Retribution Read online

  Retribution

  by Benjamin J. Boswell

  BOOKS by BENJAMIN J. BOSWELL

  Paradise Series:

  In Search of Paradise

  Esther Series:

  Esther’s Innocence

  Retribution

  Cover art and illustrations by Laurie Longberry - Berry Farm Studios

  Copyright © 2018 Benjamin J. Boswell. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express permission in writing from Mr. Boswell.

  1st edition

  ISBN: 9781731155719

  DEDICATION

  I’d like to dedicate this book to my parents and siblings, who have always been a source of inspiration for me.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Book I – Ardmorr

  Chapter One

  Retribution

  My dearest Asserius, I hope this letter finds you well. I know my last letter announcing my pregnancy must have come as a shock. I am now in my second month. I know you would not have wanted me to go if you would have known that I was expecting, but I needed to see to the protection of my homeland. I hope you are not angry. I and my crew are managing to get by, though morale is low. Admiral Marsena continues to lack the will to engage the enemy…

  Esther stood behind her gilded desk in the richly furnished great cabin of Her Majesties Ship Retribution, frowning down at the navigational charts spread out across it. Her mood was heavy and she knew her normally light brown skin was pale as she tried to keep the morning sickness from making her vomit. Quite a few strands of her dark brown hair had escaped the pony-tail, hanging annoyingly in her face or sticking out at weird angles from her head. She was exhausted and just didn’t care enough to put it back into place.

  Fortunately, the summer heat had waned as October had come and gone, bringing cooler weather. The chill of early November was here, but today the temperature in the cabin was surprisingly moderate. Her dress, tailored by her dear friend and self-appointed Chief of Staff Marigold Meriwether, was perfectly suited for the temperature. It was made from a luxurious material that kept her warm, but still let her skin breathe. She was grateful for this small comfort—even if she hated the low-cut Hadiqan necklines that her somewhat progressive seamstress had adopted so readily.

  She would be seventeen years old next month, although she felt much older at the moment. Since marrying the King, she had been required to fill several roles for which she was clearly not prepared, in addition to the toll that pregnancy took. Her political marriage to King Asserius of Hadiq after the assassination attempt almost four months ago that had catapulted her from a farmer’s daughter to the Queen of one of the most powerful nations on Earth. Almost immediately thereafter, she had been appointed as the official envoy back to her homeland of Ardmorr, the nation her mother had emigrated to after Esther’s birth father was killed. And if that wasn’t enough, before she’d left Hadiq, the Naval Captain’s Appointment Committee—comprised primarily of those who were part of the political opposition to her husband, King Asserius, and who didn’t much like their new foreign queen—had tried to sabotage her efforts by appointing one of their political lackeys’ as Captain of her beautiful new airship, HMS Retribution.

  Esther had been quite proud of herself when she’d thwarted them by not taking a Captain at all. In doing so, however, she had heaped a whole lot of work on herself and her already taxed First Officer, Mr. Abdel Najafi. Hadiqan’s didn’t tend to use the title ‘Mr.’, but being Ardmorran—at least culturally since her mother had never told her exactly where she’d emigrated from—she still sometimes used Ardmorran titles to address her crew. She had no idea how to do half of the things that she was required to do aboard ship.

  Fortunately, Mr. Najafi—who had been recommended by a good friend of Asserius—had stepped in and done a fabulous job. He’d hand-picked a first rate crew and worked well with her Ardmorran companions that had stayed on to fill some of the positions onboard. Those included Mackay Jefferies, or Mac, an older man who had been a steward aboard the Ardmorran ship HMS Nautilus and who now acted as her steward; Marigold Meriwether, her childhood friend and self-proclaimed Chief of Staff; Geoffrey Scott, her surgeon; Oluchi and Nkiru Kwabena, who were Easterner’s that had stayed with her after she’d left the Ngozi to be her guard and handmaiden; Baird Fendrel, a crewman who had been stranded with them when the Nautilus had been destroyed; Joel Mowbray, her Bosun; and Daniyah Shir-Del, or Dani as she preferred to be called, a young woman whom Joel and Baird had rescued from the illegal human trafficking trade in Al Farnaka’s criminal underbelly.

  Esther sighed and thought about all that she had to do. She had spent hours and hours every day, training with her officers and crew, learning how to do all of the things which she needed to learn. Mac had a wealth of experience serving nobility and high ranking individuals and was instructing her regarding etiquette and other skills she needed as Queen and the Hadiqan envoy to Ardmorr. She continued her sword and dagger self-defense lessons with Oluchi. And to learn what her most important tasks were, she spent the bulk of her time with Mr. Najafi and Joel Mowbray, her Bosun. They taught her the detailed workings of a naval warship, such as how to direct the crew and how to coordinate the actions of the small squadron of ships that made up her escort. She pushed herself hard, knowing that by not selecting a Captain, many of those duties would be left undone if she didn’t help Mr. Najafi to do them.

  It still seemed a bit ludicrous to her that by the simple act of marrying the King, she was now in the position of negotiating a major alliance, but that’s just the way the world was. No one ever said it made sense. She had spent as much of her remaining free time as possible studying diplomacy, negotiation strategies, and historical treaties. The long hours and additional hardships of pregnancy were taking their toll and she could feel the fatigue behind her eyes as it tried to muddle her thoughts. She took a deep breath to clear her mind.

  “This is unacceptable, Abdel,” she said, turning to her First Officer. He was a clean-shaven, dark haired man in his mid-twenties with skin the same light-brown as Esther’s. “We came to defend Ardmorr, not just sit here and watch while whole squadrons of Madrausan warships break away to raid with impunity!”

  “I understand, Your Majesty,” said Najafi calmly, “but according to Admiral Marsena, once the attempts at diplomacy failed, his orders only required him to keep the main Madrausan flotilla from invading the island. He says it’s up to the Ardmorrans to stop the small raiding parties.”

  “The last raiding party had twenty ships, Abdel!” said Esther
sharply, “and the main Ardmorran fleet was occupied on the other side of the island due to the raid there last week. They weren’t in a position to intercept—but we were!”

  “I know, Your Majesty, I know. I didn’t say I agreed with the Admiral, I just repeated what he has expressed to the senior officers in the fleet.”

  Esther had a hard time keeping a sneer off her face. The Admiral had pointedly excluded her from any coordination meetings of substance with the other senior officers. He only invited her to the flagship for formal dinners to maintain the ‘image’ of serving his monarch. Esther understood, of course. Why should a Navy Admiral with years of experience ask the thoughts of a foreign girl who the King had only married for political expediency? Asserius had thought that appointing Esther as the official envoy to Ardmorr would keep the Admiral’s political allies in check, but it obviously wouldn’t work if the fleet never arrived in Ardmorr! Her coordination with the lone Ardmorran diplomatic ship that sat to the rear of the Hadiqan fleet could only produce limited results.

  The Hadiqan fleet had arrived on the outskirts of Ardmorran airspace just in time to intercept the approaching Madrausan flotilla. Since that time they had been sitting here. She had thought about disengaging from the rest of the fleet and continuing on to Ardmorr alone, but she was afraid that Admiral Marsena would find some excuse to take the fleet back to Hadiq, leaving Ardmorr exposed—or conveniently let the Madrausan’s slip by to attack Ardmorr, and then arrive just in time to ‘save the day’ as a first move in an annexation attempt—the kind of attempt his supporters in the nobility wanted. Besides, if she went alone, with no fleet to back her up, she wouldn’t be bringing much to the table, and, given that she was a simple farm girl, and from Ardmorr’s own small town of Tewksbury no less, she doubted that she would get anybody’s serious attention.

  She turned away to look out the bay of windows set in the aft wall of her great cabin. She stared at the clouds, deep in thought. She loved her ship. She loved sailing through the air. It gave her a feeling of freedom that she seldom felt anywhere else. Her thoughts turned inward as she thought about the wonder of it. The sight of an airship never ceased to amaze her. Even now, after she’d seen countless airships of all different types, they continued to instill a feeling of excitement inside her.

  Back in Tewksbury, the only airship she’d ever seen was a small transport vessel with balloon sails that a merchant captain flew into town four times a year. She had spent much of her time learning everything she could about them—from the Saug oil that made the wood lighter, to the powdered mineral that when combined with Saug oil created a gaseous vapor whose buoyancy and flame retardant characteristics made the airships a reality. Now she currently resided in one that had been specifically gifted to her.

  The HMS Retribution was a warship and lacked the balloon sails of the merchant and transport ships. Instead, her sails were like those of the fishing boats that sailed on the seas, only much larger. To contain the Saug gas that held her aloft, the Retribution had a number of bunkers built into her hull. For propulsion, the Retribution relied primarily on wind power, using the knowledge of wind and sail applied by the skilled crew and trained officer corps to get them quickly to their destinations. Of course, most airships also had propellers, rowed by teams of men turning oar-shafts. Merchant’s and transports typically only had one pair of large propeller’s set on either side of the oversized rudder extending from the bottom of the ship up above the stern deck two or three heights of a man. Warships usually had another set of propellers near the bow, one on each side. The ships were still at the mercy of the winds for the most part, but a good Captain knew which way the air currents were blowing at different elevations and used them to his advantage

  Some ship types, like most of those in the Madrausan Navy, had several sets of propeller’s along their hulls, driven by slaves turning the propeller oar shafts. These ships typically only had one single large mast and sail. There was much less training required for crews of those ships than for a three-masted ship like the Retribution. Over long distances, single-mast propeller driven ships were much slower, but in battle conditions, Madrausan ships could—for short distances—increase their speed over that of their opponents, and even fly directly into the wind, to ram their prey with large metal-tipped rams constructed into the bows of their ships. Then they would board them, and the tales of what Madrausan’s would do to those they captured were horrific. There was a reason why the rest of the world referred to the nations on the continent of Madraus as the Barbarian Kingdoms.

  The deck swayed beneath her feet and Esther focused her thoughts back on her own ship. She loved all airships, but she loved this one in particular. Ardmorran built, she was the strongest ship in her class with heavy planking made from the toughest northern timbers. She and her two Hadiqan built escorts were also outfitted with the most powerful weaponry their size would allow. The escorts each boasted forty-two guns comprised of a mixture of 18 and 12- pounders. The Retribution herself carried fifty four guns—eighteen 24-pounders on her lower gun deck, twenty-four 32-pound carronades on her upper deck, eight 12-pounders on her main deck and forecastle, and two 9-pound chasers each on both her quarterdeck deck facing aft and on her forecastle, facing forward—a very heavy armament indeed for a ship her size. Just as Ardmorr was known for its ship construction, Hadiqan gunsmiths were known for their weapons, and each cannon was meticulously crafted in the beautiful city of Al Farnaka.

  Though not as large or heavily armed or armored as a ship-of-the-line, the frigates were favored due to their optimal balance of heavy weaponry, speed, and maneuverability. This enabled them to overpower most other ships while still being able to escape from a larger, more powerful ship-of-the-line. They were perfect for transporting nobility.

  In addition, the Retribution was brand new and Asserius had made modifications before he had given the ship to her. This included the modified great cabin with its opulent furnishings and larger elongated quarter galleys, one of which he’d turned into a luxurious bath. But it wasn’t the thick hull, powerful armament, and luxuriousness that Esther loved. She loved the Retribution because it was hers. All of the other ships in the Hadiqan Navy just had names—the Retribution was the only one with the HMS designation. Her Majesty’s Ship Retribution. Her ship.

  Thoughts of her beautiful ship turned bitter with anger and rage, however, as memories of what the Madrausan’s had done to her and her village resurfaced and merged with the fact that the Retribution was forced to sit here, doing nothing while the Madrausan’s were raiding other villages. She longed to reach out and smash the enemy fleet—to inflict upon them all of the pain and hurt that they had wrought upon so many others that she cared about. This need to do something—to punish them—only added to the stress and fatigue building inside of her. Now, however, Esther’s anger was being directed more and more at the Navy Admiral commanding the Hadiqan fleet. This only caused her to become more frazzled and unable to control her fluctuating emotions and anger. She thirsted to engage the enemy fleet and that thirst only increased each time an enemy squadron slipped past, unanswered, to raid a village, or engage the increasingly taxed Ardmorran fleet. Fortunately, engagements between the Madrausan’s and the Ardmorran Navy had ended badly for the Madrausan’s thus far, but the Ardmorran fleet couldn’t be everywhere it needed to be, which left areas vulnerable to Madrausan raids. The last one to get by had been devastating.

  “We will not sit idly by and let another raiding party go,” said Esther, her skirt swirling about her as she turned abruptly to face Najafi. “Invite our escort Captain’s to dinner tonight and draw up plans for how we are going to prevent that from happening.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” replied Abdel, bowing slightly before turning and walking out of the great cabin to carry out her orders.

  Esther turned back and looked down at the table. She wondered if he simply tolerated and humored his sixteen-year-old queen, or if he truly supported her. Have I given him any
reason to support and trust me? He hadn’t been with her when she and her other companions had foiled the assassination plot against Asserius, and all he’d seen her do was cause him more work by not taking a Captain for the Retribution, and defy logic by insisting on continuing with the fleet instead of turning back toward Hadiq when her constant nausea and vomiting made it apparent that she was pregnant with the heir to the throne. Esther sighed, her hand dropping to rub her belly. She could feel a small bump beginning to form as the baby grew. She was surprised to be showing so much already. She’d have to ask Marigold to begin altering her dresses soon.

  Esther let out another sigh as her thoughts turned back to her First Officer. While it was true that there were obstacles to developing a good working relationship with Mr. Najafi, he hadn’t made her feel like those obstacles were barriers at all, and had never indicated that he had a problem with her. In fact, if anything, he seemed to relish in those challenges, taking them in stride and doing everything possible to make them work. He’d never once revealed any resentment towards her. Esther had been pushing herself to learn all she that could from him in order to make informed decisions. She hoped he recognized her efforts for what they were—the best she could do to fulfill her duty. She may not have all of the expertise or knowledge needed to fill her various roles, but regardless how it had happened, these decisions were hers to make. She tried to rely on those who did have that experience, but in the end, she had to go with what she thought was the best course of action. She would make mistakes—she had made mistakes—but she didn’t let that stop her from moving forward.

  There was a sudden knock on her cabin door. “Ma’am, the surgeon is here to see you,” called the marine sentry standing guard.

  “Come in,” she said.

  The door opened and Mr. Geoffrey Scott ducked his head through the doorway and stepped inside. He looked good in his newly tailored outfit consisting of a white button-up shirt and a nice suit jacket, also courtesy of Esther’s dear friend, Marigold. His sandy hair and gray eyes sent a familiar and not-unwelcome thrill up her spine as he walked over to her desk. Geoffrey had been with her when she and her companions had traveled to Al Farnaka and foiled the assassination plot. She and Geoffrey had become very close during that time, before her political marriage to Asserius. Now he served aboard the Retribution as her surgeon.