Dreadnought (Starship Blackbeard Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

would still exist,” Drake said. “Someone would smuggle more in, and it would start all over again.”
    “That is why they will also destroy the sugar worlds. Hot Barsa, San Pablo, Antilles. And of course, the biggest sugar world of them all. It does not grow sugar itself, but it is the heart of the trade and the source of the cult’s anger.”
    Drake stared. “You mean Albion.”
    “Yes.” Mose Dryz held his gaze. “This is what I offer you in trade, Captain James Drake. A warning. The death cult means to destroy Albion. They have assembled a massive fleet of sloops of war and loaded them with fissile material. It is a one-way mission—they do not intend to return. They do not wish to fight your navy or battle your orbital forts, they will aim at your home world and bomb it.”
    “Disseminate the antidote,” Drake said. “That will undercut this cult. They’ll have no reason to kill sugar eaters, and no cause to attack Albion with a suicide fleet.”
    “It is too late for that. They have already left. They cannot be contacted or recalled. Nobody must know their course, because they must arrive via the most circuitous route possible to lessen the chance that they will be detected by your Royal Navy before they enter the Albion system. But when they arrive, they mean to turn Albion into a radioactive wasteland.”
     
     

Chapter Three
    HMS Vigilant was only an hour from her last jump point and still accelerating when she drew the attention of a hungry star leviathan. Captain Nigel Rutherford had just gone down for his sleep cycle when they recalled him urgently to the bridge, and by the time he’d thrown on a uniform and rushed to the helm, the leviathan had homed in on the cruiser’s plasma engines and was giving chase.
    Commander Pittsfield was in the captain’s chair, but he sprang to his feet with a look of relief and moved aside for Rutherford to take the helm. The leviathan stretched across the viewscreen, the body eight hundred yards long with ropy tentacles stretching several miles behind it. Violet plasma vented from its nozzle.
    “How the devil did this happen?” Rutherford demanded, glaring at Tech Officer Norris, one of Malthorne’s loyalists. Sweeping a system for star leviathans was routine upon coming out of a jump.
    “He says that he looked,” Pittsfield said dryly, “but he claims to not have found anything.”
    “It was lurking in that gas giant,” Norris protested. “It must have been dormant. We can’t pick them up when they’re dormant, you know that.”
    “Right, of course, it was dormant,” Rutherford said sarcastically. “So it popped out of its dormant state and fired up its nozzle. Just like that.” He narrowed his eyes and glared until Norris looked away. “This one was awake and lurking. You missed it.”
    “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.