The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

“He sends a girl to do his work again?” Ness called back. “I’ll see that end the same as last time, I swear it!”

  Alexis cursed under her breath. Aside from the need to capture Ness, it was infuriating that the pirate cast everything in the light of that damned man Avrel Dansby. The bastard should be afraid of her for what she’d already done to his force — well, her and her lads, but it was no plan of Dansby’s that had brought them this far.

  The pirate captain was busy at something on the other side of the fusion plant. Alexis couldn’t fire too near that — not because her flechettes would do the thing any real damage, but because her firing at such a solid shield would likely only result in raising Ness’ spirits.

  Still, the man hadn’t fired back at her, nor had she seen him peek around the edges, which must mean his attention was elsewhere.

  Alexis glanced at the hatchway she’d entered by, wondering at where the rest of her crew had got to. She’d set Nabb to a task before following Ness and there was the matter of disarming and securing all of the pirates, yet surely, they’d have someone to follow her soon …

  Unless they hadn’t seen where she’d gone. She’d set Nabb on his task then flung herself away, and past the mass of pirates to follow Ness. It was possible they hadn’t noted where she’d gone … and she hadn’t ordered them to secure the ship, which they might have started to the fore, thinking she’d gone to Roebuck’s quarterdeck to start.

  Damn me.

  Alexis edged around the side of the console and peered across the space. There was no sign of Ness, but she could hear him moving about — the rasp of his vacsuit against itself and the slight tap of his boots as he moved — over the gentle hum of the machinery.

  Damn me twice, she thought again as she darted from cover and rushed across the compartment.

  Ness was hunched over a console, back to her, as she rounded the corner of the fusion plant.

  Alexis raised her flechette pistol and fired, but his suit was better armored than most. The tiny darts stuck, but didn’t penetrate to flesh, save in a few places, and those only shallowly.

  The pirate’s own reaction was swift.

  He spun to her even as he grasped his blade from atop the console and swung it in a wide arc, forcing Alexis to jump back.

  She fired again, holding the trigger down to send a steady stream of darts into the man’s suit, but with little more effect.

  She had to duck back again from the pirate’s backswing and drop her pistol as useless.

  Ness advanced on her, alternating stabbing and heavy chops with his short, wide blade, while she had barely time to interpose her own blade awkwardly with her left hand before taking the chance to switch to her right.

  She’d barely got a grip on it before Ness swatted it aside, twisting her wrist painfully, and catching her in the side with his return. It was a glancing blow, with the flat of his blade and not the edge, else she feared it would have gone through her vacsuit to the flesh beneath.

  His next blow caught her helmet, making her see stars even with the padding, and she dropped to the deck to roll away and gain some distance.

  Though Alexis loved an action, and a boarding, and the task of pitting her skills against another with all on the line — she did despise a vacsuit. She lacked the mass to face most men in a brute exchange of blows, relying instead on her size and speed. The bulky suit slowed her, though it did her opponent as well, and reduced her advantage.

  Ness advanced on her with slow, deliberate steps — blade held in guard, but ready to attack when near enough.

  Alexis came to her feet more slowly than she had to, hiding her speed and feigning more effects from the blow to her head. She took a step back, then another, nearly to the console she’d ducked behind on entering. The ring of consoles faced the room’s center, where the engineer of the watch would sit, so that he could face the man on each station. There was a bit of space between that console and the next, and a bit behind for the console’s seat and for a man to walk, but it was a tight space.

  Her hip hit the console’s edge and she adjusted to go between it and the next, which was when Ness lunged.

  He rushed straight for her, thinking her trapped between the consoles and seeking to overbear her with his weight and strength, but Alexis had counted on that. Even as he started forward, she was falling back and to the side, using all her speed now, recklessly, perhaps, in the bulky vacsuit, she scrambled back and to the side, flinging the console’s seat into Ness’ path to slow him.

  She rushed around the console’s far edge back into the compartment’s center, faster than Ness could follow and he did exactly as she wished.

  Foregoing an attempt to follow her, which would have been only a feint, he turned to return to the room’s center through the gap between consoles, but his size betrayed him. It was a space meant to access the console’s insides for repair when the ship was aired and at peace, not during an action with everyone in bulky vacsuits.

  Ness could turn, but only in mincing steps, and, now committed, couldn’t turn back without exposing his back to her for longer.

  Alexis lunged, sinking the tip of her blade through his back, then again and again as he turned. None were lethal wounds, the tough fabric of his vacsuit slowed her blade even as it made Ness slower than a normal vacsuit would, and penetrated no more than a few centimeters. She couldn’t even be certain that she’d got to the man’s flesh beneath his thick, bulky suit.

  She got her tip into his side next, as he turned, going in just above his hip and probing, hoping to disable him somehow.

  Ness lashed out with his own blade, having turned enough to strike at her, and she had to duck back again. He was free now, and advancing, with no visible sign of weakness from any wounds, so that Alexis had to wonder if her blade had made it through his vacsuit at all. Only a bit of blood mixed with the sealant that oozed from the cuts let her know the man must be hurt at least a little.

  A heavy swing from Ness’ sword forced her to back off farther and the pirate jerked at his vacsuit helmet to send it clanging along the deck towards the hatch.

  He was an older man than she’d expected, or appeared so in any case. Long hair streaked with grey and tied back in a queue, with a sharp, craggy face and a beard that mirrored Avrel Dansby’s goatee, if the trimming of that had been left to a barber both lazy and half-blind. All was damp with sweat from his exertions in the vacsuit, much as Alexis felt, and he gulped air.

  Alexis took the chance to toss her own helmet aside, giving up its protections, as Ness had, for a breath of more and better air. Heat from her activity was drawing out some of the older odors from her vacsuit, as well as some new ones that seemed to have crept in from Erzurum’s swamps, and the dry, cool air of Roebuck’s engineering spaces was welcome.

  “Who are ya, girl?” Ness asked, then darted his sword forward.

  Alexis swatted the thick, heavy tip aside with her thinner blade and circled to the right, Ness turning to follow.

  “Captain Alexis Carew, commanding HMS Mongoose,” she said, probing his defenses.

  Ness beat her attack aside, but made no counter.

  The pirate snorted derision. “I know that ship —”

  Their blades clanged together, then rasped as they closed. Alexis couldn’t hope to overpower the larger man, not unless she could get him off balance, so disengaged.

  “— an’ it’s not Royal Navy. Wouldn’t ever be, that one.” Ness shot a glance at the closed hatch. “He not here, though? Really?”

  “No, damn you,” Alexis said, “It’s me you should be fearing.”

  “Disappointing, that.” Ness laughed. “No, lass, it’s you an’ yours should fear — battle’s lost an’ you’ll take me, but I’ll take another o’ Dansby’s girls and one last ship with me.”

  Their blades met again, but she felt Ness was merely playing with her now and she considered his words until a chill ran through her.

  Alexis disengaged again and looked to the console the pir
ate had been at when she’d entered. Controls for the fusion plant, which now displayed a countdown and gave off a steady beeping. A scuttling charge, leaving time, if they knew, for a crew to abandon the ship in their boats, but that time now half gone.

  Ness laughed again. “Guessin’ I’ll have t’ see the man himself in Hell.”

  Alexis launched herself at him, blade, elbows, knees, anything she could throw a blow with, all blocked by the pirate who displayed far more skill than she’d expected. He merely deflected her attacks and backed away laughing.

  Even if she’d had her helmet on still, she couldn’t have warned her crew, for the gundeck and much of the rest of the ship was so open to darkspace that no signal would get through. Her only chance was to take Ness down and then either stop the process, though she was certain he’d locked the console, or get her lads off Roebuck and far enough away.

  His blade scraped her forehead and blood sheeted her vision. She had to shake her head to fling it away, but more returned.

  Ness laughed again. “Come, lass, just wait it out. We’ll go together, shall we? Y’can spend yer time in Hell with me.”

  Alexis bound his blade and was able to leverage it aside, then whip her own at his face on the return. It might have done for him, but the high collar of his vacsuit deflected it to slice along his ear and cheek instead of through.

  “Take my ear!” Ness cried, laughing harder. “Like that mad dog o’ his, Presgraves, sent me? Oh, you bring back memories, girl! Keep ‘em in boxes t’talk to on lonely nights, you know —” He lunged, setting off a flurry of blows that drove Alexis back. “—along with that crazy bint’s head!”

  The pirate leader was clearly mad, Alexis determined, once they’d both circled and backed off once more. Still she thought there was a long session of questions with, perhaps, several bottles of bourbon in Avrel Dansby’s future.

  And a pistol to his head if he proves reluctant, but I’ll know about these ears and heads and whatnots..

  “Almost time,” Ness said with a glance at the fusion plant’s console.

  “There’s no need for that, Ness,” Alexis said. “Time enough to save yourself and your crew.”

  Ness snorted and stood, almost relaxed, waiting for her to move. “Bugger my crew — a more worthless bunch of whoresons I’ve never seen. Not like the old days, not like the start. No, girl, I’m old and don’t care no more —”

  Ness whipped his blade at her, unexpected after his casual, almost careless, stance. The heavy cutlass cut through her vacsuit above her left elbow and into the flesh beneath. He jerked it back, twisting so as open the tear in both suit and arm. Sealant and blood oozed out to fill gap, and her arm burned.

  “Careless, girl.”

  Alexis attacked, knowing her opponent would take a moment to gloat over getting a blow in and expect her to take one to recover. She leapt toward him as he backed away, knocking her left elbow, despite the pain from her wound, and the slightly stronger suit material there into the side of his blade as he raised it. She grasped the back of his blade near the guard. That got her inside his reach and she swung hard, not at his exposed head, but at his left leg where he had his weight as he stepped back.

  His vacsuit was strong, but not enough. Her blow cut through the suit, then sliced into the flesh beneath as she drew it back.

  Ness pulled against her grip on his sword, but she went with it instead of resisting, sliding her own blade back along the cut, the sharp edge slicing deeper, like carving slices from a Christmas roast.

  The pirate captain screamed and clubbed at her with his free hand, knocking her in the head again and again, but she kept her grip. With every blow and every movement she sliced at Ness’ leg until her blade grated against bone.

  Ness grasped her face and no matter how she twisted he got his rough gloved thumb into her eye, forcing Alexis to back and twist away, but she sliced with her blade as she did, angling down so as to bite into new flesh in the pirate’s leg, carving along the bone to separate a slab of flesh.

  He staggered back, left leg weak and not bearing his weight.

  “You rotting bitch,” he muttered through a tight jaw, clenched at the pain.

  Alexis backed further, trying to catch her breath and looking for another opening. A quick glance at the fusion plant’s console showed time was running out and, though she knew it couldn’t be the case, she felt it was growing hotter in the compartment. Sweat ran down her face and her left eye was puffing up from where Ness had dug his thumb in.

  She took another step back and something rattled on the deck. A quick glance down showed that her boot had knocked against her discarded flechette pistol. It might have been useless against Ness at the start of this fight, but now he’d removed his helmet and no longer had the full protection of his armored vacsuit.

  The pirate saw it at the same time and howled — that was the only word for it — raising his sword in both hands and rushing her with a lurching, knee-buckling gait as his injured leg gave way with every step.

  Alexis reached down, transferred her blade to her left hand, and grasped the pistol. She rolled to the side, to Ness’ right, forcing him to put more weight on his injured left leg to make the turn, and brought the pistol up as she came to her knees. The grip vibrated as she pulled the trigger, telling her there was little of the thermoplastic block the thing stripped its darts from left.

  Those darts pattered against Ness’ vacsuited chest, then up to pepper his neck and face as he reached her.

  She barely had time to raise her own blade and that only deflected his. The flats of both still came down on her head, making her vision blur.

  Alexis rolled again, this time to her right, then again to get behind Ness and fire as he made his lumbering turn. Darts peppered the back of his skull, but none with enough force to fully penetrate the thick bone. They’d do well enough with thin bones of a foot or knee, but really needed to strike soft tissue to do damage to a person.

  Soft tissue like that covering Ness’ face, Alexis saw as the pirate turned.

  He must have turned his head, for she’d missed his eye, but darts stood out on the side of his face and blood poured over his cheek and ear from those higher in his head.

  Alexis raised the pistol to fire again and finish the man now that she could see his eye clearly, but the pistol was done with warning and demanded a fresh block of thermoplastic.

  Ness, shuffling horror that he was, charged again before she could even think of the magazines tucked into her vacsuit pouches.

  She holstered the pistol automatically and gripped her blade, timing his approach with it raised as though to block his heavy, over-handed swing again, then lunged upward from her knees. Under his blow, not so high as to strike his face, she put all of her forty-five kilos of mass into it, plus the five or so of her vacsuit, driving them with all the force her legs and arms could add.

  The tip of her blade struck Ness in the belly, his own momentum added to it, and the point pierced his vacsuit to the flesh beneath, digging deep.

  Pain screamed through her injured arm as she forced it to add to her lunge.

  Alexis threw her weight into him offsetting his lunge and driving him back. She pushed him across the compartment, Ness’ every other step staggering and jerking on his injured leg so that her blade sawed at his insides. The tip of her blade punched through the back of his vacsuit as they came up against a console. The lip of that took Ness in the hip, bending him backward over it and the force drove her blade through the console’s glass top and into its insides.

  Sparks flew, and some smoke billowed out, but not enough to shock either her or Ness, whatever she might wish.

  Ness’ hands clubbed at Alexis’ head, weak and ineffectual blows. He’d dropped his own blade somewhere in that last shove across the compartment.

  Alexis stepped back, panting. Her body felt weak, drained of all energy, as though it recognized her foe was done for and the fight over. Then she heard the continued beeping of the f
usion plant’s console, the very console she’d just driven Ness into, and new energy flooded her.

  Ness smiled at her with red-stained teeth. He had to spit blood to clear his mouth.

  “Yer too late,” he laughed. “Can’t stop it.”

  Fifty-Five

  Alexis rushed from the compartment.

  She didn’t bother with her blade or the console under Ness, the one wasn’t worth the time and the other was clearly ruined, though the incessant beeping told her the last command entered was still in force.

  She paused only to grasp her vacsuit helmet, sealing it in place as she left the engineering compartment.

  There was no one in the companionway, they were still all on the gundeck in the process of disarming and restraining the surrendered pirates. Had her fight with Ness truly taken so little time? And how much time did she, they all, have left?

  She tried to estimate with what she’d seen of the countdown and how long she’d fought with Ness, but, as usual, a fight seemed to have taken forever in her mind and she couldn’t think why the fusion plant hadn’t already blown, turning them all to a bit of light that would brighten darkspace for a few moments before fading to nothing.

  She grasped the first man from Mongoose she found and touched her helmet to his.

  “There y’are, sir — Nabb were lookin’ fer —”

  “Belay that!” Alexis yelled. “Pass the word — evacuate this ship and cut Mongoose loose! Their fusion plant’s about to blow!”

  It took no more than that. Every spacer knew what a blown fusion plant meant and the man passed the word to another, then two more, then four and eight and so on. Even to the captured pirates, though Mongoose’s crew made sure to strip those of what weapons hadn’t been tossed aside to float about the deck.

  In a moment, the tide of men taking Roebuck reversed to stream out the ship’s locks and through holes in her hull to make the leap to Mongoose.

  “Pass the word!” Alexis said to another. “Cut the ship free — chop down the masts if you must, and prepare to pull her away!”