Alex, though, just went back to work. As amazing and fascinating as the things were that Shion had told him, he had responsibilities and demands upon him, right here and right now, which would not wait. And that just wouldn’t let up, either, as he had another crisis to deal with, before dinner.
It was towards the end of the afternoon. They were hosting an event in the secure zone, so routine that Alex hadn’t even thought twice about it. It was a deeply embedded tradition in Fleet culture to take particular care of spacer kids. If kids were known to be aboard a freighter, gifts would be sent over for them, and if time allowed, visits offered. They had issues with security with that, in the Fourth. An assumption that kids were fine to be around classified tech because they wouldn’t even recognise it as such had been proven wrong back on the Minnow, when an extremely clued up twelve year old had commented enthusiastically on their highly classified computer systems. Since then, kids were only allowed in the secure zone. The event being hosted that afternoon was, indeed, perfectly routine, organised by one of their Subs as a normal part of their visit to the station. All the spacer kids had been invited for a visit, with games and party food laid on, and the opportunity to meet members of the crew. The highlight of the event was visiting sickbay, where Rangi was letting the kids meet and play with Lucky the lizard.
Or at least, that was supposed to be the highlight of the event. Alex was vaguely aware of it going on, glancing at monitors occasionally and giving a smile at a noisy game of freefall tag, but paying no particular interest. Not, at least, till Sam Barlow drew his attention to something happening on the monitor.
‘Er – skipper?’
Alex looked at the screen Sam was indicating, and took in what he was looking at. Most of the kids were gathered around Kate Naos, keenly interested as she drew a complex doughnut shaped diagram on the wall with a holographic light pen.
Alex closed his eyes briefly, some part of him hoping that he’d been imagining that and that when he looked again, Kate would be just drawing some daft cartoon. But no, when he opened his eyes, there she was, cheerfully drawing out a D9 Loop diagram.
There was no way that should be happening. Kate’s presence aboard the ship was so highly classified that she had not even gone over to Karadon, even in civilian clothes. The chances were high that the media would recognise her, after all, as their cameras used facial recognition software and they routinely scanned crowds in public areas of the station, hoping to pick up on some celebrity attempting to slip by incognito.
Kate was hardly a celebrity, at least not in groundside terms. She had, though, been featured in the media when, at the age of eleven, she had amazed the wave space physics world by producing a mathematical proof of the Petrasky Curve. A cute, freckle-nosed kid solving a problem that had defeated the finest mathematicians in the League for hundreds of years was quite definitely news, and features about ‘Katie Naos, the Maths Kid’ had been broadcast on most League worlds. She had kept out of the news since then, though, and nobody had thought there’d be a problem with her helping at the kids’ party. She’d changed quite a bit between eleven and sixteen, after all, and was wearing Fourth’s uniform, complete with her honorary insignia, looking no different from any member of the crew.
Alex ran a quick check, finding it hard to believe that Kate, so careful about security, had breached that by telling the kids who she was. It was very easy to scan back through the monitor footage and see exactly what had happened. One of the kids had spotted her. It was a boy of about ten, watching her with a perplexed expression for some time as Kate helped with setting out the party food. Then he just blurted out, as recognition dawned, ‘You’re Katie Naos! I’ve got a poster of you!’
It was hard to tell which of the two of them was more embarrassed by that, as both had turned bright red. Kate’s attempt to claim that she just looked a bit like the girl he was thinking of had been wholly unconvincing, and as other kids had joined in the clamour, she’d given up, cracking up laughing and admitting that yes, okay, they’d got her.
The clamour had turned almost immediately to pleading with her to ‘show them the Loop’ and ‘tell them about the doughnut’ – proof positive in itself that these were spacer kids. Groundside kids their age might have posters of pop or sports stars on their bedroom walls, but spacer kids were far more likely to have posters of explorers, racing pilots or even physicists, along with their collections of model starships and science experiment kits. So, there was Kate, obligingly drawing the standard D9 Loop diagram on the wall, and answering their questions with laughing enthusiasm.
Alex considered the implications of this, sighed quietly and closed down the screens he was working on. Then, with a nod for Sam, he left the command deck and headed down into the secure zone, himself. The kids were so focussed on badgering Kate with questions that they didn’t notice him approaching.
‘I wish you’d come over to the school,’ one of them said, with a plaintive note, ‘and give us a proper maths lesson.’
‘They make us do division,’ another agreed, with the scorn of an eight year old who knew how a superlight engine worked. Karadon had a school aboard the station, primarily for the children of employees who lived there, but also for any kids passing through either on liners or freighters. The school took part in the Starchild programme, operated by the Diplomatic Corps, providing education for spacer kids. Clearly, these kids at least were not impressed by that.
‘Sorry,’ Kate said, with combined amusement and apology. ‘But the thing is, see, like I said, it’s a big, big secret that I’m here, so you really can’t...’ she broke off as she saw Alex coming over to join them, and gave him a comically guilty look. ‘Sorry, skipper.’
‘That’s all right, I know,’ he said. He might have wished that she’d had the social skills to handle that situation convincingly, assuring the boy that he was mistaken in his identification of her. But social skills were not, after all, Kate’s area of strength, and Alex knew she’d done her best. ‘But you can’t,’ he said, good humouredly, ‘ask the kids to keep this secret, Kate. It isn’t fair.’
Many of the kids looked indignant at that, though they were looking at Alex with delight, too. They’d been told that the skipper was far too busy to come and meet them today, but there he was, large as life, the famous von Supernova. One of the kids was already holding out an autograph pad with a hopeful expression.
‘Hey, we can keep a secret!’ One of the older girls declared.
‘That’s right!’ A smaller boy with a strong resemblance to her added, ‘We never told anyone about...’
His sister – and she had to be his big sister – clamped a hand over his mouth just in time.
‘Shut up, fatbum,’ she said, and, holding her little brother as he wriggled and made protesting mmmph, mmmph! noises, spoke to the skipper with a sudden assumption of grown-up dignity. ‘You can rely on us to keep it classified, skipper.’
There was a chorus of agreement from the others. Alex looked around at their faces, alight with excitement, and broke into a grin, himself. He could not be cold with kids, it just wasn’t in him.
‘I’m sure I could,’ he said. ‘But there’s no need, honestly.’
That was a decision that had made itself. Quite apart from having a realistic understanding of how long it would be before one of the kids let slip that they’d met Katie Naos on the Heron, Alex could not, and would not, ask these kids to keep secrets from their parents. Their parents had entrusted their kids to the Fourth, letting the Fourth’s shuttles pick them up to bring them over to the party, trusting that they would be kept safe in every way. Alex knew how he would have felt, as a parent, if he’d discovered that other adults had asked his child to keep secrets from him. It just wasn’t something he was prepared to consider. He looked across the kids’ heads at Kate, hardly much older than some of them, herself. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but we have to go public.’
‘Aw, whaaat?’ It was more horrified exclamation than protest, and
followed by an immediate plea, ‘You’re not going to make me do a media conference, are you? Please, skipper?’ She looked at him imploringly. ‘They gave me a teddy!’
This, he recognised, was a reference to the previous media coverage, in which an enterprising journalist had handed her a cuddly toy and asked her to pose with it, playing up the ‘cute kid’ angle.
‘I’ll do a ‘no interviews’’, Alex told her, with some sympathy. ‘And we are not, obviously, disclosing the nature of your research here. But we have to make a statement, okay?’
‘Okay,’ she accepted that, reluctant but recognising that this was his decision to make.
‘All right, then,’ Alex nodded to her, then gave the kids a friendly nod, too. ‘Have fun, kids.’
He made his escape from the secure zone, though it took some minutes to extricate himself from wheedling to sign autographs, shake hands and return salutes. Then he went back to the command deck, where he drafted a press statement and sent off reports to all the people who were entitled to be told what was going on. He knew there would be fallout from that, and there was, too – Harry Alington just could not resist the chance to call, querying it as if he could not quite believe what he’d read.
‘A nine ack alpha security has been busted by kids?’
‘By a ten year old, yes,’ said Alex, in a matter of fact manner, as if that kind of thing happened all the time. ‘And don’t tell me, I know, yes, this is why you don’t allow kids on your ship. But the benefits to that, believe me, far outweigh the risks. Even with it forcing disclosure of Dr Naos’s presence aboard, I still believe it was the right decision. And that is, after all, my decision to make.’
Harry could say nothing more than a noncommittal ‘hmmn’ to that, though his opinion was perfectly obvious. Bull Stuart was more sympathetic, sending a message that said ‘Bad luck, Alex.’ Dix merely countersigned approval of the press release, making no comment at all.
The LIA, however, was far more forthright. Alex had to tell them that he was declassifying Kate Naos’s presence on the ship from nine ack alpha status to seven ack beta, which would allow the media to report on the statement but not on any speculation as to what Kate might be doing on the Heron.
‘You people take maximum security to whole new levels,’ said the grating, artificial voice of the message that came back at them in response. ‘Well done, shipmaster. Just when we thought you couldn’t amaze us any more.’
Alex took that in good part, choosing to regard it as inter-agency banter and not taking it as any personal affront. He hardly had time to take offence, anyway, as he was busy ensuring that the fallout from this would not affect the Levets.
They were still aboard the station, though they’d already accepted Quill’s offer of one of the starseekers that had been abandoned there. They’d agreed that it would be sensible to spend another week or so at Karadon, to recover from their ordeal, before setting off on the return trip to Telfa. Quill had arranged for them to join a Darmel convoy, which they were more than happy to agree to, recognising that it would be prudent to have some company as they passed back through Kennerman’s Ridge.
They were, Alex knew, having a good time on the station, thoroughly enjoying the hospitality suite and VIP passes that Quill had provided. He felt guilty having to ask Quill to give them a heads up about what was going to happen, inevitably, as soon as spacers knew that Kate Naos was aboard.
‘Please, look after them for me?’ he requested. Quill gave him a patient look.
‘You don’t need to ask,’ he replied. ‘And they are, I should point out, my responsibility now.’ He smiled, though, recognising Alex’s ongoing sense of responsibility towards the couple he and his crew had saved at such incredible odds. ‘Don’t worry about them,’ he said. ‘But – Katie Naos, eh? That’s the ‘nine ack alpha’ aspect you couldn’t talk about, I take it.’
Alex nodded. Spacers were already marvelling over the rescue of the Jolly Roger lifepod. As soon as they heard that one of the most brilliant wave-space mathematicians in the League was on the ship, two and two would click together immediately. They might not know how she’d worked it out, but they would know that she had. And whatever spacers knew, the media would find out very fast. Alex gave it about half an hour between the statement confirming Kate Naos’s presence on the ship and the first broadcasting of stories linking that to rumours of a miraculous rescue.
In fact, the media were rather more on the ball with that than even Alex had given them credit for. It was just twenty three minutes after the release of the bland, official statement confirming ‘rumours’ that Dr Kate Naos was aboard the ship conducting classified research, that the story of the Jolly Roger rescue broke.
In fact, the journalists aboard the station had known about the Levets for a couple of days, now – the actual rescue of the couple wasn’t classified, after all. Quill, however, had ensured lock-down protection of privacy for the rescued couple, reinforced with medical statements warning the journalists that they were in a fragile emotional state and any attempt to interview them or subject them to publicity would be regarded as actionable. It wasn’t a big enough story to risk being sued over, and the journalists had, in any case, been content to leave it a few days, hopeful that the couple would agree to interviews once they’d recovered.
Now, though, they had a red hot combination of ‘miracle rescue’ with an unprecedented admission from the Fourth that they had a celebrity physicist aboard their ship conducting secret research. Yells of joy could be heard from every media suite, and it would be hours before journalists stopped running around madly grabbing any kind of angle on the story they could find. ABC, later that evening, scored the coup, with the Levets agreeing to an exclusive interview with one of their journalists.
Alex watched, still working on the command deck, as that interview went out.
‘Honestly, we had no idea.’ They were being filmed, sensitively, in a quiet setting, sitting on a sofa together, holding hands. ‘They never told us anything about Kate Naos being on the ship. We wouldn’t have known who she was, anyway, even if they had, would we, love?’
‘No,’ Jayanne agreed. ‘I know they’re saying she’s been on the news, but if we saw it, we wouldn’t have remembered. They never told us about her, anyway.’
‘So they lied to you?’ The journalist’s manner was warmly sympathetic.
‘Well, I suppose so,’ Roger agreed, uncertainly. ‘But I suppose they were just, you know, with it being classified.’
‘But now they’ve admitted to Kate Naos being on the ship, have they apologised to you for lying to you, or admitted that Kate Naos was actually the one who found you?’
‘They don’t need to apologise to us,’ Jayanne said, staunchly loyal. ‘They saved our lives. Skipper von Strada didn’t give up on us even when other people were saying we had to be dead by then.’
‘Did he tell you that, himself?’
‘No, other people did, people in the crew.’ Jayanne was getting defensive, now, a hint of indignation, rising. ‘Look, they haven’t done anything wrong, they saved us! And they were just absolutely wonderful, too, so kind, so kind, you just couldn’t ask to meet nicer people.’
The journalist backed off from that, not wanting the Levets to terminate the interview. He smiled, and spoke soothingly, ‘It must have been a terrible ordeal.’ It would be several minutes before he’d raise the matter of the great generosity shown by Mr Quilleran, not only taking such good care of them but actually giving them a yacht.
You didn’t need to be any kind of genius to work out what angle the finished reporting was going to take. ‘The Fourth in miracle rescue’ would very rapidly become ‘Fourth lied to rescued couple’ and ‘rescued couple deny that their silence was bought with a yacht, given to them by ISiS Corps at von Strada’s request.’ As the coverage went on, facts would fade into the background as all the usual people aired all their usual opinions. Alex could not have cared less about that, other than in how such cov
erage would affect the Levets. It was just bound to upset them, no way to avoid it.
With the benefit of hindsight, of course, it was now all too obvious that they shouldn’t have allowed Kate to help out at the party. But Alex didn’t waste time beating himself up over that. Even a little thought about it, reviewing that decision, satisfied him that he would make the same decision again, in the same circumstances, given the information he had at the time. It certainly was not going to stop him having kids aboard his ship, though perhaps with rather more thought given in future to people they might recognise.
‘And on the plus side,’ Buzz observed, always one to look for the positives, ‘we can at least now put Kate forward for the awards she deserves.’
Alex grinned at him, recognising that Buzz was attempting to comfort him, there. It was late, by then. Both of them had missed dinner, sharing a companionable hot beef roll and mugs of soup now that the immediate furore had died down.
‘I don’t think she’d thank us for that,’ he said, as Kate had hardly stopped blushing since the story about her involvement in the rescue broke. She was in the lab, now, being supported by her friends through the agonising embarrassment of finding herself back on the news. Just as she’d dreaded, too, the media had dredged up that old footage, and images of little Katie Naos cuddling a toy panda were being broadcast on all channels.
She had to contend with even more embarrassment the following morning, as Dix Harangay himself agreed to give a media conference about the Jolly Roger affair.
‘No, Dr Naos will not be giving any interviews,’ Dix said, in response to a howling demand from the assembled journalists. ‘She is, for one thing, a very private person and shies away from any publicity. And she is, for another thing, engaged in highly classified research, not circumstances conducive to public appearances.’
‘And what kind of highly classified research is a sixteen year old mathematician doing aboard a warship, Admiral?’ one of the journalists demanded.
XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Page 40
