By Darkness Forged (Seeker's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Book 3)

by Nathan Lowell

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “Never struck you as odd? How many times we’ve been tangentially involved in stuff that most people never hear of?”

  “With you and the chief on board? Not even once.”

  “You think that happened by accident?” he asked, draining his bottle and placing it on the table between us.

  “Not in the least. It was your plan all along that we poke the bear with a stick named Chernyakova.”

  He shrugged and stood. “So, I’m ready to call it a night. I’ve got a heavy day of loafing ahead of me tomorrow and I need to get my rest.” He squinted at me. “Don’t you have a date at some stupid predawn hour?”

  I took another sip of the beer and left the half-full bottle on the table. “Yeah, I do.” I stood and headed for the door.

  “We make a good team,” he said.

  “It’ll be interesting to see how we do without all the outside influences,” I said, looking back at him.

  He laughed and shook his head. “Hold that thought.” He left the bottles on the table and wandered down the hall toward the master bedroom. “Night.”

  “Good night,” I said, and let myself out. All the way back through campus, I wondered what he meant. He didn’t seem to believe that his quitting would remove the outside influences. Considering all we’d been through, I felt pretty sure he could be right.

  My tablet buzzed me awake at 0530, leaving me enough time to grab a coffee and a snack and slip into some gym clothes to make my way to the studio by 0600. The morning sun hadn’t quite peeked up over the horizon, but a glorious silver and gray light show against a bluer-than-blue backdrop heralded its imminent arrival.

  I arrived to find Sifu Newmar already working through some warm-ups.

  “Am I late?” I asked, after bowing to the studio.

  “Just getting started,” she said. “At my age, I need to ease into the day a bit more gently than when I was only a hundred.” She shot me a wicked grin.

  I slipped off my shoes and joined her on the floor, echoing her warm-up movements, stretching my torso, tugging gently on the calf muscles and thighs. I felt stiff and awkward at first. My body found the memory and my balance shifted slightly. I felt the warmth through my core.

  She stopped the warm-up and took the opening position, glancing over her shoulder at me. “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  She began the Jung Long form and we eased through it, languidly immersing in the movements as if rejoining a lover after a long absence. We finished and she stepped out of the ending position to turn and look at me. “You’re rusty.”

  I laughed. “I told you that last night.”

  She nodded. “The rust is all at the edges. Your core is stronger. More balanced.”

  “I expect we’ll knock that rust off before I leave again.”

  She grinned. “You need to practice while you’re underway. In that great big ship there isn’t enough room for even a Yang Short?”

  “I’m planning on using the spine. Just haven’t done it yet.”

  “That should be plenty of room.” She nodded me toward the kitchen.

  “Tea already?”

  She shook her head. “I need to show you something.”

  She led me into the kitchen and pointed to the two tea cups on the table.

  “It was her,” I said. “I met her on the path on my way out last night but I wasn’t sure.”

  “You met her already?”

  “We both reached for the same cup. That’s why I got the blue one.” I glanced over at the empty slot. “I picked up the tin of tea to go with it.”

  She nodded. “Great minds.”

  “Was she a student of yours?”

  “A long time ago. Last night was the first time I’d seen her since she graduated. She was the one that broke the original cup. Brilliant engineer.”

  “Dangerous woman,” I said.

  “Why dangerous?”

  “She reminds me of a classmate here. Absolutely deadly in unarmed combat. Nobody on the ship could take her. Gwai Gwahr with a lot of other techniques.”

  “Beverly Arith,” Newmar said.

  I nodded. “That’s her. This woman moves like Bev.”

  “Interesting observation. You noticed this from just a momentary observation in a shop at Dark Knight Station?”

  “Hard to miss,” I said. “Her friend is no slouch either.”

  “Zoya is the one people most often watch. Striking woman.”

  “Zee,” I said. “The other one is Nats?”

  “Natalya. Yes.”

  “So while everybody watches Zoya, Natalya is the real danger,” I said. “Are they a couple?”

  She shook her head. “Not any more than you and Pip are.” She paused and gave me one of her looks. “Why do you ask?”

  I knew I was busted but shrugged. “Just curious.”

  “Well, shall we dance?” she asked.

  “That’s it? You just wanted to know if we’d met?”

  “I found out what I wanted to know.” She smiled.

  It was the smile that told me that she’d gotten a lot more out of our exchange than I had. We set up for another form and I made a bet with myself. I’d be seeing Natalya and Zoya again. Sooner rather than later.

  “Zoya is a deck officer, isn’t she,” I said.

  “Focus, Ishmael,” she said. “Be in the moment.”

  I had a feeling that the other shoe, when it dropped, would hit me in the face. I was pretty sure it would be a woman’s shoe. I felt the smile forming and schooled my expression.

  Chapter 43

  Port Newmar: 2376, May 17

  Mal Gaines leaned forward in his chair, elbows on knees, staring at me. “So, how are you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Give me the spectrum. What’s on one end? What’s on the other?”

  I blew out a breath. “Well, the guy who killed Greta is dead.”

  “Which end is that on?”

  “That’s part of the problem. He’s gone. That’s over. Whatever that was.”

  He sat back and nodded. “Talk some more about that.”

  “Part of me thought I should be all ‘Grrr. Bring me the head of David Patterson.’ Part of me didn’t want to be the person who thought like that, who felt that way. Mostly I just miss her and wish I’d been smarter about the whole crew relationship issue.”

  “Smarter how?”

  “I know that the chain of command exists for good management reasons. That having people in relationships can get messy and ugly. In space, maybe deadly.”

  “Keep going,” he said.

  “But I’ve seen it work. At least from the outside it looks like it works. Family ships are common out there. Ships where the whole family works together. Pip’s aunt and uncle make it seem like ‘why wouldn’t we be married to each other?’ On the Agamemnon, the first mate and the cargomaster fell in love and started living together. I’m pretty sure they didn’t break up when I moved on and she became the captain. You must see it in your practice.”

  “It’s not uncommon,” he said. “But it can get messy. Why do you think it’s dangerous?”

  “The relationship can cloud judgment.”

  “You believe that?”

  I nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “Would you do anything differently as captain if, say, you loved the cook?”

  “I wouldn’t know until it happened, would I?”

  He laughed. “All right. You faced down an armed hijacker. Got right up in his face. Pulled the gun out of his hands.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “He was threatening my crew,” I said. “He obviously had no idea what to do with the weapon and could have easily killed one of them by accident.”

  “Tell me that first part again.”

  “What? He was threatening my crew?”

  “Yeah. That part.”

  “He was threatening my crew,” I said.r />
  “Not threatening the crew. He was threatening your crew,” Gaines said.

  He stopped me short with that one.

  “Which one of the crew would you have been willing to sacrifice?” he asked.

  “None of them.” The question lit a fuse in me. “What kind of question is that?”

  He smiled. “Who’s your favorite crewman?”

  “Favorite? That’s got to be like asking a parent which is their favorite child.”

  His smile broadened and he just stared.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What if—in order to save the crew—you had to jump out the air lock without a suit?”

  “Why would I have to do that?”

  “Why did you stand in front of an armed hijacker and dare him to kill you?” he asked.

  “It’s what any of us would do.”

  “Al?” he asked.

  “Certainly.”

  “How about Tom Reed?”

  “Of course.”

  “Your third mate. Ms. Fortuner?”

  “Kim, and I’m certain of her. And Chief Stevens. Any of them. Right on down the line to the most junior spacer apprentice.” The image of Kris Cross standing up to Snake gave me a combination laugh and cringe.

  “What was that?” he asked. “That last bit.”

  “My junior SA is not exactly an imposing physical specimen.” I paused. “Intellectually, she’s firing on all cylinders and she’s got the heart of a lion.”

  “So what? The image was funny?” he asked. “David and Goliath?”

  “Something like that. Also frightening. Snake could have killed her by accident.”

  “He could have killed you by accident,” Gaines said in the most matter-of-fact tone. “Why is it different with her?”

  “The safety of the crew is my responsibility.”

  “And Ms. Cross? Is her responsibility to wait for somebody else to take responsibility?”

  “No,” I said, but I stopped reacting and started thinking. I remembered Ms. Torkelson.

  Gaines’s smile came back. “Tell me about it.”

  I settled back and took a deep breath. “One of the questions you asked was ‘What will you stand for?’ I tried to think of things like truth, honesty, and abstract things like that. In my head I always heard the question differently. ‘What do you stand for?’ and that’s not what you asked, unless I’ve remembered wrong.”

  “You remember correctly. That alone is pretty impressive.” He paused. “Did you come to any conclusions?”

  “It took one of my crew to tell me.” I could hear her voice echoing in the bare lock. “It was after all the dust had settled. The danger behind us. Bombs disposed of. Hijackers locked up or dead. She told me she almost left the ship the last time we were here because she didn’t think I really cared. About the ship. About the crew. Anything.”

  “PTSD and depression are almost never invisible,” he said. “They just look like something else.”

  “She actually said that she didn’t think we stood for anything and she didn’t want to be a member of a crew that didn’t care. I asked her if she’d changed her mind. What did she think we stood for.” I paused, thinking about her standing there in the lock and facing me with her doubts and dreams on her sleeve. “She said we stood for each other.”

  “Interesting young woman,” Gaines said.

  “Spec-two shiphandler. She’s got the touch.”

  “Do you agree with her?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Ms. Sharps asked about a piece of faulty galley equipment. She was looking out for the ship and the crew even when nobody else knew there was a problem. Ms. Cross found a safety issue in the spine of the ship. She came to the cabin and confronted me about it. She was right. Schulteis in environmental, a wiper, low man on the totem pole, got his senior watchstander working on advancing rank and probably saved his life by helping him drill with the emergency suit.” I shrugged. “Those are only the ones I noticed lately. There have had to be others.”

  “Sounds like you had an interesting voyage, Skipper.”

  I laughed. “Parts of it certainly seemed like a curse.”

  “What are your plans now?” he asked.

  “What do I plan or what do I expect?”

  “Both.”

  “I plan to get the ship back out there earning credits. We’ve almost got it paid off and Pip’s talking about expanding the fleet.”

  “Can he get that past the board?”

  “Normally, I’d say ‘no’ but I’m not going to put anything past him. It might not be another Barbell, but he knows the fast packet trade cold. Compared to what we’ve currently got, that would be a cheap addition. His father would probably sell us Pip’s old ship at cost.”

  “And what do you expect?” he asked.

  “I expect to get smacked in the head by a falling shoe.”

  “As in ‘the other shoe?’” he asked.

  “That’s the one. Seems like whenever I begin to feel that I have a handle on things, I find out that not only do I not have a handle—I don’t actually have a clue.”

  He laughed. “Well, come see me when you get back to Port Newmar. You can fill me in.”

  I checked the chrono and saw that our time was up. “That went fast. You don’t have any homework for me this time?”

  He shook his head. “You’ve got a lot to chew on. Patterson’s death. You found the mega.”

  “It didn’t sink the Pequod,” I said.

  “You’re not Ahab,” he said. “Focus on processing all the changes that have happened since we first met here. That’s a lot to think about.”

  I stood and shook his hand. “Thanks, Mal.”

  “See you next time, Captain.”

  Chapter 44

  Port Newmar: 2376, May 17

  My tablet interrupted the walk back to my cottage: a message from Pip asking for my presence at his house “at my earliest convenience.” Normally, I might have just shrugged it off as “Pip just being Pip.” That phrase, used in a context where he—as CEO—outranked me, had me legging it from the administration tower to his house. Part of me hoped that it wasn’t going to be what I knew it would be.

  He met me at the door with a cold bottle of Clipper Ship and a bemused expression. “Captain, we have a problem.” He led me into the dining where the chief, looking as unruffled as ever, and Al, looking excited with a hint of fidget, sat at the long table.

  I looked at the chief first. “It’s time?”

  She nodded.

  I looked at Al. “Retiring?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. She held up her tablet. “I’ll forward you the message.”

  My tablet bipped and I flipped open the screen. “An artist-in-residence?”

  She nodded. “Christine Maloney has run an artist-in-residence program for over a decade. She’s invited me to be that artist.”

  “Did you apply?” I asked. “How did this happen?”

  Al shook her head. “It’s not that kind of program. She picks an artist who she believes represents an important voice. The term is a stanyer. It includes housing, an allowance for supplies, studio space, and a featured show in her gallery on Jett.” She stopped and swallowed hard. “It’s a big deal in the art world.”

  I looked at the chief, who gave me the biggest “who, me?” face in the Western Annex.

  I looked back at Al and smiled. “How can I help?”

  Pip looked at me like I’d lost my mind and fell into one of the chairs. “What?”

  I looked at him. “You expected me to object?”

  “Well, I thought you might put up a token bit of resistance just to let her know how much we value her contribution to the team.” His pout wasn’t really convincing, especially when he washed it down with a heavy pull from his beer bottle.

  I pulled out a chair, plopped into it, and looked at the chief. “I didn’t see it coming here,” I said. “I should have. You’ve been invite
d to be a guest lecturer at the academy for the next little while?”

  Pip’s expression turned quizzical. “Why would you say that?”

  “It’s the most likely reason for her to leave the Chernyakova here.”

  “What’s your second guess?” he asked.

  “That her publisher is pressing for the next edition of the text she’s been working on the whole time she’s been aboard but it’s not ready yet.”

  Al snorted and folded her arms across her chest. “He’s no slouch.”

  “Both?” I asked, looking at the chief.

  She nodded. “But I promised I wouldn’t leave you without a chief.”

  “How did you get them to come in from Dark Knight?” I asked.

  Her eyes widened for a moment before she grinned. “How did you know?”

  “Serendipity. Never underestimate the power of chance to reveal that which you thought to be hidden.”

  “Fortune cookie?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Plum Blossom over at Jett.”

  “I know it well. Jimmy Chin’s an old friend.”

  “I ran into them in a tea shop on Dark Knight just before we left. Nats was buying a tea cup to replace the one she broke. I was buying one for Margaret Newmar because I knew somebody had broken one of hers. I saw a likely replacement in the shop. We both reached for the same one,” I said. “I ran into them again late yesterday afternoon when I left the studio. I thought I was mistaken until I went back this morning and found the same cup on Margaret’s table and got the rundown on a brilliant engineer and a frighteningly effective deck officer.”

  The chief gave a small shrug. “We have some paperwork that needs doing, and you’re going to want to interview them before they sign in.”

  “Wait, you knew this morning?” Pip asked.

  “No, I knew when I walked in to see both the first mate and chief engineer sitting at your kitchen table.” I shrugged.

  I looked at the chief. “When are we expecting them?”

  “They’ll be here shortly.”

  “You have any tea?” I asked, looking at Pip.

  He shook his head. “Not on my provisioning order. Why?”

  “At least one of them drinks tea.”