Ships of My Fathers Read online

  The younger one shook his head. “Malcolm Fletcher died.”

  “Murder?”

  “Accident, something about loading cargo. I haven’t seen the official report yet, but an acquaintance of mine was at his wake.”

  “Damn.”

  “I know. He’ll be hard to replace.”

  The older man nodded. “Indeed. He had one of our specials, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir, Sophie’s Grace.”

  “Ha! Deceptively named. I like that. Are we going to pull it back?”

  “We could, but I worry that the paper trail might expose the program.”

  “Well, we can’t let it go to auction. We certainly don’t want one of those ending up in Yoshido’s hands.”

  The younger man picked up his pad. “I believe it’s slated to go to his son, a Michael William Fletcher.”

  “Is he one of ours?”

  “No. I believe he’s still a minor… sixteen or seventeen years old. Do you want me to contact him?”

  The older man rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “No, not yet. Let’s see what the boy does. If he’s got any of his father in him, he’ll contact us. If not, then we’ll deal with the special before he gets into any trouble with it.”

  “Are you sure about that, Admiral?”

  He chuckled. “As sure as I can be about anything in this business. It’ll do for now.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Michael stared up at the sky, watching the clouds take on strange shapes. Josie lay beside him, having tugged the blanket back over them to guard against the chilly breeze. Sex on the mountain, he mused. That was one for the scrapbook.

  Josie took another drag on the hand-rolled cigarette and passed it to him. He sucked it in, held it for a moment, and watched the clouds alter as he let it back out. “What’s this called again?”

  She set it aside and ran her hands over his bare chest. “Tonja root. It grows naturally on the slopes, but it’s hard to spot.”

  “Wow. It’s umm, different.”

  She started kissing him around the neck. “It definitely adds to the experience.” Her voice had an echoed quality.

  At some level, Michael recognized it as the effects of the drug coursing through his system. He reached over and ran a hand across her breast, his fingers tingling at the contact until the buzz cascaded up his entire arm. “It does at that.”

  A small animal darted out and grabbed part of their discarded picnic lunch, but Michael did not care. Planet-side excursions had always been a little strange, but this climb up the mountain slopes had been one of the strangest. The tonja root only underlined the fact.

  “Is it legal?” he asked.

  “Depends. Why?” She reached down and started tracing circles on his stomach.

  “Mmm, was thinking about shipping, exporting, that kind of thing.”

  She slid a leg over him. “You and your cargo again. I think it’s time for more distraction.”

  He reached over and picked up the tonja again for another long drag. “Sorry, lifelong habit, me and… Malcolm.”

  She took the tonja back and sucked it in while mounting him. “Yeah, time to start making new habits. You ready?”

  He smiled up at her, naked against the sky. “Always.”

  Hans Schneider read over the report again. Disbelief melted into cheer. “How long has this message been in port?”

  Walter Brookstone checked the log. “Thirty-eight hours.”

  Hans rose from the command chair and waved over his first officer. “Ms. Corazon, get us into the docking queue and come to my ready room as soon as you can hand it off.”

  “Aye, sir,” she responded and took his place in the center seat.

  Hans strode to the back of the bridge and through the side door to his ready room. He sat behind the desk, but he could not contain his excitement. He stood back up and paced the five steps back and forth a few times, chuckling beneath his breath. By the time Felicia Corazon pressed the chime, he was almost giggling.

  He moved back to his chair and called out, “Enter.”

  “You wanted to speak to me, sir?”

  “This may not mean much to you, Felicia, but Fletcher is dead. I never thought I’d outlive the bastard, but I did. He’s gone, at long last.”

  She remained in a stiff pose. “Malcolm Fletcher?”

  “Yes, yes. Malcolm Fletcher.” As if there could be any other! “It was some cargo accident, no doubt off on one of his smuggling runs.”

  She nodded. “As I recall, didn’t he have a cousin of yours in his crew?”

  “No cousin, my nephew. My little brother’s only son, Michael.” He fought the urge to get out of his chair again. “At long last, he’ll be coming home to his family.”

  “Then it’s good news, sir. Where is he? Will you be sending for him?”

  Hans laughed, surprised at his giddiness. “Send for him? Hardly! I’m going to get him myself. In fact, we’re all going. He’s only over at Taschin. We can divert there easily enough. In fact, if I can get a fast transport, I could get there first, sort out the details, and he’ll be all ready to join us by the time the Heinrich arrives.”

  “That seems quite efficient, sir, but Taschin is not on our regular route. We have through cargo bound for Cenita.”

  He sighed. “Yes, I suppose, but do we have a performance clause on any of those shipments?”

  “I would have to check, sir.”

  Hans shook his head. “Damn the penalties. The boy is family. If it eats into the crew share, I’ll pay the penalties myself.”

  “Understandable, sir. Your orders?”

  “Let’s see… I want you to expedite our offload here. See if there’s anything we can pick up to haul out to Taschin, but don’t wait for it. If it delays your departure more than a day, we’ll go with empty slots. Then get yourself out to Taschin.”

  “And you?”

  “Have Brookstone find me a transport. I’ll double-bunk in a commercial courier if I have to, but find me something fast.”

  “Aye, sir,” she replied and left.

  He rose to pace again. Malcolm Fletcher was dead. He wanted to head to the galley and open some champagne.

  Michael snuck out of Josie’s bed, being careful not to wake her. He heard Annie in the kitchen, so he slipped on a robe for his trip across the hall to the bathroom. When he came back out, Annie was waiting for him with a tray of cinnamon rolls.

  “I think it’s time we got caught up,” she said.

  The smell of cinnamon was very intense. Either they were actually that delicious, or the tonja was having a new effect. Regardless of the source, it would be worth the experience. “Sure,” he said, following her back to the kitchen table.

  “You doing okay these days?”

  He nodded, biting into the first roll. They truly were that delicious.

  “Have you been giving much thought to your future?”

  He nodded again, chewing on the roll. More than anything, he was thinking about whether Josie could hook him up with her tonja suppliers. His research told him that you could ship the tonja plant raw and stay within the law, but given the extra volume and weight, he was not sure the refined quantity at the other end would be worth it. The public databases did not list the street price for hallucinogens on any of the nearby worlds.

  “And what have you been thinking?”

  He froze mid-bite. Even in his current state, he was pretty sure Annie did not want to hear his idle thoughts on setting up an illicit tonja network. “Oh, you know, getting back to the Sophie, making my own runs.”

  “I see,” she replied, selecting a roll of her own. She picked at it with her fingers, delicately unwinding the spiral bit by bit. “You have your license ready then?”

  “Not yet. They won’t let you take the exam until you’re eighteen.”

  “Are there a lot of eighteen-year-old captains?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t be the first. I looked it up. Some girl did it last year, and two guys the
year before that.” He did not tell, her, however, that it had been seven years before that without anyone under thirty even trying.

  She nodded, taking another tear off her own roll. “And that’s here on Taschin?”

  “No, that’s in the whole Guild.”

  “The Guild in the Confederacy?”

  He frowned. The Guild was recognized across most of known space, not merely in the Confederacy, and when you put the Solarian Union together with the League of Catai, that added up to a lot of ships, each with a Guild captain. A hundred thousand? A million? He had never looked up the total. “What are you getting at?”

  “Simply that getting your license next year seems like a long shot.”

  He shook his head. “No, I already have ratings in drive and systems engineering — cargo, too, and that’s not even part of the license exam.”

  “And isn’t there something about navigation in there? Or maybe piloting?”

  “Not piloting, though I’m not half-bad. The computer does most of the work anyway.”

  “And navigation?”

  He put the roll down. “Okay, so I haven’t passed that one yet. What’s your point?”

  “You don’t look like the studying type, especially not when you’re on the root.”

  He laughed. “This is about Josie’s tonja?”

  “I’m not going to tell you not to use it. You’ve got no reason to listen to me, but you’ve had enough by now to feel how it dumbs you down, numbs out your mind. Right?”

  “Yeah, but Josie said that was only a few hours.”

  “Or days. It’s got a long tail.”

  He shrugged. “So, I’ve been through a lot. Maybe I need the break.”

  “Yeah,” she replied, picking at her roll again. “That’s kind of my point. Instead of jumping through the hoops for your license, maybe you should take a year or two and go a little slower.”

  He picked up his roll again and crammed the rest of it into one bite. “Doing what? Get a job here?”

  “Maybe. I don’t think the local dockworkers’ union will take you at your age, but I’m sure you could find something around port.”

  He shook his head. “No, I want to get… I mean, don’t take this wrong. You’ve been really good to me, and Josie…” he trailed off. He had no idea what he wanted to do about Josie. With his captain’s license, maybe even a first officer slot, he could take her with him, but she never wanted to talk about the future.

  “You want to get out there, don’t you? Back into the deep.”

  He sighed and picked up a second roll.

  “It’s okay,” she told him. “I recognize the look. Malcolm had it bad.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s it. Genes or not, he passed it on.”

  “Have you thought about looking up your family? They were spacers too.”

  “You mean Mom’s husband, that Peter guy?”

  She finished unspooling the last of her own roll. “Didn’t you say something that first night about an uncle?”

  “Yeah, Han, something like that.”

  “Hans Schneider,” she replied. “I looked him up. He’s a spacer too.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “I think he’s in the Captains’ Guild, so I presume he runs a ship.”

  “Captain, huh?”

  “Maybe he could help you with your navigation.”

  He looked down at the rolls again and back up to Annie. This had been an ambush. “He’s already on his way, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know, but I know he’s been sent for.”

  He leaned back from the table. “I guess I don’t have a choice in this.”

  She shook her head. “But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a bad one.” She motioned to the uneaten roll in his hand. “Go ahead, eat it. I know the cinnamon is that much better on the tonja, so enjoy it while you can.”

  Chapter 6

  “Life is going to smack you down, son. You’ve just got to get up and smack it back.” — Malcolm Fletcher

  HANS SCHNEIDER FIDGETED IN THE chair opposite Charles Hollings’ desk. Hollings was still sorting through the files on his desk screen. “I do apologize, sir. If I had known you were coming so soon, I’d have had this more organized.”

  Hans sighed. There was no point in getting angry with this man. “Since I arrived on the mail courier, I don’t think my message would have reached you any sooner than I did.”

  “Well, I’m sure the court will take your eagerness as a good sign.”

  He waved it off. “I was too late sixteen years ago. I did not want to spare a second this time.”

  “Ah, here it is,” Hollings announced, sending the virtual page across to Schneider’s side. “This guardianship document meets the requirements of both the local Taschin laws along with the stricter Confederacy guidelines. You should have no problems travelling between worlds with him.”

  “Good. After all these years, I don’t think I want to let him out of my sight.” He pressed his thumb into the appropriate box on the page. It flashed and sounded a chime.

  “And the addendum for the Solarian Union should sort out any border issues…”

  Hans flipped to the next document and thumbed it as well. “Now, what about this ship?”

  “Yes, the Sophie’s Grace.”

  “The what? Did you say it was called Sophie Grace?”

  Hollings checked the file again. “No, Sophie’s Grace, the possessive. I gather it was named for his mother.”

  Hans took a calming breath. The nerve of that man, to use her name after she had rejected him. “I suppose it was. Do you have its specifications?”

  “Not in any detail. It’s listed as a light transport, twenty-one thousand tons.”

  “Is that cargo?”

  “Sorry, no, that’s the total displacement. The cargo displacement is listed as thirty-two hundred tons.”

  Hans dismissed it with a shake of his head. The ship was useless to him. It was too small to work any of the main routes with any efficiency. Still, its sale price would go far towards advancing the boy’s position in the company. “Have you had it appraised for auction yet?”

  “No, I haven’t even looked into it.”

  “Why not? You’ve had almost three weeks.”

  “To tell you the truth, sir, I had not expected it to be sold. Mr. Fletcher seemed—”

  “His name is Schneider,” Hans interrupted. “I don’t care what the record says. I won’t have you call him by that other name.”

  Hollings nodded. “Certainly. I understand, but Michael seemed quite set on taking the ship over for himself next year.”

  “At his age? They’ll laugh him out of the Guild hall. Childish nonsense.”

  “Quite possibly. I’m sure you would know that better than me, but the ownership trust is clear. The ship cannot be sold without his authorization.”

  Hans patted the desk twice as if that settled it. “Whatever. Send me the documents. I’ll have our lawyers go over them, and I’ll talk some sense into our young adventurer.”

  Hollings’ assistant opened the door. “Mr. Rubin to see you.”

  Hans stood and straightened his uniform’s vest. At long last, he was going to meet his nephew. Isaac Rubin stepped through the door, nodded to the two of them, and then the assistant closed the door behind him.

  “Where’s the boy?” Hans asked.

  “I wasn’t sure I should bring him yet.”

  Hans bit down on his immediate response. He was not sure? “I suppose I had not made myself clear then. I have come to collect my nephew. The Heinrich should dock with your orbital in two days. I have little to no other business to conduct in this system, so I plan to leave with it and the boy in no more than three days.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Schneider. I only thought that we should talk first.”

  Hans looked at the man. He was hardly a youngster, but he still had a rough ungroomed appearance. His uniform was a bland and generic one, clearly not issued by one of the el
ite ship service companies of the major worlds. In fact, the only thing custom about it was the stitched ship patch of the Sophie’s Grace. So this was one of the malcontents Fletcher had employed.

  “Talk then,” he replied, taking his seat again. “By all means, talk. And for your information, it’s not Mr. Schneider. It’s Captain Schneider.”

  “Certainly, Captain.” Isaac took the seat beside him, and Hans forced himself to swivel around to at least look at him. “Michael is well and enjoying some portside liberty, but I think he will be eager to get back into the deep. You understand that, of course.”

  Hans nodded. The man was at least a fellow spacer. He had to give him that. “I do, but please understand that I am eager to see him. We have a lot of catching up to do, he and I. I gather he did not know that his father and I even existed.”

  “No, I don’t believe Captain Fletcher had told him.”

  Hans stiffened at the name. Captain, indeed. “Then he has a lot of family history to catch up on.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You see, he and the skipper were very tight, a hell of a lot closer than me and my dad ever were. They loved each other, you know, and I think he’s going to have a hard time making the adjustment.”

  “Boys love puppies, too, but they get over it,” Hans snapped.

  Isaac sat back with his eyebrows raised. “Puppies?”

  Hans already regretted it. He was close to losing his temper, and he could not allow it, not when he was so close to his goal. “My apologies. This is difficult for me. I did not approve of your Captain Fletcher adopting my nephew, but in the midst of the Caspian rebellion I was not given the opportunity to make my case. For all these years, I’ve been waiting for a second chance.”

  Isaac nodded. “That’s understandable.”

  “So,” Hans resumed with a smile, “how do you suggest we help Michael make this adjustment?”

  Isaac’s posture relaxed. “Well, it’s just that family is going to be a touchy subject.”

  Hans nodded. “I do realize that I am hardly a replacement for a loving father, adopted or otherwise, but I am not the only family he has. I have two daughters, one of them aboard the Heinrich, along with a number of cousins and such. It’s not exactly a family ship, but Michael will have the love and support of more family than he has ever known.”