Dragon Quadrant (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 2)

by Michael Wallace

  Carvalho took aim at some of the flying aliens and squeezed off bursts. Birds crashed to the ground under his gunfire, screaming in death. Others, merely wounded, fell flapping and squawking, and the ones they landed on hurled them away as if they were nothing but debris.

  Any thought that Apex might use some exotic energy weapon in close-quarters fighting vanished as bullets came flying back from beak-operated guns. Carvalho ducked behind the crates to reload. Other defenders kept shooting.

  Several other crew members had been working in the engineering bay while the assault teams prepared, and while most of them had successfully taken cover, a handful were caught in the open. The drones pounced on one man, who disappeared beneath flapping wings. Other birds seized two more in their talons—a human and a Hroom—and pecked viciously at them.

  “Captain,” Carvalho said through the com link. “Are you there?” No answer. “Capp?” He tried the general channel. “Someone help me. We’re getting mobbed down here.” He rose and fired.

  The first birds out of the torpedo had been a uniform gray, but others came out after them, these ones with red and green feathers among the gray. Another was almost entirely colored feathers, a brilliant mix of blue, yellow, and red. The gray birds tossed the battered, bloody captives toward this one, where more gray birds held them down with their talons. The one with the bright plumage bent to the human first, head bobbing. The man screamed in pain. The bird came up with an eyeball and a chunk of the man’s face in its beak. It tossed its head back and swallowed the grisly prize.

  That must be the leader. Carvalho aimed his gun at it and emptied his magazine on full auto. More birds went down, but there were so many, some still pouring out, that he couldn’t even see if he’d hit his target.

  A bomb exploded against the crates. Flour and pulverized beans rained down on his head, together with something sticky that smelled like grape jelly. The boxes of food and other supplies were disintegrating under fire. The forklift next to them would provide better cover, but it was badly positioned. He grabbed Boyle and Boykin and the three of them shoved at the vehicle to move it. Even at half-gravity, it resisted their efforts, the brakes locked in place, and they had to tip it over first to get it to move.

  Birds swooped down from above, but gunfire drove them back. Bullets kept pinging all around. Screams came from Carvalho’s right, where the buzzards had overwhelmed one of the other defensive positions. Men and women disappeared beneath a flurry of wings. Someone in the pile detonated a grenade, and broken wings and human arms went flying. The birds flew off with two screaming victims in their talons. Carvalho and his companions tried to bring them down, but failed.

  “Look out!” Boykin shouted.

  She dropped her empty rifle and whipped out a pistol. She fired twice into the sky, hit the bird swooping in at their heads, and sent it tumbling to the floor, squawking in rage and pain.

  A man to Carvalho’s right cried for help as birds dragged him away. It was Boyle, Boykin’s confederate in low humor. He wasn’t looking so funny anymore, writhing in terror, trying to stab one of his captors and free himself. One of the brighter colored birds flew in and dipped her beak. Boyle screamed. The bird came up with a huge chunk of flesh.

  Boykin had dropped to a knee to reload her rifle, and now she shoved a grenade at Carvalho. “Take this!”

  Carvalho pulled the pin, stepped into the chaos, and hurled it toward the enemy. A bullet zipped by his head. The grenade bounced into the middle of the birds now tearing at Boyle and detonated. It left another mass of feathers and body parts. The place smelled like a chicken slaughterhouse.

  “Boyle!” Boykin cried. She rose, her rifle reloaded, and emptied it into the enemy, screaming. More birds fell.

  In spite of their losses, it looked as though Blackbeard’s crew was going to succeed in fighting off the enemy. Someone had been caught sitting on his hands to let Apex get so close they could launch a surprise boarding party, but Carvalho had been lucky to have a dozen armed men and women in the exact spot where the enemy pressed its attack. If he could hold the line for a few more minutes, other crew would join him in defending the ship.

  “Captain,” he tried again. “For God’s sake, we need some help down here. Where are you?”

  “Carvalho!” Boykin screamed behind him.

  He turned as one of the buzzards landed on Boykin’s shoulders and dragged her off the ground. Carvalho hadn’t yet reloaded after throwing the grenade, and instead of shooting, he dropped his gun, jumped, and grabbed one of the bird’s legs as it swept overhead. It faltered, struggling to stay aloft as not one, but two humans weighed it down.

  Feet dragging, still holding on with one hand, Carvalho reached for his sidearm. He found his knife instead. He slid it from its sheath and dragged it across the bird’s leg. The bird screamed and tried to shake him loose. Boykin was still thrashing in its talons, and the three of them crashed to the ground, bird and humans all in a jumble.

  Gunfire churned through the buzzards. Someone was firing wildly at him, trying to save both Boykin and Carvalho from the same fate that had taken several other crew members already. Carvalho had no intention of being eaten alive or dragged back as a captive, but he didn’t want to be shot by his own side, either.

  He found where the bird’s wing met its body and hacked with his knife while it tried to fight free. Its beak turned to get at him, but he ducked aside. It released Boykin, then tried to shake her loose as she wrapped her arms around its legs to keep its talons out of the fight. While she held it, Carvalho kept stabbing. Soon, it was dead in a mass of blood and feathers.

  Carvalho smelled like guts and offal and some sort of nasty, bile-like substance that it had spit up when it died, thrashing, beneath his blade.

  Boykin cried another warning. Carvalho looked up to see the brightly colored one stalking toward him, neck bobbing. He grabbed for his pistol and realized why he couldn’t find it earlier; he’d given it to someone else early in the fight. He braced himself, knife in hand.

  “You dumb bird, you will never take me alive.”

  It leaned its head back, and Carvalho rolled to the side as it darted forward with its beak. He thought it was going to tear at him, but instead it spat a thick yellow gunk like snot mixed with egg yolk. He was moving, and the substance flew past his ear and missed.

  Carvalho leaped at the bird, but it flapped into the sky as he stabbed, and his knife hit nothing but feathers. It flew back to rejoin its flock. The aliens were falling back. Gunfire continued, and other crew had begun to arrive at last. The newcomers and holdouts joined forces to drive the enemy back.

  The aliens piled into the torpedo-like boarding rockets, and suddenly they were withdrawing from the engineering bay, yanked back as if on a line. Fifteen or twenty of the gray-feathered aliens stayed behind and kept shooting to guard the retreat. Bombproofs shut behind the departing tubes, sealing off the outer hull.

  The instant that happened, full gravity returned. So many of the buzzards had stayed behind that Carvalho thought the battle would rage on for some time, but they slumped under the increased gravity, and the departure of the rest of their army seemed to leave them dispirited and disorganized. They fired back in a desultory manner, but the fight quickly turned into a massacre.

  Soon, the battle was over. They’d driven off the Apex attackers. Men, women, and Hroom let out a ragged shout. It was more relief than triumph.

  “Thanks a lot, Carvalho,” Boykin said in an accusing tone behind him.

  He turned to see her face covered in the gummy yellow substance spit up by the bird. She must have taken the shot meant for him.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “It isn’t poison, is it?”

  “Don’t seem so, but it’s bloody disgusting, whatever it is. Like a camel spitting up on me, that’s what it was. Should have hit you, not me.”

  How strange. A life and death struggle, and Carvalho had driven the bird off, but not before . . . what? It hurled its snot at him
to show its anger?

  “Dumb buzzards,” he said.

  He stripped off his shirt to wipe the stuff from Boykin’s face, but shortly turned his attention to helping the wounded.

  Chapter Twelve

  The lance had appeared from nowhere, snared Blackbeard, and sent in a boarding party. From the engineering bay came the frantic chatter of battle. The enemy ship had come in so close that it was literally brushing against Blackbeard’s side.

  Tolvern kept Smythe at his console to manipulate the engines and Nyb Pim in the pilot’s chair to try to fight clear, but ordered the rest of the officers on the bridge to join the crew arming themselves to repel the boarders.

  Men and women stumbled from sleep all across the ship, rushed out from the mess, or dragged themselves from the sick bay. Tolvern joined them in the hallways, where Capp organized the crew, positioning some at key intersections to delay the buzzards should they break through. The rest charged toward the engineering bay.

  Tolvern had almost reached the bay when Carvalho shouted on her com. “It’s over! They’re fleeing.”

  She grabbed Lomelí. “Quick, back to the bridge!”

  The young woman had been following her, anxiously turning an assault rifle over in her hands. An expert with weapons at a distance, the thought of personally firing a gun had seemed to terrify her.

  Tolvern had ordered all manner of crew down to the engineering bay, but now realized she’d made a mistake with Lomelí. She should have kept the young woman at the defense grid computer in case it was possible to shake free long enough to get off a shot. And now the Apex ship was getting away.

  By the time Tolvern and Lomelí reached the bridge, the lance had accelerated away, and now jumped clear and vanished entirely. Tolvern cursed herself. The entire battle had only lasted about ten minutes before Apex turned and fled. Had she panicked?

  But as she left the bridge yet again and made her way to the engineering bay to see the aftermath of the battle, she had a chance to reconsider. In close-quarters combat there was a fine line between victory and a total rout. She’d been right to throw everything she had at repelling the boarders. The lance had escaped, but so had Blackbeard.

  The engineering bay was a disaster. A ten-foot hole tore through the hull, and while they’d managed to close the bombproofs and seal themselves from the vacuum, the bay doors were wrecked. She could see at a glance that they’d have to be cut off from the exterior and replaced.

  The floor was a mass of wings and feathers and birds with broken necks. Two techs wearing full hazard suits, including masks, collected the alien bodies, while two other suited-up crew piled up the discarded alien weapons. Someone else sprayed them down with disinfectant. An astringent smell scratched at Tolvern’s throat, mingling with the stench of offal and burned feathers.

  Carvalho stood above several human bodies and one Hroom that had been carried away from the dead buzzards. The dead were unidentifiable, faces torn off, bellies opened and guts ripped out. They were damp with blood and chemical disinfectant. Tolvern took a deep breath to steady her churning stomach, and looked away until she had it under control.

  “Impressive work,” Tolvern told Carvalho. “Ten to one their dead over ours.”

  “That is no consolation for these ones.” He gestured at his fallen comrades with a look of helpless frustration.

  “But you fought them in hand-to-hand combat, and gave them a good thrashing. That will make them think twice the next time they’re tempted to board one of our ships.”

  “How did this happen?” Carvalho asked. “Nobody saw them coming?”

  “All sorts of luck, good and bad. The jump hit us harder than usual—that’s the bad. Smythe suffered a concussion and didn’t search the area as well as he should have. We set off for Morpho without ever really looking. The buzzards must have been lurking nearby.”

  “Good thing they did not simply shoot us, yes?”

  “Right. That’s the good luck part. They were bent on taking prisoners, not destroying the ship. Did the enemy take any prisoners?”

  Carvalho’s face darkened. “Three crew are unaccounted for among the living and dead.”

  Tolvern forced herself not to think about what horrible fate might await them. She let out her breath. “Bloody awful for them, but the rest of us are fortunate that’s what they were after.” She glanced at the growing pile of Apex dead. “And that they were willing to pay dearly for their prisoners.”

  “Yes, we were fortunate,” Carvalho said, though his tone said otherwise. “If we hadn’t been down here and armed, they’d have the ship by now. What about Morpho? Are we still going after it?”

  “First things first. Let’s get this cleaned up, then we’ll go after the fugitives.”

  “Half of my boarding party is dead or missing. They will need to be replaced.”

  “We’ll find you a team, even if I have to go myself,” Tolvern said.

  She glanced around. The wounded had been carted off, but one woman sat by herself, her back to the wall, rubbing at her face with a damp towel. She had no apparent injuries, but her face was gray, and perspiration beaded on her forehead.

  “Is that Boykin? What’s wrong with her?”

  “One of the buzzards spit on her,” Carvalho said. “She got some in her mouth, and it seems to have made her ill.”

  “Send her to the sick bay.”

  He gave Tolvern a funny look. “Doc is overwhelmed with patients, and the sick bay is not so well organized as I would like it. I would rather not have Boykin mingling with the other patients.”

  Suddenly, she understood better how Carvalho had organized the cleanup efforts. The chemical disinfectants, the crew gathering the bodies. He was afraid of contamination, of course he was. Why was Boykin sick after being spit on? That pale look reminded her of Djikstra. Could he, too, have come into physical contact with Apex?

  “You’ve done well here,” she said.

  “It is what the chief would have ordered if he weren’t down with the trips.”

  “But Barker isn’t here, and you’re on top of it. I’d say you’re up for a medal.”

  Carvalho looked pained, rather than pleased. “This is all your fault, Captain.”

  Tolvern laughed. “What’s my fault? I just gave you a compliment.”

  “You have made me responsible, and I do not like it.” He shot her an accusing look. “You know what I mean. I do not want to be ordering people about—that is not my way.”

  “All right, Carvalho. I was going to promote you to security chief, but I’ll see that you’re put on septic duty instead, and I’ll assign someone to shadow you to make sure you don’t start up your illegal distillery operation again. Is that what you would like?”

  “Yes, thank you. That would be a relief.” Carvalho looked around and sighed. “I suppose I had better finish cleaning up here first. None of these pendejos are up to the task.”

  A commotion near the breach in the engineering bay wall caught their attention. Some crew had gone into the wall to check on damage, and now they came scrambling out, crying out in alarm. Something shrieked its rage behind the wall.

  Carvalho rushed off, shouting at people to follow him. They soon dragged the buzzard into the engineering bay. It had several dozen red and yellow feathers on its breast, and Tolvern’s hopes took a leap. Not only did she have her first prisoner, but it was from one of the higher castes. It must have crawled into the gap in the walls to hide during the aftermath of the battle, while the drones were dying to enable the retreat.

  The bird appeared uninjured, but couldn’t get airborne in the heavier gravity. Men and women encircled it, trying to get in close enough to subdue it. It hissed and screeched and slashed with beak and talons. Someone tried to toss a rope over its head and suffered a nasty gash across the arm as a reward. The woman fell back with a cry, holding her bleeding arm. Other humans waved guns.

  “Don’t injure it!” Tolvern shouted. “We need that prisoner.”

&
nbsp; Someone made a feint, and the bird whipped around to confront him. While it was still distracted, someone else charged in and tackled it, and then the humans mobbed it as it hit the floor. Soon, they had its wings pinned, its talons bound, and its head pressed against the floor while someone taped its beak shut. It screamed and thrashed through all of this, but the higher gravity seemed to leave it quickly exhausted. Once it was fully bound, it lay on the ground without struggling, only the occasional twitch of the eye showing it was still alive.

  Tolvern watched with satisfaction. She turned to Carvalho.

  “Put the bird in a detention cell and post a guard. Someone who hasn’t come into physical contact with the buzzards, if you can find one. No, I’ve got a better idea. Put it in stasis. We’ll wake it up when we have the facilities to study it better.”

  “The hell with that. I am going to break its neck, and we will eat roast buzzard for supper.”

  “Carvalho.”

  “Why not? That is what Apex would do to us, no? I bet it tastes like chicken.”

  His old insubordinate attitude seemed to have returned, for better or worse. Tolvern ignored it, knowing he’d do what she commanded.

  “As for Boykin,” she said, “I don’t want her anywhere near the prisoner. Have her decontaminated, then confine her to quarters. Keep her on full quarantine until we know more.”

  “And if something . . . unnatural happens? What will we do, dissect her brain?”

  “I don’t know, Carvalho. I’ll make that decision when the time comes.”

  “What about the dead buzzards?”

  Tolvern looked around the engineering bay. “We’ve already got all the specimens to study that we’ll ever need. This stuff is just rubbish. Dump it in the incinerator where it belongs.”

  #

  Tolvern returned to her post, thinking about what she’d ask Djikstra and Megat when she got them in custody. Better keep them quarantined, too. And maybe she’d bring Brockett to the interrogation, get the opinion of the science officer if there was something strange going on. The doc, too, when he’d finished treating patients.