In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (27 page)

“You know coffee doesn’t wake you up?” Pip said.

“Speak for yourself.”

“No, it just reverses the effects of caffeine withdrawal. If you didn’t drink coffee, you wouldn’t need it in the morning.”

“If I didn’t drink coffee, I wouldn’t need morning,” I said.

“You’re just trying to cheer me up.”

I laughed, just a tiny bit. It’s not that I was hung over. I’d only had a couple of beers when we got back. I just couldn’t wake up.

“So, what do we do today?” I asked.

“Find an engineer?” Pip shrugged. “Gimme a few ticks to wake up and the analgesics to kick in. How much beer did I drink last night?”

I pointed to the bucket of empties with my mug.

He peered at it. “That doesn’t seem like enough.”

“It’s the third bucket.”

His eyes were wide—bloodshot, but wide. “Third bucket? Of empty bottles?”

“All right. Maybe only second.”

“What did you do with the first one?”

“It’s here somewhere. Why? You savin’ the empties or something?”

“There’s a deposit on them.”

“I’m not flying back to Port Newmar for the deposit on empty beer bottles,” I said.

He shrugged. “Probably not.” He took a slug of coffee. “We’re not going anywhere without an engineer.”

“Seems like I’m always missing an engineer. Why didn’t I go into engineering instead of deck?” I said into my cup.

“You could probably get your engineering endorsement,” Pip said.

“I have my steward endorsement already.”

“Yes, but you could fly us over to Dree.”

“It’d take a week or more to get it. More if the steward endorsement was any indication.”

“The auction is in three days. We’d have to arrange for tugs to haul it or at least get it checked out to see if it’s spaceworthy.”

“And you’re still short one engineer. There’s no way I can take and pass an engineering chief exam. We need somebody who knows which end the fire comes out.”

“Fire comes out?” Pip asked.

“Kickers and thrusters, sure.”

He smirked at me and made me laugh at myself. Again.

“Did you post the opening yesterday?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’m waiting to hear back from Chief Michaels. He said he’s got a first who’s ready to move up. He’s got the license. Just need to see if he’s interested in moving.”

“How likely is it?”

“Michaels seemed to think it was at least plausible.”

I heard a bip and Pip pulled out his tablet. “Well, there’s one problem we can cross off.”

“Auction canceled?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Father’s response. ‘Family council approves joint venture. P on board.’”

“P on board?”

“Aunt P wasn’t in favor of the original deal.”

“She didn’t want me as captain?”

“She thought you would have been wasted as simply captain after having owned your own ship.” Pip shrugged. “I don’t think anybody considered that you might want to buy in. I certainly didn’t.”

“Why?”

He looked across the table at me and laughed. “I had a hard enough time believing I could convince you to take the helm of that hell ship. That you might want to sink your own funds into it? The farthest thing from my mind.”

“Really?”

“That and I didn’t realize you had that kind of liquid assets to spend.”

“You did know I’d get a share of the salvage claim and that I’d sold Icarus.”

“Not ten percent of the salvage, and the rumors about Icarus aren’t exactly bankable.”

“Well, the salvage will probably be eaten up by fees and administration before it filters through DST’s hands.”

He shrugged. “We’ll know shortly.”

“Assuming we win the bid.”

“You’ll find out regardless as soon as it settles.”

“Not that soon. It still has to be sent to DST for disbursement.”

“A few days. Maybe a week. You’ll probably get a deposit before we can get the ship to Dree.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“Getting the ship to Dree?”

“Yeah. If we can fly it there, that’s going to save a few million credits.”

“True, but is it safe?”

“The hull is sound. That much is spaceworthy. I’m willing to accept the engineering report at face value for the moment. If we get an engineer in there and he finds any serious discrepancy, we can sue for misrepresentation.”

“Sue who?”

“The engineering firm that filed the report for one. The auction administrators for another.”

“That could take stanyers to clear up.”

“But it won’t.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because they’d settle quickly and quietly. Nobody wants that kind of blot on their record. I bet that auction house sells repossessed ships, brokers trades, does all kinds of business. I’d also bet that report is precisely correct. We should probably find an engineer to go through it looking for things that aren’t mentioned at all. Those would be the ones we’d have a hard time suing over.”

“We’re back to that,” Pip said.

“Yeah.”

“Where do we find an engineer?”

“Feel like a beer?” I asked.

Pip lifted his head up and stared at me, his eyes still bloodshot but looking nearly open. “Isn’t that my line?”

“Yeah, but I needed it.”

“What are you thinking?”

“We only need to borrow an engineer, right?”

“All right. I’ll play along.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we had two or three arguing over what’s in that report?”

Pip sat up straighter. “Why, yes. I believe it would. You can’t get two engineers to agree on anything that’s not backed up by four years of advanced math. Even then it’s touch and go.”

“So, let me ask again. Feel like a beer?”

He poured the last of his coffee down his throat and stood up. “Maybe a small one. Shall we go?”

We made it to The Corner just as the lunch rush peaked. Brian had two helpers behind the bar and four wait staff on the floor. “Maybe we need to come back when it quiets down,” Pip said.

I saw a couple of khaki-clad arms waving over the heads of the crowd and waved back. “Maybe not. Isn’t that your buddy Michaels waving to us?”

“I knew that beer would pay off,” Pip said and led the way to the table.

We settled into a comfortable enclave of senior engineers and a couple of affable mates. The names flew around, but I wouldn’t have remembered them except for their name tags.

“So, what brings you back to The Corner?” Michaels asked Pip.

“I needed some engineering advice and couldn’t think of anywhere else there was good beer.”

“Weren’t you looking to hire an engineer?” he asked.

“Still am, but this is a different thing. My buddy Ishmael and I are looking to buy a ship, but we’ve got an engineering inspection report and I don’t know if I trust it.”

“You want an independent inspection?” one of the other engineers asked. “I know a couple good firms here on station.”

“I’m a cargo master. I’m too cheap to hire another one. I wanna know what’s wrong with the one I got.”

The line got another round of good-natured laughter.

Michaels and three other engineers pulled out tablets. “Beam it and we’ll look at it,” Michaels said. “You buy the beer.”

“Deal.” Pip stood up and flagged down the nearest wait staff to bring a couple of pitchers and some more glasses. He then pulled out his tablet, isolated the inspection report from the rest of the documentation, and beamed it to each of the waiting engineers. By the time he’d finished, the beer had arrived and the discussion kicked in almost immediately.

“Unwin Barbell. Is it on station?” one asked.

“We’re told it’s in a docking orbit somewhere,” Pip said.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” Michaels asked, scrolling through the report on his screen.

“Anything missing,” Pip said. “We figure what’s there is probably accurate enough to stand up in court, but what’s missing could be a problem.”

Shortly thereafter the conversation around the table petered out as those with tablets shared with the others, everybody busy reading.

I poured a beer and sat back to gauge the response.

“Nothing on tankage,” one of them said.

“No spine X-rays?” somebody said. “If there’s a structural lapse, it’ll be where the spine joins either the fore or aft nacelle.”

“Hours on these fusactors seem awful high for the age of the ship.”

“Yeah, and look at that maintenance log. Those generators are due for replacement, not just a realignment.”

“Well, you can’t just look at hours—” The argument took off from there.

By 1400 the lunch crowd had emptied out and the engineering staff had returned to whatever duty they had been neglecting over beers. Chief Michaels lingered, scrolling up and down in the report for a while. I’d listened to it all but didn’t take in many of the details. I just listened to see whether there were any points they agreed on.

Chief Michaels turned to me. “So, Captain. You haven’t said much.”

“In here I’m just Ishmael, Chief. I’m just the driver on this bus.”

“You’re going to helm this beast that Pip here is buying?”

“We’re actually buying it together,” Pip said.

“Well, I figured that much.” Michaels looked at my face instead of my collar. “Ishmael. You’re that guy that made a mint selling your company to DST, aren’t you? Ishmael Wang?”

“Yeah. That’s me.”

Michaels laughed. “That was a shrewd move.” He raised his glass in a toast to me. “But why d’ya want to go back out? I’d have figured that deal would have set you up for life.”

“It did. I can do pretty much anything I want. I want to sail.” I shrugged. “Pip and I met on my first ship. We’ve always worked well together, so why not?”

“Good answer,” Michaels said. He cast a look around the room, just a casual glance before leaning in over his beer and speaking into the nearly empty glass. “So you two are going to bid on the
Chernyakova
?”

“Was it that obvious?” Pip asked.

Michaels shrugged. “Not so much. There’s lots of Barbells around. Couple even for sale if you know where to look. Seemed the logical choice with the auction coming up in a couple of days.”

I nodded. “The inspection report is all they’ll give us. We’re just doing a bit of due diligence to do what we can to protect our shareholders.”

“Smart. I wouldn’t have thought of it, but I’m just an old engineer.” He grinned at us.

“I didn’t hear anything that might be seriously wrong other than potential for some weakness in the spine,” I said.

“Barbells. That’s always the risk. Really? It’s not that serious; I probably wouldn’t have bothered with X-rays either. The strain is negligible as long as you’ve got a can on there. Anybody who gets underway without one probably won’t dock again in one piece.” He shrugged. “I’d be more concerned with flushing the potable water. It’s been sitting for a while, it’s going to be stale as week-old toast and any contaminants will have had a chance to seep into the system.”

“So, it would probably be safe enough to hop it over to Dree for refitting?” Pip asked.

Michaels’s gaze focused somewhere in the distance for a moment or two before he nodded. “I’d think so. I’d give her a good cleanout and stock up a bit on spares, but one jump with very little strain? Sure. I’d fly it.”

Pip stuck out his hand. “Thanks, Steve. That’s what we needed to know.”

Michaels shook and nodded. “Thanks for all the beer. Good luck with the auction.”

We left him at the table and headed back to the ship. I had a lot to think about before we hit the auction floor.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
Breakall Orbital:
2374, August 8

The day of the auction, we got up early and scuffed around the galley. Breakfast mess turned into a desultory affair of eggs, Pip’s latest trial with Frank’s Finest, and what seemed like enough bacon to feed the crew of the
Lois
.

It wasn’t like I’d slept well the night before at any rate. Something about spending nearly two hundred million credits made me a bit anxious, even more anxious than when I started Icarus. Maybe it wasn’t just the credits. For two days I’d been mulling over what Pip had told me. Going through with the auction meant starting down a road that might cost me everything. It also meant I might find some closure on Greta’s death.

I couldn’t quite come to grips with the idea that I might succeed where the entire might and influence of the Trade Investigation Commission had failed. The concept felt oddly foreign and totally logical at the same time. Pip and I would—theoretically, at least—be able to get out into the Darkside in a way that the overt TIC forces couldn’t. Assuming we didn’t die first. Yet, it still didn’t feel quite right, quite real.

In spite of that, the longer I pondered the situation, the more attractive it felt.

That alone should have been enough to warn me.

“How much is our limit?” Pip asked over the shattered remains of breakfast.

“We’ve got two hundred million in escrow.”

Pip nodded. “We can’t use all that. We’ll be short on the refit.”

“There’s still sixty million in our reserves.”

“Yeah, but we’ll need to pay taxes and fees. There’ll be registration fees and then there’s the cost of stores and spares.”