Queen of the Void (The Void Queen Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “Drake knows Vargus already. She helped us, remember?”

  “Yeah, you were ready to go over to her. I remember that part. You wanted her bad.”

  Carvalho looked uncomfortable and spent a few seconds working at his controls. They were still drifting. Until McGowan gave orders, they would keep within visual.

  The rest of the task force drifted above and behind them. Guns were still out even though a full day had passed since the truce. In contrast, the ships of Catarina’s fleet—with the exception of the wounded Orient Tiger, now occupied by marines—sat in a tight clump ahead of them. The frigates clustered in front, guns retracted and shields down. The two Singaporean war junks sat with their sensor arrays fully splayed in a way that made them look like solar sails or the wings of giant beetles. A pair of Hroom sloops of war lurked below Orient Tiger. The rest were a collection of schooners, some strong enough to make trouble, others more for shuttling goods across jump points where the barges couldn’t get through fully loaded.

  “Drake would not have attacked her,” Carvalho said. “I do not think he was the one who told McGowan how to find her, either. He is too loyal for that.”

  “His loyalty is always to Albion. To the crown, mate.”

  “I am not so sure. You know, I do not believe that Drake knows even now. McGowan does not want to tell him.”

  “Now you’re just making stuff up, luv. Anyway, that bloke was right. It’s not safe to send a subspace.”

  “That is an excuse. Apex is the only one who could intercept it, and we have not seen them in six months.”

  “Hroom, pirates, Scandians.” Capp shrugged. “Plenty of reasons not to send a subspace.”

  “You are not convincing me, and you are not convincing yourself, either.”

  “Why wouldn’t McGowan tell Drake? Drake is the bloody admiral, and McGowan is only a captain.”

  Carvalho frowned at this. “I do not know. But I do not think Drake has been told.” He crossed his arms. “That is all I am saying.”

  Capp touched her com link. “Gillis, you down there? Good. Listen, mate, I want a subspace open.”

  “Now, hold on,” Carvalho said. On the other end, Gillis mumbled his own protest.

  “Just do it, yeah? I’m putting some words together.”

  “I did not necessarily say we should disobey orders,” Carvalho said as Capp began to type out her message.

  “Yeah, you did. Close enough, anyway. And you’re right. McGowan is our officer, but we know Vargus. She don’t deserve to be stabbed in the back. And if Drake is in on it, let him make the call. Now shut up and let me think. I saw Tolvern do this a bunch of times, but it don’t come naturally to me.”

  Moments later, she had the subspace composed and read it aloud to Carvalho. He was Ladino, and English was not his native language, but she still needed his help in getting it right. She took his advice and came up with a new version.

  Admiral James Drake,

  We have taken Catarina Vargus’s fleet and are holding her at Captain McGowan’s orders. She surrendered as a freebooter, but McGowan is calling her a pirate. Thought you should probably know.

  HMS Peerless

  “Thought you should probably know?” Carvalho said.

  “Well, I don’t know. How would you end it? Sincerely yours?”

  “And we are not on Peerless. The subspace signal would not match the cruiser, anyway.”

  “Drake’s gonna know it’s us. So will McGowan, if he snags it. But he won’t, right? That’s only the buzzards that can listen in, yeah?”

  A message from tech said that the subspace channel was good to go, and her finger hesitated above the send. She met Carvalho’s gaze and raised an eyebrow.

  “This is your idea, not mine,” he said.

  “But you put it in my head. So you own it, too. We all have our loyalties, yeah? They don’t always agree with each other. We can obey McGowan when he’s right, tell Drake when we think he’s wrong. Do what we think is best for Albion.”

  “I am Ladino, not Albionish. My loyalty is to my friends, and Catarina Vargus was one of them. Drake, even more. But all the same, I do not like sticking my neck out, not with a vindictive man like McGowan watching.” He hesitated, then let his breath out in a long sigh. Finally, he nodded. “Send the message.”

  Capp pressed the button.

  Chapter Six

  Olafsen was the first man off the boarding rocket after it had blasted across the void from Bloodaxe to the enemy ship. Once the tug of gravity indicated he was between the outer and inner hulls of the ship, he popped his harness, activated the mech suit, and clawed his way through the twisted opening and into the interior.

  The enemy vessel shuddered with impacts. That was Bloodaxe, continuing to hammer the Albion destroyer even as raiders broke through. The enemy ship was taking it from two directions; a second star wolf was attacking from the opposite side.

  The marauder captain emerged into a corridor. Two of his raiders came squirming in after him, using clamp hands to tear apart the walls and open a wider passage, and this delayed them for several seconds, during which time Olafsen was alone. The boarding rocket had sent a sonic pulse ahead of it upon entry, meant to stun enemies. That weapon saved his life.

  Six marines had taken up position in the corridor, anticipating the point of impact, and held assault rifles and hand cannons. But they lay slumped on the ground from the sonic pulse, moaning and trying to regain their feet. One man looked dead. A second marine—a woman—bled from her nose and ears and was barely twitching.

  Olafsen strode up to them, aimed his gun at the most lively man’s head, and pulled the trigger. The gunshot boomed in the narrow corridor, but Olafsen’s mech suit muffled the shot. Another marine rolled onto his back and grabbed for his weapon, and Olafsen shot him, too. He lifted a heavy metal boot and crushed another man’s skull. By now several other Scandians had entered the ship from his boarding rocket, and he stepped aside to let his men finish off the remaining three defenders, none of whom posed a risk.

  He touched the side of his helmet to activate his com link. “Where are you, Björnman? By the gods, you’d better be inside the ship, not knocking your head against the hull.”

  A rough chuckle answered. “You took your time getting over, friend. Get down here, I could use some help.” Gunfire sounded in the background.

  “What’s your status?”

  “I’ve got a dozen raiders down here, already. Two more rockets broke into the bay, but I can’t get them unloaded. Blasted marines are putting up a fight.”

  Björnman fell silent as the gunfire heated up on his side. He started to speak again, but Olafsen didn’t hear what he’d been told. Closer at hand, gunfire flashed down the corridor. A bullet pinged off his helmet, and two more dinged his armor at chest level. It was a group of marines, pushing toward the marauder captain and his handful of raiders.

  Another group of defenders reinforced the Albionish moments later, this one mixed marines and common crew, charging in from the other end of the corridor. Olafsen ignored this newer group, tossed a fragment grenade at the first collection of enemies, then dropped to one knee and fired. A fresh handful of Scandian raiders came bursting through the walls, and Olafsen led them in a charge after the enemy, war screams at their lips. Moments later, they’d driven the defenders back.

  Björnman came back on. “I’ve got twenty raiders now. But we’re still trying to break out. They’ve got a big gun—it has us pinned down. Could use your help.”

  “Hold on.” Olafsen called Bloodaxe. “Where’s my brother?”

  Jarn answered from the bridge. “Longshanks has broken into the power plant and the gunnery and is advancing toward the bridge. He’s facing heavy resistance, but he is within two blast doors of his objective.”

  Olafsen cursed and called Björnman. “You’re on your own. I’ve got to get to the bridge.”

  The gunfire from that end was intense. Björnman shouted his own insults and oaths. “Is
it Longshanks?”

  “Aye. He’s coming up from the underbelly, almost to the bridge already.”

  “Understood. Make ’em pay.”

  Olafsen now had twenty men. He’d rather have fifty before he made his move, but in the narrow corridors of the Albion warship, he could only press four or five ahead at a time anyway. The extra raiders would serve largely to secure his rear and launch side attacks to divert defenders. But if he was going to get to the bridge before Sven Longshanks, he didn’t have time to wait.

  He charged the corridor until his force reached the next airlock, which marked a bulkhead that led onto the bridge, if Olafsen remembered the schematic he’d studied before attacking the enemy ship. At least twenty enemies had taken a stand in front of the airlock and launched a ferocious defense. Damn these marines; why didn’t they surrender already?

  Bullets and grenades slammed into Olafsen and the lead raiders. One man’s mech suit cracked when hit by a grenade. Another raider tried to leap his body to get at the defenders, but fell under a hail of bullets and bombs from hand cannons. The mech suits were strong, but not invincible.

  Olafsen lost two more men, and took a sharp blow to his left thigh before he’d forced the enemy back. He’d killed several Albionish, but the biggest win was forcing them into flight. The defenders tried to shut the airlock behind them, but the Olafsen got two raiders wedged into the doorway, and their powerful mech suits held it open long enough for the marauder captain to get his men through. After that, he let it close. The ship was bleeding atmosphere already; any more broken airlocks and attacker and defender alike would suffocate.

  One more sharp firefight, and Olafsen and his surviving raiders, now numbering only eleven, with four killed and five abandoned in their crippled suits, cut down the remaining resistance and burst onto the bridge. He’d lost precious time along the way, and Björnman was still pinned down in the engineering bay.

  Olafsen expected to find the captain and the other Albionish officers either dead or with their hands in the air while Sven stood grinning, helmet under his arm and a cigar clamped between his teeth. So even as the enemy unloaded their rifles and pistols, trying to sell themselves dearly, the marauder captain was letting out a shout of victory to find that he’d beaten his brother to the prize. He hurled a stun grenade and ducked his head as it went off. The concussion struck him across the chest and his ears rang, even through his helmet.

  He lifted his head to find the enemy sprawled across the floor, groaning. Olafsen clomped toward them. He kicked away one man’s gun, grabbed another man’s shirt—this one going for a grenade of his own—and hurled him across the room. He found the captain, seized the man by the throat, and hoisted him from the floor.

  “Surrender!” Olafsen said in English.

  The captain’s eyes bulged. “Go to hell,” he said in a gasp.

  “Your crew lives if you surrender. If you resist, they all die. Horribly.”

  Olafsen nodded at his raiders as he said this. They’d been through this bit of theater before. Two men grabbed one of the crew, a middle-aged woman with graying hair who’d been rising slowly from the pilot’s chair. The woman struggled as they each grabbed one of her legs and pulled. The struggles turned to screams as the servos in the mech suits whined. A loud crack, and then one of the legs ripped loose in its socket. A bullet to the head ended her cries.

  Olafsen looked back to the captain. “Well?”

  He expected the man to beg for mercy, but instead, Olafsen gasped as a sharp pain hit his arm. The captain had got loose a knife while Olafsen’s attention was on the woman, and thrust it into the joint where the mech suit’s breastplate met the shoulder articulation. The knife penetrated the rubber and stabbed Olafsen just below the armpit. He shoved the man away with a shout, more angry than injured.

  “I’ll tear you apart!”

  The captain lifted an arm, flinching. He was younger than Olafsen expected, thirty or thirty-five. Time to set an example for the others.

  A blast stopped him in his tracks. A gaping hole opened on the far side of the bridge, and more raiders came pouring in. One of them was Sven. He stopped his men with a gesture. “You! Blood of the gods, how did you get here so fast?”

  Olafsen took off his helmet. His men kept working to disarm and pin down the surviving Albion officers. There were no more killings, and he decided that the brave-but-foolhardy young captain would keep his life as well.

  “It would seem that my men are braver than yours,” Olafsen said. “Or maybe I’m just a more clever, inspiring commander.”

  Sven took off his own helmet, still glaring and muttering, then seemed to notice Olafsen clutching the wound below his armpit. He glanced at the floor, where the bloody knife had fallen, and managed a smile.

  “Spirited bunch, these Albionish. Fought almost like Scandians.”

  “Aye,” Olafsen said. “Refused to surrender, too. We’ll have to take the rest of the ship by force.”

  “There is no more resistance, Brother, assuming you can put down the people giving you trouble in the engineering bay.”

  “I’m sure it’s over already.”

  Sven chuckled. “You might want to check with your boys. Last I heard, they’ve got all they can handle. That’s why I was surprised to see you here so quickly.” He glanced up at the destroyer’s viewscreen. “Took us two star wolves, too.”

  Up on the screen, Bloodaxe floated to starboard, while Thor’s Hammer waited off port. Several more star wolves were out of view, lingering back a few hundred thousand miles after their fight with the destroyer’s escorts, two torpedo boats and a missile frigate. The two brothers, rivals for control of the Scandian fleet, had each made a bid to take the main prize intact. But only one man had won.

  A quick call to Björnman confirmed Sven’s claim. The rest of Bloodaxe’s raiders had not yet fought their way out of the engineering bay.

  Olafsen forced the captives to the floor, where they lay on their bellies with their hands behind their heads. He sent his raiders to break into the engineering bay from behind. Sven, for his part, sent his men to seal the breaches leaking air from their new prize.

  “So you won, Brother,” Sven said, after the two were left alone with the prisoners. “I’ll claim my third of the prize, but you took the bridge, so you get the gods’ share—any coin or gold found on the ship.” He produced cigars, and Olafsen took his gratefully and let his brother light it.

  One of the prisoners tried to speak, but Olafsen wasn’t interested and kicked the man in the ribs. “Shut up,” he said in English, “or next time I’ll crack a few ribs.”

  “Impressive you still speak that jabber after all these years,” Sven said. “Something good from your little adventure when you were a boy. May as well put it to use and torture out some information. Or do you think you’ll dump them into the void while we continue on our way?”

  “Neither,” Olafsen said.

  “They won’t make good thralls. You can put them in the mines, but that sort always tries to break free, sabotage, or whatnot.” Sven shook his head. “You won’t get a good price.”

  “Don’t you wonder what they’re doing out here?” Olafsen asked.

  “Not really. Albion business. Point is, they were careless, and it cost them.”

  “We’re on our way to raid Albion territory, and at the same time they send these ships through into the Great Bear System.”

  “They’ve got their war against the aliens. Figure they know the birds came through Scandian territory, and now Albion wants to go after ’em before they reach Old Earth.”

  “With a destroyer, two torpedo boats, and a frigate?” Olafsen asked.

  “A scouting mission.”

  “Right, why would they do that? Why not send a whole fleet and muscle through to wherever they’re going? We’d have had to make a major battle of it. Instead, Albion sent a few ships and tried to keep them quiet. Like they were looking for something.”

  “Hmm.” Sven sat p
uffing his cigar in silence for a long moment while watching the bridge’s viewscreen, where two more star wolves eased in next to the destroyer, as if curious to inspect the prize. “If it’s important enough, they’ll come back, whether they lost a few ships or not.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Olafsen said. “How much is a destroyer like this worth?”

  “Stripped down in the yards or outfitted for raiding?” Sven asked. “Not as much as it used to be, but I’d still say five thousand kroner. Maybe six.” He grunted. “You schemer, you tricked me. I thought you were pinned down in the engineering bay, so I took my time.”

  “And if you overhauled the destroyer? How much to strip it down, build it up, and turn it into a star wolf?”

  “Three or four thousand more. I’ll pay you my third share plus fifteen hundred kroner if you’ll give it to me,” Sven added, as if thinking this sounded like a pretty good idea, now that it had been proposed.

  “Tempting, but no. Not yet.” Olafsen thought about how much to share with his brother. Not all of his idea, but some. “If you’re a starving man in a boat and you catch a fish, what should you do with it? Eat it, or cut it up as bait to catch even more, bigger fish?”

  Sven nodded. “Ah, yes. I see. Use it as bait, of course. You’ll have to sell the scheme to your crew. And I’ll have to do the same with mine. They’ll want their cut of the prize.”

  Olafsen clapped his brother on the shoulder with one of the mech suit’s oversize hands. “Believe me, once they hear my plans, they’ll be all too happy to wait.”

  Chapter Seven

  The first thing Catarina sensed when she woke was the smell. It was citrus, a lemon-lime scent that came in through the breathing tubes as they brought her back around. Her fingers tingled first, followed by her toes, then a strange, not unpleasant sensation ran across the surface of her skin as her body reawakened after stasis. She opened her eyes, but it was all light and shadow and made her head hurt.