Quarus (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 6)

by S J MacDonald

  Brava was, it had to be admitted, not much of a destination. The first system with bodies which could be landed on, it didn’t even have a slimeworld, no life in the system at all. Pump Station Brava itself was on a planetoid describing a warped orbit around one of the two stars in a binary system. It wasn’t even a particularly pretty binary system; no great arcs of plasma dragging from the smaller to the larger star, as they were just a little too far apart for a firefall to develop. Mass was migrating from one to the other, but slowly and without the visual drama spacers would consider scenic.

  Some effort had been made to make Pump Station Brava itself a welcoming place for those arriving from that long haul over the gulf, though, or on the inward journey. It was similar in style to the kind of survival dome which might be found along many shipping routes in the League, but considerably bigger than most of them and equipped with warehouse-sized storage units. These contained supplies for Excorps expeditions, restocked routinely by the Diplomatic Corps ships as they shuttled back and forth. Any other ships passing through customarily left some kind of gift box there for Excorps, too. The next Excorps expedition to arrive here should be a ship which had been out there for more than a year, mapping out four months beyond a point at which any human ships had ever gone. It was due back in three or four weeks and would resupply here before making the final run back to Serenity. Skipper Farah and the others, who knew everyone aboard that ship, left rude messages for them scrawled on the big scribble-board. For them, clearly, this was no big deal.

  For the Fourth, though, it was an amazing experience. None of them had ever been to an active Excorps pump station before, as they were all far outside the League’s borders, and it felt like a privilege even to be allowed to visit.

  Alex found it so when he went down for his own five hour ‘leg stretching’ shoreleave. It was possible to go for long bounding suit-walks on the surface but the station itself was very much more interesting, and plenty big enough to stretch your legs in walking around, too. There were eight domes linked together to form the core of the base, and seventeen more storage units connected with long tube corridors. The longest of them was nearly three hundred metres long, leading out to the ‘high hazard’ storage which was kept as far away from the main base as possible. Excorps used this corridor for sports, most notably airblading and airboarding, which they turned out to be a lot better at than members of the Fourth. Having declined to fall on his backside for their entertainment, Alex walked around the rest of the base, looking in at the cabins where so many Excorps people had spent a few days off their ship before heading out on expeditions, at the workshops and the hangar. One of the walls in the hangar had what looked like a lot of scruffy graffiti, which as you got closer resolved itself into a lot of names and dates, nearly all of which had been scored through with another date written across them. The dates, Alex found, went right back to when this base had been constructed, a hundred and sixty two years ago.

  ‘All our skippers,’ said Mel Farah, coming up to stand beside him, ‘write their names on this wall and date it when they’re heading out. When we come back, we draw a line through it and write the date again. Here, see, here’s one of mine.’ She pointed out a scrawled Farah with a leaving date some twenty six years previously and the return about a year later.

  Alex did not ask about the ones which hadn’t been crossed out. They were, obviously, the ships which had not come back. There were official memorials to them elsewhere, but here at this final jumping off point, their names would remain for as long as this station was in use. Mel, though, did not look at it with the solemnity of a monument, but pointed out interesting expeditions as cheerfully as if it was a modern art exhibit.

  ‘Here’s the Talipe,’ she said, drawing his attention to the ship which had found Quarus. And there it was, right there, the writing of Pierre Talipe, recording the expedition on its outward journey and its return six months later. Beside it, simple but eloquent, was one curved line and two dots… the smile face which noted the discovery of a living biosphere. ‘The base was a lot smaller then,’ Mel observed. ‘But there’s always a wall panel kept from the first build and included as it’s developed. Just tradition, really.’ She saw the way he was gazing at the names, some of which had been familiar and admired since his childhood. ‘You never considered Excorps yourself, Alex?’

  ‘Oh, I did, of course I did,’ Alex said. ‘But I never had the academic credentials.’

  Mel grinned. The Exploration Corps would only consider applications from people who had at least three years Fleet service at Lt grade or above, or the equivalent in the merchant service, and a PhD in one of the fields their people were expected to have. Being a spacer just wasn’t enough. You had also to be an astrobiologist, a medical doctor or one of the other specialisms required on every expedition. And then, on top of that, there would be at least five years of training before you could even be considered for a place on an expedition. Mel herself had joined Excorps from the Fleet with a doctorate in astrobiology and a second string of anthropology, rising to skipper by her third expedition. She was, by any spacer standards, a superstar.

  ‘Well, you do all right,’ she said, which made Alex laugh.

  ‘Not the same,’ he observed, and was not being modest. The explorations he had carried out had been, in Excorps terms, ‘near-space’ expeditions, meaning that as far as they were concerned the Fourth hadn’t ventured far beyond known, mapped territory. Because they were big-ship expeditions, too, Alex had had all the benefit of a degree of luxury unknown on Excorps ships. There would be no ‘good stuff’ coffee on an Excorps expedition, no hot meals, just recycled urine with microtab flavours and nutrient bars. There were rarely enough bunks for everyone to have their own and no room to walk about, the only exercise available being the workout treadmill. They were conditions in which it would have been illegal to keep prisoners even for one day. Excorps people competed ferociously to spend anything up to two years living like that. They truly were a breed apart, and Alex knew that, for all his delight in Van Dameking, he was not of that fanatical breed, himself.

  All the same, it was a privilege to brush into their world, however briefly, and he allowed himself to be persuaded into taking part in another Pump Station tradition, that of stuffing yourself as full of good food as you could handle. For Excorps it was the last good meal on the way out and the one you were drooling over in anticipation as you headed back, but they were keen for their visitors to enjoy it too. The dining room was busy, full of people and delicious aromas.

  ‘You have to eat at least four mains,’ said Mel, showing Alex where they could help themselves from crates of meals, heating them in the bank of flash ovens.

  ‘This is a wind-up, isn’t it?’ Alex said, as she loaded his tray with high protein dinners.

  ‘Actually, just for once, no,’ Mel assured him. ‘When you’re five months out and sick to death of nutribars it is a little consolation to know that when you had the chance to eat well you ate till you nearly went bang. Not healthy practice, of course, gorging, but then, neither is tormenting yourself months later wishing you had had that steak or that chocolate gateau. And no, I know that doesn’t apply to you, but it’s a house rule, Alex, so go with it.’

  There were quite a lot of bulging stomachs and some groaning indigestion cases by the time they left Brava. But it had been wonderful just to get off the ships, as mentally stimulating as it had been physically refreshing. And they all felt, too, the thrill of it as they were leaving, on the very last leg now of the journey to Quarus.

  As they left, the ETA on the astrogation board stood at fifteen days, fourteen hours and nineteen minutes.

  Seventeen

  Four days later, Alex addressed the crew again.

  ‘As I’m sure you know,’ he said, ‘there is a tradition in the Diplomatic Corps of appointing goodwill ambassadors. The purpose of a goodwill ambassador is just as the description depicts, to generate goodwill. Their role is that of ‘glad h
anding’, meet and greet, a prominent presence at social events and representing the Embassy in such matters as visiting charities or promoting campaigns the Diplomatic Corps is supporting. The ones you see most often on the media tend to be the stars, or the ‘Young Diplomat’ child ambassador, but they can also be industrialists generating goodwill for the Trade and Industry division or high ranking military officers brought in from offworld to assist in promoting good relationships with the local army. The point is that they can be anyone, really, appointed for any reason. Where exodiplomacy is concerned the Corps frequently appoints goodwill ambassadors from the arts and sciences. They have, at this moment, seventy three people on the Embassy III, civilians signed up to work with them on that ‘goodwill ambassador’ basis. And, as the incoming ambassador, I intend to appoint my own goodwill ambassadors from amongst the squadron. Understand, please, this is not a joke, it is a very prestigious thing to be asked to represent the League as a goodwill ambassador and a great responsibility, too, not to be undertaken lightly. It does not make you an ‘Excellency’ but it is what the Corps themselves describe as an accredited role, requiring not just the signing of a contract but the swearing of an oath. It makes you, effectively, a temporary unpaid honorary attaché. There is no salary involved, expenses may be paid but goodwill ambassadors are asked to undertake this role in a voluntary capacity because that in itself generates goodwill – when a movie star visits a deprivation area to glad-hand a charity there, it really doesn’t have the same effect at all if they’re being paid to do it. So… there’s no money, no ‘Excellency’, there’s a serious amount of work and heavy responsibility. Anyone who would like to be considered for the role of goodwill ambassador at Quarus must also be aware that standing in that role puts you front and centre operationally, and that messing things up may impact seriously on our mission there. So, high pressure. For guidance, I should tell you that I will only consider candidates who have the basic skills of being able to swim with quarians, speak quarian to a fair degree of competence, maintain their calm even in the face of startling events and use quarian hygiene facilities without embarrassment.’

  These were, in fact, the criteria set for anyone wanting to go groundside while they were at Quarus; skills which every member of the crew had been working hard to master over the five months since they’d left Therik.

  ‘To spare people the embarrassment of applying and being turned down,’ Alex said, ‘I can tell you that I, in consultation with Silvie and the command team, have already decided which of you are candidates for the role of goodwill ambassador. Those who’ve been selected will receive an invitation to attend an interview. Those of you who do not receive such an invitation, please do not take it as any reflection on your abilities or upon your integrity. We are looking, here, for a particular strength, in the ability to step up to a formal diplomatic role. The invitations to interview will be sent out…’ he glanced at his wristcom, as if he didn’t already know the time, ‘at 0900.’

  At 0900 precisely, letters flashed out to the candidates. They were official, on Diplomatic Corps letterhead, just the same standard letter that they always used in approaching people they were trying to headhunt for the goodwill ambassador role. In the media world, only A-list intersystem celebrities were even on the radar for this. In military circles, only the most famous generals and admirals, retired, were liable to be approached. It was a role which retiring Lords of the Admiralty were almost expected to undertake for a year or two after leaving the Fleet, going about the League in what some of them referred to as a ‘lap of honour’. For lower ranks, serving personnel, it really was an extraordinary compliment.

  It took the Heron’s people two and a half minutes to realise. That was the time it took to open their own mail, see the letterhead and the opening On behalf of His Excellency the League Ambassador Fleet Captain Alexis Sean von Strada…, to react with varying degrees of pride, delight, astonishment and wonder, then to look about them to see who else had been given the honour…and to find everyone around them doing just the same. Very quickly, the look to see who else had been invited turned into a hunt to find if anyone had not been invited, which turned up empty handed. There wasn’t one member of the crew who had not been given that invitation.

  That did, for some of them, take some of the gloss off it, as it seemed a blanket invitation for them all and that was not at all the same thing as having been individually selected.

  That, however, was very quickly set straight at their interviews. It was not a blanket invitation, far from it – every one of them had been individually evaluated by just the same process as the Diplomatic Corps used to assess the suitability of candidates for a goodwill ambassador role, and in addition, Silvie had added her opinion on each of them from her uniquely quarian perspective. The fact that they had all come out of that evaluation as candidates was simply because they’d been carefully selected for this mission in the first place and had been in increasingly intensive training for it ever since they had left Therik.

  ‘It is odd, looking back,’ Buzz observed, having coffee with Alex in a break between interviews, ‘to remember how exciting it was when we started introductory language classes.’

  Alex grinned. ‘And that first startle-training…’ he chuckled as he recalled the ‘ghost in the galley’ incident in which one member of crew had hidden under a table while another tried to whack it with a sauté pan.

  ‘Can you imagine?’ Buzz gestured widely, to indicate the ship, ‘if we’d tried to jump straight in at this…?’

  Alex looked around. They were full-time on the alternative watch and quarter bill by then, no watches being set, people just doing whatever work needed to be done and organising that amongst themselves. The helm was being relieved just then by someone who just came up onto the command deck, tapped the pilot on the left shoulder and slid into the chair as it was vacated. They were exchanging a few friendly words as they handed over, with a comment on the route. Then the new pilot reported to the conn that they now had the helm, the conn officer said ‘thanks’ and they just carried straight on. All around the ship, people were picking up tasks from their team board, training, studying or relaxing on down-time, all at their own decision as to what they did, and when. It was something which had taken even Alex a little time to get used to, and would make even quite progressive regular Fleet skippers go pale to contemplate. They were all speaking quarian, too, keen to hone their language skills in the last few days before arrival. Even more significantly, the only conventional showers still in use aboard the ship were those in the lab, and in the airlocks. Wardrooms and mess decks had been refitted with quarian-style facilities. That had been a major undertaking in the wardroom, requiring the stripping out of all the cabins and their rebuilding without showers to make space for a communal bathroom. On the mess decks, where there’d been shower blocks already, it had been easier to take the rows of showers out and put in spa facilities instead. People had become so used to using such facilities, so quickly, that notices had had to be put up on the inner doors reminding crew to please put some clothes on before going out into the public areas of the ship.

  ‘I can imagine,’ Alex said, remembering the able, enthusiastic but largely conventional crew with which he’d set out from Therik, ‘but I would rather not.’

  Buzz chuckled, but with an eye on the time, finished his coffee and got up.

  ‘Back to work,’ he observed, and went off to carry on with interviews.

  These took two days, even with Buzz, the watch commanders and Jun Desmoulin all doing nothing else. Each interview was a three-step process. First the candidates had to watch a holo-presentation about the role and responsibilities of a goodwill ambassador. This was just the same presentation that all candidates had to sit through at all embassies right across the League. Typically of the Diplomatic Corps, it managed to turn something very exciting into something very dull, and there was an interviewer sitting in on the presentation, too, to ensure that you did pay attent
ion and not drift off into chatting, doodling or just staring, numbed by the excruciatingly slow delivery.

  For those who survived the presentation, there was the personal interview, taking about half an hour, in which candidates were questioned just as if for any job interview, discussing their CV and their attributes for the role. Released from that, there was the social test. This was not supposed to be an obvious test. It was intended, in fact, to make candidates feel released from the formalities of presentation and interview and to let them relax with refreshments while ‘meeting a few people’. You’d have to be more than a bit dense, though, not to realise that this too was part of the interview, evaluating your social skills in a formal environment. Mako Ireson, himself a goodwill ambassador, hosted and assessed this part of the interviews, spending hour after tireless hour in a lounge reception. The Excorps team helped with this, too, for once not winding it up but demonstrating their own social skills. They too were all, or had been, goodwill ambassadors, since signing up for that role was an essential part of Excorps training. Their skippers, too, carried genuine ambassadorial status when on expeditions, on the same basis that Alex himself had been appointed to ‘Excellency’ standing on missions which required him to speak on behalf of the League. Visitors from other ships came over, too, on a rota to assist with the mix and mingle requirement for candidates. Davie pitched in with this, too, startling people by turning up in full Diplomatic Corps tuxedo and being very gracious at them.