“The rogues haven’t targeted the dorm yet. I can get Hayley and the other girls and be back here by the time I dispatch another transport,” Vengeance said.
Renee grabbed his arm and forced him to look at her. She’d paled, which only made Ven’s sense of urgency and desperation that much greater. “You need to hurry. I think I know why the rogues targeted this planet. They’re after the telepaths.”
“Hayley,” he whispered. Of course the rogues had come for the telepaths. They were an irreplaceable asset all warships needed to function—even rogues needed the telepathic link that prevented an AI from tearing his own mind apart during the throes of sensory deprivation caused by transit.
“Vengeance, once the rogues get a mental lock on the children, they’ll be able to track their exact location. We need to get to the girls before it’s too late!”
As if to reinforce Renee’s theory, his primary core alerted him to an orbital insertion by an enemy transport. The reentry vector would put the likeliest landing site on a flat patch of field behind the school.
Vengeance needed more boots on the ground if he had any hope of rescuing the girls before they were taken off the planet. When the garrison sentinels drew near, he broadcast his intention to rescue the girls at the school. Alistair’s sentinels halted and turned their faceplates with glowing red optical sensors in his direction.
“Warship Vengeance requests that four sentinel units accompany Link Renee to our waiting transport. The rest will follow my command until the other telepaths are safely evacuated from the planet.”
“Nuallan sentinels acknowledge Warship Vengeance’s authority,” Alistair responded.
Vengeance glanced at Renee and quickly squeezed her hand. He didn’t like leaving her side, but they were almost to the transport and once there, she’d be far safer. “Take care, Sister.”
“Watch yourself and protect those girls.”
Vengeance nodded. He would die to protect those children.
Chapter Three
Aboard his warship, Commander Lisk barked, “Vengeance, report!”
Renee had just boarded one of his transports so she could reach the warship currently engaged in battle with two determined opponents. Warhawk and Wolverine, the Nuallan warships, were busy with their own battles. Vengeance was particularly concerned about Warhawk. The smaller battlecruiser had sustained substantial damage to seventy-nine percent of his hull with breaches in sixteen locations. His port side engine had been completely destroyed, and his shields were almost depleted.
Vengeance was faring better, but his own opponents were keeping him hemmed in, unable to help Warhawk without leaving the planet and evacuation ships more vulnerable than they already were.
Commander Lisk barked again, “Vengeance, report!”
“Link Renee is now safely on one of my transports, and my drone is taking a squadron of sentinels to fight the enemy units converging on the school,” Vengeance answered using the ship-wide comm.
Commander Lisk grunted in acknowledgment then shouted for more reports about what was happening on Nualla. The last enemy weapons fire had knocked out his close-range sensors so the energy webs were only displaying warnings and error reports to the crew.
“Large parts of the city and spaceport have sustained damage. The evacuation is still underway. Twenty-three ships report that they are already accelerating away from Nualla. The enemy ships show no interest in following them,” Vengeance reported.
Commander Lisk leaned forward in his chair. “For now. We’ll make sure they don’t have a chance. Have the individual fighters flank and provide escort for the—”
A blast from an enemy’s cannon penetrated Vengeance’s shields and struck his hull. The bioskin absorbed and dispersed much of the impact, but Vengeance still rocked hard to the side before thrusters matched the force.
“Sustaining rapid-fire pulse cannon damage. Port side energy admitters have failed causing the foremost shield arrays to weaken. Diverting power from all other admitters to compensate. Shields holding at twenty percent,” Vengeance told his crew. “Returning fire.”
“Vengeance, can you identify what models are attacking you?” Lisk asked, his voice tense.
“Birth stamps on hulls identify them as Basilisk, Warlock, Relentless, Danforth, Agrona, and Warhammer.”
“Look out for Warhammer,” Lisk advised. “He has energy harpoons.”
“He’s bringing them online now,” Ven replied.
“Don’t let him sink his claws into your shields,” Lisk ordered. “It’ll hamper your maneuverability too much and weaken your shields.”
“I’m aware of that,” Vengeance snapped.
Flashes of weapons fire lit up the screens, revealing glimpses of the enemy ships against the darkness of space. Two seconds after Warhammer released his harpoons, Vengeance returned fire with secondary weapons’ arrays. While Vengeance was battling Warhammer, fire from the three enemy ships made Vengeance shudder under their attack.
Enemy fire began to breach his shields where energy harpoons had latched on and diverted the shield’s resonance. As his shields continued to weaken, his hull shook under the impact. His sentinels remained upright, but the crew was getting knocked around.
They were likely to get far worse if the tide of battle didn’t swing in his favor soon. However, since he was much older than his two opponents and had been built during a time when the Spire was less peaceful, he had one weapon they lacked.
“Bringing main fusion cannon online,” Vengeance announced. Deep within his engineering section, just a few decks above his primary core, his secondary power station came online and diverted power from the rest of his extremities.
“Vengeance, no!” Lisk protested.
All over the ship, lights dimmed and screens went dark. On the bridge, the energy webs blanked out, plunging the room into darkness.
“Diverting all remaining power to main weapons’ array,” Vengeance told his crew.
“Damn it, Vengeance!” Lisk yelled. “You can’t fire on them while we’re this close!”
Vengeance knew the risks, of course, but if he didn’t do something, Nualla could be lost. And he couldn’t lose Renee or Hayley.
Vengeance’s voice drifted out of the darkness. “Main Fusion cannons at eight-five percent and climbing. Nine-five percent.” His exposed hull continued to take a battering, but he was a Neit Class warship and had been designed to take more punishment than the newer, lighter models.
“Targeting Warhammer. Firing main fusion cannons. Full strength, continuous ten second burst,” Vengeance announced.
During the initial blast, Vengeance was blinded by radiation and battle damage but within seconds, his other systems normalized, and his shields and sensors both came back online. “Assessing damage.”
Throughout the bridge, energy webs flickered back on. Their feeble glow grew stronger, weaving lights and colors together until the space battle was pictured once more. Danforth, Relentless, and Basilisk were still engaged, but Warhammer was dead, the deep wound in his hull still bleeding fluids and sparks of energy.
Warhammer’s corpse rotated slowly in space, drifting toward the planet’s surface in a decaying orbit.
“Warhammer destroyed. Radiation levels inside my hull are minimal. Scrubbing commenced where shields were insufficient,” Vengeance said as he locked on to the next target.
Lisk may have thought Ven’s decision to employ the fusion cannon was madness, but Hayley was on this planet. And if he had to, he’d destroy every last Warship of the Spire to protect her.
The strip lighting running along the ceiling flickered, occasionally blinking out altogether and leaving only the emergency lights to illuminate the dormitory. Dust and smoke swirled around the room. Hayley and the other girls huddled together in small groups, clinging to each other in absolute fear.
Although the ground had stopped shaking and much of the noise of the battle that had raged above them had subsided, hinting that the upper orbit
assault was over, Hayley didn’t want to leave the safety of her dorm—not until Vengeance came to rescue them. No enemy could withstand a Spire warship, especially one as strong and battle-tested as Ven.
He would come get her and the other girls. Ven would never abandon her.
The sound of heavy treads echoed down the corridor outside their dorm, and Hayley perked up. Sentinel drones approached the room where she cowered beneath her bed with her best friend, Amelia. Several of the other girls were similarly hidden but cast terrified glances in her direction. Perhaps those were Ven’s sentinels, and he’d come for them at last.
The door opened, and those heavy boots clanked into her room. A girl behind her whimpered. Hayley had just risen to her knees to peer over the bed when both the frame and the mattress flew across the room and clattered against the wall. A twelve-foot tall robot towered over her. Hayley whimpered, too.
She’d seen Vengeance’s sentinels up close many times before, but this wasn’t one of his. And for the first time, she was reminded that a sentinel was an elite warrior drone used in ground combat rather than another playmate.
This sentinel bore the identification stamp BAS-3157-255. She wasn’t familiar with this AI. She knew all the Spire warships that came to this planet, and none of them began with the letters BAS.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice quivering. She wanted Ven.
This new sentinel didn’t answer her. Instead, he scanned the room with a deep-search wave then must’ve deemed the area secure because he sheathed two of his forearm mounted pulse cannons. His black armor shifted out of the way to allow the weapons to slide smoothly back into their housings.
Another large cannon that had been perched on his shoulder deactivated and folded down the length of his back, smoothing out until it just looked like black armor. The sentinel took a step closer then bent at the waist, lowering his upper body so his facial optical sensors were level with her eyes.
While the sentinel’s massive body was vaguely humanoid, his head wasn’t. It was too wide at the top and narrowed down into a fine point. Three sets of optical sensors marched down the length of his face, giving the sentinel a fierce appearance, as if no detail could possibly escape his six eyes. Sprouting from the back of his head, thick rope-like appendages cascaded down past his bulky shoulders. Thin bands of red glowed along the cords, turning brighter toward the ends. With Ven’s sentinels, she’d always thought the appendages gave them the illusion of waist-length hair. But for some reason, with this unfamiliar sentinel studying her, his tall, dark, armored body and the cords dangling from his head were terrifying.
The appendages moved as if stirred by a breeze then one slid away from the rest and stretched toward her cheek. She could feel the slight heat it gave off, and she wanted to scream but sensed it was testing her. Hayley held her ground, proud that she didn’t flinch or pull away. After a seemingly endless moment, the tendril returned to the others.
Hayley blinked at the sentinel, and her gaze trailed down to his identification marker again. And then she realized BAS-3157-255 didn’t have the authority to visit Nualla, which meant he must have been the enemy Vengeance had been fighting.
And he was here, which meant Vengeance was likely dead. A new rush of tears flowed down her cheeks.
Hayley backed away from the sentinel, but he reached down and picked her up with one hand. She protested by screaming and kicking at the metal drone, but he held her away from his body and stomped out of the room as more sentinels entered to collect the other girls. A transport ship waited outside, the gangplank lowered in preparation for takeoff. Hayley looked toward the sky, clinging to the hope that these sentinels had only slipped past the warship she’d grown to love and he wasn’t dead, that he would defeat the invaders and save them all. She screamed Ven’s name one last time as the sentinel carried her aboard the waiting transport.
But Ven never came.
Chapter Four
Warhawk was dead. The other Nuallan warship, Wolverine, was mortally wounded but living up to his namesake and fighting until the last. Vengeance’s fusion cannon had just targeted Danforth when the other ship powered his damaged engines up to full.
At first, Vengeance thought Danforth was fleeing the battle but quickly discovered he was wrong; the enemy vessel was targeting the planet. Vengeance fired his weapons to try to destroy or disable the other ship, but gravity had Danforth in its grip now, and the warship’s speed increased.
Vengeance gave chase, continuing to fire, but the dying Danforth maintained enough control to target where he would crash.
Deep in Vengeance’s primary core, he howled in horror and rage. But it didn’t change the outcome. Danforth crashed into the planet, taking out the city, spaceport, school, Vengeance’s drone body, and a huge chunk of the planet’s surface.
Under the impact, trees vaporized, water turned to steam, and bedrock liquefied.
While Vengeance despaired the loss of everyone still on the planet, he mourned one lost life more than all the others. Hayley, the little girl with inquisitive blue eyes and a mischievous smile, was dead.
A sensation he registered as pain consumed him as he mourned the loss of the child he’d loved, the child who had reminded him he was still alive and should live. And that pain was only matched by an increasing desire for one thing: revenge.
Almost all the remaining rogue warships had fled, but Relentless was too damaged to jump into transit. Vengeance was preparing to finish him off when the dying Wolverine, his engines critical, limped up alongside Relentless. Wolverine had already ordered his crew to abandon ship, and Vengeance’s three remaining transports had collected them and brought them aboard. Now, all he could do was watch and wait. It didn’t take long.
Explosions started in the engine compartments then spread outward to other critical systems. As Wolverine died, his death throes took out his murderer.
Vengeance turned his attention back to the planet and the destruction that had been wreaked by one rogue warship. He’d seen many horrors in his long existence, but never one so mindless. So much waste. So much innocence destroyed for no purpose.
He wanted to return to the planet to survey the damage more closely, and more importantly, to search for Hayley, but Renee approached one of his sentinels and linked with him.
“Nualla is lost. I’m sorry. No one could have survived that,” Renee whispered into his mind as tears ran down her cheeks. “You must keep your crew safe now. The other warships could return at any time to finish what they started.”
Vengeance relented because, as usual, Renee was right. Nothing could’ve survived the devastation below them. And his crew remained in danger as long as they stayed here. He’d utterly failed Nualla. Worse, he’d failed one young child who’d been robbed of the future she’d been meant to have as his link.
Two thoughts kept repeating through his primary core: He’d never get to show Hayley a bradan up close, and he’d never teach her how to swim.
A darkly seductive thought sparked through him. He should end his life here with the child who would’ve grown up to be his link. He could self-terminate. He was an old relic who belonged in the past.
After all, even Hayley had recognized just how old he was. The Spire hardly needed warships like him now.
“Vengeance? We need you,” Renee offered. Her voice in his mind was soft, affectionate.
Vengeance’s sentinels dropped their arms by their sides as he struggled to grapple with a life beyond this moment. What else was there except this moment, this vortex of pain and emptiness and the certainty that life would always be so much darker now? “I don’t know how to go on, though. This grief. Renee, my primary core… I must be critically damaged in some way.”
“I know. I’m so sorry, Ven.”
He scanned the surface of Nualla one last time. His entire crew, over two thousand of them, depended on him for their survival. He couldn’t abandon them no matter how desperately he wanted this pain to end. He plotted a cours
e away from the planet, intent on seeing his crew to safety, but after the loss of his future link—the little girl who’d already stolen the heart he often wished he had—he wasn’t at all sure how he would survive.
A warship picked up Hayley’s transport moments before a different warship crashed into the surface of the planet. Hayley and the other girls were locked into a room, which was heavily guarded by those terrifyingly huge and menacing sentinels. The ship vibrated as its engines ratcheted up to full power, and they left the Nuallan solar system far behind.
She couldn’t even imagine where they might be going or why. She’d been told her entire life that she was special, a powerful telepath bred specifically to form the highest level of telepathic link with an AI and prevent them from suffering moments of disconnect from the hive. But those AIs, like Vengeance, were their friends. Because of them, people had been able to live comfortably in space and on previously uninhabited planets. Why would any AIs need to steal untrained telepaths?
Sentinels brought the girls regular meals and, occasionally, a human-form drone would appear to ask them if they needed anything else. He would attempt to convince them they shouldn’t be frightened, but it was a useless thing to say. They’d been kidnapped and were hostages to rogue AIs. And nobody seemed to be coming for them.
Hayley couldn’t tell how long they traveled before the ship landed on a different planet. It had seemed like years, but she doubted it had been that long. The sentinels returned for them and led them off the ship, and for the first time since being taken from her home, she was hopeful. Maybe this planet wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it had lakes with bradan in it, and forests where she could dig through the soft peat and hand Ven whatever little animals she found living there.
And then she remembered Ven wouldn’t be here.
Hayley blinked back tears as she stepped onto the gangplank and sucked in a quick breath. The gray sky above them, the barren red land, the single dark blue building before them: No, this planet was far worse than she’d imagined. She’d stopped walking so one of the sentinels nudged her, and she stumbled down the gangplank, finding Amelia’s hand to hold.
Vengeance (Warships of the Spire Book 1) Page 2