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

by Nathan Lowell

  Pip said, “Plan A. We’ll be forming Phoenix Freight today.”

  I looked at Pip and started to say something but he shook his head just a tiny bit.

  “And do you have the deposits ready?” Kaplan asked.

  “We’ll be visiting the Confederated Bank Branch here on station as soon as we leave,” Pip said.

  “And you, Captain Wang. Let me say what a pleasure it is to meet you.”

  I smiled and nodded. “Thank you. I’m just the driver in this enterprise.”

  Kaplan’s lips puckered in a kind of kiss that I found a bit disturbing. “Surely the majority stockholder is more than the driver?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not even that, yet.”

  He nodded and looked at his legal tablet again. “Very well, then, let’s clear up the loose ends so you gentlemen can be on your way.”

  In a surprisingly short period of time, we stepped out of the firm of Mabon Legal with our lives signed away to Phoenix Freight, Inc.

  “So? Did you hear from your father or did you just hang yourself?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I looked over the power of attorney documents and exercised my initiative.”

  “Meaning, you haven’t heard from him?”

  He shrugged again. “No. Shall we go to the bank?”

  “Yes, but I can’t believe you did that.”

  “It’ll be all right. It’s not really that much different than what he sent me here for. I’m just taking a slightly different path.”

  “You just committed Carstairs Ltd. to a partnership with us. With me.”

  We found the lift and I pressed the call button.

  “Yeah. True,” Pip said.

  The doors whooshed open and three people stepped off before we could get on. One of them turned to stare at me as she walked away and ran into the bulkhead across the passage.

  “This could get old, fast,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.

  Pip chuckled. “We’ll be out in the cold again soon enough.”

  The bankers seemed a bit happier to see us. Of course we were going to leave a few hundred million credits in their care. Not like they didn’t have it already, but they appeared to like moving it from one account to another.

  It took less time to deal with the finances—setting up the appropriate accounts and arranging for a payroll servicing company—than it did with Mabon Legal.

  As we left the bank, Pip clapped his hands together and then wrung them as if he were washing oil off his palms. “So? What’s for lunch?” he asked. “Roland filed for a 1500 departure, which leaves us a chance to get some food we don’t have to cook ourselves.”

  I smiled. “How do you feel about breakfast?”

  “I like breakfast,” he said. “But it’s lunchtime.”

  “Come on. Let me introduce you to Frank’s Finest.”

  The trip to the oh-two deck took only a few ticks, and we stepped into Over Easy just a bit before 1200. The lunch crowd had already staked out the counter and booth space.

  “Looks busy,” Pip said.

  I looked over the crowd to see Seth behind the counter and pointing to the end away from the door. “Come on,” I said and snaked my way through the cheerful hubbub that accompanied the various meal crushes.

  Pip and I slipped onto the last two stools at the counter. Seth already had napkin-wrapped silverware and coffee cups in place.

  “Usual?” he asked.

  “One for each of us,” I said with a nod at Pip.

  Seth scribbled on a paper pad that might have come out of a restaurant in the previous millennium and clipped it onto the funky metal turn table that hung in the pass-through to the kitchen. “Order up, Frank.” He winked at me when he said it.

  The wheel spun and the order disappeared.

  Pip favored me with a look that was either wonder or indigestion. It might have been both. He leaned over. “What in the name of all the holy water in the Ganges is this place? Did we go through a time warp or something?”

  “Best food in the sector,” I said.

  A voice behind me said, “You’re biased.”

  I turned to see my father standing behind me, a spattered apron hanging around his neck and a sturdy spatula still in his hand. He gave me a big hug. “You on station long?”

  “Only until 1500.”

  “Come see me next time.” He grinned and disappeared back through the swinging doors.

  Pip arched an eyebrow. “You taken up with older men without telling me?”

  I shook my head. “That’s my father.”

  “What?”

  “Long story. I’ll tell you when we don’t have to shout.”

  He sat back on his stool and shook his head.

  Seth refilled our coffee mugs and kept moving down the bar.

  Pip took a sip and looked at me. “Bean doesn’t fall far from the bush, huh?”

  I shrugged. “My mother taught me how to make coffee. Maybe she learned from him.”

  Seth came back with our plates, slid them into place, and looked to Pip. “Anything else?”

  The pile of potatoes and onions laced with bacon and topped with three fried eggs took Pip’s entire attention.

  “We’re good, Seth. Thanks,” I said.

  He grinned at me and went back to work.

  Pip grabbed his fork and dug in. After three bites he looked at me and rolled his eyes up, a look of pure bliss on his face. “How does he do this?”

  “No idea.”

  “You never asked? Never visited the kitchen?”

  I shook my head.

  “Philistine.” He turned back to his meal and dug in again.

  He had the right idea so I followed his lead. We soon had our plates scraped down to the paint, and to be honest I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t try to lick that off.

  “Can we go back and visit him in the kitchen?” Pip asked when he pushed his empty plate back from the edge of the counter.

  I looked around the dining room and at the line waiting at the door. “Maybe another time when it’s not a meal rush,” I said, nodding at the crowd.

  Seth came back and stashed our empties in a bin under the counter. “Another?” he asked.

  I shook my head, but Pip leaned forward. “Can I get one to go?”

  “Sure.” He scribbled on the pad again and clipped it to the wheel. “Order up, Frank.”

  “To go?” I asked.

  Pip shrugged. “I was too busy eating to pay attention. I want to know what’s in that.”

  “You’re going to reverse engineer it?”

  He shrugged again. “We have a galley and we’ll have a bigger one in a few weeks. Why not?”

  I laughed just as Seth brought the box. I made a pinching motion with my thumb to get the tab and he shook his head. “Your money’s still no good here, Captain.”

  “Lemme leave a tip at least.”

  He shook his head. “He’d kill me. Besides. Finding you was good for him and what’s good for him is good for all of us.” He nodded around the room to the gang of service staff. “Now if you don’t mind, Captain, I got people waiting for that stool.” He grinned and we scooted.

  We stepped out of the restaurant and crossed the passageway to the lift. The number of eyes on me had grown to a level that gave me a bad feeling. As we waited for the lift, a sultry brunette walked up to us and stood right in front of me. She wore a pair of jeans that might have been painted on and a pink, floofy sweater that should have hidden her assets but only accented them.

  “You’re Ishmael, right?” she asked. Her voice had that faint whispery rasp that, under the right circumstances could curl my toes, ship boots and all.

  She nodded and stepped right up to me, pinning me against the bulkhead with her fuzzy boobs. “Thought so.” She gave me a kiss on the lips. Nothing too salacious. She left a hint of cherry-flavored lipstick on my mouth. I think she meant it as a tease because she stepped away and stood there.

  Pip stepped up and held out his hand. �
��Hi, I’m Phillip Carstairs. You are ...?”

  She glanced at him, then cast her hooded gaze back to me. “Waiting for Captain Wang,” she said.

  The lift doors dinged open and a half dozen station personnel rushed off, buffeting us in the wind of their passage.

  “Sorry,” I said. “We were just leaving.” I grabbed Pip and pulled him onto the lift as the doors closed, blocking our view of her pouting red lips.

  Pip blew out a deep breath and looked over at me. “Lemme guess. Your ex-wife?”

  I shook my head. “My ex works at the pub down around the corner. I think she only works nights.”

  He blinked. “Seriously? Your ex-wife is still on station?”

  “Truthfully, I don’t know. She used to be the bar maid at the pub but I don’t know what happened to her after we split up.”

  The lift dinged again and opened onto the docks. I stepped out into the chill and looked around for Pip, who still stood in the lift. The doors started to close so I stuck a booted foot in the way. “You coming?”

  He shook his head and followed me out. “You’re just full of surprises,” he said.

  “I thought you had a file on me,” I said.

  “It didn’t mention anything about a father.”

  “I have one.”

  He blew out a breath and shrugged. “Well, we can update it when we get back to the ship.”

  I glanced around at the looks we were attracting. “Sooner is better.”

  I saw him take in the spectators and strike off across the dock, his breakfast box tucked under one arm.

  “Nobody’s going to steal it,” I said.

  He laughed. “Five ticks ago, I’d have sworn nobody was going to play tonsil hockey with you in public. Why take chances?”

  “You know that’s going to be in a newsie later, right?”

  He spared me a glance. “Seriously?”

  I shrugged. “Wouldn’t bet against it.”

  We passed a newsie kiosk and he took a detour to look at the teaser display. His steps faltered and he shook his head before catching up with me.

  “Already?” I asked.

  “How do they do that so quickly?”

  “It was an easy setup. Probably had the camera linked to the network in case we noticed and took it. Could have had the image cropped and edited before we got off the lift. Distribution is a button push and my face is on the front of the newsie kiosk.”

  “Diana’s balls,” he said.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Diana was a woman, wasn’t she?”

  “Best juggler in town,” Pip said. “I got a feeling we might need one.”

  “What? Juggler?”

  “Goddess. If this keeps up, we’re going to need divine intervention.”

  “Or a bodyguard,” I said, thinking of Stacy Arellone.

  “You know any?”

  “Only one that I’d trust, but she’s got a job.”

  “Can we hire her away?”

  I thought about it for a few moments as we closed the distance to the lock. “Probably, but I wouldn’t want to do that to her.”

  “What? Make her rich?”

  “No. Put her in a position where she’d have to knife somebody else.”

  Pip paused at the keypad and looked over his shoulder at me. “You are just full of surprises today. Why haven’t you mentioned any of this before?”

  “We weren’t on my turf before.”

  Pip looked up and down the dock for a few heartbeats before nodding. “Good enough,” he said and keyed the lock open.

  We ducked in out of the cold. Pip made a beeline for the galley while I went looking for the head and a shower. I had pink fuzz on my chest and a nasty taste in my mouth that had nothing to do with cherry lipstick.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Breakall Orbital:

  2374, August 1

  Pip’s predictions proved to be spot on. We arrived on Breakall Orbital on my forty-first birthday. With a week to spare before the auction we registered with the Confederated Planets Joint Committee on Trade office as bidders, placing two hundred million credits in escrow. The functionary gave us a key card, a wand with a number on it, and a copy of the engineering report.

  “Would it be possible to see the ship before the auction?” Pip asked.

  “No. The engineering report has been certified as accurate and complete. Everything you need to know about the vessel is in that report.”

  “The report doesn’t mention stains on the decking,” Pip said. “Nor does it indicate whether the decking has been replaced recently. I was just wondering.”

  The functionary looked down his nose at Pip. “Stains? What kind of stains?”

  Pip shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Necrotic discharge post-mortem from the previous crew?”

  “Necrotic discharge.” The functionary repeated the words before swallowing a couple of times.

  “Bodies rot, even in space,” Pip said. “The residue can stain deck coverings, particularly the more porous coverings found on the bridge.”

  “Not to mention what seeps into the console chairs,” I added.

  He looked at me with a frown before turning back to the functionary. “We just wanted to know if we could take a quick look to see how much refurbishment will be required.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Carstairs. That’s completely out of the question.”

  He shrugged. “I see. Thanks. Doesn’t hurt to ask.”

  We exited the office and walked a few meters down the passageway before he glanced over at me. “Seeped into the chairs?” he asked.

  “We replaced most of them. Nobody wanted to sit on it.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” he said.

  “Sticks to your shipsuit,” I said.

  “I really would have preferred not to imagine why.”

  “You brought me along because I know what’s in there, didn’t you?”

  “I brought you along because I need a captain to fly it.”

  “Well, sure, but there are a lot of captains you could have gotten.”

  “Really? Name one.”

  I opened my tablet and scanned the jobs boards for senior officers. “Well, here’s Delman. I know him. He’s rated on Barbells.”

  “He any good?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Christine Maloney fired him from DST.”

  He stopped walking to peer at my tablet. “Does it say that?”

  “You kidding? They don’t put that stuff in public files.”

  “How do you know then?”

  “Because—if you remember my file?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Christine Maloney flew with you on the Iris.”

  “Uh, huh. And she cleaned house when she got control of the company. Delman’s out. A couple of the senior captains were allowed to retire.” I shrugged. “There was something about the cargo handlers that I didn’t really follow, and at least one inspection official is now directing traffic on-planet.”

  Pip frowned at me. “You really haven’t changed much. Trouble just falls out of your pockets and lands on everybody around you.”

  “Stand close,” I said.

  “So it’ll fall on me?” he asked, his eyes bulging and his voice practically squeaking.

  “No. So you can stay inside the radius of danger.”

  He laughed. “All right, fine, but you see what I mean. That’s not a long list of available captains.”

  “Yeah. It’s a lot sparser than I’d have expected. I wonder where they’re all working.”

  “Given what you’ve said? For Christine Maloney. Somebody had to replace all the people she booted out.”

  “Possible. I hadn’t really thought of it.”

  “Where would you be working if you still worked?” Pip asked.

  I shrugged. “I really don’t know. That’s why I went to Port Newmar.”

  He chuckled. “And now you’re back here.”

  “Small universe,�
� I said.

  “So true.”

  Pip led the way back to the lift and punched the button for the oh-one deck.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Traffic office.”

  “Why?”

  “They’ve got all the ship assignments.”

  “You thinking you’ll sneak aboard?”

  He shook his head. “I’m hoping to get a guided tour.”

  “From whom?”

  “The caretaker.”

  He had a point. A ship like the Chernyakova couldn’t be left unattended very long. Too much could go wrong that might damage the ship or the orbital.

  “Might work.”

  “I still have a few racks of Clipper Ship left. Just a friendly thank-you from a grateful relative of the dearly departed.”

  “You’d impersonate a grieving relative?”

  “I’d impersonate Alys Giggone if I thought it would help.”

  “You don’t have her legs. What do you expect to find out?” I asked. “I can tell you what shape the ship was in when I left it.”

  He stopped in the middle of the passageway. “Can you tell me if anything’s been taken off while it’s been here?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged and continued on his way.

  We found the Traffic Control Office hidden behind a sign clearly labeled as Traffic Control Office. Pip pushed through the door and walked up to the counter.

  A skinny blonde in an admin jumpsuit stood behind the counter, peering into a computer terminal. “Yeah?” she asked without looking up.

  “I’m looking for a ship,” Pip said.

  “Did you check the docks?” she asked. “Maybe your other pants? Where did you see it last?”

  “Last time I saw it it was leaking atmosphere and bleeding fuel all over the deck in the maintenance bay.”

  She looked up in shock. “What?”

  “Well, hello. Now that I have your attention. I’m looking for the Chernyakova. Can you tell me where to find it?”

  She shot him a sour look. “You and twenty other people. I’ll tell you what I told them. It’s in a secure parking orbit under guard about twenty-five kilometers away.”

  “Perfect,” Pip said and nodded. “Thank you so much.”

  Her jaw dropped but she wasn’t able to recover before Pip led me out of the office.

  “Well, now what?” I asked. “You’re not planning on going out there, I hope?”