“I …” he began to answer Jenkins’ question, racking his brain to think of a way to bring the device in. Short of pushing it, he could think of none.
“Snag it!” Estelle suddenly said.
“What?”
“Dodds, snag it!”
“With?” he almost shouted back at her.
“The tether aboard my ATAF!”
It took Dodds a moment to realise that Estelle didn’t mean the fighter she was sat in, but the one he was; Estelle’s ATAF.
“How does it work?” he demanded to know, and began stabbing away at his console, working his way through the screens and configuration systems as he followed her instructions. The battle around him dissolved as he did so, fading away into the background. He heard nothing but Estelle’s voice, saw nothing but the setup screens for the tether. Usage was simple – a pull on the missile trigger when the target was in the crosshairs. He found himself wishing it could have been routed differently. There was far too much room for a fatal error in this current setup. He gave it a quick test, seeing a cable shoot out a short distance from beneath his ATAF, automatically reeling back in when it failed to latch on to anything.
“I’m ready,” he said, a sense of fear and uncertainty that he’d not known for quite some time building within him. He swallowed, bringing the Waiter into view.
“Go get it, Simon,” Estelle said.
He readied the grapple, aimed it towards the Waiter, and pulled the trigger. He snagged it first time, the surprise of his success causing him not to notice at first. He then began to quickly reel in the line as Estelle had instructed, so that the bomb could be brought in as close to him as possible. At the same moment he saw an enemy approaching fast, hearing with it the blare of a missile warning lock. Unsure of what effect the countermeasures might have on the Waiter, he only willed the reel to retract faster. He anticipated resistance once the TSB moved within the radius of his starfighter’s shield, but discovered that it slipped happily beneath them. Maybe it had something to do with the bomb being connected to the reel, and the reel being connected to the ATAF … He gave it no further thought than that. Now enclosed within his ATAF’s defences, it would be safe. For now. He saw a Sphinx closing fast, blues and whites, the siren of its lock sounding as it dispatched a missile at point blank range. The rocket hit dead-on, blinding him for an instant.
Twenty-one percent. A new low for his shields. Still, he was alive, and the bomb remained undamaged.
“I’ve got the Waiter,” he said, raising his velocity to maximum and starting back towards Griffin. What they were to do now, he didn’t know. What he did know was that he needed to retreat from the enemy frontline.
“Commander Dodds, please repeat,” Jenkins said. “Do you have the Waiter?”
“Yes, Admiral,” Dodds said. “It’s with me now.”
“Commander, that bomb is currently our only hope of destroying Dragon. I need you to turn around and take it over to the battleship, where you will complete the deployment manually. Do you understand?”
No?! he thought. No, not at all! “Admiral?” he asked.
“You will now be acting as the delivery system for the TSB, in lieu of the collision and the original system’s subsequent impairment,” Jenkins continued matter-of-factly. “We need you to take that bomb to the Dragon, Dodds.”
Dodds was still heading towards Griffin. Turning around didn’t feel right. “How will I get it onto the ship?” he asked, incredulously.
“We will pulse the shields, as originally planned,” Jenkins replied, as straight as ever.
“Dodds, it’s all up to you,” Estelle interjected, before Dodds could reply. “You need to do this.”
Dodds glanced over the battlefield once more. The ODPs were all almost completely gone now and there was definitely a gap in the orbital ring. Griffin was still taking hits, as was Amarok. The back row was being engaged full-on by the advancing Pandoran line, who clearly now outnumbered them a good eight to one. Leviathan was gone, and it looked as though Cratos, too, was struggling against its own attackers. Estelle was right, it was up to him. He turned to his radar, filtering and then cycling through the targets until he came to the one he wanted. He then looped around.
“Your boys had better get their timing right, Admiral,” he said, as he started towards Dragon.
“Will pulse the shields to coincide with your approach, Commander. The fighter bays on both sides are open. You’re to board from there. You will have a three second window in which to get aboard. Do not cloak your ATAF, as it will make it impossible for us to synchronize the pulse with your entry,” Jenkins responded. She was somehow managing to remain practical and emotionless.
Dodds went quickly, surging through the huge wall of starfighters, weaving and diving as he did so, hurtling past the capital ships, hearing lock warnings flare for a brief few instances before they fell silent once more, moving closer and closer to the former CSN battleship. He wasn’t all that far from it now. He’d be on top of it in under a minute.
100km …
Dragon’s guns swung around to face him, the cannons opening up. Dodds reacted, banking and rolling, flying in a completely random pattern while maintaining his approach.
73km …
Lock warnings sounded, missiles leaping from points all over the battleship. This time he stabbed the countermeasures, adjusting his heading to better align himself with the fighter launch bay.
51km …
“Admiral, are you ready up there?” he asked.
“Ready, Commander.”
20km …
COLLISION WARNING! The computer started screaming at him. Dragon’s shields were still up, and Dodds had to resist the sudden urge to bring himself to a halt or pull out of his dive. “Admiral …” he started.
“Sending the pulse.”
An instance of Operation Menelaus came back to him. What if the pulse failed? If it did, he’d slam headlong into Dragon’s powerful shields, killing himself, destroying the ATAF and taking the one chance of victory along with it.
There was then a flicker of something across the body of the battleship, a ripple that lasted for but a fraction of a second. In that moment, Dodds saw that Dragon’s shields had indeed dropped and that the way ahead of him was clear.
Almost.
The forcefields enclosing the flight deck were still up, the barrier that prevented matter from travelling in or out of the ship when the bay doors were exposed to open space. Not only that, but the deck itself appeared to be full to bursting – fighters, soldiers, munitions, equipment …
With no time to do anything else, he discharged the accelerator beam that had been intended for the Draugr, preparing to brake and slowdown as soon as he could. He wasn’t sure what happened next, the blinding flash and the chaos of the jolting scene making it next to impossible to say.
There was a tremendous crash, his fighter rocking and bouncing, almost forcing him out of his seat, even in the already cramped conditions of the cockpit. Splinters of light burst all over, a shower of whites, blues and yellows. His world became a blur, turning black for a time, before he was able to focus again.
He took in the scene once he was finally able, seeing that the ATAF had come to a halt. Either he had successfully applied the brakes or he had hit something. The view from the cockpit was misaligned. Things were floating past him, turning slowly as they did so. The deck had clearly been exposed during his entrance, multiple explosions having obliterated much of what had been there, before the remains had been sucked out into space. Emergency systems had engaged fast, but had apparently failed to keep the deck and the outside space apart. Maybe a hole had been blown somewhere in the hull.
He patted himself down, surprised to find himself uninjured. A few aches here and there, but nothing serious. He just hoped his legs still worked. Clearly the TSB was also still in one piece. He’d have been vaporised otherwise. One thing that hadn’t survived the impact entirely was his helmet. There were several visibl
e cracks crisscrossing the visor, spreading out at various points, like spiders’ webs. He must have smashed it heavily off something as he was jostled around. Thankfully, it was still airtight.
He wondered about the state of the ATAF, and looked to the readouts to get an assessment of just how badly it was damaged. The condition was normal. He glanced to the shield display.
1%.
A message below warned of the decreased recharge rate and a less than optimal overall shield capacity, a warning more common to the TAFs and Rays.
Never thought I’d ever see that, Dodds thought, before deactivating the shield altogether. He then checked his flight suit and helmet, and unbuckled himself from the seat.
“Right, hero,” he said, opening the canopy, “let’s finish this.”
XXIV
— In the Belly of the Beast —
The first thing Dodds discovered as he made to leap from the ATAF was the lack of gravity on what remained of Dragon’s flight deck. Spanners, debris, wreckage of fighter craft, and various pieces of unidentifiable maintenance equipment were drifting all about. What looked like the remains of a plasma cannon floated past. His eye caught a couple of black-clad bodies, too; or rather, what was left of them. His forced entry onto the flight deck had caused it to depressurise, the results of which were clearly still in effect. While the forcefields containing the deck and launch bays were once again operational, a hole had likely been torn elsewhere, flinging all manner of items out into the surrounding space, including any crew that would’ve been working here. He imagined they’d flail about helplessly for a few minutes before succumbing to the exposure. Maybe shorter, if their superhuman abilities were dwindling. He was grateful for that – he could get this done a hell of a lot faster, knowing that he wasn’t about to be fired upon. Time was short. He had to get moving.
He kept a strong grip on the edge of the cockpit and began pulling himself around the ATAF, which was gently bobbing in the absence of gravity, and made his way towards the rear, to retrieve the TSB. He considered for a moment that the bomb might have detached itself from the tether, before finding it still secured by the grappling hook. Freeing it, he gave it a once-over to check its condition.
Though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for, the device appeared not to have suffered at all during his crash landing. Looking more closely, he could see now where the earlier collision had damaged it. Most likely, a fast-moving fighter had clipped it. There appeared to be a piece missing, a number of stray wires extending out from the main body, looking to have been severed from some unknown component. That might explain why the operators had lost control – they were able to talk to the device, but the relay wasn’t connected to anything. It was still out there, drifting somewhere amongst the fighters, warships, plasma bolts and missiles.
“Dodds!” a voice sounded in his earpiece. It was Estelle. “Dodds, come in! Please respond!”
“I’m here,” Dodds said.
“Dodds! Oh thank God, you’re alive!” Estelle said. She sounded frantic. “Where are you?”
“Came in through the port side launch bay,” Dodds said. “I’m on one of the flight decks.”
“Dodds, get out of there! That place is going to be swarming with soldiers!” Estelle cried.
“Estelle, I’m okay,” he reassured her, “There’s no one here, they’ve all been spaced. The entire deck has been depressurised.” Hearing that he was actually on board Dragon, Estelle must have envisioned him surrounded by hundreds of black-clad soldiers, all training guns on him. Thankfully not. Though, if he was being honest with himself, he had actually been expecting that himself. He could only speculate why that wasn’t the case. He imagined that security and safety systems were preventing anyone else from entering the deck for the time. That wouldn’t last long …
“Where are you?” Dodds asked Estelle. Close by, he expected, which would be why he could hear her so clearly.
“Circling,” she confirmed. “But I need to pull back, I’m taking a lot of fire here. Dodds, listen – we don’t have a lot of time.”
“Then you need to tell me how to arm this thing. Get on the blower to the operators and find out what the hell I do! There aren’t any buttons or anything on here that I can see.”
“Okay, stand by.”
An almost eerie silence descended as Estelle went mute, leaving Dodds feeling all alone on the battleship. He clutched the bomb tight, daring neither to let it go or move away from his ATAF. Estelle would be conversing with Jenkins, as well as the operators on the orbital station, as Dragon drew closer and closer to Earth. He examined the bomb once more as he waited, looking for that which he may have missed. It couldn’t be that hard to arm it.
“Dodds.” Enrique’s voice. “Dodds, do you read?”
“Here,” he responded.
“We’re going to have to do this in shifts, as Dragon is really putting in an effort to keep us all away from it,” Enrique explained.
“Understood. What have you got for me?”
“Okay, this is going to be tricky,” Enrique started, “it’s possible to arm the bomb yourself from there. Can you see a panel with black and yellow strips around the outsides, with the word ‘Danger’ written in red?”
Dodds looked all about the device, twirling it around. There was nothing of the sort. “I can’t see it,” he said, not willing to waste any more time, and hoping that Enrique could provide him with a better hint of what he was looking for.
“It should be near the warhead end.”
He looked again. No panel, but … “I think the panel’s broken off,” he said. “There’s what looks like a circuit board towards the top. Looks like it’s connected to an LCD screen or something. The panel’s definitely been taken off, but the rest looks undamaged. There are what looks like two buttons …”
“That’s it!” Enrique said. “You can arm it there, but don’t do it yet!”
Dodds jerked his hand away.
“In order for the bomb to achieve its desired effect, you’re going to have to get yourself as close to the centre of Dragon as possible. Once you’re there, arm it and get the hell out of there. You’ll have three minutes to get to minimum safe distance.”
“Three minutes?!” Dodds said. “You’ve got to be kidding me! How close is Dragon?”
“About eleven minutes from minimum firing range …”
Dodds swore. Enrique concurred.
“Dodds, I need to pull out,” Enrique then said. “I’ve taken heavy hits from several missiles. My shield is going to hit single digits if I stay here any longer. I’ll send Chaz or Kelly over …”
Silence descended once more as Enrique moved out of range, and Dodds knew that he was now on his own. Still, he had all the information he needed. Even so … Dragon was just eleven minutes away from firing? Hell, that wasn’t enough time, not to get to the centre of the ship. How was he supposed to do that? He’d have to fight his way through hoards of soldiers and God only knew whatever else he might find here.
He then looked across the flight deck, and saw something that filled him with hope. From where he floated, he could see that an inner wall of the flight deck had been ripped open, leaving a wide, gaping hole. The tear seemed to extend for quite a distance, perhaps even all the way to the middle of the ship. The port and starboard flight decks were more or less midway along the length of Dragon. All he had to do was grab the bomb and cross the width. A simple task, what with weightlessness and the aid of a propulsion pack. He could probably take the pistol stowed in the ATAF’s cockpit with him, too. In fact, why not just get back into the ATAF, fire up the accelerator and blast his way right through the rest of the ship? He could arm the bomb, drop it off midway through, blow a hole on the opposite side and be out before—
THUNK!
Dodds suddenly felt himself become heavy, and crashed down onto the floor, face down. The gravitational systems had re-engaged! Something must have been wrong with them – it had been far more abrupt than
it should have been. Something else was wrong, too. He could hear the hum of the deck; feel it, as well. Cool air was filtering in from somewhere. It was thin, oxygen clearly still building to sufficient levels following the restoration.
He then saw that the visor had shattered in the impact. He had been sure he had heard it do so as he had struck the floor. He briefly considered what he could do with it in bits, before swiftly giving up. The helmet was useless to him now, more of hindrance than anything. He wrenched it off, keeping hold of the earpiece, and giving a start as he looked back at the bomb that now lay in several pieces. He hoped it hadn’t been fatally damaged. He made to pick up the warhead and detonator when a new sound caught his attention.
Or rather, the lack of a sound.
He looked around, discovering the source of the noise that he had picked up on in the first place. A Sphinx had arrived on the flight deck with him. It was the same one he had seen out on the field, adorned with a slightly different colour scheme and markings from the others; the one that had outsmarted his targeting systems and had refused to surrender itself to his repeated attempts to bring it down. The canopy opened and the pilot was on the deck in a single bound, crouching briefly as he landed. He drew himself up, removing his flight helmet as he did so, and Dodds felt the breath catch in his throat.
Admiral Jason Zackaria fixed Dodds with a cold stare, one of contempt and anger that the man would dare to step foot on Dragon. On his ship.
“Once again I find you trespassing where you do not belong, Simon Dodds,” Zackaria said. “I will make sure that this is the last time.”
Dodds steeled himself, standing tall and determined in the face of the man who had so haunted him over the years. “I’m not scared of you any more,” he said, grabbing up the warhead, surprised to discover how light it was compared to the heavy container he had helped carry from the Elpis. Zackaria said nothing, simply holding up the ceremonial dagger for Dodds to see.
The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy) Page 135
