Tolvern put her hands behind her head and thought of the negotiations with Drake using Lucy Pearson’s plastic ship tokens. Drake had made a mistake in holding back her corvettes—she was sure of that now.
“If only I had a dozen of them, I’d tangle with those carriers and let the corvettes sort it out with the dragoons.”
But she didn’t, and so she couldn’t. All she could do was skirmish, escape, skirmish, escape.
Four days? Okay, so completing repairs on the fly, while hiding their actions from the enemy could not be done in four, but surely six. Vargus’s eight seemed overly pessimistic.
Even six days . . . those carriers in Heaven’s Gate could get here in less time than that. And with so many missing dragoons . . . all it would take was a single ambush and by the time she fought it off, Bravo and Foxtrot would be in the thick of the action.
Tolvern had mentally boxed herself into a corner when Smythe called from the bridge. “Eh, Captain, sorry to wake you.”
“Go on, Lieutenant,” she said wearily. “You know I wasn’t asleep.”
“We got a subspace from Algernon Fox. Update on his position. You should take a look.”
“Summarize, please.”
“It’s got a lot of info, sir.”
“He’s, what? Six systems away? How much info could he send across that distance?”
“That’s the thing, Captain. He’s not. He’s about to jump into Moscow. Probably.”
Tolvern sat up straight. “What are you talking about? What do you mean probably?”
“Apparently Pearson found a matching jump point for Moscow. A shortcut. He’s way out ahead of where we thought he’d be.”
“Lucy Pearson? Former captain of Vigilant? The one who commanded so ineptly in Nebuchadnezzar? That Pearson?”
“Apparently so. Maybe she’s back in command, and Drake is on Dreadnought.”
All of that was speculation, and irrelevant to the discussion. “What do you mean, probably?” she pressed.
“It’s still a subspace, even if it only crossed one system. You’d better take a look for yourself and see if I’ve read it accurately.”
She grabbed her hand computer and parsed the subspace. Yes, she thought Smythe had. Fox’s armada, let by HMS Citadel and several lighter cruisers, was only a few days from jumping into Lenin. Five, six days, tops.
Finally. A bit of good luck for a change. Tolvern no longer had to face the possibility of abandoning Void Queen to her death. Instead, they only had to hold this system for a week, then take the fight to the enemy.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lars Olafsen strutted into the command room of Boghammer like he owned it. His second, a hulking figure named Björnman, squeezed through the door after him. Björnman staked a position in the center of the room with his arms crossed while Olafsen walked around, glaring at this thing and that. The scar curving from his forehead to his upper cheek—neatly bypassing the eye—gave him a menacing air.
Svensen watched them with a hard gaze. Resentful. A raider commander didn’t swagger like that on another man’s ship. Back in the old raiding, plague days, that sort of behavior would have started a fight.
Still, when Lund and Jörvak clenched their teeth and looked ready to burst out with something imprudent, Svensen made a calming motion with his good hand. Let’s see what this pair was up to first.
“It’s a fine ship, Svensen,” Olafsen said at last.
“Yes. It is.”
“Your guns were on target. You maneuvered well. Couple of dragoons had you pinched, but you gave the ghouls the slip. Good men on board.”
“We fought as expected.” Svensen’s anger softened, and it took effort to maintain his glower.
“Course, I heard you had a woman on board for a while. A Lieutenant Kelly or some such. Albion signal officer. Bad luck, you know.”
Svensen couldn’t hold his tongue. “Is that what happened to Bloodaxe? A woman? Must have—your ship died, didn’t it?”
Anger flared in Olafsen’s eyes, and Björnman actually growled, low and feral like a bear. Then Olafsen sighed deeply.
“Come on,” Olafsen said. “I have a gift for you, but I’m not going to share it with this rabble.”
Svensen raised his eyebrows and followed Olafsen as the commander of the First Wolves pushed into the council room. As the door slid shut behind them, Olafsen reached into his vest and removed a small bottle.
“Care for a drink?”
“Depends, what have you got?”
“Schnapps.” Olafsen grinned, big white teeth appearing in his thick beard. “Stolen from the liquor cabinet on Peerless a few months back.”
“McGowan? That pompous, stuffed-up aristocrat? What were you doing there?”
“Stealing his liquor, of course.” Olafsen gave a dismissive hand wave. “And some other tedious meetings and garbage. McGowan is a boor, but the man knows his booze. I’ve been waiting for a chance to break it out. Not every Scandian can appreciate this stuff, but I’ll bet you can. Grab a couple of glasses from your cabinet and take a seat.”
Svensen did so. The schnapps had a kick, but was smooth. A burn, followed by a hint of fruit on the tongue.
“Sorry you lost your ship,” Svensen said.
Olafsen grumbled and leaned back in his chair. “That again? Don’t remind me.”
“That’s what this is about, right? You didn’t come over to share a drink. It’s something about your ship. You’re going to swipe someone else’s, someone from the Fourth Wolves, am I right?”
The other man didn’t say anything, and Svensen pressed on, sure he was on the right track.
“The First Wolves is down two ships. So you’ll take one of mine, cart it over, and then we’ll each have five. Who did you want, Loki? That’s the newest ship, the youngest commander—you might think it’s an easy grab. But he’s a Helsingor, his cousin commands Icefall. He won’t give up his star wolf, and he’ll have friends to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Olafsen drained his schnapps and poured another. “This stuff is meant to be sipped, but I’m a fast drinker. Look, you’re half right. I can’t command the wolves without a ship.”
“Tolvern ran her bridge from a temporary command center when Blackbeard got smashed up early in the war. I’ll wager it’s still set up, too. Wonder if she’d let you do it from there.”
“By all the icy hells, no,” Olafsen said. “I’m not going to be pacing some stupid Albion ship, down on some fake bridge.”
“You’re not getting Loki, that’s all I know,” Svensen said.
He could only imagine the uproar even suggesting such a thing. Imagine if Olafsen tried to take Boghammer—the knives would be out, that was for blasted sure. And if Svensen wouldn’t go for it, neither would anyone else.
Olafsen gave him a hard look. The scar twitched as muscles moved in his forehead and cheek. “Wasn’t Loki that caught my eye. Like I said, Boghammer is a fine ship.”
Svensen took a sip. “You’re funny.”
“I’m not making a joke.”
Svensen sprang to his feet and drew the dagger he wore at his belt. He pointed it at the door. “Out!”
Olafsen drew a sidearm, set it on the table, and slid it away from him. “Don’t have a dagger, but there’s my weapon. You’ll have to stab me unarmed.”
“I’m not giving you my ship.”
“I’m not trying to take it.”
“The devil you aren’t.”
Olafsen flicked a fingernail against the schnapps bottle. “Sit down, have another drink.”
“There’s no amount of liquor—”
“I know, you idiot. Take a drink and listen—it all makes perfect sense, I promise.”
Svensen sheathed his knife with a grunt. He sat down and rubbed the end of his stump arm while eyeing the other man suspiciously. “No more drinking until I know what you’re scheming.”
“Tolvern already gave me the option of her fake bridge—and I almost took it. I was in an awa
y pod on Void Queen, waiting to be flung over and feeling about as low as something you’d scrape off the bottom of your boot. Last time I’d been in an away pod, I was looking through the port while the ghouls tore my ship apart. Lost a lot of good men that day.”
Svensen felt a twinge of sympathy. “That must have been rough.”
“Rough?” A bitter chuckle. “That’s a weak word for what I went through. Hope you never face that day, friend. But I knew Tolvern was right. I have to command from somewhere. I can’t sit around moping or worse, let them drop me in stasis until some day comes—or doesn’t—when I get back to Odense or Viborg. So I convinced Vargus to send me here instead.”
“We’re back to you trying to steal Boghammer.”
Olafsen slammed his fist on the table. The glasses jumped. “I’m not trying to steal your stupid ship!”
Svensen steadied the bottle of schnapps. “Easy.”
The other man took a deep breath and seemed to calm. “I only want a console and a side screen. Björnman and I will run fleet operations from there—run the First and Fourth as a single pack—while you do everything on your own ship. Without interference.” He drew a forearm across his chest. “I swear it by the old gods.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“I know. I wouldn’t either, if I were you. But I need this, Svensen. I need it, and we’re only three hours from combat, so there’s not much time. Tolvern’s got us throwing up a ghost fleet, then coming in for a hard attack on one of those two star fortresses. Remember what happened when you took on the ghouls in Castillo?
“We knocked a star fortress out of the fight.”
“Yeah, and you lost ships, too. And a whole lot of raiders. We’re looking at the same thing here. Point is, we’re running out of time, and I’ve got to be in command. And not from a million miles away, either, from right in the action.”
“But why here? Why not one of your own ships? What about Frost Giant? The commander is a friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“He’s a friend, yeah, and also an idiot. I can’t trust any of those fools. Svensen, you know how to do this already. You had that Albion lady, you managed.”
Svensen closed his eyes. Elizabeth Kelly. Maybe she really was bad luck. Never mind that she was thirty light years away, and he couldn’t get her out of his mind, but here Olafsen was using her as an opening to worm his way onto Boghammer.
“I’m not blaming you for what happened,” Olafsen said. “I see the appeal. I half fell in love with Tolvern’s second back when we were fighting the buzzards.”
“Huh? The one with the shaved head and the Albion tattoos?”
“Yeah, name is Capp. First mate on Blackbeard.”
“I know who she is, but . . . why?”
“She’s got fire, and—” Olafsen glared. “What are you saying? You criticizing my taste?”
Svensen thought it best to deflect. “Nah, it’s just that she has a man already.”
“Not a real man. Only one of those sissy pirates from the wrong side of the frontier.”
Ronaldo Carvalho was a striker pilot, wasn’t he? Couldn’t be lacking in guts and, well, manliness. He’d done some fighting planetside once or twice, too, from what Svensen knew of him.
He sighed and poured himself more schnapps. Olafsen’s eyes widened as he filled his glass to the rim.
“That’s not some grunt’s moonshine you’re drinking, Svensen. You know how much that stuff costs?”
“I’ll be sure to ask Captain McGowan when I see him,” Svensen said. “Besides, I’m not much one for sipping, either. Fine, you can set up here. But this is my ship, right? You command the star wolf fleet, but you do not give orders to my bridge, my gunnery, or my engineering.”
Olafsen grabbed for the schnapps and matched Svensen’s pour. The bottle was already half empty. “Time to finish this, friend.”
“The war or the drink?”
Olafsen held up his glass and clinked it against Svensen’s. “Both.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tolvern held out for a good stretch before the enemy forced a real engagement. She began by making a run for the jump point to Moscow. The Adjudicators were expecting it, and had set a trap ahead of her path, with Bravo on one side, Foxtrot on the other, and a web of dragoons in the middle. To get to the jump, she’d have to break through the dragoons with her fleet before the two star fortresses slammed down on her.
If Void Queen had been able to jump, she might have tried in spite of the odds. But with Blackbeard’s sister ship stuck in Lenin, she was only pretending to attempt the jump point. Instead, as she drew near, she had Olafsen’s combined fleet of ten star wolves send a ghost signal out to the jump, as if Alliance reinforcements had arrived.
This forced the enemy to shift position, and in turn Nyb Pim charted a nifty dive that swung them past a couple of dragoons on their way to break free. Several destroyers got in a brief skirmish on the flanks with the enemy ships before the dragoons beat a hasty retreat. By the time the enemy closed ranks, the Alliance ships had slipped free.
Tolvern raced back across Lenin in the opposite direction. There was a yellow jump point on the other side, only sixty-four percent stable, just this side of red. The enemy made as if to follow, but at a distance, and that was a good warning, even if Tolvern had been serious about jumping. Something bad was on the other side of that jump, or maybe that direction was where the missing dragoons were hidden.
Instead, she turned about, running a wide loop in solar orbit around the red giant at a radius of 182 million miles. When she crossed around the back side of the star, with the enemy forces in pursuit, she bought a brief window of twenty or thirty minutes where her fleet was out of sight of the enemy. She shed a war junk and the ten remaining star wolves, who cloaked and moved away at an angle from the rest of the fleet.
Olafsen sent a final message from Boghammer, where he’d set up command under Svensen’s uneasy eye. “Screw these tactics, let’s just fight these ghouls and get it done with.”
“We’re going to fight soon enough,” Tolvern said. “How about we do so under conditions most favorable to our side?”
“Who you talking to, Cap’n?” Capp asked. “The video ain’t on and that bloke has gone dark anyhow.”
“I’m talking to you, Capp,” Tolvern said. “And anyone else who is questioning why we’re on the run when our forces match theirs in strength.” She gave the first mate a hard look. “Weren’t you one of them?”
“I never said that. Only said that it had been a long time since we were in the thick of it and I was looking forward to getting shot at again.”
“I’m doing my best to shed the HMS Battered label.”
“Yeah, but we don’t wanna be called, um, Bashful, neither. That’s what they’re saying.”
“No, they’re not. You just made that up. I heard it in your voice.”
“But they might. I don’t wanna be taken for no coward, yeah?”
“If anyone calls you that, I will personally challenge them to a duel,” Tolvern said, then laughed at Capp’s sour expression.
In truth, the captain was feeling good. Thirty-two hours had passed since she’d got the subspace saying Fox was only five or six days out from Lenin. If she could stay clear of the enemy until he arrived, they’d make hash of these two star fortresses and dominate the system until Drake arrived with the final piece of the armada. Then, a push into Heaven’s Gate to finish matters there.
Unfortunately, the enemy had gained velocity on them after she’d escaped their trap, and was orbiting just far enough in from the Alliance fleet that they could cut her off again, unless she foolishly took the yellow jump. She’d sent the star wolves off to begin the inevitable fight on her own terms, not the enemy’s.
Her biggest concern remained the six star fortresses in Heaven’s Gate. To that end, she’d sent the war junk to make a brief foray into the system, do a quick scan, and return with information.
By the time they lost p
rotection of the star, and the enemy hit them again with sensors, the wolves were long gone. Hopefully, somewhere ahead in orbit and more inwardly facing than they had been. Slowing, preparing to meet the enemy carriers.
Tolvern watched the clock carefully and ordered the fleet to shed five hundred miles per second of velocity precisely eleven minutes after reestablishing sensor contact with the Adjudicator forces. The enemy now closed at a faster pace.
Ten star wolves appeared above the enemy fleet, bearing down hard on Foxtrot. Or seemed to, anyway. Eight dragoons maneuvered to engage them, but the star fortresses didn’t change trajectories. Even as the wolves opened fire with pummel guns, the carriers remained in position without firing.
“No way we’d attack their fleet with only ten wolves,” Tolvern said. “And they know it.”
“Besides which, the other feint already gave away that trick,” Capp said.
“Exactly.”
The ghost fleet vanished from the sensors, together with the false attack of the star wolf guns. The dragoons shifted back into position. The main enemy force was already within range of the Alliance fleet’s longest missiles, although both sides were holding fire.
The star wolves reappeared, this time coming up from below and at even closer range. But this time it was no feint. Instead, it was designed to look like a feint.
The dragoons shifted once more. It was sluggish, precautionary. Tolvern could almost feel the skepticism radiating from them.
“You have ninety seconds, sir,” Smythe said a few minutes later. “After that, your warning wouldn’t arrive in time.”
A warning. If she decided to call off the attack, she was to use flash countermeasures, a way of signaling that they’d developed in the Apex war, when it was always feared that the enemy would be hacking into their com. The warning would tell Olafsen that no, the attack was too risky, and they were to break off and close ranks with the main fleet.
“They bought it,” she said. “Attack is a go.”
Ninety seconds later, the star wolves were at pummel gun range and firing. Tolvern ordered the destroyers to move ahead, fire missiles, and then withdraw between the two battle cruisers and their brawlers. Blackbeard and Void Queen timed their own salvo to launch simultaneously.
The Alliance Trilogy Page 45