Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) (34 page)

‘So, we need to talk about options.  We could if you wish, try to drop you off at Paradise Gardens if we go past near enough.  Ships drop in for shoreleave there all the time and it wouldn’t be more than a few days at most before a ship comes in, and they would pick you up as a stranded passenger.  Or, if we’re passing other ships of course, we could get you aboard one of them.  Or, if it comes to sending number four away, we could get you on that.  It wouldn’t be a comfortable journey, there are no bunks and you’d be living on K-rations, but we could get you home.’

Mako looked doubtfully at him.  ‘Do you
want
me to leave?’ he queried. 

‘No.  Really not,’ Buzz assured him.  ‘You are very welcome to stay and we’d be very sorry to see you go.  Quite apart from the respect and liking that the crew have for you, Mr Ireson, you are in a unique position on this ship.  As a passenger, you can sit down with the crew and talk informally with them,
and
talk to the skipper about things and ask him questions that the crew are not allowed to ask.  Because you are a passenger, he explains things to you far more openly than he would, or could, respond to questions about his decisions and intentions from the crew.  Everyone concerned is finding that very helpful, frankly, as a means to inform the crew beyond what would normally be considered appropriate by the Fleet, so you are in fact performing a very useful role.’

‘Oh.’  Mako felt pleased, as Buzz had evidently known he would, just to realise that he was not a burden or a nuisance to the crew, here, but actually helping.  He had, in fact, suspected more than once that the crew had nudged him on to asking the skipper things, with a very attentive quiet on the mess deck when he was doing so, so that didn’t come as any great surprise.  It was apparent to him too that the skipper did not mind that, as he neither declined to answer such questions nor took Mako into his cabin to discuss them privately. 

‘Well, I would prefer to stay and see it out,’ he said.  ‘My only concern is that my family will be worried.  If there was any way in which I could just get a message to them to reassure them that I’m fine, I would like to stick this out and do whatever I can to help.’

‘Well, I hope we may want your help professionally.’  Buzz observed, and as Mako looked enquiringly at him, explained, ‘If we take prisoners, we’ll have to be holding them in our brig.  The advice and assistance of an experienced prison officer and inspector would be very helpful.  None of us have any experience of that, you see.’

Mako stared at him, his fork suspended in mid-air.  ‘What, seriously?’ he said, incredulous.

‘Seriously.’  Buzz assured him.  ‘It has been more than ten years since any Fleet ship carried civilian prisoners.  It’s always been an unusual thing, that.  Generally, you see, if you’re arresting a ship, you just escort them into port and hand them over to the authorities there.  Mostly that’s because of the legal situation.  Space law is very complex and often contradictory.  If you seize a ship and take its crew and passengers off it to hold them prisoner on your own ship and then they’re found not guilty, they need only make one call to a lawyer specialising in space law and use the words ‘unlawful salvage’ and eyes will light up, kching!  It is, technically, you see, an act of piracy if the arrest and seizure is deemed unwarranted.  Fleet skippers tend not to like to have that on their records.  It doesn’t look good on the CV.’

‘But… you haven’t ever arrested anyone?’  Mako was struggling to get his head around that, aware of how long a career Buzz had had in the Fleet.

‘Oh, I’ve been involved in a few ship arrests, sure,’ Buzz replied.  ‘And a couple of times where we’ve put people under guard aboard their own ships.  That’s an important legal distinction because if you take people off their ship and then it’s ruled that you didn’t have the legal right to do so, that’s where the unlawful salvage thing comes in.  I’ve been involved in cases where Fleet personnel have been held in the brig, too.  But civilian prisoners?  No.  Most of my career has been on small ships, Mr Ireson, and they’re even less likely to bring prisoners aboard.  None of the other officers or crew has any experience of that either.  So we’ve all been looking up the rules and procedures in case we do end up going with the Moffat Solution.’

Mako knew what that meant.  It had been one of the things the skipper had discussed with him very soon after they’d begun this waiting game.

There were, as the skipper had laid out, many possibilities for how things would go down from here.  The pickup ship just might not arrive at all, having discovered somehow that the Fleet had been tipped off.  Eventually, that would mean they had to give up and go home, though Alex was prepared to wait it out for three months before even being willing to consider that. 

If the ship
did
come in, then they would not challenge it straight off.  It would probably be a container ship or one of its shuttles that came in for the container.  What Minnow did then would depend largely on which way that ship was going. 

If the drugs were on their way to Chartsey, it would be relatively straightforward to trail them all the way back there.  ‘Relatively’ was the operative word, there.  If they opted to go down that route, they would have to maintain a very delicate and expert course in keeping the container ship on their own scopes while remaining invisible to them, watching them all the way into port at Chartsey and reporting the situation to the authorities.  It was possible that Customs would decide not to act immediately but to instigate operations of their own, to follow the drugs through to the point of delivery in order to catch the buyers as well.  In either case, Minnow’s role would be a covert one, merely observing and reporting.

If, on the other hand, the drugs were going to Karadon where they might easily be redistributed on other ships, they would have to take more direct action.  The management at ISiS Karadon were notoriously reluctant to cooperate with the Fleet, Customs or any other governmental authority.  That was a major factor in the station being known as the roughest, toughest, most lawless station in space.  By the time they’d got past the station’s delaying tactics, the drugs could be long gone.

Alex had decided that if they were dealing with that situation, the best way to tackle that would be through the Moffat Solution.  Named after the skipper who’d first employed it more than three hundred years before, it was a tactical strike, seizing control of the ship and bringing the skipper and anyone considered dangerous back aboard the corvette whilst everyone else was held under guard aboard the freighter. 

It would all depend really on the circumstances at the time, but they were preparing for the worst-case scenario of having to attempt an arrest of a much bigger ship.  The skipper had been running several scenario drills every day.  A good many of them had involved snatch teams in hullwalker suits storming through the ship.  Sometimes he had them making as much noise as possible, stamping their duralloy boots and shouting, and other times he had insulating pads put on their boots and had them running the exercise in unnerving silence.  He was keeping his options open to go with whatever would work best, once they knew what ship they were dealing with.

‘It’s a pity we can’t paint the suits black,’ he observed, after an exercise in which the snatch team had overcome such resistance as the crew had been able to put up against them by throwing foam balls and shouting ‘bang!’. 

‘We could polish them up,’ Buzz Burroughs suggested thoughtfully.  Having considered for a moment, the skipper nodded agreement.

‘Good idea,’ he approved.  Then, seeing Mako’s incredulous expression, he gave the inspector a little smile.  ‘Skipper Moffat painted his hullwalker suits black,’ he explained, ‘to confuse the other ship.  We don’t have any black paint on the ship, otherwise I’d do the same.  We’re all hoping that it won’t come to boarding operations but if it does, anything which gives us even a momentary edge in surprising, disconcerting and discouraging any opposition is valid and justified, Mr Ireson.’

‘Ah,’ Mako said, and made no further comment, though he couldn’t help looking at Buzz Burroughs.

Everyone seemed to be taking it entirely for granted that if it did come to boarding ops, Mr Burroughs was absolutely the right man to be leading them in that.  Mako seemed to be the only one wondering whether the Exec was really up to it.  Had he been asked, he would have had to say that he’d feel it to be more appropriate, really, for the young skipper to be the one leading such a boarding party.

He understood now that that was not possible.  If Alex von Strada left his ship during operations, he would lose his command and very probably his commission as well.  Mako had learned enough about Fleet culture to recognise that if the skipper
did
supersede Buzz Burroughs’s right and duty to lead such a boarding party, Buzz Burroughs would resign his commission immediately.  His position, as even Mako understood now, would be intolerable, clearly not having the confidence of his skipper to carry out what were, after all, the duties of an exec.

It did not even seem to be an issue for anyone else, though, with no hint of anyone even suggesting that Buzz Burroughs was too old to be leading such an operation.  If the skipper had any concerns at all about sending his friend and crew off on such perilous operations, he certainly wasn’t showing it.  

In fact, Alex was not stressed.  He had known when he accepted command that this would be the price of it, having to make decisions and give orders that put other people into dangerous situations while he remained in relative safety on the ship.  He would not have been human if he had not felt any concern about that in a situation where his boarding party might be facing heavy odds, and he wouldn’t have been much of a skipper either to be making such a decision without care.

He was not tormenting himself with ‘what ifs’, however, merely waiting to see what happened.  If a ship did arrive, he would make a decision based on the best information that he had at the time.  Until then, he could only prepare for as many contingencies as they could think of, be patient, and keep his crew occupied so that morale would stay high.

In that, in fact, his biggest concern was how Mako himself was holding up, something that would have mortified Mako had he been aware of it.  But he was of course a civilian, without either the training or the experience to cope with this kind of situation.  With very little to do on the ship he had far too much time on his hands, time he spent worrying about what might happen.

The crew did their best to distract him.  They taught him to play triplink and were always ready to chat to him on the mess deck.  They whiled away many an hour telling him tales of ghosts, space monsters and alien encounters.  Mako didn’t believe any of it but he was glad to have something else to think about as the days dragged on with nothing to do but wait.

Late one evening, unable to sleep, Mako came to the mess deck looking for a mug of chocomalt and some company.  Hali Burdon was there working on some paperwork which she set aside readily to have a drink and a chat with him.  Before long, the conversation had turned to the skipper, with Hali explaining that she’d known him since before he’d got the Minnow command.

‘I was watch CPO on the Apollo, on the Therik station,’ she told Mako.  ‘That was the last posting the skipper had before he got the Minnow.  He asked me if I’d like to go with him as deck CPO and when I said yes, he called in some favours to make it happen.  He’s the best skipper I’ve ever worked with.  Brilliant, of course, and tremendously efficient, runs a tight ship and won’t settle for anything less than excellence.  But more than that, you know, there is always this sense with him that he’d go to the wall for any one of us, step in and take a bullet for us if need be.  Well, just look at the lengths he went to for Jace.’  She smiled and Mako nodded agreement. 

Alex von Strada’s loyalty to his crew was fierce.  Mako, indeed, had come to the opinion that it was that loyalty to them which was key in getting the best out of his maverick crew.  That, and his willingness to allow rather more individuality than was normally tolerated in the Fleet.

‘I don’t think many other Fleet skippers would have put their careers on the line for a crewman like that,’ he observed.

‘None,’ said Hali, with a note of certainty, and then grimaced a little as she sipped her coffee.  ‘It’s just so unfair.  Nobody deserves what happened to him, but it just seems doubly awful somehow because he
is
such a great guy.’

Mako nodded again.  It was obvious that they were talking about the death of the skipper’s daughter.  All Mako knew about that was that she’d been three years old and killed in a vehicle accident because she hadn’t been in her safety seat. 

‘He doesn’t talk about it.’  Mako commented.  The two of them looked at one another.  Mako was trying to convey that he did not want to ask Hali anything that would be inappropriate either in terms of violating the skipper’s right to privacy or gossiping with a member of the crew about their CO.  At the same time, though, he was making it apparent that he was open to being told about it if Hali was willing.  For her part, Hali snugged her elbows onto the table and leaned forward a little, her manner making it clear that this was to be a private conversation between them and respected as such.

‘Nobody talks about it much,’ she confided.  ‘Not on the ship, anyway.  But these are things that everybody knows here, so I’m not breaking any trust in sharing them with you.  The thing is, you see, what happened was this.

‘The skipper was happily married.  It was an agency marriage.  Spacers tend to go for those,’ she explained, as Mako looked a little surprised.  ‘It’s theoretically possible for a spacer to meet someone on shoreleave and form a lasting relationship, but in practice those relationships don’t usually last long or end well.  Agency marriages can seem a little clinical, I suppose, hooking you up with someone compatible, but they can work very well.  I mean, look at Mr Burroughs.  He’s in a group marriage based on Flancer, and that’s a very happy marriage.  He celebrated his thirty fifth anniversary with them not long back.  He doesn’t get to see them very often, but they write and get together when they can, and that’s as good as it gets in spacer marriages, really.