“Then why did you launch a pod in the middle of battle?”
“I didn’t. That was unauthorized. We had a few issues on Blackbeard—nothing to worry about. The buzzards saw it, and I’m guessing the pair on board that pod are either dead by now, or wish they were.”
Tolvern looked up from the cockpit at Li, who stood with his hands on his hips, staring, suspicion on his face.
“I thought we were sharing all information. You certainly led me to believe so when I revealed the eliminon battery. Why are you lying now?”
“I’m not lying.” Tolvern blinked, confused. “What do you even think I’m lying about?”
Li turned to the tech. “Show her the ship.”
The other man pulled a computer from his hip pocket and touched the screen. He leaned over and showed Tolvern the screen; it was a small chart of the system. Marked in yellow was the trajectory of a vessel flying away from the Kettle.
“Your pod,” Li said.
“Can’t be. The pods don’t have that kind of range.”
“We saw your launch and picked this up from the exact region where you sent it.”
“I don’t know what that is, but it’s not ours,” she said. “Must be the buzzards. One of the lances, maybe. It swooped in, captured the pod, and is carrying it off who knows where.”
“It’s too small for a lance, and we tracked it from where you launched your pod. Who was it, Tolvern? What are you hiding?”
“I’m not hiding anything. It was your friend Megat. And the Dutch fellow who told us you were here—Djikstra broke Megat out of his cell, and the two of them attacked and nearly killed one of my crew, then made a run for it in the pod.”
“And you let them get away?” Li asked.
“They weren’t going anywhere. I told you, there’s no range on those pods. It has to be a lance.”
“Except that it’s not. That is no lance or any other Apex ship. It’s too small, and it has a plasma engine that is clearly a derivative of your own, based on the signature. It must be your pod.”
“I’m telling you, that pod is in no way capable of crossing the system, and it doesn’t have a plasma engine. Go back to your data, you’ll see the pod was rocket-launched.”
He studied her, and it was obvious that he still harbored doubts. Tolvern was done protesting; anything more and she’d start to sound desperate to convince him. Frankly, she didn’t care if he believed her or not. She’d been on the base nearly forty-five minutes already. She had to get back to Blackbeard.
“Whoever that is,” she said, “they’re leaving the battlefield, not arriving. We’ll worry about the ones already here and trying to kill us.”
“All right.”
Tolvern gave him a hand computer she’d brought over from the ship. “I worked out a few signals on my way over here. There’s a list of them here for you to study. I’ll give you simple orders, and it will be up to you to find the best way to execute them.”
“What if I need to say something back?”
“I didn’t have time for that. Maybe when this is over we can dredge up some Old Earth flag signaling or something. Visual range only.”
Tolvern buckled herself in and gestured for the tech to lower the canopy. “Time to give your scooter a test drive.”
#
They launched Tolvern on an electrified rail. It shot her away from the station, at which point she fired the ignition. Small rockets flared out from the rear of the scooter, and she fought with the joystick to stabilize. In a few moments she was racing toward Blackbeard.
“Hey, this is fun. Too bad I can’t take it for a run.” She got on the com. “I’m on my way.”
Capp answered, her voice tense. “We see you. Approach and we’ll bring you in.” Capp hesitated, then added, “Did you get an update before you left the station?”
“Negative. And I don’t want one now, do you understand?”
“Aye. It ain’t pretty, though. I can say that much, right?”
Tolvern was itching to find out what her first mate possibly meant. And she was tired, her judgment not at its sharpest. She almost asked. But there was valuable information for the enemy in almost anything they could say, and she refrained.
“Capp,” Tolvern warned. “Enough of that. Anything you need before I close the channel?”
“Aye, Cap’n.” The lieutenant’s tone was suddenly playful. “I need a handsome bloke for a roll in the sack. Did you bring me one?”
“I wouldn’t want to aggravate that collarbone injury.”
“That’s what Carvalho said. I told him not to worry, I’m safe enough, but I had to shag him three times before he’d believe it.”
Chapter Six
Tolvern had her update the moment they hauled her into the landing bay. Seeing it on the viewscreen a few minutes later only confirmed the bad news. She settled into her seat and gratefully accepted a mug of hot tea brought to her from the mess while her exhausted brain tried to make sense of the new information.
Blackbeard was no longer trying to hide, and had been scanning the system with all active and passive sensors. Admiral Drake’s forces kept their long march toward the Kettle in relief of the Albion cruiser and her new friend, but they were still a day and a half from the battlefield. Tolvern might have to fight Apex off not just once, but multiple times, if she hoped to survive long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
Meanwhile, they located the departing ship Commander Li had told her about. It was human, all right, and what’s more, Blackbeard’s database identified the type. It was a Dutch tramp frigate, barely large enough to jump. That class of ship had a single deck gun that wouldn’t do much in an actual fight, and generally stuck to areas patrolled by the Royal Navy rather than risking pirates in the outer systems. What was it doing way out here?
The ship had apparently been hidden somewhere inside the gas giant’s orbit. When the battle started, it emerged from hiding and made a run for it. Its motivation baffled her, but she suspected who was flying it: Djikstra and Megat.
“The devil only knows how they got on board,” Tolvern said.
Capp let out a burst of rude language when Tolvern shared her suspicions, but when the cursing ran its course, an expression came over her face that managed to be both outraged and admiring.
“That Dutch bloke must have stashed a ship somewhere. How do you figure he managed?”
“Indeed.” Tolvern rubbed her thumb over the handle of her mug. “How did they get the ship in place, how did they escape from the buzzards? All sorts of questions.”
“However they did it, they ain’t taking chances now. They’re hauling their arses out of here.”
Two men operating a ship alone—it was possible, Tolvern supposed. At least for now. They’d need someone to run some calculations if they ever wanted to jump, unless one of the pair had been a pilot at some point.
The mystery was driving her crazy. Where were those two headed?
“Pilot, is there a jump point out there or are they flying blind?”
“That is difficult to ascertain,” Nyb Pim said. “We do not have a good chart for this system. Smythe has been scanning, but has not yet found anything in that direction.”
Apex ships had begun to maneuver again, and this grabbed Tolvern’s attention. “All right, Smythe. Show me the bad news.”
He changed the viewscreen. More Apex ships had jumped into the Kettle System. Three more hunter-killer packs—which felt like overkill, but couldn’t make the odds much worse than they already were—and, more significantly, a second harvester ship.
This one had a different shape. It was still larger than any of its accompanying vessels, but was long and lean, with a bulbous front and a long, slender rear. It reminded her of a sperm whale, mostly head, tapering off at the tail.
“That makes two harvester ships,” she said. “Why?”
“The buzzards are anxious,” Capp said. “Want to make sure the job gets done.”
“There’s only one h
arvester ship in orbit around Singapore,” Tolvern replied. “The refugees have all agreed on that much. Anything from a third to half of the population survived the bombardment. That’s thirty to fifty million people for one ship. We have less than a hundred on Blackbeard and another five hundred on Sentinel 3. That doesn’t require two ships.”
“What about Drake and his people?”
“Come on, Capp. Throw in Drake’s entire fleet, and we’re still only talking about a few thousand. Plus the marines in stasis, I suppose. Still, one harvester ship could process us all.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Capp said. “I mean there’s two of us now and two of them. Now we’re even.”
It was a vague explanation that sounded more like choosing teams in a playground game than anything to do with wartime contingencies, and the newly arriving buzzards were flying toward the Kettle, not trying to intercept Admiral Drake’s forces.
But Capp had got Tolvern thinking. What about the disarray in the Apex forces during the earlier battle? Blackbeard and her crew would be dead if not for that. Could this be about an internal struggle among the buzzards? Different forces, all hoping to win the battle for their own personal glory?
“Let’s hope it doesn’t play out like that,” Tolvern decided at last. “Let’s hope they team up and try to take us out.”
“What do you mean?” Capp asked. “How is that gonna help?”
Tolvern turned to Smythe. “How long until the new ships reach us?”
He and Lomelí were scanning the closer, more menacing force, and it took the tech officers a moment to come up with the answer.
“Roughly twenty hours at current speed. Maybe a little less.” Smythe punched at the console. “They came through a closer jump point, it looks like.”
“Twenty hours.” Tolvern gave Capp a half smile. “So if the first fleet waits around, that buys us time.”
Capp grunted. “Only about half what we need until Drake shows up.”
“I’ll take twenty now and figure out how to earn twenty more when they show up. And engineering will be all too glad for another day to patch us up. Maybe I’ll even get some sleep.”
But that was not to be. A few minutes later, Smythe warned of movement in the closer enemy fleet.
The main enemy force had been largely static for a few hours, milling about, positioning their ships near the moons, occasionally sending a small group to jump away and then jump back, but now two of the hunter-killer packs were breaking off. They slid sideways toward one of the smaller moons, away from Blackbeard, but Tolvern suspected this was just positioning, and she was soon proven right.
Four more packs accelerated in an apparently random direction, but Tolvern was sure they were preparing for a short-range jump. Worse still, the harvester ship was in motion. It had remained at a distance, content to observe in the earlier battle, but now came drifting in toward the planet and the icy ring where Blackbeard and Sentinel 3 remained in orbit.
“It’s on an intercept course,” Nyb Pim announced.
“King’s balls,” Capp muttered. “How long we got?”
“I am calculating that now.”
“Smythe,” Captain Tolvern said, “I sent you some codes when I came onto the bridge. Do you have them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell the sentinel we’re moving out.”
“Passing your orders to the gunnery, sir.”
Moments later, the second and third missile launchers opened, but didn’t fire. This was the signal to Commander Li that she intended to move, and he was to follow.
Barker called at once from the gunnery, even as the missile launchers were still opening. “Can you buy me some time?”
“How much and why?” Tolvern asked.
“Thirty minutes, forty, tops. We’re almost done hammering the damaged aft shields back into place. Trust me, you want that done.”
She glanced at the viewscreen. Possibly. The harvester ship was accelerating slowly, the other enemy craft still jostling. None of the lances had jumped. There might even be a full hour before battle if the cruiser and battle station maintained their position, and Tolvern could sure use the aft shields before she took more fire. Unfortunately, that would mean abandoning her latest plan.
“Keep your men working,” she said, “but we’re moving out.”
“Captain, listen to me. We need those shields. It’s the difference between absorbing twenty seconds of enemy fire and us all dying after two. As soon as we go into battle—”
“As soon as we do, we’re dead anyway. I don’t intend to fight. Not this time.”
She cut the channel and ordered Nyb Pim to take them right at the harvester ship. The instant Blackbeard moved out of orbit, the battle station materialized on the screens, its cloaks coming down. It swung out of the icy ring, several small engines flaring blue-green gasses behind it.
The station didn’t have rapid acceleration and was moving at a crawl compared to the speed that Blackbeard could manage, even with only one engine. Tolvern let the station overtake them, then ordered the ship to take a position directly above and behind the battle station, like a remora following a shark.
“Let’s see what the buzzards think of this.”
The harvester ship kept coming toward them, and though both sides were moving slowly, the distance closed quickly. The bridge fell silent as they waited to see what would happen. There were so many enemies. No way to defeat them all, not without the miracle of the eliminon battery.
“We’re coming in range,” Capp said.
Tolvern hesitated. “Lomelí, activate the defense grid computer. Looks like we’re fighting after all. And get Barker on the com. I need to talk to him.”
“Yes, sir,” the young woman said, her tone grim.
“Smythe, ready the next signal for our friends,” Tolvern said.
But Smythe cried out at that same moment. “It’s slowing down!”
It was true. The harvester ship had reversed its engines. The lances ahead of her broke off and swung wide, into an unmistakably defensive posture.
“Keep going,” Tolvern said. “We can’t look hesitant or they’ll know it’s a bluff. We have to hope they withdraw.”
The harvester ship was, indeed, falling back, retreating with its forces toward the small moon. At last Tolvern had her excuse to break off the charge, no longer worried they’d suspect her of bluffing. After all, the human forces might be confident enough in open battle, but chasing an enemy around a moon and falling into a potential ambush was another matter.
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God they bought it. Send Li another signal. We’re falling back to the ring.”
“That didn’t buy us much time,” Capp said a few minutes later, after the message had been sent. “An hour, tops, if they move again.”
“Barker was only asking for thirty minutes. He’s got to be happy about getting the aft shield fixed. Well, patched up a little, anyway.”
“But what do we do next?” Capp asked.
“Any time they come after us, we’ll rush out to challenge them. Make it look like we’re spoiling for a fight now that we’ve seen how the eliminon battery works against their forces.”
“The eliminon battery that doesn’t work, you mean,” Smythe said. He and Lomelí were back to working together at the tech console.
“We know that, they don’t. Anyway, we’ll keep bluffing them if we need to. But what I’m hoping they decide is that it’s prudent to wait for reinforcements. That buys us twenty hours.”
“And another twenty until Dreadnought comes to pull our stones out of the fire,” Capp said. “All we’ve done is double the number of ships against us. Our goose is cooked, either way.”
“Maybe not fully cooked,” Tolvern said, “but I’ll admit to a strong aroma of burning feathers. I’m open to suggestions. Anyone?” When there was no answer, she continued. “So we bluff, we buy as much time as we can, and then we fight when the enemy calls us out. It’s our best sho
t.”
Two of the hunter-killer packs jumped, and they braced themselves for a sudden fight, but the ships reappeared farther out, near several lances that had been drifting aimlessly since the harvester ship retreated.
The two clusters of ships flew across each other’s paths in seemingly random patterns. Back and forth, like two flocks of birds crisscrossing in flight.
“What are they up to now?” Tolvern asked.
Nobody had an answer or even a guess. It was buying them more time, though, so she wasn’t about to complain. Let the buzzards keep swooping past each other as long as they wanted.
The lances kept passing closer and closer, until at range it looked like they were all right on top of each other every time they passed. Sometimes one of them darted in, as if to ram the opposing ship, only to dart away at the last moment.
And then two ships coming at each other both broke in the same direction. One was a lance, the other a larger spear. The spear took a glancing blow off starboard, and gas and debris vented into space. The smaller lance crumpled on impact. It spun away, explosions blasting holes in its side. Moments later it detonated. Hard to say which ship had been at fault, but it seemed as though the lance had hesitated a moment too long before swerving.
The harvester ship had approached the action during the mysterious darting back and forth, not participating, but observing. Now, however, it rumbled into the action. The other ships scattered. Some vanished entirely, jumping clear and reappearing a million miles out.
The wounded spear limped off, picking up speed, but the harvester ship overtook it before it could escape. It launched tentacle-like tethers, hooked the spear, and dragged it in. The smaller ship tried to break free, but failed. A gaping hole opened in the rear of the harvester ship, and it stuffed the spear into its maw before closing again.
“I don’t know what just happened,” Tolvern said, “but whoever was on that spear is in for a rough time of it.”
“Good,” Capp said. “Let the buzzards eat each other. You think they’ll start up that strutting again? Maybe we can get rid of a few more of ’em.”
By now, Sentinel 3 had inserted itself back into the ice ring. Cloaked once more, it would slide slowly in one direction or another along the ring in an attempt to conceal itself. Tolvern ordered Blackbeard closer to the planet.
Dragon Quadrant (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 2) Page 6