First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3 (60 page)

“The frigate and the bulk freighter have gone active on their sensor sweeps,” Xoxix replied.  “They’re banging away like mad with their active scans, but they’re not changing course.  They’re still on a vector for the third planet.”

“Keep an eye on them.  They shouldn’t be able to detect our spysat and eventually they’ll calm down,” he predicted.  “And when they do, they’ll get complacent and lower their guard again.  Besides, our friends down on the planet will keep them plenty occupied.  And then we’ll be able to move in and snatch up a few fat, juicy prizes.  Hell, even if we can only get the small freighter, might justify this whole trip.”  Mogrin leaned back in his chair slightly, a smile spreading across his rugged features.

              “Entering standard orbit,” Isis reported, pressing a few more commands on the helm console.  “Done with engines.”

              “Thank you, Isis.”  Eamonn pressed his comm key.  “Ardeth, get your shuttles ready.  Leave shuttle two up here, but take the other four down.  Make sure that you bring Saiphirelle’s security teams with you.  I am not taking any chances.”

              “Understood,” the cargo specialist replied.  “I’m already in the boat bay and I’ve got the security chief already loading her people onto all the shuttles.”

              “Very well.  Keep me informed.  Bridge out.”  Vincent laid his head back against the headrest on the chair, looking at the overhead.  “I really hope that these security measures are unnecessary.”

              “I think you’re making the right call, Captain,” George told him.  “We want to keep our people safe.  And the cargo,” he said after a moment’s reflection.

              “I know.  But I feel like we’re overreacting,” Eamonn replied.  “I don’t like that we’re sending armed security teams down with our shuttles.  We haven’t needed to do that before in any serious capacity, even after they had that reactor explosion.”  He sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes with one hand.  “And now, because of some twitchy remarks, I’m sending down most of my security contingent, armed for battle.”

              George shrugged.  “I suppose if we show a strong enough front, if there
is
someone looking to start trouble, they would back off.  I know I would if I saw a fully armed and armored lupusan coming my way.”

              Eamonn snorted and the other crew members on the bridge chuckled.  “So would I.”  He nodded, slapping his hands on the arms of his command seat.  “All right.  We have shuttles that are going down to the planet and apparently there’s some kind of signal out there that we’re trying to locate.  Cargoes to load, sell and unload.  Work to do.”  He got up from the chair and headed for the hatch.  “Set normal in port watch, second section has the detail.  I’ll be in the wardroom.  Mister Miller, you have the bridge.”

              “Aye, Captain.”

              “Captain, I must say it is so good to see you,” Acheron Vall gushed, his image clearly showing the man.  He was in the study at the makeshift government office at the fancy house.  The governor himself, however, looked to be rather worse for wear.  His suit was rumpled, he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, in short, the man looked like hell.  He did look relieved, however.

              “I’m glad to be back, Governor,” Vincent replied.  “I have a full load of fuel and I am just aching to sell it to you.”

              He nodded, a little too quickly and enthusiastically, Vincent noted.  “That’s excellent news.  We’ve been having a serious shortage of He3 fuel.”

              Vincent frowned.  “Yes, about that, Governor.  I’m confused.  When we left, I made sure that your He3 storage tanks were topped up.  You also had shuttles and a fuel collector in the gas giant, all of which were perfectly functional.  That should have left you with more than enough fuel to see to your needs until our arrival here, even if you were running everything full blast.”

              Acheron waved a hand.  “Well, that’s neither here nor there.  I’m just glad that you’re here and that you’ve got that load of fuel we need.”  His eyes darted to the side and back to the screen.

              Vincent nodded slowly.  “Is there something wrong, Governor?”

              “Wrong?  Why would there be something wrong?” he asked.  “I was just concerned that we would have to start rolling blackouts soon.”  He looked off to the side of the screen again.  “I’m sorry, Captain.  I have another call coming in that I have to take.  I’ll have my people make sure that yours are welcomed at the landing pads and we’ll have the currency ready for transfer into your accounts.”

              Vincent put a small smile on his face.  “Of course.  Duty calls.  The shuttles should be heading down to the planet in the next half hour and I’ll be sure that my people are ready to receive your cargo handlers.”

              “Thank you, Captain,” the governor said, sounding enthusiastic again.  The relief was pouring off of him, as though some bullet had just been dodged.  Vincent wasn’t convinced it was just a metaphoric one.  “Vall out.”  And the screen went blank.

              Vincent looked over to the tabletop, where Stella was seated, cross-legged.  “What do you think?”

              “He’s nervous about something, Captain,” the AI confirmed.  “Pupil dilation, his rapid breathing, his appearance, all of it points to deception of some sort.”  She pursed her lips and frowned.  “I don’t know what he’s hiding or who he’s hiding it from, but he is hiding something.”

              “You think he’s lying to himself?”

              Stella blinked.  “I suppose, Captain.  I’m pretty good at reading people, especially humans, but I don’t think that’s it.”  She threw her hands up and then let them fall.  “I mean, I suppose he
could
be lying to himself about something, but why?  The amount of stress in his manners and his appearance indicate that he’s being bothered by something big.”

              “Can you rescan the conversation we just had?”

              She nodded.  “Done.  What am I looking for?”

              “Can you tell if there’s someone else in the room with him while he’s talking?”

              Stella smiled.  “Why Captain Eamonn, I am impressed by your devious nature.  Tamara would be impressed.”

              He grinned at her.  “Tamara is sneaky and she might have some tricks I’ve never seen before, but she hasn’t been making runs through the Argos Cluster for as long as I have.  I can still teach her a thing or two.”

              “I’m running through some scanning algorithms now,” Stella replied.  Then she shook her head.  “I can’t give much information, but yes, there is someone in the room with him.  I can detect noise of movement and breathing, and not all that far away from the vid pickup.  But as far as who’s there with him, that I can’t answer; I don’t know.”

              Vincent sighed.  That was disappointing.  Not the fact that Stella had detected someone, but the fact that she couldn’t give more information about whoever it was.  “Nothing?  Not race or species?  Male?  Female?”

              Her eyes narrowed, clearly she was giving it thought.  Was she giving it a
lot
of thought?  Enough that would warrant the five second delay, or was she just mimicking human behavior?  “I’m detecting two other individuals in the room, aside from the governor,” she said.  “There’s a seventy-two percent chance that one of those people is a human male.  I’m afraid that’s only coming from the sound of the breathing.  Aside from that?  I can’t tell.  There isn’t a lot of moving around, mostly just Governor Vall.  I’m afraid I can’t get any more information than that.  Not without more data.”

              “It’s all right, Stella,” Vincent replied.  He’d known it was a long shot when he’d asked, but there was always a chance that the AI might be able to pull off more information from the recording.  “I want to know what’s going on here, but so long as they keep buying our fuel and other parts, I guess it doesn’t much matter.”

              Stella frowned.  “But doesn’t it matter, Captain?  I mean, we don’t know what’s going on, but I know that you’re convinced that something is.”

              “You aren’t?”             

              “There’s enough subjective evidence from the Governor’s demeanor, the fuel situation and the other individuals off camera on the call to give a reasonable probability that there is something ‘going on’, to use your phrasing, Captain.  But whatever it is, how do we know it’s anything more than just internal political wrangling?  How do we know that it isn’t anything underhanded, just factions vying for control?”

              Now Vincent frowned in confusion.  “So if there’s political wrangling, and other factions are vying for control, you’re not concerned?”

              “You’re twisting my words around, Captain,” she replied, giving him a look and sticking out her tongue. 

              Vincent sighed.  “I think I need to have you remove that particular… affectation, Stella.  It’s really immature.”

              “I know,” she said with glee.  “It’s why I do it!  It’s so fun.”

              “All right, so you were saying?”

              “Spoilsport,” she pouted.  “All right.  I
am
concerned that something is going on, Captain.  But as you say, so long as someone down there keeps buying our fuel and our replicator time, I suppose as far as FP, Inc. is concerned, that’s the extent of what we care about.  But I know you, Captain.  And Tamara and the others on this ship and in this company.  We’re not just corporate vultures, caring only about where the next credit is coming from,” Stella pointed out.  “I know you care about people, about your customers and what people think about you and your crew.  If bad people are starting to take control of the government here, I know you’re going to want to step in and do something.”

              Vincent thought about it for a long moment.  Before Stella’s “birth”, before Tamara’s arrival, before
Grania Estelle
had been anything other than just an itinerant merchant ship, travelling from system to system eking out a living, he would have argued.  Back then, it was too dangerous to care about other people, about anything other than making sure the payment came in, the fuel bunkers had enough seawater and the systems were patched enough to get the ship to the next system, he didn’t care who he was dealing with, what their politics were or who
they
did business with.  Now, though…  “We’re trying to be respectable now,” he admitted.  “I don’t just represent myself and this ship; I’m representing the whole company.  And it
does
bother me that I don’t know what’s going on in this system.”  He took a long, slow breath.  “I want you to dig into this, Stella.  Get with Saiphirelle and see what the two of you can dig up about this.  Don’t let it distract her from her primary duties, but make sure that the both of you find out what you can.  I’ll keep talking to official sources from up here.”

              The AI nodded, getting to her feet.  Why she did that, Vincent couldn’t tell.  It wasn’t as though she was actually walking anywhere, and in fact he was quite certain that she was already working on numerous other projects while she was talking with him.  Keeping the reactor under control, even with all of Quesh and Tamara’s fine tuning, required her constant presence.  It was just another of many things that she did to maintain the illusion that she was a human girl, instead of an artificial computer construct.  With a nod, Stella turned on the spot and vanished in a puff of holographic smoke and a rain of holographic glitter.

              “Show off,” he said with a smile.

              As the cargo ramps of the shuttles dropped, GE Security personnel tromped down to the dirt below.  They were armored up in police-style chest protectors and helmets, armed with carbines, shotguns and sidearms.  They all looked very professional and were sweeping the area with their guns for targets.  Saiphirelle came out of shuttle four, her own weapon pointed and ready.  “Keep sharp!” she ordered.  After another moment of scans and she ordered the perimeters around the shuttles expanded and all of them pushed forward.  In the distance, the security teams could hear the whine of repulsors as
Silver Dawn
touched down.  The other cargo hauler didn’t have shuttles and with no space industry here on Heb, the ship had to land.  This actually made loading and unloading much quicker, since the crew didn’t need to keep the cargo hold depressurized and do everything in skinsuits.

              A pair of Ka’Xarian’s
Slk’vzn
fighters, or Visions as everyone was calling them, roared by.  The zheen engineer, always being clever had named the starfighters after a voracious flesh-eater on his homeworld, but everyone else (mostly humans) pronounced the name “slick vision”, which moved along in line with what the zheen had planned.  He’d been insufferably smug after everyone had figured out what he was doing as far as the naming convention was concerned.  The warbirds did lazy orbits, their engines screaming, mostly just looking threatening and keeping the sky clear of threats.

              “
Grania Estelle
, this is Sai, ground area looks clear, we’re going ahead with cargo unload.”

              “Copy that,” Serinda’s voice came back.  “Captain says to maintain caution.”

              “Yes, Mother,” the lupusan growled.  “We’ll be careful.  I’ll call for support if we need it.” 

              The landing area was the same one that they had used multiple times, bringing first fuel and then parts and then the whole structure of the first reactor.  There was talk about setting up a landing pad for fueling shuttles, but Vall had vetoed that idea, saying that he didn’t want shuttles flying anywhere near the reactor, visions of spacecraft plowing into the side of his shiny new fusion reactor and destroying the city dancing in the then acting-governor’s brain.  So the landing pad was moved to the northern edge of the city and the fuel would be shipped in by a fleet of trucks.