The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) (11 page)

“But that same scan surely lit us up for whoever else was listening closer at hand.” Li nodded at the still frame of the enemy lances. “We see
them
clearly enough.”

“Yes, but we were on the other side of the Kettle when Albion ran their scans. Our sensors are superior to Apex’s, and we saw them right through the planet. That’s how good our eyes and ears are. If I fire up the active sensors, I could tell you the color of the queen commander’s feathers. Their sensors are crap in comparison.” Swettenham gave what Li supposed was a modest shrug, but it only made him look more confident.

This was one of the sentinel battle station’s advantages. Apex could intercept and decode any known communication. They could force short-range jump points using some unknown technology, popping in and out where they liked. But stay silent, and they struggled to find you.

“Anyway, even if they
could
find us,” Swettenham said, “they’ve got to be staring out at this
Blackbeard
. Even if their sensors weren’t rubbish, they probably wouldn’t have seen us based on how we were positioned relative to them.”

“They’re using the Albion ship as bait,” Li decided.

“Why do you say that, Commander?” Ang asked.

The first officer had been fiddling with something on his screen, and it looked like his console was resetting. He’d crashed it while running diagnostics. Li felt a sudden twinge of worry about how Ang would perform in the coming fight, if his reflexes were still sharp enough for battlefield conditions.

“I can’t be sure,” Li said, “but it fits the situation. Apex must know we’re here. A captive talked or they seized a computer that said we were in this system.”

He let this stand for a moment. The only people who knew of Sentinel 3 had been confined to Singapore. The only computers that cataloged their existence were on the home world. So what did that mean for the home world?

“Or maybe they’ve fought other sentinels,” Li added, somewhat more hopefully. “They’ve studied the problem and figured this was a logical system to put us. So they’re trying to flush us out by dangling bait in front of us.”

“I don’t believe it,” Swettenham said vehemently. “That was a real message, spoken in a real language. I believe it’s real, that the Albionish are real people.”

“You believe it’s real because you want to believe it’s real,” Anna spoke up. “It’s wishful thinking bordering on superstitious faith, and it will get us killed.”

Li had almost forgotten his sister was standing quietly behind his shoulder. She didn’t belong here, but he couldn’t fight with her now. Not when he’d cast his lot with the Sentry Faction, of which she was the apparent leader. Not when the command module was filling with people from both factions, as well as people he’d previously identified as neutrals. He had to hold them all together, then impose discipline once the crisis had passed.

“Oh, I think Swettenham is right,” Li told her. “That human warship hit us with a full scan, trying to find us, but they only revealed Apex. If the enemy was in full control, there’s no way they’d have positioned their ships as they did.”

“Unless there’s an even larger fleet lurking.” Anna smiled. There was no humor in it, only satisfaction. “They show us a small force, taunt us into attacking. Then the main fleet swoops in and tears us to shreds once we reveal ourselves.”

Li stopped. He hadn’t considered that possibility. It didn’t change his general hunch, but what did it matter? The enemy knew or suspected that they were here and was trying to find their exact location.

“You see?” she pressed, looking from one man to the next and taking obvious satisfaction in the discomfort of all three. “This doesn’t change anything.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Li said. “We go to battle mode and fight.”

“You’d reveal our location.”

He gave her a withering look. “Obviously. And what are we, a listening post, or a battle station? Sentinel 3 is crammed with enough lasers, munitions, and fissiles to fight a small war.”

“It’s also incapable of jumping out of the system,” Swettenham said nervously. “We reveal ourselves and there’s no escaping.”

“Also part of our description. We hide in silence, we strike hard, and we absorb maximum punishment while we await relief from the navy. If that relief does not come, we die for the glory of the Imperium.”

“But what if it’s only eight lances?” Anna asked. “You wouldn’t give up our location for eight lances, would you?”

“I thought you were worried about a hidden fleet? If it’s there, you’ll get all the fighting you want.” Li looked back and forth between his sister and Swettenham. “Anyway, it’s nice to see Openers and the Sentry Faction united in cowardice.”

Now he had Anna and Swettenham both bristling.

“We’re fighting, all right.” Li nodded at Swettenham. “This is your chance. If the Albion ship is for real, they’ll see us in trouble, and they’ll either charge to our aid or won’t.” He looked at his sister. “And this is yours. You claim we’ve stayed hidden so we can fight the enemy. Well, here they are.” He clapped them both on the shoulders and let the full irony come through in his voice. “So you see, we all win.”

Ang cleared his throat, a sound not so different from the gurgling pipes in the water processing system. “Sir, what about the human warship?”

“Hopefully, they know how to fight and they exaggerated the extent of their injuries. And they’re smart enough to stay out of range of our weapon systems.” Li hardened his expression. “But this is war, and in any battle there is collateral damage.”

Chapter Eight

Captain Tolvern brought the critical personnel into the war room and gave her orders. There was no response for a long moment, only incredulity on every face around the table. Smythe squirmed, and Capp rubbed her shaved scalp so vigorously it was like she’d peel off the skin. Barker’s walrus mustache twitched. Nyb Pim’s long fingers stretched in front of him, and a hum sounded deep in his throat. That was Hroom nerves coming out.

It was Barker who spoke first. “We fought four lances last week. There are eight facing us now.”

“I’m aware of the odds,” Tolvern said.

“Plus HMS
Swift
was protecting our flank,” he continued. “We lost her. Nearly lost our own lives.”

“We
did
lose our lives,” Tolvern said. “It’s a slow-motion death is all. We’re going to die out here if someone doesn’t throw us a lifeline, and I don’t see that happening on its own, do you?”

“So you want to charge in, guns blazing?” Barker said. “Go down in a fiery death, glory for God and king, and all that rubbish?”

“That’s one way to put it,” she said. “It beats running for our lives while they pick at us like wolves tormenting a sick moose. You know what happens, don’t you? The moose eventually goes down and they eat it alive.”

“You got a way with words, Cap’n,” Capp said. “Makes me almost feel like I’m there.”

“We run, that gives them a chance to disable us,” Tolvern added. “Then they’ll board us. Then they’ll do their thing. We all know what that means.”

“Captain, they’re going to do that anyway,” Smythe said. “By my calculations we’ll be lucky to survive the first encounter. A single shot to the rear shields and there go the engines.”

“Carvalho will lead the fight if they try to board. We’ll contest every inch of the ship, deliver as much destruction as we can.” Tolvern looked at Barker. “You’ll rig the ship with explosives, and we’ll see if we can take out the boarding ship as we go. And we’ll each save one bullet in our guns. Barring that, how about cyanide capsules just to be sure?”

“So it’s a suicide mission?” Nyb Pim said.

“Don’t make a shrine to your death god just yet,” she told the Hroom. “I’m not giving up hope. There’s the message we sent, and the answer we received. We still don’t have all the answers.”

“You’re still laying a bet on that Dutch arsehole?” Capp said. “You ask me, we should stick that lying bastard in the airlock and give him a right proper sendoff.”

“You think explosive decompression is good enough for him, Capp?” Tolvern shook her head. “Nah, I’ve got a better plan. There’s one fellow on board who doesn’t get his cyanide capsule. We’ll send Djikstra out in an away pod, launch him right toward our Apex friends. They can have him back.”

Capp grinned at this. “Even better.”

Tolvern leaned across the table. “But I’ll tell you something. I don’t think Djikstra is a liar. I think there
is
a base out there, and I think someone tried to answer us. I just happen to think that Apex was listening. Maybe they’re trying to find these Singaporeans, too. Or maybe they calculated our trajectory and moved to intercept us. Maybe they know nothing about the other humans.”

She had their attention now.

“It’s a long shot, but we have no choice. We’ve got eight hours until we lose an engine. After that, we slow to a crawl. Until then, we’re still maneuverable. Our cannons are all repaired and ready to fight. We’ve got a fair number of missiles and torpedoes, and the laser batteries are undamaged.”

“Mostly true,” Barker said with a grunt. “Few things not quite right yet.”

She ignored this, and continued, her voice as strong and confident as she could manage. Trying to channel James Drake before they went into battle.

“We’re going to fight, and we’re going to win. Apex respects strength—it’s the only thing these buzzards
do
respect. And with any luck, these Singaporeans will too. With luck they’ll see how we fight and extend a hand.”

#

An hour until they’d reach the gas giant. Four hours until they’d lose the crippled number two engine. It was longer than early fears, but Barker and Smythe were more certain now. It was going, and soon.

That four hours had been hard earned. Some brave soul went out on a line to do external repairs, not an easy task when you’re racing along at nearly eight thousand miles a second and bleeding globules of plasma. Get a little too close to the engine and you’d find yourself in a final, warm embrace with the plasma. The man shot nano-epoxy at the damaged heat shields, and miraculously, it seemed to do some good.

Barker said it bought them nearly an hour of engine time.

Tolvern watched the viewscreen as the scans came in. Her hands had been gripping the armrests so long that her forearms were sore, and she forced herself to let go.

“Ram scoops fully retracted,” Lomelí said from the tech console. “We should be getting full data now.”

“Smythe, how is that subspace coming?” Tolvern said.

“Still not sending,” Smythe said, frustration evident in his voice.

“We’re running out of time. If you have to, go down to engineering yourself. The fleet needs to know what’s happening here.”

It was a death message, essentially. Here’s how HMS
Blackbeard
went down, all hands lost. Something from this encounter might help the navy in future encounters, some pattern emerge that further illuminated Apex tactics.

“They’re giving me everything I’m asking for, sir.”

“Well, keep at it.”

The scans resolved themselves. Some of the Apex ships had moved. Four were in orbit around the third moon from the planet, a small, rocky world with a battered, pockmarked surface testifying to eons of bombardment as debris was drawn haphazardly into the gas giant’s embrace.

Three lances had remained close to where they’d been spotted earlier, only somewhat nearer the gas giant, a few thousand miles above the dense layers of upper clouds. Scans showed their smooth, silvery skins, and they looked almost like flying creatures hovering above the surface. Giant, bloodsucking insects, like the vermin that had infested the jungles of Hot Barsa. Illusion combined with metaphor to make Tolvern’s skin crawl as she imagined the Apex queen inside, planning their destruction.

“Where’s the last ship?” she asked.

“I’m looking for it,” Lomelí said. The diminutive Ladino tech officer hunched over the console, her shoulders drawn in.

Smythe, standing next to her, threw up his hands. “I don’t know what else to try. Maybe it went through that time. It cost us plenty of power, but I never got the confirmation.”

“Are you still messing around with that subspace?” Tolvern said. “Help Lomelí find the last ship.” She called down to the gunnery. “Barker, give me an update.”

All was good. He’d been repairing the three-cannon battery installed on the underside of the ship during
Blackbeard
’s stint as a pirate ship. One of the cannons had been knocked off its carriage and remained vulnerable. Good chance it wouldn’t survive repeated firing, but it was good for the moment. The most powerful torpedoes in the arsenal, the Hunter-IIs, had been loaded in the tubes and were ready to go.

“We’ll launch a barrage as soon as we get into combat,” Tolvern said.

“Aye, Captain. The torpedoes won’t catch anyone who isn’t already wounded, but they’ll certainly chase those buzzards around the battlefield. Who are we targeting?”

“I’m coming at the planet after those three—they’re our easiest target. Can you keep the other four off our butt?”

“Four and three? Weren’t there eight when we started?”

“Yeah, we’ve lost one of them. Let me worry about that.”

“All right, then. Hmm.” A moment of silence, then Barker said, “What if we lay down some mines behind us? I’ve got a few Youds left—they’ll be easy enough to spot when we drop them, but those buggers will give chase if they’re activated, forcing the buzzards to come around wide. That will buy us some time.”

It was a single-use tactic, but anything that delayed the enemy was worth it. “Good, prepare the mines for deployment.”

“Already done.”

Tolvern looked at the screen, then down at her display. “Twenty minutes to battle.”

“We’ll be ready,” Barker said. He cut the line.

“We still can’t find it, sir,” Smythe said after the captain had ended her call. “Maybe the last ship jumped away.”

“Not likely,” Tolvern said. “Keep looking and we’ll see what happens. Not much use hanging around to see if it shows.”

“We’re trying one more hard scan and—Captain!”