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

by Nathan Lowell

  “Yeah, I suppose I am. I still think it’s elephant repellant. You proved you can handle yourself and, realistically, who’s really out to get you?”

  “Well, corporate kidnappers...”

  I just looked at her. “Do you know anybody who’s been kidnapped?”

  “No, but everybody has a bodyguard these days.”

  “And you think there’s a whole industry geared around waiting for some executive who’s just wandering around loose? Waiting for them to slip away from their bodyguards so they can swoop in and nab them?”

  She pursed her lips. “It does sound pretty far-fetched when you put it that way, Captain.”

  “That’s what you’re telling me.”

  She paused for a few heartbeats before nodding. “I guess it is.”

  We finished our lunches, and I helped her clear the mess deck.

  “So what had you all stormy, Captain? When you came into the mess deck I thought somebody was gonna get keel-hauled.”

  “The chief. After the warning I gave him back on Diurnia, he did just the bare minimum. There’s still about two dozen lighting panels and assorted other small jobs that need to be done.”

  “Well, he said he needed to order some more lighting panels.”

  I nodded. “True. I would have thought he’d have done that back in Diurnia, but maybe he did it here, and they just haven’t come aboard. I’m just not used to having to ride herd on the chief engineer like he’s some half-share wiper.”

  “Greta spoiled you,” Ms. Maloney said with a smirk.

  I shot her a look. “Excuse me?”

  “Chief Gerheart? Greta? You remember her, I think, Captain.” She smiled at me as she stashed the left over soup in the chiller.

  “You seem to know a lot about my ex-crew,” I said with a certain amount of surprise.

  “Well, she was the subject of rather a lot of debate before we decided to try to slip the chief aboard.”

  “Really?” I leaned on the counter and considered her. I wasn’t sure if I felt more intrigued, insulted, or just a little like the last to know.

  “Kirsten was very impressed with her. You three did some work aboard here?”

  “Yes, I brought Chief Gerheart over to see the ship, and we found the scrubbers dead and stinking up the ship. Kirsten was with us.”

  “So I understand.” She smiled at me. “You’re a strange man, Captain.”

  “Strange?”

  “Why didn’t you invite Greta to be your engineer?”

  “She had a job already. A good job with a crew that needed her.” I didn’t feel the need to go into any of the other, more personal, aspects.

  She arched an eyebrow at me, and then started filling the sink to wash up a few pots, leaving me to stew.

  Feeling baited by my own crew, I pulled a mug out of the rack and grabbed a fresh cup. “I’ll be in my cabin if you need me, Ms. Maloney.”

  “Okay, Captain.” The amusement in her voice nettled me but I refused to be drawn. “Will you be cooking for me this evening? Or should I plan on making supper for us?”

  I stopped at the door and looked back at her. “Oriental, huh?”

  She stopped washing the pot and turned to regard me over her shoulder. “I’d love some if you can arrange it.”

  “Lemme see what I can do, Ms. Maloney. Failing that? I’ll cook for you.”

  She seemed surprised by my offer, but nodded. “Thanks, Captain. That would be fun.”

  I went to my cabin and started digging.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Greenfields Orbital:

  2373-March-6

  The orbital’s business directory yielded only one restaurant featuring oriental cuisine and after reviewing the offerings, I decided I would be cooking. While I was looking things up, I checked the chief’s orders for spares to see how many of the lighting panels he’d ordered.

  It distressed me to learn that the answer was none. Believing that I had made a mistake I backtracked through our last three stops, looking for spares orders. I found none. A cold feeling washed down my back, and settled in the pit of my stomach.

  I pulled up the ship’s spares inventory to check scrubber filters. We were supposed to have up to thirty-two, allowing for four full swap outs of the eight filters. In practice, it was enough for almost three months. The inventory showed we had twenty-eight—the same number I had set it to after doing the half-scrubber swap on Ten Volt. He should have used at least a few more since then, but if he had, then the inventory was wrong. I counted on my fingers, and thought that he should have used at least eight—maybe as many as twelve. Scrubbers were funny and you had to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn’t get ahead of you.

  While I was there, I checked the lighting panel inventory and found it full. I was left trying to decide if he bought them with his own money, hadn’t used any from our original order, or just never updated the inventories after he had. I had seen the evidence that he had replaced some of them. I got a very bad feeling.

  I pulled up all of the chief’s chandlery orders. His orders consisted of a few tools, a bundle of wipes, and a couple of cans of cleaning solvent.

  There are times in my life when I have been scared—frightened for my life even. That was the first time I felt the absolute horror that, through my actions, somebody might die. I sat there for about a dozen heartbeats before I started slapping keys to bring up the engineering displays showing fuel and water tankage.

  Our water tanks stood at fifteen percent. It was enough for another few weeks underway. It was probably enough to get back to Diurnia, what with all the recycling and filtering we did. Maybe even another port beyond that. Fuel reserves were at around one percent. It would have been enough to get us started, but it wasn’t even enough to kick us out to the safety limit to raise sails. Worse, the volatiles that powered our maneuvering thrusters were nearly as bad, showing a bare five percent.

  I wasted no more time. I keyed the order for tankage with the chandlery immediately, and released it. The fittings were all in place. They locked on when we docked. It only required the fill order—and a payment account—to begin feeding the ship. When the order acknowledgment came back, I began to breathe again. I watched until the flow status indicator clicked up and water, fuel, and volatiles began streaming into the empty tanks.

  “Spares,” I muttered, and left the cabin heading for engineering stores. I brought up the stores inventory on my tablet and went to the scrubber filter bin. I found twelve filters and that made a certain amount of sense. If he had replaced all the filters instead of just half of them, and done it twice, it would have left a dozen. It was enough to get us to port anywhere, but an inefficient use of the scrubber.

  I put the updated number in inventory, and went to find the lighting panels. There were none left, so I zeroed that one. I spot checked other items, but we hadn’t used much of anything that I could see. Only the items I had specifically ordered him to fix.

  I ran the stores replenishment routine to generate an order, and added a simple tool kit. I needed screw drivers and wrenches of my own, if I was going to make any headway. I was through counting on the chief. Given my preferences, I would have put him ashore in Greenfields, but I had booked passengers and cargo for Diurnia, and I couldn’t afford to wait to find a new engineer. All I could do was try to keep an eye on him, and try to keep the ship together until we made it back to home port.

  Back in my cabin, I ran up the documentation on the main engineering components, quickly reviewing the maintenance requirements for sail generators, fusactors, grav generators, and the rest. The maintenance clocks all looked right based on what I could see, which left only one problem left to track down.

  The tank levels were low enough that I should have had an error. The bridge repeaters should have triggered when fuel and volatiles dropped below ten percent. I had an uneasy feeling I knew the cause. I checked the new communications bus but the channels were alive there, just not getting the signals. I d
ug deeper into the main systems bus processors, and accessed the sensor channel directly. I breathed a bit easier when I discovered that the channel wasn’t live there either. My fear was that in substituting the new communications subsystem board, I had inadvertently cut the alarm channels. With the main bus channels showing no alarms, there was nothing for the communications board to pass on, no source alarm.

  I headed back to engineering, and—with the help of the sensor schematics—found the main alarm switch panel. Before I tested it, I brought up the alarm suite on the engineering console and made sure there were no alarms. I triggered the test for each alarm in turn, watching the screen as one after another they triggered and went off again as I enabled and disabled the test. When I got to fuel, the test triggered on, but didn’t go off when I reset the test circuit, correctly indicating a two percent fuel level. The volatiles sensor did the same thing, coming up on test, but dropping into a valid alarm state when I reset the test circuit. I shook my head and kept testing alarms. All the ship’s sensors triggered correctly, and only the two I knew about failed to reset.

  The engineering seat creaked once when I dropped into it, the strength draining out of my knees. Without maneuvering jets or auxiliary fuel we might have easily crashed into the side of the orbital or another ship. Without enough spares for the scrubbers we might have suffocated before we made it back to port. If something had gone wrong, we might have been stuck in the Deep Dark, running out of water, running out of air. I shuddered at the thought.

  The chrono clicked over to 1630, and I headed for the galley. I had a lot of thinking to do, and cooking seemed like a good way to get it done.

  When I got to the galley, I didn’t know what I would fix. I kept thinking about the ship and the dangers. The knowledge that I had failed weighed heavily on me, and I didn’t like it.

  I went back into the freezers and came back with a pair of steaks. The thought of a simple steak and baked potato dinner appealed to me—perhaps with a side salad of fresh greens and a granapple cobbler for dessert. I checked the freezer, and smiled at the array of ice creams.

  Menu planned, my mind wandered over the various aspects of the problem while my hands tended to the little tasks surrounding dinner prep. I set the potatoes to bake and went looking for some granapples for cobbler.

  My first and overwhelming problem centered around being the captain. It was my responsibility to make sure the ship was safe. I had let us get underway without checking the tankage. We had sailed around the quadrant for two and a half months without testing the alarm circuits. That should have been a priority when I first got the ship and again when I replaced the communications subsystem. I had dropped the ball.

  The cobbler went together without thought. A fast mixture of fruit, juice, and a bit of corn starch and sugar went into the bottom of a loaf pan and I topped it with a fast flour batter to crust it. It was in the oven in less than five ticks, and I hoped I hadn’t forgotten anything serious as I closed the door on it. I couldn’t remember even making it.

  The steaks thawed quickly in the microwave, warming just slightly to the touch. I rubbed them with salt, pepper, and a bit of crushed garlic before setting them aside to rest while I peeled a couple of onions and chopped some mushrooms.

  As the flood of anger with myself receded, I was able to put aside the self-recriminations and focus on the larger picture. I began to ponder what I needed to do to make sure it never happened again.

  So much had gone wrong, and almost all of it in the engineering areas of the ship—tankage, maintenance, spares—all tasks that needed to be in the hands of a trusted chief engineer. My failure had been one of supervision, but the base problem rested with Chief Bailey.

  Ms. Maloney had the right of it. Greta Gerheart had spoiled me. A pang of something—longing, regret, loneliness—stabbed through me at the memory of her sapphire-laced smiles. I knew behind her smile lay a rock solid layer of dependability. Once I got to know her, I never once doubted what she said, or questioned one of her requests.

  I sighed and tossed the onions into a sauté pan with a bit of butter to caramelize, stirring them around with a wooden spoon. The smell permeated the galley and as they cooked up, I added the chopped mushrooms, shaking and scraping the pan, keeping the ingredients moving even as my thoughts spiraled.

  Chief Bailey made me crazy. The backwater patois, the lack of responsiveness in his operational area, even in the face of direct orders, and his apparent incompetence triggered something in me that made me want to scream and blocked rational thought. Was he incompetent? Or did I just think he was because he aggravated me so?

  I slipped the onions and mushrooms onto a warm plate and heated the pan up until it practically smoked. The steaks went right onto the hot metal and immediately stuck. I left them there, periodically poking them with a pair of tongs until they cooked free and I was able to flip them over. I repeated the process, letting them sear on both sides and when the second side cooked free of the metal, I slipped the pan under a hot broiler and set the timer for six ticks.

  The facts about the chief seemed damning. He hadn’t done the tasks that I specifically assigned him to do. He had reported on multiple occasions that he had topped off the tanks, but he had never done it. The empty state of the tanks, and the lack of purchasing records to substantiate his report, constituted evidence. His performance with the scrubbers in replacing all the filters when he should have only replaced half of them argued that he didn’t really have the knowledge that I needed for the ship. His failure to maintain his inventory counts constituted a certain level of either misunderstanding or incompetence. Without an accurate count of our inventories, the replenishment orders couldn’t calculate how many we needed to get. We ran the risk of getting underway without the necessary stores to complete the trip.

  While the steaks broiled, I grabbed a pair of wooden salad bowls. I tossed a few rough handfuls of greens into them, sliced a big of tomato across the top of each, and added a few scrapes of a hard cheese across the top of each. The vinaigrette was only a few ingredients and a whisk away from completion. Balsamic vinegar and a rich oil formed an emulsion that wouldn’t stand up for long but which I could reconstitute at will.

  The timer dinged, and I grabbed a side towel to use as a potholder. I fished the sauté pan out from under the broiler, and tossed the mushroom and onion mixture into the pan with the steaks before clapping a lid on it to keep in the heat.

  I sighed, wondering how Ms. Maloney would take it. The chief needed to go. I didn’t trust him, and he lacked the requisite skill set needed for the level of engineer the ship needed. He might be a perfectly good chief engineer, but if I couldn’t trust him, he was a problem that I needed to remove.

  I pulled down a pair of plates, and set about plating dinner. The baked potatoes came out first, and I carved a rough x into the top of each with the tines of a fork and stuffed a small pat of butter into the gap. The sauté pan yielded the steaks, and I split the onions and mushrooms between the two plates, the rich drippings forming a thin sauce that I drizzled across each steak.

  I put the hot pan on the back of the range top, and stood back to admire my handiwork.

  Ms. Maloney scared the willies out of me when she applauded.

  “Good gods and tiny fishes, Ms. Maloney! How long have you been sitting there?”

  She smirked and shrugged. “Half a stan or so. You seemed preoccupied so I didn’t disturb you.” She stood and crossed to the counter, looking over the dinner waiting there, and nodding with approval.

  “I couldn’t find a chinese place that looked good enough to order out from. Sorry about that.”

  She shook her head. “We’re spoiled by Jimmy Chin. After him, everything else looks just slightly unappetizing.” She smelled the aroma of beef, onion, and mushroom wafting up from the plate. “Your technique is very good, Captain. One might think you’d had some training.”

  “Only what Cookie taught me back on the Lois—and a few tricks I pick
ed up along the way.”

  “Are we ready to eat?” She asked eying the plates.

  “I think so. Shall we?”

  In response she eagerly claimed a plate and a bowl of salad, and took a seat at the table. I followed suit, and we each ate halfway across our respective plates before speaking.

  “This is where we should have had a bottle of wine, Ms. Maloney. Do you have any on order yet?”

  She shook her head. “I looked today but didn’t see anything I wanted to have in our cellar. The common table wines are a poor value, and the high-end wines are only priced at the high-end. We need to visit someplace like Martha’s Haven where they make some decent wines and stock up.” She glanced up at me for a moment before looking back at her plate. “So, what did you do this afternoon, Captain? I heard the engine room hatch open and close a lot.”

  I sighed and finished the bite I had in my mouth before answering. “I discovered some discrepancies in the ship’s engineering status. I spent the afternoon resolving them.”

  She stared me for a few moments before nodding. “Discrepancies, Captain?”

  “Inventories not up to date, tanks not refilled, work not actually done. I even found some alarm sensor faults that should never have occurred.”

  “That sounds serious, Captain.”

  “It is, Ms. Maloney. I examined some of his work, and I found it lacked the level of expertise I need in an engineering officer.”

  She chewed thoughtfully. “What will you do?” she asked after swallowing.

  “We need to get back to Diurnia. We’ve got cargoes and passengers that we’ve committed delivery for.” I shrugged. “I’m going to have to spend a lot of the transit in oversight, because I don’t think he’s competent as a chief engineer.”

  “I see. And when we get back to Diurnia?”

  “I don’t dare risk passengers and crew.” I gave her a rueful smile. “We’ll have to stay there until I can find a new engineer, and you’ll have to decide whether you can continue aboard without him as your bodyguard.”