securely and making final inspections of their guns and ammunition. Dodds clicked down his monocle, the system activating as he did so, locking onto other members of the squad within the shuttle, tagging them and displaying their names.
“Five seconds,” Chaz called. “Rear doors dropping.”
“Ready for this?” Enrique asked, leaning over to Dodds.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, as people began extracting themselves from their restraining harnesses, preparing to evacuate the shuttle the moment it set down on solid ground. He wondered what would happen when they did so. Would a hail of bullets and energy weapon fire fly inside the moment the doors opened and shred them all? Would a rocket take them out? Would he live to see the end of this war at all?
The doors jawed opened, but all that Dodds experienced as they did so was the rush of freezing air from outside, an icy wind finding its way inside the shuttle and turning the exposed skin on his face cold. Natural light, too, spilled in, the environment immediately beyond textured white, crisp and hazy with the snow and ice that Chaz had warned them about. A jolt and the sound of scraping came. They were down.
“Move people!” Chaz called. “Let’s go!”
The shuttle’s twenty-two occupants sprang to their feet and began trooping rapidly down the ramp. Dodds followed after them, but found himself unable to proceed much further than the bottom of the ramp, being almost mesmerised by the sight that greeted him.
He had set foot on many new and unfamiliar worlds during his life, his time spent in the service of the CSN transporting him to a multitude of different planets. Though they were terraformed and populated, each world had always felt different, always a little alien. The skies were different, as were the nights, the stars and constellations entirely new. The local star was either nearer or further, a different size or colour. Moons and other orbiting bodies varied in size and shape, some worlds possessing them in their ones and twos, sometimes even threes. Others wouldn’t have any at all, the skies populated only by the stars above. The horizon would also shift, depending on the size of the planet on which he stood. The architecture of the buildings would vary, as would the vehicles that populated it, the design signatures of the locally constructed transportation providing the visitor with a clear indication that he was somewhere entirely new.
Yes, he had indeed visited a variety of worlds. Kethlan, however, felt quite different from any of those. Maybe it was because the other worlds had always been colonized and populated by humans, whereas this planet’s hosts felt so detached from them, that they were like another species. Kethlan even seemed to smell different.
He looked around. Here was Capitis Duname, the place where all the troubles had started. The sky was blanketed with thick white and grey clouds, little light penetrating their layers. They were dumping snow all over the city, somewhat heavier than had been promised just a few minutes earlier. His eyes wandered over the buildings that radiated an extrinsic quality that he could
n’t place. Not far in the distance, he could make out what looked like the Imperial Palace. It sat atop a hill, and though many other structures rose taller and far more mightily around it, it was clear that it was intended by its placement to dominate the entire city. That was their target; that was where they had to go. If Zackaria was going to be anywhere, he would surely be there. And then Dodds would need once again to attempt to speak to the man.
Dodds felt a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, what are you standing around for?” Enrique asked. He was smiling, looking bright and excited for some reason. “Come on, this way,” he prompted, indicating for Dodds to follow him to where a number of the other soldiers were taking cover. Dodds followed after them and sank down behind a wall that ran close to the side of the river.
As he waited, he saw four more shuttles landing not far from their own, the rear doors opening before they had fully touched down on the ground, just as his own had done. Some of the occupants appeared very keen to exit the transport and get to cover, leaping out and hitting the ground running, even before the shuttle was down. The new groups took up similar positions along the riverside, some of the squads spotting the length of the river itself, others marking the far side.
Chaz had his hand to his ear once more, listening closely to what was being said to him through the comms device clipped there. “Delta Squad reporting in. Down and deployed. Yes. No. Palace-side of the Lyle river. Holding position for regroup,” he was saying.
Dodds saw three of the four shuttles’ rear doors begin to close, the transports’ engines engaging and propelling them skyward. He glanced to Enrique, who watched them go without a word. He wondered if Enrique was sharing his small sense of trepidation at being left here like this.
“We’re leaving one on the ground and the others high,” Chaz then explained, “so that we don’t lose all our means of withdrawal if something goes wrong.”
“Cosy,” Enrique said.
The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy) Page 97
