The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy)

by Sweeney, Stephen

  “Everyone ready?” Estelle asked a short time later.

  Dodds was about to respond, when his console jingled.

  “White Knights, this is Spirit Orbital,” a voice began, “we have a situation that requires your immediate attention. Please acknowledge. Over.”

  Estelle did so.

  “Knights, we have received an SOS from the research vessel CSN Cardinal. They have come under attack from a raiding party. Search and rescue teams have been dispatched, but we need you there sooner. We need you to get over there to secure the area so the rescue teams can work. We’re broadcasting you the vessel’s last known location.”

  “Acknowledged, Spirit, we’re on it,” Estelle said.

  Dodds’ console jingled and he looked to his main screen, which was now filling up with the received information. Be careful what you wish for, he thought to himself.

  IX

  — The Cardinal and the Thief —

  Sam Williams was probably going to miss the opera now. Somewhat typical how, after three weeks of relative quiet and short dispatch runs, a major incident should crop up on the day of his wedding anniversary. There was no way he was going to get this dealt with, get down to the surface, get washed, dressed and to the opera house on time. In planning the night, he had permitted himself about one hours’ grace, in case of a hitch. This SAR dispatch had well and truly consumed all of that. Jessica would be sat patiently at home, ready and waiting for the surprise he’d promised her. He hated to disappoint her, but he knew she’d understand. One of the many reasons he’d married her. Never mind, Madame Butterfly would just have to wait for another evening.

  He heard his earpiece jingle.

  “Williams, we’ve received word from the White Knights that the area is secure,” came the voice of the bridge, “we’re moving into position next to the Cardinal.”

  “Got it,” Williams responded. “What about the gate? Any more intel on its status?”

  “Spirit Orbital’s confirmed that it’s currently deactivated. It’s been that way for the past six months. Nothing’s been going in or out of there since the start of the year.”

  “Copy that,” Williams said, relieved to hear that the jumpgate the Cardinal lay in front of was indeed out of service. “We’ll be waiting by the airlock.”

  He heard the familiar sound of the Merekat’s docking clamps lock into place, sending a small vibration across the floor. He glanced over his team as he waited for the bridge to give him the all-clear to proceed. His team totalled seven, clad in dark blue, lightly armoured suits and protective headgear, a torch attached to each helmet. On their feet they wore magnetic boots, which could be activated in low and zero gravity situations, allowing them to work more easily.

  As with most dispatches, their inventory was made up of a standard loadout – maintenance equipment, to perform short-term repair work; medical supplies, to handle injuries; and other miscellaneous tools, such as security and terminal bypass gadgetry, to grant them unhindered access to whatever and wherever they needed. Though not a common part of the loadout, on this occasion, with the prospect of coming face-to-face with a raiding party, every member of the team had also been outfitted with some kind of defensive weaponry.

  With one last clunk, the docking tube was secured in place and the warning light on the airlock door extinguished. Williams’ earpiece popped once again.

  “Docking tube fixed and stable,” the bridge reported.

  “Acknowledged,” Williams said, sliding Merekat’s airlock doors open with a tap on the control panel. “Moving towards target airlock,” he added, as he gestured to his team to proceed down the length of the cramped and palely-lit boarding tube.

  “Copy that, Williams. Scans indicate some internal damage to the Cardinal. Proceed with caution.”

  “Will do. Any indication of hostiles aboard?”

  “We’re not picking up any movement right now, but we suggest maintaining an open channel.”

  Williams and his team made their way to the opposite end of the tube, halting outside the Cardinal’s sealed outer-airlock door. “Somerville,” he said, turning to a member of his team, “see if you can open that lock.”

  Somerville produced a small device, an electronic actuator, and connected it via a series of cables to the exterior control panel. She worked it for a short time, before the door lock gave a short buzz.

  “Unlocked,” she confirmed.

  “Excellent. Thank you, Kate,” Williams said. “Right, remember everyone – no energy weapon use unless absolutely necessary. We want to minimise damage to the interior if we encounter any hostilies.”

  The seven men and women stood to either side of the airlock, so as not to expose themselves to anyone who might be waiting on the other side. Williams gave Somerville the signal to open the airlock, and as the door slid aside they were met only by an empty corridor, pitch black, save for where the falloff lighting from the boarding tube illuminated the entrance.

  “Archer, Fisher,” Williams indicated the two men closest to the entrance to enter first. One after the other they ran in, sweeping the immediate area. They determined that the corridor was empty, though they continued to stalk forward cautiously, until they came to the end.

  “Clear,” Fisher declared to the rest of the team, who proceeded in after them.

  “Barker,” Williams said, looking to the newest member of the team, “you got any field readings for us?”

  Barker removed an adaptive sensor from his belt and used it to scan the area, correlating an overview of the working systems. “Minimal power on this deck,” he reported. “Gravity and life support are functioning as usual. Looks like most of the remaining operational power is coming from the direction of the upper decks.”

  Williams nodded. “Pair up and spread out. Get in touch as soon you encounter survivors or hostile forces.”

  The group did as ordered and proceeded to explore the darkened lower deck of the ship, carefully checking possible hiding places in various rooms and ensuring they illuminated all unreachable areas well. With the exception of a hacked airlock door – which they assumed the invaders must have used to get inside – they came up empty-handed. The team soon regrouped by the lift to the upper deck and found the doors burnt and pock-marked; it appeared a struggle had taken place.

  “The lift’s still operational,” reported Somerville and, at the request of Williams, pressed the call button. The lift arrived and the doors parted, greeting the team with the sight of the slumped body of a dead man. Blood was splattered over his clothes and the interior of the lift car. The multiple lights of the investigators lingered on the body for only a fraction of a second, before they fell upon the shotgun the man still clutched.

  “Bloody hell!” Barker cried.

  “Don’t worry, lad, this is hardly a surprise in these situations,” Williams said. “Something like this was bound to show up sooner or later. Someone certainly did a number on this guy.” He then said, “Merekat, this is Williams – we’ve found a body. Judging by the way this guy is dressed, it isn’t one of the crew. If the state of the lift is anything to go by, there has been one hell of a firefight in here.”

  “What’re we looking at?” the captain asked.

  “Definitely a raiding party,” Williams said, edging forward and examining the dead man’s body. He pushed aside the beaded dreadlocks that covered part of the face, revealing a tattoo of a spider’s web on his left cheek. “Looks like some kind of gang sign on the face, but not one I recognise. Cheap body armour; didn’t do him any good,” he muttered. “We’re proceeding to the upper deck.”

  *

  The upper deck of the ship told a very different story to the lower. Bodies, trails of blood and other clear signs of fighting were in evidence throughout. Shorting electronics lit the dark corridors with bright bursts of spark light.

  “Be careful of those,” Williams said, pointing out some wires that hung inconspicuously from the ceiling. “They might not be live, but best
not to take the chance.”

  He then set about dividing the team, instructing one half to accompany him to the bridge, and the other to spread out along the upper deck and continue to search for survivors. They moved with care, ensuring they ducked under the loose cabling. The team encountered yet more bodies as they went, none of whom displayed any signs of life. A scattering of clothing styles suggested that the crew and their attackers had suffered an equal number of casualties.

  *

  Williams and his group discovered most of the causalities on the bridge. A brief examination of the bodies revealed that some of them had died as a result of close quarters combat, the unfortunate crew of the Cardinal had suffered multiple stab wounds, some, in addition, had had their throats cut. It was a horrific scene, and though Williams was used to finding crew wounded, some with disfiguring injuries, this was by far the worst he had ever encountered. He could hear Barker breathing a little more heavily than normal and started to regret selecting him for the dispatch. He was perhaps a little too green for an outing like this. He clapped the young man reassuringly on the shoulder and gestured the group forward.

  “It seems the crew tried to barricade themselves inside the bridge,” Williams reported back to Merekat.

  “Any sign of what the attackers might’ve been looking for?”

  “Nothing yet, but I’m guessing that they may have been scavengers. Looks like the Cardinal was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Now on the bridge itself, Williams began delegating duties. “Somerville, see what you can find out from the ship’s logs. Fisher, see if you can bring up any working security cameras, it could help us to locate survivors. Barker, mark the approaching corridor. And … easy on the trigger, eh?” he added.

  As he waited for Somerville and Fisher to bring up the information he sought, Williams’ eyes strayed to the frontal viewport and he looked out at the scene around the ship. He noted first the jumpgate, the massive, unmissable ring-like structure forming the backdrop to the whole picture. It appeared cold and dull in its deactivated state, no visually pleasing multicoloured illuminations that marked an operational gate. It couldn’t have been more than about two hundred metres in diameter. One of the smaller ones.

  In front of it, large quantities of debris drifted around the area, some of which appeared to belong to the Cardinal, the rest no doubt the remains of whoever had attacked her. From the looks of things, the crew had used what little offensive weaponry the ship was outfitted with to make a conservative effort at defending herself. It clearly hadn’t prevented those interested in it from getting aboard.

  Somewhere further off he could make out what appeared to be the remains of a small vessel, perhaps a one-man fighter craft of some sort. From what the SOS had said, and from what had been communicated to him via Spirit Orbital, the raiders that had attacked the ship had each arrived in their own individual craft. He imagined that it must’ve come as something of a disappointment when they had come aboard and discovered the ship to be little more than a research vessel, with no cash, armaments or anything merchantable within.

  He noted Buffalo, the secondary SAR vessel that had accompanied them into the vicinity. It was hanging back, keeping out of the way until it was called in to assist. Just in front of it were four CSN starfighters. A bunch of TAFs and one Ray, by the looks of it. A good thing they had been in the area, he thought, even if there had been no need to call upon their services. He watched as a piece of wreckage drifted toward one of the TAFs, bouncing harmlessly off the shielding.

  “Got some of the cameras working,” Fisher said behind him.

  “Ah, good.” Williams turned, to see a number of monitors feeding imagery from various parts of the ship. “Have you man—”

  “Sam, you might want to look at this,” Somerville interrupted.

  “What’s up, Kate?”

  “The logs indicate that some data has been downloaded from the computers,” she said, running her finger across several lines of text on the screen. “The timestamps say it happened around thirty minutes ago.”

  Williams read the lines back to himself, recognising them as file transfers. It appeared as though the data had been copied onto an external device. “That doesn’t look good,” he said.

  “Maybe the crew were backing up data to a secure medium,” Somerville proposed.

  “I doubt it,” Williams said, pointing to a particular part of the log. “From what I understand, that part there means that it was all encrypted, anyway. Can we get a dump of these logs, just in case the system goes down and takes the logs along with it.”

  “We can, yes,” Somerville nodded. “It’s probably all backed up to the blackbox, anyway, so—”

  “Wait, what’s that?” Williams said, pointing to another screen next to her that had begun churning out endless lines of text, scrolling up the display faster than he could read.

  “Hold on a second while I have a look,” Somerville said, moving over to the relevant console.

  Williams became aware of something happening beyond the frontal viewport and looked back in time to see activation lights starting to dot the jumpgate, coming online in a clockwise motion. Barely a few seconds after completion, a bright point appeared, expanding out quickly and forming what looked like the entrance to a circular tunnel, the mouth turning slowly, like a lazy whirlpool.

  Hadn’t he been told that the gate had been deactivated? If so, how was it that it just opened a jump point? He hoped nothing was coming out of it. It would hit them for sure!

  He prepared to order Somerville to terminate all power to the Cardinal, in case the ship were suffering a malfunction and had somehow triggered activation of the gate, when he saw a shape dart swiftly into view from beneath them. It looked like a small craft. One of the raiders! The craft sped into the jump point, appearing to accelerate down the tunnel at tremendous speed. Mere moments later, it had become nothing more than a pinprick in his sight, whereupon the jump point closed, the tunnel shrinking away to nothing.

  “Cardinal just activated the gate and opened a point,” Somerville confirmed. “It looks like whoever used it had set up a scheduled system event some time earlier.”

  “Try to determine what the destination was,” Williams said, then, “Merekat, did you get that?”

  “Heard you loud and clear,” Merekat’s captain responded. “We’re already hooking into the gate’s usage history logs. Shouldn’t take long.”

  “Good,” Williams said, before he then broadcast a warning to his team. Should the escaping vessel have been hostile, it was possible that there may still be hostiles on the ship. “Be on your guard and take extra precautions.”

  He turned an eye back towards the four starfighters, waiting ahead of Buffalo. They had promised the area was secure. How could they have missed that ship? He could only think that it must have been clung so close to the Cardinal’s underbelly that it had escaped electronic and visual detection. What he couldn’t understand, however, was why none of the fighter pilots had mobilised to intercept the craft once it had become visible. What was the commanding officer up to?

  “This is Archer,” Williams’ earpiece jingled, “I may have found survivors. Looks like someone’s tied them all up. I’m going to check the bodies and then help anyone still alive off the ship.”

  “Archer, where are you?” Williams said.

  “Towards the rear. Looks like data storage or something.”

  Williams indicated to Fisher to bring up a feed of the area on one of the displays. They were greeted by a scene of men and women lying on the floor of the room, bound and gagged. Some appeared to be unconscious, or perhaps dead. Archer could be seen approaching from the corridor up ahead.

  Williams grew suddenly anxious. The door to the storage area had been left open, prominently displaying the captives, as if to lure someone inside. At the same time as the thought hit him, he saw the individuals on the floor start to flop about like beached fish, shaking their heads and screami
ng at Archer through their gags.

  Oh, hell! It was a trap!

  “ARCHER, WAIT!” Williams started, as Archer made to cross the threshold of the doorway. But the warning came too late, and Archer looked down briefly at his hand as it broke the hair-thin crisscrossing red laser beams.

  “Ah, sh—”

  There was a tremendous boom. The feed shut off immediately.

  Williams heard something that sounded like a roar, and Somerville, Fisher and Barker turned to him, looking petrified.

  “Everyone, back to the airlock! NOW!” he shouted. “GO, GO, GO!”

  “Williams, this is Merekat, what’s happening in there?”

  “One of my team has set off a booby trap!” he cried, as the four dashed from the bridge in the direction of the lift. “We’re abandoning Cardinal! We’ll notify you when we are safely back aboard!”

  He never heard the reply, the booms of the explosives going off shattering his eardrums, the jostling of the ship making it hard for him to move as fast as he’d have liked. He prepared to warn Merekat’s captain of the impending danger to his ship, when a sight caused him to swallow his words.

  A wall of fire was squeezing its way down the corridor towards him, engulfing everything in its path. He stalled, not knowing which way to turn. The three people in front of him halted and turned around to face him, as if looking to him for help. An instant later the wall enveloped them, their forms lost within it. The next moment it hit him, carrying him backward into the bridge. He felt his suit begin to burn away around him, the flames already starting to scorch his skin. His vision became nothing more than snapshots of the world around him as he twisted and tumbled. He struck the frontal viewport hard, heard it shatter from the force of the impact and then felt the searing heat of the blaze give way to a chilling, strangling cold.