Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 (87 page)

“Can the cruisers detect it?” Eamonn asked.

George shrugged.  “They’d have to be looking for it.  We’re not increasing our power output or anything.  I honestly can’t say, but their postures haven’t changed.  They’re not trying to maneuver.  They’re holding position relative to us and pulling us to a stop with their tractoring beams.”

“Small favors then.  Let me know if anything changes.”  The captain was keeping an eye on the atmo pressure in the cargo bays.  The indicators were well out of the green and into the yellow and continuing to rise.

Tamara checked the feeds on her console and looked up, accessing the internal comms with her implants.  “Captain, I’m showing we’re approaching the go moment.”

“Understood, Moxie.  Tell me when,” he replied.

She kept a watch on the readouts, watching as the indicators climbed ever higher and stress markers on the internal seals climbed closer to the red.  She looked up from the console, taking a deep breath.  “All right, Captain, ready to go.”

The captain took a deep breath and checked his display.  He pressed the comm control.  “All right, Moxie, do it.”

Down at her engineering console, Tamara pressed the activation control.  The massive cargo doors to all eight cargo bays burst open, the atmosphere inside rushing to escape into the void carrying with it all of the tons of cargo contained inside.  The cargo broke apart into its individual containers, spreading out into a near cloud of debris rocketing out from the bulk freighter.  None of it was volatile or explosive, a great deal of it was simply junk that Taja had picked up from the station for a song, trading their cargoes in from previous stops for bits and bobs that might turn a profit in other systems, or feed the replicators for some useful things. 

But what the debris lacked in explosive punch it all made up for in mass.  The projectiles sped out and crashed into the hulls of the two cruisers bracketing
Grania Estelle
.  The velocity was only a few dozen kilometers per hour but the mass was significant.  The odd-shaped containers, crates and other cargo boxes thunked into the hulls of the two light cruisers, battering the relatively light armor.  Individually, the cargo containers wouldn’t be able to do much damage, but with hundreds of them hammering the hulls, the damage couldn’t be ignored or denied.  A pair of turbolaser batteries were smashed on
Meghna
and a crate of metal ingots punched through the ship’s armor, breaching the hull.  Small rips, scrapes and outright breaches the mass of containers pounded all along the length of the two hulls.  A sensor array was torn apart as a half-dozen barrels of food stuffs winged the edge of the array.  Damage sparkled up and down the hulls as the mass punched through the hull, causing both ships to drop their tractoring beams and lurch off course. 

It wasn’t a crippling attack.  Both cruisers had taken light to moderate damage, but only on the sides facing the
Grania Estelle
.  They weren’t mauled enough to be out of action completely and
Ganges
and the corvette were out of the line of fire and were undamaged.

“Direct hits on both cruisers!” George said, punching the air.  “The two ships have lost their tractoring lock and are moving off course.”

“Nice shooting, Moxie,” Eamonn said.  “Shields up.  Helm, full ahead, best speed.”

The
Grania Estelle
’s engines came on at full, as did her shields, and with a bit of modulation on the part of Ka’Xarian, the tractoring beam from
Ganges
slipped off.  The bulk freighter lumbered forward, ponderous and slow, the light cruiser easily matching pace, but no longer attempting to try and lasso the bigger ship. 

But this was a short lived victory.  The corvette
Ravage
locked on and launched a pair of Sierra-class missiles which quickly closed the gap between the two ships and exploded against
Grania Estelle
’s aft shields.  A follow of pair of missiles blasted through the buckling shields and detonated against the ship’s engines.

“Thiss iz intolerable!” Verrikoth grated, incensed.  This freighter, a barely armed
merchant
had the sheer
gall
to attack and damage his brand new flotilla.  His was holding perfectly still, but a subsonic buzz was emitting from him, causing all around him, Jensen Tyler included, to shiver because of the pure predatory feeling emanating from the zheen.  “Ssend sshuttlez!” he hissed, mandibles clacking in anger.  “Board that sship!  They will
pay
for thiss outrage!”

Chapter 28

              “Bring us in behind Target One,” Tyler ordered, his voice like iron. 
Ganges
’s helmsman easily complied with the order, simply reducing acceleration to zero and allowing the bigger ship to slip past.  In less than a minute, the bulk freighter was five kilometers ahead of the light cruiser and the distance was opening.  “Fire all batteries!” the commander ordered.  “Take down their shields.  I don’t want them playing any more games.”

              All of
Ganges
’s turbolaser batteries and laser cannons opened up, sending a wave of coherent light lancing out as the charged particle beams briefly connected the two ships. 
Grania Estelle
’s shields weathered the onslaught for only a few seconds before they collapsed.  From there,
Ganges
began firing pinpoint shots, destroying all of the shield nodes on the dorsal and port sides.  Without full shield coverage,
Grania Estelle
was now trapped in the Ulla-tran system.  The stresses of hyperspace would shred an unshielded vessel.

              “We have you now,” Tyler said, eyes bright.

              “Shuttles launching in three minutes, Commander,” the boat bay officer reported over the comm.

              “Very well,” he replied.  “Helm, move us back to a safer distance.  Five thousand kilometers.”  Well within easy targeting range of the bigger ship.  “I want no more surprises.”  The extra distance would increase the shuttles’ flight time to get to the freighter, but it would only be by a few minutes.  And with their engines blasted apart and their shields ripped down, they were trapped.

              “Shields have collapsed!” Stella announced, her voice breaking.  Though she was a digital projection, she was clearly upset and her actions betrayed her pain.  She wasn’t programmed to feel physical pain, even if the ship took damage, but she could interpret the damage data as pain and mimic the appropriate body language.  “Ah!” she screamed as the ship jolted from
Ganges
’s shots.  “They’ve completely destroyed my dorsal and port side shield generators.”

              The comm beeped and Quesh’s voice came on.  “Only engine one is up, all the rest are completely trashed.  I’ve shut that one down and cut all the fuel lines.  We’re not going anywhere, Captain.”

              The Captain’s face was a terrifying mask of pure hate.  They had attacked him, his ship, his home.  He had tried to defend himself, but these people paid no mind to that.  They took what he’d dished out and then broke both of his kneecaps.  Now his ship was adrift.

              Adrift, not dead.

              “Ready the rail guns,” he ordered, his voice extremely calm.  Dangerously so, with a tone no one had heard him use before.  No one argued, they simply obeyed.  Despite his rage (and if he was honest, utter terror) his mind was still sharp.  The laser cannons would draw a noticeable amount of power but the rail guns used considerably less.  The guns wouldn’t get off more than a few shots, but they might make a difference if the
Ganges
and her fellows attempted a boarding.

              Of course, attacking any boarding shuttles would only enrage Commander Tyler further ensuring Eamonn and his crew’s swift deaths.  But in the grand scheme of it, if they were being boarded by hostile forces, they might all die anyway, but it wouldn’t in any way be quick or painless.  He didn’t have the time to brood over the morality of this.  He was protecting his home and his crew.  Others might debate his right or the wisdom to strike at these other parties; they had that luxury.  He had a second to make such judgments and others would spend hours and days tearing those decisions apart.  But they weren’t in charge; they weren’t sitting in the big chair.  They didn’t have the responsibility of all these lives and the life of the ship weighing down on them.

              “If any shuttles launch, let them get close and then knock them down.”  His voice stayed cold and the responses that came back were scared.  Either of him or of the pirates outside, he didn’t care.  They were following his orders and not wasting time or undermining his authority.              “Tell Security to prepare for boarders.  Let Corajen play with all her new toys.”

              “Captain, shuttles are launching from all four ships,” George reported.  “Two each from the big cruisers and one from the corvette.”

              “Incoming transmission,” Serinda spoke up.  “We’re being directed to surrender and prepare to be boarded.”  Her voice was hollow as she pronounced their doom.

              He glared at her.  “My orders stand.  We’re not surrendering.”

              The dark-haired beauty visibly swallowed but nodded, clearly frightened.  He swept his gaze over the bridge.  Everyone was scared, but they weren’t panicking.  Perfect.

              Shuttles cruised out of the bays of the four ships, loaded with armed boarding parties.  These small ships were not the large, bulky cargo shuttles meant for hauling freight to and from a big merchant ship.  These were speedy, armed assault shuttles, meant for ferrying troops from one place to another.  Verrikoth had spared no expense here, commissioning a dozen of these manta-like shuttles, capable of moving ten troopers fully loaded with kit, while still being able to achieve decent speed and maneuverability and armed with a pair of laser cannons and a nose mounted rail gun.

              The shuttle was loaded up to the bulkheads with troopers, eleven in total, ten sitting in the shock couches and one more standing up, holding onto the handle in the ceiling.  All of the troops in this shuttle were wearing skinsuits, the head covers pulled down like hoods.  These were not military issue, but they wore civilian type body armor over the chest and back.  They were a bit mismatched; Verrikoth may have splurged on the assault shuttles, but apparently had spared a few credits on body armor.  Their weapons were a mix of assault rifles, pistols, shotguns and even a few energy blasters.  They were a mismatched group as well, some tall, short, broad and wiry.  The one thing that unified them, other than the aggressive attitudes, was that they were all, to the last, zheen.  The interior of the shuttle hummed with excitement as they all continued to pump themselves and each other up for the boarding operation.

              “Listen up!” the leader yelled.  “Captain wants a clean sweep!  No hiding spaces.  This is a big bastard of a ship so there’s going to be lots of places to look.  Go through everything.  Any threats, you take them out.  But anyone surrenders, secure them and get them back to the holding area.”

              “Where’s that going to be?” one of the boarders asked.

              “We’re going to try and secure one of those hangar bays.  Understand this!” he shouted and all of them winced at the volume of the pronouncement.  “This is not a raid!  This is a capture!  And the Captain wants a lot of prisoners.  So curb your impulses.”  There was a hiss of disappointment that spread through the ship.  Getting to have their fun with the victims was a large draw to boarding actions.  “Shut up!  Captain’s orders.  There’ll be time for that when we get to the big prize.”

              The soldiers buzzed with happiness.  It was no secret that Captain Verrikoth wanted to take Byra-Kae, the Republic base of operations in the Argos Cluster.  Everyone agreed,
that
would be a good fight with lots of plunder.  This would just have to take the edge off until then. 

              “I mean it!” the leader yelled at them all.  And they knew he did.

              “Listen up!” Corajen yelled to the Security officers gathered up near her, and to those over the comms.  She held her communicator flipped open in her free hand, her assault rifle in the other.  She was decked out in her body armor, pockets loaded with extra clips of ammo, along with a stunner in her hip holster.  “We’ve got seven shuttles coming in, which means there’s going to be almost as many of them as we have on this entire ship.  Now there are only twenty of us,” she reminded them all, “but we are fighting for our
home
.  But brute force alone isn’t going to save us.  We gotta fight smart.”

              There were nods from the five of her people here.  The shopping trip that Taja, Tamara and Corajen had taken had yielded a great deal in the way of weapons, but not so much in the way of armor or explosives.  They were all decked out with automatic weapons with ammunition designed to do a great deal of damage to flesh, but not cause breaches in the hull if targets were missed.  Corajen had been working her crews ever since the arrival of the new weapons, making them all work on their marksmanship.  For the most part, they were working as little more than peace officers aboard the ship, but it was in their job description to handle situations like this.

              “Now, I know you’re all a bit nervous,” she told them, looking out over the ones she saw before her, her voice carrying over the comms to the ones elsewhere.  “That’s natural.  But this is what we’ve all trained for.  You just watch each other’s back, and shoot the bastards when they try to come in.”  The soldiers gave nervous chuckles.  “All right.  Team leaders, make sure you keep in contact at all times.”  A trio of Tamara’s slimer grenades hung from a bandolier over the lupusan’s shoulder and everyone else had at least two each.  They were helpful and could trap people in place.  Make easy targets of them if they could get them in the right places and with nearly four times as many boarders coming in, the security officers needed every advantage they could get.

              She had spread her security team out into five groups of four, hoping that having greater coverage over the ship would be better than trying to mass her force in one or two areas.  With the crew and Stella controlling things like doors and life support, they might be able to bottleneck a few of them into kill zones where she and her people could do the most damage. 

              The assault shuttles were still moving in toward the ship, but they were still holding a loose formation, shifting around a bit to try and confuse any targeting sensors the cargo ship might be trying to train on them.  Which was annoying, Corajen thought, because it meant they didn’t know where the boarding parties were going to try and enter.  To counter this as best as she could, she’d spread out her force along the spine, leaving Saiphirelle and her team just outside the boat bay two other teams toward the front of the ship and her own team smack at the midline.  She wanted to be able to respond in either direction depending on where the shuttles came in.

              Corajen nodded to those around her.  “All of you stay sharp.  This is going to be a bad day, we all know that.  Shoot straight and watch each other’s backs.  The rest of the crew has their jobs, keeping this place running, fixing things when they break, and even filling the bays with goods to sell.  But it’s our job to keep them all safe.  Movement orders will come in as necessary.”

              “All right,” the leader said to the shuttle pilot.  “Swing us up and around, I want to come in on the portside forward cargo bay, the upper one.”

              “Sir, that bay is completely depressurized,” the pilot warned.

              The zheen leader nodded.  “Yes, but that’s all right.  I have portable magfield generators with me.”

              “Yes, sir, but there’s no atmo in those bays.  You’d just be sealing off a bay that didn’t have anything in it.  You’d still be in hard vacuum.”

              “Soon as we crack open the doors to the ship, we’ll let their own atmo fill the bay.  No muss,” he said, his antennae twitching in satisfaction.

              “The other shuttles are moving on similar courses, cargo bays, and it looks like one is heading to the forward airlock on the port side.”

              The leader’s antennae bobbed in a shrug.  “Makes sense.  Keep everyone to port since their shields are fragged on that side.  Are they trying to maneuver?”

              “No, but then the Captain said that Commander Tyler threatened ‘em to hold position.  I don’t think they’re going to try something stupid,” the pilot pointed out.

              The zheen hissed.  “Always bet on stupidity.  Be ready when they try something.”

              They didn’t have long to wait.

              The port side rail guns on the
Grania Estelle
cut loose, sending out a hail of metal slugs which thumped into the hull of one of the shuttles.  The shuttle’s wing was damaged and the weapon tracked the ship around, firing continuously.  A barrage struck the hull, perforating it with ease.  Three slugs struck the shuttle’s core and the assault shuttle exploded.

              “Shuttle Four is down,” the pilot called out.  The guns swiveled around, tracking another of the ships and fired again.  The second assault shuttle managed to bank just enough to evade to avoid a major hit, but the metal slugs tore through the shuttle’s starboard wing, puncturing the ship’s shields and tearing apart the wing.  The shuttle spun wildly out of control, spinning off toward the blackness.  The remaining shuttles opened fire, laser blasts and their own Gatling rail guns blasting
Grania Estelle
’s port side weapons to shreds.  Now the shuttles were too close to stop or shoot down with her other guns.  The shuttles flew to their destinations, the cargo bays and the forward airlock.  They ignored the boat bay completely, rightly thinking the crew would have strong defenses there.