“This would be an excellent exploratory mission if that were our goal,” Drake said. “We’re going to have excellent charts of the system by the time we’re done.”
“And if some future Robinson Crusoe is ever marooned in here, he’ll be grateful,” Manx said.
“Congratulations, Lieutenant. You have just given this system its name.”
“The ‘Robinson Crusoe System’ is a little clunky, sir. Or did you mean the ‘Maroon System?’ People will think it refers to the color.”
“Neither. I’m going with the Manx System. Your name will be on the charts.”
“What an honor, sir,” Manx said dryly. “My mother will be proud.”
“Assuming you ever see her again.”
Ellison called over from the communications console. “Sir, there’s some solid data coming from Carthage. I’m sending it to your console.”
HMS Carthage was a destroyer, paired with the corvette HMS Pace, about twenty-six million miles from Dreadnought’s current position, on the edge of a small asteroid belt. The belt was close to where one would find the first gas giant, if there had been any such planets in the system. Jump points were often found near gas giants, and it was interesting that several in this system were wandering in a similar orbit, even though the gas giants themselves were missing.
The information coming out of the jump was promising. So promising, in fact, that Drake suspected the original scans had been inadequate, although some jump points looked different from a distance than up close. This one had wandered several thousand miles from where it had been originally spotted, which was another factor that led to less than satisfactory information.
Lloyd was working on the same data, and summarized what Drake was already seeing. “It’s big enough and stable enough to carry through our largest ships, sir. And there is another system on the other side, with at least two stable jump points.”
Drake gave Manx a raised eyebrow. “What a relief to discover that the Manx System is not a cul-de-sac, Lieutenant. Your mother might hear about this after all.” Then, back to Lloyd, “Can we flip it blue?”
“No, sir. The jump point has an expected duration of thirty-seven weeks. Royal Navy cartography principles require at least twelve months’ duration to designate a jump as blue, except in the case of an oscillating jump point, in which case—”
“I get the gist, Lloyd. What about the jump points on the other side? Do they lead anywhere?”
“Working on it, sir.”
Everyone was studying the same data, and now Koh let out an exclamation in Chinese before switching to English. “Admiral, one of them is a direct match for the Kunlun System! That’s only one jump from the Kettle.”
Drake settled back into his seat with a sigh. They weren’t going to die here after all, and, in fact, had a chance of making it back to Sentinel 3 in time to rendezvous. Hard to say; the fleet was scattered and would take a few days to gather near Carthage and Pace. He might wait until they’d investigated the rest of the yellows, but it was hard to imagine finding a better match.
Data shortly confirmed his hunch. Dreadnought’s own probe returned a fail status, indicating that it had taken significant damage passing through the jump. The limited data it returned was irrelevant; if a probe couldn’t make it through unharmed, there was no way he’d risk one of his ships.
“That settles it. Manx, contact the fleet. Time to leave this desert behind.”
#
Dreadnought and her escorting missile frigate made their way through the asteroid belt on the way to rejoin the fleet. One of his cruisers, HMS Repulse, had been nearby, investigating its own jump point, and fell in a few thousand miles off starboard. Woodbury, Repulse’s captain, called Drake a few minutes later.
“I ran some scans while we were waiting for you, Admiral. There’s something strange about this asteroid belt.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised, but go ahead.”
“The belt doesn’t have much mass, given the size of the rocky planets—my tech officer says there’s a standard ratio—and what’s here is pulverized. A lot of small rocks, not many big ones. A mile across, two miles, but none of the small planetoids you usually see.”
“The Manx System is also missing its gas giants,” Drake said.
“Manx? You named the system after your first mate?” Woodbury chuckled. “Anyway, it’s not that. We looked at a couple of the bigger rocks, and they’ve been chewed up. I’ll wager there was a mining operation in here at one time.”
“Could be,” Drake said. “Nothing active at the moment, though. And if the buzzards were present, they’d have shown their faces by now. Everyone has been talking back and forth, nothing hidden. And the fleet is divided—there’s no shortage of easy targets.”
“If it’s an old mining operation, there’s bound to be some equipment lying around. Maybe it’s the buzzards, maybe some other species, but the way these jump points are acting, there’s no way someone has been here recently, running a sustained operation. Point is, the mining operation might be very old.”
“And you want a closer look, is that it?”
“Here’s what I’m thinking, Admiral. We’re ahead of most of the ships. I’ve already run my passive scans, and didn’t turn up anything. I’ll need a closer look. If I find something, we’ve got a few hours to grab it while the rest of the fleet assembles.”
“I always like getting my hands on alien tech,” Drake said. He gave it a moment of thought. “Go ahead and run active scans, but localized. No need to shout.”
“Yes, sir.” Woodbury chuckled again. “The Manx System. I like it. Hope it doesn’t go to the man’s head.”
He cut the line. The others on Dreadnought’s bridge were grinning, and Manx scowled at them before turning to Drake.
“On second thought, Admiral, the Robinson Crusoe System doesn’t sound so clunky. Has a certain ring to it.”
“Woodbury is scanning,” Lloyd said. “Not much showing up, but he’s right. The belt is chewed up, but not recently. Someone was here a long time. Decades, maybe. You can see the excavations—looks like they were going after fissionables.”
“Fissionables?” Manx said. “Radioactive isotopes aren’t generally rare enough to go searching in distant star systems. Unless . . . you don’t suppose one of those inner worlds once had people on it.”
“A million years ago, maybe,” Drake said, doubtful.
“Wasn’t a very sophisticated mining operation,” Lloyd said, still studying the data. “They just scraped away the rock and hurled chunks of it into space. Cracked the biggest asteroids in two and ate them from the inside out.” He slowly blinked his heavy eyelids. “Whoever it was, we’re not talking about the elder race or anything. Nothing nearly so sophisticated.”
Something squirmed in Drake’s subconscious. A warning bell clanged somewhere. The Manx System was isolated and had few visitors, if any.
“Why would someone be mining radioactive isotopes out here?” Drake asked.
“Must have been someone desperate for fuel,” Manx said.
“With that much digging?” Drake shook his head. “Must have taken a hundred years to tear apart the belt like that. Maybe longer.”
“Admiral,” Lloyd said. His voice was tense. “Something is moving. It’s over on the other side of that small asteroid. No, wait. It is the asteroid.”
A small, irregularly shaped object—and small was relative in this case, as it was several times bigger than Dreadnought—rolled away from a collection of small, rocky asteroids. It began to unfold, stretch, and uncoil. Soon it was a mass of dangling appendages that waved like the arms of a squid.
“Oh, my God,” Manx said. “It’s a star leviathan.”
#
The mystery of the asteroid belt had been solved. A star leviathan had wandered into the system, hungry after an aeons-long journey through interstellar space, only to find itself in a wasteland. There were no civilizations here to feed on, no passing craft to attack and devour.
Maybe it had lurked for a few decades, watching, or maybe it had immediately sought out the asteroid belt to dig up fissionables to keep itself alive. Either way, it had eventually fallen dormant. Who knows how long it had been waiting? It might have been lurking here since human ancestors were banging two rocks together and calling it music.
As for the origin of the leviathans, or how long they’d been wandering the galaxy, nobody knew. Drake’s former science officer, Noah Brockett, said that the monstrous leviathans and the thumbnail-size barnacles that fixed themselves to ships shared genetic material. Part animal, part machine, they either had a common ancestor or had been engineered by a long extinct race who had perhaps created them to clear wreckage from the space lanes. Whatever their origin, star leviathans were a menace wherever they surfaced.
The leviathan’s tentacles stretched dozens of miles ahead of it, but the large, bulbous head was shrunken, like a partially deflated balloon. It was starved, ravenous. As the three warships came toward it, the monster opened its mouth and exposed its spore cannons. The humans were too close; there was no time to change course.
A tentacle lashed out and caught hold of Repulse. Moments later, spores enveloped the missile frigate and shut down its engine, allowing it, too, to be snared and hauled in. Dreadnought was not so large and intimidating that the starving leviathan didn’t try to grab hold of her, too, but the battleship was farther away, and the gunnery was alert enough to fire cannons. They blasted apart the grasping tentacles, and soon Dreadnought was out of range.
Drake wasn’t about to let the leviathan gobble down two of his warships, and he ordered the engines to reverse as the monster hauled in his frigate and cruiser. The two captured ships blasted away with everything they had, but the leviathan absorbed the shots, perhaps even fed on them.
Drake put out a distress signal. One of his destroyer-and-corvette pairs was a few million miles away, and veered to join the action.
Of the two captured ships, the frigate was smaller and its engines were shut down by the spore cannon; the leviathan hauled it in first. Escape pods blasted out even as the leviathan stuffed the ship into its maw. Explosions lit up the gaping interior of the monster, and then the ship was gone. Only the venting of gas from the leviathan’s mouth and the fleeing escape pods gave any indication that the frigate had even existed.
What would happen inside the monster’s gullet? Would the frigate be slowly digested even as the remaining crew tried increasingly desperate measures to cut their way free, or was the whole thing immediately masticated by the monster, quickly ending their pain?
Meanwhile, the pods were escaping, and Drake prayed that most of the crew had made it on board in time. The leviathan had plenty of tentacles and could have snared and hauled in the fleeing pods, but it was too busy trying to wrestle Repulse into its mouth. The cruiser launched torpedoes and missiles into its enemy, all of which hit, but did little damage. A cannon broadside, however, tore apart two of the tentacles with kinetic fire, and the cruiser pulled away, shaking off the shattered limbs.
For a moment, it looked as though she would escape, but more tentacles snagged her just as she began to accelerate. The leviathan was moving faster now, more alertly, and a thinner, darker appendage lanced out and speared the cruiser in the side, plunging out the other side moments later. Repulse vented gases from both sides.
Dreadnought had circled around until she sat a few dozen miles behind the leviathan’s outstretched tentacles, which twitched, greedily trying to get hold of the battleship. Repulse was still blasting her engines, and that kept the monster from moving closer to Dreadnought.
Drake gave instructions for the gunnery. “Hold all explosives. Kinetic fire only.”
“It swallowed the frigate whole!” Manx said. “We’re not going to hurt it with cannons.”
“Keep calm, Lieutenant. We’re not aiming for the body. Bring us about and target that mass of tentacles.”
Dreadnought swung around to present a broadside, and this finally brought it within range of the leviathan’s grasping appendages, one of which snared her. Engines flared, pulling the monster along, even as the battleship wriggled to get into position to fire. Drake gave the orders. A massive battery of cannon let loose.
Thousands of tons of cobalt shot tore into the tentacles. The leviathan recoiled in visible pain, as dozens of appendages were torn loose. Repulse was suddenly covered in what looked like massive squirming snakes, none of which were any longer connected to the leviathan. Dreadnought fired again, this time at the tentacle holding the battleship, and then both ships were free and pulling away from the thrashing, flailing leviathan. For a moment, it looked as though it would give pursuit, but instead it retreated, still squirming with pain.
Repulse quickly sealed its hull breach, and its engines were still functioning, thank God. It joined Dreadnought in scooping up the pods containing the survivors from the missile frigate. The destroyer and corvette arrived on the scene and kept a wary eye on the leviathan until the battleship and cruiser were ready to set off. The monster settled onto one of the larger asteroids to sit and digest its meal.
“How long do you suppose that frigate will keep it fed?” Manx asked. “You don’t suppose that was enough to allow it to spawn, do you? Or will it need to regrow its tentacles first?”
“We’ll be long gone before either of those things happen,” Drake said. “But either way, the charts are going to show the Manx System as off-limits.”
He mused gloomily on the destroyed missile frigate as the ships left the asteroid belt behind. Its loss was a blow. But it could have been worse. Much worse.
Chapter Seven
There was something strange in the posture of the other two Hroom as General Mose Dryz entered the sweating room. Both the colonel and the priestess were naked, sitting on the wooden platform at the back of the room, legs folded to their chests, but they weren’t meditating, as he’d expected, but watched him carefully as he approached. A glance passed between them.
It must be nerves. Unnecessary worry. The general’s sloops of war were fully cloaked, but though the enemy was theoretically too blind to see the fleet, nobody could fully relax with Apex searching for its next victim.
Mose Dryz ladled water onto the hot coals, breathed in the steam, and said a silent prayer to the god of higher consciousness.
Glorious being of higher thought. With gratitude, I thank thee for the gift of sentience. To be aware, to think and dream. To sense the old gods. To rise above the beasts and partake of the feast of consciousness. To recognize beauty, to feel love, and to share compassion with all living things.
Beauty, love, and compassion.
Did Apex know any of those things? For that matter, did the birds have gods, did they even possess full sentience? Didn’t sentience include the ability to extrapolate into the mind of another? If so, how could they be so cruel, so ruthless?
Mose Dryz poured more water on the coals, then pushed his way through the billowing steam to take a position on the lower bench, with his adjutants behind him. He had hung his robe outside the door of the small stone-lined sweating room, and was naked alongside the other two. There were sugar vials in the pockets of his robes outside, and an itching sensation crawled along his skin as he thought of them. It was too soon; he needed to wait another hour or two for his next dose.
“How do you feel, Lord General?” Lenol Tyn asked.
“Confident,” Mose Dryz said. “Ready to defeat the birds.”
“You do not feel unwell?”
The general turned with an inquisitive hum, uncertain what she meant. Lenol Tyn studied him, searching his face. There was concern in the young colonel’s expression, but also intense inquisitiveness.
“I am healthy,” Mose Dryz said. “Does this satisfy you?”
“Not at all,” the other woman said.
She was Dela Zam, a high priestess and cultist. Dela Zam seemed to hate humans only fractionally less than she hated Apex. She’d commanded
three sloops of war and demanded that the general include her in the triumvirate—the council of general and two adjutants that ruled the fleet—as a condition of committing her sloops to his forces.
Mose Dryz had been happy to do it. The colonel Dela Zam replaced was loyal to the general. Better him in command of the priestess’s three sloops, and Dela Zam here, under the general’s watchful eye. He’d take her “counsel,” such as it was, under advisement.
She had more to say. “According to the ration log, you have reduced your sugar dose. Do you have an explanation for this?”
“That is privileged information,” Mose Dryz said. “The dispenser should not have shared it with you.”
“You gave me the right when you made me your adjutant,” Dela Zam said. “Why did you reduce your dose?”
“This is a sweating room. It isn’t a place for interrogation.”
Lenol Tyn gave a cautious buzz, and when she spoke, sounded more circumspect than the priestess. “We are not angry, Lord General, we are hopeful. If you reduced the dose because you took remedies to reduce your cravings, we would be satisfied.”
“The antidote doesn’t work that way,” the general said. “It turns off pleasure receptors in the brain, and you will never again feel a sugar swoon. There would be no reason to take sugar of any quantity.”
“An attempted self-weaning then, Lord General?” Lenol Tyn said. “To cure yourself of the addiction through force of will?”
“Impossible,” Dela Zam said. “Once an eater, always an eater.”
Lenol turned to her with an accusing stare. “That sounds like something a human would say.”
This brought a derisive hoot from the priestess. “And a human would know, wouldn’t he? Humans are sugar peddlers, slavers, dealers of death and deliverers of misery.”
Lenol Tyn wouldn’t let it go. “You do not know the general’s powers of self-control.”
“I know eaters,” she said. “They have no self-control. Not one of them does. There is something else happening here, and I demand an answer from the general.”
Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) Page 5
