Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 (44 page)

              Eamonn cut the connection.  “George, get the weapons online now!  Raise shields.”

              “Shields up, Captain, holding at sixty-eight percent,” Stella replied.  They both, AI and human, grimaced at that, even though the Captain had never seen shield coverage that strong in his lifetime.  When dealing with shield power for hyperspace speed, he was ecstatic.  When facing an imminent attack, suddenly his big ship didn’t feel so strong and safe anymore.

              He could feel himself starting to sweat under his ship suit.  The last attack on his ship didn’t work out so well for the
Grania Estelle
.  Those fighters coming in wouldn’t be able to board, but then, they probably weren’t intending to.  They would be softening his ship up for the inevitable shuttles full of troopers who would be coming in later to board and strip out the freighter’s cargoes.

              “George, do we have anyone on board who is checked out on the cannons?” he asked, kicking himself for not addressing this before. 

              “Only Tamara, Captain,” he replied, looking guilty.  “She had started training me on them over the last two days and I’ve been running a few sims.”

              “Don’t feel bad, George,” he said.  “I’ve been neglecting a critical part of my ship.”  He sighed.  “I’m glad at least that woman had the foresight to start thinking about these things.”

              “We’re a cargo ship, Captain,” George protested.  “This isn’t a ship of war.”

              “Don’t you remember, George?  We’re a Navy Reserve vessel.  We are a ship of war.”

              “That’s not funny, Captain,” Kutok replied.

              He sighed.  “No, Kutok, it’s not funny.  Not funny at all.  George, arm the weapons, get them pointed in the right direction.”

              “Do you know anything about our guns, Captain?”

              “A little.”

              “Then would you mind taking cannon two?  Every little bit helps.  And if you’re taking one of the cannons, it means I don’t have to worry about it.”

              The Captain nodded as his display altered, bringing up a targeting system.  The Captain’s chair could be configured to handle all the various stations on the ship in an emergency and this certainly qualified.  On the arm of the chair, folded down, was a control stick for the guns.  Pressing a switch, the control stick unfolded from the side of the chair.  He gripped it and he saw on his display that cannon two (and the accompanying targeting package) was now under his command.  Nervously, he adjusted his aim and sat up a bit straighter.  Cannon two was on the bottom side, starboard, which was on the side pointing away from the planet’s surface and the approaching fighters.  But he knew that once the guns started firing, the Hecate fighters wouldn’t stay on one side of the ship.

              Tamara Samair sat in the cockpit of her starfighter, flexing her fingers and taking a few deep, steadying breaths.  It had been many years since she had fired a shot in anger from the pilot’s couch.  Her time in the brig, her time in charge of the shipyard, even her time on the
Grania Estelle
.  She swallowed a few times, using her breathing to center herself.

              “Are you all right, Tamara?” Stella asked.  She wasn’t projecting her image onto Tamara’s HUD, neither on her implants nor on the
Perdition
’s displays.

              “I can’t see you,” she replied.

              “No, I didn’t want to distract you.”

              “Thanks,” she said.  “I appreciate that.”

              “You didn’t answer my question,” the AI pointed out.

              “No, Stella.  No I didn’t.” 

              “Can you do this?”

              Tamara sighed, stretching her neck from side to side to try and loosen up her shoulders.  “Yes, I can.  It’s just been a while.  Pre-battle jitters.”

              “I’m a little nervous myself,” Stella admitted.  “I’ve never been in a battle before.”

              “I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Tamara replied.  “Just stay calm and follow the Captain’s orders, assist where you can.  For the most part, you’re just going to be doing the same things you normally do.  I just wish we had more data on the
Centurion
fighters.”  She huffed out a breath.  “Now, stop distracting me.  Get with the Captain, make sure you keep both of us informed on any critical events and relay communications.”

              “Aye, aye, Commander Samair.”  She couldn’t see Stella, but if she could, Tamara thought the AI would be snapping off a salute.  Tamara chuckled as the call ended.  She shook her hands out, as though trying to flick away droplets of water, then gripped the controls. 

              The six fighters were closing, keeping in three tight formations of two, each formation spreading out from the others.  The pairs were covering their wingmen, but the three groups were spreading out, to attack the
Grania Estelle
from three vectors.  It would make her job much harder.  But she wasn’t going to just sit here and wait for them to get too close.

              Pressing the throttle lever forward, the
Perdition
fighter roared ahead, heading toward the oncoming ships.  For the thousandth time, Tamara cursed herself for not equipping the fighter with missiles.  She had convinced herself that they wouldn’t be needed, that they were pulling resources away from more critical projects.  Now she was kicking herself.  If she had missiles, she could have whittled down the numbers of the attackers before closing to cannon range.  As it was, she had to deal with a knife fight, one against enemies with unknown capabilities.  She had never heard of a
Centurion
fighter before, and there was no time to do an in depth analysis of any sensor data.

              “No worries,” she said softly.  “Let’s do this.”  She clicked her comms.  “
Grania Estelle
, this is Em-One.  Warn them off, please.  I want it clear that we didn’t initiate this.”

              A moment later, Kutok’s very cultured voice came over the comms on an open channel.  “This is the
Grania Estelle
to incoming Hecate starfighters.  Break off your attack and stand down.  We have no hostile intentions toward you, your system or your government, but we will defend ourselves if attacked.”

              “Thank you,
Grania Estelle
,” Tamara said.  “If they close to within fifty thousand kilometers of the ship, I will engage.”  Checking her scopes, they were at sixty-two thousand and closing awfully fast.

              “Understood, Em-One,” Kutok replied.  She sounded as though she was delivering a weather report, not relaying reports that might soon include someone’s death.

              The
Centurion
fighters were shaped like elongated pyramids.  The fighter itself was flattened out on the top and bottom, but retained the feeling of an arrowhead, though the sides of the fighters were not sharp angles.  The
Centurion
sported a quartet of cannons in the flattened sides, and a pair of missiles underneath.  Three sublight engines mounted in the rear provided the thrust, which caused Tamara some concern.  They were moving at a great clip, at a rate of acceleration that might outstrip her own ship. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to be equipped with any sort of shields, which took a load off her mind.  This only was a small consolation, as her own
Perdition
fighter didn’t sport shields either.  Fifty-eight thousand kilometers.  Fifty-three thousand.  “This is starfighter Em-One to Hecate fighters: if you come within fifty thousand kilometers of the freighter
Grania Estelle
, it will be considered hostile actions and we will defend ourselves.  Stand down now.”

              The fighters crossed the line and she took a deep breath.  Jamming the throttle forward again, she banked into a lazy turn, putting the targeting reticules on the
Perdition
’s HUD around the nearest of the
Centurions
.  “Engaging enemy.”  She squeezed the trigger on her control stick. 

              The
Perdition
’s wing cannons blazed, ripping through the nose of the closest fighter.   The ship wobbled off course, spinning out of control, its vector changed to fly off into deep space.  Its pilot was still alive, but he would have blacked out due to the g-forces generated by the spin.

              Tamara didn’t wait.  Slewing the rear end of her fighter around, she fired again the instant her targeting system went from green to red.  The pilot rolled and avoided the worst of it, but two hits perforated the right side of the second
Centurion
, slagging both of the right side cannons.  The second fighter continued the roll, turning away from the fight, but Tamara couldn’t continue the chase.  Looping into a turn, she kicked in her ship’s afterburners to chase down one of the other pairs of fighters.

              The second pair of fighters continued straight on toward the
Grania Estelle
, concentrating on the bigger prize.  Tamara swooped in from above them, firing on the closest one.  The shots penetrated the aft fuselage, tearing into the little ship’s engines.  Fire plumed out from the area of the hit and the ship immediately lost acceleration, falling far behind its wingman.  A second salvo from Tamara’s guns blasted through the cockpit and the ship detonated.  Tamara gritted her teeth, but turned to follow the next fighter.

             
These guys are really green.  They’re coming straight on for the freighter instead of breaking up.  And none of them have come after me yet. 

              Apparently, the fighter pilots had the ability to read her thoughts, because she could see on her display that the remaining pair of fighters had turned away from the
Grania Estelle
and were angling back toward Tamara.  The remaining single fighter also turned, climbing up above the plane of the ecliptic to try and come at her that way.  They were still out of range of the
Grania Estelle
, which was a mixed blessing.  They couldn’t hit the freighter, but the big girl’s guns could hit them either.  No help there.

              “Here we go,” she muttered, not even realizing she was speaking.  Twisting the ship to the right, she narrowly missed a pair of shots from one of the fighters.  Mashing the rudder pedal with her left foot and jamming the throttle forward, the
Perdition
leaped into a climb, as two more shots passed through the space where she had been only an instant before. 

             
Okay, maybe not as green as I thought
. 

              The Captain watched the sensor feeds, a disbelieving smile on his face.  “She’s magnificent.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Except maybe in the entertainment holos.”

              “I’m sure it’s been a while since anyone has done any serious dogfighting out here in Indie space,” George commented. 

              Kutok chittered.  “Maybe the pirates do,” she said. 

              “Pirates don’t strike me as the kinds to mix it up with local starfighters,” the Captain replied dryly.  “They’re more the type to hit an unarmed freighter as they drop out of hyperspace.”

              “Point taken, sir,” George replied, with a smirk. 

              “Are any of the fighters getting near us?” the Captain asked, watching his display intently. 

              “Just this one, Captain,” Stella said, appearing at the holo projector.  The display focused on the starfighter that Tamara had damaged, which had gotten away from her and had looped around in a large arc.  Half its weapons were out, but it was still plenty dangerous.

              “Keep an eye on it please,” he ordered.  “Moxie’s got her hands full at the moment.”

              “Aye, Captain,” she told him.

              Tamara indeed did have her hands full. 
Three of these bastards,
she thought. 
Three of them.
  She jinked her fighter to the right and then yanked it hard to the left, diving this time as she did so.  It was an instinctive human nature to dive during flight to escape.  It harkened back to the first pilots flying single engine airplanes.  Even though these fighters were not flying in atmo but in space, the principle was the same.  To evade, pilots tended to fly down and away, which made them predictable.  It was a weakness she could exploit.

              Unfortunately, every time she tried to line up for a shot, one or the other of her target’s wingmen would swoop in on her, forcing her to evade.  It was frustrating, but it ultimately was serving her purpose.  If they were distracted by her, then they were not attacking the
Grania Estelle
. 

              This of course didn’t mean it was easy.  She cut to the left, forcing one of the
Centurions
to break off quickly or collide with her.  She pulled the
Perdition
into a climb, and then straightened out, putting a small amount of distance between the three local fighters.