Privateer (Alexis Carew Book 5)

by J. A. Sutherland

  Alexis twisted, smacked his blade with her own, and extended hers as she pushed off the wall.

  Pain lanced her side as Spensley’s blade slid along her ribs, parting flesh. The grating of steel on bone seemed to fill her body, vibrating through her, even as her own caught Spensley under the jaw.

  Spensley’s own momentum drove him onto it. His initial spasm away caused it to exit through his mouth, then the edge caught his face, raking at his cheek and eye as he thrashed.

  Alexis’ sword was torn from her grasp even as Spensley dropped his.

  The man turned away, grasping first at his face, then at the blade. Blood flowed from both face and hands as he tried to pull the blade free and cut his hands to the bone as well, all the time giving voice to a horrifying howl of agony.

  Alexis, through those horrible moments, grasped her side. The cut was bleeding and painful, but hadn’t pierced her ribs. She doubled over, more to catch her breath as the fight’s exertion caught up with her than from the pain.

  Around them, the crew and other watchers were silent, staring on as Spensley fell to the deck, still writhing and howling from the pain of the blade through his face. Blood pooled around him, then spattered as he thrashed.

  “You need to finish this, Carew,” Pennywell said, coming to her side. “If you’re able.”

  Alexis nodded. She picked up Spensley’s blade and made her way toward him.

  She could see that nearly everyone was watching her, though some had their eyes fixed on Spensley. Every movement, every cry, caused more damage to the man.

  Pennywell winced at the sight. “It’ll be a kindness, Carew,” he said.

  Alexis laid her — Spensley’s — blade against the man’s throat. Her vision blurred a bit, shadows creeping in from the edges, and a chill went through her. Her leg, the one Spensley’d pinked, went weak and she had to shift her weight before she fell to the deck beside him. It might be that she was injured worse than she’d thought. Pain from both her leg and side washed over her.

  She raised the blade from Spensley’s throat, wondering that the man’s thrashing about hadn’t slit it for her while she stood there.

  “Mister Wakeling,” she called, though it was an effort to be heard over Spensley’s screams. “Fetch your surgeon and see your captain back to Oriana.” She tossed Spensley’s blade to the deck. “We’re done here. You may take Oriana and leave if you wish, but alone and separate we’ll be picked off one by one by those pirates.” She met the gaze of each of the other captains in turn. “The rest of you, as well. We’ve enough of a fight in store for us without doing it amongst ourselves, so those of you who are with me will meet in my cabin in twenty minutes’ time.”

  She forced herself to straighten. That pulled at her side and made breathing harder, then forced a step from her injured leg — then another, and another, though each became more difficult than the last.

  Flashes of images made it through her rapidly blurring vision. The other captains, faces blank and calculating for the most part. Her crew cheering, though here and there she saw a more sober face and wondered if some had bet against her. Dockett, his face colored red as he seemed to be arguing with Isom and Nabb, both whom wore amused looks — but she had no time for that.

  She strode, as nearly as she was able, aft toward her cabin, and toward the other private ship captains at the fore of that crowd, keeping her eyes on them the entire time.

  “For those of you who wish to flee, you may get your cowardly arses off my ship.”

  She took another step, then stopped.

  “And Mister Villar?”

  “Aye, sir?”

  “Be sure to retrieve my sword before Spensley makes off with it, will you?”

  Fifty-Nine

  “Will he live, do you think?” Alexis asked.

  Mongoose’s surgeon, Merriwether, looked up from his work on her leg.

  She was flat on her cot in nothing but her bloodstained underthings as the man worked. First on her leg, for that was the worst of it, despite her not having felt so during the fight. Her outfit was in a ruined heap — soaked in blood, both hers and more than a few spurts from Spensley’s thrashing about — and in tatters. There was more than one cut to both her clothes and body that she didn’t remember getting, though her leg and side were certainly the worst of it, and then Merriwether and his loblolly boys had set to cutting what remained off her.

  “This would go easier if you’d come to the sick berth,” Merriwether muttered. “Those stretchy trousers did a fine job of holding the bits of you together, but this one’s deep.”

  Indeed it was. Alexis swallowed heavily as she saw just how deep. She couldn’t feel the pain from it, not with the anesthetic Merriwether’d applied — couldn’t feel her leg at all, come to that. It was as though her whole leg from the thigh down belonged to someone else. Someone with a large, yawning slice in their flesh, as though a butcher’d set his mind to boning the meat.

  “If I won’t die from doing it here, it’s best the others think I’m not too badly hurt.”

  Merriwether grunted. “You’ll not die and you’re not too badly hurt. So you can put on your show for the others with no worries.”

  Alexis swallowed hard as the surgeon sopped up a bit more of the blood that was flowing far too easily for her taste and pressed the wound closed.

  “Give the sealant an hour before you go jumping about on it again, will you?” Merriwether said. “And easy as you can for three days. It’s going to ache — if you feel a sharp pain, then you’re tearing something apart again, so stop it.”

  He sprayed something on the wound, which was now reduced to a thin, red line with coating of clear paste over it.

  “The tearing part would be bad, if you were wondering,” he said. “Let’s see to your side there.”

  He moved her hand from where she held a thick wad of bloodstained cloth to her side and tossed that to one of his assistants. There the numbing was more localized and she could feel the cold overspray as he first spread the wound and sprayed on several liquids from his kit, then closed it and sprayed on another.

  “That’ll offset the coagulant and prevent infection,” he said after one. “Get the blood flowing again, now that I can seal it. You’ll want a laser treatment every few days to accelerate the healing.”

  Alexis nodded. “You didn’t answer — whether you think Spensley will live?”

  “I didn’t treat him,” Merriwether said, “so I can’t rightly say. I expect he will, though. The blade went through his lower jaw and out his mouth, so none of the damage was what I’d call life-threatening. It’ll likely seal up fine, but he’ll have scars until he can reach somewhere to reconstruct things.” He frowned. “His tongue and eye’ll have to wait until then as well, unless his ship has better facilities than I’d expect.”

  Alexis winced.

  “That’s that, then,” Merriwether said, closing his kit and rising. “I’d tell you to stay in your cot ‘til next watch, but that won’t happen, will it?”

  “No.” Alexis was already rising. “The other captains will want to meet and we have pirates coming closer every moment.” She swung her numbed leg over the cot’s edge and her foot thumped heavily to the deck. It seemed she had no control over her leg at all below her wound.

  “That’ll leave a bruise,” Merriwether muttered.

  He shook his head in resignation and left, replaced at her side by Isom who carried fresh clothing.

  Alexis flushed as he had to help her change her bloodstained underthings — they were used to living in close proximity aboard ship, not this close — but Isom seemed to take it in stride. He’d brought her an old ship’s jumpsuit from her time on Nightingale, rather than anything from home. That went on easier – with her dead leg and being unable to raise her arms too high for fear of stretching the cut in her side – than the denim trousers from home or the other pair of tight leggings.

  “Thank you,” Alexis said once she was dressed and standing, one
arm around Isom’s shoulders as she hopped toward her table.

  “Of course, sir. I’ll get the bloodied things cleared up quick as I can, but the other captains are waiting.”

  “I’m sure.”

  She settled into her chair and scanned the plot displayed on her tabletop.

  Things were not so very different than she imagined. The oncoming pirates had spread out, working their way through the shoals in several different places, all the better to cut off any escaping ships. She’d expected that — and that their travels through the shoals would be quicker than any of Alexis’ forces had been able to accomplish. They knew darkspace around their system, after all, and would have all the best paths marked on their charts and updated as they changed.

  The gunboats had spread out too and were also making their way through the shoals inward of the private ships, which cut off most flight in that direction.

  A quick look at the prevailing winds told her that none of the ships — perhaps Mongoose, which she thought to be the fastest, but still unlikely — would be able to get past the farthest of either group. They’d do no better than to become bogged down in an engagement at the very edges and then be caught up by the rest of the pirates.

  As a group, some might make it past, but that would mean abandoning their engaged fellows. Or counting on being able to disable or destroy the farthest enemy ships without any of their own being similarly struck.

  Her hatch opened and Isom ushered in the other captains and their officers — all except Spensley and Wakeling, of course.

  They settled themselves, each scanning her tabletop plot as she had and she could see the same conclusions coming to them. Their faces sobered more.

  “This is a fine pickle,” Lawson muttered, her mouth twisting in a wry grin.

  “Indeed,” Kingston agreed. He pulled out his tablet and began tapping at it.

  Malcomson leaned forward, causing his chair to creak — something Alexis had never heard of from the sturdy, ship-built thing. “Buggered guid an' stoaner.”

  “Buggered good and hard at the start,” Alexis agreed. “Even if we’d scattered or stayed together to flee when they arrived, we’d be facing the same.”

  The others nodded.

  Kingston tapped the tabletop in several places.

  “Here, here, here, and here would be the farthest we’d have got as a group,” he said, glancing at his tablet. “The fastest of us would have got here.” He tapped the table again.

  They could also see that none of those places would have done well enough to avoid engagement with the oncoming ships. The new arrivals had the advantage of being outsystem, with the wind gauge and better knowledge of the shoals.

  “We’re trapped,” Pennywell muttered, then met Alexis’ eyes. “Not that I’m accusing anyone, mind you.”

  “Only a body hin' tae dae when yoo're trapped,” Malcomson said, his accent thicker.

  The others stared at him for a moment.

  Little Mal, his first officer, sighed. “There’s only one thing to do when you’re trapped,” he explained.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not chewing an arm off,” Lawson said. “Unless it’s Spensley’s arm, at least.”

  “Oriana hasn’t left yet,” Pennywell noted, pointedly ignoring Malcomson, with a glance at the plot.

  Indeed, Oriana was still sailing along with the rest of them.

  Lawson tapped her tablet. “Do you suppose Wakeling’s had a change of heart and intends to stay? There’ve been no signals since they returned to their ship.”

  “It will depend on Spensley’s time to recover himself, I think,” Pennywell said. “Wakeling might see the sense of it.” He met Alexis’ eye. “I’ll admit I wondered at whether we should all go our own ways, myself, but I’ve run some simulations and you were right from the start — the pirates would have picked us off one by one.”

  Kingston sighed. “So, we’ve five ships against twelve, then the gunboats. What do we do?”

  “Soond th' bags an' gang reit at them.”

  “No,” Pennywell said. “We’re outnumbered in ships and men, both. Going right at them will only get us killed the quicker.”

  “And keep your bloody bags on your own ship,” Lawson said. “I’ll have none of that caterwauling aboard Scorpion.”

  Malcomson sighed and looked down at the table, shaking his head.

  Alexis laid a hand on his thick forearm. “You may send a piper aboard Mongoose, if you like, it may — Mister Villar, are you quite all right?”

  Villar stopped shaking his head in a rapid, narrow arc and caught Malcomson and Little Mal glaring at him. “No, sir, nothing.”

  Alexis studied the plot then tapped it a few times to display what they knew of normal-space within Erzurum — merely the planets in their orbits and the pair of ships around the inhabited planet, along with a few other gunboats spotted by their one, brief glimpse into normal-space. She brought that up in overlay of the darkspace plot.

  “Go right at them,” she said.

  “Told you it was contagious,” Kingston whispered to Lawson.

  Sixty

  “Look,” Alexis said. “Their fleet outnumbers and outmans us here in darkspace, but not a thing’s changed about our original plan. There’s still only Hind and the frigate guarding Erzurum itself.”

  “Aye, a frigate we didn’t think would be there when we started,” Pennywell said.

  Alexis nodded agreement, but tapped the other frigate’s icon on the darkspace plot.

  “This one’s appearance makes it even more likely that the one in orbit isn’t fully functional or manned. If it were, then they’d have had it off collecting prizes, wouldn’t they?” She looked around the table, catching each pair of eyes in turn.

  “Are we all agreed that if we attempt to flee separately in darkspace we’ll each be caught?”

  She waited for them to nod.

  “And if we attempt to fight our way out as one force, we’re likely to lose as well?”

  More nods.

  Alexis tapped Erzurum’s habitable planet on the plot.

  “Then our original plan stands. We take Erzurum.” She nodded to Malcomson. “Go right at them, bags caterwauling —”

  “Not on Scorpion.”

  “— and take their base. Once in orbit around Erzurum, we hold the ground they want and they must come to us. Facing our broadsides, and only being able to respond with their chasers.”

  The others stared at the plot, Pennywell tapping at his tablet the whole time.

  Malcomson clapped her on the shoulder.

  “It’s a Sheehy plan, true. Yer a credit tae yer clan.”

  “It’s madness,” Lawson muttered.

  Pennywell shrugged. “No more so than any other.”

  “And how do we get to the Lagrange points?” Lawson tapped the plot. “We’ll still have to get past the gunboats, and through these shoals, then the next — all with that frigate and the other ships chasing up our skirts.”

  Alexis shook her head. “We won’t transition there — we’d never make it through the shoals. The pirates know the shoals better, they’d have their ships on the other side before us and pound us to pieces from both ends.” She pointed to the plot quite near their ships. “We’ll transition here.”

  Malcomson leaned over to whisper, “Aam nae likin' thes plan, lass.”

  “That gas giant’s L2? True madness!” Lawson said. “We’ll be days in normal-space before reaching the planet!”

  “A week,” Pennywell said, not looking up from his tablet. “And that’s assuming all your ships can maintain Gallion’s speed in normal-space.”

  “A bit less,” Kingston added, “as Osprey’s compensators are smaller, but not so much as to make a difference.”

  The others nodded agreement. Their ships were never meant to do much more in normal-space than transition and make their way from a Lagrangian point to planetary orbit. The normal-space engine mass and shielding to accelerate and ma
intain any greater speed simply wasn’t worth hauling around darkspace.

  “Longer,” Alexis said.

  Pennywell raised an eyebrow. “Really? I’d have expected your Mongoose to be faster.”

  “We won’t be making a least-time course,” Alexis said. “If we do that, they’ll simply sail straight to Erzurum in darkspace, and we’ll be facing all their broadsides as we come in.”

  She stood so that she could reach all around her table and traced a glowing route that zigged and zagged toward each planet in turn.

  “It'll drive ‘em a bampot,” Malcomson said with a grin.

  Lawson frowned, then nodded.

  “What?” Pennywell asked. “Other than wasting —” He consulted his tablet. “— nearly a fortnight more?”

  “Not this exact course,” Alexis said, “we’ll have to figure that, but close. We transition to normal-space, then head for a planet — not Erzurum, the habitable planet, just yet. The pirates will think we plan to use Lagrangian points there to return to darkspace well away from their fleet in an attempt to escape.”

  Now Pennywell nodded as well.

  “They’ll have to send their own ships to cover it and intercept us there — they can reach it quicker in darkspace than we can in normal, after all.”

  Alexis nodded.

  “Meanwhile, we veer off toward yet another planet and possible transition points,” she said, tracing her line.

  “All the while, they have to watch us in normal-space, transition back to darkspace, and pass our course changes along — might even have to set some ships to hanging about in between as relays for their signals.” Alexis tapped some places on the plot where she was certain the shoals would interfere with a signal being seen through it, as well as where the distance between planets would be too great without such a relay. “So much dark matter will play havoc with their lights.”

  Malcomson stood and leaned his massive form over the plot, causing the others to lean away in their chairs. He stabbed his finger on the course Alexis had painted, then drew four new lines from it, each snaking from planet to planet as Alexis’ original did, but all different, then he sat back and grinned.