Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (77 page)

              He glowered at her.  “Of course I’m interested.  But I hate being manipulated.”  He pointed at her.  “Don’t do that.”

              “But it works so well, Quesh,” she said, smiling winningly.

              “You owe me,” he said.  “You owe me for this.”

              She patted him on the forearm.  “Quesh, I suspect that by the time we’re done, you’re going to say that you owe me.”

              His glower intensified.  “Not going to happen, Samair.”  He crossed both sets of arms over his chest.

              The R3 Systems facility was a large, sprawling complex, made up of three enormous warehouses and a big, open area paved with what Tamara assumed was some sort of duracrete.  As the shuttle carrying her and her engineering teams, including the reluctant Quesh and his people, drew near she could see that the other companies had apparently gotten off their collective asses and gotten in gear.  The large modules for the construction of the warship were being gently lowered to the ground by some of her tugs, using their tractoring beams.  The ship was in segments now, and with its hak’ruk design, it looked like a large insect that had been cut into four pieces.

              The design she’d chosen was a very old one, a design fifty years old at the time the Re/files/17/18/95/f171895/public/Federation war had broken out, which made it nearly three hundred years old.  But she knew the design was sound, it was a good, sturdy ship, reasonably well armed and easy to operate.  The ship had a wide front end, which had two sets of what looked like downcast, sweeping wings, the larger, lower ones canted forward with the upper pair swept back, but half the size.  Each wing had a weapon turret, the lower ones each had a heavy dual laser cannon, the upper each had a pair of quad rail guns.  The hull of the ship looked as though it was plated with overlapping scales stretching back to the sharp-finned engine section.  A pair of box missile launchers was mounted amidships on each side, carrying eight capital scale missiles each.  Along the spine was a pair of heavy lasers, as well as another pair on the belly.  The ship was powered by a pair of powerful sublight engines, with four smaller secondaries, giving the ship a great amount of acceleration.  More railguns and single laser cannon turrets were in the after section, rounding out the arsenal.  It looked sleek and mean and it would be, once it was put together and lifted out of the planet’s gravity well.  This was a ship that was never designed to lie in the dirt, it was meant to soar.

              “It’s bigger than I expected,” Quesh said, looking out the armorglass port as the shuttle touched down.

              Tamara nodded.  “When she’s all together, she’ll only be one hundred and twenty meters in length at the keel.  Not that long, all things considered.  Especially considering you’re used to
Grania Estelle’s
kilometer long keel.  Crew of fifty-two.”

              Quesh nodded slowly.  “Hard to tell with her in pieces like that, but she looks dangerous.”

              Tamara smirked.  “Oh, she is.  Remember the corvette that was keeping up with Verrikoth’s fleet?”

              The chief engineer shook his head.  “No.  I was down in engineering dealing with damage control, remember?”

              She frowned.  “Oh, I’d forgotten that.  Well, the one they were using was a more recent design, and this one certainly isn’t new.  I tweaked a few things and updated a few others and once we get the shakedown done and work the bugs out, I think this ship will run circles around anything in her class.”

              Quesh looked at her sourly.  “Really, Samair?”

              “What?”

              “Work the bugs out?”

              “What?  Oh.”  She swatted him on the arm, as she understood what he meant.  “Well, well.  Looks like we have a visitor.”

              “Who?” Quesh said, turning back to the armorglass.  He saw a number of people milling about on the tarmac, several work crews working on one section, others maneuvering a pair of grav cradles into position to lift the very large modules of the ship into position where they could be joined.

              Tamara pointed.  “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

              “To whom?” Quesh said grouchily.  “And if I have to say ‘who’ again, I’m going to make sure you find salt in your coffee.”

              “You are an evil male, Chief Trrgoth,” she said, glowering.  She sighed.  “That’s Triarch Kozen’ck, one of the initial investors.  He wanted to see the construction, though I thought he would be here at the end, when we actually got the ship all put together.  This isn’t all going to get finished today.”

              Quesh shrugged both sets of shoulders.  “Maybe he doesn’t realize that.  And maybe he thinks he needs to lord his presence over the whole show here.”

              Tamara chuckled.  “Yeah, that sounds like him.  Come on, let’s go.”  She opened the hatch and stepped out onto the tarmac.  She heard Quesh telling his team to get their gear and follow, but she was already walking toward the Triarch.  “Triarch Kozen’ck,” she said as she drew close.  “This is a lovely surprise.”

              The zheen businessman was dressed in what appeared to be a very expensive suit, cut to fit over his slim carapaced body.  He chittered a laugh.  “I’m sure.  But I wanted to come down here and see what all the money I’d spent was buying.”  His mandibles clacked.  “I’m not all that impressed, truth be told.”

              She laughed derisively.  “Oh please.  I’ve more than tripled your investment in a matter of months and paid your dividends.  You have nothing to complain about.”

              He hissed.  “I don’t know why I let you talk to me this way.”

              “You’re not the only male authority figure that has had to deal with me,” she told him.  “And you put up with me because I make money.  A lot of money.”
              He folded his arms over his thorax, over his very expensive suit coat.  “So what is happening here?”

              “You wouldn’t have come down if you didn’t already know,” Tamara said.  “But we’re beginning the joining process of all the modules today.  But I hope you understand; this won’t be finished today.”

              He blatted a sigh.  “Yes, Ms. Samair, I do understand that.  But as I said, I wanted to see the construction.”

              “Very good, Triarch.  Well, I’m going to get the teams working on those first two sections, so I just need to ask that you keep clear.  It is dangerous here.”

              The zheen nodded.  “Of course, I will stay out of the way.  But I intend to watch and see what all this involves, Ms. Samair.  Before you go,” he said, reaching out and touching her arm, “I have a question.  What will you do with this ship once it is completed?”

              “It’s a warship, Triarch,” she said, as though that explained everything.

              “Yes, Ms. Samair, I know it is a warship.  But that isn’t what I asked.  I asked what you are going to do with it.  Are you intending to defend this system with it?”

              “Well, this ship is hardly a match for everything that might come into the system, Triarch,” she replied.  “But, it’s certainly a start.”

              “Will you turn control of this ship over to the government?”

              “No,” she said simply.

              The zheen waggled his antennae.  “You would keep this ship of war,” he gestured to the modules, “in private hands?  All that destructive power?”

              “Triarch,” Tamara replied, “I paid for this ship.  With some help,” she acknowledged, “But even still, your initial startup investment has long since been paid back.  But I do know the help you’ve been giving, the cover you’ve been flying with the local government about making this ship.  But knowing all that, I’m not turning it over.  They have their own warship, one that I know they’ve been working on for months now.”

              “And if they demand it?”

              She sighed.  “I don’t want to go to war against the government.  I’ve made a very good business here, built a lot of space based infrastructure and helped out a lot of the local business.  Is the government really going to risk all that just to try and steal my ship?”

              Kozen’ck didn’t seem to have an answer for that.  He just nodded.  “Well.  I will let you get to your work.  Will you be available to speak with later?”

              She glanced over at the workers for a moment and then looked back to him.  “Yes, Triarch, I can find time to speak with you this evening.  It might be easier if I just call you.  It’s going to be several hours.”

              He nodded.  “That would be fine.  I will be expecting your call.”  He gave a little bow and walked toward one of the warehouses.  Tamara watched him go.

              “What was that about?” she asked as she followed the zheen until he turned a corner and stepped out of sight.  “You going to try and steal my ship, Kozen’ck?” she asked quietly.  Then she shook her head and headed over to assist the crews.

              It had been a long five days.  A few injuries, but thankfully nothing serious.  The sections of the corvette had been joined and locked together, the seams welded closed.  Tamara was doing checks, making sure all was ready, but everything was otherwise ready to go.  The milspec reactor had been installed without a hitch and the helium 3 fuel had been pumped in, bringing the tanks to quarter capacity, as Tamara wanted enough fuel to get the ship into orbit, but keep the mass down as much as possible.  Once the tugs lifted the ship out of the construction cradle and carried it into space, they would top them off, but in the meantime she wanted to keep the mass down to reduce the amount of ship that the tugs needed to pull into orbit.

              “All systems online,” Tamara reported. 

              Kay’grax nodded from the operations console.  “Looking good.  Life support is online, communications are up.  Hull integrity is…”  He checked another display.  “All green, ma’am.  We’re ready.”

              “All right,” Tamara said, settling herself into the helm.  “Contact the four tugs.  Let’s do this.”

              “Yes, ma’am,” Kay’grax replied, sending the message.  The ship was crewed only by a dozen people, currently.  There was a caretaker crew in orbit in two shuttles ready to dock and take over once they got there, but until then, Tamara wanted to bring the ship up out of the atmosphere herself.  The corvette shivered in its docking cradle as the four tugs seized the ship in their tractoring beams.  “Tugs are locked on.”

              Tamara checked the readings.  “Looks good.  All right, take us up.  Nice and easy.  Once we reach ten thousand, I’ll engage the secondaries and take us the rest of the way.”

              “How long until we reach orbit, Ms. Samair?” Triarch Kozen’ck said from the back of the tiny bridge.  He had insisted that he be here when the ship departed the planet, reasoning that the ship had to be perfectly safe if Tamara was going to be piloting it out.  Tamara had strenuously argued against this, but the Triarch had been adamant.  If she didn’t bring him up on this maiden flight, then a shuttle carrying a platoon of soldiers would be landing here and taking possession of the ship, Tamara’s preferences be damned.  They stood and glared at each other for a long moment until finally she relented.  But
she
was adamant, Kozen’ck would stay out of the way, he would touch nothing and obey any orders she gave him.  He very graciously accepted those terms and why wouldn’t he?  He’d gotten what he wanted.

              “We’re going as fast as we can, Triarch,” she said, her tone turning slightly snippy.  “But we can’t rush too fast or the tugs will lose the tractoring lock.  About twenty-five minutes, Triarch.”  She settled back at the helm, her hands in her lap, waiting to grip the control levers at the appropriate time. 

              “They’re coming out of the atmosphere now, Captain,” George reported, from his position at the operations station.

              “I see it, George,” Vincent replied as he watched his own display.  “Make sure that the rest of the crew is aware of what’s happening.”

              Stella appeared on the bridge holo projector.  “I’ve already sent out a message to everyone on the ship, Captain.  They’re watching on every vid screen and display available.”

              “Good.  The first ship built by this company.  An historic moment,” Vincent said proudly.  His pride was somewhat tempered by Tamara’s statements from a few days earlier.  A company with no name.  A nameless ship.  That would definitely need to be rectified.

              “The corvette’s engines are powering up,” George said, nodding.  “Corvette is starting to accelerate.”

              “Tugs are releasing tractoring beams,” Stella reported.  “She’s flying under her own power now.”

              “She’s accelerating, gaining some serious altitude.”  A moment later, “The ship has cleared the atmosphere, Captain.”  George was smiling. 

              “Open a channel to the corvette, please,” Vincent said to Serinda, who pressed a control.  She’d obviously anticipated him.  The young woman nodded.  “
Grania Estelle
to company warship, come in please.  How are you flying?”

              There was a moment’s pause and then Tamara’s voice came back.  “Company warship?  That’s awful.  We definitely need to name this baby.  As to how we’re flying?  She handles like a dream, Captain.  Couple of a little things to tweak, got a wobbly port stabilizing thruster, but other than that, I couldn’t be happier with how she turned out.”  Vincent could hear the smile in her voice.