Owner's Share (Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper) (82 page)

I half stood, and shook his hand, but before I could speak he continued.

“I don’t know if you remember me or not, but we met a few months back on Diurnia? I’m Grant Whitherspoon?” His eyebrow arched just slightly.

“Of course, Mr. Whitherspoon. What a surprise seeing you here!”

He nodded to the people around the table and stepped closer, lowering his voice with a sheepish look around as if he’d only just realized what a scene he made. With a smooth movement he slipped in beside Chief Stevens with a smile and a nod, leaning in to speak to us all at a much reduced volume.

“Chris? I’m sorry about your father. He was a good guy.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked softly.

“Looking for you lot,” he said with a grin. “Your red-headed friend disappeared into the Deep Dark.”

“We heard,” I said. “TIC said the ship jumped, but not where they said they were going.”

He nodded. “He jumped to a place between the systems.”

“Odin’s?” I asked.

He nodded. “Good guess. We tracked him that far but he disappeared after that. Don’t know if he finally aggravated somebody and got shoved out an airlock, or if he caught ship to some other hidey hole.” He shrugged. “We’re still tracking him, so we’ll hope for the best. For now?” He shrugged. “He’s somewhere out there in the Deep Dark.”

“Why?” Ms. Maloney asked.

“Why’d he do it?”

She nodded.

“He wasn’t supposed to. It was just supposed to be a smash and dash.” He nodded at Ms. Maloney. “You were supposed to be the only casualty, laid up long enough to force the ship to leave you behind. Missing a movement like that would have given him all the leverage he needed to get Jarvis to take the company private.”

“Willie Simpson was really behind it, then?”

Kurt nodded. “Yes. We’ve been watching him ever since Mirafiori went public in ‘71. He’s been skirting the edges. Too many people have conveniently died.”

Ms. Maloney blanched. “He didn’t kill—”

Kurt shook his head. “No.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, your father was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He looked at her earnestly. “Believe me. We looked real hard.”

“We?” Chief Stevens asked.

“Joint Committee on Security,” he said. “We don’t like it when we lose a client like that. When I got freed up, the Committee re-assigned me to the team that’s working on your little red-haired friend.” He turned to me. “We last saw him on Dree, but he dropped out of sight at the end of November. We picked up his trail on Greenfields but kept hearing that he was in Kazyanenko, and here in Martha’s Haven. It didn’t make sense so we sent teams to each place. We didn’t make the connection with your ship until it was too late. Unfortunately we got to Greenfields one day too late, but the break came with Bailey. He led us to Umbra, Umbra led us to Simpson.”

“That still makes no sense.” I said.

He shrugged. “I think Simpson might have been nervous about sending out his enforcer alone, so he had Bailey make the link up and ride along. By the way, his real name is David Patterson, and he’s going to be finding life very much more difficult thanks to you.”

“How so?” Ms. Maloney asked.

“Newsies. One of them got a nice digital of his face in the foreground of a shot of you two. They published the image, and we got the original. He’ll be showing up as a featured story on Galaxy Hunter real soon now.” He gave a feral grin. “Somebody will see him.”

His hand went to his ear, and his eyes unfocused for a split second. I realized he wore a much more discreet communications device than he had when working for Geoff Maloney.

“Time’s up. Must dash.” He said as he slipped back out of the booth. “Sorry, can’t stay. Have a date with the Deep Dark in about three stans, and I don’t want to be late.” He looked around at each of us. “Safe voyage. Nobody’s paying him so there’s no incentive anymore.” With a last nod, he disappeared into the crowd.

Ms. Arellone sighed as she watched him go.

We all looked at her.

“Oh! sorry,” she said. “I just admire any man that big who can disappear so smoothly without anybody noticing.”

Chief Stevens turned her head to look at where he had gone and tsked. “Kids these days.” She turned to look back at her. “When I was your age, I’d have been admirin’ how nicely he filled out that suit.”

Ms. Arellone blushed. “Chief? He’s as old as the Captain! Why would you have even considered it?”

“I’m wounded, you know? Stung to the quick,” I said my mouth twitching as I controlled the grin.

She blushed again. “Sorry, Captain, I didn’t mean—”

I held up my hand. “Yes, you did, Ms. Arellone, but it’s okay. I am old.”

The Chief appraised me with a long look before turning to Ms. Maloney. “He wears it well, don’t you think?”

“His age?” she asked, and turned to consider me. She smiled and there was something warm and sympathetic in it that I couldn’t remember seeing before. “Yeah. You know, when I first met him, I wasn’t so sure.” She turned back to the chief. “I think he’s beginning to grow on me.”

“Enough! You make me sound like some kind of rash!” I said holding up my hands. “Let’s order dessert, and get on with this, leaving me and my age out of it, okay?”

They all smirked but I got a good-natured chorus of aye-aye’s back. We finished our dinner in relative good spirits.

Chapter Eighty
Martha’s Haven System:
2373-December-17

Ms. Maloney found me on the bridge while the passengers watched the evening movie. She didn’t need to look very hard. I always spent the evenings there. Besides the morning
tai chi
sessions with Chief Stevens, I felt most at peace surrounded by the star-dusted blackness of the Deep Dark. Being in the cabin still hurt too much, and the guilt that, somehow, I’d caused her death by violating my own rules—a kind of karmic leveling—gnawed at me. Intellectually, I knew I probably suffered survivor’s guilt, but once the anger had burned out, I had to accept that she was gone. I often found myself sitting in the near dark of the bridge agonizing over what I should have done differently.

“Gotta tick, Captain?” she asked, picking her way up the ladder with a mug in each hand.

“Of course, Ms. Maloney.”

She handed me a fresh cup of coffee, and took a seat at the engineering station beside me. “I wanted to talk about what happens next.”

I sipped, and tried to wrap my head around the idea of a future. My horizon of opportunity had shrunk to cargoes for the next port, to booking passage for the next run.

“What are you thinking?” I asked

I found myself strangely detached. In a few days, Ms. Maloney’s stanyer in space would be at an end. Technically, when she signed The Articles, she’d made a two stanyer commitment. In reality, as Captain, I could put her ashore at any point without penalty.

“I think I like it out here,” she said, turning to look out at the stars. “It’s peaceful.”

I let my gaze be drawn to follow hers. “It is,” I said.

She caught my eyes with hers. “I’d like to stay out here, Captain.”

“What about DST?”

“What about it?”

“You’re going to be the majority stockholder. You’ll inherit the CEO position. How will you run the company from out here?”

She shrugged, and her lips drew up into a half grin. “I don’t have to be CEO. I can direct the board to hire one.” She lifted her mug to her nose, and inhaled deeply before taking a sip.

“You’d do that?”

“Why not? Nobody really believes I know how to run a shipping company.”

Her wry comment forced a single snort of laughter from me. “I’m not sure I know, Ms. Maloney. Even with just one ship. I can’t imagine what it must take to keep a fleet like DST’s flying.”

That made her laugh. “Actually, I can imagine. Lots of meetings, long hours, and very little else.” Her gaze turned inwards for a few heartbeats. “I was away a lot after I reached a certain age, but the strongest memory I have of my father is coming home for visits only to have him constantly being called out for this meeting, that negotiation, or some urgent problem.” She paused and sipped again. “But truthfully, I have no idea what the job really is. It was a job he grew up with, learned as his father’s knee as it were.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I direct the board to hire Ames Jarvis as CEO. Kirsten thinks highly of him. I trust her judgment. Even if he’s been a pain in my side for this last stanyer—honestly? I don’t know that I can blame him for any of it. How much was his doing, and how much was Simpson’s manipulations from backstage?” She shrugged. “I’m going to have a talk with him, of course. Cutting me off from my own assets was a bit much. I’ve had a lawyer working on that on Diurnia since the day I found out. The stanyer will be up before that does any good, I’m afraid.” She shrugged again. “He does know his business—and DST’s too—so whatever my personal feelings about the weasel, I think he’s got to know more about keeping the company going than I do.”

A part of me found the idea infuriating. We’d spent the better part of a stanyer trying to earn Christine Maloney her birthright. For most of that time we’d seen Ames Jarvis as the enemy, the person who stood in the way. The struggle had cost Greta her life, and now this woman was caving in. Another part of me realized that Jarvis never was the enemy. He was just the distraction to keep us from seeing the reality under the surface. The detached, distant part of me noted that I should have felt more, that the idea should have evoked some reaction other than numbness.

After a few ticks of contemplation, I finally roused myself to ask, “So we’ll just keep going like we are?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about, Captain.” She paused to gauge my reaction. “I’d like to direct DST to buy you out.”

“Buy me out?”

She nodded slowly. “We can make it worth your while, and what I’ve seen here is that there’s an untapped market in luxury travel.”

I thought I should be more upset by the idea. Even if I didn’t sell out, DST’s entry into the market, with their deeper pockets and extensive infrastructure, meant that I would have serious competition. I should have felt betrayed by the idea but there was something about it that appealed to me in a perverse way.

“Why should I sell?”

She sighed and looked down into her cup for a few heartbeats before looking me in the face. Sympathy floated in her eyes. “Because you’re only going through the motions here. Because what started out as a wonderful adventure, a new life for you and Greta has been snatched away.” She leaned forward, and smiled. “Having spent a few days in my father’s residence after he died, I have some idea about what you must go through every time you go into engineering, every time you go into the cabin.”

I sighed and nodded, unable to speak past the sudden lump in my throat.

She gave a sideways shrug. “You’ve helped me see my future with new eyes, Captain. The least I can do is help you on your way to yours.”

“You don’t think my future is on the bridge?”

“Maybe.” She looked around then back at me. “Just not this bridge.”

That strange sense of looking in at myself through a camera outside the ship reasserted itself. While some small voice in my head screamed, the rest of me couldn’t rouse enough feeling to respond with more than a grunt. Instead, I focused on the practicalities. “Will you need a few days in port to establish your position with DST?”

“If it would be convenient to plan for an extended stay, Captain? That will give me time to pitch the idea to the board.” She paused. “Maybe between now and our arrival, we can work out what it is that I’ll be pitching.”

I looked at her for a few heartbeats and then turned to gaze out at the comforting cold of the stars.

“If you don’t want to sell, I’ll still want to work on the
Iris
, Captain. It’s the restaurant I’ve always wanted to have. Seems funny for a rich kid to say, but the dilettante lifestyle never appealed to me.” She paused, considering me for a moment. “It really is up to you, Captain. I just wanted to let you know you have options.”

I nodded my thanks, unable to speak.

With a smile, she stood and slipped from the bridge, leaving me sitting in the command chair of a life I no longer recognized. The idea that I might sell off my ship so soon after getting it seemed wrong, but the thought of spending the rest of my life being reminded of my failures—of Greta—seemed worse. I sat there contemplating the Deep Dark, feeling whipsawed by indecision for a stan or more. In the end, the decision washed over me as soon as I stepped back into the cabin and it felt as right as sinking into a hot bath.

In the end, it wasn’t the money, or the position, or the ship. It wasn’t some nebulous notion of quitting when things got tough, and the feeling that I should be tougher, or more resilient, or more determined. One might argue that I could have been smarter, but hindsight is a useless guide to the past. At best it gives us the lessons we need to take into the future. The unavoidable truth lay in the emptiness of a cabin that had once—if oh, so very briefly—been filled with such possibility.

And the realization that I would need to seek new possibilities elsewhere.