Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1

by Michael Kotcher

  Finally, gulping, she got herself back under control. She hated crying. She sniffed, wiping her eyes on her coverall sleeve. Which she discovered wasn’t a great idea since the sleeve was covered with grease. Tamara chuckled, as she now knew her face was covered with a black smudge. Getting up, she went to the refresher. It was a complete mess. The toilet looked functional, however, it also looked (and smelled) as though the previous user completely lacked the knowledge on how to use one. It also appeared as though hygiene was optional, if the room and this (nasty) refresher were any indication. She walked to the sink and then laughed at her own reflection. She was, quite simply, a complete mess. Turning on the tap, gray water poured into the basin and went slowly down the drain.

  “Great.” Well, she had wanted to keep busy. Pulling out a wrench, she kneeled down and set to work on the plumbing.

  An hour later she was finished. It wasn’t perfect, but the local plumbing was flushed out and clean water was flowing through. Stripping off her very dirty clothes, she stuffed them into the laundry machine (a combined washer and drying machine) and got into the shower. She climbed into the shower and let the water run over her head and down her back. Tamara stood there, she wasn’t sure how long, but she didn’t care. Just the feeling of the hot water helped sooth her jangled nerves. It also took a while to get cleaned up, what with all the dirt and grease on her from the work.

  Once she was out, dressed in her now clean clothes, she felt better, but she was still exhausted. Despite his tactics, the captain was right. She needed sleep. Laying down on the bed, her brain immediately crashed and she fell into a dreamless slumber.

  Six hours later she woke, feeling better. Tamara pulled herself to her feet, went into the refresher and splashed some water on her face. The cold water snapped her back into focus and cleared her mind. This situation wasn’t completely hopeless. Sure, it was a lot worse than the one she thought she was in, where she was just a passenger doing some work for the ship and captain. But it wasn’t prison.

  But if the captain decided it should, it would very quickly turn into a prison. One that she might very well never get out of. So, Tamara decided as she stared at herself in the mirror, tossing the towel on the rack above the toilet, what she really needed was some help. She couldn’t count on the crew, not yet. Perhaps, over time, she might be able to forge some useful relationships, but that took time and there were no guarantees. Anyone who might be friendly, or even friends with her might balk if the captain started throwing his weight around, or threatened to throw them and their jobs off the ship. Tamara didn’t think he would kill any of his crew members, not just for helping her, but he certainly would fire them and maroon them on the nearest habitable planet, whether it had a spaceport or not. So she couldn’t rely on them, and while yes, it was her life on the line, it was their livelihoods as well. No, she couldn’t rely on the crew.

  She put her hands on the sides of the sink and sighed deeply. She wasn’t a warrior. Oh, yes, she could fly a starfighter and fire upon and kill other pilots if that was what was required, but in a situation like this, she was out of her element. She couldn’t fight them. Not head on. They had numbers, weapons and a superior lay of the land. What did she have?

  “I’m smart,” she said slowly. “And a smart woman doesn’t rely on someone to save her. She plans ahead and does it herself.” A slow smile began to spread over her scarred face. She grimaced at that. One of her jobs in the upcoming weeks would be to stop into the Grania Estelle’s sickbay and have a look at their medical equipment. Fixing her face and hand would take some skin abrading and then a dunk in a proper regen tank. While she wasn’t too vain, looking at the horrible chemical burns from that thermal paint every day wasn’t really something she wanted to keep doing. Perhaps that disguise wasn’t the greatest of ideas after all. She shook her head. No time to worry about that now.

  So, back to problem one. She needed help. She couldn’t count on the crew and there was no one here in this time who would even know her much less help her. That meant she would have to go by a different route. That smile was back. But in order to get the help she needed, she was going to need some things from the replicator. Specifically, she would need a data core, an interface and some time. It would take some doing, but she could make this work.

  But for now, she would have some time before they would come to get her from this room to get back to work. Taking out her datapad and a multitool, she went over to the wall terminal. All cabins and rooms on the ship would have a terminal imbedded in the wall for public address or in case of emergencies. Unfortunately, in this room the terminal was broken, most likely quite some time ago. She didn’t worry about that. Perhaps later, once the repairs were moving at a good pace, she could have this terminal replaced. No, for now, she just unscrewed the casing, exposing the wires and chips beneath. Taking out a USB cable, she connected the pad to the port under the casing. In seconds, she had access to the ship’s computer systems.

  Nodding in satisfaction, began to maneuver around inside the ship’s network. It was almost pathetically easy. Certain areas, like life support, reactor control, the captain’s private server and the purser’s server were firewalled, though she had the tools to crack those open. But Tamara had no interest in attacking any of those things. No, she was looking for a more private place to work. She was looking for a section of the network that hadn’t been used in a long time, where no one would think to check on. It was easy enough to find. She found various sections of five different subsystems that had huge sections of open space. It would be a chore to make sure that her work in the computers did not go noticed by the crew. It would get more and more difficult as more repairs were done on the ship, though at that point, she could get herself some separated data cores and do her work independent of the ship’s net.

  She opened a few of her compressed files, then began working on the coding that she would need to get her some badly needed help. This would be a project, starting the coding basically from scratch, but she had no alternative. Besides, she relished the challenge.

  Three hours later, the guards pressed the door chime and then opened the door, not waiting for her acknowledgement. But they caught her only laying on her bunk, playing with her datapad. Her head was pointed at the door. She twisted around to see them. “Oh, there you are. What’s for breakfast? A girl could starve to death in this place.”

  The guards exchanged a glance. Apparently, Tamara realized, that they expected to catch her asleep, or perhaps in the refresher, or maybe even doing something they could complain to the captain about. Seeing her awake, obviously cleaned and just as obviously somewhat refreshed caused them both to frown. Her room was also totally clean now and the housecleaning bot was powered down, sitting on the deck next to the refuse container.

  With a grunt, one of the guards flicked his chin in the direction of the hallway. Tamara sighed. Clearly, the guards were not around to make friends, or even speak to their subject. She supposed she couldn’t blame them, she thought as they escorted her down the corridor. When one was trained in security and guardwork, it wouldn’t do to get too comfortable and familiar with someone you might need to shoot on orders from your superiors.

  They arrived at the mess hall, which was one of the biggest community rooms aboard the ship. It was a place of gathering, though never did the entire crew gather here all at once. Some of the crew had to remain on duty, so it was always in shifts that the crew come here to eat. There were rows of tables, situated in lines away from the kitchen area. The kitchen was operated by three cooks, one was working the griddle, another was taking fresh-baked bread out of one of the ovens, and the third was working the line, giving food to the crew. They were a well-oiled machine, moving the crew through the line and on to floor to eat. They were making a variety of eggs, serving fruit tarts and griddle cakes. For the non-humans in the crew, of which it seemed there was about a third, there were more regional dishes with a reasonable degree of success, based on the looks Tam
ara could see around the room. It seemed that, unlike many of the systems on the Grania Estelle, the mess hall was one that had been kept up.

  It only took a few minutes to get through the line, and grabbing some silverware, she headed to the nearest open seat. The table was empty, and judging by the looks she was getting by the other crew members in the mess, it would probably work better to not try and make new friends right now. They weren’t exactly hostile, but it was clear that she was an outsider and not a particularly welcome one either.

  That will change, she told herself as she dug into her breakfast with abandon. The food was good, but that was to be expected. She didn’t think that the captain would scrimp on grub for the crew, not if he wanted to keep them happy. With a ship this size and cargo capacity and the level of maintenance on the ship, it was very likely that he could afford to spring for fresh food. After all, if the crew got unhappy enough, they would leave. The captain couldn’t threaten them all, and then he would be stuck with an empty ship. So spending the credits to give them a little bit of happiness was well worth it. He seems to be a good leader, she grudgingly admitted. Though she was not happy with his threats toward her.

  “Look at that!” one of the nearby crewmen, a young man with sandy hair and a wicked smile cried. He was looking straight at her, as she was about to bring the last bite of griddle cake into her mouth. Tamara set the fork down. “Who’d have thought a tiny little thing like her could go through a plate like that?”

  “Cookie!” he shouted, turning to the kitchen. One of the men, a stocky man with a barrel chest and thick, muscled arms wearing a black apron whose color matched his moustache looked up from his tray of bread.

  “What?” the man called back, the Elysian accent very heavy.

  “What did you put in her food?” he asked, a huge grin on his face.

  Cookie, one Chef Raoul Duchagne, frowned, wiping his hands on a rag. “What the hell are you babbling about, Martinez? Are you complaining about my food?”

  The young man’s smile slipped a tiny fraction, but he rallied quickly. “No, it’s good like always, Cookie. I just want to know what you did to her food to make her chow it all down like that.”

  Cookie looked over at Tamara, who was getting up from her seat at the table. “You want to hit on that woman, Martinez, have the balls to do it yourself. Embarrassing yourself and her like this isn’t going to get her to like you.” Martinez’s buddied laughed and the young man flushed, tuning away. Apparently, the cook here was just as formidable as the captain.

  Tamara bussed her tray over to the dishline area, where Duchagne was there to meet her. “I hear that you came aboard on an escape pod, little girl?”

  She glared at him. “Thank you, Chef, for the very good meal, but I am not a little girl.”

  He chuckled. “From what I hear, you are not… young.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m older than you are by a wide margin.”

  Duchagne smiled. “Now, now, it’s never good to boast about your age. And call me Cookie, everyone does.”

  “All right… Cookie.” She still had that wary feeling about him, as though he was trying to cover for his friend’s gaff.

  “And Martinez? He’s an idiot, but he’s harmless. At least he better be,” Cookie growled, turning his gaze over to where the other man was still eating with his buddies. “But I want you to know, that if you need anything, you come to me. You’re safe in here.”

  A tiny crack formed in the ice around her, but it quickly froze again. “Thanks, Cookie, but this is still onboard the ship.”

  “True,” he admitted, looking back at her. Then his face grew iron-hard. “But this is my mess hall. Everyone knows this place is sanctuary. Not even the Captain would dare breach that. Not if he ever wants anymore of that lasprauga I make for him.”

  Tamara laughed. She couldn’t help it. She smiled at him this time with real warmth. “Thank you, Cookie. I will remember that and I look forward to your next meal.”

  He clapped her on the shoulder. “I look forward to having you here too! It isn’t every day I got another beautiful woman to walk into my mess hall.”

  She looked down. “Clearly, Cookie, you need your eyes examined.”

  “And clearly you need your head examined. Don’t be intimidated by these fools. This is a good crew and a good ship. And if what the scuttlebutt I hear is true, you might just make this ship a better one. Now go, I cannot stand around talking to beautiful women all day. I have a kitchen to run!” He swatted playfully at her and she retreated.

  She watched the stocky little man bustle back into the cooking area, snarling good-naturedly with his staff, who feigned innocence at his accusations. He was a good man, she wanted to believe it. Tamara only wondered if she could trust him.

  In a short while, she was back in the cargo bay, making last minute checks on the Perdition. “Looking good,” she commented, tightening one last bolt. “Just need to pull the radiation buffers off the engine, fuel it up and she’ll be ready for a test flight.”

  Ka’Xarian nodded. “I agree. I’m impressed at how quickly we’ve been able to get this work done.”

  Tamara smiled at him. “Oh, come now, Xar,” she said, using the nickname, “It really isn’t all that much work, though we did do a bit of a marathon session. Now,” she said, putting the wrench back in her belt, “I just need to get over to the replicator and get my skinsuit out and then I can take this beauty for a ride.” The Perdition class fighter had a life support unit on board for thirty hours, but with a skinsuit, one could stay on board for another six hours. While Tamara had no intention of sitting in the fighter’s cockpit for thirty-six hours, nowhere near close, she had no desire to be caught outside the Grania Estelle without a skinsuit, which would provide its own life support should there be a serious issue with the fighter. “I had it get started before I came down here, so it should be done in a few minutes.”

  A few minutes later, she got herself into her suit and climbed into the cockpit. Sealing her helmet, she brought the canopy down, which also sealed. “Comm check,” Tamara said.

  “Reading you clear,” the ops officer replied. “Sounds good.”

  “All right, I’m beginning power up procedures.” Pressing a few buttons, she noticed that all the computer systems on board booted up properly and the readouts were all green. “I’m in the green. All set for launch.”

  “All right, Moxie,” the captain’s voice came over the line. “The cargo bay is depressurized and we’re opening up the door.”

  “Right,” Tamara said, as she felt all those old feelings started flooding back. It had been years (not counting the long sleep) since she’d flown a fighter, ever since she’d gotten out of the Starfighter Corps. She very much enjoyed being an engineer, but there was nothing like that old feeling of flying, of being in the cockpit. While the design and building of things, great and small, was probably a more fulfilling sensation in the long run, there was very little that could match the sheer adrenaline rush of a combat flight in a proper starfighter.

  This, of course, was only a test flight, to break all the gear in, to fine tune some things, but still, it felt the same. The great cargo doors began to open, sliding inexorably upward until they disappeared in the upper section of the bay.

  “All right,” she said, as she hit the repulsors and the tiny ship rose up a meter from the deck. She smiled mockingly. “This is Moxie One, heading out.” There was a chuckle over the comm. Pressing the throttle levers gently, moving on maneuvering jets only, the Perdition fighter slid easily out of the bay and into the black.

  Chapter 3

  From of the bridge of the Grania Estelle, the captain and the rest of his bridge crew were watching the flight test while still keeping an eye on the ship’s systems. The freighter was about ten light minutes from the hyper limit, beyond which the gravity well from the system’s star was weak enough that a ship could jump into hyperspace and fly away, faster than light. And at the speed in which the Grania Estel
le was currently wallowing through space at, they had another twenty-seven hours before they could jump.

  Which gives Moxie more than enough time for her test flight, the Captain marveled. He was watching her, and her ship. The fighter was moving around the Grania Estelle, clearly Moxie was using the freighter as a stable platform for her to perform her maneuvers. The Perdition was twisting and turning, performing barrel rolls, looping around and over the freighter. He could hear her whooping in delight on the radio, though he was sure she didn’t mean to be celebrating over the radio. So far, he had to admit, he was impressed. That pile of junk had been sitting in his cargo bay for a long time, just taking up space. He’d had people look at it, but no one had wanted to do anything more with it than sell it for scrap. He’d kept it as an oddity, a reminder of when the Republic was in better times, though he hadn’t been alive to see those times. He’d never known himself to be nostalgic with anything other than the Grania Estelle. The fighter had been in the cargo bay so long, he’d nearly forgotten about it.

  He’d figured when he’d thrown this test at her that Moxie would balk. Or, that when it came down to it, that the little ship couldn’t be fixed. That it truly was a pile of junk and that she was no better than anyone else. But she’d somehow pulled out a miracle and for the first time in over a decade, the Captain dared to hope. If she could fix that one starfighter, perhaps she might be able to do something for him. His big girl was old, beat up, patched and way past her prime, but she was his girl, this great ship of his. He’d done his best over the years to hold her together, and the fact that she could still fly, much less continue to operate in hyperspace was a testimony to his will and the skills of his crew.