Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 (25 page)

              “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."