Ships of My Fathers (16 page)

She took a sip of her coffee. “Very well then, I’ll see you in five minutes.”

He watched her go into her own office and leaned back against the bulkhead, banging his head against it softly.

At 7:59 he stepped to her door and looked forward at the clock on the center viewscreen of the bridge. With ten seconds left, he put his finger on the chime, and when the clock ticked over, he pressed it.

The door opened, and he walked in. The XO looked up from behind her desk. “Well, I see you’ve learned the lesson of punctuality.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And did you learn any other lessons this week?”

“Yes, ma’am. Several.”

She took another sip of her coffee. It was already half gone. “And what would you say was the most important lesson to you, personally?”

His eyes went wide. The list of names and faces flashed by, of course, but that hardly counted as a lesson. He had definitely been impressed by the off-axis sail polarization, but then there had been that glimmer of insight when he finally saw that the navigation math truly could tell you about the shape of the tachyon winds. Of course, he also remembered matters of water pressure, multi-user computer management, measuring lubrication viscosity on the lift rails, and algae life cycles.

He had already known many of these skills. Most were a little different on
Heinrich
than they had been on
Sophie
, but Malcolm had taught him well. That, of course, reminded him of one of the very first lessons, with Harry taking him in hand and showing him how to run the patch-stitcher. Without that he would not have even had his own name.

He opened his mouth to tell the XO precisely that, but he caught himself. Harry could have told him he was out of luck. Charlie could have let his uncle find him on that first shift, deep in the plumbing, but he had not. And then Zane had guided him back along the spine to report to his first engineering shift, and Gabrielle had gone to great lengths to show not merely how the math worked but why it mattered. Yes, he was family, for whatever that mattered to the various cousins, but he was fundamentally the New Guy, dumb and useless.

He realized he was standing there with his mouth hanging open as Corazon looked up at him, so he closed it, blinked a couple of times and said the first thing that rolled out of his brain. “The crew looks out for each other.”

She smiled. “That’s a good answer. Not your first one though?”

He shrugged. “I thought about the name patch machine,” he confessed.

She chuckled. “Fair enough. Let’s get to the names.” She pointed to the wall display at the end of the room. “I’m going to flash their pictures on that wall. I want to know the crewmembers name, their department, their shift, and anything else that comes to mind.”

He nodded, bracing himself.

The first image came up. It was the upper third of an environmental suit, with a strong light shining against it, obscuring most of the faceplate in a shiny reflective white-out. He blinked twice and starting panting, his heart surging towards panic. How was he supposed to pick out the faces in this? He could barely even spot the chin, covered in a dark goatee. His mind raced. He could think of three men on board with goatees, but Richardson was a red-head. That left Majors and Brookstone.

And then he realized how stupid he really was. The environment suits all have the occupant’s name painted onto the chest plate right along with their departmental symbol. He started laughing, and he kept laughing almost to the point of bending over. He was finally brought up short by a curt “Ahem!” from Corazon.

He looked back at her, completely unable to contain his grin. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Is there something funny about the test you’d like to share?”

He shook his head and did his best to regain his composure. “No, ma’am. That’s Walter Brookstone, comm and computers, first shift.” He remembered him clearly, including his uniform gaffe at that first disastrous dinner. “He looks good in his dress uniform, but I think the vest is too tight across his belly.”

Corazon nodded, and the screen changed. It was another environment suit. “That’s Roxy Collier, mechanical systems, first shift. She has a daughter who raises pigs.”

“Pigs?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, all of it coming back. “Her son-in-law has a farm on Arvin.”

Then came Billy Mason and his card tricks, Karen Larkin and her kickboxing, Maggie Nelson and her grandmother’s sourdough recipe, and on through the rest of the crew. For his uncle, he merely said, “Hans Schneider, Captain.” He could have said more, of course. At a minimum he probably should have mentioned that he was his uncle, but he was not ready give ground on that yet.

The final picture was the XO. “Felicia Corazon, first officer.” He turned back to face her. “The rumor is you’ll get the next captaincy slot in Schneider and Williams.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“Yes, ma’am. That is the rumor.”

She nodded to him. “All right. Now tell me, mister, who was missing?”

He blinked at her. “Missing?”

“That’s right. One of the crew was missing from that sequence of photographs. Who was it?”

He started to panic again. He had not been keeping count. He started running through them, department by department, trying to remember whether or not he had seen them in the photos. He counted them up on his hands as he went, but it kept adding up to all of them. He could not think of a single crewman who had not been in the photos.

He shook his head grimly. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t think of anyone.”

“Clearly you where thinking of quite a few. I saw you counting. How many were there?”

“Sixty-three,” he replied.

She sighed. “I’m sorry, mister, but our crew complement is sixty-four, not sixty-three.”

And then Charlie’s words came back to him, from his first day on board. “Sixty-four,” he had said, “and you’re one of them.”

Michael looked back to meet the XO’s eyes. “It’s me, ma’am. Michael Fletcher, currently unassigned.”

She smiled at him. “Indeed it is, Mr. Fletcher. Welcome to the crew.”

The relief hit him so hard, he almost fell over. “Thank you, ma’am.”

She shook his hand. “You’re to report to Ms. Schwartz in engineering, first shift. That’s your best rating, and that’s where we have an opening. It’s almost nine, so get a move on.”

He stepped out of her office to find the bridge and hallway packed with his fellow crewmates. There must have been thirty of forty crammed in, all clapping and chanting his name. “Michael! Michael! Michael!”

He was one of them now. New Guy no more.

But his uncle’s door remained closed.

Chapter 13

“Your crewmates are your best friends out here. They’ll get you out of at least as many jams as they’ll get you into.” — Malcolm Fletcher

F
ELICIA
C
ORAZON ATE DINNER WITH
Hans Schneider that night, alone in the officers’ wardroom. She had dispatched the steward after the main course, promising to finish off all the serving herself if need be. This was not a rare occurrence. This kind of dinner was one of the few times she and her ostensible captain could speak privately outside the formality of the captain’s ready room.

“We’re scheduled to reach Ballison in the morning, about an hour after shift change.”

“That’s good time, maybe half a day early.”

“Which puts us only six days behind from the Taschin detour,” she replied.

He shrugged. “It had to be done.”

She poured herself another cup of coffee. “I’m not complaining, sir. Your nephew looks to be a solid crewman and seems likely to fill that engineer post quite well.”

“Well, I’m sure the boy is fairly sharp. Peter was always at the head of his class, and Sophia seemed to have her wits about her. But what do you make of his ratings? Are they the result of lax testing?”

She considered it. From what she had heard so far, she was starting to suspect the opposite, but she wanted to tread lightly. “It’s too early to say, and no one has given him a proper evaluation on any of them. However, from what Ms. Schwartz says, I think he definitely qualifies for a tach drive one rating. I’ll give her a few weeks before I ask her to give an opinion on his supposed drive two rating.”

Hans toyed with his dessert. “Fair enough.”

“Nonetheless, sir, I would like to mark that position as filled for now and pull the posting from the corporate office on Ballison.”

“You’re that confident?”

“Yes, provided he stays.”

Hans sighed. “Well, then I suppose we should vest his ship shares and start him on the proper family track.”

“Obviously, I leave that decision to you, sir. Does he have any corporate shares?”

“Only a handful,” he replied, taking a tentative bite of the custard. “Peter and Sophia had a reasonably large piece, but they had shifted most of it into ship shares of the
Kaiser’s Folly
.”

“And those are gone?”

“Indeed, perished with the ship. Normally we would use the insurance to repatriate the shares back to corporate, but…” he trailed off, pushing the dessert away.

“An act of war?”

He nodded. “Somewhere past Malcolm Fletcher on my revenge list is the adjuster from Eternity Trust. It’s only money, but I’ve done what I can to him. I know four shipping lines that pulled their business from Eternity on my word alone.”

“About Fletcher…” she trailed off.

“What of him? He’s already dead. Very little I can do to him now.”

This was what she had been dancing around. “I was actually speaking of your nephew Michael. He seems attached to Fletcher’s name.”

Hans set his jaw into a firm frown. “I believe I’ve already made my feelings known on this.”

“I know you have, sir, and so has your nephew.”

“I’m sure he has, but he’s only a boy. He doesn’t understand yet.”

She shrugged. “Well, he seems quite adamant, sir. I understand he made his own uniform patches. I think he even repainted his environment suit, and I hear he got out the engraver set to rework the tag on his formal jacket.”

He shook his head. “That’s exactly my point. He’s a doer, just like Peter. Sooner or later, he’s going to realize how much he truly is his father’s son.”

She hesitated, looking for another angle. “Perhaps, but in the meantime, his ratings are in the name of Michael Fletcher. Even his Confederate passport is in that name. I know you listed him as Schneider on the crew manifest, but I must point out that we’re going to run afoul at the docks if we’re mismatched.”

Hans brushed it aside with his hands. “None of that matters. When he was born, I made a promise to his father.”

“I understand that, sir, but you also made a promise to me when I became your first officer, that you leave decisions about the crew to me, and I have a crewman who may very well jump ship if his captain will not bend on this.”

Hans stared at her. “You would really… you would make a stand over this, for this boy you don’t know?”

She sat as straight as she could. This is what it came down to. “Yes, sir. He is a member of my crew, and I will make a stand for him.”

He gritted his teeth, but a sigh eventually stole the stiffness away from his shoulders. “Very well, Felicia. I will yield to your decision here. I disagree, but I will not override it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He looked over the table. “You may go,” he told her. “I’ll send for the steward when I’m done.”

She stood and walked to the door. “Good night, sir.”

Michael was still settling into his station next to Zane the next morning when the order came. “Sail release, stage one, in sixty seconds… mark.”

Michael looked up at the clock. He knew it was all handled by the computers, that he had nothing to do by hand, but it was still a habit.

Zane pointed at the displays. “You can see our capture rate is already down twelve percent from the star’s interference. When we come up on the planet, it’ll really drop.”

The sixty second mark came, and the sails stepped down in size sharply. Their capture rate fell accordingly, but at least it smoothed out. The smaller sail configuration was less prone to gravitational interference. He knew the theory well, but again, it was the math that had scared him off of attempting the tach-three rating.

The capture rate settled down to a steady line, and Michael did what figuring he could do. “We’re down to about fifty lights now, right?”

Zane nodded. “Thereabouts, should be forty-eight according to specs. The next release should bring us down to about five, then about one and a half before she sets the final transition vectors.”

Gabrielle’s voice sounded again. “Sail release, stage two, in thirty seconds… mark.”

The sails pulled in even tighter, though Michael could see the bottom port sail flutter in the process, with its capture rate fluctuating chaotically through the spin direction. He was reaching to give it a polarization thump when Zane pulled his hand back. “No, let it go,” he said.

Sure enough, it settled on its own. “What was that?” Michael asked.

Zane shook his head. “That generator has been stuttering on the down-tachs for three months. It always settles out, and it’s otherwise operating to specs, but I don’t like it.”