Free Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) by S J MacDonald Page A

been stopped.  Admiral Jennar had lost a lot of money over that, but it was probable that the attack on his integrity had hurt him even more.  Alex had made an enemy there, and Admiral Jennar was not a man to drop a grudge lightly.
    The politics had indeed been very dirty in this, Mako recognised, and had no difficulty understanding why the Fleet had tried to keep this quiet.
    ‘Thank you,’ Mako nodded.  ‘So, having a very clear understanding now of why there is this belief that Jace Higgs was shafted, do you mind if we go back on the record now?’
    ‘Not at all,’ Alex agreed readily, so Mako picked up his comp and activated it again.
    ‘Right.’  He sat poised, lumopen at the ready.  ‘Just a couple of questions then, please.  Firstly, it’s evident that your own focus has been to get Jace Higgs released, so whose decision was it to include Jok Dorlan and Timon Barrington?  Did you choose them yourself or have any say in that?’
    ‘They were proposed by the First Lord, though I daresay it was one of his staff who actually selected them,’ Alex said.  ‘I had the usual skipper’s right of veto to refuse to accept anyone aboard my ship if I did not feel them to be safe for any reason, but I had no hesitation in agreeing to them both.  I’ve never met either of them but they meet the criteria for the scheme and they both have the support of skippers whose opinions I respect. 
    ‘Both of them are on continuance of service terms, you see, which means that their skippers stood by them at court martial and made an official commitment to taking them back after completion of their sentences, should they choose to remain in Fleet service.  The Fleet holds skippers to that see, so no skipper does that lightly.  If they feel that there is any reason for concern that that crewmember may pose an ongoing problem or re-offend, no responsible skipper would make application to have them back.
    ‘Jok Dorlan, in fact, is someone who might have been sent to us on special recommendation anyway.  We do have a very similar case, fortunately picked up and sent to us before a hacking incident like the one that sent Dorlan to prison.
    ‘The crewmember we have here is Ordinary Star Elsa Nordstrom.  She is a computer hacker just like Dorlan.  She was sent to us after some minor incidents on three previous ships.  She was hacking non-classified files, usually for practical jokes like making tech generate ridiculous sounds when controls were activated.  The Fleet really wants to keep her and both R&D and the Intel division are expressing headhunter interest.  She’s very good, see, and while R&D wants her to work on computer security systems, Intel have obvious use for someone who can hack even the most heavily encrypted files. 
    ‘You can’t, however, put people in that kind of role unless you are entirely assured that they are trustworthy.  So she came as a high priority special recommend and is on a microsteps programme aiming to achieve the year of good conduct R&D and Intel need before they can start fighting over her.
    ‘The only difference between her and Jok Dorlan, really, is that she was caught at a low enough level to make it a matter for bullock farming while he was found waltzing about in classified Admiralty files.  I do know his skipper – Skipper Tanlin, of the Megathor, on the Therik station.  And if I know him, as soon as he hears that I have his crewman, he will be writing to me to tell me to send him back as fast as I possibly can.  Which I will, subject of course to that being what Dorlan wants too.  Skipper Tanlin is of the view, clearly and emphatically expressed in the file, that Dorlan has learned his lesson and will never do anything that line-crossingly dumb again, and that’s good enough for me.  
    ‘As for PO Barrington, well, even the judge who sentenced him expressed some sympathy with the mess he’d got himself into, with one error of judgement and a lot of panic.  The