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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Visit us on the web at: www.solarclipper.com
Copyright © 2018 by Nathan Lowell
Cover Art J. Daniel Sawyer
Cover art by Artistic Whispers
First Printing: April, 2018
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Dark Knight Station: 2366, March 15
Chapter 2 Dark Knight Station: 2366, March 16
Chapter 3 Dark Knight Station: 2366, March 17
Chapter 4 Dark Knight Station: 2366, March 17
Chapter 5 Dark Knight Station: 2366, March 17
Chapter 6 CommSta Bowie: 2366, March 27
Chapter 7 CommSta Bowie: 2366, April 2
Chapter 8 CommSta Bowie: 2366, April 7
Chapter 9: CommSta Bowie: 2366, April 8
Chapter 10 Deep Dark: 2366, April 9
Chapter 11 CommSta Bowie: 2366, April 29
Chapter 12 CommSta Bowie: 2366, April 30
Chapter 13 CommSta Bowie: 2366, April 30
Chapter 14 Pulaski Yard: 2366, May 2
Chapter 15 Pulaski Yard: 2366, May 2
Chapter 16 Pulaski Yard: 2366, May 3
Chapter 17 Pulaski Yard: 2066, May 3
Chapter 18 Pulaski Yard: 2366, May 10
Chapter 19 Pulasky Yard: 2366, May 10
Chapter 20 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 10
Chapter 21 CommSta Bowie: 2366, May 11
Chapter 22 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 13
Chapter 23 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 13
Chapter 24 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 13
Chapter 25 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 14
Chapter 26 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 14
Chapter 27 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 14
Chapter 28 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 14
Chapter 29 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 14
Chapter 30 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 14
Chapter 31 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 14
Chapter 32 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 14
Chapter 33 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 28
Chapter 34 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 29
Chapter 35 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 29
Chapter 36 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 29
Chapter 37 Pulaski Yards: 2366, May 29
Chapter 38 Deep Dark: 2366, May 29
Chapter 39 Deep Dark: 2366, May 29
Chapter 40 Ravaine: 2366, May 30
Chapter 41 Ravaine: 2366, May 31
Chapter 42 Ravaine: 2366, June 1
Chapter 43 High Tortuga: 2366, June 1
Chapter 44 High Tortuga: 2366, June 1
Chapter 45 High Tortuga: 2366, June 1
Chapter 46 High Tortuga: 2366, June 1
Chapter 47 Pulaski Yard: 2366, June 3
Chapter 48 Pulaski Yard: 2366, June 4
Chapter 49 CommSta Bowie: 2368, January 21
About The Author
Books in the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Series
Trader Tales
Quarter Share
Half Share
Full Share
Double Share
Captain’s Share
Owner’s Share
Seeker's Tales
In Ashes Born
To Fire Called
By Darkness Forged *
Smuggler's Tales
Milk Run
Suicide Run
Home Run *
Shaman Tales
South Coast
Cape Grace *
Fantasy by Nathan Lowell
Ravenwood
Zypheria’s Call
The Hermit of Lammas Wood
* Forthcoming
To Doreen
For all her hard work,
in helping me make this book
the best it can be.
Chapter 1
Dark Knight Station
2366, March 15
THE CREDIT BALANCE blinked on the screen, mocking her. This was supposed to be so easy. Natalya Regyri looked up as the compartment door opened and Zoya strolled in, a carry-all trundling along behind.
“You still staring at that?” Zoya asked.
With a shrug, Natalya blanked the screen and eyed the carry-all. “Can’t help it. If our unknown benefactor hadn’t tossed a few credits into the account every month, we’d be living on the Peregrine. Probably starving.”
“You still hell-bent on making a go as a courier?”
Natalya bit her lip and pondered the question for about the hundredth time. “What am I doing wrong?” she asked.
“Too much competition for a limited clientele.” Zoya parked the carry-all beside the tiny table that served as combination desk, dining surface, and work bench in their apartment. “How many scheduled fast packets are making runs out of here alone?”
Natalya shook her head. “Seems like a new one every day.”
“That’s my point. You’ve got an antique ship. It’s cramped as hell. There’s not enough room to change your attitude in that galley. You and I have to hot bunk or there’s no room for a passenger. How many times have you had to refuse a charter because they wanted two berths?”
Natalya sighed. “Too many.”
“And we’re not supposed to be carrying passengers anyway. So? When are you going to face it? The Peregrine is a great ship, but she’s not a fast packet. She’s barely a courier. She was built and designed for another place, another time. She’s an antique.”
Natalya glanced at the darkened screen. “You’re right. She’s a well-restored antique, but she’s an antique.”
Zoya started pulling groceries out of the carry-all. “Stop with the angst and help me stow these. I got some of that cheese you like and Morty had a flat of fresh vegetables in from the farms. There’s still a bit of salami left. We can make a nice antipasto.”
“But what are we going to do, Zee?” Natalya hated the whiny sound in her own voice.
Zoya thrust a package of tomatoes into her hand. “Stow the groceries. Make some tea. We’ll think of something.”
“We can’t keep relying on getting paid for nothing. It’s barely subsistence level as it is.”
Zoya bit her lip and turned away, stashing a couple of cans in the pantry. “Well, it’s not exactly for nothing,” she said without turning back. “I might have been filing reports.”
“Filing reports? With whom? About what?”
Zoya shrugged. “Ship traffic, mostly. Which one docked. Which one left. Scuttlebutt around the docks.”
“You hang out on the docks?”
Zoya faced Natalya with a frown. “What else? Sit in this cubbyhole all day and wonder when we’re going to do something?”
The words lashed Natalya, stinging deep. She felt the heat rising in the back of her neck. “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to stay.” Natalya had to grit the words out between her teeth to keep from screaming them.
Zoya took a deep breath. Her jaw worked and her lips pressed into a line. She took another deep breath and blew it out, her whole visage relaxing. “Sorry,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “That was low.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” Natalya said, feeling her own anger melting away.
“It’s been almost three stanyers since we graduated. I can’t leave you.” Zoya gave a tiny shrug and looked at the half empty carry-all. “I wouldn’t know
what to do out here.”
“What do you mean?”
Zoya leaned against the counter and crossed her arms, still not looking up. “This isn’t what I thought it was. This Toe-Hold space station thing. I don’t belong here.”
Natalya took the few steps to the counter and leaned against it beside Zoya. “That’s not true.”
“Of course it’s true. You fit out here. You’ve got the ship. You’ll figure something out to make a go of it. Eventually.” She offered Natalya a tentative smile. “I guess I’m just feeling like extra baggage.”
“Well, at least you appear to be gainfully employed.” Natalya bumped her shoulder against Zoya. “More than I can say for me.”
“Gainfully employed?” Zoya asked.
“You’re getting paid for filing your reports, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yeah. Well. True.”
“What are they paying me for?” Natalya asked. “Whoever they are.”
“TIC,” Zoya said.
“TIC?”
“That’s where the credits are coming from. At least I assume.” Zoya shrugged. “After the episode on Siren, I thought that would have been obvious.”
“That’s what I thought, but why are they still paying me? What if it’s somebody else and we get a knock on the door from somebody wanting to collect that debt?”
Zoya shrugged and looked at the deck. “It’s TIC. I don’t know what they want any more than you do. All I know is that they want us out here and they’re willing to pay us to do it.”
“Both of us. Together.”
“Yeah.” Zoya glanced at the blank screen on the table. “Basic subsistence maybe, but yeah.”
“But why, Zee?”
Zoya shrugged again. “No idea. Staged assets in advance of future need? Seems more likely than some master plan to establish a sleeper cell.”
“Sleeper cell?” Natalya felt a giggle bubbling up in her chest. “Us?”
Zoya grinned at her. “Of course. Who’d suspect us of being spies?”
Natalya’s giggle broke the tension in her gut. “But I guess we are, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. I suppose I am, anyway. You’re not filing reports on the sly, are you? Telling your controller what I’m doing?” Zoya bumped Natalya’s shoulder in return.
“I couldn’t,” Natalya said. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”
Zoya shrugged. “Well, we need to do something or we’re both going to go stir crazy.”
Natalya straightened up and started filling the tea kettle. “I guess we finish stowing the groceries and make some dinner.”
Zoya nodded and bent down to pull their supplies from the carry-all. “Something will break, Nats. You’ll see.”
“I just hope it isn’t us.”
Zoya laughed. “Amen, sister. Amen.”
Chapter 2
Dark Knight Station
2366, March 16
NATALYA SIGHED AND surveyed the job board on KnightNet. Her tea had gone cold and she wanted a cup of decent coffee. “I wonder what I have to do to get some green coffee beans out here.”
Zoya looked up from her breakfast and blinked. “Who sells them?”
“Sarabanda over in Gugara,” Natalya said. “I’m not sure where to get any of the green arabasti varietals.”
“Might be worth looking into.”
Natalya shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe. Seems like somebody would have done it by now.”
“Somebody besides Kondur?”
Natalya laughed. “Yeah, but even he has problems.”
“Does he?”
“Seems like he must or he’d be doing it on a commercial scale instead of just personal consumption.”
“What was that coffee we took over to Odin’s?”
“Medium roast arabasti. Maybe we can track down the roaster from the chandlery,” Natalya said. “But we need the funds to buy enough to make it worthwhile.”
“I’ve got some funds,” Zoya said. “We’re living a little below our means so we’ve got a positive cash flow.”
“We could go harvest gases, come to that,” Natalya said. “Maybe getting out is what we should be doing.”
“Is it worth going exploring?”
Natalya looked across the table at Zoya. “Exploring? Like where?”
Zoya waved a hand. “Out there. It’s a scout ship, after all. You keep telling me how the early explorers found all these places using ships like the Peregrine.” She shrugged. “What’s preventing us from picking up where they left off?”
“Survey probes, for one thing. Nobody makes them anymore. Exploration has been taken over by the big outfits, run by CPJCT.”
“So, what if we got some probes? Maybe we won’t find something big, but we might find something we can use. Or sell.”
Natalya sat back in her chair and felt her mind spin into overdrive. “I wonder if that’s what Dad was doing.”
“What? Exploring?”
“Yeah. What if he found something?”
Zoya shrugged. “Didn’t you say he had a place out here somewhere?”
“Yeah, but I never considered that he might have used the Peregrine to find it. I just thought it was some hole in the universe he bought or stumbled on.”
“Is that where he is now?”
“I assume so. He never said much about it. What little he did say made me think it was an empty can with an airlock, a generator, and a chemical toilet.”
Zoya laughed. “That’s quite an image.”
Natalya grinned. “You’d have to know my father to really appreciate it.”
“Someday maybe I’ll meet him.”
“I wonder if we can find him,” Natalya said, thinking out loud.
“Would the Peregrine have his location in the data?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know that he ever took the Peregrine out there. He always used a modified Unwin Eight when he came into the Toe-Holds by himself.”
Zoya sipped her tea and gazed at Natalya. “That didn’t strike you as odd? He takes a bigger ship when he’s alone?”
“I guess. I never thought about it.”
“But if he used the Peregrine to find a place, there are probably more places to find,” Zoya said.
“There are always stories of lost colonies.”
“Yeah, but we’re not talking lost. We’re talking undiscovered. Nothing big enough to register with the old Board of Exploration or the Confederated Planets, but big enough for a few people to make a living on,” Zoya said. She shrugged. “Space is big and mostly empty but not completely empty.”
“You think we’ll strike it rich?”
“No, but we could strike it better-off-than-we-are.” She smiled. “Besides, it’ll get you back out where it’s not so closed in.”
“We’d need probes,” Natalya said. “I don’t think anybody makes them anymore.”
“You think but you don’t know. Have you looked?”
Natalya shook her head and dug into KnightNet again. “They’ll be as antique as the ship if they’re out here.”
Zoya snorted. “I doubt it. Besides. How did the old timers do it? They must have used a lot of them and they didn’t have places to buy fresh ones handy all the time.”
Natalya looked up, the germ of an idea trying to take root in her mind. “No. They didn’t, did they.”
“There’s not a ton of space in the Peregrine to stack them, unless they’re really, really small. So how did they do it?”
“Like what was the process?” Natalya asked. “Or how did they actually accomplish anything?”
“Either. Both.” Zoya shrugged.
“Prep a probe. Launch it. It jumps, runs some scans, and jumps back. It broadcasts its findings and does it again.” Natalya felt her brow furrowing. “That doesn’t seem like it should work.”
“Clearly it did or we wouldn’t have the Western Annex.”
“The probes had to be jumping tiny distances,” Natalya said. “Jump error would be huge in raw numbers. I don??
?t even know what the power requirements must have been but just trying to broadcast radio across a couple of AUs would be time-consuming.”
“So they have to come back near where they started?” Zoya asked.
“Within a fairly finite sphere, yeah.”
“Any reason why they couldn’t?
“I don’t know,” Natalya said. “I wonder if we can find someone who does.”
“It would also answer the question of where to keep them,” Zoya said. “If they came back close enough to pick up and reuse? That wouldn’t take many.”
“That’s true. I know the probe launchers are still mounted.”
“I wonder if they picked them up. I can’t see suiting up and going out to fetch it,” Zoya said.
Natalya felt the sigh leave her like a last breath. “I can’t believe I’ve had this ship this long and know so little about how to use it as a scout. There’s good news, though.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re in the Toe-Holds. If anybody knows—and is willing to tell—it’ll be somebody out here.”
Chapter 3
Dark Knight Station
2366, March 17
THE JOBS LIST DIDN’T look any better in the morning than it did any other time of day. Natalya wasn’t sure why she checked it when she got up. Just a habit. She’d make the tea, grab a snack, check the jobs. She was about to close her screen in disgust—another morning habit—when a window popped up with an incoming message.
Natalya read it twice, not quite believing what she read, before sitting back in her chair.
Zoya padded out of her room, blinking and yawning her way to the tea pot. “Mornin’,” she said while slopping tea mostly into the cup. “I gotta stop staying up so late.” She stopped halfway to the table. “You all right?”
Natalya looked up at her. “We just got a job offer.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Zoya slipped into her chair across the table and blinked owlishly. “I’m not quite all the way awake but isn’t a job good?”
“They’re paying too much.”