Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  The others laughed. It was nervous, strained laughter. The pod was vibrating from outgoing fire from Blackbeard’s torpedo bays and cannon batteries. Shortly, they’d be taking shots of the incoming variety, too. She wished the captain was in here with her, but all of his skills were needed on the bridge, which had left Tolvern in charge of the assault company. She understood it, but she didn’t like it. Instead of Drake’s company, she was left with this lot.

  I am trusting my life to these people. Wonderful.

  Apart from Oglethorpe, they were all pirates and ex-prisoners. Oglethorpe was a former special forces guy, but he had a messed-up shoulder and was mostly there for tactical support. The other away pod was similarly constituted, filled by the newer, rougher crew. The two pods from Blackbeard would be joining similar sorts on Paredes’s schooner, and Tolvern would be expected to lead them all against the royal guards at York Tower. Good luck with that.

  “Ninety seconds to launch,” Jane said. A yellow light began to flash on the airlock door.

  Tolvern had been avoiding looking out the port window, but now she couldn’t help herself. Aguilar’s frigate, Pussycat, sat several miles distant, her heavy guns turned against the nearest orbital fortress, which was also the target of the guns of Blackbeard and Outlaw, although Tolvern couldn’t see the older Vargus sister’s frigate from this vantage. The fortress returned fire with a punishing array of weapons, starting with missiles and torpedoes, but they would shortly be in range of its cannon, as well.

  Appearing to float quietly between Blackbeard and Pussycat (if you could call racing at thirty miles per second floating), was Paredes’s slender schooner. Swiftly moving capsules glinted with reflected light from detonating missiles as they soared from Pussycat to the schooner, where they were snared and hauled in. Paredes was quiet, hiding even, because his was the vessel that would take the assault team into the atmosphere. His shields also couldn’t take much abuse. The schooner swung her hook around, ready to snare the pods coming from the other direction. All looked normal, and Tolvern took a deep, steady breath to calm herself.

  “Twenty seconds to launch,” Jane said. “Prepare for rapid acceleration.” The yellow warning light flashed faster now.

  No more banter; the others gripped their harnesses. Some closed their eyes. Lutz, of all people, began to chant the Lord’s Prayer in Old Earth English as Jane began the final countdown. What the absolute hell? Was that heathen a member of the church?

  Tolvern didn’t have a chance to finish this thought. A hand slammed into her chest as Blackbeard launched them. The pod spun a lazy rotation before it stabilized, and she got her first glimpse of Albion. It glowed blue and green and beautiful below them. They were passing over Canada now, on the far side of the planet from their target on the continent of Britain, and she spotted the Zealand Islands stretching into the ocean, achingly beautiful, like green gemstones laid in a row.

  There was Auckland! Her home island. An aching nostalgia wrenched something deep in her chest. There, only a few thousand miles away, lay the Drake estate. Home. Her parents, her brothers. Her dogs, were they still alive? Even old Rufus? He’d be almost thirteen now.

  Colonel Fitzgibbons is master of the Drake estate now, she thought, and her heart hardened with anger at him and Admiral Malthorne.

  “Pod two launched,” Jane said. “Life support readings normal. Docking with schooner in twenty-seven seconds.”

  The other pod had launched first and was midway to the schooner already. The navy fortress loomed, the asteroid into which it was built squatting in orbit like a giant, warty toad, bristling with guns. The fort was firing full volleys now, and Drake’s fleet was also taking fire from a second fortress, this one in an orbit closer to the equator, to the southeast.

  Something detonated nearby, and the pod shuddered violently. It spun end over end, the crew inside shouting and cursing. By the time it stabilized, the schooner seemed in a different position above the planet, and Tolvern watched with horror as the first away pod sailed toward the schooner, out of position. The hook moved, trying to snare the pod in its net, but it missed. The pod zipped past, on its way toward the atmosphere. Out of reach. Tolvern’s pod followed in what seemed to be the same trajectory.

  Jane’s voice came on. “Pod two stabilized. Docking with schooner in . . . recalculating . . . recalculating. Unable to calculate.”

  For a moment, there was horrified silence in the pod. Tolvern’s heart hammered in her chest, and she felt lightheaded, like she would pass out.

  “Unable to bloody calculate!” Capp said in a low, horrified voice. “We’ve been knocked off course. We’re going to die!”

  #

  Captain Rutherford jumped Vigilant into the Albion system. As he shook his head to clear it, he thought that they were safe, that they’d arrived in time. The instruments were dark, nobody was shouting instructions. Nothing alarming was coming through from the rest of the fleet, and Malthorne wasn’t screaming orders in a dozen directions.

  And then he realized that not only was Vigilant the first ship of the fleet through, but he was apparently the first person on the deck to come to his senses. The jump had been looser than expected, which meant that it took less energy to get through, but it also left people disoriented longer. But such effects were unpredictable, and he’d pulled out of the jump concussion sooner than anyone else. He got to work.

  Rutherford had the nav computer and the defense grid computer online before Pittsfield, Caites, and Norris could so much as stammer a confirmation that they were conscious. HMS Lancelot was next through, and, following the corvette, two destroyers and a handful of torpedo boats. By this time, Rutherford had seen enough to understand the dire situation into which he’d stumbled. There were battles raging across the home system, and although he didn’t yet have enough information to fully understand the ramifications, it was clear that the situation would call for energy and initiative.

  “Call Lancelot,” he told Pittsfield. The corvette was the second-strongest ship on this side of the jump. “She will join us in the vanguard. Everyone else who is already through will follow us. Anyone coming after will wait for Dreadnought. Malthorne can give further instructions when he arrives.”

  “But sir,” Norris said, as Pittsfield moved to obey. The tech officer still sounded groggy, and his eyes were bleary like a man who was hungover from a long night of drinking gin. “The lord admiral said to wait until the entire fleet was assembled.”

  “That will take several hours,” Rutherford said, “and we don’t have a moment to spare.”

  “We can’t go against the Hroom with a cruiser, a corvette, and a pair of destroyers. We need Dreadnought’s guns.”

  Heat rose in Rutherford’s face. “I want a full scan and report from you in ten minutes, Norris. Is that understood? And if you insist on being insubordinate—”

  “It’s not me who is being insubordinate,” Norris interrupted sullenly.

  “Lieutenant Caites,” Rutherford snapped, “if this man says another word outside of his duties, you will remove him from my bridge at gunpoint and see him to the brig.”

  “Yes, sir,” Caites said.

  Rutherford had had enough of Malthorne’s spineless sycophants. A cell was too good for Norris. If he didn’t shut his mouth and do what he was told, he deserved to be shot for battlefield cowardice.

  By the time Rutherford received Norris’s report, he had his cruiser, a corvette, two destroyers, and five patrol boats in motion. If he’d had a missile frigate or two, he’d have called it a full task force, but he didn’t have time to wait, and those slower craft would only bog him down, anyway.

  As for Norris’s report, there was a force of several ships rapidly approaching Albion on the far side of the system, only a few hours out. That had better be James Drake and Blackbeard. If it was one of the death fleets, heaven help them, because there was nothing defending the planet except for the orbital fortresses.

  Farther out from the home world, pir
ate ships appeared to have attacked the York Company mining colonies on Thor, to be chased off by a couple of destroyers and support vessels. That must be Drake, too, but what the devil was he doing attacking Thor? It was nowhere near Albion, and he had only succeeded in distracting warships that otherwise could have been engaging the Hroom.

  At least the naval forces had disengaged from the fight with the pirates. These ships, led by Captain Potterman on HMS Philistine, were now racing to engage one of three Hroom death fleets now in the system. Even so, this task force was nowhere near strong enough to fight off several sloops of war.

  That observation was supported by the results of a battle that had been fought with another Hroom fleet. The enemy had obliterated two destroyers at the cost of two of their sloops and were flying toward Albion with four ships, hassled, but not slowed, by two navy missile frigates. Potterman’s task force was of similar size to the one already defeated, and Rutherford expected a similar result.

  Worse still was the third Hroom fleet. Eight ships, uncontested. It had been in the system for several hours, according to panicked messages coming out of fleet headquarters. There were no available naval resources to oppose it. At the moment, it had a clear path straight to Albion. Shortly, the wisdom of Rutherford’s decision to leave the jump point without waiting for Malthorne and Dreadnought became apparent. Rutherford would arrive at Albion at almost the same time as these eight ships.

  There were six death fleets, according to the tortured prisoners. One destroyed in the Gryphon Shoals. Three here in the system. That left two more fleets unaccounted for.

  Rutherford had been racing toward Albion for two hours before Dreadnought came through the jump point. Malthorne snapped off several angry messages from the bridge of the battleship, but the two forces were so distant that by the time Rutherford had a chance to respond, the admiral had apparently reassessed the situation and realized the trouble they were in. A fourth Hroom fleet had been spotted near the gas giants, this one nine sloops of war. Also unopposed.

  Malthorne didn’t retract his furious missives, but to his credit, he did adjust his battle plan. He sent a second task force to chase after Vigilant and Lancelot. Rutherford’s battle would likely be over by the time it arrived, but these new ships could bolster the planetary defenses. The admiral then took Dreadnought and the bulk of his forces to intercept the force out by the gas giants. He sent his two fastest cruisers to engage the final enemy fleet that was being chased by the missile frigates. They could not hope to defeat the sloops, but could possibly delay them.

  Rutherford called Pittsfield and Caites into the war room to discuss how to position their limited forces in the upcoming battle.

  “There will be hell to pay,” Pittsfield warned. “Regardless of how the battle turns out, the lord admiral will want our blood.”

  Caites looked bewildered. “Why?”

  “Because I disobeyed a direct order,” Rutherford said. “We were told to hold at the jump point until the entire fleet had come through. It wasn’t a bad order—we had no way to know that the Hroom would already be in the system.”

  Left unspoken, but surely obvious to Caites and Pittsfield, was that Malthorne had burned three full days fighting pirates and then diverting to battle the Hroom fleet outside the home system. Had they not taken that costly detour, the entire fleet would be orbiting Albion by now. From there, Malthorne could have maintained an overwhelming defensive cordon.

  “But sir, the Hroom arrived early,” she protested. “What were we to do? Let them attack Albion unchallenged?”

  “You have a lot to learn, Lieutenant,” Rutherford said. “The lord admiral is absolutely correct. This fleet is built on obedience and discipline. It is the foundation of navy power.”

  “With all due respect, sir . . . no, I apologize. Never mind.”

  “Go ahead,” Rutherford urged.

  “It is obedience, discipline, and initiative. That is why we win.”

  “And I have taken initiative in this case. But there will be a heavy cost to pay. So long as Admiral Malthorne leads this fleet, the kind of insubordination I displayed cannot be tolerated.”

  Caites opened her mouth, then closed it again. She leaned forward. There was something else she desperately wanted to say, that much was obvious. In less-trusted company, Rutherford would have cut her off to save her from her own impudent words. But he wanted to hear what she was thinking, and so he nodded his encouragement.

  “Sometimes, I wonder,” she said at last, “if Admiral Malthorne isn’t a bigger threat to the kingdom than James Drake, the Hroom, or any number of other enemies.”

  It was a dangerous statement. It hinted at more than mutiny or insubordination, but at outright treason. The words hung in the air for a long moment, before Pittsfield cleared his throat and brought up a schematic of the system.

  They ran through the data, and what it showed was grim. Every scenario had Vigilant and her support vessels tackling eight sloops of war alone. He’d catch them a few million miles out from Albion, where he hoped to charge in with the cruiser and corvette and take out at least two of the enemy ships. Supported by the destroyers and the torpedo boats, he thought he could disable or destroy two, maybe three more before the superior Hroom forces knocked him out of the fight. That would leave three or four sloops to rush Albion unopposed. Unsupported by warships, Rutherford didn’t think the orbital fortresses could repel them all before the sloops of war had entered the atmosphere on their final suicidal mission.

  How many atomic warheads did four sloops carry? Too many.

  Caites ran her fingers through her short, blond hair. “I’d like our chances a lot better if we could reach Albion and hide behind the guns of Fort William or Fort Ellen. For that matter, the forts need us, too.”

  “Put that hope out of your mind, Lieutenant,” Rutherford said. “There is no way to arrive before the Hroom. We can only hope to come up shooting from behind and force them to turn and give us a fight.”

  “But eight sloops,” she said.

  “We may not come out of it alive,” Rutherford admitted. “Indeed, our best case scenario is to land our blows and be knocked out of the fight. We float away, disabled, while the Hroom ignore us and continue their mission.”

  “That isn’t much of a hope, sir,” she said.

  “No, it is not. In fact, an even better case would have them chasing after us to finish the job since it would delay them even more.”

  “But then we would all die.”

  “We may all die anyway,” Rutherford said. “If we do, it will be for the glory of Albion. Small consolation, I know.”

  Caites sighed. “Very small. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Maybe we will.” Rutherford had faced terrible odds before and was somehow confident in his ability to emerge from this struggle alive, as well. “There is always a hope, Lieutenant. Any of a million things may happen—always do happen, actually—to change the course of battle in unexpected ways. We may yet pull out of this.”

  And when you do? When the battle is won, thanks to your initiative and sacrifice? When Admiral Malthorne rewards you with a court martial and a demotion? What, then?

  Rutherford took a deep breath and turned to Pittsfield, who was tracing his fingers over the console, moving around various pieces as if searching for some way out of the predicament. “Commander? Any thoughts? Solutions?”

  Pittsfield shook his head. “No, sir. I am sorry. I’ve been looking for alternatives, but I can find none.”

  “Very well. Let us discuss the order of battle. We have few forces—it will be simple.”

  He had just started on possibilities, when Norris called over the com. “Sir, look at the viewscreen!”

  Rutherford brought up the image on one of the war room consoles. The relative motion of both Vigilant and Albion now gave them a view of the far side of the planet, and a fresher picture of the situation rapidly came into focus.

  Blackbeard was in orbit around Albion, with t
hree other vessels in support. Two were frigates roughly on par with a corvette, and the third was a small schooner. Drake was slugging it out with a pair of orbital fortresses. The attack on Thor must have been a feint, designed to lure the navy from Albion and distract attention while he sneaked in. It had worked.

  The hope Rutherford had been feeling, more wishful thinking, actually, than anything backed by evidence, now bloomed. James Drake was between Albion and the Hroom death fleet.

  “Thank you, Norris,” Rutherford said, and ended the call from the bridge. Better not to let Norris know what he was planning.

  “Send a message to Blackbeard,” he told Pittsfield. “Give her full access to our data. Tell Drake we are on our way and make sure he knows about those Hroom sloops. I’ll see about getting the forts to stand down, but Drake needs to hold his ground for the good of Albion.”

  That eliminated the need for Rutherford to go after the Hroom alone. He could follow close behind, count on Drake to support the forts and delay the attack, and then hammer the Hroom from behind.

  “Will he help us, sir?” Caites asked, as Pittsfield began to compose a message. “What about rescuing his parents? What about his mutinous crew? What about the fact that Malthorne murdered his sister and will still kill Drake no matter what happens today?”

  “You met Captain Drake,” Rutherford said. “You saw what kind of a man he is.”

  She shifted in her seat and looked uneasy. “Yes, but—”

  “James Drake,” Rutherford said confidently, “is, and always will be, a citizen of Albion. He will sacrifice to save our planet, I am sure of it.”

  Even as Pittsfield sent the message, a new communication came from Dreadnought. Vice Admiral Thomas Lord Malthorne had spotted James Drake and his pirate fleet and had orders on the subject. The forces were far enough apart that the orders came as a subspace message.

  Captain Nigel Rutherford, HMS Vigilant

  You must stop Drake. If our orbital defenses cannot hold, you must block him from escaping the system. Drake is behind this Hroom attack, he is the one who led the enemy here and allowed them to attack our home system. His treason has reached the point of genocide against his own race, and for the sake of peace, safety, and vengeance on behalf of the Crown, the navy, and the Albionish people, you must kill him and his crew.