In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (34 page)

“If none of that matters, what does?” she asked.

“Alys Giggone once said she’d fly with you to the gates of Hell because she knew you’d get her home.”

“Alys said that?”

I nodded.

Al swept her tongue around inside her mouth as if tasting for words that she didn’t quite recognize. Her eyes looked a little bright. “How’s she doing at the academy?”

“I wasn’t back there very long, but she seemed to be doing well. She’s on our board of directors.”

“She always had the gift,” Al said.

I glanced at Pip.

He nodded.

“Before you accept, I should fill you in a bit on where we’re going,” I said.

A grin seeped from the corners of her mouth and crinkled the corners of her eyes. She might have had a few more wrinkles there since the last time I’d seen her but I was looking more at the humor in her dark brown gaze. “Oh, I know where you’re going, skipper. You’re going to the Darkside and I’d guess it’s to look for that hunk of hull plate that killed Greta Gerheart.”

“And you’re good with that?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I’m fine with that.”

I rose to refill my coffee cup. “Well, then. We should probably get down to making some crew selections and then find some dinner.”

“Wait, wait,” the chief said. “What happened with Alicia?”

“Half a stan later, she’s got him by the tongue and dragging him out of the bar,” Al said.

“Allie?” the chief said.

Al grinned and nodded. “Allie.”

The chief gave me a long stare.

“I sent Alys my recommendation to the academy the next day,” Al said. “I figured she’d use it one day, and here he is. All cleaned up with stars on his collar and a ship under his feet.”

“If we’re through?” I asked.

“Not quite,” the chief said. “Boy toy?”

Pip leaned forward. “Oh, that’s what Bev used to call him. Her boy toy. See—”

“Can we save this for another time? We’ve got ship’s business to deal with.” I gave Pip my best captain’s glare, for all the good it did.

He grinned. “I’ll tell you later, Chief.”

“So, how many did we see, Pip?”

“Sixty-seven, not counting Al.”

Even the chief’s eyes widened at that number.

“I didn’t think we had that many here this morning,” I said.

“We didn’t. I had thirty-odd from the morning list. Word apparently spread.”

“For a one-way, one-shot ride to Dree,” I said and looked at the chief.

She shrugged in an “I told you so” way.

We winnowed the lists down relatively quickly. Having that many applicants across a wide variety of ratings meant we had our pick in terms of what we needed. We white-listed the steward, Rachel Adams, and offered her the messman slot. Two messmen and a second would be enough. That left twenty-one berths between engineering and deck. I picked six and we identified twelve for the chief. I wanted round-the-clock watches on engineering main and environmental. I still felt a little gun shy because of the ship’s history, even if a more logical part of my brain chided me about the probabilities. I claimed the last three slots for deck—one spec three bosun, and two able spacers—to be the day-worker cleaning crew. I could move off-duty watch standers to augment them in order to get the inside of the ship cleaned up. I suspected that, having seen and smelled the ship, even the watch standers would be willing to help out.

It took a little over a stan to sort out the rosters. By the time we were done, I was ready for food and the coffee had gone cold.

I turned to Pip. “If you could notify those we’ve hired? Have them report at 0800 day after tomorrow. And send a thanks-but-no notice to the rest.”

He gave me a disgruntled look. “You know I’m not your personal secretary, right?”

“I know, but you locked the file. Remember?”

“Already sent,” he said, with a grin.

“Then why are you complaining?”

“Didn’t want you to get used to having me do your scut work.”

My eyes rolled so hard I thought they might bounce on the overhead. “Dinner?”

Pip nodded. “And I need to get my beer out of storage.”

“You have beer in storage?” Al asked.

“Didn’t want to move it aboard until we had a place for it. I asked Sharps to clean one of the ready coolers so we’d have a place to put food.”

“We’re not going back to The Corner, are we?” the chief asked.

“I’m open. Where do you want to go?” I asked.

“There’s a place up on eight that has great seafood.”

“I’ll eat seafood,” I said.

“You’ll eat any food you see,” Pip said, poking me in the arm.

“That’s no way to treat your captain.”

“I’m your CEO. I’ll treat you any way I like as long as we’re docked.” He poked me again for emphasis.

“Al? You in?”

She shook her head. “’Nother time, Skipper. I got some loose ends to wrap up here on station.”

“Fair enough. We’ll probably meet at Cackleberries on the oh-two for breakfast. 0600 or there abouts.”

“Save me a seat. I’ll be there.”

“What are we going to do about the tour tomorrow?” Pip asked.

The chief turned to him. “Tour?”

“We had a crowd outside the lock when we got here this morning,” I said.

“I saw them earlier,” the chief said.

“Some of them were stationers who’d been walking past the ship as long as it’s been here and wanted to see it.”

“So you agreed to a tour?” Her eyebrows crawled halfway up her scalp.

“It was maybe a dozen. Why not?”

Pip chuckled but I didn’t see what was so funny.

Chief Stevens massaged her forehead with one hand and groaned. “What time tomorrow?”

“1400.”

“What were you planning on doing for this tour?”

“I thought we’d just walk them in, through the galley, down the spine, maybe a quick turn around the bridge.”

“Traipse through the engine room?” she asked.

“Well, probably. Yeah.”

“And who’s going to be the tour guide and answer questions? Keep them from killing themselves—or us—by fiddling with the equipment?”

Pip held up his hands, palm out. “Don’t look at me.”

I looked at Al. “First Mate Ross, I wonder if I could impose on you a bit tomorrow afternoon and ask if you’d be willing to be just slightly out of uniform when our guests arrive?”

“How out of uniform did you have in mind, Skipper?” Her eyes almost danced.

“Half a kilo of surgical steel?”

“I can go as far as a kilo without breaking a sweat,” she said.

“I’m more concerned you should make our guests sweat.”

Her rumbling laugh filled the galley.

Chief Stevens looked back and forth between the two of us. “Exactly how well did you know this raw quarter share, Al?”

“I offered to take out some of the sharper bits for him.”

“My, my, my,” the chief said. “Unknown depths, indeed.”

Chapter Thirty-Four
Breakall Orbital:
2374, August 9

The day started so well. I should have been prepared for it to turn on me.

Pip and I met Al and the chief at 0600 after a solid night’s sleep. The place had a morning rush going, but the four of us got a booth near the kitchen and enough food to keep us until lunch. We even got some ship’s business done before leaving the diner and getting swarmed.

It began innocuously. A couple of people asking me to sign a hardcopy of a newsie. A rating stopping us to ask if I was still hiring. Even one rather shapely woman who rubbed against me while asking if I was really single. I found one of her scarlet fingernails stuck in the seam of my shipsuit later.

All before we made it across the passageway and into the lift.

Several people followed us on and I was uncomfortably aware of the way they stared at me.

I’d gotten used to being a clipper captain. People treated me differently. Not exactly deferential but sometimes with a bit of wariness. Sometimes with a jaunty smile and a nod.

These people looked hungry; for the first time in months I found myself wishing I had Stacy Arellone at my back.

When the lock opened on the dock, it didn’t get any better. The four of us wasted no time getting around to dock eight-two but before we got there, I asked Al to break trail for us.

“Who are all these people?” I asked.

“You’re famous, Captain,” the chief said.

“Your face was on every screen on the orbital last night, Skipper,” Al said. “They were re-playing your news conference on a loop in the bar.”

“You went out to a bar and didn’t tell me?” Pip asked.

“You’ve got beer and didn’t share.” Al shrugged as if that ended the discussion, but she grinned back at him over one meaty shoulder.

The crowd in front of the lock was even bigger than the one the day before. The noise they made practically rattled the deck plates. So many people clogged the dock that the cargo crawlers had begun lining up along the bulkhead, trying to ease through behind them without running into—or over—anybody. I saw a couple of uniformed orbital security around the periphery, one of them talking on a radio with a hand pressed to his ear.

We pushed through to the lock, and I stopped to look at the sea of faces. Some of them were amused, some clearly drunk. Others had a look of “I wonder what’s going to happen now?” and still others had looks I really wasn’t happy about. Here and there I saw a hover-cam above the crowd and figured a half dozen recorders had laser mics focused on me.

“You want me to shut ’em up, Skip?” Al asked, her voice pitched so low I almost missed her words in the racket.

I shook my head and pointed to the deck just behind me to the left. She took up station there and I nudged Pip and the chief into a rough line beside her. Facing the crowd again, I raised my left hand and waited.

The people nearest me—a couple within sneezing distance, which made me a little nervous—quieted almost immediately, faces turned to me. Slowly the quiet inched out into the crowd for a bit before somebody said, “What’s he doing?”

“I’m waiting for you all to be quiet so I can speak,” I said. I didn’t raise my voice but those within a few meters shushed those further back.

“Shh. He’ll speak if you’d shut up.”

“Put a sock in it. I can’t hear him.”

The pool of quiet spread. Eventually people further back in the crowd raised their hands and it spread even more.

Progress, but I couldn’t see very far through the crowd.

I spotted a cargo handler with a pallet of packing crates stuck in the herd a few meters to port and motioned Al to follow. “You two stay here, please,” I said to Pip and the chief.

I pushed through the crowd with a little help from Al. The driver wore a station cargo coverall and the scaredest expression I’ve seen this side of a hull breach. I leaned in to speak to him. “If I could stand up there for a few ticks so I can talk to them, I might be able to get you on your way.”

He looked like I’d offered him jewels and dropped the pallet to the deck so I didn’t have to climb so high. Al gave me a boost and I found myself chest and shoulders above a sea of humanity.

“Good morning,” I said, raising my voice. “I’m not sure why you’re all here, but we have a problem and I really need your help.”

A wave of nods rippled out across their faces.

“This is a commercial dock. Some of your neighbors are here trying to work and you’re blocking the traffic lanes, keeping them from doing their jobs.”

I saw them looking around but only the people on the edges of the crowd could see the lineup of cargo handlers and crawlers that would normally have zipped through this passageway.

“If you could open a lane back toward the bulkhead on the station side? A few meters would let them pass and it would save orbital security a lot of paperwork if they didn’t have to arrest us all.” That got a laugh and people pushed forward from the station side. It made things a bit thicker for us, but traffic started to move again. Security personnel helped form a barricade against the back of the crowd, which moved more of them out of the way.

I glanced down at the driver on my handler with a shrug. “A few more ticks and I’ll have you free.”

He looked a lot less scared and nodded.

I looked back out at the crowd. “Is the circus in town and nobody told me? What’s going on?” I asked.

I got a laugh with that and heard more than one person ask, “What’s a circus?”

A squat man with a neck so thick his head seemed to merge with his shoulders raised a hand. “We’re here for the tour,” he said.

I looked down at Al who just smirked at me in return. Over by the lock, Chief Stevens had her forehead in her hand again and Pip had tears streaming down his face, apparently from laughter.

“The tour? Of the ship?” I asked the man.

“Oh, aye.” Everybody around him nodded in agreement. “We saw it on the viddie last night. I never been on a freighter. Ran the hoses, trotted cargo here and there. I never saw one inside. Might never have another chance. ’Specially not one like the
Cherny
.”

I stood there looking out at all those faces looking back. “You’re all here for the tour?” I asked, raising my voice so it would carry a little better over their heads.

Their response was a rough roar that might have been “Yeah!” and a lot of emphatic nodding.