The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  The Sentinel

  by Michael Wallace

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  The Sentinel Trilogy

  Book #1 – The Sentinel

  Book #2 – Dragon Quadrant

  Book #3 – Shattered Sun (Coming summer, 2016)

  copyright 2016 by Michael Wallace

  Cover Art by Lorenz Hideyoshi Ruwwe

  Chapter One

  The light blinked red. After 4,039 days of a steady, hypnotic green, occasionally, but only rarely flashing yellow, the light was now a pulsing, insistent red. Red for contact, red for danger, red for alert.

  Red for war.

  Jon Li stared at the light, blinking, unseeing at first. It was impossible, and his brain could not at first register it. The cool voice of the computer finally confirmed what his eyes were insisting.

  “Alien craft. Unknown provenance. Repeat, alien craft. Unknown provenance. Confidence: 100 percent.”

  Li hadn’t been asleep, not really. Merely dozing at his viewport, staring out at the stars. There were worlds out there, warm places with cities and trees and buildings—entire civilizations, human and alien. He’d never expected to live out his days here, cut off for year after year after year. It was a life sentence with a beautiful view and several hundred willing inmates.

  With little to do but maintain vigil for day after bloody day, Li could stare for hours through the viewport, listening to Old Earth music and letting the view of the stars hypnotize him. He’d timed the music to bring up Mozart’s Queen of the Night Aria when the local star swept across the viewport like a red ruby glowing in the warm center of the system. Later, the Ride of the Valkyries would come on when the wide copper face of the gas giant they called the Kettle swung into view.

  What music should he play now? A red light was flashing. Not classical music from before the atomic age, he thought. Rather, something harsh, violent. Old Earth rock or heavy metal. Change was in that flashing red light, and it didn’t call for Mozart or even Wagner.

  The computer continued to warn him even as the console blinked on and the first data streamed across the screen. Li didn’t try to decipher it. Instead, he hit the com link and made a call.

  “Engineer Li speaking.” It was his sister, Anna, and her voice was as tight as an overpressurized exit suit.

  “You saw?” Li asked.

  “Yes.”

  “No chance of a malfunction in the long-range scanners?”

  “I’m running tests now, but no. It could be a false alarm, but . . .”

  “But we’ve never had one before,” Li completed. “And there’s no chance that it’s one of ours? That they forgot to send us a subspace to tell us they’re coming to relieve us from duty? Or resupply, or something?”

  “There’s no way to know for sure without turning on active sounding—which we cannot and will not do—but it’s hard to imagine the Imperium running such a risk. Knowing the kind of firepower we carry, and that we’d blast them out of space lanes—they wouldn’t risk it.”

  The alert had been so sudden, so unexpected, but the ramifications were sinking in, and Li’s heart was now pounding along at a good clip. Four thousand and thirty-nine days. Eleven years.

  Sentinel 3 was 952 million miles away from its star in the deep, frigid cold, where it hid among the moons, dust, and debris of a gas giant. Always silent, always vigilant. That would change one day, Li had always thought, when the men and women under his control melted down into insanity and murder, tearing the military base apart with their zeal. That day was apparently today. Yes, this called for some heavy music.

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  “Nothing, of course. We can see one ship of unknown size. There might be others, well cloaked. The one we see could be a trap. Can’t tell from this range its armaments, its origin, or much else—it’s a billion miles away, and we’re staring at it through the sun.”

  “Where did it jump from, do you think?”

  “One of the outer jump points. Not where we’d expect the enemy to materialize from. But that doesn’t mean anything,” Anna added hastily. “The birds are masters of deception. We can’t make assumptions, not yet.”

  “Agreed.”

  Anna turned on visual, and her face appeared on Li’s viewscreen. She was moving among banks of creaky hardware and electronics. The past eleven years had blunted his sister’s once sharp features, but the old fire was in her eyes now.

  Anna carried her hand computer in front of her face as she moved into the bowels of fire control, talking as she moved.

  “Sorry for the shaky screen,” she said, “but it’s time to change shifts, and I need to talk to you away from prying ears, to keep this conversation quiet.”

  “There’s no way to keep this a secret.”

  “You’re the base commander, big brother. If you want to suppress it, it will stay hidden. Just give the word. For now, I’ve shut down the passive scanners.”

  Li was annoyed that she’d done so without his ordering it first, but he didn’t address this. Instead, he said, “Will the ship come within our line of fire?”

  “Not at its present trajectory, so we’ll have to make some decisions. Try to move into position or attack it long range? Use our lures?”

  “Premature,” Li said. “We have no idea what it is yet. It might not be an enemy.”

  “It’s either one of ours or it must be destroyed.”

  Li glanced back out the viewport to the endless expanse of stars, the sweep of the Milky Way. Any moment now the rusty gold gas giant would swing into view. The Kettle was their home now, hiding them within its massive gravity well and fields of debris. A cold, indifferent home it was. The same gravity well would happily swallow them. The thought that the battle station would attack and destroy whatever ship was coming through the system without even knowing its origin threatened to send Li spiraling into a gravity well of his own.

  “I wouldn’t necessarily attack,” he said.

  “That sounds like something an Opener might say.” Anna’s voice held an edge, a warning. “Don’t you lose your nerve, Jon. Not now.”

  “I’m not. I have questions, that’s all.”

  “All these years staying strong and now is when you question your loyalty?”

  Li bristled. “Where the hell are you getting that? I’m not questioning my loyalty. That’s not what I mean at all.”

  “Our job is to destroy hostile life forms before they jump through to Singapore,” she said. “If you’re going to doubt that the very first time we face an enemy, what are we doing out here anyway?”

  That’s what I keep asking myself. Why are we here?

  He knew Anna was trying to bait him into repeating an Opener’s argument: what if it wasn’t an enemy at all? It might be some other human ship or a nonhostile alien vessel, one that might even be an ally against the birds. Or what if the war had ended long ago? Sentinel 3 could sit forever in silence until it became a tomb for its dying crew. How would they know unless they tried to communicate with newcomers?

  Those were the arguments of an Opener. Li had better ones.

  “First of all, Anna, the ship might be a derelict. It wouldn’t be the first time we got riled up for nothing.”

  “This is nothing like that incident,” Anna said. “We were only three months into our mission, were all on edge, and didn’t know if we’d been tracked by the enemy, and they were about to swoop in and devour us. And the light didn’t blink red. A warning only.”

&nbs
p; “Which made it all the more foolish that we came out of hiding and exposed ourselves,” Li pointed out. “We were ready for a fight, and all we found was a piece of pitted metal flying on pure momentum. Whoever built it had died before our ancestors mastered fire. No risk, no threat at all, but we showed our faces to attack. If Apex had been in the system, we’d be dead.”

  “Like I said, this is nothing like that. That ship had crossed the void. This ship appeared right outside a known jump point.”

  “It was a known jump point three months ago,” Li pointed out. “A jump point decaying last time we scanned it. Until we know more, we can’t even be sure this ship is not a star leviathan. We could blast it with everything we’ve got and it would only make it hungrier.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. It’s not a damn star leviathan, and you know it.” Anna snorted, openly scoffing. “Listen to yourself. A star leviathan. Hah.”

  If she were anyone but his sister, he wouldn’t have put up with it. If it had been ten years ago, he wouldn’t have put up with it even from her. But over the years he’d come to value her bluntness and the way she acted as a bulwark against the Openers who’d abandon everything if given a chance. Now, however, her tone made him bristle.

  She pressed on. “We’re going to destroy that ship, and we won’t lose a moment of sleep over it, either.”

  “Stand down, Anna, that’s an order.”

  She didn’t respond, her face rigid, and for a moment he thought the feed had frozen. The Kettle sometimes sent out radiation pulses that could temporarily disrupt communications. Then she nodded, and he realized she’d only been showing her anger with that stare.

  “You will also share data with engineering,” he said. “We won’t keep this a secret.”

  “It’s a nest of traitors and defeatists down here. Every other engineer is an Opener, I swear.”

  “You will share the data,” he repeated firmly. “We need every man and woman ready, including Openers. They are not traitors or defeatists, so I won’t have that kind of talk. I won’t allow that kind of factionalism on my ship. Not now, not when it’s most critical we stand together.”

  This time, she didn’t respond at all, even after a lengthy pause.

  “Is that clear?” he said. “Anna?”

  “I heard you.”

  He had to give her something to show he was on her side. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll temporarily reassign Koh and Hwang to the power plant. I don’t want them near communications.”

  “Well, okay. Yes, that’s good. They can’t be trusted.” Anna’s tone was grudging, but some of the anger dissipated from her eyes. “Can I bring in Megat?”

  “What do you need that scooter jockey for?”

  “Not for scooter work, obviously. We’re not sending out a ship at a time like this. He can fill in for Hwang—he knows the systems up here.”

  “And he knows dirt work, too,” Li said. “Megat stays in the farms, and you know why.”

  Anna’s nostrils flared. “Fine. Are we done?”

  “Yes.”

  She cut the call without further comment.

  Again, the anger. Why was she taking it out on him? He was on her side in this conflict. Between the two of them, they’d suppressed the Openers for eight years. And Jeremy Megat? Li didn’t want the man anywhere near engineering at a time like this.

  Li didn’t trust Megat any more than he trusted known Openers like Koh and Hwang, and for similar reasons. Koh and Hwang were likely to send a secret subspace to the approaching ship out of desperation to end their long isolation, but Megat would blow the entire base to rubble if he thought it would gain the Singapore Imperium five minutes of advantage in their struggle against Apex. The predatory alien race was bent on exterminating humans in the Dragon Quadrant, and that necessitated harsh measures.

  Data continued to scroll across the screen on the console next to the viewport, but Li wasn’t ready to study it. News would be spreading through engineering, and from there throughout the base. To the gunnery, hydroponics, waste and recycling, the power plant, the sick bay, and even sleeping quarters. Opinions, already formed, would harden. Those on the fence would choose sides.

  We’re not ready.

  It was a strange thought to come to his mind as he went to his small kitchen to heat a pot of tea. He needed caffeine, and lots of it. He was about to enter a sleep cycle, but there was no way he could afford to clock out for eight hours while intrigues brewed from one side of Sentinel 3 to the other.

  “No,” he said aloud. “Not remotely ready. Not to fight an enemy, and not to make a decision if it isn’t an enemy.”

  And whose fault is that?

  His, of course, but how could one maintain eternal vigilance? Eleven long years. Drills, military discipline, and preparations had kept them busy at first. The drills continued, but the discipline had fallen apart years ago. Li ignored sexual liaisons, factionalism, superstitions, bitter arguments, the collapse of ranks, and the abandonment of military-style salutes and addresses. Men grew beards, both genders changed their clothing from officially sanctioned uniforms. They let their hair grow or cropped it too short. With every passing year, Li had let something else slip until it was all gone—everything but base maintenance and the all-important drills. Drills, drills, and more drills.

  He returned to sit at the viewport holding a mug of tea, scalding and bitter. The better not to taste its artificial flavor, although by now actual tea brewed from leaf would no doubt taste strange and wrong. Messages of varying urgency blinked on his console. He ignored them and took a look at scans of the strange ship.

  Anna was right about one thing. It wasn’t a star leviathan. Whatever it was possessed some cloaking, which was either rudimentary or damaged. The half-organic, half-mechanical leviathans had no such thing. This ship had a clear plasma signature, too, and while it was possible that this could come from a leviathan’s meal, that was unlikely. And it wasn’t nearly big enough—only about 150 meters long. Even a juvenile leviathan was a thousand meters long, counting the grasping tentacles.

  A ship that had just gone through a jump point left the space around it noticeably warped for up to twenty hours. This had been a key discovery in detecting and defeating Apex craft, which used an unknown technology to make short, in-system leaps, rather than relying on naturally formed jump points. Was this Apex? The passive scans were unable to tell in this case, because the ship was passing too close to the star.

  There was also no way to tell if it had armaments, although with the cloaking, it was almost certainly not a civilian craft. That meant a warship. It wobbled slightly as it moved. And the velocity was odd: five percent light speed, but not accelerating. That was too fast for a freighter, but not impressive for a military vessel. The fastest ships could manage better than ten percent light speed before fuel costs and the beginnings of relativistic effects began to take their toll.

  But not a freighter, that was clear enough. A freighter had been Li’s hope, a resupply mission from the Singapore system. Eleven years was a long time to wait.

  They couldn’t risk active scanning—that would give away the base’s location—but even passive data began to paint a more accurate picture.

  “Computer, compare the plasma engine signature to known Imperium vessels.”

  “There are no matches,” answered the cool female voice.

  “Not an Apex vessel, then?” Li already knew the answer to this. It was behaving nothing like an Apex craft.

  “Negative.”

  “Could it be a Hroom vessel?”

  “The engines do not match a known Hroom profile,” she said.

  Li had asked this rhetorically, not expecting an answer from the computer, which usually needed more specific commands.

  “Data is incomplete on Hroom vessels,” the computer added. “Contact with the Hroom Empire is limited to fringe and affiliated systems.”

  So Li couldn’t fully discount the Hroom theory.

  The Hroom posses
sed an ancient empire of alien worlds that lay beyond the systems mapped by Imperium vessels. They were prickly, given to aggressive defense, but not hostile if left alone. The Hroom Empire had been in decline and civil war for generations, however, which made them unpredictable, and it was against a theoretical Hroom threat that the Imperium had maintained a navy before the arrival of their true enemy.

  Meanwhile, five hundred years after the Great Migration, the population of the planet Singapore and its colonies had been growing steadily but cautiously. Eventually, it was thought, the Hroom might be a problem. Before the war with Apex, official Imperium policy had been to avoid the Hroom and their worlds. The same hands-off policy was to apply to any other alien race, as well as human colonies. There were no other humans in the Dragon Quadrant, but it was rumored that Old Earth Dutch had settled on the far edge of the Hroom Empire, and perhaps other Old Earth settlers as well.

  “Are any subspace messages emanating from the vessel?” he asked the computer.

  “Negative.”

  “Are there any secondary signatures like small accompanying vessels?”

  “Negative.”

  “Evidence of weapon systems?”

  “I need a more specific question.”

  “That seemed specific enough,” Li said. “Okay, how about lasers or kinetic weapons?”

  “Negative.”

  “Anything odd or unusual about the engines that I haven’t noted yet?”

  “The two engines are operating at variable strength.”

  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” he asked. “Could it be because you’re a computer and lack an imagination? Send the engine data to my personal console.”

  It came through at once, and Li studied the findings. One of the two plasma engines on the mysterious ship was operating at only sixty-two percent power compared to the other.

  Ah, so that explained the intermediate speed. And the wobble. And the slipshod cloaking, now that he thought about it. This was a warship that had been damaged in battle.

  Or so we are meant to believe.

  He heard this in his sister’s voice. And Anna would be right. Apex had used this sort of trick before. They were cunning, relentless predators. Eleven years was nothing. Singapore might be in ruins for all he knew, its people annihilated, its colonies snuffed out one by one. But Apex would continue to hunt until they’d exterminated every last human in the sector.