Rebellion of Stars (Starship Blackbeard Book 4) (12 page)

“You had your chance. Why should I give you respite?”

“All I’m asking is that you pull back. Let me get things settled. I’ll surrender as soon as I can. First, I need to get control of the mutineers.”

“How long do you need?” Drake asked. “If this is some sort of game . . . ”

“I swear to God, it’s not. Give me an hour.” Then, to someone off screen, Gibbs said, “Stop them!” She shouted something else, but the line cut before Drake could pick it up.

Two torpedo boats launched from Gamma. It was an ill-advised move, with Drake having all his guns trained on the fort. He could have blasted them apart at once, but he needed to see what was happening. If Gibbs were lying, if the mutiny was to force the surrender, and she was trying to prevent it, these two boats would be his allies, not his enemy.

The instant the two craft got free, they gunned their engines and made to flee the scene. That answered that question. Drake sent a quick message telling them to stand down. When his message was ignored, he sent
Vigilant
after them. Rutherford’s ship soon overtook them, and he attacked mercilessly. He tore apart the rear vessel, which detonated in a fiery death for all her crew.
Vigilant
swooped in behind the other craft.

That ended the fight. The torpedo boat cut its engines and surrendered.

The fort stopped firing on
Blackbeard
moments later. For awhile, there was nothing, and when Drake hailed Gibbs to tell her that the time was up, she didn’t answer. So it
was
a game, after all. He readied his forces for another attack.

Finally, the surrender came. No conditions. Gibbs claimed no allegiance to Malthorne, only that she doubted Drake’s ability to defeat him. After all, she said, the might of Albion backed the lord admiral. Drake had a poor colony world and a third of the fleet. Turning to the rebellion seemed a good way to get oneself killed. But, as she no longer had any choice . . .

Given that she’d offered her surrender, he was surprised by her candor. She’d just caused him a good deal of trouble. If he were a vindictive man, he’d have made an example of her to show the other two forts. But he was not.

That decision delivered mixed results. An hour later, Epsilon offered to join the rebellion. Fort Alpha refused to surrender. Let Drake come, Alpha’s commander boasted, he’d never break through. And this was the largest, most dug-in fort of all. Drake worried the enemy was right.

For now, he’d secure his victory. He prepared an away team to take possession of Gamma, and led the expedition himself. He brought over so many armed men that it left his fleet nearly depleted, but he wouldn’t risk an ambush. He warned Gibbs that if she were to try anything, Captain Rutherford would use his remaining atomic warheads to reduce Gamma to radioactive slag.

Chapter Twelve

Tolvern and Carvalho lay flat on the overhanging trunk, their rifles pointed in opposite directions over the lake. She’d given Carvalho seven of her remaining fifteen bullets, then sent Brockett and Nyb Pim into the makeshift shelter with instructions not to make a sound. Not that they needed a warning. All four of them had become a jangle of nerves as it grew darker and darker. Only a handful of stars penetrated the thick atmosphere. The night filled with such a racket of croaks, chirps, squeaks, and bellows that Tolvern’s whole body felt like it was vibrating.

It had been still all day, but now a warm breeze came from the direction of the mountains. A light flared again briefly on the other side of the lake, and in that moment, Tolvern saw a corner of the larger parachute that they’d snugged into the fronds of one of the giant ferns. Hanging loose, it now flapped like a flag. The movement had apparently drawn their stalkers. It would be immediately apparent that the fabric was a parachute of human origin.

Carvalho cursed in a low voice. “What do we do?”

Tolvern had no idea. It was the worst possible timing for this breeze. Why not earlier, when they were cooking in their own sweat? She’d have given anything for the slightest stirring of the air. Now, they had it, but only so it could draw attention.

“We could leave,” she whispered. “Get Brockett and Nyb Pim and go into the jungle.”

“We can’t go down there. There are bone diggers. Eye suckers!”

“Shh. Will you keep it down? We’ll deal with that if we have to.”

Still, what was the point? They’d struggled to move through the swamp in daylight, even skirting the edges of the forest; they’d never get far in the dark.

“We could surrender?” Carvalho said.

“Seriously?” she hissed. “Are you nuts?”

“That’s why we came, to find the Hroom.”

“Not like this. For all we know, these are just people of the bush, Hroom who’ve managed to evade the slavers all these years. They’ll kill us without question. For that matter, they could easily be humans or sugar slaves sent by Malthorne’s people to track us down.”

She was certain of one thing. It would be dumb to make contact under these circumstances. Beyond dumb. Suicidal.

Carvalho tried to say something else, but his voice was getting loud again, and she told him to stop talking. They settled in to wait. For a long time, there was nothing but the sounds of the jungle and lake. Tolvern brushed some crawly thing off her arm, and flinched when an animal screeched to their right. Some other animal growled, the brush crashed, and it sounded like a life and death struggle was playing out not thirty feet away.

What about their stalkers? The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced they were Hroom. No way humans would be wandering around in the dark, no matter how well armed and eager to lay their hands on the intruders. But neither human nor Hroom saw particularly well in the dark, so if she and her companions only sat still . . .

Another movement in the brush, this time to their left. The creak of a bending branch. Instinctively, she knew it was different than the animal sounds. Carvalho was lying next to her with his gun, and she felt his body stiffen.

A crack of blue lightning arced out toward the bent trunk on which they lay. It sizzled the wood next to Tolvern’s ear with a roaring crack. She smelled ozone and burning hair. The side of her face tingled.

Carvalho fired once. Someone cried out, but not in pain. A warning. The voice belonged to a Hroom. Carvalho fired twice more in quick succession.

Something moved in the brush to her right, and Tolvern, recovering from the close call of the electric attack, spotted a long, slender shadow slinking through the trees. He held what looked like a walking stick in his hand, but the tip glowed with a faint blue light. She lifted her gun to fire. But before she could squeeze off a shot, the figure disappeared into the trees.

A light blinked on the opposite side of the lake. Two lights answered with blinks of their own, but neither was close to them. There must be at least five enemies, counting the two (or more) who flanked them.

Carvalho now had four bullets and Tolvern had eight. She couldn’t sit here in the dark, waiting for another attack. Not with twelve bullets between them, and many hours until morning.

“Nyb Pim,” she said in a low voice. “Get out here.”

He came out and crawled up behind her.

“Talk to them,” she whispered. “Tell them we’re not enemies, that we’re—just explain it. You know what to say. Try not to offend them, for God’s sake.”

Nyb Pim called out in Hroom. His voice was high, with hoots and strange whistling noises. Sounds a human couldn’t reproduce, though she knew a few claimed to understand it and could manage a few very simple words. Even then, half the Hroom language was apparently just mood or sense and not words in the human sense of language.

Her Hroom pilot-turned-translator spoke for two or three minutes in what sounded like a long supplication. At last he stopped, but there was no answer from the surrounding jungle. If Tolvern hadn’t seen the electric attack and heard the voice, she’d have thought they were jumping at shadows.

“What did you tell them?”

“The truth,” he said.

Yes, but how much of the truth? And with what nuance? And if he’d admitted he was with humans, they’d expect a lie or trap. There was no escaping the human reputation, Albion’s more so, for being masters of deception.

Another electrical pulse lashed out without warning. This time, it was aimed at Carvalho. It struck him on the arm. Tolvern was touching him, and the current passed from his body to hers. Her limbs stiffened, and she only just managed to hold onto the trunk. Carvalho wasn’t so fortunate. He stiffened and lost his grip. She couldn’t move quickly enough to grab him. He fell off and landed in the water below with a plop.

“Carvalho!”

She leaned over and tried in vain to see into the inky-black water. Nyb Pim stretched out, reaching with his long arms and fingers. Another flash and crackle from one of the electric weapons, and Nyb Pim went over, too. Tolvern lifted her gun and aimed in the direction of the attack. She fired twice on semi-auto.

Tolvern saw the light at the last moment, a glowing blue spot that rose up from the water and jabbed her ankle. A painful jolt touched every nerve in her body. Her muscles seized and wouldn’t move or respond. She’d been leaning over after her two companions, and now slid off and fell. She hit the warm water with a splash.

Tolvern couldn’t feel her limbs, but there was a sensation of sinking. She must be under water. Were her lungs opening involuntarily as she sucked in water and drowned?

Then strong, bony hands grabbed her ankles and yanked her back. She started to feel her body again as they threw her down in the reeds on the edge of the lake.

Tolvern spit out mud and water. “My friends. You have to—”

A hand struck her across the face, and her head rocked back. Strong hands pinned her arms, and someone else tied her ankles together. She was terrified for Carvalho and Nyb Pim, imagining them drowning in the lake, but then she heard the former groaning and the latter said something in Hroom. A blow, a grunt from Nyb Pim as they silenced him again.

Wait, what about Brockett?

Keep quiet, you fool. Don’t let them know you’re there.
 

But only moments later, she heard Brockett’s shouts. “Let go of me! I’m not your enemy. We’re here to help you.”

“Don’t fight them!” she cried. “Don’t resist.”

That was the wrong thing to say, and it was misunderstood. The glowing blue tip came toward her again. She saw it this time and squirmed to get away. It touched her back and held there. Pain burned along her skin and through her body until it felt like electricity was shooting out her fingertips.

Vaguely, she heard Nyb Pim crying out in his language. She couldn’t open her mouth to scream, and blacked out.

#

Tolvern came to with a groan. Her hands and wrists were bound, and she was slung over someone’s shoulder. The one carrying her was tall and strong, and for a moment, she thought that Drake had come for her and was hauling her to safety.

She soon recognized the truth when her side rubbed painfully against a bony shoulder. It was a Hroom who had her. There were more Hroom in front and behind. Something crackled and sizzled in the darkness, and the smell of burning vegetation filled the air.

She groaned in despair as she realized the depth of her predicament. The Hroom ignored her, but a human voice chuckled from the darkness in front of her.

“Have a good nap?” Carvalho.

“What’s going on?”

“Let me see. While you were sleeping like a babe, the Hroom gave Nyb Pim a working over. Brockett made a run for it. He was caught, of course. This time they were more careful tying him up.”

Brockett spoke up behind them. “That’s an understatement. These blasted cords—I can’t feel my hands and feet.”

“How did you get away in the first place?” Tolvern asked. “Maybe if we all tried it at once.”

Their captors seemed to pay no mind to their conversation. That could be a very bad sign—maybe they meant to kill the prisoners—but in the meantime, she would collect as much information as possible.

“Forget it,” Brockett said. “I still had Carvalho’s knife. Nobody had checked me. I had to try. If only—” he grunted, “—they weren’t so blasted tight.”

“Nyb Pim?” she said. “Are you out there? Are you okay?”

“He is gagged and cannot answer,” Carvalho said. “Possibly unconscious. They were not gentle.”

This was worrying on several levels. “Any idea where we are?” she asked. “Or where they are taking us?”

“Shall I ask them for you?” Carvalho said. “Let me see, how do you say ‘geographical coordinates’ in Hroom?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“I admit my error,” he said. “Offering to surrender did not, in fact, help our situation. And I believe I will owe Capp twenty pounds, as well. Not that it is a debt she will be able to collect, unless she wants to rob a dead man’s possessions.”

“Why the devil are you so cheerful?”

“I am not, I am terrified. But, what can you do?” She could almost hear his shrug.

Tolvern slumped in frustrated exhaustion. The party of Hroom—there seemed to be about a dozen—burned their way through the jungle with some sort of energy tool, possibly the same devices that had rendered her party helpless. The weapon that had touched her body was definitely a Hroom shock spear, but these other ones seemed to have undergone some sort of alteration.

The Hroom stopped twice to rest, and Tolvern got a glimpse of the one who’d been carrying her. Like roughly half the group, she was a female, with a smaller frame and more delicate facial features than the males. Even so, she was more than a foot taller than Tolvern, and strong enough to carry the human woman through the jungle for two hours. All of these Hroom were lean, but very strong.

As for Nyb Pim, she heard him groaning enough to know that he was at least semi-conscious. Why they’d beaten him and not the humans, she couldn’t say. From what Carvalho told her, he hadn’t been resisting, had kept trying to negotiate to the end. Either he’d said something horribly rude in the Hroom language, or they’d singled him out for abuse as a traitor to his race. Neither possibility spoke to negotiating a release.