“Now, Ms. Samair, we need to continue this discussion,” Theodosia said, sounding as though they were discussing a replenishment order for her fleet and Tamara was trying to overcharge her for the order. “I am well aware that without proper access to the specifications of the systems on this ship, you cannot do a proper job. But I am unwilling to simply hand that information over.”
“The way I see it, Commodore,” Tamara replied, sounding nonchalant, “there’s a quid pro quo here. You need to get back to the Republic and make a report on the activities in the Cluster, specifically the pirate activity that forced you out of Byra-Kae.”
The Republic officer clenched her teeth, but nodded. “Yes, Ms. Samair, that is correct.”
“And with the Horus currently in the shape he’s in, you won’t make it,” she said again, adding just a little twist to the knife.
“Yes, that is also correct.”
Tamara went on. “Well, you already owe the company a great deal of compensation for the repairs we have already facilitated. Captain Eamonn,” she gestured to him and the man nodded, “has informed me that the medical treatments he has offered are going to be free of charge and I won’t argue with that. But the repairs to this ship, that’s a completely different matter.” She could see that the Commander was about ready to explode. Only professional courtesy was keeping her from leaping the table. Or perhaps it was the two lupusan guards standing behind Tamara. “I don’t work for the Republic. Your ship needs serious repair work if you ever expect to make it back to report to your Admiralty. And I can guarantee you that there isn’t anyone else who can fix this old boy up properly, except perhaps the pirate Lord Verrikoth. And given the amount of work that would need to get done here, we’re talking serious amounts of credits to pay for all this.”
“You know that we have no credits aboard this ship,” McConnell replied, fuming. “And I have no way of authorizing such an exchange. Anything along those lines would have to be done in the Republic.”
“And now we have arrived at the crux of our problem, Commodore,” Tamara returned. “FP, Inc has done its good deed by patching up your people and getting the ship here to the relative safety of Seylonique. But I am not going to waste my crews’ time in repairing a ship for a customer, yes, Commodore, a customer who can’t pay.”
“So what, specifically, do you want from me?” she demanded harshly, sliding one hand in a chopping motion across the table. Brianne’s fists clenched and unclenched.
Tamara affected surprise. “Why, Commodore, I want it all. I want a full download of the schematics from this ship. I would like a full download of any replicator designs that you are carrying, and yes, I’m aware that this ship currently does not carry an industrial replicator. But I want a full technical readout on everything. And by that I mean shields, engines, hyperdrives, power systems, computer systems, weapons, comm systems, medical, sensors, the works.”
“That is outrageous!” Brianne nearly shouted, half-rising from her seat.
“That is a fair offer for people who need this ship fixed up,” Tamara retorted. She could feel Vincent starting to bristle next to her, but she kicked him under the table. He remained silent.
“There are things I will never give up to civilians, Ms. Samair,” Theodosia said stiffly. “I will destroy this ship first.”
Tamara nodded. “I understand. I’m not looking for you to compromise Republic security. Keep your communication encryptions, your tactical and strategic databases concerning the disposition and locations of your ships. I’m not looking for that sort of information, as I said. What I am looking for is complete access to this ship. I know you expressed concern that you might come back this way some day to find that a flotilla of ships like this one would be here. I’m looking to properly defend this system, this company and our allies.”
The commodore sat still for a long moment, breathing noisily. She touched a hand to the Commander’s forearm, to calm the Secaaran down. Commander Crgann was on the very edge of her control, looking about ready to damn the consequences and rip the table from the deck and throttle the impudent woman. “And if I refuse these terms?” Theodosia asked, her voice choked.
Tamara gave a one shouldered shrug. “I’m not moving from this, Commodore. If these terms are unacceptable, I will have your ship towed out of the construction slip and bid you farewell. And with your weapons and shields in the condition they’re in, I know that my defensive ships will be more than a match for you if you decide to try and force the issue.”
“I will need some time to consider the offer.”
Tamara raised her eyebrows. Then she made a big show of checking her watch. “I will give you thirty minutes, Commodore,” she said. “You’ve had the whole trip from Seylonique to think this over.”
“This is not the deal I made with Captain Eamonn,” Crgann pointed out.
“Captain Eamonn was not fully aware of the situation here in Seylonique,” Tamara countered. “Nor was he aware of the capabilities of the yard here.” She kept her gaze firmly on the commodore, but she nudged Vincent’s foot with her own.
The captain nodded. “I know it isn’t what we originally agreed to, Commodore, Commander,” he admitted, “But I fully support my Chief of Operations in this matter.” The captain was putting forth a good show, but it was clear he was nervous about that statement.
Theodosia stared at them for another long moment. “Very well, Ms. Samair. Captain. If you could please give us the time to fully discuss this, I will have my decision to you in thirty minutes.”
Tamara stood, Vincent on his feet just behind. “I’ll be awaiting your call, Commodore. Commander,” she said, nodding to the ship’s commanding officer. They filed out of the room, not waiting for Crgann to speak.
“Commodore, this is ridiculous,” Brianne thundered as soon as the hatch closed behind them. “We are not going to turn over all of the Republic tech base to these people. There has to be another way.”
“Did you notice that device on her neck?” Theodosia asked idly, ignoring the Secaaran’s rant.
The rocky-skinned officer shook her head, confused. “What, ma’am?”
“The device,” she repeated. “The metallic coin looking device that was attached to Samair’s neck.”
Brianne sighed. “No, ma’am, I didn’t really notice. I was too busy concentrating on how much these provincials thought they could screw us because they think they have a boot on our necks.”
“It looked a lot like a one of the Army’s implant disruptors that they use on prisoners.”
Brianne frowned, using her own implants to call up the playback. She looked and sure enough, as the Commodore said, there was a metallic device on the woman’s neck. “Yes, ma’am, it does. It’s a variant, a modified version of the 636.”
“That was what I was thinking,” Theodosia answered. “Which makes me wonder… Why would someone be wearing an implant disruptor?”
“Because she has implants that someone didn’t want her to be using,” Brianne replied, understanding slowly dawning. “You think she’s a Republic officer?” She called up the image of the woman again and ran the information through the ship’s database, looking for an identity match. Nothing. “Well, if she is, I’m not finding her.”
“No, nor did I,” McConnell replied. “More likely she’s a Federation officer. Or I suppose she might be Republic, but she was on some sort of black ops program, though why they’d send her out to the Cluster is beyond me.”
“Ma’am, they have replicators,” Brianne pointed out. “They were of an older design, but I recognized the markings. They’re Republic devices. And if they’ve been getting the premium parts from them that they must be to get all of this up and running, then she’d have to be one of ours. And of reasonably high rank too, to have access to the level of parts and equipment needed to build warships and reactors and such.”
McConnell nodded. “So, Eamonn got himself a tamed Republic officer.”
“Tamed? She didn
’t seem all that tamed to me, ma’am,” the commander retorted. “In fact, I think she was as determined to rake us over the coals as well as possible.”
The commodore nodded again. “That’s true enough, but she’s a yard manager, Chief of Operations. She’s the one responsible for building and maintaining all the real estate and the ships around here. I think she’s determined to build the best fleet possible, be it cargo or military.”
“She’s got the two corvettes we saw plus whatever she might be building in those dry-docks. We’ve seen more than a few shuttles, tugs and other ships out here, as well as that tanker.”
“They’ve managed to build up quite an impressive operation here,” McConnell said, sounding resigned.
“I know that tone, ma’am,” Brianne replied harshly, turning to look at her. “I know what you’re thinking and you can’t be serious. You can’t really be thinking that you’re going to hand over all the data that they’re requesting? The Admiralty would skin you, skin the both of us alive if you do that.”
“I know, Commander,” she said. “But what’s the alternative? What is our alternative?”
“I agree to your terms, Ms. Samair,” Theodosia said a few minutes later, by comms. The small party of officers and guards from FP had retreated from the Horus back over to the yard and the captain had gone all the way back to his ship. “I’ll give you a full download of all the data you’re asking for and then you can get started on my ship.”
Tamara nodded. “I’m glad to hear that, Commodore. If you could please upload the data onto a portable, I’ll send someone to collect it. Once I have it in hand, my teams will be able to get started on refits to your ship. Though I think we might want to relocate the crew while we’re doing it. Perhaps some liberty?”
Theodosia looked at her suspiciously, but then nodded. “I don’t suppose you have any good place to visit, Ms. Samair?”
“Well, I’m sure we can come up with something,” she replied. “But I very much want to get started on that ship of yours, and get you up and running again.”
“Wanting us gone so soon?” the commodore replied ruefully.
Tamara smiled. “I know what’s going through that head of yours, Commodore, mirrored, I’m sure by the thoughts in Commander Crgann’s mind. You don’t want to be here. You don’t want to have your ship overrun by civilian contractors. You want to be back in space, either taking the fight to Verrikoth and his forces, or at least making the long trip back to the Republic.” She shrugged. “So, I want to get your ship repaired as quickly as possible to free up my people for other jobs.”
“Very well, Ms. Samair, but where would you be sending my crew?” Crgann asked. “I’ve seen the stations you have out here and there’s enough room for your crews but I can’t see that there’s enough for my people as well, though my engineering teams and a few others will be rotating through. I’m afraid I cannot entirely keep my own people away.”
Tamara nodded. “Of course, Commander. I completely agree. My people have never worked on a Republic warship before but I don’t envision any major problems.”
“How long do you think?” Brianne asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
Tamara considered that, then checked her datapad. “Assuming no serious problems, I think we can have it done and ready to go within two months.”
“Two months?” Both officers looked to be a bit shocked by that.
“We’re going to have to tear down a few sections, Commander,” she replied reasonably. “It’s going to take some time. I’ll do my best to speed things up and shave time off wherever I can, but two months right now is my best estimate.”
The Secaaran sighed heavily, glaring at Tamara through the vid pickup. “All right, two months. I’ll have the download ready for you within the hour.”
Tamara nodded. “Thank you very much, Commander. I’ll be waiting for your call.”
“This is a hell of a score, Tamara,” Vincent crowed, several hours later. He, Tamara and Eretria were seated in the office aboard the Samarkand, looking through the data files they’d received from the Republic. “All those specs for a warship, as well as the medical database and all the rest? I love it!”
“We got a good deal on this,” Tamara agreed.
“It’s not going to make us any money though,” the other woman pointed out. “I mean, yes, I’m drooling over all of this as much as you are, but there are no credits flowing into the coffers because of this deal.”
“Not right away, no,” Vincent acknowledged. “But think of the upgrades and such that we can sell.”
Eretria didn’t look convinced, but the nature of the deal wasn’t her problem. So long as the payment vouchers and paychecks kept clearing, she didn’t mind. “All right then. I’m going to assemble my teams and get Nasir to send workbots over and we’ll get started on fixing the old boy up.” She got to her feet, nodded and Tamara waved her off. Once she left, Tamara went back to skimming through the piles of technical data.
“Tamara, I believe I’ve discovered something.” Nasir appeared on the holo projector.
She looked up and Vincent turned to look at him. It wasn’t really necessary; Nasir was the ship’s AI, but organics tended to want to look at an image of the AI when they spoke. “What’s that, Nasir?”
“I’ve been running through the data files you have there,” he gestured toward the display. “And it appears the Republic Commodore, or perhaps Commander Crgann, has decided that they don’t want us to be able to keep these data files.”
Tamara frowned. “What makes you say that?”
“The self-destruct worm I found buried deep in the coding,” he replied simply. “It’s set to activate sixty days from now, and to self-replicate into any files we copy.”
Vincent slapped the arm of his chair. “Those bastards! Trying to screw us over!”
The AI flicked his ears in amusement. “Well, with your permission, Stella, Magnus and I will look it over. Perhaps we can de-worm the files.” Magnus was the new AI over on the Kutok mine, acting for security as well as the main systems AI, like Stella was to the Grania Estelle. He had taken on the form of a large warthog, but with a more humanoid body. His form was well-muscled and barrel-chested but with spines running down his furred arms and legs, his feet cloven. He had large tusks that curved up from his lower lip. It should give him a bit of a lisp, if he was an organic, but as an AI, Magnus had decided to remove the lisp, giving himself an extremely deep and gravelly timbre to his voice. He dressed in a set of leather armor that covered his torso and ended in a leather kilt that covered his upper legs, with the FP galactic spiral stitched in black on his chest. A heavy sword was sheathed over his back and every so often he would draw the weapon and pose with it, or make slashes in the air. The light lag between the two locations would be a bit much, but Tamara was sure between the three AIs they would be able to work something out.
“Before I get started with the others on that, Stella has something to tell you, Tamara,” Nasir said, bowing and as he did so holographic image disappeared, his lupusan form to be replaced by the image of Stella’s teenage human girl form.
“Great news!” she said, actually hopping from one foot to another. “I found information about the disruptor the pirates hooked up to your neck!” Tamara sat bolt upright and even Vincent looked more attentive. “What? It’s in the Republic medical files. Well, it’s actually an addendum to the files that deal with implants.”
“Okay…” Tamara allowed the word to stretch out.
“Sorry,” the young AI said, hanging her head a bit, but the smile never left her lips. In fact, her grin grew wider. “Well, I wasn’t actually able to find an exact match for the device Jax put on you. I think that he or Verrikoth’s people must have modified it, but the closest match to it is a 636 disabler, meant for the Republic military, specifically the military police. They use them on criminals and prisoners when it becomes necessary to subdue them without actually burning the implants out.”
“Burn them out?” Vincent asked, confused. “Like with a cutting torch?”
Tamara shuddered. “Well that’s one way, but that’s usually after the subject is already dead. No, there’s a nanite solution that’s injected, similar to Combat Heal, only instead of repairing wounds, it eats up the neuro implants. At least, that’s what they did back in the old days. If you were dishonorably discharged, your class one implant was left alone; you needed that for banking and personal identification and such. But the class twos and above would be eliminated so that you couldn’t use them to get into any mischief, or access military hardware or computers.”
“Makes sense,” the captain said, nodding. “So this device blocks the wireless transmitter and receiver on implants?”
“Actually,” Stella answered, “it’s selectable. It can be set to block wireless, as well as to shut down the manual port,” she gestured and Tamara unconsciously clenched her right hand. “And finally, it can be used to completely disable the implants, effectively shutting them down without breaking them. So I guess we’re lucky, if you can call it that, that Jax only set it to level one when he attached it.”
“Yeah, it could have been a lot worse,” she said dourly. “Could have been a lot better, too.” She rubbed her eyes with one hand. “So, does that mean you’ve determined how to get this thing off?”
Stella shrugged. “Well, we’re narrowing it down. I’m going to have a consult with Turan in a little bit and then I think between the three of us, you included Tamara, should be able to get that thing off and get you back to normal.”
“I certainly would like that,” she replied with feeling. “All right, get with Turan and then back to me. Let’s see what we can find out. And send me the links for the disruptor. Maybe it’s as simple as just sending a signal to the device to shut it down.”
First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3 Page 35