‘Any number of them,’ Davie assured her, thinking briefly of Flancer, his own homeworld, and of Canelon, as renowned for its pristine environment as for its living history tourism. Even as he thought of them, though, he shuddered at the thought of taking the quarian there. He had learned, today, just what capacity she had for causing chaos on a global scale. ‘But we’ll discuss that later, okay?’ He said. ‘We can’t leave immediately, anyway – we need to take on supplies and, uh, replacement crew.’ He glanced from Ambassador Gerard to Admiral Harangay with just a hint of embarrassment, ‘I daresay my people have already been in touch,’ he said. ‘But I hope that you can help us out.’
‘Certainly, of course,’ said Ambassador Gerard, and Admiral Harangay nodded.
‘Whatever you need,’ he confirmed.
‘Thank you,’ said Davie, and seeing that was a sincere offer took instant advantage of it, asking hopefully, ‘Can I have Tina Lucas?’
‘Already on standby,’ said Dix Harangay, with a broad, slightly smug smile.
‘And – the Fourth?’ Davie asked.
‘Tasked to a mission,’ said Dix. ‘They haven’t received their orders themselves yet.’ His tone made it clear that he did not feel he could disclose the mission to Davie when even the Fourth themselves didn’t know where they were going.
‘In the circumstances, though…’ it was President Tyborne who intervened, with a meaningful look at the first lord.
‘In the circumstances,’ Dix conceded, ‘I can tell you that they’ll be at ISiS Kavenko around the thirty fifth of next month. And in the circumstances, I would be prepared to send an order requiring them to wait there for you. But any decisions after that will have to be at Captain von Strada’s discretion, yes?’
‘Understood,’ said Davie, and smiled at the quarian, who was looking interested. ‘It might be an idea,’ he said, putting it no higher than that, ‘for us to run across and meet them – you said you want to meet Shion, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, okay,’ she laughed suddenly. ‘You don’t need to yell at me, I get that you really want to go there!’
Davie grinned wryly. There had been many times that morning when he’d wished that Alex von Strada was there, though there was very little, practically speaking, that Alex could have done. But when the president had said that if he, Davie, couldn’t handle this mission there was nobody who could, Davie had felt immediately that that wasn’t true. There was someone else. And if Alex von Strada couldn’t handle it then they really were up poo creek without a paddle in sight.
Five
They left Chartsey fourteen hours later, as soon as they had scrambled the last of their replacement crew and Davie’s staff aboard ship. Some of them had come from companies Davie owned, some from the Fleet or Diplomatic Corps, and one had been headhunted from Chartsey University. All had passed rapid but stringent vetting and interviews before coming aboard; all had passed a far more important interview with the quarian before unpacking their kit.
Of the new arrivals, Tina Lucas was undoubtedly the finest acquisition. Representative took one look at her and broke into a big beaming smile.
‘Oh, lovely!’
That wasn’t something many people said about Tina. She had a stocky physique, rather heavy features and a stolid manner. Representative, though, could see the shining young woman within, the enormous generosity of spirit, good humour and sense of adventure.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Tina, breaking into a grin. She was in her Fleet uniform, with Sub-lt’s insignia and a Zeus emblem. She was one of the rare few humans Representative had encountered who wasn’t attempting to hide anything, not the slightest bit anxious that the empath might expose discreditable secrets. She was totally open, happy for the quarian to see everything about her, with a real, deep delight in the opportunity to meet her.
‘Call me Rep,’ said Rep, and Tina nodded.
‘Tina,’ she reciprocated, and then laughed as the quarian gave her a questioning look, picking up on a ripple of duality there, a flicker of slight embarrassment. ‘All right,’ she admitted, ‘Tin-Tin. People call me Tin-Tin. But I do prefer Tina.’
‘Tina.’ Rep affirmed, and shook hands with her, laughing and looking questioningly as she did so. ‘But why would you think I’ve rescued you?’
Tina gave her a look of sparkling merriment, raising a finger to tap at the Zeus emblem on her collar.
‘I was three weeks in on the assignment from hell,’ she explained. ‘I’m on the tagged and flagged programme, see, and your first assignment after graduation is to the flagship of the Chartsey homeworld defence squadron. About which…’ she shuddered theatrically, ‘Buh-huh-huh! So…’ she twinkled at the quarian and gave her a formal little bow, ‘Thank you.’
‘It was Davie who asked for you,’ Rep said, and grinned. ‘But I would have, too.’ She looked over at Davie as he strolled up to join them. ‘Good choice!’ she enthused.
She did not, regrettably, say the same about Zelda. Davie had high hopes of that relationship but it barely lasted eighteen seconds.
‘That is just weird!’ Rep seemed fascinated by Zelda, so much so that she actually walked all around her, studying her with wide eyed incredulity.
Zelda did, admittedly, have a tendency to draw awed gazes upon her. She was beautiful in that specialised way that requires hours of work to achieve, wore high fashion garments designed especially for her and was never, ever seen without a stunning coiffure and makeup. Today, she was wearing a spider silk dress like iridescent cobweb, crystal shoes and a careless sprawl of fireheart diamonds. Her hair was a deep plum purple and swept up in an elaborate crown, her makeup the very latest style on Chartsey, with green highlights and rosebud lips.
Rep, however, was not looking at her outfit. She was looking at Zelda’s extraordinary narcissism, a self-obsession which rarely left room in her world even to consider anybody else. She had a kind of affection for Davie, to be sure, and she enjoyed working for him, but mostly what she enjoyed about that was the sense of power it gave her to be the mistress of intrigue, at the centre of a web. ‘It’s like,’ said Rep, ‘you’re all front and no back.’
It was typical of Zelda that her immediate reaction was to attempt to glance over her own shoulder, as if afraid that the back half of her dress had been left off.
‘Darling!’ she said, looking back at Rep with dismay. And even then, as she was looking at her, she was not thinking about the quarian as a person, but imagining how she might dress her up and do her hair. ‘Come on,’ Zelda coaxed, and cooed, ‘We’ll have such fun, darling.’
‘No,’ said Rep, definitely, ‘We won’t.’ Then she laughed. ‘You’re the silliest human I’ve met yet,’ she informed her, and looked enquiringly at Davie, ‘Is that what they mean by a shallow, empty headed bimbo?’
Zelda left, announcing that she took no offence, but tip-tapping off the ship, stiff backed.
There was, at least, the consolation that Rep liked Simon Penarth. He came aboard at the last moment – he too worked for Davie, at least theoretically, but they had an understanding about that. The understanding was, effectively, that Simon did what he wanted and went where he liked and Davie paid the bills. He had been on Chartsey for a while, working with the Samartian delegation, conducting research in one of Davie’s labs and giving hospital consultants grief in his capacity of Emeritus Professor of Neurology at Chartsey University School of Medicine. He had also worked several shifts in the kitchens of one of the most prestigious hotels on Chartsey, creating a new line in fancy patisserie. Davie knew better than to ask him to come aboard – any such request would inevitably generate a belligerent reminder that while he, Davie, had the privilege of funding Simon’s research, that did not mean he was at Davie’s beck and call, together with a long list of all the important things he was busy with right now. So Davie merely sent him a friendly note telling him that he was taking the quarian ambassador out to Kavenko in the hope that they might join up with the Fourth. And that, just as he’d known it
would, brought Simon aboard immediately. He arrived with a wide grin and some carrier bags with his gear in because, he said, he couldn’t find his suitcase.
Rep beamed when she met him, though remarking that she wouldn’t want to be stuck in a lift with him for very long.
‘That loud hummy thing would get on your nerves after a bit,’ she said, and Davie understood that by ‘loud hummy thing’ she was referring to Simon’s mental activity. ‘But he’s so harmonious.’
Most people regarded Simon Penarth as being somewhere along a continuum from abrasive to terrifying. He was certainly a very forceful personality and didn’t hesitate to tell people straight what he thought. It was this that made Rep see him as ‘harmonious’, with no jarring note in his presentation of himself to the world. Even his appearance was a true and unrestrained expression of his personality, with his scruffy student-style clothes and shaggy hair. He’d come aboard wearing odd shoes, perfectly well aware of the fact but explaining blithely that he’d got ready in a hurry and that the other shoes were probably in one of his bags. Other people might see him as unconventional, eccentric or a barking maniac, but Rep just thought he was wonderfully honest.
‘He’s what the Shanuk would call an eagle spirit, I think,’ she said, with some reference to her brief incarnation as a mystic. ‘Free and soaring.’
‘You could say so,’ said Davie, and chuckled. ‘But he also has the capacity to be a rhino spirit, a kind of human battering ram.’
‘You like him very much,’ Rep observed, seeing that warmth of affection.
‘Yes,’ Davie agreed, remembering when he and Simon had met. ‘We have a lot in common,’ he said. Simon, too, had grown up in a weird isolated bubble, in his case a Gifted Child Institute which had given him no experience of ordinary life. He was as close as humanity could come to Davie’s intellect, too, without genetic engineering, a natural genius and polymath. Most importantly, he had treated Davie right from the outset as an equal, a marvellous thing for a boy who found just about everyone else either treating him as a freak or patronising him as a child. ‘I used to envy him,’ Davie admitted. ‘Because he had so much more freedom than me. But he’s one of my best mates, yes.’ He chuckled again. ‘I’ve been best man at three of his weddings.’
Rep laughed too. She hadn’t missed the byplay when Davie had introduced them. Simon had looked at her with frank admiration and had been starting to speculate about possibilities when Davie had cut in, recognising the look on his face. ‘Oy!’ A warning finger had pointed at Simon. ‘Do not go there!’
To which Simon had grinned, and Rep herself looked at Davie in some surprise.
‘Am I not allowed to have sex, then?’ she asked, and as both Davie and Simon’s minds shut down in a stunned gnnnnh! moment, Silvie walked away laughing.
In fact, there was no such thing for quarians as a casual relationship, and she had already said with her usual frankness that she could not imagine ever feeling that way about any human.
‘It’s lovely having Simon and Tina aboard,’ she said, then. ‘People who just honestly want to be friends with me.’
Davie nodded. He too valued that acceptance and honest, equal friendship more highly than he could even put into words. He knew thousands of people socially or as colleagues and was on good, friendly terms with them too, but real friends were another matter entirely.
‘You’re thinking about the Fourth again,’ Rep observed, with a curious look.
‘Uh huh,’ Davie smiled, knowing that she’d seen the feeling in him, not unlike homesickness, as he thought about them. ‘They’re the only people I know – as an organisation, I mean – who just accept me as I am, treat me as one of them, a shipmate, but don’t expect me to act like a norm. Part of that is what they do, of course, as a rehab unit – it took me a while to realise that there’s no such thing as a ‘norm’ in the Fourth.’ He gave a little grin, and ate a couple of éclairs. ‘Whether they’re bullocks transferring in on a rehab ticket or people going in on the High Flyer secondment scheme, they are all, by definition, people who are exceptionally able in some way. They’ve all experienced difficulties fitting in in the regular Fleet, having to minimise their abilities in order to be accepted by their shipmates and dealing with resentment and put-downs from superiors. They’ve all experienced, too, the massive frustration of finding their potential blocked by stupid limits on the amount of training they can receive, and being bored witless by make-work postings. Alex von Strada told me once that the only difference between a bullock and a high flyer is that the high flyer has developed better camouflage and idiot-handling skills. But in the Fourth, see, they don’t have to, because they’re all about accepting people as they are and giving them every opportunity to develop to their full potential, not just in work but in every aspect – academic, creative, sporting, whatever. Anything that people have a talent for or an interest in, they can go for it. And they’re not about trying to put square pegs in round holes, see, like the regular Fleet does, trying to drill people down into what they consider to be normal. The Fourth is about looking to see what shape of peg they’ve got and making a space to accommodate it. I knew they’d welcome Shion and figure out some way to accommodate her.’ He chuckled. ‘I think they forget, you know, that she isn’t human – I’ve seen that several times, the look of surprise when other people are doing what Shion calls the ‘alien princess’ thing and it takes them a moment to realise that they’re talking about Shion. She’s just one of their officers as far as they’re concerned, liked and valued for who she is – a superb pilot instructor, a very capable Sub and an expert in ancient history. I think you’ll like them, too – in fact, I hope you’ll like them very much. And I just know,’ he grinned, ‘that they’ll love you to bits.’
Rep looked intrigued. ‘I could be an officer, too,’ she suggested, and then stabbed a finger at him in protest at Davie’s huge burst of hilarity, ‘Oy!’ She gave him a reproving look, and not just for the uncomfortably noisy emotional surge. ‘What’s so funny about that? You want to be, don’t you?’
Davie couldn’t deny it. ‘I’d like to serve with them, yes. But it isn’t possible for me, any more than it is possible for you.’ He gave her an apologetic look. ‘Complicated, in my case,’ he explained. ‘And in yours…’ his grin spread as she put her hands on her hips and gave him a challenging stare. ‘You’re not old enough,’ he told her, opting for the simplest of the many reasons he would not support her attempting the role of an officer in military service. ‘I know, you’re a legal adult by quarian and League standards,’ he assured her hastily, seeing that she was about to contradict him. ‘But you have to be sixteen even to enter military service in the League and even then there are limitations – you can’t even achieve able star rank till you’re seventeen and a half, and the youngest you can graduate as a Sub-lt is nineteen. So it isn’t an option, Rep, okay? And if you want to argue that such rules should not apply to you,’ he said, seeing that coming next, ‘then you’ll have to take that up with Captain von Strada.’
Rep chuckled, seeing the very definite belief there that the captain would set her straight on this.
‘Is he very fierce?’ she asked.
‘What? No!’ Davie burst out laughing again, and then reconsidered. ‘Well – he can be. And his public image, of course, is horrendous. And he is very driven, I swear the man has Duty and Responsibility encoded in every cell in his body. But most of the time he’s pretty easy going – quiet, you know, but good humoured, doesn’t get into a flap about things. I can’t imagine him being fazed by anything really, he just figures things out and gets on with it.’
‘He sounds a bit dull,’ said Rep, dubiously, feeling that this described a man of very limited emotional intelligence. Then, feeling Davie’s burst of incredulity, she laughed. ‘All right!’ she appeased him with a lifted-hands gesture, an éclair in each hand. ‘I know – he’s your hero. And of course I want to meet him.’ She saw his reaction to that and looked enquiring. �
�Why are you worried?’
‘Oh…’ Davie gave a rather abashed grin. ‘Just – please don’t tell him he’s my hero, Rep. I think I might just die from the humiliation.’
‘Humans!’ Rep said, and shook her head, and ate another bun.
It was eight days after that that Davie found himself wishing that he’d never been born, ironically in just the same moment that Alex von Strada was thinking of him and hoping that he was enjoying himself.
They were on their way from Chartsey to Kavenko, via Karadon. Very unusually, the Stepeasy was running directly along the autopilot route, rather than the ten minutes off to one side of it that they normally adopted. Rep had been entirely unimpressed by Davie’s reasons for that habit.
‘We prefer to be discreet,’ he told her. ‘To keep where we’re going as private as possible.’
Rep looked at him searchingly. It was as clear to her that he wasn’t telling the truth as if he’d held up a sign saying ‘Telling a fib now.’ And she was picking up other emotions, too, an attitude she was able to interpret along with micro-expressions.
‘It’s something about small and annoying,’ she observed, at which Davie gave a reluctant grin.
‘Starseekers!’ he admitted. ‘Very small and horribly annoying. The Chartsey-Karadon route is thick with them. And the trouble is, see, that cruising at the speed we do we overtake a lot of ships, which puts way more than our fair share of starseekers on the radar. I guarantee we wouldn’t get to Karadon without at least three starseekers signalling distress calls.’
Rep looked shocked. ‘But – you know that, and you’re planning to go off route so you won’t have to help them?’
‘It’s never serious,’ Davie assured her, and then, remembering the Jolly Roger, ‘Well, hardly ever. Mostly it’s just idiots getting themselves in a panic or using the distress call because they want some supplies.’
Rep did not appear mollified. ‘But – you know that there are people out there who’ll be frightened, panicking and asking for help, and you’re going to go out of your way to avoid them?’
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