Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) (6 page)

‘How about freefall rides?  Roller coasters?’  He queried.

‘I’ve never been on one,’ said the inspector.  ‘Not my thing, really,’ he looked around at their faces, and the medic’s dismayed expression.  ‘Is that a problem?’

‘I’m sorry – do, please, forgive us.’  Buzz took over, with all the warmth of his most charming manner.  ‘We certainly don’t mean to be rude or unwelcoming.  It’s just that, without even that kind of experience, I’m afraid, you’re liable to find the launch and life on a starship quite intense.  We can certainly support you through that but I do feel it only fair to advise you that this is going to be pretty challenging for you, Inspector.’

Mako Ireson squared his shoulders, looking back at them with a steadfast resolve not entirely devoid of suspicion.  It was apparent that he felt that they were trying to put him off, and that he wasn’t having it.

‘Whatever challenges there are, I am sure I will cope,’ he asserted, and was slightly surprised to see looks of approval from both the skipper and exec. 

‘Excellent.’  Buzz said, with a slight nod of agreement from Alex.

‘We will do our best to make you comfortable.’  Alex assured him.  ‘And I will be happy to meet with you later to discuss your visit.  But for now, perhaps, we’ll sort you out with quarters…’ a significant look at Rangi Tekawa, ‘and, I think, a freefall assessment?’

‘Absolutely, sir,’ Rangi affirmed, and told the inspector, ‘don’t worry, it’s routine.  And if you get sick, as most people do, it’s nothing to worry about.  We’ll just give you a tiny implant behind your ear that takes care of it.’

‘Well, I’d rather do without that if I can,’ Mako said dubiously.  ‘But is the ship liable to go into freefall, then?’

‘Frequently,’ said Alex, since that question had been directed at him.  ‘Every day, in fact, for drill, and certainly for the launch and any time we come to stations.  All warships do that,’ he could see doubt in the inspector’s eyes, a searching look as if Mako Ireson was trying to work out whether this was true or part of an effort to put him off coming aboard.  ‘Gravity is a vulnerable system, you see, prone to taking damage in wave space surges, so in any situation where we are likely to be experiencing that, as in launch or high speed manoeuvring, gravity is one of the non-essential systems which is automatically deactivated.  We can also come to stations a great deal faster in freefall than we could with the gravity on, as you will see when we sound to stations and people are hurtling about the ship at high speed.’

 Mako could see nothing but calm sincerity in him.  The looks of confirmation he got from the others when he glanced at them were convincing too. 

‘Oh,’ he said, but in the next moment, took another bracing breath, squaring his shoulders again.  ‘Well, I daresay I’ll get used to it.’

‘I’m sure you will.’  Alex agreed.  ‘But do please get yourself settled in.  Look around the ship, get your bearings, and get checked out for freefall.  Trust me on this, you do not want to discover that you’re freefall sick in the middle of a launch.  I will be available at any time this morning if you want to talk to me, all right?’

‘Thank you, Skipper,’ the inspector acknowledged, and allowed himself to be led away by Rangi Tekawa.

‘Come and take a look at sickbay, first, then I’ll show you the cubby in the wardroom and you can take your pick.’  Rangi told him, hospitably.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to evict you from your quarters.’  Mako sounded a little embarrassed by that.

‘Not at all.  I’d prefer to live in sickbay, really,’ Rangi informed him chattily, ‘only Mr Burroughs says that would be anti-social.’

Alex could hear the silence as Rangi bustled the inspector into sickbay.  He was going to get a shock if he was expecting clinical white and chrome.  It was a space full of rainbows, pot plants, meditation chimes, a holographic waterfall and an ambient sound of bird song.  Not many Fleet skippers would have tolerated that.  Alex permitted himself some slight regret at not being able to see Inspector Ireson’s face as Rangi showed him in there and pointed out the bunk that would be his, complete with colourful ethnic blanket. 

Mako was, in fact, still looking rather stunned as Rangi led him back through the command deck, telling him cheerfully that they’d go the long way round until he’d had his freefall check.  It was apparent that the inspector did not have a clue what Rangi meant.  It was quite possible that he did not even realise the significance of the circles of yellow hatching on the deck below hatchways, with the luminous 0
^G
symbol scattered all over them.  He seemed quite overwhelmed even in having to negotiate his way through the command deck with a crewman coming the other way.  Rangi led him through the for’ard hatchway, gesturing to keep him from walking into the zero-gee zone there.

‘This is the comms room,’ he informed the passenger, ‘lots of top secret stuff here.  And the primary computer core, ditto.  This is hot tech, straight out of R&D.  Our computer Sub got it for us a couple of months back.  Cool, huh?  It’s still officially on space trials, but don’t worry, its good to go.  There’s a companionway through here – a staircase – we can use till you’ve got the hang of grav shafts.’

His voice disappeared into the background hubbub of the ship, leading the bewildered inspector down the narrow winding stairwell to show him to the wardroom. 

Inspector Ireson was not likely, Alex felt, to be tremendously impressed by that either, or by the tiny cubby they were offering him as his quarters for the next several weeks.  But short of giving up his own cabin to him, which his status in no way required, it really was the best that they could do.  They were running over-numbers already, since the decision had been made that the parolees would have to be carried as supernumeraries to the regular establishment of six officers and eighty one crew.  That had already meant them filling up the couple of spare bunks they’d had and narrowing down a stack in the mess deck to fit another in.

Minutes passed.  Alex carried on with the mound of deskwork that not even the most efficient exec could take off a skipper in the hours before a launch while Buzz Burroughs held the watch and chased up the inevitable last minute supplies that had not been delivered.  A/S Thrask returned, calm again now and giving the skipper a slightly embarrassed, questioning look as he went back to his station. 

Alex gave him a confirmatory nod.  Ideally, of course, a crewman should not have to excuse himself from duty because he was unable to control a fit of the giggles, but microsteps methodology worked by setting small, achievable targets on the way to that ultimate goal.  For right now, Able Star Thrask’s target was to be able to recognise when his conduct was line crossing and ask for time out to compose himself.  He had done that successfully, and got a little smile from the skipper acknowledging that.  Everyone had settled down, now, too, with a busy, purposeful atmosphere on the ship.

Then, from the mess deck below them, Rangi’s voice emerged again from the hubbub, explaining to their passenger that this was where the crew ate their meals and relaxed.  A minute or two later, a question was audible from the inspector.

‘I know that port is to the left when you’re facing the front of the ship and starboard to the right,’ he said.  ‘So which way am I facing now?’

Alex looked determinedly at his desk screens, taking no notice of the laughter that erupted after a thunderstruck couple of seconds on both the mess deck, and everywhere else within earshot.  It would be expecting miracles, really, to expect spacers not to crack up at that. 

‘Please, sir?’  That was Ordinary Star Jenni Asforth at the Flight Control station, addressing the skipper in a pleading tone.  ‘Can we keep him?  I’ll feed him and take him for walks, honest!’

Alex cracked, giving her a look that held far more amusement than rebuke.  Jenni Asforth, at eighteen, was one of the youngest members of the crew.  Also a space-brat, she had superb technical skills but an irreverence towards authority which had raised questions about her attitude even during basic training.  On her first shipboard assignment, she had told a newly qualified Sub-Lt that he was an idiot.  She was doing much better on Minnow, learning when to keep her opinions, however justified, to herself.  Her current microstep was the use of a three-tiered warning system, giving her three chances to pull it back before any official notice would be taken of impertinence.

‘Manners, Asforth.’  Alex said, employing the mildest of those warnings.  She grinned, well aware that he was as amused as she was, but acknowledged it with a playful salute. 

‘I hear and obey,’ she said, which was impertinent in itself, of course, but progress.  She had at least now stopped addressing officers as ‘oh great one’.  For Alex, able to see beyond the impudence to the reality that she had, in fact, accepted the reminder, that was good enough.  And he could hardly, after all, tell crew off for laughing when his second in command was chuckling too.  Buzz had heard Rangi, after a stunned few seconds to work out that the inspector was serious, answering him with a careful, ‘Aft.  That’s the
back
end of the ship.’

Their voices moved on, blending into the hubbub and laughter.  They were back on deck one and heading into sickbay about a quarter of an hour later, the tour of the ship evidently concluded.  Shortly after that, Alex saw Buzz sign off on the log to a request for sickbay to be isolated from grav-control for medical assessment purposes.  For the next ten minutes or so sickbay was highlighted on the plan of the ship, flashing yellow with a 0
^G
warning.  It was entirely obvious what was happening with that, too, as another alert suddenly flashed onto the readout, declaring a hazmat response in progress.  Inspector Ireson had evidently discovered that he was, in common with about sixty per cent of the human population, freefall sick.

Alex, mindful of the tiny implant behind his own ear, felt no kind of superiority in that.  The inspector would be fine within moments of having the implant, though Rangi would probably take the opportunity to give their passenger some basic freefall safety training, too. 

He was right about that, as it was nearly an hour before Rangi brought him back to the command deck.

‘Mr Ireson would like to meet with you now, Skipper, if that’s convenient,’ he informed him.

‘Yes, of course.’  Alex said, with an appraising look at the inspector.  He was looking rather on his dignity, as anyone might be after having thrown up, and he could not have failed to notice the crew cracking up laughing at him, either.  He was keeping it together, though, his manner still professional, and Alex gave him his slight, formal smile.  He got up, closing down his desk screens as he did so.  ‘Come into my cabin.’

____________________

Chapter Four

Mako followed him into his quarters and accepted the invitation to take a seat on the sofa which doubled as a bunk, glancing covertly around as if not quite able to believe that this really was the skipper’s cabin.  He was obliged to pull his feet back to give Alex room to get past him and sit down at the little fold-down desk.

‘Can I offer you something to drink?’  Alex suggested.  ‘We’re strictly non-alcoholic of course, but we can cater to most tastes otherwise.’

‘Dr Tekawa gave me some herbal tea,’ Mako replied, with a guarded tone that spoke volumes, ‘to, er, settle my stomach.  But if that is real coffee I can smell…’

‘It is,’ Alex confirmed.  ‘Vat beans, obviously, we don’t run to organic.  But we have coffee makers in the wardroom and on the mess deck – what kind do you like, and how?’

‘The nearest you have to aloba, please,’ Mako said, with the voice of a true coffeeholic.  ‘Strong, hot and black, please, with a touch of cindar.  If you have it,’ he added, as a sudden afterthought.

‘If we don’t, the quartermaster will get some.’  Alex relayed the order with a touch to a companel on his desk.

‘Thank you, Skipper,’ the inspector said, and opened up the Fleet-issue pocket comp they’d given him to use whilst aboard the ship.  He had not been allowed to bring any recording technology aboard of his own since the ship contained, as Dr Tekawa had mentioned, some of the most advanced and highly classified technology in the Fleet.  ‘And thank you for the opportunity to observe the operation of your unit, which I understand is at your personal invitation.’

‘Well, it was the First Lord’s decision, but with my full support, yes,’  Alex replied, and explained why, making it clear that it was not just a public relations exercise but that he would welcome any observations or advice the prisons inspectorate could give.  Mako listened politely, though distracted when a man brought in their coffee.  He was introduced as CPO Martins, who combined the roles of quartermaster, wardroom steward and gun captain.

It was apparent that Mako had not met many people from high grav worlds before.  That wasn’t surprising since neither Dortmellers nor Chiellians tended to travel very much.  Quite apart from the discomfort of feeling as if they were in near-freefall all the time, they had to endure a good deal of staring and rude comments from all too many people on more average-gravity worlds.  CPO Martins was a Dortmeller, with the characteristic look of his people, broad of body and squat-legged.  He had very little neck and heavy-boned, neanderthal facial features.

‘This is excellent,’ Mako said when the steward had gone.  ‘I must admit I was rather dreading having to do without a decent cup of coffee for the next six weeks, but this is remarkably civilised.’