The Oilman's Daughter by Allison M. Dickson, Ian Thomas Healy Read Free Book Online Page A

offices.
    Jonathan had only taken a few steps into the offices when a large man with a shock of white hair accosted him. “Jonathan Orbital, as I live and breathe! Good to see you, lad! I’d heard you were on the train that was robbed. I’m glad to see you’re all right.” The man pumped Jonathan’s hand and slapped his back.
    Jonathan winced. “Hello, Ernest.” Ernest Pickering had been one of the movers and shakers in his father’s ground-based rail empire back in the States. His specialty had been kicking down the doors of potential investors and yelling at them until they wrote a check to make him leave. It appeared that the boisterous man’s time among the French hadn’t tempered him a whit.
    “I expect you’d like a status report on the train, eh?”
    “Yes, please.”
    Ernest consulted his watch. “It’s five hours before the elevator lifts. Plenty of time for lunch. I’ve found a place nearby where the chef actually knows how to cook a goddamned steak. Best cuisine in the world? Cream sauces and weeds. Hah! Give me an American beefsteak and some proper Idaho potatoes any day of the week.”
    Jonathan was hungry, but he’d also dined with Ernest before, and watching the man make love to his food was enough to put anyone off their own meal. “Actually, Ernest, you’d better tell me the details now. I’ll need to cable my father.”
    Ernest’s jovial attitude disappeared. “I’ve already sent him a report, lad.”
    Jonathan bristled at the man’s tone and injected a bit of frost into his reply. “Of course you have, Ernest, but he’ll want to hear from me directly, especially if you told him I was injured in the attack.”
    “Very well, Jonathan. Come with me and I’ll show you the report.”
    “Are there daguerreotypes?”
    “Yes, they came down on the elevator. And we developed them here.”
    Ernest brought him back to the stationmaster’s office and handed him a sheaf of papers inside a folder. “Goddamn pirates.” Ernest poured small cups of strong coffee for both of them. “I kept wondering when they were going to hit the train. I’ve been telling your father for years that we needed armed security on board.”
    Jonathan shook his head as he paged through the file. “He doesn’t want to repeat the lawlessness of the Old West in space.”
    Ernest snorted. “It’s already here, lad. You’ve got pirates in secret bases on the moon and that criminal sanctuary at the Lagrange Sargasso. The Space Guard can’t keep up, and the CR is a juicy target with a predictable schedule. Honestly, it’s a wonder we weren’t hit before today.”
    The file broke down the losses into stark black and white numbers for Jonathan. Four hundred gallons of water. Three hundred cubic feet of compressed air. Assorted foodstuffs, beverages, and personal effects of passengers and crew. All negligible and easily replaced.
    Personnel and equipment losses were much more of a detriment to the CR. It was an expensive enterprise to operate, and required highly-trained employees. All that translated into high passenger fares, and the kind of people who could and did pay those fares responded poorly in a public way when bad things happened, which made them unlikely to invest further in the company.
    The loss report grew even more grim as Jonathan read on. One car was a complete loss and would have to be towed to the Lagrange Sargasso. Three others were damaged enough to require disconnection from the track for extended repairs. That in and of itself was an expensive procedure, requiring multiple Fulton tugboats and zero-gravity cranes. The major work had already been completed, and the cost numbers stretched into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jonathan looked at the daguerreotypes and shook his head.
    Two CR employees lost their lives to the pirate attack, both of them stewards who’d been caught in a car that lost pressure too quickly to be rescued. The chief engineer had been severely traumatized and