Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1

by Michael Kotcher

  With a will, he opened up his toolbelt and stopped before the turret. The cannon itself looked to be in decent shape. Two hits wreathed in carbon scoring punctured the base of the turret, which had disabled the movement actuators and the targeting systems. There wasn’t going to be time to do a proper fix here and even with on the fly repairs, the actuator repairs were going to take more time than he had to get the cannon its full range of movement. But there was nothing for that now. Simply getting the weapon operable was going to take some work. Once that was done, if needed, they could turn the ship itself to try and line up a shot. Certainly not the best of the alternatives, but it was the only one they had at the moment.

  “Try it now,” he ordered over his suit’s communicator. “I think I’m done here.”

  “Copy, Cap,” Marcos replied. There was a pause. “Targeting systems are up. Looking good there. I’m going to start moving the gun around. Stand back, Cap.”

  “I’m clear, Marcos. Just do it,” he snapped irritably. He looked up. He couldn’t see the incoming ship, but he knew it had to be close.

  The cannon rose up and began to turn, tracking imaginary targets as the gun swiveled around. It stuck a bit as it rotated and he pulled out a spanner to try and smooth it out.

  “Captain, they’ve closed to five hundred thousand kilometers,” Jolene’s voice came over the comms. “We’re out of time.”

  “All right,” he said grimly, trying to control his breathing. He began the walk back inside, which was strenuous in the bulky suit. “I’m coming back in. Get the cannon online.”

  “Captain, are you sure that’s the best idea?” Jolene asked. “I mean, we’re not in the best of shape and I’m not even sure that gun can really do much damage to that ship coming in. That assumes we can even hit it.”

  “Just do it, Jolene. Stop arguing with me,” he huffed. Damn this suit is heavy!

  “Yes, Skipper,” she said, sounding contrite. He wondered if she really was. It was hard to tell with his people, especially after the tragedy they’d all lived through.

  He was barely inside the airlock and out of his suit before Jolene called him up to the cockpit. “They’re hailing us again, Skip,” she said, leaning over the console. The seat right behind her was perfectly useable, and Vosteros was surprised she wasn’t sitting in it. She turned to him as he entered and he could see the fear there.

  “Anything new?”

  “They’re demanding we cut accel, drop shields and prepare to be boarded. And they weren’t so benevolent about it this time.”

  “Oh? They’re not on a mission of mercy anymore?”

  “Oh, they’re still saying they’re going to help us,” she replied, though bitterness was coating each word. “But now they’re telling us if we don’t stop and let them board they might be forced to fire on us.”

  He frowned. “That ship, even if it’s got military grade propulsion doesn’t have the legs to drag us all the way to the fueling station. He’d be straining against us for days just to get us moving in the right direction if they hit us and took out our engine.” Now he was the one who was bitter. His poor ship.

  “Are you really going to shoot them?”

  He considered this. He wanted to. He didn’t have much of a punch, not with only one laser cannon, and while the enemy ship’s shields were raised they had no chance of hurting them. But once they got close enough to board, they’d have to lower their own shields to mate the two ships together. They might have to wait until they were right on top of each other, but they could do it.

  “I am, but we’re going to wait. Keep the cannon powered up, but cut acceleration and lower our shields.”

  She grumped. “They’re so low in power and coverage, there’s almost no point in having them up at all.”

  Vosteros chuckled. “No, I suppose not. Helps keep the solar radiation off, I guess.”

  “Skip, we’re far enough out that it’s pretty diffuse. I think we’ll be okay.”

  It wasn’t all that diffuse, to use her word, but the star’s radiation was relatively low enough that they should be all right for a while. He wasn’t worried. It was far more likely that he and his crew would be dead from “lead poisoning” than they would from excessive radiation exposure. That wasn’t a ship full of medics and engineers coming over to lend assistance. It was a boarding pinnace, packed with troops. Even if they could only hold eight soldiers, stuffed in tight, that was double the complement of the Emilia Walker. All they would need to do was mate with the ship, toss a few stun grenades inside and storm the cargo ship. His handful of stunners and a single shotgun wouldn’t be able to stop them from getting aboard and taking what they wanted.

  Which in all likelihood was the ship itself. Sure she was beaten bloody, but Emilia Walker could be salvaged. Eamonn and his people had proven that. These people didn’t even need replicators; if they had machine shops to fabricate the parts, they could fix her up again.

  “They’re not taking my ship,” the captain vowed, staring at the sensor display, which showed the local ship, the pinnace, growing ever closer. The time it would take them to mate airlocks and lock the two ships together could now be measured in minutes. “Not much time before they’re here.”

  “What do we do?” Jolene asked, looking up from the displays to her captain.

  “Once they get a little bit closer, we’re going to fire on them. They’re saying they are all good and helpful people, and yet they’re doing nothing but issuing demands. Have there been any attempts at visual communications?” He pointed. “I know it’s working on our end.”

  She shook her head slowly, a small smile spreading over her face. “No, Captain, there hasn’t. They just sent messages from far out so they didn’t have to send visually. Now that they’re closer, they haven’t said a damned word.”

  “You’re catching on,” he said, clapping her on the shoulder again. This time it was so hard she winced. “Sorry, kid. Let’s get the cannon ready.”

  “Captain!” Kay’grax called, rushing into the cockpit. “Shields are gone.”

  “I know, we shut them off.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. They were okay while they were running, but once the nodes stopped running, there was a fault in the main control trunk, which caused a feedback surge…”

  But the Vosteros cut him off. “We blew out the entire shield generator grid?” he asked darkly.

  The zheen hung his head, his antennae dropping in shame. “I’m sorry, Captain. I didn’t see there was a problem until it was too late.”

  “Well,” the captain replied, trying to keep from exploding in anger. The poor young bug had done his best. Kay’grax was an engine tech that he, the captain, had shanghaied into being the chief engineer. At the time, they’d had no choice. Vosteros himself had some cross-training in engineering, well, more of how to jury-rig components together to achieve a semblance of function, but the young zheen was really the only one left in the crew who had the slightest idea of how to keep the old girl running. The lack of crew and serious damage they’d taken with the pirates certainly hadn’t helped things along. In fact, it was a miracle that Kay’grax had kept the shields up and running as long as he had. It was better that they failed here, all things considered, than while they were traveling through hyperspace. The stresses of faster-than-light travel would have shredded the Emilia Walker, leaving nothing but free floating atoms. Yes, being without shields in a planetary system just as they were about to come under attack was a serious issue, but perhaps not as serious as that.

  “Just a little bit closer,” Frederick Vosteros muttered, watching the display. Once they were within what he considered point blank range, he’d aim the cannon and fire.

  His hand readied over the controls.

  Vanku Sopris Maakan held her hands lightly on the flight controls as her pinnace closed in on the damaged freighter. This wasn’t her first rodeo; she’d flown for boarding operations in this system on six other occasions and in all of them, the cr
ews of the ships in question would always try something heroic and daring at the last moment. She had no choice, the bosses wanted the ship and therefore she couldn’t fire on it until and unless they fired on her. But she knew they would. They always did. They always tried something to try and stave off the inevitable.

  The easiest way to deal with this would be to put a shot into the ship’s bridge, killing the pilot and possibly the gunners as well. That, owing to the state of the ship, would probably depressurize the whole thing and take care of the crew, which meant the boarding party wouldn’t have anything to worry about once they got inside. Then they could send a tug out here to tractor the freighter in to the Nestromu Orbital for docking and refit. Sadly, the bosses didn’t agree with Sopris Maakan. No one consulted the woman on the spot. That was the way of things. Labor did the work and management took the spoils. But, Sopris supposed, that was the way of things everywhere.

  Oh, it looks like the fun is just about to begin. They’re making sure their ventral cannon is unobtrusively powered up, but they’re keeping it pointed away so that I won’t think it’s a threat. She sighed, flipping a few switches on her console, readying the pinnace’s shields. So, when are they going to whip that gun around and fire? Should be any second now.

  She kept her hand on the shield controls, ready to raise them at a second’s notice.

  Sopris was a second too late.

  “Now!” Vosteros crowed, pressing the firing control.

  The laser cannon swiveled from its forward firing position to pointing straight at the incoming ship. A burst of radiant energy lanced out from the cannon, piercing the nose of the pinnace, blasting apart the smaller ship’s forward guns and its portside missile launcher. The second shot tore a meter wide chunk out of the nose of the ship, sending it tumbling slowly away from the freighter, its engines exposed to Emilia Walker’s gun.

  But the third shot hit against the pinnace’s now-raised energy shields, causing them to flare in a wash of opaque solidity just shy of the ship’s engines. And now the ship was angling back around.

  “Oh, no,” Vosteros whispered, an icy fist clenching his heart. It was happening all over again, just like the last time his ship was attacked. He’d gotten off a good salvo, but it hadn’t been enough, his aim hadn’t been true. He’d wounded the beast, but not enough for a kill. And now he and his crew and his ship were going to suffer.

  “Oh, you little bitch,” Sopris growled, swinging the ship around, damage alarms blaring. Whoever was at the guns was a good shot, she had to admit that. He had fired at just the right moment to catch her ship unprotected and that wasn’t easy to do. Made even more difficult by the fact that she had been waiting for such a move. “How did I miss it?” she asked, bringing her pinnace’s guns to bear. She would kick herself about this later and she knew bosses would give her a good kick. “Don’t worry,” Sopris said, speaking to the unknown gunner on the freighter. “I’m not going to give you an opening like that again.” She cycled through the missiles in the feed queue for her remaining weapon.

  Pressing her trigger, the pinnace’s starboard missile launcher spat out one of its weapons, a missile that was little more than a tube with a warhead and a propulsion system. It was not a “smart” missile, meaning it really had no guidance system, it was a weapon used on targets that were too big to miss that didn’t require a whole lot of precision. Sopris had aimed the shot low, and programmed the proximity fuse to go off within a hundred meters. Not a wide miss, but enough that the explosion from the warhead would only damage the ship (and its cannon) not blast the freighter to bits.

  The detonation rocked the freighter and the cannon crumpled into a mound of unrecognizable metal and cracks appeared in the hull radiating out from where the explosion hit. The ship wobbled unsteadily like a gyroscope losing its spin. Atmosphere started hissing out from the cracks in tiny little jets from a dozen tiny breaches and Sopris’s sensors showed power was down on the ship to a tiny fraction. In moments, the crew of that ship would be dead.

  “Moving to dock,” she called over her shoulder to the rest of the flight crew. “Make sure the boarders are ready to go over. And make sure they have breather masks secured.”

  “Copy that,” one of the other pilots replied.

  “Thirty seconds until docking maneuvers are completed,” Sopris announced, getting the pinnace into position.

  Vosteros picked himself up off the deck. He put a hand to his head, which was throbbing uncontrollably, a goose egg forming near his temple. Blood was trickling down his head; more from a blunt force trauma than a laceration. His vision was blurry and vomit was on the deck next to him. He didn’t remember emptying his stomach, but it must have happened.

  Looking to the side, he saw Jolene lying on the deck next to him, but she was in far worse shape. She was bleeding from a score of lacerations, small bits of metal were imbedded in the wounds, none of which were terribly serious. Painful, yes, the captain could see, but none that would kill her. Until he saw the sliver of deck plating that had punctured her throat. The young woman was making gurgling, gasping noises and twitching uncontrollably. Her eyes were already glazed over and the pool of blood was spreading on the side facing away from him. He lurched, trying to get to her, but by the time he could even touch her arm, he knew it was too late. His pilot, one of the few remaining members of his crew, was dead.

  He started to gasp in panic, or at least, he thought it was panic. The compartment seemed very loud, what with all the noise from the damage and there was a persistent whistling noise. His head was swimming and the air was getting hard to get into his lungs.

  “Captain!” Kay’grax shouted over the din. The metal frame of the ship was creaking from the strain of the hit and the atmosphere was hissing out from the numerous breaches. The zheen had hastily thrown on a bulky engineering hardsuit, meant for external repairs and yet somehow he was able to nimbly move around. In one gloved hand, he had a breather mask, which he pushed up to Vosteros’s face, holding it there while the captain fumbled with the straps to secure it over the back of his head. A moment later, the mask sealed around his face and suddenly he could breathe again.

  “Jolene,” Vosteros tried to reach her again.

  “She’s gone, Captain,” Kay’grax’s voice came over the mask’s comm unit. “She’s dead and there’s nothing we can do about it now. I need you to get up!”

  “Head… hurts,” he moaned, his shaking hand touching his forehead.

  Kay’grax gently pulled the man’s hand away. “I know it hurts, Captain, but you can’t stay on the deck here. That ship is closing they’re going to dock any second.”

  “Wh-what?” the captain asked, confused. Things were moving too fast. His vision was spinning.

  “He’s out!” the zheen shouted over the comms.

  “I’m coming,” Marcos replied. The captain didn’t know where the cargoman was, he couldn’t see him.

  “I’m…” he licked his lips. “I’m not out.” His voice was weak and shaking.

  “What do we do, Marcos?” the zheen demanded. “They’re coming!” There was a loud clunk and the ship shivered. The zheen chittered in fear.

  “Shut up, Kay!” the big cargoman shouted. “We need to let them aboard. The ship is almost dead and you and I can’t fix the problems fast enough to save the captain.” Vosteros had no idea where the man was, every time he tried to turn her head he almost blacked out.

  There was a very faint crash, one more felt than heard. Why was it so quiet? he wondered. Am I going deaf? Am I dying?

  “Here!” Kay’grax yelled, his voice sounding incredibly loud over the comms. “Here! This one is hurt! He’s the captain you bastards!”

  Six figures entered the ship, all armed with assault rifles. They had combat suits on, sealed helmets with mirrored faceplates, probably meant to protect against bright flashes and doubling as a way to keep their identities hidden. Not that it would matter much if they were just going to kill the occupants of any ships t
hey would board. It was a matter of minutes to secure the ship, but three of them stood over the three surviving crewmembers of the Emilia Walker, waiting for their fellows to finish up. Once they returned, the three were hustled off the ship and into the pinnace, where two more guards were waiting, handguns ready.

  “It’s going to be okay, Captain,” Marcos said, trying to sound positive.

  Vosteros leaned back against the bench where the guards sat him down. They were surprisingly gentle about it compared to the last armed boarding party that had come on his ship. “Yeah, I don’t see how.”

  Stella appeared on the captain’s display. “Captain, I’m showing the pinnace has docked with Emilia Walker.”

  “Damn it,” he swore. After seeing the battle, which was really little more than an exchange of blows, he had feared the worst. He was afraid that any minute he would see the fusion core breach and the Emilia Walker would be nothing but an expanding ball of particulate matter.

  “Sir, we can’t save them,” George piped up. The captain craned his neck to look at his operations officer. “Even if we can get to them before they reach the fueling station, they have two buddies out there waiting to pounce on us. And we can’t fire on the pinnace in question or we might kill the Emilia Walker’s crew.”

  “We can’t leave them, George,” the captain replied patiently.

  “Sir, you need to think this through logically,” George said, trying to keep calm. “We haven’t even broken out of parking orbit yet. We’re still waiting on our last shuttle to come back from the station, which we can’t leave behind. Kara is barely two light seconds out from her parking orbit but once the station gets wise to what we’re doing, if even one of the pinnaces goes after her, she’s toast. That’s to say nothing of the ones here that’ll pounce on us before we even get close to the fueling station.”

  “And what about Ka’Xarian and his team?” Kutok chimed in, though she sounded as though she really didn’t want to speak up. “If the locals decide they don’t want us interfering, they might grab them to use as hostages for our good behavior.”