“And you think . . . could it be that the human population is fighting back?” she asked. “How is that possible? I thought they were nearly exterminated.”
“Not yet they’re not. And whoever is left is putting up a fight. I was in the same situation—I get it. Maybe it was Blackbeard’s attack on the elevator, or maybe it’s the frantic pace of war preparations on the surface, but somehow the Persians have discovered that someone is attempting a rescue, and they’re trying to help us.”
Catarina turned this over, considering the possibilities. It was too late for the Persians to win a war—not with their civilization in ruins, their people scattered and hunted—but their resistance might give the allied fleet a fighting chance.
“Call the admiral and share what you just told me. Oh, and Cheng?”
“Yes, Captain Vargus?”
“I’ve found you six more war junks. You have your Singaporean fleet, just like you asked. It doesn’t sound like much to me, given what we’re facing, but they’re all yours. Only promise me one thing. Whatever you have in mind, make it count.”
Chapter Seventeen
Olafsen studied McGowan through the viewscreen, wishing he could see the man in person, study his features more closely, instead of across several thousand miles of space, the distance between Bloodaxe and HMS Peerless.
“I don’t have time for a meeting,” McGowan said. “The other fleets are in motion already, and I have thirty minutes to get our ships aligned before we move out.”
“What do you think?” Olafsen asked Björnman in Scandian. “Does this fellow sound more aggravated than usual?”
The chief mate grunted. “He should be. We’re going into battle against multiple harvester ships. By the gods, if that doesn’t get a man’s blood pounding, I don’t know what will.”
“But maybe McGowan isn’t thinking that. Maybe Vargus is right, and he—”
“I don’t know what the devil you’re babbling about, Olafsen,” McGowan snapped, “but if you intend to jabber on in your barbarian tongue, let me repeat, I am far too busy for this nonsense.”
“We’re wondering what kind of a man you are, McGowan. My brother said, and Björnman here agrees with him, that you’d rather sit back and watch others take the glory.”
“We’re a reserve force, as you damn well know. We’ll fight when we’re called on.”
“We’ll fight when you make the call,” Olafsen corrected. “When you think the others need reinforcing. A small difference, but an important one, don’t you agree?”
“What are you getting at?”
“You make the call, McGowan. Not Drake, not Broderick . . . not even Vargus.”
“Not even Vargus! Hah. That woman . . . who does she think she is?”
“He seems more agitated than normal,” Olafsen told Björnman in Scandian. “Tolvern must have goaded him about Vargus. And he bought it. He thinks the Albion king has his eye on her.”
“Maybe the king does,” Björnman said. “She is a warrior beauty, a true shield maiden.”
Olafsen scoffed. “She’s no maiden. Anyway, when did you get sweet on her? I thought a woman had no place on a starship—isn’t that what you’re always telling me?”
“This one is different.”
“Listen, Olafsen,” McGowan said. “I’ve been told to listen to your crazy ideas—God knows if I don’t, you’ll set off on your own and wreck the whole operation. But if you don’t tell me what this is about, so help me—”
“Push him,” Björnman urged. “He’ll take the bait.”
“I’ll tell you in plain words,” Olafsen told McGowan. “I have rivals for power. There’s always a Knutesen brother or cousin around, for one, and then there’s my brother. That one-eyed fool thinks he should be master of the Scandian people, not me, and he has allies on Viborg and Roskilde who believe the same rubbish.”
“That’s nothing to me. Work it out yourself. After the battle.”
“But I’m not the only one with rivals. One of your commanding officers was telling me about the reconstituted admiralty—that’s what they call it, isn’t it? Never mind what it’s called, the point is, they need four lords. Drake and Broderick make two. The third will be Tolvern, and the fourth either you or Catarina Vargus.”
McGowan had been pacing, but now stopped in front of the viewscreen. He glanced to one side, as if thinking of the others on his bridge who might be listening.
“Hold there. I’m taking this call in the war room.”
The screen went blank. Olafsen and Björnman shared grins. Moments later, McGowan reappeared on the screen, this time from his war room. Olafsen wiped away his smile.
“Who told you that?” McGowan demanded.
“One of your superiors.”
“Which one?”
“There are only two—Broderick and Drake—so take your pick. Only two for now, that is. You’re soon to have two more, from what I understand.”
“That’s nonsense about Tolvern. She’s married to the admiral. She can’t serve by his side on the admiralty. And who was her father? An earl, a baron? No, a steward on the Drake estate. And as for Vargus . . .” He spat her name. “It’s rubbish. She’s a bloody pirate.”
But if Tolvern had indeed warned McGowan that the king of Albion was thinking of taking Vargus as his bride, what would her background matter? Nothing. She’d be on the admiralty whether McGowan liked it or not, and he would spend the rest of his navy days taking orders. A queen and an admiral—what kind of power was that, wielded by one woman? Oh, and if McGowan sat back while others did the fighting, she’d be a war hero, as well.
“I don’t know if it’s rubbish or not. All I know is what I heard.” The other man fell silent, and Olafsen continued after a brief pause. “So we both have reasons to get into this fight.”
“We need a reserve,” McGowan said through clenched teeth. “That’s not cowardice, no matter what you think, that’s a necessity of battle.”
“Why?”
“So that when a harvester breaks through, it doesn’t simply escape Persia, cross Nebuchadnezzar, and vanish, only to pop up two years later at the head of a massive new fleet.”
“But if it doesn’t happen, if the other three forces stop the harvesters, we could be left out of the battle entirely. Neither one of us will hold power, if that’s the case.”
McGowan had nothing to say to this.
“It’s going to get ugly in there,” Olafsen continued. “By the gods, there are five harvesters up there already. One of those beasts is going to get free, going to get the upper hand, going to take the fight into the heart of a fleet and smash it to pieces. All I’m saying is that we don’t wait. As soon as we spot our opportunity, we throw ourselves into the fight and make it count.”
“And you? What is your place in the battle? You have some scheme, don’t you?”
Olafsen smiled, but didn’t respond. He wasn’t ready to put out his own plans. Inside, however, he could feel the knots of excitement and nerves squirming in his belly like a nest of snakes.
“And how do I know you won’t run?” McGowan asked. “Like that star wolf did at Odense.”
“If anyone runs from the battle, it won’t be me. I swear that before my gods and yours alike.”
McGowan stared for a long time without answering. Olafsen could see something passing over the man’s face, something unpleasant. He must be thinking about Vargus and Tolvern, wondering if he was being manipulated by the two women, and perhaps by Olafsen, as well. At last he nodded.
“Very well, we’re in the fight. But let’s be honest about one thing, shall we?” McGowan added coldly. “You’re not worried about rivals for the nonexistent throne. This is all about your bloodlust, your need to be in the thick of the battle. You want to fight. Very well, you Viking bastard, if fighting is what you want, fighting is what you’ll get.”
#
The mood turned somber across Void Queen as the three advance fleets approached Persia. Catarina felt i
t in the gunnery, in the engine room, in the armory, heard it in the measured, determined tones of marines as they were brought out of stasis and briefed on the situation.
Capp met Catarina in the hall coming out of the mess on the morning after the jump and stopped her.
“This is it, ain’t it, Cap’n? The big one. The last one.”
“More or less, Lieutenant. Either you return a conquering hero or you die on the inner frontier, a hundred trillion miles from home. If you’re given a choice, I’d suggest the hero part.”
“I don’t care about none of that stuff. I only want to return and see the green hills again, see mountains, breathe the Albion air, know what I mean? And I want Carvalho along with me—he better not die, neither, hear me?”
Catarina tugged the other woman’s arm. “Come on, I understand there’s more news from the planet. That will get your mind off it.”
When they came onto the bridge, Smythe brought up a viewscreen of Persia, now less than two hundred million miles away and closing fast as they crossed the system’s asteroid belt and approached the outermost of its rocky worlds.
A large, reddish-brown landmass stretched across Persia’s equator. The continent looked like a single massive desert, apart from green fringes on the coasts like tufts of hair above the ears of a bald man. With all the planets to colonize, Catarina wondered why the Persians had settled such a wasteland.
Smythe spotted the captain and first mate. “These Singaporean sensors are fantastic. Look at the resolution on this.”
He changed the screen from a current view to one earlier in the planet’s rotation. Here, on the opposite side of the world, were three long, slender continents that stretched from pole to pole, and they presented a stark contrast with the desert continent. Smythe zoomed in to show forests and grasslands and a patchwork quilt of abandoned farmland returning to the wild. The unmistakable sign of cities dotted the plains, and while Smythe couldn’t get right down to look at them from up close, it was hard to imagine they were still inhabited, except for perhaps a handful of refugees hiding like rats in sewers and bombed-out basements.
“Where are those last three harvesters?” she asked. “Did any of them get into orbit?”
“Hold on. Take a look at the elevator site, and then I’ll show you the harvesters.”
He zoomed in on a spot at the equator, which sat directly below the orbital counterweight and fortress that Tolvern had assaulted in an attempt to knock out the enemy’s ability to bring more harvester ships into orbit. Peeling back the dense cloud cover obscuring the surface revealed a city set in a massive bowl between two mountain ranges that ran north-south along the spine of the narrow continent.
The landscape was a wasteland, with the city pocked by blackened spots where fires must have burned out of control. Two of the surrounding mountains had been leveled and turned into massive piles of poisonous-looking orange tailings, presumably the result of Apex mining as they gutted the landscape in search of minerals.
“Now let me put back one of the filters,” Smythe said.
The sky over the city was suddenly hazy, as if a massive dust cloud had blown over it. Plumes of smoke rose from the surface. There was, or recently had been, some sort of battle for the old city.
“This is the Persian counterattack we heard about?”
“A nuclear counterattack,” Smythe said. “Seems that they managed to smuggle several weapons into the city and detonate them.”
“King’s balls,” Capp said.
“More like balls of tyrillium,” Smythe said, “getting into the heart of the buzzard operation like that. Look.” He shifted the viewscreen. “The Persians wrecked the ground-based portion of the space elevator and destroyed two of the yards building harvester ships. Turned them into radioactive slag. The third harvester apparently got halfway up, and crashed to the ground. It won’t be flying, either.”
“The Persians musta seen Blackbeard’s attack and figured out what we was up to,” Capp said.
Catarina had never met the Persians, none of them had. The closest anyone had come was Olafsen, who’d captured an Apex seed pod with dozens of mutilated Persians frozen in stasis.
Yet a fierce pride rose in her breast to think of a band of desperate survivors, on the run for the past year as battle striders stalked them with their paralyzing rays, still fighting on. The Persians must have guarded a cache of nuclear weapons since the alien invasion for just such an opportunity. And then perfectly executed an attack on the Apex facilities. It was a heroic effort, however they’d managed.
Catarina almost choked up at the thought of it, and could only imagine what the men and women of Hao Cheng’s small fleet must be feeling. Most of them had fought just such a guerrilla campaign on Singapore as Apex systematically exterminated the population. No wonder Cheng was so desperate to get into the action.
“So there are at least three harvesters grounded for the duration,” Catarina said. “If not destroyed outright. Plus any spears and lances being built in those yards.”
“Not that we’re in the clear,” Lomelí piped up from the defense grid computer. “Show her the harvesters.”
Smythe touched his console, and the screen pulled back to an orbital view, now unfiltered. A fleet of five harvester ships, sounded by several hunter-killer packs, had begun to accelerate away from the planet.
Capp glanced down at her console. “Message from Drake. Dreadnought is beginning initial deceleration. He’s handing over autonomy to the sub-fleet commanders.”
The pilot’s chair was empty, as Nyb Pim was off shift. Other key parts of the bridge were without their crew, and Catarina knew that Barker was currently absent from the gunnery, as she’d sent as many personnel off shift as possible to give them rest time ahead of what would no doubt prove a grueling battle. Time to get them back to work.
Catarina opened a channel on the general com. “This is Captain Vargus. Striker wing on standby. All other hands to battle stations.”
She sent a message to the other ships of her fleet, starting with Tolvern on Blackbeard. Ten minutes later, she had Nyb Pim in his place, and all stations on the bridge were manned.
“The hunter-killer packs are breaking away,” Smythe said. “Looks like they’re getting ready to jump at us.”
“Good,” Catarina said. “We’re the tip of the spear. We’ll hit first and hit hard.”
“There they go!” Lomelí said a few minutes later.
“Lower shields. Ready the main cannon.” Catarina took a deep, even breath. “It’s time to win the war.”
Chapter Eighteen
Tolvern paced the bridge of Blackbeard, rearranging ships in her mind, giving imaginary orders to move the various pieces around the chessboard. Catarina had moved the joint Void Queen-Blackbeard fleet out front, and Drake and Broderick’s forces formed a pair of massive sledgehammers above and below, lurking several million miles behind. McGowan was still way behind, but instead of hanging out by the jump point, he was on the move toward the system’s inner worlds.
Manx watched her pace for a while, then cleared his throat. “It all looks good to me. The missile frigates are well protected, Vargus put a screen of destroyers on our flank to throw down mines if we need to trap enemies, and the three smaller cruisers are positioned to charge wherever they’re needed.”
“I see that.”
“I might have placed the corvettes up front,” Manx said. “But other than that—”
Tolvern turned to face him. “Vargus put the corvettes in the rear because she expects our initial encounter will wreck the formations of the hunter-killer packs, and they’ll try to escape out the back side. The corvettes will hunt down stragglers. It’s exactly what I would have done in her position.”
“Then what’s got you worried?”
She laughed. “You’re not worried?”
“That isn’t what I mean, Captain. We’ve served together a long time—I can read it on your face. You don’t like something Vargus is doing.”<
br />
“Something, yes. What is she doing with the war junks? Why put them all together, where they’re vulnerable? Why not spread them out?”
“They’re cloaked. Doubtful the enemy can see them.”
“That’s exactly right. None of the rest of us are cloaked. We’re charging in for a head-to-head battle. So why hide the war junks? And why do we have nine of them, anyway? They should be divided evenly.” Tolvern shook her head. “She’s got something planned. Almost like she’s going to try to use Cheng for some diversionary attack.”
“I’m sure he wants to fight, too.”
“But not a diversion. Not a suicide charge to gain a moment of distraction. Manx, she doesn’t know the Singaporeans like we do. She didn’t see Sentinel Three destroyed, or the carnage on Singapore. They’re not cannon fodder.”
“Could be it’s Cheng pushing for action,” Manx said.
“There go the hunter-killers,” Oglethorpe announced from the tech console.
The five hunter-killer packs jumped within seconds of each other, and Tolvern braced herself.
At the same moment, Broderick’s fleet cut down from the Y-axis, making a guess as to the destination of the jumping enemy forces. Almost as soon as it began to move, Oglethorpe announced a subtle change in the flight path of the five harvesters.
The hunter-killer packs appeared in their midst. Spears and lances surrounded Blackbeard, stabbing her from all sides, hitting all shields with energy pulses. Warning lights flashed on Tolvern’s console as shields took damage up and down the battle cruiser.
“Main battery at the ready,” Manx said, his voice tight and anxious. “All torpedo tubes loaded. Awaiting orders.”
“Hold fire,” Tolvern commanded. “Roll us into a dive.”
Manx gave orders, while Clyde worked furiously with the nav computer to thread a course through the fleet, which was rushing to Blackbeard’s defense.
The ship’s artificial gravity shifted slightly, and there was a moment where Tolvern felt almost out of her body as they made a violent course correction, and then she was looking up at the viewscreen, where all of the other ships seemed to be suddenly upside down.
Sun King (The Void Queen Trilogy Book 3) Page 17