The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

  She keyed her helmet’s comm so that not only Creasy would hear, but all those aboard Mongoose. Even those on the gundeck, now with open ports and exposed to vacuum and the effects of darkspace — the gallenium netting over the ports would allow their radios to function, at least until those nets and the hull were shot through enough to let the radiations in.

  “To all ships, Creasy, and keep it flying ‘til the bitter end’s in hand,” Alexis said, her lips twitching in what was, most assuredly, not a smile as the signalsman reached out to lay a fingertip on the tiny wooden carving that sat atop his console.

  “The signal is Imperative — Engage the enemy more closely.”

  Fifty-One

  O’, pull me hearties, heave me mates,

  Tale an’ labor's almost done.

  There was just a bit of cleanup

  The last pirates set to run.

  Mongoose shuddered with being struck by fire from the pirate frigate even before she’d made it to the shoals.

  They were still out of range of some of the frigate’s guns — the former HMS Roebuck, she saw, identified from her appearance by Mongoose’s systems — but not the twenty eighteen-pounders of her upper gundeck. There were still the twenty nine-pounders of her lower gundeck to look forward to, and even a quartet of six-pounders on Roebuck’s quarterdeck.

  Alexis studied what information she had on Roebuck, for she’d not call the ship by whatever name the pirates had given her, even if she’d known it.

  A complement of two hundred eighty, so room for that and more. No one of the pirates, from Blackbourne on down, seemed to know exactly how many men had sailed aboard each of Ness’ ships. Bookkeeping seemed to not be in it for the pirates as a whole, though each ship knew their shares and complement to the last man and farthing.

  Nearly a thousand tons burthen, though — so I know she could have sailed with nearly five hundred aboard, if they were packed so tight as Mongoose is right now.

  They’d not have, for certain — even pirates, or perhaps even more so pirates, wouldn’t accept such cramped conditions for a lengthy cruise.

  Mongoose shuddered again and Alexis checked the time.

  Four minutes between broadsides — either an ill-trained crew or undermanned.

  She tried to guess, again, how many might have sailed on each ship Ness’d left with, how many he’d put aboard his captures as prize-crews, and how many might be left aboard Roebuck, but it was an idle, wasted effort.

  And won’t change what we must do, regardless.

  “Steady on, Layland,” she said instead, then keyed her radio so that the crew could hear. “Steady on, lads — we’re nearly to the channel, then a few twists and turns and we’ll have our own chance to show them.”

  Mongoose had no guns to retaliate with yet, her having all nine-pounders, without enough force to reach Roebuck through the shoals. Even the frigate’s eighteens were so distorted and torn asunder by the shoals that they were lasing off only the barest outer layer of Mongoose’s hull when they hit.

  That they were hitting at all at this distance, though, was worrisome.

  Ness’ guncrews might not be quick, but they were laying their shot with more accuracy than she’d credit to the motley pirates she’d seen on Erzurum. What that accuracy would mean for Mongoose once they were closer and Roebuck could bring her lower deck to bear as well, wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  Ten eighteens and ten nines per side, and I’ve my mere dozen nines to reply with — and that if we can bring the one in my, Mattingly’s, quarters to bear as well.

  She eyed the navigation plot and its chart of the channel they were following.

  “Let loose staysail and jib as we make the turn,” she ordered.

  They’d be coming onto the starboard tack, nearly straight on to Roebuck and the other pirates, who’d come about and were working their own way out of the dead-end channel. A bit more speed was in order.

  She turned to meet Layland’s eyes. The helmsman’s face gleamed with sweat, but he kept an easy hand on his controls, not clenching or jerking the ship about. She was asking a great deal of him, as she increased sail and Mongoose’s speed through the channel, barely twice the ship’s width in some places. They’d scraped keel and mast against the shoals more than once already, causing Mongoose to shudder and groan even more than all of Roebuck’s shot had managed.

  Speaking of which, it’s nearly time for —

  Shot flashed out from Roebuck’s side, condensing and flowing toward them while it was pulled this way and that by the shoals. This time three struck — two with no more damage to the hull than any before, but one in the rigging. Cut lines rebounded as the tension left them and flailed about as their stored energy dissipated. Men clambered up the masts and shrouds to set things right.

  “You have the ship in hand, Layland?” Alexis asked, keeping her eyes on the helmsman.

  “Aye, sir,” he said, then glanced at his own copy of the plot and chart. “Fore topsail’d give us a knot or two, ‘til we come about again.”

  Alexis glanced toward Mattingly, but the commodore kept his eyes on the plot, as though he’d not heard. She didn’t believe that for a moment, but if he said nothing, it was for her to decide. She nodded. If Layland felt he could keep the ship on tack with a bit more speed, then she’d take him at his word.

  “Hands to the foremast and let go the fore topsail, Creasy,” she said. “Lively now, so we may get as much of it as possible before bringing it in again.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  They were already ahead of the other ships of their fleet, and adding more sail would increase that, but Mongoose had one task in this. She was the largest, fastest, and sturdiest of them, so must gain and hold the attention of Ness’ frigate.

  Delaine entered the quarterdeck from a turn about the ship and came to stand beside her. Alexis tucked her hands behind her back and clenched them to keep from reaching out to touch him and ensure he was still real.

  “All is well, captain,” he said.

  Despite her having drafted him to serve aboard a New London ship, Delaine told her he found himself unable to apply the Royal Navy’s “fou” convention of calling female officers “sir”. To Alexis’ ear the French fou summed up her own thoughts on the matter better than the English “bloody mad”, even despite that she was so used to it after all these years.

  “Thank you, Delaine.”

  Delaine eyed the navigation plot and raised an eyebrow. “We outpace the others,” he said and grinned. “They will think you wish to keep all the pirates for yourself.”

  “Plenty for all, I think.”

  Mongoose was halfway down this channel on the starboard tack, nearing where she’d have to come about to the opposite tack in a space barely large enough to do so. Then she’d parallel, or nearly so, the pirates’ channel for a time, before the two joined near the clearer, though not entirely clear, space away from this set of shoals.

  That was where she must take Roebuck, where the two ships could come together, but before the pirates could gain open space where their superior numbers could be brought to bear with maneuvers.

  “Our guns will bear on them after this next turn,” Alexis said, not adding that if her own nines could make the range, then Mongoose herself would be vulnerable to all of Roebuck’s guns.

  Delaine nodded and said nothing, he could see that as well as her and his face grew somber.

  Until then, the pirate frigate had the range.

  Fifty-Two

  Shot after shot struck Mongoose, not in broadside, but one after another, in a seemingly endless stream from the nearing Roebuck.

  The pirates didn’t strike with every shot, but even those that missed did damage to the crew’s morale. Those that went through the rigging required men to climb the masts, to grasp and splice the flailing lines before the damage was so great that the dark energy winds could twist and pull her masts right out of the ship.

  Those men were vulnerable there, and more than
one was struck by further shot from Roebuck. Those who were lucky were killed in an instant, while those less fortunate might be injured and knocked off the masts — left to drift behind the ship and, if they had the fortitude to endure the oppressive effects of the dark matter shoals, hope their air would last until the battle was done and they might be rescued.

  The shot which did strike Mongoose had no trouble penetrating the hull now, and the ship shook and groaned with each blow. The off gassing of vaporized thermoplastic was so great that it forced the ship off course, making her wallow like a punch-drunk spacer in the last bit of an evening’s brawl. Layland worked the controls constantly, easing and correcting their course as he fought both the winds and blows. Alexis fancied she could tell merely by the sounds if it was an eighteen- or nine-pounder which had last run through her.

  Stuck in the channel and laying on ever more sail so as to catch up the frigate before she could make use of the coming open space, there was little Alexis could do to alleviate the pounding her ship was taking. She couldn’t even roll to present her tougher keel, for that would make the hold more vulnerable and there were hundreds of men crammed in there with barely room to move. Rolling to present her top would only expose more of her sails and rigging to damage, and the hull was full of spacers ready for the boarding as well.

  That left her port side, and the guns there — ports all open to expose the deck to the frigate’s shot. Not that closing the ports would make a difference at this point, as the space between them was a gap-toothed grin of holes through the thermoplastic hull.

  At least those working the guns had a task to concentrate on. The never-ending feeding of new shot for the loaders. Pull the breech, yank out the spent canister and toss it back to some fellow — there were plenty enough idlers aboard to rush below, and grateful for the chance to spend a moment in the more heavily protected space around the fusion plant and magazine.

  A new shot canister from the racks and into the breech, nearly taking a finger off the man cleaning the barrel if he weren’t quick enough at his task or like to bash him in the head with it if he were peering too closely.

  Wait, likely, for the two inspecting the barrel for flaws to step back and throw up an arm that they’d seen none — the wait gnawing at every man on the crew, but better that than to fire a barrel damaged from some previous shot and have it burst, splintering their own shot throughout the deck.

  Then the gun captain laying his aim to account for the distance, the angle, the fall of shot through the dark matter between Mongoose and Roebuck, though there was little need of that now, with the ships growing closer and that bloody monster of a frigate being so buggering big, was there?

  There was no careful laying of broadsides now, even by Mongoose, no hoping to demoralize an enemy into striking with the sudden arrival of so much massed shot. Now it was all fire as you will, fast as canisters could be loaded, and hope to kill as many of the bastards as you could before you and your fellows must give up the guns and join the others in what was to come.

  On the quarterdeck, Alexis judged her moment as the two ships cleared their respective channels into a larger — by the standard of having nearly a full ship’s length to sail through and turn — space where the channels joined.

  Roebuck’s captain seemed content to lay off and pound his smaller foe, which Alexis couldn’t fault the pirate Ness for, even shying a bit to port and following the edge of the clear space, opening up some distance between her and Mongoose.

  That wouldn’t do, though.

  This was no Giron, where she sought only to engage and delay the enemy. There were no fleeing transports for whom a few minutes, a few seconds, might mean the difference between reaching better winds and escaping or facing a frigate’s guns themselves.

  Nor was there any fleet coming to rescue them, for even if Captain Ellender might convince some captains or an admiral to enter the Hanoverese space of the Barbary, he and Claw would only just now be arriving at some New London station to tell them of what had happened on Erzurum.

  Alexis glanced over to Mattingly, who’d said barely a word through the entire time. Isom was with him, though she hadn’t seen him enter, assisting the commodore to attach a sword — a simple, thick-bladed spacer’s cutlass, his own having been lost in his capture and enslavement — and a brace of pistols. Her clerk seemed to have forgiven the man for taking on both the commodore role and Alexis’ cabin …

  Though perhaps not, she thought as she saw Isom jab a pistol into Mattingly’s vacsuit belt with a bit more force than was strictly necessary.

  Isom had her own sword and a pair of pistols for her, as well, and came around the navigation plot to her side.

  Mattingly caught her look and grinned. “The honor’s yours, Carew, she’s your ship to fight. I’ve always hated those flag officers who insist on mucking about with the ship — it is, after all, why there’s a captain.” He even chuckled. “Still, with so little room to maneuver and the plan all set, I do find my first flag remarkably free of the need for decisions.”

  “Aye, sir,” Alexis said, then hazarded, “I’ll try to arrange a more challenging action for you, when next we’re all captured by pirates.”

  Mattingly laughed. “I’ll leave that honor to some other, as well, if it’s all the same to you. More than one admiral I think could do with a bit of digging in Erzurum’s muck, to tell the truth.”

  “Indeed, sir,” Alexis said. She might like Mattingly and agree with the sentiment, especially if it were that bloody Chipley, who was the cause of this mess when one got right down to it, but it wouldn’t do for a lieutenant to agree too far with such sentiments — even if she was certain to hang regardless.

  If I’m lucky, perhaps I’ll catch a blade in the belly in this next bit, and save them all the trouble.

  “Send the word, Creasy,” Alexis ordered. The other ships of both fleets were nearing the end of their channels and at any moment Ness might think to put Roebuck about and bring those guns to bear on the far lighter hulled ships that followed. A single broadside from the frigate might send any of their merchantmen up in one shot. “More sail on the fore and main, let loose any bits of the staysail that might remain.” She turned to the helmsman. “Increase the charge, Layland — to the bloody stops.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  On Mongoose’s masts, more sail was let loose and seemed to burst with azure brightness as though struck by some new shot from Roebuck, but it was merely the particle projectors at full power. White sparks and arcs of lightning flew across the surface of the sail’s fine metal mesh, arcing to the masts and even to the men too near. Though it would do them no harm, Alexis knew from her own time as a midshipman on those yards that it was an eerie thing, both in sight and feel.

  Mongoose leapt forward.

  They were on the starboard tack, close-hauled to the winds, which gave her an advantage over the ship-rigged frigate which could not sail so close. She might even, in the space they had, pull up even a point or two closer to those winds and escape while Roebuck would have to fight tack upon tack to make up the ground. Only a point or two to starboard and Mongoose could run for that next channel and be gone from Erzurum — on her way home, free and safe with Delaine and her crew.

  Alexis watched the plot carefully. Starboard for freedom, home, and safety.

  “Hard a’port!” Alexis yelled. “Keep the sails taught! Layland, put us in her masts and twist the bloody things right out of the bitch!”

  Mongoose turned toward Roebuck, seeming to spin in place with both her rudder and falling off the wind.

  As in every action, to Alexis, the long hours, then minutes, of approach, even with the exchange of fire, had been in slow motion, the ships lagging along. Now, so close, they leapt for each other, eager to come together like a pair of fighting dogs taking the last lunge to clamp jaws on their foes.

  Men outside on both hulls scrambled to get clear of the impact and the two ships came together with a grinding, grating rumble t
hat resonated through their hulls.

  Layland spun his helm to put Mongoose’s bowsprit and then her masts into a horrid tangle with Roebuck’s mainmast.

  Rigging snapped, along with the yards, and that debris sliced through both ships’ sails, clawing great rents in the metal mesh and sending gouts of azure and white flashing out in vast displays.

  Men on Mongoose’s hull, those who’d successfully braced themselves for the impact, fired lines toward the other ship. Compressed air sending grapnels across the short space to further catch at masts, rigging, and sails, to tie the ships together.

  Those lines were wrapped to winches, through pulleys, and even around Mongoose’s masts and yards, pulled tight and made fast, then the men joined their fellows even as Alexis’ next command was given, echoing through vacsuit helmets of those aboard whose radios still worked, flashing on the hull for those outside to see, and passed from man to man, helmet to helmet, on the open, battered gundeck where the radiations of darkspace had rendered the radios useless.

  “Away boarders!”

  Fifty-Three

  But Little Bloody Bit would have

  Not a gram of that.

  She set upon their frigate

  Like a cat upon a rat.

  Alexis was first out of the quarterdeck, Mattingly close behind. The others were locking their consoles before following, and in a moment, Mongoose’s quarterdeck was empty.

  There was nothing more to do there, and nothing to defend — not even a bit of air, as the companionway was in vacuum, and what there was in the quarterdeck space rushed out with them.

  The task of everyone aboard was simply to take Roebuck with nothing left for them if they failed.