Quarus (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 6)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘Ah.’ Alex could see that this was not an excuse, but a genuine dilemma in which law-abiding instincts and the need to protect his own project trumped his regret at not being able to help them. ‘Well, suppose I was to give you an exceptional circumstance card, requesting and requiring you to carry out this work under exodiplomacy rules which do allow for it?’

  Ecky looked startled. ‘Can you do that?’

  Alex smiled. ‘Oh yes,’ he assured him. ‘I can do that. No problem.’ It amused him that the PhD student, who had seen him move the League’s border and give away the entire Serenity system, could doubt that he had the authority to issue a permit for cloning a gecko. But then, the border shifting and other events were far outside Ecky’s mollusc-bounded mental world, whereas the Biological Engineering Licensing Authority was a very real, ever-present authority peering over his shoulder. ‘Exodiplomacy rules,’ he reminded the student, ‘allow for normal restrictions to be relaxed. That is why there are bioengineering labs on the Embassy, learning from quarians.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Ecky said, since that was why he himself had been working so hard to be able to go out there once he’d completed his doctorate at Serenity. ‘But…’

  He broke off, and Alex saw the realisation dawn that the friendly skipper who slobbed about the ship in overalls really was, actually was, the League Ambassador to Quarus, with a presidential envoy status tucked in his back pocket in case he felt the need to deploy it. ‘Oh,’ he said, and as it dawned on him, too, that this made Alex more important even than the chancellor of his homeworld university, he swallowed. ‘Sir.’

  Alex chuckled. ‘Alex,’ he reminded him. It always interested him to see how many of the Second and other civilian passengers took him up on his offer of first names, and for how long they maintained it, too, as they were absorbed into shipboard culture and would generally slip into calling him ‘skipper’ at some point. Ecky, sublimely more concerned with his molluscs than with the finer points of etiquette, had been calling him ‘Alex’ happily for weeks. Only now, when authority reached ground he recognised, did he realise how high powered Alex von Strada actually was. ‘And I don’t want to put you under pressure, Ecky. I can certainly give you a permit to clone Lucky as an exodiplomacy request – which it is, a formal request from the quarian ambassador - and that will, I assure you, be accepted by the BELA. But if you feel the slightest reservation about doing it, for any reason…’

  ‘No – oh, no, not at all!’ Ecky was galvanised into a babble of enthusiastic assurances. ‘Would be delighted, nothing easier really, only that I, well, you understand, but more than happy to do anything I can to..’ he glanced at Silvie, frankly adoring, and she gave him a little scruff of his hair with her fingers.

  ‘Good boy.’ As Ecky himself dissolved into delighted giggles again, she looked at Alex. ‘So, that’s settled then?’

  It wasn’t, quite. It would be another week before the arrangements were finalised, the equipment prepared, an artificial egg created and the clone embryo inserted into it. It was, as Ecky had said, the easiest possible kind of bioengineering, a straight clone using stem cells, with no adjustment to the biology whatsoever. Rangi, in fact, could have done it himself. Silvie hadn’t asked him to because she knew how he felt, couldn’t avoid knowing how he felt, as the jangle of grief, guilt and rejection was very strong and therefore loud. Grieving at the prospect of losing Lucky, he felt guilty even at the thought of replacing him before he was even dead, and rejection, too, of the idea that even his own clone could ever really replace Lucky, who was unique, formed by his own experiences to be the sunny, affectionate little creature he was. A physical clone, however exact, would not be their Lucky.

  Rangi had accepted, though, the skipper’s decision, and when the embryo was transferred to the incubator made ready for it in sickbay, his reservations vanished under the magic of watching life develop right there in his care. They could all watch that, in fact, as the incubator was monitored and the feed from that went onto the notice board so that they could all see the embryo developing, day after day. It would be sixty eight days before it was ready to hatch. But even when it was little more than a clump of replicating cells, it already had a name, chosen by Silvie… Lucky Too.

  Sixteen

  Lucky Too had recognisable eyes and was growing limbs at the point where they finished crossing the Gulf.

  It was a time of rapturous celebration, not because of the gecko but in sheer joy at seeing the stars start to move again. People sat up half the night just to watch the shift and glide of the stellar field, as if the cosmos was coming back to life again around them. As they headed to Pump Station Brava, though, it was a testing time, too.

  On starships which had become Gulf Happy, so mesmerised by the unchanging stars and the apparently never-ending dead straight autopilot travelling, arrival at Brava could have some surprising effects. Disorientation was quite common – the kind of bewildered feeling you could get sometimes, aroused from semi-stupor on a long train journey to be thrust out onto some chilly, unfamiliar station. Rather more serious, though, was a state of mind in which you didn’t want to stop at all, an inertia in which going on as you were seemed just so much easier and more pleasant than all the hassle of having to stop somewhere.

  They had all done their best to prevent that kind of stupor or space lassitude developing, from Alex organising lively inter-ship combat games to individuals keeping themselves busy, mentally and physically active. It helped tremendously, of course, that they were still in contact with Serenity, getting a daily burst of news, mail and friendly gossip.

  That, however, began to be more problematical almost as soon as they left the dead calm of the Gulf. Accuracy of transmission had been falling very gradually as their distance from Serenity increased, but at the time they came into more turbulent wave space was still running at just under ninety six per cent. At that rate, signals could be reconstructed easily even with odd blips of distortion.

  Within two days of entering the active wave space zone amongst stars, however, transmission accuracy was dropping on a very steep curve. This confirmed what they already knew, that Geminax was going to need considerable further development before it would be practical to lay communication streams between worlds in their own space. It was still working well enough to lay streams of it out from ports, though, enabling ships to communicate with worlds for some hours distance. And here and now, it was still enabling the Fourth to be in contact with Serenity, and to create what they hoped would be a permanent comms link at least as far as Pump Station Brava.

  For Nyge Tomaas, their arrival at Brava had a particular significance. He would be a cadet when they arrived, and a Sub-lt when they left.

  That was not a coincidence. Technically he would still have a few days of his placement to run, but the exact duration of a final year placement was always flexible. Those who did their placements on ships in the same port as their Academy might remain on placement for as long as five months, while those who went intersystem for high-prestige placements might only get the minimum two months before they had to head back again, if they were to be in time for graduation.

  Since that was not an option here, Alex had decreed that Brava would be an appropriate point at which to terminate Nyge’s cadet placement, upon which he would graduate into an acting Sub until such time as his commission was formally confirmed by the Admiralty. He would be a Sub, though, carrying out an officer’s duties, and since he had already been offered a place on the tagged and flagged programme, the ship would be expected to do their best to provide equivalent opportunities. There was no possibility of him failing his placement, short of going berserk and thumping an officer. He had performed exceptionally well, and he knew it. But still, there was an air of slight anxiety about him as they approached Brava.

  It was resolved just the day before they got there.

  ‘Yes!’ he exclaimed with air-punching delight, flourishing a memo which had come from Jonas Sartin. ‘Bingo!
Full house! I got the whole set!’ He beamed at the rather startled officers on the command deck, whom he’d come rushing to tell of his triumph. ‘Run-around, initials, every stupido request on the list, inside-out underwear ‘for luck’, nonsense jargon and now…’ he waved the memo again, ‘expenses! Hah!’

  Two things became evident to the officers. The first was that Nyge had received a classic end-of-placement leg pull from the finance officer, requesting that he provide detailed accounts of all the resources – food, drink and toiletries – he’d used during his placement so that these could be properly accounted for under cadet placement expenses. Since no cadet had ever kept that kind of record it was generally a cue for panicked apologies or efforts to produce records out of thin air. Nyge, though, had evidently been expecting it. And that was the second thing which was evident, that his apparently gormless falling for every snotty wind up in the Fleet lexicon had, in fact, been him collecting them.

  ‘I knew it,’ said Buzz, laughing as he shook hands with the cadet who’d endured every wind-up with that air of slightly puzzled naivety. ‘But my heartiest congratulations, dear boy. Your cover skills are truly exceptional.’ He gave Hetty Leavam a mischievous glance, then. ‘Admiral Smith may well be taking an interest, don’t you think, dear girl?’

  Hetty assumed a ‘no idea what you’re talking about’ expression.

  ‘I really wouldn’t know,’ she said, with a touch of frost in her voice – as if she, she, could be a talent scout for Fleet Intel, alerting them to any particularly useful cadets or command school trainees who passed through her hands… such as Alex von Strada, for instance. ‘I have never,’ she lied, ‘met Admiral Smith.’

  There was a little splutter of mirth around the command deck which died away hastily when she glared at the offenders, but Buzz just chuckled anyway, turning his attention back to Nyge.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘do not be surprised if you are approached from that quarter when we get back to the League. And we will certainly offer you the best we can do in the way of field training, in the meantime.’

  Nyge thanked him repeatedly and went off in a state of rapture, feeling his future open up before him with endless and thrilling opportunities.

  Kate’s future, on the other hand, was very much more under debate. She would not complete her second year for another three weeks after Nyge’s graduation, as the third, final year was rather shorter than the others. Already, though, the issue of how she would be placed was very much under discussion. It was a particular concern of Tina Lucas and Hetty Leavam, who between them and the skipper would have to make that ultimate determination.

  It really wasn’t easy. Class position was a factor which would follow you your whole career, and certainly in the early stages of that career would have real impact on your opportunities. Two Subs applying for the same shipboard post would know that the one with the higher class position stood more chance of getting it, and the same would apply in competition for places on restricted-access courses. For those at the very top of the class, too, the second year position list made the difference between heading off to Chartsey for the elite Class of 64 and being left to do their final year at provincial academies.

  Kate was not in contention for that on any practical level. Since it would be impossible for her to take up a place in the Class of 64 even if she came top of her year, it had already been agreed that the cadet coming top at the Chartsey Academy would get that placement. Kate’s own class position, therefore, would be nominal, estimated on the basis of her own performance against what the rest of the class were expected to achieve. Only when they got back, though, would they know what the other cadets had achieved and so be able to give Kate a final result. So as to be fair to the others, their positions would stand as given and Kate’s would be tagged on to the side. Even so, it was a matter of great importance to the instructors to give her a fair judgement, so Tina and Hetty were already giving that serious thought and spending time going over training records and predicted outcomes.

  At the point where she realised that, just hours before they were due at Brava, Kate told them – very respectfully, of course – not to worry about it.

  ‘I’m taking the Specialist Officer option,’ she reminded them, as they appeared to have forgotten this. ‘Engineering.’

  They stared at her for a moment, then both started speaking at once.

  ‘But you…’

  ‘Even if…’

  They both broke off and Tina gave way to the senior officer, with a cadet-present courtesy, ‘Ma’am.’

  Hetty gave a nod of acknowledgement and turned back to Kate. She had come in to see them in the daycabin, having become aware that they were having a meeting in there to evaluate where she stood, so far, against where they expected the rest of her classmates to be. The table was covered with screens – course results, assignment grades, conduct records, leadership evaluations, predicted outcomes for exams – a morass of information from which they were attempting to pick the minutiae which would make the difference between third, fourth or fifth place.

  ‘It has already been agreed,’ Hetty pointed out, ‘that subject to your satisfactory completion of year two training, you would be offered the opportunity to dual-qualify as line-of-command and engineering specialist.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Kate acknowledged, with an impish little twinkle in her eyes. ‘I did inform Commandant Maltravers at the time, ma’am, that while I appreciated the offer, I anticipated that I would choose to focus exclusively on the engineering specialism. And that hasn’t changed.’

  They stared at her again. It was hard for either of them to understand that decision. Cadets opting for specialist-officer training for their final year were generally felt to have ‘settled’ for that because they weren’t likely to do particularly well in the normal, regular, line-of-command graduation. Becoming a specialist officer limited both what you could do aboard ship and your promotion opportunities. Nobody with a specialist-officer graduation could rise into command, not without going back and doing the equivalent of the third year again in post-commission courses, and the Fleet would hardly ever allow that. Kate could so very easily have the best of both worlds, a regular line-of-command commission and the engineering qualification she wanted, giving her even wider options. It seemed a truly bizarre decision to shut down on what the line-of-command officers themselves considered to be the most important of her options.

  ‘All I want,’ said Kate, ‘is to be an engineering officer. It’s why I applied to the Fleet, and it has been my goal, throughout. I don’t see myself, ever, at any point in the future, pursuing a career on the regular decks. I want to be an engineer, combining that with academic pursuits. Dual-qualifying in final year is pointless for me and would take up a lot of time with line-of-command training which I would rather give to my research, so while I greatly appreciate the offer being made, it isn’t one which I will be taking up, ma’am.’

  Hetty was just on the verge of telling her that that was a shame, a great pity, and that she was throwing away a tremendous opportunity – just exactly the advice she would give to a normal cadet graduating well but opting for a specialism.

  But then she remembered. All the way across the Gulf, Kate had been spending every minute she was allowed to perched in her eyrie in engineering. Hetty had seen her up there many times, and had even heard her singing. That was a remarkable experience in itself. Kate had a trained operatic voice and an affinity with engines which enabled her to sing in perfect harmony with them, a wordless aria which was spellbinding to listen to. It was almost as if Kate could hear music in the engines which was audible to nobody else, bringing it to life with her voice.

  What she was doing up there on her high-perch workstation, singing with the engines, was beyond Hetty’s own understanding. Kate’s research was expected to take several months, combining real-time engine observations with mathematical modelling of multidimensional energy flows. Kate was attempting to understand the cosmos in
ways Hetty herself would not and never would be able to grasp.

  Telling her that she should prioritise the routine duties of a deck officer, Hetty realised, was just wrong. Kate could not do all three justice – engineering, academia and routine officer work. She had made her choice, and it was the right one.

  ‘That,’ Hetty said, ‘is clearly a mature and considered decision, Ms Naos. Fair enough. You will get no argument on that score from me. But if it’s all the same to you…’ mild sarcasm on that note… ‘I will continue to carry out my professional responsibility to give you the fair, considered outcome to which you are entitled as a second year cadet.’ She gave Kate a crisp nod. ‘Dismissed.’

  When she’d gone, Hetty and Tina exchanged looks of resigned understanding.

  ‘She could have been First Lord,’ Tina said, and Hetty gave a tight, rueful little smile.

  ‘Possibly,’ she said – this was actually an Academy in-joke, since theoretically at least every cadet who graduated had the potential to make it to the very top of the Fleet, one day. ‘But what she’ll actually be is, I feel, richer and more strange…’

  Tina recognised the quote, and smiled. Few people would have suspected Hetty Leavam of a penchant for poetry, but in working so closely together in their care for Kate, the two of them had become as close to friendship as Hetty would allow with a fellow officer aboard ship.

  They had settled Kate’s provisional, pre-exam grade before the ship arrived at Brava. And they had attended Nyge Tomaas’s graduation ceremony, too.

  The Fourth had done this before, improvising a ceremony when Tina had graduated with them out at Samart. It was as close as they could get it to the real thing which would be held in a couple of weeks at Chartsey. There, the First Lord of the Admiralty would make the commencement speech and the Top Cadet would step up next to give the valedictorian traditionally addressed to ‘My fellow cadets…’. Here, it was Captain Stuart who stood in for the First Lord and Nyge, as the only cadet graduating, had to give the valedictorian address to ‘my fellow cadet’, Kate Naos being the only other cadet present. Afterwards, there was a dress reception with non-alcoholic champagne and everyone kept congratulating Nyge and posing for holos with him, standing in for the families who did that at the real event. But this was real, too, real enough to draw a line at the end of Cadet Officer Tomaas’ training. He was stood down after the celebration, to enjoy a twenty five hour leave while they were at Brava. When he returned to duty, it would be as an acting Sub-lt.