Smuggler, page 18
part #2 of Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Series
“The winds are too light, Jon,” Kaycie said so that only he could hear.
He’d had that thought himself. Too light and too variable — he could work the crew to exhaustion chasing those winds, but this was a bloody frigate and they were too close now. She might not be able to catch them up, but she could get close enough to turn, and the range of her broadsides was enough. While he couldn’t be certain which of Hanover’s frigates he now faced, Elizabeth’s copy of Jane’s Warships told him she most likely carried nine- and twelve-pounders — well, it would only take a bit of damage to Elizabeth’s sails and riggings before the frigate would be able to catch them up.
“You can’t run,” Allie said, staring down at the swiftly changing options of the plot herself. “This is their space — they’ll simply order you to heave-to and be entirely in the right to fire if you don’t.”
“We can make it to within sight of that convoy we sighted on the way here. It was bound for Hso-hsi, but won’t be far yet,” Dansby said, trying to gauge the path those ships might have taken, given these winds. “Hoist New London colors and they’ll have to break off, else risk word getting back to New London that they’re —”
“And then the New London Navy searches us?” Allie asked.
“Pan or fire, lad,” Blackbourne said. “Run, and it’s shot to shite by Hanover or hung by those yer bein’ loyal to.” He shrugged. “Were it up to Young Blackbourne, he’d stick with the one what gets him a full-purse and whole-skin.”
Dansby tapped his tabletop. “Detheridge, come in here please,” he said, then, once the bosun had arrived, “Take the Blackbournes somewhere safe for a time, will you?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Don’t be a fool, Dansby,” Allie said.
“Don’t be gettin’ Young Blackbourne killed, now, lad,” Blackbourne added. “He’s a lifetime o’ rogerin’ t’be about yet —”
“Out, while I think!”
“Aye, sir.” Detheridge ushered the twins through the hatchway and slid it closed, but not before they’d each had a bit more to say.
“Just take the bloody coin, damn you!” Allie shouted.
“Think o’ all them ladies ain’t yet met the Bald Bishop, lad!”
Dansby sat and stared at the navigation plot on his table for a time after the Blackbournes were taken out.
Kaycie remained, staring at him.
“We can’t outrun her, Jon,” she finally said.
Dansby nodded.
“Certainly can’t outfight her.”
Dansby nodded again.
“Cargoes like this —”
“Yes. Yes, I know —” Dansby took a deep breath. “It’s a cometary sort of thing.”
“What?”
Dansby chuckled. “There are some jobs in this business I can feel good about — few and far between those I don’t, really.” His eyes hardened. “And then there are some I’ll just not do. ‘Mining charges’ to some man who plans to use them on his neighbors? No. Drugs like addle, with no purpose but to make a man into a slave? No. Gallenium to bloody Hanover?” He looked up and met Kaycie’s eyes. “My family lost more than one ship to them — enroute through the Barbary, usually, when some fools decide it’s time for war again. Transit tolls paid in full and no warning at all, but ships are taken, cargoes confiscated, and the crews ransomed back — after treatment I’d not put those two Blackbournes through, mind you.” He looked away and took a deep breath. “Some ships never heard from again, and not always pirates, to credit the rumors.”
Kaycie nodded. “My own family’s ships as well.”
“My father sometimes wondered if the times of peace were merely Hanover’s way of filling up the Barbary with traffic again, so they might have better pickings once the shooting resumed.”
“So, what now, though?” Kaycie asked. “Get out of this one with our skins and have the good sense not to involve ourselves with these cargoes in future?”
“I suppose,” Dansby said, thinking hard still. He pondered what he knew of the Blackbournes and what they’d told him of how these transfers were made in the past. Though they’d held back the methods of contacting their buyer to arrange these meetings, and neglected to tell him the buyer’s true nature, he did believe they’d related the transfer process well enough, not wanting Dansby or his crew to throw a wrench into the works if surprised when the time came.
Dansby smiled.
“That smile worries me, Jon,” Kaycie said.
Dansby took a deep breath and let it out, feeling as though a great weight had lifted from his shoulders. “Am I smiling?”
“Worse than smiling,” Kaycie said. “Now you’ve got a look about you.”
“A look, is it? What sort?”
“The sort that always boded ill for a teacher, Jon, but we’re not at —”
Dansby rose, wanting to get started. They had little time, after all, before meeting with the Blackbournes’ Hanoverese contact.
“Jon?”
“Don’t worry, Kaycie, I’ll have it all worked out,” Dansby said. He rose and went to the hatchway.
“You’re worrying me, Jon!”
“Tut, not a thing to fret over, you’ll see.” He slid the hatch open. “Would you help Detheridge in keeping the Blackbournes settled? I’ll see to loading a cart with the crate of gallenium — we’ll make the sale, take our profits, and be shut of this mess, never to return.”
“So, no tricks?”
Dansby shook his head. “Deep in Hanover space with their navy staring right at us? Disappoint the captain of a bloody frigate? I’d have to be mad to do anything but.” He sighed. “Give them their crate of gallenium, take the coin, and be off.”
“All right, then,” Kaycie said, though she eyed him warily. “It’s only that you had a look.”
Dansby laughed. “Well, there are any number of mad plans flash through my head on a given day, Kaycie — I don’t act on all of them.”
“Thank the Dark,” Kaycie said. She regarded him a moment longer, then went off.
Dansby grasped a passing spacer by the arm. “My compliments to the bosun, and she’s to have two … no, three work parties assemble in the hold near the carpenter’s shop. Lively, but without alerting the Blackbournes.”
“Aye, sir.”
Dansby grinned, feeling good about his plan. “And pass the word for Presgraves, will you?”
Thirty
A naval frigate, Dansby thought, was an intimidating thing to have alongside, no matter the navy involved.
Though the Hanoverese ship, Kronprinz, was only a few meters more in beam than Elizabeth, it seemed as though a massive wall were approaching as she hove-to beside and let the winds drive her gently toward Elizabeth.
She’d taken the wind gage from Elizabeth, continuing a bit to windward after Dansby’d hove-to, and they were now in her shadow, with barely any bit of Elizabeth not blocked from the winds by Kronprinz.
It wasn’t so much the bulk, as the sheer number of gunports, regardless of them being closed, that pierced the other ship’s side in two rows from bow to stern.
Longer than Elizabeth, as well, Kronprinz’s fore- and aft-most guns would have to be levered in to point at the smaller ship at this distance, but they’d still strike, no matter the general New London opinion of Hanover’s guncrews.
And even the most Hanoverese of gun crews couldn’t miss at this distance.
“I’m glad you came to your senses,” Allie said.
Dansby grunted.
They were all on the quarterdeck, though it was nearly time to make their way down to the docking hatch for the exchange. A bit of dampness formed at the small of Dansby’s back, despite the cooler facade he maintained for the Blackbournes. He cut a glance to the tactical console where Presgraves sat beside Smithey, a look of ecstatic expectation on her face.
“Let’s move down to greet our guests, shall we?” Dansby asked. It were best, he thought, to separate the Blackbournes and Presgraves, as he didn’t want the former to become suspicious. Without waiting for agreement, he stepped away from the navigation plot and opened the quarterdeck hatch. The others followed.
“It will all be over in moments,” Allie assured him, “and we can be on our way.”
She was walking beside him, and Dansby wondered if she were, somehow, already suspicious of him, as she seemed to be taking great efforts to reassure him — though perhaps that was only because she feared he might do something at the last minute.
“Not like Young Blackbourne’s crankin’ commando,” Blackbourne whispered behind him where he walked next to Kaycie, “which’ll ever be measured in far more than moments.”
“Do you never stop?” Kaycie asked.
“Never, lass, that’s the magic of it,” Blackbourne said. “Just keeps goin’ and goin’ and —”
Kaycie sighed and moved to Dansby’s other side, putting him between her and Blackbourne.
Kronprinz had doused the last of her sails as they arrived at the docking hatch, leaving the winds to play only on her hull and masts, which left her relatively still. A flexible tube slowly extended from the frigate’s side toward Elizabeth, and four of Dansby’s spacers waited until it was within reach before grasping it and making it fast to Elizabeth’s hull around the hatch. Within a few more minutes, the tube filled with air.
“We’re to open our hatches first,” Allie reminded Dansby.
“Of course,” he said.
Whichever ship opened her lock’s hatches to the flimsy docking tube first became the more vulnerable, allowing for the risk of decompression if the tube were compromised. The hatches themselves would close quickly at that, but there was risk.
Allie stepped forward to stand beside the antigrav pallet with its crate of their combined gallenium. “Sooner done, soonest away,” she said.
“And soonest parted,” Kaycie muttered.
The plan was to make the exchange, make sail, then split the coin and send the Blackbournes off in their pinnace to make their own way out of the Barbary — or wherever they might be bound next.
“Open the hatches,” Dansby ordered.
The airlock hatches opened, letting in the scent of the docking tube’s air, and, no matter that Kronprinz likely used the same sorts of scrubbers and filters for her air as Elizabeth did, Dansby felt certain he could smell the difference.
A few moments passed, certainly only seconds, but they felt far longer to Dansby, and the frigate’s hatches opened.
Four spacers, these in vacsuits, entered the docking tube, sliding easily from Kronprinz’s gravity to the zero-g of the tube and setting their feet on the deck again in Elizabeth’s. The sight of the vacsuits, and that the arriving Hanoverese were armed, gave Dansby pause, despite the Blackbournes having told him this was how things were done.
Elizabeth’s own waiting spacers, and Dansby himself, were unarmed and not in vacsuits, putting them at a distinct disadvantage if trouble were to start.
The four Hanoverese took up positions, two just inside Elizabeth’s inner hatch and the remaining two in the airlock itself, then a man without a vacsuit entered the tube from the Hanoverese side. He wore a Hanoverese naval uniform, including the oddly folded black cap of their command staff, and set his feet lightly on the deck within Elizabeth’s lock.
He stepped out of the lock and looked around at those waiting before fixing his gaze on Allie.
“Fräulein Blackbourne,” he said.
“Kapitän Böhm,” she answered.
His eyes never left her, but seemed to take in Elizabeth and her crew. “This is different,” he said.
Allie nodded. “Circumstances,” she said.
“So,” Böhm said.
“This is Captain Dansby,” Allie said, “an … associate of ours. He, also, had a cargo of what we bring you and I thought it appropriate to make an introduction. He might, if it’s acceptable to your superiors, have cargoes for you in the future.”
This was the story they’d agreed on, though Dansby hoped never to set eyes on a Hanoverese warship again.
Böhm nodded. “Kapitän.”
“Captain,” Dansby acknowledged.
Another officer, Dansby assumed a Hanoverese lieutenant, and two more spacers arrived, these not in vacsuits or armed.
“The listed mass is correct?” Böhm asked.
Allie nodded. “As always, Kapitän Böhm.”
Behind Dansby, Presgraves snickered. Dansby turned around and she straightened, face going still.
“Something?” Böhm asked.
The lieutenant and his work crew went to the antigrav cart and checked its controls, which told them the mass it was offsetting from its load. The lieutenant tapped at his tablet, then nodded to the spacers, who got behind the cart to shove it toward the hatch and docking tube.
“My crew’s nervous, sir,” Dansby said to Böhm. “Our first time and all.”
Böhm nodded. “Understandable.” His face moved in what Dansby thought could charitably be called a smile. “Soon it will be only business, hein?”
“Yes, Captain Böhm,” Dansby said.
Presgraves covered her mouth.
“Sween?” Dansby said. “Would you? The rest of you, as well, I think. Captain Böhm and his crew have work other than to stand about being gawked at.”
“Aye, sir.”
Sween wrapped an arm around Presgraves’ shoulder and led her off with the rest, while she muttered, “It’s only his name, see, and that we’ve —”
Dansby glanced from his crew, to the antigrav cart being edged from the docking tube to the other ship’s lock, then to the Hanoverese captain.
“I’m sorry for that, Captain Böhm,” Dansby said. “It’s their first time meeting up with a Hanoverese ship, you see —” He smiled in a hopefully disarming way. “One that’s not shooting at them first, in any case.”
Böhm smiled back — sort of.
“It is of no concern. These meetings —” He waved a hand. “— they carry more … mystique than they should, hein? For us, it should be just business.”
“Yes, of course,” Dansby said. “Perfectly ordinary when you get right to it.”
At the far lock, another antigrav cart appeared, this with two crates on it, and, Dansby was relieved to note, of Hanoverese manufacture. The Blackbournes had told him this was how it worked, neither they nor the Hanoverese wishing to hang about each other in darkspace longer than needed, despite Böhm’s assertions that there was no mystique to it. It was quicker and easier with such loads, to simply exchange carts than to move the nearly half-ton crates from one to another.
“Your payment,” Böhm said as his spacers pushed the new cart and its load into place.
Neither of the Blackbournes made a move to open the crates and Dansby followed suit.
“Danke, Kapitän Böhm,” Allie said.
Böhm nodded his head to her, then to Dansby. “Until next time, Fräulein Blackbourne, Kapitän Dansby.”
“Yes, thank you, captain,” Dansby said, but the Hanoverese captain had already turned his back and entered the lock. His spacers and lieutenant followed, flowing down the tube to their own ship, which then shut its hatch.
“Close our hatches, Detheridge,” Dansby said, “and release their tube.”
“Aye, sir.”
The order given, the spacers on Elizabeth’s hull released Kronprinz’s docking tube, which was immediately pulled back toward the other ship.
“Is that it?” Dansby asked the Blackbournes.
Allie nodded.
“They’re not ones for hospitality, the Hanoverese,” Blackbourne said. “Least not their navy — now a lass in port, she’ll show a proper homage to Young Blackbourne’s —”
“Port watch to the sails, Detheridge,” Dansby said, cutting Blackbourne off. “Starboard to the guns, but for Dark’s sake, keep the gunports closed.”
“Aye, sir.”
He made for the quarterdeck, Kaycie and the Blackbournes close behind. “Let loose the jib topsail, that will get some way on her.”
“Aye, sir,” Detheridge said.
Being downwind of the other ship meant Elizabeth would have to be the first to move. If Kronprinz showed a scrap of sail, and Dansby had no doubt she would soon, as the Blackbournes had been clear that Böhm would be giving his crew orders even as Dansby was, the larger ship would be driven down on them in an instant.
The little bit of a jib sail, stretched from Elizabeth’s tallest mast to her bowsprit, would catch just a tiny bit of wind from behind the other ship, but it should be enough to turn her head about and get some way on.
The crew was rushing to and fro in the companionway, half heading for the hull to work that sail and those to come, while the other half made their way to the guns — not that Dansby planned a fight, he just wanted to be ready.
“There’s really no need to man the guns,” Allie said. “All went as it should and we’ve simply to sail away.”
“A precaution,” Dansby said, then, “Up ladder!”
The steep stairs in the companionway cleared of spacers in an instant and he climbed rapidly to the quarterdeck’s level.
“We’ve dealt with Böhm for years,” Allie said. “It’s a profitable business for both sides, and no one wishes —” She broke off as she reached the top of the ladder herself, stopping and blocking the way for her brother below and those crewmen making their way down. “You’ve done something, haven’t you.”
Dansby rushed into the quarterdeck.
“What have you done?” Allie demanded, close behind.
Thirty-One
“Let loose the jib and ready the jib staysail,” Dansby ordered, examining the plot. What wind Elizabeth could catch had them turning from Kronprinz and falling away. In a few moments, they’d be stern-on to the other ship — not the most comforting position in the face of those guns, but clear of her shadow and better able to maneuver. “Up twenty on the planes.”
“Aye, sir,” Grubbs acknowledged from the signals console.
“What makes you think I’ve done anything?” Dansby asked, giving the Blackbournes a bit of attention at last.
