Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1

by Michael Kotcher

  “So there’s an awful lot of fuel collection going on here for just local use,” Jesma, one of the human women on Xar’s team mused on their third day. “I mean, when we came here last time, there was, what, three or four collectors out there? Now there are an even dozen. Unless the number of ships that come through here has increased dramatically there’s no way they actually need that much fuel being stockpiled.”

  “What about all the shuttles and pinnaces?” Vakkon, the only other zheen in Xar’s group replied. “I mean they’re making trips all over the place. Maybe the powers that be here decided they wanted to lay in a reserve of fuel in case it was needed.”

  “Possible,” Ka’Xarian mused. “I suppose it’s also possible that they have a wing or two of starfighters on the station or down on Darcannia. From what I’ve seen of Samair’s fighter, those things just gulp down fuel.”

  Jesma nodded. “Well, I guess that would make sense, but only if they have a lot of fighters. Wouldn’t five collectors be reasonably able to keep all the lights on and engines running in this system?”

  Xar nodded, his antennae bobbing. “Yeah, they would. But hey, if they want to scoop up and refine helium 3, that’s their business, not ours. I’m just glad they’re letting us use our own equipment and not have to buy their stuff.” He paused, thinking it over. “You know, what would it hurt to ask?”

  Vakkon’s antennae twitched in amusement. “You could ask.” Everyone chuckled.

  “I’m going to ask.” Ka’Xarian got to his feet.

  Goris Hana’s office was large, much larger than any of the others in the station, which suited the fat toad. He liked everyone to know who was in charge in his little pond and his lily pad needed to be bigger than anyone else’s. Ka’Xarian didn’t care. This was for a business transaction, nothing more.

  “Mister Zheen,” Goris Hana gurgled as Xar entered the office. “What can I do for you today? Issues with your fueling operations? I surely hope not.”

  On two different occasions the collector had come up with unexplained “glitches”, which forced Ka’Xarian to have the shuttle park in orbit of the gas giant to keep an eye on it and move in quickly if anything (or any other ship) made an approach. Since he had done so, their collector had miraculously gone unmolested and in another seventy-three hours, they would have the fuel they needed to fill the Grania Estelle’s tanks. The sooner they were off this station the happier one zheen engineer would be.

  “No, but I thank you for your concern, sir,” Ka’Xarian replied, making sure that he gave all the outward signs of gratitude.

  Hana harrumphed. It was no secret he wasn’t thrilled with the deal he’d set up with Captain Eamonn and based on the glitches it seemed the man was reconsidering that deal. Though, of course, Xar had no illusions about what would happen to the fuel collected by Ka’Xarian and his crew. Undoubtedly, the bloated man would help himself to that fuel as “compensation” for all of the aggravation he’d suffered. No matter that it wasn’t his collector, it wasn’t his fuel and his people and shuttles hadn’t done any of the work.

  “So, you come to my office. What can I help you with?”

  “Just wandering around, thought I’d stop in and say hello.”

  The toad frowned. Ka’Xarian was amazed at how much this human looked like a large amphibian. He had boils and huge jowls that jiggled when he spoke. All he needed was a large tongue and green skin and he would be an amphibian. Ka’Xarian couldn’t help but wonder if he was in danger of being eaten. I wonder, am I a tasty morsel in this man’s eyes? Would I be crunchy?

  “You come into a busy station manager’s office just to say hello? Are you insane? You freighter bums truly are bums.”

  Ka’Xarian shrugged and then pointed to the vid-screen at the corner of the man’s desk. “I see you watching springball on that display and I see sports scores on your datapad.” His antennae straightened in amusement. “You’re not that busy. I think I picked a good time to drop by.”

  Goris Hana grunted in irritation. “Okay, you’re here. So for the last time, what do you want?”

  Ka’Xarian shrugged again. “I just saw that you’ve been bringing in a lot of fuel. I was just wondering what the market value is on all this fuel you’re bringing in.”

  Suddenly the toad’s beady eyes turned calculating. “It’s already spoken for. But if you’re interested in selling, I think we could work something out.”

  “What kind of value?” he repeated.

  The toad named a figure. Ka’Xarian knew he was low-balling him, but it was still a decent chunk of change. “I’d have to talk to my captain first, but I think he’d be interested in selling off a bit of our haul.”

  “That would be acceptable. The minimum would be one full load from your collector.”

  Ka’Xarian nodded. “I understand. I’ll let my captain know.” He turned to leave.

  “Then get out of here. I have a springball game to catch up on. And if he’s interested, then I’m sure the six-five-one will be happy to accept the extra fuel.”

  The zheen turned back to him. “The six-five-one?”

  The toad nodded. “It’s the name of the consortium I’m selling all the fuel to. Now get out of here.”

  Ka’Xarian gave him a sloppy saluted and walked out. A consortium. Now where have I heard that before?

  “This is ridiculous,” Tamara complained several hours later, as she stood on the padded floor of the ship’s gym. “I don’t want to fight you.”

  “We’re not fighting,” Corajen replied, bouncing from foot to foot and shaking her arms and shoulders to loosen them up. “I’m going to teach you how to fight.”

  “And what if I don’t want to learn?” Tamara replied.

  Corajen grinned. “You do. Because this is tried and tested and proven. You burn yourself out in your work, so you have no mental defenses left when you go to sleep. And your brain decides that it’s going to let its demons out then because you can’t stop it. Working out here with me will help you.”

  “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Tamara accused. “So instead of burning myself out on work, I’m getting pummeled here and then getting burned out on work?”

  “I know what it sounds like,” the lupusan replied, unflinching. “But it works. Trust me.”

  “So how do we do this?” Tamara asked, rolling her head around her shoulders to loosen up her neck. “I don’t know anything about fighting.”

  “You were in the Navy.”

  “Yes, you know that,” Tamara replied irritably.

  “So that means you went through the Basic course.” Corajen smiled. “I know it’s been a while for you, but it gives you just that: the basics. It teaches you how to move and gives you a decent platform to build martial skills off of. I know many people in the Navy don’t really do much with that once they’re out of boot camp, but there are a few who do.”

  “So you’re going to put me through boot again?” Tamara said skeptically. “I remember hating it then.”

  “No, I’m not going to have you do laps or anything ridiculous like that. I’m just going to work with you.” She gave one more roll to her shoulders. “All right. Let’s get into it here. Hands up, keep your elbows in. We’re going to work on a few things.”

  The Captain sat in his stateroom, the security vid feeds from the gym pulled up on his display. He watched as the engineer and the security chief were going at it, though thankfully as little more than sparring partners. It looked as though Corajen was doing exactly what she said she was going to do, she was working with the engineer. Actually, right now, it looked like a refresher course at some martial arts dojo. They were punching and kicking and blocking, Corajen looking like this was what she did every day, Tamara looking awkward. He winced as the lupusan got an open palm past Tamara’s defenses and hit her in the solar plexus, knocking her down.

  He switched off the feed, not wanting to watch any more of that. He changed the display over to the sensor feed, seeing the
incoming ship growing closer to the fueling station. Ka’Xarian should be seeing them soon, hopefully the zheen would be able to communicate with them, find out if they actually were the wayward ship.

  He knew he was being unreasonable about all this. No one did altruism, not here in the Cluster. Okay, there were occasional acts, but they were never anything like rebuilding someone’s ship. And he knew that his crew thought that fixing them up and then letting that ship just fly off into the dark was the stupidest decision he could have made. He was hard pressed not to agree with that as time moved forward.

  Looking into other stupid decisions, he turned off the feed. “Stella? Are you there?”

  The AI’s face with the stripes on her cheeks and her hair appeared on the display. There was a holo projector in here, but she didn’t always use them. In some cases, she only brought her voice on the PA system, or in rare cases, over the speakers on someone’s communicator. The captain thought she did it for no particular reason than it amused her to see people’s reactions, thinking that they might be able to predict how she would show up next. So far, no one could and the captain had stopped trying.

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Have the station authorities called back yet on my request on leasing some office spaces?”

  This was another controversial idea, one that stemmed from the crew’s perception of his wanting to form a co-op with the Emilia Walker. If one didn’t work, then why waste time and effort on the second? He wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to use these offices since he had no intention of leaving his ship. But if something of a permanent headquarters was going to be set up here, they were going to need a place to operate out of. Of course, the station people were acting squirrelly about him renting space here as well, which was starting to annoy him.

  “I’ve had only two messages back from the station, Captain,” the AI replied, all business. “The first was to confirm a meeting on the station tomorrow at 1600 to visit the space.” She hesitated.

  “And the second?” he asked with a sinking feeling in his gut.

  “The second was to delay the meeting for another day.”

  He thumped a fist on the table. “What the hell? It’s a simple business transaction. I have the funds to do this. What’s the problem?”

  “Maybe they’re… what’s the word? Jittery. Maybe they’re jittery about leasing space on their station to strangers.” Stella shrugged.

  He chuckled. “You’re sounding more like one of us with every passing day.”

  “Thanks, Captain,” she replied, beaming.

  “But you’re right,” he sighed. “Maybe it is just that simple. But something’s nagging me about this. It shouldn’t be that big a deal to rent out a few offices. And I’ve seen that station. They could use all the credits they could scrape up. You’d think they’d jump at the deal.”

  The AI had no answer for that.

  Ka’Xarian was enjoying a bowl of nutrient paste in one of the mess halls on the fueling station. Things were going well; it wouldn’t be more than a few days more. This was something the zheen would be very happy about. Goris Hana was a thug, plain and simple, one that was used to running his little fiefdom for his overlords exactly the way he liked. Ka’Xarian had a very bad feeling about that fat toad that he might be striking out to rule more than just the fueling station. The cabal running the orbital would be well advised to watch their backs. But that, thankfully, wasn’t Ka’Xarian’s problem. He knew that the Captain was putting out feelers to potentially set up shop here, but the zheen knew that would be a mistake. One that he fully intended on addressing as soon as his team returned to the Grania Estelle.

  His communicator beeped. He chittered angrily. Will I never get any peace? One lousy hour, that’s all I wanted. Setting down the spoon, he pulled the communicator from his pocket and flipped it open. “Ka’Xarian here.”

  “We’ve got that ship on shuttle sensors,” Jesma’s voice sounded form the communicator. “It’s a light freighter, ID’d as the Emilia Walker.”

  “Suns and stars,” the zheen swore. “The Old Man was right. The lucky bastard was right!”

  “What?” She didn’t sound like she understood.

  “Are they hailing?” Ka’Xarian said instead, ignoring her question.

  There was a pause. “No, nothing yet. They’ve been incoming pretty much on a ballistic course ever since they got out of hyperspace. Just a good puff on their sublight drives to overcome inertia and then they’ve just coasted on in from there.”

  “How fast?” She gave him a figure. “Damn that’s slow. How long until you can get into range?”

  “Without blowing through my entire fuel supply? I’d have to wait another seven hours or so.”

  His antennae twitched. “All right. We wait. How long until you can call them?”

  She chuckled. “I can call them right now, but it’ll take about forty minutes for them to receive and call back, even if they do so immediately.”

  He sat and thought for a moment. Apparently that moment stretched on so long, Jesma spoke up in a sing-song voice. “Xa-ar? You still tracking?”

  “Yeah, I’m still here. Go ahead and send the message now. Just standard hail ‘it’s us from Grania Estelle, how are things? Do you need assistance? Meet up at the fueling station.’ That sort of thing.”

  “Oh, you mean the sort of message I already have recorded and ready to send?” She sounded smug.

  “Good, you’re correctly anticipating orders. You get to keep your meager yet undeserved paycheck this week.”

  Jesma laughed. “You love me, Xar.”

  “Good thing,” he grumped. “Call when the reply comes in.” And he closed the communicator.

  “Aahh!” Tamara grunted as Corajen’s hand struck her shoulder and her foot easily hooked behind hers. She crashed to the mat, off-balance and landed hard. The breath whooshed from her and she could hear that awful whining noise one made when one got the wind knocked out of them. Her body was screaming at her to get air, but she forced herself to roll to the side, and she tried to lash out with a foot, but it was more of a wild flail. Pain wracked her body as she gulped in a breath, then another. Finally, her breathing began to return in gasps. It was then she realized that the exercise (or rather the beating) had stopped. Picking her face up off the mat, she looked around, seeing the lupusan dropping down to her haunches, tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth.

  Corajen was panting a little, but it was clear that she wasn’t winded. “You’re getting better,” she said, praising her victim.

  “Doesn’t feel like it from my end,” Tamara gasped, pushing herself to a sitting position, but leaning back to make sure she could keep breathing.

  “I know it’s been a while, a long while since you’ve gone through Basic, but it seems like your muscles haven’t forgotten. It’s starting to come back.”

  “Yeah, but it’s clear it isn’t good for anything against you.” She rubbed her shoulder where Corajen had hit.

  The lupusan flicked her ears in amusement. “I’m Security. I’m supposed to be good at this sort of thing. Besides, I’ve been doing this sort of thing for years.”

  Tamara let herself flop down onto her back, her breath still coming rapidly. “And how again is this supposed to help me?”

  “Right now, I’m sure it feels like it won’t,” Corajen replied. “You’re getting pummeled and you hurt and your lungs feel like they’re going to burst. Tomorrow you’re going to have some very nice bruises and assorted aches and pains. We’re going to continue tomorrow but it’ll be a bit lighter, more stretching to loosen you back up.”

  “Yay,” the engineer said, her lack of enthusiasm showing. “I get to do this again.”

  “See?” the lupusan said, getting back up to her feet. “That’s the right attitude to have. You ‘get’ to do this again. Not you ‘have’ to do this again.”

  “I feel like I’m back in boot,” Tamara grumped.

  “Please,” Corajen said. “
You’re going to make me blush.”

  Tamara groaned and stood. She slowly twisted from side to side, wincing in pain from a half-remembered hit to the side twinged. “I think I’m going to head down to sickbay.”

  “Probably a good idea. Say hit to the Doc for me.”

  Ka’Xarian’s communicator beeped. He set down his datapad where the last of the refueling status figures were scrolling and answered it. “Ka’Xarian here.”

  “Xar, it’s Jesma,” the woman’s voice sounded clear, but upset. “I just got a response back from the Emilia Walker. She’s in bad shape.”

  “What happened?” he asked, sitting a bit straighter on his hard backed chair.

  “Pirates, Xar,” she replied. “What else? They got hit, they got boarded and then were robbed blind.”

  “How many dead?”

  Jesma sighed. “Six.”

  “Damn,” he breathed, antennae twitching. “Two-thirds of their crew? With four people left, that’s hardly enough to even maintain any kind of watch rotation.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Captain Vosteros is saying. They’re coming in, I’ll be able to link up with them in two hours. I’m headed outbound now.”

  “Copy that,” he replied. “Be careful, call as soon as you link up.”

  “Understood. Shuttle Two out.”

  Chapter 23

  “What exactly are your intentions with that incoming ship, Mister Ka’Xarian?” Goris Hana asked via communications vid screen on the fueling station. Hana was still in his office, while Ka’Xarian was in his quarters. The man had a wheedling tone in his voice, while at the same time maintaining a level of malice.

  “My intentions?” the zheen asked, confused. “The ship and her crew are known to me and mine, we were moving out to assist since it’s clear that they are damaged.”