Ships of My Fathers by Dan Thompson Page A

“You have your license ready then?”
    “Not yet. They won’t let you take the exam until you’re eighteen.”
    “Are there a lot of eighteen-year-old captains?”
    “No, but I wouldn’t be the first. I looked it up. Some girl did it last year, and two guys the year before that.” He did not tell, her, however, that it had been seven years before that without anyone under thirty even trying.
    She nodded, taking another tear off her own roll. “And that’s here on Taschin?”
    “No, that’s in the whole Guild.”
    “The Guild in the Confederacy?”
    He frowned. The Guild was recognized across most of known space, not merely in the Confederacy, and when you put the Solarian Union together with the League of Catai, that added up to a lot of ships, each with a Guild captain. A hundred thousand? A million? He had never looked up the total. “What are you getting at?”
    “Simply that getting your license next year seems like a long shot.”
    He shook his head. “No, I already have ratings in drive and systems engineering — cargo, too, and that’s not even part of the license exam.”
    “And isn’t there something about navigation in there? Or maybe piloting?”
    “Not piloting, though I’m not half-bad. The computer does most of the work anyway.”
    “And navigation?”
    He put the roll down. “Okay, so I haven’t passed that one yet. What’s your point?”
    “You don’t look like the studying type, especially not when you’re on the root.”
    He laughed. “This is about Josie’s tonja?”
    “I’m not going to tell you not to use it. You’ve got no reason to listen to me, but you’ve had enough by now to feel how it dumbs you down, numbs out your mind. Right?”
    “Yeah, but Josie said that was only a few hours.”
    “Or days. It’s got a long tail.”
    He shrugged. “So, I’ve been through a lot. Maybe I need the break.”
    “Yeah,” she replied, picking at her roll again. “That’s kind of my point. Instead of jumping through the hoops for your license, maybe you should take a year or two and go a little slower.”
    He picked up his roll again and crammed the rest of it into one bite. “Doing what? Get a job here?”
    “Maybe. I don’t think the local dockworkers’ union will take you at your age, but I’m sure you could find something around port.”
    He shook his head. “No, I want to get… I mean, don’t take this wrong. You’ve been really good to me, and Josie…” he trailed off. He had no idea what he wanted to do about Josie. With his captain’s license, maybe even a first officer slot, he could take her with him, but she never wanted to talk about the future.
    “You want to get out there, don’t you? Back into the deep.”
    He sighed and picked up a second roll.
    “It’s okay,” she told him. “I recognize the look. Malcolm had it bad.”
    “Yeah, I guess that’s it. Genes or not, he passed it on.”
    “Have you thought about looking up your family? They were spacers too.”
    “You mean Mom’s husband, that Peter guy?”
    She finished unspooling the last of her own roll. “Didn’t you say something that first night about an uncle?”
    “Yeah, Han, something like that.”
    “Hans Schneider,” she replied. “I looked him up. He’s a spacer too.”
    “What’s he do?”
    “I think he’s in the Captains’ Guild, so I presume he runs a ship.”
    “Captain, huh?”
    “Maybe he could help you with your navigation.”
    He looked down at the rolls again and back up to Annie. This had been an ambush. “He’s already on his way, isn’t he?”
    “I don’t know, but I know he’s been sent for.”
    He leaned back from the table. “I guess I don’t have a choice in this.”
    She shook her head. “But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a bad one.” She motioned to the uneaten roll in his hand. “Go ahead, eat it. I know the cinnamon is that much better on the tonja, so enjoy it while you can.”

Chapter 6
    “Life is going to smack you down,