Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘We’ve had enough high emotion in here for one night,’ Simon said, and Rangi nodded agreement.

  ‘I think it would be best if you leave it till tomorrow,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell him you’re all right and pass on a message to him, if you like.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Banno considered for a moment, and asked, ‘Tell him ‘No bad, all good,’ would you? He’ll get that.’

  ‘Will do,’ Rangi promised. ‘Now, get some rest, okay?’

  Banno acquiesced, so Alex went over to say goodnight. He felt intensely proud of the crewman, not just for the way he was coping with his injury but for the fact that his thoughts, even now, were not for himself but for his friend, worried at how bad Mako would be feeling. Alex could hardly believe that he had ever had his doubts about taking Banno Triesse aboard his ship. The man was solid gold.

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Triesse.’ Alex gave him a slightly awkward handshake with the crewman lying down, but a nod and commendation which his crew knew came from the heart. ‘You’ll do,’ he said, and went out, then, leaving Banno grinning proudly.

  He saw Rangi, a little later, talking to Mako on mess deck four – they were sitting at a two-seater semi together, Mako wiping his eyes and Rangi talking gently. The people walking past or sitting at nearby tables totally ignoring them were not being callous; far from it. On a ship with such little physical privacy, custom and practice created a small, invisible cocoon around people who were obviously having private conversations. Alex didn’t intrude on them, either, not zoning in audio to hear what they were saying and only watching for a couple of seconds, a glance to assure himself that Mako was going to be all right.

  Then he got back to work, trying to keep up with data.

  Twenty

  They had two days to work on the first contact data before the Samartians contacted them again. This time it was a blunt, confrontational message.

  ‘This is not true.’

  Part of the first contact pack they had sent the Samartians had been a map-based manifest of the ship’s company. It contained a map of the League with a side-map indicating Pirrell. Everyone aboard the ship was identified with a mini-biography tagged to their homeworld. Each biography contained their official ID holo, name, age and rank or role aboard the ship, together with a brief paragraph each of them had written about themselves.

  The Samartians had isolated some of these biographies, and sent them back to the Heron. The one which was attached to the ‘This is not true’ statement was Shion’s. The next was Davie North’s.

  ‘This is disgusting.’ The translation matrix had improved tremendously during the last few days, as it had such a wealth of material to work on, and the translation ‘disgusting’ carried a high degree of certainty.

  The matrix had hesitated over the next statement, offering two possible translations with equal weight of probability.

  ‘This is ludicrous/fantasy.’ There were several biographies tagged to that; the only thing they had in common was that they were all the civilians aboard the ship.

  The final statement was entirely clear.

  ‘You insult us with this garbage.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Alex, regretfully. He and Buzz exchanged wry looks as Alex opened the Big Picture Briefing file and entered a ‘hold’ note.

  He and Buzz had developed the Big Picture Briefing between them, during the Novamas operation. It was something they’d come up with after finding that there was no ‘how to’ guide to steer them through telling people very high impact information about alien species. The Big Picture Briefing began by assessing where someone was on an awareness scale and progressing them through a step by step disclosure. Part of the process involved continuous assessment of how well the recipient was coping, with an immediate ‘hold’ peg if any signs of panic were detected. One of those signs was angry denial.

  ‘To be expected,’ Buzz observed, with a philosophical air. The Samartians, after all, had started from a position of very near zero on that scale, with virtually no knowledge of worlds beyond their own. It was hardly surprising that they would find this hard to cope with.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Davie North observed, and gave a slightly rueful smile himself as he addressed Alex. ‘Ditch me,’ he advised. ‘Tell them that I am regarded as a freak even by our own people and that they need not have anything to do with me.’

  Alex took a moment to realise he was serious, then continued staring at him.

  ‘Absolutely not!’ he said, in a tone which did not simply close the door on that suggestion but locked, bolted and laser-sealed it with duralloy welding.

  Davie, however, was not a man who recognised locked doors.

  ‘Look, you have to,’ he insisted. ‘It was always a possibility, given that they have been at war with a genetically modified race for more than a thousand years, that they would regard anyone genetically enhanced as an object of horror, and you have to know that they are not alone in that. You have to disassociate yourself – diplomacy 101, okay? Pawn sacrifice, relationship rescue, whatever you want to call it, the fact is that if my involvement is a problem for the relationship then you have to disassociate, simple as that!’

  ‘No.’ Alex’s tone was uncompromising, and as Davie opened his mouth to protest, it became severe. ‘No, Mr North. I will not disassociate from you, and this is not open to discussion.’

  ‘Are you insane?’ Davie’s voice was rising as he realised just how adamant the captain was on this. ‘Alex!’ he burst out, so urgent that he didn’t even notice, himself, that he called the skipper by his first name. ‘You can’t do this! This alliance is far far more important than any individual. If the cost of it is shoving me out of an airlock, you do it!’

  It was apparent that he meant that, that he would consider even his own life to be less important than what they might achieve, here.

  ‘The benefits to the League in this alliance are incredible, and I am nothing, nothing, unless I serve that! You just can’t…’ he broke off momentarily as Alex held up a hand to quiet him, but only to continue even more desperately, ‘No, you can’t shut me up! I’m the official Diplomatic Corps consultant, here, you have to listen to me. My presence is a block to relationship building, so you have to take me out of the equation, you just have to! Any other course would be insanely irresponsible!’ Seeing no change in Alex’s expression, he turned to Buzz. ‘Tell him!’ he appealed.

  Buzz, however, just looked at Alex himself, his own manner very thoughtful, and said nothing.

  ‘Davie,’ Alex said, very deliberately, and as Davie’s eyes shot back to him, as startled as they were distressed, ‘Trust me.’

  That stopped him like a trip snare. There were two seconds of absolute silence while they stared at one another. Nobody was speaking, not on the command deck or anywhere around the ship. Everyone was watching on comms, faces aghast at this conflict. For that long moment, it hung in the air. Then Davie put his hand over his mouth in an unconscious gesture, silencing himself, just for a second. When he spoke again it was with a bitter note.

  ‘If you’re wrong…’

  ‘On my own head be it, I know,’ Alex said, and his own tone was consoling. He tapped his captain’s insignia. ‘Goes with the territory.’

  Davie didn’t smile. He was too upset for that. He did give a tiny acknowledging nod, though, recognising that Alex had the right of decision, here, not only as the military commander but as the duly appointed Presidential Envoy. In that role he represented all the might of the democratic process, the legitimate government of the League, which Davie and the Founding Families held to be practically sacred.

  ‘We will reply…’ Alex said, and wrote up his response, looking around at the first contact team for their reaction. ‘If anyone wishes to register an objection or concern,’ he said, ‘you should of course do so.’

  His gaze moved round those at the table, with nobody saying anything until he got to Jermane Taerling.

  ‘No objection,’ said Jermane. That was unexpected, give
n that he had been horrified, all along, by Alex’s disregard for established diplomatic policy and process. ‘We’ve got this far by tearing up every rule in the diplomatic handbook,’ Jermane observed, as everyone looked at him in some surprise. Then he nodded to Alex. ‘You have my vote, skipper.’

  Alex had not been asking for any kind of vote, but he nodded acknowledgement, and having glanced around the rest of the table, tapped the command which transmitted his signal.

  It was just as blunt as the one the Samartians had sent.

  ‘This is true,’ attached to the biography of Shion. ‘Sub-lt Shionolethe is of an ancient people currently developing contact with the League. She serves with us in full commitment to defending innocent worlds from Marfikian invasion.’ Attached to the biography of Davie North he wrote, ‘This man is a League citizen, appointed by our government as an official diplomatic representative. His service to the League is beyond question.’ Attached to the bundle of civilian biographies he wrote, ‘This is not ludicrous. These are experts in their own fields who work with us at the same risk as our own personnel.’ In conclusion he had added, ‘These people are all members of my ship’s company. I will accept no insult to them. If you reject one, you reject all.’

  Davie looked close to tears in the moment that the signal was transmitted, but once the probe was launched he gave a fatalistic, tiny little shrug.

  ‘You’re a maniac,’ he told Alex, with a note of despair underneath the disbelief.

  ‘Possibly,’ Alex said. If he was calling this wrong, he knew, if it caused the Samartians to withdraw from any further contact, he would have to carry that burden the rest of his life. No verdict of an official enquiry, even court martial, disgrace or imprisonment for culpable incompetence would even come close to the blame he would lay upon himself for failing to secure an alliance of such huge benefit to the League. It truly was, right now, all on him.

  But he had never felt more sure than he did of anything, right then. It wasn’t something open to discussion. The Samartians had struck deep into Alex and had reached the duralloy core, the principles he would live and die by. It was the moral code which had driven him to campaign on behalf of a crewman victimised by dirty politics, even when that looked like ending his own career. Every part of him was telling him to stand his ground here and do the right thing.

  They had to wait forty three minutes for the response. The ship was very quiet. Alex drank coffee, placidly. Davie went off to the lab and did fiendishly complicated things to keep himself occupied. Everyone kept looking at scopes, a nagging, unspoken fear in the air that the Samartians might simply turn and head back into the sensor cloud, ending the contact.

  When the message came in, therefore, it was greeted with a huge gasp and exclamations of relief from all around the ship.

  ‘Answer acceptable. Loyalty is respected.’

  Davie came rushing back to the command deck, frankly astounded.

  ‘How did you know?’ He asked Alex, as he hurried over and resumed his seat at the datatable. ‘That it was a test?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Alex admitted, honestly. ‘And we don’t know for sure that it was a test – I thought it was, though.’ He gave a quick, almost mischievous little grin. ‘It’s the kind of thing I might have done myself,’ he explained, ‘to find out just how much they want the relationship and how far they’d be willing to go to achieve it. Singling out a member of the diplomatic team for insult and demanding their exclusion is a long-established test both of that desire and loyalty within the team, after all. Gunboat diplomacy 101,’ he added, with a teasing note. ‘And you said it yourself, right from the start – Stand Strong, Talk Straight.’

  ‘Yes, okay – I see that, now,’ Davie conceded. ‘I guess my judgement was knocked out, there, by emotional issues.’ He looked embarrassed, a rare expression for him. ‘Maybe I am a bit young for this, after all.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Alex, straight faced, and then gave a snurge of laughter as Davie instantly looked offended. ‘Don’t fish for compliments,’ the skipper advised, and Davie, realising that he had indeed been hoping for a reassurance, laughed too.

  ‘Okay, fair enough,’ he agreed. Then, looking back at the statement Loyalty is respected, he gave a little, marvelling shake of his head. ‘They sure picked the right Envoy,’ he observed, with a look at Alex which held genuine admiration. ‘You’ve got some nerve, boss.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr North,’ Alex said solemnly. The moment in which they’d both used first names to reach out to the other was over, now, and it felt right that they resumed their habitual, jokey forms of address. ‘Give it five minutes and signal back, ‘Acceptable’, he told the officer holding the watch, and as Jonas acknowledged the order, Alex got to his feet. ‘I’m going for lunch,’ he said, with a nod to Buzz.

  He strolled off the command deck, obviously expecting there to be another lengthy wait before they heard any more from the Samartians. They were taken by surprise again, though, not just by how quickly the next message came in, but by its content.

  Request 17 option 4 is acceptable. Meeting will occur in time interval - a single beep lasting 0.72 seconds – multiplied eight thousand. Provide proposal for communication.

  Request 17 Option 4 on their wish list was for a direct holo-link meeting with a Samartian encounter team.

  None of them had had any realistic expectation of that happening, given how guarded the Samartians had been so far.

  ‘Is it advisable?’ Buzz queried, indicating the Big Picture Briefing which had been held at level two. Face to face encounters with alien species, even over holo-link, were regarded as very much higher impact than that.

  ‘If they’re saying they’re ready, I don’t think we can say no,’ Alex said, having considered this, and gave a decisive nod. ‘Okay. Let’s do it.’

  Organising the comms link was in itself so technically challenging that it was a considerable feat to achieve it at all. This was the first time they and the Samartians had attempted direct communication, rather than simply flashing signals at one another via comms probes, and a live feed was a very much more complex proposition. Significantly, the Samartians left that entirely to them, making no suggestions of their own as to how their respective systems might be brought to interface. Nearly half the frigate’s officers and crew had been involved, one way or another, in figuring out how to create a real-time holographic interface between two entirely incompatible operating systems; innovations which ranged from hard-wiring a comms array direct to a holoscreen to writing reams of sophisticated programming. They were still testing the system as the time approached for the holo-link, with some doubt as to whether it would work, or not.

  Still, they could only try. So, at the designated time they moved into position, watching as the Samartians did the same.

  The Samartian ships were swarming about for some minutes before the meeting, their heatscan images merging, then separating again as ships appeared to be docking together in random connections. Alex’s hand hovered over the action-stations command for a full minute as they watched this, with everyone keeping a very alert eye for Marfikians on the horizon. It became apparent, though, that this was merely some kind of internal shuffling within the Samartian squadron, probably getting their encounter team together on the ship they would be sending to the rendezvous.

  ‘They must use tube airlocks, to connect like that,’ Martine observed, and seeing the speed with which two ships came together and then parted, added with an admiring tone, ‘They’re good at it, too.’

  As they watched, one of the Samartian ships moved out of formation and came over to join them.

  It was amazing to see it come into their visual range. Even though they’d seen the ships already in footage from combat with the Marfikians, that had been glimpses caught between explosions, with very few clear moments. Now they saw the Samartian ship cruising alongside them in all its strange beauty, the exoskeleton like an angular web around the hull. It had no lights, unlike any ship ever
made in the League. There was no communications array, no ID lights streaming a brightly coloured light-tail, not even so much as a navigation beacon-light. The hull and exoskeleton had a dark but shiny finish like volcanic glass, reflecting every star around them with a shadowy glimmer.

  Whether it was paintwork or some other kind of finish, they did know that it could be damaged. Footage from the battle had revealed their damaged ship to have raw duralloy showing through rents in the surface. This one was flawless, making more than one member of the Fourth suddenly acutely conscious of their own paint-scarred condition.

  It took three attempts for the Fourth to establish a data-link capable of transmitting live holo feed, two ways. When it did, it linked only to one holoscreen, isolated in the exosuite. The Fourth had used two-way comms, themselves, to run hacking operations on Karadon’s computers, and were alert to any possibility of their own systems being infiltrated.

  Alex, therefore, established himself in the exosuite’s encounter room, facing the wall-sized holoscreen which Davie had installed there for just this kind of scenario. Davie was there, too – just the two of them, as the Samartians had requested a ‘two on two’ meeting and Alex had chosen to have the diplomatic consultant at his side. Buzz was holding the conn up on the command deck, and the rest of the exodiplomacy team were working either there, or in the lab, providing translation and advisory services just as they’d rehearsed this.

  When the image flickered up, though, both sides gazed at one another in silent appraisal that went on for several seconds.

  The Samartians appeared, two of them, against a background which consisted of a closed pressure hatch, a deactivated screen and some kind of wall-mounted control panel. The panel had been covered up with something that looked like a piece of opaque plastic taped over it, presumably to hide whatever tech lay beneath. There was a makeshift quality to that which felt oddly reassuring, a little amateur touch that made the Samartians seem somehow a little less intimidating.