Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) (25 page)

Dreadnought
turned her guns on the nearest of the two harvesters, the short, bulky one. Both ships unleashed a devastating bombardment at the same time. The other harvester, still pulling back from the approaching star leviathan, turned as if to run away.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Tolvern said. “Get us in there and put a stop to that. Capp, call the gunnery. Ready a broadside on my mark.”

Blackbeard
led
Peerless
and
Repulse
in wedging between the longer harvester and the battle thundering opposite them. Tolvern couldn’t let that second harvester get at
Dreadnought
, which already had its hands full, and she couldn’t let it escape either. The three cruisers swung into a line and unleashed a coordinated broadside that struck the harvester amidships. Explosions rippled the surface, but there was little apparent damage, apart from bursting some of the bubble-like protrusions on the exterior.

The harvester was still trying to either join its companion or fight loose, and so its guns weren’t trained on the three cruisers. Even so, the attack it unleashed filled the sky with swarming bombs and flashes of energy weapons. Lights lit up on Tolvern’s console.

“Deck shields, sixty-two percent,” Jane warned. “Starboard shield—”

The AI’s report was a distraction, and Tolvern killed it. “Capp, roll us over. We can’t take any more damage on that side.”

The antigrav compensated instantly for the maneuver, but the whole battle looked upside down for a moment until the viewscreen readjusted perspective.

Repulse
had suffered even heavier damage in the exchange, and by the time the harvester’s weapons fell silent, she had lost her starboard shields. Woodbury was forced to withdraw behind the other two cruisers. He launched more torpedoes as he fell back.

The harvester renewed its devastating attack, but then
Pace
came screaming in to join the fight behind a wave of missiles and torpedoes. And she brought a guest. The guest was hungry, and naturally, wanted the biggest plate at the table.

The leviathan fired its spore cannon. The three Albion ships, more nimble, ducked out of the way, and the full brunt of the spores enveloped the harvester, expanding like masses of foam. They clogged the harvester’s engines and gummed its weapons. One gun battery had been firing, and now exploded as ordnance detonated in the tubes. The leviathan swung a long tentacle and snared the harvester, which blasted its guns in a desperate attempt to free itself.

There was cheering on the bridge, but it was short lived. Three tentacles now had the harvester, and dragged it right by
Blackbeard
, uncomfortably close.

“What’s wrong?” Tolvern asked sharply. “Why aren’t we moving?”

An urgent call came from engineering moments later. One of the plasma engines had taken spores and was offline. The other was sputtering. Tolvern shouted for them to shut it down entirely, to go dark, but it was too late. Another tentacle probed at the cruiser, and suddenly, there was a loud crash and warning chimes.

“Hull breach in the port shield,” Jane said.

The leviathan had them.

#

Dreadnought
faced a harvester ship.

“One-on-one,” Drake said, tone grim. “Unleash the fires of hell.”

His face was hot, and a bloodlust was throbbing in him that he’d never felt before. It left him almost lightheaded. All the anger, the frustration at the enemy—these merciless aliens who had slaughtered and devastated world after world—now came out. He wanted them dead. Exterminated.

Drake’s ships—his cruisers, corvettes, destroyers, missile frigates, and torpedo boats—were fighting on several fronts. Some slugged it out toe-to-toe. Others overwhelmed weaker foes or found themselves overwhelmed. On the whole, it was an evenly matched battle.

Tolvern was fighting alongside Woodbury and McGowan to hold off the other harvester as HMS
Pace
led the star leviathan onto the battlefield. The monster snared the harvester and struggled to haul it in.

That left
Dreadnought
and the second harvester hammering away at each other. The enemy thrashed Drake with energy pulses; he hit back with a ferocious barrage of missiles. The enemy responded with bomblets; he pounded them with torpedoes.

And all the while the harvester kept trying to get closer, to get the battleship in its gripping claws. Drake had no illusions what would happen. The buzzards would swarm into his ship, taking prisoners by the hundreds. Those claws would tear through shields and bulkheads and leave
Dreadnought
a gutted wreck.

They’d hit him three times with the green ray, and word came from the staging areas that marines newly thawed from stasis had collapsed when hit. But the inner parts of the ship were unaffected. The paralyzing ray wasn’t strong enough to fully penetrate a ship the size of
Dreadnought
. At least at this range.

“They’re drawing closer, sir,” Manx said. His voice was high and tight. “We can’t hold them off much longer.”

Drake paced the bridge. “Is the secondary battery ready? Good, turn us over and give them another blast.”

Dreadnought
rolled and fired the secondary battery. Moments later, the main battery was ready, and again they rolled. Drake delivered a full broadside. This time, the enemy ship was so close that the cannon struck a massive blow against shields that had already taken punishment.

But at the same time, Simon warned about damage to their own shields. The number four was down to an alarming seventeen percent, and two others weren’t much stronger.
Dreadnought
had delivered her own punishment, but the cursed enemy was still fighting.

“Oh, my God,” Manx said. “The leviathan has got Tolvern.”

Drake turned sharply toward a secondary screen, where the tech crew had been following the leviathan. The creature had the other harvester and drew it struggling toward its mouth. But another tentacle had snared
Blackbeard
, and was dragging it in, too.

He cursed inwardly, but didn’t have time to worry. Not with events so close at hand turning critical.

“Stay focused, Lieutenant. I want another missile barrage on my mark. Lloyd, get me countermeasures on that main enemy—”

Drake lost his words. His knees wobbled, and he was faint, as if he’d stood too quickly, though he’d already been on his feet. He grabbed for the armrest to catch himself before he fell.

The green ray. They hit us. Closer range, and it got through.
 

The sensation passed in an instant, but when he looked up at the viewscreen, the harvester was lunging.
Dreadnought
was slow to react. Long, biting arms loomed.

A terrific crunch. Alarms everywhere.

#

The spores hadn’t destroyed
Blackbeard
’s engines, only gummed them up. They were still burning hot. Tolvern shouted down anyone who started to panic, ordered the engines flared, and was relieved when the flare cleared out the spores. She ordered engines turned against the leviathan.

“We’ll burn our way out.”

It was no good. The leviathan’s tentacle was impervious to the heat and kept drawing them in. Missile fire only encouraged the thing, and she couldn’t get turned around to hit it with a broadside.

Capp rushed off, shouting into her com link for Carvalho. Assault crews had been on hand to guard against attempts by enemy boarding parties, and they were now needed to cut off that tentacle before more of them snared the ship.

“Warning,” Jane said. “Inner bulkhead breached. Warning, inner bulkhead—”

The computer’s voice cut out. The entire com link went down, and there was nothing but static, like the crash of surf against the shore.

The bridge shuddered. The wall near the war room exploded, and what looked like a black snake as thick as a tree trunk plunged into the bridge. Dozens of tiny tentacles uncoiled from the larger one. They grabbed at consoles and began tearing them apart.

It’s over. We’re dead. Eaten by a star leviathan.
 

These thoughts flickered through Tolvern’s mind, but already she was moving. She drew her sidearm and sprang across the room, followed by her crew. The bridge rang with the report of gunfire, deafening in the small space. The massive tentacle absorbed the gunfire.

Nyb Pim tossed aside his gun and drew a hand cannon. “Stand back!”

He didn’t have a chance to fire before the tentacle suddenly withdrew, snaking back the way it had come. It left wreckage in place of the door to the war room. The war room itself was obliterated, and beyond that lay a hole to the corridor on the other side.

There was still artificial gravity. The air was moving, but not gushing out, which meant that the hull breach wasn’t critical. Not yet, anyway. Some fail-safe airlock had closed, thank God.

“What happened?” Tolvern said. “Where did it go?”

The gunfire in the enclosed space had left her ears ringing, and she could barely hear her own voice. The others stumbled toward their consoles. Someone sprayed retardant to put out a fire. Smythe flicked switches on the wall to bring in auxiliary power.

The com link was on, and voices shouted. She called engineering. Someone answered, but she wasn’t sure who. Maybe Barker, possibly Rodriguez. She told him to get all crew to sealing the breach.

Miraculously, Lomelí and Smythe got the defense grid computer up, and then used it to simulate the wrecked tech console. The viewscreen came back up and showed the source of their salvation.

The harvester was fully in the grip of the leviathan’s tentacles and struggling madly. The leviathan had released
Blackbeard
to concentrate on its struggling prey. Tolvern’s cruiser drifted away, engines sputtering.

The harvester was firing with all its weapons at the leviathan, which was several times larger and unaffected by the bombardment. But the harvester’s bulwark-tearing arms sawed and ripped at the leviathan’s tentacles, and this seemed to cause the monster real pain. The more arms the harvester hacked off, the more eagerly the creature drew it in. At last, the two were face-to-face. The harvester grabbed and fought, while the leviathan probed and tore and tried to get the ship into its mouth.

The scene was riveting, and Tolvern couldn’t look away. It was like a giant squid fighting a shark. In this case, the squid was going to win.

Several small ships squirted out of the harvester—buzzards, fleeing the scene—together with one larger ship that looked like a spear. They raced from the battlefield, ignored by the leviathan.

And then the leviathan got its mouth over the grasping arms. They disappeared into the creature’s maw, followed by the front end of the ship. Then it was halfway down, and soon, the end tip was disappearing inside as well. The leviathan’s tentacles waved about. Some nudged tentatively toward
Blackbeard
, even as the creature bunched and twisted, clearly still fighting with its supper, only now on the inside.

Tolvern called engineering again. This time, her ears were working better, and she was sure it was Barker who answered.

“You’d better get those engines online,” she said, “or we’re the next meal.”

The engines flared to life.
Blackbeard
eased away. She left a trail of debris and leaking plasma in her wake. But she was alive. By all that was good and right in the universe, she had survived the fight.

#

Voices through the com. Royal Marines, screaming of buzzards breaking into the loading bays, into engineering, into the power plant. Fighting on all fronts as the enemy penetrated
Dreadnought
.

A man came onto the com link, high and excited. “Admiral! My God, the buzzards have broken through, they’ve—”

His voice broke into a scream, and the line went dead. Drake cut communications to the marines. Whatever happened out there, it was distracting him from his duties.

He calmly drew his sidearm and rose. “Lloyd, Díaz, Ellison, guard the door. Not you, Manx, stay where you are. The rest of you at your posts. If they break through the marines, we’re not holding them off with a few pistols. The best we can hope for is to delay them a few seconds while the rest of us do our jobs.”

“What are your orders, sir?” Manx spoke through clenched teeth, but his voice was steady.

“You’ve still got the gunnery?”

“Yes, two full companies of marines are defending it. The crew are at their posts, no panic in the ranks.”

“Good. I want a full broadside on my mark.”

Drake eyed the viewscreen. The harvester loomed, only the mouth and those chomping arms in sight. Explosions battered its surface from incoming missiles and torpedoes fired by other naval forces trying to free
Dreadnought
. But nothing had yet done significant damage.

He checked his console screen, which showed action to his rear.
Peerless
and
Repulse
had fought clear of the lances, and
Blackbeard
rumbled in to join them. The three cruisers fired a volley of torpedoes. The range was so close that one missed its target entirely and struck
Dreadnought
’s number five shield. The others raced past and slammed into the harvester.

“Hold!” Drake said, waiting for the viewscreen to show the damage to the harvester.

Closer at hand, something exploded against the outer door of the bridge. Birdlike screeches came from the corridor outside. Humans, screaming. The three officers guarding the door shouted at each other to raise their courage. The door burst open. Gunfire.

Drake didn’t look, even as the fighting continued behind him. He stared at the viewscreen as the secondary explosions cleared across the enemy hull. There! Heavy damage where the cruisers’ torpedoes had cracked the harvester’s armor.

“Fire!”

Dreadnought
rolled from the force of its cannons. Shot tore into the wounded side of the enemy ship. The gunnery launched torpedoes and missiles and hurled out mines. One of the harvester’s arms snapped off, and alert crew in the engine room turned the engines to full thrust.
Dreadnought
broke free.