A Greater Interest: Samair in Argos: Book 4 (32 page)

              “We’ve got that with the fuel we’re selling to Heb and to the orbital,” Galina said, her voice steady but little more than a whisper. 

              Tamara nodded.  “Yes, that’s correct.  But, I’m thinking we can do better.  Oh, we’re not going to stop either of those things. 
Dolcinea
and
Horton Gravis
will keep up with the hauling of fuel within the system.  We’ve got the tanker ship in the yard-“

              “
Ma Mystere
,” Galina put in.

              “Yes,
Ma Mystere
,” she answered.  “So she’ll be ready in eight weeks and she’ll be taking over the Heb run from you, Captain,” she said, glancing over at Eamonn.  The man blinked, then shook his head.

              “Wait, what?” he asked, confused.  “When did we decide this?”

              Tamara pointed to Stella.  “I spoke with Stella about it yesterday.  I told you when we met before that you’d be changing your route.”

              “I remember,” Eamonn said, frowning.  “I don’t remember the part where you pull my ship off of an established run, though.”

              “I’m thinking that the new run you’re going to be on will make up the difference in profits.  Actually, I plan to use more of the big girl’s cargo capacity on something more profitable, not in the bits and bobs she’s been hauling for a while.”  She nodded to the frowning captain and majority shareholder in First Principles, Inc.  Vincent Eamonn was nominally her boss, but once he’d named her Chief of Operations and then had flown his ship out of the system, she generally ran her own affairs.  He retained veto power over any and all decisions, but so far he hadn’t had much complaint with the choices she’d made thus far.  Profits were up, infrastructure was built and they’d had enough defensive assets available to keep the pirates at bay and the gas mine safe.

              “What did you have in mind?” he asked, trying to keep the wariness out of his voice.  His beloved ship had been through hell and back in recent years and he was always nervous about sending his ship somewhere potentially dangerous. 

              She smirked, never a good sign.  “I’m thinking you should take
Grania Estelle
back to Ulla-tran.”

              The rest of the room went silent.  Some of the people here were pensive, considering Tamara’s words.  Vincent, Quesh and Galina, however, looked alarmed.  “You want to send us back into the lion’s den?”

              “I’m thinking that the good people of Ulla-tran might benefit from a big load of fuel, in return you could pick up a load of foodstuffs, machine parts and other tech, maybe some processed minerals and some other finished mechanical and electronics.”  Tamara’s smile grew bigger.  “And maybe a
few
credits.”  Ardeth Marven looked thoughtful and immediately began furiously typing notes into his datapad.

              “All right,” Vincent said grudgingly.  “It’s a decent idea, assuming the people in Ulla-tran are a little less aggressive than last time.”

              “You’ve got a squadron of fighters at your disposal,” Tamara replied calmly.  “And if the council people and Colonel Gants are doing their jobs, they’ve secured us a trade agreement and safe passage.  But I’ll tell you the same thing I told Captain Orzo on
First Horizon
: stay away from the fueling station, deal right with the people on the orbital.”

              Vincent grunted, but it was clear that he agreed with this idea, at least in principle.  Tamara suspected there would be further discussion later, away from the rest of the crew.

              “Moving on,” she said.  “
First Horizon
will continue on the route between Heb, Ulla-tran, and Bimawae.  Our in-system ships will continue bringing goods to the orbital and the planet here in system for sale.”

              “What about the moon base for the gas giant that got proposed before the attack?” Tiyaana asked.

              “Still in negotiations,” Galina replied, nodding slightly.  “But I believe that the plan is still in place.  We are simply waiting for the contracts to be signed and the funding to be secured.”

              “Who’s going to be doing the work on that base?” the mine’s operations’ manager wondered.

              “The idea is for five different companies to share the labor and the costs,” Galina told her, as well as the room at large; everyone seemed to be interested.  “We’ve started preliminary drafting of designs for the base with R3 systems and Vulcan Industries.  But even if the contracts and the funding were to be secured tomorrow, it would be months in the planning and development stages and probably a year and a half in construction.”

              “The mining from the moon should be rich, if the asteroid belt is any indication,” Ardeth mused, making another note on his datapad.

              “Preliminary scans and core samples have shown rich veins of various strategic ores,” Stella piped up from the corner, where her image floated above the holo projector.  “We’ll be hauling out material for a long time.”

              “Hopefully hauling it out for sale,” Quesh muttered.  The others chuckled, Stella winked at him.

              “With the increase in mining, we’re going to need another industrial furnace,” Tamara said, getting nods from the engineer, but blinks of astonishment from Raydor and Tariq.  “A problem, boys?”

              “I’ve seen that industrial furnace, Ma’am,” Nazan commented, opening his hands, palms out.  “It’s huge and it has to process thousands of tons of ores per day.”

              Quesh chuckled.  “Oh, a lot more than that, my friend.”

              “That’s my point,” Nazan pressed.  “If it’s already processing tens or hundreds of thousands of tons of ore, why do we need another one?”

              “Because we’re expanding our operations,” Tamara interjected, causing more nods, gasps and groans of frustration.  “We’re adding another construction slip for the shipyard and we’ve already got more orders for ships: both for FP and for the Navy.  We need the processed metals and other trace elements.”

              “More ships?” Kol Raydor asked.  He held up his hands.  “Hey, I’m all for keeping this system and this company safe.  But who are we going to get to crew more ships?  We just lost a lot of crews in that fight we just had.”

              “We’ll have to recruit,” Tamara replied and Galina nodded.  “If not from here then from Ulla-tran perhaps, or Heb.  We were able to train people from a planet of fishermen to be engineers, I think we can manage.”  There were chuckles from around the table.  “Some of the crews from
Cavalier
managed to get off the ship and have decided to stay on.”  Everyone looked over to Nazan, who nodded in confirmation.  “And yes, I’ve already got Ms. Sterling working on new ships, corvettes to replace the ones destroyed in the battle.”

“For now,
Persistence of Vision
and the rest of the new corvettes are going to be stationed here in close vicinity of the Kutok mine.  As our new ships roll off the line and get crewed, they’ll be stationed here too.  We can’t leave the mine undefended again.”  She held up a hand to forestall protests.  “I’m not saying it wasn’t defended, but we needed your ship there sooner, Captain,” she said to Raydor.  “Having the extra firepower available would have turned the battle.  We got very lucky that it seems all the pirate captain wanted was the fuel and the processed minerals.”  Her face darkened.  “And some of our people.”

“Are we going after them?” Kol Raydor asked, his own face grim.  The others looked to Tamara and Vincent with a mix of expressions.

The two exchanged looks before she turned to address his question.  Then Tamara shook her head.  “Stars knows I want to, Captain, but our forces can’t possibly stand up against the pirate flotilla they’ve got left.  Even if all they have is what left here, what
we’ve
got is decidedly outclassed.  A heavy cruiser and two light cruisers, a destroyer, two corvettes and a handful of fighters against
Persistence of Vision
, our frigates
Mondragon,
Tsesuko
, our corvette
Maitland
and nearly four squadrons of fighters?  The fighters close the gap, to be sure,” Tamara nodded in acknowledgement. “But those of you who have watched the sensor footage saw how well the heavy cruiser’s point defense held off Korqath’s alpha strike,” she said.

Stella cleared her throat, or at least, she made the sound and her image brought her holographic hand up to her holographic mouth.  “One vision strike,” she corrected.

Now all of them were looking at the AI’s image.  “Excuse me?” Vincent asked.

“Tamara’s term was incorrect,” she said.  “Leader Korqath is calling that attack where all the Aploras and Twin Novas fired missiles at once at the pirate heavy cruiser a ‘one vision strike’ based on his cry on the open comm channel.”  Vincent didn’t answer, but just shook his head, smiling slightly.

“Anyway,” Tamara said, bringing the focus of the meeting back on task.  “Even the light cruisers did a decent job of shooting down the missiles from our defense platforms.  They were hurt, certainly, but they also managed to take them all out.  We’re going to have to do something about that for the next time they come here.  Which brings me to the other reason we aren’t going out after them.”

“We have no idea where they are,” Quesh rumbled.  “And unless you’re going to be sending ships all over the place, we’re not going to find them.  They might be one system away from here and we might never find it.”

“Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration-…” Stella began.

Tamara cut her off.  “All right, we’re getting away from the point here.  The point is, for now, we’re not going anywhere.  We need to keep the bulk of our assets here in the system in case, stars forbid, the pirates come back.  We’ll be a little better off once the
Leytonstone
and the rest of the task force gets back here, but until the new construction on the warships is completed and the ships are crewed, I certainly won’t feel comfortable taking a day off.”  There were looks exchanged and nods.

              “Now,” Tamara went on.  “We’ve got a large order of ships from the government: one of the Republic-class destroyers and three of our frigates.  They’re apparently looking to field a few more of
our
classes of ships.  That’s of course in addition to the company’s own order, which is another destroyer, three more corvettes and l want one more frigate.”  The assembled people in the wardroom chuckled.  Nasir flicked his ears in amusement, crossing his arms over his chest.

              “Girls and their toys,” Vincent sniggered.

              “As I understand, Tamara,” Galina interjected, over the nervous laughter from the others, “The government is considering three more corvettes as well.  From us, I mean.  Though as I understand, they’ve decided to wait until the delegation returns from Ulla-tran before they make a final decision.  But I think I saw in one of the news reports and heard from a source close to the council that they’re considering it.”

              “More work for us,” Ka’Xarian said with a happy buzz.  “Well, for the company I mean.”  Vincent frowned at that statement, but the zheen didn’t notice.

              “Well, it’s funny you should say that, Xar,” Tamara said, trying to keep her face straight.  This was going to seriously annoy and possibly anger a few people here.  “Because I’m going to need your talents here in Seylonique, not wandering the spacelanes.”

              The Assistant Chief Engineer’s antennae waved in surprise.  “You’re pulling me from
Grania Estelle
?”

              Tamara nodded, gesturing to the ship’s captain.  “I’ve discussed it with Captain Eamonn and we’re transferring half the engineering department from the bulk freighter over to the shipyard.  Up until now, you’ve needed a much larger contingent aboard the ship because you had so much in the way of repairs and maintenance to keep ahead of.  But now with Stella’s upgrades and a healthy new addition of worker bots that are being delivered in two days, we can keep the ship running at proper efficiency with half the techs as before.”  She smiled at him.  “I’ll need you to work with Eretria Sterling.  I’m not bumping her from her position of Yard Supervisor, but I’ll be adding a new position in Research and Development.  But before you and your teams get too involved in R&D, you and your team be working to get this latest round of ships up and running.

              Xar looked stricken.  He turned his head (though it wasn’t strictly necessary with his large compound eyes) to look back and forth between his captain and Tamara.  “I don’t know what to say.  I mean, I don’t want to leave the ship; it’s my home.  But getting to work in R&D?  Building the
Zlk’vzn
’s was so much fun.  I would love to do something like that again.”

              “Good, because that’s what you’ll be doing,” Tamara replied.  “You and your team.”  Vincent, still grimacing, nodded.  “Look, this ship is special.  I know that.  I served on her for a long while, from back in Hudora to Hecate to Ulla-tran and then here.  She’s been slowly dying, restored, then trashed, then restored again.  I know that’s she’s been ridden very hard.  But she’s the very first ship in First Principles’ fleet, be that commercial or our defensive fleet.  I don’t want to leave this ship short-handed.”  Quesh looked annoyed and Eamonn looked thunderous, but neither of them spoke up.  Tamara sighed, then relented.  “I’ll see what I can do to find a few people to hire on as replacements, but we need Xar and his people over there ASAP.”