Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  Dreadnought

  by Michael Wallace

  The Starship Blackbeard Series

  Book #1 – Starship Blackbeard

  Book #2 – Lords of Space

  Book #3 – Dreadnought

  Book #4 – Rebellion of Stars (coming August, 2015)

  Chapter One

  Captain James Drake paced the bridge while he waited for the aliens to respond to his offer. An hour had passed since he’d powered down his plasma engines and hailed the Hroom fleet. There had been no response since then, but the aliens had been busy.

  Even as Blackbeard sat motionless in space, the two biggest Hroom ships—both sloops of war—aimed their long, pointed snouts directly at Blackbeard’s side, ready to ram her should she attempt to flee. The other five Hroom ships—small destroyer-like craft and midrange patrol boats—circled Blackbeard warily. Sensors detected Hroom pulse cannon and serpentines warming up. Drake’s computers picked up a flurry of encrypted subspace messages outbound from one of the sloops, which he took as the alien flagship.

  “What the devil is taking them so long?” he asked, stopping in front of the viewscreen, as if staring at it would materialize the Hroom general.

  “Is that a question, sir, or are you simply musing to yourself?” Nyb Pim asked.

  Nyb Pim was a Hroom himself, and Drake’s pilot. He’d been the one to speak to the alien general when Blackbeard arrived in the system. Blackbeard was not hostile, Nyb Pim promised, was no longer even an Albion warship. She’d mutinied from the Royal Navy, had overhauled her systems in the San Pablo spaceyards, and had been on the run ever since. They had valuable cargo to share with the Hroom, something that might change the course of the war.

  “I was musing,” Drake said. “But if you have an answer, go ahead and share it.”

  “Humans are notoriously deceptive,” Nyb Pim said. “The Hroom naturally suspect that you are lying.”

  “We’re only one ship, Pilot. We’re practically helpless.”

  “That is why they suspect a trap. It seems an obvious ruse. That they cannot see how you would spring the trap is all the more alarming.”

  “Sir,” Commander Tolvern said, looking up from her console. “The Hroom are hailing us.”

  Drake let out his breath, relieved that the waiting was over. “Put them on.”

  “The caller has identified himself as General Mose Dryz,” she said. “Would you like to take the call in the war room?”

  Mose Dryz? That was not good news. The general had been leading empire forces during the battle of Kif Lagoon. His plodding maneuvers had allowed Drake to split his own fleet in two, sending Captain Rutherford through the asteroid belt and then pinning the general’s forces until Admiral Malthorne arrived on Dreadnought. Drake was surprised to hear that the Hroom general was not only still alive, but commanding a new fleet.

  Drake looked around the bridge. His crew was jumpy, nervous, especially the subpilot, Henny Capp, who rubbed at the tattooed lions on her right forearm and muttered to herself. Capp was one of the former prisoners freed in the mutiny; she would know nothing about Mose Dryz or the Battle of Kif Lagoon. Maybe that was for the better. He didn’t need her any more anxious about the aliens.

  But taking the call in the war room would send the wrong signal, indicating that he had something to hide from his crew. “I’ll take it here,” he said. “Put him on.”

  Tolvern connected the call. The view of space and the lurking alien warships vanished, replaced by a glimpse of the bridge of a Hroom sloop of war. A tall Hroom looked back at him through his wide, liquid eyes. He wore a white, toga-style tunic, with a gold sunburst on the chest indicating his rank as general. A circlet of black iron ringed his smooth head, a coronet indicating blood kinship with the empress, if Drake remembered correctly.

  Drake turned to his pilot. “Tell him again that we have peaceful intentions, that we have something to give him that might end the war.”

  “You can tell me yourself, Captain Drake,” Mose Dryz said. “I speak and understand your language.”

  His accent was thick, and “your” became stretched, elongated into “yooor.” But there was something else that caught Drake’s attention. The light was low and red on the alien bridge, and he hadn’t immediately taken note of the general’s skin color. He noticed it now, and he wasn’t the only one; Capp muttered a curse, and Tolvern frowned deeply and typed in a quick message that blinked on Drake’s console. He knew without glancing down what she was going to warn him about.

  General Mose Dryz was a sugar eater. A Hroom’s natural skin tone was reddish violet, or, more rarely, a deep, bruised purple. But long exposure to sugar bleached out the natural pigments. The Hroom staring back from the alien bridge was so pale and pink he must have been eating sugar for years. What would the general say if he knew what Drake was carrying in his science lab?

  “Where is the rest of your fleet?” Mose Dryz asked.

  “I don’t have a fleet. This ship is alone. We do not fly the Albion Lions, we are renegades.”

  “You have flown this deeply into the empire alone?”

  “Not alone,” Drake confessed. He wasn’t sure how much the Hroom already knew, and thought it best not to lie. “I was traveling with a pirate frigate named Orient Tiger, smuggling tyrillium. And we came briefly to the aid of a Royal Navy cruiser that was under attack by an unknown alien race. Since then, we have traveled alone, yes.”

  “I think you are lying. Either some or all of this is false.”

  “It isn’t, I assure you.”

  “You are wearing the uniform of the Royal Navy of the Kingdom of Albion. Yet you claim to be—what word did you use?—a renegade. This is an outlaw, yes? A traitor?”

  “I am not a traitor to Albion, only an enemy of Lord Admiral Malthorne, who I believe has unjustly broken the treaty between our two nations.”

  “It is unjust, you are correct in that,” Mose Dryz said. “You forced this treaty on us under unequal terms. But to break it so soon is no surprise. We have come to expect treachery from Albion. A false treaty, lies, while you position your forces for a new campaign. And this is why you have come, yes? To draw my attention while your navy attacks us elsewhere?”

  “No,” Drake said. “I told you—”

  “You claim to possess something that will end the war. What is it?”

  Drake hesitated. He’d meant to explain what he had, and then gain assurances that he’d be allowed to depart in peace once he sent it over. A sugar antidote, to end the addiction crippling the Hroom Empire. Together with the antidote seized from Malthorne’s estate, Drake would send over Science Officer Brockett’s notes about how to replicate the formula. His duty would be done; let the Hroom make of the antidote what they wished.

  But this Hroom was an eater. And most eaters did not want to be freed of their addiction. Mose Dryz would probably destroy the antidote, and that would be the end of it.

  “Who is your commanding officer?” Drake asked.

  The general blinked his large, wet eyes. “Why do you ask?”

  “I want to speak with him before I hand over what I’ve brought. Who is he?”

  “I will not tell you.”

  That was typical for a Hroom. Rather than lie, they would refuse to answer when they didn’t want to share information. Drake respected that, since he preferred the truth himself.

  “I can’t give this to you, General. We fought at Kif Lagoon.”

  “Yes, I know. You were the Albion general.”

  “More or less. I was the flag officer until Dreadnought arrived. Given our history, I would prefer to speak to another Hroom.”

  “You do not respect me?
Because we fought, and you defeated me? Do I understand you correctly?”

  “No, that isn’t it at all,” Drake said. He thought the meaning had been clear enough. “But you might harbor certain thoughts—”

  “Harbor? A spaceport? I do not understand.”

  “No, ‘harbor’ is a metaphor, a comparison. You might be holding certain thoughts of revenge. That is all I mean. I would rather talk to someone I didn’t fight.”

  Fight . . . and defeat. That went without saying. Drake wasn’t being entirely honest—this was mostly about the general’s sugar addiction—but there was some truth in it. A whiff, anyway.

  “You mean that revenge is on my mind?” Mose Dryz sounded thoughtful, if Drake was interpreting his tone correctly. “The battle is over. My anger has . . .” He seemed to be searching for a word, then made a gesture with his long fingers like ‘poof.’ Vanished, dissipated.

  “All the same, can you tell me how to contact your superior officer? I’d like to speak with him if I can.”

  “I have no superior officer, Captain Drake. I am the military leader of all of the forces still commanded by the empress.”

  “What do you mean, still commanded? Is it true there’s a civil war in the empire?”

  Mose Dryz didn’t answer the question. “You claim you have brought me something. You will give it to me, or I will assume deception and attack. This is not a negotiation.”

  “At least let me give it to you directly. Once you have it, its safekeeping will be in your hands, not mine. Come over to my ship. I’ll show you what I have and how it may be used.”

  “I will not do that. I do not trust you, James Drake, and I do not trust my safety on board your ship.”

  “I give you my word as an officer and a gentleman.”

  “That does not mean anything to me. Your customs as to what is honest and what is not are so—”

  Mose Dryz said something in Hroom, and Drake looked to his pilot. “What did he say?”

  “There’s no exact translation,” Nyb Pim said, “but it means something like ‘arcane,’ or ‘inscrutable.’ An attempt to understand something that cannot be explained. And I do not believe the word of an officer or gentleman translates into Hroom, either. Not its direct meaning.”

  “You tell him. Explain that I fully meant what I said.”

  Nyb Pim unfolded his seven-foot height and came over to where Drake sat in the captain’s chair. He looked up at the screen and spoke in his strange tongue, with its whistles and hoots. The general responded in shorter phrases.

  “He says I have been corrupted,” Nyb Pim told Drake. “He does not trust me, either.”

  “No, I do not,” Mose Dryz said. “James Drake, you will give me this object, or you will not be allowed to leave.”

  “I’ll give it to you,” Drake said. “But I must give it to you in person. If you won’t come here, I will travel to your ship with my pilot and my science officer if you can promise in turn that we won’t be harmed or detained.”

  “I will not make such a promise.”

  “Why not? Surely, you could agree to a parley, a truce.”

  “What if you behave with treachery?” the general asked. “What if you are lying about bringing something, and it is some other trick or game?”

  “Very well. So long as I behave honorably, will you promise not to harm or detain me, my ship, or any of my crew?”

  General Mose Dryz stared back for several long seconds, as if puzzling through the offer and parsing it for potential lies. “Yes,” he said at last. “That is a condition I will agree to.”

  They discussed the logistics of the meeting, then Drake ended the call. The general, with his pale, sugar-eating skin, disappeared, replaced by a view of the circling Hroom warships framed by a bright, unflickering mantle of stars. Out here in deep void, his safest option would be to turn around and run for his life. But he had traveled too far for that now.

  “Smythe,” he said to the tech officer, whose job had been to watch his instruments for unusual Hroom activity during the meeting. “Call the lab, tell Brockett we’re leaving in fifteen minutes. Pilot,” he added to Nyb Pim. “You feel comfortable visiting the Hroom ship?”

  Nyb Pim nodded solemnly. “Yes, sir.”

  Drake now turned to Tolvern. “That leaves you with the bridge, Commander.”

  “You don’t think the general will try anything while you’re away, do you?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t expect trouble, no. But if there is, I’m counting on you to handle it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Drake put a hand to his sidearm. “I guess I’ll be leaving this behind.” His fingers touched the captain’s bars on his uniform, and he sighed. “And I suppose that wearing the red and black onto their ship is an unnecessary provocation.” He eyed Tolvern. “The general seemed agitated by the uniforms. It is an unnecessary provocation. Do you mind terribly if I ask you to change out of your uniform, in case we need to pull you up on the viewscreen while I’m over there?”

  “No, sir. I figured as much. With your permission, I’ll go change my clothes now.”

  Drake nodded. “Dismissed.”

  He watched her go and sighed again. He and Tolvern were the only two left on the bridge who still wore their Royal Navy uniforms. Some of the mutineers had been freed prisoners and had never worn uniforms to begin with, while the rest had either swapped their uniforms for civilian dress in the mining colony where they’d put in for repairs, or even earlier, in the San Pablo yards. After San Pablo, their ship had been so altered that she was no longer a Punisher-class cruiser, and she no longer displayed the Albion lions. Instead, above the bridge, they’d welded plating taken from a pirate frigate, that boasted the ominous skull and crossed sabers. Drake had rechristened her Starship Blackbeard. Drake meant the name ironically, still bitter at the circumstances that had driven him from the navy. But it was no surprise when the name stuck. Half the crew were pirates to begin with. The other half had become pirates.

  He told himself this as he retreated to his quarters to change out of his uniform, but when he was dressed in simple trousers with a gray pullover shirt, he stared in the bathroom mirror, feeling morose. He was about to meet his former enemy, a Hroom general and lord, and he wasn’t even in uniform.

  Someone knocked on the door. It was Commander Tolvern. She held clothing.

  “This is for you, Captain.”

  She gave him a sleeveless vest—tan canvas with leather trim, brass buttons, and leather loops to hook them with. It reminded Drake of one of his father’s riding jackets, but with Old Earth maritime flair.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I bought it when we put in for repairs. Grabbed your jacket from the laundry and had this vest tailored to fit.”

  “But why?”

  She took it back and started putting it on him. “I’ll show you.”

  “I really don’t think—”

  “James, enough of that. For once, don’t be so stubborn.”

  He stopped at her use of his given name, and let her put it on him and button it up. She left the top two buttons unlooped, then led him into the bathroom where he could see himself in the mirror. He wasn’t entirely satisfied—it did not replace his smart, red, military jacket, trimmed with black—but it did make him look more dignified, like a sea captain, perhaps. Prosperous and of good breeding.

  Tolvern had lingered behind while he studied himself in the mirror, and now she came into the bathroom holding his captain’s bars, which she pinned to his collar.

  “Look at you now. Don’t you feel better?”

  “Say it that way, and I sound vain.”

  “I wouldn’t say vain. But you’re proud. You know your station in life, and you are determined to maintain it.”

  “Such insight into my soul,” he said lightly.

  Tolvern raised an eyebrow. “Give me a little bit of credit. You’ve been like this since you were a boy. I grew up on your father’s estat
e, remember? I watched you riding by with your hounds and your gun. My mother used to comment when you rode past that this was what a young man of good breeding looked like.” She straightened his jacket. “And now, you look a proper gentleman again.”

  “How much did this cost? I should reimburse you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a gift. Anyway, I was spending some of my hard-won loot and thought I’d buy myself some new clothes. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to take off the uniform.” She shrugged. “I figured I may as well get you something, too. I knew it wouldn’t be easy for you, but a nice captain’s jacket would help.”

  “Thank you, Jess,” he said. “That was very thoughtful of you.”

  Drake looked her over, noticing now that she was wearing finely cut civilian trousers tucked into knee-high black boots, with a new belt around her slender waist. She had a short jacket over a trim long-sleeved shirt.

  “Very nice,” he said. “That’s a becoming look for you.”

  Tolvern blushed and looked away. She touched the com link at her ear. “Hey Brockett, are you ready? Yeah? Then get yourself to the pod. The captain will be there in two minutes.” She ended the call and looked back at Drake. “Ready, sir?”

  He straightened his jacket, felt the empty spot where his sidearm should be. “As ready as can be. It’s time for me to meet these Hroom and give them the gift that will cement my position as a traitor.”

  Chapter Two

  Jane’s cool computer voice came into the pod. “Twenty seconds to launch. Prepare for rapid acceleration.”

  The yellow light pulsed above the door, and Drake checked his restraints out of habit. Nyb Pim sat in his oversize chair, an extra belt across his chest, looking through the window and into the void. Brockett waited with his eyes closed, his lips moving as he counted down to himself.

  “Ten seconds,” Jane said.

  “King’s balls,” Brockett said. “A sloop of war. Wow.”

  “Remain calm, this is no time to get agitated,” Drake told him.

  “Five seconds.”

  Drake closed his eyes. For a moment, he was back in orbit around Albion, ready to be launched toward the prison ship that would take him to the helium-3 mines, where he’d been sentenced to two years of hard labor. False charges, and a joke of a court martial. He now knew that Admiral Malthorne had framed him, and since then the villain had murdered Drake’s sister and imprisoned his parents. As soon as he was finished here, he was on his way back to Albion to free them.