The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy)

by Sweeney, Stephen

  “Careful, Dodds, you might get stuck,” Enrique said.

  “Yes,” Chaz added, “first check that you can get out if that happens.”

  “There’s an access panel in the roof, I’d be able to get out through there,” Dodds said, after ensuring he was able to open it. “You guys could throw me a rope if I was too far down.” Satisfied, he tapped LG. Nothing happened. “Correction – I think it’s dead,” he said, as the lift remained where it was. “Doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere.”

  “Shame,” Chaz said. “If you stay there, I’ll see if I can guide you to a fire escape or stairwell.”

  Dodds acknowledged him, and prepared to exit when he noted a third button, just below the card reader. He must’ve missed it earlier, looking only for a way to the lower ground. “There’s another button here,” he said. “It’s labelled B.”

  “Basement?” Enrique said.

  “Bunker,” Chaz said. “A bomb shelter or panic room, for all the VIPs.”

  “Might be worth a look,” Dodds said.

  “Doubt you’ll be able to,” Chaz said. “It’s probably special access only.”

  Dodds tapped it anyway. The button lit up, the doors closing immediately. He felt a sudden stab of panic, as if he had just consigned himself to a terrible destination. “Bunker works!” he declared. “I’m going down!”

  The lift sank quickly. If Chaz or Enrique had said anything, he never heard it.

  *

  It didn’t take long for the lift to reach its destination, and as the doors parted, Dodds was met by a lengthy, near-pitch black corridor, illuminated only by the lift he still stood in … and the light seeping out of a room at the other end of the passageway.

  He fought the urge to immediately hit the G button and get out of there, returning later with Chaz and Enrique. He then steeled himself. If someone was down here, he needed to find out who. He couldn’t afford to let Zackaria escape, not if he was only metres away. He would investigate the source of the light before returning to the others. It looked like it could be coming from a torch. Or maybe even the glow of an optical enhancement visor.

  He crept forward, half-expecting lights along the corridor to flare into life as they sensed movement. They did not, his journey forward continuing in the relative darkness. The door at the end was open only a crack, and as he approached he saw that the light was radiating a soft blue, and not a bright white as he had first believed. He slowly pushed open the door, preparing to react if he saw even the slightest hint of red eyes.

  Well, what do you know? The source of the light was neither from a torch, or the glow of a visor, but instead came from a video screen. He pushed the door fully open, carefully checking the room for the presence of any hostile entities, before allowing himself to investigate the screen. He appeared to be within some kind of communications, surveillance or security room. There were several computer terminals dotted about the place, with three large screens set on the back wall. Only one was on.

  He glanced around the immediate vicinity, getting the impression that the whole floor was more like a control or command centre than a bunker. Likely, there were a few more passageways he had missed on his way over. As with everywhere else, the place appeared deserted. If anyone had been in here, then they were long gone. Even so, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been in here recently. He stalked around the desks, before his eyes fell on something on the ground. Fingers. He traced them to a hand, belonging to a dead soldier. Black suit, white emblem, the ominous black helmet that normally covered the head lying by his side. The man was slumped up against the side of a desk, his hands and face quite pale. His eyes were closed, his mouth a little slack. By all accounts, the man appeared dead. Even so, Dodds considered putting a round into him, just to make sure. He then thought better of it, remembering the warning about creating any unnecessary noise. He activated his comms.

  “Chaz, Enrique, do you read?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I … ead … ou,” a voice came back. “A … you …?”

  Dodds wasn’t sure who it was or what they’d said. The signal was too weak. He must’ve been quite a way underground. Dodds repeated himself, but still the reply came back as a distorted crackle. “I’ve found a room down here,” he said, speaking a little louder and hoping that his own signal might be clearer. “It looks like a control room or something. I think someone’s been in here recently.”

  “Sta … re … are,” the voice said. “… come fi … ou.” From the sound of it, it was Chaz who had spoken. He was on his way down.

  After some time, he heard the lift depart, return, and, finally, approaching footsteps, before both Chaz and Enrique stepped on through the doorway.

  “Nice find,” Chaz said. “How did you get it working?” he added, nodding to the active screen.

  “It was on when I came in,” Dodds said.

  “Oh ho!” Enrique said, aiming his rifle at the soldier on the floor. “He dead?”

  “As a doornail,” Dodds said, allowing Enrique to relax and lower his gun.

  “Find anything helpful?” Chaz asked, nodding again to the screen.

  “I haven’t looked yet,” Dodds said, casting an eye over the screen and the consoles. Now that he had time to take it in fully, he saw that the interface and the displays were all in an Imperial dialect. “Not sure that I could understand it, either.” He had made an effort to study some of the Imperial dialects, in case a situation such as this should ever present itself. He had made little progress, however, his poor ability to grasp other languages holding him back. He hadn’t even passed French at school, and it wasn’t as though he was able to immerse himself in Mitikas’ language and culture, either. He knew someone else had, though.

  “Want to see what you can find out?” Dodds said, looking to Chaz.

  Chaz nodded, propping his rifle up against the console and looking over the displays. “System date-time is accurate,” he started. “No activity timestamps, though. I’ll see if I can find some log files.”

  He pulled up several files, scrolling through reams of text and typing in commands to the system. Some responded with a single line of output that Dodds could only assume was some kind of access denial. Others streamed several, with what looked like instructions of how to use the commands Chaz was entering. Every now and again, one would appear in English.

  A set of images appeared on the screen, some looking like schematics, diagrams and blueprints. One caused Chaz to halt. “Ha,” he said.

  “What have you seen?” Enrique wanted to know.

  “They’re plans for a jump space route resolver,” Chaz said. He then let out a mirthless chuckle. “That’s how they got aboard Dragon, Ifrit and everything else. This device allows you to detect vessels travelling through jump, adjacent to the listening vessel’s location, and join the stream. It was originally intended to be used for rescue purposes. Might be worth holding on to.”

  “Sounds like there’s some luck involved,” Dodds said.

  “This is most likely a first generation device, so there would be a lot of luck involved,” Chaz said, closing the images. “Otherwise, they would’ve been able to hit every ship that entered jump. The more constrained, non-linear nature of jump space technology probably helped, though.”

  More images flashed by on the screen as Chaz continued through the numerous datasets he had found. Video played, displaying various scenes from around the planet. None grabbed Dodds’ attention. A slideshow of static images followed.

  “Who’s that?” Enrique asked, as Chaz flipped through numerous pictures of the same man.

  “That,” Chaz smiled, “is Maximilian Tyler-Brett; the Senior Magistrate of the Imperial Senate, and the man whom you could probably pin this entire thing on.”

  “He started the war?”

  “In a way,” Chaz said, continuing to move through the images. “He was the person who led the split from the Emperor and initiated the civil war. He was a real bastard, his ideals v
erging on totalitarian. If he got his way, I imagine he would’ve turned the Empire into a very dangerous place to live. Removal of human rights for foreign aliens, limitless power to the authority, capital punishment for the most minor of crimes …”

  “So, pretty much what the Pandorans represent,” Dodds concluded.

  “Mmm,” was all Chaz answered, continuing to move through the data sets.

  “With the signing of this declaration …” a piece of audio began streaming.

  “The independence of Tigris and Sampi-Persei VII,” Chaz commented. He played some others at random.

  “The soldiers are marauding their way across towns and cities, taking down entire planets in weeks …”

  “First appearance of those that went on to become known as ‘the Enemy’.”

  The Enemy. Dodds reflected on how the moniker had stuck around long after ‘the Enemy’ had been officially identified as ‘the Pandorans’. Some had spent such a long time knowing them almost exclusively by the older designation that it was difficult to shake.

  Chaz brought up another piece of audio.

  “Centaur, this is First Lieutenant Chalmers …”

  “Final battle for Kethlan,” Chaz said. He let the audio play for a time, listening to the exchange between the pilot and what might’ve been his host carrier.

  “Has there been any update to the radar situation?”

  “That’s a negative, Chalmers, we’re still working on it.”

  “Any contingency plans? I can’t see what the hell I’m supposed to be shooting at out here!”

  “Again, that’s a negative. Ops believes that enemy craft are masking their vessel signatures. We’re working to decode it ASAP. We will keep you notified. Centaur out.”

  Chaz seeked through the audio stream for a time.

  “All available support, this is Minotaur. We are sustaining heavy damage. Requesting immediate assistance!”

  “Okay, all this is nothing but archived data,” Chaz said, stopping the playback and closing the entire dataset he was investigating. “This isn’t what we want.”

  “I still don’t get how they took down the Empire in just five years,” Enrique said. “With their numbers the way they are now, sure, but not back then.”

  “Geometric progression,” Chaz explained. “One person infects another. Those two then infect another two. The four then do four more. Eight, sixteen, thirty-two.”

  “I see,” Dodds said. “Small to begin with, but in aggregate you reach a staggering number.”

  “And seeding city water supplies with nanobots would’ve hit millions in a single stroke,” Chaz finished, focusing on digging further into the data. It didn’t take him much longer to find what he was looking for. “Ah, here we go …”

  “What’s that?” Dodds said. The data file that now occupied the screen showed a number of short lines, each prefixed with a long number.

  “It’s the error log for the system,” Chaz said, running a finger through the air, parallel to one of the lines of text. “It shows that someone was trying to talk to a remote server, but wasn’t able to establish a connection.”

  Dodds studied the number that prefixed the line, quickly coming to understand what it meant. 26241224.041244. “And they did it today,” he said, “at 4am, local time.”

  “Exactly,” Chaz said.

  Dodds looked at Enrique, seeing him still trying to decipher the digits. “Year, month, day, hours, minutes, seconds,” he supplied.

  “Ah,” Enrique said. “But how do you know it was a person who was trying to do it? It could be an automated system.”

  Chaz shook his head. “The intervals between the dates are too random and inconsistent to be automated. See here, they tried for two hours between 1am and 4am. Sometimes they’ve waited only a few seconds, then a few minutes, then every few seconds again. Before that, the last time someone attempted the connection was five months ago.” He scrolled up the page. “And before that still, about another six. It’s pretty clear that a person has been doing this.” Chaz didn’t say anything more, almost as if he wanted Enrique and Dodds to come to the same conclusion as he.

  “That’s consistent with what Jenkins and Parks were thinking,” Dodds said.

  “Which means that only one person could’ve come in here to do this.”

  “Admiral Zackaria,” Dodds concluded.

  “His shuttle’s still here, too,” Enrique added. “It’s still at Providence Square. He couldn’t have left the planet yet.”

  “That’s not his shuttle.”

  Dodds met Enrique’s eyes only briefly, before instantly swinging around in the direction of the voice, realising that neither of his two companions had spoken. Chaz moved like lightning, snatching up his rifle and training it on the soldier on the floor, who was staring at the three men.

  “Thought you checked him out, mate,” Enrique said through gritted teeth, levelling his rifle.

  “Sorry,” Dodds said, raising his own weapon against the man. “I swear he wasn’t breathing when I came in.”

  “Didn’t think it’d be long before we caught one playing dead!”

  “Wait,” the soldier said, raising a hand.

  Dodds felt a twitch as the man’s hand went up, but managed to refrain from pulling the trigger. The soldier wasn’t armed and Dodds couldn’t see anything threatening in the gesture.

  Enrique, however, appeared far more adamant that they should deal with the supposed threat, inching forward. “I say we put this guy down right now,” he said.

  “No, wait,” Chaz said, stepping forward and placing a hand on Enrique’s rifle and pushing it gently down. “You don’t need it.” Enrique made to protest, but Chaz only pushed the rifle down harder. Dodds noticed that Chaz had already lowered his own weapon. Chaz then looked to the soldier on the floor. “What did you say?”

  “That’s not Zackaria’s shuttle,” the soldier repeated. “It’s a decoy.”

  “How do you know?” Dodds said.

  “I was on it.”

  Dodds started in surprise. “What do you mean, you were on it? You were escorting him?”

  The man gave a slight nod. His voice was quite gravelly and rasping, and he looked as though he was having trouble breathing. Like some of the other soldiers Dodds had seen, he looked as though he had filled out somewhat in his worn suit. It couldn’t have been comfortable.

  “Why is there a decoy?” Chaz asked. “Is someone on the inside trying to assassinate Zackaria?”

  “No, the admiral just doesn’t want to leave anything to chance,” the solider said, struggling to swallow. “We have two shuttles jump to Kethlan each time, one with Zackaria and the other manned only by an equivalent number of bodyguards. Half of us from each then meet here, so it doesn’t look as if one shuttle is lying empty.”

  “He probably figured we’d soon spot that he was travelling back to Kethlan,” Chaz said. “Clearly, he wanted to ensure that he could give us the slip more easily if we somehow managed to get this far.”

  “So, where’s the real one?” Enrique said.

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “The location changes and I don’t know where they put down this time.”

  “What about the last time?” Dodds said. “You came here each time, right?”

  “No, just this time.”

  Enrique and Dodds swore. “This isn’t going to help,” Enrique added.

  “What was he doing here?” Chaz asked. “Why is he coming here every few months?”

  “He …” the man struggled to swallow once more, and for a moment looked like he might be about to choke. “He’s looking for his next set of instructions,” he managed. “He’s trying to contact the Senate, to find out what he should do after the Mission is complete.”

  Dodds, Enrique and Chaz looked to one another, exchanging nods. It was exactly as Parks had suspected.

  “Give me a minute,” Chaz said, pulling out the PDA from his belt. “I’m going to try and get a message to Twineham an
d let him know that the shuttle they’re trying to secure is a fake. I might be able to hop on some broadcast relay in here to do so,” he added, aware of the signal problems this far down.

  Dodds looked back to the solider. “Doesn’t Zackaria know that the Senate are all dead?” he asked.

  “No. He believes that they are just in hiding,” the man said. “But now that the Mission is almost over, he thinks that they will soon contact him. That’s why he’s been coming here, waiting for them to do so.”

  “How come you know all this?” Enrique said, sounding suddenly suspicious. “And how come you’re speaking English?”

  “I am?” The solider suddenly sounded quite baffled.

  “Yes, perfectly,” Enrique said.

  The man said nothing, seemingly contemplating the revelation.

  “Well?” Enrique challenged. He still didn’t sound as though he trusted the man. The soldier, however, remained silent and Enrique looked at Dodds, who only shrugged.

  Chaz continued tapping at his PDA, which soon gave an encouraging jingle. “That’s done,” he said, before focusing once more on the man on the floor. “Hey,” he said.

  The man continued staring off into space.

  “Hey!” Chaz called louder, causing the soldier to look up. “Did you come in here with Zackaria?” Chaz prompted.

  “I think so,” the man answered. He didn’t sound certain.

  “Where are the rest of your team?”

  “I don’t know. I think they left me. I remember being here with the admiral and seven others. One of them was trying to reach the Senate. After that, I don’t remember anything else up until he came in.” The man nodded at Dodds.

  “How long were you watching me?” Dodds asked, stunned that the man who he had assumed was dead had been watching him the whole time.

  “Since when you entered and those other two showed up.”

  “Why didn’t you attack me?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because it’s what you do,” Dodds emphasised.