Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  “I’m coming to Therik with you,” Davie replied, as if he’d expected Alex to figure that out for himself. “I’m bringing Chokky Dayfield. Zelda’s going back to Flancer on the ICV 12, with Bella. She didn’t want to come to Therik,” he reminded the skipper. He seemed to feel that this was all the explanation necessary, signalling the bleep that indicated it was Alex’s turn to speak.

  “Well, you’re perfectly entitled to go to Therik if you want to, of course,” Alex responded, “but you can’t go “with us”, Mr North. This is a frigate on operations. We do not take yachts in convoy.”

  He had to wait nearly ten seconds for Davie’s reply. When it came, the tycoon was laughing.

  “Space is free to all, Captain,” he teased. “And my ship is faster than yours, so there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  He was right. Unless the Stepeasy violated their security zone, Alex couldn’t prevent them cruising alongside. They were already outrunning the media ships, out of their visual range now. In another couple of minutes, the desperate pleas for interviews would fall away behind them as they left comms range, and the media ships would give up and go back to Karadon. Alex did not doubt, however, that the Stepeasy was faster than his frigate. It could probably run rings around them.

  Alex thought about this, looking at the yacht. “Why?” he signalled the Stepeasy, feeling that that encompassed everything he wanted to ask about Davie North’s intentions, here.

  “Just keeping company,” Davie’s response came back, with an impudent grin, though he went on to explain, more seriously, “I’d like to see how things go on Therik and help in any way I can. My company was responsible for allowing this to happen, so I’m going to see it through. I’m also aware that you have eighty four prisoners aboard your ship and you’re already eighteen crew down because of the Pallamar. If they know we’re here, prepared to back you up, it might stop them getting ideas.”

  He was right about that, too. Alex knew there was a risk of the prisoners thinking that they might have a chance of taking over the ship. He was confident of his crew’s ability to deal with that if it happened, but the presence of another large ship with a sizeable crew prepared to back them up might, indeed, be enough to change that equation in the prisoners’ minds.

  “I can not agree to you taking on the role of backup, Mr North,” he told him. “This is a military ship and yours is a civilian yacht. It just isn’t appropriate.”

  “Yes, yes, and I’m a fourteen year old civilian with no place in combat operations,” Davie came back, grinning tolerantly. “Let it be so noted in the logs of both ships that you refuse my offer of assistance. That isn’t going to stop me riding shotgun for you, though. I like you, Captain. My life is quite boring and you’re fun. Consider me your sidekick.” He threw the skipper a playful mock-salute. “And no,” he added, anticipating Alex’s response, “I will not go away if you ignore me.”

  Alex laughed. He didn’t really mind either the presence of the yacht, or the prospect of spending more time in Davie North’s company. Some people might have felt that having a genetically enhanced super-rich tycoon wanting to be friends with them was exciting and flattering. Alex, however, recognised a bored and lonely teenager, there, wanting to make friends with someone who was neither intimidated by his wealth nor freaked out by the fact that he’d been bio-engineered.

  “Well, since there’s nothing I can do about it…” he signalled back, amused, and got an answering laugh from Davie.

  “Excellent,” he said. But he also understood that Alex would need this quiet time on the night watch to get on top of all the paperwork the boarding operation had generated. “I’ll let you get back to work,” he said, and gave another of those playful half-salutes. “Call you tomorrow, Captain.”

  “Goodnight, Mr North,” Alex responded, and settled back to his paperwork with a grin as the three ships cruised on quietly together.

  Next morning, however, Alex was in more serious mood as he called Rangi Tekawa to his daycabin. He felt it best to speak with him privately, anticipating that the meeting might become rather emotional. Rangi didn’t look as if he’d slept much, though his manner was steady as he told the skipper that he would not euthanize Mako, as a matter of conscience.

  “All right,” Alex said. “You have the right to refuse that order on grounds of religious belief and I won’t make it a disciplinary matter, or hold it against you.” He looked calmly at the medic. “I am, however, going to ask you to prepare a hypo for me with whatever drugs are needed to put the lizard painlessly to sleep.” As Rangi’s face showed immediate refusal, Alex pointed out, “I don’t have the necessary expertise to do that myself, so if you won’t do that, rather than risk causing it pain or distress, I will have to either shoot it, or space it.”

  Tears welled up in Rangi’s eyes, but he choked back a protest, recognising that Alex was just not going to be moved by any argument, here. He couldn’t speak, but nodded.

  “All right.” Alex felt for him. He could feel the tension on the ship, too, and knew that this was going to upset his crew. They might thank him for it one day and laugh, themselves, about how carried away with emotion they’d got over a stupid lizard, but whether they did or not, he knew he was doing the right thing. “I’ll come to sickbay in a few minutes.”

  Rangi went away without a word. A heavy silence lay over the ship as Alex made his way to sickbay a few minutes later.

  Things had changed in there. The life support tank had been set up against one wall, a screen around it giving Hale Ardant some privacy. The “healing space” of grass and beanbags had been moved over to make room for it. The tree, Alex noticed, was missing. The tree in itself had been a major concession. It wasn’t something you’d normally expect to find on any starship, let alone a warship. Safety was a huge concern, too. Rangi, however, had satisfied him that he could have a living tree in a safe nutrient pot, that it would not create hazardous quantities of dust and that quarantine wouldn’t be a problem. Alex didn’t see the point of it himself, but he knew that his crew enjoyed having a real tree in their sickbay.

  He found out where it had gone when Rangi took him over to what had been the dispensary. He had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to create a habitat for the lizard. The tree was now in the dispensary, along with an improvised climbing frame, feeding bowls and toys. The gecko was basking drowsily in the warmth of the light. It was, Alex saw, now a pale brown colour with darker mottled patches.

  Rangi pulled out an expanding medi-lock from the door frame. It was a transparent plastic airlock on a fold-out frame. There was a pathogen sensor and a decontam spray within. Alex recognised that Rangi could not have done any more either to ensure that the lizard didn’t escape or to satisfy quarantine requirements. Any fair-minded quarantine inspector would sign off on this as perfectly acceptable.

  Rangi handed the skipper a hypo. His tear-drenched eyes would have wrung pity from the hardest heart. Alex did feel for him. At the same time, though, he was remembering an incident not long after Rangi had taken up his post aboard the Minnow. A beetle had been detected by airlock scans, having got inside a crewman’s kitbag. Rangi had been moved almost to tears by the crewman’s prompt disposal of the insect, protesting that he would have taken it back groundside and released it back into the wild. Rangi was a very able medic and much loved by the crew, but somewhat over-sensitive.

  “Thank you,” Alex said, and feeling that this would be hard enough without Rangi making an emotional scene, told him, “Go and have a cup of tea, Sub-lt.”

  His tone made it clear that this was an order he expected Rangi to obey. Rangi did so, too. For all his eccentricities, he was a serving member of the Fleet and would not refuse a legitimate order. Casting just one last look at the gecko, he choked back a sob and departed.

  Alex took a breath when he’d gone, and steadied himself. Then he went through the medi-lock. Alex was not at all comfortable with animals and not sure, even, if the lizard would bite. He should, h
e realised, have asked Rangi to put it in a tank where he could just reach in and pop the hypo on it, minimising distress for the creature. Still, it seemed to be asleep, so he might be able to sneak up on it.

  Advancing cautiously, he held the hypo ready in his hand, freezing into stillness when the gecko opened its eyes. Its eyes were black and bright and fixed on Alex with a look of alert enquiry.

  Alex looked back at it, willing it to just settle back down and go back to sleep, making this easier on both of them. The little gecko, however, gave a little bouncing movement and trilled what sounded remarkably like a greeting. A pink flush was rising over its skin. It trotted along part of the climbing frame, coming towards him.

  Alex moved the hand holding the hypo, slowly, so as not to frighten it off. Before he could put the hypo to it, however, the lizard hopped onto his outstretched arm. Before Alex quite knew what was going on, it was trotting confidently up his sleeve. When he put his other hand up to stop it coming at his face, the gecko climbed onto his wrist and began nuzzling at his hand. It was very pink now and the patches on its skin were a rosy red. Alex didn’t know that it had been trained to come for food like this, on the Demella, eating scraps from the hands of the crew. He just stood there staring at it as the little lizard rubbed its chin against him affectionately and then, finding no food there, settled down on the palm of his hand. It was about the size of a kitten, its feet warm on Alex’s skin. It stretched up its head to be tickled, chirruping happily, tickatickaticka.

  Three minutes later, Alex came out of sickbay. Rangi was waiting outside the door, along with Sam and a handful of crew who were comforting him. All of them looked at Alex with sorrowful eyes.

  Alex looked sternly back at them.

  “You,” he told the medic, “will take full responsibility for it.” He put the unused hypo back in Rangi’s hand. “And change its name,” he ordered. “I won’t have Mr Ireson embarrassed.”

  As wondering joy began to dawn on Rangi’s face, Alex allowed a hint of a grin to appear on his own face. It was insane, of course, and they were going to take a lot of hassle over this, but as Ali had observed, they took so much hassle anyway, more wouldn’t make much difference. Ultimately, he could not expect anyone else to kill the gecko at his order when he couldn’t do it himself.

  “Call it Lucky,” he said, and walked off, grinning to himself as the laughter and the cheering started.

  Missed the first mission?

  Skipper Alex von Strada is one of the Fleet’s highest achieving officers, commanding the corvette Minnow with a company of eccentric officers and last-chance crew sent to him for rehab.

  After a PR disaster has activists and media storming the Admiralty gates, First Lord Dix Harangay sends Minnow out on a makework patrol. Inspector Mako Ireson goes with them to investigate what’s really going on. Mako has never been on a starship before. He can’t tell port from starboard, doesn’t know what the 0-G sign means at freefall hatchways, and may need to change his underwear after the launch.

  Nobody is expecting that the “mission zero” they've been sent on will turn into a real operation. When it does, the Minnow’s crew has to rise to the challenge and justify their skipper’s faith in them.

  This is the first mission of the legendary Fourth Fleet Irregulars, the unit you send for when you need a miracle.

  For Mako Ireson, it will be the adventure of a lifetime.

  Available in paperback and e-book from Amazon, Smashwords and other on-line bookstores

  Available free (zero cost, download for nothing, nada, no strings) e-stories at Smashwords.com

  Welcome to Kluskey's spacer hangout. Here, spacers swap yarns of ghost ships, space monsters, the weird and wonderful and the downright daft.

  Spend the day with Adventure Girl Kat Auton.

  History is being made today with the launch of the Friendship, the most advanced ship ever seen in human space. It will be crewed by chethari, quarians and humans from across the League and Allianzi, and will soon be heading out on its first missions. Kat, the youngest member of the Friendship's media team, is reporting on the build up to the big event; front stage, back stage, all the atmosphere as it happens.

  But it is going to be a much bigger day than even Kat is expecting.

  Available in paperback and e-book from Amazon and other on-line book stores.