Sun King (The Void Queen Trilogy Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  “I’d say you got ’em protected. Twenty-three star wolves.”

  “Too many for a pair of hunter-killer packs to defeat,” Catarina agreed. “So the buzzards look, and what do they see us doing? I’ve positioned our most powerful ships up front to tackle the harvester, backed by enough forces to deliver a beating and survive the battle. If the enemy buys, if they take the bait, they should ignore the frigates and come right at the vanguard instead.”

  “I get that, it makes sense. They manage to knock out our big ships up front, then the rest of ’em don’t matter much. But won’t they just be saving us for the end, Cap’n? Cripple us up so they can eat us later?”

  “That’s what I expect. They’ll take what human and Hroom prisoners they can, but they really want us personally.”

  And that was the key part of Catarina’s strategy, right there. The queen commander wanted Void Queen and craved the officers especially, with Catarina served up as the queen commander’s personal feast.

  Catarina had to make it look like that were possible, then deliver a vicious counterattack before the enemy realized its mistake. And if she’d guessed wrong, then the battle was lost before it had even started.

  General Mose Dryz and the rest of McGowan’s rump fleet were racing toward the battlefield and should arrive in about eight hours, assuming Catarina and her fleet were still on the battlefield at that point, and not destroyed, devoured, or scattered to the cosmos.

  The eight lances and two spears waited until the allied fleet was almost within range of the harvester ship’s guns, and then vanished. The instant they disappeared, Thor’s Hammer and the rest of the Scandian fleet abandoned the missile frigates and accelerated toward the front of the fleet.

  That left the three frigates guarded by a handful of war junks, sloops, and mercenary schooners. If Catarina had guessed wrong, those frigates were doomed, her long-range advantage would be obliterated, and she’d have ten hostile ships at her rear.

  She had not guessed wrong. The hunter-killer packs reappeared a few miles from Void Queen. They threw explosive shot against her hull and blasted her with energy weapons. The battle cruiser rolled into a dive, like a harpooned whale fleeing for the watery depths.

  The computer’s AI came on with a dire warning. “Shields number three and four nearing critical temperatures. Shield number five at eighty-two percent.”

  The first star wolves arrived on the scene, led by Thor’s Hammer and Pestilence. Hellfire, Bloodaxe, and Frost Giant roared in after them, followed by the rest of the Scandian fleet, their pummel guns snarling. The wolves caught one of the spears in a devastating crossfire and quickly tore holes in its armor. Three lances attempted to relieve it, only to find themselves under attack, as well. Void Queen fired her main guns, which savaged the armor of one lance and struck a glancing blow to another. The three lances fled, chased by torpedoes and star wolves.

  Catarina took advantage of a brief lull to order her striker wing into the air. Carvalho’s falcons shot from the launch bay, one after the other, and joined the fight.

  Meanwhile, the harvester ship had closed with the rest of Catarina’s vanguard. The cruisers, Repulse and Fierce, fired torpedoes, while the corvettes, Dart and Arrow, raced in, fired their cannon, and danced away. Three destroyers streaked in front of the harvester, dropping mines to slow its approach.

  The last of these ships, a warship named HMS Herald, a survivor of the civil wars, the battle at Singapore, and two tours of duty on the inner frontier with Admiral Drake, was too sluggish in dropping its mines, and the harvester caught it with the green eye.

  Tracked by the paralyzing beam, Herald flew past the harvester on pure momentum, unable to maneuver. The harvester fired a harpoon, opened its biting arms, and hauled it in. As the officers on Void Queen’s bridge watched in horror, the arms closed around Herald and tore into its hull.

  “Send in the wolves,” Catarina said. “We’ll finish the hunter-killers ourselves.”

  Capp made the call to Longshanks, and Catarina ordered Carvalho to target a damaged lance, before calling back to her missile frigates to attack any of the smaller enemy ships trying to escape the battlefield.

  Already, a spear and three lances were gone, and Void Queen had closed with another spear, and was trading blows. There were still too many enemy ships for the battle cruiser to handle all by herself, but missiles from the frigates were hitting home. Sloops, war junks, and mercenary schooners abandoned their positions to the rear and raced into the action.

  The second spear died in a fiery explosion, then another lance went down. Two other lances caught one of the small schooners as it approached at an ill-advised angle, and Catarina was soon down another ship herself, although the crew had escaped in a pair of escape pods, which came soaring toward Void Queen for a rescue. The battle cruiser swung around to catch them with her nets, while at the same time firing Mark-IVs from the port-side tubes.

  The harvester plowed through the minefield dropped by the navy destroyers. A few explosions splattered like bursting blisters on its hull, but with little apparent damage. The enemy fired a massive barrage that chased off a pair of harassing corvettes, then turned its attention on the two cruisers, which were hammering away, but unable to break through the combination of burst-countermeasures and a thick, impenetrable hide.

  What a monster. Could anything stop it?

  Longshanks and his star wolves attacked the harvester. Unlike the cruisers, happy to stay at arm’s length, or the corvettes and destroyers, which had danced in and out of the fight, the Scandian warships showed little fear. Some twenty ships charged, fired guns, and fell back in waves, while the three biggest Scandian warships—Bloodaxe, Thor’s Hammer, and Pestilence—approached from below, then rolled into position to target the enemy ship’s underbelly with sustained fire.

  The harvester brushed off the initial attacks as it continued firing on Repulse and Fierce, but the attack from beneath was too savage to ignore. It turned and hit Pestilence with its paralyzing beam. The other two forced their way in and struck at the eye. It exploded, a small victory that must have had the Scandians cheering.

  Too late for Pestilence, though. Before it could get away, the harvester ship cast aside the shattered pieces of Herald and seized the star wolf in its jaws. The arms moved, and Catarina imagined drones dropping into Pestilence by the dozens. Murdering, taking prisoners for the harvester’s larder.

  The star wolf flared its engines in an attempt to break away, and a pair of smaller deck guns kept firing at the harvester, which held it in place.

  “Them Vikings are putting up a fight,” Capp said. “Maybe they’ll get inside the ship, and then we’ll see.”

  Seconds later, the star wolf’s deck guns fell silent, and within a minute Pestilence’s engine died, too. The arms moved about, tearing deeper, until it was casting aside bits of wreckage.

  Even while destroying Pestilence, the harvester had kept firing at the star wolves attacking from all sides, and these attacks had inflicted damage. Two marauder captains lost their nerve as their ships came under fire, and fled. A third attempted to flee, as well, but enemy missiles chased it down and left it a gutted wreck.

  The result of the star wolf charge was disappointing, as the harvester had yet to suffer significant damage by the time it broke free of the Scandians. The ferocity of the assault did, however, delay the enemy battleship from attacking Repulse and Fierce, and most likely saved them from a similar fate as had befallen Pestilence and Herald.

  And the delay gave Void Queen a chance to finish off the hunter-killer packs as the entire battle drifted forward toward the harvester. Orient Tiger and Pussycat fell back from the vanguard to tear apart one of the last two lances, while Catarina caught the other and mauled it with her cannon. Schooners sniped from the sides, and sloops threw their serpentines into the mix. Both enemy ships broke apart within seconds of each other.

  By the time Catarina forced Void Queen through the shattered wreckage of the A
pex assault, she’d destroyed eight lances and spears and sent the last two wounded ships back to huddle next to the harvester. It had cost her a schooner, a pair of star wolves, and a destroyer, but most of her fleet remained intact, while she’d shorn the enemy flagship of its protective shield.

  The harvester gave Void Queen its full attention as Catarina ordered a charge. One Apex harvester against fifty-one Albion, Singaporean, Hroom, and Scandian warships.

  The odds looked about even.

  #

  Tolvern was in no condition to fight the harvester ship breaking its tether above Persia. An allied fleet that had numbered thirty-one warships just a few days earlier was down to twenty-one vessels, and all the ships, Blackbeard included, had suffered damage to shields, engines, and weapon systems. She only had eight falcons left in her striker wing, and if she didn’t pull them out of there, she might lose them all.

  The officers on the bridge and throughout the fleet were crying for her to fall back, to flee for the jump point and get the devil out of Persia and pray that the enemy didn’t follow them through the jump into Nebuchadnezzar.

  “Not yet,” she said grimly. “We have to get Stratsky through. He has to take out that elevator before any more harvesters get up.”

  Meanwhile, the first harvester was bearing down on them. The green eye swept back and forth, looking for a target in range, while the ship threw missiles and explosive shot ahead from numerous batteries across its broad back.

  Stratsky and the other falcons had reentered the battle after Tolvern gave her orders. They exchanged shots with a pair of lances, keeping a low profile until the harvester was past, when they’d have a clear path to the orbital fortress. The torpedo boats returned to join the falcons, and the whole formation looked ready to crumble as a third lance entered the fray.

  “Clyde, minimize our profile,” Tolvern said. “Oglethorpe, Bayard, it’s all on your countermeasures. We’ve got to absorb a blow or two, so you’d better find a way to lessen the impact. Manx, open a channel to the fleet—I need to give orders. But not a word about Stratsky—Apex might be listening.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  The mood turned to grim determination as they took in the monstrous ship bearing down on them. The enemy battleships weren’t built to a standard appearance, and each harvester had a unique profile. This one had the flattened appearance of a giant manta ray covered in wartlike protrusions—the harvester’s larder. Three grasping appendages out front for hauling in new victims. A lance flanked the ship like a remora, waiting for scraps.

  “It’s going after the boats,” Manx warned.

  Tolvern held her breath as the harvester veered toward the torpedo boats and the falcons, sure that the gig was up, their secret exposed. It would tear through the boats and falcons, and that would be it. But this was just a feint, an attempt to scatter the small force, as the Albion ships were getting the upper hand on the damaged lances. Stratsky and the rest of the pilots and boat commanders held their nerve, and the harvester resumed its flight toward Blackbeard.

  “They bought it,” Manx said. “Lucky us.”

  Tolvern took advantage of the brief respite to reposition Triumph and Champion to absorb more punishment from the oncoming harvester. Farming out some of the pain was the only way for Blackbeard to survive the encounter. Explosive shot slammed into all three ships, who fought off some of it with countermeasures and evasive maneuvers. A fresh wave of missiles rained down on the enemy from behind, while the destroyers, corvettes, and sloops pushed forward to join the battle.

  Nothing slowed the harvester. Its eye searched for a target and finally caught a sloop, whose serpentine batteries fell silent. The harvester targeted it casually, almost disdainfully, with a few side guns, and blasted it to pieces. Then it fixed its sights on a corvette, which had rushed forward in an attempt to save the sloop. Caught in the paralyzing beam, the corvette kept flying in a straight line, raced past the harvester, and plunged into Persia’s atmosphere, where it went down.

  Oglethorpe reported the final result. “Explosion detected on the surface. She was going four hundred miles a second when she hit.”

  The harvester looked for a new victim, seemingly eager to demolish the destroyers, corvettes, and other ships harassing it from all sides, while Blackbeard, Triumph, and Champion edged backward to draw it farther from the planet and orbital fortress. Tolvern got her two cruiser captains on the line.

  “No more running. Maneuver into position to fire your main batteries and await my orders.”

  Back near the orbital fortress, Tolvern’s torpedo boats and falcons finally got the upper hand in their battle. They destroyed one lance and concentrated fire on the second, which was still fighting back. Three of the falcons slipped quietly from the battle and charged toward the fortress. Two of the lances damaged in the initial fight were lingering nearby, apparently attempting emergency repairs, and belatedly moved to intercept the small striker ships. They wouldn’t reach them in time.

  The harvester hurled a few shots backward, and guns started up from the fortress itself.

  Still on the com with the two cruiser captains, Tolvern gave her orders. “Fire at will.”

  Blackbeard rolled backward as her cannons unloaded on the enemy. Triumph and Champion erupted with fire of their own. Explosions ripped into the side of the harvester. This got its attention. Its engine flared, it turned slowly, and it came at the three Albion warships arrayed against it. Torpedoes, missiles, and secondary batteries lashed at the oncoming harvester.

  Meanwhile, the orbital fortress was firing on the three charging falcons in earnest, and one of them exploded. Tolvern held her breath, waiting to hear who had died. It wasn’t Stratsky, but one of his companions. The other ship fired missiles and veered away, which left Stratsky alone, trying to slip in under the enemy guns. He was still accelerating, going too fast now to fire his torpedo. His ship aimed straight for the space elevator counterweight.

  “There he goes,” Oglethorpe said. “May God have mercy on his soul.”

  Incoming fire was penetrating Blackbeard’s countermeasures and slamming into her portside armor, but Tolvern could only stare at the side viewscreen as Stratsky’s ship slammed into the orbital platform and detonated. A massive explosion blanked the sensors, and they could see nothing from that direction. Whatever had happened, whatever the results, it was over now.

  “Pull back,” she ordered. “We’re not going to beat this harvester.”

  The battle cruiser and the two smaller cruisers fell away, while the rest of the fleet kept in position until the trio could escape. The harvester had been attacking all three cruisers indiscriminately, no doubt intent on taking them all, one after another. As the ships attempted an orderly retreat, it tried to catch the nearest ship—HMS Champion—in its paralyzing ray. The cruiser’s thick armor attenuated the effects, and she began to slip away.

  Where the paralyzing beam had failed, however, conventional weapons had more success. The harvester hurled bombs against Champion’s rear armor as she passed. Repeated blows crippled one of the cruiser’s engines, and the harvester overtook it from behind, its three arms reaching out to grab its next meal. While Tolvern and her crew watched in horror, the harvester seized the struggling cruiser and tore through her armor and bulkheads. Screams for help came over the com from Champion’s bridge, with sounds of gunfire and explosions in the background.

  Torn between making an attempt to free Champion and preserving what was left of her fleet, Tolvern made the only rational decision.

  “All forces retreat. We’ll regroup beyond the moon.”

  It was the right call. Distress signals from Champion fell silent minutes later, long before any rescue attempt would have arrived. While the harvester was distracted, feeding on its prey, Tolvern’s ships fought off a few last attempts from lances to pin them in and got clear.

  And then the real blow fell. The radiation cleared from around the orbital fortress, and the sensors detected the resu
lts of Stratsky’s suicide charge. The explosion had smashed one end of the orbital fortress, and the tether to the surface of the planet had been severed, but the elevator apparatus itself seemed to be intact. The whole operation had grounded the remaining harvesters on Persia only so long as it took Apex to drop new cables.

  Despair clutched Tolvern as she gathered the battered remnants of her fleet and fled for the jump point out of Persia. She’d lost a cruiser, two torpedo boats, a sloop of war, a corvette, and three more falcons, including Stratsky’s. In addition, two destroyers had suffered such extensive engine damage that they had to be scuttled, their crews flung across in away pods to other ships before they were abandoned. That left her with a small, heavily damaged fleet of ships.

  Behind them, in hot pursuit, came a harvester ship and five lances. Clyde and Oglethorpe shortly determined that the long chase to the jump point would see Tolvern escape into Nebuchadnezzar, but what then? She had no ability to keep the harvester quarantined in Persia. It would jump through roughly two hours after she did, and easily fight its way clear as it escaped in God-knew what direction.

  Meanwhile, there were seven more harvester ships on the surface of Persia, built from the blood and treasure of the shattered planet, and they would soon be joining the pair already roaming free in the space lanes. The whole war effort was on the verge of collapse.

  Tolvern had gone forty-four hours without sleep, and dragged herself to her quarters, where she pulled off her boots and collapsed into bed. She’d been asleep for some indeterminate amount of time when an urgent call from the bridge woke her. A young, excitable ensign was midway through his report before she realized she was even awake and listening to him.

  “Stop,” she said firmly. “Now start over.”

  “I said they’re here,” he said. “We’re trapped in Persia, blocked from escape.”

  “What do you mean? How are we blocked?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Captain. My God, what do we do now? There’s a fleet of ships between us and the jump point. We can’t get out!”