Thoroughly depressed and feeling personally very vulnerable, Chok had come out of that meeting to find that the Fourth had just blown up the Demella Enterprise. And he had a message on his comm from Director Torres, asking if he had been down to see them in Freight, yet.
He hadn’t, but he went, then. It seemed the least important thing he could be doing right now but Director Torres obviously wanted him to go there, so he went.
He didn’t like it in Freight. It was a whole other world from the stylish elegance of the resort levels. This was an industrial environment, full of scruffy people, safety posters and machine noise. Even the managerial offices were lamentably blue collar. They drank tea from mugs and ate biscuits straight from the packet. To Chok, it was like venturing amongst barbarians.
Durb was not in his office. He rarely was, spending much of his time around the warehouses and the Freight Club. The Freight Club was actually a trading centre where skippers and traders met to buy and sell cargoes. Spacers usually preferred to do business like that face to face, catching up on the gossip and looking for deals. On the rare occasions that he went in there, Chok felt that he was barely tolerated, everyone else speaking a language he didn’t quite understand.
Just now, however, he was told that Mr Jorgensen was on one of the warehouse levels. Chok could have asked Durb to meet him at his office, of course, but he knew from experience that if he did that he’d be waiting for at least a quarter of an hour, so he went to find him.
Durb was clearly not pleased to see him.
“Do you know how many staff have quit on me, today?” He demanded. “You’ve got to get a grip on this! I’ve lost nearly a third of my workforce!”
Chok refrained from asking just what Durb thought he could be doing about that. Arguments between management would not be helpful at this time.
“It’s a difficult day,” he said, diplomatically. “And we’re all doing our best. But I needed to ask you, Durb, have you seen that the Fourth’s blown up a freighter, the Demella Enterprise?”
Durb said a word. “That’s no loss,” he added. “The Dirty D should have been scuttled years ago. But they should have taken the cargo off, first!”
“Well, they’re just being as obnoxious and destructive as they possibly can, aren’t they?” Chok agreed. “But the point is, Durb, they did take some of the cargo off, one container, which they’re claiming contains another four crates from the same container of powdered almond, allegedly DPC.”
Durb said another word. “Look, I’ve checked.” He went on, aggressively. “That container came in on the Surehaul Logistics 239, right? It arrived here three months ago, manifested from Flancer, shipped from Akame Spice, fully documented as cindar. Nobody picked it up as a full container so after a month it was offered, routinely, to the crate traders, and bought by Arad Exports.”
Chok nodded. He understood that, at least. ISiS Corps allowed independent traders on their stations to refute Senate arguments that they had a near-total monopoly on intersystem trade. What that actually meant in practice was that ISiS Corps allowed small traders to buy anything they weren’t selling themselves. Often that meant buying a container load and breaking it down into crate cargo.
“Arad then broke that down to a hundred and twenty eight crates, right? He did remanifest them as almond which is a misdemeanour, not a crime – you get fined for it, not sent to prison.” Chok did not challenge this unusual definition of criminal activity, just nodded and looked attentive. “All spacers do it, you can’t sell them cindar unless it’s under a G-12, low tax manifest.” Durb said. “Arad has sold a hundred and eleven of those crates, right? Including the six the Fourth claim to have retrieved today. I have been in his warehouse with him and we have opened up all seventeen of the remaining crates, right? They contained cindar! Not DPC, not almond boxes, just normal packets of cindar in Akame Spice packaging. So you tell me how the Fourth claims to have found almond boxes full of DPC!”
He didn’t give Chok time to respond, but powered on, angrily, “They release one edited film of an alleged raid showing them using this alleged “nanoscanner” and finding almond packaging. After that, on other ships, they just poke the “scanner” at crates, say “yup, it’s DPC” and take it away! I’m telling you, and I’m telling you straight, they’re lying! There’s no such technology as a scanner that can read atomic structure through a cargo crate, and those crates have nothing but cindar in them.”
Chok felt a wave of relief pass through him, so strong it was like a physical energy. He’d known there couldn’t be any truth in what the Fourth was saying. Now, it all made sense. The Fourth, just as Chok had suspected, was a black ops unit. They’d been sent here by the Senate on a sabotage mission, to trash the station’s image and plant evidence of drug trafficking to give the Senate the excuse they needed for sequestration of ISiS Corps assets.
“We can prove that, then!” he said, and just for a moment had a wonderful vision of being able to show von Strada up as a dirty liar, with the media blazing out valediction of the station and all the tourists pouring back aboard. “Take the media to see those crates! Show them the proof!”
“We already did,” Durb said, with an annoyed look. “It was on the news!” he pointed out. “An hour ago!”
“Sorry, I’ve been in a meeting,” Chok said, feeling that Pallo had let him down on that one, not giving him a heads-up on something that important. “But if the media believes us now that those crates are cindar, why are they reporting the seizure of DPC from the Demella Enterprise?”
“Because they didn’t believe us,” Durb told him, bitterly. “The Fourth has played them perfectly, with the emotive pictures of the dead girl, a death with a personal connection to von Strada, no less, seizure footage straight out of a movie, and this mysterious “secret tech”. The fact that they’re so hostile to the media themselves is only making their pitch more convincing – as one of the journos said, it’s not like the Fourth is trying to win them over. And we are, we’re on our knees begging them to believe us, and that just doesn’t play with credibility to journos. All we could show them were crates full of cindar boxes. One of them actually said, to my face, that we could have put those boxes into the crates ourselves. And we had to destroy all the crates, of course, for quarantine.”
Chok almost cried out in his dismay. “You burned them?”
“We had no choice!” Durb snapped back. “Company rules! Absolute! Quarantine crate gets opened, it gets burned! Do you know how many people have died in plagues carried from space stations?”
Chok did know. It was a number than ran into millions. That was one of the things ISiS Corps made sure he knew, before he’d taken up his post. A deep space station was not only a meeting and exchange point for cargo and passengers from right across the League and beyond, but also for pathogens. Good housekeeping, here, meant making every possible effort to prevent viral, bacterial and fungal pathogens from spreading world to world, both in human carriers and in cargo. A virus that was a harmless throat infection on one world might be a deadly plague on another. Still, he wished that Durb had kept the opened crates in a quarantined area, just to have them as physical evidence of the Fourth’s dirty lying tricks.
“So that’s why you’ve been issuing so many spoiled-cargo dockets.” The words escaped him before he’d considered how Durb would react, before he’d even realised, himself, how suspicious and accusing the implication was.
Durb’s reaction was explosive. He realised at once that Chok had actually come down here to find out if he was destroying drugs, and told him, loud and strong, how he felt about that.
“Yes! I issued dockets for Arad! I asked him to open the crates! It’s not fair that he should stand the loss for that! It’s not fair that we should stand the loss for it either but I’m trying to do the right thing, here! Without, I might add, any support from you! I’m losing workforce like air in a blowout and taking a world of cack from the media and we’re getting hammered by spacers giving u
s hell over thinking we’ve slipped out dirty cargo on them, and you, you, you’re swanning about the resort faffing at HC! You want to come down here and get in on the sharp end, Mr Dayfield! And don’t you dare, don’t you dare,” he stabbed a finger at the managing director’s chest, “accuse me, even by implication, of having anything to do with dealing drugs! Now, you go back to your nice office and have a nice cup of tea. I’ve got work to do!”
Chok retreated, feeling dreadfully embarrassed. He felt resentful, too, of Director Torres, for having put him in that position, sending him down here to ask those questions.
Still, at least he had clear instructions from her. You must follow policy, she’d said, on the evidence presented.
Well, he had the evidence. Durb’s word was good enough for him. The media would be clamouring for a reaction statement to the destruction of the Demella Enterprise, and Chok was ready to give them one.
Nearly ready, anyway. He called Pallo Timmons, telling the PR director to organise a press conference in five minutes and to meet him in the back room. Pallo’s comm was set to voice-mail but Chok didn’t think anything of that, assuming that he was talking to journalists and would pick up his message within moments. He’d tagged it urgent priority, after all, which would buzz Pallo’s wristcom.
He was a little surprised, therefore, when he got to the media suite, to find that Pallo wasn’t there. The only staff in the back room were Ambit Persane and two admin assistants. Both were fielding calls from the media, giving a “no comment at this stage” response. One of them had clearly been crying.
“Where’s Mr Timmons?” Chok asked, feeling annoyed as he saw none of the preparations he’d expect for an imminent press conference. The back room was adjacent to the media conference room. It contained, amongst other things, a hair and makeup station and holo-surround mirrors for a final check on appearance before going out on camera. There should have been a stylist here to make sure he looked his best. Pallo should be here, too, to go through his statement with him.
“He’s on the Cartasay,” Ambit informed him. The Queen of Cartasay had only been in port three minutes before they’d informed their anxious passengers that they were welcome to stay aboard the liner, if they liked. Only seven passengers had ventured onto the station. They hadn’t stayed long. The resort was eerily deserted, now, and they’d been surrounded by journalists filming and bombarding them with questions, so they’d gone back to the liner. Pallo must, Chok thought, have gone over to the liner to attempt some personal reassurance and persuasion, trying to get at least some of them to come aboard the station. Then Ambit disillusioned him. “He quit,” he told the managing director, baldly.
Chok felt as if part of the floor had been yanked away from underneath him. Pallo Timmons had stepped up valiantly into the breach after the previous PR director had quit at the news that the Fourth was being sent here. He had been unfailingly supportive, someone Chok had really felt he could count on.
“He’s left the station?” Chok couldn’t believe that Pallo would have just gone, like that, without so much as a word to him.
“His exact words were, “I can’t do this any more.”” Ambit confirmed. “Then he just went. Most of the PR staff went with him. White Star and Red Line are now offering evacuee berths, setting up bunkrooms in their gyms.”
Chok stared at him. That did not even make sense to him. You’d have had to know something about starships to be aware that liners carried emergency kit, with the capacity to turn gyms and other leisure areas into bunkrooms in case they had to carry people evacuated from other ships or stations. He understood, though, that the liners were now taking staff from the station. They were not just the low grade service staff he’d assumed would be quitting, either. If even a member of the board had just walked off the station, anyone might go. His station was falling apart. How had this happened so fast? The Fourth’s arrival had been like a bomb going off.
“So…” he tried to pull himself together, to focus on what was most immediately important, “Who’s handling the media now, then?”
Ambit put up his hand, with a sardonic look.
Oh, great, Chok thought, with an inner sigh of despair. Outwardly, he managed a smile.
“Well, thank you for stepping up to that, Mr Persane,” he said, awarding the intern the dignity of a “Mr”. “It won’t be forgotten.”
Ambit’s expression answered it hadn’t better be, but he just nodded. Things could not, he felt, be working out better, at least for him. It would be a tremendous boost to his career with ISiS Corps to have stepped up to a key role in the midst of catastrophe, demonstrating both loyalty to the corporation and leadership in a crisis. It was not Chok’s gratitude he wanted, though. It was Head Office he was aiming to impress.
“Can you organise a press call, in five minutes?” Chok requested.
“Certainly,” said Ambit, and asked, “What are you going to say?”
Chok reminded himself that Ambit was now the acting PR director and entitled to ask that, not just a snotty intern being impertinent.
“I’m going to tell them that these alleged drug seizures are a fake, part of a dirty tricks smear campaign,” he said. “And this time, I’m going to say “outraged” and “disgusted.””
Chapter Ten
“Medical reports, skipper.” Rangi sat down at the table on the command deck. He had already filed reports to the log, but was evidently interpreting Alex’s request to let him know how the casualties were doing to mean a personal update. “Licia has concussion. She was clearly punched on the forehead and struck the back of her head on the deck as she went down, causing contra-coup concussion. She’ll be fine by the morning. She remembers Jame Jablenko hitting her as she tried to stop him firing the cannon, though she’s not in shape to make an official statement, yet. I’ve taken Jame Jablenko’s DNA off the injury to her forehead and hers off the knuckles of his right hand, though, which are also bruised. There’s more than enough there to charge him with assault. Zak had a panic attack – he’s sleeping now. I’m keeping them in sickbay overnight, but you’ll be able to see them in the morning. The other four, well…” he grimaced, shaking his head.
“Nutritionally, and generally, they’re all in poor condition. Whatever they were eating on that ship, I don’t think healthy options have been on the menu. Exercise certainly hasn’t. Jervais Clemens shows signs of long term depression and I want to give him a full psych work up. Dusty Davies is an alcoholic, of course. I’ve given him a detox and I’ll try to talk to him tomorrow about treatment options. Jame Jablenko has serious anger management issues and a long history of violent, abusive behaviour. I consider him a security risk both to us and to other prisoners, so he’s being held in isolation. Misha Simone is in the worst condition. She’s underweight and shows evidence of drug use. She’s coming down off a Float high, right now. That’s probably why she wasn’t as stunned as the others, chucking fire extinguishers around.”
Float, like all DPC derivatives, gave the user a hugely increased metabolism as well as a feeling of superhuman power. People under the influence of DPC might dance into traffic, throw themselves off buildings in the belief that they could fly or kill themselves in a hundred other ways simply by having no sense of danger. Or they could die slowly. Addicts just didn’t eat enough to sustain the super-burn metabolism DPC caused and usually died of a combination of malnutrition and organ failure caused by build up of toxins.
“I offered her detox,” Rangi told the skipper, “and she told me where to shove it.” He gave his considered medical opinion. “These people are seriously messed up, you know?”
Alex looked unmoved. “These people trafficked drugs that kill kids,” he said. “Two of them tried to kill our boarding parties. Unless you’re going to certify any of them as mentally incapable and not responsible for their actions, don’t expect any concern for them from me.”
Rangi considered trying to engage the skipper’s empathy with arguments about upbringing, abuse vi
ctims becoming abusers and the fragility of addictive personality types. Then he looked at the skipper’s steady grey eyes and decided against it.
“Well, all four of them are fit to be detained, anyway,” he said. “Mako will be fine, too, though they haven’t been feeding him properly, either.” He smiled brightly at the skipper, as Alex looked enquiringly at him. “I called the lizard Mako,” he explained, and commented, “I miss him.”
Alex couldn’t help but grin. Rangi meant Mako Ireson, the League Prisons Authority Inspector who’d gone out with them on the Might of Teranor patrol. He’d been invited to see for himself how the Fourth was operating as a rehab unit, as part of the Admiralty’s desperate efforts to address public outrage at what they believed was going on. Mako was no spacer, and his bewilderment at so much about life on starships had given the crew much innocent amusement. They’d liked him very much, though – he was a friendly guy, as happy to sit having a laugh on the mess deck as he was in the wardroom. He’d even taken a few days’ training to be able to help out in the galley.
“Mr Ireson was not a pet, Rangi,” Alex said, though he knew that Mako had been, really; their pet civilian.
He actually felt really bad at what had happened to Mako Ireson. Mako’s report on the operation of the Fourth had been detailed, accurate and glowing in its praise. It had been instantly dismissed as lies and propaganda by every campaign group protesting against the Fourth, with Mako himself accused of insulting their intelligence with a blatant cover-up. He had tried to settle back into his job as a prisons inspector. Alex was aware, though, that the next prison he’d been sent to inspect had objected to him “in the circumstances” because of his notoriety and publicity concerns. The LPA had pulled him off the inspection and given him backroom duties.
Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Page 14