The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy)

by Sweeney, Stephen

  “I know what you mean,” Natalia said, nodding. “Sounds like he was wearing an honorary Imperial parade suit. Mostly used for ceremonies, processions and general propaganda.”

  “He was carrying a dagger, too.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “I didn’t really get a good look at it. I was more interested in trying to stay alive. Okay, I guess it looked more like something you’d hang up in your study than a practical field knife. Golden handle, jewelled hilt. That sort of thing.”

  “That’s part of the uniform,” Natalia said, peeling the wrapper from the biscuits, to make it easier to retrieve them.

  Dodds still struggled with the idea that someone would walk about a battlefield dressed and armed in such a manner. He shared the thought with Natalia.

  “Intimidation, authority, inspiration, pride, grandeur,” she said.

  “That’s absurd.”

  “How did you feel when you saw him?” Natalia said, biting into one of the biscuits.

  Dodds recalled the apprehension that had gripped him upon seeing Zackaria plunging the dagger again and again into his victim’s body, before striding purposely over in his direction. At that moment, he had never been more afraid of anything in his entire life. His eyes had been locked on the blade the admiral held. The dagger was real – it was sharp and it worked, and Dodds was about to become its next victim. He conceded with a shrug, though he was sure that Natalia had seen straight through it.

  “I still can’t believe he spoke to you,” Natalia said, chewing thoughtfully on a biscuit and staring off in to space. She looked much more awake than she had been a moment ago, as if what he had told her was of the utmost importance.

  “Okay, I need to know something,” Dodds said. “Who exactly are those people?”

  “What people?”

  “The ones that dress in black. The Pan-somethings?”

  “Pandorans,” Natalia said.

  “Whatever. What the hell are they? Where did they come from? What do they want? Are they aliens?”

  “No.”

  “Robots?”

  “They’re not robots, either.”

  “So what are they? Normal people aren’t capable of doing the stuff they can do.”

  “They’re highly-trained soldiers, working for the Imperial Senate. They’re a private military company,” Natalia said.

  “A PMC?”

  Natalia nodded.

  “No, sorry, those are not ordinary human beings—” Dodds protested.

  “They’re highly-trained in a number of different fields,” Natalia said. “The Pandoran army only recruits those that it believes have what they are looking for. After someone is hired, they are subjected to a number of intensive training courses and health regimes, to get the results they are after.”

  “No, that’s not right,” Dodds said, shaking his head. “I’ve seen them recover from wounds that would kill an ordinary man. When they brought down Ifrit, we outnumbered them a good ten-to-one and we still struggled against them. I’ve seen them gunned down many times, yet seconds later they’ll be back on their feet, as if nothing had happened.”

  “Their suits offer them remarkable protection,” Natalia said. “They’re constructed from highly advanced, ballistics resistant leathers and synthetic polymers that are capable of damping down direct attacks. They act like a sort of shield.”

  “There was blood,” Dodds said.

  “They’re obviously not one hundred percent effective,” Natalia said.

  The woman’s answers were quick and direct, almost as though she was reading from a specially prepared Q&A script. Why are you lying to me? Dodds wondered. What is it that you don’t want me to know? There was far too much evidence stacked up against what Natalia was saying, and he was sure she had contradicted herself a number of times already. The soldier in the morgue on Arlos starport, the first of the black-clad soldiers he and the other Knights had encountered, had suffered wounds that no one could survive. He remembered how, just as the soldier was about to finish him off, Estelle had emptied several bullets into his chest. There had been blood, the man had fallen, and yet, only a few minutes later, the man was back on his feet, fresh as the moment Dodds had attempted to tackle him.

  It sounded like Natalia was making a real effort to keep the truth from him. And what could be so bad about the truth that she would not want him to know…?

  “What about the eyes?” Dodds said. “You said they can see in the dark, without any external visual aids.”

  Natalia hesitated.

  You are lying, Dodds thought.

  “Special lenses and implants. Could we change the subject please, Simon? I know we’re stuck in a city full of those bastards, but I’d rather not talk about them right now.” She looked about herself for a moment and then got up.

  “Where are you going?” Dodds said.

  “To get some wine.”

  “Wine? Really?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Dodds helped himself to another biscuit whilst he listened to her fumble about in the dark, and presently she returned with a bottle and a cork screw.

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” he said.

  “I’m only going to drink a little,” she said, as she worked the cork out. “I’m tired, but I know that I’ll be too stressed to sleep properly, so I just need a bit to calm me down.” She poured a measure of it into her empty water bottle. “Do you want some?”

  Dodds mulled it over for a moment. He should really cut down on the amount he drank. There again, given everything else that could happen to him right now … “Go on then.”

  She crawled forward to him as he downed the last of his water and she poured him out an equal amount to her own. She brushed the hair out of her face when she was done and turned her eyes up to him. He studied her for a moment, catching the light that glinted off her eyes. They were greenish-grey, as far as he could tell. The colour complemented her blonde hair nicely. He caught a fragrance of something sweet. It smelled like exotic fruits. He realised that it was coming from her hair. He’d not noticed it before, perhaps only now because she’d untied her hair, allowing the scent to flow more freely. Nice.

  He then noticed something else, and let out a slight chuckle.

  “What?” Natalia said.

  “You’ve got crumbs and chocolate all around your mouth.”

  Natalia smiled and began wiping her mouth with a finger. She crawled back to where she had been sitting and took a sip of the wine from her bottle, before starting on another biscuit.

  “I once got trapped in an escape pod for over a week, with nothing but water and biscuits,” she said. “Luckily, I like biscuits, so I was okay.” She took another sip of wine. “Tell me more about yourself.”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Part of my job, remember?” she said, with a wry smile.

  Fair enough. “Well, I was born in England, on Earth. My parents worked in the City – the financial part of London, I mean. Shortly after they had me, they moved to Ireland and bought an orchard with the money they had managed to save.”

  “Any brothers or sisters?”

  “No, just me,” Dodds said. “I think after me, my parents decided to stick to cats and dogs. They’ve only the one at the moment, though – a black and white cat called Socks.”

  “What was it like growing up on a farm? Wasn’t it lonely with all that space and no one to play with?”

  “No, I always used to have plenty of company. There were always people and families coming over to visit, for little tours and things like that, and I remember that half of my school always seemed to be there during the summer, when we had barbecues. It used to slow down a little during the winter months, though. We weren’t isolated, but we were a little out of the way. But once I got my driver’s license, I was free to do as I pleased. Legally. I can’t tell you the number of times that my dad would be forced to come pick me up after I had been pulled over for driving without a licens
e. But, no; it was fun.”

  “Never fancied working in an office then?”

  “It never appealed,” Dodds said with a shrug. “I think that was my parents’ fault, to be honest – they told me that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The champagne parties and high-flying living that you always hear about was something of a fallacy.”

  “Mmmm,” Natalia nodded in understanding.

  “I did study some economics and that at school, but I never really got it. I decided to keep well away from that sort of culture – I wanted to do something different, you know – something special.”

  “So, you’ve never even been in an office?”

  Dodds paused to think. “Briefly,” he said, grinning.

  Natalia gave him a quizzical look, but he didn’t elaborate.

  *

  The two continued talking and making their way through the biscuits and their allocation of wine, until there was none of either left. Natalia’s answers to Dodds’ questions gradually became more and more lethargic as the night drew on, until she lay down on the hard floor that was to be their bed for the night. She soon announced that she was going to try to get some sleep.

  Don’t blame you, thought Dodds. I think I’ll try to get some rest, myself. It was summertime, and so he expected that the night might be fairly warm, allowing them to sleep comfortably. He counted himself lucky that they hadn’t come down in the middle of winter – he would have survived the encounters of the day by the skin of his teeth, perhaps only to die of hypothermia that same night.

  He discarded the empty sandwich wrappers and started to pack the rest of the uneaten food and water bottles back into the bag. He peeked around the wall of tables the two had hidden themselves behind, and out at the scene beyond. Nothing had changed; there was still no sign of any life. He couldn’t even remember having seen a single fly, mosquito or midge since they had settled down for the night.

  He wondered if his team-mates were out there somewhere, or if the Pandoran soldiers had already caught up with them; whether they were lying dead in the road, like so many of the other bodies he had seen that day, or if they had even survived the evacuation from Ifrit. He shook the thoughts from his head and shuffled back to where Natalia was fast asleep on the floor.

  He pulled off his boots, giving a satisfied groan as he felt his feet relax, and put them down next to him. He hoped he’d find himself given fair-warning before having to put them back on again. He couldn’t imagine having to run near-barefoot through the city streets. He lay down on his back, folded his hands behind his head and thought back to the last time he and his wingmates had all been together – six months ago, after returning from Operation Menelaus …

  *

  Spirit Orbital’s bar had never played host to such a large gathering as it had done that night. Even during the station’s opening ceremony, over one hundred years previous, the number of attendees to the celebratory drinks had apparently not breached any fire regulations, as Dodds had heard someone muttering.

  He stood with Enrique, drinking his second bottle of beer at a modest pace. He would have preferred something soft, but he didn’t want to disappoint the rambunctious group of eager servicemen and women that surrounded him. Thankfully, it seemed that the White Knights had fallen away from being the sole focus of the night, now taking a back seat to the proceedings as the alcohol had taken over. People appeared to now be drinking for a number of other reasons, their faces ranging from joyous to despondent, in their remembrance of fallen comrades.

  “Have you seen Chaz?” Dodds asked Enrique, looking around the bar. He couldn’t see the big man anywhere. He was no longer propped up at the bar, where he had at one time been. If he was still here, Dodds couldn’t see where.

  “Nope, haven’t seen him for about an hour,” Enrique said, swigging from the bottle he was holding.

  “Where’s he gone? Has he left?” Dodds said. He remembered last seeing Chaz making polite conversation with several members of Griffin’s crew. He had experienced the same repertoire of questioning himself, many of those there wanting to know exactly what it was that the Knights had been flying. He had, after both verbal and physical prompting from Estelle, waved away the questions, telling his adoring fans that the fighters were still classified. He had, however, allowed himself the satisfaction of gushing about how wonderful they were to fly.

  “The guy was getting a lot of female attention,” Enrique said. “He does seem to turn heads back down on the ground, I’ve noticed. They’re always staring at him in the gym, whenever we go sparring.”

  “Not like we were short of any of it earlier, ourselves,” Dodds said, taking another pull from his bottle and scanning the room. He nodded to a group of women, not far away. “You should tap one of those.”

  “Huh?”

  “Take the opportunity, mate. I’m sure it’s been a while.”

  “How would you know?” Enrique said, a little defensively.

  “Well, I’m pretty sure nothing’s been happening since we’ve been here, and there certainly wasn’t anything happening back at Xalan. Although, I could be wrong – the way you were dispensing the mattress advice last night, you sounded like a professional.”

  “Alright, sure, it’s been a while,” Enrique said after a pause.

  “How long?” Dodds grinned.

  “Oi!”

  “Okay, okay, no worries. Let’s take a walk, see what we can find.” They began wandering around the bar, squeezing their way past tight groups and stopping occasionally to toast their beers against others.

  Dodds scanned the revellers as they walked. He caught the eye of a young woman, who smiled sweetly before turning away. She was sitting down at a small table, holding a small glass of what looked like cola, and chatting with another woman. She was still dressed in her maintenance clothing and, almost somewhat stereotypically, her face was a little grubby from where she had apparently touched it with dirty hands. Wisps of curly blonde hair dangled down the front and sides of her head, where the cap she wore had not kept it fully covered. She didn’t appear to be a tall girl – smaller than both Estelle and Kelly.

  “How about that little grease monkey?” Dodds prompted. “She looks like she’d be up for it. Well, she keeps looking over this way, anyway.” He pretended to be looking elsewhere whilst Enrique took a look at the girl he had been referring to.

  “Cute,” Enrique said. “But what about you? I know for a fact that you haven’t gotten any, either.”

  “How?”

  “Because you always brag about your conquests for days on end,” Enrique said. “And recently, you’ve not brought up the subject once.”

  Dodds chuckled. “Like hell you’re right! I just never told you! I was sleeping with one of the pickers from the orchard. She was only about twenty. Was taking some time off from her studies and was working there to get some money. I used to drive her home some nights.” He glanced back over at the maintenance woman who was laughing with her friend. Come to think of it, she did actually look a lot like that student. Perhaps an older version of her. Well, if Enrique wasn’t going to go for it …

  “Alright,” Enrique said, taking another pull on his bottle. “With any luck, I’ll be seeing you sometime tomorrow.” He made his way over to the young woman, who watched his approach with a beaming smile. The two exchanged a few words, before the woman excused herself from her friend, and she and Enrique pushed themselves through the throng of people.

  Watching the two leave the bar together, Dodds couldn’t quite believe it had actually been that easy. Must’ve been the old, Hey, how you doing? I’m the hero of the day, don’t you know? Feel like getting out of here? line. He started to wonder if he had set his friend up as a favour, or whether he was just externalising some of his own needs and desires. Maybe he should find some company of his own.

  But then again, now that he was alone, going unnoticed and mostly ignored by all the other revellers, he felt the fatigue from the day’s events starting
to once more catch up on him. He again became conscious of the ache on the right side of his face, where the black-suited soldier had struck him in the morgue. That’ll come up a right treat in the morning, he thought, fingering the bruising around his eye.

  He debated for a time going to see if he could find Estelle. Like Chaz, he hadn’t seen either her or Kelly for a good while now. They all seemed to have vanished into thin air. He was about to start off in search of them once more, when he felt a hand catch him on the shoulder. He discovered one of the station’s coastguards standing behind him.

  “Simon Dodds?” the man said.

  “That’s me,” Dodds said. He raised his bottle, expecting to clink it off another.

  “Bar’s closing. Could you come with me, please?” the coastguard said. “Orders of Commodore Parks,” he added, as Dodds opened his mouth to protest.

  Dodds took another look around the bar before relenting, and placed his bottle down on an empty table, acknowledging that he was ready to go. He noticed a number of other security making their way about the bar, asking people to drink up and leave. It looked like top brass had decided that that was enough for now.

  The pair began down the corridors of Spirit Orbital. Dodds noticed that, just like much of the rest of the station, many were in need of a good scrub and lick of paint. It was in slightly better condition than the ground base, but both were in desperate need of an injection of funds to regenerate them.

  “Did Commodore Parks say what he needed me for?” Dodds asked, as they rode the lift to the lower levels of the station.

  “He has asked me to escort you to your quarters,” the coastguard explained.

  “Escort me? The whole way?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “You know that I’m stationed at Mandelah, right?”

  The coastguard shook his head. “Not any more. Commodore Parks has arranged for you to be stationed here, until further notice.”