“Admiral!” Caites cried. She was lifting herself back into her seat. “We’re being boarded.” She touched her ear. “Blow us up! For the love of God, Admiral, target Richmond! Don’t let them—”
Gunfire, screams. Smoke billowed across the screen, and Caites grabbed for her sidearm as she looked off to one side. The line went dead.
Hillary Koh was the first to speak. “May they rest with their ancestors.”
The harvester ship kept firing on its enemies even as it fed on Richmond and her crew. Torpedo boats charged in, trying to target the captured cruiser, as well as the “mouth” of the harvester, but the huge ship turned its back to jealously protect its prey, and destroyed one of the torpedo boats and wounded the other before they could get close.
The ships of Task Force Bravo arrived at the fight, led by Blackbeard and Peerless. They came alongside Repulse and fired broadsides. Another corvette arrived, followed by a destroyer and four torpedo boats. Shot after shot landed against the harvester, but it shrugged off the attacks from the smaller human ships. The Hroom sloops of war would soon join the fight, together with the rest of Task Force Bravo. Something had to get through the harvester’s defenses.
Meanwhile, Dreadnought was coming about to face the longer, more slender of the two harvesters, which had continued rolling toward the battleship, accompanied by lances and spears. A stout array of Royal Navy warships pulled alongside Dreadnought, including the final two cruisers and numerous smaller craft. Drake’s frigates launched a barrage of missiles, the first of which crashed into the approaching enemy fleet.
Drake took in the two battles playing out on the viewscreen. In the first, a single harvester, unsupported by any other Apex ships, was holding off three cruisers, seventeen sloops of war, three corvettes, three destroyers, half a dozen torpedo boats, and a missile frigate. More than holding them off, crushing them, in fact.
A destroyer fell under energy pulses to burn up in the atmosphere. Another torpedo boat exploded. The harvester cast aside the gutted hull of Richmond and turned about, its eye looking for another victim.
That left Dreadnought and a powerful fleet of human warships against another harvester and thirty lances and spears. Drake didn’t think he could win his fight. He knew Tolvern couldn’t win hers.
They needed another blast from the eliminon battery, but that had been a one-time weapon. He didn’t even know where it had gone to after firing. Perhaps it was still floating away in space, or maybe the enemy had destroyed or captured it.
“Manx, make the call,” Drake said. His voice sounded hollow. “Sound the full retreat.”
#
Tolvern was fighting for survival when Drake gave the orders to retreat. Relief mixed with frustration to hear the news.
Even with such a powerful force at her disposal, her attacks had turned desperate. Whoever the harvester targeted died. She ordered her ships to fall back and join Dreadnought, but it was easier to give the order than to execute it. Blackbeard and her supporting craft couldn’t disengage from the enemy, who pursued them toward the fleet.
Only Apex greed saved them. A destroyer from Task Force Alpha, HMS Gibraltar, had joined Bravo after getting separated from Dreadnought. When Gibraltar fired one more salvo before retreating, the harvester’s eye turned on it. Green light bathed the destroyer. The destroyer attempted to twist away, then stopped maneuvering, as if the crew had vanished or fallen asleep.
Samborondón. The giant striding birds.
They’d cast a similar light on their victims, who’d fallen to be hoisted up by the birds’ tentacles. This must be the same tech.
The harvester loomed over Gibraltar and seized her in its serrated arms, then ignored the rest of Tolvern’s ships as it ripped open its prey. That gave Tolvern a chance to escape with the bulk of her task force intact.
Dreadnought hadn’t yet fought clear of her battle, either. Lances and spears charged in, taking heavy damage even as they kept forcing Drake’s battleship back to fight the second harvester. The human ship launched a ferocious counterattack, but couldn’t do enough damage to the enemy to break off the engagement. The harvester was closing ranks, perhaps to bring its own paralyzing beam into play.
Capp was apparently thinking the same thing. “Smythe, target that bloody eye.”
“There isn’t one, sir,” Smythe said. “Or it’s shielded.”
“Then hit the tentacles,” Capp said. “Blow ’em off.”
Free of her entanglements, Blackbeard roared into the fight between Dreadnought and the harvester, her deck gun targeted straight ahead. Lenol Tyn’s sloops came in after. Serpentines bombarded the enemy ship. Unfortunately, the colonel was too slow to pull up her forces. The harvester raked the sloops with pulses, and one exploded. Another took damage, and was hunted down by a lance, which stabbed it repeatedly with fire until it suffered explosive decompression. A final, almost casual shot from the lance tore it in two.
But the Hroom assault had been so ferocious that the harvester pulled back in anticipation of a second charge. Lenol Tyn was already bringing her sloops back around.
“Tell that fool to pull up,” Tolvern said. “She’ll only get herself killed.”
Two lances thrust in from port before Tolvern could see if the Hroom would obey. Blackbeard got off another torpedo and a volley from the belly guns, one of which hit the enemy. The cruiser suffered light damage to the deck shield in turn.
The Albion forces were slowly consolidating and pulling away from the enemy. The longer harvester was giving chase, but falling behind, and shortly fell out of range. The stouter one with the grasping arms finished tearing Gibraltar into pieces and hurled the wreckage into the atmosphere to burn up in descent. It joined the pursuit.
Blackbeard and Peerless brought up the rear of the fleet, and were soon reinforced by torpedo boats and the Hroom sloops. They passed the orbit of Singapore’s moon. Drake sent through a course, which Nyb Pim passed to Tolvern.
“It’s just numbers,” she said. “What am I looking at?”
“He is taking us toward the Manx System, Captain.”
“What the devil? Isn’t there a closer jump? One that doesn’t lead us into a leviathan-infested wilderness?”
“Apparently not,” Nyb Pim said.
The bulk of the enemy lances were accelerating as a bunch, and Tolvern warned her crew to brace for another attack. Two dozen lances vanished a few seconds later. A long, tense moment as she waited for them to reappear. Would they attack the rear of the Royal Navy formation? Look for some weak point? Go directly at Dreadnought?
None of the above. Instead, they appeared 2.2 million miles in front of the fleet. With Drake’s ships only accelerated to three percent light speed, the enemy ships had several minutes to prepare for the humans and Hroom to arrive. They fanned out and spat out mines. Drake ordered a fleet maneuver.
They got around the makeshift minefield, and renewed their push toward the jump point. Unfortunately, by the time they were back on track, the harvesters had nearly pulled up, and the lances were accelerating as if to make another jump to cut them off.
Capp cursed. “We ain’t gonna get away. Not unless we do something different. Call the admiral, Cap’n. Tell him next time they pull that stunt to turn around and go after them harvesters while they’re unguarded.”
“How long would that buy us? Thirty minutes before the lances were back in the thick of it?” Tolvern shook her head. “And there are two harvesters, Capp. We can’t take them both, with or without the support ships.”
The news got worse. Ever since they escaped Singapore’s orbit, the fleet had been searching the system to make sure there were no other ugly surprises, and now they found one. Formidable spotted something in motion near one of the jump points, and additional scans by Blackbeard and others confirmed: four more hunter-killer packs had entered the system and were moving to intercept.
“Just what we need,” Tolvern said. “More enemies. Can they catch us before we hit the jump p
oint?”
“Hard to say,” Smythe said. “Depends on how quickly and how often they can pull off their short-range jumps. Best guess, yeah. They beat us to the jump point.”
“So we’ll have a battle just to clear the jump point,” Tolvern said. “Wonderful.”
“I been telling you, Cap’n,” Capp said. “We gotta take the fight to them. It’s the only thing to do.”
“Drake is looking at the same info we are. He makes the call, not us.”
Nevertheless, Tolvern grew more anxious to stop and make a fight of it as they fled toward the jump point that would carry them into the Manx System. The lances once again jumped ahead of them, and this time anticipated the fleet’s attempts to maneuver around. The fleet got in a brief scrape that left little damage to either side before the humans and Hroom slipped through and continued on their way.
More time lost. Again, the harvesters were nearly in range before the fleet began to pull away. At the same time, the four additional hunter-killer packs kept jumping, kept closing the distance to the jump point.
Capp had been off shift, and Tolvern rose wearily to her feet as the lieutenant returned and settled into her seat. “Pilot, give me some numbers.”
“Eleven hours and twenty minutes to the jump point,” Nyb Pim said.
“With or without another attack?”
“That is accounting for one more delaying maneuver by the enemy.”
“What about the other buzzards? The ones trying to cut us off?”
Smythe tapped his console. “They’ll reach the jump point in roughly nine hours, assuming one more short-range jump.”
“What do you think?” Capp said. “They gonna wait for us, or jump through ahead of us?”
“Jump through and ambush us from the other side. That’s my guess.” Tolvern sighed. “In other words, we’ll have enemies both in front of us and behind. Wonderful. Capp, you’ve got the helm.”
But before she reached the lift, a call came through from the flagship. Drake looked grim, and there were bags under his eyes. His hair was wild, his uniform rumpled.
She forced a smile to her face that belied her own exhaustion. “You’re looking rough this morning, sir. Are you nursing a hangover? Make a wild night of it?”
“Morning, night . . . these words once meant something to me.” He yawned behind his hand.
“Get some sleep, Admiral. You’re no good to us in this condition.”
“Speak for yourself. You look like rubbish, Tolvern.”
“Thank you for your concern, sir. I was just heading off to bed when you called.”
Their tone was light enough that Capp waggled her eyebrows when Tolvern glanced over. But now Drake’s expression turned grim.
“I need a private conversation,” he said. “Pick up the call in the war room.”
Tolvern went alone into the war room and put him on the small viewscreen above the table. Drake had taken a seat, and she saw that he was in his quarters, not on the bridge.
She almost made a joke about letting Apex eavesdrop on their private life, but stopped herself. That was a valid concern, actually. Who knew if the enemy could make anything of the personal history between herself and the admiral, but why take a chance?
“Yes, sir?”
“We’re going back into the Manx System.”
“That is my understanding, yes.”
“And you recognize the challenges that await us?”
“We’ve run the calculations. Nyb Pim and Smythe have told me . . . well, the challenges that you’re alluding to. We won’t get there first, if that’s what you mean.”
“Actually, no,” Drake said. “I’m talking about something else. Think about what happened to us the last time we were in the system. The unusual jump points and so on.”
There were a lot of jump points, most of them unusual. One was a so-called shattered sun jump, the kind that forced you to enter the corona of the star itself. Jumping out was challenging, but jumping in was worse, where you’d sit there cooking while you tried to get your ship moving again. Was that what he meant? A desperate flight through the corona of the star?
“Are you referring to a certain unusual jump point?” she asked.
“We’re still not on the same page.” A hint of frustration touched his voice. “I’m thinking of a certain . . . detour as we went through. It wasn’t a simple flight, was it?”
“Ah, I see.”
The star leviathan. Of course. Drake had tangled with it during his first pass through the Manx System, had lost one of his frigates, and very nearly lost one of his cruisers, too. On the return of the fleet, they’d dropped Youd mines to give the leviathan a snack. That let the fleet slip through unscathed.
Drake studied her. “Well?”
She chose her words carefully. “You mean to keep running, sir, rather than make a fight. After all, we can’t possibly defeat two harvesters and an entire fleet of lances and spears.”
“Not unless we had another fleet, no. Which we don’t have, do we?”
“No, sir.”
Who needs a fleet when you’ve got a star leviathan?
“We understand each other, Tolvern. That’s why I’m telling you. The others only know to follow your lead.”
“Understood, sir.”
Drake cleared his throat. “I’m devastated to have lost Catherine Caites. She was a brilliant commander, one of the best in the Royal Navy. But I can’t lose you, Tolvern. You’re too important to . . . well, to the fleet.”
“Not as important as you are, sir. Be careful.”
His eyes gleamed, and he raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need to be careful. I’m at the helm of HMS Dreadnought.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. Best wishes, Tolvern.”
“One moment, sir. There’s one small problem. Permission to speak frankly, sir?”
“The enemy is listening.”
“I know that, sir, but . . .” She hesitated. “You’ve run the numbers, I’ve run the numbers. And so have the buzzards, no doubt.”
“What are you saying?” Drake asked.
“We’re going to have a rough time of it when we go through—I expect those hunter-killer packs to make a fight of it. We’ve got enough firepower to clear them out, if that’s all it is. But I can’t see how we’re going to break through if those harvesters come through right on our tail. We’ll never make it past the jump point.”
This was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it? How could she do what Drake was asking if the fleet couldn’t get ahead of the harvesters and the thirty-odd ships following them?
Drake’s face turned grim. “I have a plan for that, too.”
And with that, their call ended.
Chapter Nineteen
Doubt turned in Drake’s gut as he stared at the Hroom commander. And guilt. The sensation was like a wrench tightening a bolt until it was metal grinding against metal.
Lenol Tyn stared through the viewscreen, and it seemed as though her deep, liquid eyes could see right through him. She wore a white tunic and had an iron circlet around her brow, a look that had made General Mose Dryz appear proud, stern, almost arrogant. On Lenol Tyn’s slender, almost delicate features, the same tunic and circlet appeared elegant. Regal, even.
And her eyes. Surely, it was Drake’s imagination, but they were sad.
“I know what you want, Admiral. Why you have called.”
“You do? I’m not sure how that is possible. I hardly know myself.”
Drake almost looked away, but stopped himself. The Hroom might not recognize such a clear sign of guilt, but the other crew on the bridge surely would. The mood had been somber when he’d shared his plans.
“I don’t know if you are deceiving me, or merely deceiving yourself,” Lenol Tyn said, “but there is only one way to get through that jump point unscathed. You look surprised. Why should you be?”
“I don’t know. If we’re thinking the same thing—”
“We are, Adm
iral, we must be.”
“—then how would you have come up with it?”
“Humans think Hroom are stupid,” Lenol Tyn said.
“I certainly don’t. I’ve seen your civilization, your temples and cities. I’ve heard Hroom music and seen Hroom sculpture.”
“If not stupid, then naive. We are children to you. Our tactics are blunt, our commanders easily fooled by your lies and trickery.” She hummed deep in her throat. “But our minds work. They may turn with different gears, but they do turn. And I know you, James Drake. I have studied your tactics, even read your account of the Battle of Kif Lagoon. So I know why you called.”
Now Drake did look away. The faces of the others on the bridge had turned into grim masks. Manx met Drake’s gaze, then shook his head, as if to say that it was too terrible, that it shouldn’t be done.
Yes, it is terrible. But we must get through that jump point.
“Look at me, Admiral,” Lenol Tyn said.
He did. “And your response?”
“I will do it,” she said. “What choice do I have?”
“There is always a choice. You’re not a cultist, this is no suicide charge.”
“If you say so.”
Drake took a deep breath. “All right, then. They’re your ships to command as you see fit, but I have one suggestion. Have you ever studied the Battle of Ipsum II?”
“Yes, in fact. My grandfather was the general of the Hroom forces. Are you a student of the battle as well?”
“Maybe you are naive.” He allowed himself a smile. “There’s an entire course at the Academy about Ipsum II. It was the most crushing Albion defeat in the last century of human and Hroom warfare.”
“Ah, yes. I suppose it makes sense that you would study it. To know how we defeated you.”
“If you know the battle, then you must know about the position of the Hroom forces.”
“I do, James Drake. My grandfather composed an epic poem about the battle that we were required to recite as children.”
“Those tactics might be appropriate in the given situation, don’t you think?”
Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) Page 17
