Carrearranis (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 5)

by S MacDonald

  As for crime, there was very little of that. The Carrearranians had never known warfare; the most violent that things got there were fist-fights, not unknown between hot blooded young men, at which both parties were sent off to different islands until, the Carrearranians said, they’d grown up a bit. Theft was not even a concept in their culture. If someone came into your home and took something of yours then it was borrowing without asking, a bit rude but nothing at all serious and, indeed, perfectly justified if they’d happened to have need of it and you weren’t around to be asked.

  Research, however, through extensive questioning which had been painfully slow at the time when all comms took eleven hours to get there, had revealed that they did occasionally have those they considered to be serious offenders, and that there was one such on the planet right now. His name was Davet, now in his late twenties though he had been about sixteen when he’d committed his offence. He’d been a troublesome boy since childhood, the Carrearranians explained, always up to no good. Then he had forced himself on a girl who did not want to have sex with him. When the people of his village had been very angry with him he had, instead of being ashamed, grabbed an axe and, in an act of defiance, chopped down a small tree on the outskirts of the village.

  He had been thrown out of his village, put aboard a boat and told not to come back. Since then, he had been continually moved on. He was now seventeen islands away and never stayed anywhere more than a few months. Villagers took him in when he arrived, a little reluctantly and making it very clear what they thought of him, but giving him a place to sleep and work to do. Sooner or later, though, they would decide that they had had enough of his lazy, surly ways and he would be told to move on.

  There was no equivalent to this in the League’s judicial system. It wasn’t imprisonment and it wasn’t straightforward exile, either – it couldn’t even be described as enforced vagrancy, since every island he arrived at did give him the opportunity to settle down there and make good. The Carrearranians themselves believed that he would do so, eventually, but if he spent the rest of his life being moved on from island to island, so be it. Buzz had eventually settled for describing this as community rehab, and used the case-study to support his finding that law and order on Carrearranis was not rights-abusing. There were those in the League who would take exception to that decision, given the absence of due process, trial, defence, formal sentence or right of appeal, but for now at least it was being deemed as acceptable to the League for diplomatic purposes. Still, as a rehab unit themselves, the Fourth was taking a keen interest in Davet’s progress, with regular updates on how he was doing.

  ‘Oh, the tree,’ Buzz said, answering Tan’s query with a smile. ‘I can tell you that – there’s abundant ethnographic evidence from the vocabulary and tone in which the offence is described – typically, ‘He forced himself on a girl,’ he spoke ordinarily, then paused and then went on in an appalled tone, ‘‘And he killed a tree!’ It’s a core violation of societal values, as serious with them as murder is with us. And understandably so – the Rule of Life forbidding the felling of trees is not about any oneness with the gaian spirit of their world, you know. It is an environmental imperative. Our surveys have found that the eco-systems of the islands are very finely balanced and dependent upon the trees, not just for oxygen production and food resources but for binding the soil. Take even ten per cent of the trees away from any island and there’ll be runaway erosion killing more trees and stripping it to bare rock and sea grass within a few decades. Their long term survival on this planet depends upon maintaining those forests, so trees are precious – sacrosanct.’ He smiled. ‘I will write it up,’ he promised. ‘When I have time.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Tan said, understanding that by ‘write it up’ Buzz meant that he would produce a detailed academic study of the relative importance of rape and tree felling in Carrearranian society. A quick smile for Alex, too, indicated that he had no further questions to ask, at which Alex gave an answering smile and moved things on briskly – Buzz had not reported Davet’s eviction merely as news, but as significant in a decision they’d already been mulling over.

  ‘All right,’ Alex said, speaking to Buzz. ‘Arak has said that we can talk to him if we think we can help, so offer him counselling – and, if he’s willing, a step-based rehab programme.’

  ‘Thank you, dear boy,’ said Buzz, who’d wanted to do that for some time but understood that it was not a high priority. And with that, having set the precedent for League involvement in Carrearranian judicial affairs, Alex turned to the next item, moving on again.

  It was head-spinning, Commander Mikthorn felt. There was no time even to assimilate what they were talking about, to understand the decisions they were making, before they’d made them and gone on to talk about something else.

  He was not alone in finding it so. Mako Ireson held what he described humorously as a ‘rebriefing’ for the official observers each morning, straight after the command team briefing had concluded. In this, he took each item in turn, explaining in more detail, showing the data and the basis on which that decision had been made. There was no limit on time for question and discussion, and the rebriefing usually took up a good chunk of the morning. Tan Ganhauser had suggested that it would be helpful for Commander Mikthorn to attend this, but the Fleet officer could not quite bring himself to sit in with a bunch of civilians. Instead, he had settled for putting himself at a nearby table, within earshot but pretending to work on a comp – actually making notes from what they were discussing.

  This time, though, they were notes merely to jot down key points as if from a lecture, not angrily-seized evidence in support of his belief that this mission was a catastrophic mess being covered up with cult-style indoctrination of anyone who came out to inspect them.

  The most interesting point that came up that morning, at least to Commander Mikthorn, was the range of data which had been used in deciding to move the medical provision out of trial phase. He was amazed by the detail of budgetary analysis, for a start, with breakdown of what had been spent, and how, with ‘cost for outcome’ calculated using just the same equations used to work out costs against what had been achieved in any medical provision. The costs for outcome were comparable with those of a specialist service such as mountain or deep sea rescue units, and had been approved as within acceptable budgets on that basis. Mission impact, too, had been closely monitored. The first three cases had been global stop events, defined as situations in which news flashed around by word of mouth and the majority of the waking population stopped what they were doing to watch what was going on – there was even an indicator recorded of the number of calls made to islands where the population was asleep, the ‘wake-up’ factor which was also part of evaluating how big the global impact actually was. By the fifth case the impact had dropped to that of a local-stop event, defined as the island involved and those close enough to see the shuttle coming down. And as geographical interest had zoned down, so had the amount of time people spent on it – even those on the island involved no longer spent several hours caught up in the event. Some, indeed, would go back to what they’d been doing once the casualty had been seen safely off, and only pause again for a few minutes to see them safely back. An evaluation concluded that there was no cause for concern at the socio-economic impact of continuing to use the snatch-pods, and it was on this basis too that the captain had made his decision.

  Commander Mikthorn had conducted quite a number of project reviews in his role as administrative officer. He recognised the format, the process – the Fourth even used the same style of forms and reports. The difference was that Commander Mikthorn himself would have scheduled at least two days for such a meeting and Captain von Strada had done it in less than three minutes.

  That seemed irresponsible – too fast, too fast to have read the information at all, let alone to have read it thoroughly and given it due consideration. von Strada had barely glanced through the key points and precis conclusions and
there’d been nothing like a discussion about it. Upon reviewing it thoroughly himself, Commander Mikthorn was obliged to concede that it was the decision he would have made himself, but it still left him feeling uneasy, as if the right call had been made more by luck than judgement.

  He was still sitting there, listening to a tangled and heated debate about the rights and wrongs of bringing in League law and their judicial system to Carrearranis, when the mail arrived. As usual, it was distributed, sent out to desks, as soon as the tape it was carried on had been authorised by the command deck.

  Commander Mikthorn looked at his mail. It had been increasingly depressing of late – today’s delivery written at the point where he had been away from Telathor for more than two weeks. His worst fears had been well founded; two more research teams had arrived already in his absence, one from Chartsey and the other from Therik, both with the same top priority status as the last one to have arrived before he’d left. This had kicked off a major argument over whether this meant that the first team had ‘first come first served’ privileges or whether the fact that the newly arrived teams were small and could fit in the lab simultaneously was the winning point. The deputy he’d left in charge was already writing with despair that the situation was ‘becoming impossible’ and that he was building all his hopes on the commander coming back with news that the Heron’s lab was available. He would, at this point, just about be receiving Commander Mikthorn’s letter telling him that the Parrot team was refusing to leave the research facility and that Captain von Strada was refusing to cooperate in any attempt to persuade or compel them to depart.

  Today, though, there was a letter from a new correspondent – one Captain Anares, a name Commander Mikthorn recognised. They had met at Chartsey, in the Second’s Headquarters there. Captain Anares had been retired from the Fleet for more than a decade now and was employed by the Second in a civilian capacity, but he retained the social use of his rank. He operated at the next level up from that of global administrator – he was a regional director, responsible for overseeing Second’s projects across the nine worlds within his region. One of those worlds was Telathor, so he was Commander Mikthorn’s direct line manager. It had been Captain Anares, indeed, who had given him that fatally flawed advice to ‘take no nonsense’.

  He used even more forthright language in that letter. He had, it disclosed, just arrived on Telathor himself – had come out there from Chartsey to take over handling the situation with the research teams they had sent out and having only realised too late that Therik was sending out as well. He had been, his letter said tersely, ‘slightly delayed en-route’, or would have been there the week before. But now he had arrived, only to find that Commander Mikthorn had ‘gone off on this hare-brained expedition’. Captain Anares had read his reports, and Captain Anares was very definitely not impressed.

  ‘What the seven shades of Hades were you thinking?’ the letter demanded, with wrath shimmering in every word. ‘And what the ten bells do you think you’re doing?’

  Commander Mikthorn read this, and the rest of the letter, which concluded with an order to relocate his backside to Telathor immediately.

  And then, in one great terrible swoop, he was hit by the realisation that if he had just stayed where he was at Telathor, just hung in there a little bit longer, Captain Anares would have swept in, taking charge and relieving him of that whole horrible nightmarish mess. If he’d only stayed… if only…

  ‘Ten bells…’ he gasped, and with that, found he could no longer breathe. The feeling of tight bands constricting his ribs had clamped down with agonising force; his lungs could not draw, whoop and suck at the air as he might.

  Rangi Tekawa was on his way. Rangi, indeed, was running, giving a yelp of ‘Me-dic!’ as he hurtled through the ship. Recognising this as an urgent medical response, people flattened themselves back out of his way, a crewman on a ladder jumping away so that Rangi could leap down it.

  It took him less than a minute to make his way from sickbay to the interdeck lounge, but by the time he got there others were already responding. It wasn’t the sight of the commander fighting to breathe which had people rushing towards him, though that was shocking enough in itself. It was the medical monitor on his ankle, now emitting a rapid, piercing high pitched beep.

  Commander Mikthorn himself was only dimly aware of the noise. The lounge was swimming away in a blur – there was no air, no air… his hands and feet had gone numb, cold tingles running up his arms. He was trying to call for help but the only sound he could make was a hoarse, airless whimper.

  A leading star who’d been having a coffee break at a nearby table was the first to get to him. He was already grabbing for the paramedic kit all crew carried on their belts as he got up, and by the time he’d rushed the few steps over to the commander had a diagnostic band at the ready.

  ‘All right, mate,’ he spoke with kindly authority, snapping the band around the commander’s wrist and looking at the results as the screen flashed up. They were showing the same information that had got Rangi leaping up from his meditation circle and racing through the ship.

  Commander Mikthorn’s body had gone into overdrive. His heart was thundering, he was hyperventilating, he was shaking, his neurochemistry was spiking red and there was a flashing alert on trauma. He was having a panic attack.

  ‘All right… all right, now…’ the crewman was fitting a trauma module to the wristband. Commander Mikthorn saw what he was doing, and felt the tiny chill as the intravenous drug feed pierced his skin. He tried to say ‘No, no…’ but words were beyond him. ‘Easy now…’ the crewman looked up as Rangi arrived, moved aside for him and went to fetch a stretcher. Someone else, though, was already getting one from the nearest damage control locker.

  ‘Okay…’ Rangi was crouched beside the patient, too, watching the readout as the sedative took effect. ‘It’s okay now, Endru – I’m right here.’

  Commander Mikthorn gave a final heave, frantic for air, and quietly passed out.

  Rangi supported him so that one arm went onto the table and his head came down to rest on it. Then, still with one hand on the commander’s shoulder and the other holding the wrist with the mediband, he glanced around, evaluating. The stretcher was on its way, with two crewmembers on active-assist while several others who’d been in the lounge were standing by, ready to help if called upon but staying out of the way. Mako was already calming the civilians, preventing them rushing forward to help and asking them please to be quiet. They continued to exclaim, horrified. None of them liked the commander, and there’d been a little incident a couple of days ago when one of them had referred to ‘Moaning Mick’, unaware that the commander was in earshot, but even so, none of them wanted to see him in that state. It was a shock, too, coming apparently out of nowhere – he’d been sitting at that table most of the morning, listening to the rebriefing and writing things down. Then he’d started reading his mail and all at once, this, that dreadful gasping.

  There was a spreading silence through the rest of the ship, too – the commander’s gasping had not been loud in the busy hum of the open comms system but as people fell quiet, it was as if those hoarse, desperate panting gulps still hung in the air.

  People watched on screens as he was lifted from his seat and helped onto the stretcher. He was evidently not entirely unconscious – able, at least, to curl up on his side as they eased him down. Rangi took him off to sickbay and people went back to work, albeit with a noticeably subdued atmosphere. The civilian observers, indeed, had to be reassured with cups of tea, agreeing amongst themselves as they drank it that the commander had never seemed right.

  Alex knew very well that he hadn’t been right – Rangi had not breached patient confidentiality, but then, he hadn’t needed to. Alex had understood that the commander, even after he’d recovered from physical exhaustion, was on a knife-edge of stress and emotional overload.

  ‘Can I have a word, dear boy?’ Buzz asked, sometime later, in an undertone.r />
  ‘No.’ Alex gave him a quick smile, though there was a wry look in his eyes. He knew what comfort Buzz would offer; the hug, the firm assurance that he had done everything that could be expected of him under duty of care.

  He also knew that if Commander Mikthorn had been one of his crew, or even an invited passenger, he would have done more. He recognised as a characteristic within himself that he was always prepared to go the extra distance for people he considered a personal as well as a professional responsibility – and that ‘in’ group did consist primarily of his crew, his people, and to a lesser degree, passengers he’d accepted as temporary additions to the ship’s company.

  Commander Mikthorn was neither of these. He had thrust himself onto the ship and they’d been forced to put up with him. He’d made no contribution of any kind and had been a miserable, irritating pest. Alex had done as much as he was obliged to, no more, relying on Rangi to get the commander sorted out and on his way.

  Now he’d broken down and had to be sedated, and Alex was dealing with a pang of guilt. Buzz understood, as few others would, how sensitive he was about situations where he feared that he might have been responsible, even in part, for somebody having a breakdown. He had acquired a reputation for hounding his enemies till they broke down from stress. However undeserved that reputation might be, there had been two cases in which his actions had been factors, undeniably, in psychological breakdown. The director of ISiS Karadon had ended up in a clinic and the port admiral at Korvold had been retired from the Fleet on the grounds of ill health, both as a result of headlong clashes with Alex von Strada. Now the commander, who had also clashed heads with him, was on the casualty list. Alex knew only too well how that would be regarded, both in the media and around the Fleet. He was not very happy with himself, right now. But he was not so distraught that he needed a hug.