In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (23 page)

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.

The view held my attention but Pip didn’t slow down. I had to take a couple of quick steps to catch up with him. “Where are you going?”

“To find the
Chernyakova
,” he said.

“How do you expect to find it up here?”

He stopped and peered through the armorglass. He had to shade his eyes to see out through his own reflection. “What’s that look like to you?” he asked, not looking away from the glass.

I stepped up beside him and looked out. “It’s hard to tell. Looks like the docking light’s burned out.”

“You see any other docking light that’s out?”

I looked to port and starboard and saw ships limned in that kind of unreal sharpness that happens in a vacuum. “No.”

“And this ship is a Barbell,” he said, pulling back from the glass.

I leaned over and shaded my eyes to get a better look. “It’s a Barbell but I can’t see the name plate from this angle. What makes you think it’s the
Chernyakova
? I bet hundreds of people walk by this ship every day.” I looked around at all the people passing us. “Who’d try to hide it here? It’s right there for anybody to see.”

“Where would
you
hide a freighter?” Pip asked. “
I’d
hide it in plain sight.”

Chapter Twenty-Three
Breakall Orbital:
2374, August 2

We got back to the docks and walked past dock eight-two without stopping.

“There’s nothing listed on the telltale,” Pip said. “But the port is dark.”

“Anybody walking by down here might not even notice there’s a ship docked there.”

Pip nodded and chewed the inside of his cheek, his eyes on the decking in front of his feet. “Why there? Why not the maintenance dock? Better security. Closed off from the public.”

“Cheap?” I asked.

He glanced at me. “What’s cheap?”

“Maintenance dock fees are expensive. No station has more than a few, they’re always in demand, and they charge through the nose for them.”

“What do they care? They’re not going to pay it.”

“Limited resource. They want to make as much from it as they can. I bet they had her docked there for a while but when they started having trouble with the auctions, they moved her to the cheapest dock on the orbital so they could collect more fees on the expensive ones.”

He nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Why are they hiding it at all?” I asked. “You’d think they’d want to draw as much attention to it as possible to unload it.”

Pip shot me a glance that I couldn’t interpret. “Maybe they got too much attention. Or the wrong kind.”

“Wrong kind? Like people wanting to see the deck stains?” The thought made me slightly sick to my stomach.

He shrugged. “Maybe. People are weird that way. Tragedy draws a crowd.”

I’d seen plenty of evidence of that myself, so I just shrugged and looked back over my shoulder. “So, we know where it is. What now?”

“Now we need to get aboard and take a look around.”

“I’m pretty sure we can’t just walk up and key the lock open.”

Pip grinned at me. “
We
can’t, no. Gimme a minute.”

I followed him to the lock at dock eight-four, where he rang the call bell.

The lock hinged up and a rating came out. “Yes, sars? Can I help you?”

“We’d like to see Mr. Claymath,” Pip said.

“Claymath, sar?”

“Yes, Cargo Chief Fredrick Claymath?”

“Our cargo chief’s a woman, sar.”

“Isn’t this the
Hecuba
out of Greenfields?” Pip asked.

“No, sar.
Elwood Dowd
out of Dree.”

Pip glanced up at the dock number above the lock and down at his tablet. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve the wrong dock. This is eight-four?”

“Yes, sar.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. ...?” He squinted at the rating’s chest. “Marvel?”

“No, sar, Martel. Arnold Martel.”

“Thank you, Mr. Martel. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“No problem, sar.” He shook his head and went back aboard, closing the lock behind him.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“You’ll see. Let’s get out of the traffic.” He led us to the station side of the dock and pulled out his tablet. He punched in a few characters, swiped a couple of screens aside, and thumbed the tab. He set off on a stroll back along the curved wall.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

“Waiting and trying not to look too conspicuous.” He glanced up at the security camera straight over our heads. “Shouldn’t be too long now.”