Ships of My Fathers (2 page)

“Very regrettable,” the magistrate said. He was graying and peered down at his reader through half-rim spectacles. “Though I find no fault in any of the crew or officers, you might have a case to make against the loader repair company… Wall-to-Sky, oh, that’s here isn’t it? Ah yes…”

“So you find no irregularities, sir?” Isaac asked.

He looked up to face them again. “No, everything looks by the book. I admit I’ve never particularly cared for the use of these border transfer points, but this kind of accident could have happened in any orbital facility, and I don’t know if we’d have any better results. Barring any push back from the coroner, I’ll mark this closed tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you, sir,” Isaac replied, “but there’s also the issue of the ship ownership.”

“Oh? Was Captain Fletcher also the owner?”

“Yes,” Michael spoke up. “Well, actually, he always said it belonged to the two of us, him and me.”

He looked back down at the file. “Ah, you must be the son, Michael.”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“I’m sorry about your father.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The magistrate paged through a few files and followed a link. “It looks as though you’re probably correct.
Sophie’s Grace
’s owner is listed as the Fletcher Trust, an owner-share cooperative with Malcolm Fletcher as the executive agent. You’d have to look up the bylaws and structure to see how the ownership flows in the event of his death, but that’s getting outside of my jurisdiction. My mandate is strictly to enforce the Confederacy’s shipping regulations, and this is getting more into property law. Do you have a local lawyer to look into this?”

Michael hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I mean Dad may have had one, but I don’t know who that would be.”

The magistrate took off his spectacles and looked back and forth between Isaac and Michael before focusing on the boy. “How old are you, Mr. Fletcher?”

“Why do you ask?”

He sighed. “It’s a matter of public record, I’m sure. Are you going to make me look it up?”

“No, sir. I’ll be eighteen next year.”

“Next year, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

He frowned. “Well, I’m sorry to say that the law does not care how old you are next year. It only matters how old you are now, and at seventeen you’re still not considered a legal adult. I gather from the fact that it’s the Fletcher Trust rather than the Fletcher joint property that your mother is no longer in the picture. Is that correct?”

Michael shook his head.

“I believe, sir,” Isaac offered, “that she died quite some time ago, before Captain Fletcher purchased the
Sophie
. He told me he named the ship after her.”

“Sophie, eh?”

“Sophia,” Michael corrected. “Sophia Grace Fletcher.” If they were going to talk about her that way, they could at least get her name right. “She died during the Caspian rebellion, killed in a pirate attack before I was one, and now I’ve lost my dad at seventeen.” He tried to fake a smile but failed. “So what, are you planning to lock me up in some orphanage for the next nine months?”

“It won’t be me, Michael,” the magistrate replied, “but I do feel I have to make a few calls on your behalf. I’m sure someone from the local child services or perhaps even the Captains’ Guild can appoint a lawyer for you. They won’t be able to take over your guardianship, but—”

“My guardianship?” Michael asked with a firm shake of his head. “No offense, sir, but I’m not some little kid who wandered into port. I’ve been on freighters my whole life, working as crew since I was a kid. I know how to take care of myself.”

The magistrate leaned back. “Look, Mr. Fletcher, I am sorry for your loss, and I’m sure you could go on to be a fine owner and captain yourself, but if you are as old a hand as you say you are, then you know the regulations as well as I do. You’re not going to captain that ship until you pass your exams, and the Guild will never offer them to someone your age.”

“I could hire a captain,” Michael insisted.

“Not on your own you can’t,” the magistrate replied. “You’re too young to enter into a legally binding contract, and no captain is going to hire on without it.”

Michael looked to Isaac for support, but Isaac merely shook his head. “He’s right, Michael.”

“It’s not so bad, boy,” the magistrate went on. “It’s only nine months. It’ll take a while to sort out the ownership transfer anyway. Take some time, grieve for your father, and figure out what you want to do with your life. From the sounds of it, you’ve been working since you got out of diapers. I think you’ve earned a little time off.”

Michael set his duffel down on the bed as Isaac rolled the trunk into the corner.

“That should do it,” Isaac said. “I’ve got my stuff in the other room.”

“Thanks.”

They had moved
Sophie’s Grace
into a long-term storage bay on the outskirts of the port. The Port Authority team had then sealed it with a double-keyed lock. No one was getting back in without Michael’s authorization, but he could not get back in either, not without an order from the Port Authority.

Packing had been hard, but he kept telling himself it was not forever. He brought the bulk of his civilian clothes along with a couple of uniforms, both functional and official. He copied all his files and most of the entertainment library from the ship’s computer but had left quite a few personal belongings behind. This was temporary, after all.

His father’s quarters had remained untouched with two exceptions. Michael had taken his father’s utility knife and an old portrait of his mother. Sophia was in a blue-gray ship uniform, curled up against a circular viewport. A nebula dominated the star field beyond her in the view, and she was looking out into the void with a hint of a playful smile on her face. Father had always told him that the picture was taken shortly after she found out she was pregnant with him. It was the only picture his father had kept of her.

On ship, the picture had been mounted to the wall. After all, everything on ship was glued down, screwed in, or locked into a groove. There was no easy way to do that in the hotel room, so he settled on putting it on top of the dresser, leaned against the wall. It threatened to slip a bit, so he braced the bottom of the frame with a rolled up towel. It was not the most picturesque arrangement, but it would do.

Isaac stuck his head back through the door. “I’m all set, and the rest of the crew is waiting for us down at the Lucky Black. You ready?”

“I guess, though I’ve never been to a wake before.”

“It’s easy enough. Drink until you can only remember the good, and then drink some more.”

The Lucky Black was better than the average spacer bar in that the bathrooms were as clean as most engine rooms, which as any engineer will tell you does not say much. It lay in the central crossroads section of the port, between the actual docks, the warehouses, and the administrative district. Even then, it was hard to find, tucked back off the main roads and behind the more touristy restaurants.

The rest of the crew was there, all four of them, but that was not so surprising. Where else would they be? What was surprising to Michael was how many familiar faces there were beyond the crew. Captain Wallace and most the crew of the
Johnny Rose
were there, already toasting to his father before he arrived.

Crews from seven other freighters trickled in over the next hour, though the captain of the
Quincy Quack
sent only his first officer and his regards. “It’s some snafu over livestock quarantine,” the officer had explained. “You know how it goes.”

Michael nodded knowingly but only guessed at the details. Dad had never transported livestock, but he still appreciated being told of the problem with candor. Everyone there was treating him like a fellow spacer, not like a kid who had just lost his father.

The drinks kept flowing as various crewmembers took turns buying a round. Michael did his best to pace himself, but he was getting fairly wobbly. Dad had started teaching him to drink two years before, telling him that if he was going to be a spacer, he had to learn to handle his liquor. He tried to keep up the routine he had learned, buffering each drink with a handful of whatever the local snack was, along with the occasional drink of water. It worked for a while, but before long he had fallen behind and started losing track of how many it had been.

At one point, he found himself leaning against the bar, listening to Isaac and Captain Wallace swap stories about his father’s love for local chili recipes, when a uniformed officer plopped down on the seat next to him. It was the uniform of the Confederate Navy, and the various tags identified him as Lt. Commander Montgomery Wheaton of the CFS
Alvarez
.

“Monty,” he said, extending his hand.

“Michael,” he replied, trying to take it, but then realized he had to switch his glass over to his left hand.

“Sorry to hear about your skipper. Your dad, right?”

Michael nodded. Monty was the first person to bring it up so far.

“Good man. Saved my ass once, back in the war.”

Michael shook his head. “Dad was never in the service.”

Monty nodded and downed his own shot. “Yeah, I know.”

“Then how…?”

Monty put his hand on Michael’s shoulder and gave it a good squeeze. “Don’t believe all the stories, boy. He was as solid as they come.”

“Stories?” Michael did not know what stories he was talking about, but he did know that the alcohol was making it hard to remember.

“But I guess I owe you one now, so if you ever need a favor, look me up.”

But the very next moment Isaac turned around and grabbed at Michael. “Hey, what was that um, that spice Skip picked up back on Ringway? You know, the blue one with the bubbles?”

Michael tried to switch gears but only managed to mumble, “No idea.”

When he turned back around, Monty was gone.

Hours later, people slipped out in twos and threes, always shaking his hand on the way out. The number of “if you ever need anything” offers piled up into one long blur of favors never to be collected. By midnight, it was down to just the
Sophie
crew. Isaac funneled them into a booth while Wendy Sheers and Liam Campbell brought over the final round.

They all gathered around and looked to him to make the last toast. It had been his father, but to them Malcolm Fletcher had been their captain, and Michael knew enough to know he had been a good one. “To Skipper,” he said and raised his glass. Several clinks later, he downed it in one gulp.

“So what now?” Wendy asked. She was their senior drive engineer and a damn good one. She had come on seven months earlier and had managed a portside refit without putting
Sophie
into an orbital dry dock.

Isaac gave Michael a moment but then answered for him. “Well, I think we’ve definitely got something of a wait on our hands.”

Michael shook his head. After seeing so many other spacers from other ships at the wake, he knew the score. “It’s a wait, but it’s probably too long for any of you to be beached. I haven’t talked to the lawyers yet, but the
Sophie
and I are stuck here for a while, maybe as long as nine months.”

Henry Bartz shrugged. “Nine months isn’t so bad. I bet you can upgrade the scrubbers while you’re here.” Henry had been the systems engineer for the last year and a half and had complained about the environmental systems the entire time. They were far too fragile for his taste.

“But for the rest of us, yeah, nine months is a long time,” Wendy replied.

James Nellis raised a finger. He was the steward and had only been on board for five months. “Well, I heard the
Johnny Rose
has room for a cook, and with all due respect to Skipper, I’m thinking about it.”

“You should take it,” Isaac said. “Captain Wallace runs a good ship.”

Captain Wallace indeed, Michael thought. Coming to his father’s wake and hiring off his crew members. But it was true. From everything his father had said, Wallace ran a good ship. “Yeah,” Michael heard himself saying. “The
Johnny Rose
is a fine berth. You should get it if you can.”