Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 (49 page)

              But the appearance of the Navy Reserve freighter changed things.  If it was true and the
Grania Estelle
was a reserve vessel that meant certain contingency orders were going to take effect.  If it was a fakery, then the ship needed to be hunted down and its true intentions determined.  But in either case, Sykora’s orders were relatively the same.  So,
Fury
was breaking off her normal patrol route to start meeting up with locals to determine if anyone else had heard from this ship and also to start working on some of Admiral Tandred’s ‘irons in the fire’.

              The planet Kolan-kei was not very wealthy, nor was it heavily populated.  It had been colonized by settlers from the Republic about three hundred years ago by a group of humans looking to escape the rigors and heavy bureaucracy of life on an industrial world.  It was a small community, concerned with farming and mining, but only for what was needed to survive.  The two thousand or so colonists were not terribly interested in the outside universe, though they did host a few spacers every so often for barter. 

              They dissembled their ships to create shelters, keeping few of the main components functional.  After they weathered the first winter, bigger and better shelters were made from local hardwoods.  They expanded slowly, extracting various ores from the nearby canyons.  The metals were used in their own construction and the more rare ones, like platinum and gold, were used in trade.

              They maintained a security force, but it was little more than police and “varmint hunters” to keep the local fauna from attacking the villages.  They kept up a few weapons, but little more than hunting rifles. 

              They were totally unprepared for when the attack came. 

              Flying down from out of the sky, starfighters opened fire on two of the community buildings in the main village.  The buildings exploded and fire spread throughout the village.  People began running out of the other buildings, screaming in terror.  The pilots opened fire on the people as they ran, gunning some down, others simply shooting at the ground to increase the fear. 

              When the five transport ships came lumbering down from orbit, there was nothing resembling resistance.  Anyone who tried to take potshots at the fighters had their positions destroyed by the starfighter’s cannons.  Once the transports landed, blocky, ungainly craft, their cargo doors opened, disgorging two dozen beings armed to the teeth with guns and blades. 

              The invaders didn’t waste time.  Anyone who resisted was shot.  Anyone who didn’t was rounded up, their hands tied with heavy zipcuffs and secured aboard the transports.  Once that was done, they helped themselves to anything they could find in the village.  Food, clothing, and any bits of technology they found interesting were taken.  Several tons of ores were brought aboard the transports as well as several dozen containers of local grains.  Once they had what they wanted, they set fire to the rest.

              Seven hundred inhabitants were killed, three hundred prisoners were taken and several thousand credits worth of goods were looted.  Everything else in the main village was put to the torch, which gave the raiders something pretty to look at as their ships headed back out of atmo and into space.

              An hour later, they were gone.

              At the foot of replicator one, Tamara was stacking junk components, among the last of the unused scrap that had accumulated in the holds of the bulk freighter.  She was feeding them into the replicator’s raw materials bunker, readying the device for another round of parts.  She was building another replicator again, this one designed for electronics.  The class three replicators already working could make any of the electronics that the ship needed, but they were not dedicated machines.  It would take an hour to make one circuit board whereas the e-replicator could make twenty in the same period of time.  She had convinced the Captain that this was a good investment and he agreed.  Even if they didn’t end up selling machined and finished components to their trading partners (which was unlikely that they
wouldn’t
) having this machine around to replace blown components would make repairs and maintenance much faster and more efficient.

              It would be a few hours before all the pieces were built and ready to assemble, but Tamara wanted to get started.  They had another two weeks in hyperspace left before they reached the Kazyanenko system, so in the meantime the crew was keeping busy and performing their duties to pass the time.  The engineering teams were making serious headway with the internal repairs on the ship.  The entire hull was now sealed tight, much to everyone’s surprise and pleasure.  All compartments were now accessible and thoroughly swabbed out.  The cleaner bots still did the rounds, though with far less drastic effects.  Now they were sent through the ship once a week to keep up with things.  Apart from keeping things clean, they helped with discerning any microfractures in the bulkheads or the inner hull.

              It had taken her a week (with her team’s help) to get the
Perdition
back up to snuff.  The damage to the ship was extensive and the small team had worked long hours to get their fighter escort restored to fighting form.  What at first had been simply a test and a collectors’ item had become the first line of defense for the
Grania Estelle
.  The entire crew was still congratulating Tamara on her spectacular flying.  During the party, by the time she had retreated to the wardroom her back and shoulders were killing her from all the slaps and hugs of gratitude and congratulations. 

              Once her fighter was again ready for combat and all systems operational, she had determined she would not be going into combat as naked as she had last time.  Unfortunately, she didn’t have any designs for missiles or torpedoes in any of the databases she had access to aboard the
Grania Estelle
.  That meant she was forced to design and build something from scrap.  It was going to take a while to come up with some sort of functional design, but this time she wasn’t working alone.  Her team, with Stella’s occasional input, would be working together on this project.  Hopefully they might find something that could speed their project along, like schematics or even a scrapped weapon or two to work off of. 

              Kazyanenko wasn’t a hugely important or technologically advanced system.  It did sport a rather large gas giant, which was good because the
Grania Estelle
was getting low on fuel.  Their lack of a fuel stop in Hecate had hurt and even though they were now running on the better helium 3, once they arrived in Kazyanenko they would be burning way into the reserves.  The Captain had mused on this and decided that they would get into parking orbit around the gas giant for a few days while they dropped off the collector and waited for it to get what they needed.  Tamara approved of this plan but it wasn’t her ship, the Captain didn’t need her approval.  Thankfully, the Captain looked to be playing this one smarter.  While it was unlikely there would be much in the way of surprises here, they hadn’t been expecting any in the last three systems, either.

              Shaking away her thoughts, she continued with the loading of the replicator.  First things first.

              “Thirty seconds to breakout,” the pilot reported.

              “All stations, prepare for breakout,” the Captain ordered.  “Bring the weapons online.”

              “Ready, Captain,” George Miller replied.

              The time ticked down and when it reached five seconds, the pilot pressed the control lever forward, deactivating the hyperdrive.  They were sixty thousand kilometers from the hyper limit upon reversion to normal space.

              “Report,” he ordered.

              “No contacts within five million kilometers,” George answered.  “Long range sensors are picking up three contacts in orbit of Kazyanenko’s inhabited world.”

              “Three contacts?” the Captain said, surprised.  “Well, that should make things interesting.  Hopefully they’re friendly.”  No one disagreed with that sentiment.  “All right, make our course for the gas giant.”

              “Aye, Captain.”

              Forty hours later, the
Grania Estelle
was slipping easily into a high orbit above the fifth planet of the Kazyanenko system, a class three gas giant.  Once in orbit, they deployed the collector and then simply sat and waited for it to fill.  Tamara estimated it would be about thirteen hours before the collection bladders would be full of the helium 3 that they needed, but they were in no particular hurry.  No one was approaching their position, which made everyone in the crew breathe a bit easier.   

              “Any chance we can go prospecting?” the Captain asked, three hours into their wait.

              George shook his head.  “No, Captain.  The shuttles just don’t have the range to get all the way to the system’s asteroid belt.  We’d need to move closer.”

              He nodded.  “All right, then let’s do that.  I know the engineering teams have been chomping at the bit to use that new shuttle they’ve built.  Get the cargo teams shifting the load out of one of the bays so that we can load them up with more materials.  I know there’s some in bay two already, see if we can move the rocks in there.”             

              The lumbering freighter arced away from the gas giant and a short time later, two shuttles raced away, headed toward the system’s asteroid belt.  It didn’t take long for the two shuttles to collect what they needed and haul their prizes back to the ship. 

              “What’s the status of the new weapons?” the Captain asked, as he entered the engineering spaces.  Quesh looked up from a diagnostic he was running.

              He stood.  “Captain,” the Parkani greeted him.  “Well, we’ve just about finished with the first of the rail guns.  It took a while to iron out a few of the bugs in the targeting software.  I didn’t want to get working on another before the first one was completed.”

              The Captain frowned.  “Seems like a waste of resources.”

              The Parkani only shrugged.  “In any case, the first cannon is ready for installation.  I’m going out there with my team, but I’m bringing Xar and his team along as well.  Once we get all the kinks worked out, we might be able to install the next one with fewer people.”

              “Anything I should be aware of?”

              “We’re going to have personnel on the hull, Captain.  We’d all appreciate it if you didn’t engage in high speed maneuvers while we’re out there.”

              The Captain gave him a wry smile.  “I’ll try and limit that.  Any idea how long it should take?”

              Again the engineer shrugged.  “I’m hoping that we can get it completed within a shift, though we might need more time than that.  I’m really not sure.  For the next rail gun we install, it should take less time.  We’ll know what we’re doing at that point, I hope.  We’ve already worked up and reinforced the area we’re going to use for the weapon hard point.”

              The Captain looked confused.  “When did you do that?”

              “We started as soon as we stopped in Hecate, but had to stop when all the festivities started there.”

              “I’d say so,” he replied.

              “Right, but then once we dropped out here, I had my team go out and finish the hard point assembly.  They just completed work about an hour ago.  It’ll help with assembly and installation of the weapon and then once it’s in, it should absorb any vibration from the firing.”

              “Moxie told me there shouldn’t be any vibrations.”’

              “Captain, I love this beat up old bitch, but the
Grania Estelle
is a freighter, not a warship.”  Quesh folded both sets of arms over his chest.  “There’s not supposed to be
any
serious vibration on the hull or through the superstructure in the areas we’ve selected.  There are all sorts of power conduits and ammunition feeds and targeting linkages that will be there, none of which are part of the original design.  So we’re having to make some custom modifications to make these weapons work.  She’s right, there shouldn’t be any vibration, but…” he trailed off.

              The Captain nodded warily.  “Is this a mistake, Chief?”

              The Parkani eyed him.  “Don’t you go insulting me, Captain.  I’ll get you the weapons you want.  You just leave it to me.”

              He held up his hands in surrender.  “All right, Chief.  You’ve got some good credit.  Make me proud.”  He turned and left the area and the engineers returned to their work.

              Tamara knew that something was up when she arrived in the mess hall after an exhausting shift.  Her team hadn’t been working on the rail guns, no, they had been working on breaking down the rocks to feed the replicators.  The shuttle pilots had done good work, bringing in some very nice rocks rich with strategic minerals.  However, after eight hours of cutting away with plasma torches and lugging crates of materials back and forth from the cargo bay to the replicators, she was absolutely exhausted.  The big room was already filled with people when she trudged in and Tamara went straight to the coffee urns.  Tamara poured herself a cup, added some milk and then gulped the whole cup, burning her tongue.  She swore, nearly dropping the mug.  She was awake now, but was no less fatigued.