Lords of Space (Starship Blackbeard Book 2) Read online

  Catarina unzipped her vest and pulled it down off her shoulder. Scars marred the flesh on her back, and he winced at the sight. She shrugged the vest back up over her shoulder.

  “You see why I wasn’t so upset when your commander shot him in the head. Yes, I know it was Tolvern who pulled the trigger. A pirate’s life deserves a pirate’s death.”

  “Is that how you intend to go? Die in battle?”

  “I don’t intend to go at all,” she said with a smile. “I’m going to make contact with some ancient and wise race of aliens that has discovered the secret to eternal life. Isn’t that every spacer’s dream?”

  “Not me,” Drake said. “I would rather go peacefully, not fighting the inevitable. Leaned back in a chair in front of a peat fire on some cold and drizzly winter night, wearing a warm robe and a comfortable pair of slippers, an old sheepdog asleep at my feet. My last glass of wine drained by my side, my last pipe still smoldering.”

  “Hah. I don’t believe it.”

  “You don’t?” he asked, smiling.

  “Let’s start with that ridiculous bit about the robe and slippers. You’re a man who sleeps in his uniform, am I right?”

  “Usually my underwear, actually. I like a cold bed and warm blankets.”

  “And a warm body next to you? Does that figure into your plans?”

  Catarina leaned forward as she said this, her hands steepled in front of her face, her index fingers against her full lips. His mouth felt dry.

  She laughed. “That look! Don’t worry, James, I’m not coming on to you.”

  “I was wondering.” He leaned back, affecting more nonchalance than he felt. “Then I remembered what you said about there being no gossip in bringing me to your room, and I knew I was perfectly safe in your company.”

  “I wouldn’t say you’re as safe as all of that. In another time, under other circumstances, I would throw you to the floor and ravish you.”

  She hesitated, and Drake thought maybe she really would make an indelicate suggestion in spite of her protests to the contrary. What’s more, if she did, he was half inclined to take her up on the offer. He was not so eager, however, as to suggest such a thing himself. Physically, he had no qualms. He’d been perfectly frank with Tolvern about his own desires with respect to women, even if those desires were largely theoretical in nature.

  In fact, under other circumstances, Jess Tolvern might have been in some danger of his attentions herself. She was clever, loyal, and not unattractive. But Drake was her commanding officer, and she was the daughter of his father’s steward. No doubt she would have been horrified to know that such a thought had crossed his mind. Her disapproval of the fraternization between Henny Capp and Ronaldo Carvalho was well known.

  As for Catarina Vargus, there were no dangers of association, and the woman exuded sensual appeal. He could easily imagine the taste of her skin, the feel of her lips against his. Unzipping that vest so his hands could range along her bare flesh.

  Drake cleared his throat. “I should be returning to my ship.”

  “So soon?”

  “Was your proposal sincere?”

  “Completely.”

  “In that case, I accept, but I have terms.”

  “Such as?”

  “Our two ships comprise a fleet, and there can only be one flag officer. No lords of space, only one person at the helm. That would be me.”

  “You don’t know where we’re going,” she said.

  “You will tell me. My pilot will chart a course, and you will follow. When we enter battle, you will do as I command at all times. The moment you disobey, we are no longer allies.”

  Her face darkened, and her eyes flashed with anger. “Is this how you behaved in the Royal Navy, as a tyrant?”

  “Not a tyrant, no, but a dictator. Every man, woman, and Hroom under my command will obey my dictates. That is the natural order of things and the key to our survival in hostile waters.”

  “I am not used to being dominated, James Drake. You understand this? It is not my natural way, and I chafe at it.”

  He nodded, not unsympathetic. Any good leader felt the same. “I understand, and you have the ability to choose. Right here and now. You’ve asked for my help, and I’m willing to give it. But if there is to be an expedition, I will make the ultimate decisions.”

  “You may have the superior ship,” Catarina said, “but you flatter yourself if you think you have superior judgment.”

  “Be that as it may, it is my judgment I trust, not yours, nor anyone else’s, except perhaps that of King Bartholomew himself. These are my terms. Do you accept them?”

  Whatever prize this woman was reaching for, it overcame her natural pride, her headstrong personality, because he could see a change sweeping over her features. Her defiance dissipated. Submission replaced it. Drake suspected that her father had seen that same look as the two of them wrestled for dominance, and she had temporarily capitulated.

  “Yes, sir,” Catarina Vargus said, and there was no defiance in her tone. “You will command, and I shall obey.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tolvern found herself drifting away from Captain Drake after he made his arrangement with Catarina Vargus. He’d returned to Blackbeard claiming that he was now the master of Orient Tiger and her crew, as well as his own ship, but he seemed preoccupied with the pirate captain, consulting her more often than Tolvern thought necessary, and studying whatever Smythe could dig up from the fleet archives about the woman and her father. And over the next week, he grew more distant as the two ships picked their way through neutral systems on their way to empire-controlled territory.

  When Tolvern engaged him privately in the war room, he mainly wanted her analysis of Captain Vargus’s motives. What did Tolvern think? Was Vargus toying with them, or did she mean what she’d claimed about the tyrillium barge?

  The two ships engaged in piracy along the way, sacking a sugar smuggler on its way to the empire. Against Vargus’s wishes, Drake dumped the sugar into the void, but kept the contents of the ship safe and dropped the crew itself in a New Dutch colony. It was a lunar mining outpost, and Drake decided it would be a good place to replenish supplies and put in for light repairs. They sold the captured merchant ship before leaving the colony.

  One night, back in space and between jumps, Capp approached Tolvern in the mess with a confession. Leaning in, breath smelling of rum, Capp admitted her worry that Carvalho had been the one to tip off Catarina Vargus.

  “I didn’t say nothing before Hot Barsa,” Capp said, “ ’Cause I didn’t want the cap’n to leave me on the planet, know what I’m saying? Then when Orient Tiger came in, shootin’, and I seen how she saved us, and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to find out what Vargus wanted.”

  Inside, Tolvern was steaming, and anxious to rush out to wake the captain and tell him that she’d discovered the traitor. Carvalho, the wretch. How dare he? But she wanted to be sure before she made accusations.

  “Did Carvalho actually tell you that?” she asked. “Or are you guessing?”

  “Good as confessed it to me. That bloke never was patient, but I thought he shoulda waited longer before losing faith.” Capp drained her cup. “Guess it don’t matter no more, though, since we’re all on the same side now, us and the pirate lady.”

  It certainly did matter, and Tolvern wasted no time in finding the captain once she left the mess. She went straight to his room and rang. The door opened.

  Drake sat in his reading nook with a book open on his lap, but he wasn’t reading. Instead, he studied a viewscreen that he’d opened with a view of near space. Over the past day, they’d been overtaking a comet that now sat some fifty thousand miles off starboard, its long, brilliant, white tail stretching across the whole of the screen.

  Tolvern told him what she’d discovered. He scarcely looked away from the comet.

  “Captain?” she prodded. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And?”
r />   “Catarina already told me,” he said. “Carvalho wasn’t happy with the pace of our piracy. I dare say he’s happier now that we’ve made an alliance with these cutthroats.”

  Catarina. Not Captain Vargus. Her given name. No doubt the woman had told Drake to call her that, had probably called him by his given name, as well.

  Tolvern felt a pang of jealousy at the erosion of her intimacy with the captain. He’d asked her to call him James, but only when they were together and off duty. She had taken it as a great honor, had even briefly entertained hopes that it would lead to something else. Now, that honor was tarnished. How could he speak Catarina Vargus’s given name with one breath, as if they were dear friends, then call her a cutthroat with the next?

  “If you knew already, why haven’t you done anything?”

  “What can I do about it?” he said. “Dump Carvalho at the next port and find someone else? He’s doing a good job in engineering. And Capp would leave, too, and we’d be short a subpilot.”

  “You have to do something.”

  “Flog him? Keelhaul him? Is that really my style?”

  “I don’t know, something. You can’t let him disobey you like that. That’s not your style, either. At the very least, send him out to scrape barnacles for a couple of shifts.”

  “We don’t have any. Rodriguez gave the hull a good shine before we left San Pablo.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Drake turned back to the viewscreen. “There’s nothing to be done for it. We’re in league with these people now. We have to conform to their ways, and that might mean relaxing discipline.”

  “I can’t believe you’re telling me that. You don’t really believe it, do you?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  There was still something in his tone that she didn’t like, and she stayed silent until he looked up at her, then said, “Is everything okay, Captain?”

  “Yes, fine. Sorry, I am distracted.”

  “About what?”

  “Catarina Vargus is coming over here. Yes, I know, I haven’t told you. Sorry, but I needed to figure it out myself, first, make sure I really wanted to see her.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “She claims she has new intelligence about the escort for this tyrillium barge we’re hunting, and she wants to discuss it in person. Apparently, we’re not the only ones with a spy on board—or so she fears.”

  “I don’t understand,” Tolvern said.

  “If she has a spy, if other pirates know we’re hunting for the tyrillium, than it makes sense to be careful about communication.”

  “And that’s all the reason you’re bringing her here? You’re trying to keep our course a secret from the two crews?”

  “Yes, pretty much.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir, but I don’t entirely believe you. You seem unusually troubled.”

  Drake sighed. “It’s this piracy business. Time to face the truth—I’m one of them. I’m a pirate. The last attack confirmed it. There was no other story I could tell myself, nothing about rescuing slaves or stopping pirates myself. It was an unprovoked attack. We took no damage and deprived people of their livelihood. Sold their ship for profit and distributed prize money.”

  The attack on the sugar smuggler had been rather uneventful, certainly compared to the fights with Captain Kidd, Vigilant, or the orbital fortresses at Hot Barsa. But Tolvern could see why it might bother him. Yet she wondered if there were something else.

  “Have you decided what to do about the antidote?” Tolvern asked.

  “I have.”

  A nervous tickle worked at her stomach. “And?”

  Yesterday, word had come from Brockett in the science lab that he’d replicated the sugar antidote for the first time since leaving Malthorne’s laboratories on Hot Barsa. He’d administered the antidote to their Hroom pilot, and the captain had saved aside a few grains of sugar from the captured smuggler ship so he could test the antidote’s efficacy. Not yet, of course, as he needed to be sure they could spare Nyb Pim for a few days in case it didn’t work. They’d need to put the Hroom back in the isolation cells for another round of detox. But Brockett was confident.

  “And I’m going to make Nyb Pim very happy,” Drake said. “The Kingdom of Albion, the entire human race, not so much.”

  “I see.”

  “What choice is there? This sugar antidote can secure the freedom and survival of an ancient civilization whose crime is a weakness of biology. If you see an alternative, please let me know.”

  The thought of delivering such a thing into the hands of the enemy chilled her, but Tolvern couldn’t argue with him on moral grounds. Practically speaking, it seemed like a disaster, a hurricane whose full force might take years to gather. But eventually, it would crash against Albion and leave devastation in its wake.

  #

  Tolvern was in her room, dressing for bed, when Capp came to her door, asking to come in. The ensign had sobered up in the hour and a half since they’d been drinking together in the mess, and was now wringing her hands nervously as she entered the room.

  “I shouldn’t have said that about Carvalho,” Capp said when the door had closed, leaving them with privacy in the tiny room. “Please don’t tell the cap’n what I told you. It was a mistake.”

  “I already told him.”

  “King’s balls!”

  “Drake already knew. Vargus had told him there was a spy. Told him who it was, apparently.”

  “He knew it was Carvalho and everything?” Capp released a string of milk-curdling oaths. “I didn’t even know it was true myself, not for sure. Maybe Carvalho didn’t mean nothing by it, or maybe they asked him to spy, but he didn’t. Why would Vargus tell on him? Don’t she want a spy on board anymore?”

  “She doesn’t need him,” Tolvern said glumly. “She has the captain now, and he tells her everything she wants to know.”

  Capp studied her face, then sat next to her on the cot. “What do you mean?”

  “What the devil are we doing out here?”

  “Pirating. Freebooting, if you like it better. I got paid fifty pounds for my share of the haul from that smuggler we took. That will buy a lot of grog, Tolvern. They say we’re going after a bigger prize, now. Could be ten times that much. Could be I send my mama a couple of hundred pounds so she can buy that cottage she was dreaming about.”

  “Will you stop and think for a moment? We’re already in Hroom territory. A few more days, and we’re on our own. We get in trouble, there’s no safe port to put into.”

  Capp shrugged. “A pirate’s life. Gotta risk something to get something.”

  “Following Catarina Vargus, who has reason to see us dead. How do we know she isn’t looking for revenge?”

  “Seems Drake and Vargus have patched things up after the death of her old man. Must not have cared for the bloke much in the first place.”

  “Did you hear that she’s coming over here?” Tolvern asked.

  “Catarina Vargus? What for?”

  “Private meeting with the captain,” Tolvern said.

  Capp raised an eyebrow at this. “How private?”

  “Oh, shut up. It’s nothing like that. He’s a gentleman, he’d never be seen with the likes of her.”

  Tolvern delivered this last bit with more uncertainty than she’d intended, and Capp seemed to pick up on it.

  “I heard that. You’re not sure, are you? You think he might be hot for the pirate lady.”

  “No, I’m not sure,” she admitted. Damn it, she was not. “He told me the other day that he was lonely. I’m afraid he’s going to fall prey to the first aggressive female who comes his way.”

  “That was your permission, right there, Commander. Shoulda jumped him yourself before he changed his mind.”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous. He would have laughed me out of the room, and anyway, I don’t think of him that way.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “I do not!”

  Capp s
hrugged. “Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better.”

  “Even if I did—and I don’t!—it’s a ridiculous premise on the face of it. My father is a servant on the Drake estate. You’re from the city, you’ve seen the lords and ladies about. Do they mix with their servants? Do they marry among the staff?”

  “So now you’re aiming to marry him? That’s a bird with a different plumage, luv.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “I ain’t missing nothing. You’re telling me that the cap’n is too good for you in one breath, and in the next, sayin’ that he fancies Catarina Vargus. And don’t give me that rubbish about fraternizing. You know that don’t matter no more. Maybe the cap’n still says it, but he ain’t serious when he does.”

  “I suppose you think I should come on to him. Do you realize how humiliating it would be if he turned me down?”

  “A pirate’s life,” Capp said. “Gotta risk something to get something.”

  #

  Tolvern was in the middle of her sleep cycle when the captain called her to the bridge. She was up, yawning, and pulling on her jumpsuit before she fully realized she was awake. Drake’s voice had been tight and urgent, and she didn’t so much as grab a mug of strong tea before she headed there.

  She arrived to discover that she was the last officer on the bridge. The two pilots were already in their chairs, Smythe was at his station, Manx stood at the defense-grid computer, and Captain Drake sat in the captain’s chair, speaking to someone on the com while he studied the viewscreen.

  The tyrillium barge stretched from one end of the viewscreen to the other, its single plasma engine glowing like a small blue star at the rear of the ship. A smaller ship snuggled up next to the nose of the barge, and a second small ship lurked along the belly, like a pair of remoras following a shark, although Tolvern knew that it was the two smaller vessels that had the teeth in this case. They were armed escorts. Had Drake been expecting that?

  Tolvern took her seat. “How long have we been giving chase?”

  “Since about the time you went to your quarters.”