Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 (18 page)

              “Thank you, Captain.  But if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.”

              He nodded.  “Of course.  If I haven’t said it already…”  He hesitated.  “I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done.  If not for you, we’d be in far worse shape.”

              She smiled.  “You’re quite welcome.  But as I said before, it’s my butt on the line here too.”

              His eyebrows went up.  “You could get off here at Instow,” he offered, though he hoped she would not.

              Thankfully, she shook her head.  “Oh, no, Captain.  I’m a spacer, born and bred.  Cooling my heels on some dirtball isn’t my idea of a good time.”  She then patted the bulkhead.  “Besides, I’ve grown fond of the old girl.  I’d like to see her restored to her old glory.”

              “I’ve been aboard this ship my whole life,” the Captain told her.  “She’s been slowly dying for so long.  I was overjoyed and overwhelmed when I took command.  I despaired when the previous captain gave me the full rundown on everything and I saw the true figures about all the systems.  I am very glad you and Quesh and the others are here to help make her young and beautiful again.”

              Tamara pinched her thumbs and forefingers together and made a mock curtsy with an imaginary ball gown.  “What kind of woman would I be to leave another have to stand a wallflower at the ball?”

              The Captain clapped her on the shoulder and threw back his head and laughed.

              “We’re approaching orbit, Captain,” the pilot announced. 
Grania Estelle
had been slowing gradually for seven hours now, approaching the moon in orbit of the gas giant, which the locals also called Instow, the only inhabitable piece of real estate in the star system.  “We’ll be in standard orbiting position in nineteen minutes.”

              “Thank you, helm.  Keep an eye on things, let me know if there are any problems.”  The Captain turned to the communications station.  “Serinda, try to get in contact with the locals at Instow.  If they don’t already know, please inform them of our imminent arrival.”

              “Roger, Captain,” the young woman replied.  Serinda was a young woman in her twenties with dark hair, who had the unique talent of attracting the attention of all the young men she met.  Some few, like the Captain, the Doctor and Ka’Xarian, seemed to be immune to her natural charms.  She pressed a few controls, opening a channel.  “Instow Flight Control, this is the freighter
Grania Estelle
.  We are looking to engage in trading in your markets.  We will be assuming standard orbit in seventeen minutes. 
Grania Estelle
, out.”  She glanced at the Captain, who nodded.

              A minute later, a response came back, on audio only.  “Whoever you are, please go away!  We don’t have anything for you to take, the last people through here took everything!”

              That brought everyone up short.  Apparently they were not the only ones who had been targeted by the raiders.  The Captain straightened in his chair.  “Put me on.”  Serinda tapped a control, then glanced over and nodded.  “What is your situation down there, Instow Flight?  We were attacked by raiders as well, just as soon as we came out of hyperspace.  As such we’re in desperate need of some supplies and repairs as well.  Perhaps we can help each other here.  This isn’t our first time in this system, Instow Flight.  You know us.  If I could speak with your proconsul, I believe we can work something out to our mutual benefit.”

              There was a long pause.  “I’m afraid I can’t help you.  We’re in desperate straits ourselves and we can’t be bothered with outsiders’ problems.  Please, just go.”

              “Like I said, maybe we can help each other,” the Captain tried again.  “We have access to some replicator support up here.”

              Another long pause.  “I will confer with the proconsul.  Do not attempt to land.  Anyone from your ship who comes down to the planet will be arrested.”  The line clicked off.

              “Nice people,” George Miller muttered, loud enough to carry in the small bridge.

              “They’re scared,” the Captain replied.  He frowned.  “Can’t say I blame them.  I know we all were only a few days ago.”  He grunted.  “Still are a bit, actually.”  He shifted position in his chair, resting his chin on his hand.  “Nothing for it, well, for now anyway.  Serinda, keep an ear out, if they call back, let me know immediately.”  He got up and left the bridge.

              “Yes… uh… Captain,” she stammered as the hatch closed behind him.

              Quesh was standing at the main engineering console, in all of its spliced together madness, trying to take stock of the situation.  Fuel levels were at about twenty-two percent with the water coming in from the shuttle’s asteroid run, which were certainly not good, but much better than they had been.  There was still so much damage, even just to bring them back to where they were before the attack.  His teams were exhausted, those that remained.  He had only two-thirds of the personnel to do the same amount of work, more, actually, considering everyone was working twelve hour shifts.

              He had his teams now redoing some of the work that had just been done in hyperspace, to repair the damage.  Fuel lines (which had only been patched so as to get them to Instow) were being ripped out and replaced properly, as were fiber optics, data lines and EPS conduits.  Tamara was busy building new replicator parts and was rewriting the firmware code for many of the damaged computer systems, to try and make the more ragged bits run more smoothly.  She would have to redo it again once they got proper equipment installed, but for now, they needed to work with the “make do” mentality.

              The
Grania Estelle
herself, though, wasn’t going anywhere.  Quesh had completely torn the engines to pieces, since most of the equipment couldn’t be salvaged.  It was all just going to be cut apart and fed to the replicators for materials.  This meant that their fortunes were now tied to this system.  For now anyway, the bulk freighter was going nowhere.  Maneuvering thrusters were still active for any corrections needed to maintain or change the ship’s orbit, but for now, they were stuck here.

              The ship was still buzzing about the pirates.  Though, since the ship and her surviving crew were still reeling, wounded from the attack, of course it would be in the forefront of everyone’s minds.  The least injured from the attack were being released from sickbay on light duty, which was fine because Quesh needed every hand.  No one had any ideas about the raiders, however.  Pirates were an unfortunate reality in this day and age, but the
Grania Estelle
had been more fortunate than most.  Up until now, they had not encountered any commerce raiders of any type, though on three occasions they had departed just before a pirate warship arrived, or arrived just after one had left. 

              Though it had looked fearsome, no one recognized the bird of prey emblem that the raiders had worn on their clothing and armor, or that was emblazoned on their ships.  Tamara had run it through her own small database, but had come up empty.  Most likely it was only a symbol the leaders of their group had come up with to inspire fear in those they attacked.  It was plenty effective.  The crew of this ship would never forget it.  The Captain had his bridge people going over every scrap of information they had about the attackers: what clothing they wore, their weapons, their armor, tactics, sensor data from the boat bay, internal cameras, Tamara’s fighter’s sensor logs, even the tattoos and body types of the ones that had been killed.  It added up to a pretty grim picture, but unfortunately, except for the broad strokes, no one could make out any clear image yet.

              But that was something for less pragmatic minds than Quesh Trrgoth.  Let the Captain worry about the pirates.  And if he needed the help, Quesh was sure that Tamara would chip in.  In fact, based on the amount of processing lag he had on his computer systems, especially since a good number of critical systems were offline, Quesh suspected that Tamara was already working on something.  Whether it had anything to do with the pirates, he didn’t know.  He did know, however, suspect that whatever it was she was doing would be something impressive.  She made very big claims and big promises and so far she delivered on every one.

              Tamara sat in the bay holding Replicator One, waiting for the latest round of parts to be completed.  Once they were done, she could tear the machine and replace some of the more fragile pieces.  It probably would be easier and less labor intensive to simply build another replicator altogether, but she didn’t want to be halfway done getting what she needed to suddenly have this replicator burn out.  So, she was doing things the hard way for now.

              Her special program was running on its own now.  She smiled as the last bit of coding she ran began compiling.  It was in a point three build stage now, but when it was completed, it would certainly be an asset.  Tamara was sure now that while this program would be a great help, she wouldn’t be needing it against the crew of the
Grania Estelle. 
In fact, should she ever decide to leave here, she might leave it behind.  A present for the crew.

              “So, now I see what you’re doing,” a voice sounded behind her.  She whirled in surprise.  Ka’Xarian stood in the hatchway, his arms folded over his thorax.

              “You shouldn’t sneak up on a girl like that,” Tamara chided, switching off the screen on her datapad.

              The zheen shrugged.  “Turning off the datapad isn’t going to hide it from me, Tamara.  As I said, I already know what’s going on.”

              “You do?” she asked, her chest tightening a bit.  The crew might not like what she was doing.  And, to be fair, she had initially started working on this project to defend herself against them.  “And what do you think?”

              “What I have to ask, Tamara, is why you would feel the need to be building your own AI?”

              Tamara sighed, feeling snakes slithering around in her stomach.  Apparently, in this day and age, there were no AI’s being used.  Of course, there was no reason she should feel threatened; an AI could only help this ship, especially once they got critical functions brought up to greater levels.  The crew themselves couldn’t keep the fusion bottle in the reactor balanced on their own, not at power levels greater than twenty-five or even thirty percent.  Organics simply didn’t have the ability to process and compensate for the many tiny fluctuations that a bottle at significant power levels would require. 

              And while this was certainly true, Ka’Xarian was still looking at her with suspicion.  His antennae were curled down, very tightly, something that wasn’t normal, but Tamara didn’t know how to interpret that piece of zheen body language. 

              “I plan on rebuilding the computer core and the doing a full tear down and overhaul of the reactor, and when we have the more serious repairs done, I’m going to speak with the captain about putting in an auxiliary reactor.”

              Ka’Xarian’s antennae twitched in confusion at the non sequitor.  “And what does that have to do with an AI?”

              She spoke carefully, as though explaining to someone who should know better, as though she knew everything, but in fact, she was speaking carefully because she was afraid that the zheen, someone she might call a friend, someone she had worked with closely over the last month and a half, might condemn her for this action.  She was worried that he might work out the real reason that she was building the AI.  Once it was up and running, and fully integrated into the computer network, she would have a real ally among the crew.  Tamara had already installed subroutines integral to its personality matrix that would identify her as a friend and someone who the AI would want to protect.

              Her coding skills were a bit rusty, she’d been more of an administrator than a floor supervisor back at the shipyard, but she had used her spare time to try and her skills sharp and up to date.  She’d also managed, thankfully, to bring with her a number of compressed files, a large bag of tricks, cheat sheets, preparation coding for a number of computer projects, and the outline frame coding for a class one smart AI.  All that, plus some very time-consuming and diligent work on her part now here on the
Grania Estelle
, meant that she now had the workings of that AI nearly completed. 

              AIs came in two types, dumb and smart.  Dumb AIs were intolerant, focused, made for very specific tasks.  While they had the ability to learn, it was only within the scope of their particular specialty.  There were security AIs, merchant AIs, factory AIs, ones that worked on stations and ships, even ones that worked as interpreters for diplomats.  Dumb AIs were plentiful, they helped keep the Republic running smoothly. 

              Smart AIs were rare.  They could evolve and grow, just like organics could.  The smart AI that was soon to be born would be a fledgling, the equivalent of a child.  It would need to be nurtured, educated and challenged, but it would grow and expand its coding.  It would become a person, a being in its own right.  Back in her day, AI’s were considered people.  Artificial, with silicon and electrons running through their veins, but they were still people, nonetheless.  They could hold officers’ commissions in the armed forces, run factories, they could work in engineering positions, even in the field of medicine; working in positions all normally reserved for “real” people.  Tamara imagined, however, that people in this new dark age probably had less tolerance for artificial life forms such as AI, which meant even having one was a risk.