Alex stared at them, nonplussed.
‘If there’s been some kind of incident ...’ he started, but Perry held up a hand.
‘There has, yes, and we’ll tell you about it, of course, skipper, but it is important to be clear that this isn’t something we’ve come here to discuss with you. It is a decision we have already made and one that is in our remit to make.’ A faint smile, at that. ‘Our kind of command decision,’ he added.
‘Ah,’ Alex said, still finding it difficult to understand how this had come out of the blue.
‘It isn’t,’ Mack assured him, cutting in, ‘a decision made either on impulse or in anger, skipper. We have, as you know, been dissatisfied with Professor Pattello’s conduct from the start, and deeply embarrassed by her behaviour at Amali. If we could have seen our way to removing her from the project before now, we certainly would have done so. Now, she’s given us justification we can act upon.’
‘We were mindful, you see, of our Board’s reaction – a concern, I suppose, not unlike you having to report to the Admiralty,’ Perry said, with an evident aim of explaining things to the skipper in terms that he could understand.
‘For us to go back and tell them that we’d fired Professor Pattello before the test was carried out would, I’m sure you appreciate, have needed us to give very good and solid grounds for that decision. We were all acutely aware of how petty and even immature our complaints about her behaviour in the lab would sound to directors who’ve never experienced the intensifying atmosphere aboard ship. We felt pretty sure, in fact, that it would sound to them like we were all behaving unprofessionally and that that would rebound badly against all three of us, even more so than on Professor Pattello. And we were, too, in an extraordinarily difficult position with regard to the incident with Shion, since we are not, for obvious reasons, in a position to explain to the Board just what was so shocking and offensive about her rudeness to someone we could only describe as ‘one of your officers.’’
Alex nodded understanding. Attempting to tell their Board that they’d fired the scientist leading the project because she’d told a ship’s officer not to come into the lab would, indeed, have sounded lame beyond belief.
‘But ...?’ he prompted.
‘But now, this evening, at dinner, she deliberately turned off the white-noise generator and refused to put it back on or to allow us to do so, physically preventing us from doing so, even when reminded that the generator is on in order to protect Kate Naos from physically painful engine noise.’ Perry said. Alex’s face hardened, and Perry hastened to reassure him, ‘Kate is fine. She went to her cabin and she is fine, skipper.’
‘All right,’ Alex conceded, though his tone was stern, with that. ‘Did she have any kind of explanation?’
‘She said it was getting on her nerves.’ Perry said.
‘She was furious,’ Mack said. ‘We were paying attention to Kate, and she seemed to feel that that was in some way directed insultingly at her.’
‘If you ask me,’ Denni said, ‘she was just flat out jealous.’
Looks from Mack and Perry conveyed that they had not asked her, and Denni subsided.
‘Regardless of her reason, however,’ Mack said, ‘the fact is that she deliberately caused discomfort to Kate, and in our company, we’d call that bullying.’
‘You might call it assault, even,’ Perry observed.
‘At any rate, we have strong anti-bullying policies at Devast,’ Mack said. ‘And since she’s working for us, they apply to her, too. She caused physical distress to a colleague, easily within the bounds of definition of that in our policy. The equivalent example we have in the policy is that of an office supervisor who didn’t have a light replaced, though it was flickering so as to cause discomfort and headaches in the member of staff who worked there, because of personal animosity between them. We’ve referenced that section of the policy in our letters, as you’ll see, in explaining our grounds for instant dismissal.’
‘You’ve fired her?’ Alex was startled. ‘Just like that? I mean, right now?’
‘These things take rather longer in the Fleet, I imagine,’ Perry was a little amused by that. ‘Court martials and so forth. In the commercial world, however, we work differently – given sufficient grounds, we can and do fire people on instant dismissal, clear their desks, leave immediately. That’s a problem, obviously, when we’re in space, but we are notifying you that she is no longer employed by Devast and therefore no longer associated with the project, so that you can make whatever arrangements you feel appropriate to get her off the ship. Devast will, of course, pay her passage back to Therik.’
‘The thought occurs to us that it might save any awkwardness with the media if it was possible to get her onto a liner that has already left Karadon,’ Mack said, and seeing the quirk of Alex’s eyebrows, added, ‘Not that we’re trying to tell you what to do, skipper, far from it – it’s just that we do appreciate that there are sensitivities involved in putting her off the ship at Karadon and we’re trying to be proactive in limiting the disruption and demand upon you and your officers.’
‘Thank you,’ Alex said. ‘But you’ll forgive me if I have to ask, do you, in fact, have the rightful authority from your company to do this?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Mack said, with a happy little smile, at that. ‘Our managerial structure may not have shown too well in terms of our ability to manage her behaviour here, skipper, but in dealing with incidents of gross misconduct, our policies are very clear. Gross misconduct is handled by a general services director – here, that’s Perry – and someone of managerial grade from the same department, which is me. Denni’s signature isn’t on the letters because she isn’t a company manager, but the two of us do, yes, have the authority to fire her. She isn’t even a full contract employee, after all, only a project consultant.’
‘And we can tell you, in confidence,’ Perry added, ‘that there have been concerns raised before about employing her – not about her professional abilities but about her personality. There have been rumours, you know, of her bullying students and faculty staff, at her university, and she is not the kind of team player we like at Devast. The decision was made, though, that an abrasive personality and unsubstantiated rumours weren’t grounds enough when weighed against the talent she could bring to Ignite, and I can only apologise for that, on behalf of the company, for the problems it has caused.’
Alex looked alert. ‘That sounds as though she was brought in on the project, rather than bringing it to you,’ he observed.
‘Oh, yes.’ Mack said, with a dry note. ‘She has a habit of assuming ownership, with a my project attitude even when she remembers to say the project. In fact, the Ignite project was first proposed months before she was involved with it, and more than sixty engineers and hundreds of staff have been actively involved in it. Including, with all due modesty, myself. You might think from her attitude that she designed and built it with her own hands, but really not. Her contribution is in the detonation system – vital, undeniably, but there are other scientific advisors who could have solved that for us, she’s far from unique. The project certainly isn’t in any way dependent on her continuing involvement. Quite apart from any other consideration, you know, Devast would never put themselves in that position, being dependent on any one person for the success of a major and very expensive project.’
Alex shook his head a little, marvelling that he had taken Candra Pattello at her own evaluation, with no understanding of the commercial world she worked in.
‘I see,’ he said, and then, as realisation dawned, ‘And you’ve told her she’s fired?’
They nodded, with an air of resolution.
‘It wasn’t a pleasant meeting,’ Mack observed, adding, ‘firing someone never is. She isn’t taking it gracefully, of course. It’s only fair to warn you that she seems to feel we’re doing this at your instigation, even though we told her repeatedly that it was our decision and you were not involved.’
�
��She appears to believe,’ Perry said, ‘that you’ve taken animus against her for the insult to Shion, and that this is your way of getting rid of her. She even accused us of being ‘paid off’ by you, though it isn’t clear what she meant by that.’
‘It seems probable, though, that she will continue to blame you for this, no matter how many times she’s told otherwise,’ Mack said, ‘And we can only apologise for that, too.’
Alex waved a hand slightly, indicating that the undying hatred of a woman he had no regard for anyway would not bother him in the slightest.
‘No matter,’ he said. ‘It is, evidently, your decision to make, so I’ll make arrangements to get her off the ship. Will you be all right with her staying in the lab for one more night?’
‘Yes, of course, skipper,’ said Perry, and there was quick agreement from the others, with assurance that they didn’t want to be any trouble.
‘All right,’ Alex said. He wouldn’t move Candra to the deck four quarters just for one night, and besides, their rescued couple would be staying there. The last thing they’d need after their ordeal was to find themselves sharing quarters with a ragingly resentful Candra Pattello. ‘We’ll see what we can do.’
They thanked him, assured him again that they didn’t want to be any trouble, shook hands with him and departed, leaving him shaking his head. Civilians, he thought, were just endlessly surprising.
Buzz arrived a few minutes later, having indicated when Alex called him that he wanted to see the skipper, too.
‘You first,’ Alex said, seeing that Buzz had things he wanted to tell him, and knowing that he had just come from sickbay, talking to Roger and Jayanne Levet. ‘How are they?’
‘Amazingly well, considering,’ Buzz said. ‘Rather more stunned to find themselves on our ship, in fact, than to have been rescued. They don’t seem to fully understand the odds they were up against, there. Rangi feels it’s best to let them realise that in their own time, or at least I think that’s what he meant by ‘let them set the emotional agenda’. Anyway, they’re fine.’
He did not tell the skipper, at least not then, that one of the first things the couple had asked him, once reassured by his warm friendliness, was how they were to tell the difference between the criminals and the rest of the crew. They had been, indeed, terrified by the discovery that they were aboard the Fourth’s ship, something they’d only realised a few minutes after coming aboard. To them, it was a ‘prison ship’, and a place of fearful reputation. The fears expressed in their questions had made it apparent that they leaned towards the liberal left wing view of the Fourth, regarding them as brutal and abusive, forcing criminals into front line service as expendable in dirty operations. Buzz had done his best to reassure them, but they were still very anxious.
‘But?’ Alex said, hearing that in Buzz’s tone.
‘But,’ Buzz said, ‘two things. One, they’ve told me what freaked them out so much that they seesawed the engines and ended up diving for the lifepod – there was a noise, they said, which they describe as a terrible screeching, like nothing they’ve ever heard before, like a voice screaming, and nothing they did would stop it.’
‘Oh, no!’ Alex exclaimed, in dismay. ‘They had a banshee?’
That, at least, made sense of why the couple had been so panicked, so terrified that when energy surge began flickering on consoles they’d mistaken it for dephase and fired off in the lifepod. Hardened spacers, men and women who’d handle fires, blowout and explosions with aplomb, would admit frankly to being totally freaked by the banshee noise. Though not many spacers would have heard it, even those who’d been in space for decades. It was a rare phenomenon, and all the more terrifying because engineers and space scientists could not pin down a reason for it. It did little good telling a crew that the phenomenon was harmless and would pass off by itself in a few hours, when you had to admit that nobody really knew for sure what was causing it. There were theories, of course, none of them fully accepted by spacers themselves. And being the superstitious critters they were, spacers had come up with their own explanations.
Alex considered the chances of his crew not finding out about the banshee, and realised there was no point; of course they’d find out about it.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Buzz confirmed, and referring to one of the most common rituals spacers used to rid the ship of a banshee, ‘We may have to stock up on salt at Karadon.’
Alex sighed, but nodded. It occurred to neither of them that they might forbid the exorcism of the banshee. Even in the regular Fleet, such an order would have been regarded both as tyrannical and jinxing the ship. As Alex and Buzz both knew very well, once a crew believed a ship was jinxed that was liable to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Not that anyone would actually admit to believing in the banshee. Every one of them would say that of course it was a load of rubbish, everyone knew it was just hyper-heated steam in the pipes or a cross-dimensional vortex. Nobody actually believed that it was the spirit of a dead spacer screaming, or that the banshee would try to take someone from the ship with it, all of them would say that. But all the same, they would point out, there were often serious accidents, even deaths, associated with the banshee, and there were more things in heaven and the stars than science could explain. Anyway it did no harm, they’d say, to do the salt thing. It was tradition, which was reason enough to do it in itself, and it might make some people who did believe in it feel happier.
It would not just be crew who felt that way, either. Looking at his exec, Alex knew that Buzz had been really disturbed by that discovery, for all that he was trying to make light of it now.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘just don’t ask me to ...’ he saw the shocked look on Buzz’s face, and cracked into helpless laughter, ‘Oh, Buzz!’ he said, reproachfully. ‘Not you, too!’
‘More things in heaven, dear boy,’ Buzz observed. ‘Of course I don’t actually believe it, not seriously, but you have to admit, it’s an eerie phenomenon, and it is often associated with accidents and even fatalities. It very nearly was, today – we all felt how astonishing it was, miraculous, when they were found.’
‘Buzz,’ Alex looked at him patiently, ‘The accident happened because they heard a noise they didn’t understand, and panicked. They were rescued because we used science and logic and a genius mathematician to find them. There is no need for mystic explanations in that. If the crew want to walk backwards and throw salt, fine, it’s a Fleet tradition and I don’t mind if it stops them worrying about jinxes. But I’d feel a complete idiot doing it myself, it’s just ridiculous.’
‘But you’re the skipper, dear boy!’ Buzz protested. ‘The essence of the ship – if you don’t do it, you’re jinxed, and the ship is jinxed too.’
‘Ohhhh,’ Alex sighed again, knowing he was right, and capitulating with a weary note. ‘All right, if I have to.’ He looked pointedly at Buzz, ‘But let’s keep this just as low key as possible, okay?’
Buzz gave him a benign look that held a certain betraying relief, too. Some of the more imaginative crew would certainly say that the skipper had fought the banshee for the lives of Roger and Jayanne Levet, and hadn’t let it take them, and it would be a short step from that to speculating that the banshee might be after them, now, coming after the skipper for revenge. Buzz himself did not believe that, of course, but ...
He moved on, anyway, to a rather more concrete problem.
‘The other thing,’ he said, ‘is the Jolly Roger. The Levets are struggling to come to terms with that – first, that the engines weren’t dephasing and it didn’t blow up. That was a huge shock, obviously, as they realised they’d put themselves in such danger unnecessarily. Finding out that the yacht is being towed by the Benefite, though, they assumed that meant it could be repaired. They even seemed to be asking at one point if they could go back aboard it for the return journey, or get a lift on the Benefite to see it back home. I did eventually manage to convince them that it is beyond repair, and is salvage now, but
they are asking if they can go aboard to get their belongings.’ He and Alex looked at one another in a moment’s silence. ‘Rangi feels,’ Buzz said carefully, ‘that they need to see the extent of the damage, so they really understand that their belongings are gone. I said I’d ask you, so ...?’
Alex nodded. He understood that if they just told the Levets that all their belongings would have been destroyed in the blast and blowout, there would always be some doubt in their minds, some question over whether a precious memento might have been saved. At the same time, there was no way he would put them through the ordeal of being taken aboard that yacht. Quite apart from the emotional trauma of seeing what had happened to the yacht they loved, it would be far too dangerous.
‘Send a probe aboard to film it for them,’ he agreed. ‘Get Ms McKenna to do that, it’ll be good experience for her.’ As Buzz nodded, Alex added, ‘Ask for volunteers for the shuttle crew. And you might as well tell them about the banshee, we may as well just get it over with.’
‘We’ll have to tell the Benefite, too,’ Buzz observed.
Alex sighed, but he knew, again, that Buzz was right. The Benefite’s crew had put the starseeker under tow to their ship, and had boarded it, too, to download the log. If – when – they found out later that the Levets had abandoned it because of a banshee, and the Fourth hadn’t told them, they’d be righteously indignant.
‘And the Stepeasy,’ Alex pointed out, with amusement in his voice at the anticipation of how Davie would react to that.
‘Okay,’ Buzz said, and since the two things he’d needed to ask Alex about were now resolved, looked expectantly at him. ‘So..?’
‘Right,’ Alex said, recognising that it was his turn. ‘I’ve had a visit from the Devast executives,’ he told him, rather enjoying just springing this on him to see his reaction, ‘They’ve fired Candra Pattello.’
XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Page 17