Blackbeard superbox, p.13
Blackbeard Superbox, page 13
The enemy ship loomed in the viewscreen. A white skull lay atop two crossed sabers. It was the bloody Jolly Roger. Vargus. The cocky fool wasn’t hiding his piracy, he was reveling in it.
Captain Kidd got the first shot, raking Ajax’s exposed side. But she only had three cannon. Ajax had eight heavy cannon. Barker took his time before firing. Explosions lit up alongside the Captain Kidd from stern to bow, blooming red and orange.
The pirate ship fired again, then made to break free. Ajax launched another broadside. These projectiles hit the armored underbelly of the enemy ship, but as it spun away, bits of debris spiraled into space, broken out by explosive decompression of failing airlocks. They’d punched through the pirate ship’s armor.
The pirate ship tried to flee, but Drake brought Ajax in behind to give pursuit. He felt his bloodlust rising, like an ancient Viking warrior locked deep in his DNA, now breaking free, grinning savagely. Ready to deliver the killing blow.
No. That wasn’t his intent.
“Hail Captain Kidd,” he said, intending to demand a surrender.
“Enemy communication system offline,” Jane’s voice said.
“We must have knocked it out,” Tolvern said.
Drake called down to Barker. “The pirates can’t hear us. Fire a warning shot across her bow.” Then, to Tolvern. “We’ll force her to a halt and communicate via signal flares if she can’t come back online.”
After a few seconds, another missile streaked from Ajax’s bays. It overtook Captain Kidd and flashed over her bow. The missile then doubled back and raced once more toward the pirate ship. It exploded harmlessly in front of the ship’s bow. Drake smiled at Barker’s freelancing. The implication was obvious.
We can destroy you at any time.
But the enemy didn’t seem to get the message.
“They’re not slowing,” Tolvern said.
“I see that. Jane, give me status of enemy shields.”
“Estimating . . . starboard shield forty-three percent. Rear shield, ninety-two percent. Deck shield, ninety-eight percent. Port shield, 100 percent. Deck shield, one hundred percent. Confidence level of estimate . . . medium-high.”
Captain Kidd had weathered the encounter better than expected. The exchange of broadsides had ripped her up pretty good, but Drake was disappointed in the damage caused by that initial missile strike. He needed something kinetic.
“Barker,” he told the gunner. “Give me torpedo bays one and two. Now.”
Two torpedoes left Ajax. They moved sluggishly at first and only gradually pulled away from the cruiser as they closed the distance to the rear of the enemy ship. On the viewscreen, they presented a similar profile to the missiles but were heavier, made of depleted uranium, with an explosive first stage. At fifty miles, the noses of the torpedoes broke off, raced ahead, and detonated against the rear shields.
While the shields were dealing with this, the main mass of the torpedoes slammed into Captain Kidd, one after the other. There was a double flash. When the viewscreen came back, the pirate ship was flaring plasma, no longer accelerating.
“Jane. Enemy rear shields?” Drake demanded.
“Estimating . . . ” Jane waited. “Estimating . . . recalculating.”
She was having a hard time calculating through the secondary explosions rippling along the backside of the pirate ship. No time to wait. “Bring her along starboard. Present broadside."
Capp worked the controls, with Tolvern giving orders to the gunners and engineers. They tried to come along the weakened side of the enemy ship, but the pirates rolled expertly away to present their stronger shields. The enemy got off a shot with one of her cannon as she rolled around again, and Ajax shuddered from the fire. Warnings flashed on his console.
Jane finally came through. “Rear enemy shield at twelve percent.”
“Take her back,” Drake ordered. “Chase gun at the engines. We’ll disable her from behind.”
They rained metal on the enemy ship, trying to destroy what remained of the rear shields. Captain Kidd continued doggedly fighting back. They were clearly beaten; gasses were venting like streams of milky liquid into the vacuum. One of those torpedoes had penetrated the airlocks.
“Blast you, Vargus,” Drake said. “Why won’t you surrender?”
Smythe piped up from his computer. “Enemy engines are overheating. Seems to be purposeful. I think they’re readying a countermeasure.”
“Watch it,” Capp said. “It’s another trick.”
Yes, like the flash-bang. But Drake wasn’t going to sit still to find out what. Next time might be more lethal. He had the rear shields demolished; a couple of missiles up the tailpipe would vaporize the ship. But he still hoped to disable her.
“Torpedo three and four,” he called down to Barker.
Two more torpedoes blasted loose. They were so close that the initial detonations shuddered through the hull of Ajax as well. The uranium rods thrust deeply into Captain Kidd, their progress visible all along the hull, as flames jetted into space where they passed. One of them passed all the way through, hurtling out the front like a bullet going through a watermelon.
Drake ordered them to pull back, worried the whole ship would blow apart, fissionable materials and all. His own shields were damaged, and he didn’t want to be battered with Captain Kidd’s debris. But after a few seconds, the fires finished venting along the enemy ship. Her engines blinked and went out, and then she was flying dead through space. No return fire, no signs of life whatsoever.
A ragged cheer went up from the others on the bridge. Drake didn’t join them, already thinking of how best to salvage the situation.
Chapter Fourteen
An hour later, when Ajax had harpooned Captain Kidd and brought both ships to a halt somewhere in the deep empty space on the edge of the Fantalus system, a signal finally came through from the pirates. Captain Vargus appeared on the screen. He wore a bloody bandage over his forehead that also covered one eye. No sign of his daughter or any other crew; he kept his own view close, no doubt so that Drake couldn’t see the state of the bridge. The air was hazy, filled with smoke.
Drake leaned back casually in his chair. “You could have saved us both a lot of trouble.”
“Damn you, what do you want?”
“I told you, twenty thousand pounds.”
Vargus clenched his jaw. “I don’t have it.”
“I don’t believe you. You were coming from Barsa, right? It wasn’t on a mercy mission. No doubt smuggling or preying on merchants. I’ll bet you’re loaded with gold and trade goods.”
“Any profits I was carrying have now been vaporized. Half my ship is destroyed. Would have burned us all to a crisp if you hadn’t also punctured my hull so many places there wasn’t enough oxygen for fire.”
“We’ll see about that. I’m sure you won’t mind a boarding party.”
“Send them over. We’ll give you one hell of a welcome.”
“Yes, now that you mention it, I should probably knock a few more holes in you first. There might still be too much oxygen on board. Wouldn’t want another fire to break out. That is, if you intend to resist.”
Vargus’s face went pale. “You have to at least give me terms.”
“Terms are we won’t hang you as pirates. How does that sound? I’ll put you down on a neutral planet with some pocket change and your side arms because I’m not a cruel man.”
Drake cut the link.
“Is there going to be another boarding party?” Capp asked. She sounded eager. Tolvern looked concerned.
“Attacking a slaver is one thing. Brawling with pirates on their home turf is another thing entirely.”
“Half of them were probably killed,” Capp said.
“Which would make the survivors all the more desperate.”
“We could always pepper her with more shot,” Tolvern said. “Vent out some of the air, like you said. Suffocating pirates are docile pirates.”
“I’m not so keen on killing men and women in cold blood.”
“They’d do the same to us,” she said.
“All the more reason to act civilized.”
He was still turning this over when Barker came onto the comm link. “Captain, there’s something down here you should look at.”
“I’m coming.” Drake cut the link and turned back to Capp. “Write up the specifications of that jump point and send them to my computer.”
“Write them, sir?” Capp looked suddenly nervous.
“Yes, I want to read your analysis,” he said impatiently. “What speed do we need, what’s the best approach, and all that. We’re coming out next to that star, and I want some numbers.”
“Oh, if it’s just numbers, I can tell Tolvern and have her send ‘em.”
“If you’re too lazy for hard thinking,” Tolvern said, “maybe you should go down to the kitchen and see if they need a dishwasher.”
“It’s not that . . . ” Capp began. She cast her eyes about desperately.
“I want your analysis in ten minutes,” Drake said. “Can you do that or not?”
“Aye. I’ll do it, sir.”
#
Drake made his way to the engineering bay. The big, warehouse-like room could hold equipment for royal marines but had been mostly empty since the mutiny, except for locked weapons bins and mechanical suits for the boatswains, as well as other scattered equipment. Now there were battered metal crates and bits of scorched debris strewn across the floor. Barker and Carvalho were picking through it, with the latter using a computer to catalog what they found.
Barker looked younger, more energetic than he had in years, and he seemed to have lost several pounds around his waist. He still had the walrus mustache, and was now letting his beard grow out to meet it. He wore his new insignia on the shoulder of his orange mechanic suit, which made Drake smile. He’d expected Capp to be invigorated and hopefully more loyal from her promotion, but hadn’t expected any such transformation in the gruff old gunner. Barker had been at his current rank and position for years, and Drake had always assumed he was satisfied with it. Apparently not.
Barker looked up as Drake approached. “This is all stuff we found floating around Captain Kidd when we hauled her in. What’s left of her cargo and other debris. I thought we might find something valuable.”
“Is this the part where you tell me you found Captain Vargus’s treasure chest? And there just happens to be 20,000 pounds in gold and silver coin?”
“Afraid not.” Barker pulled his hand out of his pocket and hooked his thumb at Carvalho. “You think I’d let this pirate down here if I had?”
Carvalho flashed a toothy grin. Drake grunted.
“What I found was this.”
Barker opened one of the scorched chests. It was filled with sugar sacks. Some of the sugar was partially burned, even caramelized by the heat.
“Seems to be ninety percent of what they were carrying,” Barker said. “Just sugar. Wouldn’t think there’d be enough profit to attract pirates.”
Yes, it was quite strange. The York Company had a monopoly on the sugar trade, although that didn’t entirely prevent smuggling, of course. He thought about where Vargus had been heading. One of the neutral worlds on the frontier. Under the terms of the treaty with the empire, Albion was forbidden to export sugar to any of those planets. That meant there was profit for those who could get it through.
Still, a big ship like Captain Kidd had a lot of overhead. Surely, there wasn’t enough profit (or risk) in sugar to attract the likes of Vargus and his crew.
“I want all this dumped.” Drake gave Carvalho a significant look. “Remember what I said. No sugar on board. We need our pilot.”
“Aye,” Barker said. “I would have done it, but thought you might want to have a look first.”
“And nothing else turned up?” he asked. “Just sugar?”
“That’s pretty much it,” Barker said. “Well, as far as cargo goes. Come check this out.”
The two men led him to the rear of the engineering bay. There Barker kicked apart some random bits of metal to clear a single large, flat piece of the enemy decking blown off during the assault, some forty feet square, battleship gray except for what had been painted onto its surface: a skull sitting above two crossed sabers.
“We took a trophy,” Barker said with a grin.
“I’d say that’s a good day’s work for a Royal Navy cruiser,” Drake said, “except we currently have more in common with the pirates. Maybe we should give it back with our apologies.”
“I was thinking we’d keep it for our own use.”
Drake sent up an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Sure enough. I’ll cut out the plate above your bridge and weld this in its place. We better start showing the pirate colors if we’re going to earn a reputation.”
Drake snorted at this. “We do that, we’d better rechristen the ship. HMS Ajax seems inappropriate, don’t you think?”
“I hear Captain Kidd is suddenly available.”
“Turned out that wasn’t such a fearsome name. We need something better. How does Blackbeard sound?”
Barker chuckled at this. “Starship Blackbeard. Rolls nicely off the tongue.” He turned to Carvalho. “Get suited up and stack this sugar in the main incinerator.”
Drake watched the former prisoner make his way to the mechanical suits on the far wall, still suspicious of his intentions. He waited until the man started putting on the suit before turning back to Barker.
“Speaking of Captain Kidd, I want to take her with us to San Pablo.”
“Why?”
“I need money, but not so badly that I’d sell sugar to get it. Vargus says he has nothing of value left on board. I’m inclined to believe him. So I thought we’d see what we can get selling his ship for scrap.”
“She ain’t worth much anymore.”
“Not what she was a few hours ago, I’ll agree. But she’s worth something. Let’s say the engines can be salvaged. That’s ten thousand right there.”
“Maybe eight,” Barker said.
“Eight, then. We could get another ten or fifteen from the rest of it.”
“I don’t know. Depends on what she looks like when you get inside.”
“Whatever we get would go a long way toward repairs and resupply,” Drake said. “Even ten thousand pounds would make a difference. Problem is, how do I carry her through the jump point?”
He pulled out his computer. There was Capp’s analysis, and now he understood her reticence in writing it. He could barely parse her poor English. The sentences were fragmented, the spelling its own dialect. The lower-class speech patterns—what they called York cockney—now sounded in his mind’s ear like glass scraping on metal when he read them.
His first inclination was to be irritated. Maybe if Capp didn’t balk when asked to write, she’d sound more clever than a sod digger in the Canadian peat bogs. No doubt that’s why the navy had kept her out of pilot school. But then he thought about how she must have felt writing it, worried he would stare at it and think she was an uneducated dolt.
And anyway, the numbers looked good, as did the analysis, once he got past the clumsy prose. Their target in Fantalus was a loose jump point, which meant they could arrive at a lazier angle and a slower speed and still make it out of the system. The jump point on the other side was a bit trickier. They’d need to accelerate while coming in at a precise X, Y, Z angle with minimal deviation. After that jump, Capp’s knowledge broke down. The third jump, the one that would take them to San Pablo, might be unstable. She’d need to consult the nav computer when they got through.
He shared this information with Barker to get his opinion.
The engineer frowned and rubbed at his stubbly chin. “I don’t know. I could probably coax .095 from the engines while towing the pirates. But accelerating on the other end, while caught in the star’s gravity well? Also, that close in we’d need to shift power to the cooling systems or we’d bake to a crisp.”
“So we can’t take her with us,” Drake said, frustrated.
“That would be my assessment. Not with the current deficiencies in equipment and piloting.”
A high, melodic voice sounded from behind the two men. “What if I promise a piloting upgrade? Could you manage, then?”
Drake turned on his heel. Nyb Pim had stepped through the doors into the engineering bay and was taking long strides toward them. He’d pulled on a shirt, though he was still barefoot. His color was better, and his eyes had lost the milky look. Nevertheless, his unexpected presence was alarming.
“Who let you out?” Drake demanded.
Nyb Pim gave the quick wrist turn that was the Hroom equivalent of a shrug. “The pirates let me out, it would seem. There was a flash, and the power went out. The doors opened. I went into the hallway, and there was no guard.”
Oh, yes. The flash-bang. Must have caused the doors to open, and since the ship was designed to bring critical systems online first, the Hroom might have had several seconds in which to make his escape.
“That was two hours ago. Nobody noticed you were missing?”
“Apparently not. I thought about going to the bridge, but decided that might cause more disruption than it was worth. So I went to my old quarters—do you know they are untouched since I was arrested?”
Neither had Drake’s been, so he supposed that wasn’t a huge surprise. Perhaps they’d intended to make wholesale changes once Rutherford had returned to Vigilant and a new captain had been assigned to Ajax.
Drake cast his glance at Carvalho, who was now fully strapped into the suit and using its powerful hydraulic arms to move the heavy crates of sugar. Even the little bit salvaged was enough to addict a hundred Hroom. A single taste for the pilot would destroy the progress made in detoxing him.
Nyb Pim’s tongue snaked over his pink lips. He didn’t turn to look at the work. “Perhaps we could go somewhere else. Somewhere with fewer . . . temptations.”
