The Honour of the Knights, Stephen J. Sweeney [reading women .txt] 📗

The Honour of the Knights (First Edition)

The Battle for the Solar System : Book One

Stephen J Sweeney

14.08

Copyright 2009 Stephen J Sweeney

Some 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: 9780955856198

ISBN 10: 0955856191

www.battleforthesolarsystem.com

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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

H1NZ Series

H1NZ-0 (Abby and Phil’s Stories)

H1NZ

FIRMWARE Series

Firmware

Malware

Project Reality

Standalone Novels

The Red Road

Project Starfighter

Author's Note

This is the first edition of THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS, the first book in the BATTLE FOR THE SOLAR SYSTEM trilogy, published in 2009. It has since been superseded by the second edition, published in 2011 and available from all good eBook retailers. Those interested in reading the whole trilogy should favour the second edition over this one.

For Dad

— Prologue —

It had taken only a matter of hours for the Kethlan system to become a tumbling sea of debris; the twisted and burnt-out remnants of a once glorious Imperial nation. An empire whose costly mistakes would for many years to come echo into every corner of the known galaxy. And with those mistakes would come death to billions of innocent, unsuspecting lives.

A starfighter hurtled through the scattered metal, the pilot desperate to find a way to stop himself from joining the ever growing population of this interstellar graveyard.

Jacques Chalmers was not alone in his frustration with the current situation, but he was doubtless one of the most panicked. He tried to steady himself as he began cycling once again through the available display options for his starfighter's radar system. His anxiety continued to grow with each passing second, every change of the screen doing nothing to abate it. He stopped midway through the calibration and glanced out of his cockpit.

The scene was the same as it had been a few moments ago and it brought him no comfort. He couldn't count the number of capital ships that dominated the Enemy's frontline. Twenty? Thirty? Fifty? In his years of service to the Imperial Naval Forces he had never seen anything like it, not even in archive war footage. The enormous forms of the battleships loomed like giants atop a hill, staring down upon a tiny village below. Then there were the Enemy starfighters themselves: hundreds at least, swarming about like a huge wall of locusts.

Knowing that he had already been flying straight for longer than was advisable, Chalmers altered his course to attempt to throw off any pursuers.

* * *

Not long before he had been standing on the flight deck of his deployment carrier, amongst the other pilots, his heart pumping in his ears, his hands sweating as he awaited the order to board his fighter.

Chalmers saw his friends run forward as their names were called out, scrambling into cockpits, pulling on helmets and performing last-minute safety checks. Though most hid it well, he was convinced they were all as nervous and scared as he was - knowing they could well be speeding only to their own deaths. As he watched his friends' fighters hurtle down the catapult, his commanding officer had addressed the last remaining pilots still standing on the flight deck.

“Right, listen up,” he started. “This is where we must make our stand. The Enemy cannot be allowed to advance any further. Tonight we fight the battle for Kethlan and for the Imperium; the battle for our survival. Hundreds of millions of lives are depending on our actions here. Make them proud!”

Hundreds of millions? thought Chalmers. Is that all that's left? A few months ago it was billions. This day had crept ever closer as cities, planets and then entire star systems had fallen to the Enemy; to those damned Pandorans; to the Senate's mistake. How many of his friends had he lost over these last few terrible months? Had they died fast or were they now suffering a fate far worse..?

As his CO continued to pump them up for the critical battle, Chalmers' head was filled with visions of row upon row of black-clad soldiers. A white emblem resided on their right arms and left breast, an all-encompassing full black helmet upon their heads, its smooth form negating all facial features. Two bright red oval spheres were set into an eye-level groove that ran all around, the “eyes” themselves slanted into a menacing and intimidating scowl. One of the soldiers turned to face him, the ruby-like eyes seeming to pierce his very soul. He felt his hand tighten on the flight helmet he held, swallowing hard.

“Daniels! Peterson! Foster! Brown! Rye...” a voice called out above the other sounds that filled the flight deck. Feet moved and Chalmers felt his stomach lurch. His name would be called soon. He felt a sense of doom. If the Empire could not stop the Enemy before, what hope did they have now? The Enemy's power had grown exponentially and they had crushed everything in their path with harrowing little effort. Chalmers was feeling forced to accept the truth: they were all that was left of the Imperial Naval Forces. This was a battle that could not be won; not now, not ever.

“... Tyler! Flynn! Chalmers! King! Golden! Blair...”

At the sound of his name, Chalmers felt himself move robotically, his mind screaming in protest against what his legs were doing. He ran over to the waiting starfighter, threw on his helmet and begun ascending the ladder into the cockpit.

Zombie-like he sank down into the seat, watching as if from outside his body as his hands buckled him in, his fingers flip switches, press buttons, acknowledge questions and confirmations on the screens before him. Moments later, his craft was taxied to the catapult and before long he'd found himself out in space and into the thick of battle.

At that moment, his worst fears had not only been altogether realised, but far exceeded.

* * *

Chalmers cancelled the radar calibration screen and instead opened a communications channel to his parent carrier.

“Centaur, this is First Lieutenant Chalmers.” He could hear the fear and tension in his own voice as he spoke and could not control it. “Has there been any update to the radar situation?”

“That's a negative, Chalmers, we're still working on it.”

Centaur's answer did nothing to ease his distress. “Any contingency plans? I can't see what the hell I'm supposed to be shooting at out here!”

“Again, that's a negative. Ops believes that enemy craft are masking their vessel signatures. We're working to decode it ASAP. We will keep you notified. Centaur out.”

Chalmers again looked down at his radar screen in frustration. In a normal combat situation the radar would differentiate between the participants with simple colour coding: green for friendly, red for hostile and white for unknown. His radar had been functioning as normal when he had launched, but only a few minutes into the battle every item on the screen had turned green. In that state it made it impossible to decipher hostile targets from friendly ones. To make matters worse, his opponents were flying the same craft as he and his squadron, so that even at visual range he could not be certain whether he was about to open fire on friend or foe.

“Jules!” he said, opening a communications channel to a life long team mate. He attempted to keep his voice steady as he spoke, trying his best to avoid drawing any of his allies into his own personal hell. “Is your radar any good?”

“Jacques!” the familiar female voice came back to him, sounding grateful to hear from a friend. “Where are you? I'm flying blind here! I can't see a thing!” The anxiety and distress was clear in her own voice. Chalmers had known Jules for years, she was almost like a sister to him. For him to hear her in such a state horrified him. He longed to open a video link, to look into her eyes and tell her that everything was going to be okay, that they would both get through this. But with his fighter in its current state, he dared not touch anything for fear it would make matters worse.

As he tried to think of how best to relay his present location to his team mate, he noticed that the radar had tagged the craft he was speaking to; a thin, blinking white rectangular box outlining the green triangle. For a brief moment his anguish subsided and he brought his craft around to face Jules' fighter. He could see her weaving and twirling in a similar fashion to his own meandering and confused flight, the cannons of her fighter as quiet as his own.

“Jules, check your radar. I'm...” Chalmers began. Jules' starfighter exploded before him, a pair of fighters peeling away from the wreckage that spread out like a firework. His small glimmer of hope melted as soon as it had first appeared and he felt the words he was about to speak become lodged in his throat. Though he had witnessed it so many times before, to see two fighters identical to his own open fire on and destroy an allied craft was still an awful sight to behold. It was not like combat against foreign craft, those of the Confederacy or Independent Nations, for instance. This was more personal, as though one was watching dear friends turn on each other again and again. For longer than was wise he sat staring at the sparking, spinning metal that continued to spread out. Chalmers took it as sign that the destruction he had witnessed over the last few months was edging ever closer to engulfing him.

“No...” the pitiful sound of his own voice finally escaped