Double Share: Solar Clipper Trader Tales

by Nathan Lowell

  He stared at me with something like a smile on his face. It wasn’t a smile. It was too threatening to be that. It was more like an expression he’d learned in front of the mirror when somebody told him he needed to look pleasant when dealing with subordinates. It wasn’t working for him.

  “I must say, Mr. Wang, you’re not what we expected.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “In what way, Captain? Is there something wrong?”

  He stared at me for a moment.

  “We don’t usually get people right out of the academy,” he said finally.

  “It’s a long way for a boot third,” I admitted.

  “You got the offer from DST when?” he asked.

  “The beginning of May, Captain. Just before graduation.”

  A snowball started to build in my stomach.

  “And did they offer you the Tinker at that time?” he asked too casually.

  “No, Captain. It was just a pro forma offer for third mate on a vessel to be determined at such time as I was able to present myself to the corporate offices at Diurnia. I booked passage on a fast packet and arrived just three days before reporting aboard.”

  He stared for several long moments, then leaned over his desk with a frown.

  “Who do you work for?” he asked quietly.

  That question came out of the port side airlock for all I could tell and I blinked stupidly for a couple of heartbeats trying to figure out what the answer might be.

  “Technically, I suppose it’s Mr. Maloney, since he owns the company, Captain, but I report to you.”

  “No,” he said. “Who do you really work for?” His expression had taken on a dangerously flat look.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Captain. I work for DSt.”

  He sat back in his chair, bracing himself against the side of the desk. He seemed to be trying to weigh me or something.

  “You expect me to believe that you’ve come all the way from Newmar to take a berth on my ship that didn’t even exist when the company sent you the contract?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know it would be this ship, Captain,” I pointed out in what I hoped was a reasonable voice. “Lots of my classmates got offers from companies in other systems.”

  “Federated, Saltzman, Coopers, Western Annex…” the captain flicked off the names of some of the largest companies in the business.

  “Yes, Captain,” I agreed.

  “Diurnia Salvage and Transport isn’t exactly in their league, now is it, Mr. Wang? Don’t you think it’s a bit unusual to have a two-bit operation like DST recruiting months in advance directly from the academy?”

  “I don’t know, Captain. This is my first experience in being hired out of the academy. I never gave it a second thought. The opening was on the boards so I applied. DST sent me an offer and a transport voucher. Here I am.”

  “How many third mates do you think are employed by DST, Mr. Wang?”

  “I don’t know, Captain. Twelve ships so, probably not more than twelve.”

  “Exactly four, Mr. Wang,” he replied.

  Reviewing what I remembered about DST’s fleet I realized his point. The Damien tractors were notorious for being short handed. They reputedly got underway with barely enough crew to mount two watch sections. The other Unwin Bar Bell and the two Manchester tankers were probably the only ships in the DST fleet that carried third mates.

  “So, why did Maloney offer you a job and fly you all the way out here from Port Newmar, Mr. Wang?” the captain persisted.

  I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times before I finally managed to put together any kind of response. “I really don’t know, Captain. You’d have to ask Mr. Maloney about that.” I put every ounce of credibility that I had into it. It helped that I really didn’t have any idea. “It never even struck me as unusual, Captain.”

  “I see,” he replied after a moment.

  We sat there unspeaking for a couple of ticks. I didn’t dare move, and he kept examining me as if he could somehow read the answer on my forehead.

  “Very well, Mr. Wang,” he said at last. “I’ll take your word for it…for the moment…but let us be perfectly clear on one thing, shall we?”

  “Certainly, Captain. What’s that?”

  “Out here I am the captain. I am the law. What I say is the answer. As far as you and the rest of the crew is concerned, out here in the Deep Dark, I am God.” He paused to let that sink in. “I do not like smart asses, troublemakers, or surprises. I like my universe orderly and predictable. If you have a problem with me, then you have a serious problem.” He placed a heavy emphasis on the “you” part of that.

  “In the Deep Dark, Mr. Wang, what I say will be the final word, and I never have any problems. Am I making myself clear, Mr. Wang?”

  “Yes, Captain, crystal clear,” I said, my voice surprising me by staying relatively even.

  “We will be watching you, Mr. Wang. Please do not give me cause to take any unfortunate action,” he said.

  “I will do my best, Captain.” I tried to sound reassuring.

  “You are dismissed, Mr. Wang.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DIURNIA SYSTEM

  2358-JULY-8

  Luckily my stateroom wasn’t far from the cabin. I managed to get back there before my legs gave out, and I flopped on my bunk. I was on the third watch section, so I didn’t have anywhere to be before midnight, which was a good thing. I didn’t know how to react, and my body was doing it all by itself.

  Only a couple of ticks went by and I heard a tap on the door to the head. “Ishmael? You okay?” Arletta asked softly.

  I sat up, reached over, and slid the door open. She stood there with her hand upraised as if to knock again.

  “You okay?” she repeated, looking at me closely.

  “Yeah, I think so. But the captain seems to think I’m a spy.”

  Her expression went from concern to incredulity in an instant. “A spy? For whom?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. He was mostly concerned that DST hired me before there was an opening, and he wanted to know who I was working for.”

  She blinked slowly at that. “What? Back up…they hired you before there was an opening?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “You wanna sit?”

  I pointed to the only chair in the room.

  She slipped in and perched on the chair. “What do you mean they hired you before there was an opening?”

  “I just graduated from the academy.”

  “Yeah, I heard that part. What were you doing on Diurnia? Is that where your family is from?”

  I shook my head. “DST brought me here. They had an opening posted at the academy. The commandant gave me a recommendation for it and DST made an offer. I accepted and they sent me a travel voucher.”

  “But…?” she started to say. “You weren’t here already? They brought you here from Port Newmar?”

  I shrugged again. “Yeah I didn’t think anything of it. At least four or five of my classmates got offers like that.”

  She was blinking owlishly at nothing in particular as she considered. “But they were all from big companies, right? Not mom and pop outfits like DST?”

  “I guess, but there wasn’t any reason for me to take note of that. I just assumed they had a projected need for a third mate when they made the offer—somebody due for a promotion or something like that. Honestly I never thought twice about it.”

  “Holy Hannah, I can see why he’s more paranoid than usual.”

  “Is he always like that?”

  She shrugged. “Hard to say. He’s a bit of a martinet and very reclusive. When we get to Breakall, he’ll disappear again, and he’ll not come back until we need to get underway. Visiting family. Apparently he has family every place we go.”

  “Every place?”

  “Well, we only really go to four ports—mostly Breakall and Jett—but he pulls the same thing when we go to Welliver and Dree.”

  “Woman
in every port?” I asked.

  “I assume so, but he might just like getting out of the smell for a few days.” She made a funny grimace.

  “I hardly notice it when I’m aboard now. My nostrils must have burnt out.”

  “Yeah, you notice it most when you go out and come back. It’ll still catch you at times when you get a stronger whiff every once in a while, but after a few days aboard, you hardly notice it again.”

  I looked at her for a moment and then asked, “So, what did happen to my predecessor? I’m not likely to find out anything out here in the Deep Dark. What am I up against?”

  “She wouldn’t sleep with Burnside or his bully boys,” she said flatly.

  I gaped. I know I gaped.

  “I didn’t realize that was a job requirement,” I said at last.

  I must have also looked worried, because she said with a little smirk, “You won’t be required to. It’s only the women they’re interested in.”

  She looked at me sharply then. “Get it out of your head. I won’t sleep with them either.”

  “But…they tried?” I asked.

  She sighed and shook her head, looking at the deck some more. “I was gonna say it’s none of your business, but that’s hardly fair if the captain has it in his head that you’re some kinda threat.”

  She grew silent and I watched her kind of shrinking into herself. “Yes, they tried. I said no and made it stick.”

  “But Sissy couldn’t?” I asked.

  Her head snapped up and she scowled at me. “Where’d you hear that name?”

  “Couple of the crew said the ship had changed Sissy for Isshy. I presumed that was her name.”

  “Burnside called her that. It was his little slap. She wouldn’t give in. Locked herself in here between watches, and only left to go to the bridge and the wardroom for meals.”

  She sighed and scrubbed her face in her palms. “There was an incident with a couple of Burnside’s bully boys. It wasn’t pretty. After that she was afraid to go anywhere on the ship alone. So, Burnside started calling her ‘Sissy’ for being so afraid all the time.”

  “That’s crap!” I exploded. “They can’t do that. It’s harassment!”

  “Yeah, but who ya gonna complain to?” she asked with a serious look. “The captain?”

  She had a point.

  “How’d she get out of her contract?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t and just took the penalty clause.”

  “She didn’t talk to you?” I asked, looking at the connecting doorway. “I’d have thought you two would have…”

  “Discussed it? Banded together against the common foe?” she asked with a fair amount of bitterness in her voice.

  I gave a small shrug. “Something like that.”

  “She didn’t trust me either.”

  “She thought you were in on it?”

  “I was already aboard. She thought I was a bunk bunny already, I guess.”

  “Bunk bunny?”

  “You’ve been through the academy and never heard the term?” she asked sardonically.

  “Oh, no, I’ve heard it. I just never knew it applied to officers.”

  “Well, typically there aren’t enough officers for it to be an issue,” she said wryly. “Here? Why do you think the captain and Burnside are so upset that you’re here? You’re not exactly their cuppa tea.”

  “They prefer their bunnies with a little more padding?” I ventured.

  “Something like that.”

  “How have you escaped? Or have you?” I asked suddenly very concerned.

  “I let them know I don’t like guys. When they tried to change my mind, I broke Apones’s arm and kicked Mosler so hard in the jewels that he sang soprano for a month. I got Mel and Fredi to back me with the captain. After that, they left me alone. As far as they’re concerned, I’m just another filthy lesbo.”

  “Why didn’t you press charges?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “They made me a deal. If I didn’t pursue it, they wouldn’t charge me with aggravated assault. They had more proof than I did.”

  “Kinda hard to hide a broken arm?” I asked.

  “Something like that,” she screwed up her face and said in an almost dead on impersonation of the captain. “‘Now, Ms. Novea. You know boys will be boys. And after all, they’ve taken more damage than you have.’”

  “Was that before or after the ‘my word is law’ speech?” I asked.

  “Oh, that was the first day. Just like you got,” she assured me. “I didn’t get the spy routine, though. I was already on station when the job opened up. He spent a lot of time hinting that I should sleep in the cabin, but he didn’t come out and do anything I could haul him up on charges over.”

  I nodded my understanding. If she had a problem with the skipper as second mate, she could file a grievance with the company, but problems with the crew got stonewalled without the captain’s support. Even with the support of the engineering and cargo chief officers, she’d have had a hard time making anything stick. I was no lawyer, but I’d sat through enough Legal Implications of Space Command lectures to have a pretty good guess of what the problem was.

  “Why do you stay?” I asked incredulously.

  “The hard part’s over,” she said with a shrug. “They leave me alone. I don’t break any more arms. Mel and Fredi are good people and there are some of the crew who appreciate having somebody besides the Testosterone Gang to talk to.”

  “And you can’t get out of your contract,” I finished.

  She shrugged. “That too. A few more months and it’ll be over. Two stanyers goes by quickly. I’ll be eligible to sit for first mate before we get to Breakall.”

  “Not soon enough for some people,” I pointed out.

  “Roger that,” she said ruefully.

  We sat there thinking our own thoughts for a bit.

  “So, what’s with Mel and Fredi?” I asked. “Fredi seems afraid of her own shadow.”

  “I don’t honestly know,” she admitted. “And before you ask, I have no idea if they’re a couple or not. I don’t care. Mel is a great person and Fredi, if you can get her away from these goons, is one of the sharpest minds in the Western Annex.”

  She grinned. “Personally, I think the ‘frail bird’ thing is an act, but whatever it is, it keeps them out of harm’s way.”

  “So, who’re the troublemakers in the crew?”

  “I already told you about Apones and Mosler. Mallory is okay, but he won’t buck the flow. He’ll walk away rather than put his butt on the line. Xhang likes a bit of fun now and again, but I think they just take advantage of the general chaos. I don’t think they’re really bad.”

  “Who’re the victims?”

  “Davies in the wardroom. She’s bearing up under the strain pretty well, but she’s a very unhappy camper. Ulla Nart, I’m keeping her under my wing as best I can. Some of the boys think she’s my bunk warmer, and I let them think that, for obvious reasons. Vicki VanDalon and Osmia Lignaria in the engineering were both getting a lot of the captain’s attention, but he’s having to be careful when poaching from Mel’s group. Below decks, I don’t know how well that’s working out. The official policy is, ‘No blood, no problem.’”

  “Could this group be any more dysfunctional?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it could. They still speak wistfully of the BDSM parties on the mess deck and there’s reputed to be one body still missing back from the ‘good old days’ before there were so many uppity women in the ranks.”

  I blinked in disbelief a couple of times. “You don’t suppose the smell…” I started to say but couldn’t finish.

  Arletta shook her head. “No, that was too long ago. The smell would have dissipated by now. It was before I came, and I think they just tell that story to terrorize the new hands.”

  “This is so wrong. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  She sighed. “We can only do so much, Ishmael. Even though he’s a megalomaniac, the
captain is correct about being the law out here. He’s got the mechanics of it down. In port, he’s never on the ship. Underway, his word is gospel. You go against him at your peril. Put in your time, keep an eye on your back, and get out when you can.”

  She was right, of course.

  “Okay,” I agreed, “so what can we make better? Why is everybody always in a dirty shipsuit? Why is there crud on the decks?”

  She snorted. “I think that goes hand-in-hand—dirty ship, dirty crew. If we could get one cleaned up, then the other would probably follow.”

  “Okay, well, other than brow beating the watch section to put on clean clothes, what else?”

  She shrugged. “The coffee sucks. I don’t remember the last time I had coffee this bad.”

  I grinned. “Coffee, I can fix. How do we get to it?”

  “Prove that you can make better coffee and I think you’ll have Vorhees eating out of your hand. That ‘joke’ that the captain used on Vorhees this morning? That wasn’t a joke. The captain wants better coffee, but Vorhees doesn’t have a clue what to try.”

  I looked at her skeptically. “Isn’t he a spec one chef?”

  “Indeed he is, but he took a lateral over as spec one from environmental to stewards.”

  “He’s an engineman?” I asked.

  “Well, not now, but he was, yeah.”

  “No wonder the coffee tastes like burned engine oil. I think we can do something about that much. Give me a couple days to work on it.”

  She looked at me with a dubious expression. “You’re going to make the coffee better?”

  “Nope,” I said with a grin. “I’m going to help Vorhees make coffee to die for.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DIURNIA SYSTEM

  2358-JULY-8

  The worst of the shakes had run their course by the time Arletta went back to her stateroom to get ready for watch. Having that back door felt a little like sneaking around, but it also felt more like normal. Everything was going to be okay. The captain was a loon. The first mate was a sexist sadist. The engineering and cargo firsts were probably sleeping together. But it was going to be okay, because at least I could talk to Arletta.