Ships of My Fathers (20 page)

Jimmy looked around the dark warehouse with shipping containers stacked two and three high. No one else was near. “Are you Rufus?”

“Yeah, what’s it to you?”

“Can you get a message to the Winged Lady?”

Now the security guard looked around himself. “Sure, for a price.”

Jimmy handed him an envelope. It contained five crisp hundreds and a data card. “I think that’s the going rate for priority traffic.”

“Priority, eh?”

Jimmy nodded. “Get it to her quickly enough, and I’m sure you’ll be in her good graces.”

“All right, I’ll make sure it goes out on the next run. And your name?”

He shook his head. “She’ll know from the message.”

Michael stopped in at the galley past twenty-three hundred. He had dropped Karen off in environmental for her shift and wanted a snack before he went to bed. Very little remained to choose from at this hour, but he did find a leftover dish of raspberry sorbet in the refrigerated case at the end of the line.

“If you were looking for the pudding, I’m afraid I got the last one.”

Michael turned to see Corazon sitting at a table in the corner with a tablet. “No, ma’am, this will be fine.”

“It looks like you’ve recovered from runner duty at Arvin,” she said, pointing to the seat opposite her.

“Mostly. I think I lost a kilo in the process,” he said, taking the seat. “Is it always that hectic?”

She shook her head. “Hardly, but everything was so compressed at Arvin. Plus, the Captain and I usually make about half of those runs ourselves, just to keep up our own contacts.”

“That makes sense. I ran into the captain on one of my runs.”

“He mentioned it. How are you two getting along?”

He shrugged. “It’s still a lot to take in.”

“Your parents?”

“Yeah, I looked up Peter. I see why people keep talking about my chin.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“You never met him?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t join S&W until about twelve years ago, and I understand the Captain’s brother died during the war.”

Michael nodded. “I saw the report, but it was pretty spotty, not much more than a list ships. I found our old ship there, the
Hammerhead
, listed as one of two privateers.”

She nodded. “There were a lot of privateers back during the war.”

“How did that work? I mean, were they handing out a free pass to anyone with a missile rack or plasma gun?”

“I never knew their criteria. It probably wasn’t the best, but I doubt the Caspians were much more prudent. They gave out their share of letters of Marque, too.”

“But why? Where was the fleet in all this?”

“They had their own problems. What started as a civilian political problem escalated into a shooting war, and the next thing they knew, over a third of their ships were on the other side, including two whole carrier groups.”

“And the merchants?”

“We were trying to pay our bills and make our shipments. I was only a junior navigator on one of Takasumi’s ships back then, but it was a mess. No one wanted to carry anything with military value and risk becoming a target, but the Navy didn’t give us much choice. In the end, it didn’t matter. Soon enough, all the shipping was at risk. I lost a good friend of mine to a hull breach.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “She got lazy. I don’t know. Maybe she just didn’t want to put on her environment suit one more time, and that was the time the other freighter turned out to be a privateer.”

“Which side?”

“We were still in the Confederacy, and my captain would have plucked out the eye of anyone who suggested we pull out.”

“No, I meant the privateer.”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

He looked at the sorbet, slowly melting. “It’s hard to think of Malcolm that way.”

“They weren’t all bad. I knew a few who were good solid captains.”

“A few? But not most?”

She tried to make a smile but it did not hold. “Where do you think Yoshido recruited his fleet?”

Every spacer in the Confederacy had heard of Yoshido. No one knew if he was still around, but dead or alive, he had left a considerable piracy organization behind. If you were wary, you would come through all right, but every now and then, you would still hear about ships disappearing near the borders. It was not nearly as bad as the Neridians of the early Republic, but it was bad enough.

But Malcolm? The way he had always talked about pirates, Michael could never believe he was one of them. “I wish I knew more about that battle.”

“You can always request the records. The Navy may not have much more than you’ve already seen, but you won’t know without asking.”

“How?”

She frowned. “It’s a pity we didn’t have this talk last week. Arvin would have been the ideal place for it. Given how short our time was, I don’t know if you’d have even gotten to see anyone over at the fleet’s station, but you could have at least had real-time communication.”

“Oh,” he replied. “When are we coming through again?”

She paused to do the calculations. “Seven, maybe eight months, but you don’t have to wait that long. You can start the request by mail at our next port. I’ll even help if you’d like.”

“I’d like that,” he replied, but even as he said it, he was not so sure. As long as he did not know for certain, he could still believe that Malcolm was innocent.

But what if he was not?

Chapter 16

“It’s good to have friends on other ships as well as friends at each of your ports, but when you really need those friends you have to remember one thing. Ships move. Ports don’t.” — Malcolm Fletcher

M
ICHAEL RESTED HIS HEAD AGAINST
the wall in the shower, holding the valve chain down with one hand as the water beat on his back. It had been a long, exhausting shift. They had had nine axis shifts that day, and the sails sank into fluttering oscillations on four of them. Zane, Nathan, and Michael had been climbing over the generators making adjustments to the sails all day. Finally, at around fifteen thirty, Gabrielle had ordered a course change.

At dinner, she had looked as tired as he felt. “Tachyon storm,” she explained. “Looks like a big one coming in from coreward. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the downwind shake out of either a nova or something big hitting the core’s accretion disk.”

“Aren’t you supposed to get forecasts of that kind of thing?”

She shrugged. “Only after someone reports it. Looks like that’s our job this time.”

She promised to send him the logs and ask the overnight navigators to do the same. He had thanked her, but he had no intention of looking at them tonight. He only wanted to shower and go to sleep.

And showering was exactly what he was doing, letting the water course over him, but after a few minutes a warning light came on. He knew from talking to Charlie that if he kept the water running it would signal an alarm down in environmental, so he released it. He soaped up with the water already clinging to his skin and then rinsed off as quickly as he could. He ran the towel over his head and chest before wrapping it around his waist.

He stepped out and came face to face with Karen in her robe. “Good evening,” he said. “Or morning, whatever.”

She reached out and put a hand on his bare chest. “Oh, Michael, what are we going to do with you?”

He blinked twice. “I’m not… what do you mean?”

She shook her head. “Three weeks of flirtation and you still haven’t made your move? I think this calls for direct action.”

He was about to ask what she was talking about when she reached down and yanked the towel from his waist. He tried to cover himself but relaxed when she let her robe drop to the floor.

“Back in the shower, boy,” she said. “You can start by washing my back.”

He watched her go in and admired what he saw. Karen had quite a back.

Gabrielle had fifteen minutes left on the elliptical when the XO started up the machine next to her. Other than that, the room was deserted.

“This isn’t your usual night,” Corazon commented. “Normally I have the gym to myself on Tuesday nights, but I don’t mind the company.”

“After the crazy winds the last few days, I needed to unwind, and tonight’s movie isn’t quite my thing,” she replied.

“
Revenge of the Pharaoh
, right?”

“Yeah, another Paula Stone spandex special, but it’s also got Marcus Kearn as the love interest.”

“Ah, him I like. I can understand why the galley emptied so suddenly.”

“Everyone went?”

“I believe so, though it’s possible some were pairing up for other activities.”

Gabrielle did her best to suppress a grin. “So, what rumors have reached your elevated office?”

“If you’re asking about Miss Larkin and a new crewman called ‘biscuit boy,’ then yes, I’ve heard.”

“Oh,” she replied. “You’re not going to tell Father, are you?”

Corazon stepped up her speed. “There’s no reason I should, is there?”

“Oh, no, not at all. I just thought, you know…”

“That I might tattle? No, young Mr. Fletcher needs some breathing room, and as long as he doesn’t hyperventilate, I’m inclined to let him be.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

They pressed on in silence for a few minutes, but when Gabrielle switched into the cooldown stage, Corazon turned to her again. “But let’s not let him get too sidetracked.”

“Oh?”

“I believe you’ve been tutoring him on his navigation.”

“Yes. He’s struggling, but I think he’s making progress.”

“Good. Keep it up. I don’t want to see him driven off by your father’s vendetta against the late Captain Fletcher. Understood?”

“Absolutely, ma’am. I confess I’ve been asking around at port. Father’s version doesn’t add up to me, and if I can, I’m going to prove it to him.”

The XO gave her a short grin. “While I would never want to interfere in family politics, I wholeheartedly approve of you sticking up for a fellow crewman this way.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But feel free to make your feelings known to Mr. Brookstone about the movie selections. I do believe this is the third Paula Stone film we’ve had in as many months. We should have more variety than his libido can provide.”

Gabrielle giggled. “Yes, ma’am, I most certainly will.”

They were a day late getting into Tortisia because of the tachyon storm, but they still beat the deadline for performance penalty by nine hours. Liberty was scheduled for three days, and Michael made sure he was signed up for all of it. He was looking forward to some more relaxed time with Karen instead of the snippets they managed to piece together during second shift when he was winding down and she was waking up. He caught up with her in the line for the airlock and gave her a brief hug from behind.

She turned around and tickled him in the ribs. “Hey, you,” she said.

“So, what’s good here? Any place with a bigger bed?”

She chuckled but quickly shifted to a more neutral expression. “Yeah, about that. It turns out that the
Summer Night
is in port, and I have a good friend on board.”

“Well, a good friend of yours should be a good friend of mine,” he offered. “What’s her name?”