The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) (18 page)

“You still there, Captain?” the chief asked. Tolvern imagined his mustache twitching impatiently. “Apologies, but I don’t have time to wait on your musings.”

“Don’t cut the lines,” she said.

“Yeah, all right. Your call.” He didn’t sound pleased. “I think we’ll hold together without them, though.”

“It’s not that. Is Capp around? Is she busy?”

“She’s strapping into a powersuit, going to haul out some broken pipes. Are you cooking something?”

“Keep working,” Tolvern said. “I’ve got an idea that might buy you some more time.” She switched channels. “Capp, you there?”

“Aye, Cap’n.” A grunt, then, to someone else. “No, not like that! Gimme the bigger clamp. The big one! Cap’n, I say we haul out those Chinese and make them do the grunt work. And if one of ’em gives me any lip, I’ll clock him upside the head. In fact, I wouldn’t mind giving all those fools a good beating. Did you know they killed Yatz? That’s right, the new guy took a bullet. Eighteen years old, three months in the navy, and poor kid is already a goner. I’d like to take them Chinese and—”

“Shut up and listen, Capp.”

“Aye?”

“You’ll get your chance to land some blows sooner than you think. Are you up for some more fighting?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I am.” Capp sounded instantly alert. “I hate this messing around fixing stuff while we wait for ’em to smash it all up again. What are we talking about?”

Tolvern explained what she was thinking, and why. Capp listened silently at first, but when the captain got to the good part, she let out a whoop of joy.

“Damn right!” Capp said. She was already shouting at someone to get her out of the suit when the call ended.

Chapter Thirteen

Commander Li figured he’d be challenged as he led the Openers toward the command module. His sister had enjoyed plenty of time to consolidate her rule. Already, she’d taken over fire control, expelling several Openers and shooting two who resisted.

Li had four others with him, including Hillary Koh. All were armed, three with shotguns, one with a grenade launcher, and Li with a pistol he’d collected from his quarters. He’d entered his rooms, fearing that they’d been ransacked and his sidearm stolen from its cabinet, but they were untouched. Anna had been too busy to get to it.

The five of them curved around the outer ring from the detention block, startling two women who had a wall disassembled and were messing around in a suspicious way with wires and computer boards. The women ran for it, and Koh threatened to shoot them in the back if they didn’t stop. Li ordered Koh to hold her fire.

They soon discovered what the women had been about. The central transportation conduit was shut down, preventing an easy trip to the ring along the rail line. But nobody had yet disabled the service conduit, and they put on breathing masks and traveled in the airless expanse that passed behind the main conduit. Soon, they were on the inside, approaching the command module, and had yet to be challenged. Where was everybody?

“Hold here,” he told the others as the corridor bent around a corner. “Try Swettenham one more time.”

Koh had kept up a mumbled conversation through her com link as they picked their way through the battle station. She’d been taking and sending all manner of calls, organizing her own people for the uprising. Maneuvering them into parts of the base not yet under Anna Li and Jeremy Megat’s control.

Some of her expected allies had not answered, including Li’s second in command, Harold Ang, who’d apparently been sent out of the command module. Neither did Dong Swettenham, their only other man on the inside. Koh thought he’d already been purged, but Li had his doubts. Who would Anna replace him with? The best communications people were all Openers.

“Swett, are you there?” Koh tilted her head. She let out her breath in a hiss. “There you are! I thought they’d taken you out. Where the devil—? Yeah, uh huh.” She turned to Li. “He’s alive, he’s still on the inside.” Her face darkened as she listened on. “There’s been an attack.”

“On who?” Li demanded. “Us or them?”

Koh didn’t answer. She listened for a moment, nodding, as if Swettenham would be able to hear nods over the com. “Got it. We’re there in sixty seconds. Keep your head down when we enter.”

She turned to one of the others, the man named Hwang, whom Li had originally sent to the power plant to keep him out of the way. “You have that charge? Good. Swettenham disabled the blast doors, but he can’t get to the entrance—we’ll need to knock it down to get in.”

“Hold on,” Li said. “What’s going on here? I demand to know.”

Koh turned to him. Her gaze was calm, almost lizard-like with her eyes half-closed. Once again, he felt as though he were being pushed aside, and wondered if she would even bother to answer his question or would tell him to shut up and stay out of the way.

He’d be needed when she took over the base.
If
she took over the base, that was. If not, Anna had already shown herself happy to use him. Either way, Li would be a puppet for the winning side, to lend legitimacy while heads rolled, while rule was consolidated. Then tossed into the recycler with the rest of the surplus crew.

“You still want us to take the command module, right?” Koh asked. “Or did you change your mind? Don’t tell me you want to leave your sister in charge—she’ll get us all killed.” Koh studied his face as she said this. “Good. I didn’t think so, but for the love of your ancestors, can you stop being so indecisive?”

Koh stopped and looked at him expectantly, as if waiting for an answer. Li realized he was still in charge, thank God.

“Yes, carry on.”

“We’ll only have surprise for a moment—we’ve got to get in and take them out before we lose it.” Koh turned to Hwang and the others. “Ready? Anyone you see, you shoot, got it? On my count.” She gestured with her rifle. “One . . . two . . . go!”

They charged, and pistol in hand, Li ran after Koh and the others. They came around the corridor and down the final passageway. He’d expected a half-dozen of his sister’s people to be guarding the door, but there was only a single man with a shotgun. He was barely paying attention, and had only begun to lift his weapon before Koh and two of the others fired. Li brought his pistol up, but it was already over, the opponent slumped against the door in a smear of blood.

“Blow it down,” Koh told Hwang as she took the gun from the dead man’s hands and tossed it to Li. “Only one guard,” she added grimly. “Better than I hoped.”

Li holstered his pistol and gripped the shotgun, which was still warm with the dead man’s body heat. His heart was pounding, his stomach tight, but a strange calm had come over him. There were no decisions to be made here, only to follow Koh’s orders as she sent him into battle. He could do this, follow orders. Shoot and kill if needed. It was making the
decision
to kill that sent him spiraling into a black hole of doubt.

Meanwhile, Hwang unhooked an explosive charge about the size of his fist from his belt. He peeled off a piece of adhesive tape from the back of the charge and pressed it against the door. The charge wasn’t shaped properly, having been taken from a collection of mining supplies, but it was more than enough to knock down the door, assuming Swettenham had disabled the heavier blast doors on the other side. Otherwise, they’d be stuck outside.

Once the charge was in place they ran back the way they’d come to take cover. Koh wasted no time once they were around the corner, pulling her computer from her hip pocket and punching in the command. Li gripped the shotgun under his arm to free his hands, which he then slapped over his ears. A muffled explosion went off.

And then they were racing back down the corridor toward the command module. The blast had knocked a hole in the doors, a gaping, smoking opening big enough to slip through. Li was the last one inside. By the time he got inside the command module, a burst of gunfire was going off, someone was shouting, and fire suppression systems sprayed foam at the burning doorway. The air smelled of gunpowder, burning plastic, and chemical retardant.

“Hold your fire!” Koh shouted. “It’s over.”

That was unnecessary, as the shooting had already stopped. Li saw Swettenham through the clearing smoke, his back against the wall, holding his leg and groaning. The doors were open on the far side, and there was nobody else in the command module, either dead or alive.

Koh swung the gun over her shoulder and rushed to the downed man, cursing. “Who shot you? Which one of them did this?”

“You did, you idiot,” Swettenham said through clenched teeth.

Li went to Swettenham. He turned the man’s leg to look at the wound, which was on the inner thigh. “It’s not that bad.”

“Don’t touch me. Ow, please.”

Koh moved to the far door and poked her head out to inspect the far corridor. She glanced back and took in Swettenham’s wound. “A little higher and you’d be peeing sitting down.”

“You shot me! Weren’t any of you listening? I was yelling over the com. I tried to tell you—they all ran away when the blast went off. There was nobody else in here but me.”

“Sorry, that’s my fault,” Koh said. “I gave the order. Why didn’t you keep your head down like I told you?”

“I did! I was behind the commander chair. You were just shooting so wildly.” He said all this through gasps of pain.

“Some of the shot must have ricocheted,” Li said. “Come on, stand up, it’s not so bad. A few small pellets is all, and they hit on a bounce. You’re barely bleeding. We need you at the computers.”

Swettenham grimaced as Li got him to his feet and helped him into one of the chairs at the communications console. Koh took another seat. Hwang and the other three took position by the door, guns at the ready in case the Sentry Faction mounted a counterattack.

“I thought for sure Anna and Megat would put up a fight,” Li said. “Why did they run off?”

Swettenham’s face was regaining some of his color. “There were only three of them, they couldn’t put up a fight.”

“Who?”

“Your sister and a couple of others. Megat is gone—I’m sure he’d have stood his ground. What about the guard at the door?” He glanced at the far side, where they’d blasted their way in. “You took care of him?”

“I still don’t get it,” Li said. “Anna was taking control of the whole base a couple of hours ago, and now she’s run off. Why didn’t she put up a fight?”

Koh shook her head, looking equally confused. “One guard and only three enemies in the command module. Maybe we overestimated the strength of the Sentry Faction. They were cowards when it came right down to it.”

“You’re wrong,” Swettenham said. He was grimacing again, the fingers from one hand digging into his leg near, but not on, the wound, while his other hand worked the console. “While you were out in the ring figuring out how to mount an operation with five Openers, Megat and Engineer Li got fifty crew members armed.” He tapped his finger on the console and nodded toward the viewscreen. “There’s your answer.”

The view changed, and it showed three assault ducts thrusting out from the base to attach to the battered hull of the Albion warship.

“They attacked
Blackbeard
already?” Li asked. “Anna said it would take all shift to get ready.”

“Come on, I was there. That was an obvious lie.”

“So it’s over.” The words sounded hollow as they came out. “The Sentry Faction wiped out our allies, and my sister has fifty armed crew at her disposal. Meanwhile, we thought we’d won because we chased her out of the command module.”

“It’s over, all right,” Swettenham said. “Just not in the way you think. The
Blackbeard
defenders wiped them out.”

He explained what had happened. Several Singaporeans died in the initial attempt, while most of the rest had been trapped by a quick-hardening foam. A handful escaped. It was unknown if the ones left behind had been taken prisoner or summarily executed. Either way, almost the entire force of Singaporeans had vanished, including Jeremy Megat.

Koh snorted when Swettenham had finished. “Idiots. What did they think would happen? Make a halfhearted rush at a warship filled with armed, angry people fighting on their own turf. We’ll be lucky if the Albionish don’t turn their guns on us and blow us apart.”

“If they do that, they’d be destroyed, too,” Swettenham said.

“Maybe that’s the way to go,” Koh said. “Better than knocking around here, acting like idiots until the end of time.”

“Except that we’ve won,” Li said. He heard the wonder in his own voice. “It’s the end of the Sentry Faction.”

The news had first come as a slap to the face, that fifty men and women he’d lived with and known for eleven years were gone, just like that. But Anna’s failed attack had saved his base.

“Not the end at all,” Koh said. “Half the base is still Sentry Faction. There must be two hundred of them still around to muck things up.”

“But Megat is gone, the plan discredited. Nobody will stand by my sister now. All we have to do is convince the Albionish that it was a mistake and hope those idiots of ours didn’t permanently piss them off. Koh, see if you can open a channel to their ship. Swettenham, pull back those battle ducts. Make sure they reseal the breach on the way out so we don’t vent their atmosphere. You can do that?”

“Yes, sir. Should I also release the mag net and let them go?”

“Not yet. Once they fly off, we won’t get them back. Let Koh have a chance at showing them the olive branch first.” Li glanced at Hwang, still positioned at the door with the two others. “I don’t know who else you have armed and ready, but I want my sister found before she causes any more trouble. Oh, and get more security up here. We don’t want to fall to the same trick we pulled ourselves.”

The viewscreen turned black. Li thought it was Swettenham or Koh messing around with the display, but then a familiar face filled the screen. Anna.

“Hello, brother. I guess you’ve heard about my little setback.” There was no change to the arrogant turn of her lip.

“Give it up, Anna, it’s over. Megat’s gone. We have the command module, we have fire control, we have everything you need to make war. There’s nothing more you can do. We’re going to make a truce with the Albionish.”