Privateer (Alexis Carew Book 5)

by J. A. Sutherland

  After a moment’s grousing that he had no proper constabulary to keep order, and his thanks to her and her men for taking on that task when asked, Doakes set about collecting the unconscious miscreants and Alexis was able to make her way to the landing field.

  There were more than a dozen ships’ boats on the field — some from merchantmen, but most from the gallenium miners still pouring into the system. One or two would belong to those she’d just left behind in Doakes’ custody. A part of her wondered, looking across the crowded field, if Dalthus as a whole hadn’t been better off before the presence of gallenium in the Belt had been widely known — even when it was just a few families mining it in secret.

  Alexis sighed as the boat’s hatch sealed and she settled into her seat.

  The trip from Port Arthur to the Carew holding took less than an hour all-told. It was still a dark, early morning when they landed and unloaded, the men making their way back to the barracks or down to the village, while Alexis made for the farmhouse itself.

  The light in the kitchen and smell of tea as she approached the house told her that her trip had not gone unnoticed.

  She sighed, braced herself, and opened the door, forcing a cheery smile on her face. Julia, their housekeeper, was at the kitchen counter beginning the breakfast preparations. Her grandfather sat at the table; tablet in hand, catching up, she supposed, on the colony news or the holding’s accounts, one.

  “Good morning,” she said as they looked up at her entrance.

  Her grandfather raised an eyebrow, a bit of a curl to his lips.

  “An early one, as well,” Denholm said.

  Alexis flushed.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you, but the call from Doakes came quite late.”

  “Slept through your departure and were awake for the arrival,” Denholm said.

  “The chickens didn’t,” Julia added, “though that’s no fault of yours, Miss Alexis.” She turned a stern look on Denholm. “I told the man that landing field was too close to the house.”

  “Always with the chickens,” Denholm muttered. “No landing field, and it’s upsetting the chickens; new field, and it’s upsetting the chickens. One would think the whole purpose of these holdings was to coddle the bloody chickens.”

  Julia set a pot on the stove and held up three eggs. “It’ll be scrambled eggs for the four of us this morning, and stretched … the laying was off for some reason.”

  Denholm gave Alexis a pained look, making her hide her smile. She’d grown up around the two and knew their sniping hid a deep affection — not for the first time, she wondered at just how deep that affection might be and why it hadn’t led to more. Her grandfather had been alone since her grandmother died giving birth to her father, and Julia had been housekeeper here since only a few months after that. The two clearly cared for each other deeply, yet they’d never, so far as she knew, acted on it.

  “I’ll have a bit extra of the bacon to make up for it,” Denholm said, turning back to his tablet, “if the larder’s so short on eggs after only one night.”

  Julia snorted in response. She added butter to the pot, then a large scoop of cut oats. The nutty smell of toasting oatmeal quickly filled the room.

  “You’ll have two rashers,” she said, “after your oats, and not a bite more.”

  “Bloody gruel,” Denholm muttered.

  “And shall I call Doctor Piercefield to remind you of your last results?”

  Denholm flushed and cleared his throat as Julia added water to the toasted oats and put a lid on the pot.

  Alexis took the pause as an opportunity to sit, pulling her own tablet from a pocket to catch up on the news. No sooner had she turned it on, than a cup of tea appeared before her.

  “Thank you, Julia.”

  “I hope there wasn’t too much trouble last night?”

  “Miners and former Nightingales tearing up a … well, the sort of place miners and spacers tend to congregate.”

  A soft sound from the doorway to the rest of the house made her look up. Marie, the French girl from the Berry March she’d brought home with her after the abortive attempt to free those worlds from Hanover had gone so very wrong, slipped in and sat. They — Alexis, Marie, and Marie’s young son — were still sharing Alexis’ room — something that had not been so very bad when Alexis commanded Nightingale and was only home for visits, but turned out to be quite crowded when done for months on end.

  Especially with Ferrau growing day by day.

  Marie seemed to have settled in quite nicely with the household, assisting Julia with work around the house and farmyard — though never in the kitchen, Alexis noted, which seemed to be Julia’s sole domain.

  “Bonjour, merci,” Marie said as a cup of tea was set before her. Though her English was quite good and improving daily, the courtesies seemed so ingrained that they came out in her native French. “You rush out in the night, Alexis. Is all well?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry if I woke you or Ferrau.” Alexis sipped her tea. “There was trouble in Port Arthur and Doakes called for us.”

  “Again? These troubles grow, it seems.”

  “And it’s you Doakes calls,” Denholm added. “I still don’t see the why of that, what with your ship decommissioned and you on half-pay. Even if you were in command still, you’ve no real authority in the port — not as we’ve not asked the Crown for more of a presence, in any case.”

  Alexis grimaced. She hated to be at odds with her grandfather, but he, and most of the original settlers of Dalthus, didn’t seem to realize just how much things had changed. With the discovery of large deposits of gallenium in the asteroid belt, the rare metal which made travel between stars through darkspace possible at all, there’d been a huge influx of miners and others. The changes were coming so rapidly that the first settlers, those who owned the system and made its laws, appeared out of touch with the new realities facing the ports.

  “Mister Doakes is the closest thing to a Crown authority Port Arthur has, though he’s only the Crown agent, and he has no proper constabulary to call upon.” She added a bit more sugar to her tea. “It’s a different world now, grandfather. The miners aren’t properly Dalthus citizens — they’ve not signed the Charter and agreed to its terms. The Charter itself doesn’t set who has authority to do more with off-worlders — short of the worst of crimes, that is — other than send them on their way. That might have worked when our only visitors were merchant crews who’d leave in a short time anyway, but that’s somewhat ineffective with the miners. They simply go to the belt for a bit, then come back.”

  “There’s a measure on the agenda for the Conclave which will let Doakes establish his constabulary,” Denholm said.

  “If it passes,” Alexis reminded him.

  “Yes, if. You’ve convinced me, and no few others, that Port Arthur, and the other freetowns, have need of it. Still, I don’t understand why you’ve taken the task on in the meantime.”

  “Part of the troubles are the hard cases from Nightingale’s crew, grandfather. They’re my responsibility.” Alexis fought the urge to sigh. This was a disagreement between the two of them that felt old, though it had only been a few months.

  When the latest war with Hanover ended — well, cease-fire, but it seemed as though the authorities were treating it as a proper ending — Nightingale’s crew was left at odd ends. Many took places aboard merchantmen — either permanently or simply working their way back toward whatever system they’d come from when they joined the Navy. Others stayed on Dalthus, signing on to the Carew farmstead for a time, or trying their hands at the lucrative mining.

  Her grandfather might not understand it, but Alexis felt she owed them all a debt, even the troublemakers, for having been their commander. Perhaps not the same debt to all, but a debt none the less, and a responsibility for any trouble those troublemakers caused, as, if she’d managed to reach them when she held command they might not be causing it. No matter that her former bosun, Ousley, had assured her more than once
that Monks and his ilk were trouble to the bone, she still thought there might have been something more she could have done.

  “After the ship’s decommissioned these four months past?”

  “Nightingale’s not decommissioned, she’s in ordinary. Merely idle and waiting to be called to service again. As am I.”

  “Half-pay and wait upon their pleasure?” Julia scoffed. “Seems poor payment, indeed, for all you’ve done.”

  “I’m quite a junior lieutenant and they’ve kept only the most senior ships and captains employed. With the war over, there are frigates such as Ulysses available and far better able to patrol this sector than Nightingale alone was.”

  Julia sniffed. “Captains like Gammill. Senior, maybe, but he rubs all folk the wrong way.”

  Alexis had to agree with that. Captain Gammill of HMS Ulysses, Nightingale’s replacement, had visited Dalthus only twice since the war ended, but both times he’d managed to irritate nearly everyone he encountered. Neither had he approved of Alexis’ use of Nightingale’s boat, but she’d managed to avoid a direct order she not make use of it any longer. Whether Gammill thought she’d agreed to such might be quite a different matter, but she was entirely comfortable he hadn’t ordered her not to.

  “Well,” Denholm said, “the Conclave’s next week and we’ll have no worries about half-pay or being recalled after. One good thing’s come of your rushing off to save Doakes and Port Arthur so often, and it’s that fewer are able to argue you’re not capable. I have every confidence the vote will go our way and you’ll be able to concentrate on learning to run our lands, rather than a ship.”

  Alexis merely nodded, grateful for the bowls of oatmeal Julia slipped onto the table, for it meant she had an excuse to look down and not meet her grandfather’s eye.

  Dalthus’ inheritance laws were the whole reason she’d joined the Navy in the first place. They’d been changed shortly after the colony’s founding from the original first-born inheriting the colony company shares, and corresponding lands, to the first-born son. She supposed it had made sense at the time, to colonists shocked and no little frightened by the implications of a new colony world’s lack of medical care and the corresponding risk of death in childbirth. It must have seemed, to many, like they’d been thrust back into the dark ages when humanity was bound to a single planet.

  In a sense it was, and they’d responded accordingly by bringing back laws, no matter their distaste for laws in general, which had shaped those earlier societies.

  Her grandfather, though, had no other heirs, and after more than one disastrous attempt to find a suitor for her — a husband who’d hold the lands instead of her — he’d determined to lobby for a change in those laws, if he could. And she’d taken to the Navy — partly out of a desire to distance herself and the reputation she’d gained for being … difficult, and partly out of determination to find something useful and productive to spend her life on. She had no taste for the parties and frivolous activities of the female half of Dalthus’ grander shareholders.

  Now, though, she found herself uncertain. The Navy might have been an impulsive leap for her, but she had found a place there. The men she’d commanded and those who’d led her in turn seemed to have filled a void she hadn’t really known existed before she left home.

  Not all of them, of course. The Navy had its share of scoundrels and dastards as well, but to stand with men like her first captain, Captain Grantham, or others she’d served with, to lead those who’d give their all, even their very lives, for their mates, for the defenseless … for her, because she asked it of them — well, the thought of giving that up emptied that void and left her hollow.

  She couldn’t tell her grandfather that, though — not let him know that what he’d fought so hard for, for her to inherit their lands and run them after him, might not be the reward he thought it was.

  Three

  Alexis had never attended Dalthus’ Conclave before. The gathering consisted of the heads and heirs of the families who’d originally settled the system. Nearly three thousand of them, though only those who held the actual company shares would be voting. It was held in Port Arthur every five years and was where the colony’s laws, such as they were, were made.

  The original settlers had felt that with thousands of years of human history to draw on, all the good and necessary laws were likely there for the taking at the start and there was little need for a permanent government or legislature.

  For the most part Alexis agreed with them, but the devil was in the details, and circumstances did have an annoying tendency to change.

  The Conclave was held in Port Arthur’s auditorium, a far cry from her grandfather’s stories of first settling Dalthus, when the settlers had met under a huge tent erected for just that purpose.

  The auditorium was a grand thing, the largest building in the port town, and a bit ostentatious, to Alexis’ view. Her grandfather agreed with that, mentioning that the columns were a bit much and he’d argued against them, but it did serve the colony for plays and musical shows between Conclaves — and many of the larger shareholding families did feel a need for ostentation. The Carew family home, with its clapboard construction and small size, was far from the huge, brick mansions many called home. In their defense, she supposed, their families were quite a bit larger than the Carews, as well.

  “Bare grass and whatever we chose to bring for sitting, that first year,” Denholm said as they settled into their seats.

  Around them was all the bustle of a large, filling space before an event. Old friends who might not have met in person for some time calling to each other, small groups forming to discuss the agenda and express their thoughts on some point or the other, and through it all vendors from Port Arthur’s citizenry taking advantage of the crowd to hawk their food and drink.

  “It’s much changed even since when I first left on Merlin,” Alexis agreed.

  “Not all for the better, neither,” Denholm said. He handed over coin for a pair of bottles and handed one to Alexis. “Four pence for a bottle of cold tea and lemon? Robbery.”

  “Prices are up in all the port towns. With so much coin for the gallenium coming in and the miners spending so freely —” She shrugged.

  “Wages as well,” Denholm agreed.

  Someone in the row behind leaned close and whispered loudly in Alexis’ ear.

  “Of course, the old miser next to you’s always been one to pinch a coin.”

  Denholm’s face broke in wide grin as he turned.

  “Sewall! Good to see you, man — and it’s frugal, mind you.”

  Alexis smiled as well. The man was older than her grandfather, near eighty, if she remembered correctly, but still strong and wiry. The woman next to him was plump and cheerful — things Elora Mylin had been all Alexis’ life.

  The Mylins were the Carews’ nearest neighbors, holding lands on the other side of a hilly region to the holding’s north.

  “Frugal’s a word for it,” Sewall Mylin said. “One.” He nodded to Alexis. “Lexi.”

  “Uncle Sewall, Aunt Elora,” she said. The Mylins weren’t really related, but visits between the two holdings had been frequent when Alexis was young. More frequent than visits with those who truly were her aunts and uncles, her mother’s family the Arundels, one of whom Alexis spotted waving to her from the aisle. “Lauryn Arundel wishes to speak to me, if you’ll excuse me?”

  “Of course, dear,” Elora said. “Will you agree to have dinner with us soon, though?”

  Alexis smiled. “I’d love to, if you’ll promise to make your yams.”

  Elora laughed as Denholm grimaced. Alexis would never understand her grandfather’s distaste for yams and potatoes — something to do with the colony’s first few years, but she dearly loved what Elora could do with the sweet, orange roots — and they were only rarely served at the Carew house due to Denholm’s dislike.

  Alexis excused herself and made her way to the aisle. A quick hug and peck on the cheek greeted her c
ousin, who, strictly speaking, wasn’t supposed to be in the auditorium.

  “I’ll clear out once things are closer to starting,” Lauryn said by way of explanation, “not being a ‘proper’ heir and all.”

  Alexis herself wasn’t a proper heir, come to that, and would have been excluded if she hadn’t been asked to speak to the inheritance measure.

  “Have you given any thought to what I asked?”

  Alexis nodded. “I have, and I’m afraid I can’t support it.”

  Lauryn frowned. “Really? After all you’ve been through yourself, you can’t see the right of it?”

  “It’s not that I disagree in principle, but there are plenty of worlds where everyone’s given the franchise. I simply don’t think it’s the right thing for Dalthus — at least not just yet.”

  Lauryn pointed to the stage where the Conclave’s speakers would make their cases for or against each of the proposed items on the agenda. “So, you’ll stand up there and argue to change the inheritance laws, the voting laws, in one way — a way which will benefit yourself — but not so as to benefit others?”

  “The proposed change is not so great, and you know it. Merely putting things back to the original Charter.” Alexis sighed. They’d had this disagreement more than once. Lauryn and many of the younger set — though none of the heirs, she’d noted — felt it was time to enlarge the franchise beyond the original shareholding families. “Lauryn, I understand the point you and your friends make, I do, but Dalthus is still such a young colony — most of the settlers who first arrived here are still the shareholders. Do you really think they’ll support such a drastic change? One that’s not even on the agenda and they haven’t had a proper time to think on?”

  “Amendments may be made in Conclave. I’ve read the Charter myself, you know.”

  “As have I. Do you really think two-thirds of those here would ever agree to such a thing?”