“Valuable or incriminating.” Grantham narrowed his eyes. “It’s always been curious that the identifiable goods pirated in this area never appear for sale anywhere.”
“You think they’re kept in the area, sir?” Caruthers asked. “Used and not sold elsewhere?”
Grantham nodded. “Some wealthy holder teaming with the pirates — he gets goods from the Core at a fraction of the cost and the pirates get a safe market. It would not be the first time such has happened.” He turned to Alexis. “Have you heard anything of the like on Dalthus, Mister Carew? Some holder who always has the newest and best — more than he ought, perhaps?”
Alexis considered for a moment. Her grandfather and his friends had sometimes discussed the profligate spending of other families, but there’d been no hint or accusations of wrong-doing. “My grandfather might have some suspicions, sir. I’m afraid I concerned myself more with the internal workings of the holding and less with the rest of Dalthus.”
“Hmm. I may have to speak to your grandfather.” He returned his gaze to the navigation plot and the image of the other ship. “Ask Mister Roland to put a shot through her sails, if you please. That should make our intentions unmistakable.”
“Aye sir.” Alexis relayed the order and watched a moment later as the shot flashed out, cutting through the Chase’s topsail with a bright flash of vaporizing metal. The topsail fluttered, its azure glow overlaid with white arcs of ionization. Then it split at the hole and split again as the two halves were pulled away and ripped to tatters by the stress of the forces pulling on it.
On the monitors, Alexis could see tiny, suited figures climbing the other ship’s mast to repair the damage.
“Another, Mister Carew. Into their maincourse if possible.”
Alexis relayed the order, biting her lip as she waited for the result. She wondered why the other ship didn’t simply give up. Merlin had been gaining on the Chase even before their sail had been destroyed — now she was gaining faster. Soon, she’d be close enough to turn and bring her main armament to bear without fear of falling behind. And she wondered at the other ship’s crew, climbing the mast and out onto the yards to repair sail, knowing that Merlin’s next shot might well strike them.
That shot came, flying through the space where the topsail had been and very close to the mast. Alexis watched in horror as two of the suited figures were struck and fell away from the mast, drifting back along the ship until they came to the end of their safety lines.
A moment later, the other ship’s main course went dark, the azure glow replaced by lines of white lights along her masts, spars, and hull.
“She’s struck, sir!” Caruthers said, grinning.
“Cease firing, Mister Carew. Lieutenant Caruthers, gather Lieutenant Ames, some few marines, and a prize crew. I want every bit of information you can find on their destination.”
The mood around the gunroom table was ebullient after the short, successful action against the smugglers. Merlin had laid-to for the night while the carpenter and his mates worked to repair the damage to the other ship. Caruthers was closeted with the captain, discussing their prize, and the bosun and other petty officers were busy in the other ship.
“Finally a prize!” Roland said, raising his glass.
“Aye,” Ames agreed. “Not much of a hull, but her cargo’s worth a coin or two. Hah!”
“And I’ll get a step from it, myself, if I’m any judge,” Roland said, smiling. “Command of a prize always goes a ways toward promotion.”
“Don’t count her as yours yet,” Philip warned.
“And who’ll the captain give her to instead? You? No, she’s too small to do a lieutenant any good, so Caruthers is out and I’m the senior midshipman. She’ll be mine to command into Zariah. Even only following in Merlin’s path, it’ll be time in command.”
“I’m only saying —”
“Not interested in what you’re saying,” Roland snapped.
“Did you say she’d be a prize and there’d be coin for us, Lieutenant Ames?” Alexis interjected, hoping to put off yet another row between Roland and Philip.
“There’ll be coin for all, regardless, once the Prize Court gets her, what?” Ames said. “At least certificates. Enough for a run ashore and a spot of fun!” He raised his glass. “To wives and sweethearts!”
“May they never meet!” Roland responded, raising his own glass as the others laughed. There was a glance or two at Alexis, but in general, they seemed to have become comfortable that she wouldn’t take offense. “Not that you’ll ever have the problem, eh, Carew? Nor Easely neither, given his runs ashore.”
Comfortable except for bloody Roland who still seems to revel in the trying. And never can bear to miss a chance at needling poor Philip. And taking every opportunity to remind the others that she was different from them, though she couldn’t understand why he persisted. She saw Philip flushing, eyes downcast.
“No doubt, Roland,” Philip said. “Though I can understand your concern.”
“Quite right! Would never do to have that happen!”
Philip looked up and raised his glass slowly to his lips. “Yes, with your limited repertoire, they might find they prefer each other’s company and take a house together by the sea.”
The group was silent for a moment.
“Ha!”
“What? What happened?” Breech asked, for he was a bit hard of hearing.
“Said Roland’s wife and sweetheart might like each other best and take a house together! ‘Cause of his limited repertoire, don’t you know!”
Breech looked at Roland and nodded. “It’s a dire risk you run, lad. Best do some’at about that.”
Alexis lowered her face to disguise her smile. She stretched out her foot and nudged Philip under the table, glancing up in time to catch his answering wink.
Roland flushed red and took a large gulp of his wine.
A spacer came into the gunroom and nodded to Alexis. “Captain’s compliments, Mister Carew, and he’d be obliged if you’d join him and Lieutenant Caruthers in the day cabin.”
Alexis stood, nodding to the others, and made her way aft. She stopped outside the hatch to the captain’s cabin and waited while the marine sentry rapped on the hatch and called out, “Midshipman Carew, sir!”
He slid the hatch open and she entered. “You sent for me, sir?”
“There’s something I’d like your opinion of, Mister Carew.”
Grantham and Caruthers were gathered at the captain’s desk, its surface changed to display an image of Dalthus. Caruthers traced a finger across the display, spinning the image and then zooming in.
“We’ve plotted the coordinates found aboard the smugglers’ ship, Mister Carew, and wonder if you have any insight into these locations.”
Alexis studied the image for a moment. “I had thought there was no mention of a planet with the coordinates, sir? Is there some reason to think they were for points on Dalthus?”
“That was the smugglers’ destination. While the coordinates may be for some other system entirely, we must start somewhere.”
“We know whose land these points fall on, Mister Carew,” Grantham added, “but wonder if there might be something that strikes you about them.”
Alexis thought for a moment. She could easily tell whose land each of the points fell on. She ran through the family names in her head — Goodwill, Coalson, Warriner, Hollingsworth, Sermons. Her thoughts went immediately to the Coalsons, but she worried that her distaste for Edmond Coalson would color any opinion she offered. Of the others, Buckley Warriner had been another of her suitors, though without the dramatic results of Coalson’s visit, and the other three had no children her age, so she’d had little to do with their families socially. Although the Coalson and Sermons families both had their major holdings on the coast, the other three were spread out over the planet’s surface. There was something though …
“Can you bring up the Belt holdings, sir, and highlight these five families?”
Caruthers bent over the plot table, expanding its view to show the outer system and entering commands. In a moment, the view displayed the entire Dalthus system, the asteroid belt circling the outermost portion of the display and lit up with colors representing the holdings of the families in question. It was a complex display, due to the nature of claims in the ever-changing belt, with the larger asteroids, worthy of being tracked individually, claimed regardless of their orbit, while the smaller rocks were claimed by area. But regardless of the complexity, there were clear patterns in evidence on the plot, with these five families consistently claiming areas quite near each other.
Grantham grunted. “I wonder at these gaps,” he mused, indicating areas within each block that were not owned by any of the five.
Alexis cleared her throat. “I believe those will be my grandfather’s, sir.” Grantham looked at her sharply. “The Coalsons have often accused him of ‘taking’ the claims they most wanted, it is a rivalry that goes back to the colony’s founding.”
“Interesting. Has your grandfather found anything at all peculiar in those holdings?”
“Peculiar in what way, sir?”
“Anything at all out of the ordinary.”
“Not that I’m aware of, sir, but the colony’s young, so we’ve barely scratched the surface of most of the claims — nothing at all in the belt. My grandfather thinks it will be a hundred years or more before it’s worth bringing in the infrastructure to mine the belt instead of the planet’s surface.”
Grantham considered that for a moment. “Well, perhaps it’s nothing, then. Though this pattern does seem to connect the families in some way.” He frowned. “Tell me, Mister Carew, is there any gallenium mined on Dalthus?”
“Gallenium, sir? I’ve never heard of it being found, no.”
“There was no mention of gallenium in the survey report we reviewed, sir,” Caruthers added. “If the colonial survey had found any indication of gallenium it would have figured prominently, I’d think.”
“Yes and raised the colonists’ share price as well,” Grantham said. “Does that ‘no mention’ not make you wonder, though? There are always traces, after all. Even if there are no large deposits.”
“Perhaps it was so little, they didn’t find it worth mentioning?”
Grantham narrowed his eyes, still staring at the pattern of claims in the system’s asteroid belt. “Or worth not mentioning? Mister Carew, are any of these families … politically connected in some way?”
Alexis tried to remember all she’d heard her grandfather say about the planet’s politics. To be truthful, she hadn’t listened as well to those lessons as she had to those about running the holdings. The work of building and producing things had interested her far more than making laws. She wasn’t at all sure why they should in the first place — after all, with all of human history to build on, surely all the good and necessary laws had already been made.
“I believe the Sermons are a minor branch of a house that sits in the Lords, sir. And the Warriners may be, as well. I’m sorry, but I paid less attention to those things than I ought, it seems.”
“Quite all right,” Grantham assured her. “If you weren’t aboard, I’d have no place to start at all, so you’ve put us ahead of the game already.”
“Thank you, sir. I … if I may ask, sir, did you find any reason for them to be smuggling at all? Dalthus has no import duties to speak of, I know. We’re desperate for all the imported goods we can get.”
Grantham and Caruthers looked at each other for a moment. “We did, in fact. A number of the crates contained luxury goods and electronics from Coreward. Goods bound for Eidera aboard a merchantman that went missing some months ago.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“Piracy, Mister Carew,” Caruthers said. “Pirates took that merchantman, but instead of disposing of her cargo in a far-off system, some of it, at least, was bound for Dalthus still in its original crates. Which means,” he continued before she could ask, “that the intended recipient cares little about its origin. Otherwise, they’d have repackaged the lot.”
“So you think someone on Dalthus is in league with these pirates?” Alexis looked at the plotted holdings with new eyes. “One of these families?”
“Or all of them, as the coordinates we found indicate landing sites on each of their lands.”
“But …” She frowned, not understanding why anyone would do such a thing. “These are all first holders — and major ones, at that. Between them, they hold as much as five percent of the entire system.” She paused. “Why?”
“Some always want more than they have. And many who make our laws do not believe they should apply to them.”
Fourteen
“Quite a large place,” Caruthers remarked, nodding to the Coalson residence behind the fence they were approaching. The home was three stories high, of red stone and with two large wings to either side. It was fronted by a vast green lawn. They’d landed the boat in a fallow field far from the main house and its manicured gardens.
“Forty or more rooms, my grandfather told me when they were building it,” Alexis said. “The Coalsons and some few others were building alike.” She hesitated for a moment. “He wondered at the expense.”
She wondered why the captain had brought her along on this visit. She’d told him everything she knew about the Coalsons and the three other families, whose lands the smugglers had coordinates for, so she doubted she could provide any value planetside — and given her recent history with the man’s son, she doubted Daviel Coalson would be pleased to see her on his lands.
The three of them, Grantham, Caruthers, and Alexis, backed by two marines, left the spacers with the ship’s boat and walked up the lane toward the house. The day was bright and warm, with few clouds, Alexis could smell the heather in the fields bracketing the road. It didn’t seem a day to be talking of smuggling and piracy.
As they neared the gates, they found a group of men waiting for them. Most were burly farmhands, but Daviel Coalson was easy to pick out. He wore jacket well-tailored to his fit form, and his graying hair was slicked back on his head.
“Captain Grantham,” he said, stepping forward to the gate but not opening it.
“Have we met, sir?” Grantham asked, stepping up to the gate as well. He held out his hand to the other man but withdrew it when Coalson gave no sign of responding in kind.
Alexis stood behind Lieutenant Caruthers, doing her best to remain unnoticed. Though she’d never met Daviel Coalson, word of her joining Merlin’s company must surely have spread and there certainly weren’t that many fifteen-year old girls in the Navy that the man would mistake her for someone else.
“There’s only the one Navy ship in-system, sir, and I’ve cause to remember your name. Your last visit to my lands left me several workers shorter.”
“We properly paid you their remaining indentures, Mister Coalson,” Caruthers said. “Left with your foreman at the site and all according to law.”
“With Navy Drafts! I’ve to wait six or more months on for payment while your chandler, that scoundrel Doakes, gets confirmation!”
“I understand your frustration, sir, I do. It’s no more than we have to wrestle with when dealing with the Prize Court and the men’s pay each month.” Grantham smiled. “Why, just last week, we took a prize outside this very system, but once we deliver it to Zariah. it’ll be a year or more, no doubt, before we see the Prize Court’s findings on it.”
“A smuggler, you say?”
“Indeed, bound for Dalthus with pirated goods, no less.”
“I see. What brings you to my lands again, Captain?”
“I’d prefer to discuss it inside, sir, if we may.”
“I think not, Captain. This is my home and I’ve no cause to invite you in.” He changed his gaze to stare at Alexis. “And certainly not with that one in your company.”
“Do you have some grievance against my midshipman, sir?”
“Mid
shipman?” Coalson snorted. “I don’t know why you’ve chosen to take her aboard your ship, Captain, but she assaulted my son and she’s lucky the boy didn’t proffer charges.”
“Indeed?”
Alexis could feel Caruthers turn to look at her and she flushed, but kept her eyes firmly fixed ahead. He leaned toward her and whispered, “Assault, Mister Carew?”
“I may have poured a bit of tea over his head,” she whispered back, barely moving her lips. “And perhaps threatened him. A bit.”
“I’ll want to hear more of this, I think,” Caruthers murmured with a grin.
“The issue I wish to discuss with you, Mister Coalson,” Grantham said, “has naught to do with my officers.”
“And what issue is that, Captain? For I do little business with the Navy and have work of my own to complete this day.”
“It has to do with those smugglers I mentioned. Are you quite certain you wouldn’t like to discuss it in private?”
“More than before, Captain, as I have neither interest nor concern for smuggling. It doesn’t affect me, sir.”
Grantham removed his tablet and held it out to the other man. “Do you recognize these coordinates, sir?”
Coalson made no move to take it, nor even look.
“Should I, Captain?”
“They are, sir, not too very far from here, in fact, and on your lands.”
Coalson’s eyes narrowed. He finally looked at the tablet but took only a short glance. “I have extensive lands, Captain, and that area is, as yet, undeveloped. I fail to take your point.”
“They were found aboard the smugglers’ ship. These five sets of coordinates. Why would that be? I’m simply curious, Mister Coalson, as to why the smugglers would be putting down on your lands.”
“My name was not mentioned by these ‘smugglers’, Captain?”
“It was not.”
“Then what you have are numbers. Numbers that may or may not be ‘coordinates’ and numbers that may not even be on Dalthus if they are. Please, do come again should you ever have business that matters to me.” He turned his back to them and strode off toward the house, his men following.
Alexis Carew: Books 1, 2, and 3 Page 16