The most recent communiqué, timed just twenty minutes ago, asked for Alex’s advice. Attaché Djenbo had obviously realised that he was boring and perhaps even irritating the first contact visitor. Since success in that relationship was of far greater value to him than his pride, he had messaged Alex asking for any suggestions he might have based on his greater personal knowledge and experience of contact with Ambassador Shionolethe.
Alex penned a brief but helpful reply, in which ‘call her Shion’ and ‘stop treating her as an alien’ were at the top of the list.
The problem was, he felt, that Attaché Djenbo was regarding Shion as if she was Solaran. The Solarans were the only people the League had any direct communication with, after all, at least within human space, so all the Diplomatic Corps’ training and experience would be in working with them. Attaché Djenbo was also basing his approach on the briefing he had had from Amali, dated weeks before Shion had even come aboard the Heron. That briefing was the same one that had been provided to the Fourth themselves. It had turned out to be inadequate or downright wrong about quite a number of things. The introductory paragraph, indeed, which described Ambassador Shionolethe as ‘gracious but reserved’ and ‘highly ceremonious’ now looked as if it had been written by someone who hardly knew her at all.
The interesting thing with that briefing, Alex felt, was that reading deeper into it, it was apparent that Shion had been trying to tell them all along what she was really like, almost pleading with them to just treat her like a normal person. She had also told them, repeatedly, that her world used no technology more advanced than hydrogen engines. As she’d commented herself, though, the Diplomatic Corps simply had not believed that. They put it more tactfully than that in the briefing, using such phrases as ‘understandable sensitivity in revealing higher order technology’, but it was evident that they could not get past their own preconceptions of her as coming from a highly advanced, highly ceremonious culture.
In this, the lack of professional training and experience had actually served Alex and the Heron very well, since they’d nothing to unlearn. Attaché Djenbo would not be on this assignment, though, unless he was himself an A-team player, and Shion was his responsibility right now. So Alex contented himself with a few written tips and left it at that, resisting the temptation to call the diplomat and tell him what he should be doing.
He had, after all, other responsibilities to deal with. Other immediate attention files from the LIA informed him that Candra Pattello had remained in the Central hotel throughout the ceremony granting the Fourth the freedom of the station, and that she had had no contact with the media beyond that initial passing chat with a paparazzi. An almost identical report had been provided by Fleet Intel, though with the additional information that the professor had spent much of the morning in a residents’ lounge, drinking coffee and watching the news.
A third file on the same topic was from Murg Attwood, their own intelligence analyst. Alex had effectively poached her from Fleet Intelligence, finding that she was weary of working long term undercover operations. Murg had an almost uncanny ability to get into the heads of the people she profiled, and to pick up on details, too, that other people wouldn’t even notice. She had run her own analysis of the intel provided about Candra Pattello and her activities that day, and felt the need to warn the skipper that she believed the professor was on the verge of causing major problems.
Alex paid that far more attention than he had Davie’s ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’ Murg, after all, had been the analyst who’d spotted the weak link in the drugs cartel’s operations on Karadon, enabling them to crack the gang. Murg, too, was much more specific in her analysis, highlighting the amount of coffee Candra had drunk that morning, compared with her known habits, and carrying out an in-depth analysis of a few minutes of holo-footage obtained by Fleet intel. Candra Pattello, Murg said, was at breaking point. Though her manner was carefully controlled, with no obvious reaction but calm interest in the news, Murg had spotted the white-knuckle tension in her hand as she’d picked up her coffee cup. It would, Murg advised, be a very good idea to run some kind of intervention. It was possible that someone Murg regarded as a neutral authority might be able to ease the stress she was under, even just by giving her an outlet for it by listening to her. Alternatively, it might be advisable to provide some means of transport for her that would get her off the station sooner than the Ruby Queen. In either case, Murg suggested, the Diplomatic Corps were the best people to help.
Alex considered that for a minute or so, thinking of alternatives, and decided that Murg was right. The Diplomatic Corps had a right to an involvement, here, and they would have both counsellors and alternative means of transport at their fingertips.
Alex sent a copy of Murg’s report with a request for assistance to Attaché Djenbo, moving on to the next file, and the next problem.
This turned out to be about Roger and Jayanne Levet. The rescued couple were still on board, which surprised Alex in itself. The plan, he knew, had been for them to have some clothes and other essentials sent over from the Karadon’s shops that morning. Then they were to be taken over to the station, discreetly, and checked in to one of the many hotels there. With an emergency grant to tide them over and a travel warrant assuring a cabin for them on the next ship back to Telfa, they would be fine. Even if the media got hold of the story, there was nothing that the Levets could tell them that would in any way compromise security on any of the Fourth’s operations. They didn’t know anything, after all. They hadn’t even met Kate, and had just accepted that the Fourth had been ‘very lucky’ to find them.
Alex had expected to see that they had left the ship by now, and was disconcerted to see why they hadn’t. The Levets, it appeared, had taken great offence at the kind of publicity going out on the local media. That was not without irony, given that they themselves had believed what they’d seen on Telfa’s news channels about the infamous Fourth. The experience of being rescued by them, though, had changed their minds completely. It could not have changed them more completely. They had become impassioned evangelists, up in arms over the horribly unfair things they could see being said on the media, and determined to set the record straight. It had taken some persuasion to prevent them blazing onto the station and telling the media straight just how brilliant, lovely and kind the Fourth really was.
Alex winced at the thought. He knew very well what the media would make of that, even if they could be brought to believe that the Levets were genuine and not Fourth’s or Fleet intel agents working a public relations spin. Anyone who stepped up publicly to speak up for the Fourth would themselves be targeted by anti-Fourth publicity and even activists. Instead of the quiet few days they should have on the station to recover from their ordeal before going home, the Levets would find themselves caught up in a storm of controversy.
So, Alex called Jon Quilleran and asked for his help.
‘You found them?’ Quill exclaimed, after Alex had given him a highly condensed version of the rescue, with no mention of Kate. ‘More than nine hours out in a lifepod?’
‘We were lucky,’ Alex said. ‘Or I should say, they were. The thing is, though, they’re still in that hugging-crying-love-you-forever stage of recovery, not so traumatised that we can hold them on medical grounds but not making clear and good decisions at the moment either. They’re all fired up with a crusading spirit and on starter blocks, here, determined to tell the media how wrong they are about us and how wonderful we are.’
Quill winced too, with a pained grimace.
‘Not a good idea,’ he observed, and looked at his old friend alertly. ‘What can I do to help?’
‘Look after them for me?’ Alex requested. ‘We’ve talked them out of going to the media, but if you could put them in one of your VIP suites they wouldn’t be talking to other hotel guests, then.’
‘No problem,’ Quill agreed at once. ‘But lord, Alex! Nine hours? That’s incredible!’
‘Hm
mn.’ Alex gave a rueful grin. ‘There are,’ he admitted, ‘nine ack alpha aspects to that rescue that I’m not, obviously, at liberty to divulge. They don’t know about that aspect themselves, obviously, they just think our astrogator made a lucky guess.’
Quill gave a complicated noise, eloquent of his belief that that had to be the understatement of the decade.
‘Okay,’ he tapped his nose, indicating that Alex could rely on him to be entirely discreet about this. Which Alex knew already, obviously, or he would not be calling him. ‘Just let me know when you’re sending them over.’
The Levets went off to Karadon a few minutes later, cheered off the ship by the crew and sent on their way with warm handshakes from Buzz and hugs from Rangi. Alex, however, kept his distance. He had a horrible feeling that they’d embrace him with effusive thanks and that they might even cry, something that they’d find as embarrassing to remember, later, as he would right now.
He was, in any case, busy dealing with a security issue concerning the Second Irregulars team they were due to take aboard. The Second had pre-approved a team consisting of a professor and an associate researcher from a commercial firm. The associate researcher, however, had had some kind of family emergency so had dropped out of the project. At this, the lecturer had brought one of her post graduate students along instead.
Civilians, Alex thought, but quite tolerantly, as he noted that the post grad had no kind of military security clearance. The lecturer, Chantal Jeol, was obviously expecting the Fourth to grant field-clearance to her assistant as a matter of course. She was getting impatient over there on the station, wanting to know why the Fourth couldn’t just give Tass, her assistant, ‘the paperwork’ so that they could come aboard and get started on their project.
The Fleet, however, wouldn’t normally even look at giving someone with her profile access to military secrets. One glance at the student organisations she belonged to, and the fact that she’d once been arrested on an anti-government demonstration, would have got a very definite no. She was, amongst other things, an active member of Liberty League.
Alex’s sense of humour was irresistibly tickled by that. And, too, by the highlight that Murg had drawn across another entry in the security profile she’d provided. Tass Curlow was a member of First Contact, a conspiracy-theory group that believed that League governments were routinely concealing contact with aliens and their visits to League worlds. They were, indeed, absolutely right about this, though not about everything else that they believed. Alex cracked into a chuckle as he read through the profile. Then he looked back at Attache Djembo’s advisory on media handling, grinned again and signed Tass’s security documents to nine ack alpha clearance. As Murg had noted in her profile, the very fact that she was a registered member of First Contact meant that even if she was able to get on live broadcast cameras and announce that she had met an alien aboard the Fourth’s ship, nobody would believe her.
Alex barely looked up from his desk for the next few hours, not till it was time for him to go over to Karadon himself. It had been an incredibly demanding day, but Alex was looking forward to having dinner with Quill. Maxi had said, very considerately, that he would leave the two of them to have dinner alone, knowing that they would be able to talk about things, then, that they wouldn’t if he was there. He was there to welcome Alex to their home aboard the station, though, and had drinks with them before heading out for the evening.
Once he’d gone, Alex relaxed. He liked Maxi but hardly knew him at all, so an evening spent in his company would have been one of social courtesy. With just Quill, however, he could relax entirely, and talk as freely as it was possible for them given that Quill didn’t have any higher than eight ack beta security clearance.
They did very little reminiscing. Neither of them was the type to live in the past, and talk of Academy days was notable by its absence. They did, however, exchange frank opinions of Harry Alington and compared notes on the relative claims of Old School Fleet and Corporate Zombies for the status of biggest pains in the backside. Only as they were working their way through rich desserts did Quill raise the subject of The Shareholder.
‘I won’t ask, of course, if it’s operational,’ he said, ‘but has he been travelling with you all this time, Alex?’
‘What? Oh, no,’ Alex replied. ‘We only met up again a couple of weeks ago. And no, that isn’t operational, he’s just keeping company. I don’t know where he’s going from here – not with us, I know that, but he hasn’t told me where he’s off to next.’
Quill looked surprised. ‘I thought the two of you were like that,’ he said, crossing his fingers, and Alex chuckled.
‘We play triplink,’ he said. ‘And there’s some friendly banter. Most of the time, though, I have no idea what he’s doing, or why. Which is fine. I enjoy his company, and he can even be helpful, at times – like the Jolly Roger rescue, he helped us out big time, with that.’
‘So I understand, though there’s the usual zero publicity lockdown,’ Quill observed, with a grin. ‘Quite entertaining, really, to see so many shots of the Heron coming into port, with not so much as a glimpse or a mention of the Stepeasy. I did get to meet him myself, last night – first time, I’ve only ever had a couple of comcalls from him, before. He’s... a bit unnerving, don’t you find? Weird, to find yourself working for a kid like that.’
Alex grinned back. Quill did not know that Davie North was genetically engineered. If Davie didn’t want to tell him that, Alex felt it was only right to respect that decision.
‘Pretty smart kid,’ he observed, since that at least had to be obvious to anyone who’d spoken to him even on a comcall.
‘Ye-es,’ Quill agreed, with a slight hesitation. ‘It’s just, I suppose, that it’s easier to think of working for the company, or even a vague, anonymous Shareholder, than some kid with ringlets actually being your boss.’
Alex chuckled, but there was an alert look in his eyes, too.
‘Not regretting the decision?’ he queried.
‘What?’ Quill looked astonished even at the idea. ‘Heck, no!’ He gestured at the luxurious apartment provided by the company, far more spacious and beautiful than anything he could have afforded, even if he’d risen to captaincy in White Star. ‘I love the job,’ he told Alex, with obvious sincerity. ‘I know I gripe a bit about the Zombies, but I get it, really. I mean, they’re corporate critters, and they’re desperate to see to it that they don’t lose control here or on any other ISiS, like before. And the job itself, frankly, is a dream. I mean, yes, there’s the glitzy side of it, but the reality is that Karadon provides a transit hub moving more than a hundred thousand people a day, Alex, a day. Take that away, even make it dysfunctional, and transit between worlds suffers, tourist revenues and intersystem business suffers, intersystem economies take a hit. What we do here is important, you know?’
Alex did know, and agreed with a warm look.
‘And you?’ Quill enquired. ‘Still happy?’
Alex looked back on a day that had, so far, involved twelve hours of work on less than three hours sleep, including a highly stressful public appearance and working with the Diplomatic Corps, Fleet Intel, Customs and the LIA. He thought about having to deal with Harry Alington whilst also making decisions about Candra Pattello, the new Second Irregulars team coming aboard, the Levets and a whole host of other matters that had landed on his desk, flashing demands to be dealt with now, now, now. The day, he knew, was far from over yet. There would be more things he’d have to deal with when he got back aboard ship, and if he was able to get to bed before two in the morning he’d be doing well.
‘Yes,’ he said, and his smile was deeply contented. ‘Still happy.’
Chapter Nine
The following day was every bit as busy, though without, at least, the need to appear at any public ceremony. The Heron’s crew were going over to the station on shoreleave passes. They were not, at Alex’s decision, going into the leisure decks. Though they were perfectly entitl
ed to do so, Alex felt that that would be just asking for trouble, provoking incidents with protest groups and with the media being right in their faces, too. There were, however, other facilities on the station. Merchant spacers generally didn’t want to mix much with groundhog tourists so there were bars and other facilities down in the cargo section. Members of the public were not allowed down there, and even journalists could only go to that section of the station by prior agreement. With security stepped up to ensure that no activists or journalists could get to the Freight Club, the Heron’s crew was able to go over there on rotation, on five hour passes. They were told not to drink – they’d need twenty five hour passes, for that, to be able to sleep off the effects of alcohol before returning to the superlight ship. Even the opportunity to have a meal off the ship, though, to walk about in new surroundings, chat to new people, had lifted morale high.
So, for that matter, had the arrival of the new Second’s team. They had been waiting aboard Karadon for eleven days before the frigate arrived, finally coming aboard that morning.
Chantal and Tass, the crew had decided, were going to be great fun. Chantal Jeol was said to be ‘Fleet trained’, not as a member of crew but with previous experience in travelling aboard Fleet ships. Tass Curlow had never been in space before, her only experience that of being on the liner that had brought them from Chartsey to Karadon. Chantal was a pleasant middle aged lady with frizzy hair and a plump physique. She had an air of going through life doing what she wanted and leaving other people to sort out the details, but in a gentle, appreciative way. That usually meant people helped her out without resentment, as had been the case here with the sudden and unauthorised substitution of a post grad student for the consultant they had been expecting.
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