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

stanyers not knowing I sat only meters from him as he worked the grill in his own restaurant.
    I’m not sure I’d have recognized him even if he’d turned around and stared right at me.
    I surveyed the mess again, holding the photo and wondering where I should put it. Almost two hundred kilograms of stuff and the only thing I found I couldn’t replace was a photo? Not even a current photo. I had new digital images of my father and me together on the orbital at Diurnia. Something about holding the one thing that had survived, the one link to my childhood on Neris, seemed important in a way I couldn’t explain.
    A cloth-wrapped bundle on the coffee table caught my eye.
    The photo wasn’t the only thing I couldn’t replace. My whelkies. Christine Maloney had offered a lot of credits for the collection. I couldn’t part with them for credits. I couldn’t leave them behind. I really needed to find their owners. Or keep them safe until they found new owners for themselves. I couldn’t believe I’d overlooked them when pulling all the stuff out of my trunks. I picked the bundle up and tucked it under my arm.
    I must have made quite a picture standing there in the middle of the night. The lights in my cottage blazing. Me barefoot, wearing a tatty but comfy old shipsuit with a William Tinker patch on the shoulder, staring around at what looked like ground zero in a clothing explosion. The realization of what it might look like if somebody was to call made me laugh. Not just little giggles but real laughter. With nobody around to see, nobody to bother, I didn’t hold it back but let it roll. After a few moments I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted.
    That’s when somebody knocked on the door and I heard Pip’s voice. “Ish? You all right in there?”
    I stumbled through the clothes, almost tripped on a pair of ship boots, and slipped the latch on the door, laughing all the way.
    Pip’s eyes got round when he saw me and the mess I’d made. I laughed harder as he rubbernecked through the door, taking in the whole effect.
    As my laughter wound down, I was able to gasp. “Come in. We need to talk.”
    He took a step over the threshold. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”
    “Thanks. I’m just doing a little pruning.” I leaned out to look across the path. “Party over?”
    He nodded, still scanning the room, eyeing a pair of jeans that had gotten thrown over a lamp. “Conference done for another stanyer. We’ll do it again next year. Probably.”
    “Good. Good. We need to talk.”
    He nodded. “Yeah, we do, but perhaps we should do it when you’re sober and it’s not the middle of the night.”
    “I’m perfectly sober.” I didn’t help myself with another little giggle.
    He raised one eyebrow at me. “All right. How about when I’m sober and it’s not the middle of the night?”
    I glanced at the chrono. It read 0135. “Where does the time go?”
    He shrugged and grinned at me. “Time flies when you’re havin’ fun. You gonna hit the floor tomorrow at 0600?”
    I used an elbow to clear off a corner of the table and put the package of whelkies and the photo down. “Planning on it.”
    “All right. I’ll get some sleep and sober up a little. Knock on my door when you get back and we’ll go find some breakfast.”
    “Sounds good.”
    He picked his way back across the mine field of discarded clothing toward the door. At the threshold he turned to me with a grin. “This mean you’re gonna be my captain?”
    “Yes. No.” I shook my head. “Maybe.”
    “I’m not that drunk, Ishmael. You sure you’re not?”
    “Positive. I’m not going to be your captain. You can’t win that bid with what you’re planning to spend. The breakers will take it for scrap value now that they know they can get it cheap. Ninety million won’t cut it.”
    His grin faded and his brows came together above his nose. “Then what do we need to talk about?”
    “I’m not going to be your captain. I’m going to