Running With Argentine Read online

  RUNNING WITH ARGENTINE

  By William Lee Gordon

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2016 Medsabi LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Medsabi Publishing

  Celina, TX

  Table of Contents

  FORWARD

  CHAPTER ONE

  The People’s Republic of Chezden

  CHAPTER TWO

  Trust

  CHAPTER THREE

  Physics is Fun

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Behind the Scenes

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Cabal

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Point of No Return

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Discovery

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Reshuffling The Crew

  CHAPTER NINE

  Can I Buy You A Drink?

  CHAPTER TEN

  An obvious Forgery

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Real Life Is So Much More Fun Than School

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Crew Recruitment Made Easy

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  An Unlikely Rescue

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I’m In It For The Prophet

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Assessing Needs

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Playing Nice

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Fool’s Gold

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  You’re A Peach

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Chance Memory

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A Tall Tale

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Making A Plan

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Conspiracies

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Revelations

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  All About Asperia

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Shut Down and Shot Down

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Prime Suspects

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Stymied

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Dig Deeper

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The New Normal

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Lady Luck

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Chief Engineer Carlton West

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  A New Mission

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Friend or Foe

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  A Mystery

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Vetting A Savior

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Unexpected problems

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Insight

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  A Shady Deal

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Meeting a Lord

  CHAPTER FORTY

  You’re Not Paranoid if…

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Prisoners

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Separation Anxiety

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Escape

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Command Decision

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  On The Run

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Unexpected Allies

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  In Hiding

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Dealing With A Bully

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Playing Hardball

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Another Mouth to Feed

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Another New Mission

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  The Sole Survivor

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Extinction Event

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Getting Focused

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Only In It For The Money

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Living in Horror

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Two For The Price of One

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Knock On The Door

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Tested

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Coming Home

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  To The Victor…

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Salute The New Officer

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Discoveries

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Wonders Abound

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  A Small City

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  The First Death

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Mystery, Revelation, and Denial

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  A Solution

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Misty Dreams

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  The Haunting

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  An Observation

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Time Keeps On Slipping...

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  Manipulation

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  Virtual VR

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  Higher Education

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  Farewell

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  The Reins Of Power

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  The Message Never Sent

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  Argentine’s Secret

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  The Night Before Nightmare

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  Full Disclosure

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  Lucid Insanity

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  Another System Entirely

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  Into The Fray

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  Who’s In Charge?

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

  Nightmare

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

  Sacrifice

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

  Being Grateful

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

  Retirement

  CHAPTER NINETY

  The Final Message

  Preview or Purchase Other Books

  William Lee Gordon

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  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

  FORWARD

  (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 tri
llion trillion individual stories that make up our universe…

  This story focuses on one.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The People’s Republic of Chezden

  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.