The Last Battlefield (Starship Gilead Book 3) Page 2

  “Fire at will.”

  The Agincourt targeted all her disruptor cannons at the pirate vessel, lighting up the darkness with their barrage.

  “Her shields are at seventy percent and falling,” said Mikhail.

  “Keep it up,” Rowan ordered. “These pirates have taken over since the Battle of Jericho. Let’s send these bastards straight to hell.”

  “Her shields are down to thirty percent. They’ve dropped their tractor beam and are returning fire.”

  Rowan stared at the red starship on his view screen. The kestrel class were known as deadly interceptors, but they were no match to the Agincourt in a fair fight. Not that pirates were known for fighting fair, but there was no sign of any other pirate ships in the vicinity.

  “Her shields are collapsing,” said Mikhail. “Ours are still holding at forty-one percent. She’s trying to run.”

  “Target her engines and fire.”

  Two torpedoes arced across the darkness, destroying both of the Blackburne’s engines with twin explosions. The red pirate ship floated lifelessly as the Luskan signaled her thanks.

  “Should I destroy them?” Mikhail asked.

  “No,” Rowan said. “They may have valuable information about the Saladin. Signal General Garner and Adrienne. We need a boarding party.”

  The Blackburne was dead in space, her engines damaged beyond repair and her life support systems at critical. In any other circumstance, Gilead would have blasted them out of the night—piracy was a crime punishable by death—but Gilead was far away and the good work that had been hers was being neglected, or so it seemed to Hollis Garner. He and a handful of rangers had taken up residence on board the Agincourt, and although she was an Affiliation ship, Captain Leigh was doing what he could to help the people of the outer baronies.

  With the Agincourt’s crew missing several key personnel, Garner had taken command of her compliment of Affiliation space Marines. They mixed freely with his small company of rangers, though each man still wore the armor of his home ship—blue for the Affiliation, black for the rangers of Gilead. Strangely enough, Garner wasn’t the first outsider to command this unit; Adrienne Manthus had that honor. He turned to look at his young queen in exile. She wore the same black armor as the soldiers who served beneath her—the same visored helmet, same blue eagle painted across her breastplate. She wore no ornaments to distinguish her from her men, no sign of rank or embellishment to show that she thought her life was more important than theirs. But she was the true heir of Gilead, and if they could find a way to retake the ship from her treacherous brother, she would someday be installed upon the throne of her ancestors. Garner longed for the day when they could quit running and hiding in shadows and return to their home in the stars. He missed Johanna and Ian, and Waylon, though his younger son had not lived on Gilead for several years now.

  “We’ve accessed their gateway,” said Mikhail Heiser over Garner’s headset. “Good luck, General.”

  “Keep me posted if your sensors pick up anything wonky.”

  “Yes, sai.” Mikhail and the rest of the Agincourt’s crew tried to pick up the nuanced speech of the outer baronies, but mostly they sounded like teenagers chewing on a new swear word they didn’t quite understand. Garner didn’t care about their dialects—these Affiliation men had the hearts of warriors, and he was proud to lead them and serve by their sides.

  The interspace gateway opened before them, and Garner led his small company from the Agincourt to the Blackburne across an Einstein-Rosen bridge that spanned the kilometers between the two starships. They were met with no resistance on the other side of the portal, and that bothered Garner more than he liked to admit. Pirates were known as some of the most dangerous warriors in the galaxy; they should have been putting up a fight. They stood in an empty mess hall as fluorescent lights blazed overhead.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Adrienne over the comm. “This has all the makings of a trap.”

  “Everyone hold tight,” Garner ordered. “Keep your weapons ready and open fire if any bad guys show their ugly faces.” He signaled the Agincourt. “Lieutenant Gilbert, I need you to scan the Blackburne for life signs.”

  “On it.”

  They stood with their backs to the gateway, waiting for the intel before they proceeded deeper onto the ship. If this had been Gilead, before Windham fell, an away team would have never boarded an enemy vessel without first scanning for life signs, but things worked differently on an Affiliation ship. Their government was more worried about offending people than keeping their soldiers alive, and that was likely the reason why the starship Babylon had all but conquered their little empire. That, and the fact that any ship that challenged Babylon lost her shields almost immediately. Windham had been convinced it was some sort of lost technology, but Galen, their bard, had sold Adrienne and Captain Leigh on the idea that Kokabiel and his Brethren clerics had some kind of supernatural power. Garner wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it himself while being held prisoner on Jericho. Those Brethren dog-pokers were torturing his rangers in the name of their dark religion, and somehow through blood magic or some other hocus pocus, they were able to negate Gilead’s shields. Garner didn’t understand it, didn’t want to understand it—the whole business made him want to launch every single Brethren into space. But until he could do that, he would keep fighting the best way he knew how.

  “There’s only one unrecognized life sign on the Blackburne,” said Sharon Gilbert on the comm.

  “One? That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.” He switched channels, back to his unit. “Everybody fall back. This is clearly a trap. Adrienne?”

  One figure clad in black armor was moving away from the company, toward a door on the far side of the room. She was disobeying a direct order, but she was also the only person on this mission who, technically, outranked him.

  “I have to see,” was all the explanation she offered.

  “Damn it. The rest of you, get off this ship but keep the gateway open in case we need to get out of here on the double. I’m going after Adrienne.”

  The remaining soldiers obeyed, bless their hearts, and Garner hurried to catch up to his true captain. She was as stubborn as her father, and since the old man had been murdered and Gilead stolen right under her nose, she had grown hard and cold. She wasn’t the timid girl who had come to him a little over a year ago asking him to train her in the art of war. That girl was dead as sure as her father was dead. She was a woman now, a woman with the heart of a warrior. She was practically on the bridge of the small ship by the time he caught up to her.

  “Adrienne, stop. This is a trap.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  He could picture her face even though it was shielded by a nightglass visor, her clenched jaw and her eyes flashing like a storm about to break. “It could be dangerous,” he said. It felt like a weak argument, but what else could he say?

  “I have to know,” was her only reply.

  The Agincourt had been chasing the Saladin for months, trying to take down the most notorious pirate in the sector, but Brogan Wyatt had managed to elude them all this time. They always arrived too late to prevent his attacks, which made this situation all the more sketchy. If this scenario did end with them meeting Wyatt, Garner though they might end up on the wrong side of the holding cell.

  Nothing happened when they entered the bridge. There was a solitary figure sitting at the captain’s chair, and he turned to face them as they approached. His face was pockmarked with scars, and his greasy hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He wore red armor emblazoned with a white skull—a sure sign that he was loyal to Brogan Wyatt, captain of the starship Saladin.

  “Look at what I’ve caught,” said the pirate. “A couple of refugees from Gilead.” He tapped the screen of his communicator and then slipped it into a pocket on his utility belt.

  “Who are you?” said Adrienne. She raised her visor, revealing her face.

  “You’re her, ri
ght? The princess?” He flashed an ugly smile, revealing a mouth full of crooked, yellow teeth.

  “Your name.” Her voice was as cold as space.

  The pirate chuckled. “Name’s Manfred Hall. You might not know it, little lady, but there’s a bounty on your head. Captain Wyatt and Captain Manthus—the younger—they want you brought in dead or alive.”

  That was it, then. The Agincourt had been intervening in pirate attacks all over this sector, and word must have gotten back to Captain Wyatt. They had staged this attack on the Luskan, but the entire pirate fleet might be about to decloak all around them.

  “Where is Brogan Wyatt?” Adrienne demanded.

  Manfred flashed his chilling smile. “The Admiral is a busy man. He need not trouble himself with the likes of you.”

  “Is that how he’s styling himself now?” Garner asked. “Admiral?”

  The pirate ignored him, keeping his attention focused on Adrienne. “You’re a pretty young thing. I heard you was kinda plain, but I’d like to give you a go and find out for myself. Take off that armor and—”

  Adrienne lunged forward without warning and slammed the butt of her disruptor rifle into Manfred’s face. His front teeth shattered like a piece of crockery, and he collapsed to his knees before them.

  “Bitch,” he said, his mouth even more hideous than ever.

  At that moment, Captain Leigh’s voice crackled in Garner’s helmet. “General, Adrienne, we’ve got multiple ships decloaking all around us, and the Luskan has just activated a bunch of disruptor cannons we didn’t even know she had. We need to get out of here, STAT.”

  “I’ll get Adrienne,” said Hollis.

  She had her rifle leveled at Manfred’s face. He looked frightened now that he was aware of what she was capable of. “I’m going to give you one last chance,” she said. “Tell me where Wyatt is hiding.”

  Manfred spit a bloody tooth at Adrienne. It landed on her breastplate, spattering the blue eagle of Gilead that she wore so proudly. The paint was chipped and faded now, and it reminded Garner of the armor Windham used to wear. He missed his friend, but likely not as much as Adrienne missed her father.

  “I guess you’ve made your choice then,” she said.

  “You won’t kill me,” said Manfred. “You don’t have it in you, you bitch. You’re nothing but a—”

  A disruptor blast exploded from Adrienne’s rifle. At point blank it took off most of Manfred’s head. All that remained was cauterized instantly, and it made Garner sick in spite of all the horrors he had seen in the universe. The pirate’s body slumped to the floor at Adrienne’s feet.

  “Check the computer,” she ordered. “There must be something here.”

  “Adrienne, we’ve got to get out of here. Pirates have the Agincourt surrounded. This was a trap.”

  “A trap,” she repeated, seeming to taste the word as if it were some rare delicacy.

  Garner knelt over Manfred’s body and grabbed a handheld communicator from the dead man’s utility belt. The device would hopefully contain something useful—recent contact with the Saladin or secret codes or tracking software. It could lead them down a hundred wrong paths, or directly to the Saladin and Admiral Wyatt. The Blackburne rocked in space as a stray disruptor blast struck her hull.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing Adrienne by the arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They were already too late. A score of pirates poured into the corridor, blocking their escape. “I should have seen this coming a light-year away,” Garner said on the open comm channel. But Adrienne didn’t respond. She raised her disruptor rifle and opened fire; Garner followed her lead. Rapid bursts of energy blazed down the corridor, and several pirates crumpled to the deck as their armor failed. But there were too many of them, that was as clear as the great blue eagle painted on Gilead’s hull.

  The pirates weren’t going for the kill, which told Garner they wanted them—Adrienne at least—taken alive. That wasn’t going to happen, not on his watch. “We need some help here,” he shouted into his comm. “On the double!”

  His rangers and the Agincourt’s space Marines were there in less than a minute, and suddenly the tables were turned. Someone tossed an EMP grenade into the midst of the pirates, and then everyone’s disruptors failed. Garner drew his sword and, beside him, Adrienne did likewise. They charged into the fray, hacking at the pirates and trying to cut a path back to the gateway. A pirate made a grab for Adrienne, but she swung her sword with savage fury and lopped off his arm at the elbow. A primal scream echoed in Garner’s helmet, but with all of his systems offline, he couldn’t tell if it was the wounded pirate, or Adrienne.

  Ninety seconds later, the battle was over. A score of pirates lay dead or dying, as well as three rangers and six Affiliation Marines. No one spoke as they removed the bodies of their fallen comrades and left the pirates for the rats and cockroaches.

  Red alert klaxons were ringing throughout the ship. The Agincourt was taking heavy fire and they were outnumbered five to one, but they could get away if they cloaked the ship and sped out of here at maximum warp. The problem was that Adrienne and General Garner, as well as their entire company of Marines, were still on board the Blackburne.

  “Status report,” Rowan demanded.

  “We lost communication with the away team,” said Lieutenant Gilbert. “I’m trying to hail them, but I’m not getting a response.”

  “Someone must have thrown an EMP grenade,” Rowan said. “Damn.”

  “Our shields are taking a beating. We’ve got to get out of here soon or we’re all dead.” Mikhail Heiser was as abrasive as an old pair of boots, but he wasn’t wrong. If the Agincourt fell, the Affiliation was doomed. They still had Jon Galen on board, and he might be able to help them defeat Babylon. It would be considerably harder, perhaps even impossible, without the help of Adrienne Manthus and the starship Gilead, but what would it matter if the Agincourt was destroyed?

  Weighing his options, Rowan was just about to give the order to retreat when Sharon spoke up again, this time with a tinge of hopefulness in her voice.

  “I just got word from General Garner. The away team is on board.”

  “Thank goodness. Mikhail, activate the cloaking device and get us out of here, maximum warp.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The Agincourt faded into the blackness of space and snuck away from the battle. They ran as they had been running for months now—as they had been running since Babylon appeared out of the darkness and began her reign of terror. Rowan looked forward to a time when they could take the fight to Kokabiel, but the time wasn’t right. Not yet. Not today.

  Captain Leigh called a debriefing in his war room as soon as the Agincourt escaped the pirate ambush. Jon Galen had attended a number of these meetings, and their tone had grown darker with every failure and setback. The captain wanted to return to Affiliation space and join the resistance against Kokabiel, but he was smart enough to know that going into that fight without some kind of advantage meant certain death for himself and every member of his crew. Galen was supposed to have been the key to that advantage, but thus far he had proven himself to be less than useful. That was pretty much the story of his life when he thought about it. Three thousand years ago, when he had trod the land of Ancient Judah, his big mouth had cursed him with immortality, and in all those years as he wandered the earth, and later the stars, he had allowed his pleasures and whims to be his guide. They led him eventually to Avalon, and then to Gilead, and now here, on this battered Affiliation starship on the edge of known space. Where he went from here, God only knew.

  “We can’t keep going on like this,” said Captain Leigh. “We walked right into their trap.”

  “We could ignore every distress call that comes in,” said Mikhail Heiser, “but how many innocent people would we have to sacrifice for our own safety?”

  “No,” said Leigh. “I won’t do that. I took an oath when I joined the Affiliation, we all did. We can’t let innocent people fall pr
ey to these space pirates, but the Agincourt is only one ship, and a small one at that. If only Gilead wasn’t out there making things worse!”

  All eyes turned to Adrienne, who sat at the foot of the table. Her jaw was clenched, transforming her plain face into a mask of rage. The captain’s words trailed off when he looked at her, and no one spoke for several moments.

  “You all know how I feel,” she said at last. “My brother must be stopped, but we cannot attack Gilead and hope to win. I’ve thought about this from every direction, but I don’t see any way we can get on board the ship.”

  “I do.”

  It was Hollis Garner who spoke. He looked older now than when Galen had first met him—his beard was streaked with gray and there were deep lines around his brown eyes. His wife and son were trapped on Gilead and worry for them must weigh heavily on the old general.

  “What’s your idea, Hollis?” asked Adrienne.

  “I heard from Waylon, my boy. He’s a performer—a wrestler—on the starship Sammartino. It’s been years since he was home; I think your mother was still living, Adrienne.”

  Something flashed across Adrienne’s face, but she suppressed it quickly enough.

  “Anyway,” said Garner, “the Sammartino had a show in our old barony the other day, on Ansalon-Prime as a matter of fact. And Waylon told me that Gilead was there recruiting new rangers.”

  Adrienne stared at him, her eyes searching his face but apparently unable to find the answer she was looking for. “How does that help us?” she asked.

  “You said it yourself,” said Garner. “We can’t beat Gilead in an open fight, but we could smuggle someone onboard. Find out where they’re recruiting next, place a young face or three in the crowd of new recruits and then work against your brother from the inside.”

  “And how long will that take?” Rowan demanded. “By all accounts, Babylon is only weeks away from planting her flag atop the Peace Palace on Earth. We have to act quickly. I hate to say this, I really do, but I’m starting to think we should abandon Gilead and return to Affiliation space. Mister Galen, do you have anything at all that might help us defeat Kokabiel?”