The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) (12 page)

Tolvern looked up quickly from her console. The two tech officers manipulated the view. The gas giant smeared across the screen and was replaced with a view of the planet’s ring. It gleamed with ice particles spotted with chunks of debris that manifested as shadows.

“I still don’t see the missing lance,” she said, “but if that’s where it’s hiding, it’s out of the action for now. We can avoid it easily.”

“Not the lance, Captain,” Smythe said excitedly. “Look!”

His fingers danced over the console, and he applied a filter to the view. The larger rocks and asteroids disappeared, and all that was left was the ice glowing like a billion radiant diamonds. Smythe applied another filter, and most of the ice vanished. What remained was a shadowy hole conspicuous by the absence of light coming through.

“Looks like we’ve found our mates,” Capp said. “And about bloody time, too.”

Tolvern allowed herself to hope. “Are you sure?”

“It’s pretty big,” Smythe said. “Got to be either a battle station or a fortress dug into an asteroid.”

“But not simply an asteroid without the fort?”

“Too much metal for just another rock. Refined tyrillium, too. You never see that in nature. It’s a clever hiding place,” Smythe added. “Almost missed it.”

Indeed, they’d found it by pure chance. With either the sun or the planet in a slightly different position, the secret would have remained secure. Had one of the Apex ships not vanished, Tolvern never would have been looking in the first place. Hidden in the ice field, the station could have remained undetected indefinitely.

Tolvern turned to her pilot. “Can you get us there?”

“Yes, Captain. I can get you there.” Nib Pym hummed deep in his throat. He worked his console. “I calculate an extra ten minutes to maneuver and slow.”

“Don’t make a direct approach. Apex might not know about the base, and I’d rather not be the one to tell them.”

A pause as Nyb Pim’s nav chip interfaced with the computer. Billions of calculations and a few seconds later, he said, “Is a two-minute delay acceptable?”

“Getting us there in twelve minutes? Do it.”

Tolvern got on the com to the gunnery and explained to Barker the change in plans. She ordered him to fling the Youd mines toward the three ships hovering above the planet instead. Once
Blackbeard
came within the battle station’s protective guns, they’d fire their torpedoes at the lances and see what happened.

Barker snorted. “Protective guns? That’s what you think they are?”

“That base is either Apex, in which case we’re dead, or it’s human. I think it’s human, and I think it’s Singaporean. The enemy will discover the Singaporeans as soon as the battle commences. What choice does the base have but to stand and fight by our side?”

“I can think of several choices,” Barker said. “Some of them ugly.”

Tolvern let the heat rise in her voice. “Well,
we
sure as hell don’t have a choice, do we?”

“Your call, Captain. We’ve got a damn rock on one side of us, and a bloody hard place on the other. Either way, it’s going to get interesting.”

This time it was Tolvern who cut the line between bridge and engineering. Nyb Pim had already implemented a subtle change in their trajectory, and the planet came rushing up, together with all the elements that would make this interesting: moons, asteroids and debris, the massive gravity well of the gas giant, and eight Apex lances divided in two forces, with one of them unaccounted for. Oh, and the human military base. Friend or foe?

“It’s going to get interesting, all right,” she muttered. Then, to the computer, “Jane, give me continual updates on the shields and the status of the engine.”

“Engine two critical. Full plasma breach estimated in—”

“I know that, you silly girl,” Tolvern said. “Give me continual updates of any
changes
. Otherwise, we’ll assume the status quo includes an imminent fiery death.”

The lances at the planet began to move, speeding away into deep space. Moments later, they blinked away. It looked as if they’d fled the battlefield, but Tolvern wasn’t fooled. She knew by now that they’d simply changed position to hide whatever it was that they did before creating one of their temporary jump points. They’d no doubt flash into place at the most inconvenient moment possible. No sense making it easy for them.

“Capp, get those mines in place.”

Tolvern turned her attention to the viewscreen. No sign of the missing lance or the three that had vanished moments earlier, but the four out by the moon were on the move. They spread into a box-four, a classic position to catch an enemy in enfilading fire that would have been recognizable to any first-year cadet at the Academy. Once in position, they came toward
Blackbeard
, cautiously at first, then accelerating.

Nyb Pim made his second maneuver. This sent
Blackbeard
corkscrewing down on both the z- and x-axes and toward the base. The gravity and inertia engines strained, and the ship shuddered.

Smythe called from the tech console. “That little maneuver just cost us the engine seal.”

Confirming this news, Jane piped in to cheerfully explain that the plasma leak had increased by twenty-seven percent.

“It’s a miracle the seal held up as long as it did,” Tolvern said.

She stared at the black gap in the viewscreen, where the battle station was starting to come into focus even as
Blackbeard
slowed dramatically. Not buried into an asteroid, but all artificial. They must have some kind of effective cloaking to stay so hidden. Somehow, she had to get that tech back to Albion.

The cruiser was well within range of the battle station’s guns by now, assuming it was armed and not just a listening post or supply dump. The four lances skated in at an angle, also coming within range of the station. They didn’t seem to have noticed it yet.

“The buzzards have broken our target baffles,” Smythe warned. “Incoming fire.”

“Fire torpedoes,” she ordered.

Barker’s voice came over the com an instant later, confirming the launch of Hunter-II torpedoes.
Blackbeard
dropped its cloaking to allow the main kinetic guns to fire. The nose laser array targeted the lead enemy ship. And the lances fired in return. Voices, shudders, flashing lights and warnings in her ear, on the viewscreen, and on her console.

The four lances were hitting
Blackbeard
with their energy weapons. The Royal Navy had reinforced the tyrillium plating since the first, nearly lethal encounter with Apex last year during the Albion civil war. The energy weapons had punctured Albion armor like a needle through paper. The new plating was blunting and dispersing the energy, even reflecting some of it into space, but
Blackbeard
could still take a full broadside of cannon fire more easily than repeated energy pulses at a hundred thousand miles.

And
Blackbeard
was already operating with weakened shields. Nyb Pim rolled the ship, even as torpedoes kept squirting off in all directions. Faster, lighter missiles followed, and the belly guns filled the gap with shells.

This at least scattered the Apex formation, forcing the enemy to evade. And that brought relief from the laser fire, with anti-targeting efforts turning aside additional pulses of energy.
Blackbeard
continued her dramatic deceleration.

Jane reported damage. It wasn’t as bad as Tolvern had feared.

“There you go, Smythe. We survived our first encounter.”

Capp cursed. “Here comes the second.”

Three more lances appeared, materializing off starboard. They darted in on
Blackbeard
’s exposed flank. Energy weapons splashed against the shields. Had they appeared port-side, the fight would have been over in an instant, like a lit match held against tissue paper, as Tolvern didn’t have her port guns exposed. The gunnery fired from starboard, and the lances pulled away.

Unfortunately, all seven of the enemy ships had surrounded
Blackbeard
. They probed with their weapons, weakening, but not destroying. It was a deliberate attempt to cripple, to take captives.

Blackbeard
shuddered, and Tolvern floated briefly out of her chair before artificial gravity slammed her back into place. Warning lights, Jane’s computer analysis, and shouting over the com from engineering confirmed: the number two engine had gone off like the world’s biggest rocket at the Settlement Day fireworks.

Amid the shouts, the flashing lights, and the shudders, Tolvern realized something. The lances still hadn’t spotted the human battle station. Even this close, they had no idea it was there. If they had, the aliens wouldn’t be trying to take them captive, they’d be finishing
Blackbeard
and getting out of range of the station’s guns. Or attacking the base directly.
Something
.

“Cap’n, why aren’t they helping us?” Capp asked in a worried voice. “We’re going to die, and they ain’t lifting a finger to help us.”

“Unknown targeting computers detected,” Smythe said. “The base has got their guns out. Laser arrays, missile batteries, and . . . what the devil is that? It’s big, whatever it is.”

“About time,” Tolvern muttered. “Five minutes longer and it would be all over but the sacrificial feasting.”

“Oh, bloody hell,” Smythe said.

“What is it now?” Tolvern said.

Smythe looked up, glanced at Lomelí, whose eyes were wide with terror, then turned to the captain.

“Captain, they’re not going to shoot at Apex. They’re targeting
us
.”

Chapter Nine

There was nothing to do but keep fighting for their lives and hope they could take out a few enemies before they went down. Then prepare to detonate
Blackbeard
before they could be boarded by the enemy and eaten. Penetrating Captain Tolvern’s fear and anger and confusion was the horrible realization that she’d made a mistake.

It was a trap all along. The Dutchman led us right to the Apex base.
 

“They’re firing!” someone on the bridge cried.

Tolvern wasn’t sure who had cried out, let alone who was firing, as she was on the com with Barker, warning him to self-destruct the instant the number one engine went out. She jerked her head up.

There was the base, lit up like a Christmas tree—if you’d doused the tree with oil and lit it on fire, that was. Bomb clusters and missiles squirted away from its surface. Green energy globules burst out. Only the underside of the station was still dark, the massive array of whatever Smythe had identified staying out of the fight.

Tolvern closed her eyes and gripped the handrails, bracing for one final flash of light and then . . . well, whatever came after you died.

They only stayed closed an instant. Then she was back at work, ordering the gunnery to deploy countermeasures, to roll away, to fire back at the attacking lances, which continued to tear apart the remaining armor.

One of her torpedoes landed a lucky blow, and the wounded lance tried to retreat. But then the base’s firepower joined the battle. And it struck Apex. Hard.

One of the twisting bomblets caught the wounded lance and blew it apart. Energy globules hit other enemy ships and affixed themselves to their skin. They quickly engulfed the silvery surfaces, and the ships disappeared beneath glowing plasma.

“We’re still targeted,” Capp said. “But they ain’t shooting at us. Not yet.”

“Maybe it’s that big array,” Smythe call over. “Whatever it is, it’s not something we want to face.”

“Time to run, Cap’n?” Capp said.

“No.”

Only one of the lances had escaped the bombardment, and it tried to flee the suddenly revealed battle station, which carried it toward
Blackbeard
. By now,
Blackbeard
’s starboard-side shields were weaker than those on the port-side—had been completely obliterated, in fact—and Tolvern had turned about to keep her weak side away from the action. This brought the main battery into play.

A few seconds later, the lance came hurtling past, and
Blackbeard
let loose. The cannons were highly developed kinetic weapons, designed to punch through tyrillium armor that could repel standard energy weapons. They’d been of limited use against the highly maneuverable Apex lances, which could scorch human and Hroom ships from a distance.

But this lance had come within range and felt the full force of sixteen heavy guns. The cannons fired shot made of cobalt rods to penetrate the shields and explosive shot to tear through the resulting holes and detonate on the interior. The lance took it all. What was left afterward didn’t even rise to the level of confetti.

They’d destroyed seven lances in a matter of minutes. Well, the Albion cruiser had destroyed one, and the battle station had obliterated the other six in a spectacular display of firepower. And the Singaporeans hadn’t even fired up that unknown battery, but kept it targeted on
Blackbeard
.

“Seven lances,” Tolvern said aloud. “Not eight. One of them got away.”

She asked Jane for an assessment. The news was grim.

“Number two engine destroyed. Number one engine leaking plasma—emergency shutdown initiated. Port shields, eight percent. Starboard shields, two percent. Deck shields—”

“All right, I get the point. Capp, call engineering and tell them to keep the number one online. I don’t care about the risks, I need to get out of range of that station. Nyb Pim, take us around the planet. We’ll try to talk to them from there.”

“What about the missing lance?” Capp asked.

“I’m taking my chances,” Tolvern said. “I think it made a run for it. These guys in the battle station have us targeted, and that’s what’s got me worked up.”

“It’s an arsehole move,” Capp said.

“Not how I’d put it, but yes. Not exactly friendly. Maybe they’ll attack, maybe not, but I have no intention of rolling over and showing our belly in submission if they demand our surrender.”

“Aye, Cap’n.” She got on the com link.

But when they tried to get away, they found they were caught in some sort of gravity net that disabled the plasma engine. Before they could find a way to hack loose, a tether crossed the thousands of kilometers between the base and the navy cruiser and affixed itself to the hull.
Blackbeard
had machinery to cut loose from a boarding attempt, but of course Apex had disabled the machinery in the savage mauling.