HMS Calypso gave a better accounting of herself. Rutherford had never thought much of Captain Lindsell’s abilities—his father was Malthorne’s cousin, and Lindsell had obviously risen through that connection—but there was no questioning his willingness to fight. Like Nimitz, Calypso’s shields were damaged and vulnerable to ramming, but before the sloop could hit her, Calypso laid down a devastating broadside, supported by missiles and torpedoes. The sloop detonated. Unfortunately, the Hroom warship had fired several volleys with her serpentine batteries, and Calypso took heavy damage fore and aft.
Rutherford had been unable to intervene in either of these fights, so he pursued the second sloop knocked out by Dreadnought, which now looked as though it would recover and come back around for another suicide charge. The sloop spotted Vigilant and fired more serpentines. Bomblets crashed into them above the bridge, and Simon warned of damage to the shields. But the enemy was sluggish and struggling to maneuver after having taken a beating from Dreadnought, and so Rutherford stood off a pace, pinpointed her with missiles, and pounded the sloop until it blew apart.
With its destruction, the battle was over. Let the licking of wounds commence.
They’d defeated six sloops of war. But Nimitz had been incinerated, with all hands lost. Captain Harbrake had died with them. Of the other Aggressor-class cruisers, half of Richmond’s crew had been killed, and the ship was so crippled she had to be abandoned. On Calypso, seventeen crew had been killed, her remaining shields destroyed, and her warp-point engine lost. She would not leave the system with the fleet, but could only hope to hide in the outer belt, protected by a pair of torpedo boats, until she could be rescued and repaired.
The biggest loss of life came on Dreadnought herself. One of the bomblets had penetrated the belly shields and detonated inside one of the marine transport chambers, killing nearly two hundred Royal Marines in stasis. Six other crew had died. But the admiral’s flagship was largely unharmed, and still battleworthy.
When the rest of the fleet arrived, Malthorne tried to seize one of the crippled sloops, but the Hroom detonated it, destroying a torpedo boat and killing its eight crew members. The admiral did capture several Hroom from another piece of floating wreckage. None were sugar addicts, but all were fanatics of the Hroom god of death and initially refused to cooperate. As the fleet continued toward the jump point, Admiral Malthorne ordered them tortured to death to extract information. It was shameful, cowardly, an action unbecoming of the lord admiral of the Royal Navy. All the same, Rutherford eagerly awaited the information gleaned from the interrogations.
What Malthorne passed to Rutherford confirmed his fears. There had been six death fleets sent out. Their goal was to penetrate Albion’s defenses and circumnavigate the planet within the atmosphere. From there, they would maintain an atomic bombardment of Albion until they were either stopped or had turned the planet’s cities into radioactive glass.
Six fleets. They’d destroyed one. The other five would be reaching the Albion system now. Meanwhile, Malthorne’s latest expedition had cost three cruisers and twenty-nine more hours.
Chapter Sixteen
Blackbeard was the first ship of the pirate fleet to enter the Albion system. This particular jump point had migrated until it was a few million miles from the planet Thor, the outermost of the rocky inner worlds before the gas giants. Drake staggered out of his jump concussion expecting to find the ship under attack, but was relieved to see that they had not yet been detected. Paredes’s schooner came through next, followed by the three frigates: Outlaw, Orient Tiger, and Pussycat.
By the time the small fleet had gathered itself and set off toward the inner worlds, Blackbeard’s sensors had collected so much data and movement in the system that Drake could barely make sense of it. Coming through the noise were two critical facts. First, while there were a few navy vessels in the system, the bulk of the fleet was absent. Even if Malthorne’s forces popped in now, the other jump points were far enough from Albion that Drake thought he could rush in and rescue his parents before he could be stopped. Assuming they could run the forts, of course.
The second salient detail was that a Hroom fleet had entered the system. The navy seemed to be on high alert for their arrival and was rushing ships to engage them. Included in this intercepting force were two destroyers and several smaller support craft. This movement had cleared out the inner system, leaving the way open for Drake to mount his expedition against Albion, but at the same time, these Hroom would need to be dealt with if the makeshift naval task force couldn’t stop them. And he knew there were at least two other death fleets on their way to the system.
Unfortunately, the space lanes approaching Thor were busy with a veritable rush hour of mining ships, trading galleons, and all manner of other craft, and it wasn’t long before Drake was detected. A six-man patrol boat, armed only with rail guns, came swinging around the smaller of Thor’s two moons and spotted them. It took one look and fled for its life. Paredes wanted to hunt it down with his schooner, but Drake ordered him to stand down. Instead, he chased off the patrol boat with a single long-range missile, but otherwise ignored it. The small navy vessel evaded the missile, swung out about two million miles, and started to circle back toward Thor. Drake considered it warily, sure that the patrol boat wouldn’t be coming back around unless it had friends in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, he had a minefield to navigate.
“Smythe,” he said. “Have you found that field yet?”
“Yes, sir,” Smythe said from the tech console. “Just sent the data to Capp.”
“And did you steal the codes?”
“Negative, sir. The fleet has closed my back door into the network since Hot Barsa. I can’t shut the mines down.”
“What do you think, Ensign?” Drake asked Capp.
She studied the data Smythe had sent, her lips moving as she read, one hand rubbing the stubble on her head. “More of them Youd mines, Cap’n. King’s balls, there’s a lot of ’em.”
Nyb Pim was interfaced with the nav computer, plotting the current location of the system’s jump points. Drake needed to know where both Malthorne’s forces and the Hroom were likely to enter, and that left the subpilot to do short-term navigating.
“I need you to get us through. Smythe couldn’t disable them, so they’ll identify us as hostile and give chase. Can you manage? We can take her slow, if we need to.”
“Aye, Cap’n. I can manage.”
“Good. Plot a course and send it to the other ships so they can follow. Not Orient Tiger, though.”
Drake had a critical side mission for his most powerful frigate. Tolvern was giving instructions to the gunnery, and he waited for her to finish.
“Get Catarina,” he told Tolvern. “I want to talk to her.”
Catarina appeared on his viewscreen moments later. “Too hot for you already? You let that patrol craft go without much of a fight.”
“It’s coming back, you saw that?”
“Yes, what do you suppose it means?”
“It means they’re expecting an assault on Thor, and that they have the firepower to turn us back. Or think they do, anyway. How do you feel about a solo run at the planet?”
“At Thor?” Catarina’s eyebrows raised, but she didn’t look overly surprised. “That’s . . . challenging.”
During their final meeting aboard Blackbeard before the jump, he’d told Catarina he intended to use Orient Tiger for a side mission, that her guns and maneuverability would be best used to distract naval resources. Any ship she engaged out here was one fewer he’d face at Albion.
“Don’t do anything crazy,” he told her. “This is a diversion only.”
“Define crazy.”
“No landing on the surface, no harpooning merchant vessels, and no slugging it out with starships. You face something bigger than that patrol boat, you keep your distance.”
“I get it. Dance around, feint, jab a few punches. But no big battles.”
“Precisely,” Drake
said. “You won’t do me any good if you get yourself killed.”
“I’m not too fond of dying, myself.”
Drake glanced at his console. The patrol boat had disappeared around the outer moon again and was lurking out of sight. Smythe was trying to ping his sensors off the planet of Thor to see if he could get an echo of what was on the far side of that moon, but so far to little effect. Something was hiding there, Drake was sure of it.
“But at the same time, you need to draw attention,” Drake said. “Thor has an orbital fort protecting the helium mines near the equator, but that thick atmosphere will hide you if you get below it. Drop down, leave them a gift, and come back out. Be agile, like when you hunted the tyrillium barge.”
Catarina nodded. Her customary smirk was gone, and her mouth was pulled together, her brow knitted. She was very pretty, and at that moment, she had a vulnerability to her expression that made him want to protect her.
“Off we go, then,” she said. “Give them hell, James.” A final, saucy grin. “And bring back my share of the loot!”
#
For the first half hour after Orient Tiger peeled away from Blackbeard, Drake wondered if he was wrong about what was on the other side of Thor’s moon. There was still no sign of the patrol boat, nor any other warships. All navy vessels seemed to be rushing out to engage the approaching Hroom fleet.
Catarina uncloaked and circled Thor like a buzzing hornet looking for a chance to sting. She dodged and evaded inexpertly launched ordnance from the single fortress orbiting the green planet. Orient Tiger ducked in once to drop some flashy bit of explosive toward the surface. It made a big bang where it hit, but didn’t seem to have much effect otherwise. The helium-3 mines on the surface were valuable, but the mines were about as easy to loot as a giant wheat field, and no doubt the naval forces in the system were confused about the pirate frigate’s intentions. Maybe the patrol boat had sent a warning, only to be told to stand down, that they were facing bigger threats.
Meanwhile, Capp was leading Blackbeard and the other three ships toward the minefield, all of them cloaked. They hadn’t entered the field yet, hadn’t passed the point of no return. There was still time to recall Catarina and use her to better effect closer to Albion. Drake had just resolved to hail Orient Tiger with new orders, when they’d finally passed far enough beyond Thor to catch a glimpse of the back side of the planet’s outer moon.
A destroyer was lurking there, together with the patrol boat they’d spotted. There was a small navy refueling station on the moon, and a missile frigate had been on the surface and was now lifting off, her plasma engines straining. Within a few minutes, she’d be up and flanking the destroyer, and the three ships would be ready to come out and challenge Catarina’s pirate frigate.
Drake called her. “You’ve got company. A destroyer and two support vessels.”
They were 1.5 million miles apart by now, and there was a long delay before her response came back. “I can handle a destroyer. One of the old models?”
“Negative, she’s a Harpoon-class. As agile as you are and nearly as fast. Missile frigate on her flank.”
Another long delay. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” Yet there was tension in her voice. “Have to keep them occupied, have to earn my keep.”
“I appreciate that, but remember what I said. No slugging it out with starships.”
Drake ended the call, as every moment with an open channel risked exposing Blackbeard and the other cloaked ships. But he watched anxiously as Catarina continued circling the planet, occasionally launching a shot at the fortress or the surface. The lean, hungry-looking destroyer and her support vessels came around the moon.
Smythe had identified the destroyer as HMS Philistine, commanded by Captain Phillip Potterman, an older man, but plenty capable. Steady, perhaps without a good deal of creativity, but not the type you wanted to face when he commanded superior forces.
The navy vessels lingered back at first, not coming in to attack, but waiting, as if trying to determine the pirate ship’s intentions. It didn’t seem like Potterman’s style; Malthorne must have pushed him to an early retirement and replaced him with one of his cronies. The Royal Navy was full of timid commanders, and it seemed as though Catarina was lucky enough to be facing one of them. She was overmatched.
But the destroyer captain—whether it was Potterman or someone else—had only been biding his time. About ten minutes later, a second Royal Navy destroyer uncloaked several hundred thousand miles beyond Thor, her torpedo tubes opening. Potterman’s ships now came in to engage the pirate frigate.
“Looks like your plan worked,” Tolvern said from the bridge of Blackbeard. “That’s two destroyers and a frigate that won’t be chasing us to Albion.”
“Yes, that was my hope,” Drake said, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the data scrolling in from the developing fight at Thor, now three million miles distant from Blackbeard. He was too far away now to return, and too close to the minefield for Catarina to follow him in.
Smythe brought down the long-range sensors to further hush their profile entering the minefield. Drake lost all sight of Catarina’s ship just as Orient Tiger came around the planet to face the first attack.
The minefield was a vast, movable field of self-propelled Youd mines that could migrate about the system to choke off entry points. Its current positioning suggested that the navy had recently moved the minefield into place to guard against possible Hroom advances toward Albion, but Blackbeard, as a former navy cruiser, had the sensors to detect the mines, and Drake’s pilots had the skill to thread the needle where mine coverage didn’t overlap.
Amazingly, they emerged from the other side of the minefield several hours later without having triggered a single one. That meant they were still undetected, and now only a few hours from entering the near space of Albion herself. He turned the long-range sensors back on long enough to scan for developments since they’d gone black.
Catarina was still alive, thank God. She was too distant to determine if her frigate had suffered damage in the fighting, but her engines were still functioning well enough. She was fleeing Thor toward the outer systems, with a good lead on the two destroyers and their escorts. Unfortunately, a third vessel, this one a larger corvette, was racing to join the chase. Catarina was flying toward one of the gas giants, perhaps hoping to lose her pursuit among the moons or the ring of dust and rock that circled it.
Catarina had successfully distracted two destroyers and a corvette, as well as a pair of support craft. Unfortunately, she’d also drawn naval forces away from the bigger threat now developing in the system.
There was a battle raging between the Hroom death fleet and the navy ships that had gone to intercept it. Two of the six sloops of war had been destroyed, left as floating wreckage far behind the evolving battlefield, but both of the human destroyers were missing from the fight. They had simply vanished. The only thing that Drake could surmise was that pulse cannons or rams had torn apart the tyrillium armor, and the Hroom had finished the job with atomic warheads. Two missile frigates were pursuing the four remaining sloops of war, but they were scarcely delaying the Hroom movement toward the inner system.
Meanwhile, a second Hroom fleet had jumped in and was barreling toward Albion. No Royal Navy forces moved to engage it. The action with the other Hroom sloops was taking place on the opposite side of the system. From Drake’s vantage, it looked as though the Hroom had a clear line straight to Albion and would arrive only a few hours after he did.
“Someone run the numbers,” Drake said. “Can anyone intercept them?”
Smythe spoke up a moment later. “HMS Philistine can, if she turns around now. The corvette and the second destroyer are already out of range.”
“Send a subspace to Philistine,” Drake told Tolvern. “Tell Potterman—if it is Potterman—the situation. Orient Tiger was a feint—she’s not his enemy here. He must engage the Hroom. Catarina will come back around to help him.”
“Smythe, send the message.” Drake gripped the edges of his chair, but didn’t let the worry show on his face or in his voice. “Potterman is a gentleman, and no fool. Surely, he will understand the stakes.”
“And if it’s not Potterman on that destroyer?” she asked.
“We’ll take our chances. Smythe, send it. And send a subspace to Catarina, too.”
An hour later, accelerating rapidly, Drake made the call to the other ships of his flotilla: drop cloaking, assemble the away team, and begin the final approach to Albion. It was time to assault York Tower and free his parents.
Chapter Seventeen
“Three minutes to launch,” Jane said. The computer sounded so soothing, so calm, considering the utter chaos of the situation, all of the dozens of variables that could lead to the death of every person in the away pod.
Tolvern eyed the others in her pod: Capp, Carvalho, Lutz, Oglethorpe, and Thatcher. Lutz sat in the seat opposite and flashed a big, gold-toothed grin, his white scar seeming to wink at her.
He patted one of his weapons, which was lying right across his lap. “Don’t you worry none, Commander, I got a big ol’ cannon here to serve you.”
“Shut yer gob,” Capp said good-naturedly. “Commander don’t want to see your cannon, so don’t you be whipping it out in public.”
Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3) Page 15