Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (90 page)

‘I
am
Third Lord,’ he reminded the other man, with awful rebuke.

‘Third?’ Simon gave a derisory little snort. ‘Internal Affairs! You’re just a petty bureaucrat, a pompous little jobsworth squatting in that office like a poison toad. And no, you
can’t
have me sacked because I don’t work for you and never would. But I am that man’s doctor, and if you say one more
word
that upsets him or sets him back in his recovery, I
will
have you charged with assault.’

Cerdan Jennar did the only thing he could; he walked away, holding on to what dignity remained to him.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ Buzz said, escorting the admiral as he stalked back to the airlock, clearly intending to leave at once. ‘Professor Penarth is…’ he gestured helplessly, but broke off as Cerdan Jennar gave him a fulminating glare. Buzz had not even attempted to stop Simon Penarth’s outrageous insults, and the Third Lord would never forgive him for that. Cerdan Jennar also had to be aware, acutely aware, of the rigid silence on the frigate, the desperately frozen faces, the handful of people who just couldn’t hold it in clapping a hand over their mouths and diving into the nearest lavatory. His glower made it clear;
You haven’t heard the end of this
.

The moment the airlock closed behind him, though, the Heron’s crew just exploded with glee, whooping and cheering, laughing their heads off. And Simon, grinning, gave a salute to the open comms.

‘You’re welcome,’ he said, knowing very well that what he’d said, there, would be passed throughout the Fleet and the spacer community.

By the time Alex returned, a couple of hours later, the hilarity had settled down to mere giggles every now and again as someone remembered what had been said. Alex was careful not to laugh, himself, when Buzz told him what had happened. There would certainly be an official enquiry into this, and part of that
would
involve review of the recording when the captain was informed about the incident. So Buzz told him about it as an incident in which a civilian passenger had been extremely rude to the Third Lord, and Alex listened with suitable formality.

‘Dear me,’ he said, when Buzz had finished his report, and kept a straight face even though many of those even on the command deck were disintegrating into giggles again. ‘I trust you told Professor Penarth that such conduct is not appropriate aboard a Fleet ship?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Buzz said. He was not nearly so good at maintaining poker-face, and the best he could achieve was a rather owlish solemnity. ‘Professor Penarth has, in fact, already left the ship.’

‘Ah.’ Alex knew that he was intending to leave the ship at Chartsey, of course, but it was with genuine regret that he heard that Simon had already gone. ‘I should have liked to see him off,’ he said, ‘to thank him … for everything he’s done for us.’

But he gave a nod, then, activating his desk screen and obviously intending to settle to work, so Buzz just grinned and left him to it.

There was a lot of mail in Alex’s in-tray flashing urgent, top priority. There was a lot in his personal mail box, too, much of it from friends at Chartsey and nearly all flagging a reference to Marto’s trying to give him the J-2-8 yacht and describing him as noble and heroic. Alex knew he would have to deal with all the inevitable leg-pulling over that, and all the usual efforts to set him up with a date, too. But that would have to wait, as the official mail came first.

There was a memo from the Third Lord, informing him that there would be an official enquiry into the disgraceful behaviour he had experienced whilst on a courtesy visit to the frigate, and that he expected disciplinary proceedings to be taken against everyone involved, including all the personnel who’d laughed. There was a memo from Fleet Medical, informing him that there would be an official enquiry into the highly unorthodox surgery he had authorised aboard his ship. There was a memo from the Audit Division, enquiring plaintively whether it had been absolutely necessary to carry out seventeen refits on the brig-deck, during the course of operations.

Then there was a personnel transfer notification – Sub lt Lucas, he was told, was to report aboard the carrier Zeus without delay, where Captain Bufford would give her orders for a tagged and flagged assignment there.

The League Prisons Authority had sent a memo, too, enquiring on what basis the Fourth had seen fit not only to dismantle the brig but to employ their Liaison Inspector as a steward in the new leisure facility.

Customs and Excise wanted to know why their high security vault had been used to carry catering supplies. The Second Irregulars wanted to know where Lt Commander Misha Tregennis was and on what basis Alex had transferred her back into regular Fleet service. The
First
Irregulars, aka Fleet Intelligence, wanted to know what Alex had done with Murgat Atwood, whom they persisted in regarding as rightfully one of theirs even though she was now a serving member of the Fourth. Even the Third Irregulars had sent a rather wistful memo, asking if they might have details of any Van Damek navigation the frigate might have undertaken – the Third had the unenviable job of maintaining shipping routes and ports, regarded as the street cleaners of Fleet service.

As Alex was writing an apologetic response to this, reminding them that such information was need-to-know and could only be passed to them by the First Lord, Martine Fishe drew his attention to a media screen. She was monitoring media output, and he knew she wouldn’t interrupt him without good reason.

The reason was a media conference being given right then by one Senator Murbles. He had become one of the most vocal critics of the Fourth at Senate level, and it was no coincidence in that, for sure, that he belonged to the same country club as Cerdan Jennar.

‘… six and a half months, at a cost of eighteen and a half
million
dollars!’ the Senator was in full rant mode as Martine called Alex’s attention to the screen. ‘And for
what
? They’ve been swanning around the Dortmell sector for the best part of a year, on these so-called covert operations, and what is there to show for it? Two ship arrests, and
those
brought in by Customs and Excise. The Fourth costs a fortune, and they do absolutely
nothing
for the League. And now,
now
, adding insult to injury, they’re being allowed to run riot on Affinity Station, on
security
grounds, we are told, because their crew isn’t safe to go about in public!’

There had been no way to hide the shuttles flitting between the Fourth’s ship and the Affinity station, so Dix Harangay had announced that he was making facilities there available for them for leave-passes, on the grounds of security risk. The media might suspect that there was more to it than that, but Senator Murbles was quite definitely not in the loop. It was evident that he genuinely believed the official reports of where the Fourth had been – Dortmell – and what they had achieved – nothing very much.

‘It is,’ the Senator raged, ‘absolutely
disgusting
that these criminals and Fleet rejects are being paid at great expense to swan around enjoying five-star chef cuisine when decent, hard-working…’

Alex watched for a couple of minutes, turned off the screen with a wry smile, and quietly went back to work.