First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3 (62 page)

              “You should have called it in to me,” Vincent pointed out, the anger in his face altering.  It was changing to more puzzlement.  Then he huffed out a breath, irritation back.  “All right, what did you see?”

              “What I saw, Captain,” she said slowly, drawing out each word, most likely just to increase his ire, “was that after we loaded up three trucks, two of them headed back in the direction of the power plant, but one of them drove off in completely the opposite direction.”  One of Vincent’s eyebrows shot up at this news, but he didn’t interrupt.  He gestured for her to continue.  “So I rerouted Shuttle Four here to get a bird’s eye view of that truck and find out where they were taking all that fuel.”

              “And?”

              She pulled out a datacard from her vest pocket.  “I have the shuttle’s sensor and camera feeds right here.  They sent it to an industrial complex on the west side of the city.  Now, I have no idea what that place is, who owns it or why they would reroute a third of the first shipment of He3 fuel to that location.  But as you say, that’s not my job.  You and Stella and George can figure that out.”  With a flick of her fingers, she tossed it to him and he snatched it out of the air.  “In three hours, we’re going to load up for the next round and head back down.  I want to get something to eat.”

              He tore his eyes away from the datacard, nodding slowly.  “All right.  Go.  I’ll follow up on this.”

              A day later, Vincent found himself seated in the wardroom, looking at George seated at the closest seat to him on his left, and Stella seated above the holo projector in front of him on the table.  Their analysis of the flight recorder and sensor data from Vision Ten as well as that from the shuttle hadn’t told him much more than he’d already known or had guessed.  “As far as where they were taking it, Captain, I can’t say,” George was saying.  “My teams and I have gone over the data and studied the city maps and technically that facility was shut down.  It
was
a factory complex at one point, possibly years ago, but it’d been abandoned quite a while ago.”

              Vincent sighed.  It wasn’t terribly surprising.  “Who owns it?”

              “No one, according to a few discrete inquiries I’ve made, Captain,” Stella answered.  “Though I guess the proper answer to that is the government.  It was closed and abandoned, and it reverted to city control at that point.”

              “So they just drove it to another government facility.”

              George made a throwing away gesture.  “If you want to call it that.  But there was nothing in that area that had anything to do with helium 3.  There was no reason to send that much fuel there.  They actually sent one more of the trucks that we loaded up on the third shuttle run there as well.”

              “Any idea why they might be sending it there?”  Vincent asked.  “I mean legitimately.”

              George sighed.  “I… suppose they might be using it as an alternate storage site.  But even that doesn’t make sense, Cap.  I mean, I guess they might want to make sure that they don’t have all their fuel in one place, in case of anyone trying to cause damage, but then they would then have to truck it all the way across the city to the power plant when they actually needed to use it.”  He shrugged.  “I can’t really see any good reason, Cap.”

              “Actually,” Stella put in, “I can.  They’re selling it.”

              Both men started in surprise.  “Selling it?  To whom?” Vincent asked.

              “Well,” she hedged.  “I don’t actually know.  But I did find this on one of my sensor sweeps.”  She held up one hand, palm up and a display appeared.  She flung it forward and the large displays behind Vincent lit up with the same information.  George chuckled; he always enjoyed Stella’s antics, as though she was a sorceress, conjuring phantoms.  “There’s another freighter here.  It looks like someone’s going to a reasonable amount of trouble to try and hide it, but Shuttle Four managed to pick it up as it was flying over the city.”  The image pushed in on a large building: a warehouse, or perhaps an aircraft hangar.  It looked as though it was taken at only just higher than ground level, which didn’t seem to make sense.  “As Shuttle Four was coming over the city, the cameras spotted this.  Organic eyes most likely would have missed it, but I found it.”  Stella looked smug.

              They turned to look.  “What kind of ship?” Vincent asked, peering at the image.

              She shrugged.  “It’s a cargo ship of some kind, but from this angle that’s all I can really get from it.  It’s a bad angle and it’s covered by that door and the size of the opening that we’ve got here.”  The shot was very small.  As the AI had mentioned, they could only see a small portion of the ship, enough to determine what it was, but not enough to actually get much in the way of details.  “But the interesting part isn’t so much the ship, although that is important, it’s that the ship is located here.”  An overhead map of the city appeared with a bracket around the hangar/warehouse where the ship was located and only a two blocks away was another bracket, showing where the fuel had been delivered by the wayward truck.  “Interesting coincidence that the ship is not that far from where they were bringing the fuel.”

              George frowned.  “All right, so I can understand the locals wanting to sell some of the fuel loads
we’ve
been selling them.”  The He3 fuel they’d been selling both to the people here in Heb and back in Seylonique, as well as what was flowing in the fuel bunkers on all the FP ships was incredibly pure.  It was why the company was able to fetch such a high price back in Seylonique.  “They’d be able to turn a good profit, but selling a
third
of their total fuel load?  That’s way too much.  If that’s what they did with the last load, it’s no wonder they’re nearly tapped out.”

              “But what about the fuel collector?” Vincent asked.  “Even if they did sell off a large fraction of the reserve, they should have been able to supplement it from there.”

              “No idea, Captain,” George replied, shrugging.

              Vincent mused on that for a moment.  Then he pressed a control.  “Bridge, this is the Captain.”

              “What do you need, Captain?” Serinda asked.

              “Open a channel to
Mondragon
.”

              “One moment, Captain.”

              “Captain Eamonn,” Leicasitaj answered, a few seconds later, his image appearing on the large monitors.  “How can I help you?”

              “Captain Leicasitaj, I know you were launching sensor probes all over the system earlier,” Vincent said, feeling irritation rising as he thought about it again.  He quickly tamped it down.  “How many was it, six?  Seven?”

              “An even ten, Captain,” the Romigani answered with a watery chuckle.  “And I’m not apologizing for it.  We’re getting a lot of good data.”

              “Good.  What can you tell me about the fuel collector we put in the atmosphere of the gas giant?  Is it still functional?”

              Some of Leicasitaj’s facial tentacles curled as he checked one of his off-camera displays.  “Yes, Captain it is.  In fact, the fuel bladders are full.  It needs to be emptied.”

              Vincent nodded slowly, his eyebrows in danger of touching he was frowning so hard.  “Thank you, Captain.  I’ve got my engineer sending a shuttle out there to collect it.  But this now makes even less sense than before.  They have shuttles; they should have been able to get to it.  Is there something broken?”  He put a hand to his forehead in consternation.  “This doesn’t make
sense
!” he repeated. 

              “I’ll see what I can find out, Captain,” Stella replied, her voice slightly softer than normal, as if she didn’t want to upset the man further.

              He sighed heavily, closing his eyes and drawing his strength back in.  “I know you will, Stella.  Captain,” he said, turning back to Leicasitaj.  “Keep up with your scans and your system-wide survey.  Would you please let me know if you find anything?”

              The Romigani considered his words for a long moment.  “Yes, of course, Captain.  I will.”  Then he ended the call.  His image vanished from the monitors.

              “What was with that hesitation?” George asked, puzzled and looking a bit hurt.

              “I think he was wondering if he should agree to my request, since he’s the commander of the security detachment for this trip and I’m just a lowly freighter captain.”

              George started.  “But you’re his boss!  The owner of the company.”

              Vincent snorted.  “But I’m also in the way.  He wants to be able to operate freely and he thinks he might not be able to do his job properly if I’m joggling his elbow.”

              “Joggling…  Captain, he works for you!”  George looked outraged.

              Eamonn nodded.  “Yes, he does.  But I hired him to do a job.”  He grunted.  “And now it seems I need to sit back and let him do it.  He’s right, I can’t be getting in his way, interjecting my opinions, despite my title.  He and Leader Stenlake need to work together to keep us safe, while I…” he trailed off.

              “You, Captain?” Stella asked gently.

              He growled, scrubbing his face with his hands.  “I… have to work on my own problems.  I have to work on getting this round of trades finished, then we head on back to Seylonique.”

              “Back home,” George replied, scratching his ear.

              Vincent nodded.  “Yeah.  Back home.”  He nodded to George, who grabbed up his datapad and walked out of the wardroom.  Stella watched him go, but then at turning back and seeing the expression on the captain’s face: pensive, moody, she blinked her eyes once and vanished.

              He wasn’t sure how long he was sitting there, staring at the tabletop. 
What the hell is going on with these people?  They start selling off fuel reserves to the point where they’re sucking their tanks dry by the time we get here with the next shipment.  They ignore the fuel collector, even when it’s filled to capacity and could keep them going.  And then the governor gets squirrely when I ask him about it. Perhaps I should ask him again.

              He pressed a control.  “Serinda, get me the Governor’s office, please.”

              Jodelle Sandusky, communications technician for Governor Vall’s office, blanched as the comm system lit up.  There was an incoming transmission from that big freighter.  It seemed that Captain Eamonn wanted to talk again.  She turned to her boss, who was slumped on the couch across the room, laying his head back, a glass of some sort of amber liquid in one hand.  She wasn’t even sure he was awake.

              “Sir?  I have an incoming call from the freighter,” she said hesitantly. 

              His head whipped up, a panicked look on his face.  “
Fletcher’s Dolly
?” he demanded.  Such a strange name for something so menacing.  “Is it them?”  He was starting to hyperventilate.

              Jodelle shook her head vigorously.  “Oh, no, sir.  Sorry. 
Grania Estelle
, up in orbit.”

              He put a hand to his chest, trying to remember how to breathe.  After a moment of little gasps, he raised a shaking hand with the glass to his face and threw back the rest of the drink.  He set the glass down on the seat next to him, his hand slightly steadier.  “What do they want?” Vall managed to croak.

              Jodelle shook her head.  “Their hail only said that Captain Eamonn wanted to talk with you, sir.”

              Vall let out a trembling breath.  Things had been going so well for so long.  There hadn’t been any sign of warlords or pirates in Heb in years.  In that time, Vall and the other governors (three others in total, one from the cities of Balambourgh, Shalatzi and Safe Landing) had managed to put a productive society together.  It wasn’t as high tech as some of the other civilizations in other star systems, but they
were
building.  And with the arrival of the traders on their interstellar ship, they’d been making good headway into constructing bigger, better and safer.  They were all cleaning up the radiation, treating the sick, even working on improving basic infrastructure.

              And now this.  They were still able to build and thrive, but now there was this new threat.  This was intolerable.  He rubbed his forehead.  “Fine.  I’ll take it.”  He hauled himself off the couch and padded over to the comm unit.  He shooed her out of the chair and she gratefully scampered away.  He plopped down in the operator’s chair, took a moment to try and compose himself, gave it up as a bad job and hit the “Connect” button.  “Captain, it’s good to hear from you again.  I saw that the fuel loads were delivered.  I must say it’s a great relief to see it being pumped into the bunkers at the power plant.”

              “I bet,” Vincent Eamonn replied.  “I’m glad that we were able to get here in time before your fuel bunkers ran dry.”  The man frowned and Acheron felt his stomach drop.  “But I do have a couple of questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

              Acheron sighed heavily, knowing exactly where this was going.  “Actually, Captain…”