“Not much. It’s seen as a kind of destination for those who are looking to get out from under CPJCT control. Scanners showed a lot of traffic in and out when we flew by. We never stopped for a beer. Lots of stories. Supposedly started by a one-eyed guy when his ship lost its Burleson drive on a routine jump through the region. I had a second mate who was convinced it was actually a pirate hangout called ‘High Tortuga.’”
Pip grinned at that. “Really?”
“He saw pirates everywhere. Anytime anything happened on the ship, it was pirates.”
“You flew with him long?”
I shrugged. “Stanyer. He could thread a needle like nobody’s business.”
“He sewed?”
“Astrogation.”
“Oh, yeah.” Pip shrugged. “Hung over. Did I mention that?”
“Couple of times. You want breakfast?”
He swallowed a couple of times. “I’ll settle for a handful of analgesics for now, thanks.” He got up and went into the bathroom. I heard him rummaging around for a moment followed by the sound of a pill bottle popping open. He returned with his chin held up and took a slurp of coffee. “There.”
“What about it?”
“Huh?”
“Odin’s Outpost?” I asked. “This is your conversation. Try to keep up.”
He offered me another sideways grin. “Hung over. Did I—?”
“You mentioned it.”
He shrugged and topped off his mug before holding up the carafe with a question on his face. I pushed my mug over, and he topped it off, too.
“You ever wonder why Odin’s Outpost exists?”
“Not really. Emergency resupply. High rollers who like a little danger to spice up going broke.”
He slouched into his chair and buried his face in his mug for a moment. “Yeah. That, but as a business model?”
“Seems to be working for them.”
Pip sighed. “It’s a gateway.”
“Gateway to what?”
“The Dark Side.”
“You’re making this up.”
He shook his head, somewhat gingerly. “No. We jumped the Bad Penny through the Deep Dark on our way here from St. Cloud, remember?”
“Sure. I’ve done it myself flying around Diurnia. What of it?”
“Well, what if—and I’m just talking hypothetically here—what if there were stations not sanctioned by the CPJCT?”
I took a belt of the coffee. “Hypothetically.”
He gave a little sideways nod of his head. “Hypothetically.”
“So, no trade regulations. No orbitals,” I said.
“No regulations. Period.”
“No law?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“We joked about how Odin disposed of the bodies, but I guess I never considered that was something real.”
“You never run out of freezer space out there,” he said with a nod toward the ceiling.
I took another sip of coffee and something Geoff Maloney’s bodyguard had told me once came unbidden from the back of my mind. “Some other hidey hole,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. Something a little bird told me once. How many of these gateways are there?”
He shrugged. “I’ve found one in Ciroda. There’s at least one in Diurnia. Two in Dunsany. There’s rumored to be one here in Venitz. They’re not exactly regulated so they don’t appear on any official charts.”
“Not even as a HazNav?”
“HazNavs only appear on regulated routes.”
I pondered that as I sipped my coffee. “How do you find this Dark Side if it’s not on the charts?”
“It’s not on official charts. If you know a guy who knows a guy, you can get them.”
I snorted. “You know a guy who knows a guy?”
He smiled. “Of course.”
“That’s all beside the point,” I said. “We have a company to form. A ship to buy.”
Pip sat up straight. “Indeed we do.” He held his mug up and I clinked mine to it across the table. “To better deals in the afternoon,” he said.
“Better deals!” I took a gulp and looked at the chrono. “Speaking of which, it’s almost lunchtime. I need a shower, and then we need to make some notes to take to the lawyer.”
Pip lifted an arm and gave himself a sniff. “Yeah. Good plan. You’re a captain. Call the O Club and catering service for 1230. That’ll give me a chance to sober up, get cleaned up, and see where Roland is with the repairs. We need to be in Breakall in time for the auction in a few weeks.”
“Can we make it?” I asked, suddenly aware of just how long the voyage could take.
He grinned.
“All right, then,” I said and left to do the needful.
I crossed back to my cottage, the fug of low tide pinching my nose. I looked up at the clouds building in from offshore. Looked like a storm brewed to the east. It would make the evening hours a bit noisy if history was any predictor.
When I opened my door, I remembered why I was wearing two mismatched socks. I scrounged around for a clean set of khakis and pondered what to do about the mess. I eyed the chrono. It flipped over to 1137. A stan before lunch.
“Priorities, Ishmael. Call. Shower. Mess.”
A card on the desk had the information I needed to place the order for lunch. The steward assured me it would be delivered at 1230. Being a captain had its advantages after all.
That amusing thought accompanied me into the shower. It took next to no time to strip down, sluice off the worst of it, and slip into my undress uniform. I had to scrounge around for a set of stars and realized I had a collection of them that needed to be put on the dining room table with my photo and the whelkies. I smiled at myself in the mirror as I pinned on the scarred stars that had belonged to Fredi’s grandfather. I always got a little boost when I put them on. If only they could talk.
I found a pair of matching socks and slipped on a pair of comfy shipboots before surveying the wreckage.
“Priorities,” I muttered and began a triage. ‘Must keep’ was the small collection on the dining room table. I checked to see that both trunks were empty and mentally labeled the one to starboard ‘Toss It’ and the other ‘Could Live Without.’
I started on the table because we’d need that to eat and plot. Any shipsuit that wasn’t new and pristine went into the ‘Toss It’ bin. I tossed most of them. Civvies went into the ‘Could Live Without’ since I’d gotten all of them on Diurnia, but were all a stanyer old. Most of the socks, ship-tees, and boxers went into that trunk as well. Those with worn elastic, sweat stains, or other problems went into the ‘Toss It’ bin. The painting clothes from the Iris, I understood, but I wondered where I’d gotten into so much blue paint while in my shorts. My two good dress blues and one good dress white uniforms went into the ‘Must Keep’ pile along with two sets of intact undress khakis.
By the time the steward arrived with luncheon, I’d cleared the table and the couch of litter. The ‘Toss It’ trunk was full to overflowing, the ‘Can Live Without’ had its own share, and still stuff festooned the chairs in the living room. The pile on the table had grown, but I suspected it weighed less than the twenty kilos I’d imagined as a goal.
I accepted the hamper from the steward at the door and thumbed the receipt.
“I can set it up for you, if you like, Captain.”
I eyed his name tag. “Not necessary, Mr. Brewster, but I appreciate the offer.”
“Thank you, Captain. Just leave the hamper on your doorstep when you’re done. We’ll send somebody over to pick it up later this afternoon, if that’s satisfactory?”
“Excellent, Mr. Brewster. Thank you for your consideration.”
He nodded and scampered back up the path toward the O Club just as Pip came out of his cottage and crossed to meet me. “Lunch, I hope?”
“Soup and sandwiches. That all right?”
He nodded and followed me into the cottage. “You’ve had the maid i
n since I was here last.”
“Just a little light straightening and a round of toss out,” I said, placing the basket on the end of the table.
“Looks like mostly toss out.”
I took the pile of must-haves and moved them to the cleared couch to make room for lunch. Pip popped the lid on the hamper and burst out laughing.
“What?”
He looked over at me. “Just soup and sandwiches?”
“That’s what I ordered.”
He shook his head and unloaded the dishes. “Cookie thought we needed more than soup and sandwiches.” He slid a note across the table to me. It read:
‘If you’re going to take over the Western Annex, you two will need more than soup and sandwiches. Enjoy!’
I tried to see past Pip’s arm and the lid. “What’d he send over?”
“Oh, there’s soup. Chicken curry, if my nose isn’t mistaken. A pile of biscuits. At least one beefalo dish that I can’t place but smells yummy.” He peered into the bottom of the hamper. “And a whole granapple cobbler, if I’m any judge. And I am.”
We spread out the food, grabbed implements of mass ingestion, and began plotting.
Chapter Eleven
Port Newmar:
2374, June 6
Morning found me crossing campus in thick fog. A cold weather system had blown in on the overnight storm and the warm air over the land gave up its moisture in the form of fog and heavy dew. I knew the path by heart, or thought I did. I still jumped when the side of Hutchins Gym loomed at me with a shift in the wind.
Pip and I had been up late hashing out plans, and we’d consumed our weekly ration of Clipper Ship in the process. On top of the short night I’d had before, it was all I could do to drag my sorry carcass across campus.
I arrived soggy, groggy, and lost in the morass of what-if’s that Sifu Newmar had left me with the day before. The lights were on, gleaming behind the large windows, and I found her in the kitchen.
“Good morning, Ishmael,” she said. “Are you ready to begin?”
“I am, Sifu.”
“What do you need work on?”
“I’m still too weak for Snake Creeps Down. It leaves me struggling for Rooster Stands after it.”
She nodded. “That you recognize it says a lot. Very well. Let us work on Yang Short again today.”
She strode out onto the floor, pausing only to bow before stepping to the front of the room. The dimness of the fog outside reflected her form in the glass of the window as a backlit silhouette. Her black uniform cast a stark contrast to my informal workout clothes.
She stood for a moment and we took our breaths at the same time. As I let it out, the world shrank to my balance, my form. We danced together in perfect synchrony, my gray sweats a shadow behind her black reflection. At the end of the first set she stopped and eyed me me up and down.
“You’ve finished pruning?”
The slow, even beating of my heart marked the moments as I thought. “Not yet, Sifu, but I think I have made some progress.”
“Are you down to one trunk?”
“I believe I’m down to twenty kilos.”
Her eyebrows shot up at that. “And yet you think you have more to go?”
“Some baggage is harder to trim than others.”
Her face relaxed and the smile that bloomed felt like the sun burning through the clouds. “That you recognize that,” she said, “says even more.” She turned back to the window and took the beginning stance—arms down, feet shoulder width apart, weight centered on her core. “Dance with me,” she said, and we began.
She led the dance in a form I didn’t recognize. The movements came smoothly, one after another but in no pattern I recognized. After the first few, I stopped trying to figure it out or anticipate the movement. I simply followed, focusing on my breathing and maintaining my balance. We swooped into Snake Creeps Down and flowed into Rooster Stands on One Leg, but moved to Grasp Sparrow’s Tail and then Wave Hands As Clouds. With each movement she flowed as water flows over stones, with no apparent pattern but as inevitable as gravity. We danced for nearly a stan without pause before she drew up to the closing, her arms rising and then falling to lie as she had begun—arms down, feet shoulder width apart, weight centered on her core.
We stood like that for several moments. The waves in my inner sea, washing the shore in a slow even rhythm. My breath, the wind across the waves.
She moved then, just slightly, turning her head to speak over her shoulder. “Thank you, Ishmael.”
“Thank you, Sifu.”
“Shall we have tea?” she asked.
“That would be very nice.”
“Then we shall.”
I joined her in the kitchen, taking my place behind the table as she heated the water and poured it over a measured portion of tea. She offered me a smile as she chose a cup I’d never seen before. As usual with her choices for me, it was a simple cup formed without a handle, a dimple pressed into the bottom as if it had been hand-molded from clay and pressed upwards with some artisan’s thumb. When she placed it on the table, it looked as if it belonged there. As if it had been formed there.
She drizzled a bit of the steaming tea into it and then into her own. She’d chosen another simple cup without handle and apparently without glaze. It was the first time I remembered her using one without a handle since I’d arrived.
She placed the teapot on the warming stone and took her cup in the tips of the fingers of both hands, lifting it as if in salute before taking a sip, her breath pulling air in with the steaming tea to cool it as she drank. It made a slurping sound that my mother might have found rude but which I recognized as part of the tradition.
I followed her lead and we sat there, unspeaking, for several heartbeats. My cup felt heavy in my hand, but balanced.
“Do you still think I have a message in my cups, Ishmael?” she asked, her voice so low that it barely rose above the sound of the morning breeze.
I looked at her collection, still missing one cup. I looked at the cups she’d chosen for each of us. I thought about what message she might have and what message I might see.
I smiled. “I think your messages are less about what you say with them than what they tell you about your students.”
Her face relaxed into a pleased smile. “Now, you begin to understand,” she said. “I’ll be away for the next week. I suspect you’ll be gone by the time I get back, but you may use the studio as long as you remain on-planet.”
I nodded my thanks. “If our plans work out, Mr. Carstairs and I will be leaving in a couple of days.”
“You’ll be traveling much lighter than when you arrived, Captain.”
“I will.”
“Good.” She tipped up her cup and drank down the tea. “When you’re ready, come back to see me and perhaps we can dance again.”
She rose and flowed away, all of her movements—from rinsing the cup to stacking it in the drainer to gliding out the door—as smooth as water. I felt like an ox next to a panther by comparison.
I sipped my tea, listening to the quiet. The light levels grew steadily as the system primary heated the atmosphere and the fog sublimated again. I heard the sounds of small birds chirping in the bushes behind the building. The tea she’d prepared had a strong tannin component that almost bit the tongue, but a sweet, almost fruity, aftertaste at the back of the tongue cleared it away. As the light level grew so did my awareness of time and place. I almost felt like I was waking from a dream, as if I’d come fully awake and realized I was still in my bed.
I shook my head and gulped the rest of my tea, took care of the empty cup, emptied the tea kettle and pot, disposed of the used leaves, and left everything draining. At least she wouldn’t come back to a pot full of mold. A glance at a small chrono tucked in beside the cooktop showed I had just time to get cleaned up before meeting Pip.
I scampered back to the cottage and spent a few ticks throwing more clothing into the ‘Toss It’ bin and contem
plating the remaining uniforms. On the one hand, all I needed for shipboard work was a workable collection of shipsuits. Even dress uniforms would stay hung in closets for the most part. I cast a slightly jaundiced eye at the civvies, but I still hadn’t found a decent tailor. Until I did, those would have to do.
The chrono ticked over to 1050. I expected Pip at 1100 so I scampered for the shower. Shipboard living was good practice for the “hurry up shower.” I was out, dressed, and mostly dry before Pip knocked on the door at 1105.
“Second thoughts?” he asked when I slipped the latch to let him in.
“About the partnership?” I shook my head.
He blinked a couple of times. “About what?”
“I don’t need all these uniforms, do I?” I pointed at the collection of undress and utility khakis still strewn over the furniture in the living room.
He coughed out a single laugh. “If that’s your biggest problem, we’re golden.”
“Where’d you get your bag?” I asked.
“My bag?”
“The one you flew down with.”
“Oh, standard luggage module. Chandlery, where else?”
I shrugged. “I don’t get out much.”
“Probably find something similar at the academy store. Maybe even one with the academy logo on it. Rah! Rah!” He waved his fists as if he held pom poms, with a mischievous grin on his face and his eyebrows halfway to his hairline.
“Where are we on the checklist?”
“I talked to Roland. Ship’ll be ready to make ship noises by tomorrow. He figures if we leave within a couple of days, we’ll be there in plenty of time.”
“How much is plenty of time?”
“A week before the auction.”
I gave a low whistle. “The Son has some legs in there, huh?”
“That’s what we specialize in. Long legs. High value. Low mass.”
“No wonder you made money flying in from Dunsany.”
“Son, we make money on every flight.”
“What are you flying back to Breakall?”
He shrugged. “Dunno yet. I’ll grab something on the way out the door.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. It’s all tricks of the trade. I put the word out with one of the brokers upstairs when I arrived. We’ll have several to choose from by the time we file an outbound flight plan.”
In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Page 8
