by Dan Thompson
Table of Contents
Cover
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Dedication
AUTHOR'S NOTES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Debts of My Fathers
Dan Thompson
Chapter 1
“Shit breaks, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. All you can do then is pick up the pieces and try to put it back together, but don’t kid yourself. Sometimes there’s not enough glue in the universe.” – Malcolm Fletcher
“IF YOU’RE HEARING THIS,” his father said, “it’s because I’m dead. Sorry about that.”
Michael sat at the systems console on the bridge of the Sophie’s Grace, alone with the voice of his dead father Malcolm. Of course, he also had a dead father Peter, but he had not known about that until after Malcolm’s death.
“I’m triggering this for when you turn 18, which is still a few years off. My plan is to tell you all this in person before then, but if something happens to me, I want a failsafe. It’s grim even thinking about this, but given that you’ve already lost your mother and … well shit, there’s no easy way to say this. I’m not your father.”
Michael shook his head slowly. It had been so hard to accept when he learned the truth before. Coming out in Malcolm’s deadpan statement, there was no question about it. “I know, Dad.” He had felt betrayed when he had first learned the truth, but now it was comforting to hear Malcolm’s voice admit it.
“Now, I’ve loved you, Michael, like any father would, and I loved your mother too. We were close, but ...” the voice trailed off in a sigh. “I wasn’t good marriage material back then, and I suppose I’m not much better now. Sophia found a good man and married him. His name was Peter Schneider. You may have my foul mouth, but you’ve got his genes, and I guess that makes him your father.”
Michael paused the recording and paced around the bridge. He was the only one on board. In fact, he was the sole remaining crew member, since the Sophie had been grounded most of the last year since Malcolm’s death. He glanced over a few system displays, but everything on the Sophie was cold. Even the batteries were at half-strength, charging up from portside power. This had been Malcolm’s ship—his father’s ship. Now it belonged to him.
He resumed the playback.
“I would tell you to look him up, but he and your mother died in the war. I got there too late, and it was a mess, but I promised her I would raise you, so that’s what I’ve been doing.” The voice was replaced by a soft chuckle, one he knew so well. “Except if you’re hearing this, I must have fallen down somewhere along the way. I’ve made a number of enemies over the years, and I’d like to think I’ll go down fighting, but with my luck I bet I slip in the shower and crack my skull open.”
Michael gave a soft laugh as well. It had been an accident loading cargo, tragic and avoidable, but hearing Malcolm laugh about it made it a little better.
“The question for you is what do you do now? Sophie is a good ship, but if I were you, I’d put in a call to Peter’s brother, Hans. He’s high up in Schneider & Williams shipping, and I’m sure he’d love to give you a nice safe job. He used to be a bit of an ass, but I’d bet he’s mellowed with age.”
Michael snorted at that. He had met his uncle Hans and spent a few months on his ship. If that was mellow, he would have hated to see the original. His cousin Gabrielle had been a lot better.
“If that works out for you, don’t put the Sophie up for sale on the open market. Put in a call to Sam Collins, Naval Intelligence. Right now he’s a lieutenant commander stationed at Arvin, but who knows what will change in the next few years. The Sophie is special, a little something left over from the privateer program in the war. It’s in my name, but the only reason I have it is that I’ve been doing some investigations on the side for them.”
Michael knew all about those investigations. Malcolm had spent years tracking down the pirates who had killed his parents. Four of them were quite possibly still at large.
“Anyway, they’ll want the ship back. They’ll especially want my chess files. It’s a long story, but if you do any housecleaning, leave those alone.”
Michael sat upright in his chair. Those chess files very likely had nothing to do with games or strategy. Malcolm had been tracking Father Chessman of the Yoshido Syndicate, and Michael had a hunch that Chessman had been party to his parents’ death.
“I don’t know what else to say, Michael. I know I’ve been hard on you, and it’s been a rough life compared to what Peter would have given you, but I’m doing the best I know how. I love you. I don’t say that enough, but it’s true. Live a good life, kid, and I’m sorry I never got to tell you face to face.”
The recording ended, and Michael filed it away in the archive. He had already met with the now Commander Collins, and he had already turned down his uncle’s job offer. Instead, he had only two goals: get Sophie up and running again, and finish what Malcolm had started.
Elsa Watkins sat with a hood over her head, bound to the chair. This was not the rescue she had been hoping for. After her escape from Arvin station, she had waited three days in a cramped cargo loader. She had been on her fourth and final oxygen tank by the time another Yoshido Syndicate ship arrived. By then, her own Blue Jaguar was in Navy hands. Her crew was in custody. Her cargo had been confiscated. Worst of all, Malcolm’s little brat was ratting her out to the Navy, her false identity of the last sixteen years in tatters.
She had expected a warm welcome from the captain of the Gray Tusk. She had the codes to prove her identity as the Winged Lady, and that alone should have been enough to grant her temporary command if she had wanted it. Instead, it had gotten her thrown into the Tusk’s brig, gassed to sleep, transported in the dark for at least a week, possibly as many as three, and ultimately delivered like a sack of laundry into this very chair.
A door opened.
She heard footsteps. They were slow and deliberate.
She tried to move the chair. It moved a little, and that was enough to tell her she was on a station and not a ship, but she also heard the rattle of a chain pulling tight. She was not going anywhere.
The footsteps stopped.
She lifted her head to face whoever it was, but the hood remained as opaque as ever.
“You are Elsa Watkins, also known as Jana Lewis publicly and the Winged Lady privately.” The voice was male, but there was something artificial about it, as if it was masked behind some digital alteration.
She shook her head but there was no point in denying the facts. “Very few people know that.”
Her inquisitor chuckled. Even with the alteration, there was something familiar about that laugh, but that was a worry for later. “Unfortunately, that once selective club has grown quite large. Its ranks now include such undesirables as station security and naval in
telligence. I even hear that a little boy found you out.”
She kept her curses to herself. “Yeah, the son of an old troublemaker, but he’s no little boy. I made the mistake of underestimating him, and I got burned. At least I didn’t get caught.”
The steps resumed, circling her like a wary predator. “Yes, you were fortunate enough to have a ready escape plan for yourself. A cargo loader hidden in one of the containers, I gather. Clever. It’s a pity that your preparations did not extend to your ship, your crew, or my cargo.”
What the hell? “What do you mean, your cargo?”
“Exactly what I said: my cargo.”
The shock on her face was hidden by the hood, but it was clear in her voice. “Father Chessman?”
“The same.”
She shook her head firmly. “Bullshit. Chessman never does face-to-face meetings.”
The footsteps stopped in front of her. “True, but this is more of a face-to-gun-barrel meeting.” The next thing she heard was the distinctive click and hum of a force pistol going hot.
She sagged forward. “So, that’s it then? You’re going to splatter me against the wall? I never figured you to be one for personal revenge.”
Again, that familiar chuckle. “Revenge, no. As much as I might enjoy peeling away your skin and force-feeding it to you, I don’t mix business with pleasure. This is simple housecleaning.”
She nodded, but even then it did not add up. If it was a simple business execution, why the hood? Father Chessman did not have a reputation for squeamishness. Or maybe it meant she had a chance of walking out without being able to identify him afterwards.
She sat up straight. “You haven’t decided yet.”
The footsteps resumed their circling. “Indeed, Miss Watkins, I have not. Good thinking, and I will grant that as a point in your favor. Your supposed death back on Cenita was very well done. I wasn’t sure of your true identity until I had the grave scanned a few years back.”
She nodded. “I had planned on putting a body in it, but the body I’d reserved fell through.”
“But bodies are easy to come by, Miss Watkins. Take Warrant Officer Simpson in naval ordnance. He was one of my more sensitive contacts and was compromised in this most recent debacle of yours. I didn’t want him talking to any investigators of course, and this way his sister gets the insurance. Still, I believe that counts as a point against you.”
“What was so special about that cargo anyway?”
“Tut-tut, Miss Watkins. Asking about things you don’t need to know might cost you another point. Suffice it to say it was something new and interesting. The items would have served nicely in some of our heavier ships, and there are quite a few neighboring governments that would have paid handsomely for a peek.”
The footsteps stopped to her right. Ice dropped into a glass. Liquid was poured.
“But that is immaterial to my decision today. You have been valuable in the past, Miss Watkins. I need to decide if you continue to be valuable. If I decide to leave you in one piece, what would you do?”
“For you?”
“For me, for yourself, whomever.”
She thought about it. Jana Lewis was burned, and Elsa Watkins was once again a person of interest. “The first thing I’d do is switch to one of my backup identities.”
“I see. You have one prepared.”
“Yes, three of them.”
“Here?”
“Yes, here.”
“But you don’t know where here is.”
It was her turn to chuckle. “If we’re on a station anywhere in or near the Confederacy, I have a secure locker tucked away with safe identification, cash, and everything I need to alter my appearance.”
The footsteps resumed. “Very well then, a point in your favor. But what next?”
“I would find the local Yoshido contact and ask for a ship.”
“You would ask for a ship rather than forgiveness?”
She smiled. “I figure if I walk out of here, I already have your forgiveness. I have business to attend to. For that I need a ship, and I need people.”
“Quite bold, Miss Watkins. Another point in your favor. And what would this business be?”
“I would go after that little boy.”
“Revenge?”
“No,” she replied, smiling. “Housecleaning. Have you ever heard the name Malcolm Fletcher?”
The footsteps stopped. “Yes. I was told he died last year.”
“This little boy is his son, and in addition to Malcolm’s ability to cause us pain, he has inherited Malcolm’s ship and all his files. Malcolm did quite a bit of investigation into our little syndicate. Personally, I’d like to see that tidied up.”
“Interesting.” The footsteps resumed. “Do you have a plan?”
For three days in a freezing cargo loader, she had thought of little else. “Hell yes, I’ve got a plan.”
The chess files were encrypted. More than that, Michael realized, they were virtually invisible. The computer on the Sophie’s Grace showed a dozen innocuous files there, mostly strategy articles on chess and a single saved game. It also listed one hidden system file. It was zero length, had no name, and none of the system tools showed anything more illuminating.
He scanned through some of the articles, but apart from losing a few games to Malcolm, he had no real experience with the game. Talk of castles, pawn gambits, and queen position meant very little to him. There had to be something there, but he could not find it.
The silence of the ship pressed in on him. There was no reason for it not to be, but in his lifetime, such a condition was rare. He heaved himself up headed aft down the portside corridor to his old quarters. He had not bothered to move out yet. The terminal was still in entertainment mode from the previous night, so he launched another vid and headed back towards the bridge. By the time he sat down at the systems console again, the sound from the vid was too quiet to make out details, but at least the ship no longer felt empty.
The chess files offered up no more help than they had before. Michael shook his head. Surely, Malcolm must have left him some key. He had to have wanted him to carry on, right? More in desperation than anything else, he considered the saved chess game. It was dated ten years earlier, right about the time they moved onto the Sophie. That made some sense. Malcolm had an actual chess set, carved pieces resting on a magnetic board, perfect for shipboard life. He had made a long habit of playing games against himself, but in all those years, Michael had never seen him play against the computer.
So why was there a saved game in the first place?
He opened the file and launched the game. The players were listed as Malcolm and Chessman. Michael smiled. Chessman, indeed. Strangely though, Malcolm controlled the black pieces, while Chessman was white. Malcolm had been enough of a scofflaw that Michael could see him wanting to be the black hat of the game, but he had a hard time envisioning Father Chessman as the white knight.
The game was far along, with fallen pieces gathered up as icons along the side. White was down to four pieces: the king, the queen, a bishop and a knight. Malcolm’s black was equally sparse, the king and rook huddled in the corner while a bishop and knight were out in board.
Michael did not know much, but he could see that Malcolm’s knight was at risk of being taken out by the bishop, so he attempted to move it, but the computer would not allow it. Instead, a warning popped up. “Game is protected. Enter passphrase to continue.”
Malcolm had forwarded the basic ship access keys along with his death apology, but he had not mentioned any special pass codes for the chess files. Presumably the folks at Naval Intelligence would have known how to extract it, but Michael had no idea.
Still, he knew Malcolm, and he knew how Malcolm had felt about the pirates who had killed his mother. He reached out to the keyboard and typed it in. “Never let them get away with it.” A friendly chime responded to let him know the passphrase was accepted, but then the game promptly disappeared.
&
nbsp; He checked the chess files again and found that the enigmatic hidden file had been replaced by a vast directory tree. He opened it up wide on the screen. There were hundreds of directories, databases, cross-links, and more structure than he could take in at that moment. But at the root was a single file titled Michael. He opened it.
“If you’ve made it this far, my boy, then I’m betting you ignored my advice to look up your uncle Hans. To tell you the truth, I’m not that surprised. You’ve always been too headstrong for your own good. Anyway, the summary files are usually only a few weeks old, and the databases have some notes on analysis as well as some saved query forms. You might not be smart enough to pass this up, but you’re probably smart enough to figure out what I was doing.
“The only other thing I’ll tell you is that revenge is not all I thought it would be. Maybe it’s because I’m not finished, but it still hasn’t filled the hole your mother left behind. Don’t go after this thinking it will make you whole. It won’t. The most it ever did for me was to keep me occupied.”
Michael started to open the summaries but stopped. He was not reconsidering. After all, this was no longer about revenge. With Elsa Watkins out there on the loose somewhere, this was about survival.
But before he could go hunting for anyone, Michael had to get the Sophie running again. That meant he needed a crew, and he was not even a captain yet.
Chapter 2
“Licenses and certifications are important, but in the end, they’re only scraps of paper.” – Peter Schneider.
MICHAEL FIDGETED IN HIS SEAT as the test proctor graded his exam. The further she went, the deeper her frown became. He could not figure out what he had done wrong. Certainly, navigation was his worst area, and he knew he had made a few guesses in distinguishing tachyon eddies from shock fronts, but the last time he had taken one of these exams he had almost passed. That was before long sessions studying with his cousin Gabrielle and reviewing navigation logs on the ill-fated Blue Jaguar. Surely he had picked up enough tricks to pass now.
When she finally reached the bottom and tallied the score, she looked up at Michael and shook her head. “I hate it when this happens.”