It went well at first. The eight dragoons in the vanguard peeled away rather than face down the incoming fire, which left the lead carrier exposed. In went the missiles, targeted by energy pulses and other flashy countermeasures. One missile got through, and it looked like the Mark-IV torpedoes would rumble in behind and deliver a real blow. But a methodical burst of outgoing countermeasure fire blasted them apart, one after the other. The final torpedo detonated only a few hundred yards short of its target.
Another Blackbeard missile got through, landing a small blow across the enemy’s broad deck. Something shimmered on its surface, and suddenly the enemy carrier came into focus on the viewscreen as the cloaking melted away like cobwebs in a rainstorm.
The star fortress was several hundred yards in length, at least twice as long as Blackbeard. It was bulbous and whale-like through the midsection, with two huge, flipper-like appendages carrying multiple small plasma engines on each one. To Tolvern’s eye, they looked too small to push a ship of that mass through a jump point, not while carrying a half-dozen dragoons.
Most unusually, a donut-like torus of energy ringed the hull midway and sent pulses of energy down the length of the ship, making the whole thing glow with ghostly blue light.
Any hope that it was solely a carrier, designed to carry dragoons through the jumps and then act defensively while the smaller, destroyer-sized ships committed the bulk of the violence, vanished as Tolvern took in its bristling assortment of exposed guns, bomb arrays, missile bays, and the like. It was packing serious firepower, which it hadn’t yet brought into action.
“What is that ring?” she asked.
“Some sort of shield generator,” Smythe said. “The dragoons have them, too. Looks like it hardens the tyrillium. The armor is only a few inches thick.”
“That would explain how they can pull ships that size through the jumps,” she said. “It’s not carrying as much mass as it looks.”
There had to be something she could do with that information.
A second star fortress approached from some distance behind, dragging the final three dragoons along with it. Meanwhile, the lead dragoons swung around for another attack. Tolvern had to act quickly or she’d be facing them in a combined attack.
“Charge the lead carrier. Bring us into range of the main battery.”
Blackbeard accelerated, and the floor vibrated as antigrav compensated. The star fortress let loose with a barrage of missiles and bomblets. Tolvern responded with missiles from her own ship and a torpedo wave from Warthog.
Three dragoons closed from above her, charging in at an angle, and this time she let loose with the Hunter-IIs to keep them at bay. These were smaller torpedoes, but with countermeasures and speed. The dragoons made a lazy attempt to shoot them down, no doubt thinking them more of the Mark-IVs, but that failed.
Suddenly, they were flailing about as four torpedoes bore down relentlessly. The dragoons split apart, and the torpedoes found a single target. It tried one last, desperate dive toward the gas giant the crew was calling the Toad.
The first torpedo slammed into the dragoon’s engines. Two more struck it blows across the upper deck. The final one caught it aft as it attempted to skip across the atmosphere and regain outer space. The engine sputtered and blew plasma, and the ship failed to escape the Toad’s gravity well. It went down in a series of explosions.
A lusty cheer went up across the bridge. Capp pumped her fist. “Oh, yeah!” She leaned over to give Nyb Pim a friendly punch on the shoulder, and he hummed in delight. Smythe, Lomelí, Ping, and Kiper exchanged high fives.
The celebration was well out of proportion to the scope of the victory, but it left them pumped up, Tolvern included. They’d needed that one.
The first star fortress loomed. It let loose a barrage of kinetic shot. But not so heavy as what Blackbeard could manage. She swung wide and presented the twenty-two guns of the main battery. A belch and roar of fire as they let loose.
Penetrating shot. For ripping holes in thick armor. How would they fare against the thinner, but energy-field-reinforced armor of the star fortress?
Blackbeard shuddered under the enemy’s incoming shot. Jane came on, telling in her calm voice about damage to the number three, number four, and number seven shields. The four was down to sixty-two percent after that single blow. Tolvern swore.
She called the gunnery. “Pull back, let loose with the explosive shot in the secondary.”
“We didn’t get through that first time,” Barker said, his voice like gravel scraped across steel. “The explosive won’t do much good.”
“We can’t win this one, you know. We can only show them what we’re capable of. Make them hesitate when they come after us.”
“Aye, Captain,” Barker said.
“More penetrating in the main battery.”
She had a different target in mind for the main battery next time. Warthog had drifted above them and was trading blows with the dragoons as they charged in to get at Blackbeard’s flank. Warthog had taken more damage than she’d delivered, unfortunately, but one of the dragoons was sitting there slugging it out with her, and taking damage near the bridge.
Tolvern spotted an opening, and Nyb Pim slipped them through the gap. The secondary battery went off, blasting the star carrier even as it fired another blow. Blackbeard twisted out of the way and found itself face-to-face with Warthog’s opponent, the enemy bridge facing them full on.
“Main battery!”
The big guns roared once more. The dragoon tried desperately to turn about. Blackbeard’s cannon shot tore into her, and explosions detonated above the bridge, bursting through the skin in a trail of fire that ran the extent of the smaller ship. The torus exploded, and then the engine blew. The enemy ship drifted away, venting gas and debris.
Blackbeard could have finished the dragoon fight in five more minutes, but she was desperately accelerating to get away from the star fortress’s renewed onslaught. Jane was worked up now, reporting a constant stream of damage reports until Tolvern had to turn off the AI to cut the distraction. Let engineering handle that.
She blasted through the icy ring surrounding the gas giant and used the planet to shield their starboard flank. Warthog hugged close above, firing a relentless barrage of missiles and torpedoes to keep the star carrier and dragoons at arm’s length.
Wang was still in position below, silently tracking them in the upper atmosphere of the planet. Bilboa remained behind, the stripped-down hull motionless above one of the smaller planets. The converted freighter was perfectly positioned to use as heavy support. Had the enemy spotted her?
Meanwhile, the other star carrier lumbered forward from behind the Toad’s third moon, still pulling three dragoons, with only Carvalho’s harassing fire to slow them. He’d been in combat for several hours now, and while he hadn’t lost any more falcons after that initial skirmish, neither was he having much effect on the battle.
“Time to reel our falcons in,” she told Capp. “And don’t let our brawler drift too far, either. It’s about to get crazy here. Smythe, call Wang. Let’s pull out all the stops.”
Blackbeard and Warthog dropped mines, countermeasures, missiles, and torpedoes as they withdrew toward the second moon. This held off the first star fortress, and some of the dragoons, but there was nothing to stop the relentless approach of the second. Tolvern launched more missiles to keep the first star fortress occupied, while making it look like she was charging the second to challenge it in a straight-up fight.
That second carrier let loose a burst of countermeasures, even though Blackbeard wasn’t attacking. Seconds later, it fired three separate waves of bomblets in what seemed like random directions. Several of the bridge crew, including Capp and Smythe, looked gleeful.
“Getting kinda hot, ain’t it,” Capp said.
“They’re definitely feeling it,” Smythe said. “And they have no idea where it’s coming from.”
Taken in isolation, war junks were modestly effe
ctive warships. Singapore had been a single planet of roughly a hundred million people when Apex targeted it for extermination, and it had survived largely through hiding, detection, and the use of devastating defensive weaponry: sentinel battle stations, eliminon batteries, plasma ejectors, and concentrated energy weapons to soften enemy armor.
It was the energy beams that Wang was hitting the second star carrier with, and the Adjudicators had taken note. Blackbeard was still in the fight, still at full power, her cannons proven, and one of their carriers was losing armor strength from some unknown source lurking next to the Toad. The other carrier sent pair of dragoons into the atmosphere, hunting. If they found Wang’s ships, she was dead.
Blackbeard and Warthog continued forward as if to engage Wang’s target, then Tolvern ordered them to swing around. The inertia controller struggled against the violent change in velocity. Blackbeard now faced the first star fortress, which had been hunting Wang and picking its way through the newly laid minefield.
Blackbeard’s main battery roared. Heavy Mark-IVs lumbered from all tubes.
Kinetic and explosive fire hammered the bow of the oncoming ship even as she responded in kind. A dragoon got caught in the crossfire and struggled to get free. Blackbeard had struck first and struck hardest, but Tolvern watched in dismay as the star fortress pulled back with minimal damage.
The second star fortress was lurking directly behind them, readying all weapon systems to hit Blackbeard without so much as Warthog to protect her, since the brawler was busy fighting off yet another dragoon charge. The brawler’s muscular shields were showing signs of giving out, especially in the rear, near the engines.
The second star fortress, apparently determining that the engine-softening from the war junks was irrelevant so long as it was taking no fire, continued forward, eager to engage. It passed beneath Bilboa, hitherto motionless. No engines, even auxiliary shut off. Tolvern gave the order.
Green blobs of plasma squirted in streams from the ejectors installed across the hull of the former merchant ship. The star fortress, focused as it was on closing with the Albion battle cruiser, didn’t notice the incoming attack until it was too late.
Green fire enveloped the enemy carrier. One of the engine fins broke off and detonated. The torus flared blue. Green and blue light warred along her skin in waves of pulsing energy. Tolvern braced herself for the whole ship to explode, yet hardly dared hope.
And then the plasma attack sputtered and dribbled away into the void. The star fortress had lost engines on one side of the ship, had taken heavy damage, but was still intact.
Tolvern had been prepared for that, and intended to use the chaos following the attack to get Warthog down to Bilbao and rescue the crew when the enemy ship withdrew to lick its wounds. She wouldn’t get another shot from Bilbao, not in time, not with enemy reinforcements racing in from the jump point.
Unfortunately, the Adjudicator commander kept his nerve and didn’t flee. The star fortress withdrew to the second moon, where he probed about, looking for Bilbao. And shortly found her.
Missiles raced outward, supported by dragoon fire, and before Tolvern’s brawler had crossed half the distance to rescue the crew from the mobile platform, the former merchant ship detonated in a violent explosion. Twenty-seven men, women, and Hroom crew on board. Killed instantly.
It was a horrifying loss, but Tolvern had no time to dwell on it. She had to bring Warthog back. The brawler made a desperate retreat under heavy fire. Her shields were in tatters, and she barely made it to Blackbeard before dragoons ran her down. Tethers came out, snared the mother ship, and pulled in tight. Blackbeard fought off the dragoon attack with rolling fire from the main battery.
The cannon attack bought Tolvern some space and shielded her bays while Carvalho’s falcons came streaking in, one after another. A dragoon pounced on the final two ships, and only quick action from the gunnery held it off with missiles and the chase gun long enough to get the falcons docked. The last striker in proved to be Carvalho himself. Capp’s cursing seemed mostly cheerful when she found out.
“You’ve got a course?” Tolvern asked Nyb Pim.
“Yes, Captain. Assuming the engines we pulled from Bilbao are up to the task.”
“Send it down and get us out of here.”
#
They left Wang behind. There was no choice in the matter. Her lighter ships couldn’t match Blackbeard’s acceleration, and she’d either be hunted down by dragoons and blasted or the battle cruiser would be forced to provide escort while suffering fire from carriers and dragoons.
The Adjudicators seemed to know Wang was down there, and the more heavily damaged of the two star fortresses—the one crippled purely by Singaporean tech, first the concentrated energy beams and then the plasma ejector—remained in orbit around the Toad with two dragoons. They nosed through the upper atmosphere as Blackbeard got clear and raced for freedom. Wang’s only hope was to remain perfectly silent and still and slip away at a later date, when the enemy’s attention flagged.
Blackbeard continued to suffer blows as the remaining star fortress and her dragoons maintained a long-range attack. The enemy ships—both the pursuers and the new arrivals—were positioned to block her retreat through several of Fortaleza’s jump points, but Nyb Pim had identified a likely escape hatch.
Taking that route would mean a series of jumps, possibly taking them into the path of another enemy fleet. There seemed to be plenty of them scouring the inner frontier and pushing into Alliance-controlled territory. But she had little choice in the matter.
She sent Capp off, as she’d already doubled up on her shift and would be needed to spell Tolvern when she finally collapsed, which left Ping Hao in the first mate’s chair. Ping was a smart, capable young man, but his nerves seemed shot, and he couldn’t stop analyzing every damage report as it came in.
“Stop obsessing about the numbers,” she said. “Your first task is to get those bulkheads sealed. Make sure engineering has what they need.”
“What about the number four shield?” Ping asked. “It’s at eighteen percent. One more hit on the four and it’s going to penetrate to the armory. Then we’re done for.”
“We’re at the extreme edge of their range,” Tolvern explained patiently. “And there’s nothing we can do to repair the shields at this moment anyway, so it’s a lot of worry for nothing. The chance of a stray missile getting through and hitting the four at just the right spot is a hundred to one.”
“But, Captain—”
“Lieutenant, we can’t fire the main battery until the bulkhead is sealed. That means no jump. I’ll risk jumping with damaged shields, but I won’t enter an unknown system toothless. Now get on it!”
“Yes, sir.”
The jump Nyb Pim was taking them toward was technically a yellow, which was dangerous, but the numbers were close enough to blue, and the situation desperate enough, that she’d go through without hesitation. Once there, drop mines, make a run for the next jump, and so on. They were in the right neighborhood; it wasn’t long until they found themselves back in the system with a doorway into Castillo.
The enemy ships were still pursuing, but they’d fallen behind. Blackbeard was winning the race. The last few missiles sputtered short and gave out. An hour later, engineering reported that Tolvern’s ship had stopped venting gasses. Shortly after that, Barker got the main battery back online.
Tolvern was in the clear. She’d survived to fight another day.
Chapter Fifteen
Even before he met the man, Svensen decided that Captain Edward McGowan was a pompous buffoon. Peerless’s war room was done up like a lord’s personal study, boasting dark hardwood bookshelves, a massive oak table with heavy swiveling chairs, and most ridiculously, a faux stone fireplace at the far end. The stone looked real enough, but when Svensen tapped it, it turned out to be molded plastic.
He grinned at Lieutenant Kelly. “Can you imagine lighting a fire on a starship? What are you going to do, poke a
chimney out of the bridge and huff smoke into outer space?”
“I saw a working fireplace on a ship once,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Lord Malthorne. It was a gas fireplace made to look like wood. I assume it was properly vented, and not into space.”
Svensen was baffled. “Why?”
“These aristocrats like to feel at home.”
“Are you one of them?”
“An aristocrat?” she said. “Heavens, no.”
He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. Neither had delved into their past, nor pried, for that matter. She hadn’t pressed any harder into his Mercian accent, and he didn’t inquire how she’d learned Scandian so fluently.
The room had a smoky smell, and Svensen discovered a pipe in a small box on the shelf, together with a small canister of tobacco. He was of a mind to light it.
“What are you doing?” she said. “You don’t mess with a man’s pipe.”
The door hissed open, and McGowan appeared just as Svensen clamped the box shut and turned around. McGowan looked them over, scowling at one then the other.
“Are you going to translate for this Viking?” he asked Kelly.
“He speaks English, sir.”
“Does he, now? We’ll see. Sit down.”
They did so. McGowan gingerly eased himself into the chair on the opposite side of the table, as if he had an injury in his thigh or buttock. The wrappings had disappeared from around his forehead, but a pink, raw gash ran from his hairline to his right eyebrow and glistened with a liquid bandage. Word had it the enemy had killed a third of his crew in the fight, not to mention all the other ships destroyed.
“I don’t have to tell you we’re in a bad spot,” McGowan said. “And your poor preparations don’t help matters. Your base is pathetic, your yards nonexistent.”
“What were you expecting?” Svensen said. “The Odense spaceyards? We had two weeks and whatever we were carrying in our hold. We slapped together what we could.”
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