So, he watched the footage, just as it was going out on the news.
It made him feel sick just watching it. There he was with Yula, walking down the path, stone-faced as he always was in public while Yula was smiling for the crowd. It was all cheers and happy faces till Alex was suddenly knocked back, staggering. Yula whirled on the ball of one foot with the speed of a ballerina, scythed his legs out from under him with her other foot and threw herself on top of him as he went down. After that was the screaming, which he remembered, and the thunderclap as Bluebottle hurtled down on a vertical descent. They hadn’t actually landed – they’d come within about a metre of the ground, thrown open the hatch and grabbed him as Yula hauled him up and threw him at them. There was more blood than he’d realised, streaming from his nose. He looked barely conscious, his face a rictus of pain.
That, though, was nothing to how horrible it was when they showed the moment of the bullet’s impact, slowed down hundreds of times.
At that speed you could actually see it, the projectile coming in on a slight angle from above. It was heading for his left eye. It got within eight centimetres before it hit the head shield.
The forcefield did its job. The bullet was deflected and much of the kinetic energy was absorbed by the forcefield. Not all of it, though. There was a shockwave which hit him like a sandblaster. The flesh of his face was forced back as if he was being hit by at least ten gees, the skin fluttering. For a moment, Alex saw his own skull showing through his face. Then the flesh rebounded and his face was pulled into a grotesque distortion, almost clownish, but the kind of clown which would give kids nightmares. Then his face started to flare red, as if it was being burned, and blood began to spurt from his nostrils.
Having seen that footage, and seeing that it was being repeated on a cycle by every channel on the planet, Alex did understand, then, why the reaction was so emotional. He had to swallow quite hard himself, pretending to sip his tea until he felt he could actually manage to drink some. He felt shaky, which was, he told himself, ridiculous. It was hardly the first time in his life that he’d been shot at, after all.
Even as he thought that, though, he knew that he wasn’t being fair to himself. This was different. It was one thing to be aboard a ship being shot at in combat, and quite another to be targeted by a sniper on your way to a party. He was, he decided, entitled to feel a little upset about that.
As always, though, his personal feelings came a long way second to his sense of duty. So, gulping the rest of the tea in the hope that it would help a bit, he looked back at Rangi again. ‘So…?’
Rangi grinned. ‘I’m professionally obliged to advise that you rest today and take it easy tomorrow,’ he said, ‘But…’
‘Thanks,’ said Alex, and was pleased, as he got to his feet, to find that he could stand up quite steadily.
He felt even better after a shower – someone had brought him a fresh shipboard uniform and he felt much more himself when he was clean and comfortably dressed again.
There was an enormous cheer on the frigate when he walked out of sickbay. Alex acknowledged it with a slightly self-conscious ‘thank you’ but did not stop walking. He went straight to the command deck, sitting down in his usual chair and giving a nod to all the people there who were applauding and cheering.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘thank you. But I’m fine now, so let’s get on with it.’
Twelve
Getting on with it involved speaking to a lot of people in rapid succession, including Joy Arthas, Froggy Croker and Ambassador Li. Before he spoke to any of them, though, he called Yula.
‘You all right?’ he asked. She had been taken away for medical treatment herself, by then, and answered his call from what looked like a hospital cubicle.
‘Fine,’ she said. She was wearing a medical issue gown – he could see the neck of it on the edge of the screen, though she’d set her comm to head shot. There was an impression of people busy around her, and someone in the background sounded irritated about her taking calls. ‘You?’
‘Fine,’ he said, and both of them knew that the other was lying. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and she smiled brief acknowledgement. ‘Come up to the ship when you can,’ he asked, and she nodded, but indicated with a cast of her eyebrows that the irritated person off screen was getting really ratty now.
‘Will do,’ she said, and ended the call as a hand reached out to take her comm off her.
He called Silvie and Shion next. He was worried that they might be frightened. He should, he realised, have known better.
‘Yes, of course I’m all right,’ Silvie answered with some surprise, ‘why wouldn’t I be?’ She surveyed his face with interest. ‘Are you going to stay that colour now?’
‘No, it’ll fade in a day or two,’ Alex said. ‘I just wanted to make sure you weren’t upset by everything that’s going on.’
‘No,’ Silvie said, though having thought about it for a moment she conceded, ‘I was worried when I saw you being shot. But Shion told me straight away that you’d be fine, and you are, so…’ she gave a fluid shrug, and grinned. ‘You don’t look right, fuchsia pink,’ she commented. ‘Not your colour at all.’
She was, Alex recognised, absolutely fine. Shion was, too, though rather more serious and concerned about what was happening globally.
‘Davie says it isn’t going to be a meltdown,’ she said. ‘But that the next few days are going to be hard work.’
That was putting it mildly, Alex felt. The media fallout alone would be difficult to deal with. Then there’d be the clamour of competing investigations, a fierce round of security services playing the blame game and a hundred times more demand on him than there had been already. If only he could just get all his people back aboard and launch, head out to the stars where they belonged and leave all this wearisome mess behind. Tempting as it was, though, he knew that for the Fourth to leave the system now would be seen as fear and mistrust, a terrible snub to the people who’d made them so welcome. They’d have to stay for at least another week.
For a moment, he felt like putting his head down on his arms and closing his eyes. Part of him even rather wished, secretly, that Simon had insisted on him staying in sickbay for a while. He felt shattered, more tired than if he hadn’t slept for two or three nights. But he rallied himself to a smile.
‘We’ll be fine,’ he said, and asked, ‘Are you happy to stay there?’
Shion nodded. ‘Best, I think,’ she said, with a glance at Silvie, who chortled.
‘Staying quiet and out of the way, ma’am!’ she said, with a mock-salute for Shion, who chuckled too.
‘We’re fine,’ she assured Alex, and he could see that was true.
Joy Arthas was fine, too. She expressed concern and regret, but kept that brief, getting straight to what she needed from him.
‘I could really do with you down here, taking a media call with me, if you’re up to it,’ she told him.
Alex looked dismayed. ‘It isn’t usually considered advisable – or beneficial – for me to do live media calls, ma’am,’ he admitted, at which Joy gave a quick, reassuring smile.
‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘I promise you won’t have to say anything more than yes and no. I know it’s a lot to ask, but things are very unsettled and it would help a lot, so if you could…’
Alex arrived at the presidential residence six minutes later, changed back into groundside rig and braced to face the howling of the media. Four of those minutes had been spent on a call with Froggy Croker.
The Port Admiral was incandescent with rage. He was concealing it quite well – long Fleet training coming good, there – but he was nearly as pink in the face as Alex and his fury revealed itself in a torrent of volubility. In four crowded minutes he told Alex repeatedly how sorry he was that this had happened on his watch, assuring him that there would be immediate and far reaching investigations into which agency had missed the intelligence which would have prevented it, that he was already demanding explanation
s from Fleet Intel, the LIA and local agencies, and would not rest until he had got to the bottom of this disaster.
Alex’s efforts to suggest that it was possible that all the agencies involved had done everything they should and could have done and that it was nobody’s fault were interrupted and dismissed at once. Even he came in for some fierce criticism as Froggy pointed out that he had told him he had to be careful, but that Alex had never seemed to take the threat seriously. Perhaps, said Froggy censoriously, this would teach him not to be so blasé about security in future.
After that, Alex had just a minute in passing to assure Buzz that he was all right and leave him to handle things aboard the ship, then took a moment on the run down in the shuttle to call Harry Alington.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, interrupting Harry’s inevitable questions, ‘I’m fine – but Harry, I need you to step up and sort out the security thing.’ Harry looked at him with alert enquiry so Alex explained, ‘The security services will be at one another’s throats within minutes, if they haven’t already started. I need you to calm it down. You’re now the Fourth’s official representative in the investigation, all right? But as far as I’m concerned finding out what happened is a lot less important than preventing inter-agency warfare breaking out. So – troubleshoot.’
‘Understood, sir,’ Harry said, and managed to convey the impression of a salute without actually giving one.
That security was already at one another’s throats was evident to Alex when his shuttle arrived at the presidential landing pad. This should have been a hands-off situation by the other agencies, under the complex etiquette of their shadowy world, as the team handling security around the president would also take care of guests within the residence. Today, though, there was a rush of agents waiting at the landing pad, all of them determined to ‘secure’ Alex as he stepped out of the airlock. They were arguing ferociously about rights and precedents as he emerged, with a rapid surge around him and just a little pushing and shoving. In the end, they all escorted him into the building, so closely packed around him that they were obliged to shuffle in a mass.
Once inside, though, he was taken away from them very firmly by a Presidential Aide, and led through to an area where Joy Arthas was being prepared for the press call. As with most buildings on Telathor, this one barely seemed to exist as a building, with a transparent roof, very few walls and as many plants growing inside as there were outside. But it was actually very cleverly designed to create private spaces within the complex, with the use of screens, planting and sound-baffles creating the illusion of quiet solitude even in the midst of one of the busiest buildings on the planet. When Alex arrived the president was being readied for the cameras by a team which worked around her unobtrusively.
‘Captain!’ she greeted him by his rank, because there were other people around, but with a warm outstretched hand. ‘Thank you so much for coming.’
‘Not at all, ma’am,’ said Alex, and looked at her expectantly. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Just as I asked – trust me, let me handle the media,’ she said. ‘All you will need to say is yes or no, no more, all right?’
He couldn’t see how that was going to work, but he wasn’t about to argue with her about it. So he just said ‘yes ma’am,’ and she smiled. At that point one of her valeting team murmured a question, giving Alex’s bright pink face a horrified look. The president regarded him too. ‘No, no make-up,’ she decided, and smiled at Alex again. ‘I want them to see,’ she said.
What followed was the best media call Alex had ever done – no thanks to him, as he would be the first to admit, but still, Joy Arthas knew exactly how to draw the best out of him even when he was at his most formal and least human.
For a start, the media did not howl and yell the way Alex had experienced on other worlds. Even offworld journalists here had learned very fast that that kind of behaviour would get them escorted out of media calls at once and not invited again, so they’d had to adopt a softly-softly approach. For another thing, the media were acutely aware that they were dealing with a global-stop story here and however thrilling that might be for them as journalists, they were conscious of their responsibility, too. If they hadn’t been, they’d been reminded of it by the general issue of codes of practice to be followed in global crisis broadcasting.
So they were quiet, just filming, as President Arthas explained that she was going to attempt a rather different kind of media call, here.
‘We all know, I’m sure, that Captain von Strada finds media calls difficult even at the best of times,’ she said, which raised some cynical grins amongst the offworlders, ‘so I would ask, please, that you pose your questions so as to require a simple yes or no response. And you, captain,’ she gave him a smile, ‘just stick to that, all right? Straight yes or no.’ She pointed a mock stern finger at him. ‘And no fibbing! Regard yourself as if on oath, here, giving evidence in a court of law. Understood?’
‘Ma’am,’ said Alex, with a sense of trepidation amounting almost to dread.
But she was right. As the questions came, it was very easy just to say yes or no, with no need to attempt explanations. They began by asking him about the man who’d shot him, but President Arthas intervened quickly and told them that the captain didn’t know any more about that than they did themselves.
‘Less, probably,’ she commented, ‘since he is waiting to be told by the proper authorities and not trying to bribe canteen staff at the police station.’
There was a little abashed coughing at that and a little sniggering, too, but they refocused quickly and homed in on Alex’s injuries. One journalist, well briefed by his editor, absolutely nailed him on that.
‘According to our medical advisor, captain, the impact you were seen to take from the bullet striking your face-shield might have resulted in a range of injuries, so will you please answer yes or no to these? Did you suffer a concussion?’
‘Yes.’
‘And whiplash?’
‘No.’
‘Was your nose broken?’
‘Yes.’
And so on, until the journalist had established the extent of his injuries.
‘So you were knocked senseless, have concussion, a broken nose and severe bruising – shouldn’t you be in bed?’
‘No comment,’ said Alex, at which there was an outburst of protest and the President intervened again with a laughing reproof.
‘No copouts!’ she said, and tackled him herself, ‘Just answer me this, captain. Did the medics want to keep you in sickbay? Or at least resting?’
‘Yes,’ Alex admitted, after a slight hesitation.
‘But you’ve gone back to work,’ the president observed.
‘Yes.’
‘There,’ Joy Arthas said, and handed the questions back to the hall packed full of journalists. One of them scored something of a coup, then, by asking him about Professor Penarth – something few of the others seemed to have picked up on. Was it true that a very distinguished neurosurgeon who was also visiting Telathor had been rushed aboard the Heron to assist with the captain’s treatment?
Alex said yes to that, because it was more accurate than no, and confirmed too that Professor Penarth had treated his injuries.
‘This is the Professor Penarth who carried out the controversial zombification surgery on Ali Jezno?’
‘Yes.’ A weary note, with that.
‘Did he carry out any surgery or treatment on your brain, Captain?’
‘No.’ Cold and emphatic.
‘Would you allow him to carry out surgery on your brain?’
‘Yes,’ unhesitating and definite.
After that they homed in on why he had gone straight back to work – was it to play the hero? Was it because he doubted his officers’ ability to handle things without him? Was it because he was concerned about public reaction to his having been shot? Was it that he wanted to show himself and reassure them that he was all right?
‘Would you say
that’s heroic?’
‘No,’ said Alex, without hesitation, because as far as he was concerned there was nothing heroic about it, it was just what had to be done. Then they asked him about Yula.
‘The way she threw you down and got you out of there had a distinctly professional look about it, Captain. So – is Yula Cavell your bodyguard?’
‘Yes,’ said Alex.
‘And presumably, therefore, a member of the security services?’ The journalist was chancing it with that one, and knew it – the security chief also at the press call was making ‘kill it’ signs and Alex did not answer, either. ‘Withdrawn,’ the journalist conceded, without rancour. ‘So, was the relationship between the two of you faked?’
‘Yes,’ said Alex. There was a gust of disappointment from the local journalists. They’d been so thrilled at reporting the romance between the captain and his elegant companion. ‘The Captain’s Lady’ had become a celebrity too, with her fashion choices under close scrutiny. The offworld journos weren’t surprised, though. They hadn’t believed in that romance for a moment.
‘So…’ Another journalist was given the nod, and leapt in quickly, ‘Do you blame any of the Telethoran authorities for allowing this to happen?’
‘No!’ A very emphatic response, with that – far more so than Alex would normally give in a media conference. Now he only had one word to say, he was making some effort to get it to convey all the things he would have said if he wasn’t so abysmally tongue-tied in public.
‘Do you think they should have anticipated such an attack and done more to prevent it?’
‘No!’
‘Do you believe that they handled it properly and efficiently?’
‘Yes.’ There was an earnest note in his voice, and he came close, with that, to adding a comment about how impressed he had been by the speed and organisation with which the Telethoran services had responded, but a glance from Joy Arthas reminded him to stick to yes and no, so he did just that.
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