Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘That was Admiral Michaels. He is a hundred and twenty four years old – yes, seriously – and still serving as a relief judge for courts martial. He is hard horse Old School, rabidly protective of the Fleet’s reputation and not in any zone where he would ever admit that a rating could have been justified in thumping an officer. Attempts have been made to get him taken off the bench, but there he still is. There is a clique within the Admiralty who regard him as something of an institution. They can afford to be sentimental about him of course because they are not the unfortunate defendants brought up before him. His sentences are legendarily harsh, and they are frequently reduced on appeal.

  ‘But that was what happened, see, and that is why people hold the view that Jace Higgs was shafted, because his court martial was rigged with a hostile judge who blatantly suppressed the evidence and gave a sentence ten times what the offence actually merited.’

  ‘Should he have got a custodial sentence at all, for that?’ Mako queried.

  ‘He would have, yes, regardless of the circumstances. Fleet regulation does not allow for anything less in cases where a rating has struck an officer in deep space. And yes, that’s important,’ the skipper clarified, as Mako gave him an interrogative look. ‘There is a clear and definite distinction, right the way through Fleet regulations, between in port and out. Offences in port are treated very much more leniently, with a certain amount of tolerance for shoreleave misconduct and the general lessening of formalities aboard ship when you’re in parking orbit. But once you launch and leave the system, a much higher code kicks in.

  ‘The Fleet cracks down very hard on anything which is considered to impair the safety and function of the ship, see. Punching an officer definitely comes under that category and there’s no doubt he’d have got a custodial sentence, regardless of who heard the case and how sympathetic they were. But we are talking, there, about two to three months to be served at the local glasshouse. With me prepared to take him back that would have been it, he could come back to the ship once he was discharged.’

  ‘Oh, I see. That’s quite different from army procedures, isn’t it?’ Mako commented. ‘But didn’t he – Admiral Michaels – give Higgs a dishonourable discharge?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Alex said. ‘Lt Simons apologised for insensitive reference to the loss of my child, but alleged that there was an inappropriate degree of intimacy between me and Higgs. There was nothing in me standing sponsor to his child. I don’t think there’s any skipper in the Fleet who hasn’t been asked to do that, often many times, for the children of crew. Lt Simons, however, said that Higgs and I had had ‘inappropriate’ personal conversations, that he was well known to idolise me and that I treated him as a personal protégé.

  ‘That is not, if it needs to be clear, the case. The nearest we came to a personal conversation was when he approached me shortly before his baby was due. He said that he would understand if I felt I did not want to go ahead with standing sponsor to his baby, if it was ‘too soon’, which was an obvious reference to the death of my own child. I said thank you but that I would be proud to stand sponsor to his son.

  ‘There was, obviously, a certain amount of emotional charge to that conversation. He did, you know, well up a bit, have to wipe his eyes. But that was it, he just said ‘Thanks, Skipper’ and went off, and that was the most personal conversation we had. The way Lt Simons told it, though, he was practically sobbing in my arms. She said that my ‘protectiveness’ of him in trying to prevent her from exercising normal Fleet discipline over him had given her serious cause for concern as to my professionalism in that relationship. She backed that up with entries from her personal log and for Admiral Michaels that was good enough.

  ‘He had the gall to tell me that he was sealing all the evidence in that case in order to protect me, in sympathy with the fact, he said, that my recent loss had clearly impaired my professional judgement in becoming over-protective and indulgent to a young crewman who was becoming a father himself. He cracked down on Higgs, obviously, with the longest sentence it was in his power to impose, saying he had taken advantage of my personal grief to play me emotionally, which he held to be an exacerbating circumstance. So he sent him down for two years and refused my application for continuance of service. Those are normally granted routinely when a skipper is standing by a member of their crew, but Admiral Michaels said he did not consider my judgement in that to be sound and ruled for dishonourable discharge. We did get that overturned at appeal, but the most we could get on the sentence was that he would be considered for early release on parole. Appeals, of course, are heard by Third Lord Jennar personally.’

  ‘Ah,’ the inspector said again, with a look of enlightenment as he understood just how embarrassing to the Fleet the politics would be, if this went public.

  He was already aware that there was something of a history between Alex von Strada and Lord Admiral Jennar.

  Seven years before, Alex had given testimony to a Senate Sub-Committee enquiry which was looking into the practice of corporate consultancies within the Fleet. At the time, senior officers had been allowed to hold posts as consultants to business corporations whilst they were still in service. It had paid very well for merely advising the corporations occasionally on space affairs. There’d been all kinds of lifestyle benefits too, like membership of corporate country clubs and use of corporate yachts. With the previous First Lord having been obliged to resign, the Senate Sub-Committee overseeing the Fleet had invited the two candidates for the office to present their views on the issue of corporate consultancies to a board of enquiry. The traditional Old School Fleet view that it was beneficial to the Fleet to have close links with the business community had been championed by Admiral Jennar. The modernising Progressive view had been championed by Admiral Harangay. A representative group of other officers of all ranks had also been summoned to express their views as part of the Sub-Committee taking soundings of Fleet opinion.

  Other officers had hedged their bets in giving their testimony to the enquiry, playing it cautious just in case the other side won. Lt Alex von Strada, however, had stood up fearlessly and supported Dix Harangay’s position that such consultancies compromised the integrity of the Fleet. Asked what his own opinion was of corporate consultancies, he had spoken seven words Admiral Jennar would never forgive.

  ‘I believe they are tantamount to corruption.’

  It was unlikely, in fact, that Alex’s statement had carried any tremendous weight with the panel. Even so, the panel had appointed Dix Harangay and corporate consultancies had been stopped. Admiral Jennar had lost a lot of money over that, but it was probable that the attack on his integrity had hurt him even more. Alex had made an enemy there, and Admiral Jennar was not a man to drop a grudge lightly.

  The politics had indeed been very dirty in this, Mako recognised, and had no difficulty understanding why the Fleet had tried to keep this quiet.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mako nodded. ‘So, having a very clear understanding now of why there is this belief that Jace Higgs was shafted, do you mind if we go back on the record now?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Alex agreed readily, so Mako picked up his comp and activated it again.

  ‘Right.’ He sat poised, lumopen at the ready. ‘Just a couple of questions then, please. Firstly, it’s evident that your own focus has been to get Jace Higgs released, so whose decision was it to include Jok Dorlan and Timon Barrington? Did you choose them yourself or have any say in that?’

  ‘They were proposed by the First Lord, though I daresay it was one of his staff who actually selected them,’ Alex said. ‘I had the usual skipper’s right of veto to refuse to accept anyone aboard my ship if I did not feel them to be safe for any reason, but I had no hesitation in agreeing to them both. I’ve never met either of them but they meet the criteria for the scheme and they both have the support of skippers whose opinions I respect.

  ‘Both of them are on continuance of service terms, you see, which means that their skippers stood by th
em at court martial and made an official commitment to taking them back after completion of their sentences, should they choose to remain in Fleet service. The Fleet holds skippers to that see, so no skipper does that lightly. If they feel that there is any reason for concern that that crewmember may pose an ongoing problem or re-offend, no responsible skipper would make application to have them back.

  ‘Jok Dorlan, in fact, is someone who might have been sent to us on special recommendation anyway. We do have a very similar case, fortunately picked up and sent to us before a hacking incident like the one that sent Dorlan to prison.

  ‘The crewmember we have here is Ordinary Star Elsa Nordstrom. She is a computer hacker just like Dorlan. She was sent to us after some minor incidents on three previous ships. She was hacking non-classified files, usually for practical jokes like making tech generate ridiculous sounds when controls were activated. The Fleet really wants to keep her and both R&D and the Intel division are expressing headhunter interest. She’s very good, see, and while R&D wants her to work on computer security systems, Intel have obvious use for someone who can hack even the most heavily encrypted files.

  ‘You can’t, however, put people in that kind of role unless you are entirely assured that they are trustworthy. So she came as a high priority special recommend and is on a microsteps programme aiming to achieve the year of good conduct R&D and Intel need before they can start fighting over her.

  ‘The only difference between her and Jok Dorlan, really, is that she was caught at a low enough level to make it a matter for bullock farming while he was found waltzing about in classified Admiralty files. I do know his skipper – Skipper Tanlin, of the Megathor, on the Therik station. And if I know him, as soon as he hears that I have his crewman, he will be writing to me to tell me to send him back as fast as I possibly can. Which I will, subject of course to that being what Dorlan wants too. Skipper Tanlin is of the view, clearly and emphatically expressed in the file, that Dorlan has learned his lesson and will never do anything that line-crossingly dumb again, and that’s good enough for me.

  ‘As for PO Barrington, well, even the judge who sentenced him expressed some sympathy with the mess he’d got himself into, with one error of judgement and a lot of panic. The error of judgement was in sitting down to play poker in a high stakes game in a dodgy club with people he didn’t know. The panic came in when he found himself in debt to them for far more money than he could possibly raise, at which point they told him not to get any ideas about skipping out on them by leaving the planet, because they knew where his family lived.

  ‘He was terrified, particularly when they kept sending him holos of his relatives. Instead of doing what he should have, of course, and going to his skipper, he panicked and tried to sell ship’s supplies to raise the cash. Frankly, the fact that he was so useless at it that he was caught immediately just tells you in itself that he’d never done it before. The admiral presiding had no choice about the sentencing, but he did make recommendation for Barrington to be considered for early release on parole, and both his skipper and his squadron captain stood by him, applying for continuance of service.’

  ‘Yes, I saw that, very strong support, there,’ Mako said, making a note. ‘And all three, I understand, had been paroled to the Fleet base on Cestus before the Senate Fleet Sub-Committee approved the scheme. So had they been sounded out beforehand as to whether they’d be willing to participate? And was that in any way part of the consideration of their parole?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Alex said, after a moment or two to be sure that the inspector was serious. ‘That would have been wholly unethical. That would have been, in fact, the abuse of prisoner rights that the activists are screaming about. To make them being released on parole in any way conditional on them agreeing to volunteer for this unit would have been, very obviously, a totally unethical pressure on them to do so. They were granted parole unconditionally, on full and proper determination that their cases merited it. They had several options available to them, including, if they chose, leaving Fleet service.’

  ‘Right, I see. And they are not, I take it, being treated as prisoners under guard?’

  ‘No, they’re like anyone else on parole, free to go about, subject to the terms of parole restrictions on them.’ Alex said. ‘They’re being escorted from Cestus by an officer, but that is for their welfare, just someone looking after them. They’re travelling on ordinary Fleet travel warrants and are in no way prisoners or under guard.’

  ‘I see.’ Mako made another note. ‘Thank you, Skipper. So can I ask on what basis it was decided to take the parolees straight out on patrol? I understand that the normal procedure would be to allow them time at a base and an opportunity for leave before joining a ship.’

  ‘That’s for their welfare,’ Alex told him, readily, ‘because of the media situation. If they say when they get here that they feel they’d like some time groundside or at a base and don’t want to go with us, that will be accepted immediately. There are fall-back arrangements for that if need be, and I will not, I promise you, launch this ship without being fully assured that everyone aboard is here of their own choice.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mako made a note and went on, ‘Would I be allowed to stay for the voyage even if all three of the parolees were to opt to leave the ship?’

  ‘Certainly, though I doubt they will.’ Alex said, mildly. ‘But just a small point, Inspector, small but socially important – only liners go on ‘voyages’, okay? Freighter journeys are called ‘runs’ and Fleet ships are either on patrols, which means out and back again to the same port, or flights, which are journeys to other systems. And if you could please try to avoid using the word ‘cruise’ in connection with this or any other warship, that would be appreciated.’

  ‘Ah.’ The inspector made a note, and gave a wry little grin. ‘Lots to learn,’ he observed again. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean any offence. But just to be clear, this ship is being launched and sent out on patrol primarily for the welfare of your parolees?’

  ‘Primarily for their welfare, yes, though also, of course, obviously, in the hope of calming the storm that that idiot Hollis kicked off. And it is purposeful operationally too. Naturally, we don’t waste a very expensive resource like this, so we won’t be just idling about out there. The Fleet tries to maintain a presence in the shipping lanes around all our worlds, so we’ll be doing our usual patrol routines, providing assistance and support to merchant shipping. We’re under orders to investigate the Pagolis Cluster, too, with intel from Customs and Excise that they believe it may be being used for drug drops.

  ‘That’s a hardy perennial,’ he added, with a rueful note. ‘Everyone knows that the Pagolis is used for drug drops because it is so hard to patrol. Drug smugglers know very well that any ship coming into port direct from Dortmell, where most illegal drugs are made, will be stripped to the rivets by Customs, so what they do is take the drugs from Dortmell to an isolated system and leave them there for another ship to pick up and bring in. This is very professional, highly organised, never using the same system twice. Both Customs and Fleet Intel are constantly trying to get some kind of lead to be able to catch them in the act. I’m afraid the intel that we have is way too vague for us to stand any realistic chance of catching anybody, but we will take a look around anyway and make our presence felt.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Mako. ‘Then… just so I know what to expect, can you give me some idea of what you feel I’m liable to find particularly challenging?’

  ‘Well, the launch for a start.’ Alex said. ‘I’m afraid when you said that you’d never even been on a rollercoaster, one of our watch crew did have to excuse himself for a few minutes so as not to be rolling about on the deck laughing. I have to tell you that there is in all probability already a book running on the mess deck over whether you will need to change your underwear after the launch. Please don’t take that personally. That’s a Fleet tradition with anyone experiencing warship launch for the first time. That would be cha
llenging, see, even for someone who has travelled on liners a good deal and enjoys going on freefall rides and rollercoasters.

  ‘What you have to understand is that the way most civilians experience superlight launch on liners is an illusion. Liners always muster their passengers in some kind of lounge or social venue for launch and deceleration runs. Those lounges are actually self-contained pods within the liner with their own internal power supplies. The whole thing is isolated physically from the rest of the ship, surrounded by inertial dampeners, shock absorbers and soundproofing. Liners have passenger management off to a fine art, too, with free drinks, impressive visuals on big screens, soothing music and friendly, reassuring stewards. Gravity and normal lighting stays on and there is a wonderful illusion of the ship just gliding gracefully into wave space. Embarking on your voyage with screaming passengers, after all, is not good for business. A big part of liner design is in creating that isolation pod within the ship to protect the passengers from the reality of the launch.

  ‘We do not, obviously, have that on warships. The best I can do for you is to isolate the wardroom for you and keep the gravity on in there. The lowest impact you could have is to lie on your bunk, wearing headphones, playing loud music. If you do that, you’ll just feel the ship vibrating and maybe some gravity lurching but it won’t be too bad.

  ‘If you’re out of the wardroom, though, you should be prepared. We go into freefall and turn off all non-essential systems, suit up and strap in. The ship will be shaking and juddering like it’s coming apart, with some very alarming noises. It’s okay, that’s normal. Even the best and most advanced starships judder and creak under launch and this is a very good, strong ship with an expert crew. We normally launch in under forty seconds, which is excellent, by the way – freighters may take up to three minutes.