The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “Oh, I think Swettenham is right,” Li told her. “That human warship hit us with a full scan, trying to find us, but they only revealed Apex. If the enemy was in full control, there’s no way they’d have positioned their ships as they did.”

  “Unless there’s an even larger fleet lurking.” Anna smiled. There was no humor in it, only satisfaction. “They show us a small force, taunt us into attacking. Then the main fleet swoops in and tears us to shreds once we reveal ourselves.”

  Li stopped. He hadn’t considered that possibility. It didn’t change his general hunch, but what did it matter? The enemy knew or suspected that they were here and was trying to find their exact location.

  “You see?” she pressed, looking from one man to the next and taking obvious satisfaction in the discomfort of all three. “This doesn’t change anything.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Li said. “We go to battle mode and fight.”

  “You’d reveal our location.”

  He gave her a withering look. “Obviously. And what are we, a listening post, or a battle station? Sentinel 3 is crammed with enough lasers, munitions, and fissiles to fight a small war.”

  “It’s also incapable of jumping out of the system,” Swettenham said nervously. “We reveal ourselves and there’s no escaping.”

  “Also part of our description. We hide in silence, we strike hard, and we absorb maximum punishment while we await relief from the navy. If that relief does not come, we die for the glory of the Imperium.”

  “But what if it’s only eight lances?” Anna asked. “You wouldn’t give up our location for eight lances, would you?”

  “I thought you were worried about a hidden fleet? If it’s there, you’ll get all the fighting you want.” Li looked back and forth between his sister and Swettenham. “Anyway, it’s nice to see Openers and the Sentry Faction united in cowardice.”

  Now he had Anna and Swettenham both bristling.

  “We’re fighting, all right.” Li nodded at Swettenham. “This is your chance. If the Albion ship is for real, they’ll see us in trouble, and they’ll either charge to our aid or won’t.” He looked at his sister. “And this is yours. You claim we’ve stayed hidden so we can fight the enemy. Well, here they are.” He clapped them both on the shoulders and let the full irony come through in his voice. “So you see, we all win.”

  Ang cleared his throat, a sound not so different from the gurgling pipes in the water processing system. “Sir, what about the human warship?”

  “Hopefully, they know how to fight and they exaggerated the extent of their injuries. And they’re smart enough to stay out of range of our weapon systems.” Li hardened his expression. “But this is war, and in any battle there is collateral damage.”

  Chapter Eight

  Captain Tolvern brought the critical personnel into the war room and gave her orders. There was no response for a long moment, only incredulity on every face around the table. Smythe squirmed, and Capp rubbed her shaved scalp so vigorously it was like she’d peel off the skin. Barker’s walrus mustache twitched. Nyb Pim’s long fingers stretched in front of him, and a hum sounded deep in his throat. That was Hroom nerves coming out.

  It was Barker who spoke first. “We fought four lances last week. There are eight facing us now.”

  “I’m aware of the odds,” Tolvern said.

  “Plus HMS Swift was protecting our flank,” he continued. “We lost her. Nearly lost our own lives.”

  “We did lose our lives,” Tolvern said. “It’s a slow-motion death is all. We’re going to die out here if someone doesn’t throw us a lifeline, and I don’t see that happening on its own, do you?”

  “So you want to charge in, guns blazing?” Barker said. “Go down in a fiery death, glory for God and king, and all that rubbish?”

  “That’s one way to put it,” she said. “It beats running for our lives while they pick at us like wolves tormenting a sick moose. You know what happens, don’t you? The moose eventually goes down and they eat it alive.”

  “You got a way with words, Cap’n,” Capp said. “Makes me almost feel like I’m there.”

  “We run, that gives them a chance to disable us,” Tolvern added. “Then they’ll board us. Then they’ll do their thing. We all know what that means.”

  “Captain, they’re going to do that anyway,” Smythe said. “By my calculations we’ll be lucky to survive the first encounter. A single shot to the rear shields and there go the engines.”

  “Carvalho will lead the fight if they try to board. We’ll contest every inch of the ship, deliver as much destruction as we can.” Tolvern looked at Barker. “You’ll rig the ship with explosives, and we’ll see if we can take out the boarding ship as we go. And we’ll each save one bullet in our guns. Barring that, how about cyanide capsules just to be sure?”

  “So it’s a suicide mission?” Nyb Pim said.

  “Don’t make a shrine to your death god just yet,” she told the Hroom. “I’m not giving up hope. There’s the message we sent, and the answer we received. We still don’t have all the answers.”

  “You’re still laying a bet on that Dutch arsehole?” Capp said. “You ask me, we should stick that lying bastard in the airlock and give him a right proper sendoff.”

  “You think explosive decompression is good enough for him, Capp?” Tolvern shook her head. “Nah, I’ve got a better plan. There’s one fellow on board who doesn’t get his cyanide capsule. We’ll send Djikstra out in an away pod, launch him right toward our Apex friends. They can have him back.”

  Capp grinned at this. “Even better.”

  Tolvern leaned across the table. “But I’ll tell you something. I don’t think Djikstra is a liar. I think there is a base out there, and I think someone tried to answer us. I just happen to think that Apex was listening. Maybe they’re trying to find these Singaporeans, too. Or maybe they calculated our trajectory and moved to intercept us. Maybe they know nothing about the other humans.”

  She had their attention now.

  “It’s a long shot, but we have no choice. We’ve got eight hours until we lose an engine. After that, we slow to a crawl. Until then, we’re still maneuverable. Our cannons are all repaired and ready to fight. We’ve got a fair number of missiles and torpedoes, and the laser batteries are undamaged.”

  “Mostly true,” Barker said with a grunt. “Few things not quite right yet.”

  She ignored this, and continued, her voice as strong and confident as she could manage. Trying to channel James Drake before they went into battle.

  “We’re going to fight, and we’re going to win. Apex respects strength—it’s the only thing these buzzards do respect. And with any luck, these Singaporeans will too. With luck they’ll see how we fight and extend a hand.”

  #

  An hour until they’d reach the gas giant. Four hours until they’d lose the crippled number two engine. It was longer than early fears, but Barker and Smythe were more certain now. It was going, and soon.

  That four hours had been hard earned. Some brave soul went out on a line to do external repairs, not an easy task when you’re racing along at nearly eight thousand miles a second and bleeding globules of plasma. Get a little too close to the engine and you’d find yourself in a final, warm embrace with the plasma. The man shot nano-epoxy at the damaged heat shields, and miraculously, it seemed to do some good.

  Barker said it bought them nearly an hour of engine time.

  Tolvern watched the viewscreen as the scans came in. Her hands had been gripping the armrests so long that her forearms were sore, and she forced herself to let go.

  “Ram scoops fully retracted,” Lomelí said from the tech console. “We should be getting full data now.”

  “Smythe, how is that subspace coming?” Tolvern said.

  “Still not sending,” Smythe said, frustration evident in his voice.

  “We’re running out of time. If you have to, go down to engineering yourself. The fleet needs to know what’s happenin
g here.”

  It was a death message, essentially. Here’s how HMS Blackbeard went down, all hands lost. Something from this encounter might help the navy in future encounters, some pattern emerge that further illuminated Apex tactics.

  “They’re giving me everything I’m asking for, sir.”

  “Well, keep at it.”

  The scans resolved themselves. Some of the Apex ships had moved. Four were in orbit around the third moon from the planet, a small, rocky world with a battered, pockmarked surface testifying to eons of bombardment as debris was drawn haphazardly into the gas giant’s embrace.

  Three lances had remained close to where they’d been spotted earlier, only somewhat nearer the gas giant, a few thousand miles above the dense layers of upper clouds. Scans showed their smooth, silvery skins, and they looked almost like flying creatures hovering above the surface. Giant, bloodsucking insects, like the vermin that had infested the jungles of Hot Barsa. Illusion combined with metaphor to make Tolvern’s skin crawl as she imagined the Apex queen inside, planning their destruction.

  “Where’s the last ship?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for it,” Lomelí said. The diminutive Ladino tech officer hunched over the console, her shoulders drawn in.

  Smythe, standing next to her, threw up his hands. “I don’t know what else to try. Maybe it went through that time. It cost us plenty of power, but I never got the confirmation.”

  “Are you still messing around with that subspace?” Tolvern said. “Help Lomelí find the last ship.” She called down to the gunnery. “Barker, give me an update.”

  All was good. He’d been repairing the three-cannon battery installed on the underside of the ship during Blackbeard’s stint as a pirate ship. One of the cannons had been knocked off its carriage and remained vulnerable. Good chance it wouldn’t survive repeated firing, but it was good for the moment. The most powerful torpedoes in the arsenal, the Hunter-IIs, had been loaded in the tubes and were ready to go.

  “We’ll launch a barrage as soon as we get into combat,” Tolvern said.

  “Aye, Captain. The torpedoes won’t catch anyone who isn’t already wounded, but they’ll certainly chase those buzzards around the battlefield. Who are we targeting?”

  “I’m coming at the planet after those three—they’re our easiest target. Can you keep the other four off our butt?”

  “Four and three? Weren’t there eight when we started?”

  “Yeah, we’ve lost one of them. Let me worry about that.”

  “All right, then. Hmm.” A moment of silence, then Barker said, “What if we lay down some mines behind us? I’ve got a few Youds left—they’ll be easy enough to spot when we drop them, but those buggers will give chase if they’re activated, forcing the buzzards to come around wide. That will buy us some time.”

  It was a single-use tactic, but anything that delayed the enemy was worth it. “Good, prepare the mines for deployment.”

  “Already done.”

  Tolvern looked at the screen, then down at her display. “Twenty minutes to battle.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Barker said. He cut the line.

  “We still can’t find it, sir,” Smythe said after the captain had ended her call. “Maybe the last ship jumped away.”

  “Not likely,” Tolvern said. “Keep looking and we’ll see what happens. Not much use hanging around to see if it shows.”

  “We’re trying one more hard scan and—Captain!”

  Tolvern looked up quickly from her console. The two tech officers manipulated the view. The gas giant smeared across the screen and was replaced with a view of the planet’s ring. It gleamed with ice particles spotted with chunks of debris that manifested as shadows.

  “I still don’t see the missing lance,” she said, “but if that’s where it’s hiding, it’s out of the action for now. We can avoid it easily.”

  “Not the lance, Captain,” Smythe said excitedly. “Look!”

  His fingers danced over the console, and he applied a filter to the view. The larger rocks and asteroids disappeared, and all that was left was the ice glowing like a billion radiant diamonds. Smythe applied another filter, and most of the ice vanished. What remained was a shadowy hole conspicuous by the absence of light coming through.

  “Looks like we’ve found our mates,” Capp said. “And about bloody time, too.”

  Tolvern allowed herself to hope. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s pretty big,” Smythe said. “Got to be either a battle station or a fortress dug into an asteroid.”

  “But not simply an asteroid without the fort?”

  “Too much metal for just another rock. Refined tyrillium, too. You never see that in nature. It’s a clever hiding place,” Smythe added. “Almost missed it.”

  Indeed, they’d found it by pure chance. With either the sun or the planet in a slightly different position, the secret would have remained secure. Had one of the Apex ships not vanished, Tolvern never would have been looking in the first place. Hidden in the ice field, the station could have remained undetected indefinitely.

  Tolvern turned to her pilot. “Can you get us there?”

  “Yes, Captain. I can get you there.” Nib Pym hummed deep in his throat. He worked his console. “I calculate an extra ten minutes to maneuver and slow.”

  “Don’t make a direct approach. Apex might not know about the base, and I’d rather not be the one to tell them.”

  A pause as Nyb Pim’s nav chip interfaced with the computer. Billions of calculations and a few seconds later, he said, “Is a two-minute delay acceptable?”

  “Getting us there in twelve minutes? Do it.”

  Tolvern got on the com to the gunnery and explained to Barker the change in plans. She ordered him to fling the Youd mines toward the three ships hovering above the planet instead. Once Blackbeard came within the battle station’s protective guns, they’d fire their torpedoes at the lances and see what happened.

  Barker snorted. “Protective guns? That’s what you think they are?”

  “That base is either Apex, in which case we’re dead, or it’s human. I think it’s human, and I think it’s Singaporean. The enemy will discover the Singaporeans as soon as the battle commences. What choice does the base have but to stand and fight by our side?”

  “I can think of several choices,” Barker said. “Some of them ugly.”

  Tolvern let the heat rise in her voice. “Well, we sure as hell don’t have a choice, do we?”

  “Your call, Captain. We’ve got a damn rock on one side of us, and a bloody hard place on the other. Either way, it’s going to get interesting.”

  This time it was Tolvern who cut the line between bridge and engineering. Nyb Pim had already implemented a subtle change in their trajectory, and the planet came rushing up, together with all the elements that would make this interesting: moons, asteroids and debris, the massive gravity well of the gas giant, and eight Apex lances divided in two forces, with one of them unaccounted for. Oh, and the human military base. Friend or foe?

  “It’s going to get interesting, all right,” she muttered. Then, to the computer, “Jane, give me continual updates on the shields and the status of the engine.”

  “Engine two critical. Full plasma breach estimated in—”

  “I know that, you silly girl,” Tolvern said. “Give me continual updates of any changes. Otherwise, we’ll assume the status quo includes an imminent fiery death.”

  The lances at the planet began to move, speeding away into deep space. Moments later, they blinked away. It looked as if they’d fled the battlefield, but Tolvern wasn’t fooled. She knew by now that they’d simply changed position to hide whatever it was that they did before creating one of their temporary jump points. They’d no doubt flash into place at the most inconvenient moment possible. No sense making it easy for them.

  “Capp, get those mines in place.”

  Tolvern turned her attention to the viewscreen. No sign of the missing lance or the thr
ee that had vanished moments earlier, but the four out by the moon were on the move. They spread into a box-four, a classic position to catch an enemy in enfilading fire that would have been recognizable to any first-year cadet at the Academy. Once in position, they came toward Blackbeard, cautiously at first, then accelerating.

  Nyb Pim made his second maneuver. This sent Blackbeard corkscrewing down on both the z- and x-axes and toward the base. The gravity and inertia engines strained, and the ship shuddered.

  Smythe called from the tech console. “That little maneuver just cost us the engine seal.”

  Confirming this news, Jane piped in to cheerfully explain that the plasma leak had increased by twenty-seven percent.

  “It’s a miracle the seal held up as long as it did,” Tolvern said.

  She stared at the black gap in the viewscreen, where the battle station was starting to come into focus even as Blackbeard slowed dramatically. Not buried into an asteroid, but all artificial. They must have some kind of effective cloaking to stay so hidden. Somehow, she had to get that tech back to Albion.

  The cruiser was well within range of the battle station’s guns by now, assuming it was armed and not just a listening post or supply dump. The four lances skated in at an angle, also coming within range of the station. They didn’t seem to have noticed it yet.

  “The buzzards have broken our target baffles,” Smythe warned. “Incoming fire.”

  “Fire torpedoes,” she ordered.

  Barker’s voice came over the com an instant later, confirming the launch of Hunter-II torpedoes. Blackbeard dropped its cloaking to allow the main kinetic guns to fire. The nose laser array targeted the lead enemy ship. And the lances fired in return. Voices, shudders, flashing lights and warnings in her ear, on the viewscreen, and on her console.

  The four lances were hitting Blackbeard with their energy weapons. The Royal Navy had reinforced the tyrillium plating since the first, nearly lethal encounter with Apex last year during the Albion civil war. The energy weapons had punctured Albion armor like a needle through paper. The new plating was blunting and dispersing the energy, even reflecting some of it into space, but Blackbeard could still take a full broadside of cannon fire more easily than repeated energy pulses at a hundred thousand miles.