Frederick shrugged. “No, it isn’t, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’ve been here before. Four times in the past two years. Ran myself up a decent amount of credit here, and stashed it away. Certainly nowhere near enough to buy the ship, or even put a significant down payment on it, but enough to get the collateral for a loan.”
“Then admin shouldn’t have any problem getting someone down here, especially if they think they’re going to make some money off of you,” Tamara replied.
“No, I don’t suppose they would.” He pressed a button on his wrist communicator, a new one, Tamara noted, and spoke into it. He carried on a conversation for a few moments, stepping away from the two women for a few moments. It seemed to be a polite affair, there was no yelling and cursing, no anger.
While he was doing that, Tamara turned to Taja. “So, got yourself a new Captain,” she said idly.
The fiery young woman’s eyes blazed. “Don’t you talk about things you don’t understand, Tamara,” Taja said angrily. “You don’t know anything.”
She shrugged. “I’m just saying, it’s awfully quick. And with another captain.”
“He… He was there for me when Vincent wasn’t,” Taja said, looking away, the fire dying down, if not out.
Tamara just looked at her for a moment. “I see.”
“I’m surprised that you stayed,” Taja said bluntly. “You more than anyone had reason to get the hell off that ship. You hate him!”
“That’s my business. And right now, Grania Estelle is the only ship I’ve seen so far with the industrial capacity to be able to get things done around here. And I’m not just going to abandon the people on that ship. Yes, the Captain and I have our problems. But that’s between me and him.”
“So, I see you got yourself a new Captain,” the other woman spat. “Or should I say, you got yourself my old one.”
“Now you’re just being petty, Taja,” Tamara said, refusing to rise to the bait. “I’m not sleeping with him. You know that.”
Now it was the smaller woman’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know anything,” she said. “I left.”
“Right, you did.”
Taja looked back, eyes flaring again. “Why are you here? Why are you looking to help us?”
Tamara looked at her for a long moment, not speaking. She glanced at Frederick Vosteros, who was continuing with his call to station admin. “Because we all just got a very raw deal, and a lot of good people got killed. Those of us that made it are scarred by the whole ordeal. I just think that we need to…”
“Get along?” Taja asked, her voice dripping acid. She turned from the armor glass and crossed her arms under her breasts.
“Look out for one another,” she said. “But if you’re so sure you don’t want my help, fine. I’ll go tell Frederick that you don’t want me here.” Tamara shrugged, finally letting the anger boil up. She was sick to death of dealing with all the damage resulting from the pirate situation. “I wouldn’t want you to think that I was stealing your Captain.” She stepped away and walked to where Frederick was standing, still talking into his communicator.
“I’m sorry, hold for just one moment,” he said. He pressed a button, muting the pickup. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I just got a call from the ship, I have to go and deal with another brush fire. We’re going to have to reschedule this.”
Frederick nodded, though his eyes narrowed ever so slightly, flicking from Tamara to Taja, who stood there with a scowl on her face. “I understand. Is this something that you might be able to take care of today and still come back here?”
Tamara shrugged. “Probably. But I would recommend just you, me and the admin person take the tour, Frederick. Your cargo specialist is apparently holding a grudge against me for some reason.”
He looked to Taja, his own scowl forming. “I can send her away now.”
But Tamara shook her head. “Doing that will just piss her off. Give her a couple of hours to cool down and then call me. I’ll be on the station.” She looked straight at him. “Don’t bring her,” Tamara told him, gesturing to where the cargo specialist stood. “I am not going to put up with her issues right now. We all went through hell, Frederick,” she said, relenting a bit, “And I know we’re all dealing in our own ways. And I can also understand if you don’t want to deal with my issues either. You can get yourself another engineer if I make you uncomfortable.”
“You’re the best I’ve seen, Tamara. You rebuilt my ship once. If I can get your help again, I’d like to,” he replied. “If you would help me, I’d appreciate it.”
Tamara nodded. “I will. And thank you.” She nodded again to him and left. As she did, she heard him get off the call and then go over to where Taja was standing. They spoke in whispered voices and after only a few seconds and Tamara intentionally quickened her pace. She didn’t want to be around while they fought.
Tamara wandered through the shops on the mezzanine back in the main Hub. She avoided the glitzy vendors or ones that provided goods or services that she’d seen in a number of systems. The mezzanine here was similar to the one on Ulla-tran; the section she was wandering through sold electronics: datapads, communicators, computer components, monitors, control systems, but no replicators. Nothing really of any serious interest. Oh, there were a few things she saw that she felt she could fix, that she could recondition, perhaps even resell for a tidy sum. But none of those things really interested her.
Shaking her head, Tamara continued along on her perusal of the components on the shelves in the stores here. There were a few mildly interesting pieces in one store that she picked up and scanned with her optics, saving the information in her implants for later use. The storekeeper kept an eye on her, but since she wasn’t damaging the items, he didn’t say anything. This could prove useful and profitable in the future, but for the most part she was just wandering and killing time.
Thinking of the junk she was seeing here brought her mind back around to Frederick Vosteros. The man absolutely refused to quit. She’d gotten to know him a bit over the last few months, ever since her release from the brig aboard Grania Estelle, when she had been acting Captain aboard the ship. She was proud of him, working to secure himself a new ship and a new crew. Her smile soured a bit when she thought of Taja, but she wasn’t going to blame Frederick for her actions. Taja had her own problems and demons and what she decided to do with her life was her choice. That wouldn’t stop Tamara from assisting the good Captain with securing that ship. And she made a promise to herself to do what she could to help him get that ship up and running, even browbeating her own Captain into helping. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to look into that cooperative idea after all.
That brought her thoughts to the cooperative itself. How would that work, anyway? Assuming Vosteros could get that ship and assuming he could crew it and Tamara could get it running properly, all that did was get another ship into space. Granted, that was a good thing, but how would Eamonn and Vosteros be able to work cooperatively? If they both worked for the same corporation, that would be simple. Or if they joined up, used Seylonique as a base of operations and did circuits in the nearby star systems to ship cargoes, that could work, but they would need someone to run the home office, as it were. Tamara was the first to admit that while her experience and skills did run in those circles, what with her having run the shipyards at Hudora not all that long ago, she wanted to be aboard ship, fixing things, traveling. The need to stay in one place and mind the store really didn’t appeal to her, not right now. In fact, she’d have thought Taja would have been perfect for that sort of job; bringing in ships and cargo, selling them at huge profit, buying new cargoes a low cost and shipping them back out again. Two ships really wasn’t enough to make a shipping empire, but it was certainly a start. Perhaps there was someone else that could run things here.
Which lead to other thoughts, ones more maudlin in nature. Seylonique was certainly one of the more advanced star systems that she’d seen
in the Argos Cluster ever since she’d been rescued in that pod, but it was utterly defenseless. Leytonstone, as it was, was a joke and a bad one at that. If Verrikoth was still out there, and there was every reason to believe he was, he wouldn’t be fooled by the charade the locals were trying to pull. By that matter, even if it hadn’t been a charade and the battlecruiser had been fully operational, one ship couldn’t adequately defend an entire star system. It couldn’t be everywhere at once and if the attackers came in from a vector opposite her, Leytonstone might be way out of position to try and repel them. Hell, it would have trouble defending just the main planet and the orbital station from attack, especially if Verrikoth, or one of the other pirates in the Cluster, was to come here with several ships. Verrikoth had had several, losing his corvette to that Republic heavy cruiser, but he had three light cruisers of his own. One their own, they couldn’t stand up to a battlecruiser, but they were fast and agile, more so than even a powerful battlecruiser. They’d have to nip at her a little at a time, trying to stay out of Leytonstone’s effective weapons’ envelope while taking potshots at her stern to try and knock out her main propulsion. A battlecruiser might not be as light and airy on her feet as a light cruiser, but if any of those ships got too close or the bigger ship was able to get a step ahead and pounce, its impressive armament of heavy lasers, turbolaser batteries and missile launchers would quickly reduce Ganges and her sisters to scrap metal.
But having one ship was better than having no ships. And even if the pirates came into the system and found the Leytonstone out of position, they’d be hard pressed to attack the planet or the station without some sort of reprisal from the battlecruiser. Just having the ship up and running would act as a serious deterrent. So why were the locals being so resistant? Were they afraid of giving up control to an outsider? Probably. They didn’t know Captain Eamonn, his ship or his crew so of course they wouldn’t like him just showing up and offering terms. They also wouldn’t like his production capabilities, or rather, they wouldn’t like that he had them and they didn’t. Tamara wondered how long it had been since the last hostile action had occurred here in this system. Years, probably. Decades, more likely, possibly even as far back as the war with the Federation.
She accessed her implants, looking for information about the battlecruiser itself. She hadn’t taken the time to do an in depth study of the ship, thinking that once the meeting was over, she would have physical access to the ship and the ability to study it from its own computer banks. For the moment, that wasn’t going to happen, but she wanted to be prepared for if and when the opportunity presented itself. She didn’t have anything on that class of ship; it wasn’t of Republic design. It wasn’t in her database of Federation ships, either. It must been local built, most likely right here. Based on what she saw from the sensor feeds and from Cookie’s digital, the ship certainly wasn’t new. Looking at the corrosion on the sensor feeds, Tamara guessed the ship was probably seventy-five to eighty years old and had probably been docked for the last ten or twelve years. She would have a lot of problems and would take a horde of technicians and a mountain of parts. Tamara smiled. Sounds just like a perfect job. Too bad I probably won’t get to work on her.
Chapter 17
Tamara stepped into Shaunessey’s five minutes before sixteen hundred. The place was a quiet pub, rather boring for most of the clientele Tamara had seen carousing through other establishments on the station. That wasn’t a surprise to Tamara, who knew that, back in her day the good chaplain wasn’t a heavy carouser. She’d known a few of the so called “holy men” who could pack away the alcohol and wander off to quarters with a female on each arm. And very few of them actually believed in the sermons and ideologies that passed through their lips. In fact, it was a surprise that Tyannikov chose this place as a meeting point. But, she shrugged and looked around for the lupusan.
She found him in a corner booth, already nursing a beer in a wide cup, almost a bowl which accommodated his muzzle and long tongue. He was hunched over the drink, as though it was the only warmth he was could find in a very cold environment. It didn’t look as though he cared at all about what was going on in the pub, but no one was bothering him or doing anything to attract attention to themselves. As she moved in his direction, the lupusan raised his head, his nose sniffing delicately. Then he saw her and he flicked his ears, smiling broadly. He climbed out of the booth, catching the woman up in a huge hug as she approached. Completely surprised by the gesture, she stiffened, but then relaxed and hugged him back. He had the smell of canine, as did all lupusan, but he didn’t stink of beer or filth as she’d half feared when she’d agreed to meet him.
After a moment, Konstantin released her and stepped back. “It is so very good to see you again, Commander,” he said. He gestured. “Please, join me.”
“Of course,” she replied with a huge smile on her face. Tamara flicked a finger at the barkeep, who in turn nodded to a robot waiter that hovered over to their booth, its repulsors humming. She ordered a beer and the bot flew off to retrieve it. “And you’re retired, Chaplain. How about we drop the rank stuff and you call me Tamara and I call you…?” she trailed off.
He chuckled. “Konstantin, as you well know.”
“But that wasn’t too hard, was it?” She thanked the serving bot as it flew back over with her drink order. Taking a sip, she found that the beer was a bit bitter for her liking, but it wasn’t too bad. Tamara raised her glass in toast. “To reunions,” she said.
Konstantin raised his mug and clinked her glass. “To reunions,” he said. And they both drank.
“So, what have you been doing all this time?” Tamara asked, settling herself more comfortably against the leather seat, which creaked as she moved. Apparently the seats in this place were just as old as everything else.
“Well,” he said, setting down his mug, “I served out the remainder of my tour on the Steadfast. We fought through two battles at Otakai, managed to take down a few ships, but we lost more than a few souls.”
Tamara nodded. She had expected as much. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you did whatever you could.”
He shrugged, letting out a sigh. “I tried to see to the comfort of the wounded, the dying. I actually took corpsman training and got rated so that I might be better equipped to help my friends and crewmembers in this life. The stars see to them in the next.”
She nodded. “I’m proud of you, Corpsman. It’s not an easy path.”
Again, he shrugged. “It seemed the best way to serve the Navy and my conscience. I wasn’t equipped to fight or to fly and I was never all that handy with a wrench like you.”
Tamara chuckled. “Well, I’ll debate with you the part about being ill-equipped to fight, Konstantin,” she replied, gesturing to his hands that were folded around the mug. “You’re a lupusan, for crying out loud.”
He looked at her and his gaze carried the depth of emotion. “I have never been comfortable being born into the body of this… machine of killing. Oh, I appreciate all the benefits of health and long life, but I always shied away from the violence of my race and of my own nature.” He looked away, picking up his mug for another drink.
She reached out across the table and touched his hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you.”
He set the mug down, his long tongue licking the edges of his mouth. He shook his head. “It’s all right. It’s my own problem, not anyone else’s. I can’t blame you for thinking that. My race is powerful, violent and unrepentant about their nature. And I don’t blame them, either.”
Tamara considered him for a moment. “Do you wish they would change?”
He chuckled. “No, I do not waste time thinking things like that. The stars would shift all their places in the heavens before my people would become gentle and pacifists.”
“You changed,” she pointed out, taking another sip.
“Not really,” Konstantin replied, smiling. “I’m just better at controlling myself than my fellows. It doesn’t mean tha
t I’ve actually mellowed.”
Tamara shrugged. “I don’t know. The ability to resist instinct and forge your own path is commendable. And it shows the ability to evolve.” Then her eyes twinkled. “Especially for a male. Females do it all the time.”
He gave a little yip of laughter. “And there is the Commander Samair I remember, though she was a Lieutenant Commander then.”
Tamara grinned. “She was very young and naïve then. It wasn’t that she only saw the best in people, but she hadn’t been as ground down as the woman before you now.”
“Ah, but the woman before me now is a survivor,” Konstantin pointed out. “I’m sure she had to make some hard choices, do some things her younger self wouldn’t understand to get to where she is now.”
“Yes, I did,” she answered. “But does that make it right? Does that make it better?”
He tipped his head to one side slightly. “I don’t know the answer for that. But I know that the road is never easy and it never leads you exactly where you expected. But then the stars give us the occasional blessings, like today.” He smiled at her.
Tamara smiled and shook her head. “You’re right,” she said. She thumped her hand on the table. “You’re right. It doesn’t make what has happened in my life recently any easier to live with, but maybe you’re right about the stars, too, Konstantin.”
“They brought you to me,” he said, raising his mug again in a toast. “I’m not trying to say that we’re engaged or anything, but I think this is a good thing.”
Tamara laughed. “I have missed you, Chaplain,” she said, clinking her nearly empty glass against his mug. “But I think that we need to get another round, some food, because I for one and starving, and then you, sir, are going to tell your Commander some of your stories from the last two and a half centuries.”
“I believe I can do that,” Konstantin said. “And what is this about you on a freighter? I saw the ship out of one of the windows. She a big ship. You don’t ever do anything small, do you, Tamara?”
Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 Page 40