But it was a losing battle. Every month, things got just a little bit harder. Parts were just a little more difficult to scrounge up. Each time they jumped another ragged system would start to sputter or fail and the crew would do whatever was necessary, cannibalize whatever was necessary to keep the whole thing going. But they were nearly at the end. Unless a whole batch of fresh parts came in and right soon, Grania Estelle might only make another two or three jumps, tops. And when she failed, they would all be out of luck.
But for now, he indulged himself in watching Moxie loop and flip her fighter around and around, dared by a woman from the past to hope.
It was wonderful.
The sheer freedom that came with flying, it was… indescribable. Back in the day, Tamara had kept her flight hours up the best she could, but she was a Commander in the Navy and second leader of a base. She really didn’t have the time to go out flying every week. But it had only taken a few moments (and a quick refresher using her implants) to familiarize herself with the controls. The control stick felt like it had been molded to fit in her hand. With the thrusters, main engines and repulsors all upgraded, this fighter could dance.
She was enjoying the maneuvers, flying around the big freighter, performing loops and rolls, pushing the fighter’s engines to maximum, then flipping one hundred eighty degrees to brake hard, to test out the inertial nullifiers. She was putting all the systems through their paces, working the little ship hard.
After about an hour, and after a number of chuckles coming her way from the Grania Estelle, “Hot mike, Moxie One,” was said a number of times, but she ignored it, whooping loudly. More chuckles.
Finally, the test flight was coming to an end, or more specifically, her fuel reserves were running low. “Moxie One to Grania Estelle. I am approaching bingo fuel and I am returning back to base.”
“We copy, Moxie One,” the ops officer replied. “Bay Four is still open. Take it nice and easy coming in please.”
“Yes, Mother,” Tamara replied. “I won’t scratch your deck.”
She’d done carrier landings before, of course. In the Navy, unless you were a dirtsider and therefore only flew in atmosphere, it was a requirement that you have at least a hundred carrier landings under your belt before you could pass basic training. Of course, now, she didn’t have anything as luxurious as a hangar deck to touch down on. But, the deck was waiting. There was one functioning running light illuminated just above the open maw of the bay, she was forced to try and put this bird down without any landing lights.
“No problem,” she said, angling the fighter and cutting acceleration. A few puffs on her forward thrusters began to burn off the ship’s speed. She hadn’t gathered too much momentum in this last approach, knowing that the landing might be a little difficult this first time. The fighter entered the bay at less than five kilometers per hour, a little nudge with the stick and the Perdition swung around, facing nose-out to the door. Cutting in the repulsors and idling the main engines, she eased it down to the deck, without so much as a bump. “How was that, Captain?”
From the bridge, the captain smiled. “Show off. Closing the bay doors now.”
The test flight was a success. Her follow up maintenance took about an hour, a few tweaks and tune ups on a few things, but so far, everything was working well. Putting her tools away, she patted the side of the fuselage in satisfaction. “Beautiful…” she whispered, taking one last glance at the Perdition fighter. Now, it was time to speak with the captain about the real job.
The captain was in his quarters and as she entered, she saw him sitting in one of the chairs at the small table, a mug of beer in his hand, a tablet in the other. The man was quite pleased. “Moxie! You said you could do it and I have to admit, I doubted you. But, you’re a woman of your word. Now that you’ve proven your worth and you proved me wrong.” He gestured her to one of the threadbare but overstuffed chairs that were bolted to the deck. Tamara sat. After their last conversation together, she was far less open and friendly toward the man. Outwardly, however, she put on a brave face and smiled, acting as though she was dealing with just another unpleasant superior officer.
“Glad everything went as planned. So where do we go from here?” She was exhausted, the euphoria from the starfighter project had worn off, leaving only the dull empty ache that had been slowly filling her these last few days.
He eyed her speculatively. “That depends on you, Moxie. We’ll be arriving at the hyper limit in a few hours, so I won’t be letting you tear down the engines, but I think you could find ways to keep yourself busy.”
“Where are we headed, Captain?”
He smiled. “Moxie, our… arrangement… is special. You’re not a crewmember. You’re not a passenger. You’re more of a…” He struggled to find the word.
“Contractor?” she supplied helpfully.
He bobbed his head. “Sure. Yes. Exactly. You are a contractor.” He leaned forward. “Which means, you do your job, you earn your keep and you let me worry about where we’re going.”
Tamara shrugged. There were only so many places that were reachable from this star. Only two other systems in fact, guessing at the engine specs she’d glanced at briefly. But she could look all that up later. And by the look on the captain’s face, he was realizing that as well.
“I have a request,” she stated, looking him in the eye.
One of his eyebrows shot up. “Do you now?”
She nodded. “I do. I said I wanted to help you rebuild your ship and I meant it. And I will rebuild it. But, it will take forever if I’m working alone. May I borrow your engineering teams to do the work?”
“You want my crew to be doing the work?” He sounded amused.
“No, I want them to be assisting me,” she clarified. She sat up straighter. “Let’s be honest. I can’t be everywhere at once. And your teams have been doing a fair job of holding this ship together.” Tamara felt she could be gracious here. In her opinion, they had been doing an atrocious job, though, in all fairness, they did not have full access to the replicators to make replacement parts. The ship was decrepit, but the fact that she was still flying and relatively safe was a testament to their will. “I can fix the ship, but if I can train them on how to maintain and repair their ship, you can keep this beauty flying for another two hundred years.”
The captain nodded. “Now that is something I want to see.” He flicked his fingers in dismissal. “Off you go then. Fix my ship.”
Ten minutes later, she was standing in the mess hall, with a group of engineers seated at tables before her. The Chief Engineer, a gruff Parkani male, crossed his four true arms over his barrel chest, looking out over his teams with his four hard eyes. Quesh Trrgoth was a no-nonsense fellow, who worked his teams hard. But, he was good at bringing out the best in his people and they all worshipped him, even the zheen Ka’Xarian. He was good with systems, but the lack of parts and the lack of a well-trained crew had hindered his efforts. He had seen what Tamara Samair had done with that Perdition fighter and was interested to see what she could do with the big ship. The captain had refused to change the schedule for the jump, so they would need to work on projects that wouldn’t affect the ship in hyperspace until they reached the next star system.
“All right everyone, thank you for being here. For those of you I don’t know, my name is Tamara Samair.” There was a quiet rumble around the room. A few had met her already and were impressed with her work ethic and her ability to unlock the replicators. “I’ve been tasked by the Captain to start work on rebuilding this ship. We’re going to try and get her as close to factory new as possible.”
“What?” someone demanded. “That’s impossible. We don’t have a space dock to work at!”
“No, we don’t,” she agreed. Tamara swept her gaze over the crowd. There was a degree of belligerence in the engineering teams, which was nothing new to her. She had been the manager of a shipyard after all. “Which means that in some cases we’re simply going to have to
do the best we can. And, since the Captain has decided not to wait around for us to work, we’re going to have to do some of our repairs in hyperspace.” More muttering, darker this time. “Look people, I’m not saying we’re going to be doing the really dangerous stuff. I’d really like to overhaul the reactor, but since that along with the hyperdrive is going to be in use, obviously we can’t. What we can work on is the power distribution system, life support, and we can work on patching the interior of the hull.”
“Why not the outside?” the same heckler asked.
She raised her eyebrows at him. “You want to be on the outside of the ship in an EVA suit while we’re in hyper?” The man gulped and closed his mouth, some of the others laughed. “I didn’t think so. So, we’ll work on the interior of the hull for now to try and reclaim some real estate.” That got a lot of their attention, since because with three of the eight main cargo holds breached, a huge amount of cargo space was unused. The captain in particular had been very interested in that particular project. Having those bays breached had been a massive waste of money, seeing as all that space was therefore unused.
“All right. The Chief tells me that we have a good crop of welders in this crew here,” she gestured to indicate the assembled lot, some of whom nodded. “I understand though, that there’s been just too much work trying to keep the rest of the ship going to try and repair the damaged bays.” The Parkani nodded. “We’re going to start slow. The Chief and I want to evaluate everyone’s skills and learning curves as we work on the more complicated systems.”
“Once we’re in hyperspace, we’ll be there for about twenty-three days. By the time we get to the next system, I’d like to see that the life support systems and a good part of the power systems are overhauled.” The engineers all exchanged looks, clearly indicating that they didn’t think it was possible.
“I hope you slept well,” the Chief spoke up. “Because for the next three weeks, none of us will be sleeping much.” A chorus of groans. “Oh, knock it off. We can get a nap or two once we get out of hyper.” Though the look he and Tamara shared broadcast the same thought, not likely. “All right. I’ve assigned teams. Company A,” he gestured with one of his hands to a group of the techs, “You’re going to be working on life support in the aft sections. Company B, you’ve got the forward sections. Companies C and D,” he indicated the rest, “You’re on the power grid. I’ll be working on fixing up the EPS grid, the stars know we’ve just sat and lived with it for long enough.”
“But Chief,” one of the women spoke up. “Like you say, we’ve had to live with it for a long time. How can we fix it now?”
“We’re going to replace broken components where things have either burned out or ruptured…” Tamara began.
“But how?” the other woman demanded. “We don’t have replacements.”
“Well, Sirra, you’re only half right,” Quesh told her. “We didn’t have any replacement EPS conduits and junctions until this morning. But thanks to Tamara here,” he gestured with two of his hands, “we now do. Cargo bay three is being loaded up with replacements straight from the replicator and we’re getting rid of a lot of the excess junk we’ve accumulated in there for the last decade.” There were looks exchanged. Apparently, not everyone had heard that the replicators were on line and running. Which was odd, really, since this was such a small population.
“So,” Quesh went on. “We’re going to start tearing out ruptured conduits, recycle them into the replicator, and then plug in new ones. I don’t care if there are pinhole leaks or full-blown ruptures. I’d like to start getting a handle on this. Now, we’re not going to interrupt the current power flow. We’re going to replace parts that are close to max impedance, by rerouting power, pulling parts, putting in new parts and then restoring flow. When we’re done, I want the power distribution system to be just… thrumming!” That got smiles from everyone, some of which were more of the long-suffering variety. “The old girl has had leaky pipes and a busted up circulatory system for far too long. I want her to feel young again. Let’s get to it.” And with that, the meeting was over.
Ka’Xarian moved over to them, Tamara and Quesh, while everyone else was getting together into their proper companies. “Do you think this we can actually do this?” he asked, tentatively.
Tamara clapped him gently on the shoulder. “Xar, you and I put together a Perdition fighter in a matter of a few days,” she reminded him, smiling. “We’re not rebuilding the whole ship, but we’ve got forty technicians, well, forty-one with me. You don’t think we can rebuild the life support and power control systems?”
The zheen made a buzzing noise, the equivalent of a deep sigh. “You’re an optimist.”
She nudged him with one elbow. “If you and the Chief here can keep people moving, I think we can get both systems overhauled and even make some decent progress on the hull.”
“All right, Tamara. I’ve been won over by your optimism. If anyone can save this old ship, I believe it’s us.” Tamara smiled at his words. A truculent team she could deal with, it wouldn’t be the first time an “impossible” project had been laid out before her with instructions to “get on with it”. But doing it with no backup, not even a single ally simply wouldn’t do. She couldn’t fight the crew and get the overhauls completed. But it seemed she had a good portion of the techs on her side, as well as the two most important, Quesh and Xar. Having the captain giving her his support couldn’t hurt either. Though back in the day, she’d had Captain Horace Bythe’s support as well. He hated her and he used her as a patsy for his own smuggling and embezzlement schemes, but he wanted her to run the shipyards smoothly and efficiently.
As the other two headed off to Cargo bay three, Tamara followed along behind, thinking about the command structure in her former job. Her former life, really. Bythe was a bastard, but she hadn’t really known that until the fix was in. He had backed her up all the way, making sure that the resources she needed were made available, throwing in his support with captains of various ships under construction or repair. As she had begun to investigate the shortages and missing supplies and funds, he had still remained helpful, but upon reflection now (and during the eleven months of incarceration) she remembered times when he seemed more upset about the findings of her investigation than he should have. Oh, certainly, a commanding officer should be angry and upset if he heard that someone was skimming funds and stealing equipment from his base. However, the captain seemed a bit more rankled than he should be. Obviously, the man sat back and secretly conspired with Islington while simultaneously promising Tamara all the support she would need.
Tamara found her hands clenching and unclenching as they walked. Now was not the time to deal with this. She had a great deal of work to do and not a lot of time to do it, working with an untried crew of freighter techs. On the plus side, she had a good supply of raw materials and a working industrial replicator. Irritated, she stamped down on the demons threatening to bubble to the surface and returned to work.
The crew turned out to be a little greener at their jobs than Tamara would have liked, though Quesh and Xar managed to keep them all moving in the right direction. They began with the most damaged power conduits first, the ones that had been cut out of the loop completely and routed around. That way, once they got those working, they could reroute around the active ones and replace those. As Quesh had said, they wanted to completely restore the Grania Estelle’s power distribution system and repair all the leaks. It wouldn’t actually give more power to the ship, but it would prevent her from losing any and help keep more systems on line.
There were the usual bumps, scrapes and cuts, thankfully minor, until the public address system came on. There was a noise like a strangled duck and everyone stopped what they were doing for a moment and listened. Quesh gently tapped one of the welders on the shoulder, who shut off the welding torch and popped up her face shield. Tamara stopped her work as well, listening intently as everyone else.
“All hands, t
his is the Captain. We are one minute from the hyper limit. Secure all loose items and hang on to something. Prepare for hyperspace jump, people.” Everyone sighed and grabbed hold of the welders’ fuel tanks.
“What’s happening?” Tamara asked.
One of the techs shrugged. “Just a little turbulence. No big deal. Just make sure you grab something.” He followed his own advice and took hold of a pipe inside of an open bulkhead.
A fine tremor began building in the hull, as well as the whine of machinery. Within thirty seconds it had changed from a fine tremor to real shaking. Tools on the deck began to tremble and then bounce as the shaking grew steadily worse. She grabbed the edge of the open bulkhead next to him as the captain’s voice came back on. “Ten seconds to jump.”
“How bad does this get?” she demanded over the din of the hyperdrive spinning up.
The man shrugged again. “A little bit worse than this,” he said nonchalantly. It didn’t look as though he was being macho to try and impress a lady. His attitude and his posture signaled that this was a regular occurrence. If the hyperdrive was this far out of tune that it would cause vibrations this bad, then Tamara knew what was quickly rising up the priority listing in the repair queue.
There was a mechanical roar from deep within the ship and as the Grania Estelle leaped forward into hyperspace, everyone was jerked backward. The inertial compensators groaned, trying to handle the stress, but Tamara lost her grip on the bulkhead and hit the far wall, hard. She was pinned against the wall, as the g-forces seemed to increase. Everyone else seemed to be holding on for dear life as well as the shaking grew so bad it felt like the ship might rattle itself apart. After a few moments, though, the shaking decreased in intensity, slowly moving back down to the initial fine tremor. When it got there, the crew released their handholds and picked up any dropped equipment.
Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 Page 7