XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘Ah.’ Buzz’s response was disappointingly matter of fact. ‘I wondered if they might.’ He obviously took it for granted that Alex had foreseen the possibility of them firing her. Another skipper might have pretended to that, too, but not Alex. One of his strengths as a skipper was that he never even tried to pretend to be all-knowing or infallible.

  ‘Well, I never saw it coming,’ he admitted, and got a friendly smile from his exec, for that.

  ‘Well, I’ve been dipping a toe here and there into academia for quite some time,’ Buzz observed, referring to an academic career that had spanned three decades and got him quite a reputation amongst the rarefied circle of psychologists specialising in closed-group research. ‘That gives you some insight into how they operate, including something of the politics of commercial consultancies.’ He smiled benevolently. ‘You might consider publishing academically yourself, dear boy – it would provide invaluable experience, particularly in your dealings with the Second.’

  ‘I’ll add it to the list,’ Alex said drily, meaning the hypothetical list he and Buzz had of the thousand things they would like to do one day, when they had the time. ‘But the point is, they have fired her, which means of course she is no longer part of the Second’s unit.’

  Buzz looked interested. ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘She turned off the WN generator,’ Alex told him, succinctly, ‘and stood there blocking it so they couldn’t turn it back on, though Kate was clearly being made uncomfortable by the noise.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Buzz said, understanding at once. ‘Grounds for dismissal. Well, I suppose we’d better get her off the ship, then.’

  Alex nodded.

  ‘I’ll try to get us to Karadon as the Tela is leaving.’ Alex took it for granted that Buzz would recognise that as meaning the White Star liner Empress of Telathor, and also that he would know the scheduled date and time of departure of the liner from Karadon to Therik. He’d be a strange kind of spacer if he didn’t, after all. Liners were a constant in their world, the only kind of ship that ran to a tight schedule. That was certainly the case at Karadon, where liners inter-connected to provide transit routes for passengers across the central worlds.

  ‘We’ll swing over to that lane and get her aboard the Tela before we go into Karadon ourselves.’ Alex said, and recognising that this would be a great deal easier with Candra’s cooperation, ‘Do your best to get her to understand that that’s in her own best interest, can you?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Buzz agreed, with a grin. He went off, then, and Alex went back to his paperwork. There would, he knew, come a day either when Buzz would decide he’d had enough of shipboard service or the Admiralty would compel him to retire, but Alex could only hope that day would be a long time coming. He’d taken on enormous responsibilities, far beyond his rank and experience, and knew very well that he was only coping with that as well as he did because he had Buzz at his side.

  By the time he went onto the command deck, a few minutes before they were due to rendezvous with the Benefite, it was obvious that Buzz had broken the news about the banshee to the crew. Expressions of happy anticipation, knowing that they were going to blow up the starseeker, had turned to ones of consternation, even amongst the command deck crew. On the mess decks, tongues were wagging busily. Every spacer worth the name had a ghost story to tell. Tales of haunted ships, space monsters and the like were a staple of any spacer bar, yarns as eagerly exchanged as news of ships and cargoes. The Fleet, particularly, played that down as much as they could, feeling that it did not fit with their distinguished public reputation, but that streak of superstition was every bit as strong in Fleet crews as in merchant ones. The Admiralty might well want to know what Alex had been thinking, to take his ship out of standard search protocols, but the information that he and his crew had exorcised the ship after a banshee incident would not raise any eyebrows at all. Not, at any rate, unless he allowed it to get out, embarrassingly, and become public.

  They came up on the Benefite, anyway, without incident, the behemoth within seconds of where dead reckoning said they would be. At their signal to tell the Benefite that they’d found the Levets and had them aboard, alive and well, they got a whoop of astonished delight in reply, and frantic flashing of all their hull lights, too, in celebration and salute. It was comical, to Alex at least, how rapidly that jubilant celebration turned to horror at the news about the banshee. As soon as they were told about the cause of the Levets abandoning their ship, they asked urgently, almost desperately, for the Fourth to take the starseeker off them immediately.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Alex said, recognising that they were really afraid, however ludicrous that might seem to him. And they didn’t need the freighter to keep towing, after all. The Jolly Roger’s engines and autopilot were still functioning, the tow no more really than a telemetry cable to keep the autopilot under their control. ‘We’ll take it from here,’ Alex said. ‘Drop it to L3 for us and cast off, please.’

  The Benefite did just that, telling the Jolly Roger’s autopilot to slow and allowing the tow line to disconnect as the starseeker fell behind them. It would be a couple of minutes before they were out of shuttle range, so the Heron sent them over a gift box, including a requested kilo of salt, with warm thanks for their assistance.

  Alex watched for a minute or two as Sub-Lt McKenna took a shuttle over to the wreck of the Jolly Roger. They didn’t dock on, but hovered their shuttle just a few metres from the starseeker. Then they opened their own airlock and fired a tiny probe across. The interior of the starseeker was in darkness. The engines and the autopilot were still working – they and the computer core were encased in a tech space that would withstand anything short of an atomic blast.

  There was very little else left inside the starseeker. They were built very lightly, an open living space and flight deck combined. There was a flight console for’ard with chairs that swivelled round to be used as loungers or clicked out as extra beds, a double bunk built in amongst lockers, a miniature galley and a fold-out table with perch stools.

  Or at least, there had been. The probe lit up the scene as it filmed. In the cold blue light of it they could see that console, chairs and other furniture were gone, leaving only stubs of fittings and torn wires protruding from the deck. The walls, or rather the thin panelling that lined the interior, had been torn, buckled, with some panels missing. Locker doors had gone, too, ripped open and most of them ripped off, one hanging by a single hinge. All of their contents had spewed into space as all the air on the yacht had blasted out in the wake of the explosive launch. Only the hatch to the tech space, sealed automatically as the lifepod launched, remained intact.

  There was a sober mood on the Heron as they looked at the images from the wrecked yacht. The Levets were watching too, Alex knew, and would inevitably be devastated. He felt he’d made the right decision, there, even so. Later, in a few days or a few weeks, when they got to thinking of things they’d had on the yacht, with little pangs of loss, at least they would know, for sure, that the Fourth hadn’t blown them up, callously, giving them no chance to retrieve them.

  And they did, then, blow the starseeker up. It could have continued for months on autopilot, though it would drift ever more wildly from where the dead reckoner thought it was. Just letting it run on was not an option, however, as it might veer back into shipping lanes. So they retrieved the shuttle, pulled back, and let fly a single missile.

  The starseeker erupted into a flower of white energy, but instead of the usual cheering there was a concerted sigh of relief aboard the Heron, followed immediately by a flurry of activity as everyone on board did the ritual for warding off jinxes.

  ‘Three steps back, skipper, and over both shoulders,’ said the engineering hand who’d brought salt to the command deck. A great hulk of a man with a face that looked as if he’d lost a fight or two and fists that looked as if he’d won a great many more, he’d terrified more than one young officer on his previous ships.

  Al
ex took three steps backwards, threw a pinch of salt over one shoulder, then over the other, handing back the mug of salt to the crewman. He could hear, actually hear the relief that went up round the ship, the immediate rise in morale, now we’ll be okay.

  Absolutely bonkers, he thought, but made no comment, just went back to the datatable. He’d been there only a couple of minutes, though, when Davie North called,

  ‘Tell me, captain,’ he requested, with bright innocence on his face and a devilish twinkle in his eyes, ‘Why are my crew going about backwards and flinging salt all over my ship?’

  Alex looked back at him, deadpan. ‘Perhaps they’ve run out of pepper?’ he suggested. As his own crew cracked up laughing, Davie did, too, giving the fencer’s gesture of ‘point to you’.

  They went on their way, resuming patrol, coming up on their next starseeker flashing the emergency assistance beacon just a couple of hours later.

  ‘Our engines are making a funny noise!’ the owner signalled.

  ‘So are ours,’ said Martine, as their own engines at that point sounded like the grumpy old ladies had just seen teenagers dropping litter in the street. She said it without transmitting, though, and when she did have her finger on the record/transmit control her tone was calmly reassuring. ‘Be advised, Lemon Pi, that it is perfectly normal for...’

  ‘Don’t tell us it’s normal for the Ridge, we’re not stupid!’ The yacht owner continued, before there was any chance of him having heard Martine’s transmission. ‘I did the Starseeker course on this route and I know all about the Ridge. Our engines aren’t making anything like the sounds they played us on the course, listen!’ They got a blast of engine noise, obviously transmitted with the gain turned up full. It would indeed be a disconcerting noise for people who’d never traversed turbulence before; it sounded as if the starseeker’s engines had half a dozen very hungry baby birds trapped in them.

  There was a small but definite relaxing aboard the Heron, the crew alert to the possibility, however faint, that the banshee might be back.

  ‘Lemon Pi, please stand by and maintain comms silence while we assess the noise,’ Martine signalled, and took an unhurried drink of her coffee, then, before calling them again. ‘Lemon Pi, I can advise you that the engine noise is nothing to be concerned about. All ships have their own sound-signature when traversing minor turbulence. The examples Starseeker played for you were just a guide to the more common kinds of sound that starseekers make. Yours is unusually high pitched but that doesn’t mean that the engines are running too hot or too fast or anything that need cause you concern – the pitch and duration of engine noise in turbulence is a product of mass balance, the mass of your ship and its distribution internally. You have, I see, four people aboard, and if you have a lot of luggage, too, that would account for the higher than usual pitch.’

  After a minute or so a signal came back, the owner’s voice pretty high pitched itself, and voices in the background telling someone that they’d told her not to bring such ridiculous quantities of luggage. Seven suitcases! a maternal voice could be heard declaring, irately, with the sound of adolescent protest in response.

  ‘You’re saying that we’re overweight?’ The skipper asked, shrill with alarm.

  Martine glanced at the datafile that the yacht had transmitted on their approach – an option that owners could set, which most of them did, to transmit a ‘hi, this is us’ file to any ship that came into signalling range. This showed a family, parents and two children, a teenage girl and younger boy. They were all heavily overweight, verging on obesity, but Martine forbore to comment. Instead she explained again, patiently, that the noise was not dangerous, adding that it was not so much about the amount of mass as its distribution.

  ‘Would it help to go into freefall?’ asked the owner, with the scolding voice in the background demanding, ‘who needs seven suitcases to go on holiday?’ against a whining ‘you’re always blaming me! I get the blame for everything in this...’

  ‘No, Lemon Pi.’ Martine had the comms set so that the yacht could not hear the groans and laughter on the frigate’s command deck, at that, her own manner remaining professionally composed. ‘Your ship would still have the same mass, even with the gravity turned off. It really isn’t dangerous, at all, no more dangerous than static on a radio. If it is annoying you, though, you might like to try moving things around, try to balance the mass equally about the ship.’

  Alex turned his head and looked at her, at that, as the frigate’s crew burst out in gales of laughter, and Martine gave him a ‘come on, skipper, I’ve got to have some fun’ look, at which Alex grinned. ‘And we will, if you like, send an officer and tech team to run a thorough diagnostic, just for your peace of mind.’ This starseeker was elderly, and though it looked to be in good repair, it wouldn’t hurt to check it over.

  ‘How much does that cost?’ the owner came back, cautiously, obviously now satisfied himself that the engine noise was not, after all, an emergency. In the background the whining voice was demanding, ‘...Rak and his half a ton of model starships, you don’t say anything about that, do you?’ whilst at the same time a younger boy’s voice was shouting tearfully that it wasn’t half a ton, and pleading ‘Muuuuum!’

  ‘Entirely free of charge,’ Martine said.

  There was a delay while the yachting family discussed this, obviously weighing up the benefits of having a free technical check against the uncertainties of having members of the dreadful Fourth coming aboard.

  ‘Actually, we think we’ll be okay, thanks,’ said the owner, cautiously apologetic. In the background, the boy’s protesting ‘Muuuuum’ sounded outraged, now, while the mother, evidently unaware that the comms microphone was still set to full gain and picking up everything said, told him firmly, ‘We don’t want them here, Jakky. They’re not nice people.’

  ‘No problem,’ Martine responded, and the fact that they didn’t issue a safety advisory for misuse of the emergency beacon showed that they accepted it as legitimate, too. As the Jolly Roger had shown, a funny noise, even if harmless in itself, could trigger panic with very serious consequences.

  ‘Try to balance the mass equally about the ship?’ Shion had come to sit on the command deck with Alex once she saw that he was no longer doing paperwork, arriving just before they’d encountered the Lemon Pi. She was staring incredulously at Martine, obviously realising that that was a joke, but bewildered, too.

  ‘It’ll keep them busy,’ Martine replied, virtuously, as the Heron sped on. ‘And by the time they’ve finished shifting suitcases around they’ll be out of the Ridge, problem solved.’

  ‘It is a wind up, too,’ Alex added, as Shion looked understanding, then. ‘A very old joke played on yachts by freighters and even Fleet ships,’ he grinned at Martine again, ‘if their watch officers are feeling mischievous.’

  Shion chuckled, then, getting it – it would be impossible to shift things around on any starship so as to make the mass balance perfectly distributed, and even if it was possible to achieve that mythical perfection, nobody would be able to move, or even breathe, without breaking it.

  ‘I thought it was another anti-jinx ritual,’ she explained. She’d readily taken part in the salt flinging, expressing keen interest and no mockery of such beliefs.

  ‘No, just amusing ourselves at their expense,’ Alex told her, frankly. ‘Though Martine is right, of course, it won’t do them any harm, and may even help to keep them occupied till they’re through the Ridge.’ He smiled at her, interested. ‘Do your people have superstitions like that, jinxes and so on?’

  ‘We don’t have any concept of jinxes, no,’ Shion told him. ‘We do have spiritual beliefs, though. We believe that a living world is a living entity, more than the sum of its biomass, that living worlds have spirit. We have ghosts in our mythology, too, though we see them as energies beyond our understanding, not dead people trying to communicate. I’ve never heard of anything like the banshee, though – that’s fascinating. I’d love to hear
what it sounds like, but the computer says there’s no recording of it in the library.’

  ‘No, there wouldn’t be, not on any starship,’ Alex said, with a grin, at that. ‘And I have to ask you, please, Shion, please, if you want to investigate the banshee phenomenon, wait until you’re groundside.’

  ‘Seriously?’ she looked at him with some surprise, having been told, and seen for herself, that he did not share the crew’s superstitious beliefs.

  ‘Seriously.’ He confirmed. ‘I don’t believe a word of it myself, never have, but it is a very well understood phenomenon, at least, that once any starship crew believes there to be any kind of jinx on the ship, accident rates increase. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy, see, people don’t just attribute even the tiniest problem to the jinx but become anxious and make mistakes that cause more problems. So no, we do not have any recording of the banshee aboard ship, and we don’t tempt fate by investigating it aboard ship, either.’

  ‘All right,’ she agreed, amused but nodding acquiescence. ‘I’m learning a lot,’ she observed, with a note of satisfaction. ‘And fascinating to hear a real family, too.’

  Alex wondered how the family aboard the Lemon Pi would have reacted to being told that they had provided an alien visitor with one of her first contact experiences of normal family life. He gave a little splutter of mirth.

  ‘They’re not all like that,’ he said, and an expression of remembered love came into his eyes, warming them. He was remembering days with his little daughter, the light and centre of his world. All he really remembered now were the best times, the moments of her toddling towards him, the pure rapturous joy of flying her in his arms as they ran about a park, Etta squealing with delight, faster, Dadda!

  All that had ended in one terrible moment because his wife, breaking her promise to him that she would never do so again, had allowed little Etta to ride in the aircar unrestrained. A minor impact, something Etta should have come away from with no more than bruises and a fright, had killed his child. He would never get over that, not entirely, but time had eased grief into an idealised memory. He could think of her now with loving remembrance, though it wasn’t something he spoke about even with his closest friends.