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Dragon Quadrant (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 2)

Page 15

by Michael Wallace


  The more he learned about Singapore, the greater his estimation of their abilities. He’d initially assumed them small in numbers, like the New Dutch, or scattered into various colonies, like the Ladinos. That was the impression given by the battered refugee fleet. Instead, he’d discovered the remnants of a unified nation that had marshaled its people, resources, and technological know-how.

  And still fallen. Was this to be Albion’s fate, too?

  The warships were only one part of the debris in the Padang System. Most of the other wreckage apparently belonged to the hundreds of thousands of Singaporeans fleeing the planet. From the look of it, most of them had failed to escape.

  Drake’s forces traversed half of the Padang System before the action found them. A refugee fleet had apparently been picking its way slowly across the system, drifting along with the wreckage as they eased closer to the jump point. Drake was going in the opposite direction, fully cloaked and quiet, and might have stumbled right past them without either side seeing the other.

  But someone had been stalking the refugees, and now appeared. Back on the bridge, Drake stared at the viewscreen as the data came in. Four hunter-killer packs, with a full allotment of spears and lances. They slipped in and out among the refugee fleet, picking casually, destroying some and boarding others.

  “Fifteen hours until we cross paths,” Manx said. “The good news is that they haven’t spotted us yet, the bad news is that there’s no way to avoid them. We either move away from the orbiting debris and into the open or we stumble right through the fight.”

  “Maybe it will be over by then,” Ellison said. Her words were hopeful, her tone less so.

  “Maybe,” Drake said. “But the buzzards look like they’re playing around. They’re in no rush.”

  Ellison glanced at Koh, who stood next to her at the communications station. “Then I assume we’ll intervene?”

  “Stay on task, Ensign,” Drake told her.

  “Yes, sir.” She busied herself with something.

  As a communications officer, Ellison had had little to do while they were traveling in silence. Not only had she been unable to send subspace messages back to fleet headquarters or to either Tolvern or Mose Dryz, but Drake had choked off communication to the other ships in the fleet. The three other cruisers—Zealand, Formidable, and Repulse—stayed within a few dozen kilometers, and they often communicated via light signaling, a technology so old that it had been used by the ancient Greeks.

  As a result, Ellison had formed a friendship of sorts with Hillary Koh, who was teaching her how to interface with Singaporean vessels. Together with Tech Officers Throckmorton (“Throck”) and Lloyd, they were programming a translator that would allow English speakers to speak Chinese, just like the Singaporeans had done in reverse. One small problem: navy crew would need a brain chip implant to interface with the communicator. So it was all hypothetical at the moment.

  Drake consulted with Lieutenant Manx. “I’m inclined to make a fight of it. Woodbury is itching to give his crew some experience. Repulse has never seen battle, and his crew is green. Captain Caites would be keen as well—she’s always up for a fight.”

  “I’m all for attacking,” Manx said. “We’ve been out here too long without a scrape. And I’m sure we can take them.”

  Manx was old Blackbeard crew, all the way back to when Drake’s former ship was still known as Ajax. And if there was one thing the Blackbeard crew was known for, it was charging into the action.

  “But is this the battle we’re looking for?” Drake said. “I love a lopsided fight—assuming we’re not the ones getting lopped—but I need to make a demonstration for Commander Li. Is this big enough?”

  “We don’t know how big it is, sir. Not until it’s over. Are we sure these are the only ships in the system?”

  “I’ve thought of that. These buzzards are in no hurry. They seem to have been waiting around for easy prey, and found it. Could be two or three other enemy forces in the system, staying hidden until they’re needed. But Manx, we’ve got a fleet. Half the firepower of the Royal Navy is right here. We didn’t come all this way to scout and reconnoiter, we came out to deliver pain to the enemy. And if my fleet isn’t big enough to do it, nothing is.”

  Drake looked up as Hillary Koh made her way over. She was scowling. Naturally.

  “Admiral Drake,” she began, her tone peevish.

  “Now listen to me,” he interrupted. “Before you object and say I don’t care about your people, why don’t you wait to see what my decision is?”

  Her response wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “You can’t attack.”

  Drake blinked. “What?”

  “I know, I feel the same way. There must be ten or fifteen thousand people crammed into those ships. Singaporeans. My people. It makes me sick to think of what they’re going through right now. They’re terrified, and they’re going to die. Some of them will be eaten alive.”

  “And you don’t want me to rescue them?”

  “You can’t fight this battle, Admiral. Not here, not now. We mix it up in Padang, we’ll give away our location. The harvester ship at Singapore will be expecting our arrival. You’ll risk the whole attack.”

  “By ‘the whole attack,’ you mean going through to your home system and assaulting the harvester ship in orbit around Singapore?”

  “Exactly. You have to rescue the planet.”

  “That’s a fight I’m not ready to have.”

  Koh looked back and forth between the two men, her eyes bugging, a flush coming over her face like a fast-arriving fever. “But you promised Commander Li!”

  “I didn’t give a timetable, Koh,” Drake said.

  “So you’re going to dither around here while my people are slaughtered?”

  “I’m not going to dither, I’m going to fight the enemy. I’m going to weaken his defenses of the approaches to your home world so that when we come through with our entire force, there will be nothing to oppose us.” Drake shook his head. “But we won’t be attacking the buzzards at Singapore until the general returns with his thirty sloops.”

  “And HMS Blackbeard,” Manx put in. “And Peerless arrives with her task force.”

  “Absolutely right,” Drake said. “I need all available forces.”

  “That could be weeks! Millions will die before you liberate the planet.”

  “Most likely. But if I move too soon, it will never be liberated. They’ll all die.” Drake gestured at the viewscreen, which showed two lances harpooning another refugee ship. “Meanwhile, there are thousands of people right here whose lives we can save.”

  Koh stared up at the viewscreen, her expression troubled. She didn’t speak.

  “Then you’re decided?” Manx asked.

  Drake nodded. “Warn the gunnery, signal our forces. We are going into battle.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tolvern and Capp put on goggles and acoustic earmuffs before entering the foundry. Green fire blasted from nozzles at a square of tyrillium armor being held in an oversize vise. It turned black as it absorbed the heat and hardened. Two men in heat suits dragged another plate of smoking armor on chains in front of water jets. The spray vaporized as it hit.

  The heat and humidity was suffocating, and acrid smoke bit the back of Tolvern’s throat. The light was so intense on one side of the room that it was like staring into a small green sun. A man with a forklift hauled in more damaged tyrillium plates to be treated with reagent and remolded. A woman, her face black with soot, gestured angrily for him to move out of the way so another forklift could get by with a load of finished armor.

  So many people working all at once, but it wasn’t a very sophisticated operation, not compared to a navy shipyard. This was all cobbled together parts, the plasma nozzles obviously taken from a ship’s engine and not engineered specifically for tyrillium hardening. Five men were wrestling another piece of armor from a mold, a job that should have been done by crane.

  “That’s one of t
hem,” Tolvern said, yelling to be heard above the din. She pointed to the woman directing the forklifts. “The big Ladino with the missing fingers is the other.”

  “These blokes look even busier than the last crop we tried,” Capp said, also yelling. “With as much coin as they’re pulling in, we’ll be lucky if they don’t steal our boatswains instead of the other way around.”

  “These two are the last. I’ll pay extra if I have to. You get the Ladino. I’ll talk to the woman.”

  Tolvern waved to get the woman’s attention. Capp picked her way through the chaos to get to the man. Too hot inside to have a conversation, so Tolvern brought the pair outside.

  The factory sat on a narrow street, blending in with the other stone buildings that stood shoulder-to-shoulder. The roofs were made of heavy tiles, and the windows had bars over them, with thick metal shutters to lock up. It gave the buildings a fortress-like appearance, but at the same time, there weren’t the high fences topped with razor wire or iron spikes that were common in high crime areas everywhere.

  But the strangest feature of this part of the city was how the roads were in troughs below the level of the buildings, and looked almost like empty canals. Once you parked, you had to climb stairs to get up from the street level.

  The rain had picked up, and was a steady drumbeat on the roofs. The clouds were so black overhead that it looked like evening, even though it was still the middle of the day.

  “Don’t like the looks of that,” Capp said, peering skyward. “Maybe it’s one of them deluges they told us about.”

  The woman they’d brought out of the factory stepped out from under the eaves, collected rain in her hands, and splashed her face. Soot still streaked her features when she was done, but she looked human now. Albionish, from the looks of her.

  “It’s safe enough for now,” she said. “I’d keep an eye on it, though. Looks threatening.” She glanced at the two newcomers and settled on Tolvern. “You’re the navy captain Rodriguez told me about?”

  Her English had broad vowels. Tolvern pegged her as a Mercian.

  “Captain Tolvern, yes. HMS Blackbeard. I want to enlist you in the Royal Navy. I lost some of my best boatswains, and Rodriguez says you’re good.”

  “Can you get me a pardon?”

  “A what?”

  “I’m already Royal Navy. Midshipman O’Keefe, HMS Lexington. That mean anything to you?”

  “I see,” Tolvern said.

  “What’s that, then?” Capp asked.

  “Lexington was one of Malthorne’s destroyers,” Tolvern explained. “She took damage in the Fantalus System and disappeared. Where is Lexington now?”

  “Lexington never made it,” O’Keefe said. “My captain was Malthorne’s cousin, and figured he’d be hung if he returned. So we scuttled, sold the ship for parts. The crew went its own way. The civil war’s over, I hear. That about right?”

  “And pardons issued,” Tolvern said.

  “What about for deserters? Because I figure that’s what all of us from Lexington count for now, isn’t that right?”

  “Was it your idea to desert or your captain’s?”

  “None of the crew had much choice in the matter. We were all the way out here, and the ship was sold out from underneath us.”

  “Put it in writing, sign a loyalty oath, and I’ll have you back at your old grade and pay. That’s more than can be said for most of Malthorne’s people.”

  “And your ship? It’s Blackbeard, right? All shot up, is she?”

  “We took a beating,” Tolvern admitted. “More than one beating, in fact. We had hull integrity issues where we fought off a boarding party, and we’re still running tests on all the systems that came down in the overhaul. But we’re armed and armored, and with a couple more boatswains we’ll have a full crew.”

  “How long you been in the yards?”

  “Two weeks. We’ve been working full out, and nearly have her patched up. I’d love another week, but I’m not sure I can get it. I’m ready to ship out now.”

  O’Keefe studied her, as if wondering if Tolvern was understating Blackbeard’s damage as part of her pitch. She lifted her hand in a slow salute. “Aye, Captain. Then I’m on board.”

  Capp was still scowling. “Just don’t be carrying any of that Malthorne rubbish with you. We ain’t that kind of ship. No cucumber sandwiches and posh talk, you hear?”

  “Look at me,” O’Keefe said. She was filthy, her hair hacked close to the scalp, so poorly it looked like she’d done it herself with a pair of old scissors and a cracked mirror. “You see anything posh here?”

  “Glad you girls can kiss and make up,” the other person from the foundry said in a light Ladino accent. He’d been watching the exchange with a stony expression. “But I got a good job already. What’s in it for me? Pay is good out here for a man with my skills, and I have never been in your navy, so that crap won’t work with me.”

  Tolvern suppressed her irritation. These two weren’t her first choice, more like her tenth, although if she’d known O’Keefe’s background, she’d have tried the woman earlier. Tolvern had been turned down plenty of times over the past week as she scratched together new crew. She’d even tried to hire some of Rodriguez’s people on a contract basis, with a kickback going to the owner of the spaceyards. Rodriguez turned her down.

  “You must be Ortiz,” Tolvern said. When he nodded, she said, “How about a signing bonus of fifty pounds?”

  Capp’s eyebrows shot up at this, but Ortiz looked unimpressed. “I can earn that in six weeks, with overtime. Not good enough.”

  Tolvern had been prepared to offer him three pounds a week, which was what an experienced boatswain earned, but if he was telling the truth about earning fifty pounds in six weeks, she was nowhere close enough.

  “How much do you want?” she asked cautiously.

  “More.”

  Tolvern turned to O’Keefe. “Is he good?”

  The midshipman shrugged. “Good enough.”

  “I’m better than you,” Ortiz told O’Keefe.

  “Not bloody likely,” O’Keefe said. “Burned your fingers off, didn’t you?”

  “Seventy-five pound signing bonus,” Tolvern said. “Three pounds fifty a week.”

  Ortiz shook his head. “Nah. Still not worth it.”

  “King’s balls,” Capp said. “Seventy-five bloody pounds. Don’t be an arse. Take it.”

  “I was thinking two hundred bonus, five pounds a week,” Ortiz said.

  “You’re mad,” Tolvern said. “I can’t offer that kind of money. It’s already going to cause me trouble if the crew hears I’m waving around signing bonuses.”

  Ortiz shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “You’d rather work here, sweltering?” Tolvern asked. “Messing around with substandard equipment?”

  “And stay alive? Yeah. I know why you want me, and it’s because your other people died, didn’t they? I don’t figure to go out and get shot at by buzzards and Hroom and pirates. If I’d wanted that, I’d have joined up years ago.”

  “So you’re a bloody coward,” Capp said. “Come on, Cap’n. Let’s leave this bloke. He ain’t worth it anyhow.”

  The rain had continued to pick up while the four had been talking, until it poured off the roofs of the surrounding buildings in sheets. From there it drained into the sunken roadbed and joined a small, but growing stream.

  “What do you think?” O’Keefe asked Ortiz. “Is it a deluge?”

  “Drains are backing up,” he said. “Roads will be rivers in a few minutes. Could be. I don’t hear any thunder. Usually, it slams into the mountains and all goes off at once.”

  “Usually, but not always,” she said.

  Lorries and private cars had been rolling by earlier in the conversation, but had largely vanished from the street. Heavy metal shutters slammed shut up and down the street, blocking windows.

  “Yeah, I’d say the toads are coming,” O’Keefe added. “Let’s get inside.” She reached for the
door, but it didn’t budge. She cursed. “It’s locked.”

  Capp clapped her hands sarcastically. “Well done, luv. You must have been the pride of the Royal Navy.”

  “Someone must have locked it from the inside. Must not have seen us come out.”

  Capp didn’t look convinced. “Better hope them toads don’t appear.”

  Ortiz pounded on the metal door, but nobody responded. Too much noise from the foundry, no doubt, plus the thundering rain on the roof. O’Keefe cursed again and said they’d have to go around the building to one of the loading bays. That would take them into the rain.

  A truck pulled up. It had big tires and was elevated to get it above the water. Metal spikes stuck out of the roof, the tire rims, the bumpers, and the hood, giving it a porcupine appearance. A window came down.

  “Captain!”

  It was Carvalho, back early from the yards. Tolvern had told him two hours. Give her a chance to seal the deal with drinks, pay off the foundry owner for stealing two of his employees mid-shift, and wrap up other business in town.

  “The fugitives are in Samborondón,” Carvalho said. “We found them.”

  Tolvern had nearly forgotten about Djikstra and Megat. Blackbeard had been stripped down and rebuilt in the two weeks since she came into Rodriguez’s yards, and Tolvern had been consumed with the numerous arguments, compromises, and simple logistics of the overhaul, as well as the struggle to acquire supplies and crew. Tolvern had spent a fortune in the end, but the result was that she was ready to ship out, whether she hired on the last two boatswains or not.

  “Why didn’t you call?” Tolvern said.

  “Get in, I’ll tell you.”

  Tolvern turned to O’Keefe. “Find me in the yards when the storm is over. Ortiz, the offer stands.”

  He snorted. “Don’t wait up on my account.”

  “Hope you burn yer knob off next time,” Capp muttered.

  Tolvern grabbed Capp and braced to make a dash through the rain to the truck. Before they could move, the ground rumbled, and water spouted from one of the overwhelmed drains about thirty feet in front of them. Tolvern stared through the sheet of water, thinking that something had blocked the drainage system and part of the street was about to collapse.

 

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