“Warning,” Jane said. “Inner bulkhead breached. Warning, inner bulkhead—”
The computer’s voice cut out. The entire com link went down, and there was nothing but static, like the crash of surf against the shore.
The bridge shuddered. The wall near the war room exploded, and what looked like a black snake as thick as a tree trunk plunged into the bridge. Dozens of tiny tentacles uncoiled from the larger one. They grabbed at consoles and began tearing them apart.
It’s over. We’re dead. Eaten by a star leviathan.
These thoughts flickered through Tolvern’s mind, but already she was moving. She drew her sidearm and sprang across the room, followed by her crew. The bridge rang with the report of gunfire, deafening in the small space. The massive tentacle absorbed the gunfire.
Nyb Pim tossed aside his gun and drew a hand cannon. “Stand back!”
He didn’t have a chance to fire before the tentacle suddenly withdrew, snaking back the way it had come. It left wreckage in place of the door to the war room. The war room itself was obliterated, and beyond that lay a hole to the corridor on the other side.
There was still artificial gravity. The air was moving, but not gushing out, which meant that the hull breach wasn’t critical. Not yet, anyway. Some fail-safe airlock had closed, thank God.
“What happened?” Tolvern said. “Where did it go?”
The gunfire in the enclosed space had left her ears ringing, and she could barely hear her own voice. The others stumbled toward their consoles. Someone sprayed retardant to put out a fire. Smythe flicked switches on the wall to bring in auxiliary power.
The com link was on, and voices shouted. She called engineering. Someone answered, but she wasn’t sure who. Maybe Barker, possibly Rodriguez. She told him to get all crew to sealing the breach.
Miraculously, Lomelí and Smythe got the defense grid computer up, and then used it to simulate the wrecked tech console. The viewscreen came back up and showed the source of their salvation.
The harvester was fully in the grip of the leviathan’s tentacles and struggling madly. The leviathan had released Blackbeard to concentrate on its struggling prey. Tolvern’s cruiser drifted away, engines sputtering.
The harvester was firing with all its weapons at the leviathan, which was several times larger and unaffected by the bombardment. But the harvester’s bulwark-tearing arms sawed and ripped at the leviathan’s tentacles, and this seemed to cause the monster real pain. The more arms the harvester hacked off, the more eagerly the creature drew it in. At last, the two were face-to-face. The harvester grabbed and fought, while the leviathan probed and tore and tried to get the ship into its mouth.
The scene was riveting, and Tolvern couldn’t look away. It was like a giant squid fighting a shark. In this case, the squid was going to win.
Several small ships squirted out of the harvester—buzzards, fleeing the scene—together with one larger ship that looked like a spear. They raced from the battlefield, ignored by the leviathan.
And then the leviathan got its mouth over the grasping arms. They disappeared into the creature’s maw, followed by the front end of the ship. Then it was halfway down, and soon, the end tip was disappearing inside as well. The leviathan’s tentacles waved about. Some nudged tentatively toward Blackbeard, even as the creature bunched and twisted, clearly still fighting with its supper, only now on the inside.
Tolvern called engineering again. This time, her ears were working better, and she was sure it was Barker who answered.
“You’d better get those engines online,” she said, “or we’re the next meal.”
The engines flared to life. Blackbeard eased away. She left a trail of debris and leaking plasma in her wake. But she was alive. By all that was good and right in the universe, she had survived the fight.
#
Voices through the com. Royal Marines, screaming of buzzards breaking into the loading bays, into engineering, into the power plant. Fighting on all fronts as the enemy penetrated Dreadnought.
A man came onto the com link, high and excited. “Admiral! My God, the buzzards have broken through, they’ve—”
His voice broke into a scream, and the line went dead. Drake cut communications to the marines. Whatever happened out there, it was distracting him from his duties.
He calmly drew his sidearm and rose. “Lloyd, Díaz, Ellison, guard the door. Not you, Manx, stay where you are. The rest of you at your posts. If they break through the marines, we’re not holding them off with a few pistols. The best we can hope for is to delay them a few seconds while the rest of us do our jobs.”
“What are your orders, sir?” Manx spoke through clenched teeth, but his voice was steady.
“You’ve still got the gunnery?”
“Yes, two full companies of marines are defending it. The crew are at their posts, no panic in the ranks.”
“Good. I want a full broadside on my mark.”
Drake eyed the viewscreen. The harvester loomed, only the mouth and those chomping arms in sight. Explosions battered its surface from incoming missiles and torpedoes fired by other naval forces trying to free Dreadnought. But nothing had yet done significant damage.
He checked his console screen, which showed action to his rear. Peerless and Repulse had fought clear of the lances, and Blackbeard rumbled in to join them. The three cruisers fired a volley of torpedoes. The range was so close that one missed its target entirely and struck Dreadnought’s number five shield. The others raced past and slammed into the harvester.
“Hold!” Drake said, waiting for the viewscreen to show the damage to the harvester.
Closer at hand, something exploded against the outer door of the bridge. Birdlike screeches came from the corridor outside. Humans, screaming. The three officers guarding the door shouted at each other to raise their courage. The door burst open. Gunfire.
Drake didn’t look, even as the fighting continued behind him. He stared at the viewscreen as the secondary explosions cleared across the enemy hull. There! Heavy damage where the cruisers’ torpedoes had cracked the harvester’s armor.
“Fire!”
Dreadnought rolled from the force of its cannons. Shot tore into the wounded side of the enemy ship. The gunnery launched torpedoes and missiles and hurled out mines. One of the harvester’s arms snapped off, and alert crew in the engine room turned the engines to full thrust. Dreadnought broke free.
Drake turned, pistol in hand. Lloyd, Díaz, and Ellison stood with several marines over the dead bodies of a pair of Apex drones. Ellison had a nasty gash on her arm, but was grinning along with the rest of them. The marines regrouped and set off. More gunfire sounded down the corridor.
“Man your posts!” he ordered the three officers.
Action drew his attention to the viewscreen.
Drake’s heavy cruisers kept pounding away with their cannon. A pair of destroyers joined them, and three corvettes streaked in, followed by two more. They took position just off Dreadnought’s flank as she continued to put distance between herself and the harvester, which kept up a stream of withering fire. Corvettes fired their smaller cannon and launched missile salvos. Frigates added their own missiles.
A wave of torpedo boats rolled into the fight. They dropped their loads and banked away. Their torpedoes accelerated toward the harvester and rang its hull with a series of hammer blows. The harvester hit one of the torpedo boats before it could escape, and it exploded. Another drifted off, wounded.
Lances and spears were entering the fight, too, and the harvester, wounded and showing gaping scars along its hull, moved behind them as if to make its escape.
“Like hell you will,” Drake said. “Lloyd, get me Tolvern. No, belay that order.”
No need to send the message because Tolvern was already moving with Blackbeard and the other cruisers to block the harvester’s retreat. The massive enemy ship lashed out in desperation, trying to clear the cruisers from its path. Dreadnought followed the harvester and laid do
wn a vicious barrage of missiles.
Drake needed one more blow. One more crashing, punishing strike.
“Throck,” Drake said, “what the devil is holding up the main battery?”
Throckmorton looked up from the defense grid computer. “That last enemy attack knocked two guns off their carriages. The gunnery says ten minutes.”
“We don’t have ten minutes. Make it faster.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pinned by Tolvern’s cruisers, the harvester turned back and laid everything into destroying the enemy battleship. Dreadnought rocked as she took blows. Simon warned of failures to the number two and three shields, with critical damage mounting in the five and six as well. The four was completely gone, and if it took one more hit, he was in trouble.
Drake gripped his hand rests. “I need that battery, by God, and I need it now.”
Throck looked up from the computer, eyes wide. “It’s ready!”
“Fire!”
Dreadnought’s cannon fired. The ship shuddered as the force of the barrage came through the hull all the way to the bridge. Tons of hot metal spewed out the side and blasted into the harvester ship. It rolled to one side and flared its engines, like it meant to come at Dreadnought and grapple with her again.
But the broadside had opened a gaping hole in the side of the enemy ship. Explosions continued along its hull. A piece of plating the size of one of Drake’s torpedo boats exploded from the side, then another. The enemy ship could no long maneuver, and it was breaking apart along the seams.
Drake’s cruisers pulled away, even as they continued to rain torpedoes and missiles on the dying ship. The weapons stabbed into the open wound, where they detonated deep inside. The harvester was launching pods now, escape bubbles that blasted off in all directions. Drake ordered his crew to keep firing.
Blackbeard came up and fired a blast with her belly cannon right at the open wound. The harvester exploded, and the viewscreen went black. Debris pummeled Dreadnought, and there was nothing to do but weather it. At last the screen cleared. Blackbeard appeared to one side, smoking and venting debris, her engines leaking plasma. But intact.
The harvester was gone. Nothing but wreckage and chunks of debris spiraling away from the battlefield.
Drake slammed his fist into his palm and joined the others in letting out a cheer. There was still mop up action ahead of them, but the battle had been won.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ak Ik came screeching out of the boarding vessel, rage filling her head with a burning white light as she entered the other ship. Smoke clogged the air, and a warning tone clanged with the sound of metal striking metal. An enemy drone, wing broken from the impact of the boarding vessel slamming through the wall, tried to crawl away. Ak Ik fell upon it and tore out its throat.
Another drone came around the corner, wearing a breach-sealant tank with a nozzle attached to its beak. The queen opened her wings, pointed twin barrels at the drone, and fired. The drone danced grotesquely as it went down, and Ak Ik threw back her head and screamed her pleasure.
Two battle drones joined the queen from the boarding vessel. They were armed with repeaters, and boasted red feathers around their necks and green ones on their breasts to offset their otherwise drab colors. She’d have brought more drones, but her own ship was smashed, birds dead and dying, her nesting chamber a wreckage of yolk and burned chicks.
“It’s all gone,” she said. “Everything destroyed.”
“Queen Commander?” one of the drones said. It cocked its head, alert.
“Never mind that. I will rebuild. Lay eggs and breed a new army to do my bidding.” Ak Ik squawked. “I will give the two of you excretions for your loyalty and turn you male. You will be my consorts and the fathers of my new army.”
They made keening sounds and ruffled their feathers. It was as much excitement as one could expect from a drone, yet even that seemed curiously muted. What the queen meant, what these two knew, was that this honor would only be given them if they survived. And first they had a rival to subdue.
Ak Ik led the pair down twisting passageways toward the center of the ship. Alarms clanged everywhere. The air smelled first of burned feathers, then of liquid waste when they came across foul effluvia spraying under pressure from a broken pipe. Two more bodies lay in the hallway.
Everywhere she looked she saw disaster. Unmitigated disaster.
Ak Ik’s rage had first centered on the cowardly birds of her own flock and those of her treacherous allies. Then, as she fled toward the jump point in the sun, she threw her ire at the humans pursuing her relentlessly instead of allowing her to limp away to recover. Two harvester ships annihilated, yet the humans hadn’t paused to gloat, had instead hunted the survivors.
We are Apex. I am the queen, and there are none above me. The human race is marked only for extermination.
Yet the humans had proven wily, dangerous opponents. That might have earned them respect if not for their inherent weaknesses. Instead of crushing the Hroom, the Albion nation had allied itself with a lesser species, with lesser nations of their own kind. Instead of purging their ranks of the weak members, the humans allowed them to flourish.
Ak Ik had forgotten about the humans now, gave no thought to the schemes she was contemplating to return and give them battle. Instead, she was thinking about Sool Em. Ak Ik swore on her own blood that she would tear out her daughter’s throat.
Sool Em’s perch was empty. There was nobody at the helm, nobody piloting the ship. No drones worked the controls. If an enemy approached, there was nobody to fire the weapons. From what Ak Ik had seen from her own ship, there wasn’t much left of the weapon systems anyway.
“Did my daughter flee the ship?” Ak Ik asked. “She must have. She must have known I was coming and has flown away in an escape pod.”
“Queen Commander,” one of her drones said simply.
“She can’t have got far, not in this system. If she escaped on a ship, it won’t be big enough to jump. That means she’s gone to the habitable planet. Can we find her before she lands?”
Again, the drone spoke. “I don’t understand, Queen Commander.”
Ak Ik screeched. “Quiet! If you’re too stupid to think, then be clever enough to keep your beak shut before I tear it off.”
The three of them made their way out of the perch and past the roosts. One of the airlocks had been burst, and they had to go around it to stay where there was oxygen.
“The ship appears to be abandoned, Queen Commander,” one of her drones said at last.
“There’s one place left to check.”
The nesting chamber. She pushed her way into the warm, humid room, not expecting to see anything but shattered eggs, but thinking perhaps Sool Em had taken her final refuge here.
Unbroken eggs covered the floor. Most of them were gray, drab, but there, in the back, gleamed four shiny blue eggs with yellow speckles. The arrogance was unbelievable. Sool Em had already hatched three princesses, and now she was trying to hatch four more. To go with what drone army? And did she really think Ak Ik would permit her to grow in power now, after everything that had happened?
The queen was so focused on those eggs, so anxious to crush them, that she didn’t immediately notice the movement at the edges of the room. Her two battle drones had stumbled into the room behind the queen, and one of them cried a warning.
Gunshots rang out, and Ak Ik’s drones fell. The queen lifted her wings to show her own weapons, but before she could whirl around to face her attacker, a warning scream stopped her in her place.
“Put your wings down or you die.” It was Sool Em’s voice. “That’s right, now turn your back to me.”
Sool Em clipped off Ak Ik’s harness with her beak. The twin-barreled gun clattered to the floor, cracking one of the drone eggs as it fell. Ak Ik’s mind churned, trying to find a way out of her predicament.
“There are only the two of us now,” she said, “so fighting would be pointless. We must rebuild.
”
“You attacked my ship.”
“My communications are down,” Ak Ik lied. “This is the only way I had to communicate. I came over to discuss our next plans. We have to rebuild our flock.”
“Keep talking,” Sool Em said. “Let me hear your lies. They will amuse me.”
Ak Ik turned to look into her daughter’s arrogant eyes. “They’re no lies. It seems like we’re defeated—and maybe we are, as far as the humans are considered—but there will be other Apex survivors. We can gather them, force them to serve us. First, dominate the flocks, then face the humans. That might take generations, but someday we will see them eliminated.”
“I like most of that scheme,” Sool Em said. “Except the part where you’re in command. I will be the queen.”
Ak Ik screeched her derision. “You have nothing. A few eggs, a few surviving drones, perhaps.”
“And you have less.”
Ak Ik launched herself with a cry. She threw herself at her daughter, talons outstretched as her wings batted the air. She would sink her claws into Sool Em’s breast and hurl her to the ground. How sweet to tear out her enemy’s innards while she was still alive. A feast to strengthen the queen before she began the—
A sharp report, a searing pain in Ak Ik’s wing bone. She fell flapping to the ground, crushing eggs as she landed awkwardly. The pain, the awful, terrible pain. Terror followed. She was wounded, at the feet of her enemy, and she was bleeding all over. Sool Em straddled Ak Ik and pointed her gun at the other queen’s head.
“You should not have done that.” There was triumph in Sool Em’s voice.
“Mercy.”
“You serve me, now. You bow to me.”
“I will!”
“You live at my pleasure, you survive only so far as I need you.”
“Yes!” Ak Ik cried. “Anything you say.”
Ak Ik’s right wing was broken, and the pain was exquisite. She used her other wing to push herself up and tried to get her legs under her. Yolk mixed with blood and dripped off her feathers. Sool Em seized her in a claw and slammed her back down. Ak Ik cried out in fresh pain and fear.
Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) Page 20
