First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3 (69 page)

              “Move in,” he hissed to the others.  “Secure the ship.  Make sure you get the bridge and the engine room.”

              “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.  “We’re a licensed trader from Seylonique, here on legitimate business.”

              “We’ll see about that,” the man replied smugly.  “But I hear different.  I hear that there is contraband on this ship.  I find so much as a bag of exotic potpourri on this ship, I will impound the cargo, seize the ship and imprison the lot of you.”

              “Captain, I just lost contact with the
First Horizon
,” the com-tech said, whipping around in his chair to face Tariq.

              He tapped a fist on the arm of his chair.  “Damn it.  Sound general quarters, everyone to action stations.  Get the shields up and power the weapons.”  Klaxons blared throughout the ship and he vaulted out of the chair.  He rushed to his stateroom (very near to the bridge) to put on his skinsuit and grab his helmet.  Things were about to get out of hand and he wanted to be sure he’d be protected in case of a hull breach.  In less than two minutes, he was back on the bridge, helmet in his hand. 

              “All stations report ready,” the XO called.  “Captain…?”

              “Go,” he ordered, indicating that the XO should hustle out and get his suit on.  “Comms, signal that ship, make sure that the ship’s company is prepared for high-g acceleration.  We might very shortly be in a battle.”  He had a ship’s name and reputation to uphold.

Chapter 21

              Tamara was going over the latest reports, trying to pick up where she’d left off after that last meeting.  They’d been experiencing some slowdowns in the shipyard, with a few of her workers suffering from a few injuries when a generator exploded inside of the engine room aboard
Persistence of Vision,
FP’s newest and most powerful warship, the Republic-class destroyer.  One of the workers had the generator on the wrong settings, it overloaded and fourteen techs were injured, with five dead.  That, of course, stopped production completely on that ship while Tamara, Nasir and Eretria did a full safety inspection and review of procedures.  This had a domino effect on the other destroyers currently under construction, which caused further ripples.

              The admin council had mixed responses to the slowdowns on the work.  On the one hand, the council was outraged at the delay, the missing of planned and promised schedules.  But, they were of course glad to see that the safety of workers was being reviewed, but then, why were these procedures not already in place?  What the hell kind of fly by night operation was Samair running out there? 

              The third reaction that Samair was getting was a level of glee.  Here now was proof that the outlander wasn’t perfect and that FP, Inc wasn’t this invincible juggernaut; the five dead workers, dead
citizens
proved that.  Which of course made it to the newsies in hours who were more than happy to jump on the story.  Within fifteen minutes of the information getting to the orbital, and then to the planet’s surface, every single news feed was talking about the deaths of those workers, the slowdowns in work at the FP shipyard, the review of security procedures.

              “This is Vanessa Marchant, with the S-Int News, reporting to you live from Orbital Station One.  It’s been five days since the explosion aboard FP’s shipyard and the death of five of their workers.  It’s been a scene of high emotion and quickly boiling tempers as the administratory council is reviewing the incident.  In a short statement just a few minutes ago, Triarch Kozen’ck had this to say.” 

              The feed clicked over to the zheen official, looking as though he had specifically primped for this particular interview.  The camera was catching him as he was walking into the council compartments, his official robes looking perfectly straight and ironed.  “I have full confidence in Ms. Samair and her people, but this tragedy clearly underlines why the government needs to take a serious look into safety regulations regarding major construction projects and especially with any industry in space.”  He raised a hand and pushed through the crowd of reporters and entered the admin compartment.

              “Well, there you have it, straight from Triarch Kozen’ck’s mouthparts.  It looks as though the government is not going to sit by and let this incident go unanswered.”

              Tamara scowled and pressed a control on her desk, muting the news feed.  She put her head on one hand, leaning her elbow on the desk.  It had been like this ever since the incident.  They’d been playing that damned clip of the Triarch as well as other talking heads nonstop, reporters blaming FP, blaming her, everyone claiming that stronger regulations were the way to go.  No one, of course, had any idea what those regulations should entail, but there were wild and rampant speculations that the days of FP being a corporate entity were coming to an end.  Soon it would be a government entity, and Tamara knew that this would be just an excuse to justify a takeover of all her facilities, though they’d probably start with just the shipyard.  Then, of course, you can’t have a shipyard without raw materials, so the mining station would be next.  And of course, you can’t run the constructs without reactors and those required fuel, so of course the Kutok mine would be up for grabs as well.  And that would be that.  She had to get a handle on this.

              The lawyers were already out in force, doing their best to try and squash this.  Tamara had unleashed them and informed them that in no uncertain terms that it was their jobs to get out there and earn the very large retainers that she was paying them.  They were in contact with the press and with the government over this incident, but so far there was no further movement on this issue for government takeover, no further public statements, and no backdoor overtures either.  The admin council was still working on what exactly their response to this was going to be, and until then, Tamara needed to make sure her own procedures were ready when they finally did. 

              Tamara made a few notations in her pad and then readied it in a communiqué she was going to send to the lawyers.  Full compensation and death benefits were going to be paid out to the families of the deceased and all medical costs were going to be paid for those injured.  The lupusan AI as well as the safety inspection people were going over that ship, as well as the others, with the finest grain scanners that they could, looking at every piece of equipment, every weld, every pane of armorglass, to make sure this sort of thing didn’t happen again.  She also made a note that every single replicator currently in use by the company (not including the numerous A2s that had been leased) was to have a full tear down and a 30, 60, 90 day maintenance performed.  There were not going to be any shoddy materials or equipment being built by this company.  Nasir was going to be reviewing the software for all of those devices as well, wanting to make sure no glitches had formed. 

              Tamara was determined that there would be no weak links in the chain.

              It took five days to get things straightened out.  Five days of answering calls from the admin council, demanding updates, demanding oversight, demanding to be heard.  Tamara answered each and every call, was forceful in some situations and deferential in others, but she absolutely refused to be bullied.  From the tone of the calls, it seemed that the council still had not come to a decision as to what they wanted.  Oh they were yelling quite a lot, making threats, demanding that FP answer for all of this, but nothing definitive.  Tamara had gotten word from her attorneys that the council was split on whether to try and move on FP’s facilities.  There was a small minority, only three votes that wanted to try and take over, the rest were still against.  Not because they didn’t want more control over the yard and the building facilities, but they were concerned that Samair might do something drastic if they tried to get them.  If they gave her an ultimatum and she defied them, even if the press did what they could to try and blacken her image, there would be large public sentiment that she was a hero who stood up to the establishment, there always was.  The last thing the government wanted was for her to be a martyr, even if she wouldn’t be dead. 

              “Things are getting moving again,” Nasir reported, appearing on one of the displays facing the armorglass ports.  “I’m pleased to announce that the new safety procedures are being followed and for now, the pace has only been slowed by about five percent.”

              Tamara nodded.  It was inevitable, she supposed, that an increase in safety would mean a decrease in productivity, at least at first.  Once her crews got themselves acclimated, hopefully speed would increase.  As it was,
Persistence of Vision
was at about 85% completion, needing only some internal systems and her weapons to be installed and integrated.  Technically, the ship didn’t actually need to be in the construction slip; the work could be done out in space with the ship running under its own power, but no one seriously was considering that.  Tamara had been recruiting like mad, getting enough people here and running them through her small training facility at the yard so that once the ship was ready to turn over, her crew would be ready.  Of course, those crews would be greener than green, and would take quite a bit of working up before they would actually be ready for any serious operations, but at least the ships would be out in space and flying. 
Mondragon
would be returning with
Grania Estelle
in a few weeks and Tamara knew that even the small amount of experience Leicasitaj and his people had gained in that trip would be a great help in educating the new warship crews.

              Work on the other destroyers had picked back up again as well.  They were all about sixty percent completed, with a few more weeks of work to get them operational.  The first of the payment vouchers had been received from the government, despite all the squabbling from the admin council.  They had delayed sending that first payment, probably just to see how she would respond, but it appeared that they finally decided that they didn’t want to get her all riled up about it.  She had, however, sent Kozen’ck a scathing communiqué (and copied the rest of the council on it) indicating that if payment didn’t arrive right away for the months that were due, then she would video the teardown of all of the hulls she had been building for them, and send a copy of that vid, along with a full disclosure exclusive to every news agency in the system, condemning them as blowhards and liars, people who would break contracts. 
That
most likely was what had lit a fire under them.  The vouchers arrived the very next day.

              The FP patrol vessels in the system,
Maitland
as well as her new sister ships
Eridain
and
Angara
, were moving around the Kutok mine and the asteroid mining station.  They kept on a regular patrol route, making sure that both installations were covered at all times.  One of the three would rotate between them every few days, allowing the crews of the three corvettes some new scenery.  War games and exercises were held once a week, pitting two of the ships against each other, and on the second week, Commander Korqath sent his Aplora squadron out to sortie with them, much to the shock of both ships involved.  The whole war game turned into an absolute disaster with the final tally of
Angara
“destroyed”,
Maitland
“disabled” and eighteen of the Aploras out of the fight.  Korqath’s fighter received enough simulated damage that had this been a real battle, he would have been the nineteenth casualty of his squadron. 

But the captains of the ships, as well as Tamara were pleased with the action, knowing that a lot more training would be needed.  The crews and officers were pleased that the bosses hadn’t been angry at the utter catastrophe this exercise had turned into.  They all knew that there was a lot of work ahead of them, but surprisingly, they looked forward to the challenge.  Knowing that they still held their officers’ confidence, knowing that they had tried their best, fought their ships to the very last made the failure a bit more bearable.  There was something strangely uplifting about this exercising.  They all felt as though they were part of a team now, a true fleet (small as it was) instead of simply a collection of ships.

Which was exactly what the officers and commanders were hoping for.  Further exercises would try to capitalize on that.  With the second escort frigate
Tsesudo
having completed her builders’ trials and shakedown cruise, she had taken up a wide orbit patrol around the Lagrange Point as well as the yard complex.  The third squadron of
Zlk’vzn
fighters, calling themselves the Twin Novas (because their lead pilot believed that only getting caught between a pair of supernovas could take his pilots down) had taken up residence in the expanded hangar at the yard.  They too were flying Combat Space Patrol around the yard complex, flying in pairs of two, no more than six fighters out at a time, except for during combat exercises. 

Things were starting to look downright civilized and protected, what with the ships and fighters and space industry.  There was a lot going on and it seemed that the people were happy.  Not just the workers or FP’s employees, but the actual population of the system.  Tamara didn’t go and walk the streets of the various cities, but from the stories she heard from passing technicians, speaking about home, or from Nasir’s daily reports, she could tell that at least some of the malaise was lifting from the people of this star system.  The ones that were working, at least, genuinely seemed to want to be working.  They weren’t slackers or layabouts, they were productive and happy.  Oh, there were a few like that, but Sterling and Nasir kept a close eye to see they were adequately covered, to make sure that their energies were properly focused.

In system trading was starting to pick up as well.  The promenade and commercial sector on the Kutok mine was up and running, and small shops had started to fill in the open areas; a food court, clothing stores, appliance outlets, entertainment vid-theaters, even a few sports arenas.  All of those shops needed goods, and those goods had to come from somewhere.  There were small businesses on the planet that supplied things, foodstuffs, athletic equipment, as well as the various items the shops would sell and a market was born.  Company
Testudo
cargo ships made trips back and forth to both the yard complex and the habitable world.  But other ships were coming up out of the atmosphere of that world as well. 

Galina Korneyev entered Tamara’s small office and sat down.  “Well, Tamara, how are we holding up?”

Tamara glanced up at her and smiled, making sure that she did so without flashing any teeth.  Galina had been working with humans long enough not to misinterpret the teeth, humans often showed teeth when they smiled.  Lupusan, as well as other predatory species, tended to interpret that as a gesture of threat.  But Tamara tried to be courteous to her lupusan colleagues whenever she could.  It was something that was noticed and appreciated.  “Well, I think our time as the only company out in the cold of space is coming to an end.  There are several companies building ships and shuttles out now; nothing hyperdrive capable, but still, there’s a lot of industry up here in space that the locals are starting to get a grasp on.  Even if right now all they’re doing is working within the parameters FP has already set, the ones that move quick enough are going to make a lot of money.”  She smiled more broadly, working hard to keep it non-threatening.