This one is a lieutenant on an Albion warship. Not a true feast, but his status will brighten my colors.
She said this even as she pinned the man with a talon and dipped her beak to his face. She came up with an eyeball. The man screamed again. The queen kept pecking away, the man kept screaming, and the general thought he would faint. She left the human before he was dead, moving on to a Hroom, from whom she casually tore flesh from his thighs. She shoved her bill up under another human’s rib cage, came out with his heart, and swallowed it. At least that poor fool was dead.
Mose Dryz refused to look away. The next time he wavered, the next time his hand seemed to move of its own volition toward the sugar that would send him swooning so hard he’d fall into a bottomless pit, he would remember this moment. Remember the horror, the evil that these birds represented.
The guards paced the edge, squawking anxiously. Other birds circled overhead, cawing, begging. The queen ate slowly, deliberately. At last she cleaned her beak on a stone, though it was still bloody when she returned her unblinking gaze to the general.
Your people are defeated, General. Soon, the humans will be, too. Both races will join the Krax, the Zylif, and the others we have consumed. The cave-dwellers of the binary stars, the amphibious race that dared us to chase them to the depths of their home world. Species more aggressive than the humans, and civilizations older than the Hroom.
“Civilization?” he asked. “Do you know that word?”
Civilization is the collection of flocks, tribes, and nations that make up an expansionary species.
“Is that what it means to you?”
What else would it mean?
Mose Dryz hummed. “You have no word for civilization in your language, do you?” He swung his arm wide, a gesture of demonstration that was the same for humans and Hroom alike. “You found a small, unoccupied world and you’re here long enough to strip it of resources, but you won’t build anything.”
We will build lances, spears, and harvesters. We grow drone armies and increase in status and power.
“Where are your temples, your palaces, your great cities?”
The work of lesser races.
“Your music, art, culture, beauty?”
Beauty is the destruction of your gods, the death of your princesses and queens. I will eat your empress myself. I will see the last Hroom dismembered in front of me.
“Go ahead, then. Start with the empress’s general. You captured me, you spat in my face. My brain is yours to control, isn’t it? Yet I stand here defying you. What are you waiting for, Queen Commander? Prove yourself by eating me, if you dare.”
She fixed Mose Dryz with a sharp, predatory gaze. He sensed her anger that he was unbroken, felt her burning temptation to prove her dominance by tearing out his throat and eating his heart. He silently urged her to do it, to end his madness. Lenol Tyn would fly away at the head of the general’s fleet, collecting more sloops to use in the war.
There is no glory to be gained in eating a Hroom drone. That is all you are, General. There are billions of Hroom, and you do not resist. I have more glorious prey in mind.
She spread her left wing. A small pouch was secured there by a plastic strap that wrapped around the joint where the wing met the body. She ducked her beak and pulled out a plastic vial from the pouch, not much larger than the glass ones Mose Dryz carried with him. Only this contained a thick, creamy liquid, not grains of sugar.
She dropped it into his hand. He wanted to hurl it away, but his hand moved of its own volition and slipped it in among the sugar vials.
“What is it?”
My name is Ak Ik, queen commander, and I will have my glory. I will rise from queen to empress and lead the Greater Flock to an age of triumph and conquest. But first I must devour the human commander. Then, my ascendance shall be complete.
You will carry this serum to Admiral James Drake and force him to drink it.
Chapter Four
Tolvern stared at the viewscreen. The Hroom commander stared back, unblinking. He was a priest, a cultist. The sort who General Mose Dryz had been trying to win over since the Albion Civil War, but with little success.
The cultists seemed unable to switch their hatred from humans to Apex. It was the same animosity that had led them to make suicidal attacks on Albion, one of which had destroyed York Town in an atomic holocaust. That hatred made them blind. Not so different from the Singaporean fanatics on the sentinel battle station, whose hatred had prohibited them from facing their true enemy. Humans, after all, had never threatened the Hroom with extermination.
No, merely crippling addiction and slavery. Thank Lord Malthorne and his sort for what we’re facing now.
“Listen to me,” she told the priest. “We’re not your enemies. Look behind us. Look at all the buzzards.”
“You are cursed, Jess Tolvern. The god of death has marked you for destruction, and there is no prayer, no plea to the universe that will save you. That is right, I know who you are and what you have done. When I heard your message, I rejoiced. I knew that my god had delivered you into my hands.”
“I’m telling you, I’m not your enemy. I never have been. I have a Hroom pilot, Hroom engineers. I fought with free Hroom on Hot Barsa. General Mose Dryz—”
“The general is a traitor.”
“Listen to me—”
“Silence!”
“The cultists are warming their serpentines,” Smythe warned from the tech console. “They mean to fire.”
And then Nyb Pim’s voice came over the com link and spoke into her ear. “Captain, look at his strange color. That shade of black is not natural.”
Tolvern subvocalized her response so the cultist wouldn’t hear her. “I assumed he was from some planet of the empire where they have skin like that.”
“I think it’s radiation poisoning.”
She’d forgotten that part. What was this cultist doing out here? He’d suffered damage to his ship, and recently, too, or the radiation would have killed him and his crew already. Why didn’t he evacuate to one of the other sloops? The other two weren’t bleeding radiation.
“Well?” he demanded. “Do you have anything to say before you die?”
“Your English is good for a Hroom. You must have lived with humans. Are you a former slave? Did you take the sugar antidote? If you know about me, then you know that I was in Admiral Drake’s crew when he gave Mose Dryz the antidote. So how am I an enemy? How is the general a traitor?”
“I’m warning you, human.”
Tolvern laughed. “You already threatened to kill me. What more can you promise?”
“Your soul can still suffer.”
“You mean the icy hell of your people? I thought that was just for Hroom.”
The priest made a low, almost growling hum in his throat. The Hroom serpentines still hadn’t fired, and it would only be moments before Blackbeard would barrel through the trio of sloops. If the Hroom fired, she could take out at least one of them, shrug off their blows, and get out the other side. She was sure of it. From there, probably outrun them, too. But what about those blasted lances? Would they jump after her, or attack the sloops first?
“You’ve got another death fleet, don’t you?” she said. “That’s what you’re doing out here. You’re loaded up with fissile material, still trying to attack Albion. To kill humans and so-called Hroom traitors. Only you’ve got a containment breach, so your time is limited. Did the buzzards hit you?”
“I have two other ships.”
“Go ahead, then. Let’s see if you can handle a Punisher-class cruiser. Blackbeard is the most decorated ship in the fleet, and she’s destroyed plenty of sloops in her day, but I’m sure that doesn’t worry you. Then, if you have anything left after we’re done fighting, send your suicide ships out to attack more human ships. Meanwhile, there’s a harvester in orbit around Samborondón.”
“That is not the proper name of the planet.”
“What the devil does that matter?
There are millions of Hroom on that planet, and they’re all going to die. If you’re going to kill yourself anyway, why don’t you ram that harvester? Why would you throw your life away trying to kill a single human ship when you can save Hroom lives?”
Tolvern glanced to her screen. Six lances had jumped. The remaining two kept up their pursuit from a distance. Far from being turned away by Tolvern’s gambit, it seemed that she’d inspired them to attack. Any moment and the six would reappear.
“My life has value in sacrifice, Jess Tolvern.” The priest’s tone was haughty. “And I have sworn to the god of death that I will take vengeance for the injustices that Albion has inflicted on my people.”
The viewscreen blinked off. Moments later, Lomelí warned that all three sloops had fired their serpentines. Missiles shot out, shedding bomblets as they approached. Tolvern cursed.
“Smythe, give me countermeasures. And I want the main guns ready. I’m going to get through those serpentines and hit that dumb cultist upside the head before we make a run for it. With any luck, the buzzards will stop long enough to teach him a—”
Tolvern didn’t finish the sentence, as lances jumped in off port and starboard. Two more appeared above them. Nyb Pim had preprogrammed a defensive roll, and moved to execute it.
“Hold!” she said. Roll now and Blackbeard would dive right into the serpentines.
Just as the first Hroom bomblets were about to hit, they corkscrewed away, toward one of the lances. It didn’t have time to evade before the bombs struck it. Explosions took out the engine and smashed the armor along the underbelly.
“I don’t believe it,” Tolvern said. “I thought he was going to kill us.”
“He sounded bloody sure of himself,” Capp said. “Do them cultists really change their mind like that?”
There were still five lances in the action, plus the pair bringing up the rear. The five seemed uncertain how to proceed, whether to go after Blackbeard, or to target the trio of sloops of war. In the end, indecision wrecked their battle plan. Three charged at the lead sloop, while two came after Blackbeard as she tried to slip away.
Blackbeard fired torpedoes. They chased off the pair of lances, which dropped countermeasures until the torpedoes lost them. After that, Blackbeard’s torpedoes wandered, looking for a target, until they’d circled around to where the last three lances faced off against the cultists’ sloops.
The sloops launched more serpentines. The lances knocked them down easily with their energy weapons, then charged the lead ship—the one whose commander Tolvern had been arguing with—which tried to evade. But the sloop moved sluggishly, as if its engines were damaged. It was soon crawling along, and the lances darted in and out, hitting it with lasers.
“They’re disabling it,” Smythe noted in a grim tone. “Looks like they want prisoners.”
“That cultist is a worthless plonker,” Capp said, “but it’s a godawful way to go.”
Once the engines went out, a lance harpooned the ship and began to haul it in. The other two hunted the remaining sloops, which were making a run for it. The lances jumped in, and were soon harassing them with fire. The sloops fired their batteries, but couldn’t land any blows. They were inferior in weapons, targeting, and maneuverability to the lances, and it showed.
The two Apex ships that had pursued Blackbeard were also accelerating for another jump. Tolvern ordered her pilot to prepare evasive maneuvers and made the sure the gunnery had the main battery ready to fire.
The captured sloop detonated in a flash of light so powerful that it could only have been an arsenal of atomic weapons. Tolvern had guessed right; the priest was leading a small suicide fleet. When the sensors rescanned the area, nothing remained of either the sloop or the lance that had captured her.
Apex stopped messing around. They relentlessly hit the sloops with missiles and energy pulses. One sloop broke in two. The other tried to ram the closest lance, but the Apex ship darted away. The sloop self-destructed, but without harming either of its pursuers.
There were six remaining lances. Two had been lurking this entire time, and seemed content to observe. Two others had destroyed the sloops and were turning around. The last two were preparing to jump again, but found themselves in the path of Blackbeard’s wandering torpedoes. The torpedoes had rumbled toward the fight between the lances and the sloops, and now acquired new targets. The lances aborted their jumps to avoid the torpedoes’ path.
This bought Blackbeard a few more minutes. She’d been streaking from the battlefield, and was at least two million miles away, changing course only when it became necessary to avoid the rocky debris that grew more numerous as they entered the asteroid belt.
The four lances fell farther behind as they targeted Tolvern’s torpedoes and blasted them apart. The final two lances joined them, and the six ships jostled for position, organizing themselves before beginning another acceleration to jump speed.
Tolvern had a sudden hunch. “Capp, shut down the weapons.”
“But that leaves us—” Capp began.
“Do it! Smythe, turn off the sensors. Nyb Pim, execute an evasive maneuver.”
They must have heard the urgency in her voice, because they moved swiftly to comply. Capp called the gunnery, Nyb Pim took Blackbeard on a new course, and the tech officers silenced their sensor arrays. Precious minutes passed while the gunnery closed torpedo tubes, sealed missile batteries, and retracted the cannon.
“They’re banging their buckets again,” Smythe said.
It was the disdainful way he described Apex’s active sensors. An unsophisticated clanging around.
“Then they’ve lost sight of us,” Tolvern said.
“That’s not going to last,” he said. “Not with all six of them searching. We’re still too close, and until those cannon are all the way retracted—”
Capp looked up from her console, her face flushed. “Guns are in, Cap’n!”
“Get those cloaks up,” Tolvern said. “Now!”
The six lances were accelerating rapidly, preparing to jump. There was no way to tell from the direction of their heading where they intended to reappear. Had they found Blackbeard? Were they guessing?
The lances jumped.
“Kill the engines,” Tolvern ordered. Moments later, they were continuing on sheer momentum.
Silence reigned on the bridge while they waited for the enemy to reappear. If they’d found Blackbeard and came in alongside, there would be no way to fight back, not with all the weapon systems drawn in.
The lances flashed out of their short jump. They came up near where Nyb Pim had executed his evasive maneuvers. Nine hundred thousand miles distant, and pointed in the wrong direction. The crew on the bridge let out a collective whoosh of breath, but they weren’t out of danger yet.
“They’re banging harder,” Smythe said. His voice was tight and breathless. “Turning this way now . . .”
Tolvern tapped her console. A schematic of Blackbeard appeared. She waited for it to flash pink, indicating incoming active sensors as the enemy ships pinged their hull. Cloaked or uncloaked, terrible Apex sensors or no, a hard enough hit would light them up. The chase would resume.
Nothing yet.
The lances wandered back and forth, searching, hunting. All the while, Blackbeard kept moving away, not daring to use the engines, just drifting at eight hundred miles a second, the sluggish speed to which they’d accelerated before the enemy jumped. Even this slow speed was enough to increase their distance between the ship and the hunting lances. The distance crept to a million miles, then 1.1 million, 1.2 million.
The lances inched along, sniffing in the direction where Blackbeard had been heading before abruptly changing course. This further increased the distance. The banging sensors looked in their direction less and less.
“That’s it,” Tolvern said. Her heart had gradually slowed its thumping. “We got away. We’ll give it another hour or two and nudge the engines into motion. Nyb Pim, work out the jump point
s—we’ll need a target.”
“I am already on it, sir. I assume we are making our way to the Kettle System?”
“Correct, Pilot.”
“I have a question, Cap’n,” Capp said. “How did you know them buzzards had lost sight of us, anyway?”
“A hunch, that’s all. There was a lot going on, starting with the Hroom death struggles. Throw in our wandering torpedoes and add all the lances coming and going, and I figured it was our best chance.”
“What do you bet they lost contact when that sloop went off?” Smythe said. “The atomic detonation overwhelmed our own sensors, and the buzzards were a lot closer and their sensors a lot crappier.”
“If that cultist’s soul is still alive somewhere in the universe, he can’t be happy to know his death helped us,” Tolvern said.
“That reminds me, Captain,” Smythe said. “The priest sent us a message before he mashed the self-destruct button. I forgot about it with everything else that was going on.”
“Play the message, let’s hear what he had to say.”
“It’s video.” Smythe hit a button, and the dead Hroom commander appeared.
The screen was shaking, and Hroom voices chattered excitedly in the background. Smoke roiled behind the priest, and his face was burned.
My name is Nol Pim, and I am a high priest of the Temple of Saar.
“Hear that, Pilot?” Capp said. “He’s a Pim. That bloke’s from the same planet as you.”
“Quiet, Lieutenant,” Tolvern said. “Smythe, back it up, will you? I missed that next part.”
I was once a slave for the Kingdom of Albion, destined to die in the helium-3 mines. A slave to the humans, in thrall to your sugar. Then one day the god of death appeared to me in a vision and promised me freedom if I would dedicate myself to Him. He commanded me to revenge myself on the human race. As you can see, my god does not lie—I have been free ever since.
Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) Page 3
