Captain's Share (Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper)

by Nathan Lowell

  “I need to check on my bridge crew and see how we’re doing.”

  We split up at the cabin door, she headed down, and I headed up to set the normal watch.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Jett Orbital:

  2372-April-15

  We finally docked at Jett around noon on the fifteenth–five days late and two full days behind the Sarcastic Voice. The courier rendezvous had gone without a hitch. With new cartridges, they were able to get their scrubbers back up and running long enough for the short run into the station. They’d been considerate guests but it felt good to get our ship back. The longer we drifted along with those locks open, the more likely it was that something would go wrong. I breathed a sigh of relief when we were finally able to secure it and get some sails up.

  We needed a little more time to get turned around and catch up. We were just less lively at maneuvering than the lightweight fast packet. We’d already missed the deadline so it didn’t cost us any more, except for a few more days of operational expense.

  As per my agreement with Mr. Hill, I’d picked a can from the available cargoes list while we were still a couple days out. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but a good solid cargo of ceramic heat tiles heading back to Diurnia. No priority or bonuses, but no deadline to miss and a good base rate. The next day Mr. Hill snagged a nice little priority can of thruster nozzle liners going the same direction. Their delivery deadline was nine weeks out, so we had plenty of time on it. Mr. Wyatt was holding out for something decent and he had some time. Being docked gave us the best data feeds and the highest probability that he’d be able to grab a hot cargo. We agreed that we’d not take anything with a deadline closer than the middle of June, which gave us about eight weeks to get from Jett back to Diurnia.

  I had Ms. Thomas declare liberty as soon as we were tied down and cleared customs. First section took the watch and we settled down to a solid, four day stay. I planned to pull out on the morning of the 21st to give everybody a little break before we headed back to Diurnia. After the run we’d had, we all had earned a little down time.

  Around 1400 I got a message from Captain Allison inviting Chief Gerheart and me to dinner, their treat. I found the chief in her office in Engineering finalizing the tankage operations and getting ready to swap out our own scrubber cartridges.

  “Hey, Chief. Captain Allison invited us to dinner tonight. Feel like a little shore food?”

  She looked up from her terminal and her sapphire-laced smile beamed over the top. “Oh, yes. I’m more than ready for a little shore food, Skipper.” She pointed to the scrubbers. “And after swapping out these, I’m sure I’m going to have a healthy appetite. What time?”

  “1900 at Adam’s on the Eight.”

  “Oh, ritzy. I’ll have to dress.”

  I chuckled. “I should probably find something to wear other than a ship suit, myself.”

  She squinted at me. “I don’t know if I’d recognize you in civvies, Captain.”

  I laughed again. “I look pretty much the same, but I take your point.” I tried to think back and was pretty sure that I had been in uniform since the day I first stepped onto the ship, barring a few stans when we were still docked at Diurnia or when I was asleep.

  She grabbed the handle on the pallet load of scrubber cartridges and headed over to the scrubbers.

  “Need a hand with that, Chief?”

  “Why? We have an extra crewman who needs work?” She looked at me over her shoulder. “I didn’t think we had anybody on punishment lately.”

  I shrugged and held up my own hands to show her. “I was thinking of these. Been a while since I got ’em dirty, and I feel the need for a little penance after missing that priority.”

  “Couldn’t be helped, Skipper. You and I both know that, but I’m glad for the help.” She nodded toward the nearest. “This is the one that’s due.”

  I started rolling up my sleeves and watched as she opened up the scrubber’s cover and began rummaging around in the innards. “Yeah, maybe. But I still feel bad. The insurance will cover the operational costs, but the shares are worth zero on that trip and everybody worked hard. Doesn’t seem fair.”

  She snorted and pointed. “If you’d strip the packing material off three of those for me, Skipper, I’ll haul these old ones out.” She stuck her head back into the case before waiting to see if I did it. “Besides, who said the universe is fair?” Her voice echoed inside the scrubber.

  She had a point and I set to with a will. The new cartridges were easy to handle and relatively light. The used ones had a slimy texture and were a lot heavier. I laughed when I saw what it had done to my shipsuit.

  She noticed the sludgy smear across my chest and arms and smiled. “It’ll wash out, Skipper. It’s all water soluable.”

  “Yea, I figured as much. I was just remembering how messy the algae matrices were to change out back on the Lois McKendrick. Now that was a dirty job.”

  “You actually changed matrices, Skipper?”

  “I was assigned to environmental for a time. I’m not much of an engineman any more, but I did my share of getting mucky back in my misspent youth.”

  “You’re just full of surprises, Skipper.” She said it with a smile and a little laugh. She stepped back from the scrubber and latched the case closed again. “That should hold her for a month or so.”

  I looked around Engineering. “How’s she holding together in general? Any problems on the horizon?”

  The chief grabbed a rag off the pallet and wiped her hands down as she considered. “Nothing I can think of, Captain. She’s none the worse for wear on the docking and even the extra load of having twenty-eight extra people aboard for a couple of days didn’t change much. The girls are in good shape. I think they liked the workout, frankly.” She finished her mental inventory with a shake of her head. “Nope. She’s going good at the moment.”

  “Okay, well, I’m going to go get cleaned up and maybe take a nap before dinner.” I grinned. “Thanks for the exercise.”

  She snickered. “Any time, Skipper. Any time.”

  At 1845 I met Chief Gerheart at the lock. I’d dug out my civvies. It felt great to be out of a shipsuit and in a set of clothes that actually looked like clothing. Chief Gerheart came down the passage in a stunning black pantsuit with a ruby red silk blouse and matching pumps. Small sparkles of ruby glinted on her lobes. I heard Mr. Ricks stop breathing which reminded me to breathe myself.

  She had a small smile and the sapphire eyes were as dazzling as the rubies at her ears. “Well, I’m glad to see I haven’t completely lost my touch.”

  Mr. Ricks coughed and tried to pay attention to his console. I just smiled back. “No, Chief, I’d say, you hadn’t lost your touch.” I turned to Mr. Ricks. “The Chief and I will be guests of Captain Allison up at Adam’s on the Eight, Mr. Ricks. If you’d log us out? We should be back in a couple of stans.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” He winked at me, and I had a bad feeling.

  Chief Gerheart saw it, too, and she snickered quietly.

  Mr. Ricks keyed the lock for us and we stepped down onto the dock together. The crisp air of the docks bit into my sinuses and felt wonderful after the weeks of canned air on the ship.

  Chief Gerheart looked over at me with a grin. “What? You don’t like my air?”

  I laughed. “We don’t usually keep the ship’s temperature this low, Chief.” I took a deep breath. “It’s bracing.”

  Behind us the lock started to swing closed. “We could, Captain. I think some of the crew might complain, but we could.” She was laughing at me and I didn’t care.

  “I like your air just fine, Chief.”

  “Please, could you call me Greta or Gretchen? We’re off the ship. Can we be people tonight?” Her eyes stabbed me with their intensity.

  I thought about it and took a deep breath. I had to confess to myself, if not out loud, that the idea scared me. “Of course. Greta.”

  “Thank you...” There was a
question in her voice.

  I answered it. “Ishmael.”

  She gave me a kind of sideways smile and headed on down the docks to the lift. “Well, then, Ishmael, let’s find Allie and Richard. I’m hungry enough to eat one of those scrubber cartridges.”

  “One of the new ones? Or one of the used?”

  She looked over at me out of the corner of her sparkly eyes. “You’re a sick man, Ishmael.”

  “Don’t look at me! You’re the one willing to chew on a scrubber cartridge.”

  She laughed and we walked a little faster toward the lift. Refreshing or not, the docks were cold.

  Dinner with Allie and Richard was a comfortable affair and they treated us to a wonderful meal with wine and postprandial cordials. It was the first time since taking over the ship I had really let my hair down. Longer than I cared to remember, if I was going to be honest with myself. Being in the company of good hosts and intelligent companions made the evening very lively.

  We lingered over our drinks until the staff began to look pointedly at the table. In their defense there was a line at the door and we occupied a prime table. Adam’s was a popular place for good reason. In the evening rush they needed to keep the tables turning and we had been camped for a couple of stans.

  Allie bowed under the pressure of a rather pointed sniff from the maitre d’ and thumbed the tab, signaling our departure. We trooped out into the curved orbital passage past a surprisingly long line of diners waiting to enter.

  Outside, we shook hands all around and Greta and I bid them good night.

  As we turned toward the lift, Captain Allison stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Thank you isn’t enough, but thank you, Ishmael. I know you were late on your priority already and all that, but you came to our rescue and I can’t bear to think about what would have happened to us if you hadn’t.”

  I forced a smile. The memory of the bloated horrors on the Chernyakova came back to me unbidden and I tried to put them out of my mind. “I certainly couldn’t sail by you, knowing you were in that kind of danger. Even if we’d still been in time. I’m just glad we could help. If we’d managed to get on the course we needed to make that delivery, we’d never have been in the position to help.” I shrugged. “Guess it was the right course after all.”

  “Still.” She looked a bit moist around the edges. “Thank you. If you ever need anything, get in touch, okay?”

  Richard stood behind her and nodded along with each of her words.

  “I will, and you’re welcome.”

  Richard led his captain away going one direction and we headed toward the lift in the other.

  After a few meters I looked at Greta. “That makes me uncomfortable. I just did what anybody would do.”

  Her breath puffed out in a quiet laugh. “You think so? I don’t.”

  “You would have.”

  She looked over at me and shook her head. “I’m not a Deck officer. It wouldn’t be my decision.”

  “Okay, hypothetically then, You would have.”

  She considered it for a moment before conceding the point. “Yes, all right. I would have.” She paused for a heartbeat before continuing. “Captain Delman wouldn’t have.”

  “You really think so?”

  She nodded. “I do.”

  I considered that and wondered how any skipper in his right mind would have been able to sail past. Memories of the Chernyakova would not stay away.

  We were almost to the lift when I remembered to ask a question that I didn’t really feel right about asking while aboard. “So, what happened to the protective coloration?”

  She gave me one of her crooked smiles and her eyes flashed at me. “You were right. I didn’t need it anymore.”

  “Did anybody say anything?”

  “What? When I stopped?”

  “Yeah. It’s rather a striking change.”

  She gave a half shrug. “With all the changes on the ship, especially with Gwennie not shouting and actually relaxed for the first time since I’ve known her, and Avery bustling about like a mother hen in the galley...” She shrugged again. “I think the only one who really was hit hard by it was Billy.”

  “Has it been a problem?”

  She wrinkled her nose in contemplation. “No, he’s just being a bit–I’m not sure what the term is. Maybe shy. He gets a bit tongue tied and nervous.”

  “You’re a pretty imposing figure, in case you hadn’t noticed.” I smiled over at her.

  She laughed. “That’s funny coming from you, Captain, my Captain.”

  “Me?” I snorted. “I probably would have killed us all flying too close to that planet, if it weren’t for you.”

  She shook her head. “You wouldn’t have considered it at all, if not for me. I’m just glad I had second thoughts.”

  I pressed the call button for the lift. “Do you think we could have made it?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She took a deep breath and let it out before looking me in the face with those sapphire stilettos. “I do know that you made the right choice. The downside risk was just too big and there aren’t any do-overs out there. You miss once and you’re dead.” She shuddered and licked her lips. “Allie and Richard got lucky because you made the right choice.”

  She stood way too close to me at that moment, but luckily the lift dinged and the doors slid open. We stepped aside and let a laughing party of spacers troop out. Several of them smiled at us as they passed. One nodded his head and offered a jaunty, “Evenin’ Captain,” as he passed.

  I stepped into the lift after Gretchen. “I wonder who that was.”

  “Who?”

  “That spacer. He said, ‘Evenin’ Captain’ but I don’t recognize him and I’m not in uniform. How did he know?”

  She started to laugh and held a hand up to her mouth. “You really don’t know?”

  I thought about it for a tick as the lift dropped us quickly back to the docks. “It shows already?”

  She laughed again. “You’re a funny man, Ishmael Wang.” She looked me in the eye then. “It showed that first time you stepped aboard.”

  “But I wasn’t Captain then. Just a jumped-up first mate.”

  She just shook her head and laughed some more as the lift dinged again and the opening doors flooded the car with icy air. I think she laughed all the way back to the ship.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Jett Orbital:

  2372-April-20

  Part of my mind nagged me about staying too long in port. My bad boys hadn’t been in trouble since we’d left Diurnia. It’s not like they’d really had much of a chance on Welliver, but I was a bit leery about giving them new opportunities on Jett. On the other hand, they were my crew, and having spent quite a lot of time with Mr. Hill over the previous months, I knew he really wasn’t the thug-like hard case his service jacket portrayed. Mr. Schubert was shaping up to be a rather impressive entrepreneur. The extended stay gave the co-op a chance to shake out their procedures and, if the snippets of conversation I’d over heard were any indication, the results from the port stay would be rather good. Mr. Ricks was still working into the role of morale officer, and spent his off-duty mornings scouring the flea market for games and amusements that the crew might take advantage of while underway. Mr. Wyatt had provided a small cupboard on the mess deck for storage and the flea market had already yielded a chess set, a backgammon board, and a clever deck of playing cards made of thin sheets of plastic to cut down on the wear and tear of many hands and stanyers of use.

  The company’s insurance examiner visited soon after docking. I had to file a full report on how we happened to be late on the priority, including plots of the fly-by and a full debrief on the encounter with the Sarcastic Voice. There was rather a lot of attention paid to the fly-by and why we didn’t skim closer and try a little harder to make the time, particularly in light of the improved wind conditions. I confess I was feeling a little defensive on that score, and I suspect the examiner picked up on it. By comp
arison, he paid little attention to our rescue of the Sarcastic Voice. When he was done, he held out his report for me to sign, and then credited the ship for a flat rate per diem rate for operations. It was actually a pretty generous rate when compared to our actual expenses, so I thanked him and showed him off the ship.

  The extended stay also gave me time to hunt down the advanced mathematics courses that I’d promised Mr. Schubert. The Union Hall had a complete set of study aids in a variety of ancillary disciplines including biology, accounting, engineering, and astronomy in addition to an extensive collection of maths. They weren’t free, but they also weren’t expensive. I grabbed the whole set for the ship. Math messed up everybody working up through the ratings and I could envision the material being very useful.

  By noon on the fourth day, we were ready to get underway again. Mr. Wyatt had picked his can—another priority, which would put the two of them neck and neck in terms of the contest. When we’d come out of Welliver, Mr. Wyatt had a very small lead. The run to Diurnia should see that reversed. In neither case was the lead more than a few hundred credits. The Jett run earned us nothing in terms of share because of the penalty clauses built into the contract. At least we didn’t lose any either, thanks to the insurance payment.

  Mr. Wyatt had planned a rather extensive last-day luncheon at my request. Second watch had the duty and I had a little surprise for them. I passed the word among the officers and so we had the whole crew, such as it was, on hand.

  Just before the lunch mess opened, Mr. Wyatt gave me the nod and I stuck my head out into the passage and called to Mr. Ricks at the lock. “If you’d hang out the Do No Disturb sign, Mr. Ricks? Lunch is about ready.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  In a tick he walked onto the mess deck and skidded to a stop when he saw the whole ship’s company lined up in formation there.

  Ms. Thomas gave the command. “Company, ah-ten-HUT! Ordinary Spacer Zachary Ricks, front and center.”

  He looked a little confused as to where he was supposed to go until Ms. Thomas looked pointedly at a spot on the deck in front of me.