Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  Alex joined in the laughter, conceding the point with a nod. He would still define himself, if asked, as a frigate skipper, though admittedly a frigate skipper who undertook unusual mission tasks. Even he, though, recognised that the ever-increasing range of the operations they were tasked to, and their ever more extraordinary nature, was due to his own perceived ability.

  That could be terrifying for a young skipper who really did not see that he had any extraordinary abilities, himself, beyond that of getting the best out of his crew. He had stepped up every time to whatever was being asked of him, though, and would do so again.

  ‘It isn’t like that, really,’ he told them. ‘For one thing, it isn’t just me, far from it, our operations are very much a team effort, and I don’t just mean those of us here on the ship. There’s a huge team effort going on, coordinated at a point way above us, at Senate level – that’s what the Sub-Committee does, coordinating operational input from everyone involved – system authorities, Customs, intelligence services, the Diplomatic Corps, just massive input from all of them, often across many worlds. And the operations we are tasked to are, or at least have been so far, of a nature that if we succeed, fine, but if we don’t, there’s no great harm done.’

  That got an instant clamour of protest, which Sam Maylard managed to dominate.

  ‘You nearly got killed on the Gide operation,’ he said. ‘And you couldn’t know, could you, that throwing your ship at the Firewall that often, for so long, was really safe?’

  ‘No, not for sure, but it was within the limits of tolerable risk for any Fleet ship on operations,’ Alex smiled. ‘We are, after all, prepared for the risks inherent in combat, prepared to fight in defence of our worlds, if need be. I was satisfied that I wasn’t putting my ship or crew at irresponsible levels of risk. I should have said, perhaps, that there would be no great harm done if we failed, in the wider scheme of things. As with the Gider – worst case scenario, if our attempts to make contact were perceived as hostile or caused offence, the Diplomatic Corps could have apologised while disclaiming our actions, giving them what they call relationship rescue.’

  ‘You won’t be doing things like that with us still aboard though, will you?’ It was one of the Devast team, an engineer called Jate, who spoke up, cutting in with an anxious tone. ‘I know it said that we had to be prepared to take the risk of the ship being in combat or high risk operations, but if it gets too dangerous, we’ll be able to get off?’ There was a challenging note in her voice, too, as she added, ‘Angas says that you can always put us onto a liner, if we want.’

  If Angas had really told them that, as a definite assurance, he had been deliberately misleading them. Alex doubted that, though – Angas Paytel was an extremely conscientious young man and would certainly have been explaining their rights as passengers with painstaking care.

  ‘If that’s possible at the point where you ask to leave the ship, we would certainly do our best to accommodate you,’ Alex said. ‘But I can’t promise you that that would be possible. It depends upon the nature of our orders and where we are at the time.’

  ‘That’s what Angas said,’ Mack McLaver confirmed, quickly, and gave his colleague a look which combined reassurance and warning. ‘I told you, don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘The Fourth will take excellent care of us, believe me.’

  Jate subsided quickly. The Devast team were still acutely embarrassed by the behaviour of Professor Pattello, both during her stay aboard the ship and subsequently. Mack had already offered Alex a personal apology for what she’d done, over and above the formal apology on behalf of Devast Industries and repeated assurance that there would be no, absolutely no complaints or anti-social behaviour from the Devast team.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Jate said, abashed.

  Alex gave her a brief, but friendly smile.

  ‘It’s natural to be a bit jittery,’ he told her, then included the rest of them in that with a glance. ‘We all are, really, even those with operational experience. All I can say is that the agreement we have with the Second is that research teams will be removed from the ship if we’re undertaking high risk operations, yes? And I can’t imagine that Admiral Harangay would issue orders which ran contrary to that. And if you do want to leave the ship, at any point, I can at least give you my word that I will do my utmost to arrange that for you as quickly and safely as possible, all right? And I do believe, whatever else we may be tasked to, that the Fleet, and the Second, and the Sub-Committee, are all sincerely committed to the Ignite project. It has come back to us with the highest possible priority.’

  As he had intended, this diverted the Devast team into focus on their own project. Mack had already told Alex that he’d been amazed, himself, to be told that the Fleet wanted them to go back to the Fourth immediately for another test fire.

  Devast Industries had spent millions developing the Ignite missile to the point of the first prototype firing. After its spectacular failure, they’d expected to have to spend millions more, over several years, to resolve the problems that had seen it explode milliseconds too soon. The Admiralty, however, had astounded them by buying it as seen, on condition that Devast worked with the Second Irregulars and the Fourth to correct the misfire issue.

  The Devast team looked polite but dubious. It had turned out that the Admiralty had made that decision on the basis of a report filed by the Fourth themselves, providing their own analysis of what they believed had gone wrong and how it might be solved. This was no more than they would do routinely in any of the R&D projects the Second ran aboard their ship. That kind of active contribution was one of the reasons the Second was so keen to use the Heron for field testing, bridging the gulf between the laboratory and deployment aboard ships in regular service.

  In this instance, however, it had caused a good deal of consternation at Devast when it was realised that the proposed solution was coming from a leading star rating called Micky Efalto.

  Mack and his team had been happy to work with Micky Efalto at the time of the first test fire, satisfied that he had all the expertise required to help them with the pre-fire diagnostics. The Devast board, however, had been rather harder to convince, with an obvious and lingering suspicion that the crewman had bodged something somewhere that had caused the misfire. Mack had done his best to convey to the board just how highly qualified and expert the rating was, but they had seemed unable to get past their own perception that a rating was the equivalent of a mechanic whose notion of fixing stuff was to hit it with a wrench. They certainly did not believe that it could really be fixed as quickly as the Fourth had said. They were expecting to spend months just analysing the data from the misfire. And rightly so, too, as one of the board had said. The Ignite was phenomenally complex cutting edge technology. It was important to progress with methodical, thorough understanding. It wasn’t their style to try things off the cuff and see what would happen, particularly when dealing with something that could blow up a planet. The Admiralty had bought in the missile, though, so here they were.

  ‘Well, you can rely on us, skipper,’ Mack told him. ‘You will have our full support, best effort.’

  Alex refrained from telling him that they did not actually need their help – the Devast team, as far as the Fourth was concerned, was here to watch and learn, to go back to Devast fully up to speed on the design fix and able to bring the missile into production. He was tactful enough not to say that, though, but thanked them with due appreciation.

  Then, with just a few minutes left before they were due to reach their rendezvous, he thanked them for their hospitality and went back to the command deck. As he took his place, there, in his customary seat at the central datatable, the excited buzz around the ship quietened into a tense, expectant hush.

  This was it, now. All theories had been aired, all bets had been placed. It would only be minutes, now, before they knew where they were going.

  Six

  There were two couriers circling at the rendezvous point. The
y had positioned themselves on opposite sides of an orbital path around the designated coordinates, circling at their lowest cruising speed.

  They were barely larger than shuttles, though each glowed on heatscan with the ten mix cores that took up more than half the ship’s interior, massively over-engined for their size. They were Fleet couriers, too small to rate being named, but with numbered ID along with the Fleet emblem on their insignia.

  The Heron saw them a good half minute before the frigate appeared on the couriers’ much less powerful scopes. As soon as they did see them, though, the couriers curved out to meet them, signalling salutes.

  It was immediately clear, though, that neither courier had any passengers aboard for them, or mail either. They signalled at once, reporting that they were standing by to receive dispatches.

  ‘Acknowledge,’ Alex told the rating on duty at comms, and to the helm, ‘Holding vector Delta.’

  As their comms arrays flashed, the helm swung them into a broad ellipse, dropping speed to L-basic. The Stepeasy followed suit, maintaining station on them, and the couriers fell in beside them, too, holding station on their starboard side.

  Alex got up. Regulations required that he open sealed orders by himself, in his daycabin. He might well then make the decision to walk out and put them on the notice board for everyone to read, but he had to see them himself, first.

  He was in his daycabin for eight minutes, which seemed a very long time to the people watching the command deck feed and waiting. The buzz of excitement had fallen into hushed expectation.

  When he came back onto the command deck, his expression gave nothing away. His manner was as bland as if he’d just been told that they were to go on an entirely routine patrol.

  ‘Bear with me,’ he requested, speaking primarily to Buzz but in the knowledge that everyone else aboard the ship was watching too. Then he held out two security-sealed tapes to the junior officer of the watch. ‘Take those straight to the couriers, please,’ he said, with his usual courtesy.

  ‘Sir!’ Don Li yelped, saluted and departed in some confusion, horribly conscious that everyone on the ship was watching him. Fortunately he didn’t have to do anything very difficult. The duty pilot was already waiting by the shuttle, and both tapes were clearly labelled with the ID of the courier to which they were to be delivered. Buzz even thought to have a couple of gift boxes popped onto the shuttle, a routine courtesy which Don Li would have overlooked in his anxiety.

  It took him just three minutes to deliver the tapes. During that time, Alex sat quietly, his manner making it clear that he had no intention of telling them anything until the shuttle had returned. The atmosphere on the ship was keyed up to such a pitch, it was as if every one of them had just seen five numbers of a lottery ticket come up, and were waiting for the final one to drop.

  ‘All right,’ Alex waited till the couriers had saluted them again and shot off at high speed in different directions, and until their shuttle had returned. ‘Attention on deck,’ he said, the ritual that heralded an official statement from skipper to crew, even though he knew already that everyone was listening. ‘This is the score, people. We will be heading out to sector four.’

  He paused to allow the implications of that to sink in. Sector four was a massive zone, even by astronomical standards. It was that part of the League’s border which faced Marfikian-controlled space. The nearest League world to that border was Cherque, their most strongly defended world. The nearest Marfikian world was Lundane.

  ‘Our orders are for dark running all the way,’ Alex told them, and remembering that they had civilians aboard, added, ‘right off space lanes, no ports of call or contact with any other ships. We will be picking up supplies from a cold-drop in the Lundane Ranges.’

  A cold drop meant that the supplies would be left for them in an uninhabited system – a trick often used by drug runners to transfer cargo without a contact-trail between the ships. ‘At that point, the Stepeasy will be leaving us. Second Irregulars teams and passengers will transfer to the Stepeasy, remaining in League space. We will then cross the border and Van Damek a route through the Ranges and beyond.’ He paused again to allow them to take in the enormity of what he was telling them, there, then delivered the kicker. ‘Our objective is Samart.’

  There was a moment, just a moment, of utter stupefaction. Then there was the sound of a couple of hundred people expressing stunned disbelief. Quite a lot of that involved swearwords, but Alex didn’t pull them up for that. He had said a word, himself, that Fleet officers were not supposed to use, when he’d realised what he was being asked to do.

  Samart was a legend amongst spacers. It was so deep in Marfikian territory that it was not believed possible for League ships to go there. There was only the vaguest information about it, much of it dating from semi-mythical encounters in ancient history. The one thing that was known, or at least very firmly believed, was that Samart had won every battle they had fought with the Marfikians, that their world had never been invaded.

  ‘All right, breathe, people,’ Alex advised. ‘We will have plenty of time to think this through, talk about it and train for it. These are our orders.’

  He put the orders on the notice board so everyone could see them. The orders were coded XD-529, revealing that this was being classed as an exodiplomacy mission. They said what Alex had already told them, then went on, You are to attempt to establish diplomatic lines of communication between the League and Samartian governments. Should response be favourable, you are to sound out what potential there may be for a mutually beneficial relationship.

  There followed eight pages of more specific orders, signed by League President Marc Tyborne personally, and countersigned Dixon Gerard Arakin Harangay, First Lord of the Admiralty.

  ‘This is, of course, an extremely sensitive operation, carrying the highest possible level of secrecy,’ Alex told them. ‘Extreme measures are being taken to conceal where we are going. The Albatross has been posted to Dortmell along with two of the Seabirds sold to Customs. Part of their task there will involve attempting to make it appear as if we are also there on covert operations. It is felt that that will not only provide us with a plausible cover, but may give them some slight edge in their own anti-drugs operations.’

  The Albatross was an excellent choice for that, as the well informed crew realised at once. It was a sister ship of the Heron’s, a Seabird-37 which could easily be mistaken for them on a long range scan. The Albatross’s skipper had also been upgrading her ship as much as she could along the lines pioneered by the Fourth. That was part of their remit, after all, to trial ways in which low-performance classes of ship might be upgraded cost-effectively. The Albatross had also managed to snare one of their most highly sought-after secondment officers, Sub-lt Arie McKenna, to assist with that technical upgrade. She would certainly be able to advise them on how to make it look as if the Fourth was in the area. Such a cover would almost certainly involve blowing up a starseeker or two, and the Albatross’s skipper, a friend of Alex’s, would undoubtedly be up for that, too. They were annoying little yachts, the bane of any Fleet skipper’s life.

  The commanders of the Customs ships would probably not be prepared to go that far, but it was evident that they too were willing to take part in providing cover for the Fourth whilst undertaking their own anti-drugs operations at Dortmell. They too would be there in Seabird-37 class frigates the Fleet had sold them for just that kind of law enforcement operation, so with three of them flitting about, it was entirely possible that people would believe the Heron was there.

  ‘If our cover at Dortmell falls through,’ Alex explained, ‘the backup story is that we have gone to Quarus – rumours deliberately spread to satisfy even the spacer community that they believe they know where we are even if they realise we’re not at Dortmell. It is vital that as few people as possible know that we are attempting to reach Samart, that even the possibility isn’t suspected. One of the couriers waiting for us here is going to Chartsey, to c
onfirm receipt of our orders with a President’s Eyes Only dispatch for President Tyborne. The other is on its way to rendezvous with a supply ship at a meeting point close to X-Base Sentinel. I was asked to designate a cold-drop site within the Lundane Ranges, this side of the border. The supply ship will get those coordinates from the courier and make the drop. They will not know that the supplies are for us. Absolute secrecy must be maintained, so I’m sorry, but there will be no mail calls till we are back in League space.’

  He heard the catch of breath as the crew realised that meant they would neither receive nor be able to send any messages to their families, for months.

  ‘I hardly need to stress how important this mission could be.’ Alex said. ‘Samart is the only world we know that has fought off every attempt to invade it, reputedly beating the Marfikians in every battle that they’ve fought. If we can learn how, and bring back that technology for the Fleet – well, the potential is obvious. It is possible of course that we will have nothing the Samartians want – possible, too, it must be said, that they will regard us too as an enemy, so approaching them is not without risk. This, however, is what we signed up for – to serve in the defence of the people of the League. I do not feel, myself, that we could do any greater service than to get out there and give this everything we’ve got.’ He paused for a moment, gauging the reaction, and gave a satisfied little nod. They might be stunned, but there was an immediate murmur of agreement with that, mixed with some awe. Alex smiled. ‘Command briefing in twenty minutes.’

  That meant he’d finished what he wanted to say, and was an instant signal for everyone else to start talking. Incredulity was running high, but within seconds all the crew were poring through the orders, exclaiming over them, calling up star charts, looking at the Ranges and exclaiming again.

  Davie North came onto the command deck with a brooding, somewhat accusatory look.

  ‘At that point, the Stepeasy will be leaving us?’ he challenged, taking a seat at the command table as if by right. ‘I might have something to say about that, you know.’