“Still alone?”
“So far as we can tell.”
“If it’s a trap,” he said, “and I find myself in trouble, don’t be a hero. Just get out of here as fast as you can.”
“Hmm.”
“Tolvern, that’s an order. Do not come for me. Cut the tether and run. Am I understood?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Sir, with all due respect, I could tell you yes, I would abandon you, but I think we both know what I will do in the heat of battle.”
Chapter Six
Vigilant came in quietly, trailing Henry Upton at a distance of 11,500 miles. The slaver didn’t know Vigilant was there because Rutherford had never warned her; he couldn’t risk Drake having a spy on the galleon who could tip him off. Instead, Rutherford had waited cloaked at the jump point until Henry Upton came through and then followed stealthily.
Rutherford had half expected his old friend to ambush the galleon at the jump point, but the next most likely spot was Cold Barsa, where the lumbering galleon meant to fling herself around the planet to slightly increase her pathetic speed as she came in toward the tugs that would haul her in to Hot Barsa. And so Rutherford had shields down and weapons on standby as they approached the ice-covered planet.
Just inside a million miles of the planet, his tech officer reported the wake of plasma engines. Something big and fast had passed nearby a few hours earlier. Military, most likely, although the wake was too washed out to glean more than that. Rutherford’s pulse quickened. Admiral Malthorne had sent off the Third Fleet, and nothing else left in the system was big enough to leave that kind of signature. Nothing but Vigilant or Ajax, that was.
The bridge was tense. Commander Pittsfield was in contact with the gun decks and engineering, and there was chatter going back and forth that Rutherford did his best to block out.
“Engineering is asking to bring down the cloaks,” Pittsfield said.
“Negative,” Rutherford said.
“But sir, that leaves us vulnerable to laser fire.”
Rutherford fought down an angry retort, instead giving Pittsfield a withering stare. The commander turned quickly back to his computer display.
“Leave the cloaks up,” Pittsfield said into his com link. “Captain’s orders.”
It wasn’t that Pittsfield was wrong. Cloaking interfered with the primary shields. Laser and other concentrated energy fire that would otherwise be deflected harmlessly into space could cut right through the hull, even saw it right in two if placed properly.
But there were only two ways to detect a Punisher-class cruiser under cloaking. First was detecting the wake of its engines, as he’d done with Ajax. But that’s why Rutherford was drafting in Henry Upton’s wake. Second was an array of listener-whisperers, waiting silently to send their reports. There’s no way Drake had set up such a defense. He lacked both the equipment and the time.
It was the questioning of his orders that drew Rutherford’s ire. Earlier in his career, he’d have ordered a man flogged for insubordination at such a crucial moment. That anger sometimes got him in trouble; he’d often thought since Drake’s fall that he’d been the one destined to kill his career with a blunder, and not his friend. Most likely, Rutherford had always figured, he would draw his side arm and shoot someone who’d aggravated him. If it was an enlisted man, he’d probably escape the subsequent inquiry, but if it was an officer, unlikely.
He was still struggling with his anger when Henry Upton came in at Cold Barsa and bent its trajectory to whip around the planet. It vanished on the screen as it disappeared over the horizon of the cool white sphere beneath them. At five hundred miles a second, the two ships would circumnavigate the planet in less than a minute, and Vigilant would have her in sight again.
Rutherford still didn’t like losing sight of the other ship, not for a single moment. He counted the seconds, the icy surface of Cold Barsa nearly a blur below as they hurtled around after the galleon.
They came around the other side, and the viewscreen found Henry Upton. But she was no longer alone. The fat, turtle-like craft was still lumbering forward. But there, next to it, lay the long, lean shape of a Punisher-class cruiser. Its shields were up, the golden rampant lions stretching brilliantly alongside, the sun catching them in all their glory. Blackened scarring marked the surface where she and Vigilant had traded blows less than two weeks earlier.
Less than a minute had passed, yet already Ajax had harpooned the galleon like it was a star leviathan, the vast beasts that roamed the depths of space. Drake meant to board the vessel.
“Drop cloaking!” Rutherford cried. “Present starboard guns!”
#
Drake flew along the tether toward the slaver galleon with the rest of the boarding party. The five of them wore pressure suits with helmets and sat astride a boarding rocket, which looked like a giant green banana with a long, tungsten-steel ramming snout and hot gasses venting out the back side. Both ships, the tether, and the five men and women flying between them were hurtling through space at several hundred miles per second, but the moon and planet were eclipsed behind Ajax, with nothing but the starry void ahead. He couldn’t feel the enormous forward speeds, only the few hundred miles an hour zipping them the mile or so between the two ships.
Jane’s stern voice sounded in his helmet. “Deceleration in three seconds.”
Drake was strapped into his seat, every bit of him clamped tightly onto the boarding rocket, but the rapid deceleration shoved him forward against his restraints. The ugly, pitted surface of Henry Upton loomed. The nose of the banana launched free, spouting its own rocket. It followed the tether to the nose of the harpoon, which had expanded to open a passage to let them through the outer hull. The ram-like protrusion now disappeared inside. There was a flash of light. Gasses and debris came venting into the void.
It slammed against him as they burst through. Then they were inside and tumbling free of the boarding rocket as it released its restraints. They were between the two hulls, both inner and outer now breached, with air venting into space rushing past them like a hurricane.
The ship lurched as Drake and his companions struggled forward to get in past the inner hull before the breach was sealed. They were at the edge of the anti-grav field, and he still felt semi-weightless, bouncing along from step to step. He grabbed the wall to keep from stumbling, then bent to help Manx, who had fallen.
At first he thought the ship’s movement was the galleon pilot attempting evasive maneuvers. It had been less than a minute since Ajax harpooned her, and so far Henry Upton had given no indication that she knew she was being boarded.
“Captain,” Tolvern’s tense voice said from inside his helmet as he got Manx to his feet. “We’ve got trouble.”
“Use the chase gun. Show them who’s boss.” He was surprised that the galleon would be so foolish as to shoot at them, but it wouldn’t take much to settle matters.
“It’s Vigilant. Came in behind the galleon. Must have been cloaked.”
Drake muttered an oath. “Are they shooting?”
“No. Rutherford is demanding our surrender.”
Rutherford. Blast it. Where the devil had he come from? Whatever he’d done, it had been a clever maneuver, and as luck would have it, he’d caught Drake off his own ship. What would he do now? Was he ruthless enough to finish the job? Drake thought he was.
There was shouting on Tolvern’s end, but she’d covered the com link or pulled away, and he couldn’t pick up what she was saying. Then she came back on. “He’s testing our shields. I need to break the tether and evade. I’ll come back for you.”
“Don’t break free. Pull in closer. Hug the slaver tight.”
“But—” she started to protest, then seemed to get what he was driving at. “Yes, sir.”
During this conversation, Drake and the others had gained the inner hull and now removed their helmets and tossed them back over their shoulders, where they hung by their straps. Capp had one gun out—a standard-issue assault r
ifle—with another dangling from her waist. This was a nonregulation hand cannon. The others, Oglethorpe, Carvalho, and the boatswain, Manx, each had pistols and assault rifles. Carvalho also wore a saber, as well as a bandolier of grenades. Where the blazes had that come from? For that matter, where had Capp found her hand cannon?
The five of them stepped into the corridor just as two crewmembers opened the airlock at the end of the hall and came running toward them. One was human, the other Hroom, tall and thin, with pale pinkish skin and a high, bald forehead. They wore bulky packs, with hoses and nozzles in hand. They’d evidently come to spray the breach with a rapidly expanding foam. A temporary patch until engineering could more permanently seal the hull.
They were coming at a run and had so much momentum that they were halfway down the hallway before they seemed to register the intruders. The pair came to a full stop, turned, and began to run in the opposite direction.
“Stop!” Drake ordered, “or I’ll shoot.”
They didn’t stop. Capp lifted her rifle and squeezed off two shots. The human fell. The Hroom came to an immediate halt and raised his hands. Capp and Carvalho ran past the dead man and grabbed the arms of the Hroom, who stood head and shoulders above them.
“Manx,” Drake said, “seal the breach.” As the boatswain grabbed the pack and nozzle from the dead man, the captain, followed by Oglethorpe, strode up to Capp. “What the hell are you doing?”
Capp was stripping off the Hroom’s pack and checking for weapons. “You told ’em you’d shoot.”
“That’s what I told them, you fool. I told you there would be no shooting unless shot at. And you killed the human, too. Why did you do that?”
She turned the Hroom to face the captain. “This one is an eater. I figured he’d be more cooperative.”
The he was actually a she, Drake could see now. Taller than a male, with large eyes and even more delicate facial bones. Capp was right about the other part, though. A Hroom’s natural skin tone was mottled reddish orange, like the leaves of a maple tree in autumn. It was the color of the jungles of their home worlds, where it was said they’d evolved to blend with the colors of the giant, woody ferns. But when Hroom turned into eaters, the pigments bled from their skin, until they had a grayish-pink hue. Like this one.
Tolvern spoke into Drake’s ear. “Rutherford is giving us thirty seconds. Then he’ll shoot.”
“I need five minutes.”
“Dammit, Captain. I told you. We don’t have five minutes.” Her voice was even more strained than before.
“Deal with it, Commander.” Drake cut the link.
She’d better figure it out in a hurry. Circumstances had left them short handed, forced Drake to lead the away party himself, and that meant there was no other leadership on board Ajax but his commander. There was nothing he could do from here except jeopardize his own chances on board the slave ship.
He turned to the Hroom. “I’m looking for Nyb Pim. Do you know him? Where is he?”
“You have . . . ” the Hroom began in her high, cooing voice. She licked her lips. “You have sugar to eat?”
“Do I look like I’m carrying sugar? Of course I don’t. Do you know Nyb Pim? Yes or no?”
“I have sugar,” Capp said.
The marine reached into one of the pockets in her suit and pulled out a fistful of sugar packets. They were the size used for sweetening tea, but slavers sometimes used them to tempt children and thereby spread the addiction. It wasn’t much. A full-grown Hroom like the one facing them might eat two or three pounds of the stuff a day.
“Where did you get that?” he demanded.
“We’re on a Hroom slave ship,” Capp said. “Seemed like it might come in handy. I visited the mess and asked Cook to unlock the sugar cabinet.” She held out a sugar packet for the Hroom, who grabbed for it. “Ah, ah,” Capp warned and pulled it away.
Carvalho jabbed his gun to push back the Hroom, who was looking like she’d leap for Capp to get her hands on the stuff. “You lead us to our pilot, and you can have the sugar,” he said. “Name is Nyb Pim.”
The mere sight of the fistful of sugar packets had set the Hroom trembling. She couldn’t stop staring at it. The slave galleon had been traveling for many days through the void, and Drake wondered if the sugar rations had run out.
It was ruthless, uncivilized behavior tempting her like this, but it was effective. The Hroom gave the toss of her head that served the same purpose as a nod did to humans.
“Nyb Pim? I not know this Hroom.” She stopped, mouth pinching. This one apparently didn’t speak English very well. “He on . . . ship?”
“Where are the quarters?” Drake asked. “We’ll look for him ourselves. The rooms for the slaves,” he added, when the Hroom looked back in confusion. “Where are they?”
“All together. All in one place.”
“Probably one big room,” Capp said. “You know how these eaters get. Run out of sugar, and they’ll go nutso. Better to keep them in a single, central location.”
Drake found it hard to imagine Nyb Pim falling so far so fast that he’d go crazy when cut off from something he’d never tasted until a few weeks ago.
Henry Upton shuddered beneath their feet. No sound of an explosion reached his ears, but something had hit the ship. He’d told Tolvern to hug the galleon, thinking this would keep Rutherford from firing. Maybe she’d brought it too close, and they’d bumped.
“Take us there,” he told the Hroom.
“You come this way,” she said and gestured back the direction from which she and her human companion had come. She glanced down at his body, but then she stared at the sugar packets that Capp was zipping back into her pocket.
Using the spray sealant taken from the dead man, Manx had been hosing down the inner hull until he’d filled the breach with hardening foam. Now he tossed aside the pack and picked up his rifle. The five of them led their prisoner up the hallway in the direction she’d indicated.
Few space ships were built with comfort in mind, but the slave ship was particularly cramped and claustrophobic. The passageway was slender enough that they were forced to travel in single file, and once they rounded the corner, the Hroom could no longer stand erect, but was forced to bend so low that her long hands nearly dragged on the floor. Drake and the taller members of his crew had to duck to get through airlocks. The air had the oily smell of leaking lubricant and the tangy, almost citrus-like scent of Hroom.
The air grew chill the deeper into the ship they traveled. Slavers were kept cold to pacify the Hroom. They prospered in warm, almost sweltering conditions, but turned sluggish in cold weather. Their guide slowed her pace as they continued. She stopped where the passageway branched, blinking with evident confusion.
“Move it!” Capp said and jabbed her rifle into the alien’s back. This got the Hroom going again.
They squeezed through another open airlock door to find themselves in an even more narrow passageway, this one coming to a dead end. A human soldier with a stun gun stood in front of a door on the far side. He was scowling, his head cocked, as if he were listening to instructions through his ear piece. He spotted the intruders, and his expression changed to alarm.
“They’re here!” he cried to whomever he’d been talking to. He lifted his stun gun. “Stand back!”
Capp lifted her assault rifle. “Put that down or so help me I’ll knock one right through your skull.”
The guard threw down his weapon and put his hands on his head. Drake squeezed past both Capp and the Hroom. He yanked out the guard’s ear piece and tossed it to one side. “Open the door.”
“The hell I will. It’s full of eaters. We didn’t have enough sugar for them all.”
“Corporal, if he doesn’t open this door by the time I count to five, kill him. One . . .”
The guard slapped his hand against a touch pad outside the door. It scanned his palm. The door hissed open. A blast of cool air rushed out. It was dim in the large open room, and as Drake step
ped inside, his eyes struggled to adjust to the soft red lights along the ceiling. It was a vast, cavernous space.
The center of the slaver was apparently one huge room, a hundred feet square and maybe fifteen feet high. Bunks stacked to the ceiling, so close one on top of the next that a Hroom was pretty much forced to lie down. And there were three or four Hroom per bunk, all jumbled together. Some were naked, others wore rags.
“Nyb Pim!” he shouted. “It’s Drake. Where are you?”
None of the Hroom answered. Most lay motionless on their cots, their big, liquid-black eyes open and unblinking. Others were moaning and thrashing, spittle foaming at their mouth. They saw the two humans and began cooing, begging.
“Sugar!”
“Give me sugar.”
“I must eat!”
“Captain,” Tolvern said in his com piece. “I’ve pulled in the ship. We’re breaking through to the bridge. Have you got him?”
“I’ll have him in a second. I’ll meet you there.”
Tolvern’s maneuver must have worked. Hauling Ajax in next to the slaver had kept Rutherford from getting a clear shot. With luck, he wasn’t shooting at all, not being able to destroy them without also taking down the galleon.
Drake scanned the room desperately as he squeezed down the passageway between the stacked bunks. The citrus smell was enough to make one swoon. Capp came after him. She covered her mouth and nose with one hand. She slapped away a long, bony hand that groped for her.
“Disgusting. Absolutely friggin’ rubbish,” she said. Drake thought she was talking about the slaves, and was about to snap a retort, but then she added, “I ain’t much a fan of the Hroom, but I don’t care if it’s human, alien, or animal. You treat people like this, and you deserve a bullet.”
The floor shuddered again.
Tolvern spoke up. “Rutherford is giving it to us. Doesn’t seem to care if he takes out the slaver with it. What should I do?”
So much for the hope that Rutherford would show restraint.
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