Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  “That’s the current score,” Rangi explained. “That yelling you heard was Dan’s Mob scoring another hit. That’s the Second’s team. Our own team, the Juvenile Delinquents, are doing pretty well though. Info on whether you had drugs aboard was actually the first hit the skipper wanted. The JDs scored that one in just under three minutes. And no, we’re not mad, honestly,” he grinned as they were both staring at him as if he’d grown a second head. “Having a bit of fun with stuff like that is motivating, good for morale.”

  “But… it’s not possible to hack Karadon’s computers,” Tom said, struggling to understand what Rangi was telling him, there. “Everybody’s tried.” He looked across at Murg, and she nodded agreement.

  “They’ve got better security than Fleet Intel,” she said. “Even the LIA can’t get past it.”

  “Well, it’s not impossible, obviously,” Rangi pointed out, “because we’re doing it. Don’t ask me how, I’m useless at that stuff myself. But we have got, you know, the very latest nanotech computer systems and some of the best computer experts in the League, right here aboard this ship. And I mean that, seriously. Dan’s Mob is being led by Dan Tarrance – he was our Computer Sub on the Minnow, brilliant guy. He’s on secondment to the Second at the moment and on board in that capacity, along with a team including four of the people who developed those nanotech cores. Our own computer guys are pretty good, too. We’ve got Elsa Nordstrom and Jok Dorlan. Individually, they’re both brilliant, but they do this thing, working together – I think it’s called cascade tessellation – that makes even the Second go wow.”

  “Seriously?” Murg had sat silently while Tom was asking questions, but she couldn’t stay quiet at that. She was a technician, trained in computer hacking. “Cascade tessellation is like, the holy grail of system cracking,” she said. “If they can really do that, they could even get into Karadon. Are into Karadon, evidently.” There was a look of admiration on her face, and Rangi smiled to see her relaxing.

  “Uh huh,” he confirmed. “We already have a lot of intel on which ships have drugs aboard, whether they know it or not. I believe they’re going for financial files at the moment.”

  Tom looked at the command deck feed. Buzz Burroughs, now out of his cyber-suit and back in ordinary shipboard rig, was joining the skipper at the table, exchanging a brief, cheerful word with him before getting to work himself, reading and highlighting screens.

  This ship had just cracked the impenetrable fortress of Karadon’s computer systems, in minutes, after every other intelligence service in the League had tried and failed. Tom wanted more than anything to have access to those files, himself, to see what it was the Fourth was digging out of Karadon’s hidden data.

  “So – when will we be able to meet with the skipper, for debriefing?” he asked.

  “Not for a while, yet – after breakfast,” Rangi replied. “As you can see, he’s busy at the moment, working the intel. We’re also winding them up, on the station.” He grinned. “The skipper wants them – the management – good and wound up before he talks to them. The timing of this is deliberate, of course. It’s got them all out of bed, on the hop because they weren’t expecting us. We’re not taking their calls, either. We’re waiting till Chokran Dayfield calls, personally.”

  Chokran Dayfield was the executive director of the Karadon station. Being the corporate critter he was, his reaction to the Fourth’s arrival would undoubtedly have been to call an emergency board meeting. It might be some time before they’d argued it out and decided that he had to call the Fourth himself, if for no other reason than to be able to tell the media he’d tried to call and be cooperative.

  “You’ll be able to watch that when it happens,” Rangi told them. “I’ll give you the orientation tour and show you to your quarters, okay? Speaking of which, Mr Burroughs has asked me to tell you that you are both very welcome, as our guests, to the hospitality of the wardroom, and that we can arrange a double cabin for you if you’d like to stay together.”

  “No.” Tom and Murg said, together, immediately. According to the movies, any deep cover agents posing as a couple would almost inevitably fall in love. In reality, Tom and Murg’s experience was that they got on one another’s nerves and ended up detesting one another.

  “Single quarters would be fine, thank you,” said Tom.

  “I’d be very happy with a bunk on a mess deck, if you have one spare.” Murg said, with a hopeful note. She would feel out of place in the wardroom, having to mind her elbows at table and make small talk with officers. She was yearning to go somewhere that felt homely and safe, amongst people she could have a laugh with.

  “If you’d prefer that, of course.” Again, Rangi seemed to understand entirely how they felt. He gave them warm smiles. “We’ll get that sorted for you, and provide you with kit,” he assured them. “We’ll be generating two sets of records, by the way – one set for public disclosure, recording your processing and treatment as prisoners, the other set for real. Either way, you both get a medical.” Seeing that they had now both finished their tea, he looked from one to the other. “So, who’s first?”

  Chapter Three

  “All right, thank you!” Chok Dayfield quietened the argument that was flaring round the table.

  He was sitting at the head of the Karadon boardroom table. His first reaction to being woken at five in the morning to be told that the Fourth had arrived had, indeed, been to summon a board meeting. He had, however, taken the time to dress in a tailored suit and to brush and gloss his silver-blond hair.

  Not everyone at the meeting had taken so much trouble. Durb Jorgensen, the director of Karadon Freight, was scruffy even at the best of times and had obviously just pulled on the pants and sweatshirt he’d been wearing the day before. Chantalle Rivers, the director of Karadon Leisure, was facing him across the table. She had put on a suit but a very slapdash make-up, foundation slapped on unevenly and one eye more heavily outlined than the other. Other members of the board looked like they’d scrambled frantically into their clothes.

  The exceptions were the two people seated at the far end of the table. Executive Director Torres was officially a guest at Karadon board meetings. She was from ISiS Corps’ head office on Flancer, here to “monitor the situation”. Technically, she had no vote in Karadon board meetings. In reality, her vote was the power to sack the lot of them if they made any decision she didn’t approve of. She had arrived at the meeting as impeccably groomed as always. If she slept at all, Chok suspected, it would be stretched out rigidly on her bed, still wearing her razor sharp suit and thousand dollar shoes.

  The young man next to her had also taken trouble with his appearance. He too was a guest at boardroom meetings. Ambit Persane was a management intern, working for a year as Chok Dayfield’s assistant. He was twenty years old, with a masters degree in business studies and the personality of a barracuda with toothache.

  “Please,” Chok said. He was uncomfortably aware of the disapproving look on Director Torres’ face, and of the fact that Ambit Persane was making private notes. “Let’s not get distracted by territorial issues.”

  “Territorial issues” was Chok’s term for the boardroom warfare between Karadon’s Freight and Leisure divisions. Both companies considered themselves to be the most important business of the station, with constant friction between them.

  Chantalle Rivers had been on the board for less than a month. Her predecessor had argued with Director Torres in a board meeting and was now on his way back to Flancer, unemployed. Chantalle had been his deputy. Her overwhelming concern this morning was how their visitors were going to react when they woke up to find the Fourth had arrived in the night and had already seized a freighter.

  Durb Jorgensen could not give a flying monkey for how the visitors reacted. He was in the habit of referring to liner passengers as “HC”, a derogatory spacer term meaning Human Cargo. He was in an even more militant mood than usual, this morning, protesting at being called to the boardroom at
all.

  “The important thing,” said Chok, “is that we agree a PR strategy. Our priority has to be to protect the integrity and operation of the station.” He saw a very slight nod from Director Torres out of the corner of his eye, and felt relieved. “We must present a united front,” Chok told them, then focussed on Chantalle Rivers. “Your priority will be to reassure visitors that there is no cause for alarm.” He looked at Durb Jorgensen. “Yours will be to reassure your customers that it’s safe for them to be here and doing business with us.” He looked around the table. “I believe the key words we should be using in our PR statements are “full cooperation with League authorities” and “business as usual”. I suggest that we use the words “disappointed with Shipmaster von Strada’s lack of communication with us”.”

  “Skipper.” Durb Jorgensen corrected, irritably. “You don’t say “Shipmaster”, it only says that on Fleet documents. It’s Skipper von Strada.”

  “Even for formal usage?” Chok queried, doubtfully.

  Durb picked up his coffee, giving Chok a withering look as he did so. He was a tall man with unusually large, bony hands and a brusque voice.

  “Only idiot groundhogs say “Shipmaster.””

  Chok swallowed this insult without reaction. He had been working on this station for twelve years, the last nine of them as its managing director, but was still regarded as a groundhog by the spacer community. He had never been anything more than human cargo, himself, and knew nothing about starships or freight shipping. His own background was in hotel management.

  “Skipper, then,” he said, and amended the statement he was drafting on the desk screens in front of him.

  “I think we should say “outraged”.” Chantalle opined, and did sound outraged, as she said it. “It’s totally out of order for them to come blitzing into our space, mounting a raid on a ship in our orbit without so much as a word to us, and refusing to even take our calls!”

  “I don’t think “outrageous” would be a helpful word to use.” Chok said. He didn’t like words like crisis or emergency, either, and had defined this as a “situation response” meeting. “I think “disappointed” would give the right air of dignified professionalism.”

  The station’s PR director nodded agreement. He too was new to the board, as the previous PR director had quit at the news that the Fourth was being sent here. A quiet, earnest man, Pallo Timmons invariably supported Chok.

  “I do feel that it would be helpful if you attempted to call Shipmas … Skipper von Strada personally, Mr Dayfield,” he suggested, with an air of anxious apology. “It would give you a very strong position in press conference, to be able to say that you’d tried to call them yourself.”

  Chok nodded. The only contact that the Fourth had had with the station had been a connection with the automated flight-control system as they’d come into port. Ships were allocated to nodes on the orbital rings according to their size, with yachts and small freighters closest in to the stations and liners and container ships further out. Fleet ships were always allocated to the outer darkness of the furthest ring, eight light-minutes away, so the system had directed them to parking node 8/001.

  Beyond that, they had not responded to any hail. So far, various departments on the station had made more than forty attempts to contact them, but their calls were being blanked out by the “off comms” response, not even getting through to leave a message.

  “Proposed,” Chok looked around the table again. “All in favour?”

  Everyone except Durb put their hands up. He shook his head.

  “You lose authority if you go to them,” he pointed out. “Make them call you.”

  “I think it’s more important that we are seen to be attempting to cooperate,” said Chok. “Carried by majority. So, I’ll do that now.” Again, he was reassured by a tiny nod from Director Torres.

  He tapped controls on a comm screen. Communication with superlight ships was never straightforward. Even with the network of superlight satellites interlaced throughout the parking zone, it would take four seconds for the signal to get from the station to the warship in the outer ring. Communication, therefore, was a series of exchanged messages rather than live conversation.

  “ISiS Karadon calling Fourth Fleet Irregulars ship Heron,” Chok ignored the sigh that Durb gave at that, keeping his manner coolly professional. “This is Managing Director Chokran Dayfield. We wish to welcome you to the station and offer you our full cooperation with your operations, here, insofar as that is concomitant with company policy. I would like to speak with Skipper von Strada or, failing that, the most senior officer available.”

  He tapped the control that would signal a blip to let them know he’d finished sending, then looked down the table at the PR director.

  “Thank you,” Pallo said, and made a clip of that call to release to the media. Karadon had always had a media presence on board. All the major intersystem networks maintained offices there. Karadon was almost in the centre of the League, geographically, the hub of an enormous shipping network. News flowed in there from more than two hundred worlds. Editors based on the station sifted through it and decided what was worth sending on for their own networks.

  With the publicity over the drug trafficking allegations and the announcement that the Fourth was going to be sent here on operations, though, there’d been a huge surge of journalists arriving, even months ahead of when the Fourth might be expected. The hundred and sixty four journos on the station were already whipping up into a feeding frenzy, clamouring for statements and footage of the Fourth boarding the Fancy Free. They were calling the other ships in port, too, trying to find anyone who knew the Fancy Free’s crew or had any information about what was going on. Pallo had a spokeswoman charming them in the press conference room, but they would have to make some kind of substantive statement within the next few minutes. Even, “Director Dayfield has attempted to call them but can’t get a response” would do very nicely.

  The Fourth, however, had other ideas. A response came back ten seconds after Chok had sent that signal. They were, by then, agreeing that they would go to press conference in five minutes, and Chok was just working up to telling Chantalle and Durb as tactfully as possible that they might want to smarten up before going on camera. Then the response bleep sounded and an image popped up on the comscreen.

  It was certainly not Alex von Strada. The image was of a teenage girl with a shock of purple and orange hair and equally lurid make-up. Her manner was that of a bored adolescent. The ID on screen said that she was Able Star Jenni Asforth, Duty Comms Technician.

  “Sorry,” she said, with a dismissive tone that would have got her on a charge of insolence on any Fleet ship. “None of the officers can take your call right now. They’re all way too busy hacking your computer systems. Try again in an hour or two. Heron out.”

  As pandemonium erupted in the Karadon boardroom, Chok saw that that call had been made open-comms, meaning that it could be picked up by any other ship in the system, or by any journalist with signal-reading gear. As the blood pressure function on his wristcom began pulsing a silent alert, he took a calming breath and considered for a moment. Then he drew a pen through the word “disappointed” on the media statement and wrote “outraged” instead.

  Chapter Four

  “Well done,” Alex von Strada commended, as Jenni Asforth looked across to him for his reaction. Their comms officer had actually held auditions to find the best person to make that call.

  “Thanks, skipper.” Jenni grinned happily as the rest of the crew expressed their appreciation, too, with a burst of applause, laughter and cheering from her mates. It might only have been a short performance but it was one that was going to get a huge audience. Every journalist on the station would be sending that footage back to their worlds. At least a hundred billion viewers would see it as it blitzed out on global news channels. Serious channels would focus on the Fourth’s claim to be hacking Karadon’s computers. Others would focus on the app
earance and attitude of the rating appearing as the public face of the Fourth. Either way, debate would rage, with all the usual anti-Fourth campaign groups leaping in with their share of the ranting.

  Jenni Asforth would be known for the rest of her life as the girl who’d told Karadon the Fourth was hacking their computers. The glow on her face made it clear that she was very proud of that.

  Alex was proud of her, too. Jenni was a spacebrat, born and raised on freighters, with an irreverence towards authority that had not gone down well in the Fleet. After several incidents of insolence, she’d been defined as a bullock, the Fleet term for difficult or underachieving crew. Alex’s ship had been the Fleet’s unofficial bullock farm long before it had been put onto irregular terms as a rehab unit, and Jenni had been one of the many crew sent to him on special recommendation. They’d been working on her attitude with a microsteps programme which had taken her from answering officers with, “I hear and obey, oh great one,” to having just achieved her five month good conduct award. There would be a special commendation on her file for this, too. Just that nod and smile from the skipper was enough, though, to bring a delighted sparkle to her eyes, and a blush that made her makeup even more garish.

  “Very well done.” Jonty Michaels was one of seven young Sub-lts the Heron was carrying in addition to their normal complement of officers. Like Arie McKenna, he was very newly qualified. Unlike her, he’d fought for this place. He’d even taken the risky step of refusing the offer of a more prestigious placement aboard a carrier to make himself available for this. Jonty was doing his utmost to ensure that the Comms department outshone all others, and his tone held as much relief as approval. “Take a tea break, Asforth.”