#
For the next ten or twelve hours it seemed as though the enemy ships would be content to escort them all the way through the system. The ones in front led by several million miles, and the ones to the rear followed the humans without jumping forward to engage.
But Tolvern returned to the bridge after her sleep cycle to discover that the advance enemy ships were decelerating and forming ranks of hunter-killer packs. The Albion fleet was still more than ninety million miles from the asteroid belt.
Tolvern settled into her seat and studied the data. “Perfect timing. As soon as Dreadnought shifts course, we’ll make our own maneuvers. Lomelí, make sure all hands will be ready in the gunnery. Smythe, alert the other ships of our task force. And can someone get Capp back up here?”
Drake veered the fleet outward on the x-axis a few minutes later, and Tolvern nudged Blackbeard into the lead. Two others cruisers followed her: HMS Peerless, led by McGowan, and Woodbury’s ship, HMS Repulse. In addition, she brought in two other ships for support: HMS Pace, a corvette, and the missile frigate HMS Catapult. They would have a vital role to play.
The enemy strategy became apparent as soon as the Albion forces changed course. First, the leading enemy ships moved to intercept them, and then the trailing lances and spears accelerated for a short-range jump. They vanished and reappeared ahead of Admiral Drake’s forces and in positions both above and below on the y-axis. If Drake continued his course, the enemy ships would box them in somewhere in the asteroid belt while the harvesters thundered in from the rear.
Drake continued course.
“We need to swing around the belt another thirty or forty million miles,” Smythe said.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. There’s a residue of radiation in that direction.” He brought up a map and highlighted a section. It was a big swath of territory, several million cubic miles in area. “I can give you a more precise location if you let me use the active sensors.”
“Passive scans only. We need to find the leviathan before the buzzards do, and that means no banging around.”
“What if it’s asleep?” Smythe asked. “Digesting its meal or something?”
“We brought a missile frigate. I’m sure we can wake it up.”
So many assumptions here. First, that the leviathan was still in the area, either molting or laying its eggs after its last meal, and hadn’t already wandered off. Second, that Apex didn’t know the creature was in the system, and finally, that the enemy’s sensors were too weak to pick up the creature until it was too late.
Depending on the moment, Tolvern had varying degrees of confidence about the answers to all three of these questions.
Capp returned to the bridge as Tolvern changed course to swing them along the rim of the asteroid belt. The other ships of her task force followed her lead, with Dreadnought and the entire fleet doing the same minutes later. The enemy forces merely shifted their entire formation ahead of the humans.
Capp spent a few minutes looking at her console, then leaned back in her chair with her hands behind her head. “I get what we’re trying to do here, Cap’n, but ain’t the harvesters too far back? These little ships don’t mean nothing if we can’t take out the big guns.”
That was a good point. The harvesters would need nearly two hours to catch up once the fleet entered the box trap being set up by the lances and spears. No doubt the enemy expected Drake to try to fight his way through, and would be suspicious if he didn’t.
“We need an excuse to slow down,” Smythe said. “A ship with engine trouble or something.”
“No good,” Capp said. “We left all them Hroom to die, and Carthage, too. The buzzards saw that. They know Drake would jettison any one of us if it meant getting away.”
“There’s one ship he wouldn’t leave behind,” Tolvern said. “Call the flagship. I need to talk to the admiral.”
According to Drake’s first mate, the admiral was in the war room with several officers from his gunnery. It took a few minutes to get him on the line. He looked curious but guarded when he finally took the call.
Tolvern held his gaze, making sure he had a few seconds to think about the reasons why she’d risk calling and having their conversation intercepted by the enemy.
“I understand Dreadnought is suffering some engine trouble, Admiral,” she said slowly. “How long until it’s repaired?”
A frown creased his brow, but vanished almost at once. A slight nod, as if acknowledging her deception. “Hard to say. You’ve seen the data?”
“My engineers think you’ll need a couple of hours,” Tolvern said, “that you’ll ease up on the damaged engine to do the work. Question is, are the harvesters going to catch us before we pass through the belt?”
Another slight nod. “I’m afraid so. We’ll have to fight it out—there’s no other choice.”
Tolvern let out an exaggerated sigh. “In that case, let’s make it count.”
“Get ahead of me, make sure there’s nothing in the way. Flush out enemy ships if they’re lurking. We can’t have any surprises when we get in there.”
“Got it. Good luck, Admiral.”
“You, too, Tolvern.” He ended the call.
“That went well,” Capp said. “He seemed to get what you was saying, right?”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Dreadnought is slowing down,” Smythe confirmed from the tech console. “And the admiral is messing around with one of his engines.”
“Very good. Nyb Pim, I want our task force at these coordinates relative to the main fleet.” She sent him some numbers.
“Yes, sir,” the Hroom said.
“Capp, give Catapult her orders. Let’s flush out the hidden fleet.” Tolvern smiled. “Or whatever else might be lurking. Say, a star leviathan, to pick one crazy example.”
Capp gave a toothy smile. “Aye, sir.” She called the missile frigate.
Catapult was soon launching missiles ahead of the fleet as they entered the asteroid field. The frigate didn’t target any one asteroid, but struck the largest of them one after another. The asteroids looked wormy, moth eaten from where the leviathan had torn into the crust looking for fissile material and other heavy metals, and one missile hit hard enough to break an asteroid into chunks.
By now, the harvesters were within range of the rear elements of the human fleet. Drake’s ships seemed to lose discipline as the enemy approached. They accelerated to stay in front of the admiral’s flagship, which left Dreadnought exposed. Her engines strained, as if struggling to gain speed.
All a feint.
The harvester ships didn’t fire, even as Dreadnought fell in range. Instead, the claws seemed to be flexing, as if eager to get the battleship in their grasp. The harvesters jostled for position as they closed on Drake’s ship.
Tolvern’s heart was thumping. “Where the devil is that leviathan?”
Smythe and Lomelí cried out at the same moment.
“Look!” Smythe said. He tapped his console and the view on the big screen changed.
There it was, using its tentacles to crawl out of a hole dug into the side of one of the asteroids. Dust and chunks of rock hung in the air above the asteroid where Catapult’s missile had struck, and the monster threw up more rubble as it tore itself free.
As the human and Apex ships approached, the creature gave a final heave and threw itself into space. Green gases jetted from its propulsors. Its mouth opened to reveal spore cannons. Tentacles hundreds of kilometers long uncoiled until they were a waving, Medusa-like mass. It jetted toward the human fleet.
A star leviathan. Hungry and ready to feed. Heaven help them.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Pull up!” she ordered. “Show the main battery.”
Blackbeard slowed rapidly, and the floor vibrated as the antigrav compensated for the extreme deceleration. Peerless and Repulse followed her maneuver, as did Tolvern’s corvette, HMS Pace. The missile frigate, its job done, fell back towar
d Dreadnought, where the rest of the fleet was forming into ranks, even as the battleship’s sputtering engine suddenly flared to life.
The Apex capital ships, with their inferior detection capabilities, didn’t seem to have noticed the leviathan yet. They kept charging forward, even as the box of lances and spears that had maintained formation the past few hours began to fall in from all sides. This, the enemy seemed to grasp, would be the decisive battle.
“Just not the way they think,” Tolvern muttered. “Capp, get me Pace.”
The captain of the corvette, a woman named Gilchrist, appeared moments later. Her face was lean, almost aquiline, including a sharp, aristocratic nose. Her hair had turned an iron gray, though her face had few wrinkles. Sharp eyes carried a natural suspicion.
Tolvern glanced at the other half of the screen, which showed the leviathan jetting toward them. It didn’t seem to have a target yet.
“You’re the fastest out of the blocks,” Tolvern told Gilchrist. “I need you to bring our friend in. Can’t have him roaming about unsupervised.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do your best to stay clear, but if you need to take risks, do it. It won’t be a party without our special guest, and you’ll do what you need to.”
“Understood.”
Pace pulled away from the three cruisers. The sleek corvette flared her engines and accelerated rapidly toward the leviathan, firing long-range missiles as she did so. The creature swiveled toward the incoming missiles, and its tentacles waved as if welcoming their approach.
The harvesters had begun shooting, but not at Dreadnought, which they seemed to want to capture rather than kill. Instead, they blasted at the swarm of torpedo boats and destroyers that had fallen in behind the battleship to guard its rear.
The leviathan was now moving directly toward the corvette, which turned sharply just as the creature let loose with its spore cannon. Pace narrowly avoided flying into a mass of the spores, which would have choked her engines and checked her momentum.
“There we go,” Smythe said. “The buzzards have spotted it.”
The harvesters had reversed thrust. They turned to maneuver away from the battlefield. Even as they came about, lances and spears jumped into the fray. Two hunter-killer packs darted into the midst of a dozen torpedo boats and savaged them with energy pulses. Another cluster of enemies mixed it up with the cruisers on Drake’s flank, led by Formidable, and backed by the damaged Zealand, which still couldn’t fire missiles or torpedoes, but had her cannon back online. Two corvettes rushed to aid the cruisers, and the four human ships were soon pounding the unsupported enemy craft.
Dreadnought turned her guns on the nearest of the two harvesters, the short, bulky one. Both ships unleashed a devastating bombardment at the same time. The other harvester, still pulling back from the approaching star leviathan, turned as if to run away.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Tolvern said. “Get us in there and put a stop to that. Capp, call the gunnery. Ready a broadside on my mark.”
Blackbeard led Peerless and Repulse in wedging between the longer harvester and the battle thundering opposite them. Tolvern couldn’t let that second harvester get at Dreadnought, which already had its hands full, and she couldn’t let it escape either. The three cruisers swung into a line and unleashed a coordinated broadside that struck the harvester amidships. Explosions rippled the surface, but there was little apparent damage, apart from bursting some of the bubble-like protrusions on the exterior.
The harvester was still trying to either join its companion or fight loose, and so its guns weren’t trained on the three cruisers. Even so, the attack it unleashed filled the sky with swarming bombs and flashes of energy weapons. Lights lit up on Tolvern’s console.
“Deck shields, sixty-two percent,” Jane warned. “Starboard shield—”
The AI’s report was a distraction, and Tolvern killed it. “Capp, roll us over. We can’t take any more damage on that side.”
The antigrav compensated instantly for the maneuver, but the whole battle looked upside down for a moment until the viewscreen readjusted perspective.
Repulse had suffered even heavier damage in the exchange, and by the time the harvester’s weapons fell silent, she had lost her starboard shields. Woodbury was forced to withdraw behind the other two cruisers. He launched more torpedoes as he fell back.
The harvester renewed its devastating attack, but then Pace came screaming in to join the fight behind a wave of missiles and torpedoes. And she brought a guest. The guest was hungry, and naturally, wanted the biggest plate at the table.
The leviathan fired its spore cannon. The three Albion ships, more nimble, ducked out of the way, and the full brunt of the spores enveloped the harvester, expanding like masses of foam. They clogged the harvester’s engines and gummed its weapons. One gun battery had been firing, and now exploded as ordnance detonated in the tubes. The leviathan swung a long tentacle and snared the harvester, which blasted its guns in a desperate attempt to free itself.
There was cheering on the bridge, but it was short lived. Three tentacles now had the harvester, and dragged it right by Blackbeard, uncomfortably close.
“What’s wrong?” Tolvern asked sharply. “Why aren’t we moving?”
An urgent call came from engineering moments later. One of the plasma engines had taken spores and was offline. The other was sputtering. Tolvern shouted for them to shut it down entirely, to go dark, but it was too late. Another tentacle probed at the cruiser, and suddenly, there was a loud crash and warning chimes.
“Hull breach in the port shield,” Jane said.
The leviathan had them.
#
Dreadnought faced a harvester ship.
“One-on-one,” Drake said, tone grim. “Unleash the fires of hell.”
His face was hot, and a bloodlust was throbbing in him that he’d never felt before. It left him almost lightheaded. All the anger, the frustration at the enemy—these merciless aliens who had slaughtered and devastated world after world—now came out. He wanted them dead. Exterminated.
Drake’s ships—his cruisers, corvettes, destroyers, missile frigates, and torpedo boats—were fighting on several fronts. Some slugged it out toe-to-toe. Others overwhelmed weaker foes or found themselves overwhelmed. On the whole, it was an evenly matched battle.
Tolvern was fighting alongside Woodbury and McGowan to hold off the other harvester as HMS Pace led the star leviathan onto the battlefield. The monster snared the harvester and struggled to haul it in.
That left Dreadnought and the second harvester hammering away at each other. The enemy thrashed Drake with energy pulses; he hit back with a ferocious barrage of missiles. The enemy responded with bomblets; he pounded them with torpedoes.
And all the while the harvester kept trying to get closer, to get the battleship in its gripping claws. Drake had no illusions what would happen. The buzzards would swarm into his ship, taking prisoners by the hundreds. Those claws would tear through shields and bulkheads and leave Dreadnought a gutted wreck.
They’d hit him three times with the green ray, and word came from the staging areas that marines newly thawed from stasis had collapsed when hit. But the inner parts of the ship were unaffected. The paralyzing ray wasn’t strong enough to fully penetrate a ship the size of Dreadnought. At least at this range.
“They’re drawing closer, sir,” Manx said. His voice was high and tight. “We can’t hold them off much longer.”
Drake paced the bridge. “Is the secondary battery ready? Good, turn us over and give them another blast.”
Dreadnought rolled and fired the secondary battery. Moments later, the main battery was ready, and again they rolled. Drake delivered a full broadside. This time, the enemy ship was so close that the cannon struck a massive blow against shields that had already taken punishment.
But at the same time, Simon warned about damage to their own shields. The number four was down to an alarming seventeen percent, and two others wer
en’t much stronger. Dreadnought had delivered her own punishment, but the cursed enemy was still fighting.
“Oh, my God,” Manx said. “The leviathan has got Tolvern.”
Drake turned sharply toward a secondary screen, where the tech crew had been following the leviathan. The creature had the other harvester and drew it struggling toward its mouth. But another tentacle had snared Blackbeard, and was dragging it in, too.
He cursed inwardly, but didn’t have time to worry. Not with events so close at hand turning critical.
“Stay focused, Lieutenant. I want another missile barrage on my mark. Lloyd, get me countermeasures on that main enemy—”
Drake lost his words. His knees wobbled, and he was faint, as if he’d stood too quickly, though he’d already been on his feet. He grabbed for the armrest to catch himself before he fell.
The green ray. They hit us. Closer range, and it got through.
The sensation passed in an instant, but when he looked up at the viewscreen, the harvester was lunging. Dreadnought was slow to react. Long, biting arms loomed.
A terrific crunch. Alarms everywhere.
#
The spores hadn’t destroyed Blackbeard’s engines, only gummed them up. They were still burning hot. Tolvern shouted down anyone who started to panic, ordered the engines flared, and was relieved when the flare cleared out the spores. She ordered engines turned against the leviathan.
“We’ll burn our way out.”
It was no good. The leviathan’s tentacle was impervious to the heat and kept drawing them in. Missile fire only encouraged the thing, and she couldn’t get turned around to hit it with a broadside.
Capp rushed off, shouting into her com link for Carvalho. Assault crews had been on hand to guard against attempts by enemy boarding parties, and they were now needed to cut off that tentacle before more of them snared the ship.
Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) Page 19