Debts of My Fathers (Father Chessman Saga Book 2)

by Dan Thompson

  Carlos shrugged. “No problem there, Skipper. I can teach pretty damn well if I say so myself. Besides, navigation is easy. It’s only math.”

  “Yes,” he replied through gritting teeth, “math.”

  Carlos motioned to the pilot’s console. “If you want, sir, we could have a go.”

  Michael shook his head. “Maybe later. I want to walk the deck … make sure everything is settled.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be here.”

  Michael walked back from the bridge and took the ladder down to environmental. Hector nodded to him.

  “Everything in the green?” Michael asked.

  “Mostly. I’m getting an occasional pressure drop feeding into the port filter unit, but it’s nothing critical. My guess is the fan motor’s lubrication is only now spreading out to everywhere it needs to be. That can happen when they sit idle for a while.”

  Michael nodded. “You’ve done a ship restart before?”

  “No, but I’ve replaced a motor before. Sitting on the ground or sitting in a crate, it’s the same thing as far as the motor is concerned.”

  “Very well, Mr. Reyes. As always, I hope you will have a boring shift.”

  “Best kind,” he replied.

  Michael proceed further back to his old station in engineering to find Dieter sitting watch. Recalling Carlos’s reaction on the bridge, Michael was careful to position himself where he could not see any of the actual monitors. Here it was even more tempting, since under Malcolm’s command, he had done most of his watches from this very seat.

  “Everything okay, Captain?”

  “I was actually here to ask you that.”

  Dieter nodded. “To be honest, sir, I didn’t believe the specs on these engines when Mr. Mosley recruited me, but that had to be the smoothest up-tach I’ve ever seen. Your sails don’t just unfurl. They snap.”

  Michael smiled. It was common for the smaller sails in ships like the Sophie to be more responsive than the larger freighters, but when listening to older engineers talk shop in port, he had always gotten the impression that the Sophie’s performance was unusually good. He was about to brag, but then he remembered something Malcolm had always told him. “It’s not the ship. It’s the crew.”

  So he simply nodded and said, “Not my sails, not anymore. They’re your sails now. Keep them tight.”

  “Aye, sir. I’ll do my best.”

  Michael saw an oblong case tucked in beneath the auxiliary panel beside him. “Planning on playing some down here?”

  “If it’s all right with you, Captain.”

  It was not as professional as things had been on board the giant Heavy Heinrich, but engineering was a lot less taxing on board a ship like this. Playing music was no worse than some of the things he had done sitting that post. “Sure. What do you play, anyway?”

  Dieter glanced at the controls before reaching down to open the case. He pulled the instrument out and held it up for Michael’s inspection. “This is the pride of my collection. It’s almost two hundred years old.” He grinned. “Sometimes it felt like it took me that long to find it.”

  Michael stared at it, not sure what to make of the long neck and the rounded body. “What is it?”

  Dieter’s grin faded. “It’s a sitar.”

  “Oh,” Michael replied. “That’s what, from the Hindu tradition of old Earth?”

  Dieter gave a shrug. “Sort of.” He lifted it up. “This is technically from the Taara tradition of Ganymede in the early Republic. It combined the old Hindustani raga of Earth with the polyphonic chovorus movement of Mars in a musical renaissance not seen since …”

  Michael’s eyes glazed over, and it must have shown because Dieter trailed off.

  The engineer sighed. “Well, the short of it is that it has fewer sympathetic strings and uses more fingers on the melody strings.” He ran his left hand along the neck and placed all four fingers on different strings across three different frets and plucked out a few notes. Michael could pick out the initial notes as well as the harmonics coming from the sympathetic strings. “You’ll still find some of the older Vedic instruments on Earth and a few worlds out in the Catai, but most modern Hindi music comes out of the Ganymede tradition.”

  Michael nodded as though he understood. Mostly he listened to drum-heavy music and film soundtracks, but it was clear he was about to have his horizons broadened whether he liked it or not. “Well, as long as it keeps you awake,” he said.

  Dieter laughed. “So you really are an engineer after all. Thank you, sir.”

  Malcolm headed back upstairs and checked in on the passengers. They had settled down in the crew lounge and were debating movie selections. He nodded to them but ducked out before they could enlist his opinion. He had the entire collection of Paula Stone films, complete with some of the racier outtakes, but they were hardly high-brow entertainment.

  He heard Winner in the galley and stopped by. “Everything settling in?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “I’m trying to work out the cooking schedule. I want to line up some of it in advance and freeze. Other stuff has to wait until the last minute.”

  “Well, keep us fed, and the schedule is yours.”

  “Sure,” she replied. “Wait, Captain, about schedules. Can I get the gym to myself?”

  He shrugged. “Well, there are ten of us on board. It’s more of a shared resource.”

  “I know,” she said, “but that’s ten over twenty-four hours. I’m only asking for ninety minutes a day, and with my off-hours and time between meals, I can be pretty flexible on the timing.”

  He sighed. He had been expecting this kind of demand from the occasional self-important passenger but not from crew. “I don’t know, Ms. Vargas. It seems ...” he trailed off, unsure of why he was objecting.

  “Please, sir,” she said. “Vivian and I are the only women on board, and I doubt she wants a man walking in on her any more than I do.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. I see what you mean.” In truth, he had no idea what she meant, but after her bluntly stated sexual policy, he was a little scared to press the issue. “Print up a schedule sheet, and run it past the rest of the crew, but I want the watch standers to have first choice. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  He shrugged and headed over to his office. Everything was as settled as it had been the night before. He gave Hans’s crate another poke with his boot, but something was different.

  It was unlocked.

  He knelt down and lifted the lid. Atop a stack of books and blobs of packing foam was a short note. “Compliments of the ship’s locksmith.”

  Locksmith? He did not remember hiring any locksmiths.

  He pulled one of the books out and flipped through it. It was handwritten with dates. Names popped up here and there, Sophia, Hans, and Michael. He almost dropped it when he realized what it was. These were diaries of his birth father, Peter.

  He put it back into its slot and scanned across the spines of the rest. They were numbered but not dated, eighteen in all. Michael dug through the foam packing and came out with a brass contraption that he recognized as a sextant. He had never seen one in person, but he recognized it from drawings.

  He shook his head. This was too much for his first day out of port. He put it back, closed the crate and moved it into his cabin proper, stowing it in the closet. He went out through his office and closed the hatch. He supposed he should lock it, but wondered if that would actually make any difference.

  Back on the bridge, Carlos was humming quietly while watching the navigation console. “Everyone settled, Captain?”

  “Yeah, everyone’s settled.”

  He came to rest in the center seat and pondered the crate. It has been locked in the morning before liftoff. Carlos and Richard had been on the bridge with him most of the time. Dieter had been manning the engineering post, with Hector in environmental. Vivian had supposedly slept through it all. That only left Winner, but she did not seem the type to
act without asking. Then again, it also seemed far too bold for any of their passengers.

  He shook his head as Dieter’s sitar music drifted up from the lower deck.

  Just what kind of crew had he put together, anyway?

  Elsa walked into the smoke-filled room, lit by one fixture shining down onto the felt table. One of the five men began to rise from his seat, but she motioned him to stay. “You boys finish up this hand, and then we’ll get down to business.”

  The men settled again, and the dealer said, “That’s twenty-five to you, Perry.”

  Perry tossed in a few bills. “I see it and raise another fifteen.” He turned to the next man. “That’s forty to you, Nick.”

  Nick shook his head and put down his cards.

  The eyes turned to young Alex, the only other player still in. He sneered at Nick. “Unlike the old man here, I’m still game.” He tossed in a couple of bills. “It’s not that I think you’re bluffing, Perry. I simply don’t think you’ve got the hand to beat me.”

  Perry smiled and laid down a full house, queens over eights. “It may not be the hand, but it is a hand.”

  Alex leaned forward to see and then threw his own cards down. “Fucking bastard! You’ve gotten that damned queen three hands in a row.”

  Perry swept the pot toward him. “What can I say? The lady likes me.”

  “One more hand, my man, and I’ll show you what to do with your lady.”

  “No,” Nick said, his voice cool. “The real lady is here, and I would rather get to business.”

  Alex frowned but said nothing more.

  Elsa tapped the dealer on the shoulder, and he and the man to his right stood and left without a word. She took the dealer’s seat. “Thank you for coming, gentlemen. I hope my men lost an appropriate sum to the three of you, but if not, the deal I’m putting to you should more than make up for it.”

  Perry Kent glanced over at the other two before speaking, but they did nothing but nod to him. “Thank you, my Lady. You may not remember me, but we worked together once. You did well for me before. I look forward to it again.”

  She smiled at the reference. Bishop had recommended Perry, and after reviewing the file, she recognized their joint history. Eleven years ago they had stolen a private collection of art being transported in a yacht. It had won Elsa her first command and put Perry in charge of one of Yoshido’s more profitable fencing fronts. “Indeed. This one should do quite well for us.” She turned to Nick. “Mr. Franklin, we’ve never worked together, but you come highly recommended from a trusted friend, and I presume you know Mr. Kent through reputation.”

  Nick nodded. “Actually, I’ve worked with Perry before, but this youngster is new to me.”

  Alex chuckled. “At least I’ve still got my hair. Perry can vouch for me, right?”

  Perry smiled. “Don’t worry, Nick. What he might lack in operational experience, he more than makes up for in skill. I’ve seen him crack professional security systems in less time than it takes me to beat the password out of someone, and as you’ll recall, that doesn’t take long.”

  “Plus I’m the damned angel of death with a good rifle and scope—kill shots at half a kilometer.” Alex sat back and crossed his arms. “I don’t think you’ll find many who can do that.”

  Elsa nodded to the younger man. “Well, I’m glad you have the weapon skills, but it turns out this job will be in much closer quarters. We’re hijacking a ship.”

  Perry raised a hand. “Hijacking? Do you mean boarding?”

  She shook her head. “No. There’s one more member of our team, and he’s already in play. If his part of the plan is on track, he’s already on board and will be there to open the door and take command when you link up. We’re still sorting out the details, but with luck, you’ll be going as passengers.”

  “Crew complement?”

  Elsa shrugged. “It’s a small ship. I’d say no more than six or seven, including our man.”

  Perry nodded. “Easy enough then.”

  Nick tapped the table lightly but hard enough to catch her eye. “And what do we do with the crew? Is this wet work?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really care that much about the crew. If you have to kill them, so be it, but there’s always a good price to be paid for slave labor, so you can consider any survivors to be an added bonus. The captain, however, is another matter. I want him delivered to me alive. He and I have an open account, and I intend to close it.”

  Chapter 8

  “All the officer training classes talk about how a crew operates like a well-oiled machine, but that’s nonsense. The reality on deck is that crew are people, and people are weird.” – Peter Schneider

  MICHAEL LET CARLOS GO TO DINNER first while he manned the navigation console. The winds had been very predictable so far, so he felt safe enough on his own. They had had only one minor issue during the long afternoon, and Carlos had responded with a slight angling to port.

  “These single-sail ships are a joy,” he had said.

  A joy indeed, Michael thought as he sat there watching the displays flicker. There was truth to it, of course. The range of options available to a small single-sail vessel like the Sophie was much more limited than what he had seen his cousin Gabrielle control on the Heinrich. There she had angled individual sails to manage not only the winds but the structural stress on the vast ship. On the Sophie, however, they merely made minor course adjustments to catch the winds more favorably.

  He caught a momentary inflection point on the pitch-axis third derivative. It was almost as sharp as the pair they had seen near port. He waited for it, and within another minute, he saw another similarly shaped pair of inflection points. Once again, he thought about the wake detections on the Blue Jaguar. He could see the reason for that on a pirate ship like the Jaguar, but the Sophie was a purely civilian ship.

  Then again, Malcolm had once held a letter of marque, acting as a privateer for the Confederate Navy during the Caspian Rebellion. In fact, Commander Collins had told Michael back on Arvin station that Malcolm had kept working for them as part a classified program and that the Sophie’s Grace was part of it. They had never fought any battles through Michael’s teen years, so it was not like the Sophie was an armed cruiser. Still, now that Michael was back aboard as captain, he wondered if she had other features.

  He shrunk the derivatives display and pulled up the navigation options. There was the standard set of color settings, along with heuristics to highlight key inflection points and cascades that poor navigators like Michael might need. There was something about “eddy forecast” and “storm mapping,” but he knew he did not have the understanding to even bother with those. The last item was labeled “sail profiles.”

  He tried opening the “sail profiles” options, but got an error. “Sail profiles currently disabled.” He closed the error and tried again, but ran right into the error again. He closed down those option windows and opened a command window.

  He launched the root feature list for the navigation console and skimmed down until he found the folder for sail profiles. At the very least, he could see what the sub-options were, but when he tried to open it, he got another error. “Rodriguez, Carlos: You do not have authorization for sail profiles. Attempt logged.”

  Michael shook his head. Yes, he was at Carlos’s station on his watch, so he was taking actions using his user profile. Yet what could be so secret about a navigation display option that the main computer was logging it as a security violation? He knew Malcolm had always been tight with information, but not with anything that would interfere with the normal operation of the ship.

  But wake detections would hardly be the normal operations.

  “Your turn, sir.” Carlos stepped up behind him. “It’s meatloaf, heavy stuff.”

  Michael shutdown the root feature list and the command window. “Well, maybe she wants to make sure we all hit the gym.”

  Carlos laughed. “Yeah, but not from fourteen hundred to fifteen thirty.�
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  He stood to let Carlos take the navigation post again. “So she talked to you about it already. Was everyone all right about it?”

  Carlos shrugged. “Makes no difference to me. I almost never work out on ship. No offense to you health nuts, but you get to my age, and you begin to accept the inevitable decline.”

  “Well, I’ll go see how heavy this meatloaf is,” he said and headed back to the galley.

  Dieter was still there, talking to Eric Hays, the passenger on his way back to Pinot’s Hammer. Winner was eating by herself at the crew table, but jumped up when he came in. He waved her down. “I know how to serve myself.”

  There was still plenty left, but it looked like she had simply made too much. Or maybe that was being set aside for the night shift. He broke off a slice, added some of the mashed potatoes, and slopped gravy over the whole thing. He sat down opposite Winner and took a bite.

  It was as heavy as Carlos had said, but it was still juicy enough to be tasty. “Wow, not much loaf to this, but still good.”

  She nodded. “Carbs kill you on these long shifts. Believe me, sir, I know a lasagna that would put us all into a coma.”

  “I suppose.” The truth was that at his age, his stomach was still a bottomless pit. He could devour a four-person pizza and still keep going.

  She started cleaning up her own plate. “Thank you for letting me have the gym, sir.”

  “Carlos said you worked it out with the others.”

  “No one wants the afternoon, and it’s the dead of night for the second shift.”

  He finished his dinner on his own, eavesdropping briefly on Dieter and the passenger until the engineer headed back to his post. Winner swept in as he pushed back and collected his plate and cup from him.

  He began to protest. Even Malcolm had cleared his own plate back in the day, but instead he merely said, “Thank you.”

  The next two hours on the bridge passed uneventfully. He kept waiting for something interesting to happen to the winds for a reason to talk with Carlos, but they held steady. Richard arrived at nineteen-forty.