In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

the small refrigeration unit in his kitchenette. He emerged with a pair of bottles and a beaming smile.
    “I keep thinking I should stock up on this stuff.” He held out a bottle to me. “You know you can only get this on Port Newmar?”
    I took the bottle with the familiar label—a square-rigged sailing ship with a bone in her teeth appeared to be sailing across the night sky. “What? Clipper Ship Lager?”
    He nodded and flipped the cap off. After a long pull from the bottle, he grinned and smacked his lips. “We lived on this stuff, but they don’t distribute off-planet.”
    I took a sip from mine and remembered only too well how much of it I’d consumed as a cadet. “Really? I thought we drank this because it was cheap.”
    He threw himself onto one end of the sofa and pointed me into the chair across from him. “That, too, but you have to admit. It’s local. Consistent product. Reasonable flavor. Not too big a kick. Not too heavy. Not too watery.” He took another pull. “It has a lot to recommend it.”
    I dropped into the chair and took a long drag from my bottle. “It’s the nostalgia factor.”
    He shrugged. “Nothing wrong with remembering the past.”
    I didn’t say anything to that. I hid my face behind my bottle as I took another drink.
    “It’s good to see you, too,” he said.
    I grinned at him. “I’m still a little off balance. I can’t believe you’re here. And giving a keynote address?”
    “Why not? I started this conference. It’s grown from a half dozen modeling geeks from the academy. Third annual and we’re expecting to get a couple dozen people from the various shipping lines along with some data mongers from around the Western Annex. Saltzman’s sending somebody this year. We’ll have a couple from Federated.”
    “This is the same stuff you were doing back on the Lois , right?”
    He nodded. “Humble beginnings on the mess deck with your mother’s old computer. Yup. It’s a lot bigger now.”
    “You learned more math?”
    He laughed, a low chuckle in his chest. “Yeah. Well, that, too.”
    “Do you have to prep or anything for the keynote?” I asked after a few moments.
    He shook his head. “It’s nothing to write home about. Mostly thanking them for coming. I’ve got a little song and dance about the latest work on applying structural equations to profitability on extended multi-cargo runs. It’s a lot more than we used to do by guess and good instincts in the old days. Single-cargo ships have an interesting problem. They can’t diversify risks across multiple cargoes. It’s one of the reasons Eighty-Eights are climbing so fast in the ranks of ships.”
    “I was on a Barbell. It worked pretty well for bulk hauling.”
    “I know.” He looked at me over the top of his bottle. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
    “About bulk hauling?”
    He shook his head and leaned forward, anchoring his elbows on his knees. “About Barbells.”
    “Not much to tell. Unwin-built. Single-can design. Rated at two hundred metric kilotons. Lock the can in place and off you go. Without a can they’re two bricks on a soda straw.”
    Pip nibbled on the inside of his lower lip as he looked at me. “You were on the William Tinker for a lot of stanyers. Started there when you graduated and stayed there until you made captain.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “You have a file on me?”
    He grinned. “I said. Only the important people.”
    “What else do you know?”
    He pursed his lips and squinted at me like he was reading something in his head. “Married, divorced. Made captain a couple stanyers ago. Moved to the Agamemnon , a fifteen-metric-kiloton tractor, also with DST. Flew her for about a stanyer before Maloney died, and then started your own company. Sold that a few months ago to the new CEO of Diurnia, one Christine Maloney who just happened to be your cook on the Iris .” He saluted me with his nearly empty bottle. “Did I miss anything?”
    I thought of