“Not from the king, from one of his relatives. His Majesty has several cousins who are naval officers, and one mentioned to me that you’d make a fine wife for the king.”
Catarina couldn’t help but laugh. It did sound like the sort of rumor that spread around the fleet, but it was preposterous on the face of it. Which was why McGowan would likely believe it; he was looking for the worst in her, and this would be confirmation.
“McGowan will swell up and burst like an angry tick,” she said.
“That’s my hope. He’ll think you’re going to steal his glory, fly in triumph to Albion, and marry the king. If he doesn’t like you now, imagine when you’re his queen.”
“I don’t know. McGowan probably thinks I’m going to be killed in the battle. I probably will be. Then he’ll sit back and smirk.” Catarina shook her head. “It’s not enough. He needs some other prod. Maybe your husband—”
“He’s not my husband out here,” Tolvern said quickly. “He’s the admiral of the fleet, and he will do what’s best for the fleet, for Albion, and for the survival of the sentient races of the sector.”
“This is what’s best.”
“That’s what you and I think, but as soon as we start arguing it to James, he’s going to see right through us. Let me try this rumor thing—it might work.”
“It’s a good plan,” Catarina said, “but it’s just not enough. We still need something else.”
The women fell silent. The two Hroom in the sweating room had been murmuring their own conversation, but now got up, took their robes, and left Catarina and Tolvern alone.
“Why did we hold the war council here, anyway?” Catarina asked. “Why a Hroom sloop?”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too. James is sending a signal, I think. He wants to show the other races that he has no intention of dominating from Albion when the war is over.”
“Not sure I believe it. Albion is turning into an empire, almost without trying.”
“But it doesn’t have to be an autocratic empire,” Tolvern said. “If the Scandians and Hroom think Drake is going to dominate, they’re likely to turn on us as soon as we defeat Apex.”
“I hope you’re right,” Catarina said. “I hope the admiral can make it happen. We’ll see. Anyway, we first have to pull off a miracle in the Persia System.”
She stopped. Mention of the other components of the alliance had given her an idea. Tolvern studied her face.
“What? What is it?”
“About your plan to get McGowan into the fight. It’s good, but it needs a push to make it happen. And it occurs to me that there’s someone else who doesn’t like McGowan, either. Someone who thinks he’s a coward.”
Tolvern looked puzzled for a moment. “Ah, you mean the Scandian. Lars Olafsen.”
“What if we tell Olafsen our plan, and he gives McGowan that little nudge to push him over the top? Get him into the fight like a good little soldier.”
“You mean taunting him?”
“Exactly. The right words at the right moment, and on top of everything else—McGowan won’t be able to resist.”
A smile spread across Tolvern’s face. “Perfect.”
“Then it’s a plan. You put a bug in McGowan’s ear, and I’ll speak to Olafsen.”
“Excellent tactics, sir,” Tolvern said, with an edge of sarcasm that made Catarina smile. “Lead us into battle and bring us victory.”
Tolvern rose to her feet, wiped off more sweat, and lowered herself from the platform. She took her robe from its hook.
“So soon?” Catarina said, reluctant to quit the soothing steam and heat to return to the bridge. “Aren’t we taking our last break before the end of the human race?”
A curious sort of half-smile crossed the other woman’s face. “It was just that thought that got me to my feet. This might be my last chance to . . . well, ostensibly, I need to visit Dreadnought to be briefed on a minor change to her cannon configuration since the last time we fought together.”
“Oh, yes, very important,” Catarina said innocently. “I’ve heard Dreadnought’s guns pack a hell of a punch. Is that true?”
“Drake knows how to fire them.” Something mischievous came over Tolvern’s face. “He gave you a personal demonstration once, didn’t he? A full broadside, if I remember right.”
Catarina laughed. “Now you sound like Capp!”
“Her York Town humor rubs off after a while.” Tolvern’s expression turned grim, and she straightened her posture. “If we never meet again in person, it is an honor to fight at your side, Catarina Vargus. Godspeed and good luck.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was one thing to scheme with Tolvern in a steam room, and another to contemplate the enormity of their challenge from the bridge of Void Queen as the ship accelerated toward the jump point. Dreadnought hit the point and vanished, and Void Queen would soon follow, with Blackbeard coming quickly behind.
After that, more than two hundred warships, the entire fighting force of the Albion, Hroom, Scandian, and Singaporean civilizations. Tens of thousands of crew, marines, and raiders. If they lost this fight, there would be nothing to stop Apex harvester ships from fanning out across the systems, slaughtering at will as their numbers grew and grew and grew.
“Two minutes to jump,” Jane announced.
The crew braced themselves across the bridge, returning to seats and strapping themselves in. Capp grabbed for her barf bag with a grimace.
“Better not all come up,” she said. “Cook made me turkey dumplings, and I won’t be able to eat ’em for a month if I sick up all over.”
Catarina raised an eyebrow. “Turkey? Doesn’t he usually use canned beef?”
“Aye, Cap’n,” the first mate said with a grin, “but I was in the mood for poultry, know what I mean?”
“I hope that’s a metaphor, and you’re not planning to eat the aliens we kill in combat.”
“Why not? They’re just big turkeys, ain’t they, and that’s good eating. Besides, they eat us, don’t they?”
“Yeah, Capp. They eat us, and then we eat them. Sounds like secondhand cannibalism, like you’re eating your old mates.”
Capp opened her mouth, but they hit the jump point before she could respond. Catarina woke up groggy, trying to remember where she was. Talking to that Viking, wasn’t it? Goading Olafsen to goad McGowan. It hadn’t taken much to convince the marauder captain. Olafsen and McGowan had fought each other at Merkur, and Olafsen claimed that McGowan knew how to fight, all right. He just didn’t care for it much, and wasn’t it about time that he got his scrawny backside into the war?
No, that was wrong. Catarina had ended the call with Olafsen and then . . . there was something about a turkey dinner. She sat up straight, remembering where she was.
She must have only blanked out for a few moments, as she was already tapping the console to get the sensors to display on the viewscreen, while others were still shaking their heads and groaning. Smythe came around next—he usually did—followed by Nyb Pim, Lomelí, Capp, and a handful of ensigns working at the defense grid and other stations on the bridge.
By the time Catarina got them straightened out and the barf bags put away, her headache had faded, and it was clear that they’d come through the jump point unopposed. The harvester that had chased Tolvern out of the system nearly two weeks earlier was nowhere to be seen, at least not with short-range scans.
Catarina had just enough time to get Void Queen safely away from the jump point on auxiliary power before Blackbeard made her appearance. Blackbeard drifted, not yet restarting the engines or showing any other sign of life.
“Come on, move,” Smythe said, watching the screen.
“Give her time,” Catarina said. “We’ve got enough going on here without you worrying about other ships.”
Dreadnought had come through first, and the massive battleship was already in motion, tossing out mines in case Apex ships remained hidden in the moons of a nearby gas giant. The mines cou
ld be recalled later if no enemy appeared. Catarina launched a striker patrol as further insurance against ambush.
Blackbeard finally set in motion just as Pussycat jumped through, followed by Scandian blackfish, one after another. The last of the five blackfish was nearly run down by a Punisher-class cruiser, which in turn had to make way for another cruiser. After that, warships jumped through at a furious pace for the next hour, until at last there was enough of a force assembled to bring them into the system at a more relaxed pace.
But not too slowly. No time for dawdling, and when the crew of one destroyer suffered a harder jump than most, Void Queen hooked the sluggish ship and towed it away from the jump point before it was rammed by the next incoming destroyer.
It would take nearly two days to get all the ships through, but already Drake was organizing the core components of the four fleets. The smallest of these would be organized around Void Queen and Blackbeard, some forty-one ships, but between the two battle cruisers and the other cruisers and corvettes, Catarina would have matched it against any of the other three, except perhaps Drake’s, with fifty-plus ships, led by Dreadnought and seven Punisher- and Aggressor-class cruisers.
To be honest, McGowan’s reserve, which would contain more than eighty ships, including all those cruisers and star wolves, looked formidable as well. No doubt McGowan was strutting about as he considered the size and strength of his fleet, even as he reassured himself it would only be used for mop-up action.
Finally, there was Broderick’s fast-attack fleet. Ten cruisers, fourteen corvettes, and a dozen destroyers, along with a handful of support craft. It was smaller in number than the other forces, but all of those cruisers and corvettes packed a punch.
“Anything from the inner worlds?” Catarina asked Smythe.
“I’ve found Tolvern’s old friend. Big, ugly manta-ray-looking thing. It’s in a wide orbit around Persia.” Smythe tapped at his console. “But I don’t make out anything else down there. Probably some spears and lances, but I can’t see if any of the other harvesters have reached orbit.”
“Hit them with all active sensors. There’s only one way in and out of this system, and nobody is going to have any more secrets.”
“Aye, Captain.” He looked up. “You don’t suppose it’s going to be just that one harvester, do you?”
“King’s balls, Smythe,” Capp said. “It ain’t gonna be that easy, and you know it. Tolvern said she spotted seven more of them big ugly ships down there waiting to be hauled into orbit.”
“I’m only reporting what I’ve found,” Smythe said with a shrug. “And nobody else has spotted them, either. We’ll get more data when the junks spread their wings.”
“They’re out there,” Capp insisted. “You know they are.”
Catarina wished she could feel excited at the prospect of taking the entire fleet against a single harvester ship. Maybe Blackbeard’s nuclear attack on the space elevator had done more damage than Tolvern thought. But in her heart, she knew that Capp was right.
Still, it was doubtful all of those harvesters had come into orbit in the last ten days. Most of them probably remained on the surface under construction. No doubt there was at least one more ship either up or preparing to lift, but maybe that was it.
We can take out two ships. Maybe even three. Four, if Tolvern inflicted some pain on that first one.
Still, the thought of facing four harvester ships was breathtaking. She’d destroyed two piecemeal, but in the first battle, the enemy was crippled, unable to fight. In the second, she’d lost a third of her fleet, hit the harvester with a nuclear torpedo, and welcomed powerful reinforcements midway through the battle.
A war junk came through the jump and drifted toward the two battle cruisers, where it came to a halt and spread its large, insect-like wings.
“That’s Hao Cheng’s ship,” Smythe said. “Best sensors in the fleet. If there’s anything down there, he’s the one to find it.”
Cheng was a veteran warrior, now reduced to a subsidiary role. When Drake assigned him to the Void Queen-Blackbeard fleet, he’d sent Catarina a message. She’d only glanced over it before the jump, and brought it up to revisit while she waited for more data.
The note was informal and chatty. Cheng spoke English through his brain implant, but that didn’t mean he could always understand the language’s nuances.
Captain Vargus,
I know what Albion thinks of the Singaporeans. We’re good for our sensors, maybe to soften armor with energy pulses so real weapons can break through. Other than that, you hold your war junks back with the missile frigates so they won’t be shredded in the first enemy attack. We’re certainly no good in a straight-up fight.
If that’s your assumption, you’re wrong. I know our numbers are few, but I beg you to use us in the battle. There’s nobody in the fleet with the same experience fighting the buzzards as the Singaporean crews. I was fighting Apex before the kingdom of Albion even knew the enemy existed. I have men and women on this ship who survived the destruction of the Sentinel battle stations, others who fought a years-long guerrilla campaign, and I personally fought (and survived!) eleven engagements with harvester ships before Tolvern rebuilt the Singapore yards and put me back at the helm of a war junk.
I know we don’t have an eliminon battery on board, but these ships do have more than just our energy pulses when it comes to offensive engagements. We have superior cloaking technology. Hiding in the wake of your battle cruiser, we can sneak right up into the action.
I only beg the chance to do some real fighting.
Hao Cheng
Oh, come on, Catarina thought when she’d finished reading. What did it matter how many engagements he’d fought? A war junk was slow to accelerate, vulnerable to enemy fire, and with weapons roughly equal to those of a Hroom sloop of war.
But unlike the sloops, the war junks had superior sensor technology, and that must be preserved at all costs. Also, unlike the sloops, they weren’t numerous enough to fight in concert, so they’d been divided among the admiral’s four fleets. So what exactly was Cheng hoping to accomplish?
On the other hand, eleven battles against harvesters. And that was before the current war. Singaporeans could fight, had fought, alone and with some success for years. If not for that resistance, the entire sector would have been overrun, its civilized peoples exterminated.
Didn’t that earn Cheng and his compatriots the right to join the fight? Besides, why hold them back now? One way or another, the war would end here in Persia, and if a few odd ships ran for their lives, it wouldn’t much matter if they carried sensor technology or not if the rest of the fleet had been wiped out.
Two more war junks jumped through and moved into a triangle formation with Cheng’s. Three more war junks took position above Dreadnought, which sat at the front of a cluster of cruisers, corvettes, and destroyers. The whole collection of warships was drifting along with the jump point toward a blue-green gas giant encircled with a delicate, almost gauzy-looking ring of ice.
On a lark, Catarina called Drake. He appeared on the viewscreen moments later, hands behind his back as he stood straight and noble-looking in front of his console.
“I want your war junks,” she said.
“You have three of your own, Vargus. Some problem with their sensors?”
“I need them for the fight.”
He raised an eyebrow. “There’s something you can do with six war junks that you can’t do with three?”
“Maybe. We’ll see. Any data from the sensors can be sent over for your techs to analyze. Our two forces will be in contact throughout the battle, reinforcing each other from either side. If you need them, I can send them back.”
“In the confusion of battle, a whole lot of things will go wrong. We might lose the ability to reinforce each other.”
“Can I have the war junks, please?”
Drake stood quietly for a moment. “Very well, I’ll send them over as soon as we ship out. In fact, I’
ll give you Broderick’s three war junks as well. McGowan can keep his. You’ll have nine in total—do with them what you will.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He glanced to one side. “Meanwhile, we’re getting data from the junks. You might want to take a look at it.” The link closed.
His tone had turned dark at the end, and even before Smythe started sharing, Catarina was bracing herself for bad news. It appeared the enemy had raised more harvesters into orbit. At least two additional ships, maybe more.
Cheng called moments later. His face was flushed, his voice tight.
“Blast them all, how are we going to do it?”
Catarina glanced down. “Four harvesters. It’s bad, but not worst-case.”
“Check again, Vargus. There’s a fifth coming into orbit, and they’re running engine tests on a sixth. It’ll be up before we arrive, you can count on it.”
Catarina caught her breath. Six blasted harvesters. Six! Cold fingers seemed to tug at her intestines. And according to Tolvern’s report, there were still two more on the surface if they couldn’t defeat the first half-dozen.
“Do you see the hunter-killer packs?” Cheng asked.
“No, where are they?”
Smythe spoke up from the tech console, where he’d been poring over the data. “They’re on the moon, ready for a quick liftoff.”
“There’s something happening on Persia,” Capp announced.
She swung the monitor around on her console to show Catarina, who peered at the numbers and data, trying to make sense of it.
“Yes, that,” Cheng said, his voice calmer now. “Maybe some hope for us, maybe not.”
Catarina began to piece it together. Radiation and dust entering the atmosphere, heat signatures in multiple locations.
“Looks like explosions, some sort of fighting going on,” Catarina said. “Does that mean the birds are fighting each other? Is there a battle for control of the flock?”
Cheng shook his head. “I wish that were it, but no. Based on the pattern of explosions and the fires we’ve detected near the enemy factory-mine complexes, it looks like sabotage to me.”
Sun King (The Void Queen Trilogy Book 3) Page 16