Kaylee’s Lament

Chapter Fourteen

When a man can’t stand being under the thumb of an oppressive regime, can’t take the sting of the economic lash that binds him to the land, when that man is pressed as far as he can be pressed and does not break, it is no surprise that such a man can discover a way to escape the course Fate or God or Dharma has in mind for him and chart his own course away from any man who would pretend to be his master. Such a man was Angus McKlintock.

Angus was born a bondsman on Altera, a miserable little moon at what was, then, the edge of the Rim. When he was 16, he stowed away in a tramp freighter. Discovered by the captain, he was spared spacing (the common punishment for stowaways) and pressed into service – the captain was short two hands, due to an untimely brawl that involved local authorities the night before the ship lifted. Rather than face a long trip with a short roster, he put Angus to work.

Ten years later, Angus had learned everything there was to know about the small-time interstellar freight business, and purchased his first small transport. Ten years after that he traded up, purchasing a hauling scow, a long-distance barge sold off for scrap by a terraforming company. He called her the Sky Hawk, refitted her to spaceworthiness, and began plying routes between the Rim-worlds, taking bulk jobs that the larger companies were unwilling or unable to. He didn’t get rich, but he kept flying. Found a wife, and had five blissful years until she died in childbirth. He kept flying. Raised two boys to manhood on the rough-and-tumble frontier before a malfunctioning space suit send his body into the Black and his soul to the Beyond.

His boys, Devon and Duncan, inherited the Sky Hawk and the business, and they kept flying. They also started to do much better than their father ever did. Devon, the elder, was an excellent pilot, but was not the businessman that his father intended him to be. Duncan, on the other hand, had a natural ability to talk a virgin out