Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  But these were perfunctory details appended to the briefing, and Drake reconsidered Rutherford’s message while the pilot spoke. Rutherford’s subspace, when it had finally come, contained a good deal of information, but concealed a good deal, as well. Had Rutherford sent it with someone looking over his shoulder? Drake knew that most of Vigilant’s crew were Malthorne loyalists, and Rutherford must have faced additional scrutiny as he joined the admiral’s fleet. Drake decided yes.

  Nyb Pim asked permission to interface his nav chip with the nav computer to recalculate some dead reckoning numbers. While he did that, Drake pulled up Rutherford’s message on his hand computer and reread it.

  Malthorne has ordered a punitive expedition against a pirate redoubt. I am to provide support fire. The expedition is expected to last no more than forty-eight hours. After, we will divide into two task forces and attempt to intercept the enemy invasion fleets. Estimated engagement with the Hroom in one fortnight.

  Captain Nigel Rutherford, HMS Vigilant

  Drake finished with Nyb Pim and dismissed him, then called Tolvern into the war room. She briefly shared what she’d learned from the science officer about the Apex tissue specimens. It was interesting, but less critical than other, more pressing matters. He showed her Rutherford’s message.

  “What do you make of this?” he asked.

  “Invasion fleets?” she said. “Plural? You told him about our fight?”

  “No, not yet. I didn’t have his location to send a subspace.”

  “So he must be aware of the second fleet some other way. How? Had those Hroom tangled with the navy already?”

  “Maybe,” Drake said. “Or maybe there’s a third force. Maybe this death cult divided their forces several times to be sure that one of them would get through.”

  Tolvern reread the message. A frown deepened on her face. “It’s thin on details. Not much else to it, is there?”

  “Are you sure? Read it one more time.”

  She shrugged. “All right.”

  “I am not trying to test you,” he assured her. “I am seeing something here, but I don’t want to plant ideas that might be erroneous. I would like to see if you independently come to the same conclusions.”

  “Rutherford must still be in Gryphon Shoals,” Tolvern said after a moment of deliberation. “Twelve days, plus two for an expedition against pirates, means he’s probably on the far side of the system, needs to cross once he’s finished, then jump to Albion.”

  “Good,” Drake said. “That was my thinking, too. Go on.”

  “There’s something else?”

  “Rutherford says Vigilant is only providing fire support for the expedition. Why would he do that? It’s not Rutherford’s style at all. You know he wouldn’t put Harbrake or Lindsell at the vanguard. Could be that Vigilant got in another fight since we saw her and isn’t battle worthy, but I don’t think that’s it.”

  “Because the lord admiral wants to lead the expedition himself,” she said, to which Drake nodded his agreement. “Which means that Dreadnought is leading the charge. That would also explain why the fleet will split in two upon its return to Albion. With that many capital ships, they have the firepower to fight two major battles at once.”

  “Yes, exactly,” Drake said. “And if Admiral Malthorne is flag officer, it explains why they’d waste time on this punitive expedition. Who cares about pirates and smugglers? They can be dealt with at any time. Or never, for that matter. The Hroom, on the other hand, threaten us with annihilation. Malthorne must have got his nose bloodied, and now he wants revenge. Like what he did to my parents’ estate after Hot Barsa.”

  “Or it could be Rutherford’s idea, sir. A way to buy us a couple of days before the fleet arrives. Goad the admiral into a side fight so we have a chance to slip in and free your parents before the battle with the Hroom.”

  Drake hadn’t thought of that possibility. It was an intriguing idea, but it seemed too devious, too risky, for Rutherford. The man was aggressive in battle and not above making a gambit against an enemy, but risking the whole of Albion to give Drake a chance to escape? No, that was not in Rutherford’s nature. His nature was to sacrifice everything for the sake of expediency. He’d been that way as long as Drake had known him, which went all the way back to their friendship at the Naval Academy. In fact, there was one particular incident at the Academy that seemed an excellent guide for Rutherford’s behavior now.

  The Academy was located in Juneau, on the coastal range abutting the North Sea, the continent of Canada. Distant and isolated. The winters were long and hard, and it was far from the intrigues of York Town or the soft living of the country estates. The primary sports were skiing and hockey in the winter and rowing on Juneau Fjord after the ice melted in summer.

  Adventurous sorts took to hunting big game in the vast northern wilderness, which was right on Juneau’s doorstep. At the time, Drake had preferred more civilized prey: grouse, rabbit, duck, and wild turkey. Animals to hunt with a hound and a fowling piece. Hunt in the day and sup on your game that same evening.

  Rutherford, on the other hand, preferred the dangerous beasts: brown bears, snow leopards, and wolves. Especially wolves, the big, hungry brutes that had been living unchecked and unchallenged since the settlement six hundred years earlier. One summer, during a week of leave, Rutherford talked Drake into joining him on a wolf hunt, armed only with bows and several cans of bear spray. They rode horses along a rough logging road, accompanied by Rutherford’s big wolfhound, who loped next to them.

  The two men were very young at the time— Drake was twenty-one, and Rutherford only twenty—but they set off with supreme confidence. Their fathers were barons, and they were of good breeding and education. As future officers of the Royal Navy, they would soon be fighting Hroom and pirates on the frontier systems; surely they had nothing to fear from the unsettled Albion wilderness.

  On the second day, Rutherford spotted wolf spoor and tracks along the banks of a shallow, muddy river, and decided it was a good place to make camp. He shot a caribou, and the two men dragged it to the riverbank, then returned to their camp on the opposite bank, where they watched the other side through binoculars. The plan was to wait until the carcass attracted a pack of wolves, then cross with the dog and horses and shoot the biggest wolf they could find. Drake wasn’t much one for trophy hunting, but Rutherford insisted that hunting wolves with bows would be sporting. Certainly more so than picking them off through the scope of a high-powered rifle, Drake agreed.

  They waited all day, emerging from their blind only to feed the horses and let the wolfhound stretch his legs. The dog was a big, gray animal named Oxnard that Rutherford had bought two years ago in Juneau, when he was only a pup, and Rutherford was freshly arrived from the islands. Oxnard had a missing chunk in his right ear from a tussle with a snow leopard the previous fall, and Rutherford insisted he was fearless against wild animals, but he seemed a big, dopey goof to Drake. It was hard to imagine him brawling with wolves.

  The wolves arrived near dusk, first a pair of smaller black ones, and then three larger gray wolves. Drake asked if they would set out right away to get the hunt over with. He was tired of the waiting and the relentless mosquitoes, and had been thinking all day how he’d rather have been hunting rabbits, or even risking bears to venture downstream and fish the larger river they’d forded the previous day. Then he’d be eating fresh game or fish right now, instead of cold food from a can. The devil take Rutherford’s wolf hunt.

  Rutherford lowered his binoculars. “The alpha hasn’t arrived yet. That’s the one I want.”

  “How can you tell?” Drake took the binoculars. “They all look pretty big to me.”

  “You’ll spot him by how the others react when he’s around.”

  It was soon dark, and the possibility of hunting wolves ended, for the day, at least. No matter, Rutherford insisted. The wolves would be lurking around the caribou carcass for days—eating, fighting, and breeding—until they’d eaten
it all. The longer the wolves remained, the more complacent they’d be when the two men crossed the river, and the less likely to attack out of hunger. Fat, complacent wolves—where was the sport in that, Drake wondered?

  The young men sprayed down the horses against bugs and secured them in a makeshift pen between two boulders, with a gate of lashed-together branches sawed from a nearby copse of spruce. Then they retreated to their tent behind good mosquito netting. It smelled of wet wolfhound inside. Oxnard seemed unperturbed by the howling wolves on the other side of the river and was soon snoring and farting in his sleep.

  Drake didn’t think he’d ever be able to fall asleep, and if the howling, snoring, and farting weren’t enough, a high-pitched whine warned him that at least one mosquito had found its way inside. He buried himself in his bag to wait out the aerial assault, and soon found the toils of the long day carrying him off to sleep.

  Oxnard’s low rumbling growl brought him to consciousness. The dog was next to him in the tent, his head by Drake’s ear. Drake groped for the dog and pushed his slobbery mouth to clear it away. Oxnard kept growling.

  “Come on, you big oaf. Move over there.”

  “What’s the matter?” Rutherford asked groggily from the darkness.

  “Your dog is growling in my ear.”

  A quick movement from Rutherford’s side of the tent. Silence. Then, a low curse.

  Oxnard moved closer to the zipped tent door, and Drake could hear the wolves again. They filled the air with ghostly howls. From across the river to the east came snarls and fighting. From downriver, to the south, two wolves howling. A growl from nearer to camp, what sounded like this side of the river. One of the horses let out a frightened whinny. A third wolf howled from the south, the sound mixing with more snarls and fighting from that direction.

  Drake didn’t know much about wolves, but that was either a huge wolf pack, or there was more than one pack out there. He joined Rutherford in groping in the darkness for his pants and boots, even while the wolfhound paced the tent as if anxious to get outside.

  “Where’s the lamp?” Drake asked.

  “I don’t know, I might have left it with the saddlebags.”

  But then Drake’s groping fingers found it next to the tent flap, and he turned it on. A cool LED light illuminated the interior of the tent. They got dressed quickly and slid out through the partially opened tent flap, the lamp in Drake’s left hand, a can of bear spray in the right. Oxnard tried to muscle his way past them to get outside.

  “No!” Rutherford said sharply. He shoved the dog’s nose back into the tent and zipped the flap. It was a clear night, with a vast swath of stars overhead. The planet Thor had just risen above the mountains, a glittering emerald of light. Framing it was the constellation of the Great Celtic Cross, with Orion to the southwest, the most famous of the so-called Terran Constellations, those Old Earth formations of stars known by the Greeks and Romans and still visible from Albion. The crescent moon hung above the eastern horizon, a cool yellow glow, and the northern horizon glowed with streaks of blue and green from the aurora borealis.

  Drake had grown up on a small estate on a small, civilized island. He’d always known the universe was vast, but now he felt it. That impression began with the huge continent of Canada, itself only one part of this as-yet underpopulated planet. He felt the empty miles of surrounding plains, sitting beneath a vast bowl of stars, themselves only a tiny part of the known universe, which stretched endlessly in all directions. Albion was hurtling around the sun, and the sun was rotating around the outer edge of the Milky Way.

  The beauty of the night sky almost took his breath away. But then, the howls started again to his right and left, and the hairs stood up on his arms and the back of his neck. A low shape slunk by on his left, and he whirled. Rutherford cursed, and Drake turned to see another wolf staring at them from that direction, tongue lolling. Drake picked up a stone and pitched it at the wolf, and the animal retreated into the darkness.

  “Why aren’t they eating the caribou?” Drake asked. “What do they want with us when there’s all that meat over there?”

  “The first pack must be defending it against this one. They can’t get to the carcass, but they’ve smelled us and our animals.”

  Oxnard whined from inside.

  “Let him out,” Drake urged.

  “He will attack the wolves if he gets out,” Rutherford said. “And there are too many of them. It will be the end of him.”

  “We can’t just sit here, doing nothing.”

  “We need the bows. That will even the odds.”

  “Bows?” It was one thing to hunt wolves by daylight, stalking them, shooting them from a distance on the back of a horse, but another thing entirely to attempt it at night.

  “Any better ideas?” Rutherford asked.

  “No, I guess not. All right then, on my mark.” Drake checked to make sure the path was clear. “Go!”

  The two men broke for the saddlebags. Drake put down the lantern when they arrived, and he and Rutherford groped for their bows. Drake still had the can of bear spray from the tent, and now grabbed a second from his saddlebag and shoved it into Rutherford’s hands. A snarling shape launched itself from the shadows, and Drake dropped his bow and aimed the bear spray. The can hissed as it launched the peppery liquid.

  He gave the wolf a snootful of it, blasting until the animal fell back snarling and howling. Another wolf came at Drake, and he hit this one, too. Rutherford fired an arrow, and a wolf yowled in pain.

  “Got you!” Rutherford said. He notched another arrow. This time, he missed, cursing his bad aim.

  Drake didn’t have time to watch Rutherford—he was too busy with the bear spray. He hit a third wolf, then a fourth, but the can was already sputtering and spuming. Rutherford tossed him the other can. He turned on the nozzle just in time to hit a huge wolf in the mouth and eyes.

  Rutherford had shot at least one of them with an arrow, and Drake had now blasted five different wolves with the bear spray. The whole pack should have been retreating in disarray and confusion. Instead, they circled the two men, snarling, feinting, staying moving and hidden in the darkness. The horses behind the two men snorted and stamped in their protected enclave. A wolf darted forward, and Drake expended more bear spray driving it off.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “We’re almost out of spray.”

  “What about the horse paddock?” Rutherford asked. “Get inside, shut the gate, and wait it out.”

  “What’s to keep them from climbing the rocks and jumping down on us?”

  “You’re right. Dammit.” Rutherford’s voice was tight and nervous, which in turn filled Drake with alarm.

  “Can you ride bareback?” Drake asked. “We’ll make a run for it. God knows, there’s enough light to see.”

  “And leave all our gear?” Rutherford said.

  “We’ve got to get out of here. We’ll be killed if we don’t.” There were more wolves than ever, what seemed like fifteen, twenty of them moving, snarling, and howling in the shadows.

  “They’ll chase us,” Rutherford said. “The horses will panic and throw us off in the darkness. We need a diversion. Cover me!”

  Before Drake could contemplate what Rutherford meant by this, the man had thrown down his bow and was racing back toward the tent. Drake ran after him. A wolf sprang out of the darkness, and he gave it a taste of bear spray. It fell back, snarling.

  Rutherford unzipped the tent. Oxnard burst out with a roar. Another wolf had come slinking in from the right, and Drake turned to see it crouching to spring at him. But the wolfhound slammed into it and drove it to the ground, his huge jaws clamping on the wolf’s throat. Other wolves poured out of the darkness to attack the dog.

  Rutherford made a run for it, and Drake followed. A wolf attacked them while they were opening the paddock, and Drake used the last of the bear spray on it. Another wolf jumped for him as he scrambled onto the panicky horse’s back, but he kicked its
ribs and sent it flying. Most of the pack was fighting Oxnard, who was still baying and snarling.

  Rutherford and Drake rode toward the fighting dog and wolves and scattered them as they made for the caribou trail they’d followed to get into the river valley. Drake looked back, hoping to see Oxnard shake off the wolves and run after them, but the dog couldn’t get free of the pack. Rutherford rode relentlessly forward through the night, trying to put distance between them and their attackers, and Drake had no choice but to follow.

  Behind them, the wolfhound kept fighting until the men had ridden out of earshot.

  #

  Dawn found the two young men cold, hungry, and sore several miles along the road back toward Juneau. Drake mentioned the dog, a comment he meant to be sympathetic, how Oxnard had died defending them, but Rutherford told him to shut up, he didn’t want to talk about it. Anyway, it was done. It was obvious that Rutherford was upset to have lost his wolfhound, but he seemed to have no question in his mind that the sacrifice had been necessary and expedient.

  Now, years later and facing both the orbital forts and the Hroom death fleets, Drake was aware that he might have to fight Malthorne, too. Rutherford needed to stop the Hroom, and it didn’t matter if it left Drake and his ship exposed to the guns of HMS Dreadnought.

  You are the wolfhound. Rutherford is going to sacrifice you to save Albion.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The assault on the pirate settlements of the Gryphon Shoals proceeded as soon as Rutherford was back at the helm of Vigilant. The bulk of the admiral’s fleet, barring Nimitz, Calypso, and a handful of destroyers and corvettes to protect the damaged cruisers, raced toward the innermost of the system’s three asteroid belts. Rutherford led Vigilant, Churchill, and nine destroyers in setting a blockade around the asteroid cluster protecting the pirates. Malthorne approached at the helm of Dreadnought and laid down a punishing fire on the main port and colony. When the pirates tried the same trick that had damaged Nimitz and Calypso, Rutherford’s forces swooped in and blasted the rear fortifications to rubble.