“Okay,” Dodds said, pointing to the weapon in Zackaria’s hand. “Now that, I’m scared of.”
And with that, Dodds ran.
Dodds’ mind raced almost as fast as his legs moved, as he sprinted across the flight deck, towards the gaping hole that led deeper into Dragon. From what he remembered, the battleship was forty-five hundred metres in length, and about twelve or thirteen hundred metres in width at its longest horizontal point. That was towards the rear. Here, in the middle, it was likely about eight or nine hundred metres wide, so he’d need only run half that to get to the centre. Carrying the bomb, he could cover that in two or three minutes. He hoped it would be the former.
A great weight struck him from behind, pulling his legs out from beneath him, and forcing him to the floor which he narrowly avoided striking face first. The TSB spilled from his grasp, Dodds managing to juggle it briefly to prevent the impact on the floor from damaging it any further. It bounced and rolled away from him, as he rolled around to face his attacker. Zackaria had caught up with him. Damn, that man was fast for a seventy-year-old!
Dodds thrashed, kicked and wriggled his way to escape, throwing off the hands attempting purchase on him, and managed to get to his feet. He braced himself to move, anticipating that Zackaria would come at him immediately with the dagger, moving with a speed of a top-class athlete who had the strength of a bull. So it surprised him to see Zackaria only just getting to his feet. The man stood slightly hunched over, glaring at Dodds with a wary expression. He was breathing heavily. He looked exhausted.
Dodds stared in disbelief. He had never expected to see this. In the act of chasing him, could Zackaria have overexerted himself? This would make him a very different man from the one Dodds had met on Mythos. Back then, Zackaria had possessed an inhuman strength, like the other Pandoran soldiers. It now seemed that he had succumbed to the degenerative weakness that was affecting them all.
“What’s wrong, Admiral?” he began taunting the man. “Bit tired?”
Zackaria’s face darkened and he lunged, slashing the dagger through the air several times as he came. Dodds jumped back, avoiding the swipes with ease, circling around the man, and, as he did so, casting about for the TSB that he had lost. He hoped it hadn’t gone far. Cylinder-shaped, it could’ve rolled anywhere. Then he saw it, lying only a few feet away. He was making for it just as Zackaria swung the knife again. Dodds instinctively moved to catch the arm, forcing it back down before aiming a kick at his attacker’s torso. Dodds could feel from the start that it lacked power. He was therefore surprised when Zackaria grunted and buckled, giving Dodds a chance to snatch up the bomb once more, and continue down the hole that the ATAF’s plasma accelerator had cut through the ship. He only made it so far before he sensed Zackaria closing in on him again. This time, he stopped and rounded on the admiral. As the dagger again swished through the air Dodds attempted to run backward whilst simultaneously dodging the savage swings.
“Give up, Dodds,” Zackaria shouted, stabbing viciously, the blade glancing off the body of the bomb that Dodds had raised in defence. “Do you think I would allow myself to come this far, only to let the Mission fail now?”
The man was talking again. Dodds saw an opportunity to exploit that, perhaps make him see sense. Something had got through earlier. It might work again.
“Admiral,” Dodds began, “listen to me! Listen to me, Jason! You’ve fallen back on your old ways again. This isn’t what you should be doing, this isn’t what is right!” He continued to back off, preparing to defend himself against each swipe of the dagger, as Zackaria stepped after him. Dodds hoped that he wouldn’t trip as he progressed backwards. Only snap glances over his shoulder gave him the vaguest idea of where he was going. What was it that Chaz had said on Kethlan? Something about the true strength of the Empire, of how that power had been established through forging relationships with others; of how war and conquest lead to nothing but misery and suffering; of how the Senate had tricked and deceived all of Mitikas into a cycle of self destruction from its selfish wants and needs …
He tried saying all that. It didn’t work.
“I promised you once, Simon Dodds, that I would let you live long enough to witness our victory,” Zackaria exclaimed, his eyes blazing with fury.
Dodds retreated again, bumping into something behind, and found himself stuck.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Zackaria finished.
Dodds had nowhere to turn. He prepared to attempt to deflect the dagger but was braced for failure and the intense pain of the lengthy blade piercing deep inside him. It never came. Zackaria suddenly clutched at his chest, gasping out strangled cries. The man looked as if he were having a heart attack. Dodds didn’t wait around to find out whether or not that was true.
Turning to resume his journey, Dodds found that the hole blasted through to the centre of the vessel was diminishing in size. Clearly, the accelerator beam had lost its effectiveness over the distance and also through contact with the internal structures of the vessel. No matter. As long as it got him where he needed to go. He wondered why none of the other Pandorans had yet come for him. Was it that they knew that he was Zackaria’s alone, and that they mustn’t interfere? As he ran he saw that there were many security doors and blast screens still in place. Some were slightly open, and he could see hands trying to prise them apart. Other doors were being attacked with cutters. Dodds prayed that he’d have enough time to plant the bomb and get out of there before they broke through.
He looked around for Zackaria, expecting to see the man almost upon him once more. But the Imperial admiral was nowhere to be seen. Where had he gone? Dodds brushed aside the question and forged on.
“Dodds! Where are you?” Estelle again.
“I’m nearly there,” he answered, suddenly aware of how heavily he was panting. Four hundred metres. It was nothing in truth, but at this moment it felt like an incredible distance to cover. “How long have I got?”
“About seven minutes.”
He could hear the panic in her voice, as if she were terrified that he wasn’t going to activate the bomb and get out in time. No, he promised her, he’d activate it at the very least.
Finally Dodds judged he had gone far enough. He looked back, still unable to see Zackaria at all. Had he collapsed somewhere? No, Dodds couldn’t rely on that. He continued to look about as he began working. This wouldn’t be a difficult task – just arm the bomb and then run back the way he had come.
Then he paused. Could he just leave the bomb sitting there? The Enemy might simply pick it up and toss it out into space, leaving it to explode harmlessly. His eyes darted about his immediate surroundings, searching for somewhere to hide it. But where? Above him, at intervals, he could see air vents. They were quite a way up, well out of reach. Even if he could lift the device up over his head, he would still need to throw it several more feet for it to actually get into the ducts. He could never do it; already he could feel the bomb beginning to weigh him down, his muscles protesting against the weight. Light at first, perhaps only because he had been so much fresher then.
His eyes then fell upon an access panel at floor level. He wondered how difficult to might be to remove and how long he should spend trying to do so. He found it came open with ease, two hand holds on the side allowing him to pop the cover off. He expected to encounter wires and all manner of other components that would lie beyond but found none, discovering a crawl space leading off somewhere. He now only needed to arm the bomb.
“Someone talk to me,” he called urgently into his earpiece.
“Dodds, it’s Chaz,” the man came back.
“I’m preparing to arm the TSB. I just need to verify the steps.”
“Can you see the main arming unit?”
“Looking at it now,” he said, turning the device around so that the display was facing him.
“There should be a safety switch on the right-hand side. Flip it all the way up to allow for manual initiation.”
&nbs
p; He did so, seeing the display on the arming unit light up for a brief few seconds. “Done! What next?”
“Only two steps – there should be a button with a clock face on it and another with an arrow pointing to the right. Those are the ‘Arm’ and ‘Activate’ buttons.”
“Got it.”
“To arm the bomb, hold the ‘Arm’ button for three seconds. That will give you three minutes on the counter. After that, hold the ‘Activate’ button for three seconds to start the countdown.”
“Right,” Dodds said, looking once again down the shaft. He could arm the bomb, activate it and attempt to roll it down that crawl space. It wouldn’t be easy, but so long as it went far enough to make it difficult for anyone to extract it easily …
“Dodds!” Zackaria shouted as he thundered towards the pilot.
Dodds attempted to evade the oncoming man, but was too slow, Zackaria cannoning into him, both men bowling over. In the ensuing chaos, pinned beneath Zackaria, Dodds saw the dagger plunge towards him. He jerked, and somehow the blade missed, striking the floor next to him, creating a tiny spark as the metals clashed. That first stab had clearly been a blind strike. The next, Dodds knew, would be better placed. He struggled again as Zackaria righted himself, but remained trapped by the admiral’s weight. Zackaria’s face was contorted with malice as he raised the dagger again, determined to complete the task that he had started almost seven years before.
Scenes from Dodds’ dreams flooded back to him. They had always been the same – Zackaria pinning him down, preparing to end his life. All that was missing were the howling dust storms and the dead bodies of his friends. They would come soon, though. The order wasn’t important. Sorry, everyone, Dodds thought, as he readied himself for the fall of the dagger.
The older man raised his arm in triumph but it began quivering – quite violently. He tried to steady himself, his face shifting from anger to something close to distress. Seizing the opportunity, Dodds heaved with all his might and managed to dislodge Zackaria. The admiral seemed to go almost without resistance. Dodds made a grab for him, determined to bring this pursuit to a final end.
“You know,” he said, as he twisted Zackaria around, “this has gone on for long enough!” He punched Zackaria in the face, hard. “Plenty more where that came from,” Dodds said, striking again and again.
Once again something seemed to be impairing Zackaria, for the man did little to fend off Dodds’ blows. Dodds couldn’t help but feel great satisfaction from dealing them, years of pent-up rage flowing from him as he struck the man over and over, his task of delivering the bomb all but forgotten.
“This is for everyone you’ve murdered!” he shouted, as he punched the man. “This is for Black Widow!” Another blow. “This is for Spirit!” Another. “This is for Parks!” He struck harder than ever this time. “This is for Sol!” Again. He caught his breath for a moment, seeing the blood gushing down Zackaria’s face. It was not being absorbed back into the man’s skin at the rate he’d expect. Hardly at all.
“And this one’s for me …” he gathered all his strength to strike, to knock Zackaria down for good. Zackaria was suddenly faster.
In an instant, the dagger was at the correct, deadly, angle in the admiral’s hand and then embedded in Dodds’ shoulder. It was more excruciating than Dodds could ever have imagined. The blade seemed to be scraping against his collar bone. Dodds screamed, faintly aware of a voice in his earpiece saying something that was lost in the blinding pain of the dagger being driven deep into his body.
Zackaria tugged at the weapon, causing Dodds even greater agony. The pilot’s hand flew to Zackaria’s, desperately working to dislodge the admiral’s fingers so as to leave the dagger where it had been thrust.
No more time to play, Dodds thought. Zackaria, panting heavily on the floor, appeared to have overexerted himself once more. Dodds seized on this brief chance to finish the job of arming the bomb, his shaking fingers pushing down the buttons and starting the timer. ‘3:00’ flashed up on the screen, before updating to ‘2:59’ as he activated it.
He waited no longer than that, pushing past the pain as he hefted the device up and hurled it down the shaft. He didn’t see how far it tumbled, but was sure it had gone far enough. He then started back towards the flight deck, leaving Zackaria behind him, running as quickly as he could. Three minutes wasn’t long, not long at all.
He ignored the agonising spasms in his shoulder, as the knife jostled around in the wound. His vision filled with stars. Lucky he hadn’t been stabbed in the leg. He’d have had no chance at all of escape.
“Chaz, Estelle, someone,” he shouted as he ran. “How long have I got?”
No reply. He saw safety doors he had passed earlier almost open, a number of Dragon’s crew now trying to push themselves through the ever-widening gaps. Those cutting the doors were nearly through, too. Picking up pace, Dodds reached the flight deck sooner than he had expected. Maybe he hadn’t quite reached the absolute centre of the ship? It didn’t matter now.
The ATAF’s canopy was still open, the fighter resting up against a rack of maintenance boxes and equipment. Without the landing gear down, the cockpit was a good deal closer to the floor. Even so, it was too high off the ground to reach without some sort of boost. He planned his route back into the fighter as he approached, bounding up the crates, boxes and racks like an acrobat before slipping on the last and almost missing his entry back into the cockpit. He hung awkwardly on the side for a moment, before his leg found purchase, and he fell into the seat.
Dodds began working frantically at the ATAF’s controls, starting up the system, closing the canopy, raising the shields and acknowledging all the safety checks without bothering to read them. He hoped that he would survive what was about to come next. He’d never flown without the aid of a helmet, and his flight suit was damaged where the dagger was still embedded. Well, he’d just have to find out …
“Dodds!” Estelle again.
“I’m coming out!” he replied. “Ten seconds!”
“Dragon will be in range in less than ninety seconds …”
“Got it!” Dodds then looked to his planned escape route, and saw to his horror that the thick doors of the flight deck were shut. They must have been sealed as he had been running with the bomb. Such was his haste to return to his fighter that he had failed to notice.
Something burst into his vision, and he saw that the battleship’s flight deck was starting to fill with soldiers. Some were already discharging weapons, the plasma fire smashing into his ATAF’s shields. They couldn’t harm him, not with pistol or rifles. Those weapons didn’t have the power to test a fighter’s shields to any degree, especially those of an ATAF.
Looking for a way to escape, he could think of no way to open those doors. It was then that he finally sighted the hole that had been torn further down the ship. Of course; he knew it had to be there somewhere. It was now covered by a forcefield, part of an advanced emergency containment feature put in place to handle situations that blast screens couldn’t. There was his exit. He lifted off and prepared the ATAF’s accelerator, seeing the Pandorans around him scatter as the fighter began moving. He had little room in which to manoeuvre, but didn’t have all that far to go, either. He saw as he approached that the hole was wide enough to permit him through. It was all he needed to know, and, after aligning himself in its general direction, he fired the accelerator, not some twenty metres from the forcefield.
The impact of the beam on the barrier dazzled him, as it had done when he had first blasted his way in. The blinding flash ended just as quickly, and he tightened his grip on the flight stick as he felt a sudden tug on his ATAF, the effects of exposure and depressurisation kicking in. Bodies spun past him, trailed by a number of other items. He paid them no attention, wrestling back control of the ATAF the moment he was clear of Dragon. Adjusting his heading to face Earth and the allied forces, he raised his velocity to maximum.
Dodds accelerated hard, speeding away from
Dragon and into the cluster of warships and starfighters that seemed to have gathered close to her during the short period he’d been aboard. They would be keeping the path to Earth open, so that nothing could get in the way of the antimatter cannon. The Pandoran forces also seemed to have fallen back, away from the allies, creating a gulf between the two sides, one that Dodds now rapidly approached. He heard his ATAF’s console start to wail not long after he began weaving between the cluster of enemy forces, warning him of multiple weapon locks. He ignored them, keen only to get as far away from Dragon as possible.
“Dragon is preparing to fire …” he heard in his earpiece.
He tried to increase his speed, but was already travelling as fast as he could, the markers on his radar screen falling rapidly behind. Why hadn’t the bomb detonated? Surely it had been three minutes by now …
“Dragon is firing!” the same operator from the orbital station cried.
He caught a flash reflecting off his canopy, lighting up his instrument panels. Too late. Dragon had fired. He had failed. He waited to see the antimatter ball hurtle past him towards Earth. His comms were exploding with noise, a jumble of indecipherable voices and shouts. The screams were distorting in his ear, so loud that it made him want to rip his earpiece out. It then quietened down, and he discovered that he had been mistaken.
These weren’t screams. They were cheers.
He glanced to his radar, no longer able to locate the large marker that had represented Dragon. Refusing to put full faith in the system, he swung around, looking back to where the colossal battleship had been. It was gone, nothing left of it at all. The bomb had worked as planned. The cheers continued, growing louder and causing a great sense of euphoria to swell within him.
There was then a sudden flash not far from him, like a firework going off. It was followed by a second, a third, and then a fourth. It took him a few moments before he realised what they were. The TSB was completing its cycle, hurling the captured energy from the destruction of Dragon out into the neighbouring space. The same had happened in Coyote, when Grendel’s Mother had been destroyed, although here the result was far more potent. Explosions began booming amongst the enemy forces, reflecting off the hulls and revealing the smallest details of craft. It wasn’t long before the first casualty occurred.
The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy) Page 136
