Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1
Author: Michael Kotcher
Date: 2014-07-22T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: Tamara Samair, a decorated Republic Naval officer, narrowly avoids a wrongful conviction at the hands of a jealous subordinate. Dropped in the void and left for dead, lost in survival sleep for centuries, she awakes to find her world has changed and hitches a ride on a decrepit freighter. Tamara and the crew work together to fix the dying ship, try to fight off pirates with a Republic Naval warship captain ruthlessly pursuing them, all while trying to turn a profit. The Argos Cluster is a dangerous place, but some of the worst threats are those left behind.

Pursue the Past

Samair in Argos, Book the First

By: Michael Kotcher

Copyright:

All characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2014 by Michael Kotcher

Cover art by Jade Taggart (FoxGirlJade on deviantart.com)

Dedication:  This is my first published book and I would like to dedicate it to my family and to Mo, my editor.  Both encouraged me to get off my duff and get my ideas to words and my words out there, and I hope I’ve made them proud.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue

Prologue

Commander Tamara Samair sat in the court martial, waiting for the members to return.  She was in her Navy dress blues, as was everyone else in the courtroom.  Her lawyer was seated next to her, completely at his ease, though she had no idea why.  The prosecution team across the way was looking rather smug.  And the commander who was doing the prosecuting kept shifting eyes their way, as though challenging her lawyer to look back.  He never took the bait though, keeping his eyes on either his paperwork or on the front of the courtroom.

Tamara seethed.  This trial had been going on for eleven months now and with each day that passed, those two had been in the court, boring holes in the back of her head.  Captain Horace Bythe and Lieutenant Oliver Islington were the two other officers (along with Tamara) in command of the Hudora System shipyards for the last six years.  In the year before her arrest, Tamara had begun to notice at first a slight, then a much more marked, decrease in supplies and funds and had begun to investigate why the sudden decrease in inventory.  Just as she was starting to get close to finding out where the resources were going, suddenly Naval Investigation Service arrested her for smuggling and theft.  And the two of them were grinning at her as the security officers slapped cuffs on her.

Eleven months later, and it had finally come to this.  The court martial was the culmination of humiliation, a humiliation that Bythe and Islington were sure to remind her of at every available chance.  Just before her arrest, she had just received her promotion to Commander, and now, she was in danger of being thrown in a prison colony for the rest of her natural life.  The amount of funds and equipment stolen was enough to put the guilty party away.  And of course, enough was found in her bank accounts and in her personal storage to make sure that she went away.  Bythe and Islington were nothing if not thorough.

The arrival of the six members of the court martial brought her back to the present.  Tamara stared straight ahead at the Judge’s bench, not allowing her gaze to shift even one millimeter in any other direction.  She could feel the looks that Bythe and Islington were sending her way, as well as the many other stares she was undoubtedly getting from others in the courtroom.  Tamara refused to submit to the crush of emotions.  She would hear the decision and then she would hold her head high, no matter the outcome.

“All rise.”  With a practiced movement, Tamara Samair rose to her feet, smoothed out the edges of her jacket.  Hands at her sides, she resumed her forward-facing stare.

The judge turned to the members.  “Have the members reached a decision?”

A female captain stood.  She was in her middling years, her short hair streaked with gray, but she was still youthful.  However, there was no twinkle of mirth in her eyes as she turned to the judge.  “Yes, Your Honor, we have.”

“Would you please read that for the court?”

The captain opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.  The deck jerked so violently beneath them all that everyone was knocked aside, many lost their footing entirely, sprawling unceremoniously to the deck.  The lights flickered and alarms sounded.  Emergency red lights ignited and the klaxons certainly got everyone’s attention, if being tossed to the floor hadn’t already.

“Battle stations!  Battle stations, all hands, battle stations!” a voice came over the public address system.  “The station is under attack.  All hands, report to battle stations!”

“Court is adjourned,” the Judge declared loudly, picking himself up off the deck.  “All of you, report to your posts!  MPs, detain Commander Samair and return her to the brig.”

Two very large MPs immediately appeared at her sides.  Her face still a ceramic mask, she held out her hands, and a pair of cuffs were attached to her wrists.  “After you, Commander,” one of the men said, gesturing.

Without a word, Samair turned and marched toward the door, aware that both Islington and Bythe were still in the courtroom, pretending to assist others out before they would leave themselves.  They glanced at her as the MPs led her past them, but didn’t say anything, didn’t betray their feelings in this case.

The attack had saved her, but it wouldn’t forever.  Federation forces were attacking the station but the Republic Navy would drive them off.  And when they did, the court martial would resume and the members’ decision would come down.  This was simply a stay of sentencing, not a commutation of sentence.  They knew it.  She knew it.  There was no reason to get angry, not yet.

The cell was familiar; she’d spent the last eleven months here.  Except for a very small locker for her uniforms, a narrow bunk bolted to the wall, a sink and a toilet, the room was bare.  Tamara wasn’t allowed to decorate the walls, but she had no desire to do that anyway.  Other prisoners were contained in the station’s brig, but no one as high profile as a Republic Naval Commander.  She sat on the bunk, still in her dress blues, wincing every so often as the attack on the station continued.  The lights would flicker every so often and the hull and the deckplates would shiver, every time the station took a hit.  Nothing as vicious as the initial hit, clearly the defenders had raised the station’s shields, but each hit was taking a toll.  Not being allowed access to any of the station’s computers, she had no way of knowing what was going on, but that was something she had learned to expect in the last eleven months.

She had been in charge of the station’s engineering teams, as well as supervising officer of the nearby shipyard complex.  Her track through the Republic Navy had been first through the standard Navy track, then up through fighter command flying starfighters, then after a serious crash and a year in the hospital and rehabilitation, she had transferred to the Naval Engineering Corps.  From there, she had worked her way up the ranks, earned her stripes and eventually earned the rank of second in command of the Hudora station.

“Things aren’t going well, Commander,” a voice from the door stated.  She looked up.  Lieutenant Islington stood there, clearly visible through the bars of the cell.  There was a force field in place as well, to prevent any chance of her escaping or to prevent her giving or receiving anything through the bars as well.

Oliver Islington was a thin, rat-faced man, with beady eyes and an insincere smile.  He was unswervingly proper to superior officers, but he was a terror to the enlisted and those of junior rank.  Also, he had the favor of Captain Bythe, the commanding officer of the Hudora station, which meant that few people were willing to try and complain or report any of the infractions that all knew Islington was guilty of.  Also, there was the fact that the lieutenant was very good at blackmail and he knew where a lot of skeletons were buried.

He also despised Tamara Samair.  After she rebuffed his lust-filled advances in her first week here, for which he was guilty of a flagrant violation of regulations, he tried to get her alone in her quarters.  He did, but after his first advance and hearing the scuttlebutt about his prowess and his activities, she set up unauthorized surveillance equipment in her quarters.  Shortly after arrival, where he tried to push things further, she made sure to record everything.  He was bigger and possibly nastier than she was; Tamara wasn’t a brawler, she was an engineer.  She made sure that the footage was broadcast, in real time, to every vid screen, phone, tablet, and other video device on the station.  In thirty seconds flat, security showed up at her quarters to take Islington into custody.  He spent sixty days in the brig on bread and water after that little stunt.  His humiliation had been broadcast for all to see and what was more, someone had stood up to him and won.  Islington couldn’t have that.  It was shortly after his release from the brig that he and Bythe had started their work on bringing her down.

And now they had.  “Glad to see that you’re entertained.  But then, it took both you and the captain to humiliate me, whereas I was able to take you down alone.”

The lieutenant shrugged.  “I did sixty days of confinement and that was it.  It was a slap on the wrist.  You on the other hand, are looking at fifteen years of stockade time at least.”  His grin was vicious.  “Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bitch.”

“That’s Commander to you, worm,” she said, getting to her feet.  “I haven’t been convicted yet.”

“Oh, sorry, Commander,” he said, sarcasm dripping.  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t following regulations.  But I was right, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bitch.”

Tamara sighed.  He was baiting her and she knew it.  A glance through the bars told her that no guards were nearby, which was probably why Islington would risk calling her names, even now.  “Is there something you wanted, Lieutenant?”

“I wanted to see you hang for this,” he admitted.  “Sadly, the Republic doesn’t hang thieves.  Too bad you never killed anyone.  I would have loved to have gotten you for murder.”

“Yes, too bad my lack of killing anyone inconveniences you.”

He shrugged, the smile never leaving his face.  “Oh well.  The knowledge that you’ll be fighting for your life in prison is enough.  I imagine the ladies in there will love being able to have someone like you licking their boots.”  He paused, leering.  “Or other things.”

“Go away, Islington,” she said, sitting down on the bunk.  She leaned back against the bulkhead and closed her eyes.  It wasn’t very comfortable, but it was all that was there.  She had no chairs in the cell and she didn’t feel much like laying down.  “You bore me.”

Without another word, he turned and walked away.  She didn’t look at him, but Tamara knew that he wouldn’t be able to help just one last look back at her, just to try and glimpse one sign of weakness, that her armor had cracked.  Tamara refused to give him the satisfaction.

Four hours later, Tamara knew that something had gone wrong.  Or rather, the right things hadn’t happened.  The deckplates still continued to shiver every so often.  The lights still hadn’t come back to a full, steady illumination.  And after four hours, she was beginning to get concerned.  The system defense forces here were formidable, Hudora was a major shipbuilding facility, after all.  There was a standing force of two battleships, six battle cruisers and more than two dozen support units at any one time.  That was a large allocation of resources and a defense stiff enough to make anyone pause.  If after four hours, the station was still taking hits, and regular ones at that, then that meant that the attacking force was very large and very heavy.

Which Tamara supposed could be a good thing.  Not that she wanted the shipyard to be destroyed, or the fleet elements guarding it, but every second the battle lasted was a second longer before the sentence came down.

A particularly savage hit must have struck the station because the floor rocked, strongly enough to toss her out of her bunk and onto the deck.  There was an electric crackling noise and then, silence.  Tamara looked up from the floor and saw that the force field had dropped.  She sprang to her feet and inspected the door.  The last hit had jarred the door loose, though the lock hadn’t quite popped.  I few good kicks should take care of that.

She could see the line drawn on the ground in front of her now.  An irreversible line drawn that would determine her destiny.  If she crossed it, she would forever be a fugitive, until eventually the Navy caught up with her and brought her back in chains.  Or, she could not cross the line, and end up in chains anyway.  She stood there for a long moment weighing the options.

Then she crossed the line.

Two kicks later, the door had popped open.  It took only a little elbow grease to shove the door open and then she was out in the corridor.  She easily slipped past the guard station; they were gone, off at battle stations.  Grabbing a datapad she saw on the desk, she quickly decoded the lockout and brought up the main screen.  She scrolled through the personal nonsense the guard kept on the datapad.  She erased it and then began her own coding.

Tamara knew she wouldn’t have long, but she wouldn’t need long.  She only needed a few minutes to write a quick program to access her personal database.  A few minutes later, she had it, and uploaded the program to the station’s nearest Wi-Fi node.  An instant later, the program she had written accessed the database, went through the identification and handshake protocols, then her identity confirmed, began streaming files into the datapad.

The datapad didn’t have an infinite amount of memory space, but the programs she had stored in her personal database were mostly compressed data streams anyway.  She wasn’t looking for a particular program, she was getting all of her files which would come in handy later.  Two minutes later, she was hustling down the corridor and out of the cell block.

It didn’t take long to get to a control console.  She’d ditched her uniform for a pair of work coveralls she’d found in an empty locker room.  They fit, sort of, but they were far less conspicuous than her dress blues.  So far, step one was going to plan: get out of the cell and get into the population of the workforce here.

Trust the system.  Ha!  Attorneys and various military officers have been telling me that for the last eleven months.  Look where that’s gotten me.  She activated the console, looking for current status.  I trusted the system and where did it lead me?  Straight into the arms of a guilty verdict.  I was about to lose my commission, my freedom and what remained of my reputation.  No, if I’m going to get free, I have to do it myself.  She tapped a few more commands.  Looking at the information scrolling down the screen, she gasped.

The Federation had apparently decided to step things up.  A full battlegroup had come into the system and was systematically taking it apart.  Five battleships, eight battlecruisers, ten heavy cruisers and a score of light cruisers and destroyers.  The Republic defenders were losing, that much was clear.  Titan, the Republic flagship, had suffered some serious hits, its shields failed, and was bleeding atmosphere from three large breaches in the hull.  Titan was dying and the circling sharks were hammering her hard.  The other Republic ships were taking damage, but giving as good as they got.  Unfortunately, the Federation ships outnumbered the Republic ones and it was taking its toll.

She had to get out of here.  There was nothing here for her now and with the confusion of the battle, this might be the best and only opportunity to get out she might ever see.  She had trusted the system long enough.  Now, she would trust herself and make good her escape.

While she had thought about escape during her months of incarceration, she hadn’t been so brazen as to actually plan an escape.  Now she was kicking herself for the oversight.  She hated having to do things on the fly.  It was one of the reasons she had gotten out of the starfighter corps and into engineering.  As an engineer, everything needed to be planned out.  Oh, certainly, there was a degree of chaos that had to be worked with and around, no plans ever survived contact with the enemy after all.  But things were much less fluid in the engineering corps, much more planned.

Oh, well, she thought.  Nothing for it now.  Okay, I’ve got the files and a change of clothes, but now I need to get out.  And that means heading for one of the hangar bays.

Which was a problem.  Now at battle stations, all sections of the station would be filled with people doing their duties and working at their stations.  The hangar bays, in particular, would be especially alert, looking for fighters to be coming back for refueling and rearming, or shuttles on search and rescue.  However, perhaps she could catch a ride on one of the shuttles heading to one of the big ships, perhaps a cutter or a destroyer.  From there, perhaps she might be able to hide out long enough for the ship to jump to hyperspace.  Though if the battle continued and even if it ended, the ships here most likely would be staying here for repairs and defense of the shipyards.  It was unlikely that any ships would be jumping away.

A problem indeed.  However, the station and the shipyard were not the only places in this system that had ships.  The colony on the fourth planet of the Hudora system, the planet which the shipyards and the station orbited, had no fewer than three spaceports which would have at least a few ships capable of faster-than-light travel.  It was there that Tamara Samair needed to go.  Which meant that the next thing she needed was a shuttle, a pinnace, or some other sort of ship that could get her down to the surface of Hudora Four.

She hustled down the corridors, turning the familiar corners and moving through the comforting passages, some of which were illuminated by steady solid lighting, but in other places were only lit with flickering glowpanels.  The station was continuing to take hits, which caused Tamara to worry slightly.  This battle was going on for far too long, in her opinion.  Men and women were dying on both sides, and precious ships and equipment were being battered and destroyed.  Normally, this would be a welcome thing, damaged ships gave engineers like Tamara and her former team gainful employment.  This of course would put serious crimps into the shipyard build schedules, what with the vessels already under construction here.

It only took a short while longer to reach the closest hangar bay.  So far, the confusion of the battle and her change of clothing had fooled everyone.  Security was much more lax now; engineering teams were apparently being given free reign of the station for damage control duties.  Finding those coveralls might have been the best thing she could have done, she mused.

This was hangar bay twenty-two, one of the civilian bays on the lower section of the station.  The station itself was two hundred levels tall, cylindrical, with administration and other offices on the top sections of the station, merchant/cargo in the middle and engineering and reactor sections at the bottom.  The spidery-looking shipyards were arrayed out around the station, all of which was in a very high orbit of Hudora Four.  This bay, however, was one of the civilian ones, not like the larger military ones on one of the higher levels.  The bay housed three shuttles, one of which was down for repairs, Tamara could see one of the Felser-228 engines in pieces on the deck and grimaced at the reduction in her options.

She supposed she might be able to get that shuttle up and running, simply cutting that downed engine out of the loop entirely, and try to take the vessel out on one engine.  But this was what she would have called a Bad Idea, because a ship like that would draw attention.  And since there wasn’t any real reason why a ship like that would need to be used; the station wasn’t losing atmosphere, yet, a shuttle trying to land on the planet on one engine would draw a lot of notice.  And since she was a very “popular” person in this system because of her arrest and trial, having customs or planetary security particularly alert to her transport probably wouldn’t be smart.

She hustled over to a large coil of fiber optic cable, where she could see a pair of goggles had been abandoned.  Quickly, she pulled them on.  Smiling, she saw a patch of black thermal paint on the deck that had been spilled from an earlier job.  The stuff was terrible on skin, it caused a horrendous rash if not cleaned off, but she decided some mild skin irritation was preferable to getting hauled back to prison.  Casually, she dipped her left hand into the paint, then rubbed some on her ear lobe, and then on her cheek and nose, as though she had accidently wiped her face or scratched an itch and transferred the goop there.  It would alter her looks, hopefully enough to fool anyone looking directly at her.  Wiping her hand on her pant leg, she looked around for an opportunity.

There was a crowd of people walking up the ramp into the second shuttle, the one in the center of the bay.  They looked like dignitaries, judging by the fine clothing and worried expressions.  Apparently, they had overridden standard Navy procedures and commandeered one of the shuttles here to go down to the planet during an alert status.  Normally, procedures called for all shuttles to be locked down until the battle or crisis ended, but it seemed that someone was unable to wait.  Or, rather, someone had the necessary pull to authorize a dangerous shuttle flight back down to the planet.

Which was perfect for Tamara’s needs.  Now, all she needed to do was get aboard that ship.  Which had its own set of problems, since everyone on that shuttle was familiar with her trial and knew her face very well.  The dirty mechanic would have to get on board the shuttle and be inconspicuous for the entire trip down to the planet, then from there Tamara could slip away into the crowd and work out how she was going to get off planet.

She started forward, going to take a roundabout route to the shuttle, and come up the ramp into the shuttle with the flight crew.  A hand grabbed her arm and something hard was shoved into her ribs.  “I don’t think so, bitch,” a hard voice bit into her ear.

Islington.  “Took you long enough,” she said, keeping her voice low.  Her stomach filled with ice.  Bile rose in her throat.  A glance showed a gun in his hands and another quick look at the crowd in front of her showed that no one else had noticed yet.  “I could scream.”

“You could,” he answered, amusement in his voice.  “Then I’d shoot you and say that the gun went off accidently.  A misfire.  And of course you were trying to escape, so I’d be a hero and you’d be dead.”

“Then why aren’t I dead?” she asked, as he started to lead her out of the hangar bay.

“Because I and the Captain have decided we want you dead, but we don’t want the long, drawn out drama of an investigation.  Better that you should be killed in a way that won’t trace back to us.”

That didn’t sound good.  But there was nothing she could do, he wasn’t moving that gun from her and the grip on her arm was like iron.  Tamara was never much of a fighter, she always considered hand to hand combat something the Marines were there for.  Now she was deeply regretting not getting more training.  Well, any training after Basic all those years ago.

They walked out of the hangar down the corridor.  He pulled her into one of the lifts and once the door closed, he released her and gave her a shove to the far side of the lift.  He took a step away as well, putting a good distance between them.

“Where are we going?” she demanded.

He shrugged.  “You’ll see.”

“The suspense is killing me.”

One of his eyebrows shot up.  “That’s an interesting way to put it.  If the captain didn’t have such a good plan, I might oblige that comment.”

The lift came to a halt, and when the doors opened, he gestured with his free hand, the gun never wavering.  “After you.  To the left.”

Tamara sighed.  Stepping out, she started to go left when she felt him right behind her, again, the weapon pressing against her back.  No doubt he was using his body to shield it from view.

They walked for about five minutes down the main corridor, then turned into a more secluded area.  This section, and the room they were now in, was on the outermost edge of the station.  Now she was really starting to get nervous.  There wasn’t an airlock here, but she was sure if Islington really wanted to he could find some way of pitching her out into space.  Freezing to death while all of her extremities burst and her lungs turned inside out wasn’t her idea of a “good death”.  In fact, Tamara didn’t plan on dying anytime soon, despite what Islington had in mind.

He walked her up to the inside of the outer hull, up to a hatch.  Her eyes widened in terror.  No.  No, no, no, no, no.  “An escape pod?” she demanded, whirling around.  “I’m not getting in there.”

“Yes, you are.”  The lieutenant seemed very sure of that.  “You can either get in there on your own.  Or,” he lowered the gun, but still pointed it at her, “I can put a round in your thigh and then you can get in there.”

Her breathing was becoming very shallow.  She did not want to get in that escape pod.  In there, her options would drop to nearly zero and the fact that Islington had brought her here, to this particular escape pod meant he had most likely tampered with it.  Or knew that there was something wrong with it, or a hundred different possibilities.  Her fists were clenching and unclenching and the smile on his face was getting bigger and nastier.

“I will… not… get in that escape pod,” she repeated, her voice shaking.

His smile didn’t move one inch.  The gun fired.  It felt as though someone had slugged her hard in the left leg with a length of steel pipe.  The feeling of a red hot poker stabbed into her thigh, just above the knee.  The bullet punched through and out the back of her leg.  Tamara screamed and collapsed to the deck, clutching her leg.  “You bastard!” she shrieked.

“I did warn you,” he replied.  He tossed her his belt.  “Tie this around the wound like a tourniquet.  It’s not going to take long before you bleed out.”  Gasping, she stuffed a rag on each side of the wound, then put the belt around the wound and pulled it tight, cinching it up.  Blood had pumped from the wound, but it had slowed considerably once she put on the belt.  “Now, get up off your whining ass and get inside the pod.”

Breathing hard, sweat pouring down her face, she pulled herself along the deck to the hatch.  Pulling herself to her feet, she grabbed the handle on the hatch.  Pressing the appropriate controls, the hatch hissed and then popped open, swinging on well-oiled hinges.  The inside of the pod looked clean, well-maintained.  It was designed to hold six people, three on a side like in some passenger cars on liner ships.  She knew that a standard pod had enough foodstuffs on board for six people for a month, medical supplies, a toolkit, duct tape, and a distress beacon which would automatically activate once the pod was launched so that rescue forces could locate the occupants.  The pod was also equipped with hibernation equipment, to put the occupants in survival sleep for months, and sometimes years if rescue was known to be a long way off.

She turned to look back at the lieutenant.  The gun was pointed at her, unwavering.  He was apparently unconcerned about the noise the gun made when fired.  “Get inside, bitch,” he said.

Tamara started to climb inside the pod when he shoved her in, hard.  She stumbled over the knee knocker and crashed into the cushions inside, her leg exploded in pain.  She lay on the bottom of the pod, her back against the small window on the far side from the hatch.  Her breath came in small gasps, she could feel herself losing consciousness.

She looked up to see Islington pointing the gun in the pod, though not at Tamara directly.  “No, no, no!” she shouted.  An instant later, he started firing.  Bullets hit the inside of the pod, ricocheting off the inner panels, off the electronics, missing Tamara by inches in some cases.  She curled into a ball, screaming in terror.  Her eyes were squeezed shut, and eventually the fusillade of bullets ended.  Miraculously, none of the shots had hit her, but the inside of the pod was wrecked.  Fortunately, it didn’t look as though the hull of the pod was compromised, though that was a very close thing.   But the internals were shot, literally, in this case, but most of the panels were dark.

The hatch swung closed and sealed.  A few seconds later, there was a loud clunk of the magclamps disengaging and then the heavy press of the pod’s thrusters burning, as the pod shot away from the station at maximum speed.

Her head was swimming and the acceleration of the pod wasn’t helping the nausea.  Pulling herself over to the back of the pod, fighting the pressure of the inertia, she pulled down the medkit from where it was velcroed to the bulkhead.  Popping the small kit open, she saw a number of vials of Combat Heal, a nanite solution with a cocktail of drugs used for fast recovery from injuries on the battlefield.  Taking one, she pressed the injector into her injured thigh, above the injury.  It stung, but she could immediately feel the pain ease.  It would take a few hours for it to truly kick in and start repairs, but now she could think clearly.  Undoing the belt, she cleaned the wound with a bottle from the medkit and then put patches over them.  It would keep them from bleeding while the Combat Heal did its job.

Grabbing the toolkit from another small compartment, she started to take a look the damage.  As she’d feared, the electronics were damaged and in some cases blown out completely.  Taking a USB cable from the kit, she attached her data pad and opened up one of the command files she had uploaded from her personal database.  The computers on the pod were not great, they were only really meant for life support and maintaining the distress beacon, but they didn’t need to be.  They were sophisticated enough for Tamara’s program to decompress and run.

The program worked quickly, which was no surprise.  After about ten minutes, the functions began to come back online, rerouting around the damage or blown out systems.  She checked the status feeds on her datapad screen.  Life support was operating, but only at 8%.  At that rate, she would be out of air and heat within two days.  The beacon, however, was completely blown out.  It would take a lot of work on the hardware to get that back up, but there was no guarantee the circuit boards weren’t completely shot.  If that was the case, she might be able to jury rig something, but it would be crude and without any backups.  About the only thing that was still working properly was the hibernation system, but she shied away from that.  Tamara had no desire to go so sleep for who knew how long.

She looked out the window.  Off in the distance, she could see the main drives of the various ships.  They were far too distant to make out their shapes, much less watch maneuvers, but she could still see some of the light show.  Tiny pinpricks of light swung around in various directions, formations and colors moving in and out of each other, with bright flashes occurring when damage was taken.  Missiles and turbolasers lanced back and forth between ships, but it looked like little more than light show from the window of the pod.  It gave her something to relax her eyes on when staring at electronics started to make her eyes cross.

Turning back to the damaged circuitry, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

Two days of toil hadn’t produced much.  She had repaired the beacon, mostly, but it was still a delicate thing.  It would only function for a few hours before the control relays burned out for good, and once it was activated, it would broadcast continuously and couldn’t be turned off without destroying it.  But the life support systems were another matter entirely.  The carbon-dioxide levels were rising, the scrubbers were nearing max impedance and were about to fail.  Tamara could already feel the beginnings of hypoxia, a headache that wouldn’t go away along with the light-headedness and fatigue.  She knew these symptoms would only get worse as the deadline approached, as she suffered from increased carbon-dioxide poisoning and decrease in oxygen levels.

There was little more she could do.  From what she could see out the porthole, the battle had not diminished in the last two days.  If anything, it had increased in intensity.  She had counted the arrival of the lights of no fewer than eight new drive signatures in the last few hours.  The light show had increased as more weapons fire was exchanged between Federation and Republic warships.  The pod’s porthole was pointed away from Hudora Station as its engines had accelerated the pod away, so she couldn’t see if the station had taken any damage, though after two days of fighting, she had to assume that the station was no longer intact.  Her trajectory was pointed away from the fighting, above the plane of the ecliptic, so she was heading out on a constant velocity away from the station.  It might be best to just light it up now before she was lost for good.

Pressing the activation key, her datapad indicated that all was working well, that the beacon was transmitting on the emergency frequency.  There was nothing to do now but wait and hope.

Several hours later, Tamara drifted back into consciousness.  A red alert light was blinking and her datapad was screeching warnings about dangerous carbon dioxide toxicity levels.  Her head was a mass of pain, throbbing with every heartbeat, but she was too tired to even move.  The air was frigid, but her impaired mind couldn’t recognize that it was because the life support was on the brink of failure.  It was getting more difficult to keep her eyes open.

As her eyes closed for the last time, she saw an automatic update scroll across the screen as the hibernation system activated.

Her eyelids slid shut and she knew nothing more.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Book 1 – The Unknown

Chapter 1

Consciousness slowly returned, though it took a long time for her brain to remember how things worked.  Her eyes slowly opened, her vision was blurred, several minutes passed before she could see clearly.  She took a long, slow breath.  The air was stuffy, apparently the carbon dioxide situation hadn’t improved much.  She still had a whopper of a headache, and her limbs were extremely heavy.  Tamara started to move when a burst of unimaginable cold rushed through every nerve ending in her body.  It was as though she had been dropped into a bath with a water temperature just above where the water would be completely frozen through.  She could move, but not well.  She tried to scream, but her muscles contracted faster than her control, meaning that the air just sort of wheezed out of her.

Several long moments later, Tamara unfroze enough to relax and lay back down.  She swiveled her eyeballs to the left, where her datapad still lay.  The screen was off, but that didn’t surprise her.  Once the pod activated the hibernation systems, all other electronics and other unnecessary systems would switch off to conserve power.  It took what seemed like an eternity, filled with that same electric freeze where she had to move extremely slowly to reach the datapad.  After an excruciatingly long time, she managed to press the activation key.  As the pad activated and a pre-programmed subroutine spun up, she reached over to where the medkit was still located on the seat next to her.  Grabbing an injector with the proper wake-up call meds, she managed to get it to her leg and depress the activator.  Within moments, the deep freeze began to thaw and she could finally move without her body acting as though it was fighting through frozen water.  As regular muscle control returned, she also noticed that her leg had completely healed.  The Combat Heal did work wonders.

Picking up the datapad, she checked her situation.  Things weren’t good.  Life support was just about used up, and as she suspected, CO2 levels were very high.  This pod would be unlivable in under two hours.  Islington would have his revenge soon.

She coughed.  “What do we have here?”  The proximity sensors activated, showing on her datapad.  The sensors weren’t great, it was an escape pod, after all, not a warship.  It wasn’t required to have the greatest sensor suite, just to be able to determine if a ship was approaching.

Tamara blinked several times, trying to clear her vision.  It did clear, sort of.  The sensors had detected a large sized vessel approaching, a cargo ship of some sort.  She couldn’t tell if it was a military or civilian vessel, but that hardly mattered at this point.  If it was a Republic vessel, she’d be tossed in prison.  If it was a Federation vessel, maybe some sort of deal could be made.  It was also possible it was from an independent star system, in which case, she might be all right.

The pod jerked, the sensors indicated that the ship had locked its tractoring beams onto it and was reeling it in.  Wouldn’t be long now.

Within minutes, the pod was inside the ship’s cargo bay and after a heavy bump, the pod set down on the deck.  Not waiting for someone to come to the hatch, for it could be hours before someone came down to check out their score, Tamara unhooked her datapad, grabbed the toolkit and then hit the hatch release sequence.  With a hiss, the hatch swung open.  Scrambling forward, she dove headfirst out of the pod and onto the deck of the cargo bay.  Gasping, she breathed in the air as fast as her lungs could fill.

The air quality wasn’t great, but it was by far a better gulp of air than in the pod.  The bay smelled like industrial trash, engine oil and strangely, onions.  Looking around, she saw an assortment of items stored in here.  Barrels of coolant, fuel cells, and containers of other cargo that wasn’t labeled that she could see among other things were stacked haphazardly around the bay.  Tamara was surprised that there was enough room in here for the pod, but it appeared as though an area had been cleared at the end of the bay, right by the cargo doors.

Picking herself up, she looked at her hands, which were now covered in grime.  She sighed in disgust and wiped her hands on her coveralls.  She also noticed that the thermal paint was mostly gone from her hand.  The Combat Heal wouldn’t have done that.  Neither would a short few months in hibernation.  Reaching with her right hand, she touched her face where the paint had been.  The rash had cleared up, but she could feel a roughness on her chin, her lips, and her cheeks where she had wiped the paint.  She took a deep, slow breath, trying to keep the frustration down.  Her face was all scarred, chemically burned by the paint.  The rash left behind from the paint, if left untreated, could make someone look as though they had a bad case of pox.  The paint, if left on the skin, could burn through and cause serious, permanent damage.

It was the hibernation sleep, she realized.  The paint might have burned completely through her skin if left on her skin for that long.  But the deep freeze had disintegrated the paint before it could do too much damage.  Now, she just had some impressive burn scars on her hand and face and ear, but it was nothing a splash in a regeneration tank couldn’t fix.  She’d just need to get her hands on one.  On the upside, her face certainly wouldn’t match her Republic Navy dossier anymore.  At least until she could get things fixed on some planet very far from Hudora.

Moving through the stacks of cargo, and trying to stay out of a few puddles of foul-smelling goop on the deck, she headed for the nearest control panel she could find.  Taking her datapad, she jacked it into the port and began a quick search to find out what she could about the ship, the owners, their special grid coordinates, the date, everything.

She was rewarded by an alert on the datapad as numerous viruses moved to attack her software.  Tamara shook her head.  “Are you kidding me?  Is this deliberate?” she muttered.  It wasn’t.  The computers’ firewalls were down and the system was infected with dozens of nasty viruses.  Grumbling to herself, she tapped a few commands on her pad, releasing a few antivirus programs of her own devising which went to work on the infections.  It would take a little while, considering how many viruses there were.  Maybe the ship operators would thank her once her programs were finished cleaning out their systems.

Of course, she was cleaning them out in other ways, too.  Data started flowing to the screen on her pad.  The ship was the Grania Estelle, a four-hundred thousand ton bulk cargo hauler out of the Destri-Juno Star System, a system about two hundred light years from Hudora.  However, it looked as though it was currently in the hands of private owners and no longer under contract with Destri-Juno.  Also, it looked as though the ship was at the far edge of the Hudora system near the hyper limit, about ten light hours above the plane of the ecliptic.

That made her frown.  The pod’s thrusters had accelerated her away from the station for about six seconds until the thrusters were empty.  From there, she was on a ballistic course until the Grania Estelle picked her up.  Going that far, she would have been floating free for… she blanched as the implications hit home.  That couldn’t be.

Two hundred forty-eight years.  Everything she would have known was gone.  All her family, her friends, her co-workers, subordinates, fellow Navy folk, all gone.  Her knees buckled for an instant but she managed to keep her feet.  Her breath was moving in and out so fast, her vision started to swim.  It was the smell of the cargo bay that brought her back to herself.

Shaking her head to clear it, she looked back to her datapad.  The operating system on this ship was a mess.  Regular maintenance clearly wasn’t a priority, but then, it usually wasn’t for big freight haulers.  Maintenance costs money and sitting around in a repair slip getting a tune up would be burning money even more quickly.  It looked as though the ship was even older than Tamara was, now, and a lot of systems were on the ragged edge.  This ship needed a serious overhaul and soon.  She could feel herself getting excited about the prospect, finally a challenge worth sinking her teeth into.  After eleven months in the brig and another two and a half centuries in an escape pod drifting through space, this was something she could work on, something real.

That of course, presupposed the crew of this ship were willing to talk, willing to work with her.  They’d picked her up, yes, but hopefully they weren’t slavers or other such… unsavory people.  Of course, it was highly likely they were exactly what she feared they’d be, and she was unarmed and didn’t really know the lay of the land here on this ship.

On that note, she pulled up a full schematic of the ship.  She was big, which Tamara already knew, but it looked like three of the eight gigantic cargo bays were unused due to damage.  The ship was a kilometer long, with the living spaces, recreation areas, and engineering and bridge sections all along the central shaft of the ship.  Eight very large cylindrical cargo bays were arrayed on either side of the central section; they were easily over two hundred meters in diameter and extended about two thirds of the length of the ship along the spine.  Further aft of the main section were giant fuel cells connected by trusses that led to the ship’s main sublight drives.  Two hyperdrive engines were mounted by the main drives, one above and one below the sublight engines.  The ship had a crew of eighty-four, but the actual roster of crew and their various jobs wasn’t on the main net.  Apparently, the ship’s shields were a joke and what few emitters did function were nearing failure, four of the six main sublight engines were down, meaning the ship was incredibly slow even by a lumbering bulk freighter’s standards.  And life support was functioning, obviously, but based on the smell many of the components needed serious overhaul, or better yet, replacement.

One piece of good news.  On her travails through the database, she discovered that this ship was equipped, at one time anyway, with a pair of class three industrial replicators.  Apparently, one of them had been out of commission for about half a century, but the other still functioned, partially, since the crew jury rigged it to produce only basic components.  Class threes could build quite a number of things, but required certain security codes to make things like weapons, military-grade items like hyperdrives, shields, computers and other replicators.  Republic and Federation replicators worked under the same principles, as neither of the large governments wanted civilians or criminal elements to have access to those sorts of things.  Without the codes, one still had access to civilian grade equipment, which, naturally, wasn’t as hardy.  If you tried to hack the system, the replicators would lock down, and if you tried to bypass the lockouts without those codes, the control systems and computers that ran the replicator would wipe and all the computer chips would self-destruct.  No danger to the foolish operator who tried to make something from the restricted list, but the chips would melt.  Then the constructor system, which was a storage tank of engineering nanites, would for all intents and purposes consume itself, leaving nothing but an empty tank.  Once a replicator was destroyed like that, there was nothing to do but pull it out and build another.  It would be completely gone.

Sadly, the database didn’t indicate the state of the second replicator or why it was down, but that was something she would need to discover.  Perhaps she could barter her skills and the use of her security codes for a ride somewhere.  However, she couldn’t risk the crew finding her as she was; unarmed, disoriented and alone.  There wasn’t anything she could do about the alone part, and she wasn’t sure she could do much about the unarmed part either.  She was a decent shot; it was a requirement in the Navy, especially for those in the starfighter squadrons.  She’d kept up her shooting skills, more of a way to blow off steam than any desire to put a bullet in someone.  But from what she’d seen of this cargo bay, there weren’t any guns laying around.

There were always opportunities, she was an engineer, after all, but according to the very spotty internal sensors, it seemed as though she would only have a minute or two before a pair of crew came in to inspect their prize.  Rushing from the console, she raced around the bay, looking for anything that could be used as a weapon.  Finding a meter long steel pipe, which had about a two-centimeter wide diameter, she grabbed it up.  An improvised club wouldn’t match up against a pistol or stun rifle, but it might have to do.  She didn’t have time for anything else and the crew had very unhelpfully left their gun cabinet in another part of the ship.

The cargo bay door slid open, she could hear it rumbling on squeaky gears and she winced.  Clearly, something else that needed fixing.  She could hear two male voices speaking gruffly to one another.

“So why are we down here again?” one asked.

“Because the Captain wants us to check out the pod we picked up,” the other voice replied.  The second voice had a bit of hissing and clicking that accompanied it.  “You’re not that dumb, Ygris.  Not usually anyway.”

“What’s that smell?” the first voice, Ygris, apparently, asked.

“It’s the pod,” the hiss-click voice replied.  “Maybe it opened.  Maybe there’s a dead body inside.”

“Uck, really?  I don’t wanna be dealing with no dead body.”

“You think I do?” Hiss-click shot back.  “I don’t get paid enough for this.”

Tamara padded around the stacks, trying to keep out of sight, though at the same time she was looking to try and see these crewmembers.  She peered around a pile of crates, trying to keep as much out of sight as possible.

She needn’t have worried.  The two crew were already past when she looked around the corner, so she couldn’t see their faces.  Still, she could see enough.  Both were wearing stained and patched blue shipsuits.  The first voice, the one named Ygris, belonged to a man, tall, with a barrel chest and thick, powerful arms.  He was balding and his pale skin was very pale, indicating that he probably didn’t leave the ship very often.  There were no balconies to sun oneself on a cargo freighter.

The other was bipedal, but he wasn’t human.  He was a zheen, an insectoid race.  Instead of skin, he was covered with a shiny purplish exoskeleton.  His head was a flattened spheroid, with a pair of large compound eyes on the sides.  His hands were three-fingered, each with a wicked talon at the end.  Zheen could gain sustenance by eating, as humans did, by putting food in their mouths, but they could also ingest nutrients through a retractable proboscis in the palm of each hand.  It made most humans very nervous to shake a zheen’s hand.  The hissing and clicking was caused by his mouth parts moving as he spoke.  Most zheen could speak Basic, but more than a few required a translation implant to speak to their human companions.  Tamara had such an implant (as well as a few others), it was a tiny device surgically implanted in the base of her throat that allowed her to speak a variety of languages.  Completely subcutaneous and unless she was using it, most of the time she even forgot it was there.  Perhaps this zheen had one too, but he apparently wasn’t using it.

“Wow,” the zheen said, checking the escape pod.  There was a buzzing sound which Tamara realized was the zheen equivalent of a low whistle.  “Look at this baby.  The pods we make nowadays aren’t up to this kind of quality.”  Glancing around it, he saw the open hatch.  The zheen recoiled slightly.  “Stinks in there.  Air quality is really bad.”

“Guess they didn’t always make things better years ago,” Ygris sneered.

“No, moron,” the zheen replied.  “It looks like this was damaged from the inside.  Looks like someone shot it up then launched it.  But this is weird.  The sensors said the pod was sealed and now it’s open.”

“Someone in there?” Ygris asked, his head cocked slightly to the side.

“Not that I’ve seen.”  The zheen’s antennae on top of his head were whirling crazily.  “But I can smell another human.  Was in the pod, scent’s still fresh which means she’s probably still in the cargo bay.”

“How do you know she’s still in here?”

“Because,” the zheen said, “we didn’t pass anyone in the corridor and the scent is still very fresh, only a few minutes old.  Whoever was in the pod is still in the bay.”  The zheen turned around.  Tamara could see him.  She had worked with zheen before, had been friends with a few.  She wasn’t particularly attracted to them, but she could tell that this one was handsome, by his standards.  His chitinous exoskeleton was glossy, had a deep purple color and very symmetrical features.  His eyes were a lovely amber color, something that would make the females of his species go crazy for him.  “Come out, come out!” he called.

Tamara sighed.  These two seemed decent enough.  She saw Ygris turn to try and spot the person his partner had detected.  Neither were armed, though she knew that both of them could easily outmatch her in a strength contest.  But there really was nowhere to run on this ship and she would need their help.  Perhaps they could come up with an arrangement.  She stepped out from behind the crates.  “I’m here.”

“Stowaway!” Ygris yelled, crouching down slightly into a fighting stance, his big hands clenching into fists.  He whirled toward the sound of her voice.  The zheen spun quickly, a holdout pistol aimed right at her.  Tamara blinked, she hadn’t seen any holster for it.  Maybe he kept it up his sleeve.

“I’m not a stowaway,” she said, keeping her hands up, though one hand held her datapad.  A subroutine was booted up, ready at the push of a button to cut the lights in the bay.  Her thumb was right over the button.  “I was in the escape pod.  I want to thank you for getting me out of there.”

“Liar,” the big man growled.

She scowled at him.  “Really?  You’re really that dumb?  You didn’t have a stowaway before, you pick up a derelict pod and now suddenly there’s a new person on board?  Think.”  Tamara didn’t usually use that tone with people, especially when she needed their help, but after the months of tension, the fear and disorientation of the long hibernation had dropped her patience to about nothing.  She looked to the zheen.  “My name is Tamara Samair.  I was in that pod.  I’d like to speak with your Captain.  I want to try and make a deal.”

“What do we do, Ka’Xarian?” the big man asked, his gaze shifting between Tamara and the zheen.

The zheen chittered in annoyance.  “I’ll watch her.  You get on the line and call the Captain.  Tell him what’s going on.  And then get back down here.”

Ygris looked at the other male.  “You sure?”

“Go.  I’ve got her.”  And without another word, the big man lumbered off, pulling a communicator from his pocket.  He pressed a few buttons but apparently the communicator was broken, so he trudged through the cargo stacks for the comm panel on the wall near the main entrance.

“So, Tamara Ssahmair,” Ka’Xarian said, his voice hissing on the first syllable of her last name.  “That pod is Republic design.”

Her lips twisted wryly.  “You know your escape pods.”

“I know lots of things.  I’m the assistant Chief Engineer.”  There was a touch of pride in his voice.

“A proper job,” she said, nodding.  “Though judging by the state of this cargo bay and what I saw in your computer systems, you could use some help.”

One of Ka’Xarian’s antennae twitched, the zheen equivalent of a raised eyebrow.  “You hacked my computer systems?”

Now it was Tamara’s turn to raise an eyebrow.  “Your computers?  I would have thought on a merchant vessel like this that it would be the Captain’s computers.”

Ka’Xarian emitted a stuttered hiss, the zheen equivalent of a laugh.  “You amuse me, Ssahmair.”  He lowered the weapon.  “You say you wanted to make a deal?  What kind of deal?”

“One question first.  The replicators you have on board, are they of Republic or Federation design?”

He looked at her, his antennae straightening and then flattening in confusion.  “What does that matter?”

“It matters because if they are Republic, I might be able to help get this ship in better condition.”

“Why would that matter?” he repeated, his voice was suspicious.

She sighed.  “I think that’s something that would be better if I discussed with the Captain.”  She didn’t want to let it get around that she had the replicator codes.  “But let’s just say that I have a way with machines.  And from what I see, this ship needs a lot of help.”

“And what would you get in return?”

“I’d want free passage, room and board, and to get dropped off at a planet of my choosing, though I’d be willing to pick a place on your regular route.  I assume you’re not going to planets well off the hyperspace lanes?”

Ka’Xarian shook his head.  “A couple, but for the most part, we tend to stick to the well-traveled routes.  Keep away from the Republic or Federation patrols when we can.”

“Running contraband?” she was amused.

Ka’Xarian chittered.  “Profit is everywhere.  We can’t be choosy about where it comes from, not in these hard times.”

“Hard times?” Tamara demanded.  “We’re in Republic space.  I can’t imagine that you need to be running illegal cargoes just to try and make a few extra credits.”

Now it was the zheen’s turn to look surprised.  “Republic space?  Little girl, this hasn’t been Republic space in over two hundred years.  Since the war.  This is all independent space now.”

She went pale.  “What about Hudora?  The shipyards?  The fleet base?”  It can’t all be gone.

Ka’Xarian sighed.  “The colony and the fleet base were destroyed in the opening battles.  Then, when things continued to go bad, the Federation launched asteroids down at the planet.  The cities and the bases were completely obliterated.  The dust cloud that was kicked up completely enveloped the planet.  Only about five hundred people got off the planet.  But when ships left the atmosphere, the Federation ships there just shot them all out of orbit before they could escape.  They blew apart the station, the shipyards, and all the Republic ships there.  The Republic retaliated at Holdred, Tetria and Solange, and then the Federation blew apart Uni-Sahn and Jovia.  It went on for years.  I think a total of forty or so planets were devastated on both sides.  The Federation and the Republic both still exist, but they’re only shadows of what they once were.  A lot of planets went independent after that.”

Her legs gave out.  It was too much.  All of it… gone?  It couldn’t be gone.  And while she was never a fan of the Federation, they were never known for such extreme actions.  And the Republic too?  What had happened?  How did all of this happen?  And I missed it all.  I could have been there, I might have been able to do something.

And then it came to her.  Do what?  You were twenty seconds away from getting convicted for theft and smuggling, looking at a prison sentence.  If Islington hadn’t put you in that pod, you’d have been in the penitentiary and would have been no good to anyone.

“You all right?” Ka’Xarian asked.  It was hard to tell if he was concerned about her well-being; he wasn’t human after all.

Tamara breathed heavily for a few moments, but nodded.  She didn’t want him touching her.  It wasn’t a species thing, she just wasn’t in the right headspace now.  As she was getting to her feet, Ygris returned with two others, a man and a woman.  Both of them were heavily muscled, both were armed with heavy duty pulsers.  And both of the weapons were pointed straight at Tamara.  “On your feet, stowaway,” Ygris growled.

“You just don’t understand the term ‘stowaway’, do you?” Tamara whispered, as the security officers snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists.  After so long without them, it almost seemed a comfort to have a pair on again.  Ygris growled at her, but she ignored him.

Ka’Xarian watched them lead her away, a strange look on his insectoid face.

The guards were far less cordial than the ones back on Hudora Station.  Each had a hand around her upper arm and they were frog-marching her through the corridors of the ship.  And she had been right, this ship was a mess.  Lighting panels were flickering or simply out, wires and cables hung from the ceiling, conduits were showing scorch marks from pinhole leaks or in some cases full on breaches.  The crew and the corridors were dirty, the clothes they wore were mismatched and threadbare.  The ship has replicators.  How could things have gotten this bad?

Eventually they arrived at the Captain’s cabin.  After being let in, they dumped Tamara unceremoniously into a seat across from his desk.  The cabin was tiny, as was expected on a space ship even a freighter this large.  But, there was more square cubage here than in an Admiral’s cabin on a warship, but then, all things were relative.

The Captain was human, male, probably in his early fifties, judging by the gray in his hair and beard.  His skin was a dusky brown, but his eyes were what caught her attention, they were very bright and alert.  He looked like a very hard man, forced to make difficult choices to preserve his ship, crew and perhaps even his own life.  He certainly didn’t look happy to see her.

“Well, so this is our stowaway,” he said, in his deep, gravelly voice.  It might have been pleasant to listen to under other circumstances.

Tamara sighed.  “Why do people keep saying that?  I’m not a stowaway.  I was in the escape pod that you picked up.”

He chuckled.  “Speak when spoken to, girl.”  His eyes took her all in.  “You’re pretty enough.  Trim, pale, athletic.  Hair could be a bit longer, but I like brunettes.  Though it looks like you’ve had a bad time of it with all those scars on the face.”

She felt herself flush, as though she was being scrutinized for a modeling job.  “You could say that.  I needed a disguise, so I figured some class-220 thermal paint across my face might hide my looks.”

The captain grimaced.  “I’d say it worked a bit too well, girl.”

“Well, I was in a hurry, and I got interrupted before I could get to my vanity and get cleaned up.”

“Ha!” The captain roared with laughter.  “Oh, I like you girl.  You’ve got… moxie.”

Tamara’s eyebrow raised.  “Moxie?  I’ve never been accused of having that before.”

“That’s what I’m going to call you.  Moxie.”

She sighed.  It was better than some of the nicknames she’d been called in the last eleven months.  Or rather, two hundred forty-eight years and eleven months.  “Fine, I guess I’m Moxie.  I’d like to talk with you about an arrangement between the two of us.”

The captain frowned.  “Listen, Moxie.  Like I said, I like you.  But I don’t do scars.  They’re sexy on men, but not so much on women.”

She gave him a baleful look.  “Not that kind of an arrangement.  I was thinking more about fixing up the Grania Estelle.”

Now she had his attention.  “If you’re not a stowaway, how do you know anything about my ship?”

“I got into the computer systems before your boys found me.  I noticed that your operating systems are infested with viruses, and everything in there could use some cleaning and updates.  Hell, two and a half centuries ago the computer software systems on a ship like this would have been better.”

“Sorry we disappoint you,” he replied sourly.

“I’m not saying it to be insulting,” she told him, smiling a bit to try and take out the sting of her words.  “It’s the truth.  I also uploaded a dozen or so virus cleansers into your systems.  Call the bridge.  Ask them if the computer systems are suddenly and inexplicably running faster and smoother.  I’ll wait.”

The captain looked at her for a long moment.  Then he pulled a cylindrical comlink out of his pocket and thumbed it on.  “Bridge, this is the Captain.  Status report please.”

There was a pause.  “Things look good, Cap.  We’re moving away from the ecliptic, readying for hyper.”

“How are the systems working?  Any problems?”

The person sounded puzzled.  “No, Cap.  Things are looking good.  The computers are actually behaving for once.  I’ll have an update for you in about twenty minutes, but things look to be going smoothly for a change.”

“Thanks.  I’ll be up on the bridge in a bit.  Have that update ready for me.”

“Will do, Boss.”

He shut off the comlink and stuffed it back into his pocket.  “How did you do that?”

“I told you, I got into the systems.”

“Yes, Moxie, you did say that.  But how was the word I used.”

She sighed.  “I’m an engineer.  I was chief engineering officer aboard the Hudora Shipyards, before I got stuck in an escape pod for two and a half centuries.”

The captain leaned back in his chair.  He studied her intently this time.  This time, Tamara felt as though he was going over her with a microscope, looking at her in the most intimate way possible, though she had the sensation that it had nothing to do with sex.  Finally, he spoke.  “All right.  I’m willing to see what you can do.  In fact,” he said, brightening.  “I think I have a way to test it.”

Uh oh.  “Test?  You wouldn’t want me fixing things on the ship?”

He shook his head, a smile on his face.  “I don’t want you touching any more of the ship’s systems.  Not yet.  You pass my test, I’ll consider it.”

She took a deep breath.  What would he ask?  “All right?  What’s your test?”

He stood up.  “Get up.  Come with me.”

He led her to one of the other cargo bays, it was the same size as the first one, but whereas the first was stacked with barrels and crates, this was filled with… well… junk.  “A junk pile?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied, turning back to her.  “Take those off.”  She stiffened.  He nodded to the guards.  One of whom moved over to Tamara and removed the cuffs.  He laughed as she almost sagged in relief.  “You thought I meant you?  To remove your clothing?”

Her cheeks flamed in embarrassment.  “Glad to see I was wrong.”

He shook a finger at her.  “Never assume.  But in this case you’re right.  I’m far more interested in your alleged abilities than your body.”  He gestured toward one corner of the massive bay.  The junk piles were stacked haphazardly everywhere, but in that corner, there was one pile that was covered by an oil-stained tarp.  “That there, under the tarp, is your test.”

She threaded through the piles, though she made careful note of the various items here.  There was no real organization, but most of it was engine and hydraulics parts for starfighters, shuttles, and larger ships, like freighters and even a corvette or two.  A lot of it might be salvageable, though it would definitely require some TLC.  If nothing else, the parts could be fed into the replicators for raw materials to make new parts and equipment.  Making her way to the tarp, she lifted it, seeing the nose of a small vessel beneath.  Gently but firmly, she pulled the tarp free, then whistled in approval.

“You know what it is?” the captain asked.

Tamara smiled.  “It’s a thing of beauty,” she gushed.  “That is a Perdition class strike fighter.  They were just being put into service back in my time.  That is a beautiful and nasty ship.”

“It’s a pile of junk,” the captain corrected.  “Right now, it’s taking up space in my cargo bay.  But, if you can fix it up, we’ll talk about your situation.”

“Fine by me,” she replied.  “So long as I get to fly her once she’s ready.”

He laughed, throwing his head back in pure joy.  “Oh, I like you, Moxie!  I haven’t smiled this much in a long while.  How about this?  You fix up that little ship, and I like what I see, I’ll sell it to you at cost.  You and I will then talk about you working off the cost by fixing up my Grania Estelle.”

She turned and looked at him.  “That sounds good.  I’ll get the ship,” she looked up and around to indicate the freighter, “running at much better than this.”  She spit on the palm of her hand and held it out to him.  “Deal?”

“Ha!  Deal!”  He spit in his own hand and they smacked the palms together, sealing the deal.

“I will need a few things.  First of which, I need to take a look at your replicators.  I think I might be able to get them running properly, and then I can get things moving.”

“I’ll leave you to it.  Is there anything else you need?”

She paused.  “Ka’Xarian.  Is he any good as an engineer?”

He looked puzzled.  “He’s the assistant chief.  Of course he’s good.  As good as I can afford, anyway.  Why?”

“I’d like to enlist his help if I can.”

He sighed dramatically.  “I’ve lost my luster already and to a zheen no less!”  He threw up his hands in mock disgust, but those bright lavender eyes twinkled.  “Fine!  If you can pry him loose from his precious engines, you can have him!”

Ten minutes later, she was standing in front of the dead replicator with Ka’Xarian right next to her.  The two guards stayed as well, though they were well back and out of the way.  It was large, about two meters high and about a meter wide, the front side which had a pair of doors.  One was meant for raw materials, which would be fed in and broken down to the molecular level by the internal nanomachines, which would then reassemble those materials into useful components, which would be removed through the second compartment door.  Parts could be made in single units, or in gross lots depending on the size of the items, all that mattered was the amount of raw materials.  This replicator, however, had clearly seen better days.  But, armed with her datapad she stepped forward to access the systems.  Tamara plugged it into the USB port and the datapad began its song and dance.

“You really think you can fix this thing?” Ka’Xarian asked, skeptically.  “It hasn’t worked in half a century.”

“All the more reason to try to get it working now.  You’re already using the other one, though I intend to fix that one too.”

The zheen blinked.  “You do?  But we’re already using it, like you said.  It meets our needs.”

She looked up at him from her datapad.  “’It meets your needs?’  That’s the best you can do?  At full operational capability, that replicator can build any parts you need, not just nuts, bolts and conduit casings.”  The datapad beeped.  “Well that’s unfortunate.”

“What is?”

“Someone apparently decided to try and make restricted technology without the proper codes.  The replicator automatically locked down.  Thankfully, the chips didn’t melt.”

“They melt?” Ka’Xarian looked worried.

“If you try to bypass the lockouts, the replicator self-destructs.  Luckily, whoever did this was smart enough to stop when they did.  Now, it’s just a matter of entering my codes and updating the software.  Then we’ll have to go through and refurbish this baby.  It’s been neglected for almost a century.  I’m impressed at how well you’ve managed to keep the ship going, even with such limited support facilities.”

“Now you’re just being insulting.”  Ka’Xarian leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his upper thorax.  His tone was light, though, indicating he wasn’t really insulted.  “What are you doing?”

What she was doing was pressing her thumb to the right side data jack.  She didn’t have the serious cybernetics that some did; she couldn’t morph her fingers or hands, she couldn’t jump sixty feet into the air with enhanced musculature or robotic limbs.  What she did have was a standard military implant package which gave her the ability to access computer systems, run scans on nearby objects, among other things.  Implants were handy to have, though she had found that some people relied on them too much.  She wondered how many people in this time had implants.  None of the crew she’d met so far did.

Shoving that thought aside, she concentrated on her task.  “Good, it’s only in lockdown.  I was afraid that the idiot who did this had actually tried to force the replicator after it locked.  Just be another minute.”  Her implants also included optical enhancements, as well as a HUD that would pop up on the edges of her vision.  It helped a great deal with target acquisition when she was in the starfighter corps, and with enhancing data that she would see.  She could (and did) also use the implants to record conversations, and to keep shots of things she saw and heard for later replay.  Now, she could see scrolling text and numbers, and with a thought, she added her codes to the text, which now began blinking a bright magenta on her HUD.  With another thought, she ended the lockdown, which had been in place for decades, and then, just like that, the replicator reactivated.

The lights on the front panel suddenly came to life, as did the screen and controls.  “There,” she said, with a self-satisfied sigh.  “All set.”  She let go of the replicator and turned back to the zheen engineer.

Ka’Xarian was gaping at her.  “You did it.”  His voice was unbelieving.

She smiled, slapping him lightly on the shoulder.  “You don’t know me that well yet.  When I say I’m going to do something, I follow through!”  She stooped and picked up a piece of burned conduit.  Opening the feeder door, she gently set it inside and closed the door behind it.  Through the transparent viewport, she could see the item begin to dissolve, looking as though it was melting, or as though the replicator was pouring concentrated acid onto it.  “That’ll take a few minutes.  In the meantime…”  She punched a few buttons on the control pad.  A green light turned red and a countdown clock began running down from four minutes.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the clock.

“Time remaining until the new item is completed.  I put a pair of full toolkits in, because I know I need one, and I want to make sure the assistant chief engineer has a complete set as well.”  She smiled at him again.  “I don’t want to insult you, but I also don’t want to slow things down by having to make new tools for you while we’re working.”  The timer took forever to run down while they stood there, awkwardly.

Finally, Ka’Xarian asked.  “So who were you?  In your former life, I mean.  It isn’t just anyone who can access replicators with their hand and a datapad.”

She hesitated.  “What do you think of the Republic?”

“They’re a bunch of crooks,” he said bluntly.  “Bloody pirates, but thankfully, they don’t venture too far from their borders anymore.”

“Pirates?”  She was getting a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Yes.  About a year ago, one of their finest, an Admiral Tandred, took his battle squadron out to Bidexia System.  Apparently, the Republic Navy was running low on resources, so they excised a tax.”  Ka’Xarian spoke in a clipped voice, clearly he was upset about this.  “From the bridge of his battleship, he destroyed a few hundred million credits in orbital platforms, and then stole a few hundred million more when he sent shuttles and troops down to the planet and liberated a number of warehouses full of foodstuffs, raw materials, and items of wealth.  And on the way out, they killed a number of citizens on the planet.  A few of my relatives were living on one of those orbital platforms.”  His antennae were quivering in rage.  “The worst part was when weeks later, I got video messages from them, from a few days before Tandred’s attack.  All filled with happiness and humming.  No way of knowing that only days later they would be dead.  Slaughtered to line an Admiral’s coffers.  So my thoughts on the Republic?  I think it should burn.”

She couldn’t catch her breath.  She held her hands up, palms out in a supplicating gesture.  “You need to understand something.  I’m two hundred and fifty years out of time.  Things were much different back then.”

“You were Republic?” he asked tonelessly.

“I was,” she said, holding up her left arm, where the Republic starburst symbol was embroidered on the sleeve.  “I am a Commander in the Navy, second in command of the Hudora Shipyards.”  Tamara stood, uncertain, as the zheen just stared at her through those huge compound eyes.  She didn’t know how he was going to react.

“How did you end up in the escape pod?” His voice hadn’t changed at all in pitch.

She sighed.  “I was set up.  Two of my fellow officers, my superior and his subordinate were involved in a smuggling scheme and they set me up to take the fall for it.  I was arrested and court-martialed.  If the system hadn’t come under attack by Federation forces, I would have been found guilty and sent to prison.  Luckily, I suppose, the attack came in just before the verdict did.  I was able to break out of my cell in the confusion of the battle, but my subordinate caught me trying to escape and shot me and launched me out into space.  After shooting up the inside of the pod.”

He nodded.  “I noticed that.”

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your family,” she went on, her words coming out in a rush.  “I can’t believe that the Republic could have fallen so far.  I won’t make excuses, but I just want to say that I had nothing to do with any of that.”

His antennae rose and then fell.  “I know you didn’t.  I checked over the pod while you were with the captain.  It confirms your story of being asleep for so long.  And,” he went on, his mouthparts clacking in what sounded like what could be a glimmer of warmth, “if your magic touch with the replicators can fix that fighter and the Grania Estelle, then I think that you and I could work well together.”

“I’d like that,” she said, smiling slightly.  The replicator chose that moment to beep, indicating that the job was done.  Stepping over, she opened the door, and pulled out a tray of tools, of two identical sets.  She handed him the tray.  “Do you have a toolbelt I could borrow?”

He took it, his antennae flaring in surprise.  “This is a comprehensive set!” he marveled.  “I’m impressed.  I don’t have half of these things.”  He looked up at her.  “I think I can find you something to use.  We should get to work.”

Tamara nodded, following him out of the room, heading back to the cargo bay.

Chapter 2

Returning to the cargo bay, Tamara began a serious scan of the fighter.  “Such a beautiful baby,” she cooed.  “I only ever flew a Perdition once.  It was one of the greatest experiences in my life.”

Ka’Xarian turned to her, though that was really unnecessary because he could see perfectly well to the side due to his compound eyes.  “I’m confused.  I thought you were an engineer.  An officer.”

“I am.  Or well, was.  But I flew with the starfighter corps for seven years before I got out.  I was always good at fixing and building things, even as a kid.  I always helped the maintenance crews who worked on our fighters.  After I got out of the starfighter corps, I switched to the engineering track.  Never looked back.”  She smiled, running one hand down the length of the fighter’s fuselage.  “But I never gave up my love for this fine beauty.  He can take me to dance anytime.”

The Perdition class starfighter was a marvel of Republic engineering.  It was an aerospace fighter, capable of maneuvering in atmosphere as well as in space.  It was designed for aerospace superiority, meaning it was meant to take on other starfighters.  The ship was designed like an airplane, with a long fuselage and a pair of forward-swept, slightly downward canted wings.  It boasted a pair of high powered engines, a pair of heavy particle cannons on the ends of the wings and a cockpit for a single pilot.  “This beauty has amazing handling.  I cannot wait to get it all fixed up.”  She crawled onto the fuselage and popped the canopy.

It slid upward and she climbed into the cockpit.  Plugging her datapad into the jack, she began running diagnostics.  Antivirus programs went to work, cleansing the systems, meanwhile she began taking a look at everything in the cockpit that on a first glance needed either fixing or outright replacement.  A very long list was starting to grow.  The exterior hull was battered.  Apparently at some point, the fighter must have flown through the upper atmosphere of a gas giant because most of the paint had ablated off.  The underside of the hull was banged up, it looked as though the fighter had come in for a very hard landing at some point.  The cylindrical fuel tanks, which were under the rather thin hull armor were both breached, probably due to the hard landing.

“Oh, no, the power couplers are fried.  Whoever flew this poor baby jammed the feeds open all the way, ran the afterburners on full tilt the whole way in.  Probably the one who crashed it.”  She sighed.  Then she brightened.  “All right, enough moping.  Time to get to work!”

“According to diagnostics,” Ka’Xarian said, “it looks like more than half of the electronics are fried.  We’re going to need to do a complete rebuild.”

“I actually prefer that,” Tamara replied.  “I don’t want some century-old processor to fail in the middle of combat maneuvers.  Let’s get to work pulling them out.  I’m going to get the replicator started on working on the replacements.”  Pulling up her datapad, she pressed the command sequences, and getting a ping in response, Tamara stuffed it back into her pocket with a grunt.  Pulling out a few tools, she set to work on the cockpit electronics.

It took little more than two hours to pull out the shorted-out circuitry, and half again as long to replace it with the new components from the replicator.  Every time a new part emerged, Ka’Xarian couldn’t help but marvel.  It had been so long since the replicator was doing its job that it was an amazing thing to see.  The zheen set up a pair of crewmembers to continue to feed junk components into the replicator to keep the raw material bunker as close to full as possible.  The crewmen also had very strict instructions that they were otherwise not to touch that replicator.  Actually, it was less of an instruction and more of a threat, that both of them would end up on Ka’Xarian’s supper plate if they did anything to hurt that replicator.  They believed him.

It didn’t bother Tamara, the threat, because she completely agreed with it.  They needed that replicator to fix the Perdition and she’d be damned if she had to go and build another replicator.  That might happen at some point anyway, since the other replicator would need a rebuild and at some point she would be leaving this ship, so she would need at least a micro-industrial replicator to take with her when she did.  But that was a problem for later.  For now, she needed to stay focused on the fighter.

Which was an easy thing to do, as it turned out.  She was enthusiastic about the project and with Ka’Xarian’s help, the work actually went quickly.  He wasn’t up to Tamara’s level as far as fixing things went, but he was a very quick study.  It wouldn’t be long before he would be able to work unassisted, though in all fairness, it wasn’t often that people these days worked on Republic military hardware.  The zheen’s workers kept bringing parts as the replicator finished making them, and they had a nice little assembly line going.

The captain wandered in after about twelve hours of work.  Tamara and the others had stopped; they were taking a meal break, the first in all that time.  “You are a machine, Moxie.  I never thought that piece of junk would ever get unwrapped let alone get rebuilt like this.”

She held up a ration bar in salute.  “You shouldn’t doubt a woman when she’s sure.  It isn’t healthy.”

“Well, if I’d known you were actually this good, I might have put some money down.”  He had a broad grin on his face.  “But, it doesn’t fly yet.”  He tsked.

“You’re doubting me again,” Tamara replied, giving him a stern look.

“All right.  All right.”  He threw his hands up in surrender.  “But until that thing actually flies,” he pointed, “I will continue to doubt.”

She winked at him.  He chuckled and then walked away.

Tamara took another bite of the ration bar and grimaced.  “This isn’t actually too bad,” she said aloud.

“Liar,” Ka’Xarian replied.  He was eating some sort of beige-colored paste from a bowl.  It looked vile and smelled worse, and the fact that he was eating it by bringing the bowl straight up to his mouth and then having his mandibles shovel it into his mouth wasn’t helping Tamara’s digestion any.

“How about that… goop?” she said with a grimace.

“This?” he said, slightly raising the bowl.  “It’s good!  It’s a conglomeration of various…”

She paled as some of the goop dripped from his mouth parts and into the bowl.  “Never mind!  I’m sorry I asked.  I’m glad that you like it.”

He chittered with laughter, which caused some of his food so splatter a bit.  “It’s not my favorite, of course.  There’s a place on Suspiria that has the best plommenkaa.”  She knew the name, it was a zheen delicacy.  His amaranthine exoskeleton, what she could see anyway that wasn’t hidden by his coveralls, tinted suddenly with a bit of rose, indicating pleasure.

“Just like Mother used to make?” she teased, taking another bite.  She blinked her eyes rapidly.  It had been a long day, exceptionally long if you considered the hibernation.  But she wasn’t ready to rest yet.

His antennae curled, showing disgust.  “Don’t even joke about that.  My mother was the worst cook ever.  Even when it came out of a food synthesizer she managed to burn it.”  He took another slurp.  “So I’m impressed with your stamina.”

She scowled.  “Is this a sex thing?  Because I’m busy right now and it isn’t funny.”

He shook his head.  “It’s not like that.  I don’t do humans.  Besides, I’m already mated.  But most humans I’ve seen, especially on this ship, couldn’t have been working as long or as hard as you have since you came onboard.”

She shrugged, finishing off the ration bar.  “I’m a Navy officer, I’m used to having close deadlines.  Besides, I’m motivated.”

“Motivated?”

Tamara nodded, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.  “Captain said I get to keep the fighter once it’s completed.”

He nodded, impressed.  “I’m surprised you got the Captain to agree to that.  He isn’t known for his giving nature.”

“Well, I’m technically buying it from him by working off the debt.”

He eyed her quizzically.  “And how would you work it off?”

“If he likes the quality of my work – our work – on the Perdition here, I’ll work to fix up the Grania Estelle.”

Ka’Xarian nodded slowly, finishing the rest of his meal.  “Well, from what I’ve seen while we’ve been working on this, I’ll be happy to work with you on the big ship.”

“Well, there’s not much left to do on the fighter.  Probably another day, working on the engine rebuilds and then another twelve or so hours putting the guns together.  Then after that just the tuning and tweaking.”

“How long do you think that will take?”

She sighed.  “Hard to say.  Hopefully only a few tedious hours.”

He set the bowl down.  “Then let’s get to it, shall we?”

It actually took nearly three days.  After all that time, and barely six hours of sleep, Tamara took a step back to admire her handiwork.  Well, hers and Ka’Xarian.  She had to hand it to the zheen, he was pretty good at his job.  And maybe now, with proper support, they could get the freighter up and running correctly.  But that was a job for later.  For now, she was going for a test flight.  Or rather, she was once the Captain had inspected her work on the Perdition.

He was inspecting the work, though he wasn’t pulling anything apart.  No, he was running a hand over a wing here, looking over a component there, even stuck his head in the cockpit for a closer look.

“So, what do you think?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

He turned to her.  “I think it looks pretty,” he answered noncommittally.  “All the parts look shiny and new, but I think it takes a lot more than that to make a ship fly.”

She nodded.  “You’re absolutely correct, Captain.  Which is why once we’re done here, I’m going to be taking my baby for a test flight and shakedown cruise.”

“Good.”  He pointed to the far bulkhead.  “Those cargo doors open, though they might need a little grease.”  He chuckled.  “I haven’t had them opened in about what, Xar, two years?”

The zheen chittered.  “Longer.”

Tamara hauled herself up off the pallet she was sitting on.  She groaned as she did, then stretched, trying to ease the kink in her back.

The captain watched her.  “You could sleep before this test run, Moxie,” he said, turning away from the fighter.  “Come to think on it, have you slept at all since you got out of the pod?”

“I’ve slept,” she replied indignantly.

“Tiny naps,” Ka’Xarian put in.  “Only one or two hours at a time, no more than ten or eleven hours total.”

She glared at him.  “Tattletale.”

He hissed back playfully.

“I don’t need to sleep yet,” Tamara told them both.  “I’m fine.”

The captain eyed her, his head tilting to one side, as his eyes studied her face.  “No.  You’re not.  You crash that ship because you’re exhausted and then I’m out a starfighter and all of the credits for the fix.”

“It’s my fighter!”

The captain’s face seemed to tighten, as though the skin was covering iron rather than bone.  “No, Moxie, it isn’t.  It isn’t your fighter until my ship is fixed up.  That was the deal we struck.  Plus, you owe me for the use of my replicator, though I’ll discount you because you fixed it, but then there’s power consumption, raw materials, and labor costs.”

Tamara felt her hands clenching to fists.  “Labor costs?” she demanded.  “I did the labor!”

The captain nodded, a smug grin on his face.  “And so did my assistant chief engineer.  He doesn’t work for free.  And he certainly isn’t working on the Grania Estelle, like I hired him to.”

She stood there fuming.  “So now what?”

“Now?” the captain replied.  “Now, you are going to get some rest.  Xar, get her some quarters. There should be a room on deck eight.”

The zheen nodded.  “Got the cleaning bots going over it now.  Should be ready by the time we get there.”  He turned to Tamara.  “Look, Tamara.  You can argue with the captain, which isn’t smart, or you can follow orders like a good soldier and then get to play with your toy.”

She glared at them.  Her feet felt as though they were glued to the deck.

The captain sighed.  “Look, Moxie, things are very simple.  You either play nice and we’re all happy, or I rescind my deal, and I sell you, your pod and that shiny new Perdition fighter to the next merchant I see.”  His voice had dropped, low and dangerous.  “Why do you think I didn’t ask about your name?  You’re not my friend.  You’re an asset.  You’re a way to put credits in my account.  You’re a way to keep my ship running.  That’s it.  You start acting reckless, taking chances with my property?  With my bottom line?  You will not be living free for very long, Moxie.”

His lavender eyes flicked to the guards.  “So, decision time, girlie.  Either you’re off to your room, or you’re off to a cell.  Your choice.”  Both of them uncrossed their arms, loosened their guns in the holsters.

She felt a knot tighten in her stomach.  He was being polite, and his demands were reasonable, but she knew better.  That commentary about the charges that were racking up was a clue as to his intentions.  She suspected that the cost of that Perdition might be a bit higher than she had initially expected.  But she was in no position to argue.  And he was right.  She had no real freedom, nor did she have a platoon of Marines to watch her back.  Ka’Xarian was friendly with her, but she suspected that he would stand back and let the captain work if he was forced to choose between them.

“Let’s go,” she said, forcing cheerfulness into her voice.  “Deck eight, you said?”

The captain smiled back at her.  “There, see?  Wasn’t a hard decision after all!”  The guards moved to flank her after a gesture from the captain and the three of them trotted off to deck eight.

Deck eight was dark.  The glowpanels on the bulkheads were out.  The smaller ones on the ceilings were active, though most were very dim, a few couldn’t sustain illumination.  The entire deck seemed to be this way.  And Tamara also noticed that the gravity plating under the floor panels was a little erratic.  One step, she felt as though she might float away at any second, the next step, she felt as though fifty kilograms had dropped on her shoulders.  The entire deck was filthy, she could hear the noise of the life support fans rattling in their ventilation ducts.

“This is the best you have?” she asked the guards.

One of them grunted, but said nothing else.  The other didn’t even bother to speak.  They arrived at the room and one of the guards hit the button on the door panel to open it.  The door slid open, stopped halfway, inched open a little more and then stopped completely, about two-thirds of the way open.  The guard gave her a broad grin.  “Inside.”

Grimacing, Tamara moved forward and peered into the room.  Sure enough, she could see a dinner-plate shaped housecleaning robot hovering by the wall.  It was cleaning the century worth of filth and grime from the very small cabin.  The bot used sonics, force fields and mini-tractoring beams to scrub the dirt clean.  The bed at least was ready for use, she noted.  She turned to make some quip to the guard, but the man just shoved her roughly inside.  She stumbled and managed to twist herself to fall on the bed.

The man sneered and the door slid shut.  Funnily enough, the door had no problem closing.  She sighed.  The bot seemed to be functioning properly, though she would have to dump its bin shortly.  Tamara sat up, rubbing her face.  One thing had been made completely clear to her: she wasn’t a passenger working off her trip with some repairs.  She wasn’t a prisoner, per se, but she certainly wasn’t lounging in the lap of luxury with a thousand friends.

It was too much.  After eleven months in jail, the scorn of her former friends and peers, watching the dissolution of the career she’d spent a lifetime building, her injury, Islington’s parting gift of the escape pod to find herself here, in “protective custody,” she just couldn’t hold it together any longer.  Tears began to form in her eyes, blurring her vision.  She tried to blink them away, but more came.  A sob escaped her throat and for a few moments, she indulged in the release.  Tears didn’t help.  But for a few moments, she reveled in self-pity, cried until her throat was raw.

Finally, gulping, she got herself back under control.  She hated crying.  She sniffed, wiping her eyes on her coverall sleeve.  Which she discovered wasn’t a great idea since the sleeve was covered with grease.  Tamara chuckled, as she now knew her face was covered with a black smudge.  Getting up, she went to the refresher.  It was a complete mess.  The toilet looked functional, however, it also looked (and smelled) as though the previous user completely lacked the knowledge on how to use one.  It also appeared as though hygiene was optional, if the room and this (nasty) refresher were any indication.  She walked to the sink and then laughed at her own reflection.  She was, quite simply, a complete mess.  Turning on the tap, gray water poured into the basin and went slowly down the drain.

“Great.”  Well, she had wanted to keep busy.  Pulling out a wrench, she kneeled down and set to work on the plumbing.

An hour later she was finished.  It wasn’t perfect, but the local plumbing was flushed out and clean water was flowing through.  Stripping off her very dirty clothes, she stuffed them into the laundry machine (a combined washer and drying machine) and got into the shower.  She climbed into the shower and let the water run over her head and down her back.  Tamara stood there, she wasn’t sure how long, but she didn’t care.  Just the feeling of the hot water helped sooth her jangled nerves.  It also took a while to get cleaned up, what with all the dirt and grease on her from the work.

Once she was out, dressed in her now clean clothes, she felt better, but she was still exhausted.  Despite his tactics, the captain was right.  She needed sleep.  Laying down on the bed, her brain immediately crashed and she fell into a dreamless slumber.

Six hours later she woke, feeling better.  Tamara pulled herself to her feet, went into the refresher and splashed some water on her face.  The cold water snapped her back into focus and cleared her mind.  This situation wasn’t completely hopeless.  Sure, it was a lot worse than the one she thought she was in, where she was just a passenger doing some work for the ship and captain.  But it wasn’t prison.

But if the captain decided it should, it would very quickly turn into a prison.  One that she might very well never get out of.  So, Tamara decided as she stared at herself in the mirror, tossing the towel on the rack above the toilet, what she really needed was some help.  She couldn’t count on the crew, not yet.  Perhaps, over time, she might be able to forge some useful relationships, but that took time and there were no guarantees.  Anyone who might be friendly, or even friends with her might balk if the captain started throwing his weight around, or threatened to throw them and their jobs off the ship.  Tamara didn’t think he would kill any of his crew members, not just for helping her, but he certainly would fire them and maroon them on the nearest habitable planet, whether it had a spaceport or not.  So she couldn’t rely on them, and while yes, it was her life on the line, it was their livelihoods as well.  No, she couldn’t rely on the crew.

She put her hands on the sides of the sink and sighed deeply.  She wasn’t a warrior.  Oh, yes, she could fly a starfighter and fire upon and kill other pilots if that was what was required, but in a situation like this, she was out of her element.  She couldn’t fight them.  Not head on.  They had numbers, weapons and a superior lay of the land.  What did she have?

“I’m smart,” she said slowly.  “And a smart woman doesn’t rely on someone to save her.  She plans ahead and does it herself.”  A slow smile began to spread over her scarred face.  She grimaced at that.  One of her jobs in the upcoming weeks would be to stop into the Grania Estelle’s sickbay and have a look at their medical equipment.  Fixing her face and hand would take some skin abrading and then a dunk in a proper regen tank.  While she wasn’t too vain, looking at the horrible chemical burns from that thermal paint every day wasn’t really something she wanted to keep doing.  Perhaps that disguise wasn’t the greatest of ideas after all.  She shook her head.  No time to worry about that now.

So, back to problem one.  She needed help.  She couldn’t count on the crew and there was no one here in this time who would even know her much less help her.  That meant she would have to go by a different route.  That smile was back.  But in order to get the help she needed, she was going to need some things from the replicator.  Specifically, she would need a data core, an interface and some time.  It would take some doing, but she could make this work.

But for now, she would have some time before they would come to get her from this room to get back to work.  Taking out her datapad and a multitool, she went over to the wall terminal.  All cabins and rooms on the ship would have a terminal imbedded in the wall for public address or in case of emergencies.  Unfortunately, in this room the terminal was broken, most likely quite some time ago.  She didn’t worry about that.  Perhaps later, once the repairs were moving at a good pace, she could have this terminal replaced.  No, for now, she just unscrewed the casing, exposing the wires and chips beneath.  Taking out a USB cable, she connected the pad to the port under the casing.  In seconds, she had access to the ship’s computer systems.

Nodding in satisfaction, began to maneuver around inside the ship’s network.  It was almost pathetically easy.  Certain areas, like life support, reactor control, the captain’s private server and the purser’s server were firewalled, though she had the tools to crack those open.  But Tamara had no interest in attacking any of those things.  No, she was looking for a more private place to work.  She was looking for a section of the network that hadn’t been used in a long time, where no one would think to check on.  It was easy enough to find.  She found various sections of five different subsystems that had huge sections of open space.  It would be a chore to make sure that her work in the computers did not go noticed by the crew.  It would get more and more difficult as more repairs were done on the ship, though at that point, she could get herself some separated data cores and do her work independent of the ship’s net.

She opened a few of her compressed files, then began working on the coding that she would need to get her some badly needed help.  This would be a project, starting the coding basically from scratch, but she had no alternative.  Besides, she relished the challenge.

Three hours later, the guards pressed the door chime and then opened the door, not waiting for her acknowledgement.  But they caught her only laying on her bunk, playing with her datapad.  Her head was pointed at the door.  She twisted around to see them.  “Oh, there you are.  What’s for breakfast?  A girl could starve to death in this place.”

The guards exchanged a glance.  Apparently, Tamara realized, that they expected to catch her asleep, or perhaps in the refresher, or maybe even doing something they could complain to the captain about.  Seeing her awake, obviously cleaned and just as obviously somewhat refreshed caused them both to frown.  Her room was also totally clean now and the housecleaning bot was powered down, sitting on the deck next to the refuse container.

With a grunt, one of the guards flicked his chin in the direction of the hallway.  Tamara sighed.  Clearly, the guards were not around to make friends, or even speak to their subject.  She supposed she couldn’t blame them, she thought as they escorted her down the corridor.  When one was trained in security and guardwork, it wouldn’t do to get too comfortable and familiar with someone you might need to shoot on orders from your superiors.

They arrived at the mess hall, which was one of the biggest community rooms aboard the ship.  It was a place of gathering, though never did the entire crew gather here all at once.  Some of the crew had to remain on duty, so it was always in shifts that the crew come here to eat.  There were rows of tables, situated in lines away from the kitchen area.  The kitchen was operated by three cooks, one was working the griddle, another was taking fresh-baked bread out of one of the ovens, and the third was working the line, giving food to the crew.  They were a well-oiled machine, moving the crew through the line and on to floor to eat.  They were making a variety of eggs, serving fruit tarts and griddle cakes.  For the non-humans in the crew, of which it seemed there was about a third, there were more regional dishes with a reasonable degree of success, based on the looks Tamara could see around the room.  It seemed that, unlike many of the systems on the Grania Estelle, the mess hall was one that had been kept up.

It only took a few minutes to get through the line, and grabbing some silverware, she headed to the nearest open seat.  The table was empty, and judging by the looks she was getting by the other crew members in the mess, it would probably work better to not try and make new friends right now.  They weren’t exactly hostile, but it was clear that she was an outsider and not a particularly welcome one either.

That will change, she told herself as she dug into her breakfast with abandon.  The food was good, but that was to be expected.  She didn’t think that the captain would scrimp on grub for the crew, not if he wanted to keep them happy.  With a ship this size and cargo capacity and the level of maintenance on the ship, it was very likely that he could afford to spring for fresh food.  After all, if the crew got unhappy enough, they would leave.  The captain couldn’t threaten them all, and then he would be stuck with an empty ship.  So spending the credits to give them a little bit of happiness was well worth it.  He seems to be a good leader, she grudgingly admitted.  Though she was not happy with his threats toward her.

“Look at that!” one of the nearby crewmen, a young man with sandy hair and a wicked smile cried.  He was looking straight at her, as she was about to bring the last bite of griddle cake into her mouth.  Tamara set the fork down.  “Who’d have thought a tiny little thing like her could go through a plate like that?”

“Cookie!” he shouted, turning to the kitchen.  One of the men, a stocky man with a barrel chest and thick, muscled arms wearing a black apron whose color matched his moustache looked up from his tray of bread.

“What?” the man called back, the Elysian accent very heavy.

“What did you put in her food?” he asked, a huge grin on his face.

Cookie, one Chef Raoul Duchagne, frowned, wiping his hands on a rag.  “What the hell are you babbling about, Martinez?  Are you complaining about my food?”

The young man’s smile slipped a tiny fraction, but he rallied quickly.  “No, it’s good like always, Cookie.  I just want to know what you did to her food to make her chow it all down like that.”

Cookie looked over at Tamara, who was getting up from her seat at the table.  “You want to hit on that woman, Martinez, have the balls to do it yourself.  Embarrassing yourself and her like this isn’t going to get her to like you.”  Martinez’s buddied laughed and the young man flushed, tuning away.  Apparently, the cook here was just as formidable as the captain.

Tamara bussed her tray over to the dishline area, where Duchagne was there to meet her.  “I hear that you came aboard on an escape pod, little girl?”

She glared at him.  “Thank you, Chef, for the very good meal, but I am not a little girl.”

He chuckled.  “From what I hear, you are not… young.”

“No, I’m not.  I’m older than you are by a wide margin.”

Duchagne smiled.  “Now, now, it’s never good to boast about your age.  And call me Cookie, everyone does.”

“All right… Cookie.”  She still had that wary feeling about him, as though he was trying to cover for his friend’s gaff.

“And Martinez?  He’s an idiot, but he’s harmless.  At least he better be,” Cookie growled, turning his gaze over to where the other man was still eating with his buddies.  “But I want you to know, that if you need anything, you come to me.  You’re safe in here.”

A tiny crack formed in the ice around her, but it quickly froze again.  “Thanks, Cookie, but this is still onboard the ship.”

“True,” he admitted, looking back at her.  Then his face grew iron-hard.  “But this is my mess hall.  Everyone knows this place is sanctuary.  Not even the Captain would dare breach that.  Not if he ever wants anymore of that lasprauga I make for him.”

Tamara laughed.  She couldn’t help it.  She smiled at him this time with real warmth.  “Thank you, Cookie.  I will remember that and I look forward to your next meal.”

He clapped her on the shoulder.  “I look forward to having you here too!  It isn’t every day I got another beautiful woman to walk into my mess hall.”

She looked down.  “Clearly, Cookie, you need your eyes examined.”

“And clearly you need your head examined.  Don’t be intimidated by these fools.  This is a good crew and a good ship.  And if what the scuttlebutt I hear is true, you might just make this ship a better one.  Now go, I cannot stand around talking to beautiful women all day.  I have a kitchen to run!”  He swatted playfully at her and she retreated.

She watched the stocky little man bustle back into the cooking area, snarling good-naturedly with his staff, who feigned innocence at his accusations.  He was a good man, she wanted to believe it.  Tamara only wondered if she could trust him.

In a short while, she was back in the cargo bay, making last minute checks on the Perdition.  “Looking good,” she commented, tightening one last bolt.  “Just need to pull the radiation buffers off the engine, fuel it up and she’ll be ready for a test flight.”

Ka’Xarian nodded.  “I agree.  I’m impressed at how quickly we’ve been able to get this work done.”

Tamara smiled at him.  “Oh, come now, Xar,” she said, using the nickname, “It really isn’t all that much work, though we did do a bit of a marathon session.  Now,” she said, putting the wrench back in her belt, “I just need to get over to the replicator and get my skinsuit out and then I can take this beauty for a ride.”  The Perdition class fighter had a life support unit on board for thirty hours, but with a skinsuit, one could stay on board for another six hours.  While Tamara had no intention of sitting in the fighter’s cockpit for thirty-six hours, nowhere near close, she had no desire to be caught outside the Grania Estelle without a skinsuit, which would provide its own life support should there be a serious issue with the fighter.  “I had it get started before I came down here, so it should be done in a few minutes.”

A few minutes later, she got herself into her suit and climbed into the cockpit.  Sealing her helmet, she brought the canopy down, which also sealed.  “Comm check,” Tamara said.

“Reading you clear,” the ops officer replied.  “Sounds good.”

“All right, I’m beginning power up procedures.”  Pressing a few buttons, she noticed that all the computer systems on board booted up properly and the readouts were all green.  “I’m in the green.  All set for launch.”

“All right, Moxie,” the captain’s voice came over the line.  “The cargo bay is depressurized and we’re opening up the door.”

“Right,” Tamara said, as she felt all those old feelings started flooding back.  It had been years (not counting the long sleep) since she’d flown a fighter, ever since she’d gotten out of the Starfighter Corps.  She very much enjoyed being an engineer, but there was nothing like that old feeling of flying, of being in the cockpit.  While the design and building of things, great and small, was probably a more fulfilling sensation in the long run, there was very little that could match the sheer adrenaline rush of a combat flight in a proper starfighter.

This, of course, was only a test flight, to break all the gear in, to fine tune some things, but still, it felt the same.  The great cargo doors began to open, sliding inexorably upward until they disappeared in the upper section of the bay.

“All right,” she said, as she hit the repulsors and the tiny ship rose up a meter from the deck.  She smiled mockingly.  “This is Moxie One, heading out.”  There was a chuckle over the comm.  Pressing the throttle levers gently, moving on maneuvering jets only, the Perdition fighter slid easily out of the bay and into the black.

Chapter 3

From of the bridge of the Grania Estelle, the captain and the rest of his bridge crew were watching the flight test while still keeping an eye on the ship’s systems.  The freighter was about ten light minutes from the hyper limit, beyond which the gravity well from the system’s star was weak enough that a ship could jump into hyperspace and fly away, faster than light.  And at the speed in which the Grania Estelle was currently wallowing through space at, they had another twenty-seven hours before they could jump.

Which gives Moxie more than enough time for her test flight, the Captain marveled.  He was watching her, and her ship.  The fighter was moving around the Grania Estelle, clearly Moxie was using the freighter as a stable platform for her to perform her maneuvers.   The Perdition was twisting and turning, performing barrel rolls, looping around and over the freighter.  He could hear her whooping in delight on the radio, though he was sure she didn’t mean to be celebrating over the radio.  So far, he had to admit, he was impressed.  That pile of junk had been sitting in his cargo bay for a long time, just taking up space.  He’d had people look at it, but no one had wanted to do anything more with it than sell it for scrap.  He’d kept it as an oddity, a reminder of when the Republic was in better times, though he hadn’t been alive to see those times.  He’d never known himself to be nostalgic with anything other than the Grania Estelle.  The fighter had been in the cargo bay so long, he’d nearly forgotten about it.

He’d figured when he’d thrown this test at her that Moxie would balk.  Or, that when it came down to it, that the little ship couldn’t be fixed.  That it truly was a pile of junk and that she was no better than anyone else.  But she’d somehow pulled out a miracle and for the first time in over a decade, the Captain dared to hope.  If she could fix that one starfighter, perhaps she might be able to do something for him.  His big girl was old, beat up, patched and way past her prime, but she was his girl, this great ship of his.  He’d done his best over the years to hold her together, and the fact that she could still fly, much less continue to operate in hyperspace was a testimony to his will and the skills of his crew.

But it was a losing battle.  Every month, things got just a little bit harder.  Parts were just a little more difficult to scrounge up.  Each time they jumped another ragged system would start to sputter or fail and the crew would do whatever was necessary, cannibalize whatever was necessary to keep the whole thing going.  But they were nearly at the end.  Unless a whole batch of fresh parts came in and right soon, Grania Estelle might only make another two or three jumps, tops.  And when she failed, they would all be out of luck.

But for now, he indulged himself in watching Moxie loop and flip her fighter around and around, dared by a woman from the past to hope.

It was wonderful.

The sheer freedom that came with flying, it was… indescribable.  Back in the day, Tamara had kept her flight hours up the best she could, but she was a Commander in the Navy and second leader of a base.  She really didn’t have the time to go out flying every week.  But it had only taken a few moments (and a quick refresher using her implants) to familiarize herself with the controls.  The control stick felt like it had been molded to fit in her hand.  With the thrusters, main engines and repulsors all upgraded, this fighter could dance.

She was enjoying the maneuvers, flying around the big freighter, performing loops and rolls, pushing the fighter’s engines to maximum, then flipping one hundred eighty degrees to brake hard, to test out the inertial nullifiers.  She was putting all the systems through their paces, working the little ship hard.

After about an hour, and after a number of chuckles coming her way from the Grania Estelle, “Hot mike, Moxie One,” was said a number of times, but she ignored it, whooping loudly.  More chuckles.

Finally, the test flight was coming to an end, or more specifically, her fuel reserves were running low.  “Moxie One to Grania Estelle.  I am approaching bingo fuel and I am returning back to base.”

“We copy, Moxie One,” the ops officer replied.  “Bay Four is still open.  Take it nice and easy coming in please.”

“Yes, Mother,” Tamara replied.  “I won’t scratch your deck.”

She’d done carrier landings before, of course.  In the Navy, unless you were a dirtsider and therefore only flew in atmosphere, it was a requirement that you have at least a hundred carrier landings under your belt before you could pass basic training.  Of course, now, she didn’t have anything as luxurious as a hangar deck to touch down on.  But, the deck was waiting.  There was one functioning running light illuminated just above the open maw of the bay, she was forced to try and put this bird down without any landing lights.

“No problem,” she said, angling the fighter and cutting acceleration. A few puffs on her forward thrusters began to burn off the ship’s speed.  She hadn’t gathered too much momentum in this last approach, knowing that the landing might be a little difficult this first time.  The fighter entered the bay at less than five kilometers per hour, a little nudge with the stick and the Perdition swung around, facing nose-out to the door.  Cutting in the repulsors and idling the main engines, she eased it down to the deck, without so much as a bump.  “How was that, Captain?”

From the bridge, the captain smiled.  “Show off.  Closing the bay doors now.”

The test flight was a success.  Her follow up maintenance took about an hour, a few tweaks and tune ups on a few things, but so far, everything was working well.  Putting her tools away, she patted the side of the fuselage in satisfaction.  “Beautiful…” she whispered, taking one last glance at the Perdition fighter.  Now, it was time to speak with the captain about the real job.

The captain was in his quarters and as she entered, she saw him sitting in one of the chairs at the small table, a mug of beer in his hand, a tablet in the other.  The man was quite pleased.  “Moxie!  You said you could do it and I have to admit, I doubted you.  But, you’re a woman of your word.  Now that you’ve proven your worth and you proved me wrong.”  He gestured her to one of the threadbare but overstuffed chairs that were bolted to the deck.  Tamara sat.  After their last conversation together, she was far less open and friendly toward the man.  Outwardly, however, she put on a brave face and smiled, acting as though she was dealing with just another unpleasant superior officer.

“Glad everything went as planned.  So where do we go from here?”  She was exhausted, the euphoria from the starfighter project had worn off, leaving only the dull empty ache that had been slowly filling her these last few days.

He eyed her speculatively.  “That depends on you, Moxie.  We’ll be arriving at the hyper limit in a few hours, so I won’t be letting you tear down the engines, but I think you could find ways to keep yourself busy.”

“Where are we headed, Captain?”

He smiled.  “Moxie, our… arrangement… is special.  You’re not a crewmember.  You’re not a passenger.  You’re more of a…”  He struggled to find the word.

“Contractor?” she supplied helpfully.

He bobbed his head.  “Sure.  Yes.  Exactly.  You are a contractor.”  He leaned forward.  “Which means, you do your job, you earn your keep and you let me worry about where we’re going.”

Tamara shrugged.  There were only so many places that were reachable from this star.  Only two other systems in fact, guessing at the engine specs she’d glanced at briefly.  But she could look all that up later.  And by the look on the captain’s face, he was realizing that as well.

“I have a request,” she stated, looking him in the eye.

One of his eyebrows shot up.  “Do you now?”

She nodded.  “I do.  I said I wanted to help you rebuild your ship and I meant it.  And I will rebuild it.  But, it will take forever if I’m working alone.  May I borrow your engineering teams to do the work?”
“You want my crew to be doing the work?”  He sounded amused.

“No, I want them to be assisting me,” she clarified.  She sat up straighter.  “Let’s be honest.  I can’t be everywhere at once.  And your teams have been doing a fair job of holding this ship together.”  Tamara felt she could be gracious here.  In her opinion, they had been doing an atrocious job, though, in all fairness, they did not have full access to the replicators to make replacement parts.  The ship was decrepit, but the fact that she was still flying and relatively safe was a testament to their will.  “I can fix the ship, but if I can train them on how to maintain and repair their ship, you can keep this beauty flying for another two hundred years.”

The captain nodded.  “Now that is something I want to see.”  He flicked his fingers in dismissal.  “Off you go then.  Fix my ship.”

Ten minutes later, she was standing in the mess hall, with a group of engineers seated at tables before her.  The Chief Engineer, a gruff Parkani male, crossed his four true arms over his barrel chest, looking out over his teams with his four hard eyes.  Quesh Trrgoth was a no-nonsense fellow, who worked his teams hard.  But, he was good at bringing out the best in his people and they all worshipped him, even the zheen Ka’Xarian.  He was good with systems, but the lack of parts and the lack of a well-trained crew had hindered his efforts.  He had seen what Tamara Samair had done with that Perdition fighter and was interested to see what she could do with the big ship.  The captain had refused to change the schedule for the jump, so they would need to work on projects that wouldn’t affect the ship in hyperspace until they reached the next star system.

“All right everyone, thank you for being here.  For those of you I don’t know, my name is Tamara Samair.”  There was a quiet rumble around the room.  A few had met her already and were impressed with her work ethic and her ability to unlock the replicators.  “I’ve been tasked by the Captain to start work on rebuilding this ship.  We’re going to try and get her as close to factory new as possible.”

“What?” someone demanded.  “That’s impossible.  We don’t have a space dock to work at!”

“No, we don’t,” she agreed.  Tamara swept her gaze over the crowd.  There was a degree of belligerence in the engineering teams, which was nothing new to her.  She had been the manager of a shipyard after all.  “Which means that in some cases we’re simply going to have to do the best we can.  And, since the Captain has decided not to wait around for us to work, we’re going to have to do some of our repairs in hyperspace.”  More muttering, darker this time.  “Look people, I’m not saying we’re going to be doing the really dangerous stuff.  I’d really like to overhaul the reactor, but since that along with the hyperdrive is going to be in use, obviously we can’t.  What we can work on is the power distribution system, life support, and we can work on patching the interior of the hull.”

“Why not the outside?” the same heckler asked.

She raised her eyebrows at him.  “You want to be on the outside of the ship in an EVA suit while we’re in hyper?”  The man gulped and closed his mouth, some of the others laughed.  “I didn’t think so.  So, we’ll work on the interior of the hull for now to try and reclaim some real estate.”  That got a lot of their attention, since because with three of the eight main cargo holds breached, a huge amount of cargo space was unused.  The captain in particular had been very interested in that particular project.  Having those bays breached had been a massive waste of money, seeing as all that space was therefore unused.

“All right.  The Chief tells me that we have a good crop of welders in this crew here,” she gestured to indicate the assembled lot, some of whom nodded.  “I understand though, that there’s been just too much work trying to keep the rest of the ship going to try and repair the damaged bays.”  The Parkani nodded.  “We’re going to start slow.  The Chief and I want to evaluate everyone’s skills and learning curves as we work on the more complicated systems.”

“Once we’re in hyperspace, we’ll be there for about twenty-three days.  By the time we get to the next system, I’d like to see that the life support systems and a good part of the power systems are overhauled.”  The engineers all exchanged looks, clearly indicating that they didn’t think it was possible.

“I hope you slept well,” the Chief spoke up.  “Because for the next three weeks, none of us will be sleeping much.”  A chorus of groans.  “Oh, knock it off.  We can get a nap or two once we get out of hyper.”  Though the look he and Tamara shared broadcast the same thought, not likely.  “All right.  I’ve assigned teams.  Company A,” he gestured with one of his hands to a group of the techs, “You’re going to be working on life support in the aft sections.  Company B, you’ve got the forward sections.  Companies C and D,” he indicated the rest, “You’re on the power grid.  I’ll be working on fixing up the EPS grid, the stars know we’ve just sat and lived with it for long enough.”

“But Chief,” one of the women spoke up.  “Like you say, we’ve had to live with it for a long time.  How can we fix it now?”

“We’re going to replace broken components where things have either burned out or ruptured…” Tamara began.

“But how?” the other woman demanded.  “We don’t have replacements.”

“Well, Sirra, you’re only half right,” Quesh told her.  “We didn’t have any replacement EPS conduits and junctions until this morning.  But thanks to Tamara here,” he gestured with two of his hands, “we now do.  Cargo bay three is being loaded up with replacements straight from the replicator and we’re getting rid of a lot of the excess junk we’ve accumulated in there for the last decade.”  There were looks exchanged.  Apparently, not everyone had heard that the replicators were on line and running.  Which was odd, really, since this was such a small population.

“So,” Quesh went on.  “We’re going to start tearing out ruptured conduits, recycle them into the replicator, and then plug in new ones.  I don’t care if there are pinhole leaks or full-blown ruptures.  I’d like to start getting a handle on this.  Now, we’re not going to interrupt the current power flow.  We’re going to replace parts that are close to max impedance, by rerouting power, pulling parts, putting in new parts and then restoring flow.  When we’re done, I want the power distribution system to be just… thrumming!”  That got smiles from everyone, some of which were more of the long-suffering variety.  “The old girl has had leaky pipes and a busted up circulatory system for far too long.  I want her to feel young again.  Let’s get to it.”  And with that, the meeting was over.

Ka’Xarian moved over to them, Tamara and Quesh, while everyone else was getting together into their proper companies.  “Do you think this we can actually do this?” he asked, tentatively.

Tamara clapped him gently on the shoulder.  “Xar, you and I put together a Perdition fighter in a matter of a few days,” she reminded him, smiling.  “We’re not rebuilding the whole ship, but we’ve got forty technicians, well, forty-one with me.  You don’t think we can rebuild the life support and power control systems?”

The zheen made a buzzing noise, the equivalent of a deep sigh.  “You’re an optimist.”

She nudged him with one elbow.  “If you and the Chief here can keep people moving, I think we can get both systems overhauled and even make some decent progress on the hull.”

“All right, Tamara.  I’ve been won over by your optimism.  If anyone can save this old ship, I believe it’s us.”  Tamara smiled at his words.  A truculent team she could deal with, it wouldn’t be the first time an “impossible” project had been laid out before her with instructions to “get on with it”.  But doing it with no backup, not even a single ally simply wouldn’t do.  She couldn’t fight the crew and get the overhauls completed.  But it seemed she had a good portion of the techs on her side, as well as the two most important, Quesh and Xar.  Having the captain giving her his support couldn’t hurt either.  Though back in the day, she’d had Captain Horace Bythe’s support as well.  He hated her and he used her as a patsy for his own smuggling and embezzlement schemes, but he wanted her to run the shipyards smoothly and efficiently.

As the other two headed off to Cargo bay three, Tamara followed along behind, thinking about the command structure in her former job.  Her former life, really.  Bythe was a bastard, but she hadn’t really known that until the fix was in.  He had backed her up all the way, making sure that the resources she needed were made available, throwing in his support with captains of various ships under construction or repair.  As she had begun to investigate the shortages and missing supplies and funds, he had still remained helpful, but upon reflection now (and during the eleven months of incarceration) she remembered times when he seemed more upset about the findings of her investigation than he should have.  Oh, certainly, a commanding officer should be angry and upset if he heard that someone was skimming funds and stealing equipment from his base.  However, the captain seemed a bit more rankled than he should be.  Obviously, the man sat back and secretly conspired with Islington while simultaneously promising Tamara all the support she would need.

Tamara found her hands clenching and unclenching as they walked.  Now was not the time to deal with this.  She had a great deal of work to do and not a lot of time to do it, working with an untried crew of freighter techs.  On the plus side, she had a good supply of raw materials and a working industrial replicator.  Irritated, she stamped down on the demons threatening to bubble to the surface and returned to work.

The crew turned out to be a little greener at their jobs than Tamara would have liked, though Quesh and Xar managed to keep them all moving in the right direction.  They began with the most damaged power conduits first, the ones that had been cut out of the loop completely and routed around.  That way, once they got those working, they could reroute around the active ones and replace those.  As Quesh had said, they wanted to completely restore the Grania Estelle’s power distribution system and repair all the leaks.  It wouldn’t actually give more power to the ship, but it would prevent her from losing any and help keep more systems on line.

There were the usual bumps, scrapes and cuts, thankfully minor, until the public address system came on.  There was a noise like a strangled duck and everyone stopped what they were doing for a moment and listened.  Quesh gently tapped one of the welders on the shoulder, who shut off the welding torch and popped up her face shield.  Tamara stopped her work as well, listening intently as everyone else.

“All hands, this is the Captain.  We are one minute from the hyper limit.  Secure all loose items and hang on to something.  Prepare for hyperspace jump, people.”  Everyone sighed and grabbed hold of the welders’ fuel tanks.

“What’s happening?” Tamara asked.

One of the techs shrugged.  “Just a little turbulence.  No big deal.  Just make sure you grab something.”  He followed his own advice and took hold of a pipe inside of an open bulkhead.

A fine tremor began building in the hull, as well as the whine of machinery.  Within thirty seconds it had changed from a fine tremor to real shaking.  Tools on the deck began to tremble and then bounce as the shaking grew steadily worse.  She grabbed the edge of the open bulkhead next to him as the captain’s voice came back on.  “Ten seconds to jump.”

“How bad does this get?” she demanded over the din of the hyperdrive spinning up.

The man shrugged again.  “A little bit worse than this,” he said nonchalantly.  It didn’t look as though he was being macho to try and impress a lady.  His attitude and his posture signaled that this was a regular occurrence.  If the hyperdrive was this far out of tune that it would cause vibrations this bad, then Tamara knew what was quickly rising up the priority listing in the repair queue.

There was a mechanical roar from deep within the ship and as the Grania Estelle leaped forward into hyperspace, everyone was jerked backward.  The inertial compensators groaned, trying to handle the stress, but Tamara lost her grip on the bulkhead and hit the far wall, hard.  She was pinned against the wall, as the g-forces seemed to increase.  Everyone else seemed to be holding on for dear life as well as the shaking grew so bad it felt like the ship might rattle itself apart.  After a few moments, though, the shaking decreased in intensity, slowly moving back down to the initial fine tremor.  When it got there, the crew released their handholds and picked up any dropped equipment.

“Back to work, people,” Quesh ordered.  “Quit your whining, Sev.  It’s nothing you haven’t felt before.”  He looked over at Tamara, who was slumped down against the wall.  “You all right?”

“That is some serious shear,” Tamara groaned, pulling herself up off the deck.  “Do you know how bad a hyperdrive needs to be tortured to vibrate like that?”  She rubbed her lower back where it had hit the wall.

Quesh waved his left hands dismissively.  “It’s a little out of alignment.  We’ll take a look after these jobs are done.”

“Damn right we will.”  She waved off his offer of assistance and moved back to working on removing the section of broken conduit.

The work started slowly.  Apparently, Quesh had exaggerated the ability of his workers.  While they weren’t entire greenhorns, it was clear that they didn’t have the skills of her former teams on Hudora Station.  They were good welders and the removal of the electro-plasma conduits proceeded apace.  Tamara continued to marvel at the decay that had crept into the Grania Estelle.  That and the amount of acceptance the crew had toward that decay disturbed her.  How could they have let things get so bad?  Even without the replicators to help them, there were ways to get the parts that were needed.  She had talked with Xar about the ship, and he had told her that aside from the parts they got from replicator two, they had a machine shop on deck two, so they could make some components they needed.

After five hours of work, they had removed and replaced the conduits through half of deck two.  They were taking a short break, seated in the corridor where they were working, eating a tray of sandwiches delivered up from the galley.  It had been a long hard slog so far, but a lot of the easiest replacements had been taken care of.  No one was speaking, they all just sat around and chewed, sipped water from cups or tea from thermoses.  It had been an exhausting five hours, a few of the people were napping against the bulkheads while the others ate.  The conduits were heavy, even though they had been replicated in meter long sections.  Thankfully, they hadn’t needed to carry the parts very far, hover pallets had been brought forth to ferry the broken parts for recycling and the new parts for installation.  The cargo workers, who otherwise were standing around bored during the journey in hyperspace, now had jobs to do getting things around the ship.

Quesh had to lay down the law with a few of his workers.  Apparently over the years, engineers and technicians had done little more than put bandages on the worst of problems and ignore anything lesser until it became a serious problem.  That of course kept things going but it only set the ship up for a catastrophic crash at some point in the future.  Depending on how well the patches and quick fixes were done, that might push that crash far down the line, or it might not.  Judging by the state of the EPS conduits, it was clear that the ship didn’t have too many years left using this style of maintenance.  The captain was either complicit in this mode of thinking or else the profit margins were so low that there was very little that could be done.

Bulk freighters got the worst of it in maintenance cycles.  Cargo companies didn’t want to spend money on extensive maintenance; ships the size of the Grania Estelle didn’t earn money by sitting around in a docking slip.  So they would get minimum amounts of repair and parts and then were sent on their way.  It was worse when the ship wasn’t owned by a cargo company, but was owned by an individual, when cargo runs might only barely break even if it was a good run.  Maintenance might be pushed back as far as it could be just to keep the tanks fueled up and the lights on.

But it wasn’t as though this overhaul they were doing now was free.  The parts were being supplied by the replicator and the raw materials were being used by recycling junk and other things from inside the ship, but the replicator couldn’t work for nothing.  It cost energy from the ship’s power reserves to run and unfortunately it was a power hog.  They wouldn’t be able to use the replicator forever.  The repairs and overhauls Tamara and the others were doing now would allow the ship to function better, but it wouldn’t increase the amount of power they had to use.  The myriad other systems on the ship also used power and there was only so much to go around.  They could work on systems until power ran out, but then they’d be forced to stop until they could refuel.  Which also cost money.  The ship was running off an Aschente Series 226 fusion reactor, reconfigured to run on seawater.  Which meant that refueling was easy, but it wasn’t cheap.  There weren’t any oceans just floating around in space, so any water to be had came from planetary bodies.  Which meant that anyone living on those planets could charge for the water that the ship would need.  Which meant if the Grania Estelle didn’t have enough money to pay for the fuel needed to fully tank up, it would just cause a cascade of problems down the line.  Less money meant less fuel.  Less fuel meant less power.  Less power meant fewer systems could be on at any one time, which meant they couldn’t use the replicator, which meant that fewer upgrades and repairs could be done, which meant that eventually the ship would fail.

Which meant that they needed to start thinking about alternate means of income, be that cash or other resources.  But that was a problem for another day.  They couldn’t do anything about the fuel situation while they were in hyperspace.  She had a few ideas about that, but it would depend on what the situation in the next star system was like, whether they had a thriving space economy.  For our sake, I hope they don’t.

But on top of the fuel costs there was a question of pay.  Everyone on board was owed compensation of some sort.  Tamara was being paid with room and board as well as the Perdition fighter once they were done with work on the Grania Estelle.  But if the ship didn’t make its runs, the crew would desert because they wouldn’t work for pennies for long.

A problem for later, Tamara thought to herself.  For now, they still had work to do.

After three days, the portside power grid was much improved, over twenty-five percent replaced.  It was a bitch in some cases to get to the conduits to pull them and replace, but they were getting it done.  The work crews were moving a bit slower than Tamara was used to, but she was impressed at their learning curve.  Quesh’s teams were good people, but up until now they hadn’t gotten the chance to truly develop their skills.

Tamara was busy sitting off by herself.  Quesh and Ka’Xarian had a good hold on the teams, giving her time to work on other projects.  She was working on two different things, a third maintenance bot to help with the scanning, cleaning of the compartments and minor repairs and her software project.  Anytime someone came close she would change the display on her computer.  It wasn’t time yet for them to see what she was working on.  The coding was coming along well, but it wasn’t self-regulating yet.

The captain came into the cargo bay, walking over to where Tamara was working.  She looked up from the bot, her hand still bolting down the circuit board she had just replaced.  “Captain,” she said in greeting.  “What brings you down here?”

“My ops officer tells me that power drain is reduced by over thirty percent,” he commented, sitting down on the crate across from Tamara.  “The leak on deck two that’s been there for a decade has been fixed.  I was losing a good portion of fuel to waste.”

“Glad to help,” she said, grunting as she extracted her hand from the bot’s innards.

“So why are you doing this, Moxie?” he asked after a moment.  “And it isn’t just for the fighter there, though I know you do like it.”

She reached back inside, making sure the wires were connected properly.  “Well, Captain, I know she’s your baby, but this ship is a deathtrap.  The teams have done a great job with the power grid and the EPS conduits, but that’s just the start.”  She looked up at him.  “It’s my butt on the line too, Captain.  I’d like to survive to get to where we’re going.”

The captain sighed.  “I would get insulted, but it’s true.  There just haven’t been the resources to fix things properly.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him.  “I haven’t gotten resources from anywhere else.”

“Yes,” he said patiently, “but until a little more than a week ago, I didn’t have you and a fully functioning replicator.  I had to purchase parts from anyone who could make them.  And there just wasn’t the money for that.”  For the first time since she’d met him, the unflappable captain was depressed.

Tamara nodded, brushing a tendril of hair out of her face.  “I understand.”

“Do you?” he asked, getting angry.  “Things aren’t all shiny and neat like they were two hundred years ago.  We don’t have the ‘might of the Republic’ backing us up.”

She chuckled.  “Neither did I.”

“Oh, of course you didn’t, Moxie,” he said mockingly.  “You were Republic military.  Don’t try to deny it.  You bearing and your mannerisms all but scream it.  That, with your ability to access the replicator codes means you were an officer.  A fairly-high ranking one.”

Tamara stopped working for a moment and stared at him.  “You’re right.  I was in a member of the Republic Navy.  I was a Commander, in charge of a shipyard.  And yes, I had access to all the fancy toys and trained crews.  And then, because a pair of officers didn’t like that I was snooping around their smuggling operations, they fabricated lies to have me arrested for their crimes.”  The captain looked skeptical.  “It’s true, though I know you have no reason to believe me.  I was about to be convicted, stripped of my rank and tossed in prison.  If the Federation hadn’t attacked Hudora just when they did, I would have been.  And I probably would have died in prison and you would have no one to fix your ship.”  She stopped because her hands were shaking so badly, she nearly caused the bot to slip off her lap.  Cursing, she pulled it back up and settled it back so she could continue working.

“Why did you abandon your posting?” he asked, his voice a bit gentler.

“I was going to lose my whole life’s work,” Tamara said, amazed at how calm her voice sounded.  “My friends and colleagues all abandoned me as the court martial dragged on for months.  My reputation was trashed, my honor dragged through the mud.  The two officers did a brilliant job of framing me for their crimes.  No one would believe me, there was damning evidence everywhere.  My family abandoned me.”  Her face darkened.  “Thankfully my folks died when I was younger, but my brother and sisters completely distanced themselves from me.  Wouldn’t do to be associated with a criminal.”  Her voice was bitter.

The captain nodded.  “That’s hard.”

“They’re all dead now,” she said quietly.  “Probably have been for a long time.  Their children, their grandchildren.”  She had never said the words aloud, not even to herself in the quiet and solitude.  “Even the Republic is a bare shadow of what I once knew.”

“I’m surprised you don’t want to go back there,” the captain said conversationally.  “Probably a lot better digs than this old girl.”  He patted the crate.

She shook her head.  “No, the Republic I knew cast me out.  But for a quirk of fate, I would no longer be an officer, I’d be nothing but a convict.  No one dared stand up for me except those who were ordered to do so.  I owe the Republic nothing.”  She was getting a bad taste in her mouth.  It wasn’t until that moment that she decided this.  She hadn’t allowed herself to think about such things until now.  She was already starting to regret bringing herself here to this frame of mind.  Damn him.

They sat there in uncomfortable silence for a long time.  After a few moments, saying nothing, Tamara returned to her ministrations on the bot.  Finishing the work on its inside controls, she closed up the access panel and picked up a can of grease from the crate next to her.  Opening it, she applied the grease inside to the bot’s four manipulator arms, specifically the several joints.  After several minutes, she wiped the grease from her hands onto a rag and nodded in satisfaction.  Taking the bot from her lap, she set it on the deck.  Taking her datapad, she connected the access cable to its upper port.  Running a diagnostic program, the bot soon whirred to life, its repulsors lifting it up off the deck.  Tamara directed it to begin work on the outer wall of the cargo bay and with a cheerful whistle, the bot flew off.  It didn’t have a personality, she hadn’t programmed one, but she had given the bot the ability to simulate it, as though it was glad to get to work, to get to its job.

The captain was shaking his head.  “It never ceases to amaze,” he said, gesturing toward the three bots working at various things around the bay.  One was splicing and repairing fiber optic cables at a busted open junction, a second, smaller bot was cleaning the decades of filth from the bulkhead around the door, and now, this third one was flying up to the door mechanism, scanning, cleaning and making small repairs on the gears.  “I’ve never seen so many working bots even if there are only three.  For the longest time, we only had two.  And they broke about a year ago and we couldn’t fix them.”

“They do a mountain of work,” she commented, shaking away the shadows.  “I’ll try and get a few more going by the time we get out of hyperspace.  I’m going to stop in on the company working on life support.”

He nodded vehemently.  “Yes, you do that.  I would very much like to continue breathing.”

Tamara raised an eyebrow as she stood up.  “So would I, Captain.”

Days passed.  The work continued.  With five days yet to go before breakout, the crew was in high spirits.  When Tamara woke on that day, she could tell that something was different.  Ever since she had arrived on board, after getting out of the completely fouled air of the escape pod, she had noted that the air on board the Grania Estelle was a bit… ripe.  But now, with bots going over the various surfaces of the ship’s interior, cleaning off the filth and with Quesh’s team completing more and more upgrades in the life support, the atmosphere seemed a clearer.  It wasn’t as though they were all standing on a beach, breathing the cool sea air, but it was a vast improvement.

One of the teams from the EPS repair group had been retasked.  Huge spools of fiber optic cable had been replicated and were now being used to reconnect and repair the various computer systems.  They had done a good job of restoring the ship’s circulatory system, to use a biological term, and now they were beginning work on the ship’s nervous system.  There was a lot of rewiring to do, decades or longer of jury rigging needed to be undone and then redone properly.  The ‘good enough’ mentality was slowly being eroded, though Tamara suspected that it would take a lot longer to truly break the crew of that.  The wiring was a long, tedious process, one which Tamara joined in with a gusto, but it was one that needed doing.  The teams would grumble about the job, but seeing their passenger working just as hard as they were, harder in some cases, tended to keep the grumbling to a minimum.

The hull breaches, fractures and pinhole leaks were a problem.  The bots, over a dozen now, had done an excellent job so far of mapping out the amount of damage on the inner side of the outer hull, repairing what small holes they could and simply marking the big breaches for proper repair later.  Quesh and Xar had gathered together with the captain and Tamara to discuss the best way to approach this very large project.  Xar had gone back to supervising the various teams working on the conduits and the fiber optics, indicating he would keep those projects moving forward apace.  The captain had no more crew to spare for this project, or rather, no crew that could do the work.  Quesh could only spare four of his people to start on the breaches.  This suited Tamara fine.

“We’re going to have to start slowly,” she said.  “Do any of those techs have EVA experience?”

Quesh shook his head.  “No.  Only about five out of my whole crew do, including me and Ka’Xarian.”

Tamara sighed.  “Great.”  Then she forced herself to brighten.  “No problem.  We’ll just go slowly, do a little at a time.”  They looked over the holo showing the three dimensional image of the Grania Estelle.  The holo showed an incredible number of hull breaches over a wide range of the ship.  The three cargo bays showed breached and the inner section of the ship showed numerous small breaches.  The port side was the most affected, as though the ship had been pounded with small meteors and until it had scraped against a much larger rock.  Tamara was interested to find out how all the damage had happened, if it was in one event, or if the bulk of it happened over time.  It didn’t much matter as far as the repairs went, but would give her a better understanding of what had happened to the ship.  Was this a sudden event or a gradual decline?

Tamara and her small team gathered in the first area, all wearing EVA suits which had seen better days.  They were patched and shabby, but Tamara had gone over every suit and pronounced them sound.  They had their helmets on, but the face shields were still open.  “All right,” she said to them all as they stood outside the hatch to the depressurized section.  “We’ve set up a temporary airlock, so on my order, they’re going to depressurize this compartment and then we can go in there.”  She pointed to the next compartment.  “Everyone make sure your atmo tanks are connected and in a moment, seal your helmets.  You should get a heads up display on the inside of your face shield showing the suit integrity.  Make sure everything is in the green.  Nobody gets cute.”  Tamara swept her gaze over the small group.  A few of them frowned, one squirmed uncomfortably.  “If at any point your suit breaches, you announce it and we’ll get you out.  I don’t want anyone trying to be a hero.  We start slowly and then we work up.  Make sure you have your welders and cutters.”  Everyone either patted the equipment on their belts or nodded affirmative.  “All right.  Grab the patch plates and we’ll go.”

“Just the patch plates?” one of the techs asked.  “Those are barely three centimeters thick.”

“Right,” she said.  “We’re just concerning ourselves with sealing the compartment so that we can use it again instead of having to go all the way around the ship to get to the next section.  Once we’re out of hyper, we’re going to get out on the hull and do external repairs.  We’ll fill in the holes that we’ve already closed on the inside with the patches and then weld the plate metal over the outside.  It won’t be as good as pulling up the whole section of the hull and putting down new hull plating, but it’ll be sufficient for your needs.  This is a cargo ship after all, not a battlecruiser.”  That got some nods and chuckles.  “All right.  Seal your helmets and let’s go.”

It was not the worst EVA job she had ever done.  At first, the techs were very careful and conscientious, but after she showed them how to cut away the erratic, ragged edges of the holes, carefully placing the cut pieces into a storage bin for recycling, then tack up a patch plate over the holes and then weld them down, they started to get a bit overconfident.  After one of the men got sloppy with the plasma cutter and accidently punched a hole in the leg of his suit, the others calmed right down.  Being exposed to vacuum was never a pleasant experience, even in a small way like on one part of one’s leg.

They worked in the vacuum of the compartment for a full shift, everyone taking their time, doing things at about half speed to make sure there were no more accidents.  Also, there were over twenty holes that needed patching, some that were as large as a man.  But they persevered and by the end of the shift, the first compartment was sealed and ready.

“Damn,” one of the techs complained.  “When we go do that again, I need a damned sweat band.  My eyes have been burning for hours.”  It was a well-lodged complaint, one that had been voiced many times.

“Very good work,” Tamara congratulated them as she peeled the suit off.  Apparently there were no taboos here, and since she wasn’t the only woman Tamara didn’t feel self-conscious about stripping down to her underclothes in front of these people.  She pulled on her coveralls, fully intending to go back to her quarters and shower after this.  “Make sure, all of you that you plug in your suits to recharge.”  Following her own order, she picked up her suit and plugged the atmo unit into the charging station.  The others did the same, then they all dispersed to get cleaned up.

An hour later, Tamara, the captain and the work crew stood in the “new” compartment.  “I haven’t been in here in ten years,” the man marveled.  “I remember it used to be a recreation area before the micrometeors tore it up.”

“I figured at much, seeing all the broken computer consoles, and those couches there.”  Tamara pointed at the furniture.  “It’ll be a while before we can spare the teams to really get this room back in order again, though.”  Her words were apologetic, but her tone wasn’t.

“A problem, Moxie?”

She shook her head.  “Just a matter of priorities.  Though I suppose the crew might be able to come in here and relax.”

“Very good work, Moxie.”  The captain looked around again in wonder.  “Get this compartment cleaned up and I’m sure the crew will come back in here for gatherings.”  He turned to her.  “How many more compartments do you think could get sealed before we’re out of hyperspace?”

Tamara shrugged.  “Probably two more.  The one on deck three and the one further up the corridor on this deck.  I’d like to get one of the big cargo bays done, but there isn’t time.  We wouldn’t even get one of those done in the time we have before breakout.”

The captain nodded.  “A shame.  Oh well though.  Still, good work.”

The time in hyperspace had been well spent.  The ship had a new set of wiring, and almost half of the power conduits had been replaced.  The life support system had been overhauled and over a dozen maintenance bots had been built or restored and were busy making small fixes or cleaning the ship.  Three compartments had been sealed and there was a general uplift in ship’s morale.  It was paired with a sense of complete and utter exhaustion in the engineering crew, who had been working very long hours to get all that work done.

Tamara stood on the bridge, at the back out of the way, while the bridge crew prepared to exit hyperspace.  The bridge was small and cramped, like every compartment aboard the cargo ship, except for the main bays.  There were five main control stations, with the captain’s chair situated right in the middle, all stations manned.  The equipment was antiquated, with a few of the stations looking as though the original equipment had been replaced, but with components that weren’t intended to do those jobs, repurposed and reconditioned.  It was the way of things nowadays, but those things were changing, especially now as the crew gained more experience in the better way of operating.

The captain had finally relented and told her where they were going, though Tamara had easily figured that out by getting into the navigation logs.  Instow Star System wasn’t much to look at, a small colony on the moon of a gas giant, the only habitable world in the system.  The system boasted only two planetary bodies, a frozen rock and the gas giant.  There was a very thick asteroid belt, however, perfect for Tamara’s plan, to go prospecting for the materials the ship would need.  Hopefully, Instow didn’t have much in the way of space forces, because if they did, Grania Estelle would have to go rock-wrangling in another system, for they certainly didn’t have the funds to purchase any.

“Counting down,” the pilot said, her hands on the flight controls.  “Ten seconds to breakout.”

“All hands, this is the Captain,” he said, sitting himself up straighter in his chair.  “Prepare for breakout.”

The pilot counted down and then pushed the lever forward, deactivating the hyperdrive.  The ship bucked as though it had crashed into an asteroid.  Tamara, prepared this time, was flung off her feet but her hands clung desperately to the handle anchored to the outer edge of the operations console.  She had wondered what those were for when the Captain had brought her to the bridge at the start of this hyperspace trip and now she knew.  Her feet regaining the deck, she continued to hold on as the ship shimmied and vibrated.  It took more than a minute for it to subside.

“That was a violent translation,” she gasped.  The others on the bridge only laughed.

“That?” the ops officer asked with a grin.  “That was about middle of the road in intensity.  We’ve had a lot worse.”

And when something actually did strike the ship, they all knew that they had found something worse.

Chapter 4

“We’ve taken a hit to the engine section!” the ops officer screeched, losing his cool in the tumult of alarms that blared throughout the bridge.

“I’ve lost helm control!” the pilot reported, frantically working her console.

“What happened?” the captain demanded, holding on tightly to the arms of his chair.

“Something hit us, Captain!” the ops officer replied, desperately scanning his sensor feeds.  There wasn’t much to see, though, the sensors on the Grania Estelle were so myopic they could barely see more than two kilometers in any direction.  It was on the list of things to be upgraded, but like everything else, it required materials, manpower, access, power and time.  And so far, there just wasn’t enough of any of those things to fix the sensors.  It would get done though.  And it wasn’t as though having perfect sensors right now would have made any difference.  Within a minute from reversion to realspace, they’d been hit.

“I can tell we’ve been hit, George,” the captain said, trying to keep his calm demeanor.  “What was it?  An asteroid?  Is someone shooting at us?”

“I can’t tell, Captain!” George Miller, stabbing at his operations console cried.  He was a short man, hearty but with a dull pallor.  He was a spacer, born and bred, but the time on the freighter, and Cookie’s fine food had caused a slight thickening in his middle areas, something his girl liked to tease him about.  “I can’t see anything!”  Then something else hit them, and everyone jerked to the right.  “Shields are out!”

“Two direct hits that just happen to take out our engines and shields?” Tamara asked, her gut filling with ice.  “Not a chance that is coincidence.”

The captain appeared to come to that same conclusion.  He pressed a stud on the arm of his chair.  “All hands, this is the Captain.  We are under attack by unknown forces.  Watch yourselves, and prepare to be boarded.  Security, assemble armed parties in the boat bay.  That’s the most likely place they’ll try to get in.”

He and Tamara shared a look.  “We can’t see anything.  Who’s out there?  How many?”

“My fighter has upgraded sensors,” Tamara said.  “Certainly better than any of the sensors on the ship.”  She waved a hand to indicate the big cargo freighter.

The captain nodded, turning to the operations station.  “Go.  Report back as soon as you have something.”

Tamara left the bridge at a run.

Outside the Grania Estelle, three ships were closing on the big freighter.  Two small vessels, warships, were flanking a larger vessel, a cargo ship about a third the size of the Grania Estelle.  The cargo ship was hanging back, half a light second away.  The warships were moving in, one above, the other below the crippled freighter, their weapons trained on the bulk freighter just for insurance.  Neither the captains nor the crews were terribly worried about the decrepit ship, though they kept their shields powered, just for insurance.

The warships were small, classified as corvettes, which would have crews of no more than eighty, which meant they didn’t require a massive crew pool.  They were fast and agile as well as armed with decent weapons, though the ships were meant more for escort duty or commerce raiding than any serious Fleet engagement.  Both the Republic and the Federation used such ships, but these ships were serious firepower in a galaxy of independent nations.  Cargo vessels, even armed ones, wouldn’t be able to stand off against dedicated warships, even small ones like these.  Grania Estelle did have weapons, but they were little more than popguns used to deflect incoming meteors.  It would be highly unlikely that they could breach the shields of the corvettes, much less damage either of them.

A quartet of shuttles raced away from the corvettes, all four headed for the wallowing bulk freighter, staggering their approaches.  While the Grania Estelle’s weaponry was no match for a warship’s shields, it should be more than enough to take out a shuttle, even if they only were hit by a lucky shot.

All of the ships, warships, freighter and shuttles all sported a symbol painted on the hull, in red, which stood out in contrast against the gray metal of the hull.  It was a bird of prey of some sort, its wings outstretched and its taloned feet flexed as though swooping down to snatch up its prey.  It made the ships all appear to be much more fearsome, and certainly identifiable.  Though in independent space, with no regular Navy patrols, having identifying marks might be a boon to the pirates, for it would spread fear into their victims and perhaps make them more pliable when they dropped in to pay a visit on a cargo ship.

Pulling up alongside the bulk freighter, two of the shuttles moved up toward the forward section of the ship.  The very fore of the freighter was the ovoid shaped, with personnel airlocks on each side.  The shuttles eased up to the sides, matching the movement of the Grania Estelle.  The shuttle on the left side of the ship deployed an access tube, less than two meters long made up of three steel rings connected by heavy cable with the tube skinned with an airtight synthweave.  Once the tube mated with the ship, it formed and airtight seal.  Seconds later, the airlock on the shuttle opened and two people rushed across the gap.  One was holding a box which immediately magnetized when he set it against the hull.  Popping open a small access cover, he connected three cables into ports on the ship.  Override programs in the box began working their magic and within seconds, the ship’s airlock moved back and then slid to the side.  After that, a score of people armed, wearing skinsuits and mismatched body armor rushed through the opening.

The shuttle on the other side wasn’t having the same luck.  The airlock controls were burned out.  Undaunted, the assault team brought out plasma torches and began cutting through the hatchway.  It was taking longer, but the team knew their business.  While the first team was streaming into the ship, the second team continued cutting.  Four minutes later, the hatch clattered to the deck inside the ship.  The second shuttle began sending teams through into the ship.

The second set of shuttles pulled up just outside the Grania Estelle’s boat bay, whose doors were sealed.  Without any finesse whatsoever, the shuttles blasted the doors open with their plasma cannons.  Strategic hits straight to the middle of the main door blew the metal apart, leaving a gaping hole the size of a shuttle craft.  An additional pair of shots widened the hole, damaging the shuttle inside and raining superheated shrapnel throughout the boat bay.  There were screams from inside as the atmosphere whooshed out through the breach, loose equipment, random bits of junk and eventually shrieking crewmen were sucked out into the void.  Six security officers were among those tossed out into space.  Once the bay was fully depressurized, the invader shuttles flew in through the gap.

Once landed, the occupants piled out into the empty boat bay.  One of the invaders, clearly the leader, pointed to the hole and said something over the radios.  Within minutes, a portable generator was rigged up to a force field projector and the hole was sealed over with an energy barrier, which allowed the life support units in the boat bay to refill the bay with atmosphere.  A few short moments passed until there was sufficient life support ready for the invaders to open the hatch to the inside and rush through.

The invaders spread throughout the Grania Estelle, either knocking back crewmen, or outright shooting them.  They were brutal, shouting their war cries and either brandishing or using their weapons.  Three crewmen were coming out of the galley after hearing the alarms, to be summarily gunned down by a quartet of invaders.  They rushed into the mess hall and then into the galley as some crewmen screamed in terror, a group from the late lunch crowd who ducked behind the tables or cowered in the corners away from the pirates.  The invaders ignored them and headed straight for the pantry area.  They loaded up a hover palette with goods from the pantry; fresh foods, canned goods and other things, taking about a quarter of the food stores and then hustled back out, a couple of the big cans falling off the palette and onto the deck.  The pirates didn’t waste time picking them back up, three of them kept their weapons trained, the fourth drove the palette.

Another team headed for engineering.  Quesh was waiting for them with a security team.  A firefight ensued, bullets, needles and plasma bolts firing back and forth.  The attack on the main engineering was stalled, but certainly not stopped.  The pirates knew their business, but the security team was fighting for their home.  Quesh had a pair of pistols, one in his lower left hand and the other in his upper left.  His right hands were holding up a large sheet of plate steel which he was using as a shield to protect both himself and one of the security officers, both of whom were using it for cover.  A security woman took a plasma bolt in the chest which blasted clean through; she dropped to the deck without a sound.  The Parkani roared, firing wildly, dropping two of the pirates, one with a shot to the throat and another in the groin.  The first grabbed his throat and collapsed, gurgling as blood bubbled up from the wound, the other flopped on the deck, screaming as his femoral artery was severed.

“Pour it on!” the Parkani shouted, continuing to fire.

Red lights were flashing in all compartments now as Tamara raced through the ship.  Another hit struck the ship, causing her to stumble, but she kept on.  She made it to the cargo bay where her starfighter was still resting, secured to the deck with tie downs, undamaged.  Some of the crates had fallen over when the ship had been struck, some of the junk pile had scattered around.  But no one was in here.

She could hear the sound of gunfire in the corridors, which caused her to flinch.  It was still confined to the area around the boat bay, though based on what she was hearing, the invaders were moving out from there.  Her mind was racing a kilometer a second.

This was insane.  Pirates?  This was Republic space!  No pirates would dare strike this close to a Republic outpost, especially a full blown shipyard like at Hudora.  Patrols would be going through this area like clockwork and it would take far too long to hijack a ship right at the hyper limit, especially if there was a patrol nearby.  There would be no place for them to scurry off to and hide.

And then it hit her.  It staggered her as her knees went watery and her heart sank to thump on the deck.  She fell forward two paces, catching herself on the nose of the Perdition.  Her breath started coming in gasps.

This wasn’t Republic space anymore.  Not for decades.  Centuries even.  There was no shipyard at Hudora.  There were no patrols out this far away from the Core.  There was no help coming.  There was no more Navy out here, no more Fleet.  Just the poor people living out here, they would have to look out for themselves.

I’ve been lying to myself, she realized.  This wasn’t just an escape from prison and a form of purgatory out here on this ship.  No.  She wasn’t going to find a little life out here, perhaps return vindicated to the Fleet.  She wasn’t going to return home, meet up with her family.  No, they were gone, dead.  All of them.  She was alone now, even more than during her trial.

“Well, well,” a gruff voice came from behind her.  She whirled to see a man in a spacer’s suit standing in the hatchway of the cargo bay.  He was human, with a long scar running down from the corner of his eye to under his jawline, as though a drop of acid had rolled down his face to then drip off.  He was tall and muscular, and his skinsuit was adorned with a set of navy blue police-issue body armor over his chest, shoulders and back.  His face was filled with a mix of lust and pure malice, and in his hand, aiming at the deck, was a very high-powered pistol.  “Very nice.”

Tamara backed away.  She was less than twenty feet from the man, but there was no real place to hide in here.  This cargo bad did have crates and barrels of freight, but a lot of it was neatly stacked around the edges, or else was strewn on the floor.  She couldn’t lose him in here.  And with the Perdition sitting right in the middle of the bay, there was a very large open space.

“No.  No, no, no, no, no, no.”  She was whispering this as she backed away, moving around the fighter’s landing struts as the man approached her.

She was panicking and she couldn’t stop.  The look on his face was utterly malevolent but now there was a degree of joy that was creeping into his features.  “Come here, little bird,” he growled at her.  The gun was still in his hand but it was his face that Tamara couldn’t tear her gaze from.  “Too bad I don’t have time for a proper job.  Guess we’ll just have to work quick.”  He was grinning now.

“No, no, no.”  Her voice was a normal tone now, though she could not stop herself from repeating that word.  Her brain realized she needed to stop and cool off, but her mouth just wouldn’t stop.  Just as her arms and legs kept moving herself away from him.

“Stop moving, little bird,” the man ordered.  She couldn’t help herself, she kept backing away.  He raised the gun.  “Stop moving.”

Tamara tripped over a piece of metal on the ground and fell backward, landing hard on her rump.  She continued to scoot backward, but the man rushed forward, looming over her.  “Oh, nice.  A woman on her back.  Just where she belongs.”  The man, upon closer viewing had pockmarks on his face, his hands were ungloved and scarred.  The weapon was pointed right at her and he was leaning down.

Islington.  She could see him now.  He was standing over her, leering down at her, laughing at her through bars of her cell.  He was snickering at her in court, sitting with Bythe and laughing.  And now Islington was here, impossibly, holding a weapon over her, about ready to strike.

Time seemed to stop.   This was impossible.  She could see him.  Lieutenant Oliver Islington, large as life.  Her implants were screaming at her, projecting images into her vision that this was an unknown, but her eyes were telling her something different.  It was him.  She knew that face.  It was one of two that had been burned into her mind during the worst year of her life.  He must have escaped the station during the battle as well.  Perhaps he had gone into hibernation as well, but had been picked up before Tamara had.  Yes, that must be it.  He was picked up by a Republic or perhaps even an independent like Tamara had.  That was the only explanation why she could see him now.  Time had been unkind to him, but that was him.

He was upon her now.  The pistol was cast aside, a wicked blade was in his hand now.  They were grappling on the deck, her hands on his wrist with the weapon, he was tearing at her coveralls.  “You are an ugly bitch,” he growled, his face right up in hers.  “But the rest of you looks fine.”  His stinking breath was all over her face.

Full blown panic set in.  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” she shrieked and continued to fight him.

“Hold still!” he barked.

Islington yanked his arm up, breaking her grip.  Her vision went red, her hands scrabbling frantically on the deck.  A pipe was suddenly in her hand, and she swung it with all her might, bringing to the fore all the rage and hate and pain she’d kept bottled up for so long.

Suddenly, her vision cleared and she was standing, her wrists aching, the pipe bent from impact, the pipe, her hands and her coveralls splattered with blood and gore.  She didn’t remember.  She didn’t remember any of it, how she’d gotten on her feet, having beaten Islington with the pipe, getting covered with blood, none of it.  Tamara looked down at the battered form lying on the deck, a shout of triumph escaping her lips.  She had won.  Two hundred forty-eight years since they had seen one another, and fate had delivered him unto her.  He’d finally tried to satisfy his baser urges but she’d won.  And he was dead.

She tossed the pipe on the deck and walked away to retrieve his gun.  Turning back, for one last gloat, Tamara leaned down, right in Islington’s battered face…

It wasn’t him.

She recoiled in horror, empty hand flying to her chest.  The gun hung in her other hand in nerveless fingers.  It wasn’t him.  The man she’d killed wasn’t Oliver Islington.  It wasn’t him!  Calling up the information on her implants, a window opened up on her optical display.  A quick replay confirmed what her eyes were now telling her.  This man was never Oliver Islington.  But she had seen him!  Oh, he was a nasty piece of trash, and she didn’t feel any remorse over his death, but what had just happened?  What was going on?

What is happening to me?

Then the sound of more gunfire came into her awareness and she couldn’t dwell any longer.

Ka’Xarian was down at the main life support processor, swapping out the algae matrices when the first hit came.  Cursing, his mandibles clacking, he pulled out the second to last of the two meter high filter cartridges and tossed it on the deck.  Damned bridge crew, he thought.  We are just starting to get this ship in some kind of order and then they have to go and crash into something.  It never fails.

Then the captain came on the overhead.  “All hands, this is the Captain.  We are under attack by unknown forces.  Watch yourselves, and prepare to be boarded.”

“Boarded?” he said out loud.  That was insane.  When the second hit struck the ship, he knew that this was happening.  Who is boarding us?  No one should be boarding us.  People don’t do that.  He felt cold, loathing and distant, somehow.

He looked around for a weapon, any sort of weapon.  As Tamara had mentioned, this was a cargo ship, not a battlecruiser.  There was a small cache of arms for the security team but as a rule, no one else carried.  A few had blades that they wore when they went for shore leave, but Ka’Xarian never did.  On the ship, no one but security went around armed.   And this was the life support compartment.  What kind of weapon could he find here?

The staccato thunder of gunfire sounded, causing the zheen to flinch.  There wasn’t time to dither.  Grabbing up a half-meter long wrench, he moved to the hatchway of the compartment.  He could hear the clunk-clunk-clunk of booted feet running around on the metal deckplating.  The footsteps were close, just outside the compartment.  A skin suited individual carrying a rifle in his hands, stepped inside the hatch and Ka’Xarian struck.  The wrench smashed the man’s helmet like a ripe watermelon, driving the man’s skull into his shoulders for good measure.  Helping himself to the dead man’s rifle, Xar peeked out of the hatchway.

A woman’s scream echoed down the corridor, a tortured wail that seemed to go on forever.  Xar flinched in pain.  The noise itself was excruciating, but the thought of what was happening to her was even worse.  He continued down the corridor, the rifle pointed in front of him.  Rushing into the new rec room that had only been opened a few days before, he found Sylvia, one of the cargo workers on the deck, two men tearing at her and laughing as she struggled.  The zheen didn’t even think.  He shot the first one in the head, showering both the other rapist and the woman in blood and gore.  Sylvia shrieked in abject panic while the second man whirled to face the door.

Ka’Xarian swung the rifle, cracking the man across the jaw hard enough to spend him sprawling.  With a roar, the zheen lunged forward, smashing his chitinous foot down on the man’s throat.  The man clutched at his neck, gagging.  Xar moved his face right into the other’s.  “You do not touch my crew!” he hissed as the other man died.  He turned to Sylvia, who, weeping, was trying to cover herself with the tattered remnants of her ship’s coveralls.  Xar went to her, but he didn’t touch her.  “They’re dead, Sylvia,” he said, a slight buzz getting into his voice, a soothing sound for his people.  Getting up, he took a blanket off the nearby couch and draped it over her.  She sniffed, her sobs slowly decreasing.  “They can’t hurt you again,” the zheen said.  “I have to go.”  He stood.

“No!” she gasped, her hand darted out and grabbed his pant leg.  “Please, no!”

Ka’Xarian’s antennae lowered.  He nodded.  “All right.  Let’s get you up off the deck.  Over on the couch.”  He helped her to her feet, noticing the scratches, the bruises forming on her arms and legs through the tears in her clothes.  She sat down on the couch, which also had spatters of blood on the cushions.  Xar moved back to the doorway, his weapon at the ready.  “I’m not going anywhere, Sylvia, but it isn’t safe yet.”  She nodded, jerkily, from the couch.  Tears silently slid unchecked down her cheeks.

He looked back out into the corridor, hoping he wouldn’t have to kill anyone else.

The pirates hustled into one of the cargo bays and loading up a palette of crates of the ship’s cargo consignment, hustled back out down the passages to their waiting shuttles in the boat bay.  They weren’t taking everything, the ops officer on the bridge was noting, basically only a cross section of the various goods on the ship.  A large cross section, to be sure, but they couldn’t possibly load up what they had in the cargo bays into four shuttles.  Though as far as the crew was concerned, everything they were taking would be sorely missed.

“Captain!” the ops officer said.  “They’ve just run off with three fifty-K sized barrels of water and two of hydrogen from the fuel tanks.  That will bring us down to thirty percent in fuel reserves.”

“Damn it,” he swore quietly, pounding a fist on the arm of his chair.  Thirty percent was lower than the Grania Estelle had ever been.  That was only a month’s amount of fuel, only just enough to get anywhere outside of this star system, using the most economical of fuel saving measures.  The captain checked the display on his chair for the amounts left in the main tanks.  Barely forty percent.  He pressed a control on the other arm.  “Bridge to cargo bay one.  Moxie, what do you have for me?”

“Bringing up sensors now, Captain,” Tamara came back.  Her voice sounded hoarse and shaking.

“You all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” she retorted harshly.  “All right.  I’ve got two corvette warships holding position above and below us and a little ways out, a medium sized cargo ship, about half a light second.”

“How many shuttles?”

“Four, Captain.  Two in the boat bay and two on the sides of the forward section.”  She paused.  “Captain, one of the corvettes is maneuvering.  They’re firing!”  A hit rocked the ship.

“Breach on deck four!” George exclaimed from the ops station.  “Hit to main engineering, looks like a number of fuel likes are ruptured, two of the fuel tanks on the starboard side have been punctured.  We’re venting fuel.”

“Shit!” The captain was on his feet.  He pressed another control, but didn’t sit back down.  “Seal off any affected areas that we can!  Quesh, this is the captain.  Status!”

“We’re in trouble!” the Parkani roared back over the comm.  “Got some company down here that’s making things difficult.  Damn!  I’ll get back to you!”  And the connection ended.

“Get a security team down to engineering.  I am not losing my ship to these bastards.”  He ran his hands though his hair in frustration, pacing around the small bridge.

Main Engineering was a chaotic hell.  Half of the engineers were at the main hatches, trying desperately to fight off the invaders, who stubbornly refused to leave.  Neither side was doing anything except exchanging fire and damaging more equipment.  Bullets, needles and plasma bolts were flying everywhere, though the fire was concentrated right at the edge of the engineering spaces.  There were eight men bearing the bird of prey symbol on their skinsuits or body armor, firing continuously, though Quesh’s men were keeping them bottled up in the hatchway.

The other half of Quesh’s men, including the Parkani himself, were just as desperate of their fellows, working frantically to get the damage under control.  “Cut the fuel lines up at junction 246,” he ordered, working the console in front of him with three of his hands.  The fourth limb, the lower right, hung limp at his side, a rough bandage tied around a seeping bullet wound in the lower shoulder.

“On it Chief,” Krazna Yol, the fiery woman who served as one of his company leaders.  She and two others were working on their own consoles.  But it seemed they weren’t getting anywhere.  “No go, Chief.  The valves are jammed open.  I’m closing it off at junction 230.”  That was a lot of fuel in the lines that would be wasted, but there was nothing they could do.  If they didn’t stop the hemorrhaging, they would lose all the fuel.  Two of the six main fuel tanks were breached and now empty.

A stray bullet smashed the screen in front of Krazna and she ducked instinctively.  “Chief!  You need to do something!”

“I’m working as best I can,” the big alien yelled back.  The computer systems worked so much better now that Tamara had worked her software magic on them.  The Parkani had known that the systems were infested with viruses but not being a coder himself, could do very little about it.  There were still problems, of course, whole banks of processors were either damaged or were completely out of commission, which caused the systems to run slower than was optimal.  But it was a job of a matter of minutes to reroute the fuel lines around the damaged or severed sections, saving as much as possible.  Something told the Chief that they were going to need every drop to get through the next few days.

The sounds of gunfire increased, a cacophonous roar that drowned out every other sound.  Quesh, Krazna and the others dropped to the deck, cowering as bullets smashed consoles, ricocheted around the compartment.  Some of the techs screamed in terror as the fusillade never seemed to end.  Just when the large Parkani was about to lose even his incredible cool, the shooting stopped.  “Clear!” someone shouted.  “Anyone still alive in here?”

“Cora you bitch!” Quesh was on his feet in a flash and raced across the engineering space.  The invaders, who up until a moment ago had been pouring fire into the room, were now lying in a pile at the hatchway, leaking blood from a couple hundred holes.  “You shot up my engine room!” he bellowed, stopping on the inside of the door.  Three of his hands were planted on his hips.

“You’re welcome, you big lout,” the woman replied.  Corajen Nymeria wasn’t human, she was a lupusan, a humanoid wolfwoman.  Her species looked like the old legends of werewolves, though the lupusan couldn’t transform like the legends.  She was as tall as an average adult human male, with a coat of shiny black and brown fur.  Her golden eyes sparkled.  It wasn’t every day she got to truly go around and “kick ass” like this.  She was a junkie for this sort of thing and wasn’t shy about letting everyone know it.  She often was part of the shore patrol who would round up the crew when they went on leave in port.  Often Cora would come back with bruised knuckles and a few stories to tell.  Now, it was clear, she was in her element.

“By the stars!” the Parkani raged, throwing his arms in the air in frustration.  The lupusan was garbed in very little clothing, creatures in this galaxy with fur tended to not wear much in the way of clothing, as it itched unmercifully.  But now she was wearing a set of body armor, cut to fit her slim shape.  She was armed with a military-style pulser, her ears flicking in amusement.

“Oh, stop your whining,” she replied calmly.  “My team and I got here as fast as we could.  Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.”  She looked mournfully at the crewmen lying dead on the deck, her ears and tail drooping.  “Are you all set in here?  Job’s not done yet.”  Her ears perked back up in excitement.

“Go!” he bellowed.  “Get the hell out of my engine room!”  Quesh grabbed one of the techs from off the deck.  “Starkey, quit lazing about and get up.  I need console two up soonest.”

The man looked dazed.  “R-right, Chief.”  He began to unscrew the front of the console to get at the damaged insides.

Quesh turned to the hatchway.  “Are you still here?” he demanded.

Corajen growled good-naturedly and then signaled her team to move out.

“Captain, the corvettes are pulling back,” Tamara reported from her seat in the cockpit of her fighter.

“How fast?”

“Pretty damned leisurely, from these readings.  They’re moving off, though my sensors are showing that they are still targeting us.”

“No surprises there,” he replied.  “Anything else of interest?”

“That cargo ship has its main cargo bay doors open.”

There was a pause.  “When did that happen?”

“Well, I wasn’t paying attention, but sometime between when they arrived and now.”

“So they weren’t just flying around with the doors open.”

“No, Captain, definitely not.  These guys are aggressive, but I don’t think they’re stupid.”

There was another pause, slightly longer this time.  “So what do you think that means?”

“My guess is exactly what it looks like.  They’re pulling back because they’re finishing up.  I’d say by now they’ve gotten whatever it is they’re looking for and are going to leave us to our own devices.”

“All right.  Keep a weather eye out.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”  She looked up as she switched her sensors to very short range, getting an inside look at that ship.  “What the…”  She quickly got on the communicator.

“We’ve got a fire in replicator two!” George shouted.

Wonderful, the captain thought.  “That’s just all I need right now.  Cut the atmo to the bay until it’s out then restore.”

It wasn’t a fire.  Or rather, not entirely a fire.  The last thing the invaders desired, it seemed, was their own replicator.  During the disconnecting of the device, the pirates rushed and switched over to a plasma cutter and just sliced it free from the wall.  In doing so, the sparks ignited some trash on the deck and in the oxygen rich atmosphere caused a flash and then wham!  Suddenly the whole compartment was on fire, fed by the fuel lines the invaders had so rashly cut.  One of them was lit up and fell to the deck screaming and batting at the flames.  One of his fellows pulled out his pulser and shot him in the head.  Lugging the heavy machine onto a hover palette, the remaining four rushed out of the bay and headed back down to the boat bay.

Tamara raced down the corridor, the captured gun in her hand.  “Captain!” she barked as she ran.  “They’re stealing replicator two!”

She could hear the man swearing over the comm circuit, but she didn’t respond.  She rushed past frame three-sixty and turned for the boat bay.  She was heedless of the risk, not caring that less than a month previous she hadn’t known any of these people.  And now she was quite possibly throwing her life away for people that might not lift a finger to save hers.  Freighter crews were intensely loyal to their own, but outsiders were always just that, outsiders.  Yes, the crew of the Grania Estelle had begun to warm to her and some were starting to like what she was helping them do with their ship, but she wasn’t one of them.  Not quite.

But that didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter that this wasn’t her ship.  It didn’t matter that she was a person out of time, or that her career was gone, her goals scattered to the solar winds.  The Navy was a distant memory and the Republic was a bitter remnant of its former glory.  So why was she doing this?  It wasn’t as though she actually owed anything to these people.  She could leave the Perdition behind and jump ship at Instow.  Hell, she could take the fighter and hustle off to Instow and leave these people to their fate.  Tamara was a skilled pilot, she could easily evade the pirates and have just enough fuel and life support to make the trip.  Fighting and killing that trash in the cargo bay was one thing; that was simple self-defense.  She had no real ties to these people.

One thing that had not changed in two and a half centuries was pirates.  Back in her Navy days, pirates had been a problem, even in Republic space.  They would plunder and kill, just like in the ancient times on the homeworld of humanity on the high seas.  Tamara suspected that independent raiders had always been an issue for civilized societies.  And that was the reason she was helping here.  She would like to believe it was because she cared about these people, and while that was partly true, it wasn’t all of it.  It was the pirates.  Her time in the Navy had drilled into her head that pirates were criminals that couldn’t be allowed to harm innocent people.  They were a scourge that needed to be burned out.  And after seeing (in her Navy days) what they were capable of, and now the carnage here on the Grania Estelle, her perspective hadn’t altered in the least.  Spacing every one of those motherless bastards would be too good a fate for them.

She sprinted down the last passage, the boat bay hatch just ahead.  Looking through the hatch, she saw the giant breach in the main doors.  Skidding to a halt, Tamara grabbed the open hatchway and yanked herself back and to the side.  Someone inside the bay spotted her and two of them started shooting.  They were standing at the ramp of one of their boxy-looking shuttles, firing at Tamara in the hatch.

Good, they haven’t left yet.  Her heart was hammering in her chest, her breath was coming so fast she was afraid she might pass out.  Risking a quick look through the hatchway, she saw that they were lugging the replicator up the ramp.  The two shooters had stopped firing, hoping they’d hit their mark.  Whipping around, she aimed her captured pistol and fired.  A shower of sparks erupted from the replicator as her shot blew out the primary capacitor.  One bullet, even from a gun with such unexpected punch, wouldn’t be enough to completely destroy a piece of machinery like that.  Replicators were hardy devices; their only real weak point was their circuitry and the capacitors that fed power.  It was still fixable, but it would take a good engineer a while even with the proper parts.

The pirates fired back, but Tamara remained behind the bulkhead, not getting out to try and hit them again.  She couldn’t do anything more by herself, not without getting shot.  She was an engineer and a pilot, not a Marine.  Her breathing was coming back under control and her heart rate began to slow to a more reasonable drumbeat.  She whirled away from the hatch as she saw six figures in body armor thumping down the deck toward her.  Her own weapon was raised, pointed at them, but she held her fire.

Corajen nodded to her.  “Sitrep,” she growled menacingly.

“They’re boarding the shuttles now,” Tamara replied, lowering her gun.  “I disabled the replicator, but I think they’ve already done what they came to do.  Once they’re sealed in the shuttles, they’re going to shut down that force field they’ve got over there.”
The wolf grinned, showing sharp teeth.  “Where?”

Tamara risked a look.  There it was.  “The force field generator is there.  See that thing that looks like it’s got a light show coming out in a cone?”

“Got it.”  She looked to the rest of her team.  “Cover me, and get ready to seal that hatch.”  She brought her weapon to her shoulder, took aim and fired.  The pirates were getting the inside the first shuttle, whose ramp was already starting to rise from the deck.  The second shuttle still had four men outside, trying to negotiate the hover palette full of goods inside.  Two more were on either sides of the ramp, keeping their weapons trained on the Tamara and the others from their spot at the hatch.  The generator sparked, smoked and then failed, the curtain of light being projected over the massive hull in the boat bay doors disappeared.

In an instant, the air rushed out the massive breach.  Tamara and the others were already shutting the hatch, which boomed closed on the doorway.  It was a matter of seconds to dog it shut but both Corajen and Tamara were trying to gaze out the tiny window into the boat bay.  One of the security officers called to the bridge to cut atmo to the boat bay, to save what little of the precious breathable air they had left in the ship.

The first shuttle, already close enough to being buttoned up, wasn’t terribly troubled by the sudden depressurization.  In the small amount of atmo left in the bay, it made a horrible screeching noise as it slid about a meter across the deck.  It quickly came to rest, as the pilot fired up the repulsors and lifted it up.

The second shuttle didn’t fare so well.  The two shooters, screaming in terror, were swept away, unable to grab hold of anything as the atmosphere rushed out the gaping maw in the main doors.  One of them hit the ragged edge, snapping his back and then tumbling out into the void.  The other, screaming until his lungs no longer could find any air to refill them, simply pitched headfirst out of the ship.  More junk and debris followed him, clanging against the inner hull before exiting.  One of the ones trying to maneuver the hover palette inside clung desperately to the control handle, but wasn’t able to maintain a grip and he too was sucked out.  The other man, on the upper part of the ramp, managed to hold on and pull himself inside.  Also, in an amazing feat of strength, he manhandled the hover palette inside and managed to get the ramp closing as the last of the atmo evacuated from the bay.

Moments later, both shuttles were up and maneuvering.  Seconds later, they were out of the bay and back in space.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Captain, the two other shuttles have undocked and are flying,” George reported.  As the last shuttle pulled free of the makeshift hole its crew had cut, another section began to depressurize.  But George and the other crew in that area were prepared.  As the pirates had pulled back, three crewmen showing great daring, had advanced, sealing bulkheads right up to the frame where the pirates had cut through.  Some more air was lost, but it seemed as though they were sealed up.

“What do you see?” the captain demanded.

“They’re out of my range, Captain,” the man replied, shrugging.

The captain pressed the button on his chair.  “Moxie!  I need your sensors.  The pirates are pulling back, I need to know what they’re doing.”

“I’m checking now, Captain,” her voice came back immediately, sounding as though she’d run a marathon.  He wanted to ask, but considering what they’d all been through in the last hour, he decided he could find out later.  “They’re pulling back.  The shuttles are heading for the freighter and the corvettes are moving to flank it as well.  They’re still targeting us, but I don’t think they’re going to shoot.”

The captain looked “Why do you think that?”

“Because if they were going to, they would have as soon as the shuttles were clear, Captain,” she explained.

They could still shoot, which was a thought that worried the captain as he sat in his chair, just waiting.  Minutes passed and no new attacks came through.

“They’re moving off,” Tamara reported.  “The freighter has recovered the shuttles and they’re all heading off.  We should be clear now.”

“How far away are they?”

“Over a light second away now,” she said.  “And the distance is opening.”

The captain leaned back in his chair, letting his head lay back on the headrest, letting out a very long breath.  “We made it.”

Chapter 5

“So what do you have for me, Quesh?” the captain asked, seated at his conference table in his wardroom.  All of the department heads were here.  Unsurprisingly, everyone looked completely worn out.

The Parkani, seated further down the table, crossed his upper arms over his chest, laying his lower ones on the table, palms down.  The injury on his arm had been wrapped up in a bandage, but his skin, his clothes and the bandage were covered in grime and smudged with grease.  He had a number of tiny cuts on his fingers and on one arm.  His face was blackened with soot, from the fire that had broken out in engineering when the fuel lines were severed.

“Well, Captain, we’re in trouble,” the big alien replied gruffly.  “I can’t think of any other way to say it.  We’ve got hull breaches in the engine spaces, the fuel lines are cut, two of the fuel tanks are breached, I’ve got microfractures spreading like arachnid webs at least two whole frames away from the weapon strikes.  The engines are completely off line, shield generators are trashed, and it looks like the hyperdrive is offline.”

The captain shook his head, rubbing the lower half of his face.  “All right, give me the rest of the news, because I know that’s not all.”

George Miller looked at his captain.  “Of our eighty-four crew and one passenger, seventeen are dead, and twenty-two injured.  Doc’s treating them in sickbay.”

“Which explains why he isn’t here,” the captain clarified, though no one else had said anything about the man’s absence.  “What else?”

The ops officer looked around the table, then quickly lowered his eyes and consulted his datapad.  “Well, they made off with a lot of our stores.  They cleaned out about a quarter of Cookie’s pantry and trashed about a quarter more, took about half of our cargo consignments, three 50-K containers of fuel, oh, and let’s not forget, replicator two.”  That last was followed by complete silence in the wardroom.

The captain spun his chair back and forth.  “Quesh, tell me.  How long will it take to get the engines back up so we can get to Instow?”

The engineer shrugged.  “It’s a week, probably, Captain and that’s just getting the engines back.  We’re going to have to patch a few things and reinforce the engine mountings.  It won’t be pretty and it won’t last very long, but it should be good enough to get at least one of the main drives back up so we can get to Instow.  But I gotta warn you, Captain, the damage we took is severe.  We’re not going to be able to get underway again for a long time.”

“How long?” he asked, his voice very quiet.

“Months, Captain,” the Parkani answered.  “At least.  And that depends on how cooperative the Instow folks are.  I think we have enough power to keep the replicator running, with the good Miss Samair’s assistance, but even still, we’re stuck here for a while.”

The captain leaned back, covered his face with his hands, then ran his fingers through his hair and then sat up.  “All right.  Quesh, get with Moxie and get started on engine repairs.  We need to get out from the hyper limit and closer in system.  Everyone else, you’re at Quesh’s disposal.  If he needs you for something, unless I’ve told you different, you’re his.”  The Parkani nodded, too tired to make light of the situation.  “I’m going down to sickbay to see my injured crew,” he said, standing.  “Everyone else…”  He trailed off and waved his hands in a shooing motion.  The room quickly cleared as they all stood and hastened out.

Sickbay looked like a charnel house.  The ship’s infirmary was filled with people, at least double what the small area was equipped to handle.  According to George’s report, twenty-two people were in here, with injuries ranging from cuts and lacerations to gunshot wounds to plasma burns.  People, the crew of this ship, were lying on beds, on the floors and seated in chairs.  The sickbay on the Grania Estelle was only designed to handle up to ten people at a time so the room was now stuffed to the gills with people.  A secondary triage was being set up in a nearby sleeping compartment, but due to the damage it was taking longer than expected to get things set up.  The freighter’s doctor, also, was running himself ragged to try and attend to the sheer number of patients.

Doctor Turan was not human, he was a member of the Guura species.  The Guura were an amphibious species, their home planet of Gom Rayan being over ninety percent water.  He was quite tall, extremely slender, with a very long neck.  His head was proportional to the rest of his body, and his face was a mix between a series of overlapping scales and a rather elephantine like trunk of only about ten centimeters in length.  He had very long gills on his very long slender neck, as well as lungs in his thin body.  Guura were a rare species to see out in the void, most preferred to stay either on their home world, or one of their colony worlds, but like in every society there were anomalies that liked to travel, to break away from the norms.  Doctor Turan was one such individual.

He had studied his tradecraft at a very small medical school on Gom Rayan, learning about primarily his own species, of course, but that had never been enough.  Of course there was always work to be had, people to be healed, research to be done, but he had always felt a bit stifled in the waters of home.  So, much to the disappointment of his family, he booked passage on a freighter two years after his studies had been completed on Gom Rayan and began his trek across the stars.  He stayed aboard the light freighter, the Juniper Freeze, for the length of his three year contract, working as a medic aboard the small ship.  He learned a great deal about humans, since the crew of sixteen was all human, save him.  Those three years had opened his eyes to the idiosyncrasies and patterns of behavior of humans, their violent tendencies and their amazing capacity for ingenuity and kindness.  He respected them and found himself growing fond of these crazy creatures.  When his contract on the Juniper Freeze had ended, he had signed on at Urulaan Star System, as a doctor on Mining Station Four for a three year term.  Here he was exposed to a plethora of species, people of all types coming in and going out, the regular mining crews, the shiftless vagabonds, the con men, transients, freighter crews, and of course the civilians on the station itself.

It was a crazy time.  He had learned a lot, done much research, and even had his first exposure to truly modern medicine.  The station had been equipped with a full surgical theater as well as over two dozen regeneration tanks for serious health issues and injuries.  Turan had read every scrap of information he could get his hands on, studied every piece of equipment, spoke with every medic, doctor, nurse, paramedic, even folk healers among the citizens, anyone with the tiniest scrap of knowledge.  Turan was determined that while he would inevitably lose people in this profession, it would not be because he didn’t know enough.

Which was why the captain was so gratified to have him among the crew now.  When he had hired the good doctor on seven years ago, he’d had to admit he was a bit wary about hiring on a Guuran, but the tall being had quickly earned his spot.  He’d even befriended the irascible Parkani engineer, which was no small feat in and of itself.

“It was simple,” Turan had reported, when the captain had found the two of them in the mess hall, sharing a meal.  “The cranky bastard had an infection in his liver and an ache in his joints.  I bet him that I could cure both if he let me.  If I was right, he’d sit down and talk with me.  And if I lost, he’d get to punch me right in the chest.”

The captain had laughed at that, since Quesh was renowned for his temper.  If he’d hit the good doctor, it was very likely he could have killed him.  The captain was more than a little impressed with Turan’s spunk.  And his competence, as it turned out.  Quesh had undergone a quick dunk in the ship’s regen tank and taken a handful of pills and within two days, the pain in his joints was gone, and the infection had cleared right up.  The Parkani felt ten years younger and for the first time that the captain had known him, had actually been laughing and joking with Turan.

When the captain arrived in sickbay now, however, the Guuran was not laughing and joking.  His very light blue skinned arms were splattered in blood, as was his apron.  He was busy, working on a man’s stomach, digging out a bullet that had lodged there.  His hands moved delicately, deliberately.  The captain nodded in satisfaction.  This was no sawbones he’d hired, this was a fully-qualified doctor and surgeon.  A good many of the people in this sickbay would owe their lives to that Guuran.

The captain went through the room, stopping to speak to everyone, making sure he kept out of the doctor’s way, out of his assistant’s way.  There wasn’t anything he could do for them, he was no doctor, but he could be seen among them.  He could give them encouragement.  He helped out for a while, acting as one of Turan’s assistants, fetching water, administering some small amounts of medication, under strict supervision of the doctor himself.  He stayed there for over three hours, seeing to his crew and making sure that he was seen.

Finally, after all that time, Turan came over to see him.  He left the cargo handler Sylvia, who he had been sitting and chatting with, holding her hand.  She wasn’t better yet, but he had managed to make her smile.  “Good to have you here, Captain,” the Guuran said wearily.

“What’s the butcher’s bill, Turan?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

The doctor removed his gloves, tossing them in a nearby sink.  He took a deep breath, letting it out in a soft trilling noise that was common to his people, a sound of frustration.  “Well, Captain, aside from the seventeen already killed in the boarding action, we had twenty-two in here, wounded.  Three have already died and I think four more might join them.  We simply do not have enough facilities to save them all.”  He rubbed his palms together.  “The rest, well, they will recover, physically.  But more than a few, especially the women, were brutalized and violated.  I have eight cases of rape among those who weren’t killed afterward.”  Another trilling sound.  “I’m doing what I can for them, Captain, but they’re going to need therapy, time and comfort.  Some of them are very badly shaken by the trauma.”

The captain nodded.  “We’ll do our best with them.  Only so much that can be done, especially with the ship in shambles as it is.  I need all of Quesh’s people moving as quickly as they can.  We have to get in-system and to Instow soonest.”

“I understand, Captain, I really do.”  Turan looked apologetic.  “I can patch together the physical wounds, but trauma to the mind?  It’s a lot simpler to break people than it is to fix them again, Captain.”

“I know, Turan.  I know.  You’re doing excellent work.  You keep at it and you make sure you get some rest too.”

But the Guuran shook his head, as the captain knew he would.  “I have patients who need me, Captain.  I haven’t got the time to rest.”

The captain only looked at him for another moment before nodding.  “I understand.  Do what you can.  I’ll be back to check on you in another few hours.”

“Yes, Captain.”  Without another word, Turan turned back to his patients.

The captain made his way back out, making sure to speak with his people as he left.  He gave them soothing words, clasped the hands of the men and women as he went by.  They all nodded in appreciation, gave weak smiles to his broad one when they could, if the pain wasn’t too great.

Soon he was outside the sickbay, leaning both hands against the bulkhead, breathing heavily.  So many dead.  So many hurt.  In less than an hour, so much had happened.

Patching together the fuel lines had turned out to be a bitch of a job.  Tamara was one of four people in EVA suits, floating outside the hull, but inside the blasted area at the hit near engineering.  The damage was near complete in this area, there wasn’t much to fix so much as to cut away the damaged and twisted conduits and components and bring in replacements.  Right now, they were in the middle of cutting out the damage.  She and the others were slicing off the worst bits, placing them carefully into containers to be brought back inside to feed the only remaining replicator.  It was difficult work, though.  While the hole was large, and they had cut away the worst of the jagged bits, the damage had ripped through clear inside the hole, down in the inside of the hull.  Which meant that in order to reach the extent of the damage they had to reach through at very difficult angles to cut the lines free.

“Might even be easier to just detach that section of hull,” Tamara mused.

“Why?” came the question.

“Because while it’s a pain to cut these pieces loose at this angle,” she explained, “imagine how much of a bitch it’s going to be to install the new stuff?”

“Damn,” one of the techs, a young woman named Mairi exclaimed.  “You’re right, Tamara.”

“Damnation,” another tech, a man named Jenkins replied.  “It is going to be a massive ache to try and hook up the new fuel lines.  But have you ever done a full separation of a hull section?”

“I have,” Tamara replied, smiling.  “It’s a tedious project.  But it’s better than trying to actually cut it loose with plasma torches.”

“Damned right,” Mairi replied.  “This is taking forever to get the ragged edges off the hull,” she agreed.  “I say we do it.”

“That’s up to the Chief,” Tamara replied, cutting away another piece of the fuel lines.  “But if it helps, I think that’s the better option.”

The Chief agreed.  So, Tamara’s team pulled out of the hole and set to work on the hull itself.  Massive plates had been bolted together to the interior ribs and connecting frame, and then welded together to form a single, smooth outer hull.  It would be a long and tedious job to first cut the welding to that particular hull section and then to uncouple it from the interior frame, but it was a much simpler job than trying to slice through the hull plating itself.  The outer seals were far thinner than the full thickness of the hull plating, which were strong and sealed tight, which meant that it would take considerably less time to slice through them.

It took nearly seven hours to uncouple the hull plating, but strain as they might, they couldn’t pry the heavy plate loose from the hull.  Deciding that they would need an alternate approach to this problem, they retreated back inside the ship, bringing the scraps of hull material and couplers along with them.

Quesh was waiting for them at the airlock, inside the ship.  “What happened?” he demanded, all four hands on his hips.  He looked exhausted, as he knew that they did also.

“Can’t get the plate off, Chief,” Mairi replied, shucking her helmet as they all entered the inner door of the airlock and into the ship proper.

“What the hell do you mean you can’t get the plate off?” the Parkani raged.  “You cut the welds?  You uncoupled it?”

“Yes, Chief we did,” she answered a bit nervously.  She was sure he wasn’t going to hit him, Quesh wasn’t that type of male, but if we was angry enough, who knew?  “We had pry bars and we still couldn’t get it loose.”

“Damn,” he swore, slapping the bulkhead, scowling.  Then he brightened.  “What about your ship?  We could rig a tow cable and pull it free.”

Tamara was dubious.  “I suppose it could,” she hedged.  “But it isn’t designed for that kind of stress.  The whole thing might rip apart.  It’s a fighter, not a tug.”  Then she brightened, running a gloved hand through her sweat-soaked hair, pulling off the sweatband.  “But, you have a shuttle in the boat bay that could do it.  In fact, there’s another project that we’re going to need that shuttle for.”

The Parkani was nodding.  “All right.  You get something to eat and then we’ll talk about the shuttle.  But we’ve got some work to do on the boat bay before we can work on the shuttle.  There’s that gaping hole in the doors to deal with.”

Tamara smiled.  “There’s always something, isn’t there, Chief?  Don’t worry.  I think we can get that taken care of.  But you’re right.  I could use something to eat.”

The mess hall was a much more somber affair now than it had been only a day ago.  With so many of the crew dead or now in sickbay, there were simply fewer people coming in to eat than there had been before.  Those who were here now were not sitting and having lively discussions, playing cards or even reading books.  Many who came into the mess hall simply took a tray of food from the line and then found themselves a seat.  Coming into the mess, Tamara saw a few groups of people simply sitting around and eating.  She stepped into the line and picked up a tray.

Cookie spotted her and gave her a nod.  “Good to see you, Tamara.”

She smiled at him.  “And you, Cookie.  I know why, but it’s hard to see this place so quiet.”

The man nodded again.  “Yes.  With so many people hurt or… gone, I see the only way this getting better is when people start coming back from sickbay.”  He sighed.  “It was terrible, girl.  Just awful.”

Tamara nodded.  “I know.  I wish I could say it’s all over, but we have a lot of work yet to do to get us moving to Instow.”

“We need to move quickly, girl.  Those bastards did a good job of cleaning out our stores.  We’ve got about twenty days of food left, which isn’t great.”

She took a piece of the bread to go along with the stew.  Tamara nodded in acknowledgement.  Breathing in the vapors from steam, she grinned.  “Smells fantastic, Cookie.  But you’re right, we need to get a mountain of work done in a very short period of time.”

The normally very even-tempered chef was displaying signs of worry.  “Are we going to make it?”

She gave him a grin and a conspiratorial wink.  “Don’t worry, Cookie.  I’ll see you right.”

His expression didn’t change.  “I want to believe you, girl.  I truly do.”

“Well, let a girl get some food in her.  I can’t work miracles on a completely empty stomach.”  Her mock indignation couldn’t mask her smile.

He barked a laugh.  “Get on with you.  And I expect to see some miracles.”

She sat down and dug in with a vengeance.  The stew was indeed very good, as she knew it would be.  The food situation concerned her.  Grania Estelle was not equipped with any food replicators, and with the theft of a good portion of Cookie’s stores, the crew was looking forward to short rations in order to survive long enough to make it to Instow.  Which meant the faster they could get the ship working, the better chance that they’d all be able to get through this and back on their route again.

A few minutes later, she finished her meal and bussed her tray back to the dish area.  With a wave to Cookie and the other servers, she left the mess hall at a brisk pace, heading to engineering to speak with Quesh.  Time was now a precious commodity, one that they couldn’t afford to waste.

“I want to bring my team with me,” she said to Quesh a few minutes later.  “It’ll be a small team, me, Mairi, Pip and Rory.  We need to get the shuttle in the boat bay working.  And to get to it, we need to walk around the ship from airlock three through the hole in the boat bay doors.”

“Wait,” the Parkani said, rubbing one side of his face with one hand, “You want to do a spacewalk on the outside of the hull, all the way from airlock three to the boat bay?  And then what?  Seal the doors?”

Tamara shook her head.  “Ideally, we would fix the doors, but we simply don’t have the time.  What we’re going to do is get inside the bay and fix the shuttle.  From there, we’ll fly it out the hole and when we need to land, we’ll land in cargo bay one with my fighter.”

“There’s no room in bay one, what with your ruddy great fighter sitting in there.”

“Oh, please, that bay is massive.  There’s just a lot of crap in there.  You’ll need to get some of the cargo workers to shift the cargo in there over to bay two,” she answered.  “I know the doors in bay one are working and I know that that bay can hold atmo.  It’s going to unbalance the load a bit, I admit that, but since we’re not moving anyway, it hardly matters.”

The Chief harrumphed.  He nodded.  “Makes sense.  And even when we get an engine back up, we’re hardly going to be tearing off across the system.  All right, get on it.  I’ll clear it with the Captain.  But remember, you’re going to need to bring whatever you need with you.  We can’t open the hatch into the boat bay, remember.  And it’ll be at least a half an hour to get any kind of parts to you.”

She shrugged again.  “We’ll just have to figure it out.  But we can’t stand around jabbering about it.”

“Go,” he repeated.  “I’ll talk to the Captain.”

“Why the boat bay?” the Captain asked a few minutes later.  They were sitting in his wardroom, he and the chief, discussing their status as a whole.  “I can understand wanting to get the shuttle operational, but isn’t that somewhat of a low priority?”

The chief shook his head.  “No, Captain, in fact, it’s something of a high priority.”  At the Captain’s disbelieving raised eyebrow, he waved his hands in surrender.  “It’s true, Captain.  We need the shuttle for two reasons.  First, we need it to assist with external repairs, for right now the hit we took to the engineering spaces.  Once we get those fixed, we need it to help with the engines.”

“Can’t you just use teams in EVA suits?”

“Of course, and we will have that.  But having the shuttle right there would be perfect if we have any issues with suits, or if, stars forbid, someone should go Dutchman.”

The Captain nodded grimly.  Flying free, falling away from the ship and drifting off into the deep dark was on every spacers’ nightmare list.  The Chief’s suggestion made perfect sense.  “So it’s a safety thing?”

“Partly.  Also, we can keep parts right there on the shuttle to simply offload and install to fix the damaged sections or later the engines themselves.  But that’s not the biggest reason to get it.”

The Captain sighed.  “All right.  What is it?”

“Even using all the junk in cargo bay one, we’re going to fall well short of the materials we need to fix the ship.  Even just getting enough metal to reskin the hull isn’t going to be found in there.  So I think, and I’ve spoken with Samair about it, that we should send the shuttle out with a small crew to rope and asteroid and bring it back.”

The Captain blinked, surprised.  “Okay, I’ll admit, I’d never thought of that possibility.”  In normal practice, the Grania Estelle bought what they needed (what they could afford) from the various planets they visited on their trade cycle.  There weren’t too many societies where the ship went that had vigorous space facilities.  Which meant that every time they flew through those star systems, there were all those resources just floating around, waiting to be plucked.  He mentally kicked himself.  All those opportunities, wasted.  “But the problem isn’t just metals, Quesh.  Our fuel supplies are desperately low.  Yes, I’ve looked over the numbers myself.  When the hydrogen and water supplies run out, the reactor scrams and we have no power.  And then we’re dead four days after that when the place gets too cold and the air gets too toxic.”

The engineer nodded.  “I’ve got some of my boys patching up the holes in the fuel tanks, but yes, I know that isn’t going to fix the fuel problem.  But maybe there’s an ice ball out there we could pick up.”

The Captain sneered.  “An ice ball?  You’re insane.  The likelihood we could even find one is unbelievably small.  You’re hanging all our fates on a ‘maybe’?  A very tiny maybe?”

Quesh sighed.  “No, Captain, I’m just saying it’s a possibility.  But in any case, we need the materials.  As soon as you and I are done here, I’m going back to the engines, see if I can’t coax some life back into one of them.  Even a little thrust would help.”

“Then stop wasting time lying about, Chief,” the captain scolded good-naturedly.

The Chief growled at him, got up from the wardroom table and left.

“How are we all doing?” Tamara asked, sometime later, as she and her EVA team trekked across the hull of the ship.  The small team were all tethered together, and their boots were magnetized allowing them to keep a firm grip on the hull.  No one was rushing, they had eight hours of life support in their suits, so it paid to take their time and not stumble, lose grip and go tumbling off into the void.  They had trained for that in zero-g in the cargo bay, but no one wanted to test their safety procedures on the outside of the hull.

“Fine, Boss.” Mairi, unsurprisingly, was only three steps behind her, lugging a container of tools along behind her.

Pip, the youngest among them, trudged along behind Mairi, pulling a crate of electronics and other parts.  No one knew what his real name was, when he had signed on to the crew he had only given the name Pip, no surname, and the Captain had accepted.  He was young, perhaps barely twenty years of age, thin and wiry, but there was an aura about him, something foreboding.  He had done nothing to warrant such a feeling, he was always polite and usually had a smile or a joke, but it was his eyes.  People could not usually maintain eye contact with him for long periods without feeling a chill.

He didn’t seem to mind, however.  Pip wasn’t a particularly brash or outgoing, though judging by his choice of career and where that particular career had led him might contradict that opinion slightly, but he was a very self-effacing man.

The man bringing up the rear, Rory Porter, was a more experienced spacer, one who had been plying the space lanes for over ten years now.  He was in his early thirties, balding, but lean and well-muscled.  Up until now, he had been confined to the interior of the ship for engineering and repairs.  This was only his second spacewalk, fourth if you counted the three repair jobs he had done accompanying Tamara on patching some of the hull breaches and just earlier in the day when they had gone out to work on the fuel lines.

Still, the Chief had decided that Tamara’s experience was sufficient and that she was able to judge their effectiveness as a team.  Up until this point, Tamara had been taking small steps with her small team, but with the clock ticking now, this was the time to move in leaps and bounds.

They reached the blasted doors of the boat bay.  “All right, kids,” Tamara said, stepping around where the metal had ruptured and burned inward.  “This is where it gets tricky.  We need to get inside without getting slashed or speared by the sharp and ragged metal.  I’m going to anchor this here,” she held up a heavy electromagnet anchor, a ten centimeter thick disk the width of her hand, which had a heavy duty handle on one of the flat sides.  Setting it on the hull, she twisted it and a green indicator lit up, as did a matching one on her HUD.  She tugged it; it didn’t move.  “All right.  That’s secured.”  Taking the connecting line, she attached the hook to the handle.  “I’ll stay up here to make sure it all stays on, you kids, in the hole.”

They gave her rather nervous looks, Rory looked slightly sick.  From their perspective, standing on the hull, the breach in the boat bay doors looked like a massive pit ringed with spikes and blades, leading down into the darkened boat bay.  Their skinsuits didn’t have attitude jets or anything that could steer them around and since there was no gravity where they were, simply jumping at the hole would cause them to fly completely over it and out into space until they were jerked up short by the tether.  That would cause them to bounce back, straight toward the anchor, which wouldn’t help.

“So,” Tamara said, looking at Mairi, who was the smallest of them.  “What we’re going to do, is have Rory throw you into the hole in the boat bay.”

“He’s going to what?” she demanded.  Mairi looked rather unhappy about this plan.

“And then,” Tamara continued, as though Mairi hadn’t spoken, “You’ll be holding onto a lot of slack in the tether line.  Once you reach either a handhold or the far bulkhead,” she pointed, “you’ll either clamp on with the other anchor, or you just loop the line around it.  Once that’s done, we’ll use the line to climb down inside.”

“Great, so I get to fly?”  Mairi looked rather put out by this, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Hey, you’re the one who didn’t want seconds at dinner,” Rory joked.

She laughed.  “You’re the one who didn’t leave any for me to take.”

Tamara chuckled.  “All right, we’re on the clock, people.  Mairi, in the hole.”

She moved to the edge of the hole, Tamara having sorted out the tether line situation and handed it to her, the line coiled in the young woman’s hand.  Demagnetizing her own boots, she slowly began to float.  “Okay, Rory.  Throw me in.”

The big man chuckled.  “I would make a comment here, but I’m not going to.”  He stepped up to her, gripping her upper arms in his much larger hands.

“Thank you, Rory.  Just do it already.”  Tamara’s voice brought them back to the task.

Raising the small woman up, he held her over the gaping hole and then thrust his arms down, pushing her gently into the boat bay.  She cried out, flailing her limbs as she “fell” into the boat bay.  Her sense of orientation was off because while she felt as though she was falling “down”, looking at the bay properly, she was flying sideways across the bay.  The path she was moving through had no hand holds, and the shuttle was several meters to her left.  The far bulkhead loomed closer until she hit.  Mairi bent her knees, absorbing the shock and then rebounded slightly.  Her hand snaked out and grasped the handle at the bulkhead, arresting her bounce back “up” toward the hole.  Pulling herself back to the bulkhead, she maneuvered herself to be standing up properly, feet on the deck, and magnetized her boots again.

“Easy peasy!” she called.

Tamara gave her a thumb’s up down the hole, which gave strange perspective issues as both sides looked to the other as though they were laying down.  “Secure the line so we can climb down.”

Attaching the hook to the anchor, Mairi magnetized it to the bulkhead behind her.  Giving it a slight tug, she felt it go taut.  “All set.  Come on in.”

Within minutes, the others had easily floated inside.  Locking down to the deck, they immediately went to the shuttle.  The rest of the boat bay was nearly empty due to the pair of explosive decompressions that had occurred, but the shuttle itself was relatively intact.  There was a great deal of blackened plasma scoring on the upper right edge of the long boxy shuttle.  A deep furrow of sheared metal also went down the same side, though this was further down near the deck, which ran up to near to the top.  Apparently something sharp had been yanked out through into the void, slicing though the fuselage.  The cylindrical drive pods attached on the bottom of both sides looked intact, though upon closer inspection, Tamara noticed that the pods didn’t match.  One was a bland cylinder, the other was slightly more bulbous, as though they were salvaged from different ships.

“Well, the external damage doesn’t look too bad,” Tamara said, giving it a critical eye.  “I’ll feel better once I get inside and start the diagnostics.”  She turned to the others.  “Get the kit unpacked.  I’ll be a few minutes inside, and then I want that breach patched up.”

The ramp to the shuttle unlatched, but it didn’t lower.  Is the power drained?  Tamara scanned the door, it and the shuttle registered normal power readings.  What the hell is wrong with this ramp?  She reached up and pulled slightly on the ramp.  Not only did it move, but it slipped easily past her fingers and clanged on the deck, bouncing back up again.  She grabbed hold of it before it could crush her fingers and gently pulled it down until it rested on the deck.  “What the hell was that?” she demanded.

Rory turned and smiled at her.  “Oh that?  The ramp always does that.   The lowering hydraulics have been busted for a long time.”

Tamara sighed and walked inside the shuttle.  The slapdash manner in which this crew used to work never ceased to amaze her.  And now, here she was, doing the same thing.  There wasn’t time or power or resources to do a proper rebuild on this shuttle; that would have to wait until later.  So long as the little vessel could get the job done, that’s all that mattered.

Sitting down in the pilot’s couch, she flipped a few switches, bringing the little ship online.  Pressing a control, the hatch to the inner four-seat compartment slid shut and with a hissing of air, it sealed and pressurized.  One minute later, the gauges all read good seal and that atmo was in the green.  Working a switch on her suit’s neck, she detached her helmet, shutting off her suit’s life support and breathed in the shuttle’s air.  It had a metallic tang to it and a bit of a moldy funk.  Clearly the shuttle hadn’t been properly serviced in a while.  She wrinkled her nose, but said nothing.

Bringing up diagnostics, she ran through the gamut of them.  “Okay, port engine looks good, starboard’s a bit… wonky, I guess.  Looks like it’s from another vehicle entirely.  Tamara to Mairi, has this shuttle used cannibalized parts from another ship?”

“Yeah.  The captain got us a wreck of a series 340 transport pod about six months back.  We had to pull parts from that to service this one.  Replaced the starboard engine and a few of the internal electronics.”  There was a pause.  “Can we start on the external repairs?”

Tamara checked the display.  It was showing the damage, highlighted in red on the otherwise gray wire diagram of the shuttle.  It looked like a wound, which cut into the aft cargo section right up to the cockpit bulkhead.  “Yeah, get started.  Start by patching up closest to the cockpit and work your way back.  It’s pretty close to the forward section and I won’t want to risk a breach.”

“So what are you going to be doing, inside and warm?”  Pip sounded a bit put out.

“It stinks in here,” she replied.  “Believe me, it’s not all champagne and caviar in here.”

“So what are you doing in there?” Rory asked.

“I’m cleaning up all the software issues in here.  I’m amazed at how many viruses and corrupted programs I keep finding on this ship,” she commented pointedly.  “I have a few cleaner subroutines going on right now.  I’m also working to patch the guidance system which amazes me even more than the viruses.  How the hell all of you managed to fly this crate, I’ll never understand.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” Mairi replied, chuckling.  “Get to work in there.”

Two hours later, the repairs were completed.  “Get in here,” Tamara ordered.  The others grabbed their kit and hustled aboard.  “Seal the rear hatch,” she told them over the comms.  A few moments later, the displays in the cockpit showed a good seal.  They also showed that the angry red scar on the side of the shuttle was gone, and while it wasn’t a clean, smooth patch, it was perfectly functional.  Activating the flight controls, she eased the boxy ship up off the deck and flew it smoothly out the gaping hole in the door.

She keyed her comms.  “Shuttle One to Big Mama, we are free flying.”

Tamara heard chuckles over the line, both from her own team in the shuttle cargo bay and from the bridge crew.  “Moxie, I like you and you’ve proven yourself to be an asset.  But don’t you dare insult my ship ever again.”  The Captain was good natured, but that last statement was not joking.

“Sorry, Captain.”  More chuckles.  “We’re heading over to the damaged fuel lines.  Once I get the stuck plate off, Rory and Pip will deal with that while Mairi and I will be heading in system.”

“Find us what we need, Moxie,” the Captain ordered.

“We’re on it, Captain.”

Quesh looked up at his diagnostic feeds.  Engineering was a complete shambles.  The place had never been entirely spic and span, but it had been clean and well run.  As well run as a place could be running on never enough parts, cannibalized components and half-trained crews.  But after the firefight, whole consoles had to be torn out and salvaged with whatever could be used.  One of the displays, which was still active, was hanging by its own wiring, and whoever needed it would have to pick it up from off the console and then set it down once they’d read it.  The entire engineering space was a mess of cables and wires, which for the moment and for expediency’s sake, were stretched out across the floor, linking bulkheads, forcing everyone to have to slow down to get through without tripping and tearing them out of their connections.  The place stank of burnt electronics and unwashed bodies.  Everyone had been up and frantically patching systems since the raid, stopping only to eat and then were back to work.

The engines were not in good shape, but then he’d known that going into this mess.  The two functioning drive pods, two and six, had been smashed by the pirate’s fire, and were now completely inoperable.  A few replicated parts and a dangerous spacewalk later and engine one was coming back online for the first time in eighteen years.  One of the crew had gone spinning off out into the void when the bolt he was trying to pry loose stuck and then suddenly released and his tether snapped.  If not for his buddy’s very quick reflexes, grabbing the tech’s wrist in a viselike grip, the man would have flown free.  Perhaps the shuttle might have been able to get him, but it was something everyone was glad they hadn’t needed to test.  Once Tamara’s team was finished with their splicing and replacing of fuel lines, they would be able to get underway.

And this was not a moment too soon.  Fuel reserves were dropping past critical levels, and the crew had resorted to as many energy saving procedures as they could.  Entire sections of the ship were sealed off, life support shut off there, lights and all other systems that drew power were either shut off or powered down as low as possible.

Reconnecting the new power junction to the feeds for engine one, he hauled himself again to his feet.  Checking the display, he saw that the feeds looked good.  They were in the yellow, not green, but it was an improvement.  A marked improvement.  Once the fuel lines were repaired, he could start looking at the engine proper, trying to tune it.  Strictly speaking, there wasn’t much that actually needed tuning, but engine one was the best out of the lot.  If the engine wasn’t properly tuned and calibrated, when it was engaged, it might vibrate which could cause it to unseat, which could break connecting bolts, control cables, fuel lines, could possibly even damage the engine itself.  And that would be a catastrophe, because the rest of the engines would require days if not weeks of work and parts.  Two resources the power-starved Grania Estelle did not have.  All of which meant that one Quesh Trrgoth needed to make sure that this one engine would work and work properly the first time.

He sighed, stretched his aching back and returned to his work.

It was the work of minutes to use the shuttle to yank the hull plate free of the damaged section, leaving it to float a few meters away from the ship, but close enough that they could retrieve it later.  Pip and Rory debarked the shuttle, bringing with them the gear and parts to get this section repaired.  Seeing that they were all squared away, Tamara backed the shuttle gently away from the hull of the freighter, using a couple of brisk puffs on the shuttle’s maneuvering jets.  Using no other engine power, letting inertia do the work, the shuttle drifted away from the Grania Estelle until it was about half a kilometer from the hull.

“Grania Estelle, this is Shuttle One.  We’re off.  I’m heading out toward the asteroid belt.  We’ll be grabbing a good rock and we’ll be back soonest.”

The Captain answered.  “We copy, Shuttle One.  Good hunting and get back here as soon as you can.”

“Understood.  Shuttle One, out.”  Tamara cut the circuit and engaged the shuttle’s main engines.  Angling away from the freighter, she pulled up the shuttle’s navigation suite.  The edge of the system’s asteroid belt was about seven light minutes from the hyper limit.  It was a job of about ten hours to make that trip one way, so this was going to be a very long, rather tiresome trip.  Then of course, they would have to select and then grab a particular rock and then haul it back.  The shuttle would be completely on empty by that point, so it was going to be an interesting trip.

“Right,” she said, locking in the course.  “I’m going to grab a nap.  I’m absolutely wrecked.  Can you keep an eye on things for a few hours?  Then we’ll switch and you can sleep.”

“Why you first?” Mairi demanded.

“Because I thought of it first,” she pointed out.  The other woman crossed her arms over her chest in disagreement.  “Fine, you go first.  I’m too tired to argue.”  Mairi smiled.  “But don’t worry.  I will be waking you up in four hours.”  Tamara looked her companion straight in the eye as she said this.  The other woman groaned but nodded, then headed into the cargo section, pulled down a section of the bulkhead which doubled as a bunk.  Laying down, she was asleep within minutes.

Tamara watched her enviously, but with a small sigh, turned back to her instruments.

In the end, she let Mairi sleep for over six hours.  In that time, as the asteroid belt grew ever closer, she began to try and scan the various rocks within what she considered the range of the shuttle.  There was much to find here.  As in years past, from Tamara’s admittedly dim memory of the star system, Instow was a resource-rich system, and with its proximity to Hudora and its shipyards and industrial nodes, there was once a prosperous mining industry here.  Apparently, with the destruction of Hudora two and a half centuries ago, the system had completely withered on the vine.  Perhaps the Federation had done some follow-up attacks that had trashed the infrastructure here.  Perhaps pirates had come in years later and looted the system and killed a number of the inhabitants.  Perhaps without the hub system of Hudora next door, the economy of Instow simply dried up and people departed to greener pastures.  She might even find out if they could bring the Grania Estelle in to the habitable moon.

From what little she had gleaned from the Perdition’s sensors during the raid (the shuttle’s sensors were almost as bad as the ones on the Grania Estelle; there wasn’t time or materials to spare to upgrade them for this mission), had determined that the system was so far empty of artificial structures.  Aside from the crippled bulk freighter (and perhaps a trio of pirate vessels) there were no ships in system, no artificial satellites, nothing.  Clearly, the locals wouldn’t object (or be able to object) to the crew of the freighter getting their materials from the asteroid belt.

Looking at the display, her eyes kept falling on the gas giant, for which the habitable moon orbited.  “I wonder…” Tamara muttered to herself.  One of the many big problems on the Grania Estelle was that they were using straight seawater as a power source.  That caused multiple issues within the ship’s reactor, since the water had impurities in it, which over time would gum up the mechanism, which would cause conduits and other such tubes to fail.  Also, by using extracting the straight hydrogen from the seawater for fuel it greatly lessened the reactor’s power ratio and heightened its radiation emissions.  Tossing in jury rigged sections of the fusion bottles made out of parts never designed for the role or the load and a computer that wasn’t up to the task of handling that challenge and yes, there was trouble rapidly coming to a boil.

Which meant that, again, the crew (and Tamara was gracious enough to throw in her own hat with that lot) would need a better source of fuel, such as deuterium or helium 3.  And as her eyes continued to look at the gas giant, a slow smile began to spread over her face.  Pulling out her datapad, she set to work designing a collector that could pick up and siphon out the materials needed.  A helium 3 collector.

It took about four hours to come up with something and she tried to keep it as simple as possible.  It was a very utilitarian design, drawing from her memories of similar devices she had seen and used back during her Navy days.  It consisted of a collector device which would suck in the materials and inflate several large bladders after being filtered through a series of force fields and other filtration systems.  The bladders would also serve as buoyancy devices to keep the collector in the higher layers of the Jovian’s atmosphere.  Once it was full, the collector could simply wait to be emptied.  And if the scans were to be believed, the atmosphere was made up of a dense concentration of particles, which meant that the collector would fill very quickly.

Of course, that meant a full teardown and rebuild of the ship’s reactor.  It was on the list, at least.  Tamara sighed.  There was so much work to be done on that ship.  Then she brightened.  “It sounds like fun.  And a lot of work.”  Satisfied for the moment, she accessed her implants, setting an alert to wake her in an hour and closed her eyes.

“Tamara.  Tamara!”  A voice penetrated the blackness.  “Tamara!”

She awoke with a start, her breath was coming in tiny rapid gasps.  Her heart was hammering in her chest.  Her implants indicated that two minutes were left before the time was up to wake her.  It took her a long few seconds to realize where she was, what was happening.  A hand was on her shoulder, shaking her.

“Are you all right?”

She blinked, turning to the sound of the voice.  It her a long moment to determine it was Mairi.  Her breathing began to slow and the constant pulsing in her chest also began to lessen in intensity.  Her implants were showing displays on her HUD that her vitals were gradually returning to normal from the danger range.

“Hey, you with me?  Can you hear me?”  Mairi’s voice was getting more worried.

Tamara nodded.  “What is it?”

The young woman looked at her with her eyebrows raised.  “What is it?  You were screaming.”

Tamara blinked.  “I was?”  A quick check of her implants, showing the readouts of her biometrics indicated that her stress levels were well over critical.  It would certainly explain the screaming and the rest.  “I think I had a nightmare.”

The other woman nodded.  “I should say so.  Woke me up.”

Tamara’s hands began to shake slightly and she clenched her fists.  “Sorry.”

“You want to talk about it?”  Concern was covering her face.

Tamara shook her head.  “I don’t really remember.  I didn’t even know there was a problem.  I set my implants to alert me when an hour had passed and then I was going to wake you up.  I closed my eyes…”  She let out a very deep breath, trying to control her shivering.  She felt cold, as though she’d been splashed with a bucket of frigid water.

“You’re not all right,” Mairi concluded.  “Get out of the pilot’s seat.  I’m taking us back.”

“No!” Tamara nearly shouted.  “Sorry.  I didn’t mean to shout.”  She shook her head, sitting up straighter.  “We can’t go back.  We need the rocks that are out here.  I don’t think the ship can make it back if we don’t succeed.”

Mairi stood over her, looking skeptical.  “I’m fine, Mairi.  It was just a nightmare.  I’ve been going all out for two days now, I’m sorry I scared you.”

Still, the young woman didn’t budge.  “Fine.  How long until we’re there?”

Tamara checked her displays.  “Three hours, forty-six minutes.”

“You will get some sleep on the way back.”  It wasn’t a request.

Tamara nodded.  “Of course.  I’m not going to be sleeping now for a while.  Not after that.”

“All right.  Fine.  Then I’m going to sleep for a while longer.  Unless you need me to stay up here a while longer?”  She looked at Tamara questioningly.

“No, Mairi.  Thank you for your concern.”  Tamara gave her a small smile.  “I’m fine now, really.”

“You’re a liar, is what you are.  But I’m going to nap for a little while longer.  Wake me up an hour before we get there.”

Tamara nodded, a bit too vigorously.  “I will.  I promise.”

Giving the other woman a suspicious look, Mairi went back into the cargo area and laid back down.  Tamara blew out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.  Mairi was very determined and if Tamara had given up the pilot’s couch, there was a very good chance she might have turned the shuttle around and flew back to the Grania Estelle.  They’d come too far to turn back now.  And Tamara hadn’t lied.  They truly did need the asteroid and its materials.

Tamara turned back to her displays and twisting her mouth to a grimace, began searching for a proper rock to haul back.

Chapter 6

“So what exactly are we looking for?” Mairi asked.  “You’ve been rather tight-lipped about the whole thing.”

Tamara nodded in apology.  “Yeah, I have been.  Well, the best thing would be an ice ball, so that we can use it to feed the reactor.  The other minerals are certainly necessary, but fuel is the most critical.”

“Okay, so we look for water.”  Mairi was nodding.  “How hard can that be?”

Tamara chuckled.  “Very, with the sensors on this clunker.  But, all is not lost!” she said grandiosely.

Mairi was shaking her head.  “What?”

Tamara pointed.  “That.  It’s a very nice sized carbonaceous chondrite.”

The other woman’s eyes glazed over.  “A what?” she asked tiredly.

“It’s a big rock made of some organic chemicals, but more importantly, water.”  She maneuvered the shuttle around so that they could capture it with the tractor.  “Usually we can find up to about twenty two percent of its chemical matrix is water.  Ooh, good.  It’s a beauty.  A good two hundred and sixty-four metric tons.  That will work out nicely.”  The shuttle flipped around, end over end, until the aft section was only a few dozen meters from the rock.

“Activating tractor,” Mairi said, flipping a switch.  There was a slight shiver through the deck of the shuttle.  “Got it.  Okay, we’re latched on.  How do you know these things?”

“I’m setting course back to the ship.  It’s going to take most of our fuel to get back there.”  She engaged the thrusters.  The inertial compensators kicked in, trying to nullify the g-forces that the propulsion system was putting out.  “Gotta get this big thing moving,” Tamara muttered.  Slowly, the shuttle began to manhandle the rock, tugging it back in the direction from whence they came.  “There we go, getting some speed now.”  She glanced at the other woman.  “As to how I know, I learned from other spacers and when I was in the military.  There were a lot of things to learn.”

Twenty minutes later, they were on a steady course for the Grania Estelle.  “All right, your turn.”  Tamara pulled herself out of the pilot’s couch.  Mairi nodded and easily slid into her place.  Tamara eyed the other woman as she familiarized herself with the pilot’s controls.  “You shouldn’t need to do anything until we get much closer.  Can you handle this bird?”

Mairi grinned up at her.  “Was that a proposal?”

Tamara nodded tiredly.  “Very cute.  I’m serious.  Can you fly this thing?”

“I’ve flown a shuttle a few times.  Not this particular one, mind you.”  She glanced around nodding slowly.  “But I’ve got this.  And if there are any problems, I’ll get you straightaway.  Go.  Sleep.  You need it.”

Tamara sighed, knowing she had to, but still slightly concerned about this woman driving the shuttle while she slept.  Going into the cargo compartment, she laid down on the bunk, and closed her eyes.  She was instantly asleep.

“All right!  Try it now.  Easy!” Quesh immediately warned.  “Whoever breaks my engine gets strangled!”  He checked the displays.  “All right.  Nice and steady.  We’re going to start out real slow.  Bring the engine from idle to zero point two power.  I want a trickle of power.  Do not ham fist the controls, you get me?  Starkey, I’m talking to you now.”

“Yes, Chief,” the man replied, his hands on the controls.

“Bridge.  Engine one is up and running.  We are moving now, but I’m only bringing it up to point zero two power.”

“Understood,” the Captain replied.  “Chief, I understand we’re going to have to step down the reactor.”

“Because of the fuel constraints, yes, Captain.  We’ve only been operating at about twenty-three percent of max anyway, but I’m going to have to bring it down to ten percent.”  He nodded as the engine came on line, pushing its power level very gently to point zero two.

“How long can we maintain that level?” the Captain asked.  He sounded worried.

Quesh couldn’t see him, they were on voice only, but he knew.  “About sixteen hours with present fuel levels.  And that’s if we’re on life support only.  If we run the engines too, we’ll be out in four.”

“Then shut the engines down!” the captain almost bellowed.

The Parkani sighed, waving to his crew to stop.  Starkey cancelled the engine power up sequence.  “Captain, I can shut down the engines, but then we’ll just die out here.  We need to get at least moving in the direction of the moon, if we’re going to have any chance to survive.”

“So you’re cutting our survival time by twelve hours?”  The Captain found himself getting angry with his chief engineer.

Quesh was about to roar back at his captain, when someone in the background on the bridge spoke up.  “Wait one, Chief,” the Captain ordered.  And then muted the line on his end.

The Parkani stood there, fuming while his crews stood there, waiting for his go ahead.  “All right Chief.  Go ahead and do your engine burn.  But only use the fuel amount you indicated before.”

The Chief frowned.  “If I might ask, Captain, why the change?”

“Moxie’s just signaled.  She’s on her way back with a big rock that apparently is full of water, so we can replenish our reserves and keep the reactor going for a couple more weeks.”

That girl.  “Good news, Captain.  All right, we’re ready down here.  Tell the helm zero point two only on the engines.  We just need enough thrust to overcome inertia and get us moving in the right direction.  After we get the fuel, then we can do a supplementary burn.”

“Understood, Chief.”

Quesh watched his data feeds and after a slight shiver through the hull, the ship started to move.  It was an agonizing snail’s pace, but they were moving under their own power again.  At this speed it would take about five weeks to get to the inhabitable world in system, but at least there was some progress.  Once the fuel came in, they could do better.

The arrival of the shuttle was to a heroes’ welcome.  Tamara could hear the cheers over the comm as she very delicately delivered the rock to cargo bay two.  Quesh had decided that two was a better choice, and the cargo workers had shifted everything over to that bay instead.  It just barely fit through the cargo doors, and she was trying very hard not to let it touch the deck.

“Why?”

Tamara chuckled as she eased a little more thruster.  “Because it’ll rip through the deck.  All right, deck crews, get in there and secure it.  Then we can start carving it up.”

Ka’Xarian came back over the circuit.  “Thanks, you did your job, Tamara, we got it.”

“You sure?”

“One of my favorite playthings is the plasma cutter, little girl,” he said, a slight tinge of amused hum in his voice.  She laughed.

“Copy that, Xar.  I’m going to park this baby here because this shuttle is bingo fuel.  We need a refill.”

As she settled the bulky shuttle down on the deck, with only a very slight bump, a team of four people in EVA suits entered bay two, armed with steel cables and p-tongs.  They strapped the big rock in place, one each on the top and bottom, three evenly spaced across the middle.  The tech at the control panel at the inside of the bay closed and secured the doors, airing up the huge compartment, but made sure to leave the gravity off.  The last thing they needed was the big rock smashing through the deck of the cargo bay.

As the fuel tanks began to fill with water, the morale of the crew continued to rise.  The breached tanks had been repaired, and Quesh had been able to bring the reactor back up to fifteen percent.  The repairs continued apace, Tamara and her team as well as Ka’Xarian and his working on repairing some of the cracks in the hull trusses as well as in the hull plating itself.  It involved cutting out the damaged pieces entirely and welding and bolting back in place the new pieces.  They weren’t able to do many, there were many demands on the replicator’s time.

Tamara and Pip, this time, went out and brought back another rock with the shuttle.  This time it was one composed of various different metals, among those gold and platinum.  “Why gold?” the Captain had asked when Tamara had reported back.  “Aside from some use in electronics and heat shielding, we don’t need very much.”

“Well, to be honest, I grabbed this one for the platinum and the other strategic minerals.  But then I saw the gold and had an inspiration.  I thought we might need something to trade to the locals when we get to Instow.  We can turn it into coins or bricks to trade with.”

The Captain nodded slowly.  “Good thinking.  Normally we have to barter some things when we get here.  I’d never thought to make coins or bullion.”  His eyes brightened.  “And since the metals out here are not mixed with the dirt and things of a planet, they’re pure.  Pure metal.  Yes.  Yes, I think we might be able to work something out.  Very good thinking, Moxie.”

“Thank you, Captain.”  She smiled, but was already thinking about the next thing on the list.  “I’ve been making lists for repairs.  It’s pretty long.”

He nodded.  “I can imagine.  How bad?”

“Well, if you want this baby back to factory new, or as close as we can get her without a space dock, it’s pretty large.”  She showed him her datapad.

His eyes bulged.  “Wow.  There’s over two hundred items on this list.”

Tamara shook her head.  “No, Captain.  Well, yes, but that’s just list A, the primary and critical list.  The letters continue on, decreasing in priority as they go on.  There’s something along the line of ten thousand or so items.”

Now the man gaped.  “Fifteen thousand?”

She nodded again.  “Yes.  At least.”

“How the hell are we going to deal with that?” he despaired.

She laughed at him.  “Yeah, it looks overwhelming.  Can’t think of it that way.  We just prioritize everything and chip away at it.  One item at a time.”

The Captain looked at the A list again.  “I see a new replicator and replicator replacement parts are very high on the list.”

“Yes.  I’m slightly concerned at the strain we’re putting on it.  I want to overhaul replicator one and then supplement it completely, since we’re now down a replicator.”  She twisted her lips into a grimace.  The loss of the second machine was a serious blow.  True, it hadn’t been truly functional, but having only to overhaul it instead of a complete replacement would have taken far less time and fewer materials.  But there was nothing for it now.  They had to move forward.

“After that, we need to get the shields and reactor completely overhauled.  We can’t be hanging around with no shields.”

He shuddered.  “No, I should say not.  But even working at breakneck pace, working everyone as hard as possible, I can’t justify sitting here in orbit of Instow until everything is done.”

She shook her head, waving one hand.  “Of course not.  I’d want to get sensors, minimal shields, at least one more engine and the hyperdrive back up.  Other than that, I’d want to get some serious exterior work on the hull done and the boat bay.  Everything else we can work on in hyperspace.  Though I do think grabbing a few more rocks to fill up the holds would be a good idea.”

“I agree.  I was going to suggest that, actually.”

“What about replacements?”

He started.  “Replacements?  You mean crew?”              She nodded.  “I’m sure we can get some here at Instow.  But I don’t know if I’m comfortable bringing on that many people all at once.”  He took a long breath.  “But I know we can’t operate with almost half the crew out of action, what with the dead and the wounded.”  He nodded to himself.  “I’ll look into it, see what can be done.”

Tamara nodded in understanding.  With so many dead or wounded, they were down to forty-two crew that could actually do their jobs.  And with a good number of the engineering crew among the dead and wounded, they needed as much help as possible.  The cargo division were busy doing anything they could to help, whether that was fetch-and-carry duties or easy jobs that required little supervision.  But even still, that wasn’t anywhere near enough.  Grania Estelle had already been undermanned when Tamara had come aboard, normally, a ship this size would carry a crew more than twice its former size.  But now, with so few actually able to perform their tasks, the captain would be naturally hesitant to bring in too many at once.  Discipline would be difficult to maintain with so many new crewmen, more than a few unused to working in space, unused to duties on a star ship, even if it was a cargo ship rather than a fighting vessel.  So, he would be cautious, bringing in new hands in small groups, perhaps only ten or so at a time.  And while they would certainly help, it would take time to train up these new people, which would slow repairs and even normal operations until a new routine could be established.  But there was nothing for it.  It was something that the current crew would simply have to live with.

“Thank you, Captain.  But if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.”

He nodded.  “Of course.  If I haven’t said it already…”  He hesitated.  “I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done.  If not for you, we’d be in far worse shape.”

She smiled.  “You’re quite welcome.  But as I said before, it’s my butt on the line here too.”

His eyebrows went up.  “You could get off here at Instow,” he offered, though he hoped she would not.

Thankfully, she shook her head.  “Oh, no, Captain.  I’m a spacer, born and bred.  Cooling my heels on some dirtball isn’t my idea of a good time.”  She then patted the bulkhead.  “Besides, I’ve grown fond of the old girl.  I’d like to see her restored to her old glory.”

“I’ve been aboard this ship my whole life,” the Captain told her.  “She’s been slowly dying for so long.  I was overjoyed and overwhelmed when I took command.  I despaired when the previous captain gave me the full rundown on everything and I saw the true figures about all the systems.  I am very glad you and Quesh and the others are here to help make her young and beautiful again.”

Tamara pinched her thumbs and forefingers together and made a mock curtsy with an imaginary ball gown.  “What kind of woman would I be to leave another have to stand a wallflower at the ball?”

The Captain clapped her on the shoulder and threw back his head and laughed.

“We’re approaching orbit, Captain,” the pilot announced.  Grania Estelle had been slowing gradually for seven hours now, approaching the moon in orbit of the gas giant, which the locals also called Instow, the only inhabitable piece of real estate in the star system.  “We’ll be in standard orbiting position in nineteen minutes.”

“Thank you, helm.  Keep an eye on things, let me know if there are any problems.”  The Captain turned to the communications station.  “Serinda, try to get in contact with the locals at Instow.  If they don’t already know, please inform them of our imminent arrival.”

“Roger, Captain,” the young woman replied.  Serinda was a young woman in her twenties with dark hair, who had the unique talent of attracting the attention of all the young men she met.  Some few, like the Captain, the Doctor and Ka’Xarian, seemed to be immune to her natural charms.  She pressed a few controls, opening a channel.  “Instow Flight Control, this is the freighter Grania Estelle.  We are looking to engage in trading in your markets.  We will be assuming standard orbit in seventeen minutes.  Grania Estelle, out.”  She glanced at the Captain, who nodded.

A minute later, a response came back, on audio only.  “Whoever you are, please go away!  We don’t have anything for you to take, the last people through here took everything!”

That brought everyone up short.  Apparently they were not the only ones who had been targeted by the raiders.  The Captain straightened in his chair.  “Put me on.”  Serinda tapped a control, then glanced over and nodded.  “What is your situation down there, Instow Flight?  We were attacked by raiders as well, just as soon as we came out of hyperspace.  As such we’re in desperate need of some supplies and repairs as well.  Perhaps we can help each other here.  This isn’t our first time in this system, Instow Flight.  You know us.  If I could speak with your proconsul, I believe we can work something out to our mutual benefit.”

There was a long pause.  “I’m afraid I can’t help you.  We’re in desperate straits ourselves and we can’t be bothered with outsiders’ problems.  Please, just go.”

“Like I said, maybe we can help each other,” the Captain tried again.  “We have access to some replicator support up here.”

Another long pause.  “I will confer with the proconsul.  Do not attempt to land.  Anyone from your ship who comes down to the planet will be arrested.”  The line clicked off.

“Nice people,” George Miller muttered, loud enough to carry in the small bridge.

“They’re scared,” the Captain replied.  He frowned.  “Can’t say I blame them.  I know we all were only a few days ago.”  He grunted.  “Still are a bit, actually.”  He shifted position in his chair, resting his chin on his hand.  “Nothing for it, well, for now anyway.  Serinda, keep an ear out, if they call back, let me know immediately.”  He got up and left the bridge.

“Yes… uh… Captain,” she stammered as the hatch closed behind him.

Quesh was standing at the main engineering console, in all of its spliced together madness, trying to take stock of the situation.  Fuel levels were at about twenty-two percent with the water coming in from the shuttle’s asteroid run, which were certainly not good, but much better than they had been.  There was still so much damage, even just to bring them back to where they were before the attack.  His teams were exhausted, those that remained.  He had only two-thirds of the personnel to do the same amount of work, more, actually, considering everyone was working twelve hour shifts.

He had his teams now redoing some of the work that had just been done in hyperspace, to repair the damage.  Fuel lines (which had only been patched so as to get them to Instow) were being ripped out and replaced properly, as were fiber optics, data lines and EPS conduits.  Tamara was busy building new replicator parts and was rewriting the firmware code for many of the damaged computer systems, to try and make the more ragged bits run more smoothly.  She would have to redo it again once they got proper equipment installed, but for now, they needed to work with the “make do” mentality.

The Grania Estelle herself, though, wasn’t going anywhere.  Quesh had completely torn the engines to pieces, since most of the equipment couldn’t be salvaged.  It was all just going to be cut apart and fed to the replicators for materials.  This meant that their fortunes were now tied to this system.  For now anyway, the bulk freighter was going nowhere.  Maneuvering thrusters were still active for any corrections needed to maintain or change the ship’s orbit, but for now, they were stuck here.

The ship was still buzzing about the pirates.  Though, since the ship and her surviving crew were still reeling, wounded from the attack, of course it would be in the forefront of everyone’s minds.  The least injured from the attack were being released from sickbay on light duty, which was fine because Quesh needed every hand.  No one had any ideas about the raiders, however.  Pirates were an unfortunate reality in this day and age, but the Grania Estelle had been more fortunate than most.  Up until now, they had not encountered any commerce raiders of any type, though on three occasions they had departed just before a pirate warship arrived, or arrived just after one had left.

Though it had looked fearsome, no one recognized the bird of prey emblem that the raiders had worn on their clothing and armor, or that was emblazoned on their ships.  Tamara had run it through her own small database, but had come up empty.  Most likely it was only a symbol the leaders of their group had come up with to inspire fear in those they attacked.  It was plenty effective.  The crew of this ship would never forget it.  The Captain had his bridge people going over every scrap of information they had about the attackers: what clothing they wore, their weapons, their armor, tactics, sensor data from the boat bay, internal cameras, Tamara’s fighter’s sensor logs, even the tattoos and body types of the ones that had been killed.  It added up to a pretty grim picture, but unfortunately, except for the broad strokes, no one could make out any clear image yet.

But that was something for less pragmatic minds than Quesh Trrgoth.  Let the Captain worry about the pirates.  And if he needed the help, Quesh was sure that Tamara would chip in.  In fact, based on the amount of processing lag he had on his computer systems, especially since a good number of critical systems were offline, Quesh suspected that Tamara was already working on something.  Whether it had anything to do with the pirates, he didn’t know.  He did know, however, suspect that whatever it was she was doing would be something impressive.  She made very big claims and big promises and so far she delivered on every one.

Tamara sat in the bay holding Replicator One, waiting for the latest round of parts to be completed.  Once they were done, she could tear the machine and replace some of the more fragile pieces.  It probably would be easier and less labor intensive to simply build another replicator altogether, but she didn’t want to be halfway done getting what she needed to suddenly have this replicator burn out.  So, she was doing things the hard way for now.

Her special program was running on its own now.  She smiled as the last bit of coding she ran began compiling.  It was in a point three build stage now, but when it was completed, it would certainly be an asset.  Tamara was sure now that while this program would be a great help, she wouldn’t be needing it against the crew of the Grania Estelle.  In fact, should she ever decide to leave here, she might leave it behind.  A present for the crew.

“So, now I see what you’re doing,” a voice sounded behind her.  She whirled in surprise.  Ka’Xarian stood in the hatchway, his arms folded over his thorax.

“You shouldn’t sneak up on a girl like that,” Tamara chided, switching off the screen on her datapad.

The zheen shrugged.  “Turning off the datapad isn’t going to hide it from me, Tamara.  As I said, I already know what’s going on.”

“You do?” she asked, her chest tightening a bit.  The crew might not like what she was doing.  And, to be fair, she had initially started working on this project to defend herself against them.  “And what do you think?”

“What I have to ask, Tamara, is why you would feel the need to be building your own AI?”

Tamara sighed, feeling snakes slithering around in her stomach.  Apparently, in this day and age, there were no AI’s being used.  Of course, there was no reason she should feel threatened; an AI could only help this ship, especially once they got critical functions brought up to greater levels.  The crew themselves couldn’t keep the fusion bottle in the reactor balanced on their own, not at power levels greater than twenty-five or even thirty percent.  Organics simply didn’t have the ability to process and compensate for the many tiny fluctuations that a bottle at significant power levels would require.

And while this was certainly true, Ka’Xarian was still looking at her with suspicion.  His antennae were curled down, very tightly, something that wasn’t normal, but Tamara didn’t know how to interpret that piece of zheen body language.

“I plan on rebuilding the computer core and the doing a full tear down and overhaul of the reactor, and when we have the more serious repairs done, I’m going to speak with the captain about putting in an auxiliary reactor.”

Ka’Xarian’s antennae twitched in confusion at the non sequitor.  “And what does that have to do with an AI?”

She spoke carefully, as though explaining to someone who should know better, as though she knew everything, but in fact, she was speaking carefully because she was afraid that the zheen, someone she might call a friend, someone she had worked with closely over the last month and a half, might condemn her for this action.  She was worried that he might work out the real reason that she was building the AI.  Once it was up and running, and fully integrated into the computer network, she would have a real ally among the crew.  Tamara had already installed subroutines integral to its personality matrix that would identify her as a friend and someone who the AI would want to protect.

Her coding skills were a bit rusty, she’d been more of an administrator than a floor supervisor back at the shipyard, but she had used her spare time to try and her skills sharp and up to date.  She’d also managed, thankfully, to bring with her a number of compressed files, a large bag of tricks, cheat sheets, preparation coding for a number of computer projects, and the outline frame coding for a class one smart AI.  All that, plus some very time-consuming and diligent work on her part now here on the Grania Estelle, meant that she now had the workings of that AI nearly completed.

AIs came in two types, dumb and smart.  Dumb AIs were intolerant, focused, made for very specific tasks.  While they had the ability to learn, it was only within the scope of their particular specialty.  There were security AIs, merchant AIs, factory AIs, ones that worked on stations and ships, even ones that worked as interpreters for diplomats.  Dumb AIs were plentiful, they helped keep the Republic running smoothly.

Smart AIs were rare.  They could evolve and grow, just like organics could.  The smart AI that was soon to be born would be a fledgling, the equivalent of a child.  It would need to be nurtured, educated and challenged, but it would grow and expand its coding.  It would become a person, a being in its own right.  Back in her day, AI’s were considered people.  Artificial, with silicon and electrons running through their veins, but they were still people, nonetheless.  They could hold officers’ commissions in the armed forces, run factories, they could work in engineering positions, even in the field of medicine; working in positions all normally reserved for “real” people.  Tamara imagined, however, that people in this new dark age probably had less tolerance for artificial life forms such as AI, which meant even having one was a risk.

“Because the upgrades that we are going to make to the ship require more interconnectivity than we currently have.”  She licked her lips, hoping Ka’Xarian wouldn’t detect her nervousness.  “And a few of the systems, like the reactor, cannot truly be run at optimal efficiency without an AI.”

The zheen stared in her direction for a long moment, his antennae moving in back and forth in very small circles, as though he was tasting the air, as though her lies somehow had more flavor than the half-truths she was spinning.  “If that’s the case, why do you look and act so guilty, Tamara?”

She laughed, spinning this yarn as fast as she good.  “I didn’t want to alarm anyone.  In my time,” and her voice wavered a bit at that phrase, “AIs were quite common.  But by the state of this ship and judging from the attitudes of the crew when I had asked them about those sorts of things, the reception I got wasn’t exactly warm.”  That last part was a complete lie.  She hadn’t spoken at all about AIs, to anyone, for fear they might think she was building one and would try to stop her.

The zheen stood there, continuing to watch her, not speaking for a while longer.  “Do you need any help?” he asked, surprising her.

She blinked.  That certainly wasn’t the response she was expecting.  “You approve?”

Ka’Xarian buzzed at her, laughing.  “Of course I approve!  Having an AI could make things a great deal simpler aboard ship.  We could have crewmen doing actual work rather than doing things the AI could do for us.”

Tamara risked a tentative smile.  “I wasn’t expecting you to be happy about this.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” he replied, coming in and sitting down on the bench next to her.  “This is wonderful!  Do you really think the old girl can handle an AI?”

She nodded.  “Right now, no.  But if we do some serious upgrades, most specifically to the computer core and data transfer system, I think she will be able to support an AI.”

The zheen glanced at her, a timid expression she’d never seen on his insectoid face before.  “May I see the coding?”

Tamara gave him one more wary look, then nodded, picking up the data pad.  “How did you even know I was working on this?” she asked as she brought up the link to the program.  It was running in the background on every spare scrap of the ship’s computer core she could find.  The next order of business once the replicator was overhauled was to get a few more banks of processors out.

The zheen hummed another chuckle.  “It wasn’t that hard, actually.  I noted that despite your impressive amount of cleanup and repair of our software systems that the computers were running even slower than usual, especially since the engines were completely offline.  I traced through the network and found your code.  I recognized a few pieces of your programming style and pieced some things together.  I’m not the programmer that you are, but I recognized a few things.”

Tamara nodded in acknowledgement.  She continued bringing up the programming.  “How many people have you told?” she asked, keeping her voice as steady as she could.  She was prepared for the worst; that the Captain would be calling upon her to explain herself.

But Ka’Xarian shook his head.  “I’m your friend, Tamara,” he said simply.  “And while I don’t think a good portion of the crew is quite ready for these kinds of new and radical ideas,” his antennae flicked in amusement, “I am.  But I haven’t told anyone yet.  I think that once the AI is up and running in the ship’s systems, we can tell them then.”  He peered at the coding that she showed him and his compound eyes lit up.  “How long until it is complete?”

Tamara laughed.  “Complete?  Never.  Operational?  We need the additional computing power first.  After that?  Probably about a month or so.  Then this new AI will be ready to make her appearance.”

“Her?  It’s female?”  Ka’Xarian sounded amused.

She looked at him in surprise.  “Well yes!  Why is that a surprise?  I plan on integrating her into the Grania Estelle’s computer core.  Why should it therefore be a surprise that the AI is female?”

He shrugged.  “Never really thought about it, to be honest.  Up until a little while ago, I didn’t think about AIs.  Though I had been thinking that we would need more help.”

She chuckled, looking up as the replicator beeped, signaling that this round of parts was completed and needed the trays removed so it could continue onto the next round.  “Just because the ship would have an AI doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t need more help.  AIs can only do so much.”

“Right,” the zheen said, continuing to stare at the scrolling code.  He seemed mesmerized.

“Xar?” she asked, looking back at him.  He didn’t answer.  “Xar!”

“What?” he brought his head up so his face was level with hers.  It wasn’t necessary for him to do so, with his compound eyes, he could nearly turned completely away from her and still be looking at her.

“I’m going to need the datapad back.  I have to go and work on the replicator now.”

“It’s still got another tray of parts to go,” Xar pointed out.

“Yes, but I need the assistant chief engineer to return to work so that we can keep the repairs on the ship moving forward.  I know the AI coding is very satisfying to watch, but we both need to get back to work.”

He buzzed in annoyance at her, but he rose from the bench.  “All right, I’m going.  Let me know when you’re going to tear down the replicator.  I’ll come up and help.”

She smiled at him.  “Trying to steal a girl’s secrets?”

His antennae flicked in amusement.  “Well of course.  How’s a young male supposed to get ahead in the world if he doesn’t?”  With that he turned and walked out.

“This is simply amazing,” the Captain muttered for perhaps the tenth time.

The tearing down and rebuilding of replicator one was going smoothly.  As Tamara had suspected, a number of the components were worn-down, and more than a quarter of the internal circuitry was on its last legs.  The nanite containment unit was fine, thankfully, she built a new storage container and transferred the nanites over, not wanting to take any chances.  The replicator nanites were programmed to destroy themselves if they escaped from the containment unit, but it was always better to err on the side of caution.

Tamara laughed.  “I know this is something that you’re not used to seeing or really using, but for me, this is a commonplace thing.  I’m actually a little disappointed that we don’t have more.”

“More?  You said when you were done that we would have two industrial replicators.”

“Yes, I did.  This one and then build a second one to replace the one the raiders stole.”  She grimaced.  “And to answer your question, I’m used to working at a shipyard.  It’s been a year, as far as my body can tell, but the shipyard I was at?  It had sixteen class six industrial replicators, a dozen class fives, and two class sevens.  I had a crew of about eighteen thousand, a dozen AIs, all well trained and motivated.  We could completely tear down and rebuild the Grania Estelle in thirty-six hours, going full tilt.”  Both the Captain and Ka’Xarian were stunned into silence.  It seemed like a crazy dream, industry on that scale.

“You miss it, don’t you?” the Captain asked after a long moment.

She didn’t stop working.  She didn’t answer, but that alone confirmed his question.  Finally, she did.  “Of course there are things that I miss.  I miss my job.  I miss the building.  I miss the structure and the certainty that I was doing what I should be doing.  I had a purpose.  I had friends and colleagues.”  Tamara took a long, shaky breath, but didn’t elaborate further.

“And then that all went away.”  Ka’Xarian’s voice was kind.

She glared at them both.  “Why are you both pushing me about this?  I’m sure you’ve had happier times in your past.”

The zheen’s antennae flatted to his head in contrition, the Captain only nodded.  Tamara continued what she was doing, Xar handing her things as she requested them.  Finally, the Captain got up and started to walk away.  Glancing back one more time at the machine, he commented, “Truly amazing,” and then left the compartment.

Repairs continued apace, and within two weeks, engine one, two and three were completely rebuilt and online.  A good deal of the hull repairs had been started; that would be a long process, one that would probably take months to complete.  Right now, the Grania Estelle could move again, but the hyperdrive, shields and sensors would need to be repaired before the ship could leave the system.  However, with the third engine up and running, the ship now had half again as much sublight thrust as it had before, which meant that in-system trips would take less time.  That made the Captain very happy to hear, though hearing that there was a great deal of work yet to be done on the hull before they would be able to utilize that extra engine power, tempered that happiness.

The injured were recovering as well.  Physically, at any rate.  Their scars from the raid would linger for a long time, possibly forever.  There wasn’t really any sure fire way to heal that sort of injury, but the crew were a tight knit group.  They had all served together for at least a year, flown many light years together.  So they mourned together and they gathered together to try and work their way through the pain.

But one of many problems was the food situation.  Cookie’s pantries were not replenishing and the authorities on the planet were still refusing to allow them to land.  Apparently a very large freighter hanging around in orbit was making the locals very nervous.  The Captain had tried to explain numerous times that they were not part of a pirate force, they were an independent trading vessel.  But they refused to listen.

“If you attempt to land on our world, you will be attacked!” the man on the other end of the communication answered, his voice sounding utterly officious and self-serving, before ending the call.

“Damn,” the Captain said, pounding a fist lightly on the arm of his chair.  “Why can’t they see sense?”  He stood.  “I’ll be in the mess hall.  Call me if there’s a change.”

Cookie was waiting for him, a worried expression on his normally very cheerful face.  “Captain, good, I need to speak with you.”

“And I with you, Cookie.”

The chef gestured to one of the tables and they both sat.  Two mugs of coffee were also there, Cookie had had the foresight to realize that they would need them.  They sipped the hot liquid for a moment before the chef spoke.  “We are in trouble, Captain.  We’ve cut rations twice since entering the system, but unless we cut them again, we only have enough left for two weeks’ worth, and even then we’re going to be very lean and hungry.”

The Captain nodded.  “The locals are not budging an inch.  They think that we’re to blame for their troubles, or else that if they help us, the pirates might blame them.”

“Then what can we do?  The Chief says that we cannot leave the system.  And even if we did, we don’t have enough rations to get to the next port.”

He nodded again.  He pulled out his communicator and flipped it on.  “Corajen, it’s the Captain.  I need you down in the mess hall, please.”

The wolf woman’s voice came back immediately.  “Roger that, Captain.  On my way.”

Cookie eyed him suspiciously.  “You have a plan?”

The Captain shrugged.  “Maybe.  Depends on what we actually have available to use.”

“Will it work?”

“No idea.  But we’re running out of options.”  A moment later, Corajen entered the mess hall.  She wore no battle armor, having shed that shortly after the raid, walking around in her standard leather kilt that fell to her knees, a wrist communicator on her left arm, and a battle harness that also doubled as a halter top, barely covering her breasts.  Those of the crew that had fur tended not to wear much in the way of clothing, but Corajen tried to project an air of demureness.  Having one’s breasts uncovered didn’t bother her, or many of the females aboard, but it did have the annoying tendency (most of the time) of distracting the males.  The Captain had never said anything about her clothes, caring more about her ability to do her job than her state of undress, which was something that earned him a number of points in the lupusan’s book.

As one of the senior security officers aboard Grania Estelle, he did care about her weapons however.  The battle harness held a stunner pistol under her left armpit, a pulser under her right, and a meter long blade sheathed down her back.  She carried no other weapons, but then, even if stripped of those artificial items, she would not be unarmed.  She was a lupusan, after all, and the inch-long claws on each finger, as well as her very sharp teeth allowed Corajen to be an arsenal unto herself.  The guns and the blade were almost an afterthought.

Almost.  Her rifle was stowed away in the ship’s armory, and she was glad of it.  Lugging the weapon around wasn’t really practical aboard ship.  And in day-to-day operations, it wasn’t necessary.  Her regular kit and weapons were more than adequate to keep order aboard the ship.  Hell, her presence alone was usually enough, without having to hit anyone, threaten anyone, or even draw a weapon.

“Captain,” she said, “You sent for me?”  She slid into a seat at the table next to them.

“Yes, I did,” he replied.  “We have a serious situation.”  He leaned back a bit, trying to get more comfortable.  “Our food stores are running dangerously low.  The locals won’t let us come down because they say we’ll be attacked if we do.  They refuse to have anything to do with us.”

“Okay,” the wolf woman said slowly, nodding a bit.  “I’m following you so far.  I’m just confused by what you think I should do here.”

“We need to get down to the surface and deal with the locals.”

Her ears flattened to her head.  “What does that mean, Captain?  If you’re thinking my security team is going down to the surface to start shooting up the bureaucrats who are stonewalling us, you can forget it, Captain.  I won’t do it and I won’t let any of the others do it.”  She crossed her large arms over her chest.  “I know you’re the Captain, but I won’t do it.”

She was greatly daring here.  On board any ship, the Captain’s word was law.  He could order she be spaced and the crew would be expected to obey.  In most cases they would, and they would trust that the Captain wouldn’t give an order like that without exceptionally good reason.  As the ruler of the ship, all of the hard choices were ultimately on his shoulders.  Others might make hard decisions, but in the end, as one would expect it would be the Captain’s responsibility.  But there was only so much that could be done.  Corajen was popular with the crew and a force of her own to be reckoned with.  Her actions during the raid had also raised her standing within the crew.  They had no intention of pushing her to try and move up in the world, and nor did she, but it did give her some leverage that even the Captain could not ignore.  If she put her foot down that she would not attack Instow, serious discipline problems might occur if he ordered that she do so.

But that was no matter, because he had no intention of conducting a raid of his own.  “Relax, Corajen, I have no desire to hurt these people.  It’s on our route, I can’t afford to completely alienate these people.  But we need food.  Badly.”  She nodded in understanding, looking grateful.  “We need to get down there and get the locals to see reason.  And we can’t do that if the only person who’s talking to us is the one who doesn’t want us here.”

She nodded very slowly, then reached up and rubbed her muzzle for a second before putting both hands down on the table.  “So what exactly am I expected to do?”

“Your job is to protect the team that is going to the surface.  I’m not saying you need to shoot up a neighborhood, but I do expect that everyone that goes down comes back up again in one piece.”

Corajen smiled wickedly.  “That I can do, Captain.”

The Captain stood.  “I’m going to be sending the team down in about two hours.  Get your team ready to go down.”

Corajen sprang up as well.  “Then I need to go speak with my team.  Who’s going down?”

“I’m sending Taja, Mickey and Slay.  And one other, though she doesn’t know she’s going yet.”

Tamara pulled herself out from the hole in the bulkhead where she had been splicing and replacing whole sections of wiring.  A great deal of the wiring in large sections of the Grania Estelle was so corroded it didn’t actually do anything.  Most of it had been spliced, and bypassed, so it was just stuffed unceremoniously back behind the bulkheads and shut back in, with no labeling system or any indication of what any of it did.  She had been busying herself in this area for the last few hours, now that replicator two was up and running.

“How’s it going?” the Captain asked her, clasping one wrist with the opposite hand, behind his back.

“Better,” she commented, dusting herself off and standing up.  “I’ve managed to rewire this junction, but now I’m running into problems because there’s all sorts of cross wiring and splicing in there.  It’s a mess.  But I’m sorting it out,” she told him with a smile.

He nodded in approval, smiling himself.  “Excellent.  Very good work.  But I need to pull you off that for a while.”

Tamara raised an eyebrow.  “Oh?  And what is it that I’m going to be doing?”

“Flying down to Instow.  Or more specifically, flying cover for the shuttle as they go down to get us some foodstuffs.”

She blinked in surprise.  “You want me to fly my fighter down to the moon and provide fire support?  You want me to shoot up a civilian population?”

“No, I don’t,” he said hurriedly.  “I just went through this with Corajen.  I don’t want any of you to shoot anybody.  Instow is on my trade route and I want to be able to come back here often.”  He sighed.  “Every time the people on the surface talk to us, they tell us they will attack us if we come down.  I’m hoping that if our shuttle flies down with a fighter escort that will make them think twice about trying to shoot at my people.”

“I’m going to have to do a full sensor scan of what we can see of the settlements from orbit, Captain,” she warned.  “If they have missile launchers or anything like that, even having a fighter escort, the shuttle will be in serious trouble.  I don’t have any missiles constructed, I have to defend the shuttle with cannons alone, which is a serious handicap.”

“I understand.  But we have to get a team down there to negotiate for food stores.  Our own are dangerously low and we have nowhere else to go to get the food.  We have to do this.  So my question to you, Moxie, is, will you?  Will you do this?”

She grimaced.  “You ask me to do this after you tell me that we’re going to run out of food if we don’t do this.  Thank you very much, Captain.  You’re a prince of merchants.”  Her tone was incredibly sour.

His grin was smug.  “Well of course, Moxie.  I needed to be sure that you would do it.”

Tamara grumbled at him.  “All right.  Then I need to get to bay one and go through preflight.  When do we go?”

“Less than two hours.”

“Then I’d better get going.  I just need to make a quick stop at replicator one before we go.”

“You called me up here, Tamara?” Corajen asked.  “I’ve got to get to the shuttle.”

The engineer nodded, pointing to a crate sitting by the replicator.  “We haven’t got a lot of time, but I figured you’d want a look at that.”

The lupusan opened the crate and her eyes goggled, her tongue lolled out of her mouth.  “Where did you get these?”

“I made them,” she said matter-of-factly.  “I have the master replicator access.”

Corajen looked up at her, a smile spreading on her mount.  “What are these?”

“This,” Tamara replied, pulling the first item in the crate, “Is the MK-413 pulse rifle.  Ten millimeter, with over under pump action, four round grenade launcher.  It’s a lot more powerful than the weapons you’re using now, a lot more durable and easier to work with.  You can drag that thing through the mud and it will still fire.”

The wolf woman took the weapon from her and cradled it as though it was a child, stroking it with the hand not holding the stock.  It was a lean weapon, a carbine, really but with a retractable stock, and a hundred round magazine.  The weight wasn’t bad, actually about the same as the rifle she used now.

“You’ve only got about ninety minutes to familiarize yourself with that, and make sure that your team is familiar.  I made enough for all of them.”  Tamara indicated the crate.  “I also made enough ammunition for six clips each.  I would imagine if you need more ammo than that for this trip, we’re in more trouble than we can really handle.  Can you do it?”

“Make this beauty purr?” Corajen asked.  “You insult me, madam!  Of course I can.  And my team too.  We’ve got this.” She leaned forward, looking into the crate.  “Hey, what are those?”

Tamara smiled.  “Oh, those?  Oh, I think you’ll like those.”

Two hours later, two ships departed the much larger Grania Estelle, the long blocky shuttle with its mismatched cylindrical engine pods and stubby wings, and the sleek winged dragon of a starfighter, which kept within a kilometer of its principal, looking dangerous and protective.  Both ships angled away from the freighter and dove into the atmosphere of the tiny world.

Chapter 7

Instow, the moon that was named for the system, the only inhabitable piece of real estate in the system, was a fair sized piece of real estate.  At just over 4600 kilometers in diameter, however, it was very compact compared to a normal planet.  There were three settlements on the tidal-locked moon, one of which was right on the equator of the point equidistant from the gas giant and space beyond, which meant that the gas giant would always be on one side of the city, making for some dramatic views of the atmospheric storms on the nearby Jovian.

This was a cold moon, for it was rather distant from the star, and the various bodies of water, small lakes, were mostly frozen over.  There was a very light atmosphere because the gravity was a bare fraction of standard, though it was heavy enough that without mechanical assistance, you could not jump and leave the planet.  People needed to wear breathing masks when outside.  Inside the buildings, gravity nets were installed allowing people to walk around normally and most buildings were connected by covered passageways.  There were no indigenous animals on this world, but the first colonists here had seeded those bodies of water with fish, which had adapted to the cold and multiplied rapidly.  Along with a few varieties of fruits and vegetables, grown in indoor greenhouses augmented with artificial light, the locals also produced a very respectable beer.

They were always in the market for high technology items and even raw materials they could process on their own in their small machine shops.  Unfortunately, Instow had no spacecraft, no shuttles, nothing that they could use to try and exploit the vast riches of their own system, but they didn’t seem to be too bothered by that.  Centuries ago when the Hudora system just next door was a major hub for technology and trade, ships would be passing through Instow fairly regularly.  Traffic had since dropped off considerably, but the locals could be assured that a ship would be passing through every six months or so, bringing news, trade goods and the occasional drunken bar fight.

A construction project had begun about fifty years ago to build a dome over the capital city, Terminus, named for its position on the planet’s surface, but it was only partially completed.  The groundwork had been laid out, but the money and the finished materials had run out.  It was still something that was talked about, usually looked upon with sad wanting when breather masks had to be put on to walk outside.  There were risks, of course, to putting up such a structure but no more so than on space stations that had transparent domes covering inner buildings and living areas.

The houses and buildings were a motley collection of shapes, designs and sizes, making the city of Terminus look like little more than a just a ramshackle collection of metal.  As the shuttle with its fighter escort drew closer, they did a flyover of the city, the Perdition’s sensors sucked up every bit of data possible, taking video of what was in range.  The information collected might not be of immediate use, but it could certainly help in mapping out the city and determining the population centers and other such things.  Perhaps even food warehouses could be located so the team from the Grania Estelle could know where to go for their business.

No one was signaling.  Perhaps their sensors were just as bad as the ones on the Grania Estelle and they couldn’t accurately detect the incoming small ships.  Maybe they weren’t watching.  Maybe only the bureaucrats who were refusing to help were the only ones watching and they were scared to death what the incoming ships meant.  No one really knew.  The Captain had hailed Instow and was continuing to do so as the shuttle and the fighter came down, but so far the same answer kept coming back.  “Do not come down or you will be attacked.”  Obviously, they were not heeding this warning.

Tamara’s comms beeped.  “Shuttle one to Perdition.  Are you detecting any weapons?  Any hostile actions by the locals?”  Corajen’s voice sounded a little strange, not afraid but more as though she was getting hyped up for an upcoming battle.

She keyed the comm.  “This is Perdition.  Nothing so far.  No large gatherings of people.  No weapons to speak of so far.  That’s not really unusual, actually, if the civilization here has fallen into such disrepair.  And I don’t think they’re hiding any kind of serious hardware here.  That’s not to say that we won’t be met by armed parties at the landing site, but so far I’m not detecting anything.”

“Thanks, Perdition.  You know just how to make a girl happy.”

They had carefully selected a landing zone near to the warehouse district, which Taja had pointed out wasn’t the place that they had used the last time they were here at Instow, but she acknowledged that it had been almost four years since the Grania Estelle had been here and that the last time, there had been no pirate threat.  It was an open clearing, away from the other buildings, most likely to be used for loading and unloading of goods.  The fish harvests were brought in here, to be packaged and sold.  For now, only a small surplus was taken in addition to what was needed to survive, meant to be sold to passing ships.  As the shuttle came closer and lower, they could see there were loaders and small vehicles frantically speeding away from the area where the shuttle’s landing spotlights were now aiming their beams.

“Shuttle one, this is Perdition.  I will remain in the air, flying an orbital pattern over the city about two kilometers up.  You need me, I’ll come running.”

“Copy that, Perdition.  Hopefully, for you this is only going to be a waste of time.”  Taja sounded like she didn’t really believe that.  Hopefully the young cargo specialist would be correct.

The shuttle did a circular sweep as it lowered to the ground.  The main engines shut off as the repulsors kicked in and very slowly touched down.  The fighter continued past, continuing a slow loop around the city.  Tamara’s sensors could pick up people coming out of their homes, tentatively, looking upward and following the track of her fighter, and as the images zoomed in on their faces, they looked worried.  They didn’t need to be.  As far as Tamara was concerned, this was going to be a show of force only.  She had no desire to open fire on civilians, not now, and only if they moved to attack the crew on the shuttle.  Even then, she didn’t think she could bring herself to turn her starfighters cannons on the people directly.

Tamara continued her lazy turn, hoping that the people on the surface would see sense and they could all do business and get on with their day.

Corajen was the first down the ramp, her pulse rifle in her hands.  She was dressed in body armor, though the weapon was pointed at the ground.  The lupusan was trying to be as non-threatening as possible but it was a difficult act for her to pull off.  A small group of people were approaching the shuttle, but most recoiled in fear as they saw the wolf woman step off the shuttle.  Even in a skinsuit, she was a fearsome presence.  Her face wasn’t the right shape to use the same helmets that humans used, so hers was outfitted with a bubble helmet that incorporated her long muzzle and her ears.  The other five members of her security team hopped down the shuttle’s ramp, not able to run properly in the low gravity.  The skipping-hop stride might have looked silly, the armor and weapons did not.

A man came forward, pushing through the small group, walking up to within about ten meters of the landing force.  He was dressed in a patched and threadbare looking skinsuit, one that had seen heavy use over the years.  He was plump, the skinsuit looked as though it was barely containing his bulk.  His face was covered in a breather mask, but the faceplate was completely transparent.  His eyes were blazing with what looked like righteous anger, though Corajen couldn’t really tell.  Her entire head was covered by the helmet though if she could use her sense of smell, she might get a better read on the man and the situation in general.  Anger had a definite odor and fear a distinctly different and more pungent one.

“How dare you!” the man roared, his voice carrying through the very thin atmosphere.  “You cannot be down here!”

Taja hopped down the ramp as well, skidding to a halt far less smoothly than Corajen and her people.  “Come now, Barnabus,” she said indignantly.  “We’ve been here before and we’ve traded fair.”

But the man refused to be sweet-talked.  “No, you brought trouble down on us!  You and that cursed ship of yours!”  He waved his hands in front of himself as if waving off a landing plane.  “Get yourselves back on your shuttle and fly back up to your ship and leave.  Now!”

“We only need a few things and then we’ll be happily on our way, Barnabus,” Taja replied smoothly.  “We’re not here to cause trouble.”

“No?” he nearly shrieked.  He stabbed a finger at Corajen.  “You bring that… that… person here with the rest of her thugs, armed to the teeth, and I’m supposed to believe you only want a ‘few’ things?”  Then he stabbed that finger at the sky.  “And you bring a fighter plane with you?  You going to bomb my city if I don’t comply?”  The man was holding his ground, but it was clear he was afraid.  “You brought those pirates here!”

“We did no such thing, Barnabus,” she snapped.  “They hit us the instant we dropped out of hyperspace.”

“You lie!” he bellowed.  “Get out of my city!  Get off our world!”  More people were arriving now.  The crowd, drawn to the landing of the shuttle, and the noise of the confrontation had swelled to over a hundred people.  They were agreeing with him.  A low growl was sounding, as the locals began muttering.  The looks flashing in the direction of the freighter crew were not encouraging.

“This is getting ugly fast,” Corajen spoke quietly, her voice carrying to everyone over comms.  Looking at movement to her left, she saw three men coming out of houses, armed with rifles.  The weapons were ancient, relics, really.  Her own weapons packed a greater punch and were simply better weapons, but an ancient bullet could kill just as well as a modern one.  “I’ve got weapons coming this way.”

“You need to go!” Barnabus shouted.  “They’re going to try and hurt us!” he called to the crowd, who responded with shouts of anger.  “They are just like the pirates who came here and took our things, killed our families!”  The crowd was moving forward now, but they hadn’t turned violent.

“That’s not it at all!” Taja pleaded, holding her hands out in front of her.  “We came here to trade.  We need things, you need things.  We want to hurt no one!”
“You hear!” Barnabus cackled, pointing at her.  “They came to hurt us!  Just like what the pirates did to us!  What they did to Volarus!”

“No!” Taja yelled.  “We didn’t!  We haven’t hurt anyone!”

A rock came hurtling from somewhere at the back of the crowd, perfectly arced, hitting the cargo specialist in the shoulder, sending her spinning and flopping to the dirt.  The crowd roared its approval.  Corajen leveled her weapon, but she couldn’t tell where the missile had come from.  And it was getting worse; she could see more people with weapons coming at them.

“Leave!” the man said, his voice carrying over the cacophony of the mob, for it had doubled in size in a matter of moments.

“You’re killers!”

“Troublemakers!”

“Offworlders!”

“Scum!”

“Murderers!”

“We’re going,” Corajen said.  “Everyone on the shuttle, now!”  Her team edged back, one of the security people grabbing Taja by the arm and hauling her to her feet.

“They’re running!” someone yelled.  More rocks came flying forward and the lupusan and her people fired warning shots into the air, well above the heads of the crowd, retreating with each step.

The crowd surged forward, screaming in rage, people with improvised weapons, and people with guns, all of them rushing forward with hate-filled fury.  Corajen leveled her rifle, but didn’t fire.  She was not going to shoot into a crowd of civilians.  “Slimers!  Now!”  Grabbing a squat cylinder off her belt, she popped the spoon with her thumb and tossed it underhand at the feet of the oncoming mob.  The others on her team followed suit, throwing the grenades forward.

The explosives went off, but instead of a concussion, or shrapnel, a gelatinous goo gushed out, soaking the ground and the feet and legs of the first few rows of the oncoming mob.  The slime then expanded from contact with the air, changing to a foam, which then hardened a second later.  One instant later, the enraged crowd who were howling for blood were suddenly shrieking in panic as they found themselves glued in place by what felt like concrete.  Some fell over, some were locked upright, while others crashed into the front rows and fell over the suddenly very hard surface that wasn’t there seconds before.

This gave the freighter crew enough time to get aboard the shuttle and up in the air.  The repulsors flared and the shuttle was off the ground before the ramp was even raised.

Tamara looked over to see the shuttle launching.  “What the hell is going on?” she demanded.

“There was a mob,” the lupusan reported back.  She sounded winded.  “We had to pull back to the shuttle and take off.  It got ugly and they charged.  Thank the stars you made those slimer grenades.”

“They were popular back in my time.  Figured they would come in handy.”

“You know, you smart girls cover your assets well,” Corajen replied.  “I think I might need a lesson or two in dirty tricks.”

Tamara laughed.  She banked her turn, flying to pace the shuttle.  “Be happy to host a class.  Is everyone all right?”

The wolf woman sobered.  “Taja took a rock to the shoulder.  No one else was hurt.”

“She all right?”

“She’ll be fine.  Might be bruised.  Doc Turan’s going to look at it when we get back to the ship.”

Tamara let out a long breath.  This was not good.  Very not good.  “Well, that didn’t work, but we need to try again.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Corajen said.  “Maybe the Captain might have some ideas.”

The mess hall was crowded.  The Captain wanted as many faces here as possible as the situation was growing desperate.  Taja was in sickbay, under sedation, but Turan reported that she would make a full recovery.  The rock had severely bruised the bones in her shoulder, but eventually she would regain full use of her arm again.  Until then, she’d be wearing a sling and have to make do.

“All right folks, the situation is bad,” he started off as the room quieted.  “We need ideas.  I don’t care who they come from, or how stupid, short-sighted, moronic or inadequate they might be.  We’ve tried talking to the locals.  That didn’t work.  We tried landing and trying to work something out face to face.  That really didn’t work, though I think if we could speak with someone without Consul Barnabus interfering, we might get somewhere.”

Corajen nodded at that.  “I agree, Captain.  He was certainly stirring up the crowd against us.”

The others nodded.  The ones who had been on the surface shuddered.  The sound and the fury of that enraged crowd had been terrifying, even for the security force.  If not for the prep work by Tamara and Corajen, they might all have been killed.

The Captain turned to Tamara.  “What about the replicators?  Can those help out situation?”

She shook her head, exhaling noisily.  “Captain, I’m sorry, but we’ve been over this.  These are industrial replicators.  They’re designed to break down components and raw materials into their base elements and then a nanite constructor farm reassembles them into the components you want.  But it isn’t designed to make food.  The closest it can get is plastics and other polymers.”  She shrugged.  “But you can’t eat that.”

He nodded sourly.  The others were looking at her as though this situation was somehow her fault.  “What about food replicators?  You built us a second industrial replicator.  Can you build us a food one?”  There was an undercurrent of hope in his voice, one that was reflected in the eyes of everyone in the room.

Tamara pursed her lips.  “Yes,” she said very slowly, but then held up a hand as someone cheered.  “But there are serious problems.  Yes, I can make other replicators using the ones on board the Grania Estelle.  But the replicators can only build with the raw materials on hand and whatever specs they have stored in their firmware and software systems.  Replicator One didn’t have designs for a food replicator in its database.  Neither am I finding anything like that in the ship’s databanks.  I brought a whole host of engineering programs, but I didn’t think to grab one to build a food replicator when I was escaping from jail.”  A few people chuckled, a couple of others were looking at her darkly.  “I’ve started the software coding to try and build one, but it’s going to take a while.  I’ve never actually built one from scratch before, so I have to go carefully.  But I think by the time I have the software for that sort of thing worked out, we all might have starved to death.”

“It’s the same sort of thing,” one of the techs complained.  “You get some sort of food substrate, proteins, fruits, vegetables, get the nanites to break them down and then reassemble them.”

She nodded, smiling.  “Yes, you are absolutely correct.  The problem is that we need more substrate.  Which is the exact same problem we have right now.  A food replicator could make food, or in the very least a nutrient paste or bar that could provide us with sustenance.  But, just like the industrial replicators, it requires raw materials to work of which we are preciously low.  The Chief and I,” she gestured, “have been working on the waste extraction systems to try and get a recycling program for that going, but that’s another system I didn’t think to grab plans for.  The Grania Estelle was designed with a very basic refuse recycling system and it’s horribly inefficient.  Not to mention degraded and damaged.  Anyone who’s had the joy of working in that section can tell you that for the most part, once the refuse is dumped down there, only about ten percent of it is recycled and that bit is really only for the water.  The rest is simply jettisoned.  Right now we’re working on it, but a food replicator is not going to be the savior in this situation.”

There was a silence in the mess hall as they all processed that information.  “What about leaving this system for greener pastures?”

Quesh cleared his throat.  “Well, we’ve got the sublight engines back up, three of them, and with the latest water rock we’ve gotten back, our fuel reserves are adequate to get us to the hyper limit here and from the limit to a planet in another star system.  But it’s just a matter of damage, Captain.”  He sighed, using one had to rub his neck.  “Those damned pirates hit us hard and in some very bad places.  I think we can patch up the hyperdrive in about five days and get enough shield coverage to physically make a jump, but that’s a very big if.  And we’d be jumping at bare minimum levels.  We’d be slow as hell and flying with no backups.”  Everyone paled a little at that.  Working on the Grania Estelle was an interesting and sometimes dangerous job, but flying in hyperspace with bare minimum shield coverage was insane.  If the slightest weak spot opened in the shields, the stresses would rip the freighter apart.  “And if what Cookie tells me is true, we don’t have the supplies to make it to another system even if we were ready to go right now.”

“Cookie?” the Captain asked, turning to him.

The chef nodded sadly.  “I’m sorry, Captain.  The Chief is right.  Even cutting rations again, we just don’t have enough.  And the less we all eat, the more it’s going to affect performance, as you know, which means less we can do.  And there would be no guarantees the situation would be any better elsewhere.”

“What about stasis pods?” George Miller asked.  Everyone turned to him, Tamara with a look of respect, but tinged with horror.  “If we reduce the number of crew we need to feed, temporarily, it might give us more options.”

“We don’t have any pods,” Quesh said, shaking his head.

“Yes, we do, Chief,” Ka’Xarian replied.  He gestured to Tamara.  “We have her escape pod.  It’s still in the cargo bay.  We haven’t touched it since she got out.”

All eyes turned back to her.  She shrugged, but then nodded slowly.  “Well, it would work.  We would need to make some repairs, the life support was almost completely depleted when you picked me up.  But the max it could hold is six people.”

“That would be six fewer people we would have to feed while we sort this situation out,” Xar pointed out.

“True, but I’ll be damned if you think I’m getting in that thing again,” she retorted, shuddering.  “Never again if I can help it.”

“I would call for volunteers,” the Captain said, his eyes sweeping the crowd.  “People who are not on the engineering or medical teams.  That means anyone from cargo or deck divisions.”  No one raised their hands.  “I will make it an order if I need to.”  No one spoke up, though furtive glances were exchanged.

“I’ll look into it, Captain,” Tamara said.  “I’ll need to check out if we can even make it viable.  I will tell you all that it doesn’t hurt.  Once the systems are activated, you fall asleep and then… nothing.  You’re asleep until the pod is deactivated.  And we would be keeping the pod in the cargo bay.  No one would be going out into space.  And no one would be sleeping for as long as I did.  Two weeks to a month, perhaps a bit more, but that would be it.”  They didn’t seem convinced.

The Captain seemed buoyed by this idea.  “Get started on that once we’re done here.”

“Aye, Captain,” Tamara replied.

“But that won’t fix the problem.  Any ideas?  Anyone?”

“What about the other towns?” Serinda asked.  “We know that Instow has three.  So far we’ve only dealt with Terminus.  What about Agron and Rexag?”

“Out of the mouths of bridge officers,” Quesh rumbled, his voice easily carrying over the mess hall.  Serinda blushed.

“All right, Serinda, once we’re done here, get back to the bridge and try and contact someone at either of those towns.  I think that’s going to be our best option.  There’s got to be someone who will be willing to talk to us.”

“All right, Captain, I’ve done a full diagnostic on the pod.” Tamara turned to the man standing just behind her as she climbed back out.  “I can tell you that it needs a good cleaning, and there are a few circuit boards that need replacing.  The life support needs charging.  Give me about six hours or so, and it’ll be ready to roll.”

“Get on it, then, Moxie,” he said.  “I’ll speak with the crew and look for volunteers.”

She grinned at him, hefting her toolkit.  “When they balk, and they will, tell them that I managed in there for two hundred and forty-eight years.  And no one can say I didn’t survive.  And if they have problems with my engineering work, direct them to look over the work I’ve done since I came aboard.”

He smiled back.  “I will.”

The repairs to the pod only took four hours, actually, which freed Tamara up for other projects.  The Captain spoke with the crew, but so far no one was coming forward.  Both Quesh and Ka’Xarian independently did diagnostics and checks of the pod’s systems and confirmed they were sound.  This helped to lift the spirits of those who might be called to go in, but still, no one was willing to go in.  When asked, it wasn’t that they were afraid that the technology wouldn’t work, Tamara had proven that it did (and even when damaged).  No, they were afraid that something terrible would happen to the rest of the crew, to the ship, and they would remain in the pod, slumbering while no one remained to wake them.

There was little anyone could really say to that.

Tamara returned to her work on the coding for the food replicators.  The concept was the same for this as it was for an industrial replicator, add raw materials to be broken down, have the nanite constructors rearrange the molecular structure of that raw material into edible food.  The basic programming was completed, but now it was only able to make a nutrient mush that was mildly edible.  It was filled with everything the body needed, but it had the consistency of slushy snow and tasted like plain tofu.  Making things that were fancy (and tasty) was a priority for later.  Feed the crew first, then worry about winning culinary awards later.  She had it installed in the mess hall, but as she had said in the meeting, this was only part of the battle.  They would need to overhaul and upgrade the recycling system in order to make the replicator really a viable answer to their food problem.  But she hadn’t given up and was continuing on that in her free time.  This would potentially be something that the AI could work on when it was completed.

The Captain, meanwhile decided that it was time to contact one of the other towns.  Twelve hours after the shuttle and her escort returned to Grania Estelle, he placed a call to the town of Agron, which wasn’t as impressive as Terminus, but was located on the far side of Instow from the capital city and in its southern hemisphere.

“This is the Grania Estelle to the offices of trade in Agron,” Serinda said, holding one hand up to her headset.  “We are seeking to do business in trade.  Please respond on this channel.”

The bridge crew were trying to maintain their professional calm and aloofness, but it was clear that everyone was hanging on to every one of the young woman’s words.  The Captain was the only one who should have been actively listening to what she was saying, but every now and then someone would glance up at her from their station, then shift guilty looks at the Captain and then back down at their own stations.  The Captain didn’t mind, though.

“No response so far, Captain,” she reported after a minute had passed.

He nodded.  “Keep trying.”

Serinda was halfway through her third recitation of her greeting when an indicator light on her console popped on.  “I’ve got someone, Captain.”

“Well put them on,” he said impatiently.

“This is Consul Farris of Agron to the Grania Estelle.  I understand you are looking for trade opportunities.  We’ve never worked with you before on your passes through the system, though I am willing to talk.”

“Put me on, Serinda,” the Captain ordered, a smile touching the corner of his lips.  She glanced over and gave him the thumbs up.  “This is Captain Vincent Eamonn of the Grania Estelle.  I’m glad to be able to speak with you.  As stated, we are here to work out some trades for mutual benefit.”

“Good day, Captain.  It’s good to see you back here.  I must admit, I’m surprised to hear from you.  I expected to see you working with the people at Terminus.”  Consul Farris was very good at hiding his true feelings for the people in the neighboring city.  “In fact, we saw two small ships fly over us in the direction of Terminus only just yesterday.”

The Captain sighed.  There was no reason to try and deny it.  “Yes, you probably did.  Consul Barnabus whipped the mob up into a frenzy and they attacked my landing party.  They barely got out with their lives.”

Farris clucked his tongue.  “That buffoon is trying for the Proconsul job.  He thinks that by inciting fear in the populace, they might see him in a more positive light, to overcome the fact that he’s a fat, smelly pig.”

The Captain laughed.  “I’m sure my cargo specialist might agree with you.  I would like to send my shuttle down, if that would be acceptable.”

Farris nodded.  “Of course!” he said genially.  “They would be most welcome.”

“I must advise you,” the Captain interjected.  “That a small security unit will be accompanying my team.  After what happened in Terminus, I hope you can understand.”

It was clear Farris wasn’t happy about this, but he nodded gracefully.  “Of course.  As long as they behave themselves, I have no objection.”

“I truly hope that this will mark the beginning of a long and fruitful trade relationship,” he replied.  “Because if things work out here, I see no reason to continue trading with Terminus at all.”

“I would very much like to see that happen,” Farris answered, not referring to which situation of the Captain’s was most appealing.  The Captain laughed.  It was probably both.

So, it was back down to the moon.  Tamara was flying cover again, but it had been an exhausting few hours.  She hadn’t slept since the last flight down to the planet.  She found herself blinking a lot, stretching out her mouth, shaking her head to try and clear away the fatigue.  So far it was working, but she knew she would need to land and sleep soon.  Tamara kicked herself.  She’d been too proud to speak with either the Captain (to postpone the landing) or Doctor Turan (to get herself some stay-awake pills) and now she was paying for it.  And this wasn’t something that would impact only her if it went wrong.  If she fell out of the sky, the impact might affect a whole town.  She chuckled to herself.  If she was still able to joke, she might still be okay.

The shuttle came down, landing in an open area near a few large warehouses, as before, but the town of Agron seemed less sophisticated than Terminus.  The buildings were very similar, in fact, most of them were built from the same materials and the same prefabricated design.  But there was a degree of shabbiness that wasn’t present in Terminus, which made sense seeing as how Agron wasn’t the capital city.  A small group of people approached, very reminiscent of the last landing on Instow, but this time they didn’t appear hostile.

The ramp came down and Corajen and four of her squad bounded down again.  They were fully kitted out, just like last time, again armed with guns and more of Tamara’s slimer grenades.  Taja and her two assistants followed them down, leaving only the pilot and one of Corajen’s security people on board the shuttle.  The cargo specialist looked a lot more hesitant than she did the first time setting foot on this world, but still, she moved forward.  She had a job to do, just like everyone else.

A man came forward, dressed in a skinsuit like the rest of them, with a breather mask over his face.  His skinsuit was patched and old, but apparently still functional.  The breather mask had a large crack running across the faceplate, which looked like it had been fused back together with epoxy.  He had a jovial look on his face, which was an improvement over the previous representative who had been sent to greet them.

“Welcome to Agron!” he said, spreading his arms out wide.  He had only two other people with him, aides, presumably.  If they were armed, the weapons weren’t visible and Instow didn’t look like the kind of place that built high-quality concealed weapons.  Corajen and her security team moved forward, their weapons in hand but they were pointed at the ground.  The lupusan’s eyes were constantly darting around, scanning for threats.  So far there didn’t appear to be any.  Every few minutes the Perdition fighter would continue it’s slow, lazy loop around the area, but it didn’t appear that Tamara was detecting any threats either.

“Thank you for allowing us to land,” Taja replied, raising her left good arm in salute before dropping it back down.  Turan had pronounced her fit for duty, but made it clear she was not to use her injured arm.  She was to keep it in a sling at all times, until she could get back up to the ship and he could truly get it fixed.  “I am Taja Mbuto, cargo specialist aboard the Grania Estelle.  And who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

The man smiled at her.  “I am Uriel Potenko, and I understand you are here to trade.  I am the man to talk to.”  There was a calm pride in his voice, with no trace of arrogance.  He clearly was the man to talk to in this town.  He frowned, gesturing to her arm which was in the sling.  “But what is this?  You are injured?”

Taja nodded, shrugging her left shoulder as if it was of no real importance, though in truth, the right shoulder still throbbed painfully despite Turan’s ministrations.  There had been no real time to for him to work on her before they had to come back down.  He’d given her painkillers, but there was no time for a regen bath.  For now, she’d just have to deal with it, but Taja was no slouch.  And the painkillers helped.

“Consul Barnabus incited a riot up in Terminus,” she told him.  “Somebody threw a rock and hit me.  We managed to get away without anyone else getting hurt.”

Uriel scowled.  “He truly is a bastard,” he spat.  “I’m glad to hear no one else was hurt.  But come!  We will accomplish nothing standing out here.  Come!  Come!  Let us go inside, get something to drink and we can talk business.”  He waved them all forward.

“Go, I’m watching,” Corajen said over the comms.  “And I would really like to get out of this helmet.”

He led their small group into one of the nearby warehouses, which had its own small airlock.  They had to go through in two groups; Uriel, Corajen, Taja and three security people in the first, and Taja’s assistants and the rest of the security and Uriel’s people in the second.

The warehouse was good-sized but not huge, a prefab structure that had little going for it aside from its size and its ability to maintain atmosphere.  It was filled with barrels made from plastic, stacked in very large rows.  Uriel pulled off his breather mask, as did his aides and after a moment, Taja did as well.  It took the security team a minute longer, watching the faces of the others before Corajen signaled the okay to do the same.

The air was good, though it smelled of fish.  All of the security forces wrinkled their noses, the lupusan especially because of her keen sense of smell.  Uriel saw their faces, threw back his head and laughed.  “The fish?  Of course it smells of fish, my friends.  That is what we eat on this world!  This,” he swept his hands to encompass everything, “is a harvest that just came in this past week.  The fish themselves are well packaged in ice in the barrels.  What you smell is the oil and the guts, which comes from the cleaning area over there.”  He pointed.  “So, what is it that you are looking for?”

Taja smiled.  “Coming straight to it, I see.  Okay.  We have some specific needs.  Ones that I know you can provide.”

Uriel smiled back.  “If I can, and if the price is right, my friend.  So?”

“Well, I would like to talk with you about foodstuffs,” she began.  “Seeing all this here is very encouraging.  In exchange,” she held out her datapad.  “We have a great deal to offer, not the least of which is payment in gold bullion.”

The man started in surprise.  “In gold?  I don’t think anyone has ever come here and paid in gold.  Not in my lifetime.  I think we can work something out.”  A smile was growing on his face.  “Come, let me show you what I have to offer.”  He led his way amidst the stacks.

After a thorough look around the warehouse, Taja nodded in satisfaction.  “Well, we’ll want about forty of those barrels of fish.  I’d also like ten of those crates of desiccated vegetables and half a dozen containers of coffee, the Sarabande Dark.”  No one, anywhere, whether it was on a ship, a desk, or a fishing boat, could function for long without coffee.  Grania Estelle had been out for over a month and the attitudes on the ship had been growing darker ever since.

Uriel was smiling in grand satisfaction.  “Of course, of course, we would be happy to sell you that.  Now we come to what we would like.  I would need at least four hundred of your gold bricks, to be checked and weighed and measured of course.  Also I would like a cross section of these medicines you are offering, the antibiotics, and these electronic devices on page eleven to twenty-three on your manifest listing.”

Taja, savvy to such haggling tactics, knew that in any situation like this, you had to open by being insulted.  Then from there, you could work your way to an agreeable method of payment.  She had no desire to fleece these individuals (if you cheated people, you rapidly ended up with no one to trade with) but by that same token, she was not going to be taken advantage of.  “Excuse me, Uriel, but you must clearly need to have your eyesight checked.  Do I appear as a woman you can just take to the shed and have your way with?  That offer is insulting and you know it.  I cannot possibly give up four hundred bricks for this amount of trade goods.  My captain would have me whipped for such incompetence!”

Uriel’s gaze grew conspiratorial.  He knew what was going on and gladly accepted the challenge.  “Yes, but if I allowed myself to be cheated by underhanded offworlders, Consul Farris would be sure I slept outside for the next few months.”

The dickering began in earnest then, neither side really willing to give an inch, but both fully enjoying the game.  During this time, Tamara was invited to land her fighter, to come inside and rest.  She did so, gladly, for it was extremely fatiguing to sit in the cramped cockpit of a starfighter for hours on end, landing only a few meters from the shuttle and locking down the computes on the fighter, preventing anyone but her to access the ship.  Her implants further secured the fighter, encrypting the computers with her own access protocols.  No one would be getting anything from that ship without her say so.

Tamara came inside, taking a cup of tea offered by their hosts, and followed the Grania Estelle’s team around the cargo sections, and looked over the cargoes they were bartering for.  She added a couple of bits and bobs she saw amidst the detritus in one of the other warehouses, and included with it an old, broken bit of computer hardware.  When asked, she only replied, “It’s an old Republic warship computer core.  It’s busted up pretty good, but who knows?  We might be able to salvage it and there might be worthwhile information on there.”

Finally, after about four hours of negotiations, adding and subtracting things from both sides, they finally came to an arrangement.  It would take a while to ship the various cargoes to and from the Grania Estelle and Agron, but neither side was unhappy with the way things turned out, though truth be told, neither side was completely satisfied.  But then, that was the nature of haggling.  On Taja’s side, she had acquired the foodstuffs, the coffee and the things that Tamara had requested.  On Uriel’s, they had gotten three hundred and one bricks of the gold, and a number of the other things on the list, including the medicines.  Taja had thrown in the one extra brick just to tweak the man, but he had accepted it with a smile and a tip of an imaginary hat.

About halfway through the transfer of goods, a transmission came through from Terminus.  “Captain, I have Consul Barnabus on the line.  He’s demanding to speak with you.”  Serinda managed to keep her face completely masked as she spoke.  She knew how Barnabus sounded, but she didn’t seem to want to give her Captain any clues.

He nodded.  “I’m guessing whatever he wants, he’s very insistent.  And I’m also guessing I’m not going to like whatever it is he has to say.”  He sighed, rubbing his face with one hand.  “All right.  Do we have video?  Or just audio?”

“Audio only, Captain,” Serinda said apologetically.  “But I’m sure that’s all you really want.”

He smiled.  “Put him on.”  She nodded, ready.  “This is Captain Eamonn of the Grania Estelle.  How can I help you today, Consul Barnabus?”

The consul’s voice was extremely stressed.  “How dare you come back down here, Captain!  Your murderous crew killed dozens of my people and then you would dare to move to another city?  You would come back down here after that?”

“I don’t recall any of my people killing anyone in Terminus, Consul,” he replied, feeling the ire creeping into his voice.  “In fact, what I recall is you stirring up a crowd against my people and then attacking as a mob.  When we left, no one was dead.”  Barnabus was spluttering now, unable to get a word out.  “So, if you’re saying that dozens are dead, but we didn’t kill anyone, what does that mean?  Did you kill them all, Consul?”

“You…!  You…” the man tried to speak, but couldn’t get the words out.  “You think that you are so clever.  You twist my words around.  No, you offworlders are all the same.  You cheat the hardworking people on worlds such as ours, you attack peaceful citizens and then you claim to know nothing of those acts.  The deaths of those people are on your head!”

“He cut the line, Captain,” Serinda said after a short moment.

“What the hell is he talking about?” the Captain demanded.  “We didn’t kill anyone.”

“Maybe you were right, Captain,” she said.  “Maybe he needed an example of ‘offworld butchery’.  But why?  Ships don’t come through here very often.”

“No,” he said, “but if an offworld vessel was responsible for a massacre, it would give him the perfect reason to restrict offworld travel and incoming visitors.  They’d have no one to talk to but him.”  He paused.  “But I think it’s less about his own city than the other ones.  If he can point to a massacre done by offworld barbarians, then if he can play his cards right, the other cities will band together.  Might even elect him proconsul.  Sloppy, but smart.”

"Um... Captain?" Serinda said, her voice sounding confused.  "That transmission was on wide beam."

"What?" he said, rounding on her.  "You broadcast it to the whole system?"

She gulped.  "Oh, no, Captain.  Not me.  He did.  He didn't send a tight beam transmission to ship, he just set the transmission on broadcast and called up."

The captain sat there in his command seat for a very long moment.  "So... he called up here to... what?  Browbeat me?  Accuse me of mass murder?  And then what?"

No one answered.  The Captain snorted.  "What did he expect?  That I would just cave and admit to that sort of thing?  That I would meekly surrender to his judgment?"

"I don't know, Captain," Serinda replied.  "Maybe he did.  I get the feeling from the few conversations I've heard that he thinks of himself as a charismatic individual.  Perhaps he thought that us uneducated barbarian spacers would fall all over ourselves to try and please him."

"Captain, he did know that we needed trade goods," George Miller pointed out.  "And if we were willing to sit in orbit and keep asking, whatever we needed must have been really important."

The Captain pursed his lips and nodded slowly.  "That's a very good point, George."

"And," Serinda added, "He wanted to be sure that the whole system heard your conversation."

Now he frowned.  "So perhaps the intended audience wasn't just for those on the planet but elsewhere?"  He turned to George.  "What's the status of the sensors?"

George sighed.  "Still pretty lousy, Captain.  I've only got about a kilometer's range on the sensors.  And our gravitics and neutrino detectors are still down.  They're on Chief Trrgoth's to-do list, but he hasn't gotten to them yet."

The Captain nodded again.  He turned back to the communications station.  "Serinda, get Moxie on the horn.  Tell her to return to the ship, soonest.  It's not an emergency, this isn't a panic scramble, just get back up here.  We need her."

Serinda turned and began her transmission.

When Tamara pulled off her shipsuit helmet after setting down in the cargo bay, the Captain was there, looking up at her.  She set the helmet on the top of the flight console, then got up and climbed down from the cockpit, the Captain having helpfully pushed the small ladder up to the side of the fighter.  When her boots hit the deck, she staggered a bit, and he reached out and gripped her elbow to steady her.

"Thanks," she mumbled, then stood up straight as he let her go.  "So, Captain.  What's so all fired important that you needed to drag me back up here?  Aren't you concerned that Taja and the group would need me for air support?"

"I am," he admitted, his expression unhappy.  "But I'm concerned about the ship more.  We're blind.  Your fighter has better sensors than the ship does that worries me.  Coupled with some unpleasant conversations I've had with the Consul of Terminus, I'm thinking it might be a good idea to have some ability to see out into space."

She nodded, rubbing the back of her neck.  "A prudent thought."  Tamara looked at him, her eyes a bit bleary.  "Well, I agree with you.  We need to get at least the bow sensors up to snuff.  I'm sorry, Captain, but your precious Grania Estelle is almost completely blind.  I don't think the ability to see what was happening would have really helped during our... fun... with the pirates.  But it certainly would help with early detection."

"And we've been sitting here for quite a while."

"And will be for quite a while longer.  We're getting the engines up, but technically, we could break orbit once the cargoes are all taken care of.  But the hyperdrive is still down, as are the shields.  Without those two systems, we're not going anywhere."

"How long?" the captain asked, a little worried.

Tamara snorted.  "A while.  Probably about a month to get everything up to decent levels.  I know you all got used to a rather serious level of quaking at entry and breakout, but I'd like to get the hyperdrive well-tuned before we attempt a jump.  And we're going nowhere without shields and sensors."

"How long to get the bow sensors up?" he asked, getting back to the original reason for summoning her back.

She yawned, an action so big she thought that her jaw would crack.  The captain chuckled.  "Sorry, Captain, I need a nap before we do anything."

"Fine, get four hours, then get with the Chief about this.  I really don't like sitting around blind."

Tamara grinned at him.  "Captain, when I got here, you were almost as blind as you are now.  In fact, with the addition of the Perdition fighter, your sensors are actually a little bit better than they were before.  Do you even know what it's like to be able to see out into the Deep Dark?" she teased.

"Actually, yes.  It wasn't until the last five years or so that the systems go so bad.  But you're right, they've never actually been very good.  What's the best range we could get?"

She stifled a yawn, putting a fist in front of her mouth.  "Sorry, Captain.  Gravitic sensors for detecting faster than light traces and neutrinos?  They'd probably be good for about ten light minutes in any particular direction.  I think I might could be persuaded to provide you with milspec level equipment for that."  The captain goggled at her.  "What?  There would be a bit of quid pro quo, mind you, but if we can get better sensors in here, you can hopefully keep anyone from sneaking up on you."

"But military spec?"  His jaw clicked shut.  "I can't imagine it."

Tamara smiled.  "I'll get you squared away, Captain, don't worry.  And I'll make sure to get Quesh the right spares and info to keep them up and running.  I can work with the gravitics and get them in with milspec parts.  But the standard sensors won't be anywhere near as good," she warned, the smile slipping.  "The ship really isn't configured for military sensors and we kind of need to be able to see now.  So to get them up and running in the shortest amount of time, you'll have to settle for civilian grade."

"And the range?  If we use civilian grade?"

"About a hundred thousand kilometers, give or take.  Fine grade resolution, about ten thousand.  But far better than the kilometer or two than you've all come to be used to."  She yawned again.  "Sorry, Captain."

He sighed ruefully.  "Go, get your four hours rack time and then I expect you working with the Chief."

Four hours went by incredibly fast.  Tamara quickly found herself out of her quarters and walking down the passageway before she quite realized what was happening.  Checking herself as she rounded a corner she felt a great wave of relief to see that she was dressed in her ship suit.  She was still feeling greasy and dirty, because she hadn’t taken the time to shower, but she didn’t care.  The four hours had been rejuvenating, she supposed, because she felt she had some energy again, but her brain wasn’t quite functioning properly.  It was as if her body was moving, but her mind was set on autopilot, and it wasn’t really seeing or hearing anything going on around her.

“Make a hole!” someone behind her barked.  Instantly, Tamara found herself leaping to the side to flatten herself against the bulkhead.  A group of three technicians, and two women from the cargo division, were trundling past, carrying a long metallic beam between the five of them on a hover pallet.  One of the cargo workers nodded to Tamara as they passed, but the rest were concentrating on getting the soon to be installed structural support beam steady.

Once they were clear, Tamara shook her head to clear the fuzziness (only partial success) and continued on to the engineering spaces.  Quesh was there, standing in front of one of the rebuilt control consoles.  It was of an older design, even from Tamara’s perspective, but from the looks of it, Quesh had done a good job of getting it together and hooking it up.  She shouldn’t be surprised.

“It’s about time you got up,” he groused as she walked in.  He turned to her, holding out one of his arms, a coffee mug in his hand.

“Oh, you blessed male!” she gushed, taking it from him.  “Real coffee!”

He nodded.  “Taja managed to get it for us.  I haven’t had it in months.  Had to make do with red leaf tea.”

“Ha!” she barked, sipping the rich steamy liquid.  It was black and very strong, but that didn’t matter.  She had been so long without the drink that it was almost a physical pain to have a mug of it back in her hands again.  She hadn’t been allowed any drinks aside from water in the brig and there wasn’t any to be found aboard the Grania Estelle, either.  The food replicator she was building didn’t have a proper coffee recipe, so she had been forced to make do without.  “Oh, it’s so good.  Quesh, I truly hope that you find happiness with an insatiable female who caters to your every whim.”  She took another sip as the Parkani smiled.

“I appreciate the thought, Samair,” he said, as the other nearby techs laughed at her enthusiasm, “But I don’t think the Captain would appreciate me stealing his ship.  She’s the only insatiable female I need.”

“Your loss,” she said, continuing to drink.  It was hot, but she didn’t care.  “Is there any more?  Because Captain wants us working on the bow sensors today one cup is not going to be enough.”

Quesh snickered and nodded.  “Cookie can set you up.  Coffee shrine is in the mess hall.”

“Thanks.  I get another cup later.  So, what have you already started?”

The Parkani glanced back at her.  “Smart.  Xar’s already outside with two teams.  They’re pulling the number one and two main sensor array right now.  Once that’s done, they’ll bring the parts to cargo bay four.”  He picked up his communicator and flipped it open.  “Xar, its Quesh.  Report.”

The zheen’s voice cracked over the comms.  “Quesh, its Xar.  Number one array is disassembled and being loaded into the shuttle.  Bryione is going to fly it back into bay four, then come back and pick up number two array.”

“Good work, Xar.  Have Bryione call in when she’s delivered the first round.”

“Well, this is a total shambles,” Tamara was saying a short while later.  Cargo Bay Four was now filled with the equipment that had been pulled from the number one sensor array.  A lot of it was worn, patched, spliced, and there were scorch marks on more than one section of the disassembled array.  “I’m actually impressed that you lot were able to keep this thing running at all, with all this damage and jury rigged repairs.”

“We did the best with what we had,” Quesh told her, starting to get angry.  “We didn’t have all your fancy Navy resources.”

“There’s no reason to get angry,” Tamara said.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you.  I’ve told you before, Quesh, many times how impressed I was with your work.”

“No more comments like that, Samair,” he said.  “I’m really tired of being thought of as some tiny operator who needs the big bad Republic Navy girl to save his ship.”

“Now wait a minute,” she protested.

“No, Samair, no.”  They both turned to face each other, but the big engineer crossed both sets of arms.  “Ever since you’ve come aboard, you’ve been criticizing my work and my teams and my ship.  Now for the most part, you’ve been right, I’m sad to say.  We were light on training, light on spares and sinking fast.  But it’s your damned superior attitude.  I won’t have it.”

Tamara looked at him.  He was serious.  His pride was hurt, probably had been for a long time.  He was a good man, a good engineer and he had held his ship together as best he could with what he’d had to work with.  It was a testament to his skills that he had kept the Grania Estelle running as long as he had.  But he had been presiding over a failing ship, with dwindling resources as the ship’s profit margins slowly dried up.  Then in came Tamara, showing him up, and showing him up.  Granted, he couldn’t fix the replicator and even if he could, he couldn’t unlock the tech that she could, which probably stung.

But she had her own pride.  It didn’t matter that he was right, it didn’t matter that they both needed each other.  She’d been pushed too far for too long and while the crew of the Grania Estelle had taken her in and were good people, there was only so much she would put up with.

“You…” she hissed, “would be dead without me!  Your replicators would be frozen solid.  You wouldn’t even have one of them and oh, let’s not forget, you’d be stuck, hovering here in orbit until you had to give up and go down to the planet.”  Her own arms were crossed over her chest and her legs were spread apart, in a fighting stance, the front of her body angled slightly away from him.  He wasn’t a fighter, but she had gone through basic training and then some more combat training when she went into flight school.  She knew a few things.

“Dead?” the Parkani asked, his voice low.  “Dead?  Who would be dead?  You.  We picked you up in that dying escape pod.  Another few days, possibly a month at best, you would have suffocated when the power failed.  The captain set up a good deal with you and we all benefited.  But don’t you think for one moment you would have lasted without us.”

Aside from the twitter of the computer systems, the drone of the equipment and the whine of the blowers, engineering had gone completely silent.  All of the workers were either staring at the two combatants in horror, or were desperately trying to remain invisible.  No one dared step forward and try to intervene.

But for some reason, Tamara’s mouth wouldn’t stop.  Her brain was frantically stomping on the brakes, but that order was not getting to her lips.  “And so because you made a mutually beneficial decision, I’m suddenly I’m to be treated like a low-level engine wiper?”  She knew that was completely unfair and irrational of her to say, but the words kept pouring out.

“Get out of here, little girl,” Quesh growled.  “Before you get hurt and the Captain has to take me to task.”

She stood there, fuming, hands clenching and unclenching.  There was an insistent beep coming from one of the consoles and one of the techs gingerly pressed the button.

“This is Bryione in cargo bay four.  I’ve landed and I’m waiting for a team to get down here and unload.”

Quesh blinked, one minute ready to commit murder, the next a consummate professional.  “Copy, Bryione.  I’ve got a team on their way to you now.”  He nodded to Starkey, who was standing near the main hatch, just behind Tamara.  The man scampered off, taking four people with him.  The Parkani turned his white hot glare on Tamara.  She had been wrong.  He hadn’t calmed down one iota, he just hadn’t let his fight with her interfere with his job.  “So, what’s it going to be?  You going to show me and mine the respect we deserve and stop acting so damned superior?  Or are you out of here?”

Tamara could hear booted feet in the passage behind her, approaching the room.  She opened her mouth to speak, but a voice interrupted her.  “What in the hell is going on here?”

Quesh spoke before anyone else could.  “Nothing, Captain.  Sorry for the disruption.  Just a little disagreement, but I think that’s been all sorted out.”  He looked to Tamara, who simply stood there.

The captain turned to her, his angry gaze turning from his chief engineer to his passenger.  “Well?”

She swallowed hard, forcing her hysterical, angry words back down her through to drown in the bubbling acid in her stomach.  “Yeah.”  Her face immediately brightened.  “Yes.  It’s all fine, Captain.  I’m sorry for what I said, Chief.  I’ll get down to bay four and help out Starkey.”

“Thanks, Samair.  That boy might make a right mess of things without someone there to keep an eye on him.”  But his glare had not diminished in intensity.

Tamara left, heading off down the passage toward cargo bay four.  The captain turned to his chief engineer.  She couldn’t hear what was being said as she was walking away, but she was sure she wouldn’t like it.

What the hell was that?  Yes, I may have sounded a bit condescending and I suppose I might have deserved what Quesh said to me, but I shouldn’t have to put up with that.  They need me.  They can’t fix up this ship without me, my replicator codes and hell, my experience.  Quesh is pretty good at his job, but he’d be a second-shift lieutenant back at the shipyard.

Tamara stopped and mentally checked herself.  She leaned one hand against the bulkhead.  But I’m not at the shipyard anymore.  This isn’t my turf, not my command.  This is Captain Eamonn’s ship.  These are Chief Trrgoth’s crews.  What is the matter with me?

Straightening up, she took a few deep breaths to try and settle her nerves.  Her chest was tightening and it was a serious effort to get a full breath.  Turning, she changed directions, heading away from bay four and toward sick bay.

Chapter 8

Sick bay was far less crowded nowadays.  Only two patients were still being held here, holdovers from the raid on the ship, rotating through regeneration therapy.  Their wounds had been horrible, one man was shot multiple times in the chest, puncturing his liver, stomach and lung and had been barely clinging to life when Turan had got to work on him.  The other, a woman, had been raped and beaten, her throat nearly crushed.  Both of them were recovering physically from their wounds, and Turan had been doing his best to try and talk with them about it.  Neither was really willing to open up, the woman, Sylvia, especially had withdrawn into herself.  She had spoken to no one, though on one occasion when Ka’Xarian had come to visit her, she had gripped his hand in a crushing grip.  His antennae had flared in a flash of pain, but he hadn’t said anything.  The two of them had just sat in silence for a long while before the zheen had to return to work.

The good doctor was doing his rounds, seeing to the two patients before returning to his small desk.  The Guura was quite pleased with the way things were going, though the toll had been considerable.  Even one death in his sickbay was intolerable to him, but in his heart he knew that he wasn’t perfect.  He knew that people under his care would die, especially if the ship was attacked again.

He rubbed his forearms as he sat, trying to fend off his weariness.  He did truly need to get to bed, but he was loathe to leave if either of his patients needed him.  His assistant could handle any of the myriad of bumps and cuts that the crew managed to accumulate during the course of a day.  He started to rise, knowing that dropping from exhaustion wouldn’t help his patients any.  He was walking to the main hatch of the sickbay when he nearly collided with someone.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Doctor,” a woman’s voice said.  It took a moment to get his bearings.

“Oh, Tamara!” Turan exclaimed.  “I’m so sorry.  I didn’t see you.”  He looked at her, taking her all in.  “You’ll forgive me, but you look terrible.  What is it?”

She looked extremely uncomfortable.  “Do you…”  She hesitated.  “Do you have somewhere we can talk?”

Inwardly, he sighed.  He was exhausted, but it was clear that she needed help.  Who was he to turn her down?  “Of course.  We can go into my office.”  She followed along behind, a bit meekly, he noted.  He led her through the sickbay into his very cramped office.  It was so tight there was barely any room for the small desk and two chairs.  He sat behind the desk and gestured her to sit in the chair.  “Now,” he said, folding his hands on top of one another on the desk.  “How can I help?”

Tamara stayed silent for a long moment, but he didn’t push.  He waited patiently and eventually he spoke.  “This is very difficult for me.  But I need to know what’s going on with me.”

“All right.”

“I’ve been having trouble sleeping, nightmares and just now I got into a huge fight with Chief Trrgoth in front of the entire engineering team.  The Captain had to intervene in the end.”  She sighed.  “It was so bad I was afraid I might deck him.”

Turan chuckled.  “I don’t think that would have turned out so well for you, he has a remarkably dense head.  Though I admit the look on his face if you slugged him would have been priceless.  But I suspect you would have broken your hand.  Parkanis, especially one as active as Quesh are very tough.”  He smiled gently at her with his small mouth.  “What was the fight about?”

She lowered her gaze.  “I was commenting on how impressed I was at how well Quesh and his crew had kept the ship running as well and for how long they had until I came along.  I was genuinely impressed.  He took it wrong and perhaps I was sounding a bit condescending, and the fight escalated from there.”

Turan nodded, a knowing twinkle in his eyes.  “Yes, he can be a bit prideful.”

She looked up at him.  “But I just lost it, Doctor.  And I forgot.”

His head bent to one side in question.  “You forgot?”

Tamara nodded.  “Yes.  I completely forgot that this was the Grania Estelle.  While he was thundering away at me for being a condescending bitch, I’m hammering back at him for questioning my competence and my skills.  But it wasn’t so much what I said, it was what I was feeling.”  She hesitated.

“And what were you feeling?”

Her eyes blazed again.  “I felt like I was standing in one of the command rooms on Hudora Station.  And that he was some ship driver questioning me and my teams aboard the shipyard.  I completely lost track of where I was.  And I knew I should shut up about the whole thing, admit my mistake and move on, but my mouth just wouldn’t stop.”

“How long has it been since you talked with anyone?” he asked gently.

“Talked?”  She shrugged.  “I haven’t.  Cookie and I chatted a few times, but nothing about anything important.  Very little about my past.”

“Cookie?” Turan asked in surprise.  “That’s a good start.  He’s a good man and a good listener.  And the fact that you came to him and then me indicates that you’re at least thinking about this.”

Tamara nodded slowly.  “Back in the old days you had to get bi-annual appointment with the shrinks.  The Navy was very specific about those kinds of things.  They didn’t want people with access and command of serious hardware to go cuckoo.”

“And how long has it been for you since you had one of these mandatory appointments?”

“Now?” she chuckled.  “About eighteen months.  I’d get smacked pretty hard by HQ for it, but I’ve been under arrest and in the brig for a year.  And now I’m two and a half centuries out of time.  So I imagine I’ve probably been officially pronounced dead.  Not that that really matters.”

Turan smiled.  “No, probably not.  I imagine it probably isn’t something that happens very often.  But let’s get back to you.  I can give you a few things, but I’m not really set up to dispense large amounts of head meds.  The things I can give will help a bit, relax a few things in your mind, help you sleep a bit better, but honestly, the best therapy would probably be to talk about it.”

She nodded.  “I imagine with the war and the reduction in sizes of the Federation and the Republic, medical science has probably declined a bit in the independent space lanes.”

“Sadly yes.”

“Thanks, Doctor.  I will take the meds if you’ll trust them to me.  And I’ll try to find someone to talk to.  Perhaps Cookie.”

He straightened out.  “And what about Quesh?”

She sighed.  “Yeah, I really made a mess of things.  I don’t know if he’s going to want me anywhere near his engineering teams now.”

Turan shook his head.  “No, I imagine he’s going to be fuming for a good while.  It might be a good idea to stay out of his way for a while.”

But now Tamara was shaking her head.  “I need to be there to help out with the rebuild of the bow sensor arrays.  I’m needed with the replicators and the installations.”

He let out a breath.  “Then let me speak with him.  I would recommend giving him some time to cool down before you speak with him again.”

“I’ve worked with Parkani before.  I’m not worried about him.  I just don’t want to accidentally say something insulting again and spark another fight.”

“But were you in a position of authority over those other Parkani?” he asked shrewdly.  She nodded.  “Then you’re in a unique situation here.  He does need you, he needs your skills and your replicator access.  But you need to understand that he is the Chief Engineer, a position he has worked extremely hard to attain and to keep.  He won’t step aside for you, and after today he most likely will be very sensitive having you around.”

“Right.  I guess I’ll try to lay low for a while.  But we do need to get the sensor array back up and running.  And they do need me for that.”  She stood up.  “Thanks, Doctor.  Now, that I’ve taken up your time and disappeared from my duties, I’d best get back and right quick.”

“You want the meds?” he asked, standing as well.

She started to refuse, but then nodded.  “I’d probably better.  I don’t need another meltdown, especially not with the Chief.”

He chuckled.  “Come on.  I’ll get them for you.”

The sensor rebuild went well.  Quesh stayed away from the EVA teams, and Tamara avoided him.  They broke apart the long antennae and squat nodes of the sensor arrays and fed them into the replicators for breakdown of materials.  That alone took two days.  Two days of back-breaking tedium.  Three teams were in the cargo bay cutting apart the array into small chunks which were then winched up onto hover pallets and carted off to the replicators for breakdown.  The breakdowns themselves didn’t take all that long, usually only a half hour or so for each part, and then once the whole thing was cut up and broken down, then the replicator began churning out new parts.  With a few of the firmware upgrades that Tamara had programmed in, they were able to build slightly better hardware than the Grania Estelle was previously equipped with.

After the first array went online and the starboard side sensors came up, the bridge crew reacted like someone who has had a bright light flared in their eyes after having been in the dark for so long.  They flailed about at their consoles, trying to distinguish between items on the displays, unsure of what to do, working their consoles with the skill of a first-time operator.  It took a bit of practice and a deal of fine tuning (using the shuttle to calibrate the sensors) but they were getting there.  Once the port-side sensor array was installed and calibrated, the deck division threw a party in the mess hall, with a round of the Instow’s Jovian Ale for all hands, deck, cargo and engineering.  There was still a huge amount of work to be done on the ship, but for the first time in decades, if not longer, the old girl was no longer blind, inching along to avoid hitting anything.  With three engines online and the bow sensors back up, things were starting to look good.

And that’s when it changed.

“Captain!  I’ve got a sensor contact.  A hyper footprint!” George Miller cried, a week after the sensors had been completed.  They were all still getting past the last of the teething issues, but George had proven to be a quick study and was turning out to be a fine operations officer, more so that before since now he had decent equipment to work with.

“Where?” the Captain demanded, looking over from his seat on the bridge.

“Edge of the hyper limit, from the direction of Malabar,” he answered immediately.  “Two contacts.  They’re moving in this direction.  They’re accelerating… moving at about point zero five light.”

“Not sprinting across the system, but not exactly lumbering along either.”  With the engines rebuilt as they were Grania Estelle could get her own velocity up considerably faster than before, but she would never be able to match a warship, even if all of her drives were back up.  “Any more information yet, George?”

“No, Captain,” he replied, still studying the display.  “They’re on the other side of the system from us, coming over the top of the plane of the ecliptic.  If they hold speed and assuming they brake down to make orbit here at Instow, they’ll be here in six days.”

“Two ships coming here,” he said, thumping the arm of his chair lightly with one fist.  “That’s probably not good.”  He pressed a key on the control pad.  “Engineering, this is the bridge.  We have ships incoming from the hyper limit from Malabar.  What is the status of our hyperdrive?”

It took a moment for the answer to come back.  Quesh sounded frustrated, harried and exhausted.  “Captain, it’s still down.  Other than clearing out the obvious damage, the drive is still down.”

Damn.  “Any idea how long until it’s back up?”

There was a sigh.  “Captain, to be honest, I’m not sure.  A week?  Maybe.”

“Well, we’ve got a pair of ships that just entered the system, Quesh.  No idea who they are or what they want, but after out last encounter here, and the welcome we got down at Terminus, I think it might be best to get the hyperdrive back up so we can get out of here.”

Another pause.  “Captain, I need to see you.  In person.”

The Captain looked around, but everyone was avoiding his gaze.  He sighed.  “All right Quesh.  The wardroom.”

“Be there in five minutes, Captain.”

The Parkani came into the wardroom right when he said, the Captain was already seated in his normal chair at the head of the table.  Quesh clearly wasn’t happy.  He was dirty and exhausted, his top arms were cross over his chest, and his lower arms were resting on his hips.  Without invitation or preamble, he pulled out one of the chairs and collapsed into it.

“You look like hell, Quesh,” the Captain told him.

“Feel like it, Captain,” he replied, his voice taking on a gravelly tone.

“So,” the man began.  “What is it?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

The Parkani sighed, three of his muscled hands on the table, the fourth rubbing his jaw.  “Well, as I said before, the hyperdrive is going to take about a week to get it back up.  Even still, with our lack of shields and structural issues, we’re only going to be able to the bare minimum of performance out of the hyperdrive.”

The Captain sighed.  “How bad are we talking?”

“Well, we’ve been normally running at about mid-level of the orange in the rainbow.”  The ‘rainbow’ was spacer slang for the levels of speed available in hyperspace, following the old convention of ‘roy-g-biv’, with red being the slowest and violet the fastest.  It was called the rainbow because if you looked outside the ship using sensors while in hyperspace, a shielded bubble formed around the ship and waves of tachyons collided with it as the ship flew faster than light.  The tachyons made brilliant and vibrant color washes over the shields in the entire spectrum of what humans called visible light.  Hence, the rainbow.  Each speed color also had seven levels within that.  Grania Estelle, with everything running at peak efficiency and new drives could reach to level four of the green band, but it had been decades since she’d gone that fast.  Most warships running with good equipment could get to indigo, and fast packet traders and dispatch boats could get to upper violet.  That was a very fast trip, but it took a huge amount of power and fuel to maintain a speed like that.

Of course, the lower speeds cost a lot of fuel as well.  Yes, they were going slower and that was a bit more economical, but it required overall more power to keep the hyperdrive active and running.  There was no real tradeoff, so it was better to try and go faster if at all possible.  The true sweet spot fuel for speed, for this ship anyway, would be in the yellow, level seven, or the top of the yellow.

“But, with the kind of repairs we would need to do now would only get us to red, level two.”

The Captain goggled at him.  “Level two?  By the stars, it’ll take us almost a hundred fifty days to get to the next system at that speed.”

Quesh nodded.  “Yes, Captain.  That’s about the long and short of it.  And we’d be almost completely on empty in the fuel tanks by the time we got there.”

“We can’t go any faster?” the Captain asked, almost pleading.

“Not with the shields in the state they’re in now.  We’ve got two shield nodes currently active.  Two.  That will give us about five percent shield coverage over the whole ship.  That’s bare minimum, Captain.  We try to push the hyperdrive any faster, the shields would breach and the stresses of hyperspace would rip us apart.”  He blew out a breath.  "There are just too many repairs to do, especially if you want to be out of the system before those new guys get to us.  We can either do the hyperdrive or the shields.  We don't have the crew or the time to do both."

The Captain pursed his lips.  "I was thinking about hiring on a few new people down at Instow."

Quesh nodded.  "I'm not thrilled about bringing on too many people right now, but we're all burning out.  We need people to help lighten the load, even if they're only doing the scut work.  We can train them properly if we can get out of here."

The Captain came to a decision and looked his Chief Engineer straight in the eye.  "All right Quesh, the hyperdrive.  Get on it.  And Quesh, what's the story with Moxie?"

The Parkani sighed and set all four hands palms down on the table.  "She's an arrogant ass, Captain.  I'm sick to death of the little picks about how 'amazing' it is that we 'managed as well as we have.'"

"It is something of a miracle," the Captain pointed out.

But Quesh shook his head.  "That is as may be, Captain, but my crew and I have busted our collective asses to make this ship run for years now.  She shows up and in a month, she's showing me up.  I guess I am a bit bitter, if I'm brutally honest with myself.  But as much as she is helping, and she is, I'm so tired of hearing how precious she thinks we all are."

The Captain sighed.  "Bottom line this for me Quesh.  Can you do the hyperdrive repairs without her?  If I were to put her off the ship here, would we be able to get things together without her?"

The Parkani's fists clenched.  His jaw worked as though he was chewing on something.  The cords in his neck strained.  "No," he growled.  "We need her to replicate hyperdrive parts and any shield node parts we can squeeze out in the time we have.  I also need her to lead her team in installations.  But she's operating as she pleases.  She's good at what she does, I can't argue that, as much as I wish it was true.  But she just kind of wanders in wherever she wants, does some work, and then wanders off again."

"You want her more integrated into the crew, Quesh?  You've been my Chief Engineer for a long time, but based on skills and experience, if I was to add her to the crew, she'd probably out rate you and Ka'Xarian."  The Captain sounded entirely sympathetic to him, however.

Quesh looked as if the Captain had slapped him.  Then his bravado crashed, replaced by even more frustration and grumpiness.  "That certainly doesn't make me feel any better.  I hadn't thought of that."

"Relax, Chief," he told him.  "I have no intention of replacing you as Chief Engineer.  You've done this ship proud and your crews all respond to you.  But by your own words, you need her.  So figure out a way to work with her."

"Captain, seriously, why is she here?  Staying on, I mean."  Quesh looked to his boss, a look of pure confusion on his face.  "I know all about your initial deal with her.  You get her to help out with the repairs to the ship and she gets a fighter out of it.  But then what?  And where are we taking her?  She's just going to stay on board while we continue on our trade route?"

"For now," the Captain agreed.  "But that's my problem.  I'll speak with her, but like I said before: figure out a way to work with her.  You're the Chief Engineer.  Don't let her intimidate you and don't smash her face in.  We need her."

Quesh sighed.  "Thought you were going to say something like that, Captain.  All right.  By your leave, I'm going to get to work on the hyperdrive."

"Carry on, Chief."

Tamara was in her quarters, going over the new data she had harvested from the Republic data core they'd acquired at Agron.  As she'd feared, the core itself was unsalvageable, but she had managed to siphon off a great deal of data.  A lot of it was corrupted beyond repair, but there were a few things that made it a worthwhile purchase.  There were a few new designs of milspec material she was happy to have, though very little of it was particularly useful on a cargo vessel.

One thing she did find that was useful was a partial database for a food replicator.  It wasn't a comprehensive list, but it was certainly a good start.  Adding this data to her current program was a big jump forward.  There were now a few things that her custom-built food replicator could make; nutrient bars of various flavors, coffee, tea and juice.  It certainly wasn't the most wide-ranging of menus, but it was better than what they had before.

Of course, this didn't actually fix the original overriding problem.  They would need food substrate to make things using the replicator, and that would require bringing foodstuffs aboard.  Fixing and completely upgrading the recycling system wasn't a high priority and that was what would be needed to make the food replicator be truly useful.  Cookie wasn't thrilled about this tech, something he declared was 'impinging' on his 'freedom of culinary expression'.  Truth be told, Tamara wasn't thrilled about it either.  Cookie was very good at his job, even with limited resources as he had here and the idea of being forced to subsist on nutrient bars and water wasn't something that made her taste buds tingle.

Her special project was coming along and was nearly in final build stage.  The AI was beginning to question its surroundings, ask questions of her.  She had begun speaking with it, and had uploaded a communications link to the computer core to her implants, so that it could see and hear everything that she could, and all the people she interacted with.  It was really an infant at this stage.  It so far couldn't truly interact with anyone but Tamara at this stage.  It couldn't actually speak, but Tamara's implants would display text messages at the bottom of her field of vision, which she could speak responses to, or if she chose, type in an answer on her datapad.  It would be weeks before the AI matured enough to actually speak with Tamara herself, and possibly a bit longer before it could converse with people in groups.  Tamara was confident, and occasionally added software patches to the constantly adapting program.

"Good morning," she said to the AI as she sat down to go over the fragmented and somewhat corrupted data from the salvaged data core.  She had given the data a once over, but now she was going through it more thoroughly, hoping to find more gems in the morass.

[Good morning, Tamara.]  The text scrolled across the bottom of the HUD.  [How are you today?]

"I'm doing well.  How was your down cycle?"  AIs, like people, needed down time to process the information they absorbed during their active cycle.  They didn't sleep, not truly, but they did go inactive while their processing took place.

[Productive.  I believe I am almost in my next build phase.]

"That's excellent.  I'm truly proud of how quickly you're progressing."

[Thank you.]  There was a pause.  [You've been going over the data from those salvaged computer cores for the last few days now.  Is there something you're expecting to find?]

"Not really.  I'm just looking.  You never know what you might find."

[But why are you looking?  Can you not just make what you need?]  There was a short pause.  [You made me.  Why can't you do the same?]

"Well, that's a good point," she said, leaning back on her chair.  "There are a lot of things that I can do myself.  But if someone else has already done some of the work, why shouldn't I use that as a springboard?"

[That does make sense.]

"And while I did most of the coding here myself, I didn't do it all," Tamara pointed out, rubbing one finger on the tip of her nose.  "I compressed a lot of data files and brought that with me, using that as a starting point for a lot of the software projects I've worked on."

The AI didn't have an answer for that.  [What will you work on now?]

"Well, you and I will be spending a great deal of time together."

[I would like that.]

She chuckled.  "Yes, so would I."  She considered.  "As you continue to progress, I'm going to start increasing your crew interactions.  You'll be observing them through me for a while, but eventually, and probably soon, I'll start introducing you to people."

[What will they think?]

Tamara bobbed her head to one side, but a small smile still touched her lips.  "To be honest, I'm not certain.  I think I few, like Ka'Xarian, would be willing to meet you right now.  But I think I need to give you a bit longer to grow before I truly introduce you to him.  But I think he might be the most receptive.  I'll trickle in more people and then eventually, everyone."

[I find this to be a pleasing conversation.  I look forward to working with these people.]

"That's excellent.  We're going to move a bit slowly at first.  While you might be able to adapt to these people quickly, they've probably not seen anyone like you before.  It may take them longer to adjust."

[I understand.  My processing capacity is quite low.  I am only able to slowly grow and adapt with the space available.]

"We're working on that, but I have to inform you there are other, higher, priorities at the moment then upgrading and increasing the ship's computer processing ability.  It is something that will be addressed, but there are only so many workers and resources and we have to prioritize."

[Of course.  That makes sense.  Thank you for the warning.]

Tamara smiled.  "You're my friend, my creation.  I didn't want you to think that I didn't care."

[You brought me into existence, Tamara.  Why would I think that?]

She snorted.  "I guess I'm used to a more... organic way of thinking.  Some of us are grateful for being brought into the world, but aren't necessarily happy about choices that others made concerning our own fates."

[I will think on this.]

"Please do so.  If you have any questions, store them until we're alone together like this, okay?  As I said, for now you're only going to be an observer, but I want to answer your questions if I can."

[Thank you.  I will.]

The hatch alert chimed.  She cleared the program from her datapad's screen, though it continued running on the ship's computer.  "Yes?"  The hatch opened and the Captain stepped inside, closing it again behind him.  "And the Captain enters my cabin.  Should I be pleased, or does this portend doom?"

"So ominous," he commented dryly.

She nodded.  "Unexpected arrivals by command personnel usually are, in my experience.  So how can I help you today, Captain?"

He walked around her and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his dark-skinned hands together.  "What happened with Quesh?"

His statement was so bold and brutally direct that she started, as though he had slapped her.  "We got into an argument that got out of control.  It was over an offhand comment I made that had no insult intended, he took it the wrong way and I escalated.  I'm sorry.  I'll stay out of his way for a while."

The commander of the Grania Estelle sighed heavily.  "Normally I would agree that is the best course of action, but I'm afraid it's one we can't entertain at the moment.  We've got some unexpected arrivals in-system and we can't hang around here for weeks waiting for you both to cool off over the incident."

She straightened, setting the datapad down on the small table.  "What kind of unexpected visitors?"

He shrugged.  "All the new sensors are telling us is that it's a pair of hyper footprints, heading in this direction.  They're moving at a decent clip, but not at a pursuit or intercept speed.  I think either they don't care about us, or haven't seen us yet.  Those new gravitic and neutrino sensors are really quite excellent."

Tamara smiled.  "Well, I didn't want a repeat of what happened last time.  Though to be fair, having amazing sensors last time wouldn't have helped.  We got hit just as we dropped out of hyperspace."

"True.  But, the Chief tells me that in the time we've got, the hyperdrive can get back on line, though it's going to be bare minimum.  Red level two."

Tamara winced, but nodded.  "That's about a week's amount of work right there."

"That's all the time we have really.  We need to be up and out of here and at the hyper limit in a week.  I'm having Taja working on getting more stores because we're going to be in hyper for a long time, and I'm also going to speak with Consul Farris about hiring a few people."

She nodded again.  "How many people?  I assume not enough to fill all the holes in the watch sections?"

He shook his head.  "Most of the people down on Instow have never been on ships and have only a passing familiarity with engineering practices.  A great number of them are farmers and fishermen.  Great for one of our purposes, but lousy for crewing the ship.  Still, we need warm bodies and if they're interesting in hiring on, I'm hoping we can train them up a bit.  Make proper spacers out of them."

She eyed him.  "It's not as easy as that you know.  Some of the engineering 'practices' as you put them take a fair amount of training and study.  On the job stuff is fine for some of the easier things and we can work on safety procedures, but working on more complex systems like shields and hyperdrives takes specialized training, and lots of knowledge and understanding of complex mathematics."

He nodded in agreement.  "I know, but I think, and Quesh agrees, that if we can lighten the burden on some of the more routine things that would open up the better trained crew to tackle the bigger problems."

"You have a point there.  How many are you thinking?" she asked again.

"Probably an even fifteen.  Two for bridge crew and deck, two for cargo, and the rest for engineering.  Eleven new faces and newbies is a lot, I know, but we need the bodies."

"I wish you weren't right about that, but you are.  With all the work we've been doing with upgrades and damage repair the tech crews are dead on their feet."

"Which brings me back to the main reason I came in here," the Captain said, his tone growing more serious.  It wasn't as though his tone was jocular before.  "I know you and Quesh have been having issues.  I know the blowup in the Engine Room was probably just blowing off stress and it got out of hand.  But that has to stop.  I need him, Moxie.  He's my Chief Engineer and he's very good at his job."  He held up a hand to forestall a comment from her.  "And that's just it.  He is the Chief.  You've been a tremendous asset to my ship and operations here, and I thank you for all you've done.  But I need you too.  You've got that specialized training and access you spoke about earlier.  You know tricks and techniques that Quesh doesn't.  So what I'm saying is, you two need to work it out and get my ship back in order.  I don't care if you don't like each other, you will work together and you will get the drives up and running.  Don't bring me personal problems between the two of you.  Work them out.  You and him.  I've spoken to him too, so don't feel singled out."  He stood.  "That's all I had to say."

She gaped at him, then closed her jaw with a click.  "And if I decide I can't?"  She knew she could try, though there were a lot of ruffled feathers.

He smiled at her, that same uncaring, dangerous smile she'd seen once before.  "You will."  It wasn't a statement of encouragement.  It wasn't said in a tone that implied confidence.  It was a pair of words strung together in a command tone, one that demanded respect and obedience.  Without another word, he strode to the hatch and opened it.  Looking back at her, because she had turned to follow, he gestured that she should leave her cabin.

Tamara went straight to replicator one.  Checking the parts list already in progress, she saw that in another hour the last part on the hyperdrive list would be completed.  A quick check of her datapad indicated that at this time, Grania Estelle had only two functioning shield generator nodes and no more had so far been replicated.  Installing and calibrating the hyperdrive, even for bare minimum operation would be a bitch, she knew, but the shield nodes were important, critical, for faster than light travel.  She updated the list to include parts for two more nodes, which would be finished with just enough time to get them installed and integrated with the others.

With a sigh, she left Replicator One and walked to the engineering spaces.  Upon entering, she could see the Chief directing a group of his exhausted looking techs in getting the hyperdrive computer programs ready to accept the new parts.  The hyperdrive had been gutted days before, so it was really just a job of getting the new drive installed and then linked into the ship's computers, but that was a big job in itself.  After a second of her standing in the hatchway, one of the techs gestured and the Chief turned to her.  He scowled, but quickly covered it with a blank mask.

"Finish this subroutine," he told the tech and then walked over to her.  "Ms. Samair.  Good to see you.  I saw the replicator build routines were updated with shield node parts."

"Yes, Chief," she said, her voice just as stiff as his.  "It's going to be tight, but I think we can get two more nodes operational before we jump."

He nodded.  "Good.  I'll have Ka'Xarian and his team work on the shields while you and I tackle the hyperdrive."

It was her turn to nod.  "Sounds good, Chief.  Where do you need me to start?"

"Get with your team.  Mairi said they're ready.  You’re going to be in the crew with me working on installation, so we’re going to start at the most internal point and build outward.  Oh, and the Captain said something about hiring on new crew."

"He mentioned it to me as well.  Eleven or so.  Probably without a whole lot of experience."  Tamara tried to keep the resignation out of her voice.

"Very little worse than a cocky kid who thinks he knows one end of a spanner from the other," the Chief commiserated, in what was probably the first joke they'd shared since they'd entered the Instow system.

Her own granite facade cracked too, and a tiny smile curled the edge of her lips.  "Between you, Ka'Xarian and, if you'll have me, me, I think we can get them into shape in short order."

Quesh nodded, his expression lightening a few shades.  "Yes, Samair, I believe we can."

Captain Eamonn stood in the Agron Town Center, which was a large, enclosed building the people of Agron used for large events, gatherings, religious services, and for any reason to get together in big groups.  He had petitioned the consul to be able to hire people, though he'd kept his number to fifteen and the consul had agreed.  They'd posted the employment opportunities sign there and within a few hours, more than two hundred people had applied.

He was in the process of winnowing out the candidates.  Three had a decent background in fixing things, which he immediately snapped up.  One had some experience in the trading side, Taja recommended that he be hired.  One other was a small craft pilot, though she had only flown aircars and the like.  Since the ship's primary shuttle pilot had been killed when the boat bay was depressurized in the initial attack, the Captain was happy to get her.  The others were eager, but had very little experience and none of it in space.

He brought them all together, standing in a long line in the room, staring forward.  In a moment of brilliance, the Captain had invited Corajen to be part of the hiring process, she had gone through all of their files and looked each one over as he interviewed them.  This was a nerve wracking experience for most of them, as the lupusan turned up her intimidation factor.  A few of the prospective candidates excused themselves and dropped out of the running as soon as they saw her.  The Captain didn't mind.  He needed people that could deal with working with her and others.   The deep dark was a dangerous place, as recent events underscored.  He wasn't looking to hire on warriors and the like, but he wanted crew with a little steel in their spines.

Now, he stood before them, his security officer radiating pure menace behind him.  "You fifteen have been chosen to join the crew of the Grania Estelle.  I'm glad to have you.  Now, please understand this."  At this, his own voice dropped a few degrees of temperature, and all the newbies felt a bit of a chill.  "You've signed the Articles.  You are crew.  The deep dark is no picnic, as you'll find out as you speak to the rest of the crew.  The Grania Estelle isn't a pleasure yacht, she's a bulk cargo hauler.  She's also seen some better days, underscored by the damage we took in fighting pirates in this very system only a few weeks past.  You all are going to be worked and worked hard.  I have no room for layabouts or slackers in my crew."

"A lot of you think you have a great deal of skill.  That's good.  I like confidence in my crew.  Understand this.  Every single one of you is going to be treated as though you are the greenest newbie imaginable until my section leaders decide you do in fact, know anything.  Initiative is good and encouraged.  You, however, will check with your division leaders before you try anything.  I don't want any serious problems, because we're going to be shipping out by the end of the day."

He paused, looking over the now slightly less confident crop of spacers.  For they were spacers now.  Corajen began to stalk up and down the line, walking behind them all and more than a few got very nervous as she did.  No one broke, no one ran.  He nodded in satisfaction.  "As you all know, the young lady walking behind you is Corajen, my chief of security.  She is a lupusan and she is very good at her job.  There is one thing that all of you need to understand and on this I will not waver.  The Grania Estelle is equipped with two industrial replicators, both of which are seeing heavy use.  Not a single one of you will touch those devices for any reason.  I don't care what you think you know.  I don't care what Chief Trrgoth thinks of you, though I can guarantee he isn't going to be terribly impressed.  I don't care how smart you think you are in working computers and engineering equipment.  No unauthorized access to those machines is allowed.  It is incredibly easy to break them and they are critical to ship's function.  So if the replicators have any issues, and I find out it was any of you, Corajen here is going to be paying you a visit."  On cue, she growled, causing them all to jump.  She winked to the Captain where they couldn't see.

He nodded.  The captain's gaze went down the line of his new crew, making sure that he took in each face, knowing that all of them were looking at him with nervous intensity.  "Now, you follow the rules, you work hard, and we will get along fine.  The crew shares have been dropping in recent months due to declining conditions aboard the ship.  However, I think that things are changing now and all of you will be a part of that.  So, collect your gear and get on the shuttle.  We're heading up to the ship in fifteen minutes."  With that, he gave them all one more nod and then walked out, heading for the landing pad, putting on a breather mask as he did so since the landing area wasn't enclosed.

"Well, what are you all standing around for?" Corajen barked.  "Move!"  Everyone jumped in fright at her sudden exclamation and they, very quickly, moved.

Tamara faced her team still consisting of Mairi, Pip, Rory and now three new people, Paidric Rafferty, Igraine Lora and Victor Standing.  The four of them had brought the new, scared looking Instows over with them before getting ready to work on the hyperdrive.  Tamara wanted to make a quick evaluation before they dug in, and she knew this would have to be fast.  The clock was ticking and those ships weren’t slowing their approach any.  Only a few days before they got here.

“I’m Tamara Samair and Chief Trrgoth says you’re going to be working with us.  I’m in charge of this particular team, and these three have worked with me for a little while, so if you have questions, ask.  I want you to ask questions.  But, I also expect you to be able to learn and apply the information you get because we have a lot of important work to get done and not a lot of time to do it in.  So, as I said, ask your questions.  We’re going to have a bit of an awkward transitional period while you get used to things aboard ship, and I can’t help that.  We’re short on crew and everyone must pull their weight.  I would rather you bother me over what turns out to be nothing than not ask and have it turn out to be something.  Everyone understand?”  The three looked like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming ground car.  “All right, everyone is going to work in pairs.  Mairi, you and Igraine, Rory, you and Paidric and Pip…”

“That leaves me and Victor,” he said with a nod to the new guy.  Victor nodded back, trying to keep his face expressionless.  He was only partially successful.

“Right.  Now, let’s get moving.”  She gathered up her tools, as did the others, and they moved toward the hover pallets.

The installation went as fast as possible, but both Tamara and Quesh chafed at the speed.  The new ones were being used mostly for fetch and carry duties, as well as helping to lift things and hold them in place while the more experienced would bolt or weld them in place.  There wasn’t much time or inclination for talk, as components were wheeled from the replicator bays down to the engineering spaces, hauled off the hover pallets and hooked up.  Then it was hours of connections, wires, cables and plugs.  Then back to the replicator for more components and the cycles would repeat.

After eight straight hours of work, Tamara called for a break.  They tromped back down to the mess hall and all of them collapsed into chairs around one of the long tables.  Igraine and Mairi lay their heads down on the table and within a few moments, Tamara could swear that they were asleep.  The others had varying degrees of weariness, but all of them had satisfied looks on their faces.

Cookie bustled up with a tray of coffee mugs, a smile on his face.  “I think you all could use some of this,” he said knowingly, setting the tray down on the table.

Tamara snatched one of the mugs and brought it up to her face, breathing in the aroma and the steam.  “Cookie, you are a god.  You know that, right?”

The man just laughed.  “No, I just have a feeling for what my customers want.  And what I’m thinking is that you all could use some chow and a long sleep.”  Taking the now empty tray, Cookie headed back for the kitchen.

“We could,” Pip chimed in, sipping his own mug.  “But I’m sure the boss here,” he jerked a thumb at Tamara, “will have us back in the salt mines in only a few hours.”

“Not entirely by choice, Pip,” she said with a smile.  “Besides, the work has to get done.  We can’t stick around this system forever.”

“Not with those ships coming this way, we can’t,” Rory said in agreement.

“What is the story with the ships?” Victor asked.  “We have cargo ships coming through the system every few months, but you’ve mentioned an attack on the Grania Estelle here.  We’ve never been attacked by anybody.”

“Never?” Rory said in surprise.  “I would think that your settlement would have had its share of visits from pirates.”

Victor shrugged, leaning against the table, resting his head on one hand.  “Not as far as I can remember.  Though big ships never landed.  It was only the shuttles that ever came down.”

“No landing parties?  Any serious dustups?”

“No,” Victor repeated, and Paidric shook his head also.  “No more so than a bar fight or two.  Nothing that really raised anyone’s attentions.”

Tamara watched them closely.  Igraine was sleeping in her seat, face down on the table.  And the others didn’t look up or cast furtive glances at one another.  Which meant that either they were the best liars in existence, the least observant bunch in existence, or no pirates had ever landed on Instow.

She blinked in surprise as the AI spoke up, text scrolling across the bottom of her vision.  [There are two other options, Tamara.  Either the pirates never came to Agron, or when they came down, they did not engage in any suspicious or violent activity.]

Tamara nodded slowly.  “Maybe if the pirates ever did land at Agron, they behaved themselves.  Or if they went to another town, like Terminus, they just came down for shore leave and legitimate trading.”  She waved her hand.  “But that’s not a critical issue right now.  The Chief has given us six hours and then we’re back on.  So if Cookie is getting us some supper then I suggest we all eat and get back to our quarters and rack out.  Then meet up back here in six.”

A chorus of nods around the table.  Mairi grumbled, “Yes, Boss.”

Four days of toil.  In that time, the unknown ships had grown that much closer.  The bridge crew were the only ones who were growing more nervous about this, as the rest of the ship was working to get the drives online.  The cargo division was either working to get more foodstuffs and supplies from the planet, bartering with whatever could be found, flying the shuttle up and down, ferrying trade goods for food.  The replicators were running nonstop, breaking down the junk in the cargo holds, most of which had been doing nothing but taking up space and costing the ship mass.  The junk was being used to build parts to fix the drives and the shields, as well as to make a few items for trade goods for Instow.  They built practical things like sewage reclamation pipes, air filters, algae matrix systems, even computers to control all those things.  In return, barrels of frozen fish, crates of fruits and vegetables and even a few kegs of beer were transferred to the holds of the Grania Estelle.  The accounting was close, as both Taja and the Captain went over the numbers.

Using the Captain’s rough estimate, and Quesh’s new updated numbers, the astrogators had worked out that the trip out of Instow in hyperspace to the next system would take approximately one hundred fifty-six days.  They weren’t going back to Hudora and they certainly were not going to try and make an end run around the incoming ships toward Malabar, so the Captain had decided to split the difference and fly in a roughly perpendicular direction toward Folston.

“We’ll get there about a month before the harvest,” the Captain said with a small smile.  “Excellent.”

Taja nodded her agreement.  “We might even get our pick this time, Captain.”

“You know we will, love,” he said to her, tapping a fist on the wardroom table with a small amount of triumph.  “There might be something good to come out of this disaster after all.”

She frowned at his crass statement, but acknowledged his statement.   The crew shares had been down considerably lately, and even with the trading done at Instow the crew had only been paid a pittance.  Most of them were happy to receive it, happy to be alive, but there were the beginnings of grumbling throughout the ship.  Hopefully once Quesh got the ship back up and running again they’d be able to do better.  Almost certainly they would, especially if he and Tamara could patch the holes in the boat bay and in the main cargo holds.  If they could hold more goods, they could certainly trade for more on the other end.

“Looking at all the inventories, if we don’t get all gluttonous with the foods supplies, we should be able to get to Folston with enough left over.”  Taja continued, consulting her datapad.

He nodded.  “Hopefully the reclamation systems will get up and running so we can get the food replicator up and running.  That would help with the food problem.”

“Do you really trust that thing?” Taja asked, wrinkling her nose.

“What?  The food replicator?” he asked.  She nodded.  “Of course.  I didn’t at first,” he admitted.  “But then Moxie gave me one of the ration bars from it.  Actually tasted quite good.”

Her nose wrinkled again.  “Ration bars?  Really?”

“Hey, if it helps keep us all alive long enough to get fresh food, I’m fine with it.  After those raiders stole all that food from Cookie’s stores, we might need it.  And there is only so much fish that one can take.”

She sighed.  “I can’t argue with that.”  Her hand was on the table and the Captain reached out and touched it.  Without looking, she reached up and clasped his hand in hers, giving it a squeeze.

“So, are you going on the last supply run before we break orbit?”

Taja nodded.  “I’d rather stay up here,” she said, shifting a knowing look his way, “But we need to get that last round of seawater for the fuel tanks.”

“Moxie says that stuff is the worst stuff we could use,” the Captain pointed out.  His thumb stroked lazy circled on the back of her hand.

“Yes, Captain, my Captain, she does say that,” Taja agreed.  “But since she wasn’t able to get the collector built and set up in time for us to be able to get the better fuel from the gas giant, we have to suffer with that.”

“Better than nothing, I suppose.”

“We’re going to need every drop of fuel, every molecule of hydrogen we can squeeze out of those drops.”  He sighed, releasing her hand and stood up.  “Nothing for it.  All right, go on.  Get going so you can get back.”

She stood as well, stepping over to him.  She was not a tall woman and compared to him, she was positively tiny.  Raising up on tiptoe, she cupped one hand on the back of his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.  It was quick, they didn’t have time to really do the job properly, but it sufficed.  Releasing him, Taja flounced out of the wardroom, heading off to the shuttle.  He smiled as he watched her go.  A moment later, he headed out of the wardroom and back to the bridge.  He decided he would stand a bridge watch until the shuttle got back, then the ship would break orbit, heading for the hyper limit.

“Oh hell,” George muttered from his station, three hours later.

The Captain looked up from his display at his ops officer.  “What is it, George?”

“The ships, Captain.  They’re increasing speed,” he said, a bit louder than was necessary.

He winced.  “I’m sitting right here, George.  I know it’s a notable event, but there’s no need to shout.”

George had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry, Captain.”

“Serinda, get the crew and the shuttle back up here,” he ordered.  “We’re breaking orbit as soon as they’re back.”  The Captain turned to George.  “How much are they accelerating?”

“They’ve kicked their speed up to point one light, Captain.  Looks like they’re holding at that speed.”

“How much does that change their arrival time?”

“We need to leave soonest, Captain,” George replied.  “They’ll be here in eight hours.”

“Understood.”  He pressed the control on the arm of his chair.  “Quesh, give me good news.”

“I have the answer to your prayers, Captain,” the Parkani said, sounding excited.  “The main engines are ready, just waiting for the word.”

“Good.”  He turned to the helm.  “Once the shuttle is back, take us to max thrust, headed for the hyper limit.  Get with astrogation and plot us a course to Folston.”  He looked ahead again back forward, addressing the Parkani again.  “What’s the status of our hyperdrive?”

“Still not up,” the chief replied, a bit ruefully.  “We’re still working it.  Samair is troubleshooting on her end, but we’re still working out some problems.  We’re looking at least two days of work, Captain.”

The astrogator looked up from his console.  “Forty-nine hour transit from here to the hyper limit, Captain, best speed.”

“You’ve got until we reach the hyper limit, Chief,” the Captain told him.  “We need to jump as soon as we get there.”

“Then if you’ll excuse me, Captain,” Quesh replied and cut the connection.

The Captain looked at his display, watching the two tiny icons indicated as “unknown” inching across toward the large blip labeled “Instow” and the smaller one circling it labeled “Grania Estelle”.  There was still no little icon for the shuttle, and he was staring at the planet, hoping that one would show up, but so far, nothing.

Chapter 9

“How we doing, Tamara?” the Captain’s voice sounded on the overhead.  His tone was also slightly annoyed, worried and carrying a bit of a sing-song lilt to it.

“Working on it!” she bellowed back.  She was stuck in the bulkhead, working through the control lines, thousands of connections.  Her team was alongside her, doing the same thing, running and testing everything.  It had to work the first time, for they had no time to rip it all out and try again, not with those two ships moving to intercept them.

“Work faster,” came the response.

“Get off my back!” she roared, losing her temper.

Igraine turned to Pip as she worked.  In a concerned whisper she asked, “The Captain allows members of the crew to speak to him like that?”

In a stage whisper that carried down the passage, Pip replied, “No, not usually.  I expect once we’re out of this mess and safe in hyperspace, he’ll give her what for, and I don’t mean in a pleasant way.”

“Pip,” Tamara said, connecting another line.  “You’re a half-share Engineman aboard this crate.  He’s capable, Igraine, but he isn’t very smart.  And if you don’t keep working and get these lines done, I’ll give you what for.  And don’t worry, you won’t enjoy it.”

There was a round of chuckles from the group.  But Igraine wasn’t satisfied.  “So what is your rank, Tamara?  If it’s okay that I ask.”  Her tone became contrite.

She sighed.  “Technically, I’m not a member of the crew.  I didn’t sign the Articles like all of you.  I don’t hold any rank in the ship’s hierarchy.  I report to the Captain and to the Chief, but that’s all.”

“You don’t get paid?”

She shook her head.  “No, though the Captain and I have worked out an arrangement.”

“She rebuilt the starfighter that’s in cargo bay one.  She gets to keep it when the ship gets rebuilt.”  Rory’s recitation made the new crewmembers stop and look over at her.

She stopped and looked over at them.  “No, I’m not getting paid in credits or gold bars or anything like that.”

“Why not?” Victor seemed flabbergasted at this response.  “Even down on Instow we had a monetary exchange system.”

Tamara pointed at the bulkheads meaningfully.  “Back to work.”  She herself took hold of a bundle of control cables and continued her work.  “I’m not that interested in money.  Except for what it could do for me.”

Mairi snickered.  “I always am interested in what money can do for me.”

Now it was Tamara’s time to smile.  “I’m not going to say I won’t want to go out and have a beer or two or a nice meal in a good restaurant, but for the most part I’m not big on stuff.  I don’t need a lot.”

The new ones stopped again and glanced at her, looked at each other, and then went back to work.  “That’s an interesting attitude for a woman on a freight hauler.”

“I know I’m fascinating,” Tamara said sardonically, “But we have a lot of work to get done if we want to get out of here.”

“But how could you stay on a ship like this and not want to get compensated for your time and effort?” Igraine asked, puzzled.  The tip of her tongue stuck out of her mouth, as soon as she stopped speaking, working to get another line attached.

“I’m getting something out of it,” she replied.

“Yeah a Perdition starfighter.  A ship that isn’t good for anything but battle and can’t leave the star system,” Mairi retorted.  “It’s a collector’s item.”

“Are you going to sell it?” Pip asked.

“Not if I can help it.”  She sighed.  “It isn’t that I don’t like or need money.  I don’t want to stay cooped up on a ship forever if I can help it.  And I might want to buy a few things if I go to a station or even planetside if I got for shore leave.”  Tamara smiled sadly.  “But it isn’t my driving force.”

The overhead squawked.  “Tamara, what is your status?”

She actually growled this time.  “Captain, are the ships pursuing us in weapons’ range?”

There was a pause.  “No, not yet.”

“Then stop bothering me.  We’re working as fast as we can.  In another hour we should be finished and then I will report back.  Samair out.”

There was an audible sigh that they all heard over the transmission before the line cut.  “You know that the Captain isn’t going to take that kind of attitude from you for too long, Tamara,” Rory pointed out, a bit worried.

She nodded.  “He’s just making me angry.  Pestering us is not going to make the job go any quicker.  In fact he’s slowing things down every time he calls.”  She growled again and then returned to work.

The Engineering crew was dead on their collective feet.  They had all been working as close to nonstop as was physically possible.  They were all worn out, irritable, and the snapping at each other had increased exponentially as the hours passed.  The control runs were finally completed, the hardware all connected and tested.  Quesh and Tamara were running sims to see if the hyperdrive and shields were synched up and capable for hyperspace flight, especially for an extended flight like they intended.  Ka’Xarian and his team had gotten the two shield generator nodes hooked in and calibrated.  The shields were now covering the entire ship now at eleven percent.  It was an increase, though not a dramatic one.  At least now, however, there was enough coverage to protect the ship against the massive stresses of faster-than-light travel.

Their speed would still be dreadfully slow.  Red level two meant that the Grania Estelle would be in hyperspace for nearly four and a half months; an eternity.  This would be the longest trip any of them had ever taken for one jump.  The tension level aboard the ship was high, made worse by the two ships speeding ever closer.

“At present speed, Captain,” George announced softly to the bridge crew, as well as his boss, “the two ships will catch us about eight minutes before we reach the hyper limit.”

“Great,” he muttered.  “Thank you, George.”  He glanced over at the nearby display, showing engine output.  The ship’s engines were running at 105%, well into the red.  Quesh had informed the Captain in no uncertain terms he would not be able to increase the speed of the ship any more.  If he pushed the engines any harder they would burn out and he refused to do it.  The Captain did not argue with the Parkani, realizing the futility of it and that the Chief was absolutely right.  All too many captains, or other leaders, might demand the impossible of their crew and expect them somehow to come through.  Now, this was also true as far as it went, as leaders did push their people to excel beyond expectations, but there was a limit as to what was actually achievable.  When Quesh put his foot down, the Captain knew to listen.

Eight minutes.  A lifetime as far as a battle would be concerned.  The freighter would get pummeled just like it had upon entering the star system.  Her weapons were no better than before, and while her engines had been improved, her shields were a bit worse, and the status of the hull was about even.  They’d stand no chance against a pair of corvettes.

“Captain, Engineering,” Quesh’s voice sounded over the Captain’s comms.

“Go ahead, Quesh.”

“We’ve completed our eleventh sim.  The hyperdrive is up and ready to go.  We can jump as soon as we make the hyper limit.”

Eamonn breathed a sigh of relief.  One worry down.  “That’s excellent news, Quesh.  Very good work, to your whole team.”

“Thank you, Captain,” the Parkani replied.  “I’m sorry about the engines, but we just can’t push them any harder.  If we weren’t going to be jumping soon, I would recommend we power back anyway.”

“Again, good work,” the Captain repeated.  He cut the connection.  “Now we only have to worry about getting away.”

The bridge crew all exchanged looks, but no one spoke.

Tamara clambered up to the bridge a few moments later.  “Captain, have we tried communicating with the two ships yet?”

He looked over at her and shook his head.  “Not as of yet.  Though they haven’t called us, either.”  The Captain looked as worried as she’d ever seen him.  Not a good sign.

“How far away?”

George piped up from the ops station.  “Three hundred thousand kilometers.  From what I can tell on their power signatures, they’re weapons and shields are powered up.  They should be in range soon.”

“Let me try.  Maybe I can bluff them.”  Her tone was calm, confident.  It was an excellent mask for the roiling turmoil in her gut, though it didn’t appear that anyone noticed.

“You?” he asked, taken aback.  “Why would you be able to?”

“I am still a Republic officer,” she pointed out.  “Maybe I can use that to get them to back off.”

He considered that, his gaze going back and forth from the display to her face and back again.  “Can’t hurt, I suppose.  If they intend to attack us anyway, I don’t imagine it matters if they think we have a Republic officer onboard.”  He gestured.  “But I thought you said you were done with the Republic.  That it held nothing for you anymore.”

She glowered.  “I think that’s a discussion for when we get out of this, don’t you?”

“Fine.  Communications,” he said, flicking his chin in that direction.

Tamara stepped over to the console, skipping her vision over the controls, her implants helpfully indicating what each button and switch did.  Like everything aboard the Grania Estelle, the console was old and well worn.  She laid her palm on the console, putting her thumb over the port for an implant jack.  Once she was in, she accessed the ship’s communication array and directed a narrow-beam transmission to the pursuing ships.

[What do you think you can accomplish?], the AI asked, text scrolling along the bottom of her vision.

“Not now please,” Tamara whispered, trying to look casual.  “I’ll talk about it with you if we get out of this.”  The AI didn’t respond after that, to which she was grateful.  “Ready to transmit, Captain,” she said in a normal tone.  “And I have to ask that you not question any of the things you’re going to hear me say.”

He nodded his assent, though the worry was still there.

“This is Commander Tamara Samair of the Republic Navy, aboard the Naval Reserve vessel Grania Estelle, to the vessels currently pursuing my ship.  State your identifications and intentions.  Over.”  She pressed a key to mute transmission while they waited to see if they would answer.

She smiled at the bridge crew, who were gaping at her like a school of landed fish.  “What?” she asked.  “You all knew I was Republic military.”

“I never knew my ship was in the Naval Reserve,” the Captain replied dryly.

“Don’t worry,” she said with an evil grin.  “I might give her back to you one day.  George, I’m sending you a list of transponder codes that I need you to update into the ship’s registry.  They will confirm that the ship is Naval Reserve.”

“I have it.  Captain, do I update the registry?” he asked, turning to his boss.

The Captain hesitated for the briefest moment.  “Yes, go ahead, George.”

The man punched a few commands and Tamara saw the information scroll across her display.  Serinda nodded as she saw it too.  “It’s all set, Captain,” the young woman reported.

“Very well.”

George piped up.  “Captain, two hundred fifty thousand kilometers.”

“Incoming transmission,” Tamara said with a slight chuckle.  “I’m putting it on the forward screen, but I’m keeping the video pickup off on our end.  For the moment, anyway.  I don’t think they’d believe me if I said I was Republic military and wasn’t wearing a uniform.”

“And they would believe an audio transmission they can’t verify with a picture?”  The Captain seemed skeptical.  Tamara didn’t answer, just brought up the video image.

The display at the comm console and in front of the Captain activated, showing a human in his mid-thirties wearing an unfamiliar uniform, dark gray with red piping, but it had the Republic galactic spiral device on his right breast.  His collar bars showed he was an officer of the rank of senior lieutenant.  He was pale, like most people who spent a lifetime in space, out of the uv rays of the sun, he had a short haircut, a mustache and very piercing gray eyes.

“This is Captain Wallace Sykora of the Republic vessel Fury.  I don’t know who you think you are, but you will heave to and prepare to be boarded.”  His voice had a heavy Republic Core World accent, aristocratic and arrogant, but it was more that he was trying hard to put on airs, not that he was born to title.

“No, Lieutenant,” Tamara replied, putting as much command voice in her words as she could.  “I am under orders to continue on my mission unmolested.  I will not heave to for your pissant little corvette.”

The lieutenant visibly blinked in surprise.  Clearly he wasn’t used to being refused by someone on board a freighter.  “Who the hell is this?  Why are you only transmitting on audio?”

I’m only on audio because I don’t have a Republic uniform.  My ship suit isn’t going to impress anyone, nor is my disheveled appearance.  “Lieutenant, you had better watch your tone with me.  You are making me repeat myself, which is making me quite cross.  I am not in the habit of explaining myself to junior officers, but because my mission is so pressing, I will oblige.”  Her voice was like frozen helium.  “As I have already informed you, I am Commander Tamara Samair, aboard a Navy Reserve vessel.  Show me that you have the slightest amount of brains and follow your procedures.  Check the ship’s registry and transponder codes.  Now.”

The man looked to the side, where, presumably, someone was checking.  Tamara could hear someone speaking from off the camera pickup.  “I am registering your ship as a reserve vessel.  I wasn’t aware that we had any cargo vessels out this way.”  He didn’t sound convinced.  The tension level on the bridge was rising as everyone saw the icons representing the corvettes drawing ever closer.  They were now in range to be picked up by the short range sensors.  However, only the bow sensors on the ship had been repaired, which left a huge blind spot, the entire aft arc of one hundred twenty degrees.  They couldn’t get a fine-degree scan, not yet.  Not that it mattered much.  The weapons on the freighter couldn’t shoot anything more than a hundred kilometers anyway.

“Lieutenant, I have no need to explain the parameters of my mission to you.”  They were less than a minute from intercept, little more than eight from the hyper limit.

“You will submit your identification codes,” the man replied, insolence dripping in his tone.

Tamara smiled to herself.  She had prepared for such an eventuality, after hearing Ka’Xarian’s story about Admiral Tandred.  Her codes were as good as she could make them, though she didn’t have all the most recent protocols.  Though the salvaged data core had helped her refine her work.  She went ahead and transmitted.

She had the joy of watching the man’s eye’s bulge nearly out of his head.  Lieutenant Sykora straightened in his seat.  “My apologies, ma’am.  I had no idea.”

“You will cease pursuit of my vessel.  At once!” she thundered.  “Return to your previous duties.”

He nodded, look as though his neck was made of rubber.  “Changing course now.”

George nodded, and a window opened up on the display, showing the two ships turning away.

“Very good.  You were doing your duty and I appreciate your vigilance.  End transmission.”  She leaned back against the bulkhead and blew out a long breath.

“You have hidden talents, Moxie,” the Captain said appreciatively.

Tamara grinned.  “I did manage a shipyard, you know.  I’m used to jumped up little pricks like that trying to act as though they own the galaxy.”

“Some of them actually do,” Serinda mused.

Tamara laughed.  “You’re right at that.  Though never any of the ones I’ve had to deal with.”

Even the Captain chuckled at that.

“We’ve reached the hyper limit, Captain,” the pilot at the helm reported.

“Good.  Get us out of here.  Shipwide,” the Captain ordered.  Serinda pressed a control and a droning beep sounded through every compartment in the ship.  “This is the Captain.  All hands, brace for jump to hyperspace.”  He nodded and Serinda shut off the shipwide comm.  “Helm, is the hyperdrive ready?”

“Hyperdrive is ready, Captain.”

“Astrogation?”

“Course plotted and laid in, Captain.”

“Operations?”

“All systems ready, Captain,” George replied.  This was a little formality that the entire bridge crew engaged in every time they jumped.  Everyone was stating the obvious, but it also made sure that every section had checked over all their responsibilities.

“Very well.  Let’s get the hell out of here.  Helm, punch it,” he said.  The control was activated. The hyperdrive spun up and a fine tremor spread throughout the ship.  Everyone grabbed on to handles, or anything they could find to brace for the jump.  The last ones done by the Grania Estelle were quite violent.  The Captain looked over and saw Tamara holding onto a handle, but only with one hand and not as though she was concerned she’d be thrown across the room.

As the drives kicked in, there was a very tiny jolt, like an elevator coming to a stop and then… nothing.

“We’re in hyper,” the pilot reported, confused.

“We are?” George asked, then confirmed it with his instruments.  “We are!”

“No teeth rattling jolt?”

Tamara laughed.  “No, Captain.  I know you hardcore freighter jocks are used to bone-jarring jumps, but the only reason that had been happening was because your hyperdrive was so far out of tune.  Quesh and I made sure that it was properly aligned.  He reckoned this would be the smoothest ride any of you had ever been through.”

Serinda released her handle.  “I’ll say.”

“Helm, talk to me,” the Captain said, chuckling.

“We’re on course, speed is holding at Red level two.  I can’t get any more out of it, Captain.”

“Understood.  ETA to Folston?”

“If we maintain speed, one hundred fifty-three days, nineteen hours, sixteen minutes,” the helm watch stander reported.  He didn’t sound too happy with that report.

The Captain wasn’t thrilled to get it.  Normally, with the hyperdrives the way they were before the attack by the raiders, the trip from Instow to Folston would take about thirty-one days.  Now it was going to be four and a half times that.

But there was nothing to do about that.  There were some tricks that they could do to save on fuel consumption and the Chief had some overhaul to the power grid scheduled, which would certainly assist in that, but they couldn’t coax any more power out of the drives.  Not with the shields at the abysmal levels they were at.  Eleven percent?  They could sustain Red level two for the entire trip to Folston, but they wouldn’t be able to increase speed any.

“Very good, helm.”  He turned to Serinda.  “Shipwide, please.”  The beep sounded again and she nodded.  “This is the Captain.  We’re safely in hyperspace, though I’m sad to say we have a very long flight to Folston.  Schedule will be posted on the bulletin board in the mess shortly.  For now, I just want to congratulate everyone on the fantastic work you all have done during our stay here at Instow.  I’m proud of all of you.  Keep up the good work.  That is all.”  Serinda disconnected.

“Well done, all,” he said, standing.  “I’ll be in my cabin.  Set normal watch rotation and by the stars, make sure all of you get some food, coffee and sleep.”

“Aye, Captain,” they all chorused, watching him leave before turning back to their stations.  A moment later, Tamara followed, though not to officer country.  She went to her own cabin, fully intending to lie down and catch a few hours of sleep.

Aboard the Fury, Wallace Sykora turned to his ops officer.  “Sylla, get with the Intelligence people.  Go through everything we have on the sensor readouts of that ship, and in particular, that audio conversation we had with that woman.  Find out who this Commander Samair is.  Get me every piece of information.  Granted, we are out in the fringes here, but I’ve never heard of a naval officer named Tamara Samair, and certainly no one risen up to the rank of commander.  And find out more about that ship.  I know we’re out here pretty far,” he admitted, “but I’ve never heard of that ship being part of the reserve.   And certainly not this far out from the Republic.”

“On it, Skipper,” Sylla said, turning to her console and beginning to work.

Sykora turned his face back to his own display, but he really wasn’t seeing it.  This small squadron, really only two ships, was pretty far from the official jurisdiction of the Republic.  Centuries ago, they were well within the borders, especially with Hudora nearby, but that was before the war.  He had his orders and he was out following them.

That freighter looked to be a fat prize.  According to Fury’s sensors, it had seen better days, but more than likely its holds were filled with swag, to quote his security chief.  They’d been tracking it ever since they had arrived in the system.  It was a close pursuit, he had to admit.  He also was willing to admit to himself that he had botched the approach.  He should have raced in system, hell bent for leather and overtaken them closer to the planet.  He hadn’t expected the Navy officer to be on board, but if he had gotten them farther out from the hyper limit he could have made more of it.

He kicked himself.  I really did not handle that well.  I allowed that woman to get me flustered.  In any other circumstance, I would have forced them to heave to and boarded them.  He’d been so surprised by the forcefulness of the “commander” that he’d ignored procedures and his common sense.  Well, he would be passing this up the chain.  He’d take his lumps and then get past it.  He was already out in the middle of nowhere, it was unlikely he could get a worse assignment.

Admiral Tandred would be very interested to hear about a reserve vessel operating in his sector.

Book 2 – Questions and Evasions

Chapter 10

The first day in hyperspace, the Captain came over the PA system.  “All hands, this is the Captain.  I am declaring this to be a day of liberty.  Standard watch rotation will continue, but I am requiring everyone else to have a day of rest.  Sleep.  Eat.  Celebrate our escape from Instow, pirates and whoever else might have been trying to get us.  Enjoy the rest, you’ve all earned it.  That is all.”

If anyone expected the corridors of the ship to resound with cheers, they would have been disappointed.  Instead, more than a few crewmembers simply groaned and sagged to the deck in exhaustion.  There was a great deal of laughter at this, both in relief and in mockery at their fellows.  More than a few headed to their quarters and their beds, while the rest headed to the mess hall.  The lounge was open, but for now, everyone was going to find sanctuary with Cookie.

And the man delivered.  The smell of crispy fried chicken, cheddar mashed tubers, corn muffins a granapple cobbler was enough to make many of them swoon.  Getting in, everyone discovered that the food was delicious, the food was plentiful and the beer flowed.  Within a short while, the exhaustive pallor that had sunk in to the crew of the Grania Estelle had abated and conversation, laughter and a renewed sense of vitality pervaded.

A short while later, the party moved from the mess hall to the lounge, though more than half of the partiers had retired to their beds.  New people trickled in as they came off watch and were greeted with enthusiastic cheers.  Cards and dice were broken out.  Gambling was allowed aboard ship, with the proviso that this was a friendly atmosphere.  The Captain was up for a good game of chance, but he would not allow members of his crew to be fleeced.  There was probably more than a little of that going on below decks, but after one of the crew had won so much from his fellows, he had set himself up as the ship’s bookie and was doing what he could to reduce his own workload.  The debts he was owed amounted to more than those in his debt could ever repay on their shares.  So he had begun to use them as indentured servants, working his shifts to pay off some of the debt.  A very profitable enterprise for him, and self-sustaining, since they would never actually pay off their debt.

When the Captain got wind of this, he was livid.  Taja had needed Corajen to physically restrain the man.  Three separate times, the Captain ordered the man’s death, he was to be tossed out of an airlock, but between the two females he managed to calm down enough to think things through clearly.  There was no mistaken the smoldering anger in his eyes, however.  Even the lupusan backed away, seeing her Captain like this.  He had marched down to the crew spaces and collected everyone who owed the man money.  After a thorough grilling, he’d worked out just how much was owed.  He was appalled at the amount.

The day they arrived at their next port of call, the Captain pulled the man aside.  He bought the man out, buying his crewmates debt.  Then he told the man to leave and not come back.  He had Corajen accompany the man down to the planet, to make sure he went, and then to make sure the man did not return on the shuttle.  She didn’t kill him, but rumor had it that the man spent a few days in the hospital after that.

To the crewmembers that had been taken to the cleaners by that man, the Captain took them all aside.  “I now own all of your debts.  If I catch any of you gambling again, you’ll be serving brig time.  I will be restricting your pay and half of your shares, as of right now, are going toward paying me back.”  This hadn’t gone over well.  Those unfortunate souls had believed, foolishly, that the Captain would sort out their problems and wipe the debt clean.  They should have known better.  “Shut your mouths!” he had roared.  That had instantly silenced them.  “I have already lost one crewmember over this, I will not lose any more!  You will be continuing aboard at my sufferance, all of you.  None of you are leaving until that debt to me is paid.  If you decide you want to leave the ship, you will either pay me in full, or else you will forfeit all pay and shares until that debt is clear.  You were the ones foolish enough to gamble away everything to a man like that.”  A couple of them had the grace to look embarrassed.  Some looked belligerent.

“Some of you might think that I am being unfair.  Some of you might think that this is not part of your contract and that I am in breach of that contract.  I refer all of you to Section C, under ‘other duties as required’?  Well I’m making this a required duty.”  They all looked as though they would argue.  “Are we going to have a problem here?”  His voice had shifted dangerously.  No one had the courage to face that.

Vincent Eamonn ran a very tight ship but he wasn’t a cruel man, as evidenced by the treatment of the man who had done this to his fellows.  As the Captain, his word was law; the Articles gave him that right, as did spacer tradition.  He was well within his rights to order this as punishment, and since he was only taking half of their shares until the repayment was complete, he was still allowing them to earn some money until that time.  This was also an incentive, for those wise enough to see it.  If the ship earned more money, the shares would be higher and the debt paid sooner.  He hadn’t expected anyone to catch that, not right away.  It was still too humiliating and raw a wound yet.  But he had been confident that some would.

That had been two years ago.  Sadly, the shares had not significantly increased, in fact, they had continued to slowly sag during that time as the ship became less capable of carrying out its primary function.  Tamara’s arrival had changed that a bit, but the setbacks by the raiders had impacted the shares as well.  The ship had made some small amounts of money at Instow, but barely enough for a good meal at a nice restaurant for most of the crew.  Even the Captain’s share had been low.

What the crew didn’t know, except for Taja because she helped with the books as cargo specialist and purser, was that the Captain was accepting only about a third of his standard share each run to help keep the ship solvent.  In fact, it had been over three years since the ship had actually turned a profit and more than a year since they’d even broken even.  A ship the size of the Grania Estelle wasn’t cheap to maintain and run, though hopefully the engineering teams would be able to get things squared away to assist with that.

The replicators also opened up new avenues of trading.  Given raw materials (and fuel) the ship could now produce finished goods for sale at the various planets and stations they would visit, potentially raising the profits.  Right now they tended to trade in raw materials and low-industrial goods shipped from one planet to another.  If they could now come in system somewhere and produced mid- to high-end goods that the buyers actually wanted and could use, the potential for profits was much greater.  It was an exciting time aboard the big ship.

That excitement was, of course, moderated by the recent attack and then near miss at Instow.  No one wanted to go through that again but they all hoped that as time went on, they could be ready for such eventualities.

Two of those unfortunate crewmen had paid off their debt, several had been killed in the attack by the raiders, but the three who remained still owed the Captain.  They owed him a fair amount.  Everyone was hoping that upon arrival at Folston they could get to some serious trading and could make a bit more money.

Tamara, Quesh and Ka’Xarian were sitting in the Chief’s office in the engineering spaces on day four of the trip.  They were discussing what work would be done during the very long trip to Folston.

“Sadly, we can’t work on the things that we would need to get the ship there any faster,” Xar said sadly.

“No,” Tamara agreed.  “Shields, hyperdrive and the reactor.  And external repairs, of course.”

“Actually,” the zheen demurred.  “Couldn’t we drop out of hyperspace, make a few more repairs, build a few more shield nodes and then jump back in at a higher speed?”

But both Tamara and Quesh were shaking their heads.  “Materials,” they said together.  They both chuckled and looked at each other, then looked back to Ka’Xarian.  Quesh spoke then.  “We don’t have enough of the things we need to make any more shield nodes, Xar.  Otherwise I would have had a couple more made back at Instow.”

“Damn,” the zheen replied.

“Yeah,” Tamara agreed.  “So… what?”

“We go through the power distribution systems again,” Quesh informed her.  “Take your team and go over the entire grid.  I want no leaks, no waste.  We need to squeeze every drop of fuel we can out of the system.”

“What about cargo bay eight?” Xar asked.  “It’s been unusable for years.”

“What about it?” Quesh asked.  “We can’t get outside the ship to do proper repairs.”

“No,” the zheen admitted, “but we can seal the inside of the hull, like Tamara and her team did on those compartments when we arrived at Instow.”

“Why bay eight?” Tamara asked, taking a sip of coffee.

“Because it’s the least damaged,” the Parkani replied.  He nodded.  “Makes sense.  Do we have the materials?”

“I think so,” Xar answered.  “Should be enough to patch the inside of the bay and we can do a more comprehensive job once we get to Folston and can wrangle in a few more rocks.”

“Won’t that unbalance the load?” Tamara asked.  “Can we look?”

Quesh pulled up a schematic of the ship on his display.  Bay eight was located in the after section, on the ventral port side.  Three other main bays were in use on that side as well.  She was correct, it would unbalance the load, but they couldn’t help that now.  Not until they got Folston.  Not that it would matter that much now anyway, seeing as they didn’t have much in the way of cargoes that could be loaded into that bay.  Perhaps they could use it for other things.

“It could, if we shift it too quickly,” he commented.  “But we don’t really have any need for it for cargo space at the moment.  I’m thinking we could use it for recreational purposes now.  At least until we can fill it with cargo.”

She raised an eyebrow at him.  “Use it in what way?”

The Parkani shrugged.  “Running track.  Turn the gravity off, use it for zero-g handball.  In fact, I think that might be a good idea.  Get some sort of team sport going since we’re going to be stuck on this crate forever.”

The other two chuckled.  “I’m sure we could figure something out.”

“Good, Tamara,” Quesh said.  “Because I need you and your team to go through the crew quarters on deck six.”

“Deck six?” she asked, confused.  “Someone living down there?”

Both the Parkani and the zheen were smiling.  Or what passed for an amused look on an insectoid face.  Tamara sighed.  “There’s a joke here that I’m not seeing.”

“And it’s on you,” Xar replied.  “There are ten crew berthing areas down there, capable of holding up to a total of forty people.  Captain said he wanted those quarters made habitable.  We apparently are going to be picking up a few new crewmembers at Folston.”

“Captain’s looking to bring the crew back up to full?”

“Yes,” Quesh answered.  “The full crew complement is actually about one hundred thirty.  I think that the Captain would like to get us back to that number at some point.  Though until we get the shields, hyperdrive, computer core and cargo bays repaired we won’t really be able to afford the extra hands.”

“I think the Captain might like cargo bay one back as well,” Xar pointed out.

“I think he would too,” Tamara replied.  “But we can’t fix the boat bay in hyper.  The damage is to the doors themselves.  We have to physically remove them, make the repairs and then reinstall them.  And they won’t fit inside the boat bay to the do the job.  We’d need to do this in open space, which isn’t worth the fuel expenditure to stop and do this in real space.”

The two other engineers looked irritated at this.  “Oh, well.  It is something that needs working on.”

Tamara nodded, a slight smile forming on her face.  “Xar, you were giving me grief about a crap job, but how would you like one?”

Now Quesh was grinning.  “I can’t wait to hear this.”

The zheen was eyeing her suspiciously, his antennae rotating opposite each other.  “Me either.  So, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” she said, holding the coffee mug to her face, as though she was going to take another sip, “that this ship needs another shuttle.”

“It does,” Quesh replied immediately.  “But we don’t have a schematic for another.”

Tamara sipped her coffee and then gave him a disgusted look.  “You have no imagination.  In fact, you do have schematics for another.  Get the readouts from the shuttle sitting in cargo bay one.  Yes, I know you’ve made a few aftermarket upgrades, but the original designs are in the shuttle’s computers.”

Both of the males were looking interested now.  They exchanged glances.  “All right, Xar, get on that.  Take your team and get started.  I want full schematics first.  No building and no replicator time until that is done.  We, all three, will examine them before any building gets done, understand?”

“Got it Chief,” the zheen replied.

“All right, let’s get to it.”

The two other engineers hadn’t been joking about the other berths.  The area was absolutely filthy, a centimeter of grime on every surface.  The walls, even the ceilings were covered in dirt.  The mattresses were stained and stunk.  The whole area had been sealed off, to contain the smell.  Tamara and her team had arrived with all sorts of cleaning supplies, buckets, sponges, mops, everything.  To help, she also had a trio of cleaning bots hovering along with them.

The entire group gagged as the hatch to the first area unsealed and the smell came out.  “That is awful!” was about the nicest comment that was made in Tamara’s group.  Tying washrags around their mouths and noses, they soldiered on.

It took about two hours with all of them working to get two of the berths cleaned out.  The machines had to be emptied twice, but they finally managed to make them livable.  All of them agreed the mattresses needed replacing, though they were clean now, so they were dragged out into the corridors to be broken down and replaced in the replicators.  After that time, though, those two rooms were immaculate.  The metal on the bunks gleamed, the walls were scrubbed, the floors had the years of grit removed, all the fixtures were repaired and functional, the refreshers were all cleaned out and ready for use.  The whole place had the pungent odor of industrial strength chemicals, but it was far preferable to what had previously been here.

Over the next day, the remaining rooms were cleaned, their mattresses all brought to the replicators for breakdown and replacement.  Once this was all completed, Tamara and her team collapsed onto the bunks in one of the rooms.

“Well, that took forever,” Pip grumbled, gulping water from a canteen he’d brought.

“I can’t believe there’s so much unused space,” Igraine commented from where she was sprawled on the bunk next to Rory.  “It seems as though there’s all this area that I never knew about.”

The others chuckled.  “You’ve only been aboard less than two weeks,” Mairi pointed out.  “I’ve been on for almost three years and I don’t think I’ve been down this way more than twice.  And the second time was on a dare.  Smelled better then, I will say.”

“So what’s with all this extra crew space, anyway?” Tamara asked.  “No one’s ever been down here?”

The three experienced crewmen shook their heads.  “Not on purpose anyway,” Pip replied.  “The Captain sort of sealed this area off about, what, ten years ago, Rory?”

The older man nodded, drinking from a water bottle.  “About that.  The crew shrank after bays six and eight were breached and we couldn’t fix it.  There was simply less cargo to carry and less profits to be had.  So the Captain had to release about forty or so people from their contracts.  They weren’t too happy being left on a farm planet, but what was he to do?  He couldn’t pay them anymore and we couldn’t fix the holds.”

“And by that time, this area of crew berths had gotten pretty wild and rowdy.  The Captain had his hands full trying to keep this tub going and couldn’t be bothered with what was going on down here.  After those crewmen left, instead of having us fix them all up, we just picked up the trash and sealed them up.  We turned off the power and the life support to economize and I don’t think many people have actually been down here at all since then.”  He rubbed the back of his head.  Then he gave a quick smile that turned to a grimace.  “Though I think that there were more than a few clandestine relations going on down here, if you must know.”  He was carefully not looking at any of them in the eye.”

“Oh, really?” Mairi asked, smirking.  “You pervert!  I’ll bet you were down here more than a time or two.”

His face changed to a closed, but smug mask.  “I certainly don’t know to what you are referring, you scurrilous liar.”

She grinned and patted him on the shoulder.

Tamara smiled and rolled her eyes.

While the cleaning and outright sterilization of crew berthing was going on, Quesh and two of his teams were in EVA suits, working diligently to patch the large holes in bay eight.  It was a slow process, as not everyone was fully up to speed on how to move around in suits.  It took a lot of practice and the Parkani demanded that everyone go slower and take their time.  He warned everyone that he wanted no accidents, no injuries.  And, shockingly, there were none.  Once the job was finished, one of the young new recruits tripped over the knee-knocker at the bottom of the hatch, bashing his shin painfully and tearing his suit.  The others mocked him mercilessly, of course, and even Quesh gave him a light cuff to the back of the head.  Though he did praise the klutz in the end.  “He did follow orders.  The job’s over.  He managed to get through the entire job before hurting himself.  That’s very good.  Now, you klutz, get down to the doctor and get treated.”

Time continued its petty pace.  Small repairs were made, accessible rooms were cleaned and made ready.  Cargo bay eight was turned into a recreational zone, with a running track around the outer edge.  Three tiers of platforms were attached to the inner side of the bay, and replicated workout equipment, deck chairs, small vid screens, even tables for games.  Cookie decided that, although the mess hall was his domain, he welcomed the idea that people could congregate in this other space as well.  It was certainly bigger and outfitted for more personnel.  Though he made sure that everyone knew that the mess hall was still a place that they could come to relax.  And also, that the cargo bay would be reverting to its primary function once the ship reached its destination on this trip.

Shifts went by; the ship continued on course.  Another meeting of the heads of engineering, the three this time, however, were meeting in the crew lounge.  The table before them held food, drinks, and datapads.  They had been making small talk for over an hour, and the cold that existed between the Parkani and the human seemed to be thawing.  They might not ever love one another, but it seemed as though the weeks of working together was making a difference.  Ka’Xarian was feasting on a plate of freeze dried kasha beetles.  The other two gave mild looks of distaste, but he ignored them, his antennae flicking in amusement at their discomfort.  The other two were making do with fruits, vegetables and yet another fish dish.  Cookie was a talented chef and so far didn‘t have any complaints, but after a month and a half into the trip, it was inevitable that people would start wishing for some more variety.

Parkani metabolism was very similar to human, so Quesh was able to eat the same foods as Tamara, though he couldn’t digest some things like lamb or coconut.  Cookie didn’t normally stock those things; natural ingredients like that were expensive.  That and he didn’t want to accidentally poison the ship’s chief engineer by adding something that he couldn’t metabolize into one of his stews.  He and Tamara were each partaking of some smoked fish with a salad, and each of them enjoying a cup of the fine Instow ale.

“Could we build more shield nodes?” Ka’Xarian asked, as his mouthparts gnashed and masticated a particularly fat beetle.

Tamara nodded, taking a swig of beer to wash down the bite of fish.  “Sure.  But we’ve talked about this.  The biggest problem is we don’t have the materials to build another.  Not enough for even one.”

The Parkani slurped a bite of food.  “What could we afford to sacrifice to make more?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she replied.  Sighing, she considered the question.  “Well, my fighter.  There are probably enough materials in it to make one.  The shuttle.  We could probably get two out of that.  Three nodes?”  She twisted her mouth.  “That would most likely get us to nearly thirty percent shield coverage.  At that amount of shield strength, we could make red level seven, possibly even break into orange level one.”

The other two exchanged looks, ones that indicated they were very for this idea.

She smiled.  “The problem with this is if we cannibalize the shuttle, we could get to Folston a great deal faster.  However, once we’re there, we will have no way to wrangle any more asteroids from the local belt.  We’d be forced to deal with the locals for anything we get.  We’d have to barter for materials from the surface of the planet.  Honestly, this isn’t a great option in my opinion.”

The sour looks she was getting indicated that they didn’t agree.

“Think of it this way, boys,” she said, taking another swig of beer.  “Once we get there, if we’ve got no shuttle, then we’ve got no way of shipping goods and people up and down from the planet.”  That seemed to get through to them.  “We would need to find another way to get the parts and materials we need to make more of the nodes.”

“What about the escape pod?” Quesh asked.  The other two stared at him.  “We could probably get a whole node out of that.”

Tamara nodded slowly.  “Now that the people aren’t in it anymore, it isn’t very useful.  And I don’t think that anyone else will ever want to get inside after that.”

Quesh shuddered at the thought.  “I know I certainly wouldn’t.  I’ll take my chances on the ship thank you very much.”

“Yeah, I think using the pod is a great idea.  We’d have to clear it with the Captain, first of all, but yes, I like that idea.”

“And your fighter?” Ka’Xarian pressed.

She grinned but shook her head.  “Nice try.  That’s my property.  And I understand that we could probably build another one, but it wouldn’t be the same.  This one is vintage, if a bit restored.  Me using the replicators to completely build another one just wouldn’t be the same.  We’re going to have to look elsewhere, boys.”

“Actually, Moxie,” a voice came from over her shoulder, “it’s my property.”

“You’re going to welch on our deal, Captain?” she said, without turning.  She calmly picked up her beer cup and took another drink.  “Because I’ve been holding up my end.”

The Captain came around the table, his own cup in his hand and taking another chair, sat down next to Ka’Xarian, who obligingly scooted his chair over to make room.  “I can confiscate it, Moxie,” he told her, a small smile on his lips.  “I would be perfectly within my rights to do so as Captain.”

She nodded.  “That’s right.  But it would piss me off that the Captain would go back on his word in a state of non-emergency, like the one we are in now.  There might be other ways to accomplish our goals without stealing my fighter.”

“I’d love to hear them,” he said, taking a sip from his cup.  “Please, enlighten me.”

Tamara could feel herself getting angry.  Once again, someone in authority was going to take the easy way out at her expense.  Once again, she’d somehow managed to get maneuvered into a position where this was going to happen to her.  And while her anger was certainly directed mostly at the Captain, she was holding a good portion of it back for herself.  She had let herself get manipulated.

“Well, all right.”  She set the cup down, faced them all as a group, since it was clear that the three of them were ganging up on her.  “There are a number of computer consoles that aren’t in use that we can use for this plan.  I saw a number of knick-knacks in cargo bay three that we can salvage.  The boat bay, even though it’s breached, I know there are some spare parts in there that we can use.  I’d have to get a full listing of everything, but there should be enough with all that for another shield node.”

The Captain looked at her without speaking for a few long moments.  “I want you to make this work, Moxie.  Quesh, you too.  I am not willing to spend another three and a half months in hyperspace.”  He slugged the rest of his drink, sighed, stood and left, leaving the cup on their table.

“So, I guess you’re going to go on that scavenger hunt you just mentioned, Samair,” Quesh said, slurping up some more fish.

Tamara shook her head.  “I guess I am.  But I am not giving up my ship, Quesh.  And you two are not taking it.  We will make this work with what other things we can find.”  She glared at the two of them.

They only laughed at her.

As it turned out, Tamara found enough parts to feed the replicator to make two shield nodes, in addition to the one that the escape pod could build.  She took no end of pleasure rubbing this in the males’ faces, though the Captain held back a smirk.   When Tamara called him on this, he threw back his head and roared in laughter.

“What is so funny?” she demanded.

“I knew that if I threatened your precious starfighter, that you would rise to the challenge, Moxie,” he said, poking a finger in her shoulder.  “You’re predictable.”

She fumed for a moment, kicking herself for allowing him to manipulate her again.  But then she softened.  He got what he wanted and Tamara got to keep her ship.  She wanted to hate the man for doing this, but she couldn’t.  It didn’t mean that she loved the feeling, however.

Still, with three additional shield nodes, once installed, they could raise the overall shield strength from eleven percent to about twenty-nine percent.  It would take some calibration, but they could increase their speed from Red level two to level seven.  They wouldn’t be able to safely break into Orange, not without work on the hyperdrive, as well as increased shield strength.  The Captain wasn’t happy about this, but he knew the futility of trying to demand more.  There simply weren’t enough resources to make these repairs and upgrades.

Next came the hard part.  “In order to install these shield nodes, we have to drop out of hyperspace.”  Tamara told them.  The engineers behind her nodded, but the Captain was unconvinced.

“Why do we have to stop?” he asked.  “Can’t you just walk on the outside of the hull in EVA suits?”              All three of them were staring at him now, like three siblings who were putting up with a dim youngest brother.  “I’ve apparently said something stupid,” he remarked, quickly catching their looks.

“Very, Captain,” the Parkani replied.  “Since we’re in hyperspace, even under the bubble of the shields, we are subject to the stresses of the environment.  Put simply, the shields are under enormous strain to keep the ship safe from the waves of tachyons and gravitons.  You don’t want to be out there if the shields were to fail.  Also, because we’re in a bubble of subspace, really, you have to stay connected to the ship.  If anything comes detached from the ship, say you skip too high and both feet are not touching the ship at the same time, you will vanish and be swept away.”

The Captain was nodding now.  “Right, I remember hearing that when I was a young officer on the ship.  If you were to drop a spanner or something, the spanner would just disappear.”

“Right.  The shields protect the ship, but they are just projected energy and force fields.  They don’t have any mass, so they don’t disappear.  But anything with mass, like say, my engineers, would be lost if they lose connection with the ship for even the barest instant.  I won’t risk it.  Besides,” he added, “in order to bring the new shield nodes online, we have to shut down the shields altogether and reinitialize all of them so we can calibrate them together.  We can’t do that in hyper.  And if we bring down the shield grid even for a second, the stresses of hyperspace would tear the ship apart.”

“All right then.  We drop out.  But I want to be back in hyper as soon as we can.”

“Of course, Captain.”

Dropping out of hyperspace was very similar to jumping into it.  Compared to what the bulk of the crew was used to, they barely noticed the transition.  If the sensors weren’t showing they were in normal space, or if they hadn’t looked out the occasional window to see the lack of the color washes over the shields, they would not know they had dropped back into normal space.

“We’re out of hyper,” George announced rather unceremoniously.  “No contacts on sensors.”

“Thank you, George,” the Captain replied.  “Serinda, tell Quesh to get moving.  I want to be back in hyperspace as soon as possible.”

“Aye, Captain,” she responded.  After a moment, she replied, “The Chief reports that his teams are underway.”

“Maintain sensor watch, George,” he ordered.  “If anything comes up on the displays, I want to know about it.”

“You got it, Captain,” the man answered, his eyes glued to his displays.

Tamara walked on the hull of the ship, leading her team to the place where the shield node emitter would be placed.  They manhandled the device with her, which would have been impossible inside the ship, but outside it was much easier because of the zero-g.  It was still difficult, because the device had a fair amount of mass and it didn’t like changing direction quickly.  But Tamara had trained her team well and while they were going slower than the captain would have liked, they were moving along at a good clip.

“It’s creepy being out here,” Pip commented, looking upward.

“Why is it any different out here, Pip?” Tamara asked, stepping over a scorched part of the hull.  It wasn’t a breach, but it was a weak spot.  “Tag that spot for repair later,” she commented, pointing.  “When we get to Folston, we’ll get some bots out here to scan the hull and do a proper survey for later repairs.”

“Right.”  Mairi entered some info on her datapad, though she didn’t stop walking.

Eventually they reached the site where the installation would take place.  There was another node already there, pitted and scorched.  “All right, let’s get this one cut free and then the new one hooked in.  We’re bringing back the old one.  We might be able to do a one-to-one replacement.”

“That’d make the Captain happy,” Rory commented.

“Though the amount of time it would take to do it might irritate him.”

“How much time?” the Captain’s voice broke in on their channel.

“Twenty minutes or so to cut this one free, another half hour to plug the new one in,” Tamara told him.  “Then forty minutes or so to lug the dead one back, about three hours to breakdown and replicate a new one, then another hour to bring the new one back out and hook it up.”

“How much faster can we go with a little more shield power?” he asked.

“Another node will give us about six percent more power, enough to get us to the first level of orange, shave another few days off the trip.”

“Then it’s worth another five hours sitting out here, wouldn’t you say?”

Tamara grinned.

It actually took closer to seven hours to get everything settled, with the Captain harassing them over the comms the entire time.  Finally, Tamara got so fed up that she actually swore at him and threatened to slap him if he didn’t leave them alone.  He laughed at her, asking if that was a proposition.

“No, Captain.  It’s a promise,” she snarled.

Finally, however, the last emitter was installed and everyone was back inside.  The Captain was on the bridge, preparing for jump.  “Quesh, what’s your status?”

“Everything’s all buttoned up, Captain,” the Parkani answered.  “Power grid is looking good, shields are online and active.  Holding at thirty-four percent.”

Far from as high as I would like, the Captain thought, but well within what I’m willing to wait for now.  “Very good, Chief.  Navigation, course plotted?”

“Yes, Captain.  Ready to go!”  The young man at the navigation console was extremely excited.

The Captain smirked.  “Helm?”

“Helm ready, Captain.  Hyperdrive is spun up, ready to jump.”

“Then by all means.  Get us to Folston.”  This empty space between stars has been giving me the willies ever since we stopped.  There’s literally nothing out here.  No stars, no planets, not even the stray rock.  “Let’s punch it.”

The helmsman pressed the control, again there was a fine tremor and the slight jolt and they were off again.  “We’re in the red.  Speed increasing.  Level two.  Three.  Four.”

The Captain found himself clutching the arms of his chair, though there was no detectable increase in vibration as the pilot called out the speed.  The whine of the hyperdrive was audible, but it was far lower in intensity from what he was used to, though as the pilot continued calling out the speed the whine increased.

“Red seven… we’ve broken through!  Speed leveling off at orange level one.  Power levels holding steady.  We’re looking good, Captain.”  He looked over his shoulder at the boss.  The whine decreased to a very dull hum.

“Good work, helm.  Estimated time of arrival?”

“We’ll be in Folston in thirty-seven days, nineteen hours and eleven minutes, Captain,” George replied.

“Hell of a lot better than the ninety or so we were looking forward to.”  He stood.  “Very well done, everybody.  Carry on.  Mister Miller, you have the watch.”

“Aye, Captain.  I’ve got the watch,” he said formally as the Captain left the bridge.

“Chief!” the Captain called as he entered the engineering spaces.  Quesh sighed as the man walked past all his watch standers.

“Yes, Captain.  I’m in here,” he replied from his office chair.

The man walked over and entered the tiny office.  “How’s my ship looking?”

“Good.  Shields are holding, power levels are steady, engines are running at best speed we can.  We’re going to have to do some serious overhauls when we get to Folston, but I think we’re up to the challenge.  And if we can get more power from the reactor, more power to the shields, we might even make yellow band by the time we’re ready to leave the system.”

“What’s this that Tamara was going on about for some other type of fuel?”

Quesh set down his data pad.  “It’s a good idea, actually.  She wants to switch us over from straight hydrogen from seawater to helium 3.  We mine it from gas giants using a collector she designed.  We haven’t built one yet and I think we’ll hold off until Folston until we do.  But she’s got the right idea.”

“Yeah, she mentioned something about more power.”

The Parkani nodded, leaning back in his chair a bit.  “Yes.  Hydrogen releases neutrons which causes radiation, causing much more wear on the reactor components and reduces the actual amount of power produced.  Deuterium or better yet, helium 3 have much lower levels of radiation, which gives us more bang for our credit, if you get my meaning.”

“I’m liking the sound of that,” the Captain admitted.

“Yes, and the best part…” Quesh trailed off for dramatic effect.

“Don’t keep me on tenterhooks here, Quesh.”

He smiled.  “The best part is that with our own collector, all we have to do is drop it off at the star system’s local gas giant, let it fill up, and then come by later and fill up our fuel tanks.”

Now the Captain was grinning as well.  “No more paying local authorities outrageous prices for seawater for their fuel.  I love it!”  He paused.  “Wait.  You said radiation.”

Quesh nodded.  “We’re safe, the reactor is shielded.”

“But you also said wear on the reactor components.”

“Yes.”

“Does that mean we can just empty out the old fuel and then add in the helium 3?”

Quesh twisted his mouth into a grimace.  “Sadly no.  What we’re going to have to do is scram the reactor, flush out the radiation, then tear the whole thing down and dump all the irradiated components.  From there we’ll have to build, essentially, a whole new reactor.  It’s going to be a major job.  I’m just glad we don’t have a spectacularly huge crew.  We’ll be on backup batteries to keep the life support running.  But I’ve talked with Xar and Samair.  We’re going to stock up on components and we’re going to get a micro reactor built first to power the replicators.  We’ll get everything built first, then shut down the main reactor and then from there we’ll replace it.”

“That’s a big job.”

Quesh rolled his eyes, a human expression he’d picked up over the years.  “You have no idea, Captain.  And batteries won’t last forever, so we’ll have to work quickly.”

“You’re going to make us completely helpless, you know.”

The engineer actually stopped and considered it.  “Well, there is another option.  We can build a slightly bigger secondary reactor than the micro one we’d planned, fuelled with helium three.  We do that first.  Then, we finish our business in Folston, our holds filled with raw materials and cargoes and jump out.”

“Okay…”  The Captain paused, waiting for the punchline.

“Then we do what we did just a little while ago.  We stop out in the middle of the jump and do our main reactor rebuild then.  Who’s going to be looking for a ship out in the void between star systems?”

“Isn’t that extremely dangerous?” the Captain asked, stunned.  “We’re out in the void, reactor offline.  And no one knows we’re out there?”

“That’s the point, Captain.  But we won’t be helpless.  That’s the point of the secondary reactor.  It won’t be enough to power the hyperdrive, but it would be enough to keep life support, shields, and main engines up.  We’d be able to run if someone is out there.”

“Not that there would be anywhere to go if someone is out there, Quesh,” he pointed out.

“What’s the alternative, Captain?” the Parkani asked, frowning.  “We can’t do the teardown and rebuild in Folston, we both agree that’s probably not the best of ideas.  We have to do these repairs sometime soon, especially if we want to switch over to the better fuel.”

The Captain sighed.  “Let me think about it.  Get started on whatever prep you can do now, but I’ll decide what we do when we get to Folston.”

“Course, Captain,” he said, saluting with his coffee mug.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Morale was up considerably since the pit stop in the void.  The prospect of only another month ahead of them instead of three and a half times that had perked up the entire crew.  They were laughing and joking with each other again, instead of simply adopting an ever spiraling depression as the length of the trip in hyperspace loomed before them.

They were all excited about the repairs to the ship, the possibility for profit on the other end of the jump, all were waiting the time when the Captain would announce that they were jumping into Folston.

He was there.  Following.  She could hear that laugh, that voice; grating, harsh, and yet nasal.  She was running.  She didn’t know where, really.  She could hear her own footfalls on the deckplates of Hudora Station.  And yet he was always there.  Always only a few steps behind.

Her heart was hammering in her chest.  It was a pain, a never ending pounding.  But she couldn’t concern herself with that.  Her breath was coming in gasps, her muscles burned with the running but she never seemed to gain any ground.

“I don’t think so, bitch.”  His voice, arrogant, and yet this time, terrifying.

She raced around a corner but he was there, waiting for her.  “I don’t think so.  The Captain and I have other plans for you.  But don’t worry, you are going to die.”  His hand flashed out like lightning, grabbing her scalp.  A gun was pointed at her and his grip on her hair was like iron.  He dragged her along the corridor, as she writhed and screamed.  It did no good, she couldn’t break free, the pain in her head was matched by that in her chest, as both her heart tried to batter its way out of her rib cage and her lungs threatened to burst from the exertion and the screaming.

Eventually, the journey ended.  Her body felt as though a bolt of lightning had struck her.  She knew this corridor.  The escape pod hatch lay before her.  He released her, flinging her against the bulkhead right next to the door.  She began to beg.

“No, no, no, no, no,” her voice squeaked.  “I’m not going in there.”

The smile on his face was pure malice.  “Oh, yes you are.  You were lucky to escape me, twice now.  You think you’ve won.  But you haven’t.”  He leaned down, putting his face right next to hers.  “It’s just you, deluding yourself to think that you could escape me a third time.”

“No!” she shrieked.

“Get in the pod!  Now!” he ordered.

Tamara tried to fight him, tried to disobey, but her traitorous muscles brought her to her feet.  She crawled inside the pod, the mantra of “No, no, no, no, no,” constantly coming from her lips.  “You can’t do this!”

“I let you get away twice before, bitch,” he bit back, though his voice never rose above a murmur.  “Not this time.  This time,” he brandished the gun, “I shoot you between the eyes and then I launch the pod.”

“No!” she screamed.  “No!  Don’t!”

He raised the gun.  He fired.

The world went dark.

[I am beginning to understand.]

Chapter 11

Tamara opened her eyes.  She was lying on her bunk, in her quarters.  With a panicked gasp, she sat up straight, breathing so fast she wasn’t actually retaining any of the air she was sucking into her lungs.  Her heart was hammering away in her chest, but as the familiar surroundings became clearer, she began to calm down.

[Are you all right, Tamara?]

She didn’t answer.  Instead, she flung the blanket off her and rushed into the refresher where she was violently sick.  When her stomach was empty, bile came up.  After it was finally over, she lay on the tile, feeling the coolness on her cheek.

[This behavior you are displaying is causing me concern, Tamara.  Please, are you all right?]

“It was a nightmare,” she groaned, her throat raw.  Thankfully, the sick hadn’t splashed onto the floor; she had managed to get it all into the toilet.  “Were you able to see it?”

[I was.]

She lay on the deck for another moment before pushing herself to a sitting position and then clambering unceremoniously to her feet.  Stripping out of her ship tee and underclothes, she climbed into the shower, letting the hot water sluice over her.

A bubble came through the water pipe, causing the water to spurt and flow irregularly for an instant.

Gunshots.  A fusillade of bullets coming straight at her.  She screamed and flung herself to the back end of the shower, landing painfully.  Tamara lay there shaking, shivering even though the water was quite warm.  There were no gunshots.  No one was in the room with her.

[Gunshots?  There is no one in your quarters with you, Tamara.]

She drew in a long, shuddering gasp.  “I know that, thank you.  I think it was a panic attack.”

[Why are you panicking?]

She sobbed, unaware that tears were streaming down her face due to the water of the shower.  “I don’t know.  I keep remembering...remembering…”

[I understand.  You are remembering the scene with the man with the gun at the escape pod.]

Tamara picked herself up off the floor of the shower, her breath coming in little gasps.  Squaring her shoulders, she forced herself to calm down.  Taking the soap, she cleaned herself, then shut off the water and got out, grabbing the towel.

[Are you going back into your rest cycle?]

“No,” she replied.  “I’m going to get some coffee and something to eat.  I think I want to be around other people.”

[I am here with you.]

This time, Tamara actually smiled.  “Yes, you are.  But I think I want more than just one other person with me right now.  I’d like to be surrounded by people.”

[I understand.]

“Do you?  I don’t want you to feel insulted.  I want you to understand that this isn’t about you.  These are my own personal issues that I’m trying to deal with.”

[And being around other people helps.]  The AI was asking a question.

“It helps me cope,” she answered honestly.  “I’m not sure how well it actually helps me deal with it.”

[I shall think on this.]

She snorted.  “Please do.  If you come up with any answers, would you share them with me?”

[Of course, Tamara.]

When she arrived in the mess hall, it was deserted.  Checking her watch, she saw that it was only 02:23, ship’s time.  Cookie wouldn’t be in for another three hours.  She sighed.  Walking to the ready cooler, she took a sandwich.  Grabbing a plate and a mug, she walked to the coffee urn and poured herself a cup.  She sat down at the table to eat.

[There isn’t anyone here, Tamara.]

She sighed.  “No, there isn’t.”  She took a bite of the sandwich.  “I wish that there was.”

[Maybe you should go and find someone.]

Tamara chuckled.  “Maybe I should.  I’ll finish this up and then go for a walk.”

She eventually did find a few people, some of the cargo workers working out in bay eight.  They were busy running laps and she didn’t want to disturb them.  She sat down on one of the lounge chairs, just soaking in the atmosphere, being around people but not in a crowd.  Eventually, she got up, stepped onto the track and began to run.

Tamara went slowly, it had been a while since she’d engaged in this kind of physical activity and she was still sore from falling over in the shower.  Her lungs still burned from all the hyperventilating and screaming she’d done in her quarters.  She allowed herself to forget about the present, just feel the rhythm of her feet on the track, concentrate on her breathing, keeping a steady pace.  Before she knew it, over an hour had passed.

She smiled.  She was drenched in sweat, her whole body ached, and she was wheezing like a set of leaky bellows, but she felt exhilarated.  It was the first time in quite a while that she actually felt relaxed.

[But you’re more tired now than you were before,] the AI protested.

“Yes I am,” she whispered, the corners of her lips remaining turned up.  “But the run I think… it helped.  The exercise helped to clear my head.  And yes, I’m quite tired and sore, but it loosened me up a bit.  I was really tense after… earlier.”

[This is confusing to me.]

“It doesn’t make much sense to me either,” she admitted.  “It just seems to be the way the human mind works.  I’m sure there’s perfectly scientific and logical explanations for everything.  Exercise causing the brain into releasing endorphins into the body, things like that.  And it all makes sense.  Personally, I like to think that it allows you to get into sort of a… meditative state, I guess.  You do the workout and the outside world fades away and your mind can process things without having all the chatter and din of the real world.”

The AI didn’t seem to have anything to say to that.  She didn’t have much more to add, so Tamara headed back to her quarters for another shower and greatly daring, a short nap.

The arrival at the hyper limit was a relief for everyone.  The trip in hyperspace hadn’t been that bad, actually, it had been a welcome respite.  Oh, there had been work to do the entire trip, even before the increase in speed after the “pit stop” as everyone was calling it.  Maintenance, small repairs, watches to be stood.  But now, the routine was being broken by the big transition, the end of the trip from “here” when it became “there”.

They were ten minutes from reversion when Tamara came up to the bridge.  “Permission to enter the bridge?”

The Captain turned and looked over at her.  “Granted.  What’s so important?”

“I’m thinking that we need to rethink our entrance to Folston.”

He raised an eyebrow.  “What does that mean?”

“When we got to Instow, we dropped out normally at the hyper limit, right?”

“Correct.”

“I’m thinking we need to drop out a few seconds early, which would give us a few hundred thousand kilometers of wiggle room.”

The Captain nodded slowly.  “Good thinking.  Helm, you heard the lady.  Drop us out twenty seconds from the limit.”

“Roger, Captain,” the pilot said, hands moving over the controls.

He pressed a stud on his chair and the PA system activated shipwide.  “All hands, this is the Captain.  We are going to be dropping out of hyperspace early.  We all remember what happened at Instow and I do not wish a repeat of that.  So I want all hands to be prepared for combat.  All security teams, I want you armed and ready to repel boarders.  I will provide updates as we have them.  That is all for now.”

“Inspiring speech, Captain,” Tamara remarked, smirking.  “I’m sure the new kids are very happy with that explanation.”

He shrugged.  “They’ll live.  I want to make sure that we do as well.  George, you be ready with those sensors.”

“Ready, Captain.  We’ll go live as soon as we drop back into normal space.”

“Very good.”  He turned to another station.  “Astrogation.  I want a plot for emergency jump should anybody be waiting for us when we get there.”

But George spoke up before the astrogator could.  “Captain, we don’t have the fuel for that.  We’re committed to this system.”

The Captain grimaced.  “Great.  How bad are we talking?”

George shrugged, going over the numbers.  “We have enough for a transit across the star system, if we’re economical with the engines.  But we don’t have anywhere near enough to make it to another star system.”

“Very well.”

“One minute to modified normal space reversion,” the pilot reported.

Everyone on the bridge tensed as the clock ran down.  Finally, the time reached zero and the pilot pressed the control.  The Grania Estelle exited hyperspace in a wash of tachyons, a burst of color on the sensors for an instant as the ship came back into normal space.

“Report.”

George checked his sensors.  “We’ve dropped out of hyper 1.6 million kilometers from the hyper limit.  No ships are showing up in range, though I am showing neutrino emissions from one ship in orbit of the primary planet.  They’re no threat to us at this range.”  He grinned.  “Listen to me.  Four months ago we had to wait until we were right on top of something to see it.  Now I’m seeing a ship half a star system away!”

Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.  “Helm, plot a course for the gas giant.  We’ll drop off the collector and then head in system.  Moxie, if you please, we’re going to need a collector to drop.”

She grinned at him.  “Already in process, Captain.  It’ll be ready by the time we get there.”

“Approaching the gas giant, Captain,” the helmsman reported.

“Very well.  Launch the shuttle, let’s get that collector out there.”

The cargo bay door opened and the shuttle slid out into space.  Mairi banked away from the freighter, headed for the upper atmosphere of the Jovian.  It was the work of only moments to get to the optimal release range for the collector.  “Open the bay, Pip.  Let it out.”

“Copy that,” the young man replied, pressing the button.  The cargo hatch popped and the bay’s atmosphere evacuated.  The collector wasn’t a pretty contraption, but the engineers who had built the thing had all checked off on it.  After that, Tamara, Ka’Xarian and even Chief Quesh had given it a full workover.  Since the collector was going to be gathering up the fuel that they were going to be using form now on.  They could not afford for it to fail.

Using the grabber arm connected to the shuttle, Pip gingerly lifted the collector and pulled it out into the emptiness of space and released it into the upper atmosphere.  The collector slid down into the atmosphere, looking as though it would continue dropping until it was crushed.  Then the stabilizer jets fired and it steadied out.

“Activating collector.”  Pip pressed a control on his datapad and the systems activated.  His eyes scanned over the readouts.  “Looking good.  The system will be filled in forty hours.  Need to swing back here by then to pick it up.”

“Captain, this is shuttle one,” Mairi said, opening a channel to the Grania Estelle.  “Collector dropped and online.  Heading back to the barn now.”

“Understood, shuttle one.”

“All right, people.  Once the shuttle is back aboard, we head for Folston.  Serinda, once we’re moving, send a message to that ship.  Tell them who we are and see if you can get a response.”

“Yes, Captain.  Sending now.”  She tapped a few controls.  “This is the freighter Grania Estelle to the unidentified vessel in orbit of Folston.  We are looking for opportunities to trade.  Please respond.”

“How long until we can expect an answer?”

“They’re eight light minutes away, Captain,” Serinda replied.  “Probably ten minutes at best guess.”

He nodded.  The light speed delay was frustrating, but it was a fact of life that they all had to deal with.  In fact, it was something that everyone had to deal with, as no one had developed a faster than light communication system yet.  It seemed strange that in a time when it was commonplace for ships to travel faster than light and yet no one could send messages any faster than the speed of light.  On a planetary surface it was fast enough to be done instantly, but in the vastness of space, it took time.

Twenty minutes passed and Serinda spoke up.  “Captain, incoming message from the ship.  Audio only.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“…is the freighter Emilia Walker to Grania Estelle.  We are affecting repairs in orbit of Folston, as well as looking for opportunities for trade and profit.  We have no hostile intent.  We are not detecting you at this time, please relay your position.”

“What?” Serinda burst out.  “They can’t see us, but they’re asking for our information?”

The Captain smiled.  “It’s what we were doing before the sensors got upgraded, Serinda,” he reminded her.  “In fact, I think we sold Folston a set of comm gear the last time we were here, what… two years ago?  Unless they’ve had a win fall like we did, I don’t see why we should expect them to have any better gear now.”

She flushed.  “I guess I’m used to the gear we have now.  But even still.  If you can’t see who’s actually calling you, why would you answer?  Wouldn’t it be better to wait until you can see them?”

“I suppose.  If they can actually see you anyway, I suppose it might be best to try and get as much information as you can.”  He nodded.  “Speaking of which, Serinda, tell them we mean no harm and that we’re coming in.  Give our position, but put it five degrees to port and up.  I want them to see us coming, but I don’t want them to have our exact position.  Or on the planet either, if they’ve got any designs on attacking us.”

She smiled.  “Aye, Captain.  I’m on it.”

On the way in, the shuttle made two separate flights, bringing in two large asteroids to break apart.  Cargo bay eight was dismantled from a lounge area back into a storage bay.  Ka’Xarian had led a team on the outside of the hull, working to seal the bay from the outer side.  A half dozen bots were skittering around the area of the hull, sealing what small microfractures and tiny breaches that they could, marking the bigger ones for the work crews to get to.  Xar and his teams, eight people in total, were tirelessly filling the holes with sealant and then welding plates over them to enclose the breaches completely.  It wasn’t a proper job, they’d have to unskin the entire section and then replace it with all new hull.  But as Tamara had said earlier, it didn’t need to be.  This was a cargo ship, not a battlecruiser.  By the time the second rock was brought in, bay eight was repaired and cleared out and the shuttle easily slipped the rock into inside where it was tethered and then cut apart for materials.  A bit of water was in this one, which helped to raise the level of water in the fuel tanks.

By the time the Grania Estelle made orbit, healthy progress was being made on cargo bay seven, though they all knew it would be nearly two weeks of work at least before it was closed up enough to use.  A huge rent in the hull sliced through in a roughly diagonal direction, cutting through hull, doors, a rent three meters wide at its largest part.  They were having to plate over it, making it look like a hodgepodge of repairs; like they were making a quilt and tacking it onto the outside.  The doors were also a problem, they’d had to be removed, cut apart and then fed into the replicators for new material.  Once it was done, however, the shiny new metal clashed with the slightly corroded older material.  The new doors that were installed were “a wonder” as one of the techs said.  They were smooth and would open and close exactly as the operator wanted, something that was unusual for the sometimes sticky and cranky doors on a few of the other bays.  The other doors still worked and it wasn’t a high priority for repair, so they were left as they were.

The other ship, Emilia Walker, was a much smaller vessel than the new arrival.  Whereas the Grania Estelle was a bulk hauler intended to move huge amounts of cargo between the starts, Emilia Walker was a fast tramp freighter, meant to move quickly, with probably more high value cargoes than what the Grania Estelle if in much smaller amounts.  Based on the sensor scans of the smaller ship, it most likely would be able to achieve higher speeds in normal space than the lumbering bulk hauler, meaning they could be in hyperspace by the time Grania Estelle was a quarter of the way to the hyper limit.  Their overheads would be lower of course, less to maintain and a much smaller crew.  Emilia Walker probably only needed a crew of ten at the most.

But based on further scans, it appeared that “effecting repairs” was an understatement.  Their primary engines were down, shields were down, and intermittent power spikes indicated their power grid was fluctuating as well.

“They’re in bad shape, according to these readings,” Quesh admitted.  “It’ll take a whole whack of new parts to get them going again.”

The Captain got a mischievous look in his eye.  “Then perhaps we might offer them our services.  See what kinds of fixes we can do.”

Quesh started.  “Captain?  You want to help a competitor?”

The Captain shrugged.  “He’s not in our league, Quesh.  Look at it.  That can carry, what maybe a hundred metric tons?  We can carry fit nearly their whole ship in bay seven.  They might get there quicker than us, but even that’s a stretch.  Once we get the other engines online, we’re going to be much better off.  Besides, if we can get them up and running, and they pay us, they might spread the word to other freighters.  And we can start a little repair business.”

“But what about our own repairs?”

“Keep on that,” he indicated.  “I want to be well fitted out before we leave here, but I’m willing to give two more weeks to give people time for leave, and to get repairs done.  And if possible, I’d like to be in the upper levels of yellow band.”

Quesh smiled.  “Guess I’ll need to break out the whip.”

He clapped the Parkani on one of his upper shoulders.  “Whatever you need to do, but please give your crews at least two days off.  I want everyone to have at least some time.”

Tamara was taking a break.  She and the others had been working nonstop since their arrival in the Folston system and she had decided she wanted a few hours to herself.  Sealing the Perdition's cockpit around her, she started the launch sequence.  Seconds later, the main engines ignited, the electronics powered up and kicking in the repulsors, the fighter hovered off the deck.  Sending a signal through her implants, the bay depressurized and bay doors opened.

She keyed her comms.  "Bridge, this is Moxie One.  I'm going out for a little joyride.  I'll be back in an hour."

Tamara heard Serinda chuckle.  "If you say so Em-One.  We'll keep the light on.  Call if you need assistance."

"Same to you, Bridge."  Ending the call, Tamara goosed the thrusters and the fighter rushed out into the void.  The cargo bay doors closed behind her; the engineering crews needed access to the bay and the shuttle.  Tamara sighed.  I think the next priority is the boat bay.  We need to get this ship out of the cargo bay and the shuttle back where it belongs.  Besides, having a giant bay empty except for a pair of sublight craft is an awful waste of space for a cargo vessel.

She went out to put the fighter through its paces.  She did a flyby of the other ship in orbit, the Emilia Walker.  It was a mess.  The Perdition's sensors sucked up every piece of data they could get about the other ship.  It was a breach of etiquette; it was quite rude to simply run your scanners over someone else's ship without their permission or without an emergency, but the state of the other ship's sensors, or lack thereof, made her feel better.  Based on the amount of corrosion, decay and shoddy maintenance, it was unlikely that the Emilia Walker would even realize that Tamara had scanned them.  It didn't really make her feel any better about it, but she decided it was information she was going to need.

"Emilia Walker, this is Moxie One, off the Grania Estelle.  I'm in the starfighter off your starboard bow.  Please do not be alarmed and do not fire.  I am a friendly, out on a joyride.  If you are in need of assistance, please call.  Em-One out."

Predictably, they didn't respond, though she did note that Grania Estelle was listening in on the transmission.  Serinda didn't call her, but she suspected that the Captain would be calling her to see him once she returned to the ship.  She wasn't much looking forward to that.

Soaring past the tramp freighter, she continued her maneuvers.  After fifty minutes of fun, she banked and headed back to the Grania Estelle.   When she was within ten kilometers, the cargo bay doors opened on their own.  "Grania Estelle, this is Em-One.  Thanks for opening the bay.  Landing now."

Serinda came on the comm.  "Copy that, Em-One.  Once you're in, the Captain wants to speak with you in the wardroom soonest."

"I need to go over a few things first," she said, playing for time.  She did have some things to do on the fighter, routine maintenance that had to be performed, refueling, things that normally a deck crew chief aboard a carrier would take care of.  Since she was acting as her own crew chief, she had to perform these tasks herself.  It didn't bother her, in fact, she quite enjoyed the work.  She didn't think she would enjoy it so much if she was handling a landing deck with a full squadron and pilots and other officers haranguing her and her deck gang to hustle it up.  But as it was only just her and so she enjoyed it.  "Be about an hour."

Tamara could hear Serinda's shake of the head.  "Sorry, Em-One.  He says soonest."

Tamara sighed.  When the Captain, any ship Captain, asked to see you "soonest" or "at your earliest convenience" that was spacer-speak for "drop what you're doing and get to the wardroom now."  "Copy that.  Landing now, securing the fighter and then I'll be on my way."

"Understood," the other woman replied.  "I'll let him know."

Without bothering to change, Tamara hustled through the ship to the wardroom.  She didn't run, but she definitely walked with a purpose.  Crewmen nodded to her, a few smiled; both of those she returned.  When she arrived, she found the Captain waiting for her, a mug of coffee in his hand.  She also found that Taja was seated at the table, a datapad in her hands.  She didn't look up as Tamara entered, she was engrossed in whatever it was she was working on.

"Ah, Moxie, good.  We need to talk," the Captain said with a serious look on his face.

Tamara took a breath.  She wasn't scared of this man, but she was apprehensive at his words.  "How can I help, Captain?"

"Why did you contact the other ship?"  His words were dead serious.  There was no humor in his eyes.  Taja, Tamara noticed, was carefully not looking up from her datapad.

"I believe my message was clear, Captain," Tamara answered.  "I don't know what kind of armament the ship had, or if it even functioned and I didn't want some nervous freighter-jockey taking potshots at me.  Also, I wanted them to know that I would assist if they had any problems."

He eyed her for a very long moment.  "And that's all?"

She plastered an innocent look on her face.  It was all, but he had no reason to believe that.  "What else would there be?"

Now he sighed.  "Fine.  That wasn't really why I called you in here anyway.  I want you to take a team over to the Emilia Walker and do a full survey."

Tamara blinked.  That wasn't what she'd expected.  "Are we bringing a security detachment with us?  I won't be a part of a raid."

He chuckled.  "You will if I order you."

Her face hardened.  "No, Captain.  I won't.  In fact, I've done more than enough work to justify the cost of my fighter.  I could get off here."

Now his face hardened.  "Why do I put up with you?" he demanded.  "Fine.  No, we're not raiding the ship.  I've been in touch with their Captain and they're looking to trade."

"And you promised my services?"

"Actually, I haven't promised anything.  I just want you to get a team ready.  Speak with Quesh, tell him you've got my permission.  The Captain of the Emilia Walker is coming over here.  I'm going to give him a quick tour, he's going to be amazed and envious and then I'm going to be offering you and your team's services."

Tamara nodded.  "That's fine.  Though I think you might need to give detached pay to the team.  If my scan data from my flyby is at all accurate, she's in bad shape."

He raised an eyebrow and even Taja, who was still pretending to be completely absorbed in her datapad chuckled.  "Detached pay?  This isn't the Republic Navy, Moxie.  We're a cargo vessel."

She shrugged.  "I tried."

The Captain of the Emilia Walker was a thin man, almost gaunt, as though his ship had been on short rations.  Judging by the state of his ship, that might not be a bad estimate.  When he stepped out of cargo bay one, he looked around the bay in wonder.

"Wasting a cargo bay for shuttles and a fighter!  But it's all so clean!"  The man's head looked as though it was on a swivel; it never stayed still for long.

Vincent Eamonn met him at the main cargo doors heading into the ship, Taja and Corajen with him.  The first was there to help out if any questions came up about trade deals, the second was there in case the other captain decided to try anything.  She only had her sidearm and it was holstered on her thigh, but then, the lupusan herself was a weapon and scans had showed he wasn't bringing any weapons aboard.

"I see you like one of my cargo bays, Captain," he said.

"Yes, I do!"  The man reached out a hand.  Eamonn shook it.  "Captain Frederick Vosteros of the Emilia Walker."

"Vincent Eamonn," the Captain returned.  "Grania Estelle."  He gestured and the four of them began walking.

They began the nickel tour and through all of it, Captain Vosteros maintained his look of wide-eyed wonder.  They showed him the active cargo bays and replicator one.  The man's eyes nearly goggled out of his head when he saw three of the techs manhandling a chunk of metal into the replicator to break it down.

"What are they doing?" Vosteros asked, fascinated.

The Captain gestured.  "They are loading a piece of the boat bay doors into the replicator to break it down for raw materials."

"The boat bay?  You mean you actually have one?"

Eamonn looked over at him.  "Of course.  The only reason we're using a cargo bay is that we took some damage to our boat bay a few months ago.  We're only just now able to get around to fixing it.  I assume they're rebuilding the doors."

One of the techs spoke to his fellows and the three of them gave the chunk of metal a heave and it slid neatly into the replicator.  The one who spoke closed the main door and then glanced inside as the constructor matrix went to work tearing down the metal.  Vosteros was enraptured.

"I can't believe you have working replicators," he said, his voice dripping with envy.

Eamonn nodded in understanding.  "They are certainly useful.  It's one of the services we offer."

Vosteros blinked, not following.  "I don't understand."

"For a fee, we would be happy to sell replacement parts that you would need aboard your own ship."

The man blinked in surprise, then his eyes narrowed.  "What kind of fee?"  Taja helpfully handed over a data pad, showing a list of items and fees.  Vosteros nodded slightly.  "Well, these are quite reasonable.  I think I might have to have a talk with my purser and get back to you.  I need a lot of things."

"That's another issue," Eamonn replied.  "If you like, I can send over one of my engineering teams over to your ship for a full survey and a software cleansing."

"Cleansing?" he asked suspiciously.

"Cleansing," the Captain repeated.  "We had the same problem.  Our system was laden with viruses and faults which was slowing down our entire computer system.  We got it taken care of and now everything runs smoothly."

"And how much with this cost me?" he asked in resignation.

Taja named a figure.

Vosteros blanched slightly, but then color returned to his face.  "Yes," he said finally.  "I would like that.  I have to tell you though, I don't have the funds to be able to afford everything I need.  We're a very small operation and trying to hold my ship together has been absorbing almost all my funds."

Eamonn nodded sagely.  "I understand, believe me.  Until we got our replicators running properly, we were having similar problems.  Let's get the survey and cleanse done and then we can talk about payment.  I don't want to cheat you and I also don't want to fly off knowing we could have helped."  Vosteros gave him a hairy eyeball, but didn't comment.  Eamonn nodded to Taja, who pulled out a communicator, flipped it open and began speaking.  When she finished, he said, "I'm having my team gear up now.  If you like you can accompany them back over, or if you prefer, I can bring you to my bridge and you can call your ship and let your people know they're coming."  He paused.  "That is, if you're still interested."

Vosteros nodded.  "I'm loathe to see the report on what they find wrong with my ship, but I'm quite interested in that software 'cleanse' that you mentioned."

The first thing that Tamara and her team noticed when they stepped aboard the Emilia Walker was the smell.  Every ship that Tamara had been on had its own particular odor.  Some had the strong stinging bouquet of industrial cleaners, as though the crew might actually enjoy that antiseptic smell.  Others smelled like food from the galley and people.   The life support scrubbers on the Emilia Walker should have taken care of the funk, but obviously they weren't.  It was a meaty smell, a blending of putrid garbage and unwashed bodies.  It pervaded the nostrils and olfactory senses of everyone who came aboard and the smallest reaction was a wince.  Mairi actually looked as though she might be sick.

"Hold it together people," Tamara scolded.  "We're doing business with these people, we don't want to offend them."  There was a chorus of groans, but everyone nodded.  Taking out her datapad, Tamara started taking notes.  First on the list: life support overhaul.  Second item on that list: a thorough scrubbing of the inside of the ship.

Stepping forward was a stocky man in a grubby ship suit.  The suit had a symbol on the right breast indicating he was a member of the ship's company.  The symbol was a bird, possibly a dove, flying over a shooting star.  He had grease stains on his hands and judging by the sheen of sweat and grime on his face and neck, it looked as though he hadn't had a shower in at least two days.  He walked up to them, a belligerent look on his face.

"And what the hell is all this?" he demanded, his nasal, whiny voice causing Tamara to wince.  With the volume of that voice, it was actually painful to hear him speak.  "Who the hell are you people?"

"We're an engineering team from the Grania Estelle," Tamara replied calmly.  She activated her visual and audio functions on her implants.  She saw the name 'Coolidge' sewn in above the symbol.  "Your captain hired us to do a full survey of the ship for repairs, Mister Coolidge."

But the man was shaking his head.  "Hell, no, lady.  No one goes into my engine spaces without my permission."  He cracked the knuckles on his big hands.   "So all of you can just turn your asses right around and get the hell off my ship."

Tamara shrugged.  "You heard the man, kids.  Let's go.  We've got work back on the Grania Estelle anyway.  I want to get some more of the external hull repairs done."

The man gave a lascivious grin as he watched them all leave.  "That's right.  Get off my ship, Scarface."

A laugh forced its way out of her throat.  She couldn't help it.  Scarface?  Are we on the playground now?  "Back on the shuttle," she ordered.  "Sorry to have taken up your time."

"You laughing at me, bitch?" he demanded, planting his fists on his hips.

She looked him up and down.  He just looked... ludicrous.  "Yes, Mister Coolidge, I am.  And since my ship is functioning and yours isn't, you can explain to your captain why we left and left him stranded.  Good day."  Stepping back through the hatch, she pulled it closed behind her.

Mairi was taking deep breaths of the shuttle's cool, clean atmo.  "By the stars it stinks in there," she complained.  "I seriously thought I was going to throw up."

Tamara nodded.  "It was pretty bad."

"Are all other ships like that?" Victor asked.  "I mean, Grania Estelle isn't in the best of shape, but she doesn't stink.  And we're doing serious work to try and fix it.  If that guy is the head of engineering, I would say he's dragging his feet."

Pip shrugged.  "Best scenario, he's in over his head and is all dirty and belligerent because he doesn't know any better.  He's covering for the fact that he really can't handle all the responsibility.  Worst case?  He's deliberately dragging his feet because it gives him a sense of control and the rest of the ship is afraid to deal with him."

"Cora would scare the stink out of him," Rory said darkly.

But Mairi shook her head.  "No way.  I mean, you're right, she would.  But with her nose she'd take one whiff of the atmo in there and pass out."  She shivered at the memory.

"At least," Tamara agreed, remembering the lupusan's acute sense of smell.  "All right, get us back to the ship."

The Captain was waiting for them as they landed in the cargo bay.  The boat bay was still under construction and would still be for at least another week.  The Captain and his cargo specialist were itching to get cargo bay one back to its intended use.  As the ramp lowered once the hold was repressurized, he opened the hatch and entered the bay.

"What the hell is going on?" he demanded.

"Take ten, guys," Tamara told the rest of her team.  "Head down to the mess hall and get some coffee.  I'll join you in a few minutes."

The Captain fumed for a moment while the others nervously left.  He had the patience not to say anything until the others had left and closed the hatch.  "Why are you back here, Moxie?"  His tone was not friendly.  "I sent you over there to do a job."

"Yes, you did," she replied reasonably.  "And when we got there, the engineer there refused to give us access to the ship.  He was of the opinion that none of us were going to be doing anything.  Aside from attacking him, I saw no reason why we should risk injury or further embarrassment by letting him hold us up.  So I turned us around and left."

"You were on that ship less than five minutes," he protested angrily.  "You couldn't talk to this guy for more than five minutes?"

She held her ground.  "He wasn't going to be reasonable.  I had the distinct impression that if I argued even just a little more, he would have tried to hit me."

He stood there, fuming for another moment.  "I'm going to have to speak with Captain Vosteros about this."

She nodded.  "I'll go with you if you'd like.  I made a recording on my implants.  I can upload it to a data disc so you can both see it if you like."

He blinked.  "Yes," he said slowly.  "I want to see this great beast that held you up."

"Then let's get to a terminal and I'll get you the copy."

Ten minutes later, the Captain turned off the recording on the display and ejected the data disc.  "That little puke..."  The menace in his voice was almost palpable.

"Softly, Captain," she warned.  They weren't in the privacy of his stateroom or even the wardroom.  They were standing in the corridor outside the cargo bay, using the cargo terminal to upload and view the video.

"With me," he ordered and set off down the corridor without waiting, fully confident that she would follow.  She did, only to see what he was going to do and perhaps restrain him if he got too angry.

They reached the wardroom a few minutes later, where Captain Vosteros was speaking with Taja, their heads together over her datapad.  The man looked up, a confused smile on his face.  "Captain!  And is this your engineer?  I thought she was leading her team over to my ship."

"She did."  Eamonn tossed the data disc, which was only about a centimeter in diameter across the table to him.  It bounced and slid to a stop against Vosteros's hand, which was resting on the table.  "You might want to view this.  It shows the reason why my team went over there and then came all the way back."

Vosteros blanched.  Picking up the disc, he scanned it into his datapad and ran the video.  His face was resigned and then grew livid.  When the video ended, he leapt to his feet.  "That bastard!"  He looked to his fellow Captain.  "Vincent, I need a ride back to my ship and your team to accompany me.  A member of my crew needs to be taught a lesson."

"A harsh one, I hope," the Captain replied, crossing his arms over his chest.  "I've been wasting a lot of fuel on these trips.  Not to mention the time my engineering team could be working on other projects."

Vosteros nodded in complete agreement.  "Oh, believe me, I'm going to tear strips out of his hide.  He'll be lucky if I don't space him."

"We need to have a serious discussion, Frederick," Vincent replied.  "Go and get your ship straightened out.  But after that, we're going to need to talk if you want to continue our business relationship.  My team will accompany you, but they will stay aboard the shuttle until they get the go ahead.  I'm also going to be sending along a security team.  I don't want any more of this nonsense slowing down our agreements."

Vosteros clearly wasn't happy about the idea that an armed boarding party was going to be brought on his ship.  But he realized that he needed this transaction with Eamonn if his ship was ever going to fly again.  He knew he would be going into debt to fix up his ship, but Eamonn was sure that Vosteros wasn't aware of just how far into debt he was going to be.  It would end up being mutually beneficial, but Vosteros probably wouldn't see it that way, at least at first.

The trip back over to the Emilia Walker was less cordial this time.  Captain Vosteros kept to himself, while Tamara and her team simply sat and waited.  They hadn't brought any replacement parts with them seeing as how they didn't know what was needed.  They knew life support would need a thorough going over, but until they got a good look at it, they didn't know what would be needed.  They did bring along a trio of cleaner bots, rented by Vosteros, after Tamara had made a comment about the smell.  The Captain had generously offered the bots and Vosteros had jumped at the opportunity.  They'd all seen his face when he had breathed the air aboard Grania Estelle and had seen that he knew there was a marked difference.

Within minutes, the shuttle docked with the freighter and the hatch showed green lights, indicating a good seal.  Vosteros pulled open the hatch and stepped aboard.  Tamara and the others didn't follow, but watched from beyond the hatch.

Coolidge was back, angry at first, but then perked up when he saw it was his captain.  "Skipper.  I chased off those bums who came on board before.  Up to no good they were."

Vosteros came up to the man and gave him a backhanded slap across the face.  A surprising move; Tamara had expected a punch.  But it seemed the strike got his point across, like a father disciplining an unruly adult son.

"What is wrong with you?" the Captain hissed.  He grabbed a fistful of the man's ship suit, pulling his thin face close to the other man.  "I am trying to get my ship up and running again and you chase away the people who are willing and able to do that!"

"But..." Coolidge sputtered, clearly stunned by events.  "But... Skipper!"

"Don't say anything," Vosteros said harshly.  "I've a right mind to throw you out an airlock and be done with you.  I cannot afford to have crewmen on my ship who do not pull their own weight.  Now," he said, releasing him, "the engineering team from the Grania Estelle has returned.  You will show them every courtesy while they were here and you will allow them access to everything.  If there is something you have a question about, take out your communicator and call me.  I cannot afford to waste any more time.  Do you understand?"

The man retained a truculent expression, as though he was pouting at being spoken to like this.  He didn't answer.

"That's it.  As of this moment, all your rank and privileges are gone.  You are now on my shit list and you can now refer to yourself as Wiper Coolidge."  He smiled and even Tamara blinked at the menace.  "In fact, I think Wiper is going to be your new name from now on.  Because I don't think I can ever see a time where you get yourself off my shit list.  Now, these people are coming aboard and you are going to assist.  And I'm not going to ask."

Vosteros turned away from the completely cowed and broken crewmember.  It looked as though Wiper Coolidge was about to cry.  The Captain came back to the hatch of the shuttle.  "I'm sorry you had to witness that.  Personnel issues."

Tamara nodded.  "Of course, Captain.  I completely understand.  Permission to come aboard?"

He gave her a large smile, though it didn't reach his eyes, and extended his arms in a welcoming gesture.  "Of course!  Of course!  Please come aboard.  I know there is a lot of work to be done.  And do you think you could do something about the smell?  You don't notice it after a while, but when you've been gone and come back its particularly bad."

"Certainly, Captain.  It’s a top priority.  In fact, Pip, get one of those bots cleaning.  It'll help."  The man nodded, pulling up his datapad and entering a few commands.  One of the dinner plate sized bots warbled and hummed as it floated swiftly past the group, immediately going to work on the airlock, while the other two stayed with Pip.  "All right kids," she said.  "Attempt number two.  Though I think this one is going to go more as planned."  They all chuckled and entered the ship.

The Emilia Walker was a far different design than the Grania Estelle.  As a tramp freighter, it wasn't designed with a huge crew in mind, and space was at a premium.  Just beyond the airlock was a decent sized compartment which looked like a small cargo area.  Compared to the massive holds on the bulk freighter, this looked as though someone had stacked pallets, crates and barrels in someone's quarters.  It was about the size of two sets of quarters aboard the Grania Estelle, with the walls knocked out.  A narrow corridor between the crates of cargo was available to move through.

There wasn't anything of particular interest in that room, but Tamara had Victor stop and give the room a thorough scan anyway.  They were going to do a complete survey and that meant scanning every room.  Vosteros moved through, motioning them all to follow.  "Come along," he urged.  "Wiper Coolidge here will escort you."

The two security guards followed along with the tech team, looking stern and their eyes sweeping the area for threats.  They didn't seem to find any, no booby traps, automated defenses, or crewmembers with concealed (or openly displayed) weapons.  It didn't cause them to relax their vigilance, but a degree of tension seemed to evaporate.

The entire team looked over the ship as they walked, running their scanners and checking things as they moved.  They all were concerned by the readings they were seeing.  Hell, just by using their eyes they could see things that were concerning.  Pipes that were leaking.  Wires and cables that were hanging from the ceiling.  Trash and other detritus littered the deck, the tables, and there was even a coffee cup wedged in between two pipes in the overhead.

"How the hell do they do anything on this garbage pile?" Igraine asked in an undertone.  No one answered.  No one had any good idea.

"All right.  Pip, Igraine, you two head to life support, bring one of the bots with you.  I'm sure it could use a good scrubbing.  Run the finest grained scan that you can.  I'm sure it's a mess."  Tamara nodded to them and they turned and walked off.  "Rory, you and Victor head to the engineering spaces.  See how they're progressing in with repairs there.  I saw on my flyby that the sublights are in pieces."

"On it, Boss," Rory replied, tugging on Victor's sleeve.  The two walked away.

"That leaves you and me," Mairi replied.

"Yes it does.  We're off to the bridge for the moment.  I'd like to get started on the software cleanse.  It'll only help."

“Wait,” Mairi said.  “What about the third bot?”

Tamara grimaced.  “Oh, that’s coming with us to the bridge.  I don’t want to be sitting in a filthy space running software cleaning and patches.  Besides, I want it to make sure all the areas in there are clear.  I don’t need any fires or shorts in the circuitry.”

Mairi nodded.  “Makes sense.”  She tucked on curl of dark hair back over her ear.  Then she smiled wickedly.  “But what’s the real reason?”

Tamara smirked.  “Those are the real reasons.  But a very close auxiliary reason is that I’m hoping that it will help with the smell.  The cockpit on a ship this big isn’t going to be huge.  I’d be surprised if it can hold more than four stations.  And I imagine it’s going to be very tight.”

Mairi chuckled.  But then her face fell.  “Ugh.  I haven’t thought of that.  I’m not looking forward to sitting in a closet with three other people.”

“Can’t say I am either, Mairi,” Tamara commented as they continued their walk through the ship.

After an hour’s work, Tamara’s virus eaters were on the attack.  Only about 12 percent of the ship’s software had been cleaned, but it was a work in progress.  In the meantime, she had repaired four logic faults, seven conflicts and had begun programming a firewall to keep any new viruses out.  Finally, she leaned back in the sensor station chair and rubbed her face with her hands.  Mairi was in the next seat, running checks on the main systems, getting a full update on what was actually working from a software perspective.

The bridge was, predictably, cramped.  There were four stations: helm, sensors, astrogation and engineering.  There was barely enough room to move and even with just two people there it was claustrophobic.  That brought up another issue, one that Mairi was vocal enough to point out.

“Why are we allowed to be alone in here?” she asked, looking over at Tamara.

The other woman smiled.  “We aren’t, actually.  You’ve been pretty absorbed, so I’m not surprised you didn’t notice the Captain poking his head in here every five minutes or so.”

Mairi blinked, looking to the cockpit door.  “Really?”

Tamara nodded.  “Yup.  He’s very quiet and I can tell that it’s killing him waiting.  I think I’ll put him out of his misery.”  She leaned backward.  “Captain?  Do you have a moment?”

And instant later, the gaunt man appeared in the hatchway, a desperately hopeful look on his face.  “You have something?”

“Finally?” another voice said from behind him, scorn clear in the tone.

“We are approximately…” she checked her datapad, “fourteen percent complete with the full virus cleanup.  Once that’s done, we can work on speed of your systems.  I’ve corrected a few errors now, but I’m still working on it.  But just with what we’ve done so far, your systems will already be noticeably better.”

“I don’t know what to say,” he said, flabbergasted.

“I know what I’d say,” the second voice replied.

“Shut your mouth, Zamir,” the Captain snapped.  The other man, a short, squat man with a Teyrogian accent with gray hair and about five days of beard growth, threw up his hands in disgust.  He turned away and stormed off.

Tamara raised an eyebrow.  “Forgive me for saying, Captain, but it looks as though your crew is very unhappy to have us here.”

He sighed.  “Let me ask you this, Miss Samair…”

“Tamara, please.”

“Tamara then.  If you were on a ship that was in need of serious repair, would you be happy to need some outsider to come in and do the job that you and your own teams could not?”

She took in a deep breath and then let it out, instantly regretting it as she sucked in more of the rancid air.  The cleaner bot had been doing its thing, but it still had a ways to go to finish the cockpit and that did nothing about the funk wafting in from the outer compartment.  “Put like that, no I wouldn’t.  But, I’m here, my team is here.  We want to help.  Our Captain wants to work with you.”  She smiled gently.  “I don’t want to step on your toes, Captain, but in all honestly…” She trailed off.

“But…?” he asked, the look on his face showing he suspected where she was leading.

“But,” she repeated, “Without our help, do you think that you could get this baby flying?”

He sighed heavily.  “Very to the point, Tamara.”

“I don’t believe in the comfortable lie, Captain.  And besides, this is a Navrot Yards built, Sequim-352 class light freighter.  Yeah, she’s seen a lot of wear and tear and a lot of light years, but that’s no reason to throw her away.  She’s a beautiful machine, Captain.”  Her smile caused his lips to turn up at the corners.  “I’m a big fan of restoration.  I’ve been helping out on the Grania Estelle, I’ve rebuilt my own starfighter and I want to help you here with the Emilia Walker.”

Her grin was infectious.  “You pitch a good sale, Miss Samair.  I don’t know how many of the repairs that I can afford, but you’re right.  I want my baby to fly again.”

She laughed.  “I think we can manage that.  The biggest problem I see on first glance is preventative maintenance.  I need to give an honest appraisal, Captain.  One that you might not like to hear.”  Mairi tried very hard to look as small as possible.  This was supposed to be a somewhat private conversation among the two of them, but she was needed to keep doing her job on the ship’s systems.

He shrugged.  “I dislike my ship not functioning more.  Go on.”

“The ship is filthy, Captain.  And the smell, well, I saw your reaction when you stepped on board our ship.  You noticed a clear difference.”

He nodded, humiliation clear on his face.

“Well, it’s an easy fix, though it will take discipline.”  She looked him straight in the eye.  “You just have to keep to a regular cleaning schedule.  And,” Tamara added, pointing to the bot that was floating under the pilot’s console, “invest in a couple of these.  They do a ton of work.  You just need to make sure you empty out the bin when it gets full.”

Vosteros nodded, as though he was slowly coming to understand.

“But that’s not the only thing,” she added.  “I’ve got a couple of my team working on your life support systems.  I think there’s quite a lot of work in there that needs to be done as well.  But with a combination of keeping the systems maintained and the place clean, you’ll get rid of that funk.”

“It might make my ship a place that my crew will actually want to work, as opposed to a place they’re trapped on for weeks at a time,” he mused.

She only nodded.  “Talk to Captain Eamonn and his cargo specialist.  They’ll sort you out.”

It took about a day to get the whole engineering survey completed.  Tamara and her team gathered in the main cargo bay along with the ship’s crew.  The cargo bay was selected because it was nearly empty and it was the only space on the ship large enough to fit that many people.  The Emilia Walker boasted three bays, two small lateral bays and the large bay in the center.  The berthing spaces where the entire crew (including the Captain) slept, were forward of the cargo areas.  The crew lounge was located above the cargo areas, while the engineering spaces were located to the rear and above the main cargo bay, which left a large empty space below for cargo doors.  The ship looked as though it had a low belly hanging underneath.  The cockpit was on the lower level, the most forward part of the ship.

“Miss Samair,” Captain Vosteros said formally.  “I believe you have your report.  If you would please?”

There were quiet grumbles among the crew.  They still weren’t happy about the bringing in of another ship’s engineering team to do their jobs.  The entirely male crew was rather displeased by the fact that this particular team was led by a woman with a team that was half female.  Oh, the boys had no problem with women.  On their brief liberty trips to Folston, they would all hang out in bars, brothels and other such places to find a bit of female companionship.  But it was certainly… emasculating… to have a group of women and their male attendants to come aboard their ship and tell them what was wrong.  Even worse was that these women seemed quite competent.

“Well, the cleaner bots that you rented have done their magic through about twenty percent of the interior of the ship,” Tamara began.  And it had helped.  The smell had diminished
, but only slightly.  “We’ve completed the software cleaning and the patches and upgrades.  When you get onto the ship’s computers again, you’ll find a marked improvement.  You’ll need to observe a much more…”  She paused, trying to find the word.

“Disciplined,” Igraine put in helpfully.

Tamara frowned.  “Yes, thank you.  A much more disciplined regimen when dealing with the computers.  The reason they were so infested with viruses was because absolutely anything got uploaded.  Things that were infected with viruses and other such things got into the system which started to damage or slow down the processing speed.”  She could tell she was losing her already thin hold on her audience.  So she changed tack.

“All right,” she said, a bit louder.  “This crew is a disgrace.  Captain Vosteros has very wisely come to my captain for assistance because the group of layabouts and ingrates on board this tub clearly don’t have the stones or the brains to get the job done.”  That got their attention.  They were all glaring at her now and a low growl resounded about the bay.  Her own team was looking about nervously.  Her security guards shifted, loosened their sidearms in the holsters.

“So, some life from this crew at last,” Tamara replied defiantly, looking from one man to the next.  She was baiting them and she knew it was a dangerous tactic but it was the only one that seemed to be working.  And besides, she’d done this before.  The labor strike a year before her arrest.  Senior officers officers’
conferences berating her for schedule slippages in the shipyards, demanding more productivity.  Sitting in the courtroom while attorneys and witnesses and the members picked apart her life.  Compared to that, these men were little puppies.

“Now, I have a repair and maintenance list a kilometer long.  Your Captain is going to trade for parts from the Grania Estelle and my team has been assigned to assist in the installation and testing of those components.  Now, you all have two choices.  You can get over yourselves, buckle down and roll up your sleeves and get to work with my team to bring the ship up to snuff.  Or… you can act like the sniveling pack of worms I’m seeing before me.  In which case, while my Captain might still sell you the equipment, I will recommend that all of you receive no assistance from our crew.  You can figure out how to fix this ship and good luck to you.”  She crossed her arms under her breasts, her confident glare sweeping over all of them.

“So it’s put up or shut up time, gentlemen.  We have to report back to the Grania Estelle.”  She turned to Vosteros.  “Captain, thank you for your time and assistance.  Please contact our ship when you and your crew have made their decision.  We’ll need to report back there to gather up proper tools and the first round of parts anyway, assuming you come to a consensus.”

“Well, Miss Samair…” he began.

But Tamara cut him off.  “Talk it over, Captain.  I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder the whole time we are here.  Get in touch once you have a decision.”  She nodded her head in the direction of the airlock to the rest of her team, all of whom turned and headed out.  Without a look at them, Tamara deliberately turned her back on the Emilia Walker’s crew and walked briskly to the shuttle.  Her implants were picking up aggressive noises from the men behind her, but no one was rushing at them.

The others got into the shuttle and Tamara followed, closing the hatch behind her and sealing the shuttle hatch behind her.

Chapter 12

“Moxie, this has got to stop,” the Captain told her, slapping one hand on the desk.  He clearly was not happy but he wasn‘t angry, at least not outwardly.

“Which part, Captain?” she asked blandly.  She was seated at the wardroom table, her hands folded in front of her on the table.

“The part where you keep walking out in the middle of my transactions!  You keep throwing wrenches into my deal!” he nearly shouted.

“Captain, I’ve been trying to work with that crew…” she began.

“No, what you have done is twice… twice… walked off that ship once the boys looked at you wrong.”  He glared at her.  “What do you have to say about that?  What happened to the Navy steel you’re supposed to have in your spine?”

She glared back.  “I tried to work with them…” she began again.

“You are not authorized to change or end… any deal that I make,” he said, biting off each word, the full weight of all of his menace behind those words.  He didn’t get up.  He didn’t shout at her.  He didn’t try to make himself larger.  He simply sat there and… seethed.

And Tamara couldn’t help it.  Her mouth went dry.  “Captain, I need to explain…”

“You don’t need to explain… anything,” he hissed.

“Yes, I do.”

“I have given you so much leeway,” he said as though she hadn’t spoken.  “I have looked the other way when I really should have come down hard on you.”  His voice changed from menace to iron.  “But those days are over.  Now, one of two things is going to happen.  Option one: you are going to do an about face, march down to the shuttle and fly with your team and the first set of replacement parts and get to work on fixing the Emilia Walker.  Option two involves me having a security detail march you down to the cargo bay, while you watch as Quesh disables the weapons on your fighter.  You would then board that fighter and leave my ship.  And you would not be returning.”

She didn’t answer for a moment, simply sitting at her seat and trying to regain her breath.

“Do you think I’m kidding?  That this is an elaborate joke?”

“No, Captain, I don’t think that.”  She swallowed hard.  “But I need you to listen to me.”

He sighed.  “So we’re going with option two then.”

“No, listen!” she insisted.  “I wasn’t doing this to hurt you or the deal.  I was
.
..”

But Serinda’s voice interrupted, coming in over the PA.  “Captain, I have Emilia Walker on the comms.  Captain Vosteros wants to speak with you immediately.”

He growled, getting to his feet and leaning on the table with one hand.  Pointing at Tamara with his free hand, he said.  “You… do… not… speak…”

She nodded.

“Put him through.”  There was a click.  “Captain?”  His voice was friendly and open.

“Captain Eamonn,” Vosteros’ voice answered.  “I would like to speak with you about what happened on my ship a little while ago.”

“Yes, Captain.  I’m sorry about that…”

“I can’t lose this deal, Vincent.  My ship is in trouble.  Your Miss Samair’s work on the computers was amazing but that’s just the first step.  I need so many things and I can’t afford to lose this opportunity.”

Eamonn blinked, shaking his head slightly.  This wasn’t going according to the script in his head.  “So what would you like to talk about?”

“I’ll pay anything, do anything to get the parts I need for my ship.  You’re playing a really hard game here, but I’m in.”

“Okay,” he said, rapidly trying to keep up with the conversation.  “I’m very glad to hear that.”

“And I was thinking.  I know I can’t pay for all of the parts that I need, there are simply too many.  But what if we were to work together?  Form some sort of… I don’t know.  A cooperative?”

Eamonn’s head was spinning.  He looked over at Tamara, who was trying her best to look innocent.  “A cooperative?”

“Yes!  Perhaps… going into business together?”

Now Tamara was trying very hard not to look smug.

“That sounds like something we can discuss, but I would prefer not to do so over the comms.  This sounds like something we should talk about in person, yes?”

“Of course.  If when your shuttle comes over, could I hitch a ride back with my purser?  I think he should be involved.”

“That sounds fine.  The shuttle should be leaving here in about ten minutes.  I await your arrival.”  He pressed a button on the table that ended the call.  “Talk.”  It was an order and he was back in his serious voice again.

Tamara took a deep breath and slowly let it out, but couldn’t hide the small smile on her lips.  “The crew was rather… difficult to work with.  They clearly don’t like me or the bulk of my team.”

“I wonder why?” he mused wryly.  “There are times when I don’t like you, Moxie.”  He gestured for her to continue.

“I could tell that working with them would be a challenge, though yes, I knew I could get them to get over their male pride and buckle down to save their ship.”  She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms under her breasts.  “I thought it might be to everyone’s benefit if the two of you, you two captains I mean, were to join forces.”

“And you thought by pissing me off, that would do that?”

“No, Captain, I though t that by making them think that you were not all that interested in helping Vosteros fix his burned out wreck of a ship, they’d get desperate and go for something more drastic than just credits.”

“And why would I be willing to settle for something other than credits?  And why should I trust that he’s going to actually want to work with me?  What’s to stop him from just flying off after the Emilia Walker is fixed?”

“Technically, nothing,” she admitted.  “But I think he’s more savvy than that.  I think he genuinely wants this deal.  I think he would want to enter into some sort of partnership with you.  And think about it.  If the two of you pool your resources, and set up some sort of headquarters, I think you could do some serious trade in and among the surrounding systems.”

He wasn’t seeing it.  “His ship is tiny.  A hundred metric tons?  That’s nothing.  You can’t carry any kind of goods like that.”

“Not the kind of goods you carry about the Grania Estelle, no,” Tamara agreed.  “But his ship isn’t designed to try and compete with you in that manner, Captain.  His is built for speed.  Emilia Walker is meant to bring less bulky items, like medical supplies, electronics and luxury goods and she’s meant to do it fast.  Yes, we can carry a thousand times the amount of goods, but it would take this ship almost four times as long at optimum efficiency.”

“And…”

She grinned.  “And he can make many more trips from home base than Grania Estelle can.  Which mean that while each individual trip might not make as much money, but he’ll make many more trips to make up for it.”

Now he was grinning.  “I like this idea.  I think we might be able to make something work.  Now, I need to say two things more, Moxie.”

She sighed.  “Yes, Captain.”

“I’m very pleased that this might actually be a very profitable relationship.  And I want to thank you for helping to bring it about.”

“You’re welcome, Captain.”

He glared at her again, in all seriousness.  “Don’t ever do something like that again without my express approval.  I don’t want to be protected or anything cute like that.  I will decide what it is that I need and I will allocate personnel and resources accordingly.  If you see something that might work out well for me or my ship or my crew, you bring it to me.”

Tamara nodded, looking down.  “Of course, Captain.  You’re absolutely right.  This is your ship.  You need to be making the calls.”

He chuckled.  “Praise the stars!  She can be taught!”

She snorted but rose from her chair.  “So, Captain, with your permission, I will grab my team and the parts and head over to the Emilia Walker and work on getting your fledgling trading empire on its feet.”

“Damned right.”

The next month passed in a whirlwind of activity.  The boat bay on the Grania Estelle was repaired and restored, much to the Captain, Taja and Tamara’s delight.  Her fighter and the shuttle were moved out of the cargo bay, though the shuttle got very little downtime as it was almost constantly in use.  It was either bringing in rocks for materials or transferring material or personnel between the two ships and the surface.

The machine shops and the replicators were going nonstop.  The concept of downtime on both ships became little more than a fond memory for both crews.  In a short period of time, the Emilia Walker was torn down and then built back up.  Dealing with the smell became priority one, especially as crewmen from the Emilia Walker were leaving the ship and coming back.  The cleaner bots made impressive headway in a short period of time, leaving gleaming deckplates and bulkheads.  The life support was completely overhauled, members of both crews simultaneously gagging and smiling with delight as the almost completely contaminated scrubber matrices were changed out and disposed of (out the airlock).  But the real problem was the waste recycler system.  It was leaking and was the biggest reason the ship stank.  This came as a complete shock to the crew, who over the months and years simply didn’t notice the stink anymore.  Perhaps their nasal passages were simply burned out.  The flushing out, repair and complete replacement of components were finished within five days and finally, the air on the ship didn’t seem to have a miasma of decay.

The Captain hired on another twenty-five people, all of whom came aboard the Grania Estelle in wide eyed wonder.  None had ever been in space before and unlike at Instow, where there was always a feel of being in space, Folston was far less advanced.  The planet was an agricultural world, known for grains and cattle.  This made many of the crew happy as everyone was thoroughly sick of fish.  The idea of chops, ribs, burgers and steaks was amazingly appealing.  Cookie stocked up on all sorts of foodstuffs, but particularly beef, including a fair amount for trade in the next system.  Taja was happy to trade in electronics, machined tools and other such things.  She also managed to pick up a fair amount of local medicines sourced from the forests and jungle areas.  Taja also traded a few discs and e-readers providing the locals with some lectures on engineering, mathematics and science principles and the tools to take advantage of some of those.  With enough people willing to put in some hard work, Folston might be more than just an agricultural world.

After the month was up, Emilia Walker was almost an entirely new ship.  From bow to stern, she was functional again, engines and life support completely overhauled.  The crew grumbled a little, but in truth they were ecstatic over the state of their little flying home.  Engine tests demonstrated that the ship sliced through space with ease.  While not as maneuverable as a shuttle or Tamara’s starfighter, it could now easily run rings around the Grania Estelle.  With her cargo bays full of medicinals for trade, Vosteros determined the next system would be Yoka-Hana.

By contrast, Grania Estelle didn’t have as much of a drastic change.  All of the cargo holds were now repaired and in use.  The boat bay was completed and Ka’Xarian was well on the way to building a second shuttle.  The bay was quite spacious and even with Tamara’s fighter, it would easily hold three shuttles.  Perhaps at some point they would build another one.  So with the crew just topping ninety, the holds full and a secondary reactor installed, the final details for the cooperative were hammered out.

For now, they would be working as a loose-knit partnership, putting in two shares of each ships’ profit into the cooperative.  For now, that didn’t mean much since they had no base of operations.  Each ship would be holding that money in reserve for now, which each captain knew would cause a bit of grumbling among the crews.  Though as far as the crews were concerned, since each ship was now moving faster and carrying more goods, the shares would be better regardless.  Once a suitable planet was found, they would set up offices and perhaps even a dock for refueling and maintenance.  But that was something to be dealt with later.

“So how are we to meet up again, partner?” Vosteros asked, with a huge grin on his face.  He was exceptionally pleased with how things turned out.  They were meeting in the wardroom of the Grania Estelle and one of Cookie’s mess attendants had delivered a tray of beers for the illustrious company.

This was a good question.  Since faster than light communications were not available (in fact, not possible in this day and age) ships had to be sent out to other star systems in order for different worlds to talk with each other.  So unless by some happy accident they arrived in the same system, they would need to set up some sort of rendezvous in order to compare notes and compile profits.

Eamonn smiled, taking a sip of the beer in front of him.  “Well, partner,” he said with a chuckle, “you are a lot faster than I am.  I’m also going to be making a stop in the void to tear down and replace my ship’s main reactor.  So that’s going to be a few days longer.  I imagine by that point you’ll get four or five systems ahead of me.  How about we meet in Ullu-tran in six months?  That’ll be four stops on my route and should give you the chance to make, what?  Ten?”

Vosteros squinted in thought.  “Possibly.  I’m going to shoot for eight, but we might be able to make ten before we loop back to Ullu-tran.  I’m not used to having such a fast ship.  It’s going to take a serious shift in thinking.”

“That’s great.  Ullu-tran has enough of an industrial base that I think it will work out for us.”  He nodded slowly.  “Well, Captain, I think all I have to say is good luck and I’ll see you in six months.”  Eamonn stood, setting the beer down on the table.  He extended his hand.

Vosteros reached out his own and took it, shaking it firmly before releasing it.  “And to you, Captain.  May the stars’ light shine on you.”  Taking his glass of beer, he chugged the rest down, slammed the glass down hard in salute, turned and left.

Eamonn picked up his own glass and downed the rest.  It was time to get moving.

An hour later, the Emilia Walker broke orbit, heading toward the hyper limit in the direction of Yoka-Hana.  The ship raced across the system at amazing speed, as though it was moving at combat velocity.  The Captain sighed as he watched the light freighter moving away from the planet at great velocity.

“So, what do we think?” he asked the bridge at large.  “Do we think they’re actually going to be at Ulla-tran in six months?  Or did we just fix them up to let them skate off?”

“I want to believe them,” Serinda commented.  “From the conversations I fielded and the ones I heard you with, Captain, I think Captain Vosteros wants to be there.  To work with us.”

“I agree with Serinda, Captain,” George put in.  “But I talked with the engineering teams who worked on the other ship.  The crew of that ship isn’t too keen on us helping them out.”

The Captain raised an eyebrow.  “You think they might mutiny?”

George shrugged.  “Not so much mutiny, Captain.  They like and respect Captain Vosteros, but I think it more likely they might talk him out of the deal.”

He twisted his mouth in concern.  “I don’t like the sound of that.  With a shiny new ship and some distance from us, he might let himself get convinced.”  He sighed.  “Well, there’s nothing for it now.  Helm, are we ready to leave?  I think we have a cargo that needs to get to Hecate.”  The day before, Taja had snagged a load of gadolinium, a mineral essential in hyperdrive construction.  The load had been scheduled to go to Hecate on another vessel eight months before, but that ship had dropped the consignment and left.  So the shipment of gadolinium had sat in a warehouse on the planet ever since.  Taja only found it after overhearing some gossip between workers in a local pub.  But that grab and others like it was only one big reason he kept her around.  He smiled at the thought.

Sadly, since they were picking up the shipment, the receivers on the other end weren’t going to be happy about the delay.  They might even try to stiff on the payment; it had happened before.  He and Taja were good hagglers and negotiators, but if the receivers blamed them for the late arrival of the shipment it would take some fast talking to get them to pay for it.  But there was an upside.  If the receivers refused to pay, they would keep the gadolinium and use it for any hyperdrive repairs that might crop up.

“Astrogation, plot us a course for the hyper limit, course for Hecate.  Helm, take us out of orbit.  Make sure we stop at the collector before we go.”

“Aye, Captain,” the pilot answered.  The ship answered immediately under his hands, easing out of the parking orbit and turning to head out into deep space.

“I think you’ve finally reached the point where I can start introducing you to the crew,” Tamara said.

[I would like that very much.]

“I think it might be best if we did this slowly.  At least at first, while you get used to them and they get used to you.  Once you’ve got a group of people that know you, and we can get the ship’s computer core up to snuff, I’ll introduce you to the crew as a whole.”

[I understand.]  The AI paused.  [Tamara, may I ask you a question?]

“Of course.”

[Do I have a name?]

“Not at the moment, no, you don’t.”  She considered this.  “Would you like one?”

[All sentient beings have names.  You have a name.  Did you name yourself?]

She shook her head.  “No, my dear, I didn’t.  My parents, my creators gave it to me.”

The AI paused to mull this over for a few moments.  [You are my creator, Tamara.  Would you give me a name?]

Tamara nodded.  “I will.  I’ve been intending to make you the primary AI for the ship we are on, the Grania Estelle.  So I think that you should be named for the ship.  Does that make sense?”

[You are choosing the name, Tamara, not I.]

She laughed.  “Well, my dear, I don’t want to give you a name you will hate.”

[Why would I hate it?  You are giving it to me.]

“Thank you, dear one.  You are far more forgiving and loving than I would be.  But I am going to name you for the ship.”

[Very well.  I am the Grania Estelle?]

She pursed her lips.  “That is a bit cumbersome for a person.”

[I am an AI, not a person.]

“No,” she disagreed firmly.  “You are an AI, yes, but you are a person.  You’re not an organic one, you’re synthetic.  But you are still a person.”

The AI pondered this further.  [I understand.  And thank you, Tamara.]

“You’re welcome, my dear.  I think if we are introducing you formally to someone, we will call you Grania Estelle.  Would you mind if otherwise we called you Stella?  It’s a nickname.”

[I would like that very much.  I am the Grania Estelle… but my friends call me Stella.]

Tamara laughed joyously.  “You have been paying attention!”

Ka’Xarian was exhausted.  He’d just gotten off a twelve hour shift, working to get engine four operational.  With all the other building and repairs that had been done, the ship’s main propulsion had remained untouched.   They were still operating on three of the ship’s six engines, though he was confident that after another shift, number four would be online and operating.  He nodded to himself, antennae twitching in pleasure.

They were really doing it.  The ship, which had been their home and their lives for so long had been dying.  He and Quesh and the Captain had been doing everything they could to keep Grania Estelle alive for years, but it had been a losing battle.  For those same years, they had presided over the downward spiral of their home.  Then that fateful day came when they picked up an escape pod with an unlikely passenger.  She had given them the codes to the replicators, she had given them some skills that they needed and ideas to solve problems.  More importantly, she had given them hope.  And now that hope, and an awful lot of sweat and hard work, was breathing new life and new youth into the ship, into their home.

But, that new life was exhausting.  He clacked his mandibles in a zheen chuckle.  A cleaning in the sonic shower and a long sleep would do wonders.  He could eat, he probably should eat, he knew, but he was simply too tired.  He placed his hand on the door control to his quarters to open it when his communicator beeped.  His antennae flared in annoyance.

“I need to sleep!” he hissed.  Pulling the communicator from his belt, he flipped it open.  “This is Ka’Xarian.”

“Xar, it’s Tamara.  I know you just got off shift.  Would you mind stopping by my quarters?  I have something to show you.”

He sighed.  “Tamara, it’s been a very long day.  Can this wait until tomorrow?  I really need rest.”

“I know you’re tired.  But I have snacks!” she said in a wheedling voice.

He stood there, thinking, or rather, trying to get his sleep-addled brain to think.  “All right.  But whatever this is had better be good and it can’t take long.”

“Thanks, Xar.  I’ll have the ku-resh waiting for you.”

“Oh, you have ku-resh?”  Candied pill bugs, which were a considered a zheen sweet treat.  “You know its bad form to bribe an officer of the ship.”

She laughed.  “See you in a few.”  The call ended.

He was in her quarters a few minutes later.  They sat and chatted for a few minutes, he ate a few bites of ku-resh, which was succulent, while she had a small plate of cookies and sipped a glass of fruit juice.

After finishing a particularly tasty bite, he finally addressed the reason he was here.  “All right, Tamara.  Spill it.  Not that I don’t appreciate the snacks – they’re delicious, by the way – but why did you call me here?”

Tamara set down her glass.  “You know I’ve been working on a special project for the last few months.”

“Yes.”  He set down the bowl and sat up straighter on the chair.  “The AI.”

She nodded.  “Yes.  And she’s finally ready to be shown off.  But I’m going to be doing this slowly.  I don’t want anyone freaking out over this.”

“She?” he asked.

“Yes, she.  She’s a person, Xar, not just a computer construct.”

He cocked his head to one side briefly.  “We’ll see about that.”

Picking up her datapad, she pressed a command.  The holo projector on the tiny table in the middle of the room, separating the two of them activated and an image appeared.  It was a pretty young human woman, a teenager, dressed in a ship suit.  She had dark hair which was pulled back in a ponytail.  Her rather serious façade was marred by slashes of color across her cheekbones, a dash of purple.  Also, upon further inspection, Ka’Xarian noted that her dark hair, which was a dark shade of brown, was highlighted with a trio of purple stripes starting at her forehead and going back to the end of the pony tail.

“And this is the AI?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, I am, Assistant Chief Engineer Ka’Xarian,” the projection of the woman replied.  “I am Grania Estelle, but my friends call me Stella.”

He was taken aback.  Looking at Tamara, “Did you program it to respond that way?”

Tamara chuckled.  “I programmed her, yes, but you can talk to her directly.  Don’t be rude.”

He looked back to the AI.  “Forgive me… Stella.  May I call you Stella?”

She considered him for a moment.  “You were a bit rude just then, Assistant Chief.  But I can tell you are excited about seeing me.”

“The Captain is the only one you need to address by rank, Grania Estelle,” Xar replied, shaking his head.  “Everyone else, you just call by name.  Except for the Chief Engineer.  Most people call him Chief.  My friends call me Xar.  I’d like it if we were friends.”

She smiled.  “I would like that too, Xar.  Call me Stella.”

“Hello, Stella.”  He looked over to Tamara.  “We have got to get the computer core rebuilt for her.”  The zheen was really excited now.

Both of the women laughed.  “Yes, I think we do,” Tamara replied.  “Though I think perhaps Stella would need to meet the Captain and Chief Trrgoth first.”  Her face darkened.  “Not sure the Chief will like her.”

Stella looked concerned.  “He is a tough male and is in charge of his department.  Having me in the computer core and running a great deal of the autonomous functions could only ease his workload and make the ship run more smoothly.  Why wouldn’t he like that?”

“He’s not entirely thrilled with me as a person,” Tamara admitted.  “We can work together, but he isn’t always enthusiastic about my ideas.  Or more correctly, our personalities clash.”

Xar nodded.  “I’ll speak with him.  Stella, you’re too good of an opportunity to waste.  A real AI!  I have never seen one before, but I’ve heard about them.  Read about them.  This is so exciting!”  He stopped and thought for a moment.  “We should tell them.”

“What tonight?”  Tamara frowned.  She checked her watch.  “I know I dragged you in here just off your shift, but it’s late.  You think they’re going to want to get called in this late?”

Xar’s antennae were swirling in excitement.  “For this?  To meet Stella?” he gestured.  “I think so.”

“All right.”  She frowned.  “Stella, are you ready to meet them?”

“Of course!  I’m excited.  Let’s do it!”

Tamara laughed.  “All right.  But I think we should move to the wardroom instead of my quarters here.  There is simply much more room.  I think you should meet them where you can be celebrated.”

The Captain was lying on his bunk, just pulling his blankets up over him.  The sheets were cool and just starting to be warmed by this own body heat.  It had been a long shift, hell, a long month here in orbit.  Long, but it was incredibly satisfying.  His ship was coming back together, better, in fact, than it had ever been in his lifetime.  The crew was larger than ever.  His holds were full of goods.  This was a good time.

The comm panel next to his bed beeped.  He sighed in frustration.  Leaning over, he pressed the button.  “Yes?”

“Captain, its Moxie.  I didn’t wake you did I?”

He took a deep breath and let it out.  “No, you didn’t, though I was just about to get to sleep.  Is there some problem?”

“I have something that you need to see, Captain, but no, it isn’t an emergency.  Can you meet me in the wardroom?”

He sighed again, looking at the chrono on the bulkhead.  It read 02:14.  “I’ll be there in five minutes.  And all I have to say, Moxie, is that this had better be good.”

The wardroom was far less empty than the Captain expected when he arrived.  Moxie was there, of course, seated at the far end of the table from his seat, though not at the actual end of the table.  Seated at his standard seat was Ka’Xarian, who had a happy glow about him, his exoskeleton flushed a pale lavender.  Also in attendance were Quesh who was downing a cup of coffee and, to his surprise, Turan.  The Guura had a glass of water (half full), a shot glass of Sherbaak brandy (full) and the accompanying bottle (two thirds full) in front of him.

Moxie looked up as his entrance.  “Ah, Captain, good you’re here.  Coffee?”  Without waiting, she stood and walked over, handing him a cup.

“I thought this was going to be a one-on-one session, Moxie,” he said irritably.  “I didn’t realize we were having a staff meeting.”

She shrugged.  “Sorry, Captain, but I thought this was something that we’d only want to do once.  After that, of course, you’ll be able to decide how to proceed.”

He eyed her.  “All right.  I’m both concerned and intrigued.”  He gestured with the coffee mug.  “Carry on then.”  He took his standard seat at the head of the table.

“Aye, Captain.”  She went back to her own seat at the far end of the table.  “Gentlemen, I present to you, Grania Estelle.”  Without pressing anything, the holo projector on the table activated and the image of the young female AI appeared.

“Good evening, Captain.  Good evening, Chief.  Good evening, Doctor,” she said, nodding to each in acknowledgement.  “I am Grania Estelle.  When the computer core is upgraded, I am programmed to become the ship’s AI.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared.  Drinks sat forgotten on the table as they stared at what looked like a human girl.  “Moxie, what is this?”

“This is Grania Estelle, Captain,” she replied.  “Just as I said.  She’s a class two smart AI, though she is very young.  I built her to help out on the ship.”

“For which I am grateful,” Stella replied with a smile and a bow to Tamara.  The woman saluted her with her coffee mug, smiling herself.

“An AI?” Turan gasped.  “That’s amazing!  Where did you get her from?”

“My mind and my fingertips,” she told him.  “I did all the coding myself.”

“But I’m self-sustaining now,” Stella put in.  “Tamara did an excellent job getting things started and set up, but I don’t need additions to my coding or core matrix anymore.  I can learn on my own, just as any organic would.”

“This is incredible, Tamara,” the doctor gushed.  “I haven’t seen an AI since I was on the mining station, but the ones there were little more than helpers.  She’s a real person!”

Stella beamed and Tamara nodded.  “Yes, she is.”

“What do you mean by help out?” the Captain finally managed to say.  He was bowled over by this.  He too had heard about AI’s ever since he’d been old enough to listen to spacers talk.  Ever since the war between the Federation and the Republic, very few AI’s could be found out here in independent space.  In his life, the Captain had seen only one AI and that was aboard a Republic cruiser that had passed through the Volantis system while the Grania Estelle was in for repairs and refueling, some thirty years ago.  The cruiser had been in orbit, negotiating with the locals for a replenishment order and the AI had contacted the big freighter to contract them to carry a load of machine parts to another system.  While the Captain had been only a quarter-share crewman then, he had never forgotten the artificial person who had worked out the deal with the then-Captain of the ship.

“She will work to keep the ship operating at its most basic level,” Tamara explained.  “She will maintain the fusion reactor and help to run the ship’s autonomic functions.”

“I see.”  And he did.  “That will free up crewmen for other jobs.”

“Exactly.  She can’t do everything, and Stella, please forgive me for speaking around you,” she apologized.  The AI just smiled and nodded.  “But she’s a synthetic, not an organic like us.  She can perform millions of calculations a second and has a much higher response rate than any of us do.  So, she’s an excellent troubleshooter and fixer.”

“Will you be a hindrance to operations?” the Captain asked.  He didn’t want to ask, but he needed to know, especially if he was going to consider adding her to the ship’s company.

“I’ll try not to be, Captain,” Stella replied, unfazed by the question.

“No she won’t, Captain,” Tamara agreed.  “In fact, she’ll help smooth things out.  She’s a crewmember like any other, though she will be confined to the ship.  She’ll be the ship, for all intents and purposes.”

“But you are the Captain, sir,” Stella pointed out.  “You are the boss.”

He laughed.  “Well, she clearly learned that from someone other than you, Moxie.”

Tamara smiled, her cheeks coloring slightly.  “Nice, Captain.”

“Well, I’m sold,” he said.  “How long to rebuild the computer core to accommodate this young lady?”

“A few days,” the Parkani rumbled for the first time.

“No objections, Chief?” the Captain asked.

He looked surprised and held up all four hands, palms up.  “To an AI?  Are you kidding, Captain?  No way.  I’ve always wanted to work with one.  To have one in our ship?  I think this is one of the best things that Samair has done.”  He lowered his hands, save one, which he used to shield his mouth from her.  He spoke in a very loud and conspiratorial whisper.  “Don’t let her know that, Captain.  It might make her head swell.”

The entire assemblage laughed, even Stella.  Tamara roared the loudest of them all.

“Can we have the core ready by the time we reach the hyper limit?”

Quesh shook his head, a smirk on his lips.  “No.  We’ll have engine four up by tomorrow, which will let us get to the hyper limit about eleven hours sooner.  But I’d say unless we slow down, we’ll be about six hours in hyper before we have it set up.”

“Then we’ll delay the jump,” the Captain decided.  “I know that we can’t really interrupt the computer systems while we’re in hyperspace.  Get the core up and running, install our friend here,” he indicated Stella, “and then we’ll jump.”

The Parkani nodded.  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” she echoed.  “My first jump.”

“Our first jump,” the Captain corrected.  “With an AI, anyway.”  He checked his watch.  “Well everyone, this is certainly an exciting meeting.  It gives me hope for the future.  We will inform the crew once the core is built, but until then, I’m sorry… Stella… you’re going to be kept under wraps.”

“I understand, Captain.”

“Good.  Now, I bid you all good night.”  He stood and they followed suit.

The actual building and installation of the computer core didn’t take as long as Quesh had projected.  Uploading Stella’s core matrix into the system didn’t take all that long either.  They were actually still a day out from the hyper limit when it was completed, much to the Captain’s delight.  He made the announcement to the crew about Stella’s existence and installation as the ship’s AI and as a crewmember.  The ship was abuzz with conversation about this.  They were generally excited about the idea, though a few were concerned that she might be spying on them during private or intimate moments.

Stella chuckled when the topic was raised.  “I’m no spy,” she replied.  “I don’t have any designs on becoming one.  I’m not interested in the workings of your digestion or what you might do in the comfort of your staterooms.  If you decide to… go at it in the corridor or the cargo bays or some other inappropriate place, I will be reporting you to the Captain.  But other than that, honestly…”  She paused at the looks coming her way.  “I don’t care what you’re doing.  So long as you’re not endangering the ship or breaking the ship’s rules, have at it.”  At this point, Stella gave them a conspiratorial wink and her holo disappeared.

An hour before they ship was ready to jump into hyperspace, the Captain called Tamara to the wardroom.  She wasn’t nervous this time.  Stella was a great hit and seemed to be integrating herself well into the workings of the ship and with the crew.  The ship was operating better than it ever had before.  And while the sell prices of all the cargoes they had brought on board were speculative and basically unknown until they reached their destination, the likelihood was that the crew shares and profit would be much higher than anyone had yet seen aboard this vessel.  To her knowledge, she hadn’t done anything to invoke his ire in the last few days.

“Moxie, good.  Come in, have a seat,” the Captain said as she entered the wardroom.

She did so.  “I have to say I’ve come to dread these meetings here, Captain.”

He laughed.  “Understandable, but I’m actually not here to yell at you this time.”

She raised an eyebrow.  “That’s a change.”

His face got more serious.  “Change is actually the reason I called you in here.  I want to discuss the future.”

“Okay.”

“Our original agreement was that you get to keep the starfighter and you pay off the work by fixing up my ship.”

“That’s right.”  Her tone was wary.  Was he going to go back on the deal?

“You’re more than held up your end, Moxie.  And with the addition of Stella to my crew, I think that our original contract is complete.”

Tamara’s HUD popped up in her vision and Stella stuck her face into the left hand bottom corner.  Clearly, she was going to have a witness to this conversation.  Tamara wondered if the Captain was aware this was going on.  She kept her face clear of expressions.

“You’re throwing me off the ship, Captain?” she asked, curious.

He blinked.  “Are you kidding me?  After all the work you’ve done?  All the potential profit?  Unless you want to go, I’m not getting rid of you.”  He hesitated, his confident demeanor slipping just for a moment.  “You don’t want to go, do you?”

“Well…” she said, drawing it out.  Then she gave him a wicked smile.  “No, Captain, I don’t.  I like it here and there’s still plenty of work to get done.  Besides, I think I’ve made a difference here and could do more.”

He beamed.  “I’m very glad to hear that.  So, I’m not just going to keep you on as a passenger.  So, I ask you… What are your terms?”

Now it was her turn to be surprised.  “I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest.  I’m getting room and board and I don’t need much in the way of… well, stuff.  I don’t need another fighter.  But I’d like to stay on in a similar capacity, if I may.”

“All right.  We’ll keep the contractor status.  But I think we need to integrate you formally into the crew.  Having you just dangling out there seemed to work, but to be honest, I’m thinking I need to reduce Quesh’s stress levels a bit.  He really didn’t like you being only answerable to me.”

She nodded.  “I kind of got that.”

“So, if you accept, you’ll be in charge of the third engineering watch section.  You’ll keep the same group of techs and basically have the same responsibilities and schedule as before.”

“But now I’ll be reporting directly to the Chief?”

“Is this going to be a problem?” he asked seriously.  “I know the two of you have clashed.  I’ve gotten in the middle of a few of these clashes.  If it isn’t going to work…”

She sighed.  “No, Captain.  You’re the boss and he’s my boss.  But we need to talk about my princely wage and my share.”

He laughed.  “Ha!  Don’t feel bad.  No one gets paid if we don’t deliver.  It’s all paid by shares.”  Stella nodded, which eased Tamara’s mind.  “All right, I’ll give you a full share rating, you’ve more than earned that.”

She shook her head.  “No, Captain.  As a leader of a watch section, as well as my obviously well-proven skills, I want officers’ pay.  Double share, just like the others.”  Stella winked at her from the edge of Tamara’s HUD.

The Captain shook his head, but he was smiling.  “All right.  I see I can’t pull one over on you.”

“And one other thing,” she added, holding up one finger.

He chuckled.  “Only one?”

“I want a full medical treatment.  I was never the belle of the ball, but I think I’ve had enough of the scars.”

The Captain blinked.  “I’m surprised you didn’t ask for that already.  Talk with Turan, he’ll fix you up.”

“And I don’t want that coming out of my pay, as a tax, or expenses or anything like that.  The ship covers the cost.”

“You think I would cheat you, Moxie?”

She grimaced at him, but her eyes were bright.  “Captain, you would swindle the stars if you thought you could get a little more light.”  Stella giggled silently.

The Captain, however, threw back his head and guffawed.  He slapped his hand repeatedly on the table.  It took him a few moments to recover, but when he did, there were tears in his eyes.  “I have to tell that one to Taja.  That is just wonderful.”

She couldn’t help but laugh.  “I’m glad I continue to impress, Captain.  Now all we need is a contract to review and sign.”

He pulled up the contract on his datapad and slid it over to her.  All of the conditions they had discussed were on it, exactly as they had mentioned.  “You got Stella to write this up as we were talking, didn’t you?”

He shook his head in disbelief.  “You never cease to amaze me, Moxie.  And here I was hoping you’d think I was omniscient.”

“Oh, but of course you are, Captain,” she said, looking at him with an adoring expression.  Then she laughed.  She looked it over one last time, noted one particular item that intrigued her, and swiveled her eyeballs look at to Stella’s avatar on the HUD.

The AI mouthed the word “Later.”  Tamara nodded as though she was agreeing with the contract, then thumbed the acceptance of it.  Stella nodded back on the HUD, then disappeared.

“I guess I’m now officially a member of the Grania Estelle’s company.”

“And we’re happy to have you, Moxie.”  He sat back.  “As far as the medical treatment, I think we might be best to wait after the reactor tear down.  I’d rather have you indisposed after that, if it’s all the same to you.”

She nodded.  “No problem, Captain.  That’s what I was thinking anyway.”

Half an hour later, she was in her quarters.  With the hatch sealed, she sat down on her bunk.  “All right, Stella.  What was with that clause there?”

The AI appeared on her HUD again, her voice coming through her implants, low enough that it sounded as though the two were in the room together, instead of the AI projecting her face and voice directly into Tamara’s head.  “I know that you and the Republic had your issues back in the day.  We talked about it.  But I also know that being in the Navy was a source of great pride for you.  You try to deny it but it’s there, Tamara.”

She couldn’t argue the point.  She wanted to, but she really couldn’t.  “I know.”

“So I thought that there should be something in your contract that made sure you retained your rank and seniority within the Republic Navy, despite taking a berth and a job on a civilian ship.  So I worded the contract to indicate that you were in fact a Navy officer operating on detached service.”

Tamara laughed in disbelief.  “This is excellent, Stella.”  Then she sighed.  “I know the Navy will always be a part of me, but I think that perhaps that chapter of my life has ended.  I don’t know if I can forgive the Navy for what they let Bythe and Islington to do me.”

“I know you are bitter about that, Tamara.  But the people involved in that are surely dead now.  Medical science was advanced at that time, but a war had just kicked off.  A terrible, bloody war that destroyed planets.  Maybe you can’t forgive the people that allowed it, but surely the members of the Navy now might be more accepting?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly.  “I would have to meet some of them.  Maybe.”  She sounded doubtful.

“There was another reason,” Stella said.

“Oh?”

“I was concerned if the replicators would balk at your access if you signed on under a civilian contract.”

Tamara blinked.  “Good catch.  I hadn’t considered that.  Very good work, Stella.”

The AI smiled with pleasure.  “Thank you, Commander.”

But Tamara shook her head.  “It’s technically correct, Stella, but you don’t need to call me that unless the situation calls for it.  And unless the Captain directly asks, please don’t mention the fact that I’m operating as a Navy officer on the ship.  I don’t know if he noticed that, but I don’t think it’s something we need to announce.”

“Of course, Tamara.”

Chapter 13

The ship was only in hyperspace for twelve hours before they stopped to begin the reactor replacement.  The Captain wanted to get the reactor done and changed out as soon as possible and far enough from Folston that it would be very unlikely that any other passing ship would detect them out in the void.  With the new additions to the shield grid, the ambient shield power was at 54 percent, higher than it had ever been in the Captain’s lifetime.  They were racing along at a speed of Yellow level four, which no one on the crew had ever seen.  Someone even described the speed as “blistering.”  Having traveled at upper blue and low indigo levels, Tamara could only smile and nod.  She could appreciate how fast this felt to them, having been stuck in the red and orange levels of the rainbow their entire lives.  The trip to their next destination, Hecate, would take twenty-eight days at this speed.

“Helm, all stop,” the Captain ordered as the timer reached zero.

“All stop, Captain,” the pilot replied, working his controls.  The ship came out of hyperspace and slowed to a stop.  There was nothing to do this relative to out in the void, but the engines were shut down and the sensors indicated they weren’t moving.

“George, link with Engineering.  Make sure we are running on low power only.  Sensors, comms and life support.  Everything else shut it down.  I want to put as little strain on the aux reactor as possible.”

“Understood, Captain.”

The bridge crew all sat at their stations, a bit nervous.  In fact, most of the crew were not thrilled at the idea of stopping out in the middle of nowhere, far from any planet or assistance.  But, it was in the Chief’s hands now, the Captain mused.

“All right people, let’s do this carefully,” Quesh’s voice boomed over the engineering spaces.  All of his crews were gathered, ready to do their part.  The biggest problem would be the teardown of the reactor.  The irradiated parts needed to be removed from the reactor, carried to the nearest airlock and spaced.  The problem was there was no direct path to an airlock from the reactor spaces.  They had the ability to scram the reactor, of course, but unlike on a warship, a freighter didn’t have the ability to eject its core.  Fusion reactors were expensive and therefore needed to be protected.  Freighters were not equipped with ejection systems since it was considered unlikely they’d ever need to toss the reactor.  It was assumed that either you could get your ship into port to make repairs, or the problems would be minor enough to fix on the go.  No one ever planned for a ship to be running and being overhauled hundreds of years past its planned hull life.

After cutting the fuel lines, draining them, and physically disconnecting them from the main reactor, the power plant eventually flared out like a guttering candle.

“Power levels at zero, Chief,” one of the techs reported from the nearby console.  “We’ve lost plasma stream.”

“Good,” Quesh replied.  “I was actually worried we’d have a problem in the shutdown.”

“They’re not going to cool down, you know,” Tamara put in.  “They’re so hot with radiation, the temperature will technically come down, but we won’t be able to be in the reactor spaces.”

“Good thing we have those bots built.”  The Parkani normally wouldn’t have been in the mood to have Tamara pointing out the obvious, but this was a situation he hadn’t encountered before.  The ship’s reactor was a patchwork of mismatched and cobbled components, using anything and everything they could to keep it running over the years.  In the last few months since Tamara’s arrival, they had pulled out some of the fixes and replaced them with proper components, but this full teardown was long past due.

The bots in question were built from specialized materials and shielded from radiation.  They would continue to function even under the harshest of conditions, which would allow them to be able to get inside the reactor and tear out the old emitters.  Then, once the entire reactor was completely removed, the whole place cleansed of residual radiation, all the parts carefully stacked in cargo bay three would be brought in and a new reactor assembled.

There were four bots currently inside the reactor, being controlled by four technicians while Tamara looked on.  Her job was to handle the teardown and disposal.  Ka’Xarian was to supervise the rebuild, while Quesh would handle the power up.

They all worked as a well-oiled machine.  The techs on bot-duty had been practicing control for the last several days and could operate their machines with skill.  The actual tearing out of components was simple.  Getting them out through the narrow spaces was the difficult part, especially since many of the various components were big and awkward and not really designed to fit through the corridors of the ship.  They had mapped out the most efficient route from the engineering spaces to the closest cargo bay, where once inside, the bay would be depressurized, the main cargo doors opened and the tractoring beams would toss the irradiated components out into the void.

A problem this caused was that once the bots left the reactor spaces, they themselves were now contaminated and spread the lethal energy throughout the corridors as they moved.  But there was nothing they could do about that as it happened.  Each area was sprayed down with “the blue goop” which was a special chemical that was developed for radiation cleanup.  This was done by crewmen in special skinsuits hardened against radiation, though they too needed to take anti-radiation pills and receive a shower in the blue goop as well, both in the suit and out of it.  The bot would move through, the area would be sprayed, the bot would move back to the reactor spaces, the crewmen would spray it down again.  The blue goop evaporated quickly once exposed to atmo, so the workers had to spray quickly and efficiently, though Quesh had stressed he would rather they use too much than not enough.

No one disagreed with this.

They had synthesized a very large store of the stuff, knowing the teardown might take a few hours and a number of trips.  The workers that had to be in areas directly exposed were changed out every two hours in order to limit their exposure.  Those working to control the bots were doing so from another compartment in the engineering spaces; the reactor spaces themselves were completely shielded against hard radiation, so the crew as a whole was protected.  Still, there were several cases of workers complaining of nausea; those displaying those symptoms were rushed to sickbay for treatment.  They were suffering from the beginning stages of radiation sickness, luckily they were only showing the first symptoms, low white blood cell count and nausea.  Turan made sure that everyone on the ship was treated and those showing symptoms were given anti-rad meds and sent to rest on the far side of the ship.

Stella really came into her own during this time.  While the technicians worked to get the contaminated and radiation-damaged components out and off the ship, she monitored everyone who was in the contaminated zone, reporting on anyone showing even the barest hint of sickness.  Two such individuals who might have decided to tough out their symptoms were reported to Turan who demanded they stand down and get to sickbay.  She also managed to be with those who were resting, giving words of encouragement, telling jokes and stories, doing anything she could to try and help them through the frightening time.

Eleven hours of work later, the reactor spaces were empty of contaminated parts, cleansed of radiation and all of the protective surfaces had been overhauled and resurfaced.  Using the helium 3 fuel they had collected in Folston was far safer and produced only a tenth as much radiation as the seawater did, or even just straight hydrogen.

Xar’s teams moved in with caution.  Everyone was trepidatious about going into places that until only a few hours previous had been flooded with radiation.  It took thirty minutes of continuous scans using the reactor sensors and even portable hand units used outside the hatch before anyone was comfortable enough to get inside.

But once they were reassured they were not being exposed to hard radiation, the zheen’s teams assembled the components and aligned the new emitters with ruthless abandon.  One of the men got his fingers jammed as the rest of the team slotted the emitter in place.  Another sliced his leg on a tiny sliver of metal sticking out from the hull of the cargo bay and had to be taken to sickbay.  More bumps and bruises followed, the worst of which was one young woman (one of the new kids) who couldn’t maintain her grip on one of the conduit housings and dropped it, crushing all the bones in her foot.  Her shrieks could be heard up on the bridge and it didn’t take long to get her over to Turan’s tender mercies.  The Guura treated her while an enraged Parkani berated her for her carelessness.  None of the other “knuckleheads” as the Chief called them, were spared from his wrath.  Anyone who had gotten injured through recklessness or stupidity got chewed out.  Finally, Turan got fed up with the yelling and ordered the Parkani out of his sickbay.

Turan was lauded as a hero by the injured after the Chief stormed off in a huff.

It took about twelve hours to get all of the emitters and connections installed, after a few more injuries occurred and Ka’Xarian, in frustration, ordered everyone to take an hour break.  Everyone chafed at the delay, but the zheen and Turan insisted.

The reactor initialization was actually the easiest part of the entire process.  A very small amount of fuel was added into the chamber and the lasers powered up.  In moments, the plasma temperature continued to rise.  The gravitic compressors activated, the fuel intake floated in the chamber’s toroid, flattening out.  Temperatures continued to rise, no spikes, and the plasma was quickly becoming superheated, which was what they wanted.  The toroid ribbon was rippling with waves of incoming force, both in mass projections from the compressions and from the incoming fuel feeds.

“Come on, baby, ignite,” Quesh whispered to the reactor.  “Ignite.”

There was actually a tense moment, more so than all the prolonged tension of the radiation threat.  The radiation certainly was a problem, no one wanted to get bombarded by subatomic particles.  But if the reactor didn’t ignite, the Grania Estelle would be stuck out in the void.  The backup reactor didn’t have the juice to power the hyperdrive.  They’d be stuck if the new reactor didn’t light.

“We have ignition!” Starkey crowed.  “Upping the fuel to one percent.”

“No, wait,” Quesh ordered.  “Nice and slow.  I don’t want it flaring out because of a lack of fuel, but if we add too much fuel too quickly it’ll cool the ribbon too much and it’ll flare out that way.  I really don’t want to scram it and start all this again.  Quarter of a percent every five minutes.  Nice and slow,” he repeated.

“Roger, Chief.”

“Stella?  Are you there?”

“I’m here, Chief,” the AI responded, popping to life on the engineering holo projector at the main station.  Her voice came over the overhead PA.

“Take over here,” he ordered.  “Keep the flow stable, it’s your fusion bottle now.”

The grin in her voice was audible.  “No problem.  Waiting for your handover, Mister Starkey.”

“Handover in three… two… one… now,” the man replied, pressing a button and removing his hands from the controls.

“Handover complete.  Oh, this is easy.  Whoa, okay.”  Clearly it was more than the AI was expecting.  Quesh tensed, prepared for the worst.  She wasn’t going to be able to handle it.

“Okay, I’ve got it now,” she said in relief a moment later.  “It’s different than I expected.  I’m adjusting flow rate.  Emitter two is out of alignment by 0.02 percent.  Adjusting emitter two.”

The Parkani watched the displays.  Stella was handling it.

“Power output now at half of one percent,” she reported.

“Keep at it,” he said, nodding slowly.  Once they reached five percent, he figured they’d be in the clear.

Half an hour later, he called up to the bridge.  “Captain, Engineering.”

“Go ahead, Chief,” the Captain replied, his voice tense.  “Report.”

“Looking good, Captain.  We’re at two percent output and everything’s looking good.  Stella has a good handle on things.  Another twenty minutes and we’ll be at three percent.  At that point I’ll start upping the fuel injector rate.”

“How long until we can get underway?”

“Don’t rush it, Captain.  I don’t need you destabilizing my reactor,” the Chief growled.  “I’ll give another update in an hour.  But I’d say we’d need another twelve hours or so to get everything squared away.”

He sighed.  “Very good, Chief.  Keep me informed.”

Seven hours later, the reactor was still holding steady, output at over sixty percent.  “That’s higher than it’s ever been on my tenure on this ship,” Quesh remarked.  With a combination of better fuel, new components and an AI tending the bottle the power output the ship now had more power than it ever had, allowing them to step down the secondary reactor to five percent output.  That was enough to keep it from flaring out, but not so much that it would just be burning fuel unnecessarily.

The Captain, though, had had enough waiting.  Normally, the reactor was running at about twenty-seven percent and now at sixty-two, he was more than justified in wanting to get underway again.  He ordered the crew to do one last set of diagnostic checks, but when those came up clean, he ordered the ship into hyperspace again.

The crew was exhausted but jubilant.  They had done it.  Again.  Another huge accomplishment under their collective belts, though the engineers grumbled that the deck and cargo divisions had done little to get the reactor work done.  The cargo divisions grumbled that the engineering crews had irradiated one of the cargo bays and gotten several of the crew sick.  The radiation damage to the corridors and cargo bay was minimal, but everyone noticed a slight grayish tinge to the metal in all the affected corridors.  Every sensor they had indicated that the radiation levels were normal, but it was still eerie to walk through there.

The reactor power levels finally tapered off at ninety-one percent.  Tamara actually thought they could go higher and apologized to the Captain for the failure.

“Oh… well…” he replied, a bit flustered.  “I’m sure you are.”  He cleared his throat.  “Actually, since I’ve never seen the power level go higher than thirty percent, I think you’ve done okay for yourself.”

She laughed.  “What will you do with all that power now, Captain?”

“The powerrrr…” he purred with fake malice, raising and clenching one fist.  They laughed.  Then his face grew pensive.  “I’m not sure.  I’ll talk it over with George and Quesh.  I was thinking of increasing the ship’s armament.”

Her eyes clouded, but her face remained a pleasant mask.  “Oh?  In what way?”

“The guns we have are pretty pathetic.  I’m not looking to make the old girl into a warship or anything like that, but the laser cannons we have don’t scare anybody.  I was thinking we could add a graser or two.”

But Tamara was already shaking her head.  “Sorry, Captain, but that isn’t really practical.”

He eyed her.  “What does that mean?”

“The power grid could handle one or two of those weapons, sure, but Grania Estelle is a civilian vessel.  It isn’t configured for heavy armament.  Oh, we could build and install gamma-ray lasers, but the hull isn’t designed to deal with the strain.  A weapon like that is cumbersome and heavy.  I’d be concerned with vibration and wear and tear.  Then there’s sensor profile and our own neutrino signatures.”

He shook his head slightly, as though his head was on a spring.  “You’re losing me,” he said.  “And you’re starting to give me a headache.”

Tamara smiled.  “The way I see it, Captain, there are two main problems.  One, the ship isn’t designed to handle a weapon like that, much less two.  A good shot or two might shake us apart.  Yes, I’m sure we could jury rig some solutions to make it work, but to be honest, with the mass of the weapons and the wear on the ship when we use them, there would be a lot of maintenance and a noticeable reduction in speed.”

He nodded slowly.  “Okay, I can see that being a problem.  And the second?”

She sighed.  “The second.  Having a heavy weapon like that would certainly be a deterrent to anyone deciding to mess with us.  But that in and of itself would cause problems.  We wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that we had grasers, the power output is just too noticeable.  Which would make people think twice about dealing with us, but it would make serious players just work that much harder to disable us.  If they know we’ve got a massive punch, they’re either going to up their punches, or they’re going to try and swarm us with more ships.”

The Captain considered her.  “These are all valid points.  But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m concerned my shiny ship is becoming a better target for pirates.”

“I didn’t say we couldn’t arm her better,” Tamara replied.  “I’m just saying that gamma-ray lasers aren’t the way to go.  Now, you’re currently outfitted with four laser cannons, well, we call them lasers, but they are really focused particle beams.  You’re right.  As a weapon system they’re really only good for shooting incoming meteors.  We can probably figure out some way to up their effectiveness.”  She pursed her lips, staring at the bulkhead in thought.  “Let me think on it and see what we would be able to get away with.”

“We?” he asked, amused.

Tamara frowned at him.  “I am a member of the crew now, remember?  My ass is as much on the line as everyone else’s is.”

“Well that’s true.”  He sighed.  “Get back to me on this, please.  I really want to try and get some better weapons.”

“I will Captain, I promise.”

The solution that she, Quesh and Ka’Xarian came up with was a quartet of rail gun turrets.  The weapon was relatively simple: a tube lined with electromagnets, capable of accelerating a solid metal slug up to almost twenty thousand kilometers per second.  The guns themselves could spew slugs at over a thousand rounds per minute, with a magazine of ten thousand rounds.

“It will take a bit of reinforcement around the mounts,” Tamara admitted, “But not as much as it would for a serious energy weapon.  The rail gun is essentially recoilless.  There’s no propellant to get the round to fire, it’s just accelerated out the barrel of the weapon by the use of magnetism.  Which is another benefit.  The power levels are very low and you wouldn’t be announcing your intentions to anyone with halfway decent sensors.”

“What’s the catch?” the Captain asked suspiciously.

“The range is good,” she said.  “The guns are effectively kinetic projectile weapons, which means that if you see them coming, you can maneuver out of the way.  Technically, you could hit someone on the other side of the star system if you had the patience and the ability to aim.  But if you could get someone within say, half a light second, you could pound them.”

“The catch, Moxie?”

“Oh, sorry.  They won’t do terribly well against any serious energy shields.  It’ll take fair few salvos to open a hole in a large vessel’s shields.  However, I don’t think you’re going to last very long against a cruiser or even a destroyer anyway.  Against the occasional pirate raider in a corvette or even something as large as a frigate, we could hold our own.”

He nodded.  “I’m sold.  I just want to keep the wolves at bay anyway.  I’m not interested in taking on a saberbear.  Can we build them now?”

“Of course.  Can’t install them until we drop out of hyperspace, though.”

“Get with Quesh and hammer this out.”

Admiral Nicholas Tandred was seated at his desk in his stateroom aboard his flagship, the battleship Valkyrie.  His battlegroup was patrolling the western edge of Republic space and had been for the last three years.  They were currently parked in orbit of the Dryden system, taking on supplies.  It gave his crews time to rest and take some shore leave, though he was still battling the bane of any flag officer: paperwork.  As an Admiral, he always felt that the amount of reports and paperwork should be handled by his clerks, but no.  The clerks insisted that he be submitting more forms and reports to them.  In turn, they would send back more reports, sometimes to make minor corrections, at other times for new issues all together.  He, of course, would be expected to review and send these back.  He never got ahead; it was a never-ending cycle.  He, like many officers, also wondered if the clerks knew who was actually in charge of the Navy.

And like many officers, secretly, he was scared to truly push the issue and find out.

He was reviewing reports from his advance pickets out in Independent space, when his door alarm chimed.  “Come,” he called.  The hatch opened and one of his officers, a Commander Duncan Harth, entered.  The man commanded one of the heavy cruisers in the battlegroup.  He was a dark, sallow man with a skeletal visage.  Harth always looked as though he was ill or horribly undernourished.  His voice was low and raspy as he spoke.

“Admiral, I have the reports for the outer pickets in Independent Space.”

Tandred looked up.  “Good.  Anything interesting?”

“Mostly routine.  Nothing of any serious interest.”

“No Federation activity?”

“Not in this report.  In fact we haven’t seen any sign of Fed activity out there in eight months.”

Tandred frowned.  “I don’t know how I should feel about that, Duncan.  I don’t want Federation ships in the Indie systems, but when we don’t see them there, I wonder if they’re just good at hiding.”  He sighed and rubbed his forehead.  “Anything else?”

“Yes, sir.  One thing.  We got a report from one of the picket ships about a reserve vessel operating out in Indie space.”

“What?” Tandred asked, stunned.  “A Naval Reserve vessel?”  He pressed a comm button on his desk.  “Sopris?”

His yeoman immediately answered.  “Yes, Admiral?”

“Get me a list of all Naval Reserve vessels operating in Indie space right now.”

“Yes, Admiral.  I’ll message you immediately with that.”

“Good.  No, wait.  Get a list of every Reserve ship in the Fleet.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

Tandred ended the call.  Getting that info would only take a few minutes.  “Where was this reserve ship sighted?”

“Instow.”  Harth checked the report.  “One of the corvettes, the Fury sighted her.”

“So?  Why is a reserve vessel operating out there?”

“I don’t know, Admiral.  It isn’t from this battlegroup.”

Tandred sighed.  “Yes, Commander, I know that.  What I want to know is what the hell is that ship doing there?”

“I don’t have any idea, sir.  Do we have any interests out there?”

“No ships, just the pickets.  But I have a few irons in the fire out there.”  Harth was wise enough not to ask.  The Admiral considered it for a moment.  “What was the ship’s name?”

“Um… Grania Estelle, sir.  According to the ID data the ship was broadcasting when Fury intercepted her, she was a bulk cargo freighter.”  Harth pursed his lips.  “That makes even less sense, sir.  Why would a Navy Reserve vessel be operating unsupported?

“So let me get this straight,” Tandred replied, sitting himself more comfortably on the chair and steepling his fingers.  “Fury arrives at Instow, sees this ship, the ship broadcasts its ID and Reserve status, and Fury’s captain just lets her go?”

Harth frowned.  “Not entirely, sir.  Apparently, the ship was in orbit of the habitable moon of that world when Fury arrived in system.  Once Fury started her approach, the ship left orbit, heading for the hyper limit.  Fury followed in pursuit and intercepted the ship just shy of the hyper limit.  It was at that point that the ship broadcast its Reserve status and its commander called Fury.”

“Wait,” he said, sitting up.  “They actually talked?”

“Yes, sir.  A…” Harth consulted his datapad.  “Commander Tamara Samair called Fury and informed them of the freighter’s Reserve status.  She then indicated she was on some sort of mission, though she refused to indicate what that was.  She transmitted identification codes that turned up valid, and Lieutenant Sykora was forced to turn away.”

Tandred hissed.  “I will string that wretch up!  He let them go!”

Harth nodded, unconcerned.  “Yes, sir.  He did.  He had what he thought were valid reasons.  He had proper identification of both the ship and the commander.  How was he to know differently?”

“The idiot should have stopped them and discovered their true purpose,” Tandred pressed.

Harth nodded again.  “Perhaps, Admiral, he should have.  But what if the registry and the ID were legitimate?  Should he have risked his command over a freighter?”

“It’s his job to risk his command.”  Tandred was starting to get angry.

“Yes, sir, you’re right.  It is.”

“Why are you defending him?” he demanded.

“Because without the benefit of hindsight, he made a judgment call.  And we don’t know anything yet, Admiral.”

Tandred blew out a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.  “I still want that idiot’s head on a plate.  But you’re right.  We don’t know anything yet.  But I want that ship, Commander.”

“Yes, sir.  I request permission to detach Legacy immediately and investigate.  I’ll find our wayward ship, Admiral.”

“Yes, Commander.  Do that.  Report back as soon as you have something.”

Harth saluted.  Tandred returned it.  The commander did an about face and exited.

The Admiral sighed.  He liked order in his universe and this anomaly was definitely disrupting that order.

Who the hell in Fleet would send a reserve vessel, a freighter no less, out into Independent space?  Why waste a ship like that?  Independent space isn’t safe for civilian traffic.  Then he paused, seething.  If Intelligence decided to send a team out there to look into any Federation activity out there without informing me, there is going to be a reckoning.

He reread the report.  Who is this Commander Tamara Samair?  I don’t have anyone by that name under my command.  He did a quick search of Republic records.  Nothing came up under that name.  “Sopris?”

“Yes, Admiral?”

“Run a personnel search for a Commander Tamara Samair, in the Navy Archives.  Go back fifty years if you need to.”

“Yes, sir.  I will.”

“Thank you, Sopris.”

Sopris was a very capable yeoman, if anyone could dig up the information he wanted, Sopris would.

Fifteen minutes later, Sopris called.  “Admiral, I’ve done a search, and I went back as far as a century.  I have no record of a Tamara Samair even in the Navy, much less a Commander.  I went through Marine archives as well, nothing.  I checked on ground and aerospace forces and even the Starfighter Corps, all nothing.”

Tandred frowned.  “Huh.”  He tapped his fingers on the desk.  “Check our intelligence files on Federation personnel.  Maybe someone was faking a security code.”

“I will check, Admiral.  This may take a few hours to go back as far.”

“Take your time, Sopris.  I want that information.”

“Aye, sir.  Should I also check civilian files?”

Tandred considered that.  “No, stick with military files for now.  If the search comes up nothing, I might have you do that then.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Oh, do you have that ship list?”

“Yes, Admiral.  It’s in your inbox.”

He looked over and saw the blinking light on his computer terminal, indicating a new item received.  “Thank you, Sopris.  Carry on.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tandred cut the connection and looked to the list.  Sopris had been thorough.  Of course there were no reserve vessels in this battlegroup.  There were seven in the western edge of the Republic, but none that went by the name Grania Estelle.   What the hell was a bulk freighter doing in independent space?  Are there any corporations crazy enough to send a ship that big and important out there?  There can’t be that much in the way of goods needing shipment that far from civilization.

Continuing down the lists, he kept checking, but no ships matching either the description or the name appeared.  He thought about it some more.  By that same token, if it isn’t a Reserve vessel, who could possibly be running it?  Federation?  That makes even less sense.  That area of Indie space is awfully close to the Republic.  They’d be crazy to send a freighter that close to our border.

This was a mystery.  And it was one he did not like.  There was enough going on out there that needed tending to, he did not need some freighter intruding on his well-ordered universe.

Commander Harth exited the shuttle in Legacy’s boat bay.  He opened his communicator to call the bridge.  “Bridge, this is the Captain.  Have astrogation begin a plot to take us to Independent space.  We are leaving the battlegroup.”

His executive officer, Lieutenant Tran, quickly replied.  “Understood, Captain.  Do we have a place in particular?”

“Instow.  Make sure the crew is recalled from leave.  I want to be leaving orbit by 1800.”

“Very good, sir.  Is there some reason for this rush, sir?  Should we be concerned?”

He smiled.  “Orders, Lieutenant.  You know how it is.”

Tran chuckled.  “Yes, sir, I do.  Will you be joining us on the bridge?”

“Not just yet.  I’m going to Engineering to speak with the Chief, then I’ll be in my stateroom.  But I’ll be on the bridge at 1800 when we depart.”

“Understood, sir.”

Two hours later, the heavy cruiser Legacy left orbit, moving out past the other cruisers and destroyers of the Valkyrie battlegroup.  Its main engines lit off and the ship accelerated away from the planet, headed out toward the hyper limit.

The trip to Hecate went fast, both in the literal sense and in the way that an anticipated journey seems to move quicker than it should.  The Grania Estelle was indeed much faster than it had been, so technically, the trip was much shorter than it would have been four or five months ago.

Tamara worked with Turan to fix up the scar tissue on her hand, ear and face.  As she suspected, she needed to have the skin abraded and then a dunk in a regeneration tank.  Thankfully, Turan had kept up repairs on the sickbay equipment and Tamara had made sure to go over all the equipment before they started.  Turan was ecstatic that it was finally his turn to have an engineer make repairs to his domain.

A dunk in the regen tank was never pleasant.  Normally, when someone was put into the tank, it was because they had sustained serious, life-threatening injury.  Other times, like now, when the subject was otherwise healthy but was being stuck in the tank for repair.  The treatment would require two twelve hour sessions in the tank, with a tube in her mouth, plugs in her nose and stark naked, floating in regenerative fluid.  While none of those things sound very comfortable, those weren’t the worst parts.  The worst part was the boredom.  Floating in the goop for twelve straight hours with nothing to do could probably drive someone mad.

Thankfully, Tamara had some advantages that others in the crew did not.  Using her implants, she was able to listen to music, play games, read books.  She tried to have conversations with Stella on her implants, but she wasn’t able to speak because of the breathing tube in her mouth.  The AI dropped in on her every so often, but usually wouldn’t do much more than make her presence known and then disappear from Tamara’s HUD.  Tamara tried to sleep as much as possible, just to be done with this ordeal as quickly as possible.

But finally, it was over and Turan was decanting her from the tank for the last time.  She had little issue with the nakedness, being in the Navy, there was little expectation of privacy, certainly in the lower ranks and especially in the Starfighter Corps.  In a world where you might be expected to strip out of your ship suit or coveralls and get into a skinsuit with all the plumbing connections (and be expected to do so in a hurry as their might be a hull breach) the squeamishness and taboo of being naked around other people evaporated quickly.

Based on the looks the sickbay attendants (male and female) were giving her as she casually padded barefoot across the room, she guessed that perhaps society might have regressed a bit.  She had never been accused of being gorgeous, though the looks the males were giving her it would make one think that they had never seen a naked woman before.

The Captain arrived as she was pulling on her ship suit.  “Moxie, a marked improvement,” he said, looking her over with a critical eye.

“What would that be, Captain?” she teased.  “The disappearance of the scars or the lack of clothes?”

To her great surprise, he chuckled.  Was that nervousness in his voice?  “The scars.  You’re a handsome woman, Moxie.”

She nodded.  “Thank you, Captain,” she said, zipping up her ship suit.  She gingerly touched her chin and lips where the skin was once again smooth.  “You were right; I should have done this a while ago.”

“You don’t seem to be particularly possessed of a great deal of vanity,” he noted.

Tamara shrugged.  “I’m not, to be honest.  The scars weren’t hindering me.  In fact, when I first came on board, I was more concerned that I might get raped.  The scars acted as a bit of a deterrent.”

“I told you before, I’m not into scars.”

“You are hardly the only male on board, Captain,” she pointed out.

“True,” he acknowledged.  “But when we started our business relationship, I made it known among the crew that you were off limits.  No one would have touched you.”

Her eyebrows raised in surprise.  “I appreciate that, Captain.  And I have to say, I wondered why I hardly had anyone speaking to me in a social setting.  Made me wonder if I’d completely lost my sex appeal.”

“Are you now on the prowl?” he teased.

She gave him a look.  “Nothing has changed, Captain.”

“Nor for me,” he replied.  “Taja would gut me with a dull knife if I started sleeping around, Captain or no Captain.”

“And you’d deserve it,” Tamara commented.  “She’s a good woman.”

The Captain nodded, his face completely serious.  ‘Now, talk to me about these rail guns you promised.”

“You’d have to talk to the Chief, Captain.  He’s the one who’s been working on it.  But I’ve got to tell you, I think it might take a little while.  We need to plan it out.  I’ve never installed military-grade weaponry into a civilian ship before, much less a freighter that was never designed for it.  But we’ve got other projects going on as well.  Ka’Xarian has been working on a hydroponics bay in two of the compartments on deck three.”

“Yes, I know about that.  Problem is, we don’t have anyone who knows how to work with plants,” he said a bit sourly.  “He’s wasting all that time and effort on something that isn’t going to work.”

Tamara chuckled.  “That’s not a serious problem, Captain.  See if you can recruit someone when we get to Hecate.”

He nodded.  “Something to look into.  I’m just wondering if we’re going to get screwed on that load of gadolinium.”

Now it was Tamara’s turn to shrug as they started to leave sickbay.  “Thanks, Turan!” she said, waving.  The Guura raised one hand in recognition, but didn’t reply.  “Won’t be an entire loss if they don’t want it.  We’ll need it to overhaul the hyperdrive in a while.  Could also use it to build a new drive for another ship.”

The Captain laughed as they walked down the passage.  “You want to build a new ship?”

She shook her head.  “Not particularly, but what I meant was if there happened to be another ship and poor crew with a failing hyperdrive, it would be good to have the materials on hand to build another one.  And profitable,” she said with a sidelong glance.

He pursed his lips, thinking, clearly liking the idea.  “I think you might have an idea here, Moxie.”  Then he grimaced.  “Sadly, I’ve already informed the commerce authorities that we have the shipment.”

“What do they want it for?” she asked.  “Do they have their own ships?”

He nodded.  “Yeah, they’re under contract with a consortium to build a ship.”

“What kind of ship?”

“Military,” he shrugged.

She raised an eyebrow, moving to the side as a crewman walked the other way, carrying a plastic tote in his arms.  “A consortium wants a warship and you don’t see a problem with this?”

“Why should I?” he asked, unconcerned.  “There are warships everywhere, Moxie.  The Republic doesn’t care about Independent space.  Piracy is rampant, as we found out at Instow.  If a few corporations or a planet want to build a warship, why should we be bothered by this?”

“And if they decide to turn the warship’s guns on their neighbors?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Moxie.  War is good for business.”

“You’d fly this ship, your baby, through a warzone?”  Tamara clearly didn’t believe that.

“Every time we’re in normal space for more than a few hours we are in a warzone, Moxie,” he reminded her.  “If it isn’t belligerent Republic ships demanding we heave to for inspection, its pirates shooting us up and stealing cargo and crewmates.  If a few systems have a decent warship that discourages the nastier elements to think twice, I think we might actually start having safer spacelanes out here.”

She sighed.  She couldn’t really argue with that, though it went against the grain to simply hand military technology to civilians.  Not that it was something completely unheard of.  Even back in her day, before the fighting between the Republic and Federation heated up, there were civilian contractors using military equipment.  She’d never approved of that, but she understood that the Navy couldn’t be everywhere, what with budget and manpower restrictions.  But she suspected there was a flaw in his logic.  Yes, things, might be safer with independent warships around, but what if someone decided that they might like to carve out their own little empire?  She also knew that until that flaw slapped him in the face, it was unlikely she was going to convince him of that.

The trip into Hecate was remarkably quick.  As the Grania Estelle moved in system, the sensors picked up a great deal of space traffic.  By “great deal” it meant that there was any space traffic.  In many of the systems in what was now called Independent space, there were only a handful of ships traveling around, and here, they could see two ships in orbit, as well as a building slip, with a group of shuttles going up and down from the planet to the ships and the construction yard.

“This place is bustling,” the Captain commented as they drew closer.

“Yes, Captain,” George commented.  “That building slip has a ship inside, which looks to be nearly completed.”

“What kind of ship?”

“Nothing that the sensors recognize.  I think it might be a new design,” he replied.

“Stella?” he asked.

“Nothing I recognize either, Captain,” she admitted, her image appearing on the left side of the display.  “Though my data banks have no more information than the ship.  In fact, my data banks are the same as the ones in the ship, so I don’t have more info.  At this range, the sensors can’t really pick out details, but based on the size of the hull in that building slip I would say that the ship is probably a light cruiser.  Fast and agile, decent armament, lightly armored.”

“Very dangerous, in other words,” the Captain replied.

The AI nodded.  “Certainly to merchant shipping.  Normally it’s used as a screening element for larger capital ships.”

“And we’re bringing in materials for their hyperdrive.”  The Captain frowned.  “Suddenly, Moxie’s words of caution are making more sense now than before.”

Once they reached orbit, the merchant commissioner called up to the ship, demanding to know their business.

“This is the Grania Estelle, recently out of Folston.  We are here to deliver the load of gadolinium originally scheduled nine months ago,” Serinda informed them.

“What?  You have it!” the male voice on the other end demanded, stunned.  “What the hell took you so long?”

“We only came to Folston two months ago, sir,” she replied.  “We had no knowledge of any previous deals to ship the cargo here until we were just about to leave about a month ago.”

“Well, whatever.  It’s finally here!  We can get the Ganges launched and get the consortium off my back.”

“Very well, sir,” she answered.  “We await your cargo shuttle and your delegation to arrive to arrange payment and transfer of the goods.”

“Yes!  Yes, we’ll be up there in thirty minutes.”  The line ended.

“Excitable fellow,” Serinda muttered.

“If this consortium is anything like him, I can imagine they’ve been pestering him and his people for months about getting the materials they need to finish the ship,” the Captain said.  “I’m sure they’re even more anxious to get a piece of hardware like that out of the slip and into space where it can actually do some good.”  He looked over the sensor readings as well as the video footage.  “Would you look at that?”

“You like that thing, Captain?” Serinda asked, wrinkling her nose.

He glanced over at her.  “You don’t?”

She shrugged.  “Not really.  It’s all sleek, but if you look closer, it’s clear they didn’t make it for aesthetics sake.  Look, you can see ugly welds, mismatched colors on the hull plating, off the shelf components, especially in the communications array forward, but then new and custom stuff in the weapons amidships.”  She stopped, embarrassed as everyone on the bridge was looking at her.

The Captain chuckled.  “Well, Serinda, I never knew you were such a warship snob.”  The rest of the bridge crew snickered.

She sniffed.  “Maybe I am.  I think that if you’re going to make a warship like that then you should do it right.  Shouldn’t you want your lethal killing machines to inspire awe and fear in your enemies?  Not have them scan the ship and bust out laughing because they think you built it on the cheap?”

“Not only a snob, but a saleswoman,” George said in an undertone.

“I’ve a mind to come over there and slap your face, George Miller,” she threatened, but there was humor in her eyes.

He held up his hands in surrender.  Serinda turned her nose up at him, then smiled.

“You do make a good point there, Serinda,” the Captain pointed out.  “Perhaps the owners of that ship are hoping that the appropriate levels of fear and awe will be achieved by the strength of her guns.”

“I guess,” she muttered.

“Besides,” he went on, “I suppose they could have made it that way hoping their enemies will underestimate them, then get in for a knockout punch.”  Then he grimaced.  “Yeah, I don’t really believe that either.  Still, if it’s as fast and with as strong of weapons as it looks like, I know I don’t want to mess with them.”  Then he smiled as an idea hit him.  “Stella?”

The AI appeared on the screen in front of him.  “Yes, Captain?”

“Tell Moxie that I want her out in her fighter.  Do one of those rude flybys I know she likes doing.”

The AI nodded, then disappeared.

“We might get a little more of a look at her guts,” he said, a trifle smug.  “And satisfy Serinda’s aesthetic tastes.”

Chapter 14

“Oh, this is just splendid!” the fat little man said, clapping his hands together in delight.  “We’ve been waiting months for this material.  Do you realize?  Months!  I can’t express to you how excellent this is having this material arrive.  We can finally get it to the Ganges and get the ship completed.  I’ve been speaking to management to try and figure out some sort of alternate solution to getting the gadolinium from Folston, but no one seemed to have a way of solving this particular problem.  Gadolinium is pretty rare, as you know.”

Taja smiled tiredly as the bilious little administrator yammered on.  “We are very happy we could help, sir.  As soon as the payment is transferred to us, we’ll be happy to release the goods to you.”

The man eyed her suspiciously, the delight immediately gone.  “Are you trying to hold our shipment hostage?  You signed a contract and you are eight months late!”

Taja smiled now with some real heat behind her eyes.  “Oh, no, sir, I am not.  I am more than happy to deliver the shipment the instant the money is in my hot little hands.  Or accounts.”

“You delivered it late!  There is a massive penalty involved!” he said, smug.  He held up a datapad with the contract on it.

Taja’s smile didn’t slip one nanometer.  “Yes, sir, that is the original contract that you had with the miners on Folston.  However, that is not the one that we signed with the warehouse people in Folston.  This is,” she said, holding out her own datapad with the contract on it.

The man snatched the datapad from her and perused the text.  “This has been altered!” he crowed triumphantly.

“Of course it has,” Taja replied.  “We were not the original shippers.  We were not going to absorb an eight-month old penalty.  We renegotiated with the people at Folston to remove that penalty, though we were willing to deal with a ten percent reduction in payment amount.  We will adhere to the letter of this contract,” she said, pointing to her own datapad.

The man spluttered.  “This is unacceptable!  This shipment was under contract to be here eight months ago!  Folston doesn’t have the authority to change the contract.”  He looked completely sure of that fact.

“Very well,” Taja replied, taking back her personal computer from the Hecate man.  “Then once our other business is complete, the Grania Estelle will be leaving the system with the gadolinium on board.”

Now it was the man’s turn to look upset.  “No, in fact, young lady it will not.  You are not going to cheat us out of our shipment and then try to fleece us in our own star system!  I you insist on pushing this, I’m afraid I will have to suspend any groundside visits and no other trades will be happening with this ship.  But we cannot allow you to leave with those materials.  If necessary, we will launch the Ganges and take what is ours.”

Now she raised an eyebrow.  “You have the authority to attack a peaceful ship with a customer’s property?  I wonder how that consortium would feel about that.”

His grin was malevolent.  “Oh, I think they should understand in this case.  I mean, we have a ship that is holding property for ransom.  The owners should be completely sympathetic to our cause.”  He held up his datapad again.  “Last chance for a reasonable solution.”

“I was just going to say the same thing to you,” she replied.

“Then our business here is completed.”  He sighed, though it was clear he was pleased with this outcome.  He turned on his heel and whistling, he returned to his shuttle in the boat bay.  Under a minute later, the boxy shuttle roared out of the bay, scorching the deck and leaving the stink of exhaust fumes.

As soon as the shuttle hatch sealed, Taja was on her communicator.  “Captain, we have a serious problem.”

“He did what?” the Captain demanded.  They were in the wardroom, three minutes later.

“He cancelled all our barters, buying and selling,” Taja repeated.  “He also said that we would not be allowed to leave the system with the shipment of gadolinium.  And to top it off, they’re threatening to launch the cruiser to attack us and take the shipment.”

“This is unbelievable,” he replied.  “And I suspect that they would be helping themselves to more than just the gadolinium.  It’s a large load, but I’m sure that they will be taking quite a bit more than just that for their ‘trouble’.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Captain.”  Taja looked worried.  “So what do we do?”

“We need to get the status of the cruiser,” he told her.  “Stella, what do our sensors show us?”

“Well, the Ganges is currently running on very low power, Captain,” she told him, appearing on the display at the edge of the wardroom table.  “They’re showing no signs of getting underway at this time.  I’d need more data to determine how quickly the ship will be able to get powered up and moving.  Right now they’re still moored to the building slip.”

“Where’s Moxie?”

“Tamara is out in her fighter,” Stella replied immediately.

“Doing a flyby of the big ship I hope?” Taja asked.

“Yes, Taja, in fact she is.”

“Get her on the horn, please,” the Captain ordered.

There was a pause, then a beep.  “Em-One here, Grania Estelle.  I’m not seeing a lot of activity here.”  Tamara’s voice was calm.  “Based on the size of the ship, I’d say it requires a crew of anywhere between two and three hundred.  I’m only detecting life form readings enough for perhaps fifty people.  It’s just a guess, but I’m only detecting very small clusters of life signs.  Nowhere near enough for a full crew.”

“Moxie, are there enough people on board to bring the ship to fighting form?”

“I’d be very surprised if they could, Captain.  I’d need a much more in depth survey of the ship to be sure, but I’d wager that’s just enough crew to act as caretakers.”

“Stella, any activity suggesting they are bringing up more crew?”

“No, Captain, not yet.”

“Moxie, what is your status?”

“I’m at seventy percent fuel, all systems normal.”

“Stay out there for now.  Call in if you see anything.”

“Copy that.”

Stella nodded to indicate the channel was closed.  “I’ll monitor for her transmissions.”

“What’s our status?” the Captain asked.  “Do we have enough fuel to get to our next stop?”

“Do you still intend to go to Kazyanenko, Captain?” the AI responded.

He sighed.  “I’d intended to stay here for a few weeks and give the crew some shore leave.  I wanted to unload our holds of the building materials we have and make a profit here.  Clearly, it seems that isn’t going to happen.”  He set his face in determined lines.  “Stella, make sure the ship is ready to depart.  I’m going to the bridge.”

The walk to the bridge took only a few moments. Once there, he turned to the communications station.  Serinda was off duty, but a young hak’ruk female was at the console.  The hak’ruk was an insectoid race, though completely unrelated to the zheen, born on a very hot, desert world.  Unlike the zheen, whose coloring tended to be in the purple and violet range, the hak’ruk were almost universally black.  Kutok, the young female who sat at the controls, was a competent communicator who at that moment was monitoring local communications.  Like the rest of the crew, she wore a ship suit, though it was cut to fit her smaller frame, for she only stood little over a meter in height and with six legs, though her front two were actually considered arms.  Her carapace was a glossy black color and she made sure to keep her talons and pincers well-polished and groomed.  She was a proper lady, though quickly offended by comparisons to the zheen, or if anyone was déclassé enough to call her a ‘bug’.  Her two front true hands had four fingers, each finger topped with a wickedly sharp talon.  Very few were brave enough to try and mock this lady.

The newly installed communications array made her job much easier than it had in years past, which Kutok appreciated.  She looked up at the Captain with her segmented eyes as he entered the bridge.  “Captain,” she said in greeting, her voice coming out like a purr.

“What do you have for me, Kutok?” he asked without preamble.

“The trade minister’s shuttle has been sending transmissions to the main complex on the surface,” she replied.  “The calls are encrypted but I haven’t attempted to break the cipher.”

“Can you?”

She nodded.  “Of course, Captain.  It will take a few minutes, but I will do so.”

“I know you’ve been recording the calls since he left the ship.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Good.  Once you’ve broken the encryption, go back and find out what he’s been saying since the first transmission after he left.”

Kutok nodded.  “Just a few moments, please Captain.”

The Captain nodded and sat down in his chair.  He knew better than to try and rush her.  She moved at her own pace, though he was glad to see that it was a fast one.

He called down to the engineering spaces.  “Quesh, talk to me.  We might have some trouble in a little bit.  The locals are threatening to come after us with their cruiser.”

There was a sigh.  “Captain, you’re killing me.  We’ve been working on the rail guns, but they are not ready.  We also have to prep the hard points on the hull to install them and those are nowhere near ready.  I do have two more shield nodes being installed right now by Ka’Xarian and his crews.”

“That’s some good news then.”

“Yes, sir, Captain, a small amount of good, I think.”

“How long are they going to be out there?” the Captain asked.  “We might need to get out of this system quick if the cruiser starts powering up.”

“Can’t you talk to them, Captain?” the Parkani replied.  “Isn’t that what you deck division people do?  We’re a cargo ship, by the stars, not a combat vessel.”

He rubbed his forehead.  “I know, Quesh.  Believe me, I know.  How are the engines?  Can we run away if it comes to that?”

Another sigh.  “If we need to, Captain, yes, my engines will make this big girl run.  But I’m going to want to do some maintenance on them before too long.”

“Are they damaged?” he asked, a tinge of worry in his voice.

“Relax, Captain.  Just normal wear and tear.  We’re just trying to keep up on the maintenance this time around.  I’m not letting my crews slip.  I’d like to keep these engines for years to come, not have to completely rebuild them in six months.”

“I’ll drink to that,” the Captain agreed.  “Far less expensive, I think.”

“Don’t worry, Captain.  The Grania Estelle is fully at your command if you need her.”

“That’s good to know, Quesh.  Hopefully this is all just academic.  I’m really hoping the locals will see reason and we can get down to business.”  He cut the connection.  Looking over at the hak’ruk, he saw she was still busy with her console.  To give himself something to do, he checked the status of the various systems on his display.  Fuel was actually good.  Since they were now running the reactor on helium 3 instead of seawater or hydrogen, the power output was much higher than he was used to and, it seemed, much more fuel efficient.  Just before the jump after the rebuild of the main reactor, the fuel tanks were about 90 percent full.  After the trip through hyperspace, they were now at 72 percent.  They were still fine tuning things and Quesh had indicated he could probably get better efficiency on the next jump.

“Captain, I have it,” Kutok said into the silence of the bridge.

He blinked, startled.  “Good.  What are they saying?”

Her mouth pincers twitched, the equivalent of a snort.  “You’re going to want to hear this.”  She pressed a control.  “It’s audio only.”

“This is Steffan.  The freighter jocks are playing hardball.  They’re completely unwilling to listen to reason.”

“Do they have the shipment or not, Steffan?”

“Oh, they have it.  Their cargo wench showed it to me and I checked the purity.  It’s exactly what we need for the Ganges engines.  In fact, the cargo labels are from Folston.  It’s our shipment all right.”

“So what’s the problem?  They won’t give up the shipment?”

“They’re not sticking to the original contract.  They apparently renegotiated with Jundlan at Folston and brokered a new deal.”

“Okay, they wouldn’t be the first to try that nonsense.”

“No, they wouldn’t.  But, they are determined that they are not going to pay the penalty.  In fact, they’re trying to gouge us for even more credits than we even started with.”

“So what are they doing?”

“They’re saying they’re going to leave.  They’re cancelling any leave and said they were just going to keep the shipment for themselves.”

“What?  The hell they are!  Those are our materials.  We need that to get the Ganges up and running!  Don’t they understand what they’re doing to our schedules?”

“They don’t care, Yorik.  They’re all about the money.  They’re just going to steal our materials and waltz off to another world and resell them.”

“Okay that’s a lie.”  The Captain glared irritably at the display.

“He’s completely distorting the facts, Captain,” Kutok said.  “We weren’t trying to gouge anyone.”

“I’m thinking that our good friend Steffan was expecting to get that shipment for a song.  And when Taja decided to actually make him stick to our contract with Folston, he decided to play hardball.”

“So where does that leave us, Captain?”

He sat and thought about it for a moment.  “Do they say anything about the Ganges?”

Kutok’s pincers twitched and she pressed a few more controls.  The Captain watched her, always impressed that her very sharp fingertips didn’t pierce the buttons she was pressing.  The transmission resumed.

“So what are we going to do about it?” Yorik asked.

“Can we get the Ganges active?  I mean, I suppose we could try and board them, but if we’ve got the cruiser there, we could bring them to their knees and just take the shipment.”

It seemed that Yorik was considering this idea.  “I’ll talk with Commander Tyler, see what he says.”

“How long will it take to get the Ganges ready and launched?” Steffan asked.

“That’s a question for Tyler.  I can’t imagine it would be any less than a few hours though.  What about the freighter?  Are they powering up to leave?”

“Grania Estelle and her incompetent crew have been here before, Yorik.  They pretend that they’re hard traders and hard chargers, but their ship is a wreck.  They’re not going anywhere soon.”

“Then why waste time with the Ganges?  Just send a flight of Centurion fighters up there and get this done.  We’ve been waiting for almost nine months for the Ganges to be completed.  I’m sick of listening to Tiberius from Imogen whining about schedules and timeframes.  I want to give him his ship and get him off my back.”

The Captain paled a little.  “Centurion fighters?  That doesn’t sound good.”

“No it doesn’t,” Kutok agreed.  “We might want to get Commander Samair in on this.”

The Captain eyed her.  “She’s not a Commander anymore, Kutok.”

“She never resigned from the Republic military, Captain, but I take your point,” she conceded.  “But my point still stands.”

“Right.  Get her on the line.”  The hak’ruk pressed a few controls.  She nodded to the Captain.

“Grania Estelle to Em-One, come in.”

“Em-One here, Captain,” the pilot/engineer replied.  “Completing my second pass now.  I’m still not picking up any signs that the Ganges is powering up.”

“We intercepted a transmission from our merchant friend and the surface.  It sounds like they’re starting the hardball game.”

“Great.  I’m game,” Tamara replied in deadly earnest.  “I have been itching to cut my baby here loose.”

He snorted.  “I’m sure you have.  But the locals decided they’re not going to wait for the cruiser to be ready for us and said something about sending a flight of their Centurion fighters to pay us a visit.”

“Any idea on how many fighters constitute a ‘flight’?”

“No, but I would imagine somewhere between four and six.”

Stella appeared on the bridge holo projector.  “I’ve used the ship’s sensors, Captain, and I’ve found their launching hangar.  I’m detecting thirty-six single-pilot ships there.  Unknown ship configuration.”

“I imagine those are our fighters,” the Captain commented.

“You’re most likely correct, Captain,” Stella agreed, “Seeing as how there is increased activity in that area now.  I’m reading a cluster of life form readings in that area.  Possibly a ground crew and pilots.”  The ship’s upgraded bow sensors could see down from orbit, as clear as a satellite picture, able to pick out details as small as a grain of sand.  Unfortunately, as the ship was in orbit, they could only look straight down, but that was fine for their purposes now.  They could see a dozen people rushing from ground cars into the hangars which, sadly, were covered.  But the sensors could detect clusters of life forms in six areas of the hangar, grouped in distinct sections.

“Looks like it could be as many as six, Moxie.”

“I welcome all challengers,” she said viciously.

“You got bloodthirsty all of a sudden, Moxie,” he commented dryly.

“I just got signed onto a ship, Captain,” she replied.  “I just helped get her back down to her fighting weight again.  Do you honestly think I’m going to let these swaggering braggarts tear her apart again?”

“You’d better not,” he said gruffly.  “You and I would have a stern chat after that.”

She laughed.  “I think it might be a good idea to bring your shields up and get your weapons online.”

“We’ve only got those laser cannons,” he protested.

“Well, you can try and mount some defense,” she fired back, “or you can sit there and wait to die.  Because while I might, and I stress might be able to handle six of them, are you really going to just stand back and do nothing?  Do nothing on the slim hope that one could best six?”

He grimaced.  “Well, when you put it that way.  You make a good argument.  Well, I need you to get your ass back over here in case they decide to come up.”

“Please try and talk to them, Captain.  I really don’t want to murder some kids who are just doing their jobs.”

“All right, stay on channel two,” he told her.  Kutok muted the bridge conversations.  “See if you can contact our good friend Steffan.  I want to try and head this off before someone dies.”

“Yes, Captain,” she answered, working her controls.  A moment later, “I have the commerce minister on the line.  Audio only.”

“Put me on.”  She nodded.  “This is Captain Vincent Eamonn on the Grania Estelle.”

Steffan answered immediately.  “Ah, Captain.  Good.  You’ve made a decision?  You’ve decided to see sense?”

“I’m trying to find some sense here,” he replied.  “My cargo specialist is telling me that the negotiations ended.  What’s the story here?”  He could see that Kutok was trying to get his attention.

“Captain, I’ve muted it.  He’s transmitting a second signal on the same encryption as before.  He’s probably talking to the people on the surface.”

“Record it for later.  Put me back on.”  She nodded.

“The story is, Captain,” Steffan replied, sounding as though he was speaking with his nose raised in the air, “is that your specialist is trying to cheat the hard-working people of Hecate.”

“Well I can’t believe she would do that,” he said, trying to sound completely innocent and confused.  Then he rolled his eyes.  “Taja is normally so reliable.”

“You will need to speak with your staff, Captain,” Steffan told him.  “Perhaps you and I can get this situation straightened out.”

“I would like that very much,” he answered, truthfully.  Kutok sent a message to his display, not saying a word.

He is in communication with the surface, the same individual as before.  Yorik is telling him to keep you talking while he gets the fighters prepped.  It is my opinion that neither man is interested in dealing with us.  They intend to attack.

Eamonn was forced to agree.  “So what’s this I hear about a different deal?  I mean, we’re both businessmen.  Let’s get this hammered out.”  He entered a few commands on his display, telling George to get to the bridge and to get the laser cannons online.

“I’ve spoken with the consortium, Captain.  I’m afraid they are not willing to budge on this,” Steffan went on.  “They are saying they will not alter the original agreement.  And since the shipment is almost nine months late, they will only pay out under those terms.”

“Come now, Steffan,” the Captain replied.  “We’re both reasonable men.  My ship picked up the shipment after the original transporters abandoned it.  Surely you and I could work something out.  I will admit that the original transporter screwed your client over and I can also understand a reduced payment.  But the full penalty?  That’s just unreasonable.”

Steffan sighed.  “Of course I understand, Captain.  And I tend to agree, the full penalty is unreasonable.  But I’ve spoken with the consortium and they refuse to budge on this.  I can try and talk with them again.  I mean you did come all this way and you do have the shipment.  Perhaps they might be willing to negotiate the price.”

“I’d like to go with you, if at all possible, Minister,” the Captain put in.  “Maybe if they see me in person showing them some respect, they might be willing to work with me.”

“I suppose that might work.  Let me speak with them first and see if we can set up a conference.”  Steffan sounded as though he was happy and willing to set this up.

Communications from the surface indicate that the fighters are ready for launch.  We only have a few minutes before they leave the surface.  He’s only stringing you along.

Great, he thought.  He was about to speak, but Kutok sent another message.

Tamara Samair indicates that the Ganges is beginning power up procedures.  George confirms the readings.  She is requesting instructions.

It never rains, but it pours.  “I understood that the consortium was threatening to use their cruiser to attack my ship,” he said, sounding slightly worried.  “I see that the ship is beginning to power up.  This is causing me some concern.”

“Oh, it’s all bluster!” the man protested.  “The consortium knows that if they started shooting customers over any sort of contract disputes, there wouldn’t be any more customers.”

“Then why is the Ganges showing increased power activity?”

“I’ve been told it’s just routine diagnostics.”

The Captain imagined that Steffan was sweating.  If Grania Estelle broke orbit now and accelerated for the hyper limit, it was possible that the freighter might get far enough from the planet that the fighters might not dare follow due to fuel constraints.  And if that was the case, he (and by extension the consortium) might not get the shipment needed for the cruiser.  He needed to keep the Captain talking long enough for the fighters to get in range.

Captain, sensors show that six sublight craft are lifting off from the surface.  Their vectors are showing they are on an intercept course for us.  ETA four minutes.

He pressed a stud on the arm of his chair, muting the call.  “Tell Moxie to get into defensive position, or whatever she calls it.”

He pressed the stud again.  “Minister, I’m detecting six ships leaving the planet on a course for my ship.  Can you explain their intentions?”

Steffan sighed.  “Please do not resist,” he said.  “We are getting that shipment, but the amount of damage your ship takes will depend on how much you resist.  Our pilots are trained to fight off pirates, they will have no trouble with your freighter.”

Eamonn cut the connection.  “George, get the weapons online now!  Raise shields.”

“Shields up, Captain, holding at sixty-eight percent,” Stella replied.  They both, AI and human, grimaced at that, even though the Captain had never seen shield coverage that strong in his lifetime.  When dealing with shield power for hyperspace speed, he was ecstatic.  When facing an imminent attack, suddenly his big ship didn’t feel so strong and safe anymore.

He could feel himself starting to sweat under his ship suit.  The last attack on his ship didn’t work out so well for the Grania Estelle.  Those fighters coming in wouldn’t be able to board, but then, they probably weren’t intending to.  They would be softening his ship up for the inevitable shuttles full of troopers who would be coming in later to board and strip out the freighter’s cargoes.

“George, do we have anyone on board who is checked out on the cannons?” he asked, kicking himself for not addressing this before.

“Only Tamara, Captain,” he replied, looking guilty.  “She had started training me on them over the last two days and I’ve been running a few sims.”

“Don’t feel bad, George,” he said.  “I’ve been neglecting a critical part of my ship.”  He sighed.  “I’m glad at least that woman had the foresight to start thinking about these things.”

“We’re a cargo ship, Captain,” George protested.  “This isn’t a ship of war.”

“Don’t you remember, George?  We’re a Navy Reserve vessel.  We are a ship of war.”

“That’s not funny, Captain,” Kutok replied.

He sighed.  “No, Kutok, it’s not funny.  Not funny at all.  George, arm the weapons, get them pointed in the right direction.”

“Do you know anything about our guns, Captain?”

“A little.”

“Then would you mind taking cannon two?  Every little bit helps.  And if you’re taking one of the cannons, it means I don’t have to worry about it.”

The Captain nodded as his display altered, bringing up a targeting system.  The Captain’s chair could be configured to handle all the various stations on the ship in an emergency and this certainly qualified.  On the arm of the chair, folded down, was a control stick for the guns.  Pressing a switch, the control stick unfolded from the side of the chair.  He gripped it and he saw on his display that cannon two (and the accompanying targeting package) was now under his command.  Nervously, he adjusted his aim and sat up a bit straighter.  Cannon two was on the bottom side, starboard, which was on the side pointing away from the planet’s surface and the approaching fighters.  But he knew that once the guns started firing, the Hecate fighters wouldn’t stay on one side of the ship.

Tamara Samair sat in the cockpit of her starfighter, flexing her fingers and taking a few deep, steadying breaths.  It had been many years since she had fired a shot in anger from the pilot’s couch.  Her time in the brig, her time in charge of the shipyard, even her time on the Grania Estelle.  She swallowed a few times, using her breathing to center herself.

“Are you all right, Tamara?” Stella asked.  She wasn’t projecting her image onto Tamara’s HUD, neither on her implants nor on the Perdition’s displays.

“I can’t see you,” she replied.

“No, I didn’t want to distract you.”

“Thanks,” she said.  “I appreciate that.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” the AI pointed out.

“No, Stella.  No I didn’t.”

“Can you do this?”

Tamara sighed, stretching her neck from side to side to try and loosen up her shoulders.  “Yes, I can.  It’s just been a while.  Pre-battle jitters.”

“I’m a little nervous myself,” Stella admitted.  “I’ve never been in a battle before.”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Tamara replied.  “Just stay calm and follow the Captain’s orders, assist where you can.  For the most part, you’re just going to be doing the same things you normally do.  I just wish we had more data on the Centurion fighters.”  She huffed out a breath.  “Now, stop distracting me.  Get with the Captain, make sure you keep both of us informed on any critical events and relay communications.”

“Aye, aye, Commander Samair.”  She couldn’t see Stella, but if she could, Tamara thought the AI would be snapping off a salute.  Tamara chuckled as the call ended.  She shook her hands out, as though trying to flick away droplets of water, then gripped the controls.

The six fighters were closing, keeping in three tight formations of two, each formation spreading out from the others.  The pairs were covering their wingmen, but the three groups were spreading out, to attack the Grania Estelle from three vectors.  It would make her job much harder.  But she wasn’t going to just sit here and wait for them to get too close.

Pressing the throttle lever forward, the Perdition fighter roared ahead, heading toward the oncoming ships.  For the thousandth time, Tamara cursed herself for not equipping the fighter with missiles.  She had convinced herself that they wouldn’t be needed, that they were pulling resources away from more critical projects.  Now she was kicking herself.  If she had missiles, she could have whittled down the numbers of the attackers before closing to cannon range.  As it was, she had to deal with a knife fight, one against enemies with unknown capabilities.  She had never heard of a Centurion fighter before, and there was no time to do an in depth analysis of any sensor data.

“No worries,” she said softly.  “Let’s do this.”  She clicked her comms.  “Grania Estelle, this is Em-One.  Warn them off, please.  I want it clear that we didn’t initiate this.”

A moment later, Kutok’s very cultured voice came over the comms on an open channel.  “This is the Grania Estelle to incoming Hecate starfighters.  Break off your attack and stand down.  We have no hostile intentions toward you, your system or your government, but we will defend ourselves if attacked.”

“Thank you, Grania Estelle,” Tamara said.  “If they close to within fifty thousand kilometers of the ship, I will engage.”  Checking her scopes, they were at sixty-two thousand and closing awfully fast.

“Understood, Em-One,” Kutok replied.  She sounded as though she was delivering a weather report, not relaying reports that might soon include someone’s death.

The Centurion fighters were shaped like elongated pyramids.  The fighter itself was flattened out on the top and bottom, but retained the feeling of an arrowhead, though the sides of the fighters were not sharp angles.  The Centurion sported a quartet of cannons in the flattened sides, and a pair of missiles underneath.  Three sublight engines mounted in the rear provided the thrust, which caused Tamara some concern.  They were moving at a great clip, at a rate of acceleration that might outstrip her own ship. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to be equipped with any sort of shields, which took a load off her mind.  This only was a small consolation, as her own Perdition fighter didn’t sport shields either.  Fifty-eight thousand kilometers.  Fifty-three thousand.  “This is starfighter Em-One to Hecate fighters: if you come within fifty thousand kilometers of the freighter Grania Estelle, it will be considered hostile actions and we will defend ourselves.  Stand down now.”

The fighters crossed the line and she took a deep breath.  Jamming the throttle forward again, she banked into a lazy turn, putting the targeting reticules on the Perdition’s HUD around the nearest of the Centurions.  “Engaging enemy.”  She squeezed the trigger on her control stick.

The Perdition’s wing cannons blazed, ripping through the nose of the closest fighter.   The ship wobbled off course, spinning out of control, its vector changed to fly off into deep space.  Its pilot was still alive, but he would have blacked out due to the g-forces generated by the spin.

Tamara didn’t wait.  Slewing the rear end of her fighter around, she fired again the instant her targeting system went from green to red.  The pilot rolled and avoided the worst of it, but two hits perforated the right side of the second Centurion, slagging both of the right side cannons.  The second fighter continued the roll, turning away from the fight, but Tamara couldn’t continue the chase.  Looping into a turn, she kicked in her ship’s afterburners to chase down one of the other pairs of fighters.

The second pair of fighters continued straight on toward the Grania Estelle, concentrating on the bigger prize.  Tamara swooped in from above them, firing on the closest one.  The shots penetrated the aft fuselage, tearing into the little ship’s engines.  Fire plumed out from the area of the hit and the ship immediately lost acceleration, falling far behind its wingman.  A second salvo from Tamara’s guns blasted through the cockpit and the ship detonated.  Tamara gritted her teeth, but turned to follow the next fighter.

These guys are really green.  They’re coming straight on for the freighter instead of breaking up.  And none of them have come after me yet.

Apparently, the fighter pilots had the ability to read her thoughts, because she could see on her display that the remaining pair of fighters had turned away from the Grania Estelle and were angling back toward Tamara.  The remaining single fighter also turned, climbing up above the plane of the ecliptic to try and come at her that way.  They were still out of range of the Grania Estelle, which was a mixed blessing.  They couldn’t hit the freighter, but the big girl’s guns could hit them either.  No help there.

“Here we go,” she muttered, not even realizing she was speaking.  Twisting the ship to the right, she narrowly missed a pair of shots from one of the fighters.  Mashing the rudder pedal with her left foot and jamming the throttle forward, the Perdition leaped into a climb, as two more shots passed through the space where she had been only an instant before.

Okay, maybe not as green as I thought.

The Captain watched the sensor feeds, a disbelieving smile on his face.  “She’s magnificent.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Except maybe in the entertainment holos.”

“I’m sure it’s been a while since anyone has done any serious dogfighting out here in Indie space,” George commented.

Kutok chittered.  “Maybe the pirates do,” she said.

“Pirates don’t strike me as the kinds to mix it up with local starfighters,” the Captain replied dryly.  “They’re more the type to hit an unarmed freighter as they drop out of hyperspace.”

“Point taken, sir,” George replied, with a smirk.

“Are any of the fighters getting near us?” the Captain asked, watching his display intently.

“Just this one, Captain,” Stella said, appearing at the holo projector.  The display focused on the starfighter that Tamara had damaged, which had gotten away from her and had looped around in a large arc.  Half its weapons were out, but it was still plenty dangerous.

“Keep an eye on it please,” he ordered.  “Moxie’s got her hands full at the moment.”

“Aye, Captain,” she told him.

Tamara indeed did have her hands full.  Three of these bastards, she thought.  Three of them.  She jinked her fighter to the right and then yanked it hard to the left, diving this time as she did so.  It was an instinctive human nature to dive during flight to escape.  It harkened back to the first pilots flying single engine airplanes.  Even though these fighters were not flying in atmo but in space, the principle was the same.  To evade, pilots tended to fly down and away, which made them predictable.  It was a weakness she could exploit.

Unfortunately, every time she tried to line up for a shot, one or the other of her target’s wingmen would swoop in on her, forcing her to evade.  It was frustrating, but it ultimately was serving her purpose.  If they were distracted by her, then they were not attacking the Grania Estelle.

This of course didn’t mean it was easy.  She cut to the left, forcing one of the Centurions to break off quickly or collide with her.  She pulled the Perdition into a climb, and then straightened out, putting a small amount of distance between the three local fighters.

“Well, now, what’s this?” she asked, checking her sensors.  She saw the fourth fighter, the one she had only damaged, homing in on the freighter.  Grania Estelle’s cannons were firing ineffectually, but they were managing to keep the Centurion at bay.  But Tamara didn’t have the chance to try and go in and help, as the three others moved to try and cut her off.

Rolling right, she let loose a spray of fire from her guns.  One of the fighters turned to try and evade and ran right into the laser fire from the Grania Estelle’s guns, blowing it apart.

“Ha ha!” She crowed, turning and firing at another of the ships.  So far, things were going fairly well.

And that’s when she took a hit.  It was only a glancing blow, which hit to the rear of the fuselage.  The fighter rocked and the fuel tank was punctured.  Thankfully it didn’t ignite, but fuel was spraying out in a fine mist behind the Perdition as it flew, making a sort of contrail behind the ship as it maneuvered through space.  Alarms blared in the cockpit, indicating the fuel leak, as well as electronics damage.  Engine power and weapons were still available, but she was concerned as to how long they would stay that way, especially with the fuel leak.

“Damn it!” Tamara swore, turning again, banking around.  Cursing herself again, she had a momentary flash where she wished she had missiles in her armament.  But there was nothing for that now.

The two remaining fighter pilots that had been tangling with her apparently decided they were going to return to their primary mission.  They turned away from Tamara and her damaged Perdition and raced away, heading for the bulk freighter.  The crew of the Grania Estelle tried to swat them away with their laser cannons, but was succeeding only in sending out shots of coherent light into the sky above Hecate.  The fighters were simply too nimble and their gunnery too slow.  The three fighters made strafing runs against the huge vessel’s shields, the energy beams of their guns causing the freighter’s shields to become opaque and visible.  Each hit was a tiny sting, but they were gradually wearing down the ship’s defenses.  Each hit drained a little bit more of the freighter’s shield power.  For the moment they were not causing any damage but the shields would not hold forever against the battering.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Tamara hissed, giving chase.

The bridge crew tensed as another strafing run hit the shields.  The deck shivered a bit with each hit, causing everyone to flinch.  George was visibly sweating as he continued working with the weapons.  He wasn’t having much luck shooting down any of the fighters.  In fact, the Captain had gotten the hit, he’d just been firing away, hitting nothing.  It was clear that they were going to have to work out a better system for targeting.  Stella was doing what she could to help, but she was just as green at this sort of thing as he was.

“Blast!” the Captain hissed, as one of the fighters slipped out of his targeting.

“Captain,” Kutok called.  “Two transport shuttles have arrived and have docked with the Ganges.  Sensors report that more life forms are now on board.”

“Great,” he said, firing on another Centurion.  He missed, but he forced the ship to break off its firing run.  “What’s the word on the Ganges?  Is she going to join the fight?”

“I’m showing power levels are increasing, Captain,” the hak’ruk answered.  “But it’s not the same thing as powering up a shuttle.  I imagine it’s going to take them at least a few hours to get the ship underway.”

“Which means we shouldn’t hang around here and let them.”  The Captain sighed.  “Helm, break orbit and take us to the hyper limit.  Astrogation, begin plotting a course out of here.”  He tracked another fighter and depressed his trigger.  The gun unleashed a bolt of coherent light that struck the very edge of the fighter, cutting a rent in the right hand side of the ship and forcing it into a barrel roll.  The Centurion recovered quickly, but sparks and smoke were trailing from the damage.

“Shields are failing under the continued assault, Captain,” George reported.  “They won’t hold much longer.”

“Helm, full thrust,” he ordered.  “If we fly far enough from the planet, maybe we’ll get lucky enough and they’ll break off their attack.”  I hope.

Chapter 15

“Yes!” Tamara said happily as her guns peppered the engines of one of the Hecate fighters.  “Take that!”  The Centurion fighter turned and flew off, heading back for the freighter.  Tamara checked her sensors and looked through the cockpit, trying to find the Grania Estelle.  “There you are,” she said.  The ship had broken orbit and was heading out.  They were only about a hundred thousand kilometers from their starting position, but they were apparently flying at top speed.  It would be almost three days before they could climb back out of the gravity well and reach the hyper limit, but the fighters would not pursue them that far.  Their fuel and life support levels would not last anywhere near that long.

But then, neither would hers, especially with the damage.  She needed to end this.  Angling around, she tore after the ship and its two attackers.

An alert began flashing on her display, indicating fuel status.  Thirty-one percent and falling.  She needed to end this quickly.  At the rate the Perdition was burning through fuel because of her maneuvers and with the leak in the tanks, she would be out of the fight in less than ten minutes.

She keyed the comms.  “Grania Estelle, this is Em-One.  I’m having serious fuel problems.  I have only about nine minutes of fight left in me.  I’m moving in to engage the remaining two fighters.  Continue your course to exit the system, but please get a shuttle prepped and ready to fly to tractor me back in.”

“Understood, Em-One,” Kutok replied.  “The Captain ordered Shuttle One to be prepared for launch.”

“Thank you, Kutok,” Tamara said.  Gotta do this fast.  She was approaching the freighter, where the two damaged Centurions were firing on the starboard side.  Her sensors indicated that the Grania Estelle’s shields were failing, currently showing at only about eight percent power.  Gaps were starting to form in the shield coverage, and the fighters were moving to try and exploit those.

As she closed, she held down the trigger, aiming at the closest of the fighters.  Lightly, she alternately pressed the rudder pedals, which made the Perdition’s guns spray fire all over a small area.  It decreased the accuracy of any potential hits, but it increased the chance of some sort of hit.  Her shooting had the desired effect.  A pair of bolts hit the Centurion at max range with glancing blows, causing little more than superficial damage, but forcing the pilot to break off his attack on the freighter and veer away.

But Tamara wasn’t going to let him get away so easily.  She continued her pursuit, peppering his tail with shots from her cannons, until finally one well-placed bolt ruptured the portside engine, ruptured his fuel tank and the ship exploded.  The ship shredded in a great fireball which was instantly snuffed by the vacuum of space as the atmo and fuel were consumed.

“One to go,” she muttered.  A glance at her own fuel readouts was not encouraging.  The excessive maneuvers had burned through more fuel than expected.  Little more than three minutes of playing time and then she would be drifting free.

“Grania Estelle, this is Em-One,” she said.  “I’m just about out of the fight and I can’t guarantee I can get this guy.  Try and warn him off.”  She increased speed, firing as she went, trying to score at least a minor hit to try and force the last fighter to break off and head home.

“Attention Hecate fighters, this is the Grania Estelle.  Break off your attack and stand down immediately.  We do not wish to destroy you.  Break off and we will cease firing.”  Kutok sounded slightly annoyed at giving this message, as though it should have been completely obvious an action.

But the last Hecate pilot, flying his damaged fighter with one side of his weapons gone, clung stubbornly to his prize.  Another salvo tore through the failing shields and hammered into the hull.  Cargo bay three was in danger of being cut open again, something that annoyed Tamara beyond anything else.

I just got that hull fixed!  Tamara watched as the number indicating distance rapidly scrolled down.  At less than a kilometer of distance between them, she fired.  An alarm blinked red for an instant as the ship tried to warn her (again) that her fuel was almost gone.

“Winged him!” she crowed, as the Centurion’s port engine shredded, trailing smoke.  The fighter broke right, looping under the belly of the huge freighter.  “Get him, Captain!”

One more series of insistent beeps and flashing lights and then the fuel supply ran out.  All systems except the radio and life support shut down.  Acceleration cut to zero and the Perdition was adrift.  “Damn it!” she screamed.

“Captain, Em-One has lost power,” George reported.  “She’s adrift.”

“Once we take care of this last annoying stinging parasite,” the Captain said, “launch shuttle one and tractor her back into the boat bay.”  The Hecate fighter was out of his area of responsibility, in fact he was on the other side of the ship entirely.  He was monitoring the sensors, however, for if that last little bastard came into his patch of sky again, he was determined that he was going to blast him out of the stars.  They had damaged his beautiful belle.  His ship, his home, his pride.  This was one of the few times he wished Grania Estelle was a warship instead of a bulk cargo freighter, for he wished he could unleash some serious payback on the sniveling worms who had attacked him.  Simply destroying the fighters and their pilots was not enough.  He wanted the ones who would give those kinds of orders.

But with the Ganges getting ready for space, it was unlikely he was going to get any kind of satisfaction in that regard.  Grania Estelle had barely stood up to six fighters and (if he was honest with himself) that was due to the excellent piloting and combat skills displayed by Moxie, not his own gunnery.  Against a light cruiser, they stood no chance whatsoever.  They needed to get out of this system as soon as they could.

“He’s making another run, Captain,” George cried, working his gunnery console, trying to track the last fighter.  “And I’m going to get him.”

The Captain couldn’t help but chuckle, but then he gritted his teeth as the ship shook lightly again as another strafing run struck the hull.  “No more playing around, George.”

George was concentrating fiercely, the tip of his tongue poking out from the corner of his mouth, the rest of his body, except his hands and his eyes locked in position.  Every spare erg of energy in his body was spent on focusing on the controls.  The pilot tried to duck and weave his fighter around to throw off the freighter’s targeting and for the moment, he was succeeding.

“Helm, full starboard roll,” Eamonn ordered.  The helmsman complied and the Grania Estelle began to turn.

George started in surprise.  Clearly he hadn’t been paying attention to the Captain’s order.  But this seemed to work out to his advantage, as he pressed the firing control.  “Hold still, you little bastard,” he muttered to himself.

Energy bolts lanced out from the freighter’s cannons, dancing all around the Hecate starfighter, which turned as fast as its damaged engines and hull could stand.  But with each miss, he seemed to grow more confident, taking more potshots at the freighter’s hull.  He seemed to be taunting the freighter crew with his ability to evade their weapons.  He was far too lucky and skilled to allow them to kill him.

And then George grabbed hold of the pilot’s luck and tore off a hunk.  A pair of well-placed shots hit the Centurion fighter in the fuselage and the cockpit.  In the span of one second, the nimble (if damaged) fighter was slipping along near the hull of the bigger ship, and the next it was shredded metal expanding outward as the Centurion’s power core detonated.

“Yes!” the ops officer yelled in triumph, thrusting a fist in the air.  Calming long enough to check his sensors, he said, “We’re clear, Captain.  No further pursuit.”

“Get the shuttle out there,” the Captain ordered.  “Pick up Moxie and bring her back aboard.”  He let out a long breath and then deactivated his weapons controls.  The control stick folded back down to the side of his chair again, out of the way.  “Get me a full damage report.  Oh, and speak with engineering about how long it’s going to take to get the shields back up to full power again.”  He turned to the hak’ruk.  “Get me shipwide.”

Kutok pressed a key and then nodded to him.

“This is the Captain speaking.  Very well done, everyone.  We are clear of the fighters and we are leaving the system.  I know we had all hoped to spend some time here for shore leave, but it seems the locals have other ideas.  As you all know, they attacked us over a contract dispute and if we stay too much longer, I suspect that they will send their cruiser after us.  So we are leaving this place and moving on to our next stop: Kazyanenko.  I just want to express my anger to you all at our treatment here by the locals and again my thanks and gratitude at all your hard work and dedication.  That is all.”  Kutok cut the connection.  He stood.  “I’m going down to the boat bay to meet the shuttle.  George, you have the bridge.  Call me immediately if anything changes.”

“Yes, Captain, I have the bridge,” the enthused operations officer said as his captain walked off the bridge.

The Perdition touched down on the deck of the boat bay as the tractoring beams brought it to rest.  Tamara had the standard fighter jockey’s ego and thus humiliation at being towed back into the carrier vessel, but she had nothing else to be ashamed of.  She had downed four fighters, allowing the Grania Estelle to get the other two and escape the battle space relatively unscathed.  There was some very minor damage to cargo bay three and to the hull around the engineering spaces.  Thankfully, the engineering spaces did not have any breaches.

Once the magfield was active, keeping the atmo within the bay, Tamara popped the canopy, which slid forward and stopped.  She shoved on the armor glass, which made a slight grinding sound before sliding the rest of the way open.  Climbing up, she saw that a piece of shrapnel had impacted on the fuselage and had jammed into the armor glass, thankfully not puncturing the canopy.  She pulled herself out of the cockpit and slithered over the side of the fuselage, landing heavily on the deck.

The Captain rushed over to help her, but she waved him off as she climbed shakily to her feet.  “Sorry, Captain, just trying to shake off the adrenaline.  It’s been a few centuries since I was in combat like that.”

“You did good, Moxie,” he said, grinning.  “You did real good!”

She smiled back at him.  “Thanks, Captain.  You all didn’t do too bad yourselves.  Way to keep it together under pressure.”

“I’m just sorry the little weasels here cheated us out of our shore leave.”  He grimaced.  “And our shares.”

“Do we have enough fuel and supplies to make it to Kazyanenko?” she asked.

He nodded.  “Cookie laid in enough supplies for two jumps,” he explained.  “We’ll be fine.  He’s rotated some fish from Instow out of the freezers and some other stuff from Folston.”  He squinted at her ship sitting on the deck.  “Little worse for wear, Moxie.”

“And you’re going to let me fix it up, free of charge,” she informed him with a smile.  “Seeing as how the Grania Estelle and her crew owe me big for taking on those four fighters for you.”

He made a mocking sigh.  “I suppose I can do that for you.  This time.”

“I’m a member of your crew, Captain.  You need to take care of all of your assets.”  Tamara was giving him a very frank look.

He nodded.  “Of course.  In fact, I’m thinking I would like to expand our repertoire a bit.”

“Oh?”

“After this debacle with the gadolinium shipment, I’m thinking that perhaps we should start dealing less in raw materials and more in finished goods.  With only the few replicators we have we aren’t really a mobile factory, but I think we can get a fair few parts and things built.  And after today, I think we need more than just four laser cannons for defense.”

“I agree on the weapons, I’ll talk to Quesh about getting the rail guns completed.  They would have been done here, but obviously that didn’t work out,” Tamara said.  She stood up straighter, rolling her shoulders.  “What did you have in mind as far as other goods?”

“Well, the places we go will need things.  More than simply metal ores and random junk we collect in a previous system.  What if we made things using the replicators?  Fill our holds with some raw materials, go to a new planet or station and build the things they need.”

“And charge them appropriately for those things,” she said sardonically.

He shrugged.  “This isn’t a charity, Moxie.  My crew and I are doing this for a living, as are you since you signed on.  You showed us and you helped us to rebuild my ship.  Why can’t we do the same in other places?”

Tamara smiled.  “I tend to agree.  I think people will truly want certain things: shelters, plumbing, computers, ductwork, hell, aircars, mining gear, agricultural equipment, anything finished.  I think that’s an excellent idea.  But despite our experiences here, and believe me when I say, I don’t want to do that again, I think that taking a consignment or a shipment of goods scheduled to go from one place to another isn’t a bad thing.  I mean, that’s how interplanetary commerce works.  The jackholes here just tried to take advantage of a bad situation.  We just need to remember not to come back here without some sort of strong escort or maybe a convoy if we could somehow swing that.”

“Sounds like a good idea.  We don’t usually run into too many ships, though I know there are at least a score of them in this area of Indie space, the nearby 100 or so systems.”

“Can we walk?” she asked.  He nodded.

“Of course.”

“Any of those ships, have they been friendly?”  They exited the boat bay and headed down the corridor.

He nodded.  “A few.  I haven’t met up with all of them.  Emilia Walker, of course.  I’m holding out hope for them,” the Captain admitted.

“So am I,” she said.  “Any others that you meet up with?”

“Why are you interested all of a sudden?”

“I’m curious,” she replied.  “I’m out of my time here, Captain.  In my time, all these systems were part of the Republic and there was merchant traffic all through here.  In one hundred systems?  There used to easily be five to six ships per system.  So yes, around five to six hundred ships.  If there are twenty or so now after a serious upheaval, I think that’s pretty good.  But if we can make friends and business relationships with some of the other ships and crews, we might be able to make a difference out here.”

“You really care about the welfare of all the people and planets out here?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

She sighed.  “The correct answer is, ‘yes I care about all of them’ but we both know that simply isn’t true.  I wish it was.  It’s not so much about the welfare of the people, though the better off things are, the more they’re going to avail themselves of our services.  No, what I meant was that if the ships start working together, incidents like the one we just dealt with will become more rare.”

“Something like the co-op idea?’

“Exactly.  I don’t pretend to be an expert on that, but if we’re part of a group instead of individual ships, it might make little petty bureaucrats like Steffan and his minister there think twice about trying to cheat us.”

“And why would that make them afraid of us?” he asked, a tiny smile on his lips.

“Because if we are part of a big group and are bringing in goods from other worlds, if they piss us off, we’ll stop coming in here.  Now, if one ship decided to stop coming here, it might not have too big an impact.  But five?  Twelve?”

“I see your point,” the Captain replied.

“Well, Captain, I’d be more than happy to discuss this with you more, but I need to get a shower and a change of clothes.  And I think I need to speak with Quesh about damage repairs.”

He nodded.  “I’ll leave you to it then.  Again, Moxie,” he said clapping her on the shoulder and making her stumble a bit, “Sorry.  But very good work out there today.”

“Captain, I’m sorry to wake you sir, but the Ganges has left its docking slip and is underway on a course for us.”  George’s voice was tinged with fear.  But he was holding together.

A cold spike of terror shot through him as he rolled off his bunk.  He was pulling on his ship suit and boots almost immediately.  His stomach was a ball of acid and his legs decided that they were going to morph into rubber.  Nonetheless, he was out of his quarters, fully dressed and hustling to the bridge in just under two minutes.

Upon arrival to the bridge, he dropped into his chair.  “Report,” he demanded.

“Ganges is underway, Captain,” George replied.  “If they maintain current speed they will intercept us a little over an hour from the hyper limit.”

“Can we increase speed?”

“No, Captain.  The Chief reports our engines are already at maximum.”

“Do you have any good news?” he asked.

George paused.  “Well, we’ve managed to rebuild our shield power to full.  Well, back up to as high as we had it before the attack.”

“That’s something anyway,” he replied.  “Are you sure we can’t increase acceleration?”

“Quesh is, sir,” George answered.  “I asked him about it earlier, he said we are already running at one hundred percent on the engines.  He’s concerned that if we push them, especially for the amount of time we need to reach the hyper limit that we will burn them out.  And I don’t think we can manage without the engines.”

The Captain sighed.  “Have they tried to speak with us?”

Serinda, who was seated at communications, nodded.  “Yes, Captain, twice they’ve called for us to heave to.”

“I’m getting really tired of being told to surrender,” Eamonn grumbled.  “Can’t an honest freighter Captain do business in a system without getting chased out?”

“They’re hailing us again, Captain,” Serinda said.  “They are really insistent.”

“Voice message?  Or video?”

“Video, Captain.”

“Put them on,” he ordered.

The image on the Captain’s display appeared of a man in his late fifties, dark hair streaked with silver.  His face was lined and weathered and it was clear from the fury blazing in his eyes that he was furious with his prey.

“This is Commander Jensen Tyler of the warship Ganges to Grania Estelle.  This is the last warning you will receive.  You will cut your engines, power down your shields and weapons and prepare to be boarded, or I fill fire upon you and disable your ship.  Respond!”

The Captain grimaced.  “This is Vincent Eamonn, Captain of the Grania Estelle.  This attack on and now pursuit of my vessel have been completely unprovoked.  I am departing this system before there is any further loss of life.  We ask that you break off your pursuit.  Eamonn out.”  He nodded and Serinda cut the connection.  “I don’t suppose we can hope that the only systems they actually have functioning are engines and communications?”

“I’d like to believe that, Captain,” George replied.  “But we still don’t have the aft scanners overhauled.  Until they close the distance, we can’t really see them.”

He rubbed his forehead then nodded.  “All right.  Helm, cut acceleration to zero, then flip us around so the forward sensors can get a good look.”

Everyone on the bridge was staring at him.  No one moved.

“Now, people!” he yelled.  Startled, they all jumped and hustled to their tasks.

“Zero acceleration, Captain,” the helmsman called.

“Activating sensors,” George reported.  “Damn.”

That was the first time that Eamonn could remember the ops officer had ever used a curse word, even one as minor as ‘damn’.  But it was enough to truly get the Captain’s attention.  “What is it?”

“We’re in trouble, Captain.  Sensors are showing active beam weapons in a dozen hard points.  We’re not in range of them yet, but as I reported before, they should be on us about an hour before the jump point.”

“Are their shields active?”

“Yes, Captain, they are,” George replied.  “Our cannons could shoot on those all day and we wouldn’t penetrate it.”

“Spectacular,” the Captain drawled.  “Any suggestions?”  No one answered.  “All right, helm, turn us back around and once we’re back on course, maximum acceleration for the hyper limit.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Ninety minutes from the hyper limit, Eamonn gathered a few of his staff in the wardroom.  Cups of coffee had been delivered, but no one was drinking.  They all looked at each other nervously.  No one was speaking.

“All right, people,” the Captain said, putting both palms on the tabletop.  “Anyone have any options?  Ones that don’t involve us surrendering or getting blown to pieces by the Ganges?”

Quesh shrugged.  “We can’t go any faster.  I’ve triple checked everything.  If anything we need to slow down.  You’re overtaxing my engines, Captain.  We’re going to have to do some serious maintenance once we’re in Kazyanenko.”

“Sorry, Chief,” the Captain replied sardonically.  “But I’ll make sure you get your time for repairs.”

“Moxie, are you sure we can’t hurt them with our guns?”

“I’m sure, Captain.  Even if the rail guns were installed, it wouldn’t do much good.  We’d have to let them get a lot closer for us to be able to hit them without giving them the ability to evade, in which case they could hit us.  And the laser cannons are even worse.”

Taja spoke up as Tamara stopped to sip at her coffee.  “Could we drop some of the ores we’ve got out of the bays?  Aim them at the Ganges?”

They all looked from Tamara to Quesh.  Both of them shrugged.  She saluted him with her coffee cup.  “It amounts to the same problem that Samair indicated before, Captain,” the Parkani answered.  “We can lob chunks of rocks at the cruiser, but they could just skip out of the way and not lose too much ground trying to catch up.  They’d have to be really unobservant not to be able to see tons of ore coming toward them.”

“Would it hurt them?”

“Of course it would,” Quesh replied.  “That amount of mass impacting the ship’s shields at these speeds?  They’d be battered down after only a few hits.  But someone would have to be asleep at the wheel in order for it to work.”

They sat there in silence for a while longer.  Then Taja spoke up again.  “What if we give them what they want?”

They all turned to her.  “What do you mean?  Stop and let them board?” the Captain asked.

The tiny woman shook her head.  “No, Captain.  I mean the shipment.  The gadolinium.  Tell them we will give them the shipment if they stop chasing us.  If they agree, toss it out of the cargo bay and let them pick it up.”

Tamara spoke up.  “What’s to stop them from just letting it float off for a little while, blasting us to pieces and then going back to pick it up?  Having the shipment on board is probably the only thing that would force them to show a little restraint.”

The cargo specialist flushed and sat back.  “It was a bad idea.  I’m sorry.”

“No,” Quesh replied.  “It’s a good idea, but I think it just needs a little refinement.”

“What do we have in the way of explosives?” the Captain suddenly asked.  Both engineers grinned at the same instant, clearly thinking along the same lines he was.  “I see you both got it?”

Tamara nodded.  “Yes, Captain, I think we do,” Quesh replied, glancing at Tamara.

“Good.  Then here’s what I want.”

The Captain was back on the bridge twenty minutes later, sitting in his chair, trying to project an air of calm confidence.  He was neither of those things, of course, but he was doing a decent job of fooling his bridge crew.  In ten minutes the Grania Estelle would be within range of the cruiser’s weapons.  The cruiser was moving in on them much like a shark chasing a whale.  The shark was determined to make a meal from its prey.  The whale might have mass, but the shark had speed and teeth.

“The Chief reports he’s ready, Captain,” Serinda reported.

“All right, open a channel to the Ganges,” he ordered.  He saw Serinda tap her console and then give him the thumbs-up.  “This is the Grania Estelle.  I have decided that trying to run is pointless.  I am jettisoning the gadolinium shipment off to my port side.  It is not aimed at your ship, nor is it aimed at striking anything in this system.”

“Captain, Ganges is responding.”

“Put them on,” he ordered.

Commander Tyler peered at him from the display.  “I’m glad to see you’ve come to your senses.  However, we cannot allow such blatant piracy go unchallenged.  You attempted to swindle us out of our product, you destroyed several Hecate fighters and are now trying to flee the system.”

“I’m not going to argue with you about the events that have transpired here, Commander,” the Captain went on.  “I’m informing you of what is going to happen.  Your ship is in desperate need of the gadolinium shipment currently in my possession, a shipment that I am more than willing to give to you.  I don’t want to see anyone else be killed over it.”

“Good,” the man interrupted.

“I’m not finished!” Eamonn said sharply.  The commander stared at him in surprise, but did not interrupt.  The Captain raised a hand to signaling George behind him, who pressed a control on his console.  “I have ejected the shipment on a course that will take it ninety degrees out to port of my vessel.  I will be continuing on course for the hyper limit.  Attached to the shipment is a series of explosive charges, set on a timer.  The timer is set to go off within one hour and five minutes from now.  As your sensors are no doubt informing you, also attached to the shipment is a small propulsion device, which is causing it to fly away from my ship.  So I give you a choice, Captain.  You’re just about in range of my ship with your weapons.  You can attack us, but if you do, you will lose that shipment.  You won’t have time to get both.”

He leaned forward in his chair, staring straight into the eyes of the other commander.  “So you need to decide which is more important to you: catching my ship, which now has nothing of any real value to you aboard, or getting that shipment of gadolinium before it explodes?  You could have your ship’s hyperdrive constructed and installed within a few weeks.  Who knows how long it will be before another ship comes through here bringing more gadolinium?  Could be months, if not longer.  The choice is up to you.”  He signaled Serinda, who cut the connection.

The Captain looked over at her.  “Do you think they’ll take the bait?” she asked him.

“We’ll see.  Maintain course and speed.  Astrogation, helm I want you both ready to make the jump to hyperspace the instant we cross the limit.  Let me know, but don’t wait for an order.”  Both stations acknowledged his comment.

Come on now, the Captain thought.  Go for the shipment.  You don’t really want us, you want the gadolinium.  Turn.  Turn!

But the cruiser was holding course.  He was really starting to sweat now.  The plan wasn’t working.

“Turn you bastard,” he murmured.  “Turn!”

And finally, agonizingly, the Ganges broke off its pursuit, turning to port and quickly losing ground to the bulk freighter.

“Yes!” Serinda said and then looked around, embarrassed.  “It worked!”

“So far,” the Captain hedged.  But he was grinning.

Forty minutes passed.  “They’ve reached the package, Captain,” George reported.  “Explosives are deactivated.”

The Captain nodded.  “I’m going down to the mess hall.  Keep monitoring and notify me immediately if something changes.  Call me just before we jump.”

“Aye, Captain.”

The mess hall was surprisingly busy.  Everyone not on duty seemed to have congregated here, gathered together for warm and company.  Cookie had whipped up a feast to try and lift the spirits of the crew and so far, now that the knowledge that they were not in imminent danger of being blasted to bits had disseminated among the crew, it seemed to be working.  Steam tables were filled with deep trays filled with foods.  The fare ranged from human delicacies to alien dishes with plenty of alcohol to go around.

As he entered, crewmembers spotted him.  “Captain!” one of the cargo workers yelled, raising his glass of beer.  Everyone turned and cried out their greetings to him.  He smiled and accepted a beer from one of the cargo workers as she walked over to him.  She handed it over with a grin and he gladly took a swig.

“Are we clear yet, Captain?” she asked, the smile slipping a bit.

He shook his head.  “Not yet, but I think we’re going to make it.”  Passing by, he headed over to one of the tables and sat down.  Gazing around at the party going on around him, he couldn’t help but smile.  They were certainly taking all of the nonsense they’d had to put up with in this system well.  Of course, this wasn’t the first system they were being chased out of and this wasn’t the first close call they’d had with warships coming after them.  Some of the newest crewmembers from Folston weren’t used to this level of tension and excitement, but they seemed to be coping well.  Aside from himself, the Captain didn’t notice any wallflowers in the mess hall.  Food, conversation and drink were flowing and then someone turned the music on.  A song from the hyper-rock band called Quantum String began to blare from the speakers and a cheer went up among the crew.

A moment later, his communicator beeped and vibrated, for which he was grateful, as he wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the noise of the party.  He got up from the table and left the mess, going into the relatively quieter corridor.  “Yes?”

“We’ve almost reached the hyper limit, Captain,” Serinda said.  “You wanted to be informed.  One minute to jump.”

He stuck his head back in the mess hall door.  “One minute to jump!” he bellowed.  A renewed roar of cheers sounded in response.

“What’s going on down there, Captain?” she asked.

“They’re starting what I believe will be one hell of a party.  Once we jump, feel free to come down, make sure someone stays on watch, but I’ll make sure food gets delivered to them.”

“Yes, sir.  Ten seconds to jump.”

He could hear a countdown in his head, then Serinda said, “Jumping!” There was the same tiny jolt like that of an elevator starting and then nothing.  “We’re in hyperspace, Captain.”

He breathed a heavy sigh of relief.  “Very good.  Inform all sections we are on hyperspace, normal watch rotation.  Anyone off duty had better be down here in the mess hall for this party.”  He cut the connection and walked back in.  “We are in hyperspace, people!  Very well done!”

The roar was deafening.

The party was the longest, rowdiest and most elaborate affair ever seen aboard the Grania Estelle.  As people came off shift, others went on, keeping a bare minimum watch rotation.  As it was, little more than engineering watch and a bridge watch were needed.  The revelry spread to three of the lounges, where holo vids, more music and more booze were added.  Card games, dice games and even a board game or two were broken out, all friendly of course.  The crew was having a good time but no one wanted a repeat of what their fellows had gone through with the Captain.

The man himself made the rounds, had a few drinks, but he didn’t linger long in any one area.  He didn’t indulge in any of the games, though he did drop in on all of them just to show the flag a bit.  Everyone greeted him jovially, but no one mistook the message for anything but for what it was.  After he had wandered around, laughing, joking and conversing, he grabbed a carrier for six beers and a plate of food and headed back to the wardroom.

Upon his arrival, he was surprised to find Tamara already there, sitting at the table with a plate of cookies and a bottle of Sebetan Reserve Whiskey in front of her, a half empty glass in her hand.  She was watching a holo vid on one of the displays.  It appeared to be a song and dance number with a multitude of players in swirling, colorful outfits.  She looked up as he entered.

“Captain!” she said, raising her glass in a toast.  “You want a cookie?”

He chuckled.  “No thank you, Moxie.  I have a plate of my own right here,” he said, flicking his chin at it.  He set the beers and the food down on the table and took a seat two over from her.  “I’m surprised you’re not down at the party.  They’ve gotten quite wild and taken over several rooms.”

Tamara snorted.  “I was there for a couple hours.  They’ve been going for almost six hours now.”

He nodded.  “Yeah, I dropped in on them all, did the rounds.”

“Not a man of the people, Captain?” she teased.

He shrugged.  “I’m sure you know, but it’s different when you’re in charge.  I know a few captains who get really chummy with their crews.  It’s rather hard not to when you’re on the really small jobs, like the Emilia Walker.  But I’ve never been quite comfortable with that level of familiarity.”

Tamara smiled at him slyly.  “Even with Taja?”

He sighed, taking a forkful of food.  He savored the taste as he chewed and swallowed.  “Taja is different.”

“Oh?” she asked, genuinely interested.  “How so?  She’s a member of your crew, same as the others.”

“Of course she is.  And I don’t let her abuse the power her relationship with me gets her.  I’m sure she’s down at the party living it up with the rest of them.”  He took another bite.  “She and I have always been comfortable together.  Ever since she joined the crew.”

“How long ago was that?”

He paused to think, cracking open one of the bottles of beer.  “About eight years now.”  He smiled.  “Can’t believe it’s been that long.”

“Though the good times and bad?”

“Mostly bad,” he admitted, taking a drink.  “Seven lean years and seven even leaner years since I’ve been Captain of this ship.  But we’ve stuck by one another and I’d like to think we’re happy.”

“You don’t know?” she asked, taking a sip of the whiskey.

He twisted his mouth.  “I’m certainly happy with her, and I’d like to think she’d happy with me.  It’s the circumstances around us that aren’t always the greatest.  Haven’t made much profit in the last eight years.”

“I’d like to think things have picked up a bit since I joined on,” Tamara said mildly.

He shrugged, eating some more.  “A bit,” he said.  “Though I’d say we did only a little better than break even at Instow and Folston.  Had no profits at all in Hecate.”

“Yes, but your ship is in far greater repair than you’ve ever had,” she pointed out.  “Hyperdrives, shields, hull, hell, I’ve even gotten you an AI.”

“Of course,” he replied.  “And I’m immensely grateful for all that.  It’s certainly going to make things a lot better from now on.  The only problem is, we need some cash and we need it soon.”

“Oh?”

“We haven’t turned a serious profit in a very long time, Moxie,” he said with a sigh.  “I would really like this very long streak of bad luck to be over.”

“I think we’ve turned a page here, Captain.”  She took another sip.  “Your idea for making parts and equipment to sell to the locals is a good one.  I think that coupled with the goods we have from Folston and we might fare better than normal in Kazyanenko.”

“That is my sincere hope, Moxie,” he told her.  “I’m tired of running on a shoestring budget.  Your help with the replicators has been such a godsend for my ship and I think you and my teams have really turned things around.  Now, though, I want to see some gold in my coffers.”

She raised her glass.  “I’ll drink to that, Captain.”  He raised his own beer bottle and they clinked them together.

Taja entered the room as they were toasting, a huge grin on her face.  “What are we drinking to?” she asked, looking from one to the other.

“To gold in the coffers,” Tamara told her.

“Give me a beer,” Taja said, coming to stand behind her captain, sliding her hands on his shoulders.  He handed her one, taking one of her hands in his free one.  She squeezed his fingers with her smaller ones.  “That is definitely something I’ll drink to.”

And within half an hour, a new party had started in the wardroom as more of the senior officers trickled in.  Quesh arrived with two bottles of brandy and what looked like an entire pan of casserole.  Ka’Xarian came in a few minutes later with a bowl of ku-resh and a small bucket of drink.  Turan showed up several minutes behind them with another pan filled with fried fish and a bucket of water.

Then Cookie arrived, with a box of fresh strawberries and a bottle of champagne.  “Well here you all are!”

Tamara was the first to greet him.  “Cookie, you old reprobate!”  She bounded to her feet (a little unsteadily) and hustled over and relieved him of his goodies.  Then she planted a massive kiss full on his lips, which he happily returned.  The others made happy shouts and teasing “woos” at her forward behavior.

“Good to see you too, fine lady,” he replied, a bit stunned at the attention.

“Come, sit!” she ordered, directing him to a chair right next to her.  “Have fun with the rest of us.”

“You,” he informed her, “Are drunk.”

Tamara grinned at him, hugging him around the neck with one arm.  “Yes, I am.  For the first time in two hundred and fifty years!”

“Then it seems I have a bit of catching up to do,” Cookie replied, pouring himself a glass of champagne.

They all sat and ate and drank and they all joked and swapped stories and relief over their latest escape.

Chapter 16

“Commander, we just crossed the hyper threshold.  We are now in the Instow system.”

The call came in just as Commander Harth was stepping out of the shower in his quarters.  He acknowledged the call and quickly toweled off, pulling on his uniform.   He hustled out of his stateroom and to the Legacy’s bridge.  “Report,” he ordered when he arrived.

“Scopes are clear at the moment,” Lieutenant Tran reported.  “We are detecting a vessel in orbit of Instow’s habitable moon.”

“What kind of vessel?” he asked, seating himself in his command seat and bringing up displays.

“Corvette, sir,” Tran told him.  “Getting identification now.  It’s the Fury, sir.”

“Excellent,” Harth said.  “Send them challenge and ID, inform them we need full updates on all activity in the region.”

“Understood.”  Tran nodded to the communications officer, who sent the message.

“Attention Republic corvette Fury, this is the Republic heavy cruiser Legacy.  We are approaching your position and request you maintain position until our arrival.  Legacy out.”

Reaching regular cruising speed, it took a day and a half for the heavy cruiser to make orbit of the inhabited moon.  There was no real hurry; since the freighter Grania Estelle wasn’t here in Instow Harth couldn’t claim hot pursuit which meant he had no excuse to run the engines up any higher.  But that actually worked out for now.  Legacy had jumped straight here, bypassing other worlds in their dash to get here.  The crew had been working hard for months, but stopping here at Instow would allow them some shore leave and would give Harth a chance to get a full report from Fury’s commanding officer and sensor logs.

“Sir, Fury’s hailing us,” the comm officer reported.

“Put me on with them.”

The image of Captain Sykora appeared on Harth’s display.  “Captain Harth, this is Captain Wallace Sykora of Fury.  I’m very glad to see you here, sir.  It’s been a very long time since we’ve seen any new Republic faces out here in Indie space.”

“Captain, it’s good to see you as well.  In fact,” Harth went on, “You’re precisely the man I want to speak with.”

Clearly, Sykora wasn’t expecting that response.  “Me, sir?”

“Yes, Captain, you,” he replied, using the honorific title ‘captain’ for the lieutenant, seeing as he was the commander of his own ship.  “As it turns out, we are not the first Republic face you’ve seen in the last few months.”

Sykora looked puzzled then nodded.  “Yes, sir, I understand, though technically, I didn’t see anyone.  The person only transmitted on audio.”

“I’ve listened to the recording and as yet, we have no information on who this Tamara Samair is.  We checked through the datanet and so far haven’t found anyone in by that name going back a century.”

Sykora dropped his gaze for a moment.  “I’m sorry, sir.  She had the right codes and the ID checked out.”

“Relax, Mister Sykora.  Admiral Tandred sent me out here to investigate and if possible track down this wayward ship.”

“I understand, sir,” the lieutenant replied.  He sighed and then plowed on, determined to get through a difficult subject.  He straightened up.  “What sort of disciplinary measures am I to be facing?”

Harth had to admit, the man had a spine.  He didn’t make excuses and faced his punishments.  “For now, there will be no disciplinary measures.  You are to retain command of the Fury and continue with your patrols.  For now, I just want all your sensor data on the ship and every single entry made in your logs about the ship, the woman, the codes, any conversation you ever had about them, every single scrap of data about that encounter, I want it.”

“Yes, sir.  I’ll make sure all of that data is sent over to you,” Sykora replied.

“Please do so.  Once we have the data we will be leaving.  Well,” he said, hedging a bit, “I’m going to give my crew three days of leave down on Instow and then we will be leaving.  That will give me the time I need to go over the information and hopefully find something about this ship or that woman.”

“If there’s anything I can do to assist you, sir, I will.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, Captain.  Because you and I are going to be in close conference for as long as Legacy is in orbit here.”

Three days later, Harth was ordering Legacy to break orbit.  He and Captain Sykora, along with Sykora’s officers and senior enlisted, had been in conference going over every piece of information there was to be found in Fury’s databanks about Tamara Samair, the Grania Estelle, the access codes and even the course the ship was traveling on.  It was determined that based on their known course, they must be headed for Folston.

Which was where Legacy was headed to now.  It was highly likely that based on the damage Fury recorded, Grania Estelle might still be in Folston when Legacy arrived and if they were very lucky, they might just catch them before they could jump away for some other system.  That, of course, would be ideal.  If not, well, Harth reckoned he could get some information from the locals in Folston about where they had gone.  A ship that big didn’t just vanish.  Someone would have seen or heard something.

As they were breaking orbit, Harth called Fury again.  “Just one last thing, Captain,” he said to Sykora.

“Yes, sir?” the junior officer replied with nothing but respect in his voice.  However, it was clear from his eyes that he was wary of ‘just one last thing’ from a senior officer.  He did a good job of masking it.

“Before I left for this sector, Admiral Tandred mentioned that he had several irons in the fire out here.  Do you happen to know what he meant by that?”

To give the man credit, he knew how to maintain calm and stay collected in the face of unexpected questions from superiors.  “I’m not sure, sir.  He might have some projects going on out here in Indie space, but I’m not looped in on any of them if he is.”

Harth smiled.  Well spoken, Lieutenant.  “I’m not trying to get you to betray any confidences, Captain,” he said instead, “but if there are any special projects going on out here, it might give me a better idea of what is going on with this woman.  Perhaps a rogue officer from one of these projects?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir,” Sykora said, sticking to his guns.

Now he wasn’t so amused.  “There’s something going on here, isn’t there, Lieutenant?”

“You are implying I am involved in these alleged activities, Commander,” Sykora said, refusing to back down.  “But if Admiral Tandred does have something going on out here, you’d have to take it up with him.”

“I could order you to tell me,” Harth said.

“Even if there was anything, sir, and I’m not saying there is,” Sykora replied, “the only one who could order me to say anything would be the Admiral.  I’m sorry, sir.”

Well, you confirmed one thing for me.  The Admiral is up to something out in Indie space.  Which might have something to do with this mystery vessel or… it might not.  But either way, something is going on.  But that’s not important now.  “I understand, Lieutenant.  Thank you for all your help.”

Sykora didn’t look convinced, but he nodded.  “Of course, sir.”  He saluted.  “Good hunting, sir.”

Harth returned the salute.  “Thank you, Lieutenant.  Forgive me.  Thank you, Captain.”  Then he cut the connection.

During the stop at Instow, Legacy’s computer geeks had gotten into Fury’s datanet and downloaded as much as they could from the files.  There were sections that they couldn’t get into, the secure sections, much to Harth’s annoyance.  He was surprised to find that anyone with the kinds of encryption skills to keep his people out of any sort of files would be way out here in Independent Space.

But that was a worry for another time.  For now, they were heading for the hyper limit retracing the Grania Estelle’s route, heading for Folston.

Wallace Sykora went back to his quarters, exhausted after the last several days.  Commander Harth had been ruthless and unrelenting in his interrogations.  They hadn’t really dug up any new information about the woman or her ship, but Harth was very thorough.  Entering his quarters, he crashed on the bunk, laying back and allowing himself to rest for a few moments.

But before he dropped off to sleep, he forced himself back up.  There was work to do yet, he couldn’t yet allow himself to slumber.  Standing up, he went over to his small table and sat down heavily into one of the chairs.  Taking out his datapad, he began typing out a report and a set of orders.  It took about half an hour, to make sure that the wording was right.

Once completed, he called the bridge.  “Bridge, this is the Captain.  At current speed, how long until Legacy reaches the hyper limit?”

Lieutenant Vos answered.  “At current speed, they won’t get there for another thirty-one hours.”

“All right.  Set a reminder to notify me when they jump.  We have some new orders and a job of our own to get to.”

“Understood, Captain.  We’re cancelling our patrol?”

“Not cancelling,” he said.  “We’re just putting it on hold while we deal with these new orders, then normal patrol routes will resume.  Out.”  Sykora cut the connection.

This patrol was different than other assignments he was used to.  He had been honored that the Admiral had chosen him and his ship to lead the small task force out here.  The squadron (designated CovRon 486) only consisted of four ships, all corvettes; Fury, Wayfarer, Red Hornet and Serpent Fang, but it was his task force.  Having only four ships to cover the entire Argos Cluster of Independent space, over a hundred systems, seemed like a futile action but at least it showed that the Republic was willing to dedicate some resources to this area.  A great deal of it used to be Republic space, once upon a time.  Perhaps at some point it might be again, but with the heavy pirate activity in the Cluster and the amount of, well, independent thinking among the inhabited systems here made reentry into the Republic problematic, at least for now.

CovRon 486 was only deployed out in the Argos Cluster about fifty months previous.  They had operated in pairs during the first few months, but it quickly became apparent that they would be unable to provide sufficient coverage with only two groups.  It wasn’t as though working individually would give them a huge amount of additional coverage, but it did allow them to show the flag a bit more.  Pirate activity was lowered throughout the Cluster but only by about nine percent.  Still, any reduction out here could only help.  During this deployment, they had bagged seven pirate ships which ranged from modified freighters, corvettes sized vessels, and even a captured Federation destroyer.  All but one of the ships had been taken back to the Republic with prize crews, who were returned several weeks later on resupply ships.  This was a frustrating task with only four warships under his command.  The only ship he had kept was the captured Federation destroyer, which was being outfitted at their home base.  Once it was ready, Sykora was going to be transferring over.

Home base in the Cluster was located in the Byra-Kae system, a dead system with no habitable worlds.  Back in the days of the Republic an old trader station was located out here to take advantage of the system’s Jovians.  There were a dozen helium 3 collectors hovering in orbit of the gas giant, with as many shuttles going back and forth from the collectors to the station and then from the station to arriving ships.  Merchants came around to make deals, trade cargoes and buy fuel.  When the Republic left the Cluster, the station stayed in independent hands until CovRon 486 arrived.  The station itself was still owned and administrated by civilians, who allowed the Republic to use several levels for their own purposes.  This had been a profitable relationship for both parties; CovRon 486 had a stable base for repair and resupply and with a pair of Republic destroyers (ships not under Sykora’s command) maintaining a permanent presence there, the locals got a secure place to do business.

But the appearance of the Navy Reserve freighter changed things.  If it was true and the Grania Estelle was a reserve vessel that meant certain contingency orders were going to take effect.  If it was a fakery, then the ship needed to be hunted down and its true intentions determined.  But in either case, Sykora’s orders were relatively the same.  So, Fury was breaking off her normal patrol route to start meeting up with locals to determine if anyone else had heard from this ship and also to start working on some of Admiral Tandred’s ‘irons in the fire’.

The planet Kolan-kei was not very wealthy, nor was it heavily populated.  It had been colonized by settlers from the Republic about three hundred years ago by a group of humans looking to escape the rigors and heavy bureaucracy of life on an industrial world.  It was a small community, concerned with farming and mining, but only for what was needed to survive.  The two thousand or so colonists were not terribly interested in the outside universe, though they did host a few spacers every so often for barter.

They dissembled their ships to create shelters, keeping few of the main components functional.  After they weathered the first winter, bigger and better shelters were made from local hardwoods.  They expanded slowly, extracting various ores from the nearby canyons.  The metals were used in their own construction and the more rare ones, like platinum and gold, were used in trade.

They maintained a security force, but it was little more than police and “varmint hunters” to keep the local fauna from attacking the villages.  They kept up a few weapons, but little more than hunting rifles.

They were totally unprepared for when the attack came.

Flying down from out of the sky, starfighters opened fire on two of the community buildings in the main village.  The buildings exploded and fire spread throughout the village.  People began running out of the other buildings, screaming in terror.  The pilots opened fire on the people as they ran, gunning some down, others simply shooting at the ground to increase the fear.

When the five transport ships came lumbering down from orbit, there was nothing resembling resistance.  Anyone who tried to take potshots at the fighters had their positions destroyed by the starfighter’s cannons.  Once the transports landed, blocky, ungainly craft, their cargo doors opened, disgorging two dozen beings armed to the teeth with guns and blades.

The invaders didn’t waste time.  Anyone who resisted was shot.  Anyone who didn’t was rounded up, their hands tied with heavy zipcuffs and secured aboard the transports.  Once that was done, they helped themselves to anything they could find in the village.  Food, clothing, and any bits of technology they found interesting were taken.  Several tons of ores were brought aboard the transports as well as several dozen containers of local grains.  Once they had what they wanted, they set fire to the rest.

Seven hundred inhabitants were killed, three hundred prisoners were taken and several thousand credits worth of goods were looted.  Everything else in the main village was put to the torch, which gave the raiders something pretty to look at as their ships headed back out of atmo and into space.

An hour later, they were gone.

At the foot of replicator one, Tamara was stacking junk components, among the last of the unused scrap that had accumulated in the holds of the bulk freighter.  She was feeding them into the replicator’s raw materials bunker, readying the device for another round of parts.  She was building another replicator again, this one designed for electronics.  The class three replicators already working could make any of the electronics that the ship needed, but they were not dedicated machines.  It would take an hour to make one circuit board whereas the e-replicator could make twenty in the same period of time.  She had convinced the Captain that this was a good investment and he agreed.  Even if they didn’t end up selling machined and finished components to their trading partners (which was unlikely that they wouldn’t) having this machine around to replace blown components would make repairs and maintenance much faster and more efficient.

It would be a few hours before all the pieces were built and ready to assemble, but Tamara wanted to get started.  They had another two weeks in hyperspace left before they reached the Kazyanenko system, so in the meantime the crew was keeping busy and performing their duties to pass the time.  The engineering teams were making serious headway with the internal repairs on the ship.  The entire hull was now sealed tight, much to everyone’s surprise and pleasure.  All compartments were now accessible and thoroughly swabbed out.  The cleaner bots still did the rounds, though with far less drastic effects.  Now they were sent through the ship once a week to keep up with things.  Apart from keeping things clean, they helped with discerning any microfractures in the bulkheads or the inner hull.

It had taken her a week (with her team’s help) to get the Perdition back up to snuff.  The damage to the ship was extensive and the small team had worked long hours to get their fighter escort restored to fighting form.  What at first had been simply a test and a collectors’ item had become the first line of defense for the Grania Estelle.  The entire crew was still congratulating Tamara on her spectacular flying.  During the party, by the time she had retreated to the wardroom her back and shoulders were killing her from all the slaps and hugs of gratitude and congratulations.

Once her fighter was again ready for combat and all systems operational, she had determined she would not be going into combat as naked as she had last time.  Unfortunately, she didn’t have any designs for missiles or torpedoes in any of the databases she had access to aboard the Grania Estelle.  That meant she was forced to design and build something from scrap.  It was going to take a while to come up with some sort of functional design, but this time she wasn’t working alone.  Her team, with Stella’s occasional input, would be working together on this project.  Hopefully they might find something that could speed their project along, like schematics or even a scrapped weapon or two to work off of.

Kazyanenko wasn’t a hugely important or technologically advanced system.  It did sport a rather large gas giant, which was good because the Grania Estelle was getting low on fuel.  Their lack of a fuel stop in Hecate had hurt and even though they were now running on the better helium 3, once they arrived in Kazyanenko they would be burning way into the reserves.  The Captain had mused on this and decided that they would get into parking orbit around the gas giant for a few days while they dropped off the collector and waited for it to get what they needed.  Tamara approved of this plan but it wasn’t her ship, the Captain didn’t need her approval.  Thankfully, the Captain looked to be playing this one smarter.  While it was unlikely there would be much in the way of surprises here, they hadn’t been expecting any in the last three systems, either.

Shaking away her thoughts, she continued with the loading of the replicator.  First things first.

“Thirty seconds to breakout,” the pilot reported.

“All stations, prepare for breakout,” the Captain ordered.  “Bring the weapons online.”

“Ready, Captain,” George Miller replied.

The time ticked down and when it reached five seconds, the pilot pressed the control lever forward, deactivating the hyperdrive.  They were sixty thousand kilometers from the hyper limit upon reversion to normal space.

“Report,” he ordered.

“No contacts within five million kilometers,” George answered.  “Long range sensors are picking up three contacts in orbit of Kazyanenko’s inhabited world.”

“Three contacts?” the Captain said, surprised.  “Well, that should make things interesting.  Hopefully they’re friendly.”  No one disagreed with that sentiment.  “All right, make our course for the gas giant.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Forty hours later, the Grania Estelle was slipping easily into a high orbit above the fifth planet of the Kazyanenko system, a class three gas giant.  Once in orbit, they deployed the collector and then simply sat and waited for it to fill.  Tamara estimated it would be about thirteen hours before the collection bladders would be full of the helium 3 that they needed, but they were in no particular hurry.  No one was approaching their position, which made everyone in the crew breathe a bit easier.

“Any chance we can go prospecting?” the Captain asked, three hours into their wait.

George shook his head.  “No, Captain.  The shuttles just don’t have the range to get all the way to the system’s asteroid belt.  We’d need to move closer.”

He nodded.  “All right, then let’s do that.  I know the engineering teams have been chomping at the bit to use that new shuttle they’ve built.  Get the cargo teams shifting the load out of one of the bays so that we can load them up with more materials.  I know there’s some in bay two already, see if we can move the rocks in there.”

The lumbering freighter arced away from the gas giant and a short time later, two shuttles raced away, headed toward the system’s asteroid belt.  It didn’t take long for the two shuttles to collect what they needed and haul their prizes back to the ship.

“What’s the status of the new weapons?” the Captain asked, as he entered the engineering spaces.  Quesh looked up from a diagnostic he was running.

He stood.  “Captain,” the Parkani greeted him.  “Well, we’ve just about finished with the first of the rail guns.  It took a while to iron out a few of the bugs in the targeting software.  I didn’t want to get working on another before the first one was completed.”

The Captain frowned.  “Seems like a waste of resources.”

The Parkani only shrugged.  “In any case, the first cannon is ready for installation.  I’m going out there with my team, but I’m bringing Xar and his team along as well.  Once we get all the kinks worked out, we might be able to install the next one with fewer people.”

“Anything I should be aware of?”

“We’re going to have personnel on the hull, Captain.  We’d all appreciate it if you didn’t engage in high speed maneuvers while we’re out there.”

The Captain gave him a wry smile.  “I’ll try and limit that.  Any idea how long it should take?”

Again the engineer shrugged.  “I’m hoping that we can get it completed within a shift, though we might need more time than that.  I’m really not sure.  For the next rail gun we install, it should take less time.  We’ll know what we’re doing at that point, I hope.  We’ve already worked up and reinforced the area we’re going to use for the weapon hard point.”

The Captain looked confused.  “When did you do that?”

“We started as soon as we stopped in Hecate, but had to stop when all the festivities started there.”

“I’d say so,” he replied.

“Right, but then once we dropped out here, I had my team go out and finish the hard point assembly.  They just completed work about an hour ago.  It’ll help with assembly and installation of the weapon and then once it’s in, it should absorb any vibration from the firing.”

“Moxie told me there shouldn’t be any vibrations.”’

“Captain, I love this beat up old bitch, but the Grania Estelle is a freighter, not a warship.”  Quesh folded both sets of arms over his chest.  “There’s not supposed to be any serious vibration on the hull or through the superstructure in the areas we’ve selected.  There are all sorts of power conduits and ammunition feeds and targeting linkages that will be there, none of which are part of the original design.  So we’re having to make some custom modifications to make these weapons work.  She’s right, there shouldn’t be any vibration, but…” he trailed off.

The Captain nodded warily.  “Is this a mistake, Chief?”

The Parkani eyed him.  “Don’t you go insulting me, Captain.  I’ll get you the weapons you want.  You just leave it to me.”

He held up his hands in surrender.  “All right, Chief.  You’ve got some good credit.  Make me proud.”  He turned and left the area and the engineers returned to their work.

Tamara knew that something was up when she arrived in the mess hall after an exhausting shift.  Her team hadn’t been working on the rail guns, no, they had been working on breaking down the rocks to feed the replicators.  The shuttle pilots had done good work, bringing in some very nice rocks rich with strategic minerals.  However, after eight hours of cutting away with plasma torches and lugging crates of materials back and forth from the cargo bay to the replicators, she was absolutely exhausted.  The big room was already filled with people when she trudged in and Tamara went straight to the coffee urns.  Tamara poured herself a cup, added some milk and then gulped the whole cup, burning her tongue.  She swore, nearly dropping the mug.  She was awake now, but was no less fatigued.

Her suspicions were piqued when a few conversations stopped when she turned back to the room at large.  She had just made an ass out of herself playing with the coffee, so perhaps at least some of the conversations had stopped just so people could point and laugh at her.  Looking around, she did see a few people grinning and then going back to their meals.  But one group in the corner was eyeing her as though she had done something wrong.

Tamara sighed.  “I do not have energy for this today.”  Ignoring the group, she stepped into the chow line behind two other crew members.

Cookie looked up at her from his place in front of the cooktop where he was stirring a huge pot of soup.  “Ah, my girl, there you are!”

Now she blushed, embarrassed.  That drunken kiss had made its way around the rumor mill of the ship at the speed of light.  It also didn’t help that in trying to be funny and ingratiate herself with the crew, Stella had plastered that image on every screen, vid terminal and communicator on the ship.  Apparently, Tamara had programmed a wicked sense of humor into her fledgling AI.  And it was funny, truth be told, even though she was the butt of this joke.  Cookie, of course, knew that this was joke, though he very much enjoyed the kiss.  But he’d known it was just a bit of fun during a party, nothing more.

“Hello, Cookie,” she said, forcing a smile to her lips.  “Here I am.”  She inhaled and the scent of the spicy pasta dish in the pan on the galley counter filled her nostrils.  After the grueling shift she’d just been through, it smelled heavenly.  Of course, it would have anyway as Cookie was excellent at his trade.  “That smells amazing.  I’ll have some of that and a couple of those biscuits.”

“Of course, my love, of course.”  He ladled a heaping plate for her and put three of the crusty rolls on there as well.  His smile slipped a bit.  “Are you all right, Tamara?”

She smiled, chuckling a bit.  “I’m beat, Cookie.  A very long shift.”

He nodded, his face still serious.  “That is easy enough to tell.  But after you threw back a cup of coffee over there, you looked about as though you thought someone was going to shoot you.  Has something happened?”

She looked him in the eye.  “I don’t know, Cookie.  You’re the one who seems to have his finger on the pulse of the ship.  You tell me.”

His eyes swiveled to the group in the corner.  “They’ve been sitting here for over an hour.  That isn’t weird, but they’ve been whispering, all conspiratorial like.  Then when you came in the room, they got all squirrelly.  Weird.”

Tamara sighed heavily.  “Thanks, Cookie.  Talk to you later.”

“There was talk of a khen game in here at 2200.  You interested?”

“I’ll try to make it, Cookie.  I am really tired though.”  She picked up her tray.  “And I think I’m going to head this off,” she said flicking her chin at the crewmembers in the corner.

“Good hunting,” he told her.  She beamed at him, then turned and walked straight over to their table.

“Hi kids,” Tamara said without preamble.  She plopped herself down at the end of the table, not asking for permission.  Once seated, she smiled at all of them and then dug into her meal with a gusto.  Cookie had really outdone himself this time.  “How are things?”

It was clear no one had expected her to confront them like this.  There were only four of them, three humans (two male, one female) and one male zheen.  Ka’Xarian wasn’t the only zheen on board, but this one was from the cargo division and she didn’t know him that well.  In fact she’d only see this one, whose name was Kek’Shar, a few times and they hadn’t spent any time together.  They didn’t answer her, just gave her sullen looks.

“Look, guys, it’s clear we seem to have some sort of problem,” she said between bites of food.  Taking another sip of coffee, she waved a hand and raised her eyebrows to indicate they should continue.  “Come on.  I’m not one for skulking around.  Let’s just get it all out in the open.”

“We don’t like the way you’re changing things,” the woman said.  She was one of the old crew, from cargo.  Tamara tried to place her and her implants helpfully supplied the information.  Her name was Sylvia.

“Oh really?” she asked.  “And what changes don’t you like?”

“This isn’t a warship,” Sylvia replied, her tone a bit sulky.  “We’re a cargo vessel.”

Tamara nodded, taking another forkful of the pasta.  “Absolutely.  I’m not trying to make it what it isn’t.”

“Bullshit,” one of the men spat.  “You’re building more guns!  You’ve got a military starfighter in the boat bay!”

Tamara smiled, though there was steel in her eyes.  “Oh, I’m sorry.  You’re right.  I should have just sat out the little conflict we had at Hecate.  I’m sure the locals would have been completely understanding and helpful, but my warmongering ways are what set them after us.”

“We’ve had three engagements in the last four systems,” the man pressed.  “That’s more than we’ve had in the last twenty jumps.  The only change we’ve had is that we picked you up.”

“Okay, my being there or not wouldn’t have changed anything about when we got attacked at Instow,” she shot back.  “They hit us almost as soon as we dropped out of hyperspace.  That was a horrific experience for all of us.  Especially for you, Sylvia,” Tamara pointed out, though her voice grew gentler as the young woman’s eyes flashed.  “Which makes me wonder why you’d hate some of the changes we’ve made.”

Sylvia didn’t speak, she just sat there in boiling fury.  If her eyes were laser cannons, Tamara would have been burned to cinders.

“So what exactly seems to be the problem with the changes?”

“The weapons, you dizzy woman!” the first man hissed.  “You’ve turned this ship into a battlewagon!”

Tamara nearly choked on her food as she snorted a laugh.  “I did all this?  In the time I’ve been here, I’ve heard a great deal of bitching from a great many of the crew about how naked they feel out here.  Grania Estelle is a big ship, but whenever there’s a problem, the first thing out of everyone’s mouth is ‘why don’t we have more guns?’”

The four of them clammed up, refusing to answer.  They returned to the remnants of their food and try as she might, Tamara couldn’t engage them in conversation.  Stella popped on Tamara’s HUD, shaking her head.  “I think they dislike me.  I’ve caught them commiserating on more than one occasion.  I tried to explain to them that all of the upgrades and changes were all for the good, but clearly it didn’t work.”  Her voice came across as a whisper.  Tamara nodded.

“So, why do you hate the AI?” she asked suddenly.  The others jerked as if they’d been stung.

“Why would you say that?” Sylvia demanded.

“Because Stella told me that she saw you were… well she used the word ‘commiserating’.”

Now they all looked guilty.  “That thing is nothing but a spy,” Kek’Shar hissed.  His antennae were quivering in rage.  “Everywhere we go on this ship, that… thing… follows you.  Watches you!”

Stella was giggling uncontrollably in the corner of Tamara’s HUD.  “That is what you’re angry about?  You don’t like Stella?”  The four of them exchanged glances then looked away from her.  “So that’s why you hate me.  Because I brought on a new crewmember?”

“That…” Kek’Shar said softly, “is not a crewmember.  “It is a machine designed spy on us, to monitor what we’re doing.  All day long.”

Tamara just shook her head.  “I… you…”  She trailed off.  Taking one last bite of food, she stood up.  “I’m not even going to argue.  I could tell you that Stella was designed and built to help, to run automatic systems aboard the ship, to make things easier for the crew.  But clearly, you’re not ready to listen.”  Standing, she gave them a lazy salute, gathered up her tray and mug and walked off.

“I don’t think they expected you to do that, Tamara,” Stella said.  “They expected you to sit and argue.”

“They’re ignorant and small minded,” she snarled, genuinely upset.  “I can’t believe they would think you are like that.”  Then Tamara paused, as she bussed her tray over to the dish area.  “You aren’t spying on them are you?  You didn’t just make a liar out of me?”

Stella frowned at her, crossing her arms over her chest.  “I am tied in to all the ship’s systems, Tamara.  Of course I’m watching.  But you taught me that there are things that are important and there are things that are simply happening.  I tend to ignore most of what is going on, unless there is some sort of emergency or if they address me directly.”

Tamara nodded.  “How discreet are you being?”

The AI actually sighed.  “As much as I can be.  I peek in on you every so often, as you know, and every so often I’ll show my avatar on displays and screens, though never in anyone’s quarters unless they call me.  I don’t talk to any of the crew unless they engage me, or if they’re talking about matters pertaining to the ship.  Or if they’re doing something dangerous or criminal, which I haven’t had much opportunity to get into, thankfully.  Oh, and I’ve warned people away from the replicators a few times.  They keep thinking that those machines are toys.”

Tamara shook her head.  “Any of those four?”

Stella nodded.  “Yes.  Kek’Shar in particular.  He tried to replicate a chrome-plated neutron rifle that he somehow got the specs for.  Why chrome plated of all things?  That certainly wouldn’t help the weapon’s function any.  I allowed him to upload the specs, but when he tried to get the weapon, I cancelled the order.  He tried three additional times and at different times on the ship’s clock.  Finally, when he tried to hack the machine, I had Security get involved.”

Tamara groaned.  “Did he lock up the replicator?”

Stella shook her head.  “No, Tamara.  I made sure that the cycle was cancelled before he got a chance to do so.  Though I’m sure you’ll want to check the machine for yourself.”

“Do I need to?”

The AI considered it.  “I did a software scrub to purge his malware program, but I’d feel better if you did a once-over.”

“I will.”  She yawned.  “Does it need to be done now?”

The AI shook her head.  “It can wait until the morning.  Get some sleep and then take a look.”

“Thanks.”  She looked at her friend.  “I’m sorry they’re being so petty.”

Stella shrugged.  “Truth be told, I’m not looking to be everyone’s friend, Tamara.  Some of you, certainly.  You created me and you treat me like a real person.”  She held up a hand to forestall Tamara’s protest.  “Xar is a sweetie.”  That made Tamara snort.  “Kutok and I have very reasoned and interesting conversations.  I respect the Captain, though I don’t know if we’ll ever be friends.  But I’m not so desperate that I’m going to try and make those… weasels like me.”

Tamara beamed at her, pride in her smile.  “Good girl.”

“Six more nodes,” Ka’Xarian said, pleased.  “The sixth one just finished right now.”  He gestured as four members of his team were lugging the shield node out of the replicator and onto a hover pallet.

“That’s excellent news,” Stella replied, smiling, her image from the shoulders up appearing on the replicator display.  She had been monitoring the replicators and had already known this information, but she was pleased that the job had been completed and also was pleased at the pride in the zheen’s voice.  He was chittering to himself, another sign of his happiness.

“Yes, it is.  With these little babies installed and with the increased output from the reactor, we’ll be able to maintain about ninety percent shield power.”  His antennae were flitting around, as though he couldn’t keep still.  He nodded to his team members, who left the replicator bay, taking the hover pallet with them.

“Does that mean the ship could fly faster in hyperspace?  I mean we’re able to hit Yellow level seven right now.”

Ka’Xarian apparently calmed a bit at that question.  “I’m sure we could.  In fact, with increased shield power like that, I know we can.  Not too much more though.  We’re going to have to do a full workup on the hyperdrive as well as the ship’s structural integrity.  As we are right now, we might be able to break Green level one, but I don’t think we can get more out of it.  We’ve replaced a lot of the ship’s components, but she’s an old girl.  It’d take a yard to get her up to middle of the green.  I think we might be right about at her max for speed.  But still, we’re going so much faster than we ever were before.  Green level one?  I’ve never gone that fast before.  On any ship!”  The excitement was back.

“Neither have I,” Stella admitted.

“This is your first ship, Stella,” he retorted.  “As a matter of fact, Grania Estelle is you.  You are the one who will be able to fly at Green level one.  With the way your core matrix is integrated into the ship’s systems, you are the ship.”  The zheen paused, his antennae drooped, as though he was embarrassed.  “And you’re beautiful, Stella.”

Stella blinked and then beamed.  “Thank you, Xar,” she said softly, lowering her eyes.  Then her image vanished from the screen.

With the collector back in the cargo bay and the tanks back up to a more suitable level, Grania Estelle broke orbit of the gas giant and headed in system.  The first rail gun had been installed in the forward section on the port side.  They hadn’t done any tests on it yet, but all the hardware was secured and the linkages were set.  As they sailed closer to Kazyanenko’s inhabited world, the Captain ordered a firing test, aiming at nothing out in deep space, just to see if the weapon would even fire.  Accuracy could wait until later.

“Rail gun one is ready and active, Captain,” Stella reported.  “Targeting package is online, no target available.”

“Power levels holding steady,” George said.

“All right, George,” the Captain said, staring at his display.  “You may fire when ready.”

The ops officer pressed the firing control and the rail gun spat out a projectile.  The metal slug raced out into the void at incredible speed, exactly as it was supposed to.

The Captain nodded in satisfaction.  “Stella?  Report.”

“Looks good, Captain,” she said, her image on the holo projector looking up as though she was reading a report off of a screen.  “No problems with power or control lines.”

“All right, George, indulge yourself.  Fifty shots, short bursts.  Move the turret around, fire on all arcs, but make sure you’re aiming at deep space.”

“Yes, Captain,” he replied, a small smile on his face.  Two minutes later, he had burned through the number of shots.

“Still looking good, Captain,” Stella reported.  “Rail gun number one is online and ready for action.”

“Very good work, you two,” the Captain said, nodding to Stella and turning to look back at George.  They both smiled at the praise.  He pressed the comm stud on his chair.

“Engineering,” the Parkani’s voice sounded immediately.

“Any problems with the weapon, Chief?”

“No, Captain,” he replied immediately.  “Everything checks out.  Rail gun one is fully functional.  Oh, we’ll need to do a few tweaks with targeting.  Should’ve actually stayed at the edge of the belt to do that.  No worries though.  We’ll figure something out.”

Eamonn sighed.  He’d meant to stay out toward the edge of the system, near to the belt to do exactly that.  In fact, he’d meant to stay out here and let the collector fill the fuel tanks all the way up.  But when the first load of helium 3 came in and the fuel levels rose to sixty-five percent, he started to get that sensation of itchy feet again.  He had that feeling they needed to get moving again.  It wasn’t a sense of danger, more that he was getting anxious just sitting around.  He knew that this was foolish, that he should top off his fuel tanks and at least get a second rail gun installed, but he just couldn’t wait.

“Thanks, Chief.  Tell your people they did good.”

“I’ll tell them, Captain.”

He cut the connection.  “Continue on course for Kazyanenko,” he ordered.  “Secure all weapons.”

Chapter 17

It took a good day and a half to get to the inhabited world.  As they approached, they got a better view of the three ships in orbit.  One of them was a big bulky vessel with large compartments, though much smaller than Grania Estelle.  As they got closer, they could see that it was a hospital ship, though it had clearly seen much better days.  It was a ship designed for space only, meaning that it would never enter the atmosphere of a planet and touch down.  It was essentially a big rectangular box, with three engines on one end and command and living quarters attached to the other.  There was another pair of smaller rectangular boxes on the top and bottom of the ship; closer inspection determined that they were boat bays.  The whole thing was ungainly, slow and probably unarmed as well.

Of course, it’s a hospital ship.  It wouldn’t carry weapons, though maybe a laser cannon up front to deflect meteors.  The Captain marveled at the ship, about half as large as his own vessel.

“How many people on that hospital ship?” he asked.

George worked his console for a moment before answering.  “Hard to tell, Captain.  Their reactor is putting out a lot of radiation.  Life signs seem to be confined to the reactor spaces… though I’m actually reading two life forms in the command area.”

“Kutok, hail them please,” the Captain ordered.

“You’re on, sir.”

“This is Vincent Eamonn of the Grania Estelle to the hospital ship in orbit of Kazyanenko.  Our sensors indicate high levels of radiation emanating from your reactor.  Do you require assistance?”

They all waited while the other ship decided what to do.  Meanwhile, the pilot slipped the freighter into a high equatorial orbit about a quarter of the way around the planet from the hospital ship.  The other two ships in orbit were small, light freighters, similar in cargo capacity to the Emilia Walker, though they did not recognize either ship.

“Kutok, send standard greeting hails to both of the other freighters.  We’re interested in speaking, looking to share information, any pirate activity, etc, etc.  You know what to do.”

“Yes, Captain,” she replied primly.  Her slender clawed fingers touched the controls with dainty precision.

A moment later, Stella appeared on the holo projector.  “Captain, Kutok is occupied, but I have the hospital ship.  They’re calling back.  Audio only.”

“Does no one have video capability?  Put them on, please.”

A female voice came over the comm channel.  “This is Administrator Galina Korneyev on Hospital vessel Kara.  We are indeed having reactor troubles and unfortunately we’ve been able to get precious little assistance from the locals.”

“What’s your status?” the Captain asked, leaning forward.  “All we can detect is radiation.”

“We’ve got a coolant leak in the primary feed tank.  The reactor is old and damaged.  It’s always been a bit leaky, sadly, but we’ve never had problems like this before.”

“I know you must have a million things to do to hold your ship together, but is it possible we could meet?  We could discuss what we can do to help.”

Korneyev sighed.  “You’re right, I do have many things all clamoring for my attention, but I believe I can spare an hour.”

“Do you have a shuttle?  I can send one over if need be.”

“No, I can take one of our maintenance pods.  None of them are in use right now.  I’ll be over to your ship in short while.”

“I look forward to seeing you.  Eamonn out.”  He nodded.  “Get Quesh up to the boat bay.  I want us both there when her pod comes in.”

“Yes, Captain,” Kutok replied.

Ten minutes later, the maintenance pod from Kara floated into Grania Estelle’s boat bay.  Tractoring beams caught the egg-shaped craft and smoothly lowered it to the deck.  The pod was little more than a cockpit and maneuvering thrusters and it was decorated on the right hand side with scorch marks.  Three spindly landing legs extended out from the bottom of the pod as the ship settled down to the deck.  The canopy to the pod popped open and the pilot climbed out.

The Captain stood there, his hands clasped behind his back, the four armed Parkani standing next to him.  Eamonn had added a long brown coat to his outfit, which gave him a more dashing air.  Quesh, however, was still dressed in his rumpled ship suit, dirty and grease-stained.  Both of them stood and waited, in comfortable silence.

The silver-haired woman who looked up at them as she straightened, however, was not what they expected.  She wasn’t human.  She was lupusan, like Eamonn’s chief of security.  She was shorter than Corajen, older, more stooped.  Her fur was a brindled brown and silver, and her eyes were the color of emeralds.  She was dressed in robes which charitably might have been once white, which contrasted with her piloting the maintenance craft.

“Greetings, Administrator Korneyev,” the Captain said, stepping forward.  “I’m Vincent Eamonn.”

“Captain,” she replied, folding her clawed hands into the sleeves of her robes.

“Welcome aboard the Grania Estelle.  This is my Chief Engineer Quesh Trrgoth.”  The Parkani nodded in her direction.

“Greetings to you both,” she replied with a bow.  Galina seemed unsure of how to begin.  “I am more than willing to speak with you, Captain, but I’m not sure there is anything you can do.  Every compartment of my ship has been contaminated with deadly radiation.  My engineers are in hardsuits, trying desperately to get the reactor shut down, but they’ve been at it for over fifty hours now with no luck.”  She huffed out a breath.  “I might be asking that you provide us with transportation.”

“Do you have a diagnostic readout of the damage?” Eamonn asked.

She nodded.  From an inner pocket, she removed a datacard and handed it to him.  He, in turn, handed it to Quesh who scanned it with his datapad.  Frowning, the Parkani looked over the information scrolling on the pad’s screen.  “Yeah, this is bad.  You’re going to have to dump the reactor altogether.”

Galina looked down.  “This is dire news, though not unexpected.  But it means my ship is junk.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Administrator,” Quesh disagreed.  “Oh, it will take a while to get the core shut down and jettisoned from the ship.  And then it will take even longer to decon the whole ship.”

“Decon?” she asked, her ears flattening, looking confused.

“Sorry, Madam Administrator,” Quesh replied.  “I meant decontaminate.  We can start making more of the blue goop to take care of that.  Once the rad levels come back down, we can work on replacing the reactor.”

She stared at him incredulously.  “Replacing?  From where?  The Republic?”

The Captain smiled.  “Oh no, Madam Administrator.  We’ve got our own ways of doing things.  The problem is, we don’t work for free.  We’ll have to talk about payment.”

Now it was her time to smile, flicking her ears in amusement.  “I’m the commander of a hospital ship, Captain, not a currency barge.  I don’t have anything you’d want.”

“On the contrary,” he replied.  “You’re the commander of a medical ship.  I’m sure there are plenty of things we would want.  And besides, you must be represented by someone.  They could pay for your repairs.”

“We’re 569 days out of Seylonique,” she answered.  “We’ve been stuck here in Kazyanenko for nearly two months.  The Council in Seylonique are really the ones you want to be talking to about payment.  With all the radiation, any goods I might have had aboard Kara are surely ruined.  Other than that, I only have sick and injured people down on the planet’s surface.  People that I need to get to medical attention that the locals really can’t handle.”

“That might be something else we can offer,” he temporized.  “I’ll have to speak with my ship’s doctor, see what he says.  Though knowing him, I’m sure he’d be more than happy to help.”

She just stared at him.  “You would do this?”  Galina’s tone was still carrying a healthy dose of skepticism.

Eamonn nodded.  “I would, though as I said before, it isn’t solely out of the goodness of my heart.”

“You seek to rob a desperate woman.”

“I seek to make at least some money out of this,” he replied.  “I have a ship, a decently stocked sickbay and replicator support, all things that you desperately need.”

“How do I even know you can deliver on any of these things you claim?”

“A fair question,” he acknowledged.  “It might be best to show you.  Come on, I’ll give you the nickel tour of Grania Estelle.  If after that time, you still don’t believe me, no harm done and I won’t bother you anymore.  Does that sound fair?”

Galina’s ears had flattened back to her head again in suspicion.  “I get the feeling I’m being set up.”

He shrugged.  “Come.  Quesh, since they seem to be having reactor problems, perhaps giving her a quick tour of the engineering spaces, and more specifically our shiny new reactor, is in order?”

“I think that is an excellent idea, Captain,” the big engineer replied.

An hour later, Galina Korneyev was starting to feel the first stirrings of hope.  After a tour of the ship’s engineering spaces, she had been startled and impressed at how clean and efficient everything seemed to run.  And upon seeing the ship’s reactor, she agreed with the Captain’s assessment; it was shiny and new.  When she had asked if they had purchased it from the Republic, he laughed, but didn’t answer.  He had led her out of the engineering spaces and up a few decks to what he called “the compartment for replicator one”.  She wasn’t really sure what she had expected.  Everyone had heard of replicators and those select and lucky few who had them guarded them jealously.  She saw the bay and the large machine as well as one of the crew feeding parts into the machine to be broken down.  A few minutes later, the device beeped and the main door to the constructor matrix opened, disgorging a section of plasma conduit.  She goggled at this.  He hadn’t been lying.  He did have what would be needed to fix her ship.

Now the problem was trying to scrape up enough money or trade goods to purchase his services.  And this was a serious issue.  She hadn’t been lying either when she said the radiation had contaminated everything.  Even with this… blue goop the engineer had talked about, she was uncertain that the ship could really be decontaminated, but she had hope.  But even if they could, she had nothing to give.  What little of the medicine stocks she had left were down on the planet and were needed for her patients.  What could they possibly ask of her that she could hope to give?

Finally, the tour ended and they brought her to his conference room.  Quesh didn’t follow, saying he had business in engineering, but that he would upload the information to Stella, whoever that was.  The Captain sat at the head of the table in the room, gesturing for her to take a seat.  She did, adjusting her tail and sitting on the padded seat.

“So, I know that the repairs are going to be extensive, but I think for the moment we should focus on the reactor and full decontamination.  I imagine if we can get those two things sorted out then you’ll be able to get underway.”

Galina nodded.  “I imagine you’re right, Captain, but even that will be very expensive.  I don’t have the resources to pay you.  And I don’t have the authority to commit Seylonique to any kind of financial arrangement.”

Eamonn sighed.  He genuinely wanted to help.  But as he told her, and as he and Tamara had toasted to at the party, he wanted to start making money.  He wasn’t a heartless man and he knew the worth of the Kara and what she and her crew did, but there was only so far he was willing to go.

“Assuming if you did get the repairs you needed, where would your next port of call be?” he asked instead.

She paused to consider, then flicked her ears.  “Our supplies are so low, it would be best to head back home.”

“Seylonique.”

She smiled.  “You’re being obvious now, Captain.”

“Forgive me,” he said, nodding.  “I was actually just thinking out loud.  Seylonique is only three jumps from here.  I had actually intended on stopping there anyway.  We could go together, fly as a convoy.”

Her ears flicked again in amusement.  “And what do you plan to do once you get there?”

“I would speak with your people on Seylonique,” the Captain told her.  “I would hope that seeing the repairs and overhauls we made to the Kara that they would be overcome with boundless joy and generosity and would compensate me accordingly.  Perhaps even request other such repairs and overhauls to their other ships or facilities.”

Galina considered this for a long moment.  If his claims were true then she knew the owners and other council members would certainly be interested in his services.  In fact, they’d be falling all over themselves to get him to repair their aged and somewhat decrepit fleet.  She found herself nodding.  “I think that might work.  And if we’re working together, we might be able to keep each other out of trouble.”

He chuckled at that.  “What you really mean is I can keep you out of trouble.”

She gave a one shoulder shrug, a surprisingly human gesture.  “If you like.  I can’t guarantee anything once we get to Seylonique, Captain.  I can say that the council members will be very interested in what you have to say and to any services you might be able to offer.  I hope that means they will… how did you put it?  Compensate you appropriately.”

He nodded.  That was probably the best offer he was going to get under the circumstances.  Still, she had a point.  Working as a pair would provide a degree of safety, though it might also turn them into more of a target.  Still, if he wanted to get paid, this was what would need to be done.  Then there was another problem.

“What is the Kara’s best hyperspeed?”

“Not great,” she admitted.  “Red level three on our best day.  With all the reactor problems we’ve been having, it’s probably more like Red two.”

He sighed.  “Well, we’ll have to work on that as well.  Grania Estelle is considerably faster than that and I have no intention of bumbling about in the Red levels for months just to get to the next system.  I have an appointment in Ulla-Tran in four months.  I’m afraid you’ll be coming with us and then we can turn toward Seylonique.”

“That is acceptable, Captain.”

“All right then, Administrator,” he said, nodding.  “Let’s talk about what needs to be done and then I will send over my teams to get started.”

Once the starter gun had fired, it was all Administrator Galina Korneyev could do to try and keep up with the teams from the Grania Estelle.  The reactor problem was far more traumatic than it had been aboard the Grania Estelle which meant that the steps to deal with this needed to be far more dramatic.  Tamara and Stella replicated a dozen new suits, specifically hardened against radiation.  Quesh meanwhile was working with his team to synthesize more of the decontamination compound, while Ka’Xarian coordinated over the radio with the engineering teams from the Kara in trying to shut down the ship’s reactor.  It took six hours of work, with the zheen on the comms trying to keep the panicking crew at their posts.  Finally, Stella reported that the power levels on the Kara had dropped to zero.  The emergency batteries had been brought down to the planet’s surface to keep the life support systems for the patients running.  Up on the ship, only those in hardsuits would stay alive.

Once the reactor was down, teams from the Grania Estelle, led by Tamara, went over to the Kara and evacuated all of the remaining crew to the shuttles.  They were sprayed down with blue goop while still sealed in their hardsuits, then loaded on the shuttles and flown over to the bulk freighter.  From there, after confirming the rad levels on their suits had dropped to normal (the blue goop was truly amazing at radiation cleanup) Galina met them there in the boat bay.  From there they were stripped out of the suits and rushed to sickbay where Turan and his medics went to work.  They were all suffering from high levels of radiation; most of them had serious damage already from the prolonged exposure.  The hardsuits had limited the damage, but the sheer time spent being flooded by hot energy had compromised the suits, as well as the wearer’s constitutions.  Turan refused to give up, but two of the Kara’s engineers were not expected to live out the day.

At this point, once the crew was gone, Tamara and Ka’Xarian led their teams throughout the ship, coating everything, every surface, every molecule that they could reach with the decon goop.  Three straight days of work, with six-hour breaks for everyone every two hours to get out of the ship to refresh their systems.  Only being able to work for two hours at a time meant their work speed was reduced to a crawl, but no one was willing to try and be a tough guy when it came to serious radiation.  When the ship had finally cooled down enough, the teams moved into the engineering spaces, and the whole process began again.  Rad levels were ten times as high there as they were in any other part of the ship, which meant the two teams had to go even slower and be even more thorough with their spraying.

Finally, when the three days were up, the Captain called a halt.  All of his engineering teams were required to take a day to rest and get checkups by Turan.  White blood cell counts were a bit low, which meant the doctor put an end to the repairs for a week.  All of them were dosed with anti-rad meds and two were dunked in the regen tanks to allow their immune systems to recover.  Tamara had all of the new hardsuits she had made collected and tossed out the airlock.  The tractoring beams flung them out into the void.  The suits had been immersed (inside and out) with goop, but Turan was taking no chances.  He ordered all of the suits and clothing that had been worn to be disposed of, insisting new suits be constructed.  Tamara balked at this, but the Guura brooked no argument.  After a half an hour of taking verbal abuse by the engineer, the doctor gave a simple response: either the suits get disposed of, or he would call off the entire affair.

The suits went out the airlock half an hour later.

While they were waiting for the time to be up so they could get back aboard the Kara, Stella and Quesh had put their heads together and came up with a more palatable solution.  Six worker bots, designed with radiation in mind, were replicated and flown over by shuttle to the Kara’s boat bay.  Once inside, the AI and the Parkani (as well as four of Quesh’s technicians) flew the bots throughout the ship, getting to the reactor spaces.

It was decided that the best and most expedient way of dealing with the radioactive components and compartments was to simply slice the parts out with cutting torches.  It made for a much more enjoyable few hours than it would have cutting and lugging the hot components off the ship by hand.  Remote controlling the bots was a much more visceral experience; the operators had all the fun of ripping out the useless parts without any of the dangers.

Galina was less than thrilled with this way of doing things; with engineering teams simply ripping apart pieces of her ship willy-nilly and throwing them out into the void.  It took all of the Captain’s considerable negotiation skills to keep the lupusan administrator from tearing up the deck plating.  Corajen needed to be called in to try and help calm the wolfwoman down.  The two lupusans stayed in the wardroom together for some time; the Captain was dismissed to go on his way.  They had things to discuss, a common heritage to rekindle.  No one knew what was said or what happened in the wardroom during those three straight hours, not even Stella.  She had been ordered by the Captain to shut down all sensors and recording devices in the room and Corajen activated a few custom devices of her own to keep the AI from cheating.  When the two females exited the wardroom they were all professional, they spoke respectfully to one another and Corajen returned to the security office, Galina went to find the Captain, completely calm.

After the irradiated components were gone, another round of spraying needed to be done, but this time, things moved at a faster pace.  Once a surface was decontaminated, it stayed that way.  The teams moved through the ship with a will.  Six hours later, the ship was clean and the goop had vaporized.  Of course there was no power and great deals of the engineering spaces were in shambles, but it no longer posed a radiation hazard.

Another problem posed itself.  While the teams had been working on the interior, the ship’s orbit had begun to deteriorate.  It wouldn’t be more than a few days before the orbit fell entirely and the ship crashed into the planet.  From orbit, Kazyanenko was a world of green land and waters so dark they were almost purple.  It would have been a terrible tragedy to have all that destroyed by a falling ship.

It was Tamara who provided the solution.  Grania Estelle did not have a tractoring beam strong enough to pull a vessel the size of the Kara up into a higher orbit, but it turned out not to be necessary.  By magnetically clamping the three shuttles from both ships to the Kara’s hull, their engines were able to provide sufficient thrust to bring the hospital vessel to a much higher orbit.  It would be safe until they could get the reactor installed and the systems reactivated.  Then the Kara could maintain its own orbit without outside assistance.

Things moved quickly from that point.  The parts were replicated and transferred over to the hospital ship, then assembled.  Crew from the Kara was brought in to assist, those Turan deemed fit to return to duty.  Two were still floating in regen tanks, recovering from their earlier exposure.  It didn’t take long for the ship to be brought back online.  From there, it was a matter of days to overhaul the hyperdrive and upgrade the Kara’s shields.  It wasn’t much, but they would be able to hit Orange level one by the time they would leave the system.

It took several days to get the ship back to a state of readiness they could work with.  Doctors and nurses began flying up from the planet’s surface, using all three shuttles to ferry the professionals and their patients.  The medical people were less than happy with the back and forth from the planet, though most of them admitted they much preferred the more controllable environment of the ship than that of the planet.  And the environment was much better, now that the radiation was clear and the life support system was overhauled.  It was almost like a completely new ship.

The captains of the other two ships had not left orbit, nor had they communicated in any significant way.  They were monitoring the activity going on between the Kara and the bulk freighter, but they made no attempt to assist or interfere.  This was extremely odd, that they would just sit there and do nothing.

“It’s so strange, being on board the Kara and have so many operational systems,” Galina remarked.  “If I didn’t know better, I would swear that this was a different ship.”

“In many ways it is, Administrator,” Ka’Xarian replied.  “We’ve replaced a lot of the ship’s systems and many of the patched and repaired ones are operating much more efficiently than before.”

“Well, I am truly grateful for all you have done.  The transfer of personnel and our patients are moving apace.  I’m not sure how long you were intending to stay here, but we should be ready to leave in about a week.”

The zheen’s antennae bounced up and down in the equivalent of a shrug.  “Sorry, Madam Administrator, but I have no idea about that.  The Captain will decide it, but he hasn’t posted any schedules.  We weren’t expecting to find you here, so I think he’s working on any trade deals at a more leisurely pace than normal.”

The lupusan smiled.  “Well, he can take his time.  I need the extra time to scrounge up more local medicines.  What little was still on the ship was ruined when the reactor irradiated everything.”  She let out a puff of breath, a frustrated sigh.  “What the locals have isn’t nearly good enough.”

Again Xar bobbed his antennae.  “I’m sure you can work something out, Madam Administrator.  From what I’ve seen over the last few days, it sounds like you have what it takes to find the solution.”

She smiled at him, her ears perking up.  “You have a gilded tongue, Ka’Xarian.”

He bowed, self-mockingly.  “Thank you, Madam Administrator.  But I must get back to this diagnostic.”

“Of course.”  She bowed to him now.  “My bridge crew will be up here in another two hours.  I would appreciate it if you could bring them up to speed on the ship’s systems.”

“Certainly, Madam Administrator,” he replied, then turned back to his computer display.

“Yes, I think we will take those,” Taja said, walking through the warehouse on the planet.  She was being escorted by a pair of Kazyanenko trade officials and deals were being made.  She had snagged a container of copper ingots and steel ball bearings going to Yullankla, which the Captain had determined was their next stop.  It was one jump away and close enough that Grania Estelle could reach Ulla-tran within his original six month deadline to meet up with Emilia Walker.  Taja had also picked up a number of crates of packaged foodstuffs for sale in the next system and possibly beyond.

“Those are not cheap, Mistress,” one of the men indicated.  “There is a great call for those.”

She smiled at him.  “Yes, I know they are, but I think the people on Ulla-tran will very much appreciate them.  Kazyanenko hardwoods are quite beautiful and I know more than a few people on Ulla-tran will be interested.  So, as I said, we’ll take them.”

“Very good, Mistress,” the man said, marking something on his clipboard.  He was actually using archaic pen and paper, as opposed to the electronic data pad Taja was using.

“What other items do you have scheduled for Yullankla?”

“Well, there is a container of dry edibles,” he temporized.

She brightened, making a note of her own.  “Wonderful!  Let’s go see them.”  She frowned.  “What are these cargo cans here?”  She gestured to five massive stacks of cylindrical cargo containers.

“Oh, those?” the man asked.  He checked the labels on the containers.  “Those are for the glassworks on Ulla-tran, actually.  Fifteen cans, twelve meters in diameter each.  Looks like five of sand, five of fine clay and other five of a mix of various compounds.  Looks like lime, magnesium oxide and… yes, aluminum oxide.  One of the ships in orbit brought in the order, but they had engine trouble and besides, their ship is too small to carry even one of those cans.”

“They came from Ulla-tran?” Taja asked, looking thoughtful.  “Which ship?”

“The Grey Feathers,” he answered.  “Captain Maxwell’s ship.”  The man frowned at her.  “You didn’t know that?  Great big parking lot of ships in orbit of our humble little planet and you didn’t know that?”

The small woman snorted.  “Well, there might be a lot of ships here, but the two smaller ships aren’t too interested in talking.  At least not to us anyway.”  She pursed her lips.  “All right, we’ll take the cans for the glassworks too.”  Taja looked at him, a hard expression on her face.  “Wait.  They aren’t on any kind of priority, are they?  Some other ship wasn’t supposed to deliver?”

The man shook his head.  “No, Mistress.  Cosorp Glassworks placed the order and are waiting for the delivery.  They have a small office over in the plaza.”

“Earmark those cans for us then, please,” she decided.  “I’ll stop over there once we’re done here and pick up the contract.”
“Sounds good to me.”  The man consulted his list.  “Oh, one more thing.  Over here.  There’s a pair of containers carrying beryllium ingots.”

“How big?”

“The ingots?  Standard size,” he said, making a fist.  “About that big.”

Taja chuckled.  “No, I meant the containers.”

“Oh, sorry.  Twelve meter, same as the other.”

“These are going to Ulla-tran too?”

“Yes, Mistress,” he replied, flipping up a paper.  “For the shipyard there.”

“Excellent.  We’ll take them.”

They wandered about a bit more, Taja selecting a few more containers for transport.  None of the containers were as large as those first few, but she did find about a dozen more to be transferred to the ship.  Containers of rice, plastic pellets, three ten meter cans of coal, even four containers of feed for livestock on Yullankla.

She signed the contracts after conferring with the Captain over her communicator.  He trusted her instincts and her business sense.  She was, after all, the cargo specialist for a reason.  They would bring in some nice shares after delivering all of these.  It had been quite a while since Grania Estelle had managed to snag this many cargoes.  As far as making a profit on this run, they had a few bits and bobs to sell, but what really brought in the cash were the items from the replicators.

Kazyanenko didn’t have much in the way of industry, mostly mining and farming, with a few cottage industries set up for producing what the locals needed.  The freighter crew set them up with parts for a new hydroelectric generator for the massive dam project that was going on about fifty kilometers from the city.  The locals were looking to dam up the Gornek River and it would provide all of the power they would need and do so much more efficiently and cleanly than the coal burning furnaces.

They also built a few pre-fab shelters and a few pieces of farming equipment, combines and several plows.  The crew shares here were better than they’d seen in months, which made everyone happy.  There was talk that the Captain was working on a deal with the city mayor about building a number of engines for some of the ground vehicles the people here used.  Trucks, mostly, though there were a few family vehicles included.  Tamara and Stella had the parts replicated and ready for shipment down to the planet in less than a day, and unlike the leaders at Hecate, those here at Kazyanenko were more than willing (eager even) to do business with them.

As the shuttle was unloading, crates of engine parts which required hover pallets and hoists to move, they were so weighty, the mayor himself was there to watch the unloading, making it sort of an informal holiday.  People lined the edges of the landing pad to watch the freighter jockeys unload the parts, cheering as each new crate came out of the shuttle’s cargo hold.

The crew, meanwhile, was rotating in shifts down to the planet for shore leave.  There were plenty of bars and places to eat, which gave the crew more than a few chances to blow off steam.  It also gave them a chance to interact with the crews of the other ships, the Grey Feathers and the Ocarina.  At first, in the various bars where they would meet up the interactions were very cool and standoffish.  Several rounds later, the groups had intermingled.  A few of them were even singing.  After that, the three crews would get together down on the surface and swap stories.

This was causing problems for the officers on the two ships.  They were still trying to stay aloof from the bulk freighter, but the co-mingling of the crews was starting to erode that.  Also, the crew and officers of the Kara were communicating with the two other ships, which seemed to soften them up a bit more.  But they still weren’t talking.

The Captain was in the wardroom, a mug of coffee cooling in his hands.  He’d been there over an hour now, reading the same paragraph in the latest system status report, but not really seeing it.  His mind was elsewhere, a million light years away.  They were to be breaking orbit in two hours, moving in a convoy with the Kara out into the void, heading toward Yullankla.  In that time, cargo had been shuttled up to the ship, the crew had tied their last collective one on, and final checks were being done on the Kara’s hyperdrive to ensure they would be prepared for the jump.  The engineering teams from both crews were confident the drives would hold up and were just making one last check before they left.  But he wasn’t concerned about that.  Quesh and his people, as well as the engineers under Galina Korneyev, were competent and well equipped.  The hospital ship would get underway on schedule.

The captains of the other ships irked him.  He could understand they might have thought he was a threat, his big ship entering the system and getting the Kara shipshape again.  But he was irritated that both of them were still refusing contact.  Sensor sweeps had determined that the ships were in decent repair and reports from the local, as well as the Kara indicated that they had been here in orbit for several weeks.  The Kara’s sensors weren’t as good as those on the Grania Estelle, especially before the reactor overhaul and to be honest, Administrator Korneyev was far less rude than he was.  She hadn’t been prying into the inner workings of the other ships.

His crew and their crews had gotten along down on the planet, the massive bar tabs and uncharacteristic lack of fights spoke to that.  And yet, still, both ships and both captains refused to speak with him or with anyone on the Grania Estelle.  It was maddening.

Tossing down the datapad to the table, he got up and walked to the hatch.  He walked briskly down the corridor and onto the bridge.  George was there, as was Kutok and the pilot.

“Captain,” the hak’ruk acknowledged him.  The others looked up as well.  He wasn’t expected back on the bridge until pullout.

“Report,” he ordered, a stern expression on his face.

“All systems normal, Captain,” George replied, double checking his display.  “Helium 3 fuel levels at sixty-one percent.  Just waiting on the guys on the Kara, but otherwise we’re just waiting until the timer runs down.”

“Any word from the Grey Feathers or the Ocarina?”

“No, Captain,” Kutok told him.  “I would have notified you immediately, per your order.”

Eamonn nodded.  “Of course.  Thank you, Kutok.”  He turned and started to walk off the bridge.  Then he stopped and turned back.  “No.  Hail both of those ships.”

Her pincers clicked in surprise.  “Captain?”

“You heard me.”

“Yes, Captain.”  She pressed a few controls.  “No response.”

“Open a channel to both ships.  Include the Kara in this.”

“Ready, Captain.”

“This is Vincent Eamonn on the Grania Estelle.  I don’t understand what the story is here.  My ship has been in orbit here for a long while now and you’ve rebuffed every attempt I’ve made to contact you.  Our crews get along, and you’ve seen the work that my crew and I have done for the Kara as well as for the people of Kazyanenko.  We will be returning here in probably a year to see how they are progressing.  Grania Estelle and the Kara will be departing here in…” he checked the time, “One hour fifty-four minutes and our ships are headed to Yullankla.  I invite you to join us.  We can travel as a convoy.  We would be safer as a group than flying as individuals.” He sighed.  “I await your reply.”  He looked to Kutok who cut the connection.

“Do you really think that’s going to help, Captain?” George asked, clearly unconvinced.

He sighed.  “I don’t know, George.  Grey Feathers probably won’t want to go with us, even if they do decide to talk.  Taja told me that they actually came from Ulla-tran, so it’s unlikely they’re going to want to go back that way.  Who knows about Ocarina though?”  He stood there, for a long moment before turning and walking off the bridge.  “George, you have the bridge,” he said as he stepped through the hatch.

As the timer ran down to zero, there was still no answer from either of the light freighters.  With a sigh, the Captain was back on the bridge, seated in his command chair.  “All right, people.  Let’s get this show on the road.  George, talk to me.”

“All stations still showing ready, Captain.”

“Stella?”

“I’m ready to go, Captain,” the AI replied, smiling from her place standing at the holo projector.  “I’m tired of parking orbit.  Let’s get going.”

He chuckled.  “Settle down, girl.  We’ll get going soon enough.”  They all laughed, even Stella.  “Kutok, make sure the Kara is ready to go.”

“They’re signaling ready, Captain,” she replied.  “I think they’re more anxious about this than we are.”

The Captain smiled.  “Good, because I like the people on this planet, but I’m anxious to go somewhere else myself.  Helm, take us out of orbit on course for the hyper limit.”

The pilot complied, easily getting them on their way.

“George?  Is Kara following?”

“Keeping station on our port rear, Captain.  They’re accelerating much more sluggishly than we are, though.”

“Helm, adjust speed to match.  We are not racing to the hyper limit this time.”  He grimaced, though his tone was light.  “I know it’s a novel concept.”  More chuckles.

Tamara sat bolt upright on her bunk, gasping like a landed fish, barely holding back a scream.  Her left hand was clutched to her chest, her right was flat against the bulkhead.  Her bedclothes were drenched in sweat.

The dream was fading now, but the tremors remained.  It was the same dream as before, Islington again.  She drew in a shaking breath as the pain in her chest dissipated.  Throwing the covers aside, she padded into the bathroom and turned on the faucet, splashing tepid water on her face.  Looking up into the mirror over the sink, she didn’t like what she saw.

“You don’t look good, Tamara,” Stella said.  There was no holo projector in the bathroom; her image appeared on Tamara’s HUD.

“I know,” she whispered.  Her throat felt like she had gargled with gravel mixed with acid.

“What are you going to do?”

“Do you have any suggestions?” she asked, leaning on the sink with both hands and letting her head droop, relaxing her neck.

“Talk to someone.”

“I’m talking to you.”

“Someone who can help,” the AI chided.

“Like who?  They can’t help.”  She took in another deep lungful of air and then stood up straight.

“What about Turan?  Or Cookie?”

Tamara snorted.  “I’ll be all right,” she said, stripping off her clothes and getting into the shower.  “I appreciate you looking out for me.  I’ll be fine.”

The AI didn’t look convinced, but she nodded and then disappeared from the HUD.

“Doctor?  Do you have a few minutes?”

Turan looked up from his display, where he was reading up on lupusan physiology.  It wasn’t that he didn’t have a familiarity with the wolfen species, but it never hurt to brush up.  At this time, Corajen and one other member of her security team, another female by the name of Saiphirelle, were the only members of the crew of the lupusan species.  They were a fascinating people, even just from a medical perspective and as a good doctor, he was making sure to brush up in case an emergency every came up.

“Stella,” he said with a smile, seeing the holo projection.  “Of course.”  He deactivated the display, making sure to save his place.  “What’s on your mind?”

The AI looked distinctly human at that point, to Turan’s trained eye.  Tamara had done an amazing job with her programming.  It was as though the AI was actually uncomfortable with this conversation.  “It’s Tamara.”

The Guura sighed, rubbing one forearm with the opposite hand.  “Yes, Tamara Samair.”

The AI raised one holographic eyebrow.  “Do you know what I’m going to say?”

“Why don’t you say it first, and then we’ll go from there?”

Stella sighed.  “She’s a wreck.  She isn’t sleeping.  I’ve been monitoring her vitals on her implants and it’s clear she’s under extreme stress.  She’s been having serious nightmares just about every time she goes to sleep.”

Turan nodded.  “Yes, it is like I thought.  I’ve been noticing the signs as well.  She came in to talk with me twice before and I’ve tried to get her to open up, but she only tells me that she keeps reliving when that officer stuffed her into the escape pod and then launched her into space.  Tamara refuses to go into details and she never said anything more than that.”

The AI hesitated.  He angled his head slightly in an inquisitive gesture.  “What is it?”

Stella grimaced.  “I feel like this is a severe breach of her privacy, but I’m really worried about her.  I have recordings of her dreams.”

The Guura started in surprise.  “How?”

Stella took a deep breath.  It was an amazing facsimile, seeing as how as an AI she didn’t need to breathe.  “I’m probably breaking some sort of Republic Navy confidentiality, but I have to tell you.  Her implants are linked to the visual cortex of her brain as well as her optic nerves in her eyes.  With a… slight software patch on her implants, I was able to… well for want of a better term, hack her dreams.”

The Guura took a few slow breaths.  “That is incredible.  I’m sure there are techs who would kill to see that kind of programming breakthrough!  Ka’Xarian would give one of his antennae to see that.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” Stella said hurriedly.  “First of all, Tamara would decompile me if she found out I told you.  And second, as I said, I’m not really allowed to be discussing her implants.”

The doctor nodded.  “Well, that is may be, but that conversation is for another day.  You, Tamara and I are going to sit down one of these days and discuss that little piece of technology.  It seems like a great boon to have them.  But you’re right, it’s not our decision to discuss them.  Not now, anyway.  All right, you said you had a recording of her dreams?”

She nodded.  “Yes.  You need to see them.  Maybe it will help you treat her.”

He held up one hand.  “Stella, you need to understand.  I’m a physician, a healer and I want to help her.  But if you show me this and you and I confront her, she might not take it well.”

“That’s ridiculous!” she sputtered.  “She’s my creator!  I love her!  I only want to help her.”

“We all know that,” he explained patiently.  “And she knows that.  But she might not see it as an act of a concerned friend trying to help.  She might see it as a betrayal of her privacy and her trust.”  His gills flared with anxiety.  “It might cause her to back away from all of us.  You need to prepare yourself for that.”

Stella stood there looking at him, her face showing that she was as lost as a little girl.  “Why would she do that?  Why wouldn’t she want to let us fix her?”

He chuckled gently.  “It isn’t always that simple, Stella.  I’m sure she hates having these dreams and the stress is negatively affecting her health.  In fact, I know it is.  But she might not react properly to having her innermost secrets laid bare, even just to me.  She won’t necessarily be as rational and logical as she should be.”

Stella mulled this over for a second, which was an eternity to an AI.  “I can’t say I understand this.  If a part of her isn’t functioning properly, she should want to fix it.  I’m going to show you the recording.”

Turan nodded.  “All right.  Let’s go back into the surgery.  I want to watch this in privacy.”

Stella disappeared as Turan stood and walked to the sickbay’s surgical theater.  He sat down on a stool next to the surgical table.  “All right, Stella.  Start the show before I lose my nerve.”

“All right, Doctor,” she replied, her voice coming over the PA.  The holo projector activated and the recording began.

Once it was over, Turan found himself huffing his breath in and out.  That was what Tamara was going through every night.  It was horrible.  He suspected that he would have trouble sleeping tonight, perhaps for several days.  So that was the human who had done this to her.  As a doctor, he knew that humans sometimes displayed their worst qualities, which was one of the reasons he had steady employment.  But he was filled with such malice.  That man was truly evil; it was fun for him.  Stella showed him several dreams, all similar, but the endings were usually different.

In one of them, the man fired into the pod and disabled it, launching her out into the void where she suffocated.  In another, he fired into the pod, causing a breach so when it launched, Tamara was blown out into space.  In a third dream, he simply shot her dead.  There were others, but the common thread in all of them was that this man, this officer, made sure that Tamara died each time.  Turan knew that Tamara was suffering because of these dreams, this focal point of fear.

“Can you help her, Doctor?” Stella’s voice asked.  She sounded like a scared child speaking about her wounded mother.  In a way, that’s exactly what she was.

The Guura sat for a long moment, trying to make sense out of all the madness.  “I don’t know if I can cure her, Stella,” he said honestly.  “But I will do whatever I can for her.”

Chapter 18

As the two ships reached the hyper limit, there was still no response from either of the other two freighters.  Vincent Eamonn, seated on his command seat on the bridge, sighed inwardly.  He had really hoped the other two captains would come to their senses.  He hadn’t expected a complete change of heart, which one or both of them would call out to him in desperation, pleading with him to wait for them.  He’d hoped for just a conversation, an insult, anything.  But they had remained completely silent to him.  His crew had broken the ice for their crews, but apparently it hadn’t been enough to get through to the captains.  He might have been able to convince them, maybe even only one of them, to join with him, hell, even just to make friends with them.  He could establish a friend and a contact.  But that hope would be gone as soon as Grania Estelle and Kara jumped.  Which was only moments away.

“Thirty seconds to jump,” George reported.

“Kara reports thirty seconds.”

“Make sure they remember to drop out thirty seconds before the hyper limit at Yullankla,” he said to Serinda as a reminder.

She rolled her eyes.  This was the third time he had reminded her.  “Yes, Captain.  I’ve sent the reminder.”

“Good.”  He thought for another moment.  “All right, cut accel to zero, flip us one-eighty degrees, full scan back in our wake, see if we’ve got anything interesting going on in the system.”

The pilot acknowledged and executed the helm order.  The ship spun around so it was facing back toward the planet, but its momentum kept it moving in the same direction toward the hyper limit.

“Incoming message from Kara,” Serinda reported.  “They want to know what we’re doing.”

“Let them know what we’re doing, tell them to continue on course.  We’ll both jump at the same time, side by side.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Anything, George?”

Before the ops officer could reply, Stella appeared on the Captain’s display.  “Captain, Ocarina has broken orbit and they’re accelerating toward the hyper limit.  They’re on an intercept course.”

He grimaced.  “Well they’re certainly not going to catch us before we jump.  Are they hailing?”

“No, Captain.”

“Serinda, send them another message.  We’ll meet them in Yullankla.  Safe journey.  Helm, flip us again back to our original course and Serinda, signal the Kara.  Once we’re back in the right direction, we’ll jump.”

“Crossing the hyper limit now, Captain,” George reported.

“Thank you, George.”  The Captain watched his display, showing their position and their orientation relative to Kara and the hyper limit.  Once the Grania Estelle was back in position, the two ships jumped to hyperspace.

“And we have real space reversion,” the helmsman reported.

Commander Harth rubbed his jaw with one hand.  “Report.”

“Scopes are clear, sir,” the sensor officer reported.  “No ships are in the system.”

“Anything of interesting in the system?”

“There’s something going on at the planet,” the man replied.  “A lot of shuttle activity around Folston’s inhabited planet.  And there’s some sort of structure in orbit.”

“A space station?” Harth asked.

“Can’t tell from this distance, Skipper.  But it sure looks like one, or at least the beginnings of one.”

“Where did the shuttles come from?” Harth mused.  “From what Sykora said in his report, Folston was an agricultural world as of the last time he passed through here.  Odd.”

“Perhaps the Folstons purchased them from someone?” the sensor officer proposed.

“Four shuttles?” the captain replied.  “That’s an expensive purchase.  And that station wouldn’t be cheap either.”  Another mystery.  “A lot of things are going on out here in the Cluster that aren’t adding up.  First our mystery ship, then what’s going on here.  Curious.  Maintain course.”

As they grew closer to the planet, Legacy’s sensors were able to discern more about the activity going on in Folston’s orbit.  As noticed before, there were four shuttles moving up to the unfinished structure in orbit.  Right now, the structure was little more than a loose framework of trusses with a pair of inflatable habitat structures attached.  The shuttles were ferrying materials and machined components up from the planet and were being assembled by EVA suited welders.

This was maddening.  “Where did all this industry come from?” Harth demanded, looking over his displays.  “There is no way that this could have sprung up in six months.”

“I’m at a loss to explain this, Captain,” Lieutenant Vedig at operations said helplessly.  “If the freighter we’re after left Instow four months ago, and left here two months ago, I suppose it’s possible that some of what we’re seeing could have been dropped off by them.  But based on Fury’s sensor scans, Grania Estelle was pretty shot up when they departed Instow.  I don’t know how it would be possible for them to contribute to this industrial… explosion and not still be here.”

“Could we have just missed them?” Harth asked, curious.  “Do you think they might have left just before we arrived?”

Vedig shrugged.  “I suppose it’s possible, sir.  Interviews with the locals would net us some answers.”

Harth nodded.  “XO, have Lieutenant Phillips and Chief Grey get their teams together.  I want each of them to get down to the planet and talk with the locals.  I’ll be contacting people from up here.”  Phillips and Gray were widely considered to the people who could connect with local populations on the various planets Legacy visited.  They were members of Republic Military Intelligence and were trained to gather up all the information and data needed to provide a clearer picture of the land and its people.

They made an interesting duo.  Lieutenant Sophia Phillips was a powerful, confident woman, tall for her gender.  She was attractive with her dark hair, classic beauty and liquid brown eyes.  She had been trained to use any weapon in her arsenal.  People liked to talk, and with her honeyed words, light touches and a quick wit she had a knack for getting people to open up.

Antares Grey on the other hand, was a master manipulator.  He was highly skilled at grilling people for details, beating confessions about of people and wasn’t above using drugs or… morally questionable tactics to get information.  If Phillips was the carrot, he most certainly was the stick.  And he looked the part.  He was a burly human with a pugnacious face and malicious eyes, shorter than his lieutenant, but with great presence.  He eyes commanded respect and deference, so much so that new recruits and crew to the Legacy had a tendency to quake a bit as he passed.  No junior officer was stupid enough to try and give him orders.  He took orders from just two people, the Captain and Lieutenant Phillips.  Everyone else officers and enlisted (if they were smart) gave politely worded suggestions.  Those who didn’t tended to regret it.

They would be taking a shuttle down to the planet and bringing a pair of assistants with them, though they really were only there to keep an eye on them both, for Commander Harth’s sake more than anything.  Neither of them really needed any help and both were more than capable of taking care of themselves.

“Captain, we’re getting a hail from the surface,” the communications officer spoke up.

“Put them on.”

“Audio only, sir,” the comm officer replied.  “You’re on.”

“This is Commander Harth of the cruiser Legacy, to whom am I speaking?”

“My name is Raidon Djinn, I’m in charge of the station.  Well, I will be once the construction is far enough along.”  The man sighed.  “But this is such an exciting time for my people.  A time of industry and construction!”

“So I see,” Harth replied.  “But from what I understand, as little as six months ago, this planet was an agricultural world, little more.  Not that there’s anything wrong with agro worlds, everyone needs to eat.”

“I agree and of course the growing and the cattle production is going to continue.  As you say, everyone needs to eat and they’re still one of our most important trade industries.  But all this?  This is just… incredible.”

“I’ll say.  If you don’t mind my asking, how did this all happen?”  Harth set his elbows on the armrests and steepled his fingers.

“Oh, we had some help from a few offworlders,” the man replied offhandedly.  “They jump started everything, but really, it was our own willingness to get down and get to work that made this happen.”

So, there had been offworld assistance.  That really didn’t help much.  “I see.  Well, my ship will be here for a few days, I hope it will be acceptable to have some of my people come down for shore leave?”

“Of course!  So long as they behave themselves,” the man said, quickly backpedalling.

“I assure you, they will, Mister Djinn.”  He cut the connection.  “All right, bring us into parking orbit.  Once the shuttles are ready, go ahead and launch,” he ordered.  “I want it fully understood, anyone who gets drunk or starts fighting with the locals without provocation is going to regret it.  I don’t intend to be here very long, but I realize everyone could use a break.  XO, you can announce liberty.”

As the XO’s voice boomed throughout the ship, “Now hear this: first section has the watch, now liberty, liberty, liberty,” Harth leaned back in his seat.  This made no sense.  Oh, sure, there were freighter crews that would land on planets like Folston all the time.  Shipping was down in the Cluster since the war with the Federation and the Republic’s subsequent retreat from this area of space, but it wasn’t dead.  There were a handful of worlds that had managed to thrive, despite the pirates and other deterrents.  Folston was a nice little farming world that was producing enough to export to other worlds on the occasional cargo ship that might come through every few months, it had never boasted this kind of high tech industry.

But that was really a problem for another day and another officer.  His job was to track down the Grania Estelle and the elusive Commander Samair.  Perhaps she had something to do with the industrial revolution, perhaps not.  Phillips and Grey would determine what was going on, the XO would see about getting a few extra stores, and then Legacy would be off, chasing down their prey.

Antares Grey walked into the pub nearest to the landing field, one that was frequented by the crews of the shuttles that were going up to the station.  The workers were also coming to and from the three factories set up within five kilometers from here, so the place was jumping.  It was a large establishment made from a converted warehouse.  There was a very large and somewhat winding bar that made a rather amorphously shaped semi-circle against the far wall.  Tables, chairs and even lone stools dotted all over.  A second level was built that went around the periphery of the building, leaving the upper level patrons able to look down at the bar and the melee below.  Servers brought heavily laden trays of drinks and food out to the patrons who were piled three-deep to the bar.  Music blared from a dozen speakers all around the room, which was coming from the small stage on the left side of the building, where a five-player band was belting out some local tunes.

He didn’t much care for the music, but then, he wasn’t here to really relax and take in the scenery.  He was here on business, but then, that was a type of relaxation for him.  Besides, a pub was a place for information.  If you knew what you were doing, you could get just as much information here from the workers as you could by breaking into a bunker full of top-secret files.

He pushed his way through the crowd, making his way up to the bar, where he bellied up.  Flagging down a bartender, he got himself a flagon of the local tipple and another of beer.  He turned and fought his way over to a crowded table.  The men and women seated there didn’t look up as he approached.  There were so many people in this pub that those at the tables simply got inured to random passersby.

“Howdy folks!” Grey said amiably, a huge smile splitting his face.  “What a night it is out there!”

The six people at the table looked up at his announcement.  They were all human, four men and two women, dressed in coveralls bearing the insignia of Hailorn Factory, which had its premises less than a hundred yards from the pub.  None of them looked terribly happy to see him interrupting.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” he said amiably, pulling a chair over.  “Just because I’m new in town doesn’t mean you can’t be neighborly.”

“Who are you?” one of the women demanded.

“Name’s Antares Grey, ma’am,” he said, keeping his voice jovial.  “I came in on the Republic ship a few hours ago.  And let me tell you: being stuffed up in a tin can for months at a time is just hell.  Man it feels so good to be planetside, feeling real air and,” he sipped the beer, “tasting real alcohol.”

That managed a chuckle.  “Are you really a soldier on that ship?”

Grey gave her an offended look.  “I, ma’am, am a sailor, not a soldier.  Soldiers are Army, I’m Navy.”

“What kind of ship?” one of the men asked.

“Now, now,” he chided.  “I told you all who I am.  Seems only neighborly that I not be drinking with a bunch of strangers.”

They introduced themselves and the conversation went on.  He talked about the Legacy and the joys of serving aboard a real life Republic heavy cruiser.  They talked about life on a farm and then the miracle of the offworlders bringing all the technology to their humble little dirtball.  First it was the small ship, the one with engine trouble (they didn’t know the name of that one) and then the bigger one, the bulky ship (one of the women called it) that gave them books and tools and small machines for building.  But it was the third ship, the Requiem that really got things going.  They hired out their technicians to help build the factories and sold flash-teaching devices to give the Folstons the information they needed.  In a matter of months, they had bootstrapped their way up to a spacefaring culture, something that would normally take years, possibly decades.

Of course, they had always suspected that technology and other boosts were coming from outside sources, especially after what the local leader had told Commander Harth.  It was an interesting puzzle, why anyone would be willing to suddenly change the entire profile of what was otherwise an uninteresting and unprofitable world?

Lieutenant Sophia Phillips was having similar luck in another establishment, speaking with the high rollers.  Workers had management and those were the ones she was dealing with.  A few smiles, laughter, and batted eyelashes and the men in the club she visited were spilling their guts.  The three ships that came here did indeed each have things that were traded to or purchased by the locals.  But it was the second and third ships that had given them the true tools they needed.  The second ship had delivered tools and teaching aids, the third ship had provided techs and industrial fabricators and the locals just went crazy with them all.

It was an interesting puzzle, why would anyone care about this world?  It would be a while before they would get themselves up to a truly spacefaring level, but it seemed no one had informed the locals of that.  She estimated that within five years, they’d have their station completed and within a year of that, they’d have at least a half dozen ships ready to start plying the spacelanes.  Though Phillips was willing to bet that they’d exceed that estimate.

As far as their mission was concerned, little information had been garnered, Harth realized, reading over Phillips’ and Grey’s reports.  Grania Estelle had been here, that much was certain.  They had apparently spent a few weeks in orbit, helping out the smaller ship with their engine troubles and then some trading was done with the surface.  After that, both ships departed for places far from here.  The smaller ship, the Emilia Walker, didn’t provide any information as to where they were going, but Grania Estelle had been contracted by the locals to deliver a load of gadolinium to the nearby system of Hecate.

“Well, Captain,” the XO stated, a smile on his face.  “I think we’re going to Hecate next.”

Harth chuckled.  “Yes, XO, I think we are.  And based on the sensor data Fury collected and allowing a small margin of repair on their hyperdrives, we might just catch them before they leave Hecate.”

The XO nodded.  “Shall I cancel the remaining leave?”

Harth seriously considered the question.  His crew was made up of good people and they would certainly understand.  But he didn’t need morale to take a nose dive over this and even the best people would burn out.  “No, we’ll stay another day.  I want to make sure everyone has had time for leave.”  He shrugged.  “One more day shouldn’t matter that much.  I find it highly unlikely that a bulk freighter would be able to outrun a heavy cruiser.”

“Confident words,” the XO replied.

“Oh, come on, XO,” Harth said with a sardonic grin.  “We have a very good track record.”

“Tamara, do you have a minute?”

She looked up from her datapad, from the novel she was reading.  It was one she had read before, but many years ago, back during her time in the Republic, before her life fell apart.  It had felt nice to reconnect to a part of her past she had thought long gone.

Tamara pressed a button and Stella’s image appeared on the datapad’s screen.  The AI’s striped-haired head was overlapping the text of Tamara’s novel, which was very distracting, so Tamara pressed another key and the text disappeared.  She probably lost her place when she deactivated the e-reader, but that was a small inconvenience.  Stella’s image was very serious, so she knew whatever this was about was more important than losing a place in a book.

“Okay.  What’s this about?”

“You.”

Tamara blinked.  “Me?”

“Yes, Tamara,” the AI replied.  “I’m worried about you.”

She sighed.  “Look, if this is about the other day, I’m sorry I was rude.  You know what happened, I hadn’t slept well and I wasn’t ready to talk.  I needed to just…”

“Just what?” Stella asked.

“Just get past it.”

“Tamara, this is a habit with you,” Stella said.  “I’ve seen you wake up from terrifying nightmares almost every night.  I’ve started a file on your activities.”

Tamara bit back a smile.  “I get my own file.  I’m flattered.”

“Please don’t joke about this, Tamara.  This is serious.”

“I think you think it’s serious.  And I am grateful you care.”

“I told you I have a file, Tamara.  And I’m an AI, so I’m very thorough.”

“You’re thorough because I made you that way.  You talk like you’re the member of this monolithic species, Stella, but from what I’ve seen, there aren’t that many AI’s left.  Not anymore.”

“I’m probably unique and thank you for that, by the way,” she said with a smile, but then it dropped.  “But don’t change the subject.  I’m concerned about you.”

“Well, thank you, but I’m fine.”

Stella eyed her for a moment.  “You’re not fine.  You barely sleep.  You’re downing coffee like you need it to survive.  Your stress levels are elevated, your appetite is down, the nightmares.  Why are you just dismissing this?”

“Because it’s nothing,” Tamara protested, a frown starting to crease her features.

“If this was going on with me, if I was starting to behave erratically, and I told you I was fine, would you just simply accept that?”

Now she was getting angry.  “Drop it, Stella.  It isn’t your concern.  I’m fine.”

Stella paused for a moment.  “I already told Turan about this.”

Tamara’s eyes blazed.  “You did what?”  Her voice got low and icy.

Stella looked uncomfortable.  “I needed to talk to someone about it.  You weren’t willing to talk, obviously.  Who else was I going to go to?”

Tamara stood up and walked around her quarters, leaving the datapad on the bed.  Stella was still projecting her image on the screen, but now it was upside down relative to Tamara.  “You’re getting worse, Tamara.  Why won’t you let me help you?”

“Because I’m fine!  Just leave it alone!” she yelled, running her fingers through her hair.  “And I appreciate you think you need to help, but there’s… nothing… wrong.  I’m fine.”  She walked the two steps to the bed and pressed the off switch on her datapad.  Stella’s image disappeared.

Tamara let out a long growl and banged her fist against the bulkhead.  The pain helped calm her back down.  She found, quite to her surprise, that she was breathing heavily.  She forced her breathing back to normal.

“Damn it.”

Stella peeked into Tamara’s HUD as though she was looking around the corner of a wall.  But without a word, she hustled back out of Tamara’s vision.

Strangely, that night she slept better than she had in months.  Perhaps the shouting and the anger had burned through some of the built up tension.  Tamara didn’t know and nor did she care.  It was nice to wake up completely refreshed without her chest aching, her heart beating so fast it was about to crash through her ribs or her throat screamed raw.  It was almost an unknown feeling, one that she hadn’t experienced in quite some time.  She stretched and stood.  The sleep had done her a world of good.

Tamara wandered down to the mess hall, where Cookie and his assistants were bustling away behind the counter.  The man himself was taking out a pan of freshly baked loaves of bread, while one of the helpers was filling one of the cauldron-sized pots with water and what looked like vegetables.  A bag of lentils was on the counter, apparently a hearty soup was going to be on the menu at some point today.  She could feel her mouth begin water at the thought of it.

Cookie and his crew were a well-oiled machine.  Even when things were at their bleakest, one could always count on them to make sure that the crew was fed, even if it was little more than sandwiches for fare.  The non-humans in the crew were always well taken care of as well, though the lupusan did grumble every so often about not having any live food to eat.  The Captain had vetoed that notion, even if they did kill some sort of cattle, even a goat, he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of his crew hunting down and killing an animal aboard his ship.  Corajen and Saiphirelle would just have to make do with rare meat, blood soup and a hunt on the next planet they came to.   They, of course, would then sit in the mess hall and tell lurid stories of some of their hunting trips; the thrill of the chase, the terror of their prey as they ran it down, the feel of warm blood and tearing of flesh with their great teeth.  Corajen was sadistic enough to do this during meal times, accompanied by large and rather ferocious bites of lamb, just to get reactions out of people.  Most people tended to avoid her when she ate.

Tamara filled a coffee cup and held it just under her nose and breathed in the aroma.  It was another soothing balm to her nerves.  She didn’t seem to need it this morning, but it was comforting anyway.  It was just one of those daily rituals that allowed her to get her head in the right place for work and help her block out her normal nighttime demons.  She didn’t need it for this morning, the demons were uncharacteristically quiet.  It was refreshing to be so well rested and mentally in sync.

When she looked back over at the galley, she saw Cookie watching her.  Taking of sip of the coffee, she walked over.  “Good morning, Cookie.”

“Good morning, Tamara,” he said, turning to set the timer.  “Do you want something?  I can whip you up an omelet or something.  I’ve got some peppers and mushrooms, but no bacon, I’m afraid.  We haven’t really started on the breakfast chow yet.”

“That’d be fine, Cookie.  Thank you.”

He beamed at her.  “Of course.  Sit.  I’ll bring it out to you.”

“You don’t need to do that,” she replied, nodding her chin in his direction.  “I can wait here.”

“No, you’re going to go over to one of those tables and wait and I will bring it out to you,” he said imperiously.

Tamara laughed and sat down at the nearest table, drinking her coffee.  After a few minutes of skilled pan and spatula work, a perfectly constructed omelet was on a plate, accompanied by toast.  He carried it out to her, setting it in front of her with a flourish, placing the silverware to the side of the plate.  She chuckled again and dug in with a will.  He grabbed a cup of coffee and then sat down across from her.

“Don’t you have breakfast to prepare?” she asked through a mouthful of egg.

He shrugged.  “They can take care of it.  Now, you tell me what is going on in that head of yours.”

Tamara nearly choked, coughed twice and then swallowed.  “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, please, Tamara.  It’s me you’re talking to here.  You’re not hiding this.  Something is going on in that gorgeous head of yours and now you’re going to tell me all about it.”

“Don’t flirt with me, Cookie,” she said, looking down at the plate.

“You are in my mess hall, I will flirt with whoever I please,” the chef replied, taking another sip of coffee.  “And since I’ve met you, I can tell just by looking that you haven’t been sleeping well.  That and the fact that you suck down coffee as though you need it to keep your heart beating.”

“Let it go, Cookie,” she warned.

“No, Tamara, I won’t,” he said, looking at her straight on.  “Look at me.”  She brought her chin up, but her face was stormy.  “Something is going on, Tamara.  You’re not sleeping and I hear that you’re not the most pleasant person to be around.”

“We can’t all be bubbling cauldrons of joy, Cookie,” she pointed out, a bit sourly.  She increased the pace of the eating, something her companion noticed immediately.

“Tamara, please.  I want to help.”

She finished her omelet and gulped the rest of the coffee.  Setting her fork down, she looked up at him.  “All right, Cookie.  You want to help me?  Fine.  Let me show you what it is that I dream about almost every night.”  Clearly, this conversation was burning away her good mood.  She stood.  “Come on.  I don’t want to do this in public.”

He blinked, but stood up and followed her out of the mess hall, with a nod to one of his fellows.  They would have to muddle along without him.  He wasn’t worried.  They had in fact worked the breakfast shift many times without his oversight and assistance; they’d be fine.  He hoped Tamara wasn’t going to do anything drastic, though her demeanor made that a forlorn hope.

They arrived at the lounge where she gestured him to sit down on one of the couches.  He sat on one of the arms of the couch, while she moved to the door, closing it behind them.  “Closing the door…” he said in a pensive tone.

Tamara glared at him.  “Do you want to see or not?” she snapped.

Cookie held up his hands in surrender.  “I’m here, aren’t I?  I’m sorry.”

The fierceness went down a notch and she turned to the monitor closest to the couch.  Pressing her thumb to the control panel, the display immediately lit up and then a video began to play.  “Don’t talk,” she ordered.  “Just watch.”

Cookie nodded and focused on the display.  It was a first-person video, as though someone had a camera attached to their head.  The camera panned over from a shuttlecraft which was parked in some sort of hangar bay as a man’s voice spoke.  “I don’t think so bitch.”

“Took you long enough,” a woman’s voice – Tamara’s voice – replied.  The camera panned to the man’s face and then down to the gun in his hand.  “I could scream.”

“You could,” the man answered, amusement in his voice.  “Then I’d shoot you and say that the gun went off accidently.  A misfire.  And of course you were trying to escape, so I’d be a hero and you’d be dead.”  Cookie shuddered at the pure malice in his eyes and his tone.

The scene continued, as the man led Tamara through the corridors of what looked like either a station or a ship, until they arrived at the hatch of an escape pod.  “An escape pod?” she demanded, whirling around.  “I’m not getting in there.”

The man just smiled.  “Yes, you are.”  The man sounded sure of that.  “You can either get in there on your own.  Or,” he lowered the gun, but still pointed it at her, “I can put a round in your thigh and then you can get in there.”

Cookie was getting a sick feeling in his stomach.  But it wasn’t over yet.  He could hear Tamara’s breathing getting more panicked and labored.  Her voice shook.  “I will… not… get in that escape pod.”

The man didn’t even reply, just kept that grin on his face and fired.  Tamara screamed and collapsed.  “You bastard!”

“I did warn you,” the man told her.  He tossed her his belt.  “Tie this around the wound like a tourniquet.  It’s not going to take long before you bleed out.”  Gasping, Tamara stuffed a rag on each side of the wound, then put the belt around the wound and pulled it tight, cinching it up.  Blood had pumped from the wound, but it had slowed considerably once she put on the belt.  “Now, get up off your whining ass and get inside the pod.”

Cookie found he couldn’t pull his attention away from the display.  It was intense.  Tamara’s hands pulled the camera forward and she slithered more than crawled inside the escape pod.  It was agonizing to watch, especially accompanied by Tamara’s whimpers and moans of agony as she pulled herself along.  She stopped right at the edge of the hatch and looked back at her assailant.  “Get inside, bitch,” he told her.  Then he shoved her inside and the camera crashed inside, as the video came to a stop with her facing the outside porthole.

“No, no, no!” she shouted.  An instant later, he started firing.  Bullets hit the inside of the pod, ricocheting off the inner panels, off the electronics.  Cookie could see that she had curled into a ball, screaming in terror.  Suddenly the picture disappeared as what looked like the lens was covered.  He was confused.  Was she wearing a camera?  Had the man damaged its visual capabilities with his gunfire?   Eventually the fusillade of bullets ended but the inside of the pod was wrecked.  Most of the panels were dark, coils of smoke came out of them.

The camera came back on as Tamara pointed it back toward the hatch.  It swung closed and sealed.  A few seconds later, there was a loud clunk of the magclamps disengaging and then video wobbled, as though there was a sudden burst of acceleration, as presumably the pod launched.

The video stopped and the display turned off.  Tamara removed her hand from the controls.  “That is what I see every night when I close my eyes.  That bastard, tossing me out into the void, hoping I would either bleed to death or suffocate when the pod’s life support failed.”  Her voice came out in a strangled growl, as though it was a sheer effort to get the words past her throat.

The chef found he was wringing his hands in his lap and stopped himself.  He tried to speak, but his throat had gone dry.  He cleared his throat.  He started to speak, then reconsidered and tried something else.  “Who is that man?”

Tamara blinked, not expecting that from him.  She must have expected some sort of useless platitude or apology or some sort of expression of sympathy.  “That creature is Lieutenant Oliver Islington, one of my subordinate officers at my last posting.  He and our superior officer, Captain Horace Bythe had been skimming funds and cargoes for months and then framed me.  The video you saw was a recording from my implants when Islington caught me trying to escape the brig.”  She let out a long breath and turned away from Cookie, staring at the door.  “He and Bythe decided that instead of just murdering me, it would be best if I were to just disappear in the battle that was going on at the time.  You found my pod drifting after that.  I got the hibernation system active just as the air was growing toxic.”  She sighed.  “You know the rest.”

Cookie blinked.  “It didn’t look like you could have done anything except get shot, Tamara.”

“I didn’t even try,” she barked.  “I just let that worm lead me right to the pod and throw me in.”

“So what’s the alternative?” he asked.  “You fight him, he kills you, then what?  Grania Estelle dies a very slow death in orbit of Instow.”  She glanced over at him out of the corner of her eye.  “From what I saw, I don’t think he had any qualms about killing you.  In fact, I think he was hoping you’d try something so he could just blow you away and be done with you.”

“I never really thought of it that way,” Tamara whispered.  “But it never stops.  I think last night was the first in a very long time that I haven’t dreamed about him.  He’s always there when I close my eyes.”

“He’s also dead now, Tamara,” Cookie pointed out.  “He looked human, so I doubt he’s alive two hundred and fifty years later.”

“You’re right, he is probably gone,” she grated.  “But he’s always going to be there.”

“Is it the violence?  Is it that he tried to kill you?  Was going to kill you?”  Cookie stood up.  “Because he didn’t.  You got the pod working and then we picked you up.”

“I don’t know,” she said, throwing her hands in the air and pacing the length of the room.

He shook his head.  “I don’t think it was the violence.  Because I heard about what you did when we got boarded by those pirates.  Oh, I’m sure you were scared, but you soldiered on.  That pirate tried to rape and kill you and you took care of him.  And even after that, you still were Janie-on-the-spot helping Corajen and the others to fight them off within the ship and the boat bay.”

“I saw him there,” she said quietly.  “In the cargo bay.  I thought that pirate that attacked me was Islington.  My implants were telling me he wasn’t, but I was convinced that he was.”

“Have you seen him since then?”

She shook her head.  “Only in my dreams after that.”  She grimaced.  “That sounds a lot more romantic than it is.”

He managed a small smile.  “I can see that.  But it wasn’t him.  In the cargo bay, I mean.”

“Of course not,” she said, continuing to pace.  “I know that now.  But at the time, it was just so… real.  And shortly after that the nightmares started.”

“But he didn’t kill you, Tamara,” he told her.

“But for a twist of fate, he would have,” she replied bitterly.

“That’s bullshit,” Cookie countered, closing the distance between them and stepping in front of her.  “He shot you and threw you in that pod, damaged it badly enough that you would be dead in a matter of hours.  But he didn’t kill you.  You, struggling with a serious leg wound, managed to repair the pod enough and then you slept.  You survived, Tamara.  You beat him.”

“I beat him?” she asked dully.  “My whole life was gone.”

He reached over and grabbed her wrist.  Pressing his thumb against it, he spoke.  “Still feeling a pulse.  So I guess your whole life wasn’t gone.  You beat him,” Cookie repeated, then released her hand.

Tamara leaned over and took his hand in both of hers.  “Thank you, Raoul.”

He looked away, embarrassed, but he didn’t pull away.  “You’re being too hard on yourself.  He didn’t kill you.  He failed.”

She squeezed his calloused hand and he gave a gentle squeeze back.  “He did fail,” she replied, her voice soft.  “Thank you again.”

He gave a sardonic smile and snorted.  “I just did what anyone else would do.”

Tamara let his hand go, but a very small smile touched the corners of her lips.  “No, Raoul, they wouldn’t.  Not many.”

He shrugged.  “Come on.  I’ve got to get back to the galley before those boys burn everything.”

Tamara nodded, grinning now.  “Can’t have that.  The crew would mutiny.”

“Are you free for a drink later?” he asked, greatly daring.

She laughed.  “You’re buying.”

Two days later, Tamara was summoned to the Captain’s stateroom for some sort of meeting.  The last two days had been an interesting time for her.  She had been assisting Ka’Xarian and a few others on building a third shuttle, and also working on a few maintenance issues on deck three.  At night, she’d been spending time with Cookie.  She got a few looks from various members of the crew, but she didn’t care.  They would spend time in the lounges, having a few beers, watching vids on the displays, they even had rather heated arguments over the virtues of saffron being added as a spice.  They hadn’t gotten together in any private way but that didn’t stop the crew from hiding smiles and leering at them.  And she didn’t care.

She arrived at the Captain’s stateroom hatch and pressed the buzzer.  “Come in,” his voice came over the intercom.  Grabbing the handle, she pushed the hatch open and stepped inside.

The Captain was seated on the edge of his bed, a datapad in one hand, a mug of coffee within easy reach on the nearby nightstand.  He looked up as she entered and stood.  Tamara nodded to him, and then saw that someone else was in the stateroom as well.  Corajen was seated at the Captain’s small table, her tail wrapped around her waist, as the chair was designed for humans, not for lupusan tails.

“Captain, you wanted to see me?”

He nodded.  “Moxie, good.  Come in.  Have a seat,” he said, pointing to the table.  He perched himself again on the edge of his bunk.  When she was seated, he began.  “Corajen has brought us both here because she wants to discuss something I think is near and dear to both of our hearts.”

Tamara looked to the security officer with interest but the lupusan only snorted at the introduction.  “I’m concerned about pirates,” she said without preamble.  “We got lucky the last time that there weren’t more of them in the boarding parties and, moreso I think, that they only wanted a few things from the ship.  If they had wanted to keep the ship, I don’t think we would have been able to stop them.”

Tamara shrugged.  “I think we did all right for ourselves.”

Corajen fixed her with a look.  “No, Tamara, we didn’t.  We lost a lot of people, the ship took a lot of damage and a great deal of our materiel was stolen.  It wasn’t all right.  We held it together, but that’s about the best that could be said for it.”

Tamara lowered her gaze, stung.  She was right.  It had been a desperate fight and certainly one she didn’t want to repeat.  But it was a scenario that might happen again.  They had repaired and overhauled a great deal of the ship, almost all of it in fact, but in the end, Grania Estelle was a cargo ship, not a combat vessel.  If a serious pirate vessel came after them again, they would need to defend themselves and there was a good chance they would be boarded again.  They had to be prepared for that.

“Captain, we need to hire on a few more security people and we need to be outfitted with more and better weapons.”

He nodded.  “I agree.  The engineering teams tell me that there isn’t a whole lot more we can do for the ship itself, but I agree we need more weapons for the crew.  I do not want to be caught so undefended like that again.”  They both looked at Tamara.

“What?”

“You’re the one in charge of the replicators,” Corajen prompted.  “What can you get for me?”

Something inside of her locked up.  Tamara couldn’t really explain it, but she knew that turning this ship into a weapons factory was a step on a very slippery slope.  A slope that led down, down so far she couldn’t see the bottom.  And that terrified her.

But Corajen saw it.  “Oh, here we go.  The former Navy girl is going to spout some dogma now about how she can’t use the replicators to make guns.  You’re no peacenik.  And you’ve used them to arm the ship and make cannons for your starfighter.  So what is the hang up with making weapons for my security people?”  Tamara found she was speechless.  Both of them were glaring at her now, accusations in Corajen’s eyes.  “Are you kidding me?  You have nothing to say?”

“I can’t do that…” she began.

But the security chief cut her off.  “No, no, no.  We need these weapons, Tamara.  I know you can make them.  Do not try and feed me a line about how it’s against your Republic moral code.  You’ve done it before.”

Tamara sighed.  “Yes, the replicators can create weapons, specifically small arms for our security troopers.  But you’re right.  My problem with this is you are all civilians.”

“This is ridiculous,” Corajen snarled.  She had her hands on the table and she flexed her fingers, her claws digging furrows into the surface leaving curly cues of metal behind.  “So?  What does it matter?  We’re civilians.  You’re not Navy anymore.  You’re a member of the ship’s company, of which Grania Estelle is a civilian vessel.  There is no argument that you could make that changes any of that.”

“You’re absolutely right, Corajen.  This is a civilian vessel.  I am a member of the ship’s crew.  But you’re wrong about one thing.  I am still a member of the Republic Navy.”

“What?” the Captain exclaimed.  “When did this happen?”

“I never stopped, Captain,” she replied.

Corajen blinked, her ears held back to her skull.  This obviously had thrown her for a loop.  “What the hell is this?  Captain?”  She looked over at the man, plaintively.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Cora,” he told her.

“The replicators we have aboard the ship are Republic military class three industrial replicators.  In order for me to have command access to them, I need my implants and I need to have the proper codes for the constructor nanites to activate.  In order for the replicator to recognize my codes, it has to recognize my rank, which is imbedded in the firmware.  I have to maintain my rank in the Republic Navy for that to happen.”

But Corajen was shaking her head.  “You are so full of it, Tamara.  Other than that one small encounter we had with that Republic corvette back at Instow, you’ve had no other contact with the Republic military.  Your implants had no trouble accessing the replicators before that or since.  So all this smoke screen you’re throwing out here is just that.  Your mouth is moving, but I’m just hearing excuses as to why you won’t do this.”  She glared at the woman, anger radiating from her.  “What?  You think you can shut me up?”  She started to rise from the chair, menace oozing from every pore.  She towered over Tamara, her hands at chest level, claws extended.

“Easy, Corajen,” the Captain ordered, his voice hard.  “No one is fighting anyone.”

Tamara, however, hadn’t reacted.  Picking up her datapad, she yawned and looked away from the lupusan, as though bored.  She pulled up a reactor status feed and studied it for a moment.

Corajen remained on her feet and then slammed her palms on the table.  “Don’t you ignore me!” she roared.

Tamara pressed a control on the datapad, switching off the screen, and then slowly looked over to the raging security chief.  “You can’t force me to do anything, Corajen,” she replied, standing up.  Undaunted, she moved right up and put her face right in front of the lupusan’s muzzle.  “Oh, there’s no question that you could rip me to shreds, but that won’t get you what you want.  Even if the Captain let you, I’m dead and you still don’t have the codes to the replicators.  And you’re right back here, only now you can’t make anything off the restricted list.”  She stood there, holding Corajen’s gaze without any sign of fear.

The truth was she wasn’t as icy calm as she appeared.  There was a legitimate concern that the wolfen would lose control and tear her throat out.  The primal, lizard part of Tamara’s brain was closing in on full blown panic mode; her conscious mind was barely maintaining control.  She knew her heart rate was rapidly accelerating and her pupils were dilating and her breathing was threatening to go out of control, but years of experience in this sort of situation allowed her to maintain a visage of calm determination.

“Corajen, stand down,” the Captain said, sounding far away.

But the two women didn’t hear him.  “You don’t frighten me, Corajen.  You’re the big bad bitch, but there’s no prey here.”

Corajen let out a low growl.  “Yes there is,” she said.  Her mouth curled, revealing her teeth and her fangs.  “You are just covered in stinky fear.  The stench of your fear is so strong it’s covering everything else.”  She huffed out a long breath.

“I’m not backing down, Corajen,” Tamara told her.  “Kill me if you have to, but it won’t get you what you want.”

“You are not in command here,” the lupusan hissed.

Tamara smiled, making sure she showed teeth.  Corajen’s eyes widened even further.  “Neither are you,” she whispered, knowing her life hung in the balance.  Then, she backed away, deliberately turned her back on the predator and walked to the hatch to leave.

She could hear the Captain give a small whistle as she pulled open the hatch and walked out, leaving it open.  “Girl’s got some serious moxie.”

“She’s lucky you were in the room,” Tamara heard Corajen say as she rounded the corner in the corridor.

Tamara walked into the nearest lounge, one deck down, and collapsed into a chair, her breath coming in shuddering gasps.  She hadn’t faced down someone as powerful and dangerous as the security chief in a very long time.  She was very glad she hadn’t lost her cool, but she needed to show Corajen she wasn’t afraid.  Tamara had no idea if she’d succeeded.

Picking up her datapad, she sent a quick message to the Captain, apologizing for walking out in the middle of the meeting.  She did feel bad about that because she had no desire to disrespect the man in his own stateroom, but that meeting wasn’t about him.

“Stella?  Are you there?” she called out to the empty room.

The AI appeared on Tamara’s HUD.  The young woman looked a bit nervous, as evidenced by her inability to look Tamara in the eye, which was odd, considering her image was actually being projected onto Tamara’s eyes.

“I’m not going to yell at you, Stella,” Tamara soothed.  “I’m sorry I got so upset before.  I know you were just trying to help.”

“Are you going to try and work through your issues with Lieutenant Islington?”

Tamara chuckled.  “I will… try, Stella.”

The AI sighed, looking up at her.  “I suppose that’s the best I can hope for.”  Then she frowned.  “Why wouldn’t you give Corajen what she was asking for?  You know you can program the replicators to produce them.”

“Of course I can.  That’s not the point.  Yes, I’ve armed the ship and I’m going to be making more, both for the freighter and for my fighter, but personal arms are something different.”

“Why is it different?” Stella asked, genuinely interested.  In her mind, she didn’t see a difference, but clearly Tamara did.

“Because arming the ship is simply good business,” she said.  “If we get attacked again, I’ll get a few pulsers and other things.  But I don’t want this ship to turn into a gunrunner.  Because we will.  If I make them once, then Taja or the Captain will start selling them to people.  And while yes the buyers could find weapons elsewhere, I don’t want them getting milspec weapons from us.  Before we know what’s happening, we’ll be running containers full of guns between systems.  I think having weapons at our command is a good idea, but for defense.  We’re not equipping an army, we’re trying to run freight.”

Stella nodded in agreement.  “That sounds reasonable, but you know both Corajen and the Captain are not going to accept that argument.  They’re going to want more weapons.”

“Like I told the security chief, they can’t force me to do anything.  And I’m sure there are people we can talk to on Yullankla to get guns and ammo.  I’ll even go down myself and see what we can find.”

“Do you think they will accept that?” Stella asked dubiously.

Tamara shrugged.  “They’ll have to.  I’m not going to use the replicators to make guns unless it’s a dire emergency.”

“Well, that was interesting,” the Captain said a moment after Tamara had left the stateroom.

“I’m going to kill her,” Corajen said, stalking around the room.

“Oh, sit down.  You’re not going to hurt her,” he told her.  “We need her.”

The lupusan glared at him.  “You like her too much, I think.”

He shrugged.  “She was the driving force behind fixing up my ship, Cora.  Since she arrived, things have started to look up.  Taja tells me we should make a record profit on this run.”

She grumped, plopping back down onto the chair, crossing her arms over her chest.

The Captain grinned at her.  “Besides, admit it.  You’re impressed she stood up to you.”

Corajen gave him a sly smile, though it was more predatory than happy.  “I think she earned some points, yes.”

Chapter 19

The arrival at Yullankla was uneventful; there was no pirate activity when Grania Estelle dropped out of hyperspace.  They swung by the local Jovian and dropped off the helium 3 collector before continuing on into the system to the local inhabited world.  The planet hosted some light industry to support the agricultural endeavors.  There were a few small cities, where a fair amount of small businesses had sprouted.  The planet hosted a population of over five million, a mix of humans and other species, living in a degree of harmony.  Crime wasn’t too high, but it was clear that everyone there was ready and able to defend themselves.

When they arrived in orbit, the locals were immediately calling.  “How is it that all these planets have radios but no shuttles or ships?” Tamara asked, standing at the back of the bridge.

“Simple,” Serinda replied.  “The Captain sold radios to a few planets.  We’ve been here before you know.”

Tamara smirked.  “Nice.  I’m actually impressed with you, Captain.”

He shrugged, not turning to face her.  “Makes it easier for trade.  And we made a few credits.”

“How many did you sell?”

“Here?  Four I think,” he replied.  “There were three businesses we normally work with, so I sold each of them one and then one to the government.  I think that they started working out how to build more just as we were leaving.  I would be surprised if they haven’t copied the design already, and started manufacturing more.”  He grimaced.  “I’d also be surprised if they didn’t try to sell us one before we leave.”

“I think it might be worth buying,” Tamara mused.  “To see what sorts of designs and innovations they’ve come up with.”

“We have replicators, why should we care?” Serinda asked.

“Because if they’re good, we might be interested in it.”

“Better than the replicators?” the communications officer asked, clearly disbelieving.

“The hint is in the name, Serinda,” Tamara explained.  “They only make copies of things in their databases.  Right now, the items in there are very good, but what if someone creates something on their own that’s better?  There’s a scan feature in the replicator that allows you to upload new designs.  So, if this radio they built is better, or has better features than the one in the constructor database, we can get the specs for it.”

The Captain actually turned around to look at her.  “Seriously?”

She smiled.  “I wouldn’t lie about something like that, Captain.  It’s what we used to do in the old days.  In fact, it’s what we should do now.  If we can get something better, I say go for it.”

“I’m not paying more for something I sold them the last time we were here.”

“We don’t need more than one, Captain.  Don’t let them gouge you, but I think we can manage the credits it would take to buy one.”

He twisted his mouth.  “I’ll think about it.”

The locals were overjoyed with Grania Estelle’s arrival.  Or more specifically, the arrival of the cargoes from her holds.  The three factories each received a delivery of raw materials as well as a number of parts, for a hefty commission.  They also commissioned Grania Estelle to build an annex on the Vladen facility.  Vladen built farm equipment, such as tractors, combines, even smaller devices like automated milking machines for cattle.  It took a few days of tweaking with the replicators until they were able to get the machines the locals wanted.  But they were happy to receive them and strangely eager to hand over their money.

The addition of the third shuttle made unloading half again as quick.  Taja stationed half of her cargo loaders on the ship and the other on the ground, to make loading and unloading that much faster.  It also freed up room in the shuttles for more cargo as well.  There was only so much that could be done for some of the very large containers, however, and in some cases they needed to bring along some heavy hoists to get them out from the shuttles’ cargo bays.  The locals provided a dozen heavy duty ground cars to carry the containers to their destination.  But those fees were paid by the receivers, not from Eamonn’s purse, so they were happy.

With the delivery came the credits, more than any of them had seen on any deliveries the Grania Estelle had made since the Captain had taken command.  No one blamed him, they knew how tough times had been, the state of disrepair of the ship and with fewer cargo bays available, that much less tonnage they could fill.  The crew shares this time around were in excess of forty times higher than the ship had ever before seen.

“Crew morale is up,” Stella observed, speaking through Tamara’s implants as the woman walked down the corridor heading to the boat bay.

“I’d say so,” Tamara replied, watching three of the cargo crewmen rush by.  They were all talking excitedly about hitting some of the local entertainment spots.  Bars for the most part, it seemed, though one of them mentioned that there was a theater showing classic movies from the Federation.  No one had any ideas what Federation movies were like, but they were excited to go see.  Tamara had to admit, she was interested in that as well.  Relations between the Republic and the Federation had been deteriorating all throughout her lifetime leading up to the war that really had started right at the end of her time before her trip in the escape pod.  Most people in the Republic had little idea of what Federation culture was, though there of course would be some similarities.

Both great star nations were space-faring cultures, of course, which meant that both sides had starships of all shapes and sizes, warships for their navies, space stations, asteroid and gas giant mining.  But that was really where the similarities ended.  Each side had their own way of doing things, even in government.  The Republic was run by the Senate, whose senators represented their various worlds, whereas the Federation was run by a cabal of high governors, who then sent orders back to regional governors who presided over their constituent worlds.  In practice, the rulers of the planets of both nations tended to their own affairs, though the main government would occasionally stick their collective heads in to collect taxes and lay down laws, as well protect the spacelanes with their navies.

But the day to day?  Few people knew anything about that, and a movie made by someone in the Federation?  In the very least it would be an interesting perspective.

“I think I’m going to try and see that,” Tamara said aloud.

“What?” Stella asked.

“The Federation movie those crewmen were talking about,” she explained.

Stella appeared in Tamara’s HUD.  “Really?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.  “I still don’t understand organics’ methods of entertainment, even after the few months that I’ve been active.”

Tamara shrugged.  “You’ve only been active for a few months,” she soothed.  “And to be fair, your pool of available study subjects has really only been the crew of this ship and the occasional visitor.  A good start, yes, but far from a large sample size.”

“Speaking of sample size,” Stella said, changing the subject slightly.  “Do you think that Chief Corajen will hire on more security people?”

“She said she was going to.  Probably another ten or so.  We’re starting to fill out the crew nicely.”

“If she does bring in ten more, we’ll be at one hundred fifteen,” Stella commented.  “A full crew complement is one hundred twenty five.”

She shrugged again.  “I’m sure the Captain will think on it.”  She saw the chronometer on the bottom corner of her HUD.  “Oh, damn.  I’ve got to get to the boat bay or I’m going to miss my ride.”

“You’re really going to get in the shuttle with her?” Stella asked, shocked.  “After she threatened to kill you?”

Tamara sighed as she picked up the pace.  “And I challenged her to do so and then gambled she wouldn’t.”

“And what’s to stop her from killing you in the shuttle?” Stella demanded.

“Hopefully, she will,” she replied.  “But a smart woman doesn’t rely on other people doing the right thing.”  She smiled and muttered sub-vocally, “I brought a few tricks and nonsense along.  Text only please.  I don’t want her to hear you, even directly into my audio implants.”

Stella nodded.  [Understood,] came the message on the bottom corner of her HUD.  [What sorts of tricks?]

“Well…” she started, but stopped as she entered the boat bay.  “You’ll have to watch.”  Corajen and Taja were already there, but Tamara was only a few steps behind them.  Corajen was dressed in a red leather kilt with a matching red leather vest with black piping.  She didn’t normally wear a shipsuit, in fact, a kilt and a vest were her usual garb, though she would wear the normal gray colors of the Grania Estelle, as well as a shoulder holster with a stun pistol on one side and a 10 mm pulser on the other.  Of course, no lupusan was ever truly unarmed, but sometimes showing a weapon was more effective than simply looking as vicious and powerful as Corajen.

Taja, by contrast, looked like a predator of another sort.  Whereas Corajen was all malice and destruction, the cargo specialist exuded sex appeal.  She was dressed in a yellow skirt with a sleeveless purple top showing plenty of cleavage, and knee high leather boots.  Her dark skin was offset by a pair of silver bracelets and a thin silver necklace.  Her dark hair was done up in a mass of curls on top of her head, her makeup accentuating her face in a way that made it look as though she wasn’t wearing any.  The slow eye blink she gave as Tamara approached made the engineer gasp.

“Damn,” Tamara said with a smile.  “I feel really underdressed.”  Looking down at her own outfit, a simple blue blouse over a pair of jeans and a pair of boots, she felt positively drab by comparison.  She was being careful, however, as a tiny holdout pistol was secured in a holster on her forearm.

“You are,” the smaller woman replied, grinning back, though it faded quickly and she gave Tamara a critical eye.  “We might have to stop somewhere and remedy that.”

Corajen also was inspecting her, as though she was a rather dim student who had showed up late to class.  “Yes, it’ll do for where we’re going, but afterward, it simply will not.”

Tamara felt one of her eyebrows shooting up.  “Where exactly are we going afterward?”

Taja’s smile was like the sun coming up.  “A girl’s night.  I haven’t been off the ship except for business since Folston.  And I know both of you haven’t been off since Instow.  So,” she said imperiously, raising her nose and sliding her eyelids down, “I have decided that we three are going out.  Cora, I’m afraid you’ll have to either leave your guns on the shuttle, or find somewhere to hide them.”

But the lupusan shook her head.  “After.  Once we’ve secured the things we’re looking for, then I’ll put them up.”

Taja rolled her eyes.  “All right.  Well, let’s go.”

“Wait, you want to go gun shopping looking like that?” Corajen asked.

She smiled, glancing down at herself.  “I think I look good.”

“You do,” Tamara agreed.  “But isn’t it a bit… um… distracting?”

The small woman laughed.  “Do I distract you, Commander Samair?”

Now it was Tamara’s turn to laugh.  “Not at all, Specialist.  But I think the man behind the counter might be more interested in you than in dealing in guns.”

“Good,” she replied.  “Maybe it’ll make the haggling a bit easier.”

“He might get the wrong impression,” Corajen pointed out.  “I don’t think you want to put forth the impression that you’re going to screw his brains out over a few crates of guns.”

“I plan on screwing him over a few crates of guns,” Taja said with a smile.  “Just not the kind of screwing he’s looking for.”  They all chuckled and boarded the shuttle.

From the landing pad, they took a ground car through the city, heading to the place where Taja had learned one could buy weapons.  When they reached the landing platform, they had about three hours until sundown which meant they had an excellent view of the city itself as they drove through.  They had rented the car, which was actually a four-seater with a truck bed in the back.  Corajen was driving, with Taja riding shotgun and Tamara in the backseat.  They were driving past various shops and businesses, all of which looked as though they had seen better days.  There was a degree of decay and neglect, though seeing the number of people in the streets and sidewalks belied the idea that no one was around.  Tamara watched as they drove by, seeing people looking at them as they passed.

The people here on Yullankla weren’t poor, but the standard of living was lower than she was used to.  The factories were employing a great number of people, but the hours were long and the pay apparently wasn’t great.  Families were out in the streets, enjoying the evening, it seemed.  There were also a great number of people sitting in doorways, doing nothing.  Tamara had read up on the planet and had asked the Captain as well as others about the people and the way of life down here.  They had told her that it was an industrial world, one that was just truly getting into a true revolution from an agricultural society to an industrial one.  Manufacturing was growing at an exponential rate and employed an ever growing number of workers.  However, as the markets for such industry slowed, progress did as well, meaning that there were slowdowns in the factories and layoffs until the production picked up again.  The ships that would come into the system were a great boon, buying significant numbers of processed parts and machinery and for a time, the factories would be running full blast.  But that would stop again once the ships moved on and the slowdowns would happen again.  Grania Estelle, significantly larger than most of the ships that came through this system, was filling her empty cargo holds with engines that could be used in ground cars, farm equipment, and massive containers of parts and other machined items made here.  The factories were up and running again to fill the demand, of which these items would be sold in neighboring systems, who in turn would have ships come back here with things to sell and buy more.

But in the meantime, the people would be in a state of economic depression once the slowdowns began again.  It seemed that most of the people they passed as they drove were either not working today or perhaps had already gotten off shift.  As they continued on, however, they moved into what looked more like a residential area rather than commercial and even more people were in the streets, mostly human, though there were a smattering of aliens as well.  Tamara saw a few zheen, lupusan, a pair of jackal headed Anubises, catlike Severites, even a Fovorian.  They too were either walking around, or sitting around on porches or on steps.  And everywhere she looked, Tamara saw beings with cups in their hands.  She assumed more than a few of them had alcohol in those cups, but perhaps not all.

There was a sullen look on a great deal of the faces as the car rumbled by.  Corajen was forced to slow the car’s pace to a crawl to avoid running people over, but Tamara noted that very few of the pedestrians truly seemed to care that a car was driving down the road.  Many of them seemed to be of the opinion that since they were walking, the car would stop for them and thus showed no urgency to get out of the way of a two-ton vehicle bearing down on them.  More than once, the lupusan was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting someone.  The people didn’t seem angry by this; there wasn’t an angry mob, it was just a general malaise that seemed to permeate everything and everyone.

“I’m seeing a lot of guns,” Taja suddenly said, which got the attention of the other two.

“Yeah,” Corajen replied.  “Me too, and I don’t like it.”

Tamara blinked in surprised.  She hadn’t really noticed before, but now that Taja had pointed it out, she saw it too.  And they were everywhere.  The groups of people she could see all had weapons.  She could see pistols and pulsers, assault rifles, shotguns.  These were carried by people who looked as though they had used them before with (probably) varying degrees of skill.  Even the younglings carried guns.  Tamara saw a trio of teenage zheen walking by, one of them had a pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

“Even the kids,” Tamara said, a bit sad.  “Any idea why?”

Corajen didn’t answer, but Taja spoke up.  “I’m not sure.  I know that pirates were here about a decade or so ago and there was a civil war.  I think the pirates were in league with the people in charge of the cities and the citizens revolted.  Incoming cargo ships brought in weapons and supplied both sides.  From what I got from the locals, the fighting was pretty nasty.  Took about four years to eject the pirates from power.  That was six years ago.”

“Did they force the pirates to leave?”

“No, I think they killed them all, eventually,” Taja replied.  “Mostly in the fighting, and the rest in the subsequent trials and execution.”

“War crimes?” Tamara guessed.

Taja nodded, still looking out the windshield.  “Most likely.  Crimes against life too, for incidents that occurred before the civil war started, I would imagine.”

“Pirates implies they had ships,” Tamara mused aloud.  “Were they destroyed in the fighting?”

Taja shrugged, glancing back.  “I don’t know.  They didn’t have any ships in orbit or at the landing pad when we were there.  They might be trying to hide them from us, I suppose.  But more likely you’re right, they were probably either destroyed or damaged beyond their ability to repair at this time.”  She pursed her lips as she turned back around.  “I would imagine they stripped out the ships for anything they could salvage and then began reverse engineering anything they could.  Probably why they’re having something of a renaissance with their industry right now.”

“Well, I think that’s partly true,” Tamara conceded, looking at the crowd of people walking along the sidewalks and lounging around.

“How much farther?” Corajen asked.

“You’re driving,” the cargo specialist replied with a smirk.

“Yes, but you’re navigating,” she pointed out.

“Just around this corner,” Taja said, pointing.

Corajen maneuvered them around the corner and parked in front of the building.  There were about fifteen people within easy reach as they all got out.  Taja pulled a bag over one shoulder, adjusting it to a more comfortable position.  “Should someone stay with the car?” Tamara asked.

Taja shrugged, walking with complete confidence to the door of the shop.  Tamara sighed and followed.  Corajen turned to sweep her gaze over the crowd of people ambling around.  No one was particularly interested in her, nor in her vehicle.  She wasn’t trying to be menacing and draw attention to herself.  Shaking her head, telling herself this was a mistake, the lupusan female followed her companions inside.

The shop was a dilapidated two-story gray brick building, very similar to all the others around it, up and down the street.  It also had a small two car and two story garage attached next door, but the steel door was closed and presumably latched.  No one touched the door.  The front door was made of steel and it closed behind the three as they entered.

The inside of the shop was crowded with merchandise.  It wasn’t especially clean, and it was cluttered with all sorts of items; some of them were weapons, but most of them were just random bits of junk.  The shop itself was rather narrow, with a clear space barely wide enough for Corajen to squeeze her broad frame through the stacks.  The shop was dimly lit by a series of fluorescent light bulbs that lined the clear area, though the one closest to the door was flickering erratically.  It had a faint odor (to Tamara’s and Taja’s noses) of rust and machine oil.  Corajen, meanwhile, wrinkled her snout, but otherwise made no indication that she was displeased by the odor.

Taja led them to the back, where sat a desk with another steel door blocking access to the next room.  Above the desk was a sheet of armor glass, stained nearly opaque with fingerprints, noseprints, and even what looked like a perfect print of someone’s foot.  All three women were slightly disgusted by this, but they did not break stride.  Walking straight up to the armor glass window, Taja pressed the bell which was on the small counter jutting out from the glass.  The other two women flanked the cargo specialist.

“Yes, yes, how can I assist you, friends?” a male voice came from the other side of the glass.  The other side of the glass was darkened, which along with the smudged glass made it difficult to see who was behind it.  They could see a shadowy figure behind the glass, but were unable to make out who it was.

Or rather, two of them couldn’t.  Tamara’s visual implants activated, where she allowed a scan of the silhouette to be done, and the implants did their best to lighten up the frozen image, which was then beamed to her datapad.  She picked it up from the holster on her hip and checked it.  On the screen was the image of the… person behind the armor glass.  Her implants had to extrapolate his actual shade and coloration, and she thought they did a reasonable job of it.  The creature behind the glass was not human.  He was a short, feline like creature called a Severite.  He was a little over four feet in height, though he must be on some sort of riser or a chair on the other side of the glass.  His body was covered with a brindled gray and brown fur, which was streaked with white, indicating his age.  His eyes were jade and he had long whiskers protruding out from the sides of his face.  One of his catlike ears was torn, as though it had been ripped away by something with sharp teeth.  He appraised the three females in his shop and smiled, showing yellowing fangs, slightly blunted.  The picture only caught him from the waist up, so she could only see that he was wearing a weathered brown vest, festooned with pockets.

“We’re here looking to buy some product,” Taja began.  At Tamara’s soft cough, she looked back, and glanced at the image on her datapad.  She nodded and looked back, as Tamara showed the image to Corajen, who didn’t react, just flicked her gaze down and then back to the proprietor.

“Oh, yes, yes, pretty lady,” he drawled.  “Anything in particular?”

“I have a list.  Depending on your inventory, I might be prepared to place a large order.”

“I see, yes, yes, pretty lady.  And how will you be paying?”

Taja shrugged.  “I have various methods of payment.  Gold specie, Far Genevielle ducaries, or Republic credits, whichever you prefer.”

“You have these with you, yes, yes?”

She gave him a look.  “My friend, do I look like I’m carrying wads of bills, or piles of credit chits on me?”

He paused.  “No, no, pretty lady, you do not.  No money, I cannot sell.  Not even to a pretty lady.”  His face, so much like the domestic felines on numerous worlds, didn’t have the facial musculature to show much in the way of emotion.  But the flattening of his ears and the slow blinks he gave displayed all the emotion a human face could.

Taja turned to her companions, then looked back and sighed.  Opening the flap on her bag, she pulled out a bundle of paper bills: Far Genevielle ducaries.  All of them could see his eyes widen in anticipation and Tamara could even see the tip of his tongue lick the edges of his mouth.

“The pretty lady doesn’t always speak the truth, no, no,” the proprietor said.  “I will show you my stock.”  He leaned over and pressed a button.  There was a buzz and Corajen moved over and pushed the door open.  She led the way inside, instantly wary for some sort of trick or ambush, but there was none.

Seeing him up close, they all noted that he wasn’t especially clean.  His fur was matted in places and as he hopped down from his stool, they could see that his tail appeared to have been broken in two places, as it hung at a crazy angle.  He wasn’t wearing shoes, which wasn’t a surprise, but he, like Corajen, was wearing a kilt that came to his knees, though his was a faded orange which had clearly seen better days.  “Come, come, pretty lady, bring your friends, yes, yes,” he said, with his strange drawl.  He led them into the back area, where three other Severites were standing, all of them armed with assault rifles, though none of them were pointed at the newcomers.  In this room were racks and racks of rifles, stacks of ammunition, crates of other things, weapons unseen.

Tamara kept an eye on their hosts, while the other two ladies walked among the merchandise, picking up a few things, checking on them.  Corajen hefted a rifle, pulling back the bolt, checking the chamber, and sighting down the barrel.  Taja checked out a pair of pistols, feeling the weight, checking the slides, seeing how well maintained they were.

The weapons they inspected were in varying states of repair, though all the ones they looked at could be brought up to snuff with a little care.  In the end they decided on a dozen assault rifles, twice as many hand weapons, and several thousand rounds of ammunition.  Then it came time for the haggling.

“Yes, yes, pretty ladies decide what they want?” the proprietor asked.  They had never asked his name, nor had he decided to give it.  He didn’t ask their names and that suited everyone just fine.

“Yes, my friend, I think we have,” Taja said, crossing her arms over her chest.  “Now, I’m thinking for all these…”  She bobbed her head back and forth, considering.  “Four thousand ducaries.”

“Four thousand?” the little Severite screeched.  “No, no, pretty lady will bankrupt me!  I can go no lower than eight thousand, no, no.”

“Eight?” Taja declared.  “That’s too much, my friend.  I may as well let you bend me over the counter and take me!”

The Severites all smiled and exchanged looks.  The proprietor blinked amusement.  “Pretty lady must be reasonable.  All the hardware she wants?  Must be willing to meet me at a reasonable price.”

The haggling went on for a little while longer, until they finally agreed on a price of fifty-two hundred ducaries, which Taja paid.  The Severites opened up the inner door to the garage, and then the outer door to the street.  Tamara stepped out into the street to find, much to her surprise, the car was right where they had left it, completely untouched.

The proprietor noticed her surprise.  “Oh, no, no, lady, no one touch your ride here.  Everyone know that be a bad thing to do in front of my establishment.”

Tamara got in and backed the vehicle into the garage, where they loaded up their gear.  They lashed the crates of guns and ammo to the flatbed and then climbed aboard and drove off.  Before they left, Taja promised that if they needed any more of either while they were still planetside they would come and visit him.

“What do you think?” Tamara asked, pulling away from the curb.

“I think he actually got away with more money than he should have,” Taja admitted, settling more comfortably into the passenger seat.

“You’re slipping,” Tamara noted with a smile.  Taja slapped her playfully on the arm.

“I think we got some decent swag,” Corajen piped up from the back seat.  “Take a little work to get them cleaned up and such, but I would do that anyway.  I’m not going to trust my life, or the crews’ lives with what might be a faulty weapon.”

“Copy that,” Tamara replied as she drove them back to the landing pad.  Once they arrived, Taja had the two crewmen that were waiting around for the launch help load the crates onto the shuttle, with Taja’s order they be taken up to the ship on the next run.

“All right, Cora, lose the guns,” Taja ordered.  “I feel like dancing!”

Vincent Eamonn sat in the wardroom, staring at a display showing the planet below.  He couldn’t see more than land, oceans and swirling clouds.  He didn’t expect to see anything else, and truth be told, he wasn’t really looking.  He had escaped to the wardroom, taking a break from his own logs, the endless calls from the people on the surface.  The locals were so happy to see him and his big ship that they were pestering him to fill his holds with goods that they manufactured for him to transfer to another system.  He and Taja had worked with them, taking on a number of things, but he had decided he wasn’t going to take on any more cargo.  While shares were up, there was only so much he could afford to take on, since he’d have to purchase here to resell in another system.  Even cutting his own captain’s share down to almost nothing, he could only afford to fill the holds about two thirds of the way.

But that was far more cargo than he was used to.  He still couldn’t get over the overhauls to his battered old ship.  She looked nearly brand new and could hold so much more.  The crew was nearly at optimal size, another change for the better.  It was as though the old girl had been rejuvenated, found her lost youth and purpose.  And he for one liked it.

Next stop after this was Ulla-tran and their long awaited meeting with the Emilia Walker.  At each of the ports they’d made, he’d stashed away some of the profits to go toward the co-op, hoping to have some startup capital when they made it there.  He truly hoped that Vosteros had worked out the issues with his crew and had decided to take him up on his offer to work together.  They’d have to set up some sort of office, though Ulla-tran would be well suited for that.  It would mean that ultimately, Ulla-tran would be their new home base.  It might restrict his ability to simply go gallivanting all over the cluster, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.  He’d have to think on that.

It would also mean that someone would have to stay behind to man the home office.  He certainly didn’t want that job; he was a freighter captain after all.  It would require someone with administrative abilities, someone willing and able to work with the locals, keep track of everything as well as have a head for figures.  Hopefully, if everything worked out, the co-op would have more than two ships in a reasonable amount of time, either by recruiting others or building new ships.  That also meant that person would have to be able to handle the various captains, recruitment of staff as well as crews for the ships.  A grand undertaking, really.

He shook his head, clearing away the fantasies.  Oh, this co-op could still happen, even if Emilia Walker turned their collective noses up at his offer.  He could find someone else willing to join, hell, with Tamara and her replicators, they could build another ship and simply recruit.

Now there’s an idea.  But then I run the same risk as with the Emilia Walker.  That I would build the ship, stock it, staff it, and then the captain and crew that I hire simply run off with it.  That obviously would be less than optimal.  Clearly this will take some serious thought and planning.

“Captain?  Do you have a moment?” Quesh asked over the comms.

He sighed.  No time for that now, it seemed.  He made a mental note to start working on plans for the co-op.  And if Emilia Walker did indeed show up as scheduled, he would work with Vosteros to try and come up with some sort of workable plan.

He activated the comms.  “Yes, Chief.  What’s the problem?”

“I wanted to talk with you about some housekeeping items.  Got the main engine maintenance finished, but a few things have cropped up.  Specifically, the port injector feeds.  They’re acting up again…”

Taja brought them to a nightclub on the other side of town from the landing area.  The place was built from the same gray bricks as many of the other buildings in the area, though it looked as though some small effort was made to spruce the place up.  The front area was painted a dark burgundy, and it looked as though someone had tried to make it look fancier by hanging flashing lights above the door and lined the door itself with what looked to be brass.  It certainly was shiny, though when the lights flashed it also tended to glare and reflect the light into everyone’s eyes.

“We’re really going in there?” Corajen asked, dubiously.

Taja glared at her.  “Yes, we are, even you.  Besides, what would you be doing tonight if you weren’t out with us?”

She actually thought about it.  “I’d probably fine some dive bar, drink until they closed, then start a fight and then take someone somewhere more private to spend the night.”

“Spend the night?” Tamara articulated with a grin.

Corajen shrugged.  “Well, that is the euphemism.  But I don’t think I would actually need the whole night.”

“Just use ‘em and lose ‘em, huh?” the engineer asked.

The lupusan shrugged.  “I’m not one for big attachments.  Besides, the land rats here don’t interest me that much.”

“But you’d bring them back for the night?”

The lupusan sighed.  “They serve a specific purpose.  I don’t lose any sleep over it.”

Tamara wrinkled her nose.  “Aren’t you worried about, well, disease?  Especially in a place like this?”  She waved a hand to encompass their surroundings.

Corajen shrugged again.  “I’m careful and I don’t sleep with anyone who doesn’t smell right.  And the doc takes good care of me.”

The lupusan’s sense of smell was legendary.  Not only did they make excellent trackers, but it was even rumored that they could smell when someone was ill.  Obviously, there were times that anyone could detect illness, like if someone was vomiting or covered in sores, but the lupusan carried that to incredible heights.  The wolfen race could detect cancer as well as other ailments and if what she was implying was to be believed, sexually transmitted diseases as well.

“All right, no more of that,” Taja admonished them.  “I want to have fun and you two are not going to ruin it for me.”

He next morning, the Captain was just stepping out of his stateroom when his communicator beeped.  He pulled it from his pocket and flipped it open.  “Eamonn here.”

Serinda answered.  “Captain we have an incoming transmission from the surface.  Their security service is calling.”

He blinked.  “What?  Why?  What happened?”

“They didn’t say, Captain.  They’re demanding to speak with you.”

He sighed.  “All right.  I’m on my way to the wardroom, I’ll take it there.”

A minute later he was in his chair in the wardroom, hand on his forehead, resting on his elbow.  “Are they on video?”

“Yes, Captain,” Serinda answered.  “Should I put them through?”

He straightened up.  “Yes, go ahead.”  The display over the table came to life, showing a man wearing a gray uniform, with a pin showing a pair of crossed swords on collar.  Eamonn presumed this signified he was a member of planetary security.  “This is Captain Eamonn.  How can I help you today?”

“Captain,” the man began, speaking with the same lazy sort of accent that all the locals seemed to have.  “I’m Officer Tremaine.  I have some of your crew down here that were caught causing a bit of a ruckus.”

A ruckus?  “What happened, Officer?”

“They got into a drunken brawl in one of the bars.  They actually caused quite a stir.  A few people are in the hospital, Captain.”

“I see.”

“There was quite a lot of damage as well, though the owner of the establishment isn’t pressing charges for damage.”

That was unusual, especially, if the amount of damage was as serious as the officer here was intimating.  Maybe the owner had been persuaded not to do so for fear of offending the captain of the ship that was helping so much with the construction projects.  He suspected that was it.

“Well that’s certainly generous of him.  How many of my crew do you have?”

“Five, Captain,” the man told him.  “And I’d certainly be grateful if you came down and got them.  Normally, I’d be tossing them in jail, but since they’re not locals and if you’re willing to take them aboard, well, I think we can just put the whole matter behind us.”

For just an instant, he bristled.  But then he relaxed.  Planetary security wasn’t answerable to him.  Yes, certainly there was some political pressure to keep him and his crew happy, but if his crew crossed the line somewhere the locals were well within their rights to lock them up.  And he wasn’t going to let his people swing.  Or rather, if they were going to swing, he was going to be the one to hold the rope.

“Very well, Officer Tremaine.  I’ll be on the next shuttle down to collect my people.  Please have them ready for transport.”

“Thank you, Captain.  I appreciate the situation this puts you in.”

“Thank you, Officer.  I’ll be down directly.”  He cut the connection.  Then he pressed another control.  “Security, this is the Captain.”

“Saiphirelle here, Captain,” the lupusan replied immediately.

“Good.  Sai, get me a shore patrol, five person team, armed with stunners.  We have some naughty crewmembers to collect.”

“Yes, Captain.  We’ll be in the boat bay in ten minutes.”

“Right.”

The bedraggled, battered group of crewmembers waiting at the edge of the landing field were flanked by a trio of Planetary Security officers.  All five of the crewers were cuffed, with their hands behind their backs.  As the shuttle touched down and the landing ramp lowered, their spirits rose; they would finally get out of this degrading position and back up to the ship.  When they saw the Captain standing there, looking down from the ramp, those spirits plummeted.

The Captain looked every one of them over, his face like stone.  He trotted down the ramp, the members of his shore party with him.  He heard a snort from Saiphirelle, but he didn’t look back.  Eamonn walked up to Officer Tremaine.

“Officer Tremaine, thank you for collecting my people,” he told the man.

Tremaine saluted him as the Captain walked up and Eamonn returned it in a more sloppy fashion.  “Captain Eamonn, I’m sorry that we had to meet under such circumstances.  It seems that your crew did not sustain any life threatening injuries, but we did have the medics look them over.  Contusions and scrapes, and I think that one has a big gash on her leg, but I don’t think it’s serious.  I understand you have a doctor aboard your ship.”  It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, I do.  I’ll make sure he looks them all over.  I will speak with the Governor about this and again, I appreciate you doing your job bringing them back.”

The man nodded.  “Then I formally present you with these prisoners, Captain.  Per our agreement, I ask that you remove them from the planet’s surface immediately.”

“That will not be a problem, Officer,” Eamonn replied.  He nodded to Saiphirelle, who was trying mightily to hide her smile at the fate of the prisoners.  The black-furred lupusan stepped forward and, with the rest of the team behind them, ushered the prisoners aboard the shuttle.  The battered crewmembers didn’t even answer, though one glared at the lupusan with what was certainly murder in her eyes at Saiphirelle’s mirth at their situation.  They all trudged up the ramp.  One looked as though she was going to speak, but one look from the Captain, who was following them up the ramp, silenced her.

Thirty silent minutes later and the shuttle had landed safely in the boat bay.  The prisoners looked about ready to explode because the Captain had not removed the handcuffs.  However, he refused to listen to anything they had to say.  Once the shuttle was down, he had them marched out of the shuttle’s hold and paraded them out in a line.  He didn’t try any more dramatics; he simply stood in front of them, roughly in the center of the line and looked them over.

Two of them were members of the cargo division, looking as though they’d been dragged behind a car down a gravel road.  The young woman, Sylvia, had road rash on both of her forearms from her wrists to her elbows, a nice shiner forming under one eye, and her scalp was bleeding because of a clump of hair that looked to have been ripped from her skull.  The other, a young man, one of the new hires, had a cut on his face and a purpling bruise on his cheekbone.  His clothing hung on him like rags and there was enough blood splattered on what remained to look as though he’d rolled around in the stuff.

The other three were Taja, Tamara and Corajen, all three of whom looked battered and torn, though strangely defiant.  All three were bleeding from a number of cuts, the lupusan’s knuckles were skinned, as were her knees, elbows and the way she was favoring her right side indicated she might have a cracked rib or two.  An impressive feat, considering her size, build and species.  Lupusan were notoriously difficult to injure.  Tamara was leaning to the left, and had a hefty amount of gauze wrapped around her right foot.  Her trousers and blouse were torn, showing off a great deal more skin than she was used to.  Taja’s dress was shredded, filthy and her beautiful hairdo was matted in dirt, blood and what smelled like cheap, nasty beer.

“All right,” he said after a long moment of just drinking it all in.  “What’s happened down there?”  He held up a hand before anyone could speak.  “One at a time.  Sylvia?  You first.”

“They started it, Captain,” she said sullenly.  “Togren and I were in there, drinking and having a good time, and then these thugs just came up to us and started hassling us.”

“Hassling you?” he asked, his voice monotone.

“Yes, Captain,” she replied.  “One of them kept harassing me, making passes that I got fed up with it and threw my drink in his face.  He grabbed my arm and threw me into the next table over.  That got those people all excited and they joined in.  One of them tried to help me up, while another one grabbed my ankle and dragged me across the floor.”

“I see.  And then what?”

“Someone grabbed my hair and something hit me in the eye, and then Togren was trying to get me up when two of those bastards hit him.”

“With a chair,” the man put in helpfully.  He then cowered under the Captain’s withering glare.

“And what about you three?” he said, looking to Corajen.

The lupusan sighed.  “I think that if planetary security hadn’t shown up, between Samair and I, we might have had it sorted out.”

“There were five of them on you,” Taja muttered, though it looked as though she was shaking a bit.

Corajen shrugged and then hissed painfully.  “The hardest part was keeping my claws from shredding them,” she admitted without a trace of glee.  “One of the little bastards snuck a billy club under my arm and thunked me good.”  Now she did give that feral smile.  “He won’t be walking anytime soon.”

“How did you get involved?” he demanded, looking at Tamara.

“I stayed out of it, for the most part.  But then when three of the godless fuckers tried to drag Taja out of the room, I pulled out my holdout pistol and shot them.”  She gave her report deadpan, as though she took no pleasure from the act or from reporting it.  “Oh, not to kill.  One in the shoulder, one in the kneecap, the other in the leg.  They'll be fine.  One of their buddies tried to back away from one of Corajen’s punches and stomped down on my foot with all his weight.”  She winced.  “Bastard broke a bunch of the bones in my foot.  Still hurts.  Should have shot him too,” she said dryly.

“What about you?” the Captain said, turning his now burning gaze on Taja.

The small woman shrugged.  “Tamara saved me from being raped.  But she couldn’t protect me from the fight.  I had to dive under a table, but I caught my dress on a splinter or something, which ripped it.  Then someone tried to pull me out from under the table, and I kicked him in the face and smashed his nose.  He leaped up, which dumped the table on me, along with all the clay mugs and the beer and food and silverware.  I got drenched and covered in food and cut by all the knives.”  She chuckled.  “I for one was glad Planetary Security showed up when they did.”

He sighed, taking this all in.  “All right.  All of you get to sickbay and have Turan fix you up.  You look like hell.  You’re all restricted to the ship, except for business.  Go.  I’ll deal with you all later.”  His burning gaze hadn’t reduced its heat in any discernible measure.  For now, at least, he was letting them get to the doctor for the medical treatment they obviously needed.  He turned and left the boat bay, hearing them shuffling along as well.

The Captain maintained his visage of towering rage until he was safely back in his stateroom.  He was absolutely incandescent about this.  Five members of his crew were in the infirmary.  But it was just too much.  He collapsed into one of the chairs at his table, wracked with guffaws of uncontrollable laughter.  It was good to see his crew could handle themselves, and it appeared that the dustup had helped to cement a few relationships among some of his senior people.  Taja, Corajen and Moxie would probably be spending some more time together, getting into similar scraps on other planets they would visit.  He shuddered to think on the people they were going to trample on their quest for "fun".

Chapter 20

"We have realspace reversion, Captain," the helmsman reported.

Legacy had arrived in the Hecate system without incident.  Moving at a comfortable hyperspeed of Yellow level four, Commander Harth expected that they might finally catch up to the bulk freighter they'd been chasing for months now.  There was simply no way a ship that size or in that state of repair based on Fury's reports, could possibly have that big a lead on them, even allowing for a small amount of repairs.  Most likely, the Grania Estelle would hold speed at somewhere in the Red level, even allowing for the best possible speed of Red level seven, Legacy would easily close the gap on the slow, pondering freighter.

"Running sensor sweeps now, Skipper," the sensor officer spoke up.

"Very well," he replied, nodding, his eye on his displays.  The heavy cruiser's sensors were bringing in every bit of information that could be seen, and within moments, he would be able to see them.  The light from the system came into the sensors and what there was to be seen appeared on his display.  The system boasted a spacedock in orbit of the inhabited planet, in which rested what looked to be a light cruiser about two-thirds the size of Legacy, and what looked like a dozen or so starfighters flying maneuvers nearby to the docks, still in easy reach at a distance of less than twenty light seconds away.  Other than that, no bulk freighter.

"Damn it!" he swore.  Then he reconsidered.  "Did we beat them here?"

"Possibly, Captain," the XO replied, looking at his own displays.  "Though it looks like there's been some activity here.  Sensors are showing debris clouds near to the planet, and also on a vector in the general direction of the hyper limit on a vector toward..." he checked the data, "Kazyanenko."

"So they might have beaten us here and been long gone?"

"Possibly, sir," the sensor officer reported.  "I'm not detecting any cargo vessels in the system the size of the bulk freighter."

"Might have to talk to the locals," the XO put in.

"Could they have destroyed her?" Harth asked.

The sensor officer shook his head.  "No, sir.  Not enough debris.  Looks like enough for four of those starfighters that are on maneuvers."

"What kind of ships are those?" he asked.

"Unknown type, Captain," the report came back.  "Based on the maneuvers and engine outputs we're detecting, they might be on par with the old Sentry-class fighters."

Harth nodded slowly.  Sentry-class starfighters were of an obsolete, but still useful design, which had gone out of production in the Republic Navy about forty years previous.  A good, solid fighter with decent speed and maneuvering, but the upgrades in maneuvering thrusters as well as navigation computers and weapons targeting had eventually retired the Sentry for more advanced craft.  "Do we need to worry about them?"

The XO shrugged.  "If they try to swarm us, maybe," he hedged.  "But trying to attack a modern heavy cruiser with a squadron of fighters with capabilities like those?  Our anti-fighter guns should be able to handle them."

"What about the cruiser?"

"Again, Captain, unknown configuration.  Power output and size indicate she's a light cruiser, but I have no idea on her speed or maneuverability."

"Wait, their reactors are up?" Harth asked, incredulous.  "In a spacedock like that?"

"They appear to be affecting repairs to their hyperdrives, Captain," the sensor officer replied.  "Without closer scans, I can't be sure of their actual power output, but at a guess... they seem to be at about half power right now."  The man shrugged.

"How long would you think it would take them to get up to combat readiness?"

Again the man shrugged, causing the XO to get a tiny wrinkle in his brow.  A junior officer did not shrug with such uncertainty on the bridge of a Republic cruiser.  Sadly, he didn't have any more or better information for the Captain either, so he bit his tongue.

"Best guess?  Probably anywhere upwards of an hour, sir.  They'd have to detach all of the umbilicals and bring the ship's systems up."  He nodded.  "An hour at the earliest, Captain."

"Understood.  Keep an eye on them.  I don't want them surprising us.  They make so much as a peep, inform the XO and myself."

"Aye, Captain."

It took about six hours of inbound travel for the Legacy to get within communications range of the planet.  Harth was sparing the engines a bit, not because they couldn’t take it, but because of fuel consumption.  His ship ran on helium 3, as did all warships in the Republic, and so far his reserves were at just above ninety-two percent.  Once they dipped below eighty, he would have to break off pursuit to head to the nearest Republic outpost to refuel.  That sounded like an awfully large reserve, but per regulations, unless engaged in combat maneuvers, he couldn’t allow his reserves to drop below sixty percent.  Warship operations were much different than those of a cargo vessel, who might decide to run a bit closer to the ragged edge.  He couldn’t let Legacy get too low on fuel, for she might be required to go into combat at any moment.

And combat was a state that looked to be more and more likely in this system.  The locals hadn’t said anything yet, though the way that the fighters had shifted position to block the heavy cruiser’s direct approach to the spacedock.  It also appeared, as reported by his sensor watch, that the light cruiser was powering up, releasing the locks and umbilicals to get ready for space.  It was clear that the locals were not going to be sucker punched by the incoming Republic warship.

“Captain, they’re hailing us,” the communications officer reported.

“Put them on,” he replied.

“This is Commander Jensen Tyler of the cruiser Ganges to Republic warship.  Please identify yourself and state your intentions in the Hecate system.”

Harth smiled upon hearing this.  “Well, they’re a bit belligerent, aren’t they?”

“Well, we are showing up uninvited, Captain,” the XO pointed out.

He nodded.  “Quite right, XO, quite right.  Well, let’s see what they have to say to us, shall we?”  He looked over to the communications watch, who gave him the thumbs up.  “Ganges, this is Commander Harth of the Republic heavy cruiser Legacy.  We are here searching for a cargo ship we believe may have traveled through here recently.  We appreciate any assistance you might be able to offer.  We have no hostile intentions toward any of your ships, personnel or cities.  We are simply looking for information regarding the particular ship and its personnel.  If we can get the information and whereabouts of our wayward ship, we will depart your fair system.  I await your response.  Harth out.”

A moment later, the communications watch officer blinked.  “Captain, they’re hailing us on an open frequency.”

“Put them through.”

The image of a man slightly older than middle age appeared on Harth’s display.  He might not be happy to have a Republic heavy cruiser in the star system, but he was hiding any discomfort.  “Commander Harth, I am Commander Tyler.  Welcome to Hecate.”

“Thank you, Commander.  It seems to be a lovely system,” Harth replied, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.  “I am noticing that you are very security conscious.”

The Ganges’ captain shrugged.  “The locals are.  There was a recent dustup with a ship that tried to steal some cargoes and that’s made everyone a bit jumpy.”

Harth frowned.  “Someone was stupid enough to try and steal something with all those fighters buzzing around and your ship in orbit.”  Then he realized what the other man had said.  “You mentioned ‘the locals’.  I assume by that statement you are not from here?”

“By the stars, no,” Tyler exclaimed.  “We’re based out of Imogen.  One of the consortiums there raised the funds to have the Hecate people build us the Ganges.  We’re finishing the last of the construction now and then we’ll be on our way back home.”

“I see,” Harth answered.  And he did.  That meant the ship had been here when Grania Estelle came through.  “We’re in pursuit of a cargo ship that came through this way.”

“Yes, I heard your original message,” Tyler said, nodding.  “That ship was the one that tried to steal the cargo we needed for out final outfitting.”

Harth raised an eyebrow.  “I assume you got the cargoes you needed.”

Tyler nodded.  “Yes, the cowards tried to run, but in the end they jettisoned the cargo.”

Now the Legacy’s captain frowned again.  “But if they jettisoned the cargo, why did you not board them?  Why wasn’t the ship detained?”

Tyler scowled.  “We needed that cargo, Captain.  We were in complete low power mode because of the refit, so by the time we got underway they were well across the system.  We gave chase and caught up to them only a short distance to the hyper limit.”

“And yet they still escaped?” Harth asked, trying to keep his tone light, but it was obvious that the other commander picked up on Harth’s derision.

“They jettisoned the cargo with an explosive attached.  It was moving away from them on a perpendicular course at high speed.  The bastards gave us the choice of continuing the chase or getting the shipment.”  He sighed, slapping a hand down in frustration.  “We needed that shipment.  We’d been waiting for nine months already and we couldn’t afford to wait for another shipment.  So, we let the ship go.  It was a good thing that we did veer off.  As it was, we barely got the explosive deactivated in time.”

“Do you have sensor scans of the ship?  I’m actually surprised that they’ve been able to get out of the system before our arrival.”

Tyler sniffed.  “Of course we have scans.  But nothing is free, Commander.  You might know the ship’s vector, I can’t help that.  But if you want a better understanding of what you’re up against, you’re going to need my help.  So, what can you do for me?”

Harth suppressed a sigh.  This was the Frontier.  Hecate was once part of the Republic, though once the war came, it was one of the first star systems to find itself without a Republic presence and its inhabitants decided they liked it that way.  Of course, Tyler wasn’t from Hecate, but from what he’d read from the intelligence reports, Imogen wasn’t much better.  They had no love for the Republic, even after two hundred and fifty years.  Sadly, Harth had no authority to simply start shooting holes in the Ganges to get the information he desired and there was no telling how much damage the ship could take.  He needed those scans and it seemed that he was going to have to bargain to get Tyler to give them up.  He would send teams down to the planet to see if the locals had any further information, possibly scans of their own.

“Very well, Commander.  What is it that you want?”

“How the hell did they get these parts?” the XO demanded, looking over the scans.

“I don’t know, XO,” Harth replied.  “But that ship had had a full blown overhaul.”

“Look at the reactor power output,” Lieutenant Commander Brister, the chief engineer said, pointing to some of the text on the side of the display.  “That is way higher than a ship like that out here should be putting out.”

“How is that possible?” Harth asked.

“Well, with that output, either they have three distinct power reactors or they’re not running straight hydrogen.”

“Wait,” the commander said, crossing his arms.  They were in the Legacy’s wardroom, several hours later.  “Not straight hydrogen?  You mean they’re running helium 3?”

Brister shrugged.  “Either helium 3 or at least deuterium.  It’s not a milspec reactor, I don’t think, the power output isn’t quite high enough.  But they’ve obviously upgraded since Instow.  What Fury’s sensors picked up back at Instow and what Ganges recorded here shows a marked difference.”

“How?  And what do we have to concern ourselves with?”

“Well, sir, shield output is much higher,” Brister started ticking things off on his fingers.  “It looks like all the hull damage was patched up.  I don’t detect any breaches in their hull structure.  They’re also armed with four laser cannons, but I don’t think we really need to worry about those.  Our shields should be able to handle that.”  He pursed his lips.  “But with shield strength as high as it is, and their structure as reinforced as I think it is, I’d be confident to say that ship might be able to make hyperspace levels as high as Yellow.”

Harth blinked.  “Yellow?  You’re kidding me.”

Brister shook his head.  “No, Skipper, I’m not.  I know they’re not as fast as us, but we’ve been tooling around in the Green because we figured there was no reason to rush.  But if they’re flying around in the Yellow?”  He paused, thinking.  “Well, they could be in Yullankla, Borea, or Tritoll by now if they went through Kazyanenko like we suspect.”

Harth grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Then I guess it’s time to stop meandering around, XO.  Once we depart here, take us up into the Blue.”

The XO smiled.  “Aye, Captain,” he said with feeling.

“Captain, I’m interested in the debris patterns we detected that are on a vector for Kazyanenko,” Brister replied.  The others in the room turned to him.  He spoke slowly, as though he was working it out in his own mind.  “So, Grania Estelle comes into the system, they steal some sort of cargo and then flee the system.”

“That’s the consensus of the local officials and the Captain of the Ganges,” the XO agreed.

“Convenient,” Harth muttered, and there were nods.

“Skipper, does that make any sense?” Brister asked.  “A bulk cargo freighter comes into a system with significant military presence and then they decide to steal an important cargo?”

“Actually, sir,” Lieutenant Sophia Phillips replied, “From what I gather from the people I talked to, Grania Estelle actually brought the cargo in question.”

Brister looked over at the Intelligence officer.  “Wait, Sophia, when did you get down to the planet?  No shuttles have departed the ship.”

She nodded.  “No, sir, they haven’t.  I used the comm system and called some of the cargo dispatch people.”  She smirked.  “They were very forthcoming.”

They all chuckled.  But Brister sobered quickly.  “So that makes even less sense.  The freighter comes in system, bringing a cargo of gadolinium with them, tells everyone they have it, then says ‘ha ha suckers’ and takes off across the system trying to escape?  There’s no chance that Grania Estelle’s captain is that stupid.”

“So what are you suggesting, Commander?” Phillips asked.

“I’m thinking that the locals were less than fair with our freighter jocks,” he said bluntly.  “I think Grania Estelle must have brought the cargo from Folston, and the people here wouldn’t pay up.  They tried to play hardball and the freighter captain told them to go screw themselves.”

Phillips lit up and she picked up the thread.  “Yes, Commander!  I think you’re right.  So then the locals decide they’re not going to let some jumped up freighter bums dictate terms to them.  They launch their fighters and prepare to board the freighter.”

“But then the freighter fights them off?” the XO asked.  “Yes, according to Ganges’ sensor data, Grania Estelle was armed with a quartet of laser cannons, but does anyone here actually think they’d do well against five or six starfighters?”  The rest of the table looked dubious.  “So there must be more to this.”

“I think if they had pocket missile launchers, Ganges would have been happily spouting further excuses as to why they couldn’t take the freighter,” Harth mused.  “Four laser cannons is the bare minimum of prudence out here in the Cluster.  But missiles?  The locals and Commander Tyler would have been screaming that this was an armed merchant cruiser.”

Chuckles went around the table again.  “Even with all her refits, the freighter would be no match for the Ganges, Skipper,” Brister said.  “So the locals must have launched the fighters and gone after them.  And, clearly, the freighter fought them off and escaped.”

“Yes, but how?” the XO demanded.  “Unless they’ve got modern targeting system and very well drilled crews, I find it unlikely that a freighter the size of this one could shoot down a half dozen of these Centurion fighters.”

“Tyler is no help,” Harth said.  “He’s just touting the strength and power of his ship and how he valiantly chased away the vile pirates until they dishonorably trapped him into sparing their lives or losing the cargo they needed to outfit their hyperdrive.”  He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head.  “Sophia, you and Grey are to go down to the planet and do your thing.  Find out as much as you can about the locals, the Imogen people, and especially the encounter with the Grania Estelle.  You know what to do.”

She nodded.  “Yes, sir.”

“Everyone else, put feelers out, but be gentle about it.  We’ll stay here for three days and then we’ll be on our way to Kazyanenko.”

The XO frowned.  “Sir, I understand you want to get information, but shouldn’t we be underway immediately?  The ship might jump away again before we can get to Kazyanenko.”

Harth nodded in understanding.  “I know, XO, I do.  I want to catch that ship.  But if they’re able to destroy six starfighters and swan off to another system, I want to know what exactly it is that we’re chasing.  They’ve got to have some sort of weapons system that we’re not aware of and I think we need to know what it is.  All right.”  He stood, putting his hands down.  “You’re all dismissed.  Get to work.  And XO, you can announce liberty.  That’s the other reason.  I want our crew to have at least a few hours of leave.”

Fury dropped out of hyperspace in the Trullium system, weapons and shields already raised and ready.  Without warning, a small battle station just inside the hyper limit locked on to the Republic corvette and opened fire, its rail guns spewing projectiles.

“They’re firing, Captain!” the ops officer cried.

“Easy, Ops,” Wallace Sykora replied calmly.  “Helm, bring us to three-two-three mark five-five, increase speed to full.  Guns, take out that station, please.”

The corvette twisted and climbed up over the plane of the ecliptic, grasers and rail guns returning fire.  The station’s fire glanced off Fury’s shields, causing them to flare opaque.  The station had three rail gun cannons, firing metal slugs at the interloper in the system.  The corvette fired back, their own storm of metal slamming into the station’s shields.  The grasers hammered bolts of energy into the shields, causing the tiny station to wobble slightly in its position in space.

“Ready missiles,” Sykora ordered.  The ship passed over the top of the station, weapons blazing, taking as many hits as they gave.  The portside launcher opened fire, sending three Sierra missiles arcing around to explode against the shields of the station.  Simultaneously, Fury’s grasers continuously fired into the brief opening created by the missile detonations.  The energy blasts tore into the exposed metal of the station’s hull, ripping it open to space.

“One more salvo,” he ordered, and the rail guns and grasers opened up once more.  The strikes sheared off a section of the station, ripping apart hull plating and vaporizing it in other places, leaving a trail of superheated and super cooled metal streaming away from the station, looking like blobs of metal.  A power conduit must have been severed, for all of the lights on the side of the station facing Fury went dark.

“Should we finish it off, Captain?” Lieutenant Vos asked.

“No, XO, I think we’re going to leave it as is.”  Wallace rubbed his chin.  “Helm, alter course, head us in toward the habitable planet.  Tactical, remain on alert.  I’m sure there are more surprises out there.”

“Aye, Captain.”  Both officers chorused in response.

“XO, damage report?”

Lieutenant Vos was nodding slowly as the reports came in, showing up on his display.  “Moderate damage to the forward and ventral shields, Captain.  No penetrations, though.  Engineering is already rebuilding the shields, though.  Should be back up to full power in about thirty minutes.”

“Good.”  Sykora checked his own display over the weapons that had been expended in that last encounter.  Three Sierra missiles and just under six hundred rail gun slugs.  Not bad.  No damage to his ship.  The crew was performing well.  He nodded to himself.  “Good work everyone.  Continue on course.”

The trip in system took over a day and a half.  Sykora didn’t strain his engines and didn’t want his crew worn out and exhausted once they arrived.  This system was dangerous enough without his crew falling asleep on watch from sheer fatigue.

For the thousandth time since setting off on course to this system Sykora wondered if this was the best idea.  He had orders, but Trullium was not a system one came to lightly.  The system was well populated, the fourth planet was heavily populated.  There were several large cities down on the planet, with a total population at about a hundred million, a mix of humans and aliens a good portion of who were Severites.  The planet had a very slight axial tilt, which meant a great deal of the planet was tropical and subtropical.  The planet had two large land masses and a fair amount of industry.  The cities were formed in areas surrounding the industry, which made sense, though some of those industries had sprung up since the Republic had departed the Cluster since the war.  All of these things made the Trullium system someplace that people would want to go; it should be a place of commerce and trade.

And it was, up until about sixty years ago.  A mutiny took place aboard the pirate cutter Ysleth, the second in command murdered his captain and assumed command.  At that time, Verrikoth, the new captain of the tiny pirate vessel decided that things needed to change.  Verrikoth, a brutal and intelligent male zheen, decided that he would no longer be subject to the old way of doing things.  His previous captain had abided by the limitations of his equipment and personnel.  The Ysleth was a small vessel, only capable of carrying a crew of eight, armed with a spinal-mounted neutron cannon and a dorsal mounted rail gun.  It had decent speed and excellent maneuverability and the previous captain had retrofitted it with a hyperdrive.  The ship couldn’t make anything past Red level three, so what it actually meant it was confined to a small portion of the Cluster, because the cutter couldn’t carry the supplies needed for a long journey, even only for a crew of eight.

Verrikoth was undaunted by this.  His days of being a bottom feeder, latching onto the dregs that happened to pass through the system the Ysleth was in were over.  Which meant that the first order of business was to secure a better ship.  So he did.  The first ship he found was a small cargo ship, needing a crew of twenty and capable of holding a decent amount of swag.  The Ysleth was stripped down to the bare metal of the frame and all of its equipment, especially the weapons, was transferred over to the new ship.  He got himself a bigger crew and set off into the Argos Cluster to make a name for himself.

Sixty years later, Verrikoth had certainly done that.  He now commanded a small fleet of eight ships; all modified cargo ships outfitted with heavy weapons and had garnered a reputation as a thief and a merciless killer.  He had set up a base of operations on Trullium, which now had the umbrella of his protection over it.  He did not prey upon his home, though he did retain an enhanced status there.  His ships were given priority for refueling and repair and his compound was lavish.  Freighters came into this system every month, and currently the shipyard was in the process of building two more cargo vessels to move goods about the Cluster.

Fury’s sensors detected four cargo ships in orbit of the Trullium Four, but none of them were broadcasting any kind of identification nor were any of them moving out to meet the incoming Republic ship.

“Should we be concerned that no one is challenging us, Skipper?” Vos asked, sounding a bit concerned.

Sykora shrugged.  “I don’t think so.  Verrikoth will contact us when he’s ready.  Though you can be sure he knows we’re here by now.”

“Is he going to be upset about the battle station?”

The lieutenant actually considered that.  Then he sighed.  “Probably.  But I’m not going to lose sleep over it.  It attacked as soon as we came out of hyperspace.”

Six hours later, the corvette pulled in close to the planet (while still maintaining a high orbit) and still the locals had not made a peep of acknowledgement.  However, as they pulled in, they noticed that every one of the ships was scanning Fury with every sensor that they could.

“Active sensor sweeps coming in from all four of those ships, Captain,” the sensor officer reported, staring at his console.   “They’re not showing the least amount of restraint.”

Sykora chuckled.  “All right, Tom, Yankee search.  Hit them with a ping of our own.  I’m a little tired of these games.  And make sure you get everything you can from the sweep.”

The sensor watch beamed.  “Yes, sir!  I’ll get the serial numbers off the hulls for you, Captain!” he said excitedly.

“That’s fine, Tom.  Make sure you get them all,” Sykora said with a smile.

The man blushed.  “Yes, Captain,” he said, lowering his gaze, embarrassed.

The captain turned to his communications officer.  “Open a channel to the planet.  Use the encryption and channel codes I’m sending to your terminal now.”  He pressed a few controls on his own console to get the information over to communications.

“Got it, Captain,” the man replied.  “I’m sending a hail now.”

It took about a minute for a response to come through.  A hissing, clicking voice replied, one filled with anger and malice.  “You have some serious courage coming here, Republic.”

Sykora grimaced.  “You and I have an understanding, Captain,” he said, his voice firm but calm.  “Don’t get too much attitude.  I only came here to speak.  A small situation has come up; one that I thought you would be interested in hearing about.”

“You Republic Navy presume much,” the voice came back.  “We have an agreement, this iss true.  But you assume we will move to your commandss.”  He spoke Basic fluently, but all of the ‘ess’ sounds in his sibilance were pronounced.

“I don’t assume anything, Captain Verrikoth,” Sykora replied.  “But I come with a matter that concerns us both.  And you know that we allow each other to tend to our own affairs.”

“And yet you are here?”  The voice was suspicious.

He sighed.  “Captain, let me ask you this.  Do you think I would come to Trullium without any other escort with hostile intent?”

There was another pause.  “Republic Navy sometimess do foolish thing.”

“I’m not a fool, Captain,” Sykora told him.  “But we do need to meet.”

“Very well.  Bring your shuttle down, we will discusss your important matter.”

“Now you’re insulting me, Verrikoth.  We each send a shuttle, and we meet up in space.  The shuttles will link up through their airlocks.  And don’t try anything cute, Captain.  We really do need to speak.  You can bring one assistant only, and I will only bring one.  Anybody tries anything and all of our ships will open fire.”

There was the sound of hissing laughter.  “Republic Navy not so foolish after all.  My sshuttle will launch in thirty minutess.”  The connection cut.

“That was a dirty trick,” Lieutenant Vos put in sourly.

Sykora shrugged.  “I expected he’d try something like that.  And there’s not a chance in hell am I going down to the planet’s surface without a battalion of Marines with me.”

“And at least a battleship in orbit,” Vos said darkly.

The shuttles linked up about fifty kilometers from Fury’s bow, about the same distance from two of Verrikoth’s ships as well.  Both sides had their weapons powered and their shields up; no one was taking any chances.  The Republic shuttle was very angular, octagonal in the aft section, but ovoid toward the front, with a pair of engine nacelles attached at the ventral side aft.  The pirate shuttle was much boxier, little more than a rectangular shape with a pair of nacelles on the sides.  The two shuttles docked with some difficulty, as they were not meant for this sort of maneuver.  In the end, the pirate shuttle extended a flexible plastic boarding sleeve, completely covering the Republic shuttle’s airlock.  Once there was hard seal, both ships opened their airlocks so they could speak.

With the airlocks open, the zheen didn’t waste any time.  He grabbed the bar above the airlock door and pulled himself through.  He floated down the short tunnel to the other ship, then grabbed the edge of the airlock and pulled himself inside the Republic ship.  He landed lightly on the deck and then stood up to look at his ‘hosts’.

Lieutenant Wallace Sykora looked like many humans that Verrikoth had met over the years.  Pale skin, with a small amount of fur on the top of his head, with a small amount of fur just under his olfactory on his head.  He was dressed in the same gray and red uniform that most of those Verrikoth had seen over the years would wear.  Verrikoth wondered if all humans wore that same sort of outfit in the Republic.  That seemed to be the only thing he ever saw them wear, though he was willing to admit that it had been more than six decades since he had been in Republic space.

Verrikoth looked much like most of his zheen brethren, as far as Sykora could tell.  His exoskeleton was a dull purple, though he had white scars running over his arms and thorax, as well as his neck and face.  He also had luminescent tattoos on his neck and arms of designs that Sykora didn’t recognize.  They were etched into his carapace in a yellow color that seemed to glow as though they were electric.  He was dressed in a shipsuit cut to fit his frame, and a heavy pulser holstered at his hip.  He also had a brace of knives on a bandolier across his chest, and another blade in a scabbard on his right wrist.  On his left wrist was a small datapad with a retractable antenna.  His multifaceted eyes seemed to shine in the interior lights of the shuttle.

“Lieutenant Ssykora very brave to bring his one sship into my sstar ssystem,” Verrikoth said in a hissing growl.

Sykora shrugged.  “This isn’t about bravery,” he replied.  “As I said before, there’s an urgent matter that you needed to be made aware of.”

“Sso you keep ssaying,” the zheen said irritably, his antennae flaring straight.  “Ssay what you came to ssay and then leave before my patience endss.”

“There’s a navy reserve vessel that is currently going through the Cluster,” Sykora began.  “The Admiral did not send it, which means that either it isn’t actually a reserve ship or it’s been sent by military intelligence to try and determine the status of the Argos Cluster.”

“What are you telling me?” the zheen raged.  “The Admiral iss no longer in command of his own fleet?  That you are abrogating our deal?”

“I am abrogating nothing,” Sykora snapped.  “I just need you and your people to keep an eye out for this ship.  And if you should catch it, you should blow it apart and kill everyone aboard.”

The pirate’s antennae flicked in surprise.  “Republic Navy wants a Reserve vessel destroyed and crew killed?  Unuzual.”  His voice buzzed on the last word.

“Either way, the ship needs to be taken care of,” the lieutenant informed him.  “Unless, of course, you want our arrangement to end.”

“Perhapss I do,” Verrikoth replied snidely.  “If one sship cauzez this much trouble, perhaps this arrangement iz not as profitable as it once was.”

Sykora sighed, eyeing the defiant pirate before him.  “We have a good working relationship, Captain.  It’s been very profitable.  The Admiral allows you to go where you like in the Cluster and turns a blind eye to your activities in exchange for a cut.  I think you’ve managed to do quite well for yourself since we started this.”

Verrikoth waved a hand dismissively.  “I could have done just as well without hiz… help.”

“On four separate occasions, most notably four months ago in the Kigri system, I have allowed your ships to… operate without my interference.  I also have bagged a number of your competitors, making it easier for you to maintain your activities.”  The lieutenant shrugged.  “If our arrangement has ended, then Fury will open fire on your ships in this system and destroy them all.”

The zheen bristled.  “Your sship iz military, yess, but it is only one.  A corvette iz not a particularly powerful sship.  Limited ammunition.  You couldn’t sstop all of my sships.”

A slow, nasty smile spread over the lieutenant’s face.  “So you’re saying we’re done here?”

His antennae drooped.  “I ssuppoze I am.”  With speed the lieutenant wouldn’t have thought possible, his hand whipped one of the knives free from his bandolier and slashed the lieutenant’s throat.  Blood fountained from the wound and Sykora’s hands flew to his throat, gagging.  He collapsed to the deck of the shuttle before pitching over on his side, a pool spreading outward from him.  Verrikoth’s fellow, a Severite armed with a pulse rifle, raised his weapon and fired, killing Sykora’s pilot with a hit to the forehead.  The catlike creature stepped forward and pumped three more shots into the pilot’s chest.

“A waste,” Verrikoth said softly.  “We did have a good working relationship.  But I think it iz time for us to expand our operationss past what the good Admiral had in mind.”  He activated his communicator on his wrist.  “All ships, open fire on the Fury.  Take it out.”

Both pirate vessels fired.  Rail guns sent a storm of metal hammering into the corvette’s shields.  Grasers blasted against the corvette’s shields, which was causing them to weaken.  The other two ships moved up from their positions in lower orbits, targeting the outnumbered Republic ship.  They weren’t in range yet, but they would be in less than a minute.

“What the hell?” Vos demanded as his ship was suddenly under attack.  “Helm, go evasive now!”  The helmsman responded immediately and the ship began to accelerate, banking hard to port, the inertial compensators barely managing to keep everyone from being flung against the bulkheads.  “What happened to the Captain?” he bellowed.’

“I’m only reading two life signs aboard the shuttles, Lieutenant,” the sensor officer reported looking up from his displays.  “One of them is zheen, the other is Severite.”

“Damn it,” Vos said, dropping into the command chair.  “All right, I’m assuming command as of this date.  Tactical, lock all weapons on the closest ship and open fire.”  He smiled grimly.  “Lock a missile on the pirate shuttle and destroy it.”  He allowed himself one instant to mourn his captain.  The man was a good officer and he had done his job well, but he had foolishly brought them here to this system, arrogantly assuming that his Republic uniform and Fury’s presence would protect him against someone who clearly held no regard for anyone’s life except his own.

It would take every ounce of skill he and his people had to get out of this viper’s nest.

The pirate shuttle detached from the other and began racing for the planet’s surface, while the Republic shuttle remained in position, unmoving.  A Sierra missile launched from Fury’s starboard launcher, locked on to Verrikoth’s tiny craft.  A short pursuit, as weapon shots were traded back and forth between the Republic and pirate vessels, and the missile caught up to the shuttle.  The small ship tried to evade, tried to make a hard turn up and to the starboard, but it was too late.  The Sierra clipped its ventral hull and detonated.  The vessel exploded in a ball of expanding gas and warped and twisted metal.

“Good shooting, Guns,” Vos congratulated.  “Helm, go to port three zero, climb two-seven.  Guns, open up on the pirate as soon as she’s in range.”

“We’re too far away, XO,” Senior Chief Ros Dragomirov informed him.

“We won’t be,” Vos said.  “When we’re done with that maneuver, he’s going to be right where we want him to be.  You just make sure that you have the weapons ready, Mister Dragomirov.”

A particularly vicious hit struck Fury on the port side, causing all of the bridge crew to grab hold of their stations hard to avoid being tossed across the bridge.  Apparently, things would not be so simple in this fight.

“Direct hit to the port quarter!” the sensor operator called out.  “They launched a missile at us and it got through the shields.  Hull breach on deck two; sections twenty through twenty four.”

“Seal it off,” Vos ordered.  Not good.  If the pirates had already breached the shields and punched through the hull, they were in deep trouble.

Verrikoth sat in the pilot’s seat of the Republic shuttle.  His little ruse with the other ship had worked like a charm, though the zheen was willing to admit simply sitting there waiting for his pilot to try and escape the missile was incredibly nerve wracking.  Clearly, the Severite had been unable to evade the Republic weapon and had been killed with the shuttle.  The zheen shrugged to himself.  It was no matter.  He had more shuttles and other pilots.  The cat had decided that he was going to try and save the ship instead of simply remote piloting it from here and had underestimated the tracking capabilities of Republic missiles.

But now he had this shuttle to replace the one he just lost.  And his ships were keeping Fury busy and as he watched one of his ships blasted a hole through the corvette’s portside shields and then planted a missile into the hole, breaching the hull.

Well now, that makes things interesting.  He fully expected that, despite his earlier bravado, Fury would make short work of those two ships.  They might have gotten in a few good licks, but the corvette probably would prevail over his modified merchant ships.  However, they might be able to keep it busy enough and damage it enough for the other two ships in system to finish it off.  Though, with that big hit, perhaps he might get through this battle with more than one of those ships still functional.

Fury tried to accelerate toward one of the merchant ships, while both of them peppered her with metal slugs from their rail guns.  The corvette’s shields were flaring against the continuous strain from the hits.  A salvo got through a hole in the shields and Verrikoth could see another explosion, this time against the ventral side of the corvette.  It wasn’t a big hit, but his pirate ships were starting to nibble the interloper to death.

But the Republic ship wasn’t done yet.  Reeling from the hit to her belly, the corvette lashed out at the closest of his ships.  High powered grasers and a hail of rail gun slugs battered the modified freighter, smashing the shields until they collapsed.  The slugs slammed into the hull, tearing a massive hole through metal as though it was paper.  Verrikoth grimaced.  He’d known for a long time that his converted freighters were not warships, but seeing them in action now against a proper warship was disheartening to say the least.  Another salvo from the corvette finished what the first had started, tearing through the hull of the ship completely and blasting out the other side.  An instant later the ship broke apart, the burning aft section of the ship floating free from the dead hulk of the forward section.

The tide seemed to turn then, as the second of Verrikoth’s ships tried valiantly to attack this shark that had swam into its protected cove.  Laser cannons fired, more rail guns fired and the Fury turned to bear down on this annoying fish that was attempting to hurt her.  Just as the Fury cut loose with its own weapons, the freighter opened up with a full volley of missiles.  It looked as though the captain of that ship had loosed every weapon he had in his launchers.  A second later, the Republic ship’s weapons blasted the weakened ship’s shields and battered the ship to a twisted hulk, burning and listing to port.  The ship was now dead in space, its atmosphere ignited, power out, crew dead.

“Damn,” Verrikoth breathed, watching the carnage.  He’d hoped for better from his people.  But then the missiles crashed into the Fury’s bow.  A titanic explosion rocked the Republic corvette, an explosion so powerful that the ship was actually blown off course.  When the light from the explosion faded, Fury’s bow was both torn outward and crumpled inward.  The explosion had blasted away the controls to the corvette and now the ship was listing badly, slightly turning to starboard.

“Excellent hit!” the zheen crowed.  Perhaps his second ship’s death wasn’t as big a problem as he’d thought.  The corvette wasn’t finished, but it was hurt, perhaps mortally.  He checked the shuttle’s sensor feeds, marveling at the range and quality of the scan.  He would happily add this ship and its tech to his operations.  But he could see his other two ships, Hector and Ajax moving up into range.

The whole forward section of the ship was gone.  Able Spacer Dava Ricks picked herself up off the deck from where she’d been flung by the impact.   She had a cut on her forehead and a goose egg forming there.  As she stood, the corridor swam and she pressed a hand to her injury from where her head had collided with the bulkhead.  Dava managed to stumble into the engineering spaces, where pure chaos reigned.  Chemicals and steam gushed from ruptured conduits, Dava could see three of the engineering ratings laying on the deck, dead, covered in plasma burns from the ruptured conduits.  Alarm klaxons were blaring and the heat from a fire.

“Anyone alive in here?” she managed to shout.

There was a crash of metal.  “Who is that?” a voice called back to her.

“Ricks!” she bellowed over the cacophony of the maelstrom in here.  “Where are you?”

“Back here!” the voice came back.  Dava climbed over the debris, trying to keep out of the flames.

“I’m coming!  I’m coming to you!” Dava shouted.  She picked over the metal to see Ensign Kal Marcos stuck under a beam.  “Hang on, sir,” she called to him.  “I’ll get you out of there.”  She grabbed hold of the beam and pulled and the ensign pulled his leg free, screaming in pain from the broken limb.  Stooping down, she helped him get to his feet.  Leaning on her, the two of them managed to get clear of the rubble and back into the main area of engineering.  Finding one of the chairs, Dava eased the officer down.

“Is… is there anyone else left alive?” Marcos gasped, leaning back but trying to keep his gaze on her.

Dava grabbed a metal bar from the debris on the deck and fistful of loose wire and yanked it free from the nearest console.  Kneeling down next to the ensign, she took hold of his calf and then felt up and down his leg for the break.  He gagged in pain, trying desperately not to scream.  Eventually, she found it, mid-thigh.  Taking hold of his calf, she jerked it hard, setting it back in place.  This time he did scream, a sound of pure agony, then he collapsed, limp.  It took a moment, but then he lifted his head again.  “Thanks,” he growled, gritting his teeth against the pain.

The young spacer grinned.  “Well, shit, sir, if I’d known you liked pain this much, I would have made a move sooner,” she joked.  She made a crude splint from the bar and the wires, quickly lashing it to his leg to immobilize it.

“It’s against regs,” he gasped as she pulled the binding tight.  “But I’ll buy you a drink when we get out of this.”

“Deal,” she said, standing up again.

“What’s our status?” he asked, his voice sounding a little stronger.

“I don’t know,” she replied.  Dava turned to the console, which miraculously was still active.  “Okay, according to this… oh no.”

“What?” Marcos asked.

“It’s gone,” she whispered.  “The whole forward section.  The bridge.  The living compartments.  Only the aft section is left.”  Dava pressed a few controls.  “Only a half dozen or so life signs.”

“External sensors?”

She pressed a few more controls.  “It’s patchy and fuzzed out.  But I’ve got two ships closing aft.”

“Help me over there,” Marcos ordered.  Dava turned and pulled the chair closer to the console, where he could reach.  He helped by pushing with his good leg, scooting along the deck.  He checked the console himself and then started entering commands on the controls, his hands moving so fast that Dava started to believe that the smoke was getting to her.  She could hear the sound of fuel being cut off to a section nearby and the heat began to die down.  “Closed the fuel lines to this section.  The reactor can manage with only one main power conduit, and I think it’ll take care of the fires.”

“What about those two ships?” she demanded, her voice starting to panic.

“Hey!” he said, his voice calm, though clearly he was still in pain.  “Get the extinguisher and try to put out the fire in here.  I’ll take care of those ships.”  She nodded, and moved over to get the gear.  Exactly how I’m going to take care of those ships, I have no real idea.  But I will take care of them.

He checked the weapons feeds.  Two Sierras left in the only undamaged launcher.  The rail guns were either destroyed when the forward section was caved in, or else the ammo feeds were.  The power lines from the reactor to the graser capacitors were severed, though there was enough juice left in the capacitors for one good shot from the portside weapon.  Not much to work with.

Marcos heard the spacer using the extinguisher and the ambient temperature in the room felt slightly cooler.  Glancing over, he saw Ricks spraying down the last of the flames with the extinguisher foam.  “Good work Able Spacer!” he shouted.

“Thanks, sir!” she said, turning back to him she hustled back over.  “What do we got?”

He sighed.  “Not much.  One shot from the portside graser and two missiles.  We might get one.”

Dava lowered her head.  “But we can’t get both.”  Then her head came back up.  “So get the one,” Ricks said, her face turning savage.  “Blow the bastards apart.  Kill the bastards that killed us.”

Marcos nodded, reaching over and clapping his hand on her shoulder.  “Just what I was thinking.”  Then he turned back to the console, hesitating a moment and then began entering commands.

The shuttle was moving now, as Verrikoth got the hang of flying it.  He checked his scopes and smiled.  Fury was dead in space now.  Her engines had flared out and fire was belching out of a dozen huge breaches in the hull.  Sensors were only showing about five or six people left alive aboard that ship, out of a crew of normally over a hundred.  They were done.  All it would take were a couple of missiles planted right in that thing’s hull.  It was a shame really.  Fury might be battered to scrap, but there were components aboard that were far advanced to anything that could be obtained out here in the Cluster.  Republic tech was at least three or four generations ahead.  But there was nothing for it.  He couldn’t leave that ship out there.  The survivors might somehow manage to hurt him.  No, better to just kill them and be done with it.

“Thiss iz Verrikoth,” he said in to the comms.  “Hector, Ajax: open fire on the Republic sship.  Finish it off.”

He got acknowledgements on the comm and then sat back to watch.  “Republic pigz,” he spat.

Hector and Ajax, two boxy freighters moved up on the decapitated shark.  Its brains and teeth were gone.  It was little more than a flailing carcass now, not even aware it was dead.  And it was already dead; it just needed to have its heart torn out to stop the flailing.

Weapons ready, they accelerated to make a pass at the ship.  Its power levels were barely registering; the surviving crew must have powered down so as not to overtax the undoubtedly damaged reactor.  For all the good that would do for them.

Suddenly, the crippled corvette cut loose with all the weapons it had left.  The graser shot rocked the Hector’s forward shield while the two missiles crashed in just behind.  The first hit weakened the modified freighter’s shields considerably but only for a second or two, but that was enough as the detonation of the missiles occurred right at that interval.  The energy tore a hole through the shield and fountained through to the hull behind.  Hector’s design, unfortunately for the crew, had the bridge directly at the front, and it wasn’t particularly armored.  Hector was a cargo ship after all, outfitted with better weapons, engines and shields, it wasn’t intended to fight against a proper warship.  The bridge was a small compartment enclosed by armor glass on three sides, which was a tough substance, but it couldn’t stand up to the detonation of two Sierra missiles bare centimeters away.

The bridge armor glass shattered and what little metal was holding it together crumpled inward.  Once it reached the hull of the ship the metal peeled backward as it tore apart.  The atmosphere inside the ship ignited and secondary explosions rocked the interior of the ship.  The crew was killed instantly, screaming as a wave of fire roared through all the compartments, none of which were sealed because the crew believed they were only moving in to mop up an already crippled ship.  The ship suddenly began to roll on an uncontrolled vector, passing well below the wreck of the Fury.

“Unbelievable,” Verrikoth said, watching the display.  He’d fully expected that the corvette was dead in space and that his ships would simply come out and blast its corpse to bits.  The destruction of the Hector was extremely annoying, however.  He had expected to lose two ships destroying the Navy ship, but now three?  Yes, he had others, but now he would get or build more.

“Yeah!” Ricks said, jumping in the air and pumping her first.  “Nailed the bastards!  Great shot!”

Marcos leaned back.  “Yeah, it was,” he groaned, clutching his leg.

Ricks turned back to him, concern on her face.  “I could grab a medkit,” she said.  “There’s probably a vial of combat heal in there you could use.”

“Don’t bother,” he said, grinding his teeth against the pain.  “We’re going to be dead in minutes anyway.”

She leaned her rump against the console.  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.  And no more weapons.”

Marcos grinned, though it was strained.  “We have one more left.”

Dava blinked in confusion.  Then watching his eyes as he flicked them to his right, she smiled.  “The reactor?”

He nodded.  “We can cause an overload.  In fact, it’s already started.”

Her eyes widened.  “You already…”

He nodded again.  “I did.  I already increased the power to maximum and disabled all the emergency cutoffs.  The reactor’s already running at one hundred and five percent and the levels are climbing.  Pretty soon the pressure is going to breach the core.”

“How long?” she asked, her voice timid.

“I don’t know.  I can’t crank the valves open any further.  Probably not long enough.  No more than five minutes.”

“They’re going to open fire at any second!” Dava said, hopping up, running a hand through her black hair which had stuck to her sweat soaked face.

“I know,” Marcos replied.  “I can’t get it to breach any faster using the systems.”

She smiled.  “I’ve always wondered what would happen if you shot a pulser at an active reactor core while it was set for overload.”

“You’ve always wondered that?” he asked, gritting his teeth, though he was clearly amused.

“Yup,” she said, walking over to the corpse of one of the security officers and pulling the sidearm from the holster on his hip.  Flicking off the safety, she raised the weapon, aiming it at the nearby reactor.  She glanced back over at him.  “I’m sorry we didn’t get that drink, sir.”

“Yeah, me too.  Have to say, Ricks, you are an interesting woman.  I’m sorry we really didn’t talk before now.”

Dava beamed at him.  “I’m sorry too, sir.  I have to say, I thought that being posted to the Fury was going to be boring.”

Marcos chuckled and then gasped.  “Never a dull moment.”  He looked over at the console.  “The second ship is closing.”  He leaned his chin on his chest and closed his eyes against the pain.  “So long, Ricks.”

Dava stared hard at the reactor down the barrel of the pulser.  “See you on the other side, sir.”  And she fired.  There was a blinding flash of light and for just an instant she felt an indescribable wave of searing agony and then nothing.

An instant before Ajax opened fire, the reactor on the Fury exploded.  A burst of energy washed over Ajax’s shields, while chunks of debris hammered her.  She only suffered minor damage and altered course away from most of the debris.  A minute later, Ajax’s captain was calling to Verrikoth on the shuttle.  “Target destroyed.”

“Acknowledged,” the pirate captain replied.  Well, it was an expensive enterprise, but now he had taken care of the meddling lieutenant and his thrice cursed ship.  However, it meant that the easy times were over.  He had crossed a line, one that most likely would not be ignored.  It would take a while for this incident to be discovered by Admiral Tandred, and of course he could deny it, but eventually, the Admiral would find out.  And when he did, he would bring in more than just one corvette to handle the situation.  He would bring in a fleet to the Cluster, he would find the one who had killed his people and destroyed one of his ships and then he would stomp that irritant into a squishy pulpy mass.

Verrikoth knew that it was time to start pushing up his timetables and to get the other plans he had in motion moving a bit faster.  For when the boot came crashing down, he would be damned if he would be beneath it when it fell.

Book 3 – Hauling freight and Opening Moves

Chapter 21

Antares Grey put his arm behind his head, sighing in satisfaction.  He had done his usual rounds through the various pubs and other establishments throughout the main city.  He had even managed to find someone of interest, a woman who worked in the Ministry of Defense.  She was lonely but even better, she was one of the operators of the planetary sensor grid.  They’d talked and laughed over drinks, one thing led to another and they ended back at her place.

The woman, Monique, lay naked and entwined with Grey on her bed, the sheet pulled up to their waists.  She was running her fingers over his chest, humming slightly to herself.  “So what are you doing here, anyway?” she asked suddenly.

He chuckled, which was more of a rumble in his chest.  “I thought that was obvious,” he said, looking at her, a wry smile on his face.

She laughed, her face flushing with pleasure.  “Well, I think you are certainly well deserving of your title of Chief.”  Monique quivered with the memory.  He laughed at her again.  “But seriously, why are you here?  On this world, I mean.”

He grunted and looked up at the ceiling.  “We’re chasing a ship.  A cargo freighter.  We’re concerned about it, though.  It seemed to shoot up this system before it managed to get away.”

She laughed.  “Yeah, you could say that.  Apparently, they tried to steal a load of consignment they had brought.  I guess it was for the ship in the orbital dock.  They were really unhappy that the freighter wouldn’t cough it up.”  She hummed again, shifting a bit.  “They were just going to take the cargo and leave; I guess the government wasn’t going to let them take off with the consortium’s property.  So they launched a bunch of the fighters to stop them.”

“That sounds exciting,” Antares said, smiling a bit, stroking her black hair.  “Bit of space piracy.  And in your own backyard.”

Monique shrugged.  “We’ve had pirates before.  But none as cowardly as these though.  They just ran away.  Though I guess it was the smart move, considering the crap they had for weapons.”

Antares looked at her again.  “But I heard they managed to smoke six of your fighters.  If their weapons were crap, how’d they do that?  Your pilots can’t be that bad.”

“They’re not,” she admitted, humming slightly to herself.  “The freighter had a starfighter of its own.  Took out four of them and the big ship managed to get the other two.  When the Ganges launched, they scooped up their fighter and ran as fast as they could for the hyper limit.”  She sighed, snuggling closer.  “Are you done pumping me for information now?”

“Well I don’t know,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “I thought I would do a little more pumping.”

She laughed and it was joyous.  “You spent the night with me just to find out about that ship, didn’t you?”

He sighed.  “I always did like the smart ones.  And no, that wasn’t the… only reason,” Grey said, bringing his lips to hers.

“A starfighter?” Harth asked, several hours later.  He was seated in his stateroom and Grey was seated at one of the small chairs, making his report.  “What kind of fighter?”

Grey shook his head.  “Unknown, Commander.  My contact didn’t know and it wasn’t in their database.  What she could tell me was that it apparently wasn’t outfitted with any kind of missiles.  At least, if it had any, it didn’t use any during the running fight to the hyper limit.  And the freighter is in much better shape that we thought.”  He passed a datacard across the table to Harth.

Harth raised an eyebrow.  “Do I want to know how you got this information, Chief?”

Grey smiled.  “I’ll be happy to tell you, if you want, Skipper.”

“Forget it.  Give me the bad news.”

“Well, I don’t have all the details, but from what I see on this,” he tapped the datacard, “Our target has fixed all of their hull issues.  Looks like they patched it all up, got everything back to really close to factory spec, at least with the hull.  Looks like their sublight drives are completely replaced as well.”

“What the hell?” Harth asked, bewildered.  “Where the hell did they get replacements for all of that?”

“No idea, Captain,” Grey admitted.  “My source didn’t know.  All I have is what I could get from the sensor feeds.  They were only running on passive so I don’t have anything about their internals.  Maybe Ganges does.”

“If they do, their Captain isn’t letting on.”  Harth sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers.  “I think he’s embarrassed that they made a fool of him.”

“Probably right, sir,” Grey admitted.

He nodded.  “Very good work, Chief.  Any chance of getting any better info on our target?”

Grey shook his head.  “I doubt it, Skipper.  Not from the locals anyway.  Aside from boarding the Ganges and just taking what we need from their data banks, do you know of any way of getting the information from them?”

Harth smiled then.  “Normally, I’d send you and Phillips.”

“All respect, Captain,” Grey said, grimacing, “I don’t think even the Lieutenant could crack them.”

“Why do you say that?”

“A vibe I was getting from the locals,” Grey explained.  “I really don’t think the crew from the cruiser like it here and as soon as their hyperdrive is ready, they’re getting out of this system.  Fast.”

“So why do you think they won’t help us?”

“Because we’re Republic Navy, sir,” Grey told him, as though the answer was obvious.  Perhaps it was.  “They really don’t trust us.  And if someone’s building warships out here, it’s because they intend on carving out their own little empire.  I’m sure they would want to interact with us as little as possible.”

Harth nodded, considering the implications of this.

“Administrator Korneyev, this is Captain Eamonn.  We’re going to be breaking orbit in the next twenty minutes.  Is the Kara ready?”

The lupusan gave a toothy smile.  “Yes, Captain, the Kara is ready.  As am I.  The sooner we can get to Ulla-Tran, the quicker we can be on our way back home.”

He nodded.  “I’m a bit anxious to get underway myself.  I’ll signal you when we actually break orbit and we’ll head out to the hyper limit together.”

“Understood.  Kara out.”

Twenty minutes later, the two ships left orbit of the planet, beginning their long climb out of the sun’s gravity well for the hyper limit.  During their stay here, one of the shuttles had gathered up the fuel collector and brought it and its helium 3 cargo back to the Grania Estelle and topped off her tanks.  Morale was high on the Grania Estelle and even on the Kara it was an improvement over recent months.  They were moving toward home.

The Kara was still a hospital vessel, but her Administrator didn’t have the funds to purchase new equipment or medical supplies.  The locals here in Yullankla weren’t up on giving things away, even for friends of the crew of the bulk freighter.  They didn’t want shuttles from ships landing anywhere but at their cities, so the Kara’s people didn’t even have the opportunity to go prospecting for natural medicines in the wilderness.  So for this trip, the crew was riding in an unused ship.  The medics and doctors were unneeded anyway as the ship wasn’t carrying any patients.  For the moment, all they were doing was hitching a ride back home.  Once there, the ship could be restocked and then sent on its way to help in some other sort of medical emergency.

“Isn’t that sort of ship meant for use with some sort of large task force?” one of the cargo handlers asked during dinner mess.  “Like for a fleet or something?”

One of them leaned over and yelled across the mess hall.  “Hey, Samair!  What’s the story with the hospital ship?”

The whole room went immediately silent as everyone turned to look at the engineer, who was in the process of raising a forkful of fried fish to her mouth.  She sighed, and set the fork down on the plate.  “Okay, Martinez.  And thank you very much for putting me on the spot.”  The man smirked at her from across the room.  She didn’t need to raise her voice to be heard in the now quiet room.  “Yes, the Kara is a ship that very well could be used in a fleet, to handle large numbers of casualties.  But a ship like that would also be ideal for dealing with planetary wide disease outbreaks, serious disasters, things like that.”

The crowd seemed to take that in, working to digest it.  While they did that, Tamara took another bite of fish and then chewed quickly, for she knew there the question and answer session wasn’t over yet.

“Okay, then what the hell were they doing all the way out here?” someone demanded.

“Probably an emergency of some kind,” she said reasonably.  “What else would they be doing out there?  I imagine they’re doing the same thing we are, just going from system to system, plying their trade and helping people wherever they can.  They had reactor problems, as you all remember and got stuck.”  Tamara rolled her eyes and went back to her food.  Conversation started back up again and people turned back to their own meals.

“What was all that about?” Tamara asked her companions.

Corajen shrugged.  She was busy tearing apart a leg of lamb and wasn’t terribly interested in the conversation to begin with.  The lupusan wasn’t particularly dainty when she ate and didn’t believe in using any kind of tableware.  She wasn’t a total barbarian, after all, the whole point of meals was to eat the food, not wear it.  But it was clear that despite her trappings of civilization, she would have preferred to eat her food fresh from the kill, not in a five star restaurant.

Taja set down her cup.  “Crew is interested.  And you’re the woman in the know, Tamara.”

“I suppose,” Tamara grumbled.  “But aren’t these questions that should have been asked back when we linked up with the Kara?  Not now, two jumps later?”

“Probably,” Taja admitted.  “And who’s to say they haven’t been asking?”

“Then why are they only bringing this to me now?”

Corajen chuckled.  “Maybe it’s because of your frightening reputation, Tamara.  I mean you did just go to a bar and shoot three people.”

Tamara waved that away.  “That was weeks ago,” she joked.  “I’m sure they’d all forgotten about that by now.”

The other two laughed.

“So tell me about implants,” Turan asked.  The officers all looked over.

The senior officers were gathered in the wardroom, having just finished the morning meeting.  The meetings had become a much more congenial affair, now that the officers and the crew had a functioning ship beneath them.  It was amazing what that did for morale.

Tamara set down her datapad on the table where she had been making notes about jobs that needed doing, preventative maintenance, mostly.  “Well, there are all sorts.  There’s your most basic identification chip.  Most everyone had those back in the day.  It was a chip implanted under the skin on the top of your left hand.  It contained all of your personal information, medical info, banking data, everything.  It couldn’t grant you any serious access to computers or anything more than that.  It was also used as a means of security.  Anyone without the right data in their chip couldn’t get through locked doors.”

“And do you have one of those?” the doctor asked.

She nodded, holding up her left hand and wiggling her fingers.  “Yup.  Everyone in the Republic got them shortly after you are born.”  Tamara frowned.  “At least they did.  I assume they probably still do.”

“What other kinds are there?” Taja asked, fascinated.

Tamara shrugged.  “Lots.  My implants are actually on the low end of spectrum.  I’ve seen ones that are far more extensive.  People with cybernetic limbs, whole computer systems within their bodies.”

“Isn’t that what you have?” the captain asked.

Tamara shrugged.  “On a very small scale.  I’m talking about people with crystal data cores imbedded in their bodies.  Not very common.”

“When can you start making them?” Corajen asked bluntly.

“As soon as one of you illustrious merchant traders finds me a class five industrial replicator, and the software upgrades to make medical tech,” Tamara replied.  She crossed her arms under her breasts.  “Until then, I can’t make any.”

“Why not?” Taja asked.  “You can make hyperdrives and replicators and shields, why not implants?”

“Because implants pack a lot of complicated machinery into a very small package,” she replied.  “Class three replicators, like the ones we have, are not capable of building implants.”

There was a collective grumble around the table, as the various officers either expressed irritation at the answer, while others seemed to be thinking that Tamara was just making this up.  The engineer gave them all a cool look, then turned her gaze back to the Captain.

Stella’s holo image appeared above the projector.  “I’m afraid she’s telling the truth.  I’ve gone through the specifications and software on the replicators and they are not capable of building the things we need.  Not for nano and micro tech that we would need to make implants.”  She turned her fact to Quesh.  “So unless you have the plans and schematics for implants in your personal database, I’m afraid that for now you’ll have to go without.”

Turan looked confused.  “Wait, wait.  Stella, that didn’t make sense.  Tamara already said that the replicators we have can’t make the technology we need.  Why then would it matter if the Chief had the schematics?”

“Because we could then try to do things the hard way, by hand” Tamara answered before the AI could speak.  “It would take longer and would be more difficult to do, but I think we could do it.  Instead of replicating the machines we need, we build them by hand.”

“Could you design some?” the Captain asked.

Tamara sighed.  “I’ll look into it for you, Captain.  They would have to be simple to start.  I can try and reverse engineer my ID implant first and then go from there.”

“All right.  Work with Turan with that.  Keep me informed.”  The Captain nodded to Tamara then looked back to the table at large.  “All right.  Now, onto bay six.  I think we need to transfer the big containers over to bay five to trim out the load…”

The breakout into the Ulla-tran system was uneventful.  There were no ships or battle stations waiting for them at the hyper limit, though the Grania Estelle and the Kara had dropped out of hyperspace thirty light seconds from the limit itself.  It had become standard procedure and while it wouldn’t necessarily save them if a ship was waiting right on top of them, it would certainly be better than blundering in all fat and happy into the waiting arms of a pirate ship.  The two ships began the long run in to the inhabited world; the third planet in the system.  There were seven planets here, and the main world, called Darcannia, had seven moons.  It made for some interesting tidal effects on the very large seas and two large land masses.

Ulla-tran was a more industrialized system than most in the Cluster, though it was far from the only one.  However, it did boast a small orbital station around the largest gas giant in the system, with a dozen fuel collectors, similar in function to the one in the Grania Estelle’s cargo bay.  They were using highly refined helium 3 and the fueling station was a throwback to the Republic days.  The station itself was in decent repair, though as the Grania Estelle and her companion approached, sensors indicated that there were sections of the orbital that were showing corrosion.  Possibly there were particulates that were coming up out of the swirling storms from the Jovian’s atmosphere, sandblasting the station.  As they approached, the sensors detected a group of technicians in EVA suits making minor repairs to one small section.  It looked as though they were welding new plates over a particularly weathered part of the hull.

“Well, that complicates things a little,” the Captain said, frowning as he studied his displays.  “I suspect the locals wouldn’t be too pleased with us just dropping our collector into the gas giant and topping off.”

“Probably not, Skipper,” George agreed.  “I’m actually showing six tugs carrying the fuel bladders from the collectors to the station and what looks like three small, fast ships moving in our direction.”

“What kind of ships?” he asked, adjusting his view.

George shrugged.  “I’ve never seen this configuration before, Captain.  Could be pinnaces?  I would imagine they’re there for security of the station.”

Stella appeared on the right side corner of the Captain’s display.  “I’ve scanned the… pinnaces, to use Mister Miller’s term, Captain.  They’re armed with a graser and a pair of missile launchers in the bow.  Our shields might be able to absorb attacks from one of the small ships maybe two, but not from three.  And the Kara is in even worse shape.  She can’t withstand any kind of serious attack from them.”

“Could Moxie stand up to them in her fighter?”

“Probably,” the AI admitted.  “She would be faster and more maneuverable, but from what I’m seeing on those scans, the pinnaces have shields and Tamara’s Perdition fighter does not.  One good hit and she’d be free floating ions.”

“Well, they’re just being cautious at the moment,” the Captain mused.  “They’re moving toward us, but it doesn’t look they’re being too aggressive.  I think they’re just seeing who we are and I imagine they’ll probably start talking to us soon.”

“Good call, Captain,” Serinda piped up a second later as an indicator on her console flashed.  “The lead ship is hailing us.”

“Let’s see it.”

The image of a young woman appeared on the Captain’s display.  She was young, probably in her twenties, with dark skin and dark curly hair.  She was wearing a red flight suit, with some sort of rank tab insignia on her shoulder straps.  “This is Vanku Sobris Maakan, of the Ulla-tran Defense Forces to incoming ships.  Please identify yourselves.”

“Put me on, Serinda,” the Captain ordered.  She nodded to him.  “This is Vincent Eamonn on the Grania Estelle.  We are forty-one days out of Yullankla with cargo to sell and trade.  We are accompanied in convoy by the hospital ship Kara.”

The woman nodded.  “Understood, Grania Estelle.  I will escort you into the system.  Please follow along and do not deviate from course.”

The Captain frowned.  “Actually, we could use a top off on fuel,” he said.  “Could you bring us into the fueling station?”

The pilot nodded again.  “Of course, sir.  I have to advise, the rates are a bit steep.  We’re not selling hydrogen or seawater here.”

“Understood.  Actually, if possible, would we be able to use our own helium 3 collector in the gas giant?  A possible rental situation?”

Vanku Maakan shrugged.  “Not my bailiwick, Grania Estelle.  You’ll have to speak with Goris Hana on the station.  He’s the one who deals with fuel.”

“Roger that, Vanku,” he replied.  “Altering course now.”  He nodded to the pilot, who had twisted around in his chair to look.  The pilot gave the thumbs up and turned back to his console, entering the commands.  The Captain cut the connection.  “What the hell is a ‘Vanku’?  Is that her name?”

George shrugged.  “No idea, Captain.  Maybe it’s a title or rank.”

Stella appeared on the bridge holo projector.  “I believe it’s her title, Captain.  Based on intercepted chatter I’m overhearing, I think it’s her title.  It seems to be roughly equal to Lieutenant in the military.  I believe that she is the leader of her little flight here.”

The two large vessels made their ponderous turn toward the fueling station.  Vanku Maakan’s pinnace led the way, staying in front of them, leading the strange convoy toward the station.  The fueling station was of a strange design, for all intents it looked like a king’s scepter, or a baby’s rattle.  It had a spherical section on the “top” with a flat section of three levels below that with docking ports for small ships.  Jutting out from the bottom of the station was a kilometer long spike; the fueling pier meant for very large ships, such as the Grania Estelle.  Smaller ships, light freighters, tugs, and shuttles would dock with the station or land in one of the two hangar bays along the flat disk-like section.  The upper, spherical section held administrative offices, crew quarters and several score of cylindrical fuel tanks.

“Captain, I have Administrator Korneyev on the comms for you,” Serinda reported as they drew closer to the station.

“Put her through.”  A second later, the lupusan’s face appeared on the Captain’s display.  “Administrator?”

“Captain, our fuel tanks are running very low,” she said, a slight growl in her voice.  “I’m concerned about this.  In fact, even running on reduced power and with the upgraded fuel of helium 3, we won’t make it to Seylonique.”

“I understand,” he replied.  And he did.  The overhaul his crews had done to the Kara had been extensive, but there was only so much that could be done for the ship’s old engines.  The ship was designed to be a hospital, not a long distance racer.  It wasn’t terribly fuel efficient, even compared to the much larger Grania Estelle.  “How can I help?”

“Well, we need to top up our fuel and normally I know that you would use your own collector to gather and refine the helium 3 that both our ships need.  Is that something that you can do again here?”  Her ears flattened in frustration.  “I know that I’ve racked up quite a tab as far as all the repairs, parts, labor and now fuel that you’ve been supplying.  Would we be able to continue that arrangement here?”

He sighed.  “I’m honestly not sure.  I’m going to have a meeting with the manager of the station here and I will let you know.  We’ll work something out.  I’m not going to leave you hanging out here.”

Galina perked up a bit.  “Thank you, Captain.  I will make sure that the governors in Seylonique know of your contributions and of course, your expenses.”  While lupusan didn’t have the range of expressions that humans did due to different musculature, Galina’s face was an open book to the Captain.  She was concerned about the constant uptick in expenses and her deepening debt to the Grania Estelle.  More specifically, her deepening debt to him.  He knew that she didn’t have the credits to pay him off and Eamonn was concerned that her employers might not be willing to pay on that debt.  The look on her face was telling him that she was starting to feel that way too.

But that was an issue for when they reached Seylonique.  For now they had other business to attend to.  “All right, Administrator.  I’m going to contact the fueling station now.  I’ll contact you as soon as we have an answer.”

The lupusan nodded.  “Very well, Captain.  I thank you again.  I await your call.”  And the connection broke.

The Captain rubbed his forehead with one hand.  “Well,” he said after a moment’s contemplation, “let’s do this.  Serinda, please get me this Goris Hana person.  Let’s get this fueling situation underway.”  The last time the Grania Estelle had been in the system, the fueling station was here, but it wasn’t as massive an operation it seemed to be now.  There had been only two collectors floating in the Jovian’s upper atmosphere as opposed to the dozen now hanging suspended.  Also, it had been over three years since the bulk freighter’s last arrival here and at the time she didn’t run on such a refined fuel.  And even if she did, the Captain didn’t have the funds to pay for that kind of fuel.  At the time, and up until recently Grania Estelle was running on straight hydrogen from seawater.  They would purchase the water from the authorities on the planet, so he’d never had the need to work with anyone from the station before.  He’d never heard of Goris Hana.

“Captain, I have him.”  A second later, the Captain’s display changed to show a human male that he presumed was the man in question.  He was a rotund toad of a man with what looked like graying sallow skin, which seemed to hang off him, as though he was a very heavy candle that had started to melt.  His small beady eyes were made smaller by his persistent squint and his skin had a dull sheen, which the Captain was unsure if he was covered in sweat, or if his skin was just greasy.

“Yes, who is it?” the man asked, his voice a nasal drone.

A look flashed over the Captain’s face, quickly suppressed.  “This is Captain Vincent Eamonn on the Grania Estelle, the bulk freighter approaching your station.  We’re in need of refueling, as is our companion ship, the Kara.”

“Well, now,” the man replied, his eyes brightening.  “I believe I can assist you there.  Our rates are a little high, but we’re talking about premium helium 3 fuel here.”

“Yes, I can see your operation is quite extensive,” the Captain agreed.  “I want to discuss some sort of arrangement to lease some space in the gas giant’s atmosphere.”

The toad looked confused.  “To what end?”

“We have a helium 3 collector of our own and rather than waste your time and resources, I’d like to set ours up to get the fuel my ships need.”

“And why would I allow this?” Hana asked.

“I will pay you in fuel, I’ll give you a percentage of all the fuel my equipment brings in.”

The man seemed to consider this.  “Very well.  You will pay me fifty percent of all fuel collected.”  He crossed his arms over his very large chest.  “If the fuel isn’t of sufficient quality, I might have to go as high as sixty percent.”

“That’s unreasonable,” the Captain said, frowning.  “You’re not doing any of the work.  It’s not even your equipment.  I’ll even use my own shuttles to transport the fuel.”

The toad ran a pink tongue over his lips.  “Forty-five percent.”

“Thirty,” the Captain replied.  “I won’t go any higher than that.”

Goris Hana shrugged, causing his mounds of flab to undulate for a moment.  “Thirty-five; final offer.  Otherwise you can either buy my fuel wholesale or you can do without.”

The Captain made a show of deciding.  Thirty-five was lower than he’d expected to be able to get the man.  After a moment, he grimaced and then said, “Fine.  You have a deal, thirty-five percent.”

The man nodded.  “Excellent.  I await your shuttle.”  And he display went dark.

The Captain blinked.  “Well, that went better than I’d expected.  Have Quesh assign a team and get the collector out there.  Have Corajen assign a security detail as well,” he said as an afterthought.  “But keep it together down there.  We’re here to get fuel, not get arrested.”

There were chuckles around the bridge.

With Ka’Xarian and his team on the shuttle, the Captain had the ship begin its trip in system toward the inhabitable planet Darcannia.  There was a fair amount of traffic in orbit of the planet as the bulk freighter arrived.  Four small freighters and a dozen shuttles were also in orbit, either holding geosynchronous position over one of the principle landmasses or moving toward the orbital station.  Nestromu Station was large, at least five times in size of the fueling orbital out by the gas giant.  This was designed differently as well.  Whereas the fuel station was shaped like a scepter, the main trading station was a cylinder bisected by a wide ring in the center.  The upper sections held living quarters, motels, common areas, an area for shops and other businesses, the admin and control sections.  The central ring held docking bays, and cavernous cargo bays for goods to be dropped off and picked up for shipment elsewhere.  The lower areas also had living quarters and businesses, on the ten levels closest to the center ring, the rest below that were for station use only; the fusion reactors, life support sections and other such things.

The station was well populated, holding over nine thousand souls aboard, with room for half again as many more.  It was another hold over from the Republic days and like its counterpart further out in the system, it too had seen better days.  Two of the station’s eight fusion reactors were dark, though it seemed as though the remaining ones were supplying enough juice to keep the station running.  Aside from a patchwork of plates over sections of corrosion on the hull, it seemed as though the station itself was in good repair.  The sensor dishes were up and running, the communications arrays looked all right.  Shield generator nodes were a bit of a mess, it looked as though only about forty percent of the station had coverage, most of that was on the side current facing away from the planet.  As the station did its slow rotation that section rotated with it so any protection against meteors, other space debris and solar radiation was negated.  The shields did completely cover the reactors, however, which was something at least.

The station looked little different than it had on the Grania Estelle’s last visit.  Of course, the big freighter herself looked a fair bit different and the ship didn’t have the kind of sensors, passives or otherwise that she did now.  So the Captain, looking at his display showing the station, was now seeing things that he wouldn’t have been able to in his blind, wallowing rock of a ship of yesteryear.  The station was up and running, but he wondered now just how much rot had seeped in over the years.  How much had he simply not noticed because of the amount of decay he’d lived with every day aboard his own ship?  Now that Grania Estelle was for all intents running like new, he wondered what the inside of the station would be like and how much would cause him to wrinkle his nose in disgust.

“Captain, we’ve got a tug bringing in a big rock off our starboard quarter,” George Miller reported from his station at ops.  “Recommend we shift orbit to course two-one-six mark one-five.”

“How close is he?”

George tipped his head slightly to the side.  “He’ll miss us by about ten kilometers, Captain.  Not all that close, but a lot closer than we’d like.  According to scans, one of his primary propulsion units is out and it looks like his maneuvering thrusters are a bit jittery.”

The Captain pursed his lips for a moment.  “All right, helm.  You heard the man.  Change course.  Good eye, George.  Keep it open.”

The man smiled.  “You got it, Captain.”

A half an hour went by as the bulk freighter found herself an orbit about three thousand kilometers from Nestromu Station.  It was a bit of a haul between them, but the Captain had no interest in trying to evade shuttles or other ships.  With two other shuttles of his own still with them (Ka’Xarian having taken one) there was no cause for concern.  The crew should go over in shifts with the cargo when it was unloaded and sold on the station.  Taja was already on the line with cargo brokers making deals for the large amounts of goods they had brought with them.  They were going to have an all-time high on profits for this run, he thought.  Taja was very good at her job and she’d see that they weren’t cheated by the locals.  Not this time.  Though from the way she was talking, it didn’t seem that this would be a problem.  This wasn’t some fly-by-night operation in a backwater system.  Ulla-tran was a hub, both for commerce and for, well, civilization out here in the Cluster.

“All right, people,” the Captain said, sweeping the bridge with his gaze.  “Taja’s already starting to sell our cargo, get us the money we’re owed.”  Smiles broke out for that.  With a big haul of cargoes needed for such an industrialized system like this, it was likely that the Grania Estelle might do very well.  They might even pick up a contract or two to bring things to and from here.  And that would suit the Captain just fine.  If they could set up a dedicated trade route with guaranteed cargoes and payment, instead of the vagabond existence they’d been subsisting on for the last few years, he was all for it.  “Any sign of the Emilia Walker?”

George shook his head.  “Nothing yet, Captain.  I’ve been running sensor sweeps for them every fifteen minutes looking for them.  I think we’re a few days early from our deadline, though.”

He frowned.  “Actually, if my math is right, unless they got held up somewhere they should have beaten us here.”

Stella appeared on the holo projector.  “Averaging a stopover at each planet they visit of no more than five days, and if they maintain their best hyperspeed, they should have arrived here a week ago.”

The Captain nodded.  “Keep an eye out for them, George.”

“Got it.”

“You too, Stella.

“Understood, Captain,” she said, giving a slight bow.  “Hopefully, they just extended their stays at the various planets they stopped at.  Maybe they’ll arrive here in the next few hours.”

The Captain nodded, but didn’t reply.  He wasn’t saying it, but they were all thinking it.  It was very possible that Captain Vosteros and his crew had simply taken their newly repaired ship and left, with no intention of ever linking back up with the big bulk freighter ever again.  Eamonn wanted to believe in them, that they would honor their word and their promise, but circumstances were starting to look as though the old Argos Cluster adage of “look out for yourself first” was playing true here.

The station had its own shuttle service for passengers and cargo, though they were perfectly happy to have incoming ships use their own means of ferrying things.  Tamara and her team, along with ten others, were among the first to get leave to go over to the station.  A few of the crew had been here before, so for them it was a rush to get to the bars and brothels and gambling halls.  Others, like Tamara and her team, had never been here before.  So for them, it was all new, a whole new place to explore.  Tamara’s team had only been aboard for a few months, so their experiences in the Cluster had been aboard the Grania Estelle and the planets she had visited.

As they approached the station, Tamara turned back to her team.  They were all strapped into uncomfortable chairs that were bolted to the sides of the slim, rectangular shuttle.  They had partaken of the station’s shuttle service, as both of the freighter’s ships were in use for cargo unloading.  “All right kids, you all heard the rules from the security people back on the ship.  But they bear repeating so listen up.”  Tamara glared at all of them, though she kept her tone light.  “Nobody goes anywhere alone.  And I do mean nobody.  I don’t care how tough you are, I don’t care how many people you’ve killed, or what Navy you’ve served in.  Everyone has at least one person they are staying with at all times.  It sounds childish, as though we can’t trust you to do your thing.  That you’re not an adult.”  She smiled.  “Take it as an insult or as instruction.  I don’t really care.  If you all want to be angry with me, that’s just peachy.  But I’d rather you have your leave and then come back to the ship in one piece to be angry with me.”  She made eye contact with all of the crew, each of them nodded in understanding.  “We aren’t really familiar with this place.  They aren’t familiar with us.  So just… keep your eyes open, please?”

Again they nodded.

“Good.  Now, go, have fun and come back ready to work.”  She beamed at them and they all laughed.  The shuttle set down on the deck of the hangar bay, a bit more roughly than they were used to and they all pitched against their harnesses as the shuttle came to a stop.  “Wow does that pilot need a refresher course.”

The pilot’s voice sounded over the intercom.  “Welcome aboard Nestromu Station.  You’re in bay 12 on level sixteen.  The levels above you lead to the civilian sections; markets, hotels and other businesses.  The ten levels below the hangar ring have more of the same.  We ask you remain in the public sections and enjoy your stay.”  The main hatch popped with a hiss of air and then slid to the side, the door control gears grinding slightly, causing Tamara to wince at the sound.

She unbuckled her safety harness and stood.  “Well come on, kids,” she told them.  “Time’s wasting.”

The hangar bay looked much like many space based structures did.  It was a huge metal box, with the occasional life support unit attached to the bulkheads every few meters.  The deck and the bulkheads were not the cleanest Tamara had ever seen, they were somewhat dingy from accumulated grime, leaky pipes and exhaust from engines.  The deck itself, however, was clear of any debris, something Tamara very much approved of.  Having bits of dirt and junk and other debris on the deck in a place where it could potentially interfere with passing ships was what spacers called “A Very Bad Thing.”

They passed through the main doors to the lifts, which were utilitarian, and Pip punched the button for the third level.  No one seemed to argue with this choice, they just waited for the lift to move, which it did, and then waited for it to stop on the desired level.

“I’m going to go through every single bar here,” Rory declared, rolling his shoulders as though he was preparing for some athletic event.

“You know I’m coming with you,” Mairi said with a grin.

“Me too,” Igraine put in.  “No way are you going without me.”  Victor nodded his assent.

“Pip?” Rory asked, looking to the other man.

But he shook his head.  “No, thanks.  I’m going shopping.”

The others chuckled.  “Shopping?” Mairi asked.  “What for?”

He shrugged.  “Not sure yet.  Though I am going to look for some new shoes.”

“Shoes?” Mairi said, laughing.  “You’re going to buy some shoes.”

He turned a look of mock anger on her.  “And what, pray, is wrong with wanting a new pair of shoes?  My ship boots are fine for every day.  I want a new pair of actual shoes for when we go off the ship.”

“You’re not going alone, Pip,” Tamara said.  It wasn’t a question.

“No, Tamara,” he replied.  “I’m going with one of the cargo guys.  He wants to look for a new jacket.”

Mairi just laughed, putting one hand to her forehead; Rory put a hand to her elbow to help steady her.

Tamara smiled.  “Leave him alone, Mairi,” she said, trying hard not to laugh.  “The boys want to get some new clothes.  I hope that they can clean up nice.”

“Where are you off to?” Mairi asked her, once she managed to recover from her fit of hysterical laughter.

Now it was Tamara’s turn to chuckle.  “I’m off to get a few new clothes myself.”  She waved her hands to indicate her clothes, which were nothing more than a shipsuit and a pair of boots.  “I don’t have any civvies, not after what happened at Yullankla.”  That story had made its way around the ship in less than an hour.  Somehow, pictures of the three women (the two humans and the lupusan) had found their way onto the computer network, showing them bloody, battered with torn clothing, wearing metal restraints and being marched aboard the shuttle.  Once they started appearing, the mirth of the crews was unmatched.  The three growled their ire at seeing the pictures, but no one was willing to delete them from the database.  Even when Tamara went in and tried to purge them, some quick thinking soul had gotten in and copied them to some sort of external drive and within two hours of her sweep of the ship’s database, the pictures kept popping back up again.  Throwing their hands up in disgust, the three had decided to just ignore them.  This was a difficult task, as the pictures popped up on displays, datapads and console screens at seemingly random times.  Tamara suspected Stella’s involvement, though she didn’t scold the AI.  She was sure she could see a twinkle of mirth in the AI’s eyes whenever they would speak lately.

The interior of the station looked much like the hangar bay: well used and slightly dingy.  There was a distinct metallic odor that pervaded as Tamara walked along the corridors, the two other women from cargo just ahead of her.  It looked exactly like what it was, a well-worn station that had been around for over three centuries.  The crew had apparently made repairs and patches when needed, with her critical eye (and assistance from her visual implants) she could tell where components had been swapped out, new plates installed among other small repairs.  But it was clear that disrepair was beginning to overtake their efforts.  Either they didn’t have replicator support, or else the station administrators didn’t believe that a full overhaul was worth the expense.  On the Grania Estelle, the Captain had authorized such an effort because his ship was literally on its last legs.  The station must be doing decent business, but not bringing in enough to justify the pay for all of the labor needed for work gangs to get the overhaul done.  Perhaps there were some sections that were getting the attention now and it was deemed unnecessary for the connecting corridors.  Tamara decided she would look into it.  Perhaps the Captain could work out a deal to sell them replicated parts.

The lift reached the Promenade levels, which were lined with shops of all types, arrayed in what looked like various “districts” as the identification panels on the bulkheads indicated.  There was a weapon district, the garment district, library, even one with the quirky “gadget district” moniker.  Tamara and her companions headed for the garment district, determined to find a new stock of civilian clothing, but the engineer had a desire to check out a few of the other places.  One never knew what one might find sifting through the various items for sale.

Tamara stepped into one of the electronics shops about an hour later.  She had found several new outfits for herself, spending what little cash she could on new clothing.  She wasn’t big on fashion, comfort was more important in her mind, but she had to admit, she did look good in what she’d bought.  She had rented a locker and stowed her packages there, so that she didn’t have to lug them around with her while she went “fun shopping”.  Clothes were a necessity and while she had indulged herself a little, what she was really interested in would be more likely found here.

Once inside, she looked around.  Shelves were stacked with various items from floor to ceiling in the narrow space.  She noticed a few power nodes, drained, from what she could tell, but they looked to be in good condition.  Nodding, she continued on, looking at the various items.  A lot of what she saw here was reconditioned, and very little of it actually interested her.  The replicators on the ship could make better stuff, frankly, though it was interesting to see what was here.

“Can I help you with something?” a male voice came from the far side of the shop.  Tamara looked up to see who had spoken.  It was a human, a big man, with dark hair, wearing a standard coverall, with a fuel pump in one hand and a rag in the other, wiping it clean of grease.  He was wearing a pair of goggles, which shielded his eyes.

She nodded.  “I’m really just looking, but I’m always looking for something good.”

The man grunted.  “I’ve got a lot of this and that, ma’am,” he replies.

She raised an eyebrow.  “What, you’re not going to ‘pretty lady’ me?”

He grunted again.  “Ma’am, the only pretty I care about is the pretty of your money.”

Now Tamara chuckled.  “I like that attitude.  Well, so long as you’re not trying to sell me junk for overinflated prices.”

“You seem to have a good eye.”  His tone was flat.  “I saw you checking out my wares.  You won’t find crap in my store.”

She looked at him more closely, her implants scanning him.  “I’m not the only one with a good eye.  That’s a serious prosthetic you’ve got on there.  I like the goggles.  You ashamed of people seeing what you really are?”

“Now, that is pretty,” he commented, setting the pump down.  “You got yourself some prosthetics too, I see.”  Tamara’s implants indicated that she was being scanned.  The man’s eyes had been replaced with cybernetic implants, with a wide range of abilities, detailed scans seemed to be one of them.  A handy trait for someone who would be working on fixing machines.  “Some old prosthetics.”

“Are you calling me old?” she asked, pretending to be offended.

It didn’t fool the merchant.  “Your implants certainly are.  Wow, those are ancient.  Over two hundred and sixty-eight years old.”

“Good eye,” she replied.  “Yeah, these are Republic Navy implants.”

He nodded.  “Haven’t seen anything like that around here.  But I doubt you came in here looking for implants.”

She shook her head.  “No, not really.  Though if you happen to have any, I’d be interested in taking a peek.  My crew is getting itchy for some and I can’t make them.”

“Chief Engineer?” he guessed at her rank.

Tamara shook her head.  “Engineering Third Officer.”

“So you said you’re not really looking for implants.  What are you really looking for?” he asked, interested.

“Replicators,” she replied, crossing her arms under her breasts.  “Anything class four or above.”

The man chuckled.  “Haven’t had working replicators on this station for quite some time, ma’am.  Had a bunch once, even a class seven, if you can believe it.  But that was back in the Republic days.  A few were stolen, the rest were either broken or they just stopped working.”  He paused, thinking.  “I think the last one we had, a class five, broke down about forty or so years ago.”

Tamara nodded, a small smile on her lips.  “I don’t suppose it’s still on the station.”

“Matter of fact, it is,” he said.  “Up on level three, ring section.  In the back of hangar bay twenty-two.”

“Thanks,” she replied.  “I think I’ll wander that way later.  But for now, I’m looking for new designs for an L-type heat exchanger.  The ones we have on our shuttles wear too easily.  Had to replace them twice in two months.”

“An L-type?  Yeah, those were notorious for their short shelf lives.  Let me think.”  The man nodded to himself.  “Your best bet would be to yank the whole system out and replace it with a modified class-F.  I have a few things that might interest you.  Come over here and we’ll take a look.”

“So how are we looking?” Eamonn asked, entering Taja’s small office.  She was seated at her desk, her terminal activated, datapad in hand.  She looked up as he entered and smiled.

“Hey,” she replied.  “I was going to call you in about an hour.  But the prelim figures from the sales are good.  We’ve got a twenty percent return over projections on those ingots.  Profits on this run are going to be great.  Shares are too.”

He smiled at her.  “That’s what I like to hear.  Any chance they might be interested in a more permanent arrangement?”

Taja shrugged.  “I’ve asked around and I’ve gotten a few bites, but nothing to write home about.  Nothing yet.  The station is reasonably self-sufficient.  And while there’s a good amount of industry here, so far no one’s willing to trust us.  But once they see the goods keep pouring in from our holds…” She trailed off.

“Good.  Keep at it.  I’d like to try and set up some sort of permanent run based around here.  If someone here is willing to pay us to stay in the vicinity, I’d like to do that.”  He sighed.  “Give us a sense of permanency rather than this endless, less profitable wandering.”

Taja smirked.  “Yeah, I hear the crew likes it here.”
“Bars and brothels,” he replied.  “For the males and females, it seems.  There’s also things to do, people to see, stuff to buy.  Everybody wins.  And since other ships are coming through here all the time, better chance of hiring on new crewmen if people decide to leave, or if we decide to get another ship.”

“You’re really thinking about doing that?” she asked.  “Build another ship?”

“Moxie’s convinced me,” he replied.  “Nothing as big and grand as this old girl.  But maybe something small.  Something along the lines of the Emilia Walker.”

“I can’t believe you keep talking about them,” Taja said sourly, setting down her datapad.  “They screwed us.  Or more precisely, they screwed you.”

“You don’t believe they’re going to show?” he asked, smiling.

She gave him a look.  “I know they aren’t. And I just checked the bridge feeds, so I know they didn’t just show up so you could trick me into betting with you.”

He held a dark hand to his chest.  “I’m wounded, Taja.  Truly hurt.  It also appears I’ve become predictable in my old age.”

“In your dotage,” she replied, smiling fondly at him.

“Good thing I have you around to help me lace up my boots.”

“Good thing.”  Then her smile faded.  “You really do think they’re coming, don’t you?”

He sighed, leaning against the desk, looking over at her.  “I want to, Taja.  I really do.  I want to believe that there are some good-hearted and like-minded souls out there who really are interested in making a few credits together.  If we can band together, we can get more contracts.  Hell, we can get contracts.  Earn a reputation for our collective work and even be able to line our pockets a bit.”

“But a light freighter like Emilia Walker can’t haul nearly the amount of goods we can.”

“No, but what they can carry, they can get it to where it’s going faster,” he countered.  “Which means they’ll be more likely to get high value goods with even a priority or two on the bill.  If we’re both based from here, we could make three runs to other systems in the time they could make five or six.  The individual shares would be smaller, but taken as a whole…”

“And if it’s known that we’re working together and that both of our ships are in good repair and that everyone gets paid, others might want to join.”

He nodded.  “That’s right.  That’s really what I want.  Joining together as a group will keep people like those bastards on Hecate from pushing us around.  Though we’re going to need someone to run this whole affair.  I certainly am not going to do it.  I’m a ship captain.”

Taja smiled, though there was steel in her eyes.  “Don’t even think about dumping that on me,” she warned.  “If you think I’m staying behind while you go gallivanting, well, you would not like the conversation we’d have if you left.”

He raised his hands in surrender.  “Don’t worry, love.  You stay with me.”  His communicator beeped.  Pulling it out of his pocket, he flipped it open.  “Yes?”

“Captain, we have an incoming comm from Commander Samair,” Kutok’s very precise voice answered.  “It’s on an encrypted frequency.”

He frowned, now deeply concerned.  “Trouble?”

“I don’t know, Captain,” the comm officer replied.  “She just said she needed to speak with you immediately.”

He tipped his head to the side.  “All right.  Are we secure?”

He couldn’t see her, but he knew that the hak’ruk nodded.  “Yes, Captain.  Comm lines are secure.”

“Then put Moxie through.”

He heard her sigh.  He knew that Kutok hated his little pet name for the Engineering Third Officer.  “Very good, Captain.”

There was a crackle of static.  “Moxie, is that you?”

“I’m here, Captain,” Tamara replied, her voice pitched low.

“Well, you have my attention,” he said, holding the communicator at chest level, upping the sound on the speakers so Taja could here.  “Is everything all right?”

“We’re all fine, Cap,” she replied.  “But I have a purchase that you need to make.  I don’t care how you do it, but you need to make it happen.  And it probably would be a good idea if you could make sure the locals don’t know why you’re doing it.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, not really understanding.  “What am I buying?”

“A replicator.”

“We have replicators already, Moxie,” he reminded her patiently.  “Thanks to you.”

He could hear the grin in her voice.  “Not like this one.  It’s a fixer-upper, I’ll admit, but if I can get it working…”

“What’s so important about this one?”

“It’s a class-five,” Tamara said, excitement flooding her voice.  “With a full database.”

“I understand,” he said, feeling a clutch of anticipation in his chest.  “What’s the condition?  Is it in use?”

“Its offline,” Tamara told him.  “And it is in pretty bad shape.  According to a source and a few other people I spoke with, it hasn’t been used in sixty or so years.  It’s just sitting in the hangar bay.”

“So it’s junk?”

“Not once I get my hands on it,” she replied.  He grinned.

“So I’ll need to add it to a list of junk salvage to buy.”

“That would be my advice, yes.”

“All right, Moxie.  I’m on it.”  He sighed.  “You’d better be right about this.”

“Captain Eamonn,” she said, hurt.  “When have I ever steered you wrong?”  And then she cut the connection.

He chuckled.  “Kutok, are you still there?”

“Here, Captain,” she replied instantly.

“You know, it’s rude to eavesdrop.”

She chittered.  “Captain, you pay me to eavesdrop.”

“Right.  Call down to the boat bay.  Get a shuttle prepped to take me, Taja, and a security officer over to the station.  We’re going on a purchasing trip.”  He nodded to Taja, who shut down her terminal and stood up, putting her datapad into its holder in her belt.

“Understood, Captain.”

An hour later, he, Taja and the lupusan Saiphirelle stepped off the shuttle onto the hangar deck.  Taja had linked in with Tamara and they had compiled a list of junk for “salvage” which consisted of a lot of useless scraps, a few bits and bobs that Tamara had found in various collections on the station, and two of the dead replicators, an old food replicator and the class five she had found earlier.

The two humans were dressed in their shipsuits, each carrying only their datapads, though the Captain had a gun up his sleeve and a knife in his boot and Taja had concealed a tiny holdout pistol in her belt.  The lupusan carried much more in the way of overt weaponry, she was a security officer after all.  A pulse rifle was slung over her back, a pulser on her thigh and then of course she had her own natural weapons.  With her watching their back, only the very brave or the very stupid would try and hurt them.

A short, plump man dressed in a shipsuit was waiting for them.  He rubbed a hand over his bald pate as though he was nervous and then beamed as the trio approached.  “Captain Eamonn, so good to see you again!” he boomed, arms outstretched.

“Ranius Trent,” the Captain replied, a bit less enthusiastically.  “Always a pleasure.  It’s been a long time.”

“How long?” the man asked.  “Four years?”

“I think it was just over five.”

“Ah, how the years go by.  So, I understand that you’re in the market for some salvage.”  His eyes glittered.  “Why ever do you want it?”

The Captain shrugged.  “Melt some of it down, use it for hull plating.  There are some components in the electronic stuff that could be reconditioned and reusable.  I’ve got some shorts in my computer systems that some of these would work well with.”

All perfectly reasonable.  And even likely, given the state of repair of the ships out here in the Cluster.  But Trent had seen the scans of the Grania Estelle, as well as what he could see of Eamonn’s shuttles.  They were all in excellent shape, far better than Trent had seen out in the Cluster for quite some time.  It could, of course, be that his engineers were wizards would could spin spells with their spanners.  But Trent had done business with Eamonn before.  He was a wily character and Trent knew the man was up to something.  But, the stuff he wanted was junk.  If he could get it off his station and some credits in his coffers, so much the better.

“I’d like to take a look at what I’m buying, of course,” Eamonn said.

“Of course,” Trent replied.  “I have your officer with the items in the other bay.  Let’s head over there and then we can talk business.”

Tamara was awaiting them, looking over the bins she had filled up with the items she was pretending to care about.  There was the food replicator in one of the bins, as well as scraps of metal, broken electronics, servos and actuators from several worker bots along with other things.  She looked up as they approached, and nodded.  “So I’ve gone over all these things again, for the most part they look okay.  I like the electronics on these two,” she pointed to the food replicator and the class-five still bolted to the bulkhead.  “I think they’ll work well with the computers in the sensor array.  There’s a lot of good hull material here, I think we can get that section in level eight repaired properly.”

Trent watched the byplay between the two of them, noting their facial expressions and body languages.  Both of them seemed mildly interested in this purchase, the woman at the Captain’s side, the cargo specialist, seemed reasonably eager, though she was watching Trent warily, probably gearing up for a haggling session.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but Trent was suspicious.  Those replicators had been bolted to the bulkheads in the station for a very long time, neither of them had functioned in decades.  No one wanted them and all of a sudden, Captain Eamonn and his engineer did.  They didn’t work, why would they want them?  But, as he thought about it further, it was just junk taking up space in his station.  The sooner it was gone, the happier he would be.

“So then,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “Let’s talk business shall we?”

The shuttle landed in the boat bay aboard the Grania Estelle an hour later.  They’d managed to secure the parts and scrap, though Trent had gouged them for an extra ten percent.  But, if Moxie was right and she could get the replicators functioning again, they would already have paid for themselves.  He was restraining his own enthusiasm, because as yet the new toys didn’t work.  And until they did, all he had done was transfer from scrap metal and components from the station over to his ship.

Then he looked over at the woman in question who was going to reclaim that scrap.  “You did good today, Moxie,” he said, smiling.

She nodded, then leaned her head back against the shuttle bulkhead.  “Yeah, I guess I did.  Lucky for us the station people didn’t know how to work with what they had.  Hopefully the two replicators aren’t beyond saving.  The food replicator should be easy enough.  The class-five?”  She shrugged, “That will take some serious work.”

He eyed her.  “You don’t sound terribly enthusiastic about that.”

She sighed.  “I don’t know.  I mean, I am jazzed about it.  A class-five is a serious boost.  And the databases on both of them will help me augment what we can do aboard the ship.”

“But…” he prompted.

“But,” she replied, taking a deep breath.  “I like my job and my team and even you.”  He growled at her mockingly and she swatted his arm.  “But running freight isn’t what I envisioned doing with my life.”

“You don’t think it’s a worthwhile pursuit?”

“Now you’re putting words in my mouth.  I was on ships since I was born, in fact, I was born on a freighter, the Hyacinth.  HyaHI joined the Navy when I was eighteen.  Went through the Academy, went through flight school, did that for a few years, then got on the engineering track and made command level in only a few years after that.  I was in charge of a shipyard.  I built warships.  I was the one making things happen.”

“And now being an Engineering Third Officer is a, what?  A demotion?”

Tamara sighed.  “I don’t know.  As I said, I’m enjoying my job very much, working with my team, trying to build up a tech base from what we have now to what I’d like to see.  And it is exciting work.”

“But it isn’t enough.”

“I’m used to the Navy way of doing things.  You’ve been great about getting us what we need to fix up the ship, or fix up others and I do feel good about the work we’ve done.  It’s a lot like what I’m used to.  And this just, well…”

“Isn’t the Navy,” he finished.  “I thought you were done with the Republic, with the Navy because of what it did to you.”

She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly.  “I know.  I said that and I meant it.  I still mean it.  But I think I still miss it.”

The Captain watched her for a long moment.  “All right.  Let’s get all this crap down to the cargo areas and then hit your rack.  I know you’ve been up for a while and your shift isn’t for another eight hours.  Get some sleep.”  He frowned as she grimaced.  “What?”

“What?” she replied.  “Oh, nothing.  Sure, I’ll do that.”

“What is it?” he pressed.

She shrugged.  “I don’t sleep well.  Though I think that with all the work I’ll be doing to get those replicators up I should be able to exhaust myself enough.”

“You just can’t sleep?”

Tamara shook her head.  “I keep having nightmares.  About my last day before I slept through all those years.”

He’d heard about that and Turan had shown him the video.  He wasn’t sure how many people had seen that video, but he was fairly sure that Tamara would explode if she found out that someone other than the doctor had viewed it.  He wasn’t even sure she knew the doctor had it and he sure as hell was not going to be the one to tell her.

Tamara gasped, sitting bolt upright on her bunk, clutching her chest and breathing hard and fast.  Her throat was raw though she didn’t remember screaming.  Throwing off the covers, she padded into the bathroom and turned on the faucet.  She splashed some cold water on her face and then leaned on the sink hard, staring at her reflection in the mirror, willing her breathing to return to normal.

This one wasn’t as bad as those that had come before.  It wasn’t terribly different than all the others, but it wasn’t as sharp somehow, not quite as terrifying.  She had come awake when she always did, when the pod depressurized and she couldn’t breathe.

[Why does this keep happening to you, Tamara?]  Stella’s text came through on her implants’ HUD.

Her breathing back under control, Tamara grabbed a towel.  “I don’t know!” she yelled, scrubbing her face with it and then throwing it against the bulkhead.  “He’s dead!  I survived!  He can’t hurt me anymore and I’m so far away from him and anything he could ever do or have done to me!  Why does he keep haunting me?”

[I wish I could help.  I worry.]

Tamara sighed and then leaned over and picked up the towel, hanging it up on the bar.  Then for good measure she pounded the bulkhead with her fists, screaming in purest rage and despair.  She continued to attack the metal wall without hesitation, even as her knuckles split and blood covered it.

[Tamara!  Stop!  You’re damaging yourself!]

But she didn’t.  She couldn’t.  Tamara couldn’t see the metal, what she was seeing was Islington’s face, as though he was there, laughing at her, mocking her.  Her screams escalated until there was a banging on her door.  Her brain started taking over again, the rage fading.  With the rage came the pain.  Her knuckles and hands had been beaten bloody, torn down to the bone.  Her wrists throbbed and pain radiated down from her fingers and hands to her elbows.  Her hands slowly came open, shaking uncontrollably.

Her knees gave out just as Corajen and Ygris banged into the bathroom, the lupusan in full combat footing, the big man with his pulser drawn, looking for targets.  They took in the whole scene in under one second and then Corajen was crouching down, waving Ygris off.  The big man hustled out of the bathroom and out of the stateroom, after doing a quick check for intruders, as if that was possible in such a confined space.

Corajen was kneeling there, next to Tamara, being careful not to touch her, but being there in case she was needed.  Tamara just sat there, leaning against the sink with her hands cradled against her chest, taking in and letting out shaking breaths, just staring at that spot on the wall, not acknowledging Corajen’s presence, nor Stella’s frantic text messages on her HUD, not even when Turan and one of his orderlies arrived.  The doctor pressed a hypo into the carotid artery in Tamara’s neck and she sagged almost instantly.  The lupusan easily swept the woman up into her powerful arms and laid her gently on the hover stretcher waiting in the corridor.  Once she was on, the medical personnel rushed her to the infirmary.

Chapter 22

Tamara opened her eyes.  She was in sickbay, lying on one of the beds.  She tried to sit up, but her arms were secured to the sides of the bed frame.  Upon further inspection, her arms were encased in some sort of hard polymer up to the elbows.  She couldn’t move her fingers inside, but her skin felt delightfully cool.  She had the slightly sour taste in her mouth of the regeneration fluid, which was strange, because she only remembered punching the wall.  That shouldn’t have required a dunk in one of the regen tanks.

“Good morning, you great idiot,” a voice said.  Looking over, and without any real surprise, she saw that Cookie was in the chair next to the bed.  He was in a shipsuit, which was surprisingly clean.  He wasn’t a slob and he did believe in hygiene and cleanliness, but when he was in the galley he was normally doused in flour or spilled food.

“Good morning,” Tamara replied.  “How long have I been out?”

Cookie shrugged.  “Doc had you out for about a day.  You took a dip in the tank because you apparently broke four of your knuckles and more than a dozen of the bones in your hands.”  He shrugged again.  “Quicker and easier than keeping you in those cocoon things.  Doc could explain better.”

“I wonder when he’s going to be by,” she wondered aloud.

He tapped her on the shoulder, leaning in.  “What happened, Tamara?  Why did you do it?”  Worry and concern was plastered all over his face.

She sighed.  “I don’t know, Raoul.  I had a nightmare, I got up and went to the bathroom.  I splashed some water on my face.  Stella was ragging on me about why this kept happening.  I grabbed a towel and then threw it at the bulkhead.  And then I just started seeing his face.  I couldn’t stop seeing it and then I just started hitting.  The next thing I know, I’m here.”

Cookie’s expression got even more serious, if that was possible.  “How long has this been going on?”

“The punching of the bulkhead?  Only tonight.”

“No, the nightmares.”

“They started about a month after you found me.”  She looked away, staring at the ceiling.  “They have just been ongoing.  Some nights are better than others, and I’m usually too tired not to sleep.  I get a few hours and then I wake up screaming.”

He squeezed her arm.  “I’m sorry, Tamara.”

“Yeah,” she rasped.  “Me too.  I keep being afraid of a dead bastard who nearly ended my life.  I beat him.  I’m alive and prospering and yet he’s still there.”

He didn’t have anything to say, so he didn’t.  They sat there together, for a long few minutes, Tamara looking at nothing on the ceiling, Cookie looking at nothing on the privacy curtain pulled closed on the other side of the bed.

“Thanks for being here, Raoul,” she said quietly.

“Hey, of course,” he said gruffly.  “Though you keep calling me by my birth name people are going to start to talk.”

That forced a laugh out of her.  “Let them.”

Another sixteen hours of regeneration therapy and then five days of rehab before Tamara was finally fit for duty again.  She spent the time conversing with Stella and Cookie, finding herself growing closer with both.  Stella had called security when it was clear Tamara had gone berserk for which the engineer and the chef were grateful.  She’d done enough damage to herself by that point and Stella couldn’t take it, couldn’t stop her and had to call for help.  Tamara at first was angry for such a violation of her privacy, but after she calmed down, she thanked the AI for her foresight.  By the time Corajen had burst into her stateroom the worst of it was over anyway and it was unlikely that she could have hurt herself more.  However, getting her medical attention so quickly probably prevented any nerve damage that she might have suffered and for that, Tamara was grateful.

“How have your nights been?” Cookie asked her during one of their walks on the station.  They were doing long slow laps around one of the market promenades.  It was an odd thing, Cookie being off the ship.  He rarely ever left except for ship’s business, buying of stores and such.  But in the last week he and Tamara had come here every night after dinner mess to walk through the corridors of the station together.

“I’ve been spending them with you,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder lightly.  “Though not the whole night.”

He smiled back at her.  “I know we’ve been going for walks, I get you back to the ship and then you go to your quarters.”

She sobered.  “I don’t sleep.”

“I know you don’t,” he replied.  “Stella’s been spying for me.”

“That rat,” Tamara growled.

“We care about you, you great idiot,” Cookie told her.  “I know your hands are all healed up but you’re not better.  This thing has been haunting you for too long.”

Tamara stopped, in front of a shop that sold knockoff designer bags.  “And how do you propose to stop it?  You have some tarragon you can throw at the problem?”

“You’re hysterical, Tamara,” he replied.  “I’m in stitches.”

“No, it’s just that everyone seems to have the answers, get over it; just let it go.  How?  All this advice and nothing helps.”

“That’s because no one knows how to deal with your situation, Tamara,” he reminded her.  “You lived with a nightmare for two hundred and fifty years.  Of course there’s going to be difficulties.”

“And you just know all about that,” she retorted, getting angry.  “You, ship’s cook, are the expert on nightmares.”

“I listen to people,” Cookie told her, his own ire starting to rise.  “And sometimes I can help.”

“Help!  Ha!”  Tamara turned away, looking at the window.  “If it’s not a turnip or a cut of fish, you can’t help.”

“You know what?  For that, I should just let you spiral down and self-destruct,” he informed her, not a trace of humor in his voice.  “Are you so determined to push everyone away?  Because you’re succeeding.  Hope you enjoy the thump at the bottom!”  And he stomped off, not looking back, not waiting for her response.

Corajen found the engineer in one of the station’s drinking establishments a few hours later.  Stella had commed her, worried that Tamara hadn’t returned to the ship.  Cookie had come back in a fine seething rage and refused to answer any questions about “that damned woman.”  He’d thrown his arms in the air and gone into the galley, slamming metal pots and pans around.  The security officer had tried to talk with him, but when he’d brandished a cleaver, the lupusan wisely retreated.

Tamara was sitting in a chair in a darkened corner of the bar, a bottle on the table nearly empty, the tumbler in her hand with a finger or two of drink left in it.  She was staring at the crowd blankly, as though her mind was a million light years away, the drink on the arm of the chair.  She didn’t notice as Corajen approached.

“There you are,” she told Tamara, moving closer, yet standing just out of striking range.  She wasn’t afraid that Tamara would try and hit her, or even if she did that it would hurt, but it was always prudent to avoid such an encounter if possible.

“You my babysitter now?” Tamara asked, not looking at the wolfen in front of her.

“If it comes to that.  Stella was worried and Cookie is pissed, and as Chief of Security it’s my job to find the ship’s wayward crew and drag them back by their ears if needed.”

“Why are you here, Corajen?  I’ll be back to the ship in a few hours.  You can go back and tell Stella and Cookie that I’m fine.”

“I’d tell Stella, she’s the only one of the two you mentioned who cares.  Cookie seems indifferent.”

Tamara only shrugged, taking a sip from her glass.  “And again I ask, why are you here?  We went gun shopping and then bar hopping.  We made a ruckus.  I don’t recall that making us friends.”

The lupusan flicked her ears in annoyance.  “It didn’t.  We had a decent time, but I haven’t forgotten that time in the Captain’s quarters.  Took some serious gumption to stand up to me like that, despite how scared you were.  And then you walked out.  I seriously considered going after you for that.”

Tamara didn’t look up as she poured the last of the liquor into her glass and took another sip.  She acted as though she was completely uninterested in this conversation.

“I’ll go back to the ship now,” the lupusan replied.  “Let them know that you’re not dead.”

Tamara finally looked up at the other female, a look of genuine (if muted) surprise on her face.  “You’re not going to… what was it you said?  Drag me back by my ears?”

Corajen chuffed a laugh.  “You’re a big girl.  You’re sitting here, pickling your liver and honestly, if that’s what you want, go ahead.”

“The Captain doesn’t have anything to say about me being here?”

She shrugged.  “Not that he’s told me.  And since we seem to be staying for a few minutes in this system, I don’t think he cares at all.”

Now it was Tamara’s turn to grunt.  “He’s got some special projects he wants me to work on.”

“Yeah, I don’t care about that,” she replied, waving one clawed hand.  “Right now, I’m just checking to make sure you’re still breathing.  Maybe later, I might be back to haul you to the ship.  And I will be back if you’re not on the ship in seven hours.  Until then, stay here and feel sorry for yourself.”  The lupusan turned and walked away, leaving Tamara sitting there staring at her drink.

The Captain was sitting in the wardroom, balancing his head on one hand, elbow on the table as Turan came in.  He’d heard what had happened when the shore patrol (such as it was on this ship) went over to the station to round up those wayward souls who were going to miss their shifts.  His Chief of Security had literally dragged his Engineering Third Officer back to the ship.  The two of them had apparently gotten into it in the boat bay, where the very inebriated Engineering Third Officer had tried to take a swing at the lupusan.  Which eventually led to his Ship’s Doctor coming into the wardroom to brief him on the outcome of that scuffle.

“What happened?” the Captain asked tiredly.  This was a headache he didn’t need right now.

Turan actually had the grace to look embarrassed.  “Well, from what I understand, Tamara was incredibly drunk but otherwise pretty passive when Corajen dragged her back to the shuttle.  She actually sat there until the shuttle landed.  Once it did, it was then that she started to get violent.”

The Captain straightened and then raised an eyebrow.  “Get violent?  She tried to attack my chief of security.”

“She was drunk, Captain,” Turan pointed out.  “It was a wild haymaker of a swing that Corajen easily evaded and then put her down.”

“Put her down?” the Captain demanded, leaping to his feet.  “What?”

Turan raised his hands in alarm.  “No, Captain, I’m sorry.  That didn’t come out like I wanted.  Corajen knocked Tamara on her ass, then cuffed her and dragged her to the brig.  Tamara sustained some slight lacerations on her face and hands.  Though I think the hangover is going to be worse than any pain from those injuries.”

Eamonn slumped back in the chair.  “Doc, what the hell is going on with that woman?  Is there anything we can do?  Or am I going to have to have Corajen throw her around some more?”

The doctor nodded slowly.  “Actually, that might not be a bad idea.”

“You want me to what?” Tamara demanded, her voice light.  She was in the ship’s tiny brig, which was only big enough to hold two people, sitting on the small bunk and leaning forward her head in her hands.  The hangover had claimed her it seemed and every few seconds she let out a whimper of pain.

“I want you to get out of this funk you seem to have settled yourself in,” Corajen replied, flicking her ears in amusement, her arms crossed over her chest.  “And then, you’re going to come to the workout room with me and I’m going to throw you all over the mat.”

Tamara winced at the volume and sharpness of the lupusan’s voice.  “I am not going anywhere.”

Corajen shrugged.  “You’ve been bottling everything up.  So either you’re going to come down there with me after I get Turan to give you something for the hangover, or I’m going to drag you there without the hangover cure.”

“Why can’t you just let me die in this cell?” Tamara whined, collapsing back onto the bunk, clutching her head.

The lupusan laughed.  “Oh, you might want to, but you’re not going to die.  I’m going to beat the hell out of you and you’re going to be better for it.  You wear yourself out with work and from what Stella tells me you pass out pretty quick in your bunk, but I get the feeling you aren’t dealing with any of the stuff that haunts you.”

“And you kicking the stuffing out of me is going to help me deal?”

Corajen gave her a predatory smile.  “Well, it might make you feel better… inside.  But I think you’re going to go through the path of enlightenment.”

“The path of enlightenment?” Tamara muttered, confused.

“Yeah, it’s a cultural thing.  My culture.  Emotional peace through pain.  I understand the Republic Marines have a similar tradition.”

“You trying to make a Marine out of me?” Tamara grimaced.  “Ugh, please tell me you weren’t one.”

Corajen shook her head.  “No, but my mother and cousin were.  Are, actually.  They’re still in the Republic.  My sister and I left the Republic when we were kids, never looked back.”

“Your sister?”

“You’ve met her.  She’s on board.”

Tamara groaned in pain.  “I am not up for twenty questions this morning, Corajen.”

“Saiphirelle.  She and I got in a little trouble back in the Republic and made our way out to the Cluster.  Sound like anyone else you know?”

Tamara barked a laugh.  “I’m Navy, not a Marine.”

Corajen grinned.  “And I’m Security.  But we’re going to walk the path of enlightenment and you’re going to start feeling better.  Or I beat you up and I feel better.  Either way, enlightenment is achieved.”

“You’re a real Zen master, aren’t you?” Tamara asked.

“Yes, I am,” she replied with perfect aplomb.  “And don’t worry.  This ship has a fine doctor.”

“Captain, a ship just dropped out of hyperspace on a vector from Desdemona.”  George exclaimed.  Then he moderated his tone.  “Too far out for a full identification, but hyper footprint is consistent with a ship the size of the Emilia Walker.”

“Finally!” the Captain snapped, punching the arm of his chair.  He had decided that he was going to stay on the bridge for a few hours while he caught up on a few reports.  Even as a captain of an independent freight hauler, he still had reports to review, things to sign off on.  It wasn’t all sitting in the chair and giving orders, more’s the pity.  But now he was getting an answer to the question him that had been constantly on his mind since Folston.  Would they show up?  Well, he didn’t actually know that they had shown up, not yet, and based on their approach vector they would reach the fueling station before they came to the main orbital where the Grania Estelle was in orbit.

He pursed his lips.  “Kutok, send a message to Ka’Xarian at the fueling station.  Have him keep an eye out for that incoming ship and send an update once whoever is on that ship arrives.  Oh, and make sure he sends us an update on the fueling process.”

The fueling process was going like clockwork.  The collector had gathered up and refined enough helium 3 after two trips to top off the Kara’s tanks, for which Administrator Korneyev was breathing easier.  It would be at least another two rounds before Ka’Xarian had collected enough fuel for the Grania Estelle, but it seemed that the Captain was in no hurry.  They were still waiting for the wayward Emilia Walker and the Captain had said he was going to give it another good week or so before he made any kind of decisions regarding their next move.  Eventually they had a trip to Seylonique to get to, but there was no particular hurry, though the Captain was determined to go.  They had done a great deal of rebuilding to the Kara and he fully intended to get his payday for that.  Administrator Korneyev couldn’t trust that the governors on Seylonique wouldn’t stiff him if he didn’t go directly, so, that was their next stop.

Getting the work on their own fueling operations done was taking up a fair amount of his time and for the most part, when his team wasn’t working they kept to the common areas, out of the way of the station crew as much as possible.  The station itself wasn’t the most appealing habitat, it was well used, and it was hot, with leaky steam pipes, water dripping and mold forming on the walls.  There was a faint stink of damp and rust and fuel here, though very thorough scans from the shuttle confirmed that the air was breathable and that there were no dangerous chemicals or breaches in the hull.  Nobody on the team was truly happy or comfortable here, but they all knew it was a necessary part of their orders.  The station personnel weren’t hostile, per se, but they certainly were not pleased to have interlopers hanging around on their fueling station for days at a time.

“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.”

“And you think it’s your responsibility to do this, do you?”

“May I ask your interest in this, Mister Hana?”

“Oh, that’s no business of yours,” Hana replied, looking smug.  “You leave that ship alone.  My people will handle this.”  And he cut the connection.

Great.  The locals have decided to start a pissing contest.  He stood, heading for the door.  He flipped open his communicator.  “Vakkon, it’s me.  We’ve got a serious problem.”

“Yeah, I saw it boss,” the other zheen replied.  “One of the pinnaces has altered course to intercept the freighter.”

Ka’Xarian chittered a curse.  The Emilia Walker wasn’t a heavily armed ship and certainly wasn’t up for fighting off one of the pinnaces here.  The shuttle would be no help.  Each of the Grania Estelle’s shuttles had a laser cannon mounted on a turret on the top of the nose section, but that would be next to useless against the well-armed ship coming to intercept.  And with only four crewmen aboard the freighter and only Jesma and a co-pilot on board, they would not be able to prevent a boarding action on the Emilia Walker.  The pinnace had enough space aboard for decent amount of weapons, a flight crew of three and passenger space for at least seven or eight troopers, maybe a high as ten if they were crammed in tight.  There wouldn’t be a lot of room for amenities, but if the ship was heading strictly out for a snatch and grab, the crew might be willing to put up with the cramped quarters.

Which meant he had to explore other options.  “Call it in.  In fact, can you connect me to the ship?”  Entering the code on his communicator, he waited while the other zheen patched him through.  Vakkon had brought with him a serious communication package that would allow him to make calls across the system.  It wasn’t a large unit and it drew a lot of power.  So far, Xar had made sure that Vakkon had used it sparingly, because he really didn’t want to have to negotiate the use of the fuelling station’s fusion reactor to charge it up.

“Roger that,” Vakkon replied.  “You’re on.”

“Captain, this is Ka’Xarian on the fuel station.  We’ve spotted and made contact with the Emilia Walker.  They’re in bad shape and they’ve lost a lot of crew.  We were moving to intercept them but the locals seem to have taken an interest as well.  They’re sending one of their pinnaces out.  I think they intend to board her.  Requesting immediate instructions.  Message ends.”

“Sent, Xar.”

“Good.  Let me know when the captain gets back to me.”

“You know I will.”

“Now what the hell is this?” the Captain demanded as he watched the message from Ka’Xarian.  “Why the hell are the locals going after Emilia Walker?  She’s damaged and under crewed and if what Ka’Xarian says is true about her cargo, they’re not carrying anything.  What the hell?” he repeated.

“I don’t know Captain,” Stella replied, a bit meekly, her image hovering above the holo projector.  “There was no indication of any interest in them from any transmissions we intercepted from the orbital.”

The captain could help but smirk at that.  It wasn’t until the AI had been integrated into his ship that he decided that intercepting any transmissions from other ships or stations was a good idea.  Now, he found it an invaluable resource.  “Were there any transmissions from the orbital and the fueling station?”

“Yes, Captain, several.  Only two did not contain regular status updates.  One was a personal message from the head of the fueling station to one of the leaders on the orbital wishing him a happy birthday, the other was a thank you message back.”

“A happy birthday message?” the Captain said, tipping his head to one side.  That didn’t make sense.  “The people here don’t seem to be the fuzzy cuddly type.  Maybe it’s code of some sort.”

“The only thing that does make sense, Captain,” Stella replied.

“Get me the admin from the orbital on the line.”

Stella looked away for a moment, then nodded.  “Kutok has a channel open.  Go ahead, Captain.”

“This is Vincent Eamonn on the Grania Estelle,” he began.  “I understand that a freighter has entered the system.  They are friends of mine, why are you boarding them?”

“This is Orbital Control,” an unidentifiable voice came over the comms.  There was no video image accompanying it.  “We are not seizing the vessel.  Our pinnace is moving to intercept the freighter as it is showing damage and we have heard that the crew is in need of assistance.  We are moving in to provide aid.  That is all.  We would appreciate it greatly if you do not interfere with official business.  End transmission.”

The Captain raised his hands to shoulder level in disbelief.  “Why is it that I don’t believe a single word of that?”

“Well, Captain, the ship is damaged,” Stella pointed out.

“That is as may be, Stella,” the Captain conceded, “but I get a nagging suspicion that this is no mission of mercy.”

“What makes you think that, Captain?” she asked, concerned.  It was clear that the AI didn’t understand his thought process.

“I think it’s that birthday message, Stella,” he said, leaning his rear against the edge of the wardroom table.  “That’s just too weird for it to be genuine.  And then there’s the polite but firm ‘stay the hell out of our way’ message.”

“Yes, but you’d expect that kind of a message in any space-faring system,” she replied.

“Yeah,” he acknowledged.  “But this was nastier.  As though they knew they were doing something I wouldn’t approve of.  Not that they need my permission to do anything,” he growled.  “And it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it, either.”

“Why not?” she demanded, flaring.  “I’m armed for battle!  I have fully functional shields.  Let’s get the crew back aboard and go find my sister!”

He blinked at her sudden ferocity.  “You’re not a warship, Stella,” he reminded.

“No, but the only warships here are trying to steal that ship,” she raged.  “They might be there to imprison or kidnap the crew.  I can’t just sit here and do nothing.  Please, Captain.  Let’s go get them.”  She stared at him, her eyes pleading.

He hesitated for just a moment.  “Kutok!” he barked.  “Recall the crew, now.  Drop what they’re doing and get back to the shuttles.”

“One of them is on board, Captain,” Stella said.  “I’m getting a pilot down to the boat bay now.”

“Get Moxie and Corajen out of the workout room,” he ordered, heading for the hatch.  “I want all crew to stations, now.”

“Understood,” the hak’ruk replied.

A moment later he was on the bridge.  It was ridiculous, really, him being here.  But he felt as though he needed to be here now that momentous events were occurring.  But it would be at least two hours before the shuttles were back and the ship brought back up to full crew strength.  He had absolutely no intention of taking off without them, leaving those left behind to the tender mercies of the orbital’s population, especially after the cabal saw what Eamonn intended to do.  But he was antsy.  He wouldn’t be able to sit still and in truth, he wanted to be here on the bridge.

“Captain, are you sure about this?” George asked.  He flinched when the captain turned an iron glare at him, but he didn’t back down.  “Seriously, Cap.  I mean, I told you before when we entered the system, we might be able to stand up to two of those pinnaces, but certainly not three.  And that’s almost a day’s long jog to get over to the fueling station.  By the time we get there, any fight will be long over and the Emilia Walker and her crew would be docked, in station hands.”

The rest of the crew went completely silent, the only sounds to be heard were the whispering of the blowers and itinerant beeps emitted from the various consoles.  They all knew that George wasn’t speaking out of cowardice, but out of practicality.  This white knight gesture the captain was making was gallant and all, but it wouldn’t amount to anything if they couldn’t get there in time.  And despite all of her overhauls and upgrades, the lumbering bulk freighter couldn’t sprint as fast as those pinnaces across the star system.

“And there’s another wrinkle, Captain,” George plowed on.  “What about Kara?  She’s no fighting vessel either, in far worse shape than us.  If we’re going after Emilia Walker with any real chance of saving her, we’d have to leave Kara behind.  But if we do that, she’d be a plump target for the locals here at the orbital.”

Damn, Eamonn swore to himself.  He hadn’t considered Kara when he’d jumped on the train of enthusiasm Stella was driving.  But his Ops officer was right.  Kara wasn’t a warship, far less so than Grania Estelle.  She couldn’t come with them into what was almost certainly going to be a firefight and she couldn’t remain behind, either.

“Kutok, get Administrator Korneyev on the line,” he ordered.  A moment of manipulating the controls and the lupusan appeared on the Captain’s display.  “Administrator, we are going to do something that the Kara has no business being a part of.  I want you to break orbit and start on course to Seylonique.  Don’t stop, don’t turn back and don’t wait for us.  We’ll meet you in Seylonique.”

“I understand, Captain.  We’re getting underway now, but it’ll be days before we can reach the hyper limit.  I’ll try to wait for you…”

But he cut her off.  “No, I want you to go.  Don’t wait.  Don’t burn your engines out, but hold your best speed until you hit the hyper limit.”

The Administrator looked unsure.  Clearly this went against her nature, both as a lupusan and as a healer.  But eventually she nodded.  “I understand.  I’ll see you on the other side.”

He slashed his finger across his throat and Kutok closed the connection.  “Get Moxie on the horn.”

A moment later, “Captain, it’s me.  What’s going on?”

“Get your ass down to the boat bay and get your fighter prepped.  We’ve going on a trip and we’re going to unleash hell.  I assume you’d want to partake.”

She laughed and it was joyous.  “Oh, Captain my Captain, you do know how to make a girl’s day.”

“You going to be okay?  I know Corajen was giving you a good beating only minutes ago.”

“I’m in sickbay with the doc.  He’s giving me a shot of Combat Heal, and I should be good to go in a little bit.  Besides, we’ve got long hours before we can get to the fueling station.  More than enough time.”  She stopped and gasped in pain.  “Damn that burns.”

“You all right?”

“I’m fine,” she ground out.  “Damn Combat Heal.  Don’t worry, Captain.  I’ll be good to go in a little bit.  How long do I have?”

“About thirty hours.  I know it’s a long shot that we’ll even be able to do anything, but I’m taking us back there.”

“Understood.  Samair out.”

“Captain, they’re gettin’ closer,” Jolene cried, pointing out the front viewport in the cockpit.  “Look, one of the pointy ships is angling toward us.”

“Great,” Vosteros said, wiping a hand across his brow to get the sweat out of his eyes.  All he did was transfer sweat between his arm and his face.  “What’s the status on the sublights?”

“Only one lit, Captain,” Jolene replied, her grease smudged face looking grim.  “We couldn’t outrun them even if all of them were.”

“Maybe not,” he said, stroking his chin.  “But maybe we can make it harder for them to board.”

“How?” she demanded.  “I didn’t sign up to die!”

He glared at her.  “I didn’t either.  But I didn’t fight my way out of that hornet’s nest just to get boarded by more hornets here.  I thought this system was supposed to be safe.  Apparently not.”  He stepped out of the cockpit.  “Kay’grax!  What’s the status on our shields?”

The zheen looked over at him, white scratches all over his exoskeleton.  He was scorched and his right plating on his thorax was pitted from corrosive chemicals that had splashed on him during their tussle with pirates.  He was the only engineer left on the ship, this poor beleaguered ship and even then he was barely a power tech.  He had a feel for engines but up until his rapid promotion, he’d had only six months of experience.  He was learning the ropes very fast but there was so much to do and not enough crew to help him do it.  He was starting to buckle under the strain.

“They’re up, Captain,” he said, body and antennae drooping with exhaustion.

“Yes, thank you, Kay’grax, I know that.  But will they hold?”  The Captain glared at his engineer as well.

“No,” the young zheen stated bluntly.  He shook himself as the Captain’s stare intensified.  “Those ships fire on us?  The ones I’m seeing on the sensor feeds?  No, the shields will collapse.  The shields are at…”  He rechecked the feeds.  “Twelve percent.  They might withstand one hit.  Maybe.  But the next one would rip through them like tissue paper and with the hull the way it is…”  He trailed off.  “So if you’re asking me can we try to outrun that ship closing on us the answer is no.”

The Captain sighed.  He’d already known the answer, but was hoping that the engineer would have a different answer for him.  “All right.  Thanks.  Where’s Marcos?”

“Here, Captain!” the burly cargoman replied, coming up the ladder from the cargo area.

“What kind of small arms do we have left?”

The big man shrugged.  “Not much, Cap.  I got this stunner here,” he gestured to the pistol in a holster on his hip, “two more of the same and one shotgun.  Ammo is pretty low too, only one box of shells for the shotgun.”

Four guns.  Very low on ammo and three of those were only stunners.  If a team from that ship tried to board them, and he had every reason to believe they would, he and his crew would have no chance.  Most likely they would come aboard with heavy weapons and just blast their way on board.  Stun blasts from those pistols wouldn’t slow the boarding party down very much.

“Are you planning to fight them?” Jolene demanded, her voice trembling nervously.  The last time they had fought boarders hadn’t turned out well.  They’d only just barely escaped with their lives and even then, two thirds of the crew had been killed.

Vosteros sighed.  “I don’t want to fight anyone.”  He pointed to the front viewport over his shoulder.  “I don’t think they’re going to give me a choice.”

One of the consoles beeped and Jolene whirled to access it.  “Captain, the incoming ship is hailing us.  Again.”

“Answer them this time.”

The ship had been trying to speak with them ever since the Emilia Walker had exited hyperspace.  At first, Vosteros had declined to answer because it had taken all three of his crew and himself to get the ship moving under sublight power.  The sublight engines had been damaged by pirates before they had jumped into hyperspace but the myriad of other essential repairs had eaten up all their time and effort during the trip to Ulla-tran.  Four people trying to do the work normally for ten meant there had been a lot of sleepless nights during the long haul through hyperspace.  He had ignored the calls since then because he didn’t like the look of the local security ships hovering around the fueling station.  They didn’t look all that friendly and he was just being cautious.

This probably hadn’t been the best strategy, upon reflection.  Ignoring communications requests would probably only increase their interest in the Emilia Walker.  It would also make him look a bit more like a tempting target.

“Unidentified vessel, this is Vanku Sobris Maakan, of the Ulla-tran Defense Forces.  Our sensors are showing a great deal of damage to your vessel.  We are moving in to assist you.  We have medical and engineering teams aboard.  We request you cut your acceleration, lower your shields and allow us to board and assist.  Please respond.  End transmission.”

“That was sent four minutes ago, Captain,” Jolene reported, rubbing her cheek and smearing grime on her skin.  She looked up at him, clear worry in her eyes.  “You really think they’re coming in to try and help us?”

He looked at her.  “Do you?”

She hesitated.  “I’d like to.  But no.”

“Yeah, me neither.  Keep an ear out.”

“Do you want me to send a reply?”

“Not just yet.  Let’s pretend we’re really damaged and we’ve lost a lot of crew.”

She frowned at him.  “Captain, we are really damaged and we’ve lost a lot of crew.”

“Good!  That’s the way to look at it,” he replied with forced cheerfulness.  He clapped her on the shoulder.  “Then you’ll be able to make that silence convincing.”

Jolene gave him a look, but then went back to her instruments.  The cockpit was designed to be operated by three, two in a pinch.  There was simply too much to do if only one person was at the controls, though it did make things easier that they were on a ballistic course, which meant no course corrections were needed on the helm.  But if something did pop up, someone would be needed to fly the ship, which meant someone flight certified.

Vosteros checked the console, looking at Emilia Walker’s weapons.  She wasn’t a heavily armed ship to begin with, only a pair of laser cannon turrets, one ventral, one dorsal.  The fight with the pirates had damaged both, but during the trip in hyperspace, Vosteros himself had managed repairs on the ventral cannon.  They needed to get someone outside to so some spot repairs and it was probably a good idea to get to that now before that incoming ship got them in their crosshairs.

“I’m going outside,” he told her.  “I’m going to try and get the ventral gun online.”

“Are you kidding?” she nearly screeched.  “You’re going outside now?”

He didn’t answer, just went into the main part of the ship, leaving her alone in the cockpit to stare at the displays and the local ship growing ever closer.

Going out in an EVA hardsuit was never fun, even under the best of conditions.  Frederick Vosteros was trained in doing repairs in one (Emilia Walker’s crew was so small that there was a large degree of cross-training, and everyone needed to know their way around a wrench, a welding torch and a datapad) and he’d kept up his skills by going outside every few months.  Now, however, trying to get a gun turret online with an enemy ship bearing down was the textbook definition of nerve wracking.  It wasn’t easy to concentrate with that ship literally hanging over his head, but there was nothing he could do about that now.  He needed to focus.

With a will, he opened up his toolbelt and stopped before the turret.  The cannon itself looked to be in decent shape.  Two hits wreathed in carbon scoring punctured the base of the turret, which had disabled the movement actuators and the targeting systems.  There wasn’t going to be time to do a proper fix here and even with on the fly repairs, the actuator repairs were going to take more time than he had to get the cannon its full range of movement.  But there was nothing for that now.  Simply getting the weapon operable was going to take some work.  Once that was done, if needed, they could turn the ship itself to try and line up a shot.  Certainly not the best of the alternatives, but it was the only one they had at the moment.

“Try it now,” he ordered over his suit’s communicator.  “I think I’m done here.”

“Copy, Cap,” Marcos replied.  There was a pause.  “Targeting systems are up. Looking good there.  I’m going to start moving the gun around.  Stand back, Cap.”

“I’m clear, Marcos.  Just do it,” he snapped irritably.  He looked up.  He couldn’t see the incoming ship, but he knew it had to be close.

The cannon rose up and began to turn, tracking imaginary targets as the gun swiveled around.  It stuck a bit as it rotated and he pulled out a spanner to try and smooth it out.

“Captain, they’ve closed to five hundred thousand kilometers,” Jolene’s voice came over the comms.  “We’re out of time.”

“All right,” he said grimly, trying to control his breathing.  He began the walk back inside, which was strenuous in the bulky suit.  “I’m coming back in.  Get the cannon online.”

“Captain, are you sure that’s the best idea?” Jolene asked.  “I mean, we’re not in the best of shape and I’m not even sure that gun can really do much damage to that ship coming in.  That assumes we can even hit it.”

“Just do it, Jolene.  Stop arguing with me,” he huffed.  Damn this suit is heavy!

“Yes, Skipper,” she said, sounding contrite.  He wondered if she really was.  It was hard to tell with his people, especially after the tragedy they’d all lived through.

He was barely inside the airlock and out of his suit before Jolene called him up to the cockpit.  “They’re hailing us again, Skip,” she said, leaning over the console.  The seat right behind her was perfectly useable, and Vosteros was surprised she wasn’t sitting in it.  She turned to him as he entered and he could see the fear there.

“Anything new?”

“They’re demanding we cut accel, drop shields and prepare to be boarded.  And they weren’t so benevolent about it this time.”

“Oh?  They’re not on a mission of mercy anymore?”

“Oh, they’re still saying they’re going to help us,” she replied, though bitterness was coating each word.  “But now they’re telling us if we don’t stop and let them board they might be forced to fire on us.”

He frowned.  “That ship, even if it’s got military grade propulsion doesn’t have the legs to drag us all the way to the fueling station.  He’d be straining against us for days just to get us moving in the right direction if they hit us and took out our engine.”  Now he was the one who was bitter.  His poor ship.

“Are you really going to shoot them?”

He considered this.  He wanted to.  He didn’t have much of a punch, not with only one laser cannon, and while the enemy ship’s shields were raised they had no chance of hurting them.  But once they got close enough to board, they’d have to lower their own shields to mate the two ships together.  They might have to wait until they were right on top of each other, but they could do it.

“I am, but we’re going to wait.  Keep the cannon powered up, but cut acceleration and lower our shields.”

She grumped.  “They’re so low in power and coverage, there’s almost no point in having them up at all.”

Vosteros chuckled.  “No, I suppose not.  Helps keep the solar radiation off, I guess.”

“Skip, we’re far enough out that it’s pretty diffuse.  I think we’ll be okay.”

It wasn’t all that diffuse, to use her word, but the star’s radiation was relatively low enough that they should be all right for a while.  He wasn’t worried.  It was far more likely that he and his crew would be dead from “lead poisoning” than they would from excessive radiation exposure.  That wasn’t a ship full of medics and engineers coming over to lend assistance.  It was a boarding pinnace, packed with troops.  Even if they could only hold eight soldiers, stuffed in tight, that was double the complement of the Emilia Walker.  All they would need to do was mate with the ship, toss a few stun grenades inside and storm the cargo ship.  His handful of stunners and a single shotgun wouldn’t be able to stop them from getting aboard and taking what they wanted.

Which in all likelihood was the ship itself.  Sure she was beaten bloody, but Emilia Walker could be salvaged.  Eamonn and his people had proven that.  These people didn’t even need replicators; if they had machine shops to fabricate the parts, they could fix her up again.

“They’re not taking my ship,” the captain vowed, staring at the sensor display, which showed the local ship, the pinnace, growing ever closer.  The time it would take them to mate airlocks and lock the two ships together could now be measured in minutes.  “Not much time before they’re here.”

“What do we do?” Jolene asked, looking up from the displays to her captain.

“Once they get a little bit closer, we’re going to fire on them.  They’re saying they are all good and helpful people, and yet they’re doing nothing but issuing demands.  Have there been any attempts at visual communications?”  He pointed.  “I know it’s working on our end.”

She shook her head slowly, a small smile spreading over her face.  “No, Captain, there hasn’t.  They just sent messages from far out so they didn’t have to send visually.  Now that they’re closer, they haven’t said a damned word.”

“You’re catching on,” he said, clapping her on the shoulder again.  This time it was so hard she winced.  “Sorry, kid.  Let’s get the cannon ready.”

“Captain!” Kay’grax called, rushing into the cockpit.  “Shields are gone.”

“I know, we shut them off.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.  They were okay while they were running, but once the nodes stopped running, there was a fault in the main control trunk, which caused a feedback surge…”

But the Vosteros cut him off.  “We blew out the entire shield generator grid?” he asked darkly.

The zheen hung his head, his antennae dropping in shame.  “I’m sorry, Captain.  I didn’t see there was a problem until it was too late.”

“Well,” the captain replied, trying to keep from exploding in anger.  The poor young bug had done his best.  Kay’grax was an engine tech that he, the captain, had shanghaied into being the chief engineer.  At the time, they’d had no choice.  Vosteros himself had some cross-training in engineering, well, more of how to jury-rig components together to achieve a semblance of function, but the young zheen was really the only one left in the crew who had the slightest idea of how to keep the old girl running.  The lack of crew and serious damage they’d taken with the pirates certainly hadn’t helped things along.  In fact, it was a miracle that Kay’grax had kept the shields up and running as long as he had.  It was better that they failed here, all things considered, than while they were traveling through hyperspace.  The stresses of faster-than-light travel would have shredded the Emilia Walker, leaving nothing but free floating atoms.  Yes, being without shields in a planetary system just as they were about to come under attack was a serious issue, but perhaps not as serious as that.

“Just a little bit closer,” Frederick Vosteros muttered, watching the display.  Once they were within what he considered point blank range, he’d aim the cannon and fire.

His hand readied over the controls.

Vanku Sopris Maakan held her hands lightly on the flight controls as her pinnace closed in on the damaged freighter.  This wasn’t her first rodeo; she’d flown for boarding operations in this system on six other occasions and in all of them, the crews of the ships in question would always try something heroic and daring at the last moment.  She had no choice, the bosses wanted the ship and therefore she couldn’t fire on it until and unless they fired on her.  But she knew they would.  They always did.  They always tried something to try and stave off the inevitable.

The easiest way to deal with this would be to put a shot into the ship’s bridge, killing the pilot and possibly the gunners as well.  That, owing to the state of the ship, would probably depressurize the whole thing and take care of the crew, which meant the boarding party wouldn’t have anything to worry about once they got inside.  Then they could send a tug out here to tractor the freighter in to the Nestromu Orbital for docking and refit.               Sadly, the bosses didn’t agree with Sopris Maakan.  No one consulted the woman on the spot.  That was the way of things.  Labor did the work and management took the spoils.  But, Sopris supposed, that was the way of things everywhere.

Oh, it looks like the fun is just about to begin.  They’re making sure their ventral cannon is unobtrusively powered up, but they’re keeping it pointed away so that I won’t think it’s a threat.  She sighed, flipping a few switches on her console, readying the pinnace’s shields.  So, when are they going to whip that gun around and fire?  Should be any second now.

She kept her hand on the shield controls, ready to raise them at a second’s notice.

Sopris was a second too late.

“Now!” Vosteros crowed, pressing the firing control.

The laser cannon swiveled from its forward firing position to pointing straight at the incoming ship.  A burst of radiant energy lanced out from the cannon, piercing the nose of the pinnace, blasting apart the smaller ship’s forward guns and its portside missile launcher.  The second shot tore a meter wide chunk out of the nose of the ship, sending it tumbling slowly away from the freighter, its engines exposed to Emilia Walker’s gun.

But the third shot hit against the pinnace’s now-raised energy shields, causing them to flare in a wash of opaque solidity just shy of the ship’s engines.  And now the ship was angling back around.

“Oh, no,” Vosteros whispered, an icy fist clenching his heart.  It was happening all over again, just like the last time his ship was attacked.  He’d gotten off a good salvo, but it hadn’t been enough, his aim hadn’t been true.  He’d wounded the beast, but not enough for a kill.  And now he and his crew and his ship were going to suffer.

“Oh, you little bitch,” Sopris growled, swinging the ship around, damage alarms blaring.  Whoever was at the guns was a good shot, she had to admit that.  He had fired at just the right moment to catch her ship unprotected and that wasn’t easy to do.  Made even more difficult by the fact that she had been waiting for such a move.  “How did I miss it?” she asked, bringing her pinnace’s guns to bear.  She would kick herself about this later and she knew bosses would give her a good kick.  “Don’t worry,” Sopris said, speaking to the unknown gunner on the freighter.  “I’m not going to give you an opening like that again.”  She cycled through the missiles in the feed queue for her remaining weapon.

Pressing her trigger, the pinnace’s starboard missile launcher spat out one of its weapons, a missile that was little more than a tube with a warhead and a propulsion system.  It was not a “smart” missile, meaning it really had no guidance system, it was a weapon used on targets that were too big to miss that didn’t require a whole lot of precision.  Sopris had aimed the shot low, and programmed the proximity fuse to go off within a hundred meters.  Not a wide miss, but enough that the explosion from the warhead would only damage the ship (and its cannon) not blast the freighter to bits.

The detonation rocked the freighter and the cannon crumpled into a mound of unrecognizable metal and cracks appeared in the hull radiating out from where the explosion hit.  The ship wobbled unsteadily like a gyroscope losing its spin.  Atmosphere started hissing out from the cracks in tiny little jets from a dozen tiny breaches and Sopris’s sensors showed power was down on the ship to a tiny fraction.  In moments, the crew of that ship would be dead.

“Moving to dock,” she called over her shoulder to the rest of the flight crew.  “Make sure the boarders are ready to go over.  And make sure they have breather masks secured.”

“Copy that,” one of the other pilots replied.

“Thirty seconds until docking maneuvers are completed,” Sopris announced, getting the pinnace into position.

Vosteros picked himself up off the deck.  He put a hand to his head, which was throbbing uncontrollably, a goose egg forming near his temple.  Blood was trickling down his head; more from a blunt force trauma than a laceration.  His vision was blurry and vomit was on the deck next to him.  He didn’t remember emptying his stomach, but it must have happened.

Looking to the side, he saw Jolene lying on the deck next to him, but she was in far worse shape.  She was bleeding from a score of lacerations, small bits of metal were imbedded in the wounds, none of which were terribly serious.  Painful, yes, the captain could see, but none that would kill her.  Until he saw the sliver of deck plating that had punctured her throat.  The young woman was making gurgling, gasping noises and twitching uncontrollably.  Her eyes were already glazed over and the pool of blood was spreading on the side facing away from him.  He lurched, trying to get to her, but by the time he could even touch her arm, he knew it was too late.  His pilot, one of the few remaining members of his crew, was dead.

He started to gasp in panic, or at least, he thought it was panic.  The compartment seemed very loud, what with all the noise from the damage and there was a persistent whistling noise.  His head was swimming and the air was getting hard to get into his lungs.

“Captain!” Kay’grax shouted over the din.  The metal frame of the ship was creaking from the strain of the hit and the atmosphere was hissing out from the numerous breaches.  The zheen had hastily thrown on a bulky engineering hardsuit, meant for external repairs and yet somehow he was able to nimbly move around.  In one gloved hand, he had a breather mask, which he pushed up to Vosteros’s face, holding it there while the captain fumbled with the straps to secure it over the back of his head.  A moment later, the mask sealed around his face and suddenly he could breathe again.

“Jolene,” Vosteros tried to reach her again.

“She’s gone, Captain,” Kay’grax’s voice came over the mask’s comm unit.  “She’s dead and there’s nothing we can do about it now.  I need you to get up!”

“Head… hurts,” he moaned, his shaking hand touching his forehead.

Kay’grax gently pulled the man’s hand away.  “I know it hurts, Captain, but you can’t stay on the deck here.  That ship is closing they’re going to dock any second.”

“Wh-what?” the captain asked, confused.  Things were moving too fast.  His vision was spinning.

“He’s out!” the zheen shouted over the comms.

“I’m coming,” Marcos replied.  The captain didn’t know where the cargoman was, he couldn’t see him.

“I’m…” he licked his lips.  “I’m not out.”  His voice was weak and shaking.

“What do we do, Marcos?” the zheen demanded.  “They’re coming!”  There was a loud clunk and the ship shivered.  The zheen chittered in fear.

“Shut up, Kay!” the big cargoman shouted.  “We need to let them aboard.  The ship is almost dead and you and I can’t fix the problems fast enough to save the captain.”  Vosteros had no idea where the man was, every time he tried to turn her head he almost blacked out.

There was a very faint crash, one more felt than heard.  Why was it so quiet? he wondered.  Am I going deaf?  Am I dying?

“Here!” Kay’grax yelled, his voice sounding incredibly loud over the comms.  “Here!  This one is hurt!  He’s the captain you bastards!”

Six figures entered the ship, all armed with assault rifles.  They had combat suits on, sealed helmets with mirrored faceplates, probably meant to protect against bright flashes and doubling as a way to keep their identities hidden.  Not that it would matter much if they were just going to kill the occupants of any ships they would board.  It was a matter of minutes to secure the ship, but three of them stood over the three surviving crewmembers of the Emilia Walker, waiting for their fellows to finish up.  Once they returned, the three were hustled off the ship and into the pinnace, where two more guards were waiting, handguns ready.

“It’s going to be okay, Captain,” Marcos said, trying to sound positive.

Vosteros leaned back against the bench where the guards sat him down.  They were surprisingly gentle about it compared to the last armed boarding party that had come on his ship.  “Yeah, I don’t see how.”

Stella appeared on the captain’s display.  “Captain, I’m showing the pinnace has docked with Emilia Walker.”

“Damn it,” he swore.  After seeing the battle, which was really little more than an exchange of blows, he had feared the worst.  He was afraid that any minute he would see the fusion core breach and the Emilia Walker would be nothing but an expanding ball of particulate matter.

“Sir, we can’t save them,” George piped up.  The captain craned his neck to look at his operations officer.  “Even if we can get to them before they reach the fueling station, they have two buddies out there waiting to pounce on us.  And we can’t fire on the pinnace in question or we might kill the Emilia Walker’s crew.”

“We can’t leave them, George,” the captain replied patiently.

“Sir, you need to think this through logically,” George said, trying to keep calm.  “We haven’t even broken out of parking orbit yet.  We’re still waiting on our last shuttle to come back from the station, which we can’t leave behind.  Kara is barely two light seconds out from her parking orbit but once the station gets wise to what we’re doing, if even one of the pinnaces goes after her, she’s toast.  That’s to say nothing of the ones here that’ll pounce on us before we even get close to the fueling station.”

“And what about Ka’Xarian and his team?” Kutok chimed in, though she sounded as though she really didn’t want to speak up.  “If the locals decide they don’t want us interfering, they might grab them to use as hostages for our good behavior.”

“Why didn’t either of you speak up when I first gave the order?” the captain demanded, rising from his chair, crossing his arms over his chest and frowning at the two of them.

“I tried, Captain,” George said, going for broke.  “But you’re…” he stopped himself.

“I’m what?” he said, keeping his voice low and dangerous.

The ops officer started to look down, but then raised his face to look the captain straight in the eye.  “You’re very determined, Captain.  And more often than not, you’ve been right.  But this time, sir, we just can’t do it.  The big girl isn’t a warship.  We don’t have the guns, we don’t have the shields and we don’t have the armor.  Those pinnaces and their missiles will tear us up, even with Tamara out in her fighter.”

The bridge went completely silent, punctuated only by the soft chirps of the computers.  Finally, the captain nodded.  “How many others are with him?”

Before anyone else could answer, the ops officer plowed on.  “Captain, I’m not trying to undermine your authority.  I’m just looking to the best interests of the ship.”

“And you think I’m not doing that?” he asked, tone still dangerous.  “You think I’m just throwing our lives away?”

George swallowed hard, seeing the trap laid out before him.  “I think you’re trying your best to keep the ship up and running and to keep us safe, sir, but in this case, we can’t win.”  The last three words were barely a whisper, but everyone heard him perfectly.

The captain just stood and looked at his ops officer for a long moment.  George Miller wasn’t a particularly imposing man, he didn’t have the Captain’s stature or presence, but he’d been a fixture aboard the Grania Estelle and the bridge crew for years now.  He was a steady hand at the controls and very good at his job.  In fact, this was the first serious confrontation he’d had with his captain in all the years on board.

“George, you can leave the bridge now.”  The Captain’s voice was clear and unbending.

The man just stood there, dumbstruck for a long second, then secured his console and left the bridge.  He didn’t speak, he just walked out.

Kutok rose from her seat as well, the ends of her legs clicking on the deckplates.  “I’ll be going too, Captain,” she said, matter-of-factly.  The other bridge crew watched her go as well, saying nothing.  None of the others moved.

“Continue crew recovery,” the captain said hoarsely.  “Inform me once the shuttle is aboard.”  He turned and sat back down in the command chair, his eyes fixed on his display.  No one dared speak, but he knew they’d heard.

Chapter 24

Verrikoth smiled, looking out the window at the approaching ships.  There were seven in total, he could see six out of the window of Ajax as the freighter approached the rendezvous point.  Three of the ships were like Ajax, blocky freighters whose systems had been upgraded to make them more merchant raider than cargo hauler.  One of the other ships was a military vessel, a tiny vessel dwarfed by all the others, a corvette bearing Republic markings, similar to the ill-fated Fury.  The last three were cruiser-sized, looking like they had been welded together from a variety of parts, whether they matched or not.  All of the ship had that menacing air about them and the cruisers bristled with weapons.

Verrikoth’s smile grew larger as the ships in the window did.  The first arrivals.  A sword; a projection of his power in the Argos Cluster.  With these ships and more like them, he would rule here.  The first target, of course would have to be the main Republic base in Byra-Kae.  It wouldn’t stop the Republic from retaliating, in fact, it might enrage them all the more.  But the pirate captain was savvy enough to know that the citizens and government had no real stomach for war.  They grew squeamish at the thought of faraway conflicts and irate at the tax hikes to fund military projects outside the borders of the Republic.  The Argos Cluster was not part of the Republic and hadn’t been since the war.  And with both the Republic and the Federation angrily stalking their border, trifling little conflicts here in the Cluster paled.  People wondered why lives and resources were being squandered in an area of space with no value when those resources could be put to better use elsewhere.

He was counting on that, perhaps a bit too much, he admitted to himself in the darkest recesses of his mind.  Because if he posed too much of a threat, the Republic (and Admiral Tandred) would send a fleet into the Cluster and squash his little squadron flat.  Still, he was determined to give them a good showing if they did come after him.  And Byra-Kae would be a treasure trove of Republic technology, weapons, hell, even slaves.  Even if the majority was destroyed, there would be plenty to salvage there.  He could feel himself salivating just thinking about it.

“Two minutes to docking,” came over the PA.  He nodded.

Ajax closed with the nearest of the cruisers, settling in and linking up with it.  The cruiser extended a docking tube which sealed around Ajax’s starboard airlock.  The pilots of both ships easily maintained station and within minutes he was aboard the cruiser.

Commander Jensen Tyler was waiting just inside the airlock, his hands clasped behind his back.  The pirate noted that the commander had a pistol holstered on his thigh, but he wasn’t nervous because of it.  All of his crews went around armed, because they all went to dangerous places and did dangerous things.  The Cluster was a hazardous place, after all.  Granted, Verrikoth mused, it was perhaps a bit more dangerous because of his people and their activities, but he wasn’t going to quibble about that.

“Commander,” he said to Jensen as his feet touched the deck.

“Captain,” Jensen replied, inclining his head.

“How is my ship?”

The human visibly bristled, but didn’t say anything.  “The Ganges is ready.  We’re loaded with one hundred and twenty days of stores, fuel tanks are at sixty percent throughout the squadron.”  He grimaced.  “We’re running on straight seawater, though we’ve purified it all first.  But it took a lot to get the ships here.”

“Ssixty percent?  We’d be at only a quarter by the time we reached Byra-Kae,” the zheen pointed out.  “That will not do.”

“No, Captain, it won’t,” the commander replied.  “But a contact has told us that the collector farm at Ulla-tran has a great deal of fuel for us.”

“Collector farm?”

Tyler nodded.  “Yes, at Ulla-tran they have a number of fuel collectors and a massive storage of helium 3 and deuterium.  I believe they intended to sell it at cost, but my contact has convinced them to sell to us at a discount.”

“A disscount?  I have a squadron of warsships!  I sshould not have to pay anything!  Who would… dare try to extort money from me?” the zheen demanded.

“You need to look at this another way,” Tyler said patiently.  “Yes, we could fly to Ulla-tran and blast the system to pieces and take the fuel, or what might be left of it when the dust settles.  But then what?  We might get one big load of fuel and nothing else.  No one would work with us.  Anyone who did we’d have to worry about sabotage and other disruptions on everything we ever obtain from any source.  And we don’t have the labor pool to risk that.”

“What do you mean by that ‘labor pool’ comment?”

“I mean we don’t have the manpower to do everything ourselves.  And if we start shooting up legitimate businesses in peaceful star systems, no one will ever trust us.  Not to keep our word or to deal even reasonably, if not fairly, with them.  We’ll either meet gunfire everywhere we go, at worst, or have to worry about sabotage everywhere else at best,” he repeated.

The pirate captain considered this.  Unfortunately, the man was right.  He couldn’t afford to anger or frighten the various star systems too much.  “Very well.  How much of a disscount?” Verrikoth asked suspiciously.  Tyler named a figure.  The zheen nodded, his antennae bobbing up and down.  “Yess, that would be most acceptable.  And I do not think they will try to back out of our deal, not with the amount of firepower my squadron here pozessess.”

“No, I suspect they will not.  So to Ulla-tran then, Captain?” Tyler asked him.

“Yes, Commander,” the pirate replied, his mandibles clicking with pleasure.  “I am eager to show off my new toyss.”

The second shuttle had landed in the boat bay twenty minutes previous but the ship hadn’t moved.  The crew was confused, everyone was moving around as though they were walking on eggshells, especially on the bridge.  Only routine status reports were actually spoken aloud, everyone was otherwise silent, casting furtive glances at their captain and at the furious form of the AI who was stalking around over the holo projector as though she was a caged beast.  Every few moments, Stella would leave the holo projector and pop up on various displays throughout the bridge, as though she was pacing, losing what little composure she had left.

Everyone kept glancing at the captain in his chair, but no one addressed him.  Finally, he got up and exited the bridge, not saying a word to anyone.  The bridge crew watched him go, completely uncertain as to what they should be doing now for he had given no orders.  They all knew that he wanted to break orbit and head for the fueling station, but he hadn’t actually given the order to do so.  So, here they would sit, in parking orbit near Nestromu Station.  The whole crew (minus Ka’Xarian’s team) had been recalled back to the ship, the cargo loading had stopped with only about two-thirds of it completed and now no one knew what was happening.  Were they going into battle?  Were they going to follow the Kara out of the system?  Not even Stella knew the answer to that, though she stomped around in everyone’s displays, prodding people to “do better” and “work quickly”.

“What the hell is going on?” Mairi demanded, pushing a hover cart carrying two missiles under the port wing of Tamara’s fighter.  The weapons were secured to the cart with heavy cargo straps and seated in special grooves on the cart to keep them from falling off and onto the deck.  “We’ve been sitting in orbit ever since the last shuttle landed.”  She took one hand off the control handle of the cart and jerked a thumb at the small, boxy vessel.

“I know,” Tamara replied, unfastening one of the straps on the weapons.  The Perdition fighter had already been loaded up with four other missiles just like these two and with these, it would put three each under wing.  These missiles were ordnance of Tamara’s own design, painstakingly developed over the last several weeks; missiles with decent range, tracking capability and enough punch to (theoretically) take down a capital warship’s shields.  That last feature hadn’t been tested, not in battle, but the engineer was confident that her designs would do well.  Against the pinnaces that she would be engaging, she wasn’t exactly sure how well they would perform, but she was sure that the crews of the small ships would think twice after the first one got hit.

The robotic lift arm moved over, grabbed hold of the missile, securely, and lifted it up into position under the wing.  The magclamps locked the weapon in place and the arm took the last missile and repeated the process.  Tamara took hold of the last one and gave a firm but gentle tug.  The missile didn’t move and she nodded in approval.

“I really hate it when you pull on those,” Mairi said, having winced when her boss and tried to dislodge the weapon from the wing.  “I keep waiting for the time when you have faulty magclamps and we have an explosion in the boat bay.”

“Oh, relax,” Tamara scolded, tossing a rag at the other woman, who caught it before it hit her in the face.  “The warheads aren’t armed.  Clanging to the deck might make your ears ring, but you won’t die from it.”

The younger woman sighed.  “I’m not even going to justify that comment.  You have no way of knowing how that missile would react if it hit the deck.”

Tamara smiled.  “As a matter of fact, I do.  But that’s not what making you all jumpy.”  She glowered at her.  “Spill.”

Mairi threw her hands up in the air in frustration.  “What do you think I’m jumpy about?” she retorted.  “The captain said he’s going to take the ship into battle.  We’re supposed to go after the Emilia Walker and rescue the crewmen that the locals captured.  We’re going up against ships that can tear this one,” she waved a hand to encompass the whole of the Grania Estelle, “to bits.  And the captain doesn’t seem to be the least bit concerned about that.  I mean he cares about Emilia Walker and her crew, but what about us?”

Tamara chuckled as the young engineer vented.  “Well, it’s clear that you’ve put some thought into this.  But have you considered why we haven’t moved yet?  If he didn’t care about us at all, he’d have fired George and Kutok when they stood up to him about this decision and we’d already be moving in the direction of the gas giant.”  She arched her back, trying to loosen sore muscles.  “But we’re not.  So what does that say?”

“It says that I have no idea what’s going on aboard this ship.”

Tamara laughed out loud.  “Now that sounds about right.”

Mairi threw the rag back at her.

The captain was in his stateroom, sitting in a chair, the display on the table showing an image of the Ulla-tran star system, that part of it in range of Grania Estelle’s sensors, anyway.  Tamara and her replicators had truly done an amazing job on them, he reflected, swirling the drink in his glass.  He’d been nursing it for over an hour now; the ice cubes had long since melted.

The door chime sounded and he growled in frustration.  There was never any peace aboard this ship.  Not that his actions this time actually courted peace.  He was deliberately putting himself, his ship and his crew, not to mention the surviving crew members of the Emilia Walker, in harm’s way.  He’d never intentionally done that before.  Oh, sure, over the years he’d fought off pirates and other ner-do-wells in the Cluster, but he’d never actually gone on the offensive before, for all the reasons that George had mentioned.  Of course, the big girl had never been in as good repair before, not since she’d been launched.  But he couldn’t shake the knowledge that his operations officer was right.  They couldn’t win.

But he couldn’t abandon Emilia Walker.  Sure, there was no actual agreement standing between himself and Captain Vosteros.  They’d fixed up the man’s ship and agreed to meet here to discuss some other mutually beneficial arrangements.  That was it.  They weren’t partners or really even friends.

So why did he care?  He wasn’t a man with a tender heart, not when it came to other ships in the Cluster.  This was a rough place, but it was one that he had chosen to do business.  Sure, the Republic and Federation markets were open but there were just as many problems dealing with them, the pirates in their respective bureaucracies as there were with the pirates and governments out here.  But the life of an independent freighter captain wasn’t one that inspired trust or the willingness to stick one’s neck out for others not of one’s own crew.

The door chime sounded again.  It was getting increasingly more difficult to stay shut in here and alone with his thoughts if people wouldn’t leave him be.  It sounded a third time and then came the sound of someone’s fist banging on the metal.  With a grunt, he set the glass down on the table and heaved himself from the chair.  Walking to the hatch, he keyed it to unlock and then pulled it open.

“Look, Taja, I’m not in the mood for…” he stopped, when he saw that the young woman was not in fact standing in the hatchway.

“Not in the mood for what, Captain?” Corajen asked, folding her arms over her chest.

He sighed.  “What do you want?” he asked, leaning on the door jam.

“To talk with you.  To find out what our plans are.  And what you intend on doing with the crew of the Emilia Walker.”  She stared at him pointedly.  “May I come in?  Or are we going to have this conversation out here in the corridor for all to hear?”

He stepped back from the hatch and went back to his chair.  The lupusan followed, closing the metal door behind her and heard the latch clack shut.  He gestured to the other chair and she took it, eyeing the drink back in his hand.  He sipped it, but her sharp eyes could tell that he wasn’t really tasting it.  It was more of an ingrained habit.  A drink was in your hand, you imbibed.

“What do you want?” he repeated when she was settled.

“I want to know what’s going on, Captain,” Corajen told him.  “Are we going after Emilia Walker?  Because I think that ship has sailed, to use a cute phrase.  Ka’Xarian reported in that the locals grabbed the ship about an hour ago and brought it in to the fueling station.  The engineer also reported that three people from the Walker’s crew were brought aboard station and taken to the infirmary under heavy guard.  The ship itself is in a parking orbit near the station and what looked like an engineering team was sent out for evaluation and repairs.  We might be able to get the ship back, and that’s very tenuous from what I hear, but we don’t have the boarding parties capable of getting those crewmen.”

Eamonn snorted, then sipped his drink again.  He grimaced at the lukewarm taste and set it down.  “I thought you were a one-female army.”

She preened slightly at the compliment.  “I am, but that wouldn’t be enough.  Even with everyone from Security with me and even if we were armed to the teeth, we wouldn’t be able to get clear.  There are just too many people on board that station.  And I suspect they probably have double the amount of security officers as we do.  They know the territory.  It’s just a bad situation.  A bad situation that I don’t think we can win.”

The captain laid his head back, staring at the ceiling, letting out a long breath.  “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“You wanted to be the knight on the stallion, riding to the defense of the weak.”

“Thanks.  But I would trade the stallion for the Grania Estelle any day.”

She smirked at him, showing a little fang.  “That’s actually part of the problem, Captain,” Corajen pointed out.  She patted the bulkhead fondly.  “I love the old bitch, but she’s not built for that type of mission.  They’d tear us up and we’d still fail.”

But he was shaking his head.  “We wouldn’t fail.  We could get through.”

“But to what purpose?  One or two good shots to the engines and we’re done.  It would be weeks of repair and rebuild in a hostile system.”

He was on his feet, pacing around the compartment.  “But we need to do something!” he demanded.  “We can’t just sit here.”

“Why do you care so much?” the lupusan asked, genuinely curious.  She didn’t seem the least bit threatened or perturbed that the man was stalking around like a caged animal.  Though the predator in her couldn’t help tracking his movements by sight, sound and smell.  “They aren’t our crew.  Hell, we barely knew them.  Just another freighter crew.”  She eyed him.  “Is it because they owe us?”

He stopped and gaped at her.  “What?”

She started to nod, slowly.  “That’s it, isn’t it?  They owe us for all those parts and labor from the wrench teams and you’re upset about not getting what we’re due.”

His incredulous look turned irritated.  “That isn’t it.  That isn’t it at all.”

She chuckled.  “Captain, you’re not known for your altruism.”

“That’s because I don’t shout it to the heavens, ‘Look at me!  Look at how good a person I really am!’ like a lot of those hypocrites do,” he countered.  “I try to help out where I can.”

“Then why?” she asked again.  “It isn’t likely that Emilia Walker could ever really pay us back for the services rendered, even if they joined up in full partnership with us.  Are you trying to buy them out?”

“No,” he growled, turning away, leaning one hand against the bulkhead.  She didn’t push, knowing he’d speak when he was ready.

“Captain, what are you thinking?” she asked after several long moments had stretched out without him speaking.

“It was that damned engineer,” he muttered, but her sharp ears easily caught it.

“Who, Quesh?” Corajen asked, genuinely confused.

He turned back to her, a look of irritation on his face.  “No, not Quesh.  You’re being deliberately thick.  Moxie.”

“Samair?” the lupusan asked, her ears flicking as her confusion level rose.  “How does she work into this?”

The captain began to pace, running his hands over his scalp.  “She changed everything.  When she came here, the ship was barely holding together and in some cases was actually falling apart.”

“Right, and you worked out a deal with her to fix us up.”

He nodded.  “And my ship came back to life.  Sections that no one had even seen in years were rebuilt, refurbished.  We have full shields, an upgraded reactor, more weapons, hell, I can even fill the cargo holds.”

“And how does that relate to our current situation?”  He sighed.  “What?” she asked.

“Hope.”

“Hope?”

“Yes, hope,” he snapped.  “For the very first time, we were up and running.  We weren’t just barely surviving, skating by on luck and not a little skill.  We were moving.  Hauling.  We were even making money.  Lots of it.”

Corajen flicked her ears again.  “Still are, if memory serves.”

He grunted.  “And then she so easily talked Vosteros into accepting our help and then bullied him and me into joining forces.”

“I’m sorry, so you’re trying to save Vosteros and his ship because Samair bullied you into it?” she asked, smiling.

“No,” he replied, glaring at her.  “I’d given Vosteros my word we would help him.”

“So?”

“So, my word is actually good, which is why I rarely give it.”

“So it’s a pride thing?”  She snorted.  “Men.  Typical male bullshit.”

“If you’re just going to insult me, you can leave,” he grumped.

Corajen grinned evilly.  “Oh, I’d love to see you make me.”  They locked gazes until she yawned and looked away after a moment.

“I suppose there was a degree of pride,” he conceded after some thought.  “But it was more than that.  They came here, to this system, because of us.  Because of me.”

Finally, the lupusan nodded.  “I understand.  They came here because you said to come.  And now the locals have them.”

“I can’t just leave them, Cora.  I can’t.”

Corajen sighed, shifting her position in the chair.  “I get where you’re coming from.”

“But George was right, damn him,” he growled.  “The big girl can’t stand against the defense ships.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“I don’t know,” the captain admitted.  “But I think we need to have more heads working on this than just yours and mine.”

“So long as there are no suicide charges,” she warned.

He nodded.  “I don’t want to die, either.  But I won’t just turn away and leave knowing I did nothing.”

The wardroom was full for the first time in a long while.  All the department heads where here.  Stella was sitting cross-legged on the table, just over the holo projector, checking her fingernails, a thunderous expression on her face.  She had been determined to charge to the rescue of the Emilia Walker.

“All right,” the captain began, addressing the room at large.  “I will not be taking the ship in and trying to make a daring rescue against all odds.”  There were collective sighs of relief at this.  After the initial euphoria from the Captain’s bold announcement had faded, the fear had set in.  The grumbling and the whispers had quickly followed.

“But neither am I about the leave the Emilia Walker and her crew to rot.  We’re going to do what we can to get them back.  I want ideas.”  He gestured for the others to speak.  “The floor is yours.”

He looked around, but no one was willing to be first.  The captain saw that both George and Kutok had decided to attend.  He had not made attendance compulsory, despite the tradition on a ship that a summons from the Captain constituted an absolute imperative.  He had asked them to attend and made sure that they understood it wasn’t an order.  And still they came anyway.

Quesh sighed, laying all four hands on the table.  “Well, we can’t take the ship in, but what about a shuttle?” he asked, breaking the ice.

Eamonn straightened; Stella perked up a bit, though the expression on her face had turned sour.  “That sounds promising,” he said.  “What can we do with one of the shuttles?”

Quesh and Tamara exchanged glances.  “Well, Captain,” the chief began, “it’s a shuttle, not a battlecruiser, so there is a limit.  But we can upgrade the armor, shields and power systems.”

“Make it more like a combat dropship or an assault shuttle,” Tamara agreed.  “Could probably hook up some weapons too.”

“We’d lose about a third of the cargo space,” Quesh admitted.

“Might even be as much as half,” Tamara disagreed.

The Parkani nodded.  “Fine.  But we could still fit all of your security people on board.”  He looked over at Corajen, who was across the table.

She nodded back.  “We’d need specs.  I’d want to know exactly how much room it had, what the exits were like, etc,” she said, ticking points off on her fingers.

The chief nodded in agreement.  “We’ll mock something up for you this afternoon.”

Tamara looked around and then spoke.  “But that wouldn’t solve the underlying problem.”  She locked gazes with George, who had leaned back in his chair, arms crossed.

“Do enlighten us,” the captain replied, letting out a long breath.

She frowned at Eamonn, but continued.  “They’re going to see us launching that shuttle.  And unless we can secure the Emilia Walker’s crew and escape to the hyper limit before they can catch us, we’d still get attacked by the system defense forces.”  Tamara sighed.  “And we can’t win that fight.”

“So you’re saying there’s nothing we can do,” Corajen replied.  It would have been easy to make that statement sound angry, but it was just a statement of fact.

“I’m saying,” Tamara said calmly.  “That there’s going to be very little we can do that won’t lead the locals straight back to the Grania Estelle and the very combat situation we are trying to avoid.”

“So we do nothing then?” Saiphirelle demanded.  “I thought we were going to help, not cower here in fear of what might happen.”

“We can’t stand up to the defense ships here, Saiphirelle,” Tamara shot back.  “I’m sorry, but we can’t.  And nothing we can slap together in a few days is going to do the trick either.”

“What would?” the snarling lupusan asked, ignoring the look and the growl she was getting from her sister the security chief.

Quesh and Tamara exchanged another glance.  Tamara shrugged.  “A squadron of starfighters,” the Parkani said, looking up at the overhead, at the ducts and the pipes.  “Maybe four or five assault shuttles.  A purpose-built warship or two.”

“None of which we have,” George spoke up.

Murmurs spread around the room as people recognized the predicament.

But Saiphirelle wasn’t finished.  “But Stella thinks we can do this.”  She pointed a clawed finger at the AI, who nodded.

“Stella is a child!” George roared, slapping a hand on the table.  The AI looked as though she would murder him and was about to speak, but he cut her off.  “I’m sorry, Stella, but you are.  You’ve been in only one combat engagement and that was against forces not as strong as these.  And even then we barely escaped!”  He glared at the lupusan.  “And you know it.  You were the one who attached the bomb to the load of gadolinium when Ganges was chasing us.”

She started to rise, a growl low in her throat, fangs bared.  But Corajen placed one clawed hand on her sister’s arm and the light furred female dropped back into the chair, her gaze never leaving George’s face.  Her temper hadn’t receded at all, but she was controlling that rage.  “Better be watching yourself, foolish boy,” Saiphirelle hissed.

“No one is threatening anyone,” the captain said idly, as though the comment was of no importance.  No one missed the order in his tone.  “Now,” he said after a minute, as the lupusan sat back, her lips covering her fangs again.  “I’d like to try and come up with some sort of solution here; any kind of solution.  So I want ideas, no matter how stupid, reckless or inadequate they sound.”  Eamonn said to them all.  “We are going to rescue the Emilia Walker and what’s left of her crew.  So I want to hear what you’ve got.  Even you, little girl,” he said, smiling at Stella, who bristled and then stuck her tongue out at him.

Over an hour of ideas thrown out and thrown back.  The meeting actually degenerated into a shouting match at one point and the captain called for a break.  Nothing they had come up with so far had even the remotest chance of working and they were all tired of rehashing the same arguments.  The captain sent them off, back to their departments to think on it and perhaps get some ideas from other sources.  Yes, the officers were the ones who ultimately made decisions, but insight and inspiration could come from the most humble of sources.

The captain caught a conversation on his way to the mess hall.  A small group of crewmen, a mix of cargo people and some of Quesh’s engineering team were arguing as they were coming out of the mess.  They parted for the captain as he came down the corridor the other way, all of them straightening up as he passed.  Several of them acknowledged him.  “Hi, Captain!” one of them said.  He only nodded, though and then they continued their argument as they walked.

“Oh, that is the stupidest idea yet,” one of the cargo handlers said derisively.  “Stealth suits?  Where the hell are we going to get those?”

“From the replicators,” the engineer replied.  “They can build anything and Commander Samair has the proper codes.”

“You’re an idiot,” another of the engineers told him.  “Even if we could build them, it would take the class five for that and it’s still just a hunk of corroded metal.  We haven’t even started refurbishing it yet.  That’s a good week of work right there.  The freighter crew hasn’t got that kind of time.”

“It’s still a good idea,” the first engineer grumped.  “Besides, we were talking about if it was possible.  No one said anything about time!”

“What the hell did you think we were talking about?” the cargo handler spat, his voice carrying down the corridor, even though they were all out of his sight now.  “The captain needs viable alternatives, not pipe dreams.”

“I don’t hear you coming up with anything,” the grease monkey complained.

The captain chuckled to himself and entered the mess hall.  He was greeted by the aroma of one of Cookie’s stews and he quickly grabbed a tray and stepped into the chow line.  There were only a few people in front of him, who when they saw him immediately insisted he cut the line to the front.  The captain did not wait in line with the rest of the crew!  He laughed good-naturedly and obligingly stepped to the front of the line.  One of Cookie’s mess attendants ladled some of the hearty stew into a bowl, tossing a pair of crusty rolls and another small bowl of salad onto the captain’s tray.  He thanked the man and wandered off, leaving the mess hall entirely.  Normally, he stood on privilege and had his meals delivered either to his stateroom or the wardroom, but today he decided it would be best to allow himself to be seen by the crew.  And he didn’t need to be waited on hand and foot.  (Not that it wasn’t nice, most of the time.)

Twenty minutes later he sat at the wardroom table, empty food bowls pushed away.  He’d bus them back to the galley later, but for now, he was getting back to the main problem at hand.  The crewman’s idea about stealth suits was a good one, but the other crewman’s comment that they couldn’t build said suits was also valid.

But there was another problem.  His own ship couldn’t sit here forever.  Taja had already closed the deal on several contracts from the orbital, which meant that he needed to get the ship moving.  Not that he was terribly concerned about that right now, as most of his attention was focused on the problem with the Emilia Walker.

“Am I kidding myself here?” he asked to the room.  Here was no one in the room, but he didn’t mind.  “There doesn’t seem to be anything we can do for them.”

Stella appeared on the table’s holo projector and sat down.  “I don’t think that you are, Captain,” she said.  “You’re trying to help those people.  We’re trying to help those people.”

“You’ve never even met them, Stella,” he pointed out.  “Why do you care about them?”

She sighed.  “Why does anyone care about anyone else?” she countered.  “I mean, it would make so much more sense, from a safety perspective, to just ignore them and all other ships and just continue on our merry way.  If we only worry about our own ship and our own crew we’d probably be better off.”

“Until the pirates eventually catch up to us,” Eamonn said.  “Then it would be nice to have someone else who might be willing to watch our back.”

“So is that your answer, Captain?” Stella asked.  “You want to have someone to have your back?”

“That’s my answer,” he replied.  “But what’s yours?  You haven’t really answered.  In fact, you made an argument for not helping out the Emilia Walker and the others.  You were all for going after them a short time ago.  What changed?”

Stella leaned back, resting her hands on the table, as though she was actually leaning on the hard surface.  “I still think that we can get in there and take them.  But I’ve gone over the sensor data we had for the pinnaces and what Ka’Xarian sent over to us from the shuttle’s sensors from the attack.  I’m a little more apprehensive about charging into the fray, I’ll admit,” she said ruefully.  “I got a little over excited.”

“But you still want to go over there?”

“Maybe it would need to be a combination of things,” the AI mused.  “We can’t just go over there, cannons blazing.  We’d get into a fight and the pinnaces would swarm me under.  But what about going over there to collect our crew, collector and fuel?  We would have had to do that anyway.”

“Right,” the captain said, leaning forward, putting his elbows on the table.  “So that can get us in position.”  He paused, then nodded.  He pulled his communicator out of his pocket.  “Taja, it’s me.”

“Yes?”  She sounded bored.  She probably was.  After yanking her and her crews off of their loading jobs, the cargo division had been sulking in the common areas, the cargo bays and their quarters.  Taja had actually refused to speak with the Captain, since he offered no real explanation, no apology to her, even after the reasons for his action had gotten around the ship.  At first, Taja had been concerned, thinking that the ship was about to come under attack or pirate ships had been sighted in the system.  But when the truth came out, that the Captain was looking to play hero, she had been beyond angry at what he had done to her loading schedules.

“I know I pulled you off cargo loading.  Go ahead and resume.  Get everything on board that we purchased from the orbital.”

“We’re not going after the ship?” she asked, confused.

“We still are, but we’ve been acting suspicious enough by cancelling loading ops halfway through.  If the locals ask, tell them we had an injury or something aboard the ship.  Tell them the Doctor had a safety seminar.  I don’t care what you tell them, but I know you know what to do.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Taja told him and signed off.  He sighed.  She’d already been making him pay for this act of altruism and brotherhood with angry comments and rants, but he had steadfastly ignored her.  She wasn’t angry at him for wanting to save another ship and its crew, no she was upset the he had just left all their cargo to sit in the orbital’s hangar bays.  In a more candid moment, the fiery woman admitted she was terrified by the prospect of leaping into battle.  She was a cargo specialist, not a soldier.  He’d try to find a way to make it up to her at some point in the future.

“Okay, so we gather up our cargoes and fly the ship over to the fueling station.  Xar and his team can try to locate the Emilia Walker’s crew and maybe cause some mayhem over there,” Stella said, getting excited.

“Slow down there,” the Captain admonished.  “I have no doubt that Ka’Xarian could cause some havoc over there, but he doesn’t even know to do it.  And we can’t just call him and tell him.”

Stella looked down at the table.  When she looked up, utter despair was etched on her face.  “We’re not going to be able to save them, are we?”

He sighed heavily.  “I don’t know, Stella,” he replied.  He rubbed his nose and then slapped his hand lightly on the table.  “I honestly just don’t know.”

“So what do we have?” Ka’Xarian asked to the group at large.  They were aboard the shuttle in the fueling station’s main hangar bay, the one place where the zheen was sure that the locals wouldn’t be listening.  He swept the shuttle for monitoring devices every day, using a few toys of his own design and was sure that no one was listening.  They’d discovered a few bugs and removed them, and judging by the dirty looks station security had been giving them indicated they were aware their surveillance wasn’t working.  It didn’t mean they would stop, Xar knew, but it did mean that he would need to keep up with his own countermeasures.

“I’ve found the survivors of the Emilia Walker,” Sally Duncan, one of Xar’s power techs spoke up.  Sally was tall for a human woman, dark skinned with a frizzy mop of hair.  She was arguably the most serious member of the Grania Estelle, though some argued she and Kutok were tied for that particular honor.  However, there were few aboard who could run a reactor like she could, which was why Quesh and Ka’Xarian valued her as part of the team.

“Where?”

“They’re being held on Deck Four, section two-twenty,” she replied sourly.  “Which is as bad as it can get.  From what I can tell, the compartments they are being held in are right up against the outer hull.”

“Which means that if we can locate exactly where that is, someone on the outside of the hull could cut through and get them out,” Jesma reasoned.

“Yes, someone could,” Lorcan Hughes said.  He was a heavy worlder who had the short, square and stocky build characteristic of those born on higher gravity planets.  “But as soon as you breached the hull, the atmo would get sucked out into the void and kill anyone inside.”

Jesma shrugged.  “So then we pull the shuttle up to the side of the hull, extend a sleeve and get seal.  Then we can cut them out.”

But Lorcan was shaking his head.  “Yeah, that would work, but there’s no way Hana and his people wouldn’t notice us flying right up to the hull of the station where we have no business being.  They’d probably just shoot us before we got anywhere near the station.”

“So what’s the alternative?” she demanded.  “Storm the cells from within the station?”

Now it was Ka’Xarian who was responding in the negative.  “With just us?  We wouldn’t get near that part of the station.  We could try a few tricks with the computers, maybe even spoof them for a while, but it wouldn’t be enough.  Even if we made it all the way to the shuttle and managed to launch, once we were in open space, the pinnaces would come for us.  I doubt we’d be able to launch a cyber attack on the pinnaces.”

“Be nice if we could,” Lorcan replied.  “I’d need to get a look under the hood of one of them in order to try.  We need to see the hardware and what kind of software and firewalls they have.  It could be done, potentially, but they’d have to come in to the station and we’d need access to really try.”  Then he sighed.  “I suppose it might be possible to attack them remotely, but we’d only get one shot.  Once they detected an intrusion, we’d be on lockdown and its game over.  Unless there’s something else going on to distract them, like a battle going on outside.”

“Captain’s a tough bastard, but even he knows our ship is no match for the locals.”

“So it’s over then,” Jesma said, slumping onto one of the passenger couches.  “We can’t get them.  If we try, we’re dead or ending up just like them.”

The all just sat and looked at one another, no one having anything else to add.  Finally, Ka’Xarian spoke up.  “Fueling ops will be completed in six hours.  Then we go out to the gas giant, drain the collector, pick it up, and then head back to the ship.”

“The station’s been paid?” Lorcan asked.

Xar nodded, his antennae bobbing up and down.  “Yes, we’re ready to go.  I’ll contact the captain and let him know that we’re ready.”  No one was happy with that remark, but then, no one had any new ideas.  He looked around at them all.  “You all look like I’m pulling the plug on this because it might cost us or the ship a few credits.  Going after them will get us all killed.  But I’m willing to listen.  If someone can come up with a plan to spring them from their rooms and get us out of the system that has even a remote chance of succeeding, I’ll consider it.  So.”  He paused.  “Now’s the time.  Otherwise, I’m pulling the plug, we’re all back here on the shuttle in six hours and we’re out of here.”  He surveyed them all, dark looks, averted eyes, relief at knowing they weren’t going to have to risk their lives, and even shame for feeling that relief.  But no one spoke up.

“Well, all right then.”  He stood.  “Something comes to you in the next few hours, come find me and let me know.  But for now, I’m off to the mess hall.  I recommend you all get something to eat or some rack time.  Who knows?  We might be busy.”  And he turned and pressed the control to open the side exit hatch to the shuttle.  The door pulled in slightly and then slid to the side, opening to the rust-colored metal interior of the hangar bay.  He stepped out and onto the deck and continued on to the main door into the station, leaving them all to look at each other and his retreating form.

Several hours later, ninety minutes before departure, Ka’Xarian returned to the shuttle.  His team was waiting there for him; they hadn’t moved from the hangar since he’d left.  They’d thrown ideas around, rejected most of them, tore all of them apart and tried to rework them, so far no one had come up with anything viable.  Throughout all the arguing, Lorcan had sat with his portable connected with his tablet, typing away, yet still participating.

“So, any new ideas?” Xar asked.  “Because we are rapidly approaching time to go.”

Glum looks came his way, though Lorcan had a puzzled frown on his face.

“What?” the zheen asked impatiently.  “Now’s the time.”

“Well,” he began slowly, holding his tablet in his large hands.  “I’ve been working on a knock-knock package for our friends here.”  He flicked his jaw to indicate the station and its inhabitants.  “It’s a whole whack of viruses, worms, Trojans, rabbits and a host of other goodies for them to enjoy.”  An evil smile spread over his face, garnering chuckles from the others.

Xar’s antennae wheeled in amusement.  Lorcan was a decent software geek, though his build was atypical for someone of that persuasion.  He was just another example of false assumptions.  Though he could sling plasma conduits and heavy girders as well as any knuckle dragger and no one wanted to get into a boxing ring with those iron fists of his.

“Do you need to be at a console to upload it?”

Lorcan shook his head.  “Not necessary, though I could if we needed to.”  He paused.  “Though now that I think on it, that might be better.  If we could upload from somewhere away from the hangar, it would delay them from suspecting us, even if only for a little while.  That would give us time to grab the Emilia Walker’s survivors and get back here and then leave.”

“What about the defense ships?” Vakkon asked.  “They’d be all over us as soon as we left the bay.”

“The knock-knock will take care of that,” Lorcan assured him.  “It’s programmed to attack the station’s communications and then all of the processing and computing power they have.  If all goes well, no one would be any the wiser until we’re underway.”

“Okay, what about the station?” Jesma asked.  “Sure, the crew starts scrambling around to try and deal with the software issues, but there are eight hundred people aboard.  How do we get to the prisoners?”

But Ka’Xarian shook his head, trying to stay focused.  He held out a hand for the tablet and Lorcan passed it over.  He skimmed through the coding.  It was good; almost a thousand varieties of attacks that would hammer the defending computer system every few seconds.  Breaching viruses would tear into the firewall and at the very least create a hole for more of the attacks to get through.  Hopefully the station’s software and protection systems weren’t as good as Lorcan’s knock-knock.

“All right then.  Lorcan, you and Jesma go and find a good place to deliver your parcel.  The rest of you, we need to fake a thruster failure that will require us to stay on until they get back.  We get to work up a plan to get into the guts of the station in the knock-knock’s confusion.”  Everyone nodded.  “Real cool, people.  Don’t sneak around, no furtive glances.  Just a normal pain in the ass maintenance job.  Got it?”  More nods.  “Move.”

The station seemed much more hostile now that they had decided to act against its inhabitants.  As Jesma and Lorcan walked through the corridors heading for the secondary hangar on the far side of the fueling station, they passed crewmen and station security, nodding at them in what they hoped was a nonchalant manner.  No one questioned their presence, in fact, no one seemed to care about them much at all.  They had been aboard the station long enough that two freighter crewmembers didn’t attract any attention, especially here in the public areas.  They weren’t carrying any weapons, at least, nothing visible, and they weren’t walking around with large crates or boxes or computer components, doing nothing to draw attention to themselves.

It didn’t take them long to make their way over to the other hangar, the station wasn’t all that big, though they moved at a leisurely pace.  Once there, they saw tugs and shuttles parked, one of which was taking off, and about thirty or so crewmen here working on the shuttles, loading and unloading cargoes and in a few cases, simply standing around.  The two of them made their way to the customs terminal at the rear of the hangar.  It was currently unoccupied, because the local officials were off in other parts of the hangar, making inspections and working with the crews of the various ships.  There were only three officials on duty here, which made Lorcan feel a bit better.  Jesma watched the room while he strolled up to the console.  Connecting his tablet to the terminal with a cable, he watched as the progress bar increased.

“Come on,” Jesma muttered urgently, trying to look unconcerned.

“Can’t go any faster,” he said back.  “Almost there.”

No one was looking at them, thankfully, but the both knew it would only be a matter of moments before someone became interested in their presence.  Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the upload was complete and Lorcan quickly extracted the cable and started walking for the door.  Jesma followed behind, then lengthened her stride to catch up.

“I think we did it,” she whispered, barely heard over the sound of the hum of the station.

“Don’t jinx it,” he warned.

“Hey!” a voice bellowed from behind them.

Lorcan grimaced, shaking his head only slightly.  “Damn it.”

“What do we do?” Jesma asked, clearly starting to panic.

“Keep calm.”

“Hey!” the voice repeated, accompanied by the clunk-clunk-clunk of booted feet on the metal decking.  “Stop right there!  You two!”

Jesma visibly paled and started to hyperventilate.  “Stay cool,” Lorcan commanded in a low whisper.  She nodded, trying hard to control the trembling.  He turned to the approaching voice.  It was one of the customs agents, dressed in his gray uniform with red sleeves and gold piping.  It was both bland and garish at the same time, Lorcan decided.  He was a tall, thin man, but one who looked like he had seen everything and was less impressed with the new stuff that kept coming in to his station.  Holstered at his hip was a stunner pistol, but as the man approached, Lorcan noticed that his hand was covering the butt of the weapon, ready to draw at any provocation.

The heavy-worlder wasn’t scared.  He’d taken on more serious opponents in the bars on Yullankla than this man.  He was sure he could take the man down with a good punch to the gut if it came to that.  He hoped it wouldn’t because he knew the minute he struck this official, the jig was up and it would be all over but the running.

“What?” he said to the man, planting his rocklike fists on his hips.  Jesma turned with him, looking spooked and guilty, but Lorcan poured menace into his own expression, trying to keep the man’s attention on him.

“I saw you over at my terminal,” the tall man said, looking down at the squat engineer.  “What the hell did you think you were playing at?  Trying to mess with my schedules?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Cockroach,” Lorcan growled.  “Leave me and my comrade alone.  We didn’t touch your damned terminal.”

“Oh, yes you did,” the man replied, poking a finger into Lorcan’s very solid chest, as if daring the shorter man to do something.  “You plugged your tablet there,” he gestured to the device in Lorcan’s right hand, “into my terminal.  What were you doing?”

“You mean this tablet?” the engineer asked, holding it up.

“Yes, that one!” the customs agent declared, reaching to take it.

But Lorcan pulled it away, and the man’s fingers closed over empty air.  “I didn’t do anything to your precious terminal or your oh-so-important schedules.  I was just synching this up to station time.  I needed a console to do that; yours was the closest.”

The agent studied him, studied his face.  Lorcan was as impassive as stone.  Not one iota of emotion or tell so much as flicked across his features.  He knew that Jesma was on the verge of collapse from pure anxiety and terror.  But she was holding it together.  She was on the verge, she hadn’t toppled over it yet.  Lorcan found his fists tightening, and he had to slightly loosen his grip on the tablet for fear he would break it.  He didn’t know if the man was starting to get suspicious, but then the agent’s face brightened.

“Mister Truelove,” he said jovially.  “Showing excellent timing as always.”

Jesma gasped, elbowing Lorcan lightly on the arm.  “Lorcan,” she warned.

The heavy worlder turned to find himself face to chest with a very well-muscled man.  He was dressed in a shipsuit that was extremely form-fitting, with pupils so dark they were black.  His sleeves were rolled up, displaying hard and very tattooed forearms.  He had a stun pistol holstered at his belt as well, though it looked as though he had no interest in using it.  The scars on his arms and face gave testimony to a man who liked to work with his hands.

Lorcan wasn’t impressed.  He’d gone toe to toe with a lupusan before and come out on top, and still found time to spar with the security people on the Grania Estelle despite his duties.  This man was tall, but height wasn’t enough to intimidate him.

“Security is on their way, sir,” Truelove said.  His voice was very nasal, which didn’t seem to fit with his physique.

“Excellent.”

“Wait a minute,” Lorcan demanded.  “You can’t detain us.  We haven’t done anything.”

“Oh, we both know that’s a lie,” the agent replied.  “You did something to my terminal.”  He flicked his gaze over to Jesma, who was so pale she looked as though she would pass out.  “And clearly you’re nervous about something.  I think she’s intimidated by your… size, Mister Truelove.”

The big man shrugged, an evil grin on his face.  “Most women are.  But that’s just the way I am.”

Jesma shuddered, and Lorcan knew that time was running out.  If they examined his tablet, they would find the specs for the knock-knock and they’d be done.  There was no constabulary in this system, local law would be used.  And since the fueling station was Goris Hana’s own private little domain, it would be unlikely any leniency would be shown.  If they were really lucky, only the two of them would be arrested and charged and the rest of the team would be left alone.  That was unlikely, he knew.

He struck.  His left hand whipped outward in a chopping motion, and the edge of the tablet smashed into the agent’s throat with a crunch.  The man went down, gasping and clutching his throat, eyes bulging.  Whipping around, he saw Truelove had been stunned by his actions.  Clearly, he had thought that he had intimidated the shorter engineer, and was simply standing there, slack jawed.  Balling up his fist, Lorcan drilled it into the tall man’s stomach, throwing all his weight and strength behind the punch.  With an “oof,” Truelove doubled over.  Driving his knee upward, he connected with Truelove’s face.  Blood blossomed from the man’s shattered nose and he went sprawling backwards, thumping against the bulkhead, sliding down and unconscious to the floor.

Jesma just gaped at the scene before her, cringing at the agent’s panicked gurgling sound.  Lorcan went over to Truelove, pulling the stun pistol from his belt.  Clicking off the safety, he fired two shots into the tall man’s chest, then pumped another two into the customs agent.  The gasping stopped, but it was clear the stun blast hadn’t actually solved the man’s problem.  His windpipe was crushed from the force of Lorcan’s blow with the tablet.  Now he would just die in his sleep as opposed to agonizing pain and terror.  For that Jesma was thankful, but she glared at the engineer accusingly.

“What the hell did you do?” she demanded, managing to keep her voice down.  Lorcan moved over to the customs agent and took his weapon as well as all the ID cards and data crystals he could find on the man.  “What are you doing?”

“I took care of the immediate problem,” Lorcan said getting to his feet.  He handed over Truelove’s pistol to her, keeping the other for himself.  “We need to beat feet back to the hangar and quick.”  He raised the data pad from where he’d dropped it on the deck, grimacing at the cracked face and the smashed in end where he’d hit the agent.  The main screen immediately powered up, but then it flickered intermittently.  “Damn it.  Oh well, I guess I’ll need to get another tablet.  Or maybe a datapad.”

“What the hell are you babbling about?” she hissed, grabbing the sleeve of his shipsuit.  “You just killed that man!  And you might have killed him!”

He glared at her, as though she was some annoying child screaming for a later bedtime.  “And what do you think would have happened if I didn’t?  Did you think that once they checked out my tablet that they would have just sent us on our way?  Or do you think they would have arrested us and tossed us in the brig alongside Vosteros and his people?  How could we have helped them then?”

“I didn’t sign up for that,” she told him, disgust on her face and a stricken look creeping over her features.

“You signed on to help the crew of the Emilia Walker,” he pointed out, his own look just as hard.  “You knew that at some point, someone might get killed.  Don’t whine at me because you’re getting squeamish now that the hard part has just begun.”

“Just begun?” she whimpered.  Jesma looked very lost and afraid now, a far cry from the cocky wrench holder and pilot demeanor she normally portrayed.

“Oh, yeah,” he said.  “My little knock-knock is going to be hitting the firewalls in less than two minutes.  Once that happens all hell is going to come crashing down on this station.  And we’re going to have to move quickly if we’re going to rescue Vosteros and his people.”  He took off at a brisk walk down the corridor and after a long moment, another glance at the men lying on the deck, she trotted off after him.

Book Four: The Hammer Falls

Chapter 25

Goris Hana sat in his control room, staring at his various monitors and displays, when one of the feeds flickered.  It was just a small flicker, but it was enough to catch his attention.  He turned to look at the monitor, which was still showing a status feed of the fuel tank farm, which were at about ninety percent capacity.  The bloated toad tapped on the monitor’s surface and the flicker came through again.  He frowned, tapping it again.  This time, when it flickered, so did the virtual display of the life support feeds.  Growing concerned, he brought up his control pad and activated the control to refresh all the screens.  They all blanked out and five seconds later, they all reset, but now three more were flickering, as though there was some sort of problem in the computer system.  This was no faulty circuit.

“What is going on?” he demanded to the empty room.  Stabbing a finger on his comm button, he signaled Operations.  “This is Hana.  What is going on up there?”

“Sorry, sir, we have a bit of a situation,” his exec replied.  “Escalating computer problems.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Hana rumbled irritably.  “What is happening?”

“Glitches, sir,” the man reported.  “And they seem to be getting worse.  Long range communications are still up and life support is actually unaffected so far, but the computers are running slower.  It’s as if a lot of programs are running in the background that are eating up all the processing power.”

“Well fix it!” the toad demanded, slapping a hand on his desk for effect.

“We’re working on it, sir,” the man said, sounding harried.

“Work faster,” he growled, ending the call.  “I do not have the patience for this today.”

Things were rapidly falling apart on the station.  Four of the emergency airlocks popped open, venting atmosphere from two different decks before crew were able to seal the inner doors.  No one was sucked out into the void, but sixteen people were brought to the station’s infirmary with exposure.  The lights began to dim and flicker all over the fueling station, much to the annoyance of everyone.  The lifts would stop abruptly and then set off again in the opposite direction, often at breakneck speed.  With the lights going out, the screams of absolute terror could be heard throughout the station.  Three of the massive fueling hoses inexplicably began spewing fuel all over the second hangar, sending workers scrambling in all directions to try and contain the fuel before either too much was lost or it ignited.

In a short time, the communications array began sending random bits of messages, music, pieces of a variety of conversations and entertainment vids on every channel and frequency, clogging everything up.  No one could get a clear signal to anyone else in the system, even on the emergency ones, as a jumbled mass of communications came through, sounding like coherent static, as the crew’s ears were able to detect the myriad and sunder of transmissions, but they made no sense whatsoever, until finally ear-shattering feedback began to blare over all of those frequencies at random intervals for random amounts of time.

No one in Operations had any clue what was going on.  The workers at their consoles stabbed impotently at the controls, trying desperately to get some semblance of order back to their stations, but it was all for nothing.

One of the workers called to his supervisor.  “Sir!  I think I know what’s going on.”

“Well spit it out, man!” the supervisor yelled, exasperated.  His once orderly control area had been reduced to all the order and discipline as a rave nightclub, complete with flickering and flashing screens, loud obnoxious noise coming from anything with a speaker, and finally the blue smoke smell of burned electronics as various computers and other systems began to short and finally burn themselves out.

“Well, sir, we just had Nelson and MacKenzie up here yesterday and they just ran through their scrubbing protocols.  And now suddenly all our systems are going completely crazy.”

“So you’re saying it’s a virus,” the boss stated.

“I’m saying it’s some kind of malware, yes, sir,” the man replied.  “But with the system on the fritz like this I don’t know if we have a way of finding where it came from.”

“Right now, I don’t care where it came from,” the boss told him.  “Start isolating it and getting our systems back.”

“On it.”  He turned away, to his nearby colleagues.  “Start pulling consoles out of the network.  Then we can flush out any viruses and such and then restore from clean backups.  Won’t be as quick and efficient as running on the network, but it will prevent further contamination of the whole system.”

“Then do it,” the boss said, flipping open his communicator to update Hana.

“So I think at this point, they should have gotten the idea to start breaking apart the network,” Lorcan said to the others from the shuttle.  He had warned them all not to connect to the station net by any means while this was going on.  No calls out using the shuttle’s comm system, no updates, don’t even set the clock.  The others were smiling at this, all but Jesma who still had a horrified expression on her face.  She was seated in the cockpit of the shuttle, as far from the heavy worlder as she could get and still be aboard.  Lorcan and Ka’Xarian both believed that she would not want to work with the big man ever again after what had happened in that hallway.

“And you sound like that’s a bad thing,” Vakkon said suspiciously.

But Lorcan shook his head.  “No, it is a good thing.  But the knock-knock is designed to work individually as well as in a network.  So if they isolate systems, the programs are self-replicating.  If even a small portion of the knock-knock survives, it’ll rebuild itself in the individual systems and crash those.  It’ll take them a while to completely purge the system so they can install clean backups and get their systems back.”

“Self-replicating software?” Ka’Xarian asked, his antennae wheeling in amusement.  “You didn’t come up with that on your own.  And I know you didn’t do all the coding for that.”

Lorcan had the grace to look embarrassed.  “Well, Stella and Commander Samair may have made a pass or two through the coding and made a few… suggestions.”

The zheen nodded.  “That makes more sense.  But whatever.  It’s working.”  The smiles faded as everyone realized the hard part had just begun.  “Now we need to get through the station and get those people out.”

“Cargo loading operations completed, Captain,” Stella reported, her voice coming through the bridge’s overhead speaker.  “The last shuttle is unloaded, and the cargo division is just trimming out the load now.”

He nodded.  “Good.”

“Captain?  I’m reading something strange from the fueling station.”  George had resumed his station on the bridge, though Eamonn had had serious doubts about bringing the man back.  But he had returned with his usual efficiency and within no time at all, they were back into normal routine, the incident behind them, but not forgotten by either party.

“What is it, George?”  The Captain damped down on an involuntary reaction to snap at the man.  He was trying very hard to keep his emotions in check.  He had a feeling George (and probably Kutok) was doing the same.

“The fueling station is broadcasting all sorts of noise on every channel.”

Serinda, at communications, nodded.  “I’m getting that too, Captain.  I was just about to report.”  The raven-haired woman looked up at him.  “They started about six minutes ago, but we only just received the first of the communications.  And George is right, it’s just… noise.”  She held up her hands in confusion.

“In fact,” Stella said, appearing on the captain’s display, “it’s a mishmash of overlapping conversations, and other audio and video files.”

The Captain stroked his chin.  “Why would they do that?”

“They wouldn’t,” Serinda replied.  “Not intentionally.  They’re essentially just clogging up the communications frequencies with junk.  I can’t understand what happened though.  No one has transmitted anything to the station that should have caused that.”

“George?” the Captain asked, turning to the operations officer.

“They haven’t taken any damage, no one has attacked them,” he replied, studying his readouts.  “Two of the pinnaces have moved into the station for docking since the transmissions started.  Probably going in to try and render assistance.”

The Captain turned back to his own displays, pursing his lips in thought.  “Anyone have an idea what’s happening?”  Then he noticed the AI covering her mouth as though to stifle giggles.  “What?”

“I think I know what’s going on, Captain,” she said, before she was overcome with a laughing fit.

He sighed.  “If I have to say ‘what’ again, you are not going to like it, Stella,” he warned her.

She straightened, composing herself.  “Sorry, Captain.  But as I said, I think I know what’s going on.  Ka’Xarian’s team have deployed the knock-knock package we’ve been working on.”

Eamonn stared at her blankly.  “A… knock-knock package?” he asked, his tone dripping with derision.

“Yes, Captain.  It’s a software package that Lorcan, Tamara and I have been working on for the last little while, while we were in hyperspace on the way here.  We thought that at some point we might need to drop a bad day in someone’s lap and it seems that Lorcan did so.”

“How can you be sure?”

She shrugged.  “The communications scramble is one of the particulars of the program.  It attacks everything in the target’s computer system.  I’m sure the crew of the station are in pure hell right now, if the communications scramble is any indication.”  Her look was smug.

He thought for a moment.  “What are the other defense ships doing?”

George consulted his displays.  “One of the pinnaces is holding station at the orbital, Captain.  But the other two are hauling ass over to the fueling station.”  Then he frowned.  “One of the remaining ships around the fueling station has just taken off away from the station.  It’s on a course that will take them straight ‘up’, above the plane of the ecliptic, but I don’t think they’re aiming for anything in particular.  The fueling station is really at the extreme range our sensors, even with all the upgrades.  I can’t really get a good fix on what’s going on.”

“Well then,” the Captain said, turning to the helm.  “Since we’re done with the cargo loading, I think we’re done here.  Nav, helm, set us a course over to the fueling station and engage engines when ready.  We’ve got fuel, crew and a shuttle to pick up after all.”  Smiles broke out among the bridge crew.  “George, Serinda, keep eyes and ears open.  Sing out as soon as we have something.”

“Aye, Captain,” they chorused.

“So what did you do?” Tamara and Stella were in the wardroom with the Captain.  He had brought them both there to discuss this knock-knock package they had designed and not told him about.  “And why wasn’t I informed?”

Tamara looked to the image of the AI, who had seated herself cross-legged on the table.  “Lorcan was the one who was really working on it, Captain.  Stella and I took a few passes over the coding, made some suggestions.”

“He was really the one who was designing it, Captain,” Stella agreed.

“Okay, fine, I’ll yell at him later,” he replied.  “Still doesn’t explain why it is neither of you two informed your boss about it.”  He eyed Tamara.  “I’ll bet Quesh wasn’t even aware you were working on it.”

She shrugged again.  “No, Captain, he wasn’t.  But Lorcan was extremely careful, I made sure of that.  He kept all his work off the ship’s net, and made sure it was quarantined at all times on devices that had no network connectivity or wi-fi.  I don’t want that crap getting into Grania Estelle’s systems any more than you do.”

He glared at her, but then shook his head.  It was over and done with and frankly, he was glad he hadn’t known about it at the time.  He knew he wouldn’t have been happy knowing something like that was on his ship that might accidentally get uploaded to the ship’s systems, leaving them a drifting, dead hulk.  Then he started as he made a mental connection.

“Wait.  If this software package is so dangerous, and you,” he gestured to the AI’s image, “are essentially all software, how did you possibly look over the coding without corrupting yourself?”

She grinned at him.  “Oh, Captain.  Who’s to say I’m not corrupted?”

His face turned to stone.  “If that’s a joke, it is really not funny.”  He turned to Tamara.  “Is she joking?”

She nodded, though a smile touched the corners of her mouth.  “She is, Captain.  I’ve gone over every single bit of her coding to double check, but I verified it.  She’s fine, if a bit twisted.”

Stella sniffed.  “You made me this way, Creator,” she accused.

Tamara snorted, smiling for real.  “Don’t remind me.”

“So then how did you view the program?” he asked again, crossing his arms over his chest.  “And no jokes this time.”

“The same way you meat bags do, Captain,” Stella replied.  His eyes narrowed at the slight, and she ducked her head in apology.  “Sorry.  With my eyes.  I used the internal cameras to read the coding on Lorcan’s tablet as he was working.  He did a good job; Tamara and I just made a few adjustments and suggestions.”

He huffed.  “Fine.  No more freelancing like this,” he warned them both.  “Quesh, Corajen and I are to be informed of all your little side projects.  I’m not saying don’t use your initiative, I’m not saying don’t come up with ideas.  I just don’t ever want to be caught in the dark like this again.  Am I clear?”

“Clear, Captain,” Stella said.

Tamara nodded.  “You’re right, Captain.  I’ll make sure you’re in the loop on all side projects.”

“So, next question,” he said, moving to the next problem.  “The Emilia Walker.  Can we salvage her?”

Tamara chuckled, leaning back a bit in her chair at the table.  “Captain, I think that’s dangerously, no, recklessly optimistic.  Assuming Xar and his people can even grab the remaining crew from the freighter and get off the station, we’ll be running like crazy for the hyper limit.  Trying to stop and grab a ship that most likely has station crew all over it?  That’s insane.  We don’t have the boarding parties to do that.  Hell, we’re going to be extremely lucky if we can even get Xar and his team back, much less the survivors of the Emilia Walker.”

The captain sighed.  “So we’re back here again,” he said.

She nodded ruefully.  “Yes, Captain, I’m afraid we are.  I’m all for trying to rescue those poor people, but it’s going to be quite a magic trick if we can pull it off.  We’re doing pretty good on the pulling the rabbit out of our collective hat right now with the knock-knock, but Xar and his people still have to get the crew back and get off the station without getting apprehended or shot.”

“I trust you and my other officers will come up with something,” he told her.

“Oh, so now you want to leave it all in our hands?”

“I’m hoping I won’t have to leave it in anyone’s hands,” the captain replied.  “I’m hoping that Xar can liberate the crew, we recover the shuttle, our fuel and the collector and we just mosey out of the system while everyone is too busy scrambling around to deal with the issues created by your knock-knock.”

“Lorcan’s knock-knock,” Stella corrected helpfully.  He gave her a dark look, clearly not in the mood.  She ducked her head again in contrition.

“See if the two of you can come up with something else to kick them in the teeth with,” he ordered.  “Get Quesh in on this.  Let’s do this right.”

Tamara nodded.  “Aye, Captain.”

“Then get to it.”

The Grania Estelle was under power again, heading to the fueling station in orbit of the gas giant.  The trip would take them about a day and they were three hours into the trip.  The captain was in his quarters, just about ready to lay down for a few hours of sleep when his door chime activated.  Just about to climb into bed, clothed only in a pair of silk pajama pants, he set in palms on the bed and let his head droop in exasperation.  Straightening up, he grabbed the robe off his chair and threw it over his shoulders.  Going to the hatch, he keyed the latch release and pulled it open.

Taja was standing on the other side.  The two of them had not spent any time together since his original announcement that they were going to rescue the Emilia Walker.  After that, she might have warmed up to him again, but he had set her and her crews to work in collecting up all of the cargoes that had been abandoned on the loading dock of the orbital.  So then there was a mad scramble among Taja and her people to get all of that collected up and ferried up to the ship.  Then once there, they had to trim out the load to make sure everything was balanced, which also took time.

“I’m glad to see you,” he told her.

“Do you have a minute?” the cargo specialist asked, a very slight frown on her face.

He stepped back, allowing her to enter.  She stepped over the bottom of the hatch and walked inside.  He took a breath and closed the hatch behind her.  Turning back to her, he went back and sat down on the edge of the bed.  “I’m guessing the minute you want isn’t going to be for anything fun.”

“Why are we doing this?” she asked bluntly, without any preamble.

He shook his head, blinking.  “I don’t follow.  We’re talking.”

“No, you great idiot,” she fumed, pacing around in a circle.  “Why are we going after the crew from the Emilia Walker?”

He ran a hand over his scalp.  I knew this wasn’t going to be fun.  “We’re going after them because I’m not willing to leave them to the mercies of the people in this system.”

“We don’t know there’s anything sinister in their motives,” Taja pointed out.

The Captain gave her a look of disbelief, raising an eyebrow.  “Really?  You really think that the locals will treat them well, patch up their ship and send them on their merry way?”

That brought her up short.  “No,” she admitted.  “But that doesn’t justify going in there.”

“I disagree.”

“What about the rest of us?” she asked, glaring at him.  “You’re risking one hundred and twenty-four lives to potentially save what, ten?  Maybe?  Our lives, the ship, everything on the very slim chance that we can get them out?”

He nodded.  “I know what that sounds like, especially with you using that accusatory tone.  But I’m not willing to just leave them behind.”

“When did this start?” she demanded, utter frustration in her voice and on her face.  She balled up her fists, raising them to her jaw level for just a moment.  Then she opened her hands and ran her fingers over her face before turning to look at him again.  “I can remember three other instances where we turned away and left people to their fate.  Worrying more about us than strangers.  Your family over strangers.”

“That’s true,” he said.  “It made me sick inside.”

“No it didn’t!” she spat.  “I was there with you, Captain.  I remember exactly how sick you were.  Relieved would be a much better word to describe your feelings, not ‘sick’.”

He leaned back on his hands and looked up at her.  He was tired, they were going into a very dangerous situation in the next few hours; he was fully prepared to admit that.  He didn’t want to fight with Taja right now, though he knew that she wasn’t going to let this go.

“What do you want from me, Taja?” Eamonn asked.  “You tell me.  You seem to have all the answers.  Yes, in the past, I was relieved that my ship and my crew, my family, as you so helpfully pointed out, had managed to escape from some deadly situations.”  Taja made a face.  But he continued.  “The ship is finally up to spec in most places, and we’re starting to get some money coming in.”

“Yes!” she exclaimed.  “We are.”  She came and sat down on the bed next to him.  He sat up, putting his elbows on his knees.  “And getting involved in this... this… craziness is just going to jeopardize everything.”

“It might already be too late,” he pointed out.  “If the engineer’s sabotage really does some serious mayhem over on the fueling station, the locals might think that we’re involved.”

“Oh great,” Taja complained.

“And yes, I think there’s a degree of risk.”  She eyed him and he chuckled.  “Fine.  A large degree of risk.  But I gave my word to Captain Vosteros that we’d work together.  I’m not just going to leave him and his people hanging.”

“You don’t even know if he’s alive!” she hissed.  “And since when did we care about the crew from another ship?”

“Since now!” Eamonn snapped.  “And not every ship and every crew, but that one.  I gave him my word we’d help and I’m not going to walk away.”

“Stupid male pride,” Taja growled, anger rising.

He stood up, walking over to the tiny lavatory.  He took a glass from the side of the sink and filled it with water from the tap.  “If that’s how you want to see it.  And I think I’m done having this conversation.”

She sat there for a long moment, watching him drinking the glass of water.  She could see him clenching and unclenching his free hand, so Taja knew that he wasn’t totally calm.  But she knew he wouldn’t budge.  He was set to this course of action and now, so were the rest of them.  “Fine.  Sleep well.”  The small woman stood up and went to the hatch, pulling it open and walking out, leaving it open.

He sighed.  Setting down the now empty glass, he went to the hatch and closed it.  Pressing a control, he heard the locks click shut.  Letting his head droop again, he leaned with one hand against the hatch.

“She wasn’t happy,” Stella’s voice came from the overhead.

He wasn’t even startled.  He knew that the AI liked to eavesdrop on private conversations, a habit she’d grown into.  Most of the time she truly didn’t care about the things the crew talked about and just ignored them.  But on his orders, she did listen in on and record any conversations that dealt with the safety of the ship.

“No, Stella, she wasn’t,” he agreed.  “And to be honest, neither am I.  But I’m too tired to talk about it.  Good night.”  He went to his bed and climbed in.

The AI paused for a moment.  “Good night, Captain,” she said finally.

The morning brought a lot of worried glances and nervous conversations.  When Tamara entered the mess hall, the tables were full of crewmembers in for breakfast, but very few were actually touching their food.  Shaking her head with a sigh, she stepped into line at the galley, taking a tray.  Helping herself to eggs, bacon and some ikin-fruit, and coffee of course, she hustled away from the serving line before Cookie could come out of the kitchen area and glare at her.  They hadn’t spoken to one another since their harsh words on the orbital and neither seemed in the mood to try and mend fences.

Tamara plunked herself down at one of the very few empty seats near the middle of the room, next to Saiphirelle, two bulky men from cargo and one of the life support techs.  None of them were eating, though the lupusan’s tray was empty.  Everyone else was looking at each other and making low conversation, as though they were afraid of letting their words be heard by the officers or worse, Stella.  Tamara dug into her eggs with a will, making little noises of pleasure at the excellent fare.

“How can you eat so much?” one of the cargomen asked.  He wasn’t a small man, in fact he was powerfully built, with a barrel chest and tree trunk like limbs.  Most likely he was more than capable of packing away the food, but the atmosphere of the galley could best be described as grim.

She shrugged.  “I just got up and last night I was busy doing maintenance on the port sensor array.  EVA work is exhausting.”  She took a bite of bacon, washing it down with a sip of coffee.

“No, I meant right now,” he clarified.  “We’re flying toward certain death.”

“I didn’t sign up for this,” the life support tech, a round woman named Farille Garet told them.

“Me neither,” one of the other cargo loaders chimed in.

Tamara sighed.  “No, what you signed up to do was follow the Captain’s orders,” she reminded them.  “It’s written into your contract.  I know it was written into mine.”

“That’s bullshit!” the first man declared, slamming a meaty fist into the metal table.  “This is a cargo ship, not a battlecruiser!  What the hell does he think he’s playing at?”

The lupusan growled slightly, made worse by the subsonics that she applied to her voice.  All of the others immediately felt their blood run a little colder at hearing that, feeling the primal fear generated by an angry predator.  “He thinks, and so do I, that he’s the Captain,” Saiphirelle said slowly, her claws digging into the metal of the table, making curlicues of metal from the furrows.  “And that as Captain, he doesn’t need to explain his motives to the rest of us.”

“The hell he doesn’t!” the big man replied, refusing to let it go.  “He’s only Captain because we let him be.”  Saiphirelle stood, and so did he, unwilling to be intimidated.  “You don’t scare me, Saiphirelle.  You and I both know you’re not going to kill me.  The Captain would throw you off the ship.  And we both know you’re a good little lapdog, aren’t you?”

“You’re really trying to get her to kill you, aren’t you?” Tamara asked idly, taking another bite of bacon as the lupusan seethed.  She was far less calm than her sister Corajen, even on the best of days.

The man turned a wild, frenzied eye to her.  “Always got a smart-ass comment, don’t you, Commander?  Always gotta put someone in their place.”

“If they’re being an arrogant asshole, yes,” Tamara replied, pushing aside her tray and standing up.

Now most of the mess hall had grown very quiet as everyone moved to clear a space for the three of them.  Would he be stupid enough to attack either of them?  Would Saiphirelle attack him?  “He’s going to get us all killed!” the cargoman said again.

“Come on, Frank,” his buddy said, realizing the situation his friend was in.  “Let it go.  Calm down.  This isn’t the place for this.”

But Frank appeared to be beyond reason, beyond willing to keep quiet any longer.  “No.  This is the perfect place.  I’m not willing to take this death ride with him at the control.  He’s lost it.  And he’s going to drag all of us down with him for the sake of another crew.”

“You need to shut your mouth,” Saiphirelle warned, her ears flat to her skull, the cords in her hands standing out even through her thick fur.

“Oh, of course,” he said, continuing to plow forward.  “The officers want to keep the common crew under control.  Don’t think.  Don’t have an opinion.  We know what’s best for you and the ship.  Well I say in this case they’re wrong.  In this case, they need to hear what we have to say!”  The last sentence was delivered in a shout that carried throughout the mess, and Tamara could see that his words were having an impact.

“Stella,” she murmured.  “You better get the Captain on the horn.  He’d better make an appearance and right quick.  Saiphirelle and I are trying to contain this, but he’s going to have a mutiny on his hands if he doesn’t do something.”

“Yeah!” someone in the crowd said.  “I didn’t sign up for this!  I’m here to make money and haul freight.  I’m not a soldier!”  More mutterings of agreement.

“Everyone needs to just calm down!” Cookie boomed from the galley.  He walked out from behind the serving counter, holding up his hands for calm.

“All right, let’s all go about our business,” Saiphirelle said, stepping forward toward the cargo man and pushing him lightly on the shoulder.

It was the wrong thing to do.  “Don’t you touch me!” the man shouted.  Taking two steps forward, he crashed into the lupusan, and they both went down to the deck in a tangle of limbs.  Suddenly, everyone was shouting and a dozen bodies went into the pile either trying to break it up or else getting hit themselves in the process.  It was pandemonium.

An eternity passed and security finally arrived, led by the Captain himself.  Corajen and three of her security officers decided the simplest way of dealing with the problem was to simply open fire.  Armed with stunners they simply began firing into the pile of brawlers.  It took a moment for the gathered crowd to realize what was happening, but after more than a quarter of the inhabitants of the mess hall were hit with stun blasts and had collapsed to the deck, they started to clear out of the way of the armed security personnel.  Finally, the chaos ended and security started pulling the unconscious crewmembers out of the pile.

Once the room was situated, no one was allowed to leave.  The Captain stepped up. “All right!” Eamonn bellowed to the room at large.  “Someone better tell me what the hell happened here!”  There was a silence, as no one dared speak.  “Anyone thinks that this is a big joke, you could not be more mistaken,” he warned.

“An argument broke out, Captain,” Tamara said, moving through the crowd.  Despite having been standing right at the epicenter of the fighting, she had somehow manage to contort her body and escape the brawl before the crush of the mob closed in.  “Things got out of hand and suddenly we had a brawl.”

“What the hell started it?” he demanded.

“You did, Captain,” Frank said, pushing his way through the crowd.  He had a serious shiner forming on his jaw from where Saiphirelle had clocked him (he was extremely lucky she hadn’t torn his face to shreds) and he was holding his left arm tight to his ribs.  But he was defiant.  “When you decided to put the good of strangers over the good of your own crew!”

“Horus,” the captain said, addressing the cargoman by his last name.  “You’ve got quite the mouth on you.”

The man shook his head.  “Don’t change anything,” he said between gritted teeth.  “I didn’t sign up to die in some daring rescue of people who aren’t crew.”

“You signed up to follow my orders!” the Captain shouted.  “You can’t do that, if anyone can’t do that, you can get the hell off my ship!”

Silence reigned in the mess hall.  Finally, the Captain turned to the lupusan beside him.  “Get this sorted out and then clear this deck.  I want everyone either back at their stations or in their quarters.”  He glared at the assembly.  “I will not have anyone brawling on my ship!”

Corajen nodded.  “You heard the man,” she said, putting a growl and subsonics into her voice, making everyone in the room flinch.  “Move!”

They moved.

“Captain,” Tamara said, coming up to him as he was just about to turn and leave the galley.  “The crew, well, they’re scared.  They’re not cowards.”

“I know exactly what kind of people my crew are, Moxie,” he said menacingly.  “Right now, I thought I would see a group of spacers committed to helping out their fellows; a group of people who were out for more than just to make a quick credit.”  He glared around.  A few of the crew look ashamed, others simply embarrassed.  One or two, like Frank Horus, simply glared back at the Captain, defiant.  Eamonn turned and left the mess hall, his long stride quickly outpacing the rest of his crew as they exited the mess hall.

“Down!” Xar hissed, ducking low.  Bullets zinged overhead, peppering the bulkhead.  He fired back with the stun pistol, missing twice, but he forced the man firing at him to duck back behind the bulkhead.

“Whose idea was this again?” Vakkon asked, hiding just behind his boss, crouched behind a crate.

“Mine,” the engineer replied, firing again, but again hitting nothing but metal.  The lights flickered overhead, this time only coming back up to about a quarter of their previous brightness, which was annoying, though his eyes easily compensated for the difference.

The station was in utter chaos.  It seemed the operations crew had started to tear out sections of their command consoles from the network to set up isolated stations, by wiping the databases and restoring systems with clean backups.  The problem was that the knock-knock was designed to counter that by imbedding itself in the hardware, anywhere it could possibly find.  And if any part of itself survived, it would replicate itself again in the new station forcing a full system scrub and then another reboot.  It would take hours to fully cleanse the system, far longer than Ka’Xarian and his people needed to get the Emilia Walker’s crew and get out of here.  Or so one zheen fervently hoped.

The plan had been simple, get as far as they could without drawing too much attention, which seemed to work well.  The six of them had hustled through the corridors of the station, amidst crewmen running in all directions or others trying desperately to access panels and computers in the various compartments.  They had no time to waste on people in the corridors; even the security personnel seemed at a loss of what to do and since Ka’Xarian and his group moved with utmost confidence, the security officers just waved them through.

Right up until they reached the compartment just outside where Vosteros and his people were being held.  They were only being held in crew quarters; a guest suite meant for two, but since there were only three and they were in fact prisoners, no one was much concerned for their comfort.  A medic came to see them every twelve hours and there were two guards outside the door armed with guns, but aside from that, the prisoners were generally left to their own devices.  Aside from two meals a day, bland nutritional supplements, they were left alone in the room.  There were no computers, no power outlets, no ducts or vents large enough for them to crawl through.  These “guest” quarters were really as close to a brig as possible.

The two guards outside the door, however, were not content with Ka’Xarian and his crew coming in to see the prisoners.  They didn’t waste any time.  When they saw Ka’Xarian approaching, they simply pulled out their guns and fired.  Only the zheen’s very quick reflexes had saved him and the others from being shot.  They dove for cover, while the guards slipped around the corners of the corridor.  The guest suite was located at the end of a T junction and each guard went to either side of the junction, which allowed them to only need to lean out and fire.

Ka’Xarian hissed in frustration.  Why was this always so easy in the holo-vids?  Action heroes in the vids never had to deal with intransigent guards who wouldn’t come out from behind cover.  And of course he and his people weren’t properly armed to deal with this kind of problem.  Plonall (the red scaled lizard biped Gekken) and Sion (the wiry human), the two security people from Grania Estelle were equipped with assault rifles and sidearms, as well as stunner pistols, and his own people had stunner pistols taken from the shuttle.  But that was it.  No grenades.  No explosives of any kind, really.  No breaching tools to cut through bulkheads.  He mentally kicked himself.  If he had actually taken the time to plan, he and the others might have come up with a more viable way to rescue the Walker’s crew with something better than “Let’s walk there, shoot the guards and walk back in the confusion.”

Plonall moved up from his place further down the corridor, squashing his body up close to Ka’Xarian.  His carbine held close to his chest, the lizard looked at the team leader.  “Get ready to move, sir,” he hissed then brought himself up to one knee.  Xar came up as well, both of them pointing their weapons down the corridor.  The guards took that moment to peek around the corner.  Xar missed (again) but forced his target back, but the Gekkon shot his target dead, a hit straight through his exposed eye.  There was a curse and then the sound of booted feet on metal decking as the second guard slumped to the deck.

The lizard didn’t wait, instead breaking cover and sprinting for the T junction.  Xar and Vakkon were right behind him, the others staying behind cover and watching their backs.  Reaching the junction, the Gekkon stomped on the guard’s throat with a strangely satisfying crunch, ensuring the man was dead.  There was no sign of the second guard, but down the corridor he was hiding in, there was an open hatchway about fifty meters down.  Apparently the death of his comrade had caused his spine to evaporate.

“Do your thing, sir,” Plonall said, sweeping the corridor with his eyes and the muzzle of his weapon, keeping the stock tight to his shoulder.  Corajen had trained him well, it seemed.

Xar wasted no time.  Going up to the door, he pressed the button to open.  It beeped, but the door didn’t budge.  Checking around the panel, feeling as though a bullet or blaster shot was about to hit him in the center of his back thorax at any second, Ka’Xarian forced himself to calm down.  He wasn’t a soldier, that was obvious, but he wasn’t supposed to be.  There was a problem in front of him, a closed door, it was up to him to open it.  The quick and dirty method was out, no explosives, so he’d have to get it open by other means.  Besides, with prisoners inside, he wasn’t sure explosives would have been the best way anyway.  Turning back to the dead guard, he rifled through the man’s pockets, looking for an access card, data key, anything.  His search turned up nothing.  There was no handprint or retinal scanner in the access panel.  Humming to himself slightly to try and get his head in the right space, he pulled a multitool from his belt pouch and set to work removing the panel from the wall.

There was a burst of static from Plonall’s communicator, but the zheen ignored it, focusing on his task.  “Don’t want to rush you sir,” the Gekkon said, drawing out the last word.  “We’re going to have company real soon.”

“Just keep them off me for a few more moments,” Xar hissed back.  Just a stuck door.  No problems.  You’re back on the Grania Estelle, we’re just trying to get to some crewmen who are trapped in a room because the door won’t open.  That’s all we’re doing here.  He stripped a wire and then made another connection, pulling out another one in the process.

There was a heavy, metallic clunk and the door popped open, sliding about four centimeters to the side.  “Yes!” he crowed.  Holstering his stun pistol and putting the multitool back in his pouch, he gripped the door and pulled.  It easily slid open and he entered.

There were the three of them, looking as though they’d been through the wringer.  “My name is Ka’Xarian,” he told them, gently.  “I’m an engineer aboard the Grania Estelle.  We met several months ago.  We’re here to get you out of here.”

The captain was lying on the nearby bunk, his eyes not really focusing.  His wounds had been treated, based on the bandages, but he was clearly in a great deal of pain.  The other two, another male zheen and a human male, looked up at him.

“Oh, thank the stars!” the man replied in relief.  “They’ve told us they were going to sell us to the pirates!  They took our ship.  The medic has only been by to make sure we weren’t going to die, that we’d be healthy enough for sale.  Thank the stars you’re here!”

The other zheen nodded, showing for the first time his own injury.  His left hand had been severed just below the wrist and it had been wrapped in a bandage, crudely since there was green ichor seeping out of the wound.  It hadn’t been cleaned or treated at all, based on the smell, just wrapped.  The younger zheen could barely hold himself upright and his antennae drooped, though the buzzing noises he was making told Ka’Xarian clearly that he was alive.  He needed serious medical treatment as soon as they could get him out of here.

“Can you walk?” he asked them.

The man nodded.  “I can.  I think that Kay’grax can too.  But the Captain can’t.”

Xar swept his gaze over the man; big muscles, large for a human, possibly a hint of heavy-worlder in his blood.  “Can you carry him?  Or at least help him travel?”

The big man nodded again.  “Yeah, I should have thought of that.”

“How about you, Kay’grax is it?  Can you walk?”

The buzzing sound didn’t stop or change in volume or pitch, but the younger zheen pushed himself to a standing position, wavering a bit.  Xar rushed forward and caught him before he fell.  “Lean on me,” he ordered, putting his left arm around the young one’s waist, staying to the opposite side of his injured hand.  He drew his pistol with his right.  “Come on.  I’ve got people waiting outside.  What’s your name?” Xar asked the man.

“Marcos, sir,” he replied, gently lifting the human captain into his arms.  It appeared to take no effort, and Xar hoped the big man could continue carrying him.

“All right, Marcos.  Let’s go.”

“Let’s go, sir!” Plonall yelled into the door.  He nodded as he saw them all coming to the door.  “They okay?  Never mind.  Doesn’t matter, does it?”

“They’ll be better if we can get to the shuttle and then back to the Grania Estelle,” Xar agreed.

“Mmmm,” the captain muttered in Marcos’s arms.  “My ship…” he whispered.

“We’re getting out of here, Captain,” the zheen told him.

“No… can’t leave my ship.”

“He’s delusional,” Marcos said, hefting the man’s weight a bit, adjusting his grip.  “He thinks we’re trying to take him off the Emilia Walker.”

“Can’t leave the… ship behind…”

“I think he’s aware of what’s going on, Marcos,” Xar replied.  “But it doesn’t matter.  We have to get to the shuttle regardless.  Lead the way, Plonall.”

“Yes, sir.  Let’s go.”

Chapter 26

Goris Hana was for the first time in as long as his bloated, toad like brain could remember, afraid.  The station was, to his mind, coming apart at the seams.  The computer systems, which were normally so powerful and reliable, were now working erratically, giving false commands and output, when they worked at all.  His suite’s power had completely failed, forcing him to fish out a flashlight from one of his desk drawers, which game a strong, if small amount of light.  But that only added to his growing terror since he could only see a short distance in front of him.  He was desperately afraid that the gravity would fail and he would be flailing around in the blackness with only a small flashlight to see with.

He slammed his comm panel with his palm, but it didn’t activate.  Nothing but the stars forsaken static, which only increased his panic.  Hana knew he couldn’t stay here any longer, not knowing what was happening.  Grabbing a blaster from the drawer, he held it in his left hand, keeping the light in his left.  Getting up, he waddled to the door and pressed the command for it to open.  Thankfully, it did.  The lights in the corridor were still on, but flickering erratically.  But it was a relief from the otherwise utter blackness of his suites.  He moved as fast as his bloated body could travel down the corridor, heading for operations.  The command staff would bristle at his presence, but that was just too bad.

“This is my station,” he huffed to himself.  “And they will follow my orders.”

“Almost there, Captain,” Ka’Xarian said, coming around the corner of the corridor.  They were less than two hundred meters from the hangar, once there, they could board the shuttle and take off.  The trip this far hadn’t been uneventful, in fact Plonall had decided it was simpler to just stun anyone they came across rather than try to answer awkward questions.  This time it was much easier, for as soon as they approached the people working on the systems, or hustling through the corridors, Xar and his people simply fired their stun weapons.  Bodies dropped to the deck, unconscious, and the freighter crews simply stepped over them and kept going.

He was actually surprised that they’d made it as far as they had without any serious opposition.  Captain Vosteros hung limply in Marcos’s arms.  He was conscious, but clearly in great pain and they didn’t have anything to give the man.  Kay’grax wasn’t doing so well either.  He leaned heavily on Ka’Xarian’s arm and swayed with every step.  He continued his humming and Xar felt for the younger zheen.  When a zheen made a sound like that, it was clear that zheen was in a considerable amount of pain.  It was the equivalent to going into shock in humans.  Zheen would still be able to function, but they would continue to emit that humming noise until either they died or medical assistance was provided.

“Hold it right there!” a voice barked from one of the side corridors.

“Damn it,” Plonall grunted, turning and firing his weapon.  The owner of the voice took a hit directly in the chest and went down, chest perforated by bullets.  “Move!” he barked to the others.

“I… can’t…” Kay’grax intoned, his voice a low hiss.

“You must,” Xar told him, increasing his pace, gently tightening his hold on the younger zheen.  “We can’t stay out in the open like this.”

“Hurtsz…” he buzzed, trying to grip onto Ka’Xarian’s arm.

Plonall and Vakkon knelt, firing down the corridor.  They each only let off a short burst, three bullets from the security officer’s assault rifle and three blasts from Vakkon’s stunner.  There were no other people in the corridor and in seconds the two were back on their feet, racing to catch up with the others.

“What the hell is happening?” Goris Hana demanded, bursting into Operations.

The workers all looked up at the boss in fear, nay in abject terror.  Goris Hana was not known for his gentle and understanding nature.  And with the problem not yet dealt with and his arrival here in Ops, they were all afraid he might try to vent his frustration by venting one of them.  Either with new holes, or by having someone tossed out an airlock.

“We’re working on it, sir,” the XO replied.  “We’ve been under a cyber attack but we’re starting to get some of the systems isolated and back up.”

Hana grunted, shifting his bulk across the room with surprising speed.  “What the blazes is taking so long?”

“These attacks are insidious.  They seem to be able to completely replicate themselves and if any of the virus escapes our purges, it seems to be enough for it to self-replicate and attack the systems again.”  He clenched one fist.  “It’s maddening.”

“So where are we?”

The XO nodded.  “We’ve got life support fully isolated, and we should have the reactors locked down and secured within the next ten minutes.”  He sighed.  “But the communications array is completely burned out.  The virus caused the array to start broadcasting all sorts of crap on all channels, effectively blocking everything.  We’re trying to purge the systems but with that system, as soon as we start virus scrubbing procedures, it changes tactics and causes the system to burn itself out.”

“So what are you saying?” Hana asked menacingly, causing the nearby workers flinch.

But the XO refused to be bullied.  He knew his own worth and he knew that Hana wouldn’t dare try to have him killed.  “I’m saying, sir, that the communications array, actually all the comms arrays are completely dead.  We’re going to have to tear the whole thing out and replace all of it.”

“Damn it!” the toad screeched, bashing his fist against the nearby bulkhead.  He winced and rubbed his sore knuckles, then turned back to glare at the workers, daring anyone to say something.  No one did, they were all fastidiously working on their consoles, trying to get the system back to some semblance of function.  “Get us back up!”

“Sir,” the XO replied in a very calm tone.  “We’re working as fast as we can.  As I explained, we cannot…”

“Don’t you patronize me!” the bloated toad roared, drawing his weapon.  It wasn’t pointed, but everyone in Ops was no longer pretending to be busy, they were hustling to get as far away from Goris Hana as they could.  He realized what they were doing and raised the weapon, turning quickly and waving it around.  “Get back to work!  Get back to work!”

The XO stepped forward.  “Sir, that’s not helping!”

He whirled back to his executive officer his weapon aimed right at the man’s chest.  “You are not giving the orders here.  You work for me!”

“Sir, you’re just scaring the workers,” the XO explained.  “They’re moving as quickly as possible.  This is delicate work; they can’t make any mistakes.  And if you start shooting people, it’s only going to slow things down.”  He faced down his boss, apparently unfazed by the weapon aimed straight at him.

“Do you think this is a joke?” Hana demanded.  “Or that this is some sort of exercise?  That this is something that you can just execute some prearranged plan for?”  His deep and throaty voice was getting higher as his agitation grew.  “We cannot lose this station.  We cannot lose the functions we have here.  I have plans that must continue unimpeded.”  Though it was clear he was agitated, what was also clear was the near plaintive tone his voice was taking.

The XO sighed.  “Yes, sir.  I know and we’re going as fast as we can.  The instant we can continue with normal operations, we will.”

Hana only growled and began stalking around Operations, looking at all the consoles as he did so, his weapon back in his belt.  The workers went back to their stations, though the tension level in Ops had ratcheted up significantly.

“Sir, I believe I have some more news,” the XO said, gritting his teeth against bad news and the inevitable explosion.

Hana looked up at the man.  “What is it now?”

“I believe that the two of Vanku Maakan’s ships tried to call in to determine our status and it seems that their ships were infected with the same malware.”

The toad screamed in fury, actually stomping on the deck in his small tantrum.  “So we’re defenseless?  Wasn’t Maakan’s ship in because of damage?”

The XO nodded.  “Yes, sir, it is.  Though I believe the Vanku was expediting repairs as much as possible.  In fact, I believe she’s cutting as many corners as she can possibly get away with to get her ship back into space.”

“Good, I won’t kill her just yet.”  The nearest workers flinched at that, but continued doing their jobs.  “So that brings us down to one viable ship to protect us.”

The XO shrugged.  “Four of the shuttles are armed.  A single laser cannon on each, but they are still armed.”

“Get them ready to launch,” Hana ordered.  “They can stay on the hangar deck though until called for.”

The man nodded, grateful to finally have some sort of news that the boss would accept.  Then the next report came in.

“Doren, the systems are acting hinky,” the pilot of Defense Pinnace Three reported.

The commander of the ship looked up from his own display, which was starting to flicker.  “What do you mean, hinky?”

“I mean hinky,” the woman replied, pointing at the screen.  “I’m starting to have major slowdowns here.  The systems are acting really sluggish and my controls are not responding properly.”

“Whoa!” the gunner exclaimed.  “Missile controls just went down.”

“Shit,” Doren said, checking his own systems again.  “Confirmed, missiles are offline.  What the hell?”

“No shit, what the hell,” the gunner shot back.  “What the-!”  The ship’s forward laser cannons began firing on their own, alternating back and forth.  “I lost control of the cannons.”  He beat his fists against the controls, trying in vain to stop the weapons.

“What the hell?” the commander demanded again.  Sensors and communications went out.  He was starting to hyperventilate.  He couldn’t understand it, he couldn’t understand how this could be happening.  “How is this happening?”

“We got a comm return from the station when we sent them a query,” the gunner replied.  “I think there was a virus or something in the communication.”  He raised his hands in confusion.  “Well, guns are offline now.  Least they’re not shooting randomly anymore.”

And then all the interior lighting went out.

“Captain, I’m getting something here,” George reported.

He looked up from his displays, over at his Operations officer.  “What is it?”

“The two pinnaces that were nearby the fueling station have suddenly gone dark,” George reported.  “Their courses are unpowered.”

“They’re adrift?”  The captain tapped his chin with one finger.  “Stella, more of your knock-knock?”

She nodded from her position on the main display.  “I believe so, Captain.  According to my sensors, they’re just completely dark and adrift.”

“I think I know what happened, Captain,” Serinda piped up from her console.

“Well?” he asked, turning to her.

“They sent communications to the fueling stations about ten minutes ago and a return signal came through.  About a minute after that, they went dark.”

“So presumably they called in to find out what the hell was going on, and then got snared themselves,” Eamonn mused.

“It certainly looks that way, Captain,” she agreed.

A smile began to form on the Captain’s lips.  “I think that’s the first real spot of good news we’ve heard since the Emilia Walker entered the system.”  He nodded.  “Continue on course for the fueling station.  I just hope that Ka’Xarian and his people are doing all right.”

“Where did this attack come from?” Goris Hana asked.  The others in Ops glanced at him, but then quickly looked back to their consoles.  The XO pursed his lips.

“I’m not sure, sir.  The systems started going down in what seemed like a random pattern.  By the time we started tracking, there were all sorts of rabbit programs and such running in the background.  Our systems slowed down to a crawl and then stopped altogether in some cases.”

But the bloated leader was staring off at a distant display, but it was clear he wasn’t trying to view it.  He blinked very slowly before speaking.  “Where is that bug?”

The XO blinked.  “Sir?”

“The bug.  The one that came here to collect his own fuel for their big ship,” Hana explained.  “Where is he?”

The XO shrugged.  “I have no idea, sir.  Internal sensors are still down.  But at last report, before the systems went crazy, he and his crew had been recalled to their shuttle in the main hangar.  They were slated to depart about forty minutes ago.”

“Do we know if they actually left?” Hana pressed, looking intently at his officer.

Again, a shrug.  “No idea, sir.”

The toad nodded.  “Get a security team down to the hangar bay.  If that shuttle is still here, do not let it leave.”  Then he paused, eyes widening.  “And get another team over to the compartment where we’re holding the freighter bums.  Make sure they’re still there.”  As the XO looked as though he was going to protest, Hana growled.  “Use the damned radios!” he barked, infuriated at the constant excuses.  “If internal comms are down, use the radios.  That’s what they’re for!”  He threw his hands into the air.  “Damn it!”

The XO sheepishly brought the communicator out of his pocket and began issuing orders.

Jesma was seated in the pilot’s couch aboard the shuttle, anxiously awaiting the return of Xar and the others.  Lorcan was calmly standing at the hatch, one of security’s rifle’s held easily in his hands.  He was staying out of the hatchway itself, he didn’t want to be seen by any of the locals here raising questions as to why he was heavily armed, but he was in a position to be able to see into the hangar and down toward the main doors.

The cargo ramp was up, which meant that the minute their people were aboard, they could seal the hatch and go.  The shuttle’s engines were at idle, just waiting for her to stomp on the accelerator.  She twisted her hands in her lap and checked the shuttle’s rear camera for the five thousandth time.  “Anything?” she called.

“Nothing new since the last time you asked forty seconds ago,” the heavy-worlder replied calmly.  He rolled his shoulders to get more comfortable.  “But I’m hoping they’re moving quick.”

She let out a long breath, checking the ship’s status and rear camera once again.  All green and still nothing.  Jesma drew in another shaking breath and checked again.  “Where the hell are they?  What if something happened?  What if they caught them?”

“Then we wait five more minutes and then get the hell out of here,” Lorcan replied, irritation showing in his voice for the first time.  “You know the drill, you know what Ka’Xarian ordered.”

“He didn’t know!” Jesma despaired.  “He’s an engineer, not a soldier!”

Lorcan chuckled.  “Relax, Engineman,” he told her.  “Check your feed again.”

She looked up, and sighed, her shoulders sagging.  There they were, with three more in the group.  “Oh, thank the stars!” she gushed.  “Now can they hurry up?”

He laughed again.

“Almost there,” Ka’Xarian said as they entered the hangar.  The shuttle was still there, they weren’t overrun by security and from what he could hear, the shuttle’s engines were on standby.  As soon as they could get on board, they would be racing for open space.  Which was a good thing, because the young one was on his last legs.  He was not going much farther.  Kay’grax was shaking now with pain and fatigue.  The humming noise he was emitting was actually painful to Ka’Xarian, though the humans didn’t seem to mind.  Marcos was easily carrying his captain, who had slumped unconscious in the man’s arms.  The others of his team were formed up in a loose phalanx around the injured though according to the two security officers, they were just in a group, a loose mob, not a true combat formation.  Xar didn’t mind.  They had made it to the hangar.  Now they just needed to get aboard and get the hell off this station and somehow get to the Grania Estelle without getting shot to pieces by the defense ships.

Easy.

“Nice to see you,” Lorcan called from the hatchway.  He was staying to one side, leaving the entry clear for them all to climb aboard.

“We decided to take the long way,” Ka’Xarian replied, his antennae straightening.  “Be gentle with this one,” he said, as Lorcan gave his muscled arm to the injured zheen.  “He’s had a bad day.”

“Thank…” Kay’grax started to say, but he was just overcome.  His legs gave way and he nearly fell, but Lorcan was there and easily scooped him up.

“Don’t mention it,” the big man replied.  “Now, you sit here and try not to move too much.  We’re getting underway in just a minute.”  He brought the zheen to one of the seats and gently set him in it.  He quickly pulled the safety harness on and locked it in.  “You just lie still, we’re getting out of here.”

The others were clambering through the hatch, with Plonall and Sion being the last two through, continuously keeping their weapons ready.

Sion smiled.  “I think we’re going to make it.”

Plonall started to smile, but then his face dropped, his gut filling with ice.  A full squad of security troopers wearing civilian body armor and armed with a variety of weapons were trotting into the hangar.  They looked professional and they looked like they had a purpose.  One of them pointed at the shuttle and they started moving forward.

“Fuck!  Xar!  We got company!”  Without waiting, Plonall opened up with his assault rifle, spraying the entryway with bullets.  One of the soldiers went down in a mist of blood and the rest of the group scattered, looking for any kind of cover.  Sion fired as well, hitting one of the troopers in the leg, and a second in the shoulder.  They weren’t killing blows, but they were enough to give the soldiers pause.  “You rationing those bullets?  Open ‘er up!”

“You eat what you like and I’ll eat what I like!” the other man yelled back.  “Either way we’re both full!”

“Did you really just tell me that?” Plonall snorted.  “Get on board!”

Taking two more shots, Sion rushed inside the hatch.  The troopers returned fire, forcing the man to duck instinctively.  One shot zipped by him, missing only by the barest millimeter.  He could feel the breeze as it went by and then ricocheted off the hull of the shuttle.  A dozen more bounced off the shuttle’s hull and Plonall dove inside the hatch.

“Go, Jesma!  Go!”

Lorcan and Sion were already slamming the hatch shut and dogging it closed.  The pressure and indicator lights were all green, indicating the ship was buttoned up and ready for space and the young woman at the controls gunned the engine.  The ship lurched forward, racing for the bay entrance and the force shield holding in the atmosphere.  The ship would be able to pass right through it without slowing down and the bay would be able to maintain atmosphere.  It was one of the very few systems not being targeted by the knock-knock, which was by design.  Lorcan had tweaked the program for this, because he wanted the shuttle to be able to escape without hassle.

“What is that?” Xar asked, pointing at the rear camera display.  One of the troopers was pointing a squat tube at the departing shuttle.  “Oh, no,” he breathed as he realized what it was.

A powered projectile fired out from the weapon, raced across the bay and exploded against the shuttle’s portside engine just as they cleared the force shield.  The shuttle bucked and tumbled forward and to starboard in an uncontrolled spin.  The inertial compensators couldn’t keep up with the spin and the passengers, those not strapped in, were tossed around the interior of the ship.  The shuttle continued to roll away from the station and no more weapons were fired at them, but it took over a minute for Jesma to regain control.

“Port engine’s out,” Xar said, slipping into the copilot’s seat.  “I’m shutting it down.”  He checked the diagnostics.  “No breaches.  I’m rerouting power around the damage, closing out the fuel lines to that side.”

“Where am I going?” Jesma asked, checking her sensors.  There were over a dozen vessels, tugs and shuttles in the nearby area.  Three small freighters were here too, as was the Emilia Walker, which was docked at one of the ports on the station’s long spindly axis.

“Find the ship and head for it.”

“What about the fuel collector?”

The zheen paused.  Right now the station was in chaos.  And they’d come here to get all that fuel.  If they just left it, and the collector…  But he wasn’t sure.  “All right, head to the collector.  We’ll grab it and suck the fuel bladders dry.  But I don’t think we’re going to have time to actually bring the collector itself aboard.  Once we’ve gotten the fuel in the shuttle’s tanks, we’ll blow it apart and be on our way.”

“Got it,” she said, maneuvering the now very sluggish shuttle onto a new course.

“I’ll be right back,” the zheen told her, unstrapping and moving to the main cargo compartment.  “Everyone all right?” he asked.

“No, we’re not fucking all right!” Sion spat, cradling his left arm.  His forearm was bent at a crazy angle, clearly broken from when he’d collided with the bulkhead.  “What the hell happened?”

“The troopers hit us with some kind of shoulder fired rocket,” Xar explained.  “Took out the port engine and well…”  He shrugged in a very human fashion, his antennae copying the maneuver.

Sion just groaned in pain.  One of the team came over and injected him with a hypo for the pain and began trying to attach a splint.  Xar looked around.  Everyone was in varying states, having been tossed around the cargo compartment of the ship.  The Captain of the Emilia Walker and young Kay’grax had been fortunate enough to be strapped into their seats and had avoided any further injury.  Sadly, they didn’t have a medic in his team or on the shuttle, so they’d need to deal with the fuel collection quickly and get back to the Grania Estelle.

“Captain, our shuttle just launched from the fueling station,” George reported.

A weight lifted from Eamonn’s shoulders.  He’d hoped that Ka’Xarian and his team had survived, but it had been agony cruising closer to the station for all those hours just not knowing.  But now, finally, he knew that his people were safe.

“The shuttle’s taken damage,” Stella said, standing straight at the holo projector at the front of the bridge.  She seemed unusually somber.

His heart skipped a beat.  “How bad?”

“Looks like they’ve taken damage to their port engine, Captain.  Can’t get much more information than that.  And to be honest, we won’t know much more until they actually land in the boat bay.”  George’s frustration matched his own.

“Keep Quesh in the loop,” the captain ordered.  “Make sure he has an engineering team standing by when they land.  And a medical team too,” he decided after a second’s thought.  “Damage like that might have gotten some people hurt.”

“Yes, Captain,” George replied.

“Where is Xar going?” the captain mused, watching the shuttle’s flight trajectory.

“He appears to be going to the collector farm, Captain,” Stella answered, frowning.  “But with damage like that and possible casualties, that seems a bit… well… irresponsible.”

Eamonn frowned.  “Well, I did send them out there to get us fuel.  It seems that’s what they’re going for.”

“Captain, more bad news,” George piped up.

The captain closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.  “Why do I keep you on my bridge, George?”

“Because no one else can make this job look as good,” the man replied.  “And you need the best.”

“What do you got?”

“Three of the defensive pinnaces flying endless circles around the orbital have changed course, moving to intercept us.  They’re at the extreme edge of the range of my sensors, but I can see they’re coming this way.”

“Swell,” the Captain said aloud.  “All right, not much we can do about them at the moment.  Keep an eye on them and sing out when they get within a million kilometers.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“What the hell is going on up there?” Mairi demanded.  The fitting out of the Perdition was long since completed, and now Tamara and the rest of her engineering team were sitting around on crates and other things that had been stacked on the deck in the boat bay.

The older woman looked at her.  “I have no idea, Mairi.”

“Bull.  You’ve linked your implants to the bridge feeds, haven’t you?” the younger woman accused.  When Tamara didn’t immediately answered.  “I knew it!  Spill.”

“We’re approaching the fueling station.  Should be there within about thirty minutes or so.”

“That’s great,” Mairi replied, crossing her arms over her chest.  “What else?”

The others were looking at Tamara expectantly.  “You know I don’t actually have to tell you all anything, right?  The mystique of officers and all.”

“If that was the case, Boss, then you shouldn’t have been explaining things to us for the last few months,” Pip pointed out.  “And encouraging us to ask questions or asking for help.”

She smiled.  “Damn, outwitted!  All right.  Looks like the defense pinnaces are coming in from the orbital station to try and intercept us.”

“We haven’t done anything!” Igraine exclaimed.  “All we did was move toward the station!  And we haven’t communicated with anyone, or done anything wrong!  Why would they come after us?”

“Well, we don’t actually know that they are coming after us,” Tamara pointed out.  She raised a hand to forestall the objections.  “But based on their courses and speed, it looks pretty likely.  I think we are In Trouble.”  She made sure to emphasize the capital letters in each word.

The others were looking nervous.  “What can we do?” Rory asked, looking worried.

Tamara shrugged.  “This big girl isn’t a warship,” she reminded them.  “There isn’t a whole lot that we can really do.”

“We could have if you’d authorized the replicators to start pumping out weapons,” Igraine accused.  “Four laser cannons and four rail guns?  That’s not much at all.”

“We’re not going down that road again,” Tamara said firmly.  “What we have is what the ship can handle.  If we get out of here, we might think about putting in a few more rail guns, but this isn’t a dedicated warship with all sorts of hard points for weapons.  She’s a bulk freighter, meant to carry huge amounts of cargo.  I don’t know what you all want from me.”  She sighed, ignoring the ever-increasing number of dark looks coming her way.  “And it’s too late for this time anyway.  There’s no time to start building anything in time to deal with the current crisis, we’re just going to have to ride it out.”

“What about more warbirds?” Pip asked, pointing at the Perdition.  “Obviously not now,” he said hurriedly, seeing Tamara’s expression, “But what about when we’re out of here?  Can’t we make more fighters like this one?”

The engineer touched her cheek, staring off at the bulkhead in thought.  The others seemed to think this was an excellent idea.  But then Igraine piped up.  “Do you know how to fly it?”

The thin man shrugged.  “I can learn.  Mairi can fly a shuttle.”

“And you think that’s the same thing?” Tamara asked, looking at him with an amused expression.  “It isn’t.”

“But I could learn,” he pressed.

“And what am I?” Mairi demanded.  “Scrap metal?”

“After watching you fly, Mairi, I’m surprised you aren’t,” Rory rumbled.  They all chuckled, even the young woman.

“So what about it?” Pip asked.  “Can we make more?”

Tamara sighed.  “Yes, I suppose we could.  Not now, of course.  But yeah, we could.  Problem is, where are we going to put them?  I know I keep repeating myself but this isn’t a warship with a big hangar bay.  And good luck trying to convince the Captain and the purser to part with one of their cargo bays just to stack up fighters.”

She could see the brightness of their expressions dimming a bit.  Pip sighed.  “Yeah, the Captain is never going to agree to that.  So much for that idea.”

“Cheer up,” Tamara said, adjusting her position on her crate a bit to get more comfortable, smiling.  “We might be super busy patching this big girl up in a few hours.  You’ll be so busy you won’t have time to mope about our lack of fighter space.”

“Says the woman who actually has her own starfighter,” Pip griped.

Now her smile was smug.  “The only starfighter on this ship,” Tamara corrected, raising one finger.  Then she frowned.  “But there is something that’s been puzzling me.”

“And what’s that?” Pip asked sourly.

“We bought some things in Kazyanenko, industrial supplies and things meant for the shipyard here.”

“So?” Victor asked, sitting up a little straighter.

“So where’s the shipyard?  We’ve only seen the orbital station and the fueling station, right?  And the defense pinnace ships that are hustling to catch up with us.  But what about the rest of the system?  We haven’t really gotten a good look at what’s around here.  There are a few places, Lagrange points, maybe on the far side of the gas giant or on the other side of the system that they could be hiding it.  But the people on Kazyanenko knew it was here.  So it must be.  And come on, half a dozen pinnaces to defend all of this?  Even if there isn’t a shipyard, that’s just irresponsible.”

“You’re saying there should be more defenses?” Igraine said.

“It did seem a little light, considering all the real estate in orbit,” Mairi mused.  “Even Hecate had a wing of starfighters.  We didn’t see anything like that on the orbital.”

“The ships here are a little better armed than those fighters at Hecate,” Rory pointed out.  “But you’re right, it does seem a bit light.  Makes me wonder if pirates have been here before.  Because if there aren’t any other defenses, this place is just low hanging fruit.”

“How goes it?” Plonall asked for the fifth time.

“The pumps are working, and we should be full up in about twenty minutes,” Ka’Xarian replied patiently, watching the feeds.  “Sadly, we need to leave the collector here.  Such a waste.”  The zheen’s antennae whirled in irritation.  “Oh well, guess I get to build another one.  Not like I haven’t done it before.  Probably need to do it again.”

“You’re remarkably chipper,” Jesma said anxiously.  Her eyes flicked back and forth between the displays showing the pump feeds and the proximity sensors.  So far, none of the nearby ships were paying any attention to them, but she knew, they all knew, that that would quickly change.  She was quite a bit more vocal about her anxiety than the others, though no one was happy about hanging around gathering up fuel.  They all wanted to be back aboard the ship and making tracks for the hyper limit.

“Trying to keep a level head,” the engineer replied.  “Because everyone else on this shuttle is acting as though we’re already caught and dead.  We’re not.”

“We shouldn’t be here.  We should be back on the Grania Estelle and heading for Seylonique,” Jesma shot back.  She put a hand on her head and let out a fast breath.  “Xar, this isn’t going to work.  We’re wasting our time with this.”

He made a buzzing sound, a sigh.  “We’re not going over this again, Jesma.  Twenty minutes, that’s all we need.  Then we’re free sailing.”

She glanced at him quickly, doubt etched in every pore.  Then she looked away from him, back to her controls and displays, a shaking breath drawing into her lungs as she tried to remain calm.

“Captain, those pinnaces are accelerating,” George reported.  “I don’t know if they’re carrying extra fuel or not, but it’s clear they’re hell bent on getting to that fuel station.  They’re vectors are more toward getting there, not intercepting us or cutting us off.”  He twisted his lips.  “Though it’s possible they could change vectors.”

“What the hell is Ka’Xarian doing?” the captain asked.

“He’s emptying the fuel collector, Captain,” Stella replied.  “And according to sensors, he shouldn’t be too much longer.  Perhaps fifteen minutes.  At current course and speed, the pinnaces will reach the station about eight minutes before we do.”

“How long until we get there?” Eamonn asked, checking his own displays.

“Forty-one minutes,” the helmsman replied, confirming what the captain saw on his own screens.

Eamonn chuckled.  “This is maddening.”  There were stares at him from around the bridge.  “This,” he said, gesturing to his displays.  “This whole mess we’re in.  We’ve been flying around this Cluster for years, hauling freight.  We’ve met up with other ships, tangled with pirates, even needed to shoot our way out of a system or two.  But this?”  He chuckled again.  “Never seen this before.”

No one else seemed to find it as funny.  He sighed.  Clearly this decision wasn’t as popular as he’d hoped.  It didn’t matter that they were committed now.  They would all blame him now, and he couldn’t argue.  He was the Captain and ultimately all decisions were his responsibility anyway.  If he couldn’t take the heat, he shouldn’t be cooking, he mentally quoted Cookie.

The Grania Estelle continued on course, lumbering along at a slightly brisk cruising speed.  The big bulk freighter would never be fast, but anyone with pair of eyeballs and a decent sensor array would be able to tell when the ship was pushing forward at max thrust.  As much as Eamonn wanted to go roaring over to that station and link up with Ka’Xarian and his team (and hopefully the other crew), he couldn’t risk drawing too much attention.  Of course, a ship the size of the Grania Estelle wasn’t exactly subtle and they couldn't hide.  But he had a perfectly good reason for going to the station, he was picking up the fuel that was rightfully his.  He could only hope that the commander of the defense ships would remember that.

The pinnaces moved gracefully by the much larger ship, though in truth they were several hundred thousand kilometers away.  The light emitted from their propulsion units was visible from the windows of the ship, and a few of the crew went and watched them fly by.  A pass that close was an oddity in space, except in gathering points like a station or planetary orbit.  But out in the blackness like this, emergency proximity alarms would be sounding of objects or other ships came by that close.  The three pinnaces sped by, their own velocity and acceleration a good deal higher than that of the bulk freighter.  The lights moved by and continued past, and as the pinnaces altered their vectors slightly, the bluish-white glow of their engines looked like will’o’wisps swooping about before the larger ship.  It was as though it was leading them through the blackness to some destination they couldn’t see.

Only a few remembered the stories about will’o’wisps, that they were trickster spirits who would lead lost travelers through the swamp to quicksand marshes where they would sink to their doom.

Corajen’s ears flattened to her head as she remembered.  Her sister looked to her, concerned.  “What is it?” Saiphirelle asked.

But the lupusan only shook her head, continuing to watch the lights move further ahead, as the large ball of the gas giant loomed ever larger in the window.  Saiphirelle touched Corajen on the back, a gesture of comfort, but she didn’t even notice, too wrapped up in gloomy thoughts.  A moment later, the wolfwoman shook her head.

“Get down to the armory,” she said.  “Make sure the gear is ready.  I’m getting the feeling we’re going to need in short order.”

“What makes you think that?” Saiphirelle asked, concern over her sister’s reaction leeching over to her own mood.

“Just a hunch,” she admitted.  “A lead ball in my gut that’s getting heavier.  Now go.”

Saiphirelle nodded and hustled off, leaving Corajen to continue her viewing.  The dancing lights were little more than pinpricks of illumination, lost amidst the gas giant’s background radiance and the flickering lights of the fueling station.

Ka’Xarian kept his eyes on the feeds, when finally he made a flat buzz, the zheen equivalent of a snort.  “All right that’s close enough.”  Flipping switches on the control panel, he cut power to the shuttle’s pumps.  Pressing another control, the collector was cut free.

“What are you doing?” Jesma asked, looking over at him.  “There’s still fuel in that thing!”

“Yes, there is,” the zheen replied, activating the shuttle’s laser cannon.  “But I decided waiting another five minutes for the dregs of fuel in that thing wasn’t worth all of our lives.  Besides, the fuel in there will help me make a big boom when I blow the collector.”

She smirked.  “Men.”

“Watch your tone, little lady,” he growled.  He lined up the shot and pressed the control.  The cannon fired and the collector blew apart.

“Good shot.”

“Can we get out of here, now?” Ka’Xarian asked her, looking right at her.  It was hard for her to tell with his compound eyes, but the meaning was obvious.

Jesma gripped her controls.  With the one engine out and maneuvering thruster damage, flying the shuttle was going to be very tricky.  But she’d managed to steady it out during the trip from the station to the collector farm, and she was confident she could get them back to the ship.  She eased the throttle and controls and the shuttle responded.

“Shuttle’s on its way,” George reported, relief clear in his voice.  “ETA, nine minutes present speed.”

“Good,” the captain replied.  “Have the boat bay ready and have Turan standing by with a medical team.  They may have injured.”

“Yes, Captain,” Serinda replied, making a call to sickbay.

“Captain!” George said, startled.  “I’ve got ships coming out of hyperspace!”

Verrikoth stood on the bridge of Ganges, Commander Tyler at his side.  They were looking at the sensor feeds of what was happening in the system as the flotilla dropped out of hyperspace.  “Well now, Commander,” the zheen pirate said in wonder.  “What do we have here?”

Chapter 27

Ganges’s sensors vacuumed up every stray iota of data that they could as the flotilla arrived.  The ships were arrayed in a rough box formation, with the three cruisers in the middle, all side by side, with Ganges in the middle, with Meghna off to port and Kerala off to starboard.  Above and slightly back was the corvette, Ravage, flanked by the freighters Ajax and Cierre, and in mirroring position, below and slightly behind the cruisers were the other two modified freighters Nocturne and Squire.  It was an impressive sight, one whose like hadn’t truly been seen here in the Cluster since the time of the Republic.  All the ships were banging away with their active sensors, trying to determine exactly what was happening here in the Ulla-tran system, uncaring as to who saw or who might object.  But then, who would dare?  Verrikoth was certain there was no one in this system who could stand up to the firepower of this flotilla.  They would all bow and scrape at his feet, begging to be left alone, or to join in the fun.  He might even indulge a few of them.

“Get me a fix on the ships moving around here,” Tyler ordered his bridge crew.

“Yess, pleaze,” Verrikoth said.  “Ssee if there are any familiar facez.”  His antennae bobbed up and down with amusement.  He crossed his arms over his thorax.

“Commander?” the sensor watch specialist called out.  “I’ve got something.”

Tyler turned and walked over to the sensor station.  All of the bridge consoles were U-shaped, all facing inward, with the captain’s chair in the center.  The young woman pointed to her display.  “Here, Commander.   That ship there.  The bulk freighter.”

“Bulk freighter?” Tyler asked, his voice a whisper.

“Yes, sir,” she replied.  “We’ve seen her before.  Back at Hecate, sir.  ID checks out as the Grania Estelle.”

The smile on Tyler’s lips was pure malice, but his eyes glowed like a pair of stars.  “It seems the universe has decided to shower blessings on me.”

Verrikoth looked over at him.  “What iz sso important about thiss particular sship?”

“They brought in a load of gadolinium for our hyperdrive a few months ago,” Tyler told him, his voice strained.  “Ganges was laid up in the building slip in Hecate, waiting for that last shipment so we could get the drive on line.  They refused to turn over the gadolinium and wanted to gouge us, so the locals launched some of their fighters to try and persuade them.”

“And they did not ssurrender?” Verrikoth asked, puzzled.  “A bulk freighter taking on a flight of sstarfighterz?”

Tyler ground his teeth.  “Yes, Captain, they did.  They managed to hold them off with their own fighter support.”

Verrikoth’s antennae straightened in surprise.  “They have their own sstarfighterz?”

Tyler growled.  “One at least,” he admitted.

“Sso a bulk freighter with minimal weaponz and one sstarfighter managed to destroy a flight of sshipss from Hecate and defeat this cruizzer?”  He buzzed with laughter.

“They didn’t fight us off,” Tyler replied angrily.  “They shot down the fighters, recovered their own and then ran for the hyper limit.  By the time we were able to get this ship up and running, they were almost there.  We caught up to them but they ejected the cargo with a…” he ground his teeth again, “a bomb attached to it.  We could either chase them down and lose the shipment, or we could get the cargo and have to let them go.  I didn’t have the means to do both, so I went after the cargo.  But now I want that ship, Captain.  And you will let me have it.”

The pirate stared at his flagship commander for a long moment.  Finally, his antennae twitched and he nodded.  “Very well, Commander Tyler,” he said slowly.  “You will get your payback.  But do not damage that sship too much.  It will be an exssellent addition to my flotilla.  It can carry sso much more ssuppliess and cargo than my merchant sshipss.”

The human nodded in satisfaction.  “Thank you, Captain Verrikoth.  Communications: all ships.”  He waited for the comm worker to give him a thumbs up.  “All ships in Flotilla Alpha, accelerate to point one light speed.  Course is being fed to you by Ganges.  We are going after the bulk freighter.”

But Verrikoth wasn’t finished.  He leaned in closer to the human, his voice pitched low.  “But do not misstake pragmatizm for weakness.  I let you go after thiss sship because it benefitss uss both.  You do not dictate termz to me.”  His words were punctuated by a subsonic thrum, causing the hairs on the back of Tyler’s neck stand up.  The human took an unconscious step back.  “Do you undersstand me, Commander?”

Tyler swallowed hard, nodding.  “I do, Captain.”

“Good.  Then, launch your attack.”

“Captain, the group of ships is changing course,” George reported, his voice calm, though it was clear his nerves were stretched as tight as a drum skin.  “Vector on them indicates they’re heading in our direction.”

“How long?” he asked, suddenly so very tired.

“At present speed?  They’re accelerating like crazy,” George replied.  “They’ll be right on top of us in two hours.”

“Time until we meet up with the shuttle?”

“Two minutes.”

The captain nodded.  “Then as soon as that shuttle is aboard, we’re out of here.  Helm, stand by to drop us straight down the Z-axis, perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic.  Best speed.”

Stella got a concerned look on her face.  “Captain, I’m not a speed racer.  I’m a freighter.  My ability to make vector changes that drastic is extremely limited.”

“Then divert power to your maneuvering thrusters, try to cushion your frame as we turn,” he told her.  “We stand exactly zero chance trying to fight off those ships.”  He stood and swept his gaze around the bridge, looking at his bridge crew.  The looks they were sending his way told him that they knew just what their chances were.  The cold stares were also telling him that his grip on their trust was tenuous and failing fast.  He grunted.  “All right.  Since you all seem hell-bent on blaming me for this latest turn of events, let’s have it out.  Stella, if the instant we saw Emilia Walker get shot up and captured, if we had poured on the speed, abandoned Ka’Xarian and his team and headed straight for the hyper limit for Seylonique, could we have gotten out before that group of ships arrived?”

The holo of the AI flickered, as though she was nervous.  “Yes, Captain, we could have.  We’d have made it into hyperspace about five hours ago.  But we would have left Xar, his team, and the Kara to their fates.”

“Stella,” the captain went on, making sure as his gaze swept over them, that he made eye contact with everyone, “If when we saw the Emilia Walker get hit and captured, if we had immediately gone to the fueling station, picked up Ka’Xarian and his team, and then followed the Kara to the hyper limit toward Seylonique could we have gotten out before that group arrived?”

She flickered again, this time her nervousness showing on her artificial face.  “No, Captain.  We would still have been two hours from the limit when they arrived.  And based on the acceleration we’re showing from those ships now, the corvette should have just gotten into weapons’ range about six minutes before we jumped.  They might have been able to get us.”

“Thank you, Stella,” he said, settling back into his chair.  “And since it doesn’t matter anyway, the looking back and what-if-ing ourselves, let’s all just focus on the job in front of us.  We get that team aboard and then we dive straight for the hyper limit.  We jump ten light years straight out, then recalculate for Seylonique, going around this system.”  The light in their eyes was starting to warm a bit.  It was still cold, but no longer frigid.  “Hopefully, it’ll be enough to keep the warships confused and they’ll lose us in the scramble.”

“Entering boat bay now,” Jesma reported, easing the thrusters and spinning the craft.  She set the ship down heavily on the deck, but no one complained.  An instant later, the outer hatch slid open and Security and medical personnel were waiting there for the crew on the shuttle.  Stretchers were brought out and Captain Vosteros, Kay’grax and Sion were loaded up and carried off, the sick berth attendants running down the corridors to get them to sickbay.

Tamara walked over to the shuttle.  She stepped inside through the main cargo hatch as it lowered to the deck.  Ka’Xarian was inside, along with most of his team.  Those that were injured were following the medicos down to sickbay, but there were still several of his engineers here to transfer the fuel to the ship’s tanks.  Without a word, she walked up to the zheen and put her arms around him.

Ka’Xarian froze in alarm.  “What’s this?” he asked.

“Just glad you’re all right, Xar,” Tamara said, her voice a low whisper.  “Scared you wouldn’t make it back.”

“And leave you and the Chief at each other’s throats?” he asked, patting her back.  “Never.  Besides, I’m too handsome to die.”

She chuckled, which came out almost as a sob.  Releasing him, she took a step back, but her hands were still on his shoulders.  “That you are, sir.  Just glad you’re back.”

“What about me?” Lorcan asked, walking over.

She wrinkled her nose at him.  “What about you?”

“Don’t I get a hug?  I’m the one who did most of the development on the knock-knock box and delivered it,” he pointed out.

Tamara nodded.  “Yes, of course.  Xar, hug this man.”

The zheen clacked his mandibles in disgust.  “No thank you.  I’ve had to be around him for the last few days and he hasn’t bathed in two of those.”  They all three laughed.

“Well, we’ll have to fix up the shuttle later,” Tamara told Ka’Xarian.  “Captain’s bugging out of here pretty quick now that you and the fuel are on board.”

“Bugging out?” Lorcan asked, chuckling.  “I can’t believe you just said that, Tamara.”

“Go find something to do, Lorcan,” Xar said, as Tamara released his shoulders and took a step back.  “In fact, get to work securing the hoses for the fuel transfer.”  He patted the nearest tank on board the shuttle.  “We need to get all this transferred as soon as we can.”

“Right,” the large man said.  He took the hose from the approaching tech and plugged it into the first storage tank on the shuttle.  Making sure the hose was locked down, he checked the status lights as they all turned from red to yellow to green.  Nodding, Lorcan twisted a control and the system began pumping the fuel out of the shuttle, through the hose to pipes that would lead to the main fuel bunkers aboard the Grania Estelle.  “Pumping initiated.  I’ll keep an eye on this, but it’s going to be about forty minutes for this tank, then about the same for the others.”

The PA system gave a shrill drone for two seconds then the Captain’s voice came on.  “All hands, this is the Captain.  Prepare for emergency maneuvers and acceleration.  Make sure all loose items are secured and that you brace for this.  We may be going into combat shortly, I want everyone ready.”  There was a pause.  “As most of you know, a number of warships entered the system and it looks as though they’re moving to intercept us.  We’re going to try and evade.  Moxie, report to the bridge.  That is all.”

“Never a dull moment,” Ka’Xarian said, his antennae flattening in weariness.

“Nope,” she replied.  She turned and gave him a little bow, which he returned.  “Damn, it’s good to have you back, Xar.”

“Thanks, Tamara.” His voice was tired, but the feeling came through.  “I am very glad to be back with all my little children.”

She chuckled and hustled off, heading into the ship.  As she was running, a message popped up on her HUD.

[Grab hold of something!]

Tamara dove forward, grabbing a hold of a handle on the bulkhead, her fingers locking around the metal bar just one second before the kilometer long freighter lurched onto a new heading.

“Finally,” Goris Hana exclaimed as life support stabilized, and reports came in over the radios indicating that the station’s three fusion reactors were now stable and operating out of network control. The fat man stomped a foot in satisfaction, trying to relief a bit of the frustration that had pent up in his chest ever since the madness with this malware had begun.

“Sensors are coming back up,” the operations watch stander called out.

“Excellent,” Hana replied, clumping his heavy booted feet over to that station and staring at the readouts.  “What the hell?”  He saw the feeds and displays showing the new arrivals, and that the big freighter had moved in on an approach vector toward the station, but now it seemed to be turning to dive down, straight relative to the system ecliptic.  “Where the hell do those bastards think they’re going?  Are communications up?” he bellowed to his exec.

The long-suffering officer nodded.  “Yes, sir.  But short range only.  We can’t send a signal to the orbital yet.”

“That’s fine.  Divert the defense ships to go after that freighter.”  He grinned.

“Why?” the exec asked.

The toad turned on him, raising his gun.  “You only need to worry about following my orders,” he told him.  “Don’t you worry about the why.”

The exec raised his hands.  “Very good, sir.  No whys.  But what are the defense ships’ orders once they catch up?”

“They are to force the freighter to return back to the station, by any means necessary.  If they refuse to stop, disable their engines.”  Administrator Hana stroked his jowls with his free hand, lowering the gun.  “Where are we on detaining their crew?”

The exec shook his head.  “Security intercepted them in the hangar bay, apparently they broke into the holding room and got the three survivors from that light freighter.  They shot their way out of the hangar, though the security team indicated that they managed to cause some damage to the shuttle’s propulsion.”

The toad brightened.  “Then we can grab them?”

The exec shook his head again.  “No, sir.  I’m sorry.  It looks as though the bulk freighter came in at just the right moment, the shuttle landed aboard and then the big ship made their turn.  They’re accelerating toward the hyper limit.”

Hana growled.  “Are they going to make it before the pinnaces catch them?”

The comm watch officer was already issuing orders.  “The defense ships are en route.  They should catch them in less than fifty minutes.”

“Good.  Make sure that they do.”

“Captain, the defense pinnaces are turning toward us and accelerating,” Stella reported.

George nodded in confirmation.  “I’m seeing them too, Captain.  They’re moving to intercept.”

The captain frowned.  “Lucky us.  We couldn’t have been less popular the last time we were here.  They were in a hurry to get rid of us.  Now it seems that everyone wants us to stay.”  He sighed.  “Not sure how I feel about that.”

The officers exchanged glances, worry plain on all their faces, but no one replied to his rhetorical question.  The hatch to the bridge opened and Tamara stepped inside.  “Permission to enter the bridge?”

“Get in here,” the captain ordered, not taking his eyes from the controls.

“You wanted to see me?”

He nodded.  “Yes.  I want to know if you have any tricks you can throw out at our ever increasing number of followers.”

She pursed her lips in thought.  Stella appeared on the holo at the front of the bridge and looked over at her.  “Well, opening fire is certainly not an option.  We don’t really have the firepower to hurt any of them, except maybe the pinnaces, but if any of those proper warships get near us, we’re toast.”

He frowned at her.  “Yes, thanks, I determined that on my own.”

Tamara nodded, smiling slightly.  “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud.  There isn’t really much more we can do, Captain.  I mean we can try another cyber attack, like the one Xar’s team managed on the station, but that’s iffy.  It worked because the station’s crew wasn’t prepared for it and they didn’t know that it was his team that had done it.  We don’t really know the hardware and software on those warships, so I don’t know if the malware we have would work on them.  I know it will work on the pinnaces, but the only problem is, we’d have to send it to them by radio communication.”

“So?”

“So, if we do that, then everyone will know that it was us who did it.  And if it doesn’t work, or doesn’t disable them completely enough, they’ll probably shoot us down,” she pointed out.

“As opposed to now,” he shot back.  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Moxie, but the ships coming after us probably aren’t doing so because they want to have us invite them in for tea.”

She nodded.  “All right, Captain.  I’ll get with Stella and the Chief and see what we can do.  In the very least we might be able to whittle the number of ships chasing us down a little.”

“Better than nothing,” he agreed.  “Get on it and report back.  And do it fast, Moxie.  They are closing in on us rather quickly for my tastes.”

“Grania Estelle is turning, sir,” the sensor watch reported.

Tyler and Verrikoth moved to the control station.  “Yess.  Order Ajax, Cierre, Nocturne and Ssquire to break off purssuit and head to the fueling sstation.  They will get with the sstation authoritiez and ssecure our fuel ssupply.  The rest of the flotilla will continue after Commander Tyler’z wayward sship.”

The comm officer relayed the orders and in seconds, four of the ships broke from the formation, their vectors curving around to take them to the fueling station.  The remaining ships were continuing on course.  But now those ships, the cruisers and the corvette were arcing around as well to an intercept with the freighter.  It seemed as though the captain of the Grania Estelle thought that he could sprint to the hyper limit and Verrikoth’s ships either couldn’t catch him or would give up the pursuit.  The zheen looked over at his flag captain.  It was clear that Commander Tyler was not going to let this go.  And there was no reason to let it go.  His ships were fast and powerful, more than a match for an aging bulk freighter.  It couldn’t escape.  His ships would cut them off long before they reached the hyper limit.

“Sir, I’ve got more ships coming out from the fueling station,” the sensor watch reported, pointing at the indicators on the display.  “They look small, pinnace-sized.  They’re moving fast, on vectors to intercept the Grania Estelle.”

“Stop calling that ship by name,” Tyler hissed.  “I don’t ever want to hear that name again.”  The officer looked up at the commander in fear.  “You call it Target One from now on, do you understand?”

“Yes, Commander.  Sorry, sir.”  The man tried to look contrite.

Tyler nodded.  “Just don’t do it again.  Can you bring up sensor readings on those small ships?”

The man obliged.  He was right, the attack ships were larger than starfighters and the power readings on them indicated legs long enough to move around the system easily without frequent refueling stops.  He’d seen ships similar to this in other industrialized systems, where governments wanted ships to handle local policing of freighters and such with enough weapons to be able to keep everyone in line.

“Will they get to the Target One before we will?”

“They’ll reach them before we will, sir,” the sensor officer answered.  “But we’ll be in weapons range before they can dock with them.”

“Good.  Continue on course and speak with engineering about getting us more speed.”

Tamara’s fingers flew over the keyboard at her station in engineering.  She had isolated it from the rest of the ship’s network, physically uncoupling the connections to the rest of the ship so that there would be no accidents.  Stella was reviewing and adding her own little tricks to the special package.  Finally, she stopped, then hit three more controls and let the program run.  The other engineering crew were working around her at their own consoles, maintaining the ship’s systems at full thrust.

“Looking good,” Stella admitted.  “Though I’m begging you to please be careful with that, Tamara.  I don’t need to have that spreading out through my systems.”

“You’re such a worry wart,” Tamara teased her.  “What happened to the gung-ho creation that advocated charging headlong to save the prisoners aboard the Emilia Walker?”

“She’s had time to reconsider,” Stella admitted.  “I thought it over, reviewed the sensor readings and then realized that they were right.  I got overconfident because of the upgrades and repairs.  And I saw the other ship, the Emilia Walker getting attacked and I just… snapped.”  She hung her head and stopped talking.  Tamara looked up from the screen at her.

“Are you okay?” she asked the AI.

“I don’t know what happened to me, Tamara,” Stella said, sounding miserable.  “I risked everything.  The lives of the crew, the ship, everything.  And for what?  What have we accomplished?”

“Well, you got the Captain to move the ship close enough to the fueling station fast enough that we were in exactly the right position to grab Xar and his team.  We might not have gotten there in time if you hadn’t.”

“I know, and I feel good about that, but what about the crew?  They nearly all hate the Captain now.  I’ve driven a huge wedge between Taja and the Captain.  And who will trust me now?  They’ll think I’m a defective program, not worthy of serving with, and certainly not one they can trust.”

“All right, calm down, Stella,” Tamara told her.  “Once this is done, I’m going to run a full series of diagnostics, all right?  I don’t think there’s anything wrong, but I’ll check.  I want to keep working with you.”

Stella’s face looked stricken.  “You think I’ve snapped?  That my code is defective?”

“Relax, Stella,” Tamara soothed.  “It’s just a checkup.  That’s all.  You were checking up on me, now it’s my turn for you.”  The AI was clearly still worried.  “Please calm down, Stella.  Do you think that if I thought there was any kind of problem with you I’d be playing with this malware program instead of looking at your core matrix?”

“But do you trust me, Tamara?”

She looked over at Stella’s image, appearing so weak and vulnerable.  She looked like the little lost teenager she appeared to be.  Tamara couldn’t help but marvel at her handiwork.  Of course, now was not really the most opportune time for the ship’s AI to decide to have an emotional breakdown, what with two different groups chasing after them, looking to kill them or capture them.

“I trust you, Stella.  I wouldn’t work with you if I didn’t.  Now I really need you to calm down and focus.”  Tamara checked the coding as it scrolled by.  “Run one more test on this.  Looks okay to me, but I need to be sure.”

The AI sniffed, a very organic gesture, but then she straightened.  “Right, of course.  Scanning now.”  Thirty-five seconds later, the AI blinked.  “Looks good.  Ready to transmit.”

Tamara activated her comms.  “Captain, the malware is ready to transmit at your command.  I recommend you let Stella do it, because I don’t want any accidents.”

“I completely agree.  Good work, Moxie, Stella.  Send it.”

“Opening a channel to the pinnaces,” Stella announced.  “Sending transmissions.”

Goris Hana stared at the display, quivering with excitement.  His pinnaces were almost in range of that bulk freighter.  The pilots were ready to open fire on the Grania Estelle’s engines and then he could have that big bitch brought in.  And then he would get some answers and some damned satisfaction.

“I think I’m going to keep the hull,” he muttered to himself.  “Make an excellent storage vessel, hell, I think I might even get her fixed up so we could make hauls to nearby systems.”  He nodded as he made the decision.  “Yes.  If they don’t shoot it up too much, I think that’s what I’m going to do with her.”

But then the display flickered.  “Damn it!  Are the systems acting up again?” he demanded.  His gun was back in his meaty paw again.

The ops crew recoiled in fear.  “No, sir, they’re not.  We’re still up and running.”

“Then why is that screen flickering?” he bellowed, waving the gun in the air.

“It’s happening on the other end,” the sensor operator replied, his voice unsteady.  “Whatever is happening is on the other side.  On the ships.”

“Now what is that?” Hana asked, pointing at the cluster of signatures that were approaching.

“Ships, sir,” the man replied, doing an admirable job of keeping his voice and tone steady.  “Eight of them, sir.  Four of them look like freighters, they’re breaking off from the others and heading in our direction.  The others look more like proper warships; a corvette and three cruisers.  They’re going after the freighter, sir.”

“They’re what?  Oh hell no they are not!  That’s my fucking ship!  No way in hell am I going to let them steal it out from under me.”

“Sir, we’ve lost contact with the three pinnaces.  Their comms are out and they’ve lost power.  They’re completely adrift.”

“Damn it!” he howled.  He brought the gun in both hands up to his forehead, resting the long edge of the barrel against his forehead, the business end up at the overhead.  He breathed heavily for a long moment, watching as the icons for the various ships moved inexorably closer to both the fueling station and to the bulk freighter.  “They did this.  Those freighter bastards.  They sabotaged our ships.”  He paused.  “And they must have attacked us too.  This… this… this… virus problem… it’s them!  Do we have comms back up?  Can we reach the orbital?”

“Five more minutes, sir,” the comm technician said, frantically splicing wires and entering commands on her console.  Sweat was beading on her upper lip and forehead, but she didn’t slow down in her work.  It was probably that that stayed her execution.

Goris Hana paced around, his impatience growing with every second, though surprisingly he did not interrupt the technician.  When finally she gave the thumbs up to him, he clumped over to her console to check for himself.  “Good.  Call the governing council on the orbital.  Tell them to release some of the defense ships to our use.”

“Sir!” the exec protested.  “They won’t do it!  Those ships are protecting the shipyard.  I can’t imagine they’re going to let us take even one of those ships.  And even if they release them, what good would they do against those ships?” He pointed at the cruisers on the display.

Ulla-tran had more in the way of defenses than just a half-dozen pinnaces.  In fact, there was a full dry dock and shipyard on the far side of the system from the fueling station.  Two ships were currently undergoing construction and final outfitting, a light cruiser and frigate, respectively, though the frigate was much further along than the cruiser.  The frigate was undergoing final outfitting and shakedown, only awaiting a crew.  The cruiser was about sixty percent complete, with her engines, shields, and hyperdrive completed, but no weapons and only about half of its internal sections completed.

The system also boasted two squadrons of blocky and rather ungainly looking Sigma-class fighters.  They could do the job, and were well-armed enough to do it well, but they wouldn’t be winning any awards for aesthetics.  The system also employed three sublight gunships, little more than hull, engines and weapons, each with a crew of ten.  They were lightly armored, but carried heavy laser cannons and a trio of rail guns.  They were little more than eggs with teeth.  Right now all of those ships were clustered around the shipyards and the dry dock, to keep the new ships and the industry here safe, but the defense ships were doing little to protect the rest of the system, as evidenced by the eight newcomer ships arriving in system completely unchallenged.

Hana glared over at the exec, aiming the gun at the man.  “I keep hearing your voice and it’s squeaking at me, XO.  You need to stop the squeaking.”  He turned to the comm watch.  “Tell them about the ships that have entered the system.  Tell them that we need to have at least some deterrent since our pinnaces have been disabled.”

The comm watch officer nodded.  “Yes, sir.  Sending transmission now.”

“We did it!” Stella crowed.  “The pinnaces are adrift, completely unpowered.  They’re no longer actively pursuing.”  Her voice was smug.

“Are they dead?”

“Yes, Captain, the ships are.”

“I was referring to the crews,” he commented.

The AI shrugged her holographic shoulders.  “No way to be sure.  But if they don’t get systems back in short order, they will be in a matter of hours.”  No remorse in her voice, no pity.

The captain looked as though he was going to speak, perhaps to order her to try and cancel the malware that she had infected their systems with.  The bridge crew was quiet, to see if he would give that order.  But he didn’t.  And no one spoke up about it.

“Continue on course,” was all he said.  The ship was still running all-out for the hyper limit, with the pinnaces floating along behind, losing ground on the bulk freighter now that they were no longer accelerating.  The pirate cruisers and corvette were still gaining, rapidly, and according to estimates, it would not really be a race to the hyper limit.  They were going to catch up well before then, it was only a matter of what the warships would do once they caught up.

“Do you want to talk to them, Captain?” Stella asked, appearing on his display.  Her image had vanished from the holo projector.  “See if you can get them to leave us alone?”

“You’ve already identified Ganges on your sensors, Stella,” the captain reminded her.  “I can’t imagine that the good Commander Tyler is going to be very generous after we humiliated him back at Hecate.”

“Perhaps not,” the AI admitted.  “But maybe you can distract him and keep him talking long enough to get us to the hyper limit.”

“They’re going to catch us about an hour distance from the limit,” he pointed out, his face sour.  “There’s not much that conversation is going to do to change that.  Anything he says to us is going to include the words ‘cut your engines and prepare to be boarded’.  You know that, Stella.  That’s if he doesn’t just start firing.  And if he does, we are beyond screwed.  We are a giant target.”

“Are you calling me fat, Captain?” she asked, pretending to be indignant.

He smiled.  “First of all, this was my girl before she was yours, Stella.  She’s big and perfect.  But she’s not meant to try and evade and outfight a cruiser.  Much less three.”  He sighed.  “No, for now, we continue on.  We can try your malware package once they get a little closer, but I can’t count on that working a third time.”

“We are entering the extreme edge of our weapons range, Commander,” the tactical officer on Ganges’s bridge reported.  “Locking on with forward batteries.”

“Fire only on my order,” Tyler stressed.  “Not before.”

“Yes, Commander,” the officer replied.  His controls were set.  “Ready on your order.”

“Hold for now,” he ordered.  “Wait until those targeting solutions firm up a bit.  I want to be able to take them down with a single salvo.”

“You are not going to desstroy that sship, Commander,” Verrikoth warned him.

“No, sir, I’m not,” Tyler said, nodding.  “But I want to make sure we get the point across to those freighter jockeys.”

“There are four warsshipss chassing them, Commander,” Verrikoth said wryly.  “I think that they will undersstand the point we are trying to make.”

“They need to heave to and allow us to board.”  Tyler was adamant about this point.  “And we know that they sent some sort of transmission to those pinnaces chasing them.”  He pointed to the display.  “Look, they’re completely dead.  That’s no act.  The freighter hit them with some sort of cyber attack.”  He punched his fist into his open hand.  “Damn.”

“Then open a channel and order them to ssurrender.”

Tyler nodded, a wicked smile on his lips.  “Yes, let’s do that.  Communications, open a channel to Target One.”

“Channel open, Commander.”

“This is Commander Jensen Tyler of the warship Ganges to pirate freighter Grania Estelle.  You will heave to immediately, lower your shields and prepare to be boarded, or we will fire upon you.  Respond.”

“This is Vincent Eamonn, Captain of the Grania Estelle to Commander Tyler.  Under whose authority are you demanding I stop?  This is an independent star system, of which you are not a part.  And should you try to push the matter, you’re only proving yourself to be the very pirates you claim I am.  I am continuing on course.  Grania Estelle, out.”

Tyler ground his teeth in frustration.  “That arrogant bastard.  I warned him.  I warned him.  I gave him the chance to surrender and he spit in my face.”

“Am I going to have to liszten to you whine all day, Commander?” Verrikoth asked, amused.

“Guns, open fire on Grania Estelle’s engines.  Disable them.”

The light cruiser’s forward turbolasers opened up, pouring coherent energy into the aft section of the freighter.  Tyler had to marvel at the strength of the big ship’s aft shields.  It didn’t take long however for the constant hammer blows of charged particle spears coming from Ganges’s forward weapons array to batter down the larger vessel’s shields.

“Once the shields go down, I want pinpoint accuracy, Guns.  Disable their engines but don’t destroy them.  I want to be able to recover that hull.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damage report!” Eamonn bellowed over the howling of alarms.  “And shut that damned thing off!”  George pressed a control and the alarm ceased.

“Aft shields have failed,” he reported.  A jolt shook the ship as another shot lanced over from Ganges.  “Damage to the aft section.  Engines still online.”

“Helm, alter course, port six degrees, up nine degrees,” the captain ordered.  It was a small enough change that they wouldn’t waste too much time, fuel and effort, but enough to throw off the targeting of the Ganges, if only for a few moments.  Another hit rocked the big ship and damage markers flashed over the Captain’s display.

“Engine two is out,” George said, trying to maintain calm.  “Engine three is showing damage.”

“Shut down power to the engines,” the captain ordered, his voice completely flat.  “Bring us to zero acceleration.”  The bridge crew all looked at him in astonishment.  “We can’t outrun them and they’re just going to keep pounding us until we stop.  We can’t stand up to that.  Get security on the line, tell them to prepare for boarders.”

Engineering was a madhouse.  Techs were working their consoles and stations furiously, while others were running, carrying tools and trying to lock down damaged components.  Damage control parties were dispatched from engineering to the after sections to cut fuel lines and patch up any hull breaches, which were thankfully few.  Quesh stood at the main console, rerouting around damaged systems and other components.

“We better not keep taking hits like that,” he muttered to himself.  “Or we’re going to be dead.”  He pressed a comm button.  “Engineering to bridge.  You’d better do something about those ships and fast.  My engines are not going to stand up to that.”

“We’re cutting the engines, Quesh,” the captain replied.  “I’m not even going to try and outrun them anymore.  Our inertia will keep carrying us forward and hopefully we’ll be able to reach the hyper limit.”  The captain’s tone told the Parkani how hopeful he was at that possibility.  “But keep the engines on standby.  If possible, I’m going to need you ready to accelerate all out.”

Quesh sighed, rubbing his forehead with one hand.  “Aye, Captain.  I’ll be ready, but remember, two of the engines are out.  We won’t have as much acceleration as before.”

“Understood.  Just be ready.”

“They’ve cut acceleration, sir.”  The sensor watch officer sounded confused.  “But they’re not slowing.”

“They think that if they follow the letter of my orders, I won’t blast them into oblivion,” Tyler replied.

“You won’t, Commander,” Verrikoth reminded him, hissing slightly.  “I want that sship in uzable condition.  Move uss closser and uze the tractoring beamz on the cruiserz to sslow it down.  I don’t want them accidently reach the hyper limit and escape.”

The commander nodded in agreement.  “Yes, they’re going to try and do that again.”  He nodded to the helmsman who complied with the order.  “Communications, order Target One to drop their shields and keep their weapons powered down or we will open fire.”

“Captain, the cruisers are closing in on us from three sides,” George reported.  “They’re pulling in damned close, too.  They’re moving to ten kilometers off.  Ganges is taking station above us and the other two on either side.  They’re deploying tractoring beams.”  The ship lurched a bit as the cruisers locked on.  “They’re using their own thrusters to slow us down.  Apparently they’re not going to let us sneak across the hyper limit when they’re not paying attention.”

“Well, it was a dim hope at best.”  The captain rubbed his chin.  “But that does give me an idea.”  He pressed the comm control on the arm of his chair.  “Quesh, Captain.  Begin increasing atmospheric pressure in all the cargo bays.”

The Parkani sounded harried.  “What?  Why?”

“Because I’m going to blow the doors of the cargo bays open and shower the cruisers with the cargo like missiles.  And if the overpressure is enough, the mass of the cargo will shoot out like bullets.”

The Parkani sighed.  “Roger that, Captain.  I’m on it.”

“Pressure is rising in all of the cargo bays, Captain,” George reported a moment later.  “Boat bay is remaining normal.”

“Can the cruisers detect it?” Eamonn asked.

George shrugged.  “They’d have to be looking for it.  We’re not increasing our power output or anything.  I honestly can’t say, but their postures haven’t changed.  They’re not trying to maneuver.  They’re holding position relative to us and pulling us to a stop with their tractoring beams.”

“Small favors then.  Let me know if anything changes.”  The captain was keeping an eye on the atmo pressure in the cargo bays.  The indicators were well out of the green and into the yellow and continuing to rise.

Tamara checked the feeds on her console and looked up, accessing the internal comms with her implants.  “Captain, I’m showing we’re approaching the go moment.”

“Understood, Moxie.  Tell me when,” he replied.

She kept a watch on the readouts, watching as the indicators climbed ever higher and stress markers on the internal seals climbed closer to the red.  She looked up from the console, taking a deep breath.  “All right, Captain, ready to go.”

The captain took a deep breath and checked his display.  He pressed the comm control.  “All right, Moxie, do it.”

Down at her engineering console, Tamara pressed the activation control.  The massive cargo doors to all eight cargo bays burst open, the atmosphere inside rushing to escape into the void carrying with it all of the tons of cargo contained inside.  The cargo broke apart into its individual containers, spreading out into a near cloud of debris rocketing out from the bulk freighter.  None of it was volatile or explosive, a great deal of it was simply junk that Taja had picked up from the station for a song, trading their cargoes in from previous stops for bits and bobs that might turn a profit in other systems, or feed the replicators for some useful things.

But what the debris lacked in explosive punch it all made up for in mass.  The projectiles sped out and crashed into the hulls of the two cruisers bracketing Grania Estelle.  The velocity was only a few dozen kilometers per hour but the mass was significant.  The odd-shaped containers, crates and other cargo boxes thunked into the hulls of the two light cruisers, battering the relatively light armor.  Individually, the cargo containers wouldn’t be able to do much damage, but with hundreds of them hammering the hulls, the damage couldn’t be ignored or denied.  A pair of turbolaser batteries were smashed on Meghna and a crate of metal ingots punched through the ship’s armor, breaching the hull.  Small rips, scrapes and outright breaches the mass of containers pounded all along the length of the two hulls.  A sensor array was torn apart as a half-dozen barrels of food stuffs winged the edge of the array.  Damage sparkled up and down the hulls as the mass punched through the hull, causing both ships to drop their tractoring beams and lurch off course.

It wasn’t a crippling attack.  Both cruisers had taken light to moderate damage, but only on the sides facing the Grania Estelle.  They weren’t mauled enough to be out of action completely and Ganges and the corvette were out of the line of fire and were undamaged.

“Direct hits on both cruisers!” George said, punching the air.  “The two ships have lost their tractoring lock and are moving off course.”

“Nice shooting, Moxie,” Eamonn said.  “Shields up.  Helm, full ahead, best speed.”

The Grania Estelle’s engines came on at full, as did her shields, and with a bit of modulation on the part of Ka’Xarian, the tractoring beam from Ganges slipped off.  The bulk freighter lumbered forward, ponderous and slow, the light cruiser easily matching pace, but no longer attempting to try and lasso the bigger ship.

But this was a short lived victory.  The corvette Ravage locked on and launched a pair of Sierra-class missiles which quickly closed the gap between the two ships and exploded against Grania Estelle’s aft shields.  A follow of pair of missiles blasted through the buckling shields and detonated against the ship’s engines.

“Thiss iz intolerable!” Verrikoth grated, incensed.  This freighter, a barely armed merchant had the sheer gall to attack and damage his brand new flotilla.  His was holding perfectly still, but a subsonic buzz was emitting from him, causing all around him, Jensen Tyler included, to shiver because of the pure predatory feeling emanating from the zheen.  “Ssend sshuttlez!” he hissed, mandibles clacking in anger.  “Board that sship!  They will pay for thiss outrage!”

Chapter 28

“Bring us in behind Target One,” Tyler ordered, his voice like iron.  Ganges’s helmsman easily complied with the order, simply reducing acceleration to zero and allowing the bigger ship to slip past.  In less than a minute, the bulk freighter was five kilometers ahead of the light cruiser and the distance was opening.  “Fire all batteries!” the commander ordered.  “Take down their shields.  I don’t want them playing any more games.”

All of Ganges’s turbolaser batteries and laser cannons opened up, sending a wave of coherent light lancing out as the charged particle beams briefly connected the two ships.  Grania Estelle’s shields weathered the onslaught for only a few seconds before they collapsed.  From there, Ganges began firing pinpoint shots, destroying all of the shield nodes on the dorsal and port sides.  Without full shield coverage, Grania Estelle was now trapped in the Ulla-tran system.  The stresses of hyperspace would shred an unshielded vessel.

“We have you now,” Tyler said, eyes bright.

“Shuttles launching in three minutes, Commander,” the boat bay officer reported over the comm.

“Very well,” he replied.  “Helm, move us back to a safer distance.  Five thousand kilometers.”  Well within easy targeting range of the bigger ship.  “I want no more surprises.”  The extra distance would increase the shuttles’ flight time to get to the freighter, but it would only be by a few minutes.  And with their engines blasted apart and their shields ripped down, they were trapped.

“Shields have collapsed!” Stella announced, her voice breaking.  Though she was a digital projection, she was clearly upset and her actions betrayed her pain.  She wasn’t programmed to feel physical pain, even if the ship took damage, but she could interpret the damage data as pain and mimic the appropriate body language.  “Ah!” she screamed as the ship jolted from Ganges’s shots.  “They’ve completely destroyed my dorsal and port side shield generators.”

The comm beeped and Quesh’s voice came on.  “Only engine one is up, all the rest are completely trashed.  I’ve shut that one down and cut all the fuel lines.  We’re not going anywhere, Captain.”

The Captain’s face was a terrifying mask of pure hate.  They had attacked him, his ship, his home.  He had tried to defend himself, but these people paid no mind to that.  They took what he’d dished out and then broke both of his kneecaps.  Now his ship was adrift.

Adrift, not dead.

“Ready the rail guns,” he ordered, his voice extremely calm.  Dangerously so, with a tone no one had heard him use before.  No one argued, they simply obeyed.  Despite his rage (and if he was honest, utter terror) his mind was still sharp.  The laser cannons would draw a noticeable amount of power but the rail guns used considerably less.  The guns wouldn’t get off more than a few shots, but they might make a difference if the Ganges and her fellows attempted a boarding.

Of course, attacking any boarding shuttles would only enrage Commander Tyler further ensuring Eamonn and his crew’s swift deaths.  But in the grand scheme of it, if they were being boarded by hostile forces, they might all die anyway, but it wouldn’t in any way be quick or painless.  He didn’t have the time to brood over the morality of this.  He was protecting his home and his crew.  Others might debate his right or the wisdom to strike at these other parties; they had that luxury.  He had a second to make such judgments and others would spend hours and days tearing those decisions apart.  But they weren’t in charge; they weren’t sitting in the big chair.  They didn’t have the responsibility of all these lives and the life of the ship weighing down on them.

“If any shuttles launch, let them get close and then knock them down.”  His voice stayed cold and the responses that came back were scared.  Either of him or of the pirates outside, he didn’t care.  They were following his orders and not wasting time or undermining his authority.              “Tell Security to prepare for boarders.  Let Corajen play with all her new toys.”

“Captain, shuttles are launching from all four ships,” George reported.  “Two each from the big cruisers and one from the corvette.”

“Incoming transmission,” Serinda spoke up.  “We’re being directed to surrender and prepare to be boarded.”  Her voice was hollow as she pronounced their doom.

He glared at her.  “My orders stand.  We’re not surrendering.”

The dark-haired beauty visibly swallowed but nodded, clearly frightened.  He swept his gaze over the bridge.  Everyone was scared, but they weren’t panicking.  Perfect.

Shuttles cruised out of the bays of the four ships, loaded with armed boarding parties.  These small ships were not the large, bulky cargo shuttles meant for hauling freight to and from a big merchant ship.  These were speedy, armed assault shuttles, meant for ferrying troops from one place to another.  Verrikoth had spared no expense here, commissioning a dozen of these manta-like shuttles, capable of moving ten troopers fully loaded with kit, while still being able to achieve decent speed and maneuverability and armed with a pair of laser cannons and a nose mounted rail gun.

The shuttle was loaded up to the bulkheads with troopers, eleven in total, ten sitting in the shock couches and one more standing up, holding onto the handle in the ceiling.  All of the troops in this shuttle were wearing skinsuits, the head covers pulled down like hoods.  These were not military issue, but they wore civilian type body armor over the chest and back.  They were a bit mismatched; Verrikoth may have splurged on the assault shuttles, but apparently had spared a few credits on body armor.  Their weapons were a mix of assault rifles, pistols, shotguns and even a few energy blasters.  They were a mismatched group as well, some tall, short, broad and wiry.  The one thing that unified them, other than the aggressive attitudes, was that they were all, to the last, zheen.  The interior of the shuttle hummed with excitement as they all continued to pump themselves and each other up for the boarding operation.

“Listen up!” the leader yelled.  “Captain wants a clean sweep!  No hiding spaces.  This is a big bastard of a ship so there’s going to be lots of places to look.  Go through everything.  Any threats, you take them out.  But anyone surrenders, secure them and get them back to the holding area.”

“Where’s that going to be?” one of the boarders asked.

“We’re going to try and secure one of those hangar bays.  Understand this!” he shouted and all of them winced at the volume of the pronouncement.  “This is not a raid!  This is a capture!  And the Captain wants a lot of prisoners.  So curb your impulses.”  There was a hiss of disappointment that spread through the ship.  Getting to have their fun with the victims was a large draw to boarding actions.  “Shut up!  Captain’s orders.  There’ll be time for that when we get to the big prize.”

The soldiers buzzed with happiness.  It was no secret that Captain Verrikoth wanted to take Byra-Kae, the Republic base of operations in the Argos Cluster.  Everyone agreed, that would be a good fight with lots of plunder.  This would just have to take the edge off until then.

“I mean it!” the leader yelled at them all.  And they knew he did.

“Listen up!” Corajen yelled to the Security officers gathered up near her, and to those over the comms.  She held her communicator flipped open in her free hand, her assault rifle in the other.  She was decked out in her body armor, pockets loaded with extra clips of ammo, along with a stunner in her hip holster.  “We’ve got seven shuttles coming in, which means there’s going to be almost as many of them as we have on this entire ship.  Now there are only twenty of us,” she reminded them all, “but we are fighting for our home.  But brute force alone isn’t going to save us.  We gotta fight smart.”

There were nods from the five of her people here.  The shopping trip that Taja, Tamara and Corajen had taken had yielded a great deal in the way of weapons, but not so much in the way of armor or explosives.  They were all decked out with automatic weapons with ammunition designed to do a great deal of damage to flesh, but not cause breaches in the hull if targets were missed.  Corajen had been working her crews ever since the arrival of the new weapons, making them all work on their marksmanship.  For the most part, they were working as little more than peace officers aboard the ship, but it was in their job description to handle situations like this.

“Now, I know you’re all a bit nervous,” she told them, looking out over the ones she saw before her, her voice carrying over the comms to the ones elsewhere.  “That’s natural.  But this is what we’ve all trained for.  You just watch each other’s back, and shoot the bastards when they try to come in.”  The soldiers gave nervous chuckles.  “All right.  Team leaders, make sure you keep in contact at all times.”  A trio of Tamara’s slimer grenades hung from a bandolier over the lupusan’s shoulder and everyone else had at least two each.  They were helpful and could trap people in place.  Make easy targets of them if they could get them in the right places and with nearly four times as many boarders coming in, the security officers needed every advantage they could get.

She had spread her security team out into five groups of four, hoping that having greater coverage over the ship would be better than trying to mass her force in one or two areas.  With the crew and Stella controlling things like doors and life support, they might be able to bottleneck a few of them into kill zones where she and her people could do the most damage.

The assault shuttles were still moving in toward the ship, but they were still holding a loose formation, shifting around a bit to try and confuse any targeting sensors the cargo ship might be trying to train on them.  Which was annoying, Corajen thought, because it meant they didn’t know where the boarding parties were going to try and enter.  To counter this as best as she could, she’d spread out her force along the spine, leaving Saiphirelle and her team just outside the boat bay two other teams toward the front of the ship and her own team smack at the midline.  She wanted to be able to respond in either direction depending on where the shuttles came in.

Corajen nodded to those around her.  “All of you stay sharp.  This is going to be a bad day, we all know that.  Shoot straight and watch each other’s backs.  The rest of the crew has their jobs, keeping this place running, fixing things when they break, and even filling the bays with goods to sell.  But it’s our job to keep them all safe.  Movement orders will come in as necessary.”

“All right,” the leader said to the shuttle pilot.  “Swing us up and around, I want to come in on the portside forward cargo bay, the upper one.”

“Sir, that bay is completely depressurized,” the pilot warned.

The zheen leader nodded.  “Yes, but that’s all right.  I have portable magfield generators with me.”

“Yes, sir, but there’s no atmo in those bays.  You’d just be sealing off a bay that didn’t have anything in it.  You’d still be in hard vacuum.”

“Soon as we crack open the doors to the ship, we’ll let their own atmo fill the bay.  No muss,” he said, his antennae twitching in satisfaction.

“The other shuttles are moving on similar courses, cargo bays, and it looks like one is heading to the forward airlock on the port side.”

The leader’s antennae bobbed in a shrug.  “Makes sense.  Keep everyone to port since their shields are fragged on that side.  Are they trying to maneuver?”

“No, but then the Captain said that Commander Tyler threatened ‘em to hold position.  I don’t think they’re going to try something stupid,” the pilot pointed out.

The zheen hissed.  “Always bet on stupidity.  Be ready when they try something.”

They didn’t have long to wait.

The port side rail guns on the Grania Estelle cut loose, sending out a hail of metal slugs which thumped into the hull of one of the shuttles.  The shuttle’s wing was damaged and the weapon tracked the ship around, firing continuously.  A barrage struck the hull, perforating it with ease.  Three slugs struck the shuttle’s core and the assault shuttle exploded.

“Shuttle Four is down,” the pilot called out.  The guns swiveled around, tracking another of the ships and fired again.  The second assault shuttle managed to bank just enough to evade to avoid a major hit, but the metal slugs tore through the shuttle’s starboard wing, puncturing the ship’s shields and tearing apart the wing.  The shuttle spun wildly out of control, spinning off toward the blackness.  The remaining shuttles opened fire, laser blasts and their own Gatling rail guns blasting Grania Estelle’s port side weapons to shreds.  Now the shuttles were too close to stop or shoot down with her other guns.  The shuttles flew to their destinations, the cargo bays and the forward airlock.  They ignored the boat bay completely, rightly thinking the crew would have strong defenses there.

The shuttles landed in the cargo bays and the troops closed up their skinsuits, sealing the head covers before the shuttle ramp opened.  The troops inside hustled out, weapons ready, moving in cover formation.  The gravity was still active, but the gaping maw of the main doors still yawned behind them.  The bay itself was clean, surprisingly, though the decking was scratched and dinged from the cargo have been flung out into space.  The two combat engineers lugged the magshield generator out of the shuttle.  Within two minutes it was set up and running and a shimmering wall of light appeared at the open end of the bay.

“Magshield active, but atmo is still zero,” one of them said over the comms.

The leader nodded.  He pointed to the main interior doors leading into the ship, the wide double doors.  “Kes’sen, get that door open.”  Then he waved his arm to the others.  “Get clear of those doors.  Atmo’s gonna come rushing in and that field,” he pointed, “only holds the atmo in.  You will go tumbling through without even slowing down.”

The others nodded, already aware, but it was serious enough that no one minded having it repeated.  They all moved away from the door, except Kes’sen who was hooking up a datapad to the door controls to bypass the safety lockouts.  His boots were magnetized to the deck as was a tether and anchor near one of his fellows.

“They’re attempting to unlock the interior cargo doors for Bay Three,” George reported.  “I can’t keep them out.”

“Warn Corajen,” the captain told him.  “Make sure all teams are advised.”

“Ready!” Kes’sen called.  Everyone braced.  He leaned to the side, double checking his tether.  “Opening!” he said, pressing the activator.

The doors slid open and a roar of wind thundered through the widening gap.  The troopers dug their feet into the deck, straining as the rushing air threatened to knock them over.  Unidentifiable objects sucked from the corridors beyond in the ship flew out of the doorway, one of them bouncing off the shuttle fuselage and through the magshield and into the void.

But no people, none of the ship’s crew were sucked out.  It look less than a minute for the bay to air up and the pressure to equalize and the wind to die down.  The instant it all became manageable, the leader hustled his troops forward.

“Bangers!” he shouted and two of the zheen tossed flash bang grenades through the open doorway to give his people cover for entry.  A pair of detonations went off in the corridor and the zheen rushed through, weapons ready.

Security officers from the Grania Estelle were disoriented, desperately trying to recover.  The zheen moved through the doorway, firing as they moved.  One of the security officers took a blaster shot in the thigh and a second in her lower side.  She shrieked in agony and collapsed, clutching her side, gun clattering to the deck.  The officers fired back; one of the zheen took a round in the shoulder, and another center mass in the thorax.  Greenish ichor spewed out and a high pitch squeal emitted from the zheen as he slumped down and flopped on the deck, dead.  The others continued firing and another of the security officers dropped, a trio of hits in his chest.  The remaining two security officers threw slimer grenades and retreated down one of the corridors.  Two of the zheen were caught in the goo that expanded to foam and then hardened.  The security officers unloaded on them with their weapons.  The ferocity of the attack caused the zheen to hesitate, giving the defenders a chance to fall back in good order, hugging the bulkheads, firing as they went, keeping them pinned down in the doorway.

“Move!” Saiphirelle shouted, urging her team up the corridor.  “Run!  We’re going to bay seven!”  The four of them hustled out from the boat bay, running pell mell for the cargo bay to stop the group from escaping.  This would be the best chance the defenders would have to bottleneck the attackers and keep them from getting too deep within the ship.  The bridge had already reported another wave of shuttles coming from the cruisers and the ones in the bays were heading back out, most likely to make another run.  And with the weapons on the port side of Grania Estelle trashed, the shuttles would be able to take off and land with impunity.

They pounded down the corridor, the lupusan’s fur standing up in excitement, panting, though not from exertion.  Finally, she was being given a chance to cut loose, to do what she loved to do: to fight and to kill.  For a brief while she could shed these civilized trappings and behaviors others were forcing on her and she could just give in to instinct.   Well, not completely to instinct.  While it would be intensely satisfying to tear apart the boarders with her claws and teeth, Saiphirelle knew that she wouldn’t be able to let herself go that far.  There was a reason Corajen had been training her using these new weapons, it would allow her to kill quickly and at range.  Getting in close while the boarders were shooting at her would probably be the definition of A Very Bad Idea.

It was only a matter of minutes for them get to the entrance to Bay Seven.  A mixed group of humans and zheen were just coming out of the doors when Saiphirelle spotted them.  Holding down her trigger, she sprayed the corridor with bullets, killing one and wounding another.  All the rest ducked or dove out of the way, but there was nowhere to hide.  The lupusan roared in delight as the two men dropped to the deck, the survivor writhing in agony.  The rest of her team opened up with their own weapons, cutting down the remainder.  The screams and report of all the weapons echoed off the bulkheads but it was all music to the lupusan.

“Let’s go,” she said to the team.  Getting in close to the bodies, she went among them and made sure they were all dead.  There was no time to start worrying about prisoners.

Corajen wasn’t having nearly as fun, or as much luck.  Her team was pinned down under near constant fire from a group of attackers that were slowly getting out of Bay Five.  Two of her team were down, probably dead from a grenade the attackers had thrown.  She had a cut along one arm from shrapnel, which stung, but she was doing her best to ignore it.  A well-aimed shot hit one of the attackers, a human, in the forehead and he flopped backward, blood spraying out behind his now dead body.

The others didn’t hesitate.  They kept up their fire, pinning Ygris and Corajen against the bulkhead.  Bullets and energy blasts were coming in a storm down the corridor at them, while the two tried to fire back as best as possible.  It was a standoff, but one that Corajen knew that she couldn’t win.  All it would take was for one of them to get a lucky shot and she would be done, or if they figured out they just needed to lob a bunch of grenades down here.  She cursed her own short-sightedness.  If she’d thought to have Samair replicate her a string of her own grenades, she might have been able to even things up.  Of course it was far too late for that now.

“Bridge, this is Corajen!” she shouted over the sounds of the gunfire.  “My position is about to be overrun!  I’m down to one left in my team, but I can’t hold here.  I’m going to have to fall back.”

“Understood,” the Captain replied.  “I’ll update the rest of your teams.  We’ve got another wave of shuttles coming in, ETA in six minutes.”

Corajen swore.  Leaning forward from behind the support strut, she fired off a three-round burst, catching one of the men in the chest.  He pitched over, hitting the bulkhead and falling on the deck.  That brought the odds a little better, but Ygris swore behind her.  She looked over, and the big man was clutching his belly, blood running from between his fingers.  He dropped the rifle, but he pulled out his stun pistol.  “Sorry, boss,” he growled.  “But I’m not out just yet.”

She nodded to him, then turned away, baring her fangs.  Popping out from cover, she shot her weapon dry, but only one got hit, the rest had pulled back along the bulkhead.  Grabbing one of the slimer grenades, she pulled the pin and lobbed it down the corridor, then grabbed another, pulled the pin and threw it too.  Grabbing her last clip of ammunition off her vest pocket, she changed out her weapon and racked the bolt.  “Come on!” she rushed over and pulled Ygris’s free arm over her shoulder and heaved the big man up off the bulkhead.  “I know it hurts but move!”  They hustled as fast as they could down the corridor, away from their attackers.

“Captain, I’m pulling back,” Corajen yelled.  “They’re breaking through.”

Tamara was listening to the report coming from the lupusan, and felt ice come down her spine.  It was happening again.  She remembered the desperate fight at Instow, but this time it was different.  This wasn’t a snatch and grab.  This was a dedicated boarding operation.  They weren’t going to stop until they were all dead or until they took the ship.  Security officers were dying and it just wasn’t enough.  The Captain wouldn’t be able to hold off the inevitable for much longer.  He would have to surrender.  She was standing in the bay with replicator one, at a loss of what to do.  It was currently offline, and she had no intent of powering it back up.  In fact, she was thinking of locking it down permanently, to make sure that these pirates didn’t get it and its twin in the other bay.

“I know what you’re thinking, Tamara,” Stella’s voice came over her implants, her face appearing in the corner of Tamara’s HUD.  “You’re thinking of trashing my replicators.”

“Better that than letting the pirates get them.”

“Is it?  If they knew you had functioning replicators on board and that you destroyed them, Commander Tyler might do horrible things to you and the rest of the crew,” the AI pointed out, looking worried.

Tamara sighed.  “I know, Stella.  But I think that Commander Tyler and his friends might do those horrible things anyway once they’ve got the ship and then they’ll use these replicators to do horrible things to others.”

“But they can’t make any serious equipment without your access codes,” Stella reminded her.  “They’ll lock down or melt if they try.”

“Can we risk that?  What if Tyler or someone on his crew is former Republic Navy?” Tamara shot back.  “What if they’ve got rank codes and the implants needed to unlock these machines?  I can’t risk that.  And we’re not getting out of this unscathed, Stella, you know that.  They’re going to take the ship.  And then you will be working for the pirates also.”

“What do you mean?” the AI asked, bristling.  “They kill my crew and I’m supposed to work with them?”

“And if you don’t?” Tamara asked.  “They’ll just pull back their ships to a safe distance and unload with their weapons.  They won’t let a rogue AI in command of a massive ship like this run loose.  If they can’t bring you to heel, they’ll get rid of you.  I’ve asked around and I know you have too.  How many AI are there in the Argos Cluster at this time?  Hmm?  Other than you?”

The AI darkened, literally lowering the light setting on her image on Tamara’s HUD to show her displeasure.  “None, as far as anyone knows.  But there might be some at Byra-Kae!” she said petulantly.  “That’s the Republic base in this Cluster.  They might have at least one.”

“Okay, one in all of the Cluster, other than you.  If they even know you exist, they might just go down to the computer core and start blasting, Stella.  They don’t need you throwing a wrench into their plans.  So I need you to keep hidden and keep quiet.  If anyone refers to you by name, or tries to access your systems, you need to hide.  I want you to just pretend you’re part of the ship’s mainframe.”

The AI lowered her eyes.  “All right.  I understand.  Just until we take the ship back.”

But Tamara shook her head.  “Stella, we’re not going to be able to take the ship back.  I would disconnect you from the mainframe, transfer your core matrix into a portable, but I’m afraid we’d lose the fusion bottle if I did that and everyone would die.  I don’t have time to reprogram the computer to balance the fusion reactor without you monitoring and get you transferred out.”  She could feel her eyes burn.  “And even if I could, there’d be nowhere to go.  Even if I could get us off the ship on my fighter or a shuttle, we’re trapped in the system.  They’d find us.  And they’re a lot faster and meaner than we are.”

“Than I am, you mean,” the AI replied, with a weak smile.

Tamara chuckled.  “I’m sorry, Stella.  I truly am.  I don’t know how this all fell apart like this.”

The thunder of more gunshots could be heard down the corridor.  Tamara sent a command through her implants to the replicator systems, ordering a full meltdown and destruction sequence of the constructor matrix and computer files.  Lights began to flash on the LCD screen on the front of the device, warning of the self-destruct in progress.  Thirty seconds later, the screen went dead and she could detect the unmistakable smell of burned electronics.

“That’s that, I guess,” Stella said.  “Going into burrow mode.  I’ll keep an eye on you, Tamara.”

“Discretely, please,” Tamara warned.  “Don’t tip them off that you’re on board.  Don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself.”

She nodded.  “I understand.  Replicators two and the e-rep are gone now too.”

“Thank you, Stella.  For everything.”

Stella laughed.  “You brought me to life, Tamara!  I should be thanking you.”  And her image winked off the HUD.

Tamara turned just as a pair of troopers entered, their weapons raised.  She raised her hands to shoulder height in surrender as they approached.  They were careful, one of them watching her, while the other swept his gaze and his weapon over the whole room.  They noted the burned out machine behind her, but said nothing about it.  They still had their skinsuit helmets raised, but based on their body movements and other information being helpfully fed to her by her implants, Tamara quickly realized they were zheen.  She raised her hands over the top of her head, lacing her fingers together.

They drew close, one of them covering her with his weapon, the other relieving her of her stun pistol in her thigh holster.  “On your knees,” the zheen hissed.  She obliged, and the zheen produced a heavy plastic zip tie, and expertly secured her wrists behind her back, pulled the draw tight.  Tamara winced but they weren’t so tight she’d lose her hands.  But the restraint wouldn’t budge.

“Close out on thirteen!” Quesh ordered, pointing with one of his left hands.  With his others, he was working the reactor console, helping the AI to keep the reactor stable.  They were reducing power to everything except gravity, life support and minimal sensors.  Everything else was being shut down, seeing as how they weren’t going anywhere.

“Got it chief!” Stranz replied.  “Closed down conduit thirteen and all the lines from the reactor to the port side.  Compensating on the starboard side.”

“All right, I’m stepping down power to the reactor.  Bringing us down to twenty percent.  Shouldn’t need to strain the reactor any more than that to keep things running, what with nearly all the primary systems offline.”  Quesh twisted a control and then eased a lever down.  The reactor slowly came down in power output, stopping at twenty percent.  All the lights in main engineering dimmed a bit before the system compensated and the brightness came back up to normal levels.

“And why the hell isn’t the AI responding to my commands?” the Parkani demanded.

“I don’t know, Chief,” one of the other techs reported.  “Stella hasn’t responded to anyone in the last…” he checked a display, “Four minutes.  She’s still running, I can see she’s helping to keep the reactor steady, but she’s not responding to communication from anyone, nor is she visible on any of the displays.”

Suddenly, every display in engineering blanked, to be replaced with a simple message in text only.  [I am hiding from the attackers.  Please do not let them know I am here.  If they do, Tamara and I believe they will do horrible things to me and to all of you to gain control of me.  This will be my last transmission.  Please keep me a secret.]  The text stayed on the screens for ten seconds, giving them all a chance to gawk at the words, then it vanished, to be replaced by the standard status displays.

“What the hell?” Quesh demanded, throwing all his hands into the air.

“Nobody move!” a voice shouted from behind him.  All of them turned to see a full score of heavily armed troopers standing inside the doorway to the compartment, their weapons trained on everyone.  “Surrender!”

Main engineering was quiet, for perhaps the first time in decades.  The only sounds were that of the computers and the machinery running in the background.  All of the engineers were on their knees as troopers tied them up, all under the watchful eyes of their fellows.  Quesh was lying on the deck, unconscious, a bullet wound in his upper arm’s tricep muscle, but the four stun shots were what laid him out.  Both sets of his arms had been secured behind his back and one of the engineers was tending to his wound, doing little more than bandaging it up.  One of the troopers raised a communicator to his face and spoke into it, calling for reinforcements and a crew to run the machines.  No one wanted the reactor to fail because no one was monitoring it.

Eamonn watched the scene from his display on the bridge, coming through from one of the cameras in engineering.  Once the stopgaps failed, the attackers had poured through.  There was no stopping them.  Corajen had done what she could, Saiphirelle had done considerably more, with eleven kills to her credit, but it hadn’t been enough.  They’d been overrun.  He had no idea what had happened to his two fiercest security officers, but they hadn’t reported in.  The soldiers were sweeping through the living quarters, dragging anyone they could find out into common areas where they were being secured.

It seemed that they were leaving the bridge for last, as no one had come here yet.  Taja had arrived shortly after the fighting started, carrying a box filled with guns and ammo, as well as a pair of Moxie’s fancy grenades and the bridge crew had loaded up.  He wasn’t sure exactly what they were going to do in the very cramped confines of the bridge when the soldiers showed up.  He and the other bridge officers could fire a gun if it came to that, but he had no expectations for longevity if it did.  In fact, all the boarders needed to do was toss in a grenade or two and they’d all be dead.  Critical functions could be rerouted to Main Engineering and that would be that.  It might seem noble to die in defense of his home and his ship, but that’s all he and his officers here would be doing.  It wouldn’t change anything and it wouldn’t save anyone, much less the ship.  He kept the pistol in his hand, ready to use if needed, but the futility of the situation was starting to get to him.

Stella’s message had just disappeared from the bridge consoles a moment earlier and it was an action that he fully supported.  AI were so rare nowadays that to be given one was a gift beyond measure.  And in the time that she’d been integrated with the ship’s systems, he’d seen a considerable uptick in performance in the ship’s operations.  Being able to literally talk to the ship to diagnose problems and iron out wrinkles had been invaluable.  But Stella was right.  If the pirates, or whoever they were, found out that the ship had a functioning AI, bad things would happen to both her and the crew in their zeal to gain control of her.

“What do we do, Vincent?” Taja asked, looking over at him, fear plain on her face.  He hoped he was doing a better job of concealing his own terror at the situation.

But he shook his head.  “I think we’re done.  Enough of my crew have died trying to hold them off.  I’m not going to kill any more of them.  Serinda, contact the Ganges.  Send them our surrender.”

The rest of the bridge crew was giving him horrified looks, all but George.  His expression was more resigned and he and the Captain shared a nod when their eyes met.  But Serinda dutifully picked up her headset and sent the message to Ganges.

“All of you, put your weapons down,” Eamonn told them, setting his own weapon in the box Taja had brought to the bridge.  The others followed his lead, George gratefully, though the pilot looked a bit reluctant to relinquish hers.  “I’m sorry, all of you.  I wish there was more we could do.  But short of committing suicide, I can’t think of it.”  He sighed.  “I’m sure the welcoming party will be along in a minute.”  He gestured to the doors to the bridge as he sat heavily back down in his command seat.

They didn’t have long to wait.  Soldiers burst onto the bridge, screaming at them all to surrender.  The bridge crew, as one, raised their hands above their heads.  One of the men moved forward with zip ties to bind their wrists while the others kept their weapons trained on them.  The Captain and Taja were first to be secured, but when the man moved to Serinda and leered suggestively at her voluptuous body, he let his hands roam a bit.  The communications officer tensed, gritting her teeth, but didn’t say anything.

“Get your hands off her!” George bellowed, charging the man, his hands outstretched.

A gun went off and George flopped to the side, blood flowing from his stomach.  He growled and thrashed on the deck.  Serinda screamed and tried to run to him, but the man grabbed her arm and yanked her back.  She tripped and fell, her head hitting the flat side of the console so hard the metal rang.

“You fucker!” Eamon shouted, trying to get to his fallen crewmen.  One of the soldiers clubbed him with the butt of his rifle and the captain went down to his knees.

“Do not try it,” the leader ordered to the pilot, who had started inching forward.  “I will shoot this man.”  He aimed his weapon at the captain’s head.

Taja touched the pilot on the arm and she calmed, though her expression was still murderous.  Come to think of it, Taja’s was too.

“Wise decision.  Open a channel to the Ganges,” the leader said, pointing to Taja.

“You just knocked out my comm officer,” the captain groaned. “I can do it.”

“Then get up and open a channel to the Ganges,” the man repeated.  He took a small step back, giving the captain room to get up.

He pulled himself to his feet and walked over to the communications console.  Hitting a few commands, made a bit more difficult because of his tied wrists, the channel was open.  “It’s all yours,” he said, stepping away.

“Commander?  Captain?  I’m getting a transmission from Target One,” the comms officer reported.  “They’ve surrendered.”

Tyler nodded in his head in satisfaction.  “Excellent.  Send comms to our teams aboard Target One, but remind them that they are to continue to secure the vessel.  I want no surprises.”

But Verrikoth wasn’t looking as pleased, as difficult as it was for most humans to tell looking at a zheen face.  “Your teamz cauzed conssiderable damage to my prize, Commander.”

Tyler didn’t back down.  “Yes, Captain, they did.  But all things considered, that is still a functional ship.  It will take a little effort to repair the engines and the shields, but once that’s done, the ship will be flying again.  Lucky for us, this system has engineers capable of doing the work and the crew will be very motivated to make sure she is ready for space in short order.”

The zheen considered that.  “Yess, I ssuppoze you are right.  Bring her Captain, or sshould I now ssay former Captain over here to Gangess.  I would like to meet the one who withsstood our attack az well az they did.”

Tyler’s face brightened, though anger still flooded his eyes.  “Yes, Captain, I believe that is an excellent idea.  I, too, would like to meet the man.”

Morale aboard Grania Estelle had reached a point that was so low it couldn’t be tested for, one had to dig for it.  All of the survivors of the crew, all ninety-nine of them out of the one hundred and twenty-six originals, were herded into Cargo Bay Eight, which had been closed and aired back up again, making it a perfect holding pen.  There was nothing in the bay for the crew to get into mischief with, the internal cameras and sensors all still worked and it was more than large enough to hold so many people.  Both of the lupusan sisters had survived the attack, though both looked more than a little worse for wear.  Corajen had a few light gashes in her hide, her light brown fur stained a bit with blood.  She’d been pinned in a corridor junction, trying to drag the wounded Ygris away.  Rather than try and take them all on, Corajen had dropped her weapons and surrendered.  They had secured her with metal shackles, ones that had covers for her large hands, preventing her from slashing anyone with her wicked talons.  It actually looked as though she was wearing a pair of steel mittens.  The wrist shackles were then secured to more chains around her waist, which prevented her from striking anyone with those heavy metal hands.  She had bitten off the hand of the zheen who had attempted to muzzle her; the greenish ichor staining her mouth and teeth.  When she’d spit the appendage back into his face, everyone decided that they would leave her head unmolested, ignoring the squeals of pain from their fellow.

Saiphirelle hadn’t gotten off quite so easily.  She’d killed a number of the invaders, but had finally been overrun and subdued.  Those who had tried regretted it, however, as her claws had gutted one man, slashed another’s throat and punctured so deeply into the thigh of a third it was likely he would lose the leg.  Under orders from Commander Tyler (reinforced by those of Captain Verrikoth) the survivors switched from lethal ammunition to stun weapons.  More than a dozen shots were necessary to bring the lupusan down.  Once she was down, they’d run forward and begun beating her with the butts of rifle stocks, or simply kicking her with mag-booted feet.  When her bloody and mangled body had finally been shackled, they’d fitted her with a muzzle and tossed her onto a hover pallet, dumping her unceremoniously into the bay.

The rest had been pushed into the bay, their hands still secured with zip ties and left to wander around for several hours.  Turan had his work cut out for him trying to help the wounded.  Serinda had quickly recovered but had fussed over George, who was in a crippling amount of pain.  It was likely that the gunshot had perforated his intestines and possibly his bowel.  Sepsis was likely.  It would have been treatable, in sickbay, but here in the cargo bay, with his hands tied and no medical equipment, not even bandages, it was likely that the operations officer was going to die.  After the third hour of waiting, finally the main interior doors slid open and a squad of ten soldiers hustled inside, weapons leveled at the crowd of freighter crew.  “Get back!” the leader bellowed, his mandibles clacking.  “All of you, get back!”

No one was trying to argue with an angry zheen carrying a heavy blaster rifle.  The freighter crew had no weapons and they were all still restrained.  It took a moment, but the Captain elbowed his way to the front.  “What do you want?” he yelled back at the soldiers.

“Where is the Captain of this ship?” the zheen replied.

“I’m the Captain,” Eamonn told him flatly.  Several of his crew stood at his back and shoulders, trying to present a unified front.  More than a few, however, sidled away, afraid to draw too much attention to themselves.  Tamara stepped up right beside him, he glanced over at her, but quickly back to the soldiers in the entryway.  She was looking at them, not him, determination on her face.  “I’ve got wounded here that need immediate medical attention.”

The zheen emitted a high pitched, trilling hiss.  “I could end their suffering right now, if that would make you feel better, Captain.”  He hefted his weapon suggestively.

“I’m serious,” Eamonn demanded.  “My crewmembers will die if they and my doctor cannot access the equipment in sickbay.”

“I am serious as well, Captain,” the zheen replied, mockingly.  The laughter stopped.  “If your crewmen will not survive, then so be it.  I have no orders to save anyone.  In fact, I do have orders to put down any further resistance.  So if these dying crewmen are going to be a problem for you and you make it a problem for me…”  He trailed off.  “Then I will make it so there is no problem.  Do I need to demonstrate my seriousness?”

“No you do not,” Eamonn ground out, the muscles in his jaw clenching.

“Now, you are coming with me.”

Eamonn started.  “No I’m not.  I’m staying right here.”

The zheen buzzed again, his antennae straightening slowly.  “Yes, Captain, you are.  Or I start shooting.”  He aimed his blaster rifle straight at Eamonn’s chest.  “Now.”

The captain nodded.  “Moxie, take charge.  Corajen’s out, Quesh is out, and George is out.  That leaves you.”  He started walking forward, not waiting for an answer.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Tamara replied.  “Good luck.”

“Moxie is in charge,” the captain yelled as he walked forward to the doors, where the soldiers closed in around him, keeping a respectful distance.  “Be back soon!”

The murmurs among the crew rose to a crescendo as the Captain was lead out of the cargo bay, the doors closing behind him and his “protectors.”              Several of the nearby crewmen turned to Tamara, concern and worry all over their faces.

“What do we do, Tamara?” Mairi asked.  She was the closest, having followed right behind when Tamara had fought her way through the crowd to stand by the Captain.

Tamara chuckled.  “The very first thing we do,” she said, pausing for effect, looking out at everyone staring back at her, “Is get these damned restraints off.”  The others laughed nervously, grateful to at least have some small amount of direction.  The plastic zip ties were tough, designed to resist breaking, normally would require snips or some sort of blade to remove them.  “See if there’s any exposed or rough surfaces,” she ordered.  “Everyone not working with the Doctor, please look around and find something to cut off these bindings.”  They all started moving, which was good, it would keep their minds off their situation, the condition of the ship and the thousand other things that might paralyze them.

Stepping off the shuttle in the landing bay of Ganges, the group of soldiers escorted their prisoner to one of the secure conference rooms.  The interior of Ganges was similar to the outside, it was patched together with mismatched components.  It looked somewhat modular in design, perhaps built in different star systems or different parts of one star system and then transported to the dry dock in Hecate for final assembly.  In fact, that would explain a lot of things, though it wouldn’t explain who had financed all of this.  Serinda may have been right all those months ago that the ship wasn’t aesthetically pleasing, but it was certainly powerful.  Compared to what else was in the Cluster nowadays, Ganges alone would have been able to dominate the local forces.  But two other cruisers, a corvette and a handful of modified merchant ships?  There would be very little that the commander of such a flotilla couldn’t do.

“Sit,” the leader told him, shoving the man had in the center of the back.  Eamonn stumbled, but he went over to the table and sat, deliberately choosing one of the chairs on the left side of the table.  He didn’t want to put his back to the door (and the soldiers) but he didn’t want to be at the far end of the rectangular table right in front of the door either.  He groaned as he settled himself into the hard metal chair, shifting his weight to try and find a comfortable position.

He raised his bound wrists.  “Can we take these off now, please?”

The zheen let out a hissing laughter.  “That will not happen.”

“I’m sitting in a chair on your ship, genius,” Eamonn said, his temper rising.  “What is it you expect me to be able to do here?”

But the insectoid just shook his head.  “I have no orders to do that, and I will not be removing them until I do.”

“Where do you think I’m going to try to go?” the human persisted.

Another hiss.  “I know exactly where you are going.  You are going nowhere.  As you say, you are now aboard our ship and you are under guard.”

The door opened behind the leader and he stepped to the side, allowing room for someone to enter.  Another zheen, accompanied by a graying human entered the conference room.  The leader nodded deferentially to the two newcomers, and moved off to the side of the room, the other two soldiers going to the far side of the room from him.  The battle-scarred zheen who entered clearly carried an air of authority with him, as well as one of a dangerous predator.

Eamonn’s face split in a smile.  “Commander Jensen Tyler, sir!  It’s so very good to see you well.”

The commander’s face went beet red with anger.  “You sit there and joke, you clearly are more of a fool than I originally thought.”

“No, I’m just very glad to see that your brand new cruiser didn’t get all banged up in our little encounter.”

“Unlike the other two of my cruizerz,” Verrikoth said, his voice strangely free of anger.  He held out a hand to silence the human commander who looked as though he was about to have an aneurysm.  “Meghna and Kerala will require ssome time for repairz.  Far longer than I cared to sspend, if I am honesst.”

Eamonn shrugged, rubbing one hand on his brown-skinned face.  “Sorry to inconvenience you,” he replied, a trace of bitterness in his voice.

But the zheen surprised him, by laughing, that same sort of hissing laugh that the leader had done earlier.  “Inconvenienss.  Yess, you have cauzed me a good deal of inconvenienss.  But I now have a new sship in my growing fleet.”

“A bulk freighter among your fast warships would only slow you down,” Eamonn pointed out.  “Grania Estelle would only be a liability.”

Verrikoth shrugged.  “Not true.  A freighter az large az that sship would be a great asset.  True, it would be foolish to tie my fleet down to ssuch a sslow vessel.  That iz why I would detail Ravage to act as a permanent esscort sship.  That would keep the freighter ssafe, and my fleet well ssupplied.”

“I love my ship,” the captain told him, “But a bulk freighter is very good at transporting exactly what the name implies.  Yes, we could load up on a variety of things, but my ship is really not meant to supply a fleet.  A base, perhaps, if you’ve got active contracts with a group of planets.”

“That would be acceptable,” the zheen replied.  “I have no dezire to bring my new sship into a war zone.”

“You sound like you’re interviewing me for a job,” Eamonn replied.  “You want to hire me?”

“I need a crew to operate the sship,” Verrikoth admitted.

“You just attacked my ship, chopped it up and then sent armed boarding parties to chop my crew up further.  I think only because I surrendered are any of my people still alive.”

“Oh, sstop whining,” Verrikoth spat.  “If I was sso inclined I would kill you right now and your crew with you.  You work for me, you get paid.  You get to fix up your ship, you get to hire on more crew and I get my goods sshipped to and from my basez in the Clusster.  No one will touch your sship because it iz under my protection.  Everybody winz.”

Vincent Eamonn could see the chasm yawning at his feet.  It did sound good, to finally have steady runs, to know that money would be coming in.  To never have to worry about pirates simply because of the label on his ID tag.  But there would be more to it, a hidden cost.  Perhaps one that wasn’t even that hidden.

“So assuming I accept,” Eamonn replied, “Grania Estelle is a wreck right now.  She won’t be going anywhere for a while.  And I get the feeling you have pressing business elsewhere.”

Tyler bristled at this, but the zheen, both Verrikoth and the soldier standing at Eamonn’s back hissed with laughter.  “It sseemz you are quite clever.”

“It’s all about knowing your audience,” he said confidently, swallowing the bitter taste of bile in his throat for even considering this.  “Equally important in any form of business, be it trade or battle.”

Verrikoth’s antennae bobbed up and down in a nod.  “I like you, human.  You are clever and you think well on your feet.  Commander Tyler does not agree with that assessment, it seems.”

“I don’t see why Commander Tyler has any reason to complain about me,” Eamonn drawled.

Tyler spluttered in rage, his fists clenching, but the zheen forestalled him with a raised hand.  “How do you figure that?  He tellz me that you tried to ssteal a load of gadolinium conssigned to Hecate.”

“That’s true,” Eamonn admitted and Tyler’s eyebrows raised in surprise.  “The consignment part, anyway.  We picked up the load in Folston, and renegotiated the contract with the locals there.  They’d give us the load at a ten percent discount, but they would waive the massive late fees since we weren’t the original shipper.  I turned up in Hecate and the locals refused to honor the contract.  I got wind that they were going to board the ship and take it, most likely helping themselves to whatever else in my holds they wanted as well.  So I decided to leave.  They then decided the best way to handle this was to launch fighters and disable my ship.”  He grinned, a feral look.  “I fought back.  The locals got upset at my shooting down their fighters and contacted the Commander here aboard this ship to chase us down and finish the job.  In the end, he got his shipment and I exited the system.  As I said before, I’m unsure what he’s so upset about.  He got his shipment at no charge while I made no profit on that run and had to spend time, resources and man-hours to repair the damage.”  He looked at the fuming military officer.  “People should be grateful when a sweet deal like that falls into their laps.”

A vein in Tyler’s neck pulsed and the man looked as though he would leap the table and throttle the merchant captain.  But Verrikoth’s look was speculative.  “I believe, Captain Eamonn that we could work well together.”

He knew enough of zheen body language to read the pirate captain before him.  He was confident.  He did, in fact, hold all the cards, it was only a matter of whether he would allow Eamonn to live.  And he knew that Eamonn was aware of this.  So the captain was faced with a choice.  He could accept the offer and work with a pirate or he could stand on his newfound honor and ideals and die nobly.

Eamonn nodded slowly.  “I’d like to know the name of my employer,” he said.  “I don’t like to work for someone I don’t know.”

“Sir, may I have a word with you in private?” Tyler asked, his voice strained.

“Yess, Commander you may,” Verrikoth replied.  “To you, captain, I agree.  I do not like ssurprizez.  I am Verrikoth.”  He gestured to the guard.  “He’ll no longer need those.  Captain Eamonn now workss for me.  Esscort him back to hiz sship and let him get to work.  I want Grania Esstelle to be up and running in sshort order.”

Eamonn nodded and stood as the zheen guard came over and removed the restraints.  The captain winced as the feeling came back to his hands.  He rubbed his wrists.  “Good to be working with you, Captain Verrikoth.”

The zheen and his companion had started to turn away to leave, and he stopped and turned back.  “For me, Captain Eamonn,” he corrected, his voice imparting the dire warning.  “For me.”

Eamonn nodded in complete understanding.

Chapter 29

“All right everyone calm down!” Tamara shouted, holding her hands up over her head to signal quiet.  Ka’Xarian and both of their engineering teams stood just behind her as she addressed the crew.  Taja stood opposite Xar, on Tamara’s left, wholeheartedly supporting the engineer’s role as leader.  Things hadn’t changed much in the hour or so since the pirates had taken the Captain away, the one notable exception being that they had found an exposed scrap of metal that was sharp enough and thin enough to cut the plastic bindings off the wrists of the crew.  The heavier metal ones would require a key, or some sort of proper cutting tool, which meant that the lupusan sisters would be bound for a while longer.

Turan didn’t have time to deal with any “leadership foolishness” as he called it, he had patients to try and save.  Their captors had left them alone in the cargo bay, deaf to all of Turan’s pleas for medical assistance or access to sickbay.  It seemed that if any of the crew were to die, it would suit the pirates just as well, that many fewer they would have to deal with later.

“We’re trapped in here!” someone yelled, fear evident.

“Only for the moment,” Tamara replied.  “I’ve got a few ideas, but none of them are going to amount to anything if we all panic.”

“You’re not the captain!” the same voice came back.

“She’s in charge!” Xar bellowed.

“Says who?”  The murmurings in the crowd increased at this sentiment.

“The captain left her in charge!” Taja yelled, adding her voice to the din.  “We’re still alive, so shut up and listen to her!”
“Not because of her!” someone else yelled from the safety of the crowd.

Tamara just threw back her head and laughed, hands on her hips.  The crowd in front looked angry that she would dare to act this way in such a dire situation.  When she calmed down enough, she looked at them, sweeping her gaze over the ones that she could see.  “I’m hearing a lot of complaints from people hiding in the back.  No one coming forward.  But you know what?  You’re right.  I’m not the captain.  He did leave me in charge, but since you seem perfectly content to ignore that, fine.”  She waved her hands, as though shooing them away.  “Go.  Kill yourselves.  I’m not going to try and stop you anymore.  I’ve got a few people that seem to want to try and band together and save this ship, but the rest of you… Just go.  Save me the time and effort of trying to get you to fall in line.  I’m trying to find a way to help Turan and get us out of here and back into the ship proper.  If you can’t or won’t help, then I don’t want you.”  She touched Ka’Xarian and Taja on their shoulders and then turned away, showing the crowd her back.

“What are they doing?” Tamara asked the two in an undertone, not looking back.

“They’re breaking up into groups,” the zheen replied, his large compound eyes able to see the group without turning his head too much.  “About a third of them are hanging back, but the rest seem to be coming in our direction.”

“Good.  Taja, go over to them, keep them calm.  I’ll be over in a few minutes.  Xar, have somebody keep an eye on the malcontents.”  She nodded and the two of them walked off.  Tamara turned and looked upward, as though she was examining the ceiling of the cargo bay.  In actuality, she was accessing her HUD and using her implants to get into Grania Estelle’s computer network.  Stella was carefully keeping herself walled off and Tamara didn’t want to disturb her.  So far the AI was doing very well at keeping to the “shadows” of the mainframe, basically only keeping the fusion reactor stable, but staying out of all the other systems.  But Tamara didn’t need Stella’s help in this case.  After months of working on the ship and its computer systems, she’d built herself all sorts of back doors in case she needed to access them.  In case of a situation just like this one.

Tamara used her implants to access the ship’s internal cameras and did a quick survey of the ship.  It wasn’t damage so much that she was looking for, though she mentally catalogued what she saw for later.  What she was looking for was a headcount; the number of invaders aboard the ship.  For the most part they were zheen or human, about a sixty-forty split, her implants helpfully informed her.  Going through every compartment (that had cameras) she got herself a firm number.  Eighty-nine.  A damning number.  There was no way they could take on eighty-nine invaders, only four less than the whole crew complement, and that was including all the wounded.

But a closer inspection revealed that only about forty were the heavily armed boarders, the rest were technicians meant to keep the ship’s systems running.  It looked as though they were beginning to tear out the blown components on the port side and another team was working on the sublight engines.  One of the main propulsion units was still online, and it looked as though they were getting a second close to test-firing.  Checking the external feeds, she also saw another ten on the outside of the hull in EVA suits doing damage assessment on the hull.  It looked as though they were clearing away the worst of the battle damage and checking out the shield nodes on the starboard side to move to the now unshielded port side.  They weren’t looking to build more, just to extend shield coverage over the whole ship, to allow the ship to jump to hyperspace.  Tamara approved of this, but that wasn’t her problem right now.  Right now she was trying to figure out how to get everyone out of this giant mess.

“What do we got?” Xar asked.

“Eighty-nine in the ship, ten more out on the hull,” she replied, grimacing.

The zheen hissed.  “Well that’s just wonderful.  How many of them are troopers?”

“About forty,” she admitted, “but from what I could see, it looks like just about all of them have a sidearm of some sort.  I don’t think we’d get very far, especially with our heavy hitters out of the game.”  Tamara gestured to where Corajen sat, miserable, still shackled next to her unconscious sister.  They didn’t have anything to get those manacles off of her and she couldn’t fight with them on.

“What can we do?” the zheen asked, clearly concerned.  “You know we’ll support you.”

Tamara chuckled, looking back down again, putting one hand on the purple carapace of Ka’Xarian’s shoulder.  “It wasn’t your support I was worried about, my friend.  It’s what to do.  Simply charging out into the corridor isn’t going to do anything.  I can override the lockouts and get us out of the bay here, but then what?  The hallway’s got six guards there, they’d cut us down without a second thought.  I can get into the engineering feeds and cause some mayhem there, but what’s the point?  The minute someone figures out what’s going on, they either vent the bay,” she jerked a thumb to the huge external bay doors, “or the soldiers just come in the door and hose us down with bullets.”

“We can’t wait,” the zheen argued.  He pointed.  “Turan’s patients are dying.”

Tamara glared at him.  “Yes, Xar, I know that.”

He bowed his head a little.  “Sorry.  I know you do.”  He buzzed loudly.  “I’m just so frustrated at this.”

She nodded, releasing his shoulder.  “I know.  I am too.  Hell, we all are.  One minute we’re bumbling along, hauling the mail, the next we’re fighting pirates and losing the ship.”  She sighed, running one grimy hand through her hair.  She grimaced at the hand, but there was nothing she could do about the grease she’d just smeared into her hair.  Xar hissed at her in laughter.  Tamara glared at him, but her eyes twinkled in shared mirth.

“I just don’t know, Xar,” she said.  “I don’t really know if there’s anything we can do until the pirate bosses decide what to do with us all.  Nothing that won’t get us all shot anyway.”  A red light flashed on her HUD.  “Hold on.  Another shuttle incoming.”

The zheen growled.  “Great, more troops.  Maybe they’re going to stop messing around and just kill us all.”

Tamara laughed.  “I’m not really sure what I’m hoping for at this point.”

Twenty minutes later, the bay doors opened and a single figure walked through.  All heads turned to look as Captain Vincent Eamonn entered.  Taja broke through the crowd and ran to him, flinging herself into his arms, locking her arms around his neck.  He chuckled and squeezed her tight.  “Glad to have you back,” she whispered into his neck.

“Missed you too,” he replied, setting her back down.  She reluctantly let him go and turned back to the others.

“Good to see you, Captain,” Tamara told him, walking up with Ka’Xarian at her back.

“You too, Moxie.  Get everybody up.  We’re back in business.”  His face was a blank mask, his tone flat.  “Later.  I’ll talk to senior staff in a few hours.  Right now, you and the techs get to engineering and get up to speed down there.  You,” he turned to Taja, “get some people to help Turan get all the wounded to sickbay.  And for goodness sake, get those chains off of Corajen before she hurts herself.”

“You have some serious explaining to do,” Taja told him.  She pulled his head down and kissed him hard then released him and hustled over to where the Guura was with the wounded.

Tamara smirked, but didn’t comment on the kiss.  “So what about the guards?”

He shook his head.  “They stay for now, but I got an understanding with the boss.”

She blinked.  “Commander Tyler was willing to work with you?” she asked, skeptical.

The captain shook his head again.  “Oh, lords, no.  He apparently has a boss and that’s the one I worked with.  We have an understanding.”

“What kind of understanding?” she pressed.

He scowled.  “The kind that keeps us alive and gets us out of this cargo bay.  The kind that you don’t worry about.”

Now it was the engineer’s turn to scowl.  “One of those deals.”

He sighed.  “Yes, Moxie, one of those deals.  One that hopefully will keep us from all being shot or sold off as slaves.”

She raised her hands up.  “I’ve got to get to engineering and try to get this heap running again without replicators.”

Now he linked in surprise.  “What the hell do you mean ‘without replicators’?”

Tamara met his gaze.  “We were boarded.  I was not going to let them fall into pirate hands, Captain.  So I made a decision that they weren’t going to get them.”

He gritted his teeth and shook his head, slowly.  “I told you before about what I thought about you making serious decisions concerning my ship, Moxie.  I meant what I said.”

“Oh, so you’ll kill me now?” she demanded.  “You’re going to throw me under the shuttle now?”

“You just destroyed critical components to my ship!”

She crossed her arms over her chest.  “I kept it out of their hands,” she said, pointing in the general direction of the ships outside.  “They can’t have that equipment.”

“That wasn’t your call,” he grated.

“No, Captain, it wasn’t,” she agreed, nodding, fury building.  “It was yours.  But you didn’t make a call about it.  No one was doing anything.  So I had to step up.  And I decided that quick action was needed.”

“You could have called up to the bridge,” he pointed out.

“I could have,” she agreed.  “And we both know what would have happened.  You would have been so concerned about possibility of getting through this situation that you would have delayed the decision.  The soldiers burst into the replicator bay less than a minute after I cooked it.  There was no time to wait for the hemming and hawing from above.  It’s over now, we have to deal with the situation.”

He glared at her.  Then his eyes narrowed in suspicion.  “What do you have up your sleeve, Moxie?  I know you.  You planned for this.”

She shrugged.  “Why, Captain, why would you ever think something like that about me?”

“Because you cheat,” he said flatly.  “And I know that you wouldn’t have burned out all of my replicators if you didn’t have a way of starting them back up again.”

Tamara tried to look innocent, but her façade shattered quickly.  She grinned.  “Yes, I might have stashed a few things away.  But the class threes and the e-rep really are gone.  I did melt those down.”

He put a hand to his head, probably to try and stave off an oncoming headache.  “You’re not making me feel better, Moxie.”

“Relax, Captain, you were right,” she soothed.  “While I did slag the operational replicators, I did make replacement parts and a constructor matrix for the class five.  It’s in the boat bay and I’ve got the other parts hidden away throughout the ship.”

He shook his head, as though she’d punched him in the jaw.  He might have been less surprised if she had.  “When did you have time for all this?”

“I did it while we were sitting at the orbital.  Actually,” she corrected herself, “it was more while we were en route to the fueling station.  It actually didn’t take all that long.  I just hope I got enough things replicated to get the class five operational.”  She shrugged at the glare he was giving her.  “We were in a hurry and I didn’t know I was going to be melting down the main replicators a few days later.”

He sighed.  “All right.  Do your thing.  Go gather everything up and get it operational.  We’ve got a ship to fix.”

“Isn’t that my line?” Tamara asked, chuckling.

“Yes, but I’m the Captain, so I get to say it first.”

She bent at the knees, doing a mock curtsy.  “What about the pirates?” she asked, dropping the volume of her voice.  “The whole point of me melting down the replicators was so that they wouldn’t get them.  I go and build new ones and that just defeats the purpose.”

He sighed.  “Just get everything together, Moxie.  Meet in the wardroom in two hours and I’ll explain our new… situation.”

“That sounds ominous,” Tamara commented, frowning.

He shrugged.  “All about perspective, Moxie.  Now go.  I’ve got to talk with Turan.”

Working aboard the Grania Estelle was much different now.  The spaces were still the same, save for the damage, but some of the seats were empty now.  However, while the crew might have been thinned out a bit, Security having been gutted because of the boarding action, they weren’t short of bodies aboard ship.  Verrikoth had kept seventy of his people aboard ship, forty of them to maintain “security” and the rest to assist in repairs.  The engineers were skilled, though none of them had ever worked on a ship the size of Grania Estelle before, but Ka’Xarian and Tamara quickly snapped up their help.

This however, caused problems because there was intense friction between the two crews.  Grania Estelle’s crew wanted to fix up their ship and get underway, as did Verrikoth’s people, under Quesh Trrgoth’s leadership and with him in sickbay, under Ka’Xarian and Tamara.  However, Verrikoth’s people believed that because all of them now worked for the Pirate Captain, they were the ones in charge.  More and more confrontations began to crop up between the two crews, with the security troopers having to step in more than once to “mediate”.  What that meant in strict terms was that the pirate engineers would not like how something was being done by the freighter crew and would go running to the security troopers.  The troopers, meanwhile, would approach the freighter crew who were not “following orders” and sort the whole mess out.  Usually with threats and menacing behavior.  Then the freighter crew would follow orders until Tamara or Ka’Xarian would inspect what was being done and then order them to stop and start the job over, to do things their way.  This in turn would aggravate the pirate crew and the cycle would repeat.  By the time Tamara and Ka’Xarian arrived at the wardroom for the senior officers’ meeting, the two engineers were beyond frustrated.  They came to the meeting fully intending to vent their concerns to the Captain to get him to get things back to normal.

He had news for them, however.  “All right, all right,” Eamonn said, raising his hands in a warding gesture and then waving them to their seats.  “Everyone has been bitching about the other crew being aboard and you know what?  I’m tired of listening to it.  I know they have their own ways of doing things.  We just have to suck it up and deal with it for now.”  At the angry looks shot his way, he only sighed, looking exceptionally tired.  “Yes, I know it’s a bad situation.  But we deal.  We’re still up and running and Captain Verrikoth is allowing us to continue on aboard ship.  It’s a much better deal than we might have had otherwise.”

“A better deal?” Taja spluttered.  “This isn’t a deal, this is slavery.”

Eamonn shrugged.  “It’s the best deal we could get,” he repeated.  “From now on we’re no longer an itinerant trader.  We’re a dedicated runner in Captain Verrikoth’s fleet.”

“A pirate fleet!” Corajen raged, slamming a fist into the table.

He speared her with a glare.  “Would you prefer the alternative?  Anyone who resists is shot.  Anyone still alive gets sold as slaves or put to work in Verrikoth’s asteroid mines in his home system and worked to death.  That is if no one is interested in purchasing a few pleasure slaves.”  That got a universal shiver around the table.  No one wanted to think about that.  There were more than a couple of planets in the Argos Cluster that accommodated that kind of commodity, and the crew was more than happy to never visit those places.

“So this is the way it is,” he said, bringing them back to the subject at hand.  “We are now running under Verrikoth’s banner.  Serinda, I’ll have an update for your communications and for Grania Estelle’s ID signature that I’ll need you to upload immediately.”  The woman nodded soberly.  “He’s assigned the corvette Ravage to escort us on a semi-permanent basis.  That’s two-fold, I’m sure.  One, to make sure that we have safe passage but also to make sure we go where we’re told.  In addition to that,” he looked to the lupusan, “Your security forces are being ‘augmented’ by thirty of Verrikoth’s soldiers.”

“Thirty?” the lupusan demanded, growling, her ears flattening to her head.  “That’s insane!  I only had twenty to start with and including me and Saiphirelle, I have four.  Am I getting my deputies back up to full strength again?”

Eamonn sighed, but nodded.  “Yes, Corajen, you are, but you’re going to have to coordinate your efforts with him.”

“And what about the engineering teams that are fucking with my engines?” Tamara snarled.  “They need to be gone, Captain.  We have entirely too many people trying to make decisions in Engineering.  We start to work on something and then Engineer Nomat comes over and demands we stop and explain exactly what it is we’re doing.  In five different cases he’s had my people stop and pull apart some no-brainer repairs and now our whole overhaul schedule is shot to hell.”  She threw up her arms in frustration before gripping the arms of her chair so tight her knuckles turned white.  “Essentially we’re about four days behind in getting the shields back up to full coverage and we still only have one working sublight engine.  That of course doesn’t address the hull damage or the thousand other things that need fixing.”

The captain only shook his head imperceptibly.  “Work it out, Moxie.  I’ll speak with Captain Verrikoth and see if we can get those teams removed, but he wants his people involved in all areas and he wants this ship up and running again in short order.  He said something about some parts that could be transferred over from his modified merchant ships, I’ll get with them as well and see what they’re offering.  Maybe they can goose things forward.”

“What about cargoes?” Taja asked, her voice hard.  “I’m getting the impression that our Lord and Master is going to want us to be hauling what he wants us to and nothing more.”

Eamonn nodded, rubbing his temples.  “Yes, Taja, that’s correct.  Six of our eight cargo holds are going to be reserved for Verrikoth’s goods.  The remaining two are ours to fill with whatever we want.  On the off chance that his stuff doesn’t fill those six bays, we can fill up the remaining space.”

“And are we working on spec again?” she pressed.

He tipped one hand back and forth.  “We get a standard salary in contract from Verrikoth for moving his goods around.”  He picked up his datapad and sent them all a file containing the contract he had signed with the pirate leader.  He had found it odd that a pirate, someone who lived outside the law, one whose word was flexible based on his personal needs, would want someone working for him to sign a contract.  Eamonn suspected it was so that he, the human worker, would feel as though this was a more legitimate business arrangement and not try to weasel out of it.  That his own honor would hold him to working for a pirate organization.

And judging by the bulging eyes by the senior officers around the table, it was clear they were impressed by the amount that Verrikoth had indicated he would pay them for their services.  “If this pirate captain is truly going to pay us these figures, I’m willing to go for it,” Taja said grudgingly.  “But I won’t run slaves,” she added quickly.

“And you think I would?” Eamonn thundered.  “Do you think that I want any of this?  That I want to have complete oversight by a pirate and his thugs?  I made this deal to save your life.  All of your lives!  Doing things this way isn’t what I want.  But if we do things this way, I get to keep my ship and my crew and bills get paid.  That is why I took this deal.  That is the only reason I took this deal.  Don’t question me on it again.”  He gritted his teeth.  “If there was any way for me to get out of it, I would take it.  We were doing well.  We had the ship fixed up and we were finally starting to bring in good money until we got to this system and all this bullshit fell on top of us.  I did what I had to do to get out from under it.”

The room had gone completely quiet.  “All right, get back to work.  We have a lot to do and it seems like Captain Verrikoth isn’t going to give us a lot of time to do it.”  They all stood, but he remained in his seat.  “Taja, Corajen, Moxie.  You three stay.”  The others filed out, they three sat back down, neither of them looking happy.

He took a deep breath, making sure to make eye contact with each of them.  “I’d be talking to Quesh if he was out of sickbay, but he isn’t.  Once he gets out, I will have this conversation with him as well.  But this is the way it is for now.  We work for Verrikoth.  I know you all don’t like it; you’ve made that abundantly clear.  But that’s the way it is.  He’s keeping his soldiers aboard the ship to make sure we all behave, but honestly, once we get those engineering teams off the ship, I believe we’ll have reign to act as we always have.  He wants us making runs for him, cargo as I’ve been told.  I’m sure more than a little of it will be things he… acquired by extralegal means.”  He sighed again, scrubbing his face with one hand.  But when he put his hand down, his face was no longer tired and frustrated.  It was determined and forged in iron.

“You don’t like it.  I understand.  I don’t like it.  But what you all need to understand is that, frankly, that’s not important.  You’re all upset by this.  Honestly, at this point, I don’t care.”  He ignored the stunned looks on Tamara and Taja’s faces and continued.  “Do your jobs.  We’ll get the ship fixed back up, haul some cargo and hopefully get out of this mess.  I don’t know how that’s going to happen, but I do know that it will.  So, in the meantime, you all have work to do and I don’t want any of you, or any of the crew to be going behind my back and undermining my command or trying to get us all killed.  I get the slightest whiff of mutinous talk and I will be having another conversation with you three.  Because I’m going to assume that it was one or all of you three that caused it.”

His face softened a bit.  “Now, that’s that.  Go, get out of this damned wardroom and start getting this ship running smoothly again.  I’m going to get those engineers off the ship so you can get things done.”

The three of them got back up from their seats and filed out, but the temperature of the room had not risen back to a normal level.  There was a distinct chill in the room.  Eamonn sighed again as they filed out, his gaze on the table before him, though he wasn’t really seeing it.

“Captain, I need to speak with you about the teams aboard my ship,” Eamonn said a short while later.

Verrikoth’s antennae began to whirl slowly.  “I am not going to like lisstening to thiss, am I?”

“It’s like this, Captain, the security teams are fine.  We need to have a force like that on board,” he lied, but he knew he would get nowhere asking for those to be removed.  “But the engineering teams are causing a headache for me.  To be honest, my own people can get the Grania Estelle up and running much faster if your teams will just let them work.”

“Your teamz are not working with mine?” the zheen asked, his voice syrupy sweet.

“The two groups are butting heads,” Eamonn told him frankly.  “And right now, rebuild and repair schedules are all shot to hell because of it.  And to be honest, you don’t need to have your people over here.  Bring them back to your own ships, I know you have a lot of repairs to do on your cruisers.  I ask that you trust me to get the work on my own ship done.”

The zheen stared silently at him for a long moment.  “Yess…” he said, drawing the word out in a hiss.  “I do have a lot of repairz to be done to Meghna and Kerala.  Very well.  The engineering teamz will return.  But I expect your sship to be ready for hypersspace in a week.  One week.”  He raised a hand, one chitinous finger raised.  “Do not dissappoint.”

“I need ten days,” Eamonn replied.

“Ah, but you do not have ten dayz,” the zheen said back, his voice completely calm.  “You have only sseven.  Sso I ssuggesst you make the mosst of them and prove to me that I have placed my faith in ssomeone who can deliver.”  And the connection cut.

“Seven days,” Eamonn muttered.  “Better than nothing, I suppose.”  Pressing a control, he called down to engineering.

“Samair here,” Tamara answered after an irritatingly long moment.

“Good news, Moxie, the engineering teams from the cruisers will be departing immediately.”

“Yeah, so I noticed,” she answered.  “Looks like they got the message independently.”  She sighed.  “But they’re literally just dropping whatever they’re doing and walking off.  I have no idea what’s actually been done, so I’ve got half of the engineering department chasing down shorts and systems that are now off line.”

“Well, there’s more,” he told her.

“Oh, there always is,” Tamara replied.  “All right, what is it?”

“We need to be ready for hyperspace in seven days.”

“Seven days!” she exploded.  “Captain, that’s absolutely ridiculous.  I won’t even have the replicators up for three, bare minimum.”

“That’s the amount of time we have, Moxie,” he told her.  “And this is a deadline I don’t think we can miss.  So, to use your words, bare minimum, what do we need to jump?”

She sighed, though it was more a growl of frustration.  “Um, okay.  Well, we need full shield coverage on the hull.  I’ve got Xar and his team suiting up right now to see about that.  They need to clear the damage on the portside and then get emitters from elsewhere in the ship to cover the gap.  It’s going to lower the overall coverage, so our days of tootling along in the yellow are gone, at least for a while.  There are a few structural things we need to look at and I want to go over the power distribution network.”

“Can you make the seven day time frame?”

Tamara sighed again.  “I guess I’ll have to, won’t I?  Any word on when Quesh will be back?”

The Parkani was still out.  Apparently the multiple stun blasts that he took to take him down, not to mention the six or so more that the soldiers pumped into him to make sure he stayed down, had done some neurological damage to the four-armed engineer.  “He’s in the regen tank right now, though I think Turan is optimistic.  I can’t imagine he’ll be out of there and back to work before the seven days is up though.  And I don’t want to rush Turan.”

“No, I don’t either,” Tamara replied, resigned.  “If it was scars or something, I’m sure Quesh would be sneaking out of sickbay in a day.  But neurological problems are something different.”  They couldn’t have the big male unable to work, especially if he’d lost feeling in his extremities or started shaking uncontrollably.  Might even require surgery.  But that was a doctor’s realm.  She wasn’t terribly familiar with the ins and outs of human physiology, to say nothing of that of a Parkani, but it was far more complicated and scary than anything she ever dealt with in the cockpit or on the Engineering deck.  Better to leave such things to people more suited.  “All right, I’ll get on it, Captain.  Samair out.”

The next six days were a maelstrom of activity.  The entire engineering department, minus Quesh, who under Turan’s very stern eye was recovering in sickbay.  The butcher’s bill had been high, far too many had already died, and the Guura was determined not to lose another.  He’d been livid when he’d returned to his clean, ordered sickbay and found it a ransacked mess.  But he didn’t have time to turn the walls a deeper shade of bluish gray than he was, he had patients to save.

George Miller had taken Quesh’s place in the regen tank.  Three surgeries and two complete blood cleanses had saved his life.  However, he was far from out of the woods.  Turan was going to have to let him stay in the tank for a three more hours and then operate on him again, possibly in the tank of things went badly.  He’d been injected with a nanite solution which was working on his belly wound, but it was slow going.  He would be days in treatment and weeks further in recovery, but from a wound like that and the amount of time he’d had to sit and wait for treatment, the fact that he might pull through was a minor miracle.

Getting the portside damage patched up so that they would transfer shield nodes over was a slow process.  Anyone who had any kind of EVA experience, no matter what department they were from originally had been drafted to help.  Twenty-five people were on the outside of the hull, with plasma cutters slicing away at the peeled edges of hull where Ganges had shot up the weapons and shield nodes.  It was a slow, tedious process, because once the hull sections were fixed, then came the task of either repairing or replacing the control lines and power conduits.  Hours were spent out on the hull as the exhausted crew repaired one section after another.

Tamara wanted to be out on the hull, but she and her team were inside the ship, trying to nail down all of the “repairs” that Verrikoth’s engineers had been working on when they had abruptly left.  If she hadn’t known better, and truth be told she didn’t, she would have sworn that all these so called repairs were actually full blown sabotage.  Everything from power distribution junctions, communications busses, data transfer modules and more had been pulled out to be worked on.  Most of them had no need to even be looked at, much less fixed.  A simple diagnostic from any of the nearby terminals would have shown the workers anything they needed to know.  It was possible, Tamara reasoned as she and her team attempted to put everything back together, that either Verrikoth’s techs had very little in the way of actual experience in these matters, or were intending to pull all of these systems out for transport over to Meghna and Kerala.  Maybe the gear on Grania Estelle was better than what was on the warships.  That civilian gear based on replicated parts from two-hundred and fifty plus year designs might actually be better than what was being used on military ships here in the Cluster spoke volumes as to how far things had fallen.  But, the flip side to that coin was that if Grania Estelle’s gear was better, it started to give a more favorable outlook to getting out of this mess.  Sure, Ganges and her sister ships could easily outfight a lumbering bulk freighter, but against a properly built warship if what Tamara suspected was true, they’d be very hard pressed.

It was something to keep in mind.  Of course, right now, under the thumb of pirates, it would be highly unlikely that she would have the opportunity to build a warship to take them on with, but it might be something doable for the future.  A project she would keep tucked away for now.

Three days into the seven day deadline, they were finally getting the first of the shield nodes moved over to the port side.  “Xar, how are we looking?” Tamara asked from the main control console in engineering.

“Seating the node now, another hour to make all the control connections and then we’ll be ready to power up,” he replied, his voice sounding pleased.  “I’m happy with the way it’s fitting in, we should be good.”

“Glad to hear it,” Tamara replied.  “I know we’re all running on empty.  We’ve got three more of these to do in the next four days.”

“I know.  We’re all going to be absolutely dead by the time we’re done.”

She ran her hands through her short hair, uncaring about the dirt she’d just run through it.  “I know.  And I’m also wanting to look to get Engine Four back up.  It’s the least damaged of the disabled ones and I think we can get it running at about fifty percent.”

“That’ll be good,” the zheen said.  “I’m used to having a good deal of thrust in the old girl.  Being back down to one engine, well, sucks.”

Tamara laughed.  “You’ve been hanging around me too much.  I’ve spoiled you.”

“Yes, Tamara, you have.  If I wasn’t already mated…” he drawled good-naturedly.

“Oh, and if I was just a century younger, I’d give you a run for your money, Xar.  Get back to work.  Call me when you’re ready to power up.”

“Copy that.”

“Moxie!  Where are we?” the Captain bellowed as he walked into Main Engineering.  Crewmen scrambled to get out of his way; no one wanted to cross the Captain when he was in this kind of mood.

“Captain, good to see you,” she grumbled, wiping her forehead.  As he approached, Eamonn noticed that she looked exhausted.  In fact, everyone in Engineering did.  Bloodshot eyes seemed to have been issued out to all the workers here.  About a quarter of the diagnostic screens showed items in the red, but he didn’t look too closely, not really knowing what everything was indicating.  “I’ve got the second shield node installed, we’re just tuning it now.”

“So where does that leave us?” he asked again.

She sighed, running her dirty hands through her greasy hair.  “Once this node is up, we’ll have full shield coverage.  But, we’re back down to thirty-four percent, because of all the power problems and movement of all the other generator nodes.  We’ll be up to Red Six once we jump.”

The captain put his hand to his forehead, rubbing his temples with his long fingers.  “Back down to Red level six?  You’re killing me, Moxie.”

“I’m killing you?” she demanded as her thin veneer of patience snapped.  “You and your Lord are the ones killing me and my teams!  We’ve done three weeks of work in six days.  Six!  You don’t like the way my teams are doing things, we’ll stop right now.”

“Don’t push me, Moxie,” he warned.  “I know you and your teams have been killing themselves for the last six days and I do appreciate it.  And if we had a choice, I would give you more time, but I don’t.  I do not have a choice.”

She took a long deep breath, stamping down hard on her frustration.  “I know, Captain.  I’m just used to being able to operate under a reasonable time frame.  It’s been a long time since I’ve needed to work on a very short one like this.  Not since before my big sleep.”  Tamara shook her head.  “But I don’t think we can keep going at this pace much longer.  I have to check over the hyperdrive to make sure that’s still working.  Diagnostics on the computer say it is, but I want to physically check it over for any problems.”

“Yes, do that,” Eamonn said, sourly.  “The last thing I need is for the drives to not spin up when we get to the hyper limit with four or more warships with us.”

Tamara blinked several times, trying to get the fatigue out.  “I’m on it, Captain.  Give you a progress report in a few hours.”

“Commander, I’ve noticed something odd in the last few days,” the sensor operator said as Tyler walked over past the man’s station.

“What is it?” Tyler asked.  Any time his sensor operator went out of his way to get his attention, it was usually something he’d want to know, even if he didn’t necessarily wanted to hear it.

“There are three ships that are holding at about two light minutes away, but they’re keeping their distance.”

“What kind of ships?  More merchants?”

The officer shook his head.  “No, sir.  They look like warships.  One of them is big enough to be a frigate size, though it’s still not as large as Ganges.  The other two are corvettes, though they look to be of different designs.”

Three warships.  Smaller than the ones in his flotilla, but faster than his own ships, especially now that Ravage was assigned to protect and watchdog the Captain’s newest acquisition.  They might be able to race in, fire off a few missiles and turbolasers and then dash away before Ganges and the other light cruisers could adequately respond.  Light cruisers were best of both worlds, in Tyler’s opinion.  They were big enough to trash lighter ships, but fast and maneuverable enough to keep those same smaller ships honest and dance around much bigger ships.  Of course, if offered the opportunity, he would of course take command of a heavy cruiser or battlecruiser.

“What are they doing out there?”

The sensor officer just shrugged.  “They’re part of the system defense forces.  As far as I can tell, sir, they’re just out there loitering.  I think they’re just keeping any eye on us, but they’re not advancing.  They were coming after us hell bent for leather when we took Target One.  But after that, they pulled back and have just been holding position relative to us.”

“I’ve detected over twenty transmissions between the frigate and the orbital, Commander,” the comm officer piped up.  “Haven’t cracked their encryption, but I imagine it’s just status reports on us based on the frequency.  They’re transmitting at regular intervals.”

Tyler nodded.  “Keep an eye on them, Sensors,” he ordered.  “Comms, if you can crack their communication encryption, I’d like a report on what they’re saying, even if it is just routine updates.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Goris Hana had thrown a full-on temper tantrum when he heard that the interlopers in his star system had “nicked” the Grania Estelle.  He didn’t care that his own ships had been no match for the freighter’s computer viruses, or that the proper warships had been too far away to intervene in the fighting.  And when they had gotten into range, the ships were outclassed.  Perhaps in a desperate fight to try and protect the system the defense ships might have taken on the outsiders and done well, but they wouldn’t be able to win.

Of course, he knew this, but he hadn’t been willing to listen.  He shouted and fired his weapon, though thankfully he hadn’t hit anyone.  The XO had barely managed to avoid getting shot by diving behind the communications console, and it took over three hours to make repairs and get the systems back up.  When he’d been showered in sparks, Hana snapped out of his rage, ordered them to “carry on” and stormed out of Operations.

The XO, glad to have his boss leave his domain, ordered the frigate and corvettes to hang back and stay out of weapons range of the cruisers and their prizes.  They were to maintain surveillance of those ships and report everything back.  They were only to act if those ships moved to attack the fueling station or any of the rest of the real estate in the system.  The merchant conversions had arrived at the fueling station within hours of their arrival, looking to load up on fuel.  He was surprised that they offered to pay for the fuel, which was completely unexpected.  When a number of warships showed up in a system and captured a big freighter, the XO simply figured that his fueling station would be next.

“It’s a pleasure to be doing business with you, Captain,” he said a few hours later when a zheen, presumably the leader of this expedition, called in to the fueling station.  “I have to say I’m surprised that you’re wanting to actually do business.”

“And why iz that, good ssir?” Verrikoth asked.  His tone was light, but the XO was skilled enough to see the danger there.

So he opted for the truth.  “Honestly, with your warships here in system and with the ruckus that got stirred up not too far from here, I assumed we were in for more of the same.  But as I said, it’s a pleasant surprise.  You’re getting a good product and you’re paying fair rates.”  The rates Verrikoth were paying were a bit lower than the XO would have liked, truth be told, but they were fair.

But the zheen nodded, the dangerous vibe vanishing.  “I do have a bit of an aggresssive way of doing buzinesss, but I do want to continue to do buzinesss with local ssysstemz.  I have disscovered that ssimply taking what you want haz the unwanted sside effect of alienating everyone around you.  I want to be able to work with the people of Ulla-tran in the future.”

“I appreciate that, Captain.  I do appreciate that very much,” the XO replied, beaming.  “If you’re interested, we could talk about setting up some sort of long-term arrangement for fuel.”

The zheen nodded.  “I would like that, ssir.  The next time I am back thiss way I will be in need of a good deal of fuel for my sshipss.”

The XO rubbed his hands together as the two of them settled in for some business.  In the end, they worked out an arrangement for a good deal of fuel, something that both sides were happy with.  Verrikoth sketched a two fingered salute before signing off.  The XO slumped back in his chair, bewildered.  “A reasonable pirate?” he asked.  “What’s happening to the world?”

Vincent Eamonn was sitting in his quarters, a beer in a glass on his small table.  It had been a long day.  He’d just come from sickbay, getting updates from the haggard-looking Turan and visiting all of his injured crewmen, even if they weren’t awake.  He’d put his people through a lot lately and they’d sacrificed a lot.  A few of them, like George, Saiphirelle and Quesh were in rough shape, but were slowly recovering.  The lupusan was doing the best, most of her wounds were of the blunt force variety from the beating she’d taken from the soldiers.  The nanite injections that Turan had given her were working their magic and she as several days away from being back on her feet.  It would be a good two weeks before she’d be 100% again, but he knew from experience that she’d be bitching and threatening the orderlies in probably four days.  Turan would probably release her from sickbay in five and let her back on light duty in ten.

Quesh was another story.  He’d suffered serious nerve damage from the repeated stun blasts and was under serious treatment to repair his neural pathways.  Turan was pulling out all the stops for the Chief Engineer, even going so far as to dip into a few experimental techniques.  So far they were working, but the recovery was agonizingly slow.  And also the problem was once the Parkani had woken up, he was in excruciating pain.  Another issue was that the treatment was slowed by any painkillers Turan used to try and help, but it was simply too much, even for the tough as nails Parkani.  He’d had to reduce treatments to about thirty-five percent of maximum, which increased the time by a matter of weeks.  He’d be at least a month in sickbay before he’d be back on his feet, and probably another week or two before he’d be recovered enough to get back to work.  But there was nothing to be done and Quesh was in too much pain to really argue.  Slowing the treatments and trying out some light painkillers helped to ease the pain, but it was never gone.  His whole body would occasionally tense up and he would have uncontrollable muscle spasms as neural pathways were repaired.  The big male was frustrated beyond belief but there was nothing that could be done.  He either had to take the pain at this level, or they would have to reduce the treatments further, which would drastically increase his healing time.  But the big engineer was a trooper, he hardly complained once the Guura had laid the whole situation out for him.

And finally, George Miller.  The man was recovering, in fact, he was spending most of his time in the regen tank, though Turan believed that today would be the last day for that.  The nanite injections were doing their job and the wound was almost completely healed.  The problems of infections and sepsis had been the biggest worries but the dunks in the tank had kept them at bay and finally cleared them up.  He’d be another week and then back on the bridge, which made Eamonn very happy.

The chime at his door sounded and he sighed, closing his eyes.  Never a break.  He opened his eyes and stood, walked over to the hatch and keyed it open.  Moxie was standing there, looking absolutely wretched.  She clearly still hadn’t slept, her ship suit was rumpled and filthy; her hands, arms and face were also covered with grease and dirt.  Her hand was against the outside doorjam, keeping herself upright.

“Moxie, it’s late.  What could possibly be so important that it couldn’t wait until the morning?” he asked.  Then his stomach turned to ice.  “There isn’t a problem with the hyperdrive, is there?” he demanded.  That would be all they needed at this point.  They’d barely made Verrikoth’s deadline as it was.

“No, Captain, there isn’t,” she answered, rather monosyllabically.  Her voice was much more gravelly than he was used to, probably due to her lack of sleep.

“What do you want, Moxie?” he asked again.  “I’m tired, I know you’re tired.”

“We need to have a discussion, Captain and I don’t think we should wait.”

He sighed and stepped back from the hatch.  He waved her inside and closed the hatch behind her.  Tamara flopped down on the very end of his bed, and he sat down back in his chair, swiveling around in the chair to be able to see her.

“Ship’s systems are back up, though nowhere near what they were before this whole thing started,” she told him.

“Moxie, you could have told this to me over the comms or you could have waited until the morning.  What the hell are you doing in here and why am I not throwing you out?”

She sighed, sitting forward and putting her face in her hands.  “Damn I am so tired.”  She rubbed her eyes and then looked back up.  “I’m here to talk about the crew of Emilia Walker.”

“What?  Damn,” Eamonn said, pounding a fist on the table.  “I’ve seen Vosteros and his zheen crewman in sickbay, but they were both out whenever I went down there.”

Tamara nodded.  “What about the ship?”

“What about the ship?” he retorted.  “We can’t save their ship, Moxie.  You know that.”

“Yes, Captain, I do, but what about them?  You’re going to have another captain aboard your ship?”

Eamonn sighed.  “For now, I guess,” he hedged.  “But he’s taken a good beating.  It’ll be a little while before he’s on his feet.”

Tamara shook her head.  “He’ll be up and about by the time we get halfway to the next star system.”

“Moxie, again, this is not something that couldn’t have waited.”  He was starting to get agitated now.

She took a few breaths.  “I think Taja is royally pissed at you,” she blurted.

He chuckled.  “And they say engineers are completely oblivious to their surroundings.”  He took a sip of his drink and then set the cup down.  “Yes, Moxie, she is very upset with me.  I’m not a complete idiot for all I am male.”

“I’m sorry, Captain,” she said, and meant it.

He only nodded.  “Yeah, well.  Not much can be done about it now.  She’s scared and she doesn’t like the changes I’ve made.”

“We got attacked by pirates,” Tamara exclaimed, though it was dampened somewhat by her sudden jaw-cracking yawn.

The captain chuckled at her embarrassment.  “We got attacked by pirates, but I think she was more upset by the fact that we’re even in this system to begin with.  Then my gung-ho exclamation to save Emilia Walker and her crew, and now my collaboration with pirates.”

“Collaboration?” Tamara spluttered, sitting up straighter.  “That’s complete horseshit, Captain.  She was happier than anyone to see you back.”

He nodded.  “And then elation wore off and reality set in.  I don’t even know why I’m talking to you about this,” he said, looking at his cup.

Tamara looked down at the deckplating.  “I shouldn’t have come in here.  You were right,” she muttered, getting to her feet.  “There wasn’t anything that couldn’t have waited.  Good night, Captain,” she said, heading to the hatchway.

“Moxie,” the captain called, as she keyed it open.

She turned back as her hand pressed the button.  “Yes, sir?”

“I’m glad you came by.”

She nodded, but turned away.  “It was a mistake, Captain.  Good night.”  And with that she pulled the hatch open and nearly ran over Taja, who was on the other side of the hatch, hand raised to press the comm button.

The smaller woman’s face completely drained of color and she turned and fled without a word.  Tamara tried to call out to her, but she didn’t answer.  The captain was on his feet and just behind her at the hatchway.  “Great,” he muttered.  “Well that certainly isn’t going to help things.”

Chapter 30

A day later and the ship was ready.  Verrikoth had decided that since the “misunderstanding”, he couldn’t have a ship as big as this bulk freighter flying around with empty cargo holds.  So in addition to the fuel he’d already purchased to top up his warships he bought enough extra to fill two of Grania Estelle’s holds.  That of course left six empty, which would certainly make the ship faster at sublight speeds because of the reduced mass, but it certainly wouldn’t be very profitable.

In her copious free time, Tamara had somehow found a few hours to get the class five replicator up and running and had churned out replacement parts for the device itself to make sure that it wasn’t going to fail.  The next thing in line was a new e-replicator, which the parts were coming forth even now.  It would be a day or so before the parts and the constructor matrix were done, and then probably another twelve hours to actually assemble it.

The Captain sent out two of the shuttles to rope some rocks for processing, and while it was clear the pirates were interested in what they were doing, Verrikoth sent no messages.  They had an agreement and to be honest, as long as the freighter captain behaved himself and did what he was told, he could use his free time, space and crew’s time however he wanted.  He was turning the image of a hard-bitten brutal pirate on its ear.  Of course, he didn’t trust this image, he kept waiting for the curtain to come down and for the standard image of the pirate to come to the forefront.

“So what are you doing about these pirates, Captain?” Tamara asked later that day.  She’d slept a few hours, showered and changed clothes and looked a great deal better.  “I’m really worried about them and my replicators.”

“My replicators, Moxie,” he warned, raising a finger at her.  They stared at each other, but he knew that he couldn’t win this fight.  With but a thought, Tamara could send a lockdown or worse, meltdown command through her implants and then there would be no replicators.  He wasn’t willing to push her and besides, he needed her command level codes to be able to access the replicators to get anything more than basic parts.  He nodded and looked away, conceding her point.  “So far, Verrikoth doesn’t seem to care what we’re doing so long as we’re following his directions.  In the meantime, he is giving me free reign to do what I want.”

She blinked in surprise.  “What the hell kind of pirate operation he is running?” she demanded.  “Granted, I don’t have a huge amount of experience with pirates, but it seems to me that they would come and take what they want, kill who resists, and fill their cargo holds with goods and slaves.  Not making deals with freighter crews and letting them make a profit.”  Her eyes narrowed.  “Is he taking a percentage of anything we make?”

“Yes, Captain, is he?” Taja’s voice came from behind Tamara.  “Is he taking a percentage?”

The man deflated.  He hadn’t told anyone that yet.  “Yes, actually, he is.  He gets forty percent of anything we make.  Off the top.”

There was a stunned silence.  “Forty?” Taja whispered.  “That’s insane.”

The captain’s eyes were averted, refusing to meet anyone else’s.  “What am I supposed to do, Taja?  He’s got security teams all over the ship.  And when we jump, our navigation is going to be slaved to theirs, meaning we’re going where they want us to go.  We can’t get away.  We do what he wants or we die.”

The young woman fumed, but nodded.  “I hate this, Vincent.  I absolutely hate it.”

He nodded.  “I know, Taja.  Believe me I know and I agree.  But for now, there’s nothing we can do.”

Her steely eyes softened for just an instant.  “I’ll go talk with the people on the fueling station.  Maybe I can find us a few bits and bobs to trade.”  She turned and walked off the bridge.

After she was gone, the captain smiled.  “I wonder how she’s going to do that.  We don’t have anything to trade and I don’t know how much money she thinks she’d going to work with.”

“Oh, come on, Captain,” Serinda chided.  “You know her.  She’ll have at least one of the bays filled by the time we leave.”

He nodded, chuckling.  “Yeah, she probably will.”

Eleven hours later, the pirate Captain called.  Eamonn took the call in the wardroom, where he might get a little privacy.  The others were dying for a listen, to try and get a little hint as to what they were going to be doing now, but the Captain was adamant.  No one else needed to know any more than they needed to, which made them all feel a little hurt.  Up until this point, the Captain had always been very open about his plans for the future, but now, things were different.  Before things ran as though the crew was one big family.  Sure, they would argue and bicker, but they got along and managed to move forward.  Now it seemed less like that and more that the Captain was their boss and they were his employees.  This was a complete change and the crew were still trying to adjust.  They didn’t know it, but the Captain was trying to adjust to this new way of doing things as well.  Before now, things had run fairly smoothly, but with his ship littered with armed troops not answering to him, and an escort ship ready to smack them down should they try to fly off, he couldn’t act as though everything was normal.

Tamara came to the wardroom while he was still on the call with Verrikoth, and she leaned against the bulkhead, waiting for him to be finished.  Probably better than anyone else on the ship, she understood the way things were and the way things would have to be.  Her military training and background had helped her adjust to such an environment, though it didn’t mean that she liked it.  She kept an eye on what the Captain was doing with her implants, linking in with the communications system.  She wasn’t eavesdropping, just watching to see when the call ended.

She sighed.  At times like these, she would talk with Stella, who had quickly become a good conversationalist.  The two of them had spoken at length on a number of topics and at these times, when she had a minute to spare, she liked to catch up.  But that was impossible now.  Stella was still in lockdown, helping to balance the fusion reactor, and a few of the more raggedy systems, but nothing more.  She wasn’t helping with any of the diagnostics, she wasn’t even responding to calls by any of the crew, though everyone now was careful to never refer to her within earshot of any of the soldiers aboard.  Tamara was beginning to wonder of the AI would ever be able to spread her wings again.

Finally, a light flashed on her HUD, indicated the call had ended and she opened the door and stepped inside the wardroom.  He was seated at the table, leaning back in his chair, looking haggard.  “Hard day?” she asked.

“Please don’t come in here and give me more bad news,” he told her.  “I’m really not in the mood.”

“Actually good news,” she said with a small smile, sitting down at a seat about three away from him.  “The e-rep is up and running, and I’ve started on some replacement parts for a few of the blown consoles in engineering.  Won’t really show a massive rise in performance, considering all the damage, but it’ll help a little.”

He nodded.  “That is good news.  Have the guards been giving you a hard time?”

Tamara frowned.  “Surprisingly, no.  They’ve been there, always watching, always in the background, but never getting in the way or asking any questions.  I’ve gotten with Kutok and Serinda and we’ve been monitoring all communications coming to and from this ship, except for yours,” she added with a smirk.  “We haven’t detected anything being sent by any of the guards to the warships.”

Now they were both frowning.  “That is odd.  You’d think they’d be more interested in something like that.”

“I don’t know.  Maybe they’re still in the gathering information stage.”  She rubbed the back of her neck.  “Anything from our lord and master about it?”

He shook his head.  “Nothing.  And that’s something for which I am glad.  I don’t need that headache on top of anything else.”

“Any chance we can swing by the local asteroid belt and grab a few rocks for our empty cargo bays?”

He sighed.  “We’d have to explain why we want them.”

She shrugged.  “Well, technically, even without the replicators, we would need the materials we could get from those rocks.  We can tell him we’re breaking them down for fabrication and then sell whatever we can’t use.”

The captain looked at her for a long moment.  Then he nodded.  “All right.  I’m going to announce to the crew our marching orders in a little bit, but then we’re going to get moving.  I’m going to angle us toward the belt.  I need all three shuttles ready to go.  I know that fixing up shuttle two hasn’t really been a high priority considering everything, but I need them all up and running.  We’re going to have to grab everything we can before we leave and I know that Verrikoth isn’t going to want to wait.”

Tamara nodded.  “I’ll get right on it.”  She stood up.  “Captain, I know this whole situation sucks, but you’re doing the best you can.”

He shook his head.  “I know I am, Moxie.  But I’m getting the feeling that it will never be enough and that the crew will never understand.”

“Or a particular crew member?” she guessed.

The captain chuckled lightly.  “Yeah, but thems the breaks when you’re the boss and you’re seeing the help.”

Tamara nodded.  “All right, I’m out of here.  I’ve got a shuttle to fix and a new replicator to oversee building.”

He blinked in surprise.  “Another one?”

She beamed at him.  “Of course.  We have to get back up to full industrial capacity again, Captain.  And while we won’t be using a good portion of the cargo bays for a while,” she gave him a knowing look, and he nodded in understanding.  At the first real opportunity they had to get away from this pirate and his “deal” they would take it and be gone.  She cleared her throat.  “Well, we’re still going to be trading with various planets and they’re going to want machined parts and maybe even have us fabricate structures and such for them.  Gotta make money, even if it is for him.”

“Keep at it, Moxie,” he told her.  “And get that shuttle back up and running.”

Four hours later, the shuttle was ready, the engineering crews were absolutely dead on their feet and the convoy of ships was loaded and ready to go.  Grania Estelle and Ravage were going to be following along after Ganges and her sisters, with the converted and armed merchant ships pulling up the rear.  The bulk freighter and her corvette escort were going to be going in the same direction as the rest of the ships, but they were going on to Byra-Kae, while Grania Estelle would be heading to Amethyst.  From what Tamara could tell from her quick peek with the shuttle sensors, the three cruisers seemed to be back up and running.  Oh, they still showed their scars from the engagement with the big freighter, but they seemed to have gotten their hull damage repaired and their weapons back up.  Who knows how well of a fix they all were, but they appeared to be fully functional again.  Though the captain seemed to think, and she agreed with him, that Verrikoth and his fleet were heading to a well-defended system, possibly Byra-Kae.  Would seven ships be able to take on the defenders there?  She didn’t know.  In this time, she had no idea what the defenders would have, and in what shape.

They began their trip, with the local defense ships shadowing them from a ten light seconds away.  They had added four smaller gunships to their order of battle, looking to try and sweep them out of the system.  And they all got the feeling that if given the chance, the locals might try and slip a knife in Verrikoth’s exoskeleton.  The pirate seemed unconcerned, however, though he did keep his ships in a loose formation so that all the warships could provide cover for each other and the converted merchies.

“What are they doing?” Serinda demanded from the communications station, referring to the local ships.

“I think they want to make sure that Captain Verrikoth doesn’t try to just take whatever he wants from this system,” the Captain mused.  “Though with the large disparity in firepower, I’m not really sure what they hope to accomplish.”

“It could be that they’re hoping Captain Verrikoth won’t want to get his ships too damaged or possibly destroyed smashing the local defense ships,” Kutok replied from the Ops station.  She was filling in for George while he was out under medical care.  The hak’ruk was still learning the ropes, but she was a quick study.

“Seems as good a theory as any,” Eamonn replied.  “What’s the status on our prospectors?”

“Commander Samair is on her way back, she said she found ‘a good one’, Captain,” Kutok replied.  “Ka’Xarian and Martinez in the other two shuttles are starting their return runs as well.”

“Good.  Comms, anything from Ganges about what our shuttles are doing?”

Serinda shook her head, tucking a tendril of dark hair behind her ear.  “No, Captain.  Not a peep.  There’s a good deal of comm traffic between the other ships, but nothing directed at us.  Or at the locals either.”

He nodded.  “All right.  Carry on, everyone.”

Half a day later, the convoy had broken apart, all of them heading to the hyper limit.  Two of Grania Estelle’s cargo bays had been loaded up with asteroids, which were already in the process of being broken down for transfer to the replicators and the shuttles were back in the boat bay.  There were a lot of repairs that needed doing, and not many that could be done in hyper, namely shield relays, sensors, and replacements for the rail guns and laser cannons, but there was a good deal of work that needed to be done inside the ship while they were waiting.  And it would be an extremely long trip from here to Amethyst, trundling along at Red level six in hyperspace.  No one was looking forward to the ninety-six day trip, now that they’d gotten used to doing the same distance in a little over three weeks.

“Captain, we’ve got a hyper footprint,” Kutok reported succinctly.  “Fifteen light minutes away.”

He turned to her.  “Anything more than that?”

The hak’ruk angled her head slightly as she worked her console, studying the readings.  He didn’t get aggravated at her because the contact was quite a distance away, but everyone on the bridge was hanging on her every word.

“Another of Verrikoth’s friends, perhaps?” he mused.  The soldier standing at the doorway to the bridge, shifted his stance a little, but he didn’t speak.  The captain glanced over at the human male standing there, a rugged man, his face covered with burn scars, his chest armor looking worn, though his weapon was immaculate.  The soldier met the captain’s eye for a moment before looking away to ogle the communications officer.  Serinda pointedly ignored him.

“Could be, Captain,” Kutok replied slowly.  “It’s a warship, definitely, and from what I can tell, it’s a bit bigger than Ganges and her sister ships.”

“Keep on it, Kutok.  Serinda, anything?”

The young woman blinked.  “Captain, she’s a warship, all right, Kutok is right about that.  But she’s broadcasting Republic ID!”

He shrugged.  “That’s not too uncommon,” he drawled, though his mind was racing.  “Get Moxie on the comms, now.”

Serinda looked puzzled for only an instant, but then she got it.

Tamara trotted onto the bridge a few minutes later.  “You wanted to see me, Captain?”

“We have company,” he replied, pointing to the display.  “A Republic warship.”

She shrugged.  “Had to happen sometime.  I admit their timing could have been a little better.”  She ignored the glare the soldier behind her gave her.  She didn’t need to turn around to know that the man had been checking her out before she’d spoken.

“I was thinking, and I believe you’re right, Moxie.”  He eyed her, clearly trying to send a message to her through willpower alone.  “Do you remember what happened at Instow?”

Tamara nodded in understanding.  “I do.  You want I should do that now?”

“Yes, Moxie, I do.”

She walked over to the communications console, and Serinda gladly slid over to accommodate her in the cramped space.  Tamara went to work on the console, bringing up with the same ID and communications codes she’d used back at Instow to trick the Republic ships there that Grania Estelle was actually a Naval Reserve vessel.  It was a risk, in fact, a very serious risk, should Verrikoth decide to take retribution for this act.  She nodded to Kutok, who acknowledge her by nodding her shiny black head.

“Good to go,” Tamara reported, mentally crossing her fingers that the soldier wouldn’t react.  He didn’t seem the terribly interested in what they were doing.

“Hold until five light minutes, Moxie.”

“Understood, Captain.”  She glanced over at the guard, who leered at her suggestively.  Tamara gave him a disparaging look and then returned her attention to her console.

“Commander, we’re got a small flotilla of ships that are moving toward the hyper limit,” the sensor operator reported.  “They’re about eleven hours away at their current speed.”

“The bulk freighter is broadcasting ID,” the communications watch said excitedly.  “It’s her, sir.  It’s Grania Estelle.”

Commander Harth tapped his fist on the arm of his command chair.  “Finally,” he said aloud.  After months of chasing them across this Cluster, they finally caught up to them, with the possibility that they might even catch them.  “Helm, set course to intercept, best speed.”

“Aye, Commander,” the helmsman replied, putting in the commands on her console.

“What’s her status, Sensors?” he asked, referring to the freighter.  “Are they indicating Naval Reserve status?”

“No, sir, she isn’t.  She’s not as hale and hearty as we got at the reports from Hecate, sir,” he admitted.  “She’s taken some engine damage, in fact four of her six propulsion units are offline.  Also, her shield strength is considerably lower than it was before.”

“Maybe they’re just keeping them up to hold off solar radiation, but not keeping them at full power?” Harth suggested.

The sensor officer twisted his lips.  “I don’t think so, Commander.  Their power plan output matches the reading we got from the people at Hecate, in fact, it’s a little higher.  But I’m detecting a fair amount of hull damage on the port side of that ship, which is facing us.  They’ve got about half the number of shield relays they should, or did have back at Hecate.  I think they’ve been in a battle.”

“What’s the story with her escorts?” Harth turned to his own display, frowning as he did so.

“Eight ships, sir.  Three light cruisers, a corvette and four modified merchant vessels.”  The sensor officer frowned and then turned back to his captain.  “Sir, the corvette that’s holding position close to Grania Estelle, sir.”

“What about it?” he asked.  There was a shiver in the deckplates as the artificial gravity systems compensated for Legacy’s acceleration.  He pressed a button and the display brought the corvette up, the sensor readouts scrolling down beside it helpfully.

“Its Republic design,” the man replied.  “In fact, it’s recent design.  I’d say it was Cygness class, similar to that of Fury.”

“Is that ship the Fury?” he asked, pressing a few controls.

After a moment’s checking, the sensor officer shook his head.  “No, sir.  Same class, but it’s definitely a different ship.”

“But it could be from Fury’s patrol unit?”

The man nodded.  “Yes, sir, it could be.  In fact, it probably is.  They’re broadcasting their ID, Ravage on a Republic frequency, but they’re not using standard Republic military channels.”

“Are they indicating they’re a Republic ship?”  That didn’t make sense.

But the man was shaking his head again.  “Oh, no, sir.  Sorry, I didn’t mean to confuse you.  I meant they’re using Republic ID frequency, but they’re not using military codes.”
The Commander waved one hand as though shooing away a fly.  “Whatever.  They’re with that rat pack of ships, and the fact that Grania Estelle is showing more damage makes me think that we’ve fallen in with a group of pirates.”  He smiled wolfishly.  “A group of well-armed pirates, but pirates nonetheless.”  He looked over the other ships on his display.  “What about the cruisers?  How much trouble did we just drop into?”

“Well, from what I can tell, we might have a bit of a run for our money with those cruisers, Commander,” the sensor officer replied.  “Against one, we’d mop them up.  But against three, I think they could move around quick enough that we might not be able to focus on one long enough.”  He shook his head slowly.  “They’re outfitted with turbolasers and a few heavy laser cannons, but I think I might be seeing a couple of missile batteries on each of them.”

Harth sighed.  That was a big force multiplier.  Of course, Legacy was also armed with turbolasers and heavy laser cannons on her broadsides, as well as a pair of Sierra-missile batteries in the bow and on each broadside.  A Republic heavy cruiser was no slouch and certainly nothing out here in the Cluster could stand toe-to-toe with Legacy, but as a group, depending on what they were armed with, they might be in a little bit of trouble.  Oh, Harth had no doubt he would emerge victorious, but his ship might take more damage and suffer more casualties than he’d like.  He didn’t want to suffer any, truth be told.

“We’ll just deal with it.  Now I wish we’d loaded up with a couple of fighters.  Would have helped a lot with point defense.”  He sighed, straightening in his seat.  “Nothing for it now.  Continue on course.”

“Captain, it’s a Republic heavy cruiser,” Kutok reported.

“They’re closing fast,” Eamonn replied.  “I suppose that’s a good thing.”  He smiled ruefully.  “I guess that’s what we wanted.”  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the soldier by the door shift slightly.  Still nothing threatening, in fact, he seemed to be just as at ease than before the cruiser showed up.  Either this guy was the most laid back soldier imaginable, he was completely out of the loop as far as what his bosses were doing, or he knew something that Eamonn and his crew did not.  Eamonn was a betting man, and he was betting that the third option was the correct one.  He typed out a question and sent it to Tamara’s private frequency, the one Stella typically used to contact her on her implants.

[The soldier on the bridge is way too relaxed.  Are we missing something?]

Tamara tried to keep her face expressionless, but she shrugged noncommittally.  She motioned for Serinda to do her thing, and the younger woman quickly did another scan of all communications frequencies.  She shrugged her shoulders slightly, indicating she didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.  Tamara replied subvocally, sending a message to the Captain’s display.

[Serinda and I aren’t finding anything, Captain.  This guy just might be way out of the loop, but I agree with you.  I think something is up.]

The captain tapped his lips with one finger and then sent Tamara another message.  [Do it.]  She nodded, though he was facing away for her and couldn’t see.  She pressed the control and the Grania Estelle’s ID changed.  The bridge officers continued to stab at their consoles, Tamara watching over Serinda’s shoulder, all of them clawing at their heads trying to make sense out of this situation.  Why wasn’t the guard concerned?  And for that matter, why hadn’t Tyler or Verrikoth, or even the commanding officer on Ravage sent a message demanding to know why Grania Estelle was broadcasting Republic ID?

Unseen by the others, the guard only smirked.

“Commander, Gra… I mean Target One has changed her ID code,” the sensor officer on Ganges reported.

“Changed how?” Tyler demanded.

“They’re broadcasting Republic ID, sir,” the man replied meekly.  “Republic Navy Reserve.”

Tyler frowned.  Was it possible that this bulk freighter and her pain-in-the-ass captain were actually Republic Navy?  Is that why they fought so hard and so well to keep us away?

But Verrikoth looked interested as he walked over.  “What iz thiss I hear about Grania Esstelle broadcassting Republic ID codez?”

“Confirmed, Captain,” the sensor officer replied, bypassing Tyler, who grimaced.

The zheen let out a hissing laugh, though his face and antennae indicated he wasn’t really amused.  “It sseemz we have a very clever new member in my growing fleet, Commander.  The Captain of the bulk freighter is trying to ssignal the Republic cruizzer.”

“That bastard,” Tyler swore.  “Even now, with troops on his ship and Ravage ready to pound him to scrap, he keeps trying to swindle us.”

Verrikoth tipped his head to look over at the human.  “Sswindle uss?” he asked, hissing again.  “Thiss iz not some sshady buzinesss deal here, Commander.  I am looking to rule this Clusster.  And if the Republic decidez to come ssnooping around, then we musst deal with them.”

Tyler blanched.  “No one said anything about taking on a Republic heavy cruiser.”

“Are you afraid, Commander?  I can ssmell your fear.  Perhapss I erred in choosing you for my flagsship Captain.”

The man’s fists clenched.  “No, there was no error.  I’m just concerned about taking on a ship as powerful as that one.”

Verrikoth nodded.  “Caution is understandable.  But ssometimez bold action iz needed.”  He hissed again.  “But not thiss time.  Communicationz!” he barked.

“Yes, Captain?”

“Ssignal all shipss to upload the comm package,” he ordered and the comm officer hustled to obey.  The zheen turned back to Tyler.  “What interestss me is that Captain Eamonn haz a Navy code.  It makes me wonder.  Are they part of the Republic Navy?  Haz my fight already begun?”

“I can’t see that being true, sir,” Tyler hedged.  “That has to be a fake.”

“Perhapss,” Verrikoth replied.  “Are we ready?” he asked, directing his inquiry to the comm officer.

“Ready, sir.”

“Then begin broadcasting.”

“Whoa!” the comm officer on Legacy’s bridge exclaimed.  “Commander, all of the ships in the group, even the corvette in the small group and the warships in the other are now broadcasting Naval Reserve ID codes.”

But Harth was shaking his head.  “No way.  There is no chance that this many Reserve ships were out here in the Cluster and I hadn’t known about it.  Maybe one, but not all of them.  This is a ruse.”  He curled a hand into a fist.  “I’m not falling for it.”

“But sir, if those are real signatures…” the comm officer replied.

“Yes, I understand the consequences, Ensign,” the Commander said scathingly.  The young man at the comms ducked his head, cheeks flaming with embarrassment.  “Helm, continue on course.”  He checked the displays.  At current course and speed, Legacy would catch them long before they reached the hyper limit.  But if they scattered, it would be unlikely that they could catch more than one of them, aside from the big freighter.  He just had to hope that whoever was in command over there was arrogant enough to think they could take him on in a straight fight.

They had to be pirates.  There were no legitimate governments out here that would have their own fleets, certainly nothing of this size and power.  Eight ships didn’t constitute a fleet, and four of them were only converted merchant ships that had a few guns tacked on.  But it was the fact that someone had built these cruisers in the first place.   Maybe it was a coalition of planets that banded together and financed this fleet.  That seemed reasonable, but to what purpose?  The planets out here in the Cluster didn’t have much in the way of loyalty toward one another and Republic agents would have heard if there was anyone rising to any kind of power out here.  Or even if any serious trading partners were starting to band together.  He’d have a serious talk with the Intel people back in the Republic after this was over.

***************************

“This trip is taking forever,” the Captain muttered to himself.  “When did that happen?” he wondered.  When did I get so used to a well-tuned and functional ship that going back to the way things were simply won’t do anymore?  He sighed.  I’m getting soft.  The distance between Grania Estelle and Ravage and the other ships was slowly opening.  The two different stars they’d be aiming for were not all that far apart from each other, only a few light years, so the large flotilla was still within easy closing distance of the freighter and her escort ship.  The heavy cruiser was bearing down on them steadily, fast enough that they could even catch the speedier warships and still possibly have time to swing around and catch the much slower bulk freighter before they jumped.

Could a single heavy cruiser fight off eight smaller warships?  And, on another note, was the captain of that ship moving to attack or to assist?  And what was Vincent Eamonn supposed to do when they got close enough?

But now, finally, the guard on the bridge moved into action.  He raised his rectangular comlink to his mouth and spoke into it, his voice pitched too low for Eamonn to hear.  The captain looked to the others on the bridge, but there was nothing they could do.  Less than a minute later, three others guards arrived, all of them heavily armed.  The first guard hefted his weapon, though it wasn’t pointed at anyone on the bridge.

“Captain.  I have orders from Ganges.  You are to continue on course to the hyper limit and you are not to reduce speed or change course.  Once we reach the hyper limit, you are to jump for Amethyst as scheduled, your navigation linked with Ravage.”

Everyone on the bridge froze.  The guard sighed.  “Captain, please let’s not make this difficult.  I have my orders and so do you.  The Republic ship here changes nothing.  This ship and everything in it belong to Verrikoth.  So don’t do something stupid.”              Still no one moved.  “Are you going to make me shoot someone?  Bug lady?”  He swiveled around and pointed his rifle at Kutok, who bristled at the slur.

“Don’t you dare call me a… bug!” she seethed, raising one clawed hand.  She was far enough away from the man that he was in no real danger, but seeing that hand full of talons was still rather intimidating.

But he wasn’t impressed.  “Calm down… bug,” he taunted.  “I have no problem shooting you, or anyone else on the bridge here.  So, Captain.  What’s it going to be?  Are you going to behave and we all jump for Amethyst?  Or does the bug get crunched?”

Every time he said that hateful word, Kutok’s rage grew.  She was visibly shaking.  The man’s smirk grew wider.  “All right.”  He fired, and Kutok’s hand exploded in verdant gore.  She emitted a high-pitched keening noise from pain.  The hand was blasted off from just above her lowest joint, what on a human would be a wrist joint.  Her arm curled in, the wounded part right up to her thorax, the keening noise getting louder and more piercing.

The man raised his weapon again, ready to finish the job.  “No!” the Captain shouted, lunging to his feet.  Tamara was trying to get to her from around the communications console, but one of the guards stuck a pistol in her face, stopping her.  “Leave her alone!” he demanded.  “All right, all right!  I’ll do it.  We get to the hyper limit and we jump!”

“Shut her up, Captain!” the man shouted, not lowering his weapon an inch.

“You blew her hand off, you bastard!” Eamonn shouted right back.  “She’s in agony.”

He shrugged.  “I warned her.  I warned you.  Now I’m warning you again.  Shut her up, or she loses her head.  And if that doesn’t finish her, I’ll blow apart her thorax and then stomp the rest into the deckplates.”

Eamonn, glaring daggers at the guard, approached the screeching hak’ruk, his hands outstretched as though to catch her.  “Come on, Kutok.  Help me save all our lives, especially yours.”

The compound eyes were sparkling with agony.  She swiveled her head to stare at the man who had shot her, the sound level dropping to a much more manageable level.  But she didn’t stop; either she couldn’t, or she was continuing as a small measure of defiance for the bastard who might yet kill her anyway.

“Moxie, can you help Kutok down to sickbay?” the captain asked, gently, holding the hak’ruk in his arms.  She sagged against him, though her head was laser focused on the guard, making sure he never left her sight.

Tamara nodded slowly, her face immediately shifting from anger to compassion.  “Of course, sir.”  She rushed forward to help and the guard moved aside to let her pass, taking Kutok’s weight in her arms.  She wasn’t trying to lift the hak’ruk, Tamara was a strong woman, but Kutok weighed almost as much as the human.  She wasn’t a bodybuilder, but thankfully, Kutok was able to hold herself up on her back legs.  The two females shuffled off the bridge, sidling past the guards, one of whom “accidently” rubbed his hand along Tamara’s side and rear.  She clenched her jaw and pushed past until the two of them were in the hall.  One of the guards, the one who had put his hands on her, followed them out, but he kept a respectful distance, though just a few centimeters out of kicking distance, should either of them decide to get feisty.

Tamara could hear the captain issuing orders on the bridge, as well as yelling at the guard for his completely unnecessary actions.  The guard’s voice replied, but it was pitched too low for Tamara to hear.  Most likely he was telling the Captain off, probably acting completely reasonable, as though his hands were lily white, instead of green with blood.

“Wh-why?” Kutok stammered, her voice so low that Tamara almost didn’t hear it.  Her implants, however, amplified the sound and helpfully scrolled text indicating what Kutok had said on Tamara’s HUD.

“Because they’re pirates, Kutok,” Tamara replied.  “Because no matter what time you live in, it seems there are always people that like to prey upon others.  You’re no victim and who knows?  It might have been the fact that you stood up to him and didn’t meekly back down that made him do it.  Had to show he meant business.”

“I will kill him,” the hak’ruk vowed.  This saddened Tamara, because for all her fierceness, Kutok was a proper lady and a gentle soul.  The fact that she could be driven to this…  It was just another tick on the ledger as far as Tamara was concerned.

“Come on, let’s get to you to Turan.  It’s going to be all right.”

“It’s never going to be all right!” Kutok hissed, raising her voice and then cringing from the pain.  “Never,” she whispered.

Tamara didn’t have any reply.

“Coming into extreme weapons’ range now, Captain,” the tactical officer reported, clearly excited.

“Easy now, Perrin,” Harth chided gently to the ensign at tactical.  “Plenty of time for you to clear your guns if it comes to that.”

The young man flushed in embarrassment.  It had been a very long run out across the system to catch up to this group of ships.  Their quarry was finally in sight and in range and energy levels and morale aboard Legacy were through the roof.  Harth considered his options.  Grania Estelle was definitely his main quarry here, but she was escorted.  Legacy could easily take the corvette that was escorting her, but she wouldn’t be alone for long.  The other ships would quickly turn to engage before he’d have a chance to board the freighter.  And then the heavy cruiser would have her hands full.  But there was no way of knowing what the others would do.  Would they cut their losses and leave the two ships to their fate, or would they turn and engage?

“Are the two groups close enough together to support each other?” he asked, rubbing his chin.

Ensign Perrin shook his head.  “No, sir, but I’m not entirely sure about their speed and acceleration rates, but there should be a small window where we can operate without interference from the larger mass of ships.”

Harth nodded.  “When we do, then what will the freighter do?  Are they going to be good and stick around, seeing as how we’re a Republic warship?  Or are they going to bolt for the hyper limit?”

No one had a good answer.  He didn’t blame them, he didn’t have an answer either.  Finally he nodded, making up his mind.  “Hail the Grania Estelle,” he ordered.  “But make sure that the other ships are included in my broadcast.”

The communications officer nodded, then after a moment said, “You’re on, sir.”

“Grania Estelle, this is Commander Harth on the Legacy.  You are ordered to heave to prepare to be boarded.  If you do not do so, we will open fire.  Any ships that attempt to stop me from my goal will be fired upon and destroyed.”  He flicked his eyes to the comm officer, who cut the transmission.  “Let’s hear what they say.”

“Captain, you are not to respond to that message,” the soldier informed Eamonn.  His weapon was pointed directly at the captain’s head.  The man was completely calm, as though the two of them were standing in a coffee shop and he was placing his order.  “You will continue on course for the hyper limit and you will not deviate from that unless either I or Captain Verrikoth orders it.  Now, sit yourself back down in your chair and give the order to the helm.”

Eamonn worked his jaw and slowly lowered himself back into the seat.  Fists clenched, he turned back to the main display.  “Helm,” he ground out, “Continue on course.  Serinda, radio silence for now.”

The two officers chorused acknowledgement, not making eye contact with anyone, for fear that the soldiers would pay attention to them.  Serinda’s hands were shaking, both from fear and from shame.  She wasn’t strong enough to stand up to these men, not like Kutok, and after seeing what they had done to her the woman couldn’t even look up at anyone on the bridge.  Her friend had been horribly wounded and the only ones who had tried to move were the Captain and Tamara.  She’d been aboard this ship for years, far longer than the former Republic engineer, had been friends with the black insectoid female since almost the beginning of her tenure.  And she’d just stood there and let the bastard shoot her.  Her eyes burned and she blinked hard to hold back the tears and she clenched her fists to control the shaking.

The pilot just simply sat facing forward, not looking at anyone, her face a blank mask, back ramrod straight.  She refused to speak to anyone and only to the captain if she had an update or if he required a report.

“Grania Estelle is not responding, sir,” the comms officer replied.

Harth shook his head.  He hadn’t really expected one, truth be told.  “Continue on toward the freighter,” he ordered.  “Leave the others alone for now, but bring us to Condition One.”

“The corvette is moving in between us and the Grania Estelle,” Tactical reported.  It wasn’t much more than a gesture, seeing as how the corvette could fit inside one of the bulk freighter’s massive cargo bays.  He checked another readout.  “Moving from extreme to long range on turbolasers now, sir.”

“Guns, warning shots, one hundred meters off their forward bow,” he ordered, indicating the freighter.

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer replied, grinning, entering the commands on his console.  A second later, the massive cannons pumped out a trio of shots that passed just in front of the kilometer-long bulk freighter.  The ship continued on its course, undaunted.  “They’re not stopping, Commander.”

“I see it,” he replied.

“Looks like the corvette is moving away from the freighter, sir,” the executive officer, Lieutenant Tran reported.  “They’re accelerating toward us.”

“Fire on Grania Estelle,” Harth ordered.  “I’m so tired of all these games.  No more cat and mouse.  Bring down their sublight engines.  Then switch targets to the corvette.  Disable them.”

~~~~*~~~~~

The ship shivered as Legacy’s turbolasers hammered into their after section.  The shields shredded and collapsed within seconds under the heavy cruiser’s barrage.  Eamonn stood at the Operations station, watching the green icon protective bubble around his switch rapidly from green to red and then turn from a solid line to one that had holes in it as the turbolasers quickly punched holes in the energy barrier.  Spotting turned to holes which turned to fully collapsed shields in the aft section.  Three shots later and the hull took a hit.  The sound could be heard throughout the ship, the vibration translating through the huge ship.

“Cut the engines,” he ordered.  “Do it now,” he snapped to the pilot, who looked like she might argue.  “Shut your mouth!” he said to the guard, pointing a finger at the man.  “That heavy cruiser will take out our engines.  Then I can’t follow your orders.  If we behave for a little while, your ships will engage them and then we can continue on our way.”

The soldier shrugged, his rifle slung over one shoulder.  He clearly didn’t like being told what to do by the captain, but he wasn’t going to argue in this instance.  Clearly the heavy cruiser wasn’t going to just let the bulk freighter slip away, so they had no choice but to power down for now.  But only for now.  “Very well, Captain.  We’ll do things your way for the moment.  But the instant I feel that we can get underway again, we will.”  Then, he stepped up to the Captain, standing at the Operations station.  “And never speak to me in such a tone again.  You are Captain of this ship because my Captain allows it.  You are easily replaced.”

“Fine,” Eamonn said, turning back to his instruments.  “Serinda, send a message to Legacy, tell them we are cutting our engines.  Then send a comm laser to Ravage and inform them that as soon as we see an opening, we’re going to run as fast as we can for the hyper limit.  We’re going to continue to drift in that direction until we can jump.”

The raven-haired woman looked up at her captain, stricken.  He locked gazes with her for a long moment, but then she nodded and turned back to her console.

Chapter 31

“Report,” Harth asked calmly.  The first round of missiles missed their target, annoyingly.  The electronic jamming suite on board the corvette was far better than predicted, which worried him a bit.  The pirates and defense forces out here in the Cluster were not supposed to have systems as advanced as those of the Republic.  He salved his pride by remembering that that ship was a former Republic vessel.  It meant that whoever these pirates were, they had stolen or acquired Republic military tech and were using it.  It also meant, he thought sourly, that they might also have copied it.  The missiles lost track and raced out into the void, away from the freighter and the corvette.  Harth shook his head and grimaced.

“Missiles lost track, sir,” Tactical reported.  “Corvette is moving to engage us, sir.  They’re in range of our turbolasers now.”

“Let them have it,” he ordered.  He watched at the Legacy’s guns opened up, sending charged particle lances at their target.  The amount of energy slamming into the smaller ship’s shields caused them to turn opaque, but the captain of the other ship was no fool, it seemed.  He banked his turn, not allowing the heavy cruiser’s weapons to fully blast apart his ship on a head on course.

“Corvette’s forward shields have taken heavy hits,” the report came in.  “We’ve punched a few holes in them, moderate damage to their forward section.  They’re still under power and maneuvering.”

“Missile separation!” the sensor officer reported.  “Ten, twelve, fourteen Sierra-class missiles inbound.  ETA forty-five seconds.”

“Guns, I said I want that corvette down.  Take care of it.”  Harth watched as the ship’s turbolasers lashed out again, savaging the smaller ship as she was trying to turn away from Legacy.  The salvos tore through Ravage’s weakened shields, smashing through the belly hull and engines of the smaller craft.  She spun uncontrolled, power going out on half the ship.  “Good shooting, Tactical,” Harth congratulated.

The other officers at tactical lit up the ship’s electronic countermeasures as well as the point defense guns, trying to jam the guidance systems of as many of the inbound missiles as they could and shoot down the rest.  Chaff burst forth, and jammers howled, confusing the Sierras’ nav systems.  Six of them veered off course and the guns blasted apart four more.  But four managed to sneak by, doggedly tracking down their prey.  They crashed into the heavy cruiser’s shields, detonating on impact.

The ship shuddered under the impacts.  “Forward shields at twenty-three percent,” the tactical operator reported.  “I’ve got some spotting, but no breaches.  No damage to the hull.”

Harth nodded, exhaling slowly.  He tried not to project to his bridge crew just how nervous seeing a salvo of those missiles had made him.  “The corvette must have flushed all her tubes at us,” he said aloud instead.

“Commander, the other ships are not moving to intercept,” the sensor officer called out.

“Odd,” he replied, rubbing his chin.  “We get in a scrap with one of theirs and they just float on, unconcerned?  Damned peculiar.”  He frowned.  “And suspicious.  Sensors, keep an eye out for any surprises.”

“What do you mean we’re just going to leave them?” Tyler demanded, throwing his arms to the sides.  “We spent all that effort to secure that freighter and now you’re just going to throw away both ships?”

Verrikoth moved with speed greater than the human commander’s eye could follow.  His chitinous armored fist slammed into the man’s neck, not hard enough to cause permanent damage, but certainly enough to make his point.  Tyler collapsed to the decking, gasping desperately trying to gulp down air through his damaged trachea.  Stepping over him, the zheen kicked him hard in the stomach, causing him to double up, sucking wind in long wheezing gasps.

“Your tongue esscapess you, Commander,” he told him, standing over him.  “I have grown very tired of listening to you whine.  And you question my orderz far too much.”  The low moaning sounds were starting to subside, so Verrikoth game him another sharp kick in the abdomen.  Tyler gagged and curled into a ball on the deck.  “I have given you much leeway.  Do not quesstion me again, Commander.  Or I will end your miserable life.”  The zheen walked away from him, and the rest of the Ganges bridge crew did their best to look anywhere but at their commander, crumpled there on the deck plates.

“You,” Verrikoth said, pointing at the communications officer.  “Order the cruiserz to launch two of their three fighterz each toward the bulk freighter.  Their orderz are to harass the Republic warsship long enough for the freighter to jump.  They are to land in the freighter’z cargo holdz.  Do it now.”

“Yes, Captain,” the man said, sitting bolt upright in his chair, clearly terrified but still obeying orders.

Commander Tyler slowly picked himself up off the deck.  “Permission…” he started, but then choked, coughed and then tried again.  “Permission to go to sickbay, Captain?” he said, his voice sounding as though he had been gargling with gravel.  His throat was dark red from where Verrikoth had punched him and he was holding one hand on his stomach.

“Denied, Commander,” Verrikoth replied smoothly.  “You will sstand here on the bridge and be an example to your men of what true sstrength iz.  I will tolerate no weakness in my crew.  You will either sstand your watch now, or I will be recruiting a new commander for Gangez.”  He flexed his armored hand menacingly, the mandibles on his face clicking together lightly, as though daring the man to try something.  He was aware of the sidearm on the commander’s hip, but clearly the zheen wasn’t concerned about the weapon.

Tyler was smart enough to keep the anger and humiliation off his face.  “I understand, Captain,” he grated.  “I will stand my watch.”  One hand was up to his throat, trying to massage his throat back into shape.  He felt as though the pirate had punched a dent into him.

“Good.”  The zheen turned his back on him.

-----------------*-----------------

“Captain, the cruisers and the merchant ships with them have not altered course,” the sensor operator indicated.

Harth nodded in acknowledgement.  “Very well.  Order the Marines away on their mission.”  The entire ship’s Marine contingent, the entire platoon, was armed and armored up and launching in the ship’s two assault shuttles with orders to secure the Ravage.  It was a Republic ship once, it would be again.  True, Harth’s mission was to track down and capture the Grania Estelle and he fully intended on doing that, but he also felt it was his duty to bring that corvette into back into the fleet as well.  Admiral Tandred was always looking for good ships and with the cost-cutting measures underway back home, adding another warship back to the fleet, even a small one like Ravage would help.

Five minutes later, when the shuttles were almost to their target, the sensor officer cried out.  “Missile separation!”

Ice filled Harth’s stomach.  “From where?”

“Ravage, sir,” the officer replied.  “They must have got their launchers back up.  Only ten weapons heading this way though.”

“Small victories,” the commander grumped.  “ECM, point defense, stop those weapons.”

The ship went to work again, the jammers howled and screamed into the void, the point defense lasers blazed out their fury.  Eight of the weapons wandered away or were blasted to atoms while one more was picked off just outside the Legacy’s shield barrier.  The last missile exploded against the shields, causing them nearly to buckle.

“We’re getting spotting on the forward shields, Captain,” the watch stander at the shield station called out.  “Minor damage to the hull.  Forward shields at twenty-four percent.”

“What’s the status on the shuttles?” he demanded.

“They’re under fire, Captain, from the Ravage but it looks like the weapons are in local control.  There’s no coordination between the active weapons.”  The sensor operator’s report was factual and clipped; she was showing no hesitation.

“Very well,” the captain replied.  Then he checked his own display.  “Sensors, what are the contacts breaking away from the further group?”

The operator checked her displays and then her face flushed to the roots of her hair.  “Sorry, sir, I should have caught that.  There are a small group of ships breaking away from the others on a course for us.  Could be fighters, based on the size and speed.”

“Wonderful,” Harth replied.  “All right.  Guns, get ready to intercept and keep them off of us and the Ravage.  I’m not having Marines take her back just so they can blow her apart.”

Sadly, Legacy was not outfitted with any fighters; it had been deemed unnecessary at the time of their extended deployment.  Legacy wasn’t really designed to carry any fighters anyway, though it might have been possible to shoehorn one or maybe two into the shuttle bay, but it would have been a very tight fit.  The Amun-Ra class heavy cruiser was an older model, one that had been kept in service for almost forty years now and wasn’t one rated to carry starfighters.  It was a ship with heavy weapons and shields meant to deal out pain and absorb a good deal of punishment in return.  Unfortunately, this particular class wasn’t terribly good at swatting starfighters out of the sky.  Normally light cruisers, destroyers or corvettes, ships that were better equipped to handle smaller vessels would usually accompany Legacy, but in his haste, Harth decided to leave with no support.

He was regretting that now.  But there was nothing he could do about that now.

“Marine shuttles are docked with Ravage,” the sensor operator reported.

“Good,” Harth said.  “Helm, move us closer so we can provide support.”

“Aye, Captain, moving closer,” the helmsman replied.

----------------*-----------------

“We just lost our escort,” the Captain mused, watching the battle outside play out.  Ravage had thrown everything they had at the heavy cruiser, but Legacy swatted aside their attack, took the hit right and the face and then swung back.  And her hits knocked the smaller ship reeling.  Now it looked as though the captain of the Legacy wanted the Republic’s property back.  Those were assault shuttles, if Eamonn’s sensor readings were correct.

“Pity,” the soldier said, shrugging.  “Your orders and mine don’t change.”  He spoke with the confidence of a man fully in control of his destiny.  “You continue on course for the hyper limit, Captain Eamonn.”

“Do you see me changing course?” Eamonn demanded.

The leader of the soldiers flicked his chin, a signal to the guard nearest to Eamonn.  One swift movement and he buried his fist in the Captain’s gut, doubling him over.  He bent over so fast that his forehead smacked the console and he fell backwards to land hard on the deck.  “Get up,” the leader said, as though he was extremely tired.

Coughing and dry heaving, the captain slowly stood, under the watchful gaze of the guards, their leader and his own bridge crew.  The guard helpfully grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and roughly yanked him up onto his feet.

The leader stared at him from a few meters away.  “You think this is some game?  Or that I am some chump on your crew?  Don’t ever speak back at me like that again, Captain.  Never.”  He walked over to stand in front of the other man.

“Understood,” Eamonn grunted, holding a hand over his sore abdomen.

“Don’t make me embarrass you again.”

If the pure rage on the Captain’s face could have killed, the leader would have been incinerated.  But his voice was completely calm as he spoke.  “Understood,” he growled.

Main Engineering was a madhouse.  People were running in every direction, trying to get systems up, others trying to make sure that current systems stayed online.  Ka’Xarian and Tamara were splitting the tasks, utilizing anyone who could hold a wrench.  All the engineering teams were working round the clock and had been now for three days.  There were no more regular shifts, not for a long while, trying to keep the old girl running.

Tamara was completely wrung out.  She’d had four cups of coffee in the last few hours, but even the caffeine from that was starting to wear off.  She had small cuts on her hands from various jobs where she’d been working with sheet metal, patching up holes, and even replacing some duct work in the life support system.  No job was too small, and everyone was pulling their weight.  They couldn’t afford any layabouts at this time, not with pirate guards standing over them with guns ready to shoot at the slightest provocation.

This whole situation had fallen apart far too quickly.  One minute they were getting angry with the locals over the stealing of a cargo ship and the big bulk freighter was trying to assist, the next they’d been boarded and now were under hostile control.  And now this.

She shook her head, clearing such thoughts from her mind.  It was because she was so tired, she told herself.  Right now, the pirates and the Republic ship were fighting against one another, but it wouldn’t be long before one side prevailed.  Once that happened, someone was going to chase down Grania Estelle and bring the big ship to heel.  Whether that was a pirate or the Republic ship, it honestly did not matter.

The soldiers on the ship were bad enough.  But if they could stay separated from any outside assistance, maybe Corajen and her people could deal with them.  Which meant they needed to get to the hyper limit as quickly as possible.  Which meant they needed to get more than one engine operational.

“Xar!” she bellowed over the din of Main Engineering.  A few of the techs glanced over to her, but immediately continued with their assigned tasks.  A second yell got his attention and the purple-hued zheen trotted over to her.

“You know that I am the Assistant Chief, Tamara, right?” he asked sourly.  “I outrank you.”

“Time for that later, Xar,” she told him.  “I need to get another engine, or better, two operational.  Once the pirates and the Republic get things sorted out outside, the winner is going to be coming after us.  Which means we need to be able to get this big bitch moving and right quick.”

“Even with all six engines up and functional, the old girl wasn’t exactly swift and nimble,” Xar replied.  “She was faster than the Kara, but that ship was in even worse shape than we were.”  He hissed.  “I hope we see them again someday.  They were good people.”

Tamara nodded.  “Yes they were.  And maybe we can get to Seylonique one day.  But sadly it’s not going to be this day.”  The zheen flared his antennae in a negative.  “So, the engines.  I’m going to take my team out and try and get at least one other online.  Can you handle things here?”

He hissed in annoyance.  “Can I handle things here?  Girlie, I was running this outfit long before you got here.”

She smiled.  “I’m sure Quesh just sat in his easy chair, a beer in his hand while you were running things.”

“More like three beers in hand,” he corrected buzzing with laughter.  “But essentially.”

“All right.”  She clapped him on the shoulder and turned back to her console.  “Engine Four looks like the best candidate.  I’ve got the parts started in the replicator and we’ll work from the inside as much as we can, but I know we’re going to need to take a team EVA.”

“You’re going to have to clear that with the bridge,” Xar reminded her.

Now it was Tamara’s turn to hiss in annoyance.  “Yeah.  Wonder how the soldier boy up there is going to take this news?”  She blinked, activating the comms with her implants.  “Captain, it’s Moxie.  We need to talk about Engine Four.”

Eamonn sighed, rubbing his forehead.  Doing the duties of the Operations officer and running the ship was exhausting.  And now Moxie was calling in from Engineering, most likely with some report he wasn’t going to like.  Doing all this while under the hawk eye of the leader and his soldiers was not helping his stress levels.

The cramped bridge only allowed the leader and two of his soldiers, one human and one zheen, to be up there, but since they all carried weapons and the bridge crew did not, three was more than enough to keep them in line.  The man was still unnamed, even after the few days he’d been aboard.  Granted, none of the pirate guards had been terribly chatty during their stay aboard the ship, except to spout orders make rude or vulgar comments to the crew.

“What about Engine Four, Moxie?” Eamonn asked, running one dark skinned hand over his scalp.  He checked his displays.  Engine Four was currently offline.  “It’s down.”

“Yes, Captain, it is,” she confirmed.  “But I think with a little work, I can get it back up.  But I’m going to need to take a team outside to do it.”

The leader chuckled as he listened to her.  “Outside?  Your engineer has a bolt or two loose, I think.”

Eamonn glared, but didn’t say anything to him.  “We can’t do much to protect people on the outside, Moxie, you know that.  And with the shields the way they are…”

“Understood, Captain.  I just wanted you to be advised.  Any chance we could get a shuttle out for recovery ops should someone slip?”

The leader shook his head.  “Absolutely not.  You are not sending any shuttles out there, Captain.”  The two men locked eyes, the leader’s gaze was like iron.

Finally, Eamonn looked away.  “No shuttles, Moxie.  Make sure you and your team are secured to the hull.  We can’t go back for anyone who comes loose.”

There was a pause.  “Understood, Captain.  Moxie out.”

“Captain, report from Gunnery Sergeant Rajendra, corvette is secured, twenty-two prisoners, four of his Marines are down.”  The comm officer sounded excited.  “Shuttle pilots are requesting a return to Legacy to pick up engineering and medical teams, sir.”
“How many combat medics are in the Gunny’s platoon?” Harth asked.

“Two sir, and they’re already working with the injuries, but the Gunny is requesting additional assistance.”

“Understood,” the Captain replied.  “Get the teams together down in the shuttle bay, have Ensign Foster to prepare to take the Ravage as a prize, she’ll be in command.”

“Copy that, sir.”  The comm officer turned back to his controls.

“Helm, keep us close in on the corvette, and be ready to move if I order it.  I don’t like those fighters coming our way.”

“Aye, sir!”

The fighters were actually moving toward the Grania Estelle, not the Republic warships (as they both were now).  But they weren’t making a beeline straight for the cargo ship, they were maintaining distance of about ten light seconds behind, making sure to put themselves between the freighter and the Legacy.  Which was a problem.  If Harth decided to go after the freighter, they’d pounce on the disabled corvette, killing his Marine platoon and the command crew he was sending over.  If he stayed, the fighters would simply follow the big freighter out, park in one of the cavernous cargo bays and jump away and the chase would begin anew.  He tapped his fist on the arm of his chair, cursing fate once again.

Hopefully, once Foster got aboard Ravage, it would be a matter of days, not weeks, to get her up and running again.  Then they could go after them and finally run down that wayward freighter.

“They’re hanging back,” the leader said with a smile.  “Good.  Tell your teams out on the hull they’d better hurry, because in four hours I want you to bring the engines up to full power.”

Eamonn ground his teeth.  His very small hope for deliverance was drifting further and further back.  Grania Estelle’s engines were still offline but her velocity was still enough to carry her away from the objects and stations of this star system and toward the hyper limit.

He pressed the control.  “Moxie, it’s the Captain.  You have four hours before I engage the working engines at full.  What’s your status?”

“My team is at Engine Four now, we’re working as fast as we can.”

“I’m not kidding, Moxie,” he told her.  “Three hours and fifty-nine minutes, we are going full burn.  You’d better be done and back inside by then.”

“Then stop wasting time, sir,” she snapped.  “I’ll report back with updates.  Samair out.”

The leader snickered, as did his two fellows, but none of the bridge crew did.  The captain absently rubbed his sore abdomen but didn’t raise his eyes from his displays, scowling.

“We’re approaching the hyper limit, Captain Verrikoth,” the sensor operator called out.

The zheen rubbed his hands together in a very human gesture.  He’d been waiting for this for hours now.  He hadn’t truly been all that concerned about the Republic cruiser that had shown up to challenge him, but he hadn’t exactly been without worry, either.  He was fairly certain that his flotilla of warships would defeat the bigger ship, but he was concerned that he would lose a good many of them in accomplishing this.  Seeing how quickly the ship dispatched the Ravage, his level of concern did go up a bit more.  He still had plans for the Republic base at Byra-Kae and that required his warships and the bulk freighter.  For now, they were going their separate ways.  But he trusted his soldiers aboard the big ship and he knew that they would keep the merchant crew on task.

“Leader Wolf will keep them in line,” the zheen mused.  “Of that I have no doubt.”  The bridge crew around him looked up at him, but at seeing that he was speaking to none of them, they didn’t speak up.  “Make the jump as soon as we cross the limit,” Verrikoth ordered.

“The warships have jumped,” Eamonn reported.  It felt good to be working at the Operations console, it had been his position before he’d taken over as captain and it felt as though he was slipping on a pair of old, well-worn gloves.  He checked the chronometer, less than an hour to go on the four-hour deadline.  He took a breath and slowly let it back out.  The soldiers looked completely calm and unconcerned.  He supposed they felt they had nothing to worry about.  As long as he and his people behaved themselves and followed orders, the soldiers were calm.  For now.  How long that would last, Eamonn wasn’t sure.  They were pirates, after all, and locked in a can for weeks on end while they flew through hyperspace to Amethyst would test the resolve of even the most morally minded individual.  And these guards were anything but morally minded.  Eamonn was actually surprised none of the soldiers had decided to take what they wanted from the crew.

The external feeds to the hull sensors were destroyed in the attack, but he’d kept an open comlink to the engineering team working on the sublight engines.  Serinda had been monitoring them constantly, there was a battle going on nearby after all, but so far she’d heard nothing but chatter about what they were doing.  No problems.

“Come on, Moxie,” he whispered to himself.  He knew that if she didn’t get that work done, the guard leader would force him to jump the ship to maximum acceleration, or what passed for that at this point, whether the team was back inside or not.  And most likely someone would get shot once they were under power again.

Tamara desperately wanted to wipe the sweat from her forehead.  She’d rushed out the airlock in her skinsuit, sealing the helmet and forgotten a sweatband.  But she was proud of her team.  They were moving at breakneck speed, having completely torn out all the broken or cracked housing and components for Engine Four in record time.  Now they were in the process of getting all the new replicated parts installed, and making sure everything was trimmed out and calibrated.  This was only going to be a temporary job; once they got to Amethyst, Tamara fully intended on coming back out, tearing the whole engine down and rebuilding it.  They were welding temporary structural supports on the trusses holding the engine mounts together, as microfractures had spider webbed out due to the damage.  What they needed to do was yank the whole assembly and rebuild it from scratch, but with the crazy deadline there simply wasn’t time.

Normally, they would collect all the damaged components and haul them back inside for replicator material.  But again, there simply wasn’t time.  Now they just threw the pieces out into the void, uncaring where they went.

“All right,” she said, as Mairi bolted down the last piece.  “Should be good to go.”  She ran a diagnostic on her data pad; everything seemed to be in the green.  In some cases the readings were just barely in the green, but the engine should run with little problem.  “Twenty-one minutes to deadline.  Pack it up, people, we’re heading back inside.”  Tamara blinked, activating her comms to the bridge.  “Bridge, this is Samair.  Engine Four is up, make sure that you sync it with Engine Six.  We’re heading back in now, I’ll let you know the instant we’re in.  After that, you’re good to burn.”

Serinda’s voice came back right away.  “We’re monitoring you, Tamara.  Captain says good work.”

“Thanks, Serinda.  Like I said, we’re on our way back.  Samair out.”  She cut the connection.  Her team had gathered up their gear and were starting back to the airlock.  They made sure their steps were deliberate, making sure their magboots were firmly catching on the metal of the hull before they would lift the next foot.  There was no time to dawdle, but her team were all veterans at this point, they wouldn’t slip.  They quickly hustled across the few hundred meters of hull to the airlock.  Two minutes later they were inside the airlock and it cycled open, letting them inside.

“Bridge!” Tamara cried over the comlink.  “We’re inside.  You can commence full burn on engines four and six!”

“Helm, engage engines four and six, bring us to fifty percent,” the captain ordered from his seat at Operations.

“Copy, fifty percent, four and six,” the woman seated at the helm, a human female by the name of Isis replied.  She was one of the newest people that had been hired at their last stop before coming here at Ulla-tran, and the Captain still wasn’t terribly familiar with her yet.  She tended to work the helm on shifts opposite her captain, which meant that until this current crisis and with the guards keeping Eamonn on the bridge for three straight shifts, he’d only spent a few minutes in the last month in her presence.  She was a large woman, plump, middle-aged with graying hair and crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.  However, she seemed to be skilled at the helm, enough to impress both the Stella and George at her hiring.  The Captain had signed off on her without really having met the woman, he’d been busy with other things at the time, but so far had had no reason to complain about her.

“Why not to max thrust, Captain?” the leader asked, his voice deceptively calm.  “I’d like to put as much distance between us and that cruiser as possible.”

“So would I,” Eamonn replied dryly.  “But if I just have Isis jam the throttles forward, we run the risk of burning out the engines.”

“You don’t trust your engineer?” the leader asked, more of a statement than a question.

Eamonn scowled at him.  “Of course I trust her.  But these are new connections and components, thrown together in a rush.  If I push them too hard too fast, we could blow something and then we’d be drifting again.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, before finally the soldier nodded.  “Very well, Captain.  Ease us in.  But you will take us to full burn.”  He stepped closer to the Operations console.  “And once we reach the hyper limit and we jump, Captain, then you and I will have a discussion about all these new parts and components your engineer is finding to repair the engines.”  Eamonn blanched, but quickly recovered.  The soldier continued.  “Because I saw the state of your holds after we boarded.  They were empty.  And I am hearing whispered talk of replicators.  And you are going to give me a full report about this situation.”

The Captain clenched his jaw, but he didn’t need to say anything.  The leader stepped back looking over at Isis at the helm.  The conversation was apparently over; he’d had his say.  Apparently the Captain was going to be having a further discussion later, but for now, the leader was back on task again.  It wouldn’t be long now, Eamonn realized, checking the displays.

“Grania Estelle is nearly to the hyper limit, Captain,” the sensor officer reported.  “They’ve just taken on the fighters that were trailing them, sir.  They should be jumping within the next few minutes.”

Commander Harth sighed.  “There’s no help for it.  Track their course and vector and calculate all known destinations on that trajectory.”

“I’m on it, sir,” the sensor officer replied, nodding.

Harth shook his head.  He’d had a small crop of crew brought on Legacy just a few days before they went on this mission.  After months in space, he’d thought they’d had plenty of time to knock the green off these greenhorns, but every so often someone would say something like that, showing their small amount of experience and a lack of professionalism.

“Very good, Sensors,” he said, grimacing.  The officer didn’t even notice his captain’s irritation, so focused was he on his assignment.

The man glanced up again a moment later.  “Grania Estelle has jumped to hyperspace, Captain.”

Harth nodded.  Well, the chase would be on again.  Once they got Ravage up and running, the little flotilla would be able to resume the pursuit.  He relished it, wanting to bring that wayward vessel to heel.  But on the flipside of that, after all these months of flying through hyper, trailing after a bulk freighter and a mysterious Commander, Harth was anxious for it to end.  He wanted to return to the Republic and to the Fleet.  There were things out here in the Cluster that the Admiral definitely needed to be made aware of and the Navy definitely needed a reinforced presence out here.  Perhaps he could get himself assigned to a more permanent posting out here, to patrolling areas of the Cluster.  Definitely a thought that might be worth pursuing.

“Continue sensor sweeps of the area,” he ordered.  “Lieutenant Tran, keep an eye on things; you have the conn.  I’ll be in my ready room.  Oh, and Sensors, get me that list of possible trajectories ASAP.”

“Aye, Captain,” both men chorused as Harth stood and walked off the bridge.

The landing had gone a bit rougher than they had expected, trying to put six starfighters down in a cargo bay with no landing tractors was apparently more difficult than anticipated, but they managed.  As it turned out, it was more nerve wracking for the crew in the Grania Estelle than it was for the pirate pilots.  They brought their fighters in under reaction thrusters only, a bit faster than was really necessary, dropping their landing struts and skidding to a stop on the deck.  They, thankfully, came in one at a time and luckily the cargo bay was depressurized to help with the landings, otherwise the skidding fighters would have come in with a shower of sparks.  As it was, furrows were cut into the decking by the pirates’ landing struts, something the cargo bay attendants furiously cursed about over the comms.  The great cargo bay doors closed and less than a minute later, the ship made the jump to hyperspace.

It wasn’t quite the smooth jump that the crew had gotten used to over the last few months since the drive had been properly calibrated, but it was nowhere near as rough as the teeth-rattling vibrations followed by a bone-jarring jolt of yesteryear.  There was a shivering throughout the deckplates and enough vibration that it was noticeable, but nothing terribly violent.  The soldier leader did make comment about this to the Captain, mocking the man for the poor repair of this massive ship.  The Captain, to his credit, called a relief officer to the bridge to man the Operations station, and then simply walked off the bridge with no further comment.  The leader followed, leaving his two compatriots on the bridge to watch the crew there.  The two men walked into the wardroom, closing the door behind them.

Tamara walked back to her quarters, her tiny cabin deep within the ship.  It had been a very long few days.  Now that they were in hyper again, and most likely for a good long time to come, the frantic pace of the work would diminish somewhat.  Oh, there was still plenty of work to be done, but there was no one actively shooting at Grania Estelle now, no tricky maneuvers to work with, no time sensitive repairs that needed to be made.  At least, not yet.  She figured she’d have a few hours before either the Captain, Quesh, or the pirate leader stated banging on her door demanding some new job be done.

Stripping off her sweat stained and filthy clothes, she dropped them all into the laundry and stepped into the shower.  After a good hot scrub, she stepped out, feeling a great deal better.  She was still exhausted, but the overwhelming malaise Tamara was feeling lifted.  After drying off, she put on a t-shirt and underwear and flopped onto her bunk.  After a long second, she felt herself relax and the tension that had built up in her back and neck and legs released, melting her onto the bunk.  Tamara closed her eyes, ready to sleep.

She wondered about Stella.  The AI’s core matrix was still in the ship’s computer core, but most of her higher (and lower) cognitive functions had been shut down to avoid detection.  She was still monitoring and controlling the ship’s fusion reactor but not much else.  The rest of the crew was handling the other tasks that she had been doing for the last couple of months.  It was much less efficient, but it helped keep her secret and safe.

Tamara sighed as she felt herself sink deeper into relaxation.  She missed their discussions, their talks about random things, even the nagging the AI gave her over her dark dreams.  Tamara had been pushing herself so hard in the last few days that she hadn’t dreamed at all, simply collapsed onto her bunk and passed out.  Now, she was feeling the same way, the sweet, comforting feeling stealing over her, but still, she missed her friend.  Stella was still there, only not.  It wasn’t quite the same, but Tamara took heart in the fact that her friend wasn’t dead or gone, but just silent.

Sleep overtook her then and she knew no more.

Sickbay was quiet.  Finally, after all the madness, things were starting to settle down.  Turan was slumped into his chair at his desk, hands on the desktop.  The Guura had been working twenty-two hour days since the survivors of the Emilia Walker had been brought aboard.  The three crew from the other ship were recovering, slowly in the case of the young zheen, Kay’grax.  His entire arm was encased in a clear plastic container, filled with regenerative fluid.  A new hand was regrowing, but it would take weeks before he would be ready for full duty.  In the meantime, he was seated in a berth in sickbay his eyes and antennae buried in datapads overflowing with technical manuals.  For now, he was working on getting up to speed, because Ka’Xarian had every intention of hiring on the young zheen.  Kay’grax had done pretty well on his own in very stressful circumstances and the engineer had no intention of letting that raw talent go to waste.

Marcos, the brawny human, had already been released and transferred to the cargo division.  He was quickly adapting to his surroundings, getting in with his new colleagues.  Taja was pleased to have such a burly and hardworking new member of her team.  For the moment, there wasn’t a whole lot for the cargo people to do, especially now that they were in hyper, but Taja was making sure they stayed occupied.

Captain Vosteros was also recovering slowly from his injuries.  He’d had a lot of internal injuries and bleeding and while the station medic had pumped him full of drugs to keep him running and patched up the wounds; he had been on death’s door when Turan had gotten his hands on him.  He was in and out of consciousness, though in his time awake he asked about his ship, but no one could give him any news.

Ka’Xarian walked over to the Captain’s sickbed.  Turan was nearby, but still at his desk.  He had informed the Assistant Chief that he was not to get his patients too excited or he would throw the big bug out of his sickbay on his head.  Meekly, the engineer nodded in agreement and went over to the Captain.

“Ah,” Vosteros said, struggling to sit up.  “My savior.  I never did get the chance to thank you, my lad.”

Ka’Xarian gave a small bow in acknowledgement.  “I’m glad we could get you out of there, sir.”

“But clearly there’s more,” the man replied shrewdly.  “Though as I said, I am glad to see you.”

“Yes, sir, there is.”  Ka’Xarian’s antennae dropped a bit.  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed down here in sickbay, but we’re in hyperspace now.”

The captain nodded.  “Yes, I did notice that a little while ago.  So my ship is gone then.”  It was a statement, not a question.

The zheen nodded.  “Yes, sir.  And with the… situation we’re currently in, I don’t know when or even if we’ll be back in Ulla-tran.  Even if we do someday go back, there’s no way of knowing if your ship will even still be there, or if Goris Hana will simply keep it, claiming he has salvage rights, since the crew abandoned it.”  He held up a hand to forestall Vosteros’s furious retort.  “Yes, sir, I do remember that they stole your ship and kidnapped you and your remaining crew.”

“And killed one of them!” he shouted, before clutching his side and wincing.

There was a scraping of a chair on the decking and the sound of feet walking in their direction.  “I told you not to get him excited, Ka’Xarian,” Turan said harshly, running a hand scanner in Vosteros’s direction.  “Damn it, you made him pop some of the sutures.  Get out of here,” he said angrily to the zheen.  “Captain Vosteros, I need you to be calm, or I’ll be forced to sedate you.”

“Sorry, Doctor,” Ka’Xarian said, contrite.  “I’m sorry, Captain.”  He slipped out past the Guura and the orderly who had started to work on Vosteros and fled the sickbay.

There was a hammering on the metal door, jolting Tamara awake.  She rolled off her bunk just as the door slid open and two figures rushed inside.  Rough hands seized her arms and jerked her to her feet and she fought them.  A fist smashed into her gut and she doubled over, retching.  Another hand backhanded her across the face and her vision swam.  Another hit to the stomach caused her to spit up bile, but the burn in her throat was completely eclipsed by the agony in her abdomen and her jaw.  She ceased her struggles and the two figures dragged her limp form from the room.

“So, Captain,” the leader said, sitting himself down at the wardroom table.  His rifle went on the table top, but his hand rested lazily on the butt of his sidearm in his hip holster.  Eamonn was under no illusion that he could try to jump the man.  He’d be gunned down with no effort on the pirate’s part.

Eamonn frowned.  “You’ve been aboard my ship for a while now, and I don’t even know your name.  Or even a title or rank to call you,” he mused aloud, as though they were two spacers meeting at a conference.

The pirate chuckled.  “Gideon Jax, Captain.  Pleased to make your acquaintance.”  His eye held a malevolent twinkle.  “If you must have a title, I suppose Armsman might be appropriate.  I and my soldiers are part of the Captain’s Guard.”  He crossed his arms over his chest.  “Now sit down, Captain.  We have need to have a discussion.”

Vincent Eamonn knew the sound of that voice meant trouble.  He slid into his customary seat at the head of the conference table; Jax was to his left, but no one else was in the room.  He tried to project calm and serenity; he was the captain of the Grania Estelle after all.  But he couldn’t stop his hands from clenching and unclenching.

“We need to have a talk about the industrial fabricators you have aboard this ship,” Armsman Jax said, his voice mild but dangerous.  He smiled fully as Eamonn said nothing.  “You’re not going to deny it?”

Eamonn shrugged.  “Why should I?  Your troops are all over my ship and you’ve seen my engineering teams working on repairs.  I know you’ve been interested as to where all the spare parts were coming from, especially since you knew that all the cargo bays were empty.”

Jax nodded.  “Yes.  So I sent a team over to them to see what they could do, but you know what they found?”

The captain shook his head, knowing he wasn’t going to like where this was going.  “What?”

“They found that the entire set of fabricators were locked down with security codes.”  His voice hardened to iron.  “Why would you lock them out, Captain?  Do you not trust me?”

The captain didn’t answer.

Suddenly, Gideon Jax was on his feet.  “Clearly, you’ve proven to me that I cannot trust you!” he roared.  “You tried to hide all this from me?  After all the growing pains we had and you still think that you can play games with me?”  His sidearm materialized in his hand; the captain didn’t even see him draw.  “Now, you’re going to spill everything about those fabricators.  I want every bit of information, I want every code, I want a full manifest of everything that you can do with those fabricators.  Because you are going to be turning them over to me.  And every second you make me wait, or if you lie to me, I will kill a member of your crew.  If I have to kill them all, so be it.”  He slid a datapad across the table, which came to a stop right next to the captain’s clenched fist.  Jax kept his weapon in his hand, but sat back down.  “Now, begin.”

Tamara felt her bare feet scraping against the metal deckplates, and the pain in her toes somehow managed to pierce the fog of pain emanating from her stomach and her head.  She was still dressed in only a t-shirt and underwear.  Her head lolled, but she was dimly aware of being pulled past other members of the crew; she heard a few cries of alarm, muffled as the soldiers dragging her along either glared at or backhanded anyone who looked as though they were going to intervene.

After an eternity of corridors, of banging her legs and knees on the knee knockers on the bottom of every hatch they pulled her through, and the constant scraping of her feet on the deck, they eventually arrived at their destination.

The wardroom doors slid open and they went inside.  Dumping her unceremoniously on the deck, Tamara looked up to the pirate soldier leader looking down at her in disgust.  He stepped over to her and squatted down next to her, a pistol held easily in one hand.  The business end was pointed vaguely in her direction and she felt her breathing and her heart rate accelerate.

“What do you want from me?” she croaked, her throat raw.

“The good captain tells me that you are the key to the industrial fabricators on this ship,” Gideon Jax replied, his voice dripping with contempt.  Tamara looked over at the captain, who refused to meet her gaze.  “He tells me that you have the access codes to be able to unlock all of the serious materiel that the machines can make.  I was concerned that you might try something stupid, like melting them down like you did the last set.”  Reaching over, he took a two-inch wide cylinder, shaped like a coin with a trio of barbed prongs on one side and pressed it into the side of her neck, hard.  Tamara screamed as the prongs dug into her flesh, and tried to thrash, but he swatted her hands away and pressed the barrel of the gun into her breastbone.  She flopped around for a few moments, but then he pressed a control on the face of the device and a powerful electric shock ran through her body.

Tamara convulsed, every muscle in her body going completely taut, unable to scream, unable to breathe.  She was dying.  That much was clear.  Her HUD was flickering, her vision was tinged in red and then abruptly, it ended.  The electricity stopped, her whole body collapsed, completely limp.  She could do nothing but lay there and gasp like a landed fish.

“There,” he said, matter of factly, moving back and then standing up.  “I’ll give you a minute to compose yourself and then we are going to have a chat.”

Tamara swiveled her eyeballs in the direction of the captain, who had a horrified look on his face, but he still would not look at her or meet her gaze.  She could feel her limbs regaining feeling and after a moment, she groaned and pushed herself to a seated position.

The man was smiling grimly at her.  “I know you and I have seen each other around, Ms. Samair, but we haven’t been formally introduced.  I am Armsman Gideon Jax, part of the Captain’s Guard.  Not this man,” he clarified with a smirk, indicating Vincent Eamonn at the table, “But my Captain.  And in case you’re curious, the device in your neck is interrupting the implants in your head.  You will no longer be able to send or receive signals via those implants unless I disable the device.”  He frowned a little.  “The good captain here informs me that those implants are how you actually interface with the fabricators, but I’m sure we can work something out until we can come up with a more permanent solution.”

“So what do you want from me?” she asked again, glaring at him.

“I don’t appreciate that tone or that eyeball you’re giving me, Samair,” Jax told her.  “You are not a free woman.  You’re not a member of the crew, not anymore.  Not that you ever were,” he chuckled darkly.  “No, now…  Now, you are an asset.  A possession to serve a particular purpose.”

Eamonn’s jaw clenched, as did his fists.  His gaze was locked on the datapad in the middle of the table.

“Captain Verrikoth is going to be extremely interested the treasure I found aboard this ship,” Jax commented.  “And you are going to make sure that this continues to produce treasures, Samair,” he informed her.  “And if it doesn’t, if you, the possession meant to serve a singular purpose, isn’t fulfilling the mandate I set?  Then I will throw you to my men and they will do as they like with you.”

Icy fear clawed her heart.  He was utterly serious, but what about Eamonn?  Why the hell was he just sitting there, letting this happen?  How could he abandon her like this?  “Captain?” she pleaded.

“You will perform the tasks I set you, Samair,” Jax told her sternly.  “Or else your very long and painful death will serve as an example to the rest of the crew.”  He nodded to the men behind her.  “Get her up.  Take her to the brig and toss her in a cell.  I think she needs some time to reflect on her situation.”

“Wait, no!” she started to say, but a sharp blow to the back of her neck relieved her of consciousness.

Epilogue

Saiphirelle sat next to her sibling in the brig.  The two lupusan were sharing a cell, which was cramped, but not unbearable.  Apparently the pirate guards had decided that they couldn’t trust that the wolf women wouldn’t go tearing into them the minute their collective backs were turned.  And they were right to think that.  Every minute they were locked in the cells only increased Saiphirelle’s ire.  Even the normally even-keeled Corajen was starting to lose her cool.

“How long are they going to keep us in here?” Saiphirelle demanded for probably the hundredth time since their incarceration.

“As long as they mean to,” Corajen replied again.  The elder sibling was laying back on the hard bunk, examining her claws on one hand.  They’d fallen into a predictable pattern over the long days stuck in this metal box: Saiphirelle would start bellyaching about their situation, and Corajen would placate her with meaningless platitudes.  The younger sibling would stalk around their tiny cell and wear herself out and then crawl up on the top bunk and lay quiet for a while.  Then she’d hop down and the cycle would repeat.  Corajen felt it was a waste of time and energy but she knew her sibling; Saiphirelle would go absolutely insane trying to keep herself down and seated for any length of time and Corajen had no desire to come to blows with her sister when there were still plenty of real enemies to fight.

There was a bang from behind them as the main door to the brig opened.  The brig aboard Grania Estelle was not huge; it was capable of holding six occupants in three cells.  The cells themselves were secured by solid metal door with two small openings, an inch-wide opening six inches wide at regular eye level, and a feed slot that opened at the bottom so that a bowl or tray could be slid inside the cell.  The rest of the door, and the walls, floor and ceiling, were solid metal, reinforced so that even the mightiest lupusan (or two) couldn’t tear through.

Corajen remained on her bunk, but Saiphirelle flew across the tiny cell, her face pressed to the door, eyes peering through the slot.  “What is it?” the elder asked mildly, though in truth, she was craving information about the world outside this tiny room just as much.

“Guards,” the younger rasped, her hackles starting to rise.  “And they’re dragging Tamara between them.  She looks like hell.”

“What?” Corajen demanded, getting up.  Elbowing her sister out of the way, she took a look through.  Sure enough, there they were, two burly bastards wearing the same police-style body armor, each outfitted with a sidearm and between then was the limp form of the battered Tamara Samair.  Corajen’s sensitive nose detected the tang of Tamara’s blood and she could see that her feet and legs were festooned with scrapes and cuts.  She also had some sort of device attached to her neck and a slight trickle of blood was seeping out from under it.  The wound there wasn’t terribly serious, it looked as though whatever that circular device was it was preventing her from bleeding more seriously.

The guards opened up one of the cells and tossed her inside, completely uncaring, it seemed where she landed, or for that matter, how she landed.  They exited and one of them closed the door behind them, securing it.  Then the two thugs simply left, the outer door to the brig slid closed with another bang.

“No, she doesn’t look good,” Corajen breathed, stepping away from the door.  “But there’s nothing we can do for now.  We need to come up with some kind of plan, ready to go at a moment’s notice once we get out of here.”

Her sister, in a sober mood for the first time, nodded, a wicked gleam in her eyes.

The mess hall was busy, as usual.  The lunch rush was in full swing, though now that they were in hyperspace, the frantic workings of the majority of the crew had slowed somewhat.  The engineering teams were still running full blast, though with first Quesh and then Tamara out of commission, there was an amount of aimlessness among the teams.  Ka’Xarian, Cookie noted, was in the process of assigning new team leaders to try and move forward with the large amount of repairs.

There were pirate soldiers in his mess hall, the cook noted sourly.  For the most part, the soldiers were keeping to themselves, doing little more than being a firm presence in the background.  Though judging by the looks they were starting to give the various members of the crew (mostly the female ones) Cookie guessed that the time of stalwart indifference was coming to an end.  And with Corajen and Saiphirelle in the brig, these men and zheen would have very few impediments from indulging their urges.

This was no longer a happy ship.  Normally, the mess hall was ringing with conversations and laughter.  Now, people came in, ate, and any conversations they held were in hushed whispers and conspiratorial glances.  Crew tended to move in groups, fearful of being caught alone in any of the corridors.

Even the Captain had been conspicuous by his absence.  The man had been known to make tours around every area of the ship, to make his presence known and to keep apprised of the inner workings of the various departments on his ship.  Not so lately.  Ever since the ship had made the jump to hyperspace, the captain never left his cabin.  He took his meals there, had meetings with Armsman Jax and the heads of his departments, but he never came out.  People wondered what was going on.  Had Jax taken over the ship?  Was the man a prisoner?  There were also whispers that he might have some other reason for being there.  It was well known that Tamara had been dragged through the corridors of the ship to the wardroom, then a few minutes later she was tossed into the brig.  The captain and the Armsman had been in there at the time.  Something had gone down then, but no one knew what.  Speculation was rampant.

“Bad business,” Cookie muttered to himself.  He shook his head, as one of the guards started to move in his direction.  Clearing his head of the cobwebs, he refocused his attention back on the lunch service and put those other thoughts away for another time.

Grania Estelle sailed on through the void between star systems, the wash of tachyons causing vibrant red splashes of color to appear on the shields.  Anyone looking through a window or through a sensor display usually found themselves slightly hypnotized by the phenomena, similar to staring into a fire.  At her current speed, it would be just over three months travel time to reach Amethyst, far longer than either she or her crew had gotten used to.

An outside observer would see the ship, cocooned in its shield bubble, fly past at a very sedate pace and disappear from view into the deep dark.