Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) (6 page)

Twenty jump points, ten missions at a time. Start with the most likely ten, send through probes, determine what was on the other side and the likelihood of passing through unscathed, then report to
Dreadnought
via light speed communication, not subspace. Three days per jump point; it would take a maximum of a week to investigate them all. That was the best Drake could do, short of twenty separate missions.

The largest of his task forces—the torpedo boats and missile frigates—arrived at its jump point first.
Dreadnought
was still racing toward its target when the first probes came back through. The good news? The jump point was more stable than scans initially indicated; it was almost certain that they could jump through and arrive safely on the other side.

The bad news was that staying safe once they got through was a different matter. The jump point on the other side was inside the corona of an expanding red giant on the verge of going supernova, if by “on the verge” you meant a thousand years in the future. Still, it was toasty in there. The probe suffered some melted instruments on its way back through.

“So that’s out,” Manx said as they studied the data on
Dreadnought
’s bridge. “We’ll be cooked if we try.”

“Have you heard of a shattered sun jump?” Drake asked.

“Like the one that blocks transit toward Old Earth, right? It’s a jump through a nova, if I remember right.”

“More or less. Ships have made the jump—it’s possible to shield yourself from the heat. We might be able to pull it off, but the problem is how hard we’re hit going through. We wake up quickly, we’re all right. If it’s a full-on jump concussion, we’re in trouble. Especially the smaller ships. They’ll cook.

“Still, I might risk it if I had any idea what that system contains,” Drake continued. “The probe didn’t send enough data to tell us if there are more jump points on the other side.”

“Could be another cul-de-sac,” Manx said. “Doesn’t seem worth the risk.”

No, it didn’t. Not yet. But drag this situation out a couple more weeks and Drake might find himself desperate enough to try.

Chapter Six

Two days after Drake had divided his fleet,
Dreadnought
stood three quarters of a million miles from another yellow jump point and fired a probe at it. The torpedo-sized object vanished through to the other side.

There was a function between the size of an object and the velocity required to push it through a jump point. It didn’t scale perfectly, but in general, the smaller the object, the slower it could travel and make it through. Ideally, you’d send something the size of a marble—if someone unpleasant was lurking on the other side, you didn’t want your probes detected—but a probe needed instruments, it needed a subspace transmitter, and it needed a warp point engine to get through. It was a marvel of Albion engineering that they’d engineered the probes as small as a torpedo.

Meanwhile, there had better not be enemies lurking in this system, because they were sending all sorts of transmissions back and forth. Five jump points investigated so far, and none were good candidates. Two, in fact, had shifted red with the arrival of additional information.

“This would be an excellent exploratory mission if that were our goal,” Drake said. “We’re going to have excellent charts of the system by the time we’re done.”

“And if some future Robinson Crusoe is ever marooned in here, he’ll be grateful,” Manx said.

“Congratulations, Lieutenant. You have just given this system its name.”

“The ‘Robinson Crusoe System’ is a little clunky, sir. Or did you mean the ‘Maroon System?’ People will think it refers to the color.”

“Neither. I’m going with the Manx System. Your name will be on the charts.”

“What an honor, sir,” Manx said dryly. “My mother will be proud.”

“Assuming you ever see her again.”

Ellison called over from the communications console. “Sir, there’s some solid data coming from
Carthage
. I’m sending it to your console.”

HMS
Carthage
was a destroyer, paired with the corvette HMS
Pace
, about twenty-six million miles from
Dreadnought
’s current position, on the edge of a small asteroid belt. The belt was close to where one would find the first gas giant, if there had been any such planets in the system. Jump points were often found near gas giants, and it was interesting that several in this system were wandering in a similar orbit, even though the gas giants themselves were missing.

The information coming out of the jump was promising. So promising, in fact, that Drake suspected the original scans had been inadequate, although some jump points looked different from a distance than up close. This one had wandered several thousand miles from where it had been originally spotted, which was another factor that led to less than satisfactory information.

Lloyd was working on the same data, and summarized what Drake was already seeing. “It’s big enough and stable enough to carry through our largest ships, sir. And there is another system on the other side, with at least two stable jump points.”

Drake gave Manx a raised eyebrow. “What a relief to discover that the Manx System is not a cul-de-sac, Lieutenant. Your mother might hear about this after all.” Then, back to Lloyd, “Can we flip it blue?”

“No, sir. The jump point has an expected duration of thirty-seven weeks. Royal Navy cartography principles require at least twelve months’ duration to designate a jump as blue, except in the case of an oscillating jump point, in which case—”

“I get the gist, Lloyd. What about the jump points on the other side? Do they lead anywhere?”

“Working on it, sir.”

Everyone was studying the same data, and now Koh let out an exclamation in Chinese before switching to English. “Admiral, one of them is a direct match for the Kunlun System! That’s only one jump from the Kettle.”

Drake settled back into his seat with a sigh. They weren’t going to die here after all, and, in fact, had a chance of making it back to Sentinel 3 in time to rendezvous. Hard to say; the fleet was scattered and would take a few days to gather near
Carthage
and
Pace
. He might wait until they’d investigated the rest of the yellows, but it was hard to imagine finding a better match.

Data shortly confirmed his hunch.
Dreadnought
’s own probe returned a fail status, indicating that it had taken significant damage passing through the jump. The limited data it returned was irrelevant; if a probe couldn’t make it through unharmed, there was no way he’d risk one of his ships.

“That settles it. Manx, contact the fleet. Time to leave this desert behind.”

#

Dreadnought
and her escorting missile frigate made their way through the asteroid belt on the way to rejoin the fleet. One of his cruisers, HMS
Repulse
, had been nearby, investigating its own jump point, and fell in a few thousand miles off starboard. Woodbury,
Repulse
’s captain, called Drake a few minutes later.

“I ran some scans while we were waiting for you, Admiral. There’s something strange about this asteroid belt.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised, but go ahead.”

“The belt doesn’t have much mass, given the size of the rocky planets—my tech officer says there’s a standard ratio—and what’s here is pulverized. A lot of small rocks, not many big ones. A mile across, two miles, but none of the small planetoids you usually see.”

“The Manx System is also missing its gas giants,” Drake said.

“Manx? You named the system after your first mate?” Woodbury chuckled. “Anyway, it’s not that. We looked at a couple of the bigger rocks, and they’ve been chewed up. I’ll wager there was a mining operation in here at one time.”

“Could be,” Drake said. “Nothing active at the moment, though. And if the buzzards were present, they’d have shown their faces by now. Everyone has been talking back and forth, nothing hidden. And the fleet is divided—there’s no shortage of easy targets.”

“If it’s an old mining operation, there’s bound to be some equipment lying around. Maybe it’s the buzzards, maybe some other species, but the way these jump points are acting, there’s no way someone has been here recently, running a sustained operation. Point is, the mining operation might be very old.”

“And you want a closer look, is that it?”

“Here’s what I’m thinking, Admiral. We’re ahead of most of the ships. I’ve already run my passive scans, and didn’t turn up anything. I’ll need a closer look. If I find something, we’ve got a few hours to grab it while the rest of the fleet assembles.”

“I always like getting my hands on alien tech,” Drake said. He gave it a moment of thought. “Go ahead and run active scans, but localized. No need to shout.”

“Yes, sir.” Woodbury chuckled again. “The Manx System. I like it. Hope it doesn’t go to the man’s head.”

He cut the line. The others on
Dreadnought
’s bridge were grinning, and Manx scowled at them before turning to Drake.

“On second thought, Admiral, the Robinson Crusoe System doesn’t sound so clunky. Has a certain ring to it.”

“Woodbury is scanning,” Lloyd said. “Not much showing up, but he’s right. The belt is chewed up, but not recently. Someone was here a long time. Decades, maybe. You can see the excavations—looks like they were going after fissionables.”

“Fissionables?” Manx said. “Radioactive isotopes aren’t generally rare enough to go searching in distant star systems. Unless . . . you don’t suppose one of those inner worlds once had people on it.”

“A million years ago, maybe,” Drake said, doubtful.

“Wasn’t a very sophisticated mining operation,” Lloyd said, still studying the data. “They just scraped away the rock and hurled chunks of it into space. Cracked the biggest asteroids in two and ate them from the inside out.” He slowly blinked his heavy eyelids. “Whoever it was, we’re not talking about the elder race or anything. Nothing nearly so sophisticated.”

Something squirmed in Drake’s subconscious. A warning bell clanged somewhere. The Manx System was isolated and had few visitors, if any.

“Why would someone be mining radioactive isotopes out here?” Drake asked.

“Must have been someone desperate for fuel,” Manx said.

“With that much digging?” Drake shook his head. “Must have taken a hundred years to tear apart the belt like that. Maybe longer.”

“Admiral,” Lloyd said. His voice was tense. “Something is moving. It’s over on the other side of that small asteroid. No, wait. It
is
the asteroid.”

A small, irregularly shaped object—and small was relative in this case, as it was several times bigger than
Dreadnought
—rolled away from a collection of small, rocky asteroids. It began to unfold, stretch, and uncoil. Soon it was a mass of dangling appendages that waved like the arms of a squid.

“Oh, my God,” Manx said. “It’s a star leviathan.”

#

The mystery of the asteroid belt had been solved. A star leviathan had wandered into the system, hungry after an aeons-long journey through interstellar space, only to find itself in a wasteland. There were no civilizations here to feed on, no passing craft to attack and devour.

Maybe it had lurked for a few decades, watching, or maybe it had immediately sought out the asteroid belt to dig up fissionables to keep itself alive. Either way, it had eventually fallen dormant. Who knows how long it had been waiting? It might have been lurking here since human ancestors were banging two rocks together and calling it music.

As for the origin of the leviathans, or how long they’d been wandering the galaxy, nobody knew. Drake’s former science officer, Noah Brockett, said that the monstrous leviathans and the thumbnail-size barnacles that fixed themselves to ships shared genetic material. Part animal, part machine, they either had a common ancestor or had been engineered by a long extinct race who had perhaps created them to clear wreckage from the space lanes. Whatever their origin, star leviathans were a menace wherever they surfaced.

The leviathan’s tentacles stretched dozens of miles ahead of it, but the large, bulbous head was shrunken, like a partially deflated balloon. It was starved, ravenous. As the three warships came toward it, the monster opened its mouth and exposed its spore cannons. The humans were too close; there was no time to change course.

A tentacle lashed out and caught hold of
Repulse
. Moments later, spores enveloped the missile frigate and shut down its engine, allowing it, too, to be snared and hauled in.
Dreadnought
was not so large and intimidating that the starving leviathan didn’t try to grab hold of her, too, but the battleship was farther away, and the gunnery was alert enough to fire cannons. They blasted apart the grasping tentacles, and soon
Dreadnought
was out of range.

Drake wasn’t about to let the leviathan gobble down two of his warships, and he ordered the engines to reverse as the monster hauled in his frigate and cruiser. The two captured ships blasted away with everything they had, but the leviathan absorbed the shots, perhaps even fed on them.

Drake put out a distress signal. One of his destroyer-and-corvette pairs was a few million miles away, and veered to join the action.

Of the two captured ships, the frigate was smaller and its engines were shut down by the spore cannon; the leviathan hauled it in first. Escape pods blasted out even as the leviathan stuffed the ship into its maw. Explosions lit up the gaping interior of the monster, and then the ship was gone. Only the venting of gas from the leviathan’s mouth and the fleeing escape pods gave any indication that the frigate had even existed.

What would happen inside the monster’s gullet? Would the frigate be slowly digested even as the remaining crew tried increasingly desperate measures to cut their way free, or was the whole thing immediately masticated by the monster, quickly ending their pain?

Meanwhile, the pods were escaping, and Drake prayed that most of the crew had made it on board in time. The leviathan had plenty of tentacles and could have snared and hauled in the fleeing pods, but it was too busy trying to wrestle
Repulse
into its mouth. The cruiser launched torpedoes and missiles into its enemy, all of which hit, but did little damage. A cannon broadside, however, tore apart two of the tentacles with kinetic fire, and the cruiser pulled away, shaking off the shattered limbs.