Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  Exchange of military technology was obviously sensitive. Initially, Alex was suggesting that they exchange gun-tech, specs and a laser cannon for R&D. The Samartians, however, had also brought the offer of a missile defence array – something the Fourth hadn’t seen, as yet, as they were deep within the defended zone and certainly hadn’t been in any disclosures. One look at the outline specs made it clear to Alex that this was a major prize – much smaller than anything the League had, but considerably more powerful, both in terms of the number of missiles it carried and their speed.

  ‘In return,’ Tell informed him, ‘we want the Ignite.’ The slightest pause, then she added, levelly, ‘in the grey casing.’

  A slight twitch at the corner of Alex’s mouth betrayed his amusement, at that, though his gaze was questioning. The Ignite had been pretty much dropped off their gift-list, in the belief that it wasn’t something the Samartians were impressed by.

  ‘Is the Ignite of acceptable value to you?’ Alex queried, and indicated the defence-array they were offering. ‘This is something we regard as a very high level acquisition.’

  That was an issue, a big issue, in negotiations. The Samartians had already made it clear that they were not prepared to accept what they’d described as ‘alien beneficence’. They had a particularly strong cultural principle of gifts being given by superiors, parents to children. They would not put themselves in a child-like role in accepting gifts from the Revellin. The only way to do this, with honour, was for any exchange to be of equal value.

  Jurore and Tell glanced at one another.

  ‘The Ignite, also,’ Jurore admitted, just a fraction unwillingly.

  ‘We see that it has…’ Tell hesitated just for a moment, ‘possibilities.’

  In other words, Alex realised, they would tear their eye-teeth out with their bare hands, for it.

  ‘Satisfactory, then,’ he said, with a sense of warm accomplishment – time well spent, bringing the Ignite to the level of functioning prototype, even if their attempt at a more dramatic casing had gone down like a lead balloon.

  That left them making the arrangements to hand over the items, a matter requiring considerable discussion in itself. In the end, it was agreed that they would carry out the exchange as a cold drop, at a location just outside the Samartian system. A squadron of their ships would escort the Fourth’s biggest shuttle through to deliver their containers to the designated coordinates, pick up the Samartian ones, and return. The Samartians were keen to clarify and agree the very finest detail of that arrangement, right down to the exact time that it would take the shuttle to offload and then pick up the exchange cargo. They asked for Buzz Burroughs to be in charge of that too, evidently having come to see him as a trusted expert in handling shuttle-docking with their ship.

  ‘Certainly,’ Alex agreed, and added, ‘Our pilot will be Lt Commander Vergan.’

  It was a choice he made for many reasons. Very had come to the Fourth initially on consultancy secondment, requested by them to help train pilots for their newly acquired fighters. He had stayed at Alex’s request and become their third watch commander, but he still took an active role in pilot training and was recognised as one of their best pilots, himself. There were sound reasons, operationally, for choosing him. But there was a very human reason, too … Alex knew how much Very Vergan wanted to be on the team that stayed here, and he had already decided, and had to tell him, that he wouldn’t be. Giving him the honour of piloting the first alien ship to get within sight of the Samartian system was a consolation prize. A glance at the command deck feed told him that it was a very welcome one, too, as Very was already flushing scarlet with happy pride, shaking hands with Buzz as the exec congratulated him.

  And with that, they moved on to preliminary agreements for the exchange of diplomatic teams. This was going to take considerably more and fine-detailed negotiation – the very first League word spoken by the Samartians, in fact, was ‘ambassador’, since they had no equivalent word, no equivalent concept, in their language. It was taking them some time to decide who to send, and they weren’t ready yet to discuss that, but Alex was able to tell them who the Revellin team would be.

  He had announced that to the crew, just half an hour before the Samartians came aboard for this meeting – the people concerned already knew, as he’d broken the bad news to the other candidates as well as the good news to the successful ones, in a series of private meetings in his daycabin.

  It had not come as any great surprise, therefore, when he announced that the team they would be leaving here consisted of Misha Tregennis, Jermane Taerling and Murgat Atwood.

  The addition of Murg to the team had come about since she had quietly slipped a case-of-need analysis into Alex’s in-tray. She hadn’t said a word, just let the analysis do the talking, setting out in calm and orderly manner all the reasons why it would be of benefit to have a third person on the team, and why that person should be her.

  There was no arguing about it; she was right. One of the things she’d tagged in the file was Alex’s own analysis giving his reasons for having chosen her as part of the first contact team with Gide.

  ‘In the interests of full and frank disclosure,’ Alex told the Samartians, ‘I should tell you that Chief Petty Officer Atwood has, in the past, been employed as an agent in our intelligence service, undertaking covert information gathering, and is currently employed with us as a data analyst. She will not, I assure you, be undertaking any more than analysis of information freely shared with us, but if you are uncomfortable with the idea of having a former intelligence operative on the team, I will respect your wishes.’

  Murg’s own analysis of their reaction to that was a give-away that they were, themselves, intending to send at least one intelligence agent, or whatever their equivalent might be – just a little embarrassment, there, as Jurore assured Alex that they would have no objection to that.

  Later, once the Samartians had gone, Alex had Misha, Jermane and Murg to lunch in his daycabin. He had already spoken with each of them individually, and had had a long discussion with Misha Tregennis about her responsibilities and the expectations of her. He had also given her an acting-rank promotion to full Commander, merited by the responsibility she would be undertaking. As a result, she was now wearing Fleet uniform, and had committed to doing so throughout the mission.

  This, though, was an informal gathering, bringing them together as a team for the first time, though it was apparent that they would need no assistance with team-bonding.

  ‘One man, marooned for a year with two gorgeous women,’ Misha teased Jermane. ‘Lucky boy!’

  Jermane tried to maintain his dignity but a pink flush rose through his neck and a schoolboy giggle escaped him. Alex saw the way he glanced at Murg, too. Misha was being generous, there – she might have the looks and glamour to get away with ‘gorgeous’ but there was no way that the staid, middle-aged and slightly overweight Murg was in that category. Jermane had been working very closely with both of them for weeks, now, though, in the buzzing atmosphere of the lab, and it was perfectly obvious to Alex which of the two ladies had Jermane’s interest, romantically. Which was just as well, given that Misha, as mission commander, was not supposed to so much as joke-flirt with the people under her care.

  ‘Last one, skipper,’ she added, to Alex, and he grinned, knowing that he could rely on her to switch up to Fleet protocols, that she was just having one last flirty hurrah. Just at that point, too, Banno Triesse appeared with the trolley – inevitably, Banno, though he was back on the duty roster and ought to be having his own lunch, now.

  He had been planning and practising, too.

  ‘Sorry, skipper.’ He appeared to stumble a little on his replacement leg – a trick he’d acquired after a genuine little stumble had made everyone within reach leap to grab him. It had become a joke, repeated and shared in the way that in-jokes always were, as much about shared understanding as humour. As the people at the table moved instinctively towards jumpin
g up to catch him if he fell, he recovered himself, giving them a big beaming grin which focussed in on the skipper. ‘Mr Ireson has done you a salad,’ he told him, with the air of bestowing a treat. ‘It’s pretty good, too.’

  Alex tried not to think that even Mako would find it hard to mess up a salad. He knew that wasn’t fair. Mako had embraced the challenge of learning to cook with all his usual enthusiasm, and on the whole, was doing very well. Alex would freely admit that he would not even know where to start, himself, faced with the kind of chef-station Davie had fitted in the interdeck, and he was very sure he didn’t even want to try. Mako was starting to work with Sam Maylard, too, asking him what he was going to be making in the biovat, and moving on, already, to asking if he could make things that Mako wanted for a recipe. Today’s salad was the first result of that collaboration. ‘It’s pear and blue cheese,’ Banno told him.

  Alex was so preoccupied with contemplating a lunch consisting of baked fish, pear and blue cheese salad that for three more vital seconds he failed to notice what Banno was doing. By the time he did, Banno had already set out the condiment tray and was laying cutlery with a legerdemain worthy of a close-up magician. Even as Alex was opening his mouth to protest, a salad bowl appeared on the table, green leaves and sliced pear, glossy with dressing. And, in the next moment, plates with fish steaks already on them were being dealt into place with the elegance of a croupier.

  ‘Enjoy,’ said Banno, and departed, triumphant.

  It wasn’t silver service, to be sure – it was a very long way from silver service, and the very idea of setting table and serving food in under ten seconds would make any professional steward shudder. Banno had pulled it off, though, and as Alex realised that he had been very successfully distracted while the crewman whipped lunch onto the table, he just had to laugh.

  The salad was not, it had to be said, a hundred per cent successful. It was delicious on its own, and so was the fish, but the combination wasn’t great.

  ‘Fish and pear… okay.’ Misha observed, having tried it. ‘Well, okayish. Pear and blue cheese, lovely. But fish and blue cheese?’

  They all agreed that it was better to eat the two separately, and did so, making two courses of it. They were chatting as they ate, and by the time Alex exchanged their plates for the dessert tray from the trolley, were at ease enough to talk quite frankly about how they were feeling at the prospect of going to the dome. It was a great thrill, of course, as well as a tremendous responsibility, but all of them admitted, too, to having a touch of apprehension, a fear that they would not be worthy.

  In Jermane, that was most apparent in his unease at the rank he was going to have.

  ‘I’m not arguing about it, or anything,’ he assured Alex, ‘but it still doesn’t seem like it can be right, really, for me to be an Attache.’

  Alex smiled. He had made Jermane a Cultural Attache for this assignment, lifting him from the ranks of civil service administrative grades into the glory of holding diplomatic accreditation.

  ‘I am allowed,’ he told the linguist, with a touch of mischief. ‘I looked it up.’

  Jermane had looked it up, too, secretly, worried that his bosses in the Diplomatic Corps might take exception to this and perhaps say he should never have accepted it, that the captain had no right to bestow such rank and title. He had found, though, as Alex had, that amongst his entitlements as a Presidential Envoy was the right to appoint diplomatic personnel, right up to and including the rank of Ambassador. He had held off from that, recognising that the appointing of their first ambassador to Samart was, properly, the remit of the President’s office. But it was, he felt, appropriate to give Jermane the status that his role here really deserved.

  ‘Attache Taerling…’ Jermane tried it out again and laughed, shaking his head. ‘I just can’t get myself to believe it.’

  The others laughed, too, assuring him that they had just as much difficulty really believing that they were actually doing this.

  ‘When I came on this trip,’ Misha recalled, ‘it was just to study how the Fourth achieves your performance efficiency. Routine ergonomic survey, with fair warning that we’d be dumped off the ship if you were going anywhere like Quarus. If you’d told me then that I’d get to come to Samart, I’d have thought that was nuts. If you’d told me I’d be heading up a team on a year-long assignment here, I’d have thought you were completely off your head.’

  Murg smiled. She had been on quite a number of deep-cover missions, some of them lasting for months. The last of them had actually involved her pretending to leave the Fleet, getting married, and operating a freighter with her partner, which they had been doing for more than a year at the point where Alex picked them up. She would never talk about her work for Fleet Intel, but they all knew she must have incredible stories to tell, had she been at liberty to do so. She had been on the first contact party to the Gider, too, had been aboard their encounter-ship and danced the Dance of the Lizard.

  ‘Business as usual, for me,’ she said, and as the other two looked at her with some uncertainty, gave a spluttering little laugh, ‘Not!’

  ‘You’ll all be fine,’ Alex said, recognising that a reassuring word at that point would be expected. ‘I wouldn’t have chosen you if I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure of that. You’re a credit to us, and will be a credit to the League, too, for sure.’ As they sat a bit straighter, at that, and looked varying degrees of abashed, he smiled at them. ‘Just a little advice,’ he said, and addressed each of them in turn, starting with Misha. ‘Do not allow Ms Atwood to drink too much coffee. Make Mr Taerling go to bed, no sleeping on a sofa in his clothes.’ He looked at Jermane. ‘Give Ms Tregennis a game of triplink when she needs to take time out. Make sure that Ms Atwood sits down and eats a proper meal at least once every day.’ He looked at Murg. ‘Make sure Ms Tregennis finds time for workout, and make Mr Taerling sit down and watch a movie now and again.’ He looked around at the three of them. ‘Basically, look after one another, yes?’

  They promised him that they would, and he knew that he could not have chosen a better team, but all the same, he felt a little touch of anxiety at the thought of leaving people here, his people, his responsibility. Even watching the cargo shuttle head off later that day, gave him a twinge of apprehension. Realistically, Buzz and Very were at no greater risk, heading into the defended zone, than they were sitting out here on the edge of it, but they would be out of contact, beyond Alex’s ability to help them if anything went wrong, and he couldn’t help a little twinge of worry.

  It was thirty seven hours before the shuttle returned, bringing with it a hold full of boxes and two very tired but delighted officers.

  ‘Honestly, skipper, you should have seen it!’ a red eyed Very Vergan told him, within moments of Alex meeting them at the quarantine airlock. ‘It was…’ he struggled to find the words, waving his hands helplessly, ‘incredible.’

  Actually, as it turned out, they hadn’t been able to see very much, or at least not in any great detail. As had been agreed with the Samartians, the shuttle had been escorted by a squadron of their ships – eight of their ships, in fact, which had maintained such close-order station around the shuttle for the entire flight that Very had had to over-ride the proximity alarm. As they approached the outer reaches of the system they dropped out of superlight, their escort ships peeled away and a swarm of system fighters swept in in their place. They were smaller than the ships – quite obviously of the same basic design as the four units which were bolted together to make a patrol ship, but even narrower, with barely room aboard for pilot and gunner. There had been at least a hundred of them in complex formation round the shuttle – an ‘honour escort’, the Samartians said, though it was tacitly understood to be a security cordon as well. Just as had been agreed, as the shuttle went sublight to pick up the cargo they had deactivated all their hull systems except for one comms array, relying on the Samartians for flight control and navigation. They had been virtually blind, but for a visual th
rough the comms array which was hardly better than they’d have seen with a decent pair of binoculars.

  Even at that, what they had seen had left them speechless. The busiest port in the League was Chartsey, considered by spacers to be packed-out overcrowded, with thirty four major space stations, heavy industry, shipyards and junkyards in addition to the hundreds of big ships and thousands of smaller ones in parking orbits, along with more than a million system vehicles, bus-shuttles, taxis and leisure runabouts.

  Samart, Very said, made Chartsey look like a rural port in the back end of nowhere.

  ‘They have lanes,’ he said, ‘I don’t just mean like traffic lanes laid down on charts and marked out with sats; they’ve got so much stuff in their system that they’ve actually got lanes, like tunnels, you have to navigate to get through it. From a distance it looks almost like a wild system, full of debris and gas, but then you realise that it’s actually zoned, and how much of it is moving, like, under power, and it just takes your breath away. A lot of it is rock and gas, like asteroid belts only built, or made, or whatever the right word is. The comet cloud is really thin, practically non-existent, and it looks like they’ve put most of it inside the system, as defences. And they haven’t even got grav-sats! They have to physically haul every lump of rock around – they told us they use drones for that, auto-hauls they call round-ups, no bigger than our cleaning autobots, that are just out there, millions of them, moving rocks around. And they must have a billion missile arrays, too, honest, skipper, at least a billion, and mines, lord, who knows how many minefields, we couldn’t even start to count the fighters. Best guess, they have to have at least sixty or seventy thousand! These guys have got more firepower than the entire Fleet!’

  Buzz was just as amazed, in his case not so much at the scale and power of the Samartian defences, but at the mineral wealth it represented. Samart had never mined even nearby systems and had no trading capacity with anyone, so all their raw materials came from within their own system. Even with recycling metals, Buzz observed, Samart had to have extraordinary mineral riches to have enabled them to make all that.