When the gunfire died, the water was still roiling, but there was no sign of the beast. Brockett still sat where he’d been before the attack, frozen in place. Nyb Pim wobbled and nearly fell before he steadied himself. Carvalho panted.
“That’s it,” the Ladino said. “That’s my ammo. I fired every bullet.”
Tolvern had shot three times on semi-auto. Plus the first two shots, she reminded herself. That left her fifteen bullets, if she remembered correctly. And it wasn’t even fully dark yet. Doubtful they had killed the creature, with its thick, scaly hide. Might have only pissed it off, in fact. And there could easily be more of them.
Then she caught another sight that brought all of her worries into perspective. A light. Not in the heavens, but on the surface, and close. It blinked twice on the far side of the lake. Another light blinked twice a hundred yards or so around the lake to their right. An answer to the first.
“Quiet, everyone,” she whispered. “Get down.”
They had been found.
Chapter Eleven
Dexi Gibbs appeared on Captain Drake’s viewscreen. She was the commander of Fort Gamma, one of Hot Barsa’s three orbital fortresses. The woman had a sharp nose and small eyes, reminding Drake of one of his primary school teachers from many years back. Until she spoke.
“Why in the name of Albion are you hailing me?” she said. “You are a traitor and a pirate.”
Gibbs spoke with that snooty, artificial-sounding accent gained only by those who’d spent their childhood in preparatory academies in and around York Town. Those academies fostered a clannish arrogance of the sort also seen in Lord Malthorne and his ilk. Not Drake’s type of people at all.
“You could have ignored me,” he said. “Yet you answered my call.”
“You have a dozen ships aiming their guns in my direction.” She gave a cold smile. “And I have nothing to lose by stalling until Lindsell receives his reinforcements and returns.”
Capp muttered a dark oath to Drake’s side, and he looked away from Gibbs long enough to give his subpilot a hard look. Capp needed to hold her tongue. Gibbs was bluffing, of course. Captain Lindsell’s task force had begun reorganizing farther out in the system, but for now, he hadn’t turned around to relieve Hot Barsa.
“I would presume,” Drake said to Gibbs, “that you hope, as I do, to see Albion reunited. There are too many alien threats for us to be fighting each other.”
“Ah, the traitor seeks a parlay. Come to offer your surrender, is that it? Very well, I accept. Ah, but wait. Sadly, Malthorne will have your neck in a noose, all the same. Better that you flee for your life.”
Drake noted that she’d called him “Malthorne,” and not “King Thomas the Second,” as the murderous villain was styling himself now. Interesting.
“How about cooperation,” he said. “Maybe we want the same thing.”
“Cooperation? Hah. You are a bloody fool, James Drake.”
“Turn over your fort. Your garrison will work for me. You will keep your ranks and fight for those who mean to remove the usurper. Together, we can restore the crown to a rightful heir and organize our defenses against the alien threat.”
“A rightful heir? Let me guess—you mean yourself, don’t you? You have no royal blood. Or do you refer to Nigel Rutherford? He is even more distantly related to the crown than I am.” Gibbs smiled. “No? Then perhaps you mean the Duke of West Mercia. Alas, he has declined the throne. Malthorne’s flagship seems to discourage such moves from pretenders.”
“Come now,” Drake said. “You hold no respect for the lord admiral. You’re not even flying the Albion flag, only showing the fleet colors. And you cannot withstand my forces, so even if you are a friend of Malthorne, we will bombard you into submission.”
“Impossible.”
“Is it? You have no arms. None of your forts do. Malthorne couldn’t bother to resupply you. Do you even have food? For all I know, your people are starving.”
“Where are your pirates?”
“They prefer to be called mercenaries.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Whatever, they are still the rubbish of the sector. Where did they go?”
“To resupply you. Once you surrender, you’ll need arms and other supplies.”
“You are deluding yourself. We can hold out indefinitely if we must.”
“Very well. Prove me wrong. I had hoped you would come to your senses and save us both some unneeded headache. But so be it.”
Gibbs’s haughty expression never changed. “Go ahead and make an attempt. You will find that I have plenty of bite in me, as do my commanders on Fort Epsilon and Fort Alpha.” She cut the line, and the screen went black.
Rutherford appeared a moment later. He’d been monitoring the transmission from on board Vigilant, which sat a few hundred kilometers above Blackbeard and off starboard.
“I don’t like that woman,” Rutherford said. “She will be no ally of ours.”
After considering what he’d learned from the database about the other two commanders, Drake had pegged Gibbs as the most likely to turn. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Perhaps he should approach Alpha and Epsilon instead. No, he trusted his instincts. Gibbs was waiting for a show of force, he was sure of it.
“We’ll see. Take command of the missile frigates. Lay them off . . . ” Drake looked at Capp and raised his eyebrows in question. She fed him coordinates, which he passed to Rutherford.
“Just out of torpedo range,” Rutherford said.
“Right. We won’t take chances. The frigates can’t punch through that asteroid, anyway, so it’s mainly to knock them around a bit. Keep them distracted.”
“And the rest of us?”
“We’re going to find a soft spot and come in swinging.”
#
They followed Gamma in orbit around the planet as they readied their assault. Drake let the other forts catch a quick glimpse at their vanguard, curious if they would fire on him. They didn’t. No way to be sure, of course, but he was growing more and more confident that they were low on ammo.
But “low” was not the same thing as “completely depleted.” Blackbeard and Vigilant led a few exploratory passes over Gamma, then began their bombardment. The missile frigates laid down a barrage of missiles.
The muted response of the orbital fortresses had left him more and more certain of his enemy’s weakness. All three forts must already have been suffering deficiencies a few weeks ago during the battle that had so badly mauled Philistine, sending Tolvern’s destroyer to the San Pablo yards for costly repairs. They’d held back then, too.
Gamma absorbed Drake’s punishment as it completed several rotations. His ships followed it around, maintaining the attack.
And then Fort Gamma let loose. Missiles flared out. As Drake scrambled to keep from getting blown out of the sky, the fort opened torpedo tubes and exposed cannon batteries. Rutherford had sent a two-man observation craft out to scout the surface of the fortress for damage, and it was caught in Gamma’s sudden fury. Cannon fire caught it before it could get back to Vigilant. The scout ship weaved desperately to escape the guns, but they drove it down toward the planet. Moments later, it fell into the atmosphere, flaming like a meteorite.
Larger ships had begun to take damage too, as missiles and torpedoes got through countermeasures and evasive maneuvers. Chatter came down the com link, asking Drake about a retreat. Fort Gamma had been playing some sort of game, seemed to have plenty of ammo, and Fort Epsilon was about to swing into range. And what about those torpedo boats? Where were they?
But Drake wasn’t ready to abandon his hunch. “Signal the fleet to hold their position,” he told Oglethorpe. “We’ll keep up the fight.”
Blackbeard cut around to come at the enemy from a new angle. She came within range of the enemy cannons, but swung quickly to show a broadside. The gunnery let loose. Explosions lit up the side of the fort. They hit an ammo dump, and out came a spectacular display of light and burning, venting gasses.
>
It was night over the eastern hemisphere of the planet. They were not far from where Tolvern’s pod had entered the atmosphere. Was she looking up at the night sky even now, wondering what was going on overhead? Had she even survived the landing? They had received no word.
Drake held his breath as Fort Epsilon approached. His frigates let loose a few warning missiles, but enemy countermeasures brought three of them down. The final one detonated on the surface, sending up a geyser of dust, but causing no harm.
Gamma’s fire diminished, but didn’t stop. Epsilon didn’t shoot, and Drake told his forces to let it continue without further harassment. A few minutes after Epsilon was gone, Commander Gibbs hailed Blackbeard from Gamma.
“Hold your fire, Drake.” She sounded exhausted, frustrated.
“You still have a torpedo and two missiles in play. How cheeky. Call them off.”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” she demanded. “Isn’t it obvious what’s happening? There’s a bloody mutiny down here is what.”
Drake took satisfaction in seeing her discomposed. Two hours of combat had wiped away her smugness. If only he were looking at Admiral Malthorne instead.
“You had your chance. Why should I give you respite?”
“All I’m asking is that you pull back. Let me get things settled. I’ll surrender as soon as I can. First, I need to get control of the mutineers.”
“How long do you need?” Drake asked. “If this is some sort of game . . . ”
“I swear to God, it’s not. Give me an hour.” Then, to someone off screen, Gibbs said, “Stop them!” She shouted something else, but the line cut before Drake could pick it up.
Two torpedo boats launched from Gamma. It was an ill-advised move, with Drake having all his guns trained on the fort. He could have blasted them apart at once, but he needed to see what was happening. If Gibbs were lying, if the mutiny was to force the surrender, and she was trying to prevent it, these two boats would be his allies, not his enemy.
The instant the two craft got free, they gunned their engines and made to flee the scene. That answered that question. Drake sent a quick message telling them to stand down. When his message was ignored, he sent Vigilant after them. Rutherford’s ship soon overtook them, and he attacked mercilessly. He tore apart the rear vessel, which detonated in a fiery death for all her crew. Vigilant swooped in behind the other craft.
That ended the fight. The torpedo boat cut its engines and surrendered.
The fort stopped firing on Blackbeard moments later. For awhile, there was nothing, and when Drake hailed Gibbs to tell her that the time was up, she didn’t answer. So it was a game, after all. He readied his forces for another attack.
Finally, the surrender came. No conditions. Gibbs claimed no allegiance to Malthorne, only that she doubted Drake’s ability to defeat him. After all, she said, the might of Albion backed the lord admiral. Drake had a poor colony world and a third of the fleet. Turning to the rebellion seemed a good way to get oneself killed. But, as she no longer had any choice . . .
Given that she’d offered her surrender, he was surprised by her candor. She’d just caused him a good deal of trouble. If he were a vindictive man, he’d have made an example of her to show the other two forts. But he was not.
That decision delivered mixed results. An hour later, Epsilon offered to join the rebellion. Fort Alpha refused to surrender. Let Drake come, Alpha’s commander boasted, he’d never break through. And this was the largest, most dug-in fort of all. Drake worried the enemy was right.
For now, he’d secure his victory. He prepared an away team to take possession of Gamma, and led the expedition himself. He brought over so many armed men that it left his fleet nearly depleted, but he wouldn’t risk an ambush. He warned Gibbs that if she were to try anything, Captain Rutherford would use his remaining atomic warheads to reduce Gamma to radioactive slag.
Chapter Twelve
Tolvern and Carvalho lay flat on the overhanging trunk, their rifles pointed in opposite directions over the lake. She’d given Carvalho seven of her remaining fifteen bullets, then sent Brockett and Nyb Pim into the makeshift shelter with instructions not to make a sound. Not that they needed a warning. All four of them had become a jangle of nerves as it grew darker and darker. Only a handful of stars penetrated the thick atmosphere. The night filled with such a racket of croaks, chirps, squeaks, and bellows that Tolvern’s whole body felt like it was vibrating.
It had been still all day, but now a warm breeze came from the direction of the mountains. A light flared again briefly on the other side of the lake, and in that moment, Tolvern saw a corner of the larger parachute that they’d snugged into the fronds of one of the giant ferns. Hanging loose, it now flapped like a flag. The movement had apparently drawn their stalkers. It would be immediately apparent that the fabric was a parachute of human origin.
Carvalho cursed in a low voice. “What do we do?”
Tolvern had no idea. It was the worst possible timing for this breeze. Why not earlier, when they were cooking in their own sweat? She’d have given anything for the slightest stirring of the air. Now, they had it, but only so it could draw attention.
“We could leave,” she whispered. “Get Brockett and Nyb Pim and go into the jungle.”
“We can’t go down there. There are bone diggers. Eye suckers!”
“Shh. Will you keep it down? We’ll deal with that if we have to.”
Still, what was the point? They’d struggled to move through the swamp in daylight, even skirting the edges of the forest; they’d never get far in the dark.
“We could surrender?” Carvalho said.
“Seriously?” she hissed. “Are you nuts?”
“That’s why we came, to find the Hroom.”
“Not like this. For all we know, these are just people of the bush, Hroom who’ve managed to evade the slavers all these years. They’ll kill us without question. For that matter, they could easily be humans or sugar slaves sent by Malthorne’s people to track us down.”
She was certain of one thing. It would be dumb to make contact under these circumstances. Beyond dumb. Suicidal.
Carvalho tried to say something else, but his voice was getting loud again, and she told him to stop talking. They settled in to wait. For a long time, there was nothing but the sounds of the jungle and lake. Tolvern brushed some crawly thing off her arm, and flinched when an animal screeched to their right. Some other animal growled, the brush crashed, and it sounded like a life and death struggle was playing out not thirty feet away.
What about their stalkers? The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced they were Hroom. No way humans would be wandering around in the dark, no matter how well armed and eager to lay their hands on the intruders. But neither human nor Hroom saw particularly well in the dark, so if she and her companions only sat still . . .
Another movement in the brush, this time to their left. The creak of a bending branch. Instinctively, she knew it was different than the animal sounds. Carvalho was lying next to her with his gun, and she felt his body stiffen.
A crack of blue lightning arced out toward the bent trunk on which they lay. It sizzled the wood next to Tolvern’s ear with a roaring crack. She smelled ozone and burning hair. The side of her face tingled.
Carvalho fired once. Someone cried out, but not in pain. A warning. The voice belonged to a Hroom. Carvalho fired twice more in quick succession.
Something moved in the brush to her right, and Tolvern, recovering from the close call of the electric attack, spotted a long, slender shadow slinking through the trees. He held what looked like a walking stick in his hand, but the tip glowed with a faint blue light. She lifted her gun to fire. But before she could squeeze off a shot, the figure disappeared into the trees.
A light blinked on the opposite side of the lake. Two lights answered with blinks of their own, but neither was close to them. There must be at least five enemies, counting the two (or more) who flanked them
.
Carvalho now had four bullets and Tolvern had eight. She couldn’t sit here in the dark, waiting for another attack. Not with twelve bullets between them, and many hours until morning.
“Nyb Pim,” she said in a low voice. “Get out here.”
He came out and crawled up behind her.
“Talk to them,” she whispered. “Tell them we’re not enemies, that we’re—just explain it. You know what to say. Try not to offend them, for God’s sake.”
Nyb Pim called out in Hroom. His voice was high, with hoots and strange whistling noises. Sounds a human couldn’t reproduce, though she knew a few claimed to understand it and could manage a few very simple words. Even then, half the Hroom language was apparently just mood or sense and not words in the human sense of language.
Her Hroom pilot-turned-translator spoke for two or three minutes in what sounded like a long supplication. At last he stopped, but there was no answer from the surrounding jungle. If Tolvern hadn’t seen the electric attack and heard the voice, she’d have thought they were jumping at shadows.
“What did you tell them?”
“The truth,” he said.
Yes, but how much of the truth? And with what nuance? And if he’d admitted he was with humans, they’d expect a lie or trap. There was no escaping the human reputation, Albion’s more so, for being masters of deception.
Another electrical pulse lashed out without warning. This time, it was aimed at Carvalho. It struck him on the arm. Tolvern was touching him, and the current passed from his body to hers. Her limbs stiffened, and she only just managed to hold onto the trunk. Carvalho wasn’t so fortunate. He stiffened and lost his grip. She couldn’t move quickly enough to grab him. He fell off and landed in the water below with a plop.
“Carvalho!”
She leaned over and tried in vain to see into the inky-black water. Nyb Pim stretched out, reaching with his long arms and fingers. Another flash and crackle from one of the electric weapons, and Nyb Pim went over, too. Tolvern lifted her gun and aimed in the direction of the attack. She fired twice on semi-auto.
Rebellion of Stars (Starship Blackbeard Book 4) Page 9