Natalia looked over at him again. “Listen, they might not be dead,” she said in a more controlled voice. “They may have managed to escape. If that’s the case, and with any luck, they will have started north, too. But heading to the coast won’t help us any more than staying around here.”
For a moment, Dodds considered telling her to stop and let him out. He could continue walking to the coast by himself. But then he conceded that Natalia was right – travelling to the coast would simply be too dangerous right now, what with the huge number of soldiers that had likely been drawn there. “Right, so where do we go from here?”
“We head to the north of the city and join up with friendly forces,” Natalia said. “Though it won’t be all that simple to get through these streets with all the cars that are blocking them. Driving means we can evade and outrun the Enemy foot patrols more easily, but we’ll be more obvious to aerial forces.”
“True, we’re hardly inconspicuous,” Dodds remarked.
“Quicker than walking, though. It could take us days to get there like that, and we’d need to find food and water along the way.”
Dodds felt the Sabretooth’s suspension stabilize as the surface beneath the vehicle transitioned from the bumpy ground of the park, to the regular flat surface of tarmacked road. Far ahead of him, he saw a dense tower of thick grey and black smoke rising steadily, the top of the column thickening out like a funnel and blotting out the once-clear blue skies. It was growing a great deal denser, too. Soon, the skies above the entire city might be completely overcast.
He glanced back in the direction he had been walking – towards the coast – as it fell away from them. He pictured Estelle, Enrique, Kelly and Chaz lying there in the sand, their eyes glazed over, staring blankly ahead. No, it hadn’t happened … and neither would he let it happen.
I’ll find you, he thought. I promise.
IX
— Keeping Friends Close —
Some years ago, Captain Elliott Parks had been enraptured with a beautiful young woman named Claudia Burns. She had been his world, but, at the same time, a source of some uncertainty for him. Parks had never found much confidence in himself and often believed that he got by purely on luck alone. An odd thought perhaps, for a man who looked certain to soon be promoted to the rank of commodore. How had he gotten there? He didn’t know. He was sure that the day would soon come when he would be called out, the imposter exposed. And it was such thoughts that had eventually caused him to refrain from proposing to his long-term girlfriend.
The couple had been enjoying a long holiday together in Shai-Jin, taking in the sights and sounds of the Far Eastern-inspired city, immersing themselves in the culture, soaking up every drop. An evening of dinner, outdoor theatre and a slow walk along the marina had been exactly what he had planned; everything had been perfect. Except for one thing – and that was that, when it came to it, Parks wasn’t sure that he deserved a woman like Claudia Burns. He felt like a fraud, that she would see past him, to who he truly was. Whatever that was, he didn’t know; all he was sure of was that it was bad. The night had concluded without him going down on one knee, and a few weeks later he called off their relationship, with the simple of explanation of, “It’s not you, it’s me.” That old chestnut.
In the weeks that followed, he had confided in one man, the same who would go on to mentor him in his rise to senior command – Anthony Hawke.
*
Parks’ dull reflection stared back at him from the glass of his transport shuttle’s window. Not that he any longer noticed it, nor the blue haziness of the jump space tunnel that drifted past. Though he had been sat in the shuttle for little over an hour now, it felt like an eternity. Many thoughts had filled his head during that time, though none more prevalent than those pertaining to Anthony Hawke.
After the incident in the Phylent system, where the Enemy had carried off both Zackaria and Hawke, Parks had at first assumed that the former Confederation commodore was dead. With Lieutenant Dodds having shattered Ifrit’s frontal viewport and jettisoned the bridge’s occupants, it was difficult to imagine that Hawke might not have succumbed to the vacuum of space. Admittedly, in the weeks that had followed, he had briefly entertained the possibility that the man might somehow have survived. But those had been fleeting thoughts, quickly dismissed, never to be revisited. It was unsurprising then that he had felt the knot form in his stomach the moment the man’s name had been mentioned, during the emergency meeting. It saddened him to think that Ifrit’s former captain had been the one responsible for bringing the mighty ship down. He was certain there was some kind of irony in there somewhere, but right now he couldn’t think straight to appreciate it.
He had found himself wishing he could turn back time, right back to the point where Dragon had been offered up as a resource for the evacuations. There was so much there he could’ve changed. Though its size made it ideal for shuttling people and vessels out of the Independent border systems, in preparation for Operation Sudarberg, neither Dragon nor Hawke should’ve been so closely involved. It would’ve saved them a lot of trouble. No loss of Dragon, no loss of Hawke, no loss of lives.
Hindsight was a wonderful thing.
But they had lost Hawke. And how that had happened, how a high-ranking and long-serving member of the Confederation Stellar Navy had gone on to betray them had become Parks’ top priority to discover. He recalled how, at David Turner’s request, he had spent a great deal of time gathering extensive data on every aspect of Hawke’s life before he had enlisted in the CSN, as well as every part of his life whilst he had been a part of it, probing into every corner of his personal background. Though at first he had found nothing out of the ordinary, further investigation had exposed a discrepancy in the man’s early life. Through deeper digging and cross-referencing of permanent records, Parks had eventually uncovered Hawke’s secret.
Anthony Hawke was an Imperial citizen, born and bred. He had fled from one of the Mitikas Empire’s less affluent and stable colonies, likely one of the systems or planets that had been swallowed up centuries previous, during the empire’s expansion, but where a deep-seated hatred ran for what the original colonists still saw as an ongoing and unjustified invasion. Victims of racial abuse and hatred, the Hawke family – if that was their real name – had secured passage to Confederation space and, with the aid of forged documents, had worked their way into society and fully integrated themselves. The earliest record that could be found of Anthony Hawke was when he was only four years old.
It explained a lot – why Hawke had been so strong in his resolve to join the CSN and work his way up through the ranks, and why he had taken such an instant dislike to those such as Dodds and Todd, seeing them as something of a blight upon the navy’s reputation. Perhaps he had reasoned that he wanted to serve and protect the nation that had taken him and his family in, whilst others had tried to kill him. He wanted to give something back.
It also explained what had happened aboard Dragon, during Operation Menelaus, and at Phylent. Being pure Imperial, Hawke was exactly the type the Enemy sought. Likely they hadn’t known this when they had attacked Dragon, but had discovered it soon after. Had they not been so very stiff, Parks imagined that the battleship’s invading forces probably wouldn’t have believed their luck. They had then assimilated Hawke into their ranks and formulated a plan to re-introduce him to the Confederation, without anyone suspecting. Though – once again in hindsight – Parks now realised that the unexplained nosebleeds and heavy personality swings should’ve tipped him off earlier.
Once they had finally extracted the truth from the man’s long and convoluted past, the revelations behind Hawke’s betrayal had come as a relief to Parks and Turner. It seemed that their greatest fear, that the mistake that had sentenced millions of innocent citizens of the Mitikas Empire to serve as pawns in a dangerous political game, was still restricted to purebred Imperials. The nanomachines that now swam throughout Hawke’s bloodstream, put there by the Enemy –
by the Senate’s mistake, by those blasted Pandorans – and residing within his muscle tissue and grey matter, hadn’t mutated after all; they were still as loyal and obedient to their programming and design as always.
He thought of the last moment he had seen Hawke, the man’s body tumbling over and over in the void of space. So, the Pandorans could survive such things. That was a new one. He never would’ve thought something like that was possible. But then again, who would have? Once spaced, a normal, unprotected human being could survive for a little less than a minute before losing consciousness; mild, reversible swelling of the skin and organs occurring within the first thirty seconds before that. It would be about two minutes before they succumbed. In such a context, the human body was a remarkably resilient machine, but it wasn’t invulnerable. He had little reason to believe that Hawke and Zackaria might be exceptions. The nanomachines must’ve been working overtime to keep all their vital organs alive.
Operation Menelaus had been Parks’ very first confrontation with the greatest threat to the continued existence of the human race. Prior experience with the threat posed by the Pandoran army had been purely academic. He wondered what other surprises lay in store for them.
But what if the nanites did mutate at some point in the future? Was that even possible? They could certainly reproduce, growing from their original tens-of-thousands to the necessary tens-of-billions, significantly outnumbering the host body’s own white blood cell count and overwhelming their defences. Could anything ever go wrong during that process, he wondered? Could a fault occur in their duplication, much like how an error can occur in DNA structures, nature’s own blueprints? How were the numbers of nanites controlled? What if there suddenly became too many? How did they know when there were too few?
Parks didn’t know. But what he did know was that, with the relief of uncovering Hawke’s true heritage, came a stark warning; a warning that there could be many more Hawkes hiding in the shadows – ticking time bombs, ready to go off at any moment.
*
Parks once again became aware of his surroundings, and rolled back his sleeve to check the time. It was coming up to close to two hours since the transport had commenced jump. This was taking too long. He glanced at the galactic map that was displayed on the screen attached to his seat. A timer in the top portion of the image indicated that they would be arriving somewhere within the next thirty minutes. But that was only an estimation, only about as accurate as things could be made.
He watched the blue clouds drifting by for a time. They weren’t really clouds, that was just what people called them; it was easier that way. Most people didn’t really want to think that they were passing through a parallel dimension, where the distance between two points was significantly shorter than that of ‘reality’. Sometimes it was better for people not to know the whole story.
Parks mused that, whilst it had been a revolutionary technology, jumping had some major downsides. For a start, the journey was non-linear, meaning that the time taken to travel from one star system to the next couldn’t be resolved simply by measuring the distance between the two. In some cases, it could take longer to travel to a system that was relatively close by than to one that was further away.
The other downside to jumping was that it was slow. Parks looked over the key star systems marked on the galactic map. Together, they occupied only a few thousand light years, in a galaxy that was over one hundred thousand light years in diameter and more than one thousand thick. In the grand scheme of things, the human race were nothing but a small spit in a vast ocean. He realised he should be grateful that Coyote wasn’t over the other side of that ocean.
The time continued to tick past.
Parks felt his frustration beginning to grow and wondered if Matthew Marsh, Griffin’s chief engineer, had held on to the engine data following the carrier’s mis-jump, all those months earlier. They had crossed several hundred light years in the space of minutes, rather than hours, back then. He sure could’ve used a little accident like that right now.
“Commodore.”
The voice roused him from his thoughts and Parks looked up to the shuttle’s co-pilot, who had just emerged from the cockpit. “Yes?”
“I wanted to let you know that we are about to arrive in the Temper system, sir.”
Parks glanced back to the small window to see the blue haze of jump space gracefully peel away. The illusion of rushing stars followed for a time, before they slowed and came to a near-halt.
Finally. Took long enough. “Thank you,” he said, rising from his seat and making his way past the co-pilot and into the cockpit, for a better view of their destination. The shuttle’s pilot looked around as he entered, but said nothing, turning his attention back to the front.
They had emerged from jump not far out from Spirit. Just ahead of them, Parks saw that their escort of three Rooks were still with them, leading just in front. The shuttle altered its pitch, bringing itself more in line with the orbital station and the planet itself, which was already a flurry of activity. A multitude of different craft circled around the orbital, busying themselves with various tasks, in preparation for the upcoming operation. They were dwarfed by several larger vessels that rested not far out from the station itself.
The scene above Spirit and around the orbital was somewhat reminiscent of earlier that year, when Griffin, Ifrit and Leviathan had prepared to travel to Aster in their –
Yes, okay, Mr Parsons, in one way it was somewhat misguided …
– attempt to retake Dragon. Transport craft travelled back and forth between the planet, the station and the ships they were servicing. Starfighters of various differentiating classes milled around, moving themselves into position next to the frigates, landers and troop carriers. Parks noted them for but a few seconds, before his gaze turned to the one vessel he had been most eager to see.
CSN Griffin looked incredible. It appeared as though every inch of the exterior of the ship had been re-armoured and repainted – not one panel, fixture or screw left unrefurbished or unattended to. The emblem of the griffin, emblazoned across the top of the carrier’s long flight deck, had been redesigned and repainted with deep, vibrant colours. The creature looked more magnificent and majestic than ever. Even the words ‘CSN Griffin’ had been given attention, the letters rendered in a bolder, more modern and striking typeface.
Parks had never seen her look so splendid. The carrier was looking as good – if not better – as when she had taken her maiden voyage, some thirty-odd years ago. The sight lifted his spirits, and he dared anyone who laid eyes on her not to feel the same.
Griffin had hardly moved since returning to Spirit earlier that year, the decision being made that she should undergo all the repairs there, rather than relocate in her questionable state. Parks hadn’t set eyes on her at all, following the fallout of Operation Menelaus. It was good to see her again.
“She looks incredible, sir,” the pilot said, without turning around.
Clearly, Parks’ silence in seeing the ship after so long was speaking volumes. “She certainly does,” he said, still not taking his eyes of the carrier. “What’s our ETA?”
“We should be docking within the next ten to fifteen minutes, sir. Not long now.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Captain,” Parks said, before departing the cockpit and returning to his seat.
Not long after, the shuttle banked and sped towards the huge Confederation carrier, weaving its way between the cluster of frigates and other craft that rested close by. It was soon bearing alongside the huge ship, making its way towards the launch bay.
*
As Parks’ shuttle touched down on the flight deck, it becoming immediately clear that the interior of the carrier, as with the outer, had also benefited from a great deal of restoration work. The flight deck had been returned to a fully functional state, and as Parks stepped out of the shuttle, his feet met with a pleasingly flat, solid deck. He recalled the state of it the last time he had set foot her
e – huge holes had been torn in the floor, jagged steel pointing out of the ground, the walls and the ceiling. Debris from starfighters, munitions containers, cabling and all manner of other wreckage had lay strewn about the area, daubed red in places with the blood of those who had lost their lives when the suicidal Imperial starfighter had gone up. Landing the transports to disembark the crew had been a struggle back then; how different the picture was now.
But now wasn’t the time for admiration of the engineers’ efforts in returning the ship to its former glory, and Parks began to make his way quickly across the flight deck, towards the lift. All about him personnel scurried around, making preparations for departure, ensuring that the TAFs, Rays and Rooks that made up their starfighter complement were in good working order, and could be quickly armed and deployed as soon as they arrived at their destination. Many of the crew noted his arrival, saluting and greeting him as he strode past them.
A tall, dark-skinned woman, carrying an electronic tablet and wearing an earpiece, hurried forward. Karen Weathers, the communications officer who had served aboard Griffin during its last deployment.
She stopped in front of him and saluted with a smile. “Welcome aboard, Captain. Preparations are almost complete. We will be ready to execute jump within the next few minutes.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Parks said, not stopping in his journey to the lift.
Weathers hurried along by his side, presenting him with the tablet. “I have the pre-departure itinerary here for your approval, sir.”
“Has there been any word from either CSN Headquarters or Captain Meyers?” Parks said, taking it from her. The long journey through jump space had not only left him with time to spend with his own thoughts, but had also left him completely in the dark as to how events in the Coyote system might be unfolding.
“Based on the last report we received, Captain Meyers and Leviathan made attempts to approach Mythos, but ran into resistance from Imperial forces,” Weathers replied. “He withdrew and is now awaiting backup from nearby United Naval Forces, before pressing forward. A naval contingent is expected to be joining him within the next hour, so he should have sufficient support by the time we arrive.”
The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy) Page 59