The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

  “Were you told the tales of Beneschau and the kinder there?” Kannstadt yelled back. “For I have and we are well-rid of your kind!”

  “A few!” the farmer yelled, his face as red as Kannstadt’s. “Not all of us!”

  “There were more — always more! More rubble, more dead kinder!”

  “How many children died here, do you think? Abandoned on this place where nothing grows!”

  Alexis, along with all the others, had grown still, fascinated by the exchange — as though some long and bitter feud was being played out for them. Both the Hanoverese and the farmer’s family seemed to understand the whole of it, but Alexis was at a loss, other than that the people of Hanover and those of Erzurum must truly hate each other, for long-past transgressions on both sides.

  “We gave you your own world,” Kannstadt said. “And what did you become? Pirates and slavers!”

  Kannstadt was fairly screaming now, his face inches from the farmer’s, who strained against his bonds as though to press his own face to that of the Hanoverese captain — or perhaps to reach his enemy with his snarling teeth.

  “And where were you?” the farmer asked. “You navy man with your ship? Where were you when the pirates came to Erzurum? Where were you when they demanded what little food grows here? Where were you when they took the machines you left us to sell on other worlds and said, ‘Here, take these men for your fields?’ Always the pirates demand more food and how else are we to grow it? What else were we to do?”

  The farmer turned his reddened face to Alexis, eyes filled with tears and anger in equal measure.

  “And you, New Londoner —” His voice was filled with scorn. “— come to blame us for the pirates?”

  He spat at her, but it fell short.

  “Your New London are the pirates!”

  Eighteen

  Alexis chilled at the farmer’s words, no longer struggling against Kannstadt’s men and their grip on her arms.

  What did he mean that New London were the pirates?

  She might still feel that her letter of marque and the whole privateering business was not too very far removed from piracy itself, but none of the private ships she’d encountered would stoop to raiding a poor world like Erzurum, much less making slaves of New London’s own Navy spacers.

  Could there be other, less scrupulous, captains working the Barbary? She’d not put such a thing past bloody Malcome Eades of the Foreign Office.

  No, Eades would have warned her if he’d known, not set her after “pirates” knowing the largest group of those in the Barbary were sanctioned by his own government.

  The farmer must mean something else, not the kingdom, but merely New Londoners. That was a sad thing, but not entirely unexpected — spacers from captured ships, given the choice to join or be enslaved, and even volunteers jumping their merchant ship in the Barbary and seeking out what they saw as an easier, freer life. It was disappointing to hear that her countrymen would be involved in this sort of thing, but not surprising.

  “There are New Londoners among these pirates, you mean?”

  “Among? Leading! And most of them!” the farmer told her.

  He glared from Alexis to Kannstadt, as though torn between which he’d most like to get his hands on for a moment.

  “They came in my father’s time. I was just a boy,” he went on, the calm translation from Alexis’ tablet belied the passion and anger in his voice. “‘Captain Ness’ he calls himself and his crews, with so many fine ships. They waved away the troubles of the shoals like nothing, saying they wished to trade — to make Erzurum a regular stop on their routes through the Barbary. Lies! He visits the farms, he visits the towns, he buys our poor crops, and he is generous in payment — more generous than the other merchants who so rarely come.”

  Even Kannstadt had stilled, listening to the man, as though he wanted to understand what had happened on Erzurum as badly as Alexis did.

  “Then when he has seen it all, Ness says it is his. All — our crops, our goods, the mud of Erzurum, and us.” He shrugged. “Those who protested too strongly were killed and soon no one protests. And at first, there is not much change, save who claims to run Erzurum — and what have we on the farms ever cared for that, so long as we are left alone?” The farmer took a deep breath and snorted. “But then we are not left alone.

  “Ness still buys our crops, but he is not so generous — then comes the ‘tax’ on what he does pay. Then the ‘tax’ on holding the land and the ‘tax’ for selling and the ‘tax’ for not selling and the ‘tax’ for standing in Erzurum’s mud.” The farmer spat to the side. “Ness, may his privates rot and burn.”

  “You should have sent for help,” Kannstadt said. “The navy would have —”

  “Profanity filtered your profanity filtered,” came from the tablet as the farmer cut Kannstadt off, but it was enough to make the Hanoverese captain turn red and square his shoulders. “How are we to ask with one of Ness’ ships in orbit always? And sending honest merchants away so that all goods, all trade, comes through him and those who would trade with his ilk?” The farmer laughed. “‘Oh, Mister Pirate, you will take this message to Hanover, please?’ It has been my lifetime since your navy visited Erzurum, kapitän — where were you?”

  Kannstadt clenched his jaw.

  “What’s your name, sir?” Alexis asked, realizing she had no idea and seeing him now as more than just some anonymous obstacle.

  “Altu Isikli,” he said, “as if you care.”

  “Mister Isikli, I’m sorry for your troubles, for Erzurum’s troubles, but one man — one crew — is not New London, and nothing excuses what I saw in your fields. You keep slaves and —”

  “Does it not? Nothing?” Isikli shrugged. “Perhaps not, but my father had machines for the fields — old, broken down, but they did the work. Now they are gone — a ‘tax,’ you see? Nearly all of value on Erzurum is taken for the ‘tax’ and sold on other worlds — my father’s machines harvest other crops there now. And Ness? He says it does not matter that we have no machines, we must still pay his ‘tax’ and every hectare must give food to his men or to those in the towns who service them.”

  Alexis was so caught up in the farmer’s story that she barely noticed Fischer, the man Kannstadt had sent away earlier, had returned with a half-dozen others and went up the stairs.

  “We must have his ‘tax’ when his men come for it, do you see? It is best it is ready and they load their shuttles quickly — if not, they search for value, without care of what they break.” His eyes met Alexis’ steadily. “Idle, bored, rough men search through my house, in every room and every hiding place … and I am the father of daughters. Do you see? I must have these pirates on their way as quickly as they come, so I must have what they demand waiting for them.

  “So Ness sends us men and he says, ‘Here are men to work your fields.’ Men from other worlds he raids, men from merchant ships, and, best of all —” He looked at Kannstadt. “— men from navies.”

  Isikli laughed.

  “Hanover’s navy put my people here. Hanover’s navy promised us safety, then abandoned us. So, Kapitän Kannstadt, when Ness gives me men of some navy to work my fields, I touch myself and laugh.”

  There was a piercing scream from upstairs and Kannstadt’s lips thinned in a cold smile.

  “Will you laugh now, Altu Isikli, father of daughters?”

  Nineteen

  “Just leave,” the pirate captain said,

  “And I'll let you all escape.

  For when your fellows all have fled,

  There'll be tuppence for your fate.”

  Alexis frowned, not understanding, then her blood chilled.

  She’d thought Kannstadt had brought only the farm’s men to the dining room to spare the women from his questioning, especially when he’d ordered Isikli’s farmhand stabbed. Now, though, she knew different.

  “No!” Alexis renewed her struggles, but even distracted as they’d been by the farmer’s words, t
he two men holding her arms kept their grip. “Captain Kannstadt, you can’t! You mustn’t!”

  Kannstadt let out a snort of disgust. “I had thought you knew of war,” he said, “after Giron.”

  “I learned enough of its horror and brutality there,” Alexis said. “I’d thought you had honor enough to stand against that!”

  “War is brutal and horrible,” Kannstadt said. “Isikli must talk or we will be doomed once we are discovered here.” He shrugged. “Hanover has dealt with his kind for generations. We know what will bring his words.”

  “Damn you! In the cave, when we spoke about Giron, you said Captain Schäfer was not an honorable man for attacking the transports — is this your own honor, Captain?”

  “Schäfer attacked a fleeing foe,” Kannstadt said, then pointed to Isikli who closed his eyes as another scream sounded from upstairs. “He is a slaver and has no honor.”

  “Captain Kannstadt, please, those women upstairs are innocent, they’ve done nothing to you or your men!”

  Alexis felt as though there was nothing at all stable in her world. Their enemy on this farm turned out to be a poor farmer who, perhaps, had no choice but to work the land with slaves under the direction of pirates from her own kingdom, and now Kannstadt, former enemy turned ally, yet willing to send his men to commit such atrocities.

  “Your New London fleet has few women in it, Leutnant Carew?”

  “What —”

  “Hanover’s does — as did the French who sailed with your own fleet — yet did you see any amongst my men? Or in this man’s fields? Think on where the pirates this man supplies took the women of my ship, Carew, and then speak to me of innocence.”

  “Those women — those girls upstairs had nothing to do with what the pirates —”

  Another scream sounded and Kannstadt turned his back to her, his attention once more on Isikli.

  “The codes, vermin.”

  Alexis braced herself against the men holding her who expected her to struggle mindlessly as she had before. Then she’d only been trying to shrug off their hands and move away — she hadn’t wanted to hurt them, hoping Kannstadt would see sense — but now she was determined to get loose no matter the cost.

  She raised her legs, tucking them almost to her chest, and one of the men holding her laughed, as though he found it funny she might think her scant weight would bother him, then she drove her feet down.

  Her shipboard boots might have been worn by Erzurum’s acidic mud, but they were still sturdy enough, and their soles and heels, weighted with heavy magnets to keep contact with the deck in case her ship lost gravity, struck her captors just above the kneecaps. It was a move she’d used before to good effect and it did the same now.

  The man on her left howled in pain as her heel drove solidly past, taking his kneecap part of the way with it. He released her arm and grasped at his leg.

  The man on her right was luckier — her heel skipped down his leg, merely raking his shin painfully. He yelled too, but more from anger than the pain. Still, it was enough of a distraction for Alexis to plant her feet firmly, reach across him to catch and grasp his right arm, already swinging to strike her in anger, and leverage that momentum over her hip.

  Her second captor rolled mid-air, the torque of her throw losing him his grip on her arm, and slammed face-first into the farmhouse’s wooden floor.

  Alexis reached for the pistol tucked into her belt, but the rest of Kannstadt’s men reacted swiftly.

  One leapt across his fallen comrade to grasp her arm and hand, forcing the pistol to point safely away. He must have had some training, for his grip on her hand pressed painfully into the joint where thumb and forefinger met, leaving her hand too numb to hold the pistol, which dropped to the floor.

  Even as the pistol fell, another of Kannstadt’s men struck her from behind at the knees, making her legs buckle, and a third grabbed her around the neck.

  Together, the three men bore her to the floor and more than one blow landed from their free hands.

  Alexis struck out in those few seconds, as well.

  She ducked her head, managing to get her teeth into the forearm around her throat to clamp down hard, tasting blood, and she drove her left leg back, connecting with something that gave a quite satisfying crunch as her heel connected.

  Then she was on the floor and more blows came. Her arm was wrenched painfully behind her back, another hand grasped her jaw to clamp her mouth closed and keep it from any new target.

  It all happened so quickly that it was only as that happened that Kannstadt shouted something — or only then that she heard it. Then more shouts as the rest of his men reacted to the fight.

  A sudden, unexpected crack cut off their shouts and brought abrupt silence, as well as a stilling of the men atop her. The sharp smell of ozone came to her, that and the sound meaning someone had fired a laser — which made little sense to her, since she was still alive and left not much visible as a target beneath her three captors.

  “There’ll be a general an’ complete lettin’ go o’ our captain, now, if you please,” came Dockett’s welcome voice.

  “Off her!” Nabb was shouting. “Off! You bloody Hannie scum! Offen dur captainen, damn your Dark-buggered windwards to rotting Hell!”

  Alexis was torn between relief as the pressure on her arm eased and the weights on her lifted, and dismay at Nabb’s language — both his execrable attempt at German and the curse. Perhaps he was spending too much time with Dockett.

  She shook her head to clear it of the odd thoughts that seemed to come with a blow. Her forehead hurt, but she didn’t remember it striking the floor when she was taken down, though it must have. A moment’s pause brought the situation back to her and she was off, shrugging off the last of Kannstadt’s men — who was carefully getting off her legs in the face of Dockett’s laser rifle — to dash for the stairs.

  She had the briefest glimpse of the situation as she did so. Dockett and Nabb at the fore and six or more of her lads in the doorways, all armed now that they’d retrieved their weapons from Kannstadt’s men.

  “Nabb, you and two men with me!” she yelled. “Keep the peace, Mister Dockett!”

  She had to trust that Dockett hadn’t killed one of the Hanoverese spacers with his shot and wouldn’t do so with her gone — that would be something their brittle alliance couldn’t come back from, she thought. Assuming of course, it could come back from what Kannstadt had ordered happen upstairs — and she was certain it had been on his order, even if unspoken. A captain was responsible for what he allowed of his crew, just as much as what was spoken in orders.

  It heartened her that there wasn’t a bit of question called out after her, only the two men’s “Aye, sirs,” and the sound of Nabb’s feet following her.

  “Veals! Aiden!” Nabb called, even as he ran after her.

  Twenty

  Alexis reached the top of the stairs and saw one of Kannstadt’s men dragging a woman — a girl, one of Isikli’s daughters probably — down the hallway.

  “You! Stop! Halt!” She had her flechette pistol in hand and pointed, not really remembering drawing it from the concealed pocket in her suit liner as she raced up the stairs.

  The man stopped, puzzled — probably wondering at what had happened to turn Alexis and her men from allies after they’d successfully taken the farm. He frowned and his mouth formed a question.

  “Away from her,” Alexis said, gesturing with the pistol. That was enough for him to understand what she wanted, if not the reasons. He let go and held his hands up putting his back to the wall. “Nabb, see to the girl! They’re still captives, so watch for tricks.”

  “Aye, sir — Aiden see to it.”

  Alexis had a moment’s pause to wonder at the young man from Kannstadt’s group in the cave being among the first Nabb called on, but assumed her coxswain saw something in the lad to take him on so quickly, then she was off again, down the hall from where the man had come. Behind her, the girl screamed again, but N
abb’s footsteps didn’t falter so she assumed it was just from Aiden taking the situation in hand. From the girl’s perspective, one foreign spacer grabbing her must be much like another and Alexis didn’t have time to explain — nor the ability, for she’d left her tablet and its translating behind in the dining room.

  The girl’s scream set off another from the direction Alexis was going, so at least she was moving in the right direction. There were only two rooms off this hallway, and two on the other.

  She burst through the door at the end where she thought the scream had come from and found herself in what must be the farmer’s bedroom — roughly appointed, it still had a bed big enough for the man and his wife, and two bureaus of what appeared to be wood along with a chest or two. The bed had been shoved against one wall to make more room and one of the chests moved nearly to the center. The room was crowded with a dozen men.

  Of the four remaining women on the farm, three were crouched in a corner, guarded by one of Kannstadt’s men, while one, maybe one of the farmer’s other daughters, stood on the chest. Kannstadt’s man, Fischer, was gesturing at the girl.

  “Sieben,” one of Kannstadt’s men said.

  Another countered, “Acht!”

  Sweet Dark, they’re auctioning them.

  It made a perverse sort of sense, she supposed, if it wasn’t so horrifying — the former slaves taking and auctioning their captors. It was odd there were so few of Kannstadt’s men there — perhaps only those who’d take part in such a thing? Or, more likely given the small numbers she heard tossed out, only those privileged enough to be the first. And odder still, the sorts of thoughts that went through one’s head when presented with a scene so unbelievable.

  “Halt!” Alexis yelled, aiming her flechette pistol and stepping to the side to make way for Nabb and Veals.