Last Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 16) Page 13

  “We went to a party last cycle and I caught her doing the steps a few times,” Samuel said. “I think when she’s a bit older she’ll miss it enough to start again.”

  “In the meantime, we can thank my father’s cousin for paying you to practice,” Ailia teased him.

  “Ambassador Aainda treats me really well and my mom says she’s been helping EarthCent on the sly. It’s too bad they can’t visit you without risking political consequences. I thought I understood how complicated your situation was, but you’ve been holding back on me,” Samuel added in an accusatory tone.

  “I didn’t want you to worry for no reason. Baylit has proved more than equal to foiling the plots contrived by the Imperial faction.” Ailia gave a wry smile and let out a sigh. “I just wish I could see my cousins. My half-sister is the only member of the family I’ve ever met.”

  “Do you want me to introduce you to Aabina?”

  “It’s too risky. Somebody might see her going into your house.”

  “But she’s already here,” Samuel said. “My mom found out that speech writing is part of Vergallian royal training and she didn’t want Aabina helping her at the embassy because she’s afraid it’s bugged.”

  “Your old ice harvester is more secure than the embassy?”

  “I think Jeeves cheats and takes care of it for us. He’s over here all the time, and the dogs have a nose for surveillance technology as well.”

  From his guard position sprawled in the doorway, Beowulf nodded his agreement.

  “If your mother won’t mind your stealing her ghostwriter for a few minutes, I’d love to meet Aabina. What will you say to them?”

  “I’ll come up with something. Be right back.”

  Samuel stripped off the Physics Ride flight suit which he wore over his clothes, squeezed past the Cayl hound, and found his mother and Aabina at the dining room table.

  “How’s the speech going, Mom?”

  “Aabina is a genius. I’m just going through and checking some of the numbers she included. I think she already knows more CoSHC statistics than I do.”

  “I read my Mom’s intelligence reports,” the Vergallian ambassador’s daughter admitted. “She likes me to keep up on everything so I can act as her sounding board.”

  “That’s just what I need—a sounding board,” Samuel said. “Can I borrow her for a few minutes, Mom?”

  “You can’t talk here?”

  “Vergallian embassy business. It wouldn’t be right to discuss it in front of you.”

  “Oh, go ahead. As long as you don’t let her sneak out the back way.”

  Aabina gave the ambassador’s son a strange look, but she followed him to his bedroom, where the dog stood up and blocked the door.

  “It’s okay, Beowulf,” Samuel said and lowered his voice. “She’s Ailia’s family.”

  The Cayl hound sniffed Aabina carefully, tilted his head as if to slide an old odor profile into place, and then broke into a tongue-lolling grin.

  “Thank you,” Aabina said, slipping by Beowulf into the room. “What did you—Ailia?”

  “Aabina!”

  “How is this possible?”

  Samuel pointed to the little robot toy with the glowing green eyes. The Vergallian ambassador’s daughter nodded. “Stryx technology. I might have guessed.”

  “There are so many things I want to ask you,” Ailia said, her voice choked up with emotion.

  “I should give you two some privacy,” Samuel mumbled, backing in the direction of the door. “Just call me if you need anything.”

  “Wait! Let me see the two of you dance first. Something short would be fine. There’s no faster way to get to know somebody than watching them dance.”

  “Don’t be shy, Sam,” Aabina said. “We’ve danced before. How about Orion’s Waltz? That’s fast.”

  The two took the starting position, and Samuel requested Orion’s Waltz, which immediately began to play. The Vergallian ambassador’s daughter wasn’t used to dancing in such a confined space, but Samuel was an expert lead and would have completed the waltz without a single false step if not for Vivian entering the bedroom.

  “Okay, let’s hear it,” Blythe’s daughter growled, folding her arms across her chest.

  “It’s not what you think,” Samuel said reflexively. “I can explain everything.”

  “It’s better that you don’t try,” Ailia spoke up, her voice coming from the little robot even though her hologram was on the other side of the room. “I’ve been hoping for an opportunity to speak with Vivian for years. Could you give us a little privacy, Samuel?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Vivian said coldly. “Could you take your arm off of Aabina’s waist and give us a little privacy? Your dad was looking for you when I came in.”

  Samuel slumped out of his bedroom, giving Beowulf a hard stare for not sounding the alert when Vivian arrived. The Cayl hound winked in return.

  “Where’s my co-op student?” Kelly asked, without looking up as her son passed the table.

  “She and Vivian are talking, I guess. They kicked me out.”

  “My little boy is all grown up. Ask your father if he knows any good jokes. That’s the only part I’m missing.”

  Samuel saw welding flashes coming from the area where Paul and his father were working on the nascent rental fleet and headed in that direction. Before he got there, he spied the two men helping Kevin replace the main thruster in the next ship over and realized that the person welding must be Marilla. A moment later the Horten girl completed the bead and flipped up her visor.

  “Are you coming to help me, Samuel? I need somebody to hold the hatch in place so I can scribe the upper hinge leaf.”

  “Sure, I can do that. Since when do you know how to weld?”

  “Since last week. Your dad taught me, but you can see I’m still using the Dolly student rig so it’s almost impossible to do a bad job.”

  “I don’t remember it being that easy.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I’m loving this. If I ever do start working at a design firm, I’m going to know more about how ships actually stay together than any of the other newbies.”

  Samuel held the escape hatch in position while Marilla inserted the bottom pin and then scribed the location of the upper hinge leaf with a fine marker. Then she pulled the lower hinge pin again and motioned for him to set the hatch back down on the deck. Finally, she pulled the upper pin and held the newly liberated hinge leaf up against her scribed outline to double check the alignment with the opening.

  “Do you need me to hold that in place while you weld? I can grab the channel-locks.”

  “I’ve got a magnetic clamp,” she said, fitting it into position over the hinge leaf and activating the electromagnet.

  “Okay. I heard my dad was looking for me so I better check what he wants.”

  Marilla flipped her face shield back down, waited until Samuel turned away, and then started welding the hinge leaf into place. Joe looked up at the initial flash, and seeing his son approaching, said a word to the other two men and left them to finish bolting the thruster down.

  “You were looking for me, Dad?”

  “I was hoping to get Beowulf back and I knew he was with you, but Alexander jumped right in and did the sniff test on the coolant system. I’ll have Beowulf double-check later, just to be sure.”

  “He’s standing guard on my bedroom,” Samuel said. “I think I’m in trouble.”

  “Oh?”

  “Vivian came in when I was dancing with Aabina because Ailia wanted to watch us.”

  “Stop right there,” Joe said, holding up his palm. “You know I’m always happy to give you advice, but when I was twenty years old, I wasn’t juggling two Vergallian royals and one of the heirs to InstaSitter. I’m not in your class, son.”

  “You know it’s not that,” Samuel protested before he realized that his father was teasing him. “Anyway, they let me know that I wasn’t wanted.”

  “When do you have t
o be in work? We could use some help with cleaning up the old starter shells.”

  “From that Raider/Trader game that was popular before I was born? Is it making a comeback?”

  “We’re going to bring them to the CoSHC trade show. Your mom’s Vergallian co-op student sweet-talked the Dollnick who runs the Empire Convention Center into letting us put them in the lobby, near the entrance to the Nebulae Room.”

  “Why?”

  “We can’t bring real examples of rental ships to the show. There’s enough clearance in the lobby, but they wouldn’t fit in the freight lift tube unless we cut them in half. It’s just not worth the effort.”

  “So you want to set up game simulators to let people see what it would be like flying a rental ship?”

  “Yup. Jeeves is coming by later to help reprogram the controllers with the same parameters we’ll use for rental ships. They won’t get the effect of being weightless or pulling G’s on acceleration, but that’s just as well since a lot of the conference attendees will hit the trade show right after breakfast or lunch.”

  “Sure, I can help with that. I’ll go get the cleaning stuff.”

  “It’s already over by the shells. I started earlier but my knees gave out. We only need to bring four, and there are seventeen to choose from, so pick out the nicest ones.”

  Samuel spent the next hour vacuuming out flight simulator shells, some of which plainly hadn’t been entered since he had played in them as a small boy. After cleaning the deck and wiping down the interior surfaces of the last of the four he’d picked out, he noticed that the upholstery of the command chair was cracked.

  “Can I help?” Marilla asked, sticking her head in the hatch. “You know that I’m an expert at cleaning rentals. Isn’t it ironic that your dad has me welding and you vacuuming?”

  “I thought I was just finishing up but the fake leather on this chair is cracked. I guess we’ll have to pick another shell, though these four have the best exteriors.”

  “Are the chairs standard? We could swap it out for one from another simulator.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” Samuel said. “Sure. If I remember correctly they’re held in by four bolts.”

  The Horten girl got down on her hands and knees, and producing a small flashlight, looked under the seat. “Sharf sizes. I’ll grab some tools and find a good chair while you take out this one.”

  “Deal.” The ambassador’s son waited for Marilla to climb back out of the shell before following, and then the two of them broke into a sprint for the closest tool chest. Samuel got there first, but then he realized he hadn’t sized the bolt heads. He pretended to busy himself selecting a ratchet while watching the Horten girl make her choice out of the corner of his eye.

  “Blue pent head,” she told him. “The light blue, not the dark blue.”

  “Thanks,” he said, embarrassed at having been caught peeking. He waited for her to choose a ratchet and start back towards the shells before digging into the collection himself. “Hey, there should have been two light blues here! Did you take both?”

  “Finders keepers,” she called back, and then broke into a jog. “Besides, I have to pick out a good chair.”

  Samuel raced to the back of the ice harvester where his father kept a large collection of tool chests. He quickly found a light blue pent-head socket and grabbed a ratchet wrench. On his return, he saw Marilla come out of one shell and disappear into another, so he knew she hadn’t located a replacement chair yet. After he climbed through the hatch and started feeling for the bolt heads under the chair, it occurred to him that the Horten girl might have lied about the socket size, but the blue pent head fit perfectly. Ten minutes later, after some tricky maneuvering, he succeeded in getting the chair out the hatch. Then he went to check on the last ship he’d seen Marilla enter.

  “What took you so long?” she asked.

  “You’ve been waiting?”

  “I had the bolts out ages ago but I can’t lift the chair myself.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t think of that.” Samuel helped the slender Horten remove the command chair from its mounts and the pair carried it to the other shell. Each of them put in two of the bolts, but when Marilla started to get up, she lost her balance and flopped on her stomach.

  “Are you alright?” Samuel asked.

  “Something pulled me down. Oh, I can’t believe this. I got the sleeve of my coverall pinched under the chair rail.”

  “I’ll get a knife.”

  “Are you crazy? All I have to do is loosen the bolts on this side and it will come right out.”

  “You do the front one, I’ll do the back one,” Samuel offered. He lay down beside her, felt for the bolt head, and seated the socket. “Wow. You really torqued this down.”

  “I used the quick-drying thread glue. Didn’t you?”

  “It’s just a simulator,” he said, reaching over her to brace his other hand on the front of the chair so his body wouldn’t slide forward as he applied force to the ratchet wrench. “Got it. Let me pull your sleeve out.”

  Some instinct made Samuel glance towards the hatch and he saw Vivian glaring daggers at him.

  “I suppose you can explain this too?” she asked sarcastically.

  “What did I do now?”

  “We have a saying in Drazen Intelligence that if it looks like a Brulock and chirps like a Brulock—Oh no,” she interrupted herself, clapping a hand to her forehead. “I’m late for my debriefing.”

  “What’s wrong with Vivian?” Marilla asked after Samuel’s girlfriend disappeared.

  “I don’t know. Maybe the Drazens are working her too hard. I’ve got a couple more hours before I have to be at the Vergallian embassy, so let’s get the hulls of these shells shined up and it will all be done except for the programming.”

  Samuel and Marilla worked together, applying Dollnick polish to the exterior of the metal shells, and then buffing it out with a long cloth that they pulled back and forth over the surface as if they were working a two-man saw. They were just finishing the fourth shell when Paul and Jeeves arrived.

  “The controllers are all identical,” Samuel informed them. “I turned them on an hour ago so they could sync up and download updates from the Stryxnet. Who knows the last time they were actually used.”

  “I do,” Jeeves said. “The usage parameters are permanently stored, which turns out to be a handy feature in the rental business.”

  “Permanently?” Paul asked. “But I thought that Stryx controllers lasted more-or-less forever. I’ve certainly seen some old ones.”

  “They can’t function without Stryxnet access so storage isn’t an issue,” Jeeves explained. “It wouldn’t be fair to the other species if I reprogrammed the controllers using best practices for rentals, so you tell me what changes you want and I’ll make them.”

  “What does he mean?” Marilla whispered to Samuel, as Paul climbed into the shell to switch the controller mode to ‘Maintenance,’ which would unlock the program memory.

  “You know that the Stryx don’t help us with technology when it could impact the business operations of other species. It’s part of the whole tunnel network deal,” Samuel replied.

  “You don’t have to whisper, Marilla,” Jeeves said. “It doesn’t work in any case because I have superior hearing.”

  “It’s just that I thought the Stryx only held back sharing the advanced technology, like faster-than-light travel and nanobots. Who cares about excursion craft rental software?”

  “The competing species that invested the time and money into developing successful business models. I can get away with reprogramming the controllers for Paul because he’s my friend and it’s just saving him a few days of tedious coding, but I won’t step in and do the product development as well.”

  “All set,” Paul said, emerging from the shell. “We want to limit the simulation to navigation in systems connected to the tunnel network. Did I already send you the thrust profile for the drive units we’re installing in
the actual rentals?”

  “Yes,” Jeeves replied. “Did you decide on whether you want a charge meter to show on the main display at all times?”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea. How did the Hortens do it, Marilla?”

  “You could ask for a verbal price check at any time, but the amount was never displayed. I’ve heard that the Verlocks are the only species who show a running total on their rentals, but they’re just weird.”

  “I don’t think I could fly a ship that was telling me how much it cost every second,” Samuel added. “Are you going to charge strictly by time, or does distance come into it as well?”

  “Time and reaction mass,” Paul said. “It’s not like the customers can refuel the thrusters themselves, and we wouldn’t want to encourage it if they could.”

  “We always took a cleaning deposit,” Marilla said. “It’s hard to collect after they leave with their programmable cred.”

  “How about insurance?”

  “For what?”

  “If they get into an accident.”

  “With a Stryx controller? Not unless you allow them to turn off the automatic docking function.”

  “Time and reaction mass, cleaning deposit, disable manual docking mode,” Jeeves recited. “Have you figured out the rates yet?”

  “We don’t really have a clue,” Paul admitted. “Could you just stick in some dummy figures for now? They don’t have to make sense, but keep them low so we don’t scare off potential partners.”

  “Why is it so hard to come up with a rental rate?” Marilla asked. “All of the Horten agencies charged pretty much the same, though they used loyalty rewards to keep their customers.”

  “We don’t know what the costs will be on the other end or what kind of profit margins our partners will need. It’s easy for us to make money because we already own the ships and we got them for a song, but we don’t have enough for a rental fleet, which means somebody will have to buy new ships.”

  “Or old ships,” Joe pointed out, taking a seat in the ripped command chair his son had removed from the shell. “We weren’t in any hurry to fix ours up until Marilla gave us the rental idea, so maybe there’s an endless supply of used excursion ships up for auction somewhere.”