Owner's Share (Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper) (27 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two
Diurnia Orbital:
2372-December-24

Because of the long evening, we got a late start. It worked out for the best because it gave me an opportunity to detour us to Light City. It took almost ten ticks to buy a two kilo brick of Moscow Morning because of the number of people in line to get their morning fix.

We got back to the ship around 0945, quite late by my standards, and the galley became our first order of business. Simple detergent and hot water, along with the liberal application of elbow grease and the occasional scouring pad, stripped the galley of most of the dirt, grease, and accumulated neglect. Some stains required a bleaching cleanser, and the coffee urn got a white vinegar treatment, leaving a strong pickle smell in the galley, and a mess deck that was not a health hazard.

It took the rest of the morning to get the galley cleaned because of the intricacy of the area. Stove tops, ovens, sinks, chillers, counters, and cupboards all needed attention. It took a while, but because previous crew stripped the ship of anything not nailed down, we didn’t have to move things to clean under them, nor did we need to clean pots, pans, dishes, or flatware. We had none aboard.

At around noon, with the galley and mess deck looking as clean and bright as it would short of a fresh coat of paint and new deck-coat, I discovered the error of my ways in purchasing the brick of coffee.

“No cups, Captain,” Ms. Arellone pointed out with a certain level of glee in her voice.

I stood there with the brick of coffee in my hand, still sealed, and stared glumly at the gleaming urn, piped and wired to the counter. I sighed. “No cups, Ms. Arellone,” I confirmed. “Also no grinder, no filter, and—” I turned to look at her, “Do you take your coffee black, Ms. Arellone?”

She shook her head with a grin.

“I didn’t think so.” I sighed again. “No creamer, no flatware.”

She waved her hand at the empty cabinets. “Nothing really, Skipper.”

I put the bag of beans on the counter next to the coffee maker, and leaned against the counter to think. “I knew we’d need to get a few things before we could move aboard, but somehow I expected there’d be at least basic gear.”

“I know, Skipper. I’ve been just looking at the end of my nose, and not quite thinking it ahead.” She yawned. “And last night’s cram session didn’t help my ability to focus. I feel like I want a nap.”

I ran a hand over my scalp, and tried to think logically. “We have…what? Two more days before the
Chernyakova
auction ends?”

“Something like that, Skipper.” Ms. Arellone emptied and rinsed our cleaning buckets in the kitchen’s utility sink, and spoke without looking at me. “How long will it be before we know anything on this end?”

“I don’t really know, Ms. Arellone. I would think it would take a day or so for message traffic to reach us here, and maybe as much as four or five days for the credit transfers? I have no idea, but I bet Mr. Simpson does.”

“Well, what do we do now, Skipper?”

“After lunch, we keep cleaning—” The groan of the lock opening echoed through the galley.

Frowning at each other we hustled out to the ladder and scampered down to the main deck in time to see Kirsten Kingsley leading a small parade through the passenger lock. She looked up and smiled as we clattered down the ladder toward her.

“Captain! Ms. Arellone!” She called.

Adrian was the last through the lock, and he took up station looking back through the opening. Ms. Arellone crossed to the lock controls and keyed it closed, giving him a wry smile. “That’ll keep the threat level down, huh?”

Kirsten almost choked, trying not to laugh, and turned to face me instead. Beside her, on her left, a rather imposing man in an impeccably tailored brown suit scanned the vestibule, his eye catching on every ding, dent, and broken console. Eventually his survey came around to me and stopped. On her right, a bowlegged old fellow in a badly stained shipsuit stumped along a couple of steps behind.

“Haverhill, this is the Captain Wang I told you about,” Kirsten turned to the tall man on her left. “Captain Ishmael Wang, this is Haverhill Kimball. Haverhill handles all the procurement and dispersal from the breaker’s yard here.”

I held out my hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Kimball.”

He looked at my hand before taking it, and giving it a rather limp and moist shake. “Captain.”

She turned to the older man on her right. “Montague Bailey, this is Captain Ishmael Wang. Captain Wang, Chief Engineer Montague Bailey.”

Chief Bailey nodded at me without really looking at me. His eyes kept straying to the broken console on the bulkhead.

“Nice to meet you, Chief.”

“Sar.” He nodded again, and his head twitched a couple of times like he was trying not to look to the left, but he couldn’t help himself.

I arched an eyebrow at Kirsten who smirked but otherwise offered no explanation for Chief Bailey.

“I’m happy to see you, Ms. Kingsley. I was just thinking about the engineering reports.”

She nodded. “That’s why we’re here.” She turned to Mr. Kimball. “Haverhill...?”

He nodded pleasantly enough to Kirsten, and frowned at me. “I’ve seen the reports and talked to Kirsten about the ship. She tells me you’re willing to buy it for scrap value, Captain. Mind telling me why?”

“I need a ship. I’m just starting out, and can’t afford much of one. When I heard about the
Jezebel
, I thought it might be just the vessel I was looking for.” I swung an arm indicating the scarred and dented cargo deck. “It’s in pretty rough shape, as you can see, and when I first saw it, the scrubbers were on the verge of failing.”

“I also read the reports, Captain. Did you have anything to do with drawing those up?”

I shook my head. “Not me, sir. I just got a copy yesterday. Those were apparently done before Ms. Arellone and I came aboard as caretakers.”

“And what have you done as caretakers, Captain?”

“We’ve gone over the ship making a punch list of issues that need addressing. Yesterday we changed the water filters so we’d have water to clean with. Today we started scraping down the galley so we can use that as a base of operations while we’re aboard.”

“Have you found any discrepancies between the engineering reports and your punch list?”

I shook my head. “Mostly they don’t intersect. The engineering report looked at the big things—sails, power, gravity—that stuff. Ms. Arellone and I went through and identified missing light panels, broken switches, bad hinges, and the like.” I shrugged. “I’m not rated to run these fusactors and generators, so I haven’t tried them. Being docked we haven’t tested the auxiliaries.”

He nodded slowly, and I got the impression that I passed some test that I had not been aware that I was taking.

“What’d you find on your punch list, Captain?” he asked.

“Anything not nailed down is missing. The ship’s spares closet is almost bare. There are no tools. No cooking gear in the galley other than the built-in appliances. Everything is filthy and almost every piece of gear has had hard use.”

“What’s your assessment of the vessel’s spaceworthiness, Captain?”

“I wouldn’t want to take it out. Just restocking the spares closet will be expensive. I understand the sail generator coils are out of whack and I’d guess the major systems all need a good flush out and restart.”

“And in spite of that you’re willing to buy it at scrap value?”

I shrugged. “It’s either buy this one and fix her up as we go along or lease something. I’d be hard pressed to raise the capital needed to buy a new one, but with a bit of sweat equity, a few replacement parts, and some judicial investment, I think I can make this ship spaceworthy. If I lease, I pay a lot of credits, haul freight, and accumulate rental receipts. At the end of the lease, I wave good-bye to the ship. It would be easier in terms of starting up, I could focus on the business and not the ship, but there are some advantages in capitalization.” I paused and ran a hand over my head. “I don’t know. Call me sentimental but I’ve grown kinda fond of the old girl.”

“She’s not that old, Captain.”

“Ten stanyers, Mr. Kimball. Hardly a new ship.” I shrugged. “And Higbee retired this design.”

Chief Bailey cackled briefly at that but subsided when we all looked at him. “Retired. Good one, Skipper.” he mumbled and went back to carefully not looking at the broken console. He gave every impression of a man who wanted to fix it so bad he twitched.

Mr. Kimball turned to Kirsten. “You wanna tell me what’s really going on?”

“I can’t, Haverhill. I told you. Company business related to Geoff’s passing.”

“Something’s not right here. Isn’t Ames on his way back from Breakall?”

“Yes, but he won’t arrive for at least a couple more weeks, and I’m trying to get stuff picked up, and the ends tied off so we can move forward with the new CEO.”

“Yes, that’s odd by itself, and you know it.”

“I know it looks odd, but I have the backing of the board.”

He made squinted at her. “If I ask Roni, what will she tell me?”

“Probably something rude.”

He barked a laugh at that. “Yes, you’re probably right, but what about this?”

“She’d tell you the same thing. Company business.”

“Why are you cutting Ames out of the loop?”

“Because Ames has a conflict of interest we need to work around to keep it from becoming a problem.”

“So that’s why you’re not selling Captain Wang the ship directly? You and Roni want to use the breaker’s yard as a fig leaf?”

She shrugged. “We can sell direct if we need to.”

“But you’d rather not?”

“We’d rather not.”

He frowned at me. “This ship’s in better shape than that report says, isn’t it, Captain.”

He wasn’t asking. “The engineering report is correct as far as I can tell, Mr. Kimball. The valuation at the end...” I shrugged. “I don’t know because I’m not privy to the methods they used to come up with it.”

He narrowed his eyes at me and nodded. “You’re a careful cuss, I’ll give you that. You mind if Monty here takes a look around?”

I shook my head. “Not at all. I’d welcome his opinion actually.”

Chief Bailey perked up visibly, but eyed me from under his bushy white brows.

“Go see what you can see, Monty.” Mr. Kimball said.

I nodded at Ms. Arellone, and she fell in beside the bandy-legged Chief Engineer.

“I don’t need no banged baby-sitter,” he grumbled shooting her a look that was more petulant than personal.

“Oh, Chief, I’m not going to baby-sit you,” she said with a grin. “I want to watch and learn.”

He barked a single high pitched laugh. “Suck up,” he muttered, but there was an edge of humor in his tone. “Come on, then, spacer. Maybe I can teach ya how to brown nose better’n that before the day’s out.” He chuffed out a sigh and I thought he said, “Kids.” under his breath. He stumped toward the back of the cargo bay, a stormy frown on his face and he even spared a glare at me on the way by. As he passed, I was certain he muttered, “Kids!” again.

“What do you think he’s going to find, Haverhill?” Kirsten asked.

“I think he’s going to find a perfectly operational ship with a coat of dirt on it.”

“Assuming he does?”

“Kirsten, I’m not sure what kind of in-fighting is going on over there, but I’ve got a duty here to recover as much as I can from hulks like these. If you sell me a perfectly good ship at scrap rates, I’m gonna get as much for it as I can.”

She bit her lip. “I understand, Haverhill.”

He relented a bit. “I’ll not screw you over by telling you one thing and doing another. DST has been a good customer and even occasional partner, but if I play this kinda game, my credibility is at risk, and that causes a problem for every single transaction we enter going forward.”

She nodded, and I had to give the big man my grudging respect. He had good instincts about what was going on, and he was being upfront about it.

Kirsten looked at me and shrugged, but didn’t say anything.

“I’d offer you coffee while we wait, but ...” I shrugged. “No cups.”

They all laughed at that.

I felt as much as heard the fusactors spooling up. They were cold, and bringing them online would take hours from a cold start, but apparently Chief Bailey was giving the ship a thorough look-see. The vibration lasted for only a few ticks before I felt it subside and fade out. The blowers stopped and started a couple of times over the next few ticks, and we all stood there waiting to see what new manifestation would strike.

After a few ticks where nothing obvious happened I heard the air tight door on the upper deck clank closed, and the sound of footsteps and muffled voices coming toward the bow over our heads. They apparently went up to the bridge, and I heard a few odd clanks in the silence before they clattered down off the bridge and rejoined us on the main deck.

“Well?” Mr. Kimball looked at the gnarled engineer.

Chief Bailey shook his head in disgust. “Banging inspectors! Everythin’ in those reports, ya. Bad. Crazy boogers missed the fusactors. They need a good flush and refurb. Sails are out of phase, but only needs new coils. Everything’s filthy. Even the mattresses are stained. Fiber’s sound but they’ve connected obsolete gear on modern lines. You got no scrap here, ’ceptin’ maybe the metal itself. What’d they quote ya?”