Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1

by Michael Kotcher

  “If you attempt to land on our world, you will be attacked!” the man on the other end of the communication answered, his voice sounding utterly officious and self-serving, before ending the call.

  “Damn,” the Captain said, pounding a fist lightly on the arm of his chair. “Why can’t they see sense?” He stood. “I’ll be in the mess hall. Call me if there’s a change.”

  Cookie was waiting for him, a worried expression on his normally very cheerful face. “Captain, good, I need to speak with you.”

  “And I with you, Cookie.”

  The chef gestured to one of the tables and they both sat. Two mugs of coffee were also there, Cookie had had the foresight to realize that they would need them. They sipped the hot liquid for a moment before the chef spoke. “We are in trouble, Captain. We’ve cut rations twice since entering the system, but unless we cut them again, we only have enough left for two weeks’ worth, and even then we’re going to be very lean and hungry.”

  The Captain nodded. “The locals are not budging an inch. They think that we’re to blame for their troubles, or else that if they help us, the pirates might blame them.”

  “Then what can we do? The Chief says that we cannot leave the system. And even if we did, we don’t have enough rations to get to the next port.”

  He nodded again. He pulled out his communicator and flipped it on. “Corajen, it’s the Captain. I need you down in the mess hall, please.”

  The wolf woman’s voice came back immediately. “Roger that, Captain. On my way.”

  Cookie eyed him suspiciously. “You have a plan?”

  The Captain shrugged. “Maybe. Depends on what we actually have available to use.”

  “Will it work?”

  “No idea. But we’re running out of options.” A moment later, Corajen entered the mess hall. She wore no battle armor, having shed that shortly after the raid, walking around in her standard leather kilt that fell to her knees, a wrist communicator on her left arm, and a battle harness that also doubled as a halter top, barely covering her breasts. Those of the crew that had fur tended not to wear much in the way of clothing, but Corajen tried to project an air of demureness. Having one’s breasts uncovered didn’t bother her, or many of the females aboard, but it did have the annoying tendency (most of the time) of distracting the males. The Captain had never said anything about her clothes, caring more about her ability to do her job than her state of undress, which was something that earned him a number of points in the lupusan’s book.

  As one of the senior security officers aboard Grania Estelle, he did care about her weapons however. The battle harness held a stunner pistol under her left armpit, a pulser under her right, and a meter long blade sheathed down her back. She carried no other weapons, but then, even if stripped of those artificial items, she would not be unarmed. She was a lupusan, after all, and the inch-long claws on each finger, as well as her very sharp teeth allowed Corajen to be an arsenal unto herself. The guns and the blade were almost an afterthought.

  Almost. Her rifle was stowed away in the ship’s armory, and she was glad of it. Lugging the weapon around wasn’t really practical aboard ship. And in day-to-day operations, it wasn’t necessary. Her regular kit and weapons were more than adequate to keep order aboard the ship. Hell, her presence alone was usually enough, without having to hit anyone, threaten anyone, or even draw a weapon.

  “Captain,” she said, “You sent for me?” She slid into a seat at the table next to them.

  “Yes, I did,” he replied. “We have a serious situation.” He leaned back a bit, trying to get more comfortable. “Our food stores are running dangerously low. The locals won’t let us come down because they say we’ll be attacked if we do. They refuse to have anything to do with us.”

  “Okay,” the wolf woman said slowly, nodding a bit. “I’m following you so far. I’m just confused by what you think I should do here.”

  “We need to get down to the surface and deal with the locals.”

  Her ears flattened to her head. “What does that mean, Captain? If you’re thinking my security team is going down to the surface to start shooting up the bureaucrats who are stonewalling us, you can forget it, Captain. I won’t do it and I won’t let any of the others do it.” She crossed her large arms over her chest. “I know you’re the Captain, but I won’t do it.”

  She was greatly daring here. On board any ship, the Captain’s word was law. He could order she be spaced and the crew would be expected to obey. In most cases they would, and they would trust that the Captain wouldn’t give an order like that without exceptionally good reason. As the ruler of the ship, all of the hard choices were ultimately on his shoulders. Others might make hard decisions, but in the end, as one would expect it would be the Captain’s responsibility. But there was only so much that could be done. Corajen was popular with the crew and a force of her own to be reckoned with. Her actions during the raid had also raised her standing within the crew. They had no intention of pushing her to try and move up in the world, and nor did she, but it did give her some leverage that even the Captain could not ignore. If she put her foot down that she would not attack Instow, serious discipline problems might occur if he ordered that she do so.

  But that was no matter, because he had no intention of conducting a raid of his own. “Relax, Corajen, I have no desire to hurt these people. It’s on our route, I can’t afford to completely alienate these people. But we need food. Badly.” She nodded in understanding, looking grateful. “We need to get down there and get the locals to see reason. And we can’t do that if the only person who’s talking to us is the one who doesn’t want us here.”

  She nodded very slowly, then reached up and rubbed her muzzle for a second before putting both hands down on the table. “So what exactly am I expected to do?”

  “Your job is to protect the team that is going to the surface. I’m not saying you need to shoot up a neighborhood, but I do expect that everyone that goes down comes back up again in one piece.”

  Corajen smiled wickedly. “That I can do, Captain.”

  The Captain stood. “I’m going to be sending the team down in about two hours. Get your team ready to go down.”

  Corajen sprang up as well. “Then I need to go speak with my team. Who’s going down?”

  “I’m sending Taja, Mickey and Slay. And one other, though she doesn’t know she’s going yet.”

  Tamara pulled herself out from the hole in the bulkhead where she had been splicing and replacing whole sections of wiring. A great deal of the wiring in large sections of the Grania Estelle was so corroded it didn’t actually do anything. Most of it had been spliced, and bypassed, so it was just stuffed unceremoniously back behind the bulkheads and shut back in, with no labeling system or any indication of what any of it did. She had been busying herself in this area for the last few hours, now that replicator two was up and running.

  “How’s it going?” the Captain asked her, clasping one wrist with the opposite hand, behind his back.

  “Better,” she commented, dusting herself off and standing up. “I’ve managed to rewire this junction, but now I’m running into problems because there’s all sorts of cross wiring and splicing in there. It’s a mess. But I’m sorting it out,” she told him with a smile.

  He nodded in approval, smiling himself. “Excellent. Very good work. But I need to pull you off that for a while.”

  Tamara raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what is it that I’m going to be doing?”

  “Flying down to Instow. Or more specifically, flying cover for the shuttle as they go down to get us some foodstuffs.”

  She blinked in surprise. “You want me to fly my fighter down to the moon and provide fire support? You want me to shoot up a civilian population?”

  “No, I don’t,” he said hurriedly. “I just went through this with Corajen. I don’t want any of you to shoot anybody. Instow is on my trade route and I want to be able to come back here often.” He sighed. “Every time the people on t
he surface talk to us, they tell us they will attack us if we come down. I’m hoping that if our shuttle flies down with a fighter escort that will make them think twice about trying to shoot at my people.”

  “I’m going to have to do a full sensor scan of what we can see of the settlements from orbit, Captain,” she warned. “If they have missile launchers or anything like that, even having a fighter escort, the shuttle will be in serious trouble. I don’t have any missiles constructed, I have to defend the shuttle with cannons alone, which is a serious handicap.”

  “I understand. But we have to get a team down there to negotiate for food stores. Our own are dangerously low and we have nowhere else to go to get the food. We have to do this. So my question to you, Moxie, is, will you? Will you do this?”

  She grimaced. “You ask me to do this after you tell me that we’re going to run out of food if we don’t do this. Thank you very much, Captain. You’re a prince of merchants.” Her tone was incredibly sour.

  His grin was smug. “Well of course, Moxie. I needed to be sure that you would do it.”

  Tamara grumbled at him. “All right. Then I need to get to bay one and go through preflight. When do we go?”

  “Less than two hours.”

  “Then I’d better get going. I just need to make a quick stop at replicator one before we go.”

  “You called me up here, Tamara?” Corajen asked. “I’ve got to get to the shuttle.”

  The engineer nodded, pointing to a crate sitting by the replicator. “We haven’t got a lot of time, but I figured you’d want a look at that.”

  The lupusan opened the crate and her eyes goggled, her tongue lolled out of her mouth. “Where did you get these?”

  “I made them,” she said matter-of-factly. “I have the master replicator access.”

  Corajen looked up at her, a smile spreading on her mount. “What are these?”

  “This,” Tamara replied, pulling the first item in the crate, “Is the MK-413 pulse rifle. Ten millimeter, with over under pump action, four round grenade launcher. It’s a lot more powerful than the weapons you’re using now, a lot more durable and easier to work with. You can drag that thing through the mud and it will still fire.”

  The wolf woman took the weapon from her and cradled it as though it was a child, stroking it with the hand not holding the stock. It was a lean weapon, a carbine, really but with a retractable stock, and a hundred round magazine. The weight wasn’t bad, actually about the same as the rifle she used now.

  “You’ve only got about ninety minutes to familiarize yourself with that, and make sure that your team is familiar. I made enough for all of them.” Tamara indicated the crate. “I also made enough ammunition for six clips each. I would imagine if you need more ammo than that for this trip, we’re in more trouble than we can really handle. Can you do it?”

  “Make this beauty purr?” Corajen asked. “You insult me, madam! Of course I can. And my team too. We’ve got this.” She leaned forward, looking into the crate. “Hey, what are those?”

  Tamara smiled. “Oh, those? Oh, I think you’ll like those.”

  Two hours later, two ships departed the much larger Grania Estelle, the long blocky shuttle with its mismatched cylindrical engine pods and stubby wings, and the sleek winged dragon of a starfighter, which kept within a kilometer of its principal, looking dangerous and protective. Both ships angled away from the freighter and dove into the atmosphere of the tiny world.

  Chapter 7

  Instow, the moon that was named for the system, the only inhabitable piece of real estate in the system, was a fair sized piece of real estate. At just over 4600 kilometers in diameter, however, it was very compact compared to a normal planet. There were three settlements on the tidal-locked moon, one of which was right on the equator of the point equidistant from the gas giant and space beyond, which meant that the gas giant would always be on one side of the city, making for some dramatic views of the atmospheric storms on the nearby Jovian.

  This was a cold moon, for it was rather distant from the star, and the various bodies of water, small lakes, were mostly frozen over. There was a very light atmosphere because the gravity was a bare fraction of standard, though it was heavy enough that without mechanical assistance, you could not jump and leave the planet. People needed to wear breathing masks when outside. Inside the buildings, gravity nets were installed allowing people to walk around normally and most buildings were connected by covered passageways. There were no indigenous animals on this world, but the first colonists here had seeded those bodies of water with fish, which had adapted to the cold and multiplied rapidly. Along with a few varieties of fruits and vegetables, grown in indoor greenhouses augmented with artificial light, the locals also produced a very respectable beer.

  They were always in the market for high technology items and even raw materials they could process on their own in their small machine shops. Unfortunately, Instow had no spacecraft, no shuttles, nothing that they could use to try and exploit the vast riches of their own system, but they didn’t seem to be too bothered by that. Centuries ago when the Hudora system just next door was a major hub for technology and trade, ships would be passing through Instow fairly regularly. Traffic had since dropped off considerably, but the locals could be assured that a ship would be passing through every six months or so, bringing news, trade goods and the occasional drunken bar fight.

  A construction project had begun about fifty years ago to build a dome over the capital city, Terminus, named for its position on the planet’s surface, but it was only partially completed. The groundwork had been laid out, but the money and the finished materials had run out. It was still something that was talked about, usually looked upon with sad wanting when breather masks had to be put on to walk outside. There were risks, of course, to putting up such a structure but no more so than on space stations that had transparent domes covering inner buildings and living areas.

  The houses and buildings were a motley collection of shapes, designs and sizes, making the city of Terminus look like little more than a just a ramshackle collection of metal. As the shuttle with its fighter escort drew closer, they did a flyover of the city, the Perdition’s sensors sucked up every bit of data possible, taking video of what was in range. The information collected might not be of immediate use, but it could certainly help in mapping out the city and determining the population centers and other such things. Perhaps even food warehouses could be located so the team from the Grania Estelle could know where to go for their business.

  No one was signaling. Perhaps their sensors were just as bad as the ones on the Grania Estelle and they couldn’t accurately detect the incoming small ships. Maybe they weren’t watching. Maybe only the bureaucrats who were refusing to help were the only ones watching and they were scared to death what the incoming ships meant. No one really knew. The Captain had hailed Instow and was continuing to do so as the shuttle and the fighter came down, but so far the same answer kept coming back. “Do not come down or you will be attacked.” Obviously, they were not heeding this warning.

  Tamara’s comms beeped. “Shuttle one to Perdition. Are you detecting any weapons? Any hostile actions by the locals?” Corajen’s voice sounded a little strange, not afraid but more as though she was getting hyped up for an upcoming battle.

  She keyed the comm. “This is Perdition. Nothing so far. No large gatherings of people. No weapons to speak of so far. That’s not really unusual, actually, if the civilization here has fallen into such disrepair. And I don’t think they’re hiding any kind of serious hardware here. That’s not to say that we won’t be met by armed parties at the landing site, but so far I’m not detecting anything.”

  “Thanks, Perdition. You know just how to make a girl happy.”

  They had carefully selected a landing zone near to the warehouse district, which Taja had pointed out wasn’t the place that they had used the last time they were here at Instow, but she acknowledged that it had been almost four years since t
he Grania Estelle had been here and that the last time, there had been no pirate threat. It was an open clearing, away from the other buildings, most likely to be used for loading and unloading of goods. The fish harvests were brought in here, to be packaged and sold. For now, only a small surplus was taken in addition to what was needed to survive, meant to be sold to passing ships. As the shuttle came closer and lower, they could see there were loaders and small vehicles frantically speeding away from the area where the shuttle’s landing spotlights were now aiming their beams.

  “Shuttle one, this is Perdition. I will remain in the air, flying an orbital pattern over the city about two kilometers up. You need me, I’ll come running.”

  “Copy that, Perdition. Hopefully, for you this is only going to be a waste of time.” Taja sounded like she didn’t really believe that. Hopefully the young cargo specialist would be correct.

  The shuttle did a circular sweep as it lowered to the ground. The main engines shut off as the repulsors kicked in and very slowly touched down. The fighter continued past, continuing a slow loop around the city. Tamara’s sensors could pick up people coming out of their homes, tentatively, looking upward and following the track of her fighter, and as the images zoomed in on their faces, they looked worried. They didn’t need to be. As far as Tamara was concerned, this was going to be a show of force only. She had no desire to open fire on civilians, not now, and only if they moved to attack the crew on the shuttle. Even then, she didn’t think she could bring herself to turn her starfighters cannons on the people directly.

  Tamara continued her lazy turn, hoping that the people on the surface would see sense and they could all do business and get on with their day.

  Corajen was the first down the ramp, her pulse rifle in her hands. She was dressed in body armor, though the weapon was pointed at the ground. The lupusan was trying to be as non-threatening as possible but it was a difficult act for her to pull off. A small group of people were approaching the shuttle, but most recoiled in fear as they saw the wolf woman step off the shuttle. Even in a skinsuit, she was a fearsome presence. Her face wasn’t the right shape to use the same helmets that humans used, so hers was outfitted with a bubble helmet that incorporated her long muzzle and her ears. The other five members of her security team hopped down the shuttle’s ramp, not able to run properly in the low gravity. The skipping-hop stride might have looked silly, the armor and weapons did not.