Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (71 page)

              And now, somehow, they were building back from all her hard work.  “I don’t mind the profits that are starting to come in.  I don’t even mind the fact that the planetsiders are actually starting to pull themselves out of the gutters.  What I care about is that they are working with businesses in Yakavetta.”

              “Oh, stop, please, you’re making me cry,” Kly said, sarcasm dripping.  “Your obsession with Yakavetta has just been one long sob story that you love to just trot out for respect and attention.  I’m so sick of hearing you talk about that stars-damned province.”

              She scowled at him and started to speak, but the other man broke in.  “Oh, enough.  Both of you.  The question here isn’t about who has been wronged, or how much we’ve lost, because we haven’t on both counts.  What we’re here to discuss is what we’re going to do about it.”  He looked at the other two, both were staring at him balefully.  “Personally, I wonder why we need to do anything.  Money’s coming in,” he said with a chuckle.  “They’re even paying the rather… progressive… business tax we’ve been heaping on them.  Nothing exorbitant, or they might just start to balk, but about forty percent higher than we’re charging anyone else.  The mob is happy, and these people are drumming up bread and circuses literally out of nowhere.”  He laughed out loud this time.  “Did you know that some of the locals are actually charging for seats at the landing pad when they set down in Yakavetta?  There’s actually a show surrounding the landing of a stars-damned
cargo
shuttle!  Picnics, drinking, dancing, it’s insane.”

              “You’re the one who’s insane!” Kly spluttered.  “Those neobarb yahoos come waltzing in here and start telling us what for?

              The other man looked at him in disgust.  “Will you listen to yourself, Kly?  You sound like a petulant child who’s been told that he has to go to bed early tonight because he’s going to the amusement park tomorrow and needs to rest up.  You’re acting like a whining ass and, frankly, it’s a bit tiresome.”  Cresswell smirked at him and Kly turned a bright shade of puce.  “Do you have any idea the amount of money that we’re going to be able to make if we get involved?”

              “I don’t want to get involved,” Kly spat.  “I want them
gone!
”

              The other man stood.  But as he did, Hyacinth spoke up.  “So your advice is to get involved with these people?  Just ignore the fact that they are flouting our laws and traditions and current business practices?”

              He just looked at the other two, shaking his head slightly.  “You both need to listen to yourselves.  You can sit here in this room and seethe about the audacity of these outsiders, or you can get yourself into the action and possibly find a way to get the control back.  Kozen’ck has seen the light.  Why can’t you?”  And with that he turned and exited.

              Kly and Cresswell just sat and watched as he left.  “We cannot let this continue,” Kly blustered, turning to face her.  “If this carries on for too much longer, then we won’t be able to dislodge these outsiders.  And that arrogant asshole just turned his coat.”  He gestured to the doorway after the direction the other man had gone.

              “What about Kozen’ck?” Cresswell demanded.  She pulled out her PDA and angrily punched in some queries.  “Oh, that bastard,” she seethed.

              Kly just sank into his chair, as though he was deflating.  “What happened?” he asked, his voice weary.

              “I just checked with some friends of mine.  That little bug needs to be crushed under the heel of my shoe,” she said.  “It looks like the outlanders are trying to add an air of legitimacy to their operations here and instead of just doing things like they have, their leader here just went into her lawyer’s office and apparently just cut a deal with EDI Transworks.  They’re looking to build a power plant.”

              “EDI,” Kly said, his voice very low.  “Of which that skittering little beast is majority shareholder.”

              “Yes,” Cresswell hissed.  “He’s going to make a fortune on those contracts.  And if he gets the materials from the outlanders, he’s only going to increase the fervor to work with these people.  Damn him.”  She slapped her hand down on the arm of her chair, hard.  Then she was on her feet.  “We need to take a trip.  You and I.”

              Kly looked at her, surprised.  “Where are
we
going?”

              “I want to see how repairs to the
Leytonstone
are progressing.”

              “So you’re going to tell me that after I just ink the deal on this contract with our biggest new client, that we can’t make the order?” Tamara demanded.  “Someone better say something.  I can’t go back to that client after assuring them that we would be able to deliver all of the materials that they need and tell them now, Oops, sorry, yeah, I was wrong about the amount and the delivery date.”  She growled with frustration, running a hand through her hair.  “What the hell happened?  Why are both tugs down?”

              Eretria looked abashed.  “I don’t know what happened, ma’am,” she stated.  “Tug one was coming in for its 30-day maintenance.  Kay’grax went into the cockpit to run diagnostics on the control systems and electronics and he thought he found something hinky.  He was running it down when one of the others lost control of one of the hover carts, which ran into the engine cowling of engine one.  He just got singed, but the cart was slagged in the fire and so was the engine.  We had to pull it,” she said, lowering her gaze until Tamara’s furious glare.

              “Who was the tech?” she said, furious. 
Why now?  Why did this have to happen now?

              “Angel,” Eretria replied, referring to the male squid-like Romigani.  His name was actually Anjelnamentas, but the humans in the crew had nicknamed him Angel.  Up until this little incident, which upon reflection, Eretria realized wasn’t so little, he had been a skilled and hard worker.  “We got him to sickbay and Konstantin looked him over.  Said he was a little seared from the fire, but no serious injury.  He slathered the exposed tentacles with some of the regen goop and sent him to his bunk to rack out.  He’ll be back on duty tomorrow.”  She waved to the other techs that were in the room and they quickly hustled out.

              Tamara ran her hands through her hair again in frustration.  They were meeting in her small office, which up until now had been crammed with the engineering crew.  She wanted to call them back and shout at them, but there was nothing about it she could do to fix it.  Letting out a deep breath, she looked back at her lead specialist.  “Both tugs are down.  What happened to Tug two?”

              “The tractor went out, so we called it in to fix.”  Eretria hesitated.

              Tamara scowled.  “What?”

              “Well,” the other woman said, hedging. 

              “Well…?” she said, her voice getting low and angry.

              Eretria sighed.  “Well, ma’am, when the tractor went out, Grok reversed his thrust with a puff on the engines, but he apparently did too much and ended up crashing the asteroid he was pulling into the back of the tug.”

              “Oh, stars,” Tamara said, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger.  “How bad?”

              Eretria grimaced.  “Bad enough.  The tugs are tough, as you know, but apparently, he managed to maneuver the rock in such a way that he crunched it against the aft end of the tug at three hundred kps and crumpled the port engine and ended up almost flattening the starboard.  A good two days of repairs, working round the clock.”

              “All right, get the teams on it.  I’ll be out to assist in a minute.”  Tamara sighed heavily, leaning both hands on her desk for support.  “Did not need this right now.”

              “I’m sorry, ma’am.”  The other woman looked genuinely upset.  “It’s just bad luck that this happened all at once.”

              Tamara looked up.  “Was it?”

              “Ma’am?” She looked confused.

              “Bad luck,” Tamara elaborated.  “Was it bad luck that both tugs are down at the same time, just as we get this huge contract?”

              Eretria pursed her lips, frowning slightly.  “You’re thinking this was deliberate?”

              Tamara sighed.  “The timing is very convenient,” she pointed out.

              She looked doubtful.  “I suppose.  But in both cases, someone could have gotten seriously hurt or even killed.  If the fire had been a little more severe, or if Angel had been just a little closer when the hover cart caught fire, he could have been a lot more hurt than just a little singed.  And when the tug crashed into the rock it was towing, if he had hit it just a little harder, it could have crunched more than the just the engine cowling.”  She shook her head.  “I don’t think it was deliberate.”

              Tamara nodded.  “Thank you, Eretria.  Get the tugs back up.  I’m going to have to speak with Galina about using the
Samarkand
’s tractoring beam to get the asteroid out of the belt and into position where we can work at cutting it up.  We need the tugs online but we can’t lose the time needed to repair them.”

              “Ma’am,” Eretria said carefully, “I understand that we need to keep up with the mining op, but with both tugs down for repairs, if you want them back up as soon as possible, that means it’s going to be all hands on deck working on them.”

              Tamara nodded.  “I know.  We need to work out a more elegant solution here.  All right, take half the team and get one of the tugs back in operation.  I’ll take the other half and continue with the mining op.  It’ll take longer, but we can’t afford the loss of that time.”  She rubbed the back of her neck, standing up straight.  “In the meantime, I’ll start working on getting us some automation.”

              Eretria nodded.  “Yes, ma’am.  But wouldn’t we need an AI for that?”

              “Yes, that would be ideal, but I don’t have the time to get into the coding for that.  We’ll have to do the best we can.”  She looked up at the overhead.  “I think that a smart computer with a fair amount of processing power, not quite to the level of an AI might be enough to get the job done.  And then of course we’ll need more tugs and bots to do the cutting.”  She was seated again at the desk, her terminal powered up, fingers flying over the keys.  The entirety of her concentration was bound up in the work she was now doing, she didn’t even notice Eretria slip out of the room with a smile on her lips.

              A very long sixteen hours later, Tamara shook her head, sitting up straighter.  She leaned back in her chair groaning as she stretched.  She’d been sitting motionless in the chair for all that time, only her fingers moving as she created program code for the system she needed.  It had been a marathon session, longer than she was used to, but a great deal of work had been accomplished.  Right now the code was compiling and although she would have liked to sit and watch it for a while, her back and legs were screaming at her to get out of the chair.

              She stood and her legs protested after the many hours without use.  She was a little wobbly, but managed to make it out of her office without too much difficulty.  Stepping out onto the main work floor she saw that half of her team: three humans, Bevan Rollo, Tomas San Martin, Bobbi Nikol and two zheen, Xhevess and Karrex, were busy working the smelter, diverting raw materials from the ship’s bunkers into the device to process out the unwanted materials.  She nodded to them and they all chorused out greetings, Bobbi smiled at her and Bevan waved.  She headed for the lift, intending to hit the mess hall for some chow and then her stateroom for some sleep.  The coding would be doing its thing on automatic for several hours, long enough for her to get a nap, a shower and a fresh set of clothes.  But all that could wait, her stomach felt as though it was about to gnaw its way through her spine, she was so hungry.

              She sat at one of the tables in the mess hall a short time later, a cup of fruit juice and a bowl of some excellent fish chowder in front of her, both of which was rapidly disappearing into her stomach.  A shadow came over her and she looked up to see Konstantin grinning toothily at her.  Tamara waved him to the chair across from her.  “Sit down, Old Wolf,” she said, through a mouth full of chowder.  He plopped down in the chair, the smile never moving from his muzzle.  He didn’t have any food or drink.  “Why are you here?” she asked.  “It’s customary to have something to eat when you come in here.”

              He shrugged, still grinning.  “I just saw you in here, powering through that… paste, and I couldn’t help but stop in and say something.  That and I haven’t seen you all day.  Where have you been?”

              “Working,” she said, gesturing slightly with her spoon.  “I’ve been at it for,” she consulted the clock on her HUD.  “Wow, sixteen hours.  And I’d already been on shift for five hours before that.”  She groaned.  “Once I got started on the coding, I didn’t stop that whole time.  And apparently, someone made sure that I wasn’t interrupted for all that time.”

              “That was nice of them,” Konstantin replied.

              She scowled at him.  “Constant Tyranny, indeed,” she said sourly.

              “I’m just impressed at how we’ll you’re putting away… whatever that is.”  He gestured to the bowl in front of her.