And if not, they’d disappear into the void as a stream of subatomic particles, never to be seen again. Theoretically, they might pop up on the other side of the universe, but most likely, they’d simply be dead.

  But that didn’t happen, and a few days later they found themselves recovering from a jump, with the Hroom sloops already pulling back into formation. The Singaporeans called this the Kunlun System, after a volcano on the home world. The exit jump point was close to a red dwarf, and things would get warm. Tolvern figured the risk of ambush was greater than the risk of giving away their position, and had Smythe blast the system with active sensors during the first day of travel to make sure that they wouldn’t stumble into a flock of lances. The system appeared empty, desolate, even.

  From Kunlun, they jumped into the Getzus System without incident. This system was inhabited, and the resident Hroom immediately spotted them. Three sloops of war pulled out of orbit from around one of the inner worlds, and were joined by a collection of smaller craft coming out to challenge Blackbeard and the general’s sloops.

  General Mose Dryz called over. “They are cultists.”

  “You mean the God of Death?”

  “Yes, Captain Tolvern. They worship and adore Lyam Kar, and have sworn to fight all humans and any Hroom who would fight by their side.”

  “King’s balls,” Capp grumbled. “You’d think them cultists would’ve lost their religion when we smashed up their death fleet.”

  “It’s religion, Capp,” Tolvern said. “You wouldn’t expect people to change their beliefs based on the results of one battle, would you?”

  “Don’t see why not. That god of theirs didn’t help them none, did he?”

  The general hummed deep in his throat. “Do not doubt the existence of our god, Lieutenant Capp. He certainly exists.”

  Capp looked ready to say something else, but Tolvern glared her into silence.

  “We certainly have the firepower to defeat these cultists,” Mose Dryz continued, “but I would rather have those sloops in my fleet than as my enemies.”

  “And how do you propose to persuade them if they’ve sworn to kill us all?” Tolvern asked.

  “They might not have identified your ship as of yet. What if you were to veer off and let me speak to them alone? You could wait for me at the jump point.”

  “Hmm. How long?”

  The general turned and spoke in his hooting language to someone offscreen. “My pilot says we will only lose ten hours if we go meet these cultists.”

  But Nyb Pim had apparently run his own calculations on the nav computer and spoke to Tolvern through her com link. “My estimate is thirteen hours of waiting for the general at the jump point, plus whatever time he spends negotiating.”

  “Hold on one moment, General.” She cut audio to address her pilot. “Can we delay and still catch the fugitives before they reach Samborondón?”

  “I am running calculations now.” A minute later Nyb Pim came back with the answer. “I estimate even odds. If we don’t, we’ll arrive shortly thereafter.”

  Tolvern made her decision and connected with the general. “Go ahead. Recruit them if you can, but don’t mix it up if they balk.”

  “Mix it up?”

  “Don’t do any fighting. Negotiations, only.”

  Mose Dryz merely fixed her with a look, then cut the line. She hoped that was agreement.

  Blackbeard and the general’s sloops soon went their separate ways. Tolvern’s destination was a jump point in a similar orbit to that of the inhabited planet, but the planet and jump point were on opposite sides of the sun, which took Blackbeard far from the hostile sloops. It was close enough, however, for Mose Dryz to rendezvous when he was done negotiating with the cultists.

  Eighteen hours later, Tolvern came onto the bridge intending to give the order to decelerate as they approached the jump point, since they weren’t going through yet. The others were staring at a small ship on the viewscreen.

  “Is that our target?”

  Capp flashed a triumphant smile. “Aye, Cap’n. We caught them bastards.”

  “So soon. I didn’t expect it.”

  Nyb Pim hummed. “They must have poor charts. If they were forced to wander the system looking for the jump point, that would explain their delay in jumping to safety.”

  “And a two-man crew,” Tolvern said. “Sleep must be hard to come by. Are we going to catch them in time?”

  “They’re nine hours from the jump,” Smythe said from the tech console. “We’re thirteen hours out ourselves.”

  “So we can almost grab them before they make it through,” Tolvern said. “But not quite.”

  “It ain’t as bad as that,” Capp said. “The gunnery says we can fire in five hours. Shove a couple of missiles up their arse and they’ll never make the jump.”

  A couple of long-range missiles wouldn’t do much from this distance against a real enemy. Plenty of time for countermeasures, and a missile with that kind of range was almost all engine, with very little explosive power. But for such a tiny ship it was overkill.

  “Tempting,” Tolvern said, “but our orders are to take them prisoner, not kill them.”

  “So we follow them through?” Capp said. “Grab ’em on the other side?”

  “How is the general getting on?”

  “Still negotiating, apparently,” Smythe said. “The two sides have been standing off a pace from each other for six or seven hours now. Want me to send a subspace?”

  “Too risky,” she said. “Apex might be listening.”

  And now she had contradictory orders. Drake had told her to stick with the general until Samborondón. He’d also told her to capture Djikstra and Megat. She could wait for Mose Dryz at the rendezvous point and let the fugitives through, figuring she could catch them later, but by now her target probably knew she was chasing. The fugitives might break for a different jump point and escape, and then she’d never see them again.

  “Say we jump four hours after they do,” Tolvern said. “Forget the concussion, time to restart, and all of that. Once they’re through, and we’re through, how long until we make up that four-hour head start?”

  Nyb Pim returned an answer a moment later. It would take another ten hours of chase time on the other side of the jump point.

  “Ten hours out, ten hours back,” Tolvern said. “Add the thirteen hours it will take to reach the jump point in the first place.”

  “That will make us late to our rendezvous,” Smythe said.

  “But maybe not so late that the general would think we’d left him behind. Pilot, show the chart of whatever is on the other side of that jump.”

  Nyb Pim put it on the main viewscreen. It was another Hroom system, which added a complication. She’d rather have the general around to help pick her way through. But worse, there were several jump points, and two were close by. If she waited for the general to arrive before jumping, she’d never grab the fugitives in time. They’d vanish through one of the jump points, and it would be a coin toss which one.

  She called down to engineering and explained the situation to Barker. “Any chance we can disable their ship with a missile before they jump?”

  “A chance? Sure, and you can also wing a sparrow with a moose rifle,” Barker said. “It just takes a really, really lucky shot. Most likely, you’re on your hands and knees looking for scorched feathers.”

  “Thanks, that’s all I need to know. Stand down your missile crew, I won’t risk it.”

  Tolvern thought about it for a few minutes before making her decision. Once she’d decided though, she was certain it was the right call.

  “Keep engines at full,” she ordered. “We’re chasing them through the jump point.”

  #

  Tolvern woke up on the floor, having apparently unfastened her restraints after the jump. Probably trying to find the bathroom, she thought, her stomach heaving. Heroic effort kept it down. Her head felt like one of Barker’s people had taken up residence inside her skull, armed with a percussion hammer.

  It was her worst jump concussion in months, and as she staggered to her feet, she saw that she was not alone. Smythe and Lomelí slumped over their consoles, Capp sat with her head hanging back, and Nyb Pim whistled in pain. A young man named Grosbeck had come up from engineering to discuss another tweak to the plasma engines, and lay unconscious in one of the jump seats.

  Tolvern’s hands worked over the console, trying to manipulate the viewscreen to run a quick scan of the system. First thing to do was find out if there were more Hroom sloops in the neighborhood. But her fingers were fat and sluggish, and her eyes couldn’t focus well enough to see the touch screen.

  Lomelí lifted her head with a groan and started to work. Smythe followed, and one by one, the hard-hit men and women on the bridge came around. Capp was second to last to respond, awakening with a curse.

  “Blast it, how much did I drink last night?” she slurred. She leaned over and puked at her feet. When she looked up, she seemed to recognize where she was. “Sorry, Cap’n.”

  “Get to work, Lieutenant,” Tolvern said, still trying to get her fingers to cooperate. “Smythe, I need a scan. Pilot, find that ship and plot a course. Grosbeck, get your butt down to engineering where you belong.”

  They were all responding with varying degrees of alertness except for Nyb Pim. The pilot was still whistling, and now made a series of incoherent squeaks. The Hroom looked around him, but his eyes didn’t focus.

  Dammit, he’s got the trips.

  A more severe form of jump concussion, the trips could leave a man—or Hroom—with a permanently scrambled brain. Tolvern’s already-heaving stomach clenched with worry.

  “Grosbeck!” she said. “Scratch that. Take Nyb Pim to the sick bay. Quickly, now.”

  The man steadied himself and made his way to the pilot’s chair. Capp got up to help. When they reached him, his eyes swiveled back and forth, and he held up a long, bony hand.

  “No. I am recovering. Leave me be.”

  Tolvern breathed a sigh of relief. What a blow it would have been to lose him. Capp also had a nav chip, and in addition to being the first mate, could serve as subpilot in a pinch, a role she’d played under Drake. Capp was no slouch, but Tolvern needed her best pilot threading their way through these hostile and semi-hostile systems, and that was Nyb Pim.

  “Why did that hit us so hard?” Capp asked. “Smythe, anything funny about that jump?”

  He wasn’t answering, and Lomelí was at the defense grid computer instead of the tech console. But Smythe did seem to be working, albeit with his eyes scrunched nearly shut.

  “Smythe,” Capp said. “Wake up, you.”

  “I . . . I got the fugitives,” he said at last. Then he, too, turned and puked his guts on the floor.

  “Well, bring it up,” Tolvern said impatiently. “And someone call maintenance to clean up this mess.”

  The small frigate appeared on the screen. It was a classic smuggler ship, the kind run by Dutch or Ladino pilots carrying high value goods. Lots of engine and not much storage space. Small enough to evade long-range scans and agile enough to dart among asteroid fields and land in isolated craters when hiding from Royal Navy warships. Most likely the interior smelled like a candy shop; sugar was the preferred cargo for those willing to penetrate so deep into the Hroom Empire.

  “Does she come up in the database?” Tolvern asked.

  “Still looking,” Smythe said. “Got to um, to . . . ah.” He rubbed his temples. “To analyze the engine and do a detailed scan of the hull with active sensors.”

  They got the ship moving. Doc called a few minutes later. Fourteen crew in the sick bay with the trips. Hardest hit was engineering, where Barker himself went down. It was not what the captain wanted to hear.

  Smythe wasn’t able to answer Tolvern’s question about the database for some time. And when he finally recovered enough to do his job, another hour passed before they had enough data to make an identification.

  “Yep, we’ve found her,” Smythe said. “Sort of. The engine signature matches a tramp frigate named Morpho, a Ladino vessel out of Peruano.”

  “Peruano?” Tolvern said. “She’s a long way from home. What do you mean by ‘sort of’?”

  “Morpho was ninety-two feet long,” Smythe said. “This is only sixty-seven feet.”

  “Ships don’t generally shrink twenty-five feet.”

  “Morpho was last logged in the database seven years ago. One of our destroyers stopped her in the Fantalus System and fined the captain 235 pounds for carrying bad tax stamps.”

  “That’s a stiff fine,” Tolvern said. Three times the starting salary for an enlisted man in the Royal Navy, as a matter of fact. “Must have been a repeat offense. The next time he was caught he’d have faced imprisonment. He wasn’t named Djikstra, was he?”

  “No,” Smythe said. “Some Albionish fellow.”

  “In that case, he’s lucky he got off with a fine.”

  “What do you bet the bloke sold Morpho and started over with a new ship?” Capp said. “New name, new crew to keep him from getting hung the next time around.”

  “Or maybe Morpho fell to pirates,” Tolvern said, “or got shot up so badly that he sold it for scrap. Either way, same engine, different ship.” She considered. “The name Morpho is good enough for now. Capp, hail them and demand a surrender.”

  There was no answer to repeated attempts. Blackbeard kept after her, and within an hour or two their quarry would fall within range of the deck guns. At that point, it would be easy enough to knock her around a bit, harpoon her, and haul her in.

  “Captain,” Smythe said, his tone a warning. “We just completed our initial scan of the system. There’s trouble.”

  “We jumped through two hours ago,” Tolvern said sharply. “Why the devil are you just getting around to scanning?”

  “I-I don’t know. I forgot.”

  “Dammit, Smythe.”

  Tolvern was angry, but not with Smythe, with herself. It had been obvious that his mind had been firing with less than a full battery of cannon since the jump. Nobody had followed the list of protocols post-jump, starting with the captain herself, who should have straightened her crew out when they were obviously listing. That her head had been pounding and she’d nearly joined the pukers was beside the point.

  Smythe shared his data. Blackbeard and her quarry were in the Irlus System, which was also Hroom space. There was a habitable planet in the so-called Goldilocks Zone, a damp, sweltering world that resembled Hot Barsa in that only the highlands and polar regions could have taken human settlement. Plenty of Hroom, though, even if the largest cities had fallen into decay. All of these details were sketchy in the database, as the system was far from Albion space.

  A fleet orbited the planet of Irlus itself. At first glance, Tolvern thought she was looking at a massive force of Hroom, an assembled collection of sloops. There were roughly twenty smaller ships and a single large one.

  “You’d better not tell me this came from the active sensors,” she said.

  “No, Captain,” Smythe said. “We’re just listening, not shouting out. But they’re in orbit, so it was easy enough to find them.”

  Tolvern breathed a sigh of relief. That would have been a blunder, letting a potential enemy know they were in the system. All the same, she was itching to find out who they were looking at, to either confirm or deny her fears.

  “Keep quiet. And stay cloaked until we know what we’re looking at.”

  “This is close to where the general saw the buzzards, ain’t it?” Capp said. “Bet it’s a bloody harvester ship and some lances.”

  “If there is a harvester ship,” Nyb Pim said, “it means they are slaughtering thousands of people.”

  “I’ll wager you’re right,” Tolvern admitted. “The both of you. But this is not our fight. Not yet. We get Morpho, and we get the hell out of here.” She turned toward her tech officers. “Lomelí, get Barker—er, whoever is in charge down there—and figure out if we can still use our deck gun without dropping the cloaks.”

  Meanwhile, she hailed the fugitives again, this time offering an open channel. She had little hope of a response, but to her surprise, there was an answer. They were at the outer limits of short-range communication, and the image jerked back and forth on the screen, sometimes dissolving into blurry pixels before returning to focus.

  Djikstra and Megat appeared. The tall, thin Dutchman, with his hollow face, and the muscular, scowling Singaporean made a strange pair. Even through the terrible image, Tolvern could see that Djikstra looked ill. He was pale, and sweat trickled down his temples. Looked like he had a case of the trips, if not something more serious.

  “You’ve come a long way for one little ship,” Megat said.

  “I am curious,” Tolvern said. “Curious as to how you escaped, how you got your hands on a ship, but mostly, why you hatched this scheme. What were you hoping to accomplish?”

  “I was hoping not to be locked up in your detention block, obviously.”

  “We repatriated most of the mutineers, you know. I would have handed you over to Li with the rest of them. I bet he would have freed you, too.”

  “I have no desire to serve under that coward again.”

  “Whatever you’re doing, it makes no sense.”

  “Not to your tiny brain, I’m sure it doesn’t.”

  Tolvern tried the sick man. “Djikstra, what made you think an alliance with this idiot was a good idea? You’re lucky you’re not dead.”

  Djikstra’s mouth twitched. His face looked like plastic. “Yes, very lucky. Very lucky indeed.”

  A strange response. Bizarre, even. Tolvern wanted to question them harder, ask about the Apex lances, get an answer to what surely could not be true: were these two somehow working with the aliens? And if so, for God’s sake, why?

  But that was all secondary. First, she was going to bring these two in and scuttle their frigate before the fleet orbiting Irlus discovered their presence.

  “I can destroy you at any time,” Tolvern said. “You know this, don’t you?”

  “Can you?” Megat said. “What is stopping you, then?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149