Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2

by Michael Kotcher

  There was nothing they could do to remedy any of that now, of course. What was done was done and they were forced to simply swallow their ire and move on. Most of the crew seemed to be adapting to this new cruise, dealing with the pirate soldiers that seemed to somehow be everywhere on the ship at all hours of the ship’s day and night. So far, they hadn’t burst into any of the individual quarters, though every so often a patrolling guard would walk through deck and engineering berthing leering at everyone, giving hard looks, but generally leaving the crew alone. They ate in the mess hall in shifts and generally did little more than make their presence known.

  Morale aboard the ship, however, was beginning to slip. With only twenty days gone and more than seventy to go, the pirates were starting to get restless. Being cooped up in a ship, even one as large as the Grania Estelle was unusual. Unusual in the fact that there wasn’t any entertainment for them. One of the cargo bays had been retrofitted as a shooting range and running track for the pirate soldiers, who visited it in shifts. It was a ten day project, this required pulling engineering teams of repair duties to build this playhouse (such as it was) for the soldiers. But once it was completed, this took a small amount of pressure off the crew, as only ten to fifteen soldiers were wandering about the ship at any given time. The rest were either in the cargo bay or asleep in their berths. The problem wasn’t solved, as now live fire exercises were going on aboard the ship while it was underway, but it gave the pirates a way to blow off some steam that didn’t involve them turning their wandering eyes on the crew, especially the female members of that crew.

  Tamara stood in front of one of the engineering consoles, her ever-present shadows not very far away. She had made her decision and it was time to act. Tamara was aware that if she was caught doing anything against the ship or more accurately the pirates in it, there would be hell to pay, and not just for her, if Armsman Jax decided to vent his wrath on others in the crew. She glanced back over at them; one of them lifted his eyes from his perusal of her bottom to smirk at her. He waved. She shook her head in disgust and turned back to the display. She pulled up the control feeds to the main reactor, running a standard diagnostic. Tamara made sure that the diagnostic featured prominently on the screen.

  Her left hand kept working the diagnostic on the console, but her right hand set down flat on the edge of the console itself, her right thumb pressing into the access port there. Her HUD popped up, still sputtering and cracking a bit. Tamara concentrated a bit harder and the HUD image firmed up. It wasn’t getting much easier, as she’d originally thought. Getting her implants to work still took a good amount of concentration to bring her HUD up to operational status, but it was easier now to maintain her systems once they were up. Now, using her implants, she accessed the controls to the cargo bay doors, the bay that the soldiers were using for their exercise.

  It was as simple as pulling up the information on the control console before her. It was an engineering display, which, coupled with her officer status aboard the ship, gave her immediate access to the door controls on that cargo bay. The controls were there, ready for her command and with just a single thought, the bay doors would open and blast the contents out into the void. A red warning indicator began to flash on her HUD and another indicating that the bridge would be alerted if she continued with this action. A few mental commands later and a number of macros opened, activated and then closed in rapid succession. An instant later, the warning indicator disappeared and a new command icon appeared, with text just below.

  [Continue with cargo door activation? Yes/No]

  The “No” indicator was highlighted, while the system waited for Tamara to decide. She activated a few other control macros, ones that she updated and loaded with other information that had nothing to do with the cargo bay doors. If this worked, they wouldn’t have a lot of time. If it didn’t work, then someone would probably need to pick up the torch from her dead hand. Tamara checked the internal sensor feeds again on her HUD while she pretended to be looking over the reactor diagnostic. Twenty-four of the pirate soldiers were in the cargo bay at this moment. More than half. With all of them gone, in the confusion surrounding that debacle she might be able to get the lupusan sisters out of the brig and they could finally get the ship back. That was a lot of hope to try and place on the furry shoulders of the two security officers, but the crew didn’t have any hope without them, even with the advantage of half the pirates dead. She agonized for all of one second, closed her eyes for a moment and then initiated the command.

  Just as she did so, someone grabbed her right hand off the console, severing her link to the mainframe. Tamara gasped in confusion as her HUD suddenly lost all the feeds from the main computer, returning to her standard displays. Did it work? Were the bay doors opening? What had happened?

  A vicious blow landed right in her solar plexus and the engineer went down, doubled over. She made pitiful gasping noises as she tried to get air back into her lungs. The pain was just as bad as she’d remembered, back when the pirates had attacked her in her quarters just after Grania Estelle had made the jump to hyperspace from Ulla-tran. It was a pain she’d hoped she’d never have to experience again.

  “Did we get her in time?” one of the guards asked, concerned.

  “What was she trying to do?” the other one asked.

  The first one checked the panel. It was only showing the reactor diagnostic. “I don’t know. Whatever it was, she wasn’t using this actual terminal. The diagnostic was just a cover for whatever she was doing on her implants. I don’t have any way of checking.

  One of the pirate’s communicators beeped. The second one brought his wrist up to his face. “Yes, boss?”

  “Cargo bay two just depressurized and blew everything out into space!” the Armsman’s voice was livid. “What the hell just happened?”

  “I think the prisoner here just did it, Boss,” the first guard replied. “I think she faked a reactor diagnostic and then accessed the system with her implants. I stopped her, but I didn’t know what she was doing and I was too late.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “You stopped her?” Jax asked, his voice calm.

  “She’s still alive, Boss,” the guard answered.

  “Good. Get her on her feet and get her to the wardroom. Now,” he ordered and the line clicked off.

  “Get up!” the second guard yelled, grabbing Tamara’s arms and hauling her to her feet. “We carried you through the ship once, I sure as hell ain’t doin’ it again! Move, slug!”

  Still groaning as her lungs remembered how to catch and hold the air being brought into them, the two guards frog-marched her out of Main Engineering and back through the ship. It wasn’t as humiliating or damaging as the last time she’d been brought through the ship, for which Tamara was grateful.

  Once the wardroom door slid open, the two thugs pushed Tamara in before them just as they had the last time. This time, however, she wasn’t dumped on the deck, she remained on her feet. Gideon Jax sat in the Captain’s accustomed seat at the head of the table, his eyes on a datapad, his face haunted. He looked up as the three of them entered. Upon seeing Tamara, his face went from haunted to pure incandescent rage. The remote for disabler was on the table in front of him, but he ignored it. Jax launched himself out of the chair, barreling across the deck and around the table to get at her. Tamara tried to shy away, but the two behind her pushed her forward again. She’d just managed to get her arms up in a semblance of a guard position when Jax reached her.

  He was simply a ball of rage. There was no precision to his strikes, no real aim to them, so long as he hit her. “Twenty-four!” he kept screaming as he struck. Tamara tried to defend herself, tried to keep her arms up or dodge away and occasionally she managed to evade a truly crippling blow, but in moments she was battered and bruised, blood coming from a few cuts.

  Finally, Jax stopped his storm of blows. He was breathing heavily, shoulders rising and falling with each breath, standing bef
ore Tamara who had collapsed against the bulkhead for support. The two guards were still in the room, but they were far enough back to be completely out of the way. And it wasn’t as though they were going to move forward to help her anyway. Suddenly the Armsman turned and walked around the table, snatching up the remote from where he’d left it.

  “Twenty-four men!” he shrieked, activating it. Electricity coursed through Tamara. Agony filled her body, screams rushed out of her lungs. Her legs collapsed and she writhed on the deck until finally it stopped. Her whole body went limp but when she was able to turn her eyeballs in Jax’s direction, she couldn’t help a smirk curling the corners of her lips.

  “You think this is funny?” he bellowed, pressing the control again. He let her go for a longer period this time, until she couldn’t even scream anymore, just pitiful moans escaped her mouth, her body contorting under the electric shocks. When he turned it off, she lay there, completely limp on the deck. Her mind didn’t even have the decency to allow her to lose consciousness. Oh, no, she got to be awake to enjoy every excruciating moment.

  “You just… murdered twenty-four of my men. Of the Captain’s men!” Jax shouted, walked closer and squatting down near her. He wasn’t concerned that she would strike him, but a very tiny portion of Tamara’s conscious mind noted that he was just out of range if she decided to flail an arm at him.

  Tamara couldn’t speak. It wasn’t that she was afraid; her brain was too fried and pain-wracked to care about that anymore. It was just that the shocks had robbed her of her speech. It was a temporary condition, she hoped, but regardless, she could do nothing but lay there on the metal deck plates and take shallow breaths. But then she felt the corners of her lips curling into a smile again. In fact, it wasn’t an involuntary spasm, it was a conscious effort on her part.

  Jax’s face contorted even further with rage; Tamara wasn’t sure how that was even possible. He stood, pointed the remote at her, but stopped. He looked as though he was about to activate it again, but apparently changed his mind. He raised one booted foot and brought it down hard on her left forearm. There was a loud crack of both bones snapping and pain surged through her again. Still she couldn’t scream, only a low moan came out of her mouth. But she could feel her strength returning, somewhat, but the pain from the beating and the shocks and now the broken arm was getting too much. Her stomach heaved and she vomited. Jax stepped back and avoided most of it.

  “Looks like this one needs to have some more time to think,” the Armsman rasped. “Make sure she gets to sickbay.” But he held up a hand. “But you are not to touch her, boys.” He squatted back down, making sure she could see him and hear him. “And you, you murdering bitch, you want to get to sickbay? You want to get help from the doctor? You’ve gotta get there under your own power. Nobody’s going to help you. Nobody,” he said forcefully, an order to his men more than a directive to her. With that, the Armsman turned and left the bridge.

  The crew watched the ghoulish sight of Tamara Samair stumbling down the corridors of the ship, her left arm held at a crazy angle, her face and arms covered with bruises, her shipsuit torn at the torso and legs. She was clearly in a great deal of pain, but the two thugs behind her refused to allow anyone to help her, not even touch her. When someone grabbed a comm unit to try and call sickbay, the guards didn’t interfere, but when one of the orderlies from sickbay bounded down the corridor, their guns were immediately drawn.

  “Armsman Jax ordered nobody helps her until and unless she can get to sickbay on her own,” the first one told the orderly.

  The man looked at the pirate guard in disbelief. “This is ridiculous! She’s in pain! She’s injured. She needs my help.” He reached out to take Tamara’s uninjured right arm.

  “You touch her, doc, and I got orders to put you down,” the guard repeated, a tinge of glee in his warning. “I will shoot you, make no mistake about that.”

  The orderly looked aghast. “Why are you doing this to her?” he demanded. “She’s done nothing to you.”

  The sound of a gunshot echoed through the corridors and the unfortunate orderly collapsed to the deck, a bloodstain growing larger on his chest. He gasped, clutched at the wound and then fell back and was still. Others who had gathered to watch the spectacle cried out in alarm, demanding to know what was going on.

  “Done nothing?” the first guard shouted in anger. “That one’s done nothing?” he demanded, pointing his gun at the now blood-splattered Tamara, who had stopped for only a moment to look down sadly at the poor man who’d tried to help her and gotten himself killed in the process.

  “She killed twenty-four of the Captain’s soldiers!” he roared, and the collective spacers shrank back from that.

  Tamara couldn’t help that smile on her lips as she continued to trudge forward, cradling her broken arm.

  “Good on you, Samair!” a male voice, Martinez, from the sound of it, came from within the crowd.

  The second guard stayed on Tamara, while the first plowed into the group of spacers that was crowding near to where he was standing. In an instant, he had Martinez by the collar and dragged him out into the open. Martinez was a big man, a cargo handler and his prowess on the docks as a brawler was well-documented. He tried to fight, socking one meaty fist against the first guard’s jaw, causing him to stagger. The guard raised his gun and fired three shots. All three hit the cargo handler in the center of his chest and he went down, a look of utter surprise on his face. Martinez was dead before he’d even hit the deck, blood quickly pooling around him.

  “No one jokes about that,” the second guard yelled, waving his gun around at the gathered throng. “No one!”

  No one moved forward to help Tamara as she continued down the corridor, but once she and her guards were far enough along, they moved forward to see about their fallen crewmen. There was nothing to be done for either of them, even if they were rushed to sickbay immediately. But that didn’t matter. These men were crew and they weren’t just going to be left in the corridor like carrion on the side of the road. Perhaps Turan might be able to do something for them. Strong arms lifted both of the bodies and the group carried the two fallen men after Tamara, careful not to interfere with her walking.

  The banging again. Always the damned banging. Would he never get any peace?

  Vincent Eamonn sat up in his bunk. The banging on the hatch continued and it was clear that whoever it was had no intention of stopping. He tried ignoring it, but eventually the staccato continued and increased in both tempo and ferocity to the point where it sounded as though rail gun slugs were hammering the door.

  Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. Getting up from his bed, ignoring his lack of clothing, he was wearing nothing more than a t-shirt and boxers, he went to the hatch and keyed it open. “What!” he demanded of the person on the other side.

  Taja stood there, looking stricken. “I wondered if you were going to answer,” she said, blinking at the liquid fury on his face.

  He glared pure ice at her. “What. Do. You. Want?” He was very precise with each of the words, but his tone was frozen helium.

  “I can’t believe you,” Taja started. “I can’t believe you care so little for what happens aboard your ship. To a ship and crew that you claim to care so much about.”

  Eamonn just shook his head and started to close the hatch, but Taja put her hand out, stopping him as her palm hit the metal. “I just thought you’d like to know that the pirates just killed two members of the ship’s company. Martinez from Cargo and Silva from Medical.” Without another word, the tiny cargo specialist turned sharply on her heel and marched off down the corridor, leaving the captain to stare at her.

  The captain didn’t speak, he just closed the hatch. But instead of returning to his bunk and his depressed fugue, he sat down at his table and activated his display. A few keystrokes and commands and he brought up internal sensors. He replayed the events captured on the internal camera feeds over the last twenty-four hours, speeding past otherwi
se normal events and watching more carefully to anything that seemed to be of interest.

  Repair work. A goodly number of the pirates were using cargo bay two as a gym area, with a running track around the edge and a firing range set up in the middle. Why anyone would be willing to run around an area that people were shooting in was beyond him, but they seemed to be fine with it. Strong reinforced metal barriers had been erected to protect the ship and the passersby that might move behind the shooters, so he guessed it must be somewhat safe. He detected his own people’s work there. And while he might be willing to guess that Xar or Quesh or even… Moxie… might be willing to make those barriers weaker than they appeared to hope that the shooters practicing might accidently blast one of their fellows, if there was one thing these thugs seemed to be proficient in, it was weapons. And therefore, if they were going to be popping off shots in the cargo bay, they’d know that they would need a very strong barrier to protect them and would double check all of the engineers’ work.

  And there it was. Approximately twenty-seven minutes ago, the cargo bay doors to the bay opened, completely without warning and everyone and everything inside the bay was blown out into space. The captain had mixed feelings over this. On the one hand his heart soared watching all those pirate bastards getting the deaths they so richly deserved. But on the other, his stomach churned at the sight of those same poor bastards behind blasted out into the void, out into the crushing fields of hyperspace. Hard vacuum was a fear every spacer shared. Once the pirates were outside the barrier of the ship’s shields, they would be completely unprotected from the massive stresses of faster than light speeds. Of course, they’d most likely be dead from asphyxiation before that happened, but there would be nothing left of them. They would be vaporized in an instant.