“I saw that Roland made lieutenant — and you were mentioned in dispatches, more than once.”
Philip nodded. “That was a rough action,” he said. “Roland showed himself well, and in sailing the prize back. He deserved the commission.” He shot her an amused look. “Still a prat, though.”
“Really?”
Philip’s grin faltered. “More than ever, really.” His brow furrowed. “I do think there’s something … I don’t know. The more he succeeds, the more of an arse he seems. Haven’t heard from him since he left Merlin, though.”
Alexis frowned. She’d hoped Roland might have come around since he’d finally made lieutenant. She quickly shook the feeling aside, though. She’d have, at most, an evening to spend with Philip and didn’t want to waste time on worries that were far away.
The thought of far-away worries brought Delaine to mind, though. She spared a moment’s time to wish him well and safe. She began to understand why spacers seemed so much stronger about their relationships and passions. Two mates could meet after being months or even years apart on different ships, but they’d drink and carouse together as though they’d been together all along. The same men who’d spend half their pay on a doxie in port, sent the other half home to a wife they spoke of with words that brought tears to Alexis’ eyes. And speak with pride of a child born while they’ve been a year or more in space, they do.
She and Philip were friends, there may have been a moment or two of more aboard Merlin, but nothing could come have come of it, serving aboard the same ship, so those feelings, if they existed, had to be put aside. She’d had a few weeks with Delaine and then returned to New London. She might never see him again, couldn’t even send him a message, at least for the duration of the war. I’ll not know if he’s alive or dead until the war’s over, even.
Now she’d have a few hours’ time with Philip, simply by the vagaries of chance that they were on the same station at the same time, then they’d both be off on different ships, with no telling when they’d meet again. With so little time to exercise them, no wonder the men’s passions run so strong. One had to fit a lifetime’s affection into a few hours’ time — before you were torn apart again.
She realized Philip had been speaking, but her thoughts had been far away. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I was only saying that I’ve heard there’s a pub two levels up that has a better than usual ordinary. My lieutenant recommended it highly.”
“That sounds quite nice.”
“This way, then,” he said.
He laid his hand over hers where it rested on his arm and pulled her into a gentle turn, causing her to smile.
They made their way to the station’s lifts, Isom trailing them with her baggage, and up two levels, then down the corridor to a pub called The Eagle’s Beak, a grand name for a tiny place, whose storefront was crammed between a gin-stall and an establishment with suspiciously dark windows and furtive clientele.
“It doesn’t look like much, I know,” Philip said as they entered, “but Lieutenant Vallance says it’s the best he’s had.”
Alexis sniffed tentatively as they entered, then inhaled deeply. The air inside was redolent with rich spices and cooking meats. “Heavens! If that’s their ordinary I smell, I can well believe it!”
Philip grinned. “I’m glad you think so,” he said. “I was hoping you’d like it.”
“Isom,” Alexis said. “Take a table over there with the baggage, will you? Have supper and a pint or two?”
“Thank you, sir.” The pub was only a little more than a third full, so he was able to quickly find a table along the wall where the baggage would be out of the way. Philip led Alexis to another table and they sat.
“I’m glad I found you, Alexis,” Philip said once they’d placed their orders for two meals and wine. “When I saw your packet was due here, I was afraid I’d have to sail before she arrived.” He grinned. “Been checking the arrival boards every day.”
Alexis grinned back. He was waiting for me? Checking every day? “I’m glad, as well.”
“Yes, well.” He glanced away and red crept up his face. “You see, I wanted to —”
“Mister Easely! I thought I’d find you here.”
Alexis turned to the pub’s entrance and saw a young lieutenant had entered and was heading for their table. The man stopped short and nodded to Alexis, taking in the rank insignia on her collar. “Lieutenant,” he said, nodding.
Alexis nodded to him in return. “Lieutenant,” she said.
“This is Lieutenant Vallance, Alexis,” Philip said. “From Ruby. Sir, this is Lieutenant Carew — she and I were berthmates on Merlin.”
Vallance nodded to her again. “Easley’s said good things about you, Carew. I’m happy to make your acquaintance at last.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Vallance,” she said.
“If you’ll excuse me for interrupting,” Vallance went on. “I have a bit of a mess aboard Ruby and need to ask Mister Easley a few questions. If you’ll be so good as to excuse us for a moment, I’ll have him back to you instanter.”
“Of course.”
Vallance pulled out his tablet and gestured for Philip to follow him. Alexis turned around to watch them leave, then turned back to her table.
She jumped and nearly screamed when she discovered someone was sitting in the seat Philip had just left.
“Lieutenant Carew?” the man said.
Alexis tried to catch her breath from the start. She looked quickly around the pub and found that Isom was watching her carefully, eyes wide as another stranger was seated at his table as well.
“Your man is safe, lieutenant,” the stranger said. “As are you.” He held out a hand. “Malcom Eades, Foreign Office.”
Alexis took his hand reluctantly. “What is the meaning of this, sir?”
“There are some matters I wish to speak to you about and prefer to do so in private.” He gestured to a narrow set of stairs along the pub’s wall. “I’ve engaged a private room upstairs, if you’d be so kind.”
Alexis’ mind raced. Anyone could sit down at a table and claim to be from the Foreign Office, or any Office he pleased, really, but why should he? Why with her? What could the man, legitimate or not, possibly want?
She made a wait gesture to Isom, afraid he might do something, and looked at Eades carefully. He wasn’t in uniform, but the Foreign Office had no uniform. In fact, his clothing was, if anything, so nondescript and general that no one could possibly remark upon it. Even his features were bland and unremarkable, with nothing at all that stood out.
“My companion will return soon, sir,” Alexis said. “I cannot imagine what you might wish to speak to me about.”
“Lieutenant Vallance will keep Mister Easley busy for as long I require, Lieutenant Carew,” Eades said at the same time Alexis’ tablet pinged for her attention. Shocked that Eades knew both Vallance and Philip, she pulled out her tablet and saw a message.
Mister Eades of the Foreign Office will be contacting you this evening. Please follow his instructions.
Alexis blinked. It was signed Captain Euell of Shrewsbury, her next ship, but Shrewsbury was not in port. She checked the message headers to see if it had been sent some time ago and only just arrived on some other ship, but her tablet clearly informed her that the message had originated from Shrewsbury directly to the station and had been sent that very minute. She used her tablet to quickly check the system’s arrivals, in case Shrewsbury had just transitioned, but it had not. Shrewsbury was, in fact, in darkspace, still en route to Lyetham and had been unable to send messages at all for over a week’s time since leaving her last port of call. She looked at Eades in shock. How had he done that? He’d have to have the ability not only to send messages via the Navy’s secure communications, but also to send them with perfectly formed message headers that would be accepted as from ships and officers that couldn’t possibly have sent them.
Eades smiled slightly and gestured toward the stairs.
Alexis motioned for Isom to stay where he was and rose. Eades did as well and Alexis preceded him up the stairs to the pub’s second floor where he nodded to a hatchway off the corridor. She entered and found a round table with seating for eight, but there was only one man in the room, seated at the opposite side of the table, facing the hatchway. In a bit of a daze, Alexis moved to the side and sat down.
“Will you have something to drink before we begin, Lieutenant Carew?” Eades asked.
“No, thank you, sir. I’ll wait until I return to my companion.”
“This may take some time, lieutenant.”
Alexis looked from Eades to the other man and back. “You have me at a disadvantage, sirs.”
“Ah, yes,” Eades said. “The introductions, forgive me.” He gestured to the other man. “Lieutenant Carew, may I present Vachel Courtemanche, representative to Her Majesty’s Court from La Grande République de France Parmi les Etoiles. The Grand Republic of France Among the Stars.”
Alexis’ eyes widened and she found it suddenly hard to breathe. The Foreign Office and a French diplomat dragging her to a private room? She licked her suddenly dry lips.
“Bourbon,” she said.
Eades looked at her oddly.
“To drink,” she said. “Bourbon, if you please.”
She settled back into her chair, stomach fluttering at the thought of what this meeting might mean. Eades’ face had turned smug, as though he’d just won at something and her temper flared.
“No,” she said, “make that Scotch.” She narrowed her eyes. “And if they have none, ask them to send for a bottle. I’m sure there’s a branch of Dorchester’s aboard station that will have something suitable.”
A Note from the Author
Thank you for reading Mutineer. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
In the realm of historical, Age of Sail fiction, the events that took place on HMS Hermione in September 1797 are always mentioned, but never depicted. It was the bloodiest mutiny in Royal Navy history, so an author would have a bit of trouble inserting his character into it. Most of the officers were killed and most of the crew was sentenced to death and relentlessly hunted down by the Royal Navy.
To some it might appear that Captain Neals’ cruelty is exaggerated in Mutineer, but the historical Captain Pigot of Hermione was no less cruel.
In his previous command he had 85 men, fully half the crew, flogged over nine months and two men died of their injuries. He would order the last man down from the yards flogged, and this resulted in three men falling from the masts to their deaths in their attempts to avoid the punishment. And when the men complained after this, he had the entire division flogged … and then flogged again the next morning.
It was this, along with his treatment of Midshipman David Casey that spurred the mutiny.
Casey was confronted by Pigot over an untied gasket on the main top and, after apologizing for the oversight, was ordered to beg forgiveness from his knees. Casey refused this humiliating order and Pigot ordered him disrated and flogged.
It’s always bewildered me that Bligh – who by all accounts lost his ship because he wasn’t harsh enough with the crew – is the one reviled by common usage while Pigot is all but forgotten.
I can only hope I’ve shown the crew of Hermione a bit of justice and honor in this story.
J.A. Sutherland
Orlando, FL, February 1, 2015
THE LITTLE SHIPS
Alexis Carew #3
by J.A. Sutherland
Copyright 2015 Sutherland. All rights reserved.
Cover Art by Steven J. Catizone
(https://www.facebook.com/StevenJamesCatizone)
Newly commissioned lieutenant Alexis Carew is appointed into HMS Shrewsbury, a 74-gun ship of the line in New London’s space navy. She expects Shrewsbury will be sent into action in the war against Hanover; instead she finds that she and her new ship are pivotal in a Foreign Office plot to bring the star systems of the French Republic into the war and end the threat of Hanover forever.
Created with Vellum
For Aryn,
Made you wait for the third book — I suppose that’s torture enough.
Whatever influence I had on you is the best thing I’ve accomplished in life, sweetheart, and I could not be prouder of you.
Oh … and call your grandmother!
And to the men and ships of The Little Ships of Dunkirk, 26 May to 4 June 1940.
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3
William Shakespeare
One
“Fire!”
Alexis Carew, sixth lieutenant aboard HMS Shrewsbury, stepped back from the gunport quickly and added her own voice.
“Fire!” she yelled.
Her vacsuit’s radio crackled with static as the order was passed on by the two midshipmen with her on Shrewsbury’s upper gundeck. The crews of the fourteen guns that lined the ship’s port side stepped back and the gun captains slammed their hands down on the buttons that fired the guns. The crystalline tubes of the guns flashed and, even before the afterimage had faded from her eyes, the crews were in motion to reload the guns with fresh shot.
Alexis ducked her head back to the port and watched as the shot from her guns joined the rest of Shrewsbury’s broadside on its way to the enemy ship. Fourteen more from the guns of the main gundeck below them, along with seven from the quarterdeck guns and two from the forecastle, all flashing across the space between Shrewsbury and the other ship in the odd way things behaved in darkspace. Even light was affected by the presence of so much dark energy and dark matter, with the bolts of the lasers becoming condensed and foreshortened in their path between the ships.
The bolts of light seemed to slow and condense as they moved, until they struck the other ship and the shot splashed against its hull. The light from the bolts illuminating the gases and droplets of vaporized thermoplastic from the other ship’s hull.
“Faster, lads!” Alexis yelled to her reloading crews. “Captain’ll want two broadsides in three minutes, or he’ll know the reason why!”
The carefully choreographed dance of reloading the guns went on.
Before the guns’ tubes had even darkened, the gun captains threw open the breeches to expose the gleaming casings of the gallenium-cased shot. The other two men of each crew knelt and ran their eyes over the gun tubes, checking for any obvious damage from the last firing. A cracked or hazed tube could burst, sending the next bolt in deadly splinters of energy throughout their own gundeck.
The gun captains pulled the spent shot canisters from the breeches and flung them to the far side of the gundeck, then selected new shot from the racks that ran down the middle of the deck. They ran practiced eyes and fingers over the shot to see that the casing was well-sealed. It was early in the action and the gallenium-mesh nets covering each gunport kept out most of the radiation effects of darkspace, but that wouldn’t last. More and more would creep in the longer the action went on. Enemy shot would damage the nets, or even hole the hull, allowing in even more. That radiation affected all electronics, save those protected by enough gallenium, and if the shot casing wasn’t sealed well enough the gun wouldn’t fire.
Alexis smiled with a certain pride. She loved the guns. The way her voice and breathing echoed inside the helmet of her vacsuit, the hot, heavy work of hauling shot canisters from the racks to the guns, she even loved the risk.
She knew it would take only one shot, even from the smaller frigate Shrewsbury now faced, to end her. Though the hull was thick, it could be breached, and the gunports only had the thin nettings, meant to keep out the darkspace radiation and not as any sort of protection for the crews.
But still she never seemed to feel so alive as in action, pitting her la
ds against those on another ship.
Her crews were working well. The runners were collecting the spent shot canisters for return to the well-protected magazine below, where the capacitors would be quickly recharged. Her two midshipmen, Walborn and Blackmer, were assisting the crews where needed, or at least had the sense to step back out of the men’s way where not.
The guns’ tubes had been checked and the facings inside the breeches, where the shot’s lasing tubes would meet the tubes of the guns, were even now being wiped clean.
Alexis was dimly aware of the other ship firing, but none of their shot penetrated Shrewsbury’s hull. She spared a moment’s worry for the spacers working the ship’s masts, then returned to her more immediate concerns.
One by one, the gun captains shoved new cannisters into the guns, slammed home the breech, and raised their arms to signal their readiness. Some of them took a moment to adjust their aim, having their crews roll the heavy gun carriages into a new position or crank the wheel to change its elevation. The work had to be done by hand because no electrical motors or controls would work once the darkspace radiation began entering the ship.
“Ready forward!” Walborn yelled, his arm going up in concert with his last gun captain’s.
That’s twice he’s ready first, Alexis thought. There’ll be a shilling or two changing hands if Blackmer’s crews don’t show better.
Alexis Carew: Books 1, 2, and 3 Page 58