Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3) (4 page)

“Sorry, sir.”

“Scan its belly. Let’s see how hungry it is.”

Norris brought the viewscreen to a higher resolution. A closer inspection confirmed that it was in its feeding state. When dormant, a leviathan tucked in all its parts until it looked like a fat, bloated whale, but when it entered its feeding state, it uncoiled until it resembled a monstrous squid, like a kraken from ancient legends. Once, Rutherford had been on
Dreadnought
when Malthorne’s battleship fought off one of the monsters. A tentacle had pierced the tyrillium armor, plunged through two decks, and been hacked off by marines as it groped for fissile material. After the fight, Rutherford joined the crew in examining the severed tentacle. Six feet thick of oozing gelatinous flesh enveloped a core of wires and circuitry. Nobody knew what alien race had created the things, or to what purpose. Perhaps they’d evolved from some lower technology.

This particular leviathan was skinny, almost emaciated. No hope that it had fed recently and would make a half-hearted attempt to haul them in. It must have come in from deep space, traveling for decades or even centuries through the void. Leviathans digested metal and plastic, but fuel, explosives, and especially fissile materials were its primary targets, and the reason leviathans chased ships. Thank God they were so rare.

“Are there any other warships in the system?” Rutherford asked.

“Unfortunately—” Norris began.

Rutherford cut him off. “I was talking to the commander. I want
you
to communicate with engineering. Shunt power from the shields and ready countermeasures. Caites, get me the gunnery and see what we’ve got that might help.”

“No, sir, there aren’t any warships,” Commander Pittsfield said in answer to the question. “There are no Royal Navy vessels in this system except
Vigilant
.”

“Can we return to the previous jump point? It can’t follow us through.”

“No, sir,” Pittsfield said. “The leviathan has spit up plasma spores around the jump. A whole web of them. They’ll gum up our engines and trap us if we try to go through.”

“Sir, may I suggest something?” Norris said.

“No, Norris. You may not. Do what you were told.” Rutherford turned back to Pittsfield. “What is our fuel situation?”

“Low. Not critical, but we don’t have much to spare.”

“I don’t want to outrun it only to burn through so much fuel that we can’t make the next jump.” Rutherford glanced at Lieutenant Caites, who had been speaking quietly into her com link. “Any word from the gunnery?”

She looked up. “We have no fission weapons on board. They were expended in the bombardment of San Pablo. Nothing else is big enough to drive off the leviathan—that is the opinion of the gunnery, at least.”

Rutherford frowned. “I see.”

That brutal and possibly criminal bombardment of the Hroom continent, as ordered by the lord admiral, had not only precipitated a new war, but had left him bereft of the only weapon that could drive off the leviathan. But what could Rutherford have done, disobey a direct order?

“May I offer a suggestion, Captain?” Caites asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Wait,” Norris said, looking up. “How come you’ll listen to her and not me?”

Because she is not an idiot.
 

And because Rutherford had promoted Catherine Caites himself, had brought her on board after the initiative she’d shown tracking down the mystery of Apex. Norris, on the other hand, was one of Malthorne’s toadies, foisted on Rutherford to assure his loyalty when he faced his old friend, James Drake. And Rutherford was now fairly certain that it was
Malthorne
who was the traitor to Albion, not Drake and his crew.

But Rutherford had no wish to become a tyrant. He needed to put aside his anger.

“One moment, Caites. Yes, Norris?”

“What about lasers? We have a fifty kilowatt, and we could use it to blind the leviathan’s sensors, maybe even burn off some of its tentacles.”

“No, that won’t work.” Rutherford glanced at Caites, then turned to Pittsfield. “Commander, how long until we fall in range of the leviathan’s spore cannons?”

“Ninety-seven minutes,” Pittsfield said.

“Why not?” Norris persisted. “It’s not like the thing has tyrillium armor or anything. Why wouldn’t it be susceptible to laser fire? We have an hour and a half, we could concentrate the laser on one spot. If we hurt it enough, it might leave us alone.”

Rutherford sighed. “Norris, a star leviathan can brush through the corona of a star, for God’s sake. A 50-kilowatt laser wouldn’t even tickle the thing.”

“Oh.”

Caites had waited while Norris rambled, but she’d been shifting from one foot to the other, leaning forward. She was steady, but still young, and Rutherford had learned to recognize when she was eager to share information. He made his way to her station.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” Rutherford asked.

“Look at this, Captain.”

Caites had apparently been running through scans of the system, perhaps looking for other ships that might be bribed or bullied into helping them if there were no Royal Navy vessels about. Unlikely, as the Hades Gulch system was unpopulated, except for a small mining colony. And since Hades Gulch was on the edge of the Omega Cluster, which had no jump points into it, few ships had cause to pass through. This one space lane led to the Gryphon Shoals, where
Vigilant
was supposed to rendezvous with Harbrake and the rest of the task force.

Rutherford leaned over her shoulder and amplified the map. It showed a small, rocky planetoid, unusually positioned between two gas giants. Perhaps an escaped moon, it had a small moon itself, nearly a third as large as the planetoid. Orbiting around them both was a strange double ring of tiny asteroids.

“That ring isn’t natural,” Caites said, “What you’re looking at is debris from a Hroom fleet.”

“Debris? There was no battle out here.”

“Not in the most recent fighting. This is from the Third Hroom War, Queen Ellen’s time.” Caites scrolled her finger across the screen, bringing up text. “An Albion fleet was chasing them, and several sloops smashed into that small moon while the Hroom were performing desperate evasive maneuvers.”

Rutherford eyed Caites with new appreciation. “How did you know where to look? I’ve never heard of this battle—couldn’t have been a pivotal one. Are you some kind of military historian?”

“No, not really. I’d heard of the Battle of Hades Gulch, but didn’t know much about it. But there are several ships out there—a salvage operation seems to have taken up position a couple of years ago. Mixed Ladino and New Dutch.”

“Do any of them have weapons?”

“Nothing big enough to tangle with a leviathan. Couple of frigates, some unarmed vessels the size of my old torpedo boat. The planetside base has a small cannon and two missile batteries, but still, nothing to speak of. What they do have is a pair of nukes on the surface. Reactors, I mean, the modular stuff. It powers their operations.”

“Oh,” Rutherford said. Then, with new appreciation. “
Oh.
Fissile material.”

“We’re three hours from the salvage operation,” she said, typing on her keypad. “We’ll need to accelerate to get there before we’re caught, and that means we’re back to the fuel problem.”

“Yes, but once the leviathan is feeding, it’s no longer our problem. We’ll have time to stretch the ram scoops for a couple of days. Send this to Pittsfield.”

“I just did, sir.”

Rutherford turned it over in his head as he returned to his chair. He imagined the panic in the salvagers as he tore past with a ravenous star leviathan in pursuit. Their panic might serve as an additional distraction, but that felt unnecessarily cruel. No sense being brutal about it.

“Commander Pittsfield,” he said, “contact the salvage operation. Strongly suggest that they run like the devil himself is after them. Warn them we’re about to drop a leviathan in their lap.”

#

A few hours later, the leviathan had closed to within a few thousand miles as
Vigilant
rushed toward the salvage operation. Small mining craft, scout vessels, and box-like asteroid scrapers had been fleeing in all directions like rats boiling out of the hold of a burning ship. One small vessel had been unable to detach itself from a Hroom hulk it had been salvaging, and its workers launched themselves out in an escape pod that was picked up by one of the larger mining ships before it fled.

By the time
Vigilant
tore past the planetoid and its small moon, every man and woman had either fled or hunkered in some deep hole to wait out the catastrophe. Rutherford couldn’t just tear through—the leviathan might not notice all the other juicy morsels to feed on—so he hooked his ship in a big arc, just out of reach of the monster’s tentacles—and swooped back toward the planetoid and its moon, shedding speed.

“It’s spitting spores,” Pittsfield warned, his voice tight and nervous.

“One more pass,” Rutherford told the pilot. “Take us right through that debris.” He got the gunnery on the com. “Drop some ordnance right next to those reactors. Make them light up.”

They came through again, and this time the gunnery let loose with a barrage of torpedoes and missiles, aimed not at the leviathan, but at the planetoid. Light flashed on the dusty, frozen surface, and giant columns of debris exploded, drifting up and up before slowly raining down under the world’s weak gravity. The leviathan was now so close that it was probing with its tentacles, trying to snag
Vigilant,
and spewing spore globules from its mouth, but now it hesitated. It swung one arm and looped it around the nose section of a drifting bit of Hroom wreckage, which it pulled toward a suddenly gaping maw. After munching the wreckage, it seemed to spot the undamaged nuclear reactors and dropped toward the surface.

This was
Vigilant
’s chance, and she tore off into space, accelerating again. Even as they fled, Rutherford kept a wary eye on the leviathan. It landed on the planetoid. Miles-long tentacles tore at the surface, throwing up boulders the size of small hills as the beast stuffed the reactors, the mining buildings, and any other ores, fuel, fissile material, or equipment it could find into its mouth. With both the debris of the Hroom fleet and the remnants of the salvage operation to feed on, Rutherford supposed it would be sated and shortly venture off into the void, never to be seen again by any living being.

#

With the time lost evading the leviathan and collecting enough fuel to limp through the jump point,
Vigilant
would be three days longer in leaving Hades Gulch than planned. Rutherford sent subspace messages to the Admiralty and to Captain Harbrake to explain. The Admiralty wouldn’t be happy to hear about the destroyed New Dutch operation; to keep the peace, Albion would no doubt feel compelled to offer compensation to the affected salvagers. The fleet counted on New Dutch and Ladino colonies and mining operations for refueling and emergency repair and couldn’t afford to aggravate them while trying to fight the Hroom Empire.

Rutherford was still ten hours from the final jump out of this cursed system when they spotted a Hroom fleet on the opposite side. Norris, duly chastened because of his failure to spot the leviathan, had been anxious to properly execute his duties, or it might have passed unnoticed altogether. The fleet comprised six sloops of war, entering through a jump point that led from the Fantalus system. The Hroom vessels quickly cloaked themselves and vanished from long-range scans, but not before Lieutenant Swasey—Rutherford’s pilot—was able to chart their course.

The Hroom were apparently crossing the system on their way to a jump point that would take them into the deep void, a region of space not on any of Rutherford’s charts. The jump points in that section of the deep void were constantly shifting and had not previously led anywhere useful. Presumably, the Hroom had a destination in mind, but without better data, Rutherford could only speculate.

The enemy was headed away from the empire worlds, that was one safe guess. Based on the general flow of jump points in these parts, the most likely course was toward one of Albion’s home worlds: Mercia, Saxony, or Albion herself.

But why? And with only six sloops? That was a strong force, but hardly overwhelming. Even if Albion were unprotected by the fleet, six ships wouldn’t be sufficient to fight the planet’s orbital fortresses long enough to bombard the surface. And away from the planets, HMS
Dreadnought
alone could fight six sloops to a standstill. Give the admiral’s battleship a few destroyers and corvettes, and it would be a slaughter.

Still, it was strange to see the empire on the offensive this far from their home worlds. Strange, and unsettling. Rutherford thought briefly about sending a subspace to Gryphon Shoals and ordering Harbrake to come through.
Vigilant
would move to intercept the enemy while waiting for Harbrake’s forces to arrive. But Rutherford was low on fuel, and he had disregarded orders for long enough already. Let him make the rendezvous first, find out what Malthorne was up to, and then worry about six stray sloops of war.

Chapter Four

As soon as he left the Hroom, Drake felt the stress and pressure lifting from his shoulders. Ever since seizing the sugar antidote from Lord Malthorne, he’d felt as though he’d been carrying sandbags on his shoulders. He’d been torn between the moral imperative of freeing the Hroom from their sugar enslavement and the need to protect Albion from a rejuvenated empire. Drake had made his choice, and now General Mose Dryz had the antidote.

Drake now had two things on his mind: freeing his parents from York Tower and punishing Malthorne for killing his sister Helen. Malthorne was a slaver, a warmonger, and a murderer, and somehow, Drake would bring him to justice. But first, free his parents, get them to safety.

He led
Blackbeard
carefully through the Hroom systems, wary of running into the death cult faction the general had warned him about, but when the ship reached the frontier systems, he stopped taking unusual precautions and made his way directly toward the New Dutch world of Leopold. Catarina Vargus had recommended Leopold, claiming that there were always freebooters, mercenaries, and other adventurers lurking about its spaceports, looking for work. Pirates and smugglers brought their ships to Leopold’s yards for repair and supplies.