‘This is lovely,’ Alex said, looking around. Silvie had done a wonderful job of blending human and quarian environments so that there was no harsh dividing line. The small tables and chairs on the human side were surrounded with tropical plants which merged subtly into the air-corals around the pool. The full-surround holo was beautifully done, too. Quarians were not impressed by holographic scenery which attempted any kind of living feature. It was as obvious to them that holographic fish weren’t real as it would have been if they’d been cartoons. There was just no sense of them, so the under-sea scenarios humans found enchanting left quarians mystified.
What Silvie had created here was an abstract environment, an art form in itself, full of blues and greys which gave the impression of a constantly shifting geometric sea all around and a softly flowing, curving sky above. It was tranquil and gave, somehow, the feeling of being surrounded by vast open space. Alex knew at once that he would be spending quite a lot of time here – instantly, his favourite place on the ship.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Min agreed, as they left… riggers were hovering discreetly in the background, ready to secure the encounter room for launch. ‘And here, of course, sickbay.’
It was adjacent to the encounter room, which doubled as a quarantine facility. And it was, in every way, disappointing.
Alex had unreasonable expectations, he knew that. He’d got so used to the sickbay on the Heron that it now seemed entirely normal to him that sickbay should be a wonderful, warm, welcoming space. The Heron’s sickbay was a holographic forest glade complete with waterfall and birdsong. When you walked into it you saw a grove of artificial but convincing grass, a healing circle of comfortable airbags with a meditation light at their centre and a heady aroma. The medic would greet you with a chatty welcome and immediately offer you a bowl of his infamous herbal tea. He could, at need, transform sickbay into a surgical space at the flick of a button, revealing all the tech, life support tanks and bunks the holograms had been concealing. But it was far more often used for relaxation sessions, counselling, meditation, chi-massage and all the other therapies Rangi offered the hard working crew. It was also where their mascot lived, in a specially constructed habitat. Lucky Too, a clone of the original gecko, was as much loved by the crew as his parent had been. And it was, even Alex had been prepared to admit, quite calming to spend a few minutes with the gecko, tickling him to make him change colour and give his funny little happy chirrup.
No gecko would ever be allowed over the threshold of the Assegai’s sickbay. No herbal tea would ever be served here, either, and the medic’s opinion of aromatherapy, chi massage and the rest was the entirely dismissive one of a conventional Fleet doctor.
When they went in, Alex was immediately struck by the glare. It wasn’t simply that every surface was either bright white or shining steel; the lighting in here was completely different from the rest of the ship.
The Fleet was, very slowly, coming around to using the diurnal lighting system trialled by the Fourth. Davie had given orders that all new ships being built at his Mandram yards would include the system as routine, and both he and his father were offering free up-fitting of it to all Fleet ships at any of the spacedocks they owned. Davie had been that convinced of its benefits, and had, in turn, convinced his father.
And the Admiralty, too, presented with hard evidence as to the welfare benefits of using the system, with all the implications that had for morale and productivity, had given consent for skippers to adopt the system at their own discretion. It would be ten years before even half the Fleet’s ships had acquired it, but the Assegai had done so as a matter of course. Since it was mid-evening by then, the quality of light around the ship was mellow, though not yet tinged with the subtle pinks which would shade them into twilight.
Dr Payling, evidently, was having none of that in his sickbay. He had exercised his right to exempt sickbay from what he called the ‘mood lighting’ on the rest of the ship, commenting acerbically that they needed to be able to see what they were doing, as if the rest of the ship did not. The result was a harsh blue-white ceiling light which made Alex blink a bit when he first went into it.
His second impression was one of severity, a dauntingly clinical environment with a distinctly medical whiff of sterilising spray. The Assegai’s sickbay was very much bigger than the Heron’s, of course – it had a reception area with health-advisory holo-posters, with signage indicating that the two doors and short corridor leading off it belonged to Treatment Rooms One and Two and the Ward. The Assegai, in fact, had three doctors, four full time nurses and two riggers on duty every watch. Ruler of this little empire was Dr Endru Payling (Commander, Medical Corps). He held much the same status in the medical corps as a senior consultant in a hospital, and until a few days ago had been serenely confident in both his own abilities and his own authority.
‘Welcome aboard, sir,’ he was obviously expecting them, waiting in the reception area with his staff lined up behind like a second honour guard.
‘Thank you,’ Alex was aware of several simultaneous feelings – the kind of confusion which made Silvie protest. At one level he was amused, perceiving that as far as Dr Payling was concerned, his domain was so detached from the rest of the ship that it merited a separate welcome. At another he was irritated. One look at Endru Payling told him that they were unlikely to be friends. The medic was portly, with the stance of someone accustomed to inflating his chest, emphasising his own importance. Even before he began to come towards them, Alex knew just how he would walk, a deliberate pace which came perilously close to a strut. He was expensively groomed, utterly conventional. He would almost certainly belong to a country club with intersystem affiliations so that he could be assured of appropriate leisure facilities on any reasonably civilised world. Who in the world, Alex wondered, had chosen him, of all available people, for such a post aboard a ship which was intended for exodiplomacy service?
At another level again, though, and sweeping aside both amusement and irritation, came surprise. Because Endru Payling, clearly so very used to being the great panjandrum of his own domain, was scared.
It was as obvious to Alex as if he’d been trembling and sweating, though the give-aways were far less obvious than that. Endru Payling was afraid.
Scared of him? But no. Alex could see no indicators of that – the way the doctor was looking at him indicated deep concern, not fear of him. But fear there was, an anxiety which made the doctor swallow repeatedly and had brought a clammy, barely perceptible dampness to his palms.
Fear for him, Alex realised, and in the same moment, enlightenment broke upon him with such force that he almost laughed aloud.
Simon, he thought. And in that, he was almost right. Endru Payling did indeed have the characteristic look of a consultant who’d received one of Professor Penarth’s terrible letters. Simon himself had remained at Serenity, enjoying himself too much on his honeymoon to come back to Chartsey. He had, however, fired off several letters to people he considered responsible for Alex’s health during his stay here… and one or more of them, Alex guessed, had been passed on to Dr Payling. It would, for sure, be explicit both in the standards of care he expected for Alex and in what he would do to the unfortunate responsible for any lapse. There would be no physical threat involved, but the actions Professor Penarth could bring against any medic for incompetence would shred even the most distinguished career.
‘I’ll come in for a medical in the morning,’ Alex told him. ‘All right?’
This was routine – if it hadn’t been for the launch, in fact, Alex would have been expected to have his ship-joining medical that evening. Since he was not actually a member of the Assegai’s company, though, the next day would be fine.
‘Of course, sir,’ Dr Payling was trying to make it look as if he was looking forward to that, whilst at the same time micro-expressions made it apparent to Alex that, on the whole, he would rather be facing court martial. What had Simon said in that letter, Alex won
dered. And then, with uncharacteristic unkindness, decided that it wouldn’t do the pompous little man any harm to worry a bit, so merely gave him a nod and turned away.
Min made no comment, even after the sickbay hatch had closed behind them. She was leading him back to the command deck, as if taking it for granted that that was where he’d want to be as the launch progressed.
‘All right – thank you,’ she acknowledged the sudden silence and standing up which met their arrival on the command deck. ‘Normal protocols, please,’ she flicked a smile at Alex, ‘With your agreement, of course, Captain.’
Alex grinned back. She knew his opinion of such formalities, and really did not need to ask.
‘By all means,’ he said, and as they went to the command table, took the seat she offered him. It was, as etiquette required, to the left of her own, skipper’s place. Her exec was seated to her right, with the current watch commander beyond and the junior officer of the watch at the end. As a guest, Alex was expected to remain an observer and keep his hands off the screens. Min, however, activated the table in front of him with an active copy of the screens in front of her, giving him access so that he could pull up whatever data he wanted.
‘Thank you,’ said Alex. The command deck had settled down again to a busy hum, and it was clear from Min’s manner that she expected Alex to be completely at ease here. She didn’t even tell him to make himself at home – an offer which had the contradictory effect of reminding people that they weren’t at home – or assure him that he was welcome to command access. She simply gave him the access and left him to it, with the clear message, You are a shipmate, not a passenger.
Alex found the launch fascinating, from looking at how the ship had prepped for it to the run through the tunnel itself. Min had, he saw, adopted his own habit of having the ship put through an intensive strip-down check in the twenty five hours prior to launch. She could not, however, do that in the same way as they did in the Fourth, merely listing all the jobs that needed to be done, with tech pairs picking up the next job on the list and working on their own recognisance. This, after all, was a regular Fleet ship. On a regular Fleet ship, strip-down was organised departmentally and had to be very closely supervised. Min had got around this, Alex found, by having every member of the crew attached to at least three departments, with a system for strip down which effectively ran through the same checklist as they used in the Fourth, and which gave every member of the crew the same range of experience in different departments, different types of tech, as the Fourth’s system. It was extremely complex logistically and must have taken a great deal of time to work out, but it was at least as efficient as the Fourth’s method.
And then there was the launch itself. Alex had been told that Defender class ships ran very much more smoothly through launch than traditional vessels. In fact, he’d seen it many times as Davie’s own prototype, the Stepeasy, had dashed through launch far more easily than the Heron.
At some level, though, Alex had not really believed that a warship launch could be that smooth, regardless of the revolutionary internal skeleton which was supposed to flex and absorb vibration. Alex knew what a warship launch ought to be like, with the dimmed lights, screeching deck plates, popping of electronics shorting out and everyone hanging on for dear life as the vibration rattled every bone in their body.
On the Assegai, it was very much more the kind of launch you’d experience aboard a gunboat. There was the usual sense of stomach-turning disorientation, of course, and a deep rumble that seemed to be rolling through the ship like distant thunder, but Alex did not, he found, need to hang on to the freefall bar. There was no screeching of metal against metal, no pop and fizz of fuse-boards shorting out, no teeth-jarring jolts. Instead, there was a feeling of immense power, a strange, high, singing note almost beyond human hearing range, a moment of wild spinning confusion, and then, far sooner than he would ever have believed possible for a ship of this size, the complacent hum of a ship cocooned in its little bubble of twenty-four dimensional forcefield, falling at impossible speeds through a universe which had ceased to resist it.
The Assegai’s crew cheered, but quite discreetly, as if trying to be modest about their ship’s astonishing performance. As with all Fleet ships – even the most conventional – the rating at the helm had the traditional right to play their own choice of music during the couple of minutes between the end of the launch run and the ship being released from traffic control. In the Fourth that was always a rousing sing-along, and more often than not in the last few years, the classical chorale which had become the Fourth’s unofficial anthem. Here, the rating at lead-helm chose a classical piece, too, but it was a calming Nocturne.
‘Good work, everyone,’ Min commended, as the crew settled down to post-launch checks in an atmosphere of contentment. ‘And here comes Firefly,’ she observed, with a glance at scopes.
Alex watched too as the fighter cruised across the system, following traffic lanes and remaining within system speed limits. And this was not because they had SDF fighters escorting them, either – Shion was far too good a pilot to pull law-breaking stunts. And this was, too, the most crowded space in the League. Even the relatively vast space within a solar system was packed out, at Chartsey, with its hundreds of space stations, some of them enormous, thousands of ships and millions of small craft. The sheer amount of traffic was dizzying, buses, taxis, shuttles and hordes of private system runabouts spilling out from Chartsey itself and hurtling around between there and the eighteen inhabited zones around the rest of the system and all the space stations. Traffic was streaming in and out of the system, too – a constant flow of liners, freighters and yachts rising from below to run through deceleration into the system whilst at the same time an even greater flow was surging out of the departure gates above. Departures were always busy at this time of day, with many ships preferring an evening slot as it gave them all day for launch prep. And at least a hundred small craft had either preceded or followed the Assegai out of the system, many of them media ships jostling for the best filming angles and signalling plaintively for one last interview. Firefly was similarly attended, but the SDF fighters kept even the most importunate to a safe distance and all those craft restricted to system space were obliged to fall back as the fighter reached the exit gate.
This was the one point in the whole immensity of the solar system out of which ships could leave. The natural barrier of the Comet Cloud had been reinforced here over centuries of laying scatter mines, defence arrays and streaks of shredded garbage. No superlight ship could traverse that barrier, at least not without blowing a passage through it with continuous missile fire ahead of themselves.
Alex, for one, knew how quickly that could be achieved, having done it to gain entry to wild systems several times, so he knew just how illusory that fragile bubble was in any terms of protecting the system. But it was effective as a means of traffic control, directing ships from the several launch tunnels into an organised flow.
Firefly joined that stream, following a whalebelly freighter lumbering off with hull-nets stuffed with cargo, and followed by the remnants of the pursuing flotilla.
The moment they were clear of traffic control, though, the fighter’s comms arrays flashed a signal at the accompanying SDF squadron. Alex did not need to glance at comms to know that this was Shion, signalling a courteous thanks to their escort. And in the same moment, she was off. Firefly burst free like a swallow released from captivity, springing away from the traffic and swooping after the Assegai. The destroyer was already moving into long orbit, circling the system and preparing to salute it before their departure.
Min did not give any orders as Firefly approached. She didn’t need to. Flight control made a routine request to the watch commander for permission to open the hangar bay, which was just as routinely granted. Access panels glided apart on the belly of the ship as permission to dock was signalled to the incoming fighter… no more than that, Alex noted. Ordinarily an incoming fighter
would be under the direction of flight control, and with the ship superlight, would be brought in under remote handling.
Not so with Shion. By the third time Shion had brought Silvie to visit them Min had given orders that her fighter was to be allowed free docking, merely given permission to approach and an acknowledgement when she reported the docking procedure accomplished. Which it was, with all the speed, grace and perfect control which were the hallmarks of Shion’s piloting. Moments later, the fighter was secured to its carrier airlock and the outer shield was gliding back into place. A note on the watch screens informed the skipper that they were now ready to give the salute, but she didn’t have to give any orders for that, either. The Exec gave that command, with the gunnery officer and all the crew involved already on their toes.
It was a conventional salute – a ripple broadside fired from nose to tail – with none of the acrobatics with which the Fourth livened up their departures. But the Assegai more than made up for it in the ensuing few seconds. As the salute concluded Min gave an order, in tones which made it little more than a casual suggestion.
‘Evasive T-9.’
The Assegai span out of orbit, flicked in five or six directions with bewildering rapidity, and shot off at tremendous speed as the pursuing craft scattered in confusion behind them. They were, Alex noted, already making L-32, faster than the Heron’s own top cruising speed, and after three further dodges to throw even the fastest pursuer off the scent, settled on a course in the general direction of Karadon.
This – the mighty space station at the geographical and logistic heart of the League – was as far as their orders would take them. Further orders, they’d been told, would catch up with them there. For now, they were simply to make their way to Karadon, taking their time about it and staying well away from shipping lanes. They could have reached Karadon in just nine days, at the Assegai’s top speed and on the most direct route. Instead, they’d been told to take a full two weeks before they arrived. It was officially a training flight, a shakedown period for Alex and the Samartian officers to familiarise themselves with the Assegai. In fact, it was intended to give Alex some down-time, much needed to recover from his exertions at Chartsey.
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