“I don’t know,” Jarn said. The signalman was hunched over his console, tapping away. “Still trying to resolve the scans.”
Olafsen crossed his arms. “I don’t surrender. I never have and I never will.”
But the situation was urgent. The enemy ships were only seventy thousand miles away, and Olafsen had come to a complete stop. Bloodaxe’s engines fired up again, but the ship was so close to the other star wolves, it would only take minutes for missiles to run Olafsen down across the void. With so much firepower arrayed against him, the first volley would finish him off.
Olafsen had made his boast hastily, and now realized the grim inevitability. He glanced at the other three men and saw from their expressions that they recognized the same. Surrender or die. And Scandian raiders, for all their bravery and risk-taking, were not so proud that they wouldn’t prefer giving up a ship to death at an enemy’s hands.
“I don’t understand it,” Björnman said. “Is it Forkbeard? Why would they join up with him? He’s the devil who betrayed us, he betrayed us all.”
“We’ve been on our own,” Olafsen said. It was coming to him now. “All these months in the void, raiding isolated mining camps and keeping down until the turmoil burned itself out. Forkbeard has been busy.”
“Telling lies,” Björnman grumbled. “He’s found a way to pin the blame on us.”
It was more than Olafsen had expected. Revenge for taking the man’s arm, he supposed. The end result was that Forkbeard had outwitted Olafsen and his crew. A curse on the man and his ancestors.
“They’re giving us twenty seconds to give our answer,” Jarn said. He tapped at his console. “Surrender or die.”
“I need terms. We won’t be thralls. We won’t be stripped from our ship.” He considered. “Will Forkbeard speak to me personally if we retract our guns? Don’t just sit there gaping, Jarn, ask him!”
Jarn came back with an answer a moment later. The lead ship had opened a channel. Olafsen took a deep breath and nodded. The enemy marauder captain appeared on the viewscreen moments later.
Except it wasn’t Ragnar Forkbeard. The ugly brute with his braided beard and mechanical arm was nowhere to be seen. Instead, it was a familiar, grinning figure. A shaved head, a red beard, a patch over his left eye. Sven Longshanks—Olafsen’s half-brother.
Sven threw back his head and roared with laughter. Olafsen could only glare his response.
“Look at you!” Sven said when he’d finished laughing. He wiped the tears from his good eye, took another look at Olafsen, and burst into laughter again. “I haven’t seen you this dumbfounded since I stole that wench from your bed on Roskilde.”
“I’ve identified the ship,” Jarn said at last. “It’s Thor’s Hammer.”
“I can see that, you idiot.” Olafsen turned back to his brother. “All right, you’ve had your fun. What the devil is this about? Are you really demanding my surrender? Finally found a way to steal Bloodaxe from me?”
“Why not? I was more deserving of the old man’s star wolf than you ever were. But nah, that’s not what this is about. I’ve got a better ship now. Take a look. She’s been to the yards, I’ve had a few augmentations. Better armor, better guns. And I can outrun your sorry bucket of rust, Brother.”
“In Thor’s Hammer? Not likely.”
Sven grinned. “Got your attention, though, didn’t I? You bit, and you bit hard. Even fired your guns. Wish I could have seen your face when they flew right through my illusion.”
“How did you do that?” Olafsen demanded. “My sensors—” He thought better of admitting too much and fell silent.
“Your sensors what?” Another obnoxious grin. “Ah, don’t stay angry. I’ve got presents for you. Knutesen is on ice. That’s right, I took Pestilence—it’s mine now. You weren’t the only one he stabbed in the back at Rykus III.”
Olafsen grunted. “Well, that is something.”
“I’ve had a little fun with Knutesen already, and I’ll send him over for you to knock around if you want.”
“Don’t bother. Dump him into the void if you want. Sell him to the slavers.”
It stung to admit it to himself, but what Olafsen really wanted was Knutesen’s ship, which his half-brother had already taken. Who cared if the man lived or died? Olafsen’s anger over the treachery at Rykus III had long since faded, even if his crew was still worked up about it.
“What about his women?” Sven asked.
“Old, toothless hags. Who cares?”
“Hardly,” Sven said. “A pair of feisty Albion wenches.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll send them over if you want.”
This was more tempting, but Olafsen had other concerns at the moment. “What is all of this? You’ve got a small fleet here.”
“More on the way, too. We’ll have fifteen star wolves by the end of the week assuming you’ll join me. Under my command, of course.”
“Under your command?”
Sven drew his mouth closed, until his mustache pulled over his lips and merged with his beard. His good eye glittered. “You’d be dead if I’d given the order.” A nod. “And I’ve proven myself to the other marauder captains by outwitting you.”
So that was it. That explained Sven’s entire motivation. He wanted Olafsen’s ship and services for some kind of raid, but he wanted to be in charge. Olafsen was inclined to scoff.
And yet Sven had outwitted Olafsen, forced the famed Bloodaxe to surrender without firing a shot. For Olafsen’s part, serving under his younger brother would be galling, but not as galling as surrendering to Ragnar Forkbeard would have been.
“So?” Sven pressed, tone impatient. “Are you in? Or do I have to ring you upside the head with a few missiles to make you see my point?”
Olafsen narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing out here? There’s nothing in the Great Bear but salvage.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve been here a hundred times. Gutted beetle ships, some old mining colonies—they’ve been abandoned, what? Fifty years? Nothing left to scavenge. You’d have better luck panning for gold in a bathtub.”
“Plenty of resources left in the system.”
“So what?” Olafsen said. “You could have an asteroid made of nothing but fissionables, but if you can’t keep raiders off your back, what good does it do you? Anyway, that’s not my work. My duty is to raid other people’s colonies. To cull the herd. Where the men are weak and the women soft—I do the work of the gods. I’m not in the business of planting colonies, and I never will be.”
“Neither am I,” Sven said. “Nor anyone else in this raiding party. But others are, and they’re coming. You know who I’m talking about.”
“What do you mean, Albion?”
“That’s right. Albion. Their women are beautiful, and their children well-fed. Such sorts make excellent thralls. Their worlds are rich and populous. And soft.”
Olafsen scoffed. “How about the battleship that crushed and scattered the alien threat? Is that what you mean by soft? Tough enough to drive off the buzzards—we couldn’t manage it. And Albion space lanes are mined and patrolled by warships.
“You know something else?” he continued. “I captured a Singaporean beetle ship last month, and its captain said Albion is rearming to go searching for the Apex harvester ships. They have more warships than ever.”
“What happens when their fleets set out?” Sven said. His tone was mocking, and it was clear he knew at least as much as Olafsen about what was going on in Albionish space. “They’ll leave their home worlds unprotected, won’t they?”
“Except by orbital fortresses. Each of their planets is protected by asteroids pulled into orbit and armed with heavy guns. Did you forget that?”
“Of course not.”
“So this is your idea? Look at you, all smart and clever.” Olafsen gave his sarcasm free rein. “I’m sure we can fight our way past the forts in a week or two and there will be no marines waiting for our raiders when they land.”
&nbs
p; “Yes, it’s my idea,” Sven said in a growl. “What is yours? Go ahead, Brother. Tell me. Apex is ravaging the systems back toward Earth. Albion blocks us from the Hroom and the Ladino worlds. Keep raiding Scandian settlements, is that your idea? There’s nothing left to steal. The Scandians are poor and desperate, and any place of value is either an armed camp for marauders, wracked by the blood tongue, or has already been raided so many times that the survivors would happily sell themselves into slavery for a scrap of beef and a bowl of potato soup.
“We’ll have thirty star wolves before I’m done,” Sven added. “That’s enough to thrash an Albion fleet and leave any fortress in rubble. Six thousand raiders—who could stand up to an army of that size, with the firepower we can bring to a fight?”
Thirty wolves. Now Sven was onto something. And six thousand raiders decked out in mech suits.
“It sounds like a lot, but they’d be arrayed against Royal Marines,” Olafsen said. “Whole armies of them, converging against your forces and pummeling them from orbit or at the very least from their air forces. If you’re forced to reduce the forts, you’ll lose the element of surprise.”
“You’re the one talking about attacking the Albion forts, not me. I’m talking about raids deep in Albion territory, but I don’t mean to attack Albion itself, or even Mercia and Saxony. Not now, not until we’ve reduced their worlds to chaos. Then, they’ll be easy pickings. We can reach Hroom territory, get at the Ladino and New Dutch worlds.” Sven nodded. “There is a hundred years of plunder on the other side of this system, Brother.”
“And how will you slip past the enemy defenses?” Olafsen asked.
There were sentries in Albion space, continual navy patrols, plus all the pirates, freebooters, and semi-licit traders from Ladino and New Dutch worlds. Those sorts would be happy to send the Royal Navy after the star wolves. They may not like the navy or the pompous Albion nobility who ran it, but compared to the mayhem caused by Scandian marauder captains, it was clear which side they would take.
But even as the words came out, Olafsen knew the answer. He stared at Sven, who stared back with a sharp gaze through his remaining eye.
“How did you do that?” Olafsen asked. “That business with the ship. I fired on you, but you weren’t there.”
Sven lifted one eyebrow. “Trickery, Brother. That’s what will beat Albion.”
Chapter Four
Catarina Vargus stepped out of the away pod to find three royal marines facing her with their rifles lowered. Their hair was trimmed so close to the scalp it was nearly a buzz, and they greeted her with hostile expressions on their square-jawed faces.
“Keep yer hands up,” one of the men snapped when she tugged on her shirt where it had ridden up under her gun belt.
“Thank you for the warm welcome. Where is your boss?”
“Shut yer mouth, he’ll be here.”
Orient Tiger’s damaged launch platform had proven incapable of sending her over to the Albion cruiser, so she’d strapped in and let the torpedo boat tether her pod and haul her manually over to the cruiser’s snare. The snare had pulled her in, then left her sitting in the engineering bay for nearly forty minutes before she was ordered out of the pod by these three.
Catarina stared across an open room large enough to hold one of the smaller schooners in her fleet. Unlike her own small bay, currently crammed with goods, this one was clean down to the well-scrubbed floor. Peerless hadn’t fired her guns, had suffered no damage, and there were few workers in sight. Those few put down their tools to stare at her.
“Hands up,” the lead marine said. “Be a good girl now, and don’t make trouble.”
The other two removed her gun belt and let it slip to the ground. Then, in a quick motion, they twisted her wrists together and cuffed them. Fear, anger, and frustration warred within her. They’d been growing for the past two hours as she awaited her fate.
“The terms were that I would surrender as a freebooter.” Catarina kept her voice lofty, her tone clipped, as befitted her upbringing on Albion. “So why am I being treated as a criminal? Or did your master lie? Am I now to be subjected to a sham trial and hung as a pirate?”
The marines said nothing, but someone else cleared her throat to one side. She glanced over and was surprised to see a pair of familiar faces from Blackbeard’s old crew standing among the workers in the cargo bay. They’d been standing casually, and Catarina had dismissed them with a glance. One was the woman with the shaved scalp and the Albion lions tattooed on her exposed forearms who’d been Admiral Drake’s old subpilot. What was her name again? Henny Capp. The other was a big Ladino fellow by the name of . . . the name slipped Catarina’s mind.
“Please tell me James Drake is on board,” she said, “and that all of this is a misunderstanding.”
The pair shared an uncomfortable look. “Sorry, we ain’t supposed to talk,” Capp said in a rough York Town accent that contrasted with Catarina’s accent like sandpaper against silk. “We got orders to haul you in. That’s all we know, right, Carvalho?”
Carvalho, that was it. The Ladino shifted uncomfortably and wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“So you’re the ones who shot holes in my ship and left my launch platform a wreck.”
Capp shrugged at this. “Sorry.” She glanced toward the far door of the engineering bay. “What’s holding him anyhow?” This was addressed to no one in particular.
“I only have one question,” Catarina said. “Was that a well-placed shot with your torpedo, or were you trying to kill me and missed?”
“I meant it to happen like that,” Capp said. “Coulda hit you with both torpedoes, right?”
“Count yourself fortunate,” Carvalho added.
“Oh, certainly. What a lucky woman I am today. To be ambushed by former comrades. But I should be grateful because I’ve merely been robbed instead of killed.”
“We’re not supposed to talk to her,” the lead marine said. “Hold her here and keep quiet—them’s our orders.”
“Shut up, you,” Capp said. “I’m a lieutenant, see. You’re a bloody corporal.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Where is that bloke, anyway?” Capp said irritably.
“Do you mean Captain McGowan?” Catarina said. “Maybe you should call him and tell him to stop hiding. Let him face me himself.”
Capp reached for her ear as if to activate her com link, but before she could, the door to the lift on the opposite side of the bay slid open. A tall figure came striding across the floor. Catarina would have recognized that posture from any distance. Edward McGowan.
McGowan cut a handsome figure in his Royal Navy uniform of red and gold with its brass buttons, a greatcoat coming nearly to his knees, and the captain’s bars on his shoulder. It had been several years since she’d seen him in person, but he was as handsome as ever, though he must be in his early forties by now. Iron gray touched his temples, and a hint of crow’s feet marked the corners of his eyes.
McGowan came to a halt and looked her over with barely disguised hostility. She held his gaze without flinching.
“You coward,” she said.
“It was not cowardice, Vargus, it was prudence. You had a rather large and powerful fleet—”
“What a generous assessment.”
“—and I could hardly be expected to see damage to my own forces when subterfuge would do.”
“Anyway, you know damn well that’s not what I’m talking about. You were a coward a dozen years ago, and you’re doubly a coward now.”
Capp cleared her throat. “Eh, Cap’n, you and the lady got some kind of history together?”
McGowan gave the woman a sharp look, then passed his gaze to Carvalho. “You are both dismissed. Get back to your torpedo boat and await instructions. You were not told to enter Peerless in the first place.”
“We was just following orders, Cap’n. Drake said—”
“I don’t want to hear about Admiral Drake,” McGowan said. “Your orders are to ret
urn to your boat and maintain subspace silence. We don’t know who else might be lurking in this system, and until it’s clear, we’re going to keep quiet.”
Capp looked like she was going to say something else, but her expression merely turned surly. “Aye, Cap’n. Come on, you,” she told Carvalho, and the pair made their way toward the same lift that had recently brought McGowan.
“What’s this about?” Catarina demanded when they had left.
“I’m going to give you a chance to be reasonable.”
“Go to hell, McGowan. I want to see Drake. Where is he?”
“The admiral is not here. In fact, he is four systems away. You’ve been left to me.” He reached for her arm. “Come with me, we’ll talk like two reasonable adults.”
She jerked from his grasp. “Don’t touch me, you snake.”
“I have my orders, Vargus. I’ll take you by force if I have to.”
“You’ll take me by force, will you? Go ahead and try.” Catarina held up her cuffed hands. “I’ll wrap these around your throat and choke the life out of you.”
His face hardened, and he clenched his fists. “By God, if you try anything, I’ll knock you down, so help me.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and kill me, if that’s what you’re about? You’ve already taken everything I have, so what does it matter?”
“Your precious little colonization scheme, is that what you mean? Hah! Like we could ever allow that.”
“Did Drake tell you? Did he break the trust, is that it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The admiral didn’t tell me anything. I found you myself.” He crossed his arms as she glared at him skeptically. “That’s right. You didn’t think you could guard your secrets, did you? That I wasn’t keeping an eye on you?”
“You’ve been fighting aliens and traitors, and you had time to watch me? How flattering. No, I don’t believe you for a moment.”
“Oh, believe it,” McGowan said. “You’re only the most notorious pirate in the frontier worlds. Part of a long and inglorious line of pirates. Your sister is a pirate. You father was a pirate—quite infamously, if I remember correctly. And we both know that blood always proves true.” McGowan flicked at the tassels on the edge of her vest, making the silver bells jingle. “No matter what trappings you put on.”
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