Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (19 page)

Seven

Two days later, Banno was serving Alex lunch in the captain’s daycabin.

That sounded a lot grander than it actually was. Alex might be a flag officer now, but he occupied the same quarters as he had as a mere skipper, and took no more interest in styling them now than he ever had, either. The daycabin – with a desk just large enough for six people to sit around for meetings if they didn’t mind their knees and elbows touching – was exactly the same as it had been the day Alex moved into it; standard Fleet decor without even so much as his own choice of holos on the wall.

It was set up in its configuration as a dining room right now, which also sounded a lot grander than it was since all it actually meant was pulling up the flip-top cover over the desk’s datascreens. There was enough room, though, for Alex and his guest to sit comfortably, and just enough space for the crewman to bring in the hot trolley.

‘Thank you,’ Alex said, and as Banno hovered hopefully, told him, ‘No need to serve.’

Banno Triesse went away disappointed. He’d been practising his stewarding and had really been hoping to show off his silver service skills for the skipper. He’d wanted to put on a show for Old Sarky, too – they were determined, the entire crew, not to give Lt Commander Sartin even the slightest thing that he could look down his nose at them for. Banno had intended to serve lunch with a grandeur that would do credit to a dress dinner on a carrier.

Alex, however, was having none of that. Now that he was a captain he was entitled to a flag officer’s staff, as well as a non-watch rostered executive officer. By Fleet regs, he could have a full time petty officer adjutant, a pilot chauffeur and a personal steward. Only the most pompous captains actually employed such a staff, though – most of them, like Alex, took advantage of it to increase their crew complement but employed the extra crew on general duties. Meals were still brought to his cabin, just as they were taken to the wardroom, by whichever rating was on galley-steward duty that watch.

‘Please.’ Alex gestured hospitably to his guest to resume his seat, as Jonas Sartin had got up politely when Alex did himself.

The Second Lieutenant sat down, making no comment as the captain served his lunch, other than for courteous thanks. It was hardly any great matter. Alex merely took three trays out of the trolley, one each with their meals and the third with the bread rolls and condiments. Having put that in the middle of the table and handed Lt Commander Sartin his tray, he sat down with his own. They’d chosen the same dish from the menu, a flaky fish pie that had been turning up every week on shipboard menus for as long as anyone in the Fleet could remember, served with a side of fresh salad.

‘That is definitely getting better,’ Alex observed, having tasted the salad and found it to be a pleasing combination of mild, crunchy radish with multi-coloured leaves. It had been grown aboard ship, in the biovat – Alex still insisted on tasting anything new, himself, before he’d allow it to be inflicted on his crew, but that was becoming increasingly unnecessary. The sight of Sam Maylard bearing down on him with a taster dish and an enthusiastic beam made Alex grin, now, rather than bracing himself to gulp down yet another horrible experiment.

‘Quite an achievement, sir,’ Jonas Sartin observed. You would have to be a spacer, really, to understand just how significant a technological development it actually was. Liners had biovats aboard which produced salad stuff and a limited range of fruit-mush for their passengers, but they took up an inordinate amount of space and needed quite a few qualified people to run them. The biovats they were trialling on the Heron occupied no more than the space of a shower unit and could be operated by galley techs, in theory producing enough fresh fruit and vegetables to feed the entire crew. There was more to that than healthy eating or improving morale. The nutrients used in the vats occupied a fraction of the space needed for crates of fruit and veg dehydrates. The vats, therefore, could significantly extend the patrol range of warships.

‘It is,’ Alex agreed. The Second had had three different teams aboard at various times, working on the biovats – as with so much other tech, things that worked perfectly in groundside development labs could glitz up incomprehensibly when installed aboard a starship. Such tech was supposed to be able to cope with vibration, variable gravity and air pressure, EM pulsing and superlight fields, and in theory it should, but all too often, didn’t. ‘Sam Maylard says he may be able to produce coffee beans, too, though I’ll believe
that
when I taste it.’

Jonas gave a thin, brief, ‘smiling at a superior’s joke’ smile. Coffee was always an important matter on Fleet ships. Skippers and wardrooms bought their own, quality coffee, while the crew mostly had to make do with the vile powdery microtabs. High performing ships, however, were traditionally allowed some space in the hold for the crew to have their own supplies, a custom known as ‘crateage’ and generally used by them, too, to buy in good coffee, usually rationed to one or two cups a day. Alex allowed his crew an unprecedented amount of crateage, justified, he said, by their exceptional performance. It was a matter of great pride and much boasting, on the Heron, that they had enough coffee in crateage for them all to drink themselves manic. Old School, authoritarian officers did not approve – it was their comments on Alex pampering his crew with that excessive crateage that had ended up with the myth of their ‘champagne lifestyle’.

In fact, as Jonas would have been forced to admit himself if put on the spot about it, the Fourth lived far more modestly than their equivalents aboard the Zeus. Of course, the homeworld squadron flagship was obliged to entertain a good deal, hardly a day without Captain Urquart having guests aboard, formal dinners in the wardroom, lots of VIP events. Even when they weren’t entertaining, though, the officers would routinely spend two or three hours over dinner, with white-coated steward service and at least four courses.

On the Heron, wardroom dinner was friendly, but short. Even dress dinners didn’t go on for more than an hour, distinguished only by the use of Buzz’s silver table settings. Lunch with Captain Urquart, too, would be nothing like this – there would be white linen on the table, real glasses, porcelain, a quietly attentive steward and food prepared by his personal chef. Here, they were eating exactly the same food as the rest of the crew, served on plain safe-grav trays by the captain himself.

There was, however, no hint of sneering in Jonas Sartin’s manner. It was unfair of the crew to have dubbed him ‘Old Sarky’, really. He was neither old nor sarcastic. He did everything the Fourth’s way without complaint or criticism, and there had not been any problems at all, either with other officers or with the crew.

‘Anyway,’ Alex said, and it was clear from his tone that he meant
I didn’t invite you here to make small talk about coffee
. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that we should have the opportunity to talk privately – or as private as it ever is on a starship.’ He gestured at the wall screen, displaying echo from the watch screens, the command deck feed, and comms. Jonas looked, and understood the significance of the comms screen setting. It showed that the cabin was on privacy level. That still meant that everything that happened in there was being automatically recorded, but such records could not be accessed even by the First Lord without good cause, such as allegations having been made of misconduct. ‘I believe,’ said Alex, ‘that I owe you an apology, Mr Sartin. I have been guilty of making assumptions about you which I now realise are unfounded.’

Jonas looked at him in some surprise.

‘Assumptions, sir?’

‘Yes. Frankly, I assumed on the basis of your role in Internal Affairs and having been transferred from the Zeus that you were, to put it bluntly, here on a double agenda, on covert inspection, as it were, for Lord Admiral Jennar.’

Jonas looked quite shocked.

‘Sir!’

‘Yes, I know. Sorry,’ Alex said, with disarming honesty. ‘It was an unwarranted assumption, prejudiced on my part and, as it turns out, politically naive.’

Jonas nearly smiled, at that, though the look he gave Alex was shrewd.

‘Well…’ he hesitated, then made a decision, and went on, ‘You weren’t
that
far wrong, sir.’ A faint tinge of colour was rising to his cheeks. ‘I mean, a year ago, even five months ago, that might well have been true. Probably
would
have been true. I’m what you’d consider Old School, sir, though I’d describe myself as middle of the road – open to improvements in efficiency, but a traditionalist by instinct.’

‘But not,’ Alex observed, ‘working for Admiral Jennar.’

‘No, sir – well, technically, inasmuch as he is the commander in chief of Internal Affairs and I am still officially employed by IA under the terms of secondment. I am not, though, I do assure you, operating under any other agenda than as declared. I’m here to assist as far as I can with disentangling the Fourth’s finances. Though I should, perhaps, in the interests of full and frank disclosure, mention that I do happen to be aware, informally, that my name was suggested to Admiral Harangay, that I was, in fact, recommended for this posting by Admiral Tennet.’

Alex nodded, conveying that that was not news to him.

‘So I was informed, this morning.’ He said, and as Jonas gave him an enquiring look, ‘My apologies, again – please don’t think that we were spying on you, in any way. It’s just that CPO Atwood picked up on something you said – you referred to Admiral Tennet as ‘Terrible’, I gather, which alerted her to the fact that you are not, as she put it, batting for the Jennar team. I knew, of course, that Terrible has a strong following throughout the Fleet, and that she is becoming much more active at the Admiralty level since her promotion, but it never occurred to me, stupidly, that she was taking any ongoing interest in us. Obviously, she wanted to provide us with an officer of unimpeachable integrity, perhaps to forestall Admiral Jennar getting his own man in.’

‘Possibly, and thank you, sir. My understanding is that Admiral Tennet … Terrible,’ he corrected himself with a little smile, ‘is of the view, given the regrettable incident at Novamas, that you would benefit from having an IA officer on staff, of such seniority and credentials that they could assist in the event of any similar allegations being made in the future.’

The ‘regrettable incident’ at Novamas had scandalised the Fleet. It had become known as the Novamas Incident. And the Fleet being what it was, even years from now, too, accounts of it would still be doing the rounds, embroidered into ever wilder versions of events.

At the thought of anything like that happening
again
, indeed, Alex felt a gut-twisting lurch. The image of a Fleet-issue cup full of cold tea, a greasy scum formed on the surface, came back to his mind. It was a memory that would forever be associated with a sense of helpless, numb humiliation. He could handle people trying to kill him in combat, no problem. Screaming hordes of activists, fine. But being so savagely attacked by one of his own, by an officer he should have been able to rely on for help and support, had been devastating. He had learned the hard way that internal politics within the Fleet were not merely a matter of tension between traditionalist and modernising factions, it could get
dirty
.

It had been a huge relief to him on their return to Novamas to find that Terrible Tennet was there, newly promoted to admiral and fired out to the system as a trouble shooter. She was, herself, rigidly Old School, but was held in the highest esteem even by the radical fraternity. It had been good to work with an officer Alex knew he could trust. It had been comforting, too, to remind himself that it was Terrible who represented the vast majority of Fleet officers – professional, honourable, fully worthy of respect – and Vickers who’d been the shocking, isolated exception. Now, as he took in what Jonas Sartin was saying, it began to dawn on him that Terrible had gone to some trouble to protect him. She was absolutely right, of course – the presence of an Internal Affairs officer of a seniority to handle incidents where Alex or his officers were being accused of misconduct would be very helpful. And, given his credentials as a very well-known Old School officer, Jonas Sartin would have high credibility across the Fleet.

Alex, having thought about that, smiled. Terrible Tennet had his back. That was a very good feeling.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Thank you – I hope I never need to call on your services in that regard, but it is good to know that I have that protection.’

‘Please, don’t thank me, sir.’ Jonas said. ‘I’m not doing anything more than my job
as
an Internal Affairs officer. Since we are talking on a time-out basis here, I will tell you that I was
deeply
shocked by what happened at Novamas – the failure to salute alone...’ he shook his head. ‘I’ve never known anything like it,’ he said, and Alex could hear the consternation in his voice, even now. ‘For a port admiral to actually order the homeworld squadron
not
to respond to the salute of an incoming ship.’ He put down his fork, as if the enormity of it was too much to talk about and eat at the same time. ‘I know, things got a lot worse than that, sir, and his conduct towards you was dreadful, but for me, the failure to salute, that was an insult to the entire
Fleet
.’

That was Old School talking – yes, okay, the Port Admiral had disobeyed the First Lord’s orders and had arrested a skipper on obviously malicious charges, but the
important
thing was that he’d ordered the homeworld squadron not to return the Fourth’s salute. Alex didn’t find that offensive, just grinned a bit and nodded.

‘It was a bit of a stunner,’ he recalled. ‘One of the few occasions I’ve had when the entire ship’s company was looking at me and I really didn’t know what to do.’

‘I would never have guessed that,’ Jonas said, with an interested look, and as Alex raised an enquiring eyebrow, ‘I reviewed the footage – all the recording presented in evidence at the enquiry. You seemed very calm about it, sir, if I may say so.’