The advice he got on that one, in fact, was to stay a little longer. To leave early or even to depart as scheduled might, he was told, be perceived as an admission that he had been guilty of lingering in port. To extend the courtesy visit even by a day or two more would declare that he was not going to be hounded out by what a minority of the media thought.
Having been told that by the port admiral, the president and the League ambassador put so much pressure on Alex that he did agree to remain for just one more day. But even on the morning of the twentieth, all three were still trying to get him to stay. And they were just the first gust of the hurricane of pressure that was coming at him from all directions. He could hardly keep track of it all – the captain of the Fleet squadron had reasons he wanted the Fourth to stay, so did the army and the SDF. Every national president was on comms trying to talk to Alex personally, and there were just hundreds of calls from other authorities and organisations, all attempting to persuade him to stick around just a little longer.
In the end, though, they did launch. It was one of his own officers who inadvertently clinched that. Anticipating that Alex would soon be giving the order to begin preparations for launch, Lt Vergan came to see him on the command deck and asked if they could please delay the normal launch time from 1900 to 0200 on the twenty first.
‘It’s just that there’s a freefall agility competition on the Anubis,’ he said, ‘and our team is in with…’
He broke off as he saw the skipper’s expression. And Alex was genuinely appalled. He had spent very little time aboard his ship over the last month, but there’d been a nagging concern in him that Telethoran hospitality was not just losing them focus on their primary mission but starting to undermine their discipline. Now, in that moment, he knew he was right. It would have been inconceivable a month ago for any of his officers to suggest that they delayed launch on active operations so that they could take part in a sports tournament. The fact that nobody else had gasped or stared at Very but evidently felt this to be a reasonable request was proof in itself of how far they had all slipped from being the sharp, keen crew they had been before arriving here.
‘We are leaving,’ he said, ‘at 1900.’ And it was apparent from his tone that there was no power in the galaxy short of a direct order from the First Lord of the Admiralty or the President of the League which would keep him from doing exactly that.
He had to hold on to that resolve. Even as late as 1800, Joy Arthas herself was attempting to get him to stay. She’d insisted on him coming down for a ‘farewell’ drink but it was actually a last-ditch effort to convince him to stay another week.
‘You’re doing such wonderful work,’ she told him. ‘The pleasure of your company, of course, would be reason enough to ask you to stay, but you are bringing enormous practical benefits to Telathor, too, some of them we never anticipated at all. Quite apart from all the social and economic benefits, you are upgrading the Anubis, training SDF pilots and upgrading their fighters, and you’ve given new comms technology to the army which they are utterly delighted with. And academically, too, the lectures your people are giving at our universities are inspiring a whole generation of students, Alex, not to mention the benefits to our academics of the seminars and conferences your people have presented papers at. And the charitable work, too, the fundraising and projects your crew have got behind has inspired a huge upsurge in volunteering. There may be just a tiny number of you in terms of our global population, but the impact you are having is immense. We are benefiting so much from your visit, in so many ways, and there is so much more that you could do – won’t you even consider staying on a few more days?’
‘I’m sorry, Joy, but it has to be no,’ said Alex, and looked at her with more amusement than apology. ‘Have you forgotten,’ he asked, ‘why you fought so hard for us to come out here in the first place?’
‘No, of course not.’ Joy took no offence, but grinned back. ‘Obviously, that’s important too! But we’ve waited centuries to solve that mystery and another week or two is hardly going to matter, is it?’
Alex recognised a typically Telethoran attitude to time, and smiled.
‘Sorry,’ he said, and held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, and thank you so much for everything you’ve done.’
He said goodbye to Yula shortly after that.
Yula would not be coming with them. It was as unimaginable for her to abandon her post as skipper of the Calliope and the next mission they were tasked to as it would have been for Alex to leave the Heron and go off on the Calliope with her. Both of them had known that from the start and had, like the spacers they were, enjoyed the shoreleave romance in the full knowledge that it must end with the first ship to launch. They would write, but they would not be love letters. That too was understood. It might be years before they met again. If and when they did, if both were free and felt the same, their relationship might be briefly rekindled. But in the meantime, no romantic claims were being made upon the other. So it was a cheerful goodbye, with a comment from Yula which made Alex laugh as he broke off the call. That was a good way to leave it, he felt – such partings were an inevitable part of life as a spacer, after all. He didn’t have time to brood on it, anyway, as his attention was fully occupied then with preparing for the launch.
The launch did not go well. Alex was so used to his crew performing to the best of their ability that it came as a shock when he saw that they were not getting things done in time to keep to schedule. Efficiency analysis showed that technicians were working, on average, eight per cent slower than the norm, but Alex hardly needed that to tell him that they were dawdling through pre-launch checks with lots of chatting and no sense of urgency at all.
‘Telethoran time,’ he observed, ‘is contagious.’ And, seeing that at that rate they were not going to make their 1900 launch, he went on the PA with an air of severity few of his crew had seen before, at least not directed at them. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘we are now running fourteen minutes behind schedule and that delay is getting worse with every little chat and amble around that you have. So I suggest that you pick it up and give it some focus and effort. Failing that, I will call the Anubis and ask for the loan of some techs to assist us.’
That was a terrible threat. For a ship to have to ask for another to assist with a routine operation like pre-launch was a very public disgrace, inexcusable unless in extraordinary circumstances. It was evident that Alex meant it, though. He was going to get his ship launched at 1900 come hell or high water, even if that meant humiliating himself and his ship by asking another captain for help.
It worked, though. After a wave of consternation and some semi-private muttering about the skipper being off on one today, officers and crew did pick up the pace and managed to get things back on schedule. Aboard the Whisker, Dan Tarrance was obliged to go around telling every single member of his crew to get a move on. Harry Alington, on the other hand, was able to report smugly that his crew was keeping to schedule. At least, that was, until he realised that one of his tech teams had been sealing panels with an autobot still inside.
That was an old trick, quite common in the merchant service. It meant that instead of carrying out a thorough decontamination clean of the tech behind a wall panel, you popped an autobot in there set to do the clean and then sealed the panel. In the Fleet, that seal was a physical sticker which certified that the tech space behind it was now clean – a lie, since it might take the autobot anything up to half an hour to complete the work. Even then, the bot itself presented a potential hazard, if vibration tore it from its mag-grip and flung it around inside the tech. It was a practice tolerated on a few Fleet ships but even the regular Fleet regarded it as slovenly. It was actually forbidden, specifically, under Fourth’s regulations. Just to add to Harry Alington’s mortification, the two crewmen responsible were his, having been serving on the Minnow with him before it transferred to the Fourth.
Launch preparations, therefore, were carried out in a mood of frustr
ation and irritation on all three ships. And it wasn’t just their own three ships they had to think about. The Exploration Corps ship had been holding themselves ready for launch for more than a month, now, facing delay after delay as Alex had to tell them that they were going to be staying a little while longer. It was practically inevitable, therefore, that they discovered just half an hour before the launch that they weren’t going to be ready after all. Their launch countdown had redlined, a technical fault showing up on final phase diagnostics. They were working flat out on it but would still be about forty minutes late for launch – could the Fourth, their skipper was obliged to ask, reschedule?
Alex refused. Seeing that there was no more to be done to fix the problem than Excorps was already doing, he told them that the Fourth would launch as scheduled but go to a rendezvous point and wait for the Excorps ship to join them there. They were obliged to accept that, but it was clear they weren’t happy about it. After all these weeks of them having to wait around for the Fourth, the Fourth wasn’t prepared even to wait for half an hour for them so that they could launch together. It wasn’t starting things off in the spirit of friendly enthusiasm that either Alex or Excorps had been hoping for. And Alex could hardly explain that he felt very strongly, if irrationally, that if they didn’t get away at 1900 they might not get away at all. He had a sense of the planet attempting to hang on to them, casting sticky threads around the ship like a great spider entrapping its prey.
He wasn’t that far wrong, either. Just eight minutes before they were due to launch, the Flight Controller at the launch tunnel contacted them to say that the tunnel was not going to be ready.
‘You might want to hang on there for a bit,’ he was told, with a mischievous grin which made it entirely obvious what was going on here. ‘We may not be ready till tomorrow – even the next day.’
Alex had to make a conscious effort not to clench his teeth.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is a priority one launch, a warship heading out on operations. If you are unable to get the tunnel ready in time due to technical or personnel issues then we will have to send over a team to take over the facility.’ He was clearly not joking. ‘Check with President Arthas if you don’t believe we have that right.’
The tunnel was ready. The Heron had lifted out of parking orbit four and a half hours before the actual launch, accelerating round to make their run at the tunnel. As they locked on to their final approach, Alex declared ‘Last calls, ladies and gentlemen,’ before shutting down all comms other than for the essential link with flight control.
It was at this point, with the ship hurtling towards the launch tunnel, that Jimmo Towitz burst into tears. They were at launch stations, meaning that everyone was wearing survival suits and tethered down, the ship on emergency lighting and with all unnecessary systems turned off, hatches closed. Even so, Alex kept the open comms system active so that he would know at once if there was any problem anywhere around the ship. And he certainly knew about this, as a sudden wail broke through the focussed quiet on the command deck. The wail was followed immediately by loud gusty sobs and the repeated cry of ‘Mandi!’ along with a desperate plea, ‘I want to get off!’
The source of the disturbance was Jimmo Towitz, launching into one of his hysterical displays and working himself up rapidly into a frenzy. There were, Alex saw, now three people there attempting to calm him down – three people having to deal with him when they should be giving their attention to launch.
Still, he did not hesitate. With his hand on the command table he issued the order which would commit them irrevocably to the launch run.
‘Go, go, go.’
So, they went. The launch itself was technically fine, with no more than the usual bone-jolting juddering and terrifying noises as if the ship was coming apart at the seams. Morale, though, was very low. There had been only half hearted cheers when Alex had given the traditional pre-launch rituals, and nothing like the usual joyous rip-roar of yelling during the launch itself. Even the post-launch music fell flat, though the helm had chosen a good old favourite, Born to Fly, which would normally have the crew belting it out with an energy still surging with adrenalin from the launch.
Today, though, there was more of a drone than a bellow. Alex could sense the anxiety around the ship, not with any empathic ability but with an almost subconscious observation of the buzz aboard the frigate. Those who understood what Jimmo Towitz had just done were muttering explanations to the few who did not. Most of the crew were watching the skipper, and none of them looked happy.
Alex was not at all happy either. The ethos with which he’d founded the Fourth was very much that people deserved every opportunity to make good, and loyalty to his crew was a powerful drive in him, too. This, though, was different. As he signed the documents which would get Jimmo Towitz taken off the ship immediately, he knew it was the end of the nineteen year old’s career in the Fleet. This had been his last chance, and he had just blown it.
There was no process involved – no interviews, no medical assessment, no possible response to screaming hysteria during launch other than sending the member of crew groundside straight away. That was a Fleet regulation even Alex would not attempt to override.
This was going to be distressing, though, and all of them knew it. The more alert amongst the crew spotted, too, how Buzz got up from his seat and rested his hand on the skipper’s shoulder as he moved behind him. It could have been no more than a casual gesture as if to steady himself, but those who knew them best recognised that it was rather more than that. The Exec was giving the skipper a discreet but comforting pat as he went, himself, to enforce the removal order.
What happened next was worse even than Alex had feared. Jimmo had calmed down a little by the time that Buzz got to him. He was still sobbing, but the first thing he did was apologise.
‘Sorry, Mr B.’ He dragged a sleeve across his eyes and gave the Exec a tragic look. ‘It’s just – it’s Mandi. I love her!’
Alex was far from being the only member of the Fourth to have had a shoreleave romance, though quite how the crew had found time to fit that in with all their groundside commitments was difficult to imagine. Some of them had even become involved in more serious relationships – as serious as spacers on the move were likely to get – and there’d been a few pangs of regret at parting. Anyone who burst out screaming and crying at being parted from their lover, though, was not a spacer. They certainly had no place aboard a warship heading out into deep space.
Buzz tried to break that to him gently.
‘Never mind, dear boy,’ he said. ‘We’ll soon have you back with her – a pilot ship is on its way to pick you up.’ And so it was, as Alex had requested a port authority shuttle to come out and collect a passenger for return to Telathor.
‘Oh!’ Jimmo looked shocked at that, stunned out of his self-indulgent woe. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll be okay.’ He had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Sorry, Mr B. But honest, I’m okay.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ Buzz said. ‘But the problem is, Jimmo, that you were shouting to be let off the ship before and during the launch and you have become highly emotional. I’m afraid that Fleet safety regulations do not allow us to keep someone aboard under those circumstances so we don’t have any option but to send you back to Telathor.’ He glanced significantly at one of the people standing nearby. ‘Ali will pack your kit for you, okay?’
Ali Jezno nodded and headed off quickly to get the crewman’s kit, but Jimmo still did not seem to understand.
‘But I’ve said I’m sorry! And I’ll be fine now. It was just…’ he hesitated, unable to find the words to describe how he’d succumbed to the impulse to give way to his emotions. He did not even recognise himself how much he had enjoyed the drama of it and being the centre of attention.
‘I know,’ said Buzz, with kindly understanding. Then, as Jimmo started to look relieved, ‘But I’m afraid that any demand to be let off the ship during launch means that we have to take
you off the ship, and when that demand is made in a state of such high emotion we have to do that immediately.’
He had to repeat himself a couple more times before Jimmo really believed he was serious, at which point things got really ugly. The young crewman refused to budge, shouting at Buzz and when that had no effect, shouting at Alex through the comscreen. The general trend of his invective was ‘you can’t do this to me’, to which Alex made no response at all. This was Buzz’s responsibility, as the Exec.
In the end, even Buzz’s persuasive abilities were unable to get Jimmo to leave the ship quietly – he might have been able to do so had he had the time to sit down with him and talk it through over a cup of tea, but there was no time for that. The pilot shuttle was on its way and Buzz had just minutes to get the crewman to the airlock. Talking to him achieved nothing. It was as if Jimmo had regressed to the level of a stroppy three year old, though three year olds rarely used that kind of language. As the pilot shuttle came in to dock, Jimmo was hanging on to a freefall ladder with both arms locked around it, declaring that they’d have to bleeping carry him off the bleeping ship and before they bleeping well did that they’d have to bleeping well knock him unconscious.
In the event, he wasn’t unconscious. It might have been less painful for everyone if he was. Hali Burdon was already there, in her capacity of master at arms. Between them, she and Buzz prised him off the ladder and used a compulsion grip to walk him to the airlock. He was fighting them, shouting and swearing every step of the way. The crew of the pilot shuttle, understandably, would not take him aboard unless he was handcuffed, so they had to do that, too, cuffing him to one of the seats on the shuttle and handing his kitbag to a member of the crew. As they started to leave his aggression changed suddenly to a desperate appeal.
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