‘I believe we have to override that policy,’ Alex said. ‘The Samartians were strongly resistant to any other suggestion being made; it was apparent to me that this decision had already been made at some higher or central authority and was not open to discussion at this level. So it’s obviously going to be this, or nothing.’ He smiled briefly, sensing the tension, and the disappointment, in many of the officers around the table. ‘And it isn’t unreasonable for them to decide who they want aboard their ship, someone they evidently don’t consider to be a threat. If it goes well, of course, we’ll be hoping to develop rather more open contact, but we have to start somewhere.’
He looked at Tina, with that, and saw with the change in her expression that the reality of what she had agreed to was sinking in, now. This was not going to be any kind of jolly; however thrilling an adventure it might be for her personally.
‘So – can I ask, dear boy, who you would have chosen for this role, if it had been your choice?’
Buzz’s tone was mildly interested, but Alex flicked him an appreciative look. It was an extraordinary question – many in the regular Fleet would have considered it unprofessional or even impertinent. But Buzz, more than anyone, would understand the emotions seething behind those polite faces around that table. Every one of them was senior to Tina Lucas, after all, and most of them could lay claim to a better right to be chosen for this mission. He was bringing this up, Alex understood, to clear the air.
‘Well, me, obviously,’ he replied, and after a moment, everyone laughed. The point had been effectively made, though – the point that they all wanted this, all envied Tina. And the friendly grin and nod he gave her as they all laughed and she grinned with rosy embarrassment made it clear that that envy was in no way mean spirited. ‘I’m sure you’ll do a fine job, representing us,’ he said, and there were murmurs of agreement from the other officers, recognising with that that Tina really needed their support, right now.
With that settled, it didn’t take long to decide what it was, exactly, that Tina would be expected to do. This amounted to little more than ‘show respect, learn as much as you can, make friends if possible.’
They spent considerably longer, then, planning for the visit of the Samartian officer. There were so many suggestions for what they could show her that it would have taken at least five days to do the half of it. Narrowing it down to what could reasonably be accomplished in a half day visit meant deciding what was going to be happening in different parts of the ship as they took their visitor around. Alex allowed his officers their say, amongst other things listening as two of them made competing cases for what could be going on in the main gym. One of the super-subs, who happened to be in charge of their freefall agility competition squad, was keen for them to be putting on a display when the visitor came around.
‘It’s military,’ he argued, ‘disciplined, coordinated and very highly skilled.’ He set his jaw rather pugnaciously. ‘Our team could take on the best in the Fleet – they’re a credit to any ship, skipper.’
Alex didn’t dispute it. The freefall competition squad was new – something organised by the Sub himself as he’d come in with experience of that world and rapidly put a squad together. The fledgling team had achieved silver in the synchronised gymnastics class of a freefall agility tournament just a couple of days before they’d left Therik, and he’d been working with them extensively since then.
‘I think it would be better to put on a flickball game,’ said the Lt who played goal attack for the ship’s flickball team. ‘Just as disciplined and skilled, and it may connect with whatever sport culture they have on Samart.’
That was a good point, too. They were looking, here, to find common ground, and if the Samartians played team sports, too, that could build a sense of understanding.
Alex, though, listened to this and all the other suggestions without comment, bringing the discussion to an end with a nod and ‘Thank you.’ He had a pen in his hand and was filling in a schedule, shielding the screen so that they could not see what he was writing. He finished what he was writing, quickly but very deliberately, before looking over at Davie North.
‘Your advice, Mr North?’ he requested, politely.
Davie filled out a schedule, himself, with one sweep of his pen across a screen, and transferred it to the skipper with a glance at an optic control. His manner was bland, as it had been throughout.
Alex looked at his suggestion, chuckled a little, and put it on the table alongside his own schedule so that everyone could read them.
They were virtually identical.
‘All right!’ Davie laughed at that, with the ‘point score’ gesture he used to acknowledge that Alex had impressed him. ‘I’m not sure if that means that I’ve learned how you think or vice versa, but either way, skippy, good call.’
‘Thank you,’ Alex said, desert-dry, and turned back to his officers as they chuckled. ‘Questions, comments?’ he asked, though they all understood that the decision had been made, now.
There was only one question – from Jonas Sartin, who had spotted something unexpected on the schedule and raised a hand to query it.
‘You want the choir, sir?’ He indicated studio two, a subsidiary workout room off the main gym which was often used for exercise classes and clubs.
‘You did say you’d be willing to lead them in performance for operations, if required,’ Alex reminded him.
Jonas hardly liked to say that he had done that only because every other club and society aboard ship had put themselves forward to do whatever they could to support operations. The choir had only learned five songs to date, and only two of those were at any kind of standard Jonas would feel happy about performing in public. At most, he had imagined, at some vague distant date, they might be called upon to sing the League or Fleet anthems at some formal event, as they had at Tina’s graduation.
‘Well yes, of course, sir, if that’s what you want,’ Jonas said, with a hesitant note. ‘Only, I wouldn’t say that we’re ready for public performance quite yet, sir, frankly, and I wouldn’t want to let the ship down, in any way.’
‘Not just the ship,’ Alex pointed out. ‘You’re representing the music culture of the League, Mr Sartin.’ He let that hover for a moment and then grinned, mischievously. ‘No pressure.’
Jonas had to laugh, but he was a little breathless, too.
‘Seriously, skipper…’
‘Seriously,’ Alex interposed, with a friendly but definite manner. ‘This is exodiplomacy, front line.’ He observed. ‘Everything the Samartians are learning about the League, they are learning from us, right here, right now. Whatever their officer sees tomorrow will be what is reported back not just about our ship but about our entire culture, and that will be a significant part of their decisions, for sure, about how far they trust us and how willing they are to develop the relationship. Given everything that is at stake, here, it could not be any more important that we all do our utmost, tomorrow, to show the Samartians honestly and openly who we are as a people. Professionally, I want them to see military skills, which is why I’ve chosen boarding-party training for the main gym and a damage control drill for deck four. We must also be mindful, though, that we are representing the wider culture of the League as a whole, so I want a handball game in studio one, and yes, the choir in two. It’s either that or the guitar karaoke group, and with all due respect to them I feel that the President would prefer us to represent the League’s musical culture with something a little more classical.’
That got a laugh across the ship – their light-guitar karaoke group was more notable for the fun that they had than the quality of music produced. Their ‘rocking out’ jamming sessions were always popular, but it was considered quite an achievement if they were all playing the same rhythm, let alone in the same key.
‘Fair enough, skipper,’ Jonas conceded, and with an air of bracing himself, observed, ‘We can only do our best.’
‘Exactly,’ Alex gave him an approvi
ng look, for that, and glanced around again. ‘That’s all any of us can do. And if we give this our best and it does go wrong, at least we know that we could not have done any more.’
That was an obvious, even trite remark, but the way he said it was calmly reassuring, on a comfortable note which also subtly conveyed his full confidence in every one of them to do the ship and the League great credit. People straightened up, a little riff of pride running through the ship.
That buzz continued, even intensified, once the briefing was dismissed and people began to get to grips with what they themselves would be doing. Planning and preparations carried on late into the evening, and it was some time after the nightwatch was set that the ship finally settled down.
Twenty One
There was an even greater buzz of excitement, next morning, as they put final preparations in place. It had been arranged that they would carry out the exchange at 1117, shipboard time. They had, finally, been able to figure out Samartian time. Samartians measured time using a forty hour day, but their hours were considerably shorter than Chartsey Central Time. Eight of their hours equated to just over five and a half hours, shipboard. 1117 shipboard would be 0800 on the Samartian ship.
At 1075, Alex gave the keenly anticipated order.
‘Full quarantine protocols.’
There were noisy cheers around the ship as the crew turned to with enthusiasm. They all knew what to do, here; this was one of the procedures they’d practiced till it became routine. The entire ship was being brought to a degree of cleanliness which would get an ‘excellent’ rating in any operating theatre, while everyone aboard took a decontamination shower and throat-scouring gargle before getting into survival suits which were themselves, then, fully decontaminated.
As the ship came to readiness, however, there was still some doubt over how they were going to carry out the officer exchange at all. This was something they’d been trying to work out ever since they’d seen the Samartian ships up close. It was apparent from those visuals that the Samartians did not carry any shuttles on their ships. They only appeared to have two airlocks, both amidships and located port and starboard – the exoskeletons of the ships protruded a good eight metres around the hull, making it impossible for any of the Fourth’s shuttles to get close enough to dock directly.
The Samartians themselves evidently dealt with that by grappling the exoskeletons together and then using pop-out airlocks to link their ships together via a flexible tube.
The Fourth could improvise something like that using emergency airlock tubing, and they had, but that was not the only problem. Samartian airlocks and tubing were circular, as opposed to the rectangular ones used by the League. Their own airlocks were too long to connect with Samartian systems vertically, and not wide enough to span them horizontally. Docking on, therefore, would require some modification and considerable skill.
It was Buzz who took the shuttle over, with Jace Higgs piloting but Buzz supervising the docking. It took several minutes to engage grapnels on the other ship’s exoskeleton and guide their improvised airlock to connect with the Samartians’, but Buzz handled it with unhurried calm.
‘There you are, dear girl,’ he told Tina, once diagnostics had confirmed that the link was holding firm. Then, as she stood up straight, taking a deep breath like someone about to dive off a high board, he patted her gently on the back. ‘Have fun.’
‘Thank you.’ She shot him a grateful look, then walked through the inner airlock, giving him a half-wave, half-salute as the hatch closed behind her. Buzz watched as she made her way through the link between the two ships, passing the Samartian officer who was coming through the other way. Their encounter lasted only moments, little more than an exchange of nervous looks, as both were wholly focussed on getting through the airlock. Buzz, watching on a comscreen, saw Tina vanish into the Samartian section of the tube, and gave just a moment to praying that she would be both safe, and successful. Then he turned his attention to the woman who was now pulling herself through the outer hatch into the shuttle’s own airlock.
The courage it took to come through that tube could only really be appreciated by those who had, themselves, engaged in first contact. To put yourself entirely into the hands of an unknown race, to go into an entirely alien environment, was a moment of heart stopping terror.
Heart pumping thrill, though, too. And if this was a moment of historical importance for the League, that was nothing to how important it was for the Samartians. They had only ever attempted one friendly contact with visitors to their worlds, historically, and everyone aboard that ship had died. Since then, their only experience of visitors had been the continual threat of Marfikian raiders and occasional, equally terrifying ships blitzing into their space signalling incomprehensible gobbledygook at them. And it really was incomprehensible, too. The reason the Samartians had not responded to any previous communication efforts was quite simply because their systems could not make any sense of those signals at all. Even the Fourth had had to stretch both their technology and their programming skills to the limit in order to transmit and receive comprehensible data. It was apparent that that was beyond the ability of the Samartian ships, and since it was unlikely the Prisosans had that capacity either, there had never been any possibility of meaningful communication between them. The Fourth were, quite literally, the first people the Samartians had met who had spoken to them in a way that they could understand.
So here they were, now, taking the historic step of sending their first explorer aboard an alien ship. For good or bad, the impact of that would be enormous, culturally, globally, not just now but for centuries to come. If the weight of responsibility on Tina was high, the equivalent weight on the Samartian officer had to be just overwhelming.
Buzz began to understand why the Samartians had chosen Janai Bennet for this, though, as she came through the outer airlock. It was at that point that the historic ‘first step’ descended into farce as the Samartian squeaked, yelped and fell splat on the deck.
It was apparent to Buzz that she was unprepared for there to be gravity in the inner airlock. She seemed for some reason to have been trying to come through the airlock sideways, only to be yanked down as she entered the gravity zone. She was pulling herself back up as he opened the inner door. It was obvious that she was dazzled, too, twisting her head away from the ceiling lights and shielding her eyes with her hand, instinctively. She managed to adjust, though, with some blinking, as she regained her feet.
Had that been a senior officer representing the Samartian government, clearly, there would have been huge embarrassment and loss of face at that point. Sending a junior officer to check things out first was, indeed, a sensible decision.
And a good choice, too, clearly, in Janai Bennet, a very good choice, as laughter was mingling with her astonishment.
‘Koto!’ she said, in rueful amusement, and then saw that the hatchway was opening. She pulled herself quickly into a more formal stance, composed her expression and held up her hands.
In the League, that gesture was regarded as a universal gesture of surrender, hands palm forward, slightly above the shoulders. There was something very natural and habitual about it, though; the way she did it, it looked almost more like a salute.
Buzz smiled warmly, taking in every detail of her appearance. She was wearing a spacesuit with some flexible metallic outer layer. It looked like pale copper, with a matt, slightly textured surface and a separate helmet attached with a pressure-sealed ring. The front half of the helmet was transparent, showing her face. Her hair was mostly concealed under a fitted cap, just a hint of strawberry-blonde visible at the temples. She looked very young – mid teens, Buzz would have guessed – with eyes so vivid they were almost turquoise, fine-boned features and a slightly snub nose. She was small, by League standards, just over a metre fifty and lightly built, at that. The hands she was holding up had only three fingers and a thumb.
‘Welcome, Janai Bennet,’ Buzz greeted her, and though the
words were formal his tone was fatherly. He held out his right hand to her as he spoke, and as she continued to stand there with her hands up staring at him in blank bewilderment he explained, ‘It is our custom to take hands, at meeting.’
She put her hands down and echoed his gesture, rather hesitantly, looking very solemn as he took her hand in his and shook it gently. ‘Welcome,’ he repeated, speaking slow but comprehensible Samartian, and stood back, waving her aboard the shuttle hospitably, ‘Do, please, come aboard. My name is Commander Burroughs.’
‘Predeo, Commander.’
They were in some difficulties with forms of address – the matrix kept insisting that the word the Samartians used to address both military superiors and subordinates translated as ‘beloved’ or ‘darling’. Jermane Taerling said it was right, too. There had been quite a debate about it and they’d not been able to come to a decision. Until they had a better grasp of that, given how sensitive people could be about the correct use of honorifics, it had been agreed that Samartians and Fourth’s personnel would address one another by rank.
‘And this is our pilot, Leading Star Higgs.’
‘How do,’ said Jace, twisting around in the pilot’s seat and grinning hugely as he lifted a hand in greeting. ‘Creseo.’
Every member of the crew knew that ‘creseo’ meant ‘welcome’, along with a handful of other words and phrases they had all learned. Beyond that, they would have to rely on the translation matrix, though Buzz was one of those who’d become reasonably fluent, learning the language as fast as they deciphered it.
‘Predeo, Leading Star.’ Janai Bennet said, but it was apparent that this was a purely automatic response, meaning, ‘honoured’. She was staring around at the shuttle’s interior, eyes widening in a look Buzz had seen before. He had seen it on the recording of the Fourth’s first-contact team as they stepped out into the Gider encounter zone, awed by the sheer size and strangeness of it. To the Fourth, this was a perfectly ordinary shuttle, but it was apparent that Janai Bennet had never seen anything like it before. She was looking around as if she felt the space to be enormous, and stared at the seats, too, as if they were something weird and wonderful. The seats were, admittedly, quite big, as the Fourth routinely used seating which could accommodate people wearing hullwalker rig, so to her they must look as if they were seats intended for giants.
Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) Page 45
