“Vargus is going to get herself killed,” Drake muttered as he studied his console.
It showed the evolving situation in the Barsa system as scans, intercepted communications, and notes from his fleet began to appear following their jump. Dreadnought was already rumbling leviathan-like toward the inner system. Captain Lindsell had arrived, too, and his forces were augmented with two more cruisers, plus support craft. They were currently at the outermost gas giant of the system, but pushing swiftly toward the rocky inner worlds.
Mysteriously, the mercenary fleet was moving into position to intercept Dreadnought. Why? Vargus didn’t have a prayer of success.
“Rutherford must have given her orders,” Oglethorpe said. “Commanded the mercenary fleet to hold Dreadnought to give us time to join the fight.”
“Ain’t likely she’d agree though, is it?” Capp said. “That stuffed shirt Rutherford telling them pirates to fall on their swords—Vargus would give him the middle finger. She’d never do it, and those other blokes wouldn’t, either.”
Drake let them argue it out, listening, but not objecting, while he continued to study the data. They were too far from Hot Barsa to communicate directly, so he had Smythe send a subspace to Rutherford asking for an assessment of the current strategic situation.
As for Vargus, could she simply be protecting the goods? She’d sent the barges and tramp frigates ahead to Hot Barsa with their shipments of armaments and supplies. It was the reason Drake had ordered her to San Pablo in the first place, and if Dreadnought overtook them, the battleship would gobble them up like a tasty snack.
But no, those auxiliary ships had a good lead. Even though they flew at relatively slow speeds, Dreadnought was too far out to catch them before they reached Hot Barsa. Scans and computer estimates suggested that Rutherford and the forts would enjoy a full day to unload and organize the shipments before the battleship arrived. So what was Vargus up to?
She hesitated near a collection of asteroids that belted the system between Cold Barsa and the innermost of the gas planets. Led by Vargus’s own Outlaw and Aguilar’s stout, heavily armed frigate Pussycat, the motley collection of pirate and mercenary ships was powerful enough to give most attackers pause. Dreadnought was not most attackers.
Drake sent her a message. Don’t be stupid, he told her. Get out of there.
Vargus answered: I know what I’m doing. Go to Hot Barsa at all speed. That is an order.
“That cheeky wench!” Capp said, when the message came through. “King’s balls, what is she thinking?”
Oglethorpe looked confused. “Does this mean that Rutherford has taken control of the fleet, sir? It must have come from him. I can’t imagine that Vargus herself would presume to give orders.”
“It’s not an order,” Drake said. “She’s tweaking my ear. Probably finds it amusing.”
At one point, such insolence at a time of battle would have been highly irritating. Now, he’d come to expect it from the Vargus sisters. He imagined the smirk on Isabel’s face as she composed it.
“But there’s a serious part of this message,” he added. “She means to face Dreadnought. What can she be thinking?”
Capp grunted. “Trying to impress you, I should wager. Them sisters are rivals, know what I mean?”
“What shall we do, sir?” Oglethorpe asked.
“We make for Hot Barsa, of course. We couldn’t reach Vargus soon enough any way you look at it, so we may as well take whatever time she buys us.”
As they moved to obey, Drake kept his attention on Isabel Vargus and her looming confrontation with Dreadnought. Malthorne didn’t even bother to wait for Lindsell, but continued toward the mercenaries with nothing more than a pair of torpedo boats as escort. Confident yes, but no fool. He slowed to a prudent speed.
“I would imagine that he’s expecting an ambush, sir,” Oglethorpe said. “Something cloaked that is waiting nearby. Or perhaps a base in the asteroid belt.”
“Yes, that does seem reasonable,” Drake said. “I have my own hopes on that score.”
Although he couldn’t think who it might be. Drake had no secret fleet to draw on, let alone hidden forces capable of battling Dreadnought. And there were no fortresses among the asteroid belt that he knew of, unless there had been some deeply embedded pirate base that had been lurking there undiscovered for many years. Not likely. There was an old navy refueling station, but it was mothballed.
But there had to be something, right? Vargus wouldn’t be sitting there waiting for Dreadnought without an exit plan. A way to escape. This wasn’t like her fight with Lindsell; she had no hope of surviving even a short encounter with the battleship.
“Send her another message,” he told Smythe, then reconsidered. “Belay that order. We’ll keep on our current trajectory. Whatever she’s up to, she’s on her own.”
Rutherford responded at last via subspace.
I do not understand Vargus’s intentions. Am testing Vigilant’s engines now. Will prep for battle and await your arrival.
That must mean Vigilant’s engine repairs had been completed. Very good. If the tests checked out, Vigilant and her support craft would form a powerful opposition to the enemy. But Rutherford would have a rough go of it before reinforcements arrived. Holding on by his fingernails, no doubt.
How long would Vargus’s mercenary fleet delay Dreadnought? An hour or two. That would bring the enemy battleship to Hot Barsa thirteen hours after Captain Lindsell’s allied forces. Say it took a couple more hours for Malthorne and Lindsell to coordinate their forces. The lord admiral would enjoy eight full hours with his entire fleet before facing the last two rebel cruisers from Saxony, and nearly sixteen hours before Blackbeard arrived.
Those sixteen hours would be plenty of time to crush Rutherford and reduce the orbital forts. Dreadnought had the firepower to do both. Backed by Lindsell, he’d do it with ease.
The admiral was only two hours from the mercenary fleet when Isabel Vargus apparently had second thoughts. Her ships had been arrayed in battle formation, ready to catch Dreadnought in crossfire, but now they turned and fled toward the inner system.
“You fools,” Smythe said, as the viewscreen updated the posture of the two forces. “Why run now?”
His fingers danced over his console, moving the view first to Dreadnought and her torpedo boats, and then to Outlaw, Pussycat, and the other mercenaries.
“We shall find out,” Drake said.
The end game seemed inevitable. Four, maybe five hours before Dreadnought caught Vargus, and it would be all over. The tension was too much and too drawn out, so he left Oglethorpe at the helm and went to his quarters for some rest. He was exhausted and quickly fell asleep.
When he came back to the bridge a few hours later, he sent Oglethorpe and Manx on break, moved Capp to the commander’s chair, and had Smythe operate both the tech console and the defense grid computer. Right now, there wasn’t much to it. All the drama was playing out elsewhere in the system.
And it was indeed playing out, as the pursuit entered its final stages. Dreadnought’s batteries were warmed and almost within range. An hour out, at most. A few minutes later, Vargus brought her ships into a single file and started threading them into a minefield.
“So that was her plan,” Drake said. His stomach sank. So much for his hopes. “Why the devil didn’t she consult me first?”
“That’s them same Youd mines we went through that other time, ain’t it?” Capp said. “Seems pretty clever, don’t it? That big old battleship will set ’em off. Vargus gets through, but the mines will knock Dreadnought around a bit.”
“No,” Smythe said gloomily. “That field was laid down by the Royal Navy. I tried to hack it when we were in orbit around Hot Barsa. Then Commander Gibbs had her people make a second attempt. That failed, too.”
“The Youd mines detect and follow,” Drake said. “They send a signal to other nearby mines and form a net. It closes around you, and then you’re done for.”
“Yeah, I know,” Capp said. “I was piloting us through, remember? Nyb Pim was down with the sugar shakes. So you’re saying Malthorne can just stumble through there and nothing will happen? King’s balls.”
Drake nodded. “More or less. Vargus has a good pilot, but she’ll have to maneuver to avoid detection. The mines won’t target Malthorne’s forces, because they’ll recognize him as a friendly force. He can come right at her. It will only shorten the pursuit.”
Indeed, that’s more or less what was happening. Isabel Vargus must be in possession of good charts from Fort Gamma, because her mercenary fleet, traveling single file, moved swiftly and without hesitation, as if knowing where each and every mine was positioned. But Dreadnought, already closing, lumbered straight ahead and was now only moments away.
Suddenly, Dreadnought made an evasive maneuver. Then another. The ships were millions of miles away from Blackbeard, and it took a couple of minutes to figure out what was going on. Vargus must be firing back, though with what kind of firepower that would make Malthorne dance like that, Drake couldn’t fathom. Maybe it was Pussycat and her heavy weapons. Even then . . .
“It’s mines!” Smythe said. “She must have hacked that field after all. How the blazes did she manage that?”
Drake was looking at the same incoming data. “No, that’s not it. Look, the field is quiet.”
And then it came out. Isabel Vargus’s forces hadn’t been idle while waiting for the enemy to approach. She’d returned to the Barsa system stuffed from stem to stern with anything she could get her hands on in San Pablo. And that had included mines.
“She put down her own mines,” he said. “Entered the field before Malthorne jumped into the system and set a trap.”
And then led Dreadnought right into it. The lord admiral, his arrogance on full display, had shown no caution, thinking he was in full control of the minefield.
Explosions rocked the underside of the battleship. Another mine crashed off the bow. Mostly class three detonations—or so it appeared from a distance—so they wouldn’t cause serious damage to the shields. But Dreadnought pulled short. Drake held his breath, hardly daring to hope.
Then, to his rising elation, the enemy turned and fled for the outer edge of the minefield. Two more explosions splashed off the aft starboard shields. Another mine hit one of the two escorting torpedo boats. It lost power and spun away from the others. Dreadnought abandoned it, and it drifted helplessly through the minefield. Two more of Vargus’s mines found the wounded torpedo boat a few minutes later. It detonated.
Capp pumped her fist. She jumped from her seat and ran over to Smythe to give him a high five. He returned it awkwardly, laughing.
“Clever, Vargus,” Drake said. “Clever.”
He’d stood to watch the enemy retreat, but now settled back into his seat to see how it would play out. Dreadnought nosed around the edge of the minefield. Hard to say how many mines Vargus had laid down; maybe that was it. But the encounter seemed to have left the enemy shaken. Malthorne let the mercenaries escape.
By the time Oglethorpe and Manx returned to the bridge a few hours later, the full scope of Vargus’s tactical victory became apparent. She’d not only slipped away unscathed, but Dreadnought had lost hours skirting the vast field. The battleship cut up on the z-axis to hook around the field and swoop down on the inner worlds from above.
Fourteen hours. That’s how much time Vargus had bought Drake. She’d given them a chance.
And then, disaster struck. HMS Vigilant had remained in orbit around Hot Barsa while Rutherford rushed through repairs on her plasma engines. The repairs finished, Rutherford had taken Vigilant for a spin around the neighborhood to make any last-minute tweaks.
Four hours out, one of the engines melted down. Quick thinking by the crew vented plasma into space and saved the ship. Vigilant came limping back to Fort Gamma. What the hell had happened?
They soon found the culprit: a loyalist boatswain from Fort Gamma. The man had planted a bomb in one of the engines during repairs, then feigned illness when Rutherford attempted to press him into service on Vigilant. He was in the sick bay on Gamma when Gibbs sent men to arrest him. The man wrestled away a gun, shot two guards—one critically—and fled toward the escape pods. An alert engineer opened the pod to the void while it was still docked, and the saboteur suffocated before he could launch.
But the damage was done. Vigilant was down an engine. The second most powerful ship in Drake’s navy had been effectively crippled. The small advantage gained by Vargus’s maneuver was effectively erased. Dreadnought was looking more invincible than ever as she rumbled toward Hot Barsa, spoiling for a fight.
Chapter Twenty-three
Carvalho and Tolvern climbed the vine-choked trunk of a large tree until they got to a crook about twenty feet off the ground. Tolvern threw a rope over the branch and let the end trail to the ground. Brockett tied the other end to the barrel of a .50-caliber machine gun. Carvalho and Tolvern heaved it up to the branch.
Nyb Pim stood a few feet off with the Hroom rebels, translating the instructions Tolvern had given him. The Hroom listened impassively, occasionally making soft hoots of assent. It was a heavily armed group, carrying assault rifles, shotguns, and hand cannons, and loaded with ammo and grenade belts.
While Carvalho fixed the machine gun in place, Tolvern pulled back a branch to create a small gap in the foliage. There it was, the northeast entrance to the enemy base, some two hundred yards distant. A ditch encircled the base, followed by a thicket of razor wire, and finally, a chainlink fence topped with more razor wire. A sandbagged bunker and checkpoint sat outside the gates, with a machine gun peeking over the top. A guard tower guarded the entrance from inside, and there was no doubt another heavy gun inside, pointing out through the loops.
At first glance, it seemed secure, but Tolvern noted the open gates and the vegetation that should have been cut down. Had it been her, she’d have burned out every tree and blade of grass for a mile to deny cover to enemies.
Carvalho positioned himself behind the gun. “Idiots. They’ve left themselves vulnerable to snipers. All these trees—it is an invitation. Who could resist?”
“It’s a security operation, not military.” Tolvern fed in a belt of ammo. “The marines haven’t been here for decades. Not since the reign of Queen Ellen. Once they wiped out and enslaved the last Hroom kingdoms on the planet, there was never a need.”
“What about Pez Rykan and his sort?”
“They’ve been an annoyance at best. The rebels couldn’t recruit sugar eaters, and those few who made it into the bush were terrified of the plantations. They were either former eaters and vulnerable to re-addiction, or freeborn Hroom who had little connection to their enslaved people.
“So where does that leave Malthorne’s security personnel?” Tolvern continued. “The slavers only needed enough force to stop raids, to deter smugglers. To put down sugar riots. More about intimidation and security than fighting real enemies. They never expected a war, that’s for sure.”
“Then it was careless,” he said. “It will cost them.”
“Anyway, this base was more or less mothballed until recently. Look, you can see they’ve been burning back the vegetation.”
“How many men are inside?” he asked.
That was a good question. The enemy had assembled a formidable force in preparation to put down the sugar revolt, but most of those men had recently departed to fight Pez Rykan’s attempt to cut the road.
That didn’t mean it was abandoned. She could see the guard at the machine-gun nest. The tower was no doubt manned, too.
“Just get us inside,” Tolvern said. “We’ll worry about the rest then.”
Carvalho nodded. “I will take out the machine-gun nest first. As soon as you give the signal, it is gone.”
“Good. Then hit that guard tower. Knock it out if you can. Draw its fire if you can’t.”
“Oh, I will take care of it. Don’t worry. You keep yourself saf
e.”
“Right.” She prepared to climb down to where Nyb Pim and the others waited. “I’ll send Brockett up to help you load ammo. Best use for him, I figure, rather than running around getting shot at.”
“I mean it,” Carvalho said. “You be careful now, you understand? I would not want to see you die.”
“You’re not getting all sentimental on me, now, are you?”
Somehow, he managed to shrug both his shoulders and his mouth at the same time in what was a very Ladino expression. “Perhaps a little bit.”
Tolvern poised on the edge with a hand wrapped around a vine and a leg dangling over the side. “Capp might be good with what happened last night, but I doubt she’d be too keen on anything she’d call ‘feelings.’ So, we’re professionals now, right? We know what needs doing, and we’ll do it.”
“Got it.” He scowled and turned to fiddling with the gun.
It was the first time they’d mentioned what had passed between them in the hammock. She didn’t regret it—assuming, she, Carvalho, and Capp herself were right about all the parties involved—but neither did she plan to make a habit of it. And she was sure Carvalho didn’t either, if he gave it two seconds of thought.
Once Tolvern reached the ground, she gave Nyb Pim final instructions, which he translated for the others. Counting Blackbeard’s pilot, she had seventeen Hroom in her force. They came to the edge of the trees about a hundred yards outside the gates to the base.
Any natural camouflage the Hroom enjoyed among the red and purple jungle of the lowlands was negated here in the higher elevations, where Terran vegetation had taken root with all of its shades of green. But a deep ditch flanked the dirt road to drain off the heavy rains, and the enemy had not yet cleared it. Tolvern led the others into waist-high weeds and brush, and then had them fan out down the ditch, moving on their bellies.
Tolvern looked at her computer to get the time. “Five minutes,” she told Nyb Pim. “Then you go, whether I give you the signal or not.”
Nyb Pim checked his own computer and gave a human-style nod. Tolvern continued along with three Hroom, leaving Nyb Pim and the rest behind. They crept along the ditch toward the base. Only in the last fifty feet had someone bothered to burn down the vegetation, and it was here that Tolvern stopped. She looked at her computer. Four minutes and fifty seconds already. She’d cut it close.
Rebellion of Stars (Starship Blackbeard Book 4) Page 17
