Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) (12 page)

They had to be manned vessels, though, not merely floating bombs. Each ship was smaller than one of the navy’s own torpedo boats, but in sheer numbers, they’d almost doubled the size of the enemy fleet.

Only four lances and a spear remained near the harvester. The rest of the enemy ships, including the newly launched craft, formed a shell around the Kettle and its ring.

“I have no idea what they’re up to,” Tolvern said, “but I like our chances. No way they can cover it all. We’ll make a couple of maneuvers to throw them off our trail, and smash right through to the sentinel.”

“They got a lot more ships now,” Capp said.

“I’d rather face sixty enemies under the sentinel’s guns than thirty out here on our own.”

The Hroom high priestess called
Blackbeard
when they were less than an hour from reaching the outermost of the enemy’s forces. Dela Zam still wore her iron necklace, but had added an iron circlet to her brow.

“Where is the general?” Tolvern asked.

“I told you already—”

“But now you’re wearing his crown.”

“For expediency,” Dela Zam said. “When the battle is over, I will return it.”

“Did you depose him?”

“Of course not.”

“So he’s still in command?”

“I told you,
I’m
in temporary command. But I’m only honoring the general’s wishes.”

Tolvern narrowed her eyes, studying Dela Zam for signs of deception. If the priestess had been human, Tolvern would have guessed an outright lie. Mose Dryz might even be dead. But a Hroom would have either admitted it or refused to answer.

“Did the general tell you to call, or is this your own initiative?”

“I’m calling out of courtesy,” the priestess said.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Nor do I intend to.”

“So, your own initiative. Go on.”

Dela Zam made an annoyed sounding hum. “I see your stratagem, Jess Tolvern. I know what you hope to accomplish.”

“That’s obvious enough. Stay alive until Admiral Drake and Captain McGowan join the battle.”

“In that case, your goals and mine have diverged.”

“You don’t want to stay alive? I thought that was the noncontroversial part.”

“My goal is victory. Yours is to live to fight another day.”

“I’m kind of aiming for both of those things,” Tolvern said. “Anyway, the best path to both win the battle and to stay alive is to concentrate all of our firepower, and that means hiding under the battle station’s guns and waiting for the boys to show up to the party.”

“The harvester ship is almost unguarded. It is the perfect opportunity to strike a blow.”

“Even if it
was
unguarded, you just broadcast your intentions.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Tolvern was losing her patience. “You’re going to form your ships into either the claw formation or the wedge and make a run at the harvester. Which, being roughly as powerful as HMS
Dreadnought
, and commanded by someone with far more imagination than yourself, will gobble up your fleet and spit out the bones.”

Again, Dela Zam said nothing to either confirm or deny.

“If you do this,” Tolvern said, “you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“The god of death will guide my hand as I obey His will. And if His will is that I die, so be it.”

“Let me talk to the general. I don’t care how sick he is, I want to talk to him.”

“This is your warning, Jess Tolvern. Make your plans without taking into account the Hroom ships.”

Chapter Eleven

Drake was so focused on the action developing on the viewscreen that he didn’t notice Hillary Koh’s agitation until Lloyd sent him a message bringing the woman’s behavior to his attention. Drake looked up to see Koh pacing in front of the tech console, gnawing on the tip of her thumb and muttering to herself as she spared glances at her terminal.

Drake called her over. Her eyes were bloodshot and her hair a mess, as if she’d run her hands through it too many times.

“When did you last see your bed?” Drake asked.

“I don’t remember. Yesterday, I think?”

“And if I query Simon, will the computer tell me you were actually asleep, or were you still interfaced to your work station?”  

She glanced up at the screen, as if something had happened in the five seconds since she’d last checked.

“Koh, look at me.”

“Don’t send me off, sir,” she said. “I’ve got to see how it plays out.”

“Sentinel 3 has been in battle before,” Drake said. “Your friends survived that encounter, and they’ll survive this one.”

“Those are boarding craft the harvester launched,” she said. “Thirty of them. They’re going in hard, and they’re going to take prisoners.”

“Only if they can get past Li’s plasma emitter and the eliminon battery. And only if
Blackbeard
and the sloops don’t knock them around.”

“You said yourself you don’t have much faith in the Hroom.”

“No, Koh, I do not. But they don’t have to win the fight, only stay alive.” He raised his voice. “Díaz, how long until we reach the battlefield?”

“Give me one moment and I’ll have your answer, sir,” the pilot responded.

“They’re not invincible, Koh,” Drake said. “This is a smaller force than we faced among the refugee fleet.”

“We didn’t fight a harvester, sir. With all due respect, neither of us know how we’ll fare.”

“No, we don’t. But you pacing and worrying is not going to tilt the balance.”

“Admiral?” Díaz said. “Five hours and forty-seven minutes until we join the fight.”

Drake nodded an acknowledgment, then continued with Koh. “My better judgment says you need ten hours off shift, completely disconnected. Dinner, a hot shower, sleep. But given the circumstances, five hours will do. No,” he added as she sputtered a response, “it doesn’t matter what
Blackbeard
and the sloops do, because you can’t affect it. Koh, I—”

An exclamation from the tech console drew their attention. The enemy ships had been spreading out for the past couple of hours, but now they were on the move.

A dozen lances leaped toward the gas giant’s ring. They immediately began firing at a spot in the ring, which lit up on the sensors as it returned fire. Twisting missiles raced out from the battle station, followed by globs of green fire from the plasma ejector. The plasma engulfed two lances and destroyed them. Other enemy ships squirmed to evade. Several more lances appeared from around the back side of the planet.

Simultaneously, the harvester—well beyond the action—fired a burst of missiles and smaller bomblets. They raced toward the battlefield, followed by a second, even larger wave. There were so many missiles, bombs, and ships, the sensors struggled to track them all.

Meanwhile, the small boarding craft disgorged by the harvester a few hours earlier suddenly veered toward the planet. The battle station was delivering a beating to the attacking lances, but the enemy was firing so many shots from so many directions that some of them got past the station’s baffles. One penetrated the shields on the outer ring, and a bombproof burst.

“Get him off your back!” Koh cried, as if Li could hear her. “He’s going to tear you apart.”

One of the sentinel’s batteries found the offending lance and attacked it with a barrage of bombs. Drake expected the lance to flee, but it sat there trading blows even as the Singaporeans improved their targeting and hammered until it blew apart.

Koh gasped in relief and staggered for the nearest seat.

“That ship could have got away,” Manx said. “It sacrificed itself.”

“They’re like wasps,” Drake said. “The life of a drone is worth nothing, so long as it gets in its stings before it’s swatted.”

Indeed, enemy lances were dying right and left, even though few of them landed the same kind of punishment before the battle station destroyed them. So far, eight down, with a ninth making a futile charge and seeing itself knocked out of the action. And the Singaporeans hadn’t yet fired up their eliminon battery, or needed to.

Even as he knew that all of this was preliminary jostling, Drake was mentally recalculating his odds. The more enemy ships that fell, the better his chances of taking out the harvester with
Dreadnought
. Wipe away the support vessels and go straight at it. As for Sentinel 3, it was making a good accounting of itself, but its danger had only just begun.

Koh sprang to her feet again and came over to stand next to Drake. She stood there, running her hands again and again through her hair.

Eight more lances jumped in. At the same time, the harvester’s missile barrage swarmed the battlefield. Commander Li had his hands full trying to fight off this attack and keep after the initial wave of lances.

“The eliminon battery,” Koh murmured. “Don’t wait too long.”

Drake started to think the same thing. The boarding craft came racing in. The sentinel fired the plasma ejector again, burning up one of the smaller ships. Two more fell to bomblets. These boarding craft had poor shielding and to hit them hard was to destroy them. But the boarding craft were only one more thing on a battlefield now littered with ships and weapons targeting the sentinel. Too many weapons were penetrating the battle station’s fire.

“Here comes
Blackbeard
,” Drake said.

“It’s too late,” Koh said. “They’re going to get through.”

Drake wasn’t so sure. Commander Li only needed to hold on a few more minutes and he’d get relief. It would be hard to watch Tolvern wade into the middle of that mess, but her presence was the only thing that could turn the tide.

General Mose Dryz’s sloops had formed a claw as they followed Captain Tolvern onto the battlefield. Now, the entire formation of twenty-two Hroom ships sheered off to
Blackbeard
’s starboard. The Albion cruiser was alone as she came at the sentinel.

“Wait, where are they going?” Manx asked. “Why would Tolvern send them off?”

“It’s not her. It must be the general.” Drake suppressed a groan. “I thought he had more sense than that.”

It was the same old story. Hroom commanders might behave strategically leading up to a battle, but once the fighting started, they wanted to land a deciding blow. And that was against the harvester in this case. The entire fleet of sloops made a beeline straight at the Apex mother ship. It didn’t run, and none of the ships mauling the battle station returned to defend it. The harvester held only a small force of three lances and a spear in reserve, which now moved to intercept the general’s fleet.

Still heading toward the sentinel,
Blackbeard
fired missiles as she entered the battlefield. Torpedoes followed, a barrage of Mark-IVs and Hunter-IIs.

Drake clenched his teeth.
Dreadnought
and the rest of his fleet were still four hours from the fight. Captain McGowan’s task force was another eleven hours behind that. Neither Albion fleet had the ability to influence the battle.

Sentinel 3 kept taking blows. It destroyed another lance, but there were too many enemies. The eliminon battery—why wasn’t Li firing it?

One of the boarding ships struck the station. A second hit moments later. They buried halfway in. The battle station kept fighting, knocking down more boarding ships one after another, but it couldn’t stop them all. A third hit, then a fourth.

“No,” Koh said. “Please, no.”

Blackbeard
, fighting off her own enemies, took out a lance with torpedoes and rolled to present a broadside as more boarding ships came at the station, escorted by two more lances. The cruiser spewed metal, destroying two boarders and wounding a lance. The rest of the lances fell back, but more boarding ships kept hitting the battle station and lodging.

At the same time this was happening, the Hroom sloops had met the enemies flying out from the harvester. The general’s forces divided in two, with roughly half breaking from the claw to face the spear and lances, while the others kept their hard charging attack of the harvester.

“Oh, that will help,” Manx said sarcastically. “What are the odds a single sloop escapes? Ten percent? Give them one pass and they’ll be finished.”

Drake stared, wondering if he was watching the last great Hroom fleet go to its doom like a mass of cavalry charging fixed machine gun positions. For centuries Albion had faced waves of sloops like the one opposing the harvester. More often than not, the humans had thrashed them, winning war after war. But the Hroom Empire was vast—or had been—and a few years or decades later, there would be another big war, with similar results.

Now, the empire was in tatters, its economy collapsed. Death cultists tore it apart from within, sugar addiction continued to rage, and Apex enjoyed an all-you-can-eat buffet from the flanks. The once proud Hroom shipyards lay in ruins, abandoned or reclaimed by jungle. When Mose Dryz’s fleet died, there might never be another.

Lances pierced a sloop with energy weapons. Gas jetted from numerous wounds, and it limped away. Another took fire to its midsection and exploded. A third sloop came under attack and fled, pursued by a lance. The sloops launched serpentines, but none seemed to hit their mark.

Meanwhile, the harvester targeted sloops from the second force as it charged in. The general, or whoever was commanding the attack, launched waves of serpentines, which themselves spewed dozens of tiny bomblets. They splashed against the harvester’s shields, but did little visible damage.

One sloop went down, then a second. The ten that charged the harvester quickly turned into eight, then seven. A hollow pit formed in Drake’s stomach. Such wreckage, such waste.

“You were wrong, Manx,” Drake said. “It’s going to take
two
passes before they all die. Maybe even three.”

“They’ve still got to escape out the other side,” Manx said. “Looks like they’re going to ram it.”

“My God, I think you’re right.”

All sloops had a tyrillium ram on the nose, but ramming as a tactic hadn’t worked in generations, not since Albion altered their armor and the configuration of their bombproofs. Maybe it would work against a smaller ship, like a torpedo boat, but that would just trade one ship for another, with the advantage to the Royal Navy. Against the harvester ship, ramming was foolhardiness in the extreme.