Drake studied her, and a smile broke slowly across his face. “I was right. You are not immune, are you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
He said nothing, merely continued to smile enigmatically.
“Fine,” Catarina said. “So maybe I’m not immune.” She pushed past him and sat in the captain’s chair. “Tell me then, where are we going?
“You have heard of Viborg?”
“Yeah,” she said, suspicion blooming.
“Hey,” Capp said, “ain’t that the middle of the Scandian worlds? It’s one of their home planets, right?”
“It’s the Scandian home world, in fact,” Drake said.
“And we gotta go through it?” Capp said.
The admiral shook his head. “No, not through, Lieutenant. That’s your destination. That’s where you will bring your colonization fleet. I expect there to be some trouble.”
Catarina laughed. “Some trouble. Hah! What a way with words you have.”
Drake reached for her console. “Let’s take a look at the charts.”
He showed her what he was thinking. First, it seemed, they’d have to get through either the Roskilde or Odense System, themselves hives of marauder activity. What’s more, Drake said, he’d be long gone before they moved, off looking for Apex. He was sending more ships, one of them HMS Blackbeard, his old cruiser, but they wouldn’t have overwhelming force.
Yet somehow Catarina was more at peace as she contemplated the new expedition than she’d been upon her arrival in the Great Bear System. She’d already fought Scandians and won. She’d proven herself an adept commander in the field. She’d also, not that she’d ever admit it aloud, learned something from McGowan’s maneuvers in battle. Since then, she’d been studying old tactics, learning how the Royal Navy fought Hroom, other navy vessels, and pirates.
And she wondered. Was her anger and hostility at Albion because she felt betrayed? Driven off as the daughter of a pirate captain when she’d been willing to give the kingdom everything? Well, now she was a part of it, captain of a battle cruiser and a future grand duchess. Assuming she lived long enough to see the end of her mission.
Maybe Drake was right. Maybe she had to earn it.
-end-
Thank you for reading Queen of the Void. The trilogy continues with book #2, Star Wolf. You can buy it right here.
If you enjoyed Queen of the Void. In fact, if you email me a link to your review at [email protected], I’ll gift you a copy of the second book as my thanks.
To receive notice when my next book is released, visit my web page to sign up for my new releases list, and get a free copy of the first book of my fantasy series, The Dark Citadel, as a thank you. This mailing list is not used for any other purpose, and your email will never be sold or distributed.
From the Author:
If you are enjoying this trilogy after reading The Starship Blackbeard Series, or The Sentinel Trilogy, thank you for continuing with the story. If Queen of the Void is your first introduction to the Blackbeard universe, I hope you’ll take a look at the earlier four-book series, beginning with Starship Blackbeard. You can continue with The Sentinel Trilogy.
I hope to tell many more stories in this universe, as I’ve created a collection of characters, a history, and human and alien civilizations that have really captured my interest. At the same time, I’m annoyed as a reader when I start a story and it drags on and on and on into an endless series of books, and I’ll bet you are too. It’s frustrating as a reader, and it’s boring as a writer to keep writing the same thing over and over again.
Instead, my goal is to create interconnected series that can stand on their own. Read a three- or four-book series that represents a single story arc, and then you can pick up the other books when you have time without feeling like you’ve been left hanging. Of course, some story arcs are going to touch across multiple series, and I hope that readers will be intrigued enough to read them all. Isn’t that the dream of every author?
Meanwhile, since I know the ending of this book has left the story more unsettled than ever, I hope you’ll continue on and read book #2, Star Wolf.
Queen of the Void (The Void Queen Trilogy Book 1) Page 23