Ships of My Fathers Read Online Free PDF

its warmth and had been sucking the heat back out of him. He buttoned up his uniform jacket, and gave a perfunctory salute towards the spotlight and started walking back towards the center of the port. The guard trailed him for a minute but eventually peeled off onto another cross street.
    At night, this part of the port was virtually deserted. He could hear the shifting whine of an electric motor echoing off the hangar walls, but he saw no one. The truth was the security guard might have saved his life. Taschin was not the most dangerous port by far, but he would have been easy prey for any manner of portside predators.
    He needed to eat, drink, and get some rest, but he refused to go back to the hotel suite, not after what Isaac had said. Fucking disrespectful.
    A different hotel would be his best option, but if Isaac or Hollings had notified the authorities, then they could track him by his bank card. Michael fished out his wallet as he walked. A fifty and two tens. That was not going to last long. His stomach rumbled again. First he would eat. Then he would worry about the money.
    The late night district was in full swing, but he steered clear of the nicer places. They would use up too much of his money, and they might look at him a little too closely, so he headed further back on some of the side streets. He thought about the Lucky Black but knew better. That would be one of the first places Isaac would have looked, so the bartender was no doubt keeping an eye out for him.
    Then he remembered a late night with Dad and a little twenty-six-hour diner behind the Far Meridian. Only one booth was occupied, with two more people eating at the counter. The dinner crowd was long since gone and the bar-closing throngs would not descend for another two or three hours. More than anything, he wanted another shot at breakfast, so he sat at the counter and ordered a large platter of eggs and sausage. The local flavor was a spicy mix with a lot of cheese. When he finished, he found he was still hungry, so he ordered another. After that, he finished off with a couple of sides and got the bill: twenty-six.
    He broke the fifty and looked at the meager leftovers in his wallet. “Do you have any bank access here?”
    “Around the side,” the waitress told him, “next to the Meridian entrance.”
    He wandered outside, his full belly urging him towards sleep, but he found the bank machine. Dad had kept accounts at all his regular ports, and Michael was used to drawing his portside allowance this way.
    He waved his chit over the reader, pressed his thumb, and then traced out his pass code shape, an asymmetric five-pointed star with four of the outlying points connected by separate downward strokes. Dad had helped him design it. “Never use a pass code with only one finger trace,” he had always said. “Always add some touches.”
    He requested six hundred. It was the maximum he could pull in a single day. That had been another thing from Dad. He had figured that six hundred should be enough to get him out of any emergency long enough for him to report back to the ship. Now with no ship to report back to, six hundred would not last him long. The machine spat out the bills, and Michael stuffed them into his wallet. He could always try for more in the morning.
    “Mikey? Is that you?”
    He turned to see three women coming out the door of the Far Meridian, music blaring after them as the door swung closed. They were all dressed stylishly, with the oldest in an off-the-shoulder blue dress that left little to the imagination. He blinked a few times before he recognized her. “Annie?”
    “Oh my dear Mikey,” she said coming towards him with arms open. “I heard about Malcolm. I’m so sorry.”
    She put her arms around him, and he leaned against her. There had been a time when he could lean into her belly, but now even in heels, she was not quite as tall as he was. “I… oh, Annie.”
    She waved her friends off, and they made their own