Captain's Share (Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper)

by Nathan Lowell

  I shook off the images and fired up the command circuit. I needed to let Fredi know what I’d found. I stood at the front of the bridge facing forward.

  The coldness of the Deep Dark seemed clean.

  Chapter Six

  Breakall System:

  2371-October-02

  The forensics team asked us to chill the ship down to just above freezing to “help preserve the evidence.” Enough time had elapsed that the "evidence" was pretty far beyond “preserving” so we lived in our suits when aboard. We also used the thrusters to turn the ship. While we were still on a ballistic trajectory, the course curved inward and toward the investigative team racing out to meet us.

  Four days after turning the ship, we rendezvoused. Their ship was a fast packet in the twenty metric kiloton range and they boarded by the simple expedient of docking with us nose-to-nose. That allowed us to use the main locks on both ships and walk between them. I was at the brow to meet the team when we cycled the locks. Both ships had breathable air, but we didn’t want to contaminate theirs with what we knew ours must smell like.

  When the lock opened a team of six professional looking individuals wearing black softsuits stepped out. The suits had the Confederated Planets logo on the breast and the letters TIC across the back

  I was impressed. The Trade Investigation Commission was the big dog in the enforcement arm. More often than not it was the TIC that sent in the marines. They looked like salvation to me. These folks did not mess about, brooked no hanky-panky, and knew their business–and everybody else’s–inside and out.

  The leader of the TIC Team waited patiently for me to track onto his face. “You are Acting-Captain Ishmael Wang?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m Field Agent James Waters representing the CPJCT Investigatory Commission. We request permission to come aboard to offer aid and assistance to you and your crew under the terms of the Emergency Relief Clause of Title Twelve and also to begin securing available evidence pursuant to our investigation of the death of the crew. We further stipulate that we recognize that you and your crew are operating in good faith to safeguard the vessel and that evidence to the best of your abilities–pending any evidence to the contrary which we may uncover–and that you have successfully consummated a claim of salvage against this vessel, its cargo, and relevant appurtenances pending adjudication by the appropriate legal authorities.”

  Obviously this guy practiced the speech. I couldn’t imagine that he did it often enough that he’d be able to just rattle it off like that.

  “Permission granted, Agent Waters. Welcome aboard and I’m glad to have you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wang. We’ll begin with a survey of the ship, dump out the computer data cores, and begin retrieval of the remains. This is likely to be uncomfortable and unpleasant. If you’d like to send your people over to the Pertwee, you’re welcome to use our facilities.”

  “Thanks. We’ve been shuttling crew between here and the Tinker, but it’s still been a long and trying few days.”

  He nodded before giving a hand signal and the whole, black-suited lot of them tromped into the ship.

  It took them a surprisingly short time to clean up the bodies. One of the Pertwee’s holds was turned into a morgue and their team included two coroners. Within a day, they’d removed the bodies, copied the computer cores, taken photographs of much of the ship, and even cleaned up a lot of the more unfortunate by-products. We all gave depositions about what we’d found and walked a team of examiners through our boarding process–explaining what we’d touched, where we’d looked, and what we’d found.

  When it was over Agent Waters invited me to the Pertwee and we shared a cup of coffee on their mess deck. It felt good to peel back the softsuit a bit and breath real air. I’d had a few hours out of the suit back on the Tinker over the previous couple of days but I was feeling a bit worse for wear and had some ‘suit chafe’ in places it didn’t bear to think too long about.

  “You’ve done well, Mr. Wang. Are you going to be able to take the ship in from here?”

  “I think so. The Tinker has a crate of spares for us. We know what mistakes the previous crew made. We won’t be making them.”

  “We cleaned up what we could, but that’s not going to be a pleasant ship to ride in,” he said with a rueful smile.

  I sighed. “Yes, I’m sure. Is there anything you need us to safeguard?”

  He shook his head. “We took samples and swabs of everything. This really looks like a simple case of carelessness. It’s too circumstantial to be foul play. Everything on this ship is held together with baling wire and spit. Even their food stores are barely up to regulation.”

  “We noted that, too. There’s plenty to get the few of us back to Breakall, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be heading out into the Deep Dark with so little food.”

  Agent Waters snorted.“Or spares, or tankage, or anything else.”

  “Were they that broke?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, but it looks like a shoestring operation that just ran off the end of its string.”

  We sat there for a moment and then he stood. “Well, Mr. Wang, I’ll let you get back to your ship. I need to follow up with the investigative staff.” He grimaced. “If it’s any consolation to you, I’ll be filling out reports all the way back.”

  I grinned and stood up myself. “I’d almost be willing to trade you, Agent Waters. This is going to be a long three weeks.”

  I pulled my suit back around me and buttoned it up.

  Agent Waters looked at me strangely. “The air is breathable in there.”

  “Yes, but we’re going to change out the air and reload it to try to purge some of the smell.”

  “Good luck with that. It’ll help some, and I’d recommend you keep the ambient temperature way down. It’ll help control the smell.”

  I nodded my thanks and headed back to the locks. It took only a couple of ticks to cycle through to the Chernyakova. We released the latches and the Pertwee used her maneuvering thrusters to pull back and fall off to starboard. We set about clearing as much of the smell as we could.

  Fredi sent over a replacement circuit board so we were able to get alarms back online. With just the five of us as a skeleton crew, we were going to be relying on automated systems a good deal. We vented the tainted air and refilled the ship with a clean mixture that was clear of methane and the other gaseous byproducts of decomposition. We used the depressurization process to test the alarm circuits. They triggered correctly when the hull pressure dropped. They also put up a proximity alarm because we were sailing so close to the Tinker.

  I was on the bridge with Mr. Belnus and Mr. Marks when the hull pressure stabilized. We looked at each other, nobody wanting to be the first to take off the helmet and breath ship’s air. As ranking officer, I did the only thing I could do and pulled the seal on my suit. The cold ship air rushed in carrying a whiffy carrion odor that I won’t try to describe. It wasn’t enough to make me retch, but I had to swallow a couple of times.

  Mr. Belnus and Mr. Marks followed my lead. They both made faces but kept control.

  “Let’s get some cleaning gear up here and scrub down the bridge with something strong and chemical smelling, gentlemen.” I blinked my eyes against the odor. “And maybe we should do that first.”

  Mr. Belnus headed for the cleaning locker below decks and returned shortly with sponges and buckets of hot water with a resinous smelling soap so strong that it pinched the lining of my nose. We all leaned close to the buckets and took lungs full of the moist air. It helped a little. After a fast hour’s washdown of the bridge, the smell wasn’t entirely gone, but the resin soap gave it a run for its money.

  I left the deck ratings to finish putting away the cleaning gear, and made my way aft to check on engineering. By the time I got there, the odor didn’t bother me so much. Perhaps the proximity to the scrubbers made a difference, or perhaps my nose got numbed to the stimulat
ion.

  I found Strauss and Marks working in the engineroom.

  “This place is filthy, sar.”

  I looked around and had to agree. “The bridge was a little better but obviously they didn’t place much value in cleanliness, Ms. Strauss.”

  Mr. Marks sighed. “It was worth their lives, sar. Too bad they valued that so little.”

  That was a sobering thought. Like we needed any more somber thoughts. He had the right of it. If the pile of rubbish hadn’t been there, it couldn’t have caught fire. Of course, if they hadn’t shorted themselves on the spares, the ship would have alerted them to their danger. Looking around once more, I grabbed a sweep and started to help clear the trash and other detritus.

  It took us a couple of stans to get the ship clean enough to start up the sail and keel generators to get underway. The ship responded well enough and the Tinker led us into the gravity well acting as escort and warning. We operated with a skeleton crew, and while the Emergency Relief clauses of Title Twelve allowed for it–better to have some crew than none–we were unable to keep up the normal watch rotation required for a vessel of the Chernyakova’s class.

  The watch stander merry-go-round went at a blinding pace as we traded watch-and-watch around the clock. Ms. Strauss and Mr. Marks handled engineering while Mr. Udan and Mr. Belnus traded off on the bridge. Every twelve stans I’d relieve one or the other to give each pair a chance to sleep a little bit.

  Meals were catch-as-catch-can. I usually tried to have something warm and pungent on the stove as often as I could. The general lack of cleanliness extended to the mess deck and galley, making even that an extended chore.

  We found enough unstained mattresses to outfit five bunks in Deck berthing and piled all the stained and damaged ones in Engineering. It was a small help but over time even the smallest improvements added up.

  After a couple of days of having to clean everything we wanted to use, we had cleared enough of the mess that we could at least function without having to undo the neglect of the late crew. By then we were all so tired–and so used to the smell–we didn’t notice it any more, but I knew it would stay with me for a long, long time.

  Chapter Seven

  Breakall Orbital:

  2371-October-31

  I had expected that once we docked, it would be a simple matter of shutting down the ship and turning it over to the authorities for disposition. In hindsight that was a silly assumption on my part. Docking went smoothly and the shore ties allowed us to secure most of the power and propulsion systems but a ship like the Chernyakova is never unattended. Until we could arrange for a caretaker service, we were caught doing it ourselves.

  Then there was the small matter of the ongoing investigation.

  The TIC people were professional and they were thorough. They were also adamant that we should remain with the ship until they’d gone through the entire vessel one more time. I walked Agent Waters and his team through the ship again, showing them what areas we’d cleaned up and which we hadn’t. The contrasts were striking.

  I escorted them back off the ship and he stopped me at the lock. “Mr. Wang, we recognize that your part in this is to claim the prize money for your company and that you have no connection to whatever else is going on here. Nothing that you’ve done or said changes that and it will be in my official report. It may take us a couple of days to get this cleared up, but it will be cleared up.”

  I left him there conferring with a group of black-suited agents while I headed for Deck berthing and a bunk. Fredi had loaned me a few more hands so we had enough people to watch the lock and keep the coffee pot full. The ship had no operational mission, and my sole purpose aboard was to safeguard the salvage claim until the authorities let us turn it over to caretaker services.

  In the mean time, I had about three weeks worth of sleep to catch up on.

  After the long, grinding run in from the Burleson limit, the three days in Breakall seemed almost idyllic. True, none of us could leave the ship. At least not for long. TIC did let us go out to dinner—accompanied by a discreet field agent. The Tinker ran short-handed, but they picked up a couple of locals and the skipper filled in as OD, so it wasn’t too desperate. I just hoped that we’d see the prize money from the effort relatively quickly and that it would have been worth it.

  On the morning of November 7th, the TIC had gleaned what they needed from the ship and I signed the papers that relinquished the ship to the company lawyers. I had no idea whether the Chernyakova would go to the breaker’s yard or would be put up for sale. The insurance companies in at least three systems were already screaming bloody murder, and given what I’d seen staining the decking, they had the right of it.

  After the last affidavit had been signed, witnessed, notarized, blessed, and paid for, the five of us remaining from the prize crew were finally free to walk about the dock. Of course, the first thing we did was shoulder our kits and head back to the Tinker.

  Walking through the lock again was like coming home. As much fun as it was to have the whole ship to ourselves, the Chernyakova never seemed like much more than a hull to me. We spent a lot of time on her, but ultimately, I didn’t really have anything personally invested in her, except survival. The Tinker was home, and I was ready to go home. I wanted to try to wash off some of the odor that still lingered. I wondered if I’d ever feel clean again.

  As I stood there feeling the warm glow, Ulla Nart welcomed me aboard. “The captain’s compliments, sar, and she asked if you’d report to the cabin at your earliest convenience.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Nart. That was her message? ‘Earliest convenience?’”

  “Yes, sar.”

  “If you’d let the captain know that I’m on my way?”

  I didn’t stop for acknowledgment. It wasn’t unusual for the captain to summon me upon my return and I had hoped to spend some decompression time with her. In Officer Speak, ‘Earliest Convenience’ was a special phrase. Like most polite contrivances, it didn’t mean what it said. I hustled my buns to officer country and was knocking on the cabin’s door frame in less than half a tick.

  “Ishmael Wang reporting as requested, Captain.”

  “Come in, Mr. Wang. You can leave the door open. You’re leaving again.” She held out her tablet and used it to send a document to me.

  I dropped my duffel on the deck to free a hand so I could look at it. It was an invitation to sit for Captain and I was due at the CPJCT offices on Breakall in less than a stan. “Captain?”

  “Talk later, foolish man. I was beginning to think those TIC people weren’t going to let you go in time. You need a decent shower, a good shave, a pressed set of khakis, and your ID. You need to be there in 30 ticks. Go.” She snapped the orders with her usual efficiency of communication and a gentle smile.

  I went.

  In spacer terms, half a stan is twenty ticks more than you need to shower, shave, and skin into a fresh uniform. Eleven ticks after leaving the cabin, I was leaving the ship again and walking deliberately–not running–to the lift. The CPJCT offices were on the oh-one deck opposite the lift. They owned the station but kept a low profile with a discreet presence and a modest sign. Unless you needed them, you’d never see them.

  I skidded into the lift and stood outside the office door with time to spare. I checked my uniform in the reflection of the glass and smoothed a bit of wet hair. I had no idea how the invitation had been wangled but it had been. I didn’t even think about whether or not I wanted to sit for the exam. Unlike the Mate’s exam, the Captain’s exam was by invitation only.

  You could sit for Mate once you had the requisite time in grade and thought that you knew your stuff. You only needed to attend one of the periodic exam sessions and take the test. They were often proforma events, not too fraught with formality. You paid the fee, you took the test, they gave you the ticket–or not.

  The Captain’s exam was different. There was a minimum time in grade, of course, but captains were not part of the normal te
st rotation. The Captain’s exam occurred when ever somebody was invited.

  There were forms and fees that needed to be filled out and paid, and I suspected the not-so-frail hand of Frederica DeGrut held the spoon that stirred that particular pot. The CPJCT then convened a panel of not fewer than three ‘Licensed Captains in Good Standing.’ I understood that most captains deemed it an honor to be selected for a board but it took a fair amount of valuable time away from their normal duties to pass judgment on the invited first mate.

  Before I could face the panel, I had to pass the written test covering law, navigation, accounting, engineering, and more. It was all in there–over a decade’s worth of experience and expertise–distilled down to a few hours of test taking. A smiling, smartly dressed clerk showed me to the testing room, had me verify my identity against that on record, and waved me to my seat.

  “This first exam is three stans, Mr. Wang. At the end of that time, or when you finish, there is an intermission of one stan where you may get something to eat, refresh yourself, or otherwise make ready for a similar period to follow. Upon completion of the second half, you will be finished for the day. Your results will be transmitted to the Board of Captains. After review of the record, they may or may not summon you to an Examination within one standard day. Do you understand the process, Mr. Wang?”