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

by Nathan Lowell

“What makes you think they won’t just exterminate the people there?”

  “That’s a much harder secret to keep. Unless the guy who orders the execution and all the people who carry it out die, that’s going to be a massive load of karma to offset.”

  “Will that be enough to stop them?” I asked. “Or will hubris make them think they can get away with it?”

  Pip paused at that. “Good call. I don’t know.”

  “So security has to be tight. Not to keep people out, but to keep the secret in. Can anybody do that for two decades?”

  “Clearly not,” Pip said.

  I felt my brain stutter. “Not?”

  “They haven’t,” Pip said.

  “How do you figure?”

  “We’re looking for them. We’re pretty sure they’re out here. We even have a rough idea of their location, a reasonable map of what they’ve done, and even some ideas about what might have gone wrong.” He shrugged. “That’s not exactly a well-kept secret.”

  “We’re overlooking one possibility?” I said.

  He lifted his chin.

  “Accident. What if it’s not there anymore?”

  “What? The station blew up?”

  “Took an asteroid hit. Poisoned their air. Something.”

  He settled back in his chair and frowned. “Possible,” he said after a few moments. “Unlikely that everybody would be in the same station at the same time. Miners would be out mining. Possibly crew building a ship.”

  “How long could you survive in a mining barge?” I asked.

  His frown deepened. “Not that long. A few months if you had adequate food stocks.” He looked me in the eyes. “A few hours if you didn’t have enough air.”

  I sighed. “I still think there’s something we’re missing. The Chernyakova can’t have been the only supply ship.”

  “I’m not even sure it was a supply ship anymore,” Pip said.

  I felt a brief but almost overwhelming desire to reach across the desk and strangle him.

  He must have seen it in my face because he held up both hands, palms out as if to ward me off. “We had good intelligence. TIC was pretty sure the Chernyakova was supplying the Manchester skunk works.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out before speaking. “What’s changed your mind?”

  “Nobody’s bitten.”

  “Nobody’s approached us about the base?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what I’d expected, but I’d have thought somebody would have said something along the way.”

  “What’s the worst case?” I asked.

  “We troll around Toe-Hold space for a stanyer and uncover nothing.”

  “That’s already not the case,” I said.

  “How do you figure?”

  “Did you know that the alleged base was out near The Junkyard before we came out here?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did you know Brill might be involved in it?”

  He shook his head again.

  “Did you know that Plunkett’s probably helped seed the initial crews into the base?”

  “No, and I didn’t know about the tellurium or Victor Flores, either,” he said.

  “So we’ve already gotten more than you had a stanyer ago.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest with a scowl and a harrumph.

  “Hate it when I’m right?” I asked.

  “None of that proves the Chernyakova has the location in her database,” he said.

  I nodded. “True, but are we making any credits in this wild goose chase?”

  His eyebrows lifted a bit and he gave me a short nod.

  “We’re making massive profits on this, aren’t we?”

  “We didn’t on that last trip out to Siren,” he said, still scowling.

  “Have we paid for the ship yet?” I asked.

  “We haven’t had it a whole stanyer yet and we sank a lot of credits into it,” he said.

  “How much of it have we earned back just in the last quarter?”

  It felt like pulling teeth but he finally said, “A little over half.”

  “So worst case, we make Alys Giggone and Margaret Stevens and—let’s not forget us—stinking rich but we don’t find this ghost station.”

  “No. Worst case we blow a Burleson in the Deep Dark somewhere and drift forever where nobody will ever find us,” he said.

  His answer surprised a short laugh out of me but I nodded. “All right, barring some kind of catastrophic failure—which could happen in a million different ways to each of us individually and all of us together—what’s the probability that we’re not going to be successful at running cargo?”

  He seemed to come out of his funk a bit and pursed his lips as he sat up straighter. “If we keep going at this rate, we’ll have the ship paid off by this time next stanyer. We could probably start building a fleet of these bricks.”

  A stray thought crossed my mind. “Why hasn’t somebody done that already?”

  He grinned at me. “Who says they haven’t?”

  Chapter 36

  Tehas System: 2375, October 24

  The jump into Tehas took next to no time coming out of Mel’s. The combination of big drives, stations well out in the system, and the short-first-jump technique had us dropping into the Combine cluster and Tehas in record time. We cleared navigation stations and set normal watch just before the evening mess. Ms. Sharps and the mess crew served as we came off the bridge.

  I gave everybody time to get to the wardroom ahead of me by the simple expedient of stopping by the cabin to use the head and wash my face. I stared at myself in the mirror for a moment before shutting off the light. I wondered if I’d ever lose that haunted look around my eyes.

  Which made me think of Mal and my “homework” to consider whether or not a snake missed his shed skin. “What the hell kind of question is that, anyway?” I asked. Luckily nobody was in the cabin to hear it or try to offer an answer.

  When I got to the wardroom, I found everybody but Ms. Fortuner waiting for me. I took up a plate and helped myself to the buffet at the back of the compartment. The rest fell in line behind me and we took our seats in good order. One thing I had to admit. For all its shadowed past, the Chernyakova seemed to be running smoothly enough with our current cast of characters. Even Virgil Bentley, who’d seemed like such a cutup early on, had settled in.

  “Something funny, Captain?” Al asked, passing the carafe of coffee down the table.

  “Just thinking about Mr. Bentley.”

  She paused and looked at me. “Something wrong with Mr. Bentley?”

  “Not at all. I was just musing at how well he’s apparently meshed with the crew.”

  “I haven’t seen him much since he made able spacer.” She looked at Mr. Reed. “Tom?”

  “He hums,” Reed said.

  “Hums?” Al asked.

  “On the helm. We’ll be sitting there, and he’ll start humming. Completely tuneless. He just makes humming noises.” Reed smiled and shook his head.

  “Is it distracting?” Al asked. “Do you want me to speak to him?”

  Reed shook his head. “No. It’s nothing. I just never had a helm who hummed.”

  I looked at the chief. “What’s new and exciting in the world of engineering?”

  “The bleach seems to have stopped that scrubber problem. Air quality is top notch now that we’ve finally cleared that up and gotten the last of the particulates from the overhaul out of the system.” She paused. “I hate to say things are going well, because that’s about the time something breaks.”

  “I know that feeling.” I looked at Pip. “Anything to add to the conversation?”

  He finished chewing and swallowed. “Things look good in terms of cargo. I’ve already got a load of frozen food lined up and I think I need to work with Ms. Sharps to take advantage of this trip. There really isn’t a better source for food out here.”

  “How does everybody eat?” I asked, looking around the table.

&
nbsp; “What do you mean, Skipper?” Al asked.

  “Without the CPJCT clearing house? How does everybody get food at the right station at the right time?”

  Chief Stevens chuckled. “Same way anybody would. They import some. They grow a lot. They work to keep their trade balances neutral, which means nobody’s an actual specialist.”

  I looked at Pip, who shrugged and nodded. “All the stations we’ve visited have had some significant investment in food production. You can’t depend on some friendly tramp freighter to come through with food when your pantry goes empty.”

  “It’s the same with everything,” Al said. “Water, atmospheric gases. Parts.”

  “I don’t get it. I thought Bar None was the best source of food,” I said.

  Pip raised his fork. “I said ‘best,’ not ‘only.’ We’ve been able to get a nice variety of food supplies for the galley while we’ve been out here even before Bar None. Mel’s has a nice beef operation. It’s just smaller. They sell a lot of refined ore and spools of printer stock, but they also have a big investment in mining infrastructure. It’s how they get credits in, but they don’t rely on buying oxygen or water with it.”

  “We should invest in some parts stock,” the chief said. “We could pick up a printer easily enough and start making the smaller parts we need instead of relying on buying them.”

  “Can we print scrubber cartridges?” I asked. I thought I was making a joke.

  “We could,” the chief said. “We’d need a second printer for the matrix but a standard part mill could handle the frames. I’d have to see what we can do about the algae, but—theoretically—we could grow our own stock by cannibalizing an existing cartridge.”

  I looked around the table. Nobody else seemed to think the idea was unusual. “Why don’t we do that then?” I asked.

  The chief looked at Pip. “We have the credits for it?”

  “How much do we need?”

  “Small parts printer? Probably two grand for a good one. Another couple of thousand for the raw stock. Probably the same amount for the fabric printer and stock. So, ten thousand credits would cover it.”

  “How much do we spend on filters?” he asked. “I’ve only seen one purchase come through on it and it seemed pretty small compared to our potable water bill.”

  “We’d break even in about four months,” the chief said. “Maybe six. Certainly less than a stanyer. We’ve been working through the scrubber filters the yard gave us or we’d have had to buy a lot more. Printer would let us replace the stock we use as we use it so it’s always on hand in case of emergency.” She got a faraway look in her eyes. “We could probably print the water filters on the same unit. Amortize the cost faster.”

  “Why haven’t we done this before?” I asked.

  “What?” Pip asked, looking up from his plate.

  “Printed our own parts.”

  He shrugged. “A lot of ships do. All the chandleries print their parts. Most ships just buy the parts and pay the premium because it’s easier to just stock the pieces you need than to juggle the equipment and feed stocks needed to make parts on any scale.” He shrugged again. “They just outsource the pain in the butt.”

  “That’s a good point,” the chief said. “Space? We’ll need to set up the printers somewhere.”

  “Lemme see what the current crop looks like,” Pip said. “We might be able to buy a small one for cheap and then use it to fab the sizes we need for the parts we want.”

  “That’ll work. I’ve got room in my office for a small one,” the chief said.

  Al grinned. “We make enough maybe we can sell them to the chandleries we visit.”

  The chief shuddered. “Now you’re talking major pain in the neck. For small runs like ours, I think it would make a lot of sense. Out here in Toe-Hold space, it’s common since you never know who’s going to stock the parts you need.”

  “Or how much they’re going to charge you for them,” Pip said.

  I settled back in my chair and let the conversation swirl around me. They talked as if this idea of using the fabrication printers was an everyday occurrence but I’d never heard of it being done on a ship like ours.

  The conversation swirled around the possibility of getting the operation set up and running but it went on without me until the chief leaned over and got my attention. “Something wrong, Skipper?”

  “Why is this the first I’ve heard of a ship making her own parts?”

  She smiled. “Because you’ve never been in Toe-Hold space before. Out here, self-reliance is a survival trait.” She paused. “In CPJCT space, self-reliance is closely regulated. You can’t even buy printers there. It’s one of the universally controlled technologies. Only the planetary corporate entities and the CPJCT itself are allowed to have printers.”

  I opened my mouth to ask why, but she’d already told me. “Self-reliance is closely regulated.”

  She nodded. “If you could print your own rocket nozzles, why would you need to buy them from Jett Ceramic Components?”

  “Without Jett Ceramic, who would Welliver Mining sell their clay to?” I asked.

  She nodded. “The CPJCT’s structures don’t just facilitate specialists. They require them.”

  “Economics,” Pip said. “Basic economics. If you have a supply, you need a demand. Without it, you have no economy.”

  “If you can’t make it,” Al said, “but you survive anyway, you didn’t need it after all.”

  “In the Toe-Holds, those tools that foster self-reliance—like printers and patterns, like feed stock, like gas refineries and water production plants—they’re all readily available here,” the chief said.

  “I feel like I’ve jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire,” I said.

  “Out here there’s no frying pan to jump out of,” the chief said. “Just fire. You make what you need. You get along with your neighbors because if you suddenly run out of oxygen, you might need to scoot next door for a few breaths of air.”

  “It’s why everybody knows how to supply food and water and clothing,” Pip said.

  “Marc printed your new outfits,” the chief said.

  “I knew that but I guess I didn’t take that to the logical next step,” I said. I looked at Tom Reed. “You’re being awful quiet over there.”

  “My first trip, too. I had no idea,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in.”

  The chief smiled. “Once you get over the shock, it’s not so bad. We’re here now. Outside the mirror. We can choose. Before you never knew what you didn’t know.”

  That phrase—outside the mirror—tickled a memory. A story my mother used to read to me when I was small. “Who’s Alice?” I asked, looking at the chief.

  She smiled back at me—a wide, toothy grin with a sparkle in her eyes. “You are,” she said.

  Chapter 37

  Bar None Ranch: 2375, October 29

  The smell of Bar None hit me the instant I stepped onto the dock. Not that it was bad, but that it was so good. When I stepped out of our lock, the fresh, warm air smelled of growing things. I drew in a huge lungful, almost without thinking about it.

  “They have great scrubbers, don’t they?” Pip said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know any scrubber that can do this.”

  He grinned and pointed to the planter boxes running along the far side of the dock. “Wanna bet?”

  “Trees? How do they grow trees in the docks?”

  Most of the docks I’d been on were wide, and certainly tall enough. They had to be to accommodate the standard ten-meter docking rings. The CPJCT orbital specs called for precisely twelve meters’ clearance above the deck plates with observation galleries above those. Bar None had gone at least that high. The distance from the lock to the back of the dock was about half-again wider than I was used to. I could almost believe I was planetside. It felt huge.

  Wide plantings ran along at deck level, groupings of what I could only call trees with eight- to ten-centimeter-diame
ter trunks. They rose well above my head before branching out, but the canopies almost formed a ceiling above us.

  “See?” Pip said. “Scrubbers.”

  “How do they grow them?” I said, marveling at the engineering that must have gone into them.

  A rangy young man in station livery walked up to us. He towered over me but he was so skinny, he could have hidden behind one of the trees. I probably outweighed him. “You from the Cherny-kovy?” he asked, jerking a thumb at our lock.

  “Yes,” I said. “Can we help you? We’ve already talked to security.”

  He grinned. “Yep. Figgered so, otherwise jefe wouldn’ta sent me to get you. Either of you named Carstairs?”

  “Guilty,” Pip said, raising a hand.

  “Probably,” the kid said. “I’m Baldry.” He brushed a hand over the fuzz on his scalp. “Probably be callin’ me Baldy before too long.” He shrugged and grinned again. “Come on. Jefe don’t like bein’ kept waitin’ and he’s got a load of beef for you.”

  I glanced at Pip who shrugged in return.

  Baldry had already turned and was walking away. He paused after a couple of steps and looked back. “You güeyes comin’?”

  “How do you grow these trees here?” I asked, looking up at the leafy canopies above me.

  He grinned and spit into the planter. “You never seen trees before?”

  “I’ve seen trees,” I said. “Just never growing on a dock.”

  Baldry shook his head. “Cow shit,” he said.

  “No, really, I’ve never seen one growing on a dock.”

  Baldry laughed. I got the uncomfortable feeling he was laughing at me, not with me. “Naw, man. It’s what they’re planted in. Cow shit. You plant anythin’ in it, it grows.”

  Pip chuckled. “That explains it, then.”

  Baldry looked at him. “Explains what?”

  “How you got so tall,” Pip said. “Your mother fill your boots?”

  The kid paused for just a half a heartbeat and then started chuckling. “You’re all right, Carstairs. That’s exactly what my old man used to say.” He waved us forward with his arms. “Get a move on. Jefe’s waitin’.” Baldry led us down the dock and out through a passageway into the station proper, chuckling to himself all the way.