Ringship prosper thrive.., p.2
Ringship Prosper (Thrive Space Colony Adventures Book 5), page 2
He loved this place. Outside the creche, it was the only home his kids remembered. For that matter, this was the only home Ben had since leaving his father’s, except on a spaceship. And now a truck stood in front of it on its high studded balloon tires. A couple workmen seemed to be ferrying out their worldly belongings.
Abel Greer stood at the pompous front portico, arms crossed, facing off against Cope stalking likewise by the truck. Both men wore exquisite business suits, their best ‘fund-me’ outfits, and glared at each other. Not exactly moving-day attire.
What the rego hell?
Ben forced a smile and waved. “Hey, Abel. Happy sunset!” He mastered this strategy from his old captain Sass Collier. When the going gets rough, smile hard and start off friendly.
Abel, the onetime first mate of the Thrive, dropped his face onto a hand in disgust. Cope turned and shot Ben a furious middle finger.
“Get the flyer,” Cope barked at him. “I’m driving the truck.”
Ben continued strolling to reach him, caught his shoulder, and dropped a quick peck on his cheek. “What did I miss?”
“Not now,” Cope growled.
“Oh, I think now would be a great time for that sunset drink,” Ben differed. “You could fill me in. I could say hi to the Greers.”
“We’re leaving.”
Ben peered into the truck. Was that Cope’s office furniture and tools in the back? Not just the junkyard-reclaim home office stuff, but his extravagant president’s desktop. “Really eager to hear what’s going on, buddy.” He drank in the rage on Cope’s face.
Abel retreated into the house. He left the door hanging open.
“That is what’s going on,” Cope replied, back to glaring at the house. “We’re out of here. Complete asset separation. Thrive Inc. has divested of Thrive Spaceways. And we’re out of a house.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Are these two things necessarily entwined? I mean, not that I think you’d just walk out because you’re mad at Abel over business.”
That was exactly what he suspected, but he didn’t want to anger Cope much further. He estimated the Schuyler tough was about a centimeter from taking a swing at someone. Ben preferred not to volunteer.
Cope met his eye, lips pressed together, whitened with fury. His fists started to pump.
“The flyer,” Ben acknowledged, scratching his nose. “Um, would I be flying it to the spaceport? Or…?” He gathered the corporate offices near the spaceport were off the menu. “Honey, we could use that sunset drink. I feel…uninformed.”
Cope scrubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. I need to pick up Nico from school. So he doesn’t…”
So he doesn’t come home to this, Ben completed the thought for himself. “Should I go in and talk to Abel and Jules?” Could this still be salvaged?
Cope turned decisively and shut one side of the truck’s cargo doors.
The workmen scurried faster. “Uh, sir? We’ve still got like a dozen boxes in the garage, the lady said.”
Cope snorted. “She’s no lady.” But he yanked the truck door open again, and banged his forehead on it.
Ben pulled him into a hug. When all else failed with Cope, he found it best to go nonverbal. If he said anything, his ex would react to it. Simply holding him, Cope had to accept the implied I care about you without a fight, at a visceral level.
Judging by his expression, one of the workmen copped another Schuyler attitude at two ‘frills’ engaged in a public display of affection. Ben stared him down until the hauler shifted his eyes to his own feet. He and Cope weren’t ‘frills.’ Guys got upset, same as anybody else, and needed a hug.
Once the last cartons were loaded, Ben was the one to pay off the loaders and thank them for their hard work. He pulled a few flattened cartons out of the truck and closed it. Meanwhile Cope stood, arms crossed, looking the other way. A wealthy and privileged neighbor peeked out of her own mansion. His glare served as gossip repellent.
When the dockers were out of earshot, Ben told him softly, “I need to go in and look around. Make sure nothing of ours got overlooked.”
“I should do that,” Cope murmured, near tears in Ben’s estimation, or close to hammering his fist into the rental truck. Cope could go either way like that.
Ben clapped him on the shoulder. “Just go pick up Nico. I’ll meet you at the Spaceways hangar.”
“I’m sorry. That I screwed up –”
“Stop. Not now, Cope. Get Nico. Try not to scare him.”
Cope blew out explosively and rubbed his face. Apparently he hadn’t considered that, whether he was in the right frame of mind to explain this to his son. “Maybe you should…”
“Maybe I should explain to him?” Ben needled Cope just a little. “Explain this thing I know nothing about? Just tell Nico you’re having a bad day. He’s known you 15 years, after all.” Ben confidently predicted that Nico would clam up instantly. Like father, like son.
Cope snuffed amusement. With a decisive nod, he clambered into the truck.
Ben waved to him from the curb before turning into the ‘Thrive mansion.’
This goodbye was going to suck.
“Coming in!” he called cheerfully from the front door that was no longer his. “Just doing a final sweep. Make sure we got everything.”
As the entry hall met the great room, he could see into the kitchen, where Abel and Jules stood huddled, as he expected. He paused to nod to them.
They nodded back warily.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” Ben admitted to them. “Cope’s still too upset to talk. So if one of you wants to offer an explanation, that’d be cool. Or I’ll just make sure our children’s lives and ours are all packed away. Plus our stuff out of the kitchen. Did the movers visit the kitchen? I guess you won custody of the playscape out back that we built for the kids. And all the trees.”
Ben cut himself off, pursing his mouth. He hadn’t meant to get angry too. Silly of him. He gave up saying anything further and sighed, heading straight to their wing.
The movers skipped the bathrooms entirely, which filled one of his boxes. His own guest bedroom held nothing of value, his real life aboard the Prosper.
The workmen missed the concealed safe in Cope’s bedroom, by design. He collected that unopened. And if he wasn’t mistaken…yes, all three kids had hidey-holes as well, though two of them lived in the creche. He balled up the contents of each stash in a separate towel and tried not to intrude on their private treasures. Though with Nico’s porn collection, he couldn’t resist a peek just to inquire which orientation the boy was leaning toward these days, an unanswered question the parents were reluctant to ask. Based on his spying, he still didn’t know. Presumably neither did 15-year-old Nico. Ben could relate.
Cope’s third child, Socrates, he also snooped on. Sock was Cope’s by their Denali friend Teke instead of Ben. Nosiness earned him nothing – child number three remained a cipher. Frazz – short for Sassafras, his own biological child in the brood – collected glass marbles, and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Unwilling to hunt for a ladder, Ben simply flipped his gravity and walked the ceiling to collect her decorations.
His dusty boots left footprints on the white paint. It didn’t matter. Jules would renovate the entire wing before using it, he imagined.
“We’ll sell,” Jules corrected his suspicion from the doorway. “You’ll get 49%, like we agreed at the start.”
“I hope that’s soon,” he acknowledged. Jules wouldn’t get to keep the big house either. That made him feel better. Except Ben didn’t like feeling spite.
“You and I don’t have a problem with each other,” Jules attempted.
Ben flipped gravity and landed with well-practiced ease. “We do now.”
“I mean, about the kids,” she countered.
Ben nodded dubiously. “Let’s give each other space for a while.”
“You, need more space?” Jules scoffed, then amended her tone. “Sorry. Let’s not be that way. I love your kids. You love mine.”
“Yeah, but I don’t undercut a kid’s parents,” Ben returned. “And I think that’ll be difficult now. Don’t you? So stay away from our kids. We’ll stay away from yours. I have stuff in the kitchen. I’m not sure what belongs to Cope. Help me pack in there.”
Jules threw up her hands in surrender and led the way.
Ben claimed the deep fryer without asking – no one deep-fried like a Schuyler man. Fortunately, the appliance was clean and empty. No doubt Cope had been working around the clock trying to prevent whatever this was, too busy to cook. Ben continued systematically through every cupboard and drawer, grabbing whatever he knew was theirs. Jules followed and added a few more things.
She’d really gone whole hog into entertaining in recent years. Jules aspired to reigning social queen of Schuyler. Fancy cutlery stayed. Cleverly repaired coffee mugs and favorite nicked knives went into the box. Most of the kitchen tool drawer got dumped in too, the essentials that his mechanic ex needed at hand rather than fetch from his workshop in the garage.
“It’s the taxes,” Jules offered. Her husband Abel hid in their wing, the coward. “They want more and more to make all the schools and creches free, and nanite treatments for everybody. But nothing is free. This morning the stockholders solved their tax problem with a fire sale on Thrive subsidiaries. Abel had a buyer lined up for Spaceways, for all of them. But Cope insisted on keeping his company. He blew all his assets to buy out the investors. Abel wasn’t expecting that. Cope needed to liquidate the house to keep Spaceways at all.”
Ben nodded vague thanks for the explanation. But no matter how big the house, half of it didn’t amount to much compared to a spaceship. Wrong order of magnitude. And he sure as hell wouldn’t apologize for the Greers losing the mansion, certain that whatever crisis this was, Abel was its author.
“We’ll be friends again some day,” was the most neutral he could manage.
He plucked an ice wand from a chunky porcelain vase that held the everyday cooking implements. Likely Jules crafted this one. She made most of the wands on the way to the hothouse planet Denali, where they sold like solid platinum. But it was Cope’s idea to bring the coolant and make the wands for popular consumer sales. Jules assembled and decorated them, but Cope manufactured the parts for her.
How many sunset drinks did Ben watch him stir with this wand? How many beers did he frost alone after work? Ben was around for his ex-husband all too few of those times. But Cope was proud of the wands. Rightfully, so was Jules.
“Take it,” she whispered. “I want him to have it.”
Ben lay the keepsake in the carton, suddenly extremely done with this drama. “Thank you. The garage… I can’t do this now.”
Jules nodded, probably not trusting herself to speak.
“I have birthday presents for the twins, on the ship. I’ll send them. Nothing you’d object to.”
“This hurts, Ben. Just go. I’m sorry, not sorry, I dunno. I want us to be friends again. But profit matters. Money matters.” She shook her head. “Can you imagine if Sass came back right now? What she’d think of us?”
Ben huffed. “I don’t think Sass would judge, really. She’d tell us to work it out. Hopefully we will before she gets back.”
Jules rolled her eyes. The earliest Sass could return was still a decade away. If she ever intended to return. Ben had his doubts.
“Bye then.” Habits died hard. Even today, Ben had to restrain himself not to give Jules the firm hug he usually traded with her before he returned to space. One of his closest friends. Their eyes met for a moment. She hugged herself and looked away.
Ben didn’t even try to say goodbye to Abel.
3
“Hey, buddy!” Ben cried to Nico. The teen alighted from the high cab of the truck to trade hugs. The hugs were their usual welcome-back. Nico’s closed face was not. Ben added a murmur in his ear, “Sorry I wasn’t here for you leading up to this. Whatever this is.”
Nico gave a jerky nod, then elected to climb into the flyer alone with his book bag.
“That good, huh?” Ben inquired softly to his receding back. Not that there was anyone else around, save Cope behind the truck’s steering wheel. They were a half hour into sunset by now. The entire city quit work to enjoy happy hour.
“Can I fly it?” Nico attempted.
“No.”
The kid shrugged and clambered into the flyer’s back seat to hunker down.
Ben hopped up to the cab off-gravity. In theory the truck provided rungs for this. But it also supplied a handy landing step, which was the way everyone here boarded a balloon-tired transport. Anything lower than a single story tall, they flicked off their personal gravity and jumped.
Cope slid open the window. “Next stop Josiah’s.”
Ben considered that, hanging on the door. The mob boss was probably Cope’s oldest surviving friend, a mentor, protector, practically a big brother. He was a leader in the resistance before they won against the urbs. Nowadays the more populous settlers ran the moon.
Reluctantly, he offered, “Hey, buddy, when I’m hurting? I like to retreat to my own turf. Jules says we’ve still got the Prosper –”
“Josiah’s tonight,” Cope insisted. “The ship later. Not now.”
“Really hope you’ll let me in on your thinking soon, Cope.”
His ex rocked his head so-so. Or perhaps it meant ‘get off my back.’ “I’ll leave the truck here. We’ll take the flyer to Josiah’s.”
“So this is a private word first?”
“Yeah. Short version.” Cope swallowed, visibly struggling to get it out. “Spaceways is bankrupt. Abel blindsided me. He assumed I’d sell, because the offer gave me the capital to start over, or retire. Instead I bought us out to keep ownership of our intellectual property, the ship designs, the works. The investors got the assets.” He added a middle finger as a tip.
“But there’s that loan on the Prosper.” They’d owned Ben’s ship outright until half a year ago. Then Cope said he needed to borrow against it, to cover a cash flow problem at Spaceways. At the time, Ben’s lawyer tactfully suggested it was time to buy out his ex-husband. Perhaps Ben should have taken his advice, but that would have incurred even more debt.
Cope shook his head. “It’s a loan. We make payments on it. That’s all. You’re still in business. You need to make a profit.”
As Ben recalled, the size of those payments was painful. “Can we? And still make payroll?”
“I let everyone go. With no termination pay,” he said bitterly.
That had to hurt, Ben reflected. Cope came up through the docks, a working stiff. When you lived paycheck to paycheck, getting laid off without notice was a personal catastrophe. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill Abel for that alone.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Cope finally unbuckled from the driver’s seat.
“Wait, that’s it?” Ben countered. “That’s all you needed to say without Nico?”
Cope hopped down. “I didn’t need to say anything at all. You got it. That’s why I loved you in the first place. Yeah?”
Ben didn’t marry a romantic. Rather than doe eyes and tender caresses, Cope delivered this line while checking the locks on the truck. That accomplished, he marched to the flyer, his elegant charcoal suit smudged with moon dust. The work boots he likely wore even to the shareholder meeting. The man was never happy without steel-toe shoes.
“Cope, wait. How did this happen? How did we lose everything?”
The engineer paused in his stride. “You caught the part where I laid off your crew, right?”
“My crew? All?” Ben couldn’t fly the Prosper without at least…an engineer. His ex intended to go into space with him again. Time was, Ben had begged Cope for this, to save their marriage. That time was long gone. Hell…
“Volunteers only for this next run,” Cope continued. “Thrive reunion.”
“My next run is an ice delivery,” Ben noted. Every second trip, he brought down water ice from the rings to shore up Mahina’s sorely limiting hydrosphere.
Cope informed him, “The new government won’t pay us for that.” He turned back toward the flyer. “Coming?”
“No,” Ben replied in sudden decision. “I should be on my ship. Saying goodbye to my crew!”
“Suit yourself,” Cope returned. “But Josiah is the contract. And don’t forget your dad expects you to bring the kids around on Glow. He specified all three.”
That last was a barb. Baby Socrates was where Ben drew the line and asked for a divorce. Not that he had anything against the child. The 8-year-old was cute and quiet, well-behaved to a fault. But as Cope’s husband, Ben should have been consulted before conception. It wasn’t as though two men made a creche baby by accident. The reams of paperwork provided ample time for reflection, to consult one’s husband. The form even supplied a blank for that.
“Fine, dear,” Ben shot back acidly. “We just do whatever you say, Cope. Because God forbid you ever get angry. Except somehow you always are.”
Cope raised one hand in surrender, then dropped it in defeat. “Not now, Ben. Tonight sucks enough.”
He trudged away alone. Ben stifled the urge to run after him, to defy him, to insist that no, Cope didn’t need to face everything alone, that he never had needed to! But by the divorce, Ben had relinquished that right, any credibility on that score. Cope set himself up to take the fall solo, and Ben had to let him. Damn the man!
Josiah, one of the mob bosses who drove Schuyler City to prominence, oofed as he sank into his couch with his beer. “Don’t lose Ben over this, too, Cope. Losing the company is bad enough.”
He’d handed beers out to Copeland and Nico. The teen passed a sleek chrome ice wand to his father when he finished with it. “Ben and I divorced years ago.”
“Still,” Josiah quibbled. “Hey, Nico. Your dad and I have things to discuss. Give us the room, OK? Try the game room down the hall.”
Nico rose with alacrity, casting a wary eye at the attending brace of goons, 250 cm tall. Nowadays they stood straight and broad and wall-like from top-of-line nanites buttressing their old stretch bones. Alas, Yang nanites were powerless to make them smarter. When the boss dismissed the kid of a friend, they automatically stepped forward menacingly. Josiah glowered at them and waved them out.
