As Harry gave him a shocked, even hurt look, Alex looked steadily back at him. ‘I know, you have followed protocol meticulously, and I’m sure you’ve been courteous, personable and your idea of informal, too, in your dealings with the spacers, but that is it, you see, you’ve approached them as a problem you have to deal with, informants you have to coax into passing on intel. They are not stupid, you know, not by a long way, they can see that ulterior motive and they find your approach with it both clumsy and condescending.’
Harry flushed, not least because the First Lord had told him, personally, that his manner towards merchant spacers could be condescending, and that he would have to watch that, if he was to win their trust.
‘In what way, clumsy?’ he asked, strongly on his dignity.
‘In the way that you and your officers go aboard, hand over a packet of biscuits, sit there for ten to fifteen minutes making self conscious small talk, then start talking about the need for Fleet and merchant service cooperation in tackling intersystem crime.’ Alex said, drily. ‘The word ‘insulting’ was used several times, in that context.’
Harry looked mightily indignant. ‘They said that to you?’
‘Not to me, no – to my crew, and officers.’ Alex said. ‘I authorised personal calls within minutes of coming into station, and it didn’t take long for people with mates aboard the freighters to get in touch with them. Note, there, mates, not contacts. You have, I know, asked your crew to tap any contacts they might have in the merchant service and report that to you. I am aware, too, that you have made that a formal procedure, with the crewmember filing a written report. You can’t, or shouldn’t, ask people to do that, Harry, you really shouldn’t. Even when I do ask crew to make specific calls to people to find out as much as they can about a particular issue, they make those calls in private and only report back to me, verbally, as much of it as they feel is relevant. You have to allow that they will be talking frankly, between mates, possibly using language the Fleet does not approve and certainly being far more frank in their opinions of officers than the Fleet would tolerate.’
Harry stiffened, moving unconsciously to sit at attention.
‘I certainly do not have to allow that!’ he said, with an edge to his voice that reminded Alex that he too was on the tagged and flagged programme and expected to make admiral one day. ‘It is a disciplinary offence for any Fleet personnel to be derogatory about superior officers, on or off the ship, and if I found that my crew were making calls from the ship expressing disrespect for officers to merchant spacers or anyone else, I would have no hesitation putting them on a charge.’ He looked accusingly at Alex. ‘You always did have a very lax attitude to that sort of thing.’
‘I’ve always had a very realistic attitude to that sort of thing,’ Alex said. ‘And a sense of humour about it, too. Discipline, yes, of course, any ship needs that, and there are lines my crew know not to cross. But as far as I’m concerned, if they follow orders and conduct themselves professionally at work, I really don’t mind what they might say about me in private.’
‘Well, it’s different for you, of course,’ said Harry. ‘But you watch your crew, don’t you? Round the clock monitoring on the mess decks?’
‘Yes, we have that – fair exchange, we have round the clock feed from the command deck, too.’ Alex said. ‘But the comms feeds aren’t to monitor what the crew are saying. We have the same kind of blind-eye culture about that as any Fleet ship. Even you, surely, if you walked through the mess deck on the Minnow and heard crew telling dirty jokes, would turn a deaf ear?’
‘That is the protocol when crew are at mess tables, yes,’ said Harry, looking rather annoyed by the even you in that remark. ‘Though if a member of my crew was habitually using inappropriate language on the mess deck, I’d have a CPO have a quiet word with them about it. But you’re telling me you allow your crew to talk freely and derogatively about the officers, even when you’re monitoring them?’
‘I don’t tend to listen to their conversations at all,’ Alex told him. ‘None of us do, unless something particularly interesting or amusing is going on. The monitors are only there to give us an ‘open ship’ atmosphere, and the only professional use I make of that, really, is in awareness of the ship’s morale, the buzz that tells you how the crew are feeling. I certainly would not expect to monitor their personal calls or mail, and I wouldn’t consider it right even to ask them to either hand over copies of their private calls and mail or to file detailed written reports about them. The calls they’ve made, overnight, have been genuine, private calls, catching up with mates on other ships, swapping gossip, having a laugh. What information they’ve passed to Murg, our data analyst, has been voluntary and whatever they themselves feel comfortable sharing. The important thing to note in that is that the people they’re talking to are aware that they will share that information with us, and are, obviously, fine with that. Many of them, indeed, have asked their mates to pass things on, as people do tell Murg when information has come in as ‘tell your skipper’. Actually they’re unlikely to have referred to me as ‘your skipper’ but the crew are tactful about that, don’t use nicknames aboard ship.’
A certain amount of respectful nicknaming was permitted in the Fleet, and officers, like Buzz Burroughs and Very Vergan, might be referred to that way informally by the crew. Harry was aware that Alex was widely known as ‘von Supernova’ in the Fleet, but since his founding the Fourth and fame in drugs operations, all manner of nicknames had been coined for him, some by the media and others in spacer bars. ‘Ironeyes’ was one of the more socially acceptable, with reference to the duralloy qualities of his reproductive organs being commonplace. Harry knew that he himself was referred to as ‘All Right Alington’, and felt that this was fine, respectful and expressive of the regard in which he was held by his crew. He had failed to grasp the subtext, there, by which the Fleet was actually conveying their opinion that he was all right, but nothing all that special.
‘So – your information comes via the crew, then? On licence, even, to be derogatory about you and other superiors?’
‘No, it comes in right across the board,’ Alex told him, patiently. ‘Buzz, I believe, knows practically every skipper out there, and he’s been chatting to some of them, as have all our other officers who know people on those ships, and that goes right down to an ordinary star who has a cousin working on a liner. Word of mouth, of course, is everything, to spacers. That’s what I meant in the reports I sent the Admiralty about how we’d come by so much information, here. We didn’t go aboard freighters making stiff small talk, asking questions about what cargo they had or what ports they’d been to recently. We gossiped, had a laugh, talked about ships and mutual acquaintances, just normal friendly spacer goss. And if, as we were leaving, they mentioned casually that we might want to take a look at such and such a ship, we just said thanks, just as casually, leaving it at that. We did not shake hands with them and thank them for being good citizens. You could get away with that if you were having a laugh with it, saying ‘good boy’ and handing out lollipops, but seriously? They find it patronising, and many of them have commented, in fact, that they’d rather talk to Customs.’
Harry winced. ‘Surely not!’ he said, in shocked tones that betrayed the depth of division between the Fleet and the Customs and Excise service.
‘Well, you know, fair play to Customs, they’re on the ball with this one,’ Alex said. ‘They pulled Ternalt off, fast, after he tried to muscle in on our operations here, and they’ve sent out people on much the same orders as yours. We met one of their patrols on the way in. They weren’t keen to be friendly with us, obviously, but it’s apparent that while they were in port, they got on well with the spacers. Better than you are, frankly.’ He gave the other skipper a moment to consider that, then told him, ‘If you want to succeed, here, you’re going to have to rethink your approach quite significantly. Stop treating the spacers as informants to be tapped, and just, you know, make friends with th
em. Come on, Harry, you’re good at this networking stuff, this should be child’s play to you.’
Harry looked ruffled. ‘That’s different!’ he replied. ‘Totally different – social networking, professional information gathering, totally different worlds.’
Alex sighed inwardly, reaching for his coffee. As he did so, a freefall alert rippled through the ship, with a rapid beeping and a tremor pulsed through the deck. Alex flipped the freefall lid onto his coffee.
‘Housekeeping,’ he explained, as it was now 0750. ‘If you’ve finished..?’
A rigger came in without knocking as they were putting their plates and cutlery back into the trolley. The ship was in freefall by then and the rigger was floating in mid air, though hooking one foot under a freefall bar beneath the table so that he could wipe it over. He was being ostentatiously efficient in front of the other skipper, using decontaminant spray and carrying out a rapid scan of walls and other surfaces that were routinely cleaned by autobots. He was only there for a couple of minutes, during which time Alex continued to drink his coffee and chatted amicably to Harry about the Minnow’s tendency to nose-upward at high speed.
Harry responded in kind, but it was apparent to Alex that he was not happy either about the intrusion of the crewman, or about the freefall. Harry was perfectly competent and comfortable in freefall, of course, he’d hardly be a spacer otherwise, but there was, as in so many things, an issue of command style, there. Alex was far from being the only Fleet skipper who combined the traditional morning clean-through of the ship with freefall exercise. That was an innovation that had been approved decades before, becoming part of the skipper’s discretionary protocols that set the tone of any ship. Doing the morning housekeeping chores with the ship in freefall marked Alex, unsurprisingly, as a progressive, modernising skipper, pushing for the best performance he could get out of his crew. Many Old School officers, however, Harry amongst them, regarded this as unnecessarily demanding, putting crew under an unfair pressure of work.
When the crewman had gone, they resumed their discussion, Alex doing his best to persuade Harry that he really could, and should, approach the task of gaining information from the merchant spacer community in just the same way he networked at a far more elevated social level. Harry was not the slightest bit convinced, he could see that, and remained immovable on all key issues, either making doubtful noises or flat out telling Alex that he would not conduct professional matters that way. More than fifteen minutes later, Alex was still trying to convince him to drop the official written report policy for crew passing on any information they were given. Then there was another rapid beeping, a pulse through the deck, and gravity returned.
Alex made no comment at all. He did not even glance at his wristcom. Harry, however, broke off what he had been saying, looked at the time, and stared at Alex with rising indignation.
‘They’ve finished?’
Alex nodded.
Harry visibly swelled, assuming as massive a pomposity as his slender physique would permit.
‘I always feel, myself,’ he stated, with mighty dignity, ‘that the Fleet sets guidelines for drills and tasks for a reason, for safety and thoroughness, and as fair and reasonable standards, long term.’
Alex saw him off the ship a few minutes later, both of them putting on a cordial performance. Buzz came to intercept him as soon as the airlock was closed, offering a hand-held scanner and a hopeful grin.
‘Would you, dear boy?’
Alex took the scanner without comment, hearing the suppressed glee about the ship, instantly stilled. The tension was extraordinary as he made his way around the frigate, pausing in every section to do spot checks of cleanliness. The crew were on their toes, holding their breath, watching him every second, as eager as athletes waiting for the starter shot. It took him twenty five minutes to carry out the regulation spot-checks, being solemnly followed all the way around by the Housekeeping Sub and Buzz Burroughs himself. In all that time the only voices were murmurs, quickly shushed. Shiny Sugorne, the Sub responsible for supervising housekeeping, was turning steadily more purple with excitement.
Finally, they were on the command deck, where three touch-tests with the scanner confirmed that the ship had indeed been cleaned to regulation standards.
‘Excellent, Mr Sugorne,’ Alex said, shaking hands with the Sub, ‘Kindly convey my compli...’
The rest of the customary sentence was drowned out by the uproar of cheers, whoops and banging that exploded simultaneously everywhere around the ship.
Alex signed the log, formally, to certify their achievement. They’d knocked eight seconds off their previous best time, which had already been the record for housekeeping for a ship of this class.
He knew why, of course. There’d been conversations between the crews of the frigate and the corvette, and those of the Heron’s crew who’d been with Alex on the Minnow had been highly unimpressed by how standards had fallen there since they’d given it back into regular service. Time spent on the morning clean-through was one of the many criteria used to judge the everyday working efficiency of Fleet ships, and in their day the Minnow had held the record for a vessel of its class, eleven minutes sixty four seconds. Now Harry had it, the Minnows went through the clean-through at a leisurely twenty to thirty minutes. The Herons, very obviously, had wanted to show the Minnows how it should be done.
Alex might have wished that they’d chosen another day to flaunt their superiority, seeing how resentful Harry had got over it, but he knew, really, that it wouldn’t have made any difference. Harry Alington and he were just never going to see eye to eye, and no amount of orders could change his personality.
News got out very quickly about the new housekeeping record, of course. There was something of a race to tell the Minnow about it, and it was soon shared with spacers aboard other ships in port, too. Which meant, inevitably, that it got to the ears of the media within minutes.
It was far from being the only story they’d already got hold of. Alex trusted his crew, allowing private calls and uncensored mail even when they were on the most highly classified operations. There were certain things, like the Ignite project and Shion’s presence on board, that were not to be mentioned, at all, to anyone, not even hinted at, and all of them understood that. Casual chat about life on the ship, though, that was fine. And it was inevitable that such gossip would find its way very quickly to journalists. The people the crew spoke with directly were themselves immediately badgered by others for the goss, and someone, somewhere, would talk to a journo, on or off the record.
Anyone flicking through the Karadon news channels that morning, indeed, might have been forgiven for wondering if there were two ships in port with the same name, two organisations called the Fourth and both with a Skipper von Strada in command. In one incarnation they were brutal and abusive. The housekeeping record story would slot right into this broadcasting, with immediate response from the Liberty League activists aboard the station. The words punitive and slave-driving would be used repeatedly in that, conveying a very clear impression that Alex had driven his crew to achieve that record with savagely unrelenting drills, far beyond what the Fleet themselves considered necessary. Anyone telling them that the crew had, in fact, set out to break that record on their own initiative, in pride and some mischief, and that it had been the crew who actually asked for an official skipper’s inspection to confirm their achievement, would have got a very scornful response. How likely was that, after all?
In the other incarnation, the Heron was a disgrace to the League, taking criminals out of prison, allowing them not only to serve on a fully armed warship but giving them shoreleave so that they could be walking around in society and nobody would even know. They were also pampered beyond even the already disgustingly luxurious lifestyle prisoners enjoyed in prison, with lavish hotel-class catering. In that broadcasting, the housekeeping record story wouldn’t even get a mention, since they were far too busy being righteously indignant over the ‘f
ive star first class breakfast’ provided by the Ruby Queen and over supplies that had been ordered by the Fourth, which included two hundred kilos of the best quality fresh coffee beans and quantities of luxury chocolates. Justice Now, a campaign group that lobbied for all criminals to be locked away for life and forced to do hard labour, also had a presence on the station, commenting bitterly on the luxuries that the Fourth would enjoy.
The fact that these two versions of events could not both be true did not seem to be worrying either the media or their audiences in the slightest. The key word there was ‘audiences’. People chose news channels that reported the news with views that were broadly in sympathy with their own. It was not uncommon even for media companies to own several stations putting out entirely different editorial pictures of events, pro and anti, at the same time. Describing the Fourth as both a brutal prison ship where prisoners were being forced to work as slave labour and sent off on dirty, dangerous operations whilst at the same time reporting it as a ‘cruise for criminals’ where they enjoyed a lavish champagne lifestyle did not even stretch their range as journalists. These, after all, were well established reportage positions on the Fourth, now; you just picked up whatever story was doing the rounds about them at the moment and slotted it in with reaction from suitable activist groups.
Both kinds of broadcast, however, reported on the riot story that broke about half an hour before the Fourth was due to board the station for the freedom ceremony.
‘Ah,’ said Buzz, thoughtfully, when the breaking news was drawn to his attention.
It was immediately obvious that the alleged ‘riot’ was a garbled account of their border-crossing rumpus. As had been the custom in the Fleet for centuries, the youngest member of the crew had been made ‘skipper’ for an hour, while the skipper and the officers withdrew to the wardroom. Petty officers actually held the watch, but the traditional order of, ‘Let the rumpus begin!’ heralded all kinds of fun and games, all noisy, messy and hilarious. At the end of the hour the skipper and officers returned and the ship settled back to normal. It was a nod to the fact that they were indeed leaving League borders, something that Fleet crews had, historically, speculated might mean that they were no longer subject to League laws or even Fleet regulations. It was the Fleet’s only bacchanalia, a wild hour when all normal rules and hierarchy were set aside.
XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Page 23
