Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2

by Michael Kotcher

  Vincent covered his face with his hands. “I didn’t think of that. You’re right. We have to keep the replicators secure. But how do we do that? And the ball is already rolling. Galina is already out there talking to people, and I didn’t tell her not to divulge the existence of my replicators.” He tapped a fist on the table.

  She eyed him for a moment. “Captain, I have to tell you that the replicators that are on this ship are Republic issue. Which means that they make parts intended for Republic ships. They can upload and copy other schematics and scan new items, and of course we can repurpose our parts to work with the ship.” She trailed off.

  “I think you’re making a good case for the construction and sale of parts,” Eamonn said, a smirk on his lips.

  “There is something else, though, Captain,” Tamara went on. “These replicators are old, even the class-five that we picked up in Ulla-tran. I’ve reconditioned and rebuilt them, hell, the class three and the e-rep are brand new. But what I mean is that the technologies they build are coming from a database that’s as old as I am. Though the stuff from the class-five and now the new replicators I built from it is only a hundred years old.”

  He looked confused. “What’s your point?”

  “I know that things in the Cluster have deteriorated in the time since I last was here, Captain.”

  “Two hundred and fifty years ago,” the Captain pointed out.

  She nodded. “Granted. And that is exactly my point. I don’t know anything about that battlecruiser or the tech it holds. Maybe it’s better than the things we have in the replicator databases. I don’t know. But if we start churning out parts that are less advanced, yes, we might be able to get it running, but we might be sacrificing capability. Of course it might be completely possible that the parts we make are incompatible with Leytonstone’s current configurations.”

  Eamonn sat back in his chair a bit. “I can see you getting excited about this, Samair,” the Captain said, with a smirk.

  She shrugged. “It was my field of expertise, Captain. I ran a military shipyard.”

  “So you’re telling me that before we sell anything…”

  “That I need to get aboard the battlecruiser with a team and a host of maintenance bots and we go through that ship from bow to stern. I want full resolution scans of everything, every component, I’d want to vacuum the ship’s database for any and all relevant information. Hell, if it’s good enough we might consider putting a few tech upgrades to Grania Estelle’s systems, Captain.”

  The Captain gave a small shrug. “Hey, if we can get the old girl up to the capabilities she had at Ulla-tran before all that mess happened, I’ll be happy.” Then he smirked. “Of course, if you were to sneak in a few performance upgrades, you’d have a happy Captain. An even happier one if you could do it under budget.”

  She sighed, unable to completely tamp down on a surge of cold that flooded through her. She had her problems with this man, but she felt that she’d been working through them. Things would never be warm and cuddly between her and Vincent Eamonn, but that last statement of his had triggered a memory. The comment itself was innocuous enough, but suddenly she was back in the distant past, aboard her dream posting back in Hudora, to be the manager of a shipyard. She was in her first administrative meeting with her commanding officer, Captain Horace Bythe, who had just expressed pleasure at her service record.

  “I’d like to make sure that things stay on schedule, Commander,” Bythe had told her. “I want no problems.”

  “I can’t guarantee no problems, Captain,” she had replied. “But I can promise that any that come up with be dealt with swiftly and efficiently.”

  He’d eyed her then, those brown eyes scanning her face and eyes right down to the quark level. But his face remained impassive. “Very good, Commander. I like confidence in my officers.” He smiled then. “We’re going to have ships coming in and out of here for refit, repair and overhauls. There’s going to be a schedule. Now, I understand that things happen, and that there are doing to be delays. I want them to be kept to a bare minimum and as you say, I want the problems dealt with.”

  “Understood, sir,” she had said.

  “Good. That’ll make your Captain very happy. And I’ll be an even happier one if you can do so under budget.”

  Ice flashed over her heart causing her to give a slight gasp. Eamonn looked at her sharply, but she grabbed her emotions and stuffed them back in their box. “It’s nothing, Captain. If it’s all right, I’m going to get started on a more refined list for the Leytonstone.”

  He stared at her, confused, but then he nodded and she stood and left. He stared after her for several long moments after the hatch had closed.

  Tamara managed to maintain iron control over herself all the way back to her tiny stateroom. She closed and secured the hatch behind her, went into the refresher and threw up. It had been a while since she’d been haunted by her past. She wasn’t naïve enough to think that she was over everything and that all her past emotional issues were gone.

  There was a beep out in the main room of her quarters and the wall unit activated. “Tamara, are you all right?”

  Stella. Tamara stood over the sink, running the cold water, splashing her face.

  “Tamara!” she yelled. “Are you there?”

  Splash. “Ugh,” she said, “I’m here.” She cupped her hands, bringing some of the water to her lips. She rinsed her mouth, spitting into the sink. Shutting off the water, she reached back and grabbed a towel. Tamara patted her face with the towel and then hung it back on the rack. She walked out the three steps into the small front room.

  “I’m all right, Stella,” she said, flopping down on the bed. She sat on the edge, put her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.

  “What happened, Tamara?” the AI demanded, her voice firm but gentle.

  She took a shuddering breath. “It’s all right, Stella. Just a bad moment.”

  “Islington?” Stella asked, her voice soft.

  Tamara shook her head. “Bythe this time. The Captain said something that reminded me of him. And for a moment, I was back there.”

  “It’s just your memory, Tamara,” Stella replied. “You have a faulty recall device.”

  Tamara spluttered a laugh, as tears leaked down her cheeks, unnoticed. “It’s not faulty, Stella,” she replied. “I just seem to have misplaced the control nodes.”

  Stella’s face softened further. “I’m sorry, Tamara. I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “I know, Stella,” Tamara breathed, laying back on the bed, one arm up, her wrist over her eyes. “And thank you.”

  “All right, people, step lively. Make sure those lines are secured,” Tamara ordered her team. “Eretria, Stennis, Krogan, make sure that your mag boots are secured to the hull. I want no accidents on this job.” This was the day that the engineering teams were going to complete the first of the hull truss replacements in the opened section. It was critical that the new pieces line up properly so that it could be connected and secured with bolts and welds. Tamara was adamant about safety procedures as well as making sure that the beam was properly seated and then secured. So far, everything was going exactly by the numbers and she intended that it stay that way.

  Quesh had assigned Eretria to the team being supervised by Tamara over both the women’s objections. Tamara would need Eretria’s steady hand to help out with the two greenies and so far she was proving her worth. When they had argued about personality conflicts, he had spoken to them individually. His words were, “We have a ship to fix. Deal with it. Get the job done and then once it is, I’ll reassign people. Now get out there and get it done.” And that ended the command meeting.

  So here they were. The two women had managed to put their differences aside and focus on the job. So far things were going as planned. Tamara was steering the two maintenance bots using a datapad with a long antenna giving her a range of almost a thousand kilometers, not that she would need anywher
e near that. So far the longest range that she’d needed was five hundred meters. The bots were carrying the last of the trusses out of the shuttle which was holding position near to the working area and down to where her team was working.

  As Tamara swung the beam close, Eretria reached out and grabbed hold of it, locking the magclamp to give a better, solid handhold. She could feel the magclamp lock and she pulled the beam down, guiding it into position. Stennis and Krogen, the two new hires, moved in to assist, grabbing hold of the magclamp and assisting Eretria in holding the beam in place. The bots stayed attached, their thrusters and antigrav making the beam easier to manhandle. Once it was in position, Eretria reached out to the bin floating only a meter away. “Hold it steady,” she ordered.

  “We got it,” Stennis, the human male answered. He was a stout, burly man, formerly from the station’s maintenance division. At barely twenty, he’d gotten tired of the same old humdrum existence and had jumped at the chance to serve aboard ship. In fact, he was one of the more eager recruits. He had very little in the way of technical skills or knowledge, but in his downtime he had struck up a fast friendship with the young zheen Kay’grax. The young engineer had taken the big man under his wing and they had started a small study group. Kay’grax had passed his qualifications for half-share Engineman a week after the Grania Estelle had entered into the Seylonique system and was more than happy to help his new friend to do the same. Granted, Stennis had a lot more space to cover than the zheen, but he was eager and willing. So far, he’d mastered a few of the practical basics and absorbed more text than he’d thought possible, but with a long way to go.

  Stennis held fast to the beam while Eretria inserted the bolts into the connector plates. Krogan, a zheen, screwed down the nuts and tightened them with a large wrench with a long handle, levering the bolts tight. Once that was done, he gave a thumbs up. Krogen, unlike Stennis, did not come from the maintenance staff, and in fact was not a member of the station crew at all. He was a worker at a bookshop, who had been there for more than seven years. He’d hated that job. He’d stayed in that position because there weren’t any others that would take him. He had little to no training, a decent education, but nothing exceptional. He was well-read, thanks to his job at the bookshop, but reading romance novels and ancient cultural literature wasn’t a useful background to have on the orbital station. Krogen had no desire to serve planetside, in fact he often dreamed of serving on a ship. Unfortunately, despite the orbital station above the habitable planet here in system, there was very little space traffic. Few cargo ships traversed the spacelanes between systems these days, what with all the unrest, poverty and pirate activity. So it was very likely his dreams of plying a trade on a space faring vessel would come to nothing.

  When the Grania Estelle arrived in system and Captain Eamonn started posting positions for hire, he was the seventh one to submit an application. He didn’t care for what position; he would have happily worked in the galley or scrubbing out air ducts if it could get him on a ship that would be flying to other worlds. When his application was approved and even better, his assignment to the engineering division came through, he was ecstatic. He didn’t make friends as easily as Stennis, but he did intend to study hard and work even harder. He pestered Ms. Sterling (who had a good deal more shipboard experience than he) and Officer Samair (who seemed to have no end of knowledge about engineering and many other matters) with questions. Both women would answer him, but made sure he knew that on duty there was a time for questions and there was a time for simply observing. Part of Krogen’s problem was that his questions tended to fly all over, touching on a multitude of unrelated topics. After four days of his constant prattling Eretria had threatened to smack him, his enthusiasm and his endless stream of questions had lessened considerably. But he was still here and still doing his job.

  It took a few minutes of work, but finally, the last bolt was tight. “Looks good, Officer,” Krogen reported, hefting his wrench.

  Tamara nodded. “Very good, Mister Krogen. Ms. Sterling, spot check?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Eretria replied, moving up, a datapad scanning the connected pieces. After a moment, she nodded. “Looks good. Ready for welds.”

  Tamara checked the readouts on her HUD as well as on her datapad. The other woman was correct. “All right. Stennis, you assist Ms. Sterling. Krogen, you’re with me, we’re going to secure the other end of the beam. Once we’re done with this one, we’ll have the first rib finished. A ways to go, but we’re still making progress.”

  “Not done yet, ma’am,” Eretria reminded her, her voice with just a touch of chill.

  “Yes, you’re right.” Tamara replied, clearing her throat. “Make sure you keep the comms open. Both of you,” she said looking first to Eretria and then to Stennis.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sterling replied.

  “You got it,” the stout man answered. He handed the welding torch to Eretria, who pressed a control on her wrist, causing her armor glass faceplate to darken. Activating the torch, she began her work.

  Tamara and Krogen maneuvered to the other side of the beam, which was touching its fellow right at the middle of the rib. Tamara used the magclamp to secure the end of the beam and floated back a slight distance, lightly holding to the edge of the beam with one hand while Krogen repeated what he’d done on the previous section. A few minutes later, the beam was bolted down and the two were working to weld the last section.

  Several minutes, and two thorough scans later, the last beam was secured. Tamara pressed a control on her forearm. “Samair to Quesh.”

  “Go ahead, Samair,” the Parkani’s voice came back.

  “First rib is complete and secure. We just finished final scans; it looks good.”

  “Good work, Samair. Secure your gear and get your team inside.” Quesh cut the connection.

  “All right, people,” Tamara said, looking over to her people. “Grab up the gear and let’s get back in. I could certainly use a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup.”

  The others chuckled, following her orders.

  Once inside, they got cleaned up and headed to the mess hall for supper. Once they were there, they were pleasantly surprised by Noken and his mess attendants. The Severite had organized a small party for the first rib of the hull being completed, a “rib party”, much to the delight of the technicians and other crewmembers gathered there. The foods being served were a variety of rib dishes, pork, beef, saberbear and even a few deboned fishes, with food coloring strategically put in to look like rib bones. Noken had somehow procured a pair of kegs of the local ale, bringing more delight to the crew. Stennis and Krogen confirmed that the cat had gotten the good stuff, proven by a big smile on the man’s face and the zheen’s antennae whirling in small circles with pleasure. There were also plates of cookies, ku-resh, and a pile of sandwiches.

  Tamara laughed joyously upon seeing the all the food. Noken pushed through the crowd, ushering them in. “My friends, comes in! I have prepared some foods for you, I would love if you could comes in and enjoy.”

  Tamara patted him on the shoulder, having to lean down slightly because of her much greater height. “Noken, where are the other three hundred people you expect to feed here today?”

  The cat’s ears spread to the sides and he blinked in amusement. “I believes that you could makes a good dent in the ribs, ma’am. Go, please eat!” He stepped behind and gently pushed them all in to the mess hall.

  The four of them walked over to the chow line and loaded up trays, each of them grabbing a mug of the beer. Tamara also went to the coffee shrine and poured herself a cup, setting it next to the one on her tray with the beer. It was a strange combination, but no one would ever question a spacer who got herself a coffee. Spacers everywhere lived on the stuff. The others didn’t follow suit, but they did find a table. Tamara walked over to join them and Stennis looked to her and then to the seat next to him. She smiled and sat down.

  The food was excellent. They went back for se
conds and thoroughly enjoyed that as well. Finally, they pushed the empty trays away and leaned back in seats, groaning slightly after having overindulged. “Well, that was a bit of a mistake,” Tamara said, not looking the least bit repentant.

  Stennis chuckled. “My only regret is that I didn’t grab another beer.”

  Krogen chittered. “How is it possible you could want to put more into your body?”

  The big man shrugged. “It’s good beer!” he said, slightly hurt. They all chuckled.

  “Do you have room for another?” came an amused voice.

  Tamara looked over to the speaker. “Doctor!” she said, happily. She gestured to the seat next to her. “Please, sit here!”

  The Guura moved to take the seat, his willowy stature moving a little like a stalk of seaweed swaying slightly in a calm sea. He set down his tray and sat. He had loaded up a tray with some of the fish steaks, and a pair of cookies. He had forgone the beer for a very large cup of water; one might go so far as to call it a pitcher.

  “None of the very good beer, Doctor?” Stennis asked, drawing smiles from the others.

  Turan shook his head. “I’m not a drinker, young one. Well, I do enjoy some brandy every now and then,” he said as Tamara started to object. “But I don’t like to imbibe every day.”

  Krogen nodded. “Smart.” He patted his thorax. “I think I overdid it a bit.”

  “So, Tamara,” Turan went on, slicing a piece of the fish with his cutlery and slurping it off his fork. “Talk to me about implants.”

  Eretria snickered. “Implants, Doctor? Isn’t that a little inappropriate?” Krogen looked confused, but Stennis was suppressing laughter.

  “You’ve got come cheek,” Turan replied, giving a little snort. “But I’m not referring to mammaries, miss, I’m referring to the cybernetic and computer implants in Tamara’s brain.”

  The other three gaped, looking over to Tamara. She shrugged, sipping her coffee, even though it had grown cold. “I got them in the Navy when I got out of officer training. They were upgraded with every promotion.”