Samartians and Novaterrans were genetically akin. Both worlds were descendants of survival colonies created by an ancient race, the Olaret. The Olaret had engineered many such species, tailoring each for optimum survival on the planet for which they were created. Samartians and Novaterrans had several qualities in common, though – both were a sturdy, stocky physical type, both with the light-eye gene which produced either grey or blue eyes. Both had early-onset greying, too, the Samartians markedly more so in that it was normal for them to be grey haired by the time they were in their mid-twenties. The most obvious difference between them was in their hands. Samartians had narrow hands, with three slender fingers and a thumb. Technically, the Samartian genome fell within the definition of the Homo Sapiens Identification Act, but after lengthy consideration they had decided that they preferred to assert their identity as a non-human species, a decision based more on cultural factors than on genetics.
‘My respects, sir.’ Preddai Jarlner, the senior of the two, spoke first, raising his hand towards Alex in greeting.
Alex raised his own hand and they touched the tips of their fingers – the three middle fingers in Alex’s case, in a gesture which was in itself a diplomatic compromise. A Samartian salute looked very much like holding up both hands in surrender, while the Fourth’s preference for a cordial handshake had shocked them as unduly intimate. It was Buzz who’d suggested this hybrid, finger-touch salute.
‘A pleasure, Preddai Jarlner.’ Alex was relieved to see that the Samartian officer greeted him in League Standard, and that he’d adopted the courtesy of ‘sir’. It had emerged during first contact that the form of address used by all Samartian ranks to one another translated directly as ‘beloved’, which Alex had felt obliged to reject on behalf of the regular Fleet and Diplomatic Corps personnel who’d come after them. ‘I regret,’ Alex said, ‘that I was unable to meet with you earlier than this.’
‘It isn’t a problem,’ said Jarlner, although it had been, really. The Samartians had not been able to understand at all why they were being told that Alex was unable to meet with them before now, when they could see on the news every day that he was right there on Chartsey, rushing around doing all manner of ridiculous things. One of their party had even wondered whether the League was doing this deliberately to insult them, making it clear that they were less important than the lowest ranking civilians on Chartsey. The second of the officers there, however, had reassured them. However insane their behaviour might appear, she had asserted, they certainly wouldn’t mean any offence by it, and certainly in Alex von Strada’s case at least, that was guaranteed.
‘An honour, sir,’ she didn’t smile as they touched fingers, but her gaze was bright and direct. She had the clear blue eyes normal to her genome, fair hair already streaked with silver, and a self-conscious pride as he addressed her by her new rank. Last time they’d met she’d been Janai Bennet, the equivalent of a cadet or very junior Sub. Now, she was Caldai Bennet, two steps below that of skipper so regarded by the Fleet as the equivalent of a Lt Commander.
It wasn’t equivalent, of course, and nor could it be. Samartian culture was so very different, with the military functioning more as a religious order than as any military as the League understood it. These people in their crisp white uniforms had been chosen at the age of ten to enter the highest echelon of their society, trained in academies to join the Service. They were addressed as Father or Mother by civilians, even by members of their own family, and were permitted no personal relationships for as long as they served. Competition for promotion at every level was immense, so much so that even the smallest slip could see you tumble out of contention. So these, the people the Samartians had chosen to represent them in this very important role, were the best of the best, the finest of their officers.
‘A pleasure, Caldai.’ Alex included them both in a very brief smile. ‘I trust that everything is satisfactory for you?’
They would have said that it was, regardless, since Samartians were endurers, not complainers. But there was a ring of sincerity in Jarlner’s voice when he replied.
‘Everything is good, thank you.’ He spoke Standard with the careful air of someone using a language at phrase-book level. Even that was a remarkable achievement. Until the Fourth had turned up, Samartians had believed that it was scientifically impossible for anyone to translate the language of an alien species. And since they had been isolated almost from the founding of their world, none of them had ever learned any other language than their own. A linguist attached to the Fourth had stayed behind when the Heron had left, based in a moonbase dome, training their very first linguists and providing language lessons. By now, a get-by level in Standard was already regarded as essential for promotion into senior ranks. ‘The cabins,’ said Jarlner, ‘are good.’
Alex picked up the nuances in that, the subtle tone and glance which conveyed how pleased and even relieved they had been to find such comfortable quarters here. Their second cabin was a workspace, just as sparsely furnished as the first, but equipped with the kind of deck-level computer interface they were accustomed to.
‘Well, if there is anything you would like,’ Alex said, ‘Please let me know.’
They thanked him, and he left. A meeting had already been scheduled for the following morning, in which they could discuss the provisional schedule agreed with the Admiralty and figure out what they were going to do with the group of trainees. And Samartians – military Samartians, anyway – did not do chat or any kind of small talk.
When he’d gone, Jarlner and Bennet carefully refrained from looking at one another, or speaking, or moving, for several seconds, just gazing contemplatively at the closed door. This, for Samartians, was a profound reaction. Both of them were shocked by how weary, flabby and unhealthy Alex looked compared with the bright-eyed officer they remembered at Samart. Neither, of course, would make any comment whatsoever. But that silence, that pause, was eloquent.
Alex knew that he was not at his best, but there was a sparkle coming back into his eyes as Min Taylar gave him the briefest of tours. The Assegai was in a highly unnatural state, of course, in the final stage of prepping for launch and with him going around, but all the same Alex could see what an exceptional ship it was. And by that he did not mean its design or its tech, though both were fascinating. What Alex meant was the crew, the most important part of any ship. He’d always had a keen eye for morale, the subtle cues by which even the most orthodox Fleet crew let it be known how they were feeling. Training in intelligence work and studying micro-expressions with Buzz had honed that natural awareness. The Assegai’s crew would have been amazed by the amount of information he picked up about them, even with a passing glance while they were poised at attention. Even the short time he spent going through the ship told him that this was a very happy, positive and motivated crew. There might be exceptions, of course, but the overall mood was one of such confidence and excitement that it raised his own spirits just to be there.
Engineering certainly did that. It wasn’t actually very dramatic, visually, since the structure of the ship had split engineering into three separate sectors. These were known respectively as the For’ard, Mid and Aft Halls, each with their own watch officer and crew. The largest, Mid Hall, however, had a control platform from which the senior engineer on duty controlled the mind-blowing power of the destroyer’s eighty four engines.
‘Pleasure to see you, sir.’ Commander Onwudiwe held the traditional role of ‘elder officer’ aboard the Assegai. Though he was not, in fact, the oldest officer, he had that air of benign gravitas which made it seem very natural to confide your troubles to him. He’d been one of the few kindly faces Alex had seen during a perfectly horrible tour of duty aboard the carrier Zeus.
‘Likewise!’ Alex beamed at him. It had been twelve years since they’d last met, at which time Lt von Strada had been calling Commander Onwudiwe ‘sir’, but there wasn’t the slightest awkwardness about Alex having overtaken him. Janus Onwudiwe had b
een a commander then and would remain a commander for the rest of his career… as a specialist engineering officer, it was the highest rank he could achieve.
He was looking very well and happy on it, anyway – a cheerful, chubby gentleman with eyes as dark and as bright as polished chestnuts.
‘Come down for a cuppa,’ the engineer invited, and it was understood that this would be the traditional mug of tea brewed from a steam valve, with a cookie or two and a good old gossip thrown in for good measure. But it was also understood that this would not be today. They were prepping the engines for the most demanding, dangerous operation they ever undertook. Flinging a ship through launch involved unimaginable forces, the kind of physics only normally experienced around singularities, and during launch and deceleration those forces were attempting to tear the ship apart. Being engineer on a starship required a rare combination of scientific understanding, technical skill and cool nerve. Perhaps this was why even the Old School Fleet tolerated engineers being just a tad eccentric. ‘Yon snotty,’ Commander Onwudiwe added, ‘can make a fairly decent brew.’
Alex glanced over at the ‘yon snotty’ the engineer indicated, and grinned. This was another of the complications landed on the Assegai at the last minute.
It wasn’t unwelcome, at least as far as Alex was concerned.
‘Cadet Officer Naos,’ he acknowledged her prompt salute.
A cadet had no business aboard a warship, of course, not at this time of year. Final year cadets were assigned to ships during the last three months before graduation, but the new academic year was barely through the first half semester. Yet here she was, neat as a pin from her glossed red hair to her scrupulously clean deck shoes.
‘Sir!’ She had risen from a console and was now looking very innocent – too innocent. It needed little detective ability for Alex to realise that she’d been assisting the engineer by running a series of cross-calibration tests only a qualified officer ought to undertake.
Neither Alex nor Min made any comment at that, though it was just as obvious to the skipper what had been going on. She and Janus Onwudiwe had already discussed Kate Naos’s unprecedented position aboard ship – unprecedented in the regular Fleet, at least – and had agreed that while she was in engineering she could undertake whatever work Janus felt to be appropriate, entirely on his own responsibility.
Alex had no issue with that, either. He had been obliged to ask his own engineer not to leave the cadet holding the watch in engineering on any regular or extended basis, but that had been a matter of managing her workload, not any question of her competence. The Assegai, after all, was using the very latest in astrogation systems – the Naos System. And one of the reasons the Admiralty had sent her aboard had been to continue research on an idea she had for an engine calibration system.
The other reason – unstated but tacitly understood – was that through no fault of her own and very little blame to anybody else, really, her position at the Chartsey Academy had become untenable. The instructors there had already found it problematic to be teaching a genius cadet who generally knew more about their subjects than they did. Now, though, Kate had been to Quarus. She’d been part of that mission – almost inadvertently, since it had never been expected that she would take an active part in it. But of course she had, even being appointed a goodwill ambassador. She had been further, seen and done more, than any of her instructors ever would. And it just didn’t seem to matter how quiet and modest she was about it all – instructors very naturally felt the need to assert their authority, while her fellow cadets were either worshipful or rabidly jealous and in either case distracted. Kate had been having a miserable time of it, though she had not and never would complain.
So, here she was, assigned to the Assegai on much the same basis as she had been aboard the Heron. She had to take the same classes as she would have at the Academy, at the same times, and comply with the same supervised meals and lights-out rules. Time had been allowed, however, for her to work in engineering, with a pair of mix cores allocated for her research and her own work station tucked under a gantry out of the way. Right now, evidently, she was taking advantage of launch prep to get hands-on, fine-tuning the engines.
Alex gave her a nod – no more than that, but then, no more than that was needed with Kate. It told her he approved, relieving her of any anxiety she might have had that he’d regard her being dumped on them as an imposition.
She didn’t smile – for all Janus’s free and easy manners, this was very much a formal situation for the cadet – but Alex saw the glow of pleasure in her face and went away satisfied. Silvie would be pleased, too, he knew, since she and Kate had become good friends during her time on the Heron, Kate being, as Silvie observed, one of the few humans with whom she could have an intellectual conversation on anything like equal terms.
Silvie herself was not on the ship. She would not stay aboard for the final hours of launch prep, or for the launch itself – the ever-rising emotional intensity as the ship prepared for launch got on her nerves, while the launch itself was even more uncomfortable for her emotionally than it was physically. She could cope with it, if she had to, with Shion’s support. But there was no reason she had to endure that when it was so easy to avoid. So Shion had taken her for a final spa before they left, with her own fighter Firefly on standby. When the Assegai had launched, Shion would follow in a far more rapid, smooth dash which would bring Silvie out to them happy and unruffled.
Min did show him the aquadeck, though – just a glimpse into the upper air level, but that was enough for Alex to see just why Silvie had been so enthusiastic about it. It was as big an open space as was achievable on a starship, a broad wedge more than thirty metres long and eighteen across at the widest end. The general effect was stunning – and not in a good way. The whole space was full of the air-side equivalent of coral reefs, a cacophony of garish colour and unnerving flora. Here, a lurid purple cactus-thing was competing with fluorescent orange spikes. There, a rather alarming thing like a mass of cobweb was pulsing and drifting tendrils into the air. There were pools, too – plunge pools giving access to the swim tunnels and the tanks located below and elsewhere about the ship. Water features sprayed, blurped and spat globules of water everywhere, often in the most unexpected places and without any warning. And there were artworks throughout, some of them having a sculptural form whilst others appeared to be almost random agglomerations of material. All, however, were so abstract that no human could make any sense of them. It smelt richly of seaweed, a tang of salt in the air and the temperature markedly colder than the rest of the ship.
‘Home away from home,’ Alex observed, since that was indeed as typical of a quarian environment as anything could be.
‘Silvie did the décor,’ Min said, with a glance around the lounge which betrayed that she hadn’t been entirely sure that Silvie was serious, at first. ‘It turned out that there is an, uh, facility…’ she gave Alex a speaking, sidelong look, ‘where quarian flora and fauna are cultivated from samples sent back over the years by the Diplomatic Corps. Silvie, uh, borrowed what she wanted.’
A crack of laughter escaped Alex as he thought about that. He could readily imagine the consternation of the Diplomatic Corps when Silvie discovered that the humans had a secret lab where they were growing and experimenting on plants and sea life brought from her world. They would have given her anything, anything, to make that right with her. And that, too, made sense of a comment in one of her messages, remarking that she’d found some lovely fish.
As they closed the hatch on the aquadeck, returning to the bland grey of the rest of the ship, Alex glanced sideways at Min. She was, he could see, perfectly relaxed, enjoying giving him the first sight of her ship.
‘We tend not to use these…’ They were walking past a semi-circular pressure door, already sealed with a holo-sticker indicating that the interior had been sterilised for launch and must not be opened.
‘Ah.’ Alex nodded agreement. If there was one a
spect of the Defender’s design he would have dispensed with, it was this. The ship had an internal pod-transit system. It was basically a U shape with a long horizontal, with the verticals situated centrally, roughly a third and two thirds along the length of the ship. It was the kind of thing you’d find on a liner, not a warship – unnecessary, even perhaps detrimental. It was better for people to walk around the ship, as moving from place to place by pods tended to contract your sense of the environment around you, a claustrophobic effect which was the last thing you needed on a starship. They were pretty much useless in alerts, too, since their tubes had to be sectioned off with a multitude of pressure and fire hatches. And in any case, a well-trained crew could get to stations just as quickly as they would have using pods, with the ship in freefall.
Min and Alex, anyway, shot up five decks without any effort at all. Zero-gee ladderways here were slightly offset between decks, as was normal for warships. Traversing upwards was a simple matter of stepping into the zero-gee zone marked around the ladder, slapping a rung to propel yourself upwards, catching a landing bar and swinging out into the gravity zone, taking two steps to the neighbouring ladder and repeating the process. It was as easy, and as quick, as walking up a shallow flight of five steps.
‘Exosuite – encounter zone,’ Min told him, opening an internal airlock.
This was part of the aquadeck, though five decks away from the living quarters. That was deliberate, placing different facilities as far apart around the ship as possible and connecting them with swim tubes. The swim tube came up here into a smaller version of the lounge, with a pool and the same kind of gaudy flora. The difference here was that the other half of the room was dry – still a garden, since Silvie had had the decorating of it, but very much a human space. It was possible for a quarantine barrier to keep the two halves of the room separate, though it would only be used under medical need.
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