Drake brought up Rutherford’s messages, then turned the console so Sal Ypis could read them. “Tell me if this means anything to you. And look at what we’ve seen so far—have you ever heard of this kind of ship?”
He turned back to the other officers, suddenly finding the idea that had eluded him moments earlier. That distracting thought about the capture of Ypis III had diverted his conscious mind long enough to allow his idea to coalesce and bubble to surface.
“Pilots, those temporary jump points—how long do they stay open?”
“Most of them are still open,” Nyb Pim said. “There’s a string of them across a hundred million miles of open space. Gradually decaying, but not quickly.”
A string of them. Wow. That was some kind of technology. It almost seemed like magic from what he knew of the physics.
“So we could follow them through to wherever they’re lurking between attacks on Vigilant,” Drake said.
“Don’t see as how that does us any good,” Capp said. “We jump through, we’d have no idea where we’d end up. Then we come out the other side with the trips, trying to pull our heads out of our asses while they shoot us full of holes.”
Yet the alien craft had performed a multitude of jumps without apparent physical effect on the crew. Maybe they had tech to deal with that, too.
“I agree with the ensign,” Tolvern said. “We come out blind, and meanwhile, they’re waiting to pounce. Don’t you think we’d better stick to chasing them off until we know what we’re dealing with?”
“No. I want to defeat them. Sal Ypis, you have something?” Drake asked. The Hroom had looked up from reading Rutherford’s messages and was studying him with her big, liquid eyes, as if waiting for him to address her.
“I know this word,” she said. “‘Apex.’ They’re aliens, yes. There was a war, a stalemate, and the alien fleet . . .” Her voice trailed off.
She turned to Nyb Pim, and they briefly spoke together in Hroom. The Hroom put their hands together, palm to palm, as their species did to indicate a conversation where two sides were sharing information.
“No, I haven’t,” Nyb Pim said, switching to English. “I was raised by humans and never heard of them before now.”
“I don’t know anything about their tech,” Sal Ypis said, also in English. “Or their tactics. Only that they were reputed to be dangerous. There are stories about what they wanted from us—I don’t know if they’re true.”
“ ‘Apex,’ that’s a translation, I assume?” Drake asked. “Is that the name they gave themselves, or a Hroom invention?”
“Hroom, I believe,” she said. “But I do not know for sure.”
“We’ve only got ten minutes,” Smythe warned nervously from his station, “and then we’ll be in the thick of it.”
Drake acknowledged his tech officer with a nod. He turned back to Sal Ypis. “Thank you, midshipman. Return to your post.”
Capp pointed at the viewscreen. “There they are, the bastards.”
The long, slender ships had jumped in again and were swooping once more to test Vigilant’s shields with a series of energy pulses.
Ten minutes. Not much time, not even to explain what he was planning. “Barker, are you still there? Shunt whatever power you can find to the rear shields. Make sure they can take a hit.”
“Rear shields, sir?”
“Yes, Chief. Rear shields. I’ll send more info shortly. Tolvern,” Drake said, when Barker was gone from the com, “send a message to Orient Tiger. Simple instructions. I want her right behind us, as close as she can get without colliding.”
“That’s pretty damn close,” Tolvern said. Her fingers were already composing the message. “You saw Vargus charging that tyrillium barge.”
“Exactly. The instant those ships jump, we’re going through after them, and I want Orient Tiger glued to our tail. Be prepared for a bump on the other side—the more Vargus can do to strengthen her forward shields, the better. And ready her torpedoes.”
While Tolvern finished sending, Drake prepared one final message for Rutherford.
Prepare your main batteries. Watch where I go and follow. Remember the battle of Ypis III.
#
By now, Blackbeard and Orient Tiger were racing to join the fight between the big royal cruiser and the two smaller alien craft, who had been darting in like a pair of wolves nipping at a wounded moose. Testing its hooves and horns, weakening it by attrition for the final kill. A strange and ironic turn. Normally, Vigilant would be the hunter; her prey, Hroom sloops of war.
The alien craft had been following a pattern of sorts, with each attack lasting several minutes, but at the sight of the newcomers, they broke off early and opened a new jump point. Perhaps they only meant to flee, but Drake doubted it. There had been something almost teasing in their attacks so far, as if they had been holding back. He thought they would soon come back around, so confident in their ability to evade and damage their enemies that shortly all three human ships would find themselves under assault.
Drake waited until the second of the alien craft had gone through, then he barked his orders to go after them. Orient Tiger was hugging his rear as he accelerated toward the jump, and Vigilant changed course, banking hard to come around behind the other two. Blackbeard was already at speed and hit the jump point less than two minutes later.
Drake woke, groggy and stunned from the jump, trying to remember where he was and what he was doing. Warning lights flashed, and he was lying on the floor. Some dim part of his mind said that the stabilizer fields had momentarily been knocked out of action. A woman spoke in his ear, her voice confident, assuring, yet somehow insisting that he pay attention.
Only gradually did he realize that the woman was really Jane, the computer. “Additional damage from the collision to rear shield, eleven percent.” She sounded disapproving, as if better attention would have prevented the mishap. “Damage includes a plasma leak at—”
Her voice turned into a drone as he recovered enough to hoist himself off the floor and stare at the flashing lights on his console. It was coming back to him, now. A jump after the alien ships. Blackbeard had been bumped in the back and must have taken a knock up front, too.
“Commander!”
Tolvern hadn’t yet recovered. She lay on the floor, groaning and rubbing her head. Nyb Pim was down, too, and Smythe slumped over his computer, while Manx looked down at the tech officer with a slack-jawed expression, then took him by the shoulders and shook him.
Capp regained her feet and staggered to her seat. Her fingers worked sluggishly at her console. She thumped her forehead with the heel of one hand, as if trying to knock away the aftereffects of the jump.
“Ensign,” Drake said, to get her attention. His head was growing clearer by the moment, but he still couldn’t remember why he needed to get the engines online quickly, only that it was necessary. He thumbed the viewscreen. “Engines up. Now.”
The ship shuddered, and now he remembered everything. They’d come through the jump point, one after another, each bumping into each other. Orient Tiger and Vigilant must still be jostling him. That was the origin of Jane’s disapproving analysis of the collision damage.
But what about Apex?
He searched with his instruments until one of the enemy ships came into focus on the viewscreen. The long, slender craft tumbled end over end away from them. Balls of energy dripped out the back end like sickly green droplets of blood, dissipating slowly in the vacuum. He’d come out on top of her as he’d hoped, and then Orient Tiger and Vigilant shoved him into the enemy craft. She’d taken serious damage.
Smythe was awakening, and looking at his computer, and the first thing he did was find the second ship, or rather, the first that had passed through the jump point. She was accelerating rapidly away from them.
Finally, Blackbeard edged into motion. Vigilant lay off starboard, and the two ships ground together as they separated. Data and communication started to flow in from both the navy ship and
the pirate frigate. Drake ignored it for now.
Instead, he shouted to get Capp’s attention. She turned, bleary eyed.
“Follow that ship!” He called the gunnery. “Give me the main battery! And the laser, too. Barker? Are you there? Wake up, dammit.”
“Aye, sir. I hear you. Dropping shields.”
By now, Tolvern was up, still looking stunned, but seeming to recover as she made her way to her chair. Drake sent a quick message to the other two ships: finish off the crippled ship, I’m going after the other.
Blackbeard was soon in pursuit of the uninjured alien craft, her more powerful engines thrusting her toward her prey. Although she was still losing ground in absolute terms, she was accelerating faster. They were already up to five hundred miles a second. Drake didn’t know how fast the enemy needed to be traveling to punch through a jump point, but he didn’t intend to give them a chance to show him.
Drake’s console lit up like the fireworks over the St. Lawrence River on Settlement Day. Jane protested in his ear. It was the enemy craft firing its energy weapons at Blackbeard. Within seconds, it had punctured several holes in the tyrillium armor, and word came of hull breaches under emergency sealant protocols. Smythe cried that the enemy was warming its battery for another attack.
But Blackbeard returned laser fire, and that forced the Apex craft to veer away. She slowed as she performed maneuvers.
“Now we have you,” Drake muttered.
Blackbeard came in from above, and Barker let loose with the underside battery. Cannon fire raked the long, slender craft from bow to stern. Explosions lit up her surface. Again, the alien craft tried to peel away. There was nothing cocky in her movements now, but neither was there panic, as there would have been with a Hroom ship. Instead, she twisted and shimmied like a fish trying to free itself from a hook. Drake’s pilots followed every jerk and twist.
And then they were alongside the enemy craft, which presented a full profile to Blackbeard’s broadside cannon. Drake ordered them to fire. Blackbeard rolled to her side as the full force of her cannons roared to life. The ship shuddered beneath him.
Explosions ripped into the alien ship. Some internal ammunition or energy source detonated. The ship exploded. Debris pounded Blackbeard. More warning lights.
But when it was over, there was nothing left of the enemy but scattered debris. Blackbeard was wounded, her new armor pierced in multiple places, but all decks were intact, and there were no casualties anywhere on the ship.
As his officers celebrated on the bridge, Drake ordered Blackbeard around. He returned to the jump point to find Rutherford and Vargus still fighting, launching missiles and torpedoes. But they weren’t shooting at an alien craft. There were none to be seen. They were shooting at each other.
Chapter Twenty
Drake roared into the conflict with all the patience of a male lion breaking up a fight among two brawling lionesses. He fired a missile at each of them, catching Vargus’s ship on the belly shield and slamming Rutherford’s exposed main battery, which surely dismounted or destroyed several cannons.
With the fire, he sent a warning: whoever didn’t stand down at once would face his full wrath.
The bluster worked. Shortly thereafter, the two ships had disengaged and sat at a distance, sulking, while their captains pleaded their case to Drake.
Captain Rutherford, Vargus insisted, had ordered her to stand down instead of destroying the enemy craft, as she’d tried to do. Instead, Rutherford wanted to harpoon and board it. When Orient Tiger fired anyway, Vigilant tried to destroy her to protect the prize.
While the two ships mixed it up, the alien craft, stunned but not destroyed, had fled the scene. By the time the humans realized she was underway, she’d already jumped, and Vargus and Rutherford immediately resumed their attempts to kill each other.
When Vargus was gone from the viewscreen, and it was Rutherford’s turn to speak his part, Drake’s old companion expressed his fury about the interference from the pirate captain. Drake let him vent his spleen.
“I gave you orders, Rutherford,” Drake said when the man had finished. “You disobeyed them.”
“You’re not in command.”
“The devil you say. The moment you asked my help, you implicitly accepted my command. And I told you to destroy that ship.”
Rutherford thrust his jaw forward and glared at Drake through the viewscreen. “We’re at war, in case you haven’t noticed. And unless your treason has extended to a hatred for all of Albion, you know we had to take that ship. Who knows what technology we might have discovered? And maybe we could have formed an alliance with them to fight the empire together.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Drake said. “When a bear and a wolf meet over the carcass of a sheep, they don’t discuss who gets the best cuts of meat. Apex was testing you, seeing how easy you were to kill. If I hadn’t been stumbling through the same system, you’d be dead now, your technology in their hands, and not the reverse.”
“Do you know something about Apex?” Some of the anger dissipated from Rutherford’s voice. “What are we dealing with?”
“I know a few things,” Drake said slowly, as if reluctant. This was disingenuous, as he had very little information. It was likely that Rutherford knew more than he did. “I’d be happy to discuss it in person.”
“You are a traitor. Why should I meet with you?”
This brought grumbles from across Drake’s bridge. Capp cursed, and Tolvern muttered something about shoving a torpedo where the sun didn’t shine.
Drake ignored the chatter. “I am not a traitor and never have been. The incident that saw me sentenced to the mines was fabricated. What’s more, I believe that Admiral Malthorne is guilty of his own crimes in an effort for self-aggrandizement. His entire attack on my person may have been personally motivated.”
Rutherford’s face darkened at the mention of the lord admiral, and he looked strangely uncomfortable. Drake could only surmise that he knew something about Malthorne’s intentions, but that didn’t explain the look. It was almost guilt.
“Do you have news from home?” Rutherford asked.
“I haven’t heard anything from Albion since . . . ” Drake was about to say ‘the mutiny,’ but he didn’t want to poke the other man about this. “ . . . well, for at least a couple of weeks. Is something happening on the planet?”
Rutherford stared at him for a long time. “I have orders to kill you, Drake.”
“I’m sure you do. But if my saving your life doesn’t earn me an audience, then I don’t know what that says about your character.”
“My character demands loyalty to Albion.”
A bitter laugh rose to Drake’s mouth. “You don’t think I understand that? I swore oaths to king and country. I never expected to face betrayal in return.”
“This is pointless,” Tolvern said. “Send him off. We don’t need him.”
Drake gave her a hard look, and she looked away. He turned back to Rutherford. “Well? Will you deny my request because of your pride? Come over, we’ll talk, we’ll clear up misconceptions.”
He wasn’t entirely sure why he was making the offer. The friendship between the two officers wasn’t just broken, it was shattered. They were enemies now. Did he hope to somehow ingratiate himself, have Rutherford return to Albion to plead his case before the king?
“Very well,” Rutherford said at last. “We’ll meet. But we will meet on my ship, not yours. And you will change out of your navy uniform before you come.”
A flush of angry pride washed over Drake. “Take off my uniform? You must be mad.”
“Some of my men died when you attacked me at Albion. Their friends and comrades remain on board. If you come in that uniform, boasting of being a captain in the Royal Navy, a loyal subject of Albion, I cannot guarantee your safety.”
Drake hesitated. He could refuse, could cling to his pride, and close this door forever. Rutherford was his only hope to return to Albion. But if Drake were willing
to renounce his citizenship once and for all, why insist on wearing the uniform that declared his allegiance to the Royal Navy?
Drake glanced at Tolvern, who now met his gaze and held it. He wasn’t sure what that look said, if it was agreement with whatever decision he was making, or if she was declaring her hostility to the whole scheme. He looked back to the viewscreen.
“I’ll come, and I’ll dress as a civilian. Commander Tolvern will accompany me.”
“I won’t see that traitor.”
“You have made your conditions. I will make mine. Do you accept, or will you go back to Malthorne knowing nothing about these aliens?”
For a moment, it looked like Rutherford would refuse, but then he nodded curtly. “Very well, Drake. Come to Vigilant, the both of you. I will guarantee your safety.”
#
There was crucial business to resolve before Drake went to meet his old friend turned enemy. First was figuring out where they were. Second, he had to speak with Catarina Vargus and let her know his plans.
They weren’t as far from their initial jump as he’d thought. It turned out that the two Apex craft had merely opened a passage to a new part of the same star system. No way to know if that was a limitation of the artificial jump points, or if this was only so the Apex warships could jump back and forth as they toyed with Vigilant.
Catarina had located the tyrillium barge some half-billion miles away, fleeing at top speed toward the jump point that would take her out of the system.
“I’m going to catch her before she escapes,” Catarina said over the com link when Drake had retreated to the war room to speak with her in private. “But that means leaving now. You’ll be alone with that snake.”
“Rutherford won’t harm me. If he promised safe passage, he meant it. He is a man of honor.”
“A man of honor wouldn’t have turned on his old friend in the first place. Think about it. He has tried to kill you before, why not now? Me, I wouldn’t trust him for the universe. But if you’re willing to put your life in his hands, I won’t tell you no.”
Lords of Space (Starship Blackbeard Book 2) Page 17
