Christine looked at me. “Do you think it would work?”
I tried to visualize it and failed. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t be any worse than these default gray panels.”
“You’re hesitating, Ishmael,” Christine said. “What are you thinking?”
“We have tonight and tomorrow to get this done.”
“Two stans, tops,” Christine said. She waved a hand. “There’s nothing here to get in the way of a paint crew. If I didn’t know better, I’d say nobody lived in here.” She smiled at me, a sad little smile.
“We could have the base coat in tonight and do the mural tomorrow,” Dierdre said.
“We who?” I asked.
“Have you forgotten how to paint a bulkhead?” Christine asked.
Chapter 15
Jett Orbital: 2375, April 6
Mid-morning found me staring at the sea-green bulkheads and wondering how long it would take to scrub the paint smell out of the air. “It’s subtle,” I said.
Christine finished pulling the arc of tape off the fresh paint and balled it into a sticky mass. She raised an eyebrow at me before stepping back to admire our handiwork. “I suppose,” she said. “I’m not sure I’d call a three-meter-long shearwater ‘subtle’ but I’m not you.”
I grinned. “From a distance, probably not. Up close, it’s going to be too big to actually make out.”
Dierdre pushed a strand of hair back from her face with the back of her wrist and nodded. “He’s right. Do you like it?” She looked at me.
“Very much.”
“It’s still dark,” Christine said. “The blue ceiling helps.”
“You don’t think it’s too cold,” Dierdre asked, looking up and then down at the gray decking.
“I don’t,” I said. “It feels ...” I had to stop and think what it felt like. “Right,” I said at last.
Christine smiled at me. “Good. It should be dry in a couple more stans.” She rummaged in a pocket of her slacks and pulled out a small package, tossing it to me. “Catch!”
I snagged it and found I held an unmarked strip of metal. I frowned at it, trying to figure out what it was.
“It’s a magnet. When the paint’s dry, use that to hang up your license.” Christine lifted her chin in the direction of the blank spot over my desk. “Should work.”
I recognized it then and smiled at her. “Thanks.”
Al knocked on the open door frame and stuck her head in.
“First Mate Alberta Ross, I’d like you to meet Christine Maloney and her protégé, Dierdre Darling. They’ve been helping me decorate.”
Al grinned at me and nodded to the two women. Her gaze raked the bulkheads and took in the brightly colored overhead. “I love it.”
“Better than the gray box?” I asked.
Al winked at me. “Much better, Skipper.” She looked at Christine. “Here for the Gala, Ms. Maloney?”
“I am. Just getting in a little field work before I have to dig into the organizing committee review.”
I felt my jaw open on its hinges.
Al looked at me and drew herself up. “What? You think I don’t follow what’s happening in the quadrant?”
My teeth clicked when I snapped my jaw closed. “Not at all. I just never thought of you following the art scene.”
Dierdre ducked her head and Christine laughed. “You’re being provincial, Ishmael. My father started the Gala and DST’s simply continuing the tradition.” She looked at Al. “Have you submitted any pieces, Ms. Ross?”
Al’s eyes bulged slightly and she glanced at me. “Uh. No. Not this time around. No. Been busy getting the ship ready.” She looked at the deck. “Next season, maybe.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing them,” Christine said.
“Is there something you need, Al?” I bit back the question I wanted to ask.
“Chief said we’re ready to get underway as soon as the crew’s aboard. I’ve been working with Mr. Reed on the navigation.” She gave a kind of nod toward Christine and Dierdre. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“We need to get going, Ishmael,” Christine said. “I’ve got work to do and I’m sure you’ve got ship’s business to attend to.”
“Thank you for this,” I said, waving my hand around at the bulkheads. “You and Dierdre really got me out of a bind. Bill the ship for the service, will you?”
Christine smirked and Dierdre grinned.
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” Christine said.
“Can I escort you out, Ms. Maloney?” Al asked, glancing at me.
“Thank you, Ms. Ross. I’d be delighted.” Christine nodded to me with a sly wink. “When will you be getting underway?”
“Probably after breakfast mess tomorrow,” I said.
She nodded again. “Safe voyage, Ishmael.”
“Safe voyage, Christine. My love to Stacy.”
Al stepped aside to let Christine and Dierdre leave.
“Would you see me when you’re done, Al?” I asked.
The look she gave me carried plenty of warning. “Aye, aye, Skipper. Couple of ticks?”
“No rush.”
She closed the door behind her as she left.
I took my seat behind the desk and pulled up my ship’s status screen, thumbing through the departmental reports and signing as I went. Pre-launch routine. We’d do a verbal followup at breakfast mess, but the activity distracted me and I wondered—not for the first time—what Pip had gotten me into.
I was only about halfway through when the knock came. “Come in,” I said.
Al ducked into the cabin and plunked herself down in one of the visitors’ chairs. “You wanted to see me, Skipper?” She glanced up at the gray outline on the wall.
I snorted. “Yeah. I wanted to thank you for the suggestion that I get my head out of my butt.”
She slouched down and folded one leg over her other knee. “I hope all this means you’re going to get out and wander around the ship a bit.” She waved a hand at the bulkheads.
“Yeah. I’ll be making the rounds.” I looked down at my desk. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say to her. “Navigation?”
“Tom’s got it. We’re going to need to make three jumps to get to Mel’s and we’ll bleed off some velocity in the dark. Should be no longer than six weeks. Probably less.”
“Less? It’s going to take five weeks to get to the Burleson limit.”
She shook her head. “Four weeks, tops. We’ll get out far enough to satisfy the CPJCT regs but we’re going to make a short jump closer in and going slower than normal.”
I closed my eyes and tried to visualize it. “We’ll start slower and jump sooner.” The solution snapped into place. “The Burlesons,” I said, and opened my eyes.
“Exactly. We’ll have a hell of a load on, but we’ve got muscle in the back now. They can handle the load for a shortish jump. We’ve plotted half a BU for the first leg and we’ll be carrying a lot less velocity into the Dark than normal.”
“So we don’t have quite so much to lose on the other end.”
She nodded. “We’re also going to jump into an interim system and drop as much as we can there before we make the final leg into Mel’s. We’ll have plenty of fuel and use the kickers to match orbits. If we do it right, should be only a few days, maybe a week in-system on that end.”
“And we’ve got time to spare.”
Al nodded. “That we do.” She looked around the room. “It’s not that much difference, but it’s a lot better.”
“The colors aren’t actually gray,” I said.
She grinned. “No, but I like them.” She stood up and stepped back from the bulkhead. “That’s your whelkie, isn’t it?”
“Dierdre identified it as a shearwater. We used it as a theme.”
Al nodded, slowly at first but more firmly. “Sky above. Gray water below. Sea green with the solitary bird.”
“That’s a bit much,” I said.
She arched an eyebrow at me. “If you say so, Skipper.” Sh
e tilted her chin at the spot above my desk. “You finally going to hang that license?”
I picked the magnet Christine had given me off the desk and held it up. “Soon as the paint’s dry.”
She blessed me with one of her brilliant smiles. “Need me for anything else?”
I shook my head. “We’re done.”
She started for the door but stopped with a hand on the latch. She spoke over her shoulder without turning around. “You don’t wanna ask about the Art Gala?”
“Someday, maybe.”
She twisted her neck farther so she could look at me. “Fair enough. Thank you.”
I shook my head. “Thank you, Al.” I tossed the magnet a couple of times in the palm of my hand. “For everything.”
She snorted, and I could have sworn she muttered “Any time, Boy Toy” as she left.
Chapter 16
Jett System: 2375, April 7
We secured from navigation stations just before lunch mess. The undocking and departure fell right into place. As the tug gave us a little extra push over the safety perimeter, I wondered if their skipper knew where we were really headed. The manifest said we were heading for Blanchard in Venitz. I also wondered if we’d ever get there.
Ms. Sharps delivered a wonderful lunch of quiche and fresh greens, with a vanilla pudding for dessert. It left me sated but not stuffed, a feeling I greatly appreciated as I sat back in my chair and scanned the table. Al’s seat remained empty. She had first watch and I knew one of the stewards had taken a tray up to the bridge. I noticed that everybody else was looking at me.
“Well?” I asked. “Any issues?” I looked at Chief Stevens.
“None in engineering yet,” she said. “Overhaul seems to be holding together.”
I turned to Tom Reed, our second mate. “How’s it look from your end?”
Reed shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “I’m having to adjust my thinking a bit, Skipper, but I’ll confess that I’m finding it way too interesting to worry about whatever rules we may be breaking.”
Pip cleared his throat loudly and looked to me.
I nodded.
“Actually, we’re not breaking any regulations,” he said.
Ms. Fortuner looked up at that. “I thought we were smuggling stuff into the Deep Dark.”
Chief Stevens chuckled. “Not exactly,” she said. “We’re taking a can out to a Toe-Hold station that has no recognized standing with the CPJCT, but there’s no regulation against doing that. We just can’t dock with a can that’s not recognized as coming from a CPJCT port.”
“But we can’t even lay in a course to a Toe-Hold station,” Ms. Fortuner said.
“Actually,” Mr. Reed said, leaning over toward her. “Actually, we can lay in the course. We just can’t file a flight plan for one.”
Ms. Fortuner blinked a couple of times. “So we can go there as long as we don’t tell them?”
Chief Stevens smiled and nodded. “Basically.”
“All right,” Ms. Fortuner said, looking back and forth between me, the chief, and Pip. “We take this can out to this place and drop it. How do we get back?”
Pip nodded and raised his coffee mug in a toast. “Excellent question. The answer is we have to smuggle a can back in from Toe-Hold space when we want to go back.”
“When we want to go back?” she asked.
“We can carry whatever we like for as long as we want as long as we stay in Toe-Hold space,” Pip said. “I’m hoping to develop some lucrative business connections for Phoenix Freight before we head back to CPJCT space.”
“How long will that be?” Fortuner asked, looking at me.
“A few months, probably,” I said.
“A few months?”
“It’s not that much different from our normal trips,” Pip said. “The stations are a little different than you’re used to seeing. They’re not all standardized. Sometimes they look more like factories than tin cans.”
“Most of them are factories,” Chief Stevens added.
Ms. Fortuner looked at me again. “Have you ever been to this Toe-Hold space, Captain?”
“No, Ms. Fortuner, I haven’t. First time for me.”
“I have,” the chief said, smiling. “Many times. Met my third husband at Bar None.” She paused and tilted her head a bit. “Or was it my second. No matter. The thing to remember is that these stations have been here longer than CPJCT orbitals. Without them, the CPJCT wouldn’t have had the foundation to set up the Western Annex.”
“I feel like I’ve missed out on something,” Ms. Fortuner. “Like there’s some compartment on the ship that I never knew existed.”
“Welcome to my world, Ms. Fortuner,” I said.
“Surely, they covered it at the academy,” the chief said. “History of the Diaspora. Second term?”
Ms. Fortuner blinked several times and stared into her coffee mug. “Possibly,” she said at last. “I was a bit of a mess that term.” She looked up at us. “Long story, but now that you mention it, they talked about some ancient history. The guy Port Newmar was named for. That stuff?”
Chief Stevens laughed. “Yes, Ms. Fortuner. That stuff.”
“I thought those were all just stories.”
“They are,” Pip said. “They just happen to be true and the stations are still there.”
“Why doesn’t CPJCT want us to go there?” she asked.
Pip and the chief shared a glance. “That’s a really long story,” the chief said. “The short answer is money and politics. The longer answer should probably wait until we have time and few beers.”
Ms. Fortuner seemed to examine the chief’s face, her brow furrowed in concentration. She looked at Pip, who smiled at her, and then at me. I don’t know what she saw in our faces, but she shrugged. “They have beer at this station?”
Pip laughed. “They have beer at all the stations. Some good. Some not so good. But beer.”
I heard footsteps in the pantry. “We should probably vacate so Ms. Adams can clear.” I took the last drag off my coffee cup and stood. “See you round the docks.” I left the wardroom door open as I left and headed for the cabin.
When I got to the top of the ladder in officer country, I stopped with my hand on the latch of the cabin door and looked at the ladder that went up to the bridge. “No time like the present,” I muttered and continued on up.
Al grinned at me when I stepped onto the bridge. “Captain on the bridge.”
“As you were,” I said. “Not like I haven’t been here before.”
She laughed. “No and you’ll be here again, I’m sure.”
“How’s she handling, Ms. Torkelson?” I asked.
“Like a brick, sar.” She glanced over my shoulder. “A very solid brick.”
I wandered toward the front of the bridge and stared out at the stars ahead of us. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sar. It certainly is.”
“Anything interesting happening, Ms. Ross?”
“Seems like the ship’s getting back to normal, Skipper.” I turned to see her grin glowing in the light of her console.
“Good to hear, Ms. Ross.” I smiled back and nodded to Ms. Torkelson. “I’ll get out of your way.”
As I dropped down the ladder, Al said, “Any time, Skipper. Any time.”
I wandered aft along the spine, trying to remember how many times I’d made the journey on the Tinker. It felt odd, trying to bring those memories back. Newer memories seemed so much fresher. I’d spent the better part of twenty stanyers on the Tinker. The two stanyers aboard the Agamemnon and the Iris seemed much more vibrant, more real. In spite of that I marked the Visual Site Inspection status stations without having to think of them. Sometime before too long or perhaps recently, one of the Environmental Section crew would have checked these off on their long walk around the ship, much as I had done so long ago on the Lois. I got to the engineering end before realizing that I hadn’t thought of the dead messenger on my way through the spine. I
stopped and looked back down the long passageway, clean and gleaming with new paint and fresh decking. Perhaps the ghosts had been exorcised in the yard after all.
I found the chief in her office. She looked up from her console with a grin. “Stretching your legs?”
“Just seeing if I can find my way around,” I said.
She nodded. “Anything I can help with?”
“Wanna give me the tour?”
“Love to.” She tapped a couple of keys on her console before securing it and coming around the desk. “You probably know your way around as well as I do.”
I had to grant her the point. I just shrugged. “I’d like your take on what’s back here now that we’ve had a chance to get it shaken out a bit.”
She shot me a sideways glance and a smile. “Of course.”
We stuck our heads into Engineering Central, surprising Wicklund and Wallace in mid-discussion about something—discussion that chopped off when Wicklund said, “Captain on deck.”
“As you were,” I said. “Let’s keep the formalities to a minimum, shall we?”
“Aye, aye, sar,” they both said.
I glanced at the chief.
“They’re not used to seeing you this far aft, Captain,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “The cabin’s getting a bit cramped. Figured I better move around a bit more.”
The chief smirked and led me down the ladder to the engine room. “Al got to you, I take it?”
“Yeah. You might say that.”
“I smelled the paint. Are you ready to show it off yet?”
“Stop by after dinner mess. It should be dry by then.” I nodded at the scrubbers as we walked by the cabinets. “Have they settled in?”
The chief patted the case. “No worries there, Skipper. We rotated cartridges about twice as often as we needed to and got them on a good rotation. We’ve got spares for a couple stanyers.”
I stopped between the two big Burleson drives and looked forward the length of the engine room. “Think we’ll need that many?”
She shrugged. “Rather have ’em and not need ’em.”
“Can’t argue that.” My gaze traveled along the lines of the fusactors hulking along the port side.
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