Quarus (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 6)

by S J MacDonald

  Alex noticed, of course, but did nothing about it. A sense of standing together in the face of adversity was good for crew morale, too, and stress levels were not unreasonably high given how important a matter this was for all the people concerned. And he knew, too, that none of them would be disappointed.

  They certainly weren’t. It took Buzz all day to work through the interviews and bring each member of the crew to the command deck for a formal congratulation by the skipper. By the end of it Alex’s hand had been subjected to so many crushing handshakes that it was quite sore. By the end of it, though, he had a very happy crew – Owun Glyn, to his delight, was promoted from the lowest rank possible back to able star, senior grade, with a requirement only that he achieve a five month good behaviour period before getting his leading star pips. And that, as he understood, was a Fleet requirement even the Fourth could not change. At the other end of the scale, Bonny was equally delighted by the commendation she had for her own probation period, during which she had, as Alex observed, contributed materially to the success of the shakedown.

  There was a party, naturally, to celebrate – there always was a party a month after a new crew intake, even if that was only one or two people, as it was one of the few excuses the Fleet recognised for a shipboard celebration. With so many of them having so much to celebrate, the party was very loud, very long and very very happy. There was deafening music to dance to, hilarious performances at open-mic slots and a veritable banquet of treats. Most people dug out civilian party clothes for the event, too, a rare opportunity to get out of uniform.

  Alex did not take part. As was traditional, he remained on the command deck holding the watch so that other officers could attend, and his only involvement was that they sent him a tray of party food. But that was just as he liked it – he enjoyed it much more, minding the ship while his people had fun, than he would have the raucous fun in the gym and interdeck.

  One month in, he mused, as he sampled a hot spiced pastry, and they were doing pretty well.

  Seven

  Seven days later, Ab Abnedido came onto the command deck, escorted by CPO Hali Burdon. The ship was almost silent, everyone watching, and Ab himself was stiff with nerves. Hali was the ship’s master at arms, and being officially escorted by her into the presence of authority awoke uncomfortable memories of being led into court by guards.

  ‘Skipper,’ Hali said, coming to a halt herself and moving to attention, which Ab did too, just as they’d practiced. ‘O/S Abnedido requesting permission to speak.’

  Alex was sitting there waiting for them, and responded just as ritually, ‘Permission granted.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Ab, and felt his voice strange, as if it was someone else uttering the words while he was half-hypnotised, ‘Reporting the ship’s company ready for inspection, sir.’

  Ab had become, with Owun’s promotion, the only Ordinary Star rating still on the manifest – the lowest ranking member of the crew. This rating, though lowly, carried with it a host of ceremonial responsibilities, notably when the crew was on parade or at other times when the crew’s views had to be officially recorded.

  This was one of those times. Alex had said the day before that he was satisfied that they were as ready as they were going to be for the inspection, and all the necessary paperwork had been done. Admiral Dafour and his team had finally emerged from their lair and were sitting right there on the command deck, Admiral Dafour at the captain’s side, watching. But as usual in Fleet affairs, there was a certain tradition and ceremony to be gone through. Part of that was that the most junior rating had to report the ship’s company as ready for inspection. Ab managed that even though he did look as if he might bolt for it at any moment and even though he was feeling an urgent need for the lavatory.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Abnedido,’ Alex said, and with a brief but warm smile of approval, ‘Dismissed.’

  Ab span about and marched himself off the command deck with Hali, and Alex turned to the admiral beside him.

  ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘The command, company and vessel of Fourth Fleet Irregulars frigate Heron are at your inspection.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain.’ Admiral Dafour had spent weeks on a ship from Chartsey to Therik, another month waiting there and then five weeks lurking on the interdeck in preparation for this moment, but nothing in his manner conveyed that it was anything but routine. ‘We will commence,’ he said, just as if they hadn’t seen them for themselves, ‘with a review of your shakedown training logs.’

  And with that, the inspection began. It took ten days and involved at various points every officer, commissioned and non-commissioned, being put through the hoops about their knowledge of policy and procedures, while lower ranks were quizzed about how they carried out particular duties. There were tests, too, drills, more tests and more drills.

  Absurdly, these turned out to be a great deal easier than the ones they had been doing already. When a fire drill was called, it was just that, every department on the ship dealing with a basic fire-response drill at the same time. Tech-failure and blowout drills were the same. And they were basic – the Fourth always hiked things up with complications and other things which would go wrong, escalating the problem, if the correct procedures weren’t followed fast enough. In standard Fleet drills that wasn’t allowed. There was a set task – respond to a console short out, say – and the nature of the fault was absolutely routine, as were the procedures to deal with it. Providing that all the correct orders were given and actions carried out, the rating achieved depended on how efficiently the matter was dealt with – which usually meant how fast. There was frequently an air of slight surprise at such drills, a sense of ‘Is that really all?’, and even a little frustration, too, that the inspectors were not giving them the opportunity to show what they could really do.

  The port-related procedures were typical. There were any number of systems they could have reached within a day or two, including some quite interesting binary ones, but Admiral Dafour chose the most boring option possible. It was a brown dwarf, shining so dimly it seemed barely luminous at all, dark bands striping a faint inner glow. It had two planets of sorts, two uninspiring lumps of dirty ice, and a litter of smaller objects which might just have been dignified with the name of asteroid belt, but there was no recognisable comet cloud. This was a failed star; there had never been that great kindling of hydrogen fusion which would have set it ablaze, and whatever objects it might have had beyond its little heliosphere had long since been pulled away by more powerful neighbours or knocked into ultimately destructive paths. It was just about as dull, in every sense, as it was possible for a solar system to be. And it was here that Admiral Dafour had them carry out the required manoeuvres of going into superlight orbit, preparing as if for port entry and firing a salute. He and his team appeared to be oblivious to the air of indignation which riffled through the ship over that.

  ‘It’s like getting athletes to prove that they can do ten press-ups,’ Owun Glyn complained, a little too audibly. ‘Why can’t they just let us show them what we can do?’

  ‘Procedure,’ said several voices around him, with varying inflections of resignation and scorn.

  ‘They can only assess us on the same criteria as any other Seabird 37,’ a more experienced crew member explained. ‘Don’t worry – we’ll get our chance to shine in the Three Days Normal.’

  This was the ultimate phase of the inspection, three days during which the frigate was required to operate just as it would under normal operation, albeit with inspectors bobbing up all over the place with clipboards and an insatiable curiosity. ‘What are you doing?’ and ‘Why?’ became the ever-present questions, to such an extent that a crewman joked that he’d found himself evaluating the precise nature of what he was doing and its efficiency even using the lavatory.

  For Alex, it was a time of extensive scrutiny. Admiral Dafour was glued to his elbow at every waking moment, his noteboard never far from his hand. He didn’t keep interrupting him with question
s about what he was doing and why, he just made notes. There were, Alex could see, going to be a lot of questions in the debriefing.

  For now, though, the only time he raised a question was during the full ship drill on day two.

  Today’s random crisis hit the computer room, where the team standing by to deal with fire, blowout or technical disaster found themselves instead being showered with tiny white flakes crystallising out of the air.

  There was a moment of pure blank disbelief, jaw-dropped huh, into which a single voice uttered the incredible diagnosis, ‘It’s snowing!’

  After that, having identified the problem, they pulled it together and responded to it as an environmental hazard, blasting dry heat through the section and running diagnostics on all equipment to ensure that nothing had been damaged.

  ‘This, I take it,’ said Admiral Dafour, ‘would be the startle-training identified as operational in your shakedown logs.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Alex, fully aware of how bonkers it was to have snow-reaction drill on a starship. He had not asked Bonny to pull the startle training from the drills. On the contrary, he had reminded everyone that they must follow normal shipboard routines and do things as much as usual as they could. Ships which attempted to pump up their rating by faking superhuman effort in the three day observation were digging a pit for themselves, as inspectors could easily compare routines and workload with what had been recorded in the log over previous weeks. So they were just going about their usual work in the usual way. ‘I feel it to be operationally advantageous,’ Alex said, ‘that our ship’s company develops mental agility in responding even to the most unexpected and unlikely challenges.’

  Admiral Dafour made a note. But his manner was interested – always interested and courteous, and often with a gleam of appreciation in his eyes, too.

  He appeared to develop a slight cough, though, and was obliged to turn his back for a minute or two, the following morning. It was one of Alex’s days for a gym session with a personal trainer. In fact, the role was shared by everyone on the ship who had a PT qualification – and it really was surprising how many people considered it worthwhile to grab a gym instructor qualification.

  ‘Good Morrrrning Skipperrrrr!’ Today’s personal trainer was Able Star Tonos Trevaga, something of a shipboard comedian. He was not going to allow the presence of an inspecting Admiral to spoil his fun in any way, and he hailed Alex’s appearance in the workout room with a theatrical sergeant-major manner and absurdly rolled R’s. ‘Today,’ he announced, with sadistic glee, ‘we will be doing Weight Worrrrk.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Alex, partly because he hated weight- training and partly because he could see that A/S Trevaga was going to be winding him up throughout.

  He certainly did. He piled up the gravity and the exercises until Alex’s legs were shaking and the sweat was pouring off him, while Tonos Trevaga himself, standing comfortably outside the high-gee zone, was jumping up and down flinging imaginary weights from between his legs at the ceiling, shouting ‘Up, up, up, get it up, man!’

  Alex put the weight down, letting it thud down between his feet, and gave the instructor a speaking look.

  ‘I can’t,’ he panted, ‘do this… if you keep…making… me laugh.’

  A/S Trevaga snorted happily, but he was merciless.

  ‘Stop messing about,’ he told the captain. ‘Or I’ll put the gravity up another notch. Come on, worrrk! Up – lift, bend those knees, put some efforrrrt into it!’

  It was at this point that the Admiral developed his little cough and had to turn away, focussing his attention on an exercise poster for a minute or so before making a note and resuming his observations with an impassive expression, even if his eyes were unusually bright.

  There was no doubt by the end of the session that Alex had had a very demanding workout, for which he thanked his instructor with a wry grin and a handshake.

  ‘My pleasure, skipper,’ Tonos Trevaga said, with the sunniest of smiles, and with an acknowledging ‘Sir’ for the Admiral, left Alex to hit the shower while he went to get some breakfast.

  As far as Alex was concerned, this was normal, as was his participation later that day in an ongoing research project. Just as usual, the request had gone on the notice board that morning, volunteers please to report to sickbay at any time during that day.

  Alex popped in during one of his periodic walks around the ship. This particular project was Rangi’s, a study of human empathic ability which required volunteers to participate once a week in a classic experiment.

  ‘I know you know the drill,’ he said, when Alex called into sickbay. ‘But I have to go through the intro every time as part of the methodology.’ He saw Alex’s assent and continued, ‘There are two lizards in the habitat,’ he indicated the corner of sickbay which was set up as a habitat for their mascot gecko. ‘One is real, our Lucky, The other is a robo-sim. Appearance and behavioural characteristics are identical. The only way to tell which of them is the real one without using scanners is by sensing which of them is alive and which of them is not. Your task is to go into the habitat, observe them for a maximum of twenty seconds, then decide which is the real, living gecko. Please do not pick them up, prod them or disturb them in any way, just have a look at them and use your instinct. One is wearing a blue tag, the other green. And to protect the blind nature of the study, even I don’t know which is which. Once you have decided, please indicate your choice by touching either the blue or green panel by the door – don’t tell me what you chose and please don’t discuss the experiment in any way with anybody else, okay?’

  ‘All right,’ said Alex, and did just as he was asked. As usual in this experiment he was faced with two identical lizards, both of which were drowsing on a warm branch. After studying them thoughtfully for a few seconds he found himself drawn to the one with the little blue ribbon. There was no logical reason for it, just, as Rangi had said, an instinct, a feeling of warmth from that one which he didn’t get from the other. So he tapped the blue panel and left.

  ‘Thanks, skipper,’ Rangi said.

  ‘No problem,’ said Alex, and as other volunteers were arriving, then, gave the medic a smile and moved on. Later, he popped into the machine space, too, where Oti and her team were having an animated debate about whether the time had come to turn the SEP off and start taking it to bits again. Oti, Alex was pleased to see, was standing firm, though he knew how difficult it was for her to just stand by day after day with the SEP churning out ludicrous items and nobody coming up with any ideas.

  ‘We have to give them time to do their thing,’ Alex heard her insist, as he went into the machine space. ‘I know it’s hard and frustrating but we have to be patient.’

  There wasn’t much room for a conference in the machine space. The experimental Siliplas Extrusion Plant had been constructed in a very small space in an area already crowded with life support and other vital tech. It had been squeezed in here because it was necessary for a technician to keep an eye on it at all times and there were always techs on duty in the machine space, day and night. Oti and her three team members were allowed in here too at any time they wanted to monitor what the SEP was doing. Right now, it was humming complacently, having recently finished feeding itself three hundred and eighty nine packs of playing cards. With the four of them and the two techs on duty, the little space was already like a game of sardines. The skipper was obliged to stand in the open doorway to speak to them, with Admiral Dafour behind him.

  ‘Thanks, Oti,’ Alex could see that she was dealing with an attempted rebellion on the part of the engineer who could see no point in continuing to allow a faulty machine to keep working, and he gave her his support with a smile. ‘It is very difficult for you all, I appreciate that, but we do have to ask you to allow us to keep monitoring the SEP until we have some idea what’s going on with it.’

  Behind them, he caught a quick look from one of the techs on duty – it was Ali Jezno, standing a junior tech watch as part of the
low-grade duties they all had to share. There was just something in Ali’s expression which made Alex aware that ideas were starting to form, but that Ali did not want to share them yet.

  ‘But monitoring won’t get us anywhere when the thing is just obviously kicking off randomly,’ said the engineer, with a look at the SEP which made it very clear he’d rather like to take it to bits with an axe.

  ‘We don’t know that yet,’ Alex said. ‘But anyway, stressing about it certainly isn’t going to help – come on, all of you…’ he gestured them out of the machine space with friendly authority. ‘Take five,’ he suggested, and when they looked dubious, ‘I believe there are fresh doughnuts in the refectory.’

  He called it that, although it was more commonly known aboard ship as Egghead Central, a meeting room on the interdeck which, when not in use as an exodiplomacy encounter zone, was used primarily as a hangout by the academically minded. One of its features was a supply of doughnuts kept on the table – a wave space physics joke referencing the classic Dimension Nine diagram. The promise of fresh doughnuts won, anyway, and the disconsolate research team went off to continue their debate in more comfortable surroundings, while Alex stepped into the machine space and gave Ali Jezno an enquiring look.

  ‘Something?’ He gestured at the SEP, and was interested to see that Ali looked embarrassed. It took quite a lot to embarrass Ali Jezno.

  ‘I dunno, skipper,’ Ali admitted. ‘A thought, but so totally out there I can hardly give it any credibility myself. It’s just that other people have said it too, and they’re right, it did happen…’ he saw Alex’s look of patient expectation and gave him a quick, apologetic look, realising he was making no sense. ‘People have been saying,’ he explained, ‘that it kicks off when you laugh – not always and not for everyone, but sometimes, like, it’s immediate, there’s a laugh and bang, off it goes. And I dunno if it’s a coincidence or not, but me and Zak…’ he indicated his tech buddy, who nodded confirmation, ‘were having a laugh earlier and bingo, off it kicked and started making packs of cards. It’s like… well, I hardly like to say, skipper, but it’s almost like it’s joining in.’