Mutineer (33 page)

Eades smiled slightly and gestured toward the stairs.

Alexis motioned for Isom to stay where he was and rose. Eades did as well and Alexis preceded him up the stairs to the pub’s second floor where he nodded to a hatchway off the corridor. She entered and found a round table with seating for eight, but there was only one man in the room, seated at the opposite side of the table, facing the hatchway. In a bit of a daze, Alexis moved to the side and sat down.

“Will you have something to drink before we begin, Lieutenant Carew?” Eades asked.

“No, thank you, sir. I’ll wait until I return to my companion.”

“This may take some time, lieutenant.”

Alexis looked from Eades to the other man and back. “You have me at a disadvantage, sirs.”

“Ah, yes,” Eades said. “The introductions, forgive me.” He gestured to the other man. “Lieutenant Carew, may I present Vachel Courtemanche, representative to Her Majesty’s Court from
La Grande République de France Parmi les Etoiles.
The Grand Republic of France Among the Stars.”

Alexis’ eyes widened and she found it suddenly hard to breathe. The Foreign Office and a French diplomat dragging her to a private room? She licked her suddenly dry lips.

“Bourbon,” she said.

Eades looked at her oddly.

“To drink,” she said. “Bourbon, if you please.”

She settled back into her chair, stomach fluttering at the thought of what this meeting might mean. Eades’ face had turned smug, as though he’d just won at something and her temper flared.

“No,” she said, “make that Scotch.” She narrowed her eyes. “And if they have none, ask them to send for a bottle. I’m sure there’s a branch of Dorchester’s aboard station that will have something suitable.”

Thank you for reading
Mutineer
. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

If you did and would like to further support the series, please consider leaving a review on
Amazon
or a review/rating on
Goodreads
. Reviews are the lifeblood of independent authors.

As a reader, I’ve always been a fan of both science fiction and historical fiction from the Age of Sail. It’s been a wonderful treat for me to bring those two loves together in the Alexis Carew series.

In the historical realm, the events that took place on
HMS
Hermione
in September 1797
are always mentioned, but never depicted. It was the bloodiest mutiny in Royal Navy history, so an author would have a bit of trouble inserting his character into it. Most of the officers were killed and most of the crew was sentenced to death and relentlessly hunted down by the Royal Navy.

To some it might appear that Captain Neals’ cruelty is exaggerated in
Mutineer
, but the historical Captain Pigot of
Hermione
was no less cruel.

In his previous command he had 85 men, fully half the crew, flogged over nine months and two men died of their injuries. He would order the last man down from the yards flogged, and this resulted in three men falling from the masts to their deaths in their attempts to avoid the punishment. And when the men complained after this, he had the entire division flogged … and then flogged again the next morning.

It was this, along with his treatment of Midshipman David Casey that spurred the mutiny.

Casey was confronted by Pigot over an untied gasket on the main top and, after apologizing for the oversight, was ordered to beg forgiveness from his knees. Casey refused this humiliating order and Pigot ordered him disrated and flogged.

It’s always bewildered me that Bligh – who by all accounts lost his ship because he
wasn’t
harsh enough with the crew – is the one reviled by common usage while Pigot is all but forgotten.

I can only hope I’ve shown the crew of
Hermione
a bit of justice and honor in this story.

J.A. Sutherland

Orlando, FL, February 1, 2015

To be notified when new releases are available, follow J.A. Sutherland on Facebook (
https://www.facebook.com/alexiscarewbooks
)
, Twitter (
https://twitter.com/JASutherlandBks
), or subscribe to the author’s newsletter (
http://bit.ly/sutherlandlist
)
.

At fifteen, Alexis Carew has to face an age old problem - she's a girl, and only a boy can inherit the family's vast holdings. Her options are few. She must marry and watch a stranger run the lands, or become a penniless tenant and see the lands she so dearly loves sold off. Yet there may be another option, one that involves becoming a midshipman on a shorthanded spaceship with no other women.

Available now
!

Just as Midshipman Alexis Carew thinks she’s found a place in the Royal Navy, she’s transferred aboard H.M.S. Hermione. Her captain is a Tartar, free with the cat o' nine tails and who thinks girls have no place aboard ship. The other midshipmen in the berth are no better. The only advice she’s offered is to keep her head down and mouth shut – things Alexis is rarely able to do.

Available now
!

Lieutenant Alexis Carew, newly commissioned from midshipman to junior lieutenant aboard a new ship, and secretly ordered by the Foreign Office to join the intrigue at the French Republic’s Court.

Coming in 2015

Denholm Carew enjoys a life most would envy. Scion of a wealthy family on New London, he can have almost anything he wants. But what he wants more than anything is the freedom to make his own way and build his own legacy to pass down to his children. Together with his wife, Lynelle, he sells everything to buy shares in colonial company and settle the newly discovered world of Dalthus IV.

Coming in 2015

Email:                           
[email protected]

Facebook:                           
https://www.facebook.com/alexiscarewbooks

Twitter:                            @JASutherlandBks

Website:                           
http://www.alexiscarew.com

Mailing List:             
http://bit.ly/sutherlandlist
                           

The basic monetary unit of New London is the
pound
, though most items in the Fringe Worlds cost considerably less than this; at least those produced on the planet or nearby. The
pound
is further divided into
shillings
and
pence
.

12
pence =
1
shilling

20
shillings =
1
pound

21
shillings =
1
guinea
(1
pound,
1
shilling
)

The
pence
is further divided into
half-pence
(1/2
pence
) and
farthings
(1/4
pence
).

The perplexing problem dated back centuries, to when mankind was still planet-bound on Earth. Scientists, theorizing about the origin of the universe, recognized that the universe was expanding, but made the proposal that the force that had started that expansion would eventually dissipate, causing the universe to then begin contracting again. When they measured this, however, they discovered something very odd — not only was the expansion of the universe not slowing, but it was actually increasing.

This meant that something, something unseen, was continuing to apply energy to the universe’s expansion. More energy than could be accounted for by what their instruments could detect. At the same time, they noticed that there seemed to be more gravitational force than could be accounted for by the observable masses of stars, planets, and other objects.

There seemed to be quite a bit of the universe that simply couldn’t be seen. Over ninety percent of the energy and matter that had to make up the universe, in fact.

They called these dark energy and dark matter, for want of a better term.

Then, as humanity began serious utilization of near-Earth space, they made another discovery.

Lagrangian points were well-known in orbital mechanics. With any two bodies where one is orbiting around the other, such as a planet and a moon, there are five points in space where the gravitational effects of the two bodies provide precisely the centripetal force required to keep an object, if not stationary, then relatively so.

Humanity first used these points to build a space station at L1, the Lagrangian point situated midway between Earth and the Moon, thus providing a convenient stopover for further exploration of the Moon. This was quickly followed by a station at L2, the point on the far side of the moon, roughly the same distance from it as L1. Both of these stations began reporting odd radiation signatures. Radiation that had no discernible source, but seemed to spring into existence from within the Lagrangian points themselves.

Further research into this odd radiation began taking place at the L4 and L5 points, which led and trailed the Moon in its orbit by about sixty degrees. More commonly referred to as Trojan Points, L4 and L5 are much larger in area than L1 and L2 and, it was discovered, the unknown radiation was much more intense.

More experimentation, including several probes that simply disappeared when their hulls were charged with certain high-energy particles, eventually led to one of those probes reappearing — and the discovery of
darkspace
, along with the missing ninety-five percent of the universe.

Dark energy that moved through it like winds. Usually blowing directly toward a star system from all directions, pushing those systems farther and farther apart, but sometimes coming in storms that could drive a ship far off course. Dark matter that permeated the space, slowing anything, even light, outside of a ship’s hull and field.

The ship’s crew is divided into up to four groups, the exact number is dependent on the number of crew, called “watches”. Each watch takes it turn with the essential activities of the ship. In the event of a crisis — needing to quickly alter all sails due to gravitational flux, clearing for action, etc. — “all hands” is called and the work is done by the entire crew, many of whom have specific stations in such an event.

The hours between 16:00 and 20:00 are so arranged because that watch (the "dog watch") is divided into two. The odd number of watches aims to give each man a different watch (or watches, if the ship is shorthanded) each day. It also allows the entire crew of a vessel to eat an evening meal, the normal time being at 17:00 with First Dog watchmen eating at 18:00.

The bells are struck every half hour throughout the watch, in pairs for easier counting, with the odd bell at the end of the sequence: