Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  Murg chucked, readily able to imagine Admiral Smith’s reaction to being told that one of his special agents had been headhunted into the Fourth.

  “Yes sir,” she said. Then, looking at him curiously, “And can I ask if you’re going to make Tom, Mr Sutherland, I mean, the same offer?”

  Alex smiled. “I’m sure we’ll work with him again,” he said. “And he’s a fine officer, one of the best cover agents in the business. I’d be pleased to have him serving with us at any time. I won’t be offering him that, though, no. I think he’ll be happier in the rather more orthodox environment of Fleet Intel. We may be just a shade too irregular for him.”

  Murg gurgled with mirth. Tom Sutherland had not said so, because he was far too correct an officer to criticise a superior, but she knew very well that his admiration and respect for Alex von Strada had been tinged with horror. She knew just how Tom Sutherland would react when he found out how they’d taken Karadon. She could practically hear his voice and see the incredulous look on his face as he queried, “They turned the gravity upside down?” Any regular Fleet skipper pulling a stunt like that would be out of command and facing court martial before they knew what had hit them. Alex von Strada would probably get a commendation for it.

  “Possibly, sir,” she said, with some relief that she was not going to have to work in close quarters with Tom Sutherland again, at least for a while. They needed some distance on the tensions of the last year, before they’d be comfortable together again. “But I can’t think of anything I’d like better than to stay with the Fourth, sir, thank you.”

  “All right.” He held out his hand and they shook on it, the skipper nodding amicably. “Goodnight, then, Chief.”

  “Night, skipper,” said Murg, and went off very happily to bed.

  Alex continued on his rounds, making a final check on the prisoners in the brig before heading back to the command deck. It was past midnight now and the prisoners had been encouraged to go to bed by the traditional lowering of lights and temperature during the nightwatch. Most of the ship felt cool, with a moonlight glow to the lighting and a hushed air about the sleeping ship. The command deck was an exception. They wanted the nightwatch crew wide awake so lights were bright there.

  “Thank you, Buzz.” His exec had been holding the watch till Alex was ready to take over. He didn’t look tired. Anyone who’d expressed doubts as to Buzz Burroughs’ fitness to continue in active service at his age should have seen his smile, then. Buzz had led two high adrenalin boarding operations today as well as taking a very busy part in repairs and processing prisoners. He looked happy and relaxed. It was boredom that made Buzz weary. Action brought a sparkle to his eyes and a predatory gleam to his grin. He would have been perfectly happy to continue holding the watch while Alex got a couple of hours sleep. He understood, though, that this was important to the skipper to keep watch over his ship on nights like this.

  “Thank you, dear boy,” he transferred the watch screens to the skipper and got up. “Goodnight, then.”

  “Night,” said Alex, pleasantly, and settled down to a wonderfully tranquil watchkeeping.

  It was some time after one in the morning that the surgeon who’d been helping them out departed. He was seen off the ship by Rangi Tekawa, who then came to the command deck to report to Alex.

  “We’ve patched him up,” he told the skipper. “Dr Penarth was amazing – it was just a privilege to work with him, really was. Hale Ardant will be in a tank for a few days while the new organs heal in, and he’ll need intensive rehab, but unless there are unexpected complications he has every chance of making a full recovery.”

  He meant a total life support tank, with the patient suspended in gel and a forest of tubes and wires feeding into them. He would be kept unconscious throughout that. They wouldn’t allow him to wake until he could do so in a normal bed with no more than ordinary dressings and monitors on him.

  “Excellent,” Alex said. He would not have grieved in the least over the death of the murderous drug trafficking Ardant, but he preferred him alive. Either Ardant would turn State’s evidence or be brought to justice himself. Either way, it was a better outcome than him merely being gunned down. Alex recognised the extraordinary achievement of saving him, too, and gave the medic a nod of commendation. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible, frankly, the state he was in.”

  Rangi gave a rather smug look. “I don’t just do herbal tea and chi massage,” he observed. “I’ve a particular interest in extreme injury cases. I read up on them and run holos of the surgeries. I buy out of date organs, too, to practice on.” He seemed oblivious to the appalled looks he was getting from the nightwatch crew, adding cheerfully, “It was fascinating getting the opportunity to work on a live one myself.”

  “Well, let’s hope you don’t get any more such opportunities,” Alex said, with a dry note.

  Rangi chuckled, but before he could say anything the skipper went on, “Anyway, we’re about to leave, so I hope you’ve been able to make some arrangement about the lizard.”

  Rangi’s face fell.

  “Well, not exactly,” he hedged. “Things have been, you know, a bit busy.”

  “I appreciate that, doctor,” Alex said, calm but determined. “But you had until this afternoon, and I’ve already given several hours more. I can give you a few more minutes if you want to make some calls. After that, we’re leaving, and I will not take an unquarantined animal into port with us. Come on, be fair,” he asked, as Rangi’s expression became mulish. “It just isn’t reasonable to expect me to register a warship as a space zoo so you can keep a lizard on board. I know we’re irregular but that’s just insane. And quite apart from the publicity and the animal rights campaigners and the sheer embarrassment of it, you have to consider the crew, here. Many of them have families who’ve moved to Therik. They haven’t seen their families in five months. They’ll want to head groundside as soon as they can once we get into port, and however quickly you may think you could go through this “quarantined facility” certification, it would certainly take days, maybe more than a week. Is it fair to expect the crew to be kept in quarantine, away from their families and the shoreleave they’re entitled to, just so you can keep a lizard?”

  “Well, no, but it’s not fair to kill Mako, either,” Rangi replied. “I know he’s not sentient but he’s an emotional being, sir, he has feelings and relates to people. He’s our responsibility, too, since we rescued him from the Demella.”

  “Agreed, and if you can find any solution that gets it off this ship and does not involve me having to register a frigate as a space zoo, I’m willing to listen,” said Alex. Rangi was silent. He had already discovered that no other ship would take the gecko, for exactly the same reason Alex didn’t want it aboard. The hassle with port authorities would just be too much.

  “I suppose I could try them on the station,” Rangi said, after a long pause, and looked appealingly at the skipper, “Perhaps you could ask your friend there, sir, if he’d take it.”

  Alex gazed at him, taking no notice of the fact that the rating at the helm was giggling while the petty officer on comms had developed a very unconvincing cough. Rangi looked back at him, his soft brown eyes eloquent and imploring.

  “Oh, all right,” said Alex. “I can ask, at least.”

  He called Quill, who was in bed by then and took a minute to answer.

  “What’s up, Alex?” he asked, concerned. He was assuming it must be a problem for Alex to be calling him at that hour when they’d already said goodbye.

  “Sorry to wake you, Quill,” Alex said. “I need to ask you a favour. You know that lizard I told you about?”

  Quill’s eyes widened. “Er, yes?” he said, with a guarded air.

  “We need someone to take it,” Alex explained. “Could you, you know, take it onto the station till you find a ship willing to take it off your hands? Or maybe you could start a petting zoo or something.”

  Quill laughed uproariously and Alex looked re
signed.

  “Oh – sorry,” Quill said, as he saw that the skipper had been serious. “It’s just…” he laughed again, but controlled himself. “Sorry, Alex.” There was genuine apology in his tone, though his eyes were still bright with laughter. “You know I would – anything to help. But the thing is, I hadn’t been in this job ten minutes before they were handing me The Plague Book – that’s what they call the policy on pathogen control. I had to read and sign the eight page summary, and I can tell you now that there is just no way that I or anyone else would be allowed to bring any animal onto this station unless it has full quarantine transit documents and is passing through on quarantined cargo transfer.”

  “Yes, that’s what I thought,” Alex said. “Never mind, Quill. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “Good luck with it,” Quill said, and they said goodbye again before Alex turned back to the medic with a regretful look.

  “Well, you heard him.”

  “Yes, that’s the same answer I’ve got, everywhere,” Rangi admitted. “It’s just wrong, sir. He’s a perfectly healthy animal – believe me, I’ve checked very thoroughly and he’s not carrying any kind of infection, but just because he doesn’t have an export license, he’s being treated like he’s carrying the Red Death.”

  “Sorry, but I’m with Quarantine on this one,” Alex said. “Without export documents we don’t know for sure where it came from or where it’s been. I’m sure your tests are very thorough – I don’t doubt your expertise and if I considered it to be a risk to us I wouldn’t have allowed you to keep it as long as you have. But you have to understand Quarantine’s position, here, that they can’t start making exceptions. I’m sorry, you’ll just have to accept it. However unfair it is, that’s just the way it has to be.”

  “But you can’t just kill him, sir!” Rangi protested. “He’s a survivor! We saved him!” Seeing that that was not persuading the skipper at all, he tried a new tack. “What about the Stepeasy, then? Might they take him? I’m sure they could find a way past Quarantine!”

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” said Alex, with a reproving look, as the nightwatch crew stared at the medic again, wide eyed. “And no, I don’t believe they would even consider taking an unlicensed animal aboard. They wouldn’t even allow me aboard without decontamination. Did you ask their doctor?”

  “Well I did, yes, and he said they’re very tight on quarantine and wouldn’t have let it through the airlock in the first place,” Rangi admitted, “but I thought perhaps if you asked the Shareholder personally, sir…” he looked at Alex’s expression. “No, okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said, “but that’s it. I have to ask you to euthanize it, doctor.”

  Rangi stared back at him, distress turning into resolve.

  “No, sir,” he said, and as Alex’s eyebrows rose, “You can’t ask me to do that or order me to do it, either. I’m a doctor, a healer. It goes against everything that I believe in, professionally and personally, to kill a healthy, emotional being. I just won’t do it, sir, no.”

  The command deck had gone very quiet. Nobody was laughing now.

  Alex saw that Rangi was close to tears, and spoke to him gently.

  “Look, it’s late, we’re all tired,” he said. “We don’t have to deal with this now. Sleep on it and make a decision in the morning, all right? Just do be aware that your refusal will not prevent the lizard being euthanized. If you won’t do it – and I will accept your refusal on grounds of religious belief – I will have to do it myself.”

  Rangi gave him a shocked look. “You wouldn’t!”

  “I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it if you won’t,” Alex said. “But it has to be done, so yes, I will. Go on, now.” His manner was quite kind, but authoritative. “Get some sleep, doctor. We’ll discuss this in the morning.”

  Rangi went off looking miserable, and Alex went back to work. After a few minutes, though, he became aware of the continuing silence on the mess deck and the atmosphere of reproach. Looking up, he caught the eye of Petty Officer Ali Jezno, who’d volunteered to hold the comms watch tonight.

  “Not you, too!” Alex said, seeing the “pleeeeeease, skipper?” look he was getting, not just from Ali but from all the crew on the command deck.

  “It’s just that the little fella’s a survivor, sir,” Ali explained, looking a bit embarrassed. “And he’s just such a happy little thing – cheerful, like.”

  “Cheerful,” Alex repeated, staring at him. “We are having a conversation about a cheerful lizard.”

  None of them laughed.

  “But he kind of is, sir,” Ali assured him, rather red in the face, but determined. “He changes colour according to how he’s feeling, see? If he’s scared he goes green, like he was when they brought him aboard, poor little guy, he must have been terrified with all the noise and vibration. When he’s relaxed, he’s kind of brown. If he’s happy, though, if he likes you or he’s having fun, he turns pink, with red splotches. When he’s really happy he makes this tickatickaticka noise. He does that a lot. He loves to be tickled and he likes to play games, too, chasing stuff. You should see him chasing a ball, sir, it’s hilarious. He loves it in freefall, too, leaps about all over the place. Some of the guys have been saying we should let him try out for the flickball team, sir. Just joking, obviously. But he’s like, well, he’s kind of a mascot, sir, you know?”

  Alex sighed quietly. While he’d been preoccupied with other things, evidently, the lizard had become rather more important in the life of the ship than he’d realised.

  “It’s a lizard,” he said, wondering if he was the only person aboard who had no affection for animals and couldn’t understand why people kept them as pets.

  “Yes sir,” Ali said, “but we’re kind of fond of him, you know?” The imploring puppy-eyed look was back, as they all gazed at him hopefully. “Isn’t there something we could do, sir? Couldn’t we put him on the Pallamar, with volunteers who don’t mind giving up a few days shoreleave? And if the cost of it’s an issue, sir, we’d have a whip-round and pay for the vet and that ourselves.” There were nods of agreement from the others.

  Alex looked around at them. They represented a broad cross section of his crew, different ranks and ages, some of them had been with him from the Minnow and all of them were good, reliable, responsible crew. If they felt this strongly about this, it was likely that most of the rest of the crew did, too.

  “Do you have no idea,” he asked, “of the storm it would unleash upon us? The campaign groups? The media? Even just the jokes and comments from the regular Fleet about our ship being a zoo?”

  “Well yes, sir,” Ali conceded. “But the thing is, sir, there’s so many nut-jobs yelling at us everywhere we go anyway, what difference would a few more make? And I reckon we’re big enough to take a few jokes, sir.”

  This, too, got noises of agreement. Alex couldn’t help but grin, though he shook his head, too, marvelling at them.

  “You’re all bonkers,” he observed. His own resolve was unshaken. The crew might have taken a liking to the gecko and be sorry that it had to be euthanized, but they’d get over it. They’d certainly realise he’d been right when they went into port and were able to clear quarantine and head out on shoreleave. One of the things a skipper had to certify as they brought their ship into port was that nobody aboard had had contact with a quarantine risk during the previous two weeks, along with blood sample results confirming that they were pathogen free.

  Alex could, on that basis, allow them to keep the lizard for another week before it was euthanized, but that, he felt, would only prolong the issue. Best just to get it dealt with now so they could move on and forget it. “Sorry,” he said, seeing that their faces were showing hope at his amusement. “I’m just not prepared to register my ship as a zoo and that’s final.”

  They left Karadon a few minutes later. Those ships with nightwatch-keepers still awake saluted them jubilantly, and they were sent on their way with a media-
directed statement of thanks and farewell from Kelvin Geovane. They were also, inevitably, pursued by the media, chasing after them signalling frantically for some kind of statement from Alex.

  Perhaps a little surprisingly, there was no word of farewell from the Stepeasy. Alex had sent a report of the boarding operation to Davie North. He’d half expected to get back some jokey response about them not having blown anything up. Instead there’d been a cool note of thanks, signed merely “DN”.

  Alex felt a slight sense of regret. He’d really felt as if he and Davie North had connected, though it would be going too far to say that they’d become friends. Perhaps Buzz was right, he realised. Davie-Boy North Delaney was just so strange, both genetically and in his bizarre lifestyle, that you couldn’t really know what was going on with him. It had been interesting meeting him, though.

  It wasn’t until the Heron was heading towards the end of the departure lane, the Pallamar following, that Alex saw the Stepeasy rising out of orbit too. Perhaps they were going back to Flancer now, he thought, leaving Kalvin Geovane to sort things out at the station.

  As the Heron and Pallamar turned towards Therik, however, accelerating to get away from the annoying media ships, the Stepeasy cruised up and dropped into formation on the frigate’s other side as if it was joining a squadron.

  Alex considered this for a while, then called them.

  He was somehow not surprised to see that Davie North was in the skipper’s seat. He was wearing a night-robe of fantastically patterned silk that was falling off one shoulder.

  “Captain,” he greeted Alex, with a friendly nod.

  “Mr North.” At the distance they were travelling, comms transmission was taking nearly nine seconds between them. At that distance starships would normally communicate audio only, but the Stepeasy evidently had comms arrays just as sophisticated as the new ones on the Heron. They were sending full holo-comms. Alex could see people standing in the background – Davie’s retinue, of course, attending him wherever he went. “Can I ask what you’re doing?” Alex enquired.