She turned her attention back to the Randy Whistler where some few of the captains were back at the windows, with a group of three at the doorway. They were some hundred meters away from the pub and she supposed it was time to meet those worthies … the handover on the field from pirates to naval forces seemed to be going well.
Alexis nodded to Kannstadt and Blackbourne, indicating they should return to the pub.
“What do you know of those waiting captains?” Alexis asked.
It was a bit of a risk, not knowing Mountjoy well, or at all, really, but she thought he seemed a solid sort.
“The three seniors, there in the doorway, are a bit hidebound,” Mountjoy said, confirming Alexis’ opinion of him, “as you’d expect them to be, but they’re anxious to understand what’s going on — won’t be too fond of you grabbing all their lieutenants out the door in such a rush.”
“I expected as much,” Alexis said.
“I know most about our own Service, you understand, with only the day or two we’ve been gathered here to see the Hanoverese and French officers — I didn’t liase much with the French while we all still had ships around us.” Mountjoy lowered his voice a bit, as they were approaching. “So that’s Mattingly, Gotthart, and Neault there on the porch, seniors of the three fleets — and hasn’t it been interesting to watch them sort each other out in the face of these pirates, instead of firing into each other’s ships? Makes one wonder if we shouldn’t turn all the politicians over together to be made slaves to rogues and scoundrels before they’re allowed to start a bloody war in the first place. A bit of time in Erzurum’s fields with a Hannie at your side does wonders to clear the animosity, I must say.” He through a glance at Kannstadt. “Meaning no offense with the term, Captain Kannstadt.”
Kannstadt merely smiled. “Of course, Herr ‘Bloody’.”
Mountjoy chuckled. “See what I mean, sir?”
Alexis nodded. “So those three are senior, but a bit hidebound?”
Mountjoy nodded. “Senior for the moment — until another boat lands with someone higher on the lists. That causes no end of shuffling and sorting. And I don’t mean to say they’re at all hesitant to be getting off Erzurum, sir, only that … well, your own rank. Mattingly, especially, would like nothing more than to have a ship around him again. Offer him that and he’d forgive the devil himself a liberty or two.”
“I expect as much and have a few ships to offer, at least. All right, anyone else of note?”
“The younger captains took to the back room at once, much as we lieutenants took to the upper floor — the better to stay out of our betters’ sight. Stuffed the snotties all in some back rooms upstairs and told them to keep quiet on pain of garnering a post-captain’s wrath. So I’ve met few of those. There’s a frigate captain, Esworthy, who’s hot to take on the pirates, and a Hannie … Hanoverese, named Wendt, who seems a good sort.”
“I know Kapitän Wendt,” Kannstadt said. “He is a good man.”
Mountjoy nodded.
“Of the French, it’s hard to say, they keep to themselves, the Hannies viewing them as traitors, you see, and being treated a bit second-class by us.” Mountjoy shrugged. “They’re good fellows, to my mind, but I’m no captain. If you’re looking for allies to speak to for convincing the French, though, then Theibaud is well-respected amongst them, it seems, and —”
“Theibaud?” Alexis asked, barely daring to hope. She hadn’t seen him in her brief time in the pub to collect the lieutenants, and it was a common name. “Delaine Theibaud?”
“I think so, yes, he —”
Alexis left Mountjoy and his words behind her.
She didn’t run, quite — at least for the first few steps — only hurried her pace. Then a bit more, and a slightly longer stride.
Then … well, running was certainly excusable, them being in quite a hurry to finish things up before this Ness and the rest of the pirate forces returned, so the senior captains in the doorway would certainly forgive her rush, wouldn’t they?
“What —”
“Ooof!”
An elbow was, perhaps, not quite so forgivable, but it was delivered to the Hanoverese captain who didn’t have the courtesy to get out of her way as she arrived at the doorway, and they’d so recently been in a proper shooting war with one another, that one could consider it only a slight and forgivable incident … she hoped.
“Delaine!” Alexis called as she entered the Randy Whistler again.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but she distinctly heard a surprised, “Alexis?” with the distinct French enunciation she’d thought she might never hear again. It came from over where the bar stood and she rushed in that direction.
A few steps were all it took to spot him, behind the bar, pouring wine into a glass, and staring at her with wide, astonished eyes, and something deep inside her broke apart. The hard shell she’d built up around the certain knowledge that Delaine must be dead and she would never — despite sailing for the Barbary, despite Deckard’s word that he was here on Erzurum, despite any hope — see him again.
“Delaine!”
“Alexis — ooof!”
Leaping atop a stool, launching oneself over a pirate pub’s bar, and wrapping arms and legs about him was not, strictly speaking, how the Royal Navy advised its officers greet those of a foreign service, but Alexis didn’t care.
The kiss — well, kisses, as one couldn’t rightly call it just the one — was likely right out as well.
All her fears for him through so much time since Chipley’s fleet had sailed off after the Hanoverese at Giron fell from her, and she’d realized she’d not truly understood their weight.
Tears of relief and happiness stained her cheeks and touched both their mouths where they joined in the kiss she refused to break just yet.
He was here, and he was real, with a solid body pressed to hers and strong arms around her. So unlike the phantom sensations from her dreams these far too many months and she could barely trust he wouldn’t dissolve to nothing as she woke, as he had so many times before.
It was not so much the throat-clearing as the applause and cat-calls that got her attention and led her to pull back from that kiss, reluctantly, and look around the pub.
Quite nearly everyone was staring at her, save those few, mostly of New London and Hanover, who were pointedly looking away with discomfort at her display.
Mattingly, the senior New London captain, had approached the bar and was scowling at her with displeasure, while Neault, the senior French captain, was openly grinning. At least he was not applauding and, she noted, what could only be described as hooting, as so many of the French were. The Hanoverese merely looked amused, so there was that.
Mattingly cleared his throat. “And you are?” His frown, though she would have sworn it not possible, deepened. “Lieutenant?”
“Ah … Lieutenant Alexis Carew, sir, commanding Mongoose.” She took a breath, well-needed after Delaine’s kiss, which, she thought, he’d thrown himself into admirably despite the audience. “Senior officer in-system, sir, at least until we’ve put a ship around you again.”
She hoped the reminder of that prospect might distract Mattingly from her lack of decorum.
“Indeed.” Mattingly made an expansive gesture to the tables put together on the pub’s main floor. “Well, lieutenant, please, do, brief us on the situation.” He raised an eyebrow. “If you can find your way clear to climbing down off Captain Theibaud, that is.”
Alexis realized that her face was on a level with Delaine’s, instead of mid-chest where her height ought to have placed it, because her legs were wrapped around his hips and locked tightly behind him.
She flushed even while thinking, Must I?
Forty-Five
There captains waited for her word,
But to them, she didn't go.
Instead Alexis offered comfort first
To a spacer-man laid low.
“How many?” Alexis asked in shock.
Both the other captains shook their heads.
“As near as we can tell,” Mattingly repeated, “we three having discussed the action around this mudball, nearly three hundred ships were lost in Erzurum space by our fleets before the rest sailed on. Some were destroyed outright, but the bloody pirates pulled us out of our boats in job lots and set us down here.”
“We will need more ships,” Kannstadt said, echoing Alexis’ words from the landing field.
She could only nod. When she’d said it, she’d thought they’d need dozens of ships to evacuate Erzurum — but the number of wrecks Mattingly claimed —
If even half their crews survived to be taken prisoner —
Her mind worked at it — mostly frigates, supported by pinnaces and sloops, perhaps a few third-rates thrown into the fray as heavy support.
“Sweet Dark,” she breathed.
Thousands, tens of thousands, ten times more than the thousands on the field right now.
She caught Isom’s eye where her clerk had bent over his tablet, busily tapping away at some new estimates. He looked from her to his tablet then back again.
“Some numbers best not thought on, sir,” he said.
“What?” Mattingly asked.
Alexis hesitated. She’d told the senior captain about the pardons, and he’d taken that well enough, though distancing himself from it as all the rest seemed to.
“There was a bounty, sir,” Alexis said, “in addition to the pardon. On both the pirates who’d not surrender and on, well, yourselves.” She gestured around the room full of captains and lieutenants. “And the men. Scattered as you were to all the farms on Erzurum, it seemed the most expeditious way to convince the pirates to retrieve you and keep you safe.”
Mattingly raised his eyebrows and the Hanoverese pursed his lips.
“Bounty?” the French captain, Neault, asked. His own brows went up. “For every of the spacers?”
“How much?” Mattingly asked.
“A hundred pounds for a captain, sir,” Alexis said. “Twenty for a common man.”
The listening officers muttered amongst themselves while the three seniors eased their chairs from the table as though Alexis carried some contagion they’d as like not get too close to.
“And the recompense, sir,” Isom said.
All eyes returned to Alexis.
“Recompense?” Mattingly asked.
“Well, sir,” Alexis said, wishing Isom hadn’t felt the need to bandy that bit about. “The farmers were loath to lose their …” She glanced around at the watching faces. “… workers? It seemed … easiest to compensate them …”
“Compensate?” Mattingly asked.
“You bought us?” one of the watching captains demanded.
“I — well, for the Queen, yes, I suppose —”
“How much?” Mattingly asked again.
“Ah, ten pounds each, sir, seemed to be what the farmers thought fair …”
The mutters and dark looks grew until Mattingly’s hearty laughter cut across it.
“Oh, leave off, you lot!” he yelled. “Queen Annalise got us all for a shilling each at the start, just be glad your bloody stock’s risen so high!”
“So that’s the gist of it, sirs,” Alexis finished. “The pirates are nearly all unarmed, only those still out and about collecting more of our spacers have weapons, and Lieutenant Mountjoy is seeing to taking those as they arrive. I’ve no idea how long it will take to retrieve all our men from the outlying farms — I had no idea there’d be so many, you see.”
She sighed.
“We hold the planet, well and truly, with so many men, of course, and the orbit, but Ness’ return with his own ships, and a frigate, make that a fragile thing.”
“And all because your boat crashed,” Mattingly mused. “If you’d set down as intended, you’d have had no proof at all we were here and likely had to leave with your fellow privateers. With no proof, there’d be no rescue.” He shook his head in wonderment. “The thinnest of threads to get us here.”
“And slimmer to get us all out,” Alexis said.
“Providence,” another captain put in.
Alexis looked around to ensure none of her own lads were about the Randy Whistler and heaved a sigh of relief that they were all outside seeing to other tasks. The last thing she needed was word of that thin thread leaking back to Creasy and him convincing a dozen or so New London captains to worship the Vile Creature in thanks for their rescue.
“I’ll settle for Providence, indeed,” Mattingly said. He rubbed at his face where pink skin shown, as it did on so many of the captains, now that they’d been freed and had a chance to shave. “You say this Ness’s off on a cruise for more prizes? Even after having been discovered here?”
Alexis nodded. “We’ve little hope of assistance from anyone, you see, with no evidence that you’re here.”
“Our Captain Ness’s a confidant sort,” Blackbourne said with a wide grin. None of the naval captains were particularly welcoming of his presence, but he did offer the pirates’ perspective on their situation. “Erzurum’s been a pirate holding fer a long time, an’ Ness’ fief fer near as long. He knows yer fellows’ll not come an’ he’s set a proper spanking on the only force o’private ships to assemble in all his time here.”
There was a bit more talk and the senior captains detailed some others to go out on the landing field to join Mountjoy and the lieutenants in their work. More questions than Alexis felt comfortable answering, but she did so — even those about Ellender and how she’d come to be back in uniform though she’d arrived as captain of a private ship.
As the hour grew late, many captains sought rest, while others sought out the surgeons to have the marks of slavery removed from their ears and necks.
The crowd in the Randy Whistler gradually thinned and Alexis caught sight of a lone figure hunched over a table to the side. One not a captain or other officer in the naval fleets and one she’d not expected to see again at all.
When Mattingly seemed to have had all his questions answered, Alexis took her leave.
“Well, look on the bright side, Carew,” Mattingly said as she stood from his table.
“What’s that, sir?”
“New London’s founders may have brought back the farthing, but drawing and quartering was right out, so you’ve no need to fear that from Admiralty, at least.”
Forty-Six
“Take heart and tell your fellows,”
She said unto the man,
“For your Queen has not forgotten you
And together we've made a plan.”
“Commodore Skanes,” Alexis said, stopping beside the table.
Up close, the woman looked more ragged than Alexis had first thought. Her uniform was oddly intact, not at all ravaged by the conditions on Erzurum, but she herself was worn and haggard. Red-rimmed eyes, the lines on her face seeming to have deepened in the short time since Alexis had last seen her, and her shoulders slumped over the table, her face hanging above the glass she drank from.
Skanes was — had been — commander of the Marchant Company ship the Hind, a massive hull ostensibly the stores ship and command center for the fleet of private ships Alexis and Mongoose had joined in the Barbary. That the captains of private ships were, to be kind, less than amiable to the strictures of command, and less than partial to the prices of Marchant Company stores, had left Skanes and her ship with little to do but sit and wait for the occasional visit from those captains.
The merchant captain had styled herself an erstwhile commodore over her “fleet” and taken the title on, which Alexis used as a courtesy, despite the woman having no right to it — also because Alexis felt somewhat responsible for the loss of Hind to the pirates.
It was Alexis who’d convinced Skanes to take Hind along with Mongoose on Alexis’ first assault of
Erzurum, and the woman had to surrender the much larger ship when it became mired in the system’s dark matter shoals and been surrounded by the pirate gunboats while Mongoose’s rudder was damaged. She still thought Skanes could have held out, with the larger ship and far more guns than the pirates, but the “commodore” had surrendered without firing a shot.
Skanes looked up and narrowed her eyes at Alexis, who prepared herself for the merchant captain’s rebuke for abandoning her. They’d not had proper signals for Alexis to spell out that Mongoose had been damaged and she must withdraw for a day or two of repairs, if only Hind could stave the pirates off until then.
“Carew,” Skanes said, then looked back to her glass as if seeking something in its depths. “I’m sorry.”
The words left Alexis dumbfounded — it was not at all what she’d expected of Skanes.
“Commodore?” Alexis said softly.
Skanes snorted. “Captain, if you please, no need to mock me. I suppose you’re here to have your say — go on then?”
“My say?” Alexis asked.
Skanes looked up and peered at her closely. “You’re in a Naval uniform — haven’t you returned with some rescue force? Captured that Ness fellow?” She frowned. “You’re not here to arrest me? I’d thought when I saw you enter that you must have asked for the pleasure of that job yourself.”
“Arrest you? Comm — Captain Skanes, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
This woman was nothing like the haughty commodore Alexis had last spoken to.
Skanes laughed but there was no humor in it. “So you don’t know?” She gestured at the chair across from her. “Sit, then, if you will. It’s fitting you’re the one I surrender to, I suppose.”
Alexis sat but remained silent. She felt Skanes was far enough in her cups to keep talking, but she didn’t want to risk stopping her. This talk of arrest and whatever Skanes had supposedly done seemed important, but Alexis hadn’t an inkling what it might be.
The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6) Page 30
