Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  Part of the problem, Jonas felt, was that it just didn’t feel like work, here. Even combat drills felt more like playing games than anything. They were games, effectively, battles of wits between Alex and Davie North. They were often like kids playing tag, the frigate and the tender chasing one another in dizzying leaps and spins. Even the damage control drills that were part of that on the Heron were played as a competition between the various sectors of the ship, with kudos and cookies for the team which scored the highest for efficiency. They used very realistic special effects, too – the first time Jonas went through blowout drill he was actually alarmed, wondering if Alex really could be crazy enough to have triggered a real blowout for training purposes. The explosion both looked and sounded real, air was rushing with tornado force, an unsecured coffee mug flying past his head. It was only afterwards that he was able to confirm that it was, indeed, no more than special effects and a simulator programme running in the air-processing systems.

  Even knowing that it was a simulation, though, there was always something of an adrenalin kick when the explosions and fires and blowouts were going on; the ship really was in freefall and they were responding to real tech deactivations, too, as ‘hits’ by the opposing ship’s blank fire triggered worst-case scenario damage to every possible bit of tech that might have been affected by it. Their training programmes didn’t quite go so far as to actually damage the tech, but it was rigged so that it would turn off and could not be reactivated until whatever work was needed to ‘fix’ it had been completed. So the challenge was real, even if the damage was not. Jonas found that he enjoyed the combat drills, the fast pace, the bangs and smoke, the teamwork, the having a laugh afterwards as they debriefed. Jonas would never have believed it, but he had to admit that combat drills with the Fourth were actually fun.

  The hours just flew by, anyway, with no sense of weariness or being overworked. He was conscientious about keeping on top of his schedule, ensuring that he stayed within the bounds of workload regulations, took all proper meal breaks and got enough sleep.

  He was, therefore, dismayed to find a message from Dr Tekawa on his coms, on their tenth day out of Therik, pointing out to him that he had bust workload limits and should take things easy for a while. He had, Rangi told him, worked more than forty five hours over the past three days.

  Back on the Zeus, Jonas would have said that was entirely reasonable and right. Anything over fifteen hours a day should be classed as exceptional workload and only justified at exceptionally busy times or on operational imperative. Now, he looked at it with a sense of frustration, feeling that it was a limit preventing him from doing all the things he wanted to do.

  He called Rangi, though, and apologised, saying that that he hadn’t intended to break regs and still couldn’t see how he had, since his own reckoning of workload over the last three days added up to forty four hours, not forty six.

  ‘Oh-kay,’ Rangi said, and pulled up his own records. ‘Let’s just compare your log…’ he ran a check and drew a circle around an item which his analysis had identified as workload, and Jonas’s had not.

  It was time he’d spent the previous afternoon, in an area on mess deck four variously referred to as the refectory, the doughnuttery and egghead central. Its official description was that of quiet study zone, with a bank of study cubicles around a central table. It had become a gathering place for anyone who enjoyed academic conversation. Calling it the ‘doughnuttery’ was a physics joke, as the standard representation of the D-9 Loop in wave space physics looked like a ring doughnut, and ‘doughnutter’ was a slightly derogatory term for the stereotypical maths geek waving a doughnut in the air and exclaiming incomprehensible equations. Someone, at some point, had put a box of doughnuts on the table in the study zone, and it had subsequently become a thing, always a box of doughnuts there and ‘going for a doughnut’ being shipboard jargon for going to hang out at egghead central.

  ‘Oh, I see!’ Jonas looked relieved, seeing that that accounted for the two hours that weren’t on his own schedule. He had actually put himself on down-time for that couple of hours, recognising that he needed to keep enough time free on his workload to take the evening watch. ‘This has been mis-coded,’ Jonas told the medic. ‘I was on down time, then, not working.’

  Rangi cast his eyes heavenward.

  ‘So soon are the holy brought low,’ he commented, an obscure quote but one which Jonas understood to mean that the medic was remarking on how little time it had taken even the Internal Affairs officer to be trying to dodge workload protocols. ‘Nice try,’ he added, with more secular idiom, ‘but no balloon. Officers spending more than ten minutes on mess decks is logged as pastoral, and you know that.’

  Jonas did, though he hadn’t realised it applied in this case. Pastoral care, to his mind, meant spending time with a member of the crew who was having difficulties of some kind, providing supportive listening and advice.

  ‘But I wasn’t, honestly,’ he protested, with an earnest look. ‘I only stopped by for tea and a doughnut. I mean yes, there were some crew there, people coming and going, and people from the Second, but there was no pastoral care element in that, it was purely social.’

  ‘Yes.’ Rangi laughed. ‘You’re a Fourth’s officer now, all right. But there’s no point arguing with me, Jonas – if you want time spent on mess decks to be reclassified from pastoral to social, take it up with the skipper.’

  Jonas had a sudden mental image of Captain Urquart’s reaction if he was told that Lt Commander Sartin had asked for a policy allowing officers to socialise with crew on a mess deck. Jonas was familiar with all the different shades of Captain Urquart’s fury, from the mottled look that started to rise whenever Alex von Strada’s name came up to purple cheeked erythema. This, Jonas realised, would be a full-on purple and at least twenty minutes of expressing his opinion.

  ‘Uh...’ he said, laughing, but becoming aware then that he was, in fact, challenging Fourth’s policy and suggesting something that even Alex von Strada considered too radical. ‘No argument!’ he held up his hands, gesturing surrender. ‘Sorry, Rangi. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘Hah.’ Said Rangi, in a tone that made it apparent he’d heard that one several hundred times before, but a friendly grin that went with it. ‘See you for intervention round two,’ he prophesied, and ended the call.

  Ten

  Rangi was not the only one concerned about the workload on the Heron. Simon Penarth said nothing, at first, just kept a shrewd eye on what was going on and came to his own conclusions about what needed to be done about it.

  Which took him, at four in the morning, to Alex’s cabin.

  Alex was asleep, though he woke up fast as the door opened and his bunk light brightened automatically. It was never entirely dark on a starship, a dim gleam from emergency lighting even in a bunk with the privacy screen shut.

  Alex never used the privacy screen on his own bunk. He didn’t need to, since it was in his own sleeping cabin. He never locked the door, either, since it was understood even by passengers that you did not go into the skipper’s private quarters.

  ‘Uh?’ The momentary, bleary disorientation of being woken from deep sleep was blinked away fast– long training and experience taught anyone in the Fleet to jump to full awareness in an alert. ‘Simon?’

  If Alex was startled to see the passenger in his cabin, that was nothing to his surprise as Simon sat down at the foot of his bunk. He hitched himself up there, hooking one knee across Alex’s feet as if making himself comfortable, but Alex’s instinctive effort to withdraw his feet found that they were pinned down by the weight of Simon’s leg.

  Alex sat up, indignant reproof on his face, coupled with some slight, comical apprehension. It wouldn’t be the first time a passenger had fancied him, a situation Alex dealt with by pretending not to notice, but turning up in his cabin and getting on his bunk was something new.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not after your body,’ Simon said, before Alex could
say any more. ‘I just want a word.’ His manner suggested that it was entirely reasonable to pop in for a chat like this, hop on the skipper’s bunk and sit on his feet. He took no notice of Alex’s reaction, either, but went straight on, not giving him a chance to speak. ‘You and me,’ he told him, gesturing with two fingers from his own eyes to Alex’s, ‘need to talk. Which means I need to talk and you need to listen.’

  ‘Professor...’ Alex attempted, as Simon drew breath, but Simon just kept straight on talking.

  ‘Thing is, there’s a problem on this ship,’ he told him, conversationally. ‘Rangi’s a good kid, I know, and he tries, but between him not quite getting it and your mutton-headed arrogance, things are getting worse and worse.’

  ‘Professor...’ Alex attempted to tug his feet out from Simon’s leg, but they were as effectively clamped as if by a steel bar. It was, Alex recognised, a martial-arts hold that the medic was employing so casually.

  ‘There is a culture on this ship,’ Simon said, as if oblivious both to Alex’s attempts to interrupt him and his efforts to free himself, ‘of pushing workload limits to the max, routinely, long term. A major factor in that is the perception that this is what you do, and you as the skipper set the tone and culture for the ship. It’s okay, I get it.’ He held up a hand as if Alex’s protest was against what he’d said, rather than increasingly vehement efforts to make Simon get off his feet, ‘I know you don’t max workload, I get that enforced inactivity drives you nuts, I’m not going to try to get you to take up painting or sit in your quarters twiddling your thumbs.’ The reference to taking up painting showed that he had been discussing this with Rangi Tekawa, since that had been one of Rangi’s more desperate suggestions for leisure activities the skipper might enjoy.

  ‘What we’re talking about here is perception. Your crew sees you on the command deck or busy round the ship from dawn till gone midnight, often reading or having meetings even while you’re eating. The only obvious break you take is a mug of tea in engineering. Rangi’s gone about it all wrong, of course, in perpetuating that myth that you work eighteen hours a day instead of helping make it clear to your crew that you don’t. So now that’s what they see, so they push it too. It has actually become not only normal to push at workload regulations on this ship, but admirable, like getting an overwork intervention from Rangi is scoring points. And that is your fault, absolutely – you have kudos from your crew for having defied medical orders and refused to take leave, you know? Bad, Alex, very bad! You’ve got people on this ship who are going to burn out, trying to copy what they think you’re doing. You need to put a stop to that right now – make it clear when you are working and when you’re not, and for pity’s sake stop saying ‘I’m a workaholic, of course’ as if it’s something to be smug about.’

  ‘Simon, will you get off my bunk!’ Alex finally managed to drive a word in edgewise, firing back at him just as forcefully, ‘If we must have this discussion right now, we will do so in my daycabin!’

  ‘Skipper to passenger, in your control space?’ Simon pretended to consider, but only briefly. ‘I don’t think so. And no, I won’t get off your bunk, and you can shut up, too – you gave me medical authority when you signed me aboard as a doctor, and it is as a doctor that I am speaking to you, on behalf of all the patients I or some other medic will have to treat if things go on as they are. Of course,’ he conceded loftily, ‘you could call security or whatever you have on the ship, and have me removed. But you won’t be half the man I take you for, if you do.’

  Alex looked at him, and there was a long moment as he considered his options. These came down, ultimately, to calling for crew to remove the medic from his quarters or agreeing to talk to him. Getting into a physical confrontation with him himself was not a realistic option – for one thing, it would be beneath his dignity as captain, and for another, given the ease with which Simon was pinning him down, he was highly unlikely to win.

  ‘All right,’ he said. However outrageously Simon was going about it, he was indeed a medic raising issues of real concern about the welfare of Alex’s crew, and Alex could not dismiss that out of hand. ‘But get off my bunk!’ Alex insisted. ‘I won’t talk to you like this.’

  For answer, Simon released the pressure on his feet, though making no move to get up, himself.

  ‘There’s nowhere else to sit,’ he pointed out. The cabin was tiny, only twice the size of the bunk itself, with under and over-bunk lockers for storage, a narrow hanging locker and a shower/lavatory angled into the corner.

  Alex got out of bed, gesturing for the medic to move himself.

  ‘Up,’ he commanded. Simon got up, watching with interest as Alex flicked the bedclothes straight and clipped the fastenings, then released a clip and swung the entire bunk up and over, clicking it back down into place as a sofa. That was commonplace on starships, the norm even in standard class accommodation on a liner. Simon, though, had never travelled intersystem in anything other than first class accommodation.

  ‘Clever!’ he said, as if the concept of sofabeds was entirely new to him.

  Alex made no comment. He’d come across that kind of ignorance in GCI people before, astounding gaps of knowledge in things ordinary people would consider mundane.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ the skipper requested, and indicated the shower. Simon made no objection, stepping around him obligingly so that Alex could get past.

  When Alex came out of the shower, in not much more than the minute specified, he had showered and put on a uniform. Simon was sitting on the sofa, a mug of coffee in his own hand and another on the grav-safe ring at the other end, waiting for Alex.

  Alex said nothing about the medic helping himself to his personal supply from the coffee maker in his daycabin. Instead, he just picked up the coffee and sat down, angling a little towards Simon for conversation, but with a firm, authoritative manner.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you five minutes.’

  ‘I will only need three.’ Simon told him, and looked ostentatiously at his wristcom, starting a stopwatch. ‘What you need to do,’ he told him, ‘is to make it overt, absolutely clear to everyone when you are working and when you are not. You and I both know that you take between twenty and thirty breaks a day and always a couple of hours on down-time, but that is not how it looks to the crew. You know you’re writing letters to friends or playing triplink with Buzz or just watching the stars go by, but the crew sees you on the command deck, even if they can see you playing triplink, it looks to them as if you’re doing that while you’re, like, holding the watch, or just there, keeping an eye on things, working. It’s all about perception, location, the fact that you are on the command deck.

  ‘I’m not suggesting that you take your breaks in your cabin,’ he assured him. ‘I know you hate it in there and so would I, fair enough, you like people around you, no problem. But there should be a place on the ship, other than engineering, where you and anyone else can sit, relax, write letters, play triplink, have a chat or watch the stars. And the irony is, there, that the one place on the ship that has that potential, the refectory, is blocked by a stupid rule that any time spent on a mess deck by officers has to be recorded as pastoral care, so officers actually trying to make use of a healthy, beneficial down-time get restricted in that by overwork rules. You can’t tell me that makes any sense. So what you need to do is move the refectory off the mess deck into the exosuite, make the conference room the academic hangout and open up the other facilities for anyone to use, too. The refit will be finished, tomorrow,’ he pointed out, ‘And it’s just ridiculous having such facilities sitting there empty. And seeing you, then, go there, the crew will recognise, themselves, when you are working and when you’re not, which will set a very much better example for them and bust this frightening culture of thinking that working yourself into the ground is actually cool.

  ‘I know, I know, they’re all high performance right now, you’re good at that, keeping people so motivated and high energy that t
hey’d be the first ones to swear that they’re fine, great, loving this, having a blast, never felt so great in all their lives. But they can’t keep up that pace indefinitely and sooner or later, as operational pressure increases, they will start to crash. And don’t tell me that there isn’t an issue. You’ve got Jonas Sartin, an IA officer who has never broken the smallest rule in his life, being logged for breaking safety regs, and that in itself should have red-flagged to you that there is a serious problem. I am crediting you with concern for the welfare of your crew as well as concern for the operational performance of your ship, so I know that I can count on your full support in this, not just in doing as I ask with the exo-suite, but backing me in tackling this overwork equals kudos culture, head on.’

  Alex drank some of his coffee, regarding the medic with cool, thoughtful eyes.

  ‘Tell me,’ he asked, in a noncommittal tone, ‘is this – turning up in people’s bedrooms in the middle of the night – something you make a habit of?’

  Simon grinned.

  ‘As occasion requires, yes,’ he admitted. ‘I find it useful to ensure that I have someone’s full and undivided attention. It makes the point, too, that I feel very strongly about something.’

  ‘Very effectively,’ said Alex, drily. ‘And I won’t waste my breath telling you how out of order it is, so many ways, because you know that already. I am curious, though, as to why you didn’t wait till we’ve parted company with the Stepeasy – are you that confident I won’t boot you off the ship?’

  ‘Totally,’ said Simon, with absolute certainty. ‘I’m in the right. You’re smart enough to recognise that, and not so stubborn or arrogant that you’d let your own irritation with me stand in the way of what’s best for your crew. And besides, even if I did think you’d kick me off the ship, I wouldn’t wait until you couldn’t to speak up. I’m not that kind of sneaky – always up front, me.’

  ‘Hmmmn,’ said Alex. ‘You know, I am beginning to develop a strong sense of sympathy with the Dean.’ He couldn’t help but give a reluctant grin, though, as Simon laughed. ‘You are a right pain in the backside,’ Alex added. ‘But, speaking as someone who has been a right pain in the backside myself when I believe I’m in the right on an important issue, I don’t really have much ground to complain, there. Though it wouldn’t, I have to say, have occurred to me to try to make my point by going into the First Lord’s quarters and sitting on his feet until he listened. Don’t do that again, Simon. Please,’ he added, as the medic adopted a mulish look. ‘If you want to talk to me, you only have to say so – unless we’re on alert at the time, you can have my full and undivided attention without the need for this kind of shenanigan, okay?’