The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy)

by Sweeney, Stephen

  “As the last remaining true representative and purveyor of the Mission was meant to hear,” Chaz prompted, for Dodds to repeat. “My companions brought me here tonight to ensure that I could deliver that message.”

  Zackaria stopped, the hand that still remained by his side making a subtle gesture, before he lowered his other. Five of the bodyguards’ guns were lowered, two remained up, marking Chaz and Enrique. He looked back down the hill. “Go on,” he said.

  “Admiral, you know me as Simon Dodds, a pilot enlisted in the Confederation Stellar Navy, one of the White Knights, and one of the ATAF pilots,” Dodds began, repeating what Chaz said. “You know me as a man who has stood up to you and the rule of the Senate, one of the arrogant, the ignorant and the traitorous. But I have come here today to tell you that you and I are more alike than you could ever have imagined.

  “We each enlisted in our respective armed forces to fight for the nation that we loved and respected, to defend it and its people against invasions by foreign aliens and to uphold what is right. You did just that when the Senate first abandoned the Forum here on Kethlan and made threats against the Crown Emperor’s life.

  “But you cared not just for the lives of the citizens of Mitikas, but also those outside of it. Barber, Grace and Koonan were brought to you by Jessica Duke when the war with the Senate began to escalate, and you warned them all to leave, to save their own lives. You knew then that the Senate had become very dangerous, and that they would bring about the destruction of the Empire and all its citizens.

  “And when Barber, Grace and Koonan promised to fight alongside you to help defeat the threat of the Enemy, you called them brave and said that once the danger was passed, you would toast your victory together – three nations coming together to fight against one common enemy, one common evil. You wept the day that the Senate took Julian Rissard from you, because he sacrificed himself to keep them from you. But they got to you too, and twisted your mind to believe that the destruction they were causing to the Empire was right and just.

  “But a part of you still knows that it is wrong, a part of you that is struggling to escape the controls forcefully imposed on you.”

  The admiral’s pose seemed to relax a little, as if he was more carefully considering the explanation and the reasoning. Something seemed to be getting through. A faint but detectable change came across his expression and he started towards the three men, stopping halfway down the slope.

  “It’s working,” Enrique said, his voice low.

  Dodds ignored him, concentrating only on repeating what Chaz was saying.

  “The Senate tricked and deceived many into doing their will, into believing that what they were doing was right. When Helios saw what had become of Mitikas, of how the people had suffered, we knew we had to stop them. We tried in Aster, when we ambushed Dragon. Our goal was never to destroy Dragon or make a mockery of your forces, but to find a way to reach you, so that we could talk. That is why later, in Phylent, I refused to kill you – I knew you were acting against your will, being manipulated by a common enemy. We next met on Mythos, and I did not challenge you there, either, for I wanted only the chance to speak with you, face to face. But again the lies and trickery of the Senate ran too deep, and you saw me as an enemy, a traitor and a miscreant. The strings were pulled and you bent to their will, spreading the Senate’s goals of fear, mistrust, suffering, death and destruction to everything you found.

  “And now, after the violence that the Senate started here has consumed the galaxy, I have come here one last time to tell you that we are not and never have been your enemy. We are your friends, and friends look out for one another. We saved as many people as we could, but the hate was just too strong.

  “There is still a chance though, Admiral, that we can save those who remain; and to do that we need only save one – you, Jason. Let us save you. Let me save you.”

  “Dodds, offer him your hand,” Chaz whispered in Dodds’ ear.

  Dodds did so, walking forward a little more, a little way up the slope. There he held his ground, his hand outstretched. A hand offering friendship. He found he didn’t need to force any kind of sincerity onto his expression. It was there already.

  A grave look then came over Zackaria’s face and his gaze shifted from the three pilots, to the scene behind them. Dodds followed his eyes to the cityscape of Kethlan’s capital. The skyline was shattered, the buildings a former shadow of themselves. Zackaria silently looked upon it, as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes and he was finally seeing the devastation that had been wrought on the capital for the first time. He turned about, seeing the same destruction in every direction he looked. He then raised his eyes to the sky. The clouds that continued to dump snow on the city remained, allowing him to see no further, but Dodds knew where he was really looking.

  “It’s all gone, Admiral,” Dodds said, without needing a prompt from Chaz. “The ring, the orbital stations, the planets and systems beyond … the Empire. They forced your hand, Jason; the Senate made you do it.”

  Zackaria’s eyes remained locked on the sky for a long time, before he lowered them once more to Dodds’. There, now, was a look that Dodds never thought he’d ever see – grief, fear … guilt. Several snap movements from Zackaria now, eyes darting to his guards, the shuttle and the three pilots, seemingly needing to run somewhere, but not knowing where. He opened his mouth to speak, raising a hand towards the three.

  Dodds kept his hand outstretched, waiting for the words he longed for Zackaria to speak and still hoping the admiral might take his hand. He felt almost as if, should that moment come, it would be as if he, Dodds, had exorcised the will of the Senate from the man; mind over matter overcoming the billions of nanobots controlling him. There was nothing quite like the human spirit.

  He then noticed movement on the side of the hill. Figures were approaching Zackaria’s bodyguards, all clad in black and staggering about. There were a lot of them, almost a dozen already, with what looked like more coming over the crest. One moved with greater purpose, striding towards the admiral’s group with vigour. The bodyguards seemed not to notice, and as they grew nearer the lead soldier withdrew a pistol and aimed it at the back of Zackaria’s head.

  Dodds didn’t know why he did it, he just felt that he needed to. “Admiral, watch out!” he called.

  The eight figures on the hill turned as one, the bodyguard’s guns finally opening up and shredding the suit of the man that had approached them. The action was met by a hail of fire from the group that still came on, as well as more from several unseen assailants elsewhere. The hillside quickly became chaos, with fierce fire being exchanged between the two groups. It wasn’t long before the bodyguards reacted in a way that Dodds had seen them do before, surrounding Zackaria, creating a human shield and shepherding him away to the safety of the shuttle.

  Enrique swore, raised his rifle. Dodds followed suit, sweeping it between the two groups, looking for targets.

  “Chaz!” Dodds said.

  “Teams are seconds away!” Chaz said.

  “That’s not nearly soon enough!”

  “Then we’ll get him ourselves!” Chaz said. “Aim for the degenerates!” He raised his own rifle and began shooting targets.

  Enrique and Dodds joined in, finding the degenerating arrivals quite uninterested in the three men spraying them and focused only on engaging Zackaria and his bodyguards.

  “After them!” Chaz called, starting up the hill, feet sinking deep into the snow. The three men began an urgent pursuit, but found that they were already too slow. The bodyguards surrounding Zackaria were as effective as always, moving fast and gone in a flash, up the ramp and into the waiting shuttle in seconds, the craft’s engines engaging instantly.

  Dodds stumbled in his haste, almost losing his grip on his rifle, feeling it as a sign that he was also losing his chance to bring Zackaria in. So close – they couldn’t let him get away! Dodds tightened his grip, to ensure the weapon didn’t get lost in the snow
and freeze out. The shuttle’s door clanged shut, bolts slamming home. Too late! Dodds was sure he heard Zackaria utter a single word, just before they did so. “Judas,” the man had said.

  “What the hell do we do now?” Dodds cried. The degenerated soldiers saw their quarry had escaped them, and started to pepper the outside of the vessel with weapon fire.

  “Keep them away from the shuttle!” Chaz said.

  It didn’t prove difficult, the wandering men and women were as oblivious to the three pilots as ever, and with a sinking heart, Dodds watched the shuttle lift off and disappear up through the clouds, the area around them gradually descending into darkness as the lights from the craft were swallowed up. Immediately he heard feet crunching through the snow and finally saw the teams that had once promised to assist in the apprehension of Zackaria make their appearance. Twineham led the group, a good twenty or so soldiers following behind him. He’d seemingly lost people en route, but that wasn’t good enough for Dodds.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Dodds was unable to stop himself from shouting at Twineham. “Could you really not have gotten here just one minute sooner? We just lost another chance to end this thing!”

  Twineham ignored Dodds, his face grave. He glanced skyward, apparently having witnessed the shuttle’s escape as he and his team had approached.

  “Shouldn’t we get to the shuttles and go after him?” Dodds pressed.

  “No,” Twineham said. “I received orders from Commodore Parks that, should we fail to capture Zackaria here on the ground, we were to return to Griffin immediately and prepare to head to Sol.”

  “Sol?” Enrique said.

  “What’s happened?” Chaz said.

  “We’ve lost the battle for Alpha Centauri,” Twineham said. “All forces are falling back to Sol, to make preparations for final defence.”

  Dodds looked to his companions, seeing their faces now just as grave as Twineham’s. If only they’d been faster. So near and yet so far. And now it looked as though they only had one chance of victory left. He felt his grip on his rifle become slack, but no longer cared if it ended up in the snow.

  IX

  — Dead Men Walking —

  So close, Parks thought. If we’d only arrived just a few hours earlier we might have caught him. But now there were bigger problems.

  “Are you still tracking them?” he asked, returning to Liu’s side and looking over the man’s shoulder, to his console.

  “Yes, sir,” Liu said.

  “Still coming this way?”

  “Still coming this way.” Liu tapped at his console, Griffin’s targeting systems zeroing in on the vessel he was tracing. “It’s proceeding at a steady rate, moving between the abandoned ships.”

  “Have we managed to get hold of its signature yet?”

  “It’s identifying itself as ‘INF Sandwalker’,” Liu said, pulling up a schematic of the warship. “However, we have no record of any such ship ever existing in the Imperial navy.”

  Parks looked to the holographic camera feed tracing their potential new adversary. He saw the markings on the vessel, its designation – now a confirmed match for the USID it was broadcasting – and insignia on the side identifying it as an Imperial warship. It was proceeding with care, moving between similarly-sized Imperial vessels, so as not to easily expose itself to weapons fire. Not that it mattered, not given its type and class.

  “It could be a new build, one that was completed just after the start of the civil war,” Parks said. “If that’s the case, then we’d have no record of it.”

  “I’m not so sure, Captain,” Liu said, manipulating the schematic of the vessel on screen and tapping on particular portions of the ship. “The design isn’t entirely consistent with other Imperial Naval Forces warships. The engines and the placement of the weapon arrays, as well as the overall construction, lend themselves more towards Independent nation design.”

  “Do we have anything on our systems that is a close match?”

  “We can start a scan,” Liu said. “It should only take a few minutes at most.”

  “Do it,” Parks said, studying the steadily approaching ship with growing trepidation. “But it’s most definitely a dreadnought?”

  “Unfortunately, sir.”

  There was only one reason why such as ship would’ve jumped into the system, Parks knew – it was here to protect Zackaria. It was larger than most, a Drake-class dreadnought, one of the most powerful in existence.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t here already?” Parks asked. “It’s not one of the ships from the outer limits of the abandoned fleet?” It had been impossible to check them all; there were simply too many. Approaching Kethlan, they’d had to simply run with the belief – and the hope – that none of the occupants of the ships were alive or in any fit state to control those vessels.

  “One hundred percent,” Liu said. “We still have the jump signature from where it emerged. Unfortunately it does appear to have originated from another Imperial system,” he added.

  Parks balled his fists a little tighter by his sides. If the worst came to the worst, he’d simply have to send Agent 57 and Colonel K – and perhaps even the Goon Sunrise – forward to slow it down. The dreadnought would bulldozer them in minutes and it would cost them several hundred lives, but if it resulted in them getting what they came here for … People had made bigger sacrifices in the past. The needs of the many.

  He looked to Weathers. “Have you heard back from the ground teams?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “They’re returning to their transports and preparing to leave the surface.”

  “Where’s Zackaria’s shuttle?”

  “It’s just hitting the stratosphere,” Weathers confirmed, working quickly at her console. “We’ll have a camera locked on it any second now.”

  A computer system jingled somewhere down the bridge and Parks saw that a previously static holographic feed had started tracking a small vessel that was travelling up through the cloud layer of the planet. It was moving quickly and would be in low orbit quite soon. Parks allowed himself a little smile. The shuttle might be fast, but it wasn’t going fast enough. Griffin was close enough to it that they could catch it before it reached the jumpgate, which was itself a significant distance away. Funny, Parks mused, all they’d needed to do was to move all their pieces in to place and force the king to make his move, no longer able to hide in his castle. Just like in a game of chess.

  “Wait until the shuttle is in upper orbit and send the intercept team after it,” Parks ordered. It was unlikely that Zackaria’s transport wouldn’t have spotted Griffin hovering so close to the planet, but even if they had, it wouldn’t be so easy for them to simply turn around and return to the surface. They had him cornered. Checkmate.

  The intercept team dispatched as soon as the shuttle was clear of the atmosphere, a stream of Rays and TAFs hurtling towards it, clearly outnumbering the small vessel by a good thirty to one. An absurd ratio to tackle a ship that couldn’t fire back, but better to be safe than sorry. And after all, they had brought one starfighter carrier, two frigates and a lander all the way to Kethlan for this very purpose. The faster TAFs could act as sheepdogs, herding the shuttle towards the Rays with threats of weapon locks and intentional stray fire. After that, a few rounds of the Rays’ mag cannons would be enough to bring the transport down, and then it could be towed back to Griffin. Parks only hoped that Zackaria wouldn’t decide to take his own life rather than accept capture.

  He glanced to the feed monitoring the Imperial dreadnought, considering whether he should order Griffin closer to Kethlan, to shorten the round trip of the interceptors and the returning drop teams. Seconds could be a factor here. The moment the Sandwalker – if that really was its name – moved into firing range, Parks was certain that it wouldn’t hesitate to do so.

  The TAFs, as expected, were well ahead of the Rays, closing in on their target rapidly. But as they did so, the shuttle produced a sudden burst of speed. Liu’s
console began to whine. Parks’ thoughts turned instantly to the threat of the dreadnought, anticipating an early attack. “Mr Liu?”

  “Sir, there’s a jump point forming,” the man said.

  “Where?”

  “Ahead of Zackaria’s transport.”

  As he watched, Parks saw the slice appear, the portal swirling into existence shortly after. But though he expected something to exit the tunnel, it was in fact the transport that fled into it. A moment later the portal snapped shut, leaving the intercept teams with no target to pursue. Liu and Weathers looked at one another as the shuttle disappeared out of the system, before turning to Parks, both as slack jawed as one another. Parks said nothing and simply suppressed a sigh.

  Why am I not surprised? he thought, staring out at the scene ahead. It appeared that the Imperial navy had indeed found a way to construct a jump drive so compact and efficient that it could easily fit into smaller sized vessels. It must’ve been a working proof of concept. He considered that the allied forces should count themselves lucky that the Pandoran forces hadn’t possessed the skills to build and insert the drives into starfighters. If they had … Well, the result probably wouldn’t have been much worse than what the war had already come to.

  “How long do you suppose they’ve been able to do that?” he eventually asked of the bridge crew.

  “Captain, the Sandwalker is moving into weapons range,” Liu prompted.

  Parks saw in the feed tracking the dreadnought that the huge ship had moved out of its cover and into the open. It was now powering towards them, with clear intent. “Looks like they’re done hiding,” he said. “Not that I’m in any mood to play. Notify the fleet to prepare for jump to Sol. What’s the status on the drop teams?”

  “All teams are loaded and have commenced planetary leave,” Weathers said.

  “ETA?”

  “Forty-five minutes at the earliest.”

  Hell. Should’ve held Todd back. There was no need to send all three of the Knights to the surface. Chaz, yes, for his experiences of Kethlan; Dodds, if only for the possibility that Zackaria might speak to him. That the admiral might somehow acknowledge Todd for his time spent being held hostage and tortured by Rissard was threadbare reasoning at best. Yes, he should’ve kept one of them back here, even a single cloaked ATAF would’ve been enough to nip around behind that warship and hit it in the back. Too late now. Though he was certain that they could outrun it, they’d still have to make preparations to stand and fight.