Good lord, it was hot. “Jane, what’s the temp?”
“One hundred twelve point two.”
“Don’t sound so cheerful about it,” he grumbled. “How are the crew holding up?”
It was a rhetorical question, and pretty vague for Jane, but the computer had an answer, nonetheless. “Two crew in the gunnery have fainted from heat exhaustion. Medical reports indicate severe heat stress.”
Capp frowned. “We got to get out of here. Tell him, Lieutenant,” she said to Oglethorpe.
“We do, and we’re all dead,” Drake said.
So what? He’d push them until they all fell, one by one. How would that help? Could he have been wrong about Dreadnought? How did she keep up the pursuit, hour after hour?
“There she goes!” Smythe shouted.
The tech officer threw the enemy ship onto the viewscreen. Dreadnought was pulling out of the chase, running for cooler air.
“Capp, get us around that other hemisphere and then take us for the Fantalus jump,” Drake said.
“Fantalus, sir?” Oglethorpe said.
“Look at Dreadnought. Malthorne can block our way to Hot Barsa. We can’t go back directly. We’ll have to go around.”
“That will cost us valuable time,” the lieutenant said. “If Malthorne turns toward Hot Barsa, he’ll arrive before us.”
“That is unavoidable,” Drake admitted.
Still, they were alive. He imagined Malthorne cursing and raging as his adjutants mopped at his brow with damp cloths. The admiral would want to continue the pursuit. At the same time, there was no longer any hope of catching Blackbeard before it jumped out of the system. Meanwhile, his sugar plantations on Hot Barsa were in flames, and Rutherford had shut down all shipping to and from the planet.
In the end, Malthorne did as he must. He turned his battleship toward the jump point to the Barsa system, and let Blackbeard escape.
Drake had achieved some important objectives, even while conceding the battlefield to the enemy. The admiral would reach Hot Barsa, but without Lindsell, who was off chasing Drake’s support craft toward San Pablo.
Once in the Barsa system, Dreadnought was nearly invulnerable from ambush and could roam around as Malthorne wished. But the admiral wouldn’t attack Rutherford and the forts without the full weight of his fleet. That bought Drake valuable time.
Drake didn’t say this aloud. The others would figure it out soon enough.
“As I commanded,” he told them. Then he picked up the last full water jug at his feet, drained it dry, and waited for the air to cool.
#
A large fleet was crossing the Fantalus system when Blackbeard arrived. More than seventy vessels strong, it held merchant frigates, converted liners, lumbering barges, and all manner of mining and salvage craft. They were mostly New Dutch, but also Ladino and even Hroom, and appeared to be a refugee fleet from Jericho, now under attack by Apex.
Drake ordered Capp to continue toward the next jump point, even as he performed full scans of the refugees. Let’s see what they were carrying. Some of them might be roped into assisting his fight against Malthorne. He’d offer refuge on Saxony in return.
But there was something strange about the refugee ships. The entire flotilla was completely silent, flying along at cruising speed toward the inner worlds of the system. No engines; it was traveling only on momentum. The reality soon became apparent.
It was a ghost fleet.
Scans of the largest vessels showed that their hulls had been pierced in multiple locations. Someone had come in, cut holes in each of the ships to vent out the atmosphere, and left them to continue. Dead. No survivors that they could detect. And at their current trajectory, they would eventually pass out of the system to drift forever through the endless void.
“Wait, here’s a live ship,” Smythe said. “Look.”
There it was. A long, slender, needle-like craft like the one Drake and Rutherford fought. It dipped in and out of the ghost fleet.
“Looking for some tasty bits, I should imagine,” Capp said. “They eat their victims, right? Bloody apex predators.”
Apex, maybe. Predator, not so much. This wasn’t predator behavior. Predators culled the weak, consuming their prey. This was an entire herd of refugees cut down and slaughtered. Perhaps by this single craft. It seemed to be sport, as much as anything, whether the aliens ate some of their victims or not.
“We’re cloaked, sir,” Oglethorpe said, sounding nervous. “Best be making for the next jump point, don’t you think, before they detect us?”
Drake was inclined to mix it up with the aliens. Destroy or drive off this ship, and it might convince Apex that Albion was not an enemy to be trifled with. Could he scare them away long enough to end the Albion civil war and unite the nation against this new threat? Or might he instead draw Apex ships by the hundreds? Who knew?
But here he faced a single ship, and after his other battle with the aliens, he’d mounted his own hundred-kilowatt laser to fight them. His shields, normally stubbornly resistant against any sort of non-kinetic weaponry, were vulnerable to the aliens in turn, but were they helpless? He didn’t think so. With superior tactics . . .
He shook his head. No. This was not the time. If he didn’t defeat Malthorne first, Apex would rip Albion and her people to shreds.
And so he kept a wary eye on the ghost fleet and its killer as he continued toward the next jump point. They approached it warily, half expecting an ambush either here or on the other side. But when they came through, the space lanes were clear.
Six days later, they jumped into the Barsa system. There they found HMS Dreadnought lurking in wait.
Chapter Twenty-one
It was the last night before the assault on the military base, and Tolvern had made her bed in a hammock forty feet above the ground. They were in a transition zone of mixed Hroom and Terran vegetation between the lowlands and highlands, but the forest floor was still infested with pouncers. The army took to the trees.
The Hroom were masters at manufacturing shelter out of what the forest gave them, and they bivouacked on beds made from cut branches and fronds and strung up with vines. Tolvern’s own hammock stretched between the branches of two separate trees. Carvalho’s bed hung to her right, while Brockett and Nyb Pim lay some twenty feet below them. As the sky darkened into a black, starless night, she heard the science officer and the pilot below, discussing what kind of equipment would be needed to manufacture more doses of the sugar antidote.
But soon, a breeze swept down from the mountains, driving away both the heat and the bugs, as well as drowning out their conversation. After weeks in the sweltering lowlands, Tolvern found the cool air a relief beyond words, but it sent her hammock swaying back and forth with every gust.
“Tolvern,” Carvalho said about twenty minutes later. “Are you asleep?”
“How could I be with this wind?”
“Do you still have that vine rope we used to cross the stream?”
“It’s my pillow,” she said.
“Toss the end over here. I have an idea.”
Tolvern didn’t know what he was getting at, but she threw over the end of the vine. He took hold of it and used the vine to lash the two hammocks together.
“Now take the other end and tie it down by your feet,” he told her. “There, isn’t that better?”
It was, she had to admit. Pulling the two hammocks together and tying them off had stabilized them against the wind. It turned the rough rocking into a gentle sway.
“I told you we’d be sharing a bed sooner or later,” he said.
“You’d better not snore.”
“Didn’t Capp tell you? I rumble like a warthog. Why do you think she kicks me out of her bed every night before she goes to sleep?”
“If it gets too bad, I’ll do the same.”
“We’re forty feet up,” he said. “That will hurt.”
“I know.”
“What’s wrong with a sharp elbow to the ribs? T
hat will shut me up.”
“So will pouncers and tigers.”
“I can’t tell if you’re playing,” he said, “or if you still dislike me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You understand me perfectly well,” Carvalho said. “Sometimes, I see you watching, and I think you want to tear off my clothes. Other times, you say these things, and I can never tell if you are serious or not.”
“Why not both? Maybe I want to tear your clothes off first and then push you to the ground anyway.”
Tolvern meant it as a jest, but suddenly, the hammocks heaved, and Carvalho was over on her side. Right up next to her, a solid block of muscle against her lean frame.
“What the blazes are you doing?” she demanded.
“Do you want me to go back?”
“The devil take you, of course I do. Get out of here.”
“My apologies, then. I misunderstood.”
“Go on, get,” she said, pushing at him as he rolled over and climbed back to his side.
Her hands touched the bare flesh on his back and buttocks. “You’re naked!”
“It was hot. And it’s dark. Don’t you ever sleep in the nude, Tolvern?”
“But you came over to my side and you weren’t wearing any clothes at all. I can’t believe you did that. What gives you the right?”
“Again, my apologies. I will not do it again.”
Carvalho managed to say this without sounding sullen, and then fell silent. Tolvern regretted her harsh words. She’d been flirting with him more and more over the past several days and yes, she had been watching him when he stripped to wash off the sweat and grime. Sometimes, she’d even kept looking as he glanced at her and noted her gaze. No wonder he’d gotten the wrong idea.
Her fingers were practically tingling from where they’d touched his body. She imagined if she’d kept one hand on his butt and let the other touch his shoulders, his arm, his chest. If she pushed herself up against him . . .
“It’s all right,” she said a few minutes later. “I guess I see how it must have seemed.”
He didn’t answer. Asleep, then. That made her feel bold.
“Maybe I pushed you away too fast,” she added in a lower voice. “It alarmed me, is all.”
He stirred. Not asleep.
“I meant what I said,” he told her. “You understand my intentions. If you ever change your mind—and I’m not busy with Capp, of course. She is not jealous, but she must be fed first, if you understand my meaning. You know what to do should that happen.”
Did she? Could she possibly do what he was suggesting? Well, yes. What about the time she’d tried to climb in naked with Captain Drake in the shower? If not for Catarina Vargus getting there first, she’d have done it, too.
In a moment, on pure impulse, Tolvern grabbed for Carvalho’s side and swung herself over. She moved so quickly that she upset the two hammocks, and they nearly upended with a violent heave.
“Easy!” Carvalho said.
Tolvern flattened herself to stop it from swinging. “I’m sorry.”
“I thought you were trying to throw me to the ground!”
She laughed. “No, you invited me to come over, and I did. Not particularly skillfully, admittedly. I almost pitched us both to the ground.”
He said nothing, and now she really did feel herself up against his body. Her hands were up high, by his shoulders, and she buried her fingers in his hair. And then, he was kissing her. He smelled strong, masculine, and his thick stubble pricked her face. She didn’t care. Every bit of nervous energy and stress that had been building for these past weeks now sprang loose, and she wanted to devour him.
“I am naked, but you are still wearing this silly jumpsuit,” he said.
“Why don’t you take it off me, then?”
He did so, unzipping it to her navel, and then easing his strong hands in against her bare flesh. She shivered. When his thumbs brushed over her skin, she shivered harder, almost violently.
“I’m sorry,” she said. The words sounded foolish coming out. “It has been a long time for me. Your touch—”
“Do not apologize for feeling pleasure.” He kissed at her neck. “I swear I will give you a lot more before we are done.”
He eased the jumpsuit off her shoulders and down to her waist. His mouth followed it down at a leisurely pace, first kissing her neck, then the gentle swell of her breasts. Her breathing came faster and faster.
But Carvalho didn’t stop there. His mouth went down along her firm belly, and then he peeled off the jump suit and her panties in one motion. And still he kept kissing her body.
It had, in fact, been so long since Tolvern had been with a man that she’d have been embarrassed to admit it to Carvalho, Capp, or anyone else. She’d practically forgotten how to do it. But Carvalho, it was immediately clear, suffered no such lack of experience. He knew what he was doing, he did it well, and he didn’t tire quickly.
It was the night before a major military assault, and she should have been sleeping, but Tolvern didn’t get much rest. And she didn’t much care, either.
#
The rebels came up through the forest flanking the road the next morning. They traveled together in silence until they were roughly two miles from the enemy base, where they prepared to split into two groups. The first, let by Pez Rykan, contained the majority of the former slaves, several hundred in all, but few weapons.
The second was loaded with guns, ammo, and other equipment they’d lugged with them since dragging the pod from the mud at the bottom of the lake. This group boasted the most experienced fighters, the best shooters, and the coolest under pressure that Tolvern could identify. She and her three companions would lead this group of rebels in the main assault.
Tolvern pulled out her hand computer as Pez Rykan approached. “You have yours, right?”
“Yes. I will use it as you showed me.”
“It’s going to take us several hours to get in position,” Tolvern said, “but don’t wait that long. Maybe twenty minutes, then get to work. It will take the enemy some time to figure out what you’re doing, but then I expect them to come out of the base and attack.”
“You have left me six guns,” Pez Rykan said. “How are we to fight without weapons?”
As if to punctuate his words, a lorry engine sounded through the trees from the direction of the road. It had the low rumble of a heavy vehicle, the kind that carried either men or supplies across the muddy gash through the jungle connecting the estates and the security bases with the ports that shipped sugar offworld. Either way, it would be traveling armed, and Tolvern hadn’t given Pez Rykan enough weapons to stop even a single lorry if it were determined to break through.
“Your job isn’t to fight, it’s to make them think you’re going to fight,” she said. “That road may not look impressive, but it’s the artery to the lowland plantations. Cut it, and they have no way to put down the slave rebellion. That’s your job—shut it down. Force them to come out and open it again. Pin them down as long as you’re able, then get out of there.”
“Without arms, we will not be able to stop them from reopening the road.”
She sighed. Pez Rykan was even more literal-minded than most Hroom. She couldn’t remember Nyb Pim ever needing things spelled out like this. She’d sketched out the basics of the plan two days ago. From the way Pez Rykan listened solemnly, she thought he’d understood. The words, maybe. The logic behind them, no.
“It’s a feint,” she explained. “A trick. They’ll see you blocking the road and think you’re mounting a frontal assault, Hroom-style. You know, where you hide until the last minute, like your death fleet did, then come in for the attack in the most direct and obvious way possible. That’s Hroom thinking, and Malthorne’s goons understand it.
“Meanwhile,” she continued, “I’ll come up on their flank and attack from the opposite side of the base.”
“Do you have enough forces and equipment?” he asked.
“We’d better hope so. If the enemy commander is any good, if he’s prudent, he’ll fortify that approach at the first sign of danger. But your rebellion has trained them.”
“I do not understand. Trained them?”
“To expect a frontal attack. To know that what they see is what they get. Of course, they’ll be wary about stumbling into a firefight down here—the enemy doesn’t know the size of your army or how many weapons you possess. They’ll come down in a massive show of force. You wouldn’t be able to resist it no matter what. But that’s our opportunity.”
“What will you have me do? If not to defend our work closing the road, then what? How can we ‘pin them down,’ as you put it?”
“Stir up trouble and force them to commit. That’s all. They’ll rush out.” This was like explaining to a child, but she kept at it. “We’ll come in behind and take the base. I’ll get my people positioned at the guard towers and manning the heavy guns. Then they’ll be in trouble. They come back, we’ll attack them. They go forward, they enter the plantations, which are in disarray and embroiled in slave revolt. And if they do that, you’ll bring the rest of your army up the road, and we’ll load you up with weapons.”
“Yes, it is a good plan.”
“But you’ve got to do your part if we’re going to pull it off.”
“That will not be easy,” Pez Rykan said. “There will be a stretch of time when we will be facing them in open battle, with little in the way of arms.”
“That is our biggest risk,” she agreed. “Use the trees, use the cover. Disguise how many weapons you have. Some of your fighters will die, no matter what you do.”
Tolvern studied him, waiting for him to balk. The Hroom chief had forces now, hundreds of them. Freed slaves who had given him a real army for the first time. Her plan risked throwing that all away.
It also offered the opportunity to kick apart the whole rotten foundation of Lord Malthorne’s sugar and slave operation on Hot Barsa.
Chapter Twenty-two
Rebellion of Stars (Starship Blackbeard Book 4) Page 16
