This is book 6 of the "Solar Clipper Trader Tales" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

 

Latest book in the series. Some evidence that one version saw a 2012 release, but I just noticed it recently.

Still fun.

Ishmael gets into a weird deal with DST, where they help him buy a ship (and help him get financing), and he takes on the heir to control of DST for a year as a quarter-share hand. Weird behavior in the background; apparently the head (CEO and major stockholder) of DST still, even that far in the future, even when lots of captains and engineering officers are female, has weird ideas about what's suitable for a woman. Or perhaps it's her mother's fault more. Anyway, she wasn't prepared for the job, there are no other children, and the will says she inherits the company only if she gets a job on a ship and keeps it for a year.

Turns out she's not a useless rich girl, though. She did several years in the service that goes out and finds and terraforms new planets, and she also got a degree in cooking from one of the top schools.

After giving up looking long ago, Ishmael stumbles onto his father, who runs the cafe that's his favorite place to eat on Diurnia. Actually his father stumbles on him, having seen the press coverage. Ishmael has been eating there for 15 years.

They come very close to dieing because of an incompetent engineer. So incompetent I don't believe in him. He fixes the flux capacitors or whatever they were, but doesn't think to replenish fuel and air, even though he reports that he has done so. He's also there as bodyguard to the heir, but it turns out he's also the major security leak in her system.

The beautiful and talented engineer from his previous ship turns out to have actually been interested in him after all, despite saying otherwise, and she comes to join his fast packet crew when the incompetent is fired.

For a lot of the book we have an unknown antagonist. Paparazzi and tabloid reporters bother them some, and towards the end there's an actual attempt at assassination, which kills Ishmael's brand-new love but doesn't even harm the assumed target. Probably really more complicated than that, though, since killing Ishmael would also work to negate her tenure on the ship. We don't know if it's acting CEO, or what. Turns out it's the financier, and he actually gets arrested for it. And the acting CEO, who is only being somewhat selfish and a bit of an asshole, gets to keep the job because the heir doesn't want to be an executive.v