Into the Dark (Alexis Carew Book 1)

by J. A. Sutherland

  “There are other reasons to smuggle, Mister Roland. To land something you’ve no right to possess in the first place, for instance.”

  They sailed on, closing with the other ship.

  “We’re close enough to make out signals, sir.” The image of the other ship had grown enough, though blurry from magnification, to make out its sails and yards.

  “Very well. Mister Carew, make Heave To and Inspection, if you please.”

  “Aye sir.” Alexis turned to her console and sent the signals that would cause the lights on Merlin’s masts and yards to change color and pattern for the other ship to read.

  “No response, sir,” she said after a few minutes.

  “And they’ve not slowed, either, sir. They’re sure to have seen us by now.”

  “Oh, they’ve seen us, Mister Gorbett. I’ve no doubt of that.” He nodded quickly. “Mister Caruthers, clear the ship for action. Mister Roland, I’ll have you in the bow chasers with the gunner, please.”

  There was a sudden flurry of activity as the orders were passed and spacers rushed to take their stations and prepare the ship for action. Alexis had seen this done often enough as drill, but this time was in earnest. Men rushed throughout the ship, ensuring that every hatch and compartment was secure. Anything that might be pulled loose in the rush of decompression if the ship were holed was packed up and struck down into the hold. On the gundeck, the men clambered into their vacsuits and pumped the air out before opening the gunports and rigging the gallenium nets that would allow their radios to work for a time. At least until those nets were shredded by enemy fire and darkspace made its way inside.

  Alexis felt an odd surge of excitement at the thought. The ship ahead was no longer just a strange sail, but a ‘Chase’, prey for Merlin and she felt her heart quicken at the thought. She placed a copy of the navigation plot in a corner of her console, watching the tracks of the ships as the range between them closed. The plot showed arcs to fore, aft, and either side, representing the range of Merlin’s guns. Shorter fore and aft, where the less powerful chasers were stationed, but eventually they closed so that the fleeing ship was in range.

  “Mister Carew, request that Mister Roland put a shot beside her, if you please. Beside and not into. I suspect they’ll not wish to fight and simply hope they may escape us somehow.”

  “Aye sir.” Alexis turned to the signals console, her stomach knotting. A boring station it might be at times, but in action she was to be responsible for communicating the captain’s orders to the rest of the ship. By radio or communications line to those inside the hull where the darkspace radiation wouldn’t interfere with the signal, or by light codes and at worst, messages passed by hand where it did.

  She switched to the frequency Roland would be monitoring in the cramped enclosure of the bowchaser and passed the order along, hearing him respond, though the channel crackled and hissed with static.

  A moment later, the monitors displaying the Chase showed a bolt of laser light flow by the fleeing ship to port. It almost oozes along, Alexis thought, still disturbed by the odd way things behaved in darkspace.

  Minutes passed, but there was no change in the Chase’s speed and no signal that either Alexis or the signals computer could detect.

  “They’re certainly aware of us now, sir,” Caruthers commented.

  “No doubt,” Grantham said. “Another shot, if you please, Mister Carew. Inform Mister Roland that I am desirous it be as close as he and the gunner may manage without actually hitting her.”

  “Aye sir.”

  She passed the order along and a moment later another shot flashed out from Merlin’s bow. This one, she was certain, would strike the other ship. It slid by along the Chase’s starboard side, so close that she couldn’t tell it hadn’t hit until it was clearly past.

  “Mister Breech has outdone himself with that last.”

  “Yes,” Grantham said. “And still they run.”

  “Must be a valuable cargo,” Gorbett said. “Punishment for smuggling’s not so great as to take a risk like this.”

  “Valuable or incriminating.” Grantham narrowed his eyes. “It’s always been curious that the identifiable goods pirated in this area never appear for sale anywhere.”

  “You think they’re kept in the area, sir?” Caruthers asked. “Used and not sold elsewhere?”

  Grantham nodded. “Some wealthy holder teaming with the pirates — he gets goods from the Core at a fraction of the cost and the pirates get a safe market. It would not be the first time such has happened.” He turned to Alexis. “Have you heard anything of the like on Dalthus, Mister Carew? Some holder who always has the newest and best — more than he ought, perhaps?”

  Alexis considered for a moment. Her grandfather and his friends had sometimes discussed the profligate spending of other families, but there’d been no hint or accusations of wrong-doing. “My grandfather might have some suspicions, sir. I’m afraid I concerned myself more with the internal workings of the holding and less with the rest of Dalthus.”

  “Hmm. I may have to speak to your grandfather.” He returned his gaze to the navigation plot and the image of the other ship. “Ask Mister Roland to put a shot through her sails, if you please. That should make our intentions unmistakable.”

  “Aye sir.” Alexis relayed the order and watched a moment later as the shot flashed out, cutting through the Chase’s topsail with a bright flash of vaporizing metal. The topsail fluttered, its azure glow overlaid with white arcs of ionization. Then it split at the hole and split again as the two halves were pulled away and ripped to tatters by the stress of the forces pulling on it.

  On the monitors, Alexis could see tiny, suited figures climbing the other ship’s mast to repair the damage.

  “Another, Mister Carew. Into their maincourse if possible.”

  Alexis relayed the order, biting her lip as she waited for the result. She wondered why the other ship didn’t simply give up. Merlin had been gaining on the Chase even before their sail had been destroyed — now she was gaining faster. Soon, she’d be close enough to turn and bring her main armament to bear without fear of falling behind. And she wondered at the other ship’s crew, climbing the mast and out onto the yards to repair sail, knowing that Merlin’s next shot might well strike them.

  That shot came, flying through the space where the topsail had been and very close to the mast. Alexis watched in horror as two of the suited figures were struck and fell away from the mast, drifting back along the ship until they came to the end of their safety lines.

  A moment later, the other ship’s main course went dark, the azure glow replaced by lines of white lights along her masts, spars, and hull.

  “She’s struck, sir!” Caruthers said, grinning.

  “Cease firing, Mister Carew. Lieutenant Caruthers, gather Lieutenant Ames, some few marines, and a prize crew. I want every bit of information you can find on their destination.”

  * * *

  The mood around the gunroom table was ebullient after the short, successful action against the smugglers. Merlin had laid-to for the night while the carpenter and his mates worked to repair the damage to the other ship. Caruthers was closeted with the captain, discussing their prize, and the bosun and other petty officers were busy in the other ship.

  “Finally a prize!” Roland said, raising his glass.

  “Aye,” Ames agreed. “Not much of a hull, but her cargo’s worth a coin or two. Hah!”

  “And I’ll get a step from it, myself, if I’m any judge,” Roland said, smiling. “Command of a prize always goes a ways toward promotion.”

  “Don’t count her as yours yet,” Philip warned.

  “And who’ll the captain give her to instead? You? No, she’s too small to do a lieutenant any good, so Caruthers is out and I’m the senior midshipman. She’ll be mine to command into Zariah. Even only following in Merlin’s path, it’ll be time in command.”

  “I’m only saying —”

  “Not interested in w
hat you’re saying,” Roland snapped.

  “Did you say she’d be a prize and there’d be coin for us, Lieutenant Ames?” Alexis interjected, hoping to put off yet another row between Roland and Philip.

  “There’ll be coin for all, regardless, once the Prize Court gets her, what?” Ames said. “At least certificates. Enough for a run ashore and a spot of fun!” He raised his glass. “To wives and sweethearts!”

  “May they never meet!” Roland responded, raising his own glass as the others laughed. There was a glance or two at Alexis, but in general, they seemed to have become comfortable that she wouldn’t take offense. “Not that you’ll ever have the problem, eh, Carew? Nor Easely neither, given his runs ashore.”

  Comfortable except for bloody Roland who still seems to revel in the trying. And never can bear to miss a chance at needling poor Philip. And taking every opportunity to remind the others that she was different from them, though she couldn’t understand why he persisted. She saw Philip flushing, eyes downcast.

  “No doubt, Roland,” Philip said. “Though I can understand your concern.”

  “Quite right! Would never do to have that happen!”

  Philip looked up and raised his glass slowly to his lips. “Yes, with your limited repertoire, they might find they prefer each other’s company and take a house together by the sea.”

  The group was silent for a moment.

  “Ha!”

  “What? What happened?” Breech asked, for he was a bit hard of hearing.

  “Said Roland’s wife and sweetheart might like each other best and take a house together! ‘Cause of his limited repertoire, don’t you know!”

  Breech looked at Roland and nodded. “It’s a dire risk you run, lad. Best do some’at about that.”

  Alexis lowered her face to disguise her smile. She stretched out her foot and nudged Philip under the table, glancing up in time to catch his answering wink.

  Roland flushed red and took a large gulp of his wine.

  A spacer came into the gunroom and nodded to Alexis. “Captain’s compliments, Mister Carew, and he’d be obliged if you’d join him and Lieutenant Caruthers in the day cabin.”

  Alexis stood, nodding to the others, and made her way aft. She stopped outside the hatch to the captain’s cabin and waited while the marine sentry rapped on the hatch and called out, “Midshipman Carew, sir!”

  He slid the hatch open and she entered. “You sent for me, sir?”

  “There’s something I’d like your opinion of, Mister Carew.”

  Grantham and Caruthers were gathered at the captain’s desk, its surface changed to display an image of Dalthus. Caruthers traced a finger across the display, spinning the image and then zooming in.

  “We’ve plotted the coordinates found aboard the smugglers’ ship, Mister Carew, and wonder if you have any insight into these locations.”

  Alexis studied the image for a moment. “I had thought there was no mention of a planet with the coordinates, sir? Is there some reason to think they were for points on Dalthus?”

  “That was the smugglers’ destination. While the coordinates may be for some other system entirely, we must start somewhere.”

  “We know whose land these points fall on, Mister Carew,” Grantham added, “but wonder if there might be something that strikes you about them.”

  Alexis thought for a moment. She could easily tell whose land each of the points fell on. She ran through the family names in her head — Goodwill, Coalson, Warriner, Hollingsworth, Sermons. Her thoughts went immediately to the Coalsons, but she worried that her distaste for Edmond Coalson would color any opinion she offered. Of the others, Buckley Warriner had been another of her suitors, though without the dramatic results of Coalson’s visit, and the other three had no children her age, so she’d had little to do with their families socially. Although the Coalson and Sermons families both had their major holdings on the coast, the other three were spread out over the planet’s surface. There was something though …

  “Can you bring up the Belt holdings, sir, and highlight these five families?”

  Caruthers bent over the plot table, expanding its view to show the outer system and entering commands. In a moment, the view displayed the entire Dalthus system, the asteroid belt circling the outermost portion of the display and lit up with colors representing the holdings of the families in question. It was a complex display, due to the nature of claims in the ever-changing belt, with the larger asteroids, worthy of being tracked individually, claimed regardless of their orbit, while the smaller rocks were claimed by area. But regardless of the complexity, there were clear patterns in evidence on the plot, with these five families consistently claiming areas quite near each other.

  Grantham grunted. “I wonder at these gaps,” he mused, indicating areas within each block that were not owned by any of the five.

  Alexis cleared her throat. “I believe those will be my grandfather’s, sir.” Grantham looked at her sharply. “The Coalsons have often accused him of ‘taking’ the claims they most wanted, it is a rivalry that goes back to the colony’s founding.”

  “Interesting. Has your grandfather found anything at all peculiar in those holdings?”

  “Peculiar in what way, sir?”

  “Anything at all out of the ordinary.”

  “Not that I’m aware of, sir, but the colony’s young, so we’ve barely scratched the surface of most of the claims — nothing at all in the belt. My grandfather thinks it will be a hundred years or more before it’s worth bringing in the infrastructure to mine the belt instead of the planet’s surface.”

  Grantham considered that for a moment. “Well, perhaps it’s nothing, then. Though this pattern does seem to connect the families in some way.” He frowned. “Tell me, Mister Carew, is there any gallenium mined on Dalthus?”

  “Gallenium, sir? I’ve never heard of it being found, no.”

  “There was no mention of gallenium in the survey report we reviewed, sir,” Caruthers added. “If the colonial survey had found any indication of gallenium it would have figured prominently, I’d think.”

  “Yes and raised the colonists’ share price as well,” Grantham said. “Does that ‘no mention’ not make you wonder, though? There are always traces, after all. Even if there are no large deposits.”

  “Perhaps it was so little, they didn’t find it worth mentioning?”

  Grantham narrowed his eyes, still staring at the pattern of claims in the system’s asteroid belt. “Or worth not mentioning? Mister Carew, are any of these families … politically connected in some way?”

  Alexis tried to remember all she’d heard her grandfather say about the planet’s politics. To be truthful, she hadn’t listened as well to those lessons as she had to those about running the holdings. The work of building and producing things had interested her far more than making laws. She wasn’t at all sure why they should in the first place — after all, with all of human history to build on, surely all the good and necessary laws had already been made.

  “I believe the Sermons are a minor branch of a house that sits in the Lords, sir. And the Warriners may be, as well. I’m sorry, but I paid less attention to those things than I ought, it seems.”

  “Quite all right,” Grantham assured her. “If you weren’t aboard, I’d have no place to start at all, so you’ve put us ahead of the game already.”

  “Thank you, sir. I … if I may ask, sir, did you find any reason for them to be smuggling at all? Dalthus has no import duties to speak of, I know. We’re desperate for all the imported goods we can get.”

  Grantham and Caruthers looked at each other for a moment. “We did, in fact. A number of the crates contained luxury goods and electronics from Coreward. Goods bound for Eidera aboard a merchantman that went missing some months ago.”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “Piracy, Mister Carew,” Caruthers said. “Pirates took that merchantman, but instead of disposing of her cargo in a far-off system, some of it, a
t least, was bound for Dalthus still in its original crates. Which means,” he continued before she could ask, “that the intended recipient cares little about its origin. Otherwise, they’d have repackaged the lot.”

  “So you think someone on Dalthus is in league with these pirates?” Alexis looked at the plotted holdings with new eyes. “One of these families?”

  “Or all of them, as the coordinates we found indicate landing sites on each of their lands.”

  “But …” She frowned, not understanding why anyone would do such a thing. “These are all first holders — and major ones, at that. Between them, they hold as much as five percent of the entire system.” She paused. “Why?”

  “Some always want more than they have. And many who make our laws do not believe they should apply to them.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Quite a large place,” Caruthers remarked, nodding to the Coalson residence behind the fence they were approaching. The home was three stories high, of red stone and with two large wings to either side. It was fronted by a vast green lawn. They’d landed the boat in a fallow field far from the main house and its manicured gardens.

  “Forty or more rooms, my grandfather told me when they were building it,” Alexis said. “The Coalsons and some few others were building alike.” She hesitated for a moment. “He wondered at the expense.”

  She wondered why the captain had brought her along on this visit. She’d told him everything she knew about the Coalsons and the three other families, whose lands the smugglers had coordinates for, so she doubted she could provide any value planetside — and given her recent history with the man’s son, she doubted Daviel Coalson would be pleased to see her on his lands.

  The three of them, Grantham, Caruthers and Alexis, backed by two marines, left the spacers with the ship’s boat and walked up the lane toward the house. The day was bright and warm, with few clouds, Alexis could smell the heather in the fields bracketing the road. It didn’t seem a day to be talking of smuggling and piracy.