The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) (25 page)

Now Capp cocked her head, as if receiving orders through her com link. “Look alive, the lot of you. Won’t be long now.”

Koh tried to get Li’s attention again. He shook his head and pointed toward the blackened blast doors. There wasn’t time—the explosion would go off any moment, and that would set the attack in motion. They’d built a partial box of tyrillium plates, wired the explosives from an Albion torpedo inside, and welded it against the blast doors. When the bomb went off, Capp said, the doors would explode inward and knock anyone standing nearby to the ground. Stun the rest of them. The box would hopefully contain the explosion. Otherwise, they might blast a hole all the way to the void, and everyone wanted to avoid that, right?

“You ready, Commander?” Capp asked.

Li swallowed hard and looked at his fellow Singaporeans. “Ready as anyone.”

Roughly a hundred men and women clustered in the corridor, with another hundred waiting along a second corridor not far away. Anna would be on the inside with her own people. It was going to be one bloody battle.

Capp cocked her head again. “Here we go! Brace yourselves!”

Li ducked his head and covered his ears. The explosives went off in a deep, muffled boom that reverberated through the hull. An instant later, another reverberation and an even more muffled explosion. When he looked up, the door was gone, as was some of the surrounding wall.

“Go! Go!” Capp screamed.

Li joined the charge. Koh came alongside him, yelling something, but his ears were ringing from the explosion, his heart was pounding, and already there was the sound of gunfire from ahead. He couldn’t hear a word of what she was saying.

Capp had organized the attackers into smaller companies in the narrow corridor, instructed and drilled them. Now they fanned out as they entered the farm, coordinating their positions and fire so as not to mow each other down. As Li’s company of twenty took position behind the shattered rubble of a hydroponic tower, gunfire lashed across the wide empty space.

Bits of glass struck him and water rained down from ruptured tanks as he squatted. The ground around him was a mess of burned vegetation, glass, twisted metal, and bloody water.

“Commander!” Koh came to him, running at a crouch.

“Head down!”

Bullets came zinging in their direction, and they returned fire. It was all chaos, with men and women sprinting across the open space and bullets coming from everywhere. He couldn’t tell who was friend and who was enemy, only knew to shoot in any direction from which they were taking incoming fire.

Smythe called from the command module, warning him to look to his right—the enemy was pressing in from that side, using smoke and fire as cover to advance.

“Commander, listen to me,” Koh said.

“Dammit, Koh. I’m trying to stay alive here. Why didn’t you just tell me over the com?”

“Because
they
control the com.” Her voice crackled with frustration. “Listen to me, it’s a fake, all of it, all this. We’re not meant to win.
Blackbeard
—”

Another fierce battle broke out. A company of Li’s people had advanced almost to the center of the room, but now fell back under heavy fire.

Koh shook him. “Commander! I intercepted their message. I was listening. Captain Tolvern lied to us.”

This got Li’s attention at last. He squatted behind the base of the hydroponic tower and reloaded his rifle while he looked her over. There was panic on her face.

“What do you mean?”

“Tolvern actually used the word ‘diversion.’ That’s what our attack is, a
diversion
. Look around. Where are all the Albionish? There aren’t any! She
lied
, Commander. They’ve abandoned us.”

Yes, he could see it now. The big Ladino—what was his name, Carvalho?—was to have rushed in with his reserve force. Taking advantage of the chaos, the blood spilled by Li’s forces, Carvalho would charge across the farm to the service tunnels on the other side, and from there assault Anna’s stronghold.

“They left us,” Koh said. “Got us out of the way so they could run.”

“But Smythe is still in the command module—he’s been coming on to give instructions. Capp is here somewhere, too.”

Li looked around, but didn’t see the Albion lieutenant at first. A knot of fear clenched in his stomach, but then Capp came on the com, shouting to one of the companies to move into a different position.

Li turned back to Koh. “You see!”

Uncertainty flickered in the woman’s eyes. “I don’t know. I only know we’re not supposed to win. We’re being used as bait.”

That part seemed clear enough the longer things went on without seeing Carvalho’s forces. What were they doing? They must have found a way to get behind Anna’s lines—it was the only thing that made sense. By why not tell him the truth? Suddenly, he knew why.

“Tolvern doesn’t trust us,” he said.

“We’re dying here. What more proof does she need that we’re on her side?”

“Except my sister knew about the other attack, she anticipated it. Later, she hacked into my com link, which you and Swettenham swore was secure. We’ve got traitors in our midst, Sentry Faction sympathizers. They’re feeding Anna information. Tolvern lied to us so that my sister would concentrate her forces here.”

“So it
is
a trap,” Koh said. “Your sister massed her forces here, and we’re going to die if we keep fighting without reinforcements.”

“Possibly,” he conceded.

“We have to pull back. Tell them, they’ll listen to you. Get on the com and call the general retreat.”

A figure came striding through the smoke, waving one arm and shouting. The other arm thrust out at an awkward angle, held in place by a cast. It was Capp, urging them deeper into the farms. Men and women stood up all around Li, ready to follow the young woman’s orders, even if it carried them into the meat grinder. Capp herself was exposed, ready to lead the charge.

Li could throw the attack into chaos by ordering a retreat. Fall back to lick their wounds, demand that Captain Tolvern tell him the truth, force the
Blackbeard
crew to take their share of the casualties. A few days ago, he might have done it.

Li rose to his feet. “No. Here we make our stand.”

#

Tolvern reached the oxygen plant without opposition. Her company of five had met up with a second team, who’d also faced no enemies. Carvalho unleashed his hand cannon at the door that led into the oxygen plant, and it crumpled like wet cardboard.

But when it was down, the captain hesitated. Bad idea to charge in shooting. The place would be packed with tanks holding pure oxygen. One bad shot and they’d be finished.

“Hold your fire!” Tolvern ordered. “No shooting.”

They charged. There was only one man inside, and he didn’t even have his weapon handy. By the time he’d recovered from the blast and rushed to grab his shotgun, Carvalho was springing at him. He grabbed the man with one hand, drew his knife with the other, and the mutineer lay dead on the floor before he had a chance to cry out.

One of the other teams called on the com. They’d moved toward the power plant, and finally come up against determined opposition. If Tolvern had forces to spare, could she send them at once?

“Give me five minutes, and we’ll be there.”

First, she needed to get the oxygen turned back on. She located the instrument panel and called the command module for help. Smythe answered, and she explained what she was looking at. He talked her through it, and they soon got the systems reconnected to the command module. Turning it back on proved trickier. Unfortunately, Hillary Koh, Dong Swettenham, and any other Singaporean who might have helped had been sent away as part of the diversionary attack.

Tolvern checked in on the other action while she waited for Smythe. “Capp, talk to me. You there?”

“Aye, Cap’n. Here and still alive. Barely.” Her voice was strained, and gunfire filled the channel with static. “We ain’t been able to push forward none. Keep trying, keep getting knocked back.”

“Don’t be a hero down there, it’s a diversion. Hold the line. Take defensive positions.”

“Can’t do that, Cap’n. Bloody Sentry faction knows something. They been falling back. I’m worried they found out about you. If I don’t keep fighting, you’ll have them breathing down your neck.”

It did sound that way, especially as word came through from the other
Blackbeard
crew that opposition was stiffening at the power plant. The enemy was rushing new fighters into the battle, and they had to be coming from somewhere.

Tolvern got back on with her first mate. “I think you’re right, Capp. Keep pushing. One of us has got to break through.”

“Aye, Cap’n. I’d rather die here than face them buzzards, anyway.” Capp cut the line.

Tolvern still didn’t have the oxygen production back online, but the equipment was in their control, and there was nothing more to be done. Not from here. She left Carvalho and two others to guard it against counterattack, then took the other seven to join the push toward the power plant.

By the time she arrived, the battle was in full swing.

#

Li’s forces clawed their way across the farms, inch by bloody inch. Bodies lay everywhere. No way to tell how many were Openers and how many were Sentry Faction. Even when he saw their faces staring blankly up at the air vents far overhead, he often couldn’t recall which side this man or that woman had fallen on.

Eleven years of peaceful struggle, of jockeying between the two factions, of a crew divided over this one issue. Then suddenly, it erupted into civil war, a bloody conflict that left so many dead. Li recognized every face he saw. Every dead body struck him like a knife in the side.

Once he’d made his decision, Koh didn’t try to talk him out of it. Instead, she fought like a lion by his side. She shouted at her comrades to press forward every time it looked like they would falter. The other side fell back, their gunfire dying, even as fires broke out everywhere, filling the air with smoke and burning up precious oxygen. The vents tried to suck it away, but was there any oxygen left to replace it?

And then suddenly the fight was over. The enemy was either in full retreat or throwing down their arms to surrender.

“We have her!” Capp yelled from somewhere to his left.

That could only mean Li’s sister. He sloshed through the water that was now ankle-deep in the room from ruptured tanks and fire suppression systems. He trod over tomatoes, crushed rice plants, and kicked aside other vegetation. The hydroponic farm that had kept over five hundred crew alive for year after year was a wreck, the carefully tended crops and machinery alike destroyed.

“Anna,” he said, coming through the smoke to find Capp and two others holding a prisoner with her hands behind her back. He was angry, frustrated, and relieved, all at once.

“Nah, this ain’t the one you want,” Capp said. She nodded toward the ground. “That’s the leader, that’s who I was talking about.”

And there was Anna, lying on her side with her eyes glazed, staring without seeing. Her face had a few scratches from glass or other debris, and a superficial cut ran down her right temple, but otherwise, she looked fine except for that stare. Whatever wound she had, whatever had finished her off, was not immediately apparent.

My sister, dead.
 

Li gaped, unable to move. Koh came and touched his arm. Then Capp came next to him, brow scrunched and lips drawn together.

“Yeah, I forgot who she was for a moment.” Capp cleared her throat and shifted from one foot to the other, as if uncomfortable with the whole thing. “I’m sorry. But, you know. Well . . .”

“She had her chance to stop it and could have at any time. But she didn’t.” Li managed to shake his head. “Anna’s death is on her own shoulders.”

#

Tolvern got word that the battle had ended in the farm. Anna Li, the leader of the Sentry Faction, had fallen in the fighting, and with that, the opposition had evaporated. One of the surrendering fighters agreed to send a message through to the holdouts in the power plant. Meanwhile, Smythe finally got the oxygen plant back online.

It was all over.

Except that nobody told the die-hards in the power plant. Or rather, nobody could convince them. There were only about ten defenders in all, but every time Tolvern’s larger force tried to fight its way inside, gunfire drove them back out.

Tolvern called for a limited retreat. For several minutes, they stayed in the corridor, crouched next to large pipes that ran along one wall, waiting for someone to negotiate a surrender. A few minutes after receiving word from the farms, three armed Singaporeans came running down the corridor from the lift. They were wheezing and bleeding from cuts and superficial gunshot wounds.

They took one look at the
Blackbeard
crew, threw down their weapons, and surrendered. Moments later, Carvalho called urgently from the oxygen plant. Several more Sentry Faction holdouts had arrived and were trying to shoot their way in. Tolvern sent two companies to relieve him. Word soon came that her forces had either killed or captured this latest group. More news came of skirmishes throughout the base as Capp’s forces consolidated control.

Soon, only the power plant holdouts remained. But they refused to surrender, even after several attempts to negotiate. Tolvern was exhausted, frustrated, and angry. She needed to act calmly, but she felt the steady drip of time.

Blackbeard
came back around to dock. Smythe went on board to scan the Kettle System: the enemy fleet was still headed toward them, and no Albion reinforcements had appeared. Neither was there another subspace from the Admiralty. Eight hours until the enemy arrived.

Carvalho soon arrived armed with shaped charges. “Shall I blow it?”

“We’ll give them one last chance to surrender,” Tolvern said, “and then blast our way in and kill whoever is left.”

“The sooner the better,” he said. “We need to get back on
Blackbeard
before it is too late.”

“It was too late the moment we flew into the system,” she said. “Shields smashed up and a leaking engine about to blow.”