XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  It was the interpretation of capable and decisive that was at the heart of the difference between the two of them. There were two ways to succeed in the Fleet. One was to be strictly orthodox, following all protocols rigorously, making the by-the-book decisions that many senior officers believed were the only way the Fleet could and should operate. The other way was to be radical, progressive, taking risks and getting away with it. The two of them, therefore, represented diametrically opposite poles. In this, at least, opposites did not attract.

  ‘Please,’ said Alex, having given this a good deal of thought on the way here, ‘We’ve known each other long enough, surely.’ He’d taken Harlon Alington into his cabin, with that, and gestured hospitably at a chair. ‘Call me Alex.’

  ‘Harry,’ said the other skipper, never at a loss socially, at least, and responding to this with automatic courtesy, though he didn’t smile. He looked, Alex thought, like a man who hadn’t slept much recently, for all his superficially well-glossed grooming. Even so, Alex saw him glance about the cabin as he sat down, and could see the faint disparagement in that. Harry Alington, for sure, would have made this a far more stylish space if it had been his cabin.

  ‘Coffee?’ Alex offered, and after a glance around to see if it might be materialising out of thin air, Harry declined, ‘No, thank you ...’ the barest hesitation, and he substituted ‘Alex’, though his tone still said ‘sir’.

  This was awkward. Alex had, true, four years seniority over him now, and commanded a larger ship, too, but the difference in their ranks was not so great that they would normally be expected to be so stiff with one another. Skippers, indeed, were usually casual with one another in private, even if just in relief at being able to set aside command formalities.

  ‘So,’ Alex sat down, himself, regarding the older, taller man with thoughtful appraisal. ‘How are things going, then, Harry?’

  Harry winced, an involuntary little twitch of his shoulders and shifting in his seat. A look passed across his face, too, a shadow that looked like grief. Alex recognised it and felt a twinge of appalled sympathy, thinking that the other skipper must have lost someone close to him. Harry composed himself quickly, though.

  ‘It’s a nightmare,’ he answered. ‘It’s just a nightmare. I...’ he struggled for a moment, but got the words out, ‘I have to offer you an apology – you may have heard, already...’ he looked at Alex and saw only incomprehending sympathy. But there was no help for it – if the other skipper hadn’t heard about this already then he certainly would very shortly, and it was better to come from Harry himself, with due apology straight off. ‘The incident at Chartsey...’ Harry said, and seeing that Alex still had no idea what he was talking about, confessed, ‘There was a dinner aboard the Zeus. People were talking about your mission here and, well, I expressed the opinion that it was not really so remarkable, as you’d used a similar strategy in a command school exercise.’

  Alex had no difficulty understanding the context in which such comment would have seemed entirely appropriate, even greeted with laughter by his fellow diners. The Zeus’s captain was fiercely Old School and both he and Alex had been relieved when the Minnow was detached from his squadron. Alex, with due deference to a senior officer, had been quietly so. The Zeus’s captain, on the other hand, had seen no reason to keep quiet about that infernal puppy von Strada and his so-called innovations. With Harry’s own opinion of Alex entirely in sympathy with that and his habit of social networking with superiors, Harry would have seen no harm in airing that opinion. He had a fair point, too. Alex’s strategy in the Karadon operation had not sprung out of nowhere. It was a development of a hypothetical strategy he’d worked on as part of a command school course, itself a modification of a very much older strategic coup. The principle of applying psychological pressure to control a situation where you couldn’t go in physically was, after all, nothing new. It was the way Alex had done it that had been so out there, the deliberate destabilising of the station’s management and creating such unease that the tourists had fled en masse.

  ‘Oh?’ He said, noncommittally, seeing that there was more to it than that.

  ‘Captain Tennet was there.’ Harry said, as if that explained everything. A little gleam of amusement came into Alex’s eyes, at that, as he began to see the direction this was going.

  Captain Tennet was known as ‘Terrible’ in the Fleet – herself rigidly, ferociously Old School, she’d have been perfectly at home in that company. But Terrible Tennet had been the flag officer who’d carried out the Fourth’s inspection on the way out to Karadon, clearing the Heron as ready for active operations. She had been on their case with a ferocity that fully justified her nickname, and if there had been anything, anything she could have criticised, she would certainly have done so. Captain Tennet, however, had shaken Alex’s hand as she left, giving him a rare nod of approbation along with the highest possible rating of excellence. She would not, Alex knew, on principle, have liked to hear any officer belittling another who was senior to him, but he could imagine her reaction to hearing the indolent home-squadron officer speaking so disrespectfully of a skipper who’d just pulled off a major front line law enforcement operation.

  ‘I was called in a few days later and told I was being given the Minnow,’ Harry told him, ‘on assignment to come here. I didn’t understand why till I met Captain Tennet in a corridor and she said she hoped I’d benefit from ... well, from learning the difference between scoring an A in a training exercise and pulling off real operations.’

  ‘Ah,’ Alex said, and felt that the question who did he pee off to get this assignment? had now been satisfactorily answered.

  ‘I do apologise, sir, sincerely,’ said Harry, and evidently meant that. ‘I shouldn’t have said it, and I take it back, and apologise, unreservedly.’

  ‘Apology accepted,’ Alex said, and since Harry’s tentative gesture showed that he was hoping for a more definite acceptance, solemnly shook hands with him. ‘So, the nightmare?’ he prompted.

  ‘Oh, the media!’ Harry said, and the word held a cry of despair, with horror on his face, too, as he looked at Alex. ‘I had no idea, I freely admit, I just had no idea what I was coming into. I mean, it isn’t as if I haven’t been on operations before – not as skipper, admittedly, but in senior, responsible posts. I’ve taken part in patrols, even law enforcement, and I really thought that all I was expected to do here was to further the good relationships you’d already established. But I had no idea. The spacers aren’t nearly as cooperative as I hoped, and there are all these campaigners on the station, but the media, sir, the media!’

  Again, the word was imbued with much the same emotional charge as ‘flesh eating zombies’ and an almost visible shudder. Alex was human enough to snigger internally, and professional enough not to let that show on his face.

  ‘Hostile?’ he asked, as if mildly interested, and as if he didn’t know already the kind of stories they were broadcasting.

  ‘Hostile?’ Harry echoed, and with a note of despair, ‘They’re crucifying me!’ As Alex looked attentive, encouraging him to continue, the other skipper unburdened himself, with heartfelt relief at finally being able to report to a superior, laying the problem at his door.

  It had begun, Alex gathered, very quietly. The media at Chartsey had barely taken any notice of the news that the Minnow was being sent back to Karadon. That was last year’s news as far as they were concerned. They were interested in where the Fourth was and what they were doing now, not what was happening with their old ship. Any enquiries they might have made about Harry Alington would have come up with ‘bit of a chinless but firmly by the book’, which would have had the news value of damp tissue, too.

  The reception at Karadon had been delightful, though, at least to begin with. Harry had done the kind of thing at which he excelled and Alex would admit frankly that he was lousy at – he’d socialised, he’d networked, he’d talked charmingly to journalists and given smooth, polished media conferences. Al
ex got the impression of Harry being wooed, flattered by the media based at the station. That had changed on the morning he’d woken up to find that he was featuring in a news item about the ‘Secret Society’ of the Sixty Four.

  ‘It was complete nonsense!’ Harry said, with a note of bewilderment even now. ‘They’d taken something I’d said about a fraternity of those of us who’ve graduated Top Cadet, and twisted into this bizarre secret society at the upper echelons of the Fleet, it was just ...’ he shook his head.

  ‘Ah,’ Alex said. He looked at Harry’s hand and saw that he was, yes, still wearing his Academy ring.

  Harry flushed as he saw Alex looking at it. That, in fact, had been the cause of the falling out between them. Every year, the cadet graduating top of the Sixty Four, best of the best, was presented with a signet ring engraved with their name and the year. Since it was technically an honour they were supposed to wear it with dress uniform, but it was left to individual preference whether they wore it for ordinary usage. Few officers did, at least not after their first few months in active service.

  Harry, however, wore his all the time. He’d been at Alex’s graduation, in fact, invited back as recent winners of the award often were if they happened to be in port at the time. Harry had made a speech, shaking young Cadet von Strada by the hand. Afterwards, at the formal reception, he had cornered Alex and told him, in all seriousness, that they were part of an elite club, now, a brotherhood of those entitled to wear that ring. As such, he said, it behove them to support one another.

  Alex had never met anyone who could use the word ‘behove’ in conversation before, and he had felt pretty strongly that he did not want to be Sub-lt Alington’s fraternity brother, thank you.

  He’d avoided him successfully for the next couple of years, declining all invitations from him when they happened to be in the same port. The next time they’d met, both of them had been Lts. It had already been apparent by then that Alex was overtaking him on the way to command, with more shipboard experience and necessary courses already under his belt. They’d met at a dinner held by a port admiral. Lt Alington had cornered him again, taking him to task over a story he’d heard about Alex refusing to wear his Academy ring even with dress uniform. The story was true, in fact, and Alex actually had said, too, that as far as he was concerned it was as embarrassing as still going about wearing the badge you got for a high school science fair.

  He hadn’t meant that to be insulting to Lt Alington, hadn’t been thinking about him at all when he said it, and was unaware, even, that the Lt was still wearing his ring every day. He would have apologised for any unintentional offence his remark might have caused, but Harry Alington had pitched in at him with the fraternity line again, reproving him for letting the rest of them down, telling him that he should remember it was an honour, a great honour, and repeating that those of them who wore that ring should stand together and support one another.

  It was not hard to see how that might be misinterpreted as there being some kind of fraternity within the upper echelons of the Fleet, pulling strings for one another and furthering one another’s careers. That, coupled with the operation of the tagged and flagged rapid promotion scheme, might look plausible even to a responsible journalist, particularly those from other worlds. On Chartsey, the journos who reported on Fleet affairs were as familiar with the Admiralty and Fleet culture as Fleet officers were themselves. To provincial journos, however, gathered on Karadon from many different worlds, the Admiralty was a distant and lofty authority. Any suggestion of corruption in high places would have got them slavering, for sure. He looked at Harry Alington and felt a kind of exasperated compassion for him, just knowing that it had been Harry himself who’d blurted and burbled on in his usual precious way about the honour of the Sixty Four and the brotherhood of the Ring.

  ‘I told them it was nonsense, of course,’ Harry said, with the clear implication that he had expected them to accept him correcting their misapprehension once he explained it to them. Once the media had decided that you were involved in dodgy dealings, however, as Alex had learned the hard way, you had no credibility with them. ‘But then they started putting out these reports about you, too, about the two of us, I mean, stories about us being, well, rivals, and really just astounding, incredible nonsense – have you seen any of it?’

  Alex had, of course, as they’d picked up news from the station, and nodded.

  ‘Just in the last few days, but enough to get a flavour of it.’ He’d expected to find Alington taking such media vilification hard, but had not expected to feel any sympathy for him. ‘I’ve got used to it, myself,’ he added, philosophically, ‘But I do understand how difficult it is.’

  ‘Do you?’ Harry’s voice held almost an accusing note, at that, as if he felt that at some level, this was Alex’s fault. ‘Do you? They’re attacking the Sixty Four, Alex! The Academy itself! The finest officers in the Fleet are being vilified by association, and it doesn’t matter what I say or do, it just keeps getting worse!’

  Welcome to my world, thought Alex, but did not say it aloud.

  ‘And the campaigners, too!’ Harry’s voice rose in indignation. ‘You just wouldn’t believe – a woman from Liberty League actually spat at me!’

  ‘They set up a protest camp outside the base, when we were there last,’ Alex said, with a light shrug. ‘I tried to send them out some supplies, but they seemed to feel I was being sarcastic.’

  That stopped Harry in his tracks, as his jaw dropped perceptibly.

  ‘You...? Supplies?’

  ‘Just some hot food and coffee. It can get quite chilly in the mountains at that time of year,’ Alex said, his own tone conversational, remarking, ‘I have a lot of time for Liberty League, myself.’ As Harry gaped at him, he explained, ‘If we really were doing what Liberty League believe we are, then I certainly hope they would be campaigning about it, loud and strong. I tried to tell them that at the activist conference on Chartsey, too, but I’m no hand at public speaking, never have been. Again, they thought I was being sarcastic, and they just yelled and started throwing leaflets at me, so security made me leave. There were a couple of hundred of them outside the base at one point, painting slogans on the ground and that kind of thing. I didn’t really expect the offer of soup and coffee would make them change their minds about us, but I did hope they’d see it as a good humoured gesture. They don’t seem to have much sense of humour, though, these people. Good people, though,’ he added, with a sincerity that was evident to Harry, at least, ‘Decent, caring people putting themselves out there to defend rights and protect others, and you can only respect that. You have to see it that way, really, and not take it personally. Just ask yourself, if it really was the case that there was an elitist secret group within the Admiralty, corruption at the highest level in our armed services, would you want to live in a society where the media and public were not outraged by that?’

  ‘But it isn’t true!’ Harry protested, with something like a wail in his voice.

  ‘So?’ Alex said, with more than a year of cruelly steep learning curve behind him on this. ‘There is reason to believe it might be true, and that is, and always will be, good enough for questions to be asked. That’s all this is, you know, overwhelming as it seems to you right now, caught up in it all, all it actually is is journalists doing what they are supposed to, raising issues of concern, asking questions about them, challenging authorities to be answerable to the public. You can’t even call it irresponsible journalism, if something was said that gave them reasonable grounds to suspect that they were uncovering corruption or wrongdoing in public office.’

  ‘But that’s outrageous!’ Harry argued. ‘To take what I said and twist it into something so vicious, dishonouring something as fine as the Sixty Four – two thousand years of proud tradition, eighteen hundred officers who’ve worn that ring, and it’s being tarnished, made to look like something dirty.’

  ‘Hmmn,’ Alex said, and there was a pregnant little silence,
Harry’s expression slowly turning from indignation to one of bewilderment.

  ‘You can’t mean that you believe...’

  ‘Please,’ Alex held up a hand slightly, silencing him with that and a look. ‘I don’t, of course, believe that, not for one moment. But in terms of understanding how the media might get the wrong end of the stick on this one, do you remember what I said when we met, five years ago?’

  Harry’s expression showed very clearly that he did. Alex had not allowed him more than a few minutes of his high-faluting spiel about fraternity and the honour of the ring before blighting him, freezingly, with an opinion that Harry was highly unlikely to have forgotten. Alex had told him bluntly that he did not consider that having graduated top of their respective years created any more bond between them than with any other officers, and that he considered that attitude inappropriate, elitist snobbery that had no place in the modern Fleet. Harry Alington had walked away, white with fury. They hadn’t met since.

  ‘I think the problem is, if you’ll forgive me,’ said Alex, ‘that you live in a world where talking about honour and pride and glorious tradition is quite normal. To journalists, however, that certainly will sound elitist. And when you start talking about a brotherhood of officers within the Fleet, distinguished by the honour of wearing a particular ring, they just don’t have the frame of reference to understand that you’re talking about a social standing, there. It will sound to them, as it obviously has, either like elitist nepotism or some kind of secret society.’

  ‘You’re saying it’s my fault?’ Harry looked shocked.