Vincent Eamonn sat in the command seat on the bridge of the Grania Estelle as the ship approached the hyper limit for Seylonique. It had been a long run to and from Heb, but the profits had been excellent. His crew, mostly new additions from Seylonique, had done well for themselves. The profits hadn’t been as high as they’d been in other systems, but it sure beat sitting around in Seylonique for months waiting for repairs to be completed. The locals had been appreciative of the goods and services the bulk freighter had brought in. They had built a collector for helium 3 and hung it in orbit of the system’s Jovian. It wasn’t as rich as the ones in Seylonique or Ulla-tran, but it was perfectly acceptable for the small usage the planet would need and the passing ships might use.
The locals had just reached an atomic level of development, but their containment vessels were clearly below par judging by the radiation levels in the cities surrounding the power plants. Eamonn sold them the use of one of his engineering teams to try and properly contain the radiation of one of the nastier nuclear plants. Quesh’s blue goop was used in heavy amounts as they and the local teams affected cleanup. The reactor was leaking toxic waste, the cooling system had corroded and was failing, best case scenario was that the whole system would shut down and just seep radiation. Worst case was a full on meltdown. He’d stayed for far longer than he’d intended to, assisting one of the Heb governments in shutting the reactor down and directing the cleanup and disposal operations. He’d even sold them one of his shuttles so that they would be able to get the contaminated parts and equipment off planet and thrown into an orbit that would head toward the system’s sun. He sold them the collector he’d dropped and a huge supply of the blue goop, with the formula to make more. They would need it. In addition, Turan had flown his entire medical team down to the planet to help out where they could, various cancers and other radiation related illnesses had been high. By the time Grania Estelle broke orbit, treatment centers had been established and it looked as though many who would have died from all the exposure would live and the cancer rate was down, if not completely eradicated.
With the removal of the nuclear reactor, they were in a serious power crunch. The reactor they’d disassembled hadn’t been providing more than a pittance for the local area’s energy needs, but now without it, the city and surrounding area was experiencing serious brownouts as the remainder of the power grid tried to compensate. The locals weren’t happy about it, but they were aware of how serious the problem had been with the failing reactor. They were in discussions to build a helium 3 fuelled power reactor, but Vincent had decided that they needed to get back to Seylonique and check on things there. He had remained here in Heb for a month longer than he’d intended, nearly seventy days in total. He sold one of the local governments the plans, but he was unable to stay to provide technical expertise. He promised he’d be back this way in a few months to see how they’d progressed. In the meantime, they’d have the shuttle and the collector to get fuel should they get far enough along.
But they’d left Heb, stopping at the fuel collector to top off the bulk freighter’s tanks before heading out to hyper limit and jumping away. The crew morale had been high, though Turan and his medical team didn’t like leaving with the job unfinished. But Turan had gotten the locals started and the Captain promised that they would be heading back that way in a few months. The Guura fully intended on stocking up on the appropriate medications and even seeing if he could bring a few doctors and nurses along the would be willing to stay behind and help out those that needed care.
But the trip back to Seylonique had been nerve wracking, especially in the last few days before breakout in the system. They had no idea what they were jumping into. It could be overrun by pirates. The whole system could be a bombed out ruin. The battlecruiser could be up and running, patrolling the system, evicting those that the admins didn’t much like, though there wouldn’t be any reason to throw Grania Estelle out, not with the profit she’d brought to the system. Though, Vincent remembered with a sharp pang, the admins hadn’t been exactly thrilled with the changes those profits brought with them. Perhaps there might be something to worry about. Hopefully, Samair had managed to work a few more of those miracles she was known for.
“Thirty seconds to hyper limit,” Isis announced from the helm, her low, almost sultry tones snapping Vincent back from his reverie.
He straightened in his command seat. “Yes, thank you, Isis. At ten seconds, drop us out, standard procedure.”
“Yes, Captain,” she replied, hovering her hand over the proper control. At the appropriate time, she pressed the control and there was a surge from the engines. With hardly a hiccup, the kilometer long bulk freighter dropped from hyper back into normal space, shedding the wash of tachyons which from an outside observer would look almost like a multicolored splash in the surrounding blackness.
“Report,” Vincent ordered, checking his own displays.
“Nothing within one hundred thousand kilometers,” George Miller replied almost immediately. “In fact, going to extreme range on the sensors, I’m not picking up any energy or drive systems. I think we’re clear.”
“All right. Helm, take us in. Set course for the gas giant so we can top off our tanks.” The deck plates hummed under Vincent’s feet as the ship accelerated in system.
“What the hell?” George exclaimed from his station, three days later as the ship approached the target gas giant.
“What’s the matter?” the captain immediately snapped, his head whipping around from the display where he had been reading one of the daily engineering reports. He quickly looked back to his own display, which had Stella’s face on the left hand side and the sensor feed behind her. The AI didn’t look particularly worried, and Vincent felt his racing heart slow a bit.
“Sorry, Captain,” George said, slightly embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to scare you. There’s a large structure in very low geostationary orbit of the gas giant and we’re showing a number of people in EVA suits apparently working on the station. I’m showing lots of shuttle and tug activity moving to and from the station.”
“Where’s the Samarkand?” Vincent asked. “I know she’s around here somewhere.”
“The freighter is holding position about six light minutes from the gas mine, Captain,” Stella answered before George could. “They appear to be engaged in mining operations; they’re sending out a host of what look like mining bots to swarm over one of the large rocks that’s been towed clear of the rest of the asteroid belt.”
Vincent looked upon the sensor feed with smile slowly spreading over his face. “I’ll be damned, she actually did it.”
Serinda frowned. “Captain, we’re being hailed by a pair of starfighters.”
George piped up just an instant later. “Captain, two starfighters approaching on an intercept course.”
“Serinda, put them through,” Vincent ordered.
“Audio only, sir,” she said. Then she pressed a control and a voice came over the speakers.
“This is Aplora Flight leader to unknown bulk freighter. You will state your identification and your intentions. You are crossing into a protected zone.” The voice had the distinctive tones and buzz of a zheen.
“Put me on,” he ordered. Serinda gave him a thumbs up and he turned to his display, showing the blips on the sensors that were the fighters. They were doing long, lazy orbits around the Grania Estelle, never stopping, never holding position anywhere but always managing to keep the big ship under their guns. “This is Vincent Eamonn, Captain of the bulk freighter Grania Estelle. I’m here for refueling and to speak with Tamara Samair.”
“I’m sorry, Captain,” the buzzing voice replied. “Commander Samair is busy and has many demands on her time. I’ll put your name in the queue and she should get back to you if she can in a few hours.” Vincent gritted his teeth at the tone of this pilot’s pure gall. “But in the meantime, we can get you set up for refueling ops. I’m transmitting a flight plan for you to approach the
fueling tanker above the mining station.”
Vincent checked the feed. Indeed there was a ship holding position above the gas mine, a massive freighter about five hundred meters in length, and about one hundred and fifty wide. It was designed similar to that of the Grania Estelle, but instead of having huge cargo bays attached to the central part of the ship, four massive fuel pods ran two thirds the length of the ship. A pair of shuttles was docked with the tanker, fueling hoses connected and Vincent assumed that they were probably transferring fuel from the mine to the tanker, filling her tanks. Then he frowned. It would take days to fill the tanker using the shuttles, even if they were packed to the fills with fuel bladders. They must be pulling fuel off to possibly bring to other ships: tugs, other shuttles, perhaps even the Samarkand.
“Understood, Aplora Flight lead,” he said, trying very hard not to scream at the pilot. “Helm, navigation, follow the course they send us. Take us in at speed eighty.”
The two bridge officers nodded and the lumbering bulk freighter moved off to follow the vectors provided by the starfighters. The two fighter pilots apparently had either nothing better to do or were concerned that Isis couldn’t pilot the big ship properly, so they were holding station one hundred kilometers to either side, one slightly higher and the other slightly lower than Grania Estelle. Vincent wasn’t sure if he should be comforted that the pilots were showing a good deal of concern for either his ship or security (probably the latter) or irritated that they needed it at all.
Refueling ops proceeded apace. Once they were close enough to the tanker, hoses sprang forth from both ships, easily connecting the two ships and within mere minutes, fuel began pumping into the bulk freighter. “We should be refueled within seven hours and change, Captain,” George reported.
Vincent nodded. “Very good. Keep an eye on things. George you have the conn. I’ll be in the wardroom.”
A moment later, he was in the wardroom, closing the hatch behind him. “Stella? What the hell is going on here? Is Tamara still here? Did the locals finally move in and take over?”
The young female AI appeared on the display. “I don’t show much indication of that, Captain,” Stella said. “I’ve been monitoring local communications chatter and there’s lots of talk about the station and the mining work going on. Apparently some of the local pacifist groups have started complaining loudly about the armed fighter wing that’s been doing security patrols around the gas mine. It seems our good Tamara has bolstered her protection a bit.”
“Oh?” he asked, interested.
“Yeah,” Stella said with a smirk. “She recruited zheen pilots for the pirate starfighters we got from Verrikoth and then she either built, bought or found six more. They’re a different design though,” the AI said, bringing up an image of the ships. They were narrow ships, little more than a fuselage with an engine, a wedge shape almost a spike. The starfighters were armed only with a pair of laser cannons, which seemed very light, but considering the ships that had been through Seylonique lately, the popguns those fighters were armed with could handle any mischief the freighters might try to get into.
“They don’t look very tough,” he said dubiously.
Stella shrugged. “They aren’t,” she admitted. “Based on the specs, they appear to be very fast and maneuverable, though as you suspected, they can’t take much in the way of damage. They have paper-thin armor and a pair of class two laser cannons in the nose.” She grimaced. “That’s not like Tamara, to bring in some slipshod fighters like that. She’d have wanted something much more robust.”
Eamonn nodded. “Maybe she managed to buy these ones. It would make sense.” He looked at the pictures on the display with a critical eye. “They certainly look like they’ve been ridden hard,” he said, indicating the sandblasted hull plating, the patterns of corrosion on the hull. Vincent saw that yes, these ships might be nimble, but they’d seen some very hard use. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re better than they look.” Stella gave him a look that mirrored his own feelings on the subject. Vincent sighed. “No, I don’t suppose I really believe it either.”
“Why hasn’t she contacted us?” Stella asked after a moment.
“I don’t know, Stella,” he said. “I hope it’s just because she’s busy and hasn’t noticed our arrival for some reason. But I honestly don’t know.”
Stella spent an entire tenth of a second considering the problem. Grania Estelle had been in system for days now and her course had taken her to the gas giant and the whole fueling operation here, the most logical target. With her reactor running on helium 3 fuel, her shields at over ninety percent, hull integrity back well into the green and her hyperdrive properly tuned, the ship wasn’t blowing through fuel like she used to. Upon her arrival back in Seylonique, the ship was only down to fifty-eight percent in fuel reserves, a far better result than she’d been at up until only a few months ago. So despite all the improvements and upgrades, the gas mine and a top off of her tanks was the obvious destination once she arrived back in the system. So why wasn’t Tamara calling or coming out to greet them?
There were a few different reasons why this might be so, Stella reasoned. She might be sleeping. But she’d have known the ship was coming for days now. So the likelihood that she would be asleep now as the bulk freighter came in for refueling seemed unlikely. She might be on the orbital or on the planet. These options seemed more likely and Stella gave a virtual nod. Yes. She must be out of range of easy communications.
There was an easy way to check, though it was annoying for the amount of lag time because of light speed communications. She shot off a query to the orbital station looking for Tamara. She also pinged every fighter, every tug, every shuttle, every communications array within Grania Estelle’s easy comm range. Finally, as the tenth of the second finally came to an end, Stella was just about to concede defeat when finally she found her.
“Captain, I have her,” the young AI said with a grin. “She’s out in her Perdition fighter, going through what looks like a live training exercise with some of the zheen pilots. They look to be doing flying and shooting maneuvers at the edge of the asteroid field.”
He nodded. As Stella brought up the sensor feed, he could see the four blocky pirate starfighters flitting in and out of a collection of rocks at the edge of the belt, well away from the four tugs that were hauling asteroids. They were flying around, shooting targets in the belt on what looked like a predetermined path. Tamara’s fighter was holding position several hundred kilometers above the course, giving her a bird’s eye view of the exercise.
“Can you open a channel?” he asked.
“Yes, Captain,” Stella said. “Just one moment. Let me see if I can get her.” She ran through the channels until she found Tamara’s tactical channel. Now, if Tamara was engaged in maneuvers, would she answer?
Chapter 25
Tamara nodded to herself in satisfaction. Her flyers were starting to shape up nicely. They still had a ways to go, but they were showing definite improvement as this exercise was proving. She wouldn’t have allowed them to play tag with the asteroids if she didn’t think they could get through without getting killed. The machines they were using certainly weren’t the best, but for the moment, they were the best she could give them. There were plans in the pipelines to build new and better starfighters but other projects had cropped up. She didn’t like the Sepulcres or these Lancer-class fighters the new guys were using. They had a lot of problems, they weren’t the greatest of design and in the case of the Lancers severely lacking in their armament. But, it was what she had to work with until she could free up some resources to get better fighters out there. And they did have good speed and maneuverability. They were able to handle any of the in system traffic and freighters that came to the system, though she had to admit to herself that so far all the in system traffic and freighters had been hers.
Today’s exercise had been a swoop and shoot, forcing them to fly through the nest of asteroids firing powered down targeting
lasers at beacons that had been set amidst the rocks. Points were awarded for whoever could shoot the most beacons while maintaining a high rate of speed. She’d be running the rest of her small fighter squadron through this exercise throughout the next few days, and she’d given strict orders that none of those who had already flown it were to speak about it to the others until they’d all gone through. No one argued, since they wanted to see how good their fellows would be. They were shaping up into a decent fighting unit.
An indicator on her control panel blinked. She keyed the comm. “This is Samair. I’m a bit busy right now, so I hope that this is important.”
A small voice answered. “Tamara? It’s me.”
“Stella! Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice! When did you get back?” She started checking her sensor feeds and then blinked. “What the hell? How did you make it all the way into the system already?”
“Tamara, we’ve been on approach for the last four days,” Stella replied. “How did you not notice?”
Tamara let her head fall back against the headrest and sighed. How the hell had she not noticed that the Grania Estelle was in system? It wasn’t as though she was some tiny stealth ship sneaking into the system. “I’m sorry, Stella. I’ve been so busy with the projects here I don’t even remember to eat half the time. I’ve got about another hour working with my flyers here and then I’ll be able to fly over to the Grania Estelle.”
“The Captain will be glad to meet with you, Tamara. And I’ll be glad to have you back aboard.”
Tamara smiled broadly. “It’ll be good to be back. And we all have a lot to talk about.”
Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 Page 60