A New Job
10 May 2016Jellicoe
“Come.” Said the voice in answer to my knock. The door slid open and I stepped into Admiral Craddock’s office. The room was plain but neat, the admirals desk in the far corner with a sofa, table and drinks cabinet taking up the majority of the space, the walls were bare save for two paintings one of the FNS Orion, the great battlecruiser the admiral had once commanded with such distinction and the other of a waterborne vessel from Earths ancient past bearing the name HMS Warrior. The admiral looked up from his desk and smiled.“Stannis my boy, good to see you again. Sorry it took a few days but with Halsey somehow turning up like that I’m sure you can imagine how its been round here. Anyway well done in Cubeo.” The admiral continued without waiting for an answer. “I’ve seen your report and it’s all good useful stuff, and dinner with Tasigny. Nobody else we’ve sent has even got through the door of his office, what did you make of him?”
“Very shrewd and intelligent.” I answered truthfully. “Mind like a laser beam. It’s all in the report sir.” I had wondered if I should have included more in my report, perhaps about his suspicions and our discussion after dinner but decided against it; trust even between enemies was too precious a commodity to throw away, and besides if the king was right it could be extremely dangerous to say anything to any one.
“Yes, yes of course, he always was one of their best, and the princess, you don’t think she’s the fool your predecessor did?”
“No sir.” I replied firmly. “Princess Aisling is extremely adept at playing the airhead but in reality she’s anything but.”
“Good man, good man.” The admiral replied with a smile. “You’ve done yourself a lot of good, you’ve shown us you have a brain as well as a trigger finger and that’s just what your career needed. Now the future, are you ready for another posting? Might not be as comfortable as Cubeo.”
I smiled. “Of course sir.”
“Splendid, do take a seat.” He rose from the desk and gestured me to the sofa. “Brandy?”
“Please.” The admiral poured two generous measures of the finest Lavian, handed one to me and sat down.
“Ever heard of Ra?”
“No sir.”
“No reason why you should have, it’s another nothing little system with a pirate problem, only this particular nothing little system has just had an Imperial front corporation set up there promising to sort out the pirate problem. God knows why they want it but we can’t allow it. We need to sort out the pirates ourselves and keep the Imps from expanding their influence. Interested? Lot of money to be made from bounties.”
“Yes sir, be good to get back into action.”
Good show. We’re putting a task force together, officially you’ll be acting as the Federal Reclamation Co, off the record it’s a navy operation with a lot of resources behind it. I’ll give you a brief to read on the way over there, but the bottom line is this, stop the Imps expanding into Ra.” He said slapping the table top for emphasis.
“Understood. Who are my contacts in system?”
“A Commander Skifton is heading up our front corporation and he’s very capable, Vice Admiral Sturdee is the regular navy’s senior man over there, he’s a first class officer, tit of a stroke of luck the way that turned out.” He finished with a grimace. “Anyway, liaise with the two of them but you should have a lot of operational latitude.” The admiral then pulled up a holographic map of the Ra system above the table and went through its points of interest. It was wholly unremarkable with several stations and ground settlements and an economy based mining and agriculture. “Most of the pirate activity is focussed on the mining operations in the rings of Ra 7, it needs to be hit and hit hard before we lose the public, what’s more worrying though in the long term is that the Imperials have bought up two of the systems ground bases. They’ve got a foothold, don’t let it get any bigger.” I took a sip of my brandy and looked hard at the holo-map, the system didn’t look as though it should be a difficult one to police, the problem appeared to be a simple lack of resources.
“While I hesitate to risk costing myself a fortune on bounties, wouldn’t we be better off just giving the local commander a couple of extra patrol wings?” I asked.
“We would.” The admiral agreed lighting the pipe he had been carefully packing. “Unfortunately we don’t have any to send.” I looked at him in surprise.
“I thought Hudson had promised to sort all that out?” I asked, the new presidents loudly proclaimed support for the military had been the main reason I had backed him.
“He has and he is doing.” Admiral Craddock answered between puffs of his pipe. “Our yards are working day and night but we can’t make good over ten years of neglect in less than one. Ships have to be built, crews recruited and trained and of course the priority is the defence of our borders, internal security for backwater systems is well down the list, which is why we’re relying so much on you chaps in the auxiliary.”
“Well, we should be more than able to handle this. Anything I need to know about the opposition?”
“You’ll find everything you need in the briefing.” He passed me a dataslate. “The pirates are typical pirates, nothing you’ve not seen a hundred times before, probably Imperial funded, deniably of course. The Imps are the ‘Ra Empire Party’ obviously a front for Imperial intelligence and as we know they’re very good.”
“So are we sir.” I smiled.
“I know.” He smiled back “Right as of Thursday you’re seconded to the Federal Reclamation Co, take a couple of days off then get yourself to Ra.”