Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (5 page)

              “And what’s to say I don’t just let them die?” she asked, bluntly.  “The Captain clearly has no loyalty to me after throwing me to you.  Why should I care what happens to him or his crew?”

              Jax released her and stepped back.  He shrugged.  “I think you’re putting up a good front and I fully expect that I will have to kill some of the crew.  The question you need to ask yourself is how many will I have to go through before you decide to cooperate?”

              “And if I tell you to go fuck yourself?” Tamara demanded bluntly.

              Jax’s smile was pure malice.  “Oh, while I think that I could change your mind on that, I’m concerned about the effects of that on your physical well-being.  If you are in fact the key to using the replicators, I won’t want to disrupt or damage your access too much with standard techniques.  But don’t worry,” he told her.  “You won’t.”  Putting a hand behind her back, he gave her a shove in the direction of sickbay.  “Now move.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

              Sickbay was a little busier than Tamara had seen in a while, in fact, it was busier than she’d seen since the pirate attack at Instow.  But upon her arrival, she saw the familiar faces of the orderlies and even Quesh lying on one of the beds and suddenly a weight lifted off her shoulders, one that she didn’t know she had been carrying.  But then Gideon Jax stepped into her field of view and the weight crashed right back onto her shoulders again.  These people, her friends and colleagues while they raised her spirits, they were also hostages that could and would be used against her.  And it would be unlikely that Tamara could save them all, even if she bowed to Jax’s wishes immediately.  Once again, she cursed this situation.

              Turan stepped out of the surgery theater, rubbing his hands on a towel.  He was nodding to himself in satisfaction, apparently whatever he was doing had been successful.  He looked over to the entry way and saw the three new arrivals.  He tossed the towel on a nearby empty bed and rushed over to them.  Without warning, he threw his arms around Tamara’s shaking shoulders, hugging her tight. 

              “I was so worried,” he breathed.  He smelled of antiseptics, of the mechanicals of sickbay and also of the sea.  As an ocean dweller, Tamara wasn’t surprised by this.

              Tamara slipped an arm around him, but refused to release her death grip on the front of her robe; she was already shivering too much. 

              The Guura pulled his head back and examined the woman before him.  "You're burning up," he declared, holding her shoulders extended at arms' length.  "Come on, let's get you squared away."  Steering her in the proper direction, he gently pushed her down onto one of the open biobeds.  Tamara was shivering badly enough now that she didn't even protest.  Just being in the sickbay with Turan's comforting presence was enough to puncture her defenses.  She was just numb now, emotionally, though it was clear her body was not doing well.  The pain was coming back with a vengeance now and with her fever continuing to rise Tamara was slipping away into pure misery.

              She could hear Turan issuing orders to one or more of his orderlies, but her hearing apparently had shut down.  She felt herself completely shutting down, just letting her mind drift.  If she'd cared enough, she would have known that her ears and eyes and nose were all still working, if perhaps a bit impaired, but she didn't.  At this point, she just surrendered to the misery and allowed Turan to work his healing magic.  It took all of a few moments for her consciousness to slip away under the doctor's ministrations.

              Gideon Jax watched the little floor show with a mix of alarm and amusement.  He'd known the woman wasn't doing as well as she trudged from the brig to here in sickbay, but clearly he hadn't known how far gone she was.  The urgency in the doctor's voice and actions made the Armsman believe that the engineer was indeed quite ill.  The Guura was a talented physician but he wasn't a talented actor.  After all of the business he had sent the doctor's way, Jax had received a good deal of experience as to how irritated and concerned the Guura could get.  Based on that experience, he could tell that the doctor wasn't faking his concern over Samair now. 

              The Armsman swept his gaze over the denizens of sickbay.  There was the chief engineer, the four-armed Parkani, grumbling to himself as he was reading something on a datapad.  He actually looked quite healthy, despite the grumbling.  Jax honestly didn't care that much about what was wrong with him.  He suspected there was a degree of faking there; he wasn't a doctor, so he couldn't be sure.  But the Parkani had no visible wounds and yet was here in sickbay.  A big male like him, used to the hustle and storm of working in Engineering and yet here he was.  A layabout?  Jax, despite the evidence, was thinking this was unlikely; Parkani were notoriously industrious.  Perhaps he was more injured than he appeared. 

              There was a zheen in here, which was not uncommon.  Almost a third of the crew was zheen and having served under Captain Verrikoth for years, he was used to the insectoid aliens.  This one had one of his arms encased in a tube that was filled with regenerative fluid.  His compound eyes made it difficult for Jax to determine where the young zheen, for he was very young if Jax's practiced eye was any authority, was looking.  He had a datapad in his hands as he too was absorbed in reading something.  The nervous twitching of his antennae belied his calm, however.  If Jax didn't know better, he would have sworn that the young zheen was stealing glances over at him and over at the where the doctor was working on Samair.

              And of course, there was the other insectoid, the one the Captain had called Kutok.  Her glossy black carapace was marred on her one arm where Jax had blasted off her hand.  She, like the young zheen, had her injured arm encased in a tube filled with the regenerative fluid.  However, Jax had no problems discerning where the hak'ruk was looking.  Her black eyes were staring straight at him, and it was amazing to note how a field of blackness could convey such heat.  Jax smiled.  He'd been threatened and intimidated by the best; this little bug was no real threat.  He nodded in her direction before turning away to leave.  Nodding to the pirate soldier at his side, Jax departed sickbay, the soldier moving to stand guard menacingly over the charges there. 

              Tamara came back to consciousness slowly.  It was the sounds that had really pulled her out from under the warm, comforting blanket of blackness.  She could hear the sound of the blowers circulating the air, the beeping of consoles, the muffled conversations of crewmen.  There was a constant light beeping noise sounding just behind her, an annoying blip-blip-blip that refused to allow her to slip back down to sleep.  She tried to move, to stop the noise.  Her arm raised up, tapping against the panel behind her head, trying to find an off button.

              Opening her eyes, Tamara discovered she was not in her quarters and the blip-blip-blip noise was not her alarm trying to wake her.  She was in sickbay, lying on one of the biobeds.  The repetitive noise was actually an alarm indicating her status, most likely attempting to summon an orderly, a nurse or perhaps even the doctor himself.

              Eventually, one of the nurses, a young male that Tamara didn‘t recognize, came over and pressed a control that shut off the alarm.  He checked the readouts on the bed’s display and then looked at her.  “And how are you feeling, Ma’am?”

              Tamara tried to speak, but her throat was completely dry.  The man picked up a cup of water that was on the nearby stand and helped her hold her head forward so she could take a few sips.  “Not too much,” he chided as the engineer drank.  The water had been sitting out for a while, but to Tamara it tasted like the finest ambrosia.  Her parched and stinging throat seemed to be eased by the cool liquid. 

              She cleared her throat and then spoke, her voice rasping.  “I feel better, but still awful.  How long have I been here?”

              The man smiled.  “You’re the woman with a computer in her head.  You don’t know?”

              She raised her right hand and brought it to her neck.  The metal device was still attached to her flesh.  She sighed heavily.  “This thing makes using my implants… it requires a bit more concentration now.  Can’t you just tell me?”

              The man nodded, relenting.  “About two days.  Not quite two days.  Are you in any pain?” he asked, studying her face intently.

              Tamara shook her head.  “My legs feel a little odd, a little cold.”

              He nodded.  “It’s the surgical heal,” he commented.  “The bully boys,” he nodded his head in the direction of the guard standing at the entrance to sickbay, “Certainly did a number on you.  You had a serious infection and it took a while for the doctor to patch you up.  But he was more concerned with that device on your neck.”

              “Any chance he can remove it?” Tamara asked, a tiny sliver of hope entering her soul.

              But it was quickly crushed.  “I’m sorry.  I’m sure the doctor will have more to say about it, but from what I understand, the tendrils coming off that device have woven throughout your brain stem and into your brain itself.  We’re not sure exactly how it does that without hurting you, but obviously there is nanotechnology involved.”

              Tamara nodded.  “I thought as much.  I’ll have to take a more in-depth look at some point.  Maybe there’s a way to extract the tendrils.”

              The nurse shrugged.  “Maybe.”  He clearly wasn’t confident.  “I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake.”

              “Do you know when I can get out of here?” she asked, putting a hand on his arm as he started to walk away.

              “Probably by tomorrow.  But let me get Doctor Turan and he can give you an update.”  And with that he walked off, leaving Tamara alone with her thoughts behind the privacy screen.  She could see the guard at the door, but no one else in sickbay, though she could hear others moving around and talking quietly. 

              A moment later, the tall Guura came around the screen.  He smiled at her, touching the controls to make one last check of her vitals.  “Hey,” he said, his voice light.  “We need to stop meeting like this.”

              “People will start to talk,” Tamara said, chuckling.

              Turan gave a little snort.  “They’re already talking about Quesh and I.  I don’t know if I can handle all of the gossip.”

              Her lips formed a smirk.  “I’ll try to be discreet.”

              He nodded, all business.  “Very well.  The surgery went well.  We took care of the infection and the Quick Heal should have those scratches on your legs gone by tomorrow.”  He gestured, but the limbs in question were under the thin blanket.  “Fever’s broken and the device on your neck doesn’t seem to have caused you much in the way of physiological damage.  Though it wove its way into your brain stem and the lower section of your brain and connected itself to your implants.”  He sighed, a soft blat of sound.  “I can’t get it out, Tamara.  I’ll work on it, but the device is too tightly imbedded in your soft tissue.  I’ll continue studying it, but it’s going to be extremely difficult to extract it.”

              She smiled at him.  “I have the utmost confidence in you, Turan.  And thank you for trying.”

              “I won’t give up,” he told her, grasping her hand.  “I won’t.”

              Tamara shrugged.  “I know.  And I won’t either.  Maybe there’s a way to get the device to withdraw the tendrils.”  She sighed.  “Another long term project.”

              “But from what I can tell from just a cursory examination, your implants should still work.”

              She nodded.  “They do.  It takes a little more effort than before to use the standard functions, but they all still work.  I think once I get used to this new way of doing things I’ll get back up to snuff.  But it interferes with my wireless implant so I can’t transmit or receive.”  She held up her right hand. “But apparently I still have access with my manual port.”  She wiggled her thumb.

              Turan snorted again in amusement.  “Your ‘manual’ port?  Funny, Tamara.”

              She smiled.  “Thought you’d like that.”

              “It is a digital system,” he joked, chuffing out a small laugh.

              Tamara threw back her head and laughed for the first time in weeks.

Chapter 2

              Time moved forward, as did the
Grania Estelle
.  The engineering teams went into the cargo bays and began cutting apart the chunks of rocks they’d harvested back at Ulla-tran, carrying loads of raw materials to the replicators for breakdown.  Tamara was released from sickbay and then from her imprisonment to resume her duties, though she was accompanied everywhere she went by two of Armsman Jax’s more tech-savvy guards.  They kept out of her way, but it was obvious that they were watching her closely and they did not like it when she tried to both give them the slip working in the crawl spaces or when she would get cagey and try to hide things from them.  After the third such attempt, the guards politely asked her to stop.  And in their version of polite, one of them grabbed her by the arm and slammed her hard against the metal bulkhead while the other screamed his directives in her face.  She complied.

              Under Armsman Jax’s direction, shield nodes were being constructed and set aside for later installation.  He refused to bring the ship to a stop to allow installation out in the void, preferring to err on the side of caution there and simply keep moving.  While everyone on board was not thrilled with the idea of just under ninety days in hyperspace, creeping along (relatively) until they reached Amethyst, the longer trip gave the engineering teams more time to work on repairs. 

              Ka’Xarian really stepped up during this time.  He held daily meetings with Quesh, who had just been released from sickbay and was now able to stand on his own, but only for short periods; he tired easily and his legs felt to him as though they were made from very light rubber.  But the Parkani was recovering and was determined that he would not lose his slot as Chief Engineer.  He was on medical convalescence just now and grudgingly allowed Xar to take the reins.  But he demanded to be kept in the loop on everything being done, every weld and every build.

              There was a lot to do.  The three engineering officers planned it all out, working first on sealing up every single crack, breach and microfracture that they could in the hull.  They wanted the ship sealed back up again, airtight.  This was hampered a bit by the fact that the Armsman refused to stop the ship to therefore allow any teams to go out on the external surface of the ship to perform repairs, but that would be planned for when they reached Amethyst.  Quesh’s teams worked on repairing the damaged computer systems (in order to make sure that the navigation subnet didn’t go down at a critical moment and either drop the ship out of hyperspace prematurely or else steer them off course).  Ka’Xarian focused his attention on the command and control lines, many of which had either been damaged or torn out during the last days at Ulla-tran while Tamara and her people concentrated on power.  All of these systems had been in pristine order before all the ruckus had gone down before the jump, which caused a great deal of grumbling among all of the engineering teams. 

              There was nothing they could do to remedy any of that now, of course.  What was done was done and they were forced to simply swallow their ire and move on.  Most of the crew seemed to be adapting to this new cruise, dealing with the pirate soldiers that seemed to somehow be everywhere on the ship at all hours of the ship’s day and night.  So far, they hadn’t burst into any of the individual quarters, though every so often a patrolling guard would walk through deck and engineering berthing leering at everyone, giving hard looks, but generally leaving the crew alone.  They ate in the mess hall in shifts and generally did little more than make their presence known.

              Morale aboard the ship, however, was beginning to slip.  With only twenty days gone and more than seventy to go, the pirates were starting to get restless.  Being cooped up in a ship, even one as large as the
Grania Estelle
was unusual.  Unusual in the fact that there wasn’t any entertainment for them.  One of the cargo bays had been retrofitted as a shooting range and running track for the pirate soldiers, who visited it in shifts.  It was a ten day project, this required pulling engineering teams of repair duties to build this playhouse (such as it was) for the soldiers.  But once it was completed, this took a small amount of pressure off the crew, as only ten to fifteen soldiers were wandering about the ship at any given time.  The rest were either in the cargo bay or asleep in their berths.  The problem wasn’t solved, as now live fire exercises were going on aboard the ship while it was underway, but it gave the pirates a way to blow off some steam that didn’t involve them turning their wandering eyes on the crew, especially the female members of that crew. 

              Tamara stood in front of one of the engineering consoles, her ever-present shadows not very far away.  She had made her decision and it was time to act.  Tamara was aware that if she was caught doing
anything
against the ship or more accurately the pirates in it, there would be hell to pay, and not just for her, if Armsman Jax decided to vent his wrath on others in the crew.  She glanced back over at them; one of them lifted his eyes from his perusal of her bottom to smirk at her.  He waved.  She shook her head in disgust and turned back to the display.  She pulled up the control feeds to the main reactor, running a standard diagnostic.  Tamara made sure that the diagnostic featured prominently on the screen. 

              Her left hand kept working the diagnostic on the console, but her right hand set down flat on the edge of the console itself, her right thumb pressing into the access port there.  Her HUD popped up, still sputtering and cracking a bit.  Tamara concentrated a bit harder and the HUD image firmed up.  It wasn’t getting much easier, as she’d originally thought.  Getting her implants to work still took a good amount of concentration to bring her HUD up to operational status, but it was easier now to maintain her systems once they were up.  Now, using her implants, she accessed the controls to the cargo bay doors, the bay that the soldiers were using for their exercise. 

              It was as simple as pulling up the information on the control console before her.  It was an engineering display, which, coupled with her officer status aboard the ship, gave her immediate access to the door controls on that cargo bay.  The controls were there, ready for her command and with just a single thought, the bay doors would open and blast the contents out into the void.  A red warning indicator began to flash on her HUD and another indicating that the bridge would be alerted if she continued with this action.  A few mental commands later and a number of macros opened, activated and then closed in rapid succession.  An instant later, the warning indicator disappeared and a new command icon appeared, with text just below. 

              [Continue with cargo door activation?  Yes/No]

              The “No” indicator was highlighted, while the system waited for Tamara to decide.  She activated a few other control macros, ones that she updated and loaded with other information that had nothing to do with the cargo bay doors.  If this worked, they wouldn’t have a lot of time.  If it didn’t work, then someone would probably need to pick up the torch from her dead hand.  Tamara checked the internal sensor feeds again on her HUD while she pretended to be looking over the reactor diagnostic.  Twenty-four of the pirate soldiers were in the cargo bay at this moment.  More than half.  With all of them gone, in the confusion surrounding that debacle she might be able to get the lupusan sisters out of the brig and they could finally get the ship back.  That was a lot of hope to try and place on the furry shoulders of the two security officers, but the crew didn’t have any hope without them, even with the advantage of half the pirates dead.  She agonized for all of one second, closed her eyes for a moment and then initiated the command.

              Just as she did so, someone grabbed her right hand off the console, severing her link to the mainframe.  Tamara gasped in confusion as her HUD suddenly lost all the feeds from the main computer, returning to her standard displays.  Did it work?  Were the bay doors opening?  What had happened?

              A vicious blow landed right in her solar plexus and the engineer went down, doubled over.  She made pitiful gasping noises as she tried to get air back into her lungs.  The pain was just as bad as she’d remembered, back when the pirates had attacked her in her quarters just after
Grania Estelle
had made the jump to hyperspace from Ulla-tran.  It was a pain she’d hoped she’d never have to experience again.

              “Did we get her in time?” one of the guards asked, concerned. 

              “What was she trying to do?” the other one asked.

              The first one checked the panel.  It was only showing the reactor diagnostic.  “I don’t know.  Whatever it was, she wasn’t using this actual terminal.  The diagnostic was just a cover for whatever she was doing on her implants.  I don’t have any way of checking.

              One of the pirate’s communicators beeped.  The second one brought his wrist up to his face.  “Yes, boss?”

              “Cargo bay two just depressurized and blew everything out into space!” the Armsman’s voice was livid.  “What the hell just happened?”

              “I think the prisoner here just did it, Boss,” the first guard replied.  “I think she faked a reactor diagnostic and then accessed the system with her implants.  I stopped her, but I didn’t know what she was doing and I was too late.”

              There was a pause on the other end of the line.  “You stopped her?” Jax asked, his voice calm.

              “She’s still alive, Boss,” the guard answered.

              “Good.  Get her on her feet and get her to the wardroom. 
Now
,” he ordered and the line clicked off.

              “Get up!” the second guard yelled, grabbing Tamara’s arms and hauling her to her feet.  “We carried you through the ship once, I sure as hell ain’t doin’ it again!  Move, slug!”

              Still groaning as her lungs remembered how to catch and hold the air being brought into them, the two guards frog-marched her out of Main Engineering and back through the ship.  It wasn’t as humiliating or damaging as the last time she’d been brought through the ship, for which Tamara was grateful. 

              Once the wardroom door slid open, the two thugs pushed Tamara in before them just as they had the last time.  This time, however, she wasn’t dumped on the deck, she remained on her feet.  Gideon Jax sat in the Captain’s accustomed seat at the head of the table, his eyes on a datapad, his face haunted.  He looked up as the three of them entered.  Upon seeing Tamara, his face went from haunted to pure incandescent rage.  The remote for disabler was on the table in front of him, but he ignored it.  Jax launched himself out of the chair, barreling across the deck and around the table to get at her.  Tamara tried to shy away, but the two behind her pushed her forward again.  She’d just managed to get her arms up in a semblance of a guard position when Jax reached her.

              He was simply a ball of rage.  There was no precision to his strikes, no real aim to them, so long as he hit her.  “Twenty-four!” he kept screaming as he struck.  Tamara tried to defend herself, tried to keep her arms up or dodge away and occasionally she managed to evade a truly crippling blow, but in moments she was battered and bruised, blood coming from a few cuts.

              Finally, Jax stopped his storm of blows.  He was breathing heavily, shoulders rising and falling with each breath, standing before Tamara who had collapsed against the bulkhead for support.  The two guards were still in the room, but they were far enough back to be completely out of the way.  And it wasn’t as though they were going to move forward to help her anyway.  Suddenly the Armsman turned and walked around the table, snatching up the remote from where he’d left it. 

              “Twenty-four men!” he shrieked, activating it.  Electricity coursed through Tamara.  Agony filled her body, screams rushed out of her lungs.  Her legs collapsed and she writhed on the deck until finally it stopped.  Her whole body went limp but when she was able to turn her eyeballs in Jax’s direction, she couldn’t help a smirk curling the corners of her lips.

              “You think this is
funny
?” he bellowed, pressing the control again.  He let her go for a longer period this time, until she couldn’t even scream anymore, just pitiful moans escaped her mouth, her body contorting under the electric shocks.  When he turned it off, she lay there, completely limp on the deck.  Her mind didn’t even have the decency to allow her to lose consciousness.  Oh, no, she got to be awake to enjoy every excruciating moment.

              “You just…
murdered
twenty-four of my men.  Of the
Captain
’s men!” Jax shouted, walked closer and squatting down near her.  He wasn’t concerned that she would strike him, but a very tiny portion of Tamara’s conscious mind noted that he was
just
out of range if she decided to flail an arm at him.

              Tamara couldn’t speak.  It wasn’t that she was afraid; her brain was too fried and pain-wracked to care about that anymore.  It was just that the shocks had robbed her of her speech.  It was a temporary condition, she hoped, but regardless, she could do nothing but lay there on the metal deck plates and take shallow breaths.  But then she felt the corners of her lips curling into a smile again.  In fact, it wasn’t an involuntary spasm, it was a conscious effort on her part.