Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘You’re going to give it to them?’ That was a cry of incredulous dismay from Mack McLaver. He brought himself under control very quickly as the skipper looked at him, but was clearly struggling with strong emotion. ‘The Ignite is our hottest weapons tech, the most advanced piece of ordnance ever developed in the whole of human history,’ Mack pointed out. ‘The idea of giving it away is just...’ he shook his head, ‘gut-wrenching. I’m trying not to howl, here,’ he admitted, ‘or swear at you. But you have to understand, skipper – that missile has been our all-consuming passion for the last six years of its development, it is our pride and joy, the most powerful missile ever developed, and you are proposing to hand it over to a foreign power like a freebie rocket on Constitution Day. You can understand, I hope, how we feel.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Alex said, and with genuine sympathy, too. ‘But I do think you are seeing this from a rather narrow point of view – understandably, it is as you say your pride and joy, your baby, and the words ‘give it away’ are quite naturally making you hyperventilate. If you could take a few deep breaths, though, and hear me out... for a start, you have my absolute assurance that I will not, of course, obviously, even consider giving the Samartians access to the Ignite or any other tech unless we are able to establish a relationship of trust, in which I am fully satisfied, bluntly, that they will not use those weapons against us. Secondly, I will not offer them the Ignite anyway unless we can offer it with data from a successful test, as a ‘very nearly’ working missile wouldn’t do us any credit. And third, most importantly, you have to understand that if we are able to establish a trust relationship with Samart and if the missile is working properly and if it is of value to them – which we don’t know, after all, they may already have more advanced weaponry than that, themselves – but if it is of value and we are able to trade it for whatever tech they have that is obviously so effective against the Marfikians, you will, with that, be doing an enormous service to the League, making our worlds safer, which is of course what it is all about. And we ourselves, of course, will still have the Ignite, we’re offering to share it, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I suppose,’ said Mack, uneasily. ‘And you really do think we can fix it, in the time we have?’

  Alex smiled. Micky Efalto had said that he could fix the missile in a couple of days. Micky operated in his own personal time stream, though, in which ‘I’ll have it done in ten minutes’ was generally understood to mean ‘come back in a couple of hours’.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ he said. ‘It only needs an exchange of gyros, and there’s no shortage of systems we can use in the Ranges for testing.’

  ‘Yes, but…’ Jate protested, then adopted a more professional manner, ‘I’m sorry, skipper, but I really don’t think that it can be anything that simple. We already use the diamond standard gyro for missiles and I don’t see that the one you propose using has any functional advantage at all. And the calculations which identify the gyro as the cause of the misfire are so speculative and unsubstantiated that they’re no more than a guess. If you’re expecting this new gyro to be an instant fix, I’m sorry, but you’re going to be disappointed. It just isn’t possible to figure out what’s wrong and solve it in under eight weeks!’

  ‘I have every confidence that our solution will work,’ Alex assured her. ‘And perhaps it may help, in that, if I tell you that Mr Efalto had, as he put it, help with his sums from Kate Naos, so I wouldn’t describe those calculations as speculative, myself.’

  Mack McLaver looked impressed. He had seen Kate Naos at work. Jate, however, had not. She had only heard of her as ‘The Maths Kid’, a mathematical genius best known for having found the solution to the Petrasky Curve at the age of nine. A journalist filming an interview with her at the time had upped the cuteness level by asking her to hold a stuffed panda. That coverage had been revived recently, after news broke that the Maths Kid was travelling with the Fourth. It would be hard for Jate to see beyond the image of the teddy-cuddling kid to understand just how brilliant a wave-space mathematician Kate Naos had become.

  ‘Well, we’ll do our best to help you with it,’ Mack said, resolutely. It might be tearing at his gut to think of handing over the Ignite to a foreign power, but he recognised his duty. At the same time, though, Sam Maylard was holding up a hand, evidently feeling that enough time had been given to discussion of the Ignite.

  ‘Of course, we’ll all do everything we can to help,’ he said, as Alex looked at him. ‘But please, skipper – is there any chance that we could come along?’ He caught the look of horror on more than one face, and amended, quickly, ‘Those of us who want to, at least? Me? I think I could be helpful, and I wouldn’t be any trouble.’

  Alex grinned.

  ‘I do have some discretion over whether I allow civilians to come along with us,’ he admitted. ‘But if you are serious about that, Sam, you’ll have to convince me over the next eight weeks that there is real operational benefit to keeping you aboard. We’ll discuss that nearer the time, if any of you do want to stay with us once you understand what will actually be involved.’

  ‘Thank you, skipper,’ Misha said. ‘And I for one want to go on record as saying thanks, too, for letting us in on this as much as you can, giving us the same information as your own crew. You would have been within your rights to blank out the lab during briefings and refuse to tell us anything at all, just leave us on the Stepeasy with no idea what’s going on.’

  She might have been a different woman from the one who’d tried to flirt with him at dinner. She was all business, now. He could see that she had said those things not for his benefit, but to remind her colleagues that they were only guests aboard this ship.

  ‘I would never do that,’ Alex assured them. ‘I don’t doubt that you will handle this just as well as my own crew – we’re all a bit knocked sideways by it at the moment, obviously, it will take a day or two to get our heads around it all. But you’re coping very well. We’ve had to peel people off the deck for stuff this high impact, or treat them for panic attacks. You’re keeping it together very well – very impressive.’

  He left them feeling proud of themselves, which was generally all it needed for people to overcome their fears, in Alex’s experience.

  A walk around the ship, though, confirmed that he did not have to employ any such morale-boosting tactics with his crew. They were eager to see him, knowing that he would do a walk round the ship after posting major mission orders, giving them all an opportunity to talk to him and ask questions of their own if they wanted. All they wanted to do this evening was to tell him that they were up for this, a hundred per cent, thrilled and honoured, delighted, wow. Banno Triesse did express some slight regret that they were not after all going to Quarus, but was cried down by his mates.

  ‘Are you nuts?’ one of them asked. ‘This is waaaaay more important!’

  ‘Big stuff!’ another told him.

  ‘We can go to Quarus anytime,’ said a third, as if that was no more than a trip to the seaside.

  Alex saw the recruit laugh and capitulate to the peer pressure, there, and smiled as he went on his way. In-group socialisation was working very well, there, he noted. Peer bonding, absorption, normalising, all within beneficial parameters. Or, to put it rather less academically, the rookie was fitting in just fine.

  Seven

  Two days later, Banno was serving Alex lunch in the captain’s daycabin.

  That sounded a lot grander than it actually was. Alex might be a flag officer now, but he occupied the same quarters as he had as a mere skipper, and took no more interest in styling them now than he ever had, either. The daycabin – with a desk just large enough for six people to sit around for meetings if they didn’t mind their knees and elbows touching – was exactly the same as it had been the day Alex moved into it; standard Fleet decor without even so much as his own choice of holos on the wall.

  It was set up in its configuration as a dining room right now, which also sounded a lot grande
r than it was since all it actually meant was pulling up the flip-top cover over the desk’s datascreens. There was enough room, though, for Alex and his guest to sit comfortably, and just enough space for the crewman to bring in the hot trolley.

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex said, and as Banno hovered hopefully, told him, ‘No need to serve.’

  Banno Triesse went away disappointed. He’d been practising his stewarding and had really been hoping to show off his silver service skills for the skipper. He’d wanted to put on a show for Old Sarky, too – they were determined, the entire crew, not to give Lt Commander Sartin even the slightest thing that he could look down his nose at them for. Banno had intended to serve lunch with a grandeur that would do credit to a dress dinner on a carrier.

  Alex, however, was having none of that. Now that he was a captain he was entitled to a flag officer’s staff, as well as a non-watch rostered executive officer. By Fleet regs, he could have a full time petty officer adjutant, a pilot chauffeur and a personal steward. Only the most pompous captains actually employed such a staff, though – most of them, like Alex, took advantage of it to increase their crew complement but employed the extra crew on general duties. Meals were still brought to his cabin, just as they were taken to the wardroom, by whichever rating was on galley-steward duty that watch.

  ‘Please.’ Alex gestured hospitably to his guest to resume his seat, as Jonas Sartin had got up politely when Alex did himself.

  The Second Lieutenant sat down, making no comment as the captain served his lunch, other than for courteous thanks. It was hardly any great matter. Alex merely took three trays out of the trolley, one each with their meals and the third with the bread rolls and condiments. Having put that in the middle of the table and handed Lt Commander Sartin his tray, he sat down with his own. They’d chosen the same dish from the menu, a flaky fish pie that had been turning up every week on shipboard menus for as long as anyone in the Fleet could remember, served with a side of fresh salad.

  ‘That is definitely getting better,’ Alex observed, having tasted the salad and found it to be a pleasing combination of mild, crunchy radish with multi-coloured leaves. It had been grown aboard ship, in the biovat – Alex still insisted on tasting anything new, himself, before he’d allow it to be inflicted on his crew, but that was becoming increasingly unnecessary. The sight of Sam Maylard bearing down on him with a taster dish and an enthusiastic beam made Alex grin, now, rather than bracing himself to gulp down yet another horrible experiment.

  ‘Quite an achievement, sir,’ Jonas Sartin observed. You would have to be a spacer, really, to understand just how significant a technological development it actually was. Liners had biovats aboard which produced salad stuff and a limited range of fruit-mush for their passengers, but they took up an inordinate amount of space and needed quite a few qualified people to run them. The biovats they were trialling on the Heron occupied no more than the space of a shower unit and could be operated by galley techs, in theory producing enough fresh fruit and vegetables to feed the entire crew. There was more to that than healthy eating or improving morale. The nutrients used in the vats occupied a fraction of the space needed for crates of fruit and veg dehydrates. The vats, therefore, could significantly extend the patrol range of warships.

  ‘It is,’ Alex agreed. The Second had had three different teams aboard at various times, working on the biovats – as with so much other tech, things that worked perfectly in groundside development labs could glitz up incomprehensibly when installed aboard a starship. Such tech was supposed to be able to cope with vibration, variable gravity and air pressure, EM pulsing and superlight fields, and in theory it should, but all too often, didn’t. ‘Sam Maylard says he may be able to produce coffee beans, too, though I’ll believe that when I taste it.’

  Jonas gave a thin, brief, ‘smiling at a superior’s joke’ smile. Coffee was always an important matter on Fleet ships. Skippers and wardrooms bought their own, quality coffee, while the crew mostly had to make do with the vile powdery microtabs. High performing ships, however, were traditionally allowed some space in the hold for the crew to have their own supplies, a custom known as ‘crateage’ and generally used by them, too, to buy in good coffee, usually rationed to one or two cups a day. Alex allowed his crew an unprecedented amount of crateage, justified, he said, by their exceptional performance. It was a matter of great pride and much boasting, on the Heron, that they had enough coffee in crateage for them all to drink themselves manic. Old School, authoritarian officers did not approve – it was their comments on Alex pampering his crew with that excessive crateage that had ended up with the myth of their ‘champagne lifestyle’.

  In fact, as Jonas would have been forced to admit himself if put on the spot about it, the Fourth lived far more modestly than their equivalents aboard the Zeus. Of course, the homeworld squadron flagship was obliged to entertain a good deal, hardly a day without Captain Urquart having guests aboard, formal dinners in the wardroom, lots of VIP events. Even when they weren’t entertaining, though, the officers would routinely spend two or three hours over dinner, with white-coated steward service and at least four courses.

  On the Heron, wardroom dinner was friendly, but short. Even dress dinners didn’t go on for more than an hour, distinguished only by the use of Buzz’s silver table settings. Lunch with Captain Urquart, too, would be nothing like this – there would be white linen on the table, real glasses, porcelain, a quietly attentive steward and food prepared by his personal chef. Here, they were eating exactly the same food as the rest of the crew, served on plain safe-grav trays by the captain himself.

  There was, however, no hint of sneering in Jonas Sartin’s manner. It was unfair of the crew to have dubbed him ‘Old Sarky’, really. He was neither old nor sarcastic. He did everything the Fourth’s way without complaint or criticism, and there had not been any problems at all, either with other officers or with the crew.

  ‘Anyway,’ Alex said, and it was clear from his tone that he meant I didn’t invite you here to make small talk about coffee. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that we should have the opportunity to talk privately – or as private as it ever is on a starship.’ He gestured at the wall screen, displaying echo from the watch screens, the command deck feed, and comms. Jonas looked, and understood the significance of the comms screen setting. It showed that the cabin was on privacy level. That still meant that everything that happened in there was being automatically recorded, but such records could not be accessed even by the First Lord without good cause, such as allegations having been made of misconduct. ‘I believe,’ said Alex, ‘that I owe you an apology, Mr Sartin. I have been guilty of making assumptions about you which I now realise are unfounded.’

  Jonas looked at him in some surprise.

  ‘Assumptions, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Frankly, I assumed on the basis of your role in Internal Affairs and having been transferred from the Zeus that you were, to put it bluntly, here on a double agenda, on covert inspection, as it were, for Lord Admiral Jennar.’

  Jonas looked quite shocked.

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Yes, I know. Sorry,’ Alex said, with disarming honesty. ‘It was an unwarranted assumption, prejudiced on my part and, as it turns out, politically naive.’

  Jonas nearly smiled, at that, though the look he gave Alex was shrewd.

  ‘Well…’ he hesitated, then made a decision, and went on, ‘You weren’t that far wrong, sir.’ A faint tinge of colour was rising to his cheeks. ‘I mean, a year ago, even five months ago, that might well have been true. Probably would have been true. I’m what you’d consider Old School, sir, though I’d describe myself as middle of the road – open to improvements in efficiency, but a traditionalist by instinct.’

  ‘But not,’ Alex observed, ‘working for Admiral Jennar.’

  ‘No, sir – well, technically, inasmuch as he is the commander in chief of Internal Affairs and I am still officially employed by IA under the terms of secondment. I am not, though, I do ass
ure you, operating under any other agenda than as declared. I’m here to assist as far as I can with disentangling the Fourth’s finances. Though I should, perhaps, in the interests of full and frank disclosure, mention that I do happen to be aware, informally, that my name was suggested to Admiral Harangay, that I was, in fact, recommended for this posting by Admiral Tennet.’

  Alex nodded, conveying that that was not news to him.

  ‘So I was informed, this morning.’ He said, and as Jonas gave him an enquiring look, ‘My apologies, again – please don’t think that we were spying on you, in any way. It’s just that CPO Atwood picked up on something you said – you referred to Admiral Tennet as ‘Terrible’, I gather, which alerted her to the fact that you are not, as she put it, batting for the Jennar team. I knew, of course, that Terrible has a strong following throughout the Fleet, and that she is becoming much more active at the Admiralty level since her promotion, but it never occurred to me, stupidly, that she was taking any ongoing interest in us. Obviously, she wanted to provide us with an officer of unimpeachable integrity, perhaps to forestall Admiral Jennar getting his own man in.’

  ‘Possibly, and thank you, sir. My understanding is that Admiral Tennet … Terrible,’ he corrected himself with a little smile, ‘is of the view, given the regrettable incident at Novamas, that you would benefit from having an IA officer on staff, of such seniority and credentials that they could assist in the event of any similar allegations being made in the future.’

  The ‘regrettable incident’ at Novamas had scandalised the Fleet. It had become known as the Novamas Incident. And the Fleet being what it was, even years from now, too, accounts of it would still be doing the rounds, embroidered into ever wilder versions of events.