First Command: A TIDES novella by Lidell Alex

Author:Lidell, Alex [Lidell, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Danger Bearing Press
Published: 2017-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

My heart is oddly steady as I keep my eyes on the fog and touch Syd’s arm to get his attention. “Set all sail,” I order in a barely audible whisper. “Now.”

The muscles of his forearm coil beneath my touch. “Are we cowards who run?” Syd hisses, his nostrils flaring.

I wait for the rush of panic and self-doubt to flow through me, but it doesn’t. Not even with Syd’s taunt beside me and the deck vibrating with energy of the crew as they stand at battle stations, waiting for orders that will decide their lives. And deaths.

“Knowing when not to fight is strategy, not cowardice,” I tell Syd levelly, well aware of the crew’s listening ears. “One that Tirik are fools not to understand. I am not a fool.”

“They’ve just fired shot at us,” Syd insists, a glint of panic in his dark eyes for the first time. His hands twitch at his sides. “We must fight.”

I drape my hands behind my back. Slow. Easy. Trained. “They fired a shot at where they think we might be,” I say quietly but surely, as if the discomfort in Syd’s eyes had calmed all doubts in mine. “And they missed. I would prefer not to find out just how long it will take them to calculate our actual whereabouts. That’s enough discussion, Mr. Carley. Be about my orders.”

Syd opens his mouth to protest, but the seamen are already in motion, swarming silently into the shrouds to set sail as I ordered. My breath halts once as the poor visibility and swaying ship threaten to knock them from precarious purchase, but the topmen know their craft. In minutes, the Marquis’s sails fill with a pop, and the ship lurches in a flight as fast as winds can carry her. Another shot sounds, farther away this time, as the Tirik ghost ship searches the thick fog for its fleeing prey.

“This is a fool’s run,” Syd hisses to me, his hands crossed too tightly over his chest. “The fog can lift at any time, and then the Tirik, not us, will chose the angle of attack. Better face them on our terms.”

At least he’s dropped the only-cowards-run approach to pushing his strategy.

A raised eyebrow is all I bother with to silence Syd. “Then we better be outside their sight sooner rather than later, Mr. Carley,” I say with a mildness that fools no one and leaves him to stand frozen in place as I call for a chart, calculating with nothing but math and compass and estimates. Squirrel keeps himself beside me, fetching anything I might need. Sunset. I need to keep us alive and out of reach of the Tirik man-of-war’s guns until sunset for the second part of my plan to work.

Silence reigns, interrupted only by the occasional quiet call of the lookout. The Tirik are following, the calls assure us. Out of gun range but close enough to occasionally spot our sails. A game of cat-and-mouse in the fog.

“You’ve but delayed the inevitable,” Syd says, staring into the darkening sky.

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