HMS Nightingale (Alexis Carew Book 4)

by J. A. Sutherland

  Captain Lounds was one of these.

  His cabin had been breached and he was unable to retrieve his suit, leaving him trapped on the Gale’s quarterdeck, surrounded by dead and useless equipment which must have frustrated him to no end.

  To his credit, once aboard Nightingale, he shed himself of the rescue bag and stayed by the airlock, helping pull aboard each of his crewmen and seeing to their needs.

  When the last of these was aboard, Ousley and his mates back inside after casting loose the tethers, Alexis gave the weary, sweat-soaked Busbey a nod.

  “Take us up to a more sane orbit, Busbey.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Then you and Audley see the purser for a bit of a wet,” Alexis said. “Lord knows you’ve earned it.”

  “Aye, sir — thank you, sir,” the two men said in unison.

  “A drink, Captain Lounds?” Alexis asked.

  The man looked at her, glassy-eyed. His face was sheened in sweat-streaked soot where the smoke from ruined components covered him. Beneath that soot, a bruise covered the left side of his face and Alexis felt certain there were others elsewhere.

  “My crew …” he said, voice trailing off.

  “They’re safe aboard Nightingale, sir,” Alexis reminded him. “Our surgeon is seeing to them.”

  “Nightingale …” Lounds frowned. “You’re that lieutenant.”

  “I am, sir. Can you tell me what happened here?”

  Isom arrived with a bottle of bourbon and glass. He poured and held it out to Lounds who downed it in one go. Isom refilled without having to be told.

  “My crew …”

  “Safe aboard,” Alexis repeated again. What’s left of them. A merchantman the size of the Gale had a crew of over one hundred — forty-six, Lounds included, had been pulled off the hulk.

  “My ship …”

  “What happened to her, captain?” Alexis prompted.

  Lounds drained his glass again and some sense of where he was seemed to come him.

  “My crew’s aboard, you say?”

  Alexis nodded. “All who …” She trailed off, unsure if the man could handle knowledge of the full butcher’s bill.

  Lounds winced, but then took a deep breath. “How many?”

  “Forty-six are aboard,” Alexis said, simply. The large merchantman’s crew had been more than that, but there was no easy way to break it to him.

  “Is there —”

  “Our bosun saw to every compartment himself.” Ousley had insisted, not wanting to chance a single man being left behind, as the Gale’s orbit was rapidly decaying. “He’s an experienced hand,” she assured Lounds.

  He took another glass from Isom, but this time only downed half of it at a go.

  “What happened?”

  “Two ships came in … looked like common merchants.” Lounds coughed, took a sip, then stared at the glass for a moment. Alexis wondered if his mind had wandered again when he went on. “Two ships. Looked to take up an orbit. Perfectly ordinary … not a thing to suspect … my first officer was on the quarterdeck, you understand, not me, but even were I there.” He frowned. “Perfectly ordinary, merchants coming in system, you see.”

  Alexis nodded, though inside she was puzzled. Was there yet another pirate ship out there which had joined up with the Owl?

  “They dropped four boats before they reached orbit, which seemed odd, but … ragtag merchants like that — always in a hurry, yes?”

  Alexis nodded again. It was though the man was seeking reassurance from her — reassurance that there was nothing he should have seen, nothing else he should have done to avoid what happened to his ship.

  “Three boats headed for the surface, one for us. They called and said … said they had a Marchant representative aboard. That’s when my first officer called me? Unusual, that — for a Marchant man to be traveling on such a ragtag bit, but not impossible.”

  He looked down and swallowed hard.

  “By the time I reached the quarterdeck they were close … too close …”

  He trailed off and Alexis waited for a time, wanting to let him tell it in his own time, but finally, “Sir?”

  Lounds jerked as though struck and looked at her wide-eyed.

  “One of the ships — not the boats, but one of the two ships — was near those two the Jadiqis had in high orbit. The ones they thought to build a merchant fleet of their own with?”

  Alexis nodded.

  “It … it just exploded. I thought, at first, it was an accident — the fusion plant, I supposed — but then … I saw it then. The boat heading for us, I mean.” He shook his head. “A Marchant man would have come on a Marchant ship; we have couriers for just that.” He looked down. “Too late.” He drained his glass. “Not an accident at all.”

  “The boat, sir? What happened?”

  Lounds laughed. “How the bloody hell would I know? Next I remember I’m waking up on a quarterdeck with every console dead as …”

  He trailed off, perhaps remembering just how many dead there were.

  Alexis nodded. She’d heard enough to fill in the other pieces herself. If the pirates … no, she couldn’t rightly call them that. They were something other than pirates, something worse. Pirates would take a man’s goods and leave him in a ship’s boat along some shipping lane. They’d give a crew at least a chance to live, so long as they didn’t resist. These, though …

  A ship to the Jadiqi’s “fleet” and then a breach of their fusion plant would destroy all three and account for the debris in system. A boat with a mining charge or two aboard would do for the Gale. And the other three boats …

  Her mind filled with images of the Jadiqi city, three columns of black smoke rising from the flattened buildings.

  But the crew of that ship and those boats …

  She shook her head.

  What drives a man to that, much less women and children?

  “I think …” Lounds began, paused, and then took a deep breath to steady himself. “I think I should like to see my crew, lieutenant.”

  Forty-Nine

  27 May, aboard HMS Nightingale, Al Jadiq System

  Villar soon returned to the ship, having offered what aid the small boat crew could in the face of the destruction on Al Jadiq. He also carried with him the Jadiqi government’s formal request for aid from their former brethren on Zariah and the Kingdom at large.

  Alexis was faced with a difficult decision. Sail for Zariah, leaving the Owl, for she was certain that was the ship which had not sacrificed itself to destroy the Jadiqi shipping, to wreak further havoc on Man’s Fall, delay sailing for Zariah in order to deal with the Owl, or split her crew, sending the captured ship for Zariah while she and Nightingale sailed after the Owl.

  Captain Lounds and the surviving crew of Dark Gale did give her another option, if only she could convince the man.

  “No.”

  Alexis regarded Lounds levelly. He’d cleaned himself up quickly after visiting his surviving crew, though his face still showed bruises and cuts and his uniform was torn in places, he’d put himself into as much order as he could. He’d also recovered his composure, something Alexis found herself regretting.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Sad to say, but I much preferred him when he was despondent over the loss of his ship.

  She winced at how unkind a thought that was, but there was no getting around it. Worse than his recovery was that the Gale had, against all expectations, not yet sunk into Al Jadiq’s atmosphere and burned up. The hulk’s orbit was still decaying, but something about its tumble must have settled it on a slower fate.

  “Captain Lounds —” she began again.

  “I will not take your … your little rowboat,” Lounds spat, “to Zariah for you.” He shook his head emphatically. “In fact, I demand your assistance in reboarding the Gale and returning her to service!”

  “Your ship is surely lost, sir, I’ll not risk Nightingale or any of our boats in returning to her.”

  L
ounds’ face reddened. He opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by the Marine at her hatch.

  “Farst ossifer, sar!”

  “Come through,” Alexis said, grateful for the interruption, and the support. She’d thought to speak with Lounds about her plan before the others arrived, but that had clearly been a mistake.

  Villar, Spindler, Ousley, and Poulter entered, arranging themselves around her table. Villar and Ousley both looked at Lounds and narrowed their eyes — whether they’d heard his demand through the hatch or merely sensed the tension in the compartment, Alexis couldn’t say. Poulter looked from Lounds to Alexis and raised his brows questioningly.

  “This will be a working meeting, gentlemen,” Alexis said, as Isom began pouring wine. “We’ll speak as you’re being served.”

  “You’re wasting time, Carew,” Lounds said, his voice hoarse. “Time the Gale doesn’t have.”

  “The Gale?” Ousley asked. His brow furrowed. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but if it’s salvaging aught off the Gale this is about, you’d best leave off.”

  “No, that’s not what —”

  “I’ll do no such thing!” Lounds barked, cutting Alexis off again. “You are all wasting time. The Gale had power when we left her — a repair crew may restore power to the engines and thence to a more stable orbit where full repairs may be made.” He glared at Alexis. “I fail to see why you are sabotaging the chance of recovering my ship, and the Marchant Company won’t stand for it!”

  Alexis and Ousley shared a glance. She could empathize with Lounds, certainly, but the man refused to face reality.

  “Captain Lounds, sir,” Villar said gently, edging his seat closer to the man and leaning forward. “The damage to your ship is quite —” He reached for the table’s top then glanced at Alexis. “May I, sir?”

  Alexis nodded.

  Villar tapped for a moment and brought up imagery of the Gale.

  “I’ve seen the damage,” Lounds said. “The masts and rigging can be repaired once in a stable orbit. The hull fittings can be replaced. We’ve a full shop aboard — could build a whole other ship from it, for god’s sake!”

  “Look at her stern, sir,” Villar said, voice soft.

  The Gale’s stern was a twisted mess. Her long, wide rudder and planes were warped and cracked from the mining charge’s blast. That was repairable, and they weren’t needed in normal-space any more than the sails, but what Villar pointed out next was not. The nozzles of the Gale’s conventional drive were equally damaged — knocked askew, covered by the misshapen rudder, and even missing altogether.

  “She’s a few hours left at most,” Ousley said every bit as softly as Villar had. “Remarkable she’s not gone down as it is, but there’s not time enough to repair that.”

  Lounds’ shoulders slumped and his expression went dead.

  “You have two ships here,” he said, looking up at Alexis, his voice as flat as his expression. “A tow to higher orbit … give her time …”

  Ousley shook his head. “She’s too large, sir, we’ve not the power, even with the prize added in. You can see that.”

  Lounds swallowed heavily and his eyes fell.

  Alexis ran a hand absently over the edge of her table, almost a caress, as she sometimes did the navigation plot on the quarterdeck. She could see the other captain’s pain and knew it. The loss of Belial still stung her to the core … and the thought of losing Nightingale.

  “If there were any way, Captain Lounds,” she said, wishing she’d treated the man more kindly at the start of this meeting. Perhaps he’d have been more receptive to her — or perhaps he’d needed to hear it from Villar and Ousley, men he could respect, a feeling she suspected he didn’t feel for her.

  Lounds looked up and met her eyes. She tried to communicate her understanding and let the man know she knew how he felt about his ship. It was likely harder for him, she suspected, for he wasn’t Navy. Whatever Alexis felt for her ship, for her crew even, always had to be secondary to her duty — much as she might love them, they were tools toward that end. There was never time to mourn their loss in the heat of things.

  Lounds closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and nodded.

  “Very well, then,” Alexis said. “Captain Lounds, you and a third of your crew, those who are whole, that is, will take Distant Crown and sail for Zariah instanter — the worst of your wounded with you, as well, as many as may be safely transported in the Crown, and the bulk of the prisoners from that ship.” Alexis paused. That was as far as she’d got with Lounds in describing her plan before he began objecting, and she felt he might again. “One third of those remaining should stay here on Al Jadiq to assist with the recovery efforts in the meantime. The Crown is much smaller than the Gale … was —” She felt her own heart twinge in sympathy at Lounds’ expression. “— and the smaller crew will allow you to get your wounded to the best care on Zariah all the quicker.” She took a deep breath. “The remaining third of the Gale’s crew, especially those with any experience on the guns, I plan to take aboard Nightingale.”

  Lounds’ nostrils flared. He opened his mouth, then clamped it shut.

  “We’ll give your lads some opportunity to strike back at those who did this to you.”

  “You plan to hunt down that ship, then?” Lounds asked, eyes narrowed. “Do you know where the pirates base themselves?”

  “Not pirates — not in the traditional sense, at least,” Alexis said. “They’re —” How to phrase it? “They’re some sort of extremist sect from Man’s Fall. They —”

  Alexis broke off as she saw Lounds’ face react to her words. His eyes widened and color drained from his face as his jaw slackened.

  She thought quickly. Lounds and his insistence that colonies had no rights to restrict trade, her certainty that the Dark Gale was one of those ships Stoltzfus had complained about visiting Man’s Fall, Lounds’ talk of opening up new markets — all those combined with his reaction, far more than anyone should have at the news of an extremist sect on an already religious colony world …

  “You bloody fool,” she whispered, “you’ve been trading with them, haven’t you?”

  “I —” Lounds licked his lips and hesitated.

  “Say it man!” Alexis barked. She could sense him steeling himself to deny or put off anything he’d done and didn’t want him to have the chance.

  Villar was staring at him as well, then glanced over at Alexis. He seemed to sense what she suspected and what she wanted.

  “Tell us now,” he said. “It’ll come out and your one chance to convince us you didn’t know you were trading with pirates is now.”

  “I didn’t!” Lounds said. “They … they wanted goods! Is it my place to say they can’t have them?”

  “What goods?” Alexis asked. “And what did they pay you with? Man’s Fall has no exports.”

  “It —”

  “Bloody hell,” Villar said. “You took gallenium in payment?”

  “A bit!” Lounds said, his eyes were wide and panicked. “They said they’d found a single source on the planet! A bar or two each visit, no more, it seemed —”

  “It seemed plausible because you wished it to be, not thinking that gallenium that accessible would be noted on the survey report and no religious commune would be able to afford the bloody system!”

  “What did they buy?” Alexis asked. She had a chilling suspicion she knew. The niggling feeling that the crew of Distant Crown hadn’t been speaking of Al Jadiq when they talked of heretics grew. Unbelievers, yes, but heretics was something else, wasn’t it?

  Lounds drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  “Arms,” he said softly, then louder as though trying to convince himself, “Nothing proscribed! Laser rifles, flechettes — the sorts of thing any sane colony would have already to protect themselves and for hunting!”

  “Or to take a visiting ship,” Villar muttered.

  “I didn’t know!”

  “How many?” Alexis asked.

&n
bsp; Lounds frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “Bollocks,” Alexis said. “I’d wager you know every bit of cargo comes on and off your ship, Captain Lounds.” She narrowed her eyes, recalling that when she’d searched the Gale there’d been no mention of weapons or gallenium in his records. “Whether it’s on the manifests or not.”

  Lounds flushed.

  “What have you delivered to them in the way of weapons, captain?”

  “I …” His shoulders slumped. “Four dozen crates of flechette pistols. Near the same of laser rifles. Nothing, really.”

  Alexis ran the numbers in her head. If all of the ships she’d encountered had crews similar to that of the Distant Crown, then it was more than enough to arm them thrice over. And if she was correct, if the destruction of “heretics” meant not the Jadiqis, but those who opposed them in their own faith, then there were more than enough for what she feared as well.

  “You’ll be sailing for Zariah with a quarter of your surviving crew, Captain Lounds, and I’ll be taking the rest aboard Nightingale.” She glared at him as he started to speak and he bowed his head. “Get them aboard, Mister Villar, we sail for Man’s Fall instanter.” She ground her teeth together. “Damn me, but we’re dragging along behind yet again.”

  Fifty

  6 June, Man’s Fall System

  “This is not an ‘internal matter’, Mister Stoltzfus, and never was — you must tell me what you know.”

  “We have —”

  Alexis cut him off. The man was determined to remain blind to the possible consequences and she couldn’t let him. It was past time he faced the facts. Nightingale had beaten the Owl back to Man’s Fall, assuming she was correct in the remaining ship’s destination, but she felt there was little time before it arrived.

  She had the boat land just outside of the port town, instead of the far off landing field, then she, Spindler, her boat crew, and two Marines had marched into town and demanded the whereabouts of Stoltzfus. Villar was left in command of Nightingale instead of Spindler, because she wanted an experienced officer on the quarterdeck should anything happen while she was away.