Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3) (18 page)

“Yes,” he said quietly. “That is a fair offer on your part.”

She reached across the table and put a hand on his arm. “Are we good, James?”

“We are good.”

“I don’t regret what we did, becoming lovers. It was pleasant, and I am glad we spent those moments in each other’s arms. I will always recall them happily no matter what happens in the future.”

“I don’t regret it, either,” he said truthfully. The only part he regretted was how she spoke of it in the past tense.

“Good. Well, you have my ship and crew. They are at your full disposal. I hope you will put us to good use.”

#

The older sister, Isabel Vargus, was next to arrive on
Blackbeard
. The entire fleet was hurtling through space at several thousand miles a second, and there was nearly a mistake in the calculations of the slingshot-type system that would get her from one ship to the next. Had that happened, the older Vargus sister would have sailed off never to be seen again. But some alert person in engineering noted that the numbers didn’t sound right, and they corrected the error before the pod launched.

Isabel arrived in the war room already looking put out. She studied Drake with her artificial eye focusing and refocusing, and then turned to her sister.

“So, you’ve decided to stick around and help your lover after all.”

Catarina snorted. “What do you know?”

“I know the two of you have been together,” Isabel said with a grin. “People talk. And I know that you’re after money in a big way.”

“Of course I am,” Catarina said. “I’m a pirate. Treasure and loot is what I live for. Like good looks and brains, you can never have too much gold.”

“So you’re hoarding doubloons, and you’re going to bury a chest on some deserted asteroid with a pirate map and an X-marks-the-spot? Sure, of course. Well, I assume something good is involved if you’re willing to throw in with us.”

Paredes and Aguilar joined them moments later, led in by Tolvern and Capp, who shut the door and then settled at the table with the five captains. It was the first time Drake had met Aguilar in person, and the man was taller than expected. He had a bushy black mustache and wore crossed bandoleers on his chest. He was a youngish man—perhaps midthirties—but his skin had the look of someone who had taken a lot of sun, not like some of these spacefarers from the frontier worlds, many of whom hadn’t seen natural light in years, if ever.

Aguilar had a cunning look about him that made Drake wary. He had a thick Ladino accent, but it almost seemed affected, so as to make him sound less clever and cause others to drop their guards. Although Drake hadn’t sought Aguilar out, and resented the way he’d insinuated himself into the fleet, the captain was now counting on
Pussycat
’s powerful armaments to support the mission, and had no choice but to trust the man.

“Well, here we are,” Isabel Vargus said, after they were all seated. “We’re inside of three hours to the final jump, so I suggest you get to the point.”

“I don’t know what we’ll find on the other side of the jump,” Drake said, “but we can all imagine, and we know it won’t be pretty. There will be a hard fight. Maybe more than
one
hard fight.”

“So long as there’s treasure,” Paredes said. “I will do all the maiming and killing you want, if you put enough gold in my pocket.”

“As little maiming and killing as possible,” Drake said. “But we will go for the gold all the same.”

“I like the way you think,” Paredes said.

“Yes, well. There will be blood enough. Let us hope that most of it is not our own.”

He’d run over his plan several times and discussed it with Tolvern to incorporate her thoughts. There had been an alternate scheme—nearly suicidal—that had assumed that Catarina would take
Orient Tiger
and go, and he was relieved to be able to incorporate her powerful frigate into his strategy. Still, it would be exceptionally risky.

The others sat in silence as Drake laid out his plan of attack. Eager faces turned serious, and then dour. Tolvern looked worried when Drake explained why she would need to lead the away team while he stayed on
Blackbeard
to fight the orbital fortresses, but she didn’t argue with his reasoning.

“Now,” he said, “let me tell you the enemies we’re likely to face.”

He started with the Royal Navy, her warship and orbital fortresses, and he finished by sharing his thoughts about the Hroom death fleets. By the time he concluded, their expressions were very grim indeed.

Chapter Fifteen

The Hroom fleet ignored the battleship and six cruisers and kept a straight course toward the jump point. Even after Malthorne ordered the cloaking lowered, so weapon system diagnostics could be properly run, the Hroom sloops paid them no attention. If there had been any doubt in Rutherford’s mind that this was a suicide fleet, that settled it. Otherwise, why not flee? There was another jump point not too far off that would take them deeper into the frontier and away from Albion. The Hroom must know that if they jumped into the Albion system with the Royal Navy in hot pursuit, there would be no escape.

Meanwhile, Rutherford counted the lost time with every hour spent in deviation from their prior course. More time lost, more time where other Hroom forces could be attacking Albion with minimal opposition. Because he was now certain that
Dreadnought
,
Vigilant
, and the rest would arrive after some of the alien forces.

Malthorne seemed confident in this particular battle. If the Hroom attacked in one of their well-known formations, the six cruisers would flank
Dreadnought
on all sides, above and below, as if they were extra-powerful destroyers. The battleship herself would thrash the alien sloops as they approached.

But if the Hroom fled or failed to deviate from their course, the cruisers would race in and pound them with missiles from the rear. Break apart the formation, then let
Dreadnought
devour the wounded as they fell behind.

As it turned out, the Hroom did neither of these things.

As the human fleet closed in, the sloops came about as if to attack, but rather than keeping one of the tight formations for which they were known, the six ships peeled off and scattered, as if they were fleeing in different directions. Malthorne shouted instructions across the com. He wanted the force divided.

Six sloops, six cruisers. Each cruiser would attack and destroy one weaker sloop, with
Dreadnought
coming in to mop up.

Rutherford was skeptical. None of the alien warships were fleeing toward a jump point, and they could not hope to outrun a cruiser, especially not the newer, swifter Punisher-class ships,
Vigilant
and
Churchill
. This was not improvisation—Hroom were not known for that—this was some unknown maneuver the Hroom had planned and rehearsed. Better to divide into three task forces, with the two wounded cruisers sticking with
Dreadnought
.

But the heat of battle was not the time to argue with one’s commanding officer, so Rutherford obeyed the order. Soon,
Vigilant
had veered away from the rest of the task force to hunt down her assigned sloop. But no sooner had the cruisers all separated from Malthorne’s flagship, then the Hroom sloops of war angled in toward each other once more. Before Rutherford knew it, they had gathered into a formation that he knew well, though he’d never seen it in battle: the legendary “tip of the spear.”

One sloop in the lead, three in a wedge behind it, and two at the rear. It was designed to stab into a gathered formation of warships, with the lead ship taking all of the abuse of incoming fire, a sacrifice. The others would use their long points to ram enemy craft.

“Ramming formation!” Pittsfield cried. Like Rutherford, he seemed excited to see the legendary tactic in play, what they’d all learned about in the Academy, but never faced.

They’d never seen it before, because the Hroom had abandoned the formation when it no longer worked. Newer Albion warships had strengthened shields, and older vessels had been retrofitted with modified bulkheads and airlocks. With these modifications, Hroom sloops would impale themselves and the ram-tip would break off and vent out the sloop’s atmosphere. The Albion ship might limp away, injured, but the sloop would be destroyed. So why were they using the formation now?

Because it was a suicide fleet. Loaded with fissile material. And the ships were aimed at
Dreadnought
.

“Bring us around!” Rutherford cried. To the gunnery: “Main missile battery. Hit those side ships!”

Missiles squirted out from
Vigilant
. They would take several minutes to close the distance. Hugh Lindsell, captain of the wounded
Calypso
, was the next ship to respond, as he swung in with a broadside of cannon fire.

Harbrake had been the most sluggish to react to Admiral Malthorne’s initial orders, and
Nimitz
was directly in the path of the oncoming Hroom spear point. She was an older Aggressor-class cruiser and also injured from the battle with the pirates, but there was nothing wrong with her main cannon battery. If Harbrake swung wide and let loose, he could get off two broadsides before the sloops closed. With steady nerves, he might still turn aside the enemy.

But Harbrake seemed frozen with indecision. He presented his main cannon, even as he kept swinging past the position of a broadside and dipped his nose down. His plasma engines flared, as he moved to accelerate out of danger.

“Harbrake, you coward!” Rutherford said. “Hold your ground, you idiot.”

The com channels were screaming with orders and information, and Rutherford was sure that if he looked down, he’d see that Malthorne was raging the same instructions. Something seemed to get through, since
Nimitz
hesitated again and began once more to turn her main guns toward the enemy.

Too late. The tip of the spear point reached him before he could bring
Nimitz
into position to fire. The lead sloop slammed into the cruiser.

Nimitz
was still damaged from the ambush she and
Calypso
had suffered at the hands of the pirates, and her shields gave way. The sloop thrust in up to the nose. Debris and gas blew off, and a secondary explosion shuddered on the main deck. The two ships—Hroom and human—went spinning away, entwined.

Even then, there was a long moment where it was unclear whether or not the sloop would break free, and, if it did, whether Captain Harbrake would be able to take his ship and crawl from the battle, or be dead in the water until the fight was over. Somehow,
Nimitz
had survived the initial impact.

Then the two ships exploded. There was a flash of light that blinded all sensors. When the instrument panels recovered, there was no sign of either ship, only an expanding shock wave from a massive nuclear blast.

The crew on the bridge stared, gaping. The Hroom ship had apparently been loaded with atomic warheads and had self-destructed, vaporizing Harbrake and the 103 other people on board. The radioactive blast rolled over
Vigilant
, and instruments struggled to stay online.

Simon spoke in his mature, stern voice, giving the computer’s assessment. “Negligible damage to sensitive systems. Crew with exterior exposure have absorbed an estimated twenty-seven millirems of radiation. To mitigate the effects, it is suggested—”

It was a minimal amount, and Rutherford had no need for more, so he cut Simon off.

Vigilant
’s missiles had disappeared into the explosion, which had not slowed the remaining five sloops of war. They raced at
Dreadnought
, their rams pointed straight forward. Serpentine batteries fired, and swarms of bomblets went racing toward the battleship. Rutherford ordered his ship to pursue. Other cruisers slowly came around, but only
Calypso
,
Vigilant
, and
Richmond
would be able to join the battle in time.

Malthorne didn’t turn
Dreadnought
away from the approaching suicide fleet, didn’t try to run. He seemed to give no thought to buying time so his cruisers could engage the enemy. Instead, he turned the battleship, and her shields slowly retracted above the main batteries. The first Hroom bomblets slammed into
Dreadnought
. Explosions rippled along her side.

Rutherford was coming in right after the sloops and couldn’t use his missiles for fear of hitting
Dreadnought
instead. So he ordered the forward torpedo bays readied, prepared the main guns, and as they entered the battle, he slid
Vigilant
wide so she’d show a broadside to the enemy fleet, which was now diving toward
Dreadnought
. At the last moment, two of the remaining five sloops peeled away, targeting the rapidly approaching
Richmond
and
Calypso
instead.

Richmond
was out of position for this unexpected move and turned in a panic to flee, which brought curses from Rutherford and the other officers on
Vigilant
’s bridge.
Calypso
, on the other hand, fired missiles and cannon.

Dreadnought
opened her guns on the final three sloops of war. Fire rolled along her side, spewing thousands of tons of hot, explosive metal at the enemy. The first shot caught the lead Hroom warship and ripped apart its shielding. It lost control and slid harmlessly past
Dreadnought
a few miles off the stern, then continued on into empty space, unable to change her trajectory, her engines smashed.

At last, Rutherford had
Vigilant
in position. Caites was calling for torpedoes, even as Rutherford gave the order to fire the main guns. They blasted at the rear sloop heading toward
Dreadnought
. Torpedoes followed.

Like a bellowing dragon roaring fire,
Dreadnought
opened another broadside, even as the three hard-charging sloops continued to hit the flagship with serpentines and pulse cannon. Cannon fire tore into them. The lead ship broke in two and drifted away, bleeding plasma and shuddering with explosions. Rutherford’s torpedoes found another and took out her engines, which detonated in a cloud of green plasma.
Dreadnought
finished the third off with missiles down the gullet. It exploded in a terrible flash, and Rutherford waited, breathless, for the screens to clear, afraid that when they did,
Dreadnought
would be no more. But when the viewscreen cleared, there she was, unvanquished, the mighty battleship enveloped in a cloud of smoke and debris.