Double Share: Solar Clipper Trader Tales

by Nathan Lowell

  “Mr. Wang,” she said loudly, “how can I help you?”

  I stepped in and motioned to close the door. She looked intrigued but signaled her agreement with a shrug and a nod.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” I said and took the offered chair.

  “Problem, Ishmael?”

  “Yes, and I’m leery about taking it to the first until I can get some insight from you,” I said. “You’re the senior officer aboard—barring the captain and the first—and I need some advice on how to stay out of trouble.”

  She snorted. “On this boat, the only way to stay out of trouble is to sleep with the captain. What’s on your mind?”

  Having been through the story once already, it didn’t take long to spin the yarn again.

  Mel nodded when I had finished.

  “Those two are not the only problems on this ship, but they’re the dumbest,” she said with a sigh. “It’s not like I can tell Mosler to not play with Apones in his off stans. I’m not his mother, and there just aren’t that many people he relates to.”

  “I understand,” I said. “The question is more about how I can keep from getting into a position where Burnside can reprimand me?”

  “Leave the ship,” she said flatly. “If he wants to find an excuse, trust me, he will.”

  “It’s rather a long walk back to Diurnia,” I pointed out.

  The left side of her mouth curled up in a lopsided grin.

  “You may find that preferable, if they’ve decided to target you.”

  “Suggestions?” I asked. “Anything?”

  She crossed her arms in front of her and leaned on her desk, eyes focused inward and face tilted down in consideration.

  “The problem is evidence. You need to be with somebody who can corroborate what you’re saying or you need a record of it somehow.”

  “Recording didn’t help what’s her name,” I said.

  “Alice Stewart?” Mel asked. “Yeah, but she was trying to use it to convince the authorities, for all the good that did her. You need to record it to show you have evidence against the bully boys. Not that it’ll ever see the light of a courtroom, but you might be able to convince David not to beat you up himself.”

  My hand went to my stomach almost reflexively. I still remembered my last blatantly hostile interlude with the first mate.

  I saw in her eyes that Mel caught the movement, but she didn’t say anything.

  “So, any suggestions?” I asked.

  “You’re the systems guy. If I wanted to set up any kind of surveillance on the ship, you’d be the one I’d ask for help.”

  There haven’t been many times in my life when somebody hit me with the “obvious stick” so hard it left me sitting there staring blankly.

  “Ishmael?” she said.

  I shook my head. “I’m okay. I was just thinking about how I might do it.”

  “You’ll want remote recording or at least storage.”

  She nodded at my tablet.

  “You can use that to record sounds, but you’ll want to offload the audio to something less obvious as soon as possible.”

  She was way ahead of me in the problem solving curve. I struggled to keep up.

  “If they’re close enough to hurt you, they’re close enough to break your tablet,” she said. “Poof.” She sketched an explosion in the air with her fingers. “No more evidence.”

  “Oh,” I said as the stick whacked me once more in the head.

  My brain finally started ticking under its own power then. I began to trace various possibilities in my mind.

  “Hey! Ishmael!” Mel spoke sharply and regained my attention. “If you’re gonna do that, go do it in your own place. I know how you system’s people work,” she said it sternly, but she had a smile on her face. “Next thing you know I’ll need a sweeper to get the bits out of my office. They’ll be piled up in the corners for weeks.”

  “Thanks, Mel. I appreciate the insight. If they find my body somewhere, you’ll know who did it,” I joked as I rose and headed for the door.

  “If they do it, we won’t find the body,” she said.

  I looked back at her but she wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t even holding a smile back. She just looked at me and then looked up at the overhead—that thin metal shield between us and the Deep Dark.

  “Yeah. Well, there is that.” I sighed and headed out the door. “Thanks again,” I said over my shoulder as I stepped into the passage and ran into a spacer walking by outside.

  “Oh, sorry!” I said and I recognized him as that other engineman I’d seen outside the cabin. I looked at his name badge. “Mr. Simon, I should pay more attention to where I’m walking. Sorry about that.”

  “No problem, sar,” he said with a smile.

  He nodded through the open door at Mel and kept going. A pleasant enough guy, but I wondered why he spent so much time in Officers’ Country.

  I stood there for a moment, until he’d cleared the ladder heading down into the engineering section, before turning back to Mel who watched me with a curious look on her face.

  “One of your problems?” I asked, nodding in the direction he’d gone.

  She frowned in curiosity at that. “No, Ed Simon is as nice a guy as you could ask for. Why?”

  “I’ve seen him over in Officers’ Country coming out of the cabin. More than once. I thought he was up for an infraction.”

  She looked thoughtful but shook her head. “He’s never gotten even a reprimand as far as I know.”

  I shrugged. “Dunno. The only people I’ve seen over there on a regular basis are him and Bayless.”

  “Bayless?” Mel asked sharply. “You’re sure it was Bayless? For that matter, are you sure it was Simon?”

  “Well, there aren’t that many people aboard. Unless it was somebody wearing Bayless’s suit, it was him. This is the first time I’ve seen Simon’s nametag, but yeah I’m pretty sure it was him.”

  Her face clouded. “Coming out of the cabin?”

  “Well, not always. Sometimes just in the passageway in Officers’ Country. It struck me as odd because they’re both in engineering. Not like deck crew on the way to the bridge or something.”

  “Thanks for letting me know, Ishmael,” she said.

  She looked angry but not at me.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid so, but I don’t know what and I’m gonna pull rank on you and tell you to shut up about it.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ms. Menas.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wang,” she said with more gratitude than I felt was warranted. “See you at dinner.”

  I considered that all the way back to my stateroom. She was more grateful than she should be, which could only mean it was a bigger deal than I thought it was.

  Terrific.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  DIURNIA SYSTEM

  2358-AUGUST-10

  Dinner was another of those painful episodes with David Burnside being obnoxious, Mel not responding to him, and Fredi hunched over her plate. Burnside’s contribution to the dinner conversation consisted largely of chewing with his mouth open, belching loudly, and calling for Davies to bring more coffee. I wondered what David would have been like had the captain been at the table. My hunch was: not much different.

  I expected him to comment about Apones and Mosler, but either the boys hadn’t reported anything, or he was waiting for a time without witnesses. I smiled inwardly thinking that he’d have a much more difficult time backing me into a bridge wing than he might expect.

  Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…

  Burnside burped once more and slid his dish back from the edge of the table, plowing silver and salvers alike, he stood and without looking at anybody headed for the door.

  “Later, ladies,” he said. “Long watch. I need some sleep.”

  And he was gone.

  Mel sighed. “He’s such a charmer. I can’t understand why he’s not married.”

&nbs
p; She shook her head in wonderment.

  Fredi snickered into her plate, but with Burnside gone, began to resume a more normal posture, as if his leaving took a weight off her back.

  “Any ideas yet, Ishmael?” Mel asked.

  I was in the middle of a sip of coffee, and I finished it before speaking.

  “Yes indeed, but I want to check out some things on watch tonight from the big console on the bridge.”

  She smiled. “That didn’t take long.”

  “All I needed was a little incentive and a kick in the butt, I guess.”

  Fredi looked back and forth, and I could tell she was dying to know what we were talking about, but before she could ask, Penny Davies came in to start cleaning up the wardroom.

  “You sars just sit there and enjoy your coffee if you want. I’ll just get some of these bigger pieces out of the way for you,” she said.

  “You go right ahead, Ms. Davies,” Mel said. “We’re done here and there’s no good reason for us to slow you down.”

  Mel drained her cup, stood, picked up a load of dirty dishes and placed them in the tray while Fredi and I followed suit. I let the senior officers precede me out the door and then started to follow suit.

  I heard a tablet bip and looked down to see if it was mine, but then I realized the sound had come from behind me. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw Ms. Davies reading a message on hers and frowning.

  “Something wrong, Ms. Davies?” I asked.

  She looked up quickly as if surprised that I was still there. “Oh! No, sar, just a little extra duty.”

  I didn’t really like the way she said “extra duty” but I didn’t press it. I just closed the door, leaving her frowning into her tablet.

  When I got back to my stateroom, I stripped down to boxers and tee before crawling into bed. At the last tick I remembered to set my tablet to wake me at 23:00. I had the mid-watch, but I knew I needed sleep before I tackled the job of figuring out how to spy on myself.

  The midnight watch change with Arletta went smoothly. While Juliett relieved Betts, Arletta took me aside.

  “What did Mel say?” she asked.

  “She gave me some good advice, I need to make sure I’m never alone or that I collect some evidence.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I hope to have an answer to that before Burnside relieves me in the morning.”

  Betts stepped back and Juliett stepped up to the console.

  “I have the watch, Ms. Novea. Logged on 2358-August-10, at 23:45 per standing order,” I said.

  “Good luck,” she said.

  When they’d left the bridge Juliett asked, “So, what was it I wasn’t supposed to hear, sar? Mr. Burnside punch you again? Or was it about you facing down Apones and Mosler in the gym?”

  She had a very straight face, but a twinkle in her eye.

  “Why, Ms. Jaxton, I can hardly believe you’d stoop to such gossip mongering!”

  “Why, sar? Is that Ms. D’Heng’s job?” she asked in return.

  The apprentice in question came up the ladder bearing the customary three cups of coffee, “Is what my job, Juliett? What are you sticking me with this time?”

  “Gossip mongering,” Juliett replied.

  “Oh, yes. Actually I monger with the best,” she said with a little giggle and distributed the coffee. “Was there any gossip in particular you need? Or something you require spread around, Juliett?”

  “Apparently Mr. Wang thought I was trying to take your job by commenting on the altercation in the gym yesterday.”

  After long exposure to this pair’s repartee I was used to it. I wondered how much they knew, and how accurate the ship’s rumor net was.

  “Which altercation were you commenting on?” Charlotte asked. “The one between Mr. Wang and the Bumble Brothers? Or the lovers’ spat between Bayless and Simon?”

  Juliett grinned. “Well I was actually talking about the Bumble Brothers, but is there anything new on the triangle?”

  “Nope. Nobody seems to know who the new boy is. They’re keeping it pretty hush-hush. But Bayless and Simon were spitting and clawing in the gym. There’s trouble in paradise, I think.”

  Charlotte looked over her shoulder at me and Juliett followed her glance.

  “What, sar?” Charlotte asked. “You look startled.”

  Juliett added, “Yes, was there some other gossip you were interested in?”

  “What happened with Mr. Apones and Mr. Mosler after they left the gym?” I asked.

  “Mosler convinced Apones that he shouldn’t say anything to Mr. Burnside so they went down to engineering berthing and harassed Ballantine until she kicked Mosler in the jewels and threw him off her bunk.” Belatedly she added, “Sar.”

  “How do you know this?” I asked.

  “Mr. Wang, there are twenty eight people on this ship. At any given point in time, a third of them are trying to sleep, a third of them are working, and the other third is just trying to amuse themselves until we get to port. How in the world can you expect to hide anything?”

  “But who told you? How do you know?” I asked.

  I was familiar with rumor nets, but Charlotte D’Heng was obviously rated spec one in rumors.

  “I would have expected with only twenty-eight on board, it would be easier to slip into corners and hide.”

  “Well, obviously some stuff gets away, sar. But the big things sorta fall out pretty easily. Somebody sees something and tells somebody else, who adds it to what they know and passes it on. At the end of the day, we have a good idea of what happened. The details might be a bit sketchy but we know, for example, that Apones and Mosler attacked you in the gym—or tried to. You did something to stop it and they got out when VanDalon and Cottonwood came in.”

  I sat back in my chair, trying to get a grip on what had just happened. I couldn’t count on this level of surveillance, but my preconceived notions about how much anybody in the crew was aware of were being challenged.

  “What makes you think they attacked me? Or tried to?” I asked after a couple of heartbeats.

  Charlotte gave me a look that was straight out of Pul-Lease 101.

  “Sar? We’re pretty sure you wouldn’t have attacked them,” she said slowly and succinctly. “Ispo Factoid, they must have attacked you.”

  “Ipso facto,” I corrected automatically, while thinking.

  “You sure, sar?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Ipso facto. That’s right, but I think you actually meant prima facie, but never mind the Latin.”

  I took a deep breath and started over. “What makes you think anybody was attacked?”

  Juliett and Charlotte shared a look containing the despair that all crew feel when faced with the absolute denseness of officers.

  D’Heng turned back to me and said, with no small degree of derision, “Sar? It was Apones and Mosler. The three of you were in the gym…alone…without any witnesses. Are we supposed to believe that you played parchesi?”

  This little spitfire was so unexpected, she just tickled me to no end.

  “Do you know what parchesi is, Ms. D’Heng?” I asked.

  “Well, sure!” She was quite positive about it.

  “What is it then?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s a kind of a game that you play on a board…with dice…” her voice petered off a bit and then she finally added, “Okay, so no I don’t.”

  “You’re pretty close. Only thing you’re missing is that it’s a long, boring game where you try to move little pieces around the edges of the board and then be the first one to get all your pieces all the way around and into the middle. A very tedious, frustrating game.”

  “So, it’s a lot like being a spacer, sar?” Juliett said with her tongue so far into her cheek it was in danger of becoming disjointed.

  “Quite, Ms. Jaxton, quite. They assigned it to us at the academy to teach patience, but back to Mr. Apones and Mr. Mosler. Why do you call them the Bumble Brothers?” I asked Charlotte.
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  “Because when they’re together, they’re so busy trying to impress each other, they bumble around and bump into walls. There’s a certain faction of the crew that thinks that when they get together, the sum of their IQs is actually less than each taken separately.”

  “They seemed to be doing a good job of harassing Ulla Nart—” I began.

  “Yes, they’re not exactly friendly puppies, sar,” Juliett said.

  D’Heng added, “They’re stupid animals. Even stupid animals are dangerous. They raped that one girl—Stewart—and they did a number on your predecessor, Ms. Jaffee. We call them the Bumble Brothers, but we don’t take them lightly.”

  “Anything else I should know about them?” I asked.

  The two women traded glances again. Juliett nodded slightly and Charlotte turned back to me.

  “Sometimes they do things for Mr. Burnside,” she said quietly.

  “What kinds of things?” I asked.

  “He calls them his enforcers, and when they get into that enforcer thing, they leave the Bumble Brothers behind and become laser focused, sar.”

  Juliett added, “They stop thinking for themselves and just follow the first mate’s instructions. That’s when they get really dangerous.”

  I thought about what they’d said for a good two ticks, letting it filter through.

  “Thank you, both,” I said. “Let’s get this place cleared away. You two have studying, and I’ve got some tinkering to do.”

  In less than half a stan we’d finished the midwatch clean up and swab down, and the two women pulled out tablets and began studying. I sat down at the systems console and pulled up an overlay of the ship’s intercom and loudspeaker system.

  One of the things that got my attention when talking with Mel was that I couldn’t be sure that my tablet wouldn’t be broken in any scuffle. Therefore, using the tablet was too risky. I needed some other way to record. The tablet had a microphone, but if the device got broken before the really incriminating activities happened, then I’d be out of luck.

  The tablet was also tied to ShipNet and could triangulate its position within the ship. Every place in the ship had an intercom for safety purposes. If I could get the tablet to track me as I moved around and trigger the intercom’s microphone. That might allow me to capture the audio into a file on a system drive, that way I’d have a full-time watch dog listening around me where ever I was.