“Can we start arming the crew?” Gants demanded suddenly.
“Not sure it would do much good against the armor that they’re wearing,” the sensor operator said dubiously.
“Thank you for your input, Specialist but I prefer to fight,” he said irritably and the specialist flushed in embarrassment. “Hunt up as many volunteers as you can find and raid the arms lockers. Anyone who is willing to fight, get them armed and organized. Is Major Telford still with us?”
The comms officer nodded. “Yes, sir. He’s moving to ambush the pirate group moving along the keel.”
“Good. Get with him, tell him that he’s going to have some… militia coming his way. I know he’ll bitch about it, but we need all the help we can scrounge up. Once you’ve done that, send a message to all ships in the area. Inform them of our situation and see what anyone can do to help.”
“Aye, sir.”
“I’ll go, sir,” Chief Kolgus said, to no one’s surprise, turning back to him and raising one clawed hand.
“Me too, Colonel,” said one of the comms operators, followed by another one of the engineers. Two other crewmen quickly stepped up.
“As will I, Colonel,” Lieutenant Commander Paxton said, moving to stand over with the others. He had a stunner pistol in one hand, though what he thought that was going to do against the mobs of pirates aboard his ship, Gants wasn’t sure.
But Gants shook his head. “I appreciate your thought, Commander, but that’s my job. You’re going to stay here on the bridge and you’re going to stay on top of things.”
Now it was Paxton’s turn to shake his head. “I’m afraid I can’t allow you to do that, sir. Your job is to take care of this whole ship, not get bogged down in an unnecessary firefight.”
“I can’t order my crew to do things that I won’t do,” he replied stubbornly, getting to his feet.
Again the XO shook his head. “It’s about what is more important, sir. What if this is a precursor to an all out attack on the system? We need you here to command the flagship, Colonel. You’re not Army, sir and you’re not going to run headlong into gunfire when you have greater responsibilities.”
“I have no intention of ‘running headlong into gunfire,’ Lieutenant Commander,” Gants stated, getting angry at the man now. “And I don’t need you telling me my job.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t go out there,” the Lieutenant Commander replied, raising the stunner and pointing it at his commanding officer. “You need to stay here and retain overall command.”
“What the hell are you doing? This is mutiny!” He had no trace of humor or understanding in his tone and took a step toward his first officer. It was probably right, but Malachai Gants was not going to stand by and do nothing while his crew was dying, while his ship was under attack from within her hull.
“I don’t see it that way, sir,” Paxton replied simply, not backing down. “You’re too important to lose.”
Gants stared daggers back at his traitorous XO and sat back down in the command seat. “Fine. Go then and try not to get killed,” he said harshly. “You won’t want to miss your court martial.”
Paxton visibly gulped but still did not retreat. “I understand, sir. You do what you need to do.”
“Get out of my sight,” Gants snapped, his voice rising a few decibels. Paxton lowered the stunner and led the others, all eight, out through the main bridge doors, waiting for them to unlock and open and then close behind them.
The colonel watched them go and once the doors boomed shut behind them, he swept his gaze over the rest of the bridge crew. “Get back to your posts!” he barked at the rest of them, all of whom were staring at him. They all jumped and hustled back to their stations, chastened.
Gnashing his teeth, Gants turned back to his display. He saw a group of two dozen Army troopers gathered around the emergency bulkheads at frame 90, lying in wait. They were finding anything they could to use for cover. Thirty seconds after Gants tuned back in, the pirate’s breaching charge burned a rectangular hole several meters wide in the metal wall.
Don’t wait, Gants mentally begged, his previous anger vanished. Once it cuts through, don’t wait, just shoot them.
And that’s just what they did. When the slab of metal crashed inward once the breaching charge did its job, all twenty-four troopers, led by Major Telford, opened up with all their weapons into the gaping hole in the bulkhead.
The wolves on the opposite side were caught completely by surprise. They hadn’t realized they were walking into an ambush, since no real gathering of defenders had been waiting for them on the other side of the myriad of other bulkheads they’d cut through. The pirates had foolishly bulled forward instead of scanning the way forward properly. It was the somewhat narrow entranceway that saved a good number of them. The two frontmost lupusan were cut apart by the fusillade of so much incoming fire: bullets, slugs and flechettes tore into them. The blizzard of rounds punched through their nanoweave armor and the two wolves fell, covered in dozens of wounds. One died when several needles pierced his heart, and the other took a trio of hollow point bullets that tore open his throat. Their armor absorbed and deflected a great deal of the incoming fire, but eventually the damage added up and the nanoweave failed. Both collapsed to the deck, blood fountaining from the wounds.
With a roar, Colonel Arn directed two of his Grenadiers to do what they did best: to launch grenades into the mix. Their launchers each fired a pair of explosives through the hole and the compartment beyond the bulkhead erupted in flames.
Screams added to the din and the incoming fire from the defenders slacked off a bit. Arn ordered his troops forward and they rushed through the breach. Six of the defenders targeted the lead wolf, bringing all the fury their weapons could muster and after a few secondes of concentrated fire, they brought him down. By doing so, however, they they opened themselves up to another grenade barrage. Three of them were killed in the blasts as four grenades went off in their midst, one more was wounded by shrapnel. At a bellow from their officer, the remaining soldiers withdrew, laying down covering fire as they went.
Arn gave them credit. It had been a well thought out and executed ambush. It was their weapons that had been lacking. Tossing a handful of plasma grenades through the breach at the platoon would have been devastating, instead only three of his wolves were dead. Of course, the 800s with the platoon would have advanced and torn the defenders apart. But it was a good plan.
“Move up!” Arn ordered, his voice harsh. “Maintain cover pattern. We only have six more stops.” He switched on the external speakers on his suit. “Where are we going?” he rasped loudly, but he was perfectly clear.
The entire platoon switched to externals as well. “Seylonique!” they all screamed, their shouts reverberating down the corridor.
“Damn these people!” Kiki shouted to the rest of the team, shoving through a panicked throng of crewmen. It seemed as though there were three hundred people crammed in here and all of them were pushing and screaming at one another, but none of them seemed to know what exactly was going on, or in what direction they needed to move.
“They’re scared,” Calvin said, his fist connecting with the belly of a human crewman who’d accidently elbowed the cat in the eye. The man doubled over in pain, gasping for breath, his eyes accusing. “Cheer up,” the cat told him. “I could have hit you a lot lower and you’d be squeaking instead of sucking wind.”
“This isn’t working Serzhant,” Beau rumbled, pushing a pair of female humans out of the way. They stumbled into a pair of zheen, who pushed back. “This corridor is completely blocked, unless you want to start shooting. We’re not getting through this way.”
“No, damn it, we’re not,’ Viktoriya snarled, though her ire was not at the big male. “We’re going to need to take an alternate route. We go back,” she ordered, turning around. She nodded to Tamara. “You all right?”
“Fine, Serzhant,” Tamara replied, though she was a little flushed. It had
been a while since she’d dealt with a boarding action. Not since the void on board the Grania Estelle when the Armsman Gideon Jax and his fellows were trying to take them to the pirate base in the Amethyst star system. Recovering from injuries, a broken arm and serious infections as well as malnutrion, she hadn’t enjoyed the experience. The pirates had already been aboard and the lupusan sisters were fighting to retake the ship. It had been frightening and dangerous and Tamara had hated every minute of it, though she’d been able to compartmentalize her fear and carry on as best she could. She had, however, been plenty happy when the last of the bastards was finally dead.
But during that operation the corridors and compartments on the bulk freighter had been nearly empty. The crew had lost people, was barely two thirds of its normal size and most of the pirates were already dead. Here, though, in a similar situation, there were still over 2500 crewmembers, possibly more, still alive. And it seemed as though they were all rushing to the forward half of the ship. Every corridor, passageway or compartment seemed to be stuffed with terrified people.
As Viktoriya reversed her course, Tamara put her hand on her back again and the wolf started shoving her way back through the crowd. “Make way!” the black-furred female shouted. “Make way!” The crowd tried to part for her group of wolves and their charge (no one could see Calvin through the crush of bodies), but there simply wasn’t room to move around much. In the end, the Serzhant simply reverted to her fearsome predator mode (as Tamara thought of it), growling, gnashing her teeth and pushing forward. It didn’t help with keeping things calm, but it did help clear a path through the corridor as people screamed in fear at this new threat. They were almost clawing at each other in their terror, trying to get away from her. The sisters followed her lead and suddenly there were a trio of ravening wolves amidst the prey, all of whom were nearly trampling each other to flee.
Tamara grimaced; she didn’t want to see these people hurt. “Viktoriya-“ she started to say.
The serzhant looked over her shoulder at her, face still twisted in a snarl and teeth bared. “Not NOW!” Then she looked to the front again. “We need to get clear of this place.” She snapped her jaws at a human male who was holding his hand out to her as though he was trying to halt their progress. He snatched his hand back clutching it to his chest, startled. They jostled and shoved their way through the mob of crewmen and about twenty meters down the corridor they were finally clear.
The chief guard turned to her principle. “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” she said, face calm, but her tone made it clear she wasn’t the least bit sorry. Her demeanor was otherwise completely unreadable. Gone was the fearsome predator, replaced by what felt like a block of obsidian.
“I am sorry about back there, Ma’am. And I am sorry about those people. But they are not my priority. You are.” Seeing the scowl on Tamara’s face, she went on. “You are my first priority as my principle, Ma’am. Then my team comes next and then, at a very distant third, is anyone else. I’m not contracted to have separate priorities, Ma’am.”
Tamara looked at her with sympathy. “That sounds like a hard life,” she said.
Viktoriya’s tail thrashed. “I don’t plan to be living this type of life forever, Ma’am. I’ll retire in a few years and maybe start a security consulting company or something like that.”
Tamara, despite the urgency and danger, suddenly felt a bit hurt. “You’d abandon me?” she asked, her voice small.
The wolf stared at her for several seconds, the serious train of thought short-circuited by Tamara’s response. She blinked in confusion and the human woman began to smile. She laid her ears back and yipped. “Very funny, Ma’am.”
“I’ll make sure you get a glowing recommendation when you do decide to set up your own shop, Viktoriya,” Tamara said.
“This is very entertaining and everything,” Kiki said, her head swiveling around from side to side, ears perked. “But if we’re really going, we need to go.”
The serzhant snapped her long fingers in Tamara’s face, making her start. She yipped again in amusement and then turned her back and waited. Tamara put her left hand on the she-wolf’s back and with a loud bark, the serzhant ordered them all forward.
Gants clawed at the back of his head, heedless of the pain as his nails raked his scalp. Inertial dampener control had fallen. The pirates had just rushed in and unloaded their weapons, and that damned powered armor of theirs had just mowed down anyone trying to escape from the other hatch. A couple of consoles were damaged but controls were still on line.
What are they doing? Fighting down the keel, capturing IDC, and now the fighting to take auxiliary damage control was increasing. Almost fifty Army soldiers, fully an eighth of the ship’s contingent, and over a dozen of Leytonstone’s crew were firing any kind of weapons they had to try and keep the pirates out. They were doing all right for the moment, as it seemed that the pirates were unwilling to fire off grenades. It was an odd change from their normal operational pattern so far. Also, it helped that the mechs couldn’t get close enough to get inside Aux DC, so the amount of fire that the pirates could bring to bear on the defenders was lessened. But it was certainly not enough for the defenders to relax. Clearly they wanted auxiliary damage control to be taken as intact as possible.
But why? It’s maddening. Yes, there were important things in there, but with the decompression safeties shut down and overridden from the bridge, the ability to vent the ship into space and kill the crew was lost. It made no sense for them to be going there. The engines were shut down, so even cutting fuel or rerouting systems wouldn’t do anything, not anything serious.
He turned to the specialist sitting at the engineering station. “Specialist!” he barked, and she jumped. “What is your opinion on why the pirates would be going for Aux DC?”
The woman looked stricken. “I don’t know, Colonel. They could reroute power, cut fuel lines, power up or down the engines, but those aren’t good enough reasons to be pushing so hard for control of that compartment.”
“Wait,” he interrupted, frowning. “Engine control can be accessed from there?”
She nodded. “Well, yes, sir. But only to bring them online or shut them off. It’s not like you could navigate.”
“Um, Colonel, that’s not true,” a young ensign piped up.
It was Ensign… Laborteaux, Gants remembered. The man was a part of the ship’s steward division for this deployment. “Explain, Ensign,” he ordered, rounding on the man.
Laborteaux straightened to strict attention. “Sir, you would not be able to use the ship’s navigational computer, but the Aux DC can also fire maneuvering thrusters. If you had a spotter, you could, in theory, fly the ship, sir. A least at sublight speeds,” he corrected himself, his eyes fixed on a point on the bulkhead.
Gants sat back in the chair, heavily. That still makes no sense. “You think they’re trying to steal the ship?” He waved a hand in the air. “And how the hell do you know this?”
The ensign’s posture didn’t waver. “I did a few shifts in Aux DC last month, sir, studying for my engineering quals. I want to shift my specialty to engineering, sir.”
Gants grunted. “I see. So are they trying to steal the ship?”
The man looked uncomfortable. “I suppose that’s possible, sir. But even if they make us fly for the hyper limit, it isn’t as though we can’t get more of our own ships here in time to help secure the ship and keep outside forces away from the battlecruiser.”
“Outside forces…” Gants said slowly, and then turned to his displays. “Sensors, are we showing any other ships nearby?”
The sensor officer bolted back to his station. “No, sir, only Moxie-2. Nothing else within mid-range scan. Just some cargo shuttles near the planet, sir.”
He considered this more. “No, this doesn’t make sense. They’re not acting like they’re trying to take the ship. And what’s this nonsense going on down on the keel? That group isn’t going anywhere near anything vital. They’re just
moving down the full length of the ship. What possible purpose could that be for? What’s so important about the keel?”
“Sir, they’re breaking through!” the sensor officer called, his voice a bit louder than was normal. His voice carried in the much more sparsely populated bridge.
Gants checked his own feeds as the officer’s words struck home. He looked at it just in time to see a dozen black-clad raiders rush inside of Aux DC, their weapons firing almost continuously. Did they just overwhelm the defenders, or had they slipped some sort of surprise past them? Damn it, he hadn’t been watching. Of course, once inside, the pirates slaughtered those Army soldiers and crewmen that were there, dumping their dead bodies on the deck. He cursed silently, but his fist pounded against the arm of the chair.
“This can’t be happening. What the hell is so important about the keel? What is down there on the keel?” His voice trailed off. Then the beginnings of a horrifying thought came to him and his eyes widened. There wasn’t time to try and fight the pirates off, if he was right, there was hardly any time for anything. His brain rebelled against this idea, but watching the Army troopers and crewmen in Aux DC cut down to the last forced him to face reality. Leytonstone and her crew were in serious danger and the crew was insufficient to the task of stopping the pirates. The invaders had explosives and heavy weapons and damned impressive armor and his people were completely outmatched.
He activated the internal comms. “Gants to Paxton.”
A moment later, the XO’s voice came back. “Paxton here, Colonel. I’ve gathered up a score of crewmen and we cleaned out the arms locker on deck six. We’re approaching Reactor One now. No sign of the enemy.”
Gants shook his head, even though he knew that Paxton couldn’t see him. “Understood. Good thinking, but I don’t think that pirates are trying to seize the ship. I think they’re trying to destroy it.”
A Greater Interest: Samair in Argos: Book 4 Page 65