Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  Mako laughed, and felt that he had rarely been happier in his life than he was, right now, just having so much fun, and in such good company, too. This, he felt, was Adventure.

  That opinion had not changed when they located the Red Line liner Ruby Star two hours later. During those two hours, they’d responded to three more incidents, one of which had been a flashing distress call and the others requests for assistance at the routine check-in with them.

  The distress call, to Mako’s amazement, had been because the ship concerned had embarked upon their journey to Sharfur with insufficient supplies of sugar. It was not a little starseeker, that, but a very big, expensive corporate yacht named the Tanek Enterprise IX. There was a former Fleet rating working aboard as deckhand and it was he, to his evident mortification, who was sent over in one of their shuttles to fetch the sugar. The actual skipper was a corporate type who was clearly not in any zone of listening to a common little oik of a crewman trying to tell him that it was out of order to initiate a distress call because they were short on sugar. Nor, come to that, was he prepared to listen to a common little oik of a corvette skipper telling him that the distress call should only be used in situations of real concern, not because you were low on unimportant supplies.

  ‘You wouldn’t say it was unimportant if you had to cope with my partner if he doesn’t get his sugar fix, haw haw!’ He breezed over the skipper. ‘But many thanks for your assist, Skipper. I shall certainly mention how helpful you were at the Admiralty – I know the Third Lord personally, you know.’ A lofty, patronising manner. ‘Do, please, tell me your name so that I can let him know how civil you were, put in a good word for you, haw haw!’

  Everyone on the command deck looked astounded. The yacht skipper must be pretty clueless not to have recognised the Minnow or noticed their ID. Then Alex gave a grin that, just for a moment, was one of evil glee.

  ‘Shipmaster,’ he said, evenly, ‘Alexis von Strada.’

  There was a taut, frozen moment, with everyone on the command deck looking at the skipper and an air of almost breathless anticipation hanging in the air.

  ‘I don’t think,’ said the yacht skipper, coldly, ‘that that is very amusing. Good day, Skipper.’

  Alex gave his little half-splutter of amusement as they curved away, signalling what Mako felt to be somewhat ironic best wishes for their journey.

  ‘What am I missing?’ he queried, asking Buzz.

  ‘Tanet,’ Buzz explained, kindly, ‘is the corporation Third Lord Jennar used to have a consultancy with, and many other senior Fleet officers too. They make engines for warships, amongst other things.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mako had no difficulty in understanding how advantageous it would be to them, to have direct lines into the highest echelons of the Admiralty. Nor was it hard to imagine how they would feel about the young officer who had taken such a high profile role in getting that practice overturned.

  ‘Oh!’ he said, and as he understood the delicious irony of a Tanet executive bumming a box of sugar off the skipper and actually offering to commend him to the First Lord, he joined in the laughter too.

  Neither of the other two incidents was any more serious. One of them, indeed, demonstrated how a supplies mishap should be dealt with, not by flashing a distress signal, but by a courteous request asking if they had any toiletries they could spare. The couple aboard the yacht were qualified and experienced travellers but had had the kind of misfortune that might happen to anyone. Packing up their toiletries at home, both of them had thought the other had put them in their bag, not realising their mistake until they were already some hours out of the system. Dan Tarrance was sent over that time, with a gift box containing a couple of personal toiletry kits, a salad box and some candy, for which the yachters rolled their ship in a three sixty spin to thank them.

  The other ship was even more fun – a freighter, that one, assuring that they did not need any assistance or supplies, but asking if, time permitting, they might bring ‘the kids’ over for a visit, as Lory, especially, was mad to bag the Minnow for his spotter’s log.

  Lory, it turned out, was twelve, a science geek to the core and as it turned out, rather too well informed about the Minnow. He bounded aboard, breathless with excitement as both the skipper and exec signed his spotter’s log. Being given permission to explore the ship, he hurtled off at speed while his little sister, aged about five, was content to be dropped down onto the mess deck to be made a fuss of and fed cake and candy there.

  Their mother, who’d brought them over from the freighter, exchanged some pleasantries with the skipper and exec, and then went down onto the mess deck herself, where she could be heard laughing uproariously as they told her about the starseeker they’d scuttled. From for’ard, though, Mako heard Lory’s high-pitched voice exclaiming delightedly, ‘Oh, are these the new bones?’ And in the next breath, ‘Are they really nanocarbites?’

  ‘Ohhhhh!’ Dan Tarrance brought him back onto the command deck, fast. He was laughing but had his hands over the boy’s eyes. ‘You know way too much to be looking at those!’ He said, releasing him once they were away from the highly classified computer cores. Lory clearly found this hilarious, giggling happily and wheedling.

  ‘Awww, go on!’ He pleaded. ‘It’s not like I’m gonna tell anyone! They are nanocarbites, aren’t they? What’s the density? Sixteen? Seventeen?’ he read something in the young officer’s expression, some flicker of amusement, and was on it like a shark scenting blood in the water, ‘You’ve never got it to twenty?’

  ‘I am not answering that, you appalling child!’ Dan Tarrance said, reducing the boy to further fits of giggles. ‘Come back and see me in four or five years when you’re at the Academy, and I might answer you then!’ He was steering the boy back across the command deck as he spoke and presented him to the skipper with a grin. ‘I think this one might need to be blindfolded, sir.’

  ‘Mr Lopez,’ said the skipper, mock-sternly, ‘you are unnerving my computer officer. Sit.’ As the boy darted into a seat and sat there, straight backed, looking at him with joyful hope, Alex grinned and activated a set of screens in front of him. ‘There. Play nicely with those, and don’t ask questions about things you’re not supposed to know anything about.’

  ‘Thank you, sir!’ He was as pink as a rose and giggling again, but dived straight into investigating the screens, exclaiming rapturously, ‘Oh, just look at that – you do use cross harpins! Is that for better tension, sir?’

  The conversation became incomprehensibly technical, but Mako enjoyed seeing the boy’s enthusiasm and the trouble the officers took with him. It was probable that he was looking at a future Fleet officer, there, but he got the feeling that even if there was no possibility of him joining the Fleet, the spacers would still have enjoyed sharing their own passion for starships with a boy so enthusiastic and knowledgeable.

  It wasn’t a long visit, though. A quarter of an hour had been specified, and they were good to their time. Their mother collected them with thanks for hospitality and both children departed clutching gift boxes that had been rustled up for them by the quietly efficient Martins.

  Then they met the Ruby Star and were able to discharge their passenger as the liner’s skipper readily agreed to taking her aboard as a rescue. They were within a few hours of Chartsey, so would not need to give her a cabin. It was clearly no big deal as far as they were concerned, though the skipper did crack a laugh when informed that Minnow had scuttled her ship.

  ‘Well, that’s one less starseeker causing us grief,’ she observed.

  It was clearly no big deal, either, entirely routine, for them to accept a ‘dispatch bag’ from the corvette. That meant classified hard copy tapes under high security seal, which Mako had already been told was common practice out in space. Liners and some of the bigger freight companies would carry both secure and personal mail for the Fleet, and it was routine practice for Fleet ships to send up to date copies of their logs at any such opportunities. They sent some pe
rsonal mail too, with a mail call for anyone wanting to send messages on the liner.

  It gave Mako a strange feeling to see the great liner powering on towards Chartsey with two letters of his aboard. One was official, an update to his boss, telling her that all three of the Cestus parolees had come through the launch well and were being looked after on the mess deck, taking no active part in operations.

  He knew that they were fine, too – when things were quiet on the command deck he could hear the conversation going on down there, and though Dorlan and Barrington were very quiet, the tone of the conversation of others talking to them was easy and cheerful. He had distinctly heard Jok Dorlan, too, at one point, protesting laughingly that if he drank any more tea, his bladder would explode, which he felt to be a good indicator that his shipmates were taking good care of him and that he was settling in well.

  The other letter, of course, was to his family, assuring them that he was fine and enjoying his adventure. It felt lovely to be able to share that with them and he felt, secretly, that it was kind of cool to be sending them a message from deep space. At the same time, though, it made him acutely aware of the enormous distance between them, which was only going to get greater.

  That little pang, though, was more than outweighed by the thrill of what he was doing here. He was effectively distracted, too, by the discovery that this time it was they who’d received a gift box of food supplies sent over from the liner.

  ‘Is that usual?’ he queried, and was assured that it was.

  ‘Bigger, faster ships always help out smaller ones and it’s a routine courtesy to share what ‘treat’ supplies you can.’ Alex confirmed. ‘And it is entirely usual for liners to be generous with Fleet ships, too – all above board, naturally, recorded in the log, we don’t take private gifts from anyone. But a liner within hours of heading into port, meeting a Fleet ship heading out, will offload as much fresh stuff for them as they can. I wouldn’t have taken supplies from them just in passing – we’re well supplied, after all, our hold is stuffed full. But since we had to drop a passenger aboard, it would have been rude to refuse.’

  Mako didn’t refuse, either, when Martins came round handing out portions of sticky fruit gateau that it had been decided ‘needed eating up’. They were able to eat it in peace, too, encountering many ships during the next hour or so but none that required any assistance. This, Mako learned, was not a coincidence. They were past the point now where starseekers would have been out for a full day. Most of them, as Alex observed, would have either got themselves sorted out by now or turned back.

  ‘Once they’re settled on course, they’re nowhere near as much trouble,’ he told the inspector. ‘Most hassle with small craft occurs within the first few hours of a journey as they’re trying to get themselves sorted out and realising what supplies they’ve forgotten and that kind of thing.’

  ‘So… what would have happened to all those ships you helped out today if Minnow wasn’t here?’ Mako asked.

  ‘Oh, I daresay they’d have got themselves sorted one way or another,’ Alex said, comfortably. ‘The mad bat was the only one which had any significant risk to it, as those starseekers really aren’t designed to be pushed at that speed and there are all kinds of ways that could have gone bad. But even with them, it’s likely that either one of the ships they ripped past would have managed to get through to them with a signal, or that some minor system shorting out would have brought them to their senses. The others were social assists, really, which either other ships would have helped with anyway or they’d have just had to manage without.’

  ‘Even the Peach Lady?’ Mako queried, that being the name of the starseeker they’d scuttled.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Alex said, with a smile. ‘She could have carried on all the way to Sharfur like that, you know, quite safely unless she was to do something insanely stupid like firing herself off in the survival pod. My feeling is that even without assistance from another ship, eventually at some point she’d have got herself together sufficiently to go back to the flight console and access the help function, there, which would have run trouble-shooter diagnostics for her and told her exactly what to do.

  ‘It’s a design flaw with the starseeker sixteen, which to be fair, they did remedy in later designs. They bring out a new starseeker every few years, see, and sixteens are still very popular as second hand purchases. They have this ‘Fix All’ function on diagnostics to remedy problems with earlier models, but it does have a tendency to turn off automatic stabilisers. Later models have a safeguard on the stabilisers so you can’t turn them off so easily, and if you have and the ship starts spinning, it will offer you the option to turn them back on, straight off.’

  ‘So… it’s mostly just people panicking, really, isn’t it?’ Mako commented.

  ‘Well, this kind of trivial routine assist is, yes.’ Alex agreed. ‘It does get more serious of course. When you’ve been on one or two tough ones, you see this kind of thing differently. It makes you more tolerant. We tend not to say ‘just’ panicking, either, because even an assist that spares people anxiety for a few hours, however groundless that anxiety might have been, is a good result.’

  ‘I did notice that everyone got very tense when that yacht, the Dreamweaver, wasn’t it? The honeymooners, when they didn’t answer at first? It all went very quiet, and everyone kind of went phew when they came on.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s something that’s always in the back of your mind as you respond to a distress call.’ Alex said, with a wry note. ‘Your worst case scenario, there, that you are too late, that there’s been some kind of catastrophic life support failure and that, while the ship is continuing on autopilot, everyone aboard it is dead. That’s what we mean by a ghost ship, and yes, it happens. It’s rare, but you’re always aware it’s a possibility as you’re going in and if they don’t respond to hails, everyone does get tense, yes, because we know the kind of horrors that might have happened over there.’

  ‘Ah.’ Even Mako had heard of explosive decompression, and nodded understanding. ‘I noticed,’ he observed, ‘that you always stand off at long communication range until you’ve established exactly what the problem is.’

  ‘Fleet regulations.’ Alex informed him. ‘There are certain situations, you see, in which it would be extremely dangerous for us to put our ship near the other, and certain situations, too, in which we are not even allowed to attempt a rescue. If the ship is dephasing, the engines out of control, all we’re allowed to do is to shout at them to abandon ship and hope we can grab them out in time. Any skipper who allowed even so much as a shuttle crewed by volunteers to go in for a rescue would be dismissed from the Fleet, no question, even if they pulled it off. The regulation about not approaching a dephasing ship is absolute, and it is something they have to be sure you will comply with, however tough it is if you’re ever faced with that decision, or you do not get into command rank.’

  Mako looked at him with respect. ‘That,’ he observed, ‘is one heck of a responsibility.’

  Alex gave his fleeting smile. ‘Well, they don’t pay us as much as they do for looking good in the uniform,’ he joked. ‘But please, don’t get the wrong idea, Inspector. I know movies like to do the ‘terrible burden of command’ thing for dramatic purposes, but the reality is that if it is a terrible burden, if making these highly responsible decisions is an intolerable stress for you, you do not get through the command selection process. Though the Fleet does like to perpetuate the myth that skippers are somehow superhuman.’

  Mako, aware that Alex’s nickname in the Fleet was ‘von Supernova’, grinned at that.

  ‘Someone told me that you’d be taking the night watch, tonight,’ he observed, this having been one of the things the crew had mentioned, keen to tell him what a good skipper he was.

  ‘Well, yes.’ Alex agreed. ‘I take the night watch, myself, usually, the night after a launch. That’s common in the Fleet as a consideration for officers who will have been working very hard alrea
dy, all day. Skippers are expected to need less sleep, see. Many in the Fleet believe, in fact, that we are given special training to be able to go for up to five days without sleep and still be high performance functional. And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. It’s ‘skipper mythology’ in the Fleet, that, which the Fleet encourages because they feel it gives the crew more confidence in you. I think that’s rubbish, myself. But I can certainly pull a triple watch without strain so don’t worry about that.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not worried,’ Mako said, and was a little surprised to find that was actually true. ‘I’m having the time of my life,’ he admitted. ‘Though I suspect that I may still be on some kind of adrenalin high because right now I’m feeling like I may never need to go to sleep ever again.’

  Alex gave a low chuckle. ‘That’s an endorphin high, rather than adrenalin,’ he told him. ‘You’re mildly euphoric. Which isn’t a problem, enjoy it while it lasts. Though if you don’t mind a suggestion – just a suggestion, no more – I’d say that even though you feel that you could stay awake for ever, it would be a good idea for you to make a move fairly soon. Try to relax on your bunk even if you don’t think you’ll sleep.’

  ‘You’re starting to look just a little bug-eyed, dear boy.’ Buzz informed him, kindly, which made Mako laugh, but got him nodding agreement, too.

  ‘Yes, okay. Fair enough,’ he said, and was conscious that it had not only been one heck of a day, but that he had hardly got any sleep the night before, either, and was time zoning, his personal time two hours ahead of the ship. It was hardly surprising that he was starting to get bug-eyed and manic, really. ‘You’re absolutely right,’ he conceded, and got up, shaking hands briefly with both of them, adding a smile to the formality. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And goodnight!’

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