Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) (21 page)

Tolvern called the gunnery. “Barker! Do you see it?”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Shove some torpedoes right down its gullet.”

“Already on it.”

Blackbeard
launched four torpedoes and a pair of missiles. The belly cannon fired while the main cannon were being reloaded. Other ships in the fleet seemed to spot the enemy weakness at the same time. Two destroyers drew dangerously close and lashed at it with their heaviest guns. The explosions continued to grow in the weakened spot in the enemy hull, but not fast enough.

“Thirty seconds to collapse of the gravity shield,” Jane said.

And then
Dreadnought
fired another broadside. Hundreds of tons of kinetic fire smashed into the enemy’s wound. A massive jet of flame and debris burst from the ship’s guts. A secondary explosion burst a hole in its spine. The destroyers kept hitting the wounded ship even as debris came blowing past them.

“Get away from there,” Tolvern said. “Move.”

Blackbeard
and the other ships pulled back from the self-destructing harvester ship.

“Five seconds to collapse of gravity shield.” Jane paused. “Gravity shield now offline.”

Almost instantly, the lances and spears of the enemy fleet began to move. At the same moment, another explosion burst out the side of the harvester ship, and a full cruiser worth of debris spewed into space. Such was the force of the explosion that it shoved the massive ship toward Singapore, where it began to lose altitude.

Soon, it hit the upper atmosphere, where it caught fire. It descended into the night sky over the planet like a flaming sun. Cheers erupted across the bridge. Hugs, back slaps. Nyb Pim let out a high, keening hoot, a song of celebration.

Tolvern allowed them a moment to enjoy their victory, then addressed the tech console. “Give me an active sounding. I want to know where all of those ships are. It’s time to do mop up, and I don’t want to miss anyone.”

A flashing light alerted her of at least one enemy of immediate concern. One of the spears—itself a match for a cruiser—came in with energy weapons pounding. They lit up the starboard and deck shields. But McGowan’s cruiser was at hand, and swung in from the opposite side of the enemy ship. The spear soon fled under the combined assault of
Blackbeard
and
Peerless
.

The battlefield had devolved into a series of struggles. Here a pair of destroyers and a frigate fought two lances, while a few thousand miles away, three corvettes broke apart a gathering hunter-killer pack. The cruisers paired up, sometimes with torpedo boats, to target and destroy stray lances.
Dreadnought
caught the spear
Blackbeard
and
Peerless
had damaged earlier and tore it to shreds.

Meanwhile, something curious was happening with the final group of lances and spears. They’d loitered a few tens of thousands of miles away as events played out following the use of the eliminon battery. It made perfect sense that they’d stayed out of range, but the gravity shield was down and they hadn’t yet joined the fight in orbit around Singapore. This force held sixteen lances and four spears, plenty of firepower to tip the battle. Instead, they lingered outside the battlefield, doing nothing as the combined human and Hroom fleet mauled the surviving lances and spears in orbit.

“Look, Cap’n,” Capp said. “Some of ’em are getting away.”

Several lances were fleeing the battlefield and joining this final group of enemies. Others tried the same thing, but were blocked before they could reach jump speed, and forced to fight.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll finish these off, then take care of what’s left.”

The fleet had been in combat for several hours. A torpedo boat had been destroyed, and several other ships had taken significant damage.
Zealand
’s guns were savaged, her torpedo bays melted into slag. She’d been forced to draw in next to
Dreadnought
for protection, and couldn’t even manage to launch missiles.

But in addition to the fiery death of the harvester ship, another dozen or more lances and spears had been completely destroyed or rendered helpless, and most of the rest had suffered under Royal Navy fire. Even if Drake were to order a retreat, the battle would be counted as a success, but things were rapidly progressing to a full rout, the enemy annihilated. Total victory was at hand.

“More ships, sir,” Smythe said, “and . . . oh, no.”

The main screen showed
Richmond
. Caites was mauling one lance and holding off another. Tolvern had ordered some of Bravo’s ships to join her in the fight, but they weren’t yet in position.

Smythe changed the view to the four hunter-killer packs that been milling outside the battlefield. For a moment, Tolvern blinked, confused. The number of enemies had grown, and not just from the lances fleeing to join its protection, but from several other ships that hadn’t been on the scans earlier.

And then, Tolvern spotted what had drawn Smythe’s alarm. Coming up from behind was not one, but two harvester ships.

Chapter Eighteen

Drake stared at the viewscreen. The crew on the bridge followed his lead, staring and quiet. Simon, the ship’s AI, broke the silence. He warned of damage to the hull and shields. A light blinked on Drake’s console, with a faint, but insistent chime, and there was a throbbing sound like water hammering in a rusty pipe that radiated up through Drake’s feet.

Two more harvester ships. The first was long and stretched, with a bulbous tail and three short arms up front that looked more like scythes than grasping tentacles. The second was shorter in the body, but with eight long, hooking arms. Jagged spikes ran along the inside of each arm. A large protuberance glowed like a blue eye where the arms met the body.

The harvester ships came directly at
Dreadnought
. Several Albion vessels moved to intercept. The first to arrive was Catherine Caites, at the helm of
Richmond
, which had been battling a pair of lances. Captain Woodbury on
Repulse
moved to join her. A pair of corvettes, a destroyer, and two torpedo boats rushed into the fight.

Caites and her support ships were too late to intercept the first harvester, which barreled forward, but they managed to block the second, larger one. The two cruisers pulled about and delivered a broadside, while other Albion warships fired missiles and torpedoes.

This second harvester pulled up and let loose a fireworks display of flashing energy weapons and exploding bomblets. One of the destroyers fell into its direct line of attack. Explosions rippled along the hull and tore it to pieces moments later.

The massive eye swiveled. A beam of green light stabbed out and caught
Richmond
in its glare. The light seemed to spread over the hull, but it didn’t stop the cruiser, which kept pounding away, now with torpedoes, as it reloaded cannon. The other ships hammered away, but concentrated fire from the harvester forced the corvette and the torpedo boats to withdraw.

“Caites, sir,” Lloyd called from the tech console.

The woman appeared on the viewscreen. Her eyes were flashing and a flush had come to her fair complexion. Her lips pinched together, and the furrow of her brow gave her an eager, almost wolfish look. This was Catherine Caites in her element.

“I’ll hold this monstrosity here,” she said, “but I need more firepower. Give me Task Force Bravo, and by God we’ll tear this thing apart.”

Drake glanced at his first mate. “Manx, call Tolvern. Get Bravo into the fight.” Then, back to Caites. “What the devil is that energy beam?”

“Don’t worry about that, Admiral. Looks like the tyrillium is spreading it over the hull, diffusing whatever effect it may otherwise have.”

“Yes, but what
is
it?”

“Some old weapon, no doubt, maybe—”

She never finished the sentence. Instead, her eyes rolled back in their sockets, and she slumped over, then slid out of view. There was nothing left on the screen but a shot of her captain’s chair. Nobody else took over in her place.

Alarmed, Drake shunted her feed to one side and put the larger view back front and center.
Richmond
sat motionless, weapons dead. No evasive maneuvers, no attempts to fight back as the harvester ship turned toward her. All the while it kept that green light focused on the cruiser.

As Drake watched in horror, the harvester stretched its arms and grabbed
Richmond
. The serrated edges tore into her hull, cracking through armor, ripping open bulkheads and bombproofs. When the cruiser began spewing gases, the arms turned the ship around and pressed it against a mouthlike aperture, where it seemed to be disgorging something into the captured warship.

“Admiral!” Caites cried. She was lifting herself back into her seat. “We’re being boarded.” She touched her ear. “Blow us up! For the love of God, Admiral, target
Richmond
! Don’t let them—”

Gunfire, screams. Smoke billowed across the screen, and Caites grabbed for her sidearm as she looked off to one side. The line went dead.

Hillary Koh was the first to speak. “May they rest with their ancestors.”

The harvester ship kept firing on its enemies even as it fed on
Richmond
and her crew. Torpedo boats charged in, trying to target the captured cruiser, as well as the “mouth” of the harvester, but the huge ship turned its back to jealously protect its prey, and destroyed one of the torpedo boats and wounded the other before they could get close.

The ships of Task Force Bravo arrived at the fight, led by
Blackbeard
and
Peerless
. They came alongside
Repulse
and fired broadsides. Another corvette arrived, followed by a destroyer and four torpedo boats. Shot after shot landed against the harvester, but it shrugged off the attacks from the smaller human ships. The Hroom sloops of war would soon join the fight, together with the rest of Task Force Bravo. Something had to get through the harvester’s defenses.

Meanwhile,
Dreadnought
was coming about to face the longer, more slender of the two harvesters, which had continued rolling toward the battleship, accompanied by lances and spears. A stout array of Royal Navy warships pulled alongside
Dreadnought
, including the final two cruisers and numerous smaller craft. Drake’s frigates launched a barrage of missiles, the first of which crashed into the approaching enemy fleet.

Drake took in the two battles playing out on the viewscreen. In the first, a single harvester, unsupported by any other Apex ships, was holding off three cruisers, seventeen sloops of war, three corvettes, three destroyers, half a dozen torpedo boats, and a missile frigate. More than holding them off, crushing them, in fact.

A destroyer fell under energy pulses to burn up in the atmosphere. Another torpedo boat exploded. The harvester cast aside the gutted hull of
Richmond
and turned about, its eye looking for another victim.

That left
Dreadnought
and a powerful fleet of human warships against another harvester and thirty lances and spears. Drake didn’t think he could win his fight. He
knew
Tolvern couldn’t win hers.

They needed another blast from the eliminon battery, but that had been a one-time weapon. He didn’t even know where it had gone to after firing. Perhaps it was still floating away in space, or maybe the enemy had destroyed or captured it.

“Manx, make the call,” Drake said. His voice sounded hollow. “Sound the full retreat.”

#

Tolvern was fighting for survival when Drake gave the orders to retreat. Relief mixed with frustration to hear the news.

Even with such a powerful force at her disposal, her attacks had turned desperate. Whoever the harvester targeted died. She ordered her ships to fall back and join
Dreadnought
, but it was easier to give the order than to execute it.
Blackbeard
and her supporting craft couldn’t disengage from the enemy, who pursued them toward the fleet.

Only Apex greed saved them. A destroyer from Task Force Alpha, HMS
Gibraltar
, had joined Bravo after getting separated from
Dreadnought
. When
Gibraltar
fired one more salvo before retreating, the harvester’s eye turned on it. Green light bathed the destroyer. The destroyer attempted to twist away, then stopped maneuvering, as if the crew had vanished or fallen asleep.

Samborondón. The giant striding birds.
 

They’d cast a similar light on their victims, who’d fallen to be hoisted up by the birds’ tentacles. This must be the same tech.

The harvester loomed over
Gibraltar
and seized her in its serrated arms, then ignored the rest of Tolvern’s ships as it ripped open its prey. That gave Tolvern a chance to escape with the bulk of her task force intact.

Dreadnought
hadn’t yet fought clear of her battle, either. Lances and spears charged in, taking heavy damage even as they kept forcing Drake’s battleship back to fight the second harvester. The human ship launched a ferocious counterattack, but couldn’t do enough damage to the enemy to break off the engagement. The harvester was closing ranks, perhaps to bring its own paralyzing beam into play.

Capp was apparently thinking the same thing. “Smythe, target that bloody eye.”

“There isn’t one, sir,” Smythe said. “Or it’s shielded.”

“Then hit the tentacles,” Capp said. “Blow ’em off.”

Free of her entanglements,
Blackbeard
roared into the fight between
Dreadnought
and the harvester, her deck gun targeted straight ahead. Lenol Tyn’s sloops came in after. Serpentines bombarded the enemy ship. Unfortunately, the colonel was too slow to pull up her forces. The harvester raked the sloops with pulses, and one exploded. Another took damage, and was hunted down by a lance, which stabbed it repeatedly with fire until it suffered explosive decompression. A final, almost casual shot from the lance tore it in two.