Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  Three pirate frigates appeared and attempted to break the siege, but HMS Lancelot, a corvette, held them at bay until she could be supported by a pair of nearby navy missile frigates. Lancelot sustained several hits, but destroyed one of the enemy ships and drove the other two into Rutherford’s destroyer screen, where they were shortly finished off.

  Soon, ships were fleeing the pirate redoubt like rats from a sinking ship. Navy torpedo boats obliterated a frigate and two schooners, while Vigilant came alongside a pair of merchant galleons making a run for it. They immediately tried to negotiate, offering up holds stuffed with bullion and loot as payment. Rutherford ignored the request. Now the galleons tried to surrender unconditionally. Rutherford didn’t have time to take prisoners, and called the admiral for instructions.

  Destroy them.

  Rutherford took on the faster of the two galleons first. He needed to preserve his long-range arsenal for the fight against the Hroom, so he pulled along starboard and presented his cannon. The first broadside left the galleon crippled and venting gasses. The second blew her apart.

  The slower galleon sent off escape pods, but Rutherford ignored these and focused on the ship herself. The galleon held Vigilant at bay for nearly an hour with a powerful deck gun and two rear torpedo tubes, but as soon as she seemed to exhaust her defenses, Vigilant swooped in, took out her engines, and then circled back around to punish her with cannon fire. The first broadside ignited ammunition stores on the quarter deck, and a terrific blast tore the galleon in two. One piece spun away, end over end, while the other drifted a few hundred miles and then detonated in a final explosion.

  Vigilant returned to the fleet to find Dreadnought silencing her guns, the pirate operation demolished. Rutherford gathered the rest of the fleet and withdrew cautiously, alert for counterattack until they were safely clear of the asteroid belt and in open space again.

  The entire operation was textbook for how to deal with rebellious elements on the frontier. This untidy nest of piracy and smuggling had been a thorn in Albion’s side for years, taking advantage of the Hroom wars to prey on shipping, harass legitimate mining operations, and raid refueling and resupply stations. York Company shipping had been taking costly detours through the fringes of the Shoals to avoid it, which had added nearly three days to their voyage every time they traversed the system.

  Now, the main pirate base was routed, its fortress obliterated, its spaceport in ruins, and some twenty pirate ships destroyed. Explosions continued deep underground on the hollowed-out asteroid as they departed. This victory came at the cost of one lost torpedo boat, minor damage to two destroyers, and a total of eleven lives lost. Malthorne’s communication to the fleet was jubilant, boastful, promising a return expedition in the near future to finish the job against the other pirate outfits in the system. If not for more pressing business, the admiral said, they’d do it now. Another few weeks, and the Gryphon Shoals would be cleaned up for good.

  Unfortunately, by the time they made it back to where the rest of the task force waited, performing emergency repairs on Nimitz and Calypso to get them battle ready, forty-three hours had passed since Malthorne’s tantrum. That was nearly two days that could have been spent racing toward Albion to establish a defensive cordon against the Hroom assault.

  A few hours later, Rutherford left Pittsfield at the helm and retreated to his quarters. He had only slept fourteen hours in the past three days and desperately needed rest. But he was angry, furious even. He got up and paced the room.

  “Forty-three hours,” he muttered. “Wasted, thrown away.”

  He punched up the viewscreen above his entertainment nook and looked at the long, empty space until the jump point that would take them to Albion. From Vigilant at the vanguard to Dreadnought and her screen of destroyers in the rear, the fleet stretched eleven million miles, but as Rutherford drew the map out to the scale needed to see the entire distance they needed to traverse, those eleven million miles could not be differentiated from a single point on a map. A pinprick in space.

  The fleet was on the wrong side of the sun and had to reach the far outer fringes of the system, a few billion miles away. They’d be forty-three hours closer if Malthorne hadn’t insisted on this revenge mission. Meanwhile, suicidal alien forces were converging on Albion. Damn Malthorne. Damn stubborn, vainglorious Lord Malthorne.

  But Rutherford’s rage couldn’t burn forever, and soon enough, he found himself crawling into bed, the lights out, as exhaustion took hold. He fell asleep and dreamed that Malthorne was king. In the dream, Rutherford was at the coronation ceremony in the royal palace at York Town, while the admiral smugly approached the archbishop of York, who held aloft the crown. Rutherford stood next to Drake in a long line of fleet officers in red and black. He was trying to tell Drake that this wasn’t right, that the admiral was only the king’s cousin, only sixth in line for the throne. Together, they had to stop Malthorne before the archbishop placed the crown on his head.

  Rutherford woke with the sense that something was wrong. The smooth hum of the ship through the walls and floor was unchanged, there were no warning lights, and nobody had awakened him. He checked the clock, but it had only been nine hours. A long, long sleep by his standards. He had showered and was drinking his coffee before he recognized what was off. Pittsfield’s early-shift memo was missing. It was normally a green, blinking light on Rutherford’s handheld computer, greeting him the moment he awakened. Pittsfield always sent a brief, bullet-pointed status report for Rutherford to read while he drank another scalding cup of coffee. Where was it?

  Rutherford came warily onto the bridge, convinced that his commander would be gone, and possibly Catherine Caites, too. In their place, more Malthorne loyalists. More incompetent loyalists.

  But both officers were there. Pittsfield sprang from the captain’s seat and stepped aside to let Rutherford take his place. The commander’s lips were pressed tightly together in the way that indicated worry.

  Rutherford frowned as he sat down, still wondering what was wrong. “What happened to my memo?”

  “Apologies, sir. The situation could not be easily summarized, and as there is no urgency, I thought it best to explain to you in person.”

  “Well, then,” Rutherford said impatiently. “Explain it already.”

  He glanced up as he said this, and noticed the viewscreen for the first time. A long, spear-nosed Hroom sloop of war filled it.

  Rutherford jumped to his feet. “What is this?”

  Pittsfield quickly filled him in on the developments of the past nine hours. The fleet had been hauling across the system at close to maximum speeds. Admiral Malthorne had apparently repented of his unnecessary attack on the pirates and decided that they should arrive at Albion as soon as possible, even if that meant leaving some of the slower ships behind. So he’d ordered the swifter cruisers to lead Dreadnought to the jump point, while allowing the destroyers, corvettes, and support craft to form a second flotilla that would jump through a few days after the initial force.

  Under other circumstances, Rutherford would have argued to maintain the proper fleet arrangement, with destroyer screens protecting the larger capital ships. But it was hard to imagine an enemy fleet strong enough to challenge Dreadnought and six cruisers, even with Calypso and Nimitz damaged. The second force had eighteen destroyers and corvettes, and thirty-three frigates and torpedo boats. Surely, either force could defend themselves long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

  Rutherford agreed with the decision. Get Dreadnought and the cruisers into the home system. Defeat the Hroom if possible, but otherwise hold them off until the rest of the Royal Navy warships arrived.

  Unbeknownst to Malthorne, Rutherford, or anyone else in the fleet, there had been another force traveling through the Gryphon Shoals. They were well cloaked, and nearly on the edge of the system, passing through the outermost of the three asteroid belts, where they would be especially hard to detect.

  If there hadn’t been such a lar
ge naval force, the enemy might have made it through undetected. But Malthorne had so many ships looking in every direction for threats that was almost inevitable that one tech officer noted an anomaly in a long-range scan, and then the hunt was on. Soon, they had identified six sloops of war. It was the same size as the other known Hroom fleets. But given its location, this had to be a different force.

  How many fleets were there? Several, apparently. Even combined, the Hroom ships wouldn’t be powerful enough to defeat the Royal Navy, but they didn’t have to be. Send enough, each sneaking into the Albion system via a different route, and it would be impossible to intercept them all. Get one fleet past, any fleet, and they could fly into the atmosphere on their one-way mission to vaporize Albion with atomic weapons.

  Rutherford looked at the warship on the screen, which shimmered oddly, a composite image of long-range scans from numerous ships. Together, they gave a fairly accurate representation.

  “Has anyone tried to hail the Hroom?” Rutherford asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of, sir. But there doesn’t seem to be much ambiguity to their intentions. Norris, show him.”

  The Hroom warship vanished, and the viewscreen showed a schematic of the system, with its rocky inner worlds and three vast asteroid belts—the so-called Shoals, being so difficult to navigate—stretching all the way to an outer ring of icy comets. A line curved from the Hroom fleet toward the same jump point the navy meant to take.

  “They’re going straight to Albion, sir,” Pittsfield said.

  “Will they beat us to the jump point?”

  “Yes, and no.”

  Pittsfield explained. At the Hroom’s current course and speed, the enemy would arrive at the jump midway between Dreadnought’s arrival and the destroyer-and-corvette-led second wave.

  Thankfully, the admiral had sent the capital ships ahead. Dreadnought and the cruisers would arrive first, could prevent the Hroom from leaving the Shoals.

  Rutherford called the flagship and suggested to the admiral that they hail the Hroom. Warn them they’d been detected. Force the Hroom to seek another route to Albion. That would buy time to get the whole fleet home before they were forced to fight.

  Malthorne said no. They would intercept the Hroom at the earliest possible moment and destroy them. That mean fighting here, in the Gryphon Shoals. When the call ended, Rutherford could no longer contain his anger and cursed the lord admiral for his idiocy. Norris and Swasey—Malthorne loyalists—were watching Rutherford carefully, but he didn’t care.

  “Sir,” Pittsfield warned, his tone nervous. “Have you eaten yet? Perhaps if you—” He stopped and said to the rest of the bridge, as if explaining, “The captain just woke up, and the situation caught him by surprise. Sir, perhaps if you had breakfast, drank some coffee, met with us in the war room—”

  “Rubbish,” Rutherford cut in. “I don’t need coffee, and I am not hungry, either, by God. I’m furious. Malthorne’s plan is beyond asinine. We will be here, fighting over a bunch of asteroids, while half a dozen death fleets incinerate Albion.”

  “Sir,” Pittsfield said quietly. “We have no choice in the matter.”

  The other man’s voice was so calm and reasonable that it deflated Rutherford’s anger. He had stomped away from his chair during his rant, but now he stopped and looked at his commander for a long moment and realized that Pittsfield was right. Certainly, Rutherford could break from the fleet and make a run for it, mutiny like Drake had. Go through the jump point and join whatever defenses remained in the home system. But alone, what good would he do?

  He may, however, assist Dreadnought and the other cruisers in crushing this particular enemy force as quickly as possible. The faster they ended the battle, the faster he’d be able to get them through to the other side.

  Meanwhile, Norris and Swasey were staring, alarmed. Rutherford could only imagine the private communications they would send to the lord admiral. After what had happened on HMS Ajax, there was no question that Rutherford would be removed from command the moment it looked as though he might go rogue. For that matter, Caites looked aggravated, too, and he could see the conflicted loyalty in her face. Pittsfield’s, too. Neither of them wanted this fight.

  Rutherford formed an apology, though the words tasted like ash in his mouth. “The commander is correct. I misspoke in my eagerness to defend Albion. We will follow the lord admiral and obliterate these enemies first.”

  Pittsfield let out a long, relieved sigh. Caites, Norris, and Swasey turned back to their consoles.

  My God, Rutherford thought, as his emotions settled. I almost did it. I almost mutinied against the fleet.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Drake called the pirate captains to meet with him on Blackbeard before the final jump into the Albion system. He brought over Catarina first, greeting her personally in the engineering bay when she stepped out of her away pod. She stretched, yawned, and glanced at the crew moving torpedoes with forklifts and hauling belts of ten-inch projectiles for the deck gun.

  Other men and women stayed busy making minor repairs to equipment damaged in the fight with the pirate fortress, and the smell of ozone from arc welders and the hiss of blow torches filled the engineering bay. Anything that could be brought into the engineering bay instead of repaired in space could be found here. Carvalho walked past, his face streaked with grease, while Barker drove a forklift with a damaged belly gun. That wasn’t a good sign; that gun should be installed and ready to go, not dismounted so close to the jump. Several techs jumped into action as soon as Barker lowered the gun to the floor.

  “So organized,” Catarina said, as she joined Drake in crossing the bay toward the lift. “Half of my people would be smoking, playing cards, or getting drunk behind a pallet of crates.”

  “We will be facing professional soldiers,” Drake said. “I don’t want to go into battle leading a bunch of undisciplined amateurs.”

  “Where are the other captains?”

  “They’ll be here in an hour. I wanted to see you first.”

  Catarina raised an eyebrow. “Looking to seduce me, or are you making a final attempt to coerce me into joining your fleet? Or maybe you’ll try the first thing to make the second thing happen.”

  “Believe me, if I thought seducing you would help, I would do it.”

  Her eyes flashed. “What about doing it for pleasure? Does there have to be an ulterior motive?”

  Drake lifted his hands. “Please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just—I am worried about my parents, about the Hroom, about facing Dreadnought. There is too much pressure to think of anything else.”

  “I understand. You are a man of duty. That is why I want you for my own fleet.”

  “Your colonization scheme? How is it coming?”

  “You know the haul we took from the tyrillium barge?” Catarina said. “I’ve spent every guinea, plus some.”

  “That was a lot of gold. I hope you got your money’s worth.”

  “I hope so, too. I’m mostly stockpiling gear at this point—lorries, fuel, a couple of mini nuclear reactors, transport ships with stasis chambers. Plus there’s equipment for refining ore, manufacturing chemicals—everything from plastics to pharmaceuticals. It’s a one-way trip. I don’t want to get into the Omega Cluster, watch the jump point collapse behind me, and then realize I forgot my toothbrush.”

  Drake laughed.

  “I still need ships,” Catarina continued, “and I need good men and women to lead them. The colonists themselves can wait until the last moment. I don’t want Albion or anyone else to get wind of my plan until it’s too late to stop.”

  They’d come onto the lift, and now they entered the bridge. Tolvern frowned after them as Drake and Catarina made their way across to the war room. Once inside, Catarina grabbed the chair at the head of the table, leaned back, and propped her boots up. An insouciant grin stretched across her face as she studied him.

  “No boots on the table?” she said. “I don’t
see a sign.”

  Drake sighed and sat down opposite her. “What will it take to keep Orient Tiger in the fight?”

  “If you want my ship and crew, you can have it. Twelve thousand now, twelve thousand when we finish. Twenty-four thousand pounds.”

  “You know I don’t have it.”

  “How much do you have?”

  “About five.”

  “That’s what I figured,” she said. “Not enough.”

  “There’s treasure in York Tower. Bullion for the mint. Could be a haul for the ages.”

  “Could be. Sure. And gold doubloons might start spewing out of your engines, too.”

  “How about this? I will promise you the next sum of money that comes into my hands, whenever that happens.”

  “An I.O.U.?” she said suspiciously. “Is that what you mean?”

  “More or less. For now, I’ll give you the money I won’t have to pay Dunkley, since he got himself killed. A down payment. After that, you can have the next twenty-five thousand pounds that comes into my hands.”

  A calculating look crossed Catarina’s face. “If I weigh the odds that you don’t survive this mission, that I don’t survive it, plus the likelihood that you wouldn’t be able to deliver because I am pressed for time or you are unable to keep your crew or ship—all the possible ways this scheme can fail—then I would say that twenty-five thousand, paid in the future, looks more like fifty thousand pounds.”

  “Fifty?” he said, disbelieving. “You want fifty thousand pounds to rent the services of your pirate frigate? At those prices, what is Blackbeard worth, a hundred?” He laughed. “Maybe Malthorne would rent me Dreadnought for a million guineas. Is that a good price?”

  Catarina sprang to her feet, glaring. “I’m giving you a bargain you don’t deserve. You already lost one ship, and I’d wager Orient Tiger at two-to-one odds that you’ll lose at least one more ship before you come out the other side. Hell, at five-to-one, I’d wager that you lose your whole blasted fleet. But instead, I’m offering you my services at fifty thousand pounds, backed only by your wishful thinking and my misguided sentiment.”