Blackbeard Superbox, page 76
“This mission exceeds my ability to organize,” he said at last. “I have no training in your tactics, and the wicked practice of human deception is beyond my understanding.”
“Then it’s a good thing you have me to plan the attack.”
“You would do this?”
“With two conditions. First, I give the orders. If I say pull back, you will pull back, even if victory is at hand. If I say attack, you will attack, even when it seems suicidal. It will not always be what it seems—it might be tricks and stratagems—and I can’t be stopping in the middle of battle to knock sense into your thick skull. Are we agreed? You can do this?”
Pez Rykan tossed his head in the Hroom manner that indicated assent. “Yes. For this one battle, I will accept that as a requirement of securing your aid. Your word is a command to be obeyed without question. As if from the gods. As if Lyam Kar himself stood on the battlefield. What is the second condition?”
“About your god of death.” Tolvern glanced at the temple platform. The groans and struggles had stopped, and the priests were descending from their killing place, drenched in gore. “There will be no more torture and murder. It ends now.”
“You want me to kill them first, then dismember?”
“No. You will stop killing your captives entirely. Let them go, lock them up—I don’t care which. But no more killing of those who have surrendered. That’s murder, and I won’t be a part of it.”
“Our religious code requires a sacrifice to our god.”
“And my code demands that I stop you from doing it.”
“It is too late,” he said. “We have cast our lot with the dark god. If he withdraws his blessings, we will surely lose.”
Tolvern stood up. “Then it’s up to you. You can either throw your hopes to superstition and religion and keep fighting with sharpened sticks, or you can get your hands on those guns at the enemy base. You can’t have both. And you sure as hell won’t have my help anymore.”
He looked up at her as she stood with her hands on her hips. Her face was hard, and she stared back without blinking. He’d be wondering if she was bluffing. She wasn’t. Let him balk again and she’d walk, so help her.
At last, another toss of the head. “Very well, Jess Tolvern. There will be no more killing and sacrificing of prisoners.”
Chapter Twenty
The second time into the star’s fiery embrace was worse, somehow. This time, Drake was bracing for the heat, and he was already exhausted. They chilled Blackbeard as much as possible before descending toward the sun, but the air, the floor, even the water coming out of the taps was soon scalding.
Dreadnought followed them down. She gained as Blackbeard was forced to slow dramatically, and nearly had the smaller ship in range of her guns before they fell into pace at nearly the same speed. They circled twice around the vast diameter of the sun, baking. He needed Dreadnought to pull away, then he’d make a run for it.
“It isn’t working,” Capp said. She’d stripped to a sweat-soaked tank top and had a collection of empty and partially consumed jugs of water at her feet. “We can’t shake them.”
“One more pass,” he said. “Dreadnought will be forced to retreat. She can’t take the heat.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Smythe said, “we’re not doing so well ourselves. One more pass, and we’ll be cooked alive.”
“We only need a few hours more than Malthorne,” Drake said.
“It’s almost one hundred and ten degrees in here!” Smythe exclaimed.
Drake fixed him with a hard stare. “I am well aware of that, lieutenant.”
“Sorry, sir.” He dropped his gaze to his console.
Yet Smythe was right. They couldn’t stand this much longer. And Dreadnought? Was Malthorne weak and feverish, yet stubbornly refusing to call off the attack? He was an older man, in his fifties, but rigid and unyielding, like a piece of rope hardened with frozen salt water. No, Drake couldn’t count on the man’s physical limitations to win this particular struggle. His battle was with the battleship itself, her physical limitations.
“Slow us down another five percent,” he told Oglethorpe.
“That will bring us in range of them guns,” Capp said. She looked at Manx, who was at the defense grid. “Right, Manx?”
“And you,” Drake told her. “Bring us in closer. I want us on the edge of the transition zone. I’ll warn engineering. We’ll need to catch that extra radiation. We’ll need Dreadnought to catch it, too.”
There were more worried noises from the bridge at this, and engineering didn’t like it, either. They were in a relatively cool band just below the chromosphere, and Drake meant to take them into hotter space. Let them figure it out. Drake was tired of explaining, and simply tired. His own collection of water jugs was nearly emptied, yet after drinking and drinking, he still didn’t need to urinate. It was all coming out his pores. Probably, they were all getting dangerously dehydrated and suffering heat exhaustion.
As expected, Dreadnought began to pull in closer as Blackbeard slowed and descended closer to the star. Jane, her voice the calmest on board, warned that they’d fallen within range of the enemy guns, and that Dreadnought’s silos were opening. Two missiles flashed out. With plenty of advance warning, Blackbeard brought them down with countermeasures. Dreadnought drew closer still.
This time, she let loose with a heavy barrage. Missiles, followed by torpedoes. Countermeasures brought down the missiles. The torpedoes locked in and closed. Three of them, all targeting the rear shields protecting the engines. One they could take. Maybe two, accepting heavy damage. The third would finish them off.
“Give them a flash,” he told Smythe.
“They’re Hunter-IIs, sir,” he said. “Hardened against that tactic.”
“Do it. Capp, prepare evasive maneuvers.”
The crew braced themselves as the torpedoes closed. When they were a few hundred miles out, Smythe pulled the trigger. A pulse of radiation burst toward the enemy weapons. At the same moment, Capp shimmied Blackbeard like a fish squirming from the jaws of a shark. The torpedoes soared harmlessly by and were soon caught in the star’s gravity well and dragged down to a fiery death.
“What’s that, then?” Capp asked. “How did we—?”
“Smythe, explain,” Drake said.
“Oh, of course,” the tech officer said. “They were already taking a beating from the energy coming off that star. A bit of extra radiation overwhelmed the shielding. How did you know that would happen, sir?”
“Catarina Vargus taught me that one,” he admitted. “I told her the Hunter-IIs couldn’t be defeated by flash-style countermeasures like the old Mark-style torpedoes. She informed me otherwise.”
He hadn’t been entirely sure it would work. The Vargus sisters were not opposed to a little boasting. After surviving several scrapes with the Royal Navy, they were entitled. Still, what was fact, and what was bluster?
Dreadnought didn’t waste more ammunition, but kept closing. Any closer, and the cannons would come into play. That was an attack for which Drake had no ideas. Simple kinetic force would pound them into submission. He told Capp to accelerate again. They were swinging around the star again and still no sign that the enemy was giving up the chase.
Good lord, it was hot. “Jane, what’s the temp?”
“One hundred twelve point two.”
“Don’t sound so cheerful about it,” he grumbled. “How are the crew holding up?”
It was a rhetorical question, and pretty vague for Jane, but the computer had an answer, nonetheless. “Two crew in the gunnery have fainted from heat exhaustion. Medical reports indicate severe heat stress.”
Capp frowned. “We got to get out of here. Tell him, Lieutenant,” she said to Oglethorpe.
“We do, and we’re all dead,” Drake said.
So what? He’d push them until they all fell, one by one. How would that help? Could he have been wrong about Dreadnought? How did she keep up the pursuit, hour after hour?
“There she goes!” Smythe shouted.
The tech officer threw the enemy ship onto the viewscreen. Dreadnought was pulling out of the chase, running for cooler air.
“Capp, get us around that other hemisphere and then take us for the Fantalus jump,” Drake said.
“Fantalus, sir?” Oglethorpe said.
“Look at Dreadnought. Malthorne can block our way to Hot Barsa. We can’t go back directly. We’ll have to go around.”
“That will cost us valuable time,” the lieutenant said. “If Malthorne turns toward Hot Barsa, he’ll arrive before us.”
“That is unavoidable,” Drake admitted.
Still, they were alive. He imagined Malthorne cursing and raging as his adjutants mopped at his brow with damp cloths. The admiral would want to continue the pursuit. At the same time, there was no longer any hope of catching Blackbeard before it jumped out of the system. Meanwhile, his sugar plantations on Hot Barsa were in flames, and Rutherford had shut down all shipping to and from the planet.
In the end, Malthorne did as he must. He turned his battleship toward the jump point to the Barsa system, and let Blackbeard escape.
Drake had achieved some important objectives, even while conceding the battlefield to the enemy. The admiral would reach Hot Barsa, but without Lindsell, who was off chasing Drake’s support craft toward San Pablo.
Once in the Barsa system, Dreadnought was nearly invulnerable from ambush and could roam around as Malthorne wished. But the admiral wouldn’t attack Rutherford and the forts without the full weight of his fleet. That bought Drake valuable time.
Drake didn’t say this aloud. The others would figure it out soon enough.
“As I commanded,” he told them. Then he picked up the last full water jug at his feet, drained it dry, and waited for the air to cool.
#
A large fleet was crossing the Fantalus system when Blackbeard arrived. More than seventy vessels strong, it held merchant frigates, converted liners, lumbering barges, and all manner of mining and salvage craft. They were mostly New Dutch, but also Ladino and even Hroom, and appeared to be a refugee fleet from Jericho, now under attack by Apex.
Drake ordered Capp to continue toward the next jump point, even as he performed full scans of the refugees. Let’s see what they were carrying. Some of them might be roped into assisting his fight against Malthorne. He’d offer refuge on Saxony in return.
But there was something strange about the refugee ships. The entire flotilla was completely silent, flying along at cruising speed toward the inner worlds of the system. No engines; it was traveling only on momentum. The reality soon became apparent.
It was a ghost fleet.
Scans of the largest vessels showed that their hulls had been pierced in multiple locations. Someone had come in, cut holes in each of the ships to vent out the atmosphere, and left them to continue. Dead. No survivors that they could detect. And at their current trajectory, they would eventually pass out of the system to drift forever through the endless void.
“Wait, here’s a live ship,” Smythe said. “Look.”
There it was. A long, slender, needle-like craft like the one Drake and Rutherford fought. It dipped in and out of the ghost fleet.
“Looking for some tasty bits, I should imagine,” Capp said. “They eat their victims, right? Bloody apex predators.”
Apex, maybe. Predator, not so much. This wasn’t predator behavior. Predators culled the weak, consuming their prey. This was an entire herd of refugees cut down and slaughtered. Perhaps by this single craft. It seemed to be sport, as much as anything, whether the aliens ate some of their victims or not.
“We’re cloaked, sir,” Oglethorpe said, sounding nervous. “Best be making for the next jump point, don’t you think, before they detect us?”
Drake was inclined to mix it up with the aliens. Destroy or drive off this ship, and it might convince Apex that Albion was not an enemy to be trifled with. Could he scare them away long enough to end the Albion civil war and unite the nation against this new threat? Or might he instead draw Apex ships by the hundreds? Who knew?
But here he faced a single ship, and after his other battle with the aliens, he’d mounted his own hundred-kilowatt laser to fight them. His shields, normally stubbornly resistant against any sort of non-kinetic weaponry, were vulnerable to the aliens in turn, but were they helpless? He didn’t think so. With superior tactics . . .
He shook his head. No. This was not the time. If he didn’t defeat Malthorne first, Apex would rip Albion and her people to shreds.
And so he kept a wary eye on the ghost fleet and its killer as he continued toward the next jump point. They approached it warily, half expecting an ambush either here or on the other side. But when they came through, the space lanes were clear.
Six days later, they jumped into the Barsa system. There they found HMS Dreadnought lurking in wait.
Chapter Twenty-one
It was the last night before the assault on the military base, and Tolvern had made her bed in a hammock forty feet above the ground. They were in a transition zone of mixed Hroom and Terran vegetation between the lowlands and highlands, but the forest floor was still infested with pouncers. The army took to the trees.
The Hroom were masters at manufacturing shelter out of what the forest gave them, and they bivouacked on beds made from cut branches and fronds and strung up with vines. Tolvern’s own hammock stretched between the branches of two separate trees. Carvalho’s bed hung to her right, while Brockett and Nyb Pim lay some twenty feet below them. As the sky darkened into a black, starless night, she heard the science officer and the pilot below, discussing what kind of equipment would be needed to manufacture more doses of the sugar antidote.
But soon, a breeze swept down from the mountains, driving away both the heat and the bugs, as well as drowning out their conversation. After weeks in the sweltering lowlands, Tolvern found the cool air a relief beyond words, but it sent her hammock swaying back and forth with every gust.
“Tolvern,” Carvalho said about twenty minutes later. “Are you asleep?”
“How could I be with this wind?”
“Do you still have that vine rope we used to cross the stream?”
“It’s my pillow,” she said.
“Toss the end over here. I have an idea.”
Tolvern didn’t know what he was getting at, but she threw over the end of the vine. He took hold of it and used the vine to lash the two hammocks together.
“Now take the other end and tie it down by your feet,” he told her. “There, isn’t that better?”
It was, she had to admit. Pulling the two hammocks together and tying them off had stabilized them against the wind. It turned the rough rocking into a gentle sway.
“I told you we’d be sharing a bed sooner or later,” he said.
“You’d better not snore.”
“Didn’t Capp tell you? I rumble like a warthog. Why do you think she kicks me out of her bed every night before she goes to sleep?”
“If it gets too bad, I’ll do the same.”
“We’re forty feet up,” he said. “That will hurt.”
“I know.”
“What’s wrong with a sharp elbow to the ribs? That will shut me up.”
“So will pouncers and tigers.”
“I can’t tell if you’re playing,” he said, “or if you still dislike me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You understand me perfectly well,” Carvalho said. “Sometimes, I see you watching, and I think you want to tear off my clothes. Other times, you say these things, and I can never tell if you are serious or not.”
“Why not both? Maybe I want to tear your clothes off first and then push you to the ground anyway.”
Tolvern meant it as a jest, but suddenly, the hammocks heaved, and Carvalho was over on her side. Right up next to her, a solid block of muscle against her lean frame.
“What the blazes are you doing?” she demanded.
“Do you want me to go back?”
“The devil take you, of course I do. Get out of here.”
“My apologies, then. I misunderstood.”
“Go on, get,” she said, pushing at him as he rolled over and climbed back to his side.
Her hands touched the bare flesh on his back and buttocks. “You’re naked!”
“It was hot. And it’s dark. Don’t you ever sleep in the nude, Tolvern?”
“But you came over to my side and you weren’t wearing any clothes at all. I can’t believe you did that. What gives you the right?”
“Again, my apologies. I will not do it again.”
Carvalho managed to say this without sounding sullen, and then fell silent. Tolvern regretted her harsh words. She’d been flirting with him more and more over the past several days and yes, she had been watching him when he stripped to wash off the sweat and grime. Sometimes, she’d even kept looking as he glanced at her and noted her gaze. No wonder he’d gotten the wrong idea.
Her fingers were practically tingling from where they’d touched his body. She imagined if she’d kept one hand on his butt and let the other touch his shoulders, his arm, his chest. If she pushed herself up against him . . .
“It’s all right,” she said a few minutes later. “I guess I see how it must have seemed.”
He didn’t answer. Asleep, then. That made her feel bold.
“Maybe I pushed you away too fast,” she added in a lower voice. “It alarmed me, is all.”
He stirred. Not asleep.
“I meant what I said,” he told her. “You understand my intentions. If you ever change your mind—and I’m not busy with Capp, of course. She is not jealous, but she must be fed first, if you understand my meaning. You know what to do should that happen.”
Did she? Could she possibly do what he was suggesting? Well, yes. What about the time she’d tried to climb in naked with Captain Drake in the shower? If not for Catarina Vargus getting there first, she’d have done it, too.
In a moment, on pure impulse, Tolvern grabbed for Carvalho’s side and swung herself over. She moved so quickly that she upset the two hammocks, and they nearly upended with a violent heave.
