The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

  There was more squawking and displays at this. Other princesses showed jealousy, anger at Sool Em and at Ak Ik herself, anger that another had been chosen in her place. Every princess harbored the same ambition, to become a queen commander, allowed a flock of a hundred thousand to command. And every queen harbored an equally powerful ambition, to someday become empress of the entire species, to devour the other queens and their princesses and raise a flock that was composed of their descendants and their descendants only.

  Such a thing had not happened in more than three centuries, but everywhere the queens were jockeying, making temporary alliances. Three queens had already formed a super flock as they thrust deep into the Hroom Empire, feasting and multiplying.

  And now, Ak Ik, her flock having cracked the code to control the brains of the humans, found her own ambitions swelling. If only she could keep Sool Em from splitting at the end of the battle with the humans. The queen commander cocked her head and studied the younger bird as she strutted about, nipping the feathers of her sisters.

  I lied to you, daughter. When the battle is over, you must die.

  They kept up their display for nearly a minute before settling down. Sool Em let out a croaking, hooting request to be heard.

  “Speak.”

  “My hunter-killer pack is positioned at the rear.”

  “Being held in reserve, daughter. You will see combat, I promise you.”

  “With the rest of the flock in front of my lances, I’ve kept my instruments trained outward. Watching for the Albion forces being sent to relieve our prey.”

  “We determined that the intercepted subspace was intended as deception,” Ak Ik said. “No enemy warships will arrive in time to affect the battle.”

  “Are you certain, Queen Commander?” Sool Em asked. There was something cryptic in her voice. “What if I were to tell you that an enemy fleet is on its way?”

  Ak Ik hesitated at this. Did the princess mean Hroom ships? The empire was in disarray, attacked from the rear by Apex queens, from within by a still smoldering civil war, and on the outskirts by the raging addiction to sugar that humans had fostered for generations to weaken their rival. There was an antidote now to the addiction, but it was spreading slowly.

  All of this had come from numerous sources. The Hroom brain had been cracked open long ago, and spies and saboteurs were placed throughout their worlds. Ak Ik herself had six different Hroom returned to their people with secretions to control their brains, though she was not currently moving against that race. There was more glory to be found in fighting humans.

  “If you mean the Hroom,” Ak Ik said at last, “I find that implausible. They have shown no ability to move their sloops of war into independent combat against our flocks.”

  “I do not mean the Hroom,” Sool Em said. She smugly ruffled her feathers, an action that made the queen commander twitch with rage. “Or the humans. Other flocks are coming to share the spoils.”

  Sool Em shared her discovery. A flock that had been feasting on abandoned Singaporean mining colonies had broken away with its harvester ship and had jumped into the system, apparently laying claim to the battle station as part of its spoils. It was a large, powerful flock, with numerous resources for a protracted battle. It also enjoyed the glorious status of being one of the flocks participating in subduing a human civilization. That had never happened before.

  Still, Ak Ik was surprised to be challenged so directly.

  “This can only mean one thing,” Ak Ik said. “The queen commander has pretensions to take her place as empress of the race. We’ll pluck her feathers if she tries.”

  “And there is another threat, Queen Commander,” Sool Em said. “A second challenger to our prize.”

  Ak Ik could only clack her beak at this. A second challenger? How could that be?

  “Explain at once!”

  This turned out to be three of the flocks that had been working together to attack and devour the defenseless Hroom systems. There was little glory in preying on the Hroom, but the worlds were rich in resources and allowed the flocks to grow in strength for more serious battles elsewhere. And now Sool Em claimed they were returning to steal Ak Ik’s glory.

  “We cannot stare down four flocks at once, Queen Commander,” one of the other princesses said. “Maybe we’ll have to share our prize.”

  Ak Ik squawked her anger, both at the princess for saying something so obvious, and at the ugly reality.

  “Verify these claims at once,” she ordered the drones working the computers. She turned back to Sool Em. “You had better not be lying, or I will tear out your feathers and eat your liver.”

  There was no heat in this threat, it was merely symbolic, like the strutting and preening of a few moments earlier. The princess wasn’t lying; that was obvious in her smug manner.

  But what to do? The prudent thing would be to negotiate, to allow the strongest of the arriving parties to share her glory in capturing the human battle station, and then fight off the others. She could still claim the warship as a lesser prize and use its crew to infiltrate the Albion worlds. Preserve her secret until it was too late for the others to stop her. The true glory lay in that direction.

  But she balked at this plan. It would show weakness.

  “We’ll call in the rest of our forces,” Ak Ik decided at last. “They won’t arrive in time, but that will broadcast our intentions. Any queen who dares challenge me will realize that it is a fight to the death, that I intend to prove my dominance.”

  The others stared at her, and Sool Em’s flapping wings managed to look both eager and worried at the same time. To challenge the other queens so directly meant only that the queen commander was declaring her own pretensions. That might leave her princesses dead, or it might make them ascendant, queens in their own right through the glory of their mother, the empress.

  Ak Ik strode across the perch to her drones. “You will increase speed. Prepare all weapon systems. Ready boarding parties. Bring the harvesting facilities online. We must defeat the humans at once.”

  The drones moved quickly to comply. Such was Ak Ik’s command over them that nothing would stop them but death. There was no longer any turning back.

  #

  Captain Tolvern followed Li into the depths of the battle station’s fire control system. He stopped in front of a bank of tubes holding small missiles, each no longer than a grown man. There were dozens of missiles in the battery, and conveyor belts lined up additional missiles to reload the tubes. Technicians checked the equipment, while others prepared powersuits to maneuver heavier items.

  “This is a new weapon system since the first war,” Li said. “Well, new as of eleven years ago. I suppose the enemy has faced them by now, including in our skirmish a few days ago.”

  “They don’t look like much,” Tolvern said. “My cannons fire larger shells than these missiles.”

  “The lances are hard to hit,” Li said, “but if you can land a blow, their armor is insufficient. This was our mistake in the first war, trying to strike them hard instead of striking them often. More, smaller guided munitions was the key.”

  “But what’s their range? They don’t seem large enough to carry sufficient fuel.”

  “The fuel stage is added at the end as they’re loaded into the tubes. It’s all automatic, very efficient. Come on, let me show you the bomb clusters. Then, I want to show you how the plasma ejector fires.”

  “I’m here to see the big gun,” Tolvern said impatiently. “The rest of the stuff I can figure out in combat. Tell me where to position my ship for maximum protection, and that’s good enough for now.”

  She wasn’t impatient out of boredom. Far from it. There was a wealth of information in here that she wanted to get into the hands of the Admiralty. Weapon systems designed from lessons learned during a bloody war with Apex might just save Albion if they could be adopted quickly enough. Whatever else she’d learned about Li and his people, the Singaporeans were excellent technicians, strate
gic thinkers, and prepared to fight it out with the enemy using all of the tools in their arsenal.

  But the clock was ticking. Tolvern felt it with every passing second, her thumping heart and the building nervousness in her gut marking the erosion of what precious moments remained.

  In thirty minutes she had to be on board Blackbeard or they wouldn’t have time to run their diagnostics, bring up and test revamped weapons systems, engines, and other equipment that had been almost entirely offline for the past several days. Maneuvering around the battle station, as they’d done before launching the boarding rockets, was one thing. Accelerating into space, managing the gas giant’s gravity well, and performing evasive maneuvers while fighting Apex lances and spears was another thing entirely.

  While Tolvern was still on the sentinel battle station, Barker and his crew kept hammering away to fix Blackbeard’s numerous deficiencies. They’d keep up their pace until the moment the ship pulled away, and later, in flight, for as long as the enemy would permit.

  “I know you must think me a coward,” Li said as they got back on the lift to take them down to the next level of weapons.

  Tolvern chose her words carefully. “No, I wouldn’t say that. You’re a cautious man, but that has its uses, too.”

  “Feeble praise indeed.”

  “Is it? Then let me make it stronger. Your battle station is in an excellent state of readiness considering how many years you’ve been waiting for combat. Your crew is older, maybe a little rusty from disuse, but game to fight. My main worry is how many of your crew are currently detained as mutineers. It leaves you shorthanded.”

  “As are you.”

  “True.” Tolvern managed not to grimace as she thought of the men and women she’d lost.

  Eleven of them, which didn’t exactly leave her with a skeleton crew, but in long combat operations, the remaining men and women would struggle with exhaustion. They were already tired after several days of hard action. How would they hold up?

  Li showed Tolvern the laser batteries, the bomb clusters, and the plasma ejector. This fired the green energy globules that Blackbeard had spotted during that initial engagement with the Apex lances. The ejector looked impressive in principle, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that would harm an Albion warship.

  “Exactly the kind of weapon that our tyrillium armor can absorb without damage,” Tolvern said. “It’s why we’re armed with so many kinetic weapons.”

  “Is your armor invulnerable to the pulse weapons of the enemy?” Li asked.

  “Well, no.” She felt defensive admitting her weaknesses. “But the enemy doesn’t fire a standard energy weapon, and we were unprepared for it at first. We’re still working out countermeasures, to be honest.”

  “This isn’t standard, either.” A hint of a smile touched the corner of Li’s mouth, evident pride. “We took in some Apex wreckage during the last war and reverse engineered it. You saw how it gives them fits.”

  “You caught the buzzards by surprise. We’ll see what happens this time around.”

  “You don’t like our chances, do you?”

  Tolvern shook her head. “I don’t have to query our AI to get the odds against a fleet of that size. Ten percent? Five percent? Frankly, that’s the best-case scenario.”

  “And if we do survive?” Li asked. “What happens then?”

  “If there’s anything left of the battle station and enough of my ship to salvage, I’ll come back for more repairs. And we’ll hope to hold on until reinforcements arrive.” Tolvern gave him a sharp look. “Assuming the Singaporeans cooperate. Assuming you and your people don’t go crazy again after the battle.”

  “Is that your fear?”

  “One of them,” she admitted.

  “I know my weaknesses, Captain Tolvern. I’ve dwelt on them over the years. Endlessly. I’ll hold my people together for this battle. After that—assuming we survive—I think it only best that I place myself under your command.”

  She nodded, relieved. “I will pass your desire along to the Admiralty.”

  “If what you say about Singapore is true, there’s no command structure left for me to report to. The best hope is to turn our equipment and personnel over to Albion and hope that you can somehow drive off Apex before the Singaporean people are extinct.” Li nodded. “To that end, I will keep no secrets from you. If there are any other sentinel battle stations, I will do my best to convince them to surrender to the Royal Navy of Albion.”

  He said this with noticeable strain in his voice. What a blow to return from a long silence to discover that everything you’d fought for and lived for had been destroyed. Tolvern remembered the shattered expressions on Koh and Swettenham’s faces when they’d learned what had become of their home world. What had become of their friends, families, even the towns and cities where they’d been raised. A genocidal attack by a remorseless enemy that consumed everything it touched. Entire species, their planets laid waste, their people driven to extinction.

  As humiliating as Li’s surrender must be, he was right, it was the only alternative. Tolvern took it for the great sacrifice that it was. All the same, this station might help her own people and home world survive the coming cataclysm.

  Tolvern glanced toward the lift. “No secrets at all?”

  “This way, Captain. I think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

  They stepped onto the lift. Li hesitated with his hand above the palm pad that would authorize their final descent to the weapon system.

  “Only five percent odds?” he asked.

  “I was being generous, Commander. A single hunter-killer pack mauled a Punisher-class navy cruiser. Your battle station defeated two packs thanks to the element of surprise. This force is eleven hunter-killer packs, each with a spear and four lances. Plus the harvester ship. Fifty-six warships in all—Albion has never faced a fleet with that kind of strength.” Tolvern paused to let that sink in. “Five percent? No, I’d say more like one percent. Possibly some fraction of that.”

  Li touched the pad, and the lift slid into motion. “We have a few tricks, Captain. Some might help you stay alive. But one is designed to fight the enemy, strength to strength. You’ll soon see what I mean.”

  It was the mysterious superweapon. Never yet fired by the battle station, but when Li and the other Singaporeans spoke of it, confidence and pride came through in their voices.

  You’d better be right or we’re all dead.

  The doors opened. A blue light radiated out from the open room. Large columns pulsed with cool electrical arcs from the floor to a ceiling nearly twenty feet overhead. Li stood aside while Captain Tolvern stepped inside. A charge filled the air, raising the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. The room hummed with a resonance that sounded almost like a thrumming song, so deep she felt it in her bones. A faint, almost floral scent filled the air.

  Li spread his arms. “Behold, the eliminon battery.”

  -end-

  Thank you for reading The Sentinel. The trilogy continues with book #2, Dragon Quadrant. You can buy it right here, or you can read below to get a sneak peek at the bonus first chapter of the second book.

  If you enjoyed The Sentinel, please consider leaving a review on Amazon to help others discover the series. In fact, if you email me a link to your review at m.wallace23@yahoo.com, I’ll gift you a copy of the second book as my thanks.

  To receive notice when my next book is released, visit my web page to sign up for my new releases list, and get a free copy of the first book of my fantasy series, The Dark Citadel, as a welcome. This mailing list is not used for any other purpose, and your email will never be sold or distributed.

  From the Author:

  If you are enjoying this trilogy after reading The Starship Blackbeard Series, welcome, and thank you for continuing with the story. If The Sentinel is your first introduction to my universe, I hope you’ll take a look at the earlier four-book series, beginning with Starship Blackbeard.

  I hope to tell
many more stories in this universe, as I’ve created a collection of characters, a history, and human and alien civilizations that have really captured my interest. At the same time, I’m annoyed as a reader when I start a story and it drags on and on and on into an endless series of books, and I’ll bet you are too. It’s frustrating as a reader, and it’s boring as a writer to keep writing the same thing over and over again.

  Instead, my goal is to create interconnected series that can stand on their own. Read a three- or four-book series that represents a single story arc, and then you can pick up the other books when you have time without feeling like you’ve been left hanging. Of course, some story arcs are going to touch across multiple series, and I hope that readers will be intrigued enough to read them all. Isn’t that the dream of every author?

  Meanwhile, since I know the ending of this book has left the story more unsettled than ever, here is the first chapter of book #2, Dragon Quadrant. I hope it sparks your interest!

  Dragon Quadrant

  by Michael Wallace

  Chapter One

  Captain James Drake opened his eyes and scanned the viewscreen. Searching. There was something urgent about the search, only he couldn’t remember what, not yet. His ship had just emerged from the jump point—he knew that much—but his head was aching, his thoughts scrambled, like he was hungover, half asleep, or both. Others groaned and cursed across the bridge. When Drake turned to see who was making the sound, it felt like a delay of several seconds before his head swiveled into place.

  The enemy. Apex. Where are they?

  It was the first stirring of coherent thought in Drake’s head. “Tolvern,” he said, trying to get someone else’s attention. No, that was wrong. “Nyb Pim, tell me—” Also, wrong.