Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (34 page)

              “Hell yes it would.”  Quesh pushed himself up to his feet.  “All right, Captain.  If you could get either a team from deck or cargo division out on two of the shuttles, I’ll check on the prep for reactor startup.  After that, I’ll work on getting the sublight engine ready to fire up.”

              “Thank you, Quesh.  Dismissed.”  The captain waved to the door of the wardroom before also standing.  Once the Parkani had exited, he walked around the table and out, heading to the bridge.

              “Stella, talk to me,” Quesh bellowed as he walked back into Main Engineering, two hours later.  He had stopped by the mess hall to grab a quick bite to eat.  The mess attendants there were doing the best they could trying to keep up with the demands for chow, even without Cookie there to lead them.  They were doing a decent job, keeping things simple.  Right now they were serving sandwiches, soup, things that could be whipped up quickly.  When he left, it looked as though they were starting up several pans of some sort of casserole, to give the crew something hot and filling to eat.  But right now, he was happy with a sandwich.  He was exhausted but there was simply too much work to be done.  He’d gotten a stimulant from the doctor, enough to keep him awake and aware and on his feet.  But it did little to relieve the deep ache in his bones for having been awake so long.

              “Reactor repairs eighty percent complete, Chief,” the AI reported.  “The remainder should be finished in two hours, then we can run diagnostics and bring the reactor up.”

              “Very good,” he growled, stepping back up to the console.  The displays all confirmed what the young AI had just reported.  He trusted her, but he wanted to see for himself, he wanted to see if there were any items that needed his immediate attention. 

              “Raw material stocks are out,” he commented.

              Stella’s image on the edge of the display nodded.  “Yes, Chief,” she said sadly.  “The Captain launched the shuttles fifteen minutes ago, but yes, at this point, we’re tapped out.  We just have to hold things together until we can get what we need.”

              “Hold things, together,” Quesh repeated.  Then he nodded.  “Right.”  He started working the console, bringing up a full list of what the internal sensors, as well as the engineering teams and the ship’s AI, had found wrong.  He already knew most of it, but he needed to start prioritizing. 

              The hull damage was significant.  Luckily, the breached sections were on the outer hull, as a result of the damage taken from the battle in Ulla-tran.  That same damage had also caused metal fatigue and other weakness in the supporting trusses and beams.  That was definitely something that would have to be addressed and resolved.  For the foreseeable future, this ship was stuck here in Seylonique. 

              Quesh continued compiling his list, which was growing with every minute.  Power conduits, control lines and relays, consoles, life support systems, and the list went on and on.  He was well over three hundred items and he knew that the list wouldn’t be getting any shorter for a long while.  Stella popped up and added several hundred items to Quesh’s growing list.  She also threw in several hundred more from Samair’s list, linking them together.  He sighed.  He liked it so much better when this ship was running smoothly and all he’d had to deal with was maintenance issues.  For so long, this great hulk of a ship was barely holding on, dying a little more with every passing week, he and his teams trying to keep things going and he’d thought they were finally past all that.  Everyone knew that the Argos Cluster wasn’t the safest place in the universe, no milk runs to be found here, but even still, it was nice to not have to worry about the gravity plating on the deck failing or the life support pumping out tainted air.  Clearly those days were not as long gone bye as he’d thought.

              “All right, nice and easy,” Tamara called.  “We’ve done this before.  All the diagnostics look good and everything’s in the green, so we’re initiating power up procedures.  Just like the last time, we’re going to introduce a little bit of the helium 3 fuel, activate the laser fusion initiators and compress the plasma stream, just like before.”

              She pointed and the technicians began their work.  It was an agonizing process, but one that they knew well, as she’d said, they’d done it before.  Several times, if they included the aux reactor in those figures. 

              But it went without a hitch.  Within six hours the reactor was online again, operating at sixty percent capacity.  “All right,” Tamara said with a very tired smile.  She blinked several times, stretched her mouth and her jaw to try and wake up a bit.  “I need some more coffee, definitely.”

              Horace smiled over at her.  “I think we all do.  But at least the old girl’s heart’s beating again.”

              “Yeah, that is a big load off my mind.”

              “Should we power down the aux reactor?” he asked.

              Tamara considered.  “Well, if it were up to me, I’d bring it down to a trickle charge to keep it operational in case we need it again.  I’ll talk to the Captain and the Chief about it.  For now, power it down to five percent and leave it there.   Just enough to prevent it from flaming out.”

              “Roger that,” Horace replied, tapping a few keys.  “Fuel’s down to a trickle, reactor holding at five percent.”

              “Good.  Set the watch for now.  I think we’re going to be slowing it down a bit for now, at least until the shuttles get back.  Hopefully they’ll be able to bring back the materials we need.”

              He chuckled wryly.  “I know I’m crossing my fingers.”  Then the man frowned.  “So, not that it’s going to really affect our decision making process at all, but how are we going to deal with the locals?  I mean, we’re taking their rocks without permission.”

              Tamara shrugged.  “No one’s said anything.”

              “So far!” Horace replied.  “But our sensors are damaged.”

              “Xar’s been working on them for the last few hours.  Starboard sensors are still shot, but the forward and gravitic sensors are all on good.  We’re seeing a cluster of signals further in system, but nothing even remotely close.  There are a few ships, but they seem to be much farther in system, near the planet.”

              He turned a very skeptical look on her.  “Tamara, you’re not seriously going to tell me that you don’t think that anyone is going to notice.  Our arrival did happen with a bit of a splash.”

              “Yeah, the tachyon burst from our translation was pretty big and loud,” she admitted.  “But doing what amounted to a crash translation like that certainly wasn’t intended.”  Tamara smiled.  “I think
someone
must have noticed that we’ve arrived.”

              “And you’re not concerned?”

              “Of course I’m concerned, Horace,” she replied.  “But seeing as how there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment, I’m not going to waste time worrying too much about it.  Eventually, there will be someone coming this way to investigate and we’ll deal with public relations or barter then.”

              The tech raised his hands to his shoulders, smiling and leaning back in his chair.  “Hey, as long as someone isn’t shooting at the ship in general or me in particular, dealing with the locals is above my pay grade, at least for this sort of thing.”  He pursed his lips, running a hand over his jaw.  “Speaking of which, what would we pay them with?”

              Tamara got up from her station, crossed over and put a hand on his shoulder.  “Above your pay grade,” she said with a smile, leaving Main Engineering.

              “All right, people, let’s hear it,” Vincent Eamonn said to the table at large.  There weren’t that many people here for this meeting.  No one from the steward division had been called or stepped up to try and take over for Cookie.  For now, they were just making do and there were no serious complaints.  Everyone knew that they were doing their best and the food that was coming out was still good, it just wasn’t as good or as varied as before. 

              Taja, Quesh, Ka’Xarian and Turan sat at the table before him.  Stella was standing to the side, hovering in a standing position above the holo projector on the floor.  She didn’t look as spunky or radiant as she had in the past, though her physical appearance had not changed.  She still had the stripes on her cheekbones and the three more red stripes running through her hair over the top of her head.  She was dressed in the same type of shipsuit that most of the others were, but something about her hand changed.  If she was a flesh and blood person, instead of an artificial construct, one might say she was depressed.  Not that anyone could or would blame Stella for that, given everything that had happened in and since Ulla-tran.

              It was as though that system had become an “it”.  In a person’s life, an event would happen, “it”, and then there were only the things before “it” and the things that happened after “it.”  So it appeared that Ulla-tran was now an “it” for the crew.  And even Stella was affected by it.  No one who had been there in that system was immune to what had happened there.  Stella had put herself into lockdown before the ship was boarded, so it was unlikely that the pirates had any real knowledge of her.  There had been a screw up or two, a slip in front of one of them, but even that didn’t matter.  The subject of Stella was never discussed by the pirates and now they were all dead anyway, so it hardly mattered.

              “Reactor’s online and holding at sixty percent,” Quesh said.  “We’ve got the aux reactor down to five percent, trying to decide whether we should power it down completely or leave it powered up just at a trickle, to have it ready to roll when we need it.”

              “Leave it up for now,” the captain replied.  “Hopefully we won’t need it again, but if we can just crank it up if need be that sounds a lot better than waiting several hours to ignite it, let it warm up and then increase power.”

              “Okay,” Quesh said, noting that on his data pad.  “The hull’s a mess, but we knew that.  I’ve held off on all but the most critical of repairs.  We’ve had to completely seal off the outer compartments, those that are left, in the compromised areas.  We’ve closed up the breaches in the multipurpose compartment in that section, so it’s habitable again.”

              The Captain nodded.  “And the shields?”

              Ka’Xarian leaned forward.  “We’ve got them extended all the way around the ship, though they’re very weak, only eight percent, in the forward, starboard section.  It’ll protect us from heavy radiation and floating dust and minor debris, but certainly not from any kind of weapon strikes, or physical impact from say a rock or chuck of a ship.”

              The Captain frowned, but waved his hand indicating that the zheen should continue.

              “It’s going to take a serious overhaul to the hull, the shields and the power system to get things back up to acceptable levels in that area, Captain,” Xar told him.  Quesh nodded in confirmation.

              “On the ship,” Quesh put in.  The group as a whole nodded.  “And we need more people.  My teams can work on things piecemeal, a little at a time, but it’ll take forever.  And with the amount of people we have, I have barely enough people to maintain a regular engineering watch rotation, to say nothing of doing serious repair and rebuild work.  We’re down to sixty people, Captain.”

              “Well, we already knew we were going to have to pick up more people,” the Captain said.  “I’m just hoping there are enough here that would be willing to sign on to a freighter.”  He waved his hand, to shoo that issue away.  “Speaking of that, we can’t hire anyone from way out here.”

              “Even if we transfer most the cargo division to other departments, we’re still looking at a severe manpower shortage,” Quesh stated.
              “You’re going to poach my people?” Taja demanded, outraged. 

              “They’re all my people,” Eamonn reminded them, and Taja scowled, turning away.  “But for now, I think we will transfer the cargo people over to deck and see where they can help out.”

              “They’re not trained for that!” the tiny cargo specialist spluttered.  “They’re cargo handlers and the like.  Most of them don’t know the first thing about the duties you’re putting them into.”

              Now it was Eamonn’s turn to scowl.  “I doubt that very much.  And even if that’s the case, having them there is no different than some of the greenies we had to hire from Instow.  They can perform fetch and carry duties, if nothing else, or be taught how to stand a watch in Engineering or Environmental or the Bridge, which would free up more experienced personnel to do more advanced tasks.”

              Taja’s face was just pure anger, but she turned her face to look down at the table and didn’t look back up. 

              “I’ll keep enough people in your division to maintain a watch, but honestly, just making sure that everything is still locked down and holding together is about all they’re doing at the moment,” he said.  “Am I wrong, Taja?”

              She didn’t look up.  “No, you’re not wrong,” she said haltingly.

              “All right.  Then pick six of your people, including yourself and set a rotation.”

              Taja jerked herself upright.  “Yes,
Captain
,” she said forcefully.  She gave a mock salute, then rose from the chair and exited the wardroom.  While it wasn’t possible, if she’d been able it was clear that Taja would have slammed the hatch shut behind her when she closed it.  Everyone watched her go, but no one said anything.