The Bright Black Sea (44 page)

'So now I'm the one who has to say “No” to your
girls, am I?'

'Aye, you are. They're your engines as you've told me
on more than one occasion.'

'And when the pilot/owner tells me to pile on more
gees, I'm to say “No” to her as well?'

'Well, I'm not going to,' I replied with a grin. 'I
have to draw the line somewhere.'

'Good to hear, though I'd have thought you might've
drawn the line short of kidnapping...'

'In hindsight, you might be right,' I laughed. 'But
that's a planet astern. Now I'm drawing the line at telling her how
to run her own ship.'

'And handing the job to me.'

'Aye, but you're the man for the job, Chief. Besides,
she's not had any cross-training in engineering, so you can just
make up any old excuse, say, something about a “reflex coolant
recovery pump bearing” that sound a bit iffy or whatever and it
should fly. Even owners need to learn who runs the engine room,
don't they?'

'By Neb, they do, Skipper,' he said with a grin and a
wink, adding, ' You don't want them getting any wild ideas about
owning the engine room too,' and with that, he replaced his ear
protector.

I gave him an ironic salute, and retreated to the
part of the ship that was mine.

I looked around the table with satisfaction. Everyone
(including the reclusive Dyn) except the active watch, Vynnia, Kie
and Myes (who'd eaten just prior to going on watch) were seated
around the saloon table chatting away. We'd just finish the midday,
3rd watch meal, one of two hot meals served in the day, and were
relaxing with our desserts. Min, who I was most concerned about,
was happily talking with Molaye and Rafe at her end of the table –
the far end. She would extend a brief word to acknowledge me when
we met, (when other crew members were around, otherwise she never
saw or heard me ) and she'd answer any direct question, but
otherwise kept out of my way. Still, everything and everyone was
functioning smoothly, so I was happy enough not to let that bother
me. Too much.

Sailing under power is demanding work for the entire
crew. Eight of the twelve hours of duty owed the ship are spent
actively working at your specialty. Pilots on the bridge,
controlling the rockets and keeping the ship on course, the
engineers monitoring the engine performance while the electrical
and environmental engineers looking after their systems. Our
systems techs each stand a watch as lookouts as well as looking
after our computer and control systems, while our chefs keep us
fed, and this captain, anyway, worries and pitches in where he sees
a need.

In addition everyone stands a less intense four hour
watch where they do general labor about the ship, ranging from
repairing equipment in the engineering shop to doing the ship's
laundry and weeding the moss garden. Everyone has one free eight
hour double watch that most use for a long nap and one free four
hour watch to eat, relax or nap again.

The upside is that we get to enjoy meals which are
hard to prepare and eat in free fall, like the one we'd just had,
pasta with midnight mushrooms in a savory red sauce and fresh
vegetables, fresh baked rolls and now a dessert of crisp apple
fruit and blue berries in a cool sauce, with wine, cha or kaf to
drink.

'I say Skipper,' said Tenry from midway down the
table. 'What would you say about organizing a scavenger hunt to dig
out that drone you claim to have onboard after we've finished our
dessert? I know Vyn is anxious for us to get working on the drones
as soon as we've finished with the engines.'

'Sounds like an adventure. It's listed on our
inventory, and I'd say the only place it could be is in that pile
of Four Shipmates' memorabilia on the mezzanine of no. 4 hold.
Can't think of another place it'd be.'

'Oh, it's up there, sure enough,' spoke up Riv. 'But
I'm not sure how easy it 'd be to dig it out under power. Rather
buried, not that I'd know, first hand like,' he added with a laugh.
'It might be wise, however, to wait until we're in free fall to dig
it out.'

'Still, I'd like a look at it to see what shape it's
in to get an idea if or how it can be modified with our new
sensors. Vyn is pretty insistent that we get those drones up and
running as soon as possible, standard Patrol operating procedure,'
said Tenry. 'Even in well charted space lanes.'

'I see the wisdom in that, we'll be flying half blind
soon enough, so having one ahead suits me as well,' I replied. I
glanced down to table to see Min watching me. 'With your
permission, of course, Tallith. I believe you inherited all the
'Shipmate's souvenirs with the ship so everything up there is your
personal property.'

'By all means, Captain. Find and remove the drone.'
she replied.

'Care to join us and survey your collection of
strange and exotic vehicles, pieces of undefined machines and
mounds of mysterious crated memorabilia?'

'Thank you, I'm looking forward to doing that some
day when I've more time, but I believe I'm slated to help Saysa
refine our bio-waste and use it in the nutritional synthesizer to
restock our staples pantry this watch. I'd hate to miss that.'

'Ah,' I said, unable to suppress a slight smile.
Briefly, the duty involved emptying the bio waste compost tank by
running the sludge through a refinery machine which separates its
components into pure products that are used as fertilizer for the
moss garden and ingredients by the nutritional synthesizer to make
things like flour, various faux grains, tubers, sugars, spices and
more complicated food like pasta and faux vegetables and such used
in cooking.

'First, please note that that duty is scheduled,
after we eat... And secondly, I assure you that particular duty is
assigned automatically by the crew list rotation, not on an
individual basis.'

'If that's your story, Captain, I'd advise you to
stick with it,' she replied dryly, with a very straight face.
Everyone else was smiling and watching us. They thought it
cute.

'Oh, I intend to,' I assured her with a smile.

I can claim no extensive personal knowledge of the
other sex, but after serving for 15 years on a ship with a mixed
crew, and with Riv and Lilm as a reference point, I knew enough to
get a sense that things were slowly on the mend between Min and me.
Oh, she was still mad at me, but no longer angry, if you get my
drift. Still, I'd no intention of pushing things along, we'd a five
month passage ahead of us and I'd let the easy camaraderie and
quiet routine of the ship do its job.

'Right. If anyone else cares to join this expedition,
feel free,' I said to the rest of the gang.

Ten minutes later, an intrepid band of explorers –
Riv and Lilm, Rafe, Molaye, Lili, Barlan, and the hounds, of
course, had all found the time to join Tenry and me around the main
access well, armed with torches, ready to brave the spider webs.
(Yes, spiders do actually make a living on space ships. Some things
you can't escape. Bugs being one of them.)

As we were under power, we trooped up the circling
staircase and through the wide companionway separating the two
strongrooms and under the mezzanine into the hold proper. The two
quarter boxes piled in the far corner and the two drones secured to
the deck beside them is more cargo that I've ever seen in no. 4
hold. Besides using the mezzanine as the ship's attic, we used the
large hold – nearly 3 decks high and as wide as the ship – for team
sports and games like laser tag and glider/drone/miniature space
ship battles.

The mezzanine itself, however, has always been
strictly off limits throughout Miccall's reign as captain, though
I'm certain everyone has at one time or another, conducted their
own secret and likely brief survey of what lay tumbled together
piled high above the strongrooms. Of course, the larger items, the
battered flier, the wheeled land car, and the floater or zep
gondola where all more or less visible amongst the piles of junk
secured for free fall by cargo nets, but what lay within those
cargo nets, the crates and stuff remained, I think, a mystery to us
all. Miccall in his time – especially when angry – was not someone
to be taken lightly, and unless you were a very old shipmate – and
very old shipmates were shipmates who didn't get caught – you'd
find yourself on the beach at the next planet if he caught you
poking about the ship's attic.

I was brave enough to conduct a brief survey only
after Miccall's death and as acting captain, but I didn't press far
into the dark, spider and cat infested maze. Little could be made
out under the nets, boxes, crates, bits and pieces of machines and
robot parts and who knows what else? I didn't linger long, and to
tell the truth, having used my privilege as captain once, I've been
too busy and too superstitious, to pursue any further
investigation. It has a sort of graveyard of memories feel to it,
not only of the Four Shipmates, but of other crew members over
perhaps hundreds of years, who have for one reason or another,
abandoned things aboard the
Lost Star
.

Without actually organizing it, we set out in parties
of two, climbing the ladders set in the strongroom bulkheads and
over the top and into the narrow dark nooks and crevasses between
the vehicles and junk as the nearly feral cats watched from the
shadows and the hounds barked instructions from below. Exploring
the maze would've been a lot less work in free fall since under
power we had to crawl or climb over piles of junk, which limited
our search to the lower levels of collection that reached two decks
to the hold's ceiling. However, all of the larger, more interesting
things were buried on the lower level, so we inspected the battered
and strangely styled flier and found another one deeper in, both
seemingly scarred by plasma fire. And there's that wide, six
wheeled land vehicle and at least five one person rocket boards,
some in pieces, which drew Molaye's full attention, plus the large,
12 meter by 9 meter cylinder, with a streamlined, windowed cockpit
forward and twin enclosed propellers aft, half buried in cargo
nets. The windows of the passenger compartment were too dirty to
see more than vague outlines of objects within the locked fuselage
even using the powerful torch lights.

'It's not a zep gondola,' declared Riv, surveying it
next to me.

'It certainly wouldn't be able to fly unaided with
those two stubs of a wing,' I said studying it. 'I suppose the rest
of the wings could be buried somewhere, but what makes you certain
it's not a lighter-than-air flier?'

'Well, Skipper, I grew up on a pioneer planet. We'd
no surface roads to speak of, so we did all our traveling about in
zeps. You knew how to fly a zep by the time you were twelve. I know
zeps and this isn't a zep gondola. The balance is all wrong to
begin with, and there's half a dozen other little things that don't
add up either.'

'The wings and tail seem incomplete. Couldn't the gas
bag attachments be fitted on to them?'

He shook his head, 'The wings are too far back and
with no nose attachment, the whole rig would be out of balance. And
look at the way it's built. It's far too heavy and too securely
sealed to be a zep. Neb, those bulges might even be weapon pods,
and believe me, you don't fight air battles in a zep... I'm not
sure what it is. I'm thinking it might be some sort of boat or
submarine, though the propellers look wrong for that...'

'I think I found it!' called out Tenry. In fairness,
he was likely the only one actually looking for the drone.

I edged my way back through the narrow crevasses to
join Tenry along the edge of the mezzanine to where he was standing
looking at a fuselage about a meter in diameter. Both ends were
hidden in unruly piles of boxes held together by cargo nets, but it
seemed unlikely to be anything but the drone.

'Can't be anything else, can it?' I said after a
quick inspection. It showed the wear you'd expect to see on
something that spent a great deal of time pushing through the dust
clouds of the drift. I glanced around considering the options for
shifting it to the deck. It'd be a lot easier in free fall and we'd
not have time to work on it until . Still, I did have this big crew
on hand whose supposed purpose was to find it, so I called them
together and we set out to rig a scheme of cargo handling cables to
lift off the cargo netted boxes off and , after releasing the drone
from the cables that secured it to the deck, lift it up and off the
mezzanine and on to a makeshift frame on the hold's deck next to
the other two – all of which took several hours and struck me as a
study in inefficiency. If I didn't know they were all just having
fun cursing and arguing with each other about the best way to do
everything the whole time, I'd be pretty nervous about the
competence of the crew I was sailing with.

As Riv and I were making a final check of the drone's
lashings and cradle, he asked with a grin, 'When are you and
Tallith going to make the announcement?'

'What announcement?' I asked, absently.

'Oh, you know. I've a high spirited woman of my own,
Skipper, so I know how things are. I can see things aren't quite
right with you two at the moment, but that'll blow over. Though
it'll happen faster if you were to go crawling back to her, begging
for forgiveness.'

I gave him a look. He was only half kidding.

'Well, Chief, I've not your vast experience in
crawling back for forgiveness. However, I can assure you we settled
all the issues between us on day one, so there's no need for anyone
to be begging forgiveness,' I replied as we turned for the access
well. 'And I can't begin to imagine what sort of announcement you
expect.'

Actually, I could and it made me rather angry. You
have to put up with a lot of guff from your chief engineer, but I
rather felt this fell outside of what was required. It's customary
aboard many ships for crew members in a relationship to openly
declare that relationship. Declared shipboard partnerships are
considered inviolable in the hope of keeping the tiny isolated
society of a space ship more or less on even keel. Spaceers who
violate this custom – and of course there are those who do – are
usually sent ashore at the next planet of call. So if the crew
suspected some sort of romantic entanglement between Min and
myself, they'd also expect that it would be announced sooner or
later as demanded by the age old custom. This, as I had feared, is
what that little hint of Min's from the Yacht Club to keep Vynnia
and Tenry from asking questions has led too. Though in fairness,
shanghaiing Min may have rather confirmed this expectation, so I
was not entirely blameless. Still...