Debts of My Fathers (Father Chessman Saga Book 2)

by Dan Thompson

  Michael set the book down on his lap, open to that page. This Peter was very different from the one he had seen before. He was scared but with good reason. He had some inkling of what he was up against, and he wanted to protect his crew. His instinct had been to run, not for his own sake, but for the people under his command, for his wife.

  For his son.

  It had been a good instinct, ultimately proven by the destruction of the Kaiser’s Folly. And here was Michael not quite twenty years later, heading off in pursuit of those same treasonous privateers. But Michael had not given a single thought to the safety of his crew. He did not like to admit that, but he knew it was true. Was he making the wrong decision?

  He looked back at the words on the page, at the handwritten letters, stroked out by some archaic pen. That’s when it hit him. This was not merely a computer display or a disembodied recording of a voice long since gone. Peter had held this very same book in his own hands and poured his own worries out onto these pages.

  Michael stretched his hand out over the page.

  “Shit.”

  He shook his head and closed the book. That had been enough for one night.

  But he did not put it back into the crate. He turned out his light and curled up in Malcolm’s double bed, one hand reaching out to hold Peter’s journal.

  Commander Samuel Collins stepped into a private room of the officer’s lounge. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

  Admiral Reese Powell sat in a chair by the window, looking out at the shipyards stretching along the curve on the far side of the station. The table next to him held a bottle of Callistan scotch and two glasses, one half-filled. “Have a seat,” he said.

  Collins closed the door behind him and took his seat. The admiral filled the second glass. “Thank you, sir.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Fletcher.”

  Collins resisted the urge to glance about. He knew they were alone, but still. “Pardon me, sir, but is this the best place?”

  The admiral shrugged. “I had the place swept before I came in.”

  “I understand.”

  The admiral took a sip of his scotch and motioned for Collins to do likewise. Technically he was still on duty for another hour, but Collins complied.

  “So, how is your boy doing?”

  “I caught a report the other day. He got his captain’s license. Perfect marks.”

  The admiral grunted. “And the ship?”

  “It has been removed from secure storage, but I have not heard any further movement.”

  “You think he’ll come here?”

  Collins nodded. “He seemed interested in carrying on Malcolm’s work for us.”

  The admiral took another drink.

  “Are you having second thoughts, sir?”

  “We lost your Mr. Bishop.”

  “Yes, sir. I heard he skipped bail. I had tried to testify against him at the bail hearing, but I was dirtside when I got the notice a mere hour before the hearing. I tried to get someone from JAG to request a stay, but it was Friday afternoon.”

  The admiral nodded. “No doubt it was planned that way. I suspect your trip down to San Severus was also arranged.”

  Collins frowned. He did not like to think he had been played, but he had been called down to deal with the most banal of administrative trivia, an audit of his expense reports from two years back. “He had help?”

  “Most certainly. The bondsman who posted the bail was a carefully constructed front. I had Johannsen try to trace Bishop through the records, but he found no connection.”

  Collins took a real swig of his scotch. He needed no instruction this time. “Any ideas where he is now?”

  “I put Johannsen on a records trace. He thinks either Latera via Folsom or a straight run to Tsaigo. My money is on Tsaigo.”

  Collins nodded. “Mine as well. Latera is a good place to get lost, but a man like Bishop will have more friends on Tsaigo. You know I’ve always urged a greater fleet presence there.”

  “That’s an argument for another time. The question is, what is he going to do next?”

  “You think he’ll go after young Fletcher?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Should we pull him in?”

  “Perhaps.” The admiral finished off his scotch and poured another. “But the boy acquitted himself fairly well on his own last time, and I would be interested to see how he handles himself with a ship of his own. If he can hire on a crew and get here, I say we pull him into the program proper.”

  “You want to leave him out there on his own as bait for Bishop?”

  “Not entirely.” He took a fresh sip. “I want you to go after Bishop.”

  Collins frowned. “If he’s gone to Tsaigo, he’s as good as vanished.”

  “Possibly, but there is something to be learned from how he vanished and who helped him do it.”

  “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that, sir. If Bishop is out for the boy, or if Elsa Watkins is behind any of this ... With due respect, Admiral, I think we need to pull the boy in.”

  “You’re a hunter, Collins, not a nursemaid. Go hunt. I’ve got someone else keeping an eye on the boy.”

  “Not Johannsen, I hope.”

  The admiral chuckled. “No. I’m not that much of a bastard.” He held up his drink and stared at it. “At least not today.”

  Vivian’s stomach started rumbling. The clock read four-thirty. She punched the bridge button on the intercom. “Is it too early for dinner, Mr. Mosley?”

  “Not at all, but I’m in the middle of something interesting right now. Can you bring it up to me?”

  “So interesting that I shouldn’t leave my station?”

  “Oh, sorry, not that kind of interesting. The winds look steady, and the charts are clear for the next sixty light-days.”

  Vivian slaved her station to her tablet just in case and headed forward past the deserted environmental station to the stairs leading up to the main deck. She went up three steps and paused. Her last ship had a lift between the decks, and she had grown reliant on it. She had already had the cartilage in right knee replaced eighteen years before, but it might be time to do it again. She took a deep breath and forced herself up the remaining steps.

  There was no one else awake at this hour, so most of the ship was dark. The galley lights came on as she entered, and she went back to dig through the refrigerator. She found a small tray of casserole in the usual spot. She pulled off Winner’s handwritten directions and slid it into the flash heater.

  “Two minutes at 30 percent, let stand for five minutes, two minutes at 50 percent, let stand for five minutes, uncover and heat for thirty seconds at full power.”

  Vivian sighed. She had managed most of her career without ever pulling galley duty, and this was one of the reasons why. She was hungry now and was in no mood for two minutes of this, five minutes of that. Flash heaters are built to be fast, so fast it would be. She did some quick math and figured it would all work out to about two minutes at full power. It came out looking a little burned on top, so she stirred that in with a fork. It was casserole after all. She cleaned the fork with her mouth, but the dish tasted cold. She shoved it back in and gave it another minute at full power. The top had gotten crispy again, so she stirred it in again. She dished it onto two plates and carried them up to the bridge.

  Richard was sitting at the left-hand pilot’s station. Vivian handed him the plate. “What’s so interesting?”

  “Mr. Rodriguez found a fascinating analysis package in the navigation system. It’s like it’s back-tracing some of the wind to tell when and where it crossed other sails. I’ve never seen anything of the kind.”

  Vivian shrugged. She only cared about the wind when it was crossing her own sails. Both of them bit into their dinners at the same time. Vivian shifted it around in her mouth. The crunchier parts were kind of sharp.

  Richard picked up another forkful and examined it at a distance. “What, exactly, is this supposed to be?”
>
  “I don’t know, sir, but between you and me, I don’t think that girl can cook.”

  Michael woke early the next morning. He took a shower and shaved for the first time in days. The itching on his neck had pretty much settled the issue. If he was going to grow a beard, it would be limited to the goatee Carlos had suggested. He paused when he had shaved it down to just that and looked in the mirror. The moustache was showing a hint of Peter’s, so that looked like would definitely come in strong, and the chin was looking respectable as well. He made another few swipes at the sides, trying to frame it up right, and then washed his face again to get rid of the loose whiskers. It was not all that great, but now that he had shaved away the rest, the contrast between the dark brown whiskers and his skin was sharp and distinct.

  With a nod, he dressed and headed out to tour the ship. He arrived on the bridge a little after six, only to see Richard sitting at the pilot’s console. “Practicing your flight skills?”

  Richard jerked himself upright. “Oh, no sir, I was checking out these extra navigation modes. You know, the sail profiles and all that.”

  Michael blinked twice. Had he left himself logged in at the pilot station all night? “Sail profiles?”

  “Yeah, Carlos showed me last night at the shift change. It’s pretty cool stuff, but what I don’t understand is that it’s only on the pilot’s console, not the navigation console. You said this was your dad’s ship. Did he fly with some kind of dual-navigator system?”

  “Oh, that …” Michael said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. What else had been available through that login? Surely some of it was restricted to the terminal in the captain’s office, right? He flashed on the ruse they had used on him back on board the Blue Jaguar. “Yeah, it showed up in a software upgrade a long time ago. Never worked worth a damn, so Dad turned it off.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah,” he continued. “Annoying as hell, always popping up with these things called wake detections or the like. I suppose when I added all the new crew accounts I must have accidentally reactivated the thing. I’ll see what I can do to shut it down again.”

  Richard looked at him for a moment and then shrugged. “Whatever you say, sir. I suppose I found it more curious than annoying.”

  Michael did his best to put on a smile. “Wait until you’ve had it throwing false alarms in your face for six months and tell me how you feel then.”

  “If you say so, sir. Anything else?”

  Michael shook his head. “Just walking the ship before breakfast,” he said and headed aft to his office. He logged in and checked his account log. He had indeed left himself logged in on the pilot’s station, and for the life of him, he could not remember what had made him do that. It had never mattered before when he was merely a junior member of the crew, but now he would have to be more careful. From the terminal in his office, he simply logged himself out from the pilot station.

  He considered locking those extra navigation modes to be accessible only from his office terminal, but a scent caught his nose. It was coming from the galley, and while it smelled strongly of Winner’s omelets in progress, he would swear he also smelled shrimp. He stood to investigate. Malcolm had once complained that a good cook will add ten kilos, but at Michael’s age, he could use them.

  And one thing was certain, Winner was a good cook.

  Chapter 10

  “Ironically, the hardest command lesson I learned was when to let go of control. Sure, you’re the captain and everything, but sometimes it’s best not to issue orders at all.” – Peter Schneider

  THEY REACHED RAPOEN two days later. Carlos and Dieter handled the down-tach flawlessly, and traffic control cleared them for a two-orbit descent. Again, Michael was manning the pilot’s console, and this time he was a bit more nervous than during their departure at Taschin. Landings were more delicate than takeoffs, and while he had already landed the Sophie four times, he had always done so with Malcolm behind him ready to step in.

  Today he was doing it solo.

  There was not that much to worry about, he reminded himself. Modern landings were almost entirely computer controlled, and they were far less dangerous than they had been in ancient days. Most of the landing was a powered descent with the gravity pulse drive negating the bulk of their orbital velocity, but as the planet’s gravity pulled them down into the atmosphere, aerodynamics started to matter. At seventy-five kilometers, Michael turned the nose back toward the horizon, and the Sophie flew the rest of the distance as a lifting body.

  The final landing was much more hands-on, but it was almost a reverse of Taschin. He nosed the ship down into the landing zone, letting the port’s gravity plates catch them, and then he dropped the gear and eased it onto the landing strip as Rapoen’s natural gravity came back to full strength further down the lane. It was not nearly as tricky as the unassisted landings in the Sophie’s little flyer, but then again, the little flyer did not displace twenty-one thousand tons.

  They rolled to the end of the landing strip and taxied down three subsequent lanes to their landing berth. He turned away from the station to see that Richard had joined them on the bridge. “Mr. Mosley,” he said, “pass the word. Disembark the passengers and ready the cargo bays. With luck, liberty can begin in three hours.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Michael went aft to his cabin and changed to a pair of good groundside boots, collected the paperwork he had prepared the night before, and went down to the portside airlock. He equalized the pressure in stages and popped it open. Rapoen’s atmosphere was a little over 1100 millibars, so his ears popped as the pressure equalized. The oxygen percentage was lower, but it was still more oxygen at partial pressure than standard. He stepped through and lowered the ramp. Hot, damp air came up at him from the concrete pad, and he stepped down.

  And found no one.

  He shook his head. He had not truly been expecting anyone, but it was the end of his first leg as captain, and at some level he had thought it would be more momentous. He took a quick glance at the Sophie’s undercarriage and satisfied himself that she had come through his landing in good shape. He jogged back toward the cargo lanes and waved his document packet at a passing crate hauler.

  “Port master?” the driver called out.

  He nodded and climbed aboard. This part was familiar. It was the kind of job Malcolm had regularly delegated to the ship’s unofficial runner, and in the Sophie’s case, that had almost always meant Michael. He had pulled runner duty twice on the Heinrich, including one marathon session at Arvin. As captain, he could have easily assigned this to one of his own crew, but he wanted the pleasure of handing it over himself.

  The hauler dropped him off in front of the port administration building. He jogged up to the entrance, but made his way through the revolving doors with more restraint. He was a captain, after all. He crossed the lobby to the runners’ window, waited in line for a minute, and held up his packet for the clerk to see.

  “What ship?”

  “Sophie’s Grace,” he replied, “but if you don’t mind, I’d like to give this to the port master directly.”

  The clerk looked up and shook his head. “Look, kid, we don’t …” he stopped with his mouth open. “My apologies, Captain. If you’ll step over to that door, I’ll buzz you in.”

  Michael went through the door and followed the clerk back through the offices to a side door labeled “Brent Reynolds, Port Master.”

  The clerk ducked his head into the open door. “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a captain here to see you.”

  He heard some grumbles from the other side, including the phrase “fucking shit owns the place,” but when the door swung wide, Brent Reynolds’s face lit up. “Michael Fletcher? My God, I barely recognized you.”

  Michael smiled and ran a hand over the stubble on his chin. “Yeah, I’m trying it out.”

  Reynolds laughed. “It shows promise. Hell, kid, how long has it been since you came through here? A year? Two?
”

  “Something like that, maybe eighteen months.”

  Reynolds’s smile faded. “Yeah, I heard about your dad. Sorry.”

  “Thanks. He always spoke well of you.”

  “Then your dad was a fucking liar,” he said, the smile coming back. “So, what are you doing here?”

  Michael handed over the document packet. “I have cargo that needs an unloading team and a sign-off from customs.”

  Reynolds took the packet and scanned the front page. “Well, I’ll be damned. You got little Sophie up and running…” he paused to look back to Michael. “And as captain to boot. Malcolm used to brag that … well, shit, you actually did it.”

  Michael beamed with poorly suppressed pride. “I did at that. I hired a crew at Taschin and made you my first stop.”

  “You don’t say. Well, well, Captain Fletcher, where are you berthed?”

  “L-17.”

  Reynolds looked out over the cluster of desks. “Johnny,” he called, waving the packet over his head, “we’re putting this one at the front of the line. Get a loading crew and three haulers out to L-17, and tell Bill over at customs to get his ass out there pronto.”

  One of the men looked up, pulling his headset away from his ear. “But boss, Captain Nellis of the Castanet said…”

  “Oh, fuck that little snot, Johnny. This one takes priority. We’re busting his cherry, my boys. It’s his first cargo.”

  Johnny’s brow furrowed. “Is that a tradition or something?”

  Reynolds chuckled. “If it isn’t, it damn well ought to be.” He turned back to Michael. “Let’s get my truck, Captain Fletcher. I want to see this for myself.”

  Michael grinned. This was momentous enough.

  When the Sophie’s cargo and passengers had been emptied out, Michael declared liberty of three days, but asked Winner to come back twelve hours early to coordinate with cargo load and to restock the galley.