XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Read online

  Fourth Fleet Irregulars

  XD-317

  S J MacDonald

  Copyright © 2013 S J MacDonald

  All rights reserved.

  DEDICATION

  For Willowbrook Writers, who inspire me, make me laugh, and amaze me by showing what kids can do.

  Many thanks for the letter to Skipper von Strada.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to digitaldonna.com for the cover design.

  It is always the most exciting part

  of putting a book together, to get that

  email with my vague ideas turned

  into something that makes me dance

  around the house!

  Petals fall.

  Water sighs close.

  Travel silent speed.

  Brain always.

  Song of the Alari

  Chapter One

  There was absolute silence on the ship as everyone watched the last few seconds tick to the deadline. Then all eyes fixed on one of the officers seated at the command deck datatable. Alex von Strada had his professional poker face firmly in place, knowing very well that recordings of this incident would be watched in the official enquiry. Only the brightness of his eyes betrayed how much he was enjoying himself.

  ‘Mr Belmok,’ he addressed the Communications Sub with cool formality, ‘confirm comms status.’

  ‘Communications status green, sir,’ Ceri Belmok’s answer came across as rehearsed, as indeed it was, following a script. ‘All channels active and open.’ He drew a quick breath. ‘No response to ultimatum has been received from any party, sir.’

  Alex nodded. That came as no surprise at all. The terms of the ultimatum had been carefully crafted by the Diplomatic Corps to be sure that none of the nations of Sixships would agree to it. A big screen on the command deck was also displaying live feed of media from the planet below. It was all about the Fourth and their ultimatum right now. Representatives of all nations were giving press conferences. All were belligerent, some cold, some lectern-pounding, one so fired up with indignation that he was spraying spittle as he ranted.

  It looked such a pretty world from a distance. Rich green forest covered much of the land mass, with a deep blue ocean and feathery white clouds. You’d have to go a lot closer to discover the barbarous warfare going on under the cover of those steaming jungles. It was a colony that should never have happened; incompatible extremist groups grabbing land in uncontrolled settlement. They had been at war since the first colonisation, though hostilities had intensified as populations and competition for resources grew. The League had been attempting to resolve the crisis there for more than a hundred years, the Diplomatic Corps working on political solutions while the Peace Corps tried to hold buffer zones between the warring nations.

  Now it was the turn of the Fourth Fleet Irregulars, brought in to resolve a dispute over a moonbase over which all the nations were claiming territorial rights. Alex had positioned his ship, the Heron, in geostationary orbit exactly half way between the planet and the larger of its two moons. On that moon was the Amity moonbase, a sprawling complex surrounded by the pock-mark craters of missile impacts.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘action stations.’

  Nothing happened. The Heron had been ready for action for the last hour. Everyone was at their action posts wearing transparent survival suits, all systems at readiness and all hatches closed. Alex knew that too, of course, but there was a protocol to these things.

  ‘Action stations secured, sir,’ said Buzz Burroughs, tapping in the code that would log the ship as being officially cleared for action. ‘All weapons live and primed.’

  ‘Thank you, Commander.’ Alex spoke as if he and Buzz were practically strangers, barely glancing at him as he entered his own note in the log. They made an unusual pairing, often commented on with amusement in the Fleet – Alex a fresh-faced twenty eight years old and Buzz, his exec, the oldest officer in the Fleet still on shipboard service.

  ‘Missiles two and four,’ Alex said, as calmly as this was just a drill, ‘target Amity Base.’

  ‘Missiles primed, target locked, skipper.’ That was Martine Fishe, the second lieutenant. She was looking relaxed, but thoughtful. One of her roles was that of Internal Affairs Officer, ensuring that all Fleet regulations and policies were adhered to, a thankless role even at the best of times. When your skipper was about to blow up a moonbase, that responsibility to challenge improper orders would make anyone thoughtful.

  Reaction on the media screens had reached hysterical pitch as the deadline passed, but the main theme in the babble was ‘they wouldn’t dare’. Few people really believed that even the infamous Fourth would destroy the Amity base. Even battered as it was, it was supposed to be an emblem for the League’s peacekeeping efforts on Sixships. It had the words, ‘We will never abandon effort for peace’ emblazoned at the entrance, representing that commitment. It was also, incidentally, worth more than sixty million dollars.

  ‘Fire,’ said Alex.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Alex ... welcome home.’ Admiral Jennet Mackada rose from her desk to shake hands with him, her smile warm.

  ‘Ma’am.’ Alex responded formally, then, as she raised an eyebrow, he changed that to, ‘Jen.’

  This little ritual having established that Alex would not presume on his friendly relationship with Therik’s port admiral, they both sat down.

  ‘Good job at Sixships,’ Jen commented, with a grin. Images of the Amity base vanishing in a great plume of dust were racing across the League as fast as news couriers could carry them. Alex’s statement, released to the media in response to the howling fury of the nations of Sixships, would be headline news across hundreds of worlds: I believe we have fulfilled our brief, since there is no possibility of further dispute over ownership of the Amity base. ‘The Diplomatic Corps are delighted,’ Jen observed.

  Alex smiled. The whole incident had been planned by the Diplomatic Corps. The Amity Base had become unusable, nothing more than a focus for conflict. Demolishing it when it was supposed to stand for peace and when all the nations were claiming rights over it, though, would be more than diplomatically sensitive. The Peace Corps hadn’t wanted to play the bad guys in destroying it, though, and neither had the Fleet.

  ‘Well, you know,’ Alex said, ‘any chance to blow stuff up.’

  Jen chuckled. They’d done a great deal more than that. Most importantly, they’d given the peace keeping force at Sixships a threat they could use in future when hostilities focused in on the next disputed territory; the threat of the Fourth being sent back in with their own particular kind of gunboat diplomacy.

  ‘Well, you’ll enjoy your next mission, then,’ she said, and as he looked enquiringly at her, ‘you get to blow up a planet, this run.’

  Alex laughed.

  ‘The Ignite test?’ he queried. He already knew that the Second Irregulars had asked for the Heron to be deployed in carrying out test fire of a new planet-buster missile.

  Jen nodded.

  ‘I also have XD orders for you,’ she said, and saw the slight widening of his eyes that betrayed his astonishment at that. She’d been looking forward to that reaction and grinned happily. ‘The Diplomatic Corps has requested you for exodiplomacy assignments,’ she informed him. ‘You have, after all, some experience in that line.’

  Alex gazed at her, amazed.

  ‘Only a couple of encounters,’ he pointed out, which made her chuckle.

  ‘That in itself is more than most skippers could claim,’ she replied. ‘But they mean rather more recently than that, Alex – the diplomats were very impressed by the relationship you forged with Mr North.’ There was a note of respect in
her tone, and a certain caution, even, in mentioning his name. ‘And you do know, of course, that he isn’t human.’

  Davie-Boy North Delaney, the son of one of the wealthiest and reclusive men in the League, had turned up during the operations the Fourth had undertaken at Karadon. During the course of helping to resolve the crisis there, he had evidently taken something of a liking to Alex von Strada. He was quite frank about the fact that he was genetically engineered to have an IQ and physique far beyond the human scale. Quite frank, at least, to the very few people who got past the wall of secrecy around him.

  ‘I hardly thought of that as exodiplomacy,’ Alex said, with another grin at the thought.

  ‘Evidently,’ said Jen, with a dry note. ‘He is, however, very active in XD circles himself, and reading between the lines, it’s evident that his recommendation has carried quite a bit of weight with the diplomats.’

  Alex considered that, intrigued. He wasn’t surprised to learn that Davie North was involved in exodiplomacy. That was obvious as soon as he thought about it. One of the reasons his father had had him bioengineered beyond human norms was, surely, for him to forge stronger relationships between humanity and the alien races they were encountering.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, and looked at the port admiral with a questioning look. The test firing of a prototype missile and XD orders just did not seem compatible, unless a Solaran party had asked, for some reason, to observe the Ignite test. ‘So – what are my orders?’

  ‘The committee has planned a task-series for you, Alex.’ She gave him a look that held some sympathy as she tapped up a holographic star chart. He was startled to see what scale it was on, with a course plotted in that would, by the look of it, take several months to accomplish. It was no straightforward course, either, but a complexity of zigzags that doglegged in the horizontal plane and plunged up and down in the vertical.

  This certainly did look like a task series planned by committee. The Fourth was so new and with so many potential uses that the Senate had set up a special operations sub-committee to oversee it. Dix Harangay, the First Lord, sat on that committee and would certainly have been trying to get them to make reasonable decisions, but this task series had all the hallmarks of a mission planned by politicians, and groundside politicians at that, with no concept of the distances involved in those jagged diversions.

  ‘You’re to go to Amali, first.’ Jen indicated a solar system over the edge of the League border. X-base Amali, one of the League’s top secret exodiplomacy bases. ‘Don’t ask me what you’re to do, there,’ she told him, good humouredly, ‘because I don’t know, myself – it’s need to know and I don’t need to so that’s that. I have sealed orders for you which you will open once you’ve cleared port – mission orders XD-316.

  ‘From there, you’re going to Karadon – possibly with XD passengers, though we can only speculate about that. Your orders are to be there between the seventeenth and thirty fourth of next month. It’s a courtesy visit, no particular action needed there but to consolidate relationships with ISiS Corps and the merchant service, though you’re also to take on another Second team that will rendezvous with you there – they’ll be working on the vat project. After that, you’re out to the test site.’

  Her pointer tracked a convoluted course through an area of space with hatched-out zones indicating that they were deemed to be non-navigable, either nebula or dirty space. ‘To this system, designated Ignition One. They’re allowing you ten days there for the test, then on down to call at ISiS Penrys, where you’re to pick up fuel to take to Novamas.’

  She indicated the final port of call on the journey. ‘That’s your primary mission,’ she said, ‘Which, again, has XD classification. Your orders for that, XD-317, need a clearance code from Dix for you to access. Your cover, however, is to assist with investigating claims of piracy in the Novamas sector.’

  She watched as Alex considered and accepted that, too. The XD orders were intriguing. The fact that they had consecutive file numbers did not necessarily mean that they were related. They would have been issued by Dix Harangay’s office once the task series for the Fourth had been agreed by the committee.

  ‘There is no piracy in the Novamas sector, of course,’ Jen observed. ‘Though you may find yourself chasing more reports of shadow raiders.’

  Alex laughed, though with a rueful shake of his head. Novamas was the closest League world to the barrier they called the Firewall, beyond which no human ships had been able to explore. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Novamasians remained convinced that they had what they called ‘shadow raiders’, unknown alien ships preying on their shipping. Their constant demands for more Fleet ships to protect them, and the Fleet’s refusal, made that a very edgy relationship between the Fleet and system government. There was a very edgy relationship between spacers and Novamas generally, come to that. Spacers regarded it as both an unfriendly and unlucky port. Belief in the Novamas Jinx was rife amongst spacers; so much so that many freighters wouldn’t go to Novamas at all but unloaded their cargo at a nearby mining system instead.

  ‘Perhaps they’d like us to hunt the Space Monster of Sector Seventeen while we’re at it,’ said Alex, and the port admiral laughed too. The idea that there were alien ships coming into League space and attacking their ships was, indeed, ludicrous on so many levels that it was just a joke. To spacers, anyway. The government of Novamas clearly had their own ideas about it.

  ‘Groundhogs.’ Jen observed, quite tolerantly. ‘They get the weirdest ideas. And Novamas, well...’ she gave an eloquent little shrug, conveying that Novamasians were in a league of their own where groundsider daftness was concerned. Then, with just the briefest of pauses, she asked, ‘Tell me, do you know Port Admiral Vickers at all?’

  This apparent non-sequitur got an interested look from the skipper. ‘Not at all, no,’ he admitted.

  ‘Ah.’ Jen said, thoughtfully. ‘Old School,’ she informed him, and then added, ‘Vitriolic Old School. Expect no support there, Alex.’

  ‘Ah.’ His tone conveyed nothing more than an acknowledgement of the heads-up on that.

  Jen knew that it would be a waste of time to even try to get him to attempt tact and sensitivity in his handling of Admiral Vickers. As far as Alex was concerned, being icily correct with superiors he despised was being tactful and sensitive. ‘Well, there are your orders,’ she handed him a security sealed tape. ‘Shall we say departure for Amali on the eighteenth? That should give you time to take delivery of your fighters.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex said, with a note of satisfaction. It had taken him a great deal of effort to persuade the Admiralty to allow him to carry fighters on the Heron, mostly because there was simply no precedent for a frigate doing such a thing. Even Dix Harangay, normally Alex’s strongest supporter, had needed some convincing of the need for such a radical and expensive upgrade. They had already done the work, themselves, to ready the ship to carry fighters, and it would be good to see them delivered. ‘Excellent,’ he agreed.

  ‘And you’ll be taking leave, yourself?’ It was not really a question, though phrased as one. There was something about the way she looked at him that made it perfectly clear she knew that he intended to work while the rest of his officers and crew took their leave entitlement. There might be little to do on the ship, but Alex, very unusually, also had responsibility for a base. There was a very capable commander running it, but Alex would certainly want to get involved in base affairs and decisions, too. Quite apart from anything else, the Senate’s Fleet Sub-Committee had recently ruled that the Fourth had to accept suitable candidates being sent to them on parole from civilian prisons, and they were setting up provision for training the first civilians joining them on that basis. Alex didn’t want that and Jen knew that Dix Harangay had fought it for him, but the politicians had been adamant. The Fourth was, admittedly, an expensive resource, far more expensive than any normal frigate, and the Senate wanted their money’s worth every which way.

 
‘Well, there is ...’ Alex said, then broke off as he saw the way that she was looking at him. He had already had this conversation with his executive officer and the ship’s medic, both pointing out to him that it had been seven months since he’d taken any leave, that he hadn’t had a day off in all that time, and that this was actually breaking Fleet health and safety regulations. He’d overruled them on the grounds that the Fleet allowed for such rules to be set aside in circumstances where the demands of duty prevailed, but the look on the Port Admiral’s face made it clear that she was not going to be so easily dismissed. ‘Evidently, I am,’ he conceded, which made her grin too.

  Typical, she thought. Give him orders that send him hurtling around the League like a demented pinball and he smiles. Tell him he’s got to take leave and he looks like you’ve put him on a charge.

  ‘All right.’ Seeing that she wasn’t going to get any better than resigned compliance, she gave him a benign look. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex said drily, storing the sealed tape in a secure clip inside his jacket. Then he got to his feet and gave her a crisp salute. ‘Ma’am.’

  He went out, leaving her grinning.

  Chapter Three

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Buzz broke the silence, expressing the bewilderment on every face at the table. ‘They want us to what?’

  Alex grinned broadly. The Heron was an hour and a half out of port and he and his officers were gathered around the command deck datatable. The seal on the XD-316 orders had been released when they were an hour out of Therik. Having read them himself he’d called a command team briefing. On most Fleet ships that would have meant senior officers only, meeting in private and discussing what junior officers and crew needed to be told. On the Heron it meant all available officers meeting on the command deck, in full view and hearing of the crew via the comm system that broadcast everything that happened there around the ship.