A man came forward, pushing through the small group, walking up to within about ten meters of the landing force. He was dressed in a patched and threadbare looking skinsuit, one that had seen heavy use over the years. He was plump, the skinsuit looked as though it was barely containing his bulk. His face was covered in a breather mask, but the faceplate was completely transparent. His eyes were blazing with what looked like righteous anger, though Corajen couldn’t really tell. Her entire head was covered by the helmet though if she could use her sense of smell, she might get a better read on the man and the situation in general. Anger had a definite odor and fear a distinctly different and more pungent one.
“How dare you!” the man roared, his voice carrying through the very thin atmosphere. “You cannot be down here!”
Taja hopped down the ramp as well, skidding to a halt far less smoothly than Corajen and her people. “Come now, Barnabus,” she said indignantly. “We’ve been here before and we’ve traded fair.”
But the man refused to be sweet-talked. “No, you brought trouble down on us! You and that cursed ship of yours!” He waved his hands in front of himself as if waving off a landing plane. “Get yourselves back on your shuttle and fly back up to your ship and leave. Now!”
“We only need a few things and then we’ll be happily on our way, Barnabus,” Taja replied smoothly. “We’re not here to cause trouble.”
“No?” he nearly shrieked. He stabbed a finger at Corajen. “You bring that… that… person here with the rest of her thugs, armed to the teeth, and I’m supposed to believe you only want a ‘few’ things?” Then he stabbed that finger at the sky. “And you bring a fighter plane with you? You going to bomb my city if I don’t comply?” The man was holding his ground, but it was clear he was afraid. “You brought those pirates here!”
“We did no such thing, Barnabus,” she snapped. “They hit us the instant we dropped out of hyperspace.”
“You lie!” he bellowed. “Get out of my city! Get off our world!” More people were arriving now. The crowd, drawn to the landing of the shuttle, and the noise of the confrontation had swelled to over a hundred people. They were agreeing with him. A low growl was sounding, as the locals began muttering. The looks flashing in the direction of the freighter crew were not encouraging.
“This is getting ugly fast,” Corajen spoke quietly, her voice carrying to everyone over comms. Looking at movement to her left, she saw three men coming out of houses, armed with rifles. The weapons were ancient, relics, really. Her own weapons packed a greater punch and were simply better weapons, but an ancient bullet could kill just as well as a modern one. “I’ve got weapons coming this way.”
“You need to go!” Barnabus shouted. “They’re going to try and hurt us!” he called to the crowd, who responded with shouts of anger. “They are just like the pirates who came here and took our things, killed our families!” The crowd was moving forward now, but they hadn’t turned violent.
“That’s not it at all!” Taja pleaded, holding her hands out in front of her. “We came here to trade. We need things, you need things. We want to hurt no one!”
“You hear!” Barnabus cackled, pointing at her. “They came to hurt us! Just like what the pirates did to us! What they did to Volarus!”
“No!” Taja yelled. “We didn’t! We haven’t hurt anyone!”
A rock came hurtling from somewhere at the back of the crowd, perfectly arced, hitting the cargo specialist in the shoulder, sending her spinning and flopping to the dirt. The crowd roared its approval. Corajen leveled her weapon, but she couldn’t tell where the missile had come from. And it was getting worse; she could see more people with weapons coming at them.
“Leave!” the man said, his voice carrying over the cacophony of the mob, for it had doubled in size in a matter of moments.
“You’re killers!”
“Troublemakers!”
“Offworlders!”
“Scum!”
“Murderers!”
“We’re going,” Corajen said. “Everyone on the shuttle, now!” Her team edged back, one of the security people grabbing Taja by the arm and hauling her to her feet.
“They’re running!” someone yelled. More rocks came flying forward and the lupusan and her people fired warning shots into the air, well above the heads of the crowd, retreating with each step.
The crowd surged forward, screaming in rage, people with improvised weapons, and people with guns, all of them rushing forward with hate-filled fury. Corajen leveled her rifle, but didn’t fire. She was not going to shoot into a crowd of civilians. “Slimers! Now!” Grabbing a squat cylinder off her belt, she popped the spoon with her thumb and tossed it underhand at the feet of the oncoming mob. The others on her team followed suit, throwing the grenades forward.
The explosives went off, but instead of a concussion, or shrapnel, a gelatinous goo gushed out, soaking the ground and the feet and legs of the first few rows of the oncoming mob. The slime then expanded from contact with the air, changing to a foam, which then hardened a second later. One instant later, the enraged crowd who were howling for blood were suddenly shrieking in panic as they found themselves glued in place by what felt like concrete. Some fell over, some were locked upright, while others crashed into the front rows and fell over the suddenly very hard surface that wasn’t there seconds before.
This gave the freighter crew enough time to get aboard the shuttle and up in the air. The repulsors flared and the shuttle was off the ground before the ramp was even raised.
Tamara looked over to see the shuttle launching. “What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
“There was a mob,” the lupusan reported back. She sounded winded. “We had to pull back to the shuttle and take off. It got ugly and they charged. Thank the stars you made those slimer grenades.”
“They were popular back in my time. Figured they would come in handy.”
“You know, you smart girls cover your assets well,” Corajen replied. “I think I might need a lesson or two in dirty tricks.”
Tamara laughed. She banked her turn, flying to pace the shuttle. “Be happy to host a class. Is everyone all right?”
The wolf woman sobered. “Taja took a rock to the shoulder. No one else was hurt.”
“She all right?”
“She’ll be fine. Might be bruised. Doc Turan’s going to look at it when we get back to the ship.”
Tamara let out a long breath. This was not good. Very not good. “Well, that didn’t work, but we need to try again.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Corajen said. “Maybe the Captain might have some ideas.”
The mess hall was crowded. The Captain wanted as many faces here as possible as the situation was growing desperate. Taja was in sickbay, under sedation, but Turan reported that she would make a full recovery. The rock had severely bruised the bones in her shoulder, but eventually she would regain full use of her arm again. Until then, she’d be wearing a sling and have to make do.
“All right folks, the situation is bad,” he started off as the room quieted. “We need ideas. I don’t care who they come from, or how stupid, short-sighted, moronic or inadequate they might be. We’ve tried talking to the locals. That didn’t work. We tried landing and trying to work something out face to face. That really didn’t work, though I think if we could speak with someone without Consul Barnabus interfering, we might get somewhere.”
Corajen nodded at that. “I agree, Captain. He was certainly stirring up the crowd against us.”
The others nodded. The ones who had been on the surface shuddered. The sound and the fury of that enraged crowd had been terrifying, even for the security force. If not for the prep work by Tamara and Corajen, they might all have been killed.
The Captain turned to Tamara. “What about the replicators? Can those help out situation?”
She shook her head, exhaling noisily. “Captain, I’m sorry, but we’ve been over this. These are industrial replicators. They’re designed
to break down components and raw materials into their base elements and then a nanite constructor farm reassembles them into the components you want. But it isn’t designed to make food. The closest it can get is plastics and other polymers.” She shrugged. “But you can’t eat that.”
He nodded sourly. The others were looking at her as though this situation was somehow her fault. “What about food replicators? You built us a second industrial replicator. Can you build us a food one?” There was an undercurrent of hope in his voice, one that was reflected in the eyes of everyone in the room.
Tamara pursed her lips. “Yes,” she said very slowly, but then held up a hand as someone cheered. “But there are serious problems. Yes, I can make other replicators using the ones on board the Grania Estelle. But the replicators can only build with the raw materials on hand and whatever specs they have stored in their firmware and software systems. Replicator One didn’t have designs for a food replicator in its database. Neither am I finding anything like that in the ship’s databanks. I brought a whole host of engineering programs, but I didn’t think to grab one to build a food replicator when I was escaping from jail.” A few people chuckled, a couple of others were looking at her darkly. “I’ve started the software coding to try and build one, but it’s going to take a while. I’ve never actually built one from scratch before, so I have to go carefully. But I think by the time I have the software for that sort of thing worked out, we all might have starved to death.”
“It’s the same sort of thing,” one of the techs complained. “You get some sort of food substrate, proteins, fruits, vegetables, get the nanites to break them down and then reassemble them.”
She nodded, smiling. “Yes, you are absolutely correct. The problem is that we need more substrate. Which is the exact same problem we have right now. A food replicator could make food, or in the very least a nutrient paste or bar that could provide us with sustenance. But, just like the industrial replicators, it requires raw materials to work of which we are preciously low. The Chief and I,” she gestured, “have been working on the waste extraction systems to try and get a recycling program for that going, but that’s another system I didn’t think to grab plans for. The Grania Estelle was designed with a very basic refuse recycling system and it’s horribly inefficient. Not to mention degraded and damaged. Anyone who’s had the joy of working in that section can tell you that for the most part, once the refuse is dumped down there, only about ten percent of it is recycled and that bit is really only for the water. The rest is simply jettisoned. Right now we’re working on it, but a food replicator is not going to be the savior in this situation.”
There was a silence in the mess hall as they all processed that information. “What about leaving this system for greener pastures?”
Quesh cleared his throat. “Well, we’ve got the sublight engines back up, three of them, and with the latest water rock we’ve gotten back, our fuel reserves are adequate to get us to the hyper limit here and from the limit to a planet in another star system. But it’s just a matter of damage, Captain.” He sighed, using one had to rub his neck. “Those damned pirates hit us hard and in some very bad places. I think we can patch up the hyperdrive in about five days and get enough shield coverage to physically make a jump, but that’s a very big if. And we’d be jumping at bare minimum levels. We’d be slow as hell and flying with no backups.” Everyone paled a little at that. Working on the Grania Estelle was an interesting and sometimes dangerous job, but flying in hyperspace with bare minimum shield coverage was insane. If the slightest weak spot opened in the shields, the stresses would rip the freighter apart. “And if what Cookie tells me is true, we don’t have the supplies to make it to another system even if we were ready to go right now.”
“Cookie?” the Captain asked, turning to him.
The chef nodded sadly. “I’m sorry, Captain. The Chief is right. Even cutting rations again, we just don’t have enough. And the less we all eat, the more it’s going to affect performance, as you know, which means less we can do. And there would be no guarantees the situation would be any better elsewhere.”
“What about stasis pods?” George Miller asked. Everyone turned to him, Tamara with a look of respect, but tinged with horror. “If we reduce the number of crew we need to feed, temporarily, it might give us more options.”
“We don’t have any pods,” Quesh said, shaking his head.
“Yes, we do, Chief,” Ka’Xarian replied. He gestured to Tamara. “We have her escape pod. It’s still in the cargo bay. We haven’t touched it since she got out.”
All eyes turned back to her. She shrugged, but then nodded slowly. “Well, it would work. We would need to make some repairs, the life support was almost completely depleted when you picked me up. But the max it could hold is six people.”
“That would be six fewer people we would have to feed while we sort this situation out,” Xar pointed out.
“True, but I’ll be damned if you think I’m getting in that thing again,” she retorted, shuddering. “Never again if I can help it.”
“I would call for volunteers,” the Captain said, his eyes sweeping the crowd. “People who are not on the engineering or medical teams. That means anyone from cargo or deck divisions.” No one raised their hands. “I will make it an order if I need to.” No one spoke up, though furtive glances were exchanged.
“I’ll look into it, Captain,” Tamara said. “I’ll need to check out if we can even make it viable. I will tell you all that it doesn’t hurt. Once the systems are activated, you fall asleep and then… nothing. You’re asleep until the pod is deactivated. And we would be keeping the pod in the cargo bay. No one would be going out into space. And no one would be sleeping for as long as I did. Two weeks to a month, perhaps a bit more, but that would be it.” They didn’t seem convinced.
The Captain seemed buoyed by this idea. “Get started on that once we’re done here.”
“Aye, Captain,” Tamara replied.
“But that won’t fix the problem. Any ideas? Anyone?”
“What about the other towns?” Serinda asked. “We know that Instow has three. So far we’ve only dealt with Terminus. What about Agron and Rexag?”
“Out of the mouths of bridge officers,” Quesh rumbled, his voice easily carrying over the mess hall. Serinda blushed.
“All right, Serinda, once we’re done here, get back to the bridge and try and contact someone at either of those towns. I think that’s going to be our best option. There’s got to be someone who will be willing to talk to us.”
“All right, Captain, I’ve done a full diagnostic on the pod.” Tamara turned to the man standing just behind her as she climbed back out. “I can tell you that it needs a good cleaning, and there are a few circuit boards that need replacing. The life support needs charging. Give me about six hours or so, and it’ll be ready to roll.”
“Get on it, then, Moxie,” he said. “I’ll speak with the crew and look for volunteers.”
She grinned at him, hefting her toolkit. “When they balk, and they will, tell them that I managed in there for two hundred and forty-eight years. And no one can say I didn’t survive. And if they have problems with my engineering work, direct them to look over the work I’ve done since I came aboard.”
He smiled back. “I will.”
The repairs to the pod only took four hours, actually, which freed Tamara up for other projects. The Captain spoke with the crew, but so far no one was coming forward. Both Quesh and Ka’Xarian independently did diagnostics and checks of the pod’s systems and confirmed they were sound. This helped to lift the spirits of those who might be called to go in, but still, no one was willing to go in. When asked, it wasn’t that they were afraid that the technology wouldn’t work, Tamara had proven that it did (and even when damaged). No, they were afraid that something terrible would happen to the rest of the crew, to the ship, and they would remain in the pod, slumbering while no one remained to wake them.
There was little anyone c
ould really say to that.
Tamara returned to her work on the coding for the food replicators. The concept was the same for this as it was for an industrial replicator, add raw materials to be broken down, have the nanite constructors rearrange the molecular structure of that raw material into edible food. The basic programming was completed, but now it was only able to make a nutrient mush that was mildly edible. It was filled with everything the body needed, but it had the consistency of slushy snow and tasted like plain tofu. Making things that were fancy (and tasty) was a priority for later. Feed the crew first, then worry about winning culinary awards later. She had it installed in the mess hall, but as she had said in the meeting, this was only part of the battle. They would need to overhaul and upgrade the recycling system in order to make the replicator really a viable answer to their food problem. But she hadn’t given up and was continuing on that in her free time. This would potentially be something that the AI could work on when it was completed.
The Captain, meanwhile decided that it was time to contact one of the other towns. Twelve hours after the shuttle and her escort returned to Grania Estelle, he placed a call to the town of Agron, which wasn’t as impressive as Terminus, but was located on the far side of Instow from the capital city and in its southern hemisphere.
“This is the Grania Estelle to the offices of trade in Agron,” Serinda said, holding one hand up to her headset. “We are seeking to do business in trade. Please respond on this channel.”
Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 Page 17