In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (41 page)

“Change that parties paragraph, then,” said the chief.

“Oh, good catch,” Pip said. “Thanks.”

She shrugged. “Just because I’m an engineer doesn’t mean I haven’t navigated a contract or two in my time.”

Pip gave her a sharp glance, but she only smiled and sipped her coffee. When he looked back at his tablet to make the change, she winked at me.

Tablets bipped around the table again and everybody nodded.

“All right,” I said. “We need a table down there.”

“I’ll take a grav-trunk,” Pip said. “Can I use your spare?”

“The one full of bottles?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure.”

“Bottles?” Al asked. “A grav-trunk full of bottles?”

“Long story,” I said.

Pip took a last slurp off his coffee and headed for the ladder. He chuckled the whole way.

“I got time,” Al said just as the lock call bell rang.

I lifted my mug and looked at Al. “Somebody’s at the door. I bet the crew’s here early.”

She bussed her empty dishes and shot me a glare followed by a grin before scooting for the lock.

“Bottles?” the chief asked.

“We should probably clear this table, don’t you think?”

She snickered and slipped her empty plate onto mine. “Since you’re going ...”

I laughed. “This is going to be a long voyage, isn’t it?”

“Depends,” she said. “Bottles?”

I took the plates to the rack and slotted them in. “I had two grav-trunks full of stuff when I went to Newmar. While I was there I unloaded one of them and recycled the contents. I don’t even know why I was dragging it all around.” I took my mug to the coffee urn and refilled it. “When it came time to leave, I filled it with beer.”

The chief giggled. “Clipper Ship?”

“What else? When we got to the
Prodigal Son
, I shared it with Pip.”

“You drank a trunk full on the trip out?”

“Well, and while we were here. We had help. You helped as I remember.”

She offered a sheepish grin. “Got me there.”

“Anyway, I kept collecting the empties and they kept disappearing. I thought Pip got rid of them.”

“He did,” the chief said.

“Yeah. I’m still not convinced he didn’t take the last few racks out of my trunk to add to his pallet load, but he filled my spare trunk with the empties.”

“You had that pallet load
and
a trunk full?”

I shrugged. “Pip really likes that beer.”

She was still laughing when Al returned with the first two crewmen to sign The Articles.

Chapter Forty
Breakall Orbital:
2374, August 10

By 0800 the whole crew had arrived. It only took a few moments for them to thumb The Articles and establish their contracts. Ms. Sharps set out a tray of fruit-filled tarts and a stack of napkins while everybody settled in.

“Good morning and welcome aboard,” I said. “I’m Captain Wang. I’ll be ringmaster of this circus. Some of you know Ms. Ross, first mate. The engineering crew has already met Chief Stevens. The fellow with the white hair and silver earring is our cargo master and CEO of Phoenix Freight, Mr. Carstairs. There’ll be plenty of time for you to learn to hate us on the way to Dree, but right now you’re probably wondering who those people are outside on the dock.”

A spacer in the back raised his hand. “Yes?”

“Who are those people outside on the dock, Captain?” he asked.

The assembly chuckled.

“What’s your name, spacer?”

“Bentley, sar. Ordinary Spacer Virgil Bentley.”

“I’m glad you asked, Mr. Bentley. Those are day laborers I’ve hired to help with cleanup. You may have noticed in your earlier visit and this morning that the ship is not exactly shipshape and Bristol fashion. We’ve a huge task ahead of us in getting her ready for a yard availability in Dree. We want to get there as soon as possible, but the operative phrase there is ‘get there’ rather than ‘as soon as possible.’

“That means we’ll be doing a bit of our own clean-and-scrape on the way and only asking the yard to refit damaged systems and equipment. Chief Stevens will make sure the ship is spaceworthy. It’s my job to make sure we have the crew necessary to keep us safe on the way.

“Ms. Sharps in the galley there, who made these tarts for us out of thin air as nearly as I can tell, will keep us fed.

“Today’s evolution will be a bit of a change of pace for some of you, especially the junior members. We’re going to hire about four hundred civilians to come in and clean.”

Eyes all around the room got very round at that number.

“If you’ve seen the video, you know that we offered tours of the ship, but the station management shut that down. So we can’t give tours. Everybody repeat that for me? We can’t give tours.”

A bit of rumbling that might have been words left me shaking my head.

“No. You don’t understand. We can’t give tours. Try again.” I raised my hand as a prompt.

“We can’t give tours,” they chanted. I noted a few smiles around the room and a few frowns.

“So if anybody asks you? What do you say?”

“We can’t give tours,” they said.

“Right. These people coming aboard are coming to work. We need to give them a safety orientation which will involve visiting several spaces aboard the vessel including the mess deck, the galley, a trip down the spine to engineering, some of the engineering spaces, the bridge, and one of the crew berthing areas. While that might seem like a tour, it’s a safety orientation. Are we clear?”

A few people mumbled something.

“What is it?”

“Orientation,” said a couple of ratings in the back.

“Try again,” I said. “I know this seems really stupid, but humor me—because failing this could cost us the ship and you’ll be back on the beach. Safety orientation.”

That seemed to have gotten their attention because they all said “Safety orientation.”

“And what about tours?”

“We can’t give tours,” they said.

“When they come in, each person will have a sponge.”

Their laughter stopped me.

“Seriously. They’ll each have a sponge. I need somebody to get swab buckets set up at each end of the spine, one in crew berthing, and maybe in engineering?” I looked at Chief Stevens who nodded.

“You will instruct your day workers to moisten their sponges and wash a piece of bulkhead or deck. Whatever is handy. Just dragging their damp sponges down the length of the spine is sufficient. I know this gets sillier and sillier as we go, but consider what four hundred sponges will do to that hundred meters of spine. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’ll know what I mean as soon as you get in there.”

The expressions of “are you kidding me?” began to evaporate to be replaced with some thoughtful consideration, particularly among the junior crew who’d be stuck with cleaning that spine if the day workers weren’t going to.

“Here’s the thing. There are four hundred of them. There are twenty-odd of us. We need to get them into the ship, give them a good safety orientation. Let them wash something and then get them out so the next group can come in. We can’t have them stacked up in the passages, so it’s going to be a very, very long day to get forty groups of ten through the ship.”

I paused to let that sink in. “Get us through today, and tomorrow will be operations normal.”

Some of the crew in the back rows snickered. I didn’t blame them.

“Any questions?”

An ordinary spacer raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“What’s a circus?”

When nobody laughed, I felt very, very old.

“It’s an ancient form of entertainment. I’ll see if I can find some images or holos of them.” I really didn’t feel like trying to explain clowns and trapezes with the crowd building outside the lock.

To say nothing of gladiators.

“Anybody else?”

A spec one in the back raised a hand. “So, we’re going to pick up ten stationers at the lock, trot them through the ship dripping soapy water, and then show them off the ship again.”

“Basically.”

“What do we do with the used sponges?” he asked.

The room shared a moment of laughter.

“They keep them,” I said. “That’s what they’re being paid.”

One crystal moment of silence hung in the air before the place fell apart with merriment. After they calmed down I had the chief pick a couple of engineering ratings to go aft and act as sign posts, while I split the rest up into pairs and sent Pip ahead to start getting contracts thumbed.

“Ms. Ross, could I impose on you to take a couple of these strapping lads or ladies and load up a few sponge buckets?”

“Of course, Captain. Any particular places?”

“Ends of the spine. Maybe at the foot of the ladder in officer’s country? A couple in the berthing area we’ve designated. We’ll have mattresses coming in later today, and it would be nice to give our people a bit of a head start on that. You probably know the best places as well as I do. I’ll leave it to your discretion.”

“Sponge buckets, aye, aye, Captain.” She turned to the gathered rankings and pulled two pair out. “You four, if you’d come with me?” She left the mess deck without looking back, the ratings close on her heels.

I wasn’t sure where she would find the buckets, but I suspected that she’d make do or order some from the chandlery. As I thought about it, I wasn’t sure she hadn’t already done so. First mates can be terribly efficient as long as the captain stays out from under foot. The thought made me think of Fredi and I fingered the stars on my collar. She’d taught me a lot of lessons I probably never appreciated until I needed them. It occurred to me that I’d need to be much less under foot.

“All right. First pair, down to the lock. The rest of you finish your coffee and pastry. You’ll be up soon enough.”

An engineman and an able spacer ducked out of the mess deck and the rest settled in. Mr. Franklin lowered the upper door in the pass-through and opened the galley door, locking it back on its latch. I smiled at him and he grinned before ducking back inside. In the moment of quiet I heard Ms. Sharps addressing her small gang, although I couldn’t hear what she said. I grabbed another mouthful of coffee and contemplated just how lucky I had been with crew.

I hoped that luck would continue even while girding myself against the disappointment I’d have to deal with when I was wrong.

I heard the tread of many feet coming up the passageway and stuck my head into the galley. Ms. Sharps had Mr. Franklin in the deep sink with a stack of cake sheets and Ms. Adams had her head in the sanitizer. “Ready, Ms. Sharps?”

“I don’t have to speak do I, sar?”

“Just a few words about cooking in space, maybe?”

She bit her lip and shrugged. “I’ll do my best, Captain.”

“I would expect nothing less, Ms. Sharps.”

The able spacer led the train of ten stationers into the mess deck and they gathered like a flock of birds, unsure whether to actually enter or turn and fly. I grinned when I saw the man with the number one sponge near the middle of the pack.

“Come in, come in,” I said waving them forward. “Whenever possible, don’t block passageways. Somebody might need to go through in a hurry.”

They shuffled a few steps into the mess deck and stopped again.

I took a breath and began. “You probably know I’m Captain Ishmael Wang. Welcome aboard. We’re about to send you on a safety orientation of the ship. The two spacers with you will show you where to go and what to do. Pay attention to their directions because the safety of everybody aboard depends on you.”

I paused to let that sink in.

“This is the mess deck. It’s our dining room in space. We also use it for crew meetings and generally hanging out when not on duty. Getting everybody fed three or four times a day is important, and this is where it happens. If you’d step this way, I’ll show you the kitchen—what we call the galley—where the food is prepared.”

I walked into the galley and stepped around the side of the work station to stand with Ms. Sharps. I had to wave them in to get them all in and lined up.

“This is Ms. Sharps. She’s our cook. Ms. Sharps?”

“Welcome aboard, everyone. I love to cook but cooking in space has its own challenges. We need to have the right foods in the correct quantities aboard before we get underway. Once we start, we can’t swing by the shops on the way home for a loaf of bread or a liter of milk.”

They chuckled.

“So, we have to plan menus, order staggering amounts of food and cooking supplies, and store them all in the various freezers, coolers, and store rooms around us here in the galley. It’s an important job and one that I’m honored to have.” She looked up at me. “Captain?”

“Thank you, Ms. Sharps.” I waved them back. “If you’d go back onto the mess deck, your team will take you to the next stop on your safety orientation.”

As they shuffled out, Ms. Sharps said, “Was that all right, sar?”

“That was perfect, Ms. Sharps. Can you remember to say it again?”

She laughed. “I better.”

“After the first twenty groups I’m sure you’ll be able to say it in your sleep,” I said and smiled to myself at the horrified look on her face.

After the first group left the mess deck I sent the next team down to the lock to pick up their charges. In due time they returned and we repeated the set piece for them.