In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (5 page)

He nodded and drained his beer. “Too true.”

“So enough about me. What have you been up to? Cargo first?”

He shrugged. “Not much to tell. One of the cousins is the skipper for the
Prodigal Son
. We’ve managed to stay solvent and I’ve worked up through the ranks. Cargo first is all we can justify in that small a ship. I took the exam and hold the rating, but there was never any reason to claim the rank. It’s not like I’m going to get paid more or passed over. Besides, I’m getting the owner’s share less a franchise fee to the old man. Shares have been better than I ever imagined. Which is why this modeling symposium started. People took notice of how well we were doing.”

“Your father had nothing to do with that, did he?” I asked.

He smirked. “He fought it at first. Made it clear that I had to keep the profit coming and cover the costs of my own ship. He held the note, but I paid the bills with interest.”

“How long did it take you to pay it off?”

“Well, it was a twenty-stanyer note.”

I smiled. “So, you paid it off in ten?”

He grinned. “You know me so well.”

I raised my bottle in a toast to him. “Congrats. That got his attention, did it?”

“It did. Of course, he kept up on our trading the whole time. We’re part of the family fleet after all and he’s still the chairman of the board.” He went to the fridge and pulled out another beer. “You want one?”

I shook my head. “One’s my limit for the afternoon.”

“Lightweight.” He came back and sat down again.

“Married?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Never found the right person. Really wasn’t time to get involved.”

“So you brought the
Son
here?”

“Sure. We picked up a hot priority over in Dunsany and made a tidy profit on the run.”

“Just cooling your heels for a few days?”

“Roland is doing some maintenance on the engines and upgrading the sail generators.”

“Roland?”

“Captain Roland Marx. Second cousin on my mother’s side. He’s the captain of record and has the engineering certification for that power plant.”

“But can he cook?”

Pip shook his head and laughed. “Gods, no. He keeps us moving. I keep us fed and keep the profits rolling in.”

“Just the two of you?”

“For now. He’s planning on trading me out soon for a better-looking model.”

“He’s leaving? What’ll you do for a captain?”

“Well, yes, and no. He’s actually planning on staying with the
Son
. I’m planning on leaving.”

“You’re leaving your own ship?” I could feel my jaw stretching open.

“Buying a new one, I hope.”

“You must be doing well.”

He looked down at his hands. “Yeah. Well. That’s what I wanted to talk with you about.”

“So you weren’t kidding about looking for me?”

“I knew where to find you. I expected to be flying to Diurnia to do it when the conference is over.” He didn’t look up, just kept worrying the corner of the label on his bottle with a thumbnail.

“So? What did you want to talk about?”

He glanced up at me for a moment and then looked down again. “What can you tell me about the
Chernyakova
?”

Chapter Five
Port Newmar:
2374, May 28

My beer was nearly empty but I drained it anyway. The memories of bloated bodies and of living in the smell of corrupted flesh soured the brew, but it was something to do with my hands while I processed the question.

Pip cleared his throat. “That bad, huh?”

I put the empty bottle on the coffee table and leaned back in my chair. “Yeah. Actually, a bit worse than you might imagine.” I wiped a hand across my mouth but it did nothing for the vile taste there. “What do you want to know?”

“Condition of the vessel?”

I shrugged. “It’s been a couple of stanyers. Last I saw of it, it was a mess.”

“Mess, how?”

“No spares. Systems missing components. Broken panels in the backbone. Stores completely inadequate.”

“Structural problems?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“You commanded the salvage crew.”

“Yeah.” I kept my eyes open and focused on his face because closing them meant seeing things I never wanted to see again.

“They’ll hold the next auction in about a month.”

“Third time’s the charm,” I said.

“You stand to make a lot when it closes.”

“Yeah. That’s what they tell me. It’s how I was able to finagle the financing to start Icarus.”

“I figured. Musta thrown a few wrenches in the works when it never closed.”

I shrugged. “I had worse problems.”

He gave me a long stare. His earring gleamed in the afternoon light streaming in the window behind him. “Wanna talk about them?”

I shook my head. “Alys is setting me up with a therapist and I’ve got
Sifu
Newmar to keep me grounded.”

“She’s a treasure, that woman.”

“Which one?”

He laughed and took a slug from his beer. “Both, I guess.”

“Why do you want to know about the
Chernyakova
?”

“I’m going to bid on it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The Barbell class is a unique vessel. Secure cargo. Massive capacity. Absolutely reliable ship. Relatively small crew compared to ships like the Eighty-Eights.”

“And you want one to test your model.”

He grinned at me and the twinkle in his eye took me back two decades. “You aren’t as dumb as you used to be.”

“Why
Chernyakova
?”

“Ship itself isn’t that old. The space frame is rated for a half century and it’s barely scratched ten stanyers. Generators, fusactors, and engines should all be sound.” He eyed me. “Unless you saw something?”

“Maintenance logs weren’t exactly trust-inducing.”

He sat back and cradled his beer on his chest, frowning at the ceiling. “So, we may need some overhaul.”

“The last two auctions have failed.”

“Yeah. I know.” His grin grew more predatory than friendly. “They’ve also changed the terms. They dropped the reserve and minimum bid is down to fifty mill.”

“What was it before?”

“Reserve was a hundred and fifty with a one percent penalty. Sealed bids.”

“So bid two hundred mill and realize the ship was a dog?”

“Pay the two mill to get out from under it,” Pip said. “Is it a dog?”

I took a deep breath and blew it out, trying to sort out my emotional response to the ship from the actual facts. “It’ll need some work. I wouldn’t trust the Burleson drives in a pinch. They’d need to be recalibrated. The inside probably needs to be completely refurbed. That stench got into everything. I had to burn the uniforms I wore over there.”

“Seriously?”

I chuckled. “No, but I thought about it. I smelled that ship for weeks after.”

“It’s also an open auction,” Pip said.

“Not sealed bid?”

He shook his head. “Registered credit balance deposit in escrow before you can bid. They want that ship gone.”

“So if you bid it and win?”

“They already have your credits. Losers get theirs back.”

“How the heck can you finance something like that?”

“Deep pockets.” He shrugged. “Or a good banker who’ll float the loan in advance.”

“How deep are your pockets?” I asked.

“Not as deep as yours.” He shrugged again. “Deep enough and I’ve an appointment with my bank tomorrow. I’ve enough of a credit line to cover what I intend to bid.”

“What do you intend to bid?” I asked.

“My limit is a hundred and ten. With what you’ve said, I think I need to chop that back to ninety to leave some cash for refurbishment.”

“The ship’s been docked for a couple of stanyers now.”

He nodded. “I have reserve funds for maintenance and updates, but it’s not enough to replace a Burleson unit.”

“You’ll need crew.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’ll need a captain, engineering, and steward. I’ve already taken the cargo master exam so I’m certified as chief. I’ve got some relatives we can tap for mates, and I’m planning on hiring from the pool when I need them. Probably from Diurnia.”

“Where you going to get the work done?”

“Unwin has a maintenance yard in Dree. I was planning on jumping over, but you say the ship’s not spaceworthy?”

I thought about it. “We sailed her into Breakall. They were on their way out of the system when they gassed themselves. One jump?” I shrugged. “If it can pass a decent engineering inspection, it’d probably be all right.”

Pip’s lips twitched back and forth as if he were chewing on that information. “All right. I’ll take that under advisement. Unwin must have some jump-capable tugs available or on retainer.”

“Moran runs the tugs around the stations in the whole quadrant. Maybe they have some.”

“Might not need one, but I’ll factor that into the mix,” Pip said with a nod.

“What’s a new Barbell cost?” I asked.

“I found a used one over in Ciroda for half a bill. New ones are almost twice that.”

I whistled. “I shouldn’t be surprised, but the level of the reserves, I’d have thought less.”

“How much was your Higbee?”

“I got it for scrap price. Thirty-five mill.”

“One fifty is the scrap value of the
Chernyakova
. Even the knackers didn’t want it for that.”

“Any idea why?”

“Superstition?”

“How much bad luck can you get when you melt down the hull?”

He shrugged. “Who knows. I suspect the scrap dealers weren’t paying attention. Other than its history, there’s nothing to indicate that the ship needs much more than a crew and stores to get underway.”

“You know the closing bids on the last two auctions?”

“Scuttlebutt is that they were both somewhere north of two fifty.”

“And they both folded rather than take it on.”

“Yep,” he said.

“Didn’t they get an inspection before making a bid?”

“I’ve got the prospectus here if you want to see it.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out his tablet. He flipped a couple of pages and then slid the device over to me.

The pictures looked right. I flipped through the photos. Inside shots showed some cosmetic damage to the bulkheads including the broken one that I remembered in the spine. They’d apparently cleaned out all the trash and junk. Berthing areas showed bare racks without mattresses. Galley was completely empty except for the built-in steam kettles and ovens. Images of the bridge showed all the consoles in place but the stains on the deck looked familiar enough that I thought my stomach might rebel.

“Looks too familiar,” I said, swallowing against the bile.

I flipped past the images and read the actual description. “They haven’t sold the cargo?” I asked.

“As far as I can tell, they never unloaded it. It’s still in there. It’d be part of the salvage claim, at any rate.”

I flipped through the document. “Isn’t there a manifest?”

“Near the back. It’s supposedly a can full of hydraulic fluid from Martha’s Haven bound for Diurnia.”

“At least it’s not kitty litter.”

“What?”

I shook my head. “Never mind. Long story. You think the fluid’s any good?”

“It’s probably frozen. I wonder how they unload it.”

I shrugged. “Not my problem. They must have some kind of can warmer that lets them pump it out. Two hundred metric kilotons of hydraulic fluid isn’t something you chip out with a hammer and chisel.”

I stopped at the engineering reports. “According to this, the generators, fusactor, and Burleson drives are within specification.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why I wanted to talk with you about it.”

I shook my head. “We didn’t have any problems sailing her in from where we found her, but I wouldn’t get underway until we replaced the missing alarm circuits.”

“Missing alarm circuits?”

I settled back into my chair. “How much do you know about this?” I slipped the tablet back across the table.

“Only what I’ve gotten from the public documents and a bit of scuttlebutt from here and there.”

“Crew died of carbon monoxide poisoning. A rag fire in one of the after engine compartments.”

“How’s that even possible?”

“They’d taken the alarm module out of the system. The sensors detected the gas, but the alarms didn’t go off.”

“Wouldn’t the gas have smothered its own fire?”

“Not before enough gas got into the environmental system. It took three days to burn up and then burn out.”

“Ouch.”

I nodded. “Once the level got critical, the crew pretty much all dropped within a few ticks of each other.”

Pip closed his eyes and shook his head. “And you found them?”

“Yeah.”

Pip blew out his breath. “Well. That’s nasty.”

“Yeah.”

“So, I suppose you’re not interested in being captain?”

I blinked at him. “Captain? Of the
Chernyakova
?”

“Assuming I win the auction.”

The realization struck me like a rock to the head. “That’s why you wanted to find me.”

He gave me a sheepish smile and a small shrug. “You aren’t going to stay ashore forever. I thought you might feel up to a new challenge.”

“Are you mad?”

“I’ve always been a little mad. You know that.”