Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  Alex looked instinctively at Kalvin Geovane. He looked the part of the CEO of a major intersystem corporation, a man very used to giving commands.

  “Is this true?” Alex asked him, suspecting that he was being set up with some prank, here.

  “Hey!” Davie-Boy North Delaney whistled through his teeth and gestured imperatively for Alex to return his attention to him. “Talk to me, not to Kal,” he told the skipper, with a note of some reproof. “I’m his boss.”

  The CEO was carefully expressionless at that. However he might feel at having this kid as his company’s majority shareholder, his expression remained firmly controlled. He did, however, incline his head very slightly, confirming that what the boy said was true.

  Alex went and sat down. He was a little amused when neither Martine Fishe nor Jonty Michaels came and sat down with him. Instead, they took up position standing behind his sofa, perhaps unconsciously mirroring the way his retinue was standing around the kid. Most of his attention, though, was on the owner of ISiS Corps. So, okay, not an elderly recluse with a fear of germs, then. Alex was wondering if the boy was even old enough to be acting on his own behalf – if he was under fourteen then even if he owned the shares, an adult Trustee would have to administer them until he came of age.

  “I am,” the boy said, apparently reading that question in Alex’s silent scrutiny, “fourteen.”

  He didn’t look it, but Alex decided not to make an issue of that. Everyone else in this room was very evidently accepting this boy as the ISiS Corps Shareholder. Alex had not missed the name “Delaney” in his introduction, either. Admiral Smith had mentioned that the Founding Families had so much intermarriage between the descendants of the original families that their family trees resembled mangrove swamp. It seemed likely that this boy was some relation to Andrei Delaney.

  “All right,” Alex said, calmly. “So, you asked what I’ve done to your station...” as the Shareholder regarded him expectantly, Alex duly explained. “No member of the Fourth has been aboard ISiS Karadon. Nor have we targeted weapons on it or made any threats to board it. All we have done is to search ships in orbit, in all cases but that of the Demella Enterprise at the request of the ships concerned, and advised people to evacuate the station for their own safety. The fact of the matter is, Mr North Delaney, that Karadon has become…”

  He broke off as the boy raised a hand, with a pained look.

  “Mr North,” he corrected. “My father is Mr Delaney. And you don’t need to tell me what the facts of the matter are. I got Zelda’s report before my father got Bella’s. My father owned ISiS Corps to that point. However, when we discovered what had been going on here he gave the shares to me, along with full authority to resolve the situation however I see fit.”

  “Ah,” said Alex. He was beginning to make sense of things now, though he couldn’t help wondering what kind of man would hand over control of an intersystem corporation to his fourteen year old son at all, let alone at a point where it emerged that at least one of their stations had been effectively taken over by an extremely dangerous drugs cartel. “So Zelda, I gather…”

  “…works for me, yes,” said Davie-Boy North, with just a trace of impatience. “Both she and Bella tell me that you’re brilliant,” he added, surveying Alex with a rather unflattering doubt, then glancing to the side. Belassa Torres, Alex realised, was one of the people standing in attendance. She looked coolly unemotional. “Sure about that, Bella?” There was a hint of teasing in his voice, though which of them he was teasing was difficult to judge.

  “Yes, Mr North,” her response was bland, but definite.

  “Well, all right,” the teenage tycoon conceded, “though he seems a bit slow on the uptake to me.” He looked back at Alex, speculatively. “So,” he said, “having handed my station over to a gang of armed drug dealers, what do you intend to do about it?”

  Alex studied him thoughtfully. There was something definitely odd about this boy. It wasn’t merely his assurance and the way that all these important adults were deferring to him like a court around an imperious young prince. Those dark eyes were intelligent and strangely compelling. Even though he appeared to be relaxed, one foot crossed negligently over his knee, there was a sense of tremendous energy in him, as if he might leap up at any moment.

  “Well, it’s your station, Mr North,” Alex pointed out. “What do you intend to do about it?”

  Davie-Boy North burst out laughing. He gave Alex a much friendlier look, at that, and a nod of acknowledgement as from one sportsman to another.

  “You’re all right,” he commented, and with an air of bestowing a great favour, “You can call me Davie. And it’s Alex, right?”

  “I prefer,” said Alex, “Skipper von Strada.” He paused for just a moment and then added, deliberately, “Mr North.”

  “Snubbed!” Davie declared, though he was clearly more amused by that than offended. It was interesting though, Alex felt, how many of his retinue were holding their breath in that slight pause between the skipper’s snub and Davie’s laughter. “I shall call you Captain,” Davie informed him, graciously. “Work with me on this and it will be Captain von Strada.”

  Alex gave a brief, dry smile, the only outward indication of his hilarity at that.

  “I do not,” he observed, “require your assistance to make captain, Mr North.” The First Lord would have made him a captain already – doing so would certainly have made things easier in giving him a base and such an important operational command – but Fleet regulations did not allow for any officer, however brilliant, to achieve the flag rank of captain until they’d served a minimum of five years at shipmaster rank. It would be another eleven months before Alex became eligible.

  “No, I don’t suppose you do,” Davie observed. “So, what can I offer you, then? Wealth beyond your wildest dreams? Name the enemy you want publicly humiliated? One of the new Dart commands?”

  He spoke as if he was offering Alex his choice of temptations, of rewards for cooperating with him. The word Alex would have used was bribes. And, tempting as it was to contemplate the mental image of Third Lord Admiral Jennar suffering whatever creative humiliation this kid could come up with, Alex did not consider any of those suggestions for a moment.

  “If we could please be serious,” he requested, though he knew, really, that Davie North was being perfectly serious, though it might be debatable whether he could actually pull strings to get the Fourth one of the new Dart destroyers.

  “Okay.” Seeing that Alex von Strada’s reputation for incorruptibility was well deserved, Davie chuckled. “Just a cup of tea, then,” he said. He gave no other order and didn’t even glance at his retinue, but a white-jacketed steward came forward at once with a hospitality trolley.

  Alex accepted the tea. Bizarre as this situation was, he had to establish some kind of working relationship with this strange youth. No refreshment was offered to any of Davie North’s retinue, not even to the ISiS Corps CEO. Nor was it offered to Martine or Jonty. Alex decided not to make an issue of that. Instead he just said thank you to the steward who set a tray down on the table in front of him. As well as a beautiful porcelain tea set there was a three tier cake stand with an array of fancies. They had obviously been crafted by a professional patissier. An identical tray was set in front of Davie North. He sat forward, hitching up his other leg so that he sat cross-legged on the sofa, contemplating the cake stand for a moment and then selecting an elaborate strawberry tart.

  Alex just sipped the tea. It was an unfamiliar kind but pleasantly refreshing. Seeing him drink it, Davie smiled at him with evident approval. Alex sensed that trust was being established, here. It also felt important not to rush this, as if some kind of ritual was under way, important to Davie North even if Alex didn’t quite understand it himself.

  “So,” having disposed of the strawberry tart in a couple of munching bites, the Shareholder washed it down with some tea and picked up a cream horn, “what are we going to do about this, then?”
The casual “we” made it clear that he considered Alex and himself to be working together on this now. “I could have my own security team storm the station,” he observed, “but they are nowhere near as well equipped as your boarding units. If my people go in, some of them are likely to get hurt, perhaps even killed, and I would prefer not to risk that. So, would you be willing to consider a joint operation?”

  Alex raised his eyebrows slightly. “Are you asking me to?”

  “Yes,” Davie confirmed, looking at him alertly. “If you’re in a position to be mounting operations on this scale, at the moment.”

  He was clearly referring to the seizure of the Pallamar, understanding that the Heron’s officers and crew would be stretched, having to crew and carry out repair work to both ships.

  Alex inclined his head. It was a legitimate question.

  “We’re into non-urgent repairs,” he replied, “and can certainly mount full-scale operations at any time.”

  “Good,” Davie said. “I’d rather not sit around for another two days giving them time to dig in. And besides, at least some of them are just idiots with no idea what they’ve got themselves into. The sooner we do this the better.” He glanced aside again. “Right, Bella?”

  “Corporate policy compels us to give dismissed employees three full days to vacate the station, Mr North,” Belassa Torres replied, cautiously. “And we can’t declare Emergency Protocol Five until they are occupying the station unrightfully.”

  “I am adding Emergency Protocol Seven to Corporate Policy,” said the owner of ISiS Corp. “Under EP 7, the management of ISiS Corp facilities may request the assistance of League authorities when it is obvious to anyone with three functioning brain cells that that is the right and necessary thing to do. I believe we should call it the Exercising Common Sense protocol.”

  “Er,” said Belassa Torres, and then, looking faintly appalled, “May I ask if you have discussed that policy with your father, Mr North?”

  “Wrong answer,” said Davie-Boy. “You’re fired.” He did not even look at her for her reaction. He was watching Alex, instead. Alex would have sworn that he gave nothing away in his own expression, but Davie-Boy evidently saw something that amused him.

  “As you wish,” Belassa Torres said, entirely unperturbed, and at a dismissive gesture from him, she left the room.

  “My father will employ her somewhere else,” Davie-Boy told Alex, as if he might be concerned about her fate. “Kal will write EP 7 into ISiS Corps policy, won’t you, Kal?” He glanced at the CEO, who nodded.

  “Indeed, Mr North,” he confirmed, in a colourless tone.

  “And our Acting MD,” said Davie-Boy, with a glance at Ambit Persane, “will sign off on the official request.”

  Ambit nodded quickly.

  “Whatever you say, Mr North,” he said.

  Davie-Boy gave Alex a resigned look. It was as if he said, out loud, Seriously, the fools I have to put up with. Alex looked back at him, giving nothing away. In fact, he was feeling that he rather liked this boy. He’d come close to laughing at Davie-Boy’s caustic description of the Exercising Common Sense protocol. He’d sensed sincerity in him, too, when he’d said that he did not want to risk the safety of his security team. Young as he was, he was far from irresponsible. They could work together, Alex decided.

  “I do, however, need to be assured that the implementation of this new protocol will be accepted as valid in the wider corporate community.” He’d phrased that carefully, avoiding asking directly how the Shareholder’s father was liable to react to it. “There are, after all, sensitive political aspects to be considered.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Suddenly, Davie-Boy North’s dark eyes were fixed on Alex, sharp and reproving. “When you were a child, Captain, did your parents tell you bedtime stories?”

  Alex thought about his parents. He had grown up in a suburban area of one of Novaterre’s minor cities. His father was a part-time administrator in a local hospital. His mother worked for a volunteer group that helped patients and their families. They were very proud of him being the first member of their family to join the Fleet, though they’d shed some tears when he went offworld. They were loving and supportive parents. Story-telling, however, had not been a feature of Alex’s childhood. Instead, his parents had bought him sleep-toys that projected calming holos to a background of soothing music.

  “Something like that,” Alex replied, with an interrogative look at that sudden, startlingly personal question.

  “My father,” Davie-Boy informed him, “told me the League Constitution. It’s one of my earliest memories, of him telling me, “This is who you are. This is your heritage.” I grew up with the words of the Constitution embedded bone-deep. That, and my ancestry. How far can you trace your ancestry back?”

  “Nineteen generations,” said Alex, mildly.

  “That’s more than most,” Davie-Boy seemed a little surprised, looking curiously at him.

  “My mother took up genealogy as a hobby,” Alex said. He did not tell the kid that his mother had become interested in tracing the origins of her husband’s unusual surname. “von Strada” meant “of or from the stars” in old Novaterran, and it was a rare enough name there to be commented on. Her research had unearthed an eighteen-times-great grandmother who’d registered her baby with the surname “von Strada” about six hundred years before, the first recorded usage of the name. She’d evidently been quite a character, having a love affair with an offworlder she’d declined to identify. It was family-mythology in the von Strada household that the blood of that unknown spacer had somehow made its way through all the generations since and given Alex his love of the stars.

  “Ah,” Davie-Boy nodded understanding. “I can trace my own ancestry back more than two thousand years,” he said, simply. It was no boast, just a statement of fact. “My great-times-thirty seven times grandfather was Jerome Anders Delaney, one of the investors in the development of superlight travel.”

  Everyone in the League knew that story. The government of Chartsey had pulled funding from research and development into superlight starships, frustrated by high costs and poor results. A group of wealthy industrialists had believed in the future of space travel so passionately that they’d poured their own money into it, funding that R&D privately for more than forty years before the breakthrough was made. The first starship that had left Chartsey on that history-making journey, therefore, had been a corporate freighter with a hold full of trading goods, not a government funded exploration ship. The entire history of the League had been determined by that, as exploration, trade and the development of intersystem relationships had been led by industry, not government.

  “His granddaughter Amabel Rose Delaney was one of the signatories to the Constitution,” Davie-Boy went on. “Eight hundred and sixty years ago, my twenty-two-times great grandmother, also an Amabel, founded ISiS Corps in response to the Senate passing the Seventh Amendment.

  “To understand anything about who I am, Captain, you must understand that my father and everyone else in my Family, everyone throughout the Founding Families, is still spitting mad over the Seventh Amendment. It is blatantly unconstitutional, anti-Constitutional, giving worlds the right to impose import taxes in direct contravention of the Constitution. I mean, it couldn’t be any clearer, could it? The League shall exist as an association of free trading worlds. It does not say, “except where local governments want to protect their own manufacturing industries by whacking taxes onto goods coming in from other worlds.” They even tax goods that are only passing through their systems on the way to other worlds! It was outrageous then, and still is. Grandma Amabel founded ISiS Corps with the express intention of providing alternative, duty-free ports of call to uphold the spirit, letter and principle of our Constitution. Every generation of our family, since, has taken on the responsibility of defending that vital constitutional right. Thirty seven generations of my ancestors would spin in their vaults if I were to abandon that by doing an
ything that lost our stations their sovereign independence. So you do not need to lecture me on “sensitive political issues”, Captain.”

  Alex gave a slight nod, looking at Davie with frank interest. He was choosing to ignore the slightly provocative calling him “Captain”. Since he had refused to call Davie-Boy North by the name he’d requested, he did not feel that he was in a strong position to insist on being addressed by his proper rank.

  “Your father evidently places great trust in your abilities, Mr North.”

  “Hah,” Davie grinned, at that. He glanced around at everyone in attendance on him, his manner suddenly commanding. “All of you,” he said, “Leave, now. I want to talk to the Captain alone.”

  Six of the people present left immediately, including Kalvin Geovane and a rather startled Ambit Persane. Everyone else stayed exactly where they were, their manner deferential but resolved.

  “They do not, you see, work for me,” Davie explained, turning back to Alex. “They work for my father. Their job is to keep me safe and look after me whether I want them to or not. They’re, you know,” he gestured vaguely, “lawyers, security, medics, valets.”

  Alex considered a life surrounded by a retinue who took their orders from your father and would not be dismissed. At fourteen, Davie was a legal adult. He was clearly, however, still very definitely under his father’s authority.

  “They will not, however, interfere or even comment on my decisions about ISiS Corps because that is none of their business,” Davie informed him. “My father trusts me with the handling of that because I was born, bred and raised to assume just this kind of responsibility. Most seven year olds are given toys for their birthday. I was given a toy factory. All the decisions about how it was run were mine, though a proxy signed the documents and gave the orders on my behalf. I carried out my first hostile takeover of a rival company when I was nine. Where business decisions are concerned, my father has full confidence in me. He does, though, worry about me catching cold, associating with unsuitable friends or eating unhealthily, hence the retinue.”