Quarus (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 6)

by S J MacDonald

  Skipper Thurgood almost shuddered, and reached again for his tea, this time as a restorative. He still sometimes woke up in the night, even now, remembering the incident in which Silvie, then known only as ‘Ambassador’, had taken control of the Harmony to have a little go at piloting. ‘I don’t wish to…’ Skipper Thurgood broke off and changed tack. ‘Isn’t that rather dangerous, sir?’

  Alex grinned, and indicated the emblem on his collar. ‘Fourth Fleet Irregulars,’ he pointed out. ‘We are a task force which gets sent in when conventional methods have failed. And with all due regard for the safety of my ship’s company, which I go to great lengths to ensure, we are a warship taskforce and backing away from operations because they might be a bit dangerous just is not an option. All we can do is risk assess, train for every contingency we can think of, and give it our best shot. Risk assessment in this case tells us that quarians are very unlikely to blow up our ship. They are not a superlight culture themselves, of course, but that is through choice, not lack of understanding. They use highly advanced tech every day on their own world, and I think perhaps we haven’t really understood, till Silvie came to stay with us, just how highly educated a people they are. If you stopped a hundred random people on a Cestarian street, for instance, and asked them how a holovision works, how many of them do you think would be able to tell you that with any degree of scientific or technical understanding?’

  ‘Well, I would expect them to know the basics, from high school sci-tech…’ Skipper Thurgood saw Alex’s raised eyebrow and conceded the point, ‘Okay,’ he admitted. ‘Not many.’ He gave a spacer’s philosophical little shrug. ‘Groundsiders, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know – most of them seem to forget even high school sci-tech almost as soon as they walk off campus,’ Alex said. ‘And where any kind of higher tech is concerned, most groundsiders wouldn’t have a clue. But that isn’t the case on Quarus, you know. Silvie was not given any special education for her role with us, she learned just the same things as any other quarian child, in which they consider that an understanding of the technology they use is as basic as the ability to read. I know that’s problematical because we’ve never had any contact with their children or education system and they are rightly protective of them – as Silvie says, would you let screaming raving stinking nutters round your kids? But Silvie is, in that regard, a perfectly normal, average quarian, and we certainly did not need to teach her anything about our technology, even astrophysics, pah.’ He waved dismissively. ‘They get impatient and fed up when we’re trying to teach them things because they know them already, very much smarter than we are. So the chances of them blowing up the ship or causing any significant damage are very remote. Chaos, yes, there will be utter chaos, bewilderment and hilarity, but we are quite used to that, in the Fourth. And me, I have done the Dance of the Lizard, so being embarrassed by an alien culture holds no fears for me.’

  Skipper Thurgood did smile at that, though looking at Alex with some respect, as Alex had intended with that gentle reminder that he had headed up first contact exodiplomacy missions before – three of them, in fact, if you counted the Carrearranians who had only been defined as human because Alex had fiddled a codicil onto the Homo Sapiens Identification Act. Those three missions made him the most successful exodiplomat in recent history. Not since the great days of the Golden Age of Exploration had there been anyone who’d undertaken multiple first contacts, though he had a long way to go yet before he could compete with the immortal Van Damek, who’d notched up twenty four – twenty five if you included the disputed discovery of Defrica – before vanishing on his final expedition. It was generally felt that the days of the great adventurers were long gone. There were few inhabited worlds left to find, now, at least in human space, and those beyond it too remote and aloof to be contactable anyway. Alex, though, was a man in that grand old tradition. He would have been perfectly at home back in the day, having a beer with Van Damek and competing with him over which of them could find the next undiscovered world.

  ‘I was advised,’ Skipper Thurgood said, ‘that you would be treating this as a first contact. Though that has, I should say, been attempted before, the ‘reset and try again’ approach, most recently when the current Embassy ship came in twenty three years ago. That was seen as an opportunity to ‘fresh start’ the relationship and the incoming team did attempt to start from first principles with data gathering and all the steps for primary encounter. It wasn’t, it has to be said, any more successful than it had been the first time around. But we are all hoping – hopeful – that your… innovative approach… will bear fruit. I just hope that you can bear with us if we find some of your methods a little…’ he sought for the word, ‘daunting.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Alex said. ‘I understand that, and I very much appreciate the cooperation and support you and the Corps are giving. Though it is important to understand that we really do not have any expectations, here. Of course it would be lovely if we’re able to make friends and if the Serenity encounter zone works out, but we don’t expect it, ours is not a goal-driven mission. We’re just going to see Quarus, which we’re all excited about, go swimming and hopefully hang out with some quarians. Tourists, you know, visitors, no further expectations than that.’

  ‘I know, that’s what we’ve been told, that they find us very needy in that way,’ Skipper Thurgood said. ‘We’ve had training in controlling our feelings on that but it is very difficult. I was on the team at the presidential office for a while. We always have someone there, of course, in case they want to talk to us, and I did several stints at that without seeing anyone. Then this one day a quarian walked in and try as I might I just couldn’t control the surge of excitement and a feeling that this might be my chance to forge a relationship, at which he turned right round again and left. I do understand that I was effectively screaming a frantic need to be his best friend, which is the kind of thing we’d be calling the authorities about if a stranger did that to us, but I just couldn’t help myself. So that was me, anyway, on the crash list.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Nobody anticipated that I would have to front-up when they sent an ambassador, right out of the blue, and I had to take her on the Harmony.’ He realised how that sounded. ‘Great, great honour, of course. Tremendous privilege. But we were all on tranquilisers before we got halfway over the Gulf – for her sake as much as for our own. And any hope, any belief, that I had had that all it would take to forge a relationship would be time spent together with one quarian, well, that had crashed and burned long before we got to Serenity. She…’ he hesitated, then got out the humiliating truth. ‘She called me Skipper Stinky.’

  Alex nodded. ‘She still does that sort of thing, sometimes. But she and Shion worked out a signalling code between them, you see – Shion is a super-fast, too, so she could see when Silvie was about to do or say something inappropriate, and she’d flash her a signal which told her that and gave her some indicator, too, of how offensive it would be. Which didn’t always mean that Silvie didn’t do it, far from it, but at least she was making an informed decision. And as she learned to recognise situations, she was gradually able to make that determination for herself.’

  A soupcon of envy crossed Skipper Thurgood’s face – the look of a man who had spent three and a half months with Silvie and got no further with her than ‘Go away, Skipper Stinky!’ for the man who was credited with forging a relationship of warmth and trust with her in three and a half minutes.

  ‘Do you mind me asking, sir,’ he ventured, ‘What you did… how you did it? I know it says in the reports that it was, uh, an immediate and natural bond, but… having tried so hard, so long, and got nowhere, I would really like to know… of course, if it’s inappropriate for me to ask…’

  ‘Not at all,’ Alex said, and took a sip of his own coffee. ‘And it is very simple. I love her.’ He saw, with some amusement, the embarrassed colour rising into the other skipper’s face. ‘Not like that.’ He smiled. ‘I had a child, once – a daughter
. When I met Silvie it was just like that, that feeling – you’re a father yourself, I think?’

  Skipper Thurgood nodded, his expression softening as he thought about his family on Cestus.

  ‘A son,’ he said, and added, ‘Grown up now, of course,’ because he had not taken offworld assignment while his son was still a child.

  ‘Well, I’m sure you remember,’ Alex said. ‘That feeling, the first time you held him when he was born. As if the whole universe paused, a moment of pure stillness, then it refocussed around you to centre on that life right there in your arms, and you knew that your life would never be the same again.’

  Skipper Thurgood nodded, a tight lump in his throat, because he knew that Alex, who had loved his child like that, had only had her in his life for three precious years.

  ‘Well, that is exactly how it was with Silvie.’ Alex said. ‘Just exactly that. I love her just the way I did my own little girl. All I’ve ever wanted in our relationship is to keep her safe and make her happy. And that, she tells me, is exactly how quarian parenting works. Kids are brought up by an extended family, we know, but the way it works has always been a mystery. Now I know. Silvie and I locked…’ he linked his fingers together, ‘father, daughter. Silvie and Shion, the same – Shion is her foster mum, no question about it. And it just… happens. When we met, I wanted nothing more than to make sure she was okay as she came aboard my ship, and she responded to that because I didn’t want anything more than to look after her. Like we said, immediate natural bond. Though in fact, I was not the first person to establish a strong bond of trust and affection with her – that was Tina Lucas, on the Stepeasy. It was Ms Lucas who helped her to find her sense of core identity, before she came to us, and without that we could not have got very far. And we do, you see, just love her on the Heron – genuinely, there isn’t one person on this ship who doesn’t feel warmth, care and affection for our Silvie. And you can’t train for that, pretending affection you don’t feel is worse than insulting to quarians.’

  ‘I have the greatest respect for her,’ Skipper Thurgood said. ‘I can’t imagine, myself, being alone in such an alien environment as ours is to her, for so long. I must confess to finding her just a little… intimidating, however. She poked me, you know. When she came over to make the arrangements for your, uh, experience, and I said I didn’t think I could do that to you, she dug her finger right in my ribs.’

  Alex grinned. ‘She does that,’ he agreed. ‘She learned it from us – from humans, I mean. At Serenity, I gather, while she was waiting there for Mr North to come and pick her up. She saw someone do it to someone else and what a start it gave them, stopping what had been an uncomfortable blast of emotion, and she thought ah, that’s a good idea, so she’s been doing it ever since. She says she’s going to teach her people the gentle art of poking humans, so I suspect that we’d better get used to it. But, speaking of getting used to things… I am sorry, Mr Thurgood, but I am going to ask you if you could dig deep, bite the bullet, go the extra mile and give the quarian bathroom a try, purely as a personal refresher course. You have had the training, I believe.’

  ‘Some years ago,’ Skipper Thurgood was trying not to look as appalled as he felt. ‘You mean…’

  ‘You, now, yes.’ Alex confirmed. ‘I’ll come too – my own shower has already been deactivated and I could use a freshen up myself… sorry,’ he gave the other man an amused look, ‘but I’ve been trained to see the signs… the tiny little fidgets, and the fact that you are not actually drinking your tea.’

  ‘Oh.’ Skipper Thurgood looked at his cup, which was still two thirds full for all the sips he’d apparently been taking. ‘I’ve been told,’ he said, looking cautiously at Alex, ‘that you are… remarkably observant.’

  ‘Field training,’ Alex said. ‘Courtesy of Admiral Smith.’

  ‘Oh.’ Enlightenment dawned. ‘Then you are…?’

  ‘I was. Briefly.’ Alex chuckled. ‘Not really my thing, though a fascinating glimpse into the Intel world – the only thing that stuck, really, was the observational training, which I’ve worked on, since, with Buzz – he’s a socio-psychologist, you know, and he taught me micro-observations. So I know perfectly well that you don’t want to go to the bathroom with me – multiple signs of nervous tension – but at the same time, I know you’re going to do it. You’re just not a man who’ll bottle out from a challenge, are you?’

  Skipper Thurgood was surprised. ‘That isn’t how I would describe myself,’ he said. ‘I like to think that I am, well… steadfast, when it comes to doing my duty. And if you consider this to be necessary, then I will do my best, obviously. But I would not say that there is anything the least ‘gung ho’ about me, sir.’

  Alex laughed. ‘Then you don’t know yourself as well as you should,’ he said. ‘But all right – let’s make this a matter of personal choice, then. Entirely your decision. You can come to the bathroom with me or you can head off back to the Harmony, no problem – there are facilities at the airlock, four metres that way.’ He indicated the door. ‘No hassle, no pressure, entirely your choice.’

  Skipper Thurgood glanced at the door, but there was never any chance that he’d leave. This was a man who’d had Silvie on his ship for three and a half months at a time when every day of that had been a nightmare. He had been offered either groundside posting or an alternative ship command well away from the Gulf after that, but he was still here, not because he had to be but because he would never, but never, run away when things got tough.

  ‘I will,’ he said, ‘come with you, sir.’

  ‘Damn,’ said Alex. ‘Wish I’d had a dollar on that. But off we go, then…’

  There were two of the Excorps guys in the bathroom when they got there. Three more turned up, though, when they knew that the skipper was there.

  ‘I will get you back, you know,’ said Alex, as the five of them surrounded him with keen interest in his using the lavatory. ‘I’m just biding my time…’

  ‘Look!’ one of the Excorps people yelled, right in his ear. ‘He can do potty! What a clever boy!’

  Alex cast a long-suffering look over at Skipper Thurgood, who was doing his best to be invisible while squatting in a hygiene kilt.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘the glamour of exodiplomacy.’

  Skipper Thurgood laughed – awkwardly, red faced with embarrassment, but still, finding the ability to laugh. And once the worst part, relieving himself, was done with, he found that it wasn’t really as bad as he’d feared. There was a locker-room atmosphere about it, and though there were women present, none of them were taking any notice of him.

  ‘Oil or wax?’ Alex asked the Harmony’s skipper, once they’d had their cleansing sprays.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ Skipper Thurgood looked at the range of products on the shelves, which would have rivalled those in a top salon.

  Alex grinned as the Excorps team went into manic display, giving thumbs down and nuh-uh noises as if he’d got the wrong answer on a quiz show.

  ‘You just defined yourself as socially inept,’ Alex informed him. ‘The question ‘oil or wax’ is never dismissed with anything like ‘I don’t mind’. Quarians can discuss skin care product for hours – imagine that you’re in a sports bar with a major cup final about to start and someone asks which team you’re backing. ‘I don’t mind’ isn’t going to make you any friends, or keep you in the conversation. So, let’s try that one again – oil or wax?’

  ‘The one we use on the Harmony is an oil base, I think – I didn’t choose it, it was provided by the Embassy, they had a medical team evaluate which product would be the most suitable for us. But I’m interested – which do you think is better?’

  ‘Well, that depends what your plans are for when you leave here,’ Alex said, ‘If you’re going to be doing much swimming then you’ll probably want to go with wax, it has a higher protection from water-saturation than the oil based products. But the waxy ones can make your skin feel tight if you use them a lot, so oil
is nicer if you’re going to be in air. Here, have a sniff of some, find one you like.’

  Skipper Thurgood’s plans for that day had not included standing buck naked with the captain in a busy locker room, discussing grooming products. There was a distinctly surreal feeling about that. But when he and Alex left the bathroom some few minutes later, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had coped with it creditably.

  And his skin felt very good, too.

  Fourteen

  A few days after that, they had news from the latest courier to arrive at Serenity. It brought pleasing reports of how the Beeby Disclosure had been received on Cestus. There, too, the prediction of how the population would react had been accurate – calmly, as Cestus was a very calm population and one of the few League worlds where it might actually be possible for an alien ship to land on live camera and do the ‘take me to your leader’ routine without the population going into meltdown. Davie had wanted to take Silvie to Cestus for her first experience of human worlds. Silvie, however, had decided on Chartsey, a decision both she and the Chartsey authorities had regretted. Cestus, as the nearest world to Serenity and therefore the nearest League world to Quarus, had a higher proportion of people in the know than worlds further away, and a higher level of interest, too. Their government had already said that they would be pleased and proud to host quarian visitors to their world.

  ‘Things are on track at Chartsey, too,’ Buzz observed, pointing out the latest news from the capital.

  ‘Well, it’s out there, now.’ Alex knew how far the news would have spread by then. It would be another few weeks before it had spread to every corner of the League, but it had already spread across the central worlds, which had the lion’s share of population. ‘And we will just have to wait, to see how it went.’

  They had already reached the point where it felt as if they were just hanging in space, the apparently immobile starfield changing so infinitesimally slowly that you could watch it all day with no perceptible change. The only data on the astrogation scopes, now, was the distance to Quarus and the apparent magnitude of its star, both given to sufficient decimal places to be able to see the distance ticking down while the apparent magnitude crept up. That, really, was the only proof that they were going anywhere at all. Unlike every other ship which had ever ventured into the Gulf, though, they remained in contact with the people on Serenity.