Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1

by Michael Kotcher

  “Captain,” the hak’ruk acknowledged him. The others looked up as well. He wasn’t expected back on the bridge until pullout.

  “Report,” he ordered, a stern expression on his face.

  “All systems normal, Captain,” George replied, double checking his display. “Helium 3 fuel levels at sixty-one percent. Just waiting on the guys on the Kara, but otherwise we’re just waiting until the timer runs down.”

  “Any word from the Grey Feathers or the Ocarina?”

  “No, Captain,” Kutok told him. “I would have notified you immediately, per your order.”

  Eamonn nodded. “Of course. Thank you, Kutok.” He turned and started to walk off the bridge. Then he stopped and turned back. “No. Hail both of those ships.”

  Her pincers clicked in surprise. “Captain?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Yes, Captain.” She pressed a few controls. “No response.”

  “Open a channel to both ships. Include the Kara in this.”

  “Ready, Captain.”

  “This is Vincent Eamonn on the Grania Estelle. I don’t understand what the story is here. My ship has been in orbit here for a long while now and you’ve rebuffed every attempt I’ve made to contact you. Our crews get along, and you’ve seen the work that my crew and I have done for the Kara as well as for the people of Kazyanenko. We will be returning here in probably a year to see how they are progressing. Grania Estelle and the Kara will be departing here in…” he checked the time, “One hour fifty-four minutes and our ships are headed to Yullankla. I invite you to join us. We can travel as a convoy. We would be safer as a group than flying as individuals.” He sighed. “I await your reply.” He looked to Kutok who cut the connection.

  “Do you really think that’s going to help, Captain?” George asked, clearly unconvinced.

  He sighed. “I don’t know, George. Grey Feathers probably won’t want to go with us, even if they do decide to talk. Taja told me that they actually came from Ulla-tran, so it’s unlikely they’re going to want to go back that way. Who knows about Ocarina though?” He stood there, for a long moment before turning and walking off the bridge. “George, you have the bridge,” he said as he stepped through the hatch.

  As the timer ran down to zero, there was still no answer from either of the light freighters. With a sigh, the Captain was back on the bridge, seated in his command chair. “All right, people. Let’s get this show on the road. George, talk to me.”

  “All stations still showing ready, Captain.”

  “Stella?”

  “I’m ready to go, Captain,” the AI replied, smiling from her place standing at the holo projector. “I’m tired of parking orbit. Let’s get going.”

  He chuckled. “Settle down, girl. We’ll get going soon enough.” They all laughed, even Stella. “Kutok, make sure the Kara is ready to go.”

  “They’re signaling ready, Captain,” she replied. “I think they’re more anxious about this than we are.”

  The Captain smiled. “Good, because I like the people on this planet, but I’m anxious to go somewhere else myself. Helm, take us out of orbit on course for the hyper limit.”

  The pilot complied, easily getting them on their way.

  “George? Is Kara following?”

  “Keeping station on our port rear, Captain. They’re accelerating much more sluggishly than we are, though.”

  “Helm, adjust speed to match. We are not racing to the hyper limit this time.” He grimaced, though his tone was light. “I know it’s a novel concept.” More chuckles.

  Tamara sat bolt upright on her bunk, gasping like a landed fish, barely holding back a scream. Her left hand was clutched to her chest, her right was flat against the bulkhead. Her bedclothes were drenched in sweat.

  The dream was fading now, but the tremors remained. It was the same dream as before, Islington again. She drew in a shaking breath as the pain in her chest dissipated. Throwing the covers aside, she padded into the bathroom and turned on the faucet, splashing tepid water on her face. Looking up into the mirror over the sink, she didn’t like what she saw.

  “You don’t look good, Tamara,” Stella said. There was no holo projector in the bathroom; her image appeared on Tamara’s HUD.

  “I know,” she whispered. Her throat felt like she had gargled with gravel mixed with acid.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Do you have any suggestions?” she asked, leaning on the sink with both hands and letting her head droop, relaxing her neck.

  “Talk to someone.”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “Someone who can help,” the AI chided.

  “Like who? They can’t help.” She took in another deep lungful of air and then stood up straight.

  “What about Turan? Or Cookie?”

  Tamara snorted. “I’ll be all right,” she said, stripping off her clothes and getting into the shower. “I appreciate you looking out for me. I’ll be fine.”

  The AI didn’t look convinced, but she nodded and then disappeared from the HUD.

  “Doctor? Do you have a few minutes?”

  Turan looked up from his display, where he was reading up on lupusan physiology. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a familiarity with the wolfen species, but it never hurt to brush up. At this time, Corajen and one other member of her security team, another female by the name of Saiphirelle, were the only members of the crew of the lupusan species. They were a fascinating people, even just from a medical perspective and as a good doctor, he was making sure to brush up in case an emergency every came up.

  “Stella,” he said with a smile, seeing the holo projection. “Of course.” He deactivated the display, making sure to save his place. “What’s on your mind?”

  The AI looked distinctly human at that point, to Turan’s trained eye. Tamara had done an amazing job with her programming. It was as though the AI was actually uncomfortable with this conversation. “It’s Tamara.”

  The Guura sighed, rubbing one forearm with the opposite hand. “Yes, Tamara Samair.”

  The AI raised one holographic eyebrow. “Do you know what I’m going to say?”

  “Why don’t you say it first, and then we’ll go from there?”

  Stella sighed. “She’s a wreck. She isn’t sleeping. I’ve been monitoring her vitals on her implants and it’s clear she’s under extreme stress. She’s been having serious nightmares just about every time she goes to sleep.”

  Turan nodded. “Yes, it is like I thought. I’ve been noticing the signs as well. She came in to talk with me twice before and I’ve tried to get her to open up, but she only tells me that she keeps reliving when that officer stuffed her into the escape pod and then launched her into space. Tamara refuses to go into details and she never said anything more than that.”

  The AI hesitated. He angled his head slightly in an inquisitive gesture. “What is it?”

  Stella grimaced. “I feel like this is a severe breach of her privacy, but I’m really worried about her. I have recordings of her dreams.”

  The Guura started in surprise. “How?”

  Stella took a deep breath. It was an amazing facsimile, seeing as how as an AI she didn’t need to breathe. “I’m probably breaking some sort of Republic Navy confidentiality, but I have to tell you. Her implants are linked to the visual cortex of her brain as well as her optic nerves in her eyes. With a… slight software patch on her implants, I was able to… well for want of a better term, hack her dreams.”

  The Guura took a few slow breaths. “That is incredible. I’m sure there are techs who would kill to see that kind of programming breakthrough! Ka’Xarian would give one of his antennae to see that.”

  “You can’t tell anyone,” Stella said hurriedly. “First of all, Tamara would decompile me if she found out I told you. And second, as I said, I’m not really allowed to be discussing her implants.”

  The doctor nodded. “Well, that is may be, but that conversation is for another day. You, Tamara
and I are going to sit down one of these days and discuss that little piece of technology. It seems like a great boon to have them. But you’re right, it’s not our decision to discuss them. Not now, anyway. All right, you said you had a recording of her dreams?”

  She nodded. “Yes. You need to see them. Maybe it will help you treat her.”

  He held up one hand. “Stella, you need to understand. I’m a physician, a healer and I want to help her. But if you show me this and you and I confront her, she might not take it well.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” she sputtered. “She’s my creator! I love her! I only want to help her.”

  “We all know that,” he explained patiently. “And she knows that. But she might not see it as an act of a concerned friend trying to help. She might see it as a betrayal of her privacy and her trust.” His gills flared with anxiety. “It might cause her to back away from all of us. You need to prepare yourself for that.”

  Stella stood there looking at him, her face showing that she was as lost as a little girl. “Why would she do that? Why wouldn’t she want to let us fix her?”

  He chuckled gently. “It isn’t always that simple, Stella. I’m sure she hates having these dreams and the stress is negatively affecting her health. In fact, I know it is. But she might not react properly to having her innermost secrets laid bare, even just to me. She won’t necessarily be as rational and logical as she should be.”

  Stella mulled this over for a second, which was an eternity to an AI. “I can’t say I understand this. If a part of her isn’t functioning properly, she should want to fix it. I’m going to show you the recording.”

  Turan nodded. “All right. Let’s go back into the surgery. I want to watch this in privacy.”

  Stella disappeared as Turan stood and walked to the sickbay’s surgical theater. He sat down on a stool next to the surgical table. “All right, Stella. Start the show before I lose my nerve.”

  “All right, Doctor,” she replied, her voice coming over the PA. The holo projector activated and the recording began.

  Once it was over, Turan found himself huffing his breath in and out. That was what Tamara was going through every night. It was horrible. He suspected that he would have trouble sleeping tonight, perhaps for several days. So that was the human who had done this to her. As a doctor, he knew that humans sometimes displayed their worst qualities, which was one of the reasons he had steady employment. But he was filled with such malice. That man was truly evil; it was fun for him. Stella showed him several dreams, all similar, but the endings were usually different.

  In one of them, the man fired into the pod and disabled it, launching her out into the void where she suffocated. In another, he fired into the pod, causing a breach so when it launched, Tamara was blown out into space. In a third dream, he simply shot her dead. There were others, but the common thread in all of them was that this man, this officer, made sure that Tamara died each time. Turan knew that Tamara was suffering because of these dreams, this focal point of fear.

  “Can you help her, Doctor?” Stella’s voice asked. She sounded like a scared child speaking about her wounded mother. In a way, that’s exactly what she was.

  The Guura sat for a long moment, trying to make sense out of all the madness. “I don’t know if I can cure her, Stella,” he said honestly. “But I will do whatever I can for her.”

  Chapter 18

  As the two ships reached the hyper limit, there was still no response from either of the other two freighters. Vincent Eamonn, seated on his command seat on the bridge, sighed inwardly. He had really hoped the other two captains would come to their senses. He hadn’t expected a complete change of heart, which one or both of them would call out to him in desperation, pleading with him to wait for them. He’d hoped for just a conversation, an insult, anything. But they had remained completely silent to him. His crew had broken the ice for their crews, but apparently it hadn’t been enough to get through to the captains. He might have been able to convince them, maybe even only one of them, to join with him, hell, even just to make friends with them. He could establish a friend and a contact. But that hope would be gone as soon as Grania Estelle and Kara jumped. Which was only moments away.

  “Thirty seconds to jump,” George reported.

  “Kara reports thirty seconds.”

  “Make sure they remember to drop out thirty seconds before the hyper limit at Yullankla,” he said to Serinda as a reminder.

  She rolled her eyes. This was the third time he had reminded her. “Yes, Captain. I’ve sent the reminder.”

  “Good.” He thought for another moment. “All right, cut accel to zero, flip us one-eighty degrees, full scan back in our wake, see if we’ve got anything interesting going on in the system.”

  The pilot acknowledged and executed the helm order. The ship spun around so it was facing back toward the planet, but its momentum kept it moving in the same direction toward the hyper limit.

  “Incoming message from Kara,” Serinda reported. “They want to know what we’re doing.”

  “Let them know what we’re doing, tell them to continue on course. We’ll both jump at the same time, side by side.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Anything, George?”

  Before the ops officer could reply, Stella appeared on the Captain’s display. “Captain, Ocarina has broken orbit and they’re accelerating toward the hyper limit. They’re on an intercept course.”

  He grimaced. “Well they’re certainly not going to catch us before we jump. Are they hailing?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “Serinda, send them another message. We’ll meet them in Yullankla. Safe journey. Helm, flip us again back to our original course and Serinda, signal the Kara. Once we’re back in the right direction, we’ll jump.”

  “Crossing the hyper limit now, Captain,” George reported.

  “Thank you, George.” The Captain watched his display, showing their position and their orientation relative to Kara and the hyper limit. Once the Grania Estelle was back in position, the two ships jumped to hyperspace.

  “And we have real space reversion,” the helmsman reported.

  Commander Harth rubbed his jaw with one hand. “Report.”

  “Scopes are clear, sir,” the sensor officer reported. “No ships are in the system.”

  “Anything of interesting in the system?”

  “There’s something going on at the planet,” the man replied. “A lot of shuttle activity around Folston’s inhabited planet. And there’s some sort of structure in orbit.”

  “A space station?” Harth asked.

  “Can’t tell from this distance, Skipper. But it sure looks like one, or at least the beginnings of one.”

  “Where did the shuttles come from?” Harth mused. “From what Sykora said in his report, Folston was an agricultural world as of the last time he passed through here. Odd.”

  “Perhaps the Folstons purchased them from someone?” the sensor officer proposed.

  “Four shuttles?” the captain replied. “That’s an expensive purchase. And that station wouldn’t be cheap either.” Another mystery. “A lot of things are going on out here in the Cluster that aren’t adding up. First our mystery ship, then what’s going on here. Curious. Maintain course.”

  As they grew closer to the planet, Legacy’s sensors were able to discern more about the activity going on in Folston’s orbit. As noticed before, there were four shuttles moving up to the unfinished structure in orbit. Right now, the structure was little more than a loose framework of trusses with a pair of inflatable habitat structures attached. The shuttles were ferrying materials and machined components up from the planet and were being assembled by EVA suited welders.

  This was maddening. “Where did all this industry come from?” Harth demanded, looking over his displays. “There is no way that this could have sprung up in six months.”

  “I’m at a loss to explain this, Captain,” Lieutenant Vedig at operations said helpl
essly. “If the freighter we’re after left Instow four months ago, and left here two months ago, I suppose it’s possible that some of what we’re seeing could have been dropped off by them. But based on Fury’s sensor scans, Grania Estelle was pretty shot up when they departed Instow. I don’t know how it would be possible for them to contribute to this industrial… explosion and not still be here.”

  “Could we have just missed them?” Harth asked, curious. “Do you think they might have left just before we arrived?”

  Vedig shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible, sir. Interviews with the locals would net us some answers.”

  Harth nodded. “XO, have Lieutenant Phillips and Chief Grey get their teams together. I want each of them to get down to the planet and talk with the locals. I’ll be contacting people from up here.” Phillips and Gray were widely considered to the people who could connect with local populations on the various planets Legacy visited. They were members of Republic Military Intelligence and were trained to gather up all the information and data needed to provide a clearer picture of the land and its people.

  They made an interesting duo. Lieutenant Sophia Phillips was a powerful, confident woman, tall for her gender. She was attractive with her dark hair, classic beauty and liquid brown eyes. She had been trained to use any weapon in her arsenal. People liked to talk, and with her honeyed words, light touches and a quick wit she had a knack for getting people to open up.

  Antares Grey on the other hand, was a master manipulator. He was highly skilled at grilling people for details, beating confessions about of people and wasn’t above using drugs or… morally questionable tactics to get information. If Phillips was the carrot, he most certainly was the stick. And he looked the part. He was a burly human with a pugnacious face and malicious eyes, shorter than his lieutenant, but with great presence. He eyes commanded respect and deference, so much so that new recruits and crew to the Legacy had a tendency to quake a bit as he passed. No junior officer was stupid enough to try and give him orders. He took orders from just two people, the Captain and Lieutenant Phillips. Everyone else officers and enlisted (if they were smart) gave politely worded suggestions. Those who didn’t tended to regret it.