Koh sprang to her feet again and came over to stand next to Drake. She stood there, running her hands again and again through her hair.
Eight more lances jumped in. At the same time, the harvester’s missile barrage swarmed the battlefield. Commander Li had his hands full trying to fight off this attack and keep after the initial wave of lances.
“The eliminon battery,” Koh murmured. “Don’t wait too long.”
Drake started to think the same thing. The boarding craft came racing in. The sentinel fired the plasma ejector again, burning up one of the smaller ships. Two more fell to bomblets. These boarding craft had poor shielding and to hit them hard was to destroy them. But the boarding craft were only one more thing on a battlefield now littered with ships and weapons targeting the sentinel. Too many weapons were penetrating the battle station’s fire.
“Here comes Blackbeard,” Drake said.
“It’s too late,” Koh said. “They’re going to get through.”
Drake wasn’t so sure. Commander Li only needed to hold on a few more minutes and he’d get relief. It would be hard to watch Tolvern wade into the middle of that mess, but her presence was the only thing that could turn the tide.
General Mose Dryz’s sloops had formed a claw as they followed Captain Tolvern onto the battlefield. Now, the entire formation of twenty-two Hroom ships sheered off to Blackbeard’s starboard. The Albion cruiser was alone as she came at the sentinel.
“Wait, where are they going?” Manx asked. “Why would Tolvern send them off?”
“It’s not her. It must be the general.” Drake suppressed a groan. “I thought he had more sense than that.”
It was the same old story. Hroom commanders might behave strategically leading up to a battle, but once the fighting started, they wanted to land a deciding blow. And that was against the harvester in this case. The entire fleet of sloops made a beeline straight at the Apex mother ship. It didn’t run, and none of the ships mauling the battle station returned to defend it. The harvester held only a small force of three lances and a spear in reserve, which now moved to intercept the general’s fleet.
Still heading toward the sentinel, Blackbeard fired missiles as she entered the battlefield. Torpedoes followed, a barrage of Mark-IVs and Hunter-IIs.
Drake clenched his teeth. Dreadnought and the rest of his fleet were still four hours from the fight. Captain McGowan’s task force was another eleven hours behind that. Neither Albion fleet had the ability to influence the battle.
Sentinel 3 kept taking blows. It destroyed another lance, but there were too many enemies. The eliminon battery—why wasn’t Li firing it?
One of the boarding ships struck the station. A second hit moments later. They buried halfway in. The battle station kept fighting, knocking down more boarding ships one after another, but it couldn’t stop them all. A third hit, then a fourth.
“No,” Koh said. “Please, no.”
Blackbeard, fighting off her own enemies, took out a lance with torpedoes and rolled to present a broadside as more boarding ships came at the station, escorted by two more lances. The cruiser spewed metal, destroying two boarders and wounding a lance. The rest of the lances fell back, but more boarding ships kept hitting the battle station and lodging.
At the same time this was happening, the Hroom sloops had met the enemies flying out from the harvester. The general’s forces divided in two, with roughly half breaking from the claw to face the spear and lances, while the others kept their hard charging attack of the harvester.
“Oh, that will help,” Manx said sarcastically. “What are the odds a single sloop escapes? Ten percent? Give them one pass and they’ll be finished.”
Drake stared, wondering if he was watching the last great Hroom fleet go to its doom like a mass of cavalry charging fixed machine gun positions. For centuries Albion had faced waves of sloops like the one opposing the harvester. More often than not, the humans had thrashed them, winning war after war. But the Hroom Empire was vast—or had been—and a few years or decades later, there would be another big war, with similar results.
Now, the empire was in tatters, its economy collapsed. Death cultists tore it apart from within, sugar addiction continued to rage, and Apex enjoyed an all-you-can-eat buffet from the flanks. The once proud Hroom shipyards lay in ruins, abandoned or reclaimed by jungle. When Mose Dryz’s fleet died, there might never be another.
Lances pierced a sloop with energy weapons. Gas jetted from numerous wounds, and it limped away. Another took fire to its midsection and exploded. A third sloop came under attack and fled, pursued by a lance. The sloops launched serpentines, but none seemed to hit their mark.
Meanwhile, the harvester targeted sloops from the second force as it charged in. The general, or whoever was commanding the attack, launched waves of serpentines, which themselves spewed dozens of tiny bomblets. They splashed against the harvester’s shields, but did little visible damage.
One sloop went down, then a second. The ten that charged the harvester quickly turned into eight, then seven. A hollow pit formed in Drake’s stomach. Such wreckage, such waste.
“You were wrong, Manx,” Drake said. “It’s going to take two passes before they all die. Maybe even three.”
“They’ve still got to escape out the other side,” Manx said. “Looks like they’re going to ram it.”
“My God, I think you’re right.”
All sloops had a tyrillium ram on the nose, but ramming as a tactic hadn’t worked in generations, not since Albion altered their armor and the configuration of their bombproofs. Maybe it would work against a smaller ship, like a torpedo boat, but that would just trade one ship for another, with the advantage to the Royal Navy. Against the harvester ship, ramming was foolhardiness in the extreme.
“It’s going to be like throwing eggs against a brick wall,” Manx said.
That was more or less Drake’s first thought. And yet . . .
“Where did the general get all of those sloops?” Drake asked. “There weren’t that many ships to be had.”
“He said something about neutrals and cultists and the like,” Manx said.
“Right. Death cultists. Like the ones who launched a suicide attack against Albion and destroyed York Town.” Drake paused. “In an atomic firestorm.”
“My God!”
The sloops kept barreling at the harvester. At the last minute they all peeled away except one. The final sloop slammed into the side of the much larger harvester. A flash, and the screen went dark as the explosion overwhelmed the sensors.
“They did it,” Manx said. “By God, they took it out. A bloody suicide charge, and it worked. King’s balls, I don’t believe it.”
“Hold your enthusiasm, Lieutenant.”
Silence held on the bridge. Even Koh, who had been glued to the action at the sentinel, stared at the half of the screen holding the action around the harvester ship.
And then the sensors recovered. Drake’s stomach sank. There it was, the harvester, still intact, still shooting at the sloops.
But it had a gaping wound in its side, and wreckage spilled out. It listed, the engines pushing as something happened to its antigrav. It kept vomiting up debris, and fell into a roll. Secondary explosions rippled along the skin.
And then, just when it seemed as though it would break apart, it righted itself and limped away. The Hroom, had they possessed more imagination, could have feinted another charge, whether they had more atomic weapons and the cultists to make a suicide attack or not. That might have driven off the enemy for good. But, having landed their blow, they were now fleeing for their lives.
Explosions at the sentinel drew Drake’s attention back to the other battle. Blackbeard was knocking out boarding ships with every shot, and only one more had buried itself inside the battle station. But those who’d already entered were wreaking havoc, as multiple bursts of light attested. The birds were tearing it apart from the inside. The plasma ejector kept firing, but for how long?
Debris and wreckage spun away. Secondary explosions tore into this. Large pieces drifted off, sparking, dropping globules of plasma. Blackbeard swung around and eased back into the debris, probably looking for survivors.
Koh let out an anguished cry. Drake’s stomach felt like cold cement. He rose to his feet and put a hand on Koh’s shoulder.
“Time for you to go off shift,” he said.
“They’re dead, they’re all gone.”
“There might be survivors.”
“Who, what?” Her face was slack, and her voice sounded like it came from the bottom of a well. “It’s all done for. That is the end of us.”
“Koh . . .”
She staggered away from him.
Drake called the infirmary and subvocalized a message to the answering medic. “I need someone on the bridge. Bring a sedative.”
As devastating as the loss was, he couldn’t pay it any more attention. Too much was left to be decided.
The attacking waves of lances had been mauled, and were falling back. They moved to join the wounded harvester ship, which was gathering the surviving Apex forces. Dreadnought was only an hour away from the battle and closing quickly. It would take Apex time to regroup.
“Notify the fleet,” Drake ordered. “Drop cloaks, all weapon systems online. Let’s finish this thing.”
#
The harvester fled, together with its support craft. They were still formidable, in spite of their losses, and numbered eighteen lances and four spears. Against them, a battleship, four cruisers, four corvettes, a missile frigate, four destroyers, and seven torpedo boats.
Blackbeard snuffled around the wreckage for about twenty minutes, then moved to rendezvous with Dreadnought, giving Drake a fifth cruiser. The Hroom sloops joined them. Drake called Tolvern as they gave chase.
“I can’t raise the general,” Drake said. “Which one is his ship? Please tell me that wasn’t him in that atomic fireball.”
“No, one of his adjutants. She apparently overthrew the general, then took command of a sloop carrying atomic weapons.”
“Really? Lenol Tyn? I thought she was loyal. Or was it the older one? It must have been him.”
“Neither,” Tolvern said. “It was a cultist by the name of Dela Zam. A high priestess to the god of death. She’s a real piece of work. Or was, before she rammed her ship. I have no idea what happened to the general, if he is even alive.”
“We’ll worry about that later. Can the harvester jump?”
“I have no idea, but I don’t intend to give it a chance.” There was a hard edge to Tolvern’s voice and a glint in her eye that looked a lot like bloodlust.
“How is Blackbeard?” He smiled. “Don’t tell me you’ve got her smashed up again already. I keep telling you to take better care of your things, but you never listen.”
“Actually, we’re good. Poor Li, he took all the fire this time.”
That sat in the air between them for a long time. Eleven years on his battle station, waiting. Break the silence, fight the enemy, and a few weeks later Li was dead, and with him most of his crew.
“Get me back in the fight,” Tolvern said. “I’m ready, Blackbeard is ready, and we’ve got some Singaporeans on board who are itching for revenge.”
“That, I can manage. I’m sending you and Caites in for the first run, assuming we can get that close. Can you handle being her subordinate?”
“Obey Caites? Sure, of course. Just don’t make me obey McGowan—we have issues.”
“We’ll talk about what happened later. Use the Mark-IVs. They’ve got plenty of punch for what I’m attempting.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Let’s blow these damn turkeys out of the sky.” He cut the line.
The harvester was still bleeding gas as it accelerated, and its engines responded sluggishly. Drake’s fleet was closing the distance with every passing moment. The question was whether the enemy could jump to safety or would be forced to turn and fight. The back end was blackened and gaping open—the laws of physics meant that warp point engines would be positioned at the rear of a ship, but Drake had no idea if the short-range jumps worked on the same principle.
And then lances began to jump. The first ones appeared several million miles farther away, even as more ships jumped after them. Drake fought his frustration. The enemy was going to get away after all.
Soon, only the harvester remained. It accelerated, and then . . . nothing. No jump. After about twenty minutes, it decelerated as it swung around to protect its injured stern. Bomb bays opened, the laser arrays and missile batteries exposed as the harvester showed her teeth.
The normally reserved crew on the bridge raised their voices in excitement and alarm. Calls went back and forth from the gunnery, incoming and outgoing messages to the other ships. Drake gave Caites her orders, and Drake’s five heavy cruisers pulled away from the fleet, followed by the missile frigate.
He could use two more frigates for this fight to trail the cruisers and bombard the enemy from a distance, but he’d lost one in the fight at the refugee fleet, and the other to the star leviathan. They were devastating from a distance, but vulnerable in a close fight. McGowan had three frigates in his task force, but he still wasn’t anywhere near the action.
The remaining frigate, HMS Ballista, launched a barrage of missiles that overtook the cruisers and raced toward the harvester. The enemy ship turned its energy pulses on the missiles and knocked out the first dozen or so, before two got through and splattered against the harvester’s hull in flashes of light. A second barrage followed moments later, with similar results. The cruisers added their own missiles, four or five per ship, plus slower-moving, heavy Mark-IV torpedoes. By the time the torpedoes arrived, the cruisers were already in close combat.
Formidable and Zealand rocketed by the harvester’s starboard, one after the other, their cannons roaring as they passed. Repulse rolled as it raced by the opposite side of the enemy ship. It, too, got off a full blast from its cannons. Explosions rippled across both sides of the enemy ship’s hull.
The human fire hit several of the warty protrusions that were said to contain either sacrificial victims or drones in stasis. They burst apart and spewed their contents into the void.
The harvester was still targeting the mass of missiles and torpedoes, and failed to hit the first three cruisers as they flashed by. Two of the torpedoes got through its defenses and slammed into the heavy, bulbous head.
The last two cruisers, Richmond and Blackbeard, captained by Caites and Tolvern, respectively, dove and then came up from below. They fired more torpedoes, charged ahead as if they were going to ram the harvester, and then rolled away at the last minute. As they did, they got off more cannon fire, hundreds of tons of heavy metal that slammed into the wounded back end of the ship.
It was a hell of a bombardment, executed perfectly. All five cruisers had hit the crippled enemy ship with broadsides, while taking no damage in return. In addition, they’d landed three torpedoes and at least a dozen missiles.
Drake held his breath. Explosions continued to ripple along the front and back of the massive enemy ship. It was already wounded; surely this would be the end of it. Nothing could stand up to such a massive bombardment and stay in the fight.
The front end of the harvester opened its clawlike arms. Dark objects plopped out like droplets of ink. Engines flared to life.
“It’s a bloody carrier ship after all,” Manx said.
There were more than thirty of the small ships in all. Most chased after the cruisers, but several moved toward the frigate, which had paused its attack to reload its missile bays.
“Get Ballista back here,” Dr
ake said. “We can’t lose our last frigate.”
He’d kept his other forces organized on the wing, and now launched his four corvettes and seven torpedo boats toward the fight, sending them to hunt down the enemy fighters. Only the four destroyers were held in reserve as Dreadnought continued powering toward the harvester. Caites brought the cruisers together and regrouped for another run.
Several of the enemy fighter craft broke through and charged at Dreadnought. They fired pulse cannons as they swarmed, but the battleship shrugged them off. Drake’s destroyers turned about to hold them at bay while he continued forward alone.
“Target enemy weapon systems,” he said. “Take down their ability to hit us.”
Soon, Dreadnought and the Apex harvester stood within range of each other’s most powerful guns. They came to and swung about to face each other. Dreadnought would move into place seconds ahead of her enemy.
“This is it, kids,” Manx said as silence fell across the bridge. “For the glory of king and country, and all of that. Give them hell.”
A calm, cool feeling washed over Drake. A kind of elation. His most powerful weapon against the Apex flagship. The enemy was wounded but still formidable. He watched the viewscreen.
Now.
“Fire at will.”
Missiles. Torpedoes. Cannon, first the deck and belly guns, then the secondary battery. Finally, the ship shuddered as the main guns let loose with a barrage that put any cruiser broadside to shame.
The enemy fired, too. The space between the two ships swarmed with a thicket of weaponry from both sides. Bombs slammed into Dreadnought across the number one, two, three, and six shields. Yellow lights flashed, and Simon warned of damage.
When the initial barrage ended, the enemy ship was smoking, but intact. It had hit back hard. Dreadnought had survived the encounter, but many more exchanges like that, and she’d be in bad shape. For a split second, Drake thought about withdrawing, making another charge with his cruisers, and maybe even surrounding the enemy ship and pinning it down long enough for McGowan’s task force to join the fight.
Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) Page 10