McGowan gave the barest of shrugs. “It’s a dangerous universe all around.”
“Yes, but some tours are more hazardous than others. If I were you, I wouldn’t expect to keep that fancy paint job for long.”
His eyes narrowed, and she wondered if he was taking that as a dig. Good, let him.
McGowan had been strutting through Albion, San Pablo, Fantalus, Peruano, and a number of other safe systems for the past few months, keeping his ships pristine while others wrestled in the mud with pirates, Apex, Hroom, and even Singaporeans.
As a matter of fact, he’d managed to avoid combat during the civil war, too. Peerless had been lurking in Hroom territory when McGowan’s cousin, Nigel Rutherford, threw in his lot with Drake’s forces in their fight against Lord Malthorne. To McGowan’s credit, he’d convinced his crew to join Drake, rather than the usurper, and rushed back to join the fight. But the war ended before he arrived.
Had the man even seen combat since the last Hroom war? And no, arresting smugglers didn’t count.
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
“Five days.”
“The system is secure?”
“Not at all. It’s swarming with Apex ships, as you’ll see the moment I send over my scans.”
“They why are you calling me? You know they can sniff out our communications.”
“So what? I’m happy to be spotted. Let them come. We’ll give the buzzards a good thrashing.”
“Bold words for someone who has never faced them in battle.”
McGowan only smiled at this.
“Captain,” Smythe said via the com link, “Peerless is sending over data. Sharing it with you now.”
Tolvern glanced down at a summary of the military situation. Sentinel 3 was hidden in the ice ring around the Kettle, and from the way the massive fleet of Apex ships kept their distance, it didn’t seem that the enemy had been able to find it yet. There were seven hunter-killer packs of four lances each, with four of the seven packs also boasting the larger, more powerful spears. Worse still, there was a harvester like the massive ship that had spewed walkers down to the surface of Samborondón.
Tolvern was about to remark on that harvester. Maybe Dreadnought could match its firepower, but McGowan was fooling himself if he thought Peerless could stand toe-to-toe and slug it out. Even Peerless and Blackbeard together were no match, and that assumed the rest of McGowan’s forces could hold off the lances and spears. It seemed to Tolvern that the Albion forces presently in the system could either fight the harvester or its support ships, but not both.
And then she spotted a third force of ships. Twenty-two Hroom sloops of war, stationed about eleven million miles from their current position. It was far enough to keep their distance from McGowan, but close enough to the human warships that the two sides could come together if Apex made a move to fight either one of them.
“Mose Dryz,” she said.
“Yes, the Hroom general is here,” McGowan said with a sniff. “I had expected a larger force. He promised the admiral thirty ships.”
“Twenty-two would look plenty big if we were facing them ourselves. No wonder you’re so relaxed. You know the buzzards won’t attack with twenty-two sloops backing you up.”
McGowan raised an eyebrow. “You may be confident in the general, but I am not. I’ve never seen him fight next to humans, and in any event, I could handle these birds on my own.”
Tolvern was remembering why she didn’t like the man. He may or may not be skilled in battle—McGowan certainly had a good reputation, albeit untested recently, and Drake respected him—but he was an arrogant blowhard. Probably for the best that his forces and the Hroom’s maintained their distance. Mose Dryz was prickly in his own way; the pair of them would have restarted the human-Hroom war.
“The general refuses to speak with me,” McGowan said. “Claims he is waiting for the admiral, and he won’t lift a single purple finger until the man arrives. Lazy, worthless Hroom.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“Why would he listen to you?”
“He might not, but it’s worth a try.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then we leave him behind. We’re going to the Kettle regardless. If we get in close enough, Sentinel 3 can shield us and vice versa. It’s safer for us there than out here by the jump point.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Tolvern. No. Drake told us to rendezvous at the battle station, but he didn’t tell us to throw away ships defending it.”
“He didn’t tell us to leave the Singaporeans hanging, either.”
“Nevertheless, it’s my call to make. The general can do what he wants, but you and I—”
“Hold on, McGowan. What are you talking about, your call to make? Are you telling me that Admiral Drake gave you specific orders to take command of HMS Blackbeard? If that’s your claim, I’ll need to see the orders with my own eyes.”
McGowan didn’t answer, only stared back insolently.
“I didn’t think so,” she said.
“And your orders? Do they include taking command of my task force?”
“I never made that claim. But that doesn’t mean you can order me about, either. And the way I understand it, Drake has commanded us to fly to the sentinel.”
McGowan waved a hand. “Very well. Go ahead. Persuade the general if you can. The two of you can break your bones on the enemy forces. My fleet will remain here until the admiral arrives.”
Tolvern was fuming. So he had a fleet now, did he? Not merely a task force, but a bloody fleet?
Capp sauntered onto the bridge. She was casually buttoning her jumpsuit, humming a silly drinking song to herself, when she spotted Tolvern, then took in the other grumpy faces on the bridge as the captain ended the call.
“What is it, what did I miss?”
Capp glanced up at the viewscreen just as McGowan’s smug face blinked out. She whistled.
“Retract shields and prepare to be boarded by the enemy,” Capp said.
“I’d sooner kiss a buzzard than McGowan,” Tolvern said.
“You don’t have to convince me, Cap’n. I was stationed on his ship once, back when I was a marine. McGowan is a piss nozzle and a wank weasel.”
“Lieutenant, that man is your superior officer.”
“Sorry, Cap’n.”
“But he isn’t my superior officer,” Tolvern said. “What was that you said, a piss nozzle?”
“And a wank weasel,” Smythe added helpfully.
“Shall I chart a course for the sentinel?” Nyb Pim asked.
Tolvern shook her head. “I can’t take Blackbeard in alone. Even with those sloops to back me, the buzzards will clean us out.”
“What is it?” Capp asked. “What’s going on?”
“McGowan’s here with his whole task force,” Tolvern said, “but he won’t move from this spot.”
“Send a subspace to the admiral,” Capp said. “He’ll put you in charge. I’ll wager McGowan is bluffing, anyhow.”
“I can’t risk a subspace. And McGowan isn’t bluffing—he’s staying put.”
“You can’t leave them Chinese to die! The buzzards will tear them apart.”
“Yes, Capp. I know that.”
“Then we get in there and start fighting, Cap’n. We got to do it.”
“I agree with the lieutenant,” Nyb Pim said. “The Hroom need leadership, and we have certain obligations to the Singaporeans, as well.”
“We can take ’em,” Capp said.
“We defeated the enemy last time because their forces were disorganized,” Tolvern said. “Going in without McGowan puts us in the same position. Disorganized, poorly positioned for battle.”
“Not if we can get up next to the station,” Capp said. “That gravity weapon, the plasma stuff—we got a fighting chance even without the piss nozzle backing us up.”
Maybe, but Tolvern had doubts. Still, what choice did
she have? Her crew was right; she couldn’t leave the battle station to its fate. But it galled her to have the others openly contradicting her, pointing out the obvious as if she were a child. Especially when she was still fuming at McGowan.
“Smythe, hail the general,” Tolvern said.
“He’s eleven million miles away,” Smythe said. “It will take a full minute to send a message, and another minute to get a response.”
“You know what winds me up?” she said. “How the lot of you confuse openness with congenital idiocy. I know damn well it’s going to take a bloody minute to cross eleven million bloody miles. We keep trying, but we can’t change the speed of light, now can we? Stop questioning me and make the call.”
Smythe looked chastened as he bent to his work. Capp wisely kept her mouth shut.
“Pilot,” Tolvern said, “chart our way to Sentinel 3. Include a rendezvous with the sloops in your course.”
“Yes, sir.”
She recorded a video message. “General, I’m leaving most of my force at the jump point and taking my ship to the Kettle. You will accompany me with your sloops. We will rendezvous at the attached coordinates.”
Tolvern hesitated, and something else occurred to her, something that would make the part about leaving McGowan behind sound plausible for the enemy and hopefully calm Mose Dryz’s doubts.
“It is necessary to divide our forces at this time, but Blackbeard will accompany you to show our good faith and concern about the Hroom forces. This is not a sacrificial mission.”
She ended the recording, waited for Nyb Pim to calculate a course, then attached the coordinates for a rendezvous and sent the message to Mose Dryz.
They were already underway when the general’s video response came. He stood on his bridge, gripping the hand rest of his chair with his long, bony fingers. His eyes were droopy, unfocused, and when he spoke, his words came out slurred.
“I will do this thing, Jess Tolvern, but I require an earlier rendezvous point. It is quite urgent, and I’ll not be able to fight until we have spoken in person. I want you to come over to my ship for a discussion.”
The call ended, and Tolvern frowned. “What do you make of that?”
The others looked reticent, and she remembered her outburst.
“I’m sorry, I was really yelling at McGowan, not you. You were caught in the crossfire. Give me your thoughts, all of you.”
“That bloke is sick,” Capp said. “Must be the trips.”
“Didn’t look like the trips,” Tolvern said. “I think it’s something else.”
“Captain, you know what it reminds me of?” Lomelí said. “Remember Djikstra? When he was infected with the mind control chemicals?”
“Yes?”
She nodded. “He looked just like that, sir.”
Capp cursed. Smythe looked grim.
Tolvern gave it some thought, then shook her head. “No, it’s different. He wasn’t sweating, and he looked more pale than ever, not flushed. Anyway, Brockett thinks Apex has perfected the mind control technique on the Hroom. A Hroom wouldn’t even get sick.”
Most of the others looked relieved. The only thing that terrified the crew more than being eaten alive by Apex was having their minds taken over by the aliens. The only one who didn’t look convinced was Capp.
“But don’t that mean we’d never find out?” Capp asked. She gave Nyb Pim a pointed look. “A Hroom could have it and we’d never know them buzzards was pulling his strings.”
Nyb Pim sniffed. “I have not been infected.”
“And that’s just what you would say, ain’t it?”
“I am a Hroom. We do not lie.”
“Sure, but you got a bird living up here, telling you what to do,” Capp said, tapping her buzzed scalp. “They’ll lie for you, mate.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tolvern said. “When exactly would Nyb Pim have come into contact with the aliens? He’s been right here the whole time. He doesn’t even take advantage of shore leave when he has the opportunity.”
“That’s true,” Capp said grudgingly. “Our purple friend don’t have much of a life, does he?”
“I have plenty of interests,” Nyb Pim said.
“Aye?” Capp said. “And what would those be?”
“I paint, I play the warbler flute, I memorize ancient Hroom sagas and poetry. The Righteous Cycle alone takes eighty hours to recite. It is a nontrivial undertaking and quite rewarding.”
“As thrilling as that sounds,” Tolvern said, “epic poetry doesn’t send you out mingling with strange people in strange ports.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” the Hroom agreed.
Capp opened her mouth, like she wanted to say something else, maybe bring up Djikstra being on the bridge, but then shut it. A sheepish look came over her face, and she shrugged.
“I believe I know what is happening to the general,” Nyb Pim said, “because I went through that very thing myself.”
All eyes turned to look at him.
“Mose Dryz is an eater. I was an eater, too. He is showing the classic signs of withdrawal from sugar addiction.”
Of course. Tolvern had seen hundreds of Hroom take the antidote when she was raising a rebellion on Lord Malthorne’s estates on Hot Barsa. First the pleading, then the shakes and fainting, then convulsions. Finally, recovery. But recovery didn’t come quickly, not in someone who’d been addicted as long as General Mose Dryz.
One of two things must have happened. Either his fleet had run out of sugar, or he’d decided, for some bizarre reason, that now was the time to take the sugar antidote.
Either way, the general was unstable. And an unstable general at the head of a fleet of twenty-two sloops of war meant trouble for all.
A deep breath. “I suppose I’d better go over to his ship and find out what this is all about.”
Chapter Nine
Steamy air greeted Tolvern as she popped the hatch on the away pod and stepped into the Hroom loading bay. The light was dim and red, but hot, like she was being cooked under heat lamps. Sweat prickled her brow. The heavy air took her back to Samborondón, to that muggy feeling right before it started raining and giant toads burst out of the ground, mindless in their hunger.
Mose Dryz stood next to three other Hroom. He still wore his white toga with the sunburst and the iron ring around his forehead that indicated his rank, but he looked fatigued, and he leaned against a staff that trembled in his hands.
Two of the others were guards, wearing mottled green cloaks over tunics, armed with shock spears. The third was a female, more slender and slighter of build. She wore a yellow robe without emblem and a heavy iron chain around her neck, from which hung spiked metal balls. Unlike the guards, who stood off a pace, the woman stood close to the general, almost protectively so.
Tolvern cleared her throat. “You insisted on seeing me in person. If we’re going to speak frankly, you should dismiss your guards. And we might send your colonel away until I know what this is about.”
“She is not a colonel.”
“I had assumed she was one of your adjutants. Apologies for my mistake.”
“She is an adjutant. But she is not a colonel. This is Dela Zam, high priestess.”
Tolvern said nothing, only met the gaze of the priestess, who stared back, unblinking. So that was it. A cultist. No doubt twisting with hatred inside as she stood face-to-face with a human.
The two guards with shock spears had merited little interest earlier, but now Tolvern found their presence alarming. They weren’t cultists, too, were they? Had Dela Zam whispered in their ear and told them that a Royal Navy officer would be on board and this was their chance to revenge themselves in the name of the god of death?
Mose Dryz said something in Hroom to the priestess. Dela Zam responded, seeming to hesitate even when the general spoke more forcefully. Then she gestured at the two guards and the three of them tromped across the bay and disappeared through an airlock door.
“So, a priestess
,” Tolvern said when she and the general were alone.
“Yes.” Mose Dryz sounded glum.
“She looked like she wanted to strangle me.”
“Sacrifice you to Lyam Kar, actually. Dela Zam is devout. Sometimes I think she’d sacrifice me, too.”
“Where are your other adjutants—the old man, the young woman?”
“The older one is commanding Dela Zam’s former ship. Lenol Tyn is still with me. Were you worried she had been deposed? She has not. She is working with the pilots to organize our formation going into battle.”
“What’s the formation? A claw?”
“Yes, exactly. I had thought to form a claw to attack the harvest ship.” Mose Dryz cocked his head. “How did you guess? Are we that predictable in battle?”
“It helps to know if I’m facing empire forces or cultists, but yes. Fairly predictable.”
“Come with me to the bridge.”
“I’d rather not.” Tolvern cast a glance at the away pod. “It was a mistake to come here.”
“You’ll be perfectly safe, I assure you.”
Mose Dryz’s hand went to a pocket on the inner lining of his toga, where he fiddled nervously with some small object that she could see moving beneath the fabric.
“Why the devil would you take on a cultist as your adjutant?” she asked.
“You don’t think these sloops materialized from the empress’s shipyards, do you? Negotiations were held, promises given. The cultists will fight like death itself is cracking a whip behind them, but they can be . . . difficult.”
“Is that why you took the sugar antidote?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Obvious enough to me, anyway. I saw hundreds of former eaters suffering withdrawal on Hot Barsa. So the cultists forced you to take it?”
“Yes, and forced in the most literal way possible. Caught me when I was naked and vulnerable in the sweating room, which is supposed to be a sanctuary for meditation and reflection.”
“You shouldn’t have been alone with them.”
“I wasn’t. Lenol Tyn was with me—the priestess got to her somehow, convinced her . . . never mind that. Thank the gods that I didn’t get a full dose. I’m fighting it as long as I can, but the sugar is losing its potency.”
Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) Page 7
