Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  By 0800, hotels, liner companies and station staff were all having to deal with a tsunami of anxious and angry passengers. Just to help things along a bit, the media interviewed the most nervous and angry passengers they could find. Their reportage, by now, included film of a very panicky group who’d grabbed all their stuff and fled their hotel, convinced that the Fourth might board the station at any moment. They were interviewed at an airlock, where they were demanding to be taken back to their liner, and for that liner to leave immediately.

  “You know what they’re like, they go aboard shooting!” one of them declared. “Look at what they did to the Lucinde, and there were kids on that ship!”

  When the Fourth had arrived at Therik they had had another freighter, the cargomaster Lucinde, under arrest. The haul this time had been nothing like that of the Might of Teranor, just a crate of illegal toxies, but the media had gone berserk about it as “another secret mission.”

  The Fourth had claimed that they’d just happened across the Lucinde and that the freighter had told them, voluntarily, that they had drugs aboard. Nobody believed them, obviously. There had been three small children on the ship, which the media had worked up for maximum dramatic value. TNN had obtained, somehow, a clip of audio in which one of the freighter’s crew was pleading, frantically, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! We’ve got kids on board!” Rumours about what had actually happened with the seizure of the Lucinde were running wild, even amongst spacers.

  “And they trashed that restaurant!” Another member of the party reminded the journalist, clutching a bag to himself as if fearful that the Fourth might appear and try to snatch it from him.

  The incident he was referring to there had also happened at Therik. A group of Fourth’s shoreleavers had been taken into custody after the police had been called to a restaurant. Tables had been overturned, with food everywhere, broken glass, and other customers shaken and upset. The shoreleavers had subsequently been released without charge when the police had established that they had, in fact, been attacked by a group of drunken flickball fans. By then, however, the “Fourth in Restaurant Rampage!” stories had already gone out, highly dramatised and accompanied by all the campaign groups having their say on it. Hardly anyone had seen the very brief item the following day, confirming that no action was being taken against the shoreleavers as the police now accepted that they had been the victims in the incident.

  “They could be rampaging through this station any minute!” The first speaker, a middle aged man with an ugly haircut, spoke with an outrage fuelled by fear. “Red Line should never have brought us into this situation! It’s like bringing people into a warzone!”

  Such panickers represented only a tiny fraction of the visitor population, of course, though an attempt by Chantalle Rivers to get journalists to focus on those visitors who weren’t panicking had backfired on them, too. A family had been interviewed in the Panorama Restaurant, sure enough, declaring that nothing was going to prevent them enjoying every minute of their stay aboard the station.

  “We’re not scared of the Fourth!” the father declared. “They’re not going to intimidate us off enjoying our holiday!”

  Unfortunately, the positive effect of that had been more than cancelled out by the journalists then showing a wide-angled shot of the family surrounded by empty tables.

  People waking up and seeing that on their holovisions would naturally have some concerns about their own safety. Even the most level headed would ask hotel or customer services what was going on. Increasing numbers of them were asking about going back to their ships, if they were here on cruises, or about what arrangements were in hand to evacuate them if they were here waiting for connecting ships.

  Chok Dayfield was out there in the front line, dealing with that. Smiling, shaking hands, reassuring, with a well practiced little laugh at the very idea of the Fourth boarding the station.

  “They have no more right to do so than any other Fleet ship,” he said, over and over again. “This is a sovereign independent station, and no League authority, not the Fleet or the Fourth, has any right to come aboard it.”

  There were, in fact, a handful of specific circumstances under which the station’s management could invite League authorities aboard, but none of them applied here. Chok was not even considering them. All his attention was on reassuring customers. He was equally soothing in response to questions about the allegations of drug trafficking.

  “No, no, there’s no basis to that whatsoever,” he told people, in a speech he could by now have given in his sleep. “I’m not saying that drugs never ever slip through our security systems. We handle more than a billion tons of cargo at Karadon every year. That’s more than many worlds process, you know? We do our best, in that, to verify the manifest documentation ships provide, but with quarantined goods that often just isn’t possible, so we have to just accept the Customs documentation provided. If Customs themselves, with all their planet-wide resources, can’t prevent drugs slipping through their systems, I fail to see how they can expect us to do so. So there are, yes, regrettably, occasional incidents of drugs passing through the station, despite all our best efforts. But as for trafficking, no, no, of course not. None of us here would have anything to do with such a thing, and ISiS Corps is committed to working with League authorities in all matters of law and order.”

  For those who wouldn’t accept that and kept questioning, he had a further explanation.

  “Look, what can I tell you?” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “There is a very long and complicated history to this. Some people don’t think it’s right that ISiS Corps exercises our constitutional right to maintain stations within League space that are not under League governmental control. There have been several attempts made in the past to force ISiS Corps to give up the sovereign independence of our stations. Karadon, particularly, has become so vital to the operation of both freight and passenger transport throughout the League that the Senate wants that brought directly under their control. And then, suddenly, just as changes in constitutional law are being discussed which would enable them to impose League government on our stations, surprise surprise, we start getting all these wild allegations of Karadon being used for drug trafficking.” He spread his hands again. “Trust me on this,” he said, with total conviction. “The only basis for those allegations is political, and dirty politics at that.”

  His sincerity was compelling because that genuinely was what he believed. He was very convincing personally, too, with his distinguished appearance and evident integrity. His presence on the resort was having a calming effect, and he was starting to think that, with luck, they might be able to keep the situation contained.

  Then his wristcom gave the rapid tapping pulse that indicated a priority call. He glanced at it discreetly whilst apparently giving all his attention to a group of visitors who wanted to know how much compensation they were going to get for their holiday being ruined.

  Von Strada is calling you and is on hold.

  Chok extricated himself from the conversation he was in, with speed, and went to the nearest g-porter access as quickly as dignity allowed. The gravity pod g-porter shot him half a kilometre across the station and fourteen storeys down in just a few seconds. He was already talking to Ambit Persane as he came out of the g-porter door and hurried into his office.

  Director Torres was already there. He told her before he told me, Chok realised. The intern had been brown-nosing ever since the executive director’s arrival, desperate to attract the attention of the Head Office representative. He was wasting his time there. As far as Director Torres was concerned, Ambit’s role in her universe was to bring tea when she told him to and otherwise remain invisible. She was sitting at one of the visitor places facing Chok’s desk, glancing at her watch as he came in, while Ambit hovered by the desk, looking keenly efficient.

  “…sent a message back saying that I’d inform you of his call immediately,” the intern switched from speaking to C
hok over his comm to addressing him in person as Chok came into the office. “The comline is still open.”

  “Right.” Chok sat down, waving dismissal to the intern, who left the office looking annoyed at being excluded from listening in on the call. Chok ignored him, his attention on Director Torres. “How do you think I should approach this, Director?”

  She preferred that form of address. Her ID said that her first name was Belassa, but it seemed unlikely that anyone would be on such terms with her to call her that at work. Amongst the station staff, she was often referred to as She or Her, with audible capitals and italics.

  “As per company policy, of course,” she said. She would never give any advice other than that, to stick absolutely to company policy.

  Chok had not forgotten, though, and never would forget, what had happened to Jim Alvarez. He had been the director of Karadon Leisure for the last six years. He and Chok had been friends as well as colleagues. Shortly after Director Torres had arrived, they’d had a board meeting to discuss policy ahead of the Fourth’s arrival. Jim Alvarez had said he didn’t understand what Head Office’s problem was with allowing Customs and Excise to set up on the station. It was ridiculous, he said, to stick to some century-old policy that was causing them so many problems. If it was up to him, he’d declared, he’d invite the Fourth aboard to see for themselves that the station was not involved in criminal activity, that they had nothing to hide.

  Director Torres’s response to that was a chilling, “Thank you, Mr Alvarez. ISiS Corps will no longer be requiring your services. Please ensure that you have left the station within three days.”

  It had taken a few minutes for Jim Alvarez to really understand that she had fired him. He’d been escorted from the boardroom by security, a painful scene that still made Chok feel cold to think about. The message was clear. No challenge to ISiS Corps policy would be tolerated.

  “Yes, of course.” Chok hesitated, wondering whether he should call another board meeting and take a vote on how best to respond to von Strada’s call. He was a great believer in group decisions and group responsibility. That felt particularly important when the director from Head Office was looking at you like a sniper finding her range. On balance, though, he decided, it would be better just to get on with it.

  So, he took a breath, composed himself, and took the call.

  “This is Chokran Dayfield, Managing Director of ISiS Karadon,” he said, mindful of the fact that this too was an open comline, that everything said here could be overheard by the media. He could engage privacy encryption at his end, but had no control over the Fourth broadcasting their side of it open comms. “I trust you are calling to give some explanation of your conduct since entering Karadon space.”

  There was a slightly longer delay than the time-lapse accounted for, then the bleep that indicated “data transmission”. The data was an image file which was set to open itself on Chok’s screen, replacing the ID image.

  It did so, shocking him. It was the image of a dead girl. It was hard to tell how old she was, though she was evidently an addict. She had the characteristic yellow, parchment-like skin, skeletal build and thin, straggly hair of a DPC junkie. She was obviously dead. Her eyes were half open, rimed with white and glazed, her mouth slack and hollow. She was laid out on a dirty floor, with alley trash and graffiti-covered walls in the background.

  “What is this?” Chok reacted indignantly. It looked like the kind of shock-image used in campaigns to warn kids against drug use, but he knew somehow that this was no CGI, but a picture of a real dead person. “Why are you sending me this?” he demanded.

  “You asked for an explanation of my conduct since entering Karadon orbit.” After the usual delay, Alex von Strada’s image appeared on screen. He was at his most intimidating, so icily unemotional that he hardly even seemed human. “This is it. Her name was Annabella Tokford. She was seventeen. She died sitting in a doorway, in full view of the street. Thousands of cars went by as she sat there dying. Not one of them stopped. I found her body. I gave evidence at the inquest. Afterwards, her parents gave me this picture of her.” Another “data-burst” bleep and a family snapshot appeared. It was of middle aged parents standing proudly with a girl dressed up for a high school formal. She was pretty, vivacious, laughing.

  “It was one of the last pictures they had of her before she started using DPC.” Alex continued. “She was a teenager. She liked to party. She’d use toxies – nothing heavy, things like Beamer and Spin. Then one day someone gave her Rainbow. Fourteen months later, she was dead. We could talk statistics and the economic impact of drugs in our society. But I want you to know that for me, this is about saving kids like Annabella Tokford.”

  Chok found that his mouth had got very dry, and swallowed.

  “I do not believe that this station is being used as a centre for drug trafficking,” he said. “If it was, I would know. We will of course cooperate with all legitimate investigations as far as company policy permits, but I have to raise a concern, here. What you’re saying sounds more like a personal vendetta than a professional investigation.”

  Should he mention, he wondered, that he knew von Strada’s own daughter had been killed two years before, and ask if his empathy with the parents who’d lost their child was affecting his professional judgement? No, he decided. Something told him that prodding that wound would not improve the situation.

  “Eighty six tons of DPC have been trafficked through your station in the last year alone. There are ships in this system right now with crates of DPC on board, provided under false manifest by Karadon Freight.” Alex von Strada came back, coldly. “Either you are actively involved in that, Mr Dayfield, which makes you responsible for the deaths those drugs cause, or you are oblivious to it happening right under your nose, which makes you incompetent. Either way, you are part of the problem I am here to deal with.

  “I am not asking for your cooperation. You have had ample opportunity to cooperate with previous anti-drug operations and have, instead, obstructed them. The time for cooperation is over. All I want from you now is compliance. I intend to put a stop to drug trafficking on Karadon and to bring all those responsible to justice. You have my assurance that I will do whatever it takes to achieve that objective. I would like you to keep that picture of Annabella Tokford laying dead in the street, Mr Dayfield. Put it on your desk. At any time when you are unclear as to my objectives and intentions here, just look at that picture.”

  Chok sat staring at the screen for a few seconds after the blippip had indicated the end of the call. Then he looked at Director Torres. For the first time since he’d met her, he saw her looking impressed.

  “They said he was good,” she observed.

  “Oh.” Chok thought about the way the media would react to that dramatic story, complete with pictures of a dead teenager, and felt sick. Then he thought about how they would react to Alex von Strada asserting the moral high ground and stating that he would do whatever it took to save kids like her, and nearly was sick. The words “You are part of the problem I am here to deal with.” were making him feel an urgent need to visit the lavatory, too.

  It was only then that he noticed that the “end of call” blip had included another data-packet transmission. It was an attached file of much bigger size than would be needed for another picture. Director Torres tapped a control on her side of the desk, accessing it, and a tumble of files appeared. It was obvious even at a glance that they were copies of official documents relating to the death of Annabella Tokford, including her post mortem report and a recording of her inquest. There were also interviews with her parents. All of it was clipped and labelled professionally for media use. It was a media infopack, giving them everything they needed for full reporting of that story.

  “It can’t be true,” Chok said. What were the chances, really, that Alex von Strada had actually found a dead body? It had to be media spin, a carefully constructed lie, relying on the fact that it would be weeks before any of the deta
ils could be checked.

  Without saying anything, Director Torres ran a comparison search on both the media pack and the station’s own records. To Chok’s horror, confirmation came up on the inquest records. Various journalists on the station had, over the years, called for stats and records from their own offices for use in stories. Records of drug-related inquests on Chartsey were on the system multiple times, amongst them that of Annabella Tokford.

  Director Torres accessed the inquest record and ran a software on it that created a bullet point summary.

  Chok felt his stomach churn again as he read it.

  Annabella Tokford had died on Chartsey ten years ago. Her body had been discovered by Fleet Cadet Alexis Sean von Strada, then aged eighteen. He had recently arrived on Chartsey, along with the top cadets from all the League’s Fleet Academies, to do their final few months of training and exams at the Chartsey Academy. He and a fellow cadet had wanted to see the reality of the capital world’s deprivation estates, the deep underground areas that tourists never saw. They had been taking an autopiloted taxi ride through the subterranean streets when Cadet von Strada had seen a girl sitting in the mouth of an alley. He had gone to see if she needed help. His fellow cadet, not wanting to get involved, had taken the taxi and left him there.

  Though he realised at once that she was dead, Cadet von Strada had called emergency services and carried out resuscitation efforts until they arrived, just in case there was any hope of reviving her. When they arrived, the ambulance crew certified her as dead on response and called for a coroner’s vehicle to pick her up. It was Cadet von Strada they took to hospital, insisting on having him checked out for any diseases he might have picked up in giving unprotected mouth to mouth to the dead addict. He had been thanked by the Coroner for his public spirit and commended by his Commandant for humanitarian effort.