“Peerless is hailing us,” Da Rosa said. The first mate’s face was a mask. “They’re demanding our surrender. They promise to treat us as freebooters and not pirates.”
“I see.”
It was an important distinction. Freebooters would be fined, equipment confiscated. Pirates, hung.
“Otherwise, no quarter,” Da Rosa said.
It was an unwinnable fight. And her cargo had been compromised. The entire Vargus System was compromised, her secret shredded. She let loose with her own string of oaths, the collection of which would have shocked and horrified her old tutors on Albion, but which befit her status as the daughter of a notorious pirate.
“Orders, Captain?” Da Rosa prodded.
“Deactivate weapons and lower shields. Send a message to our fleet and to HMS Peerless.” Catarina let out her breath. It felt like the last gasp of a drowning woman. “We surrender.”
Chapter Three
Lars Olafsen couldn’t help but think of the old gods whenever he spotted an enemy star wolf for the first time.
In truth, he didn’t believe in the gods any more than he believed in the Christian faith, the last remnants of which had collapsed as the Scandians’ kingdoms fell apart in plague, famine, and war. Why his people had renewed their faith in Odin and Thor and taken up the old rituals didn’t make much sense to him. The old Norse religion was already a thousand years dead when his ancestors ventured into space five hundred years ago. But apparently, there had been a religious spark lying dormant in the Scandian people, and chaos had fanned it into flames.
Nevertheless, he felt a tug of belief as he stared at the enemy vessel on the viewscreen. The other ship stretched lean and hungry, a solitary hunter shimmering against the vast swath of stars that formed the Milky Way. It swung slowly in front of the burnt-orange surface of Moloch, the blistered innermost world of the system.
My enemy, met on the field of battle. Today, one of us will enter the Valhalla, the hall of the fallen.
The star wolf was a predator of the deep, not so different from Olafsen’s own ship. A hundred raiders in its crew under a marauder captain, plus a hundred more in stasis, ready to be thawed at a moment’s notice to drop into an unsuspecting port for plunder and thralls. Or sometimes, just to wreak havoc.
Raiders were always men—no women ever set foot on a star wolf except when taken as booty—who ranged for weeks or months through the lawless systems here on the edge of Scandian territory. The older, more experienced raiders owned their own mech suits, which gave them the fighting power of five, even ten men as they rampaged into battle.
The enemy ship was a dark gray, scored with blackened streaks from hits to its armor that it carried like the scar that curved from Olafsen’s forehead to his upper cheek. The knife cut had nearly taken his right eye, too, which would have left him a mirror image of his brother, Sven, who was missing his left. A scar was nothing; Olafsen was happy to wear it. Made him look mean, a man not to be trifled with. The star wolf showing on the viewscreen carried its scars with the same swagger.
“Is it Storm Rider?” the man next to him asked.
That was Björnman, one of the biggest men Olafsen had ever seen. His head was square like the end of a maul, and the hair of his beard seemed to grow from the bottom of his eye sockets to his lower neck. Björnman could clear a tavern with a growl, and his glare alone was enough to put down arguments among the crew. There were many such conflicts; every raider on a ship thought himself his own lord, and a fleet of star wolves brought more chaos to the battlefield, with raids often turning into outright brawls among the attacking ships.
But while Björnman could be brutal, he was also a cunning navigator and strategist, and frequently the check on Olafsen’s more aggressive maneuvers.
“It looks like Storm Rider,” Olafsen agreed.
Björnman’s tone was cautious. “Only Storm Rider?”
“Ragnar Forkbeard’s ship has been flying alone since the raid on Rykus III.”
“As have we,” Björnman said. “And most of the other star wolves, too.”
Yes, that was true. The crackup of the raiding alliance had left most of the marauder captains bereft of allies. The Scandian systems were awash in rivalries, vendettas, and recriminations. Outright war had left Viborg and Roskilde bombarding each other. Two of Olafsen’s brothers had hired on as mercenaries for the conflict, and a third, Sven, so-called Longshanks, was reportedly causing mischief on Odense, trying to get that planet involved as well.
The only thing that could make the chaos worse was a return of the pestilence. Another outbreak of the blood tongue under the circumstances would kill and maim millions and bring about a total collapse.
“But why here?” Olafsen asked. “We’re three systems from Forkbeard’s usual hunting grounds. And I would think a salvage operation would be below him.”
“The pickings are lean everywhere,” Björnman said.
“But not that lean. We wouldn’t be here ourselves if we weren’t short on tyrillium.”
It wasn’t just that the Great Bear System was barren of habitable worlds, or that the once-flourishing mining colonies of the asteroid belt had been abandoned for decades. Even the fattest herds could not be culled forever; one raid too many, and the remaining colonies had simply packed up and left. But doubling the system’s isolation was the paucity of jump points in and out. From here you could return to the Scandian systems, or you could take a single jump farther into Albion space. The Royal Navy was powerful, its ships armed with a punishing array of weapons. Not that Olafsen and Bloodaxe wouldn’t have fought a destroyer or even a cruiser, but marauder captains preferred weaker prey, which was always plentiful in the other direction.
About a year ago, refugee fleets from the planet of Singapore had come through the Great Bear System on their way to Old Earth. Attempting to reverse the Great Migration, apparently. Seeking refuge from an unknown alien threat. Upon spotting the fleets, star wolves set out from ports in the Scandian systems. Poor refugees. Someone needed to help. That was, needed to steal their ships, plunder their goods, and sell the survivors as thralls.
Later, the alien ships appeared. A few star wolves ventured out to test them, and quickly withdrew. The alien ships belonged to Apex, it turned out. The Scandians had fought a short, sharp war against them before, and wanted nothing to do with the birdlike alien race. Apex were brutal predators bent on exterminating all other sentient life. This time they’d been driven out of Albion territory by the Royal Navy, and were looking for a place to rebuild. The Scandians showed enough strength to convince the aliens to look elsewhere, but let them through rather than fight. Olafsen waited for the next scans to resolve themselves. The other star wolf was sitting in orbit around the orange, rocky world. It wasn’t cloaked, and it had left its guns exposed.
“We don’t need to challenge them,” Olafsen said. “We could turn around and pretend we’ve seen nothing. Let them go their way while we go ours.”
“That would be the prudent move,” Björnman said. “They must be here for the same reason we are, to scavenge beetle ships. There should be enough for the both of us.”
The beetle ships were the strange craft flown by the Singaporean refugee fleet, several of which had been left as wreckage the last time Olafsen brought Bloodaxe through the system. Two gutted beetle ships drifted in a lazy orbit around Moloch, in fact, together with various bits of smaller debris.
“For that matter, we don’t exactly need the tyrillium,” Olafsen said. “Shields are at eighty percent, and we could put in to Roskilde and pay for the extra armor. But I hate to buy what I can steal or scavenge.”
“And if we fight it out with Storm Rider,” Björnman said, “we’ll be even shorter on tyrillium than we already are.” The chief mate shrugged his huge shoulders. “That is, if Forkbeard decides to stay and fight. Most men would cut and run if they saw us coming.”
“Ragnar Forkbeard is not most men.” The marauder captain scratched at his stubbl
e as he gave it thought. What was Forkbeard doing out here anyway? It couldn’t be as simple as scavenge, could it?
The signalman looked up from his console. “Olafsen, the other ship is hitting us with sensors. They know we’re here.”
“Drop cloaks. Show ourselves. Let’s see what they do.”
Cloaks came down, even as Bloodaxe continued toward the planet. They were still three hours out, and given that the other star wolf was at a dead stop, while Olafsen’s ship had good speed and the swiftest engines in Scandian space, it would be easy enough to veer away from the planet should he decide against conflict.
“Confirmed,” Jarn said. “It’s Storm Rider.”
The young signalman spoke with the slur of someone who’d lost part of his lips during an outbreak of the blood tongue, the pestilence that had swept through Scandia in waves. Many of the men of Olafsen’s own generation—about twenty years before Jarn’s time—suffered the same disfigurement. At the time of the earlier outbreak, Olafsen had been a slave on Albion, taken by the enemy when his father’s ship was attacked by Royal Navy vessels, and so he’d never suffered the ailment.
Olafsen stared at the opposing star wolf.
Forkbeard, you fool. Haven’t I already taught you this lesson?
If there had been some doubt before, now it vanished. His bloodlust was rising like the tide, and soon it would sweep inland and inundate all in its path.
“Bring the missiles online,” he said. “I want the pummel guns readied, as well.”
“So you mean to fight?” Björnman said.
“Forkbeard knows better than to cross me. I took his left arm, and I can take his right arm, too.” Olafsen grinned. “A raider without arms isn’t much of a raider. By the time I’m done with him, he’ll need a woman to wipe his ass.”
Bloodaxe continued to rumble toward the small planet, and still the other ship didn’t move. At two hours, Storm Rider sent Olafsen a brief, uncoded message on subspace: We are not hostile. Lower shields, retract guns, and approach for a parley. Your safety is guaranteed.
Olafsen threw his head back and laughed at the audacity of the message.
“What kind of fool does he take us for?” Björnman said. “After what he pulled at Rykus III?”
Even if Forkbeard hadn’t been such a treacherous snake, an experienced marauder captain like Olafsen wouldn’t have taken the bait. Hell, he wouldn’t have fallen for it as a young man, when he and his brother, Sven, had taken Bloodaxe on their first expedition. Twenty years of raiding had only made him more wary than ever, more able to spot treachery from two systems away.
This particular attempt was so pathetic that Olafsen began to doubt the signalman’s assessment of the ship. Jarn was only twenty years old, and this was his first full expedition on board Bloodaxe. It probably wasn’t Ragnar Forkbeard’s star wolf at all.
But when Olafsen scanned the data himself, the evidence was overwhelming. The plasma signature matched Storm Rider. The ship’s pummel gun array was the same. The starboard armor returned a signature indicating it had been exposed to the vacuum for eleven months, which would match the repairs it received in the Odense yards after last year’s fight at Rykus III.
The tension of a pending battle grew to be too much, and the marauder captain left the helm to stalk the halls of his ship. He descended to the stasis chambers and ordered his raiders thawed. Get the men warmed up in time for close combat. A star wolf was too valuable to blast out of the sky. Both Bloodaxe and Storm Rider would instead attempt to cripple their opposite number, then send a boarding party to take it by force.
The raiders came out of their pods naked and shivering. Stunned, blinking, like men fighting off a jump concussion. The master-at-arms slapped their faces, while other crew held out clothes and gear.
“Wake up, you thralls!” the master screamed in their faces. “It’s time to kill and be killed.”
Olafsen stood by, thick arms crossed, scowling. His hard stare seemed to wake the raiders as much as the slapping and abuse. They pulled on trousers and jerkins, strapped on gun belts and inspected hand cannons and assault rifles. One man twirled a knife in his hand before slamming it into its sheath. By the time Olafsen left, he was convinced the raiders would be ready for a fight. Get them in their mech suits and let them tear through the enemy ship until he took Forkbeard himself as prisoner.
Olafsen returned to the bridge to find that the other three—signalman, pilot, and chief mate—had momentarily stepped away from their consoles. They stood shoulder to shoulder, pumping their fists and shouting a war chant:
Blood, spoil, plunder, death.
Valhalla!
Olafsen joined his voice to theirs, and the four men shouted in unison again and again until they’d worked themselves into a frenzy.
“Enough!” the marauder captain shouted at last, and sent the others to their consoles. A hollow booming echo came through the ship as scores of recently wakened raiders in the war rooms, now fully armed and alert, shouted the same chant. The words were muffled, but Olafsen had no trouble picking them out.
Blood, spoil, plunder, death.
Valhalla!
“Missiles in range,” Björnman said. “Enemy engines targeted.”
Olafsen studied the viewscreen. Storm Rider remained motionless. “What is that old dung beard doing now?” He raised a hand. “Hold the missiles. No sense hitting harder than we need to. Not if Forkbeard is going to sit and take it.”
“Another call to stand down,” Jarn said. “They want a parley.”
Olafsen chuckled. “Storm Rider must be disabled. Forkbeard can’t maneuver, the scoundrel. This is going to be easier than I thought.” He nodded at Björnman. “Ease us up. Bring us around back—stay wary!—and give their engine a short burst from the pummel guns. If Forkbeard fires back, blast his guns to hell. Otherwise, leave the rest of his ship undamaged.”
Could it really be this easy? Ragnar Forkbeard was nearly sixty, and had survived countless encounters. He’d lost the occasional skirmish, even had two ships taken from him—one by Olafsen’s father nearly twenty years ago—but had never been taken captive.
Even during the failed raid that had seen twenty-seven star wolves all turn on each other, but mostly on Forkbeard for his treachery, the wily old villain had somehow escaped. Olafsen had attacked with boarding rockets, and shot it out with enemy raiders on his own bridge before being forced to withdraw.
So how improbable was it that Olafsen would catch Forkbeard sitting here, doing nothing, not even firing his guns?
“Drop countermeasures on my mark,” he said. “We won’t take chances.”
Bloodaxe spit burst charges ahead of it as it approached the enemy star wolf, but Storm Rider still didn’t fire, and the charges dissipated without effect. Olafsen didn’t let the doubt show on his face as he shouted for the pummel guns to hammer the other ship’s engines.
Bloodaxe vibrated as its guns thumped a short burst of kinetic fire from a few dozen miles out. Olafsen’s ship had nearly come to a halt, and was already close enough to send boarding rockets. His raiders would be suited up, strapped in, and ready to fly over on lines as soon as Olafsen ordered the enemy harpooned. Which he would do as soon as he’d disabled the engines.
The shot from Bloodaxe’s guns arrived. It should have slammed into the enemy ship, followed by a flash of light and plasma leaking into the void like blood from a wound. But Storm Rider sat still, unaffected. The shot hadn’t even budged it from its stationary position.
Olafsen stared, uncomprehending. His pulse was still pounding in his temples, but the cold, calculating part of his mind soon exerted itself, and even before the others on the bridge exploded into argument, a single thought penetrated.
You’ve been fooled.
There was no ship there. There couldn’t be. He was staring at an illusion, one that had perfectly baffled all of Bloodaxe’s sensors and instruments. Ragnar Forkbeard had tricked him. How was that possible? Olafsen, his father, and three
of his brothers and half-brothers had fought both against and alongside the man for decades, and he’d never pulled anything like this.
Olafsen’s words came out in a snarl. “Jarn, you bloody idiot. Get me fresh scans. What in the name of the gods is happening?”
The new scans came through. There was nothing ahead of them, only the glimmering remains of their burst charges and the rapidly departing shot, on a trajectory targeting nothing.
“There it is!” Jarn said, voice high-pitched and nervous, as if recognizing that his marauder-captain was ready to tear him apart with his bare hands. “There’s more than one of them. Gods! Look at that.”
Hidden among the flotsam of the wrecked refugee fleet, three shapes took on new definition. Star wolves. The database immediately identified two of them: Pestilence and Icefall. The last time Olafsen had seen the pair, they’d been blasting away at him in Rykus III after the raid, when sixteen days of fighting had failed to turn up sufficient treasure and thralls to pay for the expedition, and it turned out that Ragnar Forkbeard and a handful of other marauder captains had done some pre-raiding and made off with the best of the goods already.
“Pestilence,” Björnman said with a growl. “Those bastards again.”
Pestilence had inflicted damage on Bloodaxe in the battle, and while Olafsen’s crew disdained Forkbeard, they reserved their true anger for the man’s cousin, Knute Knutesen.
“Three more ships!” Jarn said. “And another!”
Seven enemy star wolves now. Their missile bays were exposed, and they pulled away from the drifting wreckage and moved into an attack formation so they could hammer Bloodaxe from multiple sides.
Jarn spoke up again, but this time his voice was grim. “Another message. The lead ship is demanding our surrender.”
“Who the devil is it?”
Queen of the Void (The Void Queen Trilogy Book 1) Page 3
