To Fire Called (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 2)

by Nathan Lowell

  He scooped it up and slipped it into a tunic pocket. “Thanks.”

  “Have you done any new charts since the last time I was here?” the chief asked, looking at the framed artwork around the room.

  It took me a moment but I realized that what I’d taken for some kind of abstract art was a series of charts done in exquisite detail. I crossed to the bulkhead to get a better look. Inge and the chief followed me.

  “That’s new,” Inge said. “I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen that one.”

  The nautical chart depicted a nearly semicircular bay including contour lines for water depth and land height. A small label under it said “Starvey Bay, St. Cloud.”

  I stepped to one side to give the chief room to examine it. My eyes locked on the next one. I recognized the harbor at Port Newmar from my days sailing on the academy’s sloop. The colors and shapes took me back so completely I could practically smell the brine and hear the creak of the rigging.

  “Do you like it, Captain?” Inge stood just behind my right shoulder.

  “I do,” I said. “I think I have a place reserved for this in the cabin. It’s for sale?”

  She nodded. “It is.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said.

  She trilled her laugh again. “I’ll package it up for you. Will you take it with you or should I have it delivered?”

  I stepped back and she tilted the frame, breaking its magnetic hold on the bulkhead so it fell into her hands. She walked away, back behind the counter, giving me a breathtaking view of the images inked into the skin of her back. Her white skin seemed to glow in the dimness, each shift in musculature giving life to the images there. “I’ll take it,” I said, pulling myself back into awareness.

  She glanced over her shoulder with a knowing smile.

  The chief asked, “Heard from Demetri lately?”

  Inge shrugged a shoulder as she slipped the framed chart into a protective sleeve. “Not in a couple of months now. He’s a busy man.” She frowned and bit her lip.

  “What’s he doing these days?” the chief asked.

  “He’s still busy developing his station. He comes to visit a couple times a stanyer.”

  “Still? How’s it coming?”

  She shrugged again. “It’s still very limited. I’ve visited a couple of times. He’s doing well enough that he can import what he needs and still turn a profit. I’m not ready to give up my business, and he’s not willing to sell out.”

  The chief patted her forearm where it lay on the counter. “Some things are worth waiting for.”

  Inge snorted. “He’s just impossible enough.”

  The chief laughed. “But not impossible enough to turn away from, eh?”

  “Exactly,” Inge said. “Is there something else?” She looked from Pip to me.

  I shook my head. “That’s enough for me.”

  Pip held up the thumb drive and flicked the case. “I’ll have this back to you by tomorrow.”

  She nodded. “Very well.” She held out a tablet for me to thumb.

  I saw there was no charge on it for the update. “You can put his update on this bill,” I said, nodding at Pip.

  She shook her head. “No charge for updates. Just the chart.”

  I looked at the chief, who nodded.

  I thumbed the tab and she slid the chart across the counter. “Hope you enjoy it,” she said.

  I tucked the package under my arm and Pip led the way back out of the office. We traveled single-file down the narrow passageway. I felt a little dazed by the encounter. “She has a lot of tattoos,” I said.

  “That’s why some people call her Inky,” the chief said. “Play on her real name.”

  “She doesn’t sell the updates?” I asked.

  Pip looked back over his shoulder. “As long as I get the drive back to her before we leave, updates are free. Under normal circumstances, that’s the way of it.”

  “Way of what?”

  “Toe-Hold space,” the chief said. “You’ll find a lot of scammers and gougers. People who’ll try to cheat you out of your last credit. You’ll also find people like Inge who do what they can to make sure people have what they need to survive.”

  “And astrogation data is survival?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Pip said. “The data is easily come by but if you don’t have it—or don’t know you need it—jumping around blind in the Deep Dark is a risky business.”

  I had some appreciation of what jumping blindly into a rock storm or nebula might do to a ship, so I saw his point. It still seemed odd that valuable information wasn’t being sold.

  Pip led us all the way back to the ship and we separated at the cabin.

  “I’m going to see what I can find out with this update,” Pip said. “Shall we do dinner on station?”

  “I’m up for it,” the chief said.

  “Sure, why not?” I said. “Meet here at 1800?”

  Pip gave me a jaunty wave and headed down the passageway. I stepped into the cabin with my prize and began tearing into the packaging.

  “Where are you going to hang it?” the chief asked, leaning against the open door frame.

  I cleared the last of the packing material and held it up at arm’s length. The jewel tones of the chart added a splash of color in the nearly monochromatic color scheme of the cabin. I rotated slowly around but didn’t see any place that felt right in the cabin. A step into the sleeping compartment showed me the empty bulkhead just to the left of the door to the head. The magnetic latches caught the bulkhead and the chart looked like it had always been there.

  I came back out and found the chief still standing in the open door. I dusted my hands together. “Done.” It took me a moment to gather the loose packaging into a bundle for disposal. “Something I can do for you, Chief?”

  “I thought you might like to go shopping.”

  “Shopping. Shopping for what?”

  “Clothes? Souvenirs?” She shrugged.

  “I just got a souvenir. You think I need new clothes?”

  “Not necessarily, but you do stand out a bit. You might have noticed that the populations out here are a bit more flamboyant than you’re used to.”

  “We didn’t dress that much differently at Mel’s Place.” I gave her outfit a scanning glance.

  “You didn’t, maybe, but I suspect Pip did. I know I did.”

  “Al didn’t.”

  The chief arched an eyebrow. “Al? Really? How much surgical steel did she wear ashore?”

  The thought gave me pause. “Granted,” I said after a few heartbeats.

  “You don’t have to buy anything. I just thought it would be nice to get you off the ship for a bit.”

  “Without Pip,” I said.

  She shrugged but said nothing.

  “Let’s go. Lemme check with Pip.” She backed out of the doorway. I took a quick walk down to Pip’s stateroom and knocked on the door.

  “Yeah?”

  I stuck my head in and found him hunched over his console. “I’m going ashore with Chief Stevens. Bip me if you need anything.”

  He nodded without looking up. “Clothes shopping?”

  “Apparently.”

  He nodded again. “Have fun.”

  I closed the door and walked back to meet the chief at the top of the ladder.

  “Does he know what he’s doing?” she asked.

  “I presume so. He’s been slicing and dicing data as long as I have. Maybe longer. I don’t know that I’d trust him with a system backup, but matching databases looking for discrepancies? Sure.”

  “As long as he doesn’t overwrite ours,” she said.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s working from a backup.”

  She grinned at me and punched me in the arm. “You’re not giving me a lot of confidence, Captain.”

  I rubbed my shoulder and scowled at her, but I couldn’t hold it and laughed.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Main Street,” she said.

  “Real
ly?”

  “You’ll see. Shopping district for the station. They’ll have some nice clothiers. Also some shabby places.”

  “Something for everybody?” I asked.

  “Just about. If you can think of it and want to buy it, you’ll probably find it there.”

  “Sounds charming.”

  “Don’t judge until you see it. You might be surprised.”

  She led me out of the docking gallery and through a wide, arched passageway into a plaza. It wasn’t as big as the one at Mel’s, but what it lacked in foot-print it made up for in height. My neck almost cramped as I looked up and up and up. I saw green plants growing in baskets and vines hanging from planters.

  “They like their greenery,” I said.

  The chief glanced up. “Organic scrubbers,” she said. “They use a lot of them here. Require no power—other than the light—and these are bred for low-light conditions.”

  We crossed the plaza and ducked down a narrow alley that opened up on a wide boulevard lined with shops. It was hard for me to think of this wide passage as anything other than a street. People walked along, some alone and others in groups of up to five or six. Some obviously had someplace to be, while others didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

  “The place to be seen?” I asked.

  “It’s one of them. The station likes to keep things peaceful so they make sure people have what they want, so long as they pay for it.”

  She led me along the near side of the street. “Here we go,” she said after a couple of blocks.

  We stopped in front of a narrow shop with a single display window and a skinny door. The window looked like something from a history book with elaborate lettering declaring the establishment to be Marc’s on Main. A display showed a collection of shirts, shoes, and hats. The top half of a mannequin wearing a teal turtleneck pullover under a brown leather jacket with some kind of furry lapels held pride of place in the middle.

  The chief walked up to the door and pulled it open, holding it for me and waving me in. The sound of a tiny bell ringing floated from the opening.

  I grinned at her and soon found myself in a tiny boutique that could only be described as quaint. The odd fragrances I associated with fabrics filled the place. The scent of good wool left my nose feeling like it had been cuddled.

  The tinny, tinkly sound stopped when we closed the door. I looked up at it, half expecting to see a bell on a spring attached to the door itself.

  “Welcome to Marc’s.” A youngish looking man—perhaps a few years younger than me—strode from behind a curtain at the back of the shop. He scrubbed the palms of his hands together and smiled in obvious pleasure. “How can I help you today?” He stopped halfway to us and held out his arms as in an embrace. “Margaret? I had no idea you were in the area. How delightful to see you.”

  The chief took each of his hands in each of hers. They performed the cheek-kiss ritual I’d seen before. “Marc,” the chief said. “You look better every time I see you.”

  “Am I old enough for you yet, my dear?” Marc asked.

  “Of course, but what would Indeo say?”

  “She left me. Ran off with some miner with dirt under his nails and huge piles of credits in the bank.” Marc sighed dramatically. “It was almost three stanyers ago, my dear. Wind past the sails now.”

  “Well, I’m happy to see you’re completely miserable, Marc,” the chief said with a grin and a pat to his cheek. “Let me try to assuage some of your black mood by helping my friend here. Ishmael Wang, please meet my friend Marc. Marc, Ishmael Wang.”

  He smiled and nodded to me, holding his hands together at his chest and offering a small bow. “Mr. Wang, a pleasure. Any friend of Margaret’s is welcome.”

  She gave him a playful slap on the arm. “Any man with credits is welcome, you young fraud.”

  He smiled and shrugged. “Well, also true.” His darting gaze shuffled up and down my body a couple of times. He paused at the top of my head with each scan. “Fleet?” he asked.

  “Sadly,” Margaret said. “Can you help him anyway?”

  He smiled. “Of course. Some of my best customers are fleet.” He held out a hand to usher me to a spot on the flooring. “If you’d stand here, Mr. Wang, we’ll measure you. Do you have any particular style or colors in mind?”

  I stood on the mark and watched as a sketch of my body appeared on the monitor mounted at eye level. “I’m partial to blue and green,” I said. “I like wearing a jacket because it gives me better pockets.”

  “Do you use them?” he asked. “The jacket pockets?”

  “Sometimes.” I thought about it. “I like a pocket for my tablet that’s not in my pants.”

  He nodded. “Here’s what you appear to be wearing now,” he said. The display showed a good approximation of my outfit, right down to the worn heels on my ship boots. “Serviceable, to be sure,” he said. “A tad ... how should I put it ... drab?”

  I smiled. “Drab is a good word.”

  “And no jacket? Why is that?”

  “The only ones I have are just as drab and a bit worn.”

  “The word you’re looking for is ‘dated,’ Ishmael,” the chief said.

  Marc’s eyebrows shot up at that. “Ah,” he said. “Been some time since you’ve updated, I take it?” He studied my pullover and jeans. “Yes. Some time.”

  “Several stanyers,” I said.

  Marc sniffed. “I’d have thought decades but no matter. You prefer comfort over style? Would you like to appear younger or older than you are?”

  “Comfort, and I’d like to not appear at all.”

  Marc took a deep breath and squinted at me for a moment before glancing at the chief. “You enjoy trying my abilities, don’t you, my dear?”

  The chief found a chair tucked into a corner I hadn’t noticed and lounged on it like it was a chaise instead of a plain, straight-backed chair. “Always, Marc. You’ve never let me down yet.”

  “Speaking of which,” he said. “What happened with that dear lad you brought in here the last time? Oscar? Oliver?”

  “Ogden?” she asked.

  “Yes. Delightful boy. I never took you for a cradle robber.”

  She snorted. “He’s gone back to his mother.”

  “Ah, a momma’s boy?”

  “My grandson,” she said.

  Marc’s eyebrows shot up as he turned to her. “You might have told me before now.”

  “Why? You were with Indeo. I should provide you with the pedigree of everyone I bring in?”

  Marc winked at her. “One never knows. I thought you had claim to him.” He looked me. “Does she have a claim on you?”

  “The other way around,” I said.

  Marc blinked and the chief laughed.

  “She’s my chief engineer,” I said.

  His eyes widened as he looked back and forth between the two of us. “Of course. You’re the captain.”

  “I am.”

  He looked at me hard in the face. “Yes,” he said, drawing the word out. “Of course. My apologies, Captain. I should have seen it before.”

  “No harm, no foul. I still need some clothing.”

  He nodded, his eyes narrowing as he looked from me to the screen and back again. “It makes sense now. You want to blend in well enough to not be noticed.”

  I shrugged.

  He smiled and shook his head. “That’s not possible. Not entirely.”

  “You mistook me for someone else when I came in,” I said.

  His smile widened. “Blame her. She provides you with excellent cover with those who know her, but I suspect not so much with strangers.”

  “What are you saying, foolish boy?” the chief asked in mock indignation.

  “Hush, you,” he said, tossing a grin at her like a wave across the room. “Your reputation, carefully crafted over decades, precedes you.” He smiled solidly at her. “You wear it well. It suits you. What I’m saying is that our dear Margaret the Bold is seldom seen in public with the
same handsome man. You, Captain, are nothing if not a handsome man. Ergo, people who know her see you as her arm candy.”

  “People who don’t aren’t fooled?” I asked.

  “Starship captains are ... special.”

  I chuckled to myself, remembering Alys Giggone in a towel in the steam room on the Lois McKendrick such a long, long time ago.

  Marc nodded even though I’d not spoken a word. “You know what I mean.”

  “What would you recommend?” I asked.

  He looked at his screen, his eyes narrowing and the fingers on his right hand playing a tattoo on his lower lip. “Comfort over style.” He paused and looked at me. “What if I can give you both?”

  I thought about it for two heartbeats. “Depends on the style.”

  His face lit up. “Excellent answer.” He turned to his display again and started flipping clothing off to one side and picking up new items from a storage array that spun too quickly for me to follow. In a matter of moments he stepped back. “This?”

  I blinked at the screen, trying to make out the shape of the clothing in the eye-searing colors. “No,” I said.

  “What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

  “Garish? I’d need to wear eye protection to keep from burning my retinas.”

  “You’d be looking away, Captain. No danger to your eyes.”

  “I’d feel guilty blinding somebody else,” I said.

  The chief snorted.

  “Fair enough.” He turned to the screen again and cleared the garish clothing before pulling in a different set. It looked like the pictures I’d seen of old fashion suits in the art books back on Neris, but with the colors inverted. A black shirt under a shocking white jacket and slacks over the whitest shoes I’d seen since leaving the parade ground at Port Newmar. A wide belt in scarlet wrapped the middle of my body. He stood back with a flourish.

  “Not terrible,” I said. “The white would be a pain to keep clean.”

  “It sheds,” he said.

  “Sheds what?”

  He shrugged. “Everything. Water. Dirt. Chemicals. Energy weapons. Blades. Small-caliber weapons fire.” He shrugged again. “Everything. What do you think of the shape?”

  “Doesn’t grab me.”

  He nodded and leaned in again. When he stepped back, the figure struck me. A burgundy jacket with some kind of pale blue flowered pattern over a ruffled shirt and what looked like blue jeans. The jacket had wide sleeves and a military tab collar, open all the way down. The ruffled shirt carried a faint blue tint that played off the blue of the trousers.