A Greater Interest: Samair in Argos: Book 4 (13 page)

              The slimer grenades went off, covering the unfortunate raider in the foam.  He writhed and screamed but he was soon engulfed in the expanding liquid foam that filled the corridor.  In seconds, the foam from the three grenades had completely gummed up the area, encasing nine of the lupusan pirates.

              Then Ekaterina and Konnair leaned out slightly from concealment and fired their weapons, cutting the remaining ones down as they were panicking about their fellows.

              Konnair was breathing heavily, but there was a triumphant smile on his face.  “I can’t believe that worked!”

              Ekaterina, however, was swearing a blue streak.  “Damn!  Damn!  Damn!”

              He turned to face her, checking behind her down the corridor.  “What?  Did they find us?”

              “No, you stupid puppy!  That!”  She pointed one clawed finger in the direction of the mess of foam, no longer liquid and gas but now concrete-hard.  “Those fucking grenades just gummed up the whole damned corridor.  And the fucking hatch!”

              Konnair’s face fell.  “Is there another way in there?”

              Ekaterina slammed a fist into the nearby bulkhead hard enough to hurt her hand.  “
Kors!”
she snarled.  “Yes, there is.  But we’ll have to get in there by the control booth, like in the other big bay we went into.”  Baring her teeth, she popped the magazine from her rifle and changed it out.  “Come on.” 

              “General, we have four of those local fighters coming at us on an attack vector,” Bek reported from tactical.  He was looking calm and eager, ready to take on those gnats that had just blown a hole in the side of the assault transport.

              Typhon nodded.  “Yes, I see them.  They haven’t fired on us.  Odd.”

              Bek frowned, his ears laying back against his skull.  “Yes, sir, it is.  Damned peculiar.  You’d have thought they’d just try and blast us out of the sky like their friends did against
Nemesis
.”

              The general couldn’t suppress a chuckle.  Even though the bug was his ally in this endeavor, it just felt so
good
to see his nice shiny new ship get hammered by missiles.  Even if they didn’t do a substantial amount of damage, the bug needed to be brought down a peg or two.  Especially since it looked as though that heavy cruiser was taking its sweet bloody time in getting into the fight.  If he’d moved just a bit faster,
Nemesis
might have been able to annihilate more of the local corvettes, instead of letting all of the light units get nearly completely chewed up.  Only one of Verrikoth’s gunships had survived up until this point and only two of the corvettes, one of Typhon’s and one of the bug’s.  And both of those were pretty worse for wear at this point.  The lupusan gritted his teeth. 
Byvennot
would require quite a bit of work to get her back into fighting trim again.  So far, this raid hadn’t been worth the effort.  The loss of two ships was a tall price to pay for a pair of cargo ships full of fuel and strategic metals.  Then he remembered; it was only the bug’s ships that had the metals.  His were helping to bring in the fuel.  No, unless the number of slaves and gear they could wrangle from the gas mine were substantial, this was going to be a very costly raid.

              He checked the displays and it showed an overlay of
Illuyanka
’s weapon’s range.  Another fifteen seconds and the ship would be in range of the fighters.  They’d thrown their best against the whole of the fleet but they hadn’t dared challenge
him
yet.  They feared him.  And he’d show them why they should.

              The timer ticked down and Typhon gave the order.  “Shoot them down, Bek.”

              “Yes, sir!”  The lupusan was already pressing the controls and the
Illuyanka
’s heavy and medium lasers cut loose, energy blasts lancing out.  The snap shots apparently caught the fighters by surprise.  Two of them were vaporized before they even had a chance to change course.  “Got you, little nothings!”  The tactical officer was obviously pleased with the kills.  The other two fighters broke off, veering away from the light cruiser and forcing Bek to either choose one fighter or split his fire.

              “Keep them off us, but helm, we’re going to the aid of HT-626.”  He turned to another of the watch standers.  “Sensors, what is the status of the assault transport?”

              “Their main power and sensors are still down, General,” the she-wolf replied.  “They’ve got a large breach in the hangar bay doors and it looks as though they’ve lost a shield generator node on that same side.”  She paused, but then squinted at her display.  “General, there’s a shuttlecraft that’s accelerating away from the assault transport.”

              “I’ve got a lock,” Bek said, smiling.

              “Fire,” Typhon ordered.  He watched in satisfaction as a heavy laser reduced the fleeing shuttle to scrap, but that feeling quickly turned to ashes in his mouth.  Is this what he was reduced to?  Destroying two fighters and a shuttlecraft?  He
needed
to be over on one of those boarding shuttles, dropping down into the gas giant’s atmosphere to
take
that station from the locals.  He needed to be there taking lives and taking prisoners.  He was a ground pounder, not a naval officer.  Over the years he’d taken a more active role in the naval side of his operations, but
stars
how he missed being on the front lines, where the metal meets the meat.

              “Get comms with the transport,” he ordered.  “I want to know what the
hell
is going on over there.  And inform them of the shuttle, get the ship on alert.  Make sure that patrols sweep that ship from top to bottom.  I don’t want any place on that ship unchecked.”

              “Yes, General.”

              When the klaxons started blaring, Ekaterina actually started to laugh.  “Took them bloody long enough.  We’ve killed, what, fifteen of their soldiers?”

              “I’ve lost count,” Konnair admitted, panting with exertion.  “Wait, was that fifteen including the dozen that we used the slimer grenades on?”

              “Okay, then a score,” she said, glancing right, then left at a T-intersection.  Even over the painful screech of the klaxons she could hear the thumping of padded feet on the deckplates.  “Okay, company coming.  And it might actually be a company of soldiers coming this way.”

              “How far are we from the control room?”  Konnair’s courage was fading, but somehow he was keeping it together.  She wasn’t sure, though, if he could keep it together for much longer, especially if that company of soldiers managed to catch up.

              “We’re only a few dozen meters,” she told him, keeping her voice very low.  “And I’ll tell you what.  If we get out of this, I’m going to put in for a month off.  I want a nice, scrubby desert, with a nice watering hole,” she took a few cautious steps forward, her hears moving frantically up and down and her nostrils flaring.  “And I would like a few nice fluffy rabbits to run down and eat.”

              “A desert?” He was covering the rear, his weapon up to his shoulder, pointed down the corridor.  “Really?  I would have thought you were going to say a nice wood, or maybe the jungle or something.”

              “Nah,” she said.  “The desert.  Nice and arid, beautiful landscapes, blowing winds.”  Ekaterina took a deep, satisfied breath. 

              “Forgive me, but that is just crazy.”  He actually seemed to be calming himself.

              They moved along the corridor and managed to avoid being seen.  That company they’d seen wasn’t in this direction, but Ekaterina was sure that they wouldn’t be too far behind.  “We need to move.”  They reached the door to the control room and she pressed Tamara’s entry device to the keypad.  Three soft beeps and the latch clunked.  She stuffed the lockbox into a pocket, hefted her weapon and pulled the hatch open.  Silent as darkness, the two lupusan slipped inside.

              It was a similar room to that in the first bay, but it overlooked a smaller hangar.  This one only contained eight of the assault shuttles.  There were soldiers down there, but it seemed as though there were fewer in this bay than there should have.  Perhaps they were in the ships?  Ekaterina couldn’t tell and her implants didn’t detect more than a score of them.  They were clustered near the front of the bay, toward the inside of the ship.  And the stairs from the control room led down to the outer edge of the bay, near to the main hangar doors.  They’d be exposed on their tromp down the steps to the deck, but there was nothing they could do about it.  And with the ship on high alert, it was unlikely they’d be able to make it back to the main bay to link back up with the cargo shuttle and get out.

              “How are we getting out of here?” Konnair asked.  “We can’t get back to the cargo shuttle from here.”

              “No,” Ekaterina replied with a grin.  She pointed.  “We’re going to trash that bay and make off with one of theirs.”

              Konnair’s eyes widened.  “Are you serious?  Are you a pilot?”

              She shrugged.  “Either that or we’d have to take the ship.”  She gestured in a wide arc, indicating the assault transport as a whole. 

              “That’s not funny.”

              “It’s not meant to be,” she said, moving to the door leading in.  “And to answer your question, yes, Serzhant Eristov did put me through some training.”

              “Right,” he said, not sounding convinced.  “All right, I don’t have a better idea.  Lead the way.”

              She clapped him on the upper arm.  “Smartest thing you’ve said this whole time, Deputy.”  She opened the inner door and started down the stairs, moving with a lazy confidence, as though she had every right to be there.  It was the best camouflage, anyway and Konnair did his best to follow suit.  They made it to the deck without incident and with a nod from Ekaterina they split up, moving through the bay, slipping the charges onto the shuttles.  A quick peek through some of the armorglass ports showed that the shuttles were mostly full up.  All but one of the two in the center, that one had only the pilot and copilot on board.

              She pointed at that particular shuttle and Konnair gulped.  Then he nodded in response, following where she led.  Four of the soldiers milling about near the inner bulkhead of the bay saw them moving in the direction of the shuttle and started walking in their direction, swaggering and brandishing their weapons.  Ekaterina nodded to them in acknowledgement but didn’t slow and didn’t respond to them otherwise.  She reached the side hatch to the shuttle and pressed the lockbox to the control panel.  Crossing her mental fingers, she waited a second, but Samair’s magic box didn’t let her down.  The door slid open and without a word, the two stepped inside.

              Bracing herself for a platoon of soldiers she hadn’t seen, Ekaterina was pleasantly surprised to find it empty.  She moved quickly to the cockpit.  Konnair hung back, staying near the door to the passenger area. 

              The pilot in the left hand seat, with mottled silver and brown fur, turned to see who had entered.  Ekaterina struck.  She lashed out with the butt of her assault rifle, smashing the pilot in the muzzle, releasing a terrible cracking sound.  The male howled in pain, gripping the mashed muzzle that was fountaining blood, falling back in the pilot’s crash seat.  She reversed the stroke, swinging the stock around like a club, trying to hit the copilot.

              The other pilot was just quick enough, however, dodging his head to the side just in time for the hard metal stock to thump into the headrest.  He fumbled with his pistol, but the restraining harnesses were making it difficult to get it free.  Her claws made swift ruin of his throat, and she pushed his head forward to keep him from bleeding too much on the piloting controls.  Another gouge and the pilot soon joined his companion in death. 

              “Come help me here,” she beckoned to Konnair.

              “Trouble!  Get back here!”

              She turned just as the sound of four growling throats reached her ears.  She ducked and turned, her rifle at the ready. 

              “What the…” one of the pirates, with golden fur with ugly red scars on his muzzle.  “What do you think you’re doing?”  Then the smell of blood hit his nostrils.  “What the hell is going on in there?”

              “Nothing to worry about,” Konnair said, trying to block the entry.  He was a big wolf, though not as tall as Marat, but he was easily able to get in front of and cover the door. 

              The gold wolf snarled.  “Who the hell do you think you are talking to me like that, pup?  You’re on
my
hangar deck!”

              Ekaterina growled to herself.  Konnair was standing in her line of fire. 
Damn it.  Step back, Konnair.
  Then she remembered.  [Step back, Konnair.  One step!] She commed.

              The deputy’s ears laid back but he obeyed, taking one step back from the door.  The big golden lupusan stepped up, into the hatchway, an ugly look on his ugly face.  He poked one claw into Konnair’s chest as he moved closer.  She fired, taking the top of his head off, blood painting the inner sides of the hatch.  Konnair gave him a hard shove and he flew out into the hangar.  Slapping the control, the door slid shut, cutting off the shouts of the raiders outside.