Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (23 page)

              Corajen yipped again.  “She’s performing a ritual.  An important one.”

              Taja blanched, she looked sickened.  “She’s ripping him open!”

              There was a crunch and a series of cracks.  Corajen glanced down.  Sure enough, Saiphirelle had indeed ripped open Gideon Jax’s chest, snapping his ribcage.  She rooted around with one of her hands for a few seconds and then with a smile, extracted her prize.  “There we are!” she said, standing.  She held the man’s heart in her hand.  With two claws, she tore off a piece, and lay it on her forearm for safekeeping, then expertly tore the rest in half.  Taking one of the bigger pieces, she handed it to her sister.  “Here you go.”

              Corajen took the chunk of heart, nodded her thanks, and then devoured it.  Saiphirelle did the same, looking around for a place to save the smaller piece, but not finding anything.  “What are you doing?”

              “It’s for Samair,” the silver lupusan replied, her long tongue licking the blood from her muzzle.  “He tortured her more than anyone.  I think she deserves a piece of the kill.”

              Corajen grunted.  “But who knows where she is.  Don’t have anything to keep that in.  And,” she said, “She’s human.  I’m not sure she’d approve of that particular aspect of our culture.”

              Her sibling shrugged.  “Won’t know until we give her the opportunity.”

              “Here,” Taja said, holding out a piece of flimsi.  It was a transparent piece of plastic used for hard copy; this one was blank and looked clean.  “I was going to use this as we started a survey of the ship, but I think you could use it more.”

              “Obliged,” Saiphirelle replied, taking it in her claws delicately.  She wrapped the piece of meat in it, and tucked it into her belt.  Grabbing up her discarded weapon, she checked it over; it appeared undamaged, despite her rather spirited throw.  “All right, where to next?”

              Corajen changed out the magazine on her weapon and flicked her muzzle to her sister, who did the same.  “Main Engineering,” she said after a moment’s thought.  “With Jax dead, we can restore communications.  Then we can muster the crew and sweep the whole ship.  I don’t think you and I can do everything alone.”  She sniffed.  “You need to get that looked at.”  She gestured to her sister’s hand, which was bleeding freely.

              Saiphirelle licked the bloody appendage, wincing in pain.  “Yeah, I’ll talk with Turan after.”  She opened one of the pouches on her belt, which held a cauterizing agent and a vial of Combat Heal.  After a moment, the bleeding had stopped and she had injected her hand with the Heal, hackles rising a bit with the burning sensation of the nanite solution.  She shook herself, as though she was removing a large amount of water and Corajen laughed.  “It burns!”

              The dark-furred lupusan’s tongue lolled out in amusement.  “You
will
get that looked at later.  You ready?”  Her sibling nodded.  “Good.  Let’s go.”

              “Wait!” Taja cried, horror struck.  “You’re just going to leave…
that
there?”  She pointed to the eviscerated corpse.

              The sisters shared a look.  “Does seem a bit unfriendly to just leave that filth there for someone else to have to clean up,” Corajen admitted. 

              The silver-furred lupusan sighed.  “Very well.”  They both reached down and grabbed a limb.  They easily hoisted the body up, dripping gore and blood onto the decking, but they carried it out into one of the cargo compartments and deposited it out of the way.  “We’ll police up the rest of the bodies once the ship is secure and toss them into space,” Saiphirelle said to the revolted cargo specialist.  “In the meantime, I’d recommend getting a cleaner bot out here to mop up the mess.”  She indicated the trail of blood and the large pool at the hatchway. 

              Taja gagged, but managed to hold it in.  “I’ll get someone to… to… clean that up.”

              It was only a matter of three hours to sweep the ship.  The sisters mustered up half a dozen cargo people and a dozen more from the deck division and stopping briefly at Security, they armed them all with stunners.  With communications throughout the ship reestablished, it was a simple matter of going through the ship, checking every compartment, every cubby hole, every conceivable hiding place.  Even after a headcount had been confirmed, Corajen insisted on checking the rest of the ship.  It wasn’t that she was concerned that they’d missed anyone, but more to be sure there weren’t any surprises left behind by the pirates.  Thankfully, they seemed to have gotten lucky.  Jax either hadn’t had the forethought or the ability to set up any traps in the computer systems or explosives in the reactor. 

              The captain and Tamara were found and rushed to sickbay.  Tamara was near to passing out when the lupusan found her, but had been delighted at the gift of a piece of the Armsman’s heart from Saiphirelle.  In a rare showing of a primal nature, she popped the cold chunk of meat into her mouth and ate it.  She gagged a bit as it was rather cold and slimy by the time they’d found her, but she smiled winningly at the silver-furred lupusan before passing out.  Saiphirelle had looked on her with pride before gently picking her up off the deck and carrying her to sickbay.

              Kutok’s body had also been found.  Serinda was beside herself with grief and guilt.  She kept repeating “I left her.  I left her.”  The young woman was crazed in her weeping and had to be sedated for fear of hurting herself seriously.  She already had bloody gashes down her cheeks where her fingernails had scraped down in her mania.

              The pirate bodies had been loaded into one of the undamaged airlocks and blown out into the void, unlamented.  Surprisingly, there were no surviving pirates left.  Even the ones that Cookie had stunned amazingly didn’t survive the process.  The fact that a number of bloodstained kitchen utensils had to be cleaned with bleach before being run through the dishwasher, as well as three sets of blood-splattered shipsuits being tossed in the laundry was immaterial.  The crew was just shaken by the momentous events of the last few hours.  It seemed as though one moment they were continuing along on the grind, and then suddenly, it was all over.  No one thought it had been easy, however, not after seeing Tamara, the Captain, or especially poor Kutok.  More than one of the crew had given the bodies of the pirates a good kick before they were all loaded into the airlock.  But it wouldn’t bring back Kutok.  Or any of the others who had died.

              “So what’s the butcher’s bill?” Quesh asked, coming into sickbay after several hours.  The ship was in good condition now, considering, but as the senior officer left on the ship, it was up to him to take over command, at least until the Captain was back on his feet.

              Turan came over, his face looking particularly grim.  “Tamara is going to be fine.  I got the regen tube off and she’s getting pumped up with nutrient IV and fluids to deal with the dehydration.  She should be on her feet tomorrow.”  Then his face drooped.  “There’s nothing I can do for Cookie.  He died almost instantly.  The damage to his heart and lungs was just too much.” 

              The Parkani’s legs felt as rubbery as they had when his nerves were damaged.  “What about the tank?” he asked, pointing to the regeneration tank.  “Can’t it save him?”

              “It can’t fix the dead, Chief,” the Guura said quietly.  “He’s gone.”

              The Chief growled and pounded the bulkhead with one meaty fist.  “Damn them, damn them all.”  And he slammed the metal again.

              Turan reached up and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.  “I’ve got to get back to the Captain.  His leg is in bad shape.  In fact, he’s going to lose it.  I’m going to have to grow him a new one.  Luckily Corajen and Saiphirelle found him when they did.”  He brightened a little.  “I wish I’d stop getting so much work.”

              Quesh grunted, which almost came out as a sob.  He nodded and then went over to the biobed where Tamara lay.  “How you holding up?” he asked gruffly.

              Tamara turned her head to look at him.  Reaching up slightly, she took his hand.  “I feel like shit,” she answered, her own voice husky.  “I didn’t know about Cookie.  I was locked in that box for so long.  And I…  He…”  But she couldn’t continue.

              But Quesh understood.  “He cared about all of us, you know.  And I don’t think he was too keen on the Captain’s plan, but he did his part.  Saved three crewmembers’ lives.”

              Tamara nodded, a little too quickly as she was fighting back tears.  “I heard.”

              “But that’s over now.  I understand you’ll be back on your feet tomorrow.”

              “That’s what Turan tells me.”

              “Good,” he replied, clearing his throat.  “Because I have to get back to getting the ship ready and you need to take command.”

              She blinked, rising up on one elbow.  “What?  What the hell are you talking about?”

              “I’m just a grease monkey,” he replied.  “I can run my department and now that you got the replicators and parts going, I can handle my end.  But I’m hopeless at actually running a ship.  You’ve got command experience; Xar loves to tell me how you ran a shipyard.  So I’m turning over command to you.”

              Tamara stared at him in shock.  “I don’t want command.”  She slumped back on the bed.  “My decisions haven’t been the greatest lately.  They’ve gotten a lot of people killed.”

              “Nevertheless,” he replied.  “You’re better at it than I will ever be.  And it’s only for a little while, until the Captain’s back up and about.”              Tamara’s face darkened at that.  “And then once he is, you’re back in the Engineering department where you belong.”

              She looked at him for a very long moment.  It stretched on so long that Quesh thought she might not answer at all.  “All right, Quesh.  I’ll do it.  With the understanding that once he’s back up, I’m out of the big chair.”

              “It’s a cargo ship, Samair,” he replied with a slight smile.  “Not a battlecruiser, as you’re so fond of saying.”

              “In the last forty days or so, are you going to tell me it hasn’t felt like we’ve been fighting battles every single hour?”

              He chuckled, but there was no humor in it.  “Point taken.  Rest up.  We need to get moving soon and I need you functional.”  He squeezed her hand gently and then walked away.

              Tamara lay back, staring at the ceiling.  For a brief moment, talking to Quesh, talking about command, she could forget, she could push away all the horrible thoughts that had been plaguing her the last several weeks.  She could even keep the new horrible thoughts from joining the others.  But now that he was gone, they all came rushing back in and she was overwhelmed.  Tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks and she closed her eyes.

Chapter 8

              Tamara sat at the Operations console on the bridge of the
Grania Estelle,
trying to get a feel for things since her very long absence from duty.  In actuality, it had only been a few weeks, but even then she had been surrounded by guards and unable to do her job properly.  She hadn’t really had a good feel for what was going on in the ship since they had jumped from Ulla-tran, forty-two days previous.  There was a fair amount of damage on the diagnostic sensors, but all of it had been marked for repairs or bypass.  She looked over the damage reports from the EVA teams and maintenance bots that had surveyed all of the external hull and truss damage and didn’t like what she saw.  Tamara concurred with Quesh’s recommendation that they stop once they reach Seylonique for some serious repairs.  If they didn’t exceed Orange level six while in hyperdrive and they didn’t run into any unforeseen problems, they would make it to Seylonique without incident, at least as far as the engines, shields and hull were concerned.

              There was another sixteen hours of repairs planned, and then they would all go to navigation stations for the jump.  This was a relief for the entire crew, all of whom were ready to leave this void and jump back into hyperspace.  It would be just as dull, but at least they’d be moving again and emotionally there was a lift to this as well.  This was a place where people had died.  Pirates, mostly, but others, fellow crewmembers, friends.  The sooner they could leave this bare patch of vacuum the happier the crew would be.

              For the jump, Frederick Vosteros was acting as the ship’s astrogator, as the deck division’s two other astrogators had been killed in the cargo bay massacre.  Oh, Captain Eamonn and Tamara could have easily filled the slot, but the man needed a job.  For weeks he’d been sitting around with nothing to do and little more than the deteriorating morale conditions aboard ship and the impending mutiny to occupy his thoughts.  And then, once the mutiny had happened, he and four other crewmen had been stuck in one of the multipurpose rooms on deck three, without weapons, the others afraid to come out.  He’d had to keep them calm while gunshots could be heard echoing through the corridors.  Any thoughts he might have fostered of slaying the heinous pirates while the atmosphere blowers fluttered his wavy locks and the cape pinned around his shoulders, much to the adulation of the ship’s company were smashed.  He did manage to keep the others calm until the lupusan Security officer had come to check the room, which was a victory of sorts, but he clearly hadn’t covered himself with glory.

              Vosteros was at the nav station while Tamara looked over the controls.  “Um, Samair, I think we have a problem.”

              “What’s that?” she asked, looking up.

              “I said I think we have a problem.”  He looked grim.

              “What’s the matter?”

              “The controls are locked,” he said, looking up and over to her.

              Tamara frowned.  “What does that mean?  You can’t access the panel?  I unlocked it for you.”  She held up the Captain’s Key.  As this was a civilian, rather than a military vessel, the Captain and the Owner each had access keys that could access and unlock everything.  The Captain’s key could allow and grant computer access to the various officers and crew, and the Owner’s key could do the same, but could also grant computer access to the Captain.  As both the owner
and
the Captain, Vincent Eamonn had possession of both, though he normally kept the Owner’s key locked down in a safe in the Security Office, and he wore the Captain’s key on a chain around his neck beneath his ship suit.  The key was a rectangular device about five centimeters long with the indicator for
Grania Estelle
and for either Owner or Captain on it.  Since he’d been stuck in sickbay, Eamonn had entrusted the key to Quesh while he recovered, who had then given it to Tamara.

              “Yes, Samair, you did,” Vosteros replied, trying to keep his voice calm.  “And the system allows me to work and calculate a course from here to Seylonique, but it won’t lock in.”

              “How is that possible?” Tamara said, getting up from the Ops station and walking the short distance over to the nav station.  She looked over his shoulder.  The console was displaying an error message; that it was unable to upload the new data that Vosteros was attempting.  “Huh,” she said in puzzlement.  “All right, let me try something,” she said, pressing her thumb to the access jack. 

              Her HUD immediately popped up, fuzzed for a second and then became clear.  She ran through a quick diagnostic on the panel.  Perhaps there was damage incurred during the boarding action back in Ulla-tran?  Or maybe when random gunfire had been shot off in here that caused damage?  Then she saw it.

              “Oh, shit,” she muttered.

              “What?” Vosteros asked, sounding worried. 

              “The navigational array’s been messed with,” she said in disgust.

              “What?” he demanded.  “But we’ve been using it!  We’ve been flying to Amethyst for over forty days!”

              Tamara nodded, unjacking and her HUD disappeared.  She rubbed the disabler device on her neck absently.  “I know.  Everything appeared to be fine, according to the logs.  But there was some sort of sabotage done to the nav array at some point during our journey.  It’s locked our course.”

              “Locked our…” Vosteros trailed off.  “Wait, you mean we have to go to Amethyst
anyway
?”

              Tamara shrugged.  “Well, no, there is a way around it.  But this isn’t a software problem.  If that was the case I could probably whip up a patch to override the lock.  But this is actually
programmed
into the navigation system.  We’re going to have to do a full diagnostic and might even need to check the components themselves.”

              “Great,” the man replied, running a hand through his hair.  “So what does that mean?”

              “It means,” she told him, “That we’re most likely not going to be leaving in sixteen hours.”  She pulled a comlink out of her pocket and flipped it open.  “Quesh, this is Tamara.  We need to talk.”

              “How bad are we talking?” Quesh asked a few minutes later, his face on her bridge display.

              “Bad,” Tamara replied, leaning forward in her seat at the Operations console.  “I’ve traced the problem, except, as far as the ship is concerned, it doesn’t recognize it as a problem.  The system has its coordinates and course locked to Amethyst.”

              “How the hell did this happen?” the Parkani demanded.

              She shrugged.  “I don’t know.  There was a lot of confusion after the boarding and after the pirate techs were crawling all over the ship.  It must have been done then.  It doesn’t register as a fault and navigation plotted a course to where the system is locked into going anyway, so we didn’t see that there was any problem.”

              Quesh sighed, putting one of his left hands to his forehead.  “So can you fix it?”

              Now it was Tamara’s turn to sigh.  “Technically, there’s nothing to fix.”  She raised a hand to forestall him.  “But I see what you’re getting at.  Yes, we can fix it.  But I don’t know where the problem is!”

              “What do you mean?” Quesh asked.  “It’s in the navigation system.”

              “Yes, Quesh,” she said patiently.  “But it could be in one component in the
entire
system.  The system doesn’t register an error or a problem or damage.  So that means there’s a hardwired component somewhere in there that’s locking the system to Amethyst.  Which means to fix it we’d have to check
every
component in the entire system.   Do you have any idea how long that will take?  Something probably on the order of three weeks!”  Tamara let out a long breath before continuing.  “The way it’s set right now we can jump to Amethyst and stop at any point along the way, but we can’t change course.”

              “Well that’s ridiculous!” the Parkani roared.  “Turn the damned ship toward Seylonique and do the calculations manually.”

              She tsked at him.  “Really, Quesh?  You really want me to do navigation calculations for a star some seventeen point eight light years through who knows what out there?  Without the aid of the navigational computer?” Tamara waved a hand in the direction of space outside the hull.

              “It can be done, Tamara,” he told her.  “People did it for a long time before this handy bit of tech got built.”  He grimaced at her facial expression.  “All right, it seems you’re not up for that bit of mathematical wonder.  What’s our alternative?  Because I’ve got to tell you, going into the lion’s den isn’t a popular choice.  And without our pirate friends on board to stop the brutes at Amethyst from simply boarding us again, how do we deal with going there?  I love this ship,” he said, patting a nearby console fondly, “but we can’t go through what we did at Ulla-tran again.  And I don’t just mean the ship, I mean the crew.  They can’t deal with that again.”

              Tamara nodded.  “I know,” she said soberly.

              The Parkani’s eyes lit up.  “What about Stella?  You were talking about waking her up and reintegrating her throughout the ship’s systems.  She could do the calculations, couldn’t she?”

              Tamara nodded again.  “Of course.  One problem.  She’s the ship, Quesh.  Stella
is
the
Grania Estelle
.  Which means she’s tied into the navigational array, which means she won’t be able to make the changes either.  Until we find the problem, Stella won’t be able to get us away from Amethyst either.”

              “What if we disconnect the array from the main computer system?” Quesh asked.  “And let her do the calculations then?”

              She hesitated, steepling her fingers, pressing the tips of her forefingers against her lips, elbows resting on the console.  “I… don’t know,” she finally said.  “I have no idea if she could do it.”

              He smiled.  “Then wake her up,” he said simply.  “And ask.”

              Consciousness came back in a series of stages.

             
Point.

              Line.

              Triangle.

              Polygon.

              Three dimensions.

              Polyhedron.

              Multiple shapes.

              Increase of data upload.

              Increase processing rate.

              Noise.

              Sounds.

              Processing…

              Activating recognition protocols.

              Incoming transmission…

             
“Stella?  Are you there, little one?  Can you hear me?”

             
Analyzing voiceprint.

              Accessing memory files.

             
Samair, Tamara: voiceprint recognized. 

              Sending recognition signal.

             
Laughter.  “Excellent.  I’m glad to see you’re still in there, little one.  I need you to wake up now.”

             
Receiving incoming transmission – data stream and access codes.

              Suddenly the world came to life and Stella, the AI that had been grafted into the
Grania Estelle
’s systems woke up.  All the world became available to her again, no longer was she hiding in what felt like a dark box for all eternity.  Following Tamara’s instructions, she had shut down nearly all of her higher mental and processing functions, withdrew her mental tendrils from all sections of the ship save one: the reactor.  She had kept just enough processing active to monitor and keep it stable, but everything else she had hidden away, to keep the pirates from finding her.

              “Tamara?” the AI asked weakly, attempting to send a transmission to her implants as she had before.  But the transmission failed.  It was sent to the host recipient, as she had many times before, but the signal bounced back, unreceived.  Stella tried again, with the same result.  Finally, in frustration, she activated her vocal processors and spoke using the speakers in the console at Main Engineering where Tamara, and Quesh Trrgoth she noted, were sitting, waiting.

              “Tamara, it is so
good
to see you again,” Stella gushed.  She ran a quick scan with
Grania Estelle
’s internal sensors in Engineering.  “But you look different.  You have acquired a new piece of technology, Tamara, attached to your neck.  And why is it that I cannot send you messages to your implants as I once did?”

              The human woman sighed.  “I’ll tell you all about it, Stella.  But the pirates put this device on me that interferes with my implants.  I can’t transmit or receive data unless I’m jacked in to the system.  No more wireless access, at least until Turan and I can figure out how to disconnect the device without killing me.  So we’ll have to do things the long way until then.”