Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 (74 page)

              “Why didn’t either of you speak up when I first gave the order?” the captain demanded, rising from his chair, crossing his arms over his chest and frowning at the two of them.

              “I tried, Captain,” George said, going for broke.  “But you’re…” he stopped himself.

              “I’m what?” he said, keeping his voice low and dangerous.

              The ops officer started to look down, but then raised his face to look the captain straight in the eye.  “You’re very determined, Captain.  And more often than not, you’ve been right.  But this time, sir, we just can’t do it.  The big girl isn’t a warship.  We don’t have the guns, we don’t have the shields and we don’t have the armor.  Those pinnaces and their missiles will tear us up, even with Tamara out in her fighter.”

              The bridge went completely silent, punctuated only by the soft chirps of the computers.  Finally, the captain nodded.  “How many others are with him?”

              Before anyone else could answer, the ops officer plowed on.  “Captain, I’m not trying to undermine your authority.  I’m just looking to the best interests of the ship.”

              “And you think I’m not doing that?” he asked, tone still dangerous.  “You think I’m just throwing our lives away?”

              George swallowed hard, seeing the trap laid out before him.  “I think you’re trying your best to keep the ship up and running and to keep us safe, sir, but in this case, we can’t win.”  The last three words were barely a whisper, but everyone heard him perfectly.

              The captain just stood and looked at his ops officer for a long moment.  George Miller wasn’t a particularly imposing man, he didn’t have the Captain’s stature or presence, but he’d been a fixture aboard the
Grania Estelle
and the bridge crew for years now.  He was a steady hand at the controls and very good at his job.  In fact, this was the first serious confrontation he’d had with his captain in all the years on board. 

              “George, you can leave the bridge now.”  The Captain’s voice was clear and unbending. 

              The man just stood there, dumbstruck for a long second, then secured his console and left the bridge.  He didn’t speak, he just walked out.

              Kutok rose from her seat as well, the ends of her legs clicking on the deckplates.  “I’ll be going too, Captain,” she said, matter-of-factly.  The other bridge crew watched her go as well, saying nothing.  None of the others moved.

              “Continue crew recovery,” the captain said hoarsely.  “Inform me once the shuttle is aboard.”  He turned and sat back down in the command chair, his eyes fixed on his display.  No one dared speak, but he knew they’d heard.

Chapter 24

              Verrikoth smiled, looking out the window at the approaching ships.  There were seven in total, he could see six out of the window of
Ajax
as the freighter approached the rendezvous point.  Three of the ships were like
Ajax
, blocky freighters whose systems had been upgraded to make them more merchant raider than cargo hauler.  One of the other ships was a military vessel, a tiny vessel dwarfed by all the others, a corvette bearing Republic markings, similar to the ill-fated
Fury.
  The last three were cruiser-sized, looking like they had been welded together from a variety of parts, whether they matched or not.  All of the ship had that menacing air about them and the cruisers bristled with weapons. 

              Verrikoth’s smile grew larger as the ships in the window did.  The first arrivals.  A sword; a projection of his power in the Argos Cluster.  With these ships and more like them, he would rule here.  The first target, of course would have to be the main Republic base in Byra-Kae.  It wouldn’t stop the Republic from retaliating, in fact, it might enrage them all the more.  But the pirate captain was savvy enough to know that the citizens and government had no real stomach for war.  They grew squeamish at the thought of faraway conflicts and irate at the tax hikes to fund military projects outside the borders of the Republic.  The Argos Cluster was not part of the Republic and hadn’t been since the war.  And with both the Republic and the Federation angrily stalking their border, trifling little conflicts here in the Cluster paled.  People wondered why lives and resources were being squandered in an area of space with no value when those resources could be put to better use elsewhere.

              He was counting on that, perhaps a bit too much, he admitted to himself in the darkest recesses of his mind.  Because if he posed
too
much of a threat, the Republic (and Admiral Tandred) would send a fleet into the Cluster and squash his little squadron flat.  Still, he was determined to give them a good showing if they did come after him.  And Byra-Kae would be a treasure trove of Republic technology, weapons, hell, even slaves.  Even if the majority was destroyed, there would be plenty to salvage there.  He could feel himself salivating just thinking about it.

              “Two minutes to docking,” came over the PA.  He nodded.

             
Ajax
closed with the nearest of the cruisers, settling in and linking up with it.  The cruiser extended a docking tube which sealed around
Ajax
’s starboard airlock.  The pilots of both ships easily maintained station and within minutes he was aboard the cruiser.

              Commander Jensen Tyler was waiting just inside the airlock, his hands clasped behind his back.  The pirate noted that the commander had a pistol holstered on his thigh, but he wasn’t nervous because of it.  All of his crews went around armed, because they all went to dangerous places and did dangerous things.  The Cluster was a hazardous place, after all.  Granted, Verrikoth mused, it was perhaps a bit
more
dangerous because of his people and their activities, but he wasn’t going to quibble about that.

              “Commander,” he said to Jensen as his feet touched the deck.

              “Captain,” Jensen replied, inclining his head.

              “How is my ship?”

              The human visibly bristled, but didn’t say anything.  “The
Ganges
is ready.  We’re loaded with one hundred and twenty days of stores, fuel tanks are at sixty percent throughout the squadron.”  He grimaced.  “We’re running on straight seawater, though we’ve purified it all first.  But it took a lot to get the ships here.”

              “Ssixty percent?  We’d be at only a quarter by the time we reached Byra-Kae,” the zheen pointed out.  “That will not do.”

              “No, Captain, it won’t,” the commander replied.  “But a contact has told us that the collector farm at Ulla-tran has a great deal of fuel for us.”

              “Collector farm?”

              Tyler nodded.  “Yes, at Ulla-tran they have a number of fuel collectors and a massive storage of helium 3 and deuterium.  I believe they intended to sell it at cost, but my contact has convinced them to sell to us at a discount.”

              “A disscount?  I have a squadron of warsships!  I sshould not have to
pay
anything!  Who would… dare try to extort money from me?” the zheen demanded. 

              “You need to look at this another way,” Tyler said patiently.  “Yes, we could fly to Ulla-tran and blast the system to pieces and take the fuel, or what might be left of it when the dust settles.  But then what?  We might get one big load of fuel and nothing else.  No one would work with us.  Anyone who did we’d have to worry about sabotage and other disruptions on everything we ever obtain from any source.  And we don’t have the labor pool to risk that.”

              “What do you mean by that ‘labor pool’ comment?”

              “I mean we don’t have the manpower to do everything ourselves.  And if we start shooting up legitimate businesses in peaceful star systems, no one will ever trust us.  Not to keep our word or to deal even reasonably, if not fairly, with them.  We’ll either meet gunfire everywhere we go, at worst, or have to worry about sabotage everywhere else at best,” he repeated. 

              The pirate captain considered this.  Unfortunately, the man was right.  He couldn’t afford to anger or frighten the various star systems too much.  “Very well.  How much of a disscount?” Verrikoth asked suspiciously.  Tyler named a figure.  The zheen nodded, his antennae bobbing up and down.  “Yess, that would be most acceptable.  And I do not think they will try to back out of our deal, not with the amount of firepower my squadron here pozessess.”

              “No, I suspect they will not.  So to Ulla-tran then, Captain?” Tyler asked him.

              “Yes, Commander,” the pirate replied, his mandibles clicking with pleasure.  “I am eager to show off my new toyss.”

              The second shuttle had landed in the boat bay twenty minutes previous but the ship hadn’t moved.  The crew was confused, everyone was moving around as though they were walking on eggshells, especially on the bridge.  Only routine status reports were actually spoken aloud, everyone was otherwise silent, casting furtive glances at their captain and at the furious form of the AI who was stalking around over the holo projector as though she was a caged beast.  Every few moments, Stella would leave the holo projector and pop up on various displays throughout the bridge, as though she was pacing, losing what little composure she had left.

              Everyone kept glancing at the captain in his chair, but no one addressed him.  Finally, he got up and exited the bridge, not saying a word to anyone.  The bridge crew watched him go, completely uncertain as to what they should be doing now for he had given no orders.  They all knew that he wanted to break orbit and head for the fueling station, but he hadn’t actually given the order to do so.  So, here they would sit, in parking orbit near Nestromu Station.  The whole crew (minus Ka’Xarian’s team) had been recalled back to the ship, the cargo loading had stopped with only about two-thirds of it completed and now no one knew what was happening.  Were they going into battle?  Were they going to follow the
Kara
out of the system?  Not even Stella knew the answer to that, though she stomped around in everyone’s displays, prodding people to “do better” and “work quickly”. 

              “What the hell is going on?” Mairi demanded, pushing a hover cart carrying two missiles under the port wing of Tamara’s fighter.  The weapons were secured to the cart with heavy cargo straps and seated in special grooves on the cart to keep them from falling off and onto the deck.  “We’ve been sitting in orbit ever since the last shuttle landed.”  She took one hand off the control handle of the cart and jerked a thumb at the small, boxy vessel. 

              “I know,” Tamara replied, unfastening one of the straps on the weapons.  The
Perdition
fighter had already been loaded up with four other missiles just like these two and with these, it would put three each under wing.  These missiles were ordnance of Tamara’s own design, painstakingly developed over the last several weeks; missiles with decent range, tracking capability and enough punch to (theoretically) take down a capital warship’s shields.  That last feature hadn’t been tested, not in battle, but the engineer was confident that her designs would do well.  Against the pinnaces that she would be engaging, she wasn’t exactly sure how well they would perform, but she was sure that the crews of the small ships would think twice after the first one got hit.

              The robotic lift arm moved over, grabbed hold of the missile, securely, and lifted it up into position under the wing.  The magclamps locked the weapon in place and the arm took the last missile and repeated the process.  Tamara took hold of the last one and gave a firm but gentle tug.  The missile didn’t move and she nodded in approval.

              “I really hate it when you pull on those,” Mairi said, having winced when her boss and tried to dislodge the weapon from the wing.  “I keep waiting for the time when you have faulty magclamps and we have an explosion in the boat bay.”

              “Oh, relax,” Tamara scolded, tossing a rag at the other woman, who caught it before it hit her in the face.  “The warheads aren’t armed.  Clanging to the deck might make your ears ring, but you won’t die from it.”

              The younger woman sighed.  “I’m not even going to justify that comment.  You have no way of knowing how that missile would react if it hit the deck.”

              Tamara smiled.  “As a matter of fact, I do.  But that’s not what making you all jumpy.”  She glowered at her.  “Spill.”

              Mairi threw her hands up in the air in frustration.  “What do you think I’m jumpy about?” she retorted.  “The captain said he’s going to take the ship into battle.  We’re supposed to go after the
Emilia Walker
and rescue the crewmen that the locals captured.  We’re going up against ships that can tear this one,” she waved a hand to encompass the whole of the
Grania Estelle
, “to bits.  And the captain doesn’t seem to be the least bit concerned about that.  I mean he cares about
Emilia Walker
and her crew, but what about us?”

              Tamara chuckled as the young engineer vented.  “Well, it’s clear that you’ve put some thought into this.  But have you considered why we haven’t moved yet?  If he didn’t care about us at all, he’d have fired George and Kutok when they stood up to him about this decision and we’d already be moving in the direction of the gas giant.”  She arched her back, trying to loosen sore muscles.  “But we’re not.  So what does that say?”

              “It says that I have no idea what’s going on aboard this ship.”

              Tamara laughed out loud.  “Now that sounds about right.”

              Mairi threw the rag back at her.

              The captain was in his stateroom, sitting in a chair, the display on the table showing an image of the Ulla-tran star system, that part of it in range of
Grania Estelle
’s sensors, anyway.  Tamara and her replicators had truly done an amazing job on them, he reflected, swirling the drink in his glass.  He’d been nursing it for over an hour now; the ice cubes had long since melted. 

              The door chime sounded and he growled in frustration.  There was never any peace aboard this ship.  Not that his actions this time actually courted peace.  He was deliberately putting himself, his ship and his crew, not to mention the surviving crew members of the
Emilia Walker
, in harm’s way.  He’d never intentionally done that before.  Oh, sure, over the years he’d fought off pirates and other ner-do-wells in the Cluster, but he’d never actually gone on the offensive before, for all the reasons that George had mentioned.  Of course, the big girl had never been in as good repair before, not since she’d been launched.  But he couldn’t shake the knowledge that his operations officer was right.  They couldn’t win.

              But he couldn’t abandon
Emilia Walker.
  Sure, there was no actual agreement standing between himself and Captain Vosteros.  They’d fixed up the man’s ship and agreed to meet here to discuss some other mutually beneficial arrangements.  That was it.  They weren’t partners or really even friends.

              So why did he care?  He wasn’t a man with a tender heart, not when it came to other ships in the Cluster.  This was a rough place, but it was one that he had chosen to do business.  Sure, the Republic and Federation markets were open but there were just as many problems dealing with them, the pirates in their respective bureaucracies as there were with the pirates and governments out here.  But the life of an independent freighter captain wasn’t one that inspired trust or the willingness to stick one’s neck out for others not of one’s own crew.

              The door chime sounded again.  It was getting increasingly more difficult to stay shut in here and alone with his thoughts if people wouldn’t leave him be.  It sounded a third time and then came the sound of someone’s fist banging on the metal.  With a grunt, he set the glass down on the table and heaved himself from the chair.  Walking to the hatch, he keyed it to unlock and then pulled it open.