Lords of Space (Starship Blackbeard Book 2) Page 4

  “What the devil is it now?” Rutherford snarled. “If you’re going to give me some rubbish about ambush, you coward, then I swear to God I’ll—”

  “It’s about the jump formation.” Harbrake’s voice was as tight as a twisted rubber band.

  Oh. Yes, of course. They couldn’t go through the jump as currently arrayed. They had to funnel through the jump, and what’s more, Rutherford should pull them in tight, so they all came in one after the other. His ships would be helpless for a brief moment on the other end as the crews fought through their jump concussions. Coming through quickly was safer, as more rapidly recovering ships would be able to give cover to their slower counterparts in case there was, in fact, an ambush waiting.

  Rutherford looked around his bridge. Commander Pittsfield was staring at him, wide eyed over the outburst, while the pilot was frowning down at his hands. The tech officer blinked from his console, looking awkward.

  Harbrake glared in barely concealed fury from the viewscreen. His eyes didn’t look so much like a hound dog’s now. And he didn’t seem particularly craven, either, more like he was on the verge of challenging Rutherford to a duel.

  Rutherford wrestled his anger to the ground. It was that old rage coming through, and once again, he’d nearly snapped. He’d humiliated Harbrake in front of his inferiors, both here and on Nimitz. That was an inexcusable breach of etiquette for an officer and a gentleman. Rutherford’s father was a baron on the Zealand Islands back on Albion, but there had always been rumors of commoner blood in the family tree, and at moments like this, he wondered if it were not true. Otherwise, how to explain his lack of self-control?

  The moment called for an apology.

  I beg your pardon, Captain. I spoke hastily, and perhaps I’d begun to question the wisdom of dismissing your counsel.

  He couldn’t bring himself to do it. “You are right, Harbrake.” That was all he could manage, and he almost choked on that. “Calypso and Vigilant will take the vanguard. Then we’ll bring the destroyers through, followed by the torpedo boats. Finally, the last two cruisers. Nimitz and Richmond will emerge with main batteries at the ready. The rest will enter the jump point with all shields up.”

  Harbrake gave a curt nod and killed the connection.

  Rutherford stared at the screen as it resolved itself to a split display of the two destroyers flanking his ship. He took a deep breath and forced down the residual anger at Harbrake and the other captains. These were the men Malthorne had given him. He had no choice in the matter, so he had better start trusting them if he was going to challenge the Hroom closer to their core systems.

  Warp engine checks passed for the entire task force, and Rutherford gave orders for the final acceleration to the jump point. The ships pulled into line, one after the other, a few hundred miles apart, which was almost the same as touching at these speeds.

  The computer gave the three-minute warning.

  Commander Pittsfield passed this warning through the general com link. “Three minutes to jump. All crew seated and secured.”

  Vigilant was the first ship. So much time on a straight course, first in pursuit of the Hroom frigate and then racing toward the jump point. Now they had arrived.

  “Thirty seconds to jump,” the computer warned. “Ten seconds.” A pause. “Five seconds.”

  Then they were through.

  Entering a jump point was not like falling asleep, but exiting the other side felt a lot like waking, except as if from a blow to the head, not a restful nap. One minute you were here, fully conscious. The next, you were there, fighting to consciousness.

  Rutherford shook his head, groggy and stunned. A dull throbbing came from a spot behind his left eye, and more throbbing in the back of his head. He blinked, trying to remember for a long moment where he was and what he was doing. Lights were flashing, voices speaking in his head. His brain emerged from the fog like a computer booting up, the most critical information coming online first.

  Jump point. Vigilant. Task force. Enemy ship.

  “Captain!” someone said. “Captain, are you there?”

  It was Pittsfield’s voice. The commander sounded slightly more alert than Rutherford felt. Pittsfield was pointing at something. The viewscreen.

  Rutherford was almost fully alert now, and the headache was already fading. This was not the trips. It wouldn’t even be a particularly severe jump concussion, not for him.

  His eyes tracked where Pittsfield was pointing. An enemy sloop of war filled the viewscreen.

  Chapter Five

  The first breath of Hot Barsa’s atmosphere felt like a hose had been shoved into Drake’s mouth and steam pumped into his lungs. Blackbeard sat hissing behind them as a warm drizzle fell onto the steaming hot surface. The vines and other vegetation atop the temple platform lay smoking, leaves withered, dead birds curled on their backs with their leathery wings crisped.

  Carvalho bent and picked up something that looked like a long, blackened eel but with the appendages of a giant centipede. “Snakes with legs. How weird is that?”

  “Put it down,” Tolvern told him. “This isn’t a nature walk.”

  “Look at your hands,” one of his mates told the Ladino when he’d tossed it aside. The woman gestured with the muzzle of her assault rifle. “That yellow crap, what is it?”

  Carvalho made a disgusted sound when he saw the slimy yellow liquid that had come off the dead snake, and wiped his hands on his pants. Several of the others laughed at him. A harsh, jeering cry from some bird or animal sounded from the jungle, and the laughter died.

  Drake took in the dozen members of his team, who stood gaping at the forest of red ferns that grew around the temple platform on which they’d landed. More of the strange, leathery birds flew overhead, and insects the size of a man’s fist buzzed past like little helicopters.

  “García, Thatcher, Mora, take the perimeter,” Drake said. “You see anything funny, you warn Ensign Capp on the bridge. Let Blackbeard’s deck guns settle it—don’t you try to fight it out.”

  “You mean make a perimeter up here?” Thatcher asked in a low, nervous voice. He was one of the men who’d recently joined the crew on San Pablo, and at the moment, he looked as if he were regretting the decision.

  “Up here?” Tolvern scoffed. “What good would that do? You need a vantage that the ship doesn’t have.” She pointed to a pile of rubble that had tumbled from one corner of the temple platform. “Get down there and set up a lookout. Go!”

  The three men moved tentatively toward the steep staircase that led to the jungle floor. Drake glanced up at the sky. It had a maroon tint from the surface, and the sun was dull and hazy through the clouds, but scorching hot nonetheless. No sign of enemies in the sky. He knew the navy would be searching, but it was a big continent, and unless they’d been tracked, the search could take days. He didn’t intend to be here that long.

  Once Drake was satisfied that they were alone, he led the remaining members of the assault team down to the jungle. García, Thatcher, and Mora were hacking six-foot fern fronds to act as camouflage for the lookout he’d identified. The men moved tentatively along the edge of the jungle, as if expecting a tiger to leap out of the brush and drag them away.

  But the others glanced longingly in the direction of the three lookouts. Everyone but the three men in question knew that theirs was the safest part of the whole expedition, here within the protective fire of Blackbeard’s deck guns. The rest of the team had to slog through the unknown dangers of the forest and approach the rather better understood dangers of Malthorne’s estate.

  Smythe consulted his computer, then pointed. “It’s this way.”

  Drake eyed the nearly impenetrable growth ahead of them, all vines and brush and ferns with six-foot stalks.

  “It seems thickest in that direction,” he said. “Perhaps if we go south for a stretch until we get past the worst of it, we could hook back around again.”

  “I’m showing a ravine and a river that way,” Smythe
said.

  “That isn’t necessarily a problem,” Tolvern said. “We might be able to follow the riverbank.”

  “You’ll want to stay away from the river,” Nyb Pim said.

  The Hroom was the only nonhuman in the dozen people who’d come out of the ship, and the only one who wasn’t panting in the tropical heat and humidity.

  “What is it, those crocodile things you see on San Pablo?” one of the men asked.

  “Twenty-foot eels, actually,” Nyb Pim said. “But they’re not confined to the river. They can walk on their fins and come onto the bank to hunt. Some species hunt in packs.”

  Tolvern shuddered. “Twenty-foot eels that hunt in packs. We’ll stay away from that, thank you very much.”

  Drake wasn’t so sure. What were giant eels compared to firearms? But the human members of his team already looked spooked by their surroundings, excepting Carvalho, who had squatted to look at a strange, segmented bug-lizard thing crawling by his boot. He seemed fascinated by the strange world. The rest of them looked ready to scramble up the stairs to the ship. Some fierce pirates they had turned out to be.

  “Anyway, this direction is the shortest,” Smythe continued, wiping the moisture from his computer screen. “Some hard slogging, then we’ll hit the main estate road. We can follow that straight to the laboratories.”

  There didn’t seem to be an alternative other than picking up the ship and landing right next to the lord admiral’s manor house, which Drake had already ruled out.

  “We’ll go two-by-two,” he said. “The last three together. Front pair will take turns cutting a trail.”

  In addition to their firearms, the remaining nine members of the assault team had come armed with cutlasses, sabers, and machetes. They set into the jungle with a few tentative hacks, but as it started to give way, they picked up the pace. The vegetation was perhaps less woody than Terran plants, and cut easily, but it was so dense that it took time to forge a path. They made slow but steady progress toward where Smythe said they would find the road. A few minutes later, they reached a flat, sandy patch of ground that had been stripped of vegetation.

  “You will want to keep an eye out for lurkers when we cross bare patches,” Nyb Pim said. “Look for their dens.”

  “What the hell is a lurker?” one of the men asked.

  Drake actually knew this. The animal was found wherever Hroom lived. “Picture a giant lizard with six legs that lives in a burrow.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Tolvern said. She wiped at the sweat on the back of her neck. “How big are we talking when you say ‘giant’?”

  “The size of a lion,” he told her. “And venemous. They nest in colonies.”

  “King’s balls,” she cursed. “I beg your pardon, sir.”

  “Hold up,” Smythe said. “My map lost its bearings. I think someone is jamming our connection with the satellite mapping system.”

  “You want us to hold up?” Tolvern said. “Here?”

  “I’m not trying to!” he protested.

  “Are there pouncers in these jungles, too?” Drake asked Nyb Pim.

  “Undoubtedly. Hroom have lived on this planet for a thousand years. You’ll find pretty much everything here that you’d find on any of our worlds.”

  “What is it with you people and recreating your natural ecosystem?” Tolvern asked. She was kicking at the ground, as if trying to uncover lurker dens.

  “Humans do the same thing,” Nyb Pim said. “Your settlers bring Old Earth livestock and pets everywhere you go.”

  “Sure, but we aren’t in the habit of transplanting our vermin.”

  “Here it is!” Smythe said. “This way.”

  “On some worlds, vast flocks of goats and sheep have turned grasslands into deserts,” the Hroom countered as they set off again. “And you carry rats and mice wherever you go.”

  “Not on purpose,” Smythe said, looking up from his computer. “Right, Commander? Why would you transplant man-eating lizards?”

  But Tolvern seemed to have tired of the conversation, and she came up with Drake, who was taking a turn with the machete. He needed a break from the chatter, but didn’t mind his commander’s company.

  “Let me go next,” she said.

  “Didn’t you have a go already?”

  “Only for a few minutes.”

  Smythe had stopped again to study the computer, and Drake leaned on the machete and looked Tolvern over. Sweat soaked her tank top, showing more of her body than he was used to seeing. She had strong arms and legs, with a lean figure.

  “Why, Captain,” she said lightly. “I don’t usually catch you checking me out.”

  “As per fleet regulations, I avoid ogling my junior officers.”

  “I was joking.”

  Drake smiled. “So was I.”

  Curiously, she blushed. Or maybe that was just a flush from the heat. He turned discreetly away to let her regain her composure, even though he was unsure why he’d left her embarrassed. He hadn’t said anything improper, only light banter. To be safe, he should clear up any misconceptions.

  “I was only looking you over to see if you seemed tired,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Capp was teasing me earlier, and I might be overly sensitive at the moment.”

  “Teasing you about what?”

  “About being sweet on you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know!” Tolvern said quickly. “Here, give me that.”

  She snatched the machete and began hacking at the ferns ahead of them, swinging away madly as if to prove that she still had energy to spare. Drake stared after her, dismayed, as she began to disappear into the growth, until shortly he could see her primarily by the shaking ferns. What had gotten into her? This heat was making people crazy. The sooner they got to the road, the better.

  “Actually,” Smythe spoke up, “it’s this way we want to go.” He pointed in a different direction from where Tolvern was going.

  Drake sighed. “Commander! You’re going the wrong way. Hello?”

  The hacking sound stopped. “Yeah, I heard you,” came her disgusted voice from the vegetation some fifteen feet or so ahead of him.

  Suddenly, Tolvern cried out. Her shout was followed by a piercing, bird-like shriek, and then a gunshot. Another shriek.

  Drake unslung his rifle at Tolvern’s cry and waded after her. He lowered his shoulder and bowled through the broken, oozing vines and fronds. He came upon his first mate lying beneath some animal that resembled a giant, hairless cat with scales. It had a short, toothy snout, and its legs were wrapped around Tolvern. At first glance, it looked as though she was struggling as it tore into her, but the thing was motionless and bleeding from its head. The struggles were Tolvern’s attempts to shove the dead body off her.

  Drake helped Tolvern get free, even as she insisted she was fine and could take care of herself. She stood up and pawed at a slimy, yellow liquid oozing down the side of her face and neck. It was the same substance that had covered Carvalho’s hands when he’d picked up the dead snake. Some kind of blood, apparently. Drake used his water to wash it off.

  Others pushed their way in. The first to arrive was Nyb Pim. His red, mottled skin blended in with the vegetation. He looked down at the creature with his big, liquid gaze.

  “That answers the question about pouncers,” he said.

  #

  Nyb Pim and Carvalho were at the front of the column when they hacked free of the undergrowth and found the estate road. They called for the captain, and Drake pushed his way up to take a look.

  A gash of muddy, red soil cut through the jungle. The vegetation on either side was scorched, wilted, as if it had been burned as it encroached, but already there were red tendrils creeping out in an attempt to reclaim the narrow strip of cleared land. Muddy ruts pocked the road, hovered over by swarms of insects with metallic green and gold wings.

  Drake pulled the team back into the protective cover and ra
dioed the ship. Capp answered.

  “Everything okay, Cap’n?” she asked. “Those blokes on the perimeter said they heard a gunshot.”

  “We’re fine. Some creature tried to eat Tolvern, and she shot it.”

  “What about Carvalho? He’s being careful, right? If that big lug—”

  “Ensign,” he interrupted.

  “Sorry, sir. What is it, sir?”

  “We’re down in the weeds and running blind. What are you seeing out there?”

  “Nothing. No sign of the destroyer, and we ain’t getting shot at from the forts, neither. Got to figure they’re stirred up out there, but they don’t see us. At least, it don’t seem so.”

  “And the estate?”

  “Can’t spot it from here. Sensors aren’t picking up anything, but that don’t mean much, seeing as we’re in the middle of the jungle and all.”

  “I figured as much,” Drake said. “You see or hear anything funny—anything flying overhead, for example—you let me know.”

  He cut the link. The call had been a risk, as would any future communication, but the success of his plan relied on Malthorne’s men being ignorant of their presence. Assuming he was right, and the forts hadn’t warned civilians on the planet, there was no reason that estate security would be scanning for illicit communication.

  They were stepping tentatively onto the road when the rumble of an engine caught their ears. Drake ordered them back into the vegetation. A lorry rolled by a few seconds later, the tires hitting ruts and kicking up muddy water. Drake peered through a break in the vegetation and spotted two men with assault rifles sitting in the back, perched atop crates of supplies. Cigarettes dangled from their lips. The lorry itself was driven by a Hroom with the pale, pink skin of a sugar eater.

  Drake waited until the lorry was gone before he poked his head back out and listened. No more vehicles, only the incessant buzz of insects and the distant screech of birds and animals.

  Smythe pointed in the same direction taken by the departing lorry. “That way to the manor house and labs.”