‘Pleeeease!’ he wailed, and as the airlock closed, ‘Skipp…’
Alex, stone faced, thanked the skipper of the pilot shuttle for coming to their aid, requesting that they ensure that O/S Towitz was safely delivered to the Port Admiral’s office. At the same time, he gave them a message to deliver to Froggy Croker, asking him to do what he could for the young man.
That would not be much, Alex knew. There was a crucial moment in the pre-launch ritual in which the skipper was required to read out an archaic warning to all hands that they were about to embark upon the perils and hazards of deep space, and all those who were willing to do so were required to answer, ‘Aye.’
Asking to leave the ship after that was not in itself a disciplinary offence, but would almost certainly be the end of your career as a spacer. It was known as ‘jumping launch’ and those who did it were highly unlikely ever to be offered another shipboard posting.
When that demand was made in a state of emotion amounting to hysteria, though, a whole other level of issues kicked in. There had been cases, historically, of unstable crew going berserk, attacking shipmates or damaging the ship. In such incidents at launch the skipper had to get them off the ship immediately. There would be an assessment and enquiry groundside but it would almost certainly find Jimmo Towitz unfit for further service in the Fleet.
Alex had no time to dwell on that, however, as even then, even then, they were not pulling clear of the entanglements of Telathor. The Customs ship had launched right behind them and slipped into formation without fuss or fanfare, but all the horde of ships which had come out to the Doorstep to welcome them had also turned out again, along with many more. Most of them had already launched and were milling around outside the system to see them come out and get close up to what was expected to be a spectacular salute.
The salute certainly did look good, though delayed by their having to wait for the pilot ship to come out to them. They were obliged to curtail some of their manoeuvres, too, because of the numbers of civilian ships clustering around, but they did their best with close-order manoeuvres and rippling light arrays. Then when they did turn and head out, they found that virtually all of those ships just turned as well and followed them.
‘What are they thinking?’ Alex wondered, looking at the buses, particularly. They were only designed for short runs. The trip out to the Welcome Point was really at the limit of their performance, even following a well-established autopilot route. For them to be heading out into deep space, off route, was just asking for trouble. Then he saw the way that a couple of the little runabout yachts were attempting to weave through the traffic to get closer to them, and winced. He had to sort that out, he just had to. So he spent the first hour heading out of port organising and managing more than two hundred craft into a massive convoy and attempting unsuccessfully to persuade them to turn back. Then they spent another half an hour at the rendezvous point where they were waiting for Excorps to join them, during which time Alex could only try to keep a lid on the situation.
Then, at last, with the Excorps ship hurrying to join them, Alex was able to issue a safety advisory to all the pursuit ships, thanking them for their escort but advising that they were now heading off on operations at a speed none of them would be able to keep up with, so for their own safety they should return to Telathor now.
To his immense relief, as the Fourth accelerated away he saw that the pursuing ships were turning back, though still flashing their lights in cheerful farewell. All but one, anyway – the Comrade Foretold had slipped aside from the others and was keeping pace with them, back at the edge of their scopes.
Alex, in fact, was content to leave them to follow along for a while. He had more important matters to attend to.
Chief amongst those was the state of morale on his ship. It had not been great even before launch but the painful incident of having to put Jimmo Towitz off the ship had plunged it way down. The mood was worse than subdued, it was downright miserable. The buzz around the ship had grumbling notes in it, unusual at any time on the Heron and unprecedented in the post-launch period which was normally a time of high energy and high spirits.
To make matters worse, Alex could not honestly say that he felt pleased with his crew. He had been feeling very proud of the way they had pitched in at Telathor, giving up their shoreleave to help out with charitable causes and the like. Now, though, he had seen what effect all that hospitality had had on their focus and performance. There was a report on his desk, too, which he had to read twice before he could quite believe it.
He was not the only one to have put on a few kilos at Telathor. In fact, it turned out that he’d done quite well only to have put on five kilos in the month that they’d been there. Rangi Tekawa’s medical report made it clear that there were only three members of the crew who’d maintained their weight. Everyone else had been piling it on. In total, between them, they’d gained six hundred and forty three kilos. Rangi had been obliged to raise it as a health and safety concern, though noting that it was the result of Telathoran hospitality and saying optimistically that he was sure that it would be worked off quite quickly now they were back in deep space.
It certainly would be if Alex had anything to do with it. There was no regulation against his crew putting on weight, so long as they stayed within healthy limits and could meet the required levels of physical fitness. He knew very well what it represented, though, and that the first full ship action stations drill he called would confirm it. They had lost their edge, had slowed down both psychologically and physically. And now they were on active operations in some of the most dangerous space within League borders.
Dealing with that, though, would wait until the morning. His chief concern at the moment was to improve morale, not damage it even further.
So, he called Mako Ireson up to the command deck. Mako had actually lost some weight during the visit to Telathor. He had hardly been on the planet at all, spending nearly all of his time in the interdeck galley and lounge.
‘Skipper?’ Mako had been upbeat and smiling all the way to the launch, but he was starting to crash now that the long haul was finally over. He looked weary and guarded; as if afraid that Alex was going to ask him to tackle yet another mammoth challenge.
‘Mr Ireson…’ Alex got up, and as the senior officers got up too and formed a neat rank to one side, Mako realised what he had been called here for, and broke into a self-conscious grin.
‘Honestly, there’s no need to…’ he began.
‘There is every need to,’ Alex overrode him, and with a nod to him that told him to play his part without argument, addressed the crew with the traditional order for getting everyone to be quiet and watch the comm screens, ‘Attention on deck.’
Being given a skipper’s commendation was a short and quite formal little ceremony including a few words of praise from Alex, a handshake and a call for a cheer from the crew. The timing of it, though, with Alex making it clear that even with everything else they had going on he regarded this as the most important thing he could be doing, made it feel particularly special. Mako was rather pink and grinning as he shook the skipper’s hand. And Alex grinned, too, at the wholehearted roar which went up from the crew even while he was still giving the customary, ‘Three cheers for Mr Ireson.’
If there was anyone on the ship who really deserved that accolade, it was Mako. Faced with the impossible task of organising more VIP visits than the Fourth could accommodate in eight months, Mako had come up with a fully worked up solution.
It was, he’d admitted, a contingency plan he’d had tucked away in his ‘just in case’ file, along with others he’d prepared for just about every crazy situation in which the Fourth might find themselves. In this case, the VIP Blitz plan had involved scrapping the traditional VIP visit entirely and offering visitors two choices. The first was described as a conventional tour and would involve the visitor being taken around a set route on the interdeck in a small group, escorted by the Deck Officer and
provided with formal drinks and nibbles.
The second was described as a ‘full immersion experience.’ In that, the VIPs were provided with Fourth’s shipboard rig before they came aboard, and would be paired up with a member of the crew on their arrival. That visit would include an opportunity to have a meal on a mess deck, to have a go at firing a cannon, to take part in a freefall drill and relax informally in the interdeck lounge.
Every single one of their VIP visitors had opted for the full immersion visit – even President Arthas herself, whose visit would normally have been a matter of the utmost formality.
There were issues, of course, with treating the frigate as if it was a theme park, and Alex knew that he would take some stick for that from other Fleet skippers, even from his mates. But it had not only resolved the problem of how they could possibly cope with such a massive influx of VIPs, it had actually given all their visitors an experience which had thrilled and delighted.
And Mako had managed it all, from day one. He had organised the fitting out of part of the gym to be a realistic mock-up of a mess deck. He had arranged the scheduling and logistics, organising transport, a supply of uniforms and a pre-visit briefing at the base from which the visitors were brought aboard. He’d organised and trained the volunteers aboard ship in their various roles, and had kept things running smoothly even amidst the usual chaos of dealing with Telathorans who either turned up early or late and never wanted to leave.
Most importantly, he had been there himself, all day every day, hosting things in the interdeck lounge. He had demonstrated cake baking eight times a day, presented souvenirs and kept people moving. Getting them to leave within a reasonable time and to be happy at leaving was the most difficult aspect of the visit, but Mako had employed his superlative people skills and every single VIP had left the ship feeling that they’d had a very enjoyable adventure.
All told, in the fifty three days they had been in port, Mako had played host to eighteen thousand, six hundred and fifty eight VIPs – he’d reached the initial target of twelve hundred well within the month allowed but had just carried straight on to the next tranche of slightly lower ranking VIPs already on the waiting list. There had still been hundreds more on that list at the time that they’d launched, but as even Mako had recognised, that list would just keep growing faster even than he could keep up with it. He had done everything it was humanly possible to do – more, even, than anyone had a right to expect. And he was a civilian, too, stepping up to help the Fourth out of a situation that was of Alex’s own making.
So Alex thanked him for that, as his top priority now that job was done, and everyone in the crew thundered their applause with cheers and hammering on tables.
This had, Alex knew, been the right thing to do, and at just the right time. It had changed the mood, distracting people from that distressing episode with Jimmo Towitz. They would settle, now, and start to fall back into shipboard routines.
‘And now,’ Alex told Mako, with a friendly grin, ‘go and get some sleep, Mako – and that is an order.’
It didn’t need to be. Mako had every intention of heading for his bunk, hoping to get his first uninterrupted night’s sleep in more than a month. But still, he nodded.
‘Aye aye, skipper,’ he joked, and went off then to another storm of applause.
Eighteen
By the next morning, things did feel very much more settled. They were established at a steady cruising speed on a course which would take them out to the point at the border where they would cross it.
They had said goodbye to the Customs ship, too, with a warm exchange of compliments and best wishes. While they were exploring, Captain Durannon and his crew would be busy attempting to create the illusion that they were out on patrol in the sector. They would also be coming to a whole series of rendezvous points arranged over the next several months, ready to provide whatever supplies or assistance the Fourth might require. Theirs would be a long, tedious task and Alex really was grateful to them for undertaking it. He felt that he could leave the cover operations safely in their hands, too, enabling him to concentrate on his own part of the mission.
In the meantime, they had got to work installing the Naos navigation system aboard the Excorps ship.
Before he sent techs over there, though, Alex called a full squadron combat stations drill. It was early in the morning, just past 0600, and many of the crew were still in bed. Not for long, though, as the clamour of action stations howled through all three ships.
The results confirmed Alex’s worst fears. A normal Fleet crew on a frigate of this class was expected to achieve primary response to action stations in less than one minute eighteen seconds, which meant that by then they all had to be wearing survival suits, that all essential stations were manned and that the hatches between sections were secured. Even if you were in your bunk, after all, it would take just seconds to leap out, grab a suit from the nearest clip and scramble into it, and with the ship in freefall people could move very quickly about and between the decks.
The Heron, though, regarded the one minute eighteen seconds as lamentably slow. They aimed to achieve full action stations readiness, with every member of the crew at their stations, in less than one minute. Their record was just fifty four seconds, though admittedly they’d been anticipating that one.
Today, though, they achieved primary response in one minute twelve seconds and full action stations took nearly two minutes.
That, though, was not really the problem. Alex wouldn’t have minded that too much if the crew themselves had been shocked by their poor performance and clearly ready to work hard to get back their edge. On the contrary, though a small minority of people were obviously embarrassed by how badly they’d done, all he could hear from the rest was the sound of excuses.
Worse, he was hearing them from his officers, too.
‘People are very tired, skipper,’ Martine said. ‘We were all working flat out at Telathor. Give it a few days for rest and some brush up drills, we’ll be fine.’
Alex considered that. Martine Fishe was one of the strongest officers in the squadron. Yet she was feeling like that, making excuses like that, with nods of agreement from almost everyone around her. Almost everyone.
Alex turned to his second in command. ‘Buzz?’
‘I believe,’ said Buzz, in his usual mild manner, ‘that we are experiencing the phenomenon commonly known as Kickdown.’
Everyone else around the command table gave reproachful looks, other than Alex who just looked calmly interested. He knew very well what Buzz was talking about, of course, and was very much of the same opinion. But he wanted Buzz to explain it for the benefit of officers and crew who clearly didn’t see the symptoms in themselves which were so obvious to the skipper and exec.
‘Kickdown,’ Buzz said obligingly, ‘is a sudden drop in performance associated with an extended period of shoreleave. It is also sometimes known as Paradise Syndrome. People adapt to a slower, sybaritic lifestyle and find it difficult, then, to get motivated and come back up to speed when they return to the ship. And there is, generally, a ‘Don’t worry, be happy, everything will be fine’ attitude even when it is shown to people that their performance has fallen far short of what is normal for them. I see numerous indicators of that here, at all ranks.’ He smiled briefly at the officers, some of whom were looking a little indignant. ‘It’s just,’ he said, ‘that we’ve all been rather swept off track by Telethoran hospitality.’
‘It isn’t as if we were just lounging round on beaches stuffing our faces, though,’ Martine argued. ‘We were working there, and working very hard, too – not a member of this crew who hasn’t put in many, many hours of voluntary duty, even turning down offers of shoreleave to do it. I think that should be credited, too, and recognised how very busy we’ve all been.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ Buzz agreed. ‘But life on Telathor is lived at a very different pace, and I believe that without even realising it ourselves, we have been adapting to
Telathoran culture during our stay there. That’s actually a good thing in that it demonstrates our cultural flexibility and ability to adapt quickly, but it has obviously had some negative impact on our focus and pace. We do need to address that, and the first step in that process is to recognise that it is an issue we all need to put our effort into resolving, to get this ship back up to peak performance as quickly as possible.’
He looked at Alex, who nodded confirmation.
‘We can’t afford the time to ease back into things gradually,’ he said. ‘We’re heading into barely navigable space, and will be at the border marked as non-navigable space in just four days. I cannot and will not risk this ship by taking us into that unless we are at full operational performance. Which means that we either get it back up to speed within the next four days or that I will have to put the mission on hold until we have.’
That shocked them. Martine stopped arguing and looked troubled. So did everyone else. There were some sighs and groans amongst the crew, too, who knew what to expect from a skipper talking like that – or at least, thought they did. There would be intensive training, compulsory gym sessions, high grav drills and very probably a punitive withdrawal of their crateage, the privilege supplies they had because of their exceptional performance rating. He would be within his rights to withdraw that, as they’d dropped below that standard, and to withhold the high status supplies like real coffee from them until they were back up to full speed.
‘So – what are you going to do, dear boy?’ Buzz asked, with a little twinkle as he knew very well that that was exactly what Alex wanted him to ask.
‘Me? Nothing,’ said Alex, and as a ripple of surprise went through the ship, ‘I personally am going to be hitting the gym and laying off desserts till I’ve shifted my Telathor Tum,’ he patted his midriff significantly. ‘And got my muscle tone back. But I believe it is the individual responsibility of everyone aboard this ship to see to it that they’re able to perform to their best. And if I had to force that, you wouldn’t be the ship’s company I take you to be, and am so proud of.’
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