The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) (22 page)

“Drake won’t be confused for long,” she told him. “He knows we couldn’t have received the reinforcements by now, but just in case, I’m mentioning McCreery, who died a few years ago. The entire message is for the enemy. They will intercept it and draw conclusions.”

“I see. You wish them to think we are stronger than we are.”

“Now you’re getting it. Maybe they hesitate, maybe they wait until they can assemble a bigger force. It buys us time.”

“You are very clever, Captain,” Nyb Pim said. “Yes, anyone would fall for this trick.”

Any
Hroom
, maybe. Humans had won numerous battles against the empire before the current truce and alliance thanks to a Hroom inability to understand deception. Unfortunately, Apex had proven themselves master deceivers. Tolvern doubted it would work on the buzzards.

She looked at that last instruction again.
Stay alive.
 

Then she glanced at Commander Li. A weak leader, but a good man. These people had held out all these years, ever vigilant against the alien race that had now surrounded their home world and was consuming its people. And Tolvern was being told by her old friend and captain, a man she’d known since she was a girl and the daughter of his father’s steward, to toss the Singaporeans aside to save her own hide.

No, James. If that’s what you mean, I won’t do it. I won’t be abandoning these people to their doom.
 

Chapter Sixteen

Commander Li watched the battle unfold on the command module viewscreen. Separation between the two sides of the battle station was almost complete, with Koh and Swettenham wresting control of cameras and communication up to the farms, but with everything going black beyond that point.

The fiery young woman named Capp with the buzzed scalp and the tattoos of rampant lions on her forearm led the attackers, which numbered some sixty in all, including nearly two dozen Singaporeans. Capp’s force split in two as they approached the farms. No hesitation or fumbling, it just happened.

These people were professionals, Li sensed, well-drilled in the kind of fighting that was now unfolding. They took and reinforced positions, knew how to drive off opposition, and used everything from flash grenades to shaped charges to gas canisters to clear tunnels. It was no wonder that in every encounter so far, they’d delivered far more casualties than they’d suffered. Under Capp’s direction, the Singaporeans drafted into the force seemed more organized, more self-assured.

“We’re not trained in this sort of combat,” Koh told Li in Chinese, as if reading his thoughts. “Megat was a fool to attempt a boarding.”

“Fortunately for us,” Li said.

“But if Apex ever tries to take the battle station, we’d be lucky to have Albionish to help us fight.”

“By the time Apex is on Sentinel 3, the fight will be over.”

“All the same, I’d rather have these people on our side, mounting the defense. This Tolvern is a leader.”

And you are not, Commander. Are you?
 

It didn’t even need to be said aloud. That was obvious from the way Koh, Swettenham, and many other Openers had responded to Captain Tolvern. The contrast with his own timid leadership style was stark, and there’d never been any talk of leaving Commander Li in command of his own battle station once the foreigners had arrived.

“I see what you’re doing, Jon,” a familiar voice said into Li’s com link. “Do you honestly believe you can take the farms with brute force?”

He looked around, but nobody else in the command module seemed to hear Anna’s voice coming through. He touched his ear and cut the link.

Tolvern gave him a sharp look. “Something wrong, Commander?”

“My sister called, got through on the com link somehow. Says she knows what we’re doing.”

“No surprise she knows.” Tolvern didn’t look or sound concerned. “No way to hide it at this point. Curious how she got through, though. So much for complete separation, Koh. The mutineers still have access to our communications.”

Koh scowled. “I’ll soon fix that.”

“Hmm, I wonder. No, hold off for now. She can only hurt herself by talking. Li, open the channel back up. Keep your sister going if you can.”

He did so, but Anna didn’t answer. He prodded a few times, but she had vanished.

Meanwhile, Capp and the big, bronzed-skinned one they called Carvalho took position in two separate tunnels approaching the farms, each with about thirty men and women in all. The Sentry Faction had sealed heavy blast doors against the attackers, which Swettenham and Koh tried to open from their consoles with no success. With the blast doors closed, it wouldn’t be as simple as Li knocking his way into the command module had been.

But the Royal Navy crew had brought some firepower. In each tunnel, two crew with hand cannons probed the defenses, launching bombs that exploded against the doors. Blast after blast rocked the corridor, while the others kept their distance. It looked ineffective, and when at last the bombardment stopped, two men ran up to the respective doors and placed charges. Li said he doubted the explosives would be any more effective than the hand cannons.

Tolvern sat watching calmly, her arms crossed. “The hand cannons weren’t to destroy the doors—that would be impossible—they were to rupture the pressure seal. The doors will come off, watch.”

Two perfectly timed explosions followed moments later, and there went the blast doors. Tolvern’s assault crew charged into the farms from both corridors, firing into them as they entered. Return gunfire erupted, but it seemed feeble. Somewhat optimistically, one of the trio of Koh, Swettenham, and Smythe flipped the color of the farm from red to yellow on the schematic, which they maintained on a small side screen. The impression was that the territory controlled by the opposing faction had instantly shrunk by half.

They didn’t control the cameras in the large open space, but several of the
Blackbeard
crew wore body cameras, and a chaotic scene reached the command module, jerking from here to there, as gunfire erupted on all sides. English and Chinese voices shouted and cursed. The air filled with shredded plants, and water poured down from ruptured hydroponic tanks. A body camera blinked out, then a second.

“Cap’n!” Capp’s voice shouted through the chaos. “The bastards are hitting us from above. We’re getting murdered!”

Li cursed. Anna’s people must have climbed the hydroponic towers and knocked the plants off to take a perch on the conveyor belts that hauled the crops up to the artificial light and cycled them back down again.

“Fall back,” Tolvern ordered. Her voice was tense. “Get out of there.”

Screaming, gunfire, chaos. The assault team came pouring out of the farms as quickly as they’d entered. Several were limping, others carried wounded comrades. They returned fire and took fire as they retreated.

“I warned you, Jon,” Anna said across Li’s com link. “You should have listened.”

#

The aftermath was ugly. Eleven of the attackers had fallen in the battle, including four Singaporeans. Li knew every one of the dead personally. Could have named their playing tactics in
Go
, their favorite foods, shared the details of family back home. In eleven years, you had a long time to get to know people.

Eighteen other attackers had suffered wounds. One of the wounded was Tolvern’s own Lieutenant Capp, who’d suffered a broken collarbone when one of the hydroponic towers fell on her. The woman was the muscle behind
Blackbeard
’s assaults, and even though Tolvern didn’t reflect the loss on her face, she must have felt it keenly. Whatever happened here, Capp wouldn’t be leading the attacks.

As the
Blackbeard
crew braced for a counterattack while seeing to the wounded, Anna kept materializing on Li’s com link to taunt him.

“She’s just trying to get into your head,” Tolvern said when Li told her what his sister was doing. “She wouldn’t bother if she had the upper hand.”

“It was a disaster. Anna was waiting for us. Maybe we should try to negotiate again.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Tolvern turned to the tech officers. “Koh, cut that woman off. We’ve heard enough. Make sure she doesn’t have a link to anyone on our side of the base. In fact, make sure none of their people can reach any of our people.”

But Anna got one last message through before Koh cut the line. “I’ve shut down your oxygen, brother. We still have ours. Get ready to suffocate.”

“She’s cut our oxygen, sir,” Li said.

“Someone figure out if she’s bluffing,” Tolvern said. “Meanwhile, let’s come up with alternatives to another frontal assault.”

“What about a truce?” Li said.

“No truce! We have no time for that nonsense. We have to get control of this battle station, don’t you understand? Apex is on its way. My ship is shot up and can’t even support its own crew, let alone provide life support for hundreds of refugees from your base. We have one working engine and our own oxygen problems.”

The subspace from her fleet had been skimpy from top to bottom, and Li had no idea how she could be so certain about the imminent arrival of the alien fleet, but the captain seemed confident in her ability to decipher her admiral’s message.

Tolvern asked a few questions about the defensive and offensive capabilities of the sentinel battle station, but she seemed distracted when Li started in. Finally, she rose.

“I’ve got to see to my crew. Some of those injuries are serious. Li, you’re in command. Smythe, you stay here, too. Let me know if anything funny happens.”

There didn’t seem much for Li to do once Tolvern was gone. The tech and communications people were busy, and the assault team was taking control of side corridors, service lifts and ducts, and any other area from which the Sentry Faction might mount an attack. He reviewed fire control, verified that the weapons systems were prepared and could be quickly brought online if Apex made an appearance. Everything seemed good to go, even the eliminon battery.

Anna’s voice came through his com. “They can’t cut me out, Jon. I’ve got direct access.”

Li stood up and walked toward the exit. Nobody looked at him. As soon as he was in the corridor, he answered. “What do you want? To taunt? Like we’re kids again, and you’ve deleted my favorite video game?”

“You’re my brother. I’m concerned about you.”

Li snorted. “What a liar.”

“We don’t have to fight, you know.”

“I know we don’t. You could come to your senses. Apex is on its way, and the only way we’ll survive is if you stand down and give me back my battle station.”

“Give it to the warship captain, you mean. Don’t try to hide it from me, Jon. I know what’s happened—you have a few defectors. Even if I can’t see directly into your half of the base, I’ve got my eyes and ears there, telling me what’s going on. You’ve surrendered Sentinel 3 to the enemy.”

“The enemy! The birds are the enemy, not Albion.”

“What does it matter? They’re foreigners, invaders.”

“My God, listen to yourself.”

“This Captain Tolvern came out of nowhere, fomented a mutiny on Sentinel 3—”

“No, she didn’t.
You
did that, Anna.”

“That’s a counter-mutiny, you idiot,” she snapped. “You were on my side, remember? You agreed to have Hillary Koh arrested for treason. But listen to me, what happened next? Apex found us, then the Albion ship attacked, invaded, took the command console.”

“It’s like we have two different versions of reality,” Li said. “You and Megat sent over the assault ducts. You initiated the fight, not
Blackbeard
. Can you blame them for their response? Or me, for supporting them?”

“Don’t claim you’re in charge, Jon. You’re a slave of the Albion captain, and you do her bidding. She and her people are in charge, at least of your side of the base. We’re still patriots over here. That you’ve surrendered, that you’ve agreed to collaborate with the enemy doesn’t change any of the facts.”

“What do you want?” he asked. “Are you hoping to convince me?”

“I’m offering terms.”

“You’re in no condition to do anything of the kind. I’ve got seventy percent of the crew either on my side or being held in the cell block of HMS
Blackbeard
as mutineers.”

“And I’ve got your oxygen.”

“I think you’re bluffing,” Li said, with more confidence than he felt. “Even if you pull it off, if you kill us, you’ve got a skeleton crew when Apex arrives. Who is going to operate the eliminon battery? That alone takes fifteen trained technicians to fire. And those are people I’ve got with me, people you’ll have suffocated.”

“Yes, a truce,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard any of his objections. “Here’s what I want. I want you to come over to me, then arrange for us to infiltrate your half of the base. We’ll expel the
Blackbeard
crew by whatever means necessary, then unite our attentions to fighting Apex.”

He had a good answer for her, but a pair of Singaporean technicians approached, watching him curiously as they passed, as if wondering why he was standing in the middle of the corridor. He hesitated again when a pair of armed Albion crew walked swiftly past in the opposite direction. These two paid him no attention whatsoever. Didn’t they know he was the base commander?

“Well?” Anna demanded.

“You’re out of your mind.”

“I’m following my orders, what about you?”

“I mean it,” Li said. “Quite literally insane. Even if it were possible to drive out the Albion naval forces before they repair their ship, these people are the only allies we have. The only possible relief we’ll get is from the Albion Royal Navy.”

“The home world—”

“It’s doomed! Haven’t you heard? They destroyed our navy, wiped out our colonies, and bombarded our cities from orbit. It’s a radioactive heap, and the aliens have set up their harvester ship to ritually slaughter the survivors.”

“I don’t believe it. It’s all lies.”

Nevertheless, she sounded shaken. Li grasped anxiously, convinced he’d finally broken through.

“Surrender,” he urged. “Open up. It’s our only hope. We’ll fight Apex together, and if we can hold on longer, we’ll do it. When there’s no hope, we’ll evacuate with the foreigners. There are refugee fleets—we’ll rebuild on some other world.”