First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3 (8 page)

              “Sending now!” the comms watch replied happily.

              “Damage report!” Gants demanded.  Half the displays on the bridge were showing static, including his own.  Only the operations console and the engineering station were live.

              Hakami checked her displays while Paxton rushed over to the engineering console.  “Main power is offline.  That hit broke loose several of the power conduits.  Main propulsion, what was left, is out.  Shields are down.  Weapons are down.  Comms are down.”  The sensor officer looked up to catch the Colonel’s eye.  “Sir, we’re dead in space.”

              He forced himself to remain calm.  They wouldn’t be sending over boarding parties.  He had four hundred fully-armed Army soldiers on board his ship, not to mention his regular crew.  Any pitiful boarding parties the FP people could muster would get chopped up by his Army troopers.  Which was something, at least.  “Is it possible that we can get main power back?”

              Paxton scanned his console.  “No, sir.  Not right away.  Chief has damage control teams on it, but it’s going to be several hours at least.”

              “Status of the reactor?” Gants asked, trying to keep the worry out of his voice.  If the reactor was down and couldn’t be restored, they’d all suffocate when the life support failed.  Speaking of which… 

              “The reactor is offline, Colonel,” Paxton reported.  “The chief scrammed it when the power distribution system took that hit.  He didn’t want an overload.  Life support and minimal sensors is all we have running and that’s going off the aux reactors.”

              The aux reactors were meant for exactly this situation, but they only had enough fuel to run for a total of twenty hours.  And with all the crew and the soldiers on board, they had to run all the life support at full blast.  “All right.  Make sure that the Chief has whatever he needs to get main power back online.  Whatever it takes.  Until then we just wait them out.  They stopped attacking us, and they won’t board us.”  Gants straightened in his command seat, trying to project confidence.  “I’ll be in my stateroom,” he said, getting to his feet.  “Mister Paxton, you have the bridge.”

              “Aye, Colonel,” the tactical officer said, watching as the commanding officer left the Flag Bridge.

              “Captain, its Fayyad.  Do you have a minute?  Because we need to talk.  And I mean we need to talk right now.”

              Tamara brought up a display and the Chief’s face appeared.  “What do you have, Chief?”
              Fayyad shook his head.  “It’s not good, Captain.  We need to power down and I mean right now.”

              “How bad?”

              The man sighed.  “It’s a lot of things, but mostly it’s the damage on the spine.  We need to get the ship over to the station and docked.  And we need to get down to minimal power because the forward section is not going to be able to hold up for very long.  I’m getting things patched up as best we can and we should be good to get into the dock, so long as we don’t go through any crazy maneuvers.”

              She smiled.  “I think we can do that, Chief.”  Tamara looked up.  “Mister Wymea, you heard the man, set course for the station, nice and easy.  And keep us away from the
Leytonstone
.  I don’t want them getting any ideas.”

              “Aye, Captain.”  He started to input the new course.

              “Captain, when I say slowly, I mean slow.  You need to keep the accel down at speed 25.”  He grimaced.  “It is going to take longer but if we push the ship too hard it will tear the ship in half.”

              She grimaced.  “We had the same problem with the
Grania Estelle
when we first arrived in system a few months ago.  We’ll keep it slow.  Do what you need to do to keep things working, Chief.”  She signed off.  “Open a channel to the
Grania Estelle
.”

              “Channel open, Captain,” the comms officer said.  “Audio only.”

              “Serinda here,” the young woman’s voice answered.

              “Serinda, it’s Tamara,” she said.  “We’ve got some very heavy damage so I’m setting course for the station.  Are there any tugs close by?”

              “Do you need a tow?”

              Tamara shook her head, and then realized the other woman couldn’t hear her.  “No,
Cavalier
should be able to get there.  I need you to have one of the tugs grab hold of the
Leytonstone
and tow her away from the station.  I don’t want you to fling her into deep space or anything, but I need you to make sure she’s out of range of the station and your ship.  I’m sure they’re trying to effect repairs right now and I don’t need them suddenly opening fire.”

              “Understood.  I’ll inform the Captain.”

              Tamara cut the connection.  “Has the
Leytonstone
responded to our demand for surrender?”

              The comms officer shook his head.  “No, ma’am.  But their power levels are really low.  They might not be able to hear us.”

              Tamara rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers.  “Well we’re not sending anyone over there.  Keep sending the message every two minutes until we either reach the station or they respond.”  She stood up.  “I’m going to give the Chief a hand.  Mister Leicasitaj, you have the bridge.”

              “We just have one last thing to finish up, here, Aploras,” Korqath said to his remaining fighters.  The fighter squadron was battered, tired, mourning, but elated.  They’d won.  A sparrow and a flock of wasps had taken down an elephant.  They’d defeated the great ship, but it wasn’t destroyed.  And he knew that the bosses wouldn’t want them destroyed. 
Hell, I’m not even sure that my ships have the capability of destroying a ship that large, especially with our fuel and ordnance loads as low as they are.  But there is something we can do.

              “What’s the plan, Lead?” Hukriss asked, excitement still in his voice, but it was tinged with exhaustion now.  “We finally going to kill this dross?  Put it out of our misery?”

              “No, Hukriss, we’re not,” Korqath said, bringing his fighter around to engage the battleship.  “Everyone, form up on me.  We’re going to cut the legs off this dross.  And then they can crawl home.”

              The Aploras pulled in behind the battlecruiser, the one needle shaped
Lancer
-class fighter tucking in with them.  Without a word, the starfighters opened fire with everything they had, everything they had left.  Three missiles streaked forth and exploded against the last remaining propulsion unit.  Volleys of laser blasts followed quickly behind.  It took more than a minute of sustained fire for the fighters to destroy the last of the
Leytonstone
’s main propulsion. 

              “Well, damn that big bitch is
tough
,” Hukriss said, shaking his fist in triumph.  “Are you sure we can’t go around to the front and just blast away until we breach through to the other side?”

              “No, Hukriss,” Korqath said wearily.  “It might feel good, but the powers that be want this baby to be able to make it back to the orbital one day.”

              There was a blatted huff from his second in command.  But then Hukriss brightened.  “Well, there is some hope then.  If they can’t get their power systems up in a day or two, we can come back and salvage her!  After all, there won’t be anyone left aboard to argue, will there?”

“All right, everyone.  Return to the barn.  We’ll do one quick pass checking for any survivors who might have ejected.”  He buzzed unhappily.  “But I’m not expecting to find anyone.”

              “This has just been a horrendous day.”  Vincent Eamonn’s words came out as a groan.  He was seated in the wardroom, with the comm screens activated and Stella hovering above the holo projector on the deck to the side of the screen.

              Tamara Samair nodded from the screen in front of him.  She was aboard the
Cavalier
, assisting with emergency repairs.  It had taken almost six hours to bring the corvette to rest and dock with the Kutok mining station.  And it had taken all of Tamara’s and her chief engineer’s considerable skills to keep the ship running that long because of all the damage it had taken in the battle.  The station itself was not doing much better.  Engineering teams on board the station were busy trying to seal up the sections that the mercenaries had blown out in their failed boarding attempt.

              “So what do you have for me, Tamara?” he asked, not sure if he wanted to hear the answer.

              “
Cavalier
is going to be laid up for two weeks with repairs,” Tamara said.  “Lots of damage along the spine and one of the forward shield generator nodes needs replacing.”  She sighed as she saw him grimace.  “I know it only took a matter of days to actually build the thing in the first place.  But that was just the final assembly, once the parts were designed and built.”  She tipped her head to the side, thinking.  “I might be able to push it to ten days, but Captain, a new problem has surfaced.  We need people.  I lost about half my crew in that battle and my pilots lost even more.  Of the twenty-six that went out, eight came back.  The Delphons are down to one pilot.”

              “Which brings me to the station.”  Tamara rubbed the back of her neck with one hand.  “Repairs are going apace, but it’s probably going to be a month there before we get things back to where we were.  Production and refinement of the fuel hasn’t stopped, thankfully.  Just a few control runs got busted up in the boarding action.”

              Vincent sighed.  “Well, that could have been a lot worse.”

              She nodded.  “It could have.  It nearly was.”  She gestured vaguely to the
Grania Estelle
.  “How is your ship?”

              “Well, Stella’s save caused a lot of damage,” he said.  “It’s going to be about a two week job, according to Quesh.  Relax, Stella,” he said, raising a calming hand to forestall her objection.  “I’m not complaining about your actions, I’m simply stating fact.  It worked, yes, but it
did
cause a lot of damage.”  He turned back to Tamara.  “
Grania Estelle
won’t be going anywhere during that time.”

              “Understood.  Damn, in the span of one day, almost all of company operations got just… battered.”

              Vincent nodded.  “Well, the
Samarkand
is still up and doing their thing.  Mining operations are unaffected, but I think we might need to recall the ship to assist with repairs.  And I need to have them build me two new shuttles.”

              “That’s going to throw our production schedules into disarray, but I can’t really see any way around it,” Tamara agreed.  “The customers back on the planet and the orbital are going to be pissed about it.”

              Vincent snorted.  “Well screw them,” he said, hotly.  “We can’t get the work done.  We just got attacked!”

              “Don’t get mad at me, Vincent,” she said, sounding tired.  “But it doesn’t change the fact that the customers are going to be pissed off at us about it.”

              He sighed.  “All right.  So how do we deal with it?”

              “All right, how about this?  We get a load of cargo ready to bring back to the orbital and we bring it back in the
Kara
.”

              He stared at her blankly.  “In the
Kara
?  Are you insane?  We appropriate the government’s ship and we throw it in their face by bringing a load of goods back in it?”

              “Why not?” she asked, warming to the subject.  “In fact, I think we can do one better.  We’ve got all the internal security footage from the Kutok mine, the
Kara
, the
Grania Estelle
and the
Cavalier
.  Put it all together, and then head back in the
Kara
.  Once we arrive at the orbital, you hold a press conference.  Lay it all out.  Don’t hold anything back, release the footage, everything.  And then, as a final grand gesture, you
return
the
Kara
to the station’s administrators, and if they or any of the reporters give you any shit about it, you make some comment about how if they’re going to do naughty things with their toys, you won’t return them next time.”

              Vincent’s face broke into a smile, then a grin.  Then he was guffawing with laughter until he couldn’t breathe.  Tamara joined him and it took several minutes for them both to calm down.  Stella had a nervous smile on her face, as though she wasn’t quite sure how to deal with this situation.  Vincent slapped the table a few times.  “I love it!  That’s what I was thinking before the battlecruiser mixed it up.  Really stick it to the bastards!  But we need to get on this right away.”  At her quizzical expression, he went on.  “The
Leytonstone
.  Eventually, they’re going to fix their ship.  And even though we started them on a trajectory back toward the planet, they might start getting ideas.  If they get their communications back up, they might start broadcasting back to the planet.”

              Tamara nodded.  “Good thinking.  Stella?  Can you assist?”

              The AI smiled.  “Already working on a press release, Tamara.”  She gave a slow blink. “Ready for your perusal.”

              “What the fuck?” Harmon Kly demanded as he flipped on the news vids to see Vincent Eamonn’s face.  He stared incredulously at the display as the man continued talking; apparently the press conference he was speaking at was already in progress.

              “Captain Eamonn!  Vanessa Marchant, with the S-Int News.  Can you explain to us why you arrived here at the orbital aboard the
Kara
?”  The reporter was dark-haired, her makeup was expertly applied, and was absolutely stacked.  Kly wouldn’t be all that surprised if she’d secreted a vid camera in her cleavage to make sure that the males she would speak with would be sure to look into the camera. 

              The freighter captain looked to the assembled reporters with a grave expression on his face.  “Approximately two weeks ago, an armed force was sent to the Kutok mining station with the intention of seizing control.  That force of mercenaries was aboard the
Kara
, under the guise of coming in for fueling before heading to other systems for trade.  I have documented logs from the station and the
Kara
’s own databanks indicating this, as well as sworn testimony from the Captain of the
Kara
and his officers.”

              Kly blanched and sank down onto the couch behind him, his legs going limp. 
This can’t be happening.  This wasn’t supposed to happen!

              Eamonn went on.  “The mercenaries boarded the mining station, causing significant damage to property and killed nearly my entire security contingent and injured a number of the civilian workers in the process before they were finally stopped.”  There was a murmur in the crowd of reporters.  “But that wasn’t the end.” 

              Kly was sweating now. 
How much does he know?  Does he know who set this whole thing up?  We worked through intermediaries; there was no trail that led back to me. 
He started to calm down. 
I can ride this out.

              “Shortly after my people stopped the attack on the station, we boarded the
Kara
and seized it and arrested the crew, to be brought back here for trial.”

              “You attacked innocent civilians?” one of the other reporters called, from the middle of the pack.

              The captain shook his head.  “They attacked
us
, Mister Danforth.  Their people boarded my station under the guise of a normal business venture and killed my people.  The crew members of the
Kara
are alive and unharmed.  As I said, I’ve returned them here to the orbital to face justice.”  He smiled to the crowd.  “I am not a monster like those who attacked an unarmed gas mining station.”  He paused. 
For effect, the bastard.
  “Nor am I a thief.  In the holds of the
Kara
are goods that my company had intended for sale.  And I am perfectly willing to return the
Kara
to its rightful owners.”  He paused again.  “To its rightful owners who sent the ship and its passengers to attack my people and my property.”

              “And you have proof of that, Captain?” another woman asked.

              He nodded.  “I have proof that the ship and its passengers attacked my station,” he answered.  Raising his datapad he pressed a key, nodded and then pressed another.  Kly narrowed his eyes, trying to determine what the man was up to.  “Flooding into your datapads and mobile devices now is the information that we recovered from the
Kara
as well as all the sensor data taken from the Kutok mine, the
Grania Estelle
and my defense ships.  You will find that the information is uncut and the electronic signatures in the feeds are unchanged, so there should be no question of its providence.  As to who ordered the assault, I can only speculate,” the captain went on, and Kly seethed at his words.  “According to the logs of the
Kara
the ship was hired by the administrators of the orbital station here,” he gestured indicating the station at large, “to go on the trading mission.  I therefore believe that the administrators need to answer a few questions regarding the events that occurred at my station.  I believe that you folk,” he gestured again, this time to the reporters and Kly again blanched at the truly feral look in the man’s eye, “need to direct your questions to them.”  Eamonn’s eyes swept the scene and then he nodded, the reporters muttering to themselves.  “Why would a ship that was on a trading mission be loaded up with mercenaries?  Who ordered them there?  Thank you for your time.  I have affairs to see to.”  He stepped off the podium and walked away and the reporters started clamoring amongst themselves.

              “Damn him!” Kly screamed, pounding his arms on the cushions of the couch.  “Damn that man!”

              But as he calmed and reached for the control to turn the vid off, Kly saw Captain Eamonn return to the podium.  The reporters went immediately silent as it became apparent that the man had more to say. 
Damn that bastard!
he raged, knowing that there would be nothing he could do to silence the man.  He had everyone in the palm of his filthy, working-class hand.

              “Oh, and as far as needing further proof that someone in a position of power in this system ordered this completely unprovoked attack?” he asked, his voice calm, but anger just starting to seep through. 
Oh, he’s good.  Playing to the crowd.  As though he didn’t already know exactly what he was going to say before coming down here.  And that coming back to the podium bit?  All theater.

             
“Perhaps you kind people will speak to the administrators of this station, and you will ask them why the
Leytonstone
departed the station and arrived at my gas mine.  I would then ask you to inquire as to why that ship would attack a civilian station.”  He nodded at the audible gasp from the reporters.  “In the data packet I sent you is a number of sensor and video feeds from every conceivable source I had out there.  Gun camera footage from my fighters.  Video footage from the station, the
Grania Estelle
and my defense ship
Cavalier
.  All of it showing that the
Leytonstone
arrived and attacked.  I ask you again to peruse all that material and then ask questions of the administrators on this station.”

              “What happened to the
Leytonstone
?” Danforth demanded.

              “The crew of the
Leytonstone
managed to restore power to the ship and they’re limping home.  I think they should be back here in another few days.”

              Kly turned it off.  He couldn’t listen anymore.  He’d barely lay back on the couch, trying to figure out what was going to be needed for damage control when his communicator buzzed.  He picked it up, checking the incoming caller ID.  Triarch Kozen’ck.  Wonderful.  He had to take this; the damned bug was head of the admin council and wasn’t someone he could just ignore.

              He pressed the control to activate the channel.  “Yes, Triarch.”

              “A lot of embarrassment just came down from FP Inc, Mister Kly.  And I have a good idea where it originated.  I’ve already received fifteen calls from reporters about this.  Now, why would the
Kara
suddenly get outfitted with new power systems only days before this attack?  And I recognized one of the mercenaries that they brought back for trial.  Glacis Ghovorak.  I know that you’ve had dealings with him in the past.  I also know that he’s very good about keeping his mouth shut and that doesn’t seem to have changed, despite the massive casualties his company has taken in this cluster-grope.”  There was a pause.  “You have nothing to say?”