‘Captain,’ he greeted Alex amicably. He’d brought his ship close enough for holo-link, and his image appeared on the comscreen. He was, Alex saw, on the Stepeasy’s flight deck, sitting in the skipper’s chair with one leg hooked casually over the side. He looked even younger than his fifteen years, and was as usual ridiculously attired. His fashion statement today included glossy ringlets, a smart business tunic, garishly bright surfer shorts and bare feet.
‘Mr North,’ Alex responded, and they exchanged grins. This too was part of the tussling friendship between them. Davie knew perfectly well that Alex was not a captain, which was a flag rank in the Fleet, but he persisted in calling him that just as Alex stuck firmly to ‘Mr North’. Neither would be the first to back down and call the other by their first name. It was one of the small but important ways by which both of them maintained their independence. ‘Good to have you in company,’ Alex told him, and transmitted a file, ‘There’s our flight plan to Karadon.’
Davie chuckled acknowledgement of a hit, at that, in the customary banter between them. This was one of the things that Alex liked about Davie North, that he understood every subtle nuance when Alex was pulling his leg. On the face of it, it was a professional courtesy to provide the yacht with their flight plan, acknowledging that the Stepeasy’s presence was at least semi-officially authorised. At the same time, though, it was cheeky, treating the Stepeasy as if it were a subordinate ship under Alex’s command.
‘Aye aye, captain,’ Davie said, tossing a joking salute, and Alex chuckled too, accepting that honours were about equal, with that. ‘So, how’s Shion?’ This too was typical of conversations with him, as he tended not to smooth from one topic to another but just got straight to the point. This could come across as brash, particularly when he felt that you were waffling or being stupid and made his feelings all too clear. His social skills, Alex felt, could use some polish. But then, what hope had he had of learning to have normal social conversation with ordinary people, surrounded as he had been all his life by functionaries who handled all that sort of thing on his behalf? Alex had seen the tremendous deference with which his retinue treated him, the respectful murmurs and instant obedience when Davie gave a command. Even now, Alex knew, there would be the ever-present retinue in close attendance, including lawyers, bodyguards, valets, medics, aides and stewards. And they really would be right there with him, too, at least twenty people following him everywhere he went, even on his own ship. He could, as he had once demonstrated, dismiss all but a handful of them when he wanted to – the few who hadn’t left when he ordered them all out did not, as he’d explained, work for him, but for his father. They were the security and medical people charged with responsibility for his safety and health. Alex had no difficulty understanding why Shionolethe had declined an invitation to travel aboard the Stepeasy.
‘Fine,’ he answered, easily. ‘Already at work in engineering – you can talk to her if you like.’
‘No – I won’t play mother hen,’ Davie said, and having cast an eye over the flight plan that Alex had sent him, did another of his firework leaps of topic, commenting, ‘Interesting course.’
They were not heading on the straight line route from Amali to Karadon, but curving around to slide into a major shipping route.
‘Patrol,’ Alex explained, succinctly, at which Davie looked dismayed.
‘Aww!’ he protested, like a child told he had to clean his room. ‘But that lane’s solid with starseekers!’
That was an exaggeration, of course, though he did have a point. The lane they would be joining was one of the busiest routes even within the Central Worlds, from Telfa to Karadon. Telfa was, as they were proud to declare, the home of the Starseeker, the most affordable intersystem yacht on the market, and so easy to fly that you didn’t even need training to pilot it. Anyone with an ordinary aircar license could operate the controls, they said, intuitively. There were, of course, regulations that prevented unqualified pilots from taking ships superlight, but they only applied within system space. Starseekers and other small craft got around this by having a launch pilot come aboard, seeing them through launch and then leaving them to it. The trip to Karadon from there would take only four and a half weeks even at the crawling speed starseekers could manage, and it was indeed a very popular cruise. Ironically, it had become so again thanks to the Fourth’s own success in putting a stop to drug smuggling and piracy at Karadon.
‘All the more reason to patrol it,’ Alex pointed out. He might well be of the view, himself, that the best use for starseekers was for live-fire target practice, but he was conscious of his responsibility for them. They would also get operational credit for the patrol to add to the balance sheet when the Senate’s Sub-Committee was reviewing whether they were giving sufficient value for money. ‘We are, after all, an operational warship.’
‘Touché,’ Davie conceded, at this jibe against his own ship’s status of luxury playboy yacht. ‘I’d put Starseeker out of business,’ he observed, ‘and have all the ones in production bought up just for the pleasure of scrapping them, but,’ he shrugged, ‘Constitution Three, you know.’
Alex did know. The third device of the League constitution was the one that guaranteed that space between their worlds would be free to all. The Founding Families, descendants of the people who had put their signatures to that constitution, considered it to be their role and responsibility to defend it to the hilt. This could put them into dispute with government at times when they considered the Senate to be infringing constitutional rights, as indeed had been the case at Karadon, but it was inconceivable that they would breach the constitution themselves.
‘Just tell me,’ Davie requested, ‘that we’re not going to arrive at Karadon like parental ducks.’
Alex grinned, with the mental image of them, the frigate and the super-yacht, arriving at Karadon with a long string of forlorn little starseekers waddling behind.
‘No,’ he said, ‘If they need more assistance than we can provide in passing, we’ll take them aboard and treat the yachts as salvage. Unless, of course,’ he suggested, innocently, ‘you’d like to help out by offering the hospitality of your ship, instead?’
Davie just gave him a withering look and broke off the call, leaving Alex laughing.
Chapter Six
An hour later, there was no hint of any smile about Alex at all, as he held a meeting with Professor Pattello in his daycabin. The things he had to say to the professor about her rights and their limits as a passenger aboard a warship brought some colour to her face, which flamed even more at the things he had to say about professionalism and good manners. When he took her to task over her rudeness to Shionolethe, however, she defended herself heatedly.
‘I don’t believe she should have access to our lab,’ she said. ‘We have highly classified work going on in there, work vital to the defence of the League. We know practically nothing about her – she isn’t even human, and for all you know she could be a spy, reporting back on our defensive capabilities. I can hardly believe she’s been allowed aboard a warship at all, and I’ve registered my protest and concern at that, on record. I don’t see on what grounds, furthermore, you can give her access to our work – it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she was here to find out about the Ignite. Well, she won’t get any access to it while I have anything to say about the matter. It is nothing short of...’
It was at that point, seeing that she might rant on in that vein indefinitely, that Alex deployed what the media referred to as his ‘psycho stare’.
As many people, superiors and subordinates alike, could have testified, it was not a pleasant experience being on the receiving end of that. It was a look of utterly dispassionate, freezing authority, no hint of any human warmth at all in his piercing grey eyes. Professor Pattello was not the first person to falter, mid rant, shocked by the menace of that look. It did feel, indeed, as if Alex might slap you across the face at any moment.
‘You do not,’ he said, in
a clipped, dismissive tone, ‘have any say in the matter. Those decisions are made at the highest level. Shionolethe is, in fact, the guest of the League government, with orders for this, for every provision being made for her, coming from the Senate directly, and signed by the President himself. If you feel that you have the right and status to argue with the League President over that decision, Professor, go right ahead. In the meantime, however, you have signed a commitment to comply with my orders whilst you are a passenger aboard my ship, and if you continue to defy those orders, causing any further offence to Shionolethe, I will have no hesitation in confining you to the lab, and if it comes to that, putting you off the ship at Karadon – and don’t tell me that I have no right,’ he continued, as her mouth dropped open, ‘because I do. I can put you or any other passenger off at any port without even having to give you a reason, and if you think the Second would protest against you being put off the ship you are, believe me, very much mistaken. They will be mortified when they learn that one of the civilians they have sent aboard is causing such offence and disruption. And we can, I should point out, carry out the missile test perfectly well without your involvement; we have more than sufficiently qualified personnel for that.’
Her mouth was now opening and closing like that of a stranded fish. ‘So I suggest,’ his tone was glacial, ‘that you reconsider your attitude.’
She was brick red when she left his cabin, and news that the skipper had given her a rocket was all over the ship even before she’d got back to the lab. It amused Alex to note, as he went back to work on the command deck, that his crew were being suddenly very quiet and brisk about their duties. The words the skipper’s on the warpath were hovering in the air, even though he was, visibly, his usual calm and good humoured self. He didn’t feel the need to do anything about the sudden and conspicuous good conduct, though – it wouldn’t do any harm, and he knew it wouldn’t last for long.
Shion, at least, wasn’t upset by it. She did come to see Alex, later that evening, but only to ask him if they would still be doing the Ignite test.
‘Yes, of course,’ Alex said, mildly surprised. ‘Why, Shion?’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she explained. ‘I know it’s serious, it’s a weapon you’re testing, not a toy...’ she spoke with a severe tone that made it apparent that she was quoting someone else, and Alex grinned. ‘And I know how important it is for you to maintain an edge so the Marfikians don’t invade your worlds. But – you’re going to blow up a planet. And they tell me that if it works, there won’t be anything of it left.’
‘That’s the idea,’ Alex confirmed. ‘The Ignite is a tactical missile – the idea is to be able to take out a given planet or moon within a system without damaging other worlds or the system’s infrastructure. If it works, we’d be able to take out, say, the planets and moons that Marfik uses for manufacturing warships, without risk to inhabited worlds.’
Shion nodded. She had already been told all about the Ignite project before she came aboard. It was quite obvious, really, that the authorities were hoping that allowing her to see a secret weapons test like this might lead to her being more forthcoming about her own world’s technologies. It was about, said the Diplomatic Corps briefing, building trust in a relationship of mutual exchange. For Shion, though, equally clearly, it was about the fun of blowing stuff up.
‘And,’ she said, ‘we get to go to a system that nobody has ever been to before – that’s so amazing!’
Alex couldn’t help laughing at that. The system designated as ‘Ignition One’ was in a region hatched out on starmaps as not yet surveyed. It was one of many such regions within League space, with many hundreds of thousands of stars that had yet to be visited. Long range observation had already determined that they had no life-bearing planets, and they were too distant from inhabited worlds to be of any interest for mining purposes, so no ships had been to them directly yet.
‘Always fun to go Van Dameking,’ Alex agreed. Then, seeing that that was a bit of jargon she hadn’t learned yet, ‘We call it Van Dameking when we’re traversing any unsurveyed space, after our greatest explorer, Oscar Van Damek. It isn’t any kind of important exploration, of course, these are all systems well within our borders, scanned and classified, only technically unmapped. But it is, admittedly, quite something to stand on a world, knowing you’re the first people ever to set foot on it.
‘You get to name things, too, if you’re Van Dameking or first footing – the Cartographic Service may roll their eyes and sigh, but they have to accept whatever feature-names the skipper has logged on the traverse, so there are all manner of weird and wonderful names for planets and astrogation features. Here, see?’ He called up a starmap. ‘There are more than eighty thousand named features in League space alone,’ he said. ‘Including the Monkey’s Armpit, the Kissing Frogs and my personal favourite, the Really Stupid Way To Bring A Starship.’ He grinned, bringing it up on the chart to show her the named route. ‘Spacers only use a few of them, really, and informally, of course, we don’t use them in official flight plans. We won’t be able to name anything this trip – well, we can if we want, but it won’t appear on published charts so it doesn’t count. But if you like, when the opportunity arises, we’ll first-foot somewhere we can register, and you can name something.’
‘I’d love that,’ Shion said, ‘thank you, skipper. But only,’ she added, with a conscientious air, ‘if it isn’t any trouble.’
Alex gave her an amused look. It was obvious to him that the task-series the Fourth had been assigned to had been planned for Shion’s benefit. All his orders were secondary to the overriding priority of his responsibility for her. There was, in fact, no such thing as ‘too much trouble’ when it came to fostering that relationship.
‘No trouble,’ he said, and added, truthfully, ‘We like Van Dameking, too.’
‘And blowing stuff up,’ she chuckled, and then in just the same casual, cheerful tone, ‘I wanted to ask you, too – people are making bets on whether we’ll get to blow up a starseeker, so when would be a good time for me to put my money on?’
There was a momentary, frozen stillness amongst the Heron’s crew, instantly followed by the best nonchalance they could manage. Alex was quite still for a moment, too, then grinned.
‘I think,’ he said carefully, ‘that you must have misunderstood, Shion. If you were actually to be telling me on record – as all things are on the command deck – that members of my crew are gambling aboard ship, I would have no option but to investigate that and bring appropriate charges against those involved, since betting money is very definitely against regulations. Custom and practice, however, allows for a certain tolerance of such things as running dollar sweepstakes and playing cards for pennies as long as its discreet, meaning by definition that you don’t tell the skipper. Silly, really, I know, since I’d be a poor sort of skipper if I didn’t know about such things, but it’s how we do things in the Fleet, a tacit understanding. So I daresay,’ he looked significantly at her, ‘that what you heard was just people talking about the odds of such an occurrence, not actual money changing hands.’
‘Oh, I see,’ she said, and agreed, just as carefully, ‘That must have been it, skipper.’
‘Good,’ he said, with a nod of commendation for how quick on the uptake she was with that. ‘As for the starseekers, that’s just a joke, really. I have, admittedly, blown up rather more starseekers than most Fleet skippers do, though that’s mostly because most Fleet skippers would rather not risk being sued. Salvage is always a tricky issue, legally, and yacht salvage is notorious. People who’ll be sobbing in your arms and thanking you for saving their lives may well turn around a few months later and sue you, alleging that they could have managed perfectly well if they’d just been provided with technical help. That’s usually about the time when they finally accept that their insurance company won’t pay out, see, at which point they consult a lawyer and the lawyer swings into action with the biggest lawsuit they can cont
rive. The thing with that is that they don’t just sue the Fleet, they name the skipper concerned. A lot of skippers seem to find that alarming, and when they’re weighing up options with salvage, most will generally play it safe. What that means is a difficult and time-consuming salvage to get the yacht on an airlock or grapnel tow, and either way, then, having to slow right down and flash your hazard lights all the way back to port. Fine, I daresay, if you’ve nothing else you need to be doing, but we are always on our way somewhere, operational, we can’t waste time towing yachts about. So when we do come across salvage situations, ship abandonment or a vessel beyond repair, I do go for the demolition option. But that is, of course, an entirely legitimate operational decision, not, as some people would have you believe, that I blow up starseekers for fun. It is fun, of course, but that forms no part of my professional assessment and decision.’
Shion chuckled. ‘So – we’re not going this way, then, in the hope of finding a starseeker to blow up?’
‘No – really not, honestly not,’ Alex said, amused, but sincere, too. ‘I’m taking us this way because it is the duty of any warship to patrol shipping lanes whenever practicable. We’ll be on that lane for three days and I would be very surprised if we didn’t have to respond to at least a few distress signals, in that time, as well as fifty to a hundred or so courtesy encounters, exchanging time checks and sending gift boxes to freighters. Most distress signals are routine requests for technical support with no life-or-death element to it, they’d make it to their destination anyway, you’re just helping them along. Sometimes the calls are just ludicrous, too. Those are the ones we laugh about, the yachts flashing distress signal because they’ve run out of coffee, and the like. But you can come across real emergencies, too, rescue people, save lives. For me, it comes down to balancing the urgency of our mission against the help we could be giving. I can’t justify spending any more than the three days I’m giving to patrol. But we can spare that time, and at least I know, then, that we’re doing all we can. Just think how we’d feel, if we went off-lane to Karadon for our own convenience, only to hear that there was an emergency and people had died. So that’s why we’re going on patrol, Shion, genuinely, a matter of professional duty. The possibility of blowing up a starseeker is just a bonus. And if you were, say, to be putting a hypothetical dollar into a hypothetical sweepstake on the odds of that, I’d suggest putting it somewhere in the afternoon of day two.’
XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Page 8
