Milk Run (Smuggler's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (28 page)

“How do you figure?”

“Because water isn’t just water. Every station, every ship. Every source is different. It’s stupidly difficult to match waters at the molecular level.”

“I thought it was all hydrogen dioxide.”

“Wrong numbers of atoms. It would be dihydrogen monoxide. It’s more commonly hydrogen hydroxide because of the atomic bonding, but that’s just the basic pure chemical. What we think of as water generally contains soluble chemicals from piping, pumps, even microscopic levels of common contaminants. They’re like a fingerprint for water.”

“You think you can find the source?”

Knowles frowned and screwed his mouth around a little like he was tasting something interesting but wasn’t sure if it was good or bad. “Maybe,” he said.

“Maybe?”

“I can tell you if the water came from the ship. Or from Dark Knight. I can tell you if it came from someplace else, but without a sample from a known location, we’re left with a fingerprint with no record behind it.”

Natalya frowned at the pink water swirling slowly in the beaker. “So, maybe five hundred credits’ worth of chemicals?”

Knowles took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Maybe that amount.”

“This didn’t happen overnight,” Natalya said. “And it wasn’t somebody random.”

Knowles looked at her, frowning. “No, that took a lot of time and somebody who knew what to take and what to hide.” He paused, scratching his cheek. “How much do you think they got?”

“Replacement cost for us will be tens of thousands if the scope is anything like I think it is.” She shook her head. “Maybe hundreds of thousands.” A sudden thought made her start.

“What?” Knowles asked.

“Maybe a lot more,” she said and ran up the ladder to the spares locker again. She opened the tool closet, flipped on the light, and stopped dead in her tracks.

Knowles bumped into her and braced himself on the door frame to lean into the closet. “That seems kind of sparse,” he said.

Natalya sighed. “If you didn’t know what was supposed to be in here, it would look fine.” She pointed to a shelf just above eye level. “That’s where I’d look to find the coil alignment meter and tools.” She pointed to the space beside it. “Burleson bus coupling balancing tools.” She pointed to a lower shelf near the middle. “Fusactor test equipment.”

Knowles frowned. “Well, that’s where you’d look but you’re used to fleet ships. Maybe they’re all just stowed someplace else.”

Natalya slumped against the bulkhead. “That might be worse, in a way.”

“How so?”

“Somebody with enough engineering knowledge to know what those tools do moved them from the place where they’d need to be for somebody who needed them to find them. Does anybody aboard have that kind of knowledge?”

“Besides you?” Knowles asked.

She chuckled. “Yeah. Besides me.”

“Solomon, maybe. She trained with an old engineer.”

Natalya considered that, letting her gaze scan the nearly empty closet. “Solomon’s propulsion. Some of the missing tools, sure. Burleson drives. Even some fuel mix adjustment tools for the kickers.” She shook her head. “Then who took the power tools? That fusactor test equipment would only be useful for somebody who knew how to use it and when.” She looked at Knowles. “You brought your own tools with you, I bet.”

“Of course. And my own crew.”

“I’ve got my own tools, too, but they’re just a basic set. Nothing like the specialist tools that should be stored here and belong to the ship.”

“How much is missing?”

Natalya shook her head and sighed. “Hundreds of thousands.”

Knowles gave a low whistle. “That’ll eat into shares.”

Natalya looked at him and started to laugh. “Yeah. It will indeed.”

“What’ll you do now?”

“First, notify the captain. Second, get a valid inventory of the spares locker so we can replenish what’s been stolen when we get to Siren.”

“Third?”

“Pray nothing happens between now and then that needs a part or a tool that’s missing,” she said.

Knowles looked around the tool closet and then the row upon row of bins and storage cabinets in the spares locker. “I’d put that prayer first,” he said.

Chapter 29
Siren System: 2363, June 23

The spares locker seemed too small a space for the enormity Natalya and the captain considered. “Who’d do this?” Trask asked.

“Who
could
do it?” Natalya asked. “Somebody who knows enough about the ship and what it’s doing. Somebody with enough knowledge of the engineering division to pull it off.”

“How long do you think it’s been like that?”

“Without being spotted?” Natalya shuddered. “No way to know. The only reason I twigged was because of the emitter bus coupling. I went to get the replacement and found all this.”

“How long must it have taken?” Trask asked.

“I’ve been asking myself that same question. It’s going to take us days, maybe weeks to get a final and accurate inventory in here. Even allowing for some rudimentary inventory filtering to take only things that were worth taking, it must have taken months.”

“That long?”

“They stole parts and replaced them with similar masses of scrap. They probably worried that somebody might be able to tell if the ship was missing a few tons of mass.”

“Tons?” Trask said, his gaze sweeping the rows of storage.

“Probably. Crew mass allotments are calculated pretty carefully in CPJCT space.”

Trask snorted.

“Yeah, I know. It gets lost in the rounding errors on tankage alone to say nothing of the food stores.”

Trask’s eyes widened at that. “You don’t suppose?”

Natalya bit her lip. “Aren’t food stocks supposed to be rotated?”

“They’re
supposed
to be but I’m going to sleep better if Marah can prove that they have been,” Trask said. He cast a final scan around the room. “What do you need to get this straightened out?”

Natalya considered for a moment. “Somebody we can trust to help with the inventory. Once I know what’s missing, generating a replenishment order when we dock at Siren should be easy, if expensive.”

“You’re not going to be able to keep this under wraps, you know?”

She sighed. “Probably not, but I’d like to keep the interference to a minimum.”

He laughed. “Can’t blame you there. What about Pritchard?”

“Pritchard?” Natalya shook her head. “Uh. No.”

“He’s not doing anything else at the moment.”

“Let me just say, the thought of being cheek by jowl with him for days at a time leaves me less than enthusiastic.” She shook her head. “I’d rather Josh Lyons.”

Trask opened his mouth as if to speak but closed it again before anything came out. He looked at her with a slight tilt to his head. “Really?”

She shrugged. “He’s actually a cargo master?”

“Yeah. I think he was with Sullivan over in Halpern before he came out to Dark Knight.” Trask frowned. “He’s rather disagreeable.”

“I think he’s probably just carrying too much baggage and can’t seem to drink it away.”

“You want me to ask him?” Trask asked.

“You two have a history, I take it?”

Trask shrugged. “Not as such. I keep putting him on the mission rosters and he keeps coming. More than half his mass allotment is liquid.”

“He’s probably going to run a little low by the time we reach—where was it? Joe’s?”

“Moe’s. Moe’s Mining.”

Natalya raised an eyebrow. “Seriously.”

“Yeah. Not terribly catchy but she flies under the CPJCT radar.” Trask grinned. “If she didn’t have us making the runs in with cheap ore, she’d probably go belly up.”

“So Kondur uses her to feed goods into the system.”

“And siphon off cargoes that we need but don’t want to account for.” Trask shrugged. “Honestly, it’s a shell game and I think TIC does it on purpose to justify their existence.” He paused for a few heartbeats. “So you want me to talk to Lyons?”

Natalya shook her head. “Lemme try him.”

“Suit yourself,” Trask said. “You got a fallback position?”

“I’ll get one of the wipers.”

“How do you know they’re not in on it?”

“I don’t,” she said. “I don’t
know
you’re not in on it, but you’re the captain so I’m pretty screwed if you are in any case.”

He laughed. “I like you, Regyri. Remind me of your father.”

“I come by it honestly.”

“That you do, lass.” He sighed. “I better go talk to Marah and see what’s in her pantries.” He shambled toward the locker’s door and stopped at the jamb to look back. “Good work on this.” He waved a hand around the room.

“Thanks, Skipper. We’ll get it straightened out soon.”

Trask nodded, pursing his lips but not speaking. When he left, the spares locker seemed a lot larger for not having him in it.

Natalya pulled out her tablet and sent a bip to Lyons via ShipNet. She didn’t think he’d answer, but at least she’d give him warning that she was coming.

Natalya knocked on the door. A polite two raps with a single knuckle. When nobody answered, she said, “Chief Lyons?”

“Go away,” he said. It sounded like he was just on the other side of the panel.

“Chief, I need your help.”

“Yeah, right. Go. Away.”

“Chief? Could we at least talk about it face to face instead of face to door?”

Lyons snatched open the door and thrust his pallid, sweaty face out of the darkness on the other side. “Here’s my face saying ‘Go away.’ Is that better?”

Natalya planted her feet and stared into the man’s red-rimmed eyes. “Not really, no.”

He closed his eyes and his lips pressed into a thin line. “I outrank you. Go away.”

“I know that, Chief. I need your help.”

He reached for the door jamb with his free hand and almost missed it. “I’m not in any condition to help you.”

“You enunciate pretty clearly when you want to, Chief. I do need your help.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “You’re not going to leave me alone. What is it?”

“I’ve got an inventory problem.”

He blinked at her as if trying to process whatever it was she’d just said. “You’re engineering.”

“I’ve still got an inventory problem. I need your help.”

“You keep saying that.”

“It’s still true and you keep telling me you can’t help me but you don’t even know what the problem is.”

He fell against the edge of the frame, propping himself on a shoulder. “All right, Ms. Whoever You Are. Tell me so I can tell you I can’t help you.”

Natalya lowered her voice. “It’s Regyri, Chief. Natalya Regyri. I’m engineering third and apparently the only real engineer on the ship.”

“All right. That’s who you are, but why is your inventory my problem.”

“Because unless we get it straightened out soon, we all might die.”

Lyons scoffed and shook his head. One shake and he winced before holding very still. “We’re all going to die, Ms. Regyri. Some sooner than others.”

“I’m aware of that, Chief, but I’d like mine to be later rather than sooner if that’s all the same to you.”

He sighed and blinked up at the overhead light. “Come in. Keep your voice down, please. I’m planning on having a hangover.”

“You’re not having one now?”

He shrugged. “That might be why the light’s so bright out here.” He turned and shuffled back into his stateroom.

Natalya stepped into the dimness and held her breath for a moment, almost afraid of what she’d inhale. She realized she wouldn’t be able to talk without breathing and took a tentative sniff. Other than a bit of stuffiness and some rather ripe clothing, it wasn’t as bad as she feared.

Lyons lowered himself onto his bunk and waved at the chair. “Spill. I’ve got a date in a few ticks and don’t wanna be late.”

“Somebody’s stripped the spares locker of everything of value.”

One ruddy eye pried itself open and peered out at her. “Engineering spares?”

“Yes, Chief. They replaced it with useless crap that massed about the same as the missing parts.”

The eye closed. “That’s inane.”

“Insane?” she asked.

“No, Ms. Regyri. In. Ane. As in incredibly silly. Stupid. Might even be puerile, now that I think of it and depending on what they replaced the parts with.”

“Scrap metal and colored water as nearly as I’ve been able to tell, Chief.”