First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3

by KOTCHER, MICHAEL

  Lujayne grinned. “Sounds good to me.”

  “There are some sandwiches in the cooler over there, Captain, if you need something now.”

  “I know. I’ll just grab some fruit while I wait. Not going to risk missing your cooking.” Thankfully, Tamara Samair had done an excellent job in her selection of ship stewards, always wanting to be sure that her crews got good meals on either their patrols in system, the work in the yard or the mines, or on the cargo ships.

  Sara blushed. “Thank you, Captain. I don’t want to disappoint anyone.”

  Lujayne laughed, taking a piece of purple fruit from the cooler. “So far, Sara, you’ve been doing a very good job at that. No one’s complained to me anyway.”

  “I’m just glad you’re all happy with my work.” She started slicing up the meat. “But, Ulla-tran. We’re in a whole other star system!” She clearly was bubbling over the idea. “I mean, new people, new way of life, a whole new planet!”

  “It is amazing,” the captain replied, taking a bite. “I mean, as soon as Ms. Samair started building up this company I got all excited about the possibilities.”

  Sarah scraped the meat off the cutting board and into a large bowl, throwing some chopped peppers and veg in there as well. She turned and pulled a few containers of spices from a cupboard. “I know. It’s all so exciting. I mean, I’m running a restaurant in space! A flying restaurant!”

  “Yes, yes you are. And I’m going to be interested in seeing what’s going on in this system,” Lujayne said, taking another bite. The fruit was very tart, just how she liked it, but it wouldn’t be filling enough for her to miss this meal. She chatted with Sara until the meal was ready, the smell of the food cooking enough to get her mouth salivating. The crew, aside from those on duty watch, got together for the meal, making a small party out of it, their first jump into a new star system.

  The trip in system took three days, but it was an uneventful three days. There were patrol ships moving around near to the planet and the orbital station: pinnaces, cutters and a pair of small corvettes orbiting the station, the planet and flying in long wide orbits. It would be more than enough to overwhelm Cavalier; even just the two defense force corvettes would be enough to stop her. But Lujayne was determined that they were going to make this run safely and manage to turn a profit. So far, even as they drew closer, the defense ships didn’t make any threatening moves. It wasn’t until the ships were less than five million kilometers from the station before they took interest.

  “Ma’am, I’ve got Captain Tariq on the line for you,” Huznall reported, as one of the corvettes and one of the cutters started on a vector to intercept First Horizon.

  Nazan Tariq was the new captain of FP’s first defense corvette. In the few months he’d been in charge, he had worked diligently to live up to the good name his ship had and to get and keep both himself and his crew up to snuff. They were more than happy to keep up with him, since all of Cavalier’s original crew had gone with Leicasitaj over to Mondragon. No one wanted to let down the proud name of their ship. And since they were getting to escort the company’s newest cargo ship into a place where the COO said there might be danger, everyone was on high alert.

  “Captain Tariq, this is Lujayne Orzo.”

  “Captain Orzo, I assume the approach of those two defense ships isn’t going to stop you from going to the orbital?” Tariq had a determined look on his face.

  She shook her head. “No, I have a load of cargo that I need to deliver and sell, and Ms. Samair is expecting that we come back with more goods to sell. If possible to set up a regular route here at Ulla-tran.”

  “Understood. I just wanted to be sure of what your intentions were.”

  “Why would you even ask that?” she flared. “Did you think I would run just because two ships turn our way?”

  Tariq glared at her. “No, Captain Orzo. I wanted to make sure that you were still committed to this course of action. I’m glad to see it, actually. I just wanted to know what you were going to do. So I’m going to ask you to slow your acceleration a bit and let Cavalier get in front a bit. Also, make sure that your shields are fully powered. If you have any weapons on that ship, and I see you have a few, get someone in there to crew them.”

  “Only the one cannon,” Lujayne said, feeling slightly ashamed at admitting that. Of course, Tariq was a company officer, and a warship captain, to boot, so of course he knew everything there was to know about First Horizon. It was a cargo ship, meant to haul lots of goods. It wasn’t a pocket warship, bristling with weapons.

  He tipped his head to the side, acknowledging the comment. “I understand. Still, hopefully it won’t come to that, but if it does, I want you to be ready. If things go bad, lock your weapon on the cutter and shoot. Then I want you to haul ass for the hyper limit and jump out of here. Don’t wait for us. There won’t be anything you can do to help us in the time it will take for the rest of the local SDF to get here.” He gave a gentle smile. “I don’t mean to frighten you or your crew, Captain. But I want to have a clear plan of action set up beforehand in case things go sour.”

  She controlled her fear, swallowing hard. “Thank you. We’ll be ready. But for now, I’m just going to continue on my course for the orbital station.” She took another deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I have a large load of machine parts that are looking for a buyer.”

  Tariq nodded. “If they call you, make sure you bring me in on the call.”

  “Understood.” She nodded. “You sure you can handle them?”

  Tariq looked at her, radiating extreme confidence. “Don’t worry, Captain. We’ll keep you safe.” And he closed the connection.

  Rezal looked over at his captain. “That didn’t sound all that confident.”

  Lujayne smirked. “Just stay cool, Rezal. Keep us on course for the orbital; don’t make any changed to course unless I tell you.”

  The Severite nodded. “Copy that, Captain.” He looked to his console again, as though the course and speed that was already entered and locked was going to suddenly change. It didn’t.

  “Unknown vessel, this is System Defense ship Garidos. State your identity, home port and your business here in Ulla-tran space.” The voice on the other end of the comms sounded angry and curt.

  “Comms are coming from the corvette, Captain,’ Huznall reported, nodding her long head toward the forward armorglass port.

  Lujayne nodded, pursing her lips. “Not really a surprise. Makes sense that the more powerful ship would be the one to issue ultimatums. Put me on with them, please,” she said. Huznall pressed a few controls, then nodded to her. “This is Captain Orzo aboard the First Horizon out of Seylonique. We’re here to engage in trade and profit with the businesses on the orbital. I have a load of machine parts that I’m sure someone would be willing to buy.”

  “Seylonique?” the voice came back. “No ships ever come out of Seylonique.”

  “That might be true until now. But I think you can expect a lot more ships coming out of Seylonique in the next few months. Both from our company, First Principles, Inc, and with others. Possibly even government flagged vessels.”

  There was some barely audible grumbling going on just below the pickup range for the mic, but a moment later, the voice came back on. “I see, Orzo. Very well, carry on to the orbital station. Maintain your course and maintain directives from orbital traffic control.”

  “Understood, Garidos. We will maintain course and follow directions for docking by traffic control. First Horizon out.”

  Moving in to dock at the station turned out to be simplicity in itself. Traffic control was surprisingly smooth; they directed First Horizon into one of the docking ports, while Cavalier remained nearby, about two hundred thousand kilometers out. Traffic control had offered them a docking port as well, but Captain Tariq politely declined. Lujayne was surprised at this. The fuel and other consumables on board a ship as small as a corvette were finite, much less so than the freighter she was on. But Tariq see
med to think he and his ship would be all right, and he didn’t want to consult Lujayne about it, so, she let it lie.

  “Docking maneuvers completed,” Rezal reported. “Engines offline.”

  “Moorings attached, docking clamps secured,” Huznall said, nodding slightly.

  Lujayne pressed a control on her command chair. “Ernie, talk to me.”

  “Looking good, Captain,” the engineer reported. “Main reactor is in gray mode now, minimal power only to life support and computer control. Everything else is offline.”

  “I hope you left communications up as well, Ernie,” she chided. “I kind of need that if I’m going to be making business deals and to keep in contact with Cavalier.”

  There was a pause. “Sorry, Captain. I should have thought of that. It’ll take only a few minutes to get the comm array back up and online.”

  She sighed, putting a hand on her forehead. “You crashed the communications array?” she demanded.

  “I’m sorry!” he said, sounding like he was harried and moving around a lot. She could hear him hammering away on keys. “Array is powering back up, Captain. I’m sorry about that. In-ship communications are still online, and we can use the mooring linkages to make contact with the station through their internal comms. But it will be a few minutes before we can contact Cavalier again. I’m sorry, it’s unacceptable.” He swore. “I know better than that.”

  She sighed again. “Just don’t do it again, Ernie. Make sure that everything is secured and then as penance, you, sir, get to stand dock watch with Santino for the first shift.”

  Lujayne could hear him sigh over the comms. “I understand. Give me twenty minutes and then I’ll be out there.”

  “Very well.” She ended the call and turned and pulled up the communications display, linking into the station-net. “All right. We’ve got a load of cargo to sell, parts that I know will go quickly and then we’re going to have to look into picking up a new cargo.”

  “Any ideas, Captain?” Huznall asked, getting up from her station. She was going to leave the bridge, since it was clear that the Captain was going to be maintaining the bridge watch.

  She shrugged. “No idea. Right now I’m going through the cargo trades. There are a host of freighters that came to Seylonique a little while ago,” she glanced to the hak’ruk, who nodded, “so clearly there’s a market for our home goods here. I just need…” she pressed a few more commands and the screens changed, “to find it! Ha!”

  A long list of cargoes appeared on the display. It was broken down by cargo size, mass, price, the works. “This is perfect,” she said, smiling. She made a note on her datapad, and refined her search to remove anything that First Horizon was incapable of carrying, which didn’t actually cut down the cargoes all that much. She saw that a fair few of the cargoes were to be delivered to either the fueling station in the orbit of the gas giant, or to the three mining colonies set up either on the surface of several of the moons, or to the shipyard at the Lagrange point ten light seconds from the planet.

  Lujayne flagged a few of the cargoes to go to the shipyard, remembering the advice that she go nowhere near the fueling station. She didn’t want to go against that advice; she’d heard the stories about Goris Hana and didn’t want to start stirring anything up. She clicked off the sales list, and switched over to the buy displays. There were a number of places that were interested in high level imports, and more than a few manufacturing companies that were looking for the kinds of parts First Horizon was carrying. She started looking into the various companies, as she posted the load of cargo on the station-net. Within twenty minutes, there were four buyers. There was no listing as to how reputable any of them were; FP didn’t have any offices here or regular trade here. One company was as good as another, as far as she was concerned. At this point, the only thing she had to go on was the buying price, so for now, anyway, she’d go with the highest bidder.

  “Any luck, Captain?” Trudy asked, coming back on the bridge, bringing two mugs of coffee with her.

  “Yes, actually,” Lujayne replied, leaning back in her chair. She rolled her head, loosening up her neck muscles. “I accepted the offer from Tulane Enterprises, they’re sending a representative over to the dockside now to get me a contract to sign and get us paid.”

  “Um, Captain…” Trudy said, wincing and raising one finger. “I hate to bring this up, but how are they going to pay for the cargo? Hard currency? Trade goods? Precious minerals or stones?”

  Lujayne pounded a fist on the arm of her chair. “Damn!” she exclaimed. “I keep doing that. I keep missing some minor but critical detail.” She took in a deep, shaking breath and then let it out slowly. “All right. It looks like I’m going to have to go out and find a local bank here and open an account. I wonder if Ganner and Saiorse has a branch here?”

  It took about an hour to get from the docking section to find a branch of one of the bigger banks here on the station. Lujayne took Huznall and Ykrik from engineering with her to the commercial levels of the station, making a beeline to the station’s assay office. She brought with her a gold bar, harvested from the asteroid field in Seylonique and melted down into a proper bar. She also had several coins of platinum and even a slip of gadolinium, which would be allow her to put a large amount of cash into the company and personal accounts she was going to open here. The assay agent was overjoyed at her arrival as well as with the precious minerals she brought with her, and Lujayne thought that he’d lowballed her a bit on the price but the nineteen thousand credits he’d shelled out she felt was more than enough to get things going.

  “I should have gotten twenty-five,” Lujayne grumbled as they stepped out of the assay office. Ykrik’s antennae flared in disbelief at that comment, for the amount of money received had been far more than he’d expected. Huznall only hummed out a puff of exasperation, making a subvocal comment that sounded suspiciously like “humans”.

  From there they moved quickly to a bank office, one of the more swanky affairs on level six. It wasn’t Ganner and Saiorse, Interplanetary, sadly, but Crown Lily Bank seemed like a good choice. Their office on level six blended in well with the other businesses on that level; there were a pair of armed guards on either side of the door, with a well-furnished waiting room inside. There was a blue plush carpet, overstuffed chairs and glass tables. Everything was expensive and tasteful.

  Getting accounts set up took only a matter of minutes. The account executives were polite and eager to set up corporate accounts for First Principles, Inc, with Lujayne Orzo, junior captain, acting as company representative, as well as personal accounts for herself and the two crewmembers with her.

  “And just remember, ma’am,” the executive reminded her, as she was submitting fingerprint, DNA, retinal and voice scans for security identification. “When and if other members of your company come here to Ulla-tran to conduct business, you just need to come and add them to the account. If they bring with them other members of the company staff, we can add them as well. I know it’s inconvenient, but for the security of our clients, we do require that they physically bring new members into one of our locations, either this one here on the orbital, the one on the fueling station across the system, or the other locations down on the surface of the planet.”

  “I understand,” Lujayne replied. The executive stuck out her hand and Lujayne shook it.

  “We do appreciate your business and I look forward to helping you in any way that I can in the future,” the executive gushed. It was all Lujayne could do not to gag. She was projecting this air of wanting to serve, of wanting to help, but it didn’t quite cover her inner core of disdain. Looking at a ship captain and two of her crew in unfamiliar shipsuits, little more than common dockworkers. Of course, she did have money, and with the promise of more coming in, which was something that few banking professionals would ever want to turn away.

  “Thank you for your time,” the freighter captain said, nodding once more. The others thanked her as well, and then
they all turned and trooped out of the bank and back out into the station proper. “Now, we need to get back to the ship. I have people coming to pick up our cargo and then we’re going to have to come back out and try and find a shipment.”

  “You were saying something about finding something local, Captain,” Huznall reminded her as they walked. Her pointed legs clicked on the metal deckplates.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “There was a load of foodstuffs and medical supplies that need to be delivered to the shipyard.” They turned a corner, heading for one of the turbolifts. Lujayne noted that this orbital station seemed to be a lot less pleasant to look at than the one back home. She was no engineer, but she could tell that the one back home had received quite a bit of maintenance and repair. Here, there were corroded panels, some of the floors seemed dirty, edges of the bulkheads had dirt and collections of assorted crud. There was also a faint, but distinct smell inside the turbolifts. Level six, thankfully, seemed to be free of the stink, probably due to the businesses that resided there, as well as the amount of money that was thrown around by people and businesses on this level. However, it was still as dirty and damaged as the rest of the place. So it seemed that anyone who had spare parts to sell was doing so. Which would explain why the two convoys of freighters that came from this system had loaded up on as many machine parts, electronics and other tech toys as they could stuff into their holds as possible.

  She and her small group hustled back to the docking level as fast as they could, making it back only minutes before Lujayne’s expected buyer arrived. She only had time to fix her hair, freshen up a bit and throw on a clean shipsuit before the buyers arrived. She was just stepping off the ladder into the main cargo hold just as Ernie sent her a comm message from the dock.

  “Captain, I’ve got a pair of people here to see you. One of them is in a suit, the other in coveralls. The guy in coveralls looks like a mechanic or technician. The guy in the suit claims that he’s with the station engineers. That isn’t who you were expecting was it?”