The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

Li looked stunned. “Then they’ll slaughter us all.”

“That is what the buzzards do, Commander. They are apex predators. That is why they must be fought and defeated. They devour the weak, they only respect strength. They once fought a brutal war against the Hroom Empire and vanished for generations after the Hroom fought them off. Now that the Hroom are weakened by decay, civil war, and sugar addiction, Apex has returned. That’s why they left Singapore alone for a while, because she fought them off, proved herself strong. Except that she wasn’t strong enough, and now she has been destroyed.”

“I know, but . . . harvested? Fifty million dead, fifty million more . . .
harvested
.”

The three Singaporeans were still gaping, visibly trying to come to grips with this, when Smythe looked up.

“I’ve got the bridge, Captain. Nyb Pim is at the helm.”

“Put him on.”

The Hroom’s long purple face brought excited remarks from the Singaporeans, and their English vanished into a stream of Chinese. Had they ever actually seen a Hroom before? Certainly, they didn’t seem to expect one on the bridge of the Albion warship.

“Apparently, my presence has caused a stir,” he said in his high, almost hooting voice. This brought fresh exclamations.

“Never mind them. What about the ship?”

“Barker wants to test the remaining engine. Unless the Singaporeans have a spare one lying around that we could borrow.”

“Doubtful, Pilot. Highly doubtful.”

“More critically, Barker says we need CO2 scrubbers as soon as possible, unless they have an atmosphere converter they want to loan us.”

Tolvern let out her breath. “Let’s say neither of those things are possible for now. I’m working on it, but we’ve got some oxygen issues on our end, too.”

“I see. This will pose difficulties.”

“I am aware of that, Pilot. What else?”

“Structurally, we can fight, as soon as we’re untethered and free from the gravity net. But we can only fly, and our shields are almost nonexistent. The first enemy salvo will destroy us. We will also be vulnerable to boarders. Apex is likely to notice that and send them over.”

“I need armor,” she said.

“Every available patch has been put to use. It is only enough to stop the leaking.”

“We might be able to help you with that,” Li said.

She turned to him. “What do you mean, might?”

“I mean we have spare armor, enough to reinforce your ship. Unfortunately, it is down in the armory.”

“In other words, your sister has it.”

“Yes, Captain Tolvern.”

She turned back to her call with Nyb Pim. “Tell Barker I’ll do what I can. No oxygen for now—he’d better figure it out on his own. Barring that, I suggest you all take a deep breath and hold it.”

“Is that a joke, sir?”

“Gallows humor. Anything else? We’re still knee-deep in it over here.”

“Yes, there is one other thing, Captain,” the Hroom said. “As the enemy knows exactly where we are already, I have taken the liberty of composing a subspace message for the Admiralty. It would tell Admiral Drake of our predicament, our contact with the Singaporeans, the fight with the Apex lances, and our desperate need for assistance.”

“Send it.” Tolvern gnawed on her lip. “If the fleet is where I think it is, it will take them weeks to reinforce us, and I’m pretty sure we don’t have that kind of time. But I suppose we’d better make the attempt, if only to pass along the info before we die.”

She wished she could tell Albion more. Unfortunately, the power demands required to send a subspace message between systems were such that the message must be stripped to the bare minimum. No chance to share all the helpful information discovered, from the Apex tactics to the strange organic substance that had been spit onto the ship’s hull. Not to mention the treasure trove of information she expected to get from Commander Li and his crew.

Assuming they could avoid suffocating, dying at the hands of mutineers, and being served up at a queen commander’s banquet.

Well then, Captain Tolvern. You’ll just have to stay alive, won’t you?
 

When the call with her pilot ended, she got an update from Carvalho, who had a solution to his manpower shortage. He wanted permission to arm some Singaporeans to help him push against the mutineers. Not so many he couldn’t control them, about twenty or thirty. She approved his plan, but wanted the Singaporeans vetted with Hillary Koh, first, and had Swettenham and Smythe connect the two com systems together. Lowest priority contact only, secure channels.

Koh claimed she’d nearly cut the Sentry Faction out of the loop, but Tolvern wasn’t taking risks. The translation software employed by these people was so sophisticated that she could see scenarios in which Commander Li’s sister bluffed her way into giving dangerous orders to the crew of
Blackbeard
. What if she could mimic Capp’s York Town accent, or even speak like a Hroom? Tolvern had no intention of returning to
Blackbeard
to find Megat and the other prisoners freed and in command of her ship.

Once the thought entered Tolvern’s mind, she couldn’t shake it. She got back on the com to give instructions along these lines, just in case. Under no scenario were the prisoners to be freed. Any strange or unusual orders must come directly from her mouth, with Jane authenticating her voice.

“Can you bring up a base schematic?” Tolvern asked Koh. “Smythe, send her the positions of where Carvalho has his people. I need you to mark secure, unknown, and hostile regions of the base. And I want this map confidential, you understand?”

The base schematic came up. Smythe had been plugging in his translation software, and both English and Chinese were now used to indicate the various parts of the base. Well, something that contained a passing resemblance to English. There was “potency skillful” again, “element control,” and “suppression of fullness,” plus a few new ones, the most important of which was the quite accurately named “oxygen cleaning plant.”

“Give me a second, I’ll fix the bad translation,” Smythe said.

“Later. There are more urgent things, and I can figure it out for now.”

The colors on the schematic looked promising. The outer, thinner ring with its batteries and defensive structures was in blue—friendly territory—as were the radial arms to the thicker inner ring. From there, the command module was blue, as was the hexagonal eliminon battery on the underside of the base and most of the storage facilities and base living quarters. But a vast swath of the inner ring was yellow—unknown or uncontrolled—as well as numerous auxiliary structures, some of them half the size of
Blackbeard
.

And then, the red zones. The large, globular farms in the center—“alimentary natural” on the schematic—looked the most impressive, but the corridor running from there into the oxygen plant was red, as was the oxygen plant itself. The power plant was also red, and the nearby water and recycling plant was yellow, but only because its status could not be confirmed as in enemy hands. Koh assured him that it would flip red shortly.

“So we’ve got the command module and weapons,” Tolvern said, “and they have all the life-support systems.”

“Plus the armory,” Commander Li said, highlighting a small red zone near the farms.

Tolvern studied how it was connected to the rest of the base. “We could take it from here.” She pointed. “Or here, but I’m guessing it’s too late, and they’ve already emptied it of weapons. We have plenty of guns on
Blackbeard
to arm your people, but it will mean a firefight.”

“We can take ’em, no problem,” Capp said. She’d rolled up her sleeves to show off her lion tattoos. “We’ll wipe them out, just like we did those blokes in the engineering bay.”

“That was our turf, this is theirs. I expect more of a fight this time.” Nevertheless, Tolvern was considering. Move sooner, rather than later, and they’d have a better chance. “How would you do it, Capp?”

“Give me a couple dozen men, give Carvalho a couple dozen more, and we’ll hit them from two sides. Through them tunnels into the farms—Smythe, show them.”

When the tech officer highlighted the approaches to the farms, it did seem to show easy access from the blue sections of the base.

“We don’t need the food,” Tolvern said, “we need power and oxygen.”

“These ducts here lead to the recycling plant, right?” Capp asked.

Commander Li nodded. “Yes, that’s right. The farms generate lots of waste material and water, and that’s how we carry it out.”

“Get into the farms, and we get into the ducts and then to the rest of it,” Capp said. “That’s what it looks like to me.”

The two Singaporean engineers had a quick conversation in Chinese, with Koh eventually arguing down Swettenham, who seemed more cautious. She looked over.

“It would be easy enough to knock a hole in the pipe and let engineering figure out how to patch it up later,” Koh said. “It would be pretty foul down there once you got in, of course—that’s some nasty slop we’re sending to the recycling plant. But you’d have an open passageway, that much is true.”

“Slop don’t bug me none,” Capp said. “Me and Carvalho have waded through worse, and I’ll bet we find plenty of blokes to join us if it gives ’em a chance to do some fighting. You want to come along, Cap’n? You can do all the shouting and pointing, and we’ll do the shooting and killing. What do you think?”

“I can’t leave here, slop or no slop. Not with a subspace out to the Admiralty and
Blackbeard
being held together with epoxy and wishful thinking.”

Tolvern glanced at Li, who was watching her intently, clearly willing to let her take charge. She had to be in command, and it didn’t seem there was anyone else to do it. That meant staying in the command module, at least for now.

“I want thirty of your crew,” she told him. “They’ll go into the farms with my people and secure it after it’s taken. There are too many approaches, and it will be tough to guard them all. I can’t have Lieutenant Capp cut off from behind.”

“Of course, Captain Tolvern. My crew is your crew.”

Yes, Li was perfectly happy for Tolvern to take charge. And no doubt let her take the blame when things fell apart.

#

Mostly as a feint, Tolvern tried to contact Anna Li, head of the so-called Sentry Faction. Nothing but mutineers, really. Tolvern could negotiate a surrender if she were lucky, or at least waste the woman’s time while Capp and Carvalho got their forces organized and on the move.

But the Sentry Faction didn’t answer calls. Security cameras showed armed mutineers taking control of the tunnels leading from the farm, one by one, before the enemy finally shut down the feed against Koh and Swettenham’s attempts to keep it live. Capp’s forces moved into position earlier than expected, and after a brief but fierce firefight that left two
Blackbeard
crew wounded and three mutineers dead, kept a direct passage open to the farms.

Unfortunately, the element of surprise was lost. Capp made a move against the farms, trying to take advantage of her initiative, but the enemy repelled her. She gathered more forces and tried again.

Nyb Pim called the command module from
Blackbeard
during the subsequent skirmishes. “We have a subspace from the Admiralty, Captain. I have not read it yet.”

“Send it through,” Tolvern said.

Message received. Apex approaching. Reinforcements coming. Stay alive. AJD.
 

AJD – Admiral James Drake. Tolvern’s former commanding officer. Her heart quickened to read it, to know he was aware of her plight. Beyond that, the message was nearly in code, so brief she practically had to decipher it to extract any useful information.

Drake, like Tolvern, had assumed that the buzzards would intercept the heavily coded subspace messages. How they did it, nobody knew, but time and again they’d proven to have prescient knowledge. The Singaporeans were aware of the same vulnerability.

Apex may have the message, but they didn’t know the mind of James Drake like Tolvern did. She parsed each sentence to unpack its meaning.

Apex approaching.
 

The enemy was sending another force to attack the sentinel battle station, and somehow the Royal Navy knew, all the way to Drake himself.

Reinforcements coming.
 

Not “arriving,” not “on the way,” but “coming.” Was there a difference? Tolvern’s assessment was more uncertain on this score. Did it mean that Drake himself was coming? She assumed he was fifty or a hundred light years distant, at the helm of his flagship, the mighty battleship HMS
Dreadnought
, accompanied by a powerful force of cruisers, corvettes, and missile frigates. How many jumps until he arrived? Too many to make a difference. Far, far too many.

Stay alive.
 

It seemed simple enough, but again, she was left guessing. Was that nothing but “good luck!” or was he admitting his worry for her, his personal feelings coming through? No, she decided, it was neither of those things. Drake was telling her to run if she could, urging her to live to fight another day, even if Sentinel 3 were destroyed. Keep
Blackbeard
and her crew alive until Drake could join the fight.

“Send this response,” Tolvern told her pilot.

“Is a response necessary or helpful?”

“Yes, Nyb Pim, I think it is. We’re in a psychological war as much as anything.”

“I do not understand, but go ahead with the message, sir.”

Tolvern considered carefully. It was important to get the words just right.

“Reinforcements arrived. Captain McCreery’s vessel and task force. More forces requested urgently. Enemy has not yet appeared.”

“I am perplexed, Captain,” Nyb Pim said. “Captain McCreery was killed by the Hroom in the Battle of Red Haven.”

“Yes, of course. And we have no reinforcements, obviously.”

“Why would you send a deceptive message? Won’t the admiral be confused?”

Tolvern sighed, exasperated by the Hroom inability to dissemble, or even understand dissembling unless she spelled it out. It was like explaining a joke or a pun to a young child.