First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3 (93 page)

              It took little over three hours at cruising speed to reach the belt, and once there, Korqath cut them all loose.  They went in as individual units, five sets of diamonds, with Tamara linking up with the first group, staying tight to Korqath’s wing.  As they closed with the huge target asteroid, Korqath spoke up over the comms.

              “All right, Aploras, we go in on a strafing run.  Cannons only on this run.  I want a nice clean strike pattern.  Em-One, you take lead position.  I’ll be pulling up the rear of First Flight.”

              “Copy that, Lead,” Tamara answered.  Pushing up the throttle, she angled her fighter in at the rock, and as soon as she reached attack range, she depressed the trigger.  Laser bolts lanced out from the cannons on her ship’s wingtips, stippling the surface of the rock.  Her attack run continued until she rocketed past the asteroid, and her sensors showed the remainder of the flight was following along right behind her, only a few hundred meters behind.  She pulled her ship up and around, making sure to stay clear of the incoming fighters.

              They continued with similar drills for the next two hours.  By the time they were done, a dozen big rocks had been pounded into smaller ones, by use of the starfighters’ missiles and cannon strikes.  They had run an obstacle course through the belt, and even set up for coordinated strikes against communal targets.  All in all, it had been a good training session and Tamara felt a trickle of sweat running down the back of her neck. 

              “That was fun,” she said, forgetting that the comms were open.

              Whoops, buzzes and cheers sounded over the squadron channel.  Korqath buzzed.  “All right, Aploras, knock it off.  Let’s head back to the barn.  I want a hot wash after that exercise, including from our illustrious leader.”

              “I’d be honored,” Tamara replied.  She settled herself into a more comfortable position on the pilot’s couch. 

              “We’ve got a long trip back, Aploras,” Korqath said.  “Report fuel status.”  The various pilots reported in, including Tamara.  “Well, it’ll be close, but if we are a bit more gentle with the throttle, but we can make it in with more than enough reserve to make combat landings.”

              There were groans over the comms.  Tamara did the math.  With enough of a reserve left for a rough combat landing, the trip back would take nearly four and a half hours.  Sighing, she brought up a course and speed to make the station in that time frame and pushed the throttle to the appropriate level.  She keyed the comm over to Korqath’s private channel.

              “Thanks for having me along, Lead,” she told him.

              There was a buzz.  “No, the pleasure is mine, Em-One.  It’s always great getting you out here for a little practice.  Too bad you won’t be able to stay on for a few days when we do some actual dogfighting exercises.  Don’t want you to get soft.  And besides,” he went on, “My Aploras are good and so are the other squadrons, but it’s always good when we can get an old hand to throw some nasty wrenches into the mix.”

              She smiled.  “Always glad to help.  When we get back to the station, I’ll make sure to draw up some ideas.”  Tamara considered it for a moment.  “I’m thinking of a few situations to toss your people into.  Also, I like that you’re having us do combat landings here, keep that up.  Make sure they do all sorts of things of that nature, thruster failures, landings, take offs, sensor failures, all sorts of things.”

              He grunted.  “Already doing some of those.  I didn’t consider take offs and regular landings.  It is something to make sure my Aploras are working on.  I think more than one or two could use the extra time.”

              She shrugged, knowing he couldn’t see it.  “Something to think about.”

              The last of the Aploras was making their hard landing on the hangar deck of the Kutok mine when Tamara lined up herself up for her own attempt.  “Em-One moving in for combat landing, coming in speed one-fifty.”

              “Copy that, Em-One, this is Kutok Landing Control.  You have the ball.”

              “Roger, I have the ball.”  She pressed the throttle forward, bringing her ship in at a steep angle. 

              It was more difficult than she’d originally expected.  The station wasn’t located in orbit, it was in fact in the atmosphere of the gas giant.  Which meant that Tamara was fighting through the high winds and thermal currents to reach the hangar.  She applied more power, more thrusters, coming in at an arc, lining up for the landing. 

              “Looking good,” the signals officer said, voice coaxing her.  “Little more power.  Powwerrr…”

              She brought the
Perdition
’s nose up, and extended her landing gear.  It was going to be tight, what with the Aploras scattered all over the deck like that.  Finding an open patch of deck, she decreased speed and pushed the stick forward, bringing the nose down and touching down.  There was a horrible screeching sound as the struts scraped along the decking, but based on the sound, it didn’t feel as though she was gouging deep furrows in the metal.  Hitting the braking thrusters and putting a puff to the ventral attitude jets, her ship skipped up off the metal and landed again, bumping hard against the decking.  Five seconds later, the ship came to a stop, less than ten meters from the wall.

              “Em-One, I’m down.”  She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.  Checking diagnostics, it appeared as though she hadn’t taken anything more than superficial damage to the landing struts and nothing to the main body of the ship.  Thankfully, there had been a large enough gap for her to set down.  “Glad that’s over with.”

              Checking the seals, she popped the canopy, which slid forward so she could get out.  Her helmet was still sealed and looking back she could see the huge hangar doors closing, sealing off the hangar.  She powered down the ship and then climbed out.  Moving forward, she went to the forward landing strut to check out the damage for herself. 

              “Nice landing, boss,” one of the pilots congratulated her, coming over to her.

              She looked up.  Hearing the voice over her suit comms made it difficult to tell where the voice was coming from, but an indicator on her HUD quickly showed her where the speaker was.  It was a male zheen, not Korqath, about three meters away.  She nodded to him and then looked back to the landing gear.  “Thanks,” she said.  No, like the sensors had indicated, it looked as though the strut had made it through the landing without much wear.  She’d check it out and replace the foot at the bottom if any microfractures had formed. 

              “I’ll have the techs lug this old girl into formation and your normal parking slot, Commander,” the zheen offered.

              “Thanks, but I think I’ll do it myself.  I want to run through the diagnostic and maintenance for this myself, assuming no crisis pops up.  I don’t have any meetings for the rest of the day and tomorrow, well, I think I can put off a few things.”  She ran one hand carefully down the leg strut, but couldn’t feel any fractures.  Not that she would anyway if the cracks were small enough.  “And I’ll want to get her refueled and rearmed.”

              The zheen nodded, his antennae bobbing up and down.  “Yes, ma’am.  Gotta do that with all these birds.”

              She looked up at him and smiled.  “Then I guess we’d best be about it, shouldn’t we?”

              “Yes, ma’am!”

              “Commander Tyler, we have an incoming burst transmission from the
Toroj
,” one of the communications technicians reported.

              “Send it here,” Tyler indicated to the tactical console.  The man nodded and a moment later the information popped up.  It included a number of passive sensor scans of the local space infrastructure.  Tyler pulled out his communicator and called to Verrikoth.

              “What is it, Commander?”

              “I’m sorry to disturb you, my lord, but the scouts have reported back in.  There is no sign of the battlecruiser.”

              There was a pause.  “I will be right there.”  Less than a minute later, the pirate lord stepped out onto the heavy cruiser’s bridge.  “What have we got?”

              Tyler looked up at him and smiled.  “It looks good, my lord.  We’re showing four, not three, of the system defense corvettes currently in close proximity of the gas mine and less than an hour ago, the squadron of fighters just returned to the station.” 

              Verrikoth looked at the display and nodded.  “Excellent.  And at thiss here?”  He pointed at an icon out away from the others.

              “That is the mining station at the edge of the asteroid belt, Lord.  There is a pair of defense turrets there, but no warships, Lord.  It does look as though there are a number of shuttles and sublight cargo ships, as well as worker bots moving around the area.”

              The zheen rubbed his hands together in anticipation.  He turned to the comm-tech.  “Order
Cierre
and
Xiy’jan
in toward the mining sstation, with
Ironhide
and
Skale
az ssupport.  A desstroyer and a corvette sshould be more than enough to handle those turretss.  Meanwhile, there resst of uss will be moving in on that gass mine.”

              “We’re going to be within extreme sensor range of our own in about two hours, Lord.”

              He nodded again.  “Yess.  Let it begin.  Tell all sshipss to increase sspeed to the max acceleration of the freighters.  There won’t be much they can do to sstop uss now, especially if their greatest asset iz out of position.”  Tyler started issuing orders and the deckplates shivered as
Nemesis
accelerated.  Checking his chair’s monitor, he saw that the rest of the fleet had brought their speed up.  In a few hours, the fun would begin and a system that had managed to remain untouched by pirates, raiders or Republic interference would find out what it was that they had been missing.  “I want them to ssee uss approaching and tremble in fear.”

              Nasan Tariq sat at his command seat, wanting desperately to stretch out.  But as the Master and Commander of the First Principles defense corvette
Cavalier
, it simply wouldn’t do to for the captain to be seen doing something so… normal. 
Cavalier
, as well as her three sister ships had been in close proximity to the Kutok mine for three days now, allowing the crews to have some limited shore leave, even if it was only on the mining station.  There had been talk of building an actual station complex, similar to the orbital station at the habitable world, out at this end of the system but so far all it had been was talk. 

              “Captain?” one of the sensor techs called from her console.

              “What is it, Lacey?” he asked, using this as an excuse to get up from his seat and walk over. 
Screw it
, he thought, stretching his arms and rolling his head to get the kink out of his back. 

              “I’m detecting… something.”  Her fingers flew over the keys of her console, the tip of her tongue sticking out between her lips.  “I’ve got a number of ships coming in on a vector from… out system.”

              “They dropped out of hyperspace?”

              “No, sir,” she replied, starting to get anxious.  “They’re well beyond the hyper limit, and they’re coming in at high speed.  Five light seconds out.”

              “What?” he demanded.  He leaned in closer to her display.  “Why the hell are we only detecting them now?”

              “They weren’t emitting much in the way of an engine signature until just a few moments ago.”  The young woman frowned.  “They must have just powered up their engines and started racing in.”

              Tariq started to feel something cold filling his stomach.  “Do we have a reading on how many ships?”

              She squinted at her displays.  Then she gulped.  “Sir, the sensor reading, it’s… it’s large.  Eighteen ships!”  Her voice had started to go up in pitch and volume and all the bridge watch standers were turning around to look.

              “How long until they’re in range?” he asked, standing up straighter, trying to project confidence and control.

              “I don’t know!” the young woman said, clutching one hand to her forehead.

              “Calm down, Lacey,” he said, his voice stern.  “Focus.”

              She took in a shuddering breath.  Then she sat up straight in her chair and squared her shoulders.  “Sorry, sir.”  She stabbed a few keys on the console.  “Ninety-six minutes, sir.  Wait.”

              “What is it?”

              “There are four ships breaking off from the rest of the pack.  They’re diverting from a vector toward the Kutok mine and are headed toward…”  She pressed a few more keys, then she nodded.  “Yes, sir.  They’re on a course toward the mining station.”

              “Damn,” he whispered.  “We just pulled
Angara
out of there.  That’s a destroyer and a corvette, yes?”

              “That’s correct, sir,” Lacey said, her voice clipped and professional.