More questions were asked, then, about whether the Fourth would continue their visit, whether he and other members of the Fourth would continue to attend events, whether he was concerned about future security at those events and whether he would want to come back to Telathor again. He answered yes, yes, no and yes with more feeling than he had ever been seen to show in front of the media. He wasn’t exactly smiling, but the strength of his feelings came through far more than when he was giving formal, robotic explanations.
Joy Arthas, however, hadn’t finished with him yet. As the time allotted for the media conference came to an end, she took over the questioning again herself.
‘Captain, I know you’re very tired, still not fully recovered from your injuries and with a great deal to do yet before you can rest – a huge list of people waiting for you to return their calls, true?’
‘Yes,’ Alex conceded, giving her a rather guarded look as he could see that she was building up to a finale.
‘And you absolutely loathe appearing at media calls,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ There was a wry note in his voice which the journalists picked up immediately – there was even some laughter.
‘So – when I asked you to come down here and do this,’ she said, ‘you agreed, to reassure the people of Telathor that you are not more seriously injured than the medical reports have already said.’ She didn’t wait for his ‘yes’ but went straight on. ‘But let’s be honest – right now, isn’t every bone in your body just longing to be allowed to go back to your ship, to be left alone and get some rest?’
He stood looking up at her with more than a hint of appeal in his eyes.
‘Do I have to answer that?’ he asked.
President Arthas smiled as laughter broke out amongst the journalists, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. She was so much taller than he was and looking down at him with such kind authority that she looked like an adult consoling a child.
‘Go home,’ she told him. ‘I will see to it that nobody calls you. Get some rest, Captain. And that’s a presidential order.’
‘Ma’am,’ said Alex, and was escorted out of the media conference to the unprecedented sound of journalists applauding.
Thirteen
He was in his cabin a couple of hours later when Yula Cavell arrived.
Buzz had taken charge of him, informing him with a grin that he had been sent specific instructions from the president herself, for which she had made him personally responsible. Alex was not to be allowed on the command deck, nor to work at his desk. Buzz was to see to it that he rested and that nobody bothered him.
Alex had accepted that without argument. It actually felt wonderful to have someone looking after him like that and being shot in the head, he recognised, was a fair enough reason to take it easy for the rest of the day.
Being Alex, though, his notion of taking it easy involved keeping half an eye on operational screens while reading through and replying to personal correspondence. He was still doing that when there was a tap on the door and Yula Cavell put her head around it.
‘Buzz said I could pop in,’ she informed him, ‘if we don’t talk shop.’
‘Yula!’ He greeted her with pleasure and some relief at seeing her. ‘Come in!’
Since he wasn’t allowed to use his desk he’d flipped his bunk over to sofa mode and was relaxing in his sleeping cabin. It was no more private really than the daycabin, since everything that went on here was blind-recorded too, but it was a far more personal space and not one in which Alex often entertained guests. This, though, was Yula, and she hardly counted as a guest.
Due enquiries made and answered about one another’s injuries, they sat down on the sofa together. The atmosphere was just a little awkward, with so much unsaid hanging in the air between them.
‘I’m so sorry, Alex.’ Yula gave a rueful grimace. ‘He’s a ghost, you know? By definition, impossible to spot.’
Alex understood. A ‘ghost’ was a security agency’s worst nightmare. Solitary, unaffiliated, off the radar and entirely unpredictable, they just came out of nowhere
‘Do we have any more on him, yet?’ He queried.
‘Not much,’ Yula sighed. ‘The usual things – college dropout, loner, fantasist. He’s been fired from several jobs when it was found that he didn’t have the qualifications he’d put on his CV. First indicators are that he’s got a power complex – the only thing he’s saying in interview is, ‘I am a man of mystery.’’ She hammed up a melodramatic manner and sighed again, shaking her head. ‘Basically, a loser trying to make himself important.’
Alex felt obscurely that that added insult to injury. It was bad enough to be shot, but at least if he’d been shot by a terrorist organisation there’d be some reason, however twisted and perverse. It felt so demeaning to be shot by an idiot.
‘Oh, well,’ he said, two syllables which carried a world of resignation. Then he remembered his manners. ‘Did I say thank you,’ he asked, ‘for saving my life?’
‘No need, good citizen,’ said Yula, deepening her voice and giving him a line made famous by a popular movie star in a series of superhero flicks, ‘it is my honour to serve. Besides,’ she added, reverting to her normal voice and speaking practically, ‘it was the shielding that saved you.’
‘Exactly,’ said Alex, with a dry note, and as she gave him an enquiring look, ‘if it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t have had the head shield on that setting – might not even have engaged it at all. So you did save me, Yula, and I have to thank you for that. Kneeing me in the stomach, on the other hand…’
Yula grinned mischievously.
‘I am not going to apologise for that,’ she said. ‘I had to get you out of there fast and I didn’t have time for an argument. So…’ she gave a little shrug.
Their eyes met. There was a moment in which he tried to look at her with cool authority and she grinned back at him. And then she held out one of her arms, offering a casual matey hug. ‘Pax?’
Exactly which of them started kissing the other was something they would debate at length, afterwards. At the time it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Alex, holding her close and abandoning himself to sensations he hadn’t experienced for years, would have been happy for it to go on indefinitely. But all the same some part of his brain was still functioning, and nagging insistently with a warning countdown – five, four, three, two…
He broke away from Yula in the moment before a tap on the door coincided with that door opening and Banno Triesse bustling in. He had, as usual, a tray in his hands and a beaming smile on his face. If he noticed that Yula was preoccupied with adjusting the fastening of her deck shoe or that the skipper was a little redder than even his pink condition merited, he gave no sign of it. Instead he pulled out a clip from the sofa and attached the tray to it, gave them an ever so slightly smug ‘Skipper – ma’am,’ and departed.
There was a second of silence after the door had closed behind him, then both of them disintegrated into helpless laughter. It was a couple of minutes before they were in a fit state to resume conversation, both attempting to assume a serious manner.
‘Life affirmation after a near-death event,’ Yula observed. ‘A very usual reaction – doesn’t mean anything.’
‘No, of course,’ said Alex, and there was a silence. Both of them knew that as officers serving together such intimacy was against regulations.
‘I should tell you,’ said Yula, as if changing the subject, ‘that I am going to have to step down as your minder. Standard procedure,’ she explained, as he looked at her in some concern, ‘policy, after an incident like this. It’s felt that a minder’s objectivity is likely to be compromised, that they might be so hyper-vigilant that they get trigger happy. So I will no longer be your bodyguard.’
‘Oh,’ said Alex, and almost without thinking, ‘But you could still come with me to events and things?’
‘Only on an off-duty basis,’ she said, and shot a sidelong glance at h
im. ‘I could if you want.’
‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘So – we’re officially no longer working together?’
‘Uh huh,’ she said.
Alex hitched himself a little closer to her on the sofa. Yula did the same and they snuggled, his arm going round her shoulders.
‘Mutual comfort after a traumatic event,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t mean a thing.’
‘Not a thing,’ Alex agreed, and kissed her again.
Fourteen
The next few days passed quickly and seemed quite uneventful, at least to Alex. There was the incident with Silvie and the volcano which reduced Davie to more bad language than Alex had ever heard him use before, (Skipper’s Rule Four – Do not enter the crater of an active volcano). Then there was the incident in which his bodyguard hurled him to the ground before realising that the banging was actually a fireworks display, but these, Alex felt, were minor in the scheme of things.
The days were, of course, dominated by the aftermath of the shooting. Though the president’s timely statement and Alex’s own appearance at the media call had prevented the situation from becoming a crisis, there had still been massive global shock at what had happened, and an insatiable demand afterwards for answers.
Some answers at least were easy to obtain. It was soon known exactly how Othoro Kelvan had managed to get into a position from which he could take his shots, where that position had been and how the police had taken him down.
He had fired his shots from the top of a building which was an iconic part of the city skyline. It was two and a half kilometres from the amphitheatre so had been on the outer band of the security zoning.
There had, in fact, been a thorough check of every potential sniper position in the wider area, for very much further than that. Smart bullets, after all, could be programmed to seek their target even when fired out of direct line of sight. The top of the Calpor Tower had been evaluated by an agent, though, because it was one of the few buildings in the city which was tall enough to give a line of sight to the amphitheatre. It had actually been built as a sightseeing facility; a tower of struts mimicking a tree with a large revolving platform at the top. Since the building had good security at its entrance which would pick up any attempt to take in a weapon, and since the platform was always crowded and had its own security people anyway, the agent had concluded that there was no need to do any more than hand that one to the local police, to keep an eye just in case anyone tried to use the venue for anti-Fourth demonstrations.
The local police force, therefore, had had a couple of officers up there, keeping an eye on the two and a half thousand people who’d filled the platform to capacity in order to get a view of the event at the amphitheatre. Nearly all of them had brought their own binoculars, realising that the hundred telescopes around the platform wouldn’t be enough for them all. Many of them had brought cameras, too – not the kind of cameras built into wristcoms and the like, but serious high powered cameras equipped with all the various lenses and gadgets that holography enthusiasts liked to use. The Calpor Tower, therefore, was packed with people with binoculars and cameras and gadget bags. Othoro Kelvan had not looked any different from the rest of them. He had walked through security at ground level without the scanners identifying the gear he carried as anything more than binoculars, camera and gadgets. Once up on the platform he had gone into the lavatory. Routine security footage showed that he had been in there for five and a half minutes. When he emerged he’d gone up to the open air level of the platform, with a chest high safety fence around it in a design of ornately woven branches and leaves. It was crowded and chaotic, because some of the people were trying to keep the amphitheatre in view and so were moving against the turning of the platform, creating a constant buffet and jostle. Then there’d been a surge at the fence, and cheering, as someone shouted to say that the captain had arrived.
Nobody had noticed the quiet phut of the bullets firing, though afterwards there were hundreds who would claim that they had. It had been so noisy, and everyone trying to get into a position where they could see, that nobody had noticed anything odd about the man with the binoculars held to his face, heard the double phut or noticed the binoculars give two little jerks in his hands. And then, of course, there had been pandemonium, as cheers of delight had turned to screams of horror at the sight of the captain going down with blood spurting from his face.
The details of exactly how Othoro Kelvan had manufactured the components of a rifle into binocular, camera and gadget casings in such a way that they had got undetected through security had been suppressed, by order of the security services. They didn’t want that information out there as any kind of manual for others to follow, after all. It had been ingenious, to be sure, but worryingly, not beyond the ability of any moderately skilful mechanic with a decent garage-type workshop.
The two police officers suddenly faced with two and a half thousand panicking civilians, though, had demonstrated just why human officers were superior to even the best kind of automated security systems. Because in all that noise and chaos, even while trying to keep it under control, one of the officers had noticed the single anomaly – one man who was still standing quietly at the fence, binoculars now lowered from his eyes and a smile on his face.
People would say afterwards that it had been an evil, terrifying smile, that his eyes had been as dead as those of a kondo eel, that just the sight of that face had made them shudder with horror. In fact the true horror of it lay in the fact that even then he looked like a very ordinary, unimpressive man with a thin smile.
Then, as if aware of being under scrutiny, he had turned and looked at the police officer – sought him out in the crowd and looked straight at him.
The officer had shot him. This wasn’t something Telathoran officers did very often. Though they carried stun guns routinely they rather prided themselves on not having to use them. On this occasion though the officer had recognised that the man he was looking at was a clear and present danger to all the already panicking people around him. He had struggled to put that feeling into words, even afterwards. Call it copper’s eye, subliminal analysis of information or sheer gut instinct, the fact was that he knew that man was dangerous. With all the screaming and pushing that was going on there was no time to try to speak to him, as Telethoran police would normally do. He had to make a decision there and then. He made it, snatched his stun gun and fired.
His partner, not having seen the man till then, had thought for a moment that his colleague had gone nuts, firing his stun gun perhaps in an attempt to stop the crowd stampeding. But he’d been quickly enlightened as the word sniper started to be screamed through their headsets. And when they’d seen the bullet holes in the lenses of what had appeared to be an ordinary pair of binoculars, they realised that they had caught him.
They were, of course, the heroes of the hour. Every police officer on the planet was glowing with reflected glory. The security agencies, it had to be said, were often brusque and dismissive of the ‘local plods’, and with the LIA, Fleet Intel, Diplomatic Corps and their own Telethoran Security Service muscling up for this visit, the police had been allowed only a tiny supportive role and had been bossed around by everybody. So it was immensely satisfying that a couple of their ordinary street patrol officers had caught the sniper. They’d become celebrities themselves, too, invited to meet the president and mobbed by the media.
There was no doubt, though, which honour meant the most to them. Three days after the shooting they were invited to come to lunch on the Heron, to meet Alex von Strada who wanted to thank them in person. It had been a ‘plus one’ invitation so they could bring a guest, and it had been arranged for them to be accompanied by the national police commissioner, too.
The Fourth did them proud. It wasn’t a dress event because Telethoran police did not have a dress uniform, so they attended in their usual shorts and t-shirts and the Fourth came in their smarter groundside rig. One of the crew had written a song in their honou
r. It wasn’t particularly good but, to be fair, no worse than many of the songs written for them by Telethorans. And it was beautifully performed, at least, by the choir, which had been given half an hour to learn and practice it but managed to make it look as if they’d been rehearsing it for weeks. Lunch was held on the interdeck, of course, since the officers and their guests did not have the necessary clearance to go aboard the main part of the ship, but it had been set up in its grandest formal dining mode and that was more than enough to awe the Telethorans. Even more amazing, they were introduced to Captain von Strada, who shook hands and talked to them for several minutes before having them sit either side of him in the place of honour.
Then, after lunch, there were presentations. The commissioner was presented with a plaque expressing the Fourth’s gratitude, in return for which he gave them a long speech of thanks. Then the captain presented the two officers with Fourth’s insignia, pinning it to their uniforms himself. This was, indeed, a rare honour and, with the three cheers roared by the crew, rendered both officers speechless with delight. The media went nuts, too, when they returned wearing FFI badges they’d been given special permission to wear with their uniforms. It would be some time before they could go anywhere without people stopping to congratulate them, admire their badges and take holos with them.
In comparison with that, the attention paid to Kelvan himself was of a far more transitory nature. Telathor was not a culture which treated criminals as celebrities, and the man who’d tried to kill their honoured guest was beneath contempt as far as they were concerned. They wanted to know how he’d managed to do it and why he’d done it, but as the answers to the how were very quickly known and the answers to the why came out over a couple of days, people actively turned away from wanting to know anything more about him.
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