The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) (27 page)

But the clock was ticking. Tolvern felt it with every passing second, her thumping heart and the building nervousness in her gut marking the erosion of what precious moments remained.

In thirty minutes she had to be on board
Blackbeard
or they wouldn’t have time to run their diagnostics, bring up and test revamped weapons systems, engines, and other equipment that had been almost entirely offline for the past several days. Maneuvering around the battle station, as they’d done before launching the boarding rockets, was one thing. Accelerating into space, managing the gas giant’s gravity well, and performing evasive maneuvers while fighting Apex lances and spears was another thing entirely.

While Tolvern was still on the sentinel battle station, Barker and his crew kept hammering away to fix
Blackbeard
’s numerous deficiencies. They’d keep up their pace until the moment the ship pulled away, and later, in flight, for as long as the enemy would permit.

“I know you must think me a coward,” Li said as they got back on the lift to take them down to the next level of weapons.

Tolvern chose her words carefully. “No, I wouldn’t say that. You’re a cautious man, but that has its uses, too.”

“Feeble praise indeed.”

“Is it? Then let me make it stronger. Your battle station is in an excellent state of readiness considering how many years you’ve been waiting for combat. Your crew is older, maybe a little rusty from disuse, but game to fight. My main worry is how many of your crew are currently detained as mutineers. It leaves you shorthanded.”

“As are you.”

“True.” Tolvern managed not to grimace as she thought of the men and women she’d lost.

Eleven of them, which didn’t exactly leave her with a skeleton crew, but in long combat operations, the remaining men and women would struggle with exhaustion. They were already tired after several days of hard action. How would they hold up?

Li showed Tolvern the laser batteries, the bomb clusters, and the plasma ejector. This fired the green energy globules that
Blackbeard
had spotted during that initial engagement with the Apex lances. The ejector looked impressive in principle, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that would harm an Albion warship.

“Exactly the kind of weapon that our tyrillium armor can absorb without damage,” Tolvern said. “It’s why we’re armed with so many kinetic weapons.”

“Is your armor invulnerable to the pulse weapons of the enemy?” Li asked.

“Well, no.” She felt defensive admitting her weaknesses. “But the enemy doesn’t fire a standard energy weapon, and we were unprepared for it at first. We’re still working out countermeasures, to be honest.”

“This isn’t standard, either.” A hint of a smile touched the corner of Li’s mouth, evident pride. “We took in some Apex wreckage during the last war and reverse engineered it. You saw how it gives them fits.”

“You caught the buzzards by surprise. We’ll see what happens this time around.”

“You don’t like our chances, do you?”

Tolvern shook her head. “I don’t have to query our AI to get the odds against a fleet of that size. Ten percent? Five percent? Frankly, that’s the best-case scenario.”

“And if we do survive?” Li asked. “What happens then?”

“If there’s anything left of the battle station and enough of my ship to salvage, I’ll come back for more repairs. And we’ll hope to hold on until reinforcements arrive.” Tolvern gave him a sharp look. “Assuming the Singaporeans cooperate. Assuming you and your people don’t go crazy again after the battle.”

“Is that your fear?”

“One of them,” she admitted.

“I know my weaknesses, Captain Tolvern. I’ve dwelt on them over the years. Endlessly. I’ll hold my people together for this battle. After that—assuming we survive—I think it only best that I place myself under your command.”

She nodded, relieved. “I will pass your desire along to the Admiralty.”

“If what you say about Singapore is true, there’s no command structure left for me to report to. The best hope is to turn our equipment and personnel over to Albion and hope that you can somehow drive off Apex before the Singaporean people are extinct.” Li nodded. “To that end, I will keep no secrets from you. If there are any other sentinel battle stations, I will do my best to convince them to surrender to the Royal Navy of Albion.”

He said this with noticeable strain in his voice. What a blow to return from a long silence to discover that everything you’d fought for and lived for had been destroyed. Tolvern remembered the shattered expressions on Koh and Swettenham’s faces when they’d learned what had become of their home world. What had become of their friends, families, even the towns and cities where they’d been raised. A genocidal attack by a remorseless enemy that consumed everything it touched. Entire species, their planets laid waste, their people driven to extinction.

As humiliating as Li’s surrender must be, he was right, it was the only alternative. Tolvern took it for the great sacrifice that it was. All the same, this station might help her own people and home world survive the coming cataclysm.

Tolvern glanced toward the lift. “No secrets at all?”

“This way, Captain. I think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

They stepped onto the lift. Li hesitated with his hand above the palm pad that would authorize their final descent to the weapon system.

“Only five percent odds?” he asked.

“I was being generous, Commander. A single hunter-killer pack mauled a Punisher-class navy cruiser. Your battle station defeated two packs thanks to the element of surprise. This force is eleven hunter-killer packs, each with a spear and four lances. Plus the harvester ship. Fifty-six warships in all—Albion has never faced a fleet with that kind of strength.” Tolvern paused to let that sink in. “Five percent? No, I’d say more like one percent. Possibly some fraction of that.”

Li touched the pad, and the lift slid into motion. “We have a few tricks, Captain. Some might help you stay alive. But one is designed to fight the enemy, strength to strength. You’ll soon see what I mean.”

It was the mysterious superweapon. Never yet fired by the battle station, but when Li and the other Singaporeans spoke of it, confidence and pride came through in their voices.

You’d better be right or we’re all dead.
 

The doors opened. A blue light radiated out from the open room. Large columns pulsed with cool electrical arcs from the floor to a ceiling nearly twenty feet overhead. Li stood aside while Captain Tolvern stepped inside. A charge filled the air, raising the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. The room hummed with a resonance that sounded almost like a thrumming song, so deep she felt it in her bones. A faint, almost floral scent filled the air.

Li spread his arms. “Behold, the eliminon battery.”

-end-

Thank you for reading
The Sentinel
. The trilogy continues with book #2,
Dragon Quadrant
.
You can buy
it right here
, or you can read below to get a sneak peek at the bonus first chapter of the second book.

If you enjoyed
The Sentinel,
please consider leaving a review on Amazon to help others discover the series. In fact, if you email me a link to your review at [email protected], I’ll gift you a copy of the second book as my thanks.

To receive notice when my next book is released,
visit my web page to sign up for my new releases list
, and get a free copy of the first book of my fantasy series,
The Dark Citadel,
as a welcome. This mailing list is not used for any other purpose, and your email will never be sold or distributed.

From the Author:

If you are enjoying this trilogy after reading
The Starship Blackbeard Series
, welcome, and thank you for continuing with the story. If
The Sentinel
is your first introduction to my universe, I hope you’ll take a look at the earlier four-book series, beginning with
Starship Blackbeard
.

I hope to tell many more stories in this universe, as I’ve created a collection of characters, a history, and human and alien civilizations that have really captured my interest. At the same time, I’m annoyed as a reader when I start a story and it drags on and on and on into an endless series of books, and I’ll bet you are too. It’s frustrating as a reader, and it’s boring as a writer to keep writing the same thing over and over again.

Instead, my goal is to create interconnected series that can stand on their own. Read a three- or four-book series that represents a single story arc, and then you can pick up the other books when you have time without feeling like you’ve been left hanging. Of course, some story arcs are going to touch across multiple series, and I hope that readers will be intrigued enough to read them all. Isn’t that the dream of every author?

Meanwhile, since I know the ending of this book has left the story more unsettled than ever, here is the first chapter of book #2,
Dragon Quadrant
. I hope it sparks your interest!

Dragon Quadrant

by Michael Wallace

Chapter One

Captain James Drake opened his eyes and scanned the viewscreen. Searching. There was something urgent about the search, only he couldn’t remember what, not yet. His ship had just emerged from the jump point—he knew that much—but his head was aching, his thoughts scrambled, like he was hungover, half asleep, or both. Others groaned and cursed across the bridge. When Drake turned to see who was making the sound, it felt like a delay of several seconds before his head swiveled into place.

The enemy. Apex. Where are they?
 

It was the first stirring of coherent thought in Drake’s head. “Tolvern,” he said, trying to get someone else’s attention. No, that was wrong. “Nyb Pim, tell me—” Also, wrong.

This bridge was too large. Too many consoles, too wide. There were too many other officers around him, rubbing their temples and shaking their heads to clear them. Who the devil were all these people, and how had they got on his ship? Three ensigns lay slumped over the defense grid computer, still unconscious. Such a large defense grid—why did he need three computers?
Blackbeard
only—

Because Drake wasn’t on
Blackbeard
, that’s why, and he wasn’t a captain, either. He was now an admiral, and this was the battleship HMS
Dreadnought
, Malthorne’s old flagship and the most powerful warship in the Royal Navy. And his ship hadn’t jumped through alone. A large task force of cruisers, corvettes, missile frigates, and torpedo boats would shortly follow him through.

Bits and pieces were coming back to him, but the sense of urgency remained. This was no typical jump.

“Manx,” Drake said, turning to his first mate. Not Tolvern—she was elsewhere, if she was even still alive—but Henry Manx. He remembered now.

Manx sat at his console to the side of the admiral’s chair, his head drooping on his chest. He lifted it and stared groggily at Drake.

“Are you awake, Manx?”

Hesitation, then a nod. “I’m here, sir. Awaiting your orders.”

“Get me the gunnery. I want those cannon online at once.”

Manx greeted this order with a blank stare. Drake repeated it, and still Manx looked confused, as if he were listening to a man speak a foreign language and trying to puzzle it out. That initial response had only been a man talking in his sleep. Reflex.

“Manx?”

“I’m here, sir. Awaiting your orders.”

“You already said that.”

“Did I?”

Lieutenant Manx was a younger man, like so many others in Drake’s inner circle. The civil war had purged dozens of otherwise capable, experienced officers who’d proven themselves too craven to stand up to Admiral Malthorne and his bid for the throne. Manx, loyal and relentlessly competent, had enjoyed no shortage of opportunities for advancement. Moving from boatswain to defense grid specialist, he was one of few Drake had brought over from
Blackbeard
when taking command of
Dreadnought
.

“Get me the gunnery,” he repeated, more slowly this time. “I need our cannon online.”

“Our cannon? What about . . . engines? Comm . . . er, communications?”

“Get me the gunnery,” Drake repeated.

Manx blinked. “Yes, sir. Of course, the gunnery.”

Nothing else mattered if the guns were offline. Not the search for hostiles, not opening communication with the other ships in the task force. Not even whether or not to see if their allies were still alive. A nervous worry kicked at Drake’s stomach when he had this thought. It was finally a question with a real answer. They’d arrived. Things would happen quickly now.

Manx got on the com. He was halting, confused at first, and worse, there was no answer from either the gunnery or engineering. Drake’s head was still clearing, but he didn’t have the luxury to sit and watch his first mate’s struggles.

“Lloyd, I want a scan of the immediate area. Ellison, run diagnostics on communications. Do not open a channel to the other ships yet.”

Ensign Lloyd was recovering more quickly than Manx, but it took him a minute to bring the instruments online. Any active sensors had been shut down for weeks, purposefully turned off so someone wouldn’t accidentally run a scan while stunned from a jump. Silence was the fleet’s biggest advantage.

By now, Drake had recovered enough to remember almost every detail of their long, silent mission. The deception, the hiding. Running blind and mute.

The admiral’s chair had been Malthorne’s, and felt almost throne-like, contoured and heated for Malthorne’s old, aching joints. Raised slightly higher than the other chairs on the bridge, it lorded over the others like a throne. The whole bridge was opulent, like the foyer of a grand country estate, and next to the war room, Drake had his own private lift, which would carry him to even more opulent living quarters. All thanks to Admiral Malthorne and his vanity.