“Manx, send the subspace to the crew and the other captains. Don’t want to scare anyone, but there might be useful information to parse out.”
“The last of our ships just jumped through,” Oglethorpe announced. “Waiting for confirmation that her crew is ready to fly.”
“Is that Cheng’s junk?”
“Aye. Looks like they’re already spreading their wings.”
Not surprising. Captain Cheng was an old Singaporean veteran who’d survived the slaughter on his home world. Made of stern stuff—the sort of man you’d want at your side in a back-alley brawl.
“The problem is, the birds are aliens,” Tolvern continued. “I don’t mean like the Hroom, I mean true aliens.”
“Sir?” Manx said.
“I’m trying to read their minds, and I really have no idea. There might be three harvesters at Persia, for all we know. Or maybe there’s an Apex civil war—they eat each other sometimes, for reasons we can’t quite figure out. Like an ant colony that splits apart with two or three queens all fighting for dominance or independence. Who knows?”
“Which is why I’d just as soon stay back by the jump point,” Manx said.
“Which is why we have to seize opportunities when they present themselves,” Tolvern corrected.
She scrolled through the rest of her messages, these ones internal to the ship. Engineering didn’t like how the warp point engine had handled the jump. And Gunnery Chief Finch had some thoughts about the use of explosive shot from the last battle she wanted to discuss. There was a question about installing tyrillium scale on an inner bulkhead as additional defense against Apex boarding attempts.
Tolvern had plenty to keep her occupied on the bridge, and thought about summoning the relevant parties to the war room, but she’d learned from Drake that it was useful to make regular visits to all parts of the ship. Sometimes you noticed things that you’d miss if you only completed the bridge-quarters-mess hall circuit.
“Clyde, plot a course to Persia that takes us past an outer planet or two—we’ll be harder to spot that way. Manx, position the fleet and get us in motion. We’re mounting an attack on the enemy forces holding Persia.”
#
Tolvern was in the engineering bay about an hour later, talking to a pair of technicians who were trying to resolve a problem with the missile-loading conveyor belt on one of the falcons, when a thin, pale figure shuffled across the floor from the lift. He wore a hospital gown and dragged a pole with wheels and a dangling IV bag, which was attached to his arm.
“Does the doctor know you’re out of bed, Stratsky?” Tolvern asked.
“Doc said I could leave the infirmary as soon as I pooped on my own. It all came out fine about an hour ago. Weirdest looking stuff. You want to know the funny thing, though?”
“Thank you, Sub-lieutenant, but I’ve got enough going on without analyzing the activity of your digestive system.”
“Yeah, I don’t blame you. It’s kind of gross. But interesting!” Stratsky shrugged. “Anyway, I didn’t care if Doc told me to stay put, I was going nuts down there. I feel fine now—appetite’s back and everything.”
“You don’t look fine, you look like you’re going to faint.”
“That’s only ’cause they won’t give me any meat. Who can survive on protein paste and kale soup?”
“A few days ago they took out your guts and put them in a big jar. Not exactly the time to be eating kidney pie. You don’t want to . . . how is it we’re still talking about your bodily functions, Sub-lieutenant?”
He grinned, which brought a little color to his face. “Hey, that time it was all you, Captain.”
“Go back to bed, Stratsky. I need you healthy and flying. Crispin is a fine pilot, but he’s not much of a wing commander.”
Stratsky’s face darkened at mention of his fellow pilot, then brightened again. “Hey, I heard you was down here, and I wanted to talk to you about this idea I had.”
Tolvern glanced toward the lift. This tour of the ship was taking longer than she’d planned, and she was anxious to return to the bridge and study the scans to see if they had new data about Apex forces in the system. Depending on what turned up, she’d decide whether this was a mere raid or if she could take control of the space around the planet until the other fleets arrived.
“I’m wanted in the gunnery, Sub-lieutenant. Why don’t you accompany me and tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I saw the subspace from Vargus,” Stratsky said as they entered the lift. “Grim stuff, Captain. Grim stuff. The bloody thing couldn’t even fight back, and it still took ’em six hours.”
“I’m hoping we won’t be facing a harvester. Most likely, a lot of spears and lances.” Tolvern pushed the button to take them down to the gunnery. “They only have to get loose with one harvester, and it all starts over again.”
“That’s exactly what got me thinking, Captain. It’s how they pull their ships out of a gravity well. They build most of them planetside where they can feed their workers, then haul ’em into orbit.”
“I’ve known that since before you joined my ship, Stratsky. We found Apex yards on Tyn, and General Mose Dryz saw another operation when the buzzards dragged him planetside. He’d taken the buzzard spit in his face, just like you.”
She slapped him on the shoulder as the lift doors opened.
“Too bad we dug it out of you, eh? Maybe you’d have got a chance to say hello up close and personal to your own queen commander.”
Stratsky winced and followed her into the gunnery. “But I got to thinking about the little moon where they found the broken-down ship, Captain, and something else came to me.”
“Hold that thought, Sub-lieutenant,” Tolvern said as the gunnery chief approached, wiping her hands on her overalls.
Finch may have been a woman, and Tolvern’s old chief, Barker, a man, but they were built almost like the same person. Finch was stout, with heavy forearms developed from years of wrestling with heavy tools and muscling munitions into place. She had the same heavy brow and the same way of gesturing at her workers as they scurried alongside the cannon, some of which were getting cleaned from the inside, while others had their electronic fire control boxes open.
The only thing missing was Barker’s walrus mustache.
“You have some thoughts on explosive shot?” Tolvern asked.
“Aye, Captain, I think I got a way to put more punch into our broadsides.”
Even the accent and gruff way of speaking was the same. Tolvern was tempted to ask if Finch and Barker were cousins.
Instead, she nodded and told the chief to go on. Finch told how she’d been thinking about that subspace from Catarina Vargus, and how the torpedo hadn’t broken through. What they needed was more destructive power in close combat, which Finch could provide by shortening the effective range of the explosive shot.
“You’re assuming we’ll be facing another harvester,” Tolvern said. “What about spears and lances?”
“I’m only proposing to alter explosive shot, not the heavier kinetic stuff,” Finch said. “Maybe if Vargus had her cannon loaded that way, she’d have thrown the enemy back before it could board her. I need to clear all that rubbish from the loading bay—”
“By rubbish, you mean the spare falcons and stacks of tyrillium plate?”
“—and get full use of engineering to get those shells reworked.”
Tolvern nodded. “All right. But don’t convert it all. I don’t want to try it mid-battle, find out it doesn’t work, and we’ve thrown out our ability to fire anything else.”
Finch grunted. “Of course. I won’t have time to do it all, anyway, not before we reach Persia.”
Tolvern listened as Finch voiced a few more minor concerns, then made her way back to the lift. She’d almost forgotten about the falcon pilot, who was still following with his IV bag in tow.
“You look wobbly, Stratsky. Why don’t you get some rest and come talk to me tomorrow when we get closer?”
She suppressed a sigh. “This had better not be a backdoor way of requesting your flight privileges before the medical staff gives you clearance.”
“Why were they on that moon, anyhow? That’s what I was asking myself. Why didn’t the harvester land on New Mars? A lot easier to hide on the planet than that little piece of rock.”
“They probably didn’t have the capability to lift from the planet’s surface until they’d repaired their engine.”
“It was repaired enough that they went chasing after Vargus and tried to eat her.” The lift opened, and he followed Tolvern onto the bridge. “Anyway, I pulled up all the info on that moon I could find—Drake put together a nice little chart when he was in there fighting the buzzards the first time—and it’s a useless hunk of rock. There’s nothing good there, no resources, nothing that could help the Apex commander repair her ship or start a new colony.”
Tolvern had been on the verge of dismissing Stratsky, but now reconsidered.
Falcon pilots weren’t chosen for their intelligence so much as for their reflexes, their cool under fire, and their guts in charging into deadly situations. But it was clear that this one had a mind working away behind the typical pilot swagger.
“Hold that thought, Sub-lieutenant,” she said.
Stratsky looked exasperated. “You told me that already.”
“This time I mean it.”
She stopped at her console long enough to check to see if any new information about enemy forces had come through, then led her falcon pilot to the war room and gestured for him to sit. She took a seat on the opposite side of the table.
“My point is that the harvester could fly all along,” Stratsky said. “Or else the damage to its engines wasn’t that great to begin with. It came out of the cave to fight, didn’t it? So why did it hide out on the moon and not the planet?”
“What’s the gravity on New Mars?” Tolvern asked.
“Point nine two,” he said without hesitation.
“So not really a Mars-like planet after all. An Earth-like planet, at least in terms of gravity. Like Albion without the atmosphere and oceans.
“The birds come from lower gravity planets,” Tolvern continued. “That’s what they look for, about point four to point six. They’ll land on heavier planets to fight, or to build a base if there are humans or Hroom to feed on. But if they’re on their own, they choose something smaller.”
“Makes sense though, don’t it? They’re birds. They can fly when the gravity is to their liking.”
Tolvern had a new thought. “So maybe the harvester ships can’t get themselves out of a gravity well the size of New Mars’s. Not unassisted. But the moon had no resources, so they’d have had to figure out a way to do it sooner or later. Were the buzzards hoping to dangle a rudimentary space elevator from that moon to get themselves down and back up again?”
“I don’t know about New Mars, but I’ve been looking in here, and Persia has its own space elevator.”
“Does it?” Tolvern asked. “I knew it had a couple of orbital fortresses built by the human population before the aliens came.”
“One of them fortresses is the counterweight for an elevator,” Stratsky said. “That’s what Drake reported, anyway. What do you bet the buzzards got it fixed up again after they took the planet so they can get new ships into orbit?”
“And if we smash it, we’ll trap any new harvesters on the surface.” Tolvern rotated her chair, thinking. “Problem is getting in there. I can’t just cut the line, I’ve got to wreck the elevator apparatus entirely, and it’s a fortress as well, so it’s dug into the rock, and it can defend itself.”
“Nukes could do it, sir. We’ve still got ’em, right?”
“I have one,” she admitted, “sitting in the nose of a Mark-IV torpedo. But I can’t use it from a distance—the aliens have good countermeasures—and they’d tear our torpedo boats to shreds if we send them that way. That means bringing the fleet into close range. We’d take a lot of blows when we’re already weakened, and that’s without accounting for any enemy ships floating around in the area.”
“You don’t need the whole fleet to close ranks with the fort,” Stratsky said. “You only need to deliver the nuke to the alien fort. Doesn’t matter much how you do it, right?”
“I told you already—I won’t send torpedo boats to charge an orbital fortress. It’s a suicide mission. They’re too small to trade blows and too big for evasive maneuvers.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, either.”
Tolvern leaned back in her chair. “I’m listening.”
“A falcon can get in there close, right up under their guns. I checked with engineering, and they say it’s no problem attaching a Mark-IV to the undercarriage and rigging up an electronic firing system. You’d need to take out the missiles to get it balanced, of course.”
“That’s a lot of extra weight whether you could balance it or not.”
“So you strip out the pulse guns, too—that will even you up. All you need is a superior pilot to get close enough to drop the torpedo and run.”
“A superior pilot. Do we have one of those? Oh, I almost forgot about Crispin. He’s pretty good, isn’t he?”
“Bloody Crispin? That stupid bloke is . . . sorry, sir. No, I was thinking about me.”
Tolvern smiled at his response. He looked flustered, and she reined in her amusement.
“Of course you were, Sub-lieutenant. All right, you, then. You’re the best pilot—that’s why you’re wing commander, isn’t it? But good hell, man, how many days has it been since you had your guts stuffed back inside? You’re so pale, if you were a Hroom, I’d think you’d been hitting the sugar.”
“I’ll be fine with a little rest.” He held out a hand, palm down. “And look, I’m steady enough. I could do it now if I needed to.”
Tolvern studied him. Stratsky still had that lounging, casual swagger of a pilot, but his eyes were hard and serious. And he’d given her a beautiful strategy for victory beyond her vague ideas of an opportunistic raid. That deserved something in return.
“Well done, Stratsky. You’re exactly the sort of man the Royal Navy needs if we’re going to win this thing.”
“You mean you’ll let me do it?”
She nodded. “You will personally lead the attack. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about rewarding you for your initiative.”
He perked up. “Yeah? I like the sound of that. What are we talking?”
“I think the salary increase is only about fifteen shillings a week, but it comes with additional privileges and responsibilities.”
“Huh, what? You mean—”
“That’s right, I’m giving you a brevet to full lieutenant. Congratulations.”
He shifted in his seat. “You know I wasn’t really an officer to begin with. The admiral bumped me up after flight training. Never been to officer school—only had a few weeks on Albion when—”
He must have noticed the frown she was allowing across her face, because he straightened.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Good. Now get back to the infirmary before you faint or throw up all over my beautiful war room table.”
Chapter Eight
It didn’t take long for Olafsen to grow tired of his cramped quarters on the blackfish. Even putting the majority of his raiders into stasis chambers, there were too many people on the bridge and in the narrow corridors, and he was forced to hot bunk like a common raider. As often as not, he had to kick someone out of his cot before bedding down for the night, and the collective snoring of twenty men made the walls rumble.
“By the gods, I can’t wait to be back on Bloodaxe,” he confided to Björnman one day when they were alone on the bridge. “I haven’t slept well in a week.”
“Me, either,” Björnman said, “but that’s because I keep seeing dead turkeys every time I close my eyes.”
&
nbsp; “I’ll tell you what. It’s not just the cramped quarters. It’s that I can’t fight in this thing.”
“We just obliterated an Apex colony with these blackfish.”
“You know what I mean. Each ship has one pummel gun. We can take a beating, but if we want to deliver a beating of our own, we have to board the enemy.”
The chief mate jutted out his chin. “That’s the way the gods meant us to fight. I’d rather look my enemy in the eye than shoot him from a thousand miles away. Rather die that way, too.”
“Any true man would,” Olafsen agreed. “But tell me, what do we do if we run into a big enemy force? Say a hunter-killer pack or two? We can’t fight it out—we’ll have to run like cowards.”
A blip on his console drew the marauder captain’s attention. An unknown ship had been detected. He scrolled through the data, trying to make sense of it. That was one other disadvantage of this ship. Unlike a star wolf, a blackfish didn’t have a dedicated tech officer, so the captain, chief mate, and gunnery officer—the latter currently off shift—had to assume those duties as needed.
“That’s not one of ours,” Björnman said.
“Doesn’t look like Albion, either. Anyway, there shouldn’t be anyone out here. We cleared the way behind us, and the only thing ahead is Xerxes.”
A flurry of subspace messages had passed between the various components of the allied fleet a few days earlier, and Olafsen was now cutting to rendezvous with a joint force commanded by McGowan on Peerless and Vargus on Void Queen. His brother Sven would be there, too, commanding the star wolf fleet under Vargus’s command. They meant to hunt down the escaped harvester and destroy it before it could slip off to Odin knew where. Olafsen only hoped he’d arrive in time to share in the glory.
The two men studied the unknown ship in silence for several minutes.
“It’s not very big, whatever it is,” Olafsen decided at last. “About the size of an Albion torpedo boat. No, not even that big. Half the mass, maybe.”
“Could be nothing.”
Sun King (The Void Queen Trilogy Book 3) Page 7