Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2

by Michael Kotcher

  She nodded, though she didn’t look at him. The corridors were empty so far. Thankfully, sickbay wasn’t too far from the brig, in fact, it was on the same level, only six sections up the corridor. “Normally the codes would be given to officers or non-comms in the military. The firmware would be updated with the new codes by Republic personnel who have the required ones, but there were command protocols that needed to be used to do that.”

  “All right, we’ll table the codes for the moment,” Jax decided. “What about the implants? I hear scuttlebutt that you could make them.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve never actually done it before, but yes, it shouldn’t be that difficult. I wouldn’t be the one to put them in you, though. Turan would have to do that.”

  “What would that entail?” His tone was slightly amused, but there was a thread of genuine curiosity.

  “Well, there’s an injection of nanites that you get that pave the way in your nervous system, clearing out any of the crap in your veins and arteries, fix any of the minor problems people accumulate over the years. Takes about a day for that to take effect, but after it’s done, you’ll feel like a million credits. After that, the doctor gives you another injection of both material substrate and constructor nanites, which then build the things and ‘install’ them in your nervous system.”

  “Material substrate?” he pressed.

  “Organic materials and other things that your body doesn’t normally produce so that the nanites have what they need to build your implants. It doesn’t hurt. In fact, you’ll be under during the process. Once they’re done, the nanites are flushed out of your system in a matter of hours. Takes about a week afterward for the swelling to go down and then it’s just a matter of getting acclimatized to the implants. You’ll have headaches for a while as you get used to working with the HUD and the other functions. You can’t ever really turn them off, though I suppose you could if you really wanted to. But if you do that, what’s the point of having them in the first place?”

  He nodded slowly. “Good, once we get you back in order that will be your first order of business. I and my men will be outfitted with neural implants.”

  “You would trust me to build implants for you to use?” Tamara replied, skeptically, trying to control her breathing and clutching the robe tight. She felt herself shivering and couldn’t control it.

  Jax gave a small chuckle, making Tamara shiver. “Oh, I trust you to try and slip one by, to try and kill me or my men, or both. But I want you to be aware of what will happen if you do.” He grabbed her arm roughly and pulled her to a halt. “I’m not going to hit you with another blast,” Jax told her, as she flinched in anticipation and fear. “Not now. But what will happen is that members of this crew will start dying. And perhaps you don’t think I’ll do it. Perhaps you think I’ll be squeamish.” He gripped a hand on her jaw and forced her face upward so that she was looking him square in the eyes. “I think the airlock might start to get some use. And while I know that I need a good portion of this crew to keep the ship moving, I don’t think I need all the crew. I have a surplus of eighty crewmen right now, because I don’t believe that the cargo division or the deck division need to be at full strength. And I will make them all suffer.”

  She swallowed hard. Her implants were active and while the HUD flickered a bit due to the interference from the device on her neck, the scan features were still active. She could detect his pupil dilation, tone and timbre of his speech and a number of other factors, all of which pointed to the same conclusion: he wasn’t bluffing. Eighty people? He’d kill off all but twenty, leaving those poor beleaguered souls to watch their comrades die and then have to run this massive ship all by themselves. All the while, the relative safety in numbers rapidly dwindling as the number of pirate soldiers aboard the Grania Estelle would remain the same.

  “And what’s to say I don’t just let them die?” she asked, bluntly. “The Captain clearly has no loyalty to me after throwing me to you. Why should I care what happens to him or his crew?”

  Jax released her and stepped back. He shrugged. “I think you’re putting up a good front and I fully expect that I will have to kill some of the crew. The question you need to ask yourself is how many will I have to go through before you decide to cooperate?”

  “And if I tell you to go fuck yourself?” Tamara demanded bluntly.

  Jax’s smile was pure malice. “Oh, while I think that I could change your mind on that, I’m concerned about the effects of that on your physical well-being. If you are in fact the key to using the replicators, I won’t want to disrupt or damage your access too much with standard techniques. But don’t worry,” he told her. “You won’t.” Putting a hand behind her back, he gave her a shove in the direction of sickbay. “Now move.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Sickbay was a little busier than Tamara had seen in a while, in fact, it was busier than she’d seen since the pirate attack at Instow. But upon her arrival, she saw the familiar faces of the orderlies and even Quesh lying on one of the beds and suddenly a weight lifted off her shoulders, one that she didn’t know she had been carrying. But then Gideon Jax stepped into her field of view and the weight crashed right back onto her shoulders again. These people, her friends and colleagues while they raised her spirits, they were also hostages that could and would be used against her. And it would be unlikely that Tamara could save them all, even if she bowed to Jax’s wishes immediately. Once again, she cursed this situation.

  Turan stepped out of the surgery theater, rubbing his hands on a towel. He was nodding to himself in satisfaction, apparently whatever he was doing had been successful. He looked over to the entry way and saw the three new arrivals. He tossed the towel on a nearby empty bed and rushed over to them. Without warning, he threw his arms around Tamara’s shaking shoulders, hugging her tight.

  “I was so worried,” he breathed. He smelled of antiseptics, of the mechanicals of sickbay and also of the sea. As an ocean dweller, Tamara wasn’t surprised by this.

  Tamara slipped an arm around him, but refused to release her death grip on the front of her robe; she was already shivering too much.

  The Guura pulled his head back and examined the woman before him. "You're burning up," he declared, holding her shoulders extended at arms' length. "Come on, let's get you squared away." Steering her in the proper direction, he gently pushed her down onto one of the open biobeds. Tamara was shivering badly enough now that she didn't even protest. Just being in the sickbay with Turan's comforting presence was enough to puncture her defenses. She was just numb now, emotionally, though it was clear her body was not doing well. The pain was coming back with a vengeance now and with her fever continuing to rise Tamara was slipping away into pure misery.

  She could hear Turan issuing orders to one or more of his orderlies, but her hearing apparently had shut down. She felt herself completely shutting down, just letting her mind drift. If she'd cared enough, she would have known that her ears and eyes and nose were all still working, if perhaps a bit impaired, but she didn't. At this point, she just surrendered to the misery and allowed Turan to work his healing magic. It took all of a few moments for her consciousness to slip away under the doctor's ministrations.

  Gideon Jax watched the little floor show with a mix of alarm and amusement. He'd known the woman wasn't doing as well as she trudged from the brig to here in sickbay, but clearly he hadn't known how far gone she was. The urgency in the doctor's voice and actions made the Armsman believe that the engineer was indeed quite ill. The Guura was a talented physician but he wasn't a talented actor. After all of the business he had sent the doctor's way, Jax had received a good deal of experience as to how irritated and concerned the Guura could get. Based on that experience, he could tell that the doctor wasn't faking his concern over Samair now.

  The Armsman swept his gaze over the denizens of sickbay. There was the chief engineer, the four-armed Parkani, grumbling to himself as he was reading somet
hing on a datapad. He actually looked quite healthy, despite the grumbling. Jax honestly didn't care that much about what was wrong with him. He suspected there was a degree of faking there; he wasn't a doctor, so he couldn't be sure. But the Parkani had no visible wounds and yet was here in sickbay. A big male like him, used to the hustle and storm of working in Engineering and yet here he was. A layabout? Jax, despite the evidence, was thinking this was unlikely; Parkani were notoriously industrious. Perhaps he was more injured than he appeared.

  There was a zheen in here, which was not uncommon. Almost a third of the crew was zheen and having served under Captain Verrikoth for years, he was used to the insectoid aliens. This one had one of his arms encased in a tube that was filled with regenerative fluid. His compound eyes made it difficult for Jax to determine where the young zheen, for he was very young if Jax's practiced eye was any authority, was looking. He had a datapad in his hands as he too was absorbed in reading something. The nervous twitching of his antennae belied his calm, however. If Jax didn't know better, he would have sworn that the young zheen was stealing glances over at him and over at the where the doctor was working on Samair.

  And of course, there was the other insectoid, the one the Captain had called Kutok. Her glossy black carapace was marred on her one arm where Jax had blasted off her hand. She, like the young zheen, had her injured arm encased in a tube filled with the regenerative fluid. However, Jax had no problems discerning where the hak'ruk was looking. Her black eyes were staring straight at him, and it was amazing to note how a field of blackness could convey such heat. Jax smiled. He'd been threatened and intimidated by the best; this little bug was no real threat. He nodded in her direction before turning away to leave. Nodding to the pirate soldier at his side, Jax departed sickbay, the soldier moving to stand guard menacingly over the charges there.

  Tamara came back to consciousness slowly. It was the sounds that had really pulled her out from under the warm, comforting blanket of blackness. She could hear the sound of the blowers circulating the air, the beeping of consoles, the muffled conversations of crewmen. There was a constant light beeping noise sounding just behind her, an annoying blip-blip-blip that refused to allow her to slip back down to sleep. She tried to move, to stop the noise. Her arm raised up, tapping against the panel behind her head, trying to find an off button.

  Opening her eyes, Tamara discovered she was not in her quarters and the blip-blip-blip noise was not her alarm trying to wake her. She was in sickbay, lying on one of the biobeds. The repetitive noise was actually an alarm indicating her status, most likely attempting to summon an orderly, a nurse or perhaps even the doctor himself.

  Eventually, one of the nurses, a young male that Tamara didn‘t recognize, came over and pressed a control that shut off the alarm. He checked the readouts on the bed’s display and then looked at her. “And how are you feeling, Ma’am?”

  Tamara tried to speak, but her throat was completely dry. The man picked up a cup of water that was on the nearby stand and helped her hold her head forward so she could take a few sips. “Not too much,” he chided as the engineer drank. The water had been sitting out for a while, but to Tamara it tasted like the finest ambrosia. Her parched and stinging throat seemed to be eased by the cool liquid.

  She cleared her throat and then spoke, her voice rasping. “I feel better, but still awful. How long have I been here?”

  The man smiled. “You’re the woman with a computer in her head. You don’t know?”

  She raised her right hand and brought it to her neck. The metal device was still attached to her flesh. She sighed heavily. “This thing makes using my implants… it requires a bit more concentration now. Can’t you just tell me?”

  The man nodded, relenting. “About two days. Not quite two days. Are you in any pain?” he asked, studying her face intently.

  Tamara shook her head. “My legs feel a little odd, a little cold.”

  He nodded. “It’s the surgical heal,” he commented. “The bully boys,” he nodded his head in the direction of the guard standing at the entrance to sickbay, “Certainly did a number on you. You had a serious infection and it took a while for the doctor to patch you up. But he was more concerned with that device on your neck.”

  “Any chance he can remove it?” Tamara asked, a tiny sliver of hope entering her soul.

  But it was quickly crushed. “I’m sorry. I’m sure the doctor will have more to say about it, but from what I understand, the tendrils coming off that device have woven throughout your brain stem and into your brain itself. We’re not sure exactly how it does that without hurting you, but obviously there is nanotechnology involved.”

  Tamara nodded. “I thought as much. I’ll have to take a more in-depth look at some point. Maybe there’s a way to extract the tendrils.”

  The nurse shrugged. “Maybe.” He clearly wasn’t confident. “I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake.”

  “Do you know when I can get out of here?” she asked, putting a hand on his arm as he started to walk away.

  “Probably by tomorrow. But let me get Doctor Turan and he can give you an update.” And with that he walked off, leaving Tamara alone with her thoughts behind the privacy screen. She could see the guard at the door, but no one else in sickbay, though she could hear others moving around and talking quietly.

  A moment later, the tall Guura came around the screen. He smiled at her, touching the controls to make one last check of her vitals. “Hey,” he said, his voice light. “We need to stop meeting like this.”

  “People will start to talk,” Tamara said, chuckling.

  Turan gave a little snort. “They’re already talking about Quesh and I. I don’t know if I can handle all of the gossip.”

  Her lips formed a smirk. “I’ll try to be discreet.”

  He nodded, all business. “Very well. The surgery went well. We took care of the infection and the Quick Heal should have those scratches on your legs gone by tomorrow.” He gestured, but the limbs in question were under the thin blanket. “Fever’s broken and the device on your neck doesn’t seem to have caused you much in the way of physiological damage. Though it wove its way into your brain stem and the lower section of your brain and connected itself to your implants.” He sighed, a soft blat of sound. “I can’t get it out, Tamara. I’ll work on it, but the device is too tightly imbedded in your soft tissue. I’ll continue studying it, but it’s going to be extremely difficult to extract it.”

  She smiled at him. “I have the utmost confidence in you, Turan. And thank you for trying.”

  “I won’t give up,” he told her, grasping her hand. “I won’t.”

  Tamara shrugged. “I know. And I won’t either. Maybe there’s a way to get the device to withdraw the tendrils.” She sighed. “Another long term project.”

  “But from what I can tell from just a cursory examination, your implants should still work.”

  She nodded. “They do. It takes a little more effort than before to use the standard functions, but they all still work. I think once I get used to this new way of doing things I’ll get back up to snuff. But it interferes with my wireless implant so I can’t transmit or receive.” She held up her right hand. “But apparently I still have access with my manual port.” She wiggled her thumb.

  Turan snorted again in amusement. “Your ‘manual’ port? Funny, Tamara.”

  She smiled. “Thought you’d like that.”

  “It is a digital system,” he joked, chuffing out a small laugh.

  Tamara threw back her head and laughed for the first time in weeks.

  Chapter 2

  Time moved forward, as did the Grania Estelle. The engineering teams went into the cargo bays and began cutting apart the chunks of rocks they’d harvested back at Ulla-tran, carrying loads of raw materials to the replicators for breakdown. Tamara was released from sickbay and then from her imprisonment to resume her duties, though she was accompanied everywhere she went by two of Armsman Jax’s more tech-savvy guards. T
hey kept out of her way, but it was obvious that they were watching her closely and they did not like it when she tried to both give them the slip working in the crawl spaces or when she would get cagey and try to hide things from them. After the third such attempt, the guards politely asked her to stop. And in their version of polite, one of them grabbed her by the arm and slammed her hard against the metal bulkhead while the other screamed his directives in her face. She complied.

  Under Armsman Jax’s direction, shield nodes were being constructed and set aside for later installation. He refused to bring the ship to a stop to allow installation out in the void, preferring to err on the side of caution there and simply keep moving. While everyone on board was not thrilled with the idea of just under ninety days in hyperspace, creeping along (relatively) until they reached Amethyst, the longer trip gave the engineering teams more time to work on repairs.

  Ka’Xarian really stepped up during this time. He held daily meetings with Quesh, who had just been released from sickbay and was now able to stand on his own, but only for short periods; he tired easily and his legs felt to him as though they were made from very light rubber. But the Parkani was recovering and was determined that he would not lose his slot as Chief Engineer. He was on medical convalescence just now and grudgingly allowed Xar to take the reins. But he demanded to be kept in the loop on everything being done, every weld and every build.

  There was a lot to do. The three engineering officers planned it all out, working first on sealing up every single crack, breach and microfracture that they could in the hull. They wanted the ship sealed back up again, airtight. This was hampered a bit by the fact that the Armsman refused to stop the ship to therefore allow any teams to go out on the external surface of the ship to perform repairs, but that would be planned for when they reached Amethyst. Quesh’s teams worked on repairing the damaged computer systems (in order to make sure that the navigation subnet didn’t go down at a critical moment and either drop the ship out of hyperspace prematurely or else steer them off course). Ka’Xarian focused his attention on the command and control lines, many of which had either been damaged or torn out during the last days at Ulla-tran while Tamara and her people concentrated on power. All of these systems had been in pristine order before all the ruckus had gone down before the jump, which caused a great deal of grumbling among all of the engineering teams.