The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

This bridge was too large. Too many consoles, too wide. There were too many other officers around him, rubbing their temples and shaking their heads to clear them. Who the devil were all these people, and how had they got on his ship? Three ensigns lay slumped over the defense grid computer, still unconscious. Such a large defense grid—why did he need three computers? Blackbeard only—

  Because Drake wasn’t on Blackbeard, that’s why, and he wasn’t a captain, either. He was now an admiral, and this was the battleship HMS Dreadnought, Malthorne’s old flagship and the most powerful warship in the Royal Navy. And his ship hadn’t jumped through alone. A large task force of cruisers, corvettes, missile frigates, and torpedo boats would shortly follow him through.

  Bits and pieces were coming back to him, but the sense of urgency remained. This was no typical jump.

  “Manx,” Drake said, turning to his first mate. Not Tolvern—she was elsewhere, if she was even still alive—but Henry Manx. He remembered now.

  Manx sat at his console to the side of the admiral’s chair, his head drooping on his chest. He lifted it and stared groggily at Drake.

  “Are you awake, Manx?”

  Hesitation, then a nod. “I’m here, sir. Awaiting your orders.”

  “Get me the gunnery. I want those cannon online at once.”

  Manx greeted this order with a blank stare. Drake repeated it, and still Manx looked confused, as if he were listening to a man speak a foreign language and trying to puzzle it out. That initial response had only been a man talking in his sleep. Reflex.

  “Manx?”

  “I’m here, sir. Awaiting your orders.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Did I?”

  Lieutenant Manx was a younger man, like so many others in Drake’s inner circle. The civil war had purged dozens of otherwise capable, experienced officers who’d proven themselves too craven to stand up to Admiral Malthorne and his bid for the throne. Manx, loyal and relentlessly competent, had enjoyed no shortage of opportunities for advancement. Moving from boatswain to defense grid specialist, he was one of few Drake had brought over from Blackbeard when taking command of Dreadnought.

  “Get me the gunnery,” he repeated, more slowly this time. “I need our cannon online.”

  “Our cannon? What about . . . engines? Comm . . . er, communications?”

  “Get me the gunnery,” Drake repeated.

  Manx blinked. “Yes, sir. Of course, the gunnery.”

  Nothing else mattered if the guns were offline. Not the search for hostiles, not opening communication with the other ships in the task force. Not even whether or not to see if their allies were still alive. A nervous worry kicked at Drake’s stomach when he had this thought. It was finally a question with a real answer. They’d arrived. Things would happen quickly now.

  Manx got on the com. He was halting, confused at first, and worse, there was no answer from either the gunnery or engineering. Drake’s head was still clearing, but he didn’t have the luxury to sit and watch his first mate’s struggles.

  “Lloyd, I want a scan of the immediate area. Ellison, run diagnostics on communications. Do not open a channel to the other ships yet.”

  Ensign Lloyd was recovering more quickly than Manx, but it took him a minute to bring the instruments online. Any active sensors had been shut down for weeks, purposefully turned off so someone wouldn’t accidentally run a scan while stunned from a jump. Silence was the fleet’s biggest advantage.

  By now, Drake had recovered enough to remember almost every detail of their long, silent mission. The deception, the hiding. Running blind and mute.

  The admiral’s chair had been Malthorne’s, and felt almost throne-like, contoured and heated for Malthorne’s old, aching joints. Raised slightly higher than the other chairs on the bridge, it lorded over the others like a throne. The whole bridge was opulent, like the foyer of a grand country estate, and next to the war room, Drake had his own private lift, which would carry him to even more opulent living quarters. All thanks to Admiral Malthorne and his vanity.

  The final battle that saw Malthorne’s capture was a vicious one, and Dreadnought had been savaged in the fight, suffering all manner of cannon, missile, and torpedo fire, and it was ultimately rammed by the loyalist cruiser HMS Vigilant. The beating left the ship crippled, floating without control, and allowed Drake’s forces to seize it and take the lord admiral prisoner. Malthorne was now dead, but Drake had brought his battleship back into fighting condition.

  Unfortunately, there had been no time to scrub the ship of Malthorne’s luxuries before it left the yards to face Apex. Not even to replace the admiral’s chair.

  Drake despised the luxury. It was unbecoming to an admiral of the fleet, even here, on the flagship. He rose to his feet as he waited for the scans to appear on the viewscreen, needing to feel like a warrior, not a duke or a prince in repose. The movement brought a wave of vertigo, and he steadied himself until the moment passed.

  Two other ships had jumped through already, a small missile frigate and the newest ship in the fleet, HMS Repulse, a Punisher-class cruiser with new armaments and weapons designed to deal with the alien threat.

  Two more ships came through: a torpedo boat and a corvette, the latter a powerful warship in the class just smaller than the cruisers. For weeks now, Drake had sensed these ships from afar, but was unable to reach out or even run active scans. Passive scans could be tricked, and that left him concerned. Sometimes he had itched to make the call, to prove to himself they hadn’t been picked off, one by one, as the enemy closed in on Dreadnought to finish the slaughter. It was a relief to receive visual confirmation they were still intact, unharmed.

  “All systems are online, sir,” Lloyd called over. “Shall I fire up the long-range sensors, find out who or what is out there?”

  “Not yet,” Drake said. “The moment we do, the enemy knows we’re here.”

  “They may know already, sir,” Lloyd said.

  “Understood. Nevertheless, we will stay silent for now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Manx looked up from his communications with the gunnery. “Our primary batteries are online, Admiral. Engineering has the plasma engines ready to go. All systems functional.”

  “Very good.”

  Drake studied the viewscreen. Repulse was maneuvering into position, flanking Dreadnought, which had already drifted several thousand miles from the jump point on auxiliary power. Two torpedo boats were also in motion, as were a pair of missile frigates. A second cruiser came through, the older Aggressor-class HMS Richmond. Older, yes. Incapable, no. Richmond had been through the yards after the civil war, and was in top fighting trim. Her captain was the young, aggressive Catherine Caites.

  Twenty-five ships came through in all, the entire fleet of human warships that had set out from Albion. Then they waited.

  “Where is he?” Drake muttered.

  “He gave us the slip, I should wager,” Manx said. “Maybe he found a sugar galleon.”

  Drake raised an eyebrow. “Do you think?”

  “He won’t take the antidote, sir. That makes him crazy for the white stuff, like all the rest.”

  “And the other ships of his fleet? Are they all eaters, too?”

  “Maybe,” Manx said. “But I don’t figure it matters. The Hroom don’t want to get involved. We’re five jumps into the Dragon Quadrant. The Hroom come out here, they’re only going to wake the beast.”

  “The beast is awake already,” Drake pointed out. “There are multiple Apex harvester ships devouring the empire’s underbelly, and the Hroom are helpless to drive them off. If we don’t hold the buzzards here, that number will multiply. What does the general think we’re doing out here, anyway?”

  It was a rhetorical question, not the admiral fishing for an actual answer. General Mose Dryz would appear; if not, something terrible had happened to him. Whatever else the general was, he was not a coward or a liar.

  Doubt and impatience clouded his officers’ f
aces. They were eager to scan for the enemy, anxious not to be caught here and picked apart. And frightened, too. No man or woman could forget the ultimate fate of those who fell into the enemy’s hands. Make that the enemy’s talons, or was it beaks?

  Months had passed since Drake led his fleet out of Albion-controlled territory. They’d fought a brief skirmish against an Apex hunter-killer pack on the frontier, then passed through system after system of Hroom-controlled worlds. Never challenged. Only even spotted sloops of war on two occasions, and they had fled without giving battle. The sloops hadn’t been allies of the general, apparently, but filled with rebels, or maybe simply cowards.

  “We all know why we’re here,” Manx said. “Fight the birds on their turf, not ours.”

  “Fight them on other people’s turf, at least. Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “But we’d have all we could handle with any of those harvester ships in Hroom territory. We’re only out here to save Blackbeard. Maybe get our hands on some new tech, if these Chinese will cough it up. So . . . well, sir, I guess I’m asking if you’re sure about the general.”

  Drake’s officers rarely hesitated to challenge him. The bridge of Blackbeard had been restless to the point of mutiny on his behalf when Malthorne had him arrested. But he thought he’d left the feisty ones behind: Tolvern, Capp, Carvalho, and Barker. Somehow, Manx’s promotion had transformed him into an arguer.

  Isn’t that what you’re looking for? If you want sycophants, go find some of Malthorne’s old crew. Toadies and bootlickers, every one of them.

  “Point is,” Manx continued when Drake didn’t answer at once, “there’s nobody out here to help us. No navy bases, no naval task force but our own. Not even pirates and mercenaries to hire in a pinch.”

  “Only refugee ships and our enemies,” Drake agreed. “Which is why we need the general.”

  “But he doesn’t need us. Not until we’re fighting our battles to protect his worlds, his people.”

  That had been General Mose Dryz’s argument. Drake wanted an alliance with the Hroom, but here he was rushing out to save some human civilization he knew of only by rumor. Meanwhile, harvester ships were literally consuming Mose Dryz’s race. The general scoffed at Drake’s plan. It was the same old story of the past few centuries: Albion saw the Hroom as slaves, as providers of fresh worlds to conquer and colonize. And now, cannon fodder to throw against Apex.

  Drake took a look at the ships aligned and waiting for his order. The men and women at the helms of those vessels would be anxious, jumpy. So long in silence, so many weeks of traveling blind, groping their way forward on passive scans only, knowing Apex lances might be lurking behind every planet, moon, or asteroid. And now, the ship and station they’d come to rescue were only a short flight away.

  “We can’t wait any longer,” Drake said reluctantly. “Lloyd, run active scans. Find the buzzards and tell me if Blackbeard is still alive. Ellison, get me the bridge of Repulse. I want her leading the van.”

  As the two complied with his order, Drake turned back to Manx, ready to consult with him about the posture of Dreadnought herself as they advanced. Was the enemy likely to strike from the flanks or from the rear? Would they go after the strongest target first, or the weakest?

  But Manx stiffened in his seat and pointed to the viewscreen. “Sir!”

  Another ship had jumped into the system. It was the long, mottled green form of a Hroom sloop of war. It drifted away from the jump point, and moments later, a second sloop jumped through, then a third. Soon, there were six sloops of war drifting, nudging into motion as their alien crew recovered from the jump.

  Drake couldn’t look at the sloops without feeling an old sense of dread. How many times had he faced sloops of war, watched them charge recklessly at his ships with their spear-like noses ready to ram him? The aliens had not modified their tactics or their ships in generations, but the suicidal charges could make a strong man’s legs turn to jelly. And if the rams no longer posed a threat, their serpentines and pulse cannons certainly did.

  “So the general showed up after all,” Drake said.

  Ellison looked up from her console. “Sir, I have Repulse. I told Captain Woodbury to hold, but he’s asking to speak to you directly.”

  “In a moment,” he told his communications officer. “I need to speak to the general first. See if you can raise him.”

  “Did you find the buzzards yet?” Manx asked Lloyd, who had been running the scans for a few minutes.

  “Negative. But there’s something going on in the system.”

  “Be precise,” Drake said. “Where, exactly. And what?”

  “I don’t know what. I’m pinging with everything we’ve got, but we’re staring through the sun, and it’s going to take some time to resolve itself. It’s a lot of motion, whatever it is. Somewhere out in the gas giants. Let me see. Roughly two billion miles from our current position, give or take.”

  “Two billion miles? If it’s Blackbeard, she won’t get our help any time soon.”

  There was no immediate response from the Hroom warships. Drake paced back and forth. Apart from the instantaneous jumps from one system to another, or the fierce, terrifying moments of close-quarters combat, space travel played out at a glacially slow pace. Even at maximum acceleration, it could take days to cross between jump points or navigate the outer worlds of a system.

  With everything still unsettled after the jump, the minutes waiting for the general crawled by. The sloops maneuvered into a defensive position, as if fearing an Albion attack. The other ships of Drake’s fleet were begging him for orders, and Lloyd’s scans continued to return a confused jumble of information.

  “I’ve got him,” Ellison said at last. She glanced up as the general’s face filled the screen, replacing the view of Albion warships and Hroom sloops. Ellison’s voice switched to the com link, and she added a private comment. “He doesn’t look happy, Admiral.”

  How could she tell? Mose Dryz had the blank, impassive look of all Hroom as he stared back through those impossibly large eyes. He wore a white tunic with a gold sunburst on the chest, which represented his rank as general, and a circlet of black iron ringed his smooth head, indicating blood kinship with the empress.

  But most notable was his pale pink skin, not the deep violet of a healthy Hroom, but a sugar eater’s complexion. A long-time addict, at that. There was an antidote now passing through the broken remnants of the Hroom civilization, something that rewired the malleable alien brain, breaking the addiction and limiting the number of new addicts. At the same time, the new king of Albion had outlawed slavery and the slave trade within Albion territory.

  But a relationship long broken would take time to repair. If that were even possible.

  “I’d begun to worry, General,” Drake said.

  “I said I would be here. We arrived a little late, but the charts of these systems are poor. An hour is an acceptable delay, is it not?”

  “I had my doubts, that’s all I’m saying. You were ambivalent when we made our plans.”

  “So you expected a lie,” the general said. “That is human behavior, not Hroom.”

  “Not a lie, a change of plans. Second-guessing. That is the behavior of any sentient people.”

  Mose Dryz spread his arms in what looked like a self-consciously human gesture. “Here we are, Admiral Drake, ready to do your bidding. I believe you want my sloops to lead the charge. That is your way, is it not? To sacrifice Hroom lives in the pursuit of human glory?”

  Mose Dryz often spoke this way, reminding Drake in a subtle fashion of their past history as enemies. The two had brawled in the Battle of Kif Lagoon, where Drake’s forces had won a smashing victory.

  “I never order my men into certain death,” Drake said, “be they human or Hroom. And I don’t order your forces at all. That is your condition of fighting by my side, unless you’d like to remove it now.”

  The general didn’t answer, only stared, unblinking.

  “I didn’t
think so,” Drake said. “Once we know what we’re facing, I’ll tell you my battle plans, and you can join as you see fit.”

  “I think we know well enough,” Mose Dryz said. “Scans are resolving themselves. The bird people are involved somehow, we can see that already. You’re human, and you’ll have some tricks to play, but the end of this mission has to involve your fleet and their fleet in combat. We Hroom will be in the middle of it, do not worry.”

  “We’ve got it,” Lloyd said from the tech console where he and two other techs had been hard at work for the last twenty minutes. His voice was grim. “Scans of the action. It’s long range, but I think you can see the gist of it.”

  “Put it up,” Drake said. “And send it out. We have no secrets from our Hroom allies.”

  The general glanced to the side, where he was apparently getting the feed. He made a high, almost cooing sound in his throat, like he’d swallowed a songbird. Whatever he was looking at, he didn’t like it. And then the screen cut out, and the results of Lloyd’s long-range scans filled the viewscreen.

  Drake and the rest of the crew stared without speaking. There was no need.

  It was the missing navy cruiser, HMS Blackbeard. And the Singaporean battle station. And an enemy force so vast that the only prudent thing for Dreadnought, the other navy vessels, and the Hroom sloops to do was turn tail and run for their lives.

  -end excerpt-

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter One