Running With Argentine (2 page)

Books by

William Lee Gordon

Running With
Argentine

(
Watch
a visual flyby of the mystery ship
they discover)

My
Friend The Emperor

Here Comes Earth
(series)

Book I:
Emergence

Book II:
Destiny

Book III:
Diaspora

For more information

and to register for New Release
notification

visit the website at:

www.WilliamLeeGordon.com

(Take a
visual flyby
of the ship that Argentine and his crew discover)

The universe is incredibly old…

Galaxies started forming over 13.8 billion years ago. There
are now over 100 billion of them that we know of…

Inside those galaxies, stars began to coalesce… and through
all those billions of years new stars have continued to form… Any given galaxy
can hold 100 thousand million stars.

Around many of those stars, multiple planets form. And on a
percentage of those, life emerges.

Each star can support planetary life for billions of years.

Each of those planets is capable of sustaining tens of
millions of generations of life.

Each of those lives forges its own story.

So there are potentially a trillion trillion individual
stories that make up our universe…

This story focuses on one.

An
Obscure Uninhabited

Star
System

No one ever called First Officer Francis ‘Frank’ Argentine
by his given first name. The last two people that tried it had gotten a rude
awakening.

The first one had backed off and apologized. The second had
taken umbrage and accepted the first officer’s challenge to dance.

It had cost them both two days in the hospital, but the
result was that no one ever again called him Francis.

Actually, no one called him Frank either. Everyone on the
ship called him
First
and everyone else called him Argentine.

He was a tall, almost ruggedly handsome man; or at least his
features were mostly symmetrical and his face didn’t carry any disfiguring
marks.

What you wouldn’t realize unless you knew him was that this
stocky, relatively quiet man with the piercing blue eyes had the heart of a
teddy bear.

That’s not to say that he loved, admired, or respected
everyone and everything around him; most of the time he hid his good nature
quite well.

“You know it’s going to happen someday,” said Chief Engineer
Carlton West. “Someday I’m going to pop that pompous SOB right in the mouth. I
don’t know how you’ve controlled yourself this long.”

He was either talking about Captain Samuel Underhill Kerry
or the Political Officer, Ernest J. Bloomington. It didn’t really make any difference;
they were both pompous jerks.

“And what good would that do you?” asked Argentine. “They’d
just ship your butt off to Macklin and you’d spend the rest of your life in a
small cell. Either that or they’d decide to save money and just space you.”

As was typical when Chief West was on a roll, he didn’t
relent easily.

“They don’t have any money to save,” he responded. “And
besides, isn’t Macklin prison in the Fargo sector?”

He had a point on both counts.

The Fargo sector had gone dark a month ago.

The rest of the Republic hadn’t had any communication with
it and there had been no traffic coming out of it.

The rumor was that it had seceded from the People’s Republic
of Chezden.

Normally, such uprisings would be put down immediately.
Warships like this one would have been sent to brutally suppress the
secessionist. The problem was that parts of the fleet were starting to go dark
too. But then that was to be expected when nobody had been paid for five
months.

The People’s Republic of Chezden was falling apart.

It’d been a long time coming. The People’s Republic was not
large as far as stellar empires go; it claimed to encompass a thousand stars
but everyone knew that only a little over eighty of them were populated.

170 years ago a lunatic named Syed Franklin had wandered
into this sector of space from up spiral. He had found a relatively peaceful
association of planets involved in mutual trade and quietly pursuing their own
prosperity.

In other words, he’d stumbled across a bunch of parochial
rubes that were more concerned with their own families than they had been in
any political machinations.

With such naïveté and only an insignificantly small
percentage of the population paying attention, he had proceeded to take
advantage.

Syed’s political rise followed the usual course for such
oppressors. There was no single revolutionary moment, but rather a long slow
succession of incremental victories over individual and planetary rights.

Sowing dissent and manufacturing grievances he had quietly
started turning the factions against each other.

Finally, violence had broken out.

This, of course, had required a much stronger government…
and if the people had to give up some of their freedoms to ensure their safety,
so what?

Eventually he would create and foment outside threats to add
to the internal turmoil.

Throughout all of this his popularity kept rising. He had
actually managed to convince the majority that he was simply warning them of
these previously unnoticed injustices in their society, not causing them. Since
that same majority had paid little attention to the political world around
them… it wasn’t difficult.

It would be impossible to say when Syed actually took total
control, but the People’s Republic of Chezden was founded 154 standard years
ago.

It had been a living hell ever since.

ΔΔΔ

By the time
Frank Argentine was approaching adulthood there weren’t many attractive career
options.

He didn’t have any family connections but he was big enough
and athletic enough that the military would consider him. Not only would this
insure him of a government job but it helped satisfy what he thought of as his
patriotic duty.

After all, he’d grown up with all the propaganda about
serving the People’s Republic.

It hadn’t taken him long, however, to figure out that it
wasn’t really a republic, and that
the people
had very little to do with
it.

By then he was fully trapped into a career that he belatedly
realized he despised. His only consolation was that many of his fellow arms men
were just as disillusioned.

So he survived.

Like everyone else he had played the game. Right at three
years ago he had found himself assigned as First Officer to the People’s
Republic Ship, Pelican.

At first, he’d thought the promotion would make his life
easier. He’d quickly discovered, however, that when a ship was captained by a
political appointee, a first officer’s life was pure misery.

Not only did he have to run the ship, but he also had to put
up with the ineptitude of the Captain and the insane ramblings of its Political
Officer. Their constant interference and conflicting orders had made running an
efficient ship all but impossible.

About a year ago he’d had an epiphany…

 An epiphany that had made his life much easier.

Trying to be loyal to both the Captain and the Political
Officer was not only leading to a non-battle worthy ship, it was turning his
stomach. So he’d decided he owed his allegiance to neither.

And he was prepared to break all the rules to protect that
non-allegiance.

Now, when the Political Officer asked if one of his insane
proclamations had been carried out Argentine responded with, “Yes sir. Your new
policy has been implemented and the men are carrying out your wishes!”

When the Captain had ordered another round of needless
uniform inspections Argentine had said, “Yes sir. I’ll start implementing them
immediately!”

When the Captain and the Political Officer inevitably issued
conflicting orders, instead of trying to please both, he played them off of
each other. He would purposely carry out the Political Officer’s orders in
front of the Captain or vice versa.

“Yes Captain. I know you ordered all department heads to
attend your daily briefings but Political Officer Bloomington countermanded
that order because it interfered with his Political Education classes. Quite
frankly sir, I’m not sure the political officer really respects you.”

“Minister Bloomington, I don’t think I’m supposed to tell
you this but the Captain has suggested that his authority exceeds yours. I hope
I’m not speaking out of turn, sir. But I thought you should know.”

Argentine had half expected to be caught in his gamesmanship
right away. It was a true reflection of how disillusioned he’d been that he
really hadn’t cared.

Amazingly enough, the crew had enrolled in the unspoken
conspiracy and backed him up no matter how absurd his gamesmanship grew.

He’d even overheard some of the crew complaining about his
fictitious uniform inspections… within earshot of the captain.

It had really become quite fun.

Frankly, even with the crew’s help, Argentine was amazed
that he’d gotten away with it for as long as he had. But since the captain
rarely inspected the ship and the political officer never left the Officer’s
Deck it hadn’t been too difficult…

And it had certainly made Argentine’s life easier.

Of course, he’d needed some overt help to pull it off.

That’s where Chief Engineer West came in…

They’d been friends ever since Argentine had caught the chief
requisitioning three times the replacement parts he’d needed, and four times
what he’d been allowed. Argentine new that it wasn’t necessarily an unusual
practice and that many of the parts could be sold on the black market, but the
chief had been vociferously unapologetic. He’d insisted that if he didn’t order
parts in triplicate he might not even get one, and yes, extras that were sold
allowed him to bribe supply officers, and others of more ill repute, to get the
parts that otherwise he never would have received at all.

In the end it was all he could do not to laugh. The Chief
was still loudly proclaiming his virtue when Argentine had just walked away
shaking his head.

His other real friend on board was Astrogator Samantha
Parker.

‘Sami’ was already onboard when Argentine had been assigned
to the P. R. S. Pelican three years ago.

She had fascinated Argentine…

Not because she was attractive, which she was in a weird
ditzy sort of way. She was lean but not skinny. She had overly large blue eyes
and blond hair… at least she was light complected and the short stubble on her
head looked to be blond. Like all astrogators, she kept it very short so she
could wear the yarmulke-like skullcap that let her interface with the ship’s
astrogational computer.

No, she fascinated Argentine because she was so smart that
she lived a rich life inside her own head. This created quirks in her
personality that he found down right endearing - in an almost fatherly sort of
way.

She was also seemingly oblivious to the arrogance,
put-downs, and insults of the Captain and the Political Officer.

They hated her because she could out-think them six ways to
Sunday - and didn’t possess the social tact to hide it. But she was far too
valuable to discard, so instead, they constantly treated her like dirt and did
it in a very public way.

When Argentine had realized that she was a good kid caught
up in a bad situation, he had taken her under his wing. There wasn’t a lot he
could do publicly, but privately he’d protected her – and the rest of the crew
had noticed.

With newfound confidence Sami had bloomed and her
professional competence was soaring to even higher levels.

At Argentine’s suggestion she had stopped showing off her
talents to the ship’s command, but her constant practicing and enthusiasm now
had her simulation scores off the chart for astrogational competence.

Now it was just a matter of keeping it a secret.

Unfortunately, the Pelican was a small ship.

She carried a complement of 23, with seven of those being
the Weapons and Security Officer (WSO) and his six troops.

As a matter of fact, the WSO was the only other member of
the crew totally loyal to the regime. Lieutenant José Stark was a man of quiet intensity.
The kind of intensity where you just knew that he’d as soon rip your arm off as
shake your hand.

Lieutenant Stark reported directly to Political Officer
Bloomington. So while the Captain was nominally in charge of the ship,
Bloomington wielded the real power. Which is a screwed up way to run a ship…
but then that was the People’s Republic.

The rest of the crew was pretty much ambivalent.

They went along with whatever protective schemes First
Officer Argentine came up with but he was under no illusions. It was more out
of self-interest on their part than any loyalty to him. Most had long ago had
their sense of duty burned out of them and were far too cynical and resigned to
offer any of their own resistance.

Not that Argentine thought of what he was doing as
resistance; but at least he wasn’t so beaten down that he was ready to roll
over and play dead… yet.