Blackbeard superbox, p.6
Blackbeard Superbox, page 6
Smythe looked up from his computer and pushed back his glasses. “Barker wants to know which weapon systems to bring online.”
“The biggest risk is stumbling into a trap,” he said. “What I want—”
Capp snorted. “Out here? How do you figure they’d spring a trap? Fill the galleon with explosives or something?”
“Let the captain speak,” Tolvern said, tone peevish.
“What I want,” Drake continued, “is shields up at all times. No cannon, no missiles. We’re not here to kill anyone, and we’re not here because of romantic notions about freeing slaves or any such rubbish. One and only one slave—that’s all we care about.”
“What if they start shooting?” Tolvern asked. “Henry Upton is unescorted, so I figure she’s carrying light armaments.”
“Nothing we can’t handle. She’s going slow enough we shouldn’t have trouble harpooning her. If she gets testy, we’ll knock her around a little with the chase gun.”
“We need a boarding party,” Tolvern said. “Hard to manage without marines on board.”
Capp flexed her arms. “I’m a marine. Gimme a gun and saber and I’ll go aboard.”
“Funny,” Tolvern said. “I thought you aspired to be a pilot. Okay, that’s one. I suppose I’d better make two, so I can keep an eye on this one.” She nodded toward Capp.
“This I’d like to see,” Capp said. “I imagine you waving around a saber all dainty like.”
Tolvern sprang to her feet, bristling, but Drake grimaced and motioned for his first mate to sit back down. Yes, this insubordination was intolerable, but they wouldn’t be serving with the woman or her fellow criminals much longer. For now, better to keep the peace.
“You’ll stay here,” Drake said to Tolvern. “I’ll lead the boarding party myself. I need to see what’s going on. If there’s anything else afoot here, I need to know.”
“But, Captain—”
“If anything happens to me, you’ll be needed here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s two,” Drake said. “Who else?”
“I know three blokes who’d be keen to get some action,” Capp said.
“And what kind of action would that be?” Tolvern asked, innocently.
“Commander!” Drake said.
“Sorry, sir.”
“I’d rather not have your blokes, as you put it,” Drake told Capp. “One wild card is more than enough.” He glanced at the tech officer, who was still doing something on the computer. “Smythe?”
“Me, Captain?” he squeaked, which drew a snort from Capp and a sigh from Tolvern.
Smythe licked his lips, turning pale. He looked every bit the royal marine, with his natural physique and strong jaw. Everything except the squinting eyes behind glasses and the full, reddish lips.
“No, not you. Get Barker, ask him if he’s got anyone in weapons or engineering he can spare. He won’t like it—he’s more undermanned than anyone—but our shields will be up anyway, so there shouldn’t be much trouble while we’re out.”
As predicted, Barker wasn’t happy with this, but eventually the gunner found two men he said he could spare. One was a former special forces fellow by the name of Oglethorpe who’d transferred into gunnery after getting his shoulder messed up in combat. He’d lost most of the motor control in one arm, but he was still a big, intimidating fellow.
The other was Manx, the boatswain, currently at work repairing hull damage from their engagement outside Albion. The man’s only experience with weaponry came from basic training, but he was healthy and game. Drake remembered how he’d filled in on the bridge during the mutiny and figured the man was steady enough.
That made four in the boarding party. The captain needed a fifth, and as Smythe cut the channel with Barker, Drake eyed Capp across the table.
“I’m telling you,” she said. “You want someone good, you should take my mate, Carvalho. He’s real handy with a gun.”
“Captain,” Tolvern said in a warning tone.
Drake ignored her. “Good enough, Corporal. I’ll take a chance.” He rose. “That will be all.”
#
Soon they were pulling in behind Cold Barsa, the icy world white and glittering beneath them. The only ice-free water was a thin belt girdling the equator, and from space one couldn’t discern the difference between glacier-covered land and frozen ocean. A small, rust-colored moon came wobbling into view, tracing its rapid path around the planet.
Drake met the four others from the boarding party in the armory to get them acquainted with the boarding rocket and pressure suits. He repeated his plans for going onto Henry Upton, explained about the harpoon and tether.
“And no shooting unless shot at,” he said, as he pulled on the pressurized trousers. “Is that clear?”
They nodded. Oglethorpe and Manx seemed relieved, while Capp and Carvalho looked disappointed. He ordered them to suit up while he hurried back to the bridge to check the situation one last time.
Tolvern eyed the captain. “We just picked up Henry Upton. She’ll be coming around the planet in eighteen minutes.”
“Still alone?”
“So far as we can tell.”
“If it’s a trap,” he said, “and I find myself in trouble, don’t be a hero. Just get out of here as fast as you can.”
“Hmm.”
“Tolvern, that’s an order. Do not come for me. Cut the tether and run. Am I understood?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Sir, with all due respect, I could tell you yes, I would abandon you, but I think we both know what I will do in the heat of battle.”
Chapter Six
Vigilant came in quietly, trailing Henry Upton at a distance of 11,500 miles. The slaver didn’t know Vigilant was there because Rutherford had never warned her; he couldn’t risk Drake having a spy on the galleon who could tip him off. Instead, Rutherford had waited cloaked at the jump point until Henry Upton came through and then followed stealthily.
Rutherford had half expected his old friend to ambush the galleon at the jump point, but the next most likely spot was Cold Barsa, where the lumbering galleon meant to fling herself around the planet to slightly increase her pathetic speed as she came in toward the tugs that would haul her in to Hot Barsa. And so Rutherford had shields down and weapons on standby as they approached the ice-covered planet.
Just inside a million miles of the planet, his tech officer reported the wake of plasma engines. Something big and fast had passed nearby a few hours earlier. Military, most likely, although the wake was too washed out to glean more than that. Rutherford’s pulse quickened. Admiral Malthorne had sent off the Third Fleet, and nothing else left in the system was big enough to leave that kind of signature. Nothing but Vigilant or Ajax, that was.
The bridge was tense. Commander Pittsfield was in contact with the gun decks and engineering, and there was chatter going back and forth that Rutherford did his best to block out.
“Engineering is asking to bring down the cloaks,” Pittsfield said.
“Negative,” Rutherford said.
“But sir, that leaves us vulnerable to laser fire.”
Rutherford fought down an angry retort, instead giving Pittsfield a withering stare. The commander turned quickly back to his computer display.
“Leave the cloaks up,” Pittsfield said into his com link. “Captain’s orders.”
It wasn’t that Pittsfield was wrong. Cloaking interfered with the primary shields. Laser and other concentrated energy fire that would otherwise be deflected harmlessly into space could cut right through the hull, even saw it right in two if placed properly.
But there were only two ways to detect a Punisher-class cruiser under cloaking. First was detecting the wake of its engines, as he’d done with Ajax. But that’s why Rutherford was drafting in Henry Upton’s wake. Second was an array of listener-whisperers, waiting silently to send their reports. There’s no way Drake had set up such a defense. He lacked both the equipment and the time.
It was the questioning of his orders that drew Rutherford’s ire. Earlier in his career, he’d have ordered a man flogged for insubordination at such a crucial moment. That anger sometimes got him in trouble; he’d often thought since Drake’s fall that he’d been the one destined to kill his career with a blunder, and not his friend. Most likely, Rutherford had always figured, he would draw his side arm and shoot someone who’d aggravated him. If it was an enlisted man, he’d probably escape the subsequent inquiry, but if it was an officer, unlikely.
He was still struggling with his anger when Henry Upton came in at Cold Barsa and bent its trajectory to whip around the planet. It vanished on the screen as it disappeared over the horizon of the cool white sphere beneath them. At five hundred miles a second, the two ships would circumnavigate the planet in less than a minute, and Vigilant would have her in sight again.
Rutherford still didn’t like losing sight of the other ship, not for a single moment. He counted the seconds, the icy surface of Cold Barsa nearly a blur below as they hurtled around after the galleon.
They came around the other side, and the viewscreen found Henry Upton. But she was no longer alone. The fat, turtle-like craft was still lumbering forward. But there, next to it, lay the long, lean shape of a Punisher-class cruiser. Its shields were up, the golden rampant lions stretching brilliantly alongside, the sun catching them in all their glory. Blackened scarring marked the surface where she and Vigilant had traded blows less than two weeks earlier.
Less than a minute had passed, yet already Ajax had harpooned the galleon like it was a star leviathan, the vast beasts that roamed the depths of space. Drake meant to board the vessel.
“Drop cloaking!” Rutherford cried. “Present starboard guns!”
#
Drake flew along the tether toward the slaver galleon with the rest of the boarding party. The five of them wore pressure suits with helmets and sat astride a boarding rocket, which looked like a giant green banana with a long, tungsten-steel ramming snout and hot gasses venting out the back side. Both ships, the tether, and the five men and women flying between them were hurtling through space at several hundred miles per second, but the moon and planet were eclipsed behind Ajax, with nothing but the starry void ahead. He couldn’t feel the enormous forward speeds, only the few hundred miles an hour zipping them the mile or so between the two ships.
Jane’s stern voice sounded in his helmet. “Deceleration in three seconds.”
Drake was strapped into his seat, every bit of him clamped tightly onto the boarding rocket, but the rapid deceleration shoved him forward against his restraints. The ugly, pitted surface of Henry Upton loomed. The nose of the banana launched free, spouting its own rocket. It followed the tether to the nose of the harpoon, which had expanded to open a passage to let them through the outer hull. The ram-like protrusion now disappeared inside. There was a flash of light. Gasses and debris came venting into the void.
It slammed against him as they burst through. Then they were inside and tumbling free of the boarding rocket as it released its restraints. They were between the two hulls, both inner and outer now breached, with air venting into space rushing past them like a hurricane.
The ship lurched as Drake and his companions struggled forward to get in past the inner hull before the breach was sealed. They were at the edge of the anti-grav field, and he still felt semi-weightless, bouncing along from step to step. He grabbed the wall to keep from stumbling, then bent to help Manx, who had fallen.
At first he thought the ship’s movement was the galleon pilot attempting evasive maneuvers. It had been less than a minute since Ajax harpooned her, and so far Henry Upton had given no indication that she knew she was being boarded.
“Captain,” Tolvern’s tense voice said from inside his helmet as he got Manx to his feet. “We’ve got trouble.”
“Use the chase gun. Show them who’s boss.” He was surprised that the galleon would be so foolish as to shoot at them, but it wouldn’t take much to settle matters.
“It’s Vigilant. Came in behind the galleon. Must have been cloaked.”
Drake muttered an oath. “Are they shooting?”
“No. Rutherford is demanding our surrender.”
Rutherford. Blast it. Where the devil had he come from? Whatever he’d done, it had been a clever maneuver, and as luck would have it, he’d caught Drake off his own ship. What would he do now? Was he ruthless enough to finish the job? Drake thought he was.
There was shouting on Tolvern’s end, but she’d covered the com link or pulled away, and he couldn’t pick up what she was saying. Then she came back on. “He’s testing our shields. I need to break the tether and evade. I’ll come back for you.”
“Don’t break free. Pull in closer. Hug the slaver tight.”
“But—” she started to protest, then seemed to get what he was driving at. “Yes, sir.”
During this conversation, Drake and the others had gained the inner hull and now removed their helmets and tossed them back over their shoulders, where they hung by their straps. Capp had one gun out—a standard-issue assault rifle—with another dangling from her waist. This was a nonregulation hand cannon. The others, Oglethorpe, Carvalho, and the boatswain, Manx, each had pistols and assault rifles. Carvalho also wore a saber, as well as a bandolier of grenades. Where the blazes had that come from? For that matter, where had Capp found her hand cannon?
The five of them stepped into the corridor just as two crewmembers opened the airlock at the end of the hall and came running toward them. One was human, the other Hroom, tall and thin, with pale pinkish skin and a high, bald forehead. They wore bulky packs, with hoses and nozzles in hand. They’d evidently come to spray the breach with a rapidly expanding foam. A temporary patch until engineering could more permanently seal the hull.
They were coming at a run and had so much momentum that they were halfway down the hallway before they seemed to register the intruders. The pair came to a full stop, turned, and began to run in the opposite direction.
“Stop!” Drake ordered, “or I’ll shoot.”
They didn’t stop. Capp lifted her rifle and squeezed off two shots. The human fell. The Hroom came to an immediate halt and raised his hands. Capp and Carvalho ran past the dead man and grabbed the arms of the Hroom, who stood head and shoulders above them.
“Manx,” Drake said, “seal the breach.” As the boatswain grabbed the pack and nozzle from the dead man, the captain, followed by Oglethorpe, strode up to Capp. “What the hell are you doing?”
Capp was stripping off the Hroom’s pack and checking for weapons. “You told ’em you’d shoot.”
“That’s what I told them, you fool. I told you there would be no shooting unless shot at. And you killed the human, too. Why did you do that?”
She turned the Hroom to face the captain. “This one is an eater. I figured he’d be more cooperative.”
The he was actually a she, Drake could see now. Taller than a male, with large eyes and even more delicate facial bones. Capp was right about the other part, though. A Hroom’s natural skin tone was mottled reddish orange, like the leaves of a maple tree in autumn. It was the color of the jungles of their home worlds, where it was said they’d evolved to blend with the colors of the giant, woody ferns. But when Hroom turned into eaters, the pigments bled from their skin, until they had a grayish-pink hue. Like this one.
Tolvern spoke into Drake’s ear. “Rutherford is giving us thirty seconds. Then he’ll shoot.”
“I need five minutes.”
“Dammit, Captain. I told you. We don’t have five minutes.” Her voice was even more strained than before.
“Deal with it, Commander.” Drake cut the link.
She’d better figure it out in a hurry. Circumstances had left them short handed, forced Drake to lead the away party himself, and that meant there was no other leadership on board Ajax but his commander. There was nothing he could do from here except jeopardize his own chances on board the slave ship.
He turned to the Hroom. “I’m looking for Nyb Pim. Do you know him? Where is he?”
“You have . . . ” the Hroom began in her high, cooing voice. She licked her lips. “You have sugar to eat?”
“Do I look like I’m carrying sugar? Of course I don’t. Do you know Nyb Pim? Yes or no?”
“I have sugar,” Capp said.
The marine reached into one of the pockets in her suit and pulled out a fistful of sugar packets. They were the size used for sweetening tea, but slavers sometimes used them to tempt children and thereby spread the addiction. It wasn’t much. A full-grown Hroom like the one facing them might eat two or three pounds of the stuff a day.
“Where did you get that?” he demanded.
“We’re on a Hroom slave ship,” Capp said. “Seemed like it might come in handy. I visited the mess and asked Cook to unlock the sugar cabinet.” She held out a sugar packet for the Hroom, who grabbed for it. “Ah, ah,” Capp warned and pulled it away.
Carvalho jabbed his gun to push back the Hroom, who was looking like she’d leap for Capp to get her hands on the stuff. “You lead us to our pilot, and you can have the sugar,” he said. “Name is Nyb Pim.”
The mere sight of the fistful of sugar packets had set the Hroom trembling. She couldn’t stop staring at it. The slave galleon had been traveling for many days through the void, and Drake wondered if the sugar rations had run out.
It was ruthless, uncivilized behavior tempting her like this, but it was effective. The Hroom gave the toss of her head that served the same purpose as a nod did to humans.
“Nyb Pim? I not know this Hroom.” She stopped, mouth pinching. This one apparently didn’t speak English very well. “He on . . . ship?”
“Where are the quarters?” Drake asked. “We’ll look for him ourselves. The rooms for the slaves,” he added, when the Hroom looked back in confusion. “Where are they?”
“All together. All in one place.”
“Probably one big room,” Capp said. “You know how these eaters get. Run out of sugar, and they’ll go nutso. Better to keep them in a single, central location.”
