Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1

by Michael Kotcher

  He beamed. “I’m very glad to hear that. So, I’m not just going to keep you on as a passenger. So, I ask you… What are your terms?”

  Now it was her turn to be surprised. “I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest. I’m getting room and board and I don’t need much in the way of… well, stuff. I don’t need another fighter. But I’d like to stay on in a similar capacity, if I may.”

  “All right. We’ll keep the contractor status. But I think we need to integrate you formally into the crew. Having you just dangling out there seemed to work, but to be honest, I’m thinking I need to reduce Quesh’s stress levels a bit. He really didn’t like you being only answerable to me.”

  She nodded. “I kind of got that.”

  “So, if you accept, you’ll be in charge of the third engineering watch section. You’ll keep the same group of techs and basically have the same responsibilities and schedule as before.”

  “But now I’ll be reporting directly to the Chief?”

  “Is this going to be a problem?” he asked seriously. “I know the two of you have clashed. I’ve gotten in the middle of a few of these clashes. If it isn’t going to work…”

  She sighed. “No, Captain. You’re the boss and he’s my boss. But we need to talk about my princely wage and my share.”

  He laughed. “Ha! Don’t feel bad. No one gets paid if we don’t deliver. It’s all paid by shares.” Stella nodded, which eased Tamara’s mind. “All right, I’ll give you a full share rating, you’ve more than earned that.”

  She shook her head. “No, Captain. As a leader of a watch section, as well as my obviously well-proven skills, I want officers’ pay. Double share, just like the others.” Stella winked at her from the edge of Tamara’s HUD.

  The Captain shook his head, but he was smiling. “All right. I see I can’t pull one over on you.”

  “And one other thing,” she added, holding up one finger.

  He chuckled. “Only one?”

  “I want a full medical treatment. I was never the belle of the ball, but I think I’ve had enough of the scars.”

  The Captain blinked. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask for that already. Talk with Turan, he’ll fix you up.”

  “And I don’t want that coming out of my pay, as a tax, or expenses or anything like that. The ship covers the cost.”

  “You think I would cheat you, Moxie?”

  She grimaced at him, but her eyes were bright. “Captain, you would swindle the stars if you thought you could get a little more light.” Stella giggled silently.

  The Captain, however, threw back his head and guffawed. He slapped his hand repeatedly on the table. It took him a few moments to recover, but when he did, there were tears in his eyes. “I have to tell that one to Taja. That is just wonderful.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m glad I continue to impress, Captain. Now all we need is a contract to review and sign.”

  He pulled up the contract on his datapad and slid it over to her. All of the conditions they had discussed were on it, exactly as they had mentioned. “You got Stella to write this up as we were talking, didn’t you?”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “You never cease to amaze me, Moxie. And here I was hoping you’d think I was omniscient.”

  “Oh, but of course you are, Captain,” she said, looking at him with an adoring expression. Then she laughed. She looked it over one last time, noted one particular item that intrigued her, and swiveled her eyeballs look at to Stella’s avatar on the HUD.

  The AI mouthed the word “Later.” Tamara nodded as though she was agreeing with the contract, then thumbed the acceptance of it. Stella nodded back on the HUD, then disappeared.

  “I guess I’m now officially a member of the Grania Estelle’s company.”

  “And we’re happy to have you, Moxie.” He sat back. “As far as the medical treatment, I think we might be best to wait after the reactor tear down. I’d rather have you indisposed after that, if it’s all the same to you.”

  She nodded. “No problem, Captain. That’s what I was thinking anyway.”

  Half an hour later, she was in her quarters. With the hatch sealed, she sat down on her bunk. “All right, Stella. What was with that clause there?”

  The AI appeared on her HUD again, her voice coming through her implants, low enough that it sounded as though the two were in the room together, instead of the AI projecting her face and voice directly into Tamara’s head. “I know that you and the Republic had your issues back in the day. We talked about it. But I also know that being in the Navy was a source of great pride for you. You try to deny it but it’s there, Tamara.”

  She couldn’t argue the point. She wanted to, but she really couldn’t. “I know.”

  “So I thought that there should be something in your contract that made sure you retained your rank and seniority within the Republic Navy, despite taking a berth and a job on a civilian ship. So I worded the contract to indicate that you were in fact a Navy officer operating on detached service.”

  Tamara laughed in disbelief. “This is excellent, Stella.” Then she sighed. “I know the Navy will always be a part of me, but I think that perhaps that chapter of my life has ended. I don’t know if I can forgive the Navy for what they let Bythe and Islington to do me.”

  “I know you are bitter about that, Tamara. But the people involved in that are surely dead now. Medical science was advanced at that time, but a war had just kicked off. A terrible, bloody war that destroyed planets. Maybe you can’t forgive the people that allowed it, but surely the members of the Navy now might be more accepting?”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I would have to meet some of them. Maybe.” She sounded doubtful.

  “There was another reason,” Stella said.

  “Oh?”

  “I was concerned if the replicators would balk at your access if you signed on under a civilian contract.”

  Tamara blinked. “Good catch. I hadn’t considered that. Very good work, Stella.”

  The AI smiled with pleasure. “Thank you, Commander.”

  But Tamara shook her head. “It’s technically correct, Stella, but you don’t need to call me that unless the situation calls for it. And unless the Captain directly asks, please don’t mention the fact that I’m operating as a Navy officer on the ship. I don’t know if he noticed that, but I don’t think it’s something we need to announce.”

  “Of course, Tamara.”

  Chapter 13

  The ship was only in hyperspace for twelve hours before they stopped to begin the reactor replacement. The Captain wanted to get the reactor done and changed out as soon as possible and far enough from Folston that it would be very unlikely that any other passing ship would detect them out in the void. With the new additions to the shield grid, the ambient shield power was at 54 percent, higher than it had ever been in the Captain’s lifetime. They were racing along at a speed of Yellow level four, which no one on the crew had ever seen. Someone even described the speed as “blistering.” Having traveled at upper blue and low indigo levels, Tamara could only smile and nod. She could appreciate how fast this felt to them, having been stuck in the red and orange levels of the rainbow their entire lives. The trip to their next destination, Hecate, would take twenty-eight days at this speed.

  “Helm, all stop,” the Captain ordered as the timer reached zero.

  “All stop, Captain,” the pilot replied, working his controls. The ship came out of hyperspace and slowed to a stop. There was nothing to do this relative to out in the void, but the engines were shut down and the sensors indicated they weren’t moving.

  “George, link with Engineering. Make sure we are running on low power only. Sensors, comms and life support. Everything else shut it down. I want to put as little strain on the aux reactor as possible.”

  “Understood, Captain.”

  The bridge crew all sat at their stations, a bit nervous. In fact, most of the crew were not thrilled at the idea of st
opping out in the middle of nowhere, far from any planet or assistance. But, it was in the Chief’s hands now, the Captain mused.

  “All right people, let’s do this carefully,” Quesh’s voice boomed over the engineering spaces. All of his crews were gathered, ready to do their part. The biggest problem would be the teardown of the reactor. The irradiated parts needed to be removed from the reactor, carried to the nearest airlock and spaced. The problem was there was no direct path to an airlock from the reactor spaces. They had the ability to scram the reactor, of course, but unlike on a warship, a freighter didn’t have the ability to eject its core. Fusion reactors were expensive and therefore needed to be protected. Freighters were not equipped with ejection systems since it was considered unlikely they’d ever need to toss the reactor. It was assumed that either you could get your ship into port to make repairs, or the problems would be minor enough to fix on the go. No one ever planned for a ship to be running and being overhauled hundreds of years past its planned hull life.

  After cutting the fuel lines, draining them, and physically disconnecting them from the main reactor, the power plant eventually flared out like a guttering candle.

  “Power levels at zero, Chief,” one of the techs reported from the nearby console. “We’ve lost plasma stream.”

  “Good,” Quesh replied. “I was actually worried we’d have a problem in the shutdown.”

  “They’re not going to cool down, you know,” Tamara put in. “They’re so hot with radiation, the temperature will technically come down, but we won’t be able to be in the reactor spaces.”

  “Good thing we have those bots built.” The Parkani normally wouldn’t have been in the mood to have Tamara pointing out the obvious, but this was a situation he hadn’t encountered before. The ship’s reactor was a patchwork of mismatched and cobbled components, using anything and everything they could to keep it running over the years. In the last few months since Tamara’s arrival, they had pulled out some of the fixes and replaced them with proper components, but this full teardown was long past due.

  The bots in question were built from specialized materials and shielded from radiation. They would continue to function even under the harshest of conditions, which would allow them to be able to get inside the reactor and tear out the old emitters. Then, once the entire reactor was completely removed, the whole place cleansed of residual radiation, all the parts carefully stacked in cargo bay three would be brought in and a new reactor assembled.

  There were four bots currently inside the reactor, being controlled by four technicians while Tamara looked on. Her job was to handle the teardown and disposal. Ka’Xarian was to supervise the rebuild, while Quesh would handle the power up.

  They all worked as a well-oiled machine. The techs on bot-duty had been practicing control for the last several days and could operate their machines with skill. The actual tearing out of components was simple. Getting them out through the narrow spaces was the difficult part, especially since many of the various components were big and awkward and not really designed to fit through the corridors of the ship. They had mapped out the most efficient route from the engineering spaces to the closest cargo bay, where once inside, the bay would be depressurized, the main cargo doors opened and the tractoring beams would toss the irradiated components out into the void.

  A problem this caused was that once the bots left the reactor spaces, they themselves were now contaminated and spread the lethal energy throughout the corridors as they moved. But there was nothing they could do about that as it happened. Each area was sprayed down with “the blue goop” which was a special chemical that was developed for radiation cleanup. This was done by crewmen in special skinsuits hardened against radiation, though they too needed to take anti-radiation pills and receive a shower in the blue goop as well, both in the suit and out of it. The bot would move through, the area would be sprayed, the bot would move back to the reactor spaces, the crewmen would spray it down again. The blue goop evaporated quickly once exposed to atmo, so the workers had to spray quickly and efficiently, though Quesh had stressed he would rather they use too much than not enough.

  No one disagreed with this.

  They had synthesized a very large store of the stuff, knowing the teardown might take a few hours and a number of trips. The workers that had to be in areas directly exposed were changed out every two hours in order to limit their exposure. Those working to control the bots were doing so from another compartment in the engineering spaces; the reactor spaces themselves were completely shielded against hard radiation, so the crew as a whole was protected. Still, there were several cases of workers complaining of nausea; those displaying those symptoms were rushed to sickbay for treatment. They were suffering from the beginning stages of radiation sickness, luckily they were only showing the first symptoms, low white blood cell count and nausea. Turan made sure that everyone on the ship was treated and those showing symptoms were given anti-rad meds and sent to rest on the far side of the ship.

  Stella really came into her own during this time. While the technicians worked to get the contaminated and radiation-damaged components out and off the ship, she monitored everyone who was in the contaminated zone, reporting on anyone showing even the barest hint of sickness. Two such individuals who might have decided to tough out their symptoms were reported to Turan who demanded they stand down and get to sickbay. She also managed to be with those who were resting, giving words of encouragement, telling jokes and stories, doing anything she could to try and help them through the frightening time.

  Eleven hours of work later, the reactor spaces were empty of contaminated parts, cleansed of radiation and all of the protective surfaces had been overhauled and resurfaced. Using the helium 3 fuel they had collected in Folston was far safer and produced only a tenth as much radiation as the seawater did, or even just straight hydrogen.

  Xar’s teams moved in with caution. Everyone was trepidatious about going into places that until only a few hours previous had been flooded with radiation. It took thirty minutes of continuous scans using the reactor sensors and even portable hand units used outside the hatch before anyone was comfortable enough to get inside.

  But once they were reassured they were not being exposed to hard radiation, the zheen’s teams assembled the components and aligned the new emitters with ruthless abandon. One of the men got his fingers jammed as the rest of the team slotted the emitter in place. Another sliced his leg on a tiny sliver of metal sticking out from the hull of the cargo bay and had to be taken to sickbay. More bumps and bruises followed, the worst of which was one young woman (one of the new kids) who couldn’t maintain her grip on one of the conduit housings and dropped it, crushing all the bones in her foot. Her shrieks could be heard up on the bridge and it didn’t take long to get her over to Turan’s tender mercies. The Guura treated her while an enraged Parkani berated her for her carelessness. None of the other “knuckleheads” as the Chief called them, were spared from his wrath. Anyone who had gotten injured through recklessness or stupidity got chewed out. Finally, Turan got fed up with the yelling and ordered the Parkani out of his sickbay.

  Turan was lauded as a hero by the injured after the Chief stormed off in a huff.

  It took about twelve hours to get all of the emitters and connections installed, after a few more injuries occurred and Ka’Xarian, in frustration, ordered everyone to take an hour break. Everyone chafed at the delay, but the zheen and Turan insisted.

  The reactor initialization was actually the easiest part of the entire process. A very small amount of fuel was added into the chamber and the lasers powered up. In moments, the plasma temperature continued to rise. The gravitic compressors activated, the fuel intake floated in the chamber’s toroid, flattening out. Temperatures continued to rise, no spikes, and the plasma was quickly becoming superheated, which was what they wanted. The toroid ribbon was rippling with waves of incoming force, both in mass projections from the compressions and from the incoming fuel feeds
.

  “Come on, baby, ignite,” Quesh whispered to the reactor. “Ignite.”

  There was actually a tense moment, more so than all the prolonged tension of the radiation threat. The radiation certainly was a problem, no one wanted to get bombarded by subatomic particles. But if the reactor didn’t ignite, the Grania Estelle would be stuck out in the void. The backup reactor didn’t have the juice to power the hyperdrive. They’d be stuck if the new reactor didn’t light.

  “We have ignition!” Starkey crowed. “Upping the fuel to one percent.”

  “No, wait,” Quesh ordered. “Nice and slow. I don’t want it flaring out because of a lack of fuel, but if we add too much fuel too quickly it’ll cool the ribbon too much and it’ll flare out that way. I really don’t want to scram it and start all this again. Quarter of a percent every five minutes. Nice and slow,” he repeated.

  “Roger, Chief.”

  “Stella? Are you there?”

  “I’m here, Chief,” the AI responded, popping to life on the engineering holo projector at the main station. Her voice came over the overhead PA.

  “Take over here,” he ordered. “Keep the flow stable, it’s your fusion bottle now.”

  The grin in her voice was audible. “No problem. Waiting for your handover, Mister Starkey.”

  “Handover in three… two… one… now,” the man replied, pressing a button and removing his hands from the controls.

  “Handover complete. Oh, this is easy. Whoa, okay.” Clearly it was more than the AI was expecting. Quesh tensed, prepared for the worst. She wasn’t going to be able to handle it.

  “Okay, I’ve got it now,” she said in relief a moment later. “It’s different than I expected. I’m adjusting flow rate. Emitter two is out of alignment by 0.02 percent. Adjusting emitter two.”