Oshiro placed the full teacups in front of his prospective buyers with great care. “Have you made a decision?” he asked with tempered optimism.
“Thank you, Mr. Oshiro,” Brooke said as she took the cup and drank greedily. The tea leaves originated from Shui Wei and the flavor was superb. “I have.” She gently settled her cup onto its saucer and flashed an offer to the sales agent while saying, “She is a wonderful ship although we’ve noticed some deficiencies that will cost us credits if we purchase her. For example, are the fuel cells capped in the low eighties?”
Before looking at the figure, Oshiro confirmed the observation remorsefully. “Regrettably so, Miss Brooke. They still hold a charge that is above the industry minimum though.” His dark eyes dropped to his datapad and his fingers rapidly went to work on the screen. “That is a most generous offer. Perhaps we can agree to meet here.” A finger flick returned a counteroffer.
Brooke scanned her screen: 268,500,000 credits. She smiled and trimmed the figure down to 260,000,000. “I was going to ask you to energize the fuel cells to increase their capacity, pay for a standard maintenance cycle on both port engines and I noticed that the shuttle inspection date is coming up shortly. I’ll forgo all of those items and take her ‘as is’ if we can agree to this amount.”
“Tengying favors a shrewd consumer, Miss Brooke.” The man bowed his head slightly before reaching his hand across the table. “We have an agreement. How will you be paying?”
“Standard credit transfer balance,” Brooke answered nonchalantly.
Oshiro frowned marginally. “That is unfortunate. Tengying will put a hold on the funds for at least twenty-four hours before I gain access to the payment. Perhaps we should let the credit transfer flow before the title switch.”
Brooke shook her head in protest. “It was your decision to sell this ship in Svea, Mr. Oshiro,” she stated, deliberately letting a note of irritation creep into her voice. “You accepted that inconvenience when you made it. We’re offering you valid, legal credit tender for title right now.” She crossed her arms in a light display of defiance. “I expect title as soon as I transfer the funds. I have plans for this ship that begin tomorrow morning.” With brow furrowed, she dressed herself in her most irritated CBP scowl. “You’re not suggesting that I’m trying to cheat you, are you?”
Oshiro’s complexion darkened and a nervous smile appeared on the man’s face. “Of course not, Miss Brooke. Your credit check is impeccable, as is your standing with your corporation. I offer many apologies if I have slighted you.” He spoke rapidly as he backtracked. “You are correct. The delay is merely an annoyance that I, alone, must suffer. We have our agreement.”
Brooke’s frown evaporated between eye blinks. She bounced lightly in her seat. “Superb. Let’s finish the process so tonight can be the first night of my life as a ship owner.”
* * *
Zanshin’s shuttle spent under two minutes at the Capeland City spaceport before lifting off once again. Lochlain merged into the designated airway that would take them to Streasskogan. As they raced away from Svea’s capital and into the darkness, he hummed quietly to himself.
Brooke waited patiently until nearly halfway through their journey. “Now is the time you tell me about your great idea to get us a free crew,” she prompted.
“I really do have one,” Lochlain answered defensively. His right hand rested lazily on the throttle. His left twitched with minute adjustments on the control stick. While in an atmosphere, the tiny craft handled more like an aircar than a space-capable vessel. “I’m just still trying to work out the timing.”
“Uh, that would be less than twenty-four hours,” Brooke reminded him. “I bet Lunde will start pinging us tomorrow morning when he wakes up and finds On Margin is still impounded.” She began to pick at a fingernail from the copilot’s seat. “Is this crew friends of yours?”
Lochlain barked a short laugh. “All my friends are in Vosstäder Correctional and the rest of Larsson’s people who are willing to talk to me want to do it with slug throwers.”
“Wow, then your plan must be really amazing.”
Lochlain engaged the autopilot and released the shuttle’s controls. He dug into his trousers for his datapad. Once recovered, he unlocked the screen and handed it to Brooke. “Ta da,” he said with mock enthusiasm.
The screen held the course listings for the ASA certification classes. Rather than let Brooke connect the dots on her own, Lochlain started his explanation. “Before you get a preliminary merchant’s certification, you have to log at least eighty hours of practical experience on a vessel.”
“Uh, yes, I know,” Brooke replied as she dug into the course catalog. She slid a finger up and down over the screen. “I’m a certified engineer, remember?”
“Including at least two tunnel dives during those eighty hours.”
Brooke snorted derisively. “It would kind of suck to only do one.”
Lochlain paused a moment to reflect on Brooke’s declaration. “Well, usually, you get hired by a shipping company after you graduate and they provide that experience on one of their vessels. You then take the certification test and license out.”
Brooke nodded as she looked over to Lochlain. “Just like attorneys who graduate from law school and are hired by a firm before passing the bar.”
“Sometimes though,” Lochlain continued over her interruption, “students do it backwards and that’s when they take one of those cert courses.” He pointed at his datapad. “Each of those classes places a group of ASA students onto a freighter to shadow the departments they’re striking for. A couple of those ships are ASA-owned and sail purely for the class but most of them are commercial vessels paid by the ASA to berth a student or three.”
Brooke offered a twisted smile. “I see where you’re going with this but we obviously don’t have the time to sign up for such a program so you’re going to… steal a crew of students from the ASA?”
“Borrow a crew,” Lochlain emphasized dramatically, “giving them invaluable practical experience and dare I say maybe a little real-world knowledge of the merchant’s life as well?”
“Let’s just try to prevent this real-world knowledge from including a detailed tour of a confinement facility,” Brooke countered while browsing through the available courses. “There’s only one crew shipping out tomorrow. Seven students berthing on a freighter named Evora. It’s scheduled to depart tomorrow at fifteen hundred hours from the orbital.”
Lochlain grinned at the circumstances. “Won’t some of those students be grateful when we rescue them from a tedious run on a boring, Handy-max freighter where they’d be lucky to catch a glimpse of a control panel let alone stand an actual watch and, instead, suddenly find themselves on a ship where they’re running their respective departments?” He gave a contented sigh. “I’m really just happy for the learners, you know?” he added, covering his heart with a hand. “I mean, as an educator, I can’t tell you the satisfaction I feel when I see them grow.”
“How are we making the switch, Phoenix?”
Lochlain’s face screwed into confusion.
Brooke’s eyes shot skyward in irritation. “He was the tutor of Achilles.”
“Whatever.” Lochlain began with a grand wave of his hands, “Well, thanks to my charm and personal magnetism, I’ve nurtured a high-level contact within the Appiation Sailing Association. I cannot overstate the great sacrifices I’ve made to secure the level of trust required to—”
“I’m going to shoot you if you’re talking about Melissa Ambridge,” Brooke declared coldly. She leaned slightly to her left and loudly popped the cover to her holstered sidearm. “You do realize that you were going to brag about your personal conquests while I’m armed, right?”
He raised his hands in surrender. “We’re going to break into ASA Administration tonight and flash the students we want from Miss Ambridge’s office,” Lochlain stated clinically. “We’ll tell them Evora needs emergency maintenance and they’ve been switched to Zanshin. We’ll have to make our departure in the morning so we’re long gone before they fail to report to Evora.” He remained quiet a moment and fought with himself internally. He lost the fight and deadpanned, “You know there’s never been anyone but you, my darling.”
“Wish I could say the same,” Brooke retorted wickedly. “Your plan has merit but nobody simply breaks into an Appiation umbrella facility, not unless you’ve been hiding past employment in a swipe squad from me.”
Lochlain tugged uncomfortably at the collar of his shirt. “By break in, I mean walk in with Melissa.”
Brooke blew out an exasperated breath. “Oh, I see. And how do you get her to let you into the office at…” She glanced at the datapad’s chronometer and finished, “Half past midnight?”
“Personal magnetism and great sacrifice?” Lochlain offered sheepishly.
“How about I kill her,” Brooke suggested as she ground her teeth. “Take her datapad, a hand and an eye…”
Lochlain grimaced and said, “Wow. Way to go all CBP on me. Here’s the deal, Mercer. Both of us will have to go because one of us needs to get her out of her office while the other makes those calls.” He glowered. “I know what will work but you’re not going to like it.”
Without further word, he verified the autopilot was holding its course and retrieved his datapad from Brooke. “Let me make the call,” he grumbled while unbuckling his seat restraints. He moved down the confined aisle, toward the rear of the shuttle, seeking not only a nondescript background but also a modicum of privacy he soon realized did not exist. After unfolding a jumpseat and sitting, he sent the communications request.
Ambridge answered on the third ping. She wore heavier than normal makeup and judging from the scene behind her, she was at High Tide. “Reece, where have you been? How did your interview go?” She was practically screaming in an attempt to compete with the music in the background.
“We’ll see, Mel,” Lochlain answered noncommittally. “I’m actually hoping for an ASA job so I can be closer to you.”
“I sent you the application.”
“I know. I’ve been working on it all evening.”
“You’re not finished with it yet?” she huffed. Her blue eyes narrowed. “Well, don’t just send it off when you finally get around to completing it,” she commanded. “I’ll need to check it and fix your mistakes.”
“That’s kind of my problem, honey,” he began but cringed when he realized his tone was nearly identical to how he often spoke to Brooke. He flinched again at Ambridge’s reaction to him on screen.
“What,” she demanded.
“Uh, I’m having a problem obtaining the physical copy of my captain’s certification,” he confessed meekly.
“What? Why? You need that paperwork, Reece!” she exclaimed even louder. “It’s one of the few forms that you’ll have to produce if you’re hired.” She clenched her jaw and raised her head toward High Tide’s ceiling. “How could you be so irresponsible and lose it?”
Lochlain started to explain but Ambridge turned to address someone off screen. “He lost his damned certification,” she fumed to her unknown companion. There was a pause before she answered acrimoniously, “I know, you warned me.”
When she finally returned her attention to him, Lochlain started again. “It’s not lost, Mel. I know right where it is.”
She rolled her right wrist, circling her hand in a “hurry up” gesture. “Then what’s your problem.”
“Vanessa has it,” he said sourly. “And she won’t give it back until I let her meet you.”
Ambridge’s jaw dropped open. After several moments, she collected herself. “She wants to meet me?” The woman gave a dark laugh before uttering, “Well, I would just love to give her a piece of my mind.” Fresh grooves appeared at the corners of her eyes as she squinted at him. “Bring her to High Tide, sugar.” The pet name was sweet but her voice was anything but.
An irresistible impulse took hold of Lochlain. “Vanessa just wants to make sure you’re good enough for me. She says she can’t let me go if she thinks I’m not getting the woman I deserve.” He glanced at the cockpit as Brooke suffered through an intense coughing fit.
“Why does she even have your certification credentials?” Ambridge asked suspiciously.
“This was before I knew you,” he offered. “The physical copy isn’t needed to operate and I didn’t want to pay for a safe deposit box.”
“Bring her by,” Ambridge reiterated, her voice still thick with sarcasm. “I cannot wait to meet her.”
“How about we meet somewhere a little more private?” Lochlain suggested innocently. “Then, once we’ve gotten rid of her, we can go through my job application and submit it.”
Ambridge’s eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea.” Her mouth twitched as she muttered to herself, “I’m not showing that bitch where I live.” A little louder she said, “But I don’t want her in my office either.”
“She doesn’t have to go in,” Lochlain prompted, letting the idea hang rather than oversell it.
Ambridge deliberated silently for several seconds. Finally, she nodded once. “Okay, we can meet outside, she can realize that I’m ten times the woman she is and after we kick her to the curb, we can go in and I can fix your application.”
“Sounds good, Melissa.” He silently kissed his fingers and pressed them to his screen. “See you at the front of Administration in an hour?”
“I suppose,” she acknowledged with a dramatic sigh. “You owe me. It’s a damned good thing I took tomorrow off.” She wagged a scolding finger and rebuked him loudly. “You’re going to settle down, mister. You can’t hold down a full-time job if you’re out gallivanting around at this time of night.”
Lochlain resisted the urge to point out her own location. Instead, he merely nodded obediently and terminated the connection. The shuttle shifted noticeably as the autopilot kicked off.
Moments later, Lochlain returned to the pilot’s seat. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Just keeping my hands busy,” Brooke answered as she boosted the vehicle’s atmospheric thrusters marginally. “This is better than shooting holes in my new shuttle.”
“You could hear her from the cockpit, huh?”
“Mr. Oshiro could hear her from the spaceport, Reece.”
Lochlain chuckled. “She believes it’s important that people hear what she has to say.” He moved a hand to the nav-system to enter new coordinates.
Brooke’s hand batted his away from the console. “We’re stopping by my hotel first. If I’m actually meeting this piece of work, I’m not doing it in raid gear.”