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.”
We’d almost made it back to the dock where the Chernyakova lay hidden when a kid wearing some kind of red and blue uniform pulled up to the lock on an electric cart. He looked at the empty telltale and then up at the dock number and down at something on his tablet. He shrugged and pressed the call button.
Nothing happened for several ticks. The kid got one foot into the cart just as the lock swung open. A burly guy wearing a generic shipsuit stepped out of the lock, looking left and right before crossing to the kid.
After much gesturing and shrugging, the guy picked up a couple of bags from the back of the cart, the kid picked up a couple more, and they both disappeared into the ship.
“Perfect,” Pip said and crossed the walkway toward the cart.
The kid came out and the lock closed behind him.
“Hey, kid,” Pip called. “Did Arnie like his surprise?”
The kid looked up and saw Pip walking toward him. “Well, they liked the free lunch fine, but neither of them was named Arnie Martel.”
Pip stopped in his tracks and looked up and down the dock. “Really? I coulda sworn Arnie Martel was on the Edwood Dowd at dock eighty-two.”
The kid grinned. “Looks like the joke’s on you, mister. That’s dock eight-two, but the ship’s the Crankachova or something. The Dowd’s on dock eight-four.”
“Chernyakova?” Pip asked.
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
“You sure?” Pip asked.
“It’s painted on the bulkhead just inside the lock. Keep walking that way and you’ll find your buddy at dock eight-four.”
“Wait! What about the meals?”
The kid shrugged. “I just deliver where I’m told to. Ticket says dock eight-two. I deliver to dock eight-two. They signed for dock eight-two.” He shrugged again and laughed. “Ring the bell. Maybe they’ll share. Those two guys will be all week eating that order.” He laughed, spun the wheel on his cart, and sped back up the dock.
Pip grinned at me and headed down the dock in the kid’s wake. “Perfect.”
I looked over my shoulder at the lock. “Perfect?”
“We know where the ship is and about how many people are in the caretaker team. We know that at least one of them is muscle, so they’re expecting trouble, and we know how to get aboard. That’s as much as I could have hoped for.”
We walked along and I chewed on the puzzle for a bit before asking, “How do we get aboard?”
“Join the caretakers.”
“Oh, they’re going to just let us sign up and give us the secret assignment because we ask?”
“Oh, please. Give me more credit than that.”
“So how do we do it?”
“Easy. We just get uniforms, show up a couple stans early, claim we screwed up, and offer to leave.”
“How’s that going to work?”
He gave me that grin. “Would you want to hang around a few extra stans on a stinking ship when somebody else screwed up and could get stuck with it?”
I thought about it for a few heartbeats. “No, but how do we get uniforms and what do we do when the real crew shows up?”
Pip held up his tablet. He had a picture of the guard carrying the food sacks into the ship. “That’s a stock shipsuit and the shoulder flash probably matches one of the caretaker companies on
station. We find the logo, take it to the chandlery, get a couple flashes made up and buy a couple of matching suits. They’d probably sew it on for us.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Are you kidding? Those guys have stars in their eyes.”
I stared at him, trying to figure out what weird mythological reference he was trying to make.
He reached out and flicked a finger on my collar. “Stars. In their eyes. A captain asks them to make shoulder flashes and sew them on a shipsuit. Would you say no? To a captain?”
The chandlery clerk proved to be just as helpful as Pip thought he’d be.
“You want just the logo on the shoulder flash, captain?” he asked.
“What else?”
“We have the full mockup already. Minotaur Monitoring gets all their uniforms here. We can even put the names on for you.”
Pip stepped forward. “Excellent. Minotaur is sending over two guys named Benjamin and Maxwell. Can you add them?”
“Of course. It’ll take just a few moments.” He gathered the suits and slipped into the back.
“Benjamin and Maxwell?”
Pip shrugged, a bland expression on his face. “He’d approve.”
“How will we know when to show up? You planning on hanging around outside the lock and timing them?”
He tsked and shook his head. “Civilian contractor. I’d bet they change at 1600.”
“Why 1600?”
“Because it’s exactly eight stans between 0800 and midnight. Civilians don’t stand watch. They have shifts.” He glanced at the chrono on the wall behind the counter. “We’ll know shortly.”
The clerk came out with the two shipsuits draped over his arm. “There we are. If you’d just thumb this?” He held out the tab and I pressed a thumb down.
Pip gathered the shipsuits and we strolled out of the chandlery.
“If they get curious, they’re going to find it was me who bought the suits,” I said as we stepped into the flow of traffic.
“If they get curious enough to investigate, they might.” He shrugged. “But you’re not actually on station, are you?”
“Where am I?”
“Last I saw, your face was plastered all over Diurnia Orbital. There was this girl in a pink sweater, if I remember.”
“Don’t tell me you did that.”
He shook his head. “Honestly, I didn’t think of it. I’m just improvising as we go. We didn’t file a passenger manifest. You came off as crew, but you’re not listed on my roster. As far as anybody is concerned, you’re probably hiding out on Diurnia.”
“But I just left a thumb print at the chandlery.”
“Exactly. It’s probably faked. What captain shops at the chandlery himself?”
“How do you fake a thumbprint?”
He smiled at me. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“How?” I asked.
“That’s just it. You can’t. You need the thumb.” He shook his head. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now, we need to take a stroll on the dock.”
I followed him up and out onto the dock. I kept flexing my thumbs and hoping nobody wanted to steal them. I’d grown attached to them.
Pip’s timing couldn’t have been better. We made the turn around the station just as two guys in nondescript shipsuits pressed the call button on the Chernyakova’s lock. The lock levered open and two guys came out—the big guy we’d seen before and a scrawny one who might have been a technician. After knowing Stacey Arellone’s facility with blades, I wasn’t going to bet that he wasn’t at least as sharp.
The scrawny guy signed off on the tablet he carried and handed it to one of the new guys. We kept walking and didn’t look in their direction as we passed them.
“Sloppy,” Pip said. “Very sloppy.”
Behind us I heard the whine of a lock closing. “What’s sloppy?”
“Passing off in public,” he said. “Anybody just walking past could see their procedure.”
I glanced back and saw the two guards strolling back toward the lift. “Yeah. Sloppy,” I said. “So now we wait?”
“Now we wait. Feel like a beer?”
“What now?”
He shrugged. “We’ve about six stans to kill. What else would we do?”
“Look for an engineer?”
“We could. Feel like a beer?”
I looked at him, trying to figure out what he was up to.
“Do they give you the stick when they give you the stars?” he asked.
“The stick?”
“Yeah, the one up your butt.” He grinned. “Come on. Let’s go interview an engineer.”
He led the way to the lift and we went down to the oh-two deck.
“We’re going for a beer?” I asked.
“We could,” Pip said. “I thought you wanted to interview engineers.”
I shook my head and followed him around to the local pub. Every station had one, at about the same place on the ring—plus or minus a couple of doors. On Breakall it was called “The Corner” which made it stand out in a round station with very few corners. I recognized the barkeep and he smiled at me when we slipped onto bar stools.
“Captain, good to see you again.”
“Whistle Wetter for me, Brian,” I said. “This is my friend, Phillip. We call him Pip because he is one. Pip, this is Brian. He’s the chief cook and bottle washer here.”
He stuck a ham-sized hand out for Pip to shake. “Nice to meet you, Pip. What do you like?”
“Big piles of credits and blondes with loose morals and an acrobatic bent,” Pip said.
He laughed. “Fresh out and the supplier’s not due until next week.”
Pip eyed the chalk board behind the bar. “I’ll call it a day.”
Brian smiled and started shuffling glasses and pulling handles. It wasn’t long before he returned with two beers. “Whistle Wetter for you, Captain, and Call It a Day for you, Pip. Enjoy.”
We each took a sip while Brian watched.
Pip smacked his lips. “That’s a very smooth porter. Thank you.”
“I haven’t seen you in here in a while, Captain. You still with DST?”
“No, I went out on my own a stanyer ago. Don’t get up to this end of the sector much anymore.”
“Ah. That would explain it.” He looked to Pip. “And you? Just passing through?”
“Yeah. Heading to Dree as soon as I find a new engineer.”
“What happened to the old one?”
“We had a difference of opinion and he quit on me.”
Brian chuckled. “That’ll happen.”
“You don’t know of anybody looking for work, do you?”
“Engineering officer?” Brian asked.
“Yeah. Fast packet out of Dunsany Roads. Small plant but long legs.”
His eyes widened. “I’d say so if you’re in from Dunsany. We don’t get much traffic from that far out.”
“We spend most of our time over that way but had a priority we couldn’t pass up.” Pip raised his glass and took a pull.
Brian smiled. “Know what that’s like. Can’t leave credits on the dock.”
Pip shrugged. “We’ll be here a few days. If you hear of anybody? I’m on the Prodigal Son.”
“You’ll be here longer than that without an engineer,” Brian said.
“Funny, that’s what my last engineer thought when he tried to renegotiate his contract.”
Brian laughed and I sipped my beer, wondering if Pip really thought he’d find an engineer at a pub.
“Hang on a second,” Brian said. He walked down the length of the bar and spoke to a couple of guys with their heads down and hands waving. The two men stopped and looked up at Brian as he approached and then turned to look at us when Brian pointed. They shrugged and picked up their beers, following along as Brian returned.
“Gentlemen, Pip here is looking for an engineer. Know of any?”
I checked their collar pips; both men wore engineering chief
tabs. I looked at Pip who shrugged before sticking out a hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “Let’s find a booth where we can chat, shall we?” He led them off to the corner while I stayed with Brian at the bar.
“Known him long?” he asked, nodding at Pip.
“Yeah. Couple of decades. Met him on my first ship.”
“He seems nice enough.”
“Oh, he has his moments but I’d trust him with my life.” I glanced over to where Pip held court with the two engineers. “Either of them looking for a berth?”
Brian shook his head. “Neither of them, but both of them have engineering firsts who might be.”
I shook my head. “What’re the odds?”
“Here?” Brian asked. “I’m thinking of changing the name to ‘The Engine Room.’ Don’t know what it is about engineers and beer but there’s almost always somebody in here arguing about drives or lube or fuel or something. Sometimes I think they just like to argue.”
“Maybe Pip shoulda been an engineer,” I said.
I looked over to see Pip wave three fingers in the air in a circle over their glasses.
Brian laughed. “He knows how to make friends,” he said, and went off to pull more beer.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Breakall Orbital:
2374, August 2
Pip and I headed back to the ship to change into our suits around 2000. I felt a little funny impersonating a caretaker.
“Look,” Pip said. “It’s not illegal. These are not station personnel. We are not pretending to be CPJCT staff. We’re not pretending to be anything other than civilian employees of a private company.”
“Yeah, but we’re doing it to gain access to an impounded vessel. The Trade Investigation Commission will cast a very jaundiced eye in our direction if we’re caught.”
Pip sighed. “Don’t you think it’s strange they’re not letting bidders see the ship beforehand?”
In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Page 18