First Command
A TIDES Prequel Novella
Alex Lidell
Danger Bearing Press
Contents
Also by Alex Lidell
Title Page
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
About the Author
Also by Alex Lidell
Next in the TIDES series
FIRST COMMAND
A TIDES Novella
Copyright © 2017 by Alex Lidell
All rights reserved.
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Also by Alex Lidell
TIDES
FIRST COMMAND (Prequel Novella)
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Chapter 1
Standing on the Ashing Ship Faithful’s crowded quarterdeck, I fix my gaze on the sloop tied up beside her—the one I’m about to take command of. The sloop Marquis rocks on rolling waves. Her sails are furled neatly and her mast, which flew an enemy flag just yesterday, now proudly displays my Ashing Kingdom colors.
“Fair winds and calm seas to you, Lieutenant Greysik.” Captain Fey extends his powerful hand to me. A man of average height, slight pudge, and specks of shiny gray in his hair, Fey carries a solid, calm presence that commands respect without effort. I might be royal born, but it is he who is the lord and master of the ship. Of the ocean.
I roll back my shoulders to match Captain Fey’s. The lively breeze blowing into my face carries the ocean’s salty tang and ruffles the few strands of hair that escaped my braid. On the Faithful’s deck, the air is tinged with gunpowder that still clings to all of us after yesterday’s battle. Behind my schooled face and trained posture, my heart pounds like a battle drum. The pounding echoes so loudly in my ears, I little understand how the whole ship doesn’t hear it.
“Thank you, sir,” I say, shaking the offered hand.
The captain nods as if my impending first command, bringing the captured Marquis to port while the Faithful continues her patrols, little worries him. Nothing ever worries Captain Fey, at least not that he lets the rest of us see. The man’s mere presence makes the crew stand taller, I being no exception.
At seventeen, I’ve been at sea for nine years, most of them under Captain’s Fey’s careful eye and all of them at war with the People’s Republic of Tirik. While my older brother is the heir to our Ashing Kingdom throne, I’m our navy’s intended future admiral. Bringing the sloop into harbor may be a short ten-day cruise, but it’s a test. As is everything in my life.
The Faithful’s first officer, Commander Brine, shakes my hand next. “There may be other Tirik ships out here, so keep up as much canvas as you dare and move quickly.” If Captain Fey is the Faithful’s soul, then Commander Brine is the embodiment of practicality. Second only to the captain himself, a first officer takes charge of a ship’s daily operations. On the Marquis, with a prize crew of only thirty sailors and marines, I’ll have no one to fulfill Brine’s role—twelve-year-old midshipman Jax notwithstanding. Brine frowns. “And sound the well regularly to check the Marquis isn’t taking on water. There may be leaks in her hull we missed.”
I touch my hat. The commander’s expected instructions are oddly soothing. “Make all speed and sound the well regularly,” I repeat back to him as is naval custom. “Aye aye, sir.”
The midshipmen, young officers in training, extend their well wishes in turn. Their eyes silently covet my assignment. My first command. The ocean, at least, seems content, lapping playfully against the Marquis’s hull while seagulls circle the clear skies.
Captain Fey’s heavy hand rests on my shoulder. Such touch is rare. I savor its fatherly feel. “Try not to enjoy yourself too much, Nile. Once you bring the prize into harbor, you’ll be right back here as a second lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir. No excess enjoyment of my first command.”
He snorts. “Off with you, youngster,” he says before adding, much more softly, “The duty of keeping a ship safe is often a solitary experience, Ms. Greysik. It’s on you to earn the crew’s trust. Not their friendship.”
I touch my hat again, though I’m tempted to note that Captain Fey manages both without effort.
I turn to my ship. My ship. She is small, her paint chipped and fading, her hull scarred with cracks and dents from yesterday’s battle. She is the most beautiful ship I have ever laid eyes on, and I love her.
I catch a faint, knowing smile touching Captain Fey’s face, though it’s gone when I look at him directly.
I run my hand over my breast pocket, where the coordinates I’ve calculated and checked three times are written on a slip of paper along with the sailing master’s reminders of the currents. I have it all memorized, but the crumpled paper makes me feel better nonetheless. The prize crew, made of people from our Faithful and the Swift, a ship that had come to lend assistance with repairs, is already aboard. As are the Tirik prisoners who lived through yesterday’s skirmish.
All the Marquis awaits now is her captain. Me. Me, storms and hail. I’ve trained for and dreamt of this moment for nine years. The responsibility, the freedom, the head-spinning excitement of showing my father, the Admiralty, the fleet, the skill and prowess of Princess Nile Greysik. Now that the moment is here, though, my heart threatens to burst with fear. I will be the Marquis’s captain. If she goes off course, if my orders are wrong, if the crew misbehaves, if a gale blows us ashore, I’ll face it alone. No mentor, no guide, no safety net.
Forcing my pounding heart to the back of my mind, I pay attention to the motion of the deck beneath me as I approach the rail. Ropes holding the Marquis alongside Faithful slacken and snap taut as the ocean rocks both ships. One glance, that’s all the time I allow myself to judge the motions of the ships, to find my timing and footing. The ships’ hulls slide apart to reveal the sea’s bubbling maw, then crash together with bone-snapping force.
One glance and then I walk forward, stepping from one hull to another with no pause, my feet hitting the deck without a stumble.
“Cast off!” I holler to my crew as I turn to give Captain Fey a final salute. “All hands prepare to set sail. Helm, come three points west. We are heading home.”
The war between the Tirik Republic and the six kingdoms on the Lyron continent, known collectively as the Lyron League, is of Tirik’s making. According to the Republic, the Tirik seek to liberate the world of royalty and return power to the people. According to me, Princess Nile Greysik of the Ashing Kingdom, the Republic needs to keep its people fighting us to divert their attention from the Tiriks’ mockery of a government. The one that executes scholars for thinking and officers for making decisions on tactics instead of politics.
My present command, the Marquis, is the perfect example. With a single deck and only eighteen guns, the Marquis never stood a chance against the Faithful’s broadside. Her captain should have struck the colors in surrender immediately, but he chose to fight and lost his ship, his life, and most of his crew in the process.
Tirik officers who surrender don’t live long in the People’s Republic. Neither do their families.
“The Swift is signaling her depa
rture, ma’am.” Jax, the midshipman and only other officer aboard, touches his hat with grave formality. A spry, curly-haired lad, Jax is the love of the crew and one of the most acrobatic youngsters I’ve ever met.
“Thank you, Mr. Jax. Please wish her fair winds and calm seas.” I watch the boy scamper to raise the correct flags up our mast while, off our starboard bow, the Swift sets her sails.
The phantom eyes of the Swift’s crew stare back at me, mixing with the Marquis’s sailors’ similar gazes. Gazes that weigh and judge my every step. Well, daughter of the Ashing crown, the gazes ask, well, Miss Presumptive Future Admiral of the Ashing Fleet, can you manage to bring a single ship into harbor? Did you earn your place in the navy or take it on a silver platter of birthright?
Ten days, I want to yell back at them. It’s only a ten-day cruise. Give me a bloody chance.
Except no enlisted seaman is ever interested in giving an officer a chance. In the crew’s eyes, we’ve too much privilege as it is. We sleep in cabins while they hang hammocks between guns. We endure no lashings. We stand on the deck and shout orders that their bodies strain to execute. By the end of the cruise, the sailors under my command will judge my performance as either adequate or wanting. Not good, or exemplary, or any word that they’d wish spoken about themselves or their friends.
This line between the crew and myself isn’t new to me. What is new is the lack of another officer to share in the isolation. Even though I’ve never been true friends with any of the officers—with anyone but my twin brother and the sea—I’ve always found trust and companionship in their company.
The daylight hours of our first day at sea pass smoothly, if not efficiently. With the exception of a few hands from the Swift, I know the crew. Most are seasoned and trustworthy workers perfectly capable of manning the Marquis with little interference from me. Squirrel, a ten-year-old ship’s boy named for his ability to climb anything, anytime, combined with skittishness, scurries all over the rigging to check for rips and cracks the repair crews missed. Ellis, a middle-aged master’s mate, takes charge of feeding the crew. Landon, a bald bosun’s mate with missing front teeth, struts the deck while slapping a rattan cane against his thigh. He is the one sailor I could do without, but Landon’s hand, though heavy with a cane, is so handy with all other tasks—from manning the helm to firing a great gun—that Captain Fey insisted I take him.
All in all, it is as good a start as anyone can ask for.
Our fair weather ends with the setting sun. By the time darkness descends upon us, the Ashing flag atop the Marquis’s mainmast flaps violently in the growing wind and the deck beneath my feet tilts harshly with each cresting wave. The thwack thwack thwack of the sea slamming the hull is a ceaseless concert of drums. Every few minutes, an especially ambitious swell breaks hard against the rail, spraying my face with ice-cold water and ensuring a slightly sulfuric, wet wood smell in the air.
I grip a stay for balance as I survey the deck, masts, and sails, listening for the creak of straining wood or tearing cloth. The Marquis is about a hundred twenty feet long and just under thirty feet at its widest point. In the endless vastness of the darkening angry ocean, we are a bouncing speck of timber and cloth. I’ve ordered sail taken in twice in the last half hour, bringing sailors up from their warm beds into the frigid night to do it.
The ship lurches again, a renewed gust of wind pressing into the canvas. If the Marquis was an Ashing ship, I’d ride out the squall, but Tirik standards little match ours. No one’s do. Ashing is the smallest of the Lyron League’s six kingdoms, but when it comes to the navy, we are unmatched by any on either side of the war. We have to be, since the ocean surrounds our kingdom on three sides. On the tear-shaped Lyron continent, Ashing is the peninsula on the tip.
“Mr. Jax!” Dread crawls through me as I raise my voice.
The middie climbs down from the shrouds, adjusting his uniform jacket as he first runs—then remembers himself and walks—to the quarter deck. The foul weather has muted even Jax’s unending energy, and the boy shivers with cold as he salutes.
“Bring the hands back on to deck,” I say, just as the skies open and rain adds itself to the windy misery. If I wasn’t the most despised person aboard before now, this order firmly seals me into that slot. The fat drops slap my cheeks and slide down my neck beneath my shirt. “We’re taking in sail.”
Jax’s shoulders hunch as if I’d just ordered him to put down a dog. “All hands on deck. Aye aye, ma’am.”
“The Marquis is Tirik built,” I say, louder than I must, wanting the crew as much as Jax to understand my reasons. To side with me. “There is no telling how much stress the wood will hold. Better a little less speed than a broken mast.”
Jax gives me a dubious look. So much for the value of explanation.
Two minutes later, the deck swarms with two dozen irritated sailors helped along by the threat of Landon’s cane. They all, Landon included, very pointedly avoid my gaze as they set about climbing the shrouds. The wind and rain batter their clothes as their chilled fingers fight for grip. The ship bucks like a wild horse, threatening to throw the climbing sailors into the death of open sea. All because I decided to take in sail. Because I ordered them to climb fifty, sixty, seventy feet up into the rigging and stand on narrow beams as they grapple with canvas in the midst of a gale.
I force my shoulders back, reminding myself of the very words I’d just told Jax. This hardship and risk is worth the cost. A part of me believes that as little as the middie did.
The sail lowers, slowing the Marquis’s run. Although I’ve protected the sloop’s masts, the loss of speed also enslaves us to the rocking waves. Squirrel vomits over the rail before going below to catch what little wet sleep remains for him.
“Can she not make up her mind?” The wind carries bits of conversation to me. An experienced topman who was up in the rigging just moments ago. “We could have done this a half hour past.”
“The youngster is making extra work,” a woman’s voice answers. “I’ve seen winds twice as tough and not a crack in a mast.”
Her bloody highness is not ready for command, say the glares and exchanged looks of many eyes. Not nearly ready.
“Coffee?”
I startle and twist toward the unfamiliar voice. Behind me, standing on my quarterdeck, is a young lieutenant with gleaming epaulettes and a porcelain cup of warm, steaming liquid. His blond hair, pulled back into a ponytail, is plastered to his wet skin as his friendly brown eyes smile at me through the rain. It takes me a heartbeat to find my voice and another beat to school it to professionalism.
“Who the hell are you, sir?” I inquire. “And what are you doing on my ship?”
Chapter 2
The young lieutenant stares at me with matching bewilderment. A few years older than I, he is tall, well-muscled, and handsome to fault. A slight tightness to his uniform jacket—especially around the chest and shoulders—hints that he’s recently gained muscle but has yet to find either time or funds to update his wardrobe.
Ironically, my own uniform fits perfectly, but what I pick up in tailoring, I lack in his ethereal beauty. My red hair is pulled back into a tight braid, and my soaked woolen jacket hugs budding curves on a tall, skinny frame.
The ship lurches. The young man’s arm flexes expertly to keep the coffee from spilling.
“Lieutenant Syd Carley, ma’am,” he says, his voice carrying a bit of an accent I can’t quite place. “Third lieutenant of His Ashing Majesty’s Ship Swift.”
I blink, searching for words. “This is the Marquis.”
He raises a brow, which accentuates his sharp eyes. “Aye, ma’am. I’m aware.” He pauses to weather another wave before speaking again. “I’ve business in Ashing and was told I might catch a ride with you into port. I’d rather assumed the Swift’s captain had cleared the arrangement with you.”
He hadn’t. Hadn’t so much as made me aware of it. And it stings.
Syd moves the coffee cup in a taunting ci
rcle. “It will get cold and weak with rain if you don’t drink it.”
I take the cup numbly, the coffee’s steaming warmth seeping into my chilled hands. I’ve had little chance to use the head, much less have a warm meal in the past eight hours. Despite the balm of hot coffee, the indignation of having been aboard for nearly two watches without knowing of Syd’s existence makes it difficult to rein my voice to tight professionalism.
“I was plainly not informed of your joining my complement, but more to the point, I did not see you on deck when I came aboard,” I tell Syd quietly. The less the crew knows of a discord between officers, the better. “Might I inquire as to why it took this long for you to grace it with your presence?”
Syd clears his throat. “I little wished to interfere with your command and crew without your invitation, ma’am.” He tries for a sheepish grin but wipes that off his face quickly as my eyes flash into his.
I know Syd Carley. I’ve met versions of him many times on many ships—though never long under Captain Fey’s command. Good-looking, smooth tongued, and typically naturally talented versus studious, these officers carry a very comfortable opinion that work is something that is divided into exactly two categories: interesting or other people’s. The Syd Carleys of the navy show off at gun drill and come down with fever on laundry day.
“Consider yourself invited and added to the duty roster,” I snap. “Being the only other officer aboard, you are now Marquis’s second-in-command. Act like it, sir.”
Syd touches his hat, and I immediately regret both the temper and its showing on the quarterdeck. Captain Fey never called an officer out before the crew and, despite the sailors’ pretense of sudden deafness, I know they heard my words.