In stark contrast, the Minnow’s representatives stood rigid, feet planted slightly apart, hands clasped behind their backs, gazes fixed forward. They looked more like soldiers than spacers, as even the regular Fleet didn’t expect such army-style precision from its personnel on parade. This was only serving as a counterpoint which made the other ships’ representatives look even more shambolic. The whole thing was a farce, and with the advent of the bouquet, became really unpleasant.
The protocol established at Karadon was for a small child to present the captain with a large bouquet. The management had been able to find an appropriate child on both Karadon and ISiS Penrys, confident and thrilled to be on camera, handing over the flowers to the officer in his grand dress uniform. Alex, in turn, would then hand them to a member of his crew to be displayed in their main entry airlock.
On this occasion, though, the child lost his nerve as he was ushered into the parade and given the bouquet. As bright camera lights focussed on him he froze, petrified. A helpful adult tried to encourage him with a hand on his back and a hissing whisper of, ‘Go on, Bobby!’ but the child, who looked about five, began to screw up his face in distress.
‘Don’ wanna!’ he protested, and made an anguished little whimpering noise as cameras swooped lower and the bright lights intensified.
There was a moment of confusion in which one helpful adult attempted to calm and persuade him to carry on while another attempted to come to the rescue, but it was Guiliano Espetti who stepped in as wails of upset broke out in earnest. He took the bouquet himself, with a quick word of reassurance to the child and a look at one of the adults which said clearly get him out of here, then came over to Alex, pinning on a smile as he handed over the bouquet in person.
Alex could hear the child crying as he was carried out of the venue. His face showed no emotion, but even while Espetti was carrying the bouquet across to him, he turned his head and looked directly at one of the officers in his party.
Silent communication took place, not only with that look but with subtle body signals. The Fourth had developed these during the Samart operation for use during encounters where they might need to communicate amongst themselves without that being obvious. The very slight tilt of Alex’s head to the right meant I need help and the equally slight lift of Martine Fishe’s chin replied I’ve got it. And with that, as unobtrusively as was possible for an officer leaving the middle of an on-camera parade, Martine broke ranks and followed the sound of the crying child.
Alex accepted the bouquet with stone-faced decorum and handed it to his steward, who was waiting to receive it. Up until now, Alex had merely handed the bouquet to the youngest rating present at the parade, but here Banno was, stepping forward to receive it with beaming pride and a brisk salute.
‘Sir!’
Alex returned the salute and turned back to the parade, bracing himself for the next phase of the torment.
This was the point at which he was required to make a speech, accepting the Freedom of the Station and making complimentary remarks about ISiS Kavenko.
He did so, in four and a half minutes of word-perfect delivery given in his usual public-speaking glacial monotone. The First Lord had actually hired a voice coach to work with him at one point, attempting to teach him how to deliver a speech with some degree of warmth or personality, but it had been a waste of time. Alex could do it beautifully in private, aboard ship, but put him out in public, on camera, and all his barriers slammed down.
Things did not improve much at the drinks reception. Kavenko’s Panorama Suite was a lovely venue, with the illusion of a glass dome giving an impressive view of the traffic around the station and the starfield all around. It was furnished with discreet elegance and a live quartet was providing background music. Telathor was a world known for its rich art culture and that was reflected on the station, too, with four major galleries showing intersystem exhibits. Here in the Panorama Suite there were several glass sculptures, notable for their abstract purity of line.
Alex, however, had to focus his attention on the people being introduced to him. As was usual at such events, the other guests were already at the venue when he and the other VIPs were escorted in. As was also usual and indeed defined in the head office specifications for this event, the guests had to outnumber the Fourth by a ratio of at least two to one.
Chief amongst these, of course, was the Telathoran Vice President and her extensive retinue. All of them greeted Alex with great warmth, though none more enthusiastically than the Vice President herself. She was very tall, as most Telathorans were, and Alex, rather shorter than average, was obliged to tip his head back to look up at her. He said nothing beyond ‘ma’am’ and ‘thank you’ in response to her effusive welcome, but she seemed quite satisfied with that, evidently understanding that he could not be any more friendly or forthcoming in such an environment. Then, as she was leaving him to be introduced to other VIPs, she intercepted a waiter who was gliding past with a tray, and directed Alex to take one of the elaborate nibbles presented. ‘You really should have some of these, they’re delicious.’
Alex took one, because it was less fuss than arguing about it, and found that she was right. The canapé was tiny but created a fiesta of flavours, releasing an intensely fragrant vapour as it dissolved.
‘Marto’s own recipe,’ said Guiliano Espetti, with slightly anxious pride. ‘He sends recipes to all the ISiS, with instructions to cook them for you if the Fourth visits.’
There is no escape, thought Alex, but inclined his head politely.
‘Excellent,’ he said, and allowed himself to be moved on through the wearisome process of being introduced to just about everyone in the room.
That was more notable in some cases than others. One of the many matters Alex had dealt with aboard ship had been a request from Jun Desmoulin that he offer the courtesy of a lift to Telathor to four of the VIPs currently aboard the station. One was an SDF colonel on his way to serve a year at Telathor on the officer exchange programme, and it certainly would be normal inter-service etiquette to offer him a lift. Another had VIP status by virtue of holding the Order of the League, the highest civilian honour the President could bestow. The Diplomatic Corps was keen to support her visit to Telathor and the attaché said that it would be much appreciated if Alex could offer her hospitality. The other two VIPs were an industrialist and a Senator from Kenso, both on semi-official government business. It would be rude to invite the other two and not them, as Jun observed, but he could guarantee that both of them would decline.
Alex had signed the request as routine, though noting from the advisory that he had, in fact, met Kalesha Endenit before. She was the holder of the Order of the League by virtue of the work she’d done as founder and prime mover of the Living Daylight charity. Alex couldn’t remember meeting her, but a background check had flagged up that they had been introduced at an event on Chartsey some five years before.
On his way over to the station, therefore, Alex found a moment to scan through a briefing on the Living Daylight Foundation. He was impressed. What had begun as a campaign to improve the lighting conditions on one notorious subterranean estate on Chartsey had become an intersystem campaign against the brutalising effect of living in underground environments. Living Daylight campaigned and fundraised for the provision of ‘glass roof’ VR in such estates, giving real time view of the sky and a natural-effect light no matter how deep underground you were. The effects on wellbeing, health and crime rates had been so spectacular that some estates, previously regarded as slums, were now being considered desirable places to live. It was one of those ideas which seemed so obvious once it was working that nobody could understand why it hadn’t been done before. But it hadn’t, and it had taken the impassioned campaigning of the right person at the right moment to make it happen. That person was Kalesha Endenit. She was quiet in her manner, but with a force of personality which commanded attention.
‘How pleasant to meet you again, Ms Endenit,’ said
Alex, who’d taken note from the briefing of the event at which he and Kalesha Endenit had both been present. ‘The Embassy Reception, wasn’t it?’
Kalesha Endenit looked amused, clearly not at all intimidated by his chilling formality.
‘Good effort, Captain, well done,’ she commended. ‘But I don’t suppose you remember me for one moment, any more than I remember more than a handful of all the people I meet. But it is very kind of you to offer me a lift – I won’t be any kind of nuisance to you, I promise. I don’t need entertaining or anything, I’d really love some peace and quiet just to get on with some work.’
‘We will be honoured to have you aboard, Ms Endenit,’ said Alex, and really meant that.
Their other passenger was introduced only briefly – Lt Colonel Sungh of the System Defence service. He was from Chielle, with the typical squat body, bull neck and heavy features of his genome. Chielle was the highest gravity world inhabited by people in the League, and the Chiellian body-form at the outer limit of what was defined as human under the Homo Sapiens Identification Act. The bright yellow of SDF dress uniform didn’t do him any favours, and he was very nearly as embarrassed in that social setting as Alex was himself. Still, he carried himself with dignity and gave Alex a crisp ‘Pleasure, sir,’ when they were introduced. He, Alex felt, was going to be no trouble at all.
There were also several officers from the merchant service at the party, including Yula Cavell. She greeted Alex warmly, as agreed, and he gave her the warmest handshake he could in such an environment.
Yula Cavell was in her late thirties, a little taller than Alex and with a slightly angular athleticism. Everything about her seemed unremarkable – slightly scruffy hair, an instantly forgettable formal suit, pleasant but not striking features and a quiet voice with a very ordinary central worlds accent.
Alex knew better. Yula Cavell had been his skipper during the five months he’d spent on assignment to Fleet Intelligence. She’d taught him a lot, though he had been more successful in some aspects of intelligence work than others. Yula had attempted to train him in basic undercover work, simply to blend unobtrusively into a crowd. Alex had not been good at that, to put it mildly. Yula had cried with laughter during one exercise when Alex had been attempting to blend himself in with a group of cruise passengers. He had done much better when they chose roles for him in which he could, effectively, just be himself.
‘Alex, how lovely.’ She greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. ‘You’re looking very well,’ she observed, and with an amused look at his captain’s insignia, ‘Very grand!’
Alex took her hand, responding with as much warmth as was possible for him in so public an arena.
‘Good to see you again, Yula,’ he said, and as there were several people around them taking a keen interest in this reunion, ‘Come over to the ship,’ he invited. ‘We’ll catch up.’
‘Love to!’ Yula said, but other people were already pressing forward, so they left it at that.
Not all the introductions were so friendly. Guiliano Espetti had done his best to ensure that there was nobody there who’d make any uncomfortable scenes, but the odd one or two had slipped through the net.
The most vocal of these, that evening, was a young woman with a very skimpy outfit and highly stylised makeup. Alex didn’t recognise her even when she was introduced as Lindy Marie.
That shouldn’t have come as any great surprise to her, really. She’d already found that spacers and people from other worlds visiting the station were so appallingly out of touch that they often had to be told who she was. She was an up and coming celebrity on Kenso, aiming for the A-list. Right now, though, she was on the B-list, with a couple of hit singles on Kenso and some local holovision appearances. She was here at the insistence of her agent, attempting to generate an intersystem profile. So she was out to grab publicity any way she could.
‘I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve,’ she said, as Guiliano Espetti introduced them. ‘But I suppose you’ve got the nerve for anything – black ops, killing people, experimenting on your own crew, even turning them into zombies.’ She fixed him in a ferocious glare and demanded the question which had become a catchphrase on the protest scene. ‘Where is Murgat Atwood?’
That one had been started by the media. There were a great many things they knew about the Fourth which they were not allowed to report, and a great many more which they suspected but weren’t even allowed to speculate about. That meant that they seized with the ferocity of wolverines on anything they could report. They knew very well that two people had gone out with the Heron on their last mission and hadn’t returned, one of them a member of the Second Irregulars R&D division and the other a petty officer who’d joined them during the Karadon operation. They didn’t know about Jermane Taerling, the Diplomatic Corps linguist who’d been sent aboard the ship in absolute secrecy. They did, however, know that neither Misha Tregennis nor Murg Atwood had left the ship either at Chartsey or on their return to Therik. Enquiries had been slammed down in Misha’s case as the Second’s personnel were covered by the Official Secrets Act.
So were the Fourth’s, of course, but the media had found a way to report that Petty Officer Atwood had failed to return with the ship before the Fleet had been able to prevent it. They had been pushing the ‘mysterious disappearance’ story for all it was worth, and it had been picked up, unsurprisingly, by many of the groups campaigning against them. Amongst the more imaginative, there were rumours that Murgat Atwood had been killed during illegal black ops and her body disposed of out of an airlock.
As so often in situations like this, Alex couldn’t help wondering what Lindy Marie’s reaction would be if he was able to tell her the truth. He already knew that, though. ‘She’s fine – we left her on exodiplomatic assignment at Samart,’ would get an even more furious, immediate rejection. The Fleet had already stated, many times, that PO Atwood had merely left the Heron on a perfectly routine inter-ship transfer, declining to specify which ship she’d transferred to on the grounds that Fleet personnel postings were military classified.
‘Did you murder her?’ Lindy Marie hissed at him. ‘Were you trying to turn her into a zombie too? Just what kind of evil experiments are you doing on that ship?’
The most evil thing they were attempting at the moment was to get the biovat to grow coffee beans. Alex was the unfortunate guinea-pig who tested all the new products that the biovat produced before he’d allow them to be inflicted on his crew. He would be willing, himself, to describe the latest coffee-bean effort as ‘evil’. It had tasted like charred yak dung, or at least, as he imagined charred yak dung might taste if brewed with warm water and served with a dash of spice. Other than that, they were currently working with a very excited Second Irregulars team, exploring the potential of nanotech they’d brought back with them from Samart.
He could hardly tell Lindy Marie that, though, and even if he could, she wouldn’t have believed him. The reference to zombies made it very clear which holovision channels she watched and believed. Reputable news channels had at least attempted to explain to their viewers that ‘zombification’ was only a technical, medical term for a patient who had had more than thirty per cent of their brain replaced with cloned material, and that, though controversial, the surgery had been perfectly legal. Tabloid channels, however, had been working the zombie story for every atom of thrilling horror they could wring out of it.
Ali Jezno, the alleged zombie, wasn’t with the Fourth’s party that evening – he had volunteered, but Buzz had said that went way beyond the call of duty. He was right, too – Alex dreaded to think how Ali would have been treated had he been here tonight. The staring and whispering, at the very least, would have been mortifying.
As it was, Alex just stood regarding the outraged celebrity with cold disinterest tinged with rebuke. His ethical position of supporting the rights of people to express their views even when campaigning aggressively against him was very strong, but so was his sense of appropri
ate conduct at formal events. If she wanted to express such views, he felt, then she should be with the activists currently demonstrating well away from the Panorama Suite for the benefit of the media.
Guiliano Espetti clearly felt so, too – he was already trying to interrupt, looking appalled at this attack on their VIP guest. Seeing how the scene was developing, security was moving in with purposeful strides.
Alex had plenty of time to dodge the inevitable, dramatic throwing of Lindy Marie’s drink in his face – she signalled it so blatantly, in fact, that he could have stepped aside twice over in the time before the champagne cocktail was airborne.
He also, however, had time to consider the other people standing around and immediately behind him. If he dodged it, the cocktail would hit at least one of the people behind him, inoffensive souls who didn’t deserve that any more than he did. So, with a certain amount of resignation, he took the cocktail full in the face, already reaching automatically for a tissue as the liquid stung his eyes and ran down onto his tunic.
Guiliano Espetti was nearly in tears, attempting to mop Alex down and apologising repeatedly as security dragged the shrieking celebrity out of the venue amidst a shocked, staring silence.
‘No matter,’ Alex said, and added, with perfect truth, ‘I’m used to it.’
It took a few minutes to assure Guiliano Espetti that he really wasn’t going to take offence, though, even after he’d stepped aside into a lavatory to wash his face and put his jacket through flash-launder. The atmosphere at the party was rather more strained after that. A few minutes later, Martine Fishe appeared, making her way through the crowd to hover at Alex’s elbow. As soon as he could turn his attention away from the latest person on the introduction treadmill, he looked at her with an air of enquiry.
Martine smiled back. She was a comfortable lady in her mid-thirties, with an air of being ready to cope with anything the universe might throw at her. If she’d worn a badge stating ‘I’m a Mum’, it could not have been more obvious.
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