The armada was slowing as it neared the Sphere, forming up on the edge of the system. The Skarak ships swarmed around Sentinel Nine.
“Walk the deck, Smith,” Commander Peel said. “Make sure we are running dark. I don’t want so much as a drink dispenser drawing any power.”
Smith left the small command deck. The corvette’s main deck stretched back twenty meters to the drive room. The ship was quiet. Usually, a corvette would have a crew of over twenty and would be a cramped, bustling little ship, but the Sentinel-class ships were all running on skeleton crews. The drive room crew was reduced to only three engineers. There was only one crew member for each of the spitz guns, and a small team of surveillance operators to manage the surveillance and communications systems. A pair of Marine regulars were responsible for internal security.
Smith walked the main deck. Crew personnel were sitting quietly in the corridors waiting for a call to action. They looked up to Smith for information as he passed.
“The commander wants quiet,” he said calmly.
After checking the main corridor, Smith checked the cramped lower and upper deck. He was a tall man and stooped to walk the entire length of both decks. The lower deck housed the small med-bay and the crew quarters. The upper deck was dominated by the enhanced communication and sensor systems. Smith checked weapons control last.
The weapon systems had been almost entirely stripped out of the corvette, like it had been for over thirty Union corvettes to create the Sentinel-class of ships. More room was given to the enhanced surveillance and communications systems. The reactor was also enhanced with additional sub-cores to provide extra power and added speed and maneuverability. Sentinel Nine was not completely defenseless, however. A pair of spitz guns sat on the upper hull and another pair on the lower. With careful piloting, the corvette could present all four spitz guns to a target and lay down a fierce hail of plasma rounds at the rate of hundreds of rounds in five-second bursts every twenty seconds.
As impressive as her spitz guns were, against an armada of this size the on-board tactical intelligence estimated the corvette would have an effective battle period of less than ten seconds—not even enough time to deliver a full salvo from all four spitz guns. The timing was rigged for all four emplacements to fire together. A burst of that magnitude might briefly deter a warship, but Sentinel Nine was surrounded by dozens of the deadly Skarak ships.
But Commander Peel knew that combat was not the goal of the Sentinels. The little ship was here to await the return of the Skarak, to gather intelligence and to report their position back to fleet command before the Skarak entered the system.
Peel watched the Skarak ships drifting all around his tiny corvette. Just his luck, he thought, that he’d be the one to find the Skarak. Of all the Sentinels watching, it was his that had found them.
“We are dark. All systems checked,” Smith said as he returned to the command deck.
“Guess we got lucky,” Commander Peel said. “We will all get a new pip on our chest for finding the bastards first.” Peel climbed up into the command chair. “We have gathered as much data as possible. Jacobs, get ready to send us back to the inner system.”
Jacobs dropped into the pilot chair. He used the gravity from one of the masterships to move the Sentinel Nine. The mastership was as large as the largest mining asteroid anywhere in the system. Jacobs doubted that any Fleet ship could stand against these massive Skarak ships.
Sentinel Nine fell slowly toward the mastership—a dark oval-shaped craft, its surface bristling with stiff rapiers that projected outward in all directions. Its hull was deep and dark, like a pool of viscous black tar, and it was impossible to scan with any precision.
Peel leaned forward in his chair. “I’ve seen the data on these masterships. They are fast, and they can swallow a dozen freighters.”
“So the Skarak are here to capture more ships?” Jacobs asked.
Peel looked at the holostage. Hundreds of warships, dozens of masterships, an armada larger than anything the Union could put out. He shook his head in disbelief. He didn’t want to die, but couldn’t see how they could fend off such overwhelming force.
“No, Jacobs,” Peel said. “They are not here to capture ships. This is a full-scale invasion force. You don’t send a force this size for a raid. The Skarak mean to conquer and occupy the system.”
Jacobs adjusted their heading with a light burst of thruster power. He reached out with the grav field and touched on the mastership next in the armada. The Sentinel Nine swung from one mastership to the next, moving slowly back toward the outer edge of the Sphere.
The asteroids of the Sphere were close now, and Peel looked at the slowly moving mass of asteroids, some as big as a gas giant’s moon, others jagged mountains of ice, many more merely fist sized dusty snowballs. Once in the cover of the densely packed asteroids, Peel knew that he would breathe a little easier. There was cover amongst the tumbling chunks of ice and rock and metal. Sanctuary. Safety.
The image of the armada from the sensor array was falling away, moving to the far side of the large holostage. The corvette, Sentinel Nine, remained at the center of the image as it fell slowly back in toward the system and the safety of the Sphere.
Peel watched the image of the last two masterships within sensor range. They shimmered on the image. He was about to jettison the extended sensor array and head with all speed for home when the image of the mastership became even more hazy. Thousands of data points appeared around each of the masterships. A dark hazy cloud surrounding the huge ship. Peel leaned forward in his command chair.
“What is happening to the masterships?” he said.
“Are they breaking apart?” Jacobs said.
Smith zoomed in and cleared up the faint image. Even though the passive scan was only recovering a fraction of the data that an active scan could it was clear what the data points surrounding the masterships were.
Skarak fighters.
Yet more fell away from the masterships, dozens more by the second. Wave after wave of Skarak fighters deploying from the masterships to space.
“Fighters,” Jacobs said his voice filled with awe and horror. “Hundreds of them.”
“How many?” Peel said. “Exactly.”
“Difficult to be sure without an active scan,” Smith said. “Request permission to launch a surveillance drone so we can get a proper view of these bastards.”
“Denied,” Peel said. “They will spot us for sure if we do that and we need to take this information back to Fleet Command. Just give me a best guess.” But Peel could make an assessment himself. The two closest masterships in the vast armada were releasing over a thousand fighters each. If that were true of every master ship, the Skarak armada would be utterly overwhelming in number.
“Best count gives us eight hundred fighters from the nearest mastership. A similar number from the only other mastership in range. We don’t have a total count of masterships, but we recorded six of them. We need an active scan to survey the entire armada.”
Peel knew an incomplete picture could be as useless as no picture at all. He clenched his fist and pressed his lips together. He wasn’t ready to die.
“Prepare all launch tubes with the remaining surveillance drones. Maximum spread. Let’s cover the sector and see how big this armada really is.”
Jacobs looked back at Peel from his pilot chair. “Commander. The instant we launch…”
“I know,” Peel said. “Have the drive systems standing by. Be ready to activate the main core on my mark. We’ll make a dash for the inner system as soon as they spot us.”
The report came back from the launch tubes that they were ready, all drones set to scan with active fields and send the data back to Sentinel Nine. The drive room reported the core was at standby.
Peel sat back in his command chair and he accessed the launch tube controls on his arm rest holo-display.
“I’ll take it from here,” he said. “This is my duty now.” His finger
hovered over the launch button, he hesitated for a second. To hesitate was to fail. He tapped the holographic button. He felt a rush of excitement and fear as the button turned from red to green.
“Drones away,” Smith reported.
“Kick up, the drive,” Peel said. He looked at the main holostage. The drones were racing away, leaving green holotrail lines on the holoimage.
“Activating the drones now.” Peel sent the signal to the drones to activate their active scanners.
“A group of Skarak fighters have broken off from their swarm and are moving directly for Sentinel Nine,” Smith said.
The holostage suddenly filled with masses of new information as the data from the drone’s active scans streamed back to the corvette. The image of the Skarak armada became crisp and clear. Data readouts in holo-text form appeared alongside each of the ships. And there were thousands of them. At a glance Peel could see dozens of masterships in a regular pattern through the armada. In between the masterships were the hundreds of warships, each a kilometer long with hundred-meter long rapiers pointing forward. And in between the heavy ships were thousands upon thousands of tiny, deadly, fighters.
“Full drive. Now. Direct heading for Terra. Get us through the Sphere, Jacobs. Command will want to see this.”
The corvette leapt to high speed, the drive throwing it recklessly into the asteroids of the Sphere. Jacobs maneuvered the small ship through the densely packed asteroids.
“Skarak fighters closing in,” Smith said.
“Give them a blast from the spitz guns. All guns fire in a rolling volley.”
Sentinel Nine rotated her spitz guns to aft and picked the Skarak targets. The first gun fired its five second burst, a stream of several hundred pulse rounds fizzing across space. The gun stopped firing to cool and recharge and the next gun took up the fire. After twenty seconds all guns had fired and the first was pouring out its second burst. Three Skarak fighters were reduced to burning wreckage in the wake of Sentinel Nine.
Peel arranged a data package for Union Fleet Command. To be sure that his data stream would make it to Command he needed Sentinel Nine to be on the inside of the Sphere giving a clear line of sight to the nearest Union relay station, a station that happened to be on the system’s outer planet, Lastone.
Sentinel Nine cleared the Sphere. Ahead on the holostage was the planet, Lastone, the highly volcanic super terrestrial five billion kilometers from the Scorpio system’s blue giant star. In a matter of minutes Command would be aware of the Skarak armada.
The instant the signal was sent, Peel turned his attention to the Skarak. The fighters were closing in. Soon the little corvette would be within range of their crackle beams. Sentinel Nine maintained its rolling volley across its four spitz guns.
“Why don’t they send more fighters after us?” Smith said.
Peel wondered the same. The armada was holding position just beyond the Sphere. The image began to deteriorate as the first of the corvette’s surveillance drones was destroyed. All drones were soon gone, and the image of the armada disappeared from the holoimage, lost beyond range of Sentinel Nine’s onboard sensors. Only the pursuit fighters remained on the holostage.
Sentinel Nine was holding its relative distance from the Skarak, now that it had cleared the asteroids. With the sub cores also at full power the corvette was about to draw on an extra boost of power. Peel began to hope that he would pull away from the fighters.
Even if he did get away, he knew he would be required to form up with the Union fleet and turn to face the armada. That confrontation was without doubt only hours away. If the armada did not strike, then the fleet would advance. It could not tolerate a hostile force on its border and not act. It might be futile, but it was all they could do, they were not about to surrender or abandon the Scorpio system without a fight. Hundreds of years of history around this blue giant star since the first ship, the Scorpio, an ancient fleet destroyer, first discovered the system.
“Skarak fighters are holding position,” Smith said.
Peel checked and it was indeed true, they were hanging in the asteroids and not venturing into the clear open space of the system.
“Do they think there are more defenses and they can’t defeat them?” Jacobs said.
Then Peel saw the small red warning signal on his arm rest holostage. A minor anomaly in the drive shunt. Then another red warning signal as the field alignment drifted suddenly.
“Drive room, report,” Peel said opening a channel to the drive room.
He opened the surveillance node in the drive room and displayed the room on the holostage. Only one of the three person drive room crew was on his feet. A large pulse wrench in his hands, the end glowing brightly. The other two men were down, lying on the deck, blood oozing from wounds on their backs.
“Intruder protocols!” Peel called out over a ship wide address. “Marines to the drive room.”
The last man standing in the drive room stepped over to the main core and began detaching the shunt connector.
Peel saw the marines rush into the drive room and reach to grab hold of the engineer who was about to release a thousand tons of drive plasma into the ship.
“Stop him!” Peel shouted.
The plasma erupted from the micro millimeter fissure opened by the engineer. It melted the rest of the seal in a nanosecond. The plasma poured out of the core and filled the entire corvette in another nanosecond. The drive assembly glowed brightly, flinging Sentinel Nine forward a few thousand kilometers. Then the hull melted from the inside, glowing brilliant white hot for a brief brilliant moment before all that was left of Sentinel Nine and her crew was an expanding cloud of plasma, rapidly cooling in the deep dark void of the outer Scorpio system.
The relay station on Lastone delivered the response from Fleet Command.
“Good work, Sentinel Nine. All data received. Return to Terra. Command out.”
But Sentinel Nine was nothing but a sea of subatomic particles, cooling and expanding in the dark.
2
The Resolute moved slowly through the Belt, a beast limping away from battle. The battered Union ship was skimming over the surface of one asteroid after the next, using them as cover. The massive grey hulk below her hull was an empty shell of a rock. It had once been a bustling mining town, but now with all the valuable material mined out, it was just an empty shell drifting in the Scorpio system’s asteroid belt between the planets of Terra and Supra. The Belt was littered with these relics of Union mining operations, all materials cut away to feed the Union.
Inside the Resolute, it was a bustling hive of activity. Battle damage across the Resolute was being repaired. As the crew worked to fix the ship, Blue Star Marine Sergeant Will Boyd was studying the signal discovered by their fallen comrade, Knole.
“This signal is different,” Boyd said looking at the holo-display on the communications console. His jacket was starting to feel tight and he wriggled his shoulders trying to make room in the jacket. But deep down he knew it was not the jacket that was restricting his movement; it was the sudden responsibility of being the most senior Blue Star Marine aboard the Resolute.
Jim Hemel stood alongside Boyd, his hair a mess, a candy stick hanging from the side of his mouth. “This is the signal Knole discovered, before he was…” Hemel trailed off.
“Killed,” Boyd finished Hemel’s sentence for him. “I know it’s not pretty. We lose marine brothers in combat but to lose one to a…” Now it was Boyd’s turn to trail off.
“A traitor?” Hemel suggested.
Boyd shook his head. It was true that Hemel had been killed by one of their own: Sergeant Dorik. He had been one of Boyd’s oldest and most trusted comrades, but Boyd couldn’t accept that Dorik had acted deliberately. He had been forced into his murderous actions by the true enemy, the Skarak. But still Boyd found it difficult to accept the fact that Dorik had been a Skarak sleeper agent for so long without fighting against it, and without being found out. Maybe in some way they we
re all to blame.
“Let’s focus on the signal,” Boyd said. “What exactly had Knole discovered?”
“It’s a master signal coming from beyond the Scorpio system. It must have a powerful single source. There is a possibility that it is coming from the Skarak home world itself.”
“So we could trace it back and find their home world?” Boyd felt his Jacket tighten up again as he tensed his biceps, getting ready to fight.
“Possibly,” Hemel said. “You would need a wide sensor net to keep on top of the signal. It is being directed to the Scorpio system in a very tight band. One ship could easily lose the signal and would have to zigzag across the beam to keep on top of it. It’s practically invisible if you’re not looking for it.”
“That’s why we hadn’t detected it sooner?”
“Perhaps. But the Resolute has been back and forth across the system so much recently that Knole was able to piece it all together.”
“But why?” Boyd said as he looked again at the data. “What is it for?”
“It’s a coordination signal.” Hemel looked at Boyd and spoke with utter certainty. “When the signal arrives here in our system it is disseminated by a network of relay stations. Some of them were the hidden Skarak vessels we’ve been hunting, others were captured Union or Faction vessels. It also looks as if every individual the Skarak ever captured and converted into their living dead monstrosities were also able to spread the signal.”
“If it’s a coordination signal, controlling all Skarak activity, what would happen if we were to disrupt the signal?” Boyd wondered out loud.
A warning alarm sounded from across the command deck signaling a major system failure. The hull stability field was close to total collapse on the rear port side. With the stability field out of action, the Resolute would be limited to dead slow speeds.
“Put us in orbit around any massive asteroid and cut all power to the drive assembly.” Boyd stepped over to the command chair.
Hemel dropped into the pilot chair and corrected the Resolute’s speed and heading.
Blue Star Marine Boxed Set Page 61