Page 17 of Argurma Warrior (The Argurma Chronicles #1)
K aylar’s decision to align his internal systems to the planet’s solar rhythm upon arriving had proven to be a good one. It had been initiated only as a way to accurately record his activity and gauge available daylight hours while engaged in the hunt so that he would not be caught far from shelter when the sun set. It had been effective, but it was proving to be even more helpful now that he was spending a significant part of the early day working inside the laboratory where the lack of light made it impossible to visually track the passage of the sun. He merely set his system in the morning to alert him once the sun was three marks past midday so that he was able to return to the ship and spend the latter part of the day making repairs with the full advantage of the sunlight and returning long before it sank below the horizon.
He would not care to venture a return in the dark when his optical sensors would be impaired. Although his one eye possessed a light, there was still a high probability of not accurately detecting E302 if it suddenly came upon him. His bio-sensors would help but once a subject got close enough it became more difficult to gauge where the target was located. He processed that it was better to avoid that probability altogether.
As this was his first return to the ship, he was pleased to note that he was progressing according to his calculations. In another fereth, Kaylar would clear the forest and be on the stretch of beach that led down toward his ship. He was making good time. There had been no sign of E302 circling back to this part of the island—or any sign of the biotech creature ranging closer while Kaylar was out. No doubt there was far easier to catch game keeping E302 occupied. Although it was beyond his ability to calculate, Kaylar hoped the supply of game would last long enough for the repairs to be completed. If it remained on the other side of the island and his treks to and from the ship were not impeded in any way by E302, he would be able to adjust his calculated timeframe for repairs forward.
That would be most advantageous.
Clicking softly to himself, he made one last sweep with his scanners as he closed the remaining distance to the edge of the tree-line. A number of small reptiles and mammals fled among the brush and the trees but none of these were large enough to be of concern to him. He suffered only the briefest of annoyance as his boots promptly sank into the sunbaked sand at the edge of the woods. Despite Argurumal being covered in sand and stone, he always seemed to miscalculate how tedious sand was as it slowed his stride with its sucking grasp. His feet were wider than those of a human—and he had noted that Meg struggled even more significantly where the sand was loose and dry—but it was inconvenient all the same.
At least his armor served well in keeping the sand out of his clothes and boots. The standard Argurma attire was not quite so successful, and he had faced each occasion where he had to wear formal clothing with a certain amount of distaste. Unlike many of his mother-line, he preferred being in space over the sands of their desert territory. Space was blessedly sand free and only had water in the quantities in which he wished to indulge in it. Nor were there any green things to cling to his boots with the barest hint of moisture that he was forced to clean off. He would be just as pleased to leave Earth behind as he was every time that he departed from Argurumal.
It was with a sense of relief that he finally arrived at the side of his ship and stepped inside. That relief shifted to dismay as he cataloged the amounts of sand and debris that had been blown into the crevice ripped through its belly. Without wasting a zec, he made his way to the maintenance closet and initiated the start up sequence on the cleaning droids. They would begin to clear out all the bits of the planet that had made its way into his sanctuary. He processed, however, that he would be finding and removing sand for many spans after leaving this world. Despite his annoyance at the debris, he would have traded any one of the bots at that moment for a good repair droid to continue with repairs in his absence.
He had lost his last repair droid during a battle with another ship when the droid had been blasted off the side of his hull while it was attempting to seal a breach. He would have replaced it by now except that the council did not provide additional credits for droids, or the upkeep of the ship and the cost of a replacement had been prohibitive. It had not been more than a minor inconvenience since most of his repairs were minimal and the mess following the ship’s required system upgrades had simply been unsightly and contained out of the way. He had not anticipated or calculated to any degree the likelihood of suffering such catastrophic damages.
Rumbling to himself as he skirted the worst of the mess, he made his way toward the core of the ship. The access tunnels were just as cramped as ever, but the AI and power center would need to be repaired before anything else. He was armed with various wires to repair broken powerlines. If the damage there was not too significant it would take less time to progress toward the repairs to the hull. The cosmetic things he could see to repairing or replacing at the nearest space station later, but these things at minimum were necessary to depart the planet’s atmosphere and safely begin heading across sectors back to Argurumal.
The biotech engineering of E302 had left a considerable blind spot in his calculations. He recognized that now even if he had ignored it then as an acceptable risk. Unfortunately, the creature had ravaged the entire access tunnel leading up to the systems’ core. He was going to need a lot more wires and the tacky casing material Meg had called electrical tape before he was even able to begin repairing the damage to the hull. With the way the lines were severed, he calculated that there was a high probability of power failure before E302 had gotten to the core itself. So long as that remained undamaged, the damage would be repairable within a reasonable timeframe. Completion within two spans was possible. Three, however, had a higher probability.
His mouth twisted at the thought of his return to his homeworld as he set to work. As much as he wished to conclude this assignment and be left to return to his regular affairs in service to the council, much of which required many long spans of travel in between assignments, returning to Argurumal with Meg did not ease any tension from his processors. It did exactly the opposite. He growled to himself as he yanked down a frayed cable and began stripping away the casing to get at the wires. The vocal release of aggression and tension was within acceptable limits among their species so he thought little of to what degree that reaction was warranted as he dragged lines down toward him and began to proceed with the tedious task of grafting them back together.
The drone of his maintenance bots cleaning became a background noise as he worked, moving from one cable to another as he made slow progress down the narrow corridor. It was slow enough that it appeared that he had barely made any progress at all along its length when his systems alerted him to the descending angle of the sun. All of that time away from the laboratory and protecting Meg and he had accomplished next to nothing!
Snarling at the cables within his hand, he allowed them to drop before carefully turning within the narrow space and making his way back along the tunnel to the main hall of his ship. Although he processed that the repairs would take time, there was a subtle itch developing within his systems that brought forth irrational irritation toward the repairs, and even more so toward his every reminder of his duty to Argurumal. Even his systems seemed unable to refrain from reminding him constantly that the council was awaiting a response regarding his return. A missive he had ignored upon receiving it twelve hours ago since he had no answer to give them.
They would not be pleased with these additional delays, even if they were done with consideration to the human female, and it irrationally angered him. He slammed the flat of his hand against the tunnel’s wall as he stepped out, his claws flexing into the metal, before storming through the ship and back out onto the sand. His anger cooled moderately as he walked, but in its place a sense of unease was welling upon him greater than before as he took stock once more of his system’s malfunctions.