Lords of Space (Starship Blackbeard Book 2) Read online

  Tolvern looked pained. “I told him to do it.”

  “You did?”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d get the antidote, or that you’d get all of it. And I thought you said you wanted to burn it to the ground on our way out of here.”

  “Not while we were in it! Tell Blackbeard we’re coming across.”

  Tolvern called in the order, and the deck gun swung around to attack the manor house again. Drake ordered the assault team forward. They ran, heads down toward the ship, hoping the deck gun didn’t turn toward them. The staircase dropped to the scorched temple platform, and they scrambled up it. Bullets pinged off the side of the ship.

  Soon, they were safely on board with the staircase rising behind them and the doors closing. Moments after that, the ship lifted off the steaming surface of the planet. As Drake came running onto the bridge, he checked the viewscreen to see them climbing rapidly, the jungle swallowing Malthorne’s estate below. Fire engulfed the laboratories, aided by the hot plasma ejection from the engines. A second, smaller column of smoke rose from the lord admiral’s manor house. No missiles or gunfire chased after them. The deck gun kept pounding the complex until they’d climbed above the clouds and lost sight of the surface.

  Nobody shot at them, and Drake began to hope that they might reach deep space without further incident. One final run past the orbital fortresses, this one easier since they’d be accelerating instead of slowing their approach, and then they’d be safe.

  But they came up over the north pole to discover two navy warships lying in wait. One was the destroyer HMS Javelin. The other was a corvette. The two ships must have been cruising the near space lanes a few hours earlier when Blackbeard made her approach, and had come racing in to join the fight. They now lay side by side next to the polar fortress, all batteries presented for an attack.

  Chapter Nine

  Drake stared at the enemy ships, frozen with indecision. Blackbeard could handle a single destroyer. And Drake was confident he could fight a destroyer and a corvette to a stalemate, hold them off long enough to make a run for it. He could accelerate faster than the destroyer and had a higher top speed than the corvette. If the corvette caught him before he could outrun her, she’d do so away from the destroyer’s protective guns, and Drake could quickly settle matters.

  But he didn’t dare lower his shields to give fight until he was out of range of that orbital fortress. Its guns overmatched anything that Drake could bring to bear, and it had enjoyed several hours to prepare for Blackbeard’s return. As he fled, the two warships in pursuit, the fortress would pound him with missiles, torpedoes, and cannon fire. He’d have sooner taken his chances against the lord admiral’s battleship. At least Dreadnought would be one single enemy, not three.

  Drake forced confidence into his voice. “Run us by the fort,” he told Tolvern, “and straight on toward the destroyer.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He could only pray that at least one of the enemy commanders would be incompetent, hesitate as he came in for the direct assault. Even then, he needed a whole lot of luck.

  Drake looked around the bridge, prepared to give a pep talk, but the confidence of his crew surprised him. Not one of them seemed to be panicking. Nyb Pim worked at the nav computer while Ensign Capp sent him numbers. Smythe, his hair still damp from the muggy drizzle of Hot Barsa, sat at his station, fingers flying over the console. Manx assisted at the defense-grid computer. Finally, Tolvern sat next to Drake, working her own computer. If she felt fear, it didn’t show on her face.

  His heart swelled with pride to see them in action. He’d lost many of the highly trained crew who’d manned his bridge during the glorious victory at Kif Lagoon, but he’d take this band of misfits over them any day.

  Gunfire and missiles lashed at Blackbeard as she raced toward the destroyer. The direct approach kept her profile as narrow as possible and allowed Baker and Smythe to fight off a good portion of the attack with countermeasures, but the ship shuddered as they took a missile blast on the bow, and more cannon fire pounded them front and aft. Jane warned of more incoming fire, a torpedo circling in from behind. Class-two detonation expected.

  Drake kept his straight approach as long as possible in hopes that the destroyer would fear being rammed. Such a direct strike would be catastrophic, but more so for the more slender destroyer than Drake’s cruiser. But the opposing captain seemed to recognize it as the bluff it was and stayed in position, as did the corvette, both ships attacking mercilessly with cannon and missile.

  Blackbeard sheered to starboard at the last moment and threaded the gap between the destroyer and the orbital fort. It was a space of only a hundred yards, and extremely risky at these speeds, shuddering under enemy fire and the strain of escaping the planet’s gravitational pull. But Tolvern, together with the pilot and subpilot, executed the maneuver perfectly, and they slipped through nearly unscathed.

  Unfortunately, the corvette had spotted the maneuver and was already accelerating to cut Blackbeard off and force her back into an open position against the guns of the destroyer and the fort. Drake’s shields had already taken damage on that side, and he couldn’t risk facing the corvette’s guns. But neither could he risk circling the planet to flee in the opposite direction. The commanding officers of the other five orbital forts were no doubt licking their chops at the prospect of setting off their batteries against this insolent pirate cruiser that eluded them earlier. Some of those forts were monsters compared to this little one.

  “Captain!” Tolvern shouted. She pointed at the viewscreen.

  Fresh worry clenched at his gut. The screen showed yet another ship barreling in from space to join the fight. It looked like a missile frigate, midway in size between the destroyer and the corvette. She was coming at such an angle as to pincer Drake between the destroyer, the cruiser, and the fortress, where he’d face a devastating four-way attack. He couldn’t even return fire; he didn’t dare bring down his shields.

  Missiles came zipping out from the frigate.

  “Brace yourselves!” Drake cried. “Jane, impact analysis?”

  His only hope, slim as that seemed, was to absorb the oncoming blow and escape in the chaos as the swiftly approaching frigate raced through the midst of the other ships.

  “Class-three detonation in five seconds,” the computer voice said. She sounded remarkably calm, almost sedate.

  Class-three? That was it? Was Jane drunk with a bottle of gin in some back alley hard drive of the network? That was some computer malfunction that could downgrade all those missiles and torpedoes into a single class-three detonation.

  The back of the ship shuddered. That was a rear missile Jane had counted. The others she seemed to have missed entirely.

  He gripped the armrests and stared at his console. The schematic showed all shields intact, with only the rear panel blinking yellow against a sea of green. Any moment . . .

  “Captain!” Tolvern shouted. There was no panic in her voice, only excitement.

  He looked at the viewscreen. The missiles streaked past Blackbeard and toward the two royal navy ships. The corvette launched countermeasures, but too late, and several of the missiles slammed into her bow. The final missile punched through the damaged shields, and a secondary explosion burst through the deck. The corvette broke off pursuit and limped away, venting debris and flaming gas.

  The frigate raced past them, engaged briefly with the destroyer, then wheeled and came in behind Blackbeard, as if to guard her flank. Drake stared, disbelieving. The frigate was helping him.

  “Who the devil is that?”

  “It’s not navy, sir,” Smythe said from his tech console. “Still analyzing her wake, but she seems like a Ladino craft.”

  “A pirate,” Drake said, wonderingly. It could only be. But who? And why?

  He didn’t wait to discover the identity of his mysterious benefactor, but ordered shields down and the main batteries deployed. They had reached a speed of almost a thousand miles per second a
nd were at the outer edge of effective fire from the orbital forts. He kept going another forty thousand miles, then pulled short and presented a broadside. The frigate veered off at an angle, then she, too, turned to present her main guns at the incoming destroyer.

  Javelin fired two more salvos at Blackbeard, then, eyeing the larger cruiser with the frigate in support, apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and fled back toward the safety of the orbital fortresses. Drake turned his ship back toward deep space and punched it. The frigate was fast and kept up the pace only a few thousand miles to their rear. She didn’t fire, but her guns and torpedo tubes were still at the ready.

  “Smythe,” he said. “I need a name, an identity.”

  “Still working, sir.”

  “Hurry up, dammit. I need something.”

  Tolvern tapped at her console. “Captain, the frigate has delivered a message.”

  “Yes?”

  “Sending it through now, sir.”

  Dear Captain James Drake,

  I bugged your ship before you left the San Pablo yards. It is continually sending me subspace signal indicating your current whereabouts. It was a simple matter to track you to the Barsa system, and I can find you wherever you go from here.

  You will follow me to the Seraphim system. If you do not, I will be forced to patch your signal to the Royal Navy, who has offered a rich bounty for your capture or death. If you fire on me, if you try anything treacherous, I will be delighted to let Lord Malthorne himself know of your whereabouts.

  CV

  CV? He remembered the young woman standing behind Captain Vargus’s shoulder on the bridge of Captain Kidd. Dark hair, flashing eyes. She’d worn a tight jumpsuit unzipped to show the upper swell of her bosom, and a ruby pendant that dangled at the end of a necklace to lodge in her cleavage.

  Catarina Vargus.

  Tolvern had shot her father dead during the battle at the San Pablo yards. Drake could only suppose that the daughter meant to seize his ship and maybe his crew, as well. Apparently, destruction at the hands of the Royal Navy hadn’t been enough revenge to suit her taste.

  “I’ve got it, sir,” Smythe said. “The name of the ship is the Orient Tiger. A pirate frigate. Vargus’s old warship before he sold it to buy Captain Kidd.”

  Sold within the family, apparently.

  “What does the message say?” Capp asked.

  He ignored the subpilot. Tolvern had read it already, and he wanted her insight. “Commander, what do you advise?”

  “Better to fight her now than stumble into an ambush in the Seraphim system. Maybe follow her until we’re sure we’ve lost those navy ships, then turn on her and show her what’s what.”

  “If we do that, she’ll carry through with her threat.”

  “Soon as we wipe her out, we do a full scan for this bug,” Tolvern said.

  “Will someone tell us what’s going on?” Capp said.

  “Not now, Ensign,” Drake said. “Engineering already ran a full scan coming out of the yards,” he said to Tolvern. “Whatever this is, it’s well hidden.”

  “Please tell me you’re not going to submit to her ridiculous demand,” Tolvern said. “There’s a trap on the other side of that jump. You know it.”

  “That was my first thought,” he admitted. “But I’m reconsidering. She took a devil of a risk, tangling with the Royal Navy just so she could work her revenge in private.”

  “More than revenge. She wants your ship.”

  “Yes, I thought of that, too.”

  After another moment of thought, he shared Catarina Vargus’s message with the rest of the officers on the bridge. Nyb Pim made a humming noise, an indication of surprise for a Hroom.

  Capp took a moment longer than the others to decipher the note, but when she had, she drew in her breath. “King’s balls.”

  “Yes, quite,” Drake said.

  In all truth, he was intrigued. And more than a little grateful that Catarina Vargus had saved him from destruction. A few months ago, he would have dismissed her as another pirate lowlife, good enough for the gallows, but not much else. Now, he was willing to consider that her motives might extend beyond murder and plunder.

  “Orient Tiger is changing course, sir,” Smythe said. “And she’s cloaking herself.”

  “Give me her plasma signature and I can follow,” Nyb Pim said. “So long as we stay within a few thousand miles. We’d better hurry, though.”

  Interesting. So the Hroom wanted to follow and see what Vargus wanted. He was usually more cautious than that. And then Drake saw the reason. The Seraphim system had easy jump points into the Hroom Empire. Go to Seraphim, and Nyb Pim would be a good deal closer to his ultimate goal of disseminating the sugar antidote.

  Drake made a decision.

  “Raise shields. Full cloaking. We’re going to follow this pirate and find out what she wants.”

  Chapter Ten

  Apex will kill you all!

  What the devil did it mean? Captain Rutherford had been puzzling over the phrase since hearing the captive spit it out. The Hroom had raved, fighting his restraints, threatening, begging for sugar to eat—everything, in short, but providing more information. Only that one phrase. A threat, a warning?

  Apex.

  Rutherford had tried for several more minutes to get through to the prisoner, but he eventually gave up and went back to the bridge to see if any more information had come through from the fleet. Harbrake called to discuss repositioning their ships against possible attack, and when that call ended, Pittsfield told him that Catherine Caites wanted to speak with him. Rutherford had sent the young lieutenant and her torpedo boat to investigate the wake of the ship that had presumably destroyed the two Hroom vessels. Perhaps she had new information.

  Rutherford took the call in the war room. He put Caites on the screen.

  She had a proud, confident air to her, and her eyes were the hazel color with green flecks common to the upper classes of the Zealand Islands. In fact, she reminded him a little of Helen Drake, James Drake’s younger sister. Helen was as pretty a girl as one could imagine.

  “Have you found anything?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. I followed the wake. The ship that left it has jumped out of the system for parts unknown.”

  “Parts unknown? You mean she jumped back to San Pablo, don’t you?”

  “No, sir. The ship left via a different jump point.”

  “That isn’t possible, Lieutenant. The next closest jump point must be two hundred million miles from here.”

  “They left via a temp point, sir. It’s already degrading.”

  Good heavens, a temp point? That was even more implausible. It was not uncommon to come across a temporary jump point, an unstable rift in space that would open to some distant point and then degrade within a few days or weeks. But nobody would jump into such a thing. Not willingly. Not until it had been charted, and temp points rarely stuck around long enough to chart. Go through and you might find yourself somewhere unpleasant—within the corona of a star, say, or next to a neutron star—or nowhere at all. Pop out into the void three light years from the nearest star with no other jump points in sight, and the temporary point collapsing behind you, and then what?

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” Rutherford let the skepticism color his voice as he prepared to end the call. “Send your data to my pilot.”

  “I already did, sir. Or rather, to Calypso’s pilot. He was a classmate of mine at the academy, and I asked if he’d look it over before I called. I didn’t trust my findings, as you can imagine. I wanted to be sure.”

  “Yes, well.” Rutherford didn’t know if he should be pleased with her initiative or annoyed at the breach of protocol. Perhaps a little of both.

  “He confirmed that it’s a temporary jump point. It’s already decaying, and he estimates it will be gone in less than five hours. And that’s not the half of it.” Caites hesitated, and Rutherford had the impression it was for dramatic purposes, not b
ecause she was uncertain. “My instruments were showing a subspace channel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For sending subspace messages. You know, the channels we open to communicate with the fleet. They’re wide enough to send through a stream of atoms. A subspace channel is a jump point, of sorts, only very small.”

  “I know the science,” he said peevishly. “But what does this have to do with the temporary jump point you claim you detected?”

  “Because I followed the wake of the mystery ship and it ended where I was detecting the subspace channel.”

  “What?”

  “It isn’t a subspace channel, it only looks like one. It’s a full-size jump point. An artificial jump point.”

  Caites sounded more than a little smug at this revelation. No wonder that she would be. If such a thing were true, it would be revolutionary. Neither Albion nor the Hroom Empire possessed the technology to force open a jump point big enough to send through a physical object larger than a stream of atoms. Not so much as a miniature probe, never mind an entire ship.

  The ramifications staggered him. It took tremendous resources to catalog the ever-shifting natural jump points. And those jump points occurred irregularly and in generally inconvenient places. But imagine a ship that could manipulate space whenever it wished and pop up wherever it wanted. No more long slogs from one jump point to the next. Such a ship would travel like a stone skipping across a pond and cross the entirety of charted space in a few days, one jump after another.

  Rutherford was still digesting this information when Caites cleared her throat. “Will that be all, sir?”

  “What? Oh, yes. Well.” Rutherford peered into the screen at this confident young woman. “Where are you from, Lieutenant?”

  “Albion, sir. West Canada, the coast opposite the Zealand Islands.”

  “I thought you might be. I can hear it in your accent. Who is your father? A gentleman, I presume?”

  “Yes, sir. My grandfather owned a prosperous estate, and my father’s eldest brother inherited it. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. Sir Reginald Caites.”