Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  No, time to end it.

  “Give me another broadside. And Mark-IVs.”

  The cruisers were making another charge. Blackbeard and Richmond had turned last, but they’d slowed to make a more direct pass, and were in the lead. The two ships came to on the other side of the harvester, opposite Dreadnought. The other three cruisers came up behind them, slowing rapidly until all five cruisers formed a row opposite the harvester, where they were perfectly positioned to enfilade the length of the enemy ship.

  Dreadnought fired another broadside. The enemy returned fire, but many of its weapon systems had gone down in the first exchange. It rocked under the bombardment. The cruisers launched a coordinated attack from the other side. Explosions bubbled along the hull of the enemy ship.

  The other ships in Drake’s fleet had mopped up the enemy fighter craft with only the loss of a single torpedo boat. Now, they came rumbling in to join the fight. The harvester absorbed blow after blow, until it could no longer return fire. Then it just sat there, taking hits.

  Drake’s fleet pounded the harvester again and again until they’d gutted the engines, blown holes along the entire length of the ship, and burst all the warty protrusions. The harvester hadn’t yet exploded or broken apart, but scans showed hull punctures that passed completely through the ship, shattering any airlocks or bombproofs.

  “Hold fire,” he commanded at last. “We’ll save our powder for the next fight.”

  The guns fell silent across the fleet. The harvester ship drifted away, gutted and venting its life gases. A derelict.

  Drake folded his arms and enjoyed the cheers that went up along the bridge.

  He had destroyed an enemy harvester ship. Now the war had started. Let them come; he would destroy them all.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tolvern waited in the loading bay, the only somber place on Blackbeard. Everywhere else, people were celebrating their victory. Carvalho had brought out his moonshine and was passing it around to the increasingly drunk crew in the mess. Capp had put on music, and the mess was soon rocking.

  Let them party. The list of battles and near-death scrapes they’d endured the past few months was almost too long to recite, but included giant toads, eighty-foot-tall armored turkeys, and boarding parties where Apex troops had been trying to take them prisoner to eat them alive. Blackbeard had helped destroy a harvester ship and chased a fleet of lances and spears out of the system, and her crew deserved whatever celebration they could take.

  And since there was no port where they could put in to get drunk, gamble away their wages, and hook up with the nearest piece of ass, the ship would have to serve all of those purposes. Tolvern would rein it in eventually, or things would get out of hand. For now, let them have their fun.

  But here, in the loading bay, things were different. Apart from Tolvern and Rodriguez, everyone on duty was Singaporean. A number had worked in Rodriguez’s yards on Samborondón. Others had joined the crew from Sentinel 3. The mood was like a funeral as the crew caught the away pod from Dreadnought and hauled it in.

  Rodriguez fell in next to Tolvern and looked over the gloomy-faced Singaporeans. “It’s a cruel universe. Every day is a gift. You might die of a heart attack, or your sun might go nova.”

  The pod opened and Hillary Koh got out. Her face was drawn, her eyes red. Several Singaporeans approached, and they embraced and conversed in Chinese. Others closed in and crowded about Koh.

  Tolvern and Rodriguez kept their distance while they waited for the woman to finish talking to her compatriots.

  “Dying is one thing, seeing your civilization annihilated another,” Tolvern said.

  “Not sure I have a civilization,” Rodriguez said. “My father was a merchant, and we never spent more than a year or two in any one port. But I saw San Pablo devastated. Samborondón, too. I’m still alive. So are you, and so are they. So we carry on. What’s next?”

  “There’s a lot of wreckage out there,” she said. “Plenty of stuff to patch up whatever damage we’ve taken. We’re running a scavenger operation while Drake plans our next move, but most of the repairs will need to be done on the fly. And by ‘on the fly,’ I mean hurtling through space at near relativistic speeds.”

  Rodriguez licked his lips. “That’s . . . I don’t want to say I’m unwilling, but . . .”

  “Barker knows all about engineering in this sort of situation, and we’ve got people like Carvalho who are willing to do a spacewalk under frankly terrifying conditions. But you’ve got more experience cobbling together nonstandard tech, and after seeing your makeshift factories on Samborondón, I’ll bet you can reforge tyrillium for us in a pinch. And complete other repairs as needed, of course.”

  “I’ll have to see this wreckage, but sure, I’ll do what I can.”

  “And you and Barker? How do the two of you get along?”

  Rodriguez shrugged. “He’s a curmudgeon. Grumpy and sure he’s always right, even when he’s wrong. In fact, the more wrong he is, the more he stands his ground.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh, I am at least as cranky. You get two hardheaded old goats together and they’re sure to lock horns.” Another, more exaggerated shrug. “But I will work with him if he will work with me.”

  “Good.”

  Koh finished her reunion with the Singaporeans. She approached the captain as Rodriguez returned to his work.

  “I didn’t want to leave Dreadnought,” Koh said, “but the admiral claims you need my help. I know it’s just to get me out of the way. I was bringing down the mood. They even tried to sedate me.”

  “You suffered a blow—maybe you needed sedating.”

  “I’m good now.”

  Tolvern led Koh toward the airlock doors, away from Rodriguez and the others. “Are you?”

  “I’m a soldier, Captain. Death is always a possibility. I’ll do my duty.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. But you’re wrong about something, Koh. Drake wasn’t trying to get rid of you. I made the request.”

  The bridge was nearly empty. Smythe was down in the mess with Capp and the others, leaving Nyb Pim at the pilot’s chair and Lomelí manning both the tech console and the defense grid computer. A midshipman by the name of Killian sat at the comm station.

  Tolvern gestured at the empty second mate’s chair. “Have a seat, Koh.”

  Koh eyed it doubtfully before sitting down. “You’re not nearly as formal as Drake. He’s a bit tight around the collar.”

  “He’s a professional. A baron’s son—it’s in his blood. But James is relaxed enough off duty. Admiral Drake, I mean.”

  The other woman studied her. “Do the two of you have some history?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know, a vibe I get when the admiral talks about you. Rumors I’ve heard.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “Nothing, it’s just—you do, don’t you?”

  Tolvern manipulated the viewscreen. “Not really, no. Not what you’re implying.”

  Nyb Pim looked up from his work. “Captain Tolvern is the daughter of Baron Drake’s steward—the baron is the admiral’s father. Lieutenant Capp says that Tolvern wants to be Drake’s lover, but the situation is improper. According to gossip, the captain and the admiral have not yet consummated their relationship, but both are anxious to do so.”

  “Thank you so very much, Pilot,” Tolvern said. “You cut right to the chase, didn’t you?”

  The Hroom hummed. “Yes, that was my intention. Lieutenant Koh seemed confused.”

  Lomelí and Killian exchanged grins. Tolvern flushed with heat.

  “Capp and Carvalho, on the other hand, are a different matter,” Nyb Pim said. “I am not particularly interested in human mating behavior, but I have been told that they copulate as often as they can.”

  “Anyway,” Tolvern said in an exaggerated tone. “I’ve hooked a large piece of wreckage from the sentinel. I think it’s the eliminon battery.” She tapped at her conso
le to shift the view on the main screen. “Here it is. What do you think?”

  The piece in question was a large hexagonal structure, scorched and twisted at the corners, but otherwise intact.

  “That’s right, that’s the eliminon battery.” Koh sighed. “If only they’d fired it in time.”

  “Might have saved their lives, all right. Once the sentinel was boarded, it was all over. No way they were fighting off so many drones. Why didn’t they fire?” Tolvern asked.

  “Probably couldn’t calibrate the graviton beams—they’re finicky, and I know the pulsors had been knocked out of alignment.”

  Koh peered at the screen, manipulating the console without looking. Amazing how quickly she’d mastered the naval computer systems.

  “There’s still power,” she added. “Do you see the light blinking on that strut to the left? The weapon has a battery—a battery for the battery, I guess you could say—in case you lose connection to the power plant. It takes so long to charge the eliminon battery, and the last thing you want to do is have it bleed away while an electrician replaces a wire or something.”

  “What are you saying?” Tolvern asked.

  Koh looked up. “I think you’ve got yourself a working eliminon battery.”

  “Great. Do you think we could connect it to a ship in the fleet?”

  “Not Blackbeard—the power requirements are way too high—but Dreadnought, sure. I’d have to see the specs of her power plant, but Dreadnought runs with plenty of juice. That’s glossing over a whole bunch of issues, of course.”

  “Such as?”

  “First of all, there’s a reason we were in orbit around a gas giant instead of hiding out on some asteroid. We were swiping the Kettle’s gravity to recharge the eliminon battery—that’s not exactly the science, but more or less the gist of it. So Dreadnought could theoretically use the weapon, but it would need to camp out in orbit around a sun or gas giant every time it uses the weapon. I suppose you could do it around a small planet like Singapore, but it would take far longer.

  “And it’s not exactly like plugging in a microwave,” Koh continued. “You’ve got to integrate the battery with your fire control—I could manage that much, of course, if you gave me Smythe and Lloyd, and maybe this one,” she added, nodding at Lomelí, who’d come over to listen. “Then, you’ve got the containment buffer.”

  “What’s that?” Tolvern asked.

  “There’s a weird quantum effect that bleeds into the area outside the hexagon. There was a science museum in Panda City when I was a kid, and they had these mirrors where it looked like your legs were short and stubby and your torso was elongated.”

  “Fun house mirrors,” Tolvern said. “I know what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s what it feels like to breach the containment buffer, with a weird sensation of gravity waves melting and stretching your body. Nothing fatal—it’s largely an illusion—but it messes up your equilibrium. Oh, and trashes your instruments, too. So you can’t attach it to your ship without a buffer.”

  “I’m guessing we don’t have a spare buffer lying around, whatever that is.”

  “I’m sure you don’t. And even if you had the equipment to manufacture a buffer,” Koh continued, “it would take weeks to integrate the eliminon battery into a ship’s hull. Maybe months. You don’t have that kind of time or the right facilities. You’re better off hauling it into Dreadnought’s loading bay—I think it will just barely fit—and carrying it back to Albion for later study.”

  “I’m not even sure we’re capable of that much,” Tolvern said. “When we started to pull in the eliminon battery to let our people take a closer look, some of that fun house mirror stuff happened.”

  “Wait, really?” Koh’s voice climbed in tone. “What happened, exactly?”

  “I had some crew suited up outside, and one of them tried to untether himself. He felt like he was upside down, and his computer freaked out and claimed his oxygen was low. Other people had that stretchy sensation you mentioned. Someone figured out it was coming from the eliminon battery, and we let the tether back out again.”

  Koh zoomed in on the eliminon battery and said something under her breath in Chinese. “How far out was the battery from the ship when your crew felt the effects?”

  “I’d have to check, but I want to say a few hundred feet. It was pretty close in. I don’t understand, isn’t that what you said we should expect?”

  “Only when the battery is charged. The whole thing broke off before it could be fired.”

  “Are you saying it still has a charge?”

  “It must. If only you could—oh, my God.” Koh put a hand to her forehead and released a stream of what sounded like oaths. “Do you know what this means? Of course you don’t, why would you? Captain, it’s not like a battery holding electricity. You can’t charge it and forget about it. You’ve got to constantly monitor the pulsors or they’ll bleed out the storage. If there’s a charge, it means there’s someone alive in there.”

  #

  Drake followed Lenol Tyn down the corridor into the depths of the Hroom sloop. It was narrow, with a high ceiling and smooth walls. The air was warm and humid, the walls humming with the sound of machinery and glugging pipes, and as the corridor twisted, Drake had the sensation that he was entering the intestines of a large beast.

  “Was this your decision?” Drake asked. “Or did Dela Zam put you up to it?”

  “The high priestess is dead,” Lenol Tyn said. “She sacrificed herself in glory and honor.”

  “I’m not interested in her. I want to know whose idea it was to lock up the general before we went into battle.”

  “We didn’t agree on the purposes of the dark god, but I never doubted Dela Zam’s devotion and faith.”

  “You’re being evasive. Give me a straight answer. Who locked up the general?”

  “I’m not being evasive. I have no straight answer to give.”

  “The general will tell me if you won’t. And I’m going to get him out of there and back in command.”

  “No, you won’t. Mose Dryz will never again lead this fleet, and you will soon understand why.”

  This wasn’t Drake’s first time on a sloop of war—he’d inspected the wreckage of several—and every one of them had the same design. Two yellow-robed guards holding shock spears stood in front of the detention block, but Drake would have recognized it anyway by the narrow opening and the door that dilated like an opening sphincter.

  The first two cells were empty, but the third contained the general behind a clear plexiglass wall. Mose Dryz still wore his white tunic with the sunburst on the chest, but his iron crown was missing. Shackles chained one ankle to the floor and a wrist to the wall.

  Mose Dryz sprang to his feet and tried to say something. But the wall blocked sound, and his thin, nearly nonexistent lips were impossible to read. His face flushed pink as he grew more agitated, until his flattened nose was nearly red.

  “So you did depose him,” Drake said.

  “No, I didn’t,” Lenol Tyn said.

  “Someone did, by God. And why is he chained?”

  “He can be persuasive. Two different guards tried to open the door and let him out. Fortunately, they didn’t have the electronic key.”

  “But you do?”

  “No, or I might have let him out, too. As I said, he can be persuasive.”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  She reached for a keypad on the wall. “Remember what I said. I know what you think you know about Hroom, but he will lie to you.”

  “This, I have to hear.”

  Lenol Tyn tapped the keyboard, and suddenly the general’s voice came through, speaking his native language, with its collection of hums, whistles, and clicks that humans couldn’t emulate.

  “I can’t understand that chirping, General,” Drake said. “You know that.”

  Mose Dryz switched to English. “By the gods, I’m glad to see you here. That cultist locked me up and convinc
ed them I was a danger. She wanted control of the fleet. I never should have brought her on. I had bad feelings about it. She agreed too quickly.”

  “That problem is over,” Drake said. “She rammed a harvester and killed herself.”

  “That’s what they tell me.” Mose Dryz took his unshackled hand and twisted his wrist in the Hroom manner indicating a shrug. “What I don’t understand now is why they don’t release me.” He glared at Lenol Tyn. “Colonel, I mean you.”

  Lenol Tyn looked away. Drake studied them both, the uncomfortable expression on the younger Hroom’s face, the anger smoldering in the general’s eyes. What exactly was going on here?

  “What happened to my thirty sloops?” Drake asked.

  “By the gods, I tried. There were few to be had, and it took longer to persuade their commanders than I’d hoped. I might have found the last eight, but it would have taken me several more weeks and carried me into hostile territory, where the cultists are even more zealous than Dela Zam.” The general hesitated. “How many survived the fight?”

  “Seventeen. We lost five.”

  “It could have been worse.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me out, James Drake. I am the general of this fleet, nobody else. I serve the empress, may she live forever, and by her pleasure, have put my ships under your command. But I must be released.”

  Drake narrowed his eyes. “Are you a danger in any way?”

  “Of course not. I brought you your ships, didn’t I? I have behaved honorably in our past transactions, have I not?”

  Drake looked at Lenol Tyn. “You really don’t have the key to those restraints?”

  “No, and neither does anybody else.”

  “Then fetch a plasma torch and we’ll cut them off.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Are you claiming that you lack basic tools used in routine ship maintenance?”

  “Of course we have plasma torches.”