Rebellion of Stars (Starship Blackbeard Book 4) (17 page)

Carvalho and Brockett grabbed hold of the chief. Nyb Pim threw his arms around him.

“Listen to me!” Tolvern said, even as the gunfire continued, marking its grisly harvest. “There are guard posts. A lorry. Must be fifty armed humans in that camp, and some of them have heavy weapons. We’ll be cut to pieces.”

“I cannot—I will not let them.”

“You have no choice.” The gunfire continued, almost drowning out her voice. “Stop! Listen to me. This is our chance. Look!”

There, to the right of the store, was the perfect target. It was a long, wooden building, some forty feet high and two hundred feet long. It slumped to one side, as if the rotting wood could barely hold itself up in the searing tropical heat. She’d seen a building like that before, albeit smaller, while traveling across one of the few places on Albion itself where slaves were kept as agricultural workers.

Pez Rykan stopped struggling and stared. He let Tolvern pull him back into the protective curtain of sugarcane.

“A slave barracks,” she said. “Think about it.”

“Yes, Jess Tolvern. Yes, now I see.”

There would be hundreds living under one roof, sharing cots, with bunks stacked on top of bunks from floor to ceiling. Get inside at night, and the rebels could do more mischief in fifteen minutes than they’d do in a week attacking the cane fields.

Chapter Seventeen

Drake made the jump into the San Pablo system a week after leaving Hot Barsa. He’d received word from Isabel Vargus that Lindsell’s fleet was racing to intercept her, and that left the jump point undefended. Still, when he raised his groggy, throbbing head after going through, he anxiously scanned the screen for enemy vessels. The nearby space was clear.

Capp eyed him with a worried expression. “That was a hard one, Cap’n. You took it worst of all. I was about to call Doc up here to have a look at you.”

The others on the bridge were already up and about. Oglethorpe blinked and rubbed at his temples. Manx chased down a couple of pills with a glass of water. Smythe was already fumbling at the tech console. Capp was yawning in the way people sometimes did when they were fighting nausea, but she seemed alert. Certainly, more so than Drake himself. He felt almost drugged.

His other ships were a destroyer, a frigate, and two torpedo boats, and they were already moving while
Blackbeard
was still dead in the water. Such a strange, unsettling phenomena, these jump points. Like every atom in your body had been disassembled and then strung together five light years away.

Smythe put up scans of the near space. A comet was hurtling through the San Pablo system, and flared white across the viewscreen only a few hundred thousand miles away. It seemed to be right on top of them, but that was an illusion caused by the vast distances. It stretched like a long, glowing white fire across the viewscreen until Smythe continued his scans elsewhere.

The computer picked up a flurry of new messages, which Jane sent through, one by one. The first came from Hot Barsa. Tolvern had stirred up a hornet’s nest on Malthorne’s largest estate. Closer to hand, Vargus had already scraped with Lindsell, who’d forced her to withdraw. She had several merchant vessels she needed to protect—the shipment of arms for the forts.

But where was she? Smythe scanned the system for ships and only turned up the usual suspects to be found in San Pablo: miners, scavengers, smugglers, mercenaries, and other unsavory types. Nothing of either Vargus or Lindsell.

“Where in the black void are they?” Drake asked.

“I’ll keep looking,” Smythe said, “but it might take some time if they’re both cloaked.”

“Vargus’s merchant frigates have no cloaking,” he reminded the tech officer.

“Don’t suppose they’ve busted out of here, do you?” Capp said.

Drake raised an eyebrow. “
Busted
?”

“You know, bug—I mean, left in a hurry. Busted out of here. Jumped to Peruano or something. Might be safer there, if Vargus’s sister’s about, doing whatever business she’s up to.”

“Vargus had better not have
busted
anywhere. Certainly not to Peruano. By the time we get that ordnance to the forts,
Dreadnought
will have seized them and reduced Rutherford’s fleet to salvage.”

“Might not have had much choice,” Capp said. “Not if Lindsell slapped her around a bit, if you know what I mean.”

“Found them, sir!” Smythe said.

Now Drake understood. Lindsell and Vargus’s forces were eclipsed by the sun, which had kept
Blackbeard
’s initial scans from detecting the two forces, but a star was just gas, and one could peer straight through it with the right array of instruments.

The two sides ducked and weaved near the tiny, sun-scorched, innermost world of the system. They were almost close enough to exchange blows, with Lindsell anxious to engage, and Vargus equally intent on avoiding it.

“She’s clever, that one,” Capp said. “Almost as clever as her sister. Know what I mean, Cap’n?”

He was well aware of the Vargus sisters’ qualities. In this case, Isabel Vargus’s flight to the rocky innermost world might have saved her life. It kept her close to the jump point. Break free, and she could make a run for it. If not, she’d be closer to Drake when he came through to help. The planet itself was an obstacle to put between herself and Lindsell, who she could not outrun in open space. And her position on the far side of the sun helped hide
Blackbeard
from immediate detection.

Drake told Oglethorpe to send word to the other ships: travel cloaked, follow
Blackbeard
up to the sun’s corona. They were going to come in quietly. See if they could get the jump on Lindsell.

“Send Vargus a coded message,” Drake said. “Tell her we are on our way. Capp, plot a course.”

The pilot interfaced her nav chip with the nav computer and came back with two suggestions a few minutes later. The most optimal one, at least in terms of secrecy, took them awfully close to the star, almost inside its transition zone.

“You’re going to cook us like a lobster in its shell,” Oglethorpe said gloomily.

“No,” Smythe said. He was running his own calculations and sending them through to the captain. “We’ll survive. It will be toasty, though.”

“Set the course,” Drake told Capp. “Oglethorpe, send that through to the other ships. Smythe, if you can think up anything clever to cool our quarters, it would be appreciated.”

“Bring it on,” Capp said. “We ain’t scared of a little heat, are we, Cap’n?” She unzipped her vest partway, as if in anticipation. It was a foolish gesture, as they wouldn’t detect any change for at least an hour. “Whatever it takes to get around there without being spotted. I’ll take it all off if I need to.”

#

Toasty proved to be an understatement. The tyrillium armor couldn’t absorb all of the energy hammering down on them, and other cooling methods proved inadequate, at least on
Blackbeard
.

A dry heat, yes. That didn’t matter so much once the temperature topped one hundred and kept climbing. Soon it felt like a baking oven.

Drake sweated out the end of his shift and returned to his quarters. He stripped to his underwear and lay on top of the sheets.

He was tempted to cool his quarters. Give him some relief at the expense of a small temperature rise in the rest of the ship. He could justify it by saying that the captain, of all the crew, most needed to be well rested before battle.

But, no. Word would get out if he told engineering to tweak the climate control. The hit to morale would negate any small advantage he might gain by sleeping in comfort. And it would be unfair to the rest, no matter if they knew or not. A captain’s duty was to suffer with his crew.

He drifted in and out of sleep for a couple of hours, then got up and took a shower. There was no cold water; it was all hot. He got a little relief as he dried, but the water seemed to transition directly into sweat as he dressed. May as well go to the bridge. They’d be coming around the star by now.

“Jane, give me a climate update.”

“Non-optimal for human survival,” the computer began. “Climate control systems, including—”

“Just give me the temperature.” The heat left him irritable, and it was hard not to snap.

“One hundred and eight point three degrees Fahrenheit.”

“And how fast is that climbing? Where were we an hour ago?”

“Contradictory questions,” Jane said. “The temperature has not increased. It has dropped point-eight degrees in the past hour.”

Oh, that was good. The worst was over, then. “And the other ships? How are they holding out?”

Jane returned a negative understanding, and he clarified. What was their temperature? All four were cooler than
Blackbeard
. Their weaker shielding was more than compensated for by a higher surface area to mass than the larger cruiser, which made it easier to shed heat through their armor.

Drake left his room and made his way to the bridge, passing a few sweaty, haggard-looking crew members on his way.

Oglethorpe was off, and Capp sat at the helm. Her buzzed scalp gleamed. She’d unzipped her vest all the way, but closed it halfway as he entered.

Barker from the gunnery was at the tech console. Manx was also at work. It felt slightly cooler on the bridge, or maybe that was his imagination.

“Better bring people back on early,” Capp said as she made way for Drake. “Nobody’s asked me, but I’d say all hands.”

He glanced at his console. Another few minutes, and they’d be far enough from the star to shed heat. That would bring the temp down in a hurry.

As for the action playing out by the rocky innermost world, Drake was surprised to see that Lindsell had not yet engaged. Some of this was due to Isabel Vargus, who’d managed to keep the planet between herself and the enemy fleet. But Lindsell had either committed some tactical blunder, or was being unusually cautious, or he would have caught her by now. Those transports were Vargus’s weakness. Surely, Lindsell knew it.

“Personnel will continue as scheduled,” Drake said, in answer to Capp’s suggestion. He’d have taken that sort of impertinence from Tolvern, who had earned the right to question him. The subpilot, not so much. “We have nearly two hours until we engage.”

“Not quite, sir,” Barker said from Smythe’s station. “Look at this.” He sent over data.

At first, it was a jumble that he struggled to decipher, even with the console rendering it visually. But as the data came into focus, the first twinge of worry hit. They weren’t the only ones traveling cloaked. Someone else was approaching the developing battle, fully cloaked.

It was a larger signature, and there was a good chance
Blackbeard
and her escorts had not yet been detected. But either way, the other side would intersect with
Blackbeard
before either force reached Lindsell.

“It’s leaving a big wake, sir,” Barker said. “Several ships, I should guess.”

Not good. They must have been lurking about the system already and were now rushing to Lindsell’s aid. No wonder the captain hadn’t attacked Vargus yet. He was playing cat and mouse to keep her from escaping while he waited for reinforcements.

“I was apparently mistaken,” Drake conceded. “All hands on deck.”

“Right,” Capp said. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“Oglethorpe is not on the bridge,” he reminded her. “That means you. Give the orders, Ensign.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, Cap’n.”

Capp got on the general link, and in her rough, York Town accent and with rather more rude vocabulary than necessary, she told the crew to get their sweaty selves to their posts.

Smythe arrived moments later, and Barker departed for the gunnery to prepare for combat. The air was definitely cooling now—Jane said under a hundred and dropping fast—and Drake’s head began to clear. He ordered in tea to get some caffeine in his sleep-deprived system, but kept most of his attention on that cloaked enemy task force.

So far, no sign of recognition, but the enemy might be well aware of his arrival. With a smaller signature and the star’s radiation at his back, he had an advantage, but the closer the two forces approached, the greater the likelihood of detection. There was an awfully lot of mass in the enemy formation. What nasty surprise was it hiding? Cruisers? Corvettes? A whole task force to match Lindsell’s?

“Twenty minutes,” Capp said. Her voice was tight, nervous. “Shouldn’t we think about dropping them cloaks so we can let ’em have it?”

“Quiet, Ensign.”

For such a large force, the enemy kept a tight formation. Not spread out, which made sense, given that it decreased the odds of detection. Still, there was a risk in that. So many ships traveling close together. Unless . . .

Suddenly, and with a short, sharp shock, Drake understood.

“Drop cloaks!” he ordered. “Raise shields. It’s
Dreadnought
.”

Chapter Eighteen

Drake stared as HMS
Dreadnought
dropped her own cloaks in response to
Blackbeard
’s action. She filled the viewscreen, a battle-scarred monster of the deep. She was long and black, with glowing instruments along the front like a hundred beady eyes. Two torpedo boats flew beneath her belly like tiny fish collecting scraps left after the beast ate.

Silence on the bridge of
Blackbeard
. Finally, Capp muttered an oath, and this snapped Drake to attention. He got on the com and ordered the gunnery to ready aft torpedo tubes. Smythe moved to prepare countermeasures.

They were close now, only a few minutes from combat. And he had no chance in open combat. Drake had stumbled right into the mouth of the dragon, and his only hope was to slip away before its jaws closed.

Forget the cloaking. Somehow, Malthorne had kept the movement of HMS
Dreadnought
, the mightiest warship ever constructed, a secret. He’d jumped several times and appeared in San Pablo without warning. It was a brilliant bit of space navigation and tactics.