Free In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) by Nathan Lowell

man.”
    He shrugged. “That, too.”
    Eloise looked back to me. “In the ten days you’ve been here, have no other paths presented themselves?”
    A chill ran an icy finger down the back of my neck. “Well, only one that I can think of.”
    “Pip,” Cookie said.
    I glanced at him. He shrugged.
    “That man has made more plans than I’ve made biscuits,” he said.
    I laughed.
    Cookie leaned toward me. “Consider that most of them succeed.”
    “The operative word there being ‘most,’” I said.
    “What is his plan?” Eloise asked.
    “To bid on a ship at auction and use it to test his economic models.”
    “He wants you to be captain?” Cookie asked.
    I nodded.
    “Did you tell him no?” Eloise asked.
    I shook my head. “I told him I need to think about it.”
    “Why didn’t you say yes?”
    “I have history with the ship. Lots of very bad memories.”
    “What’s the real reason?” Cookie asked.
    I looked at him. “Real reason?”
    “There must be something else. A ship is a ship. You and Pip worked well together on the co-op. Both of you have learned many lessons. You cannot doubt Pip.”
    I shook my head. “I don’t.”
    “Will the ship do what he believes it will?”
    “Probably. The performance only needs to support his model or prove it wrong.”
    “Can he do it alone?”
    “Without me as captain?”
    Cookie nodded.
    “Probably. I’m not the only captain in the Western Annex.”
    “Then why do you doubt yourself?” Eloise asked.
    I had to think about that and peered into my coffee mug as if the answer might appear floating on the dark surface. The horror of the Chernyakova still made my palms sweat, but the objective facts of the matter remained. I really did know what was wrong with the ship. I knew how to make it right. I knew how to fly it and how to make it profitable. From a pure investment perspective, it might be the best opportunity in the whole Western Annex.
    I looked up from my mug and into their patient faces. “I don’t. It was the wrong deal,” I said. “I just didn’t recognize it.”

Chapter Nine
Port Newmar:
2374, June 4
    By the time I got back from Cookie’s, I didn’t feel like braving the post-conference party still underway in Pip’s cottage. It sounded like a good time from where I stood at my front door, but noise discipline held and the level chopped down at 2200. The noise didn’t disappear, but it fell enough that I was only distantly aware of it. It didn’t really matter. I wasn’t ready for sleep and I had a lot to do.
    I started with my grav-trunks.
    What did I really need out of that massive pile of collected clothing? While I’d done a rough sort back on the Iris as I packed to leave, I set myself the task of paring down to a single trunk.
    I pulled the trunks out of their storage slots and parked them in the living room of the cottage. A handy dining table served as a sorting and folding surface, and the sofa and chairs worked nicely as places to stack stuff I wanted to sort.
    Two stans later, I had a mess. I couldn’t seem to make any progress at all. Every time I thought I had a handle on it, I wound up thinking, “Well, I might want this sometime.”
    In a relatively short time, clothing festooned the living and dining rooms. Some civvies. Mostly shipsuits and uniforms. All of them still fit. Probably. I’d purchased all the civvies during my shopping trips with Stacy Arellone back on Dunsany.
    I looked around at the chaos and realized that I had only one physical thing from my childhood on Neris—a picture of my father as a young man sitting at a restaurant table. I’d scattered my mother’s ashes in the sea here on Port Newmar while I was a cadet. I hadn’t even kept the urn. Her portable computer was long gone. I had some digital images and the one printed photograph. I picked up the dog-eared image and looked at the smiling face of the man who had been such a mystery for most of my life. I’d stared at the back of his head for