Assegai

by S J MacDonald

  ‘But you didn’t worry about it,’ Silvie observed.

  ‘No.’ Alex said. ‘I was focussed on the task in hand, busy with that, confident that I could hold my own against Dix in any ‘told you so’ from him over my moving into a flag suite, confident in his promise that there would be no attempt to shanghai me into an Admiralty office.’

  ‘That’s what people were afraid of,’ Silvie recalled. ‘Which is insane. Why would your authorities, finding that they have someone who is exceptionally brilliant at something, promote them into a position where they could no longer do it?’

  ‘Humans,’ Alex agreed, with a grin. ‘But I see – I do see – that there are all sorts of reasons for that, and some very good reasons, too. No individual should be indispensable, the League’s progress in exodiplomacy should not be unduly vested in any one person, a lot of things have happened very fast and it would be sensible to take some time to process it all, someone who is considered to have exceptional skills and experience is a valuable resource and should be used to train others, all those are very good reasons for moving me into an office at the Admiralty at least for a year or two. And there are very good arguments, too, for spreading that training and experience around the Fleet, now that we have ships like the Assegai capable of going anywhere the Heron could. I can see all the reasons why they would want me in an office, or running exercises for Fleet ships, like here. But I didn’t worry about it, no, because the imperative is also there to have me keep on doing what I’m doing so long as it’s working so well, and because my understanding of the politics involved made it unlikely to happen. But now, with Cerdan Jennar going…’

  ‘But Terrible must know that it would make you miserable, not letting you be a skipper anymore,’ Silvie protested.

  ‘Yes, she does.’ Alex said. ‘But she is not called Terrible for nothing, Silvie. She’s called that because she has an absolute, duralloy commitment to duty – you know that! You’ve met her!’

  ‘Yes, she’s beautiful,’ said Silvie, with her unique appreciation of the inner beauty of a perfectly cohesive personality, no façade masking a tumult of self-doubt and hang-ups; a person of shining integrity.

  ‘And that isn’t just her personal commitment,’ Alex said. ‘She believes it to be the duty of every member of the Fleet to put their duty above all other considerations, and the higher your rank, the higher that commitment should be. Which I am with her on, of course, absolutely, no argument there. I would never put my own wishes above my duty. The difference between us is that Terrible believes that my duty, the best way I can serve, is by accepting a high-command role detached from ship command. And I, with every bit as much conviction, believe that I can best serve the League, and the Fleet, by doing things the way that I believe I do them best. Which means, for me, being a skipper, being involved. But when – if – Terrible is Third Lord of the Admiralty, her opinion will carry a lot more weight than mine.’

  ‘So…’ Silvie looked attentively at him. ‘What do you think is going to happen?’

  ‘I think,’ Alex said, ‘that the Heron will be tasked back to Chartsey – transferred back there, even. We were only sent off to Therik in the first place because of the media storm. And I think that once I’m there I’ll be asked to take part in all kinds of in-depth debriefings, inter-agency committees, policy panels, think tanks. And I think I will be given, purely as a matter of convenience, of course, an office and staff at Admiralty HQ. And I think that once they’ve got me working there the Heron will be sent off on operations without me. That is what I think, Silvie. That is what I think is going to happen.’

  ‘So, all right,’ she said. ‘You’ve Acknowledged and Analysed. Now Act. What are you going to do? And don’t,’ she aimed a warning finger at him, ‘tell me that you have no choice. There is always a choice.’

  ‘True,’ Alex conceded. ‘But in this case the decisions are out of my hands – I can argue my case, of course, but I do think that Cerdan Jennar stepping down will alter the dynamic tremendously, and if it is Terrible who takes his place, I may well find myself faced with orders to report to Chartsey and nothing I can say will change their minds. Which leaves me the only choices any Fleet officer has in that situation – do as you’re told, or quit.’

  ‘And we both know,’ said Silvie, ‘that you are never going to quit.’

  ‘Oh, I could,’ Alex said. ‘If it was a case of taking a stand against outrageous injustice – a higher moral imperative, yes. Yes, I could resign then, if it was the right thing to do, on principle. But because I don’t like my orders and will hate being cooped up in an office on Chartsey? No. That is not who I am.’

  ‘And the Fourth?’ Silvie asked. ‘Your responsibility to them?’

  Alex was quiet for a while, and Silvie just waited, seeing that he was finding the emotional detachment he needed to voice thoughts he really didn’t want to have, let alone to share.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘it has served its purpose.’

  Once he had said that, got it out, he seemed easier talking about it.

  ‘We were founded, originally, because I had a point to prove.’ He said. ‘And I don’t mean the miscarriage of justice, it started a long time before that, back when I was a cadet, even.’

  He had told Silvie about this before, but not in this emotional context, and she understood, too, that he needed to talk this out, to get his own mind clear on it. So she looked at him expectantly, encouraging him to explain.

  ‘Second year,’ Alex said. ‘Leadership class, case studies in the management of challenging behaviour. I’d really believed, you know, up until then, that the Fleet had all that kind of thing down pat. I mean, they’ve been going for more than two thousand years, I thought, they must have matters of organisation, crew management and discipline down to a fine art. So I really thought it was a trick question when we were given a case study of a high potential, underperforming crewman with repeating disciplinary incidents. None of the possible courses of action provided for discussion contained what seemed to me the obvious solution, and I really thought they’d left it out on purpose as part of the exercise. So when we were asked to give our opinions I wrote that I wouldn’t do any of the options given but would instead recognise that the man’s behaviour was due to boredom and frustration and should be dealt with by finding ways to provide him with stimulus and challenge. I ended up having a little chat with the Academy Commandant,’ a grin crept onto his face as he remembered that, ‘Who advised me that such attitudes, though showing commendable strength and independent thought, might be interpreted as critical of established Fleet procedure, even as radical. It was the first time anyone told me that I had radical views, quite a sea-change moment for me in the way I saw myself, and the Fleet, too. And I was careful, after that, to be rather more tactful than saying that the standard Fleet policies were just obviously wrong.’

  ‘But then you worked with Buzz,’ Silvie said. ‘And he helped you to realise that it was okay to be radical, to take a leading role and do things how you felt they ought to be done.’

  ‘Yes, I learned a huge amount from him,’ Alex agreed. Buzz Burroughs had been the formative influence in his early career, mentoring him as a young Sub, which was why Alex had called on him for help when facing the challenge of his first command. ‘And I did, after that, make a point of addressing disciplinary issues with rehab, as I went around on postings. Which got me a reputation as a bullock farmer, and that in turn led to a lot of skippers offering me their bullocks when they heard I was getting the Minnow. And that was when it started, really, me feeling that I could use that to prove a point, make it work, not just by coping with the crew no other skippers wanted but by turning the Minnow into the best performing ship of its class. Dix gave us some leeway on protocol right from the start, agreeing that I could run the ship on a rehab basis, though still under regular terms. Even after we were moved onto irregular terms, it was still about that, really, about proving the point that stimulus and challenge gets th
e best out of people, whether they are bullocks, high flyers or whatever. And proving too, what I’ve always felt to be an outrage, that the strict limits on training budgets and qualification quotas on Fleet ships are crazy, beyond counter-productive, restricting both individual achievement and the Fleet’s overall skills. So that, really, was what we were all about – that, and the research, looking for ways to improve the performance of our ships.

  ‘And now, you know…’ he gestured to indicate the Assegai. ‘Here we are. The Fleet is investing in the talent of their most able people. And now that Cerdan Jennar has gone, Min is confident she’ll be able to get the perfect-conduct requirement lifted so that she can take bullocks, too. And as skippers throughout the Fleet are already protesting against their most talented people being pirated off them, and even more of them now with the Assegai, they’re pressing, too, for increased training budgets, and for an ‘able and talented’ scheme to catch and support talent right from basic training, before they can turn into bullocks. Anyone who’s served with the Fourth is in massive demand, too, as skippers look to use that experience in raising their own ship’s performance. More than half the people who were on the Quarus mission are going back to regular service anyway, most of the others are due to leave within another year and a half, all of them could have fine careers in the regular Fleet, now, none of them need the Fourth, and if skippers like Min are taking in bullocks, then the point I was trying to make, all those years ago… well, it has been made, hasn’t it?’

  ‘But – operationally?’ Silvie argued.

  ‘I still feel we have something to contribute,’ Alex admitted. ‘The way we work, the operational teamwork, the integration of high-tech research. But that may be arrogant, I don’t know. Others may feel that we’ve reached a natural culmination with the Quarus mission, and that to let us go on doing exodiplomacy may not be in the best interests of the League, implying as it does that we’re the only unit capable of undertaking first contact missions. Which isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the case.’

  ‘You’ve shown the way,’ Silvie observed, ‘and now you feel it only fair to step aside and let other people have a turn, yes?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Alex said. ‘I would understand if that was the decision that was made, anyway. I wouldn’t agree to anything, obviously, that left members of the Fourth feeling abandoned – I would insist, for a start, on promotions for all of them upon re-assignment, and to postings they want. And that really would be a deal-breaker, reason to resign if they wouldn’t look after my people the way they deserve. But I don’t think they’ll slam us with a disbanding order, anyway. Dix is more considerate than that. Like I say, I think we’ll be brought back to Chartsey, that I’ll be moved into an office, and slow changes will be made – new people on secondment, maybe, staying in Fleet uniform, a gradual shift from Fourth terms back to regular service, a reintegration.’

  ‘So – by resigning,’ Silvie said, ‘Cerdan Jennar may actually end up getting what he wanted all along, with you out of ship command and the Fourth quietly dispersed.’ She tipped her head onto one side and adopted a comical robot delivery. ‘Is this the human quality you call irony?’

  Alex recognised the reference, though he hadn’t seen the movie himself. It had, evidently, been of the cheesy variety, with a cute robot developing sentient awareness. The line, Is this the human quality you call love? had been picked up by the Assegai’s crew as an in-joke.

  ‘It would be, wouldn’t it?’ Alex said. ‘Damnably ironic!’ He started to laugh, not very humorously, at the thought. ‘Though Cerdan Jennar would definitely not want me pushed up into high command and the Fourth spread about in a move to raise Fleet standards.’

  ‘He’ll think he’s lost – if that happens, and he sees it, he’ll think he’s lost and you’ve taken over the Fleet. And you’ll feel you’ve lost because all the things you love will be taken away from you.’ Silvie shook her head. ‘I believe,’ she said, ‘that is a lose-lose situation. So who wins? The Fleet? Possibly. But the Fourth is like a powerhouse, leading the way but a driving force, too, for innovation and for problem solving. Take that away, that spirit, that identity, and the Fleet – and the League – will lose something special. I’d be sorry. I’d be very sorry. And… I’d have to go.’ She looked at Alex and saw that he’d already realised that.

  ‘Oh.’ She saw the sorrow in him, and the resolution.

  It would not break his heart to lose her, because he would not let it. He would do what any father did when their daughter was grown and made their own way out into the world, even if that meant that they would be separated. He would tell her it was fine, worry himself sick, be enormously proud of her and miss her like hell.

  ‘And if that isn’t what I want?’ she asked. ‘If I say, Alex, I can’t do this without you, I need you, please stay with me?’ She saw the answer in him and grinned, satisfied. ‘Thanks. I’m not going to say that and you know it, but you were feeling ridiculously guilty, there.’

  Alex worked out what she’d done, provoking that rush of emotion and the certainty that had crystallised, that if it came to a choice like that he would quit the Fleet, to be there for her as long as she needed him.

  ‘If you do get sent to Chartsey,’ Silvie said, ‘I’ll go back to Serenity – lots of ways I can help, there, and I expect they’ll let us have the Assegai to take a group on a visit to Camae.’ As Alex smiled at that, Silvie added, on a warning note, ‘I may have to fight you for Shion, though.’

  Alex laughed. He had no doubt which Shion would choose, given the option of a place on his staff at Chartsey or being pilot-instructor and liaison for Silvie on the Assegai.

  ‘Shion,’ he said, ‘will make her own choices. But this is all just speculation anyway, Silvie – the wildest kind of speculation, really. I don’t know that any of this is actually going to happen. It’s just a… well, just a suspicion, really, based on not much more than a gut-instinct uneasiness which may well be nothing more than end of mission blues.’

  ‘Oh, don’t do that,’ Silvie implored. ‘Don’t go talking yourself back into denial, Alex. You said yourself, you have a pilot’s instinct for when things are about to go bad. So you’ve acknowledged that, analysed it and decided what actions you’ll take in the case of the worst case scenario. So now, since there’s nothing more than you can do about it till the hammer drops, you can forget it.’ She was getting up as she spoke, holding out her hand to him, suggesting the panacea which would ease both the worry in his mind and the stress in his body. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go for a swim.’

  Alex got up, put his hand in hers, and smiled.

  Twenty

  By the time they were approaching Therik, Alex was resigned to the orders he more than half expected to find waiting for him there. And he was, as he always tried to do, looking at the positives.

  There were quite a few of those, for sure. The Samartians had learned a lot about Fleet warships and the Assegai, in turn, had picked up some extraordinary combat skills. The command training group, too, were graduating with every outcome that could have been hoped for. They were all now fluent in speaking Samartian, thoroughly versed in Samartian culture and in good position, now, to take on leading roles in developing that relationship further. They had also had the benefit of operational masterclasses with Alex himself, teaching them to understand operations from a broader, bigger picture view. They, and every member of the Assegai’s company, had raised their game, too, in the operational skills they’d gained through the visit to Camae. And entertaining as it had been to have finger-kissing lessons on the way there, they really had gone above and beyond what could normally be asked for of a Fleet crew paying a courtesy visit.

  They had all done well at Camae, Alex knew. And for better or worse, four and a half billion people on Camae would find their world changing because of the Assegai’s visit, which was no small thing. And they had, too, seen a promising start to a friendship between Samart and Quarus, an unanticipated but very ple
asing outcome.

  It was all good, mission accomplished, and if this was Alex’s swan song in operational command, then he could finish, at least, on a note of satisfaction.

  And there were things to look forward to at Therik, too, regardless of what orders might be waiting for him there. His parents should be at the base, by now, eager to tell him, no doubt, of their own adventures on the visit to Chartsey. He’d be able to catch up with Buzz, too, and so many friends he was only really starting to miss now that he was going to see them again. It would be nice to wake up at the base, to look out over the parade ground and see the next batch of recruits on secondment strolling and chatting on their way from quarters to classes. It would be good to see, too, what work they’d had done on the Heron.