Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1

by Michael Kotcher

  “Well, all right.” She set the cup down, faced them all as a group, since it was clear that the three of them were ganging up on her. “There are a number of computer consoles that aren’t in use that we can use for this plan. I saw a number of knick-knacks in cargo bay three that we can salvage. The boat bay, even though it’s breached, I know there are some spare parts in there that we can use. I’d have to get a full listing of everything, but there should be enough with all that for another shield node.”

  The Captain looked at her without speaking for a few long moments. “I want you to make this work, Moxie. Quesh, you too. I am not willing to spend another three and a half months in hyperspace.” He slugged the rest of his drink, sighed, stood and left, leaving the cup on their table.

  “So, I guess you’re going to go on that scavenger hunt you just mentioned, Samair,” Quesh said, slurping up some more fish.

  Tamara shook her head. “I guess I am. But I am not giving up my ship, Quesh. And you two are not taking it. We will make this work with what other things we can find.” She glared at the two of them.

  They only laughed at her.

  As it turned out, Tamara found enough parts to feed the replicator to make two shield nodes, in addition to the one that the escape pod could build. She took no end of pleasure rubbing this in the males’ faces, though the Captain held back a smirk. When Tamara called him on this, he threw back his head and roared in laughter.

  “What is so funny?” she demanded.

  “I knew that if I threatened your precious starfighter, that you would rise to the challenge, Moxie,” he said, poking a finger in her shoulder. “You’re predictable.”

  She fumed for a moment, kicking herself for allowing him to manipulate her again. But then she softened. He got what he wanted and Tamara got to keep her ship. She wanted to hate the man for doing this, but she couldn’t. It didn’t mean that she loved the feeling, however.

  Still, with three additional shield nodes, once installed, they could raise the overall shield strength from eleven percent to about twenty-nine percent. It would take some calibration, but they could increase their speed from Red level two to level seven. They wouldn’t be able to safely break into Orange, not without work on the hyperdrive, as well as increased shield strength. The Captain wasn’t happy about this, but he knew the futility of trying to demand more. There simply weren’t enough resources to make these repairs and upgrades.

  Next came the hard part. “In order to install these shield nodes, we have to drop out of hyperspace.” Tamara told them. The engineers behind her nodded, but the Captain was unconvinced.

  “Why do we have to stop?” he asked. “Can’t you just walk on the outside of the hull in EVA suits?” All three of them were staring at him now, like three siblings who were putting up with a dim youngest brother. “I’ve apparently said something stupid,” he remarked, quickly catching their looks.

  “Very, Captain,” the Parkani replied. “Since we’re in hyperspace, even under the bubble of the shields, we are subject to the stresses of the environment. Put simply, the shields are under enormous strain to keep the ship safe from the waves of tachyons and gravitons. You don’t want to be out there if the shields were to fail. Also, because we’re in a bubble of subspace, really, you have to stay connected to the ship. If anything comes detached from the ship, say you skip too high and both feet are not touching the ship at the same time, you will vanish and be swept away.”

  The Captain was nodding now. “Right, I remember hearing that when I was a young officer on the ship. If you were to drop a spanner or something, the spanner would just disappear.”

  “Right. The shields protect the ship, but they are just projected energy and force fields. They don’t have any mass, so they don’t disappear. But anything with mass, like say, my engineers, would be lost if they lose connection with the ship for even the barest instant. I won’t risk it. Besides,” he added, “in order to bring the new shield nodes online, we have to shut down the shields altogether and reinitialize all of them so we can calibrate them together. We can’t do that in hyper. And if we bring down the shield grid even for a second, the stresses of hyperspace would tear the ship apart.”

  “All right then. We drop out. But I want to be back in hyper as soon as we can.”

  “Of course, Captain.”

  Dropping out of hyperspace was very similar to jumping into it. Compared to what the bulk of the crew was used to, they barely noticed the transition. If the sensors weren’t showing they were in normal space, or if they hadn’t looked out the occasional window to see the lack of the color washes over the shields, they would not know they had dropped back into normal space.

  “We’re out of hyper,” George announced rather unceremoniously. “No contacts on sensors.”

  “Thank you, George,” the Captain replied. “Serinda, tell Quesh to get moving. I want to be back in hyperspace as soon as possible.”

  “Aye, Captain,” she responded. After a moment, she replied, “The Chief reports that his teams are underway.”

  “Maintain sensor watch, George,” he ordered. “If anything comes up on the displays, I want to know about it.”

  “You got it, Captain,” the man answered, his eyes glued to his displays.

  Tamara walked on the hull of the ship, leading her team to the place where the shield node emitter would be placed. They manhandled the device with her, which would have been impossible inside the ship, but outside it was much easier because of the zero-g. It was still difficult, because the device had a fair amount of mass and it didn’t like changing direction quickly. But Tamara had trained her team well and while they were going slower than the captain would have liked, they were moving along at a good clip.

  “It’s creepy being out here,” Pip commented, looking upward.

  “Why is it any different out here, Pip?” Tamara asked, stepping over a scorched part of the hull. It wasn’t a breach, but it was a weak spot. “Tag that spot for repair later,” she commented, pointing. “When we get to Folston, we’ll get some bots out here to scan the hull and do a proper survey for later repairs.”

  “Right.” Mairi entered some info on her datapad, though she didn’t stop walking.

  Eventually they reached the site where the installation would take place. There was another node already there, pitted and scorched. “All right, let’s get this one cut free and then the new one hooked in. We’re bringing back the old one. We might be able to do a one-to-one replacement.”

  “That’d make the Captain happy,” Rory commented.

  “Though the amount of time it would take to do it might irritate him.”

  “How much time?” the Captain’s voice broke in on their channel.

  “Twenty minutes or so to cut this one free, another half hour to plug the new one in,” Tamara told him. “Then forty minutes or so to lug the dead one back, about three hours to breakdown and replicate a new one, then another hour to bring the new one back out and hook it up.”

  “How much faster can we go with a little more shield power?” he asked.

  “Another node will give us about six percent more power, enough to get us to the first level of orange, shave another few days off the trip.”

  “Then it’s worth another five hours sitting out here, wouldn’t you say?”

  Tamara grinned.

  It actually took closer to seven hours to get everything settled, with the Captain harassing them over the comms the entire time. Finally, Tamara got so fed up that she actually swore at him and threatened to slap him if he didn’t leave them alone. He laughed at her, asking if that was a proposition.

  “No, Captain. It’s a promise,” she snarled.

  Finally, however, the last emitter was installed and everyone was back inside. The Captain was on the bridge, preparing for jump. “Quesh, what’s your status?”

  “Everything’s all buttoned up, Captain,” the Parkani answered. “Power grid is looking good, shields are online and active. Holdi
ng at thirty-four percent.”

  Far from as high as I would like, the Captain thought, but well within what I’m willing to wait for now. “Very good, Chief. Navigation, course plotted?”

  “Yes, Captain. Ready to go!” The young man at the navigation console was extremely excited.

  The Captain smirked. “Helm?”

  “Helm ready, Captain. Hyperdrive is spun up, ready to jump.”

  “Then by all means. Get us to Folston.” This empty space between stars has been giving me the willies ever since we stopped. There’s literally nothing out here. No stars, no planets, not even the stray rock. “Let’s punch it.”

  The helmsman pressed the control, again there was a fine tremor and the slight jolt and they were off again. “We’re in the red. Speed increasing. Level two. Three. Four.”

  The Captain found himself clutching the arms of his chair, though there was no detectable increase in vibration as the pilot called out the speed. The whine of the hyperdrive was audible, but it was far lower in intensity from what he was used to, though as the pilot continued calling out the speed the whine increased.

  “Red seven… we’ve broken through! Speed leveling off at orange level one. Power levels holding steady. We’re looking good, Captain.” He looked over his shoulder at the boss. The whine decreased to a very dull hum.

  “Good work, helm. Estimated time of arrival?”

  “We’ll be in Folston in thirty-seven days, nineteen hours and eleven minutes, Captain,” George replied.

  “Hell of a lot better than the ninety or so we were looking forward to.” He stood. “Very well done, everybody. Carry on. Mister Miller, you have the watch.”

  “Aye, Captain. I’ve got the watch,” he said formally as the Captain left the bridge.

  “Chief!” the Captain called as he entered the engineering spaces. Quesh sighed as the man walked past all his watch standers.

  “Yes, Captain. I’m in here,” he replied from his office chair.

  The man walked over and entered the tiny office. “How’s my ship looking?”

  “Good. Shields are holding, power levels are steady, engines are running at best speed we can. We’re going to have to do some serious overhauls when we get to Folston, but I think we’re up to the challenge. And if we can get more power from the reactor, more power to the shields, we might even make yellow band by the time we’re ready to leave the system.”

  “What’s this that Tamara was going on about for some other type of fuel?”

  Quesh set down his data pad. “It’s a good idea, actually. She wants to switch us over from straight hydrogen from seawater to helium 3. We mine it from gas giants using a collector she designed. We haven’t built one yet and I think we’ll hold off until Folston until we do. But she’s got the right idea.”

  “Yeah, she mentioned something about more power.”

  The Parkani nodded, leaning back in his chair a bit. “Yes. Hydrogen releases neutrons which causes radiation, causing much more wear on the reactor components and reduces the actual amount of power produced. Deuterium or better yet, helium 3 have much lower levels of radiation, which gives us more bang for our credit, if you get my meaning.”

  “I’m liking the sound of that,” the Captain admitted.

  “Yes, and the best part…” Quesh trailed off for dramatic effect.

  “Don’t keep me on tenterhooks here, Quesh.”

  He smiled. “The best part is that with our own collector, all we have to do is drop it off at the star system’s local gas giant, let it fill up, and then come by later and fill up our fuel tanks.”

  Now the Captain was grinning as well. “No more paying local authorities outrageous prices for seawater for their fuel. I love it!” He paused. “Wait. You said radiation.”

  Quesh nodded. “We’re safe, the reactor is shielded.”

  “But you also said wear on the reactor components.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean we can just empty out the old fuel and then add in the helium 3?”

  Quesh twisted his mouth into a grimace. “Sadly no. What we’re going to have to do is scram the reactor, flush out the radiation, then tear the whole thing down and dump all the irradiated components. From there we’ll have to build, essentially, a whole new reactor. It’s going to be a major job. I’m just glad we don’t have a spectacularly huge crew. We’ll be on backup batteries to keep the life support running. But I’ve talked with Xar and Samair. We’re going to stock up on components and we’re going to get a micro reactor built first to power the replicators. We’ll get everything built first, then shut down the main reactor and then from there we’ll replace it.”

  “That’s a big job.”

  Quesh rolled his eyes, a human expression he’d picked up over the years. “You have no idea, Captain. And batteries won’t last forever, so we’ll have to work quickly.”

  “You’re going to make us completely helpless, you know.”

  The engineer actually stopped and considered it. “Well, there is another option. We can build a slightly bigger secondary reactor than the micro one we’d planned, fuelled with helium three. We do that first. Then, we finish our business in Folston, our holds filled with raw materials and cargoes and jump out.”

  “Okay…” The Captain paused, waiting for the punchline.

  “Then we do what we did just a little while ago. We stop out in the middle of the jump and do our main reactor rebuild then. Who’s going to be looking for a ship out in the void between star systems?”

  “Isn’t that extremely dangerous?” the Captain asked, stunned. “We’re out in the void, reactor offline. And no one knows we’re out there?”

  “That’s the point, Captain. But we won’t be helpless. That’s the point of the secondary reactor. It won’t be enough to power the hyperdrive, but it would be enough to keep life support, shields, and main engines up. We’d be able to run if someone is out there.”

  “Not that there would be anywhere to go if someone is out there, Quesh,” he pointed out.

  “What’s the alternative, Captain?” the Parkani asked, frowning. “We can’t do the teardown and rebuild in Folston, we both agree that’s probably not the best of ideas. We have to do these repairs sometime soon, especially if we want to switch over to the better fuel.”

  The Captain sighed. “Let me think about it. Get started on whatever prep you can do now, but I’ll decide what we do when we get to Folston.”

  “Course, Captain,” he said, saluting with his coffee mug.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Morale was up considerably since the pit stop in the void. The prospect of only another month ahead of them instead of three and a half times that had perked up the entire crew. They were laughing and joking with each other again, instead of simply adopting an ever spiraling depression as the length of the trip in hyperspace loomed before them.

  They were all excited about the repairs to the ship, the possibility for profit on the other end of the jump, all were waiting the time when the Captain would announce that they were jumping into Folston.

  He was there. Following. She could hear that laugh, that voice; grating, harsh, and yet nasal. She was running. She didn’t know where, really. She could hear her own footfalls on the deckplates of Hudora Station. And yet he was always there. Always only a few steps behind.

  Her heart was hammering in her chest. It was a pain, a never ending pounding. But she couldn’t concern herself with that. Her breath was coming in gasps, her muscles burned with the running but she never seemed to gain any ground.

  “I don’t think so, bitch.” His voice, arrogant, and yet this time, terrifying.

  She raced around a corner but he was there, waiting for her. “I don’t think so. The Captain and I have other plans for you. But don’t worry, you are going to die.” His hand flashed out like lightning, grabbing her scalp. A gun was pointed at her and his grip on her hair was like iron. He dragged her along the corridor, as she wri
thed and screamed. It did no good, she couldn’t break free, the pain in her head was matched by that in her chest, as both her heart tried to batter its way out of her rib cage and her lungs threatened to burst from the exertion and the screaming.

  Eventually, the journey ended. Her body felt as though a bolt of lightning had struck her. She knew this corridor. The escape pod hatch lay before her. He released her, flinging her against the bulkhead right next to the door. She began to beg.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” her voice squeaked. “I’m not going in there.”

  The smile on his face was pure malice. “Oh, yes you are. You were lucky to escape me, twice now. You think you’ve won. But you haven’t.” He leaned down, putting his face right next to hers. “It’s just you, deluding yourself to think that you could escape me a third time.”

  “No!” she shrieked.

  “Get in the pod! Now!” he ordered.

  Tamara tried to fight him, tried to disobey, but her traitorous muscles brought her to her feet. She crawled inside the pod, the mantra of “No, no, no, no, no,” constantly coming from her lips. “You can’t do this!”

  “I let you get away twice before, bitch,” he bit back, though his voice never rose above a murmur. “Not this time. This time,” he brandished the gun, “I shoot you between the eyes and then I launch the pod.”

  “No!” she screamed. “No! Don’t!”

  He raised the gun. He fired.

  The world went dark.

  [I am beginning to understand.]

  Chapter 11

  Tamara opened her eyes. She was lying on her bunk, in her quarters. With a panicked gasp, she sat up straight, breathing so fast she wasn’t actually retaining any of the air she was sucking into her lungs. Her heart was hammering away in her chest, but as the familiar surroundings became clearer, she began to calm down.