Assegai

by S J MacDonald

  ‘Oh, no worries about that,’ said Alex, with a note of deep satisfaction. ‘I am off the radar,’ he explained. ‘Effectively absent, unobtainable, just as if I was on leave. The Admiralty and the Corps will handle everything while I’m away, and the only mail which will be forwarded to me will be private correspondence.’

  That, of course, was Dix Harangay’s doing, the best he’d been able to do to mitigate the fact that he was denying Alex a very well earned and very much needed rest. And it was a very good best, at that. Alex felt his spirits rising just at the thought of it. Neither the Admiralty nor the Diplomatic Corps would be sending him their usual deluge of paperwork informing, requesting, advising, instructing and generally harassing him. All of that would land on Dix Harangay’s desk, or at least, on the desk of the admiral-led team appointed to handle things on Alex’s behalf for the next five months. He didn’t even have to do any shipboard paperwork, since all the monthly reports and other required record keeping were Min’s responsibility, not his.

  ‘Good,’ said Min, with some relief. ‘Well, it goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, that I and every member of the company will help you in any way we can. And do, please, feel free to call upon the services of anyone you like, any time, you don’t need to do that through me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex said again, with a smile at that sincere and generous offer. Min could have been defensive, guarding her command against any potential incursion, but she was the very opposite of that. Alex had been told that she was delighted to have him going aboard the Assegai, and he could see now that was true. ‘I will do my best,’ he promised, ‘not to interfere. And if a comment seems to be crossing the line into advice, just tell me to back off, no problem, no offence taken, all right?’

  ‘Oh, I hope you will advise,’ Min said immediately. ‘Do, please – comment, suggest, advise as much as you like. I’d be an idiot,’ she observed, ‘not to take advantage of having you aboard. We’re finding our way here, doing something so new we’re having to pretty much figure it out as we go along. So far, at least, it’s going pretty well, but I certainly wouldn’t pretend that it’s perfect, and if you spot anything, anything at all, that you feel we might do better, please tell me, yes? Oh, and while I think of it, do take the conn – whenever you like, for as long as you like, no problem with that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex said again, and did sigh then, but with an exhalation of pleasure. ‘You could not,’ he observed, ‘be making me any more welcome.’

  ‘Pleasure and privilege,’ Min assured him. ‘We couldn’t be happier, believe me – we were thrilled when we were told we were getting the Samartian exchange officers, and then to have you, too, and Silvie…’ She considered, and grinned. ‘We are,’ she said, ‘as happy as piglings in a field full of neeps.’

  Alex did not know what a pigling was and wouldn’t have recognised a neep by that or any other name, but the meaning of the simile was clear enough. And with that, he felt another level of anxiety lift from his mind… a sense of worry he’d hardly been aware of himself, that it had been unfair to dump all this onto Min and the Assegai. Which it was, really. The Assegai was supposed to be on a long, steady progression of training and exercises which had been meant to culminate in their arrival at Serenity in another three or four months, at which point they would embark upon their exodiplomacy role.

  Instead, they’d been playing host to the quarian ambassador for the best part of a month, then moved straight into active role with the assignment of the Samartians. And the disruption of the last week could only be imagined, as plans kept flying and changing and more and more people kept coming aboard. It was good to see that Min had not only coped well with all that, but was positively enjoying it. Then he became aware of a nagging prompt in the back of his mind, something she’d said which was only now triggering doubt.

  ‘All right,’ he said, and then, as the doubt grew stronger, ‘But what did you mean – I have my own steward, of course?’

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘O/S Semach?’ And then, seeing a total lack of recognition on his face, she prompted, ‘She came aboard three days ago – CPO Triesse spent most of the last three days here with her, showing her the ropes. You didn’t know?’

  ‘No,’ Alex said, with a grim note. Ganging up on him to make him go to bed was one thing. A conspiracy to inflict a steward on him they had to know he wouldn’t want was something else again. ‘Who organised that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Min said. ‘She arrived on a normal docket, assigned to your staff as personal steward – I assumed you knew. She’s very keen,’ she added, as if that might help. ‘Fresh out of basic – popping with enthusiasm.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ said Alex, ‘I didn’t ask for a steward and I don’t need one, or want one.’ He looked steadily at her. ‘Can you use her as a supernumerary?’

  ‘Tricky,’ Min startled him by an obvious, if tactful refusal. ‘She doesn’t meet our criteria,’ she pointed out. ‘And there’d be hell to pay, Alex, really would, if we allowed anyone to serve here who doesn’t have a blue docket.’

  A ‘blue docket’, Alex understood, meant a member of the Fleet who did meet the criteria for assignment to the Assegai. That meant that they had been identified as being of above average ability, had already been refused at least one application for training aboard normal Fleet ships and had a perfect disciplinary record. If O/S Semach was fresh out of basic she would fail on the second criteria – she hadn’t even started yet on the training allocation the Fleet allowed crew in their first year in service. And Min was right, too, there really would be hell to pay, throughout the Fleet, if anyone without that coveted docket was allowed to serve with them. Even Shion was only with them on the basis of an ‘expert consultant’, and that would never wash for a newly qualified ordinary star.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, and after a moment’s thought, ‘Well, perhaps I can find her a role on the training deck.’

  ‘As you wish, of course,’ said Min, and seeing that he really wasn’t pleased, moved the topic on with her usual tact. ‘And speaking of the training deck… I am under strict instructions not to open files during meals, myself – it’s one of Dr Payling’s particular bugbears – but since we’ve both finished eating we could take a look at the proposals for orientation, yes?’

  They cleared the table of dishes, flicked into datatable mode and looked at the files. The proposals were ideal, as Alex saw at once. A two-week programme had been organised for the Samartians which involved them spending time in every key department of the ship. It was a suitably modified form of the kind of experience provided for final year cadets on their shipboard assignment – something Alex himself had adapted for Shion when she’d come aboard. It was very well organised, with a designated instructor and specified objectives for every session, time allocated for independent study and a mentor or ‘oppo’ for each of them, providing both professional and personal support.

  Plans for the trainee group were rather less structured, but just as satisfactory. All the trainees had been handed an enormous portfolio of studying to do, not the least of which was an expectation that they would achieve a ‘get by’ level of Samartian within the next fortnight. Min proposed, therefore, that they be left to get on with it, other than for a daily language seminar which one of her own officers could lead if Alex wished.

  Alex, though, put his own name down as linguistics instructor, an obvious opportunity for him to get to know the group and figure out what they needed in the way of training before the Samartian officers could even begin to teach them. At the same time, Min would be bringing her own people up to speed. All of her officers and a good half of her crew were already studying Samartian, with the language course snapped up within hours of the news that they would be taking Preddai Jarlner and Caldai Bennet aboard. Min had advanced their training in combat skills, too, with a programme of drills and exercises which made Alex smile when she showed it to him. It was clearly based on the schedule he and
Buzz had come up with on the way to Samart, building gunnery and manoeuvring skills on an increasingly challenging curve. They would not be at the peak of that curve within a fortnight, nowhere near it, but it was a programme the Samartians would be able to slot their own training into, advising at every stage how the destroyer could enhance its performance.

  ‘This is excellent,’ he thanked her, for which she smiled too.

  ‘Team effort,’ she said.

  ‘Well, my compliments to your team – for this,’ he touched the files, ‘and for all the work they’ve done to make this happen…’ his gesture indicated the entirety of all that the Assegai had had to cope with. ‘I know it can’t have been easy.’

  ‘Pleasure,’ said Min, with a twinkle, ‘and privilege.’

  Alex left her quarters feeling very much more settled. Crossing the passage, he found as he’d expected that Sub-lt Forley was already in the ante-room, pretty much sitting to attention and leaping to his feet as soon as Alex appeared.

  ‘Sir, good morning, sir!’

  ‘Morning, Mr Forley,’ Alex waved him to his seat, ‘Captain, please,’ he reminded him. ‘And informal protocols, if you can.’ He gave the flustered young man a friendly smile. ‘I have a job for you.’ As he spoke, he transferred the training proposals Min had given him from his wristcom to the screens on Miloris Forley’s desk. ‘Set up training files for each of the officers, will you?’

  He could have done that himself in under a minute, but Miloris had to start learning somewhere.

  ‘Captain,’ he sat down with a bump, looking betrayingly flabbergasted for a moment, quite at a loss. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Would you like me to show you how to do it?’ Alex enquired, seeing that the young officer didn’t even know where to start.

  ‘Oh – no, sss… captain.’ Miloris was even more shocked by that. ‘I can look it up in the Book,’ he assured him.

  The ‘Book’ was more formally known as the Fleet Policy and Procedures Manual, an all-embracing handbook which was said to cover every conceivable eventuality. If it wasn’t in the Book, then you shouldn’t be doing it at all. And there would, indeed, be a section in there about training files, what was required and how they should be compiled.

  ‘And if there’s anything I don’t understand,’ Miloris added, ‘I can ask Ms Smythers.’

  Alex didn’t recognise the name – it was in fact the Assegai’s Admin Officer, who’d already taken the anxious adjutant under her wing.

  ‘Very good, Mr Forley,’ Alex said, and did not grin until the door had closed behind him.

  Someone, he recognised, had been in his quarters while he was at breakfast. Riggers would clean through the ship, of course, every day. But riggers wouldn’t have released an aromatherapy pod in there, and nor would they have left a mug of coffee ready for him in the daycabin.

  His steward at work, Alex recognised, and with a feeling that it would be best to get this dealt with as quickly as possible, he found a steward-call on his wristcom and used it, requesting her to report to the daycabin at her earliest convenience.

  She was there in seconds, slightly breathless but glowing with delight. At first sight, Alex could have taken her for a child, dressed up in Fleet costume. She had to be sixteen, he knew, to have joined the Fleet, but he’d have taken her for two or three years younger than that. In fact, she was sixteen. She had signed up with the Fleet three weeks after her sixteenth birthday, and had graduated from five months basic training just a fortnight ago. She was small and skinny, with a pale, pinched look he’d seen only too often on Chartsey. When she spoke, too, her accent confirmed her origins. Her ‘What can I get you, skipper?’ came out as ‘Warcunee gerru, skapper?’

  A Subter. A class on the capital world defined not just by its geographical location in the deepest, cheapest estates far underground, or by their socio-economic status as the deprived under-class. They had their own sub-culture, their own dialect. And as far as popular perception went, they were characterised by poverty, low aspirations, a pervasive addiction to drugs and high criminality. For a Subter to make it into Fleet service was unusual, evidence in itself of a driving ambition and determination to make something of her life.

  Alex looked at the pride and joy on her face, and folded. He could no more have told this girl that he didn’t want her than he could have kicked away an infant.

  Buzz, he realised at once. Buzz had done this, chosen her from all the available newly qualified ratings, knowing very well that Alex would not be able to dismiss her, and aided and abetted no doubt by Banno Triesse, too.

  Oh you… Alex stifled the word even mentally. Outwardly, he smiled.

  ‘Nothing,’ he assured her. ‘I just wanted to meet you – have you settled in all right? No problems?’

  He would take the answer from give-away micro-expressions rather than what she said, but in fact there was no give-away of stress or trouble.

  ‘Oh no, skipper, everyone’s lovely,’ she assured him, after a moment to figure out that what he was really asking was whether she’d been made welcome here, or made to feel like an undeserving interloper. She beamed at him, gazing at him like a teenager meeting an A-list celebrity… for all the world, Alex felt, as if she was about to ask him for his autograph. ‘I hope everything’s all right?’ she asked, indicating the quarters she’d just cleaned and polished for him.

  ‘Yes, yes, thank you,’ Alex said. ‘And thank you for the coffee, too – unfortunately I can’t drink it, as I’m on a supervised diet for the next few days.’

  He had drunk the coffee left for him the night before, excusing it on the basis that he’d already had so much unhealthy stuff that day that it would make no difference, and that his detox didn’t start, anyway, until this morning. But it had started now, and however tempting that mug might look and smell, he had given Rangi his word that he’d stick with the detox for at least three days.

  This was evidently not news to O/S Semach.

  ‘I know, skipper,’ she said, and with that gave him a sly, mischievous wink which told him that he could rely on her to slip him a mug of the good stuff any time he wanted some.

  Alex gave his little snurge of amusement, seeing that the rating was declaring her allegiance with him, there, against what she evidently felt to be bullying by the medical fraternity.

  ‘Well, that’s, um…’ Alex floundered for the right word, and could only grin. ‘But honestly, I am off coffee for a few days, so if you could…’ he gestured to indicate that he wanted her to remove the tempting mug, and she went at once to take it off the desk. ‘And I will,’ Alex told her, ‘be shifting my gear up to the office on the training deck, so…’

  He was about to tell her that he would only need her to provide stewarding services when he was working or entertaining in the flag suite, and to see what other training he could start her on, but she forestalled him.

  ‘Oh – can I pack for you?’ The way she asked, it was as if to be allowed to move his uniforms and few personal belongings up four decks would be the culmination of a childhood dream, joy beyond measure.

  Alex von Strada, the fearsome, the terrifying, the Presidential Envoy who’d held the future of worlds in his hands, found himself utterly helpless in the face of a sixteen year old rating’s appeal. What he wanted to say, and very firmly, was ‘No, absolutely not, I’m perfectly capable of packing my own things, thank you, and I really do not like being nannied.’

  What he actually said was, ‘Uh – well, I suppose…’

  ‘Ta, skipper!’ For a moment he thought she might rush over and hug him, but she settled for giving a little happy bounce on her toes, instead. ‘I’ll get right on it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alex, and knew then that he’d lost this one and would just have to accept her waiting on him. ‘Well – thank you, Ms Semach.’

  ‘Simmy,’ she corrected him, already moving towards the inner door, keen to get on with the packing. ‘People call me Simmy.’

  And with that, and the
brightest of bright smiles, she was gone.

  Alex said a word, but only in his head. You just wait till I catch up with you, Buzz, he thought, but even as the thought occurred he knew that what he’d really say was ‘Thanks.’ As irritating as it might be to be manipulated like this, having Simmy Semach around was obviously going to be fun.

  What wasn’t fun was going to sickbay for his medical – a tedious half hour which only confirmed what he knew already.

  ‘I am happy for you to continue with the recovery programme prescribed by Dr Tekawa,’ Dr Payling told him, having explained at some length all the things which were wrong with his digestion, liver and body chemistry. ‘If that is your wish, captain?’

  Alex nodded. Dr Payling, he knew, would never normally have any truck with detox diets and herbal tea. If it had been down to him, Alex would have been slapped on stand-down, loaded with drugs and issued with nutrient drinks. Alex, though, was happy to go with Rangi’s gentler approach, if only because to do otherwise would have felt disloyal.

  ‘By all means,’ he said, and feeling it necessary to make the point that he was, in fact, a responsible and compliant patient, ‘And whatever you advise too, obviously.’

  Dr Payling blenched a little. He didn’t want to deviate one iota from Rangi’s programme, acutely aware as he was that if Alex’s condition deteriorated, he would be held personally responsible.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, with an unconvincing attempt at bonhomie. ‘I concur with Dr Tekawa, absolutely.’

  Alex left sickbay with the distinct impression that Dr Payling was unimpressive both as a medic and a human being. He was wrong about that, as he’d find out later that day, but for now he shrugged off the mystery of why a man like him had got such a prestige post, focussing instead on his own responsibilities.