The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy)

by Sweeney, Stephen

  “We had nukes at Alpha,” Mandeep said.

  “And a lot more of them, too,” Meyers added.

  “The information that has been brought here is very interesting,” Adrian Parsons said, speaking as always, Dodds noted, as though he was a grand authority on any subject he chose to lend his voice to. “But we have no evidence of how far this disability goes and how many of the soldiers it truly affects. Before we go further with our assumptions, we should gather and analyse more data and make our findings a lot more transparent to all involved parties.”

  Dodds noticed Parks attempting to hold back a scowl. From what he understood, Parks had been forced to work with Parsons throughout the development of Operation Sudarberg, as well as hold ‘discussions’ with him during the IWC General Assemblies. Apparently, Parsons had been aboard Grendel’s Mother during the assault on Mythos, happening to be on the bridge when the bombs had gone off on the carrier’s flight deck. He had suffered terrible burns to his face, arms and chest back then, wounds that appeared not to have healed too well over the past few years. The skin on his face was somewhat flaky and cracked, as well as red and a little blotchy in places. Scars, too, were quite prominent on his hands. He had clearly undergone surgery in an attempt to restore his vanity, though it hadn’t served him too well. Even so, the accident seemed to have done little to undermine the man’s conviction that he still commanded authority.

  “If you want my opinion, Admiral,” Parsons added, looking to Jenkins. “I think it’s important to establish whether this affects all members of the Pandoran army, and not just a specific group, such as those who are at the bottom of the social circles for example; those that might have been considered the working or lower-middle classes, perhaps.”

  “The Pandorans don’t have ranking or social structures, only excepting Jason Zackaria, Julian Rissard and Anthony Hawke,” Natalia said, adding to the scowls that were already being directed towards Parsons.

  “That’s assuming that the data provided in the Grace Report is factually correct,” Parsons said.

  “I collected it myself.”

  “As I said.”

  Natalia’s scowl deepened, and Jenkins looked ready to step in to push the meeting on, when Natalia interrupted. “Could we go back to the footage of Kethlan, please?” she said. “To when Dodds, Koonan, and Todd met with Admiral Zackaria.”

  Joyle Lynch, operating the video, restored the file, seeking through the footage until they reached the speech.

  “What are you looking for, Grace?” Jenkins said.

  “Hold on,” Natalia said, as the film continued to play out. “There. Rewind ten seconds and focus on Zackaria. There, see?”

  “See what?” Jenkins asked.

  “He sneezed.”

  “Well, sure,” Enrique smiled. “It was freezing on Kethlan. It was, what, -15°c or something like that? We were all feeling it. My nose pretty much stopped running because my nostril got so frozen up. I was shivering, even with all that thermal stuff on.”

  “No, you’re missing the point,” Natalia said. “The Pandorans don’t sneeze, cough or suffer from any similar aliments.” She waited for the reasoning to sink it.

  “He’s got a cold,” Parks concluded.

  Dodds was surprised that he hadn’t cottoned on before. The admiral had been standing not twenty metres in front of him when Dodds had spoken, and yet those two sneezes had passed completely unremarked. All that they had seen in the space above Kethlan, Tunstall’s explanation and the encounter with the ex-soldier in the transmission room, had not prepared him to suspect Zackaria’s own ill health. Dodds glanced over at his team-mates, each looking as bemused as he. Even Chaz, usually the first to pick up on such things, seemed taken aback.

  “So,” Natalia said, looking back to Parsons, “I think it’s safe to assume that it affects all members of the Pandoran army, from the top to the bottom, and anything existing in between.”

  Parsons studied the screen for a moment, before appearing to accept Natalia’s assessment, nodding and sitting back in his seat without a word. Dodds noticed a hint of a smile pass between Parks and Natalia, both being clearly pleased that Natalia had talked the man down. The smile still didn’t seem as genuine from Parks, though. What was that all about?

  “But we still have to fight them,” Parsons allowed himself.

  Jenkins looked at Parks, “Admiral, what is the size of the remaining fleet?”

  “Off the top of my head, we have a dozen carriers, forty to fifty frigates, thirty landers and about one hundred other battleships, all in various states of repair,” Parks said. “Starfighter numbers are still being counted, but we’re shy of about six thousand at present. What you can see there,” he added, gesturing to the window of the conference room, “is probably about half of it.”

  Outside lay a great number of large warships, with many other smaller vessels moving between them. It was a sizeable force. Even so, Dodds could already see that it probably wasn’t enough. Memories of the sheer weight of numbers that had met them at Adetton came back to him. Even the lifeless, drifting warships in Kethlan outweighed what little the allied forces had left.

  “Didn’t we tow some craft from Kethlan?” Jenkins said.

  “Only four, Admiral,” Parks said.

  The revelation seemed to ground Jenkins somewhat, her look of optimism slipping. For a moment, she looked as though she might be about to suggest heading back out to the Imperial space and recovering some more. She then composed herself. “What do we believe will be the Enemy’s first choice of target when they arrive in Sol? Will they seek to attack Mars first and then move on to Earth?”

  “It’s difficult to say,” Parks said. “From their point of view, both planets will be viable and necessary targets. However, we know that the Pandoran fleet tends to dispatch scouts to their targets before moving in. Based on their past behaviour, they will likely choose to ignore Mars once they learn that the planet has been abandoned.”

  “They never attacked any of the non-aligned and Independent systems that had been previously evacuated,” Lynch added. “They simply investigated the system and the planets, and then continued on.”

  “Interesting that they didn’t decide to destroy the towns and cities there, too,” Kelly said.

  “Perhaps they plan to do it later,” Natalia said. “My research indicated that the Enemy essentially made two sweeps of Imperial space when the war started there – one to eliminate the most immediate opposition and then to mop up those that might have escaped the first time.”

  “To take out anyone that had fled underground?” Kelly asked.

  “Very few inhabited planets offered anything remotely suitable,” Parks said. “A depth of over one mile would be needed to escape nuclear attacks of the magnitude the Enemy used, or the firestorm caused by the antimatter cannon. Quite possibly even further, to guard against the subsequent radiation. But those that did somehow survive simply wouldn’t have the capabilities or resources for long-term survival. The planet would basically be reduced to ash.”

  “What causes the firestorm? Could it be that it only happens to planets that have been terraformed?” Mandeep asked.

  “From what I understand, the detonation of the antimatter explosion in the atmosphere results in such high temperatures that it causes nuclear fusion to occur. That then starts a chain reaction that spreads across the rest of the atmosphere,” Parks said, though he sounded a little uncertain. “But don’t quote me on that.”

  “People, we’re digressing,” Jenkins intervened, steering the meeting back on course. “We need to get the total number of everything available to us – a full audit of all warship classes, starfighters, munitions and personnel. Once we know what those numbers are, we will begin tactical planning. Assuming that we are able to take out what remains of the Pandoran force, we still have to handle the most immediate danger to Earth – Dragon.”

  “I think we should start with what we know about her,” Parks said. “Elimi
nate everything we have already tried and see what methods we’re left with. Agreed?

  “So, to start with, we’ve known for quite a while that the fail-safe security override won’t work. Following on from Operation Menelaus, we determined that the ship’s crew have almost certainly physically removed the hardware hypervisors protecting the core CPUs. At this point, there is no way for us to disable the ship remotely. We’d have to actually get aboard and pull the plug on the essential systems.”

  “What about the engines?” Jenkins asked. “Can we do something about those? If it can’t move into firing range, then there is nothing it can do.”

  “Direct attacks are also worthless,” Estelle said. “During the encounter at Mythos, we directed five simultaneous accelerator beams at it, and they made little impact on the shields.”

  “But those were ATAF accelerators,” Jenkins said. “They are two to three times less effective than the weapons they are based on. Have there been any efforts to direct an equivalent number of beams at Dragon from full power accelerator cannons?”

  “No one’s ever been able to get close enough to try,” Lynch said. “Going toe to toe with Dragon these days is suicide. And even if that wasn’t the case, getting the warships into position to effect such an attack is next to impossible. We’d need to clear away nearly every other Pandoran craft out there to make it in any way achievable.”

  Jenkins pondered for a time. “Let’s put that to one side and come back to it later. If we can’t come up with anything else, then the brute force approach may well prove our only option. If so it’ll have a considerable impact on the coordination of the main engagement and how we arrange our forces. What else?”

  The room continued to list the attempts that had been made at routing or taking over Dragon, over the years. None had proven successful, hardly any causing the ship any difficulties worthy of note. Dodds became aware, as proposals and theories were bandied about, that the two representatives of Earth’s government were beginning to look somewhat concerned. They began conferring with one another, keeping their voices low and largely undetectable.

  Jenkins soon summarized. “So, we can’t disable it remotely, and we can’t penetrate its shields deep enough to blow out its engines.”

  “Which leaves us with applying one of the asteroid defence methods,” Natalia said.

  “Destroy it?” the government minster spoke up.

  “Yes, Minister,” Jenkins said. “Destroy it.”

  “Out of the question!” the minister said. “That battleship cost trillions to develop and build. You will have to find another way.”

  Dodds couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was this man serious?

  “At this point, destroying Dragon is our only option,” Parks said.

  “Admiral Jenkins,” the minister said, “you gave me your word that you would seek to recover Dragon without causing the ship any damage that could lead to its future usefulness becoming compromised; the same agreement that we initially made during Menelaus.”

  “Yes, and we saw how well that turned out,” Lynch muttered.

  “I did no such thing,” Jenkins said to the minister. “My exact words were that I would do what I could to prevent the destruction of the ship. As you have heard, we have exhausted every possible means we have of taking back the ship rather than destroying it. We have tried for years. At this stage, we don’t have any choice.”

  “If I were anyone else,” Parsons suddenly quipped to the minister, “I would assume that your goals here were not simply to regain control of the most powerful battleship ever conceived, but rather to equip the Confederation with the means to achieve galactic supremacy, once the war is concluded. Of course,” he waved a hand dismissively, “I would never endorse such accusations myself. The good admiral’s wiliness to take down the beast more than demonstrates that such a conspiracy does not exist.”

  Wow, Dodds thought, you truly are a pompous cretin.

  “Oh, do shut up, Governor,” Jenkins snapped at Parsons. She then returned to the minister and his aide. “Gentlemen, this is not something that is open to further discussion. As already established, we have tried for years to retake Dragon from the Enemy, each attempt proving as disastrous as the last.”

  “If—” the minister began.

  “The ship must be destroyed, Minister!” Jenkins said. “We have established that we haven’t a hope in hell of taking that ship back from the Enemy, no matter what their state of physical or mental health might be. If you don’t like it then feel free to leave, as you will clearly have nothing left to contribute to this discussion.”

  At that, both the minister and his aide looked at one another, before the two pushed back their chairs, packed up their tablets, pens and papers, and exited the conference room without another word. Silence followed them out the door.

  “And you can wipe that smug grin off your face, Governor,” Jenkins added. “Otherwise you’ll find yourself involuntarily exiting this meeting early, too. Now,” she said, returning to the conference room, “what have we learned about the Pandoran’s methods when attacking a star system?”

  Lynch retrieved the control device for the video stream off the table, rewinding footage of Alpha Centauri to where Dragon had fired its antimatter cannon at Sky.

  “That is something I was about to come to,” Lynch said. “Here, it may look as though the fleet have moved in and that Dragon has fired at the first opportunity, but there’s a little more to it than that. Notice here how a number of the warships are holding back and keeping step with Dragon, while the others advance the line, effectively clearing a route. Dragon’s antimatter burst can travel a significant distance before the containment field breaks down and dissipates, but it is still range-limited. It would seem that a good number of the Pandoran warships act solely as an escort to Dragon.”

  Dodds glanced towards his wingmates, seeing them nodding their understanding of what was being said. Whenever he had fired his ATAF’s cannons during a battle, the bolts that failed to strike targets – a rare instance, given the starfighter’s capabilities – would streak off into the distance quite a way before they eventually dissipated, popping like a bag of green flour. He wasn’t entirely sure how far they travelled, but he had, from time to time, seen them make contact with a very far off object.

  “We believe that this is due to the Pandorans wanting to move within an optimal distance of the target before firing,” Lynch continued. “However, it appears that Dragon frequently moves closer to the planet than it might need to. We have recorded an instance of it moving in well over two-thirds of the minimum firing distance.”

  “Why?” Jenkins said.

  “Most likely to ensure that nothing could come between the antimatter container and its target. While the ball moves at a terrific speed, issuing it from too far out could enable us to fend off the attack simply by moving something into its path.”

  “So, they’re erring on the side of caution,” Chaz concluded.

  “Exactly,” Lynch said.

  “Sure, but, how does this help us?” Mandeep asked.

  “Presumably it gives us a window in which to work, before they get close enough to Earth to fire,” Parks said.

  “But what if they jump in closer?” Estelle said.

  “They don’t,” Lynch said.

  “They might,” Enrique added.

  “No,” Lynch shook his head. “Jumping in too close to a planet presents the danger of a failed disengagement from jump, due to subspace distortion being significantly raised because of the gravity well.”

  “And this being the final phase of their first sweep, they’d not risk it,” Jenkins said. “This is meant to be their triumphant moment – storming the castle and taking the king.”

  Lynch once again manipulated the display control, changing the screen to show an overview of the space around Earth. The planet itself lay on the left side of the screen, while a number of rings at various intervals radiated out from it. “Here is the
most likely point of entry into Sol,” he said, tapping at the device. A crude top-down depiction of Dragon popped into existence on the right-hand side of the screen. It moved from right to left, before stopping midway between two of the rings. “Between here and here is where we need to hold Dragon, until we can either board or destroy it.”

  “Destroy it,” Jenkins emphasised.

  Chaz pointed to the screen. “Is that our point of no return?” he asked. He indicated the inner circle, just outside Earth.

  “Correct,” Lynch said, using the device he held to annotate the on-screen image. “This is the minimum distance from which they can fire the cannon, to hit Earth. If Dragon gets here, and we cannot find a way to turn her around or force her back, then it’s all over.”

  “That’s not exactly close,” Parks said.

  “No, it’s not. Though, as already discussed, Dragon usually moves in a lot closer than this before firing. I think it’s safe to assume that they will do so when attacking Earth, too, unless their line of sight is totally clear and they aren’t facing off against too much opposition.”

  The room turned as one to the window. Dodds studied the mass of warships that hung in view there. It was as though each somehow knew that their contribution to the upcoming battle wouldn’t be enough to prevent the Pandorans from getting the fatal opportunity to fire. He wondered how often Dragon’s operators could charge the cannon to fire. He’d never seen it done. It was worth finding out. “How often can Dragon fire?” he asked.

  “Once is generally enough,” Enrique said.

  “No, I mean, if the bolt was intercepted and destroyed before it could reach its target, how long would it be before they could fire again? Ten minutes? An hour? Longer?”

  “You’re not thinking of flying into the path of it, are you, Commander?” Parks said.

  It wasn’t what Dodds was thinking at all. He wasn’t even sure if any such bravado would help. “No,” he said. “I’m just throwing the question out there. You did say that they only fire if the path is clear, so it suggests it must be a long time. If they could fire again quickly, then they’d likely not be so cautious. I remember during Menelaus how, after they took down Grendel, the cannon shut down for the remainder of the operation. I’m thinking that if they could’ve fired again within a short period, they’d have done so.”