Stormcrow: Book Two: Birds of a Feather

by N. C. Reed

  “I did give you one,” Sean turned his back on him, grabbing the cowling and wrestling it into place in a surprising show of strength. “I didn't kill you.”

  “Now see?” Tony leaped on that comment. “That right there is a prime reason I don't want you around my sister! She doesn't need that kind of thing!”

  “You're joking, right?” Sean scoffed. “Look at you, man. How easy did you torture and kill a man to get what you wanted?”

  “That was different!” Tony defended himself. “He knew where my sister was!”

  “And every man or woman I ever did that too knew who killed my entire family,” Sean's voice was flat and cold. “You're a hypocrite, Tony. You don't want your sister around me? What about you? What about that piss ant brother of yours, selling out his own family like that? Seems to me she'd be better off around me than him. Or maybe even you,” he turned back to look at his 'friend'.

  “At least I let her make her own decisions,” he finished. “What do you do? Judge and second guess every decision she makes, no matter what it is? How has she managed without you all these years you've been gone I wonder? Without you there to tell her what to do and who she can spend time with?”

  Tony hadn't replied as yet, still stinging from the reminder of how Sean came to be as he was. It wasn't right for him to question that really, especially after what he'd done the day Lucia had been taken. Tony hadn't been a sterling role model before he'd left the planet to study medicine, either.

  “I said I was sorry,” Tony repeated. “And you're right. I'm not any better. That's why I don't stay here,” he pointed out. “I know that if I do, I'll be just like that all the time. I was before. So, I keep on the move and I don't try to depend on my family's influence except when I need it like we did on Hartley Station. And to get the Celia into Porto San Lucia so Lincoln could see the doctor,” he admitted.

  “Well, you're just a prince of a guy, aren't you,” Sean's sarcasm was a bit of a surprise, coming as it did from someone who never used it. “Look, I don't know why you care anyway. I'll never likely see your sister again. I told her I'm not the kind of guy she needs to be around and I told your mother the same thing. She'll figure that out in time and be better off for it. She's smart enough to know it once she finds out who and what I am. So you got nothing to worry about and never did. You basically called me a liar and questioned my honor for nothing.” He almost spat the word out. Tony was starting to see that Sean was really and truly angry, not just pissed off.

  “Look, the way I grew up, around here with everything like it is, it's not a big deal to say what I said,” Tony tried to explain. “It's just something we say, especially when we're questioning what we're being told. Don't take it so personal.”

  “Where I grew up,” Sean replied calmly, “questioning the honor of someone like that is reason enough to kill the questioner. That's pretty personal. Where I grew up,” he grunted as he swung the back of the cowling into place, “a man doesn't take the virtue of a woman he isn't married to. If he does, he won't ever take the virtue of another woman, you can be sure. And where I. . .grew up,” he finished moving the cowling into place with a final grunt of exertion, “you don't dishonor the home of someone else by taking the virtue of a daughter, or a sister or any other female, including the servants.” He started threading bolts into place.

  “Well, around here no one pays any attention to that,” Tony shot back.

  “And look what a fine society it is, too,” Sean nodded as if Tony had made his point for him. “Like I said, you got nothing to worry about. She'll never see me again unless we happen to come back here and she knows we're on the ground. Because I'll damn sure never set foot in your house again, you can be sure of that. Now do you want anything else or are we done here?” he demanded, still threading bolts into the frame, one after the other.

  “Sean, don't let something I said ruin a good friendship,” Tony almost pleaded.

  “I've been a friend to you, Tony.” Sean's voice was almost a whisper. “Something I don't do, to be honest. I don't do 'friends'. I went with you to find your sister. Killed a man and tortured another to do it. Then I took care of another problem for your mother. One she had to have done and couldn't do herself. And despite all that, the first thing you think to do is assume that I'm such a bastard that I'd take your sister's virginity under her parent's roof, in a bed they provided for me as a guest. The second thing you can think to do is assume I'm lying when I tell you nothing happened between us other than her talking a lot after she woke up.” Having placed the last bolt where it belonged and started it, he reached for a wrench and began to tighten them down.

  “Living in this cesspool, with a family where a brother is willing to sacrifice his sister and her closest friend in order to make some kind of pathetic power play, you want to talk to me about inappropriate. About how bad I am, and how bad it is for your sister to be anywhere near me. You need to get the log out of your own eye before you start talking about the speck in mine.”

  “I already said I-, wait a minute,” Tony cut himself off. “How do you know my sister's a virgin!”

  “She wasn't interested in having sex, but she wasn't above trying to pretend to seduce me to get me to stay around,” Sean replied. “She wanted to be enticing and seductive, but she's not very good at it which means she'd never done it before. She's also honest and straightforward, which I'm sure she learned from a book or something since she damn sure didn't learn it around here,” his tone was withering. “She flat out said she hadn't come to me wanting anything other than a place to sleep where she felt safe, but then the next morning tried every way in the world except offering herself to me physically to keep me here. That's how I know she's a virgin, Tony. And good for her, too,” he added firmly. “This place hasn't gotten to her. At least not yet.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?” Tony demanded.

  “It means she's still got values and morals despite being raised in a place that is decidedly lacking in those areas,” Sean was blunt in his response. “Now do you want anything else? I still got work to do.”

  “Sean, we need to work this out, man,” Tony urged. “We can't work together if we're enemies.”

  “We aren't enemies,” came the immediate reply. “If you were my enemy you'd be dead. We can work together just fine I imagine.”

  “Then what do you call this if we're not enemies?” Tony wanted to know.

  “I call this fixing a mistake I made in ever believing you were my friend,” the reply cut him to the bone. “We aren't enemies, we aren't friends, we aren't anything except shipmates. We ship together, we work together. We can do that and not be friends. I've done it here, I've done it elsewhere. It's not as hard as it sounds.”

  It was the matter-of-fact way Sean said it that hit Tony the hardest. He had let his mouth run away with him in the heat of the moment and it had cost him a good friend. Possibly the best friend he could ever have had.

  “Sean, come on,” he tried one more time. “Just let me have this one, okay? Accept my apology and write this off to me being an ass.”

  “I already have,” came the reply, muffled slightly as Sean was behind part of the cowling at this point, having never stopped tightening bolts. “I wrote the whole thing off, including you. Now seriously, if you don't have something you need the engineer to do, I'm busy.” His voice was growing hoarse as he talked more in past few minutes than he normally would in a day or more.

  “All right,” Tony raised his hands in supplication. “I really am sorry,” he added over his shoulder as he headed up the passageway.

  “So am I,” Sean said to himself, soft enough that Tony would never hear it. “So am I.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  -

  The next three days were pretty much repeats of the same. Lincoln was making good progress getting around with his eye patch and was helping with various system checks as the crew used the down time to make sure the Celia was in top shape. She was clean as whi
stle from bow to stern and Sean had cleaned the exhaust ports on the thrusters, then the engines, then repainted them with the extreme heat paint that such things required. Faulks had scrubbed the cargo bay until it gleamed and then moved on to the passageways and the guest cabins. Jessica helped in each turn once she had completed a complete systems check of the bridge systems and then cleaned the bridge until in shone. The ship smelled of disinfectant and cleaner but it was a good smell.

  By day six of Lincoln's wait to see the doctor, the ship was in as good a shape as it had ever been. Nothing was lacking or needing with all supplies and tanks topped off and ready.

  “I don't see why we can't have some shore leave,” Meredith surprised them all on the evening of that sixth day. “There's not really anything we can do at this point. Everything we can do is done until we light off. I don't even see the need for a watch since the port here has excellent security. We've pulled the engine mains so it's not like anyone can steal the ship. We can lock her down and head into town. We've got two days and wake-up before Lincoln can see the doctor. Assuming he clears us to leave, we'll need to start turning over right away because I just got another cargo today and it's time sensitive. Not enough that we can't wait to see the doctor but we've got to be in the black as soon as possible after that. We're headed back out on the rim with this one but it's a big payday that will more than make up for the down time, assuming we get it there on time. We're looking at a forty percent bonus for rush delivery. We'll drop our other cargo on the way back in to Halcyon.”

  “Where are we going?” Jessica asked.

  “Back to Elvy,” Meredith announced with a grin. “And I've already put a call in to the harbor master there and he will have us a full cargo waiting for the run back. All of it going to Halcyon, so we can't ask for much better than that. Assuming we make that run without difficulty, we could be looking at a regular run between those two. We'll still be taking other jobs too, but having something steady will mean a lot less planet hopping and lot more time and money for us all. I assume there are no objections to more time and money all around?” she raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, everyone knows I just do this for fun, being independently wealthy,” Jess deadpanned. “But far be it from me to keep everyone else from profiting.” Laughter chased her comment as everyone had a good laugh.

  “Well then, as of now you've all got forty-eight hours. Do as you please so long as everyone is back aboard the morning we go back to the doctor. Like I said, assuming Linc is cleared to go, we'll be out of here as soon as we can, making this speed run. That money will really help make up for our being idle all this time. Don't get in trouble!” she added as the crew all headed to clean up and change. She looked at Lincoln.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked him.

  “Let's head in and get a hotel room,” he told her, standing. “Then, I want to take you out to dinner. After that we'll see what happens.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” she nodded firmly and the two went to gather their things.

  -

  Somehow Sean and Jessica ended up together, wandering through the streets of Porto San Lucia among the shops and cafes there. Faulks had found something that interested her and had struck off on her own before anyone else had left the ship. Sean was fairly certain that Tony had gone back to his family home, though he hadn't bothered to ask and truthfully didn't care.

  “Still not going to tell me what's bothering you?” Jessica asked out of the blue.

  “There's nothing bothering me,” Sean's reply was automatic. “I do appreciate your concern, but there's nothing wrong,” he added after a few seconds.

  “If you say so,” Jess sighed quietly. “I swear, getting answers out of you is harder than finding a hen's tooth,” she was shaking her head.

  “What does that mean?” Sean frowned, having never heard that saying before.

  “Ever see a chicken with teeth?” Jess asked.

  “Now that you mention, no,” Sean replied, seeing where this was going. “I get it now. I take it you spent a lot of time around chickens?” he asked, grinning.

  “Where I grew up, if you wanted eggs you raised chickens,” Jess shrugged. “In fact, if you wanted anything you pretty much raised it yourself. You didn't have chickens to feed when you were younger?”

  “No,” Sean admitted. “If we wanted eggs we hunted for them. Taking them from nests in the wild.”

  “You didn't raise food where you come from?”

  “We did some,” he admitted. “But it was mostly grain. We had a few cattle and some other domesticated animals that were native to our world. Mostly we hunted though. It was good training,” he said without much thought.

  “Training for what?” she asked.

  “Just to be a better hunter,” he shrugged. Not entirely a lie after all.

  “Where are you from, Sean?” Jessica asked suddenly. “I mean, you know where I'm from. Was from, anyway,” she sighed at the memory of how things were so messed up in her past. “I've never heard you say where you were from.”

  “I doubt you've ever heard of it,” he replied truthfully. “I'm from pretty far out on the rim myself, just in a different direction from you. You hungry?” he asked as they passed a small eatery that had a delicious smell wafting out it's open doors and windows.

  “I could force myself to eat,” she admitted.

  “Come on, then,” he motioned with his head to the doorway. “I'm buying.”

  “I've got money of my own, Sean,” Jessica semi-protested. “I'm getting paid like everyone else now.”

  “Then you can treat me sometime,” he told her. “How's that?”

  “So long as we keep up with it,” she nodded. “I don't like owing people.”

  “Me either,” he nodded. “Not a bad policy so far as I'm concerned.” The two entered the small cafe and a jovial older woman was soon seating them.

  “Would you two like a minute to look at the menus?” she asked, pad in hand.

  “Is there a special?” Sean asked. “And do you recommend it for visitors?”

  “As a matter-of-fact, today's special is a spaghetti dish that I would absolutely recommend to anyone,” the woman beamed.

  “You had me a 'spaghetti',” Sean grinned.

  “Me too,” Jess agreed. “And some bread sticks, please,” she added, glancing at the menu board.

  “Coming right up!” the woman smiled and then moved on.

  “I wonder if this will be as good as Tony's?” Jess mused.

  “Don't know, but from the smells I bet it's pretty good,” Sean shrugged. “Maybe we got lucky coming in here, hey?”

  “Maybe.”

  -

  “Three days?” Antonia said, no reaction on her face at all.

  “Looks like it,” Tony nodded. He was seated at the table with his parents and sister, a very late lunch or early supper being served. “From what I can see Lincoln's eye is doing fine, so I don't think he'll have any trouble being cleared. As soon as he is, we've got a hot load going outbound that will more than make up for the down time we've had here, plus another cargo waiting at the destination. We'll be too busy for much more than work for the next little bit.”

  “Well, that's good,” Lucia said off handed. “I mean, being busy means making money, right?” she added when he looked at her.

  “That it does,” he nodded. “The outbound cargo is a rush job apparently, or at least there's a hefty bonus for getting it there on time or early if possible. Once we're up and gone we won't be stopping anywhere else until we can deliver that cargo. Too much money at risk.”

  “Do you get work such as that often?” his father asked.

  “More than you'd think, really,” Tony nodded. “People often will hire a small freighter to make a direct run even thought it costs more. It's worth it to them to get a cargo where it's going as soon as possible. That's really what keeps small independent ships in business, to be honest. Though Captain Simmons is pretty cagey, always stack
ing cargoes atop one another so that we've got multiple stops on the same run. She's a pretty good manager,” he shrugged.

  “She sounds like an intelligent businesswoman,” Antonia commented.

  “She is, but. . .so long as the ship is breaking even, I think that's all she cares about to be honest,” Tony replied. “She's medically retired out of the Navy and being in space is all she really cares about. So long as she can do that, I don't think profit counts as much as just paying for her to be in the black.”

  “Well, if she's getting what she wasn't from life you can't ask for much more than that,” Jerome's baritone rumbled. “I take it you will stay with them?”

  “Yeah,” Tony's reply was drawn out and slow. “I considered leaving to be honest, but. . .for now I think it's better that I stay on. I may leave at some point. Might even go back to school, I don't know,” he shrugged. He really didn't know at the moment.

  “Well, I have stuff to do,” Lucia said suddenly. “Be careful on your trip brother, and maybe send us a message once in a while?” she asked, kissing him lightly on the cheek.

  “I will,” he promised.

  “Mamma, poppa, if you will excuse me?”

  “Of course, daughter,” Antonia answered for them both. Lucia departed the dining room, leaving Tony with his parents.

  “Wonder what she's got up her sleeve,” Tony murmured.

  “What do you mean by that?” Antonia asked him, eyebrow raised.

  “She's being too nice to me,” he told her. “I made her mad over Sean a few days ago and she was still mad at me as late as two days ago. Being nice to me doesn't fit. She's up to something.”

  “How did you anger her?” Jerome asked, sparing Antonia from having to reply.

  “I, ah, might have tried to get between her and Sean and keep her from making a mistake,” Tony admitted.