The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

  “Someone figure out if she’s bluffing,” Tolvern said. “Meanwhile, let’s come up with alternatives to another frontal assault.”

  “What about a truce?” Li said.

  “No truce! We have no time for that nonsense. We have to get control of this battle station, don’t you understand? Apex is on its way. My ship is shot up and can’t even support its own crew, let alone provide life support for hundreds of refugees from your base. We have one working engine and our own oxygen problems.”

  The subspace from her fleet had been skimpy from top to bottom, and Li had no idea how she could be so certain about the imminent arrival of the alien fleet, but the captain seemed confident in her ability to decipher her admiral’s message.

  Tolvern asked a few questions about the defensive and offensive capabilities of the sentinel battle station, but she seemed distracted when Li started in. Finally, she rose.

  “I’ve got to see to my crew. Some of those injuries are serious. Li, you’re in command. Smythe, you stay here, too. Let me know if anything funny happens.”

  There didn’t seem much for Li to do once Tolvern was gone. The tech and communications people were busy, and the assault team was taking control of side corridors, service lifts and ducts, and any other area from which the Sentry Faction might mount an attack. He reviewed fire control, verified that the weapons systems were prepared and could be quickly brought online if Apex made an appearance. Everything seemed good to go, even the eliminon battery.

  Anna’s voice came through his com. “They can’t cut me out, Jon. I’ve got direct access.”

  Li stood up and walked toward the exit. Nobody looked at him. As soon as he was in the corridor, he answered. “What do you want? To taunt? Like we’re kids again, and you’ve deleted my favorite video game?”

  “You’re my brother. I’m concerned about you.”

  Li snorted. “What a liar.”

  “We don’t have to fight, you know.”

  “I know we don’t. You could come to your senses. Apex is on its way, and the only way we’ll survive is if you stand down and give me back my battle station.”

  “Give it to the warship captain, you mean. Don’t try to hide it from me, Jon. I know what’s happened—you have a few defectors. Even if I can’t see directly into your half of the base, I’ve got my eyes and ears there, telling me what’s going on. You’ve surrendered Sentinel 3 to the enemy.”

  “The enemy! The birds are the enemy, not Albion.”

  “What does it matter? They’re foreigners, invaders.”

  “My God, listen to yourself.”

  “This Captain Tolvern came out of nowhere, fomented a mutiny on Sentinel 3—”

  “No, she didn’t. You did that, Anna.”

  “That’s a counter-mutiny, you idiot,” she snapped. “You were on my side, remember? You agreed to have Hillary Koh arrested for treason. But listen to me, what happened next? Apex found us, then the Albion ship attacked, invaded, took the command console.”

  “It’s like we have two different versions of reality,” Li said. “You and Megat sent over the assault ducts. You initiated the fight, not Blackbeard. Can you blame them for their response? Or me, for supporting them?”

  “Don’t claim you’re in charge, Jon. You’re a slave of the Albion captain, and you do her bidding. She and her people are in charge, at least of your side of the base. We’re still patriots over here. That you’ve surrendered, that you’ve agreed to collaborate with the enemy doesn’t change any of the facts.”

  “What do you want?” he asked. “Are you hoping to convince me?”

  “I’m offering terms.”

  “You’re in no condition to do anything of the kind. I’ve got seventy percent of the crew either on my side or being held in the cell block of HMS Blackbeard as mutineers.”

  “And I’ve got your oxygen.”

  “I think you’re bluffing,” Li said, with more confidence than he felt. “Even if you pull it off, if you kill us, you’ve got a skeleton crew when Apex arrives. Who is going to operate the eliminon battery? That alone takes fifteen trained technicians to fire. And those are people I’ve got with me, people you’ll have suffocated.”

  “Yes, a truce,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard any of his objections. “Here’s what I want. I want you to come over to me, then arrange for us to infiltrate your half of the base. We’ll expel the Blackbeard crew by whatever means necessary, then unite our attentions to fighting Apex.”

  He had a good answer for her, but a pair of Singaporean technicians approached, watching him curiously as they passed, as if wondering why he was standing in the middle of the corridor. He hesitated again when a pair of armed Albion crew walked swiftly past in the opposite direction. These two paid him no attention whatsoever. Didn’t they know he was the base commander?

  “Well?” Anna demanded.

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “I’m following my orders, what about you?”

  “I mean it,” Li said. “Quite literally insane. Even if it were possible to drive out the Albion naval forces before they repair their ship, these people are the only allies we have. The only possible relief we’ll get is from the Albion Royal Navy.”

  “The home world—”

  “It’s doomed! Haven’t you heard? They destroyed our navy, wiped out our colonies, and bombarded our cities from orbit. It’s a radioactive heap, and the aliens have set up their harvester ship to ritually slaughter the survivors.”

  “I don’t believe it. It’s all lies.”

  Nevertheless, she sounded shaken. Li grasped anxiously, convinced he’d finally broken through.

  “Surrender,” he urged. “Open up. It’s our only hope. We’ll fight Apex together, and if we can hold on longer, we’ll do it. When there’s no hope, we’ll evacuate with the foreigners. There are refugee fleets—we’ll rebuild on some other world.”

  A long pause. “No, Jon. I won’t be a refugee. I’ll follow my orders to the end.”

  “Your orders are to stand down. Do you hear me?”

  “And if that means I have to suffocate my own brother, so be it.”

  And with that, she was gone. There was a deadened quality to that final sentence that sent a chill down his spine. She was serious, it was no idle threat.

  Li had barely started walking again, when Hillary Koh came on the com link.

  “Commander, where did you go?”

  Koh’s tone was high and nervous, the opposite of Anna’s. She had been calm all along, even when he’d come to her in the detention cell. Even when they’d blown down the doors and charged into the command module to take it from the mutineers and bullets had been flying. But not now.

  “I’m only about fifty feet away. I was going to check the . . . what is it?”

  “It’s Apex, sir. They’ve jumped back into the system and are headed this way. A whole lot of lances. Some spears, too. And that’s not all.” She swallowed audibly. “They’ve brought a harvester ship.”

  #

  Tolvern put the question to Barker in the war room. Barker nodded his acknowledgment, rubbed his mustache, and stared off to one side muttering to himself, thinking aloud. She wanted to shake him, force the answer. The others joined Tolvern in waiting silently for the chief engineer’s assessment.

  Nyb Pim watched through his large, liquid eyes, his long, slender fingers folded in front of him. Smythe kept busy with his hand computer, but kept giving side-glances to the chief.

  Capp, her left arm bound and immobilized, grimaced. More than the pain, the aggravation of being kept out of battle seemed to be eating at her. Even with bone regrowth stimulators, the broken collarbone would take several days to fully heal.

  “We have a chance,” Barker said at last.

  “Give me odds,” Tolvern said.

  “Odds? Hah. I’m not even sure where to start.” A final tug on his mustache. “The ship hull is good, and we’ve stopped the leaks. It’s only a question of if the oxyge
n holds out. Smythe?”

  The tech officer looked up. “We’ve solved the CO2 problem—that’s the real killer. Right now, the biggest problem is that we’re sharing the O2 with the battle station. We cut that down and”—his fingers moved over the console—“we’ll last between ten and fourteen days before we suffocate.”

  “Assuming we stop sharing,” Tolvern said.

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “That might be long enough to be relieved by Albion forces,” Tolvern said. “Hard to say. Or to patch up the oxygen plant completely—maybe you’ll come up with a miracle fix.”

  “We’d do that?” Capp said. “Cut loose and save our own hides? It’s a weasel move.”

  “Weasel move doesn’t begin to cover it,” Tolvern said. “If we run for it, we leave Li to fight the buzzards on his own. His sister may or may not join before it’s too late. Either way, they’re worse off without us there.

  “The point is, from our perspective, we buy time. Apex goes after Sentinel 3 first—if we’re lucky—while we run off and hide somewhere in the system. They’ve got poor sensors—we might get away with it.”

  “Meanwhile, all them Chinese blokes are dead,” Capp said. “Eaten alive, probably.”

  “We’re weighing our options,” Tolvern said. “That’s all.”

  “The captain is right,” Barker put in gruffly. “We stick around, maybe we suffocate, maybe we get eaten. Either way, it’s grim.”

  Capp thrust out her chin. “We got a chance! I figure we always got a chance.”

  “Smythe, you’ve been hitting the buzzards with the active sensor array?” Tolvern asked.

  The tech officer looked up. “Yes, Captain. Not much point in trying to stay hidden at this point.”

  “Show us the scans of the enemy fleet.”

  “You’re not going to like what you see.”

  The war room display was only a fifth the size of the main viewscreen on the bridge, which spared them some of the shock. It was alarming enough, and the four of them stared for a long moment without speaking. Smythe moved the view and zoomed in on the enemy formations, one after another.

  A typical hunter-killer pack was four lances. Occasionally, they’d travel with a bulkier command ship, heavily armed, if not quite as maneuverable as the lances. These, the navy called spears. When there were more than three or four hunter-killer packs, they might be accompanied by a harvester ship, if there was an enemy they wished to capture alive.

  This fleet boasted eleven hunter-killer packs, each with four lances and a spear, spread across a half million miles of space. In the middle of them, one of the enormous harvester ships. Bigger than HMS Dreadnought, the mightiest ship in the navy, and longer than the entirety of the sentinel battle station.

  Tolvern had seen a harvester ship in action two months earlier. One of the massive vessels, protected by lances, had attacked a Hroom mining colony, fighting off desperate attacks by sloops of war and Albion warships, while they methodically captured tens of thousands of Hroom miners. The miners’ fate was terrifying and horrific.

  During the hottest action of the battle, Blackbeard and Swift had penetrated the shield of lances to launch an attack on the harvester. It sat still, awaiting them, and nobody knew if it had the ability to fight, and if so, with what. Tolvern hadn’t intended to find out. She would hit it with every weapon in the arsenal. At a million miles she launched a barrage of missiles.

  But before the Royal Navy vessels could draw within range of the main guns, a pack of lances drove them off. The harvester launched countermeasures, but two of the missiles got through, scoring a pair of hits side by side. Satisfying, but there was little damage. The end result was that Tolvern still had no idea what kind of punishment the harvester could either absorb or inflict.

  “Smythe, bring the view in on that harvester,” Tolvern said. “Fill the screen, if you can.”

  Moments later, the harvester stretched from one end of the war room’s viewscreen to the other. It was an ugly thing, nearly as fat as it was long. Covered in warty extrusions, hundreds of them, with a fat, toad-like snout. Yes, the whole thing looked like a monstrous toad that would open its mouth and swallow its prey whole.

  Capp cursed. Nyb Pim made a Hroom sound deep in his throat. Barker made a human one in his.

  There, the upper snout, two missing warts, replaced with a shiny, reflective material. Something had knocked them out.

  “We’ve seen this one before,” Smythe said.

  “Confirm, please,” Tolvern said.

  Smythe worked the console. “The damage is in the right position to match our missile strikes.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s as close as we’ve ever got,” Tolvern said. “Sure wish we knew its capabilities. What kind of armaments does it have? How many drones does it carry? Seems to disgorge an unlimited amount, swallow an unlimited number of victims, too.”

  “I spoke to the Hroom envoy after the battle,” Nyb Pim said. “They have already lost six worlds to Apex and countless small bases and colonies.”

  “And have they ever fought off a harvester?”

  “I do not believe so, Captain. You may read my complete report of the meeting in the Navy Archives. The empire forces believe that the bubbles or bulges on the surface of the harvester are cryogenic storage tanks. It travels with its army frozen.”

  “Like we do with Royal Marines,” Tolvern said, “although I figure the buzzards pack them tighter.”

  “Each harvester carries thousands of smaller drones,” Nyb Pim said, “and hundreds of the larger ones they send to the surface to collect victims.”

  “Makes sense from a design perspective,” Smythe said. “Put them on the outside of the hull, where they’re easier to cool.”

  “It may also travel with its ‘harvest,’” Nyb Pim continued, “carrying its cargo elsewhere for ritual slaughter and consumption. Or so the empire generals believe.”

  “So we either destroyed a few of their drones when we launched those missiles,” Tolvern said, “or we killed a few doomed Hroom.”

  “A quick, easy death is preferable to what awaited them on the other side, Captain,” Nyb Pim said.

  “If them buzzards stuffed thousands of Hroom into their ship,” Capp said, “don’t figure they’ll have much trouble holding all the Chinese on the battle station.”

  “With plenty of room left for Blackbeard’s crew,” Tolvern said. “Turn it off, Smythe. I can’t stand looking at the ugly thing a moment longer.”

  When the view had cut out, she looked at the other four. “So now we know what we’re facing. Our broken-down, crippled-up ship against forty-four lances, eleven spears, and a harvester ship.”

  “Took only four lances to kill Swift, and they nearly did us in, too,” Barker said. “Can’t say I like the odds.”

  “We have the sentinel battle station this time,” Tolvern said.

  “We have half a battle station,” he corrected.

  “So you think we should patch up the best we can and run?” she asked.

  “No, I think we fight. To the death. But I have no intention of seeing the inside of that harvester, if you know what I mean.”

  “Me, neither,” Capp said. “But I still say we go down fighting. We’re no cowards, right, Smythe?”

  “Don’t look at me,” the tech officer said. “I’m absolutely a coward. But yeah, it’s a weasel move. I don’t care for running, either.”

  Tolvern nodded. “Then it’s settled. We stay and fight. How long do we have?”

  “Until we suffocate?” Smythe asked. “Or until the buzzards show up? If we keep sharing our O2 with the battle station, a day, maybe a little more.”

  “And Apex?” she asked.

  He consulted his computer. “The buzzards arrive in fifteen hours. Seems like that’s our top priority.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “We can’t fight Apex while holding our breath. We can’t fire our batteries while we worry about being invaded by muti
neers. We need to put down the rebels, that’s our top priority.” Tolvern nodded, more confident in her assessment. “Battle station first, Apex second.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Commander Li was snatching a few minutes of sleep when Tolvern woke him up on the com link and told him to meet her in the final approach to the farms. He was to order Koh to join them at the meeting. Exhausted, he called Koh while pulling on his uniform.

  “Any idea what this is about?” she asked. Her yawn came across the com, and it was clear she’d also been asleep.

  “Something about retaking the station. You’ll come?”

  “Of course. Give me five minutes.”

  “Good, Tolvern said ten. That will give us a chance to talk before Tolvern shows up.”

  By the time he met Koh near the farm, he’d had a chance to think it through. It was surely a good sign that the captain wanted to meet him here to discuss another action against Anna. It meant the Albionish were sticking around for the fight. He’d been worried they’d cut loose and run.

  There was no sign of the captain yet, so Li told Koh what he was thinking.

  “They still might run,” she said. “Some of the things Smythe has said makes me think it’s a possibility, that they’re thinking about it. Planning contingencies, anyway.”

  “Not if we don’t let them. Until we turn off the gravity net—”

  Koh laughed. “You still think we’re holding them by force? Once Smythe got into the system, he saw to all of that. The net is only holding them there for their own good while they complete their repairs. The moment they want to leave, Blackbeard is gone.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.”

  “You’re not in charge anymore,” she said. “None of us are. You answer to Tolvern. I answer to Smythe. Capp and Carvalho can order our crew to kill and be killed, and if the captain says so, Barker will be directing our guns against Apex.”

  Li thought she was right, but what about the eliminon battery? That had to be kept in the hands of the battle station. They were the only ones who know how it worked, both tactically and practically. It was their secret weapon, their ultimate weapon, and its use at an incorrect moment would render it ineffective.