A Greater Interest: Samair in Argos: Book 4

by Michael Kotcher

  “What?” the general roared, leaping to his feet. He rushed over to the tactical station, though he could have seen everything perfectly from the displays on his command seat. “What the hell is happening?”

  The tactical officer, Bek, pointed one claw to the display. A flurry of missiles streaked forth from the flight of starfighters, which were still in range of Illuyanka’s sensors. The missiles were engaged by HT-626’s point defense weapons, but only about half of the missiles were shot down. The rest plowed into the port side of the ship, and the light cruiser’s sensors registered explosions at the center of the ship.

  “What kind of damage?” he growled, his teeth bared.

  “I don’t have a full report, General,” the tactical officer replied. “But HT-626’s communications are down. They’ve dropped out of the tactical net.”

  Typhon roared his fury. After a second’s rage, he calmed himself. “Is it just the fighters?”

  “Yes, General.” The wolf seemed unperturbed by the general’s outburst. “Just those four fighters. Now they’re hanging back, but they’re not moving off from HT-626, either.”

  Typhon considered this. It would take several minutes at full acceleration to decelerate and then get moving in the right direction, and then several minutes more to get to HT-626 to attempt to help. He looked back to the display.

  “Targets in range.”

  “Fire,” he ordered. “We’ll take them out and then we’ll swing back to render assistance to the assault transport.”

  The tactical officer stabbed several controls on his console and the ship’s turbolasers opened up on the two corvettes. The two ships broke formation, trying to move away from one another, forcing Illuyanka to split her fire. But it didn’t matter. The light cruiser had guns enough for both of the smaller ships and damaged as they were, they were no match for Typhon’s flagship.

  Cavalier rocked under the onslaught. Nazan gripped the arms of his chair as the ship lurched. “Increase speed!” he ordered. “We need to try and outdistance them.”

  “I’ve lost helm control!” the helmsman cried, stabbing vainly at the controls.

  Another hit and the bridge just exploded around them. One second, things were holding together, if dire, the next the bridge was in shambles and in flames.

  “Abandon ship!” Nazan rasped. “We need to get the crew… off…” And he slumped into the chair.

  “Captain!” Alys Flynn cried, releasing her restraints. She slammed her hand down on the abandon ship button on the bulkhead and a klaxon started wailing. A klaxon she’d never hoped to hear. Then she rushed over to Nazan and then gasped in dismay.

  He was clutching weakly at his stomach and blood was seeping through his fingers, staining his uniform. He was still conscious, but only barely. “Get the crew… off… Alys…” Nazan ground out through gritted teeth. He was obviously in great pain.

  “Get over here!” she shouted to one of the bridge officers. “Help me with the Captain. We need to get him to the escape pod.” He was bleeding out and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She put her hand over his, trying to apply more pressure to the wound.

  “What about the rest of the ship?” the man demanded.

  “We can’t help them now.” Alys released his restraining harness and started to pull him out of the command seat. “We need to evacuate before the ship comes apart.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the Cavalier bucked from another hit, her frame and hull groaning with the sound of tortured metal. “Help me!” The comms officer rushed over and helped her drag the man out of his seat.

  The three other bridge watch hustled over to help, one of them pressing the control on the bulkhead to open the bridge door. There was an escape pod in the corridor just outside the bridge and that’s where they were heading. Alys and the comms officer dragged the now unconscious captain into the pod and the others piled in just behind.

  Another terrifying groan of metal and flames ignited down the corridor as a plasma conduit burst. “Let’s go!” Alys said, putting her arms around the captain and holding his back against her, holding him tight with one hand over his gut wound. There was no time to play with restraining harnesses.

  The comms officer palmed the lock closed and the door hissed shut. “Hang on!” he called and the pod jerked as the rockets fired, sending the pod away from the Cavalier.

  “Yes!” Bek said, clenching one fist. “One of the corvettes is breaking apart. They’re launching escape pods. I’m showing four pods accelerating away from that ship.”

  “And the other?”

  “Dead in space,” Bek replied. “They’re adrift.”

  Typhon nodded. “Bring us around. Helm, set a course back to the assault transport. We’re going to render what assistance we can.”

  “Aye, sir,” the wolf at the helm replied, changing the ship’s course.

  As Illuyanka slewed around, her main propulsion units fired, slowing the cruiser. Typhon checked the sensors and saw that the cargo ships were on approach. Another half hour and they would be alongside with the very nice and tasty tank farm that was in geosync orbit over their gas mining station. There were a pair of defensive turrets nearby to the He3 tanks, but Illuyanka was now too far away to properly engage them.

  The general settled himself back in his command seat. “Comms, open a channel to the Ganges, tell them we’re moving to assist HT-626. They need to clear the way for the cargo ships.”

  “Aye, sir.” The wolf started speaking into the mic, sending the message to the other light cruiser.

  Typhon scowled. At least we managed the two kills. Even the thought of his assault transport and his wolves in trouble wasn’t enough to dampen his spirits.

  “Is he all right?” Alys Flynn demanded, grabbing the other officer by the sleeve.

  They were aboard the escape pod, floating free and on a course away from the gas giant. There were six of them, all bridge officers and none of them were free of injury. Alys had a long cut running down her forearm. The comms officer had medical training and was doing his best to treat the captain’s belly wound. A piece of the Operations console had exploded, and a chunk had hit him in the midsection, impaling him. Alys, as ranking officer, had assessed the damage and ordered the crew to abandon ship. The officers had grabbed Nazan Tariq, stuffed him and themselves into the nearest escape pod and launched.

  The captain’s head was resting on her lap while the comms officer injected the man with a vial of combat heal from the medkit and wrapped the wound with gauze. The chunk of metal from the Ops console was still there.

  “He’s really hurt, Alys,” the comms officer snarled, running a scanner over the captain’s terrible wound.

  “Tony, can’t you get that thing out of him?” one of the others asked, pointing.

  Tony, the comms officer, glared at the other man. “Yes, Darby, I can. I can just yank that chunk of metal out of the man, but then he’ll bleed out in minutes. It’s unsightly, I know, but for the moment, it’s the best thing we can do, just leave it in there until we can get him to a proper sickbay, either on the mine, or on one of the other ships.” Finally, he sat back and wiped his forehead. “That’s the best I can do for now. He’s stable, but we really need to hope we get picked up soon.” He gestured at Alys’s arm. “Let me take a look at that cut.”

  She shook her head, more concerned with the unconscious captain. “It’s fine.”

  But Tony was insistent. “It’s not fine. You’re losing blood.” She started to argue further, but gave up at the glower on his face.

  Alys sighed and nodded. “Fine. Just be quick about it.” She grimaced as he swabbed out the wound with a cleaning salve from the kit, then jabbed her in the arm with another vial of the nanite healing solution. He slapped a patch over the wound, sealing it.

  “There, that should be good until we can get you to hospital.”

  “Beacon’s active,” one of the others reported. “Now we wait. And hope that the pirates don’t decide to use u
s for target practice.”

  “Don’t tempt fate,” Alys told him. She leaned her head against the metal hull of the pod. “Last thing we need is for one of those pirate ships to get any ideas.”

  “Do we know if any other pods made it off of Cavalier?” Tony asked, checking on the injuries of the others.

  Alys shrugged, putting her hand on the captain’s shoulder. The man would have despaired at the utter destruction of his ship. He might yet, once he woke up. The wrecked chunks of Cavalier had been on a collision course with the gas giant, most likely to be burned up in the atmosphere. “I think at least two others did. But I don’t have any idea. The pod doesn’t have very good sensors.” She closed her eyes. “I will miss that ship.”

  “First one I ever served on,” Tony admitted.

  “Think the company will build another?”

  Alys closed her eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. Of course they’ll build another ship. Several. I’m going to petition that one of the ships gets named Cavalier.”

  After that they continued floating off into the Deep Dark, no one really having anything more to say.

  Commander Hestian smiled, well pleased. Ganges was romping around the tank farm, weapons blazing as the light cruiser tore apart the defensive weapon turrets. Missiles impacted against the cruiser’s shields, but Ganges managed to shrug off most of them and shoot down most of the rest. Two missiles exploded against the shields, but the fire wasn’t concentrated; one missile hit each side of the ship. The cruiser rocked under the blows, but kept on going.

  “Minor spotting on the shields after that last hit,” Gorgen, the lupusan in charge of tactical reported. “Down to fifty-eight percent.” He pressed another control, letting loose with another salvo of heavy lasers. The strike shredded one of the automated defensive turrets.

  “Two down, four to go,” Hestian grunted. His first battle with his first command of the Ganges was going swimmingly so far. Thankfully, Lord Verrikoth had given Hestian his head and allowed him to chase after those corvettes and now to clear up the defensive turrets around the gas mine and the tank farm. There was the pride of the Lord’s flag to consider as well, of course. If General Typhon was going to race after them and get to the goods, he couldn’t be allowed to do so on his own. Lord Verrikoth had brought this fleet here to load up on goods and to make a statement here in Seylonique and had brought Typhon and his Dog Soldiers along as a hammer to his own forces’ anvil. But that didn’t mean that the pirate lord trusted him. Nor did Hestian, a fellow lupusan.

  Besides, it felt good to run Ganges through her paces. The ship had been in several engagements already, but this was the first with Hestian in command. Jensen Tyler had been in command of the ship since its commission and had done a good job of running things. This had been the only of the trio of light cruisers to have survived the fight with the Republic in Byra-Kae and among the most powerful units in Lord Verrikoth’s fleet. Hestian had managed to convince Verrikoth to give him command of Ganges and he wanted to be sure that he had what it took.

  “Helm, bring us to two-seven-three, keep us on the same plane,” he ordered in his gravelly voice. “Target the next platform and roll the ship. Shields!”

  The zheen at the shields station turned, his antennae curling and uncurling. “I have shunted emergency reserves into the shields; they are now coming up to seventy-five percent.”

  “Good, make sure our hull is protected as we go back in.” Hestian nodded. “We have more of those turrets to take out. I want to make sure the way is clear for the cargo ships when they get here.”

  “Yes, Commander,” the zheen replied, turning back to his console.

  This was proving to be costly, and yet, Hestian was surprised at the defenders’ response. The corvettes and the fighters had done a good job of engaging and handling the light forces, though their own numbers were dwindling. They had the punch to handle the fleet’s corvettes and starfighters, but they didn’t have much that could challenge the cruisers.

  Just then, the comms operator turned to Hestian. “Commander! There’s an incoming message coming through in the clear.”

  Hestian gestured for the man to get on with it. The operator pressed a control and the sound of a zheen voice came over the speakers. “One vision!”

  He looked to the comms operator. “That’s it?” he asked.

  The man looked confused. He checked his console. “Yes, sir, that’s it. Nothing more.”

  “Commander! Nemesis is under attack!”

  A few minutes earlier…

  “That cruiser is going to mess things up in a hurry,” Korqath mused. The battle had been going fairly well, up to this point, but after the pirate heavy cruiser trashed the Angara and then one of the light cruisers destroyed Eridain and Cavalier, he knew that the tide had turned. There was nothing more than fighters (and the Maitland) left to stop the pirates from taking the Kutok mine.

  “That’s what I was saying, Lead,” Hukriss agreed. “That big goliath blitzer is going to burn all of our real estate out here and clearly the big ships aren’t up to stopping it.”

  Korqath keyed his comms to the squadron channel. “All ships, this is Korqath. Anyone who has a clear shot at the pirate’s heavy cruiser, lock on to my telemetry now.” He brought up his targeting and locked onto the center of the large warship. The tone turned solid and the reticule changed from yellow to red. He waited another ten seconds while the rest of the pilots lined up. The acknowledgements came back, he heard nine voices and then decided he couldn’t wait any longer. “Ready and… fire!” He pressed the triggers and two missiles dropped off the wings of his fighter and raced for the cruiser.

  First five, then eight, then twelve and then sixteen, then more and more pairs of missiles joined his, all streaking toward their target as fast as their rocket motors could carry them.

  Korqath, unable to control a triumphant impulse, keyed his comms to broadcast in the open, no encryption, for all to hear. “One vision!” he screamed into his mic, putting all the rage and hate he could into that cry. A few seconds later, the remaining Aploras and Twin Novas echoed his call.

  “Incoming fire!” the sensor officer called out. Commander Tyler was at his side in an instant, looking over the young man’s shoulder.

  “He’s right, my Lord,” Jensen Tyler reported. “Sixty plus inbound.”

  “Point defensse,” Verrikoth ordered. “Shoot them down.” The zheen pirate lord’s voice was utterly calm, as though a hail storm of missiles wasn’t just bearing down on his flagship.

  The tactical team activated the point defense clusters and they opened up, filling space with a storm of coherent energy. Energy bolts blasted out in waves and as the missiles drew closer they started to fall. Shots struck the incoming ordnance, vaporizing some in puffs of shrapnel, others triggered the various warheads making blossoms of nuclear fire. But more kept coming.

  “Twenty-two down. Twenty-six,” one of the zheen tactical operators called out. “Thirty-two.”

  “Come on,” Tyler said, tapping a fist on the back of the tactical officer’s chair.

  More energy blasts fired from the point defense clusters and more missiles fell. Space approaching the heavy cruiser was lit up with nuclear fireballs, each one a little closer than the last.

  “Thirty-five. Thirty-seven!”

  The point defense lasers were swinging almost wildly, the ship’s gunners trying desperately to take down the incoming weapons. They were spraying the area with energy blasts and a moment later the heavy lasers and turbolaser batteries opened up, but it didn’t help.

  “Forty-one!” the tactical officer shouted, breaking into a sweat.

  “Come on!” Tyler cried, his face twisted with anticipation. He stepped away from the console, running his hands through his hair. It seemed that he was getting more silver in his hair with every passing day. And having a blizzard of warheads bearing down on him wasn’t helping.

  “Incoming transmission, my Lord, in the clear,” the comms offic
er cried, turning to face the pirate lord.

  “What? Put it through.” Verrikoth clacked his mandibles in irritation. This was not the time for General Typhon to be issuing decrees from the other side of the planet, or crowing about how he’d managed to destroy those irritating corvettes. He had gotten one, without the wolf’s help. The zheen pirate hissed in satisfaction. And this battle wasn’t over.

  “One vision!” came the call over the speakers. The voice was zheen, Verrikoth could easily tell that, but he didn’t recognize the voice. Or the significance of the words.

  “Forty-six!”

  And then it was too late. Sixteen missiles made it past the last of the point defense, the energy weapons and the railguns and slammed into Nemesis’s shields. All of the FP fighter pilots had targeted on the same point, which was just below the center line of the starboard side of the heavy cruiser. Explosions rocked the ship as missiles impacted at different times, but all within seconds of one another. A few were prematurely detonated by the fireballs of the ones to hit sooner, but the energy and the radiation from the warheads still washed outward onto first the shields and then the hull of the ship. Two missiles actually shot through a hole in the shields and detonated straight onto the hull directly. A great hole was torn into the side of the ship, hull metal boiling and tearing off, energy flooding into the interior of the ship, causing secondary explosions. Atmosphere ignited, crewmen burned and then were swept out into the void as what little atmo was left rushed out. Emergency bulkheads slammed down, sealing off the damaged sections.

  “Damn them!” Verrikoth raged, his mouthparts writhing in fury after the ship stopped shaking. “Damage report!”

  “Massive shield damage on the starboard shields, my Lord,” the damage control operator started to say, but Verrikoth interrupted.

  “Yess, obvioussly,” he said dryly.

  “Yes, my Lord. Hull breach on decks five through seven, emergency bulkheads are in place and holding. Two shield nodes are destroyed and four plasma conduits are breached. We’re attempting to reroute.”