Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (73 page)

              “Really?  What kind of project?” he asked curiously.

              She smiled at him.  “A girl needs to have a few secrets, Frederick,” she said coyly.  He looked at her more seriously, and it was then that he noticed her eyes were like flint.  “And that’s all I can tell you for now, Captain Vosteros.”

              He stared at her for a long moment and then nodded.  “Something serious?”

              Tamara chuckled.  “Nice try, Frederick.”  She shook her head.  “Unless we’re talking about mining operations, or what you’ve been up to or something else, we’re done talking.  And that’s just the way it has to be.”

              Frederick nodded soberly.  He hadn’t seen her like this since they were on the
Grania
Estelle
and it had been overrun by pirates.  “Okay, changing the subject.  So what’s the story with the battlecruiser?” he asked.  “We saw that there’s some work being done on her as we came in.  About thirty or so people in EVA suits.”

              Tamara shrugged.  “Looks like someone finally lit a fire under the powers that be in this system to get the ship operational.  I think someone might be taking us seriously about the pirate threat out there.  Though it really annoys me that it really didn’t start moving forward until the Ulla-tran convoy came in and they were able to corroborate our story.”

              “So they’re buying parts from you now?”

              She shook her head.  “Nope.  In fact, I’ve heard not a peep out of the admins or the government concerning the
Leytonstone
.  They’re not buying parts from me nor through any shell companies or intermediaries.”

              “Well how do you know that?” Frederick asked.

              “Simple,” she said with a smirk.  “I’m not selling any.  Oh, a few parts for reactor and power systems to the station, but those are all accounted for.  In fact,” she added, “they’ve actually got two of the reactors online now.”

              He nodded, not really interested.  “Oh.  Wow.”

              Tamara laughed.  “I know you don’t seem to care, Frederick, but with the station stabilized, it’s a better all-around platform.  Refueling, commerce, and hell, liberty.  If it’s not going to fail, more people are going to want to come there.”

              “Like the UT’s?” he asked, slightly bitter.

              “Yeah, like the UT’s,” Tamara said.  “And hopefully others.”

              He frowned.  “Aren’t you concerned that by building this place up you’re essentially lighting up a beacon to the pirates saying ‘come here, free eats!’”

              Tamara shrugged again.  “It is something that hangs over what we’re doing here, granted,” she admitted.  “And I can’t say I’m not concerned.  But what else am I going to do?  Hopefully the locals will get the battlecruiser up and running to scare off any pirates coming in.”

              “You don’t really believe that, do you?” he asked, dubiously.

              “No, Frederick, I don’t.”  She shook her head.  But then she waved a hand as though to brush away an annoying insect.  “Now, tell me about Bellosha.  I only have a vague idea about the system.  Never went there back in the old days.”

              Frederick glared at her.  Clearly there was more to this, but she wasn’t willing to speak on it.  “Well, it was strange flying in this ship, had more than a few quirks to get used to…”

              “How we doing, Eretria?” Tamara asked later that day.  She had returned to the
Samarkand
, pleased to see that work on shuttle six was almost complete.  The team was also getting the fuel collector finished, and she nodded at it to the other woman.

              “Looking good, ma’am,” Eretria replied, wiping her hands on a rag she pulled from the pocket of her coveralls.  “Collector should be done in a few minutes, we just need to run a few tests and it’ll be ready to ship over to the
Redcap Madness.
”

              “Good,” Tamara said.  “And Shuttle Six?”

              “About another eight hours,” Eretria replied, gesturing to the nearly completed ship.  “Running down a few bugs in the navigation software, then a final shakedown and it’ll be ready.”

              “Excellent.”

              “Oh, ma’am?” Eretria called as Tamara started to turn away.  She turned back.  “McCallum Ross called a while ago.  They wanted to discuss personnel.”  The dark-haired woman frowned.  “You sure you want to bring in so many new people, ma’am?”

              “I’ll admit to being a bit nervous on bringing in so many all at once,” she admitted.  “But we’re already up to thirty and things are moving smoothly.  But work hasn’t steadied out, it’s actually increased.”  Eretria nodded in acknowledgement.  “So, we have to expand to keep up.”

              “Do we?” she asked.  “I mean, ma’am, we have a monopoly on things up here right now.  No one else has a ship or shuttles or tugs, or hell, people in space.  If we keep things small and tight for a little while, build up a bit more, get the first section of the gas mine operational, we’ll be in a much better position to bring people in.  We’ll be at triple fuel capacity from what we’re at now.”

              Tamara nodded.  “Yes, we would.  But I want the technicians already working on the station, contracted and locked in with us during the initial build phase up until and after the first section goes online.  I want things to be smooth; I don’t want a month’s downtime and slowdowns on the mine because we have to train a whole new troupe of people.”  She paused.  “And then there’s Phase Two to consider.”

              Eretria tipped her head to the side.  “Of course.  Sorry.  I didn’t think.  With Phase Two we would need more people.  In fact, two hundred wouldn’t be enough.”

              “No,” Tamara said, “it wouldn’t.  But it’s a start.  I also don’t want to hire on a thousand people and have two thirds of them die in accidents and sloppiness because they have no experience working in space.  With the thirty we already have and the training these new ones are going to go through, it’s manageable.  I’d like to have as low a casualty rate as we can.  And by that I mean zero.”

              “Understood,” Eretria said.  “Do we have suits for that many people?”

              “Not yet,” Tamara admitted.  “I want them through the first two weeks of training before I start making them.  Those that wash out aren’t getting them and I’m not wasting money and resources, or replicator time on those who can’t hack it.”

              “I understand,” Eretria said.  “We’ll get it done, ma’am.”

              The hiring and training process went smoothly enough.  Word about Tamara’s operations had spread and quickly and there was no shortage of applicants.  Winnowing down the list took about a day to get the three hundred candidates Tamara wanted.  They were in a having their training in a rented warehouse planetside, learning the trade for optical welding using the laser welders Tamara had replicated.  She needed good, strong dedicated people willing to work in space in very dangerous conditions, but the pay was commensurate to those conditions.  They would learn the basics of welding first, then work up to suit training and finally, working in space.  She had a two month training course set up, a brutal course designed to weed out those who were looking for a decent paycheck from those who could actually do the job.  Tamara also hired an additional twenty-five technicians who had begun training on maintaining and operating the gas mine, wanting to make sure that anyone working there would be ready and able to keep the fledgling facility up and running once it was.  For now they would be stationed groundside until the first section of the gas mine was ready to receive them, which at the current rate of construction would be another five weeks. 

              After another four weeks of training, eighty-six of the candidates for the welding teams had been cut from the program, unable to handle the sheer stress of the training.  There was much more math and special awareness problems that the candidates had expected.  Tamara and the other instructors had them doing practical problems, actually welding of course, but there was a fair amount of skull-sweat involved in this training.  And with that came a great deal of griping, though thankfully only two of the candidates were foolish enough to complain in front of the instructors.  After those two were viciously dressed down by Tamara and the other instructors, no one dared to do so again.  They were here to work.  This was a job, one that paid well, but the dangers were also great.  Tamara didn’t want to keep anyone who didn’t want to be here and who wouldn’t pull their own weight.

              Work on the station progressed.  With ten of Tamara’s team working as instructors, it meant that the work was slowed but they were continuing to move forward.  They were only a few days from bringing the station online and the new station’s crew had shuttled up to the mine.  They’d been there for a week now, once the internals had been installed and the station itself buttoned up.  The station was completely raw looking, little more than a pair of massive plates connected by spun carbon fiber nanotubes.  The upper section was a collection of boxes on top of a metal plate, the boxes being a combination of living and control areas as well as the refinery and storage tanks.  The lower section also consisted of another large metal plate, with a series of collection tubes dipping down deep into the gas giant’s atmosphere.  On the plate itself was the secondary refinery and pumping modules both for sucking the particulates out of the atmosphere and to send it up to the higher section.

              All of the physical components were completed, it was just finishing up the control runs and tweaking the computer systems, making sure everything was integrated properly.  Once this first section was online, they’d be pulling up in a day the same amount of helium 3 as the collectors currently in orbit did in half the time it took the older collectors.  And the plans called for nineteen more sections to be built.  A massive amount of fuel would be available at that point, which would mean that many more projects could start up.  In fact, just having this one section up would mean that half again as much helium 3 fuel would now be available.

              When the newest crop of techs finished their training, all two hundred and four of them, Tamara turned them loose on the station.  Now that the plates were finished and the main control center for the gas mine was already up and running, it would be a much easier process to get the other sections built.  Tamara was having them work on sector eleven, which was on the far side of the lower plate to balance the whole thing out.  Once that was completed, she would be pulling the bulk of the techs back to work on other projects, while the remaining forty would continue work on the remaining sectors of the gas mine.

~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~

              While the station was coming online, Tamara started asking around for zheen that would be interested in flying.  She had outfitted the cargo bay of one of the shuttles with five simulator pods, which had to be crammed in tight but left a small amount of room to move around with a small auxiliary reactor to power them, so as not to drain the shuttle’s own power supply.  Later, once the second section of the gas mine was up and running, a full hangar bay would be built to accommodate an entire wing of starfighters.  It would be rather empty with only six fighters, but eventually, it would be holding two squadrons of fighters, for a total of forty ships.  That many ships would give anyone looking for mischief some pause.

              Vincent Eamonn had left behind the six pirate fighters, which right now were taking up space in the
Samarkand
’s main cargo bays.  For now, they would stay there since there was no place else to put them, and neither he nor Tamara was comfortable with parking them on the orbital station.  The cost notwithstanding, they suspected that anything not under constant guard might be vandalized, if not outright stolen.  There were some reputable establishments, like the bank Ganner and Saiorse, and a few other small businesses, but Tamara didn’t trust that the admins wouldn’t decide that they would appropriate her fighters.  So, for the immediate future, they would be parked in the cargo hold of the freighter.  Later, a dedicated boat bay would be built for them on the gas mine, to offer the pilots and ships a home and a degree of protection for the mining station.

              Finding people that had the aptitude for combat piloting wasn’t as easy as Tamara had hoped.  There were a lot of people on the station, but with the lack of any serious traffic in the system until recently, it wasn’t as though there were spacer bars full of pilots just sitting around looking for work.  The fact that she was limited to finding zheen pilots only limited things further.  It would cost more in time and resources to reconfigure the fighters for humans or other races, so Tamara had decided to stick with the insectoids.

              She posted advertisements on the station net, as well as in the Union hall.  She spoke with patrons in some of the drinking establishments, she even spoke with people in the hangar bays.  At this point, anyone with the least amount of interest would be considered.  Training was something she could give, right now she just needed bodies to fill the starfighter cockpits.  After two days of waiting, really spending more time than she wanted to on the orbital, potential recruits started trickling in.  She was looking for twenty possible recruits, wanting to winnow that down to ten, allowing enough backup pilots for the ships.  As space became available, she intended to construct more starfighters to defend the mining station, but for now, she wanted to have a few more pilots on deck and ready if needed.