Ships of My Fathers Page 2

  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.”

  The nods around the circle came one by one, so Michael prompted them. “Anyone else? I know you’ve got to work, and there’s no point in hanging around playing nursemaid to me.”

  Wendy spoke up. “Takasumi Lines has a posting for an engineer. I’d have to play catch-up with whatever ship they post me to, but it’s available today.”

  “You’d go corporate?” Liam asked. He had been their prime shift navigator for two years and never had a kind word for the larger shipping lines. Malcolm had hinted at some bad blood between Liam and one of the larger shipping lines, but he
had never given the details.

  She shrugged. “Hey, they’re offering five-year contracts. Good money, too. You should check it out.”

  “No thanks,” Liam replied. “Besides, with all my time logged past the border, I’ll have no trouble finding a berth from here.”

  “Maybe for you,” Henry said, “but I think Wendy’s onto a good thing. Did you see anything for systems?”

  She nodded. “Two of them, one general and one mechanical specialist.”

  Isaac gave him a nudge in the ribs. “Sounds like that mechanic spot might be your ticket out of the sludge tanks.”

  Henry nodded. “Yeah, it would.”

  “What about you, Isaac?” Michael asked. Isaac had been there longer than any of the others, a full four years, but even that was a little short compared to other family ships he knew. Malcolm had been a good skipper, but he had also been a hard skipper.

  The older man looked at him with a hint of sadness. “I don’t think I’m ready to ship off quite yet. I’m no nursemaid, but I figure I should keep my eye on Skipper’s boy at least a little longer.”

  They wrapped it up with a heartfelt round of handshakes, though Wendy had given him a hug that lasted a lot longer than Michael was expecting. They said their goodbyes at the door, and Michael and Isaac staggered to an auto-pod for the ride back to their hotel.

  The message light was blinking when they got to the room, so Isaac hit it.

  “Mr. Fletcher, this is Charles Hollings from Walters and Merrimack. The local court has appointed me as your representative for the dissolution of your father’s estate as well as the advocate for your minority status. I have set up a meeting for ten tomorrow morning at my office,” he said and rattled off the address. “Please be there.”

  Isaac turned back to face Michael. “Well, that was quick.”

  The room began to turn, and Michael stumbled towards the toilet to throw up. He did not make it in time.

  Chapter 3

  “It’s not so much that I lied. It’s more that I simply hadn’t gotten around to telling her the truth yet.” — Malcolm Fletcher

  MICHAEL SAT IN THE RECEPTION lounge of Walters and Merrimack. It was high in one of the super towers downtown, well west of the port, but he could almost make out the control tower through the low morning haze. At the very least, he could see the occasional glint of a ship punching up through the fog, but he tried not to look too much. Even through the shaded glass of the office building, the glare of the sun made his head throb.

  He had worn his dress uniform for the meeting. It was as close to a suit as he had, and he always thought he looked older in uniform than in his civvies. He knew his clothes were not going to fool the lawyer about his age, but he hoped it would at least impart some sense of maturity. Short of a Captain’s star, these non-military uniforms rarely showed any rank, but it did show him as a working member of the crew rather than some ship-schooled passenger.

  Isaac had offered to come along, but Michael had insisted he go alone. “I’m hoping to convince this guy I don’t need much supervision,” he had said. “Showing up with a chaperone doesn’t exactly help.” Isaac had protested, but in the end he had stayed back at the hotel suite.

  At five after ten, Charles Hollings emerged from the back offices. “Ah, Mr. Fletcher, come this way.” He wore a formal suit with the double-breasted vest that was becoming fashionable on colder worlds. It had the effect of making Hollings look broader than he actually was. Michael had tried one once, but its bagginess only accented how thin he was.

  He followed Hollings into his office and sat opposite the desk while Hollings opened the files on his desk screen. “First of all,” he said, “let me offer my condolences for your loss. I never met Captain Fletcher, but from what I have read, he was a fine man.”

  Michael sighed. He still was not used to hearing about his father in the past tense, but at least he had stifled the urge to correct people. “Thank you.”

  “I see you came alone. Are you staying with anyone?”

  He tried to sit a little straighter without making it look like he was puffing out his chest. “I asked my first officer to stay in port while we sort out the details on the ship ownership.” It was sort of true, but phrasing it that way made Michael sound far more like the responsible party.

  “I see, well, we can get to the guardianship in a moment. The ship ownership should be fairly simple.” He swept his hands across the desk screen and the virtual papers shuffled around. “I see that Sophie’s Grace is held by the Fletcher Trust. I read through the formation and bylaw documents yesterday afternoon, and if we wait until next year, the transfer should be a straightforward matter. We could proceed now if you wish, but the complexity would still add significant delay.”

  Michael tried to follow the language, but much of it turned to mush in his aching head. “What’s the delay?”

  “Well, as I said, if we wait until your eighteenth birthday, the transfer is not much more than a simple filing with the port registry. The bylaws of the trust are clear that on the death of Malcolm Fletcher, Michael Fletcher becomes the executive trustee, and in that role, you can become the primary signatory for all the ship’s business. However, there is a clause for taking care of things if the death occurred before your majority, which it has. If you want the ship to continue to operate, you and I will have to select an executive trustee to act for you, but I don’t recommend it.”

  “Why not?

  “Well, it’s the short timeframe. For ship trusts, the executive trustee is typically someone with a captain’s license and a background in law. We would have to select one, convince him to hire on, and then there are a few hearings and a filing to be sent to the sector registry offices. When it’s all said and done, we’re probably looking at three to six months before you would be operational. But the question is for how long? While you could keep the hired captain on, his role of executive trustee would evaporate after a few short months. I think we’d be very challenged to find someone willing to take it on for such a limited duration.”

  Michael thought it about for a moment. It would go much more smoothly if only Isaac could pass the Captain’s exam, but he always insisted he did not have the engineering skills to pass. In truth, he was more of a glorified navigator than a true first officer, but then navigation had always been a mathematical mystery to Michael. “I’m not so sure,” he said finally. “I do have a lot of friends in the shipping business. I might be able to convince one of them.”

  “To give up their own vessel or posting to take yours on for a few months? I can’t speak to the quality of the friendship, but I would be truly surprised to hear of someone with the necessary background who would make that kind of decision.”

  Michael shrugged it off. “Well, I may ask around, but for now let’s assume that I’ll be clear in nine months.”

  “That may be the best attitude. Your luck may surprise me after all, but I wanted you to know what you were up against.”

  “So Sophie will sit there collecting dust in that sealed dock in the meantime. Who pays for that?”

  The lawyer sighed. “Well, regrettably the storage fees accrue against you and the trust, but they aren’t as much as you might think. I imagine Captain Fletcher’s accounts would be sufficient, but failing that, I understand there is a possible litigation against one Wall-to-Sky repair facility here on Taschin?”

  Michael shook his head at the thought of the accident, watching that errant thruster again in his head. At a trial there would be the video, cross-examinations, and questions of why he had not gone into help his father. Help his father like he should have. Damn.

  “You’d rather avoid the trial?”

  Michael looked up. “How did you know?”

  “It’s not uncommon. I’m not going to push it on you, and I imagine they would be eager to settle out of court. It wouldn’t be enough to retire on, certainly, but it would easily cover your living expenses for the upcoming year along with any port fees that a
ccrue. I could start the process if you’d like.”

  He nodded and looked out the window beyond Hollings. This one did not face the port, but north to the snow-capped mountains instead. It was not nearly as bright, so his head did not throb as much. “I guess the question is, what will I be doing for the next nine months?”

  “Then let’s move on to the matter of your guardianship.”

  Michael shook his head to clear it and focused on Hollings. “Yeah, I had a thought on that. I get along pretty well with my first officer, Isaac Rubin. He agreed to stick around for at least a while. I imagine I could hire him on to fulfill whatever guardian requirements there are for the next few months.”

  Hollings shifted the virtual pages around again. “With due respect, Mr. Fletcher, I don’t think the court would be satisfied with that kind of arrangement. Traditionally the guardian holds authority over the child. He is not an employee of the child.”

  Michael waved his hands to cut him short. “Semantics aside, he’s a good guy, and he’s looked out for me before at other ports.”

  Hollings frowned briefly before masking it. “Certainly, the court is likely to look favorably upon his present assistance and will not press for foster placement, but I did perform a next-of-kin search, and without overriding factors, the living family takes precedence. In fact, I already took the liberty of sending notice to your uncle Hans, but with transit time and not knowing where he is on his own shipping route—”

  “Wait, Uncle Hans? I don’t have any Uncle Hans.” He blinked twice and tried to focus on the virtual pages before Hollings. “For that matter, I don’t have any uncles. Mom was an only child, and Dad’s little sister died when she was my age.”

  Hollings referred back to the pages on the desk screen. “Oh, sorry, I meant Hans Schneider, the older brother of your birth father Peter.”