Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1

by Michael Kotcher

  The bridge crew were trying to maintain their professional calm and aloofness, but it was clear that everyone was hanging on to every one of the young woman’s words. The Captain was the only one who should have been actively listening to what she was saying, but every now and then someone would glance up at her from their station, then shift guilty looks at the Captain and then back down at their own stations. The Captain didn’t mind, though.

  “No response so far, Captain,” she reported after a minute had passed.

  He nodded. “Keep trying.”

  Serinda was halfway through her third recitation of her greeting when an indicator light on her console popped on. “I’ve got someone, Captain.”

  “Well put them on,” he said impatiently.

  “This is Consul Farris of Agron to the Grania Estelle. I understand you are looking for trade opportunities. We’ve never worked with you before on your passes through the system, though I am willing to talk.”

  “Put me on, Serinda,” the Captain ordered, a smile touching the corner of his lips. She glanced over and gave him the thumbs up. “This is Captain Vincent Eamonn of the Grania Estelle. I’m glad to be able to speak with you. As stated, we are here to work out some trades for mutual benefit.”

  “Good day, Captain. It’s good to see you back here. I must admit, I’m surprised to hear from you. I expected to see you working with the people at Terminus.” Consul Farris was very good at hiding his true feelings for the people in the neighboring city. “In fact, we saw two small ships fly over us in the direction of Terminus only just yesterday.”

  The Captain sighed. There was no reason to try and deny it. “Yes, you probably did. Consul Barnabus whipped the mob up into a frenzy and they attacked my landing party. They barely got out with their lives.”

  Farris clucked his tongue. “That buffoon is trying for the Proconsul job. He thinks that by inciting fear in the populace, they might see him in a more positive light, to overcome the fact that he’s a fat, smelly pig.”

  The Captain laughed. “I’m sure my cargo specialist might agree with you. I would like to send my shuttle down, if that would be acceptable.”

  Farris nodded. “Of course!” he said genially. “They would be most welcome.”

  “I must advise you,” the Captain interjected. “That a small security unit will be accompanying my team. After what happened in Terminus, I hope you can understand.”

  It was clear Farris wasn’t happy about this, but he nodded gracefully. “Of course. As long as they behave themselves, I have no objection.”

  “I truly hope that this will mark the beginning of a long and fruitful trade relationship,” he replied. “Because if things work out here, I see no reason to continue trading with Terminus at all.”

  “I would very much like to see that happen,” Farris answered, not referring to which situation of the Captain’s was most appealing. The Captain laughed. It was probably both.

  So, it was back down to the moon. Tamara was flying cover again, but it had been an exhausting few hours. She hadn’t slept since the last flight down to the planet. She found herself blinking a lot, stretching out her mouth, shaking her head to try and clear away the fatigue. So far it was working, but she knew she would need to land and sleep soon. Tamara kicked herself. She’d been too proud to speak with either the Captain (to postpone the landing) or Doctor Turan (to get herself some stay-awake pills) and now she was paying for it. And this wasn’t something that would impact only her if it went wrong. If she fell out of the sky, the impact might affect a whole town. She chuckled to herself. If she was still able to joke, she might still be okay.

  The shuttle came down, landing in an open area near a few large warehouses, as before, but the town of Agron seemed less sophisticated than Terminus. The buildings were very similar, in fact, most of them were built from the same materials and the same prefabricated design. But there was a degree of shabbiness that wasn’t present in Terminus, which made sense seeing as how Agron wasn’t the capital city. A small group of people approached, very reminiscent of the last landing on Instow, but this time they didn’t appear hostile.

  The ramp came down and Corajen and four of her squad bounded down again. They were fully kitted out, just like last time, again armed with guns and more of Tamara’s slimer grenades. Taja and her two assistants followed them down, leaving only the pilot and one of Corajen’s security people on board the shuttle. The cargo specialist looked a lot more hesitant than she did the first time setting foot on this world, but still, she moved forward. She had a job to do, just like everyone else.

  A man came forward, dressed in a skinsuit like the rest of them, with a breather mask over his face. His skinsuit was patched and old, but apparently still functional. The breather mask had a large crack running across the faceplate, which looked like it had been fused back together with epoxy. He had a jovial look on his face, which was an improvement over the previous representative who had been sent to greet them.

  “Welcome to Agron!” he said, spreading his arms out wide. He had only two other people with him, aides, presumably. If they were armed, the weapons weren’t visible and Instow didn’t look like the kind of place that built high-quality concealed weapons. Corajen and her security team moved forward, their weapons in hand but they were pointed at the ground. The lupusan’s eyes were constantly darting around, scanning for threats. So far there didn’t appear to be any. Every few minutes the Perdition fighter would continue it’s slow, lazy loop around the area, but it didn’t appear that Tamara was detecting any threats either.

  “Thank you for allowing us to land,” Taja replied, raising her left good arm in salute before dropping it back down. Turan had pronounced her fit for duty, but made it clear she was not to use her injured arm. She was to keep it in a sling at all times, until she could get back up to the ship and he could truly get it fixed. “I am Taja Mbuto, cargo specialist aboard the Grania Estelle. And who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

  The man smiled at her. “I am Uriel Potenko, and I understand you are here to trade. I am the man to talk to.” There was a calm pride in his voice, with no trace of arrogance. He clearly was the man to talk to in this town. He frowned, gesturing to her arm which was in the sling. “But what is this? You are injured?”

  Taja nodded, shrugging her left shoulder as if it was of no real importance, though in truth, the right shoulder still throbbed painfully despite Turan’s ministrations. There had been no real time to for him to work on her before they had to come back down. He’d given her painkillers, but there was no time for a regen bath. For now, she’d just have to deal with it, but Taja was no slouch. And the painkillers helped.

  “Consul Barnabus incited a riot up in Terminus,” she told him. “Somebody threw a rock and hit me. We managed to get away without anyone else getting hurt.”

  Uriel scowled. “He truly is a bastard,” he spat. “I’m glad to hear no one else was hurt. But come! We will accomplish nothing standing out here. Come! Come! Let us go inside, get something to drink and we can talk business.” He waved them all forward.

  “Go, I’m watching,” Corajen said over the comms. “And I would really like to get out of this helmet.”

  He led their small group into one of the nearby warehouses, which had its own small airlock. They had to go through in two groups; Uriel, Corajen, Taja and three security people in the first, and Taja’s assistants and the rest of the security and Uriel’s people in the second.

  The warehouse was good-sized but not huge, a prefab structure that had little going for it aside from its size and its ability to maintain atmosphere. It was filled with barrels made from plastic, stacked in very large rows. Uriel pulled off his breather mask, as did his aides and after a moment, Taja did as well. It took the security team a minute longer, watching the faces of the others before Corajen signaled the okay to do the same.

  The air was good, though it smelled of fish. All of the security forces wrinkled their noses, the lupusan e
specially because of her keen sense of smell. Uriel saw their faces, threw back his head and laughed. “The fish? Of course it smells of fish, my friends. That is what we eat on this world! This,” he swept his hands to encompass everything, “is a harvest that just came in this past week. The fish themselves are well packaged in ice in the barrels. What you smell is the oil and the guts, which comes from the cleaning area over there.” He pointed. “So, what is it that you are looking for?”

  Taja smiled. “Coming straight to it, I see. Okay. We have some specific needs. Ones that I know you can provide.”

  Uriel smiled back. “If I can, and if the price is right, my friend. So?”

  “Well, I would like to talk with you about foodstuffs,” she began. “Seeing all this here is very encouraging. In exchange,” she held out her datapad. “We have a great deal to offer, not the least of which is payment in gold bullion.”

  The man started in surprise. “In gold? I don’t think anyone has ever come here and paid in gold. Not in my lifetime. I think we can work something out.” A smile was growing on his face. “Come, let me show you what I have to offer.” He led his way amidst the stacks.

  After a thorough look around the warehouse, Taja nodded in satisfaction. “Well, we’ll want about forty of those barrels of fish. I’d also like ten of those crates of desiccated vegetables and half a dozen containers of coffee, the Sarabande Dark.” No one, anywhere, whether it was on a ship, a desk, or a fishing boat, could function for long without coffee. Grania Estelle had been out for over a month and the attitudes on the ship had been growing darker ever since.

  Uriel was smiling in grand satisfaction. “Of course, of course, we would be happy to sell you that. Now we come to what we would like. I would need at least four hundred of your gold bricks, to be checked and weighed and measured of course. Also I would like a cross section of these medicines you are offering, the antibiotics, and these electronic devices on page eleven to twenty-three on your manifest listing.”

  Taja, savvy to such haggling tactics, knew that in any situation like this, you had to open by being insulted. Then from there, you could work your way to an agreeable method of payment. She had no desire to fleece these individuals (if you cheated people, you rapidly ended up with no one to trade with) but by that same token, she was not going to be taken advantage of. “Excuse me, Uriel, but you must clearly need to have your eyesight checked. Do I appear as a woman you can just take to the shed and have your way with? That offer is insulting and you know it. I cannot possibly give up four hundred bricks for this amount of trade goods. My captain would have me whipped for such incompetence!”

  Uriel’s gaze grew conspiratorial. He knew what was going on and gladly accepted the challenge. “Yes, but if I allowed myself to be cheated by underhanded offworlders, Consul Farris would be sure I slept outside for the next few months.”

  The dickering began in earnest then, neither side really willing to give an inch, but both fully enjoying the game. During this time, Tamara was invited to land her fighter, to come inside and rest. She did so, gladly, for it was extremely fatiguing to sit in the cramped cockpit of a starfighter for hours on end, landing only a few meters from the shuttle and locking down the computes on the fighter, preventing anyone but her to access the ship. Her implants further secured the fighter, encrypting the computers with her own access protocols. No one would be getting anything from that ship without her say so.

  Tamara came inside, taking a cup of tea offered by their hosts, and followed the Grania Estelle’s team around the cargo sections, and looked over the cargoes they were bartering for. She added a couple of bits and bobs she saw amidst the detritus in one of the other warehouses, and included with it an old, broken bit of computer hardware. When asked, she only replied, “It’s an old Republic warship computer core. It’s busted up pretty good, but who knows? We might be able to salvage it and there might be worthwhile information on there.”

  Finally, after about four hours of negotiations, adding and subtracting things from both sides, they finally came to an arrangement. It would take a while to ship the various cargoes to and from the Grania Estelle and Agron, but neither side was unhappy with the way things turned out, though truth be told, neither side was completely satisfied. But then, that was the nature of haggling. On Taja’s side, she had acquired the foodstuffs, the coffee and the things that Tamara had requested. On Uriel’s, they had gotten three hundred and one bricks of the gold, and a number of the other things on the list, including the medicines. Taja had thrown in the one extra brick just to tweak the man, but he had accepted it with a smile and a tip of an imaginary hat.

  About halfway through the transfer of goods, a transmission came through from Terminus. “Captain, I have Consul Barnabus on the line. He’s demanding to speak with you.” Serinda managed to keep her face completely masked as she spoke. She knew how Barnabus sounded, but she didn’t seem to want to give her Captain any clues.

  He nodded. “I’m guessing whatever he wants, he’s very insistent. And I’m also guessing I’m not going to like whatever it is he has to say.” He sighed, rubbing his face with one hand. “All right. Do we have video? Or just audio?”

  “Audio only, Captain,” Serinda said apologetically. “But I’m sure that’s all you really want.”

  He smiled. “Put him on.” She nodded, ready. “This is Captain Eamonn of the Grania Estelle. How can I help you today, Consul Barnabus?”

  The consul’s voice was extremely stressed. “How dare you come back down here, Captain! Your murderous crew killed dozens of my people and then you would dare to move to another city? You would come back down here after that?”

  “I don’t recall any of my people killing anyone in Terminus, Consul,” he replied, feeling the ire creeping into his voice. “In fact, what I recall is you stirring up a crowd against my people and then attacking as a mob. When we left, no one was dead.” Barnabus was spluttering now, unable to get a word out. “So, if you’re saying that dozens are dead, but we didn’t kill anyone, what does that mean? Did you kill them all, Consul?”

  “You…! You…” the man tried to speak, but couldn’t get the words out. “You think that you are so clever. You twist my words around. No, you offworlders are all the same. You cheat the hardworking people on worlds such as ours, you attack peaceful citizens and then you claim to know nothing of those acts. The deaths of those people are on your head!”

  “He cut the line, Captain,” Serinda said after a short moment.

  “What the hell is he talking about?” the Captain demanded. “We didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Maybe you were right, Captain,” she said. “Maybe he needed an example of ‘offworld butchery’. But why? Ships don’t come through here very often.”

  “No,” he said, “but if an offworld vessel was responsible for a massacre, it would give him the perfect reason to restrict offworld travel and incoming visitors. They’d have no one to talk to but him.” He paused. “But I think it’s less about his own city than the other ones. If he can point to a massacre done by offworld barbarians, then if he can play his cards right, the other cities will band together. Might even elect him proconsul. Sloppy, but smart.”

  "Um... Captain?" Serinda said, her voice sounding confused. "That transmission was on wide beam."

  "What?" he said, rounding on her. "You broadcast it to the whole system?"

  She gulped. "Oh, no, Captain. Not me. He did. He didn't send a tight beam transmission to ship, he just set the transmission on broadcast and called up."

  The captain sat there in his command seat for a very long moment. "So... he called up here to... what? Browbeat me? Accuse me of mass murder? And then what?"

  No one answered. The Captain snorted. "What did he expect? That I would just cave and admit to that sort of thing? That I would meekly surrender to his judgment?"

  "I don't know, Captain," Serinda replied. "Maybe he did. I get the feeling from the few conversations I've heard that he thinks of himself as a
charismatic individual. Perhaps he thought that us uneducated barbarian spacers would fall all over ourselves to try and please him."

  "Captain, he did know that we needed trade goods," George Miller pointed out. "And if we were willing to sit in orbit and keep asking, whatever we needed must have been really important."

  The Captain pursed his lips and nodded slowly. "That's a very good point, George."

  "And," Serinda added, "He wanted to be sure that the whole system heard your conversation."

  Now he frowned. "So perhaps the intended audience wasn't just for those on the planet but elsewhere?" He turned to George. "What's the status of the sensors?"

  George sighed. "Still pretty lousy, Captain. I've only got about a kilometer's range on the sensors. And our gravitics and neutrino detectors are still down. They're on Chief Trrgoth's to-do list, but he hasn't gotten to them yet."

  The Captain nodded again. He turned back to the communications station. "Serinda, get Moxie on the horn. Tell her to return to the ship, soonest. It's not an emergency, this isn't a panic scramble, just get back up here. We need her."

  Serinda turned and began her transmission.

  When Tamara pulled off her shipsuit helmet after setting down in the cargo bay, the Captain was there, looking up at her. She set the helmet on the top of the flight console, then got up and climbed down from the cockpit, the Captain having helpfully pushed the small ladder up to the side of the fighter. When her boots hit the deck, she staggered a bit, and he reached out and gripped her elbow to steady her.

  "Thanks," she mumbled, then stood up straight as he let her go. "So, Captain. What's so all fired important that you needed to drag me back up here? Aren't you concerned that Taja and the group would need me for air support?"

  "I am," he admitted, his expression unhappy. "But I'm concerned about the ship more. We're blind. Your fighter has better sensors than the ship does that worries me. Coupled with some unpleasant conversations I've had with the Consul of Terminus, I'm thinking it might be a good idea to have some ability to see out into space."