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

by Nathan Lowell

  “Don’t make me hurt you,” he said with a grin. “What about missing its skin?”

  “Nothing. We were talking about leaving the old clothes behind, and he asked if a snake missed its old skin.”

  “Sounds like a therapist. Did he ask how you felt about it?”

  I tried to replay the conversation in my head. “I don’t think so.”

  He shrugged. “Go figure.”

  The trip up to the orbital went without a hitch. The only thing out of the ordinary was when the cadet cargo master came out and shifted my second grav-trunk from the port luggage bay to starboard. He winked at me as he headed back to the cockpit.

  “What have you got in there?” Pip asked. “Rocks?”

  “Mostly water,” I said.

  “You’re taking water into orbit.”

  “Don’t judge me.”

  He laughed and settled down in his seat. “Wake me when we get there.”

  I thought he was kidding, but in a few moments I realized he’d actually fallen asleep.

  It was odd. After all the times I’ve flown into and out of orbitals, I could count the number of times I’d landed as a passenger in a shuttle on the fingers of one hand. I’d never gone planet-side after joining the crew of the Lois McKendrick until I went to the academy.

  I remembered the trips for orbital orientation courses. I supposed they counted but it only added the digits on my other hand, and perhaps a foot. We’d been flown up by a cadet, worked for a few weeks, and been flown back by a cadet. Somehow it wasn’t the same as this; I couldn’t really say why.

  I had spent my entire adult life since then in space. The feel of the wind on my skin, of the warmth and light on my face? I’d spent two weeks on-planet but still longed for the familiar astringent scent of hydraulics and oil, the machine-scented air that flew with us from place to place. It was a pleasant change, but I felt more at home on the shuttle than I had in the rose-covered cottage.

  And, unlike Pip, I couldn’t even sleep there.

  I leaned down to peer out of the port and saw the orbital appear to fly toward us as we matched orbits. Perhaps it did. One of my problems with shuttle piloting was never being sure if I was supposed to speed up or slow down to approach the dock. I wondered if I would be better at it now that I’d spent nearly two decades speeding up and slowing down, depending on how you looked at it.

  We paused just off the traffic horizon while tugs pulled a tanker out of its dock and gave it the first push on its long voyage to somewhere else. We slipped into the shuttle dock and the skids locked down with a thump. I nudged Pip with my elbow.

  “Here already?” he asked.

  “Finally,” I said.

  He scrubbed his face with both hands and stretched. “It’ll feel good to sleep in my own bunk again.” The docking collar snaked out of the shuttle bay’s bulkhead and latched on with a soft snap. As the shuttle switched to station power, the lighting failed for a moment and then cut back in. “Looks like we’re here,” Pip said and waved to me. “Captains first.”

  The cargo master came back, released the door, and began sliding my grav-trunks out of their slots. “Safe voyage, Captain,” he said. He looked barely old enough to shave.

  “Thanks. Safe voyage.” I took the control handle and tugged my trunks off the ship. Pip shouldered his bag and followed me off.

  “When did they start letting kids attend the academy?” I asked as we maneuvered ourselves and our luggage out into the arrival bay.

  He shrugged. “Musta been last year.” He grinned at me. “That’s when you musta turned into an old fart.”

  I snorted and we soon found our way around to the commercial docks. Pip led the way to the Prodigal Son. A long time had passed since I’d followed him from the shuttle bay to the Lois, but it felt like maybe it had happened earlier in the week—or perhaps a lifetime past.

  Pip must have been thinking about it, too. He stopped in the middle of the docks so suddenly a cargo handler had to swerve his trolley to keep from running him down. The handler flipped Pip a rather rude gesture on the way by. “Do you snore?” Pip asked me with innocent wide eyes.

  I laughed with him as we resumed our parade down the dock. He broke trail through a herd of ratings who looked like they’d just been granted liberty, all of them skylarking and catcalling to each other as they trooped by. A couple caught sight of my stars and stared but I followed in Pip’s wake without stopping.

  We stopped at a lock. P-Son showed on the telltale; the departure time flashed off and on. Pip keyed the lock and we went through into the tidy living space I remembered from our trip from Dunsany to Newmar. An older man lounging on one of the chairs looked up from his tablet when we entered.

  “I thought I was going to have to slip the departure time,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Hello, yourself,” Pip said. “Captain Roland Marx, this is Captain Ishmael Wang. Ishmael, Roland.”

  He stuck out a hand and gave me an oddly judgmental look. “Captain,” he said.

  “Roland,” I replied. “I’m Ishmael. Ish if you like.”

  Pip interrupted with “Where are we on the maintenance?”

  “Done. I told you that before. All systems nominal and we’re ready to roll out of here when you are.”

  “I need to grab a cargo to Diurnia,” he said. “Gimme a tick.” He pulled out his tablet and started scrolling.

  “Crapcakes, Pip. You couldn’t have done that before?”

  “Keep your suspenders on. I’ve got five waiting. I just need to pick one.” He scrolled a little more. “Or three.” He headed back to the lock.

  “You’re not leaving the ship, I hope?” Marx said.

  “Nope.” His reply was covered slightly by the sound of the lock opening.

  Marx sighed. “I swear this guy is a herd of cats in undress khakis.” He raised his voice. “We have to file the departure, you know.”

  Pip’s “I know” came floating down the short passage moments before we heard the lock cycle closed again. He came close behind and plopped a small box onto what I thought of as the coffee table.

  He looked at Marx. “Well? File it. We’re good.”

  Marx rolled his eyes and flipped through a couple of screens on his tablet.

  I nodded at the box. “Cargo?”

  Pip nodded. “Low mass. High value.”

  “What is it?”

  He smirked. “If I tell you, you have to tell me what’s in your extra trunk.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  “Diamonds.”

  Marx looked up. “What? You scored a diamond drill bit to pay for the run to Diurnia?”

  Pip grinned. “No. It’s five kilos of gem-grade diamonds. Broker is waiting for them on Diurnia. They’ll pay the freight from here to Breakall, including the pit stop in Diurnia.”

  “You mean five carets?” Marx asked.

  “I mean twenty-five thousand carets. Five kilos.”

  I stared at the box. “Seriously?”

  He nodded. “Your turn.”

  I crossed to the trunk and popped the lid. “Wanna beer?”

  Pip’s eyes got round and his face lit up. “You filled it with Clipper Ship Lager?”

  “It’s mostly water.”

  I reached in and pulled out a pair of bottles. “Want one, Captain?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “I’m flying later.”

  Pip snagged one of the bottles from my hand and flipped the cap off. He stared into the grav-trunk as if it had been filled with diamonds instead of beer. “I can’t believe you did this. I didn’t think you really liked it.”

  I popped the cap off mine and took a slug. “I don’t really. These are for you.”

  He clinked his bottle against mine. “Man, I knew I was right about you. We’re gonna have some fun.”

  I thought ahead to the Chernyakova and all the work we’d need to do before we flew her. “We’ve got a long road ahead, yet.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, but we got a t
runk full of Clipper Ship to take with us.” He pulled a couple of racks out of the trunk and headed for the galley. “I’ll just toss these in the cooler for later.”

  “You sure two is enough?” I asked.

  “It’ll get me through dinner,” he said. “I’ll worry about tomorrow later.”

  Marx rolled his eyes and sighed before settling back into his tablet.

  I plopped into a chair and pulled my own tablet out. “ShipNet?”

  “Guest password ‘Prodigal’ on the default channels,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  He grunted.

  On a hunch I typed in “Bad Penny.” The tablet linked to ShipNet, and I started reviewing my message traffic. One from Ball and Associates with the information about her colleagues on Diurnia. One from Alys Giggone with a “keep me in the loop” kind of message. I logged out and reset my access to guest.

  Marx never twitched.

  Part of me sympathized with the guy. I had no idea how long he’d been ferrying Pip around. In small doses, Pip is perfectly charming. I knew from experience that being locked up with him for weeks at a time was anything but a small dose.

  Still, I’d been locked up with him on the Lois and again at the academy. We’d shared a room for the whole four stanyers. What little I’d seen of him lately didn’t make me think he’d changed all that much. His hair was white. He had that little mustache-goatee thing going. It was white, too. He was still completely irrepressible, and yet I’d sometimes found him capable of touching levels of empathy.

  “You want dinner?” Pip called from the galley.

  “You cooking?” I yelled.

  Marx looked up at me like I’d spit on his deck.

  “Yes.”

  “Then yes.”

  I heard him laugh, and then cupboards started clacking open and closed.

  “So? You don’t like flying the CEO’s kid around?” I asked.

  He sighed. “Welcome aboard, Captain Wang. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make your passage with us more pleasant.”

  “Yes, he is a pain in the ass.”

  “This is not a conversation we will be having,” he said.

  “Do you have a new crew picked out yet? Some cousin from the outer fringes of the Carstairs clan who needs engineering experience?”

  “Captain Wang, is there something wrong with your hearing?”

  “No. Just curious. I like to know who I’m flying with.”

  “Do you have any questions about our voyage?” he asked.

  “Estimated arrival in Diurnia?”

  “Two weeks plus or minus a day.”

  “How many jumps in the Dark?”

  “Two.”

  “Nice legs. Do you work out?”

  Marx stood and walked to the galley door. “I’ll be on the bridge if you need anything.”

  “You want something to eat?” Pip asked.

  “I’ll grab a snack after we’re underway.” He offered me a polite glare before climbing the ladder toward the bridge.

  I joined Pip in the galley. “He seems a nice enough sort.”

  Pip paused in his salad construction long enough look up. “Roland? He’s all right. Little prickly at times.”

  “He’s getting a ship out of the deal. You’d think he’d be happy to be skedaddling.”

  “Skedaddling? Really?” He shot me a pained expression and drained his beer.

  “You going to do anything but salad?”

  “Feel up to making biscuits?” he asked.

  “I thought you were cooking.”

  “I am.” He held out both hands to the bowl of salad. “Look. Greens, tomatoes, a few onions, and a couple radishes. Add a few mushrooms and we’re good here.”

  “What else?”

  Pip looked at the salad for a moment before turning to the chiller. He swung the door open and pulled another beer from the rack inside. “There’s some chicken. Individually wrapped breasts. Some bacon and eggs.”

  “Any sliced ham?”

  He poked about for a bit and nodded. “Yeah. Doesn’t look too slimy either.”

  “You worry me sometimes.”

  He straightened up and looked over his shoulder at me. “Only sometimes?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’ll try harder,” he said. “What do you fancy with your salad?”

  “How about pan-seared chicken breasts and biscuits?”

  “Sounds good. You need anything?”

  “I’ll do the chicken if you’ll do the biscuits,” I said.

  “I already did the salad.”

  “And I brought the beer.”

  He held his bottle up and peered at the level. “Fair deal.”

  I crossed to the galley, pulled open the cupboard under the cooktop, chose one of the frying pans, and slapped it on the burner. “You’ve not gone alcoholic on me, have you?”

  He shrugged. “I just really like this beer. Did I tell you, you can’t get it anywhere else?”

  “At least twice. Why do you think I brought a trunk full?”

  “Because you like me?”

  “Because I knew that it would help keep you from whining about it after you drink through the stash you had sent up from the planet.”

  “I’m wounded.”

  “What? Are you going to deny that you sent up a shipment from Port Newmar?”

  “I don’t whine.”

  I laughed and he tossed me a head of garlic from the bin beside the fridge. “Biscuits?” I said.

  He sighed one of the most egregiously put-upon sighs I ever heard, but his grin never faded. Soon he had a good dough in process on the work surface. “Just like old times, sorta,” he said.

  “How much of a file do you have on me?” I asked as I turned the chicken.

  “Enough to know you needed a job. And why.”

  “Enough to know I had a big pile of credits?”

  “Well, I knew you had a lot. The rumors were flying, but I had no idea you had that many.”

  “So you only want me for my money,” I said.

  “Well, no. I want you for your license. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who’d want you for your credits. For me, that’s just gravy.”

  I laughed. I’d been doing that a lot over the last few days.

  Chapter Twenty

  Diurnia Orbital:

  2374, June 23

  Walking the passages of Diurnia Orbital with Pip beside me felt almost surreal. I kept looking for Stacey Arellone to step out of a doorway and body slam me into a bulkhead for not telling her I was leaving the ship. That so many people seemed to do double-takes as we passed made me wonder if she might have been right.

  I opened my mouth to say something to Pip and realized he wasn’t there. Casting about, I saw him stopped at a newsie box, his tablet out as he purchased the latest rag.

  He stepped toward me with a huge grin. “You didn’t tell me you were big here.”

  “Big here?” I was scanning the door designators looking for the firm Ball and Associates had recommended.

  He held his tablet up so I could see my face peering back at me. It was a grainy shot of me walking along the docks with my grav-trunks in tow. If I had to guess, I’d have said I was on my way to board the Ellis for the trip back to Port Newmar.

  I laughed. “What’s the headline? It’s always a question. That way they don’t have to have any facts to justify printing it.”

  “How long have you been off station?”

  “I don’t know. A few weeks.”

  “This was published this morning.” He scrolled down to display the headline: “Rich Boy Returns?”

  “Somebody’s paying attention,” I said.

  “How did they know?” Pip asked.

  “Spies? Bribed somebody in traffic control?” I shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Private vessel. No passenger lists. You’re not on our manifest. You should be invisible,” he said, his voice more serious than I’d heard for a long time.
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  “Somebody saw us get off the ship when we went to dinner last night?”

  He made a noncommittal kind of grunt but kept staring at the tablet.

  “Here we are. Mabon Legal.” I pulled the door open and ushered Pip through with a flourish of my free hand. “After you, good sir.”

  He rolled his eyes and holstered his tablet.

  The receptionist smiled as we crossed the carpeted deck. The place was far from ostentatious, but like any good lawyer’s office kept up appearances with some wood-grain panels and a quiet hum that seemed so familiar I wondered if there might not be a noise generator someplace that piped the sound on demand.

  “How can I help you, gentlemen?”

  “I’m Ishmael Wang. This is Phillip Carstairs. We have an appointment?”

  She scanned her screen and nodded. “Indeed you do, Captain Wang.” She pressed a button and a side door buzzed and popped off the latch. “Mr. Kaplan is waiting for you in Conference Room B.”

  Pip led the way through the door and before we had time to wonder where we might find Conference Room B, we were in it. The door latched behind us, and a rather dapper man in a three-piece suit that looked like it might have come from Bresheu himself straightened from where he leaned over a pile of documents on the broad table. “Captain Wang?” He held out his hand.

  I shook the hand. “Mr. Kaplan, I presume?”

  He smiled. “The same.” He turned to Pip. “That would make you Mr. Carstairs?”

  Pip smiled back and shook the offered hand in turn. “On a good day. Most days it just makes me grumpy.”

  Kaplan paused for a moment as if his internal programming needed to find the place where the conversation had gone off script.

  “Don’t let him throw you,” I said. “He’s like this with everybody.”

  “Just be glad it’s a good day,” Pip said and grinned. “You have some papers for us to sign?”

  After a couple of back-and-forth glances between us, Kaplan found his place on the page of our conversation and nodded. “I do. I was just reviewing them.” He pulled a cover sheet up on his legal tablet and scrolled down. “This says you’re to be CEO, Mr. Carstairs?”

  “Correct.”

  “Very good. Ms. Ball’s people indicated that you have one outstanding issue. Which of these two plans will you be executing today?”