The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) by Michael Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

would be.” She tapped the console.
    The map showed a swath of yellow, the range within which the jump point would have been four years in the past. Millions of miles away from where it was now.
    Djikstra shrugged. His angular shoulders made it exaggerated, like something from the stage. “I suppose the Singaporeans programmed the motion into their charts.”
    “The charts the captain constructed from memory?”
    “He must have just guessed and got lucky.”
    “Space is a big place,” Tolvern said. “That’s some kind of luck.”
    “It’s not my map,” he said. “Anyway, it wasn’t perfect, was it? The fellow threw a dart and hit, not exactly, but close enough. It happens.”
    “Taken by itself, I could buy that,” Tolvern said. “Added to the other strange details, it starts to paint an incredulous picture.” She ticked off the most important points. “You are on the far end of known space, about thirty systems from the nearest New Dutch settlement. You claim to be escorting human refugees, but there were none to be found. You claim they were destroyed, but your ship somehow escaped.”
    “You’ve seen my ship,” Djikstra said. “You don’t think I cut it up like that myself, do you? Run your scans if you haven’t already. Pretty obvious the buzzards knocked it around.”
    “And one survivor? One? You were traveling with how many ships, how many crew? When has that ever happened in the history of either naval or interstellar travel? One man survives, everyone else dies?”
    “There were others alive when you brought us in,” he said “It’s not my fault you couldn’t save them. And anyway, I’m sure it’s happened before.”
    “You claim to have given us Singaporean communication protocols,” Tolvern continued, “yet I’ve sent out a distress call and nobody has answered.”
    “What do you expect me to do about that?” Djikstra said. “Go out in a scout ship and track them down, force them to answer?”
    Capp spoke up near the door. “You could stop lying, how’s that for a start?”
    “Look, if you don’t believe me, fine. Let me send a subspace to some friends, put me down on the nearest rock with supplies, and I’ll wait to be picked up.”
    “Right, send out a subspace to your mates,” Capp said. “Bunch of pirates would come after us, is that your plan?”
    “That’s ridiculous,” Djikstra said. “You think this is some elaborate trap?”
    “Nobody is going to come looking for you out here,” Tolvern said. “Except maybe Apex when they intercept your subspace. And then they’ll eat you. Which you’re well aware of.”
    “All the more reason your insinuations are ridiculous. What possible motive would I have for lying?”
    There was little fire in his words, and Tolvern noted that the whole conversation had gone like that. The two officers were laying out their suspicions—Tolvern by pointing out discrepancies, and Capp more bluntly accusing the man of piracy—but while Djikstra was professing his innocence, he didn’t seem outraged, as he should be. If his story was true, he’d witnessed the horror of thousands of refugees being captured or killed by Apex, of his entire crew dying around him, so where was his anger? He looked a little pale, and word had it that he hadn’t slept since they’d picked him up. Tolvern would have guessed he was suffering from the flu, but the sick bay had pronounced him in full health.
    “How many ships did you say were in the refugee fleet?” Tolvern asked.
    “Seventy-eight. Three war junks converted to stasis transports, twelve frigate-sized craft with armaments of some kind, several strikers—those are Singaporean short-range fighters—but modified with warp point engines. A couple of Hroom merchant sloops with guns. The rest were purely commercial freighters and the like. Oh, and my flagship. Crew of fifty-six before they destroyed the oxygen plant and the rest suffocated.”
    “That’s a big fleet to go down so