Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3) by Michael Wallace Page B

jump point. Drake struggled to keep the ships in line, insisting that they go through in the proper order.
    Four of the pirate ships obeyed him, but Dunkley raced ahead in his schooner, and rather than chase him and leave the slower ships behind, Drake let him go. Dunkley jumped first. Tolvern cursed and suggested they knock him around a bit with the deck gun when they got to the other side. Teach him a lesson.
    Blackbeard came through next, with the other ships following closely behind. He emerged from the jump less confused than usual, already remembering who he was and what he was doing by the time Tolvern lifted her head and blinked groggily at him.
    And a good thing, too. There, lurking on the other side, was a Hroom fleet, six mighty sloops of war, their serpentine batteries hot and already firing on Dunkley’s schooner.
     

Chapter Nine
    HMS Dreadnought filled the port window of Captain Rutherford’s away pod, long and black and bristling with guns. The bridge on the foredeck was a blue light that looked like a single, unblinking eye. From this angle, Dreadnought looked more like a monster, some creature of the deep, than a battleship. And Rutherford was hurtling toward its mouth.
    There were eight molded seats in the pod, but the only other occupant was Catherine Caites, who sat to one side, hands on the straps of her restraints, staring at the blinking instrument panel opposite, her jaw clenched. For a woman who had raced through the void in a little tin can of a torpedo boat, she’d seemed surprisingly anxious about climbing into the pod, and her anxiety had not abated since Vigilant launched her at Dreadnought .
    She turned and seemed to notice Rutherford studying her. “It’s not claustrophobia, sir.”
    “No?”
    “No, sir. There’s no engine on this thing—that’s what scares me. I don’t like being fired off like we were a cannonball.”
    “We have been launched on a preprogrammed trajectory. Dreadnought already has the net out for us.” He pointed to the schematic on the pod console showing the battleship’s space hook.
    “Ninety seconds to docking,” the computer said.
    It was the sophisticated male baritone chosen by Rutherford for Vigilant ’s computer. The crew called him Simon. Rutherford found Simon’s voice calming at a time like this, but Caites didn’t unclench her jaw.
    “What if we miss?” she asked.
    “Impossible.”
    “It’s not impossible, it happens. Someone isn’t paying attention, or there’s an emergency.”
    “Yes, I understand. I spent seventeen hours in a misfired away pod only a few months ago.”
    “Yes, sir. During the Ajax mutiny. Wearing nothing but your bathrobe, sir. Everybody knows that.”
    Rutherford scowled at the thought of fleet gossips laughing over his humiliating capture at the hands of Jess Tolvern. Dragged naked from the shower, tossed a bathrobe, and shoved in an away pod with several other prisoners of the mutiny.
    “Then you know what happened,” he said. “I sent a distress signal, and eventually someone tracked me down and rescued me. It was an annoyance, nothing more.”
    “Yes, but imagine if you’d called for help and there had been a malfunction in the computer. The call doesn’t go out. You’re in a six-by-eight egg with no engines, no way for anyone to find you as you keep flying and flying until the heat death of the universe.”
    Rutherford scoffed. “Has that ever happened in the history of the fleet? I don’t mean an escape pod of a fighter or a torpedo boat, but an actual away pod.”
    “It has, sir. There were several pods lost in the Third Hroom War, including one carrying a destroyer captain after his ship was crippled and he had to eject. They never found him. Wherever he went, he’s still going. Long dead, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less horrifying.”
    “Escape pods. In battle. This is not either of those things.” Rutherford gave her a sharp look. “I thought you said you weren’t a military