XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  Alex gave him a speaking look. ‘Frankly, I find it terrifying,’ he admitted. ‘I mean, seriously, sir, me!’

  He really understood now why Dix Harangay had told him, so firmly, you don’t want to know. He was right. Alex was genuinely overwhelmed by the discovery of what a hot card he’d had in his hand, there. He was very glad he hadn’t known about it, coming into this operation. No matter how hard he’d tried, he knew, it would inevitably have affected the way he saw things, the way he related to people. And, if they knew about it, the way other people related to him. It really did frighten him that people of real status and importance might actually take that letter seriously, seeing him as someone of major political clout.

  In fact, as Call at least understood, Alex had already become a player in League affairs. He’d been acting under personal presidential briefing at Karadon. He worked hand in hand with the Diplomatic Corps and was on first name terms with ambassadors. He was a man who gave advice to presidents. It was not, Call felt, much of a surprise at all that President Tyborne had given him letters of accreditation in case he might need some extra authority to help him with his mission.

  Alex, though, did not see that. In his own mind he was still a frigate skipper. Okay, a frigate skipper who also had a base and task-force responsibilities, but fundamentally still just a frigate skipper.

  ‘Well, all right,’ Call said, ‘Alex, then.’ He smiled at him, feeling quite fatherly himself, in that moment. It was easy to think of Alex von Strada as an intimidating, forceful man, blasting his way through every problem in his path. Once you got to know him well enough to see the reality, though, you could see his human vulnerabilities. ‘Are you going to be all right,’ Call asked, ‘to go ahead with launch as scheduled?’

  That could be taken many ways, including as an expression of support and concern for Alex himself, heading out on a mission with emotions still running so high. Alex, though, just looked surprised.

  ‘Yes, of course, sir,’ he said, and reminded him, ‘you gave us all the supplies we needed.’

  Call laughed, giving him a nod of approval.

  ‘You’ll do,’ he said, and Alex smiled back, nodding agreement.

  They did launch exactly on schedule, making their launch run late that evening. It actually felt cathartic, as the ship rattled, shook and groaned with the stress of acceleration, to hang on and yell. The sense of release and freedom that spacers always felt as they tore out into deep space was magnified a hundredfold here. Alex even breathed a sigh of relief, as the system dropped away behind them.

  Nobody was more relieved to be heading out there than Able Star Tonno Trevaga. He couldn’t be described as happy – he was still too shaken and upset for that – but he managed a smile as they got out of survival suits. There had been a real question over whether Tonno would come with them. He’d been so upset, even after coming back from making his statement, that Rangi had eventually asked the skipper to come to sickbay and have a word with him. There, a tearful Tonno had apologised, telling the skipper that he’d have ripped his own tongue out rather than get him into such trouble, honest, he would.

  ‘I’d better go on transfer,’ he said, ‘I don’t deserve a place here – just, nothing but trouble.’

  If he’d hoped that the skipper would contradict and reassure him that they couldn’t do without him, he’d hoped in vain. Alex had responded calmly, but seriously.

  ‘Well, never let it be said that I put any pressure on anyone to head out spaceside,’ he observed. It was part of the Heron’s launch ritual, alongside official procedures, that the skipper announced last chance for anyone to get off the ship if they didn’t want to go with them. It always got a laugh, that, but they all knew he meant it, too. On any Fleet ship, any officer or member of the crew who said they did not feel able, for any reason, to undertake deep space duties would be off the ship at once. That had little to do with compassion for individual members of the Fleet and a great deal more to do with their knowledge of how intense emotions could get in the pressure-cooker of a ship out in deep space. Taking someone out with you who did not want to be there was just building in trouble. ‘If you really want a transfer,’ Alex said, ‘I’m sure I could arrange something with the Albatross, as a transfer without prejudice.’ That meant that Tonno would not suffer the career-ending consequences of jumping ship pre-launch, which generally meant you would never be offered spaceside assignment again. ‘And if that really is what you want, if you honestly feel that you can’t come back from this, that staying with us would be too hard, I will respect your decision. All I will say is that I hope you will find it in yourself to get past this, accepting that what happened here was absolutely not your fault, and stay with us, as we all want you to.’

  He was speaking for all of the crew in that, too, as Tonno discovered when he ventured, at Rangi’s suggestion, to go back to his mess deck for a while and take some time to think about things before making a decision. There might have been a certain amount of annoyance with Tonno, seeing how his stupid ‘the skipper thumped me’ story had come back to bite them, all this time later. Certain members of the crew might, indeed, have felt quite inclined to give him another slap round the head and point out quite firmly how dumb he’d been. Having seen the hysterical state he’d got into when he’d realised that himself, though, and heard the things he’d shouted at the Lt who’d come to take him off the ship, they knew he didn’t need any more telling off from them, just understanding and support. They’d given him that, in full measure, with hair tousles and jokes, and Tonno had decided to stay.

  An hour after they’d left port, though, Tonno, like almost all the rest of the crew, was fast asleep.

  Alex would rather have liked to be in bed, himself. It had been a long, emotionally draining day and the thought of quiet, privacy and sleep was attractive. Alex always took the nightwatch on the first night after launch, however, acknowledging the very much busier time the other officers had had of it, with everything they’d had to do for launch prep. Buzz, as always, offered to split the watch with him. Alex, as always, declined.

  And in fact, once the ship had settled down for the night, there was a kind of rest to just sitting there quietly, giving half an eye to watch screens and the other just to watch the stars go by. He half expected Shion to join him, but she didn’t. Buzz had suggested that it might be good to give the skipper some time to himself, tonight. Alex appreciated that, as the hours went by, and the tranquillity of the sleeping ship gliding through space soothed away his cares. He did not have to be anything out here, other than a frigate skipper. No politics, no demands tearing him in ten directions at once, no hostile superiors and no civilians at all.

  Heaven, Alex thought. And once they’d had mid-watch refreshments, he took some time to read some of his personal mail, too, particularly the letter from his parents. He had scanned it quickly and written them a reply before they left the system, telling them, as he so often had to these days, not to worry if they saw stuff about him on the news. He was fine, he said, it was just ‘work stuff’. He’d told them that he was taking the Heron out now on a routine patrol, and they might not hear from him again for some months, but again, not to worry. Then he’d signed it love, Lex, because his parents still called him that.

  Now, he took the time to read their letter properly. It was all, as usual, about the minutiae of their lives. They had new neighbours, just moved in three doors down. The city council had created a no-park zone in the neighbourhood and his father wanted to know what on earth they paid their taxes for and what the world was coming to when people couldn’t even park outside their own homes. On a more cheerful note, they’d had a lovely holiday, a river cruise for their anniversary. They’d included a couple of pictures – expensive, for intersystem mail – and Alex sat for a long time looking at them, the solemn owlish couple in their ill-suited holiday clothes. There were times when he felt like these were just two random people who’d decided to write to him for some incomprehensibl
e reason. At other times, though, it was as if he was so close to them that he could walk through a door and be right there, at home, with the stuffy smell of far too many scented products and fat, uncomfortable cushions piled on every seat. He wondered what they would say if he could call them and tell them right now, hey, Mom, Pop, I’m actually on my way out to try to make first contact with an unknown alien species right now. Knowing them, Alex felt, they’d blink a bit, say uncertainly that they were very proud of him, and within two minutes would be telling him that they were thinking of getting a new car. And they would, as always, tell him to eat properly and be sure to look after himself.

  ‘Morning, skipper.’

  He looked up and saw that Shion was coming onto the command deck. As Alex glanced at the time, too, he saw that it was 0601.

  ‘Morning,’ he said, and realised that the nightwatch was, indeed, drawing to an end, crew starting to get up. It was a whole new day. Breakfast, a few hours sleep, and Alex could get back to comfortable shipboard routines. By this afternoon, he’d be sitting in engineering, having a mug of fresh-brewed tea. And in five weeks...

  In five weeks, they would be at the Firewall.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Well, there it is,’ Alex said.

  They were cruising in a circular holding course, looking at the Firewall.

  There was nothing to see, of course. Just a plane, on charts. It was so big that it looked flat at this scale, though if you had a star chart big enough it was possible to see that the Firewall curved around part of this spiral arm of the galaxy and reached out into the next. Just how far it actually went was yet to be determined – Exploration Corps ships were out there now, trying to find out just that.

  Right here, though, they knew exactly where the Firewall was. It was an extraordinarily precise line. Ships had mapped it by doing exactly what they were about to do now. Turnaround happened, consistently, as ships struck a region that was no more than a million kilometres across.

  It was not a forcefield. Research had worked that out, even before the Solarans had confirmed that there was no forcefield there all the time. There was, however, a sensor system that would activate defences if anything attempted to cross.

  ‘Are we all ready?’ Alex asked, and there were nods, murmurs and ‘ready, sirs’ from everywhere.

  They were, Alex knew, as ready as it was possible to be. The ship was prepped, the crew was trained for every eventuality they’d been able to think of. They were all in survival suits, tethered and waiting.

  ‘All right,’ Alex said, and sat with one hand on the command table, as he did during launch runs. ‘Go.’

  They ran the autopilot programme written and tested for this. It turned the ship, holding steady at L-3, aiming it straight at the Firewall.

  The most extreme rollercoaster ride in the League was on Sharfur. It was called ‘Blackout’ and was advertised under the slogan ‘Pass Out or your Money Back’. They didn’t have to give many people their fare back, as the extreme variations of g-force would make most people grey out into momentary unconsciousness.

  Riding that, though, was a controlled experience, hardly even to be compared with hurling yourself at an alien defence system that you knew would knock you out and turn your ship around. Heart rates were high as people took white-knuckled grips on freefall bars, bracing themselves. Many people were holding their breath, too, all eyes on the countdown running down fast – five seconds, three, one...

  Alex opened his eyes, feeling groggy for just a second, and then fully alert. Joy rushed through him.

  All the drills, all the role play, and now it was real – their very first turnaround. It felt like an alien encounter in itself, though they knew it was just an automated system. The ship was, as Alex saw at once, now on a precisely reversed course. They had been unconscious for just 17.4 seconds.

  ‘Yes!’ Alex grinned as a jubilant cheer erupted all around the ship, with people laughing, punching one another on the arm, celebrating. Alex allowed them a minute to do that, then called them back to order. ‘Attention on deck – come on, people,’ he said. ‘We’re on a schedule, here.’

  Huge laughter, but they got back to work, completing post-turnaround checks just as per drill, as the ship went back into holding position. Eight minutes later, they were back to ‘green, all green’.

  Then they waited. Alex had decided to go with the simplest of mathematical sequences, combining primes and squares, in an effort to draw attention to the fact that they were not a mere tiny fuzzy noise at the border but intelligent beings seeking to make contact. They would bump the border in a series of prime numbers and pause, between, in intervals of square numbers.

  So, they ran the Firewall again, making that two bumps at eighteen minutes apart. Then they stayed in holding pattern for one ‘wait’ unit of thirty six minutes.

  The second round was three bumps, taking fifty four minutes, before they had a wait break of just under an hour and a half.

  At this point, since they’d started at 0650, they had breakfast. They had, by then, been rendered unconscious five times already, and the novelty was starting to wear off. It certainly wasn’t affecting anybody’s appetite, though.

  At 0920, they went in for round three – five bump runs this time, at eighteen minute intervals. That meant they were hanging around for ten minutes between each bump, but they all understood the reason for that – the regular nature of the pattern was important, to show that this was intelligent, purposeful attempt at communication, not just random banging. Alex had chosen the intervals – a precise 18.12 minutes – in order to make it manageable for them on a 25 hour cycle. They’d practiced this drill cycle, too, adapting shipboard routines, watch duties and chores to fit in with it. After the five bump runs they had a nine wait-unit break, three and a quarter hours, doing morning watch chores and then having lunch.

  At 1314, they embarked on round four. Seven bump-runs this time, and by the end of them the novelty was definitely wearing off. They weren’t cheering any more when they woke up and found themselves going back the other way. It was already starting to feel just as routine as the drills. They had a five and three quarter hour break, after that, a sixteen-unit interval for afternoon watch duties and dinner. Then, at 2016, they went in for the last bump-run series of the day.

  This was the big one, eleven runs at the Firewall one after the other, again and again, the same procedure. The ship was kept rigged, all of them staying in survival suits, all unnecessary systems deactivated, everyone at their posts. When the bump alert sounded they all got into position and tethered on, the ship began its run, the countdown flitting down from five seconds. Then they all woke up with the ship heading back the opposite way, and went automatically into post-bump checks – health checks, tech checks, all reporting green then hanging around waiting for the next scheduled run. As they woke up from the eleventh run they did give a cheer, but only because they knew that meant they were done for the day. This time, when post-bump checks were done, Alex stood them down for the night. They had nine hours, now, to get a bite of supper if they wanted, and sleep, to be ready to start the cycle all over again at 0650 the following day.

  Those optimists who’d hoped that the Gideans would see and respond to their border-knocking within a few runs went to bed disappointed. Most of the Herons, though, knew that they might well be in this for the long haul. Even if the Gideans were prepared to make contact with them, Shion had said that if their systems were anything like those at Pirrel, it might be some time before they even noticed the rhythmic tapping at their border. Alex had made sure that everyone understood, too, that the chances were extremely high that they would stay here for weeks, doing this, day after day, on and on till they were all sick to death of it, only to have to give up and leave without having had any response at all.

  That did not, however, prevent half the crew from waking up every few minutes just to glance at scopes on their bunk-screens, just in case. Alex couldn’t blame them for
that – he couldn’t sleep either. There was such a sense of anticipation, a feeling that something extraordinary might happen at any moment. It reminded Alex of his childhood, of restless nights before big days, that sense of something sparkling in the air.

  After the first week, though, they’d all got over that. Alex really knew that they’d settled into this as routine when he saw crew having a conversation that they just carried right on with, as if the intervening pause of having been rendered unconscious by alien technology hadn’t even happened. It wasn’t as if it hurt, after all, or had any unpleasant effects. There was no sense of losing consciousness – one moment you were looking at the countdown and the next you were opening your eyes, with just a moment of disorientation as if you’d dropped off for a few seconds while watching holovision. Rangi was monitoring their health very closely, not just checking their vital signs after every bump run but doing a whole raft of medical tests. Five of the crew had volunteered for in-depth testing, too, excused other chores for Rangi to do full medicals on them every day.

  ‘As far as I can tell, so far,’ he reported, at the officers’ briefing held at the end of the first week to review how things were going, ‘being knocked unconscious twenty eight times a day actually seems to be quite good for you. It is, quite definitely, a neuroelectric field...’ No news there, since previous research over the centuries ships had been running into the Firewall had already established that, that there was some kind of energetic field generated throughout the ship which put neurons into a ‘sleep’ mode. ‘Physically, I’m observing the same kind of effects as if people were taking cat-naps or brief meditation sessions,’ Rangi told them. ‘People are relaxed, well rested, and I’m seeing no signs of physical stress. Psychologically, too, we are all well prepared for this and I have no concerns.’

  There were no concerns about the ship, either. Whatever means was used to turn it about clearly wasn’t putting any kind of stress on the hull or the technical systems.