Blackbeard Superbox, page 89
Li gritted his teeth. He turned to Anna. “No, Koh doesn’t understand. Tell her, Engineer Li.”
Anna stepped further into the room. It was tight with three people in the small cell. She kept her right hand at her pistol, as if she hoped that Koh would try to fight for it or make a break for freedom. Give Anna an excuse to gun down the traitor. Koh merely stared back, unflinching, as a sharp, unpleasant smile crossed Anna’s face.
“You’ve condemned your would-be saviors to death is what you’ve done,” Anna said.
“I’ve done nothing of the kind.”
“You haven’t?” Anna said. “They know where we are, they are on their way here. This base is under orders, and those orders have never been broken before now, before you did it. Well, the rest of us are going to maintain formation, we won’t break ranks and flee the battlefield in panic.”
Koh’s certainty seemed to waver. Her eyes flickered to Li. “Commander, what is she talking about?”
“I think you know,” Li said. His voice sounded like an executioner’s. “We’re bringing all weapon systems online. As soon as the unknown ship pulls within range, we’ll drop our cloaks and show them the full scope of our firepower.”
“And drive them off?”
“And kill them. We can’t have witnesses.”
Koh shot to her feet. “No! You can’t do that. They’re not even Apex, they’re human! Allies, maybe even our salvation. You must have listened to the voice, you have to know. It’s not a trick, it’s real!”
“We don’t know that,” Li said. “We don’t know anything, only that we have our orders, and that is to maintain our vigil. Enemies crossing the system must come within range of our guns, and when they do, we destroy them.”
“They’re not enemies!”
“They weren’t before,” Li said. “Now you’ve made them so.”
“You as good as killed them yourself, Hillary Koh,” Anna said. Her tone was malicious, and Li found himself hating his sister, just a little, at that moment.
Koh turned to the porcelain toilet in the corner and bent over it, looking as if she’d be sick.
“Barf it up, Opener,” Anna said. “We’ll be sure to recycle it. We need every last drop of your body fluids to survive the coming decades. That’s right, decades.”
Li collared his sister and hauled her into the corridor without waiting to see if Koh would throw up, or if her nausea would pass. He palmed the lock, and the door swung shut behind him. Megat joined Li and his sister, looking grim but satisfied, as they made their way out of the detention block.
“You should throw Swettenham in a cell, too,” Anna said. “Why haven’t you already?”
“Because I only have three holding cells, and I might need the others for the pair of you.”
“I’m serious. You don’t actually believe Koh’s bullshit, do you, that she was working alone?”
“I do believe it. She confessed instantly, she explained her method and her motives. Swettenham was outraged when he heard what she’d done.”
“He’s an Opener! We’ve been watching him for years. Tell him, Megat.”
“An Opener who did not defy me,” Li said. “Who did nothing wrong. Even did me a big favor, in fact, translating the message.”
Anna wouldn’t let it go. “Come on, Jon. The guy even admits he’s an Opener. We never knew about Koh—she’s a small fish in all of this, but Swettenham talks to everyone he knows. He must have been involved.”
“Except he wasn’t, or at least, I have no evidence.”
She had the good sense to wait until they were past two men with ceiling panels down, working on an overhead duct, before she started in again. “Throw the idiot in a cell anyway. You can’t take that chance. Question him hard, see if he’ll crack and give us more names.”
He stopped. “Anna, if we start this, it won’t stop until you have every Opener arrested and tried for treason.”
“And maybe it shouldn’t. Get rid of them all, we’d be better off. These people have been waiting for this opportunity. It’s like gangrene spreading through the station. And I say it’s high time to cleanse it. Burn it out, amputate a bloody limb if you have to, if it’s the only way to save the patient. God, how can you be so naive, so weak?”
Li shoved her against the corridor wall and pinned her in place with his forearm. Her eyes bulged and her mouth hung open. He looked away long enough to glare at Megat, daring the man to make a move. Then he turned slowly back to his sister.
“Right now, you’re the biggest threat to Sentinel 3. Not the Albion warship, not Hillary Koh. Not even Apex. Your vicious factionalism, that’s what. And if you cross me, so help me, you’ll see just how weak I really am.”
She said nothing. Good. Li kept her pinned.
“We’re going to full alert,” he said. “When the Albion ship comes, we’ll finish it off. Then we’ll re-cloak and go back to full silent mode. We’ll stay there until we are officially relieved or we die of old age. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what everyone in the Sentry Faction declares is our duty and our honor, to serve as long as it takes in defense of Singapore and the Imperium?”
“Yes, Commander Li. It is.”
He released his forearm from his sister’s chest and took a step backward. “Good. Then I will make decisions about crew such as Dong Swettenham. And I say he’s loyal. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Swettenham is a communications level one, and we need him on duty bringing up scanners. We’ll shut them down when the battle is over. Or rather, the slaughter, since that’s what I expect we’ll do to them. Then Swettenham goes back to muddling around in engineering. That is why I need him. That, and a general principle not to be a paranoid dictator and send us all over the edge.”
“I’m sorry, Jon.” Anna sounded genuinely contrite.
Of course, she was getting her way, except for the desire for a widespread purge. Let her think for a moment that her brother was an Opener, and it would be back to her mutinous behavior.
As if on cue, Swettenham’s voice spoke in Li’s com link. “Commander Li, we’ve got a situation.”
“We’ve got several, from what I can see. Which of the many has you upset?”
Anna and Megat looked at him, expressions curious, but he didn’t explain or open the audio to their channel so they could hear what the communications specialist was saying.
“We just got slapped by a massive active subspace scan,” Swettenham said. “It was the Albion warship looking for us. Like sending a pack of barking dogs through the brush to see what takes flight.”
“And did we take flight? Did they flush us out?”
“No, sir. At least, I don’t think so. Cloaking held, near as I can tell. Though thanks to that idiot Koh, they know the neighborhood, and once they get here, they’ll find us if they scan that hard again.”
“We’ll worry about that when they arrive.” Li had not yet shared with Swettenham the fate of the Albion warship. “So if they barked, and we kept our heads down, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is what else they flushed out, sir.”
#
Five minutes later, Commander Li was in the command module. It was in the deepest, most shielded part of the base, but in many respects had the appearance of the bridge on a starship. A commander’s terminal sat in the middle of the room, directly below a viewscreen that gave the impression of staring through a large window straight into space, though it was only a display. To the left was a bank of terminals to control the firing systems, with consoles for shields and defensive measures taking up space behind. These were unmanned at the moment.
All the activity was to the right, at communications consoles. Here, five men and women were busy dusting off old systems that had been locked down for years. Running scripts, testing access to the equipment. Swettenham was there, giving orders, directing diagnostics.
He looked up as Li entered. “I’ll be with you in a moment, sir.”
Harold Ang, Li’s first officer, stood near the commander’s chair, mumbling into his com link as he powered up systems. Ang was a slender, bony man. The fringe of hair around his temples, already graying when the base was established, was now streaked with white. The poor old man should be retired from service, tending his family shrine in some quiet village on Singapore, not here facing a crisis twenty light years from home.
Li settled into his chair. It felt both familiar and strangely uncomfortable at the same time. He came in here for weekly drills—communications might not get much use, but the weapon systems were regularly tended to, shields and countermeasures tested, the eliminon battery warmed behind its baffle. But so many years had passed since he’d sat in the chair with actual danger brewing that sitting now felt like playacting. Yet another drill, this one where all the participants pretended it was real. But still a pretense.
“Where are the gunnery officers?” he asked. “The shield specialist?”
“They’re on their way, sir,” Ang said. “We only just called them when you said to man stations.”
Swettenham made his way over as Li tested his console to make sure he had full access. From this seat he could take control of certain laser arrays himself if needed, even fire the eliminon battery.
“Bring it up on the screen, comm officer,” he told Swettenham.
The man swelled visibly. The semi-useless mechanical engineer was gone, replaced by the head of communications. He’d even changed uniforms, and a single dragon emblem gleamed proudly on his right shoulder. Level one.
The main viewscreen showed a formation of Apex lances framed by the gas giant around which Sentinel 3 orbited. The largest storms on the Kettle’s surface were churning directly below them, matching the tumult in Li’s stomach.
Eight enemy lances. How long had they been there?
Nobody spoke for a long moment, staring. The long, slender craft gleamed silver when you caught them in the light, but peering at them through the planet, they looked like slivers of shadow. Ready to pierce, puncture, and destroy. Queens and drones on board, waiting to swoop in, seize prey in their talons, and tear them apart. Both metaphorically and literally.
“They’re well cloaked, sir,” Swettenham said. “But I don’t think they’ve moved in some time, or even the passive scans would have picked them up at this distance.”
Li double-checked his console. “And they’re positioned in such a way that we could shoot them at any time. We’ll have to fire around the planet, of course, but that’s within our capabilities.”
“Why don’t we, then?” Ang said. He remained standing, but had pulled up his own console. “Five more minutes and all systems will be ready to fire.”
“The main arrays are already online,” Swettenham said. “I’ll target the birds, and the gunnery can finish them off.”
“We’ll win this battle,” Ang said, nodding vigorously. “Easily.”
Li wasn’t so sure about that—too many unknowns. He was turning it over when the door to the command module slid open, and his sister entered. The base had been put on high alert, which meant that Anna should have been down in the eliminon battery, where an entire team was required to make sure the delicate crystals stayed aligned.
Faces turned toward her as she entered. Some seemed curious, others passed her knowing looks, while a few scowled and looked away. She approached Li, Ang, and Swettenham.
“You said we weren’t detected,” Li said, turning to the communications officer. “How can you be sure?”
“I am certain, sir.” Swettenham nodded vigorously. “I don’t care how good the Albion sensors are or how hard they scanned us, at that distance they’ll never penetrate our cloaking. It caught the lances, though, showed them to us.”
“But that same scan surely lit us up for whoever else was listening closer at hand.” Li nodded at the still frame of the enemy lances. “We see them clearly enough.”
“Yes, but we were on the other side of the Kettle when Albion ran their scans. Our sensors are superior to Apex’s, and we saw them right through the planet. That’s how good our eyes and ears are. If I fire up the active sensors, I could tell you the color of the queen commander’s feathers. Their sensors are crap in comparison.” Swettenham gave what Li supposed was a modest shrug, but it only made him look more confident.
This was one of the sentinel battle station’s advantages. Apex could intercept and decode any known communication. They could force short-range jump points using some unknown technology, popping in and out where they liked. But stay silent, and they struggled to find you.
“Anyway, even if they could find us,” Swettenham said, “they’ve got to be staring out at this Blackbeard. Even if their sensors weren’t rubbish, they probably wouldn’t have seen us based on how we were positioned relative to them.”
“They’re using the Albion ship as bait,” Li decided.
“Why do you say that, Commander?” Ang asked.
The first officer had been fiddling with something on his screen, and it looked like his console was resetting. He’d crashed it while running diagnostics. Li felt a sudden twinge of worry about how Ang would perform in the coming fight, if his reflexes were still sharp enough for battlefield conditions.
“I can’t be sure,” Li said, “but it fits the situation. Apex must know we’re here. A captive talked or they seized a computer that said we were in this system.”
He let this stand for a moment. The only people who knew of Sentinel 3 had been confined to Singapore. The only computers that cataloged their existence were on the home world. So what did that mean for the home world?
“Or maybe they’ve fought other sentinels,” Li added, somewhat more hopefully. “They’ve studied the problem and figured this was a logical system to put us. So they’re trying to flush us out by dangling bait in front of us.”
“I don’t believe it,” Swettenham said vehemently. “That was a real message, spoken in a real language. I believe it’s real, that the Albionish are real people.”
“You believe it’s real because you want to believe it’s real,” Anna spoke up. “It’s wishful thinking bordering on superstitious faith, and it will get us killed.”
Li had almost forgotten his sister was standing quietly behind his shoulder. She didn’t belong here, but he couldn’t fight with her now. Not when he’d cast his lot with the Sentry Faction, of which she was the apparent leader. Not when the command module was filling with people from both factions, as well as people he’d previously identified as neutrals. He had to hold them all together, then impose discipline once the crisis had passed.
“Oh, I think Swettenham is right,” Li told her. “That human warship hit us with a full scan, trying to find us, but they only revealed Apex. If the enemy was in full control, there’s no way they’d have positioned their ships as they did.”
“Unless there’s an even larger fleet lurking.” Anna smiled. There was no humor in it, only satisfaction. “They show us a small force, taunt us into attacking. Then the main fleet swoops in and tears us to shreds once we reveal ourselves.”
Li stopped. He hadn’t considered that possibility. It didn’t change his general hunch, but what did it matter? The enemy knew or suspected that they were here and was trying to find their exact location.
“You see?” she pressed, looking from one man to the next and taking obvious satisfaction in the discomfort of all three. “This doesn’t change anything.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Li said. “We go to battle mode and fight.”
“You’d reveal our location.”
He gave her a withering look. “Obviously. And what are we, a listening post, or a battle station? Sentinel 3 is crammed with enough lasers, munitions, and fissiles to fight a small war.”
“It’s also incapable of jumping out of the system,” Swettenham said nervously. “We reveal ourselves and there’s no escaping.”
“Also part of our description. We hide in silence, we strike hard, and we absorb maximum punishment while we await relief from the navy. If that relief does not come, we die for the glory of the Imperium.”
“But what if it’s only eight lances?” Anna asked. “You wouldn’t give up our location for eight lances, would you?”
“I thought you were worried about a hidden fleet? If it’s there, you’ll get all the fighting you want.” Li looked back and forth between his sister and Swettenham. “Anyway, it’s nice to see Openers and the Sentry Faction united in cowardice.”
Now he had Anna and Swettenham both bristling.
“We’re fighting, all right.” Li nodded at Swettenham. “This is your chance. If the Albion ship is for real, they’ll see us in trouble, and they’ll either charge to our aid or won’t.” He looked at his sister. “And this is yours. You claim we’ve stayed hidden so we can fight the enemy. Well, here they are.” He clapped them both on the shoulders and let the full irony come through in his voice. “So you see, we all win.”
Ang cleared his throat, a sound not so different from the gurgling pipes in the water processing system. “Sir, what about the human warship?”
“Hopefully, they know how to fight and they exaggerated the extent of their injuries. And they’re smart enough to stay out of range of our weapon systems.” Li hardened his expression. “But this is war, and in any battle there is collateral damage.”
Chapter Eight
Captain Tolvern brought the critical personnel into the war room and gave her orders. There was no response for a long moment, only incredulity on every face around the table. Smythe squirmed, and Capp rubbed her shaved scalp so vigorously it was like she’d peel off the skin. Barker’s walrus mustache twitched. Nyb Pim’s long fingers stretched in front of him, and a hum sounded deep in his throat. That was Hroom nerves coming out.
It was Barker who spoke first. “We fought four lances last week. There are eight facing us now.”
“I’m aware of the odds,” Tolvern said.
