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

by Nathan Lowell

  I stopped my warmup and looked at her. She had her head cocked to the left and her eyes squinted at me.

  “Well, you’re making good progress anyway,” she said. “Let’s do Yang Short Form today. Your Snake Creeps Down needs work.” With a bow to the floor, she took her place and dominated my attention for the next stan.

  Eventually she said, “Enough. Tea.” She waved a hand in a rolling gesture. “Cooldown for you.”

  I grinned and took a stance, letting the soft morning air wash away the heat in my muscles as I flexed slowly and evenly. I had to focus on my forearms to relax my hands. I let myself feel the moisture in the air, smell the green of summer and the faint salt from the ocean. Shipboard air never feels like real air. It never smells quite right; it isn’t alive and moving. While it never stays still, it never touches your skin the way real atmosphere can.

  I heard the whistle of the teapot and slowed my cooldown even more.

  The sweat stuck the back of my tunic to my skin. A small trickle of moisture traced down the side of my face, cooling as it evaporated.

  “Tea is ready.”

  I finished my cycle and released the pose, holding the chi for a few moments before releasing a breath and turning to the kitchen. The flowery scent of a jasmine blend reached me when I paused to bow to the floor.

  “You really are doing much better, Ishmael.”

  “Thank you. I’ve missed this.”

  “Your muscles are sore.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. Thighs and calves mostly. Some across my neck.”

  “You’re carrying a lot of tension in your shoulders.” She crossed to the cup rack and paused, one hand raised to select the day’s cups. She lifted a shallow tea bowl from one slot and an antique porcelain cup with a gold rim and a brightly painted scene of birds and willow branches from another. She placed the bowl in front of me and poured a portion of the jasmine into it.

  “How do you know which cup to choose?” I asked.

  Her smile was so delicate it barely showed as she poured tea into the nearly translucent porcelain. “I don’t. A cup is a cup. It holds tea.” She placed the pot on the warming stone and looked into my eyes as she lifted her cup. “Why? Do you see significance in my choices?”

  “You never pick the same cups twice in a row.”

  “No two days are exactly alike. I celebrate them each for what they are.”

  “You always pick a cup that seems appropriate for your students, even though I’m not sure what that means.” I touched the rim of the tea bowl in front of me with one finger and decided to wait for a few moments before trying to lift it.

  “Can you explain a bit more?”

  “The first morning, you gave me the simple clay cup. No handle. No adornment. You kept the brightly colored one with a wide mouth.”

  “What do you divine from these selections?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t. I feel like there’s a pattern, a commentary or message or something. I just can’t put a finger on it.” I shrugged. “That’s why I asked.”

  She sipped her tea and nodded.

  “Do you see a comment about value? Yesterday, you used the small Yixing clay cup while I used the much larger Chientan porcelain. Today, I’ve given you a clay bowl while I drink from an antique Wedgewood.”

  I shook my head and chewed my lip for a moment before speaking. “That’s not your style, Sifu. I’ve never heard or seen you make any judgments. The lowest cadet to the highest captain. The commonest of weeds to the brightest of blossoms. You seem to approach each the same way, appreciating each for what it is.”

  “My goodness. You’ve become quite the philosopher.” Her eyes fairly danced with the merriment held behind her lips.

  I laughed for her. “I sound pretentious.”

  She shook her head. “You speak your mind. I’m flattered that you think me so filled with hidden depths that even simple acts like choosing a teacup are freighted with meaning.” She pursed her lips as if trying not to laugh and hid her mouth behind the bone china.

  My tea had cooled enough to lift the bowl, and I used both hands to keep it steady. The flowery tea served as foil for the smell of wood and polish and sweat. Even the faint tang of the hot iron tea kettle blended with it. The sip washed across my tongue and filled my mouth with summer.

  “Thank you, Sifu.”

  “For what?”

  “For the tea. For being here.”

  “We all need an island of calm in the sea of life.”

  I smiled. “Even you?”

  “Even me. The plants are my island. The practice takes me into myself but the gardening reminds me that there’s a world outside.”

  “I would never have considered them in that light.”

  “Too much like work?” she asked, the smile playing around her lips again.

  I laughed and shrugged. “Yes. I’m spoiled by my air-conditioned comfort and clean surroundings. The bugs and dirt seem foreign.”

  “Dirt is life. The bugs help more than they harm.”

  “Then why do you spray them?”

  “I don’t do that very much. Only when the balance is disturbed. My goal is to restore balance, not kill bugs.”

  I looked at the tea bowl on the table in front of me, balanced artfully on a base that seemed too small but proved to be remarkably stable in practice. I glanced at her cup with the flaring rim and the too-narrow base. My gaze swept the rack of teacups, picking out the shapes and colors there, finding the ones I’d used and those she’d taken for herself.

  “I think I’m not done pruning yet, Sifu.”

  “Maybe not, but something has shifted your balance. I noticed it when I entered.”

  “How do you know what to prune?” I asked.

  “Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you just see what’s not working and start trimming. A bit at a time and eventually you find the balance is restored.”

  “What if you don’t see what’s not working?”

  She paused to tip her teacup up and drain it. “You should visit the lilac plantings on the east side of Building H. You might find inspiration there.” She moved to the sideboard, rinsed out the Wedgwood, and set it in the drainer. “We’ve time for another few sets before I need to meet the groundskeepers.”

  I followed her lead and was soon sweating on the floor again.

  She released me after morning colors and I found myself walking the circuitous route over to Building H. It housed the astrophysics classrooms in a rambling two-story building with a small observatory on the roof. Everyone had to spend a semester dealing with optics and angles, with stellar sequences and orbits. Some complained that it served no purpose when we could literally fly out and see the objects in question. It fascinated me, and I often marveled that our progenitors back on Earth had managed to learn so much simply by using such rudimentary tools. While our detailed understanding had changed over the centuries, the basic theories still governed our understanding of the universe around us.

  When I got there, I had to check the position of the system primary to make sure I was on the east side. As I approached the building, I saw no lilacs. The planting beds beside the building looked empty. I remembered pruning those lilacs when I’d been a cadet. Every spring after they blossomed, we had to prune back about a third of the stems and watch for those that had gotten too large.

  I had to walk right up to the beds to find the answer. I crouched down and ran my hand across the stumps sawed off flush with the ground. A bit of nearly dry sap stuck to my fingers. The entire stand had been taken back to root. I stood and surveyed the width of the building. Here and there I spotted the beginnings of new growth. A sprig of green here. A tiny stem with a few leaves there.

  I wiped the sap off my fingers on the side of my pants and headed back to my cottage. Clearly, I had a lot more pruning to do and a decision to make about Pip’s offer.

  Chapter Seven

  Port Newmar:

  2374, May 30

  The therapis
t that Alys Giggone recommended turned out to be a thirty-something beanpole with a flattop haircut, slightly bulgy eyes, and an infectious grin.

  “Malloy Gains,” he said when I made it to his office for my first appointment. “Mal to my patients.”

  I shook his offered hand and grinned back at him. I couldn’t help it. “You know that means ‘bad,’ right?”

  If possible, the grin got even wider. “Why do you think they call me that?” He pointed to a comfy-looking chair. “Have a seat. Tell me why you’re here.”

  I settled into the chair and felt it hug me. It was a bit disconcerting. “I’m not sure why I’m here. It’s just—given the last few months—it seemed like a good idea.”

  He pulled another chair over and sat down where he could look at me. For several heartbeats that was all he did. “So, death, dismemberments, serious illnesses. Money?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. Not so much dismemberments.”

  His bulgy eyes blinked slowly and I had the sense that he had to refocus on me. “For most of my patients, that’s a joke.” He paused. “No so much the money.” He settled himself into his chair and clasped his hands around one knee. “Tell me a story.”

  “What kind of story? You want to know how my mother died?”

  He blinked that slow blink again. “Do you want to tell me that story?”

  I shrugged. “I can. It was a long time ago, but I thought therapists wanted to know about your mother.”

  His grin came back. “Not all of us. How did she die?”

  “Flitter crash back on Neris. Two decades ago.”

  “Senseless, no warning. Left you on your own?”

  “Yeah. Company planet. They were going to deport me unless I got a job. Just a few weeks after I turned eighteen.”

  “What did you do?”

  “That’s when I met Alys Giggone.”

  “So, now I know how you got to the academy and made captain at such a young age.” He pursed his lips and looked up at the ceiling. “What do you want to get from these sessions, Ishmael?”

  “I don’t know. For a long time I’ve been focused on moving up the career ladder, making enough credits to be comfortable, and now I have.” I shook my head. “Over the last couple of stanyers, I made captain, bought a ship, started my own company, and then sold it. Money isn’t a problem. I’m probably considered wealthy at this point.”

  “More than a million?” he asked.

  “More than a hundred million.” I shrugged.

  “Yeah. You’re wealthy. If that’s a problem, I’ll take it from you.” He winked at me. “And I think my hourly rate just went up.”

  “It’s certainly life changing levels, but it’s barely enough for a down payment on another ship.” I thought of the Chernyakova.

  “What was that?” he asked, sitting up and waving a finger in my direction. “What were you thinking about then?”

  “A ship. A salvage claim I have on a ship over in Breakall. I commanded the salvage team that recovered it.”

  His grin remained but his brow furrowed. “Tell me about that.”

  “Crew gassed themselves on a rag fire. We found the ship on a ballistic course on its way out of Breakall. I took a skeleton crew over and stabilized the ship, and waited for the TIC forensics team to examine the remains.”

  “You said that pretty smoothly. You’ve told this story before.”

  “Just the other day, actually.”

  He nodded. “It must have been horrific.”

  “We found the crew where they’d dropped. Most of them in their bunks. Some at duty stations.”

  “How could such a thing happen?”

  I felt my jaw clench. “They removed the alarm-system board from their engineering section. Environmental instruments picked up the rise in carbon monoxide, but the alarm couldn’t sound because the board wasn’t there.”

  “That makes you angry,” he said.

  “No, it frustrates me.”

  His grin came back full force, and he just raised his eyebrows.

  “Yes. It makes me angry.”

  “Why?”

  “It was so senseless. They were operating on a shoestring, sure, but to take out the alarm? Gods, how much could it have cost to replace it?”

  “Senseless. Another senseless loss,” he said.

  I took a deep breath and the image of Greta’s body lying on the decking, her blood staining the back of her shipsuit, filled my mind. “Lots of senseless death.”

  He settled in again, putting his feet flat on the floor and folding his hands in his lap. “And now we come to the real problem. Who was she?”

  His comment caught me sideways. “My engineer. My lover.” My eyes stung and I had to swallow a couple of times. “My friend.”

  “Senseless death.”

  “She got between an assassin and his target. It was an accident.”

  He did that slow blink thing again. “That hardly seems like an accident.”

  “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She took a knife that was meant for somebody else.”

  “And you think it was an accident?”

  “I think I caused it.” I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. “If she hadn’t been with us, she’d still be alive.”

  “Well, if she’d never been born, she’d never have died, either.” He gave a little chuckle. “The loss part. Sure. This was a woman you loved.”

  I nodded but couldn’t find breath to speak. “She pushed me away at first. I was being an ass.”

  “How so?”

  “I had this really rigid stance about relationships among the crew.”

  He nodded. “That’s not unusual in commercial environments. The power differential can feel insurmountable.”

  “She was amazing. She had the sharpest sapphire blue eyes. Brilliant engineer. Learned at her father’s knee.” I looked up at him. “She was my conscience. Once I nearly made a fatal decision. If it had gone well, we’d have made a few credits. If it had gone wrong, we’d have all been smeared across the surface of an airless planet.”

  He nodded. “Then what?”

  “The longer we were together, the harder it was for me to see her there, just out of reach. She was everything I ever imagined. Brilliant, clever, gorgeous. A truly gifted engineer and a great shipmate.”

  “Sounds like she’d have made a good mate-mate.”

  “Except she was crew.”

  “So you let this idea that because she was crew she was untouchable get between your head and heart.”

  I looked down at my hands. The white knuckles surprised me; I unclenched the fists. “Yeah. When I became too much of an ass about it, she took me to the cabin and told me that it was impossible, that we’d never have a relationship. That I wasn’t going to be anything more to her than a captain.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. It made it better. A little.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, it wasn’t just my ethical considerations that stopped things from progressing. She didn’t care for me that way.”

  “Unrequited love was easier to deal with than holding the key to happiness and not being able to use it?”

  I looked at him, but his grin stayed in place. “Something like that.”

  “That changed. What happened?”

  “I started my own company and left the ship. She followed me a few months later. We hashed it out when we didn’t have the captain-crew barrier between us.”

  “And then you hired her anyway?”

  “Well, more like we formed a partnership. I couldn’t fly without an engineer, and she couldn’t engineer without a captain.” I rubbed a hand across my eyes, trying to dispel the images.

  “So you blame yourself because she’s dead?”

  “If I hadn’t started the company. If I’d been smarter about it. If I hadn’t hired her on.” I felt my breath shuddering in and out and had to stop for a moment. “She’d still be alive.”

  “All right, let’s talk about this
captain-crew barrier for a bit. Tell me about that.”

  “Easy. I don’t screw with crew. Never have. Well, except her.”

  “That’s charming. Where did you hear that?”

  He surprised a short laugh out of me. “It started with Alys Giggone.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You had the hots for Alys?”

  I laughed again. “She was my first captain. The Lois McKendrick was my first ship. They had a nonfraternization policy aboard.”

  “No intimate relationships among the crew members.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it enforced?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Did you ever see anyone engaging in fraternization? Did they get punished? Was it part of the standing orders?”

  “I never observed it. It was just part of the culture of the ship.” I paused thinking of Bev and Bril. “We lost at least one crewman because he wanted more latitude.”

  “He liked the idea of bunk bunnies?”

  I coughed in surprise.

  “I’ve heard the term before,” he said.

  “Yeah. And he was roundly derided for his predilection.”

  “You were what? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

  I nodded.

  “And you were good with this rule?”

  “It made things a bit difficult for me, but I understood the rationale.”

  “And you didn’t want to be seen in the same light as that other guy.”

  I shrugged. “My mother raised me alone. I learned a lot from watching her suffer.”

  “So, do you wonder why we headshrinkers like to talk about mothers?”

  He caught me off guard with that one, too. “No, I guess it makes sense.”

  “Were you ever in on a ship where this nonfraternization rule wasn’t in place?”

  “My first posting out of the academy was a den of depravity called the William Tinker.”

  “Den of depravity. That’s a bad thing?”

  “It was. I’m not being overly judgmental with that. The captain abused the crew sexually and allowed his first mate to do the same. That went all the way to torture, assault, and hospitalizations. At least one crewman died under suspicious circumstances.”

  He twitched and the grin left his eyes, but remained fixed on his lips. “What did you do?”