Rebellion of Stars (Starship Blackbeard Book 4) (11 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “That is a real question I have for our Hroom friend.”

“Intentionally transplanted, I would imagine,” Nyb Pim said. “Thousands of years ago, by the original settlers. They brought everything with them.”

Carvalho wasn’t ready to let it go, seemingly outraged by the hostile wildlife. “And those eye suckers, too? Bone diggers? What kind of fool transplants a creature known as a bone digger?”

“Albion has its Old Earth cockroaches, does it not?” Nyb Pim countered. “Sharks, tigers, wolves. Other dangerous creatures.”

Carvalho grunted. “You won’t find such foolishness in the Ladino worlds. We exterminate vermin, we do not release new varieties into the wild.”

“It’s about recreating a complete ecosystem and all of that,” Brockett said. “I understand the motivation. I just don’t want to become intimately acquainted with the food chain myself.”

Time to take control of this conversation, Tolvern thought. “Will the larger creatures attack us in the shelter?” she asked. “That’s the only question I’m interested in.”

“Possibly,” Nyb Pim said. “Most likely, yes.”

Tolvern glanced up at the sky, the burnt orange color faded into a red that was nearly black. The first bright star or planet shone through the thick atmosphere. There wouldn’t be much light from stars, she guessed.

“This is our plan to survive the night,” Tolvern said. “We stay outside until it’s black, then we retreat to the tent. One person sits at the entrance at all times. If that’s you, keep your body inside, your head and rifle out. It’s going to get dark—use your ears. Check yourself over every few minutes to make sure nothing is drinking your blood, or, God help you, sticking its proboscis in your eyeball and slurping out the juice.”

Nods of agreement.

She continued. “You hear anything noisy—loud splashes, claws on the trunk, a growl—shoot your gun at the noise.”

“That does not sound particularly effective,” Carvalho said. “Shooting into the dark will only waste our ammo.”

“Let’s hope the gunfire scares off whatever it is,” she said. “Anyway, it will wake up the rest of us, and we can defend ourselves as best we can if we’re attacked.”

Left unspoken was the question of how, exactly, someone would hear a strange noise. Already, a frog-like chorus had started from the reeds and marsh surrounding the small lake. Insects whirred, clicked, and chirped. Something buzzed from the other side of the lake like a distant power saw. It was already so noisy that splashes and growls might not be heard above the general racket.

“Um, guys,” Brockett said. “Are you sure they’ll wait for dark?”

He pointed out to the lake. Tolvern grabbed her rifle and raised to a crouch to see what he was pointing at. Something rippled the water where the pod had gone down. Bubbles broke the surface. Could they have come from the pod itself, some trapped pocket of air?

Then a horny snout lifted above the water, and two large, dark eyes looked their direction. Tolvern’s stomach clenched. It was the same kind of creature that had attacked them last year near Lord Malthorne’s estate. One of them had nearly grabbed the captain in its beak and dragged him down.

Tolvern flipped the safety and fired twice on semiautomatic. It was already too dark to see where the bullets hit, whether they’d plunked harmlessly into the water or slammed into the creature’s scaly hide. The thing made no sound, but disappeared beneath the surface.

Nobody said a word. They stared at the lake, waiting for it to ripple again, waiting to spot any kind of movement. She’d seen one of these monsters lunge from the water, and it was anybody’s guess if it could reach their perch on top of the dead, bent-over fern trunk. She was still bracing herself when something caught her eye in the heavens.

Several stars were now visible, and a single bright, shining object swung overhead. It must be one of the small moons in orbit around Hot Barsa that had been turned into orbital fortresses. Lights flashed along the surface. More lights flared at some distance from the fort. That would be a ship, taking damage.

Drake was still fighting it out up there. Why? He meant to dump her in the jungle and retreat to safety. Did he know she’d crash landed in some swamp? Maybe he was trying to mount a rescue. No, that was hard to imagine. Too risky. More lights flashed on the fort. It was almost to the horizon already.

Her attention was still drawn by the drama playing out in orbit, when suddenly the water erupted beneath Nyb Pim on the trunk. The Hroom hooted in alarm and sprang backward. A monstrous, horny mouth opened wide.

Gunfire blasted behind Tolvern’s shoulder. It was Carvalho. He must have been at the ready this whole time and was shooting at the creature before it had even completed its lunge.

The beast bellowed and twisted, falling back into the water. It flailed about, heaving up great spouts of water with a long, paddle-like tail, as Carvalho continued shooting. Tolvern joined him.

When the gunfire died, the water was still roiling, but there was no sign of the beast. Brockett still sat where he’d been before the attack, frozen in place. Nyb Pim wobbled and nearly fell before he steadied himself. Carvalho panted.

“That’s it,” the Ladino said. “That’s my ammo. I fired every bullet.”

Tolvern had shot three times on semi-auto. Plus the first two shots, she reminded herself. That left her fifteen bullets, if she remembered correctly. And it wasn’t even fully dark yet. Doubtful they had killed the creature, with its thick, scaly hide. Might have only pissed it off, in fact. And there could easily be more of them.

Then she caught another sight that brought all of her worries into perspective. A light. Not in the heavens, but on the surface, and close. It blinked twice on the far side of the lake. Another light blinked twice a hundred yards or so around the lake to their right. An answer to the first.

“Quiet, everyone,” she whispered. “Get down.”

They had been found.

Chapter Eleven

Dexi Gibbs appeared on Captain Drake’s viewscreen. She was the commander of Fort Gamma, one of Hot Barsa’s three orbital fortresses. The woman had a sharp nose and small eyes, reminding Drake of one of his primary school teachers from many years back. Until she spoke.

“Why in the name of Albion are you hailing me?” she said. “You are a traitor and a pirate.”

Gibbs spoke with that snooty, artificial-sounding accent gained only by those who’d spent their childhood in preparatory academies in and around York Town. Those academies fostered a clannish arrogance of the sort also seen in Lord Malthorne and his ilk. Not Drake’s type of people at all.

“You could have ignored me,” he said. “Yet you answered my call.”

“You have a dozen ships aiming their guns in my direction.” She gave a cold smile. “And I have nothing to lose by stalling until Lindsell receives his reinforcements and returns.”

Capp muttered a dark oath to Drake’s side, and he looked away from Gibbs long enough to give his subpilot a hard look. Capp needed to hold her tongue. Gibbs was bluffing, of course. Captain Lindsell’s task force had begun reorganizing farther out in the system, but for now, he hadn’t turned around to relieve Hot Barsa.

“I would presume,” Drake said to Gibbs, “that you hope, as I do, to see Albion reunited. There are too many alien threats for us to be fighting each other.”

“Ah, the traitor seeks a parlay. Come to offer your surrender, is that it? Very well, I accept. Ah, but wait. Sadly, Malthorne will have your neck in a noose, all the same. Better that you flee for your life.”

Drake noted that she’d called him “Malthorne,” and not “King Thomas the Second,” as the murderous villain was styling himself now. Interesting.

“How about cooperation,” he said. “Maybe we want the same thing.”

“Cooperation? Hah. You are a bloody fool, James Drake.”

“Turn over your fort. Your garrison will work for me. You will keep your ranks and fight for those who mean to remove the usurper. Together, we can restore the crown to a rightful heir and organize our defenses against the alien threat.”

“A rightful heir? Let me guess—you mean yourself, don’t you? You have no royal blood. Or do you refer to Nigel Rutherford? He is even more distantly related to the crown than I am.” Gibbs smiled. “No? Then perhaps you mean the Duke of West Mercia. Alas, he has declined the throne. Malthorne’s flagship seems to discourage such moves from pretenders.”

“Come now,” Drake said. “You hold no respect for the lord admiral. You’re not even flying the Albion flag, only showing the fleet colors. And you cannot withstand my forces, so even if you are a friend of Malthorne, we will bombard you into submission.”

“Impossible.”

“Is it? You have no arms. None of your forts do. Malthorne couldn’t bother to resupply you. Do you even have food? For all I know, your people are starving.”

“Where are your pirates?”

“They prefer to be called mercenaries.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Whatever, they are still the rubbish of the sector. Where did they go?”

“To resupply you. Once you surrender, you’ll need arms and other supplies.”

“You are deluding yourself. We can hold out indefinitely if we must.”

“Very well. Prove me wrong. I had hoped you would come to your senses and save us both some unneeded headache. But so be it.”

Gibbs’s haughty expression never changed. “Go ahead and make an attempt. You will find that I have plenty of bite in me, as do my commanders on Fort Epsilon and Fort Alpha.” She cut the line, and the screen went black.

Rutherford appeared a moment later. He’d been monitoring the transmission from on board
Vigilant
, which sat a few hundred kilometers above
Blackbeard
and off starboard.

“I don’t like that woman,” Rutherford said. “She will be no ally of ours.”

After considering what he’d learned from the database about the other two commanders, Drake had pegged Gibbs as the most likely to turn. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Perhaps he should approach Alpha and Epsilon instead. No, he trusted his instincts. Gibbs was waiting for a show of force, he was sure of it.

“We’ll see. Take command of the missile frigates. Lay them off . . . ” Drake looked at Capp and raised his eyebrows in question. She fed him coordinates, which he passed to Rutherford.

“Just out of torpedo range,” Rutherford said.

“Right. We won’t take chances. The frigates can’t punch through that asteroid, anyway, so it’s mainly to knock them around a bit. Keep them distracted.”

“And the rest of us?”

“We’re going to find a soft spot and come in swinging.”

#

They followed Gamma in orbit around the planet as they readied their assault. Drake let the other forts catch a quick glimpse at their vanguard, curious if they would fire on him. They didn’t. No way to be sure, of course, but he was growing more and more confident that they were low on ammo.

But “low” was not the same thing as “completely depleted.”
Blackbeard
and
Vigilant
led a few exploratory passes over Gamma, then began their bombardment. The missile frigates laid down a barrage of missiles.

The muted response of the orbital fortresses had left him more and more certain of his enemy’s weakness. All three forts must already have been suffering deficiencies a few weeks ago during the battle that had so badly mauled
Philistine
, sending Tolvern’s destroyer to the San Pablo yards for costly repairs. They’d held back then, too.

Gamma absorbed Drake’s punishment as it completed several rotations. His ships followed it around, maintaining the attack.

And then Fort Gamma let loose. Missiles flared out. As Drake scrambled to keep from getting blown out of the sky, the fort opened torpedo tubes and exposed cannon batteries. Rutherford had sent a two-man observation craft out to scout the surface of the fortress for damage, and it was caught in Gamma’s sudden fury. Cannon fire caught it before it could get back to
Vigilant
. The scout ship weaved desperately to escape the guns, but they drove it down toward the planet. Moments later, it fell into the atmosphere, flaming like a meteorite.

Larger ships had begun to take damage too, as missiles and torpedoes got through countermeasures and evasive maneuvers. Chatter came down the com link, asking Drake about a retreat. Fort Gamma had been playing some sort of game, seemed to have plenty of ammo, and Fort Epsilon was about to swing into range. And what about those torpedo boats? Where were they?

But Drake wasn’t ready to abandon his hunch. “Signal the fleet to hold their position,” he told Oglethorpe. “We’ll keep up the fight.”

Blackbeard
cut around to come at the enemy from a new angle. She came within range of the enemy cannons, but swung quickly to show a broadside. The gunnery let loose. Explosions lit up the side of the fort. They hit an ammo dump, and out came a spectacular display of light and burning, venting gasses.

It was night over the eastern hemisphere of the planet. They were not far from where Tolvern’s pod had entered the atmosphere. Was she looking up at the night sky even now, wondering what was going on overhead? Had she even survived the landing? They had received no word.

Drake held his breath as Fort Epsilon approached. His frigates let loose a few warning missiles, but enemy countermeasures brought three of them down. The final one detonated on the surface, sending up a geyser of dust, but causing no harm.

Gamma’s fire diminished, but didn’t stop. Epsilon didn’t shoot, and Drake told his forces to let it continue without further harassment. A few minutes after Epsilon was gone, Commander Gibbs hailed Blackbeard from Gamma.

“Hold your fire, Drake.” She sounded exhausted, frustrated.

“You still have a torpedo and two missiles in play. How cheeky. Call them off.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” she demanded. “Isn’t it obvious what’s happening? There’s a bloody mutiny down here is what.”

Drake took satisfaction in seeing her discomposed. Two hours of combat had wiped away her smugness. If only he were looking at Admiral Malthorne instead.