Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ Jermane said, even more uneasily, as a demonic howl erupted somewhere nearby. ‘Er ... it is perfectly safe, I suppose?’ Reassured on this point, he sought refuge in his usual voluble talk, speculating at length on whether there might have been some actual incident of mutiny, preserved for centuries in this odd tradition.

  Alex let the linguist’s rabbiting float past him like machine noise. He was enjoying the sense of holiday, not just for the crew but for him personally. In keeping with the topsy-turvy tradition of the rumpus, the usual order of things in the wardroom was reversed, too, with the most junior officer presiding and the seniors expected to defer to the Subs.

  ‘Please pass the pastries, Alex.’ Tina Lucas, sitting as head of the table, was clearly enjoying herself as she bossed the skipper and other senior officers around. But she was playing host to perfection, too, ensuring that they all had plenty to eat and drink and were all included in the conversation.

  At the end of the hour, then, Alex reclaimed control of his ship, leading all the officers onto the command deck in the ritual counter-mutiny.

  ‘I’m the skipper here,’ he told Jenni. ‘You hop it.’

  There was laughter and cheering round the ship as Jenni gave his place back to the skipper, and more laughter again as Teabreak Li discovered the joke that they’d played during the rumpus. The ship, the entire ship, was covered in dark greasy handprints. It would take the autobots at least forty minutes to clean that lot off, and in the meantime the frigate was in a state of filth that would make any Housekeeping Sub break into a sweat.

  Teabreak, however, scored some kudos points. There was no howl of dismay when he saw the state the ship was in, not even a rigid determination not to react. Instead he cracked up into honest laughter, freely conceding that they’d got him, with that.

  ‘I’ll be having nightmares about this,’ he lamented, standing on deck two and surveying the couple of thousand hand prints which adorned it. But he was laughing as he said it. And that was, indeed, the end of his torment – after two months of giving him grief for one thoughtless remark, the crew was prepared to let it go.

  The ship settled down – once the handprints had cleaned off, there was no evidence for the rumpus beyond a minor bruise or two. And, now that all the excitement was over, nothing to do now but get down to the serious business of getting their ship to Samart.

  They were all focussed on that. With the supply pickup and missile test out of the way, it had assumed a far more immediate focus. So much so, indeed, that the navigation to get out there seemed almost routine.

  That it wasn’t going to be that easy became apparent within hours of them entering the non-navigable zone.

  The reason it was hatched out on charts as non-navigable were the wisps of nebula which lay across the region like chaotic cirrocumulus. To groundhog eyes it might look as if the gaps between them, millions of kilometres across, were more than sufficient to navigate a starship through. At the speeds they were travelling, though, a million klicks was nothing at all, flashed past in nanoseconds. In an emergency, the ship could make a 180 turn in 8.7 seconds. For safety, they would not enter any canyon in which they didn’t have a clear ten seconds lateral manoeuvring room, as well as sufficient visibility ahead to be sure they’d have time to turn if the canyon closed. Once you’d zoned out all the areas which remote observation had determined had too high a particle density for a ship to traverse, and all the areas too narrow for the frigate to enter, even the remote observation charts were an alarmingly spidery three dimensional labyrinth.

  Remote observation, however, was only half the story. The physical obstacle of the nebula was only part of the problem. Without detailed, accurate knowledge of the wave space topography which was itself heavily distorted by particle density, they could find themselves drifting away from where the on-board dead reckoner believed them to be. Drifting off course when you were trying to navigate an already very tight route through nebula was, clearly, not good.

  Anyone who thought that their revolutionary wave-space scanner would enable them to cruise effortlessly through the Ranges, though, soon found out otherwise.

  They were just eleven hours into the navigation when they hit their first dead end. It looked clear enough, but the scanner detected an area of dirty space ahead, triggering an automatic turnaround.

  ‘I’ve never understood why spacers call it ‘dirty’,’ Jermane observed, as they reversed their course. ‘Is it because there’s, you know, dust in it?’

  ‘No.’ Mako Ireson was sitting with him in the lounge, watching the command deck feed. It was reassuringly calm up there. The ship had come to standby alert when the turnaround was triggered, bringing the skipper and astrogator to the command deck. Alex was just waiting placidly, though, while Gunny Norsten looked at their options. ‘It’s because wave space is all, like, twisted up – like turbulence in atmosphere, you know? It can throw engines out of phase, which can blow up the ship, so we don’t go into that.’

  The confidence with which he spoke raised grins in everyone around – the very idea of Mako, Mako, instructing the linguist in astrophysics was as entertaining to the spacers as a small child explaining solemnly that stars were like suns, really, but very very far away. Jermane was grateful, though. He’d found a kindred spirit in Mako, the only other groundhog on the ship.

  ‘So, what are they doing now, then?’ He wondered, seeing a remarkably casual lack of activity, or concern, on the command deck as they headed back the way they’d come.

  ‘Deciding which way to go,’ said Mako. ‘See those green lines on the chart? That’s all the possible routes that we could take, from here.’

  Jermane looked.

  ‘I make it eighteen,’ he said. ‘But they all cut off short, so how are they going to decide which one to take?’

  ‘They cut off short because that’s as far as the Naos scanner is able to predict,’ Mako explained. ‘As for how they’ll decide, well, I guess they’ll take the one that looks most promising for taking us in the right direction.’

  That, though, was easier said than done. By day four they had had to turn around seven times and had made less than one day’s progress on the route to Samart. At that rate, as even the civilians recognised, they might well not reach the critical half-way point in the ten weeks their orders allowed. And if they hadn’t got that far by then, Alex would certainly follow orders, turn the ship around and abort the mission.

  On day five, though, they broke through into the canyon Gunny had been aiming for. It was a rough hemisphere in shape, the space between a bulbous outcrop of nebula and neighbouring cloud. It took them in more or less the right direction and it was more than ten light years long.

  They named it Happy Valley. Buzz had organised a rota in which every member of the crew, randomly selected, got a turn at naming one of the most significant features they passed each day. That would only appear on highly classified charts issued to skippers of any ships that might be sent out to Samart in the future. It still counted, though, as Gunny himself was recording the route for the Cartographic Service, all the names they gave a matter of official record.

  Happy Valley was one of the more orthodox – by the end of week four they had labelled features which included Old Man Alley, Bacon Rift and Fluffy Bottom. By then, though, the novelty of exploring where no other starship had ever been had worn off. Day after day was just the same – a good day if they didn’t have to turn around and a really good day if they made significant progress towards Samart. There was little to see a lot of the time, nothing much they could do aboard ship other than the same old drills. It was even starting to feel a bit oppressive, closed in as they were so often by nebulaic fog.

  Day thirty nine provided a distraction. It was Graduation Day for the Class of Sixty Four, back on Chartsey. They graduated, traditionally, three days before the rest of the cadets in Academies across the League, giving them a tiny but significant seniority in service.

  T
hey did their best for Tina, on the Heron. She tried to tell them that she really didn’t want any kind of fuss or ceremony, that she would be more than happy with a handshake from the skipper and an issue of doughnuts. Buzz, however, was having none of that.

  ‘You owe it to the Fleet to graduate with all due dignity,’ he told her, ‘just as we owe it to you. It is one of the most important moments in your life, dear girl, and we will celebrate it accordingly.’

  There wasn’t much in the way of celebration, at least not to civilian eyes. There was a great deal of ceremony, though. There was a dress parade, held in the gym, at which officers and crew wore dress uniform and civilians their smartest clothes. They couldn’t rustle up a brass band, but Jonas led his choir in their first public performance, singing the League and Fleet anthems. Then there were speeches. Alex gave a speech which was more notable for its brevity than eloquence. Buzz gave a speech notable for its warmth and humour. Then it was time for the customary VIP guest speech. On Chartsey, that was usually given by the League President. Here, the most important civilian on the ship deputised for him.

  ‘My family has been dedicated to the service of the League for as long as the League has existed,’ Davie said, having taken his place at the speakers’ podium to polite applause. Alex was trying not to feel nervous. Davie North’s sense of humour was unpredictable, and Alex was not at all sure how seriously he would take such pomp and ritual. ‘I am, myself, the living embodiment of my father’s desire to serve and strengthen that bonding of worlds we call the League. I was created to serve, even, if called upon to do so, to speak on the League’s behalf in our dealings with the elder species.

  ‘So, what is this thing we call the League, this thing we dedicate our lives to serving and protecting? It is more than a group of worlds working together for mutual socio-economic benefit. It is more than a group of worlds which have agreed to subscribe to the same constitution, laws and government. It is a spirit, a sense of identity which unites us, a commitment to the principles of democracy, and it is a community – a community which stands together, defending our worlds from the threat of tyranny.

  ‘There is no higher service in that cause than in those who take to the stars, leaving homes and families behind, standing ready to lay down their lives in defence of their worlds. Those who undertake a leadership role in that endeavour, those who will have to make decisions affecting not only the lives of their shipmates but the safety of the worlds they protect, carry a heavy responsibility. It is right, therefore, that we honour these young people – this young person - ‘ he amended with a glance at Tina, ‘as she embarks on that fine and noble endeavour.’

  As he would admit later, he had boned up on the sort of thing he’d be expected to say by scanning through records of speeches made by the presidents over all the graduations since the forming of the Class of Sixty Four. Tina was maintaining her composure, but there was a distinctly pink tinge around her ears as she took her own place at the podium, called upon to deliver the valedictorian speech. She had meant, right up till that moment, to make light of it, to give a tongue-in-cheek acceptance speech like someone at an awards ceremony.

  Faced with the solemnity of the moment, though, with everyone looking at her so expectantly, she took a deep breath and gave it her best shot. She used the word ‘privilege’ five times and thanked all of them for everything that they had taught her in the last three months.

  ‘I have learned so much,’ she said. ‘From how to make a decent pot of tea…’ a glance at the engineer with that, which raised some grins. As with most starships, there was an ancient tradition in engineering of making tea using a battered old teapot and a steam valve. ‘… to what makes a really outstanding officer; something I am just starting to learn, and will continue to learn, from the example of the finest officers it has ever been my privilege to meet.’

  She got a hearty round of applause for her speech, and many handshakes and congratulations in the traditional tea-party that followed it. Everyone was calling her ‘Sub’, to her mingled embarrassment and delight. Her cadet insignia was gone, replaced with the gleaming wonder of the pips identifying her as a Sub-lt, junior grade. They had a dinner in the wardroom that evening, welcoming her as a member of the wardroom, no longer there as a guest.

  After that, though, she just went back to work, assigned nominally to assist Jonas Sartin with the finances, but undertaking as near to the tasks she would on the tagged and flagged programme as they could contrive. Days went by, and the ship settled back into the same rather dispiriting sense of being stuck in a maze and getting nowhere fast.

  Then Simon offered a startling diversion. He and Misha Tregennis asked to see Alex privately. Assuming that this would be something to do with workload or working efficiency, he saw them in his daycabin.

  ‘So,’ he said, bracing himself for one of Simon’s onslaughts, ‘what’s the problem?’

  ‘There isn’t one,’ Simon said. ‘We’d like you to marry us.’

  Alex blinked at him, then looked from him to Misha and back again.

  Misha chuckled.

  ‘To each other,’ she clarified, indicating Simon just in case there was any confusion. ‘Not to join us in a triad or anything.’

  Alex remembered to breathe. ‘Are you serious?’ he asked, looking back and forth between them again.

  They laughed, but were quick to assure him that they were entirely serious, yes.

  It had not escaped notice on the Heron that the medic and the ergonomist were attracted to one another, though they had complied with shipboard rules and kept their relationship friendly.

  ‘We’re not asking to make a lifelong commitment,’ Simon explained, cheerfully. ‘It’s just that the no-girlfriend thing is getting to me a bit, celibacy turns out to be really not my thing. So, since the rules are that only married people get to have that kind of fun around here, the obvious solution is to get married. Misha and I get on great, so why not?’

  Alex looked at Misha, who gave a light shrug and grinned agreement. Clearly, Misha considered that marrying Simon Penarth would be fun.

  Alex was just about to tell them both that marriage ought to be something taken more seriously than that when he realised he had no right. That was his own Novaterran heritage speaking. On his world, marriage was something entered into as a serious, long term commitment. He was aware, though, that that was not the case on other worlds. As the League had formed, absorbing worlds which had evolved very different cultures during Dark Age isolation, respect for cultural difference about marriage had been part of the constitutional bedrock. There were, therefore, as many different forms of marriage recognised within the League as human ingenuity had been able to contrive. On some worlds, Alex was aware, they went in for Lover’s Leap weddings, singles events where you were matched up and married to complete strangers. In comparison, this was relatively sensible. And in any case, he did not have the right or authority to make such judgements on their private lives. His only role would be to establish the legality of the marriage contract and make it a matter of legal record by signing it into the log. He could do that here and now – with the necessary forms completed, they could be married in five minutes.

  ‘We’ve done all the paperwork,’ Simon informed him, passing the completed forms to a screen on Alex’s desk.

  Alex looked at them, buying himself a few moments to think. As he got over the surprise, an idea was starting to wriggle up from his hindbrain. He looked up, considering the two of them.

  They smiled. Each in their own way was perfectly capable of seeing the thought process working through his mind. Simon was of course a practising psychiatrist; Misha an expert in observing human behaviour.

  ‘Yes, it would be good for morale, wouldn’t it?’ Misha observed, as she saw him come to that realisation himself.

  ‘Sorry,’ Alex said, feeling a little guilty at the thought of exploiting their private lives for the benefit of his crew.

  ‘That’s okay, we don’t mi
nd.’ Misha flicked a grin at Simon, who nodded confirmation.

  ‘We’ll just have a basic wedding in your office, if you like,’ he offered. ‘But we thought it might be good to get everyone involved.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind...’ Alex said. He would have hated it, himself, if something as private as his wedding had been turned into a show, even for as good a cause as keeping up morale on his ship. Even as he said it, though, he realised that he was putting his own scruples onto them, unnecessarily. Neither Simon nor Misha was of the type that shunned the limelight. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Thank you. And, uh – congratulations.’

  They had the wedding four days later. It was held in the interdeck lounge, specially decorated for the occasion with flowers that Davie had made with the interdeck siliplas extrusion plant. Simon did the catering himself, naturally, including a splendid wedding bread. At Misha’s request, nobody wore uniform to the wedding other than for Alex, who officiated in dress rig. Davie was elegant in a grey suit as he stood groomsman to Simon, while Martine Fishe was maid of honour for Misha. The bride and groom themselves, predictably, had a great time. Simon had borrowed one of Davie’s suits and had a haircut in honour of the occasion, so he looked very smart and quite unlike himself. Misha had contrived, somehow, to find a stylish outfit and was as manicured, made-up and hair-dressed as any bride could desire.

  The ceremony itself was simple. They were signing a standard one-year marriage contract. Neither was pretending that this was any ‘great love of our lives’ romance so there were no slushy vows or gazing deeply into one another’s eyes. What there was, instead, was a combination of wedding traditions not just from their own worlds but many suggested by members of the crew. The result was an eclectic but enjoyable hotchpotch of ceremonial which included drinking champagne with their little fingers hooked together, kissing three times when the wedding was pronounced, and handing out siliplas flowers to the guests.