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

by Nathan Lowell

  “Goodness. Why would I do that?”

  “I’m still trying to figure out why you want to see the inside.”

  “Damage control?”

  I gave him my best evil eye.

  “I want to make sure the computer systems are intact,” he said. “I don’t really need to get inside for that.”

  “Really? How are you going to find out?”

  “Simple. Ask the people who know.”

  He led the way to the lift and we dropped down to the oh-two deck. It took him a couple of laps around the station but he finally settled on a disreputable-looking hole in the wall with a shaped neon cocktail glass and a flashing “Breakall Brewery” sign above the door.

  He stopped outside and looked at me and then down at himself. “We’re a little overdressed, but it’ll do.” He loosened the collar on his tunic and ruffled the snow-white hair on his head, leaving it stuck out in several directions. “I’ll talk. You watch.”

  “What am I watching for?”

  “Somebody watching us.”

  “Won’t that be everybody in there?”

  “No. The regulars will keep their heads down and their thumbs in their pockets.”

  “Then who ...?”

  “Just keep your eyes open, all right?” He sighed and staggered into the door, bouncing it off its stops on the inside. He sauntered into the bar as if he were the new owner come to kick butts and forget names.

  I followed him before the door could close all the way and watched him weave ever so gracefully through most of the small tables on his way to the bar. He only bumped a couple, the residents grabbing for their drinks and giving him the stink eye.

  “Watch it, buddy,” one said. That was about it.

  I followed him, shrugging in apology to any of the fine folks up to their armpits in the sour-smelling swill that apparently passed for beer. I sidled up to the bar alongside him, leaning over as if to speak to him so I could look down the bar at the dark corners in the far end of the room.

  “What ya want?” The gruff voice sounded more bored than hostile.

  “Clipper Ship Lager?” Pip asked, hope bright in his voice.

  “Pfft,” the barkeep said.

  “What’s on draft then?” Pip asked.

  “We got beer. Cheap beer and cheaper beer. Unless you’d like to sample one of our fine vintage wines or perhaps a single-malt scotch.”

  The guy on the other side of Pip giggled at this. It wasn’t actually a very joyful sound, but I counted his amusement as being in our favor. The only person in the bar who seemed to be paying any attention to us, other than the giggler beside Pip, sat near the door with his back against the wall. He must have watched us walk in; he’d certainly watch us walk out.

  Assuming we actually walked out and weren’t thrown—or carried.

  “In that case, I’ll have a glass of cheaper beer,” Pip said, making a hash of the word glass so it sounded more like “glash.”

  “You?”

  It took me a second to realize he’d spoken to me. “Nothing for me. I’ll just pour my friend out when he’s done,” I said.

  The barkeep shrugged and slapped a bottle of beer on the counter. “Five credits,” he said.

  “I thought you said it was cheaper beer.”

  “It is. The other is six.”

  “Classy,” Pip said and fumbled something out of his tunic pocket, clattering it on the bar where the barkeep scooped it up, looked at the face of it, and threw it into a bucket under the bar. It clattered when it hit.

  Pip upended the bottle, swallowing twice before slapping the bottle down on the counter again. “Yeah. That’s cheaper.” He left the beer on the counter and headed for the door.

  “Hey, don’t you want your bottle?” the barkeep said.

  “Naw. Let the next guy piss in it,” he said and sailed out the way he’d come. He turned to starboard and stepped pretty lively. I had to jog to keep up.

  “All right, what was that about?”

  “I was looking for the caretakers. Nobody in there in a shipsuit. Did you see anybody watching us?”

  “The guy sitting just inside the door.”

  “Beefy guy? Big gut?”

  “Yeah.”

  Pip sighed. “Just the bouncer. We’ll have to look harder.”

  “Why don’t we just take it easy until the auction?”

  “I’m bored.”

  “You’re bored?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve got a low threshold, what can I say.”

  “I’ve got another couple racks of Clipper Ship,” I said.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Sure, I do.”

  “The ones you had stashed under your bunk?” he asked. “When was the last time you saw them?”

  “Couple of days.”

  “Those are empty.”

  “You took them?”

  “I think of it more as ‘trading my empties for full ones.’ Why? Were you going to drink them?”

  “No, but that’s not the point.”

  He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll replace them.”

  “With what?”

  “With more Clipper Ship. What else?” He shrugged.

  “I thought you were out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the one who’s out,” he said. “I still have a pallet-load in the hold.”

  “You have a pallet of it? Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I did. Back on Port Newmar but you forgot. You made such a nice, considerate gesture by bringing a trunk full of it for me. Who am I to argue with such generosity?”

  I didn’t know if I should laugh or slug him.

  “So? Wanna beer?” He headed back toward the ship. “I need to think about this a little more, and a decent beer would help wash away the foul taste.”

  “You are crazy, you know,” I said to his back.

  “Maybe, but get used to it.”

  I jogged a couple of steps to catch up with him. “Get used to it?”

  “Yep. I may be crazy but as long as you’re employed by Phoenix Freight, I’m your boss.” He grinned.

  I laughed and then slugged him in the arm.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Breakall Orbital:

  2374, August 2

  Pip gave Roland a couple of days’ liberty so we had the ship to ourselves. I was a little worried that Pip might be considering a boarding raid on the Chernyakova, but he settled into the galley with a kilogram of bacon, several large potatoes, a couple of onions, and a dozen eggs.

  I sat at the table and watched him peel the potatoes. “What are you doing? Still working on Frank’s Finest?”

  “Yeah. Cooking helps me think.”

  I chuckled to myself. “At least it covers the burning smell.”

  He glanced at me. “That the best you can do?”

  “On one cup of coffee? Yes.”

  “Drink up, the day is young even if you’re not anymore.”

  “And you complain about me?”

  He shrugged and grinned. “I’m trying to figure out why they parked the ship off station.”

  “Keep people from breaking in?” I asked.

  His paring knife paused for a moment before he shook his head. “That’s possible, but it seems like overkill. With the ship in a parking orbit, they need at least a skeleton crew aboard. Docked, they only need a fire watch caretaker and an occasional visit from an engineer to make sure the scrubbers are working. Everything else is shore power.”

  “Unless it’s not manned.”

  He glanced at me again. “It’s manned.”

  “You sound sure.”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “If it wasn’t manned, it would have been stolen by now. It’s too valuable to be sitting out there by itself.”

  “What makes it so valuable?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get it. Hell, I’ll show you when we get it.”

  “If we get it.”

&nbs
p; “We’ll get it.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because the auction failed twice.”

  “I don’t see the connection.”

  “You will,” he said. He paused in his peeling and looked at me. “I need to play this close for now, Ish. I could be wrong and I’m chasing lightning. If I’m right, that ship is worth way more than a billion credits.”

  “What if it’s not?” I asked.

  “Not what? Worth more than a billion credits?”

  “No. What if it’s not parked in orbit somewhere.”

  “Wouldn’t somebody have noticed?”

  “Depends on who was looking,” I said. “Wanna make a bet?”

  He finished peeling his potatoes and went to work on the onions. “What kinda bet?”

  “Let’s go up and run some short-range scanner tests.”

  “Tests?”

  “Yeah, we’re not supposed to fire up scanners this close to the station, but low-power maintenance testing is allowed with station approval.”

  “Can we get approval?”

  “You’re the owner of record, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  I opened my tablet and logged into the ShipNet. A few screens brought me to the maintenance menus. I filled out a few fields and held it out for Pip. “Thumb this.”

  He leaned over to peer at it. “I didn’t realize Roland gave you full access.”

  “He didn’t. I know how you think. When he gave me the guest password, I guessed the system one.”

  Pip nodded. “Interesting.” He pressed his thumb to the pad and the maintenance request went to the orbitals maintenance department. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Now we wait.”

  “How long?”

  “How long will it take you to peel those onions?”

  “Not long.”

  “Well, get on it.” I grinned as my tablet bipped. “Or wait, because here’s the permission.”

  Pip followed me up to the bridge and I sat at the navigation console. It took me a little bit to find the right interface and set the short-range scanners to their low-power test levels. I pinged once and checked the results on the display.

  “That’s it?” Pip asked.

  “Not quite.” As might be expected, the area right around the orbital was pretty busy. Every ship, container, and floating barge showed up as a glowing band. I put a twenty-kilometer ring around our position and another at thirty. “If it’s out there, it’ll be in that ring.”

  “There,” Pip said, pointing at a blob in the right region.

  I added the transponder codes and shook my head. “That’s a freighter inbound with tugs.”

  “There are no other signals.”

  “It’s not out there,” I said.

  “Why would she have lied?”

  “Maybe she didn’t. Maybe her boss told her that and she thinks it’s true.”

  The sound of the lock opening vibrated through the deck plates moments before the bellow echoed up the ladder. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “I thought you were off for a couple of days,” Pip yelled back.

  “Station communications sent me a confirmation of system testing,” he said as he stamped up the ladder, glaring at me and then at Pip. “Testing I didn’t authorize.”

  “I authorized it,” Pip said.

  “I’m getting more than a bit tired of your little games. I know it pains you, but you are not the captain,” Roland said. “I am.”

  “It’s true. I carry the secret shame deep in my heart,” Pip said, placing the back of his hand against his forehead and striking a dramatic pose. “I shall never be the captain of my own ship. What ever shall I do?” He shrugged and looked at Roland. “In the meantime, I own this bucket of bolts and my owner card trumps your captain card.”

  “Your father pays my salary. Not you.”

  “Then take it up with my father. I still hold the title on this ship and as long as I do, we’ll play my little games.”

  “Or what? You’ll fire me?”

  “I can’t fire you,” Pip said.

  He folded his arms across his chest and nodded. His smirk made me want to slap it off him. “About time you realized that,” he said.

  “But I can beach you,” Pip said.

  “What?”

  “But I can beach you,” Pip said again.

  “You can’t do that, who’ll fly the ship?”

  “Well, Captain Wang is rated up to five hundred metric kilotons and he has experience on fast packets.”

  “I don’t have the engineering endorsement for this power plant,” I said.

  Pip nodded. “True, but we need an engineer for the Chernyakova anyway so ...” He shrugged. “It’s all about the same. We’re not going anywhere for a while. I could probably have one here by the time I need him.”

  “Or her,” I said.

  “Or her.”

  Pip shook his head. “Look, Roland. We’re family, however distantly related. You’ve had a stick up your butt about this berth since you took it last stanyer. What’s your issue?”

  “Would you like the room?” I asked, rising from the console. “I can get some coffee or something.”

  Roland glared at me. “You accessed a ship’s system without authorization. You’re a captain. You know better. I could have you arrested and thrown off this ship.”

  “Actually, the owner authorized me to access that system and supervised me while I did it. The execution of the test protocol fell entirely within the legal parameters as outlined by CPJCT guidelines for maintenance of a ship while docked.” I shrugged. “I’ll still give you some space if you’d rather not have any witnesses.”

  “Witnesses?” Roland said, spit flying from his lower lip.

  “I never liked being dressed down in front of witnesses,” I said. “It can be embarrassing and—frankly—it’s bad form.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, Ishmael? I would like to have some words with the captain here.”

  I nodded and clattered down off the bridge. I knew where the coffee pot was and Pip could make a decent cup.

  I’ll give Pip his due. He never raised his voice. All I heard was a few low-pitched statements from him, even when Marx yelled back at him. I stood there in the galley, leaning against the counter and sipping coffee, and realized that I sympathized with Marx. It had to be hard sailing with the owner aboard, particularly if the owner was as eccentric as Pip. Still, the captain’s word is law only when the ship is underway; we’d been docked for more than a day.

  “I don’t have to put up with this!” echoed through the ship.

  Pip said something I couldn’t hear.

  “Your father will hear about this. Mark my words.”

  Pip said something else I couldn’t hear.

  After that all I heard was boots stamping down the ladder, followed by some thrashing about in the captain’s cabin over my head.

  Pip strolled into the galley. “That went well.”

  Something crashed onto the deck above us.

  “Captain Marx doesn’t sound happy,” I said.

  Pip poured himself a cup of coffee and shrugged. “You know how it is. Sometimes when your world view becomes too skewed from reality, it’s difficult to realign what you think you know with what is real.”

  “True. Been on the wrong end of that a couple times myself.” I took a sip.

  Pip winced. “Yeah. Me, too. You hate to see people going through it, but sometimes it’s the only way.”

  Footsteps stamped along the passage above and down the ladder. Marx stuck his head through the galley door. “You haven’t heard the last of this,” he said. He showed admirable restraint in not screaming, and he hardly foamed at the mouth at all.

  Pip said, “Safe voyage, Captain. Please pass my regards to Aunt Emily when you see her.” He pulled out his tablet and started flipping through screens as Marx growled and stomped off the ship, presumably with his grav-trunk in tow. Pip stood poised with
his finger over a button on his tablet and his head cocked to the side a few degrees.

  The lock whined open, stopped, and then whined again as it closed.

  Pip pressed the button. “Good-bye, Roland,” he said.

  “Erased him?” I asked.

  “Oh, good heavens, no. Just deactivated his keys and locked his access out.”

  “You think he’d try to come back aboard?”

  “Why take chances?” he asked.

  “I can’t fly this ship, you know.”

  “You can if we get an engineer.”

  “You say that like all you have to do is go out onto the dock and pick one that’s passing by.”

  He laughed and dug back into his tablet. “Don’t be silly. Everybody out there already has a berth. Well, except for Roland. He’ll be on the next flight to Dunsany Roads, unless I miss my guess.” He shrugged. “Besides, I need somebody who’s qualified on this power plant, not some random engineer walking by.”

  “This isn’t a Confederated port. It’s not a place where engineers just hang about waiting for work.”

  “Maybe,” he said, still rummaging through screens and filling out forms. He pressed a final button with a flourish of his index finger. “There. I should have a new engineer this afternoon, but even if it takes a week? We’re not going anywhere until after the auction.” He looked at me. “Which reminds me. If it’s not out there?”

  “It’s got to be docked someplace.”

  “Someplace they don’t want people to find it,” he said.

  “Where can you hide a bulk freighter?”

  He grinned. “Feel like taking a walk?”

  I tipped up my mug and emptied it. “I could stretch my legs a bit.”

  He holstered his tablet and took a couple of swigs from his mug before pouring it out and rinsing the cup. “Let’s go.”

  I followed him across the docks and into the lift. He punched a button and we went up one deck. We stepped off into the wide promenade and he headed around to port.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Where would you hide a bulk freighter?” he asked back, echoing my earlier question.

  “I don’t know. They’re kinda large and hard to stick in your pocket.”

  “Don’t be a smart ass.” We crossed the promenade to the wide glassed-in wall.

  I had to admit the view was spectacular. With few exceptions, each docking ring held a large ship. Some were tankers. I spotted a couple of Barbells and a whole raft of mixed freight ships. The smaller vessels, like Pip’s fast packet and the tractors, all docked on the other side of the station. As we walked by, a pair of tugs slipped an older Manchester-built hull into the ring practically at our feet. We could see right into the bridge as it nuzzled up to the orbital and the rings clamped on with a clunk.