Debts of My Fathers (Father Chessman Saga Book 2)

by Dan Thompson

  Carlos looked at the plot again and laughed. “So long as it doesn’t go against my rating, sir.”

  “Captain’s orders, Mr. Rodriguez. I think you’ll be fine.”

  “Yes, sir. Slow and steady?”

  “Yeah, slow and steady for now. If they don’t come after us for another hour, we’ll turn away at half-sail.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Weapons radar reports no targets.”

  Elsa turned to the pilot. “Wake detections?”

  “No, ma’am. No wake but our own.”

  “Damn!”

  The bridge fell silent for a moment. Finally, Celeste Davies turned to Elsa. “Orders, ma’am.”

  Elsa gritted her teeth and sat down in the command chair. “Bring up the gravity pulse drive and execute search pattern Baker.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  Elsa frowned and shook her head. She would give it four hours. If they did not find anything, she would bring the sails back up and continue on the original search pattern.

  The Sophie diverted off the Grizzly’s original course at a distance of a tenth of a light-year, and ran toward Pinot’s Hammer at half-sail for six hours. They dropped to sublight and ran on a perpendicular course for a day, letting their old wake fade into the noise. It also let everyone get some rest.

  Michael took the time then to transfer a much-subdued Stefan down to the cargo cage where they could keep an eye on him better. He changed the lock code to something only he knew and confiscated Carlos’s lockpicking equipment. Given the state of Dieter’s hand and what Michael feared he might do to Stefan, even through the locked cage, Michael restricted Dieter to bed rest.

  That meant when they started back toward Arvin in earnest, they were short both an engineer and a navigator. They did what they could, with both Carlos and Vivian working longer shifts, and Michael did what he could to fill in on both drives and navigation. As much as he hated to admit it, he finally understood why the Guild required a captain to have all of those different ratings. Still, they were left with eight hours a day of downtime, and during Michael’s time at the helm, the Sophie was kept to quarter-sail.

  It took another ten days to reach Arvin at that pace, a full two weeks late from their original schedule. Winner came out of sedation on the third day, but the autodoc recommended bed rest. Much to Michael’s surprise, she accepted it without remark.

  Chapter 31

  “If war is Hell, paperwork is Purgatory.” — Malcolm Fletcher

  MICHAEL STAYED IN THE BRIEFING ROOM as most of the Navy officers filed out. One of them, an admiral if Michael read the insignia correctly, stopped to put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “You’re a credit to your old man,” he said. “It was nice to finally meet you.”

  The door closed behind him, and Michael found himself alone with Commander Collins.

  “Is that it?” Michael asked.

  Collins walked around the table gathering loose sheets of paper that bore the “Classified” red-striped border. “Probably.”

  “No trial?”

  He shrugged. “There may be a quiet military tribunal. Carrillo was on our list of suspected war criminals, but given that he is officially dead, I don’t think there will be much civilian interference. Still, I’ll want to get statements from the rest of your crew.”

  “What kind of statements?”

  “We’ll want to get their take on the hijacking, particularly on Carrillo’s role as your mutinous first officer.”

  “His role?”

  Collins took the seat next to him. “Yes, as well as what happened to the fingers of his right hand.”

  “I see.”

  Collins stared at him for a moment. “Do you know what happened?”

  Michael glanced away. “There was a lot of confusion when we retook the ship. I believe it happened around then.”

  “You believe … and what will your crew say?”

  He turned back to face Collins. “I believe they will say it is a closed matter.”

  Collins let the silence stretch for a few moments before gathering up the last of the papers and sliding them into his case. “Well, that only leaves us with the matter of your future.”

  “And what future is that?”

  Collins took the seat next to him. “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “The last time we talked, you were considering picking up where Malcolm left off, hunting down the rest of the old crew of the Reilly. And now you’ve pulled into Arvin with one of them in custody. Are you going after them?”

  Michael set his jaw. He had known for days that this question was coming. “I don’t see how I really have a choice. They’re coming for me.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way. I could arrange a new identity for you. I imagine that your uncle would welcome you back into the Schneider & Williams fleet regardless of what name you bore.”

  “And give up the Sophie?”

  Collins shrugged. “She hasn’t exactly been a good luck charm so far.”

  Michael smiled briefly. “I don’t know about that. It’s only been a year, and I’ve already nabbed one of them.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know, but no, I’m not going to give her up.”

  Collins smiled.

  “What is it?” Michael asked.

  “Then the admiral owes me a drink,” he replied.

  “Was that the man who ...?”

  Collins nodded. “Admiral Reese Powell. He’s head of operations for Naval Intelligence.”

  “Powell,” he repeated, thinking of Carlos. “Your boss?”

  “More like my boss’s boss, but we work together on certain special projects.”

  “Like the Sophie?”

  “Yes, and we had a friendly wager.”

  Michael clenched his jaw. “And he bet against me?”

  Collins shook his head. “No, not at all. We were both sure you were going to make it, but he didn’t think you would want to continue, not after we found out about the hijacking.”

  “But you had faith in me?”

  Collins sighed. “Maybe I see more of Malcolm in you than the admiral does.”

  “All right then. What do I do next?”

  “There’s some paperwork to do, but before we get too far on that, we probably need to get the Sophie over to the yard to get her into shape for the hunt.”

  “What do you mean, get her into shape? The Sophie is a great ship. I mean, she’s not armed like Malcolm’s old Hammerhead, but you said it yourself. She’s special.”

  Collins smiled and even allowed a small laugh. “So, in all that you read in Malcolm’s files, you never found out what makes the Sophie so special?”

  “Oh yeah, I know all about it. The special tachyon detection modes are pretty cool.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  Collins really did laugh this time. “Oh, that’s not it at all.”

  “No?”

  Collins shook his head. “Tell me, Michael, how many airlocks does the Sophie’s Grace have?”

  He thought about it, counting in his head. “Four. One cargo, one passenger, and a pair of emergency locks dorsal and ventral.”

  Collins nodded. “Doesn’t that seem like a lot of airlocks for a ship that size?”

  Michael frowned. The vast Heinrich had had an even dozen, but ten of those had been between the spine and the radial cargo bays. “I never really thought about it. Why?”

  “Those emergency locks aren’t airlocks.”

  “Yes they are,” Michael insisted. He had dragged Malcolm into one and held him as he died.

  “Oh, I agree, they are currently functional airlocks, but by design, those are turret hardpoints for plasma cannons.”

  Michael blinked three times before he noticed his mouth was hanging open. “Plasma cannons?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re telling me that you can hack a couple of high-energy plasma cannons into
the Sophie.”

  Collins shook his head. “No, no hacking. She was designed that way. They’re standard J-6 turret hardpoints, already wired to the reactor for power. If anything, it’s the airlocks that are hacked in. From what I’ve read, the shipyard had to custom build them to fit onto the hardpoint rails.”

  “Then … what? You just pop the airlocks out and put the cannons in?”

  Collins shrugged. “I’m not the yard master, but I imagine it will take less time to install them than it will to get your polarization filter back up to spec.”

  Michael nodded, slowly taking it in. “So, cannons.”

  “And that’s not all. You know those fuel ballast tanks on the forward underside?”

  “Yeah, though I’ve never really understood …” He trailed off. “I mean, I’ve heard of ballast tanks on ocean-going ships, but never in space.”

  “They’re missile launchers.”

  Michael’s eyebrows shot up so high they almost left his forehead.

  “That’s right,” Collins confirmed. “Six muzzle-loading AG-9 missile launchers. Mind you, there’s no missile bay to back them up, but in my experience, six shots is more than you’ll ever need.”

  “Holy shit,” Michael said, finding his voice again. “So, she’s a battleship?”

  Collins chuckled. “Hardly. I wouldn’t even call her half a frigate, but with her speed and sail stability, she’ll outclass Malcolm’s old Hammerhead by a good margin. That’s how we managed to keep him in the program.”

  “The old privateer program?”

  Collins looked to the closed door. “Not so old as you might think. It was covert, but he worked for us here in Naval Intelligence. He opted against arming the Sophie in order to keep a lower profile, but it was designed for a quick conversion if we ever ran into another shooting war.”

  “So there’s a bunch of these floating around?”

  Collins smiled. “A few. You don’t need to know how many, but if we do send you back out in an armed Sophie, you’ll be working for us. You’ll still operate under the cover of an independent merchant, but we can send you on specific tasks, and we get full access to your logs and all the intel you gather.”

  “Like Malcolm?”

  He sighed. “I admit we let Malcolm run a little loose, but don’t expect that yourself. We’ll be keeping a tighter rein on you. You’ll have an oath to take, and there will be some extra regulations you’ll be required to obey. In exchange, we’ll keep you well supplied.”

  Michael nodded and leaned back. It was a lot to consider. He had barely gotten his ship off the ground, and the crew he had found had certainly not signed up to stand next to Elsa Watkins’s favorite target. They were even less likely to go along with this folly, no matter how heavily armed the Sophie was.

  “Look, Commander, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I’m sure there are plenty of people telling you—”

  “That you’re only a kid?”

  Michael nodded.

  Collins shrugged. “I will say that the observation has been made, but there’s no denying that you’re in play with or without us, and you already brought in one hard-to-find criminal.”

  Michael smiled. “I did at that. And hell, that was just today. Elsa Watkins may have gotten away last year, but I did deliver the rest of the Blue Jaguar’s crew.”

  Collins frowned. “About that …”

  Maya Zoland pushed handfuls of toilet paper into the trash after her orange jumpsuit. Bishop waited in the door to the maintenance closet, the air duct open behind him.

  “So what’s our getaway plan?”

  He smiled. “Nothing much. We have tickets on the Ella Carina, departing for Cenita in two days.”

  “Two days? We can’t hang around that long.” She checked her wig in the mirror. The color was tacky, but at least the cap fit well. “They’ll be looking for me.”

  “That’s the beauty of it. They won’t. You came here with eighteen other prisoners, right?”

  She nodded, and pulled on her jacket.

  “But according all the paperwork, there were only seventeen. You disappeared off the radar all the way back at Tortisia.”

  “Paperwork. That’s good. What’s next?”

  “Research, my girl. Father Chessman has us on a special project.”

  “Chessman?”

  “Indeed, so step lively, young lady. The boss is watching.”

  Dieter looked down at his left hand as the technician worked on it. Two metal-composite skeletal fingers emerged from the freshly opened wounds at the stumps of his original fingers. Cables ran up and around the hinged joints. He could not feel them, of course. In fact, he could not feel his hand at all due to the local anesthetic.

  “How long will it look like that?” he asked. Childhood memories of his uncle’s metallic hand came to him unbidden.

  “Like this? Not long at all,” she replied, still poking away at the final joint in his ring finger. “We’ll have it enclosed in a surgical mesh in a couple of days.” She sounded cheerful but artificially so.

  “No, I mean … how long before I have proper skin again?”

  “That’s hard to say,” she replied, her cheer slipping away. “The samples of your cells we have in the lab are performing well, but it could still take a while.”

  Dieter grumbled. “How long?”

  She set down her tools. “It varies by case. I’ve seen some organic regrowths of this size go as fast as three months. Others have taken a year. You’ll just have to be patient.”

  He nodded. Patience. Three months to a year before he would even had a skin pad at the end of those fingers, and only then would he be able to see whether his uncle’s fate waited for him. He looked from his hand to the technician. “Go ahead and keep working at it. I’ll be fine.”

  He would be. He had to have faith in that. The people who had sent those hijackers? They would most definitely not be fine.

  Michael stood at the window, looking out at the crews working on the Sophie. He never heard Winner come in. He only saw her reflection join his in the window. Her left arm was still in a sling, but the marks on her forehead were fading down to white scars.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said.

  “I was giving my statement.”

  “Ah,” he said. He was not sure what else to say. “How did it go?”

  She gave a lopsided shrug, leaving her left arm still. “Okay, I guess. The docs are worried about head trauma, so they still have me on a high dose of Chozamine. It’s fucking with my memory, so the details are fuzzy. I definitely remember killing the first one, and I remember talking to Dieter when that other one was …” She trailed off. “Anyway, it’s a blurry mess after that.”

  “Is that from the meds?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Mostly.”

  Michael thought about the silent rage he had seen on Dieter’s face when they cut him down. “Maybe that’s for the best.”

  She did not answer right away, and Michael knew better than to press the subject. “Maybe,” she said at last. “I do remember you and Carlos carrying me up to the med bay. That’s not such a bad memory.”

  He nodded, and they stood in silence for a few moments. A long boom was pushing a squat cylinder out over the gaping hole in the Sophie’s top. “So,” Michael said at last, “how’s your collarbone?”

  “They kind of had to break it again.” She caught Michael’s alarm, but offered a smile in return. “It’s nothing quite so bad as before, but for all Hector’s good intent, he did a crappy job of stabilizing it. Still, with the right injections, it should knit itself whole in another week or so.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  Winner took a deep breath. “Dieter tells me he and Carlos are staying on.”

  Michael nodded. “Yeah, they are. Hector and Vivian …”

  She snorted. “No surprise there.”

  “Yeah, well Commander Collins is helping me flesh out the rest of the cre
w. He said he could find me some trustworthy guys with the right skills and is doing background checks on a few others. It turns out Carlos has a pretty colorful history, but I think he’s proven himself.” Collins had also told him that Winner had a sealed juvenile record, but Michael thought it best not to mention that. “Mostly I just want to avoid another Richard, or rather, Stefan.”

  She grimaced. “That would be good.”

  Michael stood straight and steeled himself for what he knew he had to say. “Winner, I failed you as your captain—you and Dieter both—and for that I am so sorry. If I had known …”

  She shook her head sharply. “So, plasma cannons?” She motioned out the window with her good arm.

  “Yeah, two of them, top and bottom.”

  “Tell me,” she said. “Do you have anyone to shoot them yet?”

  Michael smiled a little. “No, not yet.”

  “Well, now you do.”

  Elsa stormed into the security office of Barson shipping. The guard cowered in his chair.

  “Out,” she ordered.

  He left without a word.

  She logged him out of the terminal, opened a guest account and dropped through the security trapdoor into the real system. There were dozens of messages for her, most of it routine traffic, but one stood out near the bottom.

  To all Yoshido captains and station managers:

  The merchant ship Sophie’s Grace (CMR# 583-961) and her captain, Michael William Fletcher, are now officially targets of opportunity. Do not attempt capture. Destroy the ship and kill all associated passengers and crew. A bounty of six million credits has now been posted. Unless otherwise instructed, do not compromise operations, but do not let good opportunities pass.

  -Father Chessman

  Commander Collins waved Michael forward. It was another conference room deep in the bowels of Naval Intelligence, only a little larger than the one where he had learned the truth about the destruction of the Kaiser’s Folly. A handful of other officers were there, including one in the back with an admiral’s galactic swirl on his shoulder. Introductions were not offered. Michael’s remaining three crew filled into the back row, with Carlos sitting next to the mystery man in the corner.