“Talked?” She shrugged. “I haven’t. Cookie and I chatted a few times, but nothing about anything important. Very little about my past.”
“Cookie?” Turan asked in surprise. “That’s a good start. He’s a good man and a good listener. And the fact that you came to him and then me indicates that you’re at least thinking about this.”
Tamara nodded slowly. “Back in the old days you had to get bi-annual appointment with the shrinks. The Navy was very specific about those kinds of things. They didn’t want people with access and command of serious hardware to go cuckoo.”
“And how long has it been for you since you had one of these mandatory appointments?”
“Now?” she chuckled. “About eighteen months. I’d get smacked pretty hard by HQ for it, but I’ve been under arrest and in the brig for a year. And now I’m two and a half centuries out of time. So I imagine I’ve probably been officially pronounced dead. Not that that really matters.”
Turan smiled. “No, probably not. I imagine it probably isn’t something that happens very often. But let’s get back to you. I can give you a few things, but I’m not really set up to dispense large amounts of head meds. The things I can give will help a bit, relax a few things in your mind, help you sleep a bit better, but honestly, the best therapy would probably be to talk about it.”
She nodded. “I imagine with the war and the reduction in sizes of the Federation and the Republic, medical science has probably declined a bit in the independent space lanes.”
“Sadly yes.”
“Thanks, Doctor. I will take the meds if you’ll trust them to me. And I’ll try to find someone to talk to. Perhaps Cookie.”
He straightened out. “And what about Quesh?”
She sighed. “Yeah, I really made a mess of things. I don’t know if he’s going to want me anywhere near his engineering teams now.”
Turan shook his head. “No, I imagine he’s going to be fuming for a good while. It might be a good idea to stay out of his way for a while.”
But now Tamara was shaking her head. “I need to be there to help out with the rebuild of the bow sensor arrays. I’m needed with the replicators and the installations.”
He let out a breath. “Then let me speak with him. I would recommend giving him some time to cool down before you speak with him again.”
“I’ve worked with Parkani before. I’m not worried about him. I just don’t want to accidentally say something insulting again and spark another fight.”
“But were you in a position of authority over those other Parkani?” he asked shrewdly. She nodded. “Then you’re in a unique situation here. He does need you, he needs your skills and your replicator access. But you need to understand that he is the Chief Engineer, a position he has worked extremely hard to attain and to keep. He won’t step aside for you, and after today he most likely will be very sensitive having you around.”
“Right. I guess I’ll try to lay low for a while. But we do need to get the sensor array back up and running. And they do need me for that.” She stood up. “Thanks, Doctor. Now, that I’ve taken up your time and disappeared from my duties, I’d best get back and right quick.”
“You want the meds?” he asked, standing as well.
She started to refuse, but then nodded. “I’d probably better. I don’t need another meltdown, especially not with the Chief.”
He chuckled. “Come on. I’ll get them for you.”
The sensor rebuild went well. Quesh stayed away from the EVA teams, and Tamara avoided him. They broke apart the long antennae and squat nodes of the sensor arrays and fed them into the replicators for breakdown of materials. That alone took two days. Two days of back-breaking tedium. Three teams were in the cargo bay cutting apart the array into small chunks which were then winched up onto hover pallets and carted off to the replicators for breakdown. The breakdowns themselves didn’t take all that long, usually only a half hour or so for each part, and then once the whole thing was cut up and broken down, then the replicator began churning out new parts. With a few of the firmware upgrades that Tamara had programmed in, they were able to build slightly better hardware than the Grania Estelle was previously equipped with.
After the first array went online and the starboard side sensors came up, the bridge crew reacted like someone who has had a bright light flared in their eyes after having been in the dark for so long. They flailed about at their consoles, trying to distinguish between items on the displays, unsure of what to do, working their consoles with the skill of a first-time operator. It took a bit of practice and a deal of fine tuning (using the shuttle to calibrate the sensors) but they were getting there. Once the port-side sensor array was installed and calibrated, the deck division threw a party in the mess hall, with a round of the Instow’s Jovian Ale for all hands, deck, cargo and engineering. There was still a huge amount of work to be done on the ship, but for the first time in decades, if not longer, the old girl was no longer blind, inching along to avoid hitting anything. With three engines online and the bow sensors back up, things were starting to look good.
And that’s when it changed.
“Captain! I’ve got a sensor contact. A hyper footprint!” George Miller cried, a week after the sensors had been completed. They were all still getting past the last of the teething issues, but George had proven to be a quick study and was turning out to be a fine operations officer, more so that before since now he had decent equipment to work with.
“Where?” the Captain demanded, looking over from his seat on the bridge.
“Edge of the hyper limit, from the direction of Malabar,” he answered immediately. “Two contacts. They’re moving in this direction. They’re accelerating… moving at about point zero five light.”
“Not sprinting across the system, but not exactly lumbering along either.” With the engines rebuilt as they were Grania Estelle could get her own velocity up considerably faster than before, but she would never be able to match a warship, even if all of her drives were back up. “Any more information yet, George?”
“No, Captain,” he replied, still studying the display. “They’re on the other side of the system from us, coming over the top of the plane of the ecliptic. If they hold speed and assuming they brake down to make orbit here at Instow, they’ll be here in six days.”
“Two ships coming here,” he said, thumping the arm of his chair lightly with one fist. “That’s probably not good.” He pressed a key on the control pad. “Engineering, this is the bridge. We have ships incoming from the hyper limit from Malabar. What is the status of our hyperdrive?”
It took a moment for the answer to come back. Quesh sounded frustrated, harried and exhausted. “Captain, it’s still down. Other than clearing out the obvious damage, the drive is still down.”
Damn. “Any idea how long until it’s back up?”
There was a sigh. “Captain, to be honest, I’m not sure. A week? Maybe.”
“Well, we’ve got a pair of ships that just entered the system, Quesh. No idea who they are or what they want, but after out last encounter here, and the welcome we got down at Terminus, I think it might be best to get the hyperdrive back up so we can get out of here.”
Another pause. “Captain, I need to see you. In person.”
The Captain looked around, but everyone was avoiding his gaze. He sighed. “All right Quesh. The wardroom.”
“Be there in five minutes, Captain.”
The Parkani came into the wardroom right when he said, the Captain was already seated in his normal chair at the head of the table. Quesh clearly wasn’t happy. He was dirty and exhausted, his top arms were cross over his chest, and his lower arms were resting on his hips. Without invitation or preamble, he pulled out one of the chairs and collapsed into it.
“You look like hell, Quesh,” the Captain told him.
“Feel like it, Captain,” he replied, his voice taking on a gravelly tone.
“So,” the man began. “What is it?” he asked, al
ready knowing the answer.
The Parkani sighed, three of his muscled hands on the table, the fourth rubbing his jaw. “Well, as I said before, the hyperdrive is going to take about a week to get it back up. Even still, with our lack of shields and structural issues, we’re only going to be able to the bare minimum of performance out of the hyperdrive.”
The Captain sighed. “How bad are we talking?”
“Well, we’ve been normally running at about mid-level of the orange in the rainbow.” The ‘rainbow’ was spacer slang for the levels of speed available in hyperspace, following the old convention of ‘roy-g-biv’, with red being the slowest and violet the fastest. It was called the rainbow because if you looked outside the ship using sensors while in hyperspace, a shielded bubble formed around the ship and waves of tachyons collided with it as the ship flew faster than light. The tachyons made brilliant and vibrant color washes over the shields in the entire spectrum of what humans called visible light. Hence, the rainbow. Each speed color also had seven levels within that. Grania Estelle, with everything running at peak efficiency and new drives could reach to level four of the green band, but it had been decades since she’d gone that fast. Most warships running with good equipment could get to indigo, and fast packet traders and dispatch boats could get to upper violet. That was a very fast trip, but it took a huge amount of power and fuel to maintain a speed like that.
Of course, the lower speeds cost a lot of fuel as well. Yes, they were going slower and that was a bit more economical, but it required overall more power to keep the hyperdrive active and running. There was no real tradeoff, so it was better to try and go faster if at all possible. The true sweet spot fuel for speed, for this ship anyway, would be in the yellow, level seven, or the top of the yellow.
“But, with the kind of repairs we would need to do now would only get us to red, level two.”
The Captain goggled at him. “Level two? By the stars, it’ll take us almost a hundred fifty days to get to the next system at that speed.”
Quesh nodded. “Yes, Captain. That’s about the long and short of it. And we’d be almost completely on empty in the fuel tanks by the time we got there.”
“We can’t go any faster?” the Captain asked, almost pleading.
“Not with the shields in the state they’re in now. We’ve got two shield nodes currently active. Two. That will give us about five percent shield coverage over the whole ship. That’s bare minimum, Captain. We try to push the hyperdrive any faster, the shields would breach and the stresses of hyperspace would rip us apart.” He blew out a breath. "There are just too many repairs to do, especially if you want to be out of the system before those new guys get to us. We can either do the hyperdrive or the shields. We don't have the crew or the time to do both."
The Captain pursed his lips. "I was thinking about hiring on a few new people down at Instow."
Quesh nodded. "I'm not thrilled about bringing on too many people right now, but we're all burning out. We need people to help lighten the load, even if they're only doing the scut work. We can train them properly if we can get out of here."
The Captain came to a decision and looked his Chief Engineer straight in the eye. "All right Quesh, the hyperdrive. Get on it. And Quesh, what's the story with Moxie?"
The Parkani sighed and set all four hands palms down on the table. "She's an arrogant ass, Captain. I'm sick to death of the little picks about how 'amazing' it is that we 'managed as well as we have.'"
"It is something of a miracle," the Captain pointed out.
But Quesh shook his head. "That is as may be, Captain, but my crew and I have busted our collective asses to make this ship run for years now. She shows up and in a month, she's showing me up. I guess I am a bit bitter, if I'm brutally honest with myself. But as much as she is helping, and she is, I'm so tired of hearing how precious she thinks we all are."
The Captain sighed. "Bottom line this for me Quesh. Can you do the hyperdrive repairs without her? If I were to put her off the ship here, would we be able to get things together without her?"
The Parkani's fists clenched. His jaw worked as though he was chewing on something. The cords in his neck strained. "No," he growled. "We need her to replicate hyperdrive parts and any shield node parts we can squeeze out in the time we have. I also need her to lead her team in installations. But she's operating as she pleases. She's good at what she does, I can't argue that, as much as I wish it was true. But she just kind of wanders in wherever she wants, does some work, and then wanders off again."
"You want her more integrated into the crew, Quesh? You've been my Chief Engineer for a long time, but based on skills and experience, if I was to add her to the crew, she'd probably out rate you and Ka'Xarian." The Captain sounded entirely sympathetic to him, however.
Quesh looked as if the Captain had slapped him. Then his bravado crashed, replaced by even more frustration and grumpiness. "That certainly doesn't make me feel any better. I hadn't thought of that."
"Relax, Chief," he told him. "I have no intention of replacing you as Chief Engineer. You've done this ship proud and your crews all respond to you. But by your own words, you need her. So figure out a way to work with her."
"Captain, seriously, why is she here? Staying on, I mean." Quesh looked to his boss, a look of pure confusion on his face. "I know all about your initial deal with her. You get her to help out with the repairs to the ship and she gets a fighter out of it. But then what? And where are we taking her? She's just going to stay on board while we continue on our trade route?"
"For now," the Captain agreed. "But that's my problem. I'll speak with her, but like I said before: figure out a way to work with her. You're the Chief Engineer. Don't let her intimidate you and don't smash her face in. We need her."
Quesh sighed. "Thought you were going to say something like that, Captain. All right. By your leave, I'm going to get to work on the hyperdrive."
"Carry on, Chief."
Tamara was in her quarters, going over the new data she had harvested from the Republic data core they'd acquired at Agron. As she'd feared, the core itself was unsalvageable, but she had managed to siphon off a great deal of data. A lot of it was corrupted beyond repair, but there were a few things that made it a worthwhile purchase. There were a few new designs of milspec material she was happy to have, though very little of it was particularly useful on a cargo vessel.
One thing she did find that was useful was a partial database for a food replicator. It wasn't a comprehensive list, but it was certainly a good start. Adding this data to her current program was a big jump forward. There were now a few things that her custom-built food replicator could make; nutrient bars of various flavors, coffee, tea and juice. It certainly wasn't the most wide-ranging of menus, but it was better than what they had before.
Of course, this didn't actually fix the original overriding problem. They would need food substrate to make things using the replicator, and that would require bringing foodstuffs aboard. Fixing and completely upgrading the recycling system wasn't a high priority and that was what would be needed to make the food replicator be truly useful. Cookie wasn't thrilled about this tech, something he declared was 'impinging' on his 'freedom of culinary expression'. Truth be told, Tamara wasn't thrilled about it either. Cookie was very good at his job, even with limited resources as he had here and the idea of being forced to subsist on nutrient bars and water wasn't something that made her taste buds tingle.
Her special project was coming along and was nearly in final build stage. The AI was beginning to question its surroundings, ask questions of her. She had begun speaking with it, and had uploaded a communications link to the computer core to her implants, so that it could see and hear everything that she could, and all the people she interacted with. It was really an infant at this stage. It so far couldn't truly interact with anyone but Tamara at this stage. It couldn't actually speak, but Tamara's implants would display text messages at the bottom of her field of vision, which s
he could speak responses to, or if she chose, type in an answer on her datapad. It would be weeks before the AI matured enough to actually speak with Tamara herself, and possibly a bit longer before it could converse with people in groups. Tamara was confident, and occasionally added software patches to the constantly adapting program.
"Good morning," she said to the AI as she sat down to go over the fragmented and somewhat corrupted data from the salvaged data core. She had given the data a once over, but now she was going through it more thoroughly, hoping to find more gems in the morass.
[Good morning, Tamara.] The text scrolled across the bottom of the HUD. [How are you today?]
"I'm doing well. How was your down cycle?" AIs, like people, needed down time to process the information they absorbed during their active cycle. They didn't sleep, not truly, but they did go inactive while their processing took place.
[Productive. I believe I am almost in my next build phase.]
"That's excellent. I'm truly proud of how quickly you're progressing."
[Thank you.] There was a pause. [You've been going over the data from those salvaged computer cores for the last few days now. Is there something you're expecting to find?]
"Not really. I'm just looking. You never know what you might find."
[But why are you looking? Can you not just make what you need?] There was a short pause. [You made me. Why can't you do the same?]
"Well, that's a good point," she said, leaning back on her chair. "There are a lot of things that I can do myself. But if someone else has already done some of the work, why shouldn't I use that as a springboard?"
[That does make sense.]
"And while I did most of the coding here myself, I didn't do it all," Tamara pointed out, rubbing one finger on the tip of her nose. "I compressed a lot of data files and brought that with me, using that as a starting point for a lot of the software projects I've worked on."
The AI didn't have an answer for that. [What will you work on now?]
Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 Page 20