Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3) (8 page)

“Catarina, listen to me. It is York Tower. Do you know what is in the vaults?”

“It’s not worth my life.”

“Who said anything about your life?”

“James, are you trying to tell me that we’ll skate past Albion’s forts unscathed? Or will some of us die, and the rest of us be well mauled by the time we come out the other side?”

“Not unscathed,” he admitted. “But the fleet is out fighting the Hroom—”

“Not
Dreadnought
. She’s still in orbit, finishing repairs.”

“Not anymore. From what Rutherford said—”

“Rutherford, hah! He’s a bigger scoundrel than Paredes and Dunkley put together.” Catarina had apparently not forgiven Rutherford for fighting her during the battle with the Apex hunting party. “You know what I want,” she added. “Give me that, and I’ll gladly come along.”

Drake glanced at Nyb Pim and Smythe. The former was running calculations, and the latter was on the com, speaking with engineering about a debris field they’d have to navigate as they left the orbit of the planetoid and its moon.

“Well, James? Surely, you’ve thought about what I was telling you last time.”

Yes, he had. They’d made love on her ship, then she’d showed him scans of the planet she’d discovered in the Omega Cluster.

The planet is beautiful, James. Fertile and untouched. I didn’t want to leave. Next time I pass through, I won’t. Neither will anyone else who comes with me.

“I can’t, Catarina,” he said. “It’s not just my parents, it’s Lord Malthorne.”

“The devil take him, why do you care?”

“Because I do. Malthorne has started a new war that may see Albion destroyed.”

“So you want to remove him to end the war, or what?”

“I don’t know. I need to see what Rutherford does, first.”

“Well, then. I guess I’ll wish you all the best and hope you come out the other side alive. Oh, and be careful around my sister. She’s a predator.” Catarina smiled. “Where do you think I learned my moves?”

“Catarina, please.”

“No!” Her eyes flashed. “What I’m offering, nobody else can give you. That’s more than enough. And if you don’t want it, if you won’t take it, then you know what I need instead. Money, and plenty of it. Until then, you get nothing from me.”

He looked at her sadly, wishing he could give her what she wanted. Could
promise
it, anyway. He shouldn’t have hired Aguilar. Without the money he’d committed to the captain and crew of
Pussycat
, he could have afforded the more powerful
Orient Tiger
. Tolvern had convinced him that he could have both. It was a bit of foolish sentiment from the commander, thinking that Catarina had any real feelings for Drake. 

Catarina sighed. “But I suppose information is free. There’s something you should know. Are you planning to go back via Fantalus, then through the Gryphon Shoals?”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t. There’s a big navy fleet running between those two systems. I didn’t see Rutherford’s ship, but there were a fair number of other cruisers and destroyers and the like. You don’t want to tangle with them.”

“Very good, thank you.” The news worried him. The other routes were circuitous and would add at least a week to his journey, but he couldn’t risk a fight with the navy, and he couldn’t risk being detected approaching Albion.

“You have time. Don’t rush your approach.”

“I don’t know if I do. I have no idea what Malthorne is planning to do with my parents.”

“I do,” Catarina said enigmatically. She smiled, and much of her charm returned. “I picked up some news from the Albion press. Your parents have been declared traitors, and they are being tried by the Crown.”

“That is ridiculous.”

“It may be ridiculous,” she said, “but surely it’s time consuming to try a baron and his wife for treason. Am I right?”

“Yes. Maybe so. Could take weeks, even months.” Maybe he did have time, after all. “Thank you, this is helpful.”

“So, which route
will
you take, now that Fantalus and the Shoals are closed off?” 

“I don’t know. And I probably shouldn’t say it in front of you and your crew if you’re not coming along. Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

“No, I am serious about that. I’m guessing you’ll cross the Gulch, then jump to the Jericho system. That’s the only way forward unless you want to either risk that navy fleet or backtrack to the frontier.”

“Maybe, maybe not. There are other ways.”

“Don’t be coy, James, I’m trying to help you. The thing is, we just came from Jericho. I stumbled into a Hroom fleet in the system. If they had wanted my hide, I’d be dead now, but they had other business to attend to. They seemed to be headed the same direction you are.”

Drake’s thoughts turned to what General Mose Dryz had told him. The Hroom death fleet. Of course, it couldn’t approach Albion directly, either, but would be plotting a similarly circuitous route.

“You should be all right, if you can avoid them,” Catarina said. “There were several sloops, but the Hroom weren’t powerful enough to defeat the Albion fleet I saw. Or mess with
Dreadnought
, for that matter.” 

That’s because they don’t intend to defeat the fleet. They intend to destroy Albion.
 

“You’d better stay out of their way, though,” Catarina added. “If you and my sister fly in parallel, running your long-range scanners—”

“Isabel doesn’t have long-range scanners,” Drake interrupted. Blast, some of his previous decisions were coming back to haunt him. “The arrays were knocked out in a fight, and it’s one of the main reasons she was on Leopold. Looking for work to earn the money for new arrays before she sets off alone again.”

“Isn’t that just like Isabel, operating on a shoestring? What about the other ships? How about that ugly frigate, the one that looks like a floating tank?”

“
Pussycat
? Her instruments are rubbish,” Drake said. “She is a brawler, not a chaser. Good for close combat, but if she’s out in the void, unescorted, not so tough. That’s why Aguilar was so keen to join me. He’s in no position for solo operations, either.” 

Tolvern walked onto the bridge. She glanced at the viewscreen, sighed audibly at the sight of Catarina Vargus, and made her way to her seat, shaking her head. Drake thought it was time to wrap up this conversation.

“Thank you for the information. I’ll keep my scanners going, and with any luck, we’ll spot them before they spot us.”

“I’m warning you, James. If you run into the sloops, they’ll give you a good thrashing. Stay clear.”

“What choice do I have?”

Catarina grunted. “Fine, I’ll see you to the last jump point, but no farther.”

Drake blinked. “You will?”

“Two thousand pounds.”

“Two thousand for an escort? Isn’t that rather steep for support duties? We’re already plenty strong without you.”

“Strong, but with a single eye. I can’t match
Blackbeard
’s firepower, but my instruments are more than a match. Two thousand, and another two if we come into combat. And only until the last jump point, then you’re on your own.”

“Piracy,” Tolvern said in a loud voice.

Drake considered the offer. Catarina was right; Drake couldn’t afford to mix it up with the Hroom. It wouldn’t do him any good to get to Albion if he’d already taken significant damage. And the transit time would give him opportunities to change Catarina’s mind.

He nodded. “It’s a deal.”

Chapter Seven

Within the first half hour after recovering from the jump into the Gryphon Shoals, Rutherford had received two urgent, conflicting messages. He went to the war room to consider them in privacy. The first was from the lord admiral, ordering him to collect his task force and cross the Shoals to the far side of the system, where he would rendezvous with a second force, led by Malthorne on
Dreadnought
herself and prepare to jump into San Pablo. 

That would form a massive fleet encompassing nearly half the capital ships in the Royal Navy. Poised at San Pablo, overlooking the smoking ruins of Rutherford’s atomic bombardment, the lord admiral could only mean to make a deep thrust into the Hroom Empire, leaving behind a trail of wrecked planets. Why? Albion was still struggling to consolidate its gains from the last war, so there was no strategic value to gobbling up more hard-to-defend systems. It was as if Malthorne intended to deliver a death blow to the empire.

There was nothing in the message about Rutherford’s meeting with Drake. Malthorne must have been steaming that Rutherford had defied him, had fought next to
Blackbeard
, and then let Drake and his treasonous crew go. But Rutherford had sent back so much intelligence about Apex and the new alien race’s attack on the Hroom that he knew all would be forgiven if he quietly submitted to his role in the fleet. There was still a war to win, after all. With Drake gone, Rutherford was the best captain Malthorne had left.

The second message was from Drake. Rutherford had given his old friend information on how to send him a subspace if he had important news, and now Drake seemed to have it. It took a good deal of energy to send messages via subspace, and this one was especially long.

There is a Hroom fleet proceeding toward Albion. It contains at least six sloops and intends to attack the home planet itself. You must be prepared.
 

I am unable to give you its course, because I am following a similar route and cannot risk the navy detecting me. Forgive my lack of trust. But the Hroom were observed leaving Hades Gulch.

Rutherford stopped reading and turned over this initial part of the message in his head. That answered one mystery: the destination of the alien fleet Rutherford had spotted after the encounter with the star leviathan. He hadn’t been able to guess their intentions. The Hroom fleet wasn’t powerful enough to menace Albion’s home system—or so Rutherford had thought—and he hadn’t been strong enough to challenge them alone. He’d passed along the sighting to the Admiralty, but otherwise continued to his rendezvous with Harbrake. Now, he knew. The Hroom really did intend to attack Albion, the fools. They must be desperate.

A message flashed in from Harbrake’s ship,
Nimitz
. Rutherford glanced at it. Harbrake had detected
Vigilant
entering the system, and was sending updated information, which Rutherford scanned, even as his thoughts remained on what he’d read of Drake’s subspace. 

Six sloops of war wouldn’t be enough to defeat Albion’s orbital fortresses. Hroom sloops could orbit, bombarding the surface, but they couldn’t enter a planet’s atmosphere and escape again. Albion’s forts would be sufficient defense. To be doubly sure, Rutherford could recommend that Malthorne leave a pair of destroyers and a few torpedo boats in place. He wouldn’t even have to tell the admiral what he’d heard, or from whom he’d heard it. A simple precautionary warning would suffice.

Rutherford moved back to finish Drake’s message.

This is not scaremongering when I say that you must stop them. This fleet belongs to a rebel faction that worships the Hroom god of death. It is a death fleet. A suicide force. They do not mean to return, they mean to lay waste to the entire planet. They left Hades Gulch 63.25 hours before the sending of this message.
 

If Malthorne will not listen, then you must face them alone, even if this means open rebellion against the fleet. In that case, send a subspace to the following systems, and I will join you in defeating this menace. I travel with allies.

Captain James Drake, Starship Blackbeard (HMS Ajax)

This was followed by a list of several systems where Rutherford was to send messages if he wanted to reach Drake. Presumably, one of them represented
Blackbeard
’s true location. Rutherford closed the message, encrypted it a second time, and filed it away.

A suicide fleet was another matter. Rutherford most certainly
would
need to go back to Albion and take ships with him. He needed to catch the Hroom in open space, before they entered the atmosphere on their final, deadly mission.

Wait, when did Drake say he’d spotted the fleet? Had he said 63.25 hours ago? Rutherford had assumed, at first glance, that Drake had seen the same Hroom fleet Rutherford had observed in Hades Gulch. It was the same size Drake described. But that was ten days ago, and the aliens had been jumping out of the system at the time. The Hroom wouldn’t have returned, would they?

There’s a second fleet.
 

It made sense. A large fleet would have a hard time passing through all those systems undetected. The Hroom must have divided their force in two. If one was caught, the other might still slip through.

At least two. What if there’s a third? Or a fourth?
 

What if there were thirty sloops approaching Albion? Was that likely? A number that large would represent most of what had survived the last war. If this so-called death cult had such a force, they were more than a faction, they were practically the entire Hroom navy.

Rutherford stepped out of the war room. “Caites, Pittsfield, you will join me in the war room at once.” Then, to distract the others, he said, “Norris, I just received a message from the Admiralty. I’ll need you to open a subspace channel to send a reply. But I don’t want you wasting power, so scan for a likely spot before you do. Swasey, plot a course across the system, but don’t send the data to the rest of the fleet just yet.”

Caites and Pittsfield eyed him curiously as they followed him into the war room and he shut the door. He shared Malthorne’s orders first. They were to proceed across the system to rendezvous with the admiral’s flagship, and from there, jump into San Pablo.

“No doubt Harbrake has received similar instructions,” Rutherford said when he’d finished, “and will be expecting me to lead the fleet.”

“And you don’t intend to obey them, sir?” Pittsfield asked.

Rutherford didn’t want to open Drake’s encrypted message and leave a further trail for network specialists to track down later, so he paraphrased. As he did, he studied Caites and Pittsfield for skepticism, but saw none.