Dragon Quadrant (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 2)

by Michael Wallace

  “That’s right,” Capp said. “They got to come in here.” She ground a fist into her palm. “And then we’ll pulverize ’em.”

  “Our captain does not look so confident,” Nyb Pim said, studying Tolvern’s face.

  “That’s because the eliminon battery can’t protect us anymore,” she said.

  Capp thrust her chin out defiantly. “What are you talking about?”

  Tolvern held the first mate’s gaze. “It is a single-use weapon.”

  Chapter Five

  Once it became clear that the enemy wouldn’t force an immediate resumption of hostilities, Tolvern had left a skeleton crew on the bridge and brought Capp, Smythe, and Nyb Pim into the war room. Moments earlier, they’d been cheering, slapping each other on the back, and carrying on like the battle had settled the entire war. Now they stared glumly from around the table as she laid out the facts.

  The eliminon battery warped gravitational waves coming off the gas giant, in effect capturing them within a containment field. Releasing them destroyed the containment field, and it had to be rebuilt. When Tolvern first heard of the eliminon battery, she’d assumed that “battery” was being used in the ancient naval sense to mean a collection of guns or cannons, but that was wrong. Battery, in this case, meant the device’s storage capacity.

  “So let me get this straight,” Smythe said. “The thing literally needs to recharge.”

  “I haven’t got a clue how the physics works,” Tolvern said, “but it appears to have that limitation, yes.”

  “How long are we talking about?”

  “A day or two—it’s not always consistent. But a long time, given the present circumstances.”

  “That is obviously a problem,” Nyb Pim said.

  “Yes, Pilot. It is.”

  “I do not think we have that long.”

  “No, Pilot, I wouldn’t say that we do.”

  “Let me grab Brockett and Lomelí and take a look at this thing,” Smythe said. “I’ll bet we could figure out a couple of tweaks. Barker, too. He’s got a good mind for the engineering stuff. Get it up and running faster and the battery would be a lot more useful.”

  “Maybe so,” Tolvern said, “but do you think you could do all of that before, oh, I don’t know, forty-eight hours from now? Figure out the science and engineering, and then implement changes to one of the most sophisticated weapons systems ever devised? And do it before the buzzards come flying in for another go of it?”

  “Well, no. I guess that would be too much to hope for.”

  Tolvern avoided the exasperated sigh that wanted to come out. Instead, she spoke more practically. “The good thing is that Apex has no clue, either. Hopefully. They were certainly caught with their pants down when the device activated.”

  “Do birds wear pants?” Capp asked. “Seems hard to put them on over those skinny legs. And then there are the claws.”

  “Dammit, Capp.”

  “Sorry, Cap’n. I was just wondering.” She brightened. “There’s one good thing. We hold off that long and that’s about the time Drake and his mates will be showing up, right?”

  “More or less.”

  Capp rubbed her head. “So all we need to do is stay alive for two days and we’re saved.”

  “Yes, merely that.”

  And yet Capp had a point, didn’t she? They’d lost the element of surprise, but if Drake’s fleet arrived in time, it would be more than an even match. Apex must see the same thing; they’d be eager to renew the attack just as soon as they regrouped.

  The key was to keep that attack from happening. An idea began to form, a possible solution to her problem. To implement it she’d need Commander Li’s help. But the two of them could not communicate from a distance for fear of losing their secrets to the aliens.

  Tolvern rose to her feet. “Lieutenant Capp, you have the helm. I need to pay our friends on the battle station a visit.”

  #

  Soon, Tolvern was alone in the away pod. The diamond-like sheen of the ice ring swept across her field of vision, with the gas giant a vast kettle of copper and clay eating up the background. The battle station was only a few dozen miles from the ship, but it had vanished once again against the ring.

  A yellow light flashed above the airlock door, and Jane began her countdown. “Thirty seconds to launch. Prepare for rapid acceleration.”

  Tolvern’s thoughts turned to the two men who’d attacked Carvalho and stolen an away pod. Megat, the escaped Singaporean mutineer, and Djikstra, the New Dutch pilot who’d led them to this system in the first place. What had they been thinking? How had they even known each other?

  Carvalho said that Djikstra was sick when he came down here, sweating and barely able to hold himself up. Was that a coincidence, or did it have something to do with all of this?

  Tolvern might never find out. Apex had sent a lance to pick up the pod, and the two men were probably dead by now. If not, they wished they were dead.

  Capp spoke over the com. “You remember to pack your toothbrush, Cap’n?”

  “Hah. I won’t be long.”

  “Better not. Them buzzards are moving again, and I ain’t fighting ’em alone.”

  “Twenty seconds,” Jane said.

  “An hour, tops,” Tolvern said. “Don’t leave without me.”

  “On the other hand, it is a nice ship what you left me. Wonder what it would fetch on San Pablo. Ten thousand quid, I figure.”

  “Ten thousand and a bounty on your head.”

  “I see your point.”

  “Ten seconds to launch.”

  “Tell you what, Cap’n. Bring me back a handsome bloke from the station, and I’ll let you keep your ship.”

  Tolvern didn’t respond to this. She had closed her eyes and was finishing the countdown in her head. And then the launch. It slammed her back in her seat as she went hurtling from the ship.

  She opened her eyes. Ahead, nothing but ice. Above and behind, the vast field of stars, the endless universe. Where was the station? Shouldn’t it be visible by now? Had they miscalculated?

  Or worse, what if the battle station hadn’t received her message? She’d sent the signal: two timed bursts from the plasma engine, as if testing it after battle. It meant she would send a pod from Blackbeard.

  Tolvern didn’t see the hook or net until it had snared her and she was pushed against her restraints. The hook brought her in, and suddenly she could see the black smear of the station against the surrounding stars. She had to get her hands on that cloaking technology.

  Commander Jon Li was in the docking bay to personally help her out of the pod. Like everything else on the battle station, the bay was orderly and neat, but the air was warmer than on Blackbeard, more humid. It also carried a faint floral scent.

  Li seemed more relaxed than when she’d last seen him roughly ten hours earlier, and as she studied his face, she was surprised to see that he seemed rested.

  “You look like a man who has got a good night’s sleep,” she said. “Don’t tell me you were curled up in bed during the battle.”

  “In a manner of speaking. It was artificial sleep, but good enough.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We have a pill that simulates eight hours of rest. Very useful in combat situations.”

  “What? That’s medically impossible.”

  Li laughed. “Except that it’s not. Look at me.”

  “If that’s true, I’ve got to get my hands on it.”

  “You pay for it later, of course. The pills let you skip up to two days of sleep, but you crash hard. You need to make up every hour eventually.”

  “Oh,” Tolvern said, disappointed. “So it’s just an upper. That sort of thing has been around forever. Since they discovered tea and coffee, if not before.”

  “No, it’s not an upper. You’re not jittery, you’re not drugged. It really does feel like you’ve had a good night of sleep.”

  Tolvern waved her hand. “Never mind. I’m exhausted, a
nd would rather be in my bed. But the buzzards are milling about out there. You know they’re going to make another charge before the Albion fleet arrives.”

  “Those are your ships, then? You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. The big one is Dreadnought. She’s the flagship of the entire fleet. You recall my fight with Apex before jumping into the Kettle System.”

  “Right. You lost a warship and came out battered. I recall.”

  “HMS Swift. We nearly went down, too. I fired off a subspace message, but I never expected reinforcements. I thought Drake’s fleet was back guarding the home system.”

  “So you had no idea he was coming?”

  “The admiral’s response led me to believe he was abandoning us to our fate, even though he claimed help was on its way. I thought it was a feint for the enemy. Turns out it was a double feint.”

  “He sounds like a clever man.” Li’s face turned grim. “But they’re too far away. They’ll never arrive in time.”

  “We have to buy time. The key is the eliminon battery.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, Tolvern, but give it up. There’s absolutely no way to recharge the weapon in time. In fact, we’re not even charging yet, we’re still running diagnostics.”

  “What?” she asked, alarmed. “You are?”

  “That’s the problem with using a weapon for the first time in eleven years—it doesn’t quite work as well as it did in drills. I figure we’ll lose two hours, maybe three. The point is, we won’t get it back online in time for the next attack.”

  “I know that, and you know that. Does Apex?”

  “Hard to say,” Li said. “Let’s say no. They certainly didn’t act like they were expecting to face the eliminon battery—they weren’t prepared at all. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if they know its limitations or not, they have enough firepower in their long-range weapons to stand off a pace and bombard us from a distance. That would be slow, but I’ll bet they could finish the job before your friends arrive.

  “Or,” Li added, “they turn on your admiral first. The Apex fleet is huge—I have no doubt your Albion friends would put up a fight, but the aliens would prevail.”

  “You haven’t seen Dreadnought in action,” Tolvern said stubbornly.

  “Does it have some special weapons systems, or is it just a bigger, more powerful version of your own ship?”

  “Thicker armor, more guns, more ability to take punishment and deliver it.”

  “So, bigger and more powerful, but essentially the same as Blackbeard.” Li shrugged.

  His implicit dismissal of her ship rankled. He’d only seen Tolvern’s cruiser when it was already battered by the enemy, its armor in tatters. Even so, even helplessly outnumbered, it had delivered a beating to the enemy. True, she’d only survived thanks to Sentinel 3’s defenses, but that was all the more reason she needed to stay alive until the admiral arrived.

  “Can’t this battle station move?” Tolvern said.

  His tone was wary. “Why do you ask that?”

  “That wasn’t a question, not really. Smythe has been in your command module, working your systems. And I’ve seen your schematics myself. You have six plasma engines—I would have commandeered one and patched it onto my ship somehow if I’d had the time.”

  “It’s too small for you,” Li said. “I have my own engineers, you know. Koh analyzed your ship. You couldn’t have outrun the birds, and you couldn’t have attained jump speeds. Not with anything stolen from my station, at least.”

  “I’m not here to steal an engine. My point is that you can maneuver. Your engines share a fuel source with the plasma ejector. Turn off the ejector and you’ve got enough power to cross the entire system if you need to.”

  “Not fast enough to outrun Apex. And once I start moving, I lose my cloaking, so if you’re hoping to slip quietly away before the enemy attacks, give that idea up.”

  Tolvern hadn’t even considered that possibility. Was Li sure? What if Blackbeard tucked in against the battle station and they made an attempt to join up with Admiral Drake? The enemy fleet seemed divided, distracted. Apex’s ability to detect hidden enemies was weak. It might work.

  “No, I don’t want to hide,” she said, dismissing that idea. “And I don’t want to make a run for it at all. I’m talking about pressing the attack.”

  Li’s eyes widened. “You want us to move into an offensive posture?”

  “Why not? Sentinel 3 is mobile, it’s a powerful spaceship in its own right. Don’t wait for the enemy to start a long-range bombardment, move toward them as if you have nothing to fear. Blackbeard will assume the role of fire support, stand back a pace and lob missiles onto the battlefield, keep the enemy dancing.”

  “Without the eliminon battery, we wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “They don’t know about the eliminon battery though, do they?” she asked. “They don’t know you need to recharge it.”

  “So we gain some tactical advantages—assuming they buy it. Once they see we can’t turn it on and off at will, that goes away. They swoop in en masse and wipe us out.”

  “There’s one other factor you may not know about,” Tolvern said. “The enemy forces are in disarray. There’s internal conflict in their fleet.”

  She explained what she’d noticed in the battle, starting with how not all of the hunter-killer packs were fighting in harmony. The biggest evidence was how one group had jumped in front of the other, preventing an easy victory. One side seemed cautious, the other aggressive.

  “It might be nothing more than bad coordination between forces,” Tolvern said, “but given the buzzards’ caste system, I’d expect them to fight as one.”

  “That was certainly the case during our war,” Li said. “At least in any individual encounter. We know the greater commanders and the lesser commanders are jockeying for position within a hierarchy. It must be something like that.”

  “But what if it’s something even more profound?” Tolvern pressed. “Albion just survived a civil war. The Hroom Empire is in the middle of their own. Even on your own ship, you divided into factions and fought a pitched battle, one side against the other.”

  “Don’t try to put yourself in their minds, Captain,” Li said. “They’re incomprehensible, except as a force of nature.”

  “I’m not so sure, not in this situation. You know what I think? I think it’s a natural condition of any intelligent species to fight among themselves, even in the face of an external threat.”

  “Even if that’s true, what good does it do us?” Li shook his head. “These birds are brutal killers, and the only thing that concerns them is the complete obliteration of a rival. Maybe you can negotiate with the Hroom, but Apex is something else entirely. A deer doesn’t negotiate with a wolf. It runs for its life.”

  “Albion is not a deer, it’s a lion. And we’re not running from this battle, we’re fighting it.”

  “Understood. That’s not what I meant.”

  “And don’t you call this the Dragon Quadrant?” she asked. “Isn’t a dragon the symbol of your Imperium? Do dragons flee for their lives?”

  Li’s expression hardened. “We’re no cowards either, if that’s what you mean.”

  Dragon or deer, the Imperium was nearly dead. So far as Tolvern knew, this battle station was the only force of Singaporeans still fighting. The rest of the Imperium fleet was gone, the cities of its home world radioactive slag heaps, and an Apex harvester ship was collecting the survivors to torture and feed to its troops.

  “So you’ll take the fight to the enemy?” she asked.

  A curt nod. “We’ll fight.”

  #

  Although they’d had no trouble catching an inbound pod, the Singaporeans didn’t share the Royal Navy’s system of firing pods back and forth, so Tolvern had to abandon the capsule that had carried her over, as there was no way to send it back to her ship.

  Instead, Li led her down to the launching bay, where she was shown a small ship a Singaporean te
chnician called a scooter. During Sentinel 3’s long years of isolation, the crew had apparently used them to fly around the perimeter of the station, conducting inspections of the hull and docking to complete external repairs. In a pinch Li sent them to scour raw materials from the surrounding ice, asteroids, and even the nearest of the small moons orbiting the planet. A scooter was capable of round-trip journeys of twenty or thirty thousand miles.

  The tech pointed out with concern that Tolvern was unlikely to return the scooter, but Li laughed off the objection. “If all we lose today is a scooter, our ancestors will surely have been smiling down on us.”

  Tolvern eased herself into the cockpit of the small craft. She was tucked right in, no room to stretch her legs. The tech leaned over her to point out useful buttons and knobs, and had to get right in her face to show her.

  Better a scooter than an unpowered pod launched on a preprogrammed trajectory. Launched to a blind spot in the ice ring, to be more precise, with no guarantee the station was even there. In comparison, a throttle and joystick in hand felt like control, even if she knew it was illusory. If only the instrument panels weren’t labeled in Chinese, the screens filled with chicken scratches.

  Better not overthink it. A simple throttle and joystick—how hard could it be?

  “This way of transportation worked today,” Tolvern told Li. “I’m not so sure about the future. Flitting back and forth from a few hundred miles out is one thing, but what would we do if you were on the other side of the Kettle and we needed to talk? Either we need better encryption or we need a shuttle system.”

  “What’s wrong with the scooter?”

  “I don’t have a launch platform that can send it out again, unfortunately.”

  “Don’t you have a self-propelled pod?”

  “A few,” she said. “And sure, I can send them, but you still need a way to send them back. Right now, every trip is a one-way journey—that’s going to use up your scooters and my pods in a hurry.”