Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

It wasn’t much of a rescue, really – they spent a few minutes helping him to pack his belongings, got him into a survival suit and walked him over to Firefly.

  He talked non-stop all the way through his rescue, all the way back to the ship and through the process of getting him aboard and helping him out of his suit. He was brought aboard through the deck seven secure airlock, met there by Rangi who took him to sickbay at once for medical assessment. He was still talking as Rangi led him there.

  ‘Thank you, thank you – is that lavender I can smell? You’ve no idea how wonderful it is to see you. I could kiss your feet – twenty two days I’ve been in that dome, the scariest place I’ve ever been in my life. Of course they said they’d come back and check I’d been picked up in three months but what if you didn’t arrive and something happened and they never came? And that ice coming in and out, in and out, like it was trying to get me. But there it is, safe now, thanks to you – I never saw anything so welcome in my whole life as that fighter, and that it was her grace, too – such an honour, never expected to...’

  There was a little ripple of laughter through the ship as the sickbay door closed behind him, still talking.

  * * *

  It was another hour before they understood what had happened, and why the Diplomatic Corps had gone to such lengths to get Jermane Taerling out to them. They had the letter from the president he’d mentioned, as he’d given them that straight away, but it contained no clue even as to why he’d sent the linguist out to them. Jermane Taerling himself had no idea. He did, however, have a box of maximum security-sealed tapes from the Embassy III, which turned out to contain a copy of all the information so far provided by the Gider.

  That caused a gasp, when Alex plugged in the first tape and accessed it. None of them had ever seen files that big, before. It had eighty seven files on it, identified only by a date and time. Every one of them was as big as a university library. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of them had even been translated, let alone catalogued and organised. Some had notes attached, more bewildering than helpful, such as the one that said ‘Lunar Geography #47’ and another that said ‘Commentary on Feet’.

  Alex looked at the box, which contained twenty three of those high-density tapes, and began to understand why it had been felt that they might need a linguist.

  Rangi Tekawa advised that they take their time with talking to Jermane, though. He’d come through his ordeal quite well, physically, though eating and sleeping at disjointed times. It had been much worse, psychologically – a naturally very social man who’d never choose to be alone for more than half an hour or so, he’d been fighting panic, there, in such terrifying isolation. Jermane Taerling had come to see the frost on the lunar surface as a living thing, creeping stealthily across the lunar surface, slowly but surely moving to engulf the dome. Rangi was of the view that he’d need counselling for that.

  For right now, though, what he needed most was people. Rangi took him to mess deck one, a decision made primarily on his medical needs rather than his rank. They would normally offer official passengers the hospitality of the wardroom as a matter both of courtesy and of not imposing on the crew. All the wardroom cabins were occupied at the moment, but they could easily have fitted an extra bunk in somewhere and shifted around to give their guest a cabin.

  The privacy that offered, though, was not something Jermane Taerling would welcome. He had always travelled, previously, as part of an Ambassadorial retinue. As one of the lower ranking members of such retinues, he had usually been accommodated on a mess deck and was very happy to be so, now, agreeing that he would definitely prefer that, yes.

  The crew accommodated him with great goodwill. Bunk assignments were a matter of social complexity on Fleet ships and newcomers were usually expected to accept the bunks considered least convenient or lower status for reasons that would not be apparent to anyone other than Fleet crews. Chief Petty Officer Hali Burdon was in charge of organising bunk assignments. Seeing that the only bunks they had available were the lowest status ones that nobody would want, she asked for volunteers to give their passenger a better welcome than that. In the end, seven people changed bunks so that Jermane could have the one that was decided to be best for him.

  Mess deck one, the largest on the ship, was run on traditional Fleet lines. It had three-tier bunks around the walls, many of them tucked into alcoves, a shower block and a galley hatch. Tables were set out in the usual Fleet way – eight seat ‘social’ tables at one end, two seat ‘semis’ at the other. Sixty four of the frigate’s crew lived here, and there would never be a time when there was nobody here, no time when Jermane would find himself left alone. They’d given him a bunk in the heart of things, one of those side-on to the mess deck rather than tucked at right angles into a cubby. It was the mid-bunk, too, most coveted as you didn’t have to duck down or climb up to get into it.

  ‘Oh lovely,’ Jermane exclaimed, when they showed him to it, ‘I usually end up with the bottom one – not that I’m complaining, of course I know they’re all the same, and so comfortable, too, not at all what I was expecting the first time I was told I would be sleeping in a bunk...’

  Once he’d unpacked his belongings – talking the whole time, naturally – he exclaimed over the guest-pack they’d given him, as delighted by it as if it were gifts of great price. He had never, he said, been given anything like this when travelling on Fleet ships, nor on liners, how lovely.

  ‘It’s only the usual pack we give,’ Hali assured him, ‘to all our passengers.’ That was true – everyone from people they’d arrested to Senator Machet in her own VIP visit had been given the courtesy pack. It contained Fourth’s issue shipboard rig without insignia, deck shoes, night gear and a shower robe, along with a set of toiletries.

  Jermane tried on a uniform rig, exclaiming over how weird he looked in it, but changed into a suit, then, explaining at length all the reasons he had for doing so. Then he sat down at one of the social tables for a cup of tea, though protesting that he didn’t actually need any tea, as such, since Rangi had given him some really rather lovely tea in sickbay.

  Alex gave him half an hour to catch his breath, there, though it became apparent as time went on that Jermane was showing no signs at all of slowing down. They had, by then, finished bringing the supplies aboard, unloading the containers into the hold. There were no great surprises, there, at least – one container held tech and food supplies, including the promised coffee. The other contained crates, many of them with manifest documentation from Canelonian museums.

  ‘Finally!’ Davie exclaimed, once he was able to access the inventory that had been sent inside the container. ‘Someone with a functioning brain cell!’

  He had been scathingly dismissive of the diplomatic gifts as ‘pots and paintings’, but there were no pots or paintings in the Diplomatic Corps container. It contained artefacts that might have been brought together for an exhibit of weaponry throughout the ages, ranging from an iron broadsword to modern rifles. By the look of it, many of Canelon’s museums would have a gap in their display cases or storage racks, though the artefacts were in the range of ‘significant, but not priceless’.

  ‘I can do something with this,’ Davie said, with a note of satisfaction, but set the inventory aside, then, to work on later.

  Before long, the only task that remained was to clear away any evidence of their presence in the system.

  ‘We may as well take the opportunity for target practice,’ Alex observed, and logged orders for the containers to be dropped back sublight and left floating in space for live-fire exercise. He authorised live fire against the dome, too, the fighters being tasked to remove all traces of its presence. As he did that, he saw a look of quick concern on Jonas Sartin’s face, and looked at him enquiringly. ‘Problem, Mr Sartin?’

  ‘Just a thought, sir,’ Jonas replied. ‘If we are intending to leave no hint that the Fourth has been here, perhaps blowing up the dome may not be the most advisable solution. The presence of a c
rater where a moonbase used to be is something of a trademark, after all.’

  His manner was so deadpan that it was a moment before they realised he was joking. Laughter broke out, not just round the command table but throughout the ship. Alex laughed too, but he gave Jonas a nod.

  ‘Good point,’ he said. ‘We’ll pack it all up neatly and leave it ready for collection, then. That’s the last thing anyone would expect us to do.’

  Jonas grinned. Such survival domes were virtually worthless once they had been activated. They came highly compressed in two hard-shell cases that could be flung aboard a shuttle if the ship had to be evacuated. One contained the fabric of the dome, which would pretty much explode into shape once the casing was released. Re-packing such a dome was not considered economic; the dome would have to be as deflated as much as possible and strapped up into a bale, then sent to a specialist company for detailed testing and recompression into a new explosive casing. It was cheaper just to buy a new one. The second case contained the life support gear. Technically, there was no reason why it couldn’t be stripped out again, overhauled, sterilised and packed back into its case. No spacer would want to use it again, though – superstitions abounded, but amounted to a deep, immovable reluctance to use any kind of second-hand emergency kit. Only the most rigidly By The Book skippers would require such a dome to be packed up, transported and destroyed under procedures for disposal of Fleet property.

  ‘Ms Lucas,’ Alex looked at the cadet, ‘attend to that, will you?’

  Tina beamed. That meant taking a team in, leading technical work in a spacesuit environment.

  ‘Thanks, skipper!’ she said, and hurried off at his nod.

  Jermane Taerling was brought to the command deck half an hour later, as it was recognised that he was, by then, just about as calm as he was likely to get. He burst out into effusive thanks when he was introduced to the skipper. Alex meant to shake hands with him briefly, but Jermane, evidently starved of any kind of human contact, grabbed Alex’s hand with both of his and pumped enthusiastically.

  ‘Thank you, captain! So kind! I won’t be any trouble to you, I promise – I’m quite well housetrained, or I suppose I should say shiptrained – in travelling aboard Fleet ships, and I don’t suppose this will be very much different. Anyway I know all about the safety and ‘don’t touch the tech’ rules and all that so you don’t need to worry, you won’t even know I’m...’

  ‘Mr Taerling,’ Alex put in, not unamused but recognising that the man might carry on like that indefinitely. At the firm note of his voice, the castaway broke off, responding with an alert, ‘Hello, yes?’ tip of his head and brightly enquiring look. ‘Perhaps you could give us a brief account of how you come to be here – you were aboard the Embassy III, I gather.’

  Jermane nodded rapidly.

  ‘I was there for a year – went out with the expedition,’ he explained. ‘I’m nobody at all important, just a syntax analyst in the exolinguistics office. I’m an etymologist really but the DC usually has me on a syntax desk. My job is to help work on the TM, the translation matrix. Obviously there was nothing to do with Gidean before first contact, not one word of their language to go on, but the DC brought in other work to keep us occupied. And then of course we made first contact, or rather, of course, you did, though we didn’t realise that at first when their ship appeared, we thought they were responding to our probes or signals. Then they told us that they’d met you – they were talking to us in League Standard and highly colloquial League Standard at that, but when it was realised that they were basing that entirely on their encounter with you, it was felt that we needed to build the matrix ourselves. Some of the things they were saying seemed so startling, even unlikely.’ he gave a little shake of his head and gave Alex a look that held appeal for understanding, and Alex grinned, nodding agreement.

  He had not taken offence when League Ambassador Jeynkins had told him that the Diplomatic Corps considered the translation matrix the Fourth had developed to be unsound, though he felt, himself, that Shion had done very well in helping the Gider to find the form of words they wanted to express themselves, however shocking some of the things were that they had wanted to say. Alex would never forget their cheerful dismissal of the deaths of more than eight hundred people as ‘no big’, on the basis that it had happened so long ago that those people would be dead by now anyway.

  The Diplomatic Corps, taking a very much more cautious approach to interpreting, had recorded that as, ‘We do not feel it to be of significance to the current context’. If anyone was putting words into the Gider’s mouths, Alex felt, and misinterpreting what they actually meant, it was the Diplomatic Corps themselves. But he had not said so, at the time or since. He was a novice in the field, hardly more than an amateur, and they were the experts.

  ‘I was one of the team analysing your contact with them,’ Jermane told him. ‘And may I say, Captain, amazing, the level of understanding you achieved there just tremendously impressive. I felt that from the start, myself, very very impressed indeed by her grace’s interpreting skills, there, and the speed at which she was able to function, negotiating meaning to facilitate your lead discussion.’

  Alex nodded. They had worked that as a team, Shion and one of the Gider having high speed discussions about syntax and idiom. The Gider had passed appropriate ‘form of words’ to his companion which had enabled him and Alex to have a remarkably smooth, well understood discussion.

  ‘Just how good that was became increasingly apparent as we developed our own matrix,’ Jermane said, ‘and found that meaning had indeed been very accurately conveyed, in yours. They really did mean ‘no big’, with all the subtext of trivialisation and indifferent dismissal that carries. They really did mean ‘get knotted’, too, when they said that to Hay-Chee.’

  That, they recognised as Diplomatic Corps jargon, HE, for His Excellency the League Ambassador. Jermane saw their shocked, concerned expressions and hastened to reassure them, ‘Contact is going very well – almost too well, really, we’re working flat out there and just can’t even begin to keep up with all the things they say and information that they give us – gives you some insight and sympathy into how difficult it is for Solarans in dealing with us, really.’

  The Solarans were a very slow people, inclined to sit for half an hour in contemplative silence before answering even the simplest remark, and withdrawing entirely if the conversation became too quick or confusing for them. The Gider, on the other hand, were quicksilver fast, having to slow their own communication down to crawl-speed even to make themselves understood to humans.

  ‘The ‘get knotted’ incident was just a little micro-hiccup, really,’ Jermane observed, ‘misunderstandings inevitable in exodiplomacy and got over with good humour and goodwill on both sides. Hay-Chee was trying to sound them out on the possibility of establishing the groundwork for a trade agreement.’

  Alex was not the slightest bit surprised that the Gider had reacted to that as they had. Surely the Ambassador must have known that they would? Alex had had to explain the concept to them of giving gifts in expectation that the other party would reciprocate. The Gider had been as profoundly shocked by that as the humans had been by the Gider’s attitude to the Abigale disaster.

  ‘Anyway, that’s what I was doing there,’ Jermane said, with an air of conscientiously reminding himself that the skipper had asked for a brief account. ‘Till a couple of months ago – nine weeks. Seems a lot longer. Anyway I was called into Hay-Chee’s office and asked if I’d go on this ‘presidential request’ thing. He said if I accepted the assignment I’d have to leave right then, on a courier. And I accepted, obviously – I mean, who wouldn’t? Flattering to be asked for like that, for a start, and if there’s anything more important going on in exodiplomacy than developing contact with Gide, too right I want in on it. So I just packed my stuff and got on the courier. They took me to a rendezvous – don’t know where, way out in the wilds, to some system where the Chanticleer was waiting �
� the supply ship, you know.’

  They did know, and Alex nodded confirmation.

  ‘They couldn’t tell me where we were going, or anything,’ Jermane recalled. ‘They weren’t expecting me at all, and didn’t know anything about who or what their supplies were for. We were there for four days before another courier turned up, bringing a tape that told them where to go to leave the supplies. They said they’d leave me there in a survival dome too and I realised I was going to be a castaway, an actual castaway, like in the movies. They did say I didn’t have to, they’d take me back with them if I couldn’t handle it, but I just couldn’t ... I mean, I thought, how hard could it really be, they told me I’d be perfectly safe and I thought, well, if it really is this important, I can’t bottle out. So they left me there, you know, and went.’

  He shuddered, a haunted look crossing his face. ‘The longest twenty two days of my life. But here I am, obviously, safe and sound, made it. And we are, I’m told, on our way to Samart, which is just...’ he shook his head and a huge grin broke onto his face. ‘Still trying to get my head round that, but wow, never thought I’d see that tried in my lifetime. So, anyway, captain, here I am – don’t know why you want me, but here I am, ready, willing and able. So, what do you want me to do?’

  Alex smiled, charmed into being quite at his ease with this garrulous civilian.

  ‘Well – we’re hoping that you’ll work with us on trying to figure out the Samartian language. You have, I am sure, particular expertise which the Diplomatic Corps feels will be of help to us.’

  ‘Well, I guess so, though I must admit I can’t think myself what that could be,’ he admitted. ‘The only thing I can possibly think they might have had in mind is a paper I wrote some years ago on the etymology of the four known words of Samartian having shared roots with Quarian and Prisosan – I’ve always been of the shared roots school of thought on that, you see. I believe that there are at least eighteen worlds of common cultural origin, including Quarus. But I didn’t invent that theory, my contribution was a very modest little paper, merely laying out the evidence in response to an obviously ludicrous claim that the Samartian ‘oris’ has commonality with Chevaya ‘rorokis’ and should be interpreted as ‘together’ instead of ‘immediately’. And all that of course is redundant since the GD – Gide Disclosure,’ he explained, seeing the query on Alex’s face.