The Bright Black Sea (5 page)

As a junior member of the crew I was rarely present
when the Four Shipmates gathered aboard us to yarn and carouse, so
most of their yarns came to me via Captain Miccall's reminisces or
second hand from the older members of the crew who knew them far
better. Still, when you saw them together you'd know they shared a
past. A past, as I've said, that gets very sketchy, painted in
yarns of outlandish danger and adventure for decades prior to their
arrival in the Azminn system. Illy, Riv and Lilm, Dyn and our
chefs, Barlan and Saysa Dray all came to the Azminn aboard the
Lost Star
, but the desperate adventures of the Four
Shipmates – if they exist at all – lay deeper in the past.

'All their outlandish yarns – all the dangers the
faced – if one's to believe half of 'em, anyway. And now, just that
quickly, they're all dead.'

'All our stories end in death, Wil. It's a port of
call for all of us,' said Illy, softly, out of the darkness.
'They're gone, but their stories live on. We know them by
heart.'

'Aye, and the old
Lost Star
as well – the one
thing that tied them all together. If the ship could talk, or if
its log isn't as fictional as I believe it is, we'd know a lot more
about them.'

'They knew the secret of keeping secrets – never
telling them. I doubt we'll ever know the true story of the Four
Shipmates. Still, we've a hundred yarns we can spin when we run out
of our own. And, for the next six days, the ship that served them
so well for so long.'

Six days to Calissant. Nothing left to do but be
patient and see where that three of stars I drew takes us. It was
out of my hands now.

I let the silence run on until my mug of cha was
empty.

'Thanks for the company, Illy. I think I'll be
pushing on...' I said, rising.

'Any time, Wil,' she said quietly.

Approaching the edge of the well I happened to look
down and catch the swift movement of a small white shape slipping
out of sight against the shadow laced shaft at my feet – Ginger,
one of the ship's cats.

'I see you Ginger. And don't you dare,' I warned her
as I stepped off into space pushing up to start my drop. She was
sitting on the ceiling of the deck below, waiting in ambush. She
lives for the hunt.

Unlike the dogs, cats don't require magnetic pads to
get around in free fall – their claws provide enough of a grip.
They go about in free fall making no distinction between deck,
bulkheads or ceilings, often leaping bulkhead to bulkhead down a
passageway, making dodging cats a not infrequent event aboard the
ship
.

Officially we have seven cats, and I'll admit to
having seen only six together at any one time, but unless they've
learned to teleport and change the color of their spots, I have to
believe there's more than seven cats.

Miccall was fond of them, so the ship was and remains
liberty hall for them. Ginger is one of our three “general purpose”
cats who will come to anyone, when in the mood, but there's also
engine room cats, a tribe of nearly feral cats living in our no. 4
hold, and I suspect, Dyn has several in his inter-hull realm as
well. I pretend to believe there are only seven and turn a blind
eye to their suspicious variety, but do I really have a choice? The
cats are even less in awe of me than everyone and if there are as
many of them aboard as I suspect, I'd be wise not cross them.

Ginger is a large, Neavery Snowshadow cat who, as I
mentioned, lives for the hunt. Unfortunately (for her, not for us),
there's little to hunt aboard the ship. Like all the cats aboard,
she's long since resigned herself to the fact that bachelor birds
are too alert, smart, and agile to be worth the trouble of hunting,
especially since they possess sharp pointy beaks with a cheerful
willingness to use them. She has the scars to testify to this.
Still, she or one of the other cats will sit for hours near the
jungle garden watching the birds fly about, just to unnerve them, I
suppose. Never works. Sooner or later – as the cat begins to doze,
one of the bachelor birds will make a sudden lightning feint
towards it just to see it jump. Jungle life aboard the
Lost
Star
.

With bachelor birds so iffy, Ginger
hunts
the
crew instead. A thumping landing on a victim's shoulders, a stifled
scream, a curse and she naps, purring. But she has her pride, and
having called her out, she was casually licking a paw as I drifted
down. I
meowed
a greeting. She ignored me.

And I suppose, as long as I'm cataloging the ship's
fauna, I should include the bachelor birds as well. That's not
their actual name. What it is however, and which of the 500 odd
planets of the Nebula they originated on is a mystery unlikely to
be solved, since they've now been aboard longer than any of the
present crew. They're called bachelor birds because they all look
exactly the same, old and young, male and female. They could be
phoenixes for all we know as they keep their private lives well
hidden in the dense foliage and nooks of the rough rocky wall
defended with the sharp point of their beaks. They're a bright
green with darker green trim around their necks and wings, some 8
cm long. Still, they're cheerful, cocky birds, who'll sit on your
shoulder and chat quite musically, when, like the cats, they're in
the mood.

As I've mentioned, a ship is a tiny world, and all
these touches of life, dogs, cats, birds, plants and gardens serve
to keep the cold endless void beyond the hull plates at bay.

Leaving a disappointed Ginger behind, I dropped down
past the crew deck to the bridge to keep the watch, Myes Qilan and
Lili Chartre company. I stayed for an hour into the next watch with
Molaye and Kie before those love birds drove me crazy and I was
weary enough to sleep.

I watched Molaye running through the routine of
slipping into our assigned orbital slot with clenched hands
casually hidden in my trouser pockets. She was doing it by the
book. This time. Usually she brought the ship in
packet
style
, matching altitude and velocity in a single motion, a
liberty frowned on by the old captains she'd be facing in a few
days. This time she was deftly aligning the
Lost Star
to our
assigned anchorage buoy from the fairway, a hundred kilometers
above the buoy. With position and speed matched, she'd use our
steering rockets to drop us to within ten kilometers of the
buoy.

'Relax Skipper,' said Riv, who, like me, was holding
up the port side bulkhead of the bridge. 'You're making me jumpy.
Young Molaye's perfectly capable of slotting us in without running
down the buoy.'

'Of course. Natural talent, and two years my
apprentice. Still, if the Dark Neb has it in for me, time's running
short...'

'If the Dark Neb has it in for you, there's far worst
things than running down a blasted buoy. There's hundreds of ships
and boats in orbit to run down.'

'Thanks for pointing that out, Chief. That does seem
to make hitting a buoy much easier to contemplate. I've been
thinking of becoming a cha planter anyway.'

Riv grinned and in a louder voice called out, 'Be
careful Molaye, don't run the buoy down, or the Skipper will have
to take up farming.'

Riv's partner, Lilm, at the engine room console,
turned and gave him a sharp look. 'You be quiet, Riv.'

Molaye at the helm, merely turned with a smile, 'I'll
have her within two hundred meters, Chief. Hold his hand.'

I sighed and muttered quietly to Riv, 'You know,
you're going to have to serve under a real captain again
someday.'

'All the more reason to have my fun now...'

Like the awning deck, the ship's bridge is a conceit,
designed to suggest that it is located above and overlooking the
hull rather than deep within the ship. Eleven large viewpanels wrap
around the curving forward bulkhead of the bridge. The panels are
linked to cameras in the sensor bar and, except for the center
panel displaying the pilot's data, they show a panoramic view of
the Nine Star Nebula, the sun, Azminn and the curve of Calissant
below, as seen from the upper hull looking aft since we were still
traveling stern first, having just completed our deceleration to
match Calissant's velocity. The warmth of the bright sunlight
pouring in was another artful illusion generated by the panels.

Seated at the central control console facing the wall
of panels were the three persons on watch, Lilm monitoring the
engine room and rockets, Molaye at the helm and Dyn, the look out
who monitored the ship's radar and communications. More specialized
versions of these and other stations filled the bulkhead behind
them in a blaze of status lights and screens. The rest of the crew
seemed to have drifted into the bridge as well, settling in the
various monitoring stations and corners. I don't suppose many
captains would've allowed this, but I guess we felt a need be
together at the end of what might well be our last voyage as
shipmates.

Molaye rang the maneuvering warning bell, unnecessary
with everyone present, but required.

I felt a faint, confused tug of inertia as Molaye
began firing a series of steering rockets to flip and rotate the
ship. The patches of sun light flowed around the bridge as the
ship's stern dropped and began to slowly rotate. There's no reason
why a ship needs its bow facing the direction of orbit, nor why the
holds have to open 'up' in relation to the planet, except it's the
way it's done. And while it would have been simpler to just spin
the ship laterally to accomplish this, that too is not the way it's
done. A ship is flipped 180 degrees while making a 180 degree axial
rotation before it comes to rest in orbit. Pilots like flying
rockets...

Since I was officially monitoring Molaye, my com link
connected me to the ship's array of internal and external sensors.
As with the crane, I experienced the ship's movement as a ghostly
sensation of actually being the ship. I'm unable to use this link
to control the ship (another technological victim of the robot
revolt) but it serves as an intuitive aid and an early warning
system necessary for something as complex as an interplanetary
ship.

I tried not to ignore the rapid approach of our
anchoring buoy seen by the ship's radar. Closing my eyes didn't
help, of course, but I did it anyway. If the Dark Neb had it in for
me, nothing I could do was going to make any difference.

'Captain?'

I opened my eyes to see Molaye watching me. She
smiled brightly and held up her hands. 'Oh,' I said and pushed
myself off the bulkhead.

'Hundred and eighty-six meters,' she said glancing
around me as I reached the console to grin at Riv.

I checked the readings on the screens over Molaye's
shoulder, speed relative to buoy, a neat 0.000, 186 meters off our
bow. We were home. 'Excellent, Molaye. As always. You'll have no
trouble with the board. I only wish I could promise you a berth.
I'll do all I can, of course.'

'Thanks Captain. We're hoping to stay onboard,' she
replied. The 'we' included Kie who'd also be going before his Tech
Board.

'I want you both,' I assured her.

Lilm looked up at me. 'Ah, Wil...'

'Huh?'

'Do you still need me?'

'Oh. Right. Done with engines, Lilm. Stand down,
harbor watch.'

'Well Skipper?' Riv called from across the
bridge.

'Well what?

'What did the Kardea of Min & Co say?'

I'd reported our arrival to our managing firm during
our approach to orbit and talked a bit to Phylea Kardea, the firm's
office manager.

'In a moment. Before the quarantine and trade control
boats arrive, I'd like to make a fool of myself one last time by
thanking all of you for all the big and little ways you've made my
job easier, not that I expected anything less. I know it's been
hard for you, and me, to sail without Captain Miccall. Thanks for
not holding me to his standard, I know some of you have left things
unsaid. Some more than others...'

'No problem,' Riv acknowledged with a shallow bow. 'I
can't say it wasn't a trial, but we've gotten through. Just don't
expect such a smooth ride from here on out. We've our limits.'

'Thanks, Chief.'

'I know I speak for everyone when I say that even if
you weren't the only option, I'm sure we'd still have at least
considered you for acting captain...' he added.

'I was the only option because none of you stepped
forward. If you had, I'd have dodged the berth as deftly as a jump
boat. Well, we're home again. You can admit it now. How many of you
have a master's ticket?' I asked, looking around.

'A master's ticket? I'm just an old, broken down
chief engineer. Why would I have a master's ticket?' he said with a
less than innocent smile, shared by my prime suspects. I shook my
head. I'd get Illy to tell me, someday...

'Now, what did Kardea say?' he added.

'Very little we didn't know. The ministry official
handling Vinden's estate is on holiday this week so Tallith Min
won't be able to see him before next Secondday, leaving our fate
hanging a week or more.'

'What's to prevent us from sailing hollow to
Sanre-tay before the official even knows we've here and gone?'
asked Riv.

'The thought actually crossed my mind as well. I
asked Kardea. She said there are standing orders for all Vinden's
ships to be paid off after discharging their cargoes. So running
would be piracy, or the next thing to it. I don't think we're ready
to be pirates yet. We should probably give Min a chance to argue
our case, first.'

'Blast, it could have worked...'

'If it wasn't for those standing orders, it'd been
something to consider. According to Kardea there's little in the
way of cargo and not likely to be any more in the near future so
sailing hollow to the Sanre-tay quarter might have been
justifiable. We've enough fuel on board for a slow run anywhere.
But I do draw the line at piracy.'