The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

  The gunboat captain’s transmission followed quickly along after the automated identification, but it was in excited, hurried German that the ship’s translation system, much less Alexis’ limits, despaired of making sense of, but one word was clear.

  “Raumschiff.”

  Ships.

  Forty-Nine

  “Not Ness, then?” Mattingly asked.

  “No, sir,” Alexis said.

  They were in conference aboard Mongoose, in Alexis’ — Mattingly’s — cabin. She, Delaine, and Mattingly in person, with Kannstadt aboard Fang with his officers and the captains of the other captured ships attending via their comms.

  “Prizes, as Old Blackbourne told you,” the pirate himself put in as he wandered about the cabin, examining what contents were left as though sizing up what he could pocket.

  Mattingly scowled at the man as though he’d forgotten he was there, much as Alexis wished she might. Sadly, he was still their best source of information about the pirates.

  Blackbourne opened a cabinet and began rooting around in it before Isom appeared to slap at his hand and close the cabinet with a steady clack and a sterner glare.

  Blackbourne merely smiled and returned to the table to join the others, one hand sliding into a pocket as though he’d managed to palm something, though what it might be Alexis couldn’t imagine — what few of her things remained had been moved to her new cabin and Mattingly had little enough. Perhaps the pirate was merely after tweaking Isom’s nose, as her clerk hurried to open the cabinet again and peer inside.

  Mattingly snorted. “Business as usual, then? The man’s brazen as sin.”

  Blackbourne went to the sideboard, freshly stocked — as much as possible — from pirate stores on the planet’s surface and took a glass. Isom hurried over and plucked it from his fingers, which only made Blackbourne take up an entire bottle. Isom made to take that from him as well, but Blackbourne took a long swig and held the remainder out to Isom with raised brows. Her clerk sighed and Alexis couldn’t blame him — despite that being the only bottle of bourbon aboard, she’d not want a bit of it now.

  “Not so much brazen, our Ness,” Blackbourne said, taking a seat at the table and another long pull at the bottle, “as knowing. Yours is not the first time some private ship or even navy’s set upon us here. A bit of a dustup then on to easier picking’s the norm, do you see? So our Ness expects the same again.” He grinned widely. “The man’s not counted on Old Blackbourne thinkin’ on his declining years, and how Erzurum’s not so fine a place to contemplate the spending of those.”

  He looked around at those present and at the images of those shown on the table.

  “You’re welcome,” he said into the silence.

  Mattingly pointedly turned his gaze from Blackbourne to Alexis.

  “Well,” he said, “ill-manned prizes we can certainly handle — and the Dark knows we need the ships.”

  The prizes were, indeed, something they could handle.

  Utilizing the pirate’s codes and signals, they directed the incoming ships to transition at L4, where the three captured merchantmen emerged to find not a few weeks’ ease planetside to enjoy their gains, but Mongoose, along with three of her own captured ships, all waiting with guns run out and filled to bursting with freed spacers eager to get a bit of their own back after their time on Erzurum.

  The pirates surrendered nearly as quickly as the next arriving ship, a merchant from the Barbary eager to purchase ill-gotten gains on the cheap, profiting from the ill-fortune of his fellows.

  Nary a shot was fired in anger to take them, only a crisscross of chasers to show their intent and a signaled demand to stand down and strike.

  The worst resistance came not from the now captured pirates or merchant crews, but from the newly freed captains and crews of the pirates’ prizes.

  “No, captain, I’m afraid you and your ship must remain,” Alexis was forced to say over and over again to one captain or another, Mattingly handing the distasteful task over to her.

  “But — but —” the merchant captain’s sputtering would be almost comical if Alexis didn’t have so much sympathy for him. Having been taken once by pirates and now rescued, she could well imagine how much he must wish to be back in darkspace and away, not set down in-atmosphere on the planet of those pirates’ very base.

  “We’ll see you safely back to New London space when we can,” Alexis said. “In the meantime, we’ve need of every ship here at Erzurum.”

  “But you’ve taken my ship!” the merchant captain fairly yelled over the comms and Alexis felt a bit ashamed at her relief she wasn’t having to do this in person.

  “The needs of Her Majesty and the Service, Captain Eddings,” Alexis said. “When the full pirate force returns, we must have every ship we can to meet them.”

  “He’ll destroy you! All of you! And we’ll be marooned here! I’ll file complaint with Admiralty, Captain — Carew, was it? I’ll see you court martialed — you’ve no rights to take a New London vessel!”

  “Your concerns will be duly noted, I’m sure, captain,” Alexis said, noting with relief that Creasy, back on Mongoose’s signals console now there were more freed spacers than were needed to man the ships, was trying to get her attention. “If you’ll excuse me, Captain Eddings, I’ve another call.”

  “Signal from the gunboats, sir,” Creasy said, no sooner had she disconnected. “Ships crossing the halo.”

  Alexis sighed and brought up the accompanying images of these incoming ships — more merchant crews for her to give hope to before dashing it.

  “My respects to Commodore Mattingly, Creasy,” she said at the sight of the first ship — no merchant, this, but a frigate, and one she could recognize even in the grainy image from the gunboat, “and tell him it’s time.”

  Ness was back.

  Fifty

  The waiting and not knowing and not bloody seeing were the worst, Alexis thought.

  A crew still weak with so much time of hunger and deprivation on Erzurum, no matter their success against surprised merchantman and under-crewed prizes, was bad, as well, and, no doubt, the men from a dozen different ships thrown together aboard Mongoose to make up the crew, with no more than a few weeks to work themselves up, learn the habits, good and bad, of the man beside them, the proclivities of their captain or the near godlike bent of now-Commodore Mattingly, and pressed all close together as they were — well, that was bad too.

  Knowing they were outnumbered — twenty-two ships, and one of them Ness’ frigate, in the returning pirate fleet, to their seventeen — most of their numbers merchantmen, not fully converted to carry more guns nor their hulls nearly finished being reinforced — and a double-handful of gunboats. Not nearly what one might name good, that.

  The crowding couldn’t be comfortable for the men, for Mongoose and the others were crammed to the bulkheads with every able-bodied man they could lift from Erzurum. It was their one advantage, such as it was, but only if they could force a boarding. In a shooting fight, those men were only vulnerable targets, meaning nearly every shot which made it through a hull, every splinter of the lasers from any reflective surface, would surely find a home in a man’s body.

  Delaine was there now, walking the ship and seeing to those in the forward sail locker, waiting to go out onto the hull as soon as Mongoose returned to her element of darkspace. Those on the gundeck, waiting to fling open their ports and lay their barrels on a target. Those who, for a wonder aboard a fighting ship, had no task but to wait for the call of Away boarders.

  Those men would likely agree with her. The waiting was the worst.

  Alexis tapped her fingers against the smooth top of the navigation plot, the thump, thump, thump of each fingertip oddly comforting.

  “Patience, lieutenant,” Mattingly said.

  Alexis looked up from the plot to find Mattingly watching her — a not-quite smile playing across his lips. The reference to her true rank and not the brevet thanks to her command served
to remind her that Mattingly had far more experience in action than she. Alexis snatched her hand back from the plot and flushed.

  “It’s only the waiting, sir, and not being able to see what they’re doing — they should follow the gunboat, we’ve the proper signals from Blackbourne and the others, but what if this Ness doesn’t believe the channels have shifted so much?”

  Mattingly nodded. “Patience.”

  The commodore was the very image of the word, standing straight, hands clasped behind him, looking nearly resplendent in the uniform Isom had run up for him — even if he had given Isom an odd look and scratched at a couple places when he first wore it. Alexis wondered if her clerk’s comments about seams had been — but, no, Isom wouldn’t do such a petty thing to the senior officer, no matter how put out he was at Mattingly taking Alexis’ cabin. Still, no matter Mattingly’s own worries — or how much his new uniform might itch in certain places — the commodore stood straight and still.

  “Aye, sir,” Alexis said.

  “You’ll be a proper flag captain one day, Carew. Serving a proper commodore or admiral, and under circumstances just as nerve-wracking as this. They’ll not want you tapping on their navigation plot as though it’s an egg in its cup and you’ve yet to break your fast.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said again, though she was thinking it likely she’d never see a quarterdeck again, much less be made post, and certainly never command a flagship. Not after word of what she’d done here got back to Admiralty … along with the bill.

  And the bloody receipts.

  “Set your worries about that aside too,” Mattingly said as though reading her thoughts. “The future can take care of itself well enough, and this fight is what’s important. If we don’t succeed here, you’ve no worries about what our superiors might think of your actions, right enough?”

  “That is true, sir.”

  “And success here will cover over any number of things. A grand victory, Carew, is the finest plaster in Admiralty’s eyes, and they are masters at applying it. There’s many a pock-walled career made smooth and whole by a smashing win.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  There was little else for her to say, and it seemed to satisfy the commodore, for he took his eyes from her and returned them to his own maddeningly calm perusal of the navigation plot.

  Alexis stepped away to review the stations, starting with Tite at the tactical console, so that she might make her way around the quarterdeck and not arrive at Creasy’s signals console until last. She wished to put off seeing his little carved figure of the Creature again so long as she might. Things were bad enough without having to acknowledge that her crew was carving bloody pagan totems to the thing with such an unnatural affinity for her footwear.

  Tite’s console was in good order, and Tite himself in good spirits. She clapped a hand on his shoulder and nodded to him.

  “Ready to set these bastards back a pace?” she asked quietly.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Good man.”

  As she turned to move on to the next console, she caught sight of Mattingly. She was behind the commodore, who still calmly peered down at the navigation plot, so that she could see his hands, clasped at the small of his back.

  One of the commodore’s fingers twitched. Then another. Then five rose and fell in an impatient sequence of tapping against his other hand, before he clasped them tightly together in a white-knuckled grip which relaxed only after several moments.

  Alexis moved on to the next console, shooting Mattingly’s back a glance as she did so. There was more than one thing that could be plastered over with a facade, and more than one reason to.

  She clasped her own hands behind her back and squeezed, then relaxed her grip.

  Yes, that would work admirably to keep the things out of trouble.

  She moved on to speak a word to the next man.

  “Transition, sir, gunboat!” Tite called out.

  “They’re in the channel, sir,” Creasy said, receiving the signal the gunboat was transmitting as soon as it transitioned to normal-space.

  “Signal all ships to transition, Creasy. Transition now, Layland,” Alexis ordered.

  The stars disappeared, replaced by the swirling, black and blacker masses of darkspace.

  Most of the quarterdeck’s consoles went dark as well, or the information from their sensors, unavailable here, replaced by whichever images from the ship’s optics which might be somewhat useful.

  Alexis, and Mattingly for the fleet, knew what to expect from those images.

  They’d planned out the bluff and subsequent attack in detail with the men aboard the repaired gunboats.

  Ness and his pirate fleet had sailed in, finding what they’d expected to — a system full of gunboats, all signaling properly that all was well, thanks to Blackbourne, the pardoned pirates, and those gunboats’ own systems giving up any secret signals that existed. Those not being so very many at all.

  The only hitch to Ness’ return was a shifted channel through the shoals of dark matter that permeated the Erzurum system in darkspace.

  This was not found suspicious. Those channels shifted frequently — part of the gunboats’ job was to chart, rechart, and rechart again, in their never-ending tracks throughout the system.

  Such shifts could be sudden, rather than gradual, as great masses of dark matter broke off from their trailing of some normal-space mass, like one of Erzurum’s moons. Perhaps they were affected by the normal-space presence of the planet itself, or some other in the system, or perhaps they simply grew too massy themselves to bother following and simply went their own way, drifting until caught by something else to follow.

  Or broken up by a storm, driven aside and scattered, only to be then driven to join some other stretch of dark matter by the dark energy storms which pummeled a system.

  Regardless of what cause was given, Ness and his fleet accepted the signal that they should follow a gunboat down this other channel, not the one on their older charts, else they’d become mired in the stuff.

  That gunboat’s crew had the worst bit of the waiting, to Alexis’ mind, being closest to Ness’ fleet and surely their first target should they suspect a ruse.

  They were game, though, and all volunteers — as were all those aboard the ships and gunboats, whether anxious for a chance to strike back against the pirates or simply feeling an urgent need to leave Erzurum’s surface and have a proper hull about them again.

  The channel that boat led the pirate fleet down was not, of course, the new way through to Erzurum’s transition points and the other gunboats waiting there. It was just clear enough to be believable as that — for a time.

  Until it narrowed and twisted to the point that the pirate fleet could barely come about, and the leading gunboat put on full sail and ran before the winds.

  Another gunboat at the transition point disappeared to normal-space.

  Seconds later, Mongoose, Talon, Fang, and all their makeshift fleet of taken merchantmen appeared in its place.

  Alexis took in the scene.

  It was nearly as perfect a match to what they’d hoped for as could be.

  The pirates weren’t entirely trapped, but they were quite unable to maneuver as freely as they might like, and Alexis’ … Mattingly’s, she supposed, though she had trouble not thinking of all the ships as hers … fleet had the advantage in, at least, the freedom to maneuver.

  It wasn’t a telling advantage. They were still outnumbered in ships and guns, so laying off and pounding Ness’ ships would get them only more damage in return. Nor could they wait, for once Ness worked those ships, especially his frigate, around and back through the shoals, Alexis’ fleet would be pounded into submission in short order.

  No, they had only one true advantage over the pirate fleet, come back with their prizes, and the men Ness’d sailed with come back to be captured piecemeal over time, and leaving the pirate leader with many ships, but few men aboard, while Alexis’ little fleet was packed
futtocks to mastheads with former slaves eager for a bit of payback against their captors.

  “All sail on the fore and main!” Alexis ordered. “Put her on the port tack and down fifteen, Layland. Keep us to the channel, man, for the shoals will rip her hull open if we strike at speed.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Four men to the bowsprit with leads, Creasy, and four to run capacitors for them. Open the ports and run out your guns! Port and starboard, both — we’ve men enough to fight two sides, the chasers, and more!”

  “Aye, sir!”

  It was merely confirming the order set before they’d transitioned, and Delaine would be in the bow sail locker himself to see to it. They had no shortage of men now, so could spare them for this. The leads, firing short, small bursts of lasers ahead so that she and Layland could see their fall and judge the shoals by how much each shot of coherent light was warped and twisted by the dark matter, would be a mapping of the channel Alexis trusted more than any chart.

  “And helmets, all, even those waiting in the hold! We’ll be in their range immediately, and I’ll not have men die for not wanting to smell their own bloody farts, you tell them!”

  “Aye, sir,” Creasy said, repeating her order throughout the ship and sealing his own helmet in place.

  Alexis sealed hers in place as well, then glanced to Mattingly, her ship taken care of and the other captains certainly doing the same, it was time for his orders to the fleet.

  Mattingly gave her an odd smile and simply nodded. The order was already decided and by saying nothing he ceded the honor to her.

  Alexis straightened, stepped to the signals console, and laid a hand on Creasy’s shoulder. Despite everyone aboard all their ships, from the captains to the ordinary spacers, knowing what the plan was, there was a certain formality to such things, and she felt the pride of Mattingly’s giving her the honor of voicing it first.