Thirty-Three
21 December, Al Jadiq System
“That man may be one of the most infuriating I’ve ever met,” Alexis observed once she and Villar were back at Nightingale’s boat.
“Khouri?” Villar asked.
Alexis nodded. Khouri had, at least, provided them with transport across the landing field, as Alexis pointed out the alternative was to for her to call the boat to pick them up, delaying the loading and extending the time her crew spent in and near the marketplace.
“I suppose, though the man he replaced was worse. At least Lieutenant Bensley thought so.”
“I cannot imagine.”
The men from the market had returned to the boat as well and were busy stowing pallets of fresh supplies. Ousley left off at their approach and walked over.
“We’ve a problem, sir.”
Alexis sighed. “Of course we do. We’ve had nothing but, since arriving in this system, Mister Ousley, why should we expect our departure to be any different? What is it now?”
Ousley grimaced and rubbed at the back of his neck.
“Two men missing from the work party, sir. Ruse and Sinkey.”
“Run?” Alexis couldn’t imagine a man wanting to run from the Navy to Al Jadiq, but spacers weren’t known for their thoughts about the future. If a man were fed up with life aboard ship and saw the opportunity to run, he might take it no matter where.
“I think they were took up by the coppers, sir, or whatever it is they have here,” Ousley said. “Brissenden said to me they were chatting up a local girl — they was all told not to, sir, just as always here, but Ruse and Sinkey aren’t ones to listen nor heed.” He turned to Villar. “Come off that frigate what stopped us, sir, if you’ll remember.”
Villar nodded, then to Alexis, “They were part of an … exchange with the frigate’s captain, sir. One of ours for two of his.”
Alexis frowned, that was an odd-sized bargain. “To what purpose? Why would —” She realized even as she was asking what the only reason for a captain to make such an exchange would be. “And they’re the ones who joined up with Iveson and Spracklen, those two miners.”
“They’re not bad in themselves,” Villar said, “but they’re too eager to follow.”
“And troublesome whoresons when they follow the wrong fellow,” Ousley added, then quickly to Alexis, “Begging your pardon, sir.”
“I’ve heard the same and worse, Mister Ousley,” she assured him. “Besides which, I think asking a bosun to watch his language might very well be against the Articles — the unwritten ones at least. So let me hear from this Brissenden what he saw, then.”
Ousley called Brissenden over and the young spacer shifted nervously from foot to foot as he described what he’d seen when asked.
“Ruse and Sinkey was slackin’, sir, as they’re wont to do?” He waited until Alexis nodded for him to continue. “So they’s at the back o’ the line fer loadin’, y’see? An’ there’s this girl at the next stall … well, seems she could be a girl, and it’s hard to tell with ‘em all bundled up as they are here and their faces covered, innit?” He hurried on. “But I didn’t say nothin’ to her, y’understand? Nor look too long at all. Been here before, haven’t I?”
“Yes, Brissenden,” Villar said. “No one’s suggesting you’ve done anything wrong, we just wish to hear what you saw.”
“Well, they was sort of lookin’ at her,” the man continued. “An edging toward her, y’know? An’ I thought I should say some’at to Mister Ousley at the time, but then it’s all ‘lift this’ and ‘load that’, an’ I never thought of it no more.” He paused. “’Til I heard a shout, that is.”
“A shout?” Alexis asked after a moment’s silence.
“Yes, sir. I heard this shout an’ thought it was ‘Nightingale’, which seemed odd, bein’ English and all and our ship’s name and us not hearin’ that so much in the markets here, y’see? An’ I looked around but didn’t see nothing.” He swallowed hard. “But then as we’re startin’ back an’ Mister Ousley he notes that Ruse an’ Sinkey’s gone, y’see, it’s then that I remember a bit more.”
“Go on and tell it, Brissenden,” Ousley prompted. “It’s not getting any tastier stewing in your skull.”
Brissenden nodded. “No, sir. It’s like this, what I seen. There’s one o’ them aircars in the street, see, with two o’ there coppers-like at the back door. The ones with the lasers. An’ they’re mostly at the gates from that market to the rest o’ the city — least when I’ve seen ‘em before.”
“That would be the Jannisarian Guard, sir,” Villar told Alexis. “The same who guard the government building where we met with Mister Khouri.” He shook his head. “They’re more of an arm of the politicians than a real police force.”
Alexis frowned. “And in an aircar, you say, Brissenden?”
The spacer nodded. “Aye, sir.”
Alexis scanned the sky above the town and frowned again. There were several craft visible in the air, something she’d barely noted on landing, having become used to such things in her Naval travels. Now it was brought to her attention, though, it did seem odd.
“Mister Villar, does the degree of advanced technology on Al Jadiq strike you at all odd for a colony world?”
Villar nodded. “They brought more than most do at the start, that’s certain.”
“Indeed,” Alexis said. “Dalthus had but three antigrav haulers when I signed aboard Merlin and that after two generations. It’s only the recent gallenium wealth that’s allowed them to bring in more.” She frowned again, eyeing the vehicles in the sky. “A wealthy and extravagant people.”
It puzzled her how a new colony world, even one whose settlers had planned their move for years, could afford to import and maintain so much technology they were unable to produce locally, but the matter of her missing spacers took precedence.
“Where would they have been taken?” she asked.
“Ah, sir, there’s no telling that, I think,” Ousley said. “Play it close the vest, the Jadiqis do.”
Villar nodded. “If they were taken, there’s no telling where they’re being kept. They’ll be tried and beheaded once we’ve left the system.”
“Beheaded?” Alexis asked. “For talking to a girl?”
“It happened once before, early in my time aboard Nightingale,” Villar said. “A man went missing. We assumed he’d run — perhaps he did — and we heard on our next visit that he’d been executed. I was never quite sure of the charge, as we have so little contact outside the single market.”
“Laws here’re all fool convoluted,” Ousley said. “Like Zariah was when I was a lad. All about offense to something or other and lopping off parts.” He spat to the side. “Bloody barbarians.”
Alexis shuddered a bit at the thought herself. “That does seem extreme for merely speaking to a girl. Still, one’s no more dead from that than from a hanging.”
“Least a man can be buried all of a piece if he’s hung,” Ousley muttered.
“Well, who do we speak to about it?” Alexis turned to Villar. “That Mister Khouri again?”
Villar blinked. “Speak to, sir? About what?”
“About our missing men, Mister Villar, and what’s needed to get them back. It’s one thing if we thought they’d run, but if they were taken up by the local watch, then they should be turned back over to Nightingale for any discipline.”
“Sir, I …”
Villar glanced once at Ousley.
“A moment, if you please, Mister Ousley,” Alexis said. “I believe it’s time for you to see the cargo’s well squared away while Mister Villar and I discuss what’s to be done about our wayward men.”
“Aye, sir.”
Ousley nodded and Alexis waited until he was some distance away before speaking quietly.
“Something our bosun should not hear, Mister Villar?”
“No, sir … well, only that I’m not sure if you’ll wish to hear what I have to say.”
&nb
sp; “Out with it, if you please, Mister Villar.” Her lips twitched. “It’s not getting any tastier stewing in your skull, as Mister Ousley pointed out.”
Villar smiled briefly as well, then sighed.
“Sir, I don’t see how it is we’ll get Ruse and Sinkey back. If they were indeed taken and not run, that is.” He shrugged. “Well, even if run, they’re likely in the hands of the guard by now, and the Jadiqis won’t turn them back to us just for the asking.”
Alexis frowned. “I don’t quite understand, Mister Villar. The regulations and colonial charters are quite clear on the point. A man off a Queen’s ship is not subject to the local authorities so long as a Queen’s ship is in system. They’re to be turned back over to the Navy for any punishment.”
Villar scratched at his collar and looked away.
“That is what the charters demand,” he allowed.
Once the boat was loaded, Alexis had it lift and land once more on the opposite side of the field. She and Villar made their way down the ramp to the guarded doorway, but this time the guards made no move to open it. They stared straight ahead, ignoring her.
“I wish to speak with Mister Khouri again,” Alexis said to the one on the right.
“The minister is busy,” the left-hand guard said, not looking at Alexis.
“Show me to the meeting room. I’ll wait.”
“Very busy.”
“All meetings are done,” the other guard said. “All business is done.”
Alexis looked from one to the other. Both guards were impassive, but seemed to give off an aura of self-satisfaction.
“Sir,” Villar whispered, “perhaps if we were to retire to the ship for a time and discuss what might be done.”
“Ruse and Sinkey are in it up to their necks, if we’re correct, Mister Villar, and may not have that sort of time.”
Villar shook his head and nodded back toward the boat, out of earshot of the two guards. They moved there.
“They’ll want the execution public,” Villar whispered. “That’s what we heard they did last time. But it’s one thing to do that once we’ve left, when they can claim the men ran and were left behind, then committed some crime, quite another to do them harm while Nightingale is still in system.”
“Still in system and responsible for them, as their colonial charter stipulates,” Alexis agreed, nodding. “Harming them while we’re in system means admitting they have them, and that …”
“Admitting they have them means they’re obligated to turn the two back to Nightingale for discipline, sir,” Villar said.
Alexis glared at the two guards, but nodded. “So they’re safe so long as Nightingale is in-system — as long as that may be.”
Villar nodded, though Alexis could see from his face that he wasn’t at all confident it would make a difference. Nightingale would have to leave eventually, listing Ruse and Sinkey as run in the muster books if Khouri refused to admit they were being detained. Once the ship transitioned, the two spacers’ fate was sealed.
Even if they haven’t been taken up by the Jadiqis, their fate’s sealed once Nightingale sails. Executed here or marked as deserted and hang for that later, it’s much the same.
The only hope was to somehow convince Khouri to turn them over.
“Let’s away, Mister Villar, and see what we may come up with.”
Alexis managed to barely contain her rage at Khouri until they were back aboard Nightingale. Something in her manner or the set of her jaw, which ached from her clenching it, must have warned the others aboard Nightingale’s boat, though, for the passenger compartment was unusually still and quiet as the boat lifted and made for the ship.
“There may be nothing we can do, sir, it’s the way of …” Villar ventured midway through the flight, then broke off and turned his gaze to the bulkhead as Alexis’ eyes narrowed.
They remained that way for the rest of the flight to Nightingale. Both staring forward at the bulkhead and cockpit hatch, Alexis’ mind whirling over the problem of her missing men and her outrage at Khouri, who she’d come to see as personifying the whole of the Jadiqis, Villar attempting to draw no further attention to himself.
“He has them,” Alexis said quietly as the soft thumps of the boat making fast to Nightingale sounded through the quiet compartment.
Villar nodded.
“He has them and means to kill them as soon as Nightingale sails.” Alexis rose and made her way to the boat’s hatch, unaware that the crew behind her, Villar and the bosun included, remained immobile, watching her instead of jumping into action to unload the boat as they normally would. The hatch slid open as the boat fully docked and Alexis boarded her ship.
“Not my lads, he won’t.”
Thirty-Four
21 December, Al Jadiq System
“Isom, come and look at this, will you?”
Alexis arranged the documents she wanted him to review on her tabletop and slid them to the other side.
The problem was her conflicting orders and regulations all coming home to roost here on Al Jadiq.
On the one hand, the standard clauses in colonial charters, and Al Jadiq’s was no different, called for Naval personnel to be turned over to the Navy for offenses against local laws. Despite the autonomy granted to colonies in their own affairs, the Service would never accept those varied and oftentimes regressive laws being applied to its own personnel.
On the other hand, Nightingale’s specific orders were to “provide neither offense nor insult to local laws and customs, nor to bring any dishonor upon Her Majesty or Her Naval Service”.
“Not a bit of provision for how silly or barbaric those customs might be,” Alexis muttered.
“Sir?”
She shook her head. “Never mind me, Isom, just look over these things.” She ran her fingers over the table spreading things out. “You’ve a legal mind, after all. Is there a bit of this that gives clear direction?”
Isom read through what she’d laid out. “Mister Prescott’s practice was in property, for the most part, sir, and I was just a clerk before I was taken up by the Press.” He pursed his lips. “But I can’t say as how any of this could be called clear, no.”
Alexis grunted. She supposed the easy way around things would be to mark Ruse and Sinkey as run in Nightingale’s muster book, then sail away. That’s what other commanders might do — what Lieutenant Bensley had apparently been satisfied to do before.
Apply the fiction that I don’t know full well what’s happened to them, and what happens to them further after they’re assumed to have run and there’s no Navy ship in-system is of no concern to the Service or its honor.
Her orders were so ambiguous that they could completely justify leaving Ruse and Sinkey to their fate — or forcing the Jadiqis to turn them over.
And on the captain’s head be it, when it’s over and Admiralty finally weighs in.
Isom shook his head again. “Could be read either way, sir. I suppose it would be up to Admiralty to decide?”
“After the fact,” Alexis agreed. “They’ll confirm or disavow a captain’s actions, all after the dust settles.”
“If you don’t mind me saying, sir, those two are no great loss.”
“Ousley said as much.”
“Taken up with those two miners and joined in on the —” Isom broke off, scowling.
Alexis nodded understanding. A captain’s clerk was an odd position — privy to all the crew felt and said, but having the captain’s ear. Being part of the crew he’d be well aware of the extortion happening aboard, but if the crew didn’t want it spoken of openly, it placed him in a bad spot. If the crew found out, they might not trust him in the future.
Isom my ears and my nonexistent coxswain my fist, as it were.
She’d been dearly missing that other appendage since she’d taken the miners, Iveson and Spracklen, aboard. If anything the depredations of the original gang of extorters had grown greater along with their numbers.
Still, there was
no one aboard who seemed to fit the bill — respected enough by the crew to lead her boat crew and enforce her will in the berthing spaces.
Alexis sighed. With no clear direction from her orders, she had to fall back on her own sense of duty. Ruse and Sinkey had been decent enough lads when she’d come aboard. Followers and none too quick, but they hadn’t yet turned to the bad as they had after she’d brought Iveson and Spracklen on.
In a way, their actions could be my fault. If those two miners were a bad enough influence on them. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and gnawed on it. Fault or not, they’re my responsibility, though.
Decision made, she tapped her tabletop to signal the quarterdeck.
“Mister Villar?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve been signaling the Jadiqi to request another meeting with Mister Khouri?”
“Yes, sir,” Villar said. “On the bell, as you ordered.” He paused. “Mister Khouri is still … ‘unavailable and it is unknown when there may be time to receive you’.”
“A new signal, Mister Villar. Inform the Jadiqis that we will be meeting with Mister Khouri in one hour’s time regarding a matter of urgent importance.” She took a deep breath. “Then assemble my boat crew, Corporal Brace, and a dozen Marines.” She paused again, thinking.
“Sir?” Villar asked, perhaps sensing that her orders were not quite complete.
Alexis’ eyes narrowed.
Very well, then, she thought, the exact wording of her orders running through her mind. If Admiralty’s going to leave such things to my discretion, then I’ll bloody well take advantage of that.
Her jaw clenched and she felt the now familiar sense that she was about to do something she’d regret later, but would never choose to change. Much as when she’d thrown Daviel Coalson off the back of Marylin — it made her sick to think of, but she felt certain she’d do it again even knowing that.
Oddly, even with that feeling and the gravity of the situation, it was as though a weight were lifted from her shoulders. At least this was a difficulty she could address directly – she could act.
HMS Nightingale (Alexis Carew Book 4) Page 25
