by S MacDonald
Mara had joined the fan club which had sprung up spontaneously at the Fourth’s arrival – one of millions who had done so. They called themselves Stradites, the club basically little more than a platform for people to share their experiences and enthusiasms about all things von Strada. Mara had been on a Stradite-organised trip to see him in person when he’d been attending an event in a nearby city, and had held one end of a holo-banner reading Captain of our Hearts. She had been watching on live holovision when he was shot; had screamed and sobbed and had felt shaken for days afterwards. She had been speechless with joy, too, when the announcement was made of the discovery of Carrearranis. When it was also announced that there would be a lottery for members of the public to be part of the planned observation parties actually getting to go out and see the mission for themselves, she had put her name in at once. She hadn’t expected to win a place; of course, the odds were such that you had a better chance of being struck by lightning. But then there’d been the call from the Embassy, telling her that her name had come up and asking if she was still interested and really able to undertake the training and the two month trip.
She had learned, since, that the lottery was not entirely random. Candidates were carefully vetted and selected from a hundred names which were randomly drawn, which was as close as the authorities could get to a truly random choice while still ensuring that the people sent could cope with the reality of it. Not the least of that had involved being told about the Guardian, something not even hinted at in the media. Seeing that beautiful, ancient alien ship had been a moment of pure awe for Mara, and the loss of it was still a grief confused by the fact that it had been precipitated by other aliens of which she was just as much in awe.
Now, though, that disaster had brought them to the edge of the Carrearranian system, so close that she could see the planet with her own eyes, or as good as. The deployment of the drones would tell them a lot more about the planet and bring them one step closer to being able to land there. She would not be here to see that, but she had seen the drones put into orbit and the thrill of that was still bright in her eyes.
Commander Mikthorn really should have listened. Being the man he was, though, he let her talk for less than two minutes before deciding that the time had come to start setting her straight. And the best way in for that, he decided, was the financial aspect of it – once she understood how the Fourth and this mission was ripping people off, he would be able to explain to her how they were getting away with it, and that would bring her on-side.
‘Of course,’ he said, with a deprecatory note, ‘the one thing nobody talks about, or wants you to ask questions about, is how much it’s all costing. Did you know that there is more money being spent on this mission than on the health service on Telathor?’
That was a wholly unfair assertion, a politician’s statistic. In making that claim, he was comparing all the money which he reckoned had been spent on the mission even from before the Fourth had left Therik, including all the diplomatic funding for Shion and Silvie, policing costs of events on Telathor, everything he’d been able to think of. It also included all the money being spent at Oreol, much of which was not directly for the Carrearranis mission at all. And it included, too, his estimate of the costs of sending out the Embassy II and the convoy of supply ships which would be following on. It did, admittedly, amount to a staggering total, but it was really unfair to then compare that with nothing more than daily operating costs of healthcare services and with no account made for the costs of buildings or equipment.
Mara Divanelo, as he had expected, was in no position to pick holes in his financial assertions. She just sat there looking at him blankly.
‘By the time they’re done,’ said Commander Mikthorn, ‘they’ll have spent more than a million dollars each on every man, woman and child on that planet. Can you imagine how much could be done for your children with that much money?’
Mara Divanelo was bewildered. She would have needed a calculator, and some time, to work out that a hundred and thirty million dollars divided by the population of Telathor would be about fourteen dollars each. She would have needed to muster her thoughts, too, before she could explain that this was not money being taken from her kids, or from Telathoran healthcare, but that the mission was being funded from Chartsey… from taxes, sure, but taxes spread across the whole of the League so everyone was paying a tiny amount towards it, and who would grudge that, to help those poor people?
As it was, she had only a confused feeling that there was something not quite right about what he was saying, and an even more confused doubt about why he was talking to her like this in the first place.
‘Of course,’ said Commander Mikthorn, ‘the Fourth themselves are doing very nicely out of it.’ He shook his head forebodingly. ‘They are charging the Second an absolute fortune for having our team aboard.’
That was not the Fourth’s fault. Originally they’d been happy to charge the Second no more than the cost of production for anything manufactured for their teams on board, and a purely nominal amount for any other services provided. Some committee, however, had decided a year or so back that this was not sound fiscal practice and a new set of edicts had been issued. Now, the Fourth was required to invoice the Second for anything they did for them at rates equivalent to what they would have had to pay for goods or services from commercial suppliers. This did indeed mean that the Fourth made extraordinary, even outrageous profit from whatever work or consultancy they provided to the Second. This, however, was promptly taken off them again by the Admiralty which reduced their own payment to the Fourth accordingly. Since the Admiralty also financed the Second Irregulars they in their turn would be given the funding to pay the invoices submitted by the Fourth. It was all very complex, overseen by several committees, and like much bureaucracy, fundamentally rather silly. The Fourth and the research teams themselves just issued the paperwork and let the various committees sort it out. The Fourth, though, certainly did not benefit from the money they made from the Second’s teams, and Commander Mikthorn should have known that. He had, of course, been told that, but as he’d said himself, darkly, he found it hard to believe that they wouldn’t work the system to get extra funding for themselves at the Second’s expense.
‘Wot?’ Mara might not understand the nuances of what the commander was telling her, but she understood well enough that he was saying the Fourth was doing something wrong. ‘Wot d’yer mean?’ she asked, with an edge to her voice. Opinions had been freely exchanged about Commander Mikthorn and it was generally known that he was out to make trouble if he could.
‘Well, you know,’ Commander Mikthorn said, ‘you wouldn’t believe the ‘expenses’ Captain von Strada signs off on…’
He didn’t get any further than that, so he never got to progress to explaining to her how – and why – Captain von Strada and the Fourth were indoctrinating observers like her to stop them reporting the truth about the shambolic waste of money that was actually going on.
‘Don’ yer go mal-mouthing him,’ Mara snarled. All her dislike of this pompous know-all and the irritation he’d wound up over the last few minutes had now reached the point where anger overcame politeness. ‘Oo’d yer think yer are?’
Commander Mikthorn was not accustomed to being spoken to like that, still less by someone he considered to be his inferior in every regard. He bridled instinctively, forgetting his intention to coax her along into seeing things his way and reverting to his far more customary manner of setting people straight.
‘Now look here…’ he said, with the threat of explosive wrath in his tone. ‘I know a good deal more about this than you do. And I can tell you,’ he pointed a finger at her in controlled aggression, ‘Captain von Strada is not the man you think he is.’
Forty seven seconds later, Mako Ireson arrived on scene in full crisis-response mode. Commander Mikthorn had learned a lot in those forty seven seconds. He could have learned quite a lot of new words, had he been in any state to re
member them and find out what they meant afterwards. He certainly learned very quickly that Telethorans, however lazy and careless they normally seemed in their attitude to life, could be roused to fury. He also learned that one human being really could yell and spit rage into the face of another with a ferocity he’d previously thought only happened in films. He discovered, too, that attempting to assert authority over the enraged one only got a fist shaken under his nose accompanied by threats about what she was going to do to his genitals.
Commander Mikthorn was shocked, appalled, and secretly grateful to Mako Ireson for his swift intervention. Mako appeared beside them, holding out an arm like a physical barrier between the two and addressing himself calmly to Mara. Without touching her, he guided her away.
‘Come over here,’ he invited, with a look of gentle concern. ‘Come and tell me all about it.’
Mara did so, at first at very high pitch and full volume as she continued to express her opinion of Commander Mikthorn, but quietening very fast as she realised she was yelling at Mako. An officer, meanwhile, had come into the lounge and made straight for the commander. Before he quite knew what was happening he too had been moved away from the scene of confrontation, seated with his back to the other participant and invited to tell the sympathetic officer what the problem was.
Commander Mikthorn struggled for a moment. His instinct was to express his own views of that vulgar, horrible woman in no uncertain terms and to lay a complaint against her, too, for the language and the threats she had seen fit to use at him. On the other hand, any such complaint would trigger an investigation which would inevitably reveal exactly what he’d said. He couldn’t deny it; like every other part of the ship the interdeck was subject to continuous blind recording of everything that happened there. An official investigation would be grounds to access that recording and review exactly what had happened. He could, he felt, defend his opinions about the mission financing, though there would be awkward questions to answer about why he was telling a civilian about them in such a confidential manner. His statement of ‘Captain von Strada is not the man you think he is,’ however, would generate even more awkward questions. Despite the fact that they were members of separate Irregular units, he and von Strada were still bound by normal Fleet regulations and practice in most things, and very much so by Fleet expectations about how officers conducted themselves. For a senior officer to be bad-mouthing a flag officer to a civilian had crossed a line, and though Commander Mikthorn was confident that he could justify that, he knew from experience that the Fleet authorities would come down on him at any excuse they got. In that, the figure of Port Admiral Croker loomed menacingly large. Froggy Croker was in charge at Oreol. Froggy Croker was chain-of-command superior to Commander Mikthorn himself. And Froggy Croker was not only emphatically pro-Fourth, but a personal friend of Captain von Strada’s.
‘Nothing,’ Commander Mikthorn said shortly. ‘The woman just flew off the handle.’ Then it occurred to him that she might make a complaint about him, which the Fourth and Froggy Croker would no doubt have great relish in upholding. ‘She’s unstable,’ he said, and made a gesture towards his temple with one finger. ‘Losing it. Stress, no doubt.’
He was lucky. Mara decided not to make a complaint. This had everything to do with not wanting to put the slightest burden on the Fourth in dealing with that right then and nothing at all to do with any generosity towards Commander Mikthorn himself. Even when calmed down and back writing her letter, she cast malevolent glances his way. Later, carrying her lunch tray past his table, she muttered Mick the Dick, too, in tones of loathing.
It was because of this that the minor incident had unexpected consequences. Commander Mikthorn was still, as he put it himself ‘under the doctor’. He’d recovered physically from the exhaustion caused by the journey out here on the courier, but Rangi Tekawa was still keeping an eye on his stress levels and general health. For that reason he’d asked him to wear a discreet patch on his ankle which would carry out continuous blood analysis. Commander Mikthorn had agreed to this, though making a token protest; he liked people to be attentive to him and his welfare.
Rangi was certainly that. Whatever his opinion of Commander Mikthorn as an officer and as a man might have been, in his regard for him as a patient he showed nothing but wholehearted care and concern. The commander was a very angry man, and far more wound up with stress than was at all good for his health.
Rangi had, therefore, already intended to invite him to sickbay for another chat when things were quiet, in the hope that he might persuade him to try chakra meditation as a means of relieving himself of these harmful feelings. In the light of the readings which flagged up on his monitor that morning, though, he made it an official request for a health check.
‘Your stress levels have been quite high today,’ he told the commander, once they were seated with cups of tea. This had quite a different meaning in sickbay to anywhere else on the ship; here it meant one of the aircushion beanbags placed in a ring on the artificial grass Rangi called his Healing Circle, surrounded by a holographic jungle glade with a waterfall and birdsong. The tea, naturally, was one of Rangi’s herbal brews and served in one of his fine porcelain tea bowls. Commander Mikthorn sat as ramrod straight as the beanbags permitted, resolutely ignoring the holographic nonsense. ‘You’re not worrying about the journey back, are you?’
Having found the commander to be uncommunicative in previous chats, Rangi had fallen back on the slightly sneaky method of asking questions and observing the physical reaction via the monitor his patient was wearing. Seeing the spike of stress levels, therefore, he nodded slightly, satisfied that he had guessed right.
It was true too; Commander Mikthorn was stressed about the journey back. He was stressed about being forced to leave with nothing achieved, he was stressed about the fight he was going to have with the authorities and the months of hassle he would have to go through. He was stressed, too, at the prospect of having to spend several hours in close quarters with a woman who kept glaring and muttering insults at him, and to be cooped up on a corvette with her for several days after that. He could, he kept telling himself, rise above that, and put her in her place if need be, but even so the memory of her yelling in his face with such foul-mouthed rage made him feel uneasy. There was, too, a secret dread. He was a Fleet officer. He knew very well that the shuttle they intended to use was perfectly safe for the journey back to the Minnow, and that it would be quiet and comfortable, not the rattling hell of travel on a courier. The corvette, too, would make the journey back to Oreol as slick and smooth as could be.
Truth be told, though, Commander Mikthorn had never felt comfortable out in space aboard anything much smaller than a carrier or, preferably, a liner. Even the frigate seemed alarmingly small to be so far out here all by itself, and the corvette, by comparison, was tiny. As for the shuttle… even the thought of having to head out tomorrow on a craft not much bigger than a fighter gave him an odd empty feeling in his midriff. He had to keep telling himself not to think about all the terrible things that could happen to a small ship in dirty space. Frankly, the commander was scared. It was inconceivable, though, that he’d admit to that.
‘I’m all right,’ he said defensively.
‘Well, your stress levels are high,’ Rangi said, with a look of warm sympathy. ‘Entirely understandable, of course, given the awful time you had of it coming out here. It won’t be at all like that going back, you know – a nice, quiet, calm and comfortable journey.’ He was watching the commander’s face as he spoke, as well as his monitor readings, and saw that this reassurance was not going to cut it. ‘But with readings this high, I really do feel that it would be helpful to give you something to help you through it.’
‘No.’ The refusal came quick and emphatic, just as it had when Rangi had offered sedatives to help him through his stress-induced exhaustion.
Rangi gave a little sigh. The Fleet had antiquated regulations about stress medication which Rangi for o
ne considered nothing short of barbaric. Personnel on shipboard service who required anti-stress meds had to be relieved of duty while they were taking them and go through a review before they’d be permitted back on duty again. From the Fleet’s point of view this was a precaution prioritising the safety of the ship. From the individual’s point of view it had come to be feared that if you accepted any anti-stress meds it was pretty much the kiss of death to your career. Commander Mikthorn was already in a vulnerable position, having been diagnosed with exhaustion on his arrival here. He had been very insistent that that be recorded as physical exhaustion, due to the noise, vibration and inability to rest aboard the courier, not conceding in any way that stress had been a factor.
‘We could,’ Rangi suggested, ‘call them muscle relaxants.’ This was a long-standing custom amongst Fleet medics in getting around patients’ reluctance to take any kind of anti-stress medication.
Commander Mikthorn just looked at him and Rangi recognised defeat on that score.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But honestly, I am concerned about how you’re going to cope. If you’re this stressed the day before you’re due to leave, what will you be like by tomorrow? You certainly won’t sleep much tonight if things go on like this. I understand why you won’t take meds, really I do, but you’ll be a wreck before you even get on the shuttle at this rate. Perhaps some massage therapy, or a guided hypnosis might be…’ he tailed off as he saw the look he was getting. He didn’t waste his breath trying to convince him of the benefits of aromatherapy, either. Rangi was an optimist and idealist, to be sure, but he could recognise a brick wall when he saw one.