Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  Alex went straight there, activating the desk as he went in. This room was on permanent record-mode. All public areas of the ship were continuously monitored by blind-recording cameras anyway, but the interview room had the same kind of full record systems as police interview facilities, with a warning notice on the wall stating that everything in that room was recorded and might be used in court. Other than that it was quite a pleasant little room, with padded chairs and a compact refreshment unit capable of making fresh coffee. Alex set it to grind and brew some beans and sat down, keeping half an eye on watch screens while reading through the profile Sam had called up on the Customs officer.

  His expression was not impressed, either when he was looking at the ships or the profile of their CO. Customs patrol ships were rather smaller even than Fleet gunboats. They were intended for rapid searching and patrols in the immediate vicinity of inhabited systems, rarely going more than a week away from their home port. The Fleet had no great opinion of them as starships, considering them over-gunned for their size and operationally next to useless. The Fleet did not think much of the way Customs ranked their officers, either. Fleet ships of that size would be commanded by Lts, called “skipper” only by courtesy. If three of them were on assignment together the senior officer might be of commander or shipmaster rank, but certainly no higher. Customs, however, ranked the CO of their patrol ships as “Skipper” and the officer commanding a patrol-trio as “Captain”. Most people in the Fleet considered this pretentious, since captain was a flag rank, carrier or real squadron command in the Fleet. It was a long-standing grievance between the services that the Fleet refused to acknowledge Customs captains as ranking any higher than their own junior skippers.

  If Captain Stefan Ternalt was anything like other Customs officers Alex had encountered, that issue of rank-equivalence would be a touchy one. It was possible even that the Customs officer might consider himself senior to Alex. He was, after all, nearly twenty years older and had been a captain for a lot longer than Alex had been a skipper.

  He certainly wasn’t hanging about. A shuttle detached from the leading patrol ship and came straight to their number seven airlock. Sub-lt Arie McKenna had been woken up to see him aboard. It was, perhaps, a little pompous to do that. In other circumstances Alex might have set formalities aside and met the captain at the airlock himself. His previous experience with Customs, however, made him feel it to be important to establish his authority from the outset.

  He knew that had been a good decision when Arie McKenna tapped on the door and showed their visitor in.

  “Captain Tenalt to see you, sir,” she introduced him.

  The two men eyed one another appraisingly. Alex saw a big, broad shouldered man with an air of self-importance mixed with irritation. He was wearing the overly-smart uniform Customs dressed their people in aboard ship. The blazer-style jacket and wide-leg pants wouldn’t score highly either for comfort or practicality in freefall. The jacket had gold epaulettes and enough shiny insignia to put even a liner captain to shame. Alex’s plain grey coveralls and skipper’s pips looked very unimpressive in comparison. Captain Tenalt even looked a little annoyed as he surveyed him, as if he felt that the skipper should have made more of an effort for their meeting.

  “Captain,” Alex got up courteously to offer his hand. Captain Tenalt shook it with an air of getting an unpleasant duty out of the way. Neither man smiled. “Thank you, Ms McKenna,” Alex nodded dismissal and Arie gave a brisk yap of “Sir!” and departed.

  “Please, sit down,” Alex invited, waving the Customs officer to a seat. “Can I offer you a drink? Coffee?”

  That was his effort towards establishing friendly relations. The usual practice in formal meetings was for him to send for a steward to bring refreshments. With a dispenser right there, though, that would have been more than a bit ostentatious. The captain might already be feeling a little slighted at being brought aboard through a low-status backdoor airlock and met by a mere Sub-lt. Offering a coffee might not go very far towards off-setting hundreds of years of inter-service rivalries, but it was the best Alex could do.

  “No thank you,” Captain Tenalt sat down, a little tone of resentment in his voice. Because Customs ships were not intended for anything more than short patrols around home systems, they had very limited catering facilities. Drinks were made by adding water to highly compacted tablets. Coffee was thin, with a powdery texture and a chemical aftertaste. They certainly didn’t run to freshly ground beans. Captain Tenalt’s mouth was watering just at the scent of the brewing coffee, but sheer pride prompted an immediate refusal. He would not give Alex the satisfaction of conceding the Fourth’s superiority even in something as trivial as that.

  “As you wish.” Alex got himself a mug anyway, placing it neatly onto the green grav-safe ring on the desk as he sat down. “So,” he said, unsmiling but polite, “what’s the urgency, Captain?”

  He expected the Customs officer to produce a high security data-disc at that point, handing over whatever information it was he was so keen to deliver. The captain, however, just gave him a hard look.

  “The urgency,” he said, “is that we have been informed in encounters with shipping leaving Karadon that you have offered some manner of amnesty to any ships found to have drugs aboard. We have also been told that you have found drugs aboard several ships and have given them some kind of form of indemnity against prosecution. As the senior Customs officer on scene I have not been notified of the Fourth being given any such authority, so I felt it to be imperative to ascertain the true nature of the situation as a matter of urgency. Can you, therefore, either assure me that you are not issuing such indemnities, or show me the authority under which you are doing so?”

  Alex gazed at him in silence for several seconds, then picked up his coffee and drank some of it. Anger was boiling in him as he understood that the Customs officer had come charging into the system, challenging him. Outwardly, however, he remained icily calm.

  “Tell me, Captain,” he said. “Have you received orders from Customs and Excise on Therik to keep at least three days’ distance from Karadon while we are on operations here?”

  Captain Tenalt met him glare for glare.

  “As the senior Customs officer on scene,” he stated, “I have the authority to supersede such orders at my own discretion.”

  “In the case of emergency or in order to deliver mission-vital information, yes,” said Alex, who knew the orders the other officer had received. “But not to question my operational decisions. Your orders, from the highest level, are to give us your full cooperation, yes?”

  “Cooperation,” said the Customs officer, darkly, “is a two-way street. I don’t see any cooperation in us being told to stay out of the system and not even informed about your intentions. We have been patrolling this sector for years. I personally have been the officer responsible for patrolling this sector, with very little assistance from the Fleet, for much of the last eight years. And now I’m told that you’re granting amnesties to drug smugglers, which we’ve been told nothing about? There are stories, too, that you’re finding these drugs with some new technology we haven’t been informed about. We are the lead agency in dealing with intersystem drug smuggling and it is an outrage that we’re not being fully informed and involved in these operations.”

  “You were the lead agency here,” Alex corrected. “This operational zone has now been handed over to the Fourth, with all operations here under my direction. That was done, in part, at the request of Customs and Excise HQ on Chartsey – your top brass, in fact, put in official requests for the Fourth to be assigned. I am acting under orders that you have no right to see. Nor do you have the necessary security clearance to be told about the technology we are deploying. Furthermore…”

  “Now wait a minute!” Captain Tenalt interrupted, “Are you questioning my security status?”

  “You have seven ack beta clearance,” Alex said coldly. “There is a nine ack alpha bar for disclosure of
both operational plans and the classified technology we are using. You are, therefore, not entitled to be told about either. Furthermore, your arrival in the system, in direct contravention of your orders, is disruptive to our mission. We have been to a lot of effort to secure the trust and support of the spacer community here, and your appearance on the scene will destabilise that.”

  Captain Tenalt bridled indignantly.

  “Now look here!” he protested, “I’ve been patrolling this sector for the better part of a decade! You’re not telling me anything about the “spacer community” here. They’re lying, thieving scum with zero respect for the law or its officers! And whatever deal you’ve got going on with them, I need to be satisfied that these indemnities you’re offering are legitimate, otherwise it will be my plain duty to investigate and arrest any ship found to have had drugs aboard, irrespective of any so-called “indemnity” they may have!”

  Alex considered the amount of damage it would do to his plans to have Customs lurking there, pouncing on any ship that was found to have drugs aboard and disregarding the Fourth’s indemnity. He wanted to tell the infuriating captain where to get off, to slap written orders on him to get out of port immediately and to tell him, too, exactly how much trouble he would be in if he messed up Fourth’s operations here.

  Just as those words were forming in his mind, however, he remembered the First Lord’s remarks on the subject of working with Customs.

  “They’re bound to be touchy,” he’d said, matter of factly. “Of course they want the problem sorted, and the top brass recognise that you’re the best chance of achieving that. But it’s humiliating for the people in the field, so try to keep them on-side if you can.”

  Alex would be the first to admit that he was not good at public relations. He’d include dealing with other services under that heading, too. He had no patience with fools and considered that many Customs officers were in that category, authoritarian, autocratic and even more rule-obsessed than the Fleet’s Old School contingent. Joint operations with them rarely went well, with poor communications often cited as a reason for failure. Customs blamed the Fleet for not giving them the support they felt they were entitled to. The Fleet blamed Customs for having completely unrealistic expectations. Both sides accused the other of failures in security, with strong hints both ways that they believed someone somewhere was betraying information to the drug cartels. Alex himself did not believe that the Customs patrols here had achieved as much as he felt they could have, given the years they’d been on scene. He certainly was not about to make Captain Tenalt privy to any sensitive or classified information. Perhaps, though, there might be another way to get his cooperation.

  “All right,” he got up and disposed of his partly drunk coffee. Years of life aboard ship had taught him never to leave clutter around. “Come with me,” he said, and it was not a request.

  The captain followed him out of the office, looking suspicious and a bit confused.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not far.” Alex took him through the security hatchway that sealed off that sector, straight down the nearest ladderway, and through another high security hatch. “This is our forensics department,” he informed the Customs officer.

  Captain Tenalt looked surprised as he saw that they were in a small but well equipped lab, not something you’d normally expect to find aboard a Fleet warship. Another heavy, locked hatchway was ahead of them, with notices on it reading Forensics Store, Quarantine Zone: Observe Clean Room Protocols and Authorised Personnel Only.

  Alex led the Customs officer into the first of the double airlock, taking a clean room suit from a dispenser and indicating that his guest should do the same.

  “Why are we going in here?” Captain Tenalt demanded.

  “Because I want to show you something,” Alex replied. He suited up and waited for the few seconds it took for Captain Tenalt to do the same. Once their suits were sealed, they stood through the first decontamination wash, stepped through into the second airlock and waited again for a second set of sprays, air-blasts and scans. Then the internal hatch opened and they stepped through into the store.

  Captain Tenalt caught his breath. It was more of a hold than a storeroom, with individual high security bays locked off under quarantined seals. Crates were stacked inside them, two to a bay. Captain Tenalt’s eyes tracked from bay to bay, seeing not only the number of crates but the big sticker-seals across their doors, announcing their contents. There were eleven crates full of DPC. In other bays there were another two crates and three half-crates declared to contain illegal toxies.

  The captain had never seen so many drugs in his life, let alone all in one place.

  “What the…” he walked forward as if dazed, staring at the crates in the nearest bay. The labelling said that it contained just under a hundred and thirty kilos of DPC cut with narcal. “Is this for real?” He turned to the skipper, incredulous.

  Alex nodded.

  “We took the first crate from a freighter called the Fancy Free,” he explained. “This one came from the Gentala and this from a crewman on the Might of Ferajo. These four were seized from the Demella Enterprise. We found these four,” he indicated another two bays, “yesterday. The freighter had already left Karadon before we arrived. Hearing from a liner that we were chasing down cargos of powdered almond bought from Leo Arad, however, they turned around and came back so that we could check them.

  “The skippers of those ships volunteered to be searched, even when we have no grounds for issuing a search warrant, because they trust us and our promise of indemnity for the crew of any ship assisting us with finding these shipments. Look around you, Captain. We have been here for less than a week and have made nine seizures of drugs, totalling nearly a ton and a half of DPC and half a ton of toxies.”

  Captain Tenalt took this in and said nothing. His expression was clear to see beneath the bubble helmet of his clean suit, though, and it was apparent that he was impressed.

  “We have also,” said Alex, “got that station under such strong embargo that liner passengers are not even going aboard it any more. Red Line and White Star have evacuated everyone from it now and worked out a system between them for accommodating passengers waiting for transfer to other ships. Almost all the staff have left, too. They barely have enough people left on the station to keep it operating. Stress levels on that station are so high that Chokran Dayfield had to excuse himself from a press conference yesterday, almost in tears as he demanded that we present our evidence against Leo Arad and the others we’re accusing. The real hard cases are dug in, of course, determined to hold out. I believe, though, that there are people on that station with detailed knowledge of Landorn Cartel operations who may crack and turn state’s evidence. The only reason we are able to keep that pressure up is because they’re not sure just how far our orders allow us to go or what we might be capable of.

  “That dynamic changes immediately another authority appears on the scene. The situation becomes confused and they will see some hope of attempting to either get you to take sides with them or playing us off one against the other. I need, do you see, a clear field. I also need the full trust of the spacers, both the ones here now and those coming into port. Your presence, as someone they know very well is hostile to them, will make them uneasy and that may well affect, very directly, their willingness to allow us aboard their ships to search for drugs. If you were to announce your intention of disregarding our amnesty and arresting any ships we’d found drugs aboard, that cooperation would cease immediately. Do, please, look around you again, Captain.”

  Captain Tenalt did so, though his eyes went back to Alex’s calm, steady gaze.

  “You’ve really done all that, in a week?”

  “Yes,” Alex said, simply. “And I believe we have a good chance here not only of rooting out the drugs gang on Karadon but of bringing evidence home that may give us something on the Landorn Cartel. I can assure you that I do have authority to issue the ind
emnities I have, though the nature of my orders is so restricted because of the involvement of intelligence agencies that I am unable to show them to you. I can also assure you that the nanoscanner technology we are using to search for drugs is real. We are working with the Second Fleet Irregulars to field-test it, here. Again, it is classified beyond your level of clearance and even if you had nine ack alpha clearance, frankly, you’d need special clearance from the Second themselves before you could be brought in on any details of its operation. All I can do is to ask you to look at what we’ve achieved so far and give us both your trust and your cooperation.”

  Captain Tenalt did not recognise that as a textbook approach from the “Engaging Support From Other Organisations” module in the Fleet’s Public Relations course. He just nodded. What Alex said made sense. The concrete evidence of what they’d achieved already was right there in front of him. He could not, he recognised, get in the way of this.

  “Well, you’ve got to admit, it’s extraordinary,” he said, a little defensive now over having come storming into the system demanding explanations.

  Alex gave a light, noncommittal shrug.

  “Extraordinary problems demand extraordinary solutions,” he observed. Then he gestured at the hatchway. “So, would you like that coffee, now?”

  Captain Tenalt nodded assent and they left the forensics store together. Alex said nothing as they went back through quarantine procedures, de-suited and headed back to the interview room. The Customs officer, he felt, had a lot to think about.

  He was right about that. When they got back to the interview room the captain sat down and looked at him, warily defensive.