The Bright Black Sea (30 page)

'Well, I'm joining the club.'

He heaved out a heavy sigh. 'I'd tell you to go to
the blasted tenth star or Pyleen Yards, but for Fen Miccall's sake,
I'll see what I can do for you. No promises.'

'Nothing too demanding. We're looking to upgrade our
detection and missile tracking systems to A level. And some scout
drones. We're heading out of system and gearing up for drift
work.'

'It'll be deep drift work at that,' he said, shaking
his head sadly. 'Better you than me. I'd imagine we've a few A
level systems in the warehouse. Not a lot of demand. Azminn
shipowners don't need A level stuff. Any brand in mind?' he added,
pulling up his inventory screen.

'I've a list right here, but I'm warning you, I'm on
a tight budget. I'm thinking of good quality refurbished. Best
price for an old customer.'

'Wil, everyone gets best price. Goes without saying.
Now what are you looking at?'

I read off the options Tenry had prepared. He shook
his head glumly as he entered the data. 'We've got some of those
models, in our warehouse. These are the prices.'

I looked at them and asked, 'Anything more
affordable?'

'I'll run your list through our flats' inventory to
see what's still in the wrecks. If you go out to the flats and
pulling the Neb-blasted gear yourself and settle for an as is
system, it'll save you half off warehouse prices. You'd have to
refurbish it yourself. No guarantees.'

'That sounds promising. Do you have what we're
looking for in the wrecks?'

'Well, the survey report shows more than a dozen
possibilities on the flats, but what shape they're in is anyone's
guess. All I can say for certain is that they're listed in the
survey. I'll send you a chart and you can go out and find them
yourself,' he replied. 'Still, no reason to think you couldn't find
a near mint unit out there. We've little demand for them so there's
no pressing reason to pull them ourselves.'

'That sounds encouraging. I'm sure we could refurbish
it, and the gang always likes a ticket to your salvage yard. I
think we'll go that route.'

'Then I'll set you up with yard office to schedule a
date.'

'Do that, Nat, and include where to find the drones
as well, and as to upgrading missiles. What sort of credits can we
get by trading in more missiles than we replace?'

'Doubt we'd even want them. Nobody needs them in this
system, as you well know. My records show you last swapped yours
out some thirty-seven years ago even though they should be rotated
regularly every twenty. Few shipowners bother. You'd be better off
selling them in the drifts. Always a demand there, even for your
basic versions.'

I sighed. 'Still, we'll need some. Get me some prices
and I'll see how many we can afford.'

'Right. And I'll schedule you with the armory crew to
swap out the missiles now as well. We'd need at least two weeks to
get some A-level missiles refurbished. Might as well get you
scheduled. Get back to me on how many you want once you see the
prices. Still, you might be able to get by without them. The
updated detection and control system alone will give you a B level
rating. You could get by with that. I wouldn't, but you
could...'

'Thanks Nat. I'll be in contact.'

Between Jann and myself, we found fifteen old
spaceers, mostly captains who knew Miccall well in the Anchorage,
and with the promise of drink and a Barlan and Saysa prepared meal,
we'd no problem setting an early date for the gathering. I spent
the day helping to prepare the meal, selecting the beverages from
the supplies Min had brought along with her, and getting the dining
salon and awning deck festive for the gathering.

Vynnia and Tenry had gone down to Lontria to spend
the day with Min, where they were planning on touring some colorful
dissident communities. I sent the price list Nat had sent up with
Tenry for her consideration. Tenry being the expert, I told him I'd
leave the decision in his and Min's hands. They arrived back aboard
the ship as I was setting the table in the dining salon.

'Don't you have a staff to do that, Captain?' Vynnia
asked watching me.

'Attention to details First, attention to the little
details,' I replied brightly, just to annoy her. 'This is tramping,
we're jacks of all trades. How was your visit? Any luck changing
her mind?'

From the narrow look Vynnia gave me and her short.
'No', I rather suspect just the reverse – Min spent the time on the
subject trying to convince (order?) them to stay aboard the
Lost
Star
. I tried looking sadly disappointed, but truth be told,
I'd not expected them to sway her, so astonishment at success would
have been my only authentic reaction.

Jann arrived before the rest of the guests, and we
greeted them as they arrived. Riv and Lilm and Illy were all on
hand too, all old spaceers who've known each other for decades. All
you have to do to keep things festive was maintain liquid splashing
in their drinking globes before and after the meal. I've collected
quite a score of Miccall yarns over the years, but I collected a
few more over the course of the evening, though nothing new about
the Four Shipmate era which pre-dates even these old shipmates and
rivals. It was early the next morning when they were more or less
towed to a boat sent from their ship to take them off and I was
able to find my hammock again. Getting into it proved to be a
slight problem. Sleep wasn't.

The following day started a little late for me. I
spent the morning, what little was left of it, going over the plan
and budget Min and Tenry had decided on. I asked Tenry to step in
when I called down to & Kin's to do the final negotiation with
Nat. We managed to get ten top notch Viper XD mk 7's and a hundred
Dodger 77 mini-missiles, designed to deflect small meteors, but
used mainly as anti-missile missiles in the drifts, by trading in
forty of our current missiles plus additional credits. They would
just qualify us for an A level rating –hopefully all we'd needed
them for. We also negotiated a twenty percent finder's fee for any
valuable we might turn up in the wrecks which might help pay for
them. Tenry had decades of experience searching for smuggler's
nooks in ships, so he thought he'd have a go at some likely wrecks
if he had the time. He made no guarantees, but I'd hopes.

That evening I posted word that we'd be going down to
& Kin's flats. I knew it'd be a popular excursion, so Lili and
the system techs would've plenty of help finding and pulling the
systems we needed.

The trip to & Kin's was a holiday excursion for
much of the off-duty crew. & Kin occupies a large cluster of
craters three hundred kilometers out from CraterPort. Half of their
facility is a large, ten kilometer wide, flat bottomed crater, know
simply as the “flats” where for two thousand years, wrecked and
salvaged space ships have been dumped – complete ships, and pieces
of ships in every size and type lay scattered across the airless
plain, a vast treasure trove in the eyes of our engineering staff,
and indeed in the eyes of most spaceers. On any given day, in
addition to the & Kin salvage teams, the flats hosted scores of
ship parties roaming the wide flats on some excuse or other just to
explore the wrecks, treating it like a spaceship museum.

With the proper plans, many components can be
replicated or manufactured aboard the ship, but parts made of
D-matter must be purchased since D-matter can't replicate aboard
ship. The owners who'd last refitted the ship (500 years ago) were
old ship captains who'd fitted her with the best, most reliable and
most repairable components credits could buy. This means that a lot
of out-of-production D-matter replacement components can only be
found in salvage yards, and since the ship was built out of the
Azminn system, they're rare. The engineering staff has spent
decades restoring the ship to this old standard, regularly
scrounging the flats of & Kin's and other yards searching for
the replacement parts needed to swap out the cheaper components the
less the prosperous owners of the
ship
had
used in its lean years. There are, of course, newer components, but
the Unity is all about
dynamic stasis
– improvements to
anything remain local for thousands of years, so new parts aren't
better than the 500 year old ones, and many are not as repairable
as the ones those old ship captains installed. Though the
engineering department has thus acquired a large collection of
spare D-matter parts, on the theory that
you never know when you
might need more than what you have on hand
, they never pass up
the chance to scour & Kin's for more. As I said, exploring the
flats of & Kin's is not only business, but a treasure hunt, a
museum tour and picnic as well, and not only for the engineering
staff – there were ten of us aboard the long boat who found some
reason to tag along – only the harbor watch was left behind.

The & Kin complex also includes four smaller,
overlapping craters, the largest of these being the sales field
where they sell fully refurbished space ships and boats. A second
housed their shipyards for repair and refit work. Jann and his
partner's planet traders could be seen being refitted in the
gantries, as were a host of other smaller ships of various types.
It didn't look like a gantry was empty. A third crater held the
salvage facility that stripped the ships of useable components
before the hulls were towed off to be recycled in vast furnaces,
mostly in the drifts. Given the number and age of the ships on the
flats, the salvage operation seemed to be falling increasingly
behind. The final crater housed the & Kin's offices and
factories and warehouses for refurbished parts. They also operate
an orbital ship yard for repairing ships too large to be brought
down to the surface, and a small armory several hundred kilometers
away to store and outfit ships with anti-meteor defenses.

We landed, tumbled out in our space suits, checked
in, picked out several crater buggies and headed out to the flats,
splitting into two groups, Vynnia, Molaye and I went off in search
of a couple of suitable drones, while the rest set out to find a
suitable defense system. We'd charts of where to find what we were
looking for, but the surveys were sketchy so examining them in
person was the only way of assessing their condition. They expected
to spend the morning assessing the possibilities on their list, and
only after lunch in the & Kin's cafeteria, would they return to
extract the various components selected from the wrecks.

With Molaye at the wheel of the crater buggy we clung
on for dear life as we bounced through a maze of dusty lanes
between the hulking carcasses of wrecked ships, bright in the
sunlight, black in the shadows, to the section of the flats where
the drones in assorted shapes, sizes and conditions lay in ragged
rows. There are drones for every purpose. The drone section was
divided into lots for asteroid prospecting and mining drones, with
a bewildering array of appendages to perform specialized tasks,
planetary probes for all sorts of environments from inhabitable
planets to gas giants and icy moons, spy and guard drones, and the
scout we were looking for, plus a hundred other small, specialized
pilotless vessels whose purpose was beyond my imagination. Hundreds
of them all were laid out in rows, intact and in pieces in the grey
dust and bright sunlight. It was, therefore, a minor miracle when
Molaye and I discovered two ever so slightly battered scout drones
in less than five minutes.

'What do you think, Vyn. A few dents aren't beyond
our ability to repair. We'll have plenty of time... and the price
looks right,' I said drawing her attention to our find. 'All the
pieces seem to be present too. More or less.'

'I'd prefer units that are all in one piece,' she
replied tersely and moved on.

Molaye and I exchanged glances and a shrug and
followed her. Within three minutes we'd found several more likely
candidates. 'What do you think of these, Vyn. They're all in one
piece...' I said, drawing her attention to two more battered
scouts.

She looked at them, and at me and said, 'Lift off. Go
look at your blasted boats, Captain. I'll find you when I'm
done.'

'I was just trying to help, but if you're really okay
with that,' I replied. I could see Molaye grinning in her
clearsteel helmet behind Vynnia.

'Lift,' she said with an impatient wave of her
hand.

'Right, we'll leave the buggy with you. And we'll be
a com channel down so that we won't annoy you with our chatter,'
adding brightly in my most captain-like manner, 'Carry on,
First.'

I don't think Vynnia was really (all that) annoyed.
While she was serious about the need for drones, I knew our budget
would unlikely allow them, but I didn't care to say that to Vynnia.
Molaye and I were mostly along to check out the vintage rocket
boats in an adjacent section. A passion for rocket boats was one of
the things we had in common. It was still too early in my career to
think of picking one up, but well, this was actually the first time
I was free to check them out in the flats, and you never
know...

Molaye and I bounded off to the section of the flats
devoted to (the wrecks of) rocket boats, ships' boats, small yachts
and assorted other small craft. We'd downloaded the “treasure”
chart and had marked the location of at least fifty boats we wanted
a look at and we'd certainly find many more of interest as well –
we'd easily fill the morning.

What made it a real quest was that & Kin's
identification system rarely notes the variations of a rocket boat
model over the decades. To an enthusiast, the difference between
Crimson Comet 33z and a Crimson Comet 33zx are like night and day.
The two models were built several centuries apart, and the 33zx
looks completely different – it has a gothic sort of look that was
briefly in style during the 33zx era – and was produced for a much
shorter time than the 33z, the 33za, and 33zb... and so it commands
ten times the price. & Kin listed seven Crimson Comet 33's,
without further details – though I think they do this on purpose,
since however clueless & Kin may seem about the fine details of
the wrecks they have on the flats, they actually price them with an
expert's eye on the desirability of the model and its physical
condition. In any event, we had to check them all out plus many
other boats that caught our attention as we went along. We did find
a wrecked Crimson Comet 33zx deep in the dust of the flats with a
listed price that we (meaning I) could conceivable afford. We stood
admiring it – though you had to tilt your head in several angles to
admire it all and use your imagination to see the missing
pieces.