Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  They were, a little to Alex’s surprise, going to have another crack at the Ignite project. The Ignite missile test they’d carried out during their last task-series on the way to Novamas had been a spectacular failure. It was supposed to destroy a planet so completely that there was nothing left of it but highly energised tachyons. In theory, it would enable tactical targeting of moons and worlds being used for weapon or warship manufacture while leaving the inhabited world unharmed. It was meant to be their latest ‘edge’ weapon in the stand-off that was the only thing preventing the Marfikians attacking their worlds. The test missile, however, had fired fractionally too soon, resulting in a system-trashing tsunami of debris. The Devast Industries team responsible for the project had evidently thought it would take them years to resolve the firing issue to the point where they were ready to test again. Here they were, though, back again, Mack leading a team of two specialist engineers. Devast had learned from experience in one thing, at least, Alex noted. They had made Mack project director, with line-manager authority over the others – Devast’s ‘round table’ egalitarian management structure had been a major problem the last time.

  They had evidently taken care that there would be no repeat of the horribly embarrassing situation with Professor Candra Pattello, anyway. The paperwork sent with them by the Second made it clear that all three had been subject to in-depth personality profiling and mission training, too, as close to Fleet basic training as was feasible for civilians.

  The other team, occupying the last two berths in the Second’s on-board lab, consisted of one of the Fleet’s own officers on assignment to the Second. Whether she actually was a Fleet officer in any meaningful terms was debatable, though – Misha Tregennis had certainly graduated from a Fleet Academy, but she had never served a tour of duty either aboard ship or in groundside admin. She’d been snapped up by the Second and spent the last eight years working for them in the Strategy and Operations think-tank. The Second had learned early on in their incarnation that if they wanted the best civilian minds to work with them on R&D projects then they had to be accommodating. The Second, therefore, had a first-names protocol with an optional ‘uniform’ of chinos and logoed t-shirts that could be worn by Fleet and civilians alike. Lt Tregennis came aboard wearing a low-cut shimmer top and skin-tight leggings, greeted the skipper with a ‘hi’ and invited him to call her Misha. In contrast, her assistant was smartly dressed in obviously brand new Second Irregulars kit, hair glossed into a solid cap and his face scrubbed to the point of shining. He was a civilian, a post grad who’d beaten off more than three hundred other applicants for a year-long internship with the Second. He stood to attention, all but saluted, called Alex ‘sir’ and marched himself off to the lab like a soldier.

  Getting them aboard, though, was the easy bit. Nearly all research teams came aboard with huge quantities of stuff, despite the fact that their lab was already well equipped. The Second was supposed to ensure that the combined teams did not bring aboard more gear than could be carried in the lab, but as crate after crate after crate was brought aboard, it became apparent that either they’d got their maths wrong or the various teams had brought more than they were supposed to.

  ‘All right, dear boy?’ Buzz came onto the command deck as the evening watch changeover sounded.

  Alex grinned at him. A team of techs was dismantling part of the command datatable even as he was working on it, while another was taking apart the secondary helm console, activity mirrored all around the ship as the busy hum and checklist chants went on and on. Shuttles were still buzzing back and forth, bringing their own supplies aboard, with a team organising the tonnes of crates into their hold. Sub-lt Paytel was in the corridor outside the lab, itself stacked with crates, negotiating with the Second’s teams as to what was essential to have in the lab, what could be carried in the hold and what would have to be taken back groundside. From somewhere was wafting the scent of the strange, vaguely tomato-like soup and hot beef rolls, ‘soppo and a dog’, that the Fleet served up, traditionally, at busy times.

  ‘Great,’ said Alex, and added, with an air of deep contentment, ‘Good to be home.’

  Five

  The next eight days passed rapidly. Alex got very little sleep. He seemed to be everywhere about the ship, much of the time, supervising the strip-down and drills which were working the crew into a unified team. He was also dealing with all the procedures and paperwork required of a Fleet ship going back into active service following a period of stand-down, on top of the normal burden of bureaucracy any skipper had to deal with while in port.

  Tina had never had so much fun in her life. Buzz had agreed that the best use of her time in this pre-launch period would be for her to continue shadowing the skipper and assisting as required. It wasn’t long before she found herself being handed the kind of tasks that really tested her assertion that she could be of use to them. The first of these was to deal with the formalities involved in bringing Lucky back aboard.

  This was, in itself, a bizarre situation. The Fleet very definitely did not allow pets of any kind aboard their ships, and the fact that the Fourth had had to register their frigate as a space zoo in order to keep the gecko aboard was a matter of hilarity across the Fleet. After extensive negotiations, it had been agreed that Lucky would be looked after by the Port Authority while the ship was on stand-down. That had meant a medical isolation unit at the quarantine facility being specially adapted for the lizard, with suitably qualified vets employed at the Fourth’s expense to care for him.

  Bringing the lizard back aboard ship needed far more, though, than merely fetching him back from quarantine. It required that the habitat created for him in their sickbay be checked and certified anew by the civilian authority which granted licenses to keep exotic animals. It also had to be inspected by the quarantine authority, with special arrangements made for a sterile transfer from the isolation unit to the shipboard habitat. Since all of the civilian authorities involved strongly disapproved of the Fourth keeping a lizard on their ship, they were just as unhelpful in that as they could be, to the point of being downright obstructive. Added to that was the complication of Greenstar making a last-minute legal application in a groundside court, trying to prevent the handover of the lizard. It was a waste of time trying to convince Greenstar that the Fourth was not conducting illegal experiments on their gecko. Even if they could convince individual activists of that, the position of the organisation would not be budged. And even if they did believe that Lucky was a much loved pet and mascot, Greenstar would still protest the keeping of a lizard on a warship, as an unsafe and unnatural environment for it.

  Alex handed that over to Tina to deal with, commenting that Dr Tekawa was too busy at the moment to be bothered with all that. The medic certainly did have a good deal to do with all the new people coming aboard needing both medicals and the orientation he was responsible for in his role as shipboard safety officer. The truth was, though, as Tina understood very well, that Dr Tekawa was inclined to become emotional where Lucky was concerned, so dealing with his anxieties was actually part of the task in itself.

  The fact that she had been able to go back to the skipper after just a couple of hours and inform him that Lucky was back in his habitat got her a nod of approval from Alex. He knew how hard she must have worked, for that. And there was a cheer from the crew, too, at the news.

  Lucky was, indeed, a much loved pet and mascot. But he was more than that, as Rangi Tekawa told Tina once he’d been reunited with the gecko.

  ‘He has the distinction of being the only animal we know of to have taken part in first contact,’ Rangi said, tickling the gecko under its chin and offering it another nut. Lucky trilled happily, pink flushes appearing on his skin. Then, having surveyed the nut with bright-eyed, head-tilted interest, he took it delicately from Rangi’s fingers and munched his jaw from side to side. ‘The Gider asked us to bring him to the encounter venue, and he did us proud, didn’t you, lovely?’

  Tina
glanced from the lizard to the medic. She already knew a good deal about both of them. Rangi Tekawa had famously been dismissed from a previous shipboard posting by a skipper who had written in outraged capitals NOT SUITED FOR SHIPBOARD SERVICE on his personal record. Alex, however, had welcomed him as the Fourth’s medical officer and allowed him free reign in the eccentricities that had driven his previous skipper nuts. The Heron’s sickbay had a tropical glade holodecor, a grassy ‘healing space’ and a tree in a pot. The ship also had odd and unexpected smells, as Rangi was in the habit of releasing aromatherapy pods about the ship when he felt they would be helpful. It was Rangi who had persuaded the skipper to keep the gecko, after Lucky was rescued from a ship they were about to blow up.

  ‘Even the Diplomatic Corps acknowledge that us taking him along was a significant contribution to the relationship,’ Rangi said, as earnestly as if he felt the need to convince her, too, of how important the gecko really was. ‘They’ve agreed to take more animals out to the encounter zone at the Gider’s request, and there’s a feeling, even, that it was finding that we share our lives with animal companions, too, that made them decide to meet with us in the first place, and then to develop contact.’ He evidently realised that this was placing rather too much importance on the gecko at the cost of disrespecting human efforts, there, and grinned. ‘Well, that it was a factor, at least,’ he amended.

  ‘You were there, weren’t you?’ Tina asked. One of the benefits of getting into the Sixty Four was that you could apply for nine ack alpha clearance which, once achieved, gave you access to files that even the majority of serving officers would not be allowed. It wasn’t an automatic privilege – Tina was one of only seven of this year’s cohort to have achieved it – but for the last six months, she had had access to the most classified of classified files. The file everyone wanted to get their hands on, of course, was the record of first contact with Gide. It had been reading that which had made Tina so determined to join the Fourth. She could have quoted much of it verbatim, and had watched the file footage at least fifty times.

  ‘Yup,’ Rangi confirmed, with a grin that made it clear he was far from being tired of people asking him about it. ‘Still feels kind of unreal,’ he admitted, ‘kind of like something I might have dreamed, rather than something that actually happened. I know it did, though. The most amazing forty seven minutes of my life.’

  The first contact encounter had, indeed, lasted for less than half an hour, though every minute packed with incident.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it, sometime,’ Rangi promised, and Tina beamed, recognising that they were both too busy right now for anecdotes, however fascinating.

  She met one of the other members of that first contact team later that day, too – Murg Atwood, a petty officer whose inclusion on the team had been the subject of much debate amongst armchair mission commanders. Alex had chosen to take only three people with him to the encounter zone – Rangi, as medic, was logical enough, and taking Shion made sense, too, as she was by far the best qualified to take on the role of linguist. Chief Petty Officer Atwood, however, did not look like anybody special, and taking her along as data analyst had seemed an odd decision, given so many well qualified officers available.

  Tina, though, knew that there was a good deal more to Murgat Atwood than met the eye. The First Fleet Irregulars, otherwise known as Fleet Intelligence, were still indignant over the way that Alex had headhunted her to serve with the Fourth, using words like ‘pirate’ and ‘thieving swine.’ Her combined talents as an undercover agent and analyst had played a key role in the Karadon operations.

  Tina’s first encounter with her, though, was when Alex sent her to tell Murg to stop working. She was doing her part in the strip-down work, as hands on as any other member of the crew. She was also, however, catching up on the latest intelligence files. Which, given the scale of the intelligence reports copied to the Fourth from organisations right across the League and beyond, would have been impossible even for a superhuman to keep up with. Murg was supposedly only scanning for files of particular relevance to the Fourth, but her notions of that ranged far and wide. Noticing that she was still logging into files more than an hour after she’d apparently gone to bed, Alex sent Tina to have a word.

  Murg’s bunk was on the biggest of the frigate’s mess decks. Bunks were not assigned by rank in the Fleet, but on a tradition of social standing. The fact that Murg had the mid-bunk in an alcove rather than one of the bunks surrounding the mess deck walls indicated that she was of very high status. Not that it made any difference, really – the bunks were all the same, with privacy screens and environmental controls, more like micro-cabins than what groundsiders would think of as bunks. Murg had her privacy screen up, and didn’t respond immediately to Tina’s knock on the comms panel. When she did, clearing the screen, she gave every appearance of having just woken up, a look of slightly bewildered, drowsy enquiry. She didn’t look at all impressive – a slightly plump, motherly woman in her forties, with tousled hair and a sheen of night moisturiser on her face. Her bunk screen was turned off, the rosy glow of a night-light adding to the impression that she had been fast asleep.

  Tina was not fooled, however. She had done her homework very thoroughly and knew that Murg had been subjected to three periods of mandatory stand-down, imposed by Dr Tekawa when she was found to be exceeding workload limits beyond the overworking even the Fourth was prepared to tolerate. She had also been told that Alex had been known to intervene himself, at times, when Murg had been bingeing on triple-caffeinated coffee to keep herself going.

  ‘Oh, you’re good,’ Tina observed, seeing the look of sleepy confusion. It was so convincing that if she hadn’t known for a fact that Murg had been accessing and working on files right up till eight seconds ago, Tina would have apologised for disturbing her. ‘But…’ Tina held up her own hand-comp, showing her the evidence of the files she had been accessing and giving her a friendly grin along with it.

  Murg abandoned the pretence that she had been asleep, though her manner was wary.

  ‘I’m not drinking coffee,’ she said, defensively. This was clearly a matter of importance, since she had given her word to the skipper that she would not drink coffee or any other stimulant when she was supposed to be resting. She had already put in seventeen hours of work today when the maximum was supposed to be fifteen. So had Tina, come to that. But Alex had already logged an exceptional circumstance authorisation for her to over-work as part of her role in shadowing him, and no such permission had been given for Murg.

  Tina said nothing. She just changed the display on the comp so that it showed a breakdown of Murg’s logged activity that day, flashing red where it breached the fifteen hour health and safety limit. Then she raised an eyebrow, amused, but challenging.

  Murg looked at her appraisingly. As a cadet on placement, Tina hovered between the ranks of Chief Petty Officer and Acting Sub Lt. In theory, at least, she outranked Murg slightly. In practice, only a total moron would attempt to assert any kind of real authority over such senior non-commissioned officers. CPOs were, after all, the equivalent of Subs in all but the commission, frequently managing departments and sometimes holding the watch. If Murg saw any arrogance in Tina, or any nervous uncertainty, she would undoubtedly go for the throat. Not in any personal malice, as Tina understood, but simply because it was part of training snotties. There was a long four seconds while the expert analyst surveyed Tina, making a detailed and accurate assessment, while Tina just stood there waiting, calm and friendly. Then Murg chuckled, giving her a nod.

  ‘Fair enough,’ she conceded, and turned off her bunk comp for real, rather than merely blanking off the screen. Then she stuck out her hand, offering the handshake that was more often used in the Fourth than a salute. ‘Murg.’ It wasn’t so much an introduction, as giving the cadet permission to use her first name.

  ‘Tina,’ she reciprocated. There were a hundred things she would have liked to ask Murg Atwood about, not the least o
f which was how it had been, for her, to be part of that first contact team. Now, however, was not the time, so she just shook hands and gave her a smile. ‘Sleep well,’ she said. ‘G’night, Murg.’

  Murg shuffled down into the bed and reached for the control panel.

  ‘G’night, Tin-Tin,’ she said, and turned on the privacy screen before Tina could react.

  She stood there for a moment, amazed by the realisation that Murg already knew so much about her that she even knew her childhood nickname, firmly left behind when she had joined the Fleet. Then she laughed, and gave a play-salute to the darkened screen, knowing very well that Murg was watching her reaction.

  The skipper said nothing, when she went back to the command deck, just acknowledged her return with a nod and handed her some routine mail to answer. She knew that she’d done well, though, and that having established her ability with Murg, like that, she would have acquired some standing with the crew.

  She had, too - they had been as shocked as anyone else in the Fleet, at first, by the news that this year’s Top Cadet had refused assignment to Falcon and insisted on coming to them, but disbelief had very quickly turned to pride. They were, after all, the best of the best, where else would the highest achieving cadet want to be? Seeing how competent she was, both technically and in people-handling skills, there was a feeling that she would be an asset to the ship.

  This did not, however, stop the crew from trying all the usual tricks and jokes which had been used on snotties from time immemorial. They were trying the same things on with the new officers, too, come to that. They had eight new officers, an unusually high number all at once, but forced on them by the nature of the secondment scheme. The Heron could carry anything up to ten supernumerary officers, mostly Sub-lts. They were each given a departmental role, as well as helping out with training, watchkeeping, and general shipboard duties. Their primary role, though, was operational, enabling the Fourth to send far more boarding parties away than would normally be possible. All of the Subs who’d been with them on the Novamas operations had now returned to service in the regular Fleet, with Lt Commander Sartin and seven Subs coming in to replace them.