Jarlner and Bennet were with them, and as Alex went in he saw that he’d been right in one surmise at least. They were on comms, a holo-link call on the big screen, with Jarlner and Bennet introducing the training group to four more Samartian officers.
They were still aboard the Eagle, which had arrived in port five days previously. Groundside quarters had been offered by the Fleet, the Diplomatic Corps and the President of Therik, but all had been declined. The Samartian exchange group had already had more than enough of the discreet but luxurious hospitality provided at Chartsey. They had, in fact, reacted to the hedonistic consumerism of the capital world by becoming increasingly Spartan, themselves, to the point where they would now only eat very simple food and only drank water.
It was striking to see how Jarlner and Bennet had to make a conscious effort to resume the strict military conduct that the others, if anything, had heightened. It was quite shocking to realise that Jarlner and Bennet too had been like that upon first coming aboard, gradually easing up and relaxing as they were absorbed into shipboard culture.
Now, though, they were pulled back to crisp, impersonal efficiency. So Alex did not get to say goodbye to them as he would have wished. Instead, he was introduced to the others on the call and exchanged formal courtesies with them, before telling them all that he was being removed from the ship on a stand-down order.
‘It has been a very great pleasure, and privilege, to work with you,’ he said, and touched fingers with Jarlner and Bennet before – very rapidly – shaking hands around the training group, with nods and smiles but everyone recognising this was no time for jokes or personal farewells.
There was a farewell at the airlock, though. Min was there, with a line-up of people called to see him off. Miloris Forley was one of them, saluting and thanking him for everything he’d done for him.
Alex smiled. Miloris had come aboard the Assegai as a clueless cadet-graduate and was leaving as a competent junior officer, and that was all anyone could ask for of a first posting. And Kate, standing next to him, got an even warmer grin. Kate Naos, final year cadet and super-genius. She would not be going back to her Academy. Even if they tried to take her back, Min had said no, she wouldn’t allow it. And she could spin out the arguments over that, she said, till Kate had graduated. So she would stay here, with the Assegai.
‘Cadet,’ said Alex, returning her salute. ‘Best of luck with your studies.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
He shook hands and returned salutes along the line, working his way through to Min, who was waiting at the airlock itself.
‘My highest, highest compliments to yourself and your ship’s company, skipper,’ he said. ‘It has been an honour to serve with you.’
‘Pleasure and privilege,’ she returned, and shook hands with the friendliest of grins. ‘But you will…’
She was interrupted by the shuttle pilot, sticking his head out through the airlock.
‘Sorry to intr’upt,’ he said. This was an Embassy limo, rather than a Fleet car. Embassy drivers were extremely well trained – bodyguards as well as chauffeurs, and trained to make themselves nearly invisible. This one looked worried. ‘Beg pardon, sir – ma’am,’ he said. ‘But I have orders, sir. I’m to get you to the base by 0912, sir. Professor Penarth’s particular orders, sir.’
‘Understood,’ said Alex, and as he looked speakingly at Min, she giggled.
‘Go!’ she said, and gestured at the airlock. ‘Bye, Alex!’
Alex walked off the ship, laughing.
Twenty One
By the time Alex met Dix Harangay the following day, he knew two things. The first was that if he had to spend more than a month with his parents he would go nuts. And the second was that he was going to be a commodore.
His Dad had told him that, which wasn’t normally the way a Fleet officer got to hear about a promotion. President Tyborne, it seemed, had told them. And Dix had explained, too, as they’d come over with him on the Eagle.
Commodore was not a standard rank in the Fleet. Rank progression past captaincy went straight to rear admiral, then vice admiral to full Fleet admiral. The rank of commodore was rarely used – it was a way to give captains the functional rank of a rear admiral before they had completed the five years at captain’s rank which would allow them that promotion. His parents, of course, were delighted. Their son, the commodore.
For Alex, though, it confirmed what he had feared. He was being moved up, and very firmly, out of ship command. He had no doubt at all that Dix was coming to tell him that the Heron was being transferred back to Chartsey.
Dix came to the house – his parents’ house, where Alex was effectively confined. He had never intended to stay there with them, planning to give them their own space and keep his independence by staying in his own quarters. But Simon had spoken. He was to stay with his parents and they were to ensure that he had a lovely quiet rest with nobody disturbing him. They’d had a bedroom ready for him.
Even Dix had only been permitted access under strict conditions, and was admitted to the house with a courteous but pointed mention of the time when he arrived. Tea was offered, and only when this, three kinds of cake and a plate of biscuits had been provided, did his parents leave the two of them alone together.
‘We’ll only be in the front room,’ said his mother, as if she felt that Alex might need to call for help.
‘Come on, Mother,’ his father ushered her out. ‘They haven’t got long, and they’ve things to talk about.’
When the door had closed, Alex and Dix looked at one another for a moment, evaluating. Alex was out of uniform, wearing a shirt, cardigan-jumper and pants that his parents had bought for him and he hadn’t had the heart to refuse to put on. They had, indeed, taken away all his uniforms, anyway. Dix, though, was looking splendid in his First Lord’s regalia, and quite out of place in the von Strada kitchen.
‘So,’ Alex said, and there was a silence.
‘So,’ Dix said, and looked at him regretfully. ‘I am sorry, Alex. I know this is something you’ve resisted, and I do, honestly, understand your reasons. But the pressure for this is immense, and now that Terrible is coming in as the new Third Lord…’
Alex nodded.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, fatalistically. ‘I was expecting it.’ He fixed Dix in a reproving look, though, as he went on, ‘Though not, admittedly, the commodore.’
‘Ah.’ A flash of guilt crossed Dix’s face. ‘I told Marc Tyborne that in confidence!’ he said, and the words the man is an idiot did not need to be spoken. ‘But I am sorry, obviously, I wanted to tell you myself. But the thing is…’ he hesitated.
‘It’s all right,’ said Alex. ‘I know.’ His parents had already told him that Dix was only allowed to visit for a quarter of an hour, and they’d used up the best part of ten minutes of that welcoming and making him tea. So there was not time for any lengthy explanations. ‘And you needn’t worry – I’m not going to kick off over it, Dix. Orders is orders, and all that – and I get it. Best interests of the Fleet, and the League.’
‘Well, thanks for taking it like that,’ Dix said, with some little betrayals of relief. ‘It isn’t what you want, of course it isn’t, but I do believe it’s for the best, and I hope, too, that your experience on the Assegai has shown you that it’s workable, and tolerable.’
‘Ah,’ Alex said. ‘So that was a set-up, then?’
‘Well – call it a test run,’ Dix said, with an apologetic little grin. ‘You are a very, very stubborn individual, Alex von Strada. I thought the best way to convince you that you could make this work was to let you find out for yourself. And you did superbly, of course, as I knew you would. The Assegai is on their way to Serenity with all the skills they…’ he broke off at Alex’s startled reaction.
‘The Assegai’s gone?’ They hadn’t even been in port twenty five hours, barely enough time even to flush and refill tanks and take on supplies.
‘You didn’t know?’ Dix was astonished, too, and they sat the
re staring at one another in mutual bewilderment. ‘Haven’t you,’ Dix asked, ‘seen the news?’
‘My Dad,’ said Alex, in a carefully controlled voice, ‘has taken the fuses out of all the holovisions. And my Mum has taken my comm and shut it in a drawer. So no, Dix, no, I have not seen the news.’
Dix tried not to laugh, and under Alex’s glacier-stare, turned it into a harumph, but his ears were turning pink.
‘Your, er, parents being quite protective then, I take it,’ he said.
Alex’s eyes bored into his like twin ice-core extractors. He was going to have words with Simon Penarth when he finally caught up with him. Simon had primed his parents, convincing them that Alex was on the verge of exhausted collapse, and given them instructions to coddle and fuss over him as much as they liked. They were to keep him at home on total rest for three days, after which they could start to take him out.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, his parents were convinced that he was – had to be – every bit as outraged, disgusted and sickened by his ex-wife’s behaviour as they were.
It had not taken long for Alex to realise that for them, his mission on the Assegai and the visit to Camae might just as well not have happened. They knew nothing about the Samartian visitors, of course, despite having spent several weeks aboard the Eagle with four of them, so as far as they were concerned Alex had not been doing anything more aboard the Assegai than training up its crew and a special class of officers he’d been ‘teaching how to do operations’. As for the visit to Camae, a couple of weeks at a world they’d never heard of meant nothing to them, as insignificant in their eyes as a river-cruise holiday.
For them, it was their experiences which were relevant – the trip to Chartsey on the yacht the president had sent to fetch them, so thrilling, and all the wonderful things that had happened on Chartsey, and the awful ones, too, as they’d only found out when they got there that Alex’s ex-wife had sold her story as a ‘tragic mum’ and tried to sue Alex into the bargain. They had never actually met their granddaughter; Etta had been no more to them than a flow of baby pictures sent from Chartsey. But the loss of her had torn them up, too, and they knew how painful it must have been to Alex to have had her mother – her killer, as they too believed – coming out of the woodwork at him like that. They were doing their best to help him to deal with this by telling him at length and repeatedly what a terrible, terrible woman she was and that he must not allow her to do him any more harm than she already had. His attempts to convince them that he’d already got over that and had dated a lovely lady at Camae had got him nowhere, though. The shock and upset at Chartsey was still raw to them, and Migan was nothing.
Then, just as Alex was starting to feel a strong desire to beat his head against the nearest solid object, his parents had switched into telling him about their trip from Chartsey to Therik. They had been going to come aboard the presidential yacht, but Dix had offered them quarters on the Eagle and they’d thought it would be lovely, ever so exciting, to experience for themselves the way that Alex himself lived, on a Fleet ship.
They had embraced the experience with a fervour which made Alex flinch, and hate himself for flinching, as they rattled off shipboard jargon, imperfectly understood and all too often imperfectly pronounced. He should not, he knew, be embarrassed by his parents. They were good and brave, fine people, who had stood by him at a time when half the League was believing him a murderous psychotic. It was wrong, terrible, to feel embarrassed by them. But what man could not feel twinges of embarrassment at his parents swanning sunnily about his workplace, getting the jargon all wrong and telling people stories about when he had been a little boy?
To his shame, Alex had escaped by saying he was feeling a little tired, at which they’d fussed and fussed and got him into bed. Before 2200. With a hot milky drink.
‘I may,’ he said, ‘make a break for it if they leave a window open.’
Dix guffawed. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he advised. ‘Simon has said that if you don’t do everything your parents say, he’ll come and take you off and look after you himself.’
‘Ah.’ Alex said, and took a sip of his tea - he was, his mum said, allowed half a cup of coffee with his breakfast, but no more. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Fill me in. The Assegai’s gone to Serenity?’
Dix nodded. ‘They’re needed there,’ he said, ‘asap. No problems, as such. It’s just that things are moving very fast, after all these decades of nothing doing at all, we’ve got three different parties of quarians on their way to Serenity and they’re already talking about some of them going to Cestus. We need the Assegai there. It meant a rip-turnaround here and postponing their home leave, obviously, but we’re giving all their families tickets to the resorts being built on Serenity and Min seemed to feel they’d be happy with that.’
Alex nodded. ‘They were keen to get on to Serenity,’ he confirmed.
‘Keen, and ready,’ Dix said. ‘Thanks to you. They will hit the ground running, that’s for sure. And great work with the Samartians, Alex – the combat skills outcome is phenomenal, and the training group, well, I could spend hours.’ He beamed at him. ‘They’re on the Eagle,’ he told him, ‘ready to head back to Chartsey – we’ll be leaving tomorrow. Oh, and hey, Camae!’ He grinned, saluting Alex with his tea. ‘Good choice! Not the one I’d have picked, but good choice, and damn good work! Slam-dunk mission, there, of real benefit to a world in difficulties. And the exodiplomacy outcomes, wow – Samartians and quarians, who’d have seen that working out as it did? You should be very proud of everything that you achieved there, Alex, you really, really should. And don’t tell me it was a team effort, you always say that, and yes, fair enough, but the key factor on the Assegai, making it all work, that was you. So just accept a compliment for once.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Alex said, drily. And then, trying to ignore the dull pain of the tension in his stomach, ‘And – the Heron?’ He was attempting to sound casual. ‘Chartsey, I suppose.’
‘Inevitably,’ said Dix, and grimaced. ‘They are going,’ he said, with a taut note in his own voice at that, ‘to strip out the real classified tech, put in some fake stuff and open it up as a visitor centre.’
Alex nearly cried out, the shock of that was so great, and it was a moment before he felt he could speak with composure.
‘That,’ he said, icily, ‘is beneath the dignity of any Fleet ship, Dix.’
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ said Dix, ruefully. ‘But that is the decision that’s been made – I know it isn’t the first contact ship but it’s the one everyone watched about on the holly as it went to Quarus. The Senate has slapped an order on it as a ship of historical significance, so it is to be preserved as a museum exhibit.’ He looked at the tight lines of Alex’s mouth. ‘Sorry, Alex.’
Alex took a breath, resisting the impulse to get up and walk about the room, even to walk right out of it. Time was short, and there were things that he had to get straight.
‘And my people?’ He looked at Dix with steely determination. ‘I am trusting you to do the right thing by them.’
‘Well, you hardly need to say that, do you?’ Dix was nettled. ‘Damn straight I’m going to do the right thing by them.’ He was looking, even, a little confused. ‘Why is that even an issue?’
‘Sorry,’ said Alex, realising that he had offended Dix. ‘Being over-protective there, myself.’
As if on cue, there was a tap on the door and his father looked in.
‘Five more minutes, boys,’ he told them, and departed.
Alex and Dix looked at one another, and Alex’s gaze just dared him to comment. Or laugh.
‘So,’ said Dix, with admirable self-possession. ‘You’ll have a month of leave before you get started – longer, if Simon thinks you need it. I’d give you the mission profile now, of course, but, you know,’ he shrugged, ‘Simon.’ And then, as if he expected Alex to know exactly what he was talking about, ‘We’re calling the rendezvous coordinates Point T.’
Alex l
ooked at him enquiringly. ‘What rendezvous coordinates?’
There was a moment. Dix started to laugh, realised Alex was serious and just sat there staring at him in confounded disbelief.
‘The rendezvous coordinates!’ he said. ‘T for Trilopharus!’
‘Oh!’ Alex had been so sure that he was on his way to Chartsey and dreary years of service at Admiralty HQ that he had put the Chethari invitation right out of his mind. ‘Really?’ he gasped. ‘I get to go?’
‘Well, ob…’ Dix broke himself off, mid-word, looking at Alex with dawning realisation. ‘Just how out of the loop are you?’ He asked. ‘Haven’t you picked up any news at all?’
‘Dix,’ Alex said, ‘we haven’t seen another ship since we left Camae. I haven’t seen any news or spoken to anyone but my Mum, my Dad and you, since we came into port. So no, Dix, no, I have not seen any news!’ The repetition was forceful. ‘And you’re telling me – I get to go and meet the Chethari?’
‘Well, you get to go to the T coordinates, yes!’ Dix said, and was speaking urgently, now. ‘Alex, we had an answer back from the Gider, more than four months ago! And the answer to the questions, ‘Do you know if the Chethari approached Alex, are these coordinates correct, can you clarify the nature of the invitation?’ came back minutes later, minutes, Alex, as ‘Yes, yes, and they want the Fourth.’’ He paused, but only for less than a second. ‘It took a bit longer to clarify that they don’t just mean you individually, they mean the Fourth, as a unit. And longer again to determine that they really mean it – anyone other than the Fourth turns up at those coordinates, no deal, no show. So the decision was made, full Senate, sealed session, yes, we go. It’s top secret of course, which means half the spacers in the League already know about it – but the goss on this, I’m guessing, must have got to Camae just after you left, and before my memo to you could get there – you haven’t had my memo, have you?’
Alex gave a quick shake of his head. The knot in his stomach had dissolved under a rush of joyous excitement. He was going to go and meet the Chethari. It was real, and the mission was his. And the Fourth’s… they wanted the Fourth.
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