Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  Mazian had not ceased to frown. “To your observation was Lt. Goforth intoxicated?”

  “To my observation he had been drinking.”

  He waved his hand slightly, an indication for her to sit down. She did so, leaned back with a scowl on her face. “You neglect to account for your specific reason for this execution. I’d prefer it stated for clarity’s sake.”

  “It was refusal to acknowledge an arrest not only by a troop major, but by a captain of the Fleet. His action was public. My answer was equally so.”

  Mazian nodded slowly, still grim. “I valued Lt. Goforth; and, in the normal practice of the Fleet, captain Mallory, there is a certain understanding that troops are not subject to the stricter disciplines of crew. This… execution, captain, places a severe burden on other captains now called upon to follow up this extreme penalty with decisions of their own. You force them to support your harshness against their own troops and crew… or to disagree openly by dismissing troops with the reprimand that such activities would normally merit; and thereby seem lax.”

  “The issue, sir, is refusal of an order.”

  “So noted and that will be the complaint lodged. Those troops determined in court-martial to have participated in that refusal will be dealt with by the severest penalties; bystanders will be faced with lesser charges and dismissed.”

  “Charges of willful and knowledgeable breach of security and contributing to a hazardous situation. I’m making progress with the new card system, sir, but the old ones are still valid in major areas of the station, and the personnel in that apartment were directly engaged in black-market traffic in id’s to the detriment of my operations.”

  The others murmured protests, and Mazian’s frown grew darker. “You were faced with an immediate situation that may have had no other answer than the one you gave. But I would point out to you, Captain Mallory, that there are other interpretations that affect morale in this Fleet: the fact that there were no Norway personnel arrested, and none on the infamous list. It could be pointed out that this was a case of a rumor deliberately leaked to you by some rival interest among your own troops.”

  “There were no Norway personnel involved.”

  “You were operating outside the province of your own administration. Internal security is Captain Keu’s operation. Why was he not advised before this raid?”

  “Because India troops were involved.” She looked directly at Keu’s frowning face, and at the others, and back at Mazian. “It did not look to be a major operation.”

  “Yet your own troops escaped the net.”

  “Were not involved, sir.”

  There was stark silence for a moment. “You’re rather righteous, aren’t you?”

  She leaned forward, arms on the table, and gave Mazian stare for stare. “I don’t permit my troops to sleepover on-station, and I keep strict account of their whereabouts. I knew where they were. And there are no Norway personnel involved in the market. While I’m being called to account, I’d also like to make a point: I disapproved of the general liberties when they were first proposed and I’d like to see the policy reviewed. Disciplined troops are overworked on the one hand and overlibertied on the other — stand them till they’re falling down tired and liberty them till they’re falling down drunk — that’s the present policy, which I have not permitted among my own personnel. Watches are relieved at reasonable hours and liberties are confined to that narrow stretch of dock under direct observation of my own officers for the very brief time they’re allowed at all. And Norway personnel were not involved in this situation.”

  Mazian glared. She watched the steady flare of his nostrils. “We go back a long way, Mallory. You’ve always been a bloody-handed tyrant. That’s the name you’ve gotten. You know that.”

  “That’s quite possible.”

  “Shot some of your own troops at Eridu. Ordered one unit to open fire on another.”

  “Norway has its standards.”

  Mazian sucked in a breath. “So do other ships, captain. Your policies may work on Norway, but our separate commands make different demands. Working independently is something we excel at; we’ve done it too long. Now I have the responsibility of welding the Fleet back together and making it work. I have the kind of independent bloody-mindedness that hung Tibet and North Pole out there instead of moving in as sense should have told them. Two ships dead, Mallory. Now you’ve handed me a situation where one ship holds itself distinct from others and then pulls an independent raid on an admittedly illicit activity involving every other crew in the Fleet. There’s some talk that there was a second page to that List, do you know that? That it was destroyed. This is a morale problem. Do you appreciate that?”

  “I perceive the problem; I regret it; I deny that there was a destroyed page and I resent the implication that my troops were motivated by jealousy in reporting this situation. It casts them in a light I refuse to accept.”

  “Norway troops will follow the same schedule hereafter as the rest of the Fleet.”

  She sat back. “I find a policy which gives us mutiny, and now I’m ordered to imitate it?”

  “The destructive thing at work in this company, Mallory, is not the small amount of black marketing that’s bound to go on, that realistically goes on every time we have troops off-ship, but the assumption of one officer and one ship that it can do as it pleases and act in rivalry to other ships. Divisiveness. We can’t afford it, Mallory, and I refuse to tolerate it, under any name. There’s one commander over this Fleet… or are you setting yourself up as the opposition party?”

  “I accept the order,” she muttered. Mazian’s pride, Mazian’s ever-so-sensitive pride. They had come to the line that was not to be crossed, when his eyes took on that look. She felt sick at her stomach, boiling with the urge to break something. She settled quietly back into her chair.

  “The morale problem does exist,” Mazian went on, easier, himself settling back with one of those loose, theatrical gestures he used to dismiss what he had determined not to argue. “It’s unfair to lay it to Norway alone. Forgive me. I realize you’re a good deal right… but we’re all laboring under a difficult situation. Union is out there. We know it. Pell knows it. Certainly the troops know it, and they don’t know all that we know, and it eats at their nerves. They take their pleasures as they can. They see a less then optimum situation on the station: shortages, a rampant black market — civilian hostility, most of all. They’re not in touch with operations we’re taking to remedy the situation. And even if they were, there’s still the Union fleet, sitting out there waiting its moment to attack; there’s a known Union spotter out there we can’t do anything about. Not even the normalcy of dock traffic on this station. We’re beginning to go for each others’ throats… and isn’t that precisely what Union hopes for, that just by keeping us here without exit we’ll rot away? They don’t want to meet us in open conflict; that’s expensive, even if they push us out. And they don’t want to take the chance of us scattering and returning to a guerrilla operation… because there’s Cyteen, isn’t there; there’s their capital, all too vulnerable if one of us decides to hit it at cost. They know what they’ve got on their hands if we slip out of here. So they sit. They keep us uncertain. They hope we’ll stay here in false hope and they offer us just tranquility enough to make it worth our while not to budge. They gamble; probably they’re gathering forces, now that they know where we are. And they’re right… we need the rest and the refuge. It’s the worst thing for the troops, but how else do we manage? We have a problem. And I propose to give our erring troops a taste of trouble, something to wake them up and persuade them there’s still action at hand. We’re going after some of the supplies Pell is short on. The short-haulers staying so carefully out of our way… can’t run far or fast. And the mines have other items, the supplies supporting them. We’re going to send a second carrier out on patrol.”

  “After what happened to North Pole — ” Kreshov muttered.

  “With due c
aution. We keep all the station-side carriers at ready and we don’t stray too far from cover. There’s a course which can put a carrier near the mines and not take it far out of shelter. Kreshov, with your admirable sense of caution, let that be your task. Get the supplies we need and teach a few lessons if necessary. A little aggressive action on our part will satisfy the troops and improve morale.”

  Signy bit her lip, gnawed at it, finally leaned forward. “I volunteer for that one. Let Kreshov sit it out.”

  “No,” Mazian said, and quickly held up a pacifying hand. “Not with any disparagement, far from it. Your work here is vital and you’re doing an excellent job at it. Atlantic makes the patrol. Herds a few haulers into line and restores station traffic. Blow one if you have to, Mika. You understand that. And pay them in Company scrip.”

  There was general laughter. Signy stayed sour. “Captain Mallory,” Mazian said, “you seem discontent.”

  “Shootings depress me,” she said cynically. “So does piracy.”

  “Another policy debate?”

  “Before taking on any large-scale operations of that kind, I’d like to see some effort toward conscripting the short-haulers, not blowing them. They stood with us against Union.”

  “Couldn’t get out of the way. There’s a far difference, Mallory.”

  “That should be remembered… which of them were out there with us. Those ships should be approached differently.”

  Mazian was not in a mood for listening to her reasons, not today. He had a high flush in his cheeks and his eyes were dark. “Let me get through the orders, old friend. That’s taken into consideration. Any merchanter in that category will obtain special privileges when docked at station; and we presume any merchanter in that category will not be among those out there refusing our orders to move in.”

  She nodded, carefully erased the resentment from her face. There was danger in upstaging Mazian. He had an enormous vanity. It overbalanced his better qualities on occasion. He would do what was sensible. He always had. But sometimes the anger lingered — long.

  “I’d like to point out,” Porey’s deep voice interjected, “contrary to Captain Mallory’s expectations of local help, we have a problem case in the Downbelow operation. Emilio Konstantin snaps his fingers and gets what he wants out of his workers down there. It gets us the supplies we need and we put up with it. But he’s waiting. He’s just waiting; and he knows right now he’s a necessity. If we get those short-haulers involved at station we’ve got other potential Konstantin types, only they’ll be up here with us, berthed right beside our ships.”

  “They’re not likely to jeopardize Pell,” Keu said.

  “And what if one of them is Unionist? We know well enough that they’ve infiltrated the merchanters.”

  “It’s a point worth considering,” Mazian said. “I’ve thought about it… which is one reason, Captain Mallory, why I’m reluctant to take strong steps to recruit those haulers. There are potential problems. But we need the supplies, and some of them aren’t available elsewhere. We put up with what we have to.”

  “So we make an example,” Kreshov said. “Shoot the bastard. He’s trouble waiting to happen.”

  “Right now,” Porey said slowly, “Konstantin and his crew work eighteen hours a day… efficient work, quick, skilled and smooth. We don’t get that by other methods. He gets dealt with when it’s workable without him.”

  “Does he know that?”

  Porey shrugged. “I’ll tell you the hold we’ve got on Mr. Emilio Konstantin. Got ourselves a site with a lot of Downers and the rest of the human inhabitants, all in one place. All one target. And he knows it.”

  Mazian nodded. “Konstantin’s a minimal problem. We have worse worries. And that’s the second matter on the table. If we can forbear another raid on our own troops… I’d rather concentrate on the whereabouts of station-side subversives and fugitive staff.”

  Signy’s face heated. She kept her voice calm. “The new system is moving into full use as quickly as possible. Mr. Lukas is cooperating. We’ve identified and carded 14,947 individuals as of this morning. That’s with a completely new card system and new individual codes with voice locks on some facilities. I’d like better, but Pell units aren’t designed for it. If they had been, we wouldn’t have had this security problem in the first place.”

  “And the chances that you may have carded this Jessad person?”

  “No. No reasonable likelihood. Most or all of our fugitives are moving into the uncarded areas, where their stolen cards still work… for the time being. We’ll find them. We’ve got a sketch of Jessad and actual photos of the others. I estimate another week or two to begin the final push.”

  “But all the operations areas are secure?”

  “The security arrangements for Pell central are laughable. I’ve made recommendations for construction there.”

  Mazian nodded. “When we get workers off damage repair. Personnel security?”

  “The notable exception is the Downer presence in the sealed area of blue one four. Konstantin’s widow. Lukas’s sister. She’s a hopeless invalid, and the Downers are cooperative in anything while it assures her welfare.”

  “That’s a gap,” Mazian said.

  “I’ve got a com link to her. She cooperates fully in dispatching Downers to necessary areas. Right now she’s of some use, as her brother is.”

  “While both are,” Mazian said. “Same condition.”

  There were details, stats, tedious matters which could have been traded back and forth by comp. Signy endured it grim-faced, nursing a headache and a blood pressure that distended the veins in her hands, while she made meticulous notes and contributed stats of her own.

  Food; water; machine parts… they were taking on a full load, every ship, fit to run again if it came to that. Repairing major damage and going ahead with minor repairs that had been long postponed in the operation leading up to the push. Total refitting, while keeping the Fleet as mobile as possible.

  Supply was the overwhelming difficulty. Week by week the hope that the more daring of the long-haulers would come venturing in diminished. They were seven carriers, holding a station and a world, but with only short-haulers to supply them, with their only source of some machined items — the supplies those very haulers had aboard for their own use.

  They were pent in, under siege, without merchanters to aid them, the long-haulers who had freely come and gone during the worst of the war. Could not now hope to reach to the Hinder Star stations… of which there was precious little remaining, mothballed, stripped, some probably gone unstable — a long, long time without regulation. Warships alone could not do the heavy cross-jump hauling major construction required. Without the long-haul merchanters, Pell was the only working station left them but Sol itself.

  Unwelcome thoughts occurred to her as she sat there, as they had been occurring regularly since the Pell operations began to go sour. She looked up from time to time, at Mazian, at Tom Edger’s thin, preoccupied face. Edger’s Australia partnered with Europe more often than any other… an old, old team. Edger was second in seniority as she was third; but there was a vast gulf between second and third. Edger never spoke in council. Never had a thing to say. Edger did his talking with Mazian in private, sharing counsels, the power at the side of the throne, as it were; she had long suspected so. If there was any man in the room who really knew Mazian’s mind, it was Edger.

  The only station but Sol.

  So they were three who knew, she reckoned glumly, and kept her mouth shut on it. They had come a long way… from Company Fleet to this. It was going to be a vast surprise to those Company bastards on Earth and Sol Station, having a war brought to their doorstep… having Earth taken as Pell had been. And seven carriers could do it, against a world which had given up starflight, which had, like Pell, only short-haulers and a few in-system fighters at its command… with Union coming in on their heels. It was a glass house, Earth. It could not fight… and win.

  She l
ost no sleep over it. Did not plan to. More and more she was convinced that the whole Pell operation was busywork, that Mazian might be doing precisely what she had advised all along, keeping the troops busy, keeping even his crews and captains busy, while the real operation here was that on Downbelow and what he proposed with the mines and short-haulers, the gathering of supplies, the repairs, the sorting of station personnel for identification and capture of all those fugitives who might surface and make takeover easy and cheap for Union. Her job.