Privateer (Alexis Carew Book 5)

by J. A. Sutherland

Alexis squinted at the plot. Come to that, that particular roiling mass was one they’d hoped to avoid, skirting its edges at a safe distance, but it seemed to have grown larger and its path —

  “Winds’ shifted, sir,” Layland said from the helm. “Two points to starboard and down ten …” He paused. “Three points to starboard and down fifteen, sir.”

  Alexis glanced at him, then back to the plot. Even as she watched, the winds shifted further — strengthening, too, until they settled again.

  Now Mongoose was nearly directly upwind of Delight.

  Alexis caught her lip between her teeth and worried at it. That was a rapid shift in the winds, and more than she liked. The plot showed the winds strengthening as well. That, and the speed of the shift, might mean the storm was stronger than they’d thought, picking up more and more dark matter and that mass sucking the dark energy winds into itself, further strengthening the storm.

  “Any signal from Delight?” she asked.

  Malcomson was closer to the storm and would surely have noticed the winds’ changes before Mongoose.

  Then again, the mad fool’s more likely to leave it longer, as well. Probably puts on a vacsuit and lashes himself to the mast for every storm, screaming at it to do its bloody worst.

  “No, sir,” Creasy said.

  “Well, signal to Delight, then. Ah, Storm to Leeward and … well, leave it at that. If we suggest he come up to us it’ll likely make him sail directly into the damn thing just to be contrary.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Ease us to windward, Layland.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Mongoose came up to the wind, making as much way as possible away from the oncoming storm. Delight’s image showed the other ship was doing so as well.

  “Signal from Delight, sir,” Creasy announced a few minutes later. “Ah … Have Eyes, sir.”

  Alexis shook her head. “Then he should have used them before this, I should think.”

  They sailed on, the winds ever strengthening and changing to bear directly toward the oncoming storm. Delight came closer, only because Mongoose was forced to bear off those winds and was making ever more leeway herself, despite having her keel fully extended to bite into the surrounding dark matter. They’d soon have to bring that up some, as the forces being exerted on it were growing, as well, and things could soon warp or even snap off due to the stress.

  More, the stress on Mongoose’s masts and spars was increasing with the stronger winds.

  “We’ll want to reduce sail, Mister Villar,” Alexis said, “and strike the topmasts altogether, I think.” Alexis watched the image of the storm, which seemed to grow and pulse with malevolence. “The morning watch might see us under bare poles if this keeps strengthening.”

  It did not quite come to bare poles, but both Mongoose and Delight bore mere scraps of sail before too long.

  Malcomson worked his ship upwind and nearer to Mongoose, but maintained a distance out of respect to the storm. Both ships were being tossed and knocked about, even before the full force of the storm reached them.

  That full-force was visible now, still past Delight on Mongoose’s navigation plot, so close now that the entire image was nothing but the oncoming storm, it’s face rolling like a wall of shadows.

  There was no doubt, either, that both ships would soon feel its full force. The winds being sucked into that mass were such that they could make no way to windward, away from the storm, at all, and were forced to crab their way along its face, hoping to eventually edge around it until they found some reduction in the winds.

  Even the image of Delight, though she was close enough now to make out her gunports and rigging, was occasionally obscured by blown drifts of dark matter — picked up and made visible by the winds.

  Mongoose had barely a scrap of sail on her poles, just enough to keep her helm answering, and even that, Alexis feared, might be too much, but the sail crews were already inboard and the hatches closed. She’d not risk any of the crew on the hull until they were past the outer wall of the storm.

  The winds and dark matter being drawn into that mass would accelerate once past the wall, flowing and accelerating around the storm’s center mass to pick up even more energy, as from a body in normal-space sling-shotting around a mass. Every bit drawn in then shot out again before being drawn back. That reversal formed the storm’s wall and the worst of its might.

  “Signal from Delight, sir,” Creasy said. “Making for Vendrizi. All luck.”

  That was the nearest system, and they might, with that luck, make it there with enough control of the ship to transition to normal-space and sit out the worst of the storm.

  “Acknowledge it.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  And all luck to you, too, you daft giant.

  The wall of the storm came closer, engulfed Delight, and rolled on, blocking her view of the other ship.

  Dockett came through the quarterdeck hatch, vacsuit helmet under his arm from his time at work on the sails, and approached the plot.

  “All our hands inboard, Mister Dockett?” Alexis asked.

  “A short crew in the sail locker, should we need anything cut away, sir,” Dockett said, “and the rest nearby.”

  “We’ll hope they’re not needed and we may ride this out.”

  “Aye, sir.” Dockett stole a look at the images on the plot. “It’ll be on us soon.”

  Alexis nodded. The storm’s wall, which had already driven Delight completely out of sight, was nearly upon them. The quarterdeck lights flickered and she felt the first tremors through the deck as Mongoose was tossed about so much by the storm as to overcome the inertial compensators.

  “For what we are about to receive …” Dockett muttered, and Alexis took no heart that it was a saying for a ship about to be the target of a broadside from a stronger foe.

  Forty

  A darkspace storm is like a shadowy, malevolent tumbleweed; a globular hurricane scouring all before it with a torrent of dark energy and dark matter.

  It started as a tiny, compressed bit of dark matter — small in size but large in mass.

  Mass enough to begin attracting the winds, pulling the dark energy radiations toward itself with ever-increasing force until they wrapped around the core like a spacecraft sling-shotting around a body in normal-space.

  As those winds came on, they picked up more bits of dark matter, leaving some behind to fall into the core and enlarge it, which brought on more and faster winds in an orgy of each feeding off the other.

  Those winds, faster and stronger after their trip around the core, were eventually pulled back in, reversing course at the storm’s outer edge, the wall. They might have slowed then, for their return trip around the core, but their energies were still enhanced and they carried all the mass of the dark matter they’d picked up along the way.

  As the storm became larger, it attracted winds from farther and farther outside its wall, overcoming even the attraction of normal-space masses until huge compasses of darkspace were all winds rushing toward the storm as though eager to become part of that roiling mass, strengthening the forces that looped from wall to core and back again.

  Stronger winds, though, did not give up their bits of dark matter easily. Instead they began to tear at the very core of the storm, destroying what strengthened them, until they’d ripped it apart and distributed its dark matter across space, until both the winds and core were dissipated to nothing.

  Then the bits of dark matter would begin to form again. Tossed about by the gentler winds, attracted to each other by their own, nearly undetectable mass, until there was enough together to begin again.

  The storm’s wall took Mongoose from above, driving her down and away from her track. Layland, on the helm, let the planes and rudders run free for the moment, else they’d be snapped off in trying to fight so great a force. The ship lurched and shook, nearly knocking Alexis and her officers to their knees. The quarterdeck’s lights and instrument panels went dark for several he
art-wrenching seconds before the worst of the wall moved on, then only flickered as gusts of dark energy were able to penetrate the hull and interfere.

  For a time, the ship spun and whirled like a bit of flotsam caught in a storm driven river, then the wall passed and they were well within the storm itself.

  Layland measured the stresses on the rudder and planes and, gradually, eased them into play again.

  “I’ve a bit of bite, sir, without ripping the pintles out of her,” he called.

  “Ease us back to our course, then,” Alexis said. “Handsomely, mind you.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Any sign of Delight?”

  “Nothing, sir,” Dorsett said.

  Mongoose jerked to the side and Alexis’ knee struck the navigation plot. She took a moment to curse the Navy’s tradition that officers walk their quarterdeck instead of having seats as the watchstanders did.

  Bugger tradition, and the whole, daft lot who came up with it.

  The lights flickered again. Alexis maintained her feet, eyes on the images from outside the hull. The winds were tearing at the bits of sail still on Mongoose’s masts, filling them then sending the woven, metal mesh aback as the winds shifted direction in the chaotic torrent that was the inside of a darkspace storm.

  With each change in the wind, the masts and booms shook and bowed

  “Halve the projectors, Layland,” she ordered.

  “Aye, sir. Halving — nary five-percent now, sir.”

  The sails dimmed, barely glowing, with the reduction in the particle projectors, which charged the gallenium-laced mesh of the sails to allow them to better catch the winds. With that and the reduced sail area, Mongoose was at little better than bare poles, and still the masts and booms bowed under the pressure.

  “What do you think, Mister Dockett?” Alexis asked. “Will she stand it?”

  The bosun was at the plot as well, watching what occurred outside the hull with the same intensity as Alexis.

  “The masts won’t bow, but I’d worry about the hinges,” Dockett said. “More stress than I’d like to see there.”

  Alexis nodded. There was not enough sail high enough on the masts to make them bow, bend in such a way that the upper masts couldn’t telescope in and out as they should, but the forces were working the hinges. Those, where the masts met the hull and could be folded down to lie flat, were the weakest points, and difficult to repair. They’d have to detach the mast and hinge entirely from the hull and fit new hinges, else run the risk of the damaged hinge breaking and leaving Mongoose dismasted at some crucial point.

  Alexis took a deep breath. She hated to do it, hated to require her crew to go out on the hull in those conditions, with the winds so strong and carrying so much dark matter along with them. The effect would be the same as going off the ship entirely, even staying close to Mongoose’s hull, with the feeling that one’s very thoughts were being slowed by the dark matter pressing around. And with the added strength of the winds blowing one about.

  She couldn’t say so, though. Couldn’t tell even Dockett that she wished she didn’t have to do this — that she was sorry. Certainly couldn’t show that she feared for those she was about to send out into the teeth of the storm to risk themselves for their ship and their mates.

  “I fear I’ve left too much sail on, Mister Dockett,” was the best Alexis could do.

  “Storm’s stronger’n I thought,” was the most acknowledgment Dockett could make that he understood her.

  “Storm trisail and jib?” Parrill said. “We’d have little choice in where we go, but may ride it out.”

  Alexis frowned. The trisail and jib might not hold up themselves in these winds, but they were needed. Mongoose would have to ride along, rather than letting the storm pass over, as the winds at this storm’s core would likely be much stronger than they’d yet experienced.

  “Those to keep us running with it,” Alexis said. “Do you suppose the masts might maintain themselves with a single reef, Mister Dockett? We’re running nearly direct toward Vendrizi — if we have even a bit of control then we may be able to transition to normal-space and find shelter there.”

  “No choice but to chance it, is there, sir?” Dockett said. “We’ll need a bit of control to avoid the shoals there, all regardless.”

  Alexis gripped the navigation tightly as the evolution was made. Not for the shaking and knocking about of the quarterdeck, which was bad enough, but for what the images from the hull showed.

  The crew, Mongoose’s crew, her crew, outside, battling to rig the storm sails and take in all but a scrap of the mains. Men and women, their vacsuits sometimes obscured from the camera by flows of dark matter picked up and made visible by the winds, leaning heavily to make their way across the hull. Sometimes knocked aback and sent to their knees or backs, only maintaining their place by the grace of the magnetic boots and their safety lines clipped to the hulls cables.

  She was only grateful that Mongoose’s sail plan, and what sail she’d taken in already, removed the need for any of them to climb the masts.

  Once the spacers pulling on the boom to angle it to take the winds more easily were knocked into each other by a gust. They lost their grip on the line, only for a moment, but it was enough to let the boom swing and strike the group working on the sails.

  Bodies were flung about, some coming free of the hull and would have been blown aside if not for their safety lines and their fellows trusting their own lines to fling themselves after and grasp an arm or leg to pull the floater back to the hull.

  “Reddish has a broke arm,” Dockett reported after all was complete and the crew was inboard once more. “Stott and Woodham’re a bit woozy — didn’t duck near fast enough when the boom went and took it to their noggins.” He sucked air through his teeth. “They’ll know better next time.”

  Alexis had no doubt of that. Stott was one of Dockett’s master’s mates and would likely hear from his superior about paying more attention once his eyes unglazed.

  “Thank you, Mister Dockett.”

  Alexis eyed the plot. If it was all representative of their position — which was not a bet she’d make, it being even more of a bit of guesswork than usual when hit with a storm — they should be able to run freely for several hours before sighting Vendrizi, if they didn’t miss it, and have some chance of making a transition point there.

  “See the crew’s fed and has a tot to strengthen them.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  They did sight Vendrizi — barely visible through the dark matter fog stirred up by the storm — but only when it was close upon them.

  A mad scramble of orders sent the crew back to the hull and worked the sails, taking in the trisail and jib so that Mongoose would not make so much way in the face of the storm, then raising the gaff to shake out more of the mains, and finally hauling on lines to bring those sails about and tack the ship.

  Layland laid on the rudder and planes until Alexis was certain she could hear the hull creak and groan in protest, but Mongoose answered. She turned and made for the transition point they were lucky enough to spot before being driven upon any heavy shoals.

  “Douse sails and transition as soon as you may, Layland,” she ordered. “Don’t wait for the way to come off her.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  It wasn’t strictly proper; a ship was supposed to get as near the center of a transition point as practical and stop before transitioning. Especially in a system with no pilot boat, there was the possibility of another ship having just transitioned and not cleared the point in normal-space yet. As well, motion didn’t carry over well from darkspace to normal-space, and that would stress the hull and inertial compensators.

  Still, with the storm, Mongoose would never come to a stop at all, so there was no point trying or they’d be driven past and miss it.

  The ship jerked, nearly throwing Alexis off her feet, as another gust of winds struck, and then came the slight blur of transition, as Layland didn’t wait e
ven for the center of the point, only for Mongoose to be enough inside the point to make it.

  A blink was all it took to miss the change, but in the next moment the ship went peaceful and quiet. The creaks and groans from the hull, the high-pitched, nearly inaudible whine of the compensators, the certainly imagined howl of the winds and rasping grate of dark matter blown across the hull, all stopped.

  There were some muted clicks as monitors and sensors, all dormant in darkspace, sprang to life and began their work once more, and, perhaps, a collective sigh of relief from the two hundred odd souls aboard Mongoose.

  Alexis’ shoulders slumped as some of the tension was released, and she eased her grip on the plot’s edge. Beside her, she saw Dockett’s knuckles go from white to red as he eased his own grip. She shared a look with him, then he turned his head to glare at the quarterdeck hatch where it seemed half the crew had gathered, vacsuits on, helmets in hand, to see them safely transition.

  “All right, then, back to stations! Y’ve all seen worse, y’bloody lubbers!”

  The crew scattered and Dockett turned back.

  “Secure the hull, sir?”

  Alexis smiled, her own relief at being out of the storm’s rage evident. “Aye, Mister Dockett. Secure the hull and see what damage’s been done.”

  Forty-One

  There was more than Mongoose seeking shelter from the storm in Vendrizi.

  As the normal-space sensors came to life, nearly two dozen ships appeared on the navigation plot. Scattered about the system at the transition points they’d entered from, but mostly around the four outermost planets, depending on where they’d entered the system in darkspace and which was closest to them as the storm approached.

  Mongoose had come in from the outermost planet’s L4 point and Alexis immediately saw that Delight had made it to the same planet’s L5. Bracketing two of the planet’s largest Lagrangian points and likely sending some worries through the four merchantmen also there. Those at the other planets would have a good chance of escaping, should the pair of privateers decide to ply their trade here, but those nearest would not.