Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (42 page)

              “Hey, you’re not going to get any arguments from me.”  She checked her suit readings from the status panel glowing on the bottom right corner display in her helmet.  “I’m getting toward bingo atmo.  I’m heading in.”

              “Perfect timing, I’d say.”

              “I would too.”  Tamara started back, using her hands to move down the very beam she’d been working on, hardly touching it, just pulling and pushing gently.  It took a few minutes to get from the work site to the airlock, but she made it back with more than fifteen minutes of air left, a decent cushion, but she mentally chastised herself for letting her reserves get so low.  She cycled through the airlock and happily removed her helmet as soon as the hatch closed. 

              “Feeling better?” Ka’Xarian asked, walking into the compartment.

              Tamara ran a gloved hand over her sweat-soaked hair.  “Yeah.  It’s a pain being in the suit for hours at a time.”

              “Six hours,” the zheen replied, nodding.  “It is a long time in one of those things.”  He gestured to the suit.

              She sighed.  “I hate it.  I don’t care that I’m used to it, but I still hate wearing it.”

              “You wear one when you fly,” he pointed out, antennae standing up straight in amusement.

              Tamara tipped her head to one side, conceding the point.  “I usually don’t even notice when I’m flying.  But that isn’t work.  That’s fun.”

              Xar chittered.  “Even when you were fighting for your life back at Hecate?”

              “I don’t know if I would have called that fun,” she admitted.  “But the risk and the danger didn’t remove the exhilaration.”  She grimaced.  “I didn’t like killing those other pilots though.”

              Xar shrugged.  “They were trying to kill us.  Trying to kill you!”

              Now it was Tamara’s turn to shrug.  “Just because it was justified doesn’t mean that I like it.”  She smiled at him.  “Do you mind if I grab a shower and change and then we can hit the mess hall for chow?”

              “Sounds good.  I’ll see you there in… thirty?”

              Tamara laughed.  “Thirty?  Make it fifteen.”

              The two were eating a late lunch in the mess hall, impressed with their new cook.  “Noken is good,” Tamara said, sipping a spoonful of a very flavorful fish soup the Severite had prepared.  “How’s yours?”

              Xar nodded in happiness.  “This is really good,” he replied.  He was eating a bowl of green paste, which was made from stewed snow beetles and various vegetables.  “I’ve never heard of… well, whatever this is, but I like it.”

              “It’s snows beetles greens, Chief,” a voice came from behind them.  They both turned to see the feline Noken walking over to them.  He was a ginger color, with a black circle of fur around his left eye.  He was smiling as he walked over.  “I serve many zheens in the pasts, sir.  They all loves the snows beetles.”

              “Where do they come from?” Ka’Xarian asked, setting the bowl down.  His mouthparts moved, cleaning the paste off and getting it in his mouth, like a human tongue would.

              “Theys are originally found on Molo, sir,” Noken said, pointing to the empty seat next to Tamara, who smiled and nodded.  He hopped up onto the seat and then settled himself down, cross legged.  He was short, like all of his species, shorter even than the zheen.  If she had been standing, the tops of Noken’s pointed ears would have come up to Tamara’s waist.  Sitting cross legged in the mess hall chair, he looked like a small furry child.  His voice was low and deep, yet almost squeaky at the same time.  “A couples of friends of mine found out abouts them and broughts them out here to Seylonique.  I know that the zheens love ‘em, sir.  So I started making up recipes.”

              Tamara pointed her spoon at him.  “Before you got hired on here, weren’t you just a line cook?”

              The Severite’s smile broadened.  “And because I am line cook, I can’t makes good food, sir?  Didn’t you just say you likes my snows beetles greens?”

              Ka’Xarian tipped his head from side to side, acknowledging the point.  “My apologies.”

              Noken waved it away.  “It’s nothing.  I’m glads you like it.  I have to get started on dinner mess.  Excuse me, sir.  Ma’am.”  He hopped to his feet, got down off the chair and sauntered over behind the counter and into the galley.

              “He’s a funny little guy, isn’t he?” Ka’Xarian asked.

              Tamara chuckled.  “Oh, like you’re this towering paragon of normalcy?”

              “I tower over him!” Xar replied.

              “Xar,
I
tower over
you
.”

              The zheen put his hand to his thorax.  “That was a low blow, Tamara.”

              Her eyes twinkled.  “Pretty impressive for someone so high above you, don’t you think?”

              His antennae straightened.  “High above me?  You’re going to say that to me, the one who is Assistant Chief Engineer on this ship?”

              “Of course not, O High and Mighty Assistant Chief Engineer,” she said, toasting him with a spoonful of soup.

              Tamara was walking to her quarters when her communicator beeped.  Pulling it from her pocket, she flipped it open.  “Samair here.”

              “Samair, it’s the Captain.  I’d like to see you if you have a few minutes.”

              She sighed, leaning one hand against the bulkhead.  In her Navy days, a request from the Captain would be considered a direct and immediate order.  These days, it wasn’t quite as powerful a suggestion, but she couldn’t blow off a request from the Captain.

              “Where, Captain?  Your quarters?”

              There was a pause.  “No, Ms. Samair, the wardroom would be fine.  We have some business to talk about.”

              “On my way, Captain,” she replied, changing direction and heading for the forward section of the ship.

              A few minutes later, she stepped inside the wardroom to find the Captain sitting alone at his accustomed seat at the conference table.  He was consulting a datapad and sipping from a cup of coffee.  He looked up as she entered.  “Ah, Ms. Samair, good.”

              She raised an eyebrow at the more formal name he had called her by, but didn’t respond to it.  She closed the hatch behind her and stood at attention.  “You wanted to see me, Captain?”

              He sighed.  “Yes, Ms. Samair, I did.  What’s the saying?  Oh.  At ease, Commander, before you sprain something.”

              Tamara relaxed and took a seat as he gestured to one.  She took it, in the center of the right side of the table four seats from him, her posture somewhat stiff. 

              “Is there something wrong, Ms. Samair?”  He looked very serious.

              She tipped her head.  “Yes, Captain.  The Captain and I have had serious issues ever since my confinement.  But I’d like to think that we’ve been able to maintain a professional relationship.  Things have been much more formal since then, as I’m sure the Captain has noticed.”

              He grimaced.  “Yes, Tamara, I have,” he said, surprising her with the use of her first name.  He hardly ever called her that, after giving her the nickname ‘Moxie’, another name that he hardly ever called her anymore.  Not since the first time after the crew had retaken the ship and she had bristled with metaphorical spikes so sharp he nearly bled.  Since then it was nearly always ‘Samair’ or ‘Ms. Samair.’

              “But,” Eamonn went on, “there are some things I want to talk to you about.  Two things, actually.”

              “Yes, Captain,” she replied, not unbending a single inch.

              “The battlecruiser currently docked at the station, the
Leytonstone
, I’m interested in your assessment on what we could do to try and fix it up.”

              Tamara slowly blinked.  “I wasn’t aware that it was the responsibility of the crew of the
Grania Estelle
to fix up a battlecruiser.”

              He nodded.  “Right.  The engineering teams already have their hands full with this girl here,” he said, patting the table fondly.  “And I know you all are busting your tails to get the ship fixed up.  Don’t think I haven’t noticed.  I know I’ve been giving you a hard time about the time tables and such, but I do appreciate it.”

              “Thank you, Captain,” she replied.  “I’ll let the teams know what you said.”

              Eamonn gestured.  “Please do.  I’m looking into hiring more people as well and I know that the twelve people that have come forward so far have been… subpar.”

              Tamara snorted.  With the exception of Eretria Sterling, the people that the Captain had hired for the engineering teams had been complete greenhorns at best.  Two of them were total slackers who were often negligent and derelict in their duties.  Quesh, Ka’Xarian and Tamara had to repeatedly discipline those two and ride herd on them to make sure that tasks were completed and correctly.  “A lot of them are shaping up nicely, Captain, though there are a couple of troublemakers.  But that’s my problem, Captain, not yours.”

              He raised his eyebrows.  “I don’t get to make decisions about members of my own crew?”

              She gave a small smile.  “Of course you do, Captain.  I merely meant that with those two it’s our job to make sure they get the job done.  We’d only bring it to you if it becomes a serious problem.”

              “You will, will you?”  He eyed her.  “If these two keep screwing up, Samair, I want to hear about it.  I don’t want slackers on my crew.  If they can’t deal, I want them disciplined and corrected or I want them gone.”

              “Understood, Captain,” Tamara acknowledged.  “But I’m guessing that’s not why you called me here?”

              “No, as I said, it’s the battlecruiser I’m interested in.”

              She frowned.  “You want to buy it?”

              He shook his head.  “Of course not.  What the hell am I going to do with a battlecruiser?  No, I want to use my replicators to get them the replacement parts the locals would need to fix her back up.”

              “And do we know what
they
would do with it, Captain?” Tamara asked.  “I don’t need to remind you about the last warship that we saw tied up to the dock.  We tangled with
Ganges
twice and nearly got our clocks cleaned twice.  In fact we
did
get our clocks cleaned the second time.”

              He raised a hand, cutting her off.  “I get your point, Samair.  Believe me, I remember exactly how much carnage a light cruiser could do.  I really don’t want a repeat of that with
Ganges
’s bigger and nastier brother.”

              “More like a big cousin, but your point stands, Captain.  Do you still want to try and get the
Leytonstone
back into space, not really knowing what the government of Seylonique will do with her once she’s launched?”

              He considered that.  “Well, Samair, this is one of the few systems in the Cluster that has an active space economy.  There’s the station and the rich mineral and gas resources found here.  I’ve been thinking that even once we get the ship up and running again, we set up shop here, to move cargo between here and neighboring star systems.”

              “I can’t say I disagree with that statement, Captain,” Tamara replied.  “And if we get the battlecruiser up and running again, it will just make this place all the better, since there will be a very big and nasty lupusan watching the place.”

              Eamonn frowned, then smiled.  “Oh, you were referring to the ship itself.”

              “I wasn’t going to say ‘dog in the yard’, Captain.”  She smiled, though it was a thin-lipped stretching of her lips.  “Ulla-tran might have worked out as well, if not for the pirates showing up.  They had a decent space defense force.”

              But Eamonn shook his head.  “You know it wouldn’t have worked out for us, Samair.  Yes, they did have a number of pinnaces and a frigate or two, and that is a fair amount more than the bulk of the systems in the Cluster have, but knowing how corrupt the locals were there, I don’t think I would have stayed there long term.  Besides, we already knew Administrator Galina and she could potentially put in a good word with the people here.”

              “Which I gather she has.”

              He nodded, though his expression was guarded.  “Yes, though obviously I would have liked a lot more in the way of compensation from the local government.”

              Tamara chuckled.  “Yeah, I think we all would have liked that, Captain.  The problem is the replicators and your own schedule, Captain.  And more resources.”  She grimaced.  “I guess I’m making a list now.”  Pulling up her HUD, she did just that, making a list of problems and then starting a list of common parts that would need to be replicated for a warship to get out of dock.  Not knowing anything that was wrong, she started with power conduits, reactor and shield generator parts.  “Do we know anything about the ship?  What’s damaged or broken?”