‘No, I’m saying it’s the kind of thing that can happen when wires are crossed and you say one thing and they hear another.’ Alex said. ‘Believe me, I know how that goes.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Harry said, a little lamely, and then rallied himself and took a breath, ‘So,’ he looked at Alex, ‘what do I do?’
Alex’s eyebrows shot up.
‘Sorry?’ He queried. ‘You’re asking me for advice on media handling?’
Harry looked at the officer who’d become so infamous, so unfairly, and grimaced.
‘Well, with your experience...’ he ventured.
‘Yes, okay, fair point,’ Alex conceded. ‘So, then, things I have learned about being blasted by the media – one, don’t take it personally, two, denial never works, three, anything you say can and will be twisted by others to suit their own agenda, four, never talk to journalists other than to issue pre-recorded statements, and five, don’t let it interfere with what you’re actually supposed to be doing.’ He saw Harry’s startled look, at that. ‘The media situation is secondary, and has to be, of importance only insofar as it impacts on your ability to complete your primary objective. In which it has to be said that I note you merely mention in passing that the spacers aren’t as cooperative as you expected and give far more importance to the negative publicity. Is it the publicity that’s causing you problems with the spacers?’
‘No-oh.’ Harry admitted, reluctantly, looking a little stung by that forthright comment. ‘Not as such, not really. They seem to find it funny.’
‘They would,’ Alex agreed, remembering the hilarity, even, on his own ship, when the news items had been shown. ‘It is, of course, ludicrous, to anyone who knows the Fleet. So – what’s the problem with relationships with them, Harry?’
Harry dragged his mind away from the overwhelming importance the media issues had clearly assumed in his mind, and forced himself to focus on the obviously far less urgent matter of the job that he was here to do.
‘I don’t really know,’ he told Alex. ‘That is the problem – I don’t understand, at all, what’s going wrong. My orders were to follow up on the relationship-building you’d done here, continuing to offer cargo-scans and build trust so that spacers will tell us about shipments and things. I’ve done exactly as my orders say, exactly as you did, following that protocol, but somehow it just doesn’t seem to be working. Ships ask for cargo scan readily enough, but when my officers try to talk to them about giving us information, they brush us off, just don’t want to know.’
Alex looked silently at him for a few seconds.
‘Tell me,’ he said, in a carefully neutral voice, ‘did you have the choosing of your officers, yourself?’
Harry flushed a little at the implied criticism both of his judgement and of his officers.
‘They are excellent officers,’ he told Alex, defensively. ‘And yes, I had my own choosing – that’s perfectly usual in tagged and flagged postings, as you know very well.’
Alex nodded. There was some give, in that, when they were sending you on unusually challenging assignments, to allow at least some say in the officers you had. It wasn’t always the case, and sometimes indeed the officers you got given were part of the problem you were expected to solve. There was also an expectation that a skipper on their first command would have a steadying, experienced exec.
Alex knew already who the Minnow’s officers were. It was one of the things that had been picked up on by the journalists, that all of them had been members of the Sixty Four. That was not so extraordinary in itself. This was a high status assignment, it would normally get high status officers, and most or even all of them might have been in the top cadet class at the Chartsey Academy. Harry, though, would have chosen the kind of officer to whom that mattered. Alex knew the type – wearying, to his mind, they never seemed to quite leave the Academy, with their dinner-table talk of Academy days, and their framed class and graduation holos still on display. The corvette only had five officers, besides the skipper. The exec was a senior Lt Alex vaguely remembered being at the Academy as a junior instructor, taking seminars and grading assignments. The engineer had been a classmate of Harry’s, obviously a personal friend. The three Subs had all been members of the Sixty Four, too. One of them, indeed, was the previous year’s Top Cadet graduate.
Alex couldn’t really criticise that, since when taking command of the Minnow himself he had asked for Buzz, also a personal friend, as his exec, had got the best engineer he could lay his hands on, and secured the Top Cadet of that year on assignment to him, too, knowing what a brilliant whizz-kid he was with computers. The difference, he felt, subtle but important, was that he had set out to get the very best specialists he could for his ship, and in that, had been totally focussed on the needs of the ship and its crew. Harry, he suspected, had chosen his officers as much for their social standing and compatibility with his ideals, as for their professional ability.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Alex said, ‘but are they by any chance part of your social scene, too – golf, yachts, soirees, all that?’
‘I don’t see how that matters,’ Harry said, with a defensiveness that was an answer in itself. ‘They are all excellent professional officers and I assure you have approached every ship they’ve been to with a friendly, informal attitude, just as laid down in the protocol you established.’
‘I wasn’t aware that I was establishing a protocol,’ Alex responded, surprised.
‘But you were.’ Harry looked taken aback. ‘The Admiralty put out an advisory, a protocol for building relationships with the merchant service, based upon the success of your doing that, here. It specifies an informal approach, time spent sociably, where possible, over refreshment. It caused quite a stir at Chartsey. I mean, it’s always been acceptable for Fleet personnel to have cups of tea aboard merchant ships, but this is the first time in our history that the Admiralty has put out a protocol telling us to do that, and officers, particularly, even senior officers. That caused some comment on ships like the Zeus, obviously, not something they felt entirely comfortable about. But all my officers, I assure you, are fully on side with the protocol and have been doing their utmost to establish cordial relationships. I’ve even been to many ships myself, talking with them informally about the importance of working together.’
Alex looked at him and felt a kind of helpless pity, coupled confusingly with anger. Harry Alington genuinely didn’t understand what he was doing wrong, Alex could see that. He was doing everything right, following the guidance laid down by the Admiralty, what more could be asked? But if this hapless twit, Alex thought, really was the best of the best, the finest the Fleet had to offer, the Fleet was in big, big trouble.
He wasn’t being fair with that, and he knew it, really. Officers like Harry Alington weren’t normally expected to be out working on their own, having to make decisions on their own initiative in swiftly changing circumstance. They were primarily squadron officers, strong team players, all to be thoroughly relied upon to be where they were supposed to be and do what they were told. It wasn’t fair to expect him to be as strong in command as Alex was himself, either. He had, after all, only had command of the Minnow for three months, still finding his feet in the role of skipper in normal command aboard ship. It was, indeed, extremely tough to throw him into independent operations like this, and Davie might have even had a point when he called it cruel. The Admiralty had obviously not known, though, that the media would turn on him as they had, turning an already challenging operation into a nightmare. Harry was out of his depth, here, and at least he had the awareness to realise that, and the sense to ask for help.
‘All right,’ he said, recognising that as the senior and infinitely more experienced officer, he was going to have to provide some mentoring. But not, he felt, right now. It was late, and Alex had quite a bit to do yet before he could go to bed. ‘Leave that with me,’ he said, ‘and we’ll discuss it when I’ve had time to look at your logs.’
Harry was obliged to accept that, of course, and recognised from Alex’s tone that he wanted to bring the meeting to a close. He still sat there, though, looking at him hopefully.
‘And you’ll take over speaking to the media?’
‘By all means,’ said Alex, knowing very well that while he was around, the journos would not be pointing their cameras anywhere but right at him, anyway. ‘They’ll turn out in force, I expect, for the ceremony tomorrow – the freedom of the station,’ he explained, as Harry looked questioning, and saw that that, obviously, was no news to him.
‘I didn’t know it was tomorrow,’ he said. ‘And I beg your pardon, of course, I should have offered my congratulations, sir – a well deserved honour.’
Alex had not seen it that way himself, but that, clearly, was the way that Harry Alington thought.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
He showed Harry off the ship as if he were a friend, knowing that his own crew would take note of that and how much that would affect their own attitude, even their relationships with the Minnow’s crew. Harry went off quite happily, relieved to have passed the burden of operational command to Alex, heading off to go and get some sleep. Indolent, Alex thought. In Harry’s place, he’d have been up for hours, working through the Heron’s situation analysis, but Harry had not seemed to feel that was of any immediate importance.
By the next morning, however, Alex at least had a thorough grasp of what was going on at Karadon. One of the first things he’d done was to call Davie North and to thank him, ironically, for giving the Fourth the freedom of the station. He hadn’t been surprised to find Davie in fits of giggles over that, but had been a little taken aback to be assured that Davie hadn’t known anything about it either. The offer had come from the ISiS Corps Board on their own initiative.
‘Believe it or not,’ Davie said, ‘they can have quite brilliant ideas all by themselves, sometimes.’
He was, himself, by then, already aboard the station, installed in a high security suite known as the Shareholder penthouse. There would be nothing about that on the media, Alex knew. The Founding Families had protection of their privacy sewn up so tightly that even if they were inadvertently filmed in the background of other footage, they would have to be pixillated out. Davie would not be attending the freedom of the station ceremony, though. He socialised only in the most rarefied circles, and though the ceremony and lunch would be by invitation only, it was still far too low society for Davie to attend.
‘Papa would go nuts,’ he observed, regretfully, but evidently accepting of his father’s right to control his social life.
Alex accepted it, too, quietly relieved not to have the further embarrassment of Davie standing there grinning through the ceremony. It would be bad enough, he felt, without that.
There was, at least, nothing to concern him going on aboard the station itself. Cargo handling was being carried out with rigorous attention to Customs documentation, ISiS Corps inspectors carrying out constant checks that policies were strictly adhered to. Word from the world of major drugs intel also indicated that the big players in that scene, almost all of them on Dortmell, had decided that Karadon was too hot to risk. They were now falling back on cold drops, ships leaving cargo containers in isolated systems for others to pick up, confusing the trail to get past Customs. Alex had all manner of sources of information on that, including an open link to the station’s computer systems, offered with a deadpan look by their comms officer, as he said, ‘to save them the trouble of hacking them’. He had also had reports, discreetly conveyed, from the Fleet Intel, LIA and Customs and Excise agents operating undercover aboard the station.
Almost more important, though, was the word of mouth from the spacers themselves. Alex had asked his crew to talk to their mates aboard the freighters and feed back anything of operational interest to Murg, and they were doing just that. There was unanimous agreement amongst the spacers that the Dortmeller drug lords were no longer using Karadon, though ideas about the routes they were using now seemed too diffuse and speculative to be useful.
What they were certain about, however, was that the Minnow skipper and officers were idiots. As he got dressed after a couple of hours’ sleep and a hot shower, Alex read reports that left him feeling quite exasperated. Then he invited Harry to breakfast. Harry appeared to have something he wanted to say, though containing it until the steward had left them with their hot trolley and departed.
‘I thought it best to speak with you directly,’ Harry told him. ‘It may be, of course, that you already know, but...’ he looked significantly at Alex. ‘It’s about your Sub-lt Olethe.’
Alex did not betray reaction by so much as the flicker of an eyelid, merely handed Harry the dish of rolls and looked enquiring.
‘The thing is, it says on your manifest that she’s from Altarb, graduate of 68,’ said Harry, lowering his voice confidentially, ‘and Mr Bulingo, my exec, was actually teaching at Altarb, that year – it’s a small Academy, you know, and he is sure he would have remembered her.’
This was inevitable, of course, though Alex had hoped it would be rather longer before someone challenged Shion’s cover story.
‘It does not occur to you,’ Alex said, calmly buttering a roll, ‘that there are circumstances under which an officer might be serving aboard my ship under an identity, let’s say, of convenience?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Harry looked a little nettled by that. ‘I did think she might be one of Admiral Smith’s lot, obviously. I know you have strong ties with the First,’ he said, with a rather sardonic note. The officer who was currently running the First Fleet Irregulars, also known as Fleet Intelligence, was always called Admiral Smith, occupying a hazy anonymity even within the Fleet itself. Enough was known, however, to be able to surmise that Alex von Strada had served at least one tour of duty with the First, which was always by Admiral Smith’s invitation. No such invitation had been made to Harry Alington. ‘I just felt it my duty to ensure that you yourself are aware that this officer is using a false identity.’
‘I am aware, yes,’ Alex said. There was a silence that lasted for four seconds and felt like half an hour, as Harry looked at him with an expression that turned from expectant to resigned.
‘Well, all right,’ he said, recognising that Alex was not going to be any more forthcoming than this. ‘Excellent breakfast,’ he added, both to change the subject and in genuine surprise at the quality of the food being served.
‘A gift from the Ruby Queen,’ Alex said. He did not go into why he had felt it to be fine, even a good idea, to accept that offer from Red Line, White Star’s major rival. When the tender had joined them at the station, they’d reported that Candra Pattello had been placed aboard the Empress of Telathor without any difficulty, and the captain had assured the utmost discretion. They had not, it turned out, given the Tela the official travel warrant, so Candra Pattello would be returning to Therik at White Star’s expense.
There was nothing Alex could do about that, but accepting the offer of a gift from Red Line seemed at least to balance up the generosity, so they weren’t too particularly beholden to White Star. And it was, anyway, perfectly usual for liners to provide Fleet ships with treats, even to delivering meals for them at times like this when their own passengers were off the ship, enjoying the station’s amenities. All four liners now in port had offered them breakfast, in fact, and the Ruby Queen had been crowing with kudos at theirs having been the offer that was accepted.
‘They’ve offered meals to us, too,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to let the crew get used to that, though. They come to expect it, and it just causes problems.’
It never had in Alex’s experience, but he let that go, making no comment either about the way that Harry was tucking so enthusiastically into the kind of breakfast he denied his crew.
‘I have, I think, got to the bottom of why you’re having such difficulty with the spacers,’ he said. Harry’s expression queried a startled �
��Already?’ and Alex realised that he’d assumed that Alex had gone to bed after his departure, too. ‘I was up till five,’ Alex told him. ‘We all were. There was massive data analysis, intel reports, picking up the lowdown from the spacers. We also took on supplies and refreshed tanks.’ He said nothing, in that, about the discreet but intense conversations that he’d also been engaged in with the exodiplomacy attaché waiting there at the station.
Harry gave him a look that the most popular boy in school might have given the nerdy swot, but made an appropriately impressed murmuring noise.
‘We did already pass on our intel reports, though,’ he pointed out, clearly feeling that Alex had been repeating work that the Minnow had already done, not trusting them to have done it right.
‘Indeed, yes, and good reports, too,’ Alex said, ‘but they didn’t include reaction to our arrival, obviously, and that’s what we were looking at. You didn’t have the LIA reports, either.’
‘LIA?’ Harry looked shocked. ‘But they’ve got no jurisdiction ... they’re operating on the station?’
‘I believe the argument was made, at Senate level, that the disruption to shipping caused by our operations here made it a matter affecting the security of the League.’ Alex said, noncommittally. ‘At any rate, yes, they have a small presence here, and they have passed me their report. Essentially, it confirms that there are no indications of any major drugs trafficking going on here, and every indication that the drug cartels have decided to pull right out of using ISiS and use alternative methods.’
‘So we’re wasting our time, here,’ Harry observed, looking more disappointed than pleased.
‘Not at all,’ Alex said. ‘The reason for you being here still holds, and if anything is more important than ever. ISiS are a hub for spacer gossip, and information gathering here is vital to discovering what routes and methods the cartels are using now. A small ship established here, with the goodwill and trust of the spacers, could be the linchpin for counter-drugs operations across the League. The important words in that are goodwill and trust, however, which you, it has to be said, have not managed to secure. That, I have to tell you, is primarily down to your attitude.’
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