The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Smythe lifted his head. “We got it!”

  Next to him, Lomelí worked furiously at her console. The viewscreen flushed away the rapidly disappearing planet and returned to the more distant gas giant that was their ultimate destination. Lomelí took them past the moons and asteroids, now visible in refined detail from the subspace scan, and swung across the outer gas giant and its environments, looking for whatever the computer had identified as artificial.

  “Whoever they are,” Tolvern said as she waited for the tech officers to stop messing around, “they know we’re here. That blast from the arrays would have awakened the dead.”

  “No doubt,” Smythe said. He grinned. “I told you they’d hear a ringing noise. Probably hear it in their sleep tonight. But they already got our message and we got theirs. This is just confirmation that we’re coming.”

  And then Lomelí stopped spinning the view, and there it was. Or rather, there they were, silhouetted against the gas giant, almost, but not quite masked bythe massive signature of the planet itself.

  A formation of eight long, slender ships. It was a small fleet of Apex lances.

  Chapter Seven

  Commander Li paced back and forth in the holding cell. Three steps took him to the other side. He crossed again, unable to look at the prisoner, he was so furious.

  Anna was behind him at the doorway, with Megat in the hallway outside. The pair carried sidearms, and he knew they’d use them without hesitation. Li himself was as yet unarmed. It was a small act of denial as to the gravity of the situation.

  Hillary Koh was the prisoner. She sat on the cot at the back, a defiant look on her upturned face as she stared at him. Finally, he could stand it no longer and wheeled on her.

  “For God’s sake, Koh. Why? What were you possibly thinking?”

  “I was thinking that eleven years is long enough. I’d rather take my chances.”

  “So all this time you’ve been hiding? You were an Opener all the time. A secret Opener.” He managed a harsh laugh. “That’s some irony for you. All for coming out of the shadows and finding out what’s happening in the quadrant, but you have to hide your motives to do it.”

  “No, I was never an Opener. I wasn’t Sentry Faction, either. I just did my job. It was only yesterday, working with Dong Swettenham, that it came to me. I can’t do this anymore. I had to take a risk. And I’m not sorry for it, either.”

  Li studied Koh more carefully, as if he were seeing her for the first time. She was a young woman—looked about twenty-two, except that was impossible. The Imperium had been drafting youth between the ages of seventeen and nineteen when Sentinel 3 was constructed, which meant Hillary Koh was at least twenty-eight. Possibly older, depending on her years of service. Beyond her youthful appearance, she didn’t look like a programmer, not with the way she stared unflinchingly at the base commander. It was confident, almost arrogant. She may have stayed neutral for all these years, but once she’d flipped, there was no turning back. Under other circumstances, she’d have made a good striker pilot, what with that arrogance.

  “You do realize what this means, don’t you?” he asked. “The unknown craft has changed course and is coming this way.”

  “That’s why I sent the message,” Koh said coolly. “It was a flashing light. ‘Here we are!’ I didn’t tell them anything else. We have plenty of time to establish communications as you see fit, only now you’ll be forced to do it.”

  Li gritted his teeth. He turned to Anna. “No, Koh doesn’t understand. Tell her, Engineer Li.”

  Anna stepped further into the room. It was tight with three people in the small cell. She kept her right hand at her pistol, as if she hoped that Koh would try to fight for it or make a break for freedom. Give Anna an excuse to gun down the traitor. Koh merely stared back, unflinching, as a sharp, unpleasant smile crossed Anna’s face.

  “You’ve condemned your would-be saviors to death is what you’ve done,” Anna said.

  “I’ve done nothing of the kind.”

  “You haven’t?” Anna said. “They know where we are, they are on their way here. This base is under orders, and those orders have never been broken before now, before you did it. Well, the rest of us are going to maintain formation, we won’t break ranks and flee the battlefield in panic.”

  Koh’s certainty seemed to waver. Her eyes flickered to Li. “Commander, what is she talking about?”

  “I think you know,” Li said. His voice sounded like an executioner’s. “We’re bringing all weapon systems online. As soon the unknown ship pulls within range, we’ll drop our cloaks and show them the full scope of our firepower.”

  “And drive them off?”

  “And kill them. We can’t have witnesses.”

  Koh shot to her feet. “No! You can’t do that. They’re not even Apex, they’re human! Allies, maybe even our salvation. You must have listened to the voice, you have to know. It’s not a trick, it’s real!”

  “We don’t know that,” Li said. “We don’t know anything, only that we have our orders, and that is to maintain our vigil. Enemies crossing the system must come within range of our guns, and when they do, we destroy them.”

  “They’re not enemies!”

  “They weren’t before,” Li said. “Now you’ve made them so.”

  “You as good as killed them yourself, Hillary Koh,” Anna said. Her tone was malicious, and Li found himself hating his sister, just a little, at that moment.

  Koh turned to the porcelain toilet in the corner and bent over it, looking as if she’d be sick.

  “Barf it up, Opener,” Anna said. “We’ll be sure to recycle it. We need every last drop of your body fluids to survive the coming decades. That’s right, decades.”

  Li collared his sister and hauled her into the corridor without waiting to see if Koh would throw up, or if her nausea would pass. He palmed the lock, and the door swung shut behind him. Megat joined Li and his sister, looking grim but satisfied, as they made their way out of the detention block.

  “You should throw Swettenham in a cell, too,” Anna said. “Why haven’t you already?”

  “Because I only have three holding cells, and I might need the others for the pair of you.”

  “I’m serious. You don’t actually believe Koh’s bullshit, do you, that she was working alone?”

  “I do believe it. She confessed instantly, she explained her method and her motives. Swettenham was outraged when he heard what she’d done.”

  “He’s an Opener! We’ve been watching him for years. Tell him, Megat.”

  “An Opener who did not defy me,” Li said. “Who did nothing wrong. Even did me a big favor, in fact, translating the message.”

  Anna wouldn’t let it go. “Come on, Jon. The guy even admits he’s an Opener. We never knew about Koh—she’s a small fish in all of this, but Swettenham talks to everyone he knows. He must have been involved.”

  “Except he wasn’t, or at least, I have no evidence.”

  She had the good sense to wait until they were past two men with ceiling panels down, working on an overhead duct, before she started in again. “Throw the idiot in a cell anyway. You can’t take that chance. Question him hard, see if he’ll crack and give us more names.”

  He stopped. “Anna, if we start this, it won’t stop until you have every Opener arrested and tried for treason.”

  “And maybe it shouldn’t. Get rid of them all, we’d be better off. These people have been waiting for this opportunity. It’s like gangrene spreading through the station. And I say it’s high time to cleanse it. Burn it out, amputate a bloody limb if you have to, if it’s the only way to save the patient. God, how can you be so naive, so weak?”

  Li shoved her against the corridor wall and pinned her in place with his forearm. Her eyes bulged and her mouth hung open. He looked away long enough to glare at Megat, daring the man to make a move. Then he turned slowly back to his sister.

  “Right now, you’re the biggest threat to Sentinel 3. Not the Alb
ion warship, not Hillary Koh. Not even Apex. Your vicious factionalism, that’s what. And if you cross me, so help me, you’ll see just how weak I really am.”

  She said nothing. Good. Li kept her pinned.

  “We’re going to full alert,” he said. “When the Albion ship comes, we’ll finish it off. Then we’ll re-cloak and go back to full silent mode. We’ll stay there until we are officially relieved or we die of old age. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what everyone in the Sentry Faction declares is our duty and our honor, to serve as long as it takes in defense of Singapore and the Imperium?”

  “Yes, Commander Li. It is.”

  He released his forearm from his sister’s chest and took a step backward. “Good. Then I will make decisions about crew such as Dong Swettenham. And I say he’s loyal. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Swettenham is a communications level one, and we need him on duty bringing up scanners. We’ll shut them down when the battle is over. Or rather, the slaughter, since that’s what I expect we’ll do to them. Then Swettenham goes back to muddling around in engineering. That is why I need him. That, and a general principle not to be a paranoid dictator and send us all over the edge.”

  “I’m sorry, Jon.” Anna sounded genuinely contrite.

  Of course, she was getting her way, except for the desire for a widespread purge. Let her think for a moment that her brother was an Opener, and it would be back to her mutinous behavior.

  As if on cue, Swettenham’s voice spoke in Li’s com link. “Commander Li, we’ve got a situation.”

  “We’ve got several, from what I can see. Which of the many has you upset?”

  Anna and Megat looked at him, expressions curious, but he didn’t explain or open the audio to their channel so they could hear what the communications specialist was saying.

  “We just got slapped by a massive active subspace scan,” Swettenham said. “It was the Albion warship looking for us. Like sending a pack of barking dogs through the brush to see what takes flight.”

  “And did we take flight? Did they flush us out?”

  “No, sir. At least, I don’t think so. Cloaking held, near as I can tell. Though thanks to that idiot Koh, they know the neighborhood, and once they get here, they’ll find us if they scan that hard again.”

  “We’ll worry about that when they arrive.” Li had not yet shared with Swettenham the fate of the Albion warship. “So if they barked, and we kept our heads down, what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is what else they flushed out, sir.”

  #

  Five minutes later, Commander Li was in the command module. It was in the deepest, most shielded part of the base, but in many respects had the appearance of the bridge on a starship. A commander’s terminal sat in the middle of the room, directly below a viewscreen that gave the impression of staring through a large window straight into space, though it was only a display. To the left was a bank of terminals to control the firing systems, with consoles for shields and defensive measures taking up space behind. These were unmanned at the moment.

  All the activity was to the right, at communications consoles. Here, five men and women were busy dusting off old systems that had been locked down for years. Running scripts, testing access to the equipment. Swettenham was there, giving orders, directing diagnostics.

  He looked up as Li entered. “I’ll be with you in a moment, sir.”

  Harold Ang, Li’s first officer, stood near the commander’s chair, mumbling into his com link as he powered up systems. Ang was a slender, bony man. The fringe of hair around his temples, already graying when the base was established, was now streaked with white. The poor old man should be retired from service, tending his family shrine in some quiet village on Singapore, not here facing a crisis twenty light years from home.

  Li settled into his chair. It felt both familiar and strangely uncomfortable at the same time. He came in here for weekly drills—communications might not get much use, but the weapon systems were regularly tended to, shields and countermeasures tested, the eliminon battery warmed behind its baffle. But so many years had passed since he’d sat in the chair with actual danger brewing that sitting now felt like playacting. Yet another drill, this one where all the participants pretended it was real. But still a pretense.

  “Where are the gunnery officers?” he asked. “The shield specialist?”

  “They’re on their way, sir,” Ang said. “We only just called them when you said to man stations.”

  Swettenham made his way over as Li tested his console to make sure he had full access. From this seat he could take control of certain laser arrays himself if needed, even fire the eliminon battery.

  “Bring it up on the screen, comm officer,” he told Swettenham.

  The man swelled visibly. The semi-useless mechanical engineer was gone, replaced by the head of communications. He’d even changed uniforms, and a single dragon emblem gleamed proudly on his right shoulder. Level one.

  The main viewscreen showed a formation of Apex lances framed by the gas giant around which Sentinel 3 orbited. The largest storms on the Kettle’s surface were churning directly below them, matching the tumult in Li’s stomach.

  Eight enemy lances. How long had they been there?

  Nobody spoke for a long moment, staring. The long, slender craft gleamed silver when you caught them in the light, but peering at them through the planet, they looked like slivers of shadow. Ready to pierce, puncture, and destroy. Queens and drones on board, waiting to swoop in, seize prey in their talons, and tear them apart. Both metaphorically and literally.

  “They’re well cloaked, sir,” Swettenham said. “But I don’t think they’ve moved in some time, or even the passive scans would have picked them up at this distance.”

  Li double-checked his console. “And they’re positioned in such a way that we could shoot them at any time. We’ll have to fire around the planet, of course, but that’s within our capabilities.”

  “Why don’t we, then?” Ang said. He remained standing, but had pulled up his own console. “Five more minutes and all systems will be ready to fire.”

  “The main arrays are already online,” Swettenham said. “I’ll target the birds, and the gunnery can finish them off.”

  “We’ll win this battle,” Ang said, nodding vigorously. “Easily.”

  Li wasn’t so sure about that—too many unknowns. He was turning it over when the door to the command module slid open, and his sister entered. The base had been put on high alert, which meant that Anna should have been down in the eliminon battery, where an entire team was required to make sure the delicate crystals stayed aligned.

  Faces turned toward her as she entered. Some seemed curious, others passed her knowing looks, while a few scowled and looked away. She approached Li, Ang, and Swettenham.

  “You said we weren’t detected,” Li said, turning to the communications officer. “How can you be sure?”

  “I am certain, sir.” Swettenham nodded vigorously. “I don’t care how good the Albion sensors are or how hard they scanned us, at that distance they’ll never penetrate our cloaking. It caught the lances, though, showed them to us.”

  “But that same scan surely lit us up for whoever else was listening closer at hand.” Li nodded at the still frame of the enemy lances. “We see them clearly enough.”

  “Yes, but we were on the other side of the Kettle when Albion ran their scans. Our sensors are superior to Apex’s, and we saw them right through the planet. That’s how good our eyes and ears are. If I fire up the active sensors, I could tell you the color of the queen commander’s feathers. Their sensors are crap in comparison.” Swettenham gave what Li supposed was a modest shrug, but it only made him look more confident.

  This was one of the sentinel battle station’s advantages. Apex could intercept and decode any known communication. They could force short-range jump points using some unknown technology, popping in and out where they liked. But st
ay silent, and they struggled to find you.

  “Anyway, even if they could find us,” Swettenham said, “they’ve got to be staring out at this Blackbeard. Even if their sensors weren’t rubbish, they probably wouldn’t have seen us based on how we were positioned relative to them.”

  “They’re using the Albion ship as bait,” Li decided.

  “Why do you say that, Commander?” Ang asked.

  The first officer had been fiddling with something on his screen, and it looked like his console was resetting. He’d crashed it while running diagnostics. Li felt a sudden twinge of worry about how Ang would perform in the coming fight, if his reflexes were still sharp enough for battlefield conditions.

  “I can’t be sure,” Li said, “but it fits the situation. Apex must know we’re here. A captive talked or they seized a computer that said we were in this system.”

  He let this stand for a moment. The only people who knew of Sentinel 3 had been confined to Singapore. The only computers that cataloged their existence were on the home world. So what did that mean for the home world?

  “Or maybe they’ve fought other sentinels,” Li added, somewhat more hopefully. “They’ve studied the problem and figured this was a logical system to put us. So they’re trying to flush us out by dangling bait in front of us.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Swettenham said vehemently. “That was a real message, spoken in a real language. I believe it’s real, that the Albionish are real people.”

  “You believe it’s real because you want to believe it’s real,” Anna spoke up. “It’s wishful thinking bordering on superstitious faith, and it will get us killed.”

  Li had almost forgotten his sister was standing quietly behind his shoulder. She didn’t belong here, but he couldn’t fight with her now. Not when he’d cast his lot with the Sentry Faction, of which she was the apparent leader. Not when the command module was filling with people from both factions, as well as people he’d previously identified as neutrals. He had to hold them all together, then impose discipline once the crisis had passed.