By Darkness Forged (Seeker's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Book 3)

by Nathan Lowell

  I gave her a shrug and a shake of the head.

  Ms. Fortuner looked around the table. “It’s not like I’m not paying attention, you know.”

  Al leaned forward. “It might not be where we’re looking.”

  “I know that,” Ms. Fortuner said. “It’s a long shot but at some point we’ll find it. Then what?”

  Pip frowned but the chief hid behind her beer glass, leaving Al staring at me with a “your turn, boss” look on her face.

  I stared into my coffee cup for a couple of heartbeats. “It’s probably a bad precedent, but to tell you the truth? I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

  She hooked an arm over the back of her chair. “Did you think we wouldn’t ever find it? That we’d be some kind of Pequod forever chasing the mythic white whale?” She gave me a saucy grin. “Are you sure you’re not Ahab instead of Ishmael?”

  “Who’s Queequeg?” the chief asked.

  “Don’t look in my direction, girly,” Al growled in mock fierceness.

  Ms. Fortuner laughed. “It’s a terrible metaphor. We’re on a quest. I hope it doesn’t take a tragic turn the way Moby Dick did.”

  “Why do you ask?” I asked, leaning forward to hear her over the sound of the jazz trio beginning to set up at the back of the room.

  She fiddled with her coffee mug for a few moments, staring at it as if in a trance. “I don’t know. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’m pretty sure we’re on the right track.” She paused and looked at Pip. “We’re off the ship, can I call you Pip?”

  “Only if I can call you Kim.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I think Pip’s analysis is spot on this time. I mean he comes up with some harebrained schemes, but based on what we know, I think it’s way better than his usual stuff.”

  The chief leaned over and looked into Ms. Fortuner’s mug. “You sure that’s just coffee in there?” She grinned at the young woman. “I happen to agree with you. On all counts.”

  “Harebrained?” Pip asked.

  The chief gave him the stink-eye and he retreated to his beer.

  “So, I suspect the chief will move on.” She looked at the chief. “Not that I wouldn’t sail with you forever, but you’ve got other places to be. Even I know that.”

  The chief frowned a little and sat back in her chair, a calculating look in her eye—like she was re-calibrating her opinion of our third mate. “Go on. Please, I think this is the most I’ve ever heard you say in all the time we’ve sailed together.”

  Ms. Fortuner shrugged. “Well, third mate. I don’t get much face time with senior staff. Wardroom meals and navigation stations.” She looked up at me. “I’m not complaining, Skipper. Sailing with all of you has been wonderful and I’ll do it as long as you let me.”

  “Keep going, Ms. Fortuner,” I said. “You’re not the only one who’s learning from our relationship.”

  The chief shot me a sly grin and Al kicked my leg under the table.

  “So, I know Al wants to retire to be an artist.” She looked at Al. “You do, don’t you?”

  “How do you figure?” Al asked.

  “You’re always sketching. Sometimes I smell the paints you use. I’ve seen you staring out at the stars when I come up to relieve you sometimes. You seem far away then.”

  “What about the retiring?” I asked.

  Ms. Fortuner looked at Al. “I’d bet you’ve been sailing longer than I’ve been alive.”

  Al snorted at that. “Don’t pull any punches, do you?”

  Ms. Fortuner paled and her eyes widened. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Al grinned at her. “I didn’t take it that way. I suspect you’re right. I’ve probably been sailing longer than the captain has been alive.”

  Ms. Fortuner nodded. “But you never made captain. I don’t think it’s because you wouldn’t make a good one. I’d sail with you in a heartbeat.” She looked at me. “No offense, Skipper.”

  “None taken,” I said.

  “Why do you think?” Al asked, her voice soft and low.

  “I think it’s because you kept getting passed over.”

  “Have you ever gotten invited to the board?” I asked.

  Al shook her head.

  “Would you want to be?” I asked.

  She stared at her beer glass for a long time while we all sat, silent, waiting. She lifted the glass in salute to Ms. Fortuner, then drained it, snapping it down on the table beside Pip for a refill. “For a long time, I thought I did,” she said, talking to the middle of the table. “Now? I’m tired. I could probably get a berth in the Toe-Holds.” She looked at me. “You’re a captain. Even with your head up your ass, you’re a captain.” She looked away and took the refilled glass. “Where I used to find joy in plotting the tight course, in keeping the ship and her crew on good terms with each other? Now I find myself treasuring that quiet time in my stateroom with my charcoals or my sketch pads.” She looked at Ms. Fortuner again, a soft smile on her lips. “You’re right. I want to retire and be an artist.”

  Mike showed up with food and broke the mood, but I found the chief looking at me across the table with a raised eyebrow. I didn’t know how to answer her. The chief was the only other person who knew I’d put Al up for the captains’ board back at Dree while we were still in the yards.

  “Is there anything else I can get you?” Mike asked, having distributed the food.

  Pip held up the empty pitcher. “This seems to have a hole in the top where the beer falls out into our glasses.”

  “I’m afraid all of them do,” Mike said. “Can I refill this one?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” Pip grinned at him.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  I’d only barely begun exploring my plate before Mike returned with a full pitcher. “There you go. I’ll be back in a little while to see if you need anything.”

  The food service completed, I looked at Ms. Fortuner. “What about you, Kim? What’s your next step?”

  “Second mate, I suppose,” she said. “I don’t expect Tom will move up, though, so ... I’m not sure.”

  “You want second mate?” the chief asked.

  Ms. Fortuner finished chewing and swallowed before answering. “It’s the logical choice. After going through the academy and all. I passed the exam already.”

  “Do you like it, though? Being a deck officer?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Being comms and systems isn’t the most fun, but it’s necessary. I feel like I help keep the ship moving. Watches are watches. Does anybody like them?” She looked around the table.

  “Sometimes it seems like that’s all there is,” Al said with a grin. “Watches and drills. I actually like bridge watches. Torkelson’s a good helm. You want to swap Cheuvront?”

  “No, she’s good. I swap between Cheuvront and Bentley every other trip as it is.”

  “How’s that working?” I asked.

  Ms. Fortuner shrugged. “I kinda like it. Bentley hums sometimes, but it’s usually quiet. Cheuvront doesn’t say much. We get along fine on the mids. That’s kinda the test. Doing the midwatch cleaning.”

  Al looked at Pip. “What about you?”

  “Me?” Pip looked up from his plate. “What about me?”

  “What’s your next step?”

  “We need to clear this white whale out of the way before I can think that far ahead.” He grinned at Ms. Fortuner. “Hopefully without sinking the ship.”

  Al nudged his arm. “Come on, give. You don’t do anything without having the next ten steps staked out.”

  Pip looked across the table at me and then at the chief. “I’m going to focus on Phoenix Freight. We’ve got a good start on a profitable business. I’m not exactly sure how, but we’ve made a metric buttload of credits while we’re just thrashing around out here chasing our tails.” He looked around the table with as sheepish a look as I’ve ever seen on his face. “Kinda makes me wanna see what we can do if we actually focus
on it.”

  The chief gave him a long look.

  He saw her looking and gave a little shrug. “That’s all I got at the moment.”

  “Captain?” Ms. Fortuner asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m going to try to keep flying as long as I can. It’s all I’ve known since I left Neris. There’s still a lot I have to learn.”

  “Captains are supposed to be infallible, Skipper,” Al said.

  I chuckled. “On the ship, I’m infallible. Ashore?” I thought back to all the mistakes I’d made. “Well, let’s just say I’ve got a ways to go.” I took a sip of coffee and looked around the table. “What should we be doing?”

  The chief looked at me with a little frown. “The galley remodeling seems to have struck a chord.”

  “I lucked into finding Stan Douglas,” I said. “Ms. Sharps really did the hard work. If she hadn’t noticed the scoring in the steam kettle, nothing would have happened. It’s made me wonder who else has spotted a problem but not said anything.”

  The chief carved a bite off her prime rib and grinned at me. “Surprising what a captain can hear when he listens, huh?” She tucked the beef into her mouth and chewed.

  She had a point, and it sank deep into me.

  I looked at Al. “You do murals?”

  She almost choked on her food and grabbed her beer to wash it down. “Murals?”

  “Yeah. Big paintings on the—”

  “I know what they are, Skipper,” she said. She put her beer down and stared at her plate. “I’ve never tried a mural.”

  “Why not?” Ms. Fortuner asked.

  She shook her head, as if to herself before looking up. “I never owned a wall, I guess.”

  “Are there any regs about how we paint the inside of the ship, Chief?” I asked.

  “None that I know of. We have to be a little careful painting on equipment. Heat, conductivity, those kinds of things can get messed up—sometimes just by painting the casings. Bulkheads? Fair game as far as I know.”

  Pip squinted at me, like he was trying to see inside my head. “You have a wall in mind?”

  “Mess deck,” I said. “It’s mostly blank bulkheads.”

  “Spine?” the chief asked.

  Al’s eyes grew round. “Wait. The spine is huge. Painting around all the structural members there?”

  “Moby Dick,” Ms. Fortuner said. “I don’t go down there very often but the supports always make me think of walking down a literal spine, each section a vertebra.”

  Pip tilted his head and stared at her. “That’s a little creepy, but I like it.”

  “Mess deck, huh?” Al asked.

  “It’s one of the common crew areas. It’s got blank bulkheads without a lot of fixtures to work around. Seems like a good canvas,” I said. “A mural in there would liven everybody’s day.”

  “Like the cabin?” the chief asked.

  “I need to do something about that,” I said, speaking without really thinking.

  She blinked a few times and tilted her head. “You mean change the paint scheme?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. At least.”

  “What would you change?” the chief asked.

  “For one, I’d start using the couches.”

  Everybody laughed.

  “Seriously. I had them installed instead of a boardroom style table. I never sit there. I’m always at my desk unless I’m in my rack.”

  “What about the shearwater?” Al asked. “That’s pretty classy.”

  “It’s pretty dark,” Ms. Fortuner said.

  I nodded. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t match your suit,” Al said.

  “What?” I looked down at my outfit. “This suit?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “There’s a disconnect. That suit says you’re one thing but that mural says something else.” She stared at her beer glass, spinning it around with her fingers. “Nothing wrong with having different facets. Do either of those represent you? The real you?” She shrugged and looked around the table. “Don’t mind me.”

  “What do we stand for?” I asked.

  “What? Like when the captain enters the room?” Ms. Fortuner asked.

  I shook my head. “No. Like what’s one of our core values?”

  “Oh, like truth, justice, fairness? Like that?”

  “That’s three,” I said. “Do any of those things matter to us as a crew?”

  “Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” the chief said, almost under her breath.

  “Profit,” Pip said, raising his glass in salute.

  Al grinned at him. “You say that, Mr. Moneybags, but at what cost?”

  Ms. Fortuner looked at me. “At the academy, they told us captains aren’t just the people who makes the decisions for the ship. They shape the shipboard culture.”

  I gave a short laugh. “Crew Management 200?”

  “I think so,” she said. “Dr. Frobisher. I can still see her standing at the podium. Was she ever a captain?”

  “Adele’s one of the key thinkers about how to keep people sane and productive in space,” the chief said. “She was a deck hand for about ten stanyers in her youth. Banged around most of the Western Annex before she decided to pursue higher education. Got an undergrad degree in psychology. University of Ciroda, if I remember correctly. Did her graduate work at the Teaching Hospital at Tellicherry. Earned her doctorate in psych research by studying the interactions of officers and crew. She wanted to know why some ships had rich and flourishing culture and others were—well—barely functional.”

  Ms. Fortuner’s jaw hung open. She closed it with a click. “I forget you taught at the academy.”

  “Still do on occasion,” the chief said. “I’ve been kinda busy of late.” She shot me a smile. “I should probably do a rotation there again soon. I need to finish the revisions to the next edition of the textbook first.”

  “Anything exciting in it?” I asked.

  “I did some work a few stanyers ago with recovery of damaged hulls. We got a prototype running and I’ve been trying to get a production model out. I’ve reached some new conclusions on hull integrity and the positioning of the Burleson emitter pylons as a result.” She glanced around at the glazed eyeballs. “Sorry. It’s pretty exciting to me.”

  “So why are you out here with us instead of working on that?” Ms. Fortuner asked.

  “Who says I’m not?” the chief asked. “I’ve got an Unwin yard in New Caledonia working on it. They’re giving me yard space for development in return for a cut of the design royalties.”

  “You can do that?” Ms. Fortuner asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “Oh, yes. It’s pretty common actually.”

  “But you have to invent something first?” Ms. Fortuner asked.

  The chief laughed. “Yeah. That’s kind of a prerequisite. I find being out here working in actual engineering spaces to be inspiring. It’s why I spend so much of my time in space.” She leaned closer to the young woman. “Also good for writing new texts. Not much else to do between watches.”

  “I had a captain who wrote romance novels under a pen name,” I said, thinking of Rossett. “He retired.”

  The chief snorted. “Yeah. Retired.”

  Ms. Fortuner looked back and forth between the chief and me. “Do I ask?”

  Al shook her head. “No.”

  “It was my first berth out of the academy. To say it didn’t go well would be an understatement,” I said. “I suspect, one of these people will gladly fill you in once I’m not at the table.”

  “What do you do, Captain?” Ms. Fortuner asked. “Besides reports and such, I mean.”

  “Ms. Fortuner?” Al said. “Maybe rethink that question?”

  Ms. Fortuner colored. “No, I didn’t mean it that way. Al does art. The chief designs stuff and writes textbooks. Pip is constantly fiddling with math and data.”

  Pip stiffened and stared at Ms. Fortuner.

  She glanced at him. “What? You do.”

  “
How do you know?” he asked.

  She gave him a wide-eyed exasperated look. “You leave your compartment door open half the time. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve walked by and seen the formulas on the screen. I don’t know what they are, but I know they’re some kind of vector analysis. Your tablet is always covered with scribbles. You even bring that drawing thingie to the mess deck sometimes and fiddle with it there.”

  Pip stared for a few heartbeats before sitting back in his seat. “Carry on, Ms. Fortuner.”

  Al looked at me. “We’ve got to find something for this woman to do.”

  “I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “Seems like she’s doing pretty well on her own.”

  The trio in the back finished setting up and began riffing a down-tempo blues number. I couldn’t place it, but it seemed familiar. It put the kibosh on further conversation, and not a moment too soon. Ms. Fortuner’s question—not to mention her spot-on assessment of her fellow officers—echoed in my head.

  Chapter 16

  Telluride Station: 2376, February 24

  We got the cans swapped and the crew back aboard without any issues. So far, Telluride felt like just another station in the Toe-Holds. Watching people in the passageways, I saw a lot more company-liveried workers. People with the Manchester M on their backs or the Pravda wheel on their chests. It made me think of Brill’s comment about being locked in. About it being a pretty cushy prison that paid really well. About it not being that much different from the High Line.

  I looked down the table at the assembled officers. “Chief? We ready to go?”

  “Tanks are topped. We’re short a few spares but we’re within parameters, Skipper.”

  “Al?”

  “Crew’s all present. We’re not leaving anybody behind, Cap. Stores are stocked. Ms. Sharps reports we’re at CPJCT standard levels.”

  “Mr. Reed? Astrogation?”

  He looked startled. “I’ve got a course locked to the location Pip gave me. It’s a short jump so I’ll need to tweak it just before we push the button. We’ll also need to make a short adjustment to line up for Dark Knight.”

  “Ms. Fortuner?”

  “System backed up. Logs burned to glass. We can’t do much with off-site backups here. It’s something we should think about if we’re not going to be hitting a home port very often, Captain.”