By the time they departed, every ore-carrier and freighter was stuffed and bulging with cargo. The Fourth had even lent some duralloy nets and cables, enabling the bigger freighters to carry extra cargo on their hulls. They did not take any of it themselves – that would be way beneath a warship’s dignity, and Alex wanted to make the right impression, on arrival.
They were certainly an impressive sight as they led the convoy out of Tolmer’s Drift, with much flashing of lights and cheerful farewells between them and the miners. Mustering the convoy took some time, but the skippers responded well to convoy discipline, accepting the places that the Fourth assigned them. They were limited to the speed of the slowest ship, a rolling whalebelly called the Bright Whale. It could slug along at L6 if it was really pushing it, but Alex set a more tolerable L5.
The convoy cruised easily, unhurriedly, back through the new route, the pretty way they’d opened up themselves. It had, in fact, been named ‘The Pretty Way’ by the Fourth, a decision made by Alex himself on due consideration of all suggestions made. It was, the spacers agreed, a good description, a far more scenic route this, than the old one.
And they were not, of course, stupid. Far from it. They’d realised immediately that the Fourth would not have gone to the trouble of Van Dameking a route and handing out charts of it as the new Fleet-approved route to Tolmer’s unless there was good reason. What that reason might be was widely debated, and what reason spacers believed was more about their own universe-view than anything. Whatever they thought was going on, though, whether they talked about curses or aliens or secret experiments, they believed the Fourth did know what was really going on, and that this route was ‘safer’ than the other, even if the Fourth could not tell them why.
Not every ship would comply with that, Alex knew. This route did add twenty six hours at the average freighter speed, and twenty six hours both ways amounted to more of a diversion than every skipper would make just for prettier scenery. Not all of them would believe the Fourth, either. These spacers did, because they were right there, talking to them, seeing their sincerity for themselves, but as the story spread by word of mouth, there would be more questions, less credibility, and the inertia of both habit and determination not to let the Fleet get one over on them. The Fleet had, after all, been trying for centuries to stop freighters using the Abigale route, and since they’d never given a reason the spacers believed, the spacers weren’t having it. ‘Trust me on this’ worked for Alex face to face, but it wouldn’t work nearly so well remotely. They might, he estimated, have cut down the numbers of ships buzzing the sensitive zone by as much eighty per cent by inaugurating the new route, and if things went well at Novamas they might get that up even more as ships began to go to Novamas instead of Tolmer’s, anyway. That would still mean, though, even at the most optimistic estimate, several ships every year still buzzing at the border. It hadn’t solved the Firewall problem. But it had, Alex felt, given him a good basis for being able to tell the Gideans, if they ever got to talk to them, that they really had done their best to reduce the shipping that was triggering their border systems.
There was a moving moment, on the Pretty Way, when the entire convoy tipped their hats to Abigale. The eighteen ships now in convoy, the frigate, the courier and the fighters all dipped to port together. It was quite something to see, and brought them all together, too, to feel part of a group.
That unity deepened as they made their way to Novamas, or Alar, as it was now being called by the spacers. The convoy formation had been set so that comms could be passed amongst them, every ship able to communicate with all the others. There was a good deal of ship-visiting, too, shuttles flitting back and forth amongst them, with the spacers enjoying the kind of social life they only normally got to have while the ship was in port.
Visiting the Heron was a big part of that. The secure zone became a kind of social club, spacers and the Heron’s own crew mingling there with all the usual kinds of sports and amateur entertainment events. The Heron’s crew were being kept pretty busy, though, too, besides all their usual duties, training and drills. Alex offered a thorough technical inspection to any of the ships that wanted one, and that meant them all. The opportunity to have officers and crew from one of the highest rated ships in Fleet service come aboard their ships and do strip-down maintenance for them, and free, was not an offer any skipper would refuse, unless they had something to hide. Once they’d done all the inspections, the Fourth began offering upgrades, too, even providing the parts, themselves.
On many ships that meant an upgrade either to their core computer or telemetry systems, difficult work to do at any time and far more so while the ship was superlight. The Fourth’s teams, though, treated that as routine, just as they did the hull-work their hullwalker teams carried out. It was like being in convoy, one of the skippers said, with a team of very busy space-elves.
The Heron’s crew, in fact, were having a great time, and scoring major training opportunities, too. There was just no kind of upgrade work needed or that could be done on the Heron, so anyone working on tech courses that required practicals had to do them on mock-ups in a workshop. It was far more satisfying to get out there onto the freighters and do such work for real. The officers had lots of opportunities, too, both in technical work and operational experience. It was a busy, happy time, combining lots of satisfying activity with something of the atmosphere of holiday. They had some fun, too, with exercises. The fighters were out much of the time, new pilots training and the existing team honing their skills. The convoy was often treated to the sight of the fighters working out new display sequences, and once, to a game of tag that darted all around the freighters, amazing and delighting them.
Looming up ahead of them, though, was the need to deal with the Novamasians.
‘Admiral Vickers isn’t going to like this,’ Buzz observed, bringing the end of month supplies report to Alex’s attention. They had used quite a lot of their own tech supplies in the work they’d done for the freighters, and would have to indent on supplies from the port office to replace them.
‘It’s our budget,’ Alex replied, with a slightly perplexed look, not understanding at all why the port admiral should care what supplies they’d used or needed, so long as his office did not need to pay for them.
Buzz just looked at him, and grinned. It was, he felt, going to be quite entertaining to watch Alex going up against Alford Vickers, so long as you were standing far away enough not to be hit by the shrapnel.
Two days out from the system, the first volley was fired in that when Alex sent the courier ahead to tell the Novamasians to expect the convoy. Alex didn’t want to give them too much time to work themselves up in meetings, making decisions that they would then need a lot of persuading to change. He didn’t feel it would be fair, though, to turn up without giving them any warning at all. So he sent very carefully written letters to all the relevant organisations, asking each of them to do something simple and achievable and laying out, very clearly, all the reasons why they should.
‘You do know that not one of them is going to do as you’ve asked, don’t you, skipper?’ Martine asked, as they watched the courier flit off ahead of them so fast it was off their scopes in under a minute.
‘Dear me,’ Alex shook his head, regretfully. ‘How did you get to be so cynical, Lt Commander?’
In fact, he did know very well that none of the organisations was going to do as he’d asked. He had got to grips, by then, with the Novamasian culture and, specifically, with their attitude towards the Fourth being sent in. They would refuse to do anything he asked, on principle.
Not one of them said so, of course. When the courier came back the next day it was with answers that gave all kinds of reasons for their inability to grant his request – lack of funding or resources, lack of personnel, need for proper discussion, due procedure, even a need for public consultation.
Alex just smiled, entirely unsurprised. At least they couldn’t say, later, that he ha
dn’t tried simply making orthodox, courteous requests. He smiled, too, over the lengthy, irate missive received from Admiral Vickers. He had sent the port admiral a full report, or at least as full as could be given that Admiral Vickers had not been rated ‘need to know’ on the nature of the Fourth’s XD-317 orders. He knew they had XD orders and that the piracy investigation was merely to be a cover for that, but Dix Harangay did not want him trying to interfere or even take over that operation. Alex’s orders, indeed, specifically precluded telling Admiral Vickers or any of his staff the nature of XD-317, ostensibly for their own protection, to give them full deniability about it if anything went wrong.
It was, however, Alex’s decision to go to Tolmer’s Drift before Novamas that the port admiral had focussed his complaints about. He should, by rights, said Admiral Vickers, have reported to him first, to be properly briefed and advised about the situation, not gone off half-cocked like that. And what did he mean, bringing in a convoy like this? Was he setting himself up as a mother duck, or what? Did he have any clue what he was doing? Did he have any idea of the furore this incoming convoy was causing on Novamas? His brash intimidation tactics, the admiral warned, would not wash here, and he, the admiral, would not stand for any nonsense about the Fourth pulling any wild stunts or offending people.
It went on in that vein for some time. Alex read it scrupulously, initialled it to say that he had, and filed it, giving it no further thought. A far more important and horrifying discovery had been made.
‘How much?’ Buzz echoed, when Shiny Sugorne told him.
‘Three hundred and eighty seven dollars a kilo, sir,’ Shiny confirmed. Amongst the messages the courier had carried had been both official indent forms for supplies they’d get from the Fleet, and orders for crateage to be bought out of wardroom and mess funds. They’d expected that things like coffee beans would be expensive, here, but the price that had been quoted was just beyond belief. And that, as Shiny told them, wasn’t the worst of it.
‘Not that that matters, really, since there isn’t so much as five kilos of real coffee beans on the entire planet,’ he said, and grimaced at their horrified expressions. ‘Yes, I know. Sorry. It seems there’s hardly any market for offworld foods there, and only one specialist supplier on the planet, so if he hasn’t got it, that’s it. The courier brought back some samples of Novamasian coffee, but it isn’t any better than the stuff we tried at Tolmer’s.’
‘That’s all right, dear boy,’ Buzz said, displaying a truly stoic philosophical smile. ‘I’m sure we’ll manage.’
It hit the crew hard, though. Anyone walking about the ship later that day would have heard concerned debate going on as to whether they should put coffee onto ration or just enjoy it as they were already till it ran out. Even Alex was perturbed. Coffee – really good coffee – was not just his own one personal indulgence, but a matter of high pride on the ship. The Heron had the distinction of having real coffee brewing machines on every mess deck, a gift to the crew from the wardroom, and it was one of their top bragging rights, too, that they had such high crateage that they could drink as much real coffee as they liked. They’d stocked up with three months’ supply at ISiS Penrys, but they were already half way through that, and were liable to be on operations here for another couple of months at least, plus the journey back to Penrys. It was obvious that they were either going to have to cut right down to one mug a day each, or run out very soon. Either way, they’d be drinking Fleet-issue coffee. That came in the form of tiny, highly compressed tablets that were pop-depressurised into powder before hot water was added. It bore no taste relationship to any coffee bean known to man, though most Fleet crews got used to it. Psychologically, though, it would be a come-down for the Heron’s crew, and anything that reduced morale was of concern to the skipper.
It wasn’t just coffee, either. Novamasian catering was, as they’d already discovered at Tolmer’s, dire. They’d thought at first that this was just because it was a mining station and dependent on prepacks being sent out from their homeworld, but they’d soon realised that the miners considered the catering at Tolmer’s to be every bit as good as they’d expect to get at home.
That made sense once you looked at the nature of the settlement there. Alar had first been colonised about fourteen hundred years previously, initially as a mining development. It had to be able to be self sustaining in order to get official colony status, so the settlers had developed the only form of agriculture they could. The only landmass on the planet was all in the northern hemisphere, buried deep under kilometres-thick ice, so conventional farming was out of the question. There was, however, a wide band of ocean in the tropics that remained open. Algal blooms and floating seaweeds there not only produced the planet’s oxygen, but also provided the earliest settlers with a vital food supply.
Humans being what they were, of course, they had long since bioengineered strains of the seaweeds to produce desirable nutrients, and these were now farmed in high-tech, intensive production zones. Novamasians did not eat the seaweeds directly. They were deconstructed into their component nutrients then processed into a range of foods. Novamasians liked big, hearty food, heavy with protein and rich with fat and strong, simple flavours. They didn’t have a dessert culture. A typical Novamasian dinner party meal would consist of a starter of beans in spicy sauce, main course of a large slab of vat grown pork with fried sides, and a finisher of savoury ‘cracklings’ which, again, would mostly be fried. Fruit was almost unknown, vegetables mostly fried, and even what they called ‘salad’ was hot and tossed in oil before it was served. The nearest they had to cookies or cakes was a kind of sweetened rusk, marketed for small children. They had no dairy products of any kind, so no ice creams, yoghurts or cheeses. They did have candy – two kinds. There was hard candy, cracko, which was like sucking sweet pebbles, and soft candy, taffee, that could glue your jaw together. Flavourings bore no relation to the conventional understanding of those flavours on the central worlds – the flavouring the Novamasians called ‘chocolate’ was nearer red than brown and tasted vaguely of nuts. ‘Lemon’ was bright green and tasted like one of Rangi’s bitter herbal teas.
Buying supplies at Novamas was going to be a problem, not for the Fleet supplies which they could pick up from the port office, but for all the extras like cakes, cookies and candy that they bought for treats. It was more than just indulging themselves, too. Such treats were a kind of unofficial currency aboard the ship, a way for Alex and the other officers to reward particular effort or achievement, and a good way, too, to provide a timely boost to morale.
Most skippers, with so many so very much more important matters to hand, would have just accepted, resignedly, that there was nothing they could do about that situation other than ration existing supplies and make do with what they could get.
Alex, however, called Shiny Sugorne to his cabin and put the matter into the hands of the housekeeping Sub, asking him to look at the matter as one of serious concern to morale, and therefore potentially affecting the performance of the crew.
‘Tackle it as operational,’ he requested, ‘and get creative.’
‘Sir.’ Shiny had not drawn a high-glamour role with the housekeeping post. He and the crew might know that ensuring that the ship was spotlessly clean and the crew well fed were vital to the operation of the ship, but it just didn’t have the status of being, say, the comms or ordnance officer. Now, he rose to the challenge with a determined look. ‘Will do, skipper!’
Alex left that with him, giving his own time and attention, then, to ensuring that the spacers were all solidly behind him on final approach to Alar. Alex had suggested that they choose a commodore of the convoy to take a leading role both on the journey and in dealing with the port authorities. It had not taken long for them to elect Depice Alard, the skipper of the biggest ore-carrier.
Alex had taken particular care, during the journey, to build Depice’s role, passing information to her to share with the others, and quietly encouraging a
ll the spacers to look to her, first, in organisational matters amongst them. It did not come naturally to spacers to act in any kind of organised way. That was part of the problem they had in dealing with any groundside authorities. They were just such a far-flung, scattered community, always on the move, that even when they did feel very strongly about things groundside authorities tended to perceive that as just a handful of isolated complaints. The only real voice spacers had with groundside authorities was if their ship belonged to a major shipping company, and even then, the concerns of spacers themselves would be muted by the time they’d passed through groundsider boardrooms.
This time, Alex was determined that their collective voice was going to be heard; clear, strong and unanimous. The ships in the convoy represented all three types of shipping operating in the sector – ore carriers which ran between Tolmer’s Drift and Novamas, freighters which went to Novamas because they were under some kind of contract to do so and had no choice, and the independent ones which went to Tolmer’s instead. Spacers themselves would have said they were a close community, mutually supportive, everyone a friend when you met them in deep space. Now, though, they were able to spend time together, forging much stronger bonds, and under the leadership of one of their own, too. And they’d had time to get used to the ideas that Alex had suggested, as they’d come to trust Alex himself to play his part.
By the time they got to Novamas, Alex was feeling confident. In the final hour of approach, he reorganised the convoy into a long chain, slowing them in the last few minutes so that they arrived at the station doing no more than L1. As with all League worlds, they approached the port on the proximal line, a notional line drawn between a point set as the centre of the galaxy and the heart of the star. Then they curved in below the system, entering holding orbit around the point-entry station.
On most League worlds this was necessary traffic management, as ships would be arriving and departing constantly. At busy times at Chartsey, indeed, there might be more than a hundred ships stacked in holding orbit, waiting to be directed through to one of the capital’s six launch tunnels. At Novamas the very existence of holding orbits was a joke. The point-entry station had to deal with no more than one liner, six or seven ore ships and a handful of freighters a month. It was an event to have two or three ships arrive on the same day, let alone together.
XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Page 57