Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (30 page)

              Vincent Eamonn sat at the table and let out a deep breath.  Looking away from the doorway, he went back to his sandwich, though he could not longer taste it.  He stayed for a few minutes longer, finished his food, quaffed his drink and then stood, awkwardly.  Bussing his tray, he shuffled and clunked his way out of the mess hall, but his head was held high.

              “What was all that about?” Stella demanded, appearing on one of the displays in the boat bay as Tamara walked in.

              “Not now, Stella, I’m not in the mood to talk about it,” Tamara barked harshly.  “I really don’t want to talk about that now.”  Her vision was tinged in red.

              “But why not?” the AI asked, confused.  She trailed behind Tamara on the various screens as the woman stalked through the boat bay.  “Tamara!” Stella bellowed through the speakers. 

              She stopped and turned to the display, a look of pure rage on her face, her hands rigid at her sides, her fingers splayed outward.  “What?”

              “Look at yourself!” the AI demanded, looking stricken.  “Look what you’re doing!  You just were incredibly rude to the Captain just now and you’re stomping around the ship like a raging beast.  Now what is wrong?”

              Tamara stood there, staring at Stella in disbelief.  The young AI was just sitting there on the display, arms crossed over her chest.  She raised her eyebrows.  “I’m waiting.”

              The engineer just stood there breathing heavily, not speaking, muscles in her cheek working, her fists clenching and unclenching.  “I don’t…”

              “And
I
don’t want to hear it, Tamara,” the AI spat.  “You’ve been brooding ever since I’ve woken up and every single time you see the Captain, you clench up.  And you’re like a raw nerve, just exposed and… and… burning!  And you won’t tell me why!”

              Finally, Tamara found her voice.  She turned away from the monitor, but she didn’t walk off.  But her breathing was still heavy, as though she had just been running uphill with the whole of the
Grania Estelle
on her back.  “You have access to the entirety of the security datanet and you ask me that?  You can’t just pull the answer and find out?”

              “I could,” Stella said, doing just that as she spoke with Tamara, but her expression didn’t change.  And with her implant’s ability to connect with the ship’s computers disrupted, the human would not know.  Could not detect what Stella was doing.  “But I want to hear it from you.”  And then the datafiles unlocked and unfolded and all the information flooded in.  And the AI saw it, she saw it all, saw and heard everything.  But she managed to maintain her stern composure.  She was a digital construct, after all.

              “No, you’ve already accessed the information, Stella.  Don’t lie,” Tamara told her.  “I know you accessed the information.”  She snorted.  “I programmed you, I know how you think.”

              “All right, so I know.  He betrayed you,” Stella said.  She frowned.  “He told the pirate Jax about your replicator access and how you were the one with the codes to get the restricted military technology.  And you’ve hated him as much as you hated the one who tortured you.  But do you know why?”

              Tamara bit her lip, scowling.  “I’m sure that bastard threatened to kill him.  Or to torture him the same as he did to me.  He
wanted
those replicators.  Even though he would have to trust that I would work them for him since I wouldn’t be able to give him the codes directly.”

              Stella nodded.  “He would have had to work through you; that’s correct.  I’ve scanned your implants and replicator codes and your explanation to the Armsman was correct.  You couldn’t have given him the codes.  And even if he’d torn the implants from your head and hooked them into his own brain, it still wouldn’t have worked.  But I’m getting off the point.  You’re only partially correct about the why.”

              Tamara blew out a breath and turned back.  “All right, Stella.  Out with it.”

              “Armsman Jax did threaten him,” Stella said, looking horrified.  But she carried on.  “He threatened to bring Taja into the wardroom, have her beaten bloody, stripped naked and raped on the wardroom table.  And Vincent Eamonn would be forced to watch and forced to listen, but be unable to do anything to stop it.”

              Tamara nodded.  “That’s about what I’d expected.”  She started to turn away.

              “That’s not all.”  The monitor blanked taking Stella’s image with it and then an image appeared on the screen, an overhead view of the wardroom, obviously taken from one of the wardroom’s security cameras.  There was Gideon Jax, standing up, one hand on his hip, the other on the tabletop.  Eamonn sat in his customary chair, looking defiant.  The camera angle put both men in the field of view, showing each of their profiles.  Even sitting down, the captain was a bigger man than Jax, but the Armsman’s presence made him seem much larger, even on a recording made months previous.

              “Beginning playback,” Stella said.  Suddenly, it wasn’t a frozen, static image. 

              “She’ll be screaming and whimpering and begging for it to end,
Captain
,” Jax was saying, a vicious sneer on his face.  Tamara was transfixed.  She couldn’t tear her eyes away.  “And I will make sure that every one of my men will get a turn.  I will pump her full of drugs and give her a blood transfusion if that’s what is necessary to prolong her suffering.  And rest assured, she
will
suffer.”

              “You monster,” Eamonn hissed.  “I have a
deal
with your Captain!”

              “But the Captain isn’t here,” Jax pointed out.  “And he charged me with looking after this ship and all the assets on board.  And I’ve discovered this great new asset that he is going to very much want.  And you’re standing in the way of me giving it to him, Eamonn.  Give me the replicator codes and show me how they work, or else I will begin.”

              But Vincent Eamonn, clearly distressed, simply sat up straighter and glued his lips shut.

              Jax beamed at him.  “The silent treatment?  Very well.  I can counter that.  I won’t just stop with your little cargo specialist.  That lovely little minx on the bridge, your dark haired communications officer.  I’ll throw them both to my men.  Some of the zheen would
love
to spend time with her.  And the other one, the screamer, who had to lose a hand.  I’ll give her to them.”  He tapped his fingers on the table top, putting his other hand down and leaning lightly against both.  “Very well.  You think your show of strength here will stop me?”  He gestured to one of the guards who turned, opened the hatch and left the wardroom.  Tamara couldn’t actually see him leave, but the sound of the hatch opening and him stepping through was clear on the camera pickup.

              Jax stood up straight, a triumphant leer on his face, crossing his arms over his chest.  His eyes blazed with power and contempt.  A moment later the guard must have returned, but this time he wasn’t alone.  Temmis Dendre, one of the environmental techs, a hard working spacer who had never harmed anyone in the twenty-six years she’d plied her trade on the spaceways, was pushed into view on the camera pickup.  The two guards moved from the doorway to take up positions on either side of Eamonn, as Jax fastened a grip on Temmis’s somewhat pudgy arm.

              “Tell me the codes,” he said to Eamonn, who still remained silent, but whose eyes Tamara could see were darting back and forth between the Armsman and the female tech.

              The Armsman drew a knife from a sheath on his arm.  “Tell me the codes.”

              Again the Captain remained silent. 

              In a movement so calculated, so slow and almost languorous, Jax changed his grip and pulled, twisting Temmis’s arm behind her back painfully and wrenching back, he caused her back to be pressed against his front.  She whimpered and went up on tiptoe to try and ease the pressure, but he didn’t release his grip.  With his free hand, he took the blade and raised it to the woman’s face. 

              “Tell me the codes,” he whispered, but his words were clear enough for the mic to pick up and he knew that Eamonn could easily understand. 

              Hands grabbed hold of the Captain, as the guards grabbed his wrists and pulled them painfully behind the chair, immobilizing him.  “It’s going to be all right, Temmis.”

              “Help me, Captain!” she gasped.

              Jax took the blade and jabbed the point into the woman’s cheek, enough to cut into the flesh.  She hissed in pain, but didn’t try to jerk away.  With excruciating slowness, Jax pulled the blade through her cheek and this time she did scream.  The wickedly sharp metal sliced through her skin like tissue paper and blood poured down her jaw.  Eventually, the blade made it to her mouth and with a flick of his wrist, he sliced clean through and out.  Temmis clapped her free hand to her face, wailing with pain.  With another twist of his hand on her trapped arm, he made sure she couldn’t get away, then sliced a very thin and shallow cut all the way across her throat.  This wound wasn’t serious, but it was long and it bled.  He hadn’t pierced her carotid arteries, though, it was just a long shallow cut. 

              “Stop it!” Eamonn bellowed, but the guards held him tight. 

              Another cut, a more vicious one this time and Temmis’s ear flopped to the table.  She was weeping opening, screaming in pain now.  He raised the blade again, but her stamina ran out and she collapsed against him in a dead faint.  He unceremoniously dumped her to the deck.

              He smiled at Eamonn who was cursing the other man.  “That was fun.”  Taking the communicator from his pocket he flipped it open.  “Bring in the next,” he ordered. 

              The hatch opened and one of the engineering workers, Paolo Nan, was roughly shoved inside.  Without missing a beat, Jax pivoted, stepped forward and stabbed the man in the gut with his blade.  Paolo gasped in surprise and pain and then collapsed to the deck as the Armsman wrenched the knife free.  “I will keep doing this until I run out of crew, Captain Eamonn.  You will tell me the codes.  The longer you hold out the more of the crew I will hurt.  And I will make them hurt more the longer you make me wait.”

              Tamara felt her blood burning, scorching her insides.  Acid bubbled up from her stomach and threatened to make her throw up.  Her temples throbbed and her fists were clenched so tight it felt as though her knuckles would burst.  Tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks but she didn’t even notice.  Her eyes watched the carnage as another crewman, one of the cargo loaders, and another, one of the power techs from engineering were brought in and brutalized.  Gideon Jax grew more ecstatic with each one and Tamara’s gorge rose higher, nausea threatening to overwhelm her.

              Finally, Vincent Eamonn had enough.  “Stop!” he demanded.  “Stop!  I’ll tell you.  Don’t hurt any more of them.  Get these to sickbay and I’ll give you what you want.”

              Jax looked over to the man, pinned in the chair by a burly human and a zheen.  “Tell me the codes and perhaps these won’t die.  I might let your Guura work on them.”

              Eamonn hung his head.  “One of my engineering officers, a woman, Tamara Samair, she’s the only one who can fully operate the replicators.  She’s the only one who has the codes to operate them and unlock the tech.”

              “There, you see, Captain?  Was that so hard?  I’m actually glad you decided to try and teach me a how strong you were.”  He swept his hand from one end of the room to the other, indicating the brutalized crewmen who were on the deck and mostly out of the camera’s field of view, though their moans and cries of pain were evident.  The smirk on his lips quickly grew to a grin.  Pulling out his communicator, Jax called in the guards to get medical teams in the wardroom immediately.

              The screen blanked again, to be replaced by Stella and the system status readouts for the boat bay behind her.  “So you see?  That’s what happened.  That’s why he gave you up.  But I don’t blame you for how you feel, Tamara.  What happened to you was awful.”  Stella looked as though she would cry.  “But how much choice did he have?”

              Tamara just turned and walked away, going over to the
Perdition
fighter which was tied down to the deck.  Climbing the access ladder, she popped the canopy by pressing her thumb to the data jack just below the canopy.  Once it was open, she climbed inside and it closed.  Keeping the computer systems off, Tamara sat in her cockpit, curled over to one side, and wept.

              Tamara woke to the sound of tapping.  She opened her eyes and was nearly overwhelmed with how stiff she was.  It took her a long moment to realize that she was still in the cockpit of her fighter and that she’d fallen asleep.  She sighed as the tapping continued. 

              “All right,” she said grumpily.  She reached over and pressed a control.  A small lever popped out of the left side of the cockpit, right below the armor glass.  Tamara pulled it and the cockpit popped open and then slid forward to allow her to exit.  She looked over and then recoiled in surprise.

              The silver and gray furred lupusan Saiphirelle stood on the ladder, one clawed hand raised.  “Good, you’re not dead,” she said huskily, and allowed her tongue to loll out to one side in a wolfish laugh.