The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

  Kannstadt was still staring at her. Alexis met his eye until he grinned.

  “Giron, Hermione.” He chuckled. “I think the Hso-hsi have a curse about your life, leutnant.”

  “So it seems at times,” Alexis allowed.

  The Hanoverese captain pursed his lips and looked around the cavern. “We feel safe here, but safety is not the life we chose. I will think on your words, Leutnant Carew.” He paused and looked around the cave again, then frowned. “No, there has been already too much thinking of home. You may be right that it is time to do.”

  Fourteen

  It’s after, lads, I’ll tell you of,

  When hope was all but lost,

  Come a lass you’d not expect it of,

  The only willing to bear our cost.

  The farm was not what Alexis expected.

  The sun was just barely up, seen only as a brightening of the ever-present cloud cover. She and Kannstadt had crept forward to the edge of the trees, leaving the bulk of their force several hundred meters back and out of sight. They each had one of the survival blankets from Mongoose’s boat draped over them, leaving only their eyes exposed to take in the scene.

  The space, cleared of trees, was perhaps ten hectares of fields with buildings in the center.

  Alexis had thought Erzurum’s swamps would give way to higher, drier land as they left Kannstadt’s cave, but the Hanoverese captain and his men led them to what Alexis could only describe as —

  Some sort of swamp-farm?

  The trees had been cleared and there were crops, but the fields themselves were still the flooded muck she’d trekked through to get here. Worse, possibly, as the fields were surrounded by low dikes, apparently to both keep the water in and act as paths between them. The crop was bewildering as well.

  “Cattails?” she asked, peering through the last stand of trees and some open space between their group and the fields.

  Kannstadt shrugged. “There are few crops which grow on Erzurum.”

  “Crops?” She’d seen cattails before — there were some growing in the ponds of her grandfather’s lands back on Dalthus, but the seeds for those had been imported for esthetics, not food.

  “Those and the susomun,” Kannstadt said, nodding toward another field with something growing closer to the water’s surface. “A native plant, but it gives some nutrient. And the —” He pointed. “I do not know it in English.”

  In addition to the cattails and whatever susomun was, there was also a growth of water lilies in the fields.

  “Few other crops grow on Erzurum,” Kannstadt said. “Rice will grow, but it does not mature.” He shrugged. “They make do.”

  Alexis stared at the fields, she’d never heard of a native plant being grown as a staple. For variety or export as a rarity, certainly, but not to sustain the world’s people except in the most dire circumstances. Most plants not from Earth offered little or no nutrient value to humans at all — those that offered some often came with undesirable side effects. Never mind the cattails, that Erzurum’s people were forced to grow this susomun for survival spoke ill of the survey company that had sold their ancestors the world in the first place.

  The farm’s few buildings — a long, low barn, two smaller sheds, and a small, two story house with a wing Alexis took for a bunkhouse — were built on land either diked and drained or raised a bit above the surroundings. The barn was raised on stilts about a meter above the flooded land below it.

  “The slaves sleep in the barn, there,” Kannstadt said, “the family in the house, and what few hired hands next to it.”

  Alexis nodded. “The buildings are quite small. Is the machinery kept in the barn with the slaves?”

  She didn’t see how that could be, with it on stilts and no visible way for farm machinery to get in and out.

  Perhaps there’s a ramp.

  “No machines,” Kannstadt said.

  “But —”

  “This is why they have us as slaves,” Kannstadt said. “Watch.”

  As the light brightened, a horn sounded from the main house and men filed out of the “barn”. They hopped down into the water and mud from the raised building and slogged their way to the nearest dike.

  “The other buildings are on dried land, why not the barn?”

  “The mud slows a man,” Kannstadt said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look atop the house. Do you see that box?”

  Alexis did — the farmhouse’s roof had a small cupola at the center, with a commanding view of the farm. There was some movement within it.

  “The overseer,” Kannstadt said. “A rifle from there commands all but the farthest fields. The slave quarters are closer, and if the men are slowed they are more vulnerable, hein?”

  “Yes, I see.” Alexis had no doubt a decent marksman, especially with a good scope on the rifle, could command not only the fields but the tree line around the farm as well. “Are we safe from him here?”

  Kannstadt nodded and rustled the blanket he held around himself. “With these, very, until the mist clears more. The guards will watch the workers, and this field needs no work.”

  On the farm, the slaves — and Alexis’ stomach twisted to think of them as that, for Kannstadt had told her this and the other farms had mostly men from the missing fleets — had pulled themselves from the muck surrounding their quarters and moved onto the dikes between fields. It took a moment for Alexis to see, covered in muck as they were after their trek from the barn, but they seemed to be wearing nothing but drapes of cloth around their waists.

  The light rain washed some of that muck from them as they walked, exposing bare skin covered in raw patches eaten away by the acidic mud.

  They trudged off to the left of the farm buildings and spread out to begin some sort of work amongst the low-growing susomun, bent over and plunging their arms into the muck past their elbows.

  “This is insane,” Alexis muttered. “A newly settled world’s economics might not support modern machinery, but Erzurum’s been settled for hundreds of years. Surely they’ve amassed some capital in that time?”

  Kannstadt shrugged. “All I know is from when I came here. There are few machines for the farming, and those only on the largest farms.”

  “No animals either?” Alexis couldn’t see where they might be kept, if the slaves were in the building most resembling a barn.

  “On other farms, with the men to protect them from Erzurum’s schlangen. Here? Too small. You will see some gänse, geese, around the house. Chickens are taken by the schlangen, but they leave the gänse alone. I think they are afraid.”

  They watched the farm for a time, but nothing more happened. The house remained mostly still and silent while the slaves finished whatever it was they were about and moved to the next field. This one empty of all but water and they began moving cattail shoots from a neighboring field to form long rows in the empty one.

  “Have you seen enough?” Kannstadt asked.

  “More than enough,” Alexis agreed.

  They edged back from the tree line, turned, and stood, being sure to keep the reflective blankets between them and the farm, then headed for where they’d left the other men.

  “There’s no overseer out in the fields?” Alexis asked.

  “The man with the rifle,” Kannstadt said. “The slaves know what to do.”

  “Warm and dry atop the house,” Alexis said, “of course.” She pondered what she’d seen. “Why do they accept it? There were three dozen men in that field — surely they could come up with some way to attack the household, couldn’t they? How many farmers could there be there?”

  “This farm? Four hired hands, after the owner and his family — the man, his wife, two sons and three daughters, one of the sons has a wife and there is a babe.”

  “So —”

  “There is always the man with the rifle,” Kannstadt said, “and more than the rifle.” He tapped his neck and the scar there.

  “Yes,” Alexis s
aid. “How does that work?”

  “An explosive capsule,” Kannstadt said. “Enough to destroy the artery and difficult to remove without doing the same. Some farms have only a box to control them — others buy better from the pirates. Too far from the house — poof!” He flung his fingers wide at his throat. “Too close to the house — poof! Der Herr —” Kannstadt spat into the muck. “— presses the button — poof!”

  “I see,” Alexis said.

  “Some risk it,” Kannstadt said, rubbing at his throat and ear, something Alexis had noted many of his men had a habit of doing as well. “Many die.”

  “So if we are to take this farm and its comms,” Alexis said, “we must do so quickly and by surprise, and expect no help from the prisoners.”

  Kannstadt nodded. “And we must be careful to not damage the transmitter. If the signal is lost before we remove the devices from those men —”

  “Poof,” Alexis said. “Yes, I understand.”

  Fifteen

  O’ look me hearties, see me mates?

  Us lads were not forgotten.

  Not by good Queen Annalise,

  Nor by Little Bit O’Bosun.

  The farm was barely visible at night, with only the occasional sliver of one of Erzurum’s moons breaking through the cloud cover.

  Warth swore it was enough, though.

  Alexis and the former poacher were stretched out behind one of the farm’s dikes that ran parallel to the farmhouse. Covered in their survival blankets to mask their heat signatures from the guard in the cupola atop the farmhouse, legs in the cold water of the cattail field they’d crawled through to get this far.

  The barrel of Warth’s rifle and a bit of his face at the scope were all that was exposed.

  Alexis’ presence here wasn’t strictly necessary, but it was as close as she could come without being with Kannstadt and the main attacking force — those were all Kannstadt’s men, being more experienced at moving quickly and silently through the muddy waters. That force numbered only as many as the remaining survival blankets from Alexis’ crew, to mask their heat from any scanner the guard might have, while the rest of Kannstadt’s men and Mongoose’s crew waited behind the tree line.

  That decision had taken a great deal of trust on Alexis’ part, because it meant turning over most of her force’s small arms to Kannstadt’s men. It was only the Hanoverese captain’s obvious concern for Lieutenant Deckard and the good word of those few New London spacers in his group which had swayed her.

  The rest of the force was to come forward once the attack started — or guard the retreat should the first force be discovered and an alert sent out to the surrounding farms.

  The thin material of her masking blanket crinkled as Alexis shifted her position — there was something sharp under her left thigh.

  “Best be still, sir,” Warth whispered.

  “Are they close, at least?” she asked.

  “Middling,” Warth said, which really gave Alexis no better idea than she’d had before.

  “Are you certain the guard won’t see us here? Or Kannstadt’s men as they approach?”

  Alexis couldn’t see, with her head covered as it was, but she felt certain from the pause that Warth had just taken a rather large breath and held it for a time before answering.

  “The Hanny captain said this farm’s no motion sensors, didn’t he, sir?” Warth said finally. “Think if they did, we’d’ve been spotted already. These blankets — they’ll hide our heat from what he might have. These fields’re enough to hide a man if he moves slow, an’ I’ll admit, though it galls me, those fellows do, for all they come off ships … like you, sir.”

  Alexis suspected that was some sort of rebuke for her moving too fast or too much on their way to this spot — which had drawn more than one overly polite reminder from Warth. The truth was, if she felt a ship action in normal-space was boring compared to darkspace, then an action on the ground was both more boring than that and more terrifying than either.

  It was quite one thing to bear a long approach in tacking to a far-off ship, or to lie in wait, sails and systems dark while one came you — but this crawling through the mud, never moving but one limb at a time, and that so slowly and only so far, so as to not alert some watcher …

  Well, she’d admire the patience and skill of a ground-fighter, she supposed, but never wished to be one.

  Give her a stout hull around her and the clear surroundings of darkspace to be able to see her enemy coming, not wonder where he was in the looming darkness and whether he was a better sneak than she was. If she were ever to voluntarily fight on the ground, she’d first want an extra set of eyes or two installed to keep from constantly feeling there was someone just behind her ready to slip a knife into her back.

  “And, begging yer pardon fer sayin’ it, sir, but the shadows in that cupola are a right small target from here and it’d be best did my jaw not be constantly a’yammering, if you take my meaning?”

  “Shut up and let you do your bloody job, is that it, Warth?”

  “Wouldn’t never say such, sir.” There was a pause. “But if you was to watch the field behind us fer them snakes, as is why there’s the two of us here, I’d be obliged, I would.”

  And do my bloody job, as well, though he’d never say that either.

  Alexis let herself slide slowly down the side of the dike, further into the field’s mud, but hidden from the farmhouse, and uncovered her face to watch the waters for any sign of the snakipedes — a designation which hadn’t stuck with either her crew or the those of Kannstadt’s group, who insisted on simply calling them snakes, despite the multitude of tiny legs.

  I shall have to apologize to grandfather for mocking his calling those beasts on Dalthus shite-weasels when everyone else simply calls them bearcats. A thing should have a proper name, after all, and —

  “No,” Warth said, belying his own calm by continuing to speak. “It’s not that guard up-top we have to worry about spotting us afore we’re ready, it’s the —”

  There was a short, deep honk that set Alexis’ every nerve on edge and seemed to hush the surrounding darkness in its wake. It was a sound she recognized well from her home, and she knew the first wouldn’t be the last.

  “Oh, hell,” she said at the same time Warth moved to adjust his rifle.

  Then the night exploded in a cacophony of honks that very nearly overshadowed the crack of Warth’s laser splitting the air as he fired. Body and rifle came out of the farmhouse’s cupola, rolling and clattering down the roof to land in the yard. He worked the rifle’s action to set another capacitor in place even as Alexis rose to try making sense of the coming fight and direct him toward new targets.

  “Bloody geese,” he muttered.

  Alexis and Warth had only a short time to remain in their position, as the fight for the farmhouse moved indoors without a second target presenting itself to Warth’s gun — save a yard full of geese, which Alexis wouldn’t at all reprimand Warth for shooting as they rushed about raising the alarm and batting at the attacking force with their wings.

  More than one of Kannstadt’s men was bowled over or forced to throw himself to the ground as one flew at his head. From Alexis’ perspective, it even appeared the fowl had a more cohesive plan than the attacking force, which was strung out and scattered as they rushed from various points in the muddy field, up the surrounding berm and toward the farmhouse.

  The inhabitants of the farm were either slow to respond, or the sound of Warth’s laser had been masked enough by the bloody geese that the farmer and his family didn’t rush out — perhaps they were used to the geese alerting to snakipedes and were depending on the single guard to fire if one showed itself.

  In any case, as soon as the first of the attacking force made the house’s door and kicked it down, Alexis and Warth moved as well. With no need for further stealth, they could stay on the dikes and not slog through the muddy field.

  It was only a few meters to one of the dikes leading to
ward the farmyard and a hundred from there to reach the house, but Warth was wheezing and falling behind before they’d gone half the distance. The confines of shipboard life often left the men out of shape for such things, better suited to the short, steady strength tasks of hauling on a mass of sail or steadying a yard than dashing about.

  She wondered if she shouldn’t insist they get some small amount of other exercise once they were back aboard ship, as she did with her martial arts training. Then she wondered at the odd sorts of places one’s mind went in the midst of rushing toward a fight.

  It was only a thirty second run from where she’d waited to the farmhouse door, a few being added to avoid the geese which, their first targets having entered the house already, were perfectly happy to accept Alexis and Warth as substitutes.

  “Bloody … minging … geese …” Warth wheezed behind her, swinging his rifle like a club at any of the birds that came close.

  Alexis settled for leaping over those that came for her legs and diving rolls under those in flight.

  Halfway to the door those came close together and she wound up rolling right through an angry goose, opening her head up to a flurry of wing-bats and pecks that left her with a small cut on her forehead and a stinging, half-closed eye.

  Sixteen

  So landed our Alexis

  On Erzurum’s bloody soil.

  She spurned the pirates’ offers

  For the lads she knew there toiled.

  The fight inside the house was over even as she entered.

  Kannstadt’s force, with him in the lead — something else Alexis could admire about the man, even if he was Hanoverese — had caught all but the single guard atop the house still asleep in their beds. Alexis heard a couple shouts from the connected bunkhouse as the few farmhands were subdued and the stamping of feet upstairs, but there were no shots or other sounds of fighting.