Tolvern cleared her throat. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, Admiral, but I am worried that McGowan and I won’t be able to work together. After this exchange, I mean. Harsh words were said. That is, what if Woodbury were to act as my second in command? You take Peerless and give me Repulse.”
“I would agree to that,” Woodbury said.
Thank God. Woodbury would be the perfect officer to serve as the second in her fleet. He gave off a calm air with his measured gaze and monk-like appearance. More settled and mature than Caites, but not so old as to be hidebound.
“No,” Drake said. “I’m keeping Woodbury with me. And I have no doubt Tolvern and McGowan will work together in a professional manner. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Tolvern said.
McGowan waited a moment longer, then nodded his head. “Of course, Admiral.”
“Good,” Drake said. “Task Force Alpha will be Dreadnought, four corvettes, two missile frigates, four destroyers, six torpedo boats, and the cruisers Richmond, Formidable, Zealand, and Repulse. Task Force Bravo will be Blackbeard and Peerless, three corvettes, five destroyers, two missile frigates, six torpedo boats, and seventeen sloops of war.
“We must assume that whatever we face will give us one hell of a fight,” Drake continued, “so I don’t intend to send either fleet off on chases. Bravo will force the action, and Alpha will finish it. Find the most powerful enemy first and push for a decisive battle. Any questions?”
There were none, so Drake dismissed them. After leaving the war room, the other captains crossed the bridge to the lift that would carry them to their away pods. McGowan strode away, his face hardened into fury. Tolvern lingered so she wouldn’t have to share a lift with him.
She found herself waiting with Caites. The two women exchanged looks.
“Thanks for that,” Tolvern said.
“I wanted to bloody his smug, pretty boy face,” Caites said.
“I know, right? My first mate calls him a piss nozzle. Seems appropriate.”
“McGowan has too much luck with the ladies, and doesn’t know what to do when he meets one who doesn’t swoon over him. Anyway, I’m sorry you have to deal with the jerk. Just make sure he gets his hands dirty. If he somehow comes out of the battle without firing his guns again, I’m going to throttle someone.”
“Not much risk of that,” Tolvern said. “He’ll fight, by God.”
The door opened to the lift, and the two women stepped on. Drake hurried up and held out his hand, then joined them. He pushed the button to stop them one deck short of the loading bay.
“Tolvern, I have a question about your guns before you go. It’s the belly cannons we had installed on San Pablo.”
Drake nodded at Caites as he and Tolvern left her behind on the lift.
“What about them?” Tolvern asked when the doors had closed behind her. “The guns are working fine. I use them every time I get in a fight. I can’t say they’ve ever been decisive, but they give me an edge.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “No, nothing about the guns. I need to talk to you before you go back. We’re dropping into radio silence, and who knows the next time we’ll have a chance to chat.”
“Just chat, sir? What about?”
An enigmatic smile. “About any old thing, Jess. No objections, I hope. And I don’t care tuppence for McGowan’s insinuations. They’re rubbish.”
“You’d never give me command for personal reasons—you’re not that kind of leader.”
“If anything, I’m overly cautious,” Drake said. “I know the rumors are out there, and I know what people are saying. I can’t show favoritism because of a personal relationship, so I bend over backward and do the opposite.”
Tolvern stopped and crossed her arms. He stopped, too, and looked at her.
“What?” he asked.
“We don’t have a personal relationship, James. You hinted that at some point in the future, when things had settled down . . . well, you remember your spiel as well as I do. But right now, nothing. I’ve pretty much given up on it. That’s fine, we’re at war, it’s improper, rules against fraternizing, and all of that. But don’t tell me we have a personal relationship, because we don’t.”
“Why do you think I’m taking you to my room?”
She laughed. “Is that where we’re going? We’re not going to build anything in ten minutes of small talk, or even warm up whatever we’ve put on the back burner. It’s okay, I don’t need your ‘just chat,’ right now. I’m busy keeping the buzzards from snarfing down my intestines—maybe later, when I’m in a rocking chair by the fire, I’ll regret lost opportunities. Now, I’m fine.”
“What if I were to invite you into my room and seduce you?”
“Don’t mess with me, James. I don’t have the head space for it.”
“It’s too late, I’m going to mess with you. It’s all decided.”
He turned and kept walking. They were, in fact, headed into the living quarters where Dreadnought’s officers kept their small private or double-bunked rooms. He stopped in front of a small side corridor that must lead to his chambers.
Tolvern didn’t move. She cast a glance over her shoulder toward the lift. A woman came out of one of the rooms, hand at her ear, talking to someone on the com. She got on the lift. Tolvern almost told the woman to hold up so she could take the lift back down and get away from this nonsense, but something fixed her feet in place.
“You should see Malthorne’s old quarters,” Drake said. “It’s ridiculous. There’s no room on a starship for this kind of opulence, and yet that old villain managed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Words don’t do it justice. It’s best if you see with your own eyes. First thing, of course, is the bar. I have no idea how much those bottles of Old Earth whiskey cost, but something outrageous.”
“I don’t like whiskey. It burns.”
“How about brandy from France?”
“You mean some colony of French speakers or something, right?”
“I mean the France. Passed from one hand to another through all manner of lawless systems.”
Tolvern stared at him from several paces off. Drake wore a half-smile, and his posture was tall and proud, but at the same time, there was something vulnerable in his eyes. He was really, truly afraid she would reject him. And why not, hadn’t she been doing just that a moment earlier?
She approached tentatively. He turned and palmed open his door, then stepped inside and waited.
Don’t just stand there gaping. Follow him in.
Tolvern made her feet move. As the door sighed closed behind her, she gaped at the high ceiling, the chandeliers, and the wide viewport that showed a swath of stars. At the furniture and the walnut bar, where Drake began to pour drinks from an unlabeled glass bottle.
He turned as she approached, and his voice was husky. “It’s the best brandy you’ll ever taste.” He pushed the stopper down. “But I have something else in mind first.”
And then he pulled her close and kissed her.
Chapter Fourteen
Ak Ik threw back her head and cawed. “Bring in the prisoners!”
A great cry went up from the assembled princesses. There were twenty of them in the banquet chamber, so many brilliant colors, and the stench of their secretions was so powerful that the drones staggered and drooped as they left the room to do the queen commander’s bidding.
The princesses were worked up by battle, furious about their losses, and greedy for more humans to feed on. They flapped wings, screeching and jostling. When another got too close, the offended bird cried out in rage and took a peck. So much power in the room, so many secretions from so many trying to rise to dominance.
Alone among the princesses, Sool Em didn’t join the squabbling, but then she wasn’t a princess anymore, was she? She stood off to the side, her wings extended to show the brilliant, almost radiant colors of her feathers. Her breast was red, the feathers on her abdomen shimmering
gold, and her wing feathers were azure and green. Was it only Ak Ik’s imagination, or had her daughter physically grown since her own princess chicks hatched?
No doubt that was paranoia—Sool Em had reached her adult size years ago—but Ak Ik eyed her daughter with jealousy and fear. This one was growing too powerful, and though she’d been promised her own flock as a reward for destroying the human military base, she seemed determined to aggrandize her position within Ak Ik’s flock. That would have to be corrected soon, or the queen herself would be threatened.
One misstep, daughter, and I will tear out your heart.
Two drones returned to the chamber, pushing more than a dozen stumbling, naked humans. These were no Ladinos or Singaporeans, or even civilians, but warriors from the Albion fleet. Ak Ik had been saving them in a stasis chamber for the past three months, ever since raiding a navy supply depot on the edge of enemy territory.
The drones wore disruptor vests, which they turned on the prisoners, bathing them in a pale green light that left them in a torpor. It was the same technology that the battle drones—fighters, walkers, and shock troops—used to subdue and collect victims, but at a weaker frequency. One man lifted his head and looked around, but though he was more alert than his fellows, his eyes remained glazed and wandering.
The princesses stopped their preening and cocked their heads as the drones drove the humans into their midst. The drones turned off the disruptor vests and fled the room. One princess started keening, and the rest took up her call as they encircled the prisoners, until the banquet chamber rang with their cries.
The humans came to as soon as the light fell off them. They looked around, eyes widening as they took in the chamber with its curving supports designed to look like the bones of a rib cage. The skulls of humans, Hroom, and other slaughtered species lined the walls. The room was designed to inflict terror so as to sweeten the flesh of its victims, and it served that purpose now. One human fainted, and two others fell to their knees, babbling for mercy. The one who’d remained more alert than the others shouted at his companions to stay together, to go down fighting, but few humans paid him any attention.
Meanwhile, the princesses encircling them had resumed squawking and nipping at each other, each one anxious to be the first to feed. Several turned toward Ak Ik, silently begging her to release them to their meal.
“Are we going to join the feast?” Sool Em asked.
“No, daughter.”
“But I am hungry,” Sool Em said. “And these ones are high status. They’ll feed our power.”
“You’ve taken too much power already.”
“Too much power?” A derisive shriek at this. “I have my own prisoners. If you think that by withholding my rightful prey you’ll keep me weak and subservient, you are wrong, Queen Commander.”
“Rightful prey?” Ak Ik jeered. “I should pluck your eyes out. You were not even in the battle that secured these prisoners. You were too busy working on your human victims, learning how to control their brains. This is my prey, and I will use it as I see fit.”
“How many more humans do you have on board?”
“Thousands. My stasis pods are full of them.”
This was a lie. The queen commander had plenty of Hroom, even a few hundred lesser humans on board, but these few were the only Albion warriors.
Nevertheless, from the way Sool Em greedily clacked her beak, it was obvious that the younger queen believed her.
“Thousands,” Sool Em repeated. “Let me eat.”
“No.”
Sool Em screamed in frustration. The princesses looked over, and several of the humans made a break for it. Before the princesses could react, the humans were charging. They fought their way through and ran for the door where the drones had disappeared. It didn’t open, and the humans threw their shoulders into it to no avail.
“Feed!” Ak Ik screamed. “Feast on their flesh!”
The princesses launched themselves through the air and fell on the humans. The prisoners fought back with their fists, but were no match for claws and beaks. Soon, all seven of the runners had been dragged back, bloodied and gashed, to the center of the banquet chamber, where they were thrown down with the others.
The princesses were more aroused than ever, and gobbled chunks of flesh until Ak Ik screeched for them to stop.
“Bring me the leader, the one who fought.”
They hauled the man to his feet, but his leg muscles were shredded, and he couldn’t stand, so they dragged him across the floor. A bloody streak marked his passage. Ak Ik’s stomach rumbled in hunger, and Sool Em clucked as the two princesses dropped him and returned to the other humans.
Ak Ik pinned the man with one claw. He writhed, but couldn’t get free.
“You will be the last to go,” Ak Ik told him.
He stopped struggling and looked up with a grimace contorting his face. “You speak. And English, too. What traitor taught you?”
“Your feeble human languages are trivial to master. A few minutes with a prisoner is all it took.”
“Liar,” the man said. “It’s a computer implant or something.”
“Our brains are superior, engineered over hundreds of generations to dominate our enemies, just as our weapons and tactics are superior. We are the apex predator of the galaxy, human. You are nothing, a grub, a beetle. Hardly worth bending to pluck you up.”
The man spat at her, a gesture that not only failed—the spit fell back in his own face—but left Ak Ik amused.
“We’ll crush you,” the man said. “Wait until you face Dreadnought, then you’ll see.”
“You have been asleep. You don’t know.”
“How long?”
“Twenty years.” The lie tasted delicious on Ak Ik’s tongue.
His face paled. “Years? It can’t be.”
“Yes, twenty of your human years. This is a celebratory event. Your warships are long gone, your planets, too. We have just exterminated the last human colony, all the way to your home world and beyond, which makes the lot of you the last humans in existence. And that will make you the last human ever, once you watch your companions die.”
“Damn you!” Fluid leaked from his eyes and his mouth trembled.
Sool Em and the princesses cawed and jeered at how easily the man had been fooled. Behind him, his suffering compatriots groaned and cried out.
“Feed,” Ak Ik told her daughters. “Feast and gorge yourselves.”
They renewed their frenzy. The humans screamed. Sool Em made as if to join the others.
“Not you, daughter,” Ak Ik told her.
Again, Sool Em cried out in frustration as the princesses tore apart their victims. In a few minutes, the last of the humans stopped struggling, and all that was left was the sound of tearing and swallowing as princesses dipped their beaks, tilted back their heads, and dipped again.
Ak Ik looked down at the man pinned beneath her claw. “And now, I will eat their commander.”
The man had gone still. “I’m nothing of the sort. I’m only private in the Royal Marines, so the joke’s on you.”
“You are the leader here, and that makes you delicious.”
He screamed as she fed. When the man stopped struggling, she tossed Sool Em a strip of meat, which the other queen gobbled down before letting out a plaintive cry.
“Please, Queen Commander. Let me feed.”
“Very well.”
Ak Ik stepped back, and Sool Em swooped in. She tore and fed, and was still eating after the others had finished their meals. The princesses waddled to the edge of the room, dull and sated. Drones would come and clean up the mess, eating everything down to the bones and hair.
Ak Ik expected Sool Em to continue eating until she was fully engorged, but she stopped early. She eyed Ak Ik with a cunning expression.
“Your plan has failed, old crone,” Sool Em said. “You tried to lay an egg in the enemy’s nest, and it failed.”
“We don’t know that.”
; “You gave your precious Hroom general a serum, did you not? He was to deliver it to the human commander, who would then turn traitor. Instead, you lost your precious harvester, and very nearly your life. If I hadn’t carried you off with the fleet, you would be dead, and I would be queen commander in your place. Instead of waiting for the bloody scraps you deign to toss my way.”
Ak Ik clucked in dismay. The loss of her harvester was devastating. If not for the second command ship she’d seized from a rival two years earlier, she’d be without a harvester at all, and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to keep hold of her flock long enough to build another. The other queens of the Apex race were struggling openly now, each jostling to become the empress, and they would have fallen on her in a frenzy.
Instead, Ak Ik had sacrificed the crippled harvester to save her fleet. Then, by jumping sequentially across systems, they’d put distance between themselves and the enemy, until now they were approaching the final jump that would take them to Singapore. There, the other flocks were gathering. There, the humans would be lured to their death.
This was a certainty. The doubts came over who would emerge on top. Ak Ik needed Sool Em until that happened.
“You are still weak, daughter,” Ak Ik said. “Your princesses are barely chicks, and your drone armies are no match for my own. Any of those princesses would take your place. If I give the word, they will tear you apart.”
“I will challenge you some day.”
“Yes, some day. But not now. You are feeble and pathetic, hardly a queen at all. I can pluck you anytime I wish, and mostly likely I will.”
A shiver went down Sool Em’s back, from her neck to her tail feathers. She started to squawk a response, then only clacked her beak shut.
“The admiral is mine,” Ak Ik said. “I will eat him myself. But you may have your choice of any of the other captains.”
Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) Page 13
