The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy)

by Sweeney, Stephen

  “Actually, I’ve been thinking,” Dodds said.

  “I wondered what that strange buzzing was,” Estelle giggled. “I was going to report a fault with the electrics in here.”

  “Do you think you’ll stay in the navy after this is over?” Dodds asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, do you think you’ll stay in the navy once the war is all over?” Dodds repeated, rearranging the bedsheets a little. There was a draught coming in from somewhere.

  “Well, sure,” Estelle said, sounding a little surprised by the question. “Why wouldn’t I? Are you thinking of quitting?”

  “I’ve been considering it,” Dodds admitted.

  “Since when?”

  “Since just now,” Dodds said. “Well, not just now, although that did help a little … No, I was thinking about it up there in the bar, while we were getting the finger food in and having the steak. I was looking out the window and basically wondering, where to next?”

  Estelle sat up and looked him in the eye, seeing that he was serious. “Why would you quit?”

  “We’ve been at this a long time, Estelle,” Dodds said, sincerely. “I joined the CSN when I was twenty. I’m thirty-four now. I’ve spent nearly half my life in the service, when you think about it. Remember that I enlisted mainly for the adventure …”

  Estelle frowned.

  “… as well as to do my duty for the Confederation,” he added. “And you can’t say that I haven’t done my fair share of that since I’ve been here. Okay, sure, the vast majority has been in the last four years, but still …”

  Estelle put her head back down. “Are you going to start pursuing your bar dream again? A place near a beach, where you can serve food at rustic little tables, mix cocktails, and dance with the locals and holiday makers till dawn …?”

  Dodds detected something in her voice, almost as if she was picturing such a place herself.

  “I’ve actually not worked out what I want to do after this is over,” Dodds admitted. “All I know is that I don’t want to do this any more.”

  Estelle said nothing.

  “Would you stay?” Dodds asked.

  “Most likely,” Estelle said. “There wouldn’t be much for me outside the navy, really. I don’t want to go back to waiting table any time soon.”

  “How about waiting cocktails, whilst working on your tan?”

  “Not with my pasty-white skin.”

  “You can’t stay a fighter pilot forever, though,” Dodds said. “I’ve heard rumours they’ll be retiring the ATAFs in the next few months. The only place you’ll be able to see them is either in a museum, in photos or on video. They’ll probably be no need for the original White Knights by the end of the year. And Chaz is definitely going to take off.”

  “True. I’ll probably transfer to something else.”

  “Captaincy? That was always your dream.”

  Estelle didn’t answer that. Perhaps she had higher aspirations than that now. “Can I ask you something?” she then asked. It sounded serious.

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you send letters to the Castro and Pitt families? Real letters, I mean, with paper and ink. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  Dodds considered not going down that road, but decided to anyway. “In my eyes, it made it more personal. A letter is something physical, something you can hold on to and keep. I felt it had greater value than a digital message or a video.”

  “I understand,” Estelle said, after a short time.

  Dodds was glad that she did. He thought about how Chaz kept all the letters Vanessa sent him, storing them safely away. The paper had touched her skin, the words on the pages had been formed by her own hand. It was truly a very personal thing. He decided to move away from this heavy topic.

  “You know, the galaxy is going to be a very different place after this,” he said. “Mitikas has been wiped out, most of the Independent worlds have been eradicated. There’s going to be a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done.”

  “Such as?”

  Dodds didn’t doubt that she knew. Maybe she just wanted to hear his opinions. “Well, all those worlds that were nuked by the Pandorans will want to be recolonized.”

  “People couldn’t settle on those for a long time,” Estelle said. “Those worlds would be too radioactive.”

  “We’d build space stations and orbital habitats around the planets, until they were ready to be recolonized. The displaced people would feel a lot more settled if they’re back in the home systems, than out here.”

  “Well, I doubt Torelli, Darwin, Exeter, or Alistair will see any new inhabitants during our lifetime,” Estelle commented.

  “That’s true,” Dodds said. “Thank God we managed to stop the Pandorans here. I still can’t believe how quickly they stepped things up when they discovered they could use that antimatter gun as a planet killer. Imagine if they’d managed to bring Dragon all the way into Helios.”

  “Well, we don’t have to worry about it any more,” Estelle said, Dodds feeling the smile without have to look for it.

  “Funny to think that next week this could well all be over,” Dodds muttered to himself. His mind ticked over as he considered a number of different things – where he wanted to be, what he wanted to do … who he wanted to be with. He looked at Estelle, seeing her eyes shutting. She was probably going to drift off at any moment.

  “Estelle,” he started.

  “Hmm?”

  “You don’t have to stay here. I know you can get quite institutionalized in places like this, but we’ve done our bit. Time to go live our lives and take our reward. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I end my service, but I do know that I would like you to be there with me in whatever that is.”

  Not a peep from Estelle, but not, Dodds sensed, because she was too sleepy or tired to reply.

  “What do you think?” he prompted after a time.

  “Shh,” Estelle said. “Sleep.”

  He fell quiet, feeling something inside start to empty. His pride, he thought, those horrible feeling of rejection now rising in its place. He said nothing more, but just held Estelle in his arms. He wondered what it was that made her treat him like this sometimes, why she never thought him quite good enough for her?

  But that was Estelle all over, he realised as sleep took him. She was the ambitious type, always looking for the next thing, always after something better. Many had been hurt as she’d pursued that path, himself included, on more than one occasion. Always had been and always would be. And that would probably never change.

  *

  Elliott Parks looked out at the warships ahead of Griffin, aligning and readying themselves to make what would quite possibly be one of their last major offensive jumps of the war. They were preparing to move to Imperial space, to hunt down what remained of the Pandoran army. Their scouts had returned after a short investigation, finding a number of Imperial and acquired Independent warships drifting in the Adetton system, all undergoing repairs. It looked as if the Pandoran war machine had been halted. The Enemy were licking their wounds, searching desperately for a way to prevent the allied forces from overrunning and completely annihilating them.

  Not fun when the boot is on the other foot, is it? Parks grinned to himself.

  “Captain,” Weathers looked to him. “The fleet are announcing their readiness to proceed. Should I notify Admiral Storm of our own readiness?”

  “Are the White Knights in position?” Parks asked. He could see two of the ATAFs resting just ahead of Griffin. Two others were sitting alongside Leviathan and the last was heading up a huge squadron of starfighters. As always, the five ATAFs would act as the lead strikers. He mused, as he waited for confirmation of the team’s readiness, that this could well mark the end of the fighters’ participation in this great conflict. A shame from one angle, a relief from another.

  “Knights are ready,” Weathers returned.

  “Good,” Parks said, moving to his
seat. “In that case, we’re ready too. Broadcast the jump announcement to the crew.”

  Up ahead, at the front of the fleet, he saw Phoenix, the so-called super carrier. It was a Cobra-C class vessel, a step up from Griffin, and a hybrid carrier-battleship, the first of a new generation. Well, for the CSN, anyway. The Mitikas Empire had pipped them to that post many years ago with Chimera, stealing away the thunder of Griffin’s maiden voyage. That was one other potential ship on their watch list. Along with Dragon, no debris of Chimera had been found. He guessed that it, too, had been held back from the initial jump into Confederation space. No matter, they wouldn’t have any problems overcoming it.

  Though he had seen it many times before, the sight of Phoenix still staggered him. The carrier was massive. It was more than twice the length of Griffin, and marginally bigger than Chimera. It now stood as the largest vessel in the CSN’s fleet. Today would see her maiden combat voyage. She hadn’t been intended to be introduced for another few years, but the war had pushed that requirement up. Denied a true maiden voyage and glamorous unveiling, this would be the next best thing – to return victorious after defeating the Pandoran menace. He almost wished that he himself was at the helm. But Griffin was his ship, almost always had been. He knew every inch of her, had walked every corridor, been in every room, met with much of her serving crew, and had seen her to hell and back. For an event such as this, he wouldn’t have anyone else in the captain’s chair.

  “Fleet is ready, Captain,” Weathers finally confirmed. Her console then jingled. “Rear Admiral Storm is requesting communications to the entire fleet,” she added.

  “Accept it,” Parks said.

  The man’s holographic image sprang into existence, showing him standing on the bridge of Phoenix. Again, Parks found himself suitably impressed by what he saw. The bridge of the carrier looked astonishing. It was almost difficult to look straight at it, so dazzling were all the lights from the console arrays and screens. Apparently, the designers and engineers had wanted the splendour of the exterior to be matched by the interior. Compared to the T-shape of most other carriers, Phoenix’s bridge was semicircular. There were essentially three levels, the navigators, comms officers and captain seated on the central level. Pitted just below them were a handful of other crew members, with the rest working above.

  “We’ll be commencing jump in a moment,” Storm started. “I just wanted to take this opportunity on behalf of the Confederacy, the Alba-Trilliack Union, the United Naval Forces, and all those participating members of the Independent nations, to thank you for your dedication and hard work over these past years. The road has been hard, and we have lost a great deal – friends and family, cities, our homes, our cultures, and much of our own history.

  “But one thing that has endured all these years is our spirit and our will, and our determination to fight on through to the end. We stand at that end today. We will go to Imperial space, eradicate what remains of the Pandoran army, and return the galaxy to a safe and prosperous place. We will rebuild, become stronger than ever, and work to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again. The Pandorans have tested us greatly, but in the end good has triumphed over evil; as it always has done, as it continues to do so, and as it always will.

  “This is it, people. Let’s finish this,” Storm concluded, before ending the communication.

  A rousing speech, Parks thought. Doubtful that anyone who had listened to it wouldn’t have felt lifted. Indeed, he felt the urge to put his hands together, hearing his short applause joined by the rest of the bridge crew. He imagined that the same would’ve been true of many of the other vessels out there, including the dozens of starfighter pilots resting amongst the capital ships.

  “Phoenix is signalling jump intentions,” Weathers communicated.

  Parks saw the space in front of the massive carrier begin to twist and distort, before the slice appeared, subsiding into a lazy turning whirlpool. Phoenix started forward, followed after by a number of smaller vessels that would travel down the same conduit. Around it, other vessels began to create their own jump points, slipping into the portals and accelerating towards Imperial space. Parks felt a spike of excitement at the sight. This was the beginning of the end.

  “Mr Liu, signal our own intentions and open a jump point to Adetton,” Parks said. On one of the holographic feeds, he saw Amarok, Sima Mandeep’s vessel, starting forward into its own conduit. See you on the other side, Sima, he thought, before making his mind up right there and then. After they came home, he would pop the question. It was time to give that ring he had held on to for so long a home other than the bottom of his sock drawer.

  “Jump point open, Captain,” Liu said.

  “What’s our ETA?”

  “Three and a half hours, Captain,” Liu responded.

  “Good,” he said. “When you’re ready, Commander, take us in.”

  *

  “They’re hardly making an effort to fight back.”

  “That’s because they know they’ve lost! I wouldn’t be surprised if they turn around and start running again.”

  “This is Ragnar, reporting target eliminated. Moving to meet long-range targets.”

  “Acknowledged, Ragnar, Frozen Banshees will join you as soon as we’ve splashed this wing.”

  Parks listened to the radio chatter from the various channels, as he observed the combat from out Griffin’s frontal viewport, along with a number of camera tracking feeds. Something was itching, and it wasn’t about his body.

  “Griffin, this is de Winter,” came the woman’s voice. “Do you wish us to move up the field?”

  “Negative, de Winter,” Parks said. “Please remain where you are.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Parks detected a trace of reluctance in her voice. Understandable, when you were in control of one of the most powerful weapons in the galaxy, yet being asked to remain on the midfield and not engage enemy targets. But something about all this didn’t look right. He scanned the field again. Shouldn’t there be more of them? one of the fighter pilots had quipped earlier. Parks concurred. While they had met a fairly sizeable force, this wasn’t what he had expected. Those they had met and engaged had put up a fight, but weren’t performing to their usual high standard. It was almost as if they were just trying to keep the allies here, luring them into a false sense of security and making sure that they believed they were winning.

  He couldn’t help but feel that this whole thing was an elaborate feint.

  And where the hell was Dragon? Why hadn’t they seen it? Had it fled all the way back to Kethlan, carrying Admiral Zackaria and Commodore Rissard with it? Would they find it holding the line outside the former Seat of the Emperor, readying to sacrifice itself for the good of the Mission? Something deep within Parks told him no.

  “Commodore.” It was Sima, speaking over the holographic projection she had just unmuted. “I don’t like this. Something’s wrong.”

  “I feel it, too,” Parks confessed. “That’s why I’m holding Griffin and the Knights back. I don’t believe this is all that’s left of the Enemy.”

  “Should we pull back?”

  “I think that might be a wise precaution.”

  “Commodore, Commodore,” Storm said, also unmuting his own comms. “I understand your concerns, but this really isn’t unexpected. The Enemy suffered tremendous losses back in Temper. Our initial estimates put it at three quarters of their entire fleet, a figure which analytics later upped to over ninety percent. And that doesn’t factor in any vessels that were unable to fully complete their jump into Temper before the nukes went off. Some of the vessels would’ve been crushed in the jump portal collapse, so there wouldn’t be any remains of those to be found. The same would be true of anything that attempted to flee via the same method, the jump point would’ve collapsed instantly. It’s possible that this is why we never found any trace of Dragon.”

  Parks looked to the feed tracking Phoenix. Every major CSN vessel had a camera fo
cused on the carrier, recording its début for posterity. It was there at the front, exchanging fire with a warship that it was bearing down heavily upon it. Despite the Imperial frigate’s efforts …

  Really, Elliott? Are you sure it’s actually putting up a fight? A kitten looks like it would present a greater challenge…!

  … the warship was clearly fighting a losing battle. Phoenix would be on it in a few more minutes, bringing its accelerators into range, so that it could deal the most damage to its opponent.

  Rear Admiral Storm had raced forward the moment the allies had jumped into the system and the enemy targets had been sighted, deploying fighters and drawing up long-range weaponry. He wanted everything about Phoenix’s part of this battle to be remembered – its entrance, its spectacular engagements, and how it had shrugged off counter attacks with its superior, next-generation defences.

  The first targets to be felled had been two warships, directly ahead of Phoenix – one frigate, that Parks had briefly seen identified as Elysian Fields, before it had been blown apart by the carrier’s long-range weapon fire, and some sort of cruiser that appeared to have been liberated from one of the Independent nations. Both were being repaired, a handful of ships circling them and carrying out the work. More vessels were scattered about, looking barely fit for combat. Totally unable to defend themselves, some didn’t even appear space worthy.

  It was almost too perfect.

  Parks tried to think. Had he seen those soldiers carrying out the repairs even react to their arrival? No, they must’ve done. Yet … why couldn’t he shake the feeling that they had just been hanging there? Like empty shells. Like bait.

  “But I appreciate your concern, Elliott,” Storm continued. “Likely, the remainder of the fleet is on its way to bail out their friends. Well, it’ll save us the bother of having to go all the way to them,” he added, with a chuckle.

  Parks almost didn’t want to respond, and neither, apparently, did Sima. He could see her expression over the holograph system, and she remained as unconvinced as he. He continued to watch Phoenix, now right on top of the warship it had been engaging, the vessel approaching the Confederation carrier at the same speed, its guns firing at the same predictable rate. There was an almost detectable pattern to its attack phase. Phoenix’s three forward accelerators flared as they completed their wind-up sequence, unleashing their full power against the smaller vessel. Its shields buckled instantly, Phoenix’s accelerator beams punching easily through the layers of protection, through the armour, and opening up gaping holes in the vessel.