Alexis Carew: Books 1, 2, and 3

by J. A. Sutherland

  “What truth, Coalson? You grow tiresome.”

  “Such bad luck the Carews have had on Dalthus. First your grandfather’s Highlands whore perishes, then your father. Pity about Katlynne, though — seems she’d have been better off with me, after all.”

  Alexis felt sick to her stomach to hear Coalson speak about her family, especially to speak so about her mother, Katlynne. Coalson seemed to be implying that he’d been a suitor, something Alexis had never known.

  “What do you know of your grandmother’s death, Carew?”

  Alexis frowned. Coalson’s message had mentioned her parents, not her grandmother. Lynelle Carew had died before Daviel Coalson was just a child.

  “She died in childbirth. My father came early, there was a storm …” She’d heard the story more than once. How in the early days of the colony there’d been just the one antigrav hauler capable of flight. Port Arthur, still called Landing then, was where the only doctor was and it was a half-day’s travel by horseback. The storm came and Lynelle, her grandmother, had gone into labor. Something was amiss, but no one was terribly worried — until they’d called for the hauler to fly her to the doctor and found that it had been damaged. And by the time the doctor had finally arrived, having ridden horseback through the storm, it was too late.

  “Oh, yes, it was a grand opportunity that storm, and my father took it. Grabbed it with both hands.” Coalson filled his glass and drank before pouring more for Alexis. “He had recordings, you know, of the radio calls your grandfather made throughout the night, begging for that hauler to come and drag his precious Lynelle to be cared for.” He smiled. “What? Never knew whose lands that hauler was on?”

  Alexis felt a chill. She stared at Coalson, unable to move and not wanting to hear his next words.

  “We had bright sun on the coast that day, I’m told. The hauler was half-loaded, right there in the yard near our old house, before my father had the proper estate built. Half-loaded, did I say? Couldn’t fly in that state. The pilot knew the urgency and they all rushed to unload.” He frowned. “Our foreman was generally a far better forklift driver than he was that day, truly. Perhaps he was shaken after my father took him aside and impressed on him the urgency of the situation? No matter but that it took weeks to repair the hauler from the damage his clumsiness wrought.”

  “You’re mad,” Alexis whispered. Could Rashae Coalson have really hated her grandfather that much? To have the colony’s only hauler damaged just to cause her grandmother’s death? All for spite at some imagined slight? “You’re all mad.”

  Coalson smiled and drank more. Alexis could feel the drug she’d dropped into the wine working on her and Coalson had drunk far more than she. She wished that it would work on him quicker, for she now thought this meeting had been a mistake and didn’t want to hear more.

  Done away with him, yes, but it was a mistake to allow him to speak this poison.

  “Do you know, Carew, that it was that very same hauler my father let me fly to Port Arthur some years later? He’d bribe the pilots, you see, and give them a break from their work, to let his sons fly the routes. He had the vision that we’d soon have enough coin to ship in our own hauler and even a personal aircar — he wanted us to be skilled in their use.” He drained his glass and poured more, emptying the bottle into his glass. “I only meant to startle them, really.”

  Alexis froze, unable to tear her eyes away from Coalson.

  “Horses, you know, never do seem to get used to something coming at them out of the sky. No matter how much they’re around things that fly, if a thing comes straight at them they simply bolt.”

  “No,” Alexis whispered.

  “Oh, yes.” Coalson leaned back in his chair and smiled. He drained his glass and replaced it on the table, then looked at his hand and frowned before returning his gaze to Alexis. “Imagine my surprise when the buggy went off the road and overturned.”

  Alexis longed for a weapon or to simply launch herself over the table at Coalson’s throat, but she could feel the drug she’d dropped into the wine working on her. Her muscles were weak and her limbs leaden. She could see that Coalson was affected as well. His flesh hand on the table clenched and unclenched slowly. She tore her eyes from him and glanced behind the pub’s bar to the doorway leading farther back. One of Marilyn’s crew looked back at her.

  They never watch the back, just as Dansby said.

  She returned her gaze to Coalson.

  “No words for me, Carew? My father beat me for that, you know. Quite soundly — oh, not for their deaths, but for doing it in daylight when I might have been seen. I suppose he was correct and it’s only luck that’s kept my secret until now.” He frowned and looked down at his hand on the table, the prosthetic fingers clenching and unclenching as though at random. He licked his lips and shook his head sharply, then glanced at the wine bottle.

  “What?”

  Coalson started to rise, but Alexis reached across the table and grasped his arm. It was a struggle, her own movements were difficult, but Coalson fell back into his seat. Alexis had one hand holding his prosthetic to the table and the other wrapped in his collar. She heard shouts and bodies rushing about, but couldn’t turn, simply looked into Coalson’s eyes, then they both toppled to the floor, unable to remain upright in their chairs.

  “You drank too,” Coalson whispered.

  A shot rang out.

  “I have men I trust at my back,” Alexis replied.

  It seemed odd to speak so of Dansby, much less Röslein’s crew and Mynatt, but she did trust them in this. He and his men had come in the back way, taking Coalson’s by surprise. The drugged wine was an addition to the plan, Dansby feeling that it would add to the confusion of Coalson’s men if they saw him helpless. Her vision darkened and she no longer felt her hands where they gripped Coalson, but she saw with satisfaction that it didn’t matter as his eyes were closed as well.

  Thirty

  Alexis came aware quickly and far more painfully than she’d expected.

  Her skin felt as though tiny insects of flame were burrowing their way under her skin. They flowed through her, then quickly dissipated and were gone, while she became fully aware.

  “What was that?” she asked Mynatt who was pulling an injector from her arm.

  “Stimulant.”

  “I’ve taken any number of stimulants on the quarterdeck — none of them made me feel like ants of fire were burrowing through me.”

  Mynatt smiled. “Avrel didn’t specify what to give you, so I got to pick.”

  Alexis shuddered at the brief but intense sensation.

  “Well give Coalson a double dose of it then.” She swung her legs over the bunk and was happy to find her head was clear despite the drug in the wine. “Are we well away? Did it all go as planned?”

  “In darkspace and nearly out of the system. Your friend is still drugged, and bound as well. His friends were, perhaps, not so much his friends when it came down to it. They ran out the front of the pub as soon as they saw that Coalson fellow down and may not have stopped running yet.”

  “He’s certainly no friend of mine,” Alexis said. She’d had no real hatred of Coalson before. Oh, she’d despised him for his involvement in piracy, but that was a distant feeling. Now, after hearing what he and his father had done, she felt she truly did hate him.

  Mynatt took a step back and narrowed her eyes. “That’s sounding more personal than before. What did the man say to you?”

  “Nothing that need concern you or the ship. Nothing of interest at all, really.” Alexis hadn’t fully processed what Coalson had told her, but she was certain it was nothing she wished to share with Mynatt or Dansby. “And there is no sign of pursuit?”

  “None at all.” Mynatt frowned. “Avrel doesn’t like this next bit and neither do I. I know we discussed it, but we should just shoot him and dump him out a lock.”

  Alexis shook her head. “If you want a chance at a bounty on him, it has to be done a particular way. I can’
t guarantee the bounty would have been for him just dead. Explain it to the crew however you like, but it’s best if we’re able to say you turned him over to the Navy, me, and he was hanged.”

  She met Mynatt’s eyes and then looked away. The Regulations and Articles allowed a captain to summarily hang pirates if it was ‘not in the Interests and Safety of Her Majesty’s Ship and Crew’ to return them to port for trial. Others who took pirates — privateers or the rare merchant who was able to fight back — were supposed to turn them over to the nearest Naval ship or port in order to collect any bounties on record. It was a stretch to think the Crown would pay any bounty for Coalson, and Alexis was far from a captain, but there was a chance. The pair would apparently try anything for the chance at a bit of coin.

  The truth was that she felt a bullet or laser to the head was too good for Coalson and she wanted to see him hang. She wanted the ceremony of it — to watch as the ship’s line was attached high on the mast and the noose looped around his neck below the vacsuit’s helmet. And she wanted to see Coalson’s eyes as a pair of crewmen lifted him free of the ship’s hull and flung him high. He’d float free of the ship until he exited the hull’s field and was captured by the morass of dark matter that permeated darkspace. If he was lucky, there’d be enough slack in the line and the ship would be traveling so fast that his neck would snap when it finally went taut — if he was unlucky, the noose would simply tighten and slowly strangle him as he was dragged behind the mast.

  She followed Mynatt to the quarterdeck and waited for Dansby to arrive with Coalson. He had the man’s hands bound behind him and his feet were shackled so he could take only short, mincing steps. He was also gagged and in an emergency vacsuit, save the helmet which Dansby carried.

  “Bowhay’ll be along with a line soon,” Dansby said. “I’ll take the helm, Embry. You go and have a drink with the rest of the crew.” Dansby waited until the helmsman had left and it was just the four of them on the quarterdeck, then he shoved Coalson into place before the sail locker’s hatch. “I’ve Bowhay and another man who’ll do it, but they don’t like the idea.” He returned to the quarterdeck’s main hatch as though to see that no one from the crew was near. “There’s muttering.” He raised an eyebrow at Alexis. “And they’re wondering on you.”

  “That I’m …” Alexis started, concerned that the crew might suspect she was Navy.

  Dansby shook his head. “Not that, just that this is unusual and they know you’re the source of it. This —” He gestured toward Coalson. “— him. It doesn’t fit with the fiction of your being my niece. Not at all.”

  Coalson started to say something through his gag and Dansby shot him a look.

  “Quiet, you. My side’s still tender where one of your bastards shot me, so I’ve no wish to hear from you.”

  “I’m curious what he has to say,” Mynatt said. Before Alexis could protest, she reached out and pulled the gag away from Coalson’s mouth.

  “I’ll scream she’s Navy as soon as your bloody crew comes near!” Coalson yelled. “You’re working for the bloody Navy, you hear me, you —”

  Mynatt shoved Coalson’s face hard into the hatch, shutting him up.

  “It’s my experience threats like that have a way of getting one shot on this ship, so I suggest you keep it to yourself.” Mynatt jerked him back and then slammed him forward again. Coalson’s forehead bounced off the bulkhead and his look grew dazed for a moment.

  Mynatt shrugged and left Coalson to join Dansby by the helm.

  “Still we must have something to tell the crew about this.”

  “Some old grudge?” Alexis asked. “He did attack us, after all. As for the noose, tell them I’ve simply a harder heart than you, uncle.”

  Dansby snorted. “You’re a cold one, Carew, no doubt. Perhaps we got it wrong, which of us is the snake and which the mongoose.”

  Alexis turned away, not wanting him to see her face. She went to Coalson’s side.

  “I’d already sent off a message to my son, Carew,” Coalson said. “Edmon will know I saw you here and when word comes of my death he’ll know it was you to blame. He and my other sons will know what to do and they’ll end your whole damned line once and for all! Do you hear me? The message’ll come for you that your dear grandfather’s gone to meet his Highlands whore and their whelp!”

  Alexis’ felt herself grow hot at the threat. She stared at Coalson for a moment, then retrieved his vacsuit helmet from the deck. She glanced over to where Dansby and Mynatt were. They’d moved to the hatchway into the rest of the ship and Mynatt was whispering something to Dansby.

  She looked back to Coalson and wondered if he really had sent such a message. If he had, there was little she could do about it. Dansby might have some way of getting a message back to New London space, but it was likely they’d have to return to Baikonur to do so. She met Coalson’s eyes and it occurred to her that even hanging was too good for the man.

  A chill replaced the heat and she found herself acting without really thinking.

  “Do you suppose Bowhay will be long?” she called to Dansby, struggling to keep her voice calm. As she hoped, they both looked out into the companionway. Alexis slid the sail locker’s hatch open and drove her knee into the back of Coalson’s.

  His legs buckled and he stumbled into the lock, Alexis close behind. She slammed the hatch closed and locked it. Dansby or Mynatt would be able to override it from the quarterdeck, but by the time they did she’d be Outside. She slammed Coalson’s helmet onto his suit and latched it, then shoved him toward the outer hatch. She donned her own helmet.

  “What are you doing?” she heard Dansby demanding over the suit radio.

  What am I doing?

  Coalson was struggling to regain his feet, but Alexis shoved him back down. With his hands and feet bound he could gain no leverage.

  Yes, what am I doing?

  She stared at the outer hatch for a moment, teeth clenched and breath coming in short, rasping gasps. The Coalsons and their lunatic, irrational hate had taken so much from her and now this one was threatening to take more. She stared at the hatch longer, almost hoping that Dansby would open the inner hatch and stop her, as she finally admitted what she intended.

  Her grandfather wouldn’t approve, she knew, and neither would her father, she was certain. Her mother would be horrified, for Katlynne had been, by every story she’d ever heard, the gentlest and kindest of souls. But mother and father were dead, taken by the man who knelt before her, and her grandfather would never know.

  Alexis knew she would never, ever, tell her grandfather of what Daviel Coalson had admitted. She didn’t think he’d be able to bear the thought that his actions, no matter they were filtered through the Coalsons’ insanity, had played a part in those deaths.

  Her grandmother, though — Alexis had heard all the tales of that one. Her grandfather never tired of the telling, no matter that the memories broke his heart. It was as though he kept her alive, at least for himself, in the stories. And it was a telling measure of Denholm Carew’s inadequacy in raising a young girl that the stories Alexis had heard most often about Lynelle were those that centered around her temper. What Denholm would often describe as “her Scots was up and loose that day”, and then repeat something she’d said in his truly horrible attempt at a Highlands burr. Alexis could almost hear her, could almost tell what she’d be saying now.

  It’s a feud they want? Can ye nae hear the pipes, lass? They call the clan.

  Alexis held Coalson on his knees and knelt down herself so that she could see his face through the helmet. He’d been silent since they entered the lock, but she could see the confused look on his face as Dansby’s voice still called over the radio asking what she was doing.

  She unsnapped one of the safety lines from her belt and hooked it to the inside of the hatch, then grasped the latch.

  Coalson’s eyes widened as he realized her intent and he finally spoke.

  “No!”

  Alexis te
sted the bonds on his hands to ensure he’d not be able to get them loose and dump his air.

  “You can’t! Carew! For God’s sake, shoot me! Hang me if you must! Don’t —”

  “Carew?” Dansby’s voice interrupted. “What are you doing, damn you!”

  Alexis leaned close to Coalson, so that their helmets touched. She wanted to be sure he heard her words. She wanted him to suffer and she wanted him to feel the same fear she did now for her grandfather’s safety. She hesitated a moment, knowing this wouldn’t be the last she’d see of Daviel Coalson. If she did this, he’d be joining the parade of accusing figures in her dreams for certain. Then she fixed her thoughts on the parents she could just barely remember and the grandmother she’d never known.

  “Think on this, Daviel Coalson, as you go and meet the Dark. If I’ll do this to you, what fate awaits your sons?”

  She flung open the hatch and Coalson’s scream was cut off as the radiation of darkspace rendered their suit radios useless. The lock was still aired and it rushed out, taking Coalson with it. Alexis braced herself for the short time it took and watched Coalson float away.

  He struggled and twisted as he floated forward along the bowsprit, propelled by the outrushing air from the lock. Soon, though, his momentum slowed as he left the ship’s field and Röslein began to catch up. Alexis stepped out onto the ship’s bow, ready to fend him off or untangle him if he managed to snag any of the rigging, but he’d exited at a fine angle and remained just out of reach of the hull no matter how he tried to reach for it.

  Alexis pulled herself along the hull, following him to the stern as Röslein steadily made way. At the stern she stopped, watching as Coalson was left far behind.

  It was a spacer’s greatest fear, to float free of the ship in darkspace. Those who were taken back aboard said that their limbs became leaden, that they could feel their blood slow, dragged to a stop by the dark matter that permeated everything. That their very thoughts slowed. They’d dump their air and suffocate if their ship didn’t immediately turn back for them, rather than suffer that fate, but Coalson wouldn’t be able to dump his air and his tanks were full.