A Greater Interest: Samair in Argos: Book 4

by Michael Kotcher

  She chuckled. “It’s a big beautiful ship, Colonel. I don’t have the proper anatomy for us to compare sizes. Let’s just say that FP would have been in a very bad way had you decided to take us on.”

  He bridled a bit at her comment about comparing sizes. Gants took a deep breath, making a decision. “All right then, Ms. Samair. What did we do wrong?”

  “If it’s all right with you, Colonel, we should go over everything. What went right, what needs tweaking and what definitely went wrong.”

  The door to the ready room slid open and his steward, Perkins, stepped inside, pushing a small cart. A carafe of coffee, a pitcher of water, and several covered boxes were on the cart. “Colonel?” he asked, gesturing to the cart.

  Gants nodded. “Coffee, please, Perkins. And if the stories I hear about Ms. Samair are true, you should pour one for her as well.”

  She smiled at the steward. “Yes, please.” He was already handing her a steaming mug. She breathed in the scent. “Oh, that’s lovely.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” the man replied, giving a small bow.

  “You’re going to get him all puffed up, Samair,” the colonel replied, as Perkins poured him a cup. “Thank you, Perkins. But I think we two can manage on our own.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Oh and Perkins?” Tamara said as he was about to step back out.

  “Ma’am?” He looked back.

  “I know what it is that the government issues to the Navy for grub,” she said, gesturing to the open boxes of food and the carafe. “And you, sir, set a very fine table.”

  He beamed, flushing with pleasure. “Why, thank you, ma’am.”

  “If you’re ever hard up for work, give me a call. I can always use a man with your talents.” He toasted him with her cup and he flushed deeper.

  “Ma’am. Colonel,” Perkins said and then he left, the door whispering shut behind him.

  “Poaching, Samair? Really? You’ve been here only a few minutes and you’re trying to steal my steward?” Gants said, shaking his head.

  She shrugged. “He pours an excellent cup of coffee, Colonel.” Tamara took another sip.

  “Should we get started then?” Gants asked.

  Chapter 18

  “This is it, people,” Tamara Samair said, enthusiastically, addressing the personnel of First Principles, Inc, the Navy personnel, the Councilor and her entourage, even the couple of reporters from S-Int that had shown up in the outer system. She was seated in the copilot’s couch aboard Moxie-2, watching the ballet about to unfold. “Spin Day. I know we’ve done this sort of thing before, it’s old hat for you. So what do we do? We scale it up. So, Samarkand, this is your show. Everyone else, get comfortable.”

  And the show began. Tugs under automated control moved into position around the molten ball of steel. Ten of the small, blocky ships moved into a formation equidistant around the the equator of the ball of metal. The plan was to spin and flatten out the ball of metal so that it would be on a plane edge on to the sun, to lessen the effect of any solar radiation and, in theory, speed cooling. It wouldn’t be much, but even cutting a couple of weeks off the cooling time would benefit in the long run.

  After about a half hour of maneuvering, the ships were in position and ready. “Activating tractoring beams,” Nasir’s gravelly voice announced. On sensors, the ten ships suddenly had a blue line, then a cone connecting them to the image of the metal ball. “Beginning rotation. Maintain fire from heaters, adjust as necessary.” The heat had to be maintained and adjusted as the metal was spun, in order to keep it from cooling too quickly.

  The tugs started to move, ever so slowly, never breaking formation, all of them under the control of the AI. Tamara wasn’t worried about his precision, she knew that the engineering AI could handle the job. After a few minutes, they started moving faster and the sensors registered that the ball was starting to move.

  “How long do you think it will take, Ma’am?” the pilot asked from the next couch over. Moxie-2 was holding position a good distance apart; Tamara wanted to be sure that she was well away from where the action was, as well as staying out of the regular shipping lanes. It wasn’t all that hard, space was big and there were plenty of places a small ship like this one could stand off and still see the work.

  “Not really sure, Mike,” she said truthfully. “I know that the disks we spun up for the walls of the slips in the shipyard didn’t take more than a few hours to actually stretch once the spin got going. This one is considerably bigger. I could guess, but I’d be just that. Three or four hours maybe to get it going, and then after that two or three more to get up to size.” She shook her head and shrugged. “But I really don’t know. Nasir’s got it though. He’s got to start it moving slow to make sure it doesn’t wobble and deform, but once he really gets it going it won’t actually take that long to expand to the size we want.” She she sighed. “It’s just the weeks of waiting for it to cool that will be a pain.”

  He glanced over at her. “Anxious to get started, Ma’am?”

  She snorted, looking over at him. “Mike, I understand that I’m your boss. I get that. But we spend a fair amount of time together, and everyone calls me either Ms. Samair or Ma’am. Do you think it might be possible that you could call me by my name?”

  The man looked horrified. “I’m not sure, ma’am. It wouldn’t really be proper.”

  Tamara smiled at him. “When have you known me to be doing things that were proper?”

  “A point, Ma’am,” he replied, looking back to his controls. “And I know the government types and the Navy people and what have you don’t like your way of doing things. Upsetting the mango cart and all, the established way of doing things. So far it’s worked out pretty well for you and the rest of us who follow you. But you haven’t been cheating your customers, or cutting safety corners or screwing over your workers. And despite what some of the newsies might imply, you’re not… I mean.” He looked flustered.

  Tamara looked puzzled, though she had an idea of what he was referring to. “I’m not what, Mike?” she asked gently.

  The pilot looked away, gluing his gaze to the display in front of him, showing the ever accelerating (albeit slowly) ring of tugs around the metal ball. He was quiet for a long moment, but Tamara didn’t rush him. She had a feeling he would speak if she just stayed quiet. She only hoped that the guards in the next compartment would keep quiet long enough for him to say his piece.

  Finally, it seemed as though he made some sort of decision and he spoke. “They fall back on the same arguments and insults that people tend to use when a strong woman shakes up the establishment. Calling you… an impure woman.”

  A laugh forced itself unbidden from her throat. “An impure woman? I don’t think I remember being called that before. That has got to be the most old-fashioned insult ever directed at me. And I’m almost three centuries old!” She laughed again.

  “You know what I mean, Ma’am,” the man replied awkwardly, face flaming. “That you’re some kind of whore, that could have only achieved what she has by sleeping with anyone, man, woman, or alien, that she needed to to get to the top.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you won’t use my name, Mike.”

  He squirmed a bit on his pilot’s couch. “It… it just doesn’t seem right. You’re my boss and you pay me to do a job. Getting all familiar… well. It’s just not proper.” He gritted his teeth. “And because of those terrible things that they call you, I feel wrong trying to refer to you as too familiar. I don’t want it to look as though I’m not being respectful.”

  “Well, I thank you for your gallantry. But in private, or at least here on the ship, please call me by my name. I get insulated from any sort of really friendly presence because of my position. Would you do this for me, please?”

  It amused her that the man actually took a moment to think about it. “Yes… Tamara, I think I can do that.”

  She was grinning at him. “That really hurt, didn’t it?”<
br />
  He shuddered, then smiled. “More than I can express, Tamara.”

  Finally, after hours of waiting, the expansion was noticeable. The tugs had pulled back from the flattening disk but would occasionally latch back on and give the disk another nudge, always in complete unison. It wasn’t long before the disk was up to a proper speed and expanding on its own. The tugs backed off but stayed close.

  “Looking good,” Tamara muttered to herself.

  The disk had already reached a diameter of eleven kilometers and showed no sign of slowing down. It passed thirteen, then fifteen kilometers, and at eighteen, the next phase of the show began. Nasir had another dance of the tugs start slowing it down and right on cue, the heaters deactivated. It was impossible for Tamara to tell with her Mark One Eyeball that the expansion was slowing, but the sensors were clearly showing a 0.05 percent decrease in the rate of expansion. And that rate of deceleration was increasing. The tugs continued to keep pace with the leading edge of the disk; all of the tugs activating their tractoring beams simultaneously but only for a fraction of a section each time, putting just the barest amount of friction on the edge of the spinning metal. Over the next two hours, the dance continued and all parties not directly involved watched in fascination as inexorably, the metal shield finally stopped growing in size and came to rest.

  “Final count, twenty-two point four kilometers in diameter,” the lupusan AI reported over the comms to the assembled audience. “Current thickness is one point six four eight kilometers. I expect some degree of contraction, which I will monitor closely over the next few months as the disk cools, but it shouldn’t be unmanageable. Thank you all for your patience and your attention.” Nasir signed off.

  Tamara slumped back into the couch in the main compartment, having retreated there hours before to get more comfortable. All of the guards, save Viktoriya, had piled onto the couch near her, as well on on nearby chairs to watch the display. The sisters told stories of their time in the army, of bivouacking in terrible places: the desert on the southern continent on the habitable world, the forests of Vimera (which had bugs the size of dinner plates, and snakes that could eat a lupusan), and on the fever island of Cotalina. Calvin, not to be outdone by a pair of wolves, told a ridiculous tale about how he and his platoon had chased an oxcart with an atomic bomb in the cargo area through the passes of a mountain for a week, as the ox was so frightened of the platoon of soldiers it kept running until finally, the ox twisted its ankle on some loose stones, allowing Calvin (the hero of the story, of course) to leap atop the wagon and yank on the reins, bringing the beast to a stop.

  Redfaced from laughing, Tamara asked, “So why didn’t you just shoot the ox? I mean, the poor beast and all, but there was a nuclear device!”

  Calvin blinked, drawing out the tension. “Well, Ma’am, I couldn’t risk it. Those mountain roads were fearfully narrow and I was afraid if I shot it and it panicked, or reared, it would tumbled over the edge and the device might go off, or crack the casing or a hundred other terrible thing. So we just had to keep chasing the big beastie until finally he got too tuckered out to run.” More laughter.

  For long hours, there really wasn’t much to see, other than the tugs moving around the metal ball. Once it got going, though, it moved quickly and they were all impressed. Tamara had known what to expect and the giant metal disk still made her nod in appreciation. “Going to be a lot of work, building that thing up.”

  “Why build it, Ma’am?” Kiki asked, looking over at her principle. “Just to do it?”

  Tamara shrugged. “That’s certainly a reason,” she replied. “But it isn’t the reason. Or even the biggest reason. It biggest reason is to protect the gas mine from orbital bombardments. Secondary is to provide a place that the crews and their families can live out here, without having to take a transport all the way back to the orbital. Encourage people to come out here from the planet, stay here if they come in from other systems. More trade, more people, more coins in the coffers.”

  “More money?” the wolf asked.

  “And it is a good idea,” Tamara said. “If we can make a place that’s safe for people to come out, more will. And if money happens to be the by product of that, well. I’m willing to make that sacrifice.”

  Calvin gave a low yowl, the others yipped. Even the dour Viktoriya huffed a laugh.

  “She actually did it. I can’t believe it. That wrench-turning little chit actually managed to spin that great plate up.” Carriger Hroth sat in her suite watching the news footage, not really wanting to listen to the talking heads prattle away about what they thought of this venture. They didn’t understand, so they were trying to find explanations anywhere they could. They were talking with “experts”: men and women with engineering degrees from notable schools who had never left the classrooms or the research labs, people who had never actually done anything practical with their lives, were judging Samair and her company.

  “The idea that this is a practical project, something that could actually bring profit to this system is absolutely ludicrous,” a zheen mathematician had said only a few minutes before. “A gigantic plate made of steel, is… well, it’s an impressive achievement. But it’s just a waste of resources, effort and time.”

  “But you have to admit, Zovek,” another person on the show, a human male, replied, “That considering all the heights that Tamara Samair and by extension her company, First Principles, have aspired to, they’ve succeeded beyond everyone’s expectations?” He shook his finger at him. “Who’s to say that they won’t do the same thing again here? I’m certainly willing to give First Principles the benefit of the doubt.”

  “It’s ludicrous,” the zheen commentator shot back. “There is nothing that they could actually build that would make the expense worthwhile. And you mark my words,” he shot back, shaking a mauve, blunt finger of his own, “that woman and that company will be hitting up the government, or rather the taxpayers for money once that big plate cools.”

  “Mute!” Carriger snapped and thankfully the sound shut off. “Idiots,” she snarled at the display. Narrow-visioned idiots who couldn’t see anything but their own ideology and stars forbid anyone complicate their ordered and tidy little worlds with anything so crass as new ideas. Yes, it was a twenty-two kilometer metal plate. It was important, that plate. For the protection it was provided, yes, but also for what was going to be built upon and under it.

  But that was months away. A degree of prep work would need doing so that once the plate was cool enough to work on, they could hit the ground running. If she knew Samair, and the she-wolf was certain she did, a great deal of material and equipment was already in the pipeline. One of her aides had overheard a conversation about “giant engines” which only made sense. A slab of metal that size would need massive thrusters to maintain its position above the gas mine and to keep its orbit from decaying lest it plunge into the atmosphere.

  Then there would be the weapons batteries. The big heaters, the battleship-grade turbolaser and heavy laser batteries, would be converted from temperature-control devices to their original function: defensive platforms and the councilor had no doubt that additional gun batteries would be constructed and put in.

  She would look things over, of course, but Carriger wasn’t terribly worried about the defenses for the shield station. Shooting through kilometer-thick hull armor just seemed futile and silly. It wasn’t impenetrable, of course not. Under sustained pounding, even that much steel would fail, but hopefully the defenses would be available in time to keep an attacker from slagging the massive construct. And if the rim of the shield was bristling with cannons and missile launchers, any attacking force moving to strike at the city that was going to be built beneath the shield would be pounded to scrap metal. That would certainly help Carriger sell the idea to the citizens. It wasn’t a battle station, it was a place where people could live and work in safety.

  “Councilor, I think I have something interesting.” One of her aides, a rather sha
ggy male lupusan named Dothern walked up to her, stepping around one of the couches to stand near her.

  Carriger turned away from the news vids and her own introspection to face him. “What is it, Dothern? You seemed rather animated about whatever it is.” Dothern was a rather exciteable creature, filled to the brim with energy. It made him an enthusiastic lover, but in normal discourse those same qualities tended to make him impatient and brusque. Luckily for him, he seemed to know his place. He was one of Carriger Hroth’s inner circle and an occasional bed-partner, but he did not make or influence policy, which was something she’d had to make clear more than once. She had warned him that she wasn’t going to warn him again. He wasn’t as dominant as he thought he was and certainly not enough of an alpha to push her around.

  “I overheard a conversation between the Station Manager and one of the FP ships, their new hyperspace tanker. They’ve returned from their run to Heb.” He was quite animated excited about this.

  “Fascinating,” she said sardonically. “And why are you bringing this to me?” The implied threat that he was wasting her time was clear.

  He hurried along. “It isn’t that the tanker has returned, Carriger,” he stated, moving around to stand on the other side of the coffee table from her. “It’s what’s going on in Heb.”

  Carriger flattened her ears at the use of her name, but moved past it. “And what is going on in Heb?” He still wastes my time.

  Dothern didn’t seem to notice her dangerous tone. “They are requesting some sort of military presence from Seylonique.”

  Carriger sat up straighter. “They want what?” He repeated himself. “And that’s exactly what you heard? If you’re exaggerating or lying about this…” She trailed off.

  “I’m not lying, Carriger,” he said defensively. “That’s what I heard. They want us to send ships.”

  “How did you get this information?” she asked, eyes focused on him.

  But he was undaunted. “I told you, Carriger. I overheard the Station Manager talking with the captain of the tanker. I was in Operations, speaking with one of the supervisors about how the new tank farm is going to operate now that it’s up and running.”