New Title 2

by S J MacDonald

  The only item of interest which flagged up on the command screens was an explanation of why the Customs and Excise ship they’d been expecting to find here wasn’t in orbit. It had left the station three days before in response to reports of a yacht in difficulties. The liner which had arrived from Telathor just a couple of hours ago had reported sighting the Customs ship assisting the yacht, providing a tow-line and proceeding at a speed which would bring them back to the station in another nine or ten hours.

  Alex didn’t need to do anything about that, but he did smile inwardly, anticipating the quiet jubilation of the Customs ship in snatching a rescue just before the Fourth’s appearance on scene.

  He had no time for any more than that fleeting thought, though, as he responded courteously to Guiliano Espetti’s welcome.

  ‘We have quite a lot of cargo for you,’ the Director informed him. ‘It’s been coming in for weeks – we can send it over whenever you’re ready, or of course you can pick it up yourselves if you prefer.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Alex.

  ‘And we are, of course – ready – delighted – to offer you the freedom of the station – greatly honoured, ceremony entirely at your convenience, of course.’

  The station director was becoming increasingly desperate in the face of Alex’s glacial stare. Alex could see that he was frightening him, and he understood why, too. He even felt guilty about it – it wasn’t as if there was any kind of operational justification for him scaring the pants off the poor man, after all. There was nothing he could do about it, though. This was an official call with a civilian authority he did not know and felt no sense of kinship with. It was genuinely impossible for Alex to respond to that in any other way than with the formal courtesies required by the Fleet and imposed by his Novaterran heritage. Attempting to force a smile in these circumstances would only make it worse. The best he could do, the absolute best, was to make his manner politely interested. Unfortunately, Mr Espetti was clearly not finding that very reassuring.

  ‘Anything we can do, Captain, anything!’ he gabbled, as little beads of panic appeared on his clammy forehead.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Espetti,’ Alex was working really hard to remember everything he’d learned in his latest public relations course. It had been a mistake to accept the holo-link, he saw that now. He was far more comfortable with text-comms in this kind of situation, or voice-comms, at least, which maintained some degree of impersonality. This face-to-face formal interaction with strangers was one of his weakest areas, only marginally less dire than his public speaking skills. If you can’t make your face smile or your voice warm, he reminded himself, make the words do the work. ‘Your welcome and courtesy are very much appreciated. We’ve been looking forward very much to our visit here.’ He saw the flicker of terror that crossed the director’s face at the sinister implications of what exactly they were looking forward to, and realised that that wasn’t working as well as he’d hoped. ‘We will do our best to minimise disruption to the station,’ he said, and seeing that the man was on the verge of hyperventilating, went to Public Relations Defcon One. ‘And I promise,’ he said, still deadpan but managing to get a note of dry humour into his voice, ‘that we won’t blow anything up.’

  Guiliano Espetti stared at him for two frozen seconds and then gave a whoop of sheer relief, not unmixed with a touch of hysteria. He had been told, repeatedly, that Captain von Strada could not help being cold and even intimidating in formal situations, but that he really did have a lively sense of humour and would have a good laugh with you once you got to know him. Guiliano Espetti really didn’t want to get to know him that well, but the joke, at least, made it clear that von Strada was attempting to be cordial.

  ‘Well, actually, we do have a couple of starseekers on the tether…’ he drew them to Alex’s attention – tiny yachts, inactive and held on the garbage-line tether for disposal.

  Since Davie North had acquired shareholder control over ISiS Corps, it had become company policy for any of their stations to buy any starseekers which were offered for sale, paying the market value plus a hospitality package on the station and liner tickets back home. It was also company policy that such yachts were not sold on, no matter how new they were, but were treated as garbage. A recent directive from Head Office had suggested that they might be offered for target practice to any Fleet ships which called in..

  ‘How kind,’ said Alex, and if Guiliano Espetti had known him well enough, he would have recognised the little twitch of his lips and slight narrowing of his eyes which conveyed a laughing response. ‘I hope we’ll be able to take you up on that, if we have time.’

  He saw another flash of relief, quickly followed by dismay as Guiliano Espetti was reminded of how insane the next few days were going to be, starting with the much-dreaded Freedom of the Station ceremony.

  He had no idea how much Alex would have loved to tell him to forget that, to tell him frankly that he loathed such ceremonial and would consider it a huge favour to be excused this time. Alex’s own orders were, however, to cooperate fully with ISiS Corps on this ‘freedom of the station’ procedure, both as good practice in relationship building and because it gave the League authorities a vital toe-hold on a facility that was otherwise legally outside their control. That was what ISiS meant, after all, an Independent Space Station which, though within League space, was a sovereign entity in its own right, like a tiny independent world.

  ‘If we could have the reception, say, in two or three hours, if that’s convenient…’ Alex suggested. Guiliano Espetti leapt at that, thanking him earnestly. As little as he wanted to carry out this ceremony, either, he wanted even less to have to explain to head office why he’d failed to do it.

  ‘Shall we say 2050, then?’ he asked, and at Alex’s assent, clarified how many people the Fourth would be bringing, what airlock they would go to and what security arrangements would be in place.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that we do have quite a number of activist groups with a presence on the station,’ the director said, with an apologetic, anxious look. ‘I’d have cleared them off before you arrived, but I’m afraid I’m not allowed to – ISiS Corps has an ethical code of business practice, you see, which means that we’re not allowed to refuse service to activists or the media – freedom of speech and all that.’

  His tone made it perfectly clear that if it hadn’t been for that rigid code of practice being enforced from above, he would certainly have deported all the activists from the station and probably the journalists, too, at least the noisier ones. As it was, as Alex understood very well, he could only make people leave if they were posing a genuine threat to the safety of other station users.

  Alex remembered Davie North telling him once how hard it was not just to get corporations to run Clean and Green, but to keep them that way. Guiliano Espetti, evidently, was rather lukewarm on the principle of upholding constitutional right to free speech.

  It would, obviously, have been easier for Alex, too, if protestors and journalists had been kept off the station. He was, however, with Davie on that a hundred per cent. No matter how ferocious the anti-Fourth campaigning got, Alex took it in his stride. For one thing, as he understood only too well, those organisations were campaigning on the basis of what they believed about the Fourth, and they couldn’t be faulted for that. The authorities were not in a position to be able to tell the whole truth about the Fourth, what they did and where they went, and the partial truth they could tell was instantly howled down by all concerned.

  ‘I have no issue with the activists,’ said Alex, and as the director stared at him in bewilderment, ‘they have every right to express their views. And I for one would not want to live in a society where people didn’t protest very angrily against what they believe we are doing.’

  That was too complex for Guiliano Espetti to take in in his current state of perturbation, so Alex broke it down into terms even a groundhog civilian could understand.

  ‘Half of the
m believe that we are using prisoners as expendable in dirty operations,’ he pointed out, ‘in blatant abuse of human rights laws, and that we treat people with a slave-driving brutality which would be appalling if it was true. If the Fleet really was operating a unit like that I’d be out there protesting against it myself. And the other half believes that we’re a wildly out of control experiment swilling champagne and blowing stuff up for the hell of it. I have to respect their right to express their opinions on that, too, and if it really was the case, they’d be entirely justified in their view that that’s an outrageous misuse of a publicly funded warship.’

  The director conceded the point with a troubled look, then nerved himself to speak up.

  ‘Spacers know better, though, Captain,’ he said, and conveyed, subtly, that he put himself into that category.

  ‘Indeed,’ Alex agreed. ‘Anyway, given the presence of so many protest groups, perhaps it might be more convenient to hold the reception in the Freight Club…’ he broke off as he saw the look of horror, and sighed inwardly.

  As with all ISiS, the station functioned as two separate businesses, the leisure decks catering to the liners and yachts while the freight decks provided cargo transit and facilities for the spacers. The Freight Club was a vital part of that; not merely a place for spacers to get a meal and catch up on the goss, but a trading post in its own right. Since it was on the freight decks it would be easy to keep both activists and journalists away, and would be a far more comfortable environment for Alex.

  He was to be spared nothing here, though, not even the drinks reception in the station’s highest prestige venue.

  ‘We’ll use the Panorama Suite, of course,’ said Guiliano Espetti, and Alex could only submit.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and consoled himself with the thought that at least Marto would not be there to weep and hug him. The League’s most famous celebrity chef was at Karadon, still making impassioned declarations of his admiration for Alex whenever the media went to him for a comment. There was even a song, now, a comic skit doing the rounds of spacer bars. ‘Oh has he been to Karadon, the noble and heroic One?’ Alex had been hugely relieved that their orders specified that they were to avoid calling in at Karadon. ‘Thank you, Mr Espetti.’

  His call with the station director concluded, Alex turned to his executive officer, as Buzz evidently wanted to speak to him as soon as he was free.

  ‘Developments, dear boy,’ said Buzz, and drew Alex’s attention to a matter he’d been dealing with while the captain was on the call to Guiliano Espetti. There was an officer on the way from the courier, bringing priority dispatches from Admiralty HQ. Rather more surprisingly there was also a shuttle heading out from the station, bringing over three members of the Diplomatic Corps – a Cultural Attaché, a Media Officer and a Personal Assistant. Buzz had already established that they were a diplomatic advisory team sent with the permission of the First Lord, with all necessary clearance and authorisations. There was no doubt that the orders on their way from the courier would confirm that they were to be accommodated on the ship.

  Alex looked interested, veering towards cautiously pleased. A lot would depend upon their attitude, of course, but he had faith in Dix Harangay. The First Lord would not have approved this if he’d felt that the team would hamper the Fourth’s ability to carry out this mission. And these were, he could see, orders coming from Dix himself, not from the Senate Sub-Committee.

  The shuttle from the courier was already docking as Alex looked up from the screen. The Sub Lt merely handed over his packet of tapes at the airlock, exchanging brisk salutes with the deck officer and declining an invitation to come aboard for a cup of tea. That might have been out of consideration for how busy they would be on arriving at the station, but from the curt tone of the refusal it was more likely to be that the Sub didn’t want to contaminate the soles of his deck shoes by setting foot on the Fourth’s ship. Not every member of the Fleet was supportive of them, after all.

  The diplomatic team, at least, were more congenial, arriving at the opposite airlock just as the courier shuttle sped away. They smiled as they introduced themselves and shook hands with the deck officer. Cultural Attaché Jun Desmoulin was a rather heavy-set man in his thirties, with a pronounced jaw and an air of good humoured efficiency. Media Officer Marsh Eglantine had the unmistakeable look of a Diplomatic Corps Bright Young Thing. He could be no more than a year or two out of university, an impeccably groomed young man practically fizzing with ambition and super-keen enthusiasm. The resemblance to several of their own young supernumerary Subs was striking.

  The third member of the team, the Personal Assistant, introduced herself simply as ‘Petra’ and remained modestly in the background, barely noticeable other than as a calm, pleasant lady with grey streaks in her curly hair.

  They were escorted onto the command deck by the deck officer, who handed the packet of tapes to the captain and presented their guests.

  ‘An honour, Excellency,’ Attaché Desmoulin said, shaking hands with just a little twinkle in his warm brown eyes.

  ‘Please,’ Alex said. He was used to weighing people up quickly and felt that he was going to like this man. Attaché Desmoulin was not going to stomp into this mission throwing his diplomatic weight about. ‘I prefer to be addressed by my military rank,’ he said, and saw that that was no surprise, as the Attaché inclined his head.

  ‘Captain,’ he agreed, and went on, ‘I do apologise for barging in on you like this so unceremoniously, but in the circumstances…’ he gestured towards the tapes which Alex was still holding. As Alex looked at him enquiringly, he explained, ‘I’m not entirely sure of the military etiquette, since you haven’t read your orders yet, but I felt we should report for duty at once. Be assured - we have been assigned to you, to work for you, and we are ready to pitch in any way we can help.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex said. He had declined the offer of a diplomatic staff, preferring to rely on his own people for whatever support he might need in his ambassadorial role. Evidently, though, things had changed, whatever their orders were they did include taking these people aboard, and Alex knew that the First Lord would not have sent them on that basis unless they really were going to be useful.

  ‘You are very welcome, of course,’ he said, ‘and I’m sure you’ll be of great assistance.’ He glanced around them enquiringly, seeing that the shuttle which had brought them had already left. ‘You didn’t bring your luggage with you?’

  ‘We didn’t like to presume,’ the attaché said, with a smile. That was a subtle but significant deference, recognising that Alex had the right to refuse anybody permission to board his ship, regardless of other orders. To do so on anything other than overwhelming grounds of safety and security of the ship, naturally, would result in a major scandal and disciplinary proceedings, but it was indeed a delicate courtesy of the diplomatic team not to presume on that permission being granted.

  ‘We’ll have it brought over,’ said Alex, and looked at Buzz, then, as he continued, ‘And I’m sure…’

  He left the sentence hanging, and Buzz picked it up obligingly, understanding that Alex would not ask him, in front of their guests, to accommodate them with the officers. That was Buzz’s prerogative, as president of the wardroom, and not something Alex could impose.

  ‘Of course, we’ll be delighted to offer you the hospitality of the wardroom,’ he said, and was already mentally figuring out who would have to move where in order to fit them in, as their wardroom cabins were already fully occupied. Some of the Subs would have to buddy up and share.

  ‘Oh – that’s very kind,’ Attaché Desmoulin said, ‘so kind, thank you. But I was going to ask…’ he looked back to Alex, ‘may we please, if it isn’t an inconvenience, have a cabin on the interdeck?’

  Alex looked a little surprised. It had not occurred to him to offer them quarters on the interdeck because he had accepted them straight off as members of the team. It seemed rude to him to put them on the interdeck, tr
eating them like outsiders. Seeing the earnest look on the attaché’s face, though, he realised that this really was what they wanted.

  ‘Well, if that really is what you’d prefer…’

  ‘It would suit us admirably, thank you, Captain.’ Jun Desmoulin assured him.

  ‘By all means, then.’ Alex glanced at the screen showing the interdeck lounge and saw that he had no need to call Mako Ireson. Mako was watching, looking right back at him and beaming with pleasure at the prospect of having passengers to take care of. As Alex looked at him Mako pointed to himself and then gestured upwards with an enquiring look, asking if he should come up to the command deck. Alex gave a brief answering smile and nod, and Mako hurried away. Alex could have tracked him leaving the lounge, heading through the airlock which sealed the interdeck off from the rest of the ship and traversing the various sections and freefall ladderways which would bring him up to the command deck, but he paid no further attention to the bank of screens showing footage from throughout the ship. ‘Mr Ireson, our interdeck steward, will see that you have everything you need.’

  He was alert to any hint of reserve or embarrassment as he mentioned Mako’s name. There had been an astonishing and rather undignified burst of fighting over Mako Ireson at Chartsey, on their return from the Samart mission. His employers, the League Prisons Inspectorate, had been mightily indignant that not only had ‘their’ brig been dismantled and the space turned into a leisure facility but that their liaison officer, a senior prisons inspector, had been used by the Fourth as a steward. Being told that there were aspects to that which could not be explained to them had not mollified them in any way. They had been adamant that they were going to pull him out of his liaison role with the Fourth, as he had clearly lost his objectivity and could no longer be regarded as an independent observer.

  The Diplomatic Corps, meanwhile, had pretty much taken it for granted that Mr Ireson would now come to work for them. They’d expected that he would stay on to work with the Samartian delegation, for a start, and had already lined up a career for him in exodiplomacy. He would come in, they’d told him, as an Assistant Attaché on a generous salary and benefits – nearly three times as much as he was paid by the LPA. They would relocate his family back to Chartsey, too, and provide their first year’s housing in an executive apartment. Their reaction when Mako had said thank you but no had started with mild amusement as they assumed this was merely a ploy to push up their offer, passed through incredulity when they’d realised he meant it, and ended with some rather heated and undignified arguing at Sub Committee level.