Owner's Share (Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper) (23 page)

I heard a muffled curse from the other side, and took that as a sign she was awake. I’d agreed not to leave the room without her to guard my body, but I already grew tired of the routine, and didn’t see the need.

I had been up since 05-bladder, and was desperate for my coffee. The colored water in the room didn’t quite cut it, so I hadn’t wasted the time. For two stans I reviewed my business charter, went through the packet of documentation and keys from Kirsten, and generally gazed out at space trying to think of how to differentiate my fledgling company from the rest.

To her credit, Ms. Arellone was up, dressed, and out of her room by 0710. She didn’t look happy about it, but she was moving.

“Cheer up, Ms. Arellone. You’re not standing watch.”

“I’m not complaining, Skipper. Just trying to get my eyes open.”

“You’re the one with the don’t-leave-the-room-without-me fetish.”

“Sar, every hour that passes, you’re becoming more known.”

“Yes, Ms. Arellone, but this whole bodyguard thing is just a bit over the top, don’t you think?”

“Kirsten has a bodyguard, sar.”

“She thinks it’s over the top, too.”

“Geoff Maloney had a bodyguard, Skipper. You don’t think he thought it was over the top, do you?”

“Geoff Maloney was also a member of the Confederated Planets Joint Committee on Trade. He was a lot more than a just a ship captain.”

“So are you, sar.”

“I’m not even that at the moment, Ms. Arellone.”

“You need your coffee, sar. Perhaps we should go find some?”

“We need to go check out the ship and see what we need to get started there.”

“Coffee, first, sar? You’re grumpy without your coffee.”

“I was actually thinking breakfast, Ms. Arellone.”

“Any place but Over Easy, sar.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Why? Don’t you like Over Easy?”

“I like it a lot, but you were there yesterday at about this time. You shouldn’t go there again today, sar. Too much of a pattern.”

I groaned. “Do you really think somebody is going to be after me at breakfast?”

“They got your picture yesterday, sar.”

“Yes, after you gave them the set up by mugging me in the promenade.” I shook my head. “We’re not going to be able to keep them from taking my picture, Ms. Arellone. Not when I’m in a public place, and not when I’m a public figure, which in about five more standard days, I will become if the predictions come true.”

“I know, Skipper, but that money is going to draw the crazies. You’re not going to be just another clipper captain.”

“Enough. Let’s find breakfast.”

She led the way out of the suite, and we were soon in a pleasant enough diner on deck five. The place had barely opened, and obviously catered to a later rising crowd than Over Easy. At first, Ms. Arellone refused to join me for breakfast.

“Sar,” she said quietly and in her I’m-being-reasonable voice, “I’m your bodyguard, not your dining companion. I need to be alert to threats.”

“Sit down and order breakfast, Ms. Arellone, or you will be my ex-bodyguard.”

She sat, and the hostess regarded us with a bit of a nervous smile flickering on her mouth like an out of phase neon sign. “Ellie will be your server. She’ll be right over with coffee.”

I nodded and smiled at her. “Thank you. Coffee would be most welcome.” I looked across the table to where a very distraught Ms. Arellone tried to look in all directions at once and sighed. “Ms. Arellone, thank you for your diligence, but you’re not going to be any good to me hungry, thirsty, and drawing attention to us all the time by behaving like a bodyguard.”

She looked startled.

“I am not going to live in this paranoid envelope of fear, Ms. Arellone. You’re my crew. You asked to come along with me, and I went along with it because Captain Thomas and Mr. Wyatt seemed to think I needed an assistant and an extra pair of eyes.”

“See, sar? Even they thought you needed a bodyguard.”

“Yes, I suppose they did, but so far the only one who’s really threatened me with violence in the last couple of days, Ms. Arellone, is you.”

She sighed and hung her head. “I’m sorry about that, Sar. That was inappropriate.” She looked up at me. “But you scared the gym socks off me. When I couldn’t find you, I really did think somebody had grabbed you.”

“I appreciate that, Ms. Arellone, but that’s my point.”

The waitress came over, went through the server song and dance, and I finally got a cup of coffee. Sipping gratefully, I was less than happy to find another bad cup of coffee. I sighed, placed my order for an omelet, and tried not to think of the breakfast I could be having instead.

I looked back at Ms. Arellone, momentarily thrown off conversational course by the disruption.

“What’s your point, sar?” Ms. Arellone asked after a few moments had passed.

The thought returned and I continued. “Your mindset predisposed you to misinterpret what you saw. That incorrect interpretation caused your emotional reaction which in turn drove you to pursue an improper response.”

“You’re not sitting there calling me an emotional female, are you, Captain?” She was on the verge of affront.

I shook my head. “I most certainly am not, Ms. Arellone. I am merely suggesting that the fear you have reported as your motivating mindset is not caused by a rational assessment of the risk as much as it is by the bodyguard framing of your operational context.”

“What?” Her eyes were focused on my lips as if she could see the meaning if she only watched my mouth move.

“You’re approaching this as if I’m at risk. You have gotten more and more paranoid as we’ve gone along.”

She started to object but I held up my hand. “Peace, Ms. Arellone. I’m not saying a bit of situational awareness is a bad thing. What I’m saying is that when you let fear rule your life, your life isn’t worth keeping. You were looking for something bad to happen to me. You saw my room, and your expectation caused you to jump to the conclusion that I’d been kidnapped. That conclusion was not only false, but dangerous because by acting on that conclusion, you exposed me to greater risk—a risk that was actualized by that ridiculous newsie photo.”

Ellie brought our meal and I ate, but my heart wasn’t in it. The omelet was watery, over cooked, and filled with a bland yellow cheese with a few shreds of ham. Even the toast was limp.

I took a few bites while Ms. Arellone sat stiffly across from me, her eyes alternately scanning the room and glaring at me.

“Eat, Ms. Arellone.” I pointed to her plate with my fork. “You’re going to need your strength, and it’s going to be a long time until lunch.”

“I really don’t think—” her voice choked off when she saw the look on my face. “Aye, aye, sar,” she finished. She took up her fork and picked at her meal while her eyes continued their not terribly furtive survey of the room.

I sighed and finished the tasteless meal, thumbing the tab and making an exit as soon as possible.

By 0810 we’d made it to the maintenance docks and I keyed the access code for dock three. I wasn’t sure what I’d find, but when the lock swung up, the brief wash of ship air smelled normal. I led the way up the ramp, and snapped on the lights.

“Ugh.”

I turned to look at Ms. Arellone. She looked about the lock, an expression of disdain on her face, her mouth screwed into a bitter grimace.

“This is what we call a fixer-upper, Ms. Arellone.”

“Are you sure this ship is safe, sar?”

“Chief Gerheart said it was.”

I heard her sigh. “Well, if the chief says it’s okay...”

We walked into the wide cargo vestibule and peered out into the gloomy cargo bay. The lights from the brow didn’t quite light up the space, casting a dim glow partway into the hold and leaving a large black nothing beyond.

“It looks bigger than it is, Ms. Arellone.”

“Skipper? I don’t know how to break this to you? As a cargo hold? Let’s just say I think my cell in the brig looked bigger.”

“She’s rated at just under ten metric kilotons, Ms. Arellone. Less than one of the
Agamemnon’s
cans. It doesn’t need to be too big.”

Secretly, I shared her reservations.

“But we have work to do, Ms. Arellone. This is going to be home for a while.”

She sighed. “I knew it was too good to last, sar.”

“What?”

“Hotel living, Skipper. Those beds are wonderful.”

I laughed and started up the ladder to the bridge. “This way, Ms. Arellone. We need to get to the bridge and get logged aboard.”

At the top of the first ladder, I spotted a glow plate on the bulkhead and managed to get the lights on. The longitudinal corridor looked very long and exceptionally plain when viewed from the bow. The airtight door at the end seemed a long way away, but I had a good idea how quickly that distance would shrink once we got underway.

“Did these people never clean?” Ms. Arellone muttered, her finger leaving a track in the grime on the bulkhead.

“That’s money there, Ms. Arellone.”

“Sar?” She looked up at me in confusion and looked at the smudge on her fingertip.

“If this ship were clean? It would cost more.” I nodded at her finger. “Every gram of dirt is money in the bank for now.”

“How long do we have to leave it like this, Sar?” Her nose wrinkled in distaste.

“Until the engineering report gets filed, Ms. Arellone.”

“When will that happen?”

“I think it happened yesterday, but we’ll know soon.” I headed up the ladder to the bridge. “Let’s light a fire in the hearth, and see what we need to do to move in.”

“Sar?” I could hear the alarm in her voice as she scampered up the ladder behind me, “Pardon my saying so, sar, but I don’t think a fire is a good idea...”

“It’s a figure of speech, Ms. Arellone.”

“Really, Skipper? I’ve never heard it.”

“I’m old, Ms. Arellone. I know old stuff.”

“Skipper, you’re not that old. Well, yes, you are but ... oh, you know what I mean, sar.”

I gave her a fishy eyeball, and followed it with a grin. “It’s okay, Ms. Arellone.”

There was plenty of light reflected onto the bridge from the skin of the orbital to see clearly. I sat at the main console and fired it up. It took a few ticks to get through initialization and first run diagnostics. They spooled down and ended with the “Insert Key” command.

I pulled a datachip from the packet Ms. Kingsley had forwarded, and slotted it into the console. The device mounted, and “Key accepted” showed on the screen, blinked twice, and then the screen went blank for a heartbeat before a systems administration screen came up.

“Okay, then.”

“Is everything all right, Sar?”

“Oh, yes, Ms. Arellone.” I looked up to where she stood looking over my shoulder. “I’m surprised that Ms. Kingsley was so trusting, but this should give us any access we need to take care of the ship.”

“Trusting, Captain?”

I nodded gazing at the console. “She’s given us the owner’s key. It’s the one that overrides the Captain.”

“You mean, she’s given you the ship?”

“In effect, Ms. Arellone. Other than the paperwork needed to actually transfer title, we can do anything with this ship we want.”

“What do we want to do, Skipper?” I could hear the confusion in her voice, and I realized she didn’t quite grasp the enormity. I let it go and focused on the present.

“We want to establish me as Captain, you as crew, and then bring up shipnet for our tablets.” I put my fingers on the dirty keyboard and started filling in the blank fields.

“Then what, Captain?”

“Then we start.” My answers were shortened as I focused on getting my credentials entered correctly.

“Start what, sar?”

I filed the changes, and the ship’s operational screens came up. Looking over my shoulder with a grin, I said, “We start making a list of things that need doing.”

“Can we clean first, sar?”

“As much as it pains me to say so, Ms. Arellone, no. Not until we have the engineering report filed that itemizes just how bad this ship is.”

“You’re not planning on sleeping here, are you, sar?” The revulsion was clear in her tone.

“Not tonight, no, Ms. Arellone.” I laughed at the look of relief on her face. “But we need to do our own survey of the ship, and see what needs doing.”

She stood up straight and put her fists on her hips, looking around the bridge. “It does have potential, doesn’t it, Skipper?” she said after a few heartbeats.

“I think so, Ms. Arellone, but we need to find a way to stand out in the crowd.”

She gave me one of her exasperated looks, and bit back whatever comment might have been behind it. Instead she took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, surveying the bridge once more. “Okay, Skipper. Where do we begin?”

I pulled up my tablet and made sure it was linked to the shipnet. “Are you on the network now, Ms. Arellone?”

She checked her connections. “Yes, sar.”

“Okay, then, there’s a schematic under ship’s status?”

“Got it.”

“Now we can find our way around. I’d suggest addressing the problem systematically, starting with a visual inspection of the inside of the ship from top to bottom. It’ll be incomplete until we can get the specialists to check the tankage, but the engineering report should tell us about that.”

“Then the outside, sar?”

I shook my head. “Then the systems, Ms. Arellone. Data, power, gravity, air, water, sails, and keel.” I grinned at her. “Then I’ll probably put on a suit and go look outside.”

“How long do we have to get this done, Captain?” She was eying the schematic dubiously. “This is a lot of volume for just the two of us to cover.”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure, Ms. Arellone. We have a couple of weeks before Ames Jarvis makes it back to the orbital.”

“Then what, sar?”

“I think, when that happens, we need to be underway already.”

Her head snapped around and I thought her eyes might bug out of her head. “Well, we best get cracking, shouldn’t we, sar?”

“Excellent idea, Ms. Arellone.”

Chapter Nineteen
Diurnia Orbital:
2372-December-22