Mynatt drew in a sharp breath. “You plan to hang him? Just like that?”
“That’s a dangerous game, Carew,” Dansby said. “If your Navy decides you didn’t have that power. Usurping the Crown’s authority is a hanging offense itself.”
“It provides at least some legal fiction,” Alexis said, “and gets us on our way to finish this mission without worrying about Coalson forever at our heels. Unless you’d like to rid us of him without attempting to collect a bounty?”
“Not now that you’ve mentioned it, no,” Dansby said. “Five hundred pounds or more certainly wouldn’t go amiss.” He grinned. “And it’s you who’ll face the consequences if your superiors disagree, not us. Of course there’s a chance we won’t be paid, either.”
“There’s a risk they’ll not pay,” Alexis admitted. “As for the other, rely on Eades for secrecy and I’ll rely on him to smooth things over — I can’t believe I said that, but I suspect he’ll not want this mission known, still, so it must be a small matter to keep the award to you secret and gloss over any imperfections in my authority.”
Mynatt touched Dansby’s hand and they shared a look.
“She’s right about having to deal with him, even if there’s a chance there’s no profit in it.”
“I still find your motives suspect,” Dansby said to Alexis. “It’s personal for you more than anything.”
“I have little memory of my parents, Mister Dansby, and those mostly from images and tales, I suspect. My earliest genuine recollection is sitting in my grandfather’s lap and seeing his tear-covered face as he tried to explain to me that my mother and father were never coming home.” She nodded. “If Coalson knows aught of that, then it is quite personal.”
Dansby took their glasses and filled them, remaining silent until he’d returned to the bunk and passed them out.
“All right then,” he said. “And what’s your plan to deal with him and remain alive yourself?”
“That’s where my serpent comes in.” Alexis raised her glass to him in mock toast. “Surely you’re not prepared to admit that Daviel Coalson is cleverer than you?”
Chapter 29
Alexis’ back itched as she entered the pub. It was a different one from where she’d first seen Coalson, but no less seedy and disreputable. She felt vulnerable and exposed despite their plan.
Seven plans, actually, for Dansby wasn’t one to make assumptions. They’d thought out every possible move of Coalson’s and had contingencies for all.
Save the one where he shoots me in the head immediately. That we’ve no plan for.
It was a risk, but she felt she knew Daviel Coalson well enough to be confident he’d wish to gloat for a time first.
There were few patrons in the pub and she saw Coalson immediately. He sat at the rear of the compartment with his back to the bulkhead. There were, perhaps, a half dozen other patrons and she suspected they were all his men.
One of them rose to block her path and gestured.
“Arms up,” he said. “I’m ter search yer.”
Alexis held her hands out to her sides and the man ran his hands over her, lingering in places that made her want to drive a knee into him. As his hands ran over her left arm, near the cuff where her ship’s jumpsuit was frayed, she fought the urge to tense. Most of the plans relied on what Dansby and his crew did, but one relied on what was concealed in that cuff. He moved on, though, and did find the hidden pocket at the small of her back, making her glad she’d left the flechette pistol behind. Finally he nodded and backed out of her way.
She made her way to Coalson’s table and sat. He had a glass of wine before him, bottle on the table, and an empty glass near where she sat. Up close his injuries were worse than she’d thought. The right half of his face was deeply scarred and the prosthetic he wore seemed to start above the elbow.
“I’m surprised you had the courage to come, Carew.”
“Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
Coalson pulled his tablet from a pocket and set it on the table. “Oh, do allow me my moment, yes? I plan to record this and send it to your grandfather along with the news of your death. It will be a last, fitting bit of my family’s revenge against him.”
Alexis shook her head sadly. She could understand if Coalson wanted revenge against her — she’d been aboard Merlin when his schemes were discovered and she’d given the order to fire into his boat. She’d caused his gruesome injuries, and yet he was still, after all that, fixated on revenge against her grandfather.
By all accounts his father, Rashae Coalson, had been mad. A paranoid well past the point of delusion. When the colonists to Dalthus were choosing lots, the properties they’d own based on their shares in the colony, Alexis’ grandfather had by chance chosen several that Rashae wanted. Instead of bad luck, Rashae Coalson had seen it as a plot — that her grandfather, Denholm, had some knowledge of what Rashae wanted and had chosen specifically to thwart him.
Rashae had hated Denholm until the day he died, then passed that hatred, irrational though it was, on to his sons.
Alexis scratched her left wrist, transferring the capsule in her cuff to her hand, then took the wine bottle from the table and poured herself a glass. She was relieved to find it was a new bottle and let the capsule fall into it. She raised her glass and drank.
“No protestations, Carew? No going on about how your grandfather was innocent and misunderstood?”
“I’ve given up trying, Mister Coalson. I cannot convince crazy.”
Two men entered the pub. They were from Röslein, though Coalson wouldn’t know that. Dansby had brought along almost the entire crew, though not through the main hatch. They’d assumed Coalson would have men watching the ship to see that only Alexis left it, but Dansby had brushed the concern aside.
“I’m a smuggler, dear niece,” he’d said. “Getting things on and off this ship without notice is a thing I’ve a bit of experience at.”
Two of Coalson’s men approached the new arrivals and ushered them out, saying that the pub was closed, but they’d planned for that. The men had only to enter so that they could relay information about the layout to Dansby.
“Station a man outside,” Coalson ordered. “I don’t wish to be interrupted.” He gestured at his face with the prosthetic and scowled. “This is your doing, you know. Firing into my boat.” He clenched the fingers of his prosthetic, grinding them together. “Can’t go to a decent clinic in New London space for fear of being identified — and proper Hanover systems are out, what with the war on.”
“Any of Merlin’s officers would have fired into your boat. The outcome’s your doing and you have only yourself to blame.”
“But I blame you.”
“Of course you would — you’re as mad as your father.”
“Mad? Mad to see the truth of your family’s vendetta against mine? How else to explain your presence here with the very man I’ve been waiting for?”
“What —”
“Dansby, damn you!” Coalson slammed his prosthetic onto the table. One of his men glanced their way, but then went back to watching the door. “After I recovered, after I got fitted with this —” He held the prosthetic up for her to look at. It was a crude piece of work, all metal without even the semblance of artificial flesh. “The best that could be done in the primitive systems I could safely visit. I’ve been to every pirate haunt and smuggler’s den I could remember since … and everywhere it’s the same answer: If you want to go that deep into Hanover, deep enough for proper medical care, then it’s Avrel Dansby who can get you there and back again.”
Coalson pointed at her.
“Weeks I waited on Baikonur for one of his ships, so as to send a message to him and arrange passage. Then word that the man himself was meeting in that bloody pub.” He shook his head, snorting in disbelief. “And who do I see with him? A bloody Carew. And you claim I’m mad? That you’re not pursuing me? No, I’m no more mad than my father was.”
Alexis remained
silent. She could see how such a coincidence might appear, but as Dansby had said, if there was a system where she’d encounter a man like Coalson, it was Baikonur.
“Rashae, my father, was a great man, Carew. You have no idea. He saw the promise of Dalthus and the gallenium ore in the belt there, arranged to bury the survey report, and founded the colony. In another generation the Coalsons would have been the wealthiest family in the Fringe if you’d not interfered. All my life I lived in his shadow, nothing good enough to please him. But this —” He tapped his tablet and smiled. “— when your grandfather gets this and knows the whole truth, along with the news that the last of his line is dead, then I’ll have surpassed Rashae. I’ll have made our revenge complete.”
“What truth, Coalson? You grow tiresome.”
“Such bad luck the Carews have had on Dalthus. First your grandfather’s Highlands whore perishes, then your father. Pity about Katlynne, though — seems she’d have been better off with me, after all.”
Alexis felt sick to her stomach to hear Coalson speak about her family, especially to speak so about her mother, Katlynne. Coalson seemed to be implying that he’d been a suitor, something Alexis had never known.
“What do you know of your grandmother’s death, Carew?”
Alexis frowned. Coalson’s message had mentioned her parents, not her grandmother. Lynelle Carew had died before Daviel Coalson was just a child.
“She died in childbirth. My father came early, there was a storm …” She’d heard the story more than once. How in the early days of the colony there’d been just the one antigrav hauler capable of flight. Port Arthur, still called Landing then, was where the only doctor was and it was a half-day’s travel by horseback. The storm came and Lynelle, her grandmother, had gone into labor. Something was amiss, but no one was terribly worried — until they’d called for the hauler to fly her to the doctor and found that it had been damaged. And by the time the doctor had finally arrived, having ridden horseback through the storm, it was too late.
“Oh, yes, it was a grand opportunity that storm, and my father took it. Grabbed it with both hands.” Coalson filled his glass and drank before pouring more for Alexis. “He had recordings, you know, of the radio calls your grandfather made throughout the night, begging for that hauler to come and drag his precious Lynelle to be cared for.” He smiled. “What? Never knew whose lands that hauler was on?”
Alexis felt a chill. She stared at Coalson, unable to move and not wanting to hear his next words.
“We had bright sun on the coast that day, I’m told. The hauler was half-loaded, right there in the yard near our old house, before my father had the proper estate built. Half-loaded, did I say? Couldn’t fly in that state. The pilot knew the urgency and they all rushed to unload.” He frowned. “Our foreman was generally a far better forklift driver than he was that day, truly. Perhaps he was shaken after my father took him aside and impressed on him the urgency of the situation? No matter but that it took weeks to repair the hauler from the damage his clumsiness wrought.”
“You’re mad,” Alexis whispered. Could Rashae Coalson have really hated her grandfather that much? To have the colony’s only hauler damaged just to cause her grandmother’s death? All for spite at some imagined slight? “You’re all mad.”
Coalson smiled and drank more. Alexis could feel the drug she’d dropped into the wine working on her and Coalson had drunk far more than she. She wished that it would work on him quicker, for she now thought this meeting had been a mistake and didn’t want to hear more.
Done away with him, yes, but it was a mistake to allow him to speak this poison.
“Do you know, Carew, that it was that very same hauler my father let me fly to Port Arthur some years later? He’d bribe the pilots, you see, and give them a break from their work, to let his sons fly the routes. He had the vision that we’d soon have enough coin to ship in our own hauler and even a personal aircar — he wanted us to be skilled in their use.” He drained his glass and poured more, emptying the bottle into his glass. “I only meant to startle them, really.”
Alexis froze, unable to tear her eyes away from Coalson.
“Horses, you know, never do seem to get used to something coming at them out of the sky. No matter how much they’re around things that fly, if a thing comes straight at them they simply bolt.”
“No,” Alexis whispered.
“Oh, yes.” Coalson leaned back in his chair and smiled. He drained his glass and replaced it on the table, then looked at his hand and frowned before returning his gaze to Alexis. “Imagine my surprise when the buggy went off the road and overturned.”
Alexis longed for a weapon or to simply launch herself over the table at Coalson’s throat, but she could feel the drug she’d dropped into the wine working on her. Her muscles were weak and her limbs leaden. She could see that Coalson was affected as well. His flesh hand on the table clenched and unclenched slowly. She tore her eyes from him and glanced behind the pub’s bar to the doorway leading farther back. One of Marilyn’s crew looked back at her.
They never watch the back, just as Dansby said.
She returned her gaze to Coalson.
“No words for me, Carew? My father beat me for that, you know. Quite soundly — oh, not for their deaths, but for doing it in daylight when I might have been seen. I suppose he was correct and it’s only luck that’s kept my secret until now.” He frowned and looked down at his hand on the table, the prosthetic fingers clenching and unclenching as though at random. He licked his lips and shook his head sharply, then glanced at the wine bottle.
“What?”
Coalson started to rise, but Alexis reached across the table and grasped his arm. It was a struggle, her own movements were difficult, but Coalson fell back into his seat. Alexis had one hand holding his prosthetic to the table and the other wrapped in his collar. She heard shouts and bodies rushing about, but couldn’t turn, simply looked into Coalson’s eyes, then they both toppled to the floor, unable to remain upright in their chairs.
“You drank too,” Coalson whispered.
A shot rang out.
“I have men I trust at my back,” Alexis replied.
It seemed odd to speak so of Dansby, much less Röslein’s crew and Mynatt, but she did trust them in this. He and his men had come in the back way, taking Coalson’s by surprise. The drugged wine was an addition to the plan, Dansby feeling that it would add to the confusion of Coalson’s men if they saw him helpless. Her vision darkened and she no longer felt her hands where they gripped Coalson, but she saw with satisfaction that it didn’t matter as his eyes were closed as well.
Chapter 30
Alexis came aware quickly and far more painfully than she’d expected.
Her skin felt as though tiny insects of flame were burrowing their way under her skin. They flowed through her, then quickly dissipated and were gone, while she became fully aware.
“What was that?” she asked Mynatt who was pulling an injector from her arm.
“Stimulant.”
“I’ve taken any number of stimulants on the quarterdeck — none of them made me feel like ants of fire were burrowing through me.”
Mynatt smiled. “Avrel didn’t specify what to give you, so I got to pick.”
Alexis shuddered at the brief but intense sensation.
“Well give Coalson a double dose of it then.” She swung her legs over the bunk and was happy to find her head was clear despite the drug in the wine. “Are we well away? Did it all go as planned?”
“In darkspace and nearly out of the system. Your friend is still drugged, and bound as well. His friends were, perhaps, not so much his friends when it came down to it. They ran out the front of the pub as soon as they saw that Coalson fellow down and may not have stopped running yet.”
“He’s certainly no friend of mine,” Alexis said. She’d had no real hatred of Coalson before. Oh, she’d despised him for his involvement in piracy, but that was a distant feeling. Now, after hearing
what he and his father had done, she felt she truly did hate him.
Mynatt took a step back and narrowed her eyes. “That’s sounding more personal than before. What did the man say to you?”
“Nothing that need concern you or the ship. Nothing of interest at all, really.” Alexis hadn’t fully processed what Coalson had told her, but she was certain it was nothing she wished to share with Mynatt or Dansby. “And there is no sign of pursuit?”
“None at all.” Mynatt frowned. “Avrel doesn’t like this next bit and neither do I. I know we discussed it, but we should just shoot him and dump him out a lock.”
Alexis shook her head. “If you want a chance at a bounty on him, it has to be done a particular way. I can’t guarantee the bounty would have been for him just dead. Explain it to the crew however you like, but it’s best if we’re able to say you turned him over to the Navy, me, and he was hanged.”
She met Mynatt’s eyes and then looked away. The Regulations and Articles allowed a captain to summarily hang pirates if it was ‘not in the Interests and Safety of Her Majesty’s Ship and Crew’ to return them to port for trial. Others who took pirates — privateers or the rare merchant who was able to fight back — were supposed to turn them over to the nearest Naval ship or port in order to collect any bounties on record. It was a stretch to think the Crown would pay any bounty for Coalson, and Alexis was far from a captain, but there was a chance. The pair would apparently try anything for the chance at a bit of coin.
The truth was that she felt a bullet or laser to the head was too good for Coalson and she wanted to see him hang. She wanted the ceremony of it — to watch as the ship’s line was attached high on the mast and the noose looped around his neck below the vacsuit’s helmet. And she wanted to see Coalson’s eyes as a pair of crewmen lifted him free of the ship’s hull and flung him high. He’d float free of the ship until he exited the hull’s field and was captured by the morass of dark matter that permeated darkspace. If he was lucky, there’d be enough slack in the line and the ship would be traveling so fast that his neck would snap when it finally went taut — if he was unlucky, the noose would simply tighten and slowly strangle him as he was dragged behind the mast.
The Little Ships (Alexis Carew Book 3) Page 18
