It wasn't much longer before his Mother passed, succumbing to the effect of her life-long tobacco
habit. She always said "when you live on Leeds, you might as well inhale your carcinogen of choice also."
And without Mother around, Father didn't last much more than a year. the drink took him, of course.
All of a sudden, and just before his 36th birthday, it seemed that he was in charge of the family's small
freight concern. The uncles tried to persuade him to merge with another small business run by a family
friend, but Davy knew this man too well. Brash and obnoxious, without the excuse of drinking that his
father had. Frankly, this guy was just a walking, talking Bunghole. Davy wanted no part of him, but saw
an opportunity to cut his generally unreliable and "entitled" uncles out of his business equation.
He agreed to divide the company's fleet 60/40 with the uncles, them getting the 60%. They could join
with Mr. Bunghole if they wanted, but Davy was going to convert his share of ships to handle ores.
there was a lot of work hauling ores these days. The uncles quickly agreed, believing that they got
the best deal. Remember however, that Davy was the channel-crawler through these ships for many
years and knew which were the ones with actual value.
It was decided that the 2 oldest of 12 ships were too old and worn-out to be of any use.
They were early model CSV's that father had puchased second-hand from Junkers in New London
long ago. These were scavenged for the few useful parts left and pitched on the scrap heap.
Of the remaining ships, there were 6 Starfliers and 4 Startrackers of varying age.
The uncles disdained the Starfliers, but Davy knew that they had seen less hard use despite
being older and that there were many common parts between the two models.
The uncles jumped at the deal when Davy agreed to take 1 Startracker and 3 Starfliers as his 40%.
Some paperwork was signed and run under the noses of the Barristers. The shop itself and it's
threadbare accounts, along with all it's scrap were used to pay off existing debt. Then, with the fall
of a gavel, Davy and one of the full-time drivers from father's crew named Shelton
(whom Davy had known most of his life as a decent and hard-working employee, and with whose
son Davy had attended school) were now a separate business entity known as:
Redline Inc.
They quickly retreated to a temporary shop and set about creating the 2 best ships possible from
the ones they had picked from the fleet. Due to Davy's near complete knowledge of the ships in
question and having cleverly picked the stafliers that he knew to have the best common parts,
the Startracker and one of the Starfliers was rebuilt to rather nice condition in a few months.
Shelton and Davy ran whatever short runs they could with whichever ship they had servicable
at any given time, and Davy even drove deliveries for Boar's Head Provisions to keep the
wolves off the doorstep.
At last, however, after much toil and sweat, they had 2 decent ships with which they could seek contracts. Redline Inc was flying.
