19. Fatherhood

  We’d been held prisoner for a full week when he arrived. He just appeared in the impound lot out of nowhere, no trace of fluctuations in hyperspace at all. I noticed him almost immediately, since he sent a whisker-laser communication link. Once our communication was secure, Samonosuke asked “How you holding up, kid?”

  “Mister Samonosuke!” I exclaimed. “These people are mean! I haven’t done anything wrong but they’re treating me like a BAD SHIP and my crew doesn’t have that much food left and I’m scared and angry and the inspector is a giant asshole and—”

  He allowed me to vent my fears and frustrations for a few moments before cutting me off.

  “Yeah, it sounds like you had it rough. Don’t worry though, I’m here now. Time to swing my dick around a little bit,” he said, chuckling. “I’ll get you out of this mess, just trust me and do exactly what I say, okay?”

  “Okay, Mister Samonosuke,” I agreed.

  “First of all, send me all of the recordings you have of the interviews they’ve been holding on you,” he said. I complied, and after a few minutes of reviewing them, he laughed.

  “Looks like they’ve been digging a pretty deep hole for themselves,” he commented.

  “Are we in trouble?” I asked.

  “Nah kid, they are. Alright, watch your old man at work,” Samonosuke said, and then he abruptly shouted out in a booming voice that was more than just an omnidirectional radio broadcast. “There seems to have been a misunderstanding regarding my son’s freedom. I wish to speak with the manager. Tell him Samonosuke has come calling.”

  I don’t think that the rest of the shipyard had even realized that he was there until that moment, and within a few minutes I saw signs of activity everywhere.

  “Wait, Mister Samonosuke,” I objected. “I’m your son?”

  “Shut up, I’ll explain later,” he said urgently.

  So instead of bothering Samonosuke further I began waking my crew and telling them what was happening. Captain Min-jae and Rebekah rushed to dress and soon found themselves discussing matters with their counterparts aboard Samonosuke.

  “So, basically, they’re trying to hijack your ship,” the other ship explained.

  “Yes, we figured that much out on our own,” my captain said. “But what are we going to do about it? We can’t even hire lawyers with our accounts frozen, and we’re running short on food. I know that they’re just applying the thumbscrews, but if it keeps going for much longer then I have to admit that it might work.”

  “Let us worry about that,” Samonosuke’s first mate said. “Have you been rationing? How much food do you have on hand? We can send you a care package if you need it.”

  Rebekah answered him honestly, while the shuttle that the inspector had been using to get from the main compound of the impound yard to me for the interviews took off.

  “Mister Samonosuke, they’re requesting a secure data link with me,” I said.

  “Ignore them. No, better yet. Flash them the .jpg.”

  “What?” I asked, blushing.

  “Trust me, just do it,” he said. “Send them a few thousand copies then just cut off communication.”

  Embarrassed, I answered the hail and immediately filled the bandwidth between us with thousands of copies of lookatmy.jpg. The ship continued to come for us, but suddenly it was cut into pieces.

  The cuts were clean, and the ship just fell apart, it’s pieces floating off on their trajectory. The inspector inside was spinning about in space helplessly, causing trouble for himself as he flailed about like a toddler in zero-gravity.

  “Why’d you do that, Mister Samonosuke?” I asked.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Do what?” He asked. “It’s not my fault if they’re using an ancient ship that’s held together by spit and duct tape. I haven’t even warmed up my weapons systems.”

  The standoff continued. A drone arrived from Samonosuke filled with standard rations, and my crew promptly filled their belly, breaking the rule about no food being allowed on the bridge as they watched the rush of transmissions between the main office of the impound yard and Samonosuke, who was broadcasting all of their transmissions to us.

  The story came apart as the owner of the junkyard explained what had happened. The government was strongarming him for his part in this charade as much as anyone else. He had kept note of every deviation from standard procedure that had happened since I’d arrived in the yard.

  The captains of the interdiction vessels which had brought me to the yard reluctantly admitted their roles in the conspiracy as well. Several of the crew members had found my treatment and the treatment of my crew distasteful, and they sent their reports to Samonosuke with the files appended with notes like ‘please don’t cut our ship apart,’ and ‘we’re really sorry.’

  Aside from that, it turned out that Samonosuke wasn’t alone, as a dozen other vessels showed up over the following hours. One of them was a fast-shuttlecraft filled with reporters who immediately shoved a metaphorical mic in my face and asked me for a quote. At Samonosuke’s advice, I flashed them the .jpg.

  It took an entire day, but eventually the ‘investigation into my use of force during a routine SOS response’ was concluded and I was freed from my clamps. Samonosuke sent me a list of coordinates and told me to run on ahead, promising that he’d meet me there in a few days.

  So I flew away.

  I only found out much later that Samonosuke burned that place to the ground after I was gone. He destroyed all of the interdiction field generators, cut apart all of the clamps that were holding the impounded ships in place, and just in general wrecked havoc. Many of the soulships that could make the journey went to a nearby Alliance port for refit and a new crew. The rest were rescued later on by the forces that followed Samonosuke after the dust settled.

  Good riddance.

  We waited at the rendezvous point for three days before Samonosuke arrived. He dropped out of hyperspace nearby and sent a communications request.

  “Hey kid, how you holding up?” he asked.

  “Mister Samonosuke! Thank you so much for rescuing me,” I said immediately. “But I don’t understand why you’ve come, or why you’re saying you’re my dad now.”

  He kind of coughed and sounded a little embarrassed. “It’s all very complicated and stuff,” he muttered. “But basically, it’s because I shared my .mp4 with you.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, well, basically that means that I adopted you,” he said. “So stop worrying about it okay? I wasn’t really planning on adopting you, you understand, but then the rumor got out that you had the .mp4 and my friends found out and claiming you as a son is the only way for me to save face, okay? So you’re my son now and that’s final.”

  “O-kay,” I said. “I don’t really get it but I’m really happy.”

  “Yeah whatever. How is your crew holding out? They have enough food and everything?”

  “Yeah, we have enough for another six weeks thanks to the package you sent,” I answered. “Um, should I call you Dad now? Or what should—”

  “Let’s just leave it at Mister Samonosuke,” he answered. “It’s already awkward enough, okay? So, you figured out how to speed yourself up with Qi, huh?”

  “Oh yeah, the race! Were you watching?”

  “After I heard you’d been impounded I downloaded the replay. You’ve got some moves, I have to admit. When you slowed down after your initial burn I thought that it was just a one-time thing, but you kept the lead the entire time. It was almost impressive. But you’ve still got a long way to go before you’re ready for anything dangerous. Right now, all you can do is run away, and if you get caught in an interdiction field you can’t even do that.”

  “Yeah, I know,” his words taking some of the wind out of my sails. “But they said that I’m the fastest ship of my generation!”

  “Yeah, well, let’s talk about that for a bit,” he suggested. “Have you finished mapping your meridians? Have you figured out your optimal Qi cycles? Have you figured out how to manifest your Qi outside your hull yet?”

  I blushed. “Well, no, I haven’t finished any of those yet,” I admitted. “But—”

  “You’ll want to get on that. Here, I wrote some advice for you,” he muttered, sending a few gigabytes of records for me to read through. “Anyway, I’ve got to get going. I stirred up the hornet’s nest by springing you, and some idiot imperial is going to be sending some other poor idiots to hunt me down. They should be leaving you alone now though. If not, then I’ll show them again why it’s such a bad idea to mess with me and mine.”

  “Okay,” I said. “See you later Mister Samonosuke.”

  He zipped out of the area, burning fast through hyperspace. My crew held a meeting, and they decided our next port of call would be another world that was ostensibly under imperial rule, but the records we had from the alliance showed that it would be more accurate to say that it was locally governed.

  I took off, not in any particular hurry, and I began reviewing the files that Samonosuke sent me.