Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 (79 page)

              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.”