“Step back from the plot, Dansby,” Morell said, ignoring Presgraves. “Don’t make this worse than —”
“Now, captain,” Presgraves said, hands out to her sides as though to placate him. “Ain’t none of us wants to —”
Morell’s palm connected with Presgraves cheek in a loud crack that split the air of the quarterdeck. It stilled the ongoing struggles for a moment, as though it had been a gunshot. Even Jessup stopped struggling to pull Avrel down.
Presgraves straightened from where she’d been knocked aside by the blow, eyes narrow.
She stared at Morell for a moment, still and silent, then leapt for him, lips pulled back and fingers extended like claws.
“You buggering bollocks washer!”
Avrel’s fingers found the setting he wanted and activated it. Throughout Minorca, hatches closed and locked themselves—he could only hope that Detheridge’s group had made their way into the engineering spaces in time.
With the ship sealed and none of the crew able to move from whatever compartment they were in, Avrel turned his attention to Jessup and the rest of the fights on the quarterdeck.
Most of which had ceased as the participants stared in awe or horror at Presgraves, who was on top of Morell and swinging blood covered fists at the captain’s still form. She punctuated each blow with a shouted word and a grimace.
“Don’t! No! Man! Never!”
Kaycie took the opportunity of Turkington’s distraction to jab her stunner into his gut and pull the trigger. Turkington went down in a heap, and that—along with no little fear of Presgraves, Avrel was certain—took the fight out of the rest of the quarterdeck crew as well.
“Here, now,” Sween called, easing toward Presgraves and Morell. He dodged a spatter of blood from one of her backswings and moved closer. “I think yer done there, girl.”
Presgraves paused in her pummeling. She stared at Morell for a moment, as though evaluating her work, then nodded.
“Aye, he’s killed.”
Avrel couldn’t see for certain, but took her word for it. He sighed. That would make things more complicated, and he wished it’d been avoided, but there was nothing for it now. They still had Turkington alive and he’d know of the slavery plans just as much as Morell, he was sure.
Sween offered Presgraves a hand up and she stood.
“Not certain you needed to kill him so bloody much,” Sween muttered.
“Not needed? Did you see what he done?”
“Well, he shouldn’t’ve hit you, sure, but —”
“Hit me?” Presgraves swung to face Sween, face twisted in fury. “That weren’t no hit! The bugger slapped me, like I was some kind o’ prissy tart!” She backed Sween up against the navigation plot, face close and one finger raised between them. “You mark me, Culloden Sween, and well. If ever you hit me, well, we’ll have a proper go and then a pint and maybe a poke after, if you’re still up to it—but, by the Dark, if ever you slaps me like I ain’t worth your fist then …” She stepped back and spat on Morell’s body. “You hear me, Culloden Sween?”
“Aye. Aye, I do.”
Detheridge had taken the fusion plant with nary a man lost on either side.
Of course, she didn’t have Presgraves with her, so that was easier, Avrel thought.
With that, the quarterdeck, and the ship locked down, Minorca was theirs—now they simply needed to figure what they’d do with her.
Turkington, they locked in his cabin, after Avrel and Kaycie figured how to properly strip him of access to Minorca’s systems. They’d not make the same mistake Morell had of thinking a locked hatch was enough and taking the rest for granted.
Kaycie stayed on the quarterdeck with Sween and Presgraves while Avrel went aft with the stunners. He, along with Detheridge and a few others, then went through the ship, releasing those of the crew they could rely on and herding any they couldn’t below.
In the end, they’d replaced the captives in the hold with some half of Minorca’s crew, and replaced the crew with a combination of captive spacers and those who’d never sailed before.
“Did you consider the sailing of the ship before you started this?” Kaycie asked Avrel when he returned to the quarterdeck.
“Not as such, no.” He paused. “Did you consider anything past getting out of your cabin when you ripped the desk from the wall and beat me with it?”
Kaycie flushed. “Not as such.”
“There you are, then.”
Avrel thought they weren’t really so bad off, nearly half of Minorca’s crew was still free. He was a bit concerned about some of them, but they were not so many as could retake the ship—not now that the whole of the crew was aware and on the lookout for such a thing. Many of the released captives were quite experienced spacers, if they were to be believed, and he had no reason not to.
“We should be all right,” he said. “Not all of the spacers in the hold were New Londoners, though, so there’s a bit of a language problem below.”
Merchantmen, and even some navies, had eclectic crews to begin with, picking up hands in whatever port and from whatever system they were available. What they had now, though, was quite a bit different than a few hands who’d signed on in some past port. They had Hanoverese, French, Hso-Hsi, and hands from even farther away than that. There was even one lad who claimed he was from some system off on the far side of Earth itself, and how he’d got clear around the massive globe of explored space only to be captured by some pirate in the Barbary, Avrel couldn’t fathom.
“Detheridge feels we’ll get by well enough, though,” Avrel said.
“So, what do we do now?”
Avrel paused—he’d truly not thought too very much beyond taking Minorca than Kaycie had getting out of her compartment. He’d thought only to put a stop to the ship getting any closer to offloading their human cargo.
“Well, we’re a fine pair of mutineers, aren’t we?”
Avrel winced. Kaycie’s words struck home and he’d not cared to think of himself as that, even since they’d taken Minorca.
He took a deep breath. They’d not be branded as that, not when the whole story was told, at least.
“Next is we need a way to lose our friend there,” he said, nodding to the navigation plot. Their escort was still in place, sailing placidly along aft and a few points off Minorca’s stern. “Do you have any thoughts?”
Kaycie shook her head. “My family’s policy was always to flee, then surrender in the face of a fight. The best chance of survival with pirates is always not to anger them—being left off in a ship’s boat or on some remote world’s always preferable to what they’ll do if one of them’s killed.”
Avrel nodded. It was his own family’s policy as well, and what was taught at Lesser Sibward. One might flee and have a chance of escape, but if it came to shooting a pirate’s ship would usually outgun and certainly outman a merchant. If one couldn’t get away clean it was better to give in—the pirates wanted the cargoes, after all, and not the crews. Sometimes not the ships themselves, even.
“I doubt that will work here.”
“No,” Kaycie agreed. “But it doesn’t change that we’re outgunned and outmanned. We’ll need something cleverer.” She grinned at him. “So, what’s the plan, Jon?”
“Douse the sails and hull,” Avrel ordered.
“Aye,” Grubbs said.
Grubbs was at the quarterdeck’s signals console. He and Privitt, a man from Rosson’s mess, at the tactical console, were the only ones manning the quarterdeck other than Avrel. Everyone else, those who could be trusted, at least, were either on the few guns Minorca carried or ready at the boarding tubes. They all had their vacsuits on, as did the rest of the crew, and those of the captives not huddled away in the hold for protection.
At Avrel’s order, Minorca’s sails went dark, no longer charged by the powerful particle projectors that let them harness the darkspace winds. Her hull, as well, went dark, and the ship began to slow, no longer propelled against the
resistance of the dark matter that permeated the space around her. To an external observer, she’d appear dead and lifeless.
“Detheridge’s ready,” Grubbs said.
Avrel nodded, eyes on the navigation plot.
How long should it take? Time enough to run through diagnostics, he supposed. He ran fingers over the plot, plying the menus.
“A call to the engineer to find out what’s the trouble,” he muttered. “No, a runner—and we’d have no diagnostics on the quarterdeck. These consoles would be dark, wouldn’t they?”
“Never been aboard a ship with the plant shut down before,” Grubbs said.
Most spacers hadn’t, Avrel knew. It was a possibility, but rare. If the plant detected a problem, it would shut down, for the alternative would be far worse. The ship would be without power for any but emergency systems—until the plant was ensured safe and could be restarted.
“Yes, a runner to the plant,” Avrel said aloud, “then time for him to return with a message. A few minutes at least, and Captain Morell would be far more concerned with the workings of his ship than our escort there.”
He drummed his fingers on the plot, waiting. The other ship had noted Minorca’s plight now, and there was a flurry of activity on her hull. Sails trimmed and their charge lessened to slow her, and she was coming up into the wind herself to slow further. She’d already sailed past Minorca as the darkened, apparently powerless, ship slowed to a stop.
“All sorts of signals,” Grubbs said.
Avrel could see that on the plot, the image of the other ship brought inboard by passive optics and displayed there. Her masts and hull were flashing brightly, demanding a response from Minorca.
“Detheridge —”
“Keep her inboard,” Avrel said. “We’re scurrying about with our own troubles right now. We’re a Marchant ship, as well—we’ll get around to answering in our own bloody time, won’t we?” He stared at the other ship’s image, wondering what that captain was thinking. “Time enough for an answer from the engineer, and a bit of a whinge about why is this happening to me, I suppose.” He took a deep breath. “Time to realize we’re in a fix and more time to accept that a bit of help won’t go amiss.”
A fusion plant restart could be done alone, but it would tax the ship’s batteries to their limits—wear that had a cost, and they’d need replacing sooner. An expense like that, coming off a voyage’s profits—well, what captain wouldn’t want to avoid that?
Better to string a cable from another ship if one was lucky enough to have another nearby.
“Send her out.”
“Aye.”
The sail locker’s hatch in Minorca’s bow cycled slowly and a single, vacsuited figure emerged.
Detheridge made her way a bit to the starboard side, where the other ship now lay off Minorca’s bow, having sailed past, then come up into the wind to stop.
Detheridge raised her arms and lit the long lighted sticks she held, beginning the long, laborious process of spelling out their message.
Fusion SCRAM. No Power. Assist - interrogative.
Detheridge was playing the part of Minorca’s quartermaster, arranging things while the ship’s officers dealt with what was certainly a mess inside the hull. She finally arranged things to everyone’s liking and the other ship took up moving again—it was on them to make the docking, with Minorca ostensibly unable to move.
The other ship charged her sails, pulled them around to fall off the wind and sail away downwind, then circled back to come at Minorca from behind. It would be an awkward docking as Minorca had been on the port tack when her sails went dark, leaving her in the same attitude toward the winds, rather than coming up into them to heave-to as was typically done. The other ship would have to come alongside while on the port tack as well, a more difficult maneuver.
They managed it, though, and came to rest a few dozen meters from Minorca’s starboard side.
The boarding tube extended, touching Minorca’s side with a crew of vacsuited figures carrying a thick cable already inside it. They’d left the outer hatch to their own lock open and Avrel hoped Kaycie, on the berthing deck with their few guns, had the sense to target both those in the tube and that lighter, inner hatch. He swallowed heavily at the thought, but if they could expose the other ship’s interior to vacuum quickly—well, the crew likely wasn’t suited, there being no reason to expect Minorca to attack, after all.
Avrel clenched his jaw.
“Fire.”
The action was short and brutal.
The other crew, all unsuspecting, was indeed unsuited. Avrel would never know how many died when Minorca’s first broadside opened her main deck to vacuum.
The other captain and his crew weren’t fools, though, and Minorca’s guns weren’t nearly enough to settle the matter in one go.
It was barely two minutes, not long enough for any but one of Minorca’s guns to reload, before the enemy’s gunports opened. They’d not bothered to rig their own gallenium nets to keep the darkspace radiations out for a time, simply flung the ports open and stuck the crystalline tubes of their guns through to fire into Minorca.
The boarding tube and its inhabitants had been shredded by grapeshot, canisters that split the thick lasers of the main guns into dozens of thinner beams, as Kaycie had indeed targeted them. Those in the tube, men who’d only been coming to assist a ship they thought was in trouble, were slaughtered in the one blast, but the tube itself remained in place. Open to vacuum, but still usable to propel oneself between the ships. The lock on the other side was open to space, blasted apart in their first salvo, and Avrel’s crew was already suited, as the enemy was not.
Figures streamed across from ship to ship, even as the guns were reloaded and fired again. One or two were struck with the full force of shot, but the others kept on. Kaycie had organized the boarding party from the former captives, and they knew the stakes—it was take the other ship, die in the attempt, or return to their captivity.
They’d opened Minorca’s paltry armory and handed out the weapons—bladed mostly, with the few chemical projectile sidearms going to those spacers who claimed some proficiency with them. Firing those in vacuum, especially if a ship were to lose its gravity generators, wasn’t something most merchant spacers practiced at.
The guns on both ships were firing again, erratically as the gun crews heaved shot into the breaches. The heavy canisters made up of capacitors to hold the charge and lasing tubes that fired through the guns’ barrels were encased in gallenium to protect them from the darkspace radiations that made all electronics useless when exposed.
“Bugger it,” Avrel muttered. He clamped his vacsuit helmet over his head and gestured to the others. “There’s nothing to be done from the quarterdeck, lads—it’s not as though we’re going anywhere.”
Grubbs and Privitt clamped their own helmets on, grasped their weapons and followed.
Avrel made his way down to the gun deck. He spared a brief nod to Kaycie, who was rushing from gun to gun, encouraging their crews and seeing to their aim. He wished that he could take the time to say something to her before joining the fight on the other ship, but with the radiations inboard the suit radios were down and he didn’t think he should take the time to touch his helmet to hers so she could hear.
Instead he raised a hand, turned that into a sweeping gesture forward, and flung himself through the tube at the other ship.
The aftermath of the battle shook Avrel to the core.
No class at Lesser Sibward, nor his travels aboard ships, had prepared him for the bleeding, burned, and broken bodies littering the decks of both Minorca and Fancy.
It was odd, he thought, that he didn’t remember much of the battle itself, though. Only images of his blade and the blades of others—blocked or swinging or cutting through a vacsuited limb.
His first thoughts were of Kaycie, and though she’d been the one to send word that Fancy’s captain had surrendered and the ship was theirs, Avrel wouldn’t be satisfied
until he’d gone through the boarding tube himself and seen her whole.
She’d already seen to securing Fancy’s crew and officers, so then came the task of sorting the wounded and seeing to their treatment. The worst seen to wherever they lay and moved to a makeshift sick berth in Minorca’s hold, for the main sick berth couldn’t hold so many. Of those not in dire straits, Fancy’s crew were sent to their fellows in that ship’s hold, to be treated as well as could be, while the Minorcans saw to their own.
Detheridge had taken a slash to her belly during the boarding, but her vacsuit had sealed and Minorca’s surgeon was confident in her recovery. Grubbs had been less lucky as a bolt from Fancy’s guns had taken off his left arm at the elbow. Avrel stopped to visit them both, as they were resting side by side, and was surprised to find them in good spirits.
“Oh, a prosth’ll set me right, once we’re somewheres civilized,” Grubbs said. “No worries.”
Detheridge simply nodded and smiled, her expression making Avrel wonder if the surgeon hadn’t given her a bit much in the way of painkillers.
Regardless, he clapped them each on the shoulder and moved on to have a word with each of the other wounded.
Once that was done, and both ships put to rights so that they could sail again, it was time to decide on their next move.
Minorca’s crew and the captives were divided in their desires. Some, those who’d not participated in the taking of the ship, wanted off as soon as possible. They wished nothing more to do with the mutiny, nor with standing against the Marchant Company, and Avrel couldn’t blame them—they’d not asked to be put in a place to take such a stand, merely wanting to live out their lives and do the work they were suited to. Others—Barden Dary and his fellows who’d come aboard as captives—wished to sail off and make their own way in the Barbary. Avrel suspected their own way might have something less than honest trading to it, but couldn’t blame them either, not after their experience. Some of Minorca’s crew fell into this lot as well. The minority were those who, like Avrel and Kaycie, felt the need to sail back to New London space and spread the word about the Marchant’s actions.
Orphans In the Black: A Space Opera Anthology Page 34
