Rebellion of Stars (Starship Blackbeard Book 4) by Michael Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

and Tolvern looked ready to go along with whatever Drake suggested.
    “Then it’s settled,” Drake said, without waiting for Rutherford to give his official assent. The time for that had passed. Drake had listened, he had shared information, and now he would decide. “Send out the word. There’s no disguising our plan this time. We’ll come in like we mean it.”
    It was a single, desperate roll of the dice. God help him if the numbers came up wrong.
     
     

Chapter Six
    Two days later, Drake and Tolvern were planetside, standing on the blistering tarmac at the San Pablo spaceyards. Isabel Vargus’s pirate frigate Outlaw sat shimmering in the heat. It had been repaired from the damage of the Battle of Albion, and now Vargus had returned to port to install a new missile battery. She stood with her hands on her hips, seemingly oblivious to the heat, shouting up at the crew doing final maintenance, while Drake looked over the guns.
    Vargus’s mechanical eye rotated to follow Drake as he reached up to touch the tyrillium armor of the underbelly. It felt sound enough—that slightly yielding surface that could nevertheless absorb laser energy and turn away massive explosions—but it was black and scarred, the repairs like makeup over a badly burned face.
    “I’ll paint her belly next time around,” Vargus said.
    “You managed to repaint the shark teeth on the nose,” Tolvern said.
    “Aye. Got to look to the important details.”
    “You’ve even put blood dripping off the teeth,” Tolvern said. “Anyone ever get close enough to see it?”
    Vargus grinned. “By the time you see the blood, you’re being boarded. But it’s for the yards. Reminds people not to mess with me. Menacing, wouldn’t you say?”
    Menacing, all right. But also one ugly piece of work. Back when Ed Robertson of the Royal Navy flew her, she was a sleek corvette. A wolf, meant to hunt in a pack. Now, re-christened Outlaw and overhauled several times, she more resembled a giant horned lizard. Tough enough, but no beauty to her.
    Isabel Vargus had once compared herself to her ship. Her sister, Catarina, was the beautiful one. The younger of the two, Catarina had received a posh education on Albion and didn’t have a face marred by injury. Drake thought Isabel overly hard on herself. There was still plenty of beauty in her. And where was Catarina, anyway? Some distant system, raising her secret pioneering fleet. Those ships, and especially Catarina’s own Orient Tiger , would have been a powerful ally in the fight. Isabel, sturdy and dependable as her ship, was still here. That counted for a good deal in Drake’s book.
    “You’ll be ready to fly?” he asked.
    “I could leave right now, if I needed to,” Vargus said. “In fact, if I hadn’t been scraping around for your fleet, I’d probably be in orbit already. It’s kept me away from my work.”
    “Any troubles finding people?”
    “Nah, you’ve got a good reputation. Plenty of blokes happy to fly for you. So long as you hand over the gold up front. And you’re the one giving orders, not that stuffed shirt, Rutherford.”
    In many ways, Drake was as much of a stuffed shirt as Rutherford, or had been, anyway. He’d never meant to consort with pirates and mercenaries, that was for sure. But he’d tried to carry over as much honor as he could. He paid his debts. He thrashed anyone who crossed him, and thrashed those who crossed his loyal compatriots. Fly next to Blackbeard and you might be killed in battle—those were the risks—but you’d never be cheated.
    “I want my guns aligned before we launch,” Vargus said. “Easier to fix here than in orbit. But the other ships are coming out of the hangar. Take a look. Tell me if there’s anything you don’t like.”
    Some of the craft were already out, sitting on the tarmac while forklifts and stevedores hauled in fresh supplies. Others came creeping out, pulled by lorries. Drake and Tolvern took a walk to inspect them.
    Drake