“Why did that hit us so hard?” Capp asked. “Smythe, anything funny about that jump?”
He wasn’t answering, and Lomelí was at the defense grid computer instead of the tech console. But Smythe did seem to be working, albeit with his eyes scrunched nearly shut.
“Smythe,” Capp said. “Wake up, you.”
“I . . . I got the fugitives,” he said at last. Then he, too, turned and puked his guts on the floor.
“Well, bring it up,” Tolvern said impatiently. “And someone call maintenance to clean up this mess.”
The small frigate appeared on the screen. It was a classic smuggler ship, the kind run by Dutch or Ladino pilots carrying high value goods. Lots of engine and not much storage space. Small enough to evade long-range scans and agile enough to dart among asteroid fields and land in isolated craters when hiding from Royal Navy warships. Most likely the interior smelled like a candy shop; sugar was the preferred cargo for those willing to penetrate so deep into the Hroom Empire.
“Does she come up in the database?” Tolvern asked.
“Still looking,” Smythe said. “Got to um, to . . . ah.” He rubbed his temples. “To analyze the engine and do a detailed scan of the hull with active sensors.”
They got the ship moving. Doc called a few minutes later. Fourteen crew in the sick bay with the trips. Hardest hit was engineering, where Barker himself went down. It was not what the captain wanted to hear.
Smythe wasn’t able to answer Tolvern’s question about the database for some time. And when he finally recovered enough to do his job, another hour passed before they had enough data to make an identification.
“Yep, we’ve found her,” Smythe said. “Sort of. The engine signature matches a tramp frigate named Morpho, a Ladino vessel out of Peruano.”
“Peruano?” Tolvern said. “She’s a long way from home. What do you mean by ‘sort of’?”
“Morpho was ninety-two feet long,” Smythe said. “This is only sixty-seven feet.”
“Ships don’t generally shrink twenty-five feet.”
“Morpho was last logged in the database seven years ago. One of our destroyers stopped her in the Fantalus System and fined the captain 235 pounds for carrying bad tax stamps.”
“That’s a stiff fine,” Tolvern said. Three times the starting salary for an enlisted man in the Royal Navy, as a matter of fact. “Must have been a repeat offense. The next time he was caught he’d have faced imprisonment. He wasn’t named Djikstra, was he?”
“No,” Smythe said. “Some Albionish fellow.”
“In that case, he’s lucky he got off with a fine.”
“What do you bet the bloke sold Morpho and started over with a new ship?” Capp said. “New name, new crew to keep him from getting hung the next time around.”
“Or maybe Morpho fell to pirates,” Tolvern said, “or got shot up so badly that he sold it for scrap. Either way, same engine, different ship.” She considered. “The name Morpho is good enough for now. Capp, hail them and demand a surrender.”
There was no answer to repeated attempts. Blackbeard kept after her, and within an hour or two their quarry would fall within range of the deck guns. At that point, it would be easy enough to knock her around a bit, harpoon her, and haul her in.
“Captain,” Smythe said, his tone a warning. “We just completed our initial scan of the system. There’s trouble.”
“We jumped through two hours ago,” Tolvern said sharply. “Why the devil are you just getting around to scanning?”
“I-I don’t know. I forgot.”
“Dammit, Smythe.”
Tolvern was angry, but not with Smythe, with herself. It had been obvious that his mind had been firing with less than a full battery of cannon since the jump. Nobody had followed the list of protocols post-jump, starting with the captain herself, who should have straightened her crew out when they were obviously listing. That her head had been pounding and she’d nearly joined the pukers was beside the point.
Smythe shared his data. Blackbeard and her quarry were in the Irlus System, which was also Hroom space. There was a habitable planet in the so-called Goldilocks Zone, a damp, sweltering world that resembled Hot Barsa in that only the highlands and polar regions could have taken human settlement. Plenty of Hroom, though, even if the largest cities had fallen into decay. All of these details were sketchy in the database, as the system was far from Albion space.
A fleet orbited the planet of Irlus itself. At first glance, Tolvern thought she was looking at a massive force of Hroom, an assembled collection of sloops. There were roughly twenty smaller ships and a single large one.
“You’d better not tell me this came from the active sensors,” she said.
“No, Captain,” Smythe said. “We’re just listening, not shouting out. But they’re in orbit, so it was easy enough to find them.”
Tolvern breathed a sigh of relief. That would have been a blunder, letting a potential enemy know they were in the system. All the same, she was itching to find out who they were looking at, to either confirm or deny her fears.
“Keep quiet. And stay cloaked until we know what we’re looking at.”
“This is close to where the general saw the buzzards, ain’t it?” Capp said. “Bet it’s a bloody harvester ship and some lances.”
“If there is a harvester ship,” Nyb Pim said, “it means they are slaughtering thousands of people.”
“I’ll wager you’re right,” Tolvern admitted. “The both of you. But this is not our fight. Not yet. We get Morpho, and we get the hell out of here.” She turned toward her tech officers. “Lomelí, get Barker—er, whoever is in charge down there—and figure out if we can still use our deck gun without dropping the cloaks.”
Meanwhile, she hailed the fugitives again, this time offering an open channel. She had little hope of a response, but to her surprise, there was an answer. They were at the outer limits of short-range communication, and the image jerked back and forth on the screen, sometimes dissolving into blurry pixels before returning to focus.
Djikstra and Megat appeared. The tall, thin Dutchman, with his hollow face, and the muscular, scowling Singaporean made a strange pair. Even through the terrible image, Tolvern could see that Djikstra looked ill. He was pale, and sweat trickled down his temples. Looked like he had a case of the trips, if not something more serious.
“You’ve come a long way for one little ship,” Megat said.
“I am curious,” Tolvern said. “Curious as to how you escaped, how you got your hands on a ship, but mostly, why you hatched this scheme. What were you hoping to accomplish?”
“I was hoping not to be locked up in your detention block, obviously.”
“We repatriated most of the mutineers, you know. I would have handed you over to Li with the rest of them. I bet he would have freed you, too.”
“I have no desire to serve under that coward again.”
“Whatever you’re doing, it makes no sense.”
“Not to your tiny brain, I’m sure it doesn’t.”
Tolvern tried the sick man. “Djikstra, what made you think an alliance with this idiot was a good idea? You’re lucky you’re not dead.”
Djikstra’s mouth twitched. His face looked like plastic. “Yes, very lucky. Very lucky indeed.”
A strange response. Bizarre, even. Tolvern wanted to question them harder, ask about the Apex lances, get an answer to what surely could not be true: were these two somehow working with the aliens? And if so, for God’s sake, why?
But that was all secondary. First, she was going to bring these two in and scuttle their frigate before the fleet orbiting Irlus discovered their presence.
“I can destroy you at any time,” Tolvern said. “You know this, don’t you?”
“Can you?” Megat said. “What is stopping you, then?”
His arrogant tone suggested that either he didn’t care—a distinct possibility given his reckless behavior in the mutiny—or he knew there were Apex forces in the sy
stem and Tolvern wouldn’t risk shooting. Again, how would he know?
“Right now you’re only guilty of stealing an away pod. You know you can’t outrun us. Surrender your ship, and I’ll give it back to you after we ask you a few questions.”
“You can’t take us,” Djikstra said. He wobbled, and Megat’s hand shot out to steady him. “It’s too late for that.” A ghastly grin spread across his face. “Only a miracle would do at this point.”
“What do you mean by that? Does this have something to do with the buzzards?”
The two men cut the transmission.
“Strange,” Tolvern said.
“Aye, bloody strange,” Capp said. “Something ain’t right with that Dutch bloke.”
“Did it seem like maybe Djikstra was trying to send us a message?” Smythe asked.
“If I didn’t know better,” Tolvern said, “I’d think he was Megat’s prisoner. But he’s the only one who could have had contact with the alien fleet, and he must have let Megat out of detention. Did we ever find out who’s in charge down in the gunnery while Barker is down?”
“It’s Carvalho,” Capp said.
“Wonderful. We really are shorthanded.”
“He’s willing to take a shot with the deck gun, but he says we’ll be exposed for a few minutes. Oh, and there’s a good chance we’ll destroy the ship anyway.”
“I’ve got a better idea. They’re only two men, and one looks like he’s dying of the plague. Tell Carvalho to prepare a boarding rocket. No, make it two. Probably overkill, but we don’t want any surprises.”
They still had a few hours until they closed distance with their prey. Tolvern organized the bridge, checked in on her crew in the sick bay, then went down to the mess to get something to eat. Maybe that would settle her stomach. Word came through that continued passive scanning had confirmed that it was a harvester ship around Irlus. The other ships were lances and spears.
Tolvern thought about Mose Dryz. If he’d picked up the three sloops of war, their commanders might have already told him about the harvester ship in the next system. Tolvern could go back to Getzus, pick up the general and his sloops, and come back here to lead an attack on the harvester ship, see if they could break the blockade around the stricken planet. The odds would be desperate, but not impossible.
But first, she had to get her hands on the fugitives.
Capp called from the bridge as Tolvern was finishing a bowl of stew and a thick slice of bread. Even as Tolvern took the call, alarms blared over the general channel: all hands at their stations. Tolvern suspected the worst, and Capp confirmed it.
“Cap’n! It’s the buzzards, they ambushed us.”
Chapter Eleven
Carvalho was in the engineering bay with two assault teams, preparing to launch boarding rockets to seize Morpho. Four women and eight men, counting himself. Several were former Royal Marines who’d transferred to the navy during the civil war, when everything had been in chaos. They were strong and clever and good fighters, but there was a laziness to their posture that he didn’t like.
The worst was a man named Boyle, who was a big fellow, taller than Carvalho and even more muscular. He stood with his jumpsuit hanging around his waist and was messing around with a long, nonstandard knife.
Next to him was a rat-faced woman named Boykin, who had scoffed when Carvalho asked the crew to show their ammo, and scoffed again when he ordered her to get another box of cartridges.
“I ain’t gonna need more than two bullets,” she’d said. “One for the Chinese and one for the Dutchman. Bam, bam, it’s over.”
Boyle and Boykin. Sounded like a comedy act in the port of San Pablo, the kind that told raunchy jokes and brought nude dancers onto the stage to wolf whistles and crude gestures.
At one time, Carvalho would have been one of the lazy ones, mocking whoever was trying to get him to behave. Not anymore. The world was divided into scolders and scoldees, and curse it, he’d been promoted to the ranks of scolders.
He cleared his throat, trying to think of words that would inspire confidence and keep them on their toes. “We do not know what we are going to face in there,” he began.
Boyle grinned. “Two old men, probably jerking each other off.”
Boykin brayed. Carvalho tried not to laugh himself. He had a soft spot for this sort, there was no question. This would be easier if he hadn’t spent so much time drinking with these people in the mess. He forced a growl into his voice.
“Now listen to me. I do not intend to die because we swagger in expecting a couple of old men to throw themselves at our feet. There is a reason the captain ordered two boarding rockets instead of one. If she is sending twelve people, there is a chance twelve people will be needed.” Carvalho held up his hand to stop the objection, though at this point it was really just incredulous looks all around, rather than outright scoffing. “I know, it may be very simple after all. But we must be prepared. At the very least, we must take them alive, not kill them. That is the hard part, no?”
They looked more serious at this. It was one thing to blast your way into another ship, especially when the crew numbered all of two people, but another to take control without inflicting casualties.
“Here is how we will mount our attack.” He took a small computer out of his hip pocket and brought up a representation of Morpho. “Boykin will lead the first rocket here. It’s going to lodge itself near the bridge, where she is going to bang around making a lot of noise. That is all.”
Boykin peered at him with that rodent-like gaze. “What do you mean bang around? You aiming to keep me out of the action?”
“No, Boykin. I am holding you in reserve. You will draw the attention of our quarry to the bridge. Meanwhile, Boyle will thrust into the loading bay, then come in at your rear.”
“Nyah, Boykin,” Boyle said with a snorting laugh. “I’m coming in through your rear. And thrusting, Boykin. You hear that? Thrusting.”
“Don’t ‘nyah’ me, you idiot.” She punched his shoulder. “You can thrust yourself up the arse.”
Everyone was laughing now except for Carvalho. He cleared his throat in a simulation of anger. It was really to keep himself from joining the laughter. It was a good thing Capp wasn’t here. One wink or raised eyebrow in his direction, and he’d have lost it.
This was really hard, this leadership nonsense. The sooner the chief came back from the sick bay, the better.
“Now I am angry,” he said. “The next person who makes a joke will be left behind. I am very serious.”
“Of course you are, Carvalho,” someone else said. He said it with a solemn tone that may or may not have been ironic. Suppressed smirks all around.
That was Oglethorpe, another crew member who’d served under Drake. He’d been in special forces before suffering a bad shoulder injury, and was still plenty big and intimidating.
Carvalho scowled at him. “You want to take over here? Go right ahead. I am happy to step aside.”
Oglethorpe looked sheepish. “Sorry, mate.”
Carvalho laid out the rest of his plan for taking Morpho without killing or getting killed. After the initial screwing around, the others began to settle down and listen. By the time he was finished, they were all business. Well, almost all. Boykin whispered in Boyle’s ear. He gave her a mock-serious elbow to the ribs. Carvalho let it pass.
“All right. Everyone grab your gear. Time to load the boarding rockets.”
He was checking his gun when Capp’s excited voice came over the com link.
“Carvalho, you there? We’re getting boarded. King’s balls, they’re here. Look out!”
Huh, what? They were getting boarded? Voices cried across the open channel, and he tried to get Capp back on to make sense of it all, but suddenly the line went dead. What the devil? The com was out entirely. That had never happened before.
The ship shuddered. He fell to the ground, tumbling among the others from the assault teams, and when he lifted himself, he felt strangely lig
ht. He reached for his gun, which had clattered to the floor, and it almost floated up to his hand.
“The gravity is failing,” Boyle said. “We must have lost the stabilizers.”
Another man shouted, “Activate your mag boots!”
No, that wasn’t right. The gravity wasn’t failing. It had stopped at roughly half strength. How strange.
Half gravity. That rang a bell somewhere, but the ship shuddered before he could figure it out. Then a banging sound, followed by a screech. It sounded like a giant nail being driven through sheet metal. That noise was both familiar and easy to identify—the sound of a boarding rocket breaking through decks.
The inner wall of the engineering bay ruptured, and a long, torpedo-like tube burst in. It slid across the floor and came to a rest in the middle. A second torpedo slammed through the hull about thirty feet away, on the side of the engineering bay nearest the armory.
“Take cover!” Carvalho shouted.
He grabbed his weapon and sprinted across the floor in huge strides like a leaping ballet dancer. The partial gravity made him feel like he could touch the ceiling, thirty feet up. He slid behind several pallets loaded with supplies sent over from Dreadnought. Several others dove in next to him, including Boyle and Boykin. He waved others to take position behind a nearby forklift, and they moved swiftly to comply. Nobody was screwing around now, that was for sure.
Carvalho and his team had weighed themselves down with gear for the assault, and even before they hit the ground, men and women were shuffling out of pressure suits and heavy mag boots, shedding cumbersome gear so as to better fight. Carvalho poked his head out just as hatches opened on both of the entry craft.
Giant birds spilled out, one after another. More and more and more. It was like the world’s biggest crates of turkeys, the birds packed together in confines so tight no human would have tolerated it. Except that these turkeys were about six feet tall and laden with weapons of various kinds, these being hooked by hoses and other strange controls to beaks and wingtips. Some of the birds strode ostrich-like across the floor, while others launched themselves into the sky and took flight with huge wings.
Dragon Quadrant (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 2) Page 11
