“I hesitate to say this,” he began, then stopped.
“Captain?” she said, and it came out as a squeak.
“Our crew is pirates, prisoners, and those too dumb to stay with the navy when they had the chance.” He smiled as he said this last part, with affection in his voice. “Smythe is hard to understand, Barker is an old salt, rough around the edges. There’s Doc, I suppose, and a few of the engineers are clever enough. But you’re my confidant. The one I can talk to. I think of you as a friend. I hope that is acceptable.”
He removed his hand from her shoulder, and the light feeling passed from her head.
Don’t be a fool. What did you think he was saying?
“I am happy to be a friend,” she said, feeling more steady by the moment. “So long as you give orders in the heat of battle.”
“Of course.” Drake looked relieved. “Then you have made your decision?”
“I’m sticking with you, sir. And if that means being called a pirate, I’ll submit to that. But I’ll need a better name. Captain Drake sounds like a pirate lord. Jess Tolvern is the name of a shopkeeper.”
“If that’s what you’re after,” he said, “you might need to fancy up your wardrobe. You need more flash and dazzle if you’re going to look the part. Jewelry, bright colors—you get the drift.”
She nodded with mock solemnity. “Do you think they sell parrots in the city?”
Rodriguez came over, powering down a hand tool and tucking it into his belt, where it joined other wrenches, screwdrivers, and the like. The man wasn’t the type to sit in his office counting his guineas and dubloons; she’d seen him scrambling over the skin of the ship and crawling inside one of the engines with a plasma welder.
“The bad news is you’re going to be weak on your underbelly,” Rodriguez said. “I can’t get any more tyrillium. You’ve got eighteen inches down there, is all.”
“Nothing more to salvage from Captain Kidd?” Drake asked.
“Not an ounce of the stuff. You were both shot up pretty good. I did what I could. The good news is this.”
Rodriguez removed a grease-stained computer from his hip pocket. He punched a few buttons. The ship was up on her struts, and now the belly shields retracted at the yard owner’s command. Three cannons emerged, black snouts menacing. The main guns of Captain Kidd, quite ingeniously installed in their own battery on the underside of Ajax.
“Anyone comes up from below and you can lay into them,” Rodriguez said.
“Then barrel roll and present the main broadside,” Drake said. “I like it.”
“I put in another torpedo tube, as well,” Rodriquez said. He thumbed the computer, and the cannon retracted. “And I’ve got a few other modifications yet to come. Did you ever face—how do you say serpentinas?”
“Serpentines?” Tolvern asked. She remembered the corkscrewing Hroom missiles, and the way they spat off dozens of smaller, impossible-to-track bomblets. “Where did you get those?”
“There’s all sorts of interesting things kicking around the yard. I’ve been saving some of them for the right buyer.”
She eyed the two men with rising doubts. How much money had been left from the sale of the captured pirate frigate after trading for repairs? A few hundred pounds? Surely not enough to augment their weapons systems.
Drake must have caught her questioning look. “I’ve made Rodriguez a few promises.”
“What kind of promises?” she asked.
“The friends who came to our aid aren’t the only ones betting on your captain,” Rodriguez said. “He was already famous from the war, and now you’ve thrashed Vargus, now you have the best pirate ship in known space. Once Blackbeard is in action—”
Drake looked pained. “I don’t know that we’re really going to call it that.”
Rodriguez frowned. “That is not what I have heard.”
“It’s more of a joke than anything,” Tolvern said. “I think we’re still Ajax for now, right, Captain?”
“Should I tell them to paint over the Jolly Roger, then?” the yard owner asked. He nodded up at the ship, where two Hroom welders were at work fastening down the panel.
The skull over crossed swords or bones had been the symbol of piracy for a thousand years, since the days of wooden sailing ships on Old Earth.
“Leave the Jolly Roger,” Drake said. “If people want to call the ship Blackbeard, let them. What people call us isn’t the important thing.”
Maybe not, but it pained Tolvern to see the Jolly Roger in place of the golden lions rampant of Albion that had once glimmered along Ajax’s flank. After the shield repairs, there was nothing left of them.
“What’s this about promises?” she asked again.
“We still owe Master Rodriguez five thousand pounds,” Drake said.
“That seems cheap for all this. Installing a serpentine alone would eat up ten, I’d think.”
“And we owe him a thirty percent share in whatever loot we take from our expedition.” Drake winced at ‘loot,’ as if it pained him to even speak the word.
Tolvern still didn’t know exactly what they were going to do on this expedition, and she doubted that Drake had told Rodriguez, either. But the captain must have given the owner of the spaceyard enticing hints if he’d handed over thousands of pounds of weapons and labor on a promised cut of future earnings.
“On second thought,” she said. “Maybe it does matter what we’re called. HMS Ajax doesn’t sound quite right anymore, does it?”
“I told you,” Drake said in a quiet voice. “You can walk at any time.”
“And I already told you.” She turned back to Rodriquez. “When’s all this going to be ready?”
“Five days. I might be able to cut it to four if I push my crew. No better than that.”
“No rush,” Drake said. “We’ll need time to buy provisions, and I need to go through Carvalho’s men one more time. Those who stay will need basic orientation before we drag them into space. I need to do it right. And maybe more tyrillium will turn up in the meantime. In fact, I’ll take a full week if it makes no difference to you.”
“You don’t have a week,” Rodriguez told them.
He explained. Not four hours earlier some sugar smugglers had reported via subspace communications from the planet of Peruano that they’d run into a powerful task force led by two royal cruisers, with corvettes, destroyers, and torpedo boats.
“Old friend of yours is leading the expedition,” Rodriguez added. “HMS Vigilant. They chased off a bunch of Hroom and Ladino traders, scoped out Peruano, and are now cruising toward a jump point that will take them here.”
“Peruano is in the neutral zone,” Tolvern told the captain. “According to the treaty, we—I mean, the Royal Navy—can’t bring warships into the system. Rutherford is going to start another war.”
“I don’t know anything about politics,” Rodriguez said, “but if they’re coming here, I can only suppose they’re looking for you. I suggest you be in space before they arrive.” He waved his hand at the ship. “I’ve got an investment to protect, not to mention my yards. I’d rather not see them overrun with royal marines.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Rodriguez was as good as his word, and four days later Drake had them lifting from the tarmac with a blast of plasma engines and a straining of the anti-grav. When they reached space a few minutes later, Drake half expected to find Rutherford at the head of his task force, lurking, waiting for Drake to show himself. No sign of the man. As they accelerated toward the jump point, they overtook several merchant ships, but saw no naval vessels or warships of any kind.
Six hours from the jump point, Drake set Jane to autopilot the ship and called several of his crew into the war room. When they’d all arrived, he cast a glance across the table and tried not to let out a long, audible sigh. It was hard not to compare this gathering unfavorably to the similar meeting six months ago before the Battle of Kif Lagoon.
Rutherford had been on board during
that earlier meeting so the two captains could plan their joint assault. In addition, they’d brought their respective first officers and gunners and the marine officers who would lead the ground assault on the Hroom fortress. A formidable collection of talent, and plenty of class and breeding.
Nyb Pim and Barker had been at that earlier meeting, but he had little confidence in the rest of the crew in front of him now. No doubt Tolvern would make a great officer some day, but she was still green. Then there was Capp, volatile and dangerous. Smythe was a bright fellow, but the tech officer was so introverted that his mind was as hard to puzzle out as the ship’s AI—except that Jane was a better conversationalist. That left Carvalho, who would take the place of the two marine captains in planning any ground action. Not exactly an equal trade, two gentleman officers for a would-be pirate.
Maybe not, he reminded himself, but if not for the Ladino’s timely intervention a few days ago, he’d be dead, his ship in the hands of Captain Vargus.
Drake sat in silence until the side conversations died down and the others looked at him expectantly. He cleared his throat.
“You’re not all privy to the same information, so I want to tell you what I know, or think I know.”
Drake started by recapping what Nyb Pim had said about the sugar antidote, a way to permanently block sugar from affecting the Hroom brain. There was no saying it worked, or frankly, if it even existed, but the Admiralty apparently thought the antidote real enough to resort to bloody measures to keep it secret. The antidote had been on board Henry Upton when Ajax attacked. Presumably that’s why Rutherford had broken off combat to go after the slave ship. To keep it from being lost.
“Why not destroy it?” Barker asked. “Why send it to Hot Barsa?”
“I don’t have a good answer to the first question. I believe Malthorne wishes to study it, perhaps to know if such a thing is truly possible, because if so, it might be invented a second time. Or maybe he wishes to search for an antidote to the antidote. As for why Hot Barsa, that is easy enough to answer.”
“Smythe, bring up a map of the planet. Show us the equatorial continent.”
The tech officer tapped at his hand computer, and a globe appeared above the table, the red, cloud-covered world of Hot Barsa. Drake brushed his fingers over the projection to strip away the cloud cover. The equatorial continent sat in front of him, roughly shaped like a fat slug that stretched halfway around the planet, with only the head and horns of the slug rising to more temperate latitudes. He zoomed in on the fat middle.
“Lord Malthorne’s estates. They are nearly seven hundred thousand square miles, almost ten percent of the entire continent. Sweltering tropics, with rich, volcanic soil. Two-thirds of it has been given to sugar cane, mills, and a port for shipping the sugar. The rest of the forest is being cleared. See here?” Drake zoomed again. “Eighteen thousand square miles of bare ground, hacked and burned shortly before this projection was made. The next phase of his growing plantation.”
“And you think the lord admiral shipped the antidote there?” Tolvern asked.
“Malthorne is already the biggest slaveholder on Hot Barsa,” Drake said. “ During the war, sixteen hundred thousand new slaves were shipped to the Barsa system. The vast majority are Hroom, of course, but not all of them. Eight out of every ten new slaves came to the Malthorne estates. But he needs more. He always needs more. There is no end to the demand for sugar and the slaves to grow and process it.”
“Slaves to make sugar,” Nyb Pim said. His high voice was tight, barely less strained than when he’d been fighting his own rescue from the slaver. “And sugar to make slaves.”
“Henry Upton was almost certainly traveling to Malthorne’s estate,” Drake said. “He has the most need for new slaves and faces the biggest risk should the sugar market collapse.”
“Seven hundred thousand square miles,” Carvalho said. “How big is that? Give it to me in something I can understand.”
“What’s your home planet?” Tolvern asked him.
For a moment the Ladino looked reluctant to answer, as if suspicious of why she would ask. “Nuevo Téjas.”
“That’s easy,” Tolvern said. “Nuevo Téjas is practically a water world, just a bunch of islands. 700,000 square miles is two-thirds the size of all the land mass on your whole planet.”
“King’s balls,” Capp swore. “And it’s all jungle and swamp and sugar plantations and stuff? How the devil would we find where they’ve hid the antidote?”
“The temperature in the lowlands of Malthorne’s estate can exceed 95 degrees for weeks at a time,” Drake said. “Between the heat and the humidity, a human simply cannot sweat enough to keep cool. Not without air conditioning or some other special arrangement.”
Nyb Pim let out a little whistle through his nose. “Even for a Hroom, that is a miserable heat.”
Drake zoomed again. “These are the highlands. Malthorne keeps an estate up here, at 9,000 feet. He rarely visits—it’s mostly business staff—but he has a large research center. It’s largely agricultural science, adapting sugarcane and other human and Hroom crops to the soil and climate of Hot Barsa. The heart of the facility is only a few thousand acres. I don’t expect more than a few token guards.”
“That’s all well and good,” Barker grumbled. “But it’s not token guards I’m worried about.”
The engineer reached out a hand and brought the focus of the map back out, first to the continental view, then to the entire planet. He set it into slow rotation.
“It’s these bad boys right here.”
Barker pointed to the six fortresses in orbit around the planet. A few decades ago, the Barsa system had been on the frontlines between the expanding Albion kingdom and the crumbling remains of the Hroom Empire. The closest systems had been neutral, either splinter Hroom or New Dutch and Ladino, and Albion had suffered from extended supply lines. The crown had built fortresses into the sides of two small moons, then hauled in four asteroids, converted them into forts, and set them in orbit as well.
The concept had worked. When the fortresses repelled an invasion force in the Third Hroom War, the crown had been so taken with their success that Queen Ellen had financed the construction of a similar network around Albion herself.
“They’re not what they used to be,” Tolvern said. “Barsa is no longer on the frontier.”
“Doesn’t mean they’re in ruins, either,” Barker said. “We put in at one of them for repairs a few years back, before your time.”
Tolvern scowled at this, apparently irritated by the reminder of her youth. “I still think we can take them.”
“Don’t be cocky,” Barker said. “The fort I saw may not have been on war footing, but it wasn’t a derelict, either. Plenty of wealth flows in and out of that world. Got to be able to throw off pirates and smugglers.” The chief engineer nodded. “Every one of those forts is still capable of delivering a punch.”
“So are we, right?” Tolvern said. “Isn’t that the point of all that time on San Pablo? If not, if you’re still incapable of battle, by all means, tell us so we can correct the deficiencies while we still have time.”
“You know that’s not what I’m saying,” Barker said. “I’ll take on Vigilant, if we have to, but slugging it out with an orbital fortress is another matter. We don’t have enough firepower to silence her guns, and we don’t have enough men to storm her fortifications, either.”
“Enough arguing,” Drake said, growing impatient. “We’re not going to knock down an orbital fortress. And we don’t actually have to do that. Those things were built to repel Hroom sloops of war. The sloops couldn’t land directly on the planet, they had to send down smaller craft. We don’t have that limitation.”
“You mean to run the forts?” Capp said. She’d been watching the argument between Tolvern and Barker with a smug expression, but now she turned serious.
“That’s right. We’ll find the softest position and hit it there. Any given fort can hammer us as we’re
coming in, but the orbital guns are almost all outwardly facing. Once we’re in the atmosphere, we have only ground forces to worry about.”
“A few guards, some armed Hroom,” Carvalho said. “Shouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“As if we have any clue,” Barker grumbled. “We’re even more ignorant about ground forces. For all we know, there’s an entire regiment of royal marines guarding Malthorne’s estate.”
“Actually, no,” Smythe said. He looked up from his computer, where he’d been scrolling through data—or maybe just playing Romans vs. Soviets again. “I was on Malthorne’s estate once.”
“What?” Drake said, scowling. “When did that happen?”
“I was on Dreadnought for her inaugural tour. We took a pass through the colonies to test her engines and weapon systems before she went into battle.”
“And you didn’t think that was germane to the discussion?” Drake asked. “That you knew Malthorne’s estate personally?”
Smythe wrinkled his brow, then shook his head, as if it only now were occurring to him that the captain might want to know.
“But how did you end up on the surface?” Tolvern asked. “Dreadnought is like a sloop of war—it can’t enter the atmosphere, either.”
“The admiral sent shipments down. Security equipment for his estate. There had been a slave revolt or something. I can’t exactly remember.”
“You’re a font of forgotten knowledge, aren’t you?” Tolvern said.
“Go on,” Drake urged.
Only a few weeks ago, Drake would have been shocked to hear that Malthorne had been using the mightiest battleship in the navy as his personal delivery service, but almost nothing the admiral did would surprise him anymore.
“I saw the security setup for myself,” Smythe continued. “There are minefields, some automatic guns, and a small garrison. Can’t even imagine where the admiral would station an entire regiment—the property isn’t like that.”
“What do you mean?” Drake asked.
“It may be the highlands, but it’s still bloody hot. Wet, swampy, with these mosquito things the size of a bird. I can still hear them buzzing behind me.” Smythe shuddered. “The estate is built on the ruins of an old Hroom fortress, and half of it has sunk into the ground. Malthorne built atop a giant, raised-stone platform in the middle of the fortress.”
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