Captain Nigel Rutherford
“Where is Rutherford’s fleet?” Drake asked, figuring if the man knew his location enough to send a subspace, then it should be easy enough to detect the man’s task force. Cloaked or not.
“No fleet, sir,” Tolvern said. “Only Vigilant. She’s headed this way at top speed.”
Tolvern sent him the coordinates, and Nyb Pim offered that if the two pirate ships continued at their present course and speed, it would take sixteen hours for Vigilant to overtake them. Blackbeard and Orient Tiger were currently flying more or less away from Rutherford, but if they turned around, they could rendezvous with Vigilant in a couple of hours.
But Drake didn’t want to consider that possibility while he was still confused about the particulars. Also, that would mean abandoning and possibly losing the tyrillium barge.
“Who is pursuing him? Empire sloops of war?”
“That’s the strange thing,” Tolvern said. “There’s no sign of any pursuit. Vigilant seems to be alone. Maybe they’re cloaked, but we can’t detect anything.”
“Tolvern and me have been trying to figure out why Rutherford would make up that kind of story,” Capp added. “Don’t make much sense. But he must be lying, right?”
“If it’s a lie, it’s both clumsy and cowardly,” Drake said. “That isn’t Rutherford’s style. Smythe, send me your scan.”
The tech officer sent through the data. It held nothing that Drake could see other than what he’d already been told: Vigilant, coming after them at ten percent the speed of light, seemingly alone. Still too distant to see whether her shields were up, but she wasn’t cloaked, so he assumed yes.
“Maybe there were Hroom,” Tolvern said. “But they’ve gone now. Could be he’s still spooked, if they were two big sloops and they caught him alone and unaware.”
“He didn’t say Hroom,” Drake said. “He said two vessels of unknown alien origin.”
This caught everyone’s attention. “Surely he didn’t mean that,” Tolvern said. “Surely he meant an unknown Hroom faction.”
“I’m not sure of anything at the moment.”
“You know how it is,” Tolvern said. “There’s probably another civil war in the empire, it’s always falling apart. That’s what Rutherford means by unknown. Not some unknown species. That would be crazy.”
“We know other aliens are out there,” Drake said. “We’ve seen strange ships.”
“Derelicts,” Tolvern insisted. “Ancient things, from long-extinct races.”
Drake wanted to call Orient Tiger, but his computer showed that Catarina’s pod was still in transit, about to dock. Another few minutes before he could share information.
“Pilot,” he said. “What do you know about this?”
Nyb Pim looked up. “I have no understanding of current empire politics—my loyalty was always to the fleet, although not completely aligned with Albion herself. But it would not surprise me if there were multiple civil wars within the Hroom home systems. The empire has been in a state of collapse since long before my time and only unites when the time comes to fight Albion.”
“Yes, I know,” he said impatiently. “But what about aliens? Other races and civilizations?”
“I do not know. I have heard things, that there were other contacts before the encounter with humans. But that happened long ago, so far as I can tell. I hesitate to parse Captain Rutherford’s message. Either interpretation seems possible.”
“Where are those other Hroom?” Drake asked, remembering the pair he’d hired at the San Pablo yards. “Down in engineering? Get them up here, I’ll want to talk to them. Maybe they know something.”
Tolvern turned to obey.
Drake checked his screen. Catarina’s pod had docked. “Capp, hail Orient Tiger. I want to talk to Vargus.”
Catarina was on the bridge now and answered the call herself. “What a surprise. I never thought you’d miss me so soon.” She gave him a sly smile.
Her innuendo caught him off guard. And in front of his crew, too. He could only hope they took it as a jest.
“You know what this is about, Ca . . . Captain Vargus,” he said, only just catching himself from calling her by her given name. “What is your assessment?”
“We can take Vigilant. Blackbeard can match her gun for gun, while my ship flanks from above, firing missiles to disable her shields.”
“So you think Rutherford is lying, and it’s a trap?”
Catarina frowned. “How do you mean, lying?”
Drake suddenly reassessed the situation. She hadn’t been recalled to her ship because of the message; all she knew was that a navy cruiser was pursuing them at top speed.
“Check your computer. I’m sending a transmission.” His fingers moved over his console.
She looked down, her screen out of his sight, but he could see confusion and doubt spread across her face. When she looked up, her gaze was steady, but she looked troubled.
“We’re not detecting any other vessels,” she said. “Must be a trick. I’ll bet Rutherford has other forces in the system. Hidden behind some moon, or cloaked. Rutherford means to delay us long enough for them to join the fight. If we follow the tyrillium barge’s original course, we’ll be through the jump before he reaches us.” A shrug. “Might be trading one trap for another, of course, but that’s our safest bet, if you ask me. I say we ignore the message and continue.”
“I know this man,” Drake said. “It’s not a trick. I have no idea what he’s talking about with these mystery ships he claims are attacking him, but it’s no game. He wouldn’t lie.”
“You sound awfully sure.” Her frown deepened. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of obeying the order.”
“I’m considering it,” he admitted.
“Are you mad?”
“Captain!” Smythe shouted. “We found them!”
“Found who?” Drake asked.
Catarina vanished, her call abruptly terminated, as Smythe, in his excitement, had replaced the entire viewscreen with Vigilant. At this distance, the long-range scanners could only show blurred, indistinct images of the navy cruiser. But then Smythe pulled the view out to a wider angle, and two other vessels came into sight. They followed the cruiser off the port and starboard, each a third again as long as Vigilant, but long and slender, like spears. With that profile, they would possess a fraction of the mass of the navy cruiser.
Where the devil had they come from? Was their cloaking really so effective as to render them invisible, even when all of Blackbeard’s instruments had been directly focused on them? And what the hell were they? He’d never seen anything like them.
“Talk to me, Smythe. Please tell me you can identify these craft.”
“Negative, sir. Unknown vessels. The engines are emitting no known signature.”
The two spaceships had materialized only a few thousand miles behind Vigilant, and Drake at first assumed that they would shortly overtake Rutherford. They must have been pursuing him for some time, which meant impressive speed to overtake a Punisher-class cruiser with its heavy plasma engines.
Instead, the unknown craft began to fall behind. They fired no weapons and seemed incapable of stopping or hindering Vigilant in any way. And then, as quickly as they’d appeared, the vessels vanished, one after another.
“What are they doing?” Drake asked, sure now that Smythe’s instruments would be able to pierce whatever cloaking these ships had employed.
“They’re gone, sir. I swear to God there’s no cloaking, or if there is, it’s a hundred times better than anything we can manage. We were looking right at them, and they’re gone.”
“Try again, Smythe.”
“I am. There’s nothing.”
“Check your instruments.”
“I swear, Captain!”
“You may find this difficult to believe, Captain,” Nyb Pim spoke up, “but I think they jumped.”
“They jumped?” Drake said. “There was no jump point there.”
How was that possible?
There was little about the system in their charts other than the basics. The system was filled with a collection of small inner planets possessing no atmosphere, and the typical array of gas giants. Nothing habitable, and deep in Hroom territory to boot. It was quite plausible that there would be unknown jump points within the system, but what were the odds that Rutherford would pass right next to one in all the vastness of space? Nearly infinitesimally small.
Drake was still trying to wrap his mind around this when Catarina came back on from Orient Tiger. “Did you see those things?”
“I saw them. Don’t know what they are. Do you?”
“No idea. Where the hell did they go?”
“They jumped,” Drake said.
“What do you mean, they jumped? There was no jump point there.”
“There is now.”
“Captain!” This time it was Tolvern, who had joined Smythe at the tech console. “Look at that!”
He looked at the viewscreen as Catarina vanished again, to see that the unknown spaceships had reappeared, this time a hundred thousand miles ahead of Vigilant, now racing toward her in the opposite direction. The two strange craft flashed by the cruiser on either side, and Rutherford launched missiles as they passed. The strange craft fired some sort of energy weapon and vaporized the missiles, or so it appeared. Which was odd, since even the small amount of tyrillium in the missiles should have neutralized energy weapons.
But the craft didn’t fire at Rutherford’s ship itself. It was almost as if they were testing his weapon systems. And then they vanished again. For a moment, Drake could only gape.
Catarina came back on the viewscreen. “This is no kind of fight for us. Not one thing about this situation is right. Let’s get the hell out of here. Force the barge ahead of us to the jump point and go.”
“Rutherford needs our help.”
“Rutherford can go to hell. Ten-to-one odds this whole thing is a trick to get us to investigate, that these strange ships either don’t exist, or they’re experimental navy craft. Soon as we show up, they’ll blast us. He’s no friend of ours, anyway. Let’s go.”
“Captain,” Tolvern said directly through Drake’s com, on a channel Catarina wouldn’t be able to hear. “This might be it. The way to earn yourself a pardon. A pardon for all of us. If you help Rutherford, it will change everything.”
He saw what Tolvern was getting at, but she was fooling herself if she thought Admiral Malthorne would call off the dogs simply because Drake had intervened to help Captain Rutherford escape a tight spot. For that matter, Drake doubted Rutherford would forgive him, either, not even if he saved the man’s life. His old friend’s obedience was too ingrained.
“James,” Catarina said, tone warning. “We have our prize. Now it’s time to leave.”
“This isn’t part of our bargain,” he said, “and I won’t make you follow me. Take the tyrillium barge if you want, and go.”
“Don’t do this. We have to stick together. I told you, I can’t manage this course alone, I need your ship to provide the muscle.”
“Then go through the jump and wait for me,” Drake told her. “I’ll either meet you there when we finish, or I won’t, and you’ll be able to guess what happened.”
“Damn you, I’m not going back with you, if that’s what you’re hoping to pull off. Guilt me into it or something.”
“I’m not, I swear to God. Go, leave.”
“This is not my fight. I’m warning you, I’ll go. You won’t see me again.”
“Commander,” Drake said to Tolvern without taking his eyes off Catarina. “Get engineering. Tell them to shunt all available power to the plasma engines. We’ll need all the acceleration we can get.” He noted the dismay on Catarina’s face and wondered if he was seeing her for the last time. “I wish you all the best, Captain Vargus.”
He cut the link to her ship.
“Manx, send a message to Vigilant. Tell Rutherford we’re coming. Tolvern, I want us cloaked, and that means you two—” a nod at his pilot and subpilot— “will need to take us there indirectly. We don’t know if those alien craft have detected us, but there’s no need to make it easy for them.”
Drake made the call to engineering himself. He gave Barker a brief sketch, and told him to come to the war room in twenty minutes for more instructions. But just then, Nyb Pim sent over his best estimate for when they’d be in range of the enemy weapons. The answer was, too soon. They were energy weapons and traveled at the speed of light.
“No, hold that,” Drake told Barker. “Don’t come up, go to the gunnery. Call the bridge when you get there.”
“Orient Tiger is coming around, sir,” Tolvern said. She didn’t sound pleased. “Vargus is following us. So much for her precious tyrillium barge.”
Drake glanced at his computer to confirm that Catarina was following. Good.
Chapter Nineteen
Once Drake had sent word to Rutherford, his old friend sent back a series of hasty messages with sketchy information about the enemy. Not Hroom, not human. The ships had apparently destroyed an empire sloop of war and a smaller merchant vessel. A surviving Hroom, frothing in the grip of a sugar withdrawal, had raved something about “Apex”, but Rutherford could make no sense of it.
Meanwhile, the two pursuing vessels had been jumping in and out of range to probe and attack Vigilant. Yes, jumping; the aliens seemed capable of creating their own jump points at will. Drake didn’t have time to fully consider the ramifications, but it was disruptive technology. It could change everything. Further, the craft had energy weapons that could penetrate tyrillium armor, and they seemed able to slap down Vigilant’s torpedoes and missiles.
Rutherford’s only advantage was his ship’s greater speed. The enemy didn’t have equivalent engines, but didn’t need them, either. Their jump points were loose, and they passed through them at roughly five percent light speed. The way the two slender craft kept coming and going, Rutherford thought they were toying with him, could destroy him at any time.
Drake was troubled by this information and wished he had time to take his officers into the war room to settle them. Worry marked their faces, and even Nyb Pim was licking his lips with his long, purple tongue. Barker’s voice was tight with stress when he called in from the gunnery. Drake closed his console before addressing them so he wouldn’t be distracted by the stream of data.
“We don’t know what we’re facing,” he said, “but there’s no reason to panic. Any enemy has limitations, and it’s our job to figure out what those are. Some of you must have ideas. Talk to me.”
“We haven’t seen what kinetics do,” Barker said over the com. “Shooting down a missile or two is one thing, but can these aliens handle a barrage of cobalt and depleted uranium from our main batteries? They look fragile.”
“First, we’d have to get close enough for cannon,” Drake said. “How quickly can they jump away from us? Smythe, see if you can figure out how long it takes them to make their jump points. Is it instantaneous? A predictable distance ahead of their ships?”
“I’m checking, sir.”
“What about a laser?” Tolvern asked.
“What about it?” Drake asked.
“If they have energy weapons, if they have some way of burning through tyrillium, then maybe they’re vulnerable to laser fire themselves.”
“It’s worth a try. Barker, what have we got?”
“Not much,” the man said through the com. “A 50-kilowatt laser is our strongest. Good enough to finish off injured craft, but any sort of shielding at all is going to block it.”
“Get it ready, just in case. Also, load our heaviest shot into the batteries. Those ships can’t have much mass. When we hit them, it had
better be hard. Knock them around a bit, and maybe Rutherford or Vargus will get a clear shot before they pick themselves off the floor.”
The thought of mass and inertia brought something else to mind. Or rather, almost to mind. There was an idea niggling at the edge of consciousness that he couldn’t quite grab.
The door to the bridge opened, and in walked one of the two Hroom that Drake had hired on San Pablo. It was the taller one, the female, and she approached in long strides. She said something in passing to Nyb Pim, and he responded likewise, both of them speaking in the Hroom tongue that sounded like words mixed with hoots and whistles. She nodded at the captain in greeting.
“I understand you might know something about alien tech near this sector,” Drake said.
“I have heard of it.”
“From recent encounters?”
“Not that I’m aware of. But the empire is big. And old. Humans are not the first species we have encountered. Nor even the most dangerous.”
Drake studied her. She had the deep reddish purple of a Hroom who had never been an eater, but she spoke English well, so she must have spent years around humans. “What is your name?”
“Sal Ypis, sir.”
Drake felt a twinge of recognition at the name. “You are from Ypis III?”
Hroom had three names: a first name, a surname that corresponded with their planet of birth, and something else that had to do with their maternal line that couldn’t be pronounced without difficulty. Hroom generally dropped it when speaking with humans, which sometimes led to duplicate names and subsequent confusion.
“That is right,” she said cautiously. “I believe you know the planet.”
“I do.”
Drake and Rutherford had won a great victory at Ypis III. After demolishing the empire force, Drake’s fleet had bombarded the planet from orbit while royal marines landed to occupy the surface. Millions of Hroom fled the world in a vast, rickety fleet of overcrowded merchant vessels, mining ships, barges, and anything else that could carry them offworld. Hundreds of millions more stayed behind to face the occupation. Perhaps this one was one of the refugees, and that’s how she’d ended up on San Pablo, looking for work.
Lords of Space (Starship Blackbeard Book 2) Page 16
