“I didn’t feel any want or need to,” the man said. “That seems to happen to some of us, just before the end.”
Before the end?
“What’s your name?” Enrique said.
“Er … Tim,” the man said. “I think … yes, my name’s Tim. I remember other things now,” he went on, “I remember seeing it happen on Ziz, Chimera and Dragon. People would suddenly just … snap out of it.”
“Snap out of what?” Dodds said.
“The control. They’d stop wanting to kill, they’d stop wanting to do … everything that we were doing.”
“What did they do? Did they attack the other ones?” Dodds said, thinking back to what had happened in the Pantheon and in the streets around it.
“Some of them ran,” Tim said. “They screamed and tried to escape. They were killed when that happened. Others went mad and tried to fight. I remember there being a lot of fighting on one of the ships. I’m not sure what happened to it. I think it jumped somewhere.” His eyes glazed over for a time, as if he were thinking back over the events.
“Tim, we need your help,” Chaz started to press. “We need to find Zackaria. He’s done terrible things and we need to find a way to stop him before he wipes out the human race. Do you understand? Where is Zackaria?”
“I don’t know!” Tim said, now sounding a little distressed and emotional. His face had the telltale signs of being on the verge of tears.
This wasn’t helping, Dodds knew. Tim probably felt as though Chaz was threatening him. Who knew what this man used to be before he became a part of the Pandoran army? Chaz moved to press him further.
“Hang on, hang on,” Dodds said, waving Chaz down and looking back to Tim. “What else do you remember? Do you know where the last places the decoy shuttle set down?”
Tim only shook his head.
“Okay, well maybe if you just tell us what else you remember, it might help jog your memory,” Dodds suggested.
“I remember finding it more difficult to do things. I started to get tired. I couldn’t run, move or fly as well as I had done before. I found myself asking more and more questions about who and what I was. I think I blacked out a few times. There are gaps in my memory. Rather like now …” He ran his hands over his body, as if for the first time seeing how it appeared. He prodded at his belly and legs, feeling how bulbous, lumpy and fat they were. Dodds was almost glad that he couldn’t see his own reflection in a mirror. His body might be bloated, but his face was anything but. The sight of his gaunt expression and sunken eyes might have tipped him over the edge, causing him to weep and become useless to them.
“What happened to me?” Tim then wanted to know, looking back to the three pilots. “How did I end up in this suit?”
“You were infected with a nanovirus,” Chaz said, far kinder this time.
The man looked very confused. “How?”
The three told him, and after they had finished Tim began weeping.
“They’ve been controlling you for the last ten years or so,” Chaz said. “Although, it looks like you’re free of them, now.” The big man looked at his PDA. “No further updates from the other teams,” he commented. “They’re ignoring the decoy, but haven’t found anything else just yet.”
“How many people did I kill?” Tim asked, through his sobs.
No one said anything, none of them seemed to want to answer him. “How many do you remember killing?” Enrique then asked.
“Who are you?” Tim wanted to know.
“Simon Dodds, Enrique Todd, Chaz Koonan,” Dodds said. “CSN.”
“My name’s Tim,” the man said.
“We know,” Dodds said, “you told us already.”
“That isn’t good,” Chaz muttered.
“And you are?” Tim asked again.
“My name’s Dodds,” Dodds repeated, patiently. “And this is Chaz, and this is Enrique.”
“Dodds?” Tim then brightened somewhat. “Your name sounds familiar.”
“That’ll be Zackaria’s influence,” Chaz said quietly to the others. “Did Zackaria tell you anything important about Dodds,” he turned once again to Tim.
“I’m a primary school teacher,” Tim said, once again seeming oblivious to Chaz’s question. “I’m only twenty-seven. I enjoyed teaching the teapots.”
“The teapots?” Enrique said.
“Yes, the children,” Tim said. “I used to enjoy watching them learn. I taught them to count and spell and tiger their carpet with banana jam.”
“What?” Dodds looked to Enrique and Chaz.
Tim was staring in the direction of the three men, but seemed not to be focusing on any of them. He appeared to be looking behind them, though when Dodds looked around there was no one there. Tim then refocused on the three standing before him. “I’m in a lot of pain and I can’t see so good,” he said.
That’ll be the cancer, Dodds thought.
“We’re losing him,” Chaz said, only loud enough for Dodds and Enrique to hear. “Tim, this is urgent – do you know where Zackaria is now?”
“Zackaria? Sure, he’s standing right over there,” he said, raising a hand only a minute amount and pointing behind the three men. Dodds whirled around, along with Enrique, even though he already knew that no one would be there. “He’s taking the monkeys to see Princess Christina. My mum’s helping him. My mum’s nice like that.”
“Tim, listen to me,” Chaz said, kneeling down in front of Tim and moving his head around to focus directly on him. “You said that you came in here with Zackaria, as one of the bodyguards from the decoy shuttle. Where did you meet Zackaria’s main group?”
“At the Pinnacle,” Tim said.
“When?”
“Today.”
“Precisely when today?”
“I … I don’t remember.”
“Think, Tim. Was it an hour ago? Six hours? Twelve?”
“Was it dark when you met?” Dodds asked, kneeling down next to Chaz. “Night time, I mean?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Tim, we need to find Zackaria,” Chaz pressed. “If we can’t find him, then he could destroy what remains of the human race. They’ve already sacked the Empire, all the Independent worlds, and are close to annihilating what remains of Helios. Think, Tim. We need to find Admiral Jason Zackaria as quickly as possible.”
“Do you have any water?” Tim asked.
Dodds reached for his still-full canteen. He hoped that the contents hadn’t frozen. “Here,” he said, offering the container. Tim didn’t move, but instead let out a long sigh, before staring straight ahead. Dodds waited a moment, then waved a hand before the man’s eyes. “Tim?”
Chaz removed a glove and felt about the man’s neck, before then swearing. “He’s dead. For real, this time.”
“Great,” Enrique said. “Our one lead.”
“He’s clearly been here for a long time, but we can still make use of what he said,” Chaz said, grabbing his PDA and beginning to type frantically on it, at the same time working at the console beneath the active monitor screen and pulling up a map of the city. “If we assume he was correct about where they met, then we can get a better idea of where the real shuttle is.”
“Do you know what he meant by the Pinnacle?” Dodds asked.
“They’re some of the tallest buildings throughout the capital,” Chaz answered, not taking his eyes off what he was doing.
“They?”
“Yes, there are six of them.” The big man nodded to the screen. “We’re close to one of them now, but the others are all over the place. One of them is right next to the palace.”
“I doubt they’ll have put down there,” Enrique said. “Not with all the fighting that’s going on.”
“Unfortunately, we can’t prove that it didn’t start until after they had set down,” Chaz said, finishing up. “Messages have been sent.”
“Right, what now?” Dodds said.
“I think it’s possible that Zackaria is still here,” Chaz said. “Th
e decoy is still here, after all. We just have to keep looking. I suggest we make for the nearest of the Pinnacles.”
“That was the spire-like building we saw on the way over?”
“Yes; so, not far from here.”
The three started out, making their way back up to the ground floor when Dodds’ earpiece popped. He stopped as the others did, listening to the excited voice that was coming through.
“Repeat – all squads, target located! We’ve found him!”
Another voice came back. “You broke up just then, please repeat. Who have you found?”
“Santa Claus! Who do you think? We’ve found Admiral Zackaria! Drone sighted him heading for the Vitas Pinnacle, with an escort of seven bodyguards!”
“Tim was telling the truth,” Dodds said. Zackaria had been found. They were minutes away from possibly ending the war! All they needed to do was capture the man. “Chaz, where’s the Vitas Pinnacle?”
“It’s the one we were heading for …” Chaz started.
Dodds didn’t wait to hear the rest. He raced away from Chaz and Enrique, moving as fast as he could in his heavy boots.
“Dodds!” Chaz called after him.
Dodds didn’t even look back. Something had fought its way up from deep within him – desperation.
*
He caught sight of the blood-red cloak from a little over a hundred metres away, a number of black suits walking alongside it, up a small hill. Just ahead of them was the shuttle. The side door was open, lights from within and all about the craft illuminating the immediate area, reflecting off the snow and creating an almost blinding radiance when looked at directly.
Thick snow was still coming down and the temperature seemed to have dipped further since Dodds had entered the Forum. He barely took notice, finding the snowflakes that drifted into his eyes and impeded his vision more of a nuisance than anything else.
Zackaria was almost at the shuttle. A few minutes more and the man would’ve been long gone. Dodds wondered briefly where the other squads were, before concluding that Chaz might have told them to hang back. He’d have made them very clear of one thing – it was all up to Dodds now.
“Admiral Jason Zackaria!” Dodds called, as he came to the foot of the hill. The reaction was immediate. Seven pairs of red eyes spun about to greet him, a multitude of weaponry being trained on him within a split second. At the same instant, he saw Zackaria’s hand go up and caught the sound of a command being issued in that incomprehensible language. The guns remained silent, and Zackaria turned to look down the hill towards Dodds. He peered at him for a time, his expression grave, as if he had recognised the voice, but was expecting someone else.
“I know you,” Zackaria said, eventually. His voice was clear, yet cold, emotion seeping into it. He saw standing before him the man he had mocked in his taunts of the CSN and in his propaganda for the Mission. “Why have you come here, Simon Dodds?”
Dodds opened his mouth to speak, but found himself with nothing to say. Now that he was here, facing the man, he was at a loss for words. Ever since Parks had picked him to go to Imperial space and seek Zackaria out, Dodds had dreamed of such a meeting. In those dreams he had known what he would say, how he would argue the man out of his crusade and convince him to call off the war, knowing each and every one of his counter arguments off by heart. But words failed him.
“I … to ask you to stop,” Dodds called. He held his rifle by his side, pointed down, aware that raising it might cause Zackaria’s bodyguards to react and open fire.
“Stop?” Zackaria said.
“It’s over, Admiral.”
“It soon will be,” Zackaria said, “and the Senate will be able to reclaim the Empire and start rebuilding it. It will become a glorious nation once more, untainted by the weak, the treacherous and the ignorant.”
“The Senate are dead, Admiral!” Dodds shouted. “They’ve been dead for years! You keep coming here looking for them, to see what you should be doing next, but what you should be doing is stopping. This was never what the Senate had in mind. They … they never wanted this much destruction, this much suffering.”
He was making this up on the spot and doing a poor job of it, he knew. He saw the heads of the soldiers move, the ruby eyes focusing on something else. The sound of running feet, sinking into snow, and panting came from behind him, and Dodds looked about to see Chaz and Enrique catching up on him. “Keep your guns down,” he warned them, as the seven bodyguards that stood with Zackaria split their focus to mark all three men. Zackaria’s lips moved, words that were clearly meant only for his bodyguards, not that any of the three men would ever have understood them, anyway.
“The peoples that represent the Senate may die,” Zackaria said. “But the will and the spirit that empowers it will live on, so long as there exists those to embody it. It is embodied in the Mission, the duty that we are bound to obey and with what I have been charged.”
“Admiral, please!” Dodds found himself starting to beg. Nothing seemed to be getting through to the man. Zackaria’s world and his task appeared all so black and white to him. “Billions of people are dead. The human race is at the point of extinction. Sol is almost all that is left …”
“And soon it will bend and fall to the Empire,” Zackaria said, without a trace of pity. “We will build a great monument there, to mark our victory over the dissidents, the traitors and the rebellious, to serve as an eternal reminder to all those who might oppose Mitikas.”
“Admiral, if there is any trace of humanity left in you, and I know there is, you will call off this pointless war and help us to save what little is left of the human race.”
“Save them?” Zackaria sneered. “Why would I want to save them? I ask you again, Simon Dodds – why are you here? To beg for their lives? To beg for mercy?” A humourless chuckle seemed to escape the man, though it was lost in the howl of the wind.
“Yes,” Dodds said. “I’m here to beg for your mercy; for their lives. I’m here to offer surrender.”
“Dodds,” Enrique hissed, “what are you doing?”
Talking to a brick wall and clutching at straws.
“Surrender?” Zackaria said. He wrinkled his nose. “That time has passed. We will take no prisoners and spare no lives.” He paused, raised an arm across his face, sneezed. He then continued, “When we are triumphant, we will appoint a new emperor. And, as decreed by the Senate, no non-Imperial will ever be allowed to set foot in Kethlan again.”
“This is hopeless,” Dodds said, turning exasperated to Enrique and Chaz. “He won’t listen to a damn thing that I say. Where the hell are those teams? We need to tell them to stop holding back,” he asked, pointedly turning his back on Zackaria and hoping his voice was low enough that the man wouldn’t hear.
“They’re coming,” Chaz said, “they’ve just run into some problems. A few more minutes, they said.”
Minutes? That was time they couldn’t spare. Dodds had a feeling that the admiral’s patience would soon run out, if it hadn’t already. It wouldn’t be long before the man ordered his bodyguards to do away with the three pilots that stood before him, perhaps choosing to finish Dodds himself. The thought was apparently written very clearly across his face, as Chaz moved slowly up beside him, his eyes telling Dodds not to make any sudden moves. Zackaria’s seven bodyguards swung their guns to focus exclusively on the big man as he came forward. Dodds hoped that they wouldn’t fire.
“Admiral Zackaria,” Chaz addressed him. “My name is Chaz Koonan. I was stationed here for five years, working for the Confederate Secret Service as an intelligence officer. I worked alongside Clare Barber and Natalia Grace, to uncover the true intentions of the Senate and to provide information to the Helios Confederation and allied Independent nations, as to how they could help to prevent the civil war.”
Zackaria looked at Chaz as he spoke, but said nothing. It seemed to Dodds that, though he appreciated that he was being addressed, Zackaria wasn’t prepared to entertain anyone othe
r than Dodds, with whom he had a special relationship.
“Admiral, do you recognise me?” Chaz tried some more, to no avail.
“He did the same thing when Kelly tried to talk to him on Mythos,” Enrique said. He too stepped forward, coming to stand next to Dodds, his approach far more ginger than Chaz’s had been. “Admiral Zackaria, my name is Enrique Todd. I am an ATAF pilot, one of the White Knights. Seven years ago, I spent twenty-four hours held in a cell, on the planet Mythos, upon your order, being tortured and beaten by your second-in-command, Julian Rissard. Do you remember? You came to the cell when Rissard took it too far. Well? Do you?”
There wasn’t even a flicker of acknowledgement from the admiral. As he had done with Chaz, he looked at Enrique as he spoke, but seemed neither to take in the words, or to care.
“No?” Enrique gnashed his teeth. “You know it’s rude to ignore people when they’re talking to you!”
“Enrique, you’re not helping,” Dodds said, as Zackaria looked back to him.
“Yeah, well, I never really was much of a spokesman,” Enrique replied.
Zackaria seemed to grow tired of standing there, Dodds saying nothing of consequence to him. He wrinkled his nose again, seeming to sniff. There then followed the gentle swish of the cloak as the admiral began to turn, indicating his intention to continue on into the waiting shuttle.
“I will send for you soon, Simon Dodds, so that you alone may witness my triumph. That is your reward for your persistence. Your companions’ lives are forfeit, brave as they are for bringing you here.” With that, he turned his back on the three and started to walk away.
“Oh, hell …” Enrique said, as Zackaria began raising a hand.
“Dodds, tell him you have an important message for him and then repeat everything I say!” Chaz suddenly said.
“W—” Dodds started. The guns of the seven soldiers had already divided themselves between Enrique and Chaz, reacting to some unheard command, unseen gesture or instinctual instruction.
“Just do it!”
“Admiral, I did come here for a reason,” Dodds started. “I have something to tell you, something important, something that only you … you … the … er …” He stalled.
The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy) Page 103
