Owner's Share (Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper) (25 page)

“More than one, sar?”

“Yes, Ms. Arellone. One might be suspect, but two experts reviewing the craft make the findings practically unassailable.”

“And you think Mr. Jarvis will assail them when he gets back from Breakall?”

“I think he’d like to try, but these look pretty conclusive.”

“And the verdict, sar?”

“Ship is a wreck. Sail generators shot. Fusactors need relining. Control systems dated. It’s rather a long list of disgusting problems.” I grinned as I saw the date on the first report. “This one even mentions scrubber failure.”

Ms. Arellone frowned. “I didn’t notice any problem with the air.”

“That’s because you weren’t there when the filter cartridges topped off, and turned moldy.”

“Eeew!”

“That day I took Chief Gerheart to see the ship, they’d failed completely. ‘Eeew’ doesn’t quite describe it. What a mess.”

“Why are you so happy, Skipper? I thought you wanted to buy this ship.”

“I do, Ms. Arellone.”

“Even as bad as it is?”

I nodded. “Most of these things are minor annoyances. I don’t know who she got to do the inspections, but they agree the ship should go to the breakers, and give a scrap value of about forty million.”

She squinted at me across the breakfast table. “So, you’re saying they cooked the reports?”

I shook my head. “Not in the least. Everything on here—at least as nearly as I can tell—is actually wrong with the ship. It’s a case of ‘too many little things wrong’ and after a while those add up.”

“But that report makes the value look a bit low, doesn’t it?”

I looked at the reports again. “Perhaps a bit, but the genius in them is getting the ship declared scrap.”

She shook her head. “I don’t get it, sar.”

“An operational vessel in this class, even one in as rough a shape as this one is, it would fetch nearly a hundred thousand on the open market.”

“That much I get, sar.”

“By declaring it only worth scrap, these engineers opened the way for Kirsten to clear the hull off her spreadsheet for less than half of the price, take a write off adjustment on her balance sheet, and maybe even get a tax credit or something.”

“That doesn’t sound like it would be good for the company, sar.”

“In gross numbers, it seems like a lot of credits, more than I’ll have even after the
Chernyakova
sells. But in relative terms? On the scale that DST operates on? They’ve got eighteen ships and each one is worth an order of magnitude more than the
Jezebel
. This write-down amounts to rounding error at the end of the year.”

“But, sar, Kirsten is basically tossing, what? Fifty million credits?”

“Something like that. It’s all number shuffling at this level anyway. I suspect the company makes more in a day than the amount of the write down against this hull.”

“But why, sar? You said they wanted a big favor before. I was just talking about this suite. You’re talking about enough credits to buy the hotel.”

I twisted my mouth a bit. “Not quite that many. I suspect this hotel is a going concern and would cost plenty to buy, but yes. They want a very big favor. One that I don’t really want to get into now. It’s big. I know what it is. I’ve sort of agreed to do them this favor if I can get a ship.”

“The ship part—the
Jezebel
—being the carrot they’re holding out for you, sar?”

“Precisely, Ms. Arellone.

She scraped the last of the scrambled egg from her plate without taking her eyes off me. Finally she finished chewing, and shook her head. “All I can say is, you better come through for them, or they’ll make what little is left of your life thoroughly miserable.”

“Thank you for that cogent assessment, Ms. Arellone. I think so, too.”

We finished off most of the breakfast, and stacked the dishes on the tray. By 0700 we were on the lift heading down to oh-two, and the chandlery to place an order for consumables. In less than a stan I had about a pallet worth of goods ordered, and paid for out of my new business account. The chandlery promised delivery later in the day.

“Why didn’t we take some cleaning gear with us, Sar?” Ms. Arellone asked as we headed for the docking bay.

“We’ve still got the engine room to survey, and I didn’t want to telegraph to anybody that we’re doing anything more than caretaker duties on this ship.”

“I haven’t seen anybody, Skipper.”

“I haven’t either, Ms. Arellone, but we only ever saw the one guy, and the rest have gotten away with it.”

It took only a few ticks to make the now familiar trip to the maintenance docks and, when we got to the ship, we started in on the engine room, picking up the inventory where we left off.

When we got the lights on in the engine room, Ms. Arellone eyed the deck dubiously. “That piece of deck looks freshly cleaned, sar. Is that the scrubber?”

“Yes, and it was an unholy mess here for a while. Ms. Kingsley and I were covered in slime by the time we got off the ship.”

“Ms. Kingsley? Does she know anything about ships?”

“Only fleet actions, I think.” I made a note to check her background, and kicked myself for not thinking of it before. “Let’s start in this corner, Ms. Arellone, and work port to starboard, bow to stern again. This time, don’t try the control panels. Some of them are overrides to equipment we don’t want running while docked.”

She straightened up, and looked around nervously. “I’m not going to fry anything, am I?”

“It’s unlikely, Ms. Arellone, but just deal with light switches. I’ll exercise what I can, but we really need an engineer to fire up some of this stuff.”

The engine room proper didn’t take as much time as I thought it would. We finished our first survey before noon. We slipped out for a quick bowl of noodles on the oh-two deck, and were back by 1300.

The spares closet was another matter. I took the time to fire up the ship’s inventory system as a base, and had Ms. Arellone walk through the screens while I counted and sorted. The ship had a few more spares than appeared to the first glance, but there were some conspicuous absences—notably the sail generator coils, which probably explained why the sail generator was out of phase. The ship was also out of lubricating oil, fuel filters, water filters, and spare systems boards.

“Is that serious, sar?” Ms. Arellone asked when we’d finally gotten through the rather long list.

“We won’t be getting underway without them, Ms. Arellone, but the water filters are the most critical. If the rest of the ship is any indicator, we should replace those now—before we try to drink the water.”

With shipnet up and running, it was a simple matter to place an order for a pack of six water filters of the proper dimensions. I found the correct part number in the ship’s stores database, and flashed the order to the chandlery for pick up.

“Ms. Arellone, would you go pick them up, please?”

“Just the filters? Is there anything else we need, skipper?”

“I think anything else can wait, and you won’t be too conspicuous carrying them. I can stay here in case the cleaning supplies show up.”

“Sure thing, Skipper.” She scampered forward through the stores closet, and headed for the bow. Less than a tick later, I heard the lock cycle and I was alone on the ship.

I sauntered forward through the empty and echoing cargo hold, marveling in the feeling of being the only person aboard. In all my stanyers in the fleet, I had never been the only person aboard any ship. On the
Agamemnon
there were a couple of occasions where I knew Mr. Hill and I were the only people aboard, but this was, somehow, different. I found myself smiling, and I didn’t know why.

It felt like madness, but I began to really think that I’d pull it off. The thought of being tens of millions of credits in debt was daunting, but somehow unreal. I climbed the ladder to the mess deck, and pulled one of the bottles of water out of the chiller where we’d stashed it the day before. I tried not to look at the inside of the chiller. It would need a good scrub down before I’d be comfortable putting real food in it, but the water bottles seemed safe enough, provided I didn’t think too much about it.

The mess deck configuration was an interesting melding of styles that I had seen in the past. There was one large table mounted on the deck, but instead of the benches that we’d had on the
Agamemnon
, this table had chairs mounted to the deck. Somebody with long or short arms—or legs for that matter—would find this arrangement awkward and I wondered at it.

We’d already surveyed the cook-top and other fixtures in the galley, and I knew they would serve well enough. They were not new, but they were still in good shape.

I stood in the galley, in front of the cook-top, and looked back over the mess deck. It was about ten meters square with a relatively generous overhead. I crossed to the far bulkhead, and held out my arms to get a rough measure for where I wanted the repeater to go. The success of that particular innovation on the
Agamemnon
made me believe it would be doubly important on the
Jezebel
. The engineer and I would be the only officers, and I expected I would spend a lot of time on the mess deck.

As I looked around the rather drab area, I wondered what we could do to liven it up. A small crew and a few passengers meant we didn’t need much, but it also meant we should make it as comfortable as possible.

I stepped out into the passage and looked down the length of the ship to hatch at the far end. Cleaning and fresh paint would make a world of difference in terms of the dingy appearance, and I wondered if we should carry only cargo, perhaps using the extra cabin space for small cargoes that we could hand carry up the ladder.

Something gnawed in the back of my mind, something triggered by thinking about stores and ladders. I looked back into the mess deck, and that’s when it hit me. There had to be a way to get the food stocks up to the first deck from the main, other than physically man handling every case of food up the ladder. Before I could address the issue, the lock’s call buzzer rattled the proverbial walls.

I made a note to adjust that audio level later, but hustled down to see who was at the door before they rang it again.

A couple of delivery men in chandlery livery stood outside with a pallet of goods that I could see included at least the case of wipes I’d ordered along with the handles of mops and brooms. I keyed the big lock open, and the two stepped back to give it room to slide up.

The waved when they saw me standing just inside, and the one with the tablet came up with a friendly nod. “You Captain Wang? Ordered some supplies?”

“Yes, thanks for bringing them.”

He held out the manifest for me to see. “You wanna check it?”

I took it from him, and his partner pushed the lifter up and over the threshold into the ship. It only took a couple of ticks for me to verify the list against the load, and thumb the tab.

“You taking over the
Jezzie
?” the lead man asked.

“Just taking care of it for the moment. DST’s thinking about selling her.”

“Do tell! Looks a mite worse for wear in places.” He looked around, eyeing the broken console in particular. “You want this in the galley?” He nodded at the load.

“Please.”

The lead man crossed to the ladder, and pulled open a recessed cover in the deck. He reached down and twisted something inside. With a humming hydraulic sound the entire ladder, including the landing on the top began to collapse, until it lay flush against the deck, railings and all.

The driver slipped the grav pallet over the area where the upper landing lay flat and locked it down. He nodded to the lead who twisted the handle back. The ladder rose again and locked into place with a clunk.

The two of them scampered up the ladder, and disappeared into the galley with the pallet. In less than a tick they were back. The lead man scampered down the ladder while the driver positioned the pallet again and locked it down. He came down, and the lead reached down and twisted once more, lowering it to the deck.

While the driver fetched the pallet, the lead man must have seen the expression on my face.

“What? You didn’t expect that, eh?”

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t.”

“Higbee had some funny ideas, but that’s one of the darnedest ones. Their designers realized the ladder was in the way of the cargo loading and that they needed a way to get supplies up to the galley on the first deck. They killed two birds with one stone with that one.”

I nodded in admiration. “So when you’re loading cargo, just flatten the ladder and roll it in.”

“Yep. Just so. Nothing to bump, nothing to get in the way.” He nodded his head toward the upper deck. “They made the hydraulic system hefty enough to lift a pallet of frozen food or two while they were at it. Makes it a lot easier fetchin’ groceries, eh?”

“Indeed. Thanks for the tip.”

He knuckled his brow and nodded. The driver skidded the empty pallet off the ship, and the lead man followed. I keyed the lock closed, and turned to look at the ladder.

“I wonder what else I’ve missed,” I said.

Chapter Twenty-One
Diurnia Orbital:
2372-December-23