The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

  Nabb was waiting in the companionway, along with some few others of her boat crew, including, she saw, the new lad, Aiden.

  Alexis ran for the nearest lock, which gaped open, both its hatches wide to the vacuum beyond, the better to let Mongoose’s crew pour out.

  At the lock’s edge, she found a gap of perhaps five meters between Mongoose and Roebuck, the ships having come together at an angle.

  Even as she leapt across, shoving off with as much force as she could muster to cross the space as quickly as possible, she saw that the two ships were not yet so tightly bound as she might like. They rocked apart and came together, each working against the other, driven by the winds in their sails and each ship’s momentum.

  While Layland had doused Mongoose’s sails after the impact, cutting the particle projector and rendering them inert to the darkspace winds, Roebuck’s were still charged. They were a tangled, scandalous mess, but still took the winds to some degree, pulling Roebuck away from Mongoose as the winds caught the scraps, then subsiding as they fluttered and spilled.

  The lines between the two ships went alternatingly taught, then slack, as Roebuck pulled away, paused, and Mongoose’s momentum from the tug brought them together again with a grinding crash.

  A man misjudged his leap and landed on Roebuck’s hull too far from an entry, be it a hatch blown open by those who’d preceded him or even a shot hole large enough for him to squeeze through.

  Alexis winced, wondering who it might be, as the hulls came together and ground him, vacsuit and all, to nothing between their massive bulks.

  She had other things to worry about, though. Just as time seemed to have raced as the two ships came together, it seemed to slow and crawl as she leapt between them. The journey of a few meters felt like it took forever, with her and those around her vulnerable and unable to change their paths.

  Roebuck’s crew took advantage of that.

  Those with firearms drew them and took aim, picking off Mongoose’s boarders one by one before they ever touched a finger to Roebuck’s hull.

  Others drew their swords and braced themselves to swing at the incoming men.

  Something tugged at the sleeve of Alexis’ vacsuit — bullet or flechette, she couldn’t tell. A laser would have gone straight through without her noticing, as one did for a man ahead of her, whose body went limp in his suit and continued on to crash into Roebuck’s hull.

  Ahead of her, a pirate raised a boarding pike to intercept her path.

  Alexis had her blade in hand and struck out at the pike. She didn’t have the mass to shift it, so used the leverage to shift her own path instead. The pirate tried to move to intercept her again, but merely pushed her to the side as she kept her own blade in contact with the pike’s shaft, sending a grating vibration through both weapons and forcing the pirate to drop the pike as her blade neared his hands.

  She absorbed her impact on Roebuck’s hull with bent knees and sprang up to drive her blade into the pirate’s midsection. The point held, then punched through his vacsuit and he staggered back, lost to her in a moment in the swirling chaos of bodies on the ship’s hull.

  Another pirate rushed her and she turned the wild swing of his cutlass to the side, opening him up to her following slash.

  Red-tinged air and sealant gushed from a long gash in the pirate’s vacsuit and he backed away from her. She stomped forward, rear leg working to bring her fore back to contact with the hull, then using the force of that and her arm to bring her sword down in a heavy, overhand blow that skittered off the man’s helmet to cut into his shoulder. Alexis pulled back from that and drove her blade forward, quicker than the injured man could react, and into his belly.

  Her target swayed back to fall to Roebuck’s deck, feet held in place by his boots and given momentum by the gust of escaping air and blood from his suit.

  Alexis moved on, screaming into her helmet as she knew her crew was. No matter that they couldn’t hear each other, they still knew.

  “Mongoose!”

  There was a gunport near her, so she made her way there, then grasped the edges and swung herself inboard. The gun itself was overset — barrel cracked and shattered into pieces — and there was a bit of space around its carriage for a wonder. The rest of Roebuck’s gundeck was a teeming mass of men and blades, bullets and flechettes, all with the rare twinkling of a laser cutting through space and bodies, both. Others from Mongoose were along her side, coming in from hatches and ports to engage the pirates, who were being forced back from their ship’s side by sheer force of numbers if nothing else.

  No matter what number of pirate crew Roebuck had sailed with, Ness had sent enough off to prizes that Mongoose’s overfull complement was enough to overwhelm her if they held.

  The space of the gundeck, opened to vacuum when the action started, was no longer clear. Gobs of vacsuit sealant and globes of blood filled the space, floating about as Roebuck’s gravity generators must have been hit in the action. Every cut through a suit’s fabric added to the mess, with even the tiniest drop of blood finding some of its fellows to join with and form the rather horrifying blobs that floated about until splashing against some surface.

  One of those struck Alexis’ helmet, obscuring her vision until she wiped it away to leave a gory smear behind, and distracting her so that she didn’t notice the oncoming pirate until his blade was through her left leg, adding her own blood to the mess.

  She blocked his next thrust, turning it aside to grate against a gun’s jagged barrel, even as she felt her vacsuit grow tight around her leg. The constriction of the suit itself and expanding sealant would, she hoped, stop any bleeding, but it also restricted her mobility.

  She dodged to the side as her foe brought his heavy cutlass down with such force it surely would have cracked her helmet’s faceplate. As it was, the man’s blow brought his blade clear to Roebuck’s deck.

  Through the port she’d just cleared, another figure came. She recognized the markings on Nabb’s vacsuit.

  Her coxswain’s boots landed on the pirate’s sword, pinning it there. His own blade stabbed out, but it was an awkward blow, coming off-balance through the port, and only grazed the pirate’s side, turned away by his vacsuit.

  Alexis made to attack, but a second pirate pushed through the lines to stab at her, then a third.

  Even as she parried these blows, she stepped atop a gun carriage to take in the full battle. She could see a suited figure deeper within Roebuck’s gundeck, grasping pirates by the shoulders and directing them to attack, perhaps the captain, Ness, down from the quarterdeck to rally his men against the boarders, and that should be her target.

  She stepped back toward the hull, and began assembling a force as men came through the gunports, grabbing them and holding them for a moment so they’d not simply bull their way into the mass of fighters.

  Nabb touched helmets with her.

  “Do you see that one there?” Alexis asked, pointing. “With the orange blaze on his helmet?”

  “Aye.”

  “That’s who we want! Form a wedge and go for him!”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Nabb quickly formed the men into a group, and they lunged forward as one.

  They broke through the first few fighters, into the mass of pirates behind the line. Step by step, trudging forward to shove the foe aside, men moved to replace those at the edges as they fell, passing their fallen comrades back for what help might be offered.

  Alexis rode the familiar rush of battle, every blow, every parry, like some sort of drug that made her vision sharper and her limbs tingle. She knew later would come the visions — memories of bodies, dead and ravaged — but in this moment the thrill of the contest was greater.

  Blades struck at her. She parried, twisted, dodged, and, in no few cases, was spared by the blade of the man beside her deflecting the blow, just as her blade was there to save her fellows.

  She knew Nabb was with her, and the new lad, Aiden, and one or two of the others from h
er boat crew, but others around her she didn’t know — brought up from the rescued forces to make up Mongoose’s complement, and she’d not had time to learn all their names.

  In the battle it didn’t matter, though.

  They had Mongoose’s colors on their sleeves now, making them all one and all hers.

  They fought on in silence in the vacuum, helmets full only of their own raspy breath and the cry of their own voice carrying over the muted clangs and thuds of blades that could make it through into the aired suits.

  Alexis lost sight of the pirate captain, Ness, in the swirling mass, but drove her lads on through. He’d be at the rear, and cutting the pirate force in half would do them well in any case.

  A glance behind showed her own force filling in the space her wedge made, starting to encircle the remaining pirates fore and aft on the gundeck.

  Nabb, at the wedge’s fore, broke through to Roebuck’s port bulkhead and the rest followed into the odd sort of empty space that sometimes develops in such battles.

  Shoulders slumped and hands rested on knees as they bent to catch their breath. Alexis’ own breath was harsh in her helmet and she adjusted her oxygen mix to give her a bit more and recover faster.

  Nabb pressed his helmet to hers and pointed down to the gun they rested against. Roebuck’s port guns were nearly pristine, compared to those to starboard where they’d boarded. Most of the action had placed the two ships closing Mongoose’s port to Roebuck’s starboard, with little chance to come about in the tight channels.

  Nabb tapped the gun’s breech.

  “‘At’s loaded, sir!”

  Fifty-Four

  “This is what you get,” she said,

  “When you dare Annalise’s wrath.

  For I'm her good right arm and

  She set me on your path.”

  It was but a moment’s work for her little band to unclamp the big gun’s wheels, pull it inboard, and swing its massive, crystal barrel about to face forward.

  They’d split the pirate group in two with their charge and made a lane clear across Roebuck’s deck from starboard to port. The larger group of pirates was still to forward.

  Alexis took a place at the gun’s breech, not wanting to put the act on another, while Nabb cleared their own lads from the barrel’s path.

  He didn’t bother passing the word, simply took Aiden and two others with him to the fighting line. They picked a spot where the gun was laid and grasped two men, pulling them hard to either side, and never mind if an enemy’s blow landed or their own was mislaid by the grappling. They pulled, shoved, touched helmets to scream instructions, and in a moment had cleared a space of six men from the fighting lines.

  The pirates surged forward into the gap, thinking the tide had turned in the fight and they’d break through Mongoose’s line to join again with their fellows aft.

  It took them two steps see the gun’s barrel, and that was enough for Alexis to bring her palm down on the gun’s trigger.

  Ships’ guns were a wonder.

  They were on Roebuck’s lower gundeck, where the eighteen-pounders sat.

  Time froze and the battle with it as the pirates at the fore tried to retreat.

  Alexis recalled her first time aboard ship and being handed a nine-pound shot, asking how that could be, since the shot’s casement was gallenium and with so much expensive metal must cost more than nine pounds.

  The measurement was archaic, brought, with so much else, to New London with the kingdom’s founders, a group her grandfather had once described as “not being cursed with a surfeit of sanity”. Along with labeling their colonization company shares as a hereditary monarchy and reviving the bloody farthing, the Navy’s founder had insisted on measuring their shot’s weight in pounds instead of the eight kilos most other navies would call this. It measured the weight of the capacitor set in the base of the shot, its stored energy released in an instant as Alexis triggered the gun. That energy struck the lasing tubes, which interfaced to the gun’s barrel. Then, even as the foremost pirates stopped, stared at the length of crystal barrel they faced, and were yet shoved forward by their fellows behind, the gun fired.

  Though Roebuck’s gundeck was open to darkspace, there was no, or little enough, dark matter to affect the shot. No foreshortening or compression as it flew, in fact it didn’t become visible at all — only its effects.

  The lead pirate was shot through, and the one behind him lost an arm, which spun and tumbled up into the space above the fighters’ heads.

  As though that were some sign, like the first cover to soar into the air at a graduation, more limbs and whole bodies quickly followed behind.

  The shot began splintering midway up the deck, any reflective surface on an ill-maintained suit splitting it to kill and wound even more. The carnage fanned out from the shot’s original path until it struck the fore bulkhead. A few places were shot through there, but by then the shot’s force was mostly dissipated and dispersed amongst the mass of pirates.

  Stillness followed, as both sides were shocked by the carnage. Only the spinning limbs and floating bodies moved, save for those injured who writhed in pain — either on the deck itself or floating above their mates’ heads where all could see, propelled about by the gore and sealant spewing from rents in their vacsuits.

  The forward group of pirates, seeing so many of their fellows cut down in an instant and now surrounded and outnumbered, dropped their weapons.

  Those aft made to fight on, but wavered.

  Behind them, near the aft bulkhead, Alexis saw the helmet with the orange blaze push and shove at the men, trying to get them to attack, but there were too many hesitating. In a moment they’d lay down their arms, and the pirate captain must have seen that too.

  He hopped up, feet leaving the deck, and pulled a laser pistol from his belt.

  Alexis shoved Nabb aside as the pistol’s barrel came to bear, then made to dodge herself, but she was shoved aside too.

  The shot came, striking Aiden, who’d taken her place.

  The lad was taller than Alexis and the shot meant for her head had taken him low in the chest.

  “Bloody fool,” Alexis muttered. She grabbed Nabb’s arm and dragged his helmet to hers. “Get him to the surgeon!”

  She turned back to find the pirates aft laying down their arms, but the captain’s orange helmet nowhere in sight.

  Alexis rocked her boots free of the deck, then shoved off from the bulkhead, sailing over their heads toward the aft companionway. Whatever this Ness was about, it couldn’t but mean ill for her and her lads.

  Behind her, Nabb sent two of her boat crew sailing after her while he pulled Aiden’s now still form to starboard for transfer to Mongoose.

  The rest of her crew was busy at collecting pirate weapons and binding pirate hands. They’d taken enough ships to know the way of it without her giving the orders.

  Alexis twisted in midair to strike the aft bulkhead with her feet and absorb her momentum before settling to the deck again. Two men were quickly with her, she couldn’t tell which in their vacsuits, and she cycled the lock.

  In a moment, they were out of the gundeck and through to the companionway.

  Four pirates waited there, helmets off and looking more confused than anything else.

  Alexis barely paused — she had her blade at the foremost’s throat as soon as she was clear of the hatch and the man raised his hands hurriedly.

  “Where’s Ness?” Alexis demanded.

  “Aft!” the man said. “Come like the devil hisself was after ‘im an’ tossed us’n out o’ engineering!”

  “See they’re secured,” Alexis ordered the two men with her, then hurried aft.

  She transferred her blade to her left hand as she went and drew her flechette pistol. Roebuck’s hull was whole here, so the little gun would work — she’d emptied her other pistols in the fight, though she couldn’t have numbered each shot if asked.

  The hatch to Roebuck’s engineering spaces opened at
her touch, but a bullet richocheted off the coaming as she went through, sending her to launch herself to the side and cover behind a console.

  Alexis hunched down. She should wait, she thought, until some few of her lads made it through, but they were busy with the other pirates and she worried at what mischief the captain might be up to.

  She keyed her vacsuit helmet to echo her voice over its external speakers.

  “Your men have surrendered, Ness!” she called. “It’s over!”

  Another bullet answered her, leaving a streak of grey on the cream-colored thermoplastic of the bulkhead.

  “Where is he?” a voice called from deeper in the compartment, past all of the consoles and machinery.

  “Who?”

  “Dansby! Where is he? I want to see his face one last time before we go!”

  Alexis cursed under her breath and shook her head. She’d led a fleet of private ships to this man’s threshold, taken his whole bloody planet while he was away, and now taken his own ship by boarding … yet he was worried about Avrel Buggering Dansby?

  “What in the Dark did Dansby do to you people?” she demanded. “And what must I do for you to worry about me, who’s right bloody here with a full crew to pry you out! Now throw down your weapons and let’s have no more of —”

  The crack of Ness’ pistol sounded again.

  “You out there, Dansby?” Ness called. “Listening? I regret what happened with the girl, man, but I’d thought — never mind. I’ll not go easy, you hear! Nor alone, neither!”

  Alexis stuck her flechette pistol around the console and fired.

  The thin, tiny darts of plastic stripped from a solid block and propelled down the barrel filled the compartment, clattering off bulkheads and consoles without doing much damage beyond a scratch. A few struck solidly enough to penetrate, as they would with flesh, and stuck out of the opposite bulkhead like quills.

  “That the best y’got, girl? Some little toothpicks? Come t’clean my teeth, have you?”

  “Give it up, Ness!” she yelled.