Blackbeard Superbox Read online

  “There she goes,” he said, not surprised in the slightest. “Brace yourselves.”

  Ajax rocked. An explosion boomed through the ship, coming from what sounded like the aft shields. It knocked him out of his seat before anti-grav could stabilize them. When he got up, Tolvern was shouting, pushing her way back up the hallway.

  Men poured into the pod from the corridor, dragging prisoners, who had their hands cuffed. Dwight Barker, Drake’s chief gunner, was among the mutineers.

  “You!” Drake said. “I thought you would know better than this.”

  “Don’t just sit there, gaping,” Barker said.

  “I’m not gaping, I’m wondering when this farce will end.”

  “Get him out of there,” Tolvern called from the corridor.

  Barker grabbed him, and this time he didn’t resist. His best bet was to get to the bridge and take command. Once he did, he could order his crew to stand down so he could surrender as bloodlessly as possible. Do that quickly enough, and he might be able to plead mercy for his crew. Even an aborted mutiny would bring down the wrath of the Admiralty. Best case was that Tolvern’s little stunt would earn her her own multi-year stint in the mines. Probably Barker and the others, as well. Better than a hanging, he supposed, but completely avoidable.

  He pushed through the handcuffed prisoners in the hall. One of them was Captain Rutherford, wearing his bathrobe, of all things, his hair wet, as if he’d been dragged from the shower. The man looked livid as Tolvern pushed him along.

  Rutherford and Drake had fought side by side several times in the war. They’d scattered a larger enemy force, won a victory that was sure to earn them both a hero’s parade down the streets of York Town, from Kingdom Tower to the royal palace. That was before the frame-up.

  “Mutiny?” Rutherford said, glaring as they pushed him past Drake in the narrow hall. “Are you an idiot?”

  “I swear I know nothing about this,” Drake said. “But I’ll put an end to it. Mark my words.”

  “You had better. Malthorne will blow us all to kingdom come.”

  “Not you,” Tolvern said. “You’re going home.”

  Rutherford wheeled on her, looked like he would have struck her if his hands hadn’t been cuffed behind his back. “Curse you, Tolvern. If this is your doing, I’ll see you hanged.”

  He started to spit something else, but they shoved him and the other prisoners into the pod. It was going to be crowded in there, unless Tolvern had been stupid enough to order the existing prisoners released.

  Lights were flashing in the hall, together with the siren calling all hands. Didn’t seem to be many hands available. Another shot rocked the ship, closer this time. The smell of burning plastic filled the air, and a red light flashed at an entrance to their right, indicating their airlocks had sealed off part of the ship in that direction.

  Barker caught up with them in the hall, and Drake turned to him. “If you’re here, then who is at the guns?”

  “Nobody. We’re short-handed, as you can figure.”

  “Short-handed and short of brains.”

  A wry smile from the gunner. “You might say so, yes.”

  Barker was an older man, thick about the middle and with a walrus mustache. Almost sixty years old, and though his skills were not what they had been ten or even five years earlier, he’d once been one of the best gunners in the fleet, and had a long way to slip before he was merely average. And clever, too. Could have been chief engineer, if he’d been more ambitious or of higher birth.

  Barker’s involvement in this scheme was surprising. Not only had age made him sensible, but he seemed to look down on Tolvern as young and callow and female—the older man had joined the navy when women were wives, daughters, maybe even whores in distant ports, but never space sailors, and certainly never officers. So why was he following her into this madness?

  When they reached the end of the hall, they ran into another group of several prisoners being driven by two men with guns and stun batons. Most of the prisoners were unfamiliar, probably part of Rutherford’s crew, but two were engineers Drake had known for years. They should be putting out fires and sealing damaged airlocks, not being jettisoned with the rest of the prisoners. The men driving them, on the other hand, were the head cook and his assistant.

  “We won’t be able to repair hull breaches,” Drake said, “but we can still bake a mean shepherd’s pie. Let’s get this surrender over with.”

  He said this last bit as they came onto the bridge. Tolvern moved to the viewscreen, which was split between zoomed views of the battleship Dreadnought and the cruiser Vigilant and the two corvettes beginning to give chase. The corvettes were quicker out of the blocks than the cruiser, and their engines fired up more quickly. By now, they must be hauling away from Albion at perhaps twenty miles a second and accelerating rapidly.

  “Get to the gunnery decks,” Tolvern told Barker. “Scrape together whoever you can find.”

  “But hold your fire,” Drake called after him. “Await my orders.”

  “Does this mean you’re taking command?” Tolvern asked when the gunner had hurried off. She sounded eager.

  Drake grunted. “Of a mutiny? Only long enough to end it.”

  Another blow rocked the ship. So far, they’d taken several shots from the fortress’s cannons, and another that felt like it had come from one of Dreadnought’s pea shooters, but hadn’t responded in turn. Good. Drake hoped to bring this to an end before anyone died on either side.

  “Pod eleven launched,” said the same computer voice that had been so wrong a few minutes earlier. This time, Jane was right. Drake watched as the pod arced away from the ship and disappeared.

  “Did you reprogram its trajectory?” he asked.

  Tolvern winced, which gave him his answer.

  “Only now we’re out of position,” he said. “So instead of making their way for the mine ship, Rutherford and the rest of your victims are jammed in a tin can, hurtling toward nothing. Wonder how long it will take to haul him back in. And how angry he’ll be when they do.”

  “Rutherford is your friend. He’ll forgive you.”

  “Not after this, he won’t.”

  “He’ll understand,” she insisted. “I gave him the chance to join our jailbreak. Thought for a minute he’d accept.”

  Drake gave her a hard look. “He was no more likely to join a mutiny than I was.”

  “Stop using that word. That’s not what this is about. It’s about getting you out of here so we can prove your innocence.”

  Drake looked back to the screen to see lights flashing from the side of the opposing cruiser. They were out of range of Vigilant’s cannons, but that didn’t keep her from launching missiles. The missiles sped past the two corvettes, who still gave pursuit, and accelerated toward Ajax.

  “Well,” Tolvern said, sounding a little discomfited, less self-assured for the first time since she’d burst into the away pod. “That was faster than expected.”

  “Aft force shields!” Drake said, more out of habit.

  “Already done,” she said. “I knew they wouldn’t get their cannons up in time—well, except for the little guns from the fortress—but we took those blows. All we have to do is get to point-one light and we’ll be at jump speed.”

  The nearest jump point to Albion—one of only four in the entire system—was close, but tight. That meant with their mass, they needed to be cruising northward of 18,000 miles per second, close to Ajax’s top speed. That would take time.

  Nobody was sitting in front of the defense grid computer, which was charting in big purple splotches the kinetic weapons still blasting out of the fortress and the big battleship. Nobody sat in the pilot’s chair, either. Manx worked a computer in one corner, speaking into a headset to the engine room. He was a boatswain, and normally, he’d be down below. The only other person on the bridge was Tech Officer Smythe, a young man with the square jaw, intense expression, and broad shoulders of a fighter pilot. In reality, he was a computer geek, one of those guys who could run diagnostics on the engines on one half of the screen while he played a video game on the other. Now, his fingers were flying over the keyboard and across the screen as he tried to keep the hull pressurized.

  “We’re not jumping,” Drake said.

  “But why not?” Tolvern asked. “Admiral Malthorne is worked up by the jailbreak. He needs a chance to think clearly before he does something dumb. We’ll get you out of here and wait for the fleet to settle down. Then, when we can prove what really happened . . . ”

  “Shut up, Tolvern. I need to think.”

  First step was to keep them from dying. He glanced at the defense grid computer, which showed the first missile impacting in one minute and fifty-two seconds. The second would hit a second or two later. Two more missiles—these showing red—had just fired from the cruiser. They accelerated slowly, appearing at first like they’d be left behind. That meant they were bigger, probably something two-staged, with a fissile sting. If the first missiles weakened the shields, the second pair would certainly finish them off.

  “Drake,” Tolvern said in a worried voice. “What do we do?”

  “What are our numbers? How many joined your little scheme?”

  “Seventeen.”

  He gave her a hard look. “That’s not even a skeleton crew.”

  “You can do it. I know you can. Just tell me what to do.”

  “Get on the defense grid. We’ll absorb the first two missiles, and pray Barker launches countermeasures before we take the next two.”

  “Then what?” she asked.

  “Drop shields and come to a full stop. Tell them we’re surrendering and hope the admiral is in a forgiving mood.”

  “For the love of . . . you can’t do that!” She had
started to sit down at the defense grid, but now sprang to her feet. “After everything we’ve done for you?”

  “You’ve done nothing for me, blast you. Now do what you’re told!”

  The only hope was to survive the missile attack and then stand by helplessly and hope that Admiral Malthorne called off the dogs. The dogs, in this case, were the two corvettes, which were already gaining on them. Under better circumstances, he could outgun them, but not with the cruiser wallowing outside of Albion, still hammering with missiles. And the orbital fortress would be scrambling short-range fighters.

  The grid showed twenty seconds to impact. He braced himself in the captain’s chair. Tolvern touched her com link and fiddled with the computer as she spoke to whoever was at the gunner decks. Hopefully, Barker.

  She raised her voice. “You don’t stop them and we’re all dead!”

  “Brace for impact,” Jane said. “Class two detonation expected.”

  She spoke in the same calm, soothing voice that had promised him he was about to be jettisoned toward the mining ship. Now she was warning him that he was about to have a missile stab through the shields, and bury itself in the hull before detonating.

  Manx flared the plasma engines at the last second, hoping to burn up the missiles, but whoever was on the other end had prepared for this, and the two missiles came swooping in at angles. The first missile thrust up into Ajax’s belly, while the second dove from above. There was a double shock, like a pair of staccato drum beats, followed by two huge, thumping explosions. The chair held him in place or he’d have been thrown to the floor.

  “Status?” he said. His voice was tight.

  Tolvern let out her breath. “Damage to C-deck. Engine two emergency shutdown protocol.”

  “Inner hull breach?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God,” he said.

  “Warning,” the computer said. Did her voice sound strained this time, or was that his imagination? “Class three detonation expected.”

  Class three. Bloody hell.

  “Barker!” Tolvern shouted into the headphones.

  Lights flashed on the defense grid—chaff coming out the back end of Ajax. Drake’s thumb manipulated the controls on his chair to show the region of space behind the now sputtering second plasma engine.

  They were still accelerating with only one engine, now up to 473 miles per second, with the anti-grav’s disruption field the only thing keeping them from being smashed into jelly against the back wall of the bridge from all the acceleration. But of course they needed to be closer to 18,000 miles per second to reach point-one light and jump out of the system.

  “Reverse thrust,” Drake ordered. “Bring us to a halt. Drop shields.”

  “But, Captain . . .” Tolvern protested.

  “Do it.”

  Tolvern fiddled with her computer and gave commands to Manx.

  Manx spoke up from the other side of the bridge. “Um, we can’t, sir. Engine two is damaged and bleeding heat. If we slow down, we’ll melt the back half of the ship.”

  “Dump the core.”

  “Negative, sir. Coupling damaged. She’s good if we keep accelerating. Otherwise, we’re goners.”

  Drake clenched his jaw. “Bring us to the minimum speed needed to equalize temperatures. Tolvern hail the fleet, tell them the situation.”

  But either communications were knocked out, or the fleet wasn’t responding. Malthorne would be frothing at the mouth by now. It beggared the imagination that the admiral would be trying to destroy one of the most powerful cruisers in the fleet, a ship that cost a hundred thousand pounds and was the pride of the Belfast spaceyards. But the screen showed the second round of missiles closing and the two corvettes almost within range for their kinetic weapons. Maybe they’d stop when the shields were obliterated, and the engines gone, or maybe they’d finish Ajax off with lasers.

  “Tolvern, what were you thinking?”

  “What kind of question is that? You were framed for the death of those marines, and I’d be damned if I’d see you shipped to the mines. It was you who taught me loyalty.”

  “To the crown. Not to me.” He touched his com link. “Barker?”

  “Here, sir,” his gunner’s voice rasped in his ear piece.

  A glance at the defense grid. Four and a half minutes until missiles three and four hit. It was like watching death in slow motion.

  “Do you have a crew?”

  “Jacobs is here, and two of those prisoners you freed. Woman with the Albion lion tattoos seems to know what she’s doing.”

  “Can you stop those missiles?”

  “Aye. Got a plan for that. Not so sure about the corvettes, though. Not running for our lives like this.”

  “I want the forward gun ready. Forward missiles, too.”

  “The forward gun?” Barker sounded confused.

  “And make sure everyone is seated and you’ve got disruptor fields and anti-grav in order or you’ll all be smeared against the floor.”

  Tolvern wasn’t stupid; her sharp look told him she understood. “You’re turning around?”

  “Yes, we are going back, but not to surrender. Not now, anyway.”

  “But what about Dreadnought? Vigilant is back there, too, firing missiles. And Fort William.”

  “No time to argue. I need someone at the helm. Computer isn’t going to do it.”

  Tolvern took a seat in the empty pilot’s chair, looking like a child with its high back. It had been built for Nyb Pim, a Hroom who was over seven feet tall, his limbs even longer than that height would suggest. She had to stretch to reach the controls.

  Drake sat down. Invisible hands held him in place. He passed general orders through the ship similar to those he’d given his gunner. Then he ordered them brought around.

  The ship turned, but if not for the spinning view on the screens, he wouldn’t have felt a thing. Tolvern pulled them around as fast as she could without tearing apart the mechanical systems, and soon they were shooting back toward Albion, now upside down relative to the corvettes bearing down on them.

  They still weren’t going more than a thousand miles a second, a speed so slow it felt like treading water compared to the point-one light that they needed to gain before the jump. But they’d more than doubled their effective speed relative to the enemies coming at them. The corvettes flashed past in the opposite direction, no more than a few miles off port. They struggled to turn. The missiles were more maneuverable than the cruisers and banked in a hurry. Barker launched more chaff and two radiation pulses. The screens went white. When they regained focus, there was no sign of the missiles. The corvettes were now fifty or sixty thousand miles distant.

  A ragged cheer went up from the other three people on the bridge. No time to relax. They were closing on Albion several times faster than they’d departed. And accelerating. Drake didn’t attempt to come in at an angle, knowing that the entire network of orbital fortresses would be on high alert already, but instead ordered Tolvern to bear down on Vigilant and Dreadnought, as if prepared to ram them.

  The corvettes were once again gaining at their rear. Dreadnought had slipped its tether and was preparing its main guns. Vigilant maneuvered into an angle to rake Ajax with enfilading fire. Fort William had its own cannons.

  “Sweet mercy,” Tolvern said. “We’ll be torn apart.”

  Drake ignored her. Into the headset, he said. “Don’t fire until we’re past the cruiser, then give her all guns.”

  “Not Dreadnought, sir?” Barker asked.

  “No. Vigilant is our only threat.”

  He’d better be right. The battleship, the fort, and the pursuing corvettes were all poorly positioned. They could not shoot at Drake’s ship without shooting at each other. Blowing up Ajax to abort a mutiny was a brutal step, but to finish the job, Dreadnought would risk the pursuing corvettes, too. And the corvettes hadn’t yet realized it, or they’d be veering away instead of pursuing. It was Vigilant who posed the threat, since she alone could shoot at Ajax from an angle.

  Ajax streaked by her sister ship, and both launched broadsides at the same moment, cannons blazing with shot made of cobalt rods to penetrate the shields and explosive shot to tear into any resulting holes. Had Captain Rutherford been on his ship, he would have stayed still, letting his gunners and targeting computers have the best possible shot. But Rutherford was hurtling through space in a passenger pod with no engines, and whoever had taken his place on the bridge was considerably more cautious. He rolled away from Drake’s shots, and expelled as much ordnance trying to bring down enemy fire as to attack Drake’s ship herself.