Starship Blackbeard Read online

  Tolvern looked around the room, a half smile at her lips. “What a pig sty. How do you live in such filth?”

  “Funny girl,” he said, wincing as he bent to grab some headphones and stick them in a drawer.

  Together, they picked up the books that had been knocked out of his shelves by Vigilant’s guns. In a moment, they had everything straightened up.

  His room was small by land standards, but of course it was still the largest quarters on the ship. He had his own bathroom, a small kitchen so he didn’t have to eat all his meals in the officers’ mess, and a small nook for reading that also boasted a great audio system on which he listened to classical music, Bach and Judas Priest being his favorites of the old masters.

  But it was such a small space that even a single item out of place made it feel cluttered and unlivable. It was only a sanctuary from daily life on the ship if he kept it spotless.

  He’d been to Tolvern’s room once, and that was two years earlier, during a rare lull in the war, when they’d been able to celebrate Twelfth Night like civilians. Tolvern had acted as captain, and he’d played her cabin boy. He appeared dutifully at her door to escort her to the bridge. She’d cracked the door just enough to slip through sideways. But he’d caught a glimpse inside. Dirty clothes and dishes everywhere. Drawers hung out, the bed was unmade and askew in the room, and pictures of her parents, nieces and nephews, and the family dog had been tacked haphazardly to the walls. Half-read books lay spine up on her little desk.

  “Captain Tolvern,” he’d said in a tone of faux concern, “have you called the MP? It seems you were robbed during the night.”

  Now he looked her over more closely. Her eyes were red, with bags beneath them, and her hair was mussed, and her uniform crumpled. One of the buttons of her vest was undone, and she had what looked like a grease stain on her pant leg, as if she’d eaten standing at the computer instead of in the mess.

  “You should have called me earlier. You must be fifteen hours over your shift.”

  “Eighteen and a half,” she said. “I don’t dare leave the bridge for more than twenty minutes. Afraid I’ll come back to find a new regime in place.”

  “The problem with mutiny,” Drake said, “is that when you’ve finished you’re left with a crew of mutineers.”

  She grimaced. “It’s not the mutineers. Corporal Capp and the other prisoners worry me more. Her lover, that fellow Carvalho—I swear he’s a pirate, or I don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  He cast a glance toward the bathroom, needing a hot shower, followed by several cups of even hotter tea. When he glanced back, Tolvern was stifling a huge yawn. The tea could wait, he decided.

  “Give me five minutes,” he said. “Then you can brief me in the war room before I send you down. No, better yet. Come talk to me while I get cleaned up.”

  He went into the bathroom and turned the water to maximum heat in the hope that it would cut his headache, which was starting to return. Tolvern stood outside the bathroom while he showered, shouting in to him what had occurred since the doctor drugged him up.

  While still in the Barsa system, she’d received a message offering amnesty if Drake and his crew would surrender to the Royal Navy. She’d ignored the request, figuring that it was a trick, and continued to the jump point.

  They’d jumped to Fantalus, a system whose binary stars left its planets alternately boiling or frigid and which was therefore uninhabited except for a few easily avoided outposts. They were now racing toward the next jump, on their way back to the Gryphon Shoals. Tolvern didn’t know where else to take them. Until they had their pilot back, they were stuck with what Capp could do, which was very little. Tolvern figured that they might be able to find someone to finish their repairs in the shoals.

  That was unlikely, Drake thought, though he didn’t say this aloud. From what Tolvern reported about their damage, he figured they’d need at least a week in the yards and about twenty thousand pounds to complete the repairs. This was a military vessel; they had no money on board except what pocket change could be found in possession of the crew. Drake thought he might have a few guineas and a couple of half crowns, and doubted anyone else would do much better.

  Anyway, the operations in the Gryphon Shoals were small-time. Ajax needed major shipbuilding prowess. And that meant Nyb Pim in the pilot’s chair.

  Unfortunately, the news wasn’t good for the Hroom pilot. He’d only been an eater for a few weeks, and Drake had been under the impression that the relationship between Hroom addiction and detox proceeded in a non-linear fashion. A Hroom who’d been an eater for five years might need a decade to recover, but a Hroom who’d only been on the sugar a few weeks might only need a few days. If that. The pilot should already be pulling out of it.

  Drake told her this as he grabbed his towel and climbed out of the shower. He looked up from pulling on his underwear to see Tolvern casting a surreptitious glance at him from where she stood outside the bathroom. She met his gaze and looked away, blushing.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “Doc checked me out. Nothing else broken.”

  “What? Oh. Well, I was wondering,” she added quickly. “You slept long enough. But now that I’ve had a good look, you seem healthy enough. A few bruises.”

  “My apologies, Commander. I meant to get up earlier, I really did.”

  “Anyway,” she continued as he came into the front room and grabbed his socks and shoes, “I’m wondering if someone is still feeding him sugar.”

  He gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean?”

  She told how she’d caught Carvalho and one of the other prisoners, a man she’d since discovered was named Lutz, standing outside the isolation cells, scheming.

  “I went back down a couple of hours later to see if Nyb Pim would be more reasonable, or if he’d try to attack me again. He was twitching in the corner. Wouldn’t respond.”

  “Sugar swoon?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe that’s a symptom of withdrawal. I asked Doc—he said either was possible.”

  “So you’re thinking they got to Nyb Pim, told him they’d bring him sugar if he . . . what, exactly?”

  She shrugged. “Nyb Pim might have promised all sorts of stuff to get his fix. Maybe he can deliver, maybe not. Smythe was able to pull up info on Carvalho. He was arrested for selling military supplies to civilians on the black market. This seems like something he’d do.”

  “We’ll soon put an end to it.”

  “I already did. Lutz and Carvalho are in the brig. Took them at gunpoint myself.”

  That was a problem. On the one hand, Drake was furious that the two men would be undermining his attempts to get their pilot out of isolation and back where he belonged. Some captains—Rutherford came to mind—would have grabbed the man, had him whipped and his possessions searched. Then dumped him out the airlock if anything turned up. Maybe in the heat of battle, Drake would have done the same thing. But now was not the heat of battle. Now he was short-handed.

  “What about Capp?” he asked.

  Tolvern looked proud of herself. “I waited until she was off shift and asleep in her quarters before arresting her friend. She’ll be up soon, though. I imagine we’ll need to massage things. Carvalho is pretty mad. Lutz actually threatened me.”

  “We might need to release them.”

  “What? No. Captain—”

  “It’s a delicate situation. We barely have crew enough to fly. Capp might be Carvalho’s lover. Imagine if she refuses to navigate. We’re suddenly drifting helplessly through space with no way to jump.”

  She jutted out her chin. “We’ll find a way.”

  “The Fantalus system is as good as uninhabited. The closest settlement is five light years away. The plasma engines top out at twelve percent light speed. I suppose we could send out a subspace distress signal and wait to see who shows up, but I doubt we’d like the result.”

  “And you think letting them go is the answer? I know what I saw.”
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  “Then there are the other prisoners. What are they going to think if we throw their mates in the brig based on a suspicion?”

  “The devil take them all. Sooner we dump these villains, the better.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “But until then, we’ve got to work with the crew we’ve been given.”

  He didn’t point out, though he’d been thinking it more or less continuously since the mutiny, that Tolvern’s rash decision was the cause of this entire mess. If she’d done her duty, obeyed orders no matter where in the fleet they’d sent her, they wouldn’t be running for their lives with a bare-bones crew with poor discipline and suspect loyalties.

  Except Drake was no longer certain the mutiny was a mistake. Well, Tolvern’s motives were certainly mistaken. But some curious things had turned up. What had happened to Nyb Pim was chief among his concerns, but he was also wondering why Rutherford had broken pursuit to go back and rescue the slaver. Drake had made the suggestion himself, but he hadn’t expected the man to take the bait. In fact, he’d been fully prepared to surrender so as to save all those humans and Hroom. Did Rutherford truly break off to rescue the crippled ship, or did he break off out of sympathy for his old friend? Drake couldn’t decide.

  And then there was the curious message offering a pardon if Ajax surrendered.

  Why would they do that? A trick to recover the cruiser, as Tolvern suggested? Surely Admiral Malthorne would never do such a thing. The man’s pride wouldn’t allow it, for one. For another, both Malthorne and Rutherford would know that Drake would recognize a bluff when he saw it. Discipline was so precarious in the lonely depths of space that mutiny must be put down with all violence. They would never offer amnesty, unless . . .

  What if there had been something, or someone, on the slaver of critical importance? And now they thought he had it.

  He needed to speak to Nyb Pim. And he couldn’t do that until he had the man detoxed. And that meant imposing discipline on his broken, rebellious crew.

  Drake buttoned his jacket and told Jane to open all channels. Tolvern gave him a curious look.

  “This is Captain Drake speaking. All hands are to report at once for a ship-wide meeting. If you are currently bleeding from a chest wound or your finger on the button is the only thing preventing an engine meltdown, you may hail me with your excuse. Otherwise, you will appear on the bridge by 0445. Refusal of this order will be considered mutiny and treated accordingly.” He ended the transmission.

  To Tolvern, he added, “Release the prisoners.”

  Chapter Ten

  Drake stood in the center of the bridge with his hands clasped behind his back. The last person in the room was Carvalho, who wore a deep, angry scowl. He shot a poisonous glare at Tolvern, then cast a glance at Capp, who sat at the blacked-out nav computer, rotating her chair on its pivot and scratching idly at her lion tattoos. Barker stood near the door, by one of the boatswains and a young engineer. He had a computer in his palm, and he was surreptitiously glancing at it, seemingly unable to turn away from the repairs for even an instant. Smythe was doing the same over at his console, but for all Drake knew, the tech officer was playing Romans vs. Soviets again. Even the cook wore a sauce-splattered apron and carried a ladle in hand, as if to make his own point about how critical his work was.

  Tolvern leaned against a cart she had wheeled in from the mess hall, and a few people pointed at it and whispered. Others were chatting idly amongst themselves, paying no attention to anyone or anything but their own petty concerns.

  The lack of discipline had infected the entire crew. That would change now.

  Drake pulled up a viewscreen. Nothing but deep space, an unfamiliar swath of bright, cold stars. Red, blue, yellow, orange. A glowing white shroud sliced along the y-axis from their point of view, and to starboard lay the bruised purple smear of a vast nebula, like a royal cloak covered with glowing diamonds and rubies.

  “Thirty-seven hours until the next jump,” he said. Most people stopped talking, but a few whispered conversations continued. “In total, we’re three days’ travel from the nearest planet with a breathable atmosphere.”

  He drew his gun and pointed it at Corporal Capp. The conversation died. Capp stiffened and stopped swiveling in the pilot’s chair.

  “If I shoot the corporal, we won’t be able to find the jump point.” He pointed the gun at Barker. “If I kill the chief engineer, the damaged engines will melt down.”

  Drake slid the gun back into its holster. He walked to his chair and sat down, then turned it to face them. He brought up his computer. “If I initiate certain emergency protocols, our atmosphere will vent out. Right there you have three people standing between you and death. But it goes deeper than that. Anyone in this room could kill himself and all of us. Push the wrong button, lean against an armed torpedo tube when it’s closed . . . we’re all gone.”

  This was a bit of hyperbole; there were safeguards against random mental breakdowns and general dumbfoolery. But he had their attention now.

  “And if that isn’t enough,” he continued, “the might of the Royal Navy has turned its attention to us. They will blow us straight to hell if they can. One careless subspace message, and we might pop out of a jump point to find Dreadnought herself waiting to devour us.”

  He gestured at the viewscreen, and all eyes went to it. “That’s the void. There’s nothing out there but empty space. People seem to forget that. Carelessness, lack of discipline—we’re one false move from dying at any moment.” He nodded at Tolvern.

  On his insistence, she’d gone back to her room to change her jacket and brush her hair and had come back gulping hot tea. She hardly looked fresh or well rested, but she’d managed to feign something approaching alertness. Now she cast a glare across the room.

  “Some of you don’t seem to know your positions,” Tolvern said. “And circumstances have forced changes in other areas. So that there can be no doubt, let us review them now.” She glanced at her hand computer. “Chief Gunner Barker, you are now head of engineering as well. Oglethorpe has a brevet to sublieutenant, and you may assign him duties as you see fit. Manx . . .”

  She went through the list. The cook was now alone, as was Doc in medical. Nurses and assistant cooks were placed, temporarily at least, in more critical roles. Carvalho went to engineering, something mechanical that kept him away from critical systems. His fellow schemer Lutz would work with the boatswains on a shift schedule that kept the two men from overlapping their down time. Carvalho’s lover, Corporal Capp, would stay on the bridge where the officers could keep an eye on her. Drake had more information on that score, but Tolvern didn’t reveal that yet.

  “Are there any questions?” Drake asked.

  Capp waved her hand. “Yeah, Cap’n. I got one.”

  “Stand up when you address your captain,” Tolvern snapped.

  Capp rose from the chair. “Excuse me, Commander Tolvern.” Too much emphasis on that last part to be sincere. Capp looked back to the captain. “Do we have any sort of plan, Captain? Or are we just playing at navy discipline here? They ain’t gonna let us back in because we start salutin’ and wearing our uniforms all pressed and nice.”

  “I’m glad you asked that,” Drake said. “We need repairs beyond what we can manage in transit. That means putting into a yard. Ideally, this would be a naval yard, but since that is impossible, it means going to one of the Ladino worlds or maybe a New Dutch port, outside the control of the kingdom. It’s likely to mean some nonstandard tech.”

  Some of the more alert sorts, including both Capp and Carvalho, but also Barker, Smythe, and several others of the original crew, passed looks among themselves. How would they pay for such a thing? And why would they be cobbling on foreign tech if they didn’t mean to keep flying around the sector away from the fleet? No doubt many of them had already discussed these doubts privately.

  He didn’t have answers yet, so before anyone could voice these questions, he pressed on.

  “Corporal Capp
, you’ve done well navigating us this far,” he said. “I see no reason why the navy refused your attempts to become a pilot.”

  Capp’s eyes widened, and for the first time the slouch left her posture.

  “But you have a good deal to learn. You’re being promoted to subpilot and brevetted to an officer—ensign, level two. You will train under Nyb Pim when he returns to the bridge.”

  “But he’s an eater. How am I supposed to—?”

  “He’s not an eater. Someone trapped him, and I’m going to find out who. Meanwhile, he’s going through detox. Commander?” Drake nodded at Tolvern again.

  She opened the cart and took out several sacks of sugar, containing about ten pounds each, together with a box containing sugar packets. The cook said this was all he had in the kitchen. It had been under lock and key; there were Hroom in the fleet, after all, and plenty of sugar smuggling.

  Tolvern carried the sugar to the incinerator. The sacks were too big for the little chute on the bridge, so she tore them open and poured the sugar down it. Then she emptied the packets into the incinerator as well.

  “Naval regs prevent sugar being held privately,” Drake said as she worked, “but I’m declaring an amnesty through the end of today. Turn it in to Commander Tolvern, and there will be no consequences.”

  “No sugar at all?” someone grumbled. “Not even in the kitchen?”

  “The only Hroom on board is in the bloody isolation cell,” someone else said.

  “We’ve got a little honey on board,” Drake said. “Not much. We’ll save it to sweeten tea. Cook tells me it will last about a week if rationed.” Several people grumbled or scowled at this.

  “If I hear so much as a hint that someone has a secret stash, figuring ‘what’s the harm, it’s not like I’m going to do anything bad with the stuff,’ the next step will be to put every last bit of tea on board down the incinerator. I’m as Albionish as anyone here. If I have to give up my tea, I will be very cranky. Heads will roll.