Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  A few hours later, the first death fleet arrived for its suicide mission.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Blackbeard engaged the enemy fleet while it was still a million miles out from the planet and decelerating for its final run. Drake ordered a barrage of missiles and torpedoes sent directly into the path of the oncoming fleet, which forced them to change course. Only one of the missiles hit, doing minimal damage, but the sloops swung wide of Albion, even as they continued to slow, and the maneuver cost them significant time. By the time they came back around, Rutherford’s forces were forty minutes closer to joining the fight. Drake counted that an important victory.

  Drake took a slingshot around the moon and moved to cut the Hroom off again. He didn’t dare engage eight sloops at close range, but this long-range harassment was nearly as effective.

  He called the gunnery. “I want a pair of Hunter-IIs laid down on these coordinates.” He nodded to Capp to send over the data she’d charted with the nav computer.

  “Don’t have them, sir,” Barker said over the com.

  “What do you mean?” How could they be running low on torpedoes already?

  “We’ve been in a whole lot of battles since the mutiny, and most of what we’ve got left we picked up on San Pablo and Leopold. And they aren’t exactly selling Hunter-II torpedoes out there, if you know what I mean.”

  Drake had known of some of the improvisation required in the gunnery, but he hadn’t realized they were running so short on the high-tech navy stuff. He should have tried to get ordnance from the forts while he still had the chance. But no, that would have taken too much time, and he wouldn’t have been in position to fight that initial engagement.

  “What do we have?”

  “Eight Mark-IVs and plenty of Mark-IIIs. Still want me to lay them down?”

  “Belay that order.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The older torpedoes didn’t have the range, speed, or maneuverability to do what he was asking. He had missiles, but they didn’t pack the same punch as a two-stage torpedo, which made them easier to ignore.

  “Sir,” Tolvern said. “We have to do something.”

  “Get me Fort William. They’ve got the firepower.”

  It was risky letting the Hroom get in so close so soon, but he couldn’t face their pulse cannons alone, and he needed a way to hit them. To start doing real damage.

  As the Hroom came in for an assault on the planet, three different orbital fortresses launched a barrage of torpedoes. They were too slow and distant to hit the enemy, but they forced the Hroom to take evasive maneuvers, and while they did, Pussycat and Outlaw lunged in from either flank. It was an attempt to box the Hroom in where all those torpedoes could get at them. The Hroom veered to starboard, straight at Outlaw, which forced Isabel Vargus to flee for her life.

  Meanwhile, Blackbeard came up behind, using the Hroom fleet to shield herself from the torpedoes, which were zipping around looking for targets. Drake blasted away with his belly cannon and nearly disabled one sloop’s rear armor before he was forced to screen Outlaw’s escape toward the moon. The Hroom fleet withdrew to a safe distance and prepared another run at the forts. They hesitated at about a million miles out. Drake soon realized why.

  New forces were arriving on the battlefield. First to appear were the six sloops of war pursued by Orient Tiger and HMS Philistine. Catarina and Potterman had been harassing them halfway across the system by now and had left the six sloops battered, but the two pursuing vessels had suffered significant damage. The difference was the six sloops didn’t need to stand and fight, they only needed to penetrate the planet’s defenses and reach the atmosphere.

  Rutherford arrived at almost the same time, pursuing the first fleet. In addition to Vigilant, he had the corvette HMS Lancelot, plus two destroyers and several torpedo boats. There was another task force a few hours behind that Malthorne had sent, but Drake and Rutherford would have a terrific fight on their hands before that arrived.

  Drake hailed his old friend. Rutherford appeared, looking sharp in his red-and-black uniform. Drake felt shabby in the tan canvas vest Tolvern had bought for him, with its loops and brass buttons. Rutherford looked him over.

  “So, you’re in command,” Rutherford said. “Mutiny, turn to piracy, and the king still makes you flag officer.” He said it lightly, but there was a hint of irony in his tone, as well.

  “Are you asking me to step down so you can lead?”

  “No time for that now. Tell me what to do.”

  “Pull into orbit as soon as you are able. Once we string our forces between those forts, we should be able to hold off the enemy a few more hours. Get those incoming cruisers, Potterman’s destroyer, and the final pirate frigate into the fight, and we can defend the planet indefinitely. Once Admiral Malthorne arrives, we’ll finish them off.”

  “There is something you should know about Malthorne,” Rutherford said.

  Drake glanced at his console, which was screaming with information flying in from all quarters. The Hroom had joined forces into a massive flotilla of fourteen warships and were coming in for another run.

  “Tell me after this fight,” Drake said.

  “No. There might not be an after. If I die, you must know.”

  “Quickly, then.”

  “Malthorne has ordered me to kill you. In spite of everything, in spite of your defense of Albion, I’m to look for the right opportunity and destroy Blackbeard. Of course, I will do no such thing.” Left unspoken was that disobeying the order would leave his own career in tatters.

  “Thank you.”

  “But you can bet that Malthorne will do it himself. If not when he arrives, then the instant the Hroom are finished. Stay away from Dreadnought. You can’t stand five minutes against her guns.”

  “Forewarned is forearmed. Again, thank you.”

  “Good luck, James. You’ll need it—we’re in for a devil of a fight.”

  “You too, Nigel.”

  #

  The sloops targeted Pussycat in the first main skirmish, trying to run her down and break past the forts. She clawed back with her heavy armaments, but serpentines knocked out her gun carriages, and pulse cannon obliterated what was left of her shields. For a moment, it looked like Pussycat was doomed; a sloop was right behind her, firing its pulse cannon. But curiously, the Hroom warship didn’t use its serpentine batteries, and the frigate managed to limp from the fight, bleeding plasma, her top speed barely reaching fifty miles per second. The Hroom warship let her go and turned back toward the planet.

  Rutherford lost a destroyer in a similar fight, and two of his torpedo boats were wiped out completely. The second of these went down in a blaze of glory, knocking out the engines of a sloop, which was then caught in a devastating crossfire between Fort William and Fort St. George. A final torpedo tore into the sloop’s midsection and it detonated in a fiery atomic blast that knocked out the north face of Fort William.

  The Hroom were driven off momentarily, harassed by Catarina and Captain Potterman as they retreated, and by the time they formed ranks again, the second Royal Navy task force had arrived. Drake’s forces were bolstered by two additional cruisers, a missile frigate, and a trio of destroyers. The Hroom were reorganizing, waiting for reinforcements of their own, and there was a delay of a few hours while the two opposing sides jostled for position. Drake rushed the new forces in to guard the damaged side of Fort William.

  Further out, Dreadnought and her support vessels had crushed one of the Hroom fleets at the cost of a single corvette and one frigate. A sloop had nearly rammed the battleship, but she had emerged from the fight unscathed. Now, Malthorne was turning toward Albion to join the larger battle. His separate task force had finished off yet another Hroom fleet, but had been so badly mauled in the struggle that it was unable to join the battle outside Albion.

  Hroom reinforcements were arriving in the form of the three surviving sloops pursued by a pair of frigates and two more cruisers, and then, shock
ingly, a new, uncounted fleet materialized. That made six Hroom fleets that had entered the system, and seven in total, counting the one Malthorne and Rutherford had destroyed in the Shoals. And this final fleet was big: nine sloops of war. They appeared to have come in from the far side of the sun and had evaded detection until they were less than two hours from Albion.

  That left Drake facing twenty-five Hroom warships, a force even bigger than the massive fleet he and Rutherford had defeated at Kif Lagoon. Drake sent Vigilant and two more cruisers to harass this new force from a distance, but he recalled them as soon as the main enemy fleet started to move again. Soon, the Hroom were inside the orbit of the moon and rushing at the planet.

  The next few hours must have provided a fireworks display without parallel over the night sky of the eastern hemisphere, as well as for Drake’s parents, who must have been watching from the viewscreen in Drake’s rooms. The Hroom charged again and again trying to break through. The space above the planet filled with explosions: missiles, pulse cannons, serpentine batteries, detonating torpedoes, and broadsides from the two heavy cruisers. A Hroom sloop, broken, venting gas and plasma, tried to ram Blackbeard. The cruiser just ducked out of the way. The enemy warship raced past, still being pounded by Blackbeard’s guns and the cannon of Fort William. They caught it in the upper atmosphere, where it detonated in a final, fiery death. For a moment, the night sky was as bright as day, illuminating the narrow Irish Sea and the coasts of Britain and Australia on either side.

  Minutes later, the battle turned grim for Albion. Two sloops broke past Rutherford and dove at Fort St. George. The corvette Lancelot swept in from an angle to provide a final layer of fire support. She hammered at the sloops with her cannon, but the enemies caught her in their pulse cannons, tearing through armor and into the upper deck. Lancelot went spinning away, hit the atmosphere and burst into flames as Albion’s gravity well dragged her down.

  Drake was still staring at this catastrophe when a sloop broke through St. George’s guns and slammed into the fort itself. Her atomic payload detonated as she hit. Two torpedo boats that had been racing at the sloop in a desperate attempt to stop her vanished in the blast.

  Fort St. George’s asteroid was the smallest of any in orbit around Albion, which was why it had been able to maneuver with its own engines. Now, that smaller size became a liability. The blast tore the asteroid in two and shoved it out of orbit. The two pieces hit the atmosphere and went down after HMS Lancelot. They detonated in the upper atmosphere. In an instant, twelve hundred lives had been lost, and a gaping hole opened in Albion’s defenses.

  Blackbeard rushed to plug the breach, and Drake ordered three more cruisers—Vigilant, Churchill, and Melbourne—as well as Catarina’s Orient Tiger, to join him. Fortunately, the Hroom assault was almost spent, with most of the sloops out of position, driven off, or destroyed. Whoever was commanding the death fleet ordered a retreat, which brought a reprieve. An Albion commander bent on a suicide mission, Drake thought, would have rushed that gap and gotten at least one ship through.

  Drake was still assessing fleet damage when Tolvern turned to him, wide-eyed. “Captain, Admiral Malthorne is calling.”

  Malthorne was only a few hours out. Based on the posture of the Hroom fleet, the enemy would have one more run at the planet and its weakened defenses before Dreadnought arrived. The Hroom still boasted a score of functional warships, and would no doubt mount their assault on the gap vacated by Fort St. George.

  “Put Malthorne on,” Drake said.

  The lord admiral appeared on the viewscreen. He wore the red and black with his admiral’s crown-and-star insignia on the upper arms. He appeared well rested.

  Drake had always thought the admiral smug and overconfident, but the smugness now looked like wickedness, and the overconfidence had become malevolent scheming. Malthorne had betrayed Drake, killed his sister, arrested his parents, and destroyed the family manor house, yet if there was a cosmic scale of justice, these would weigh as the lord admiral’s lesser crimes. Malthorne had also enslaved countless Hroom and hidden the sugar antidote that could have freed hundreds of millions from their addiction. Under his command, the Royal Navy had started a war of aggression and bombarded an entire continent on San Pablo with atomic warheads. His actions had led directly to this Hroom death cult, bent on annihilating Albion.

  “So,” Malthorne said, “the prodigal returns.”

  Drake was exhausted. He’d not slept more than an hour or two at a stretch for the past three days. His crew was in much the same condition, with people spared when they could be, but mostly at their stations around the clock. He’d comforted himself knowing that Hroom needed to sleep, too. Nyb Pim needed as much time off shift, if not more, as any human. The generals of the death fleet would face the same limitations. But staring at the bright, dangerous gaze of Malthorne, who seemed fresh and alert, Drake felt dull, sluggish.

  “In the story to which you refer, the prodigal son left his family to spend his inheritance on debauchery,” Drake countered. “Whereas I was driven from my family by a treacherous enemy.”

  Malthorne waved his hand dismissively. “You and I both know that is a lie.”

  “I agree that there are lies being told in this conversation, yes. And that one of us is a liar with no known equal.”

  “And so the king has promised you clemency if you will stay and fight,” Malthorne said. “Somehow, you have even put yourself in charge of navy resources in your quest for personal glory. But remember this, Drake, at the end of the day, it will be my plans, my fleet, and my tactics that carry the day. Rest assured that the king and all of Albion will know the truth as the story of this battle is written.”

  “I’m not interested in your boasting,” Drake said. “I want to hear how you plan to use Dreadnought to help me defeat the Hroom.”

  “The first thing I will do is take command of the whole fleet. From this point, you will obey my orders, as will all of the other captains and commanders.”

  “Funny, I was going to say the same thing.”

  Malthorne stared back with a poisonous look. “You do not seriously suggest that I serve under your command? What kind of fool do you take me for?”

  “Again, I was going to say the same thing,” Drake said, letting a smile touch his lips. “But since neither of us is likely to take commands from the other, and since I know you will attempt to kill me once this fight is over, if, God willing, we defeat the death cult, let me suggest this. You stay outside the range of the orbital fortresses. The Hroom will make a run, we will drive them off, and you will finish them as they retreat and regroup.”

  Malthorne said nothing, just stared.

  Drake continued. “Let me remind you, Admiral, that the forts are under my command at the order of His Majesty, King Bartholomew, and not even Dreadnought can slug it out with gun emplacements buried into the side of an asteroid. When the battle is won, I will withdraw and communicate directly with the Crown as I arrange to be reinstated into the Royal Navy. If you don’t like that, you can argue with the king. Now, I believe this conversation is at an end. You have your duties, and I have mine.”

  Drake ended the call. For a long moment, he stood trembling with barely suppressed rage, hating Malthorne with all of his heart. When he looked around, the others on the deck were staring at him. Tolvern’s mouth hung open, and Capp was gaping as she rubbed her hand over her buzzed scalp. Nyb Pim blinked, and Manx and Smythe shook their heads in what was either admiration or fear, or perhaps a little of both.

  He checked the status of his fleet and estimated he had ninety minutes before the battle recommenced.

  Drake went into the war room, sat down, folded his arms, and lowered his head to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The next phase of the battle began in a promising way. Drake had feared that the remaining sloops of the death fleet would come through en masse. He didn’t think he had enough forces between Fort Ellen and Fort William to keep them from bre
aking through. But the Hroom commander, perhaps not recognizing the huge advantage gained with St. George’s destruction, split his force in two, with ten ships to run at the gap, and an equal number to come up over the southern polar region.

  This pole was poorly defended from orbit, but the surface was an icy sea dotted with uninhabited islands. If the sloops broke through, they’d be exposed for an hour or more within the atmosphere, where they were poorly designed to travel, before they could reach inhabited land masses. Drake sent a destroyer and four torpedo boats to chase them should they break through. Meanwhile, he’d take his chances in the south for the opportunity to face a smaller fleet over the Northern Hemisphere.

  Drake spent a few minutes positioning his defensive cordon as the Hroom warships charged him. He filled the surrounding space with torpedoes and missiles. During the break in fighting, Blackbeard had pulled up warily to Fort William, prepared to be boarded, but in desperate need of the torpedoes and missiles that the fort commander was offering. The offer proved genuine, and now Barker had an embarrassing wealth of ordnance to fire, and was spending it with all the reserve of a drunk pirate in a whorehouse.

  The Hroom crashed into his defenses. Missiles and torpedoes ripped apart one sloop, and Fort Ellen’s guns forced another to withdraw, its engines dead. Drake moved Churchill, supported by a destroyer, to catch two sloops threatening to break through, and the four opposing warships slugged it out with little effect for several minutes. Meanwhile, Blackbeard and Vigilant stood against four more sloops, dancing through pulse cannon and absorbing serpentine bomblets as they forced the sloops toward Fort William.