Unfortunately, they’d all been wrong on that score.
“Dreadnought has left orbit,” Drake said. “One of our spies on Fort William said she shipped out three days ago.”
“Bloody hell,” Capp murmured.
“Our source says Malthorne is taking a pass around the sun to test her systems,” Drake continued. “Once she’s proven spaceworthy, he’ll load her up with marines, collect an escort, and set out on an expedition. But where?”
“The planet of Saxony, I should imagine,” Rutherford said. “Malthorne wouldn’t leave orbit for anything less than total victory. With the unrest on Albion, there is no assurance that another claimant won’t seize the throne in his absence. For such a risk, the reward must be very great indeed.”
“Could be Mercia,” Tolvern said. “The planet is not firmly in either camp yet. A show of force would compel allegiance to the crown.”
“I don’t think so,” Drake said, in response to Tolvern. “Malthorne has offered Mercia a carrot—trade concessions, new estates on Hroom worlds for Mercian nobility. All if she remains neutral. Bash Saxony with a big enough stick, and Mercia might decide that carrot looks pretty sweet.”
“Quite right,” Rutherford said. “One swift blow against the only world we control, and we are finished.”
“Then we return to Saxony, sir?” Caites asked. The question wasn’t directed to Drake, but to Rutherford.
“What choice do we have?” Rutherford said. “If we lose Saxony, we are reduced to a fleet without port or resources. May as well turn to piracy—we’ll be finished as opposition to the lord admiral.”
“We can reach Saxony with plenty of time to set up our defenses,” Caites said, “but we’ll be forced to leave Philistine and Melbourne on San Pablo.”
“Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves?” Tolvern asked. “Captain Drake hasn’t ordered any such movement.”
“We have to defend Saxony,” the other woman said. “Unless you’d see us reduced to piracy.”
Capp leaned back in her chair and rubbed at the lion tattoos on her forearm. “And what’s wrong with a bit of piracy? Cut off that bastard’s sugar, take his coin—we’ll hire all the mercenaries we need out here.”
“That is absolute rubbish,” Rutherford said.
Capp shrugged and leaned back farther. Any more, and she’d dump her backside on the floor. “Saxony is a bit of rock. What do we care for it?”
“That bit of rock has fifty million of our people on it,” Caites said.
Drake wanted to let them talk it out, interested in opinions and options, but it seemed that the room was dividing into two camps, and he needed to cut that off before it led to a split.
“Enough arguing about Saxony,” he said. “And Ensign, you will kindly sit up. This isn’t the mess hall.”
Capp did so at once.
Nyb Pim cleared his throat with a sort of humming. “May I ask about Hot Barsa? Are you intending now to abandon it?”
“We’ve still got two hundred thousand doses of antidote,” Brockett said. “We could make another go of it.”
Needless to say, both the former sugar addict and the scientist who’d been working to duplicate the sugar antidote had been all in favor of moving directly against Malthorne’s holdings on Hot Barsa. Turning over the antidote to the free Hroom on the surface could swiftly weaken the admiral’s hold on the world.
“We made an attempt,” Rutherford said. “It failed. It is time to turn to other options.”
“It shouldn’t have failed,” Tolvern said. “It was well conceived. I never counted on those torpedo boats. Caught me off guard, damn it. I should have wondered. Those forts were too bloody passive. Too smug. It was obvious they were going to spring a trap.”
“Any one of us would have made the same assumptions,” Rutherford said. “You deserve no blame. You were a single destroyer, and you fought well.”
Tolvern seemed to appreciate this nod to her abilities. Some of the tension dissolved from her features. “Still. We were close, we nearly launched the pod. Now, the team is dead, and we are several light years away.”
Brockett leaned over and spoke in a low voice for Nyb Pim’s benefit. The alien nodded solemnly. Meanwhile, Caites brought up something on a hand computer, which she showed to Rutherford. Tolvern repeated her self-criticism. Capp brushed it aside. There was some discussion of what, if anything, might have been done to get past those forts.
While these side conversations continued, Drake raised a screen on the table. He brought up a map of the sector, with the human systems stretching along the left side in green, blue, and yellow, and the Hroom Empire a massive swath of red on the right and above. The size of the respective regions was deceptive, as many of those Hroom systems had collapsed into sugar addiction and civil war. He pressed a few buttons, and the colors changed to reflect this. This information would be familiar to most of them, except for a sickly orange underneath and to the rear. It stabbed through the red, already close to bisecting the entire Hroom Empire.
Tolvern spotted it first. “What is that?”
“Apex. They’ve launched a massive assault on the empire.”
“When did this happen?” Rutherford asked.
“When did it happen, or when did I hear of it? The news came yesterday. General Mose Dryz sent me a subspace message asking for help. Seemed to have begun four months ago. More or less at the same time that we were fighting the death fleet.”
This quieted the room. They couldn’t help but notice the length of that salient into Hroom territory. That was a dozen systems, right there, in only four months. All gobbled up by the predatory alien race.
“And the Hroom have the audacity to demand our help?” Rutherford said. “York Town is a smoldering, radioactive ruin thanks to them. What nerve to ask our assistance at this moment.”
“That was not the general’s doing,” Nyb Pim said. “That was a cult dedicated to the god of death.”
“Still Hroom,” Caites said. “There isn’t one person in Albion space who would lift a finger to save them right now.”
“I don’t know about that,” Tolvern said, “but we can’t help them, even if we wanted to. Dreadnought is readying a jump. Malthorne is coming at us. Are we forgetting that? The Hroom are on their own, whether we want it or not.”
“But if we help them—” Nyb Pim began.
“Are you daft?” Capp said. “We can’t even help ourselves. What’re we going to do for the general?”
“You’re all missing a critical detail,” Drake said.
He pushed a button on the console, and the map flipped upside down. They were now looking at it from below. Take away the familiar perspective, and you could see that orange gash through Hroom space for what it was.
“My God,” Rutherford said.
Drake nodded. “That’s right. It’s no attempt to divide the empire. That attack is meant to get at the humans.”
They knew precious little about the bird-like Apex. There were apparently two related, genetically engineered species in the alien civilization. They had energy weapons that could penetrate standard tyrillium armor. They exterminated their enemies, rather than conquered them. Literally ate them, when they could.
The intelligence was sketchy, but it seemed that Apex wars were a struggle for dominance. Humans had only faced them in battle once. Drake, Rutherford, and the pirate ships had defeated a small Apex force with a bit of trickery. Now, it seemed, the aliens wanted to get at the human systems and see who was the true apex predator of the sector. To Apex, the Hroom were just the carcass over which the two predators would be struggling. Like a wolf pack and a grizzly fighting over a dead moose.
“I figure we have four or five months before they reach human space,” Drake continued. “They’ll tear through these outer systems. The New Dutch are scattered, and the Ladino disorganized. The pirates and mercenaries will run—they won’t stand and fight. Maybe another month after that before Apex reaches the Albion worlds.”
“What options does that leave us?” Rutherford said. “Surrender to Lord Malthorne, or keep fighting him and face extermination as a race? It’s a devil’s choice.”
“About Hot Barsa—” Nyb Pim began.
“That plan is dead,” Caites said grimly. “I think we can all agree on that much.”
Rutherford, Tolvern, and Capp nodded. Among the humans, only Brockett looked uncertain, and that was because he seemed to have pinned his hopes on his sugar antidote. Drake thought it time to inject new energy into the failed plan.
“Not entirely, no,” he said. “I would like to consider another move on Hot Barsa.”
“With all due respect,” Rutherford began, with an acidic edge to his voice that indicated a certain lack of respect, “Lord Malthorne’s main flaw as a commander was his insistence on pursuing unwise expeditions. It’s how the death fleet got through—Malthorne wasted time fighting pirates when he should have been returning to Albion with all haste.”
“That is irrelevant,” Tolvern said.
“Hardly irrelevant. That is precisely what Drake is proposing here. We had the element of surprise and failed anyway. Now, the enemy will be prepared. We would need a direct assault with all of our resources to take Hot Barsa. Even then, our chance of success is not assured.”
“That much is true,” Drake agreed. “I wouldn’t expect it to be easy.”
“And to what end?” Rutherford said. “We foment rebellion on Hot Barsa. That takes fruition in a year or two, as slaves become immune to sugar, flee the plantations, and join the slave revolt. Malthorne loses his source of revenue. Meanwhile, the war ends.”
“Because while we’re at Hot Barsa, Malthorne seizes Saxony,” Caites said. “We disrupt his sugar plantations. He ends our entire rebellion.”
Rutherford gestured at her with a short nod, as if her words were so obviously true that they didn’t even need a verbal agreement. “And even if it’s all a feint, if Dreadnought is incapable of jumping from Albion, what about Apex? The aliens will be at our throats, and we’ll be no closer to defeating Malthorne. Humans will be divided. Then destroyed.”
“You are forgetting the psychological impact of attacking Hot Barsa,” Drake said. “Spreading rebellion was never a long-term plan. With Dreadnought back in the space lanes, it’s more likely than ever to have the desired effect.”
He explained his strategy. They would gather whatever mercenary forces they could muster, pull the other ships away from Saxony, and bring everything at Hot Barsa. They’d drop a team to the surface, spread the antidote far and wide, and send taunting messages to Albion boasting of what they’d accomplished.
Malthorne’s weakness was pride. He’d earlier let the Hroom death fleet slip through while he launched a punitive expedition against pirates. On another occasion, he’d arrested Drake’s parents and murdered Drake’s sister to retaliate for the burning of his manor house on Hot Barsa. He’d sent Rutherford far and wide to track down and kill Drake. The lord admiral was a man who acted out of anger and revenge.
“What will he do when he learns we’ve all but abandoned Saxony?” Drake said. “Will he take Dreadnought and seize the planet? Or will he ignore it and come after us? I think he’ll come. With his sugar plantations threatened, I’m almost certain of it.”
There was a long, full pause.
“That is a terrible gamble,” Rutherford said at last.
“We are reduced to such wagers,” Drake said. “We must defeat Malthorne and do so quickly. If not, Apex will arrive to find us weaker than the Hroom. Just another carcass to pick over.”
“Then it will end at Hot Barsa,” Rutherford said. “A final naval battle. The winner leads the defense. The loser dies.”
“I’d suggest surrender if I thought Malthorne would take it,” Drake said. “It would be worth it to save Albion.”
“Oh, he would take our surrender,” Rutherford said. “Under generous terms, no doubt. But then he would renege on the arrangement and hang the lot of us, the defense of our home worlds be damned.”
“Yes, exactly that.”
Rutherford glanced at Caites. She raised her eyebrows and gave a little shrug. Drake looked to his own people. Nyb Pim seemed eager, while Brockett looked more circumspect. He would be imagining his own role in this; with Henry Jukes dead, there was nobody else who could fill the critical role on the away team. Capp and Tolvern looked ready to go along with whatever Drake suggested.
“Then it’s settled,” Drake said, without waiting for Rutherford to give his official assent. The time for that had passed. Drake had listened, he had shared information, and now he would decide. “Send out the word. There’s no disguising our plan this time. We’ll come in like we mean it.”
It was a single, desperate roll of the dice. God help him if the numbers came up wrong.
Chapter Six
Two days later, Drake and Tolvern were planetside, standing on the blistering tarmac at the San Pablo spaceyards. Isabel Vargus’s pirate frigate Outlaw sat shimmering in the heat. It had been repaired from the damage of the Battle of Albion, and now Vargus had returned to port to install a new missile battery. She stood with her hands on her hips, seemingly oblivious to the heat, shouting up at the crew doing final maintenance, while Drake looked over the guns.
Vargus’s mechanical eye rotated to follow Drake as he reached up to touch the tyrillium armor of the underbelly. It felt sound enough—that slightly yielding surface that could nevertheless absorb laser energy and turn away massive explosions—but it was black and scarred, the repairs like makeup over a badly burned face.
“I’ll paint her belly next time around,” Vargus said.
“You managed to repaint the shark teeth on the nose,” Tolvern said.
“Aye. Got to look to the important details.”
“You’ve even put blood dripping off the teeth,” Tolvern said. “Anyone ever get close enough to see it?”
Vargus grinned. “By the time you see the blood, you’re being boarded. But it’s for the yards. Reminds people not to mess with me. Menacing, wouldn’t you say?”
Menacing, all right. But also one ugly piece of work. Back when Ed Robertson of the Royal Navy flew her, she was a sleek corvette. A wolf, meant to hunt in a pack. Now, re-christened Outlaw and overhauled several times, she more resembled a giant horned lizard. Tough enough, but no beauty to her.
Isabel Vargus had once compared herself to her ship. Her sister, Catarina, was the beautiful one. The younger of the two, Catarina had received a posh education on Albion and didn’t have a face marred by injury. Drake thought Isabel overly hard on herself. There was still plenty of beauty in her. And where was Catarina, anyway? Some distant system, raising her secret pioneering fleet. Those ships, and especially Catarina’s own Orient Tiger, would have been a powerful ally in the fight. Isabel, sturdy and dependable as her ship, was still here. That counted for a good deal in Drake’s book.
“You’ll be ready to fly?” he asked.
“I could leave right now, if I needed to,” Vargus said. “In fact, if I hadn’t been scraping around for your fleet, I’d probably be in orbit already. It’s kept me away from my work.”
“Any troubles finding people?”
“Nah, you’ve got a good reputation. Plenty of blokes happy to fly for you. So long as you hand over the gold up front. And you’re the one giving orders, not that stuffed shirt, Rutherford.”
In many ways, Drake was as much of a stuffed shirt as Rutherford, or had been, anyway. He’d never meant to consort with pirates and mercenaries, that was for sure. But he’d tried to carry over as much honor as he could. He paid his debts. He thrashed anyone who crossed him, and thrashed those who crossed his loyal compatriots. Fly next to Blackbeard and you might be killed in battle—those were the risks—but you’d never be cheated.
“I want my guns aligned before we launch,” Vargus said. “Easier to fix here than in orbit. But the other ships are coming out of the hangar. Take a look. Tell me if t
here’s anything you don’t like.”
Some of the craft were already out, sitting on the tarmac while forklifts and stevedores hauled in fresh supplies. Others came creeping out, pulled by lorries. Drake and Tolvern took a walk to inspect them.
Drake was already perspiring before they set out, but sweat soon streamed down his temples and from his armpits. San Pablo had been a Hroom world, but this western continent was now given over to Ladino settlements. It had been warm last time they’d visited these yards, but the hot season had arrived. It was not only baking beneath the direct sun, but humid, like a steam bath.
“I suppose I should get used to the weather,” Tolvern said. “It’s pretty much like this all the time in the lowlands of Hot Barsa.”
“It was brutal enough in the highlands.” He eyed her. “When did you figure it out?”
“That you were sending me on the away team? About three seconds after you said we’d be going back.” Tolvern unfastened her vest to let it hang open. Sweat dampened the linen shirt underneath. “Your first away team was killed. We need a new one. Brockett is a given—nobody else understands the antidote now that Henry is dead. I figured you were eying Nyb Pim to replace Sal Ypis. You need a loyal Hroom translator. Capp could be your firepower. That leaves only a commander.”
“And it turns out that I have an able military leader who is temporarily bereft of her ship. She is the logical choice for the mission.”
“Hah. Able? Not so sure about that part. I had one command, and I blew it.”
“Could have been worse,” Drake said. “You could have lost your ship.”
“Didn’t I? It’s out of commission for weeks.”
Tolvern tossed her head to the two largest hangars in the yard. Rodriguez was repairing the crippled HMS Melbourne in one, and in the other, Tolvern’s destroyer.
“Let me tell you about my first command,” Drake said. “I took the helm at Fort William. I was supposed to leave Albion orbit, take a swing around Thor to get the feel for my ship and new crew, and then rendezvous with a task force under Captain Peter Daw to jump to Fantalus. Do you know Daw?”
Rebellion of Stars (Starship Blackbeard Book 4) Page 4
