First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3

by KOTCHER, MICHAEL

  “To just let them die!”

  “Their property and people had been attacked,” Kozen’ck retorted. “”But they reasoned, rightly, that they wouldn’t be able to board and seize the ship. So, they left it to its fate. Luckily for us and for the crew of the ship, they managed to get it running again so it could limp home.”

  “How generous of them,” Kly said bitterly.

  “It was very generous,” Kozen’ck replied. “They could have brought their ships back and rearmed and then come back out and cracked her open. There wouldn’t have been a damned thing we could have done about it. They spared all those lives and left the ship relatively intact.”

  Kly gaped. “And we’re supposed to be grateful!”

  “I am,” the zheen replied, turning to leave. “They allowed the ship to come back to us. Why aren’t you?” As he walked to the hatch, he stopped and turned back. “See what you can do about collecting up those replicators they’re selling. We need them, badly.”

  The two men eyed each other for a long moment before Kly left the room and Chakrabarti pulled out a communicator to make a call.

  “Tamara, we’ve got an issue,” the mature lupusan said, walking into the engineer’s office aboard the Samarkand. Things had been progressing fairly smoothly in the last two weeks. FP’s second defensive ship, the Maitland, had just been released from yard workers, if one drydock slip could be called a shipyard. The slip was little more than a rectangular box of steel, open on one end, allowing the ship to enter and exit, and giving plenty of room inside for the work crews and for any components that needed to be brought in. This first slip was quite small, compared to the ships in FP’s fledgling fleet. Neither Grania Estelle nor the Samarkand would fit inside, but the Testudo cargo ships and the corvettes would. Three more of the Testudos had been build and set up with small crews of two, loaded up with small fuel orders, and processed materials and sent on their way to the planet to make deliveries. Tamara had decided that in addition to picking up the payments due for the goods they were shipping to the planet or the orbital, the cargo ships would not fly back empty. She wanted the crews of those ships to load up on foodstuffs to bring back.

  “What’s that, Galina?” she asked, looking up from the myriad of reports. Paperwork never seemed to go away; in fact, it tended to multiply the more successful one grew. Tamara remembered that from her time running a shipyard back in the old days. She’d been spoiled working as Third Engineering Officer aboard the bulk freighter; she hadn’t needed to file or read a tenth of the amount of reports that she did now.

  “We just received a transmission from one of our buyers on the planet,” she said, holding out a data card and setting it on the table. “Here is the recording.”

  Tamara grimaced and picked it up. “I’m guessing by your tone that it isn’t good.” She plugged it into the reader and brought up the file. Her scowl grew even deeper as she saw it.

  Suriaya’s round face appeared on the screen. “Samair, what the hell? I’m loving that A2 you gave to me, it’s been working great and really moving my business along. I’m almost done with my third shuttle and then out of nowhere, a bunch of government suits show up and try to buy me out. So I told ‘em to go away, I wasn’t selling. I’d leased it from you. So then, one of the bastards knocks me down and the next thing I know, they’re running off with my A2!” She was fuming, so angry her face was turning purple. “And then, as they’re loading it up into an airskimmer, there’s this shout and the whole thing melts down! It was nothing but a bubbling pile of slag. What the hell is going on, Samair? You’d better call me back. This is not the way I do business.” And the communication ended.

  “What is happening?” Galina asked, her face showing worry. “The government is trying to run us out of business? Scare off our clients?”

  “No,” Tamara said, her tone icy. “They’re trying to ‘confiscate’ the A2 replicators I just leased to all those clients. Most likely for reasons of planetary security and so they can use them to make replacement parts for the Leytonstone.” While she didn’t appreciably warm up, she did manage a small smile. “Must have been an awful shock for them when the failsafes kicked in the A2s melted down.” She pressed a few commands on the display. “Another hour or so and the AI will be ready for implementation,” she said. “Which will make for an interesting time.”

  The lupusan took a seat on the other side of the desk. “One moment you’re extremely upset, and the next you’re smiling like a wolf in a herd of sheep.”

  “They’re trying to steal my stuff,” Tamara said, her voice like frozen helium. “But in the end they get nothing.” She pressed another command. “We need to get confirmation that the government people are the ones who tried to steal the A2 replicator I leased to Suriaya. Once we do, I’m going to destroy the ones I sold to them. They are pissing me off. Excuse me, Captain Korneyev, I need to prep my ship and make a few calls.”

  Galina nodded. “Of course. I’ll speak with Ms. Sterling. We’ll take over while you’re dealing with this situation.”

  Tamara sighed. “Thank you, Galina. I know it’s been a stressful few weeks. I was hoping that these replicators were going to bring in more income and help to jump start things. It didn’t even occur to me that the government would swoop in and steal the things. I was thinking more about corporate theft or pirates.”

  “Well, you’ve said before that you think that the government politicos are all a bunch of pirates,” Galina pointed out, sounding amused.

  “They tried attacking the company outright. Now they’re trying this. I think I need to get the lawyers on the line.” She gestured. “I’m sorry, but I really need to get them working. And I’m going to have to get back there to deal with this.”

  Galina stood up. “Understood. As much as I would like to unleash the young security chief on them and let her have some fun, I think it more poetic and much more…” she thought for a second, “Vicious.”

  Tamara gave her a feral smile. “That’s the idea. Though I think I’d much rather lock them all in a room with a bunch of pissed off lupusan.”

  Galina flicked her ears in amusement. “If not for my oaths I took as a doctor all those years ago, I think I might want to be one of those wolves in that room.” Her amusement faded to malice. “There are a few debts between us.” She turned to leave, but then looked back to the woman seated behind the desk. “Good hunting.”

  “Thanks, Galina. Try and keep things afloat while I’m gone.”

  The lupusan waved as she walked out of the office.

  Tamara activated the comms, recording a message to be sent out to the law offices of Kay, Jo’zenit and Simpson, one of the most prestigious law firms in the system, which Vincent Eamonn had put on retainer upon Grania Estelle’s first arrival in the system. While the captain had made it understood that he wanted to set up shop here in the Seylonique star system, no one had any idea of the scope of what “setting up shop” would come to mean. However, Kay, Jo’zenit and Simpson had remained on retainer and were on hand to prepare business contracts and to otherwise keep things running smoothly. And of course to take action when either Vincent or his COO Tamara needed the heavy end of the hammer dropped on someone.

  “Mister Kay, this is Tamara Samair. A serious issue has come up concerning one of my business contracts. It seems that the government sent goons to one of my clients and just walked off with one of the A2 replicator devices that the client had leased. This activated the failsafe on the device, causing it to self-destruct. No one was hurt, but I need you to look into taking action here. If the government wants some of my A2s, they need to come to me, not bully or steal from my clients. I’m leaving the Samarkand in the next half hour and heading into the orbital. We need to discuss this and I wanted to give you a heads up. If you need to contact me about this, you have my comm codes, call me on my ship. I’ll see you seventy hours. Samair, out.”

  There was one thing she needed to do before she would travel back to the orbital. H
eading to the computer core of the Samarkand, with Eretria Sterling and Galina in tow, Tamara moved with purpose. The time had come, and she’d verified through the computer’s quarantined memory that the ship’s AI was ready to make its appearance. Now came the time to truly bring it to life. Entering the core compartment, Tamara stepped up to the console right in front of the ship’s mainframe, which had been expanded considerably to accommodate the large and growing company engineering database, as well as now the new AI. Two rectangular columns of molycirc as tall as Tamara and slightly wider than her shoulders provided all of the grunt that the ship and the AI would ever need. In fact, the amount that was already installed in the Samarkand rivaled the processing power of the Grania Estelle and the Kutok mine put together. Perhaps, as time went by, another column of the densely-packed circuitry might be added to give the AI more control of mining robots or construction drones. With the amount that was there now, the AI would be able to control fifty of each, which in conjunction with the organics working on the ship, they could churn out a good number of finished projects in a short period of time.

  “I’ve never seen an AI’s consciousness brought to life before,” Eretria commented.

  “No one has,” Galina replied. Then she flicked her ears. “Except for the crew of the Grania Estelle, the crew that came into Seylonique I mean.”

  “Ma’am, back in your day, was there an abundance of AI’s out here in the cluster?”

  Tamara sighed. “It makes me feel so old when people say that. But no, there weren’t a huge number of AI’s out here. I think the trading station at Byra-Kae had one.” She paused in her working of the console and looked across the compartment. “I think there was one at Volarus. And that of course didn’t count any ships that might have had one. I know that Captain Eamonn mentioned once that he’d worked with one when he was younger.” She turned back to the panel and pressed her thumb to the access port.

  And there it was, the AI’s core matrix, what appeared as a solid ball of code, which seemed to flow in and around and through itself. Unlike Stella, who had been given a form that she would usually adopt when dealing with organics, this AI hadn’t chosen a form for itself. When Tamara had brought Stella to life, she had influenced the fledgling AI to take on the persona that she eventually did, but Stella had added her own twists to her appearance, the red locks of hair, the purple stripes on her face, as well as the pigtails. Tamara had an idea of what she thought the Samarkand’s soul would take, and she wondered if it would.

  Finally, she was ready. The two females behind her were starting to get impatient, and Tamara couldn’t help but smile. “AI,” she said, addressing the core. “Initiate personality profile, sending recognition and activation codes.” The small holo projector at the side of the room activated and the AI appeared; an amorphous cloud, a blob really, of lines of code, ever weaving and shifting.

  “That’s the ship AI?” Eretria said, unable to hide her disdain. “I was expecting something more like Stella.”

  “I must say, I have to agree, Tamara,” Galina agreed. “This isn’t really what I had in mind.”

  “Patience, ladies,” Tamara said. “He’s only just woken up. Give him a minute.”

  “Him?” Eretria asked, slightly amused.

  Tamara snorted. “Captain Eamonn’s request. He said that there were so many females in positions of authority in this organization, that we needed at least one other male presence.”

  “Men,” Eretria snorted derisively. Galina huffed a laugh.

  They were interrupted by the AI’s voice, which was androgynous at first but as it continued to speak, the voice deepened to be definitively male. “I am awake. Accessing database. Tamara Samair: voiceprint identified. Chief of Operations, First Principles, Incorporated. Eretria Sterling: voiceprint identified. Supervisor, Engineering teams, Samarkand. Galina Korneyev: voiceprint identified. Commanding officer, Samarkand.”

  “Well, he’s certainly friendly,” Eretria said, tipping her head back and forth.

  Tamara addressed the AI, ignoring the other woman’s comment. “You’re to be the AI for this ship, the Samarkand. You’re going to be assisting both of these ladies in company Operations, as well as myself. You’ll be maintaining the ship’s reactor as well as the ship’s other autonomic functions.”

  “I understand, Captain Samair.” Was it Tamara’s imagination, or did the AI’s voice have a bit of a growl to it?

  “You’re going to be working with a number of organics, and at least two other AI’s, although you are currently the only AI in this star system. We’re going to be bringing up a pair of AI’s for the Kutok mine.”

  “Understood. I will be working with a team of AI’s. I also understand that another AI is bonded with the bulk freighter cargo ship Grania Estelle?”

  “Yes, that is correct,” Tamara replied.

  “What is he going to look like?” Galina asked.

  “What form would you like me to take, Captain Korneyev?”

  She grinned. “He’s certainly polite. But he’s going to be working with me quite a bit. I think I’d like someone… familiar.”

  “Accessing database.” The AI’s voice sounded slightly distracted, but then the code matrix started to increase its speed, pulsating and spinning. Eventually, after only about ten seconds or so, the cloud shrunk down and formed into a more solid shape. For a moment, it appeared as though the AI was going to adopt a human form, following in Stella’s digital footsteps, but then the image solidified further. Its upper body increased in size, as did its arms. The fingers on each hand grew in length, ending in wicked claws. His head grew in size, slightly larger than a human’s, with a muzzle and large, triangular shaped ears.

  “He’s a lupusan!” Eretria gasped.

  Galina marveled at the newborn AI. “He’s gorgeous!”

  The new AI stood tall, crossing his arms over his chest. He was wearing typical lupusan ship attire, a gray company t-shirt with the galactic spiral logo on the right breast. His lower body was covered by a green and gold kilt, which was ultimately practical, because wearing trousers with a tail would be simply uncomfortable. He wore no shoes, but outside of those who wore skinsuits to go out in vacuum, none of the lupusan did. It was clear that he was strong and his muscles rippled under his fur. His fur was a brindled gold and his eyes were a pale lavender.

  “Now all I need is a name,” he said, in a tone that made all three of the females smile.

  “Put your tongue back in your mouth, Galina,” Tamara teased.

  The captain’s jaw closed with a click. “You made him look that way just to torture me, didn’t you?”

  Tamara gave a look of complete innocence. “He’s the one who chose his appearance, Galina,” she protested. “I only gave him a few nudges. But as the captain of this ship, I shall give the honor of choosing his name to you.”

  Eretria smirked, crossing her arms under her breasts. “Make it a good one, Galina,” she urged. “It has to live up to a form like that.” She flicked her chin in the AI’s direction.

  “I await your pleasure, Captain,” the AI said and Galina couldn’t help the shiver that went down her spine. Her ears lay flat against her head.

  “Nasir,” she said after a long moment. She looked to him, hovering a few centimeters over the holo projector. “Your name is Nasir.” Then she hesitated, looking uncertain. “Is that acceptable?”

  He gazed at her for a long second. “You are the captain of the ship. As Ms. Sterling mentioned my name should reflect my form. The name that means ‘helper’ or ‘bringer of victory’? How can that not be exactly correct?”

  Tamara laughed. “I like him already. I think we’re all going to have a lot of fun together, Nasir,” she told him.

  “I agree, Captain Samair.”

  “How about unless we’re in formal settings, you call me Tamara?” she asked.

  “Very well, Tamara.” He looked distracted for an instant, blinking slowly. “I am now fully integrated into the ship’s
system. I must say, Captain Korneyev, you run a very tight ship. And Supervisor Sterling, I am impressed with the efficiency of your teams.”

  Both females beamed at the compliments. “I think I’ll be leaving you three to get better acquainted. And, you should inform the crew that they’ve received a new member of the ship’s company. Better that it comes from you two instead of them finding out on their own.”

  “You aren’t going to introduce me?” Nasir asked, sounding slightly hurt.

  She smiled warmly. “I think it might be better if they do, Nasir,” she said. “And if you access the communications files from an hour ago, especially one that I recorded-…”

  “Ah, yes, for the law offices of Kay, Jo’zenit and Simpson. I understand. That is something you should get a handle on immediately. Of course you may feel free to contact me at any time for assistance, should you require it, Tamara.” He gave her a little bow.

  “Thank you, Nasir. As I said, I think we’re all going to have a lot of fun together. Ladies,” she said to the others. “I’ll try to make this trip as swift as possible. Hopefully Kay won’t give me too much of a hassle taking care of this.” She sighed. “But then, he’s an attorney and I’m going to be dealing with politicians. They’re going to drag this out as long as they possibly can.”

  “That certainly sounds accurate, Ma’am,” Eretria agreed.

  Nasir looked thoughtful. “Perhaps there is other pressure that could be put on the politicians, Tamara. Have you considered going to the press? Then you can tell your story, get the reporters to do some of the work for you. And, it would also put more pressure on the members of the admin council, especially if you make reference to the attack on the Kutok mine.”