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“Log it,” the captain said. “Bring us about and let’s get this show on the road.”

“Aye, Captain. Log departure at 2358-July-8 14:05,” Mr. Burnside ordered.

Mallory confirmed with a brisk, “Aye, aye. Departure logged at 2358-July-8, 14:05, sar.”

“Release tugs with our respects. Engines all stop. Prepare to come about.”

Mallory signaled the tugs and I saw them release us smoothly and the systems readouts confirmed the engines had stopped.

“Tugs released. Engines are stopped, sar. Ready to come about,” Mallory announced.

“Astrogation, bring us around. Engines ahead one quarter.”

Ms. Novea replied, “Thrusters maneuvering to bring us onto departure vector.”

The station swung out of our forward view and I saw the two tugs heading back into dock as they slid by.

“Engines ahead one quarter, aye, sar,” Mallory confirmed.

We began the long climb up out of Diurnia’s gravity well. In another stan, Ms. Menas started winding up the sail and keel generators and by 15:30, the ship was clear of local traffic.

“Shake out the reefs,” Mr. Burnside ordered and I watched the huge sails billow on my systems display.

Nothing actually showed in visible light. It was one of my great disappointments. The sails and keel were insubstantial force fields, driven by sail and keel generators in the fore and aft sections. They were invisible to the naked eye, but to the various field sensors, they showed as huge panels against the background radiation of the universe. The main sail extended some twenty kilometers and was configured to catch the solar wind from almost directly astern as we pulled up and away from Diurnia’s primary. We were climbing up, perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic to carve the shortest path to the Burleson limit as possible. Even so, it would be five weeks before we’d be far enough out to fire up the drives and bend space-time. Once the Burleson drives had given us our little hole in space, we’d be another five weeks clawing our way back down into the Breakall System.

Ten weeks in space, more or less, then we’d get four days in port. On the
Lois
, that hadn’t seemed like such a big deal. I had an uneasy feeling as I watched Diurnia Orbital fall away that ten weeks on the
William Tinker
might be a life time.

“We’re underway, Captain,” Mr. Burnside announced.

“Very well. Secure from navigation detail. Set the watch,” the captain replied.

“Please make the announcement, Mr. Mallory,” Mr. Burnside ordered. “First section has the watch.”

“Aye, sar, first section has the watch,” Mallory replied.

As he made the announcement a few people swapped places on the bridge, and I watched the ship’s status monitors shift.

The captain stood then and headed for the ladder. “Mr. Wang, at your convenience,” he reminded me before descending from the bridge.

“Aye, Captain,” I replied to the empty spot where he wasn’t waiting for my acknowledgment.

I secured my console after one more—very fast—review of ship’s systems. As I crossed the bridge, I checked my tablet to verify that it was slaved to the console so I’d be notified where ever I was on the ship if anything threw an alarm.

Arletta gave me a smile as I walked past her station, but Mel looked grim as she watched me drop down off the bridge and head for the cabin.

As in most ships, the cabin was just down the passage from the bridge. The rest of Officers’ Country was only slightly farther. In the crowded confines of the
Tinker
, that distance wasn’t far at all.

I knocked on the door and heard, “Come in, Mr. Wang,” from the other side.

I entered and stopped just inside the door. “Third Mate Ishmael Wang, reporting as ordered, Captain,” I said bracing formally.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been called to the cabin by a captain. It was one drill I knew pretty well.

“Come in, Mr. Wang. Have a seat,” the captain replied, releasing me from formality with a wave of his hand to a side chair. He still mispronounced my name, in spite of having heard me say it.

“Thank you, Captain,” I said and took the offered chair.

He stared at me with something like a smile on his face. It wasn’t a smile. It was too threatening to be that. It was more like an expression he’d learned in front of the mirror when somebody told him he needed to look pleasant when dealing with subordinates. It wasn’t working for him.

“I must say, Mr. Wang, you’re not what we expected.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond.

“In what way, Captain? Is there something wrong?”

He stared at me for a moment.

“We don’t usually get people right out of the academy,” he said finally.

“It’s a long way for a boot third,” I admitted.

“You got the offer from DST when?” he asked.

“The beginning of May, Captain. Just before graduation.”

A snowball started to build in my stomach.

“And did they offer you the
Tinker
at that time?” he asked too casually.

“No, Captain. It was just a pro forma offer for third mate on a vessel to be determined at such time as I was able to present myself to the corporate offices at Diurnia. I booked passage on a fast packet and arrived just three days before reporting aboard.”

He stared for several long moments, then leaned over his desk with a frown.

“Who do you work for?” he asked quietly.

That question came out of the port side airlock for all I could tell and I blinked stupidly for a couple of heartbeats trying to figure out what the answer might be.

“Technically, I suppose it’s Mr. Maloney, since he owns the company, Captain, but I report to you.”

“No,” he said. “Who do you
really
work for?” His expression had taken on a dangerously flat look.

“I don’t know what you mean, Captain. I work for DSt.”

He sat back in his chair, bracing himself against the side of the desk. He seemed to be trying to weigh me or something.

“You expect me to believe that you’ve come all the way from Newmar to take a berth on my ship that didn’t even exist when the company sent you the contract?” he asked.

“I didn’t know it would be this ship, Captain,” I pointed out in what I hoped was a reasonable voice. “Lots of my classmates got offers from companies in other systems.”

“Federated, Saltzman, Coopers, Western Annex…” the captain flicked off the names of some of the largest companies in the business.

“Yes, Captain,” I agreed.

“Diurnia Salvage and Transport isn’t exactly in their league, now is it, Mr. Wang? Don’t you think it’s a bit unusual to have a two-bit operation like DST recruiting months in advance directly from the academy?”

“I don’t know, Captain. This is my first experience in being hired out of the academy. I never gave it a second thought. The opening was on the boards so I applied. DST sent me an offer and a transport voucher. Here I am.”

“How many third mates do you think are employed by DST, Mr. Wang?”

“I don’t know, Captain. Twelve ships so, probably not more than twelve.”

“Exactly four, Mr. Wang,” he replied.

Reviewing what I remembered about DST’s fleet I realized his point. The Damien tractors were notorious for being short handed. They reputedly got underway with barely enough crew to mount two watch sections. The other Unwin Bar Bell and the two Manchester tankers were probably the only ships in the DST fleet that carried third mates.

“So, why did Maloney offer you a job and fly you all the way out here from Port Newmar, Mr. Wang?” the captain persisted.

I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times before I finally managed to put together any kind of response. “I really don’t know, Captain. You’d have to ask Mr. Maloney about that.” I put every ounce of credibility that I had into it. It helped that I really didn’t have any idea. “It never even struck me as unusual, Captain.”

“I see,” he replied after a moment.

We sat there unspeaking for a couple of ticks. I didn’t dare move, and he kept examining me as if he could somehow read the answer on my forehead.

“Very well, Mr. Wang,” he said at last. “I’ll take your word for it…for the moment…but let us be perfectly clear on one thing, shall we?”

“Certainly, Captain. What’s that?”

“Out here I am the captain. I am the law. What I say is the answer. As far as you and the rest of the crew is concerned, out here in the Deep Dark, I am God.” He paused to let that sink in. “I do not like smart asses, troublemakers, or surprises. I like my universe orderly and predictable. If you have a problem with me, then
you
have a serious problem.” He placed a heavy emphasis on the “you” part of that.

“In the Deep Dark, Mr. Wang, what I say will be the final word, and I never have any problems. Am I making myself clear, Mr. Wang?”

“Yes, Captain, crystal clear,” I said, my voice surprising me by staying relatively even.

“We will be watching you, Mr. Wang. Please do not give me cause to take any unfortunate action,” he said.

“I will do my best, Captain.” I tried to sound reassuring.

“You are dismissed, Mr. Wang.”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN
D
IURNIA
S
YSTEM
2358-
J
ULY-8

Luckily my stateroom wasn’t far from the cabin. I managed to get back there before my legs gave out, and I flopped on my bunk. I was on the third watch section, so I didn’t have anywhere to be before midnight, which was a good thing. I didn’t know how to react, and my body was doing it all by itself.

Only a couple of ticks went by and I heard a tap on the door to the head. “Ishmael? You okay?” Arletta asked softly.

I sat up, reached over, and slid the door open. She stood there with her hand upraised as if to knock again.

“You okay?” she repeated, looking at me closely.

“Yeah, I think so. But the captain seems to think I’m a spy.”

Her expression went from concern to incredulity in an instant. “A spy? For whom?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. He was mostly concerned that DST hired me before there was an opening, and he wanted to know who I was working for.”

She blinked slowly at that. “What? Back up…they hired you before there was an opening?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “You wanna sit?”

I pointed to the only chair in the room.

She slipped in and perched on the chair. “What do you mean they hired you before there was an opening?”

“I just graduated from the academy.”

“Yeah, I heard that part. What were you doing on Diurnia? Is that where your family is from?”

I shook my head. “DST brought me here. They had an opening posted at the academy. The commandant gave me a recommendation for it and DST made an offer. I accepted and they sent me a travel voucher.”

“But…?” she started to say. “You weren’t here already? They brought you here from Port Newmar?”

I shrugged again. “Yeah I didn’t think anything of it. At least four or five of my classmates got offers like that.”

She was blinking owlishly at nothing in particular as she considered. “But they were all from big companies, right? Not mom and pop outfits like DST?”

“I guess, but there wasn’t any reason for me to take note of that. I just assumed they had a projected need for a third mate when they made the offer—somebody due for a promotion or something like that. Honestly I never thought twice about it.”

“Holy Hannah, I can see why he’s more paranoid than usual.”

“Is he always like that?”

She shrugged. “Hard to say. He’s a bit of a martinet and very reclusive. When we get to Breakall, he’ll disappear again, and he’ll not come back until we need to get underway. Visiting family. Apparently he has family every place we go.”

“Every place?”

“Well, we only really go to four ports—mostly Breakall and Jett—but he pulls the same thing when we go to Welliver and Dree.”

“Woman in every port?” I asked.

“I assume so, but he might just like getting out of the smell for a few days.” She made a funny grimace.

“I hardly notice it when I’m aboard now. My nostrils must have burnt out.”

“Yeah, you notice it most when you go out and come back. It’ll still catch you at times when you get a stronger whiff every once in a while, but after a few days aboard, you hardly notice it again.”

I looked at her for a moment and then asked, “So, what did happen to my predecessor? I’m not likely to find out anything out here in the Deep Dark. What am I up against?”

“She wouldn’t sleep with Burnside or his bully boys,” she said flatly.

I gaped. I know I gaped.

“I didn’t realize that was a job requirement,” I said at last.

I must have also looked worried, because she said with a little smirk, “You won’t be required to. It’s only the women they’re interested in.”

She looked at me sharply then. “Get it out of your head. I won’t sleep with them either.”

“But…they tried?” I asked.

She sighed and shook her head, looking at the deck some more. “I was gonna say it’s none of your business, but that’s hardly fair if the captain has it in his head that you’re some kinda threat.”