His Majesty's Starship by Ben Jeapes Read Free Book Online Page B

Good ... yes, very good to hear from you. Very good indeed. And congratulations, and I’m very pleased you’ve chosen Gilmore, not that the name’s copyright or anything. Um. You’re welcome to put up here when you arrive, but I won’t be seeing you because I’ve got news of my own ...”
    *
    “You’re being obstructive, Mr Loonat,” said Leroux. They were in a private interview room in the Security offices: just the two of them, Samad couldn’t help noticing, which he suspected was a violation of rights it would probably be futile to try and enforce. Leroux had all the authority of the king behind him.
    “You’re being obnoxious, Mr Leroux,” Samad said.
    Leroux got to his feet and stared down at him across the desk. It was a ploy that Samad recognised: he had been seven years old when an NVN man, an armed thug of the forces of the Confederation of South-East Asia, had glared down at him in exactly the same way as the Loonat family left their newly appropriated home. There was no way he was going to be intimidated by it coming from an unarmed civilian.
    “You’re in a lot of trouble,” Leroux said.
    “So I gathered,” Samad said. “I can count at least three of my basic rights that have been violated so far. Even you wouldn’t go to all that trouble for something trivial.”
    “You ran a query on a highly classified project through your aide,” Leroux said.
    “I was curious.”
    “You know what they say about curiosity.”
    Oh great, Samad thought, now he’s going to talk to me in clichés. “The cat got unlucky,” he said. “That’s all.”
    “So how did you hear about it?” Leroux said. That was the question they kept coming back to.
    “A dicky bird told me.”
    “Right.” Leroux sat down, fingers poised over his aide. “I want the name, rank and number of this dicky bird.”
    Samad had no intention of supplying it. It had been an innocent mistake and Kirton didn’t deserve the treatment he would get. If you’re going to offer a man a job in a top secret project, he thought, you make sure he’s the right man in the first place and you certainly don’t offer it to a head-in-the-clouds Martian likely to share it with all and sundry.
    “I can’t tell you that,” he said.
    “Why not?”
    “It’s against my religion.”
    “This is some Islamic thing I don’t know about?”
    “I suspect there are quite a few Islamic things you don’t know about.”
    Leroux thumped his fist down on the table: Samad had been expecting it and didn’t even flinch. Leroux’s interrogation style was a mixture of every set interrogation piece Samad had ever seen in the zines. “Lieutenant-” There was a knock at the door. “What?” he bellowed. Samad looked round casually as it opened, then sat bolt upright as a crestfallen Peter Kirton was ushered in by a Security man.
    “Sorry, Mr Leroux,” said the man, “but this officer insists he has to speak to you ...”
    Gilmore waited with his head in his hands as Samad finished his tale. They were in Gilmore’s apartment and personnel file crystals were still scattered all over the coffee table between them. Eventually Gilmore looked up.
    “So what do you want me to do?” he said.
    “Pull him,” Samad said. “You’ve got that warrant from the king, haven’t you? If you say that we require Peter Kirton for the crew, Leroux can’t do a thing about it.”
    “Supposing I don’t want him for the crew?”
    “You do. You know him from
Australasia
, you know he can do his job.”
    “I always found him a bit ... stand-offish,” Gilmore said.
    “You’re the captain! Of course he was stand-offish. I always got on with him and I was his direct superior. He shows promise, Mike.”
    “He’s a Martian.”
    “That’s why he shows promise. He left.” Privately, Samad had always admired the Martian puritans and he knew Gilmore felt the same way: anyone who would turn their back on a corrupt, decadent Earth couldn’t be all bad and they had worked