Owner's Share (Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper) (44 page)

Three days out of Diurnia, I relieved a sleepy-eyed Ms. Maloney at 0545, and we both adjourned to the galley for breakfast. I’d been up for half a stan already, and had fresh coffee ready along with a half sheet of biscuits. I threw a little butter in the pan, whisked up some eggs, and raised an eyebrow holding the pan up.

She blinked and sipped again before answering. “Ham, onion, peppers, cheddar, please, Captain.”

I obliged, and got the mixture set and folded before the chief shambled in. “Ah, coffee! Cap, you do make the best coffee in the quadrant, yes, you do.”

“Thanks, Chief. What would you like in your omelet today?”

“Just cheese, Cap, that be great. Just cheese, and thankee kindly.”

I slipped Ms. Maloney’s breakfast onto a plate, and handed it to her just as her toast popped. She grinned, collecting plate and toast before settling at the table with a friendly nod toward Chief Bailey.

“Ms. Arellone not joinin’ us this morning, Cap? Sleepin’ in is she?”

I shrugged. “Not sure, Chief. She was up late last night, and this is her day off.”

He nodded and sipped, blinking a bit. “Anythin’ you need fixed today, Cap? Generators doin’ good. Fusactors purr like a cat, yah, they do. Might be I get some time today.”

“I’ve got a list of broken switches and missing light panels. I’ll send that to you in a bit. We also need to get the passenger compartments ready for habitation. I’ll apply for my steward’s endorsement when we hit Welliver. It would be nice if we could pick up a passenger or two, and see how that works going back.”

“Oh, aye, Cap. Can do. Send me yer list, and I’ll start chippin’ away at ’em.”

I plated his omelet, and handed it to him before throwing some onions, peppers, and a bit of ham in to make one for myself.

“Captain, what about the passenger cabins?” Ms. Maloney asked when I sat down.

“We’ve got a few days to get those cleaned up and ready for habitation, Ms. Maloney. I’ve been just waiting for us to get the routine down before making it more complicated.”

Ms. Maloney had drawn first helm watch after getting underway. I sat with her for that whole watch, and then did my own six behind it. She was fine after that, and stood her own watches without a hitch. The accumulated stress from the previous two weeks added to a back-to-back watch, laid me out in my bunk for ten solid stans. Ms. Maloney and Ms. Arellone dealt with feeding themselves and the chief, while I visited dreamland. The progress pleased me.

“Is there any procedure you’d like us to follow, sar?” she asked.

“Just clean them out. After we get them cleaned up, we can see if they need painting before we provision them.”

“What about the mattresses that are in there, sar?”

“Toss ’em. Ms. Arellone and I should have done that when we cleaned out crew quarters but I was being stupidly single-minded.”

“Okay, Captain. Thanks. I’m feeling a little antsy already, and maybe having a project to work on will help.”

I laughed a little. “Almost everybody out here has a hobby. If you don’t mind doing it, I’d certainly be grateful, but don’t push yourself. Try to get a nap sometime before you come back on watch at noon.”

“Aye, aye, sar.” She smiled. “I suspect Ms. Arellone will be getting up in a bit. Perhaps the two of us can at least strip them down and get them ready for cleaning before I go back to bed.”

“There’s plenty of spare room down in the cargo bay. Just toss them down there, and we’ll bundle them up for disposal in Welliver.”

“Aye, aye, sar. We can do that.”

“When you get ready, Miss, you let me know and I’ll give yer a hand, see if’n I don’t. Between the three of us, I bet we can get them compartments right nice looking a’fore we hit port agin, right nice looking.” The chief nodded emphatically with each phrase. He turned to me. “You got that punch list, Cap? I’m bout done eatin’ here, and I’ll go track down the weevils.”

I nodded and pulled out my tablet. In seconds he had the combined lists that Ms. Arellone and I had compiled. “There ya go, Chief. Let me know if you have any issues, or if there’s something big broken that we missed.”

He scanned the list and nodded. “Oh, aye, Cap,” he replied slowly, distracted by his reading. “I’ll do that, I’ll do jus’ that.”

I got to the end of my omelet, and helped Ms. Maloney put the galley back together while the chief muttered off down the passage. By 0645 I was back on the bridge, and actually had a chance to sit and think.

My logs were up to date. The last round of paperwork was done from our stay in Diurnia, and the bills all paid. I eyed my rapidly dwindling millions and wondered how it could disappear so fast. Almost all of it was gone to one time charges for licenses or refurbishment charges, so while the start-up costs staggered me, few of them would repeat any time soon—certainly not in the next ninety days. I sighed.

I checked the consoles once more. The autopilot kept us on course like we were some fantastic bead on a very long wire. We had no way points in this watch, and the winds blew steadily with a smooth laminar flow. On the
Agamemnon
, Mr. Pall and I had studied the wind patterns above and below the plane of the ecliptic, and I borrowed from every page of that book in setting our course to Welliver.
Iris
climbed up and out of the Diurnia system on a smooth, curving course that would take us about thirty degrees above the plane. Both of the system’s gas giants were directly behind Diurnia’s primary, and we had clear sailing.

The chrono read 0700, and I pulled out my tablet to review the steward’s certification for my master’s license. I had only just scratched the surface of it, but the further I went, the more my memories of taking the full share rating in steward division came back to help me along, and it went faster.

At one point the sound of feminine laughter echoed up the ladder, and I heard several whumping sounds that could have been mattresses falling from a height. There was more laughter and more whumps. I grinned and dug back into my reading.

At 1000 I went down to the galley for a refill on my coffee, and found Ms. Arellone rinsing out cleaning rags in the deep sink. She greeted me brightly enough. “Good morning, Skipper. Exciting watch?” She grinned.

“Stellar, Ms. Arellone. Stellar.”

She groaned at the pun.

“You’ve been cleaning the passenger compartments, Ms. Arellone?”

“Yes, sar. Between the three of us, we’ve dragged all the old crusty bedding out and tossed it below.” At the mention of the crustiness she made a little disgusted face which included sticking out her tongue, and frowning alarmingly.

“Should we put them in hazmat isolation, Ms. Arellone?”

“Vacuum would be best, I think, Skipper, but we can’t very well just toss them. Or can we?” She looked over at me with a hopeful expression.

I laughed. “No, Ms. Arellone. We can’t.”

She stamped her foot in pretend-pique and then shrugged, returning to her wash rags. “Well, Ms. Maloney has gone to lay down for a bit before watch, but I think I’ll work a bit more.” She glanced at me. “What’s for lunch, by the way?”

“Good question.” I sipped my coffee and pondered an answer. “Cold chicken and hot potato salad?” I suggested. “Peas on the side?”

She didn’t look too enthusiastic. “I think I’d just as soon have cold cuts, sar. They’re fast and easy, and you’ll be making something for dinner won’t you?”

“Yes, Ms. Arellone. I’m thinking of making a lasagna for dinner. Garlic bread and green beans on the side.”

“Oh, sounds wonderful, sar.”

“Thank you, Ms. Arellone. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I better get back on the bridge.”

She grinned, and waved her scrub brush.

I topped off my coffee, and headed for the ladder again. When I got up there and checked the screens, I walked around a bit, stretching my back and admiring the view out into the Deep Dark. Diurnia was a blue dot far astern and the primary a shimmering yellow pin head off our port quarter as the ship climbed.

As I stood at the forward end of the bridge, there were only three or four meters of hull between the bridge and the bow. I stood there rolling my shoulders and staring dumbly at the surface of the hull. It didn’t look like other hull plating, but then, this was the first Higbee-built hull I had been on so the odd texture might be something they did for dissipating heat.

I stood there remembering the extra shielding that Ms. Arellone and I had spotted on the schematics of the ship. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought the basic pattern on the hull reminded me of that. Curious, I went aft and looked along the spine of the ship. The bridge didn’t stick up very far so my angle on the outer hull plates was tightly oblique. I couldn’t see much, but it did seem to me that there were several sections of the plating that carried the same general shape as we’d seen in the diagram.

I pulled out my tablet just as I heard steps on the ladder, and Ms. Arellone stuck her head up onto the bridge. “Skipper?”

“Yes, Ms. Arellone?”

“There’s almost six liters of that white paint left. Did you have any plans for it, sar?”

“No, Ms. Arellone. You thinking of painting one of the compartments white?”

She shrugged. “Actually, sar, the chief and I figured we’d throw in a liter of that darker blue and give it a lighter shade than our crew quarters, and maybe paint the passage?”

“Paint’s cheap, Ms. Arellone. Have at it.”

“Thanks, Skipper.”

I laughed. “My pleasure, Ms. Arellone. Any time you want to use cheap material, and your own elbow grease in support of the ship, count on me to give permission.”

She laughed and disappeared down the ladder with a little wave.

I shook my head and took my seat. Having my own ship wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. I wondered if we’d ever get the thing set up correctly so we could just focus on getting from here to there and back again. I suspected it would be a while before that happened. I dug back into the small craft steward endorsement, and focused on what we needed to do to get passengers aboard.

There was a lot to it, but boiled down, it really was only common sense—things that ships needed to do to keep paying customers from dying in the Deep Dark, either from the environment or from their fellow passengers. I rapidly got beyond the level of knowledge I remembered from my messman exam, and into legalities of cartage, medical liability, and insurance coverages or—more precisely—how to word a transportation contract that kept the passengers from suing your ship out from under you in the case of a hangnail. The more I read, the less interested I was in actually bringing strangers aboard, but my rational mind pointed out that it was too late, and I needed all the revenue I could get.

Chapter Thirty-Eight
Diurnia System:
2373-January-5

The chief assured me that the burleson drives were ready to go, but I was still nervous. The jump from here to there marked the point where we were no longer leaving someplace and started arriving. In a few moments the burleson drives would grab the warp and weft of space-time and fold it, punching a hole from here to there through contiguous faces in the fabric. The process put us a lot closer to where we might be going than we had been a tick before.

The idea of messing with the fundamental nature of the universe with an untried drive made me a little nervous. I set jump for 1130 so everybody would be up and moving. It’s not like we could do much if it all went sour, but if we needed help, all the help we had would be at hand.

I’d had the morning watch to make sure we were on track, in the right position, and that the math was right. I’d jumped dozens, if not hundreds of times, I’d even pressed the button myself for two stanyers while I was second mate on the
Tinker
. I think my real concern was that everything else in the ship was run down and needed work. I feared that the drive might be in the same condition.

I had Ms. Arellone sit at the engineering console on the bridge, and Ms. Maloney took one of the extra seats with us. The chief had his fingers in the machinery aft, and I hoped he was right about the drive.

At fifteen seconds to jump, I keyed the intercom. “Stand by to jump ... 10 ... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,” and I pressed the key.

Nothing happened.

I stared at the boards. I looked ahead and realized with a start that, yes, there was a bright star up ahead, and then the navigational plots updated with the nearest beacon data. A glance at the engineering console showed that the drives had been online, were now offline, and that the sail generators were ready for me to raise sail.

Shaking my head, I keyed the intercom. “Everything all right back there, Chief?”

There was a pause. “Oh, aye, Cap. You didn’t barely scratch ’em, though. Next time maybe we oughta take a longer jump, hey? Longer jump?” His cackling cut off when he let go of the intercom.

“Welcome to Welliver, ladies,” I said. “Seems like the ship has a little more power than we thought.”

“Is that good, sar?” Ms. Arellone asked.

“It means we can jump a long way, Ms. Arellone.”

She shrugged. “That seems like a good thing to me, sar.”

I nodded, and started punching up the plot corrections for our run into Welliver. I was slow and out of practice, but I made it eventually, and updated the helm data for the autopilot.