Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 (13 page)

              “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 inside 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.

              One thing that had not changed in two and a half centuries was pirates.  Back in her Navy days, pirates had been a problem, even in Republic space.  They would plunder and kill, just like in the ancient times on the homeworld of humanity on the high seas.  Tamara suspected that independent raiders had always been an issue for civilized societies.  And that was the reason she was helping here.  She would like to believe it was because she cared about these people, and while that was partly true, it wasn’t all of it.  It was the pirates.  Her time in the Navy had drilled into her head that pirates were criminals that couldn’t be allowed to harm innocent people.  They were a scourge that needed to be burned out.  And after seeing (in her Navy days) what they were capable of, and now the carnage here on the
Grania Estelle
, her perspective hadn’t altered in the least.  Spacing every one of those motherless bastards would be too good a fate for them.

              She sprinted down the last passage, the boat bay hatch just ahead.  Looking through the hatch, she saw the giant breach in the main doors.  Skidding to a halt, Tamara grabbed the open hatchway and yanked herself back and to the side.  Someone inside the bay spotted her and two of them started shooting.  They were standing at the ramp of one of their boxy-looking shuttles, firing at Tamara in the hatch. 

             
Good, they haven’t left yet.
  Her heart was hammering in her chest, her breath was coming so fast she was afraid she might pass out.  Risking a quick look through the hatchway, she saw that they were lugging the replicator up the ramp.  The two shooters had stopped firing, hoping they’d hit their mark.  Whipping around, she aimed her captured pistol and fired.  A shower of sparks erupted from the replicator as her shot blew out the primary capacitor.  One bullet, even from a gun with such unexpected punch, wouldn’t be enough to completely destroy a piece of machinery like that.  Replicators were hardy devices; their only real weak point was their circuitry and the capacitors that fed power.  It was still fixable, but it would take a good engineer a while even with the proper parts.

              The pirates fired back, but Tamara remained behind the bulkhead, not getting out to try and hit them again.  She couldn’t do anything more by herself, not without getting shot.  She was an engineer and a pilot, not a Marine.  Her breathing was coming back under control and her heart rate began to slow to a more reasonable drumbeat.  She whirled away from the hatch as she saw six figures in body armor thumping down the deck toward her.  Her own weapon was raised, pointed at them, but she held her fire.

              Corajen nodded to her.  “Sitrep,” she growled menacingly.

              “They’re boarding the shuttles now,” Tamara replied, lowering her gun.  “I disabled the replicator, but I think they’ve already done what they came to do.  Once they’re sealed in the shuttles, they’re going to shut down that force field they’ve got over there.”
              The wolf grinned, showing sharp teeth.  “Where?”

              Tamara risked a look.  There it was.  “The force field generator is there.  See that thing that looks like it’s got a light show coming out in a cone?”

              “Got it.”  She looked to the rest of her team.  “Cover me, and get ready to seal that hatch.”  She brought her weapon to her shoulder, took aim and fired.  The pirates were getting the inside the first shuttle, whose ramp was already starting to rise from the deck.  The second shuttle still had four men outside, trying to negotiate the hover palette full of goods inside.  Two more were on either sides of the ramp, keeping their weapons trained on the Tamara and the others from their spot at the hatch.  The generator sparked, smoked and then failed, the curtain of light being projected over the massive hull in the boat bay doors disappeared. 

              In an instant, the air rushed out the massive breach.  Tamara and the others were already shutting the hatch, which
boomed
closed on the doorway.  It was a matter of seconds to dog it shut but both Corajen and Tamara were trying to gaze out the tiny window into the boat bay.  One of the security officers called to the bridge to cut atmo to the boat bay, to save what little of the precious breathable air they had left in the ship.

              The first shuttle, already close enough to being buttoned up, wasn’t terribly troubled by the sudden depressurization.  In the small amount of atmo left in the bay, it made a horrible screeching noise as it slid about a meter across the deck.  It quickly came to rest, as the pilot fired up the repulsors and lifted it up. 

              The second shuttle didn’t fare so well.  The two shooters, screaming in terror, were swept away, unable to grab hold of anything as the atmosphere rushed out the gaping maw in the main doors.  One of them hit the ragged edge, snapping his back and then tumbling out into the void.  The other, screaming until his lungs no longer could find any air to refill them, simply pitched headfirst out of the ship.  More junk and debris followed him, clanging against the inner hull before exiting.  One of the ones trying to maneuver the hover palette inside clung desperately to the control handle, but wasn’t able to maintain a grip and he too was sucked out.  The other man, on the upper part of the ramp, managed to hold on and pull himself inside.  Also, in an amazing feat of strength, he manhandled the hover palette inside and managed to get the ramp closing as the last of the atmo evacuated from the bay.

              Moments later, both shuttles were up and maneuvering.  Seconds later, they were out of the bay and back in space.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

              “Captain, the two other shuttles have undocked and are flying,” George reported.  As the last shuttle pulled free of the makeshift hole its crew had cut, another section began to depressurize.  But George and the other crew in that area were prepared.  As the pirates had pulled back, three crewmen showing great daring, had advanced, sealing bulkheads right up to the frame where the pirates had cut through.  Some more air was lost, but it seemed as though they were sealed up.

              “What do you see?” the captain demanded.

              “They’re out of my range, Captain,” the man replied, shrugging.

              The captain pressed the button on his chair.  “Moxie!  I need your sensors.  The pirates are pulling back, I need to know what they’re doing.”

              “I’m checking now, Captain,” her voice came back immediately, sounding as though she’d run a marathon.  He wanted to ask, but considering what they’d all been through in the last hour, he decided he could find out later.  “They’re pulling back.  The shuttles are heading for the freighter and the corvettes are moving to flank it as well.  They’re still targeting us, but I don’t think they’re going to shoot.”

              The captain looked “Why do you think that?”

              “Because if they were going to, they would have as soon as the shuttles were clear, Captain,” she explained.