Dragon Quadrant (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 2)

by Michael Wallace

  Never mind that the bird was five times as tall and at least three times as massive, and that the toad would never be able to swallow such a meal. The creatures were apparently too simple to understand such concerns. They were pure eating machines. Sit buried during the dry season, then emerge in a deluge and gorge. It would eat anything moving, no matter how large or indigestible.

  The bird unfolded its wings, and two small rocket launchers appeared under each one. Tolvern aimed her pistol at the exposed breast before it could shoot, and fired. She shot again and again until she’d emptied her pistol. It bellowed in pain, though how much of that was the toad and how much was the gunfire, it was impossible to say. The bird went down with a terrific crunching sound, its leg bending in the wrong direction.

  Tolvern hit the water. The tentacle remained around her waist, dragging her down. She thrashed to free herself, but it held her tight, and soon her lungs were bursting. Finally, it was gone, slithering away. She bumped into someone as she kicked at the mud. She grabbed the person’s hair and dragged them up with her.

  The toad and the giant bird were locked into a death struggle. The bird slashed with its beak, ten feet long and made of metal. It left gashes and gaping wounds in the thick hide along the toad’s back. The toad pulled its eyes into its head and bit and chomped as it tried to subdue the bird. The legs were nothing but broken bones now, and the toad managed to get its mouth around a wing. After that, it was all over. The bird kept thrashing, but it no longer did damage to its opponent, which continued its relentless chomping.

  A few people had surfaced in the water, and Tolvern dragged them away from the fighting to heave them into the muddy shallows. Carvalho was there, too, and together they found Capp, Rodriguez, and O’Keefe. Oglethorpe surfaced, as did several others from the truck, plus several people Tolvern didn’t recognize—other victims of the harvesting.

  Ortiz was screaming when they pulled him out. He clenched his abdomen, and when Tolvern pulled his hands away, it looked like a collection of muddy eels, all squirming to get out of his gashed-open belly. Behind the pain in his eyes was an accusatory look.

  “I never want to . . . never wanted—” His words dissolved into a groan.

  “The bird claw raked him across the belly while it was trying to get free of the toad,” Carvalho said grimly.

  There was nothing to be done for Ortiz, but there were plenty of survivors. Tolvern and Rodriguez left anyone who was not part of either Blackbeard or the spaceyards to their own devices, and collected the rest. Miraculously, Ortiz was the only one who’d died.

  Capp appeared holding a pistol. She glanced at Ortiz, grunted, then looked at the giant bird, now dead and being methodically torn apart and eaten.

  “Apex, hah!” Capp said. “Predator at the top of the food chain. Got yerself eaten by a bloody toad now, didn’t you?”

  Another toad surfaced and chomped down on the other side of the dead bird. A third came swimming through the floodwater, legs propelling it forward in a frog kick.

  “We’re alive and we still have fight in us,” Tolvern said. “Next step is to make sure we stay that way.” She glanced up at the yards, where the giant birds had disappeared and explosions and gunfire grew in fury. “Come on, we’ll have to follow them in.”

  #

  Drake stared at the viewscreen as Dreadnought dove on the z-axis, spinning to prevent the enemy from targeting them in one spot. Enemy lances rolled across the screen. They let loose with energy weapons the moment they appeared, and the computer—Simon, the crew called him—warned of damage to the number three and six shields. Simon’s smooth baritone sounded smug, and reminded Drake of nothing more than Admiral Malthorne’s butler. The present admiral missed Jane and Blackbeard at moments like this.

  But Dreadnought was able to absorb blow after blow in a way that no other ship could. Drake kept them on their current course, even as ten lances and a spear fell into pursuit, with more ships joining. A second force gathered to send a fresh wave, even as the first wave kept up a relentless attack. The number five shield flashed yellow on Drake’s console. The other officers on the bridge made worried noises.

  “Acquire targets and fire all port-side weapons,” he said.

  Throckmorton passed the order to the gunnery. Moments later, cannons blasted from port. Half a dozen torpedoes launched. The light dimmed as the energy weapons fired and then recharged. Explosive shot destroyed one of the lances, and a torpedo struck a glancing blow to another. The other ships on that side scattered, chased from the battlefield by torpedoes and kinetic fire.

  Captain Caites had left one of her missile frigates off to one side, where it was vulnerable to attack—the frigates were lightly armored and ill-suited to close-in combat—but perfectly positioned to target the fleeing ships. The enemy’s short-range jump engines had not yet recharged, and they now flew into a hailstorm of missiles launched by the frigate. Two Apex ships took hits and limped away from the battlefield. A third caught a crippling blow that sent it careening back toward Dreadnought.

  Dryfus’s boys in the gunnery were on the alert as it returned. A torpedo rumbled out from a port-side battery and struck the injured lance head-on. The resulting explosion flared as bright as the sun, then was gone, and with it, the enemy ship.

  Meanwhile, the enemy ships off starboard kept stabbing at Dreadnought’s shields, and the seven and eight shields flashed yellow. There were so many enemies on that side that it looked like a kicked over hornet’s nest. Drake was about to be stung to death. Fourteen lances in all, plus a spear.

  “Fire starboard side?” Manx asked anxiously.

  “Deck gun only, short-range shot. Hold the starboard cannons.”

  “Aye, sir.” Manx passed the information along to the gunnery, then addressed the crew at the defense grid computer. “Throck, keep the targeting hot for all inactive starboard batteries.”

  The reason for Drake’s command was soon apparent as Caites charged in from the rear. She swung her four destroyers wide to form a screen to pin the lances against Dreadnought. The two remaining missile frigates lobbed missiles over the top of the battle, discouraging a jump to freedom. Then Caites took her own ship—the cruiser Richmond—collected the nine torpedo boats Drake had held in reserve, and thundered into the enemy formation.

  The torpedo boats closed rapidly, and a little too eagerly. One torpedo boat took fire along the stern. It vented gasses from the upper deck, and was soon continuing dead, on sheer momentum. Another torpedo boat slashed at a lance, but found itself alone and isolated. A pulse to the torpedo boat’s engine disabled it, and a spear and two lances fell ravenously upon the wounded prey and tore it to shreds.

  But the other torpedo boats landed crushing blows against a pair of lances, and Richmond fired her cannons and launched torpedoes as she entered the fray. Expertly maneuvering the powerful cruiser, Caites brought Richmond in against the enemy ships destroying the hapless torpedo boat. She drove them apart with energy pulses. They fled, but ran headlong into Drake’s destroyer screen. The four destroyers pounded with their cannons, destroying two enemies. The spear slipped past, chased off by missiles from a crotalus battery. The missiles were about to overtake it, finishing the skirmish, when it jumped to safety.

  Drake stifled a curse to see the spear escape. But he had worries closer at hand that soon drew his attention.

  The surviving enemy ships—a still-powerful force of ten lances—fought clear of Richmond and the torpedo boats. They could have charged and overwhelmed the destroyers had they moved more decisively, but Caites reacted first, and sent her remaining torpedo boats to block their escape. The alien ships, finding their way blocked, swung back toward Dreadnought.

  Drake fired torpedoes to slow them. Enemy pulse weapons lit up his shields again. The nine shield joined several others in flashing yellow. And now overall damage on that side was sufficient to warrant a lofty-sounding update from Simon.

  “Starboard shields at eighty-two percent,” Simon sai
d with a sniff, as if to say Admiral Malthorne certainly never would have taken such damage to his pride and joy.

  “I’ll live with that.” So much punishment, and they’d lost less than twenty percent. “Throck, get me the gunnery. Fire starboard batteries on my mark.”

  Drake waited until the last possible moment. “Fire!”

  Starboard cannons roared into action. Torpedoes from tubes both fore and aft. Energy pulses flared. Lances took fire, blew apart, spun out of control to be finished off by Caites’s force. Of the ten enemy vessels, four fell in the initial blast or were gobbled up by torpedo boats. Six more lances raced past Dreadnought, which fired ordnance from her belly, and then from her rear guns. Three more enemies met their end.

  A large piece of wreckage slammed into Dreadnought, but the battleship shrugged it off and continued firing. The last three enemy ships jumped away to safety.

  They appeared moments later, together with the escaping spear, next to the remaining lances, which had surrounded the isolated missile frigate. The frigate had continued throwing missiles into the fight and knocked out one of them, but that was to be her final victory. With energy weapons blazing, the Apex ships tore holes in the frigate before it could be relieved. A shot penetrated the magazine, and the remaining missiles went off. When the resulting flash of light dimmed, there was nothing left of the navy warship but scattered debris.

  Drake and Caites regrouped, wary that the enemy fleet would jump back into combat. But as they charged toward the remnants of the Apex forces, the enemy fled. Drake gave chase, but couldn’t catch them before they jumped away yet again.

  Manx slammed his hand into his fist. “By God, we settled their hash, all right.” A triumphant message came through from Caites moments later along similar lines.

  Twenty-eight lances and two spears had entered combat. In a few short hours, Drake had destroyed twelve lances and wounded five others, effectively destroying half of the enemy fleet’s firepower. Against that, he’d lost two torpedo boats and a missile frigate. It was a terrific victory.

  Unfortunately, he’d left Captain Woodbury’s forces dangling out among the refugee fleet, and that battle had continued apace. Apex had regrouped after the initial skirmish, and soon enough the enemy pressed the attack. Woodbury was no fool, and he was more defensive by nature than Caites. Instead of grappling directly, he dodged in and out among the refugee ships and the wreckage.

  More than once during Dreadnought’s own fight, Koh had looked up from the tech computer to curse Woodbury’s cowardice. The Singaporeans were taking the bulk of the casualties. They were helpless noncombatants, and when Drake could spare a moment between engagements, he’d watched the mounting destruction with dismay.

  But the end result was that Woodbury had survived, and his ship, Repulse, was still in excellent condition. Another cruiser, HMS Formidable, had taken serious damage to the engines and lay crippled, which forced the remaining Royal Navy vessels in the task force—four corvettes and two cruisers—to circle in for protection, while the lances stalked them, darting in and out, but avoided an all-out fight.

  The enemy, too, had taken few additional casualties, and was strong enough to keep Woodbury’s forces pinned while they waited for reinforcements. And those reinforcements were coming. The remainder of the fleet that had attacked Drake reappeared from their jump, having closed most of the distance.

  “Sure would be useful to be able to leap around like that,” Manx said.

  “We’ll see if they can do it again,” Drake said. He addressed Ellison at the tech console. “How long until they reach Woodbury?”

  “Ninety-seven minutes,” she said. “Assuming a straight-line approach, no jumps.”

  “And Dreadnought?”

  This brought a moment of calculation. “Almost three hours, sir. Assuming we leave now.”

  Drake told the pilot to chart a course. He sent a message to Woodbury, then got the other captains online. No sense hiding his intentions from Apex. It was obvious enough that he had to either order Woodbury to abandon Formidable—long-range scans showed the plasma engines inoperable, but the ship still battleworthy—or rush to join the fight and hope Woodbury held until he arrived.

  Drake didn’t have so many cruisers lying around that he could afford to throw one away. That wasn’t the Royal Navy way, in any event, and the devil take him before he left nearly a hundred crew to be harvested by the buzzards.

  Once Dreadnought was underway, Drake turned to his pilot and subpilot and ordered them to chart courses to the various jump points in the systems, starting from an assumed position several hours in the future.

  “That will take some time, sir,” the pilot said. “And eat up network resources if we keep the nav computer running that long.”

  “We can spare them. I need a way out of here.”

  Koh looked up from her console. “What about the refugees? Don’t tell me you’re going to abandon them here.”

  “Best thing we can do is get them away from the fighting,” Drake said. “I’m fully expecting the buzzards to give chase.”

  “What if they don’t?” she asked. “What if they go back to killing these poor people?”

  “Then we’ll take our revenge later.”

  “Admiral Drake! There are thousands of refugees in that fleet. You can’t leave them to die, you simply can’t.”

  “That’s not what you told me before.”

  “That was different. You can’t leave them now, not after you’ve committed yourself. Please, I—”

  Drake fixed Koh with a stare, and she fell silent. This was hard business, and he was not indifferent to the refugees’ plight. But events were getting out of hand, and he had to live to fight another day.

  “Millions of your people are still alive on Singapore,” he said. “If I don’t maintain the fighting power of this fleet, they’ll all die, every last one of them.”

  That was the end of Koh’s arguments, and they continued toward the battle brewing around the crippled navy cruiser. The refugee fleet had limped away from the action, still struggling in a long line of ships toward a jump point that remained nearly six days’ flight at their current speed.

  Woodbury’s ships spat mines, laying a protective field around them. The enemy would no doubt be cataloging them all, and even in tight battle, space was so vast that they’d be able to maneuver through. It might buy ten or fifteen minutes, no more, and would hamper a retreat should Woodbury be forced to abandon the crippled HMS Formidable.

  The second Apex force was less than thirty minutes away from attacking the injured cruiser. Woodbury would be facing a massive, two-pronged attack without reinforcements for the hour and a half it would take Admiral Drake’s forces to get there. It didn’t sound like a long time, but with Woodbury unable to maneuver if he wanted to protect Formidable, an hour and a half would likely prove fatal.

  Suddenly, Lloyd called over from the tech console. “Sir, Formidable is firing up one of her engines!”

  So she was. It seemed at first that she was going to maneuver into position to be used as a floating battery, but then the second plasma engine flared to life. Formidable swung in a wide arc, with Captain Woodbury positioning the other two cruisers behind her and his four remaining corvettes in the vanguard. They thrust foward, pressing toward Dreadnought.

  “Formidable is accelerating at pace,” Lloyd said.

  A cheer went up on the bridge of Dreadnought at this news. Formidable’s engineers and boatswains deserved medals, by God, getting the damaged engines repaired so quickly and under such conditions. Hopefully, those medals wouldn’t be awarded posthumously. They’d have to bully their way through the still-powerful remnant of the alien fleet Drake had thrashed and sent on its way.

  But Apex had a curious reaction to this. Instead of moving to plug the gap, the newly arriving force swung wide, while the ones that had kept Woodbury’s ships pinned down now moved to block his retreat. That left an open path for Woodbury and Drake’s forces to
meet in the middle.

  Manx cleared his throat. “I hate to point out the obvious, Admiral . . .”

  “But it’s an obvious setup?”

  “Right, sir. It looks like a lobster trap. One path in, no way out. They get us all together and then we’re all bottled up.”

  “I like our odds,” Drake said. “Unless you think there’s a third alien fleet hiding somewhere.”

  “Could be, sir.”

  “That certainly casts the recent engagement in a new light. If there’s another enemy force lurking in the area, it stood by while we destroyed half an Apex fleet.”

  “They’re monsters,” Manx said. “Life has no value to them.”

  Perhaps. Drake could use a consult in the war room, but there was no time. He was still hurtling forward, and Woodbury was accelerating rapidly to meet him. The distance between them would soon be shrinking at a rate nearly twenty percent the speed of light.

  Drake told the tech officers to continue searching for a third, hidden alien force, but then an unexpected bit of information came through. His pilots had been charting escape routes, and now pushed forward an intriguing possibility. Both Drake and Woodbury could change course and bolt for the nearest jump point. They’d have an advantage on their pursuers and could escape the system without engaging in battle.

  “What’s on the other side of that jump?” he asked.

  “The charts are unclear, sir,” the pilot said.

  “Koh, a word?” Drake said.

  She’d been assisting Lloyd in his scans, but now came over to the admiral’s chair. He pointed to the jump point showing on his small screen. “Where does this lead?”

  Koh frowned. “I’ve just spent eleven years on a hidden battle station. I don’t exactly have the systems of the Dragon Quadrant memorized.”

  “But this is a well-trafficked space lane. You really have no idea?”

  “It doesn’t lead to Singapore, that’s for sure.”

  “Looks like it’s semi-stable,” Lloyd called over. “But it might only be a few years old. It wouldn’t appear on the old charts.”