In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1)

by Nathan Lowell

  He glanced up at me for a moment and then looked down again. “What can you tell me about the Chernyakova?”

  Chapter Five

  Port Newmar:

  2374, May 28

  My beer was nearly empty but I drained it anyway. The memories of bloated bodies and of living in the smell of corrupted flesh soured the brew, but it was something to do with my hands while I processed the question.

  Pip cleared his throat. “That bad, huh?”

  I put the empty bottle on the coffee table and leaned back in my chair. “Yeah. Actually, a bit worse than you might imagine.” I wiped a hand across my mouth but it did nothing for the vile taste there. “What do you want to know?”

  “Condition of the vessel?”

  I shrugged. “It’s been a couple of stanyers. Last I saw of it, it was a mess.”

  “Mess, how?”

  “No spares. Systems missing components. Broken panels in the backbone. Stores completely inadequate.”

  “Structural problems?”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  “You commanded the salvage crew.”

  “Yeah.” I kept my eyes open and focused on his face because closing them meant seeing things I never wanted to see again.

  “They’ll hold the next auction in about a month.”

  “Third time’s the charm,” I said.

  “You stand to make a lot when it closes.”

  “Yeah. That’s what they tell me. It’s how I was able to finagle the financing to start Icarus.”

  “I figured. Musta thrown a few wrenches in the works when it never closed.”

  I shrugged. “I had worse problems.”

  He gave me a long stare. His earring gleamed in the afternoon light streaming in the window behind him. “Wanna talk about them?”

  I shook my head. “Alys is setting me up with a therapist and I’ve got Sifu Newmar to keep me grounded.”

  “She’s a treasure, that woman.”

  “Which one?”

  He laughed and took a slug from his beer. “Both, I guess.”

  “Why do you want to know about the Chernyakova?”

  “I’m going to bid on it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The Barbell class is a unique vessel. Secure cargo. Massive capacity. Absolutely reliable ship. Relatively small crew compared to ships like the Eighty-Eights.”

  “And you want one to test your model.”

  He grinned at me and the twinkle in his eye took me back two decades. “You aren’t as dumb as you used to be.”

  “Why Chernyakova?”

  “Ship itself isn’t that old. The space frame is rated for a half century and it’s barely scratched ten stanyers. Generators, fusactors, and engines should all be sound.” He eyed me. “Unless you saw something?”

  “Maintenance logs weren’t exactly trust-inducing.”

  He sat back and cradled his beer on his chest, frowning at the ceiling. “So, we may need some overhaul.”

  “The last two auctions have failed.”

  “Yeah. I know.” His grin grew more predatory than friendly. “They’ve also changed the terms. They dropped the reserve and minimum bid is down to fifty mill.”

  “What was it before?”

  “Reserve was a hundred and fifty with a one percent penalty. Sealed bids.”

  “So bid two hundred mill and realize the ship was a dog?”

  “Pay the two mill to get out from under it,” Pip said. “Is it a dog?”

  I took a deep breath and blew it out, trying to sort out my emotional response to the ship from the actual facts. “It’ll need some work. I wouldn’t trust the Burleson drives in a pinch. They’d need to be recalibrated. The inside probably needs to be completely refurbed. That stench got into everything. I had to burn the uniforms I wore over there.”

  “Seriously?”

  I chuckled. “No, but I thought about it. I smelled that ship for weeks after.”

  “It’s also an open auction,” Pip said.

  “Not sealed bid?”

  He shook his head. “Registered credit balance deposit in escrow before you can bid. They want that ship gone.”

  “So if you bid it and win?”

  “They already have your credits. Losers get theirs back.”

  “How the heck can you finance something like that?”

  “Deep pockets.” He shrugged. “Or a good banker who’ll float the loan in advance.”

  “How deep are your pockets?” I asked.

  “Not as deep as yours.” He shrugged again. “Deep enough and I’ve an appointment with my bank tomorrow. I’ve enough of a credit line to cover what I intend to bid.”

  “What do you intend to bid?” I asked.

  “My limit is a hundred and ten. With what you’ve said, I think I need to chop that back to ninety to leave some cash for refurbishment.”

  “The ship’s been docked for a couple of stanyers now.”

  He nodded. “I have reserve funds for maintenance and updates, but it’s not enough to replace a Burleson unit.”

  “You’ll need crew.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I’ll need a captain, engineering, and steward. I’ve already taken the cargo master exam so I’m certified as chief. I’ve got some relatives we can tap for mates, and I’m planning on hiring from the pool when I need them. Probably from Diurnia.”

  “Where you going to get the work done?”

  “Unwin has a maintenance yard in Dree. I was planning on jumping over, but you say the ship’s not spaceworthy?”

  I thought about it. “We sailed her into Breakall. They were on their way out of the system when they gassed themselves. One jump?” I shrugged. “If it can pass a decent engineering inspection, it’d probably be all right.”

  Pip’s lips twitched back and forth as if he were chewing on that information. “All right. I’ll take that under advisement. Unwin must have some jump-capable tugs available or on retainer.”

  “Moran runs the tugs around the stations in the whole quadrant. Maybe they have some.”

  “Might not need one, but I’ll factor that into the mix,” Pip said with a nod.

  “What’s a new Barbell cost?” I asked.

  “I found a used one over in Ciroda for half a bill. New ones are almost twice that.”

  I whistled. “I shouldn’t be surprised, but the level of the reserves, I’d have thought less.”

  “How much was your Higbee?”

  “I got it for scrap price. Thirty-five mill.”

  “One fifty is the scrap value of the Chernyakova. Even the knackers didn’t want it for that.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Superstition?”

  “How much bad luck can you get when you melt down the hull?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows. I suspect the scrap dealers weren’t paying attention. Other than its history, there’s nothing to indicate that the ship needs much more than a crew and stores to get underway.”

  “You know the closing bids on the last two auctions?”

  “Scuttlebutt is that they were both somewhere north of two fifty.”

  “And they both folded rather than take it on.”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Didn’t they get an inspection before making a bid?”

  “I’ve got the prospectus here if you want to see it.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out his tablet. He flipped a couple of pages and then slid the device over to me.

  The pictures looked right. I flipped through the photos. Inside shots showed some cosmetic damage to the bulkheads including the broken one that I remembered in the spine. They’d apparently cleaned out all the trash and junk. Berthing areas showed bare racks without mattresses. Galley was completely empty except for the built-in steam kettles and ovens. Images of the bridge showed all the consoles in place but the stains on the deck looked familiar enough that I thought my stomach might rebel.

  “Looks too familiar,” I said, swallowing against the bile.

>   I flipped past the images and read the actual description. “They haven’t sold the cargo?” I asked.

  “As far as I can tell, they never unloaded it. It’s still in there. It’d be part of the salvage claim, at any rate.”

  I flipped through the document. “Isn’t there a manifest?”

  “Near the back. It’s supposedly a can full of hydraulic fluid from Martha’s Haven bound for Diurnia.”

  “At least it’s not kitty litter.”

  “What?”

  I shook my head. “Never mind. Long story. You think the fluid’s any good?”

  “It’s probably frozen. I wonder how they unload it.”

  I shrugged. “Not my problem. They must have some kind of can warmer that lets them pump it out. Two hundred metric kilotons of hydraulic fluid isn’t something you chip out with a hammer and chisel.”

  I stopped at the engineering reports. “According to this, the generators, fusactor, and Burleson drives are within specification.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why I wanted to talk with you about it.”

  I shook my head. “We didn’t have any problems sailing her in from where we found her, but I wouldn’t get underway until we replaced the missing alarm circuits.”

  “Missing alarm circuits?”

  I settled back into my chair. “How much do you know about this?” I slipped the tablet back across the table.

  “Only what I’ve gotten from the public documents and a bit of scuttlebutt from here and there.”

  “Crew died of carbon monoxide poisoning. A rag fire in one of the after engine compartments.”

  “How’s that even possible?”

  “They’d taken the alarm module out of the system. The sensors detected the gas, but the alarms didn’t go off.”

  “Wouldn’t the gas have smothered its own fire?”

  “Not before enough gas got into the environmental system. It took three days to burn up and then burn out.”

  “Ouch.”

  I nodded. “Once the level got critical, the crew pretty much all dropped within a few ticks of each other.”

  Pip closed his eyes and shook his head. “And you found them?”

  “Yeah.”

  Pip blew out his breath. “Well. That’s nasty.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, I suppose you’re not interested in being captain?”

  I blinked at him. “Captain? Of the Chernyakova?”

  “Assuming I win the auction.”

  The realization struck me like a rock to the head. “That’s why you wanted to find me.”

  He gave me a sheepish smile and a small shrug. “You aren’t going to stay ashore forever. I thought you might feel up to a new challenge.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “I’ve always been a little mad. You know that.”

  I sat there for several ticks. All the memories of that ship washed through my head. The sights and smells of death. The horror of what had happened rose in my chest. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” I said. I barely heard my own words over the rushing in my ears.

  Pip nodded. “You’re right. I don’t. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

  I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to unclench my hands from the arms of the chair.

  Pip leaned forward again, his elbows on his knees. He reached forward and placed his beer bottle on the table between us. He seemed to be studying the table top as if for some flaw. “What I can imagine is that you’d never let anything like that happen again. For a lot of people it’s a bad luck ship. A death trap. You were there and saw it. You know what caused it and you know how to fix it. You saw it yourself. First hand. It’s just a ship. A ship with a tragic past, but one that you might be able to turn around. One that you might be able to make into something noble again.”

  He looked over at me. His eyes dared me, but the rest of his face stayed flatly neutral.

  I stared at him and recognized the fear that lay beneath my memories. He hadn’t called me afraid in so many words but he knew just which buttons to push to get me to see it. The thought of setting foot on that ship again made my skin crawl. I had to wipe my palms on the thighs of my uniform.

  Yet there was something in his suggestion. Something that appealed to my insecurity in a horrible, scary way. My bank account held enough credits that I never had to work another day in my life. I could do anything I wanted. Find a rock and live out my days on it. Get a yacht and sail around. I could retreat from the universe and stop worrying about power dynamics and personnel management and trade routes.

  I might live long enough to forget those sapphire eyes.

  I didn’t want to do that. Any of it.

  Part of me wanted to go somewhere that I couldn’t get anybody else killed, but the life of a dilettante held no appeal. I knew that—whatever else had happened—my future lay in the Deep Dark. People died in space all the time. Probably every day, and most of them because somebody cut a corner or made a mistake without sufficient backup. The Chernyakova was a monument to that short-sightedness.

  I looked over at Pip.

  “You could sell vacuum to an orbital, couldn’t you.”

  He grinned. “You’ll do it? Be captain?”

  “I need to think about it.”

  “What’s to think about?”

  “Whether or not I’m fit to command.”

  He threw up his hands and flopped back in his seat. “I never met anybody more fit,” he said. “Even now, with your head up your backside and acting more like Hamlet’s father than Hamlet, you’re more fit to command than half the captains in the fleet.”

  I should have said something like “What do you mean?” or “Head up my backside?” but what came out was “Since when did you read Shakespeare?”

  Pip scuffed his feet on the floor and refused to meet my eyes. “I had some time on my hands and stumbled on some old books. Sue me.”

  “Guy’s been dead for centuries.”

  He glared at me. “Your point?”

  I laughed, my entire train of thought so completely derailed I completely forgot whatever I had meant to say. I just kept chuckling. Nobody had quoted Shakespeare to me since my mother died, and now it had happened twice in the last week. The wonder of it struck me funny. That one of them came from Pip made it even funnier. After the horror and seriousness of the conversation we’d been having, you could have put a whoopee cushion under one of us and it wouldn’t have been as funny to me.

  Eventually Pip started laughing, too.

  It took some time for us to rein in the giggles. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t that funny.

  “Lemme think about it,” I said after we’d gotten to the chuckle-and-sniff stage.

  “All right. Ponder,” he said. “I still don’t know what you’re going to ponder. You can’t stay ashore any more than I can, fat bank account or not. You’ll need a new berth eventually, and at least with me you won’t be bored.”

  He almost got me laughing again but I stifled it.

  Somebody knocked on the cottage door before I could answer.

  Pip stood and crossed to open it.

  A woman wearing a spacer crop haircut and a set of utility khakis stood there, hand ready to knock again. “Phillip!” she said.

  “Katharine! My gods and garters, woman. It’s so good to see you!” He gathered her up and they hugged. He stepped back and held her at arm’s length. “When did you get in?”

  “Yesterday. I’ve just been lazing around the campus, but heard you’d come in on the afternoon shuttle.”

  Pip ushered her into the cottage, and I stood to meet her.

  “Cargo First Katharine Munroe, meet Captain Ishmael Wang.” He waved a hand in my direction. “He was just leaving.”

  Her eyes goggled a bit as she stared for a moment too long before blinking and looking aside. “Sorry, Captain. I didn’t mean to stare.” She glanced at me and then at Pip. “You’re the Ishmael Wang from Diurnia?”

  I
shrugged. “Yeah. I guess. I came in from Diurnia.”

  “I’m honored to meet you, Captain.” She tamped down whatever fangirl impulse had seized her and held out her hand.

  I shook her hand and offered a smile. “Call me Ishmael,” I said.

  “Are you here for the conference?” she asked. “I didn’t see your name on the attendee list.”

  “No. I’m just here for the food.”

  She blinked and glanced at Pip who snorted.

  “At any rate, I’ve got some thinking to do and I’m not very sociable when I think,” I said. I headed for the door.

  Pip said, “You can attend if you want. I know who to bribe to get you a badge.”

  I stopped at the door frame and shook my head. “Thanks, but all I know about economic modeling is buy low, sell high.”

  Ms. Monroe snorted. “You’ll fit right in with some of these dinosaurs.” Her eyes went wide and she all but slapped a hand across her mouth.

  Pip laughed at that. “She’s right, but do what you need to. We can talk later.”

  “I can’t believe I said that out loud,” she muttered.

  I chuckled and pulled the door closed behind me. I stood on the stoop for a moment and let my eyes adjust to the late afternoon light. Pip had given me a lot to think about. I needed to find some space to foster that thinking.

  Behind the door I heard Katharine Monroe say, “You know Ishmael Wang and you didn’t tell me?”

  Pip’s laughter followed me down the path.

  Chapter Six

  Port Newmar:

  2374, May 29

  I wouldn’t have thought the simple, almost gentle movements of tai chi could have taken such a toll on my body. The third day with Sifu Newmar reminded me that I’d neglected my practice far too long. I felt it when I bowed to the empty floor, right along the back of my thighs. I felt it in my calves as I started the warmups, pushing and pulling an imaginary ball. I felt it in the back of my neck and across my shoulders every time I did anything with my arms.

  I was so focused on the burn that I didn’t notice her enter until she spoke. “Have you trimmed down your baggage yet, Ishmael?”

  Her voice didn’t startle me. It was too soft for that. I was too deep into the movements to let it jump me. “Not yet, Sifu.”

  “Hm.”