First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3 (16 page)

              Kly eyed the zheen cautiously.  “That doesn’t seem to make sense,” he said.  “One minute you’re praising their accomplishments and the next you’re saying you don’t want them to fix our main defense ship?”

              Kozen’ck gave a blat of a sigh.  “First Principles have grown in power since their arrival.  They have rapidly made inroads in the economic area and have built up some impressive infrastructure.  Then with this attack on their facilities,” he paused here and swept his head from side to side, an unnecessary motion what with his compound eyes.  Both men cringed slightly at that gaze, “now they have gained popular acclaim as well.  I like the amount of money that they have made me and the opportunities they’ve opened.  However, I do not like how powerful they are growing.  Soon they may be able to influence things in this system, things that only the admin council should have the power to do.”

              “I agree,” Chakrabarti said, and Kly nodded in agreement also.  “I’m very surprised to hear you, Kozen’ck, take this stance.  I would have expected to hear such things come from his mouth, or from Cresswell.  But not you.”

              “An increase in my holdings is certainly desirable,” the zheen said, affecting a pose of disdain.  “But I’m not comfortable with completely giving up all the power to them.  I’m not sure what their ultimate goals are.”

              “I would think that’s obvious!” Kly said.  “They want the
Leytonstone
!”

              Chakrabarti glared at him.  “What would be the point of returning the ship back to us if they just want to take it again?  All they needed to do was prevent
Leytonstone
from returning to the planet.  If they didn’t suffocate, they’d have starved to death.  Once the fighting was done, they just made sure that the ship was pointed away from the station and then they left it there.”

              “To just let them die!”

              “Their property and people had been attacked,” Kozen’ck retorted.  “”But they reasoned, rightly, that they wouldn’t be able to board and seize the ship.  So, they left it to its fate.  Luckily for us and for the crew of the ship, they managed to get it running again so it could limp home.”

              “How generous of them,” Kly said bitterly.

              “It was very generous,” Kozen’ck replied.  “They could have brought their ships back and rearmed and then come back out and cracked her open.  There wouldn’t have been a damned thing we could have done about it.  They spared all those lives and left the ship relatively intact.”

              Kly gaped.  “And we’re supposed to be grateful!”

              “I am,” the zheen replied, turning to leave.  “They allowed the ship to come back to us.  Why aren’t you?”  As he walked to the hatch, he stopped and turned back.  “See what you can do about collecting up those replicators they’re selling.  We need them, badly.”

              The two men eyed each other for a long moment before Kly left the room and Chakrabarti pulled out a communicator to make a call.

              “Tamara, we’ve got an issue,” the mature lupusan said, walking into the engineer’s office aboard the
Samarkand
.  Things had been progressing fairly smoothly in the last two weeks.  FP’s second defensive ship, the
Maitland
, had just been released from yard workers, if one drydock slip could be called a shipyard.  The slip was little more than a rectangular box of steel, open on one end, allowing the ship to enter and exit, and giving plenty of room inside for the work crews and for any components that needed to be brought in.  This first slip was quite small, compared to the ships in FP’s fledgling fleet.  Neither
Grania Estelle
nor the
Samarkand
would fit inside, but the
Testudo
cargo ships and the corvettes would.  Three more of the
Testudos
had been build and set up with small crews of two, loaded up with small fuel orders, and processed materials and sent on their way to the planet to make deliveries.  Tamara had decided that in addition to picking up the payments due for the goods they were shipping to the planet or the orbital, the cargo ships would not fly back empty.  She wanted the crews of those ships to load up on foodstuffs to bring back.

              “What’s that, Galina?” she asked, looking up from the myriad of reports.  Paperwork never seemed to go away; in fact, it tended to multiply the more successful one grew.  Tamara remembered that from her time running a shipyard back in the old days.  She’d been spoiled working as Third Engineering Officer aboard the bulk freighter; she hadn’t needed to file or read a tenth of the amount of reports that she did now.

              “We just received a transmission from one of our buyers on the planet,” she said, holding out a data card and setting it on the table.  “Here is the recording.”

              Tamara grimaced and picked it up.  “I’m guessing by your tone that it isn’t good.”  She plugged it into the reader and brought up the file.  Her scowl grew even deeper as she saw it. 

              Suriaya’s round face appeared on the screen.  “Samair, what the hell?  I’m loving that A2 you gave to me, it’s been working great and really moving my business along.  I’m almost done with my third shuttle and then out of nowhere, a bunch of government suits show up and try to buy me out.  So I told ‘em to go away, I wasn’t selling.  I’d leased it from you.  So then, one of the bastards knocks me down and the next thing I know, they’re running off with my A2!”  She was fuming, so angry her face was turning purple.  “And then, as they’re loading it up into an airskimmer, there’s this shout and the whole thing melts down!  It was nothing but a bubbling pile of slag.  What the hell is going on, Samair?  You’d better call me back.  This is not the way I do business.”  And the communication ended.

              “What is happening?” Galina asked, her face showing worry.  “The government is trying to run us out of business?  Scare off our clients?”

              “No,” Tamara said, her tone icy.  “They’re trying to ‘confiscate’ the A2 replicators I just leased to all those clients.  Most likely for reasons of planetary security and so they can use them to make replacement parts for the
Leytonstone
.”  While she didn’t appreciably warm up, she did manage a small smile.  “Must have been an awful shock for them when the failsafes kicked in the A2s melted down.”  She pressed a few commands on the display.  “Another hour or so and the AI will be ready for implementation,” she said.  “Which will make for an interesting time.”

              The lupusan took a seat on the other side of the desk.  “One moment you’re extremely upset, and the next you’re smiling like a wolf in a herd of sheep.”

              “They’re trying to steal my stuff,” Tamara said, her voice like frozen helium.  “But in the end they get nothing.”  She pressed another command.  “We need to get confirmation that the government people are the ones who tried to steal the A2 replicator I leased to Suriaya.  Once we do, I’m going to destroy the ones I sold to them.  They are pissing me off.  Excuse me, Captain Korneyev, I need to prep my ship and make a few calls.”

              Galina nodded.  “Of course.  I’ll speak with Ms. Sterling.  We’ll take over while you’re dealing with this situation.”

              Tamara sighed.  “Thank you, Galina.  I know it’s been a stressful few weeks.  I was hoping that these replicators were going to bring in more income and help to jump start things.  It didn’t even occur to me that the government would swoop in and steal the things.  I was thinking more about corporate theft or pirates.”

              “Well, you’ve said before that you think that the government politicos are all a bunch of pirates,” Galina pointed out, sounding amused.

              “They tried attacking the company outright.  Now they’re trying this.  I think I need to get the lawyers on the line.”  She gestured.  “I’m sorry, but I really need to get them working.  And I’m going to have to get back there to deal with this.”

              Galina stood up.  “Understood.  As much as I would like to unleash the young security chief on them and let her have some fun, I think it more poetic and much more…” she thought for a second, “Vicious.”

              Tamara gave her a feral smile.  “That’s the idea.  Though I think
I’d
much rather lock them all in a room with a bunch of pissed off lupusan.”

              Galina flicked her ears in amusement.  “If not for my oaths I took as a doctor all those years ago, I think I might want to be one of those wolves in that room.”  Her amusement faded to malice.  “There are a few debts between us.”  She turned to leave, but then looked back to the woman seated behind the desk.  “Good hunting.”

              “Thanks, Galina.  Try and keep things afloat while I’m gone.”

              The lupusan waved as she walked out of the office.

              Tamara activated the comms, recording a message to be sent out to the law offices of Kay, Jo’zenit and Simpson, one of the most prestigious law firms in the system, which Vincent Eamonn had put on retainer upon
Grania Estelle
’s first arrival in the system.  While the captain had made it understood that he wanted to set up shop here in the Seylonique star system, no one had any idea of the scope of what “setting up shop” would come to mean.  However, Kay, Jo’zenit and Simpson had remained on retainer and were on hand to prepare business contracts and to otherwise keep things running smoothly.  And of course to take action when either Vincent or his COO Tamara needed the heavy end of the hammer dropped on someone.

              “Mister Kay, this is Tamara Samair.  A serious issue has come up concerning one of my business contracts.  It seems that the government sent goons to one of my clients and just walked off with one of the A2 replicator devices that the client had leased.  This activated the failsafe on the device, causing it to self-destruct.  No one was hurt, but I need you to look into taking action here.  If the government wants some of my A2s, they need to come to me, not bully or steal from my clients.  I’m leaving the
Samarkand
in the next half hour and heading into the orbital.  We need to discuss this and I wanted to give you a heads up.  If you need to contact me about this, you have my comm codes, call me on my ship.  I’ll see you seventy hours.  Samair, out.”

              There was one thing she needed to do before she would travel back to the orbital.  Heading to the computer core of the
Samarkand
, with Eretria Sterling and Galina in tow, Tamara moved with purpose.  The time had come, and she’d verified through the computer’s quarantined memory that the ship’s AI was ready to make its appearance.  Now came the time to truly bring it to life.  Entering the core compartment, Tamara stepped up to the console right in front of the ship’s mainframe, which had been expanded considerably to accommodate the large and growing company engineering database, as well as now the new AI.  Two rectangular columns of molycirc as tall as Tamara and slightly wider than her shoulders provided all of the grunt that the ship and the AI would ever need.  In fact, the amount that was already installed in the
Samarkand
rivaled the processing power of the
Grania Estelle
and the Kutok mine put together.  Perhaps, as time went by, another column of the densely-packed circuitry might be added to give the AI more control of mining robots or construction drones.  With the amount that was there now, the AI would be able to control fifty of each, which in conjunction with the organics working on the ship, they could churn out a good number of finished projects in a short period of time.

              “I’ve never seen an AI’s consciousness brought to life before,” Eretria commented.

              “No one has,” Galina replied.  Then she flicked her ears.  “Except for the crew of the
Grania Estelle
, the crew that came into Seylonique I mean.”

              “Ma’am, back in your day, was there an abundance of AI’s out here in the cluster?”

              Tamara sighed.  “It makes me feel so old when people say that.  But no, there weren’t a huge number of AI’s out here.  I think the trading station at Byra-Kae had one.”  She paused in her working of the console and looked across the compartment.  “I think there was one at Volarus.  And that of course didn’t count any ships that might have had one.  I know that Captain Eamonn mentioned once that he’d worked with one when he was younger.”  She turned back to the panel and pressed her thumb to the access port.

              And there it was, the AI’s core matrix, what appeared as a solid ball of code, which seemed to flow in and around and through itself.  Unlike Stella, who had been given a form that she would usually adopt when dealing with organics, this AI hadn’t chosen a form for itself.  When Tamara had brought Stella to life, she had influenced the fledgling AI to take on the persona that she eventually did, but Stella had added her own twists to her appearance, the red locks of hair, the purple stripes on her face, as well as the pigtails.  Tamara had an idea of what she thought the
Samarkand
’s soul would take, and she wondered if it would.

              Finally, she was ready.  The two females behind her were starting to get impatient, and Tamara couldn’t help but smile.  “AI,” she said, addressing the core.  “Initiate personality profile, sending recognition and activation codes.”  The small holo projector at the side of the room activated and the AI appeared; an amorphous cloud, a blob really, of lines of code, ever weaving and shifting.