Starship Blackbeard

by Michael Wallace

  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 comm
unications 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.

  Ajax slipped by nearly unscathed. In a flash they were past Fort William and skipping across Albion’s uppermost atmosphere. Even the near vacuum a hundred miles above the planet was enough to slam into them at these speeds, and the ship shuddered like a lorry hitting a pothole before it skipped off into outer space again. Two more orbital fortresses opened fire as they blazed past, but nothing hit. They were racing into the void once more.

  Word came from the engine room that they had repaired the coupling on the second plasma engine. If the captain wanted, he could order it jettisoned and bring the ship to a halt. Then stand by and wait to be boarded.

  Tolvern stared at him. “Well?”

  “Malthorne will be screaming for blood,” Drake said. “Vigilant’s shields were poorly positioned. We hit her pretty hard when we went by. She’ll be a week in the yards. We might have even killed someone.”

  He glanced at the screen. The speed was 3,400 miles per second and climbing. The corvettes had come around the planet, but they were falling behind now. Even with Drake’s ship wounded, the corvettes would never catch him in time. Only Vigilant could do that. But there was no sign of her. Again, he was lucky that Rutherford was out of commission.

  “So you’re not surrendering?” Tolvern pressed.

  “Not yet. No.” He turned it over. “The lord admiral won’t let this go. The helium mines will be too good for us. We’ll all hang. Every last one of us, down to the cook.”

  “So we jump out of here?”

  “We jump,” he agreed reluctantly. “Where can you take us?”

  “I’ve got the first jump preprogrammed. After that, I’m helpless. We’ll need a pilot.”

  “Make your calculations. Where are we going, Gryphon Shoals?”

  “Where else?”

  Drake nodded. Of the jumps directly from the home system, that was the only one that wouldn’t get them killed. It was also a place he had never dreamed of visiting. Not unless he was leading a small fleet ready to clean it up. Never as a fugitive.

  He studied their speed as they accelerated. Soon they were at ten thousand miles a second, then eleven. Closing in on eighteen thousand miles per second, almost one-tenth the speed of light. Lights began flashing at seventeen thousand. Jane’s soothing voice warned that a jump was imminent.

  In principle, the physics were not much different from the temporary wormholes that could shoot a small object a few billion miles here and there throughout an individual star system. In practice, the disorientation was more severe the further you jumped. And it varied from person to person, with some weak-minded new recruits losing their minds the first time they went through.

  “Prepare to jump,” Jane said.

  Ajax entered the wormhole. He suddenly fe
lt stretched, his brain seemingly outside his body. For a few seconds he swore he was floating down a passageway with the anti-grav turned off. His body remained safely in the captain’s chair, while his consciousness floated past the crew mess, the quarters, the entertainment deck, and into the engine rooms, where he could see the plasma engines, still radiating heat though they’d been snuffed upon entry into the wormhole.

  When he regained his senses, they were eleven light years away, outside a small, cold red sun, in the system known as the Gryphon Shoals. He was a fugitive and wanted man.

  Chapter Three

  Drake waited in the war room. The lights were dimmed, since Ajax was drifting through space with all but essential systems dark. If Admiral Malthorne had sent ships through to look for them, Drake didn’t intend to make it easy. But even the dim light seemed bright over the post-jump headache that was currently splitting his temples.

  Tech Officer Smythe entered first, blinking and shaking his head like a dog coming out of the water. He sat opposite the captain at the big oak table and immediately pulled out a handheld computer, whose blue glow reflected off his face. Turning on the computer seemed to be a reflex, as Smythe stared at the screen with a glazed expression.

  “You look stunned, Smythe. Hope you don’t have the trips.”

  The tech officer looked up slowly. “Huh, what?”

  “The trips. Like you hit your head.” Drake had meant it as a jest, but the longer it took Smythe to respond, the more he worried that it wasn’t a simple jump concussion, but that the man really had come out of the wormhole with his brains scrambled.

  “No, sir. A little sluggish, is all.”

  Jess Tolvern came in next. She had a steaming hot towel twisted and wrapped around her neck. She looked at Drake with a gray, sickly expression. Some people came out stunned, others kept their wits but lost the contents of their stomachs. The first mate was a puker. She’d changed out of her red combat uniform to a gray service jumper.

  After emerging from his own stupor, Drake had gone back to his quarters. Only when he’d staggered up to his door and put his palm against the reader did he realize they’d probably changed the lock and cleared out all of his possessions. But no, his prints opened the door, and he looked about, surprised to see everything where he’d left it.