First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3

by KOTCHER, MICHAEL

  Theodosia blinked. “I must say, Ms. Samair, I’m surprised you know the distinction.”

  “What, between a pennant and a flag officer? I’ve done my research,” she said, waving it aside. “I just wanted to wish you a safe trip home and I hope that if you should be ever out this way again that you drop by and see us. I’d be happy to give your ship a tune up if he needs it.”

  McConnell snorted. “I’ll keep that in mind, thank you.”

  “Just one last thing before you go,” Tamara went on. “I just want you to know that I found your destructive programs in the data files you gave us. Found and destroyed them. And I have to say that in the future, I won’t be able to accept payment in anything other than credits or some other form of hard currency.” She gave the commodore a penetrating look. “That was a nasty trick you tried to pull, Commodore. I’m sure, of course that it was all in good fun and you were just testing the abilities of my code crackers. You weren’t of course trying to weasel out of payment that you made in good faith for the repairs that we did to your warship.”

  Theodosia did her best to keep her expression calm. “No, of course not, Ms. Samair. I apologize for any inconvenience.”

  “Thank you, Commodore. I know you wouldn’t try to cheat a hard-working businesswoman.” She continued to give her that hard look. “But I’m glad it all worked out. I hope, once again, that you have a safe trip home and that if you ever find yourself out this way again, I hope that we can do a little more business.”

  “Thank you very much, Ms. Samair. I hope the pirates do not give you much trouble.” And she signed off. Theodosia sighed heavily and scrubbed her face with her hands. “Well, I tried,” she said to the empty compartment. Then she pounded a fist on the desk, wincing and then rubbing her hand.

  “Are you concerned about them?” Nasir asked, as he and Tamara watched the Horus’s departure on one of her office displays.

  “How do you mean?” she asked, never looking away from the display, seeing the destroyer accelerate away from the yard, heading on a vector that would take them toward Ulla-tran. With the repairs to their hyperdrive engines and shields, the ship would be able to reach well into the Blue levels of the hyperspace rainbow. He wasn’t a speed demon, but Horus was currently the fastest thing in space, or at least, the fastest ship that anyone in Seylonique had ever seen.

  “Do you think they will be coming back to make more trouble for us?”

  Tamara sighed, rubbing her eyes with one hand. She leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know. I mean, now that we discovered that gadolinium, the likelihood that the Republic Admiralty will forget about the whole thing and just wash its hands of the Argos Cluster just dropped away. With the survey teams finding and tagging more and more of those rocks out there with gadolinium, I know the local government is salivating about it. When the Republic finds out, I’m fairly certain that they will be dispatching something back this way, and I can’t imagine it’s just going to be a single destroyer.”

  “You think they’re going to come back this way and try and take the minerals?” Nasir asked, concerned. “They have no jurisdiction out here.”

  Tamara chuckled. “Apparently, that’s the way things are done nowadays, Nasir. By the Republic anyway. I guess their Admiral Tandred has no compunctions about just coming into the Argos Cluster and taking whatever he wants. And if the people he’s taking from argue, complain or try and fight, well, that’s what his battleship is for.”

  “I have a hard time believing that, Tamara. Obviously I’ve never met the man, but a man that high up in the Republic military hierarchy must have an equally high level of morality and discipline, yes?” the AI asked, clasping his hands behind his back.

  She laughed derisively. “You’d think, wouldn’t you? But I’ve seen firsthand what ambitious men, or females, I’ll admit, are willing to do when they want something. So has Ka’Xarian on the Grania Estelle. And so has Eretria.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen that in my dealings with Ms. Sterling over the last few weeks while she has been working on the Republic ship,” the AI noted. “While she never actually said anything, she clearly did not like having to deal with the Republic officers, Commander Crgann and Commodore McConnell specifically.”

  “Yeah, well,” Tamara snorted. “I don’t like working with those two. They hated being here, hated having to turn her ship over to civilian workers in an unfamiliar system and she really despised me.” She shrugged. “Looking at it from her perspective, I guess I can’t blame her. She’d just lost her star system to Verrikoth’s flotilla and had just gone through some serious surgery, she’d lost people… The fact that she was even still able to operate coherently is a testimony to her strength.”

  Nasir grinned, laying his ears back against his head. “You like her.”

  She shrugged again. “I respect her. The commodore and I certainly didn’t get along, especially not after we discovered the worm in the data files they paid us with.”

  “Uh oh,” he said, grin growing broader. “She’s getting angry again.”

  Tamara huffed out a breath. “Oh, I was so angry when we found that worm. To be screwed again by the Republic, two hundred and fifty years later, with a whole different set of officers. And still, high ranking officers seem to think they can run right over me and I’ll just roll on my back and let them.” She growled, a very lupusan response. “Do I have that kind of face, Nasir? Am I just a gullible looking rube that screams to be taken advantage of?”

  He yipped. “Taken advantage of? Are you listening to yourself, Tamara? You know, when you breathed life into my core matrix, you gave me the freedom to choose my own form.” He gestured to his wolfen body. “I chose this. I get odd questions and looks from some of the crews, wanting to know why a hunter, a predator, would be the form for the AI for a construction ship. Lupusan are amazing creatures, but they’re not usually known for building of great structures. They can, of course, possess the skills and technical acumen, but when one thinks of a lupusan, one thinks of a killer.”

  Tamara blinked rapidly, shaking her head slightly. “What? Okay. So how does that relate to me not being taken advantage of?”

  “Just that you have a very lupusan-like attitude toward business. You know what you want to get out of a business deal, and you are relentless in your pursuit of your goal. At least, from what records I’ve been able to look through and your actions over the past several months since I was activated.”

  There was a noise just outside the door to the office and Tamara looked up. Pulling up her HUD, she could see with her infrared scanners that one of her bodyguards was just outside the hatch. Pressing a control on the desk, the hatch popped open. “Ekaterina, would you mind stepping inside for just a moment?” she asked, a tone of blatant suspicion in her voice.

  “Of course, ma’am,” the bodyguard replied, stepping into the office, clearly sampling the air with her powerful nose and checking the room for threats, just as she did every time she entered a compartment. It had been an annoyance when her three guards had done that in her presence. They had relaxed, somewhat, aboard the Samarkand, allowing her to remain in compartments without them, but every time she either changed rooms or went into a new compartment, one of them went first. The room was scanned, sniffed, listened to and eyeballed before they would allow her to enter. Tamara had actually started doing that herself, pulling up her HUD and scanning the compartments herself. When Viktoriya discovered what she was doing, she heartily approved and asked again if and when it would be possible for her team to get similar implants. But that was another conversation.

  Tamara could see that the lupusan was doing a passable job of hiding a smirk. “Ms. Trusov, could you tell me why you were laughing just then?”

  “Laughing, ma’am? I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.” She was affecting innocence.

  “Yes, Ms. Trusov, laughing.”

  “I can’t imagine what you mean, ma’am,” she replied, still holding up the innocent mask. “But, i
f I was a gambler, I would say that it was because of what Nasir said about you ma’am. You do have a very lupusan way of thinking, concerning your business deals. But I’m speaking entirely hypothetically, of course. Because I still have no idea what you’re asking.”

  Tamara couldn’t help but chuckle. She waved her hand, shooing the lupusan out. “Thank you, Ms. Trusov. You can go back out now.” She nodded to Tamara and then to Nasir and slipped out of the office, closing the hatch behind her. “But going back to your original question, Nasir? Yes, I think they will be causing us trouble. It might take a while, but I’d say within a year at the earliest, we’re going to have Republic ships back in this system, poking around again.”

  Nasir nodded slowly. “Then what do you plan to do about it? Because I know you’re not going to just want the Republic to show up here and demand the fruits of all your hard work.”

  “No, Nasir, I’m not,” she said, tapping her lips with one forefinger. “We’re going to need more resources, more trained hands and more markets. And for that, we can’t only rely on underdeveloped worlds like Bimawae and Heb. We’re going to have to go back to Ulla-tran.”

  Eretria Sterling flopped bonelessly into the chair across from Tamara’s desk. She shook her head, as though trying to keep awake. “Wait, what? Ma’am, you want to go back to Ulla-tran? After what happened there to your ship the last time?”

  “Well, the likelihood that we would run into a pirate flotilla there is pretty small,” Tamara pointed out. “But I know that they were working on ships in their system and they clearly had a few warships, based on the two frigates that came here a few months ago.” She leaned her elbows on the desk. “And I wouldn’t just be sending cargo ships unescorted. We’re going to need to send some backup. A pair of corvettes and or a frigate at the very least.”

  The supervisor nodded in understanding. “Yes, ma’am, I can see that would be prudent. But we don’t have that many ships.”

  A slow smile spread over Tamara’s face. “Yet, Ms. Sterling. Yet. I’m going to be increasing the amount of constructor bots and upping the processing power on the computers in the yard and we’re going to be doubling up on construction slip space. I want to get two freighters done and two more of the corvettes.”

  “That accounts for two of the slips. And the third?”

  “I think it’s time to make Commodore McConnell’s worst nightmares come true. I think it’s time we get ourselves a destroyer of our very own.”

  “Ma’am, do we have the budget for this? I mean, I haven’t been keeping a real close eye on those sorts of things, but warships and even cargo ships are ruinously expensive.”

  Tamara nodded. “You have no idea, Eretria. And if we hadn’t just hit the jackpot with the gadolinium I wouldn’t be considering it at this time.” She sighed. “I’d really like to get a heavy cruiser in the mix, but we don’t have plans for one of those. We’re going through the data files we got from the Republic commodore, but they only contained information in regards to Horus. We’re actually going to need to get a design committee together before we could get a big guy out into the field.”

  “Or we could stumble across another Republic ship out here that would be willing to lend us their designs,” Eretria said with a grin.

  “Yeah, what are the odds of that happening?” Tamara said.

  “What about the Leytonstone?” Eretria asked. “I mean, what about building another battlecruiser, since you’re thinking big?”

  She tipped her head to the side. “Well, I think we’ll get there eventually. But we’d either have to pull everyone off their current construction projects and build nothing else, or, we assign a team to work on it and keep moving at the same pace with everything else.”

  Eretria pursed her lips, tapping her fingernail against the arm of her seat. “Not great options, either of them. So, a destroyer it is then. That could be exciting.”

  The launching of the Leytonstone was a system-wide media event. Every single news outlet, blog, and type of social media was covering it. The cameras all showed the newly restored battlecruiser sliding away from the orbital station, off to make its patrol around the Seylonique system. Shuttles followed along in its wake like a school of fish at first, as sensors and cameras took shots and just watched. It was a heady sight.

  “Look at that!” Kly said happily, gesturing with an open hand toward the capital warship. “Now, that is a warship! And it’s ours! Under the control of the government, the biggest and most powerful ship in this system, possibly even in the Argos Cluster.” He sighed in satisfaction, raising his glass of brandy in salute before throwing the dark liquid down his neck.

  “I agree, it is certainly a magnificent sight to behold,” Chakrabarti replied, sipping from his own glass. Investigations into his possible involvement in the attack on the Kutok gas mine a year ago were still ongoing, but they had stalled out. Aside from Colonel Gants’ finger-pointing, there wasn’t another scrap of evidence to indict the admin of any crimes or involvement in the attack. A lot of political horse-trading had gone on behind the scenes and it seemed, since FP wasn’t screaming about the issue much anymore, that the whole thing was going to be quietly buried. Gants would keep his position as commander of Leytonstone and everyone was content.

  Reasonably content.

  Colonel Gants sat in his command seat on the Flag Bridge of the battlecruiser, rejoicing in the feel of the ship under him. The last time this ship left the dock, she was decrepit, aged and vastly underpowered. Now, however, Leytonstone was a tiger, a predator, back in her prime. He rubbed his hands up and down the arms of the seat. He’d sat in the chair several times before of course, while the ship was finishing up at the station and then again while during her shakedown cruiser. But now? Now, Leytonstone was out, footloose and fancy free. And she, as well as her crew and commander, were itching to see some action.

  There had been talk among high flying circles on the orbital that now was the perfect time for the Leytonstone to go back to the Kutok mine, and the FP shipyards and the FP mining station and deal with the situation from a year ago; put things right. But Gants had shot down that idea. It had seemed good back when the admins had suggested it a year ago. Get troops on the station, then use the battlecruiser to mop up and then claim the whole thing was a rescue operation. FP loses, the admin council gets to secure their supremacy.

  But things didn’t go according to plan and his entire crew nearly died, suffocated in the cold of space when it looked as though the ship’s only functioning reactor wouldn’t come back online. When it did, the nearly thousand souls aboard all breathed a collective sigh of relief and then began the long limp back to the orbital. Most of the admins were incredibly embittered and upset by the sound thrashing FP’s forces had given the battlecruiser and at first, so was Gants. But the week-long odyssey of getting the very broken and unreliable Leytonstone back to the orbital had changed something in him. He now had a healthy respect, not fear, respect, for FP, their tech, their ships and their crews, but also, for his own. His people had pulled together like he had never seen before. They had fought and hard not only in the battle, but also during that interminable trip back home. They brought the best out in each other, and in the ship. He was so proud of them for what they had proven they were capable of. And he refused to dishonor them by taking them on another mission like that.

  Now, he and his ship were on their first patrol, their first real patrol of the system in years. His was the tiger walking the edges of the field, making sure her territory stayed safe. So sure, FP, Inc was the big dog in the system economically, and they were fielding a decent number of warships and fighter squadrons, but they didn’t have anything that could match his baby.

  “All right. Lieutenant Paxton,” he said, addressing his XO. “Put us on course for our first waypoint on our patrol route.”

  “Aye, Captain. You’re still wanting to pass near to the FP Yards?” the lieutenant asked, his face a professionally blank mask.

 
He smirked. He didn’t want to go back down the dishonorable path again, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t thumb his nose at Tamara Samair and her warships. He wouldn’t cross the line, but he could ride right on it. “Absolutely, Lieutenant. But let’s not get carried away. Make them take heed, but we’re not going to scare them so badly they open fire.”

  “Of course, Colonel,” Paxton said, nodding. He turned to the navigator and the helmsman and started issuing orders.

  “Ma’am, we have a ship incoming from the orbital,” the sensor tech spoke up. “It just came into our sensor range.”

  Galina Korneyev looked up from the status report she was reading. “Another cargo run?” One of the ground based companies, R3 Systems, had pulled together a few outside investors and built themselves a cargo ship. They’d decided that they wanted to start moving cargo in and out of the Seylonique system, something that Galina heartily approved of. She was happy to be working for FP, but she was also glad to see that others in the system had taken the initiative and started getting more shipping off the ground.

  “No, ma’am. It’s the battlecruiser,” the man said, his voice trailing off and his face going pale. “They’re coming right to the yard.”

  “Go to battle alert,” she said calmly, setting down her datapad. She pressed a control on her chair.

  “Yes?” Tamara’s voice came through, a second before the alert klaxon started blaring. “What’s happening?”

  “The Leytonstone is coming straight toward the yard, Tamara,” Galina replied, still now showing any signs of distress. The bridge crew was afraid, but they were drawing strength from their captain. They had to; it wasn’t as though the Samarkand could stand up to the battlecruiser. Civilian level shields and one set of laser cannons, which wouldn’t penetrate the warship’s shields even if they just sat there and hammered on them all day long.