Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (44 page)

              It took a few minutes of work, but finally, the last bolt was tight.  “Looks good, Officer,” Krogen reported, hefting his wrench. 

              Tamara nodded.  “Very good, Mister Krogen.  Ms. Sterling, spot check?”

              “Yes, ma’am,” Eretria replied, moving up, a datapad scanning the connected pieces.  After a moment, she nodded.  “Looks good.  Ready for welds.”

              Tamara checked the readouts on her HUD as well as on her datapad.  The other woman was correct.  “All right.  Stennis, you assist Ms. Sterling.  Krogen, you’re with me, we’re going to secure the other end of the beam.  Once we’re done with this one, we’ll have the first rib finished.  A ways to go, but we’re still making progress.”

              “Not done yet, ma’am,” Eretria reminded her, her voice with just a touch of chill.

              “Yes, you’re right.”  Tamara replied, clearing her throat.  “Make sure you keep the comms open.  Both of you,” she said looking first to Eretria and then to Stennis. 

              “Yes, ma’am,” Sterling replied.

              “You got it,” the stout man answered.  He handed the welding torch to Eretria, who pressed a control on her wrist, causing her armor glass faceplate to darken.  Activating the torch, she began her work.

              Tamara and Krogen maneuvered to the other side of the beam, which was touching its fellow right at the middle of the rib.  Tamara used the magclamp to secure the end of the beam and floated back a slight distance, lightly holding to the edge of the beam with one hand while Krogen repeated what he’d done on the previous section.   A few minutes later, the beam was bolted down and the two were working to weld the last section.

              Several minutes, and two thorough scans later, the last beam was secured.  Tamara pressed a control on her forearm.  “Samair to Quesh.”

              “Go ahead, Samair,” the Parkani’s voice came back.

              “First rib is complete and secure.  We just finished final scans; it looks good.”

              “Good work, Samair.  Secure your gear and get your team inside.”  Quesh cut the connection.

              “All right, people,” Tamara said, looking over to her people.  “Grab up the gear and let’s get back in.  I could certainly use a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup.”

              The others chuckled, following her orders.

              Once inside, they got cleaned up and headed to the mess hall for supper.  Once they were there, they were pleasantly surprised by Noken and his mess attendants.  The Severite had organized a small party for the first rib of the hull being completed, a “rib party”, much to the delight of the technicians and other crewmembers gathered there.  The foods being served were a variety of rib dishes, pork, beef, saberbear and even a few deboned fishes, with food coloring strategically put in to look like rib bones.  Noken had somehow procured a pair of kegs of the local ale, bringing more delight to the crew.  Stennis and Krogen confirmed that the cat had gotten the good stuff, proven by a big smile on the man’s face and the zheen’s antennae whirling in small circles with pleasure.  There were also plates of cookies, ku-resh, and a pile of sandwiches.

              Tamara laughed joyously upon seeing the all the food.  Noken pushed through the crowd, ushering them in.  “My friends, comes in!  I have prepared some foods for you, I would love if you could comes in and enjoy.”

              Tamara patted him on the shoulder, having to lean down slightly because of her much greater height.  “Noken, where are the other three hundred people you expect to feed here today?”

              The cat’s ears spread to the sides and he blinked in amusement.  “I believes that you could makes a good dent in the ribs, ma’am.  Go, please eat!”  He stepped behind and gently pushed them all in to the mess hall.

              The four of them walked over to the chow line and loaded up trays, each of them grabbing a mug of the beer.  Tamara also went to the coffee shrine and poured herself a cup, setting it next to the one on her tray with the beer.  It was a strange combination, but no one would
ever
question a spacer who got herself a coffee.  Spacers everywhere lived on the stuff.  The others didn’t follow suit, but they did find a table.  Tamara walked over to join them and Stennis looked to her and then to the seat next to him.  She smiled and sat down.

              The food was excellent.  They went back for seconds and thoroughly enjoyed that as well.  Finally, they pushed the empty trays away and leaned back in seats, groaning slightly after having overindulged.  “Well, that was a bit of a mistake,” Tamara said, not looking the least bit repentant.

              Stennis chuckled.  “
My
only regret is that I didn’t grab another beer.”

              Krogen chittered.  “How is it possible you could want to put
more
into your body?”

              The big man shrugged.  “It’s good beer!” he said, slightly hurt.  They all chuckled. 

              “Do you have room for another?” came an amused voice. 

              Tamara looked over to the speaker.  “Doctor!” she said, happily.  She gestured to the seat next to her.  “Please, sit here!”

              The Guura moved to take the seat, his willowy stature moving a little like a stalk of seaweed swaying slightly in a calm sea.  He set down his tray and sat.  He had loaded up a tray with some of the fish steaks, and a pair of cookies.  He had forgone the beer for a very large cup of water; one might go so far as to call it a pitcher.

              “None of the very good beer, Doctor?” Stennis asked, drawing smiles from the others.

              Turan shook his head.  “I’m not a drinker, young one.  Well, I do enjoy some brandy every now and then,” he said as Tamara started to object.  “But I don’t like to imbibe every day.”

              Krogen nodded.  “Smart.”  He patted his thorax.  “I think I overdid it a bit.”

              “So, Tamara,” Turan went on, slicing a piece of the fish with his cutlery and slurping it off his fork.  “Talk to me about implants.”

              Eretria snickered.  “Implants, Doctor?  Isn’t that a little inappropriate?”  Krogen looked confused, but Stennis was suppressing laughter.

              “You’ve got come cheek,” Turan replied, giving a little snort.  “But I’m not referring to mammaries, miss, I’m referring to the cybernetic and computer implants in Tamara’s brain.”

              The other three gaped, looking over to Tamara.  She shrugged, sipping her coffee, even though it had grown cold.  “I got them in the Navy when I got out of officer training.  They were upgraded with every promotion.”

              “Navy?” Stennis asked.

              She nodded, sighing as did, purposefully keeping her eyes on her coffee cup.  “I’m a Commander in the Republic Navy.  In the Engineering Corps.”

              Stennis blinked.  “You’re a Republic officer?”

              Tamara let out a breath and swept her gaze over them.  “I am, though the Republic isn’t fully aware of that.”

              They looked confused.  “Huh?” Stennis said.

              “You tell them,” Tamara said, looking to Turan.  “It’s a story I’ve grown very tired of telling.”

              And so he did.  “Tamara is a Republic Navy officer, who was managing the Hudora Naval Shipyards at the very start of the war between the Republic and the Federation.”

              Krogen let out a little blat.  “But Doctor, she is human.  She couldn’t possibly be almost three hundred years old.”

              Tamara smiled.  “Well thank you, Krogen.  I do look young for my age.”

              “She was in hibernation sleep in an escape pod that was launched from the station during the attack.  She had been forced inside by an officer with a gun and launched, but the pod had been damaged.  She put herself in hibernation sleep and the pod drifted for almost two hundred and fifty years.  She woke when we found her several months ago.  Ever since then she’s been serving with us, and saved all our lives as well as the ship.  She’s even the one who gave the ship a soul.”

              They all exchanged looks, though Eretria’s face was still like stone.

              But Tamara shook her head.  “Not true, Turan. 
Grania Estelle
already had a soul, the crew gave her that.  I just gave her a voice.”

Chapter 15

              Tamara sat in sickbay, in Turan’s office.  She was sitting in the chair across the desk from him.  “So, now that you’ve scared some of the new kids about the big, bad Republic Naval officer in their midst, what did you want to talk about?”

              “Implants,” he replied.  “As I said at the table.  And they would have found out eventually, Tamara.  You can’t keep something like that secret.  I’m surprised you managed it for as long as you had.”

              She gave a rueful smile.  “I guess you’re right.  I have my own problems with the Republic and the Navy, but it still never ceases to surprise me just how much the people in this Cluster hate the Republic and the Navy.  Though some of the stories I’ve heard…”

              “Chief Ka’Xarian’s tale is certainly one that sticks in the mind.”  Turan flattened his flipper hands on the desk.  “And I think that Ms. Sterling clearly has had some run ins with the Republic in the past.  And I don’t think those were But I think you handled it well.  You
have
played a very positive role aboard this ship, first by helping to get the ship fixed up, then with Stella, then Hecate, then the pirates, the list goes on.”

              “You’re making me blush,” she said, embarrassed. 

              He gave her a knowing look.  “You’re a big girl, Commander.  I somehow think that you’ll survive a bit of praise.”

              She toasted him with her coffee cup.  “Thank you, Doctor.”  She took a deep breath.  “So what did you want to know?”

              “I want to know what you can do for the crew on the ship,” he replied.

              Tamara smirked.  “What
more
I can do for the ship?”

              “I’m serious,” the Guura replied.  “We’ve had the discussion concerning implants in the past, Tamara.  Why all of a sudden are you feeling reticent about it?”

              She shrugged.  “I don’t know.  After all we’ve been through in the past few weeks and months it just never seemed that important.”

              “I see.  Well, tabling importance for a moment, if we
were
to move forward, what could we do?”

              Tamara pursed her lips.  “Well, the class-five replicator does give us the ability to make up to level two implants.  Level one is just basic identification, with a small personal database for banking information, things like that.  Level two implants can access computers, give small upgrades to sensory input as well as help out with calculations and research.”

              “What are yours?”

              “Level five officer implants.  For now anyway, the best we can make are civilian grade.  I think for now our best bet is to make a few level ones.  It would help to track crew movement throughout the ship, restrict access to certain sections of the ship.  Normally they’d be use for banking, like I mentioned, but we don’t have a credit system set up for that, and neither do a lot of planets that we’re going to visit.  Does the orbital station here have that sort of thing?”

              Turan turned his flipper hands palms up in a shrug.  “I don’t know.  I assume so, given the level of technology over there.  In my few short trips to the station, I didn’t notice much in the way of automated payments in the various shops I was in.”  He gave a little snort.  “Not that I was paying all that much attention.”

              “Well, it certainly gives our people the option.  And I suppose we might go to a system that
has
more computerized operations, even more than here.  I think Ulla-tran might have had that aboard the station, despite the fact that most of the systems on their orbital and fueling station had fallen into disrepair.”

              “You sound like you want to go back there,” Turan noted.

              Tamara shrugged.  “Well, based on what happened the last time, I’m a little more reluctant, but they are the only other system, with the exception of Hecate, that had any serious kind of space presence that I’ve seen.  Now I’m pretty sure that we’re never going back to Hecate again unless we’ve got some kind of serious military escort.”

              “I’m pretty sure that the captain will etch that in durasteel.”

              “Yeah.  And it’s not like I’m seriously jonesing to get in another dogfight with their starfighters,” she admitted.  “But I think that, if we can get through the hostility, they might make good trading partners.  They have advanced tech and the manpower to utilize it.  Granted, they’re ruled by a bunch of blowhards who are not afraid to rattle the saber when they want something.”

              He eyed her.  “You’re being very generous in your wording.  They didn’t like that we’d renegotiated contracts in Folston, so they sent up fighters.  When that obviously wasn’t working, they launched their cruiser to chase us down and cripple us.  If it wasn’t for some fast talking and even quicker actions, we might never have made it out of the system.”

              “Which is why I think if we were to go back, we’d need a serious military escort.”

              “Like a battlecruiser?”

              “Well,” she said, drawing out the word.  “I don’t think it’s too likely that the locals here would give up their primary defensive asset to escort us all the way there without a very good reason.  But it doesn’t mean that other ships couldn’t be constructed and we couldn’t go back there at some future date.”

              “I suppose,” he said.  “But you’re changing the subject.  I’d like to get started on implants for the crew.  Level one implants to start with and then level twos for the officers and then highest of the crew.”

              Tamara sighed.  “All right.  I’ll talk with the Captain.  I’m sure he’s going to want to be the first in line.  But you need to understand, Doc, I’ve never done this before.”

              Turan gave a blat of a laugh.  “Neither have I.  But I think between you, Stella and I, I think we can make it work.”

              “I can’t take time out of my regular work, Turan, you know that.  Getting implants is a distant secondary to making sure that the ship is running properly.  Once we get the hull situation squared away, we’re going to be working on power and sensors and life support and of course the sublight engines.”             

              “Sounds like you have a very full plate,” Turan said.

              “You know it.”  She grimaced.  But then she smiled.  “It’ll be exhausting, but it will be a lot of fun.”

              “You really do enjoy this,” he remarked, surprised.

              She frowned.  “Why wouldn’t I?  Yes, I’m upset that this poor old girl got shot up in the first place, but some of the repairs we’re doing would have needed doing at some point anyway.  But you’re right, I do enjoy my work.  And I’d bet, if you weren’t concerned with people dying, I know that you enjoy your work.”

              Turan sighed, a trilling noise through the breathing slits in his long neck.  “I do enjoy my work.  I don’t enjoy losing people, and I certainly do not like having to triage and choose which ones live and die.”

              She nodded.  “I’m not arguing with you, Doc, I’m just trying to… spread the joy.”

              He laughed.  “So I can expect you to come by and work with us on getting the implants replicated and set up?”

              “Yes, Turan.  I’ll be here.”  She grimaced.  “I guess sleep is for the weak.”

              “Sleep?  You’re a Navy officer, Tamara.  When do you ever sleep?”

              Tamara’s eyes narrowed.  “I retain the rank, Doctor, but it’s been a while since the Republic Navy and I have seen eye to eye.”

              “In their eyes, that was a long time ago, Doctor.”

              But he shook his head.  “Not so long ago,
Commander
,” he said.  “Or have you forgotten that only just a few months ago, in the Instow system, when you used your rank and codes to make this ship a Navy Reserve vessel to fool a ship chasing us, don’t you remember?”

              “Yeah,” she said softly.  “I remember.”

              “And didn’t we see a Republic ship in Ulla-tran that showed up after the pirates caught us?”

              Tamara’s stomach turned to ice, a very familiar feeling.  “Yes, we did.  And I can’t imagine that they just
happened
to show up in Ulla-tran at the same time we were there.”

              “So they’re after us,” Turan replied.

              “Yeah, but if they were following us and if they had any credible intel on where we were going, they would think we were going to Amethyst.  Which for a while we were, but we never made it.”

              “You think they went on to Amethyst without us?”

              Tamara nodded.  “I do.  And when they got there and didn’t find us, where would they go from there?”  Then she shook her head.  “But anyway, that’s something for another time.  I’m going to speak with the Captain about the implants.  And see if he’s interested in being the first guinea pig.”

              “If it works, I’m going to be the second,” Turan replied.  He smiled.  “Ever since you came on board and the idea that it could be done, I’ve been excited to have it happen.  And even get outfitted myself.”

              “Well, the level one implants that we’re going to start with only have some passive information.   They’re really more for personal information.  But I think it’s a good start.”

              “Stella?” Tamara called out.

              The display screen on the desk lit up and the young AI’s girlish face appeared.  “Yes, Tamara?”

              “I’m working with the good doctor here on level one implants.  I’ve got to get some rack time, but I know he’s very interested in the project.  I know we talked about it at length a while ago, maybe the two of you can talk more about it and you can give him the specs that we have uploaded into the replicators.”

              She smiled.  “Of course, Tamara.  I’m happy to help.”

              Tamara stood.  “Then I’ll leave you two miscreants to it.  Let me know what you come up with.  I’ll be interested to see your ideas.”

              Turan’s short trunk flipped in a gesture of derision.  “Leave my sickbay, you…
engineer
!” he roared good naturedly, as though her profession was the lowest of the low.  Tamara chuckled, flipped a salute and then left sickbay.

              “So, where do we begin?” Stella asked.  “I’m downloading all the specs for the level one and two implants to your terminal.  We can start going over how we are going to put them in.  For the level ones it’s actually pretty easy, according to the literature.  It’s just sewn in under the skin of the forearm, with nanites creating a pathway to the thumb for computer access.  The implant itself is about this big,” she said, holding up her forefinger and thumb less than a few millimeters apart.  “It’s about twice the size of a grain of rice.  Well, about as long, twice as wide.”

              Turan looked at the specs, and then nodded.  “Yes, it looks like the implant has a small packet of nanites and from what this says, it uses materials in the blood to make the pathway and jack to the thumb.”

              “Yes.  It takes about a day or so, and the recipient has to eat during the time.”

              “I would assume that the recipient would eat more than once in a day’s time, Stella,” Turan said, his large eyes twinkling.

              “Well, of course,” she said.  “I think there’s a regimen that’s required, to make sure that the nanites have enough of the minerals needed to complete the construction.”  Then her eyes narrowed and she cocked her head to one side in a very human gesture.  “But I’m guessing your thoughts are not on this.  Or should I say, not entirely on this.  What are you thinking about, Doctor?”

              “Tamara’s problem,” he said slowly. 

              “Which one?” Stella asked. 

              Turan snorted.  “That’s very funny, Stella.  No, I was referring to the disruptor that the pirate put on her neck.”

              Stella sighed.  It always amazed Turan that the AI would make such a human gesture.  It wasn’t as though she breathed or needed to expel gas though his vocal chords to speak.  Tamara had done an amazing job bringing this… person to life.  “We’ve been over this a dozen times, Doctor.  You yourself said that we couldn’t sever the connections on those tendrils without delivering a lethal shock to her brain stem.  She’d die instantly.  We can’t disconnect the device from her nervous system.”

              He held up one flipper hand.  “Not physically, we can’t.  But then I saw you, on the display screen.”

              “Me?”  She was confused.

              “Yes.  While I acknowledge that you’re alive and that you’re here, you’re not
actually
here.  You aren’t flesh and blood that I could reach out and touch.”  Stella continued to watch him, not saying anything.  “Which got me to thinking, you’re a synthetic person.  Your core matrix is essentially lines of code that come together in a specific way to make up what you are.  From there, you filled in the blanks to make the person who is appearing before me.”