During the last engagement, we’d deliberately not fired a single shot, instead we concentrated on just running. I wanted the other guy to think we had nothing left to fire at him. Of course that would be an incorrect assumption but one I hoped to be able to exploit later should the need arise. As it was, I only intended engaging him in one of three situations which were not mutually exclusive, first we had no other choice, second we had back up from the Federation Navy or third, we could see the whites of his eyes. In any case, if we were not going to be able to escape unscathed, I wanted to destroy him before we all died, or at least make him bleed badly.
Once we were in jump space, I once again stood most of the crew down. Outside of the normal day to day tasks of running the ship, the crew could ease up and take a bit of a break. I left the bridge, and headed down towards the medical bay to see how the people we’d rescued were coming along. When I arrived outside the medical bay, Ensign Fraser was just coming out. She immediately came to attention and saluted me. I quietly told her to relax and reminded her I was not actually a Federation officer and didn’t deserve the salute. She shook her head, disagreeing with me.
She said to me, “Sir, if you will permit me to say so, you do deserve the salute, you have the respect and loyalty of this entire crew, respect and loyalty you have earned. The crew of this ship almost seem to worship you. I need to salute you, to show you this small sign of respect, especially in front of the crew. Besides, I just watched you as we ran from that pirate. You need to know Sir, I grew up in a family with quite a few naval officers, some still serving, some now retired. Many of my relatives served with distinction. I have grown up with the stories of their exploits for all of my life. My family taught me a lot about ship handling, at least the theory of it as I was growing up. Your ship handling and tactics since I have been on board have been quite brilliant. Sir, I don’t believe there are many others in the Federation who could have done a better job than you during that last run into the jump point. Your bravery, and calm under fire is incredible, you must have ice flowing in your veins. That calm face you show to the world at those times helps the crew to stay calm as well, it helps them to settle and to focus on their jobs. If the Federation authorities have any brains at all, and I think they do, they will not punish you for bringing FNS Destiny back to them, they will recruit you, or at least try to.”
I just said, “OK, I do understand what you are saying. I’m just not comfortable with this sort of thing. I don’t feel like I’ve earned it. I have looked at the way Federation law is written, I honestly can’t see how they can do anything other than at least arrest me and put me in prison, for a while anyway. If the way the Federation administers its laws is anything at all like is done on Earth, they will quite simply not have a choice in the matter. How can they let me go let alone reward me if they don’t want to make a joke of your laws? My understanding is that justice, true justice is blind. People, no matter their intentions when they broke a law, must suffer the appropriate consequence, there is simply no other option.”
Anne replied, “You may be surprised at what happens when we make it safely back into Federation territory. I can promise you, that no matter what happens, you will bear the consequences of your actions, but be aware, those consequences may be very different from the ones you expect.”
She paused for a moment, watching to see if I understood what she was saying then continued, “You have done a good thing here with this ship, and this crew and if you can guide us home safely I can assure you this much, you will have made some very powerful friends, friends who will want to send the correct message, not only to you but to anyone else who finds themselves in a position such as yours. You have earned the respect of this crew Sir, all of it. You have not only earned the respect of this ship’s crew, but you have earned mine and all of the other people you’ve helped rescue since you came on-board this ship.”
She paused again, looking at my face to see if I still understood what she was saying before she continued, “You could have dived for cover on Zafar and kept your head down, but you didn’t. You could have kept quiet about the threat of mines, but you didn’t. You could have taken a back seat during the planning for the fight with the ship I was a prisoner on, but you didn’t. You could have taken a back seat or hidden yourself away in the ships core when FNS Destiny was boarded by the pirates, but you didn’t. You could have refused to take command of this ship, but you didn’t. You could have left us as prisoners on that pirate ship, but you didn’t. For that alone, you deserve as much respect as I or anybody else is able to offer you. Whether you believe it or not Sir, right now, you are the Captain of this ship, you are the one who will be rewarded for the things you do right and you will answer for any mistakes you make. From what I have seen, and from what the crew tells me, you have not made any mistakes yet.”
I was absolutely bowled over by what Anne was saying to me. I found myself to be so completely speechless that I simply couldn’t help but stare at her in shock. For her part, Anne just stared back at me for a minute before simply nodding. I opened my mouth to say something but no sound came out, my brain seemed to have simply frozen up. Anne reached over and with a look of concern, touched me on my arm, then she asked me if I was alright and if I needed her to get me anything. I finally had something I could wrap my head around and I managed to tell her I was alright, just surprised. She just nodded, again, to indicate she understood.
“By the way”, she said, “I spoke to Lady Conti a short while ago. She has asked if you would be willing to meet with her sometime soon. She said she would like to talk with you for a while, to gauge what sort of person you are for herself. She has heard the stories of your exploits and feels they are amazing perhaps even a little unbelievable. She did not really have a chance to have a conversation with you the last time she met you and told me she feels this should be rectified.”
I checked the time using my implant then asked how long she would need. The reply was perhaps an hour, maybe just a little longer. I said I could make myself available in about thirty minutes if that was acceptable to the Lady. Anne simply replied that thirty minutes would be perfect, because once the Lady Conti set her mind on something, she usually made it her business to get her way and this prompt action would make her happy, which in turn would make my life a quite a lot easier in the long run. I just smiled at her comment and asked her to bring the Lady to the Captains office in about thirty minutes, promising to be waiting when they arrived. After we parted, I continued into the medical bay while Ensign Fraser went off looking for Lady Conti.
Eri smiled and greeted me warmly as I entered the medical bay and we discussed her current guests. She teased me, complaining in a good natured sort of way about all the extra work I kept on giving her. I have to confess, I did actually feel quite guilty about this because in all honesty, I thought it was true. It seemed that ever since I’d come aboard this ship, I was either directly or indirectly responsible for bringing increasing numbers of people into her care, numbers that medical were not equipped, or manned, to handle. I apologised to her, but she just laughed and told me not to worry about it. I told her I didn’t think there would be any more because I planned to have us back in the Federation at a star-base in about two or three weeks. She laughed again and replied along the lines she felt sure I would find a way, teasing me some more. After she’d had her fun with me for a while, we discussed how the people we rescued from the pirate ship were coming along. I have to admit; it really was pleasing to hear most of them were already discharged from the medical bay so they could continue their recovery in more comfort. After she told me about the state and welfare of the people in her care, we discussed the welfare of the rest of the crew for a short time till I excused myself and made my way up to the Captains office for my upcoming meeting with Lady Conti.
During my previous meeting with her, she had seemed to be a nice enough person but I really did not have enough time or for that matter, data, to judge her properly j
ust as she hadn’t been able to make any kind of meaningful assessment about me. I would have to admit; I was a little nervous about the upcoming meeting and found myself hoping I didn’t suffer from foot in mouth disease and make some embarrassing gaffe.
I’d barely sat down in the Captains office, when the door chime announced someone was there to see me. I pressed the button to open the door and Ensign Anne Fraser led the Lady Conti into the office. The Captains office was quite a large compartment containing a desk and chair for the Captain to work at, and for those occasions when the Captain needed to keep a little distance between him or herself and whoever had come to visit. On the other side of the office were a number of comfortable lounge chairs surrounding a low table for those occasions where a less formal atmosphere would be preferable or where the Captain wanted to put someone at their ease. This compartment was often used by the Captain when he, or she, had to deal with disciplinary matters, think, complete paperwork, meetings with small numbers of crew or officers and for planning purposes. As Anne and Lady Conti entered, I rose from my seat at the desk and indicated to her we should sit in these more comfortable lounge chairs because I wanted the more informal atmosphere.
As we made ourselves comfortable, she said, “Thank you for agreeing to see me Captain. I know you have been busy and are doing work that most Captains would have a number of other officers helping them with. I have asked to see you because while I, and all the rest of the people who were prisoners of the pirates are completely at your mercy, I would like to understand the man who holds the fate of this ship, and all those aboard her so effectively in his hands. I think we have quite a unique situation here.”
“No thanks are necessary my Lady. I can promise you this though, I would never deliberately do anything to harm you, or anyone else on this ship unless that person deliberately put the ship or someone on board her in danger by their actions”, I replied.
She said, “Please Captain, just call me Conti. Excessive formality will usually just get in the way of a productive meeting, especially in circumstances such as the ones we find ourselves at the moment.”
I replied, “As you wish my… Conti.”
She smiled as she regarded me for a few moments, evaluating me, I think trying to make a judgement about my motives or perhaps deciding on her expectations. Then her smile grew broader and she launched into the conversation she wanted to have with me.
She said to me, “Tell me about yourself Captain. Tell me your story, where you came from, what you did before coming into space, why you made your decisions, how you made them, what you stand for. Please, tell me all of it.”
I looked at her for a few seconds, then started telling her my story in a monotone, “I was born in a country on Earth called Australia. My society is one that while always not successful at it, strives for fairness for its citizens. I was raised by my parents to be honest and fair to the people around me and over the years I have tried to live by those values. As I grew and matured, I tried to develop myself, intellectually, spiritually, even physically. Back home, I have always had an academic interest in military history and I’ve read many books on the subject over the years. Some pf those books were quite good at explaining the tactics and weaponry used by Earth’s militaries over the ages. I was never in the military but I have learned a lot from those books even though the tactics, weapons and methods were for the most part, really only directly suited to warfare on a planet.”
I stopped for a moment to consider before continuing, “Professionally, I worked as an engineer, till I was taken by FNS Destiny’s crew after I had an accident and was seriously injured. My professional life was one that required me to regularly solve problems so many of the things I have done since joining FNS Destiny have simply been an extension of that. After my accident, the medical staff on this ship put me back together and woke me about a month or six weeks before we reached Zafar. If the crew hadn’t taken me from Earth, my family would have been burying a body, because I quite simply could not have survived my accident without their intervention. During the period after Eri woke me, I was doing some training with Destiny’s Troopers, mostly to help my healing, but also to keep myself occupied. When we went down to the planet, we already knew there was something seriously wrong there, we’d been able to observe the state of the colony using the ship’s optical sensors. When the pirates started firing at us, I just reacted. I don’t know why, didn’t really know what I was doing, I just did it.
Afterwards, I somehow found myself giving advice to Captain Carlon when I had it to give. I didn’t argue the case, just mentioned thoughts I was having, some of them quite random. The Captain was good enough to give me a fair hearing, and take my different perspective into account during the planning after things started to go bad. When all the officers were put out of action, the crew came to ask me to take command. I resisted for quite a while but in the end, I realised, I owe this ship’s crew my life. I felt I just could not fail them. Eventually, I agreed that if the crew were unanimous in wanting me to take command of FNS Destiny, then I would have no choice but to at least consider their request. They were unanimous so I did consider it. When I thought it all through properly, I realised there was one inescapable fact, I was living on borrowed time. If they hadn’t rescued me when they did, I would have been dead months earlier. Instead, I was still alive and still able to make a real contribution. I suppose, I felt I owed them and no matter what the ultimate consequences to me, they’d already given me those extra months, perhaps even years of life, years I would not have had otherwise. From my point of view, they owned me, I owed them.”
She asked me, “Captain, could you tell me about your home world, about how your people have progressed, how they are making the first steps into space, the political landscape? Could you tell me about the trade potential for your world, should the Federation make contact with Earth in the future?”
I answered her to the best of my ability, but there were so many things I simply could not help her with because I just didn’t know the answers to the questions she was asking. Still, it was clear to me she was trying to draw me out, assessing me by the answers I was giving and by how I responded to her questions. I did tell her we had a large population and being able to get into space would help relieve some of the pressure on the planet itself. I told her how science was progressing among humanity. I told her about global warming and how we were just beginning to try to tackle the problem. We had a solar system that as far as we knew had massive untapped resources so we could probably find something worthwhile to trade if we could gain access to it. It was clear she had a lot of skill in doing this sort of thing but then, in hindsight, she was a trained professional diplomat. She was able to draw me out, pulling more and more information from me, getting me to think about things I had never really considered in the past.
Once again, I reminded myself never to play poker with these Tangesha because they never unintentionally give their thinking away by facial expression. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have expressive faces, their faces are very expressive indeed when they want them to be. Tangesha simply have a very high degree of control over their facial expressions, or at least, that is the case as far as I can tell. In the end, I found Conti to be both an interesting and stimulating conversationalist so the time passed quickly. She delved into how I came to be commanding FNS Destiny clearly looking for more detail than I’d previously given. I answered as fully and as honestly as I could, even telling her how I expected to be arrested and tried as a pirate when we finally reached safety.
When I told her that, she explained to me that while Federation justice was not perfect, it did strive to be fair. If someone did something that was intended to save lives and to preserve the principles of the Federation, then the Federations leaders could usually find a way to reward rather than punish the person, even if the person had actually broken the law in doing it. She advised me to be honest about my motivations for my actions and honest about the actions th
emselves. As our conversation continued, it quickly became obvious she’d heard about me losing my temper with pirates on a couple of occasions. She told me this behaviour, particularly given the circumstances that led to it, would not be held against me. By this time, I’d spent much more than the allotted two hours, talking to her. She seemed to come to a decision about me and rose from her seat, apologising for taking so much of my time as she did so. I of course, stood as she did telling her that no apologies were necessary because we were in jump space and the ship could spare me for the short time we’d been talking.
After we’d said our goodbyes, Anne led Conti from the office and I sat again thinking about the conversation I just had and the ships progress. We’d virtually resurrected her from scrap after all the damage she suffered in three battles against other ships, minefields, and a boarding by hostile forces. I was proud of the crew, proud of their performance under the difficult conditions we were being forced to endure, proud of the work they’d done to repair the ship, and proud of the way some of them stepped into leadership roles even though both their biology and their culture rebelled against it. They were a good crew, tough and resourceful. I could clearly see they were an elite group of individuals. Even though FNS Destiny was not classified as a warship, and was not really heavily enough armed to go toe to toe with most pirates, we’d been able to fight off not only not one but three pirate ships and defeat them. Now we had one more pirate ship to go, one more pirate to either escape from or defeat. I wondered at the way the pirates seemed to be coming out of the woodwork and realised the Federation must be having some serious problems with them.
Star Man 1: Star Bourne Page 33
