Ships of My Fathers (33 page)

Commander Collins stood next to the skipper on the bridge during the down-tach. He would have liked to have had Gabrielle and Hans with him as well, but two things prevented it. First, it was technically against regulations for passengers to be on the bridge, even those with the kind of VIP status Collins had granted them. Collins was only allowed on because he was an active-duty officer.

The second reason was that the bridge, if you could even call it that, was so small that they could not have fit all three of them in. The compromise was that the two civilians stood in the hallway behind Collins with only the open hatchway marking the boundary between sacred bridge and a common access way.

“Uploading fleet traffic now, sir,” Morris explained. That was his primary mission after all, ferrying information between Navy ships and stations faster and more securely than the civilian networks. Everyone knew how eager the passengers were to make contact, but fleet priorities came first.

“I understand, Captain Morris. Please let me know when you get the station report.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Any word?” That was Gabrielle out in the corridor.

“Not yet. It’ll be a few minutes. Light lag, that kind of thing.”

She sighed.

It turned out to be less.

“I’ve got something, sir. Arvin station lists the
Blue Jaguar
as being in port, current status as unloading.”

Collins turned back to relay the news, but clearly they had already heard it. “So, we go with Plan B, right?” Gabrielle asked. Hans looked reserved behind her.

Collins nodded. They had gamed out four scenarios. Plan A was that they beat the
Blue Jaguar
to Arvin, got onto the station first, and lay in wait for it. Plan B was that they got there while the
Jaguar
was in port. Plan C was that they arrived after
Jaguar
had left, and Plan D was that they were entirely wrong and that the
Jaguar
was not passing through Arvin at all. Plan A had been the ideal scenario, but since it was initially indistinguishable from the Plan D failure scenario, he counted himself lucky to be only a little late.

“When your channel is clear, Captain Morris, I would appreciate it if you send packet Bravo to Arvin station and packet Falcon to fleet command.”

“Yes, sir, Bravo and Falcon.”

Falcon was his own backup plan. Calling Michael’s tag-along with the
Jaguar
“suspected kidnapping” was admittedly a stretch. Inflating that to “suspected piracy” was a work of fiction, but one way or another, he was not letting the
Jaguar
out of port until he had searched it himself.

Michael’s teeth were still chattering, long after his container had been transferred through the cargo locks and onto the dock. The one feature of the vacuum he had not been expecting was the extreme cold. Environment suits had heating and cooling for a reason, but his minimal survival bag had not. After all, its design assumed that the occupant was being carried by an urgent rescuer, not that he was waiting for three hours as cargo was slowly shifted and unloaded.

Another surprise from the design of the bag was that it carried no gauge for external pressure. After all, the rescuer would know when to open the bag. Michael had no such information. The return of gravity was his first clue that he had made it, but tentative tugs on the bag’s support ribs told him that the other side was still vacuum. Only when he could pull it inwards was he certain that atmosphere had returned. Even then, his first cut through the skin was tentative, a tiny incision while he held one of the three emergency patches in his other hand. When he was confident the air was not gushing out, he widened enough for a sniff. The strong scent of machinery told him he had made it.

He shed the bag and pressed his ear to the side of the container. He heard voices and the distant whine of machinery, but he could not hear anything distinct. With no other option, he opened the inspection hatch to let a tiny sliver of light in.

Two things caught his attention immediately. The first was that he was up off the ground, his container stacked on top of another. The second was that he had heard his name.

“I’m sorry, Michael Fletcher?” He could not place the voice, but it sounded familiar, quite possibly one of
Jaguar
’s many cargo handlers.

“Yes, though the note says it’s possible he might be using the name Michael Schneider.”

Michael repressed a laugh. Like that was ever going to happen.

“I’m not sure I’ve heard of him,” the familiar voice replied. “What is it you want with him?”

“He’s wanted for questioning.”

“Questioning? That’s pretty vague for station security.” It was Chester Walsh, Michael realized at last, one of his coincidental followers. That was one of the last people he would want to run into, but on the other hand, security did not sound like such a good option either. The only reason he could be wanted for questioning was that uncle Hans had come after him anyway. Maybe that was not such a bad idea after all, but Michael grated at the idea of being rescued by the very man he was trying to escape.

“Look, I don’t write the orders,” the security guy continued, “I just follow them. Do you have the guy or not?”

“Well, it’s against ship policy to discuss specific—”

“Yeah, I know. Article seven and all that. You going to help me out here, or do I have to kick this upstairs?”

“I’ll have to check with my captain.”

“Sure. We can wait.”

“I don’t suppose you have a picture of this guy, do you?” Walsh asked.

“No, but if you need it, I can probably get one.”

“Maybe later. First let me check with my captain.”

He heard footsteps, and he peered out through the cracked hatch. It was indeed Chester Walsh. Michael could see him walking back to the airlock, but he could not see the man from security. For that matter, he could not see anyone else, and that meant he had a decent chance of not being seen.

He opened the hatch the rest of the way and looked around. The closest person he saw was someone driving a forklift, but he was over at the next dock. He swung his legs out through the hatch and lowered himself down until he was hanging on by his fingertips. He could not see how much further he had to drop, but he had come too far to let this stop him. Closing his eyes, he let go.

And dropped less than a meter to the deck.

Well, that was easy.

From the way he had seen Walsh walking, he figured the dockside post had to be on his left, so he headed out to his right towards the neighboring dock. The forklift driver waved to him and continued his work. Michael nodded and kept on walking past two more docks and turned into the first open door he found.

He was not sure if the man he saw was a host or a bouncer, but he looked him up and down and pointed behind him with his thumb. “No tables, but there’s room at the counter.”

Michael thought of the long-gone sandwiches, now floating somewhere in the
Jaguar
’s cargo bay. Food sounded like an excellent idea.

Elsa Watkins closed the security door behind her with the guard sitting dejectedly in a chair outside. “I don’t care why they’re looking for him,” she said into her wrist comm. “We admit nothing.”

“But now the Navy guy is talking about searching the ship, says he can get something called a naval inspection warrant.”

She looked down at the floor and ground her teeth. “Don’t do anything until he’s got paper, and make the local security guys confirm it before you let one boot on board.”

“What about Fletcher?”

“Put him in the brig, no… wait, not the main brig. Tell Bishop to stun the little shit and put him in the engineering brig.”

“The coffin?”

“Yes, the coffin!”

“Uh, ma’am, Mr. Bishop wants to speak with you.”

“Captain,” Bishop came on the line. “The boy’s gone.”

Her fist came down hard on the desk. “What do you mean, he’s gone?”

“Not in his cabin. I checked it myself.”

“How did he get out? Wasn’t someone watching?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ve had Leo on the monitor since down-tach. I did find a loose wall panel in his bathroom. It’s possible he got out through the access space.”

Fuck! How much trouble could one kid be? She took a deep breath and focused. “Ok, Bishop, send Leo and Maya to meet me at the warehouse and then lock the ship down. No one in or out without my authorization.”

“And the boy?”

“If he’s on the ship, throw him in the coffin.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then I might have to fit him for one.”

Chapter 24

“When they’ve got you backed up against the wall, you start thinking about surrendering peacefully. Live to fight another day and shit like that. Not me. I say fuck them. Fuck them hard.” — Malcolm Fletcher

“W
ELL, WHOEVER HE IS, HE
must have stepped in something stinky, that’s for sure.”

Michael turned to see two dockworkers coming into the diner, settling themselves at a table behind him.

“What you boys going on about?” the waitress asked.

“Station security is crawling all over dock twenty-two looking for someone,” the first one replied.

“Twenty-two… is that the
Wandering Rose
?”

“No,” he replied. “They left yesterday. This is the
Bloody Jaguar
, something like that.”

“Not bloody, blue,” his friend said.

“Yeah, that’s right, the
Blue Jaguar
. So what’s the special today?”

Michael froze in his seat. He was wearing a
Blue Jaguar
utility uniform, the logo of the blue cat’s spotted profile on his shoulder patch. Quietly, he set a twenty on the counter and walked out. Looking back towards the dock, he could see a crowd of onlookers and a fair number of gray-clad security men standing posts.

Again, he thought about turning himself in, but the question kept coming up, turning himself in for what? Was this merely his uncle throwing his weight around to haul him back in, or had Hans gotten mad enough to press charges against him for something? He never remembered signing any contract, so jumping ship should not have been illegal, technically. But walking into a locked box with guards after he had just escaped from one did not seem to be his best option.

He turned away from the docks and kept walking. What he really needed was some neutral party to intercede for him, someone to find out what all this was actually about. It would have to be someone not attached to his uncle and not attached to Captain Lewis or Jimmy Anders. An old crewmate from the
Sophie
would be ideal, someone like Isaac, but the odds of him being at Arvin were too low to even investigate. Besides, someone with some authority would be better, a captain maybe. Captain Wallace would be a great candidate, and he did sometimes come as far in as Arvin.

He started looking for a public terminal, and after passing two more diners, he found a bar with the little keypad symbol by the door. He walked up to the entrance, but the bouncer stood up to block his path. “Let’s see some ID, kid.”

He shook his head. “I only need to use the terminal.”

He looked around the walkway and sighed. “Look, normally it’s a two-drink minimum, but since you say you’re not going to be drinking, how about you just give me a twenty?”

Michael grumbled but got out his wallet. He handed over the twenty and started to go inside, but the bouncer held out his arm.

“Hey, you said twenty.”

“Yeah, and twenty more for the bartender when you get in. Otherwise I come in and haul your ass back out, got it?”

He nodded and finally entered. For such a dive, he was amazed they could even sell two drinks to the regulars. He stepped up to the bar, laid a twenty on the counter, and asked, “Where’s the terminal?”

The bartender was a woman, a little worn around the edges, but still the prettiest thing in the whole room. She picked up the twenty, looked at with a tilted stare, and motioned towards the back. “Next to the john.”

He made his way back and found it. It was not the most up-to-date model, but at least the keys all worked. He went to the station registry and searched for Wallace’s ship, the
Johnny Rose
. It offered up the date of her last visit, nine months before.