The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy)

by Sweeney, Stephen

  Parks expected the usual result, expected to see sections start to splinter, the hull to start haemorrhaging, the interior to become exposed, and for gasses, crew and other internals to be flung out into space. None of that happened. Instead, the ship went up in one go, as though it were either rigged to explode or was in such a poor state of repair that a single well-placed blow was enough to trigger its demise. No one should be able to score that much of a critical blow, Parks thought. Not even Phoenix, with its upgraded accelerators, could obliterate a target like that, and certainly not if they were striking the front of the target.

  “Elliott …” Sima started, her voice laced with deep concern.

  Parks moved to reply, and then jumped as he heard a console somewhere up the bridge begin to wail. Here be dragons! he found himself suddenly thinking. “What’s happening?” he called up the bridge.

  “Jump points, Captain,” came the response.

  “See,” Storm said, confidently. “What did I tell you?”

  Storm clearly hadn’t heard what he had – the trouble in the operator’s voice. “Jump points?” Parks called back.

  “Yes, sir,” the operator answered. “Dozens of them.”

  Parks hoped he’d misheard that, but any doubts that he may have held over the number the operator had quoted were dispelled by the sight beyond the frontal viewport. Not far out from where Phoenix and the other frontline vessels were pushing forward, distortions in space could be seen. They quickly lapsed into the expected jump space conduits, whirlpool-like portals forming. From out of them rushed Imperial warships and fighters, wasting no time in surging towards Phoenix and the forces gathered around her. Already there was a sizeable force, and yet it didn’t end there.

  As the first batch of jump points stabilised, more could be seen swirling into existence behind them. Yet more warships spilled forth, joining up with those that had already arrived. And still, almost inconceivably, behind those more points could be seen forming.

  “Oh dear lord,” Parks heard a voice say. He wasn’t surprised to discover that it had been his own.

  “Phoenix to midfield teams,” Storm started. “Move up and engage hostiles.”

  Parks collected himself. “You heard the admiral,” he said to his fellow command, starting to delegate to the warships and starfighter squadrons that populated the midfield along with them. “Move up and engage enemy forces! Rearguard, hold position and await further instructions. Mr Liu, take us forward.”

  “Captain,” Liu interrupted. “We’ve got incoming.”

  “I see them, Commander,” Parks said, trying to keep the already deep-seated apprehension out of his voice.

  “No, Captain, not them.”

  “Then from where, Mr Liu?” Parks almost demanded.

  “Everywhere!”

  Parks moved to the helmsman’s console, his jaw dropping. He had seen the dozens of jump points ahead of them, but covering the display were yet more, blotting out almost everything else. They were everywhere – behind, above, below, and to all sides. He saw them on the radar, out the frontal viewport, in the feeds tracking the various aspects of the battle, the points completely surrounding them; an inescapable net that had them completely hemmed in. He swallowed. This was the real Pandoran force. What they had met before, and what had jumped into Temper, had been but a small fraction of it.

  “Captain, I’m reading several thousand starfighters of all classes, several hundred approaching on attack vectors,” a member of the bridge team prompted.

  Several thousand. Never in his life had Parks heard of such a threat. “All fighters, break and attack!” he called. “Shields to maximum, turrets to manual, prepare accelerators!”

  The words had barely left his mouth before the first wing of enemy fighters were crashing down upon them. Parks saw a torrent of cannon fire turning against an allied fighter squadron that had only just mobilised, around half of the unfortunate craft being taken out in the initial attack. Not long after, a tremendous rocket volley struck Griffin. The carrier held its position, but already Parks knew that the next wave of missiles would test the shields to their limits. Other vessels were suffering the very same. He saw a great explosion from nearby, realising that already one of the UNF battleships had been taken down. Plasma and particle cannon fire continued to spray the crippled vessel as the huge wave of fighter craft raced over it, stripping the warship of all its major exterior components as they passed.

  Parks issued more orders, prompting more fighters to launch and defend the carrier. The White Knights were already taking action, engaging their enemies with haste, though for all their speed it was clear that they weren’t putting even so much as a dent in the enemy numbers. So many ships. Parks had never seen anything like it. The jump points might no longer be forming, but it wasn’t as if the Enemy needed any more help.

  The scene beyond the frontal viewport and in the camera feeds was like witnessing a fireworks display two inches from his face – beam weapons coursed about, plasma and particle bolts issued forth from seen and unseen origins, glows of engines and subtle cyan trails from fighters, capital ships and missiles curled around in such numbers that they were impossible to count. Explosions bloomed, debris spun. In only a matter of minutes, the allied forces were down several dozen starfighters, two frigates and a battleship. And it was clear that it was only going to get a lot worse.

  The hunter had become the hunted.

  Another great boom and another warship fell. This time Parks was sure that it was one of the CSN’s own. Storm was shouting orders, somehow finding the resolve and the will to push on forward and continue the fight against quite clearly impossible odds. And then, finally, Parks saw Dragon, moving toward the frontline forces with no fear or hesitation, the immense vessel overshadowing and dwarfing absolutely everything around it, even Chimera that he could see pulling just ahead of it.

  Step into my parlour, Dragon seemed to speak to him across the field of destruction.

  There was little doubt in Parks’ mind that Zackaria was there at the front of the bridge, watching the destruction with no hint of emotion. Dragon’s bow was split, and once again he was treated to the sight of the battleship’s throat igniting, before it launched a ball of antimatter. It stuck a warship ahead of it, the vessel going up immediately and leaving nothing where it had once stood, save for a shower of multicoloured particles. Parks shielded his eyes from the sight, refocusing on the battle as soon as he was able.

  The minutes that followed became more chaotic than he had ever experienced in his life. Orders and instructions often came too late to save a fighter group from destruction, or grab an opportunity to inflict any meaningful damage against a key opponent. The battle was overwhelming him. Griffin was taking a hammering, the bridge operators desperately trying to direct as much power to the shields as possible. Even so, he saw that much of the carrier’s primary artillery had been targeted and destroyed.

  “Commodore!” Meyers cried, “with all respect, I must suggest that we withdraw immediately! We cannot fight these odds!”

  “Agreed!” Parks said, and looked at Storm. “Admiral! We must retreat!”

  There was initial hesitation from Storm. “Agreed”, he then said. “I will g—” Phoenix’s holographic feed suddenly cut out.

  Parks saw that a number of visible explosions had just dotted the massive carrier. The running lights flickered for an instant, but remained strong. The holographics then returned. Storm spoke, but at first there were no words to be heard.

  “… cutting us off,” he finished, as the audio returned.

  “Admiral, repeat!” Parks said.

  “They’ve just hit our engines,” Storm said. “Primary propulsion has been lost, and our secondary is barely adequate. The enemy are surrounding us. They look like they’re trying to cut us off!”

  “Jump engines?” Parks asked, doing his best to ignore the scene beyond the frontal viewport. A group of Thunderheads, nine or ten of the fighters, swooped down fro
m behind, dispatching a hail of missiles and rockets as they went. The shield held against some of them, but not all, and Parks felt the vibration all the way up on the bridge as they impacted, blackening the emblem of the griffin and smashing their way into the armour. We can’t cope with much more of this, he thought to himself.

  “Jump engines are down!” Storm shouted in return. “We can’t get away from here until we can bring them back up!”

  “How long?”

  The audio cut out again as Storm spoke. Parks had no idea what the answer might have been. Storm hadn’t been facing the display. He couldn’t be sure if it was just the connection between Griffin and Phoenix, but decided not to take the chance, giving orders that any available fighter groups near the massive carrier should lend their immediate support. He then sighted a group of vessels that looked tremendously out of place in the ongoing conflict – landers, and big ones at that. At least three were approaching Phoenix from different angles. There would be even more, Parks knew.

  “Captain! We’ve got Leeches incoming!” a voice called from Phoenix’s restored audio feed.

  “How many?”

  “Tracking seventy-two at close range. Another thirteen have just launched from the fifth lander.”

  Parks was staggered. Eighty-five Leeches. Over one thousand Pandoran soldiers. Had the Enemy made the decision to take Phoenix upon arriving, or had they known about it before? Whatever it may have been, they had held back from directing fatal attacks against the carrier because they were intent on adding it to their ranks.

  Both Phoenix herself and the allied fighters close by began to do what they could to cut down the vessels that were streaming towards it, but it achieved little. For every Leech that was shot down, another seemed to be right behind it. The enemy pilots were also offering their own starfighters as additional protection against the cannon fire and missiles, some willingly sacrificing both their lives and the fighter to allow a Leech to get close enough to its target. And despite the efforts to fight off their opponents, it soon became a feeding frenzy, Parks quickly losing count of the number of boarding craft that had started to burrow their way through the carrier’s shielding.

  Griffin rocked again, but he barely felt it, his eyes being so fixed on the allied force’s flagship. Liu’s hands seemed to be darting across his console, delivering instructions to the engineering teams to authorize the redirection of further power to the shields.

  “The first group are in!” Parks heard a voice cry from somewhere about Phoenix’s bridge.

  “Admiral!” Parks cried to Storm. “Set the self destruct and get off that ship!”

  Storm didn’t seem to hear him, too caught up in his delegation of security teams to tackle the invaders.

  “Another group are through,” an operator from Phoenix reported.

  “Location?” another responded.

  “Deck one, starboard side, sector five.”

  Storm said something else.

  “Another three groups. Four!” The operator began to rattle off the sectors and locations to Storm and the security delegates, and although Parks couldn’t see his face, he was certain that Storm’s confidence was already beginning to slip.

  Parks felt a tug at his stomach, a need to discover where Sima was and make sure that she was still alive. He ordered for cameras to focus on the four things that were most important to him at this very moment – Phoenix, Amarok, Leviathan, and the White Knights, the camera display cycling between all five of the starfighters at regular intervals. None of the sights brought him any comfort.

  Phoenix was continuing to suffer the attention of a great number of boarding teams, seemingly almost impossible to now stop, so great were their numbers. Amarok was being battered by attacks, the shield long since having yielded to the onslaughts. Parks could see pieces of the ship breaking off all over the place, chunks being ripped out of the armour. None of the attacks had yet breached the hull, but it was clear it wouldn’t be long before they did. The White Knights were coping better, but with the concentrations of fire continuing to strike them, Parks had to wonder just how much longer it would be before he witnessed the first ever failure of an ATAF’s almost legendary shielding. He wondered what the shield counters aboard those fighters were reading.

  He organised his thoughts, concentrating hard on what he needed to do. Escape was the clear, obvious move from here, and that meant returning as much of the fleet home as possible. “White Knights, Frozen Banshees, and any other heavy-class fighter units in close proximity to Phoenix – disengage from targets and cut those Leeches off!”

  The response to the order was mixed, as he was well expecting. The Knights had little problems in following it through, whereas the other pilots struggled to meet the call. A number were eliminated as they attempted to break away from the swarms of enemy craft that surrounded them, and when they came within range of Phoenix, aiming their weaponry at the boarding craft that were either clung to the hull, burrowing their way into the shields, or commencing the attachment procedure, they were met by fierce fire from opposing craft. The Pandorans wanted Phoenix badly and would stop at nothing to get her. It was clear to Parks that even in the swashes of adversaries he saw here, there were likely many, many more infected peoples still planet-bound. Phoenix would only aid in their mobilization.

  “Flight deck has been compromised!” he heard from Phoenix’s feed.

  “Tracy, you need to set the auto destruct and get off that ship!” Parks tried again.

  “No! I won’t lose her!” Storm finally rounded on Parks. “I’m going to bring her home, no matter what!”

  You can’t, there were too many of them, Parks thought. Even the ATAFs were struggling against the odds stacked against them. Missiles were striking the fighters, their forms almost a permanent fuzzy blue from the impacts being dealt to the shield. “de Winter,” he said. “Give me a status on your team-mates.”

  “We’re all down to around fifty percent on our shielding,” de Winter reported back almost immediately. “We can continue to try and prevent the Enemy from getting to Phoenix, but we won’t be able to do it forever.”

  Parks saw a beam weapon from an Imperial warship streak into the middle of the gathered fighters trying to defend Phoenix, aimed with startling precision, taking down the allied craft, but missing the Pandoran pilots who moved easily out of its path. He then became aware of something else – Sima’s holographic feed had cut off. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but it must’ve been within the last few seconds. He looked to the camera tracking Amarok, expecting to see the carrier coming apart. It hadn’t yet, but he could see those holes in the hull now, dotting the port side of the ship.

  “Give me a report on Amarok,” Parks found himself demanding, above everything else.

  “Heavy damage to all sections,” he was told. “The bridge has been crippled and there are multiple hull breaches. The flight deck is in an indeterminable state, but I doubt they’ll be able to launch fighters. Weapons systems are failing.”

  The bridge has been hit? Even through all that protection? Parks thought, finding himself shaking. While the carrier’s bridge was situated far deeper in the ship than most others and the viewport considerably smaller, it seemed it was still vulnerable to highly dedicated attacks. “Are the bridge crew dead?” he asked. Dear God, please say no.

  “Unknown, Captain,” the operator replied.

  A beam weapon then hit Amarok, cutting through the sliver of shielding that was unable to recharge fast enough to offer the vessel the protection it desperately needed, and began to slice the vessel apart. A terrible sensation twisted Parks’ stomach as he watched it do its work. He had to help Sima! He made to order the Knights to divide themselves in three – two to go to Amarok, two to go to Leviathan and one to remain and attempt to somehow save Phoenix. A tremendous flash from the frontal viewport caught his attention just as he opened his mouth and for the briefest of moments, he saw Ironside go up. There then followed a boom and Griff
in plunged into darkness. He heard cries of panic from the bridge in the sudden gloom and felt himself catapulted against a wall. He tried desperately to coordinate his limbs, immediately sensing that he was floating, that the gravity systems had failed. The lights came back on not a short time later, the gravity stabilizing, screens and systems starting back up. There was a fire somewhere, he could smell it.

  “Back to your places, now!” he barked to the entire bridge. “Status, Mr Liu, Weathers,” he added to the two at the front, who were scrambling back into their seats. Something powerful had struck them. He prayed it wasn’t a torpedo. Griffin would likely start to come apart very soon if that was the case. He was grateful that it hadn’t been Dragon’s main cannon.

  The reports came in – there were precious few vessels left now, probably only a fifth of the fleet that had arrived in the system. The Pandorans might lack emotions, but one would be forgiven for believing that they were exacting some sort of revenge, following the outcome of the first phase of Black Widow.

  And still the enemy came.

  “Get ready! Get ready!” Parks heard Storm cry.

  Parks found the sequence that followed almost fixating. Storm and several members of the bridge crew were removing weaponry from a gun locker, tossing the firearms to one another and aiming for the front of the ship. Though he couldn’t see it, it didn’t take long for Parks to realise what was happening. Perhaps having failed to make it to the bridge as quickly as they would’ve liked, Phoenix’s internal bridge security being magnitudes higher than that of the ships that had come before it, the Pandoran soldiers were attempting to enter via the second most direct route – the frontal viewport.