“No sir,” Arie explained. It was clear that they weren’t angry with her, just interested, so she told them, frankly, “If you graduate in the lower half of the sixty four, you do a lot worse even than people who graduated a lot lower than you at your own academy.”
That was true, too. It was as if the Fleet, having had such high expectations of the top cadets, dropped them off the radar if they were anything less than shiningly brilliant, just as had happened to Quill. “And even if you get on the tagged and flagged programme,” she added, “the dropout rate on that is so high, more than half the officers on it have dropped out before they reach command rank. And if you flunk out of tagged and flagged, it’s pretty much the end of your career.” She looked at Buzz, then, with a wondering expression, “But can I ask, sir, how did you know? Nobody even seemed to notice me at the Academy, and I was amazed when I was told that you’d asked for me, right out of the blue.”
Buzz gave her a fatherly look.
“Academy Commandants are not, generally, stupid.” He told her, kindly. “And they have their own code in the way they write their reports. Any experienced officer would know how to interpret “has the potential to achieve even higher” along with “peer-oriented goals”. It means you’re deliberately underperforming so as not to stand out from the crowd. Having read some of your assignments, I thought there might be rather more to it than that. It isn’t important, really, just something the skipper and I were curious about.”
“The important thing is how you actually perform on assignment,” Alex agreed. “Which is the reason, by the way, that the top three cadets often don’t do so well after graduation. The qualities that make for exceptional achievements as cadets are not always the ones that make for successful careers as serving officers. Academy training is deeply flawed, in my opinion. They stick you in classrooms for two and a half years, drilling all the initiative out of you, give you three months on a ship and fire you out expecting you to work as officers. That system turns out far too many officers who are good at writing essays and yapping out memorised policies, but are utterly useless aboard ship.”
Arie gazed at him with a look of awe. Such a statement was so radical in Fleet terms that it was practically sacrilegious, challenging the proud and ancient tradition of Academy training. It would have any Old School officer spluttering with outrage.
Buzz laughed.
“Maybe you should ask if we can have our own Academy,” he joked. “Then we could train cadets your way.”
Alex gave him a speaking look. “I think we’ve got enough on our hands just now, thanks.” Then, as that thought led to another, “We should be hearing soon about the civilian recruit thing.”
Buzz’s smile became wry. One thing they hadn’t expected from Mako Ireson’s report was his enthusiastic suggestion that the Fourth might also take “suitably qualified and experienced” civilian parolees as recruits.
Alex had fought his hardest against that. He didn’t want civilian recruits, for all sorts of reasons both practical and ethical. They were not geared up to be able to provide basic training for new recruits, for a start, and the whole concept of taking on civilian parolees would open up whole new crates of worms. He had had to accept, however, that that was not his decision to make. It was not even First Lord Dix Harangay’s decision. Dix had promised to do his best for him, putting forward all of Alex’s concerns, and his own, to the Senate Fleet Sub-Committee which would rule on that.
He had warned him, though, that the political wind was blowing in favour of it. Highly placed figures in the Senate did not see any distinction between Fleet personnel released on parole from the military prison on Cestus and spacers released on parole from civilian prisons. If they were willing to volunteer for the Fourth and the Fourth was providing a cost-effective and very successful rehab scheme, the Senate was likely to vote for that even against the massive public outcry it would cause.
“Well, if we have to, we’ll deal with it,” Buzz remarked, philosophically.
Alex smiled and finished his soup. It was extraordinarily comforting to have Buzz Burroughs as his second in command. No matter how insane things got or how extreme the demands were on them, Buzz would take it in his stride. He knew he could count on his officers and every member of his crew, too. He was, he felt contentedly, in a very good, strong place right now.
Then he glanced at the image of the station at the heart of the rings of orbiting ships. Just for a moment, as he thought about Chokran Dayfield, he felt something like a twinge of sympathy for him. It was only for a moment, though, as memories immediately surged to wipe it out.
It wasn’t even, for him, the memory of finding Annabella Tokford’s body in the street ten years ago. It was a very much more recent memory of two sad, faded people sitting in a stuffy little sitting room full of pictures of their daughter before she’d started using drugs. They were the ones who deserved his sympathy, not the man who was doing nothing to prevent drugs being trafficked through his station.
There would be no mercy from him for the drug traffickers on Karadon, or for those protecting them.
Chapter Fourteen
“I just don’t know what to do,” Chok admitted. “Things just keep getting worse and worse, and it doesn’t seem that there’s anything that I can do about it.”
Belassa Torres regarded him calmly. None of the stresses of the last week had even come close to denting her crisp self control. It was now seven in the morning. She’d told Chok to go back to bed after the Customs incident, but it was obvious he hadn’t slept. Now he’d called asking for a private meeting with her. She’d been expecting that and had come to meet him in his office.
“All I can advise,” she said, “is that you conduct yourself professionally, ethically, and according to company policy.”
“Yes, but…” he looked at her with desperation in his eyes. “Sometimes, it seems as if you actually believe the allegations being made.”
“Many drug shipments have been detected at our worlds, having passed through Karadon.” Belassa Torres observed, dispassionately. “The Fourth has just found crates of drugs on ships in our orbit, bought from a trader on this station. It does not seem improbable to me that there is a group of people aboard who are abusing their positions of trust on this station in order to traffic drugs.”
“But, then, you do believe that Leo Arad is trafficking drugs?” Chok did not even want to say the next words, and struggled to get them out, “And… and that Durb Jorgensen knows about it?” He saw confirmation of that in her resigned expression. “But… if you believe that,” Chok asked, “if you really believe that, why haven’t you fired him?”
“Belief is not proof, Mr Dayfield,” Belassa Torres said, coolly. “Also, I do not know whether the Fourth has sufficient evidence themselves to arrest him or ensure successful prosecution. If they don’t, and I fire him, he will leave the station and there’ll be nothing to stop him disappearing. If he is guilty of trafficking tons of drugs, is that what you would want?”
“No, no, of course not,” Chok said. “But I find it hard to believe that he could have any knowledge of anything like that going on! I mean, Durb! What’s more likely, really, that a man I’ve known and worked with for years is secretly involved in trafficking drugs by the ton, or that the whole thing is a frame-up by the Fourth so that the Senate can seize the stations? I just can’t understand how you could believe that of him! I’ve investigated this myself and found no evidence of drugs having been on the station – the Fourth keeps claiming to have found them on ships in orbit, sure, but where’s the proof even that they have real drugs, let alone that they came from here?”
“Well, you must evaluate the quality of the evidence as and when they present it,” she said. She got up as she spoke, and went on coolly, “However, I would make the point that there is no point in asking questions if your mind is closed to the answers.” She gave him a slight, dispassionate nod, and walked out, leaving him more bewildered than ever.
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br /> While he was still sitting there trying to figure that out, his wristcom beeped, with the caller ID reading Zelda.
Chok knew that she was still aboard the station. She was one of the few business owners who hadn’t followed Marto’s example and left. Fortunately their contracts with ISiS Corps allowed the station to take over and run facilities if they were abandoned by their owners. Unfortunately they did not have nearly enough staff to do that. Many facilities in the resort, therefore, were open on a provisional basis, available if any of the journalists who were now its only residents wanted to use them, but otherwise unstaffed.
Zelda’s clubs were an exception. Most of her staff had left, too, but she had managed to keep both of her clubs open, catering to thirsty journalists, staff and the occasional freighter crew coming aboard.
Chok liked Zelda. She was as glamorous as her clubs, an asset to the station, and always charmingly deferential to him. She always knew the latest gossip, too. She had murmured in his ear that their PR Director at the time was going to quit, the day before he’d handed in his resignation and departed.
“Chokky, darling, can you come to the Boudoir?” she asked. “I need to talk to you and we can talk privately there.”
“Oh,” he hesitated, because he had a lot more important things to do, he felt, than talk to Zelda. On the other hand, she’d given him useful information in the past, and her tone made it clear it was important. “What is it about?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you when you get here, darling. The Boudoir, ten minutes,” she said, and broke off the call as if that settled that.
Chok went to the Boudoir. It was one of the rooms at Zelda’s biggest club, on the leisure decks, a VIP area accessed by invitation only. He was anxious that he might have to run a gamut of journalists but as it turned out, there were none around. Those who were up were mostly enjoying their complimentary breakfast at the Central’s five star restaurant.
He walked through the club, conscious of the many times he’d come into Zelda’s to a reception more like that of a movie star than a station manager. The staff always made a big fuss of him here. There’d always be a buzz of excitement, too, as visitors were told who he was. He’d be shown to a reserved table, smiling benignly at the admiring eyes and surreptitious use of cameras. He was Chokran Dayfield, managing director of the biggest station in space. Most of them would have seen him on holovision, giving interviews or appearing in documentaries about the station. He was somebody.
Now his footsteps were lost in the carpet and the echoes of past applause rang in the silence.
“Chokky, darling.” Zelda was the only person he allowed to call him “Chokky”, though he knew that some of the more disrespectful staff did so behind his back. She had come to the entrance of the Boudoir to greet him, though waiting there for him to go to her before she took his hands and kissed the air either side of his face. “You poor lamb, you look dreadful,” she cooed, drawing him into the Boudoir.
The same could not be said of her. Zelda was unusually tall and slender, moving with such grace that she often gave the impression of floating. Her hair was rarely the same colour two weeks running and was always creatively styled. Today it was a pale orange, sleeked on one side of her head and fluffed into a puffball on the other. She wore couture, as always. The garment she had on today was fantastically coloured, styled to float like wings around her arms and clinched to a ruched skirt that trailed past her ankles. Delicate strappy sandals, a sophisticated makeup and discreet but exquisite jewellery completed the ensemble. It might seem a little over the top for that hour of the morning but that, in fact, was Zelda’s notion of casual wear. The kind of glamour she got into for evening occasions would make movie stars at premieres look like they’d dressed out of thrift shops.
“Come and sit down, darling,” she said, leading him gently by the hand. Chok saw that a low table had been laid with a breakfast tray, and felt his stomach revolt at the thought. It had become increasingly difficult to eat, over the last few days. He’d forced himself to swallow as much food as he could at mealtimes because he knew he had to keep his strength up, but even a few mouthfuls made him feel nauseous.
“I haven’t come for breakfast,” he said, more curtly than he had intended.
Zelda lowered herself onto a heap of cushions, draping herself decoratively and gesturing for Chok to take a seat too. He did so, a little reluctantly.
“You wanted to tell me something?” he prompted.
Zelda looked at him with genuine concern and compassion. If ever she’d seen a man stressed almost to breaking point, she knew, she was looking at one then.
“Darling, you really must eat something. I refuse, I absolutely refuse, to talk to you unless you eat a little something. You look like you might pass out at any moment, you poor lamb.” She sat up as she spoke and selected a few morsels from the tray, putting them onto a rosewood skewer and offering it to him. When he was unresponsive she took one of the morsels off the skewer again and put it to his mouth, commanding, “Open.”
Chok felt a weird sense of unreality. He felt weak and lightheaded. He knew that this was because the last few days of little sleep, little food and a great deal of stress was catching up with him. At the same time, though, he felt that he had lost control of this situation and drifted off into a surreal dream where the club owner was feeding him like a nanny with a recalcitrant toddler. He opened his mouth automatically and she put the food into it.
It was a ball of toasted semolina, the toasted shell dissolving into a smooth, mild paste.
“Two more,” Zelda insisted, proffering a piece of fruit, next. It was cool, faintly lemony and refreshing.
Chok took the skewer as she offered it again, and pulled the next piece of food off it himself. He didn’t want it but it seemed too unimportant to argue about and rather more dignified to feed himself. The next food was chicken – vat grown, obviously, only barbarians ate meat from animals. It was coated in some savoury crunch that tasted good after the fruit. Chok began to feel a little better, physically at least.
“All right,” he said, taking the next piece of food off the skewer and holding it up as if to show that he expected something in return for eating this. “Talk to me, Zelda. What did you want to see me about?”
“Darling, things are getting rather urgent,” Zelda told him, “and I’m afraid that if you don’t take action soon we’re going to be in real trouble.”
“What do you mean?” Chok asked, putting down the skewer as his stomach closed again with a lurch of acid.
“The drug trafficking and piracy, darling,” Zelda told him, as gently as she could. Then, as he stared at her, she went on conversationally, “The thing that really puzzles me is that the Fourth is acting like they don’t feel the piracy is connected to the drug trafficking. Alex von Strada has to know better than that. The LIA is certainly aware that the Pallamar is a Landorn ship, running between here and Dortmell. They don’t carry drugs themselves, as far as I know, but they organise and supervise the ships that do.”
Chok stared at her in horror.
“You can’t be serious!” he protested. “What do you mean, the LIA? What have they got to do with this?”
“Darling, they always have agents on the station,” she informed him. “They offer me money in return for information, too – quite sweet, really, though rather absurd. Like children, you know, playing very earnestly at being spies. They do so enjoy their code-names and secret mail-drops and that kind of thing. Fleet Intelligence are rather more bureaucratic. They offer to pay your expenses and then you have to sign little chitties for them to keep their accounts straight. They tell me lots of interesting things, though, so it’s useful to maintain the relationship.”
“You… you’re an agent for the LIA?” Chok’s mouth had suddenly gone very dry. “And Fleet Intelligence?”
“No, darling, not an agent,” she told him patiently. “Do try to keep up. Have a little something to drink.” She filled a tiny glass wi
th a clear blue-grey liquid and handed it to him. “Icefruit,” she told him. “Very good for clearing the mind.”
Chok swallowed it and felt the zing fill his mouth while the chill seemed to zap right through his skull.
“You’re… an informant, then?” he worked out, still feeling shocked that anyone he knew could be involved with intelligence agencies.
“Well, they think so,” said Zelda. “But since I never give them any information they couldn’t hear for free in any bar on the station, they are effectively paying me to tell me things. I’m not quite sure what that makes me. An anti-informant, perhaps. Well informed, certainly.” She poured thick black coffee into miniature cups, and handed one over to him. When Chok ignored it she set it down on the table.
“But… there are intelligence agencies on my station? Why has nobody told me about this?” he demanded, and looked accusingly at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Darling,” she gave him another look of gentle reproach, “in what universe am I responsible for telling you anything?”
She had a point, he was forced to admit. Zelda did not work for him. She ran her own businesses on the station, so she was a tenant, there, but she did not work for ISiS Corps. Protesting that he’d thought she was his friend would just be too puerile.
“Anyway,” she added, “I’m telling you now. Strictly between ourselves, of course.”
Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Page 21
