Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 (32 page)

              “Not that there would be anywhere to go if someone
is
out there, Quesh,” he pointed out.

              “What’s the alternative, Captain?” the Parkani asked, frowning.  “We can’t do the teardown and rebuild in Folston, we both agree that’s probably not the best of ideas.  We have to do these repairs sometime soon, especially if we want to switch over to the better fuel.”

              The Captain sighed.  “Let me think about it.  Get started on whatever prep you can do now, but I’ll decide what we do when we get to Folston.”

              “Course, Captain,” he said, saluting with his coffee mug.

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

              Morale was up considerably since the pit stop in the void.  The prospect of only another month ahead of them instead of three and a half times that had perked up the entire crew.  They were laughing and joking with each other again, instead of simply adopting an ever spiraling depression as the length of the trip in hyperspace loomed before them.

              They were all excited about the repairs to the ship, the possibility for profit on the other end of the jump, all were waiting the time when the Captain would announce that they were jumping into Folston.

              He was there.  Following.  She could hear that laugh, that voice; grating, harsh, and yet nasal.  She was running.  She didn’t know where, really.  She could hear her own footfalls on the deckplates of Hudora Station.  And yet he was always there.  Always only a few steps behind.

              Her heart was hammering in her chest.  It was a pain, a never ending pounding.  But she couldn’t concern herself with that.  Her breath was coming in gasps, her muscles burned with the running but she never seemed to gain any ground.

              “I don’t think so, bitch.”  His voice, arrogant, and yet this time, terrifying.

              She raced around a corner but he was there, waiting for her.  “I don’t think so.  The Captain and I have other plans for you.  But don’t worry, you are going to die.”  His hand flashed out like lightning, grabbing her scalp.  A gun was pointed at her and his grip on her hair was like iron.  He dragged her along the corridor, as she writhed and screamed.  It did no good, she couldn’t break free, the pain in her head was matched by that in her chest, as both her heart tried to batter its way out of her rib cage and her lungs threatened to burst from the exertion and the screaming.

              Eventually, the journey ended.  Her body felt as though a bolt of lightning had struck her.  She knew this corridor.  The escape pod hatch lay before her.  He released her, flinging her against the bulkhead right next to the door.  She began to beg.

              “No, no, no, no, no,” her voice squeaked.  “I’m not going in there.”

              The smile on his face was pure malice.  “Oh, yes you are.  You were lucky to escape me, twice now.  You think you’ve won.  But you haven’t.”  He leaned down, putting his face right next to hers.  “It’s just you, deluding yourself to think that you could escape me a third time.”

              “No!” she shrieked. 

              “Get in the pod!  Now!” he ordered. 

              Tamara tried to fight him, tried to disobey, but her traitorous muscles brought her to her feet.  She crawled inside the pod, the mantra of “No, no, no, no, no,” constantly coming from her lips.  “You can’t do this!”

              “I let you get away twice before, bitch,” he bit back, though his voice never rose above a murmur.  “Not this time.  This time,” he brandished the gun, “I shoot you between the eyes and then I launch the pod.”

              “No!” she screamed.  “No!  Don’t!”

              He raised the gun.  He fired. 

              The world went dark.

              [I am beginning to understand.]

Chapter 11

Tamara opened her eyes.  She was lying on her bunk, in her quarters.  With a panicked gasp, she sat up straight, breathing so fast she wasn’t actually retaining any of the air she was sucking into her lungs.  Her heart was hammering away in her chest, but as the familiar surroundings became clearer, she began to calm down. 

[Are you all right, Tamara?]

She didn’t answer.  Instead, she flung the blanket off her and rushed into the refresher where she was violently sick.  When her stomach was empty, bile came up.  After it was finally over, she lay on the tile, feeling the coolness on her cheek.

[This behavior you are displaying is causing me concern, Tamara.  Please, are you all right?]

“It was a nightmare,” she groaned, her throat raw.  Thankfully, the sick hadn’t splashed onto the floor; she had managed to get it all into the toilet.  “Were you able to see it?”

[I was.]

She lay on the deck for another moment before pushing herself to a sitting position and then clambering unceremoniously to her feet.  Stripping out of her ship tee and underclothes, she climbed into the shower, letting the hot water sluice over her.

A bubble came through the water pipe, causing the water to spurt and flow irregularly for an instant.

Gunshots.  A fusillade of bullets coming straight at her.  She screamed and flung herself to the back end of the shower, landing painfully.  Tamara lay there shaking, shivering even though the water was quite warm.  There were no gunshots.  No one was in the room with her.

[Gunshots?  There is no one in your quarters with you, Tamara.]

She drew in a long, shuddering gasp.  “I know that, thank you.  I think it was a panic attack.”

[Why are you panicking?]

She sobbed, unaware that tears were streaming down her face due to the water of the shower.  “I don’t know.  I keep remembering...remembering…”

[I understand.  You are remembering the scene with the man with the gun at the escape pod.]

Tamara picked herself up off the floor of the shower, her breath coming in little gasps.  Squaring her shoulders, she forced herself to calm down.  Taking the soap, she cleaned herself, then shut off the water and got out, grabbing the towel.

[Are you going back into your rest cycle?]

“No,” she replied.  “I’m going to get some coffee and something to eat.  I think I want to be around other people.”

[I am here with you.]

This time, Tamara actually smiled.  “Yes, you are.  But I think I want more than just one other person with me right now.  I’d like to be surrounded by people.”

[I understand.]

“Do you?  I don’t want you to feel insulted.  I want you to understand that this isn’t about you.  These are my own personal issues that I’m trying to deal with.”

[And being around other people helps.]  The AI was asking a question.

“It helps me cope,” she answered honestly.  “I’m not sure how well it actually helps me deal with it.”

[I shall think on this.]

She snorted.  “Please do.  If you come up with any answers, would you share them with me?”

[Of course, Tamara.]

When she arrived in the mess hall, it was deserted.  Checking her watch, she saw that it was only 02:23, ship’s time.  Cookie wouldn’t be in for another three hours.  She sighed.  Walking to the ready cooler, she took a sandwich.  Grabbing a plate and a mug, she walked to the coffee urn and poured herself a cup.  She sat down at the table to eat.

[There isn’t anyone here, Tamara.]

She sighed.  “No, there isn’t.”  She took a bite of the sandwich.  “I wish that there was.”

[Maybe you should go and find someone.]

Tamara chuckled.  “Maybe I should.  I’ll finish this up and then go for a walk.”

              She eventually did find a few people, some of the cargo workers working out in bay eight.  They were busy running laps and she didn’t want to disturb them.  She sat down on one of the lounge chairs, just soaking in the atmosphere, being around people but not in a crowd.  Eventually, she got up, stepped onto the track and began to run. 

              Tamara went slowly, it had been a while since she’d engaged in this kind of physical activity and she was still sore from falling over in the shower.  Her lungs still burned from all the hyperventilating and screaming she’d done in her quarters.  She allowed herself to forget about the present, just feel the rhythm of her feet on the track, concentrate on her breathing, keeping a steady pace.  Before she knew it, over an hour had passed. 

              She smiled.  She was drenched in sweat, her whole body ached, and she was wheezing like a set of leaky bellows, but she felt exhilarated.  It was the first time in quite a while that she actually felt relaxed.

              [But you’re more tired now than you were before,] the AI protested.

              “Yes I am,” she whispered, the corners of her lips remaining turned up.  “But the run I think… it helped.  The exercise helped to clear my head.  And yes, I’m quite tired and sore, but it loosened me up a bit.  I was really tense after… earlier.”

              [This is confusing to me.]

              “It doesn’t make much sense to me either,” she admitted.  “It just seems to be the way the human mind works.  I’m sure there’s perfectly scientific and logical explanations for everything.  Exercise causing the brain into releasing endorphins into the body, things like that.  And it all makes sense.  Personally, I like to think that it allows you to get into sort of a… meditative state, I guess.  You do the workout and the outside world fades away and your mind can process things without having all the chatter and din of the real world.”

              The AI didn’t seem to have anything to say to that.  She didn’t have much more to add, so Tamara headed back to her quarters for another shower and greatly daring, a short nap.

              The arrival at the hyper limit was a relief for everyone.  The trip in hyperspace hadn’t been that bad, actually, it had been a welcome respite.  Oh, there had been work to do the entire trip, even before the increase in speed after the “pit stop” as everyone was calling it.  Maintenance, small repairs, watches to be stood.  But now, the routine was being broken by the big transition, the end of the trip from “here” when it became “there”.

              They were ten minutes from reversion when Tamara came up to the bridge.  “Permission to enter the bridge?”

              The Captain turned and looked over at her.  “Granted.  What’s so important?”

              “I’m thinking that we need to rethink our entrance to Folston.”

              He raised an eyebrow.  “What does that mean?”

              “When we got to Instow, we dropped out normally at the hyper limit, right?”

              “Correct.”

              “I’m thinking we need to drop out a few seconds early, which would give us a few hundred thousand kilometers of wiggle room.”

              The Captain nodded slowly.  “Good thinking.  Helm, you heard the lady.  Drop us out twenty seconds from the limit.”

              “Roger, Captain,” the pilot said, hands moving over the controls.

              He pressed a stud on his chair and the PA system activated shipwide.  “All hands, this is the Captain.  We are going to be dropping out of hyperspace early.  We all remember what happened at Instow and I do
not
wish a repeat of that.  So I want all hands to be prepared for combat.  All security teams, I want you armed and ready to repel boarders.  I will provide updates as we have them.  That is all for now.”

              “Inspiring speech, Captain,” Tamara remarked, smirking.  “I’m sure the new kids are very happy with that explanation.”

              He shrugged.  “They’ll live.  I want to make sure that we do as well.  George, you be ready with those sensors.”

              “Ready, Captain.  We’ll go live as soon as we drop back into normal space.”

              “Very good.”  He turned to another station.  “Astrogation.  I want a plot for emergency jump should anybody be waiting for us when we get there.”

              But George spoke up before the astrogator could.  “Captain, we don’t have the fuel for that.  We’re committed to this system.”

              The Captain grimaced.  “Great.  How bad are we talking?”

              George shrugged, going over the numbers.  “We have enough for a transit across the star system, if we’re economical with the engines.  But we don’t have anywhere near enough to make it to another star system.”

              “Very well.”

              “One minute to modified normal space reversion,” the pilot reported.

              Everyone on the bridge tensed as the clock ran down.  Finally, the time reached zero and the pilot pressed the control.  The
Grania Estelle
exited hyperspace in a wash of tachyons, a burst of color on the sensors for an instant as the ship came back into normal space.

              “Report.”

              George checked his sensors.  “We’ve dropped out of hyper 1.6 million kilometers from the hyper limit.  No ships are showing up in range, though I am showing neutrino emissions from one ship in orbit of the primary planet.  They’re no threat to us at this range.”  He grinned.  “Listen to me.  Four months ago we had to wait until we were right on top of something to see it.  Now I’m seeing a ship half a star system away!”

              Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.  “Helm, plot a course for the gas giant.  We’ll drop off the collector and then head in system.  Moxie, if you please, we’re going to need a collector to drop.”

              She grinned at him.  “Already in process, Captain.  It’ll be ready by the time we get there.”

              “Approaching the gas giant, Captain,” the helmsman reported.

              “Very well.  Launch the shuttle, let’s get that collector out there.”             

              The cargo bay door opened and the shuttle slid out into space.  Mairi banked away from the freighter, headed for the upper atmosphere of the Jovian.  It was the work of only moments to get to the optimal release range for the collector.  “Open the bay, Pip.  Let it out.”

              “Copy that,” the young man replied, pressing the button.  The cargo hatch popped and the bay’s atmosphere evacuated.  The collector wasn’t a pretty contraption, but the engineers who had built the thing had all checked off on it.  After that, Tamara, Ka’Xarian and even Chief Quesh had given it a full workover.  Since the collector was going to be gathering up the fuel that they were going to be using form now on.  They could not afford for it to fail.

              Using the grabber arm connected to the shuttle, Pip gingerly lifted the collector and pulled it out into the emptiness of space and released it into the upper atmosphere.  The collector slid down into the atmosphere, looking as though it would continue dropping until it was crushed.  Then the stabilizer jets fired and it steadied out. 

              “Activating collector.”  Pip pressed a control on his datapad and the systems activated.  His eyes scanned over the readouts.  “Looking good.  The system will be filled in forty hours.  Need to swing back here by then to pick it up.”

              “Captain, this is shuttle one,” Mairi said, opening a channel to the
Grania Estelle
.  “Collector dropped and online.  Heading back to the barn now.”

              “Understood, shuttle one.”

              “All right, people.  Once the shuttle is back aboard, we head for Folston.  Serinda, once we’re moving, send a message to that ship.  Tell them who we are and see if you can get a response.”

              “Yes, Captain.  Sending now.”  She tapped a few controls.  “This is the freighter
Grania Estelle
to the unidentified vessel in orbit of Folston.  We are looking for opportunities to trade.  Please respond.”

              “How long until we can expect an answer?”

              “They’re eight light minutes away, Captain,” Serinda replied.  “Probably ten minutes at best guess.”

              He nodded.  The light speed delay was frustrating, but it was a fact of life that they all had to deal with.  In fact, it was something that
everyone
had to deal with, as no one had developed a faster than light communication system yet.  It seemed strange that in a time when it was commonplace for ships to travel faster than light and yet no one could send messages any faster than the speed of light.  On a planetary surface it was fast enough to be done instantly, but in the vastness of space, it took time.

              Twenty minutes passed and Serinda spoke up.  “Captain, incoming message from the ship.  Audio only.”

              “Let’s hear it.”

              “
…is the freighter
Emilia Walker
to
Grania Estelle
.  We are affecting repairs in orbit of Folston, as well as looking for opportunities for trade and profit.  We have no hostile intent.  We are not detecting you at this time, please relay your position.
”