Maxwell Saga 5: Stoke the Flames Higher

by Peter Grant

  The Senior Chief sounded doubtful. “That’s going to be a problem, sir. With our small crew, we don’t have enough spare bodies to assign a full-time sentry.”

  “I’m aware of that, Senior Chief, but I’m afraid this is necessary. Tell you what. We’ll ask for volunteers to stand watch for an hour or two during their off-duty periods, and give them something to make up for it – additional liberty, or canteen privileges, or something like that. That’ll ease the load on the rest of the crew. It’s eight days’ run to Athi, after which we won’t need the sentry anymore.”

  “That’ll help, sir. I’ll get dressed and have Miss Soldahl with you in ten minutes.”

  “Thanks, Senior Chief.”

  Steve thought for a moment, then punched in another code. Within moments a female voice responded. “This is Marisela Bonaventura. Who’s calling?”

  “Your Excellency, this is Lieutenant-Commander Maxwell. I’m afraid Miss Soldahl appears to have given you misleading information about her assignment. I’m having her brought to my office to discuss the matter. I wanted to give you a heads-up about it, in case you wished to be present.”

  “I certainly do! We’ve known each other for years. She wouldn’t deceive me.”

  “I can’t speak to that, Your Excellency, but an escort will shortly arrive to collect her. He’ll wait while she prepares herself, then bring her to my office.”

  “I’ll come with them.”

  “As you wish, Your Excellency.”

  Steve heaved a sigh as he stood, took his Number Two uniform jacket from behind the door, pulled it on and tugged it straight. It looked as if he’d have to deal with two irritated passengers, not one. He sat down again and straightened the data chips and papers on his desk, trying to make it look as presentable as possible.

  There came a knock at the door, and the handle turned. Senior Chief Aznar’s face appeared in the gap. “I have Miss Soldahl here, sir. The envoy is with her.”

  Steve stood. “Thank you, Senior Chief. Send them in, please, and stand by.”

  The envoy entered first, sweeping past the NCO to pull out one of the small visitor’s chairs in the cramped space between the desk and the bulkhead. She sat down without waiting for an invitation as the journalist walked in behind her and Aznar closed the door.

  Steve motioned to the other chair, waited until the reporter had taken it, then sat down himself as he said coolly, “Miss Soldalhl, I understand you claimed to be representing CNS on this trip.”

  “I never said anything to you about who I was representing, Captain,” she replied, equally coolly.

  Steve had to grin inwardly at her impudence. “But that’s what you told the envoy, and that’s what she in turn told me – not so, Your Excellency?”

  “Yes, that’s so,” Bonaventura admitted stiffly. “What of it?”

  “My superiors gave preliminary clearance for Miss Soldahl to travel with you aboard this ship, on the understanding that she represented CNS. However, they then contacted CNS to confirm her accreditation, and to ask why the agency hadn’t asked the Fleet’s permission for her to travel with us, as per normal protocol. According to CNS, she and they parted ways a week ago. As far as the company is aware, she’s now a free-lance correspondent.”

  The envoy’s face was expressionless as she glanced at the woman beside her. “I’m aware of that. However, the initial arrangements for her to accompany us were made by her former boss at CNS, Tim Novacki. After her change of status, I saw no reason to reconsider her accompanying us. I’ve worked with her before, and found her very professional in every respect.”

  “But you introduced her to me specifically as a CNS journalist, Your Excellency.” Steve’s voice was polite, but unyielding. “Why did you do so if that was no longer the case?”

  The journalist’s face showed no remorse as she intervened. “Commander, perhaps I should answer that. The primary concern of a journalist is to be a journalist. Our affiliation may change, but our dedication to our profession doesn’t. I’m no less professional as an independent than I was as a bureau employee – and CNS will still buy reports from me as a stringer, even though I’m no longer on salaried staff there. Since the initial arrangements for this trip were made through them, I saw no conflict in continuing with that arrangement. It was purely a matter of convenience, and I’m sure Tim won’t mind. I didn’t think anyone else would worry about it, either.”

  “I’m afraid the Fleet does, Miss Soldahl. We take issues such as accreditation very seriously, especially to diplomatic delegations. As a result, my superiors have ordered me to invoice you for the trip to Athi at normal commercial rates, and put you off the ship there.”

  “But that’s ridiculous!” the reporter exploded wrathfully. “I’ve already agreed to all your conditions – and I’m a journalist! You can’t treat me as if I was some sort of fare jumper!”

  “Under the circumstances, with respect, ma’am, that’s precisely what you are,” Steve pointed out. “You knew full well that you weren’t entitled to free transportation from us, as you would have been if you were still properly accredited through CNS.”

  “You’re hiding something! You’re trying to stop me from doing my job!”

  “No, ma’am. This has nothing to do with your job, as I’ve already explained. I’ll have to discharge you to the Orbital Control Center at Athi, and ask them to allow you to arrange your own transportation back to Lancaster. You’ll be responsible for all costs involved.”

  “And what if I want to go to Devakai instead, to report on the work of this delegation?”

  “You’re free to do so, ma’am, but you’ll have to arrange your own transportation from Athi to Devakai.”

  “Oh! This is…” She turned to the envoy. “Marisela, can’t you make him see sense?”

  The envoy’s face was troubled. “Commander Maxwell, it’s very important to State, and of course to me personally, to have our side of the story covered. I’m sure you understand that a planet’s news media are often biased or prejudiced in one way or another. Having our own embedded reporter, independent but trustworthy, plays a major role in helping us deal with the sort of problems that can cause. Won’t you please reconsider Solveig’s situation?”

  “I’m afraid the matter is out of my hands, Your Excellency.” Steve’s voice was impassive, but firm. “I’m under orders from my superiors to handle the situation this way. I have no latitude of discretion.”

  “I… I see.” The diplomat thought for a moment. “What if I were to get authorization for Solveig to accompany us from a more senior Fleet officer at Athi?”

  “I’m afraid that wouldn’t change the situation, Your Excellency. They won’t be in my chain of command, which is the sole authorizing authority for any passengers aboard this ship.” Steve turned to the journalist. “Miss Soldahl, until we reach Athi you’ll be restricted to the passenger quarters. You may not leave them except in emergency or when authorized by a ship’s officer. You’ll take your meals in the passengers’ mess, of course, and you’re free to use the other facilities there.”

  Her shoulders slumped slightly as she faced up to the inevitable. “Very well, Commander. Is it possible for me to send a message back to Lancaster? I’ll need my bank to wire funds to me in care of this ship if I’m to pay you, and buy a ticket from Athi to Devakai. I no longer have a CNS expenses chip.”

  “Ma’am, this is a communications frigate. We’re several times faster than a conventional merchant vessel. We’ll be at the system boundary in less than two hours, but office hours are long over in Lancaster City. It’ll be tomorrow morning before anyone gets your message, much less acts on it.”

  “Oh. Er… would it be possible to delay our first hyper-jump until a reply is received?”

  “I’m afraid not, ma’am. I’m under orders not to delay our departure over this.”

  “Not to worry, Solveig,” the envoy assured her as she rose to her feet. Steve rose too, automatically, as a gesture of respect, and the
journalist did likewise. “I’m sure the Commander will accept your personal draft in payment for your passage. As far as onward travel is concerned, I’ll issue you funds from our mission account and authorize your personal draft as reimbursement. We’re carrying a lot of cash, in case Devakai’s merchants won’t accept Commonwealth drafts. It’s a backward planet in many ways. I think we have enough that I can spare some for you.”

  “Thanks, Marisela.” The two women smiled at each other as they turned to leave.

  Steve made a mental note of the mission’s financial arrangements. They seemed similar to those Commodore Wu had made for the ship. He’d provided a substantial sum in cash and gold taels, presently locked in the ship’s safe, to pay for anything that might be needed at Devakai. Steve had also warned his crew to bring extra cash with them, in case the opportunity arose for liberty at Devakai. He couldn’t help wondering idly what the total value in currency and hard assets aboard LCS Pickle might be at present. It was probably best if he didn’t know the total, he decided with a grin. That way, he wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

  —————

  As always for the first and last hyper-jump of a mission, Steve made it a point to be at his command console on the bridge. It was a small, cramped installation, normal-sized for the commercial courier vessel that Pickle had originally been, but now filled to bursting with additional equipment and sensor consoles. Even so, it was nowhere near as comprehensively equipped as a Fleet combat vessel’s Operations Center would have been. Instead of installing an OpCen aboard Pickle during her conversion, the shipyard had used the space for a comprehensive and well-concealed Intelligence Center instead, which was far more useful for Pickle’s typical missions.

  As a concession to the journalist, not wanting her to think of him as an enemy rather than a spacer simply doing his job and following orders, Steve had agreed to Solveig Soldahl’s request to join him on the bridge to observe the first jump. She occupied a visitor’s chair beside his console, where she could lean forward and ask questions.

  “You were right about how fast your ship is,” she admitted as she watched the Plot display. The white icon denoting the ship was fast approaching the yellow line marking the system boundary, just over a thousand million kilometers from Lancaster’s sun. “The fastest I’ve been aboard before was a Fleet destroyer, and she took quite a bit longer than this to reach the boundary – but then she wasn’t in a hurry, I suppose.”

  “Most ships aren’t,” Steve agreed, glancing around at the other consoles. His crew were hard at work preparing for the coming hyper-jump, and he nodded in mental satisfaction as he observed their professional focus. “We tend to zip along at high speed almost all the time, because our reason for existence is to get people and urgent messages where they need to be as quickly as possible.”

  “What is your maximum speed, anyway? I understand communications frigates are the fastest ships in space, but why can’t they make all spaceships that fast?”

  “We sacrifice other things, like cargo and personnel space, to a much more powerful reactor and gravitic drive installation. Our drive is as big as that of a destroyer of sixty thousand tons, but we weigh half that, so the extra power makes us very fast. Our capacitor ring also has more cells, relative to our mass, than a conventional ship, and they recharge twice as fast. Unfortunately, that makes them twice as expensive per cell, and gives them only half the service life, but there’s always a penalty for high technology like that. What that combination means is that in conventional space flight like this, we can touch four-tenths of light speed, while still having enough power to generate a gravitic shield strong enough to protect us against debris. We can also hyper-jump up to six times a day, compared to a warship’s three to four times, or a merchant ship’s twice a day. We can cover up to a hundred and twenty light-years a day, if we push it.”

  She pursed her lips. “I was wondering how we’d reach Athi from Lancaster in only eight days, but that explains it. I suppose it’s also why these ships are so expensive compared to other types.”

  “They sure are! Pickle and her sister ships cost twice as much, ton for ton, compared to conventional military ships. Our power plant and drive combination costs as much as a destroyer’s, even though the warship is twice our mass; but ours lasts only half as long before having to be replaced. It’s not just the capital cost, either. Operating expenses are a lot higher, too. Of course, all those sports cars you see in the richer suburbs of Lancaster City have the same problem, compared to the family cars around them.”

  “I’d never thought of it that way, but I guess you’re right.” She smiled winningly at him. “I guess you enjoy that part of your job?”

  He couldn’t help a smile. “I certainly do. It’s a rare privilege to command a vessel like this. She’s like a thoroughbred racehorse, twitchy, high-spirited and demanding, but capable of performance like nothing else when necessary.”

  “And she’s unarmed?”

  “Communications frigates don’t belong in a fight. Some have a few laser cannons for point defense, but others, including Pickle, have no armament at all. That makes them more suitable for diplomatic missions, which by interplanetary convention use unarmed transportation whenever possible.” He thought it best not to tell her that Pickle had started life as a commercial courier vessel, none of which were armed even though their design was almost identical to most military communications frigates. The journalist had no business knowing Pickle’s origins, or the nature of her clandestine missions – or the special equipment she carried to make them possible.

  “Why is your ship called Pickle, anyway? That seems an odd sort of name for a military vessel. And what’s all that stuff in the ship’s crest on the wall of the docking bay lobby?”

  Steve smiled. “She’s named for a very famous dispatch vessel. HMS Pickle carried the news of Admiral Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar to London, England, in 1805. We commemorate her name by using it for new ships from time to time; and, of course, it’s logical to use it for a communications frigate, which is the modern equivalent of the historical Pickle. As for her crest, that’s taken from the original wet-water ship. It’s two crossed sheaves of wheat, topped by a caduceus, which was the staff carried by the Greek god Hermes and other mythological heralds. A French fleur-de-lis inside a diamond-shaped frame is superimposed over them. They’re all archaic symbols today, but they were common back then, long before the Space Age.”

  “I see. I don’t recall seeing your ship’s name mentioned in connection with any other diplomatic missions of which I’m aware. Also, she’s not listed as part of one of the communications squadrons at Lancaster.”

  Steve thought fast. If the journalist had bothered to check those details, it meant she’d done her homework before boarding. He reminded himself of Commodore Wu’s warning that this woman was ‘trouble’. Investigative journalism was her métier. He’d do well never to lose sight of that reality.

  “We belong to the Twenty-Third Communications Squadron,” he said carefully, using the cover story long since prepared for such occasions. The Squadron’s number was not assigned to any particular Sector of the Fleet, and it had no physical existence. It was just a number on an organization chart, helping to conceal the ‘Black Squadron’ as a whole. The latter had no number at all, and its existence was highly classified within BuIntel and even more so outside it.

  “The Twenty-Third isn’t assigned to any Sector in particular,” Steve continued. “That gives its ships the flexibility to undertake special missions at very short notice. A regular communications frigate is usually dedicated to the needs of a given Sector or Fleet detachment, or runs a circular route between several planets. They can’t simply abandon their other duties and respond to an urgent requirement, like this mission to Devakai.”

  “I see. What other ships are in your squadron?”

  “We don’t have ships permanently assigned to us. Some, like Pickle, have been in the Squadron for a while;
others rotate into it for shorter periods - for example, when they’re fresh out of an overhaul, and need to work up their crews before being assigned to a permanent station. We’re a very flexible organization in that respect.”

  “That structure sounds like a deliberate attempt to make it hard to find out what ships are in your Squadron, and what they’re doing.”

  Steve shrugged. “It seems normal enough to me. Besides, there’s not much to hide. We’re not warships, after all – we’re just messengers. You’ll have to ask higher authority why that structure was adopted. It was in place long before I joined the Squadron, and that sort of thing is way above my pay grade.”

  “I may do that. A loose, highly flexible structure like that must be very disruptive for your Squadron’s crews. They can never know where they may be at any given time, or when they’ll see their families again.”

  “That goes with the territory. There are compensations, like seeing interesting parts of the settled galaxy.” And a thirty per cent hardship posting allowance from the Fleet, he thought smugly to himself, although you don’t need to know about that.

  “As to that, I asked a few members of your crew where they’d been recently, but none of them would tell me.”

  “We don’t discuss our missions, Miss Soldahl. If we allow ourselves to talk about the ordinary ones, we might let something slip about one that’s out of the ordinary, so we get into the habit of not talking about any of them. It’s a basic security precaution.”

  “Perhaps, but it piques a journalist’s curiosity when she can’t get even routine answers out of people. It’s almost as if you have something to hide.”

  Steve shook his head, pasting what he hoped was an innocent-looking smile on his face, even as he thought to himself, Watch your words! She’s fishing!

  “No, there’s nothing to hide, but we don’t know much about what our passengers are doing – like this delegation, for example. We’re just taking it to Devakai and bringing it back. We have no knowledge of what it’ll be doing there. Ill-informed speculation from us could make its work much more difficult. That’s why we tell all our people to keep their mouths shut about things concerning which we know very little, when all’s said and done. Traveling with the delegation as you are, you’ll know far more about their work than we do.”