Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  At the end of twenty five minutes he’d drunk two alcohol-free cocktails and the score was standing at thirty two “isn’t it awful”, seventeen “It’s about time the League did something about that station,”, forty three “We should have been told about this, it’s ruined our cruise!”, eighteen “Did you really blow that freighter up?” and nine “It’s a disgrace!” with wide variance in exactly what the speakers considered disgraceful. He had also been asked, timidly, if it was really true that he only let his crew eat if they passed drill tests. One gruff old gentleman of the retired army-type barked at him.

  “What are you doing here, eh? Off drinking cocktails while your ship is operational! Not the thing, what?”

  Alex looked straight back at him, deadpan.

  “It’s a PR exercise,” he said, and heard Quill behind him, spluttering.

  Even worse than that, though, was his meeting with Marto. The chef had indeed been provided with quarters on the liner, along with his Army. Marto had apparently attended the reception for Alex for the sole purpose of embracing him tearfully and kissing him on both cheeks.

  “It is a noble thing you do,” Marto declared, “to hunt down the killers of that poor child, and so many others like her! You are a hero, Captain von Strada! I salute you! You may come to my restaurant at any time, and I will cook for you, wonders and marvels!”

  Alex maintained his composure, resolutely ignoring Quill’s broad grin.

  “Thank you,” he said, “though I’m only a skipper, you know, not a captain.”

  Then, just as he thought that the ordeal was coming to an end, the captain having promised she wouldn’t keep him there for more than a quarter of an hour, the captain tapped on her glass, calling for silence.

  Oh no, Alex thought, as she embarked upon a speech. He just had to stand there, though, as it went on, and on. Captain Giscard used the words “finest traditions of the Fleet” three times and stressed, repeatedly, White Star’s long history of close links with the Fleet.

  “White Star is proud to have played our small part in the Fourth’s seizure of more than sixteen tons of drugs from the Might of Teranor, too.” She said. “Our ship, the Empress of Canelon, encountered them during that patrol and was able to carry mail for them back to Chartsey and to provide them with some supplies.”

  That had been a five minute passing encounter, of no significance at all.

  “I know that you have been disappointed of your expected visit to Karadon,” the Captain pressed on, “and many of you have been put to inconvenience. But I’m sure that Skipper von Strada will join me in thanking you for your patience, understanding and cooperation with these vital operations to prevent quantities of lethal drugs from reaching our streets.”

  Alex took the hint and thanked them. His public speaking skills had not improved greatly, however, so it was a rather wooden, formulaic thank-you. The Captain then called for a toast. Everyone there drank, with some relief, to “The League”, the Captain diplomatically not asking for people to drink either to the Fourth or to Alex.

  Alex thanked her and made his escape. He did not, however, make a bolt for lunch with Quill. It had not escaped his attention that most of the people he’d been introduced to at that reception were first class passengers. The few exceptions were quite obviously professional, articulate people, no doubt very good at complaining, who’d been invited to keep them sweet. If he was going to do this as a PR exercise, Alex felt, there were other people he’d very much rather talk to than these.

  “Would it be possible to visit your emergency quarters, to have a few words with people there?” he asked the Captain. She looked dubious. The words “security issue” were hovering in the air between them. Buzz had made thorough preparation for Alex’s visit, ensuring that no journalists would be allowed aboard the liner while he was there, that no crowds would be allowed to gather around him and security would be tight. On the other hand, Alex must know what was safe for him.

  “I think some of them may be, uh, rather, um…” she looked at him apologetically, “vocal.”

  “Don’t worry,” Alex said, with a dry note, “I’m used to that.”

  “I’ll look after him, ma’am,” Quill promised. The Captain acquiesced, nodding briefly to another member of her crew who saluted acknowledgement. She and stayed to look after her own guests at the cocktail party, while Quill took Alex to the Starlight Lounge, followed by the silent, watchful crewman.

  The Queen of Cartasay had been able to take on nearly a thousand extra passengers. It helped that bookings were down so they’d had some spare capacity to start with. They also had some tricks up their sleeve like sliding cabin walls a few centimetres to squeeze in a few more, and adding more bunks into economy class cabins to double them up to four sharing. Beyond that, they’d filled a gym with flimsy-looking stacks of bunks, inflatable lockers and micro-thin sleeping bags. The emergency passengers ate in the same restaurants as the others, though with a sitting system introduced so they were allocated a time to go for their meals. They could also use some of the leisure facilities, again on a ticketing system to make it fair.

  White Star’s notions of “fair”, however, prioritised fare-paying passengers over the emergency ones. For the most part, all the evacuees had to do was to hang around in the bunkroom, walk around the Promenade or gather in the Starlight Lounge, which had been set aside for their use.

  “We are trying to lay on entertainment in there too, but we’re a bit stretched,” Quill admitted. “Some of them are starting to regret coming aboard, even talking about going back onto the station.”

  Alex nodded. He’d picked up that vibe from liner captains calling to tell the Fourth that their passengers were asking how much longer this was likely to go on for, and just how much risk they would be at if they went aboard the station for a while. He understood that, too. Most of the arriving passengers would have been aboard ship for weeks, looking forward to their stay at Karadon as a highlight of their trip. Now they were stuck on the ship with a whole load more people making the ship feel very crowded. If there was nothing happening on the station, many of them would feel that it might be worth the risk just to go back aboard for a bit. People who’d joined the stampede to evacuate the station might be re-evaluating their position, too, as things calmed down.

  Captain Giscard was wrong about them being vocal, at least to begin with. Dead silence fell as they saw that Alex von Strada was amongst them. The last of them to realise that was a man standing with his back to them, continuing to chat until the combination of the silence and someone tugging at his elbow made him turn, look, and gulp.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” said Alex. Then a kid caught his eye. There’d been quite a few kids on the station, some travelling with their families and others who’d lived there with their parents. One of them was a pretty girl of about the same age his own daughter would have been. She had a sweet face, with light brown hair and Princess Paige-Louise on her t-shirt, along with a lot of sparkly pink stars. She’d wriggled through to the front of the crowd and was staring at Alex in breathless excitement.

  “I just wanted to thank you,” Alex said, dragging his attention back to the adults, “for your continuing patience. I appreciate that many of you have left jobs and homes aboard the station. You have, believe me, made a very good decision.”

  “Why don’t you just go aboard and get the so-and-sos!” one of the braver evacuees demanded, with a chorus of support from all around.

  “Sorry,” Alex said. “The station is not League territory, you see.” He did feel sorry for these people. They were almost all ordinary working people who’d had to abandon most of their belongings on the station along with their jobs and homes there. They were now facing long, uncomfortable journeys to an uncertain future.

  “Just shoot the swine!” said a nearby woman. She wore a cheap suit and plastic jewellery. “Shoot them down like the vermin they are!” she demanded. That got applause, as well as choral agreement.


  “Even if we could do that,” Alex said, “it would not solve the problem. We need to address the issues that have enabled the station to be used for drug trafficking in the first place, and to seek evidence proving that it is, as we suspect, the Landorn cartel behind it.”

  “But even if you take them out, there are a hundred more gangs on Dortmell who’d fight to take over their territories,” one of the passengers argued. “The only way you’ll ever deal with the drug problem is to suspend Dortmell from the League and put in a government backed up by a peacekeeping force to sort out the cartels.”

  Alex remembered his meeting with the League President, and very nearly smiled.

  “I believe it is felt,” he said, “that invading one of our own worlds with an occupying force may be just a little unconstitutional.”

  Some of the more intelligent passengers nodded at that, but most of them were too angry and upset.

  “Well, something’s got to be done!” the opinionated one declared. “And if the real problem’s on Dortmell, what are you doing here?”

  “We’re doing what we’ve been tasked to do,” Alex replied. “We’re stopping ISiS Karadon being used to traffic tons of drugs across the League.”

  “Is it going to take you much longer, do you think?” An anxious woman asked. “Only, this ship is leaving in a couple of days, do you see? If there is any chance you’re going to get it sorted out soon, some of us would transfer to another ship and stay here, to go back to work when we can. I work for Leisure, see, and they’re not involved in the drug thing, are they?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, no.” Alex confirmed. “It seems to be centred in Freight.” That got a lot of reaction with people telling one another that they’d known that all along. “I would not advise you to go back aboard, though,” Alex said, with a very serious note. “The situation there is unpredictable and we are dealing with some very dangerous people. You did, believe me, make the right decision when you left. I can not, however, tell you how much longer our operations here may take. It may be days, weeks, months.” He held up his hands in an apologetic gesture as that got groans of dismay. “There are factors beyond my control.”

  “Can’t you just blow it up?” Asked Princess Paige-Louise, hopefully. “I bet it’d blow up really good!”

  Alex considered for a moment, imagining the spectacle of the space station blasting apart.

  “I bet it would, too,” he agreed, with an appreciative note. “But, you know, we’re really not allowed to go around just blowing stuff up.”

  The kid looked disappointed.

  “You could at least blow up the school,” she implored, and was hastily shushed by her mother.

  Alex gave Princess Paige-Louise a look that was straight-faced but with such a gleam of amusement in his eyes that the kid grinned back broadly. Quill cracked up laughing, too. As they left the Starlight Lounge a few minutes later, he saw Alex slip the signet ring off his finger and pass it to the girl.

  “There you go, Princess,” he said. “Souvenir.”

  People were gathering around to look at it as the skipper left. It was a gold, coin-sized circle with the Fleet emblem in the middle, Cadet Officer Alexis Sean von Strada engraved around the top part and Top Cadet, Class of 2260 around the bottom.

  “You were just so much better with them than you were at the reception,” Quill observed, with a teasing look, once they were in a g-porter.

  “Well, I feel for them,” Alex admitted. “I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for first class passengers deprived of the opportunity to go duty free shopping. Ordinary people having to run from jobs and homes, though, that’s another matter.”

  Quill considered attempting to persuade him that many passengers saved up for years to afford a cruise like this and deserved some sympathy too, but decided against it.

  “We’ll do our best to look after them,” he promised, then, in quite a different tone, “Though, speaking of “looking after”…” He glanced over his shoulder at the quiet, watchful crewman who was continuing to follow them. “Have you been introduced to George, yet?” Quill enquired, brightly, and carried straight on, explaining, “George is my personal bodyguard, isn’t that nice? The skipper has insisted on him going with me everywhere because somebody,” he gave Alex a hard look, “called her and told her that my life is at risk and I should not be allowed out in public unprotected.”

  Alex gave a little grin, but was unrepentant.

  “Good for her,” he said. “When I saw the security evaluation on you, I seriously considered taking you into protective custody myself.”

  Quill started to laugh, realised that Alex wasn’t joking, and looked disconcerted.

  “Oh.” he said. “Really?”

  “Really,” Alex confirmed, with a wry glance. “I did tell you, Quill,” he reminded him.

  Quill couldn’t deny it. Alex had told him very directly in one of their calls that intel from the station showed that the drug gang there did believe him to be a Fleet Intel agent. Once he’d got Quill to stop laughing he had tried to tell him that the gang actually believed that Quill had been instrumental in obtaining information about their drug trafficking and passing that to Alex, despite the fact that the Queen of Cartasay had only arrived at the station days after the Fourth had already begun their operations. Alex had told him that he had to be extremely careful and take all sensible precautions to protect himself.

  Somehow, though, Quill had not taken that seriously when it was just him and Alex chatting on a comline. Now, in person, with a much clearer sense of how serious Alex himself was about it, it sank in that he really was a potential target.

  “I’m really sorry,” Alex said. “Being friends with me is liable to bring you into a whole world of grief.”

  Quill grinned again at that. He had already had to cope with a barrage of people asking him to justify things that they believed the Fourth was doing. One passenger had even asked him how he could call an evil human-rights abusing psychopath like von Strada his friend. He was, Quill knew, going to be spending a good deal of his time in future, standing up for Alex. He would be proud to do so, too.

  “I’ll cope,” he said. “But – did my calling you cause this, then?”

  “No, it would have come out anyway,” Alex said. He’d been concerned about that, too, whether his decision to take Quill’s call had put his friend in danger. “You had, I gather, already told people on this ship that you knew me, right?”

  “Well, yes.” Quill admitted.

  “And anyone with access to a Fleet Almanac would be able to find out that we were cadets together,” Alex pointed out. “The media would have been on to that one within hours, no matter what we did, and it would have looked even more suspicious if we were trying to pretend we’re not friends.”

  “Oh, well,” Quill said, philosophically. They were approaching a cabin door as they talked, Quill slowing as they came to it. “This is me,” he said, unnecessarily since the door displayed a name tag showing Second Officer J Quilleran. “Thank you, George,” he said, with an unmistakeable note of dismissal to the crewman. When he hesitated, glancing at Alex, Quill fixed him in a Look. “You do not need to protect me from Skipper von Strada,” he pointed out. “So unless you want to come in and check for bombs under the bed or gunmen in the lavatory again, go and have your own lunch.”

  “Sir,” the crewman said, with a little grin.

  Quill showed Alex into his quarters.

  “Seriously, do you have to go through that kind of rigmarole?” he queried.

  “You do not know the half of it,” said Alex, with some feeling now that they were alone together. He indicated his uniform. “Bullet proof lining,” he told him. “Orders from on high. I also have to go armed at all times in public and have a bodyguard-driver, groundside. There was a security scare at Therik. It turned out to be only some nutter with a fake gun, but it put the wind up Admiral Norris and he insisted on slapping me onto high security. Between the drug lor
ds out for revenge for the Might of Teranor seizure and trying to stop me coming out here and the nut-job campaigners who believe I’m either torturing my crew or letting convicted killers run amok in society, I am considered to be something of a security risk. Anyone in Fourth’s uniform may be targeted, come to that. That’s one of the reasons they gave us our base. This is nice,” he added, politely, seeing that Quill was waiting for a reaction to his quarters.

  It certainly was nice. White Star always made sure their crew quarters were excellent – for one thing that attracted a higher calibre of crew and for another it looked good in the many programmes filmed about shipboard life. The Second Officer’s quarters had a bunk, small sofa and a diminutive dining table. It was smartly decorated and had a large holowindow, currently showing a beach view with rolling waves and wheeling seabirds.

  “I’m sharing it just now,” Quill gestured to a second bunk that had been folded up to the wall. “We were asked to double up, to give as many cabins as we could to families with kids. But lord, Alex,” he was looking at his friend with deep concern, now, “What have you got yourself into?”

  “Nothing I regret,” Alex said, and meant it. He sat down at the table, at Quill’s inviting gesture. “I can’t even say I regret the publicity,” he told him. “It seemed catastrophic at the time, and we genuinely did, all of us, do everything we could to try to explain that it was all a misunderstanding and we just weren’t doing any of the things people were accusing us of. Later though, we all started to realise that that publicity, that reputation, was, well, useful. I can’t go into details, but there’s no doubt that we were given the information we were about the Teranor’s drug cache because of the publicity over our taking on parolees. The Senate and the Admiralty saw the potential in that, straight away. What happened with the Lucinde on the way to Therik only confirmed it – even just the sight of us was enough to freak them out so much they instantly confessed to having drugs aboard.

  “It’s a delicate matter, of course – I mean, ethically, we are all obliged to keep telling the media and campaign groups the truth about the Fourth, so we can’t actually lie, or as the politicians say, “actively misinform the public”. But none of us is losing sleep over the fact that we tell the truth and put the evidence for it out there, but people won’t believe it. Anyway, the storm of outrage and conspiracy theory doesn’t upset us as much as you might think. It’s unfortunate that innocent and well-meaning members of the public are upset, of course, but the important thing is that we’re frightening the cack out of drug dealers and that’s helping us to protect the public from them. I can live with the yelling, spitting and security risks, to achieve that.”