Starship Blackbeard

by Michael Wallace

  A tall, bony man, almost built like a Hroom himself, spotted them and came over. He was one of the few wearing a hard hat, and as he approached, he took it off and ran a hand along his buzzed, glistening scalp. Sweat stained his armpits.

  “This is Commander Tolvern, my first mate,” Drake said to him. To Tolvern, he said, “Hubert Rodriguez. He owns this place.”

  She took the sweating, greasy hand Rodriguez offered, but wiped her hand on the back of her leg as soon as the man turned back to the captain.

  “Wasn’t pleased to see your friends show up at the yard this morning,” the man said in Ladino-accented English. “I know some of these people. Cutthroats and thieves.”

  He drew out this last word: theeeves.

  “Believe me,” Drake said. “I’d rather have fifty royal marines to back me up. It doesn’t seem that any are forthcoming.”

  Tolvern cast her eye about for the woman Drake had entrusted to take the captured ship down to the yard. “Where is Henny Capp?”

  “Waiting in my office,” Rodriguez said. “She won’t let her hand off the money bag.”

  “I’ll bet,” Tolvern said with a grunt. “Question is, you got anyone keeping an eye on her?”

  “Two of my men. The money is safe for now. I would not put down a long-term wager, however. Not if you have run afoul of Captain Vargus. He has a fearsome reputation.”

  “I’ve taken that reputation from him,” Drake said with a nod toward the dissolving wreckage of the pirate’s former ship.

  “We will see.”

  Against Tolvern’s better judgment, Drake had confided with the head of the yards. Rodriguez had too much money in this operation to be turning against legitimate customers. Sure, he could score a quick payoff if he betrayed them, but then who would trust him with their ship? What’s more, there was the promise of bigger prizes to come if he got Captain Drake fixed up and out working mischief again.

  “Anyway, I have not seen any sign of Vargus or his crew,” Rodriguez continued, as the three of them made their way to a metal staircase that snaked its way up to a catwalk that hooked over to his offices overlooking the hangar. “He knows this is neutral territory. If there is any fighting San Pablo will be closed to him, now and forever more.”

  “He’s desperate,” Tolvern said. She cast her eye across the hangar, looking for suspicious movement, anyone who seemed to be paying them unusual attention. “Figure he’d trade one friendly port for a fresh ship and a chance for revenge.”

  They walked across the catwalk and entered Rodriguez’s office. A wave of cool, filtered air washed over them, and Tolvern took big gulps, grateful to be away from the smell of lubricant and solvents and the muggy, smoggy atmosphere of San Pablo itself.

  Capp sat behind a metal desk, her tattooed forearm resting over a heavy sack of coins, her side arm on the desk beside her. A computer screen hung from one wall, showing the outlines of the pirate ship and movement of cranes and workers, but she paid it no attention. Instead, she stared at two men in brown jumpsuits who were armed with shotguns and standing in either corner of the room.

  “You see,” Rodriguez said, not to Drake and Tolvern, but to Capp, “I was not going to turn over the money and then steal it back from you.”

  “I ain’t so sure of that,” she said. “You mighta sent your goons to rob me, then claim they went all rogue and crap.” A nod. “Hey, Cap’n. Commander.”

  Tolvern stared at the woman. “Where’s your friend?”

  “Who? You mean Carvalho?” She shrugged. “He’s about. Somewhere in the city, I figure.”

  “Right.” She let the skepticism come through in her voice.

  Capp frowned.

  Drake looked around. “Nothing looks amiss here.” Then, to Capp, “We all need to be cautious. Come back to Ajax with us.”

  “What, you don’t want me to stay with Captain Kidd, keep an eye on things as they take her apart?”

  “We have a lot of money here, and that makes us a target for robbery,” Drake said. “Better if we stick together. In case there’s an ambush, you know. And I’m not talking about from Rodriguez or his men.”

  Something passed over Capp’s face. It wasn’t confusion—she’d picked up what the captain was insinuating.

  “Wait a minute. What are you saying?”

  Tolvern put her hand on her side arm. “Stand up, Capp. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Capp cursed. She started to move.

  “Touch that weapon, and I’ll blow you to hell,” Tolvern warned.

  “Do what she says,” the captain said in his stern voice, sounding to Tolvern’s ears like his father, the baron.

  Capp stood and pushed away from the money and the desk. Anger and betrayal flashed over her face. Tolvern wondered if she could have got it wrong. What had she seen two nights ago in the city? Could she have misread the situation, and Carvalho and Capp hadn’t received a hefty payoff for betraying them to the pirates?

  “I don’t want bloodshed,” Rodriguez said as Tolvern moved toward Capp with her gun leveled. “If you’re going to kill traitors, do it on your own turf, not my spaceyard.”

  “I hope bloodshed will be unnecessary,” Drake said.

  Capp blanched at this talk. She didn’t move as Tolvern groped her from head to toe. Tolvern lifted the other woman’s trouser leg and removed a long dagger strapped to her shin. But there were no other weapons or items of interest. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but again she had the sense that she’d made a mistake.

  Drake took Capp’s gun and handed it to Tolvern as the commander backed away from the desk.

  “Go ahead, sit down,” he told Capp. “We’ll do this in a civilized manner.”

  “I don’t deserve this,” Capp said. “I did everything you said. I was guarding the money, didn’t take none of it.”

  “It’s not the money in front of you that’s the issue,” Tolvern said. “It’s the payoff you received the other night.”

  “What do you mean?” Capp’s voice was sullen.

  “Commander, tell her,” Drake said.

  Tolvern explained how she’d come out of the washroom to see Carvalho receiving a purse stuffed with coins. Hundreds of pounds worth, it seemed. The Ladino had tucked this away, then apparently shared whatever information he had with Capp. There was a long pause when Tolvern finished.

  “Yeah, there’s money. But it ain’t what you think.”

  “I hope not,” Drake said. He sounded stern, but sincere. “But you can see how it looks very bad. As if you sold us out. Took payment from one of Captain Vargus’s men. What is the plan, to give him Ajax? Were you going to kill us to ease the way?”

  “No!”

  “No, what?” Tolvern said. “The killing part, or the part about Vargus paying you off?”

  “All of that. I swear to God. It was money some bloke owed me. Owed us, I mean. From way back when.”

  Tolvern scoffed. “We’re not idiots. You’re trying to claim you show up your first night in San Pablo and some honest creditor seeks you out at a bar, anxious to settle an old debt?”

  Capp didn’t answer.

  “I’m losing my patience,” Drake said. “I don’t want you to be guilty, I want there to be a good explanation. I’m short on crew, and I can’t be tossing people for no reason. Especially not one who showed she could be useful, like you did. That’s why I promoted you. That’s why I told you to start finding me a crew.”

  “I’m obliged, I really am. I wouldn’t do you no wrong, Cap’n. Please.”

  Capp sounded sincere, and Tolvern wanted to believe her. Carvalho was a scoundrel, but the commander had been warming to this former marine with the rough speech and swagger.

  “But I won’t have traitors in my crew,” Drake said. “I won’t be lied to.”

  “It’s the crew you told me to raise.”

  “Yes?” Drake said.

  “I started putting out the word, and it turned out that there were plenty who wanted to join.
City is swarming with ’em. Lotta tramp merchants put out of business. Smugglers and the like who lost their ships in the war. I thought, well, instead of collecting names to pass on, I’d get people to pay a little something to get on the list, know what I mean? Couple of coins here, couple there—Carvalho knew this bloke, see, who knew other blokes.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Drake said. He still sounded stern, but some of the tension had dissolved from his voice. “You were ordered to find me the best sorts for the mission. A hundred names, and I’d choose thirty of them. Instead, you were going to recommend anyone willing to press a few coins in your palm?”

  “Aye,” she said. “It weren’t no hundreds of pounds, though. Half crown to get on the list. Two quid if you found yourself chosen. But I swear, I didn’t mean no harm.”

  “Listen up,” Tolvern said. She was both angry and relieved. “We’re still a military ship, and we follow military discipline. You’ll receive your pay according to military grades. There will be no bribe on this or any other matter.”

  Rodriguez let out a chuckle behind them. “Glad to hear you don’t have a traitor on your hands, my friends, but if I were you, I’d lighten up on your ‘military’ discipline. None of those malvados are rushing to join your crew because they want three square meals and navy wages.”

  “What do you mean?” Tolvern asked.

  “People heard how you took down Captain Kidd, how you put Vargus in his place. They figure you’ll soon be hauling in the booty, and they want a piece of the action. That means pirate rules—captain’s share, first mate’s share, and so on down to the cabin boy. They want coin in palm, preferably gold and a lot of it.”

  A shadow passed over Drake’s face. Tolvern also felt troubled. The captain handed her Capp’s firearm, which she was about to return to the woman when an explosion sounded from the hangar outside the office.

  Rodriguez cursed in Ladino. He turned for the door, perhaps thinking, as had Tolvern, that some careless worker had stumbled across some unexploded ordnance and set it off. But when he threw open the door, gunfire came blasting up at them.

  Chapter Nineteen

  For some reason, the spaceyard owner’s words disturbed Drake more than the revelation that Capp had been taking a little illicit profit from filling the crew list. That bit about men and women signing on so they could get gold. Shouldn’t have been a surprise, so why was it bothering him so much?

  He was so deep in his thoughts that the explosion blended into the background clank and boom of the hangar floor. It was only when the two guards grabbed Rodriguez and dragged him back to safety in the office that Drake realized that they were under attack. Bullets slammed into the windows overlooking the hangar. The windows were thick plastisteel, bombproof against the accidents that must be common in the operation taking place outside, and they didn’t shatter.

  Drake drew his side arm and looked down at the hangar floor. A dozen or more armed men and women swarmed in through a gaping hole in the far side of the hangar. They’d blasted through the outer wall instead of facing the guards at the open hangar doors. Now the intruders exchanged gunfire with the men at the doors, while the workers took cover among the equipment or fled for their lives. Three men lay dead on the floor, already gunned down by the attackers, and he saw with alarm that these were some of the ones he’d hired to help guard Captain Kidd in the hangar. One of the attackers stood over their bodies, spraying machine gun fire across the hangar, and it was this that had apparently struck the window. They hadn’t yet been targeted.

  Rodriguez dragged the door shut and shouted instructions to his men, who looked nervous. He drew his own side arm, a big, ugly thing with a bone handle and a long, black barrel.

  Drake turned on Capp, his suspicions blooming anew. “Who are they?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know, I swear.” She sounded afraid, legitimately confused. “Gimme my gun so I can fight.”

  Tolvern had been on the verge of handing over the gun, but whipped it back. “Get in the corner,” she told Capp. “Drop to your knees. Do not move or I’ll waste you, got it?”

  Drake turned back to the window. He searched the attackers for Carvalho, half-convinced that Capp’s partner would be leading the assault, but couldn’t see the big Ladino.

  “Here they come,” Tolvern said. “Up the stairs.”

  He followed her gaze. Several attackers came sprinting up the metal stairs toward the catwalk. They carried hand cannons, assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols, and they were festooned with bandoliers stuffed with grenade shells or heavy-caliber bullets. One man was missing an arm that had been replaced with a shining mechanical limb with a Gatling gun on the end. The attackers gained the catwalk and started toward the offices. When they were halfway across, a woman dropped to her knee and lifted a long-nosed hand cannon.

  Rodriguez spat something in Ladino. His men fell back from the window, and Drake and Tolvern followed. A grenade slammed into it, and the window shuddered. The smoke outside cleared to reveal a spiderweb of cracks along its surface.

  Drake took stock of their own weapons. A few pistols, plus the shotguns held by Tolvern and Rodriguez’s guards. That might serve if the enemy closed in, but not if they kept shooting grenades from a distance. And if Drake and the others made a run for it, the attackers had rifles, as well. The enemy could pick them off as they fled around the catwalk.

  Another shot, this one against the other window. Then a third, which battered the door. Smoke seeped into the room. Outside, gunfire continued across the hangar. The ground shuddered from a thumping explosion. Drake could only presume that by now the attackers had either overwhelmed or driven off any of the defenders on the hangar floor.

  “How many armed men do you have in the yard?” Drake asked Rodriguez.

  “Not enough—fifteen, twenty? But they’re spread out over three square miles. We’ve had thieves before, lone desperadoes. Nothing like this. I told you, people know if they’re dumb enough to—”

  Another explosion hit the window. A piece of plastisteel cracked loose and clattered to the ground. The sound of gunfire came through, louder than ever.

  Had to be Vargus. The pirate had a whole crew of desperadoes. Men from whom Drake had stripped their possessions and livelihood. Vargus must have known he couldn’t take Ajax directly, not with crew still on board and manning the weapons. But if he could kill the captain and first mate while they were unprotected, perhaps even take the owner of the spaceyard hostage, then he’d stand good odds.

  Drake cast a side glance at Capp, who had risen from the floor during the last attack to grab her dagger from the table. Perspiration stood out on her forehead and buzzed scalp. Was she behind this? Or surprised like the rest of them?

  “Give her the gun,” he told Tolvern.

  “But, Captain—”

  “If she’s against us, she’ll shoot us in the back, but we’re probably dead anyway.” He paused as another blast hit the window. More plastisteel broke away. “We’ve got to get out of here before they cave it in around us.”

  Tolvern held out the gun slowly. Capp snatched it back with a glower. She shoved the dagger into its hilt and checked the gun’s magazine.

  “Where does the catwalk lead?” Drake asked Rodriguez. “Are there more stairs?”

  “It takes you around the other side of the pirate ship. No stairs that way, but we could climb onto the crane and scramble down the side of the ship.”

  “Good enough. The rest of you, listen up. This is what we’re going to do.”

  Drake gave quick instructions to get them in order, then knocked open the door with his shoulder and lurched onto the catwalk. Tolvern and Capp came in behind, followed by Rodriguez and his two guards. All six of them emerged shooting.

  The distance was too great for shotguns to be accurate, but Tolvern and Rodriguez’s men made a good show of it anyway, blasting away, pumping, and firing again. The enemy threw themselves to the catwalk to avoid the fire, and Drake and his compa
nions took advantage of the delay to race around the catwalk, which continued along the wall halfway to the main doors before spanning the floor to the other side of the hangar.

  The partially dismantled hull of Captain Kidd lay beneath them, too far to jump to on this side. Where the workers had peeled back the carapace, one could see the snaking corridors, the crew berths, and the officer quarters. Exposed wiring and conduits lay everywhere. Some of the spaceyard laborers had taken refuge inside, where Hroom and human alike cowered to wait out the fighting.

  The attackers had nearly taken control of the hangar floor, with the remaining defenders holed up in a redoubt to one side, behind one of the cranes. They returned scattered gunfire against the men and women still moving toward them. Several men and Hroom lay dead and dying across the floor.

  Renewed gunfire lashed at Drake and his companions before they could get around to the other side, where they could duck behind the highest point of Captain Kidd. One of Rodriguez’s men cried out and fell. His fellow guard tried to drag him to safety, but bullets pinged off the rail and chased him back. The fallen man was lying motionless anyway—seemed that a rifle shot had punched him in the chest, and Drake doubted anything could be done for him.

  Tolvern tossed aside her shotgun and joined Capp to rise with pistols and squeeze off shots over the top of the ship. This kept the attackers from charging across the exposed catwalk. While the two women fired, Drake eyed the crane to see if it would serve to get them down. One could, in fact, lean over, grab the metal framing, and climb to the hangar floor. Unfortunately, there was shouting back and forth between some of the enemies below and the ones on the catwalk opposite. Two of the men on the floor were loading hand cannons to blast up at their position. Drake and Rodriguez aimed through the slats in the catwalk and drove them off, at least temporarily.

  “Vargus,” Rodriguez spat. “Over there. Look!”

  Drake spotted the pirate captain now, his familiar profile with the long, graying hair and the braided beard with drooping mustache. He stood with his back to them, directing the attack on the remaining hangar defenders near the main doors.