Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1

by Michael Kotcher

  “No, no, no.” Her voice was a normal tone now, though she could not stop herself from repeating that word. Her brain realized she needed to stop and cool off, but her mouth just wouldn’t stop. Just as her arms and legs kept moving herself away from him.

  “Stop moving, little bird,” the man ordered. She couldn’t help herself, she kept backing away. He raised the gun. “Stop moving.”

  Tamara tripped over a piece of metal on the ground and fell backward, landing hard on her rump. She continued to scoot backward, but the man rushed forward, looming over her. “Oh, nice. A woman on her back. Just where she belongs.” The man, upon closer viewing had pockmarks on his face, his hands were ungloved and scarred. The weapon was pointed right at her and he was leaning down.

  Islington. She could see him now. He was standing over her, leering down at her, laughing at her through bars of her cell. He was snickering at her in court, sitting with Bythe and laughing. And now Islington was here, impossibly, holding a weapon over her, about ready to strike.

  Time seemed to stop. This was impossible. She could see him. Lieutenant Oliver Islington, large as life. Her implants were screaming at her, projecting images into her vision that this was an unknown, but her eyes were telling her something different. It was him. She knew that face. It was one of two that had been burned into her mind during the worst year of her life. He must have escaped the station during the battle as well. Perhaps he had gone into hibernation as well, but had been picked up before Tamara had. Yes, that must be it. He was picked up by a Republic or perhaps even an independent like Tamara had. That was the only explanation why she could see him now. Time had been unkind to him, but that was him.

  He was upon her now. The pistol was cast aside, a wicked blade was in his hand now. They were grappling on the deck, her hands on his wrist with the weapon, he was tearing at her coveralls. “You are an ugly bitch,” he growled, his face right up in hers. “But the rest of you looks fine.” His stinking breath was all over her face.

  Full blown panic set in. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” she shrieked and continued to fight him.

  “Hold still!” he barked.

  Islington yanked his arm up, breaking her grip. Her vision went red, her hands scrabbling frantically on the deck. A pipe was suddenly in her hand, and she swung it with all her might, bringing to the fore all the rage and hate and pain she’d kept bottled up for so long.

  Suddenly, her vision cleared and she was standing, her wrists aching, the pipe bent from impact, the pipe, her hands and her coveralls splattered with blood and gore. She didn’t remember. She didn’t remember any of it, how she’d gotten on her feet, having beaten Islington with the pipe, getting covered with blood, none of it. Tamara looked down at the battered form lying on the deck, a shout of triumph escaping her lips. She had won. Two hundred forty-eight years since they had seen one another, and fate had delivered him unto her. He’d finally tried to satisfy his baser urges but she’d won. And he was dead.

  She tossed the pipe on the deck and walked away to retrieve his gun. Turning back, for one last gloat, Tamara leaned down, right in Islington’s battered face…

  It wasn’t him.

  She recoiled in horror, empty hand flying to her chest. The gun hung in her other hand in nerveless fingers. It wasn’t him. The man she’d killed wasn’t Oliver Islington. It wasn’t him! Calling up the information on her implants, a window opened up on her optical display. A quick replay confirmed what her eyes were now telling her. This man was never Oliver Islington. But she had seen him! Oh, he was a nasty piece of trash, and she didn’t feel any remorse over his death, but what had just happened? What was going on?

  What is happening to me?

  Then the sound of more gunfire came into her awareness and she couldn’t dwell any longer.

  Ka’Xarian was down at the main life support processor, swapping out the algae matrices when the first hit came. Cursing, his mandibles clacking, he pulled out the second to last of the two meter high filter cartridges and tossed it on the deck. Damned bridge crew, he thought. We are just starting to get this ship in some kind of order and then they have to go and crash into something. It never fails.

  Then the captain came on the overhead. “All hands, this is the Captain. We are under attack by unknown forces. Watch yourselves, and prepare to be boarded.”

  “Boarded?” he said out loud. That was insane. When the second hit struck the ship, he knew that this was happening. Who is boarding us? No one should be boarding us. People don’t do that. He felt cold, loathing and distant, somehow.

  He looked around for a weapon, any sort of weapon. As Tamara had mentioned, this was a cargo ship, not a battlecruiser. There was a small cache of arms for the security team but as a rule, no one else carried. A few had blades that they wore when they went for shore leave, but Ka’Xarian never did. On the ship, no one but security went around armed. And this was the life support compartment. What kind of weapon could he find here?

  The staccato thunder of gunfire sounded, causing the zheen to flinch. There wasn’t time to dither. Grabbing up a half-meter long wrench, he moved to the hatchway of the compartment. He could hear the clunk-clunk-clunk of booted feet running around on the metal deckplating. The footsteps were close, just outside the compartment. A skin suited individual carrying a rifle in his hands, stepped inside the hatch and Ka’Xarian struck. The wrench smashed the man’s helmet like a ripe watermelon, driving the man’s skull into his shoulders for good measure. Helping himself to the dead man’s rifle, Xar peeked out of the hatchway.

  A woman’s scream echoed down the corridor, a tortured wail that seemed to go on forever. Xar flinched in pain. The noise itself was excruciating, but the thought of what was happening to her was even worse. He continued down the corridor, the rifle pointed in front of him. Rushing into the new rec room that had only been opened a few days before, he found Sylvia, one of the cargo workers on the deck, two men tearing at her and laughing as she struggled. The zheen didn’t even think. He shot the first one in the head, showering both the other rapist and the woman in blood and gore. Sylvia shrieked in abject panic while the second man whirled to face the door.

  Ka’Xarian swung the rifle, cracking the man across the jaw hard enough to spend him sprawling. With a roar, the zheen lunged forward, smashing his chitinous foot down on the man’s throat. The man clutched at his neck, gagging. Xar moved his face right into the other’s. “You do not touch my crew!” he hissed as the other man died. He turned to Sylvia, who, weeping, was trying to cover herself with the tattered remnants of her ship’s coveralls. Xar went to her, but he didn’t touch her. “They’re dead, Sylvia,” he said, a slight buzz getting into his voice, a soothing sound for his people. Getting up, he took a blanket off the nearby couch and draped it over her. She sniffed, her sobs slowly decreasing. “They can’t hurt you again,” the zheen said. “I have to go.” He stood.

  “No!” she gasped, her hand darted out and grabbed his pant leg. “Please, no!”

  Ka’Xarian’s antennae lowered. He nodded. “All right. Let’s get you up off the deck. Over on the couch.” He helped her to her feet, noticing the scratches, the bruises forming on her arms and legs through the tears in her clothes. She sat down on the couch, which also had spatters of blood on the cushions. Xar moved back to the doorway, his weapon at the ready. “I’m not going anywhere, Sylvia, but it isn’t safe yet.” She nodded, jerkily, from the couch. Tears silently slid unchecked down her cheeks.

  He looked back out into the corridor, hoping he wouldn’t have to kill anyone else.

  The pirates hustled into one of the cargo bays and loading up a palette of crates of the ship’s cargo consignment, hustled back out down the passages to their waiting shuttles in the boat bay. They weren’t taking everything, the ops officer on the bridge was noting, basically only a cross section of the various goods on the ship. A large cross section, to be sure, but they couldn’t possibly load up what they had in the cargo bays into four shuttles. Th
ough as far as the crew was concerned, everything they were taking would be sorely missed.

  “Captain!” the ops officer said. “They’ve just run off with three fifty-K sized barrels of water and two of hydrogen from the fuel tanks. That will bring us down to thirty percent in fuel reserves.”

  “Damn it,” he swore quietly, pounding a fist on the arm of his chair. Thirty percent was lower than the Grania Estelle had ever been. That was only a month’s amount of fuel, only just enough to get anywhere outside of this star system, using the most economical of fuel saving measures. The captain checked the display on his chair for the amounts left in the main tanks. Barely forty percent. He pressed a control on the other arm. “Bridge to cargo bay one. Moxie, what do you have for me?”

  “Bringing up sensors now, Captain,” Tamara came back. Her voice sounded hoarse and shaking.

  “You all right?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she retorted harshly. “All right. I’ve got two corvette warships holding position above and below us and a little ways out, a medium sized cargo ship, about half a light second.”

  “How many shuttles?”

  “Four, Captain. Two in the boat bay and two on the sides of the forward section.” She paused. “Captain, one of the corvettes is maneuvering. They’re firing!” A hit rocked the ship.

  “Breach on deck four!” George exclaimed from the ops station. “Hit to main engineering, looks like a number of fuel likes are ruptured, two of the fuel tanks on the starboard side have been punctured. We’re venting fuel.”

  “Shit!” The captain was on his feet. He pressed another control, but didn’t sit back down. “Seal off any affected areas that we can! Quesh, this is the captain. Status!”

  “We’re in trouble!” the Parkani roared back over the comm. “Got some company down here that’s making things difficult. Damn! I’ll get back to you!” And the connection ended.

  “Get a security team down to engineering. I am not losing my ship to these bastards.” He ran his hands though his hair in frustration, pacing around the small bridge.

  Main Engineering was a chaotic hell. Half of the engineers were at the main hatches, trying desperately to fight off the invaders, who stubbornly refused to leave. Neither side was doing anything except exchanging fire and damaging more equipment. Bullets, needles and plasma bolts were flying everywhere, though the fire was concentrated right at the edge of the engineering spaces. There were eight men bearing the bird of prey symbol on their skinsuits or body armor, firing continuously, though Quesh’s men were keeping them bottled up in the hatchway.

  The other half of Quesh’s men, including the Parkani himself, were just as desperate of their fellows, working frantically to get the damage under control. “Cut the fuel lines up at junction 246,” he ordered, working the console in front of him with three of his hands. The fourth limb, the lower right, hung limp at his side, a rough bandage tied around a seeping bullet wound in the lower shoulder.

  “On it Chief,” Krazna Yol, the fiery woman who served as one of his company leaders. She and two others were working on their own consoles. But it seemed they weren’t getting anywhere. “No go, Chief. The valves are jammed open. I’m closing it off at junction 230.” That was a lot of fuel in the lines that would be wasted, but there was nothing they could do. If they didn’t stop the hemorrhaging, they would lose all the fuel. Two of the six main fuel tanks were breached and now empty.

  A stray bullet smashed the screen in front of Krazna and she ducked instinctively. “Chief! You need to do something!”

  “I’m working as best I can,” the big alien yelled back. The computer systems worked so much better now that Tamara had worked her software magic on them. The Parkani had known that the systems were infested with viruses but not being a coder himself, could do very little about it. There were still problems, of course, whole banks of processors were either damaged or were completely out of commission, which caused the systems to run slower than was optimal. But it was a job of a matter of minutes to reroute the fuel lines around the damaged or severed sections, saving as much as possible. Something told the Chief that they were going to need every drop to get through the next few days.

  The sounds of gunfire increased, a cacophonous roar that drowned out every other sound. Quesh, Krazna and the others dropped to the deck, cowering as bullets smashed consoles, ricocheted around the compartment. Some of the techs screamed in terror as the fusillade never seemed to end. Just when the large Parkani was about to lose even his incredible cool, the shooting stopped. “Clear!” someone shouted. “Anyone still alive in here?”

  “Cora you bitch!” Quesh was on his feet in a flash and raced across the engineering space. The invaders, who up until a moment ago had been pouring fire into the room, were now lying in a pile at the hatchway, leaking blood from a couple hundred holes. “You shot up my engine room!” he bellowed, stopping on the inside of the door. Three of his hands were planted on his hips.

  “You’re welcome, you big lout,” the woman replied. Corajen Nymeria wasn’t human, she was a lupusan, a humanoid wolfwoman. Her species looked like the old legends of werewolves, though the lupusan couldn’t transform like the legends. She was as tall as an average adult human male, with a coat of shiny black and brown fur. Her golden eyes sparkled. It wasn’t every day she got to truly go around and “kick ass” like this. She was a junkie for this sort of thing and wasn’t shy about letting everyone know it. She often was part of the shore patrol who would round up the crew when they went on leave in port. Often Cora would come back with bruised knuckles and a few stories to tell. Now, it was clear, she was in her element.

  “By the stars!” the Parkani raged, throwing his arms in the air in frustration. The lupusan was garbed in very little clothing, creatures in this galaxy with fur tended to not wear much in the way of clothing, as it itched unmercifully. But now she was wearing a set of body armor, cut to fit her slim shape. She was armed with a military-style pulser, her ears flicking in amusement.

  “Oh, stop your whining,” she replied calmly. “My team and I got here as fast as we could. Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.” She looked mournfully at the crewmen lying dead on the deck, her ears and tail drooping. “Are you all set in here? Job’s not done yet.” Her ears perked back up in excitement.

  “Go!” he bellowed. “Get the hell out of my engine room!” Quesh grabbed one of the techs from off the deck. “Starkey, quit lazing about and get up. I need console two up soonest.”

  The man looked dazed. “R-right, Chief.” He began to unscrew the front of the console to get at the damaged insides.

  Quesh turned to the hatchway. “Are you still here?” he demanded.

  Corajen growled good-naturedly and then signaled her team to move out.

  “Captain, the corvettes are pulling back,” Tamara reported from her seat in the cockpit of her fighter.

  “How fast?”

  “Pretty damned leisurely, from these readings. They’re moving off, though my sensors are showing that they are still targeting us.”

  “No surprises there,” he replied. “Anything else of interest?”

  “That cargo ship has its main cargo bay doors open.”

  There was a pause. “When did that happen?”

  “Well, I wasn’t paying attention, but sometime between when they arrived and now.”

  “So they weren’t just flying around with the doors open.”

  “No, Captain, definitely not. These guys are aggressive, but I don’t think they’re stupid.”

  There was another pause, slightly longer this time. “So what do you think that means?”

  “My guess is exactly what it looks like. They’re pulling back because they’re finishing up. I’d say by now they’ve gotten whatever it is they’re looking for and are going to leave us to our own devices.”

  “All right. Keep a weather eye out.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” She looked up as she switched her sensors to very short range, getting an insid
e look at that ship. “What the…” She quickly got on the communicator.

  “We’ve got a fire in replicator two!” George shouted.

  Wonderful, the captain thought. “That’s just all I need right now. Cut the atmo to the bay until it’s out then restore.”

  It wasn’t a fire. Or rather, not entirely a fire. The last thing the invaders desired, it seemed, was their own replicator. During the disconnecting of the device, the pirates rushed and switched over to a plasma cutter and just sliced it free from the wall. In doing so, the sparks ignited some trash on the deck and in the oxygen rich atmosphere caused a flash and then wham! Suddenly the whole compartment was on fire, fed by the fuel lines the invaders had so rashly cut. One of them was lit up and fell to the deck screaming and batting at the flames. One of his fellows pulled out his pulser and shot him in the head. Lugging the heavy machine onto a hover palette, the remaining four rushed out of the bay and headed back down to the boat bay.

  Tamara raced down the corridor, the captured gun in her hand. “Captain!” she barked as she ran. “They’re stealing replicator two!”

  She could hear the man swearing over the comm circuit, but she didn’t respond. She rushed past frame three-sixty and turned for the boat bay. She was heedless of the risk, not caring that less than a month previous she hadn’t known any of these people. And now she was quite possibly throwing her life away for people that might not lift a finger to save hers. Freighter crews were intensely loyal to their own, but outsiders were always just that, outsiders. Yes, the crew of the Grania Estelle had begun to warm to her and some were starting to like what she was helping them do with their ship, but she wasn’t one of them. Not quite.

  But that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t her ship. It didn’t matter that she was a person out of time, or that her career was gone, her goals scattered to the solar winds. The Navy was a distant memory and the Republic was a bitter remnant of its former glory. So why was she doing this? It wasn’t as though she actually owed anything to these people. She could leave the Perdition behind and jump ship at Instow. Hell, she could take the fighter and hustle off to Instow and leave these people to their fate. Tamara was a skilled pilot, she could easily evade the pirates and have just enough fuel and life support to make the trip. Fighting and killing that trash in the cargo bay was one thing; that was simple self-defense. She had no real ties to these people.