Ships of My Fathers Read online

  The final picture was the XO. “Felicia Corazon, first officer.” He turned back to face her. “The rumor is you’ll get the next captaincy slot in Schneider and Williams.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That is the rumor.”

  She nodded to him. “All right. Now tell me, mister, who was missing?”

  He blinked at her. “Missing?”

  “That’s right. One of the crew was missing from that sequence of photographs. Who was it?”

  He started to panic again. He had not been keeping count. He started running through them, department by department, trying to remember whether or not he had seen them in the photos. He counted them up on his hands as he went, but it kept adding up to all of them. He could not think of a single crewman who had not been in the photos.

  He shook his head grimly. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t think of anyone.”

  “Clearly you where thinking of quite a few. I saw you counting. How many were there?”

  “Sixty-three,” he replied.

  She sighed. “I’m sorry, mister, but our crew complement is sixty-four, not sixty-three.”

  And then Charlie’s words came back to him, from his first day on board. “Sixty-four,” he had said, “and you’re one of them.”

  Michael looked back to meet the XO’s eyes. “It’s me, ma’am. Michael Fletcher, currently unassigned.”

  She smiled at him. “Indeed it is, Mr. Fletcher. Welcome to the crew.”

  The relief hit him so hard, he almost fell over. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She shook his hand. “You’re to report to Ms. Schwartz in engineering, first shift. That’s your best rating, and that’s where we have an opening. It’s almost nine, so get a move on.”

  He stepped out of her office to find the bridge and hallway packed with his fellow crewmates. There must have been thirty of forty crammed in, all clapping and chanting his name. “Michael! Michael! Michael!”

  He was one of them now. New Guy no more.

  But his uncle’s door remained closed.

  Chapter 13

  “Your crewmates are your best friends out here. They’ll get you out of at least as many jams as they’ll get you into.” — Malcolm Fletcher

  FELICIA CORAZON ATE DINNER WITH Hans Schneider that night, alone in the officers’ wardroom. She had dispatched the steward after the main course, promising to finish off all the serving herself if need be. This was not a rare occurrence. This kind of dinner was one of the few times she and her ostensible captain could speak privately outside the formality of the captain’s ready room.

  “We’re scheduled to reach Ballison in the morning, about an hour after shift change.”

  “That’s good time, maybe half a day early.”

  “Which puts us only six days behind from the Taschin detour,” she replied.

  He shrugged. “It had to be done.”

  She poured herself another cup of coffee. “I’m not complaining, sir. Your nephew looks to be a solid crewman and seems likely to fill that engineer post quite well.”

  “Well, I’m sure the boy is fairly sharp. Peter was always at the head of his class, and Sophia seemed to have her wits about her. But what do you make of his ratings? Are they the result of lax testing?”

  She considered it. From what she had heard so far, she was starting to suspect the opposite, but she wanted to tread lightly. “It’s too early to say, and no one has given him a proper evaluation on any of them. However, from what Ms. Schwartz says, I think he definitely qualifies for a tach drive one rating. I’ll give her a few weeks before I ask her to give an opinion on his supposed drive two rating.”

  Hans toyed with his dessert. “Fair enough.”

  “Nonetheless, sir, I would like to mark that position as filled for now and pull the posting from the corporate office on Ballison.”

  “You’re that confident?”

  “Yes, provided he stays.”

  Hans sighed. “Well, then I suppose we should vest his ship shares and start him on the proper family track.”

  “Obviously, I leave that decision to you, sir. Does he have any corporate shares?”

  “Only a handful,” he replied, taking a tentative bite of the custard. “Peter and Sophia had a reasonably large piece, but they had shifted most of it into ship shares of the Kaiser’s Folly.”

  “And those are gone?”

  “Indeed, perished with the ship. Normally we would use the insurance to repatriate the shares back to corporate, but…” he trailed off, pushing the dessert away.

  “An act of war?”

  He nodded. “Somewhere past Malcolm Fletcher on my revenge list is the adjuster from Eternity Trust. It’s only money, but I’ve done what I can to him. I know four shipping lines that pulled their business from Eternity on my word alone.”

  “About Fletcher…” she trailed off.

  “What of him? He’s already dead. Very little I can do to him now.”

  This was what she had been dancing around. “I was actually speaking of your nephew Michael. He seems attached to Fletcher’s name.”

  Hans set his jaw into a firm frown. “I believe I’ve already made my feelings known on this.”

  “I know you have, sir, and so has your nephew.”

  “I’m sure he has, but he’s only a boy. He doesn’t understand yet.”

  She shrugged. “Well, he seems quite adamant, sir. I understand he made his own uniform patches. I think he even repainted his environment suit, and I hear he got out the engraver set to rework the tag on his formal jacket.”

  He shook his head. “That’s exactly my point. He’s a doer, just like Peter. Sooner or later, he’s going to realize how much he truly is his father’s son.”

  She hesitated, looking for another angle. “Perhaps, but in the meantime, his ratings are in the name of Michael Fletcher. Even his Confederate passport is in that name. I know you listed him as Schneider on the crew manifest, but I must point out that we’re going to run afoul at the docks if we’re mismatched.”

  Hans brushed it aside with his hands. “None of that matters. When he was born, I made a promise to his father.”

  “I understand that, sir, but you also made a promise to me when I became your first officer, that you leave decisions about the crew to me, and I have a crewman who may very well jump ship if his captain will not bend on this.”

  Hans stared at her. “You would really… you would make a stand over this, for this boy you don’t know?”

  She sat as straight as she could. This is what it came down to. “Yes, sir. He is a member of my crew, and I will make a stand for him.”

  He gritted his teeth, but a sigh eventually stole the stiffness away from his shoulders. “Very well, Felicia. I will yield to your decision here. I disagree, but I will not override it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He looked over the table. “You may go,” he told her. “I’ll send for the steward when I’m done.”

  She stood and walked to the door. “Good night, sir.”

  Michael was still settling into his station next to Zane the next morning when the order came. “Sail release, stage one, in sixty seconds… mark.”

  Michael looked up at the clock. He knew it was all handled by the computers, that he had nothing to do by hand, but it was still a habit.

  Zane pointed at the displays. “You can see our capture rate is already down twelve percent from the star’s interference. When we come up on the planet, it’ll really drop.”

  The sixty second mark came, and the sails stepped down in size sharply. Their capture rate fell accordingly, but at least it smoothed out. The smaller sail configuration was less prone to gravitational interference. He knew the theory well, but again, it was the math that had scared him off of attempting the tach-three rating.

  The capture rate settled down to a steady line, and Michael did what figuring he could do. “We’re down to about fifty lights now, right?”

&nb
sp; Zane nodded. “Thereabouts, should be forty-eight according to specs. The next release should bring us down to about five, then about one and a half before she sets the final transition vectors.”

  Gabrielle’s voice sounded again. “Sail release, stage two, in thirty seconds… mark.”

  The sails pulled in even tighter, though Michael could see the bottom port sail flutter in the process, with its capture rate fluctuating chaotically through the spin direction. He was reaching to give it a polarization thump when Zane pulled his hand back. “No, let it go,” he said.

  Sure enough, it settled on its own. “What was that?” Michael asked.

  Zane shook his head. “That generator has been stuttering on the down-tachs for three months. It always settles out, and it’s otherwise operating to specs, but I don’t like it.”

  Michael thought about it. There had been plenty of imperfections on Sophie, some they lived with, some they feared they might not live with. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “Nothing for now. It’s never on the final down-tach, so Gabrielle and the navigation computers can always make any final adjustments. Wait, here comes the next one.”

  “Stage three in fifteen… mark.”

  Michael watched it more closely this time, and the sails pulled in smoothly, snapping into their smallest configuration immediately.

  “See,” Zane said. “In six months we’ve got a three-week layover scheduled at Callista Prime. I suspect that will be a working holiday for us, but until then we’re keeping our eyes on it.”

  “Transition set, drop sails in twenty… mark.”

  Michael took a deep breath. He always hated this part. Transition was the point of letting go of all the tachyon wind and keeping whatever sublight momentum you wanted to pull off them. When everything worked out, you put yourself on a nice vector into the orbital traffic patterns, but if the navigator did it wrong, you could easily end up on a high-speed course into a very large rock. It had not happened for over forty years, but that was only because navigation math had gotten that good.

  Yeah, math.

  He only kept his eyes open to be able to watch the displays. Back on Sophie he usually had them closed when he could.

  But the clock ticked down, and the sails dropped precisely on schedule.

  The speaker was silent for a moment, and then Jake Norris came on. “Secure sails, prepare low power deceleration thrust.”

  They flipped through the switches to take the sail generators offline and spun around in their seats to the consoles behind them. The sublight gravity pulse drives were not nearly so massive, but they would never take them far either. When they came online, Zane pointed him towards the status switch. “If you’ll do the honors, you can report us ready.”

  Michael flipped it over to green and waited for the pilot’s controls to start flowing into the engines. Within a minute they did, and the hum of the gravity pulses started up, much softer and lower pitched than the sail generators.

  The next voice they heard was the XO’s. “Estimate docking at eleven hundred. Cargo crew to load stations by twelve hundred. Crew liberty to begin at thirteen hundred. Check watch schedule for station duty rotation.”

  Zane’s face took on a contented look. “Ah, liberty, sweet liberty.”

  Michael nodded. “What’s station liberty usually like? I’m more used to groundside.”

  He shrugged. “Depends on the station. I’ve got a lady friend on Ballison, so that makes this one particularly sweet, but Ballison is ok. Arvin’s a lot better, what with the navy base and all, but I don’t know any of the locals.”

  A lady friend. He thought of Josie, and it stung. Even if they ever went back to Taschin for some reason, Josie would be down on the ground, not on the station. Not that it mattered. The Heinrich would likely never pass through Taschin again.

  They all piled into the same hotel and rented out the bulk of one floor, only to find out that the crew of the Windy Wilhelm had bought out the floor below them. This brought about a raucous cheer from the rest of the crew.

  “The Windy Wilhelm?” Michael asked.

  Karen was the closest. “Our sister ship,” she answered over the cheers. “We usually intersect with her every few months. Always a big party.”

  “To the Hopping Hole!” Gabrielle declared from the registration desk. “Leave your bags and pick up your keys later. It’s time to teach those windy windbags how to drink!”

  And off they went. Ballison station was significantly larger than Taschin station, with three full rings, but most of the cargo vessels were clustered on the bottom one, and the Hopping Hole bar was not far from the hotel.

  The bar looked big from the outside, mostly in that it was the only door for thirty meters in either direction. The crew lined up in front of the entrance as the bouncer waved them in. Karen went in just before him and immediately jumped on the back of another man in the blue and gray of the S&W uniforms. He laughed and staggered over to one of the bars where he dropped her off on a stool.

  Michael was about to follow when the bouncer put out his hand. “Excuse me, can I see some ID?”

  He reached for his pocket and then realized he had left his passport in his bag back at the hotel. “I’m sorry, man. I don’t have it.”

  Charlie stepped up behind him. “What’s the problem?”

  “Your friend doesn’t have any ID.”

  “Well, I can vouch for him. He’s Heavy Heinrich like the rest of us.”

  The bouncer shook his head. “He looks a little young.”

  Charlie looked past them and waved his hand. “Gabrielle!” He turned back to the bouncer. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance, buster.”

  The bouncer was opening his mouth to reply when Gabrielle came back, already with a mug of beer in her hand. “What’s the problem, Charlie?”

  He pointed to the bouncer. “This guy doesn’t want to let Michael in.”

  Gabrielle turned her eyes towards the bouncer, and in that moment, Michael saw his friendly cousin disappear. It was like looking at the XO, or worse, his uncle. She cocked an eyebrow and asked, “Is that so?”

  “Look, miss, I’m not trying to cause any trouble, but the station regs say he’s got to be eighteen. If I’m not sure, I’m required to ask for ID.”

  “Well, I don’t want to cause any trouble either,” she replied, “but I’m telling you that he’s with us, and he’s fine to come in.”

  The bouncer looked back and forth between Gabrielle and Michael. Michael opened his mouth to say something, but Gabrielle silenced him with a glare. The bouncer summoned a passable smile. “Perhaps we can send someone for his ID, miss. I wouldn’t think it would take long.”

  She shook her head and took a step closer. An older man with an officer’s stripe stepped up behind her. His name patch read Williams, and he was from the Windy Wilhelm. “Hey, Gabby, is there a problem?”

  “No,” she replied. “I was simply explaining that either he lets my cousin in, or we all leave.”

  The bouncer stammered. “I, um, I don’t think…”

  She tapped at her name patch with one finger. “Do you know who my father is?”

  He gulped. “I can guess.”

  “Then I think you should know that there are fifteen other clubs on this station that would love to hold the tab for Schneider & Williams shipping. It’s up to you whether your bosses get to keep it.”

  The Wilhelm crewman leaned forward beside Gabrielle. “You know,” he said with a little nod, “what she said.”

  The bartender turned back to Michael, apparently to escape Gabrielle’s withering stare if nothing else. “I’m so sorry for the misunderstanding, sir. All Schneider and Williams crew are welcome here, of course. My mistake.”

  Michael stepped past, and Gabrielle guided him to the bar. “Michael, this is Quincy Williams of the Windy Windbag.”

  Quincy gave her a quick swat on the behind. “Wilhelm, you heavy heiny!”

  Michael extended a hand,
and Quincy took it. “So you’re Gabrielle’s cousin… on her mom’s side, right?”

  “No,” Gabrielle answered. “Dad’s.”

  Quincy’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit, you’re Pete’s kid.”

  Michael nodded.

  Quincy stepped forward and grabbed him by both shoulders. “My God, it’s like a time machine. You look just like him!”

  Gabrielle stepped between them with a couple of beer mugs. “Except for the mustache, remember?”

  Quincy took the mug. “Oh, that’s right. The Broom of Doom!”

  Michael took his mug as well. “Broom?”

  Gabrielle shook her head. “He had this incredibly bristly mustache, always tickled when he’d kiss me on the cheek.”

  Quincy raised his mug to them. “To long-lost Pete and the Broom of Doom!”

  Michael raised his glass and joined in the chorus.

  Quincy drank it all back and slammed the glass down on the counter. He seemed about to say something to Michael when someone else caught his eye. “Maggie Nelson, you get your fine ass over here!”

  Michael looked to see Maggie, their head chef, running into Quincy’s waiting arms. After a long kiss, Quincy threw one look back at them. “I’ll catch up with you two later.”

  Gabrielle laughed and turned back to the bar, beckoning Michael to join her. “It’s always a good time when we run into another ship in the fleet, but the Wilhelm is a special treat.”

  He nodded and took a sip of his beer. Further back in the club, he could see Karen sitting on a table talking to one of the men from the Wilhelm. “So, tell me, what are the rules?”

  “What rules?”

  He shrugged, trying to play it cool but failing. “You know, rules on fraterizing. Fratization. Dammit!”

  “Fraternization?” she asked.

  “Yes, that.”

  “I say knock yourself out. I can think of several pretty gals on the Wilhelm.” She started scanning around. “I bet Suzie Milton would love to pounce you, but I haven’t seen her yet.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess.”

  She turned back to look at him. “Oh, you meant within the crew, didn’t you?”