Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (50 page)

              But having one ship was better than having no ships.  And even if the pirates came into the system and found the
Leytonstone
out of position, they’d be hard pressed to attack the planet or the station without some sort of reprisal from the battlecruiser.  Just having the ship up and running would act as a serious deterrent.  So why were the locals being so resistant?  Were they afraid of giving up control to an outsider?  Probably.  They didn’t know Captain Eamonn, his ship or his crew so of course they wouldn’t like him just showing up and offering terms.  They also wouldn’t like his production capabilities, or rather, they wouldn’t like that he had them and they didn’t.  Tamara wondered how long it had been since the last hostile action had occurred here in this system.  Years, probably.  Decades, more likely, possibly even as far back as the war with the Federation. 

              She accessed her implants, looking for information about the battlecruiser itself.  She hadn’t taken the time to do an in depth study of the ship, thinking that once the meeting was over, she would have physical access to the ship and the ability to study it from its own computer banks.  For the moment, that wasn’t going to happen, but she wanted to be prepared for if and when the opportunity presented itself.  She didn’t have anything on that class of ship; it wasn’t of Republic design.  It wasn’t in her database of Federation ships, either.  It must been local built, most likely right here.  Based on what she saw from the sensor feeds and from Cookie’s digital, the ship certainly wasn’t new.  Looking at the corrosion on the sensor feeds, Tamara guessed the ship was probably seventy-five to eighty years old and had probably been docked for the last ten or twelve years.  She would have a lot of problems and would take a horde of technicians and a mountain of parts.  Tamara smiled. 
Sounds just like a perfect job.  Too bad I probably won’t get to work on her.

Chapter 17

              Tamara stepped into Shaunessey’s five minutes before sixteen hundred.  The place was a quiet pub, rather boring for most of the clientele Tamara had seen carousing through other establishments on the station.  That wasn’t a surprise to Tamara, who knew that, back in her day the good chaplain wasn’t a heavy carouser.  She’d known a few of the so called “holy men” who could pack away the alcohol and wander off to quarters with a female on each arm.  And very few of them actually believed in the sermons and ideologies that passed through their lips.  In fact, it
was
a surprise that Tyannikov chose this place as a meeting point.  But, she shrugged and looked around for the lupusan.

              She found him in a corner booth, already nursing a beer in a wide cup, almost a bowl which accommodated his muzzle and long tongue.  He was hunched over the drink, as though it was the only warmth he was could find in a very cold environment.  It didn’t look as though he cared at all about what was going on in the pub, but no one was bothering him or doing anything to attract attention to themselves.  As she moved in his direction, the lupusan raised his head, his nose sniffing delicately.  Then he saw her and he flicked his ears, smiling broadly.  He climbed out of the booth, catching the woman up in a huge hug as she approached.  Completely surprised by the gesture, she stiffened, but then relaxed and hugged him back.  He had the smell of canine, as did all lupusan, but he didn’t stink of beer or filth as she’d half feared when she’d agreed to meet him. 

              After a moment, Konstantin released her and stepped back.  “It is so
very
good to see you again, Commander,” he said.  He gestured.  “Please, join me.”

              “Of course,” she replied with a huge smile on her face.  Tamara flicked a finger at the barkeep, who in turn nodded to a robot waiter that hovered over to their booth, its repulsors humming.  She ordered a beer and the bot flew off to retrieve it.  “And you’re retired, Chaplain.  How about we drop the rank stuff and you call me Tamara and I call you…?” she trailed off.

              He chuckled.  “Konstantin, as you well know.”

              “But that wasn’t too hard, was it?” She thanked the serving bot as it flew back over with her drink order.  Taking a sip, she found that the beer was a bit bitter for her liking, but it wasn’t too bad.  Tamara raised her glass in toast.  “To reunions,” she said.

              Konstantin raised his mug and clinked her glass.  “To reunions,” he said.  And they both drank. 

              “So, what have you been doing all this time?” Tamara asked, settling herself more comfortably against the leather seat, which creaked as she moved.  Apparently the seats in this place were just as old as everything else. 

              “Well,” he said, setting down his mug, “I served out the remainder of my tour on the
Steadfast
.  We fought through two battles at Otakai, managed to take down a few ships, but we lost more than a few souls.”

              Tamara nodded.  She had expected as much.  “I’m sorry.  I’m sure you did whatever you could.”

              He shrugged, letting out a sigh.  “I tried to see to the comfort of the wounded, the dying.  I actually took corpsman training and got rated so that I might be better equipped to help my friends and crewmembers in
this
life.  The stars see to them in the next.”

              She nodded.  “I’m proud of you, Corpsman.  It’s not an easy path.”

              Again, he shrugged.  “It seemed the best way to serve the Navy and my conscience.  I wasn’t equipped to fight or to fly and I was never all that handy with a wrench like you.”

              Tamara chuckled.  “Well, I’ll debate with you the part about being ill-equipped to fight, Konstantin,” she replied, gesturing to his hands that were folded around the mug.  “You’re a lupusan, for crying out loud.”

              He looked at her and his gaze carried the depth of emotion.  “I have never been comfortable being born into the body of this… machine of killing.  Oh, I appreciate all the benefits of health and long life, but I always shied away from the violence of my race and of my own nature.”  He looked away, picking up his mug for another drink.

              She reached out across the table and touched his hand.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you.”

              He set the mug down, his long tongue licking the edges of his mouth.  He shook his head.  “It’s all right.  It’s my own problem, not anyone else’s.  I can’t blame you for thinking that.  My race is powerful, violent and unrepentant about their nature.  And I don’t blame them, either.”

              Tamara considered him for a moment.  “Do you wish they would change?”

              He chuckled.  “No, I do not waste time thinking things like that.  The stars would shift all their places in the heavens before my people would become gentle and pacifists.”

              “You changed,” she pointed out, taking another sip.

              “Not really,” Konstantin replied, smiling.  “I’m just better at controlling myself than my fellows.  It doesn’t mean that I’ve actually mellowed.”

              Tamara shrugged.  “I don’t know.  The ability to resist instinct and forge your own path is commendable.  And it shows the ability to evolve.”  Then her eyes twinkled.  “Especially for a male.  Females do it all the time.”

              He gave a little yip of laughter.  “And there is the Commander Samair I remember, though she was a Lieutenant Commander then.”

              Tamara grinned.  “She was very young and naïve then.  It wasn’t that she only saw the best in people, but she hadn’t been as ground down as the woman before you now.”

              “Ah, but the woman before me now is a survivor,” Konstantin pointed out.  “I’m sure she had to make some hard choices, do some things her younger self wouldn’t understand to get to where she is now.”

              “Yes, I did,” she answered.  “But does that make it right?  Does that make it better?”

              He tipped his head to one side slightly.  “I don’t know the answer for that.  But I know that the road is never easy and it never leads you exactly where you expected.  But then the stars give us the occasional blessings, like today.”  He smiled at her.

              Tamara smiled and shook her head.  “You’re right,” she said.  She thumped her hand on the table.  “You’re right.  It doesn’t make what has happened in my life recently any easier to live with, but maybe you’re right about the stars, too, Konstantin.”

              “They brought you to me,” he said, raising his mug again in a toast.  “I’m not trying to say that we’re engaged or anything, but I think this is a good thing.”

              Tamara laughed.  “I have missed you, Chaplain,” she said, clinking her nearly empty glass against his mug.  “But I think that we need to get another round, some food, because I for one and starving, and then you, sir, are going to tell your Commander some of your stories from the last two and a half centuries.”

              “I believe I can do that,” Konstantin said.  “And what is this about you on a freighter?  I saw the ship out of one of the windows.  She a big ship.  You don’t ever do anything small, do you, Tamara?”

              “I honestly had nothing to do with the ship that found me,” she replied innocently.  She turned and waved to the serving bot, which started over to their booth from the other side of the pub.  “
Grania Estelle
picked up my escape pod several months ago, and I’ve been working with them ever since to get their ship fixed back up.  Did a fairly decent job of it too,” she said, her lips twisting in a grimace, “Until we tangled with some pirates.  Actually, a lot of pirates.”

              He nodded.  “Your ship was attacked.  I sympathize.  At least you were able to run away from them.  They don’t seem to have chased you here to Seylonique.”

              She shook her head.  “No, Konstantin, we didn’t run away.  They had cruisers and a corvette.  They ran us down and boarded us.  But not before blasting apart the side of the ship because we banged them up a bit.”

              He stared at her.  “As I said, I saw your ship.  She’s very big, but did you mount weapons on her?”

              She shrugged.  “A few,” Tamara said, remembering.  “A few rail guns.  But she was way outclassed by the pirate ships.  We didn’t stand any sort of chance against them.  Maybe if we’d been able to build up enough delta-v to get to the hyper limit before they got close enough, we might have been able to make the jump to hyper, but they ran us down in pretty short order.”  She looked down at the scratched tabletop and then downed the rest of her beer.  The bot, whirring, flew up to the table.  “What are you getting?” she asked.

              He ordered another drink and an order of roasted quillhog.  Tamara ordered a burger, hoping that the food here would be better than that of the last eating establishment she’d visited.  They sat for a few moments while they waited for the food, as the bot brought out another round of drinks.

              “You know,” she said, as the bot flew off to help another customer, “I’m thinking that I might need to invest in a few bots from the station.  We’re undergoing some serious repairs right now and I think my ship’s AI is getting a little bored.”

              His ear flicked.  “You need to have serving bots?”

              She shook her head.  “No, I was referring to the bots in general.  We’ve got about a score of maintenance ones, good for cleaning and doing diagnostic work, but I’m thinking if the station has even just a handful of actual repair bots, we can use them to do some of the more dangerous or tedious jobs.”

              “I thought that was what enlisted personnel are for,” he quipped with a smile.

              She looked down her nose at him with a glare of mock severity.  “I will have you know, Chaplain, that I always treated the enlisted under my command with respect.”

              “And then you sent them to do the shit jobs,” Konstantin finished.

              “Not all,” she replied.  “That’s also what junior officers were for.”  She winked at him.

              “Well that was obvious,” the lupusan answered.  “I remember a number of ensigns and junior lieutenants that needed to have a chief to set them straight.”

              “Politely, of course,” Tamara replied.  “It doesn’t do to ruffle the feathers of officers.”

              “Oh, of course not,” Konstantin agreed.  “It is our responsibility as enlisted,” he said, sounding as though he was quoting someone, “to wipe the noses and bottoms of the junior officers and make sure that they and the new enlisted don’t accidently stick their heads inside of a fusion reactor.”

              “Quoting Master Chief Kuvalo, aren’t you,” Tamara guessed shrewdly.  The old senior enlisted aboard the
Steadfast
was extremely good at his job.  He also had a lot of opinions about junior officers and enlisted, most of which happened to be right.

              “The old bug knew what he was talking about,” Konstantin replied.  “When he wasn’t talking out of his ass.”

              Tamara chuckled.  “Oh you and he got along pretty well, from what I remembered.”

              “He saw to the well-being of the ship, I saw to their souls,” Konstantin said.  “I think he did a better job, all things considered.”

              “He just had more time in grade,” Tamara said, trying to sooth the lupusan.

              He huffed.  “Don’t you placate me, Ms. Officer,” he snapped, but then smiled to take away the sting.  “Constant Tyranny, indeed.  I know exactly what the crew all called me behind my back.  To my face!  Star Chaser!  Nutcase!”  He actually seemed to be fine with it, a slight smile on his face.

              “I’m sorry, Chaplain,” she said, feeling uncomfortable.  “I know I called you that back in the day too.”

              “Do you still believe it?” he asked gently.  “That I’m insane, a follower of a defunct and ridiculous cult?”

              “I’ll tell you, Konstantin,” she said in all seriousness.  “Before my long sleep, I would have said that you were.  Something to be pitied or endured.  I remember not caring to hear the endless sermons, though I did very much appreciate all the hard work you did in counseling those who were hurting, or your tending of the sick and injured.”  She sipped her drink for a few moments, and he stayed silent, watching her.  “But now?  I feel different.  The fact that I was saved at the very moment from my conviction at my trial?  That’s a hell of a coincidence.  And then, my subordinate tried to take advantage of the confusion during the attack to finish me off, shot me and stuck me in a damaged escape pod and launched me out into the void.  He meant to kill me and I was supposed to die.  But I didn’t.  I was able to sleep through the war, and for all those years after that to be rescued by those people out there.”  She gestured vaguely in the direction of the space outside the station.  “And after all that I went through, I was able to find you, who I had mocked in days past, I’m ashamed to say.  But through it all, we’re both here.  So, I’d like to apologize, Konstantin Tyannikov, for my youthful stupidity.  I don’t know that I believe in the stars are beings watching over us all, but someone’s been looking out for me, so…”  She trailed off, slightly uncomfortable.