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

by Nathan Lowell

  He shrugged. “Sure. Well, probably. You were talking about other uses for it? Besides the side of the ship?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’re starting a business and we’ll need graphics for digital letterheads, v-cards, that kind of thing.”

  “So a scalable graphic file. Okay. What else?”

  “Shoulder flashes,” Pip said.

  “What’s that?” James asked.

  “Embroidered patches that go here.” Pip clapped a hand to his left deltoid.

  “Oh, like on uniforms and stuff.”

  “Exactly.”

  He nodded. “Town constables have them. You want any lettering?”

  “Can you do that?”

  He gave a shrug. “Don’t know why not.”

  “And the big logo for the ship,” Pip said.

  “Sure. It’s just a bigger one of these with perhaps a bit less shading.”

  “How soon can you have them done?” I asked.

  “When do you need them?”

  Pip said, “We’re breaking orbit no later than tomorrow night.”

  “We better get to work then,” he said. He waved us over to the work bench and pulled out a sketch pad. “So, the big one,” he said and started laying lines on the paper.

  Two stans later we stepped out of James’s studio. The system primary had set long before and the heat of the day had been broken by the onshore breeze. James had wrapped the small painting in a padded envelope for us and Pip carried it under his arm. Street lights kept the shadows at bay but we didn’t linger. It was probably safe, but why tempt fate.

  “What do you think?” Pip asked after we’d rounded the first corner on the way back to the shuttle stop.

  “Yeah. This is good.”

  “Think the kid can do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He didn’t want much,” Pip said.

  “He probably doesn’t do much industrial scale business.”

  Pip chuckled. “Well, the need for freight company logos is pretty limited.”

  I snorted. “I’ve needed two in the last two stanyers.”

  Pip shot me a grin. “You’re not going to be making a habit of it, are you?”

  “Gods, I hope not.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You did pretty well with the last one. Once we’ve settled the model, maybe you can sell your shares and make another fortune.”

  “You want to buy them?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Not today. Maybe in a stanyer? Who knows?”

  We made it back to the main streets of Port Newmar without incident but had to jog to catch the shuttle just before it pulled out of the stop. Except for the driver we were the only people aboard. We didn’t speak. I don’t know what Pip was thinking about, but I kept imagining the red and gold phoenix rising on the side of the Chernyakova’s hull.

  “We have to come back to meet with Ball and Associates in the morning,” Pip said as we stepped off the bus.

  “You still haven’t heard from your father?”

  He shook his head. “That worries me. I should have at least heard a ‘no’ by now. Or an ‘I’ll get back to you’ or something.”

  “Well, we have some time.”

  “We’re leaving tomorrow,” he said.

  “Yes, but we’re filing in Diurnia. We only need to get the documentation lined up here. By the time we get to Diurnia? That’s still days away.”

  “True,” he said.

  “Even if he turns the deal down, we have a Plan B.”

  “Also, true.” He sighed. “I just have a bad feeling. We should have heard something.”

  “We can only do what we can do. I’m going to do some tai chi in the morning. Meet here at 0900 and get back to Ball and Associates?”

  Pip nodded. “Night,” he said and trundled off toward his cottage.

  My cottage was still strewn with clothes. Most of them had migrated to the “Toss It” bin, but the pile of things I had to keep was very, very small. Part of me felt silly for thinking I needed more. The other part for feeling like I needed what I had. The bulkiest items were my dress uniforms and my civilian clothing, half of which I was already wearing. If not for them, I could probably have packed in a bento box.

  I shrugged, clicked off the main lights, and headed for my bed. I felt like I’d run a marathon and worried that it might be only the beginning.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Port Newmar:

  2374, June 9

  My morning workout felt rushed. I kept thinking more about what I needed to do than what I was doing. The third time I found myself doing Wave Hands As Clouds when I was supposed to be doing Grasp Sparrow’s Tail, I gave it up as a bad job. Working with somebody else had the advantage of making me focus outside of my head, which left my body to do the form unhindered. Tai chi does not lend itself to thinking. It requires concentration to stay on track. I left the studio, making sure to click the light switch on my way out. I felt grumpy and out of sorts, which only underscored how much I needed the tai chi as a relief valve. I filed that away for another day and headed for the cottage.

  The disarray smacked me again when I walked through the door and I nearly screamed. Not literally screamed. It came out as more of a low growl of frustration. I had arrived with nothing to do and found myself overwhelmed with a clutter of my own making, inside and out.

  “Enough,” I said and attacked.

  Everything in the “Can Live Without” trunk went into the “Toss It” bin. Mostly onto the “Toss It” bin, to be precise, because I’d tossed almost everything I owned.

  I stashed the bundle of whelkies, the printed photo of my father, and my small collection of captain’s stars in the lid of the now empty grav-trunk. I rummaged around in the mess until I found the padded package that held my framed master’s license and slipped that into the lid as well. I clipped my three dress uniforms to their travel hangers and hooked them into the grav-trunk. I followed them with the three best undress khakis, the two decent pair of ship boots, and my civvies. They weren’t great civvies, but they made me presentable without being ostentatious the way a dress uniform would.

  “What else?” I asked myself.

  I sorted through the pile of ship-tees and boxers that I’d stacked up before and just packed the lot. My patience with the process had worn too thin for me to worry about it. I kept all the socks that had mates and relegated the leftovers to “Toss It.”

  That left as many as a dozen assorted shipsuits in various stages of decrepitude scattered around the room. I started flinging them. I kept a half dozen of the least damaged—a couple were practically new—and tossed the rest.

  I looked around the room, awash in sweat and feeling like I might cry. Or scream. Literally scream. I’d packed everything I planned to keep except for the workout clothes on my back and the hygiene pack in the bathroom. Combined, it amounted to about half of one of the two trunks I’d brought from Diurnia.

  The “Toss It” trunk had stuff piled high and drooping down the sides.

  I had the sudden panicked thought that I really didn’t remember what was in it.

  I heard footsteps coming up the walk, then a knock. I opened the door to find Pip standing there with the wrapped painting.

  “Oh, good, you’re back. I’m getting packed up and this doesn’t fit very well in my bag. You got room for it?”

  I backed away from the doorway and he followed me into the cottage.

  “You really cleaned house,” he said, his gaze sweeping around the room.

  “We’re leaving this evening, right?”

  Pip nodded. “That’s the plan. Roland is prepping a flight plan for departure around 2100.”

  “Heard from your father yet?”

  He bit his lip and shook his head. “Not yet.”

  I glanced at the chrono. “So, about thirteen stans.”

  “We can amend it. If we leave today we’ll have five days on station before the auction.”

  “That includes the stop at
Diurnia to register the incorporation?”

  “Yeah. One day there should be enough. We’ll be there in a week. That leaves a week to get to Breakall.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Long legs.”

  He grinned. “Faster than the Iris?”

  “By a few days. To be honest, we made better profits running the length of the sector.”

  “Low mass. High value,” he said.

  “Better deals in the afternoon.”

  He laughed. “Of course. What are you going to do with this pile?” He pointed at the “Toss It” bin.

  “Leave it for concierge service to dispose of, I suppose. Why? You have a better idea?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He handed me the painting. “Looks like you’ve got plenty of room. Do you mind?”

  I took it and stashed it in the pocket inside the front of my trunk.

  “Thanks. We’re meeting Ball at 1000?”

  “I thought it was 0900,” I said.

  He glanced at the chrono. “We better move. You going to wear that?” He nodded at my sweat-soaked workout clothes.

  “Too casual?”

  He winced. “Maybe just a tad.” He laughed and headed for the door. “Half a stan? Out front?”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  He waved and latched the door behind him as he left. I stripped down and tossed the sweaty clothes into the refresher before climbing into the shower.

  I felt the clock ticking so I didn’t linger.

  The tram into town dropped us within two blocks of Ball and Associates. The receptionist showed us into the same conference room we’d used before.

  We didn’t have to wait long before Ms. Ball breezed in trailing the ever-present Alexander.

  “Gentlemen. I think we have everything in order. Did you decide on a name?”

  “Phoenix Freight,” Pip said.

  “How ... mythical,” she said with an odd look. “Isn’t that the bird that rises from its own ashes?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Every thousand years or so, the old bird dies and catches fire. The new bird rises from the ashes.”

  “If we can’t turn a profit in the first thousand years, maybe we’ll change the name,” Pip said.

  “I see.” From her tone I wondered if she hadn’t gotten the joke. “We can add that, easily. Alexander?”

  “We’ll have the updated files in one moment,” he said.

  I caught him tilting his head just a fraction of a degree as if listening. I nodded to Pip and he winked.

  “Any word from your father?” Ms. Ball asked.

  “Not yet,” Pip said.

  “We looked at your documentation and we believe that your power of attorney does not actually restrict you from investing in this enterprise in order to facilitate the acquisition of the ship. The terms in the documentation authorize you to obtain the vessel, crew and supply it, and place it into service. It remains silent as to how you accomplish these tasks.”

  Pip shrugged. “Good to know, but I’m pretty sure my father would be pretty peeved if I changed our understanding without his approval. Legal or not.”

  She smiled. “Yes, I suspect mine would be too with a hundred million credits in play.”

  “Did Commandant Giggone contact you with the names of the board members?”

  “She did. Shall we review what we have?”

  A soft knock preceded the door opening. Alexander accepted a stack of files from somebody on the other side and the door closed again.

  We took our seats while he distributed the files. We started at the beginning.

  Ball led us through the charters, supporting documents, and contracts. The board of directors named Alys Giggone as chairman, Benjamin Maxwell as treasurer, and Margaret Newmar as member at large. The charter gave the board wide latitude in expanding its membership and issuing stock so long as no single investor controlled more stock than I did. The organizational chart listed Pip as CEO, as we’d agreed.

  We got to the end of the file in about a stan and a half. I hadn’t seen anything that varied from our notes other than a few additional pieces of boilerplate in some of the mechanical aspects of corporate administration. Our notes hadn’t specified how often the board should meet or the frequency of stockholder meetings. Ball’s files spelled all those details out.

  “And that’s what we have, gentlemen,” Ball said, closing her copy of the file and folding her hands on top of it. “Any changes? Discrepancies?”

  Pip shook his head. “I didn’t spot anything.”

  “Me, either.”

  “You’ll have some time before you file on Diurnia. If you spot anything, message us and we’ll amend the files for you,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Pip said. “Do you have an associate on the Diurnia Orbital who can facilitate this for us on that end?”

  “We do. With your permission, we’ll send your file ahead so that they can make sure that everything is in order before you arrive. I’ll forward the particulars to you once we’ve received confirmation from that end.”

  “Excellent,” Pip said. “We’ll be sailing on the Prodigal Son this evening.”

  She gave a curt nod. “We have the contact information from your notes.” She spared a moment to look to each of us. “If there’s nothing else, gentlemen?”

  Recognizing the dismissal when I heard it, I stood. Pip followed suit. Ball rose with us and offered a hand to him and then to me. “It’s been a pleasure, gentlemen. I suspect I’ll be hearing from you if you need anything else?”

  Pip grinned. “You most certainly will.”

  Alexander opened the door and led us all out to the lobby, Ms. Ball bringing up the rear.

  “Thank you again, gentlemen. Safe voyage,” she said.

  We took our leave and stepped out into the late morning light.

  “Margaret Newmar?” Pip asked as we walked toward Erik James’s warehouse.

  “My tai chi instructor,” I said.

  “I know who she is, but how does a gardener have ten million credits to invest?”

  I looked at him to see if he might be pulling my leg. “Where do you think you are?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This town? Do you know the name?”

  “Sure. Port Newmar.”

  “And the planet?”

  “Newmar.”

  “Doesn’t that ring any bells?”

  He stopped in his tracks. “No.”

  “Daughter of the founder.”

  “She’s a gardener!” he said.

  “She’s also the richest person in the sector. She could buy and sell me and you and your family several times over.”

  “But she’s a gardener!”

  “She’s also a master of tai chi. She’s rich enough to do anything she likes. She likes gardening.” I shrugged. “Good enough for me.”

  Pip blinked. “I had no idea. I thought she was just some sweet little old lady who volunteered to work on the academy grounds.”

  “Well, she is a sweet little old lady who volunteers to work on the academy grounds. It’s the ‘just’ part that you had wrong.”

  He shook his head and we resumed our walk. I chuckled the whole way.

  We found Erik James waiting for us, leaning in the door frame of the warehouse and squinting into the sun. He either hadn’t changed or had an extra set of paint-smeared denims. His face lit up in a broad smile when we rounded the corner and started up his path.

  “Great! I’m so excited,” he said, waving us in.

  We stepped into building and I had to wait a moment for my eyes to adjust.

  “Guys, after you left last night, I did some research on solar clipper company logos. I wanted to see what other companies used.”

  “Good plan, but I thought we’d agreed on what we wanted.”

  “We did. I did that.” He pulled a piece of paper from a basket and laid it down on the workbench. “That’s what we agreed on, right?”

  Pip and I bumped shoulders
looking down at the image.

  “That’s pretty much what I expected,” Pip said. He looked to me.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s what I thought. It’s also wrong,” James said.

  “Wrong?” Pip asked, his eyebrows shooting up.

  “Wrong.”

  “Wrong how?” I asked.

  He pointed to the far end of his studio. Two tiny patches of white—which were probably actually gray—lay in a single pool of light. One was a smudge of red and the other was a spiral of red. “Which one of those is your logo?” he asked.

  “Neither,” Pip said.

  “The smudge,” I said understanding where the kid was taking us.

  “Right,” he said. “The smudge.”

  “What?” Pip asked.

  The kid held up the paper from the workbench. “Look, this is nice and all, but it’s too fussy. If you look at anybody else’s logo, it’s not fussy. It’s iconic. A crown with wings. A C in a circle. That’s yours,” he said to Pip. “All of them are simple shapes combined to form an unmistakable pattern.”

  I looked back down the room and saw his point immediately.

  Pip looked again and craned his neck forward, squinting. He had taken only three steps toward the small images when he stopped with an “Oh!” He turned with a grin. “Once you see it, it’s obvious.”

  James pulled out another sheet of paper, this one with the bold spiral iconography in larger scale than the small one on the far wall. Under it he’d lettered “Phoenix Freight.” He stood back and waited.

  I reached out to touch the paper. I don’t know if I wanted to make sure it was real or what. It was exactly what we needed and hadn’t known how to ask for.

  “It’s ...” My brain couldn’t form the words.

  “Perfect,” Pip said, joining me to stare at the image on the paper. Without turning he asked, “Will it work as a shoulder flash?”

  James fished in the breast pocket of his shirt and pulled something out, handing it to him. “A buddy down the block does custom embroidery for the tourists. Mostly personalized polo shirts and crap. I asked him to run it up as a shoulder patch. I didn’t know what shape so I had him put it on a simple shield and left room at the top for the ship name.”

  Pip fingered the sample for a moment, then handed it to me. “How’d you think to leave room?”