The man turned toward them with a grin. For a long moment, Catarina could only gape while the other women exclaimed behind her. It had been a breathtaking and foolhardy display of bravery. Then anger replaced her astonishment.
Catarina shoved her gun into its holster. “You killed my pig!”
“Oh, excuse me,” he said in a mocking tone. “Did you raise it from a suckling? Maybe you should have branded it.”
“You know what I mean. We’ve been tracking that boar since . . . who the blazes are you, anyway? This is the earl’s forest. You’d better not be poaching or I’ll—”
Laughter from the other young women drew Catarina’s attention. When she looked back at the man, he was grinning. He didn’t look so rough now, only hot and sweaty. His trousers and jacket were tailored, and in good repair, and his mocking smile was familiar.
“That’s our brother,” one of the McGowan sisters said. “Edward.”
Catarina gaped. While carrying the same McGowan look about him, Edward was very different in appearance from his brother, Reginald. Where the older brother slouched, the younger carried himself straight and proud. Reginald was always looking about him, and there was something shifty in his expression. Edward stared at her openly, neither hostile nor calculating, even though he was looking her up and down. There was something military in his bearing, something aristocratic, and not in the way that often made Catarina bristle at the dismissal of so many of his type.
And then he had to open his mouth. “Who is this girl?” he asked the others. “Some serving wench you’ve taken a fancy to?”
“I’m no servant! I’m Lady Catarina Richards of Tasmania.”
“Ah, the one Reginald is enamored with,” Edward said. “Tasmania, is it? There is no such place anymore, of course, since the colony was abandoned, only a lot of pretenders for its titles.” His smile turned mischievous. “I’ve met three supposed dukes, which is curious, since as far as I know there were only two duchies on the whole planet.”
Catarina sputtered. Not least because Reginald had shown no particular interest in her. He certainly wasn’t enamored. Edward must know that, and he must have also learned from someone that Catarina was interested in making the match. Her mother’s imprudent tongue, no doubt.
But she was also flustered by the implication that her entire history was invented. Which of course it was.
“I will say one thing,” Edward continued. “You are prettier than I’d been led to expect. Of course, I’ve traveled extensively in Ladino lands, so I have a preference for dark-eyed beauties.”
“That’s funny,” Catarina said, “because I’d been led to believe you preferred the pale-skinned and vacuous.”
She was still aggravated by the whole situation, and had been caught flatfooted in more than one way. The barb was unwise, given that she was currently dependent upon the goodwill of Reginald McGowan, who spoke glowingly of his younger brother. She expected her target to bristle, but he threw back his head and laughed.
The next day, Catarina pointed Edward out to her mother across the banquet hall as the earl lifted a goblet with his shaky hand and toasted the temporary return of his son from the navy. Edward’s wild boar, an enormous pit-roasted hunk of flesh, sat in the middle of the table on a massive silver platter, surrounded by roasted apples, potatoes, onions, turnips, and carrots.
Catarina’s mother took one look at the handsome, confident young captain, then whispered in her daughter’s ear that she was to change the target of her affections. Forget Reginald; Edward would be her husband. Catarina had not actually targeted the older brother—that was her mother’s scheme, not her own, so there were no affections to change, and it took little coaxing for her to agree.
It was only later, when she turned over her first meeting with Edward, that she realized that the banquet wasn’t the moment when she’d fallen for him. No, it was when he was standing with a bloody knife in hand and the still-twitching boar bleeding to death in the stream. When she’d snapped a comeback, and he’d given such a hearty, friendly laugh. That was when he’d taken her.
#
It took eleven days from when Catarina entered Nordland before Void Queen approached the jump point that led to the Great Bear System. Reassembling all of her goods after the previous jump had been the biggest delay, but there was a good deal of space to cross, which took time, given the sluggish speed of the barges. The opposing jump points were in orbit around the star near the first and second gas giants, but those two planets were currently on opposite sides of their orbit, which meant a traverse past the asteroid belt, across the orbit of two of the rocky inner worlds, and then back out again.
Any or all of these celestial objects could have hidden hostile forces, so she kept her ships together when crossing. Void Queen and two of her frigates, Orient Tiger and the stubby, heavily armored Pussycat, patrolled the lanes, scanning ahead and behind the barges, sure to always stay within a quick charge of any of the more vulnerable ships. The entire time, Peerless and the rest of McGowan’s forces stayed in position near the departure point.
Nothing hindered her crossing, not even a false alarm. When she was an hour out and had ordered the warp point engine online to run diagnostics in preparation for a jump, McGowan hailed her with a visual message.
He was glowering when he appeared on the main screen. “I don’t know what the devil you’ve been doing, Vargus, but I gave you orders. You were to bring Void Queen to the jump point with all haste.”
She kept her breathing steady. “Absent any justification, I thought it best to proceed with caution.”
There was a delay of roughly fifty seconds as she waited for his response across the millions of miles that still separated the two craft. When it came, his face was red.
“I already scanned the blasted system. I’ve been scanning continuously in fact.” He held up a hand as if to stop an objection that would be nearly a minute in arriving. “And I damn well know that something might have been hiding. It was a risk I was willing to take. I’ve been sending out probes ever since that unknown craft came through in this direction. I’ve picked up a distress signal from HMS Forge.”
The screen went black. HMS Forge. That explained a lot.
“Huh?” Capp said. “Never seen him so twisted out of shape before. Just ’cause he heard from some lost ship, it’s suddenly all our fault?”
“Forge is McGowan’s old ship, his first command. Admiral Drake told me about the missing destroyer, but he left that part out.”
“Ah, hell,” Capp said. “You better send a response, Cap’n.”
But McGowan’s next message came through before she could.
He looked calmer, though there was still that anger beneath the surface that must have been bubbling there for the last eleven days. “That’s right, Vargus. Forge apparently survived the encounter with the Scandians. She’s sitting crippled in a hidden location—”
How hidden could it be if she was sending out broadcasts? Catarina wondered.
“—while three star wolves are hunting for her. I don’t have the firepower to rescue that ship on my own, which is why I needed Void Queen. Six hours ago . . .” He stopped, turned away, and took a deep breath as if wrestling down more anger. “Six hours ago, the last of the signals came through. There is an excellent chance that your delay has cost us the loss of one Havoc-class destroyer and her crew. That’s why I needed you to come, not to satisfy some whim.” He ended his message by crossing his arms and staring at the screen, as if willing her justification to cross the distance.
“King’s balls,” Capp swore as she tapped her console. “We ain’t mind readers. If it was so bloody urgent, why didn’t he tell us?”
“I would like to know the same thing,” Catarina said, “but I’m sure he’d snarl something about security.”
Smythe spoke up from the tech console. “McGowan might have a point. Apex can grab coded subspace signals. We still don’t know how the buzzards do it, but the Admiralty doesn’t
want concrete information transmitted via subspace.”
“There’s a fine line between too much information and not enough,” Catarina said. “Under the circumstances, it would have been useful to know why he needed us to hurry.”
Capp’s expression turned thoughtful. “Them birds might have left something behind on their way out of here. Since we ain’t got a clue about how they do it, could be they spy on us from a distance. For that matter, we sure this really came from Forge?”
“How do you mean?” Catarina asked.
Now Nyb Pim spoke up from his pilot’s chair in his high, almost hooting tone. “Apex has proven to be active deceivers. Better than humans, even.”
“Right,” Capp said. “Could be Apex making us think it’s star wolves and making us think it’s our lost destroyer, too.”
The Hroom looked solemn, his big, liquid eyes staring. “That was a level of deception that had not occurred to me.”
Capp leaned over and gave Nyb Pim a playful punch on the shoulder. “Ya did good enough. And you got it faster than this one.” A nod in Catarina’s direction.
When all the old Blackbeard crew had first unloaded in the bay, the tall, purple-skinned Hroom had seemed like one apart. Catarina always felt sorry for those Hroom who spent their lives in and around humans, whether in bondage or free. Surely they’d rather be among their own kind, in their magnificent decaying cities, than standing out as oddities among the younger, more vigorous race that seemed to have settled in the quadrant with the express goal of replacing them.
Looking at the affectionate way Capp spoke to Nyb Pim, she reconsidered. I’m the odd one out here, not the Hroom.
Maybe Drake had known what he was doing in hand-selecting so many of her crew. His old companions is what they were, the ones who’d stood by him during mutiny and exile. Catarina was discovering a mix of independence and even insubordination in them. She liked it, felt comfortable with their types. Every pirate crew came together under negotiations. A man could leave at the next port and there was nothing you could do about it. Cheat him of his wage, lie to him, and watch him mutiny. Catarina knew how to manage that sort.
If McGowan had chosen her crew, heaven forbid, or even if they’d been chosen from the ranks, she’d have found herself dealing with an entirely different set of personalities.
“I’m ready to record,” she said. When Capp nodded, Catarina sent McGowan a new message. She chose her words carefully. Confident, but not antagonistic.
“With all due respect, Captain McGowan, you are to take command of my forces only in the case of combat or a potential combat mission. It is regrettable that I didn’t understand the nature of your orders. Your lack of explicit language was appreciated for the sake of security, but it hamstrung my understanding of the situation.”
She sent it, then had Capp send a second, more conciliatory message. “We will arrive shortly. Shall we follow you through the jump, or would you like to collect the entire fleet before we go through? If combat is called for, I’m willing to place my ship under your command.”
“There,” she added. “Go ahead and send that. If McGowan responds with any more obnoxious commentary, I’m going to ignore it. Let him stomp his feet and go red in the face, I don’t care about his tantrums.”
Capp cleared her throat. “Um, Captain . . .”
“I’ve got the more powerful ship,” Catarina pressed on. “So he’s at our mercy. Let him blunder through on his own if he wants. I’ll wager it’s never occurred to him that there might be a trap on the other side.”
Capp cleared her throat. “Um, Cap’n, we’re inside direct transmission range now.”
“What do you mean?” Catarina demanded.
“I wasn’t recording what you just said, we was sending it straight through.”
“You mean McGowan heard that last part? He was listening?”
“He’s still listening.”
“Oh, for the love of . . . just close the blasted channel already, will you?” When it was closed, she said, “Who did that? Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Sorry, Captain, that’s my doing,” Smythe said. “I thought you knew how it worked. When you’re down to a twenty-second delay or less, it just keeps the channel open until you close it.”
“How would I know that? I’m not a navy . . . I was never . . . oh, forget it.” She sighed. “Let’s see what he says.”
McGowan reopened the channel moments later. “Thank you for that, Vargus.” He spat her name like a curse word. “I had opened a direct channel to the captains of my escort ships so we could coordinate actions. Not to mention all the crew on my bridge. So yes, everyone heard it. It is so lovely to be shown up in front of one’s junior officers.”
Catarina groaned inside. “Apologies, sir.” A slight emphasis on sir. Let him know she was ready to take his orders. “Are you taking command under battlefield conditions?”
“Yes, I am. Between the distress signal from Forge and the obvious—yes, obvious—possibility that this might be a trap, we will enter the Great Bear System on high alert. You are already at jump speed and should arrive in”—he glanced to the side—“ten minutes. Take your ship into the Great Bear System. Hold position there and cover me as I accelerate and jump through after you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your support craft can hold in the Nordland System until we’ve cleared up matters on the other side.”
“Understood. And if I’m attacked?”
“I expect you will be.” An unpleasant smile. “It’s a good thing you’ve got the more powerful ship, eh, Vargus? I’m sure whoever you find will be at your mercy.”
Chapter Eleven
Here I am again, Carvalho thought gloomily as he looked over the other four fighter pilots in the falcon force. Ready to yell at my friends.
The others stood in front of him, hands on hips, chewing gum, listening to music on their headphones. An arrogant lot. Hard drinkers, card game players, and general troublemakers, like Carvalho.
Also like Carvalho, they had secondary jobs as mechanics and technicians. The first few days out of port, he’d identified these four and the five backup pilots, all of whom had other jobs as well. Even on a ship the size of Void Queen, there was no room for people to sit around waiting for assignments, so every man and woman was trained for multiple tasks when not on patrol.
Carvalho could lead an assault team, fix a broken airlock, load munitions, and fly a falcon striker. The others boasted a similar array of skills, and looking at the cocky expressions on their faces, they fully appreciated their worth to the fleet.
The falcon strikers themselves were pieces of art. Elegant lines, with long, curving snouts that housed the forward thrusters and the ship’s armaments, which meant that they looked hunched over when in dock. Once you climbed into the cockpit, you lost all view of anything below or straight in front of you until you launched into space, at which point the nose dipped downward and opened an expansive view of your surroundings.
Carvalho zipped his flight suit, put a scowl on his face, and forced a growl into his voice. “Now listen up. We have only got eight minutes until the jump. Five minutes until I want you all strapped in and ready to go.”
“Yeah?” said Judkins. He was the shortest of the pilots, and his heavily muscled body had a roughly brick-like shape. “Says you or says the captain?”
“I am wing commander,” Carvalho said. Ay, Dios mío, why? “And so it falls on me to carry out orders. Those orders are to get to space the instant we jump through.”
“How are we going to launch when we’re fighting a concussion?” Judkins asked. “I say we wait for everyone to recover and launch as we’re ready.”
Carvalho fought down his irritation. “If you’ll listen, I’ll explain.”
“And you know what else?” Judkins said. “Why are you making the call, anyway?”
“Ah, shut up and listen,” Greeves said. She held Judkins’s stare and popped her gum. “Vargus asked us all to put
in names. We voted for Carvalho, ya idiot.”
“I didn’t vote for him,” Judkins said.
“Yeah, funny that,” she said. “There were only four votes. Three people chose him. Who did you vote for? Or did you bother?”
“Nobody told me we were voting,” Judkins said sullenly.
“It wouldn’t have changed the results anyway, right?” Greeves said. “Hold out your fingers and I’ll show you the math. Assuming you can count to five.”
Judkins thrust out his chin. “Screw you, Greeves. I’ve been a striker pilot for five years. How about this Ladino? What’s his experience, huh? Torpedo boat? You think that’s the same thing?”
“Your strikers were fortress based,” someone else said. That was Stephenson. “The Ladino has deep space experience.”
“Come on,” Carvalho said. “We do not have time for this. Two minutes and we climb into the cockpit.”
Otherwise, he would have been happy to let his defenders go on, since the argument was going against Judkins. Carvalho may not have wanted the position—and that one vote for someone else had been his own—but now that it was thrown on his shoulders, he couldn’t have Judkins screwing with his authority.
“You want to know why we launch right after the jump?” he added. “The launch is preprogrammed, that’s why. The moment we hit the other side, the rails are going to throw us out there whether we’re awake or not.”
Greeves spat her gum into her hand. “That’s nuts!” So much for being on Carvalho’s side. “We’re going to be floating out there all knocked out and crap. What if we get the trips?”
“If someone has a bad jump concussion, Void Queen will snare his striker and haul it in,” Carvalho explained. “We have to risk it. Captain thinks there is an enemy waiting on the other side, and we need our falcons in flight when we arrive.”
“Oh, sure, and if there’s an enemy waiting,” Judkins said in a pissy tone, “then how is the ship going to haul in a drifting striker?” This time the mutters were in support of his comment.
Queen of the Void (The Void Queen Trilogy Book 1) Page 10