Alex gave a rueful look. Dix was already fully informed about the situation at Karadon. The presidential transport had intercepted every courier en route to Chartsey, carrying reports from all concerned. Alex’s own reports had been entirely neutral in their tone when reporting about Harry Alington, but he had used Fleet-speak phrases which Dix had known very well how to interpret. Others reporting to him had been far more forthright, too, about the reputation Skipper Alington was acquiring, there. Even more revealing had been Harry Alington’s own reports, so focussed on the media giving him a hard time and so hopelessly bewildered as to why the spacers here weren’t being cooperative.
The very fact that Dix was commenting to Alex about what a mess Harry had made of things here also made it clear that he was speaking to him as the senior officer on station, acknowledging the problems Alex had been trying to address.
‘To be fair, sir...’ Alex started, but broke off as Dix flung up a hand.
‘Do not,’ the First Lord commanded, ‘tell me that he was doing his best, that he is very young, in his first command, or that he walked into a media storm nobody was expecting. I don’t remember any of that throwing you off your game. And he is tagged and flagged, too, supposed to be one of our brightest and best.’
The scathing note in his voice made it all too clear what he thought about that, and Alex couldn’t help but grin. ‘You,’ Dix added, ‘may be a pain in the backside in any number of ways, Alex, but you’ve never been a whinger. Can’t stand whingers.’
Alex thought about the self-pitying laments he’d had to endure from Harry Alington about how horrible the media was being to him. He thought about the self-righteous indignation that had come at him so many ways, too, in the last few days. Dix was right, he realised. Harry was whingeing, blaming everybody but himself for the failure of his assignment here.
‘Sir,’ he grinned, acknowledging that and also the comment about him being a pain in the backside himself. He had certainly given Dix good cause for that opinion, with his absolute, immovably stubborn determination to get justice for Jace Higgs.
‘I should have known he wasn’t up to it,’ Dix observed, with a grimace. ‘I did know, but I allowed myself to be persuaded that it would be the making of him.’
He did not say who had persuaded him, but Alex guessed that that would have been Captain Tennet.
‘I’ve put him straight on a few things, anyway,’ Dix said. ‘And I’ve told him that I’m replacing his Exec.’
Alex raised his eyebrows. Lt Bulingo had certainly not impressed Alex with any great sense of his intelligence, but he was surprised that Dix was singling the Exec out in that way.
‘Sir?’ he queried.
‘No reflection on Lt Bulingo really,’ Dix said. ‘I’m sure he’s a thoroughly competent officer, at least in shipboard terms. Operationally, though, he’s hardly any more experienced than Skipper Alington himself. He also reinforces all Skipper Alington’s weakest qualities instead of counteracting them.’
Alex nodded. He was familiar with Dix’s opinions on the value of skippers and execs balancing one another’s strengths and weaknesses. He had Dix’s approval for his own choice of Exec, too, as Buzz was strong in all the areas Alex knew himself to be lacking – his personal warmth and charm, deep understanding of people and decades of experience. Lt Bulingo, on the other hand, was if anything an even bigger snob than Harry Alington, and every bit as fixated on the Academy and the glory of the Sixty Four.
‘I see,’ he said.
‘Do you? Good.’ Dix gave him a brief smile. ‘Because I’m afraid I’m going to have to rob you of Lt Commander Fishe.’
Alex stifled a protest. ‘Sir,’ he acknowledged, because there was nothing else he could say, when the First Lord told him that he was reassigning one of his officers.
‘I’m sorry – I know how highly you value her,’ Dix said. ‘But I need someone to keep Harry Alington grounded, and to take over liaison with the spacers here. Martine Fishe is just the officer for that, with her down-to-earth personality and experience. She already has the respect and trust of the spacers, too. Bigger picture, Alex, I need her more on the Minnow than you do on the Heron.’
Alex had to concede that – he’d said himself that even a small ship based here, given the trust and goodwill of the spacer community, could become a vital hub of information in the League-wide fight against major drug dealing. It would also be a promotion for Martine herself, from second lieutenant to executive officer.
‘Sir,’ he said. Dix gave him an exasperated look, for that.
‘Don’t do that,’ he told him. ‘You only do that poker-faced ‘sir’ thing when you’re thinking things you should probably be court martialled for, so pack it in and just talk to me, Alex.’
Alex broke into a grin, conceding the point with a shrug.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I do understand your position, there, and I agree entirely, Martine would be excellent in that role, ideal, standing no nonsense from Harry and already in very good standing with the spacers. I wouldn’t want to stand in her way, either, in a very well deserved promotion. So I am being, I know, entirely unreasonable and selfish, wanting to howl and call you names for taking her.’
‘There,’ Dix said, satisfied. ‘I knew you wouldn’t like it. Who would? She’s one of the finest officers in the Fleet, no question. But if it’s any consolation, I won’t inflict Mr Bulingo on you in return – you may, in fact, have your pick of any suitably qualified officer on station.’
That was a wind up, as Alex understood perfectly well. The number of officers currently at Karadon who were qualified to take the second lieutenancy on the Heron would only be two or three at the most, and one of them would be Lt Bulingo.
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ Alex said drily, but he was thinking fast. ‘In that case, I’ll ask for Lt Barlow to be promoted to second and for Lt Vergan to come in as third lieutenant.’
It was Dix’s turn to look surprised. ‘Vergan?’ he queried, obviously unfamiliar with the name.
‘One of our supers, sir,’ Alex told him. ‘A Lt on loan from Apollo to help with pilot training. He’s due to leave us at Penrys, but I’d be pleased to keep him – an officer of great potential, I feel.’
Dix gave a quick, spluttering laugh. Vergan would not be the first nonentity to be talent-spotted by Alex von Strada. There was a Lt Carrington-Smythe, currently enjoying a rapidly rising career, who’d been considered a complete no-hoper before Alex had taken him on. Alex would take no credit for that, Dix knew. If anyone commented on his ability to turn failing officers around and reveal unexpected abilities in them, he would just look mildly surprised and say that he hadn’t done anything more than given them the opportunity to shine. If he described this Lt Vergan as an officer of great potential, though, he was definitely a name the First Lord would want to remember.
‘I’ll be interested to meet him,’ he said. ‘And yes, of course, if that’s what you want, fair enough. I’ll see Ms Fishe this morning.’ He tapped out a message on his comscreen, telling his adjutant to have Lt Commander Fishe report to him in twenty minutes.
‘I hope that won’t be an issue for Shionolethe,’ he observed, meaning that she and Martine were obviously friends and Shion might not be happy that her friend was leaving the ship.
‘I’m sure she’ll understand, sir,’ Alex assured him. Shion had not yet given the president her reply to his invitation to go with him to Canelon, but there was no doubt that she was going to turn it down. Alex had sent a report to that effect during the night, indeed, including the recording of the command deck log in which Shion had said frankly that she had no desire at all to go to Canelon. She had only refrained from telling the president so at the banquet because she could not, she said, adequately express her feelings on the matter while constrained by formal etiquette.
Davie North had been brutally frank about the chances of her accepting that invitation, too, in a private meeting with the president after the banquet. He had told
Marc Tyborne that he’d done exactly what he, Davie, had been begging him not to, persisting in this stupid belief that they could mimic an ancient and virtually unknown civilisation with nothing more than some borrowed catering, recorded music and cribbing the design from pictures. It was bound to be inaccurate and insultingly gauche, and if anything had been needed to confirm Shion in the knowledge that life as the guest of the Diplomatic Corps would be a slow torment, that appalling dinner had been it. He had also bet the League President ‘a billion gazillion dollars’ that Shion would turn him down. The president said that he was still hopeful that personal persuasion might change her mind when they met later that day, but everyone else was now accepting that she’d already made her decision.
‘All right,’ Dix nodded. ‘But I do need your opinion on another matter, Alex. I’ve been asked to brief the president, advising him on what course to take if, as we expect, Shion declines the invitation to go with him to Canelon. He was rather counting on that opportunity to build a personal relationship, you see, and gauge for himself whether we could or should ask for her help. But things haven’t gone to plan, so now he either needs to make that decision here or postpone it till you reach Penrys. So we need to talk about XD-317. This is highest level classified, understood?’
‘Understood, sir,’ Alex assured him, with an alert look.
‘All right,’ Dix repeated. ‘So, what do you know already about the situation at Novamas, particularly in relation to Tolmer’s Drift?’
‘I’m aware that there’s a long standing issue with spacers preferring to go to Tolmer’s Drift than to Novamas itself,’ Alex said readily. Since being told that they would be given exodiplomacy orders at Novamas, under cover of anti-piracy operations, he had naturally familiarised himself with everything he could find out about that.
The issue with ships going to Tolmer’s Drift to trade their cargoes rather than to Novamas itself was almost as long-standing as the mining operation there. It was a mystery to the Novamasian authorities. Faced with the choice between a clear run to Novamas, with all the facilities that the system provided, and making a dangerous run through a narrow canyon through the Crown Nebula, more than ninety per cent of skippers took the turn to Tolmer’s Drift.
They gave all sorts of reasons for this. The most reasonable was that it was quicker to go to Tolmer’s Drift and cheaper to pick up cargoes of ores there directly rather than to buy them at Novamas. Underlying that, though, were deep and apparently ineradicable superstitions. Spacers did not like going to Novamas. It was considered unlucky, a world that featured in many tales of haunted or jinxed ships. The authorities, naturally, dismissed such superstitions with contempt. It was far more likely, they’d concluded, that the spacers were up to no good out there at the Drift, though precisely what it was believed that they were getting up to had varied considerably with changes of government.
So, for that matter, had the nature of the efforts made to get them to come to Novamas instead. These had ranged, over the years, from attempting to legislate against the mining companies facilitating that, to offering financial incentives to the skippers themselves. None of it worked. Year after year, the launch tunnels and cargo handling facilities at Novamas sat virtually unused, while the unofficial trading post at Tolmer’s Drift did thriving business.
‘There have also been, historically, a high number of ship disappearances in the sector,’ Alex went on, ‘which have been attributed by Novamas to acts of piracy. Publicly, they accuse spacers themselves of turning pirate against each other at any opportunity. Privately, their governments express determined belief that they are under attack from alien ships they call ‘shadow raiders’.’
Dix nodded agreement. He, like many another First Lord before him, had to deal with regular demands for a task force squadron to be sent out to Novamas to deal with this piracy. Like every other First Lord before him, though, he turned down such requests because the evidence just did not support the claim that piracy was any kind of problem there, let alone that there were any alien vessels involved. Of the eight ships that had vanished in the last decade, for instance, five of them had been either in such poor condition or skippered by such idiots that it didn’t surprise spacers in the least that they’d vanished, while two of the others were believed to have pulled a well-known insurance fraud and to be trading under different names and registrations. Only the fate of the Tangleweb, a charter yacht, was considered by spacers to be a genuine mystery.
Alex’s cover mission was to investigate these ship disappearances. In fact, he was already doing so, by the simple but effective method of asking spacers what they knew about it. Even though it was only a cover mission and Alex knew very well that there were no pirates operating there, he’d been tasked with investigating it and so investigate he would.
‘They’re obsessed with this idea that there are alien pirates,’ Dix observed, meaning the Novamasian government. ‘I had hoped that Al Vickers might be able to get them to see sense, but they won’t even listen to him.’
Alford Vickers was Port Admiral at Novamas; the officer Jen Mackada had warned him was ‘vitriolic Old School.’
‘Anyway, that’s beside the point,’ said Dix. ‘The point is that shipping persists in cutting through Abigale Alley despite every effort to prevent it.’ Abigale Alley was the name given to the canyon that ships navigated to get through the Crown Nebula to Tolmer’s Drift. It was nothing like a straight route, actually a series of rifts and canyons in the nebula that enabled ships to get to the mining system in eight days rather than the three more weeks it would have taken them to go on to Novamas. ‘Until recently that wasn’t considered a problem for anyone but the Novamasians, missing out on trade revenues,’ Dix said. ‘But the Solarans brought us a message ten months ago from the nearest world across the Firewall. They won’t tell us any more about it than that it is called Gide, but it is apparent that the Gideans are not happy. According to the message that the Solarans brought, Abigale Alley, even though it is more than two weeks from the Firewall at its closest point, falls within a range of sensitivity. Basically, from what we can gather, the Gideans can detect our shipping as it passes through that area. It seems to trigger some kind of alarm, and having a security system go off like that is understandably annoying to them.’
Alex’s eyes were wide. This was very definitely not something that was on the spacer goss, not something he’d heard anything about at all till now.
‘Your orders,’ said Dix, ‘are to attempt to find some kind of solution to that.’ He paused as Alex gave him a stunned look, and confirmed it with a smile, ‘Yes, you.’
‘Uh...’ Alex was just bewildered, ‘but what does anyone think that we could do about that?’
‘I’ll get to that,’ Dix assured him. ‘First, you should know what attempts are already being made. The Diplomatic Corps is attempting, without success so far, to make contact with Gide themselves to apologise and try for a negotiated solution. Efforts are also being made to prevent shipping going that way, though neither Fleet nor governmental persuasion have had any success whatsoever. The president, therefore, has suggested that you be asked to see what you can do. I should mention, in this, the president’s own suggestion when it became clear how serious a matter this is. His suggestion was that we, and I quote, take some old ships down there and blow them up in the alley, blocking it to shipping.’
Alex opened his mouth, closed it again, thought for a moment and then gave a strangled choking noise. Dix grinned appreciatively.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘I had to take a moment myself, on that one. He’s a fine man, no criticism of him intended in any way, but you do need to be aware that you are dealing with a groundside understanding here, Alex. Do not expect him to appreciate either the scale of the physical distances involved or of the spacer culture. He genuinely believed that all he had to do was sign a legislative document declaring Abigale Alley non-navigable to stop ships going that way.’
He had a point, from a grou
ndsider perspective. If an area was ruled to be non-navigable on charts, then any ship that went that way would not be covered by their insurance company. Anyone who thought that this would prevent spacers from traversing a long-established route that they knew politicians were trying to stop them using, however, just had no idea about the people they were dealing with.
‘He does, now,’ Dix said, ‘understand that it would take the equivalent of five million ships being towed into the Alley to make it genuinely non-navigable, and he has accepted that no amount of legislating will prevent spacers from going wherever they want, too. So, Plan A, persuading spacers not to go that way, has failed. Plan B is unworkable. So we are now looking at plans C, D and E. In plan C you go in there on patrol and intimidate the spacers into no longer using that route. This, I should tell you, is the course of action favoured by the army. In plan D you go to Tolmer’s Drift and explain the situation to the spacers, persuading them to stop using that route voluntarily out of consideration for the annoyance it is causing to Gide. This is the Fleet’s favoured approach – mine, in effect. We’ve found spacers to be cooperative with exodiplomacy in the past, and I feel that, if the situation was explained to them frankly, most skippers would be understanding about it.’
‘Well, if my orders are in line with Plan D, as you call it, I would certainly undertake that to the best of my ability,’ Alex said. ‘But I think you have to know, sir, that if I am given orders to intimidate League shipping out of using a route they have every legal right to use, I will refuse such orders as being both illegal and unconstitutional.’
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