The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy) Read online

  The Battle for the Solar System

  13.08

  Copyright 2011 - 2012, Stephen J Sweeney

  All Rights Reserved

  The right of Stephen J Sweeney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All characters in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 13: 9780955856150

  ISBN 10: 0955856159

  www.battleforthesolarsystem.com

  Books by Stephen J Sweeney

  THE BATTLE FOR THE SOLAR SYSTEM TRILOGY

  The Honour of the Knights (First Edition)

  The Honour of the Knights (Second Edition)

  The Third Side

  The Attribute of the Strong

  Author’s Note

  This is the complete edition of THE BATTLE FOR THE SOLAR SYSTEM, comprising all three books in the trilogy - THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS (Second Edition), THE THIRD SIDE and THE ATTRIBUTE OF THE STRONG. It is not a fourth novel.

  For Dad

  Contents

  The Honour of the Knights

  The Third Side

  The Attribute of the Strong

  Book One : The Honour of the Knights

  — Prologue —

  An excerpt from A GIFT FROM THE GODS

  By Kelly Taylor

  How It All Began

  For some of you reading this it may seem as though I am describing a universe and a time that never existed, or that I am decorating an already unbelievable tale with frivolous, extravagant and ornate fables of my own, in order to create unnecessary hyperbole. I assure you, however, that everything that follows is true. It is historically accurate, and based on actual events, people and places.

  It is important to understand that the galaxy wasn’t always how it is today. You should be familiar with present-day galactic states, chief among them the Helios Confederation, once known as the Helios League, and more commonly referred to simply as The Confederation. You will also be familiar with the Independent nations, who are, much like the rest of us, at the time of writing, in the process of attempting to rebuild their shattered worlds and cultures following the end of the Pandoran War.

  But one nation you may not know a lot about is the Mitikas Empire. It is worth knowing about this galactic state, as it was there that a falling-out between the reigning emperor and his advisers erupted into a civil war, one that boiled over into a galaxy-spanning conflict that pushed the human race to the brink of extinction.

  The story of the galaxy’s collapse from a great number of prosperous star systems to the small handful of populated planets we have today is a long one. But, as Natalia Grace said one very revealing day in late 2617, it would be best if I start from the beginning.

  *

  In the early autumn of 2608, in the 11th year of his reign, Crown Emperor Adam Lorenzo III gathered together an assembly of his highest aides for what was to become a historic moment in the Mitikas Empire’s history. With the delegates and representatives seated and listening, and his words being broadcast across a great number of worlds for his subjects to hear, he delivered the news that many had long expected. He was to grant independent status to two of the empire’s star systems.

  The decision had long been rumoured, but today it had been made fact, and his words were greeted with rapturous applause and jubilation throughout many a city street. The star systems in question, Tigris and Sampi-Persei VII, were part of a number that had been swallowed up during the early days of the empire’s expansion; their absorption into the swelling Imperial regime either a result of military force, political pressure, or other questionable coercions. None had joined willingly. For many years, the peoples of these worlds had campaigned for freedom and independence. Not because the empire was a cruel and dangerous state – it was far from these things – but because of the desire to return to being the republics they once had been, and for the chance to shape their own futures.

  And today, their wishes had been granted.

  The celebrations began immediately, with the citizens of Tigris and Sampi-Persei VII dancing and singing in the streets, waving flags and crying tears of joy. Even those not directly affected by the move wore great smiles, for this would only make the emperor more popular and show galactic neighbours, the existing Independent worlds and nations, and the Confederacy, that they were a powerful, yet permissive and tolerant society.

  But there were those who didn’t agree with the emperor, their faces dour as they sat before him. As the applause rang and the cameras flashed, a number of nay-sayers throughout the conference hall began voicing their dissatisfaction.

  Having opposed what they saw as the beginnings of devolution, the Imperial Senate were unhappy with the day’s decision, and the Senior Magistrate, Maximilian Tyler-Brett, rose to confront the emperor over it. Broadcasting his feelings directly after Lorenzo’s speech, he accused the emperor of undermining the great nation’s foundations, preparing to pull the rug out from under its feet. This move, he said, wouldn’t make them appear stronger and more liberal to their enemies, but quite the opposite. It would make them appear foolish and weak. It was the Senate’s position that the emperor was preparing to dismantle, brick by brick, the empire for which his predecessors had spilt blood, sweat and tears to build.

  There were mumbles and murmurs of agreement, though they weren’t as strong as the cheers and celebrations that had preceded them.

  But Emperor Adam was untroubled by the Senate’s opposition, and very sedately called for calm. Nonsense, he smiled, the Senate’s fears were both overblown and misplaced. There was nothing to worry about, no cause for alarm. He had heard such objections since the very first day he had entertained the delegates of the worlds he was about to set free. He knew he could not please everybody, he could only ever make so many people happy. Besides, he reassured the Senate, the peoples he was to set free had already agreed to work side by side with the empire, trading, researching and working exclusively with them, indefinitely. The only change was that they would no longer be governed by his rule, no longer subject to Imperial laws and statutes. Other than that, they remained as loyal as ever.

  The Senior Magistrate grumbled his further objections, but the emperor waved away his concerns. The declaration was signed, hands were shaken and that afternoon two star systems were set free; two new nations were born.

  Tyler-Brett missed all of it, turning his back on the further proceedings. “We’ll never forgive this,” he said, as he walked out.

  *

  A few days later, a messenger arrived at the palace, bearing bad tidings. The Senate had abandoned the Forum and taken leave of Kethlan. Lead by the Senior Magistrate, they had departed for and settled within Krasst, a star system in the southern quarter of Mitikas. This, they said they had done, in opposition to the emperor.

  Lorenzo was stunned by the news and immediately sent an envoy to Hyanik, the planet where the Senate had reconvened the Forum, to bid them return. The messenger returned barely a day later, with the news that the call had been rejected. The emperor then sent out another envoy, this time demanding their return, by express order of the Crown Emperor of the Mitikas Empire. The envoy was never seen nor heard from again.

  *

  A month passed, when the emperor was woken one night by terrible news. It seemed that Tigris, the star system he had freed not five weeks earlier, had been attacked, an act for which the Senate claimed full responsibility. The messenger showed him imagery of colonies that
had suffered terrible orbital bombardments, reducing many to nothing but a smouldering memory.

  Of those that had survived, so terrible was the attack that the smoke and flames that ravaged the towns and cities were visible from space. Racked by grief, the emperor ordered aid to be sent immediately, though he discovered some time later that there had been few survivors.

  *

  Weeks passed, but still the Senate refused to meet or entertain the emperor, or any of his delegates, despite Lorenzo’s repeated attempts to initiate dialogue.

  Then the day came when they made an attempt on his life.

  One evening, while Lorenzo was at dinner, one of the serving staff removed the cover of a silver platter he had set down before the emperor, only to snatch up a dagger that had been hidden there. The emperor succeeded in avoiding the slash that had been intended for his throat, deflecting a second with a scalding hot plate. The assassin was brought down by Lorenzo’s bodyguards, before he was able to try again.

  Following the incident, Margaret, the emperor’s wife, closest friend and mother of his three sons, implored him to take direct action against the Senate. It was clearly the only language they would understand, she said.

  Lorenzo refused. Men should solve their problems with words, not bombs. And against all advice, the emperor chose to travel to Krasst for a face-to-face dialogue with the tenacious Tyler-Brett and the fifty-four other members of the Senate.

  He made his preparations that same evening and his private shuttle was readied.

  *

  A few days after he intended to make the journey, the emperor awoke with little memory of the time before. He found himself in a hospital bed, his arm in a sling, his chest and face bandaged. He was told how a bomb had been discovered on his shuttle, and that his team had only just managed to evacuate him before it had gone off. Even so, he had suffered life-threatening injuries.

  “Where is my wife? Where is Maggie?” Lorenzo asked, for she had offered to accompany him to his meeting with the Senate. The doctor’s eyes turned to the floor and he spoke the sad news – she hadn’t made it. She had already been settled onboard the shuttle when the threat had been discovered.

  The emperor wept. Had he listened to his wife, she would still be alive today. He would listen to her now. Violence truly was the only language that the Senate understood. And so, in his rage and despair, he summoned Jason Zackaria, the Fleet Admiral of the Imperial Naval Forces. His orders were simple – destroy the Senate. Wipe them out.

  The admiral spoke his understanding, and in the days and weeks that followed, the emperor viewed reports, videos and imagery of the result of his orders. The Senate’s forces and followers were overwhelmed. Against the full might of the Imperial navy, they stood little chance. They were being crushed.

  But that saddened the emperor. He couldn’t wipe them out completely, it wasn’t within his nature.

  It was therefore as the INF surrounded Hyanik that the emperor called a ceasefire, before once again sending an envoy to meet the Senate. It seemed that his wife had been right, for this time they accepted the envoy, and conceded to the emperor’s demands that they relent and surrender to his rule. The battle ended, the INF withdrew, and work began rebuilding the colonies of Tigris.

  *

  Some months later, as the emperor was finalizing details to grant independence to more of the empire’s star systems, reports flooded in that the Senate had risen once again and had resumed committing acts of terror.

  “How could this be?” the emperor asked. The Senate and their followers had been defeated, they had repented and surrendered. Tyler-Brett had been tried and incarcerated for his many acts of treason. How was it that they could be on the move once again?

  At first, Lorenzo believed this to be the work of dissidents, nothing more than a splinter group. He soon discovered otherwise. A number of the empire’s core star systems had been attacked, and hit hard. Totally sacked, this wasn’t the work of a minor faction.

  And as he watched the video feeds of the plights of the affected systems, a fear gripped him. This wasn’t the Senate that he remembered, this was something else. Across battlefields he saw soldiers, clad in black suits and black helmets, with eyes that shone ruby-red in the dark, racing forward and attacking with inhuman speed, efficiency and ferocity. Flags and standards billowed over their heads, depicting a symbol of the like he had never seen before – the outline of a man clutching a spear, a long sash issuing from the tip and curling around his body.

  At that moment, as he viewed footage of the battles on the ground, in the skies and in space, he knew something was very wrong. He again summoned Fleet Admiral Jason Zackaria and Commodore Julian Rissard, ordering them to confront these mysterious adversaries and drive them back from where they had come, before they sacked the whole imperium.

  But for all their efforts, Zackaria and Rissard could not. The relentless spread of the black-clad soldiers continued, growing stronger with each passing day. Petty squabbles throughout the empire were forgotten, as the nation drew together to fight the menace that threatened its existence. But the days soon turned to weeks; the weeks, months; and the months, years; and in all that time, the emperor and his forces were powerless to prevent the advancement of the Enemy who left nothing but death and destruction behind them.

  *

  And that is how, five years later, naval pilot Jacques Chalmers came to find himself crammed alongside several others into a small briefing room aboard the Imperial starfighter carrier Centaur, as they prepared to make a last stand against an enemy he had seen tear the empire apart.

  A pilot stood next to him had asked him if he thought they were going to be okay. Chalmers had turned to Julie Drummford, a long-term friend and wingmate, seeing the fear in her eyes. Yes, he had told her. Don’t worry, we’re going to win. Even as he spoke, he knew he was doing a poor show of concealing his own terror. His heart was pounding in his ears, his hands sweating profusely inside his gloves, as he awaited the order to head to the flight deck and board his fighter.

  Already, he had seen friends depart as their names were called out. He had watched them as they had scrambled into cockpits, pulling on helmets and performing last-minute safety checks. Though most hid it well, he was convinced they were all as scared as he was, knowing they could only be speeding to their deaths. As he had watched his friends’ fighters hurtle down the catapult, his commanding officer had addressed the briefing room’s remaining occupants for one last time.

  He had told them that this was where they needed to make their stand, that the Enemy couldn’t be allowed to advance any further. Tonight they would fight the battle for Kethlan, the battle for the imperium, the battle for their very survival. Tens of millions of lives were depending on their actions here tonight. They should do the imperium proud.

  Tens of millions? Chalmers had thought. Was that really all that was left of the empire? Had billions of lives already been lost? Surely it was a mistake. But no, this day had crept ever closer as city after city, planet after planet, and then entire star systems had fallen to the Enemy, to “the Senate’s Mistake”, to those damned Pandorans. How many of his friends had he lost over these last few horrifying months?

  Chalmers recalled again the terrible images he had seen broadcast around the imperium in the months gone by, of seemingly unstoppable soldiers marching through the streets of the cities they had claimed, banners, flags and standards of a near-naked man hanging from buildings and held aloft over their heads. Row upon row of men and women trooped in their thousands, dressed entirely in black, except for two contrasting features – a white emblem that resided on their right arm and left breast, and two piercing red eyes, set into an all-encompassing black helmet that sat upon their heads, its smooth form hiding all facial features.

  A loud voice snapped him back to reality. The CO was calling out names, reeling them off quickly. Feet moved and Chalmers felt his stomach lurch. He heard Drummford’s name called and, with one last look at
him, she was gone from the room, running to get to her starfighter.

  Running to her doom.

  His name would be called soon. He felt a sense of dread. If the empire couldn’t stop the Enemy before, what hope did they have now? Their adversary’s power had grown exponentially and they had crushed everything in their path with harrowingly little effort. He was forced to accept the truth – this was a battle that couldn’t be won. Not now, not ever.

  “Chalmers!” came the call.

  Despite everything that he knew, he had felt himself move, albeit robotically, as if his limbs were no longer his own to control; that he was nothing but a casual observer to the action.

  He ran to the waiting starfighter, threw on his flight helmet and began ascending the ladder to the cockpit. Zombie-like he sank down into the seat, still watching as if from outside his body as his hands buckled himself in, and his fingers began flipping switches, pressing buttons, and acknowledging questions and confirmations on the screens before him. Not before long, his craft was taxied to the catapult, and soon after he’d found himself out in space and in the thick of battle. At that moment, his worst fears had not only been realised, but far exceeded.

  Though Chalmers intended to fight for all his worth, he knew from the moment he had cleared Centaur that this was where it all ended. The scene that had greeted his departure brought him no comfort. A wall of starfighters, hundreds, if not thousands, swarmed about like locusts, driving forward the Enemy’s frontline. Behind them loomed a host of capital ships, so many that he could never hope to count them.

  In the minutes that followed, he discovered his radar to be useless. Somehow blocked by his enemies, the screen had become an indecipherable mass of friendly markers. Not long after, he had witnessed Julie Drummford’s death, and the last symbol of the Imperial navy’s might, INF Minotaur, had begun to broadcast an SOS as she was overwhelmed. Even as far away as he was, Chalmers could make out the explosions ripping across her hull, blooming loudly before dissipating. Minotaur’s cannons were firing indiscriminatingly in all directions, failing to hit targets, whilst volleys of return fire struck its own surface, the battleship’s shielding all but destroyed.