Lords of Space (Starship Blackbeard Book 2)

by Michael Wallace

  “Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

  “It was a long-range pursuit, Commander. Did you really want to sit here watching for the last four hours as we inched closer?”

  The captain had a point about the sluggish beginning to such things, but they were nearing the end of that phase. In the void, the initial stages of a battle might flow as slowly as pine sap, but when matters started, they sped up in a big way. Tolvern queried Jane, who said that the enemy was already within range of long-range missiles. So far, none had been fired.

  “They’ve refused to surrender,” Drake continued, “or even to acknowledge that we’re hailing them. Vargus thinks they might be approaching a jump point. We have nothing on our charts within fifty million miles, and not in this direction at all, but none of us know the system very well.”

  “What are those escorts?”

  “A pair of long-range patrol boats fitted with jump point engines,” Drake said. “Highly maneuverable in tight quarters, but not usually seen way out here. We’ll see how they do.”

  Drake’s plan, as he explained it, was to send in the smaller Orient Tiger to drive off the escorts from the barge. Blackbeard would then hunt them down, one by one, and destroy or disable them, while Vargus engaged with the barge’s deck guns. They didn’t want to fire anything heavy at their target itself, intending to seize its cargo, not destroy it.

  Drake made another call to the gunnery, then turned to Tolvern. “Get our friends on the com. Send them after the lead escort, first.”

  She hailed Orient Tiger. Catarina Vargus’s smooth, insolent voice came on. “What orders from our lord and master?”

  Tolvern explained Drake’s plan, told Vargus to drive off the lead escort first.

  “Don’t we want to soften them up, first?” the pirate asked.

  “The captain says they’re too close for shooting. We’ll risk hitting the barge.”

  “It would be nice if he could tell me himself. It’s insulting to get my orders via his minions.” Vargus’s tone was more sardonic than irritated. “I might plead my case, suggest that I can hit the escorts without risk to our prize.”

  Tolvern didn’t have the inclination to spar with her. “You have your orders. Obey them.”

  “As you wish.” The call ended.

  Vargus’s frigate accelerated. While Blackbeard tailed some few thousand miles behind their prey, Vargus brought Orient Tiger alongside the barge, and then dove in at the three ships like a wolf trying to drive a calf from its mother.

  The New Dutch were canny pilots and seemed to recognize the tactic. The front ship merely hugged tighter, while the one at the rear pulled away just long enough to aim a pair of small cannons at the frigate. Vargus was forced to peel away. The barge also engaged her ship with deck guns, and two small explosions lit along Orient Tiger’s stern as Vargus retreated to a safe distance.

  But the pirate captain only pulled back long enough to reorient herself for another charge. This time, Vargus swooped in so aggressively that she was nearly between the front escort and the much larger ship before the other ships could drive her off again.

  Meanwhile, Drake ordered Blackbeard to close and shoot at the barge’s deck gun to see if they could disable it. When they were a few dozen miles away, Barker opened up with the Gatling guns. The barge’s deck gun was too well protected to take out, but they managed to draw its fire. The enemy scored a few minor hits.

  On the third swoop, Vargus came in so tight it looked like she would ram the barge. That would end in ruin. Not only was the barge five times the size of the frigate, but her hold was full of tyrillium—Orient Tiger would smash against it like a tin can crushed against concrete. Vargus pulled up at the last moment, turning her engines against the hull of the barge to check her momentum.

  The maneuver baffled the lead escort. It veered to one side to avoid collision just as Vargus pushed against the side of the barge. The escort was momentarily separated by a few miles of empty space. Before it could come in again to hug the barge, Orient Tiger shot two slow-moving torpedoes into the gap. The patrol boat was forced to peel away.

  Tolvern stared at the viewscreen, momentarily stunned by the brilliant maneuver. Catarina Vargus was twice the captain her father had been.

  Drake gave orders to Nyb Pim to muscle into the gap and keep the escort away. Never mind the barge’s deck gun, or, more dangerously, Vargus’s torpedoes, now wandering about looking for a target. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

  And now the enemy made a fatal error. The second escort pulled away to shoot at Vargus’s pirate frigate in an attempt to provide cover for the first ship to return to safety against the barge. This left it exposed to Blackbeard, now coming up behind.

  Drake was on the com, giving orders to Vargus, and that left Tolvern to give orders to the gunnery. She got Barker in the gunnery. “Prepare the main battery. Hit her hard. Ready tubes four and five.”

  They came up along starboard of the rear escort and forced themselves between it and the barge before either ship seemed to realize they were there. Tolvern gave the order to fire.

  Blackbeard’s main batteries let loose with such power that the ship rocked and the dull throb of the guns shook the floor beneath their feet. The distance was only a few miles, and the enemy patrol boat had thin shielding, sufficient to tangle with typical pirate weapons, but not to stop the main guns of a Royal Navy cruiser. She didn’t stand a chance.

  Lights flared along her side from stern to prow. The plasma engine blew off like an enormous fireworks’ rocket gone astray, leaving a blue corkscrew that zipped by below Blackbeard, nearly striking them as it passed. The enemy ship gave a little shudder, then blew apart in a final, terrific explosion.

  The other escort fared little better. Vargus had her separated, and the two ships were trading blows when Blackbeard joined the fight. While the gunnery prepared the main battery for another volley, Barker opened up with the smaller belly guns. This was enough to force the fleeing escort back into Orient Tiger’s line of fire. A final volley along the ship’s damaged side tore it in two. Blackbeard pulled away as secondary explosions blasted apart what was left of the wreckage.

  Now stripped of its defenses, the barge continued on its way, still refusing to acknowledge any attempts to communicate.

  Orient Tiger came in on one flank and Blackbeard the other. Harpoons soon had the ship fixed, and two boarding parties set off. The first pirates had just arrived when the New Dutch finally discovered a working communication system and offered a full surrender.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Admiral Malthorne descended from orbit with a corvette and two troop transports, each holding a company of royal marines. They descended to fifty thousand feet above the ocean, then flew west toward Auckland Island, staying out of range of the coastal radar of the other Zealand Islands. It was nighttime, and the islands glittered far to the north as they stretched from the continental shelf of Canada and into the ocean.

  Colonel Fitzgibbons stood next to Malthorne on the bridge of the corvette, already wearing his battle uniform, including polished black boots and black leather gloves. He had a square head, cleanly shaven except for a bristly mustache and thick eyebrows above dark, penetrating eyes. During the war, the colonel had once leveled a Hroom town of sixty thousand when they refused to surrender. He seemed to feel little more sympathy for his fellow citizens of Albion and had not balked when given his orders.

  A little brutality was in order, Malthorne decided. Time to show that he was not a man to be trifled with. Such a demonstration should not have been necessary, of course, given his station in life.

  Vice Admiral Thomas Lord Malthorne was King Bartholomew’s cousin on his mother’s side; on his father’s, he issued from a line of dukes that had been growing in wealth and power for eight generations. He was head of the Admiralty, and the king couldn’t wage war without him. In fact, it could not have escaped the king’s attention that the lord admiral was sixth in line to the throne, a
nd that the five ahead of him were two children, an unmarried woman of twenty-four, and two old men.

  And so when Malthorne had demanded two companies of royal marines to put down internal dissent in the Zealand Islands, the king barely mounted a protest, even though such a thing was illegal. One of Parliament’s most closely held prerogatives was the control of military power on Albion herself. By law, the military was confined to the barracks and ports, and under no circumstances would the navy or marines enter the major cities of York Town, Sidney, Chicago, Manchester, nor any of the semi-sovereign estates. Short of an actual invasion from the Hroom Empire, should force be required on Albion, that duty fell to the private armies of the great lords, as well as to a confusing jumble of parliamentary and city militias. Thus it had been for 375 years, since the Second Albion Civil War.

  It was nearly dawn when they reached Auckland. It was a small, insignificant island, some six thousand square miles of land far out in the ocean. Half of the island remained royal forest, with the rest divided among three baronies and several small towns with their own charters and government. A small, rain-drenched range shadowed the more temperate northern plains where the tenants of Baron Drake raised sheep and cattle and operated a small coal mine. Malthorne waited until his ships were over the mountains before they descended. The sun rose behind them in the east.

  “Will the baron resist?” Fitzgibbons asked.

  His accent was flat, neutral, spoken like a man who had never lived long in one place, who had adequate education but could not boast of particular understanding. A military mind, but nothing more.

  “Doubtful. But we’re prepared if they do.”

  “And his fellow islanders? They boast a militia of nearly three thousand in total, should they commit to his defense.”

  “Easily crushed by the armaments of this ship,” Malthorne said, “backed by your marines.”

  “More easily still from a distance.”

  The colonel had made this point earlier, while they were still in orbit on Dreadnought. Demand the baron’s surrender. Should he refuse, should he resist, the battleship could bombard his estate from space until it was a pile of rubble. Fitzgibbons didn’t understand the situation. That was the downside of choosing a man with a purely military mind.

  “For a man who has killed so many, you are surprisingly squeamish about spilling blood,” Malthorne said.

  “The only blood that makes me squeamish is the blood of my own men.”

  “Of which there will be endless quantities spilled if we do not put down the rebellion.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  Malthorne braced himself for resistance as they flew over the central plains. Dawn’s brilliant display might reveal anti-aircraft batteries set up in the estate villages, or men dug in at bunkers behind missile batteries.

  But the only movement came from bewildered flocks of sheep that scattered in terror at the noise of the heavy craft rumbling overhead, and ranchers on horseback who struggled to control their mounts as their herds stampeded in every direction.

  Baron Drake’s manor and outbuildings soon appeared, the white granite of the house’s cupolas and wings sitting peacefully among the estate’s modest gardens and the surrounding hunting forest of maple and elm. It was nicely situated, beautiful and verdant, but Malthorne thought of his own property on Hot Barsa, incinerated by the baron’s treasonous son, and hardened his heart.

  They landed the corvette on the broad expanse of lawn above the stables, with the transports dropping down on either side. The engines scorched the lawn to brown and boiled off so much heat that a pair of small sheds caught fire. By the time Malthorne and the colonel stepped out of the corvette, the fire had spread to the stables themselves, with flames licking the roofs, crackling, roaring, and spitting sparks. Inside the stables, horses screamed in terror. A stable hand came running toward the doors to unlock them and release the horses, but one of Fitzgibbon’s men shot him dead.

  Meanwhile, the transport was disgorging heavily armed marines. Some set up a perimeter beneath the corvette’s protective guns, while others moved to secure the outbuildings. Scattered gunfire came from the greenhouses. Fitzgibbons strode off to give orders and was soon leading a group of thirty or forty men toward the main house. That left Malthorne protected by several personal bodyguards and the lord admiral’s own adjutant.

  Ten minutes later, Malthorne got the call that the house had been secured. He met the colonel beneath a massive chandelier in the great hall. Fitzgibbons told him that several house servants and personal guards had died trying to protect the family, but that the baron had ordered a surrender as soon as he realized the futility of his situation, and there had been no further bloodshed.

  Malthorne strode into the library to find the baron in his bathrobe in a chair, the man’s gray hair wet and uncombed. The library was a fine room, larger than the manor itself justified, filled with handsome volumes and excellent furniture. Under other circumstances, the admiral and the baron might have shared a drink and discussed their shared tastes in books and malted whiskey.

  “You were in the bath,” Malthorne said, amused, as he took in Baron Drake’s condition. “And I worried you would give us trouble. Where are your wife and daughters?”

  The baron glared back at him and didn’t answer.

  “If they think to escape,” Malthorne said, “they will shortly be disabused of the notion.”

  Indeed, Fitzgibbons’s men soon found two of them, and brought them in. The baroness, a still-handsome woman of about sixty, came first, wearing a bonnet and a sun dress with a floral print, as if ready for a stroll in the gardens. Moments later, two marines led in a pretty young woman with dark hair. She was tall, with a proud look in her flashing eyes that reminded the admiral of her older brother, James Drake, who had lately caused so much trouble. Both James and his sister resembled their mother. The young woman shrugged out of the grasp of the two young marines, who seemed reluctant to hold her with force.

  “Which one are you?” the admiral asked the girl. “Helen or Madeline?”

  “This is an outrage,” Lady Drake said. “You have killed our servants, destroyed our property. By what right—?”

  “Say nothing,” the baron told her. “We will hear what charges he brings to justify this insult.”

  The admiral ignored them and fixed the young woman with a penetrating stare. “I asked you a question. What is your name? Answer at once.”

  “Helen, my lord.”

  “And where is your sister?”

  “Do not speak to him,” Lady Drake said, her tone as haughty as her husband’s expression. To the admiral, she added, “My older daughter is married these five months. You will not find her on the property. Indeed, she is not even a resident of Auckland anymore.”

  “I would like to hear your charges,” Baron Drake said. “I would like to know under what pretenses you have attacked my estate and murdered my servants.”

  “I would not have thought an explanation to be necessary,” Malthorne said. “Are you unaware of your son’s treason?”

  He waved for the marines to get Lady Drake seated. The older woman was agitated, and Malthorne thought she might do something foolhardy. He didn’t want any of these people dead, not today, anyway.

  “I am aware that James has been accused of such,” the baron said. “Yet we have not seen him, nor heard from him since the accusation. I cannot believe it is true.”

  Malthorne didn’t know if the man was lying about hearing from Captain Drake, but the rest of it was disingenuous. Only a parent could view the mutiny and seizure of a Royal Navy cruiser, subsequent fights with other navy ships, and then an attack on the lord admiral’s personal property as a mere “accusation” of treason.

  “He most definitely is a traitor, and we have reason to believe you have been aiding him in his treason.”

  “That’s a lie!” the girl burst out. “James is a true patriot. He loves Albion more than you or anyone else. He would never do
that! And neither would my father!”

  “Helen,” the father said in a warning tone. “You will hold your tongue.”

  “We are at war, Baron,” Malthorne said. “This time it may be for the very survival of Albion. The Hroom will turn our cities to rubble and enslave our people if we do not resist them. In the past, your seditious behavior might have been overlooked, but not this time.”

  Lady Drake’s face had paled at the mention of sedition. “What are you saying?”

  “Your husband has been aiding the traitor, telling your son where the Royal Navy is searching for him, and bribing naval officers so that they will let him slip out of traps we have set for him.”

  “These are lies,” she said. “Tell him, Chester. You are innocent of these charges. How could you possibly know anything about traps or bribes?”

  “He already knows I am innocent,” Baron Drake said slowly. A look of understanding passed over his face. “This is not about us, dear. This is something else. Some private scheme or plot. Some way to get back at James because he remains out of reach. Am I right, Lord Admiral?”

  Malthorne didn’t address this accusation. “Baron Chester Drake, your lands and holdings are hereby confiscated. You will be transported to the Tower of York to be a royal prisoner while you await trial on charges of treason and sedition. The Admiralty will demand, and crown and Parliament no doubt concur, that you be hung by your neck until dead.”

  Admiral Malthorne had fixed his gaze on the baron and his wife, sitting side by side in front of the cold hearth. The marines had similarly directed their attentions. But now a motion on the periphery caught the admiral’s eye. A sudden movement, the sound of metal scraping on metal. He turned to see the girl, Helen Drake, with a pistol in her hand, drawn from a book with a false center. She lifted the pistol and pointed it at the admiral, her hand steady, her face calm, a deadly look in her eye.

  A spike of fear lanced Malthorne’s heart. In that instant, he knew he would die, and all because he had been so careless as to ignore the girl, so foolish as to forget that she was a Drake, made of the same material as her older brother. He could see it in the flinty look in Helen’s eye, the set of her jaw, the way that she held the gun without fear, her nerves made of ice.