Assegai

by S J MacDonald

  Alex inclined his head slightly, accepting that. If it was unfair to dump this on him, a flag officer with extensive experience of independent operations, it would have been downright brutal to land any part of such responsibility on a skipper who’d never, before this posting, had to operate outside the structure of a squadron under higher command.

  ‘Understood,’ he said. ‘Though I will, as a command exercise, ask you to review the proposals and write up what you would do in my situation, I will not ask you to share that until after I have made and logged my decision, all right?’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Min, and breathed again.

  ‘And for now,’ Alex said, with this decision at least coming very easily, ‘We’ll set course to intercept the Rose Voyager.’ This, at the Assegai’s cruising speed, would take them around four days. ‘That will give me time,’ Alex observed, looking at Jarlner and Bennet, ‘to consider the options, and discuss them with you.’

  He saw relief on their faces, too, at that reassurance that they were not going to be expected to make that overwhelming decision themselves.

  ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning,’ Alex said – they already had a full morning meeting scheduled, to talk about a training schedule now that their orientation was completed. ‘And I’ll have a precis of the proposals for you – in Samartian.’

  They thanked him, and taking this as dismissal, got to their feet in turn, saluted and departed, leaving him alone with Min.

  They looked at one another.

  ‘Phew!’ Min observed, finding no other word adequate.

  ‘Yes,’ Alex agreed, and with a musing note, ‘Just when I think I can’t be surprised by any mission orders, any more…’ He gave an eloquent shrug, and a rueful chuckle. But he was, she could see, already getting used to the idea, shouldering the responsibility without complaint or even any sense of straining under the burden. It was already, within a matter of minutes of opening the most revolutionary orders any captain had received in the history of the Fleet, something he was treating as routine.

  ‘New normal,’ she said, regarding him then with fascination. She’d heard about this – studied it, even, in the kind of command analysis the Admiralty expected skippers to do as part of their continuing professional development. One of Alex’s great strengths, it was said, was his ability to adapt to even the most extraordinary circumstances, adjusting what he considered to be ‘normal’ to accommodate the new criteria.

  ‘New normal,’ Alex agreed. ‘It is, evidently, now normal to expect me to choose my own missions.’ He gave a grin which held more than a dash of mischief. ‘Didn’t expect that when I got up this morning.’

  Min smiled too, though shaking her head a little. ‘It’s breath-taking,’ she said, and then, as she realised what kind of reaction there would be from the Assegai’s company, ‘What are we going to tell the crew?’

  Alex was about to reply, automatically, that he would tell them the truth, of course, obviously, but then he realised that this was not his crew. Even in the Fourth, this would kick off high excitement and a great deal of very noisy airing of opinions. The Assegai was a regular, conventional ship, so this would shock them even more. And Min, he knew, liked to keep things on a calm and even keel.

  ‘Let’s just say that the decision will be posted after we’ve picked up Skipper Eldovan,’ he suggested, and Min nodded gratefully.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, since he could have made things difficult, there, insisting on telling the crew things which would only upset them to no purpose. And with that, she too was getting to her feet. ‘I’ll get us on intercept course,’ she told him, and as an afterthought, ‘Off route?’

  ‘No,’ Alex said, after a moment to consider. ‘I don’t see that’s necessary – and we might as well run patrol.’

  Min nodded again. That, at least, was a decision she would have no hesitation in saying she would make herself. However tiresome it might be at times dealing with idiot civilians, running patrols along busy shipping routes was a vital part of any warship’s role, and not one Min would dodge unless operational requirements made it necessary.

  So they were, within minutes, heading to swing into the Karadon-Kavenko route.

  It was not that busy a route, even now. There might, perhaps, be two or three hundred ships along this route, right now. But stretched out as they were, heading both ways over a three and a half week route at liner speeds, it was a pretty thin stream.

  And they would not, at any rate, have to contend with the usual idiocies of small ships leaving port. Anyone who’d got as far as Karadon or was this close to arriving there had already got past port-leaving panics. And certainly those leaving Karadon could be presumed, for the most part, to be at least basically competent. Quill had no authority to detain ships, of course, however incompetent their skippers might be, but ISiS Corps offered a very attractive salvage package to small craft arriving in difficulties. The overwhelmed and the incompetent were offered the market value of their ship, a free hotel stay and liner tickets home. The long string of abandoned small craft on the station’s trash-tether spoke to the efficacy of that.

  There were always, however, exceptions. The Assegai was obliged to haul up, next day, alongside a ship which Quill’s people had made every effort to purchase, only to be told in the strongest of terms what to do with themselves.

  It was a starseeker, of course – a class of ships universally despised by spacers. They were hardly even regarded as ships, more like superlight caravans, crawling through space routes like annoying little bugs. Starseekers were the smallest, cheapest vessel capable of making intersystem journeys, and as such were bought as yachts by people who were fundamentally groundsiders.

  This was bad enough when they were only making short-hop runs around their home system – weekend spacers, pottering about. But there were some, always some, who considered it an adventure to take their little yachts on Big Trip expeditions. Some of them could be downright militant about their right to do so, too – many systems now had Starseeker clubs which had broken away from mainstream yacht clubs into a kind of protest movement.

  The starseeker they’d caught up with was one of these, displaying the emblem of the Independent Chartsey Yacht Club, the most aggressively defiant of them all. ICYC campaigned against any interference with their constitutional right to free range of intersystem space – against system authorities who would not allow them to launch without a qualified pilot aboard, against insurance companies which tried to limit their range by imposing conditions, and, most vehemently of all, against any no-go zone imposed by the Fleet. The starseeker Constitutional was on its way to ISiS Kavenko, then to Telathor, and to Oriel, not on holiday but in order to protest against and attempt to break through the shipping restrictions imposed by the Fleet.

  Alex, typically, did not regard this as an irritation, but as a teaching opportunity. There’d been talk that morning about them catching up with the Constitutional, and as soon as Alex saw it looming up on long range scopes he brought Jarlner and Bennet to the command deck.

  They sat together at the Ops table, where they could watch what went on without distracting anybody.

  ‘You are about,’ Alex told them, as the Assegai, having run past and around the starseeker to drop their speed enough to come up alongside them, began to signal greetings, ‘to witness the operation of a constitutional democracy.’ He pointed out the little craft, actually smaller than one of the Assegai’s bus-shuttles. ‘That,’ he told them, ‘is a starseeker. We have pulled up alongside it because it is what spacers refer to as a ‘mad bat’, a ship travelling significantly faster than its safe operating speed.’ He saw the glance they gave at the speed indicator on astrogation charts, and grinned. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said, understanding how difficult it was for them to recognise anything travelling that slowly as speeding. ‘But it is exceeding its safe operational speed. A starseeker should not be travelling at more than L6 for any sustained period. L7 is pushing it. L8 is only t
o be used for a couple of hours, max, in situations where they are, say, trying to catch up with a liner. Cruising at L8 means that every system is hovering at red-line, with an ever increasing risk that something, somewhere, will fail. Any responsible ship, seeing them, would advise them of that. A warship on patrol has to run an intervention under Fleet regs. So they are, you see…’ he indicated the watch officer, ‘attempting to establish contact with the skipper to pass on the regulation advisory. And they are refusing to acknowledge, which is deliberate. And which they will, I predict, continue to do for the eight minutes they know it will take before the Assegai can launch a boarding operation.’

  ‘But – why?’ Bennet asked.

  ‘Oh – just to be difficult.’ Alex said, matter of factly. ‘To make things as difficult for us as they possibly can.’

  ‘No – I see that,’ Bennet said. ‘I mean – why are they endangering their lives at that speed?’

  ‘Ah.’ Alex said, and pulled up astrogation charts, alongside information the Assegai had picked up routinely at Karadon. ‘Because with the three people they have aboard, and the amount of storage space available, they can only have a maximum eight weeks of supplies. If they travel at L6 the run to Kavenko will take them ten weeks, seven days. At L8 they can do it in just over seven weeks.’

  ‘Couldn’t they pick up supplies from other ships on the way?’ Jarlner queried, and demonstrating that he’d been paying close attention to how starships operated in the League, ‘From liners?’

  ‘Sticky point,’ Alex said. ‘Liners will provide supplies to other ships in need, of course, but there is a difference between helping out ships with top-ups and treats, and being expected to resupply yachts which have deliberately gone beyond their safe range. Both liner companies have a policy by which they will provide supplies if small craft like that have got themselves into difficulties, but they will charge for doing it – at a minimum, ten times more than the supplies would cost in port, plus a significant handling fee. Freighters, too, will charge as much as they can get away with, on principle, to discourage people taking yachts beyond their safe operating range. The Fleet doesn’t do that, but then, there are so few Fleet ships out here, and not on any schedule, the chances are extremely remote that a Fleet ship will be around when you want one.’

  ‘But – they could get to Kavenko very much more quickly,’ Bennet commented. ‘Even the slowest freighter will get there quicker than that – and the fast liners in thirty six days.’

  ‘Oh yes – they could travel far more quickly, safely, and in much greater comfort,’ Alex confirmed. ‘But these are ICYC – how can I explain?’ He pondered. ‘There is a certain kind of personality – didactic, obsessive, crusading, always have to be rising up in indignation against something, the kind of people who write to their Senator saying that civilisation is going to the dogs because some teenagers were messing around on the train. You have them, I suppose, even on Samart?’

  Bennet nodded. ‘Complainers,’ she said, in a tone which made it very clear that such people were despised.

  ‘Yes – some just spend their whole lives complaining,’ Alex agreed. ‘Others become activists, campaigners – and that can be a good thing, obviously, when people are fired up about something that really isn’t right, that’s good. But sometimes that indignation, that protest, can be misdirected. And this, I believe, is a case in point. Starseeker owners are very aware of what real spacers think of their nasty little ships, which makes most of them kind of defensive to some degree. But there are a minority – I’d guess around ten per cent – who get angry and resentful over what they see as the Fleet and liner companies and even freighters trying to prevent them from exercising their constitutional right to free, unhindered travel in intersystem space. The most militant join clubs like ICYC, Independent Chartsey Yacht Club, to campaign against what they consider to be unfair, unconstitutional and even bullying restrictions on them. My guess would be that the Constitutional is en route to challenge the ban on all but authorised shipping going any further than Oreol. It doesn’t matter to them that there are two good reasons for that ban – the first that the Carrearranians themselves have asked to be protected from an uncontrolled deluge of shipping overwhelming them, and the second that small ships like that could not survive the pretty challenging route we opened up. So until the Carrearranians are ready and a safer route has been found, Oreol really is as far as they can go. But none of that matters, see. They have what you might call tunnel vision. Carrearranis is now within League space because we moved our borders out to encompass it. Citizens have the inalienable right to travel unhindered in League space and there are warships there preventing them from going down that route, so the fact that A, the Carrearranians don’t want them there and B, it would be suicidal, that’s irrelevant. ICYC is challenging that ruling in the courts, the Senate and in the media, and sending as many of their people out there as they can to protest against it on-scene. So that’s what’s going on, pretty certainly. And in that light, see, having a destroyer come up alongside and tell them they’re risking their safety by travelling at that speed, that, to them, is an outrage, bullying, so they, retaliating, will waste as much of our time as they can. I could,’ he observed, with a wry smile, ‘write you a script…’ as they looked at him in surprise, he took a lumo-pen from his pocket. ‘Here…’

  7 minutes – Assegai signals intention to launch boarding party. No response.

  8 minutes – Assegai launches shuttle with emergency rescue team commanded by Exec. No response.

  9 minutes – As shuttle approaches, Constitutional signals refusal of permission to dock.

  9 – 20 minutes, shuttle holding off, Assegai signalling, no response.

  21 minutes, Assegai signals intention to board under concerns that it may be under the control of someone other than its lawful owner. Two minute warning given.

  23 minutes, Constitutional signals ID and a legal declaration that they are in no difficulties and require no assistance.

  24 minutes. Assegai requests confirmation that they have received safety advisory concerning their excessive speed.

  25 minutes. Constitutional signals abusive language to the effect that they wish us to go away now and leave them alone.

  26 minutes – Assegai signals final safety advisory and resumes course.

  This, it transpired, was what everybody was expecting, with a sense of weary fatalism on the command deck. Min, however, did stroll down to the Ops table at around eleven minutes, leaving the watch commander sending patient signals to the obstinately silent starseeker.

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ she said to Alex, ‘you have any suggestions?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re doing and saying everything I would myself.’

  Min sighed quietly. ‘So frustrating,’ she said, and looked at Jarlner and Bennet, observing this ludicrous stand-off between the ugly little yacht and the pride of the Fleet. ‘How would you deal with a situation like this?’ she asked, just amicable, passing the time while they waited to be sworn at by the civilians.

  Jarlner looked at Bennet, who smiled slightly.

  ‘Blow them up,’ she said.

  Silence fell around her, moving out in a ripple as if from a rock thrown into a pond. Heads turned across the command deck. Had she actually just said that?

  ‘Er…’ said Min.

  ‘They’re not only risking their own lives, but the safety of others,’ Bennet said, matter of factly. ‘Blow them up now, no more problem.’

  ‘Er,’ said Min again, and gathering herself, ‘You mean – board and arrest them, then blow up their ship?’

  ‘No, they’re idiots,’ said Bennet. ‘Just blow them up.’

  The silence was profound, tinged with horror and perhaps just a little, a very little, yearning.

  It was Jarlner who gave it away. As Alex sat gazing blandly at screens and Min gave Bennet an appalled stare, Jarlner gave a tiny little hiccup of laughter… and in the next moment, he, Bennet
and Alex were all laughing.

  ‘Oh….’ Min gave the expected groaning reaction to realising that she had been the victim of a wind-up, but she was looking more relieved than anything. ‘That was not funny!’ she said, then laughed a little herself as she imagined what she must have looked like. ‘Well, okay, yes, it was…’ she grinned at Bennet, and only then realised the significance of what had just happened there. Bennet had joked with her, pulling her leg. And Min understood enough about Samartian culture to recognise that meant that Bennet was now treating her as a sister, as a beloved, as a trusted friend.

  ‘But seriously,’ Bennet said, ‘why don’t you just take them off it for their own safety, and blow the nasty little thing up?’ She looked at Alex, enquiring, ‘You do that sometimes, don’t you?’

  The deck officer on duty there was obliged to remonstrate with some of the personnel giving way to unmannerly laughter at that, restoring a modicum of dignity to the command deck, but Alex himself laughed as much as any of them.

  ‘I don’t – I really don’t,’ he protested. ‘There’s this silly rumour, a myth, really, that I go about blowing up starseekers all over the place, but I honestly don’t. I’ve only blown up four…’ he was obliged to pause at that, as Min gave a whoop and ‘Hah! Only four!’, but continued with an assumption of dignity, ‘And every one of them was operationally justified – handed over to me as salvage by their skippers after full and proper procedure including legal advice and medical evaluation, and only subject to destruction order because we were operational and not in a position to take them under tow. The Admiralty – and the courts – are satisfied that I acted legitimately in every one of those cases, so I really can’t see why people persist in believing that I grab people off starseekers and blow them up for the hell of it. And we can’t do that here,’ he said, turning to Bennet to answer her question. ‘It has to be a voluntary handover, which is obviously not going to happen here.’

  This led to a discussion of intersystem law, constitutional principles and Fleet regulations which took them to the point where the Constitutional signalled eighteen words of which the only printable ones were ‘you’ and ‘off’.