It was, he had become aware, also one of the few places on the ship where the skipper could by Fleet tradition sit down and have a cuppa with crew, chatting informally with them. Being aware of how much of an imposition he was being on them, Mako was trying to be sensitive about giving everyone some space where they didn’t have him watching them, asking questions and making notes. Today, however, Morry had been so insistent that it had been clear that refusal would disappoint, so he had come along to be suitably impressed.
He was, too, as Morry had given him a civilian-friendly tour, pointing out features he felt might be of interest even to a non-technician. Mako had been genuinely amazed to discover that all the cores had, as part of their support tech, their own hydrogen fusion reactors, producing enough power to supply a moderate sized city.
This, Morry assured him, was nothing at all impressive for starships, which frequently found themselves with so much surplus energy that they had to release it through discharge units outside the hull. As far as they were concerned, he explained, the reactors were no more important than battery-backup for the cores, which were producing orders of magnitude more power, millions of times more power than a fusion reactor.
The really astounding thing, though, was when Morry encouraged him to lay his hand on the casing of a core, putting his own hand on one to show him it was safe. Then he laughed helplessly as Mako yelped and jumped back with an astounded look on his face, feeling his jaw, which was aching, and his chest, which felt like he’d just been thumped by an invisible wall.
‘Sorry.’ Morry said, grinning broadly. ‘No engineer can resist that one. But seriously, honestly – stand sideways to it, okay? You only get that ‘push’ when you stand facing it because of the structure of your skeleton. Stand sideways and it’s fine. Trust me on this!’
Mako, easing his jaw cautiously, did not feel massively inclined to trust him, but he didn’t want to look like a wimp so he took up the stance Morry was showing him. Standing sideways to the core, he put his hand on it again, rather more cautiously.
‘Oh, that is weird!’ he exclaimed with a look of amazement. It felt as if the energy that had seemed to strike out at him last time was pulsing into him, now, like the vibration you felt in your breastbone from powerful concert speakers.
‘Good, huh?’ Morry said, with a grin, and demonstrated holding his free hand out at shoulder height. ‘Try that,’ he suggested.
Mako felt a bit self-conscious, but he copied the engineer and gave him another look of amazement, laughing aloud. The sense of energy pulsing into him had now turned into a sense of it pulsing through him. It felt as if it was passing through his body and flowing out through his outstretched hand. He would not have been surprised to see a bright light streaming out from his fingers, and felt sure that if he touched anything, sparks would arc.
‘Oh, that’s amazing!’ he said. ‘What is that?’
‘Twenty four dimensional energy pulsing right through you.’ Morry told him. ‘The heartbeat of the cosmos. Cool, huh?’
‘It’s incredible,’ Mako said, his face alight with wonder. It was so complex. He could feel that there was some kind of rhythm, but it was as if it was beyond his ability to make it out, ‘I can’t… there’s so much… it’s like an orchestra all playing different music.’
‘Hey,’ said Morry, laughing as he saw the awe on the prison inspector’s face. ‘You think that’s cool, I’ll show you something awesome. We don’t often do this. The Fleet frowns on it as bordering on ‘undue familiarity’, but you’re a civilian so it’s okay. And trust me, I am not after your body.’
Mako cracked up, seeing the twinkle in his eyes, but went along readily enough as the engineer moved him around, going to stand at a nearby core himself.
‘Check this out,’ he said. ‘These cores are neighbours but not connected in any way, okay?’ he put one hand flat on the casing, and held the other out, invitingly, at shoulder height. ‘Take my hand,’ he invited.
Mako did so, carefully, because he was coming to recognise Morry’s sense of humour. In fact, he could feel very little beyond a slight sense of confusion, as if the pulses from the two different cores were not quite in synch.
‘Right – got that?’ Morry asked. ‘But we always operate mix cores in pairs, okay? Every core has its partner – one port, one starboard. They are connected by nothing more than the simplest of telemetry wires, which does nothing more than to allow one core to detect the other. So, now you’ve felt what two cores feel like when they’re isolated from each other, have a feel of what happens when we let them become partners,’ he was moving over to another core as he spoke, and with a look of significant anticipation, put his hand on it.
‘Oh, oh!’ Mako gasped as his knees went weak. It was as if every sensory nerve in his body was trembling, a feeling so intense that he couldn’t help but cry out. He was looking at Morry with a kind of stunned look, gripping his hand white-knuckled tight.
‘Good, huh?’ Said the engineer, grinning happily, and as the rapture went on, and on, remarked, ‘of course, you’ll have to marry me now.’
Mako managed to let go of his hand, bursting out laughing.
‘That is just… well, I’ve run out of words!’ He admitted. ‘What is that?’
‘The cores singing to each other.’ Morry told him. ‘If you let two cores sense each other, they do that. They calibrate themselves to each other and sing in harmony. You can’t join any more than that because they just explode, but they love to be in pairs and they’re much more stable that way. They have personality traits and moods, too. Seriously, I am not having you on. Two identical pairs of cores on the same ship can behave in very different ways to the same stimuli, one pair placid and easy going while the other frets and fusses over any little thing. Until someone comes up with a better explanation than personality and moods, engineers will continue to describe that in just those terms.
‘Nobody is saying that they’re cognitive, let’s be clear on that. Only total nutters think that cores are ‘alive’ in that sentient way. But superlight fuel is very strange stuff, you know – actually an impossible substance in this reality, artificially created and sustained here only by the use of incredible forces. We’ve been researching it for two thousand years and still haven’t fathomed all its mysteries.
‘If you ask an engineer if cores are alive, we will tell you that’s a meaningless question. A particle of superlight fuel exists outside the parameters of our reality. It creates and destroys itself simultaneously. You can’t apply four-dimension limited labels like ‘alive’ or ‘not alive’ to something that strange, it is beyond our definitions. Cup of tea?’
‘Yes, please,’ Mako said, feeling somewhat in need of one and glad to sit down after the intensity of that experience. Tea was provided – and it was traditionally tea in engineering. It was made in a pot using water from a steam valve, which Morry told him was a custom so ancient amongst spacers that the Fleet had nearly mutinied when a First Lord had tried to outlaw the practice more than a century before.
‘He wanted to install vending machines!’ he said, with a tone that effectively conveyed the Fleet’s reaction to that. ‘Even now, he’s known as ‘Kettle’ Donovan. He’s been dead fifty years and the Fleet’s barely forgiven him yet. We don’t take kindly to people meddling with our ancient rights and customs. Engineering is also, traditionally, a haven for skippers – for any officer, come to that, but especially for skippers, as just about the only place on the ship where they do not have to maintain command aloofness.’
Mako saw that for himself, not long afterwards, as Morry was telling him a funny story, legendary in the Fleet, about a very important admiral, VIP passenger on a warship, who’d been discovered in engineering playing poker with ratings. That, Morry explained, was so not allowed under Fleet regs that personnel caught gambling for money were liable to serious disciplinary action. Legend had it that as the appalled skipper had looked on at his VIP superior running a poker school, the admi
ral had remarked genially that it quite took him back to his own days in starship command, and had invited the skipper to join them. According to legend the skipper had done so, though accounts varied as to whether he’d cleaned up or been cleaned out.
‘That old chestnut.’ Alex von Strada commented, coming into engineering as Morry was finishing the story. ‘I’ve told you, Morry, it never happened. Pure myth.’
‘Official Admiralty line.’ Morry told Mako confidentially, at which Alex grinned, swinging easily to sit on the steep open-grid stairs that formed part of the complexity of walkways and gantries interlaced through engineering.
‘Well, you believe what you like,’ the skipper observed. As one of the crew on duty there poured out a mug of strong brown tea and handed it to him in the kind of freefall safe mug used in engineering, he nodded thanks and smiled at Mako. ‘You’re not looking too shell-shocked,’ he said.
‘No,’ Mako said, having recovered his composure now. ‘It’s fascinating.’
Alex gave the LPA inspector an amused look.
‘Your hair is still standing on end,’ he observed. Mako put up a hand and felt his hair standing out from his scalp. His skin was still tingling all over and it would be hours before the sense of energy surging through him finally vanished. As he yelped at the realisation of what a sight he must look, Morry and the engineering crew cracked up too. So, more astoundingly, did the skipper. He could relax here in this sanctuary aboard his own ship. For the first time, Mako heard him laugh properly instead of the discreet little snurge he usually used. For years afterwards, whenever Mako heard Alex von Strada being described as a chillingly unemotional and ruthless man, he would remember him sitting there in engineering, drinking tea out of a battered mug and laughing. When he laughed like that, he looked hardly more than a teenager. Mako was suddenly aware that Alex was, in fact, only a few years older than his own son.
When he came to write that experience up, though, he found it difficult to put official words around it. LPA report writing protocols did not lend themselves either to recording the experience of having twenty four dimensional energy surging through your body, or to the revelation of seeing the skipper open up and show the mischievous kid within.
If that was hard to write up, though, then what he found out the following day was just downright impossible.
It was not the best of days to begin with. They’d overtaken a freighter not long after breakfast and a request had been signalled for a medical check on one of their crew, if convenient. Mako had been shocked to see that the patient was a woman who was heavily pregnant.
He had, then, made a remark that had caused offence. Exclaiming in amazement that a heavily pregnant woman would head into space on a freighter he’d commented that he was surprised that the authorities allowed it, at which a certain frost developed in the atmosphere.
‘Perhaps you’re not aware, Mr Ireson,’ said Martine Fishe, tactfully, ‘that that is an issue which spacers tend to feel pretty strongly about. Several of our own crew were, in fact, born and raised in space. Including,’ she glanced over to where the chief petty officer was studiously pretending not to be aware of the conversation, ‘Hali Burdon.’
‘Oh.’ He’d apologised of course, admitting that he’d spoken in ignorance and expressing himself as very willing to learn, but it clearly was a very touchy subject. A good many hedgehog spikes emerged the moment the words ‘Social Services’ entered the discussion and everyone was keen to tell him how well spacers looked after and educated their kids. He was grateful to Hali Burdon for inviting him to go have lunch with her at the end of the watch, clearly with an intention to show no hard feelings. He was relieved, too, to find that they were joined by other members of the crew who were pleasant and friendly with him. They didn’t harp on the subject, either, but were very willing to let that go and just chat about other things.
Unfortunately, this brought up a subject which later that afternoon had him asking if the skipper could spare him a moment. Since this clearly meant privately, Alex agreed at once and took him into his cabin.
‘Problem, Mr Ireson?’ He asked, as they both sat down.
‘Well… yes, frankly. I don’t quite know what to make of it.’ Mako admitted. ‘The thing is, skipper, someone has obviously told Ty Barrington that the secret facility underneath the prison on Cestus is actually ‘Base 19’, with alien bodies there and everything. My concern is that when I asked Lt Fishe to assure him that it isn’t true, she told me that it is. I have until now regarded Lt Fishe as an entirely reliable source of information, and I’m not sure what to make of this at all.’
He looked suspiciously at the skipper, who was sitting there with his hand over his mouth and his eyes rather bright. ‘Are you laughing, Skipper?’
‘Forgive me.’ Alex said, composing himself with a visible effort. ‘I know this is going to come as a considerable shock, Mr Ireson, but they are in fact correct. Since you have been told it already, I will do the decent thing here and confirm it. That is exactly what is under there. Though the army doesn’t call it ‘Base 19’. The myth of Base 19 was actually something they created themselves on Canelon in order to draw attention away from the real facility when activists at the time were getting rather too close to it. The army name for it is ‘C-Storage Facility’. But yes, it is the reality that the myth of Base 19 is based on. They are not having you on.’
Mako stared at him. ‘But…’ He protested, feebly. ‘Come on! Aliens?’
Alex gave him a curious look. ‘Amazing,’ he commented. ‘You are an intelligent, educated, professional man, Mr Ireson. You know for a fact that non-human species are a reality. You know about the Marfikians, of course, and you’ve surely heard of Quarus, if not that much about it. And you must, I am sure, be aware that human space is bounded by an impenetrable barrier we call the Firewall, beyond which there is clearly some kind of highly advanced civilisation. And yet you say ‘aliens!’ as if the very notion is preposterous. That’s an attitude we do see a lot in groundsiders. It’s quite astounding to us that even intelligent, educated people like yourself can be so closed minded and blind on this issue.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose, theoretically, I’d have to concede the existence of some kind of advanced life out there.’ Mako agreed reluctantly. ‘But that’s, you know, out there, way beyond our reach! Not here on our own worlds! It’s only people like conspiracy theory nutters who go on about aliens secretly visiting our worlds and all that!’
Alex grinned. ‘And what is there in that, that you find so hard to believe?’ he queried. ‘The existence of non-human civilisations, their visits to our worlds, or that our government would keep that a secret?’
‘Well, the government secrecy thing, I suppose,’ Mako said, having considered it. ‘I don’t believe you could keep something like that secret, not really, and I don’t see why governments would do that anyway. But you’re not seriously telling me that that’s true?’ he looked reproachfully at him. ‘Skipper!’
‘I’m telling you the stone cold honest truth.’ Alex said, positively. ‘The Fleet does, in fact, have a secret base just a few days from Chartsey. It’s an entry port for visitors from the only world we have so far established contact with across the Firewall. It is a world we know as Solarus Perth, and its people are very definitely not human. They are hugely more advanced technologically than we are. We have been in established diplomatic relationship with them now for more than a century. They maintain an embassy at the secret base and their visitors are brought on from there to Chartsey by specially adapted Fleet ships in joint operations with the Diplomatic Corps.’
‘You’re serious!’ Mako gasped, as he saw the conviction with which the skipper was speaking.
‘Totally.’ Alex confirmed. ‘That, in fact, is one of the functions of the raptor class destroyers. That’s what’s so special about them and why they always have very senior skippers and top end crew.’
‘But…’ Mako was still trying to find a way for this not t
o be true. If it was, it would mean many things he believed about his world were wrong. ‘You know this for a fact, do you?’ he asked, clutching at straws, ‘I mean, it’s not just something you’ve heard in a bar?’
Alex smiled. ‘I had my first exo-encounter when I was eighteen,’ he said. ‘Every year, all of the sixty seven League Academies across the League send their top rated cadet to Chartsey to sit their finals there. There’s an intensive month of exams and assessments in a moderating exercise ensuring that all the academies are teaching and grading to the same standards. But as part of that, the cadets are competing with one another for graduation rankings, with that determining very directly what opportunity you get in the final year shipboard placement. The absolute pinnacle of prestige, given to the cadet who comes out top across the entire League for that year, is a placement aboard an exodiplomatic vessel.
‘I won that, the year I graduated. I was aboard Falcon. That’s a raptor class destroyer, very new. It’s officially part of the Second Irregulars R&D division but actually attached to the First Irregulars exodiplomacy service. There are VIP quarters on board fitted out for the comfort of non-human passengers. Diplomatic personnel escort them back and forth between the entry station and the embassy provision for them on Chartsey. I was aboard when we took a party of nine visitors back to the entry station, and had the honour of meeting them, yes.
‘It was a strange experience, thrilling and yet strangely dull at the same time. I mean yes, obviously, amazing to meet aliens from beyond the Firewall. But they seem to function at a fraction of the speed we do with very slow, long silences. They spend hours just sitting with gauzy veils wrapped about their heads. The ship had to be kept extraordinarily quiet, too. They find loud noise of any kind distressing so Falcon is fitted with noise dampeners on buzzy tech, the ship’s company are issued with silent footwear, and there is a whisper protocol for talking. It felt like walking on eggshells for four days, and the whole ship erupted with noise when they’d gone and the diplomats gave us a ‘thank you, good job’.
Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Page 17
