Quarus (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 6)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘None at all.’ Buzz was quietly but deeply proud of the crew. It wasn’t just that their training was coming good now in the reality of quarian encounters. It was that they were, every one of them, genuinely enjoying themselves. Fits of the giggles were breaking out around the ship from time to time but there were no incidents of fear or distress. Even the Second’s people were having a blast, just thrilled to twitters when any quarians popped into the lab. The research teams were so eager to show them what they were doing that the quarians generally popped out again pretty quickly, but even so, Oti, Ecky and the others were having the time of their lives.

  ‘Was it fun?’ Buzz asked, indicating the planet beyond the airlock where he’d met the skipper.

  ‘Amazing!’ Alex beamed with happy satisfaction. He would have liked the experience to go on for longer but realistically, he knew, it had gone as well as he could have hoped for. And it wasn’t over yet, not by a long way. ‘but go see for yourself,’ he told the Exec.

  Buzz grinned. They didn’t have to wait for the whole first party to return before the next wave went down. Nothing here would be that structured. Instead they had a list and you could go down whenever your name came up as next in line because someone had come back to the ship. For Buzz, Alex and Bonny that meant that one of them could be groundside while the other two remained on the ship. Right now, that meant it was Buzz’s turn.

  ‘Tag,’ he said. ‘I’m it.’ And with that, he headed for his quarters to get into his swim gear.

  Ab Abnedido returned to the ship just over an hour later. There was a general feeling, seeing how little time he’d spent groundside, that the therapy could not have gone ahead after all. He had been there under three hours, surely not enough time for a therapy which Silvie had suggested might take anything up to three or even four days.

  Ab, though, returned aboard ship glowing with a calm, happy confidence which made it obvious that something had happened.

  ‘It was wonderful, skipper, ‘ he reported to Alex, coming straight to the command deck. ‘As soon as they saw me, they knew what I wanted. They took me to a room like a garden, in one of the buildings, and several of them – therapists – came to see me. I think there were seven or eight of them, though I was a bit foggy by then, everything just felt kind of hazy and remote, you know? They told me not to worry, they could help, and I could kind of feel them round me, like, hugging me without touching me. I felt safe, you know, cared for. ‘ He smiled at the memory. ‘And then it was like dreaming, like, that lucid dreaming Rangi tried to get me to do, but real, like I was really there, but knew that I was dreaming, and things that had happened were like movies I could play and rewind and take control of and even change how I felt about them if I wanted to. And it was me doing it, not them doing it to me, like they were just showing me how I could fix things myself if I wanted to. And I saw how scared I was as a kid, that time, that first time, when things went so wrong, and I could change it, you know, not just like telling myself I needn’t be scared, but stopping the scared, making things right. And then I could see all the things that had scared me just kind of fizzling away. It was just brilliant, such a relief, and so easy, I can’t believe my life was being messed up by something so stupid and so easy to fix! And it’s gone now, it’s better, I’m not scared anymore and I’ll never be scared of spaceports or security or customs or anything like that ever again. ‘ He grinned suddenly. ‘I could get a job in a spaceport if I wanted. ‘

  Alex looked at him and saw certainty in his face.

  ‘That’s excellent, Mr Abnedido, ‘ he said, and they shook hands warmly. ‘Excellent.’ He smiled at Rangi, who was waiting to take his patient to sickbay for a thorough check up, and Rangi beamed back. The first human patient had been treated by quarian therapists. It was a landmark day. But there was no more time than that to discuss it, as other people were already waiting to talk to the skipper.

  Then, forty minutes later, screams from engineering grabbed his attention. They were sounds of panic, and one glance at the comm screen showed why. One of their quarian visitors was reeling back from an engine core, where she had evidently been attempting to access the fuel.

  Alex caught his breath, but he could see that the situation was already under control. One of the people who’d yelled with such urgency was Tina Lucas. She was already apologising to the shocked-looking quarian and guiding her away from the engine.

  ‘Sorry – didn’t mean to scare you, but you really can’t open the core to look at the fuel…’

  A wry grin touched Alex’s face and he breathed again.

  Line crossed, he thought. And line drawn. Things were working out just fine.

  Twenty One

  Shortly before midnight, all the Fourth’s visitors on Quarus returned to the ship, and all the quarian visitors aboard departed. Ground rules had been established to ensure that the humans could cope with the pace of the encounters; no more than twenty visitors to the ship at a time and no visitors at all between midnight and 0800. That gave them time to sleep, to clean through the ship and to hold a morning briefing.

  ‘So,’ Alex said, regarding the officers gathered around the datatable next morning, and glancing at the screens which showed every member of the crew watching, too. ‘Day one went very well, I feel.’

  He looked at the mission status screen and everyone else followed suit. It charted their progress in terms of the hours spent groundside, visitor hours aboard ship and a scatter graph showing points of how positive or negative each encounter had been. The scatter graph was overwhelmingly in the positive scale, with no more than a handful of points showing incidents in which offence or concern had been caused.

  ‘Very well indeed,’ said Alex, with quiet satisfaction.

  ‘Skipper…’ It was Hetty, raising a hand in the ‘halt’ gesture she used to indicate that she was interrupting as a point of order for Internal Affairs. ‘It should be noted,’ she said, ‘that there were five incidents of concern in the course of the first day’s operations – three of diplomatic offence, one security incident and, of course, one casualty.’

  She refrained from looking at the screen where Jace Higgs was attempting a nonchalant manner but only succeeding in looking mightily embarrassed. His visit to Quarus had lasted only eighteen seconds. That was how long it had taken him, in the excitement of the moment, to attempt an acrobatic dive out of the shuttle, to mistime the second somersault and to splat face down on the surface of the ocean. Their swimsuits were protective but even so a high speed splat from eleven metres up had smacked the wind out of him and the shuttle had promptly picked him up again on an emergency grab, bringing him straight back to the ship for medical evaluation.

  ‘A minor, human-error casualty,’ Alex replied. ‘Which has already been dealt with by safety advisory.’

  He was obliged to pause, there, as gales of laughter broke out round the ship. Several of his mates slapped Jace on the back, too, and there were grins even amongst the senior officers on the command deck.

  Simon Penarth had come running, so excited at the prospect of having an actual patient to treat that he’d been yelling ‘Medic!’ as he tore through the airlock. His reaction to finding that Jace had already got his breath back and wasn’t even bruised had been… well, the only word to describe that reaction was incandescent. He’d erupted at Jace like a volcano unleashing pyroclastic flow, engulfing him in white-hot rage which had lasted for a good twenty seven minutes without the slightest pause in either the volume, flow or ferocity of the invective. When Jace had finally emerged from sickbay he’d been a good deal more shaken and pale than when he’d been taken in. Buzz had decreed that no further disciplinary action would be taken against him as the matter had already been satisfactorily dealt with by a safety advisory, which had had the ship in fits of laughter at the time. The point had been very well made, though, and nobody else would be attempting show-off dives.

  ‘As for the security incident…’ Alex recalled the screams of horror as th
e quarian tried to open an engine core, and smiled slightly, ‘that was dealt with appropriately by the personnel present and was, I believe, useful in itself in establishing boundaries for our quarian visitors. None of the diplomatic concerns were of a serious nature, either. ‘

  Each of the three had involved some incident in which quarians had withdrawn from encounters. In two of the cases that had involved situations in which human visitors were simply feeling such a wild tangle of over-excited emotions that the quarians couldn’t stand being near them, for which the visitors had apologised and departed at once. The third situation had involved a crewman inadvertently breaking wind and feeling so hugely embarrassed by it that every quarian around had retreated at speed. ‘It is all,’ Alex said, surveying the data again, ‘well within the expected parameters of operations. And there were many more significantly positive encounters than we had hoped for, too.’

  He glanced, at that, at the five points which soared high above the general run of positive encounters. One was his own, the first and most significant meeting between the new ambassador and the people of Quarus. The second was Ali Jezno, who had ended up in a garden auditorium with an audience of more than a hundred quarians listening to him tell stories. The third was Owun Glyn. He’d been one of the third wave of visitors and had amazed and delighted the quarians by speaking his own language to them, Camag. Just as Silvie had been delighted by the discovery of how close that ancient tongue was to her own language, so were the quarians in general. Owun, indeed, was taken to their hearts as an honorary cousin, considered almost as a second ambassador from his world to theirs. The fourth point was Jen Jennet, their own empath, who’d been whisked away by a group of quarians keen to help her develop her abilities.

  And then there was the fifth point on the scatter graph, so high above all the others that it shone in splendid isolation. Davie North had been groundside. And he was indeed, as Silvie had predicted, greeted there like a rock star. Upwards of four hundred quarians had been following and gathering around him throughout his visit, thoroughly enjoying the bright flash and sparkle of his multicognitive personality.

  Davie, sitting at the datatable with the rest of them, grinned happily as several people looked at him. He was in such a state of tranquil pleasure at the moment that it wouldn’t have surprised any of them if he’d started to purr.

  Davie was content. He’d come back to the world of his genesis and had found it beautiful, welcoming and full of wonders. The quarians were delighted to see him, fascinated to see what the odd baby they’d created had become and more than pleased with what they saw. As Alex himself had recognised from their first encounter, if you could drill down into Davie North’s deepest core you would find no other purpose to his life than pure, unselfish dedication to the service of the League. To quarian eyes, that social generosity shone in him like the brightest of diamonds. It was more attractive even than his glittering intellect and his rock-solid ethical convictions. If Alex was Captain Gorgeous, Davie was Prince Charisma.

  ‘I believe,’ said Alex, ‘that we’ve made a very good start.’ He looked at Buzz. ‘Kindly convey my compliments to the ship’s company, Mr Burroughs.’

  That made it official, an on-record skipper’s commendation for the performance of his crew which would also be noted on each of their files. A ripple of pleasure ran through the ship and Buzz smiled.

  ‘With pleasure, skipper.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Alex returned his attention to the rest of the officers. ‘So – Day Two, just as before. There are no specific events today and no new or amended protocols to go on the board.’ He smiled briefly. ‘Any questions?’

  Bonny Bonatti raised her hand.

  ‘Point of interest, skipper,’ she said, when he gave her a nod to continue. ‘I note that Sub-lt Shionolethe’s visit to Quarus is not recorded on the scatter-gram.’

  There were some chuckles amongst the officers who knew why, and some surprise amongst everyone else. There had been so much going on that most had only been able to pick up on the highlights, such as Jace Higg’s spectacular face-plant and Ali’s tremendous success as a story-teller. As far as most people knew, Shion’s visit had been pleasant but largely uneventful. She’d only headed out late in the evening, when her name had come up on the junior-officer rota. She’d visited a quarian home and shared a meal with them, though only staying for an hour or so before the midnight curfew obliged her to come back.

  Alex looked at Shion, who smiled serenely back.

  ‘No,’ the skipper said. ‘It was decided to create a separate chart for Shion.’

  That caused a ruffle amongst the crew. There was even a little note of indignation here and there. What was the skipper on about? Shion was one of their officers, wasn’t she? One of them. Side-lining her off like that was just wrong!

  ‘Because,’ said Alex, deliberately, ‘she was off the scale, on ours.’

  He demonstrated what he meant by accessing the scatter-gram, changing the scale on the y-axis and adding in a single point. It was so far above all the others that it reduced them to a meaningless flat blob squished into the lowest region.

  There was a moment of bewilderment in which people stared at the new axis and worked out what it signified. The scale had been calculated on the basis of degrees of interaction ranging from the smallest exchange of greetings to the highest levels of engagement they could reasonably aspire to. On their graph, the ultimate achievement would be for quarians to trust them enough to let them meet their children. Beyond that was literally uncharted territory.

  Shion’s point was above that, off the scale, and as they realised what that meant, exclamations turned into wondering questions.

  ‘Please…’ Alex smiled at Shion. ‘A brief account of your visit?’ he requested.

  ‘Certainly, skipper.’ Shion answered just as casually. ‘I landed at Ortali, a deepwater city. They were very welcoming; I spent some time there in the gardens doing meet and greet, then went to one of their homes. There was a pool there and I cast a flower for them just as I would if I’d been visiting people for the first time, back home.’

  They all knew the ceremony. Even those who’d never seen her do it in person had seen footage, marvelling at the difference between that graceful lady and the everyday Shion they knew aboard ship. It was a ceremony which involved floating a flower from one end of a gently circulating pool to the other, remaining in quiet poise for however long it took until the host picked the flower out of the water.

  ‘They liked that,’ Shion said. ‘We had some food afterwards and they invited me to stay, but of course I had to get back for curfew, so that was all.’

  Alex grinned. ‘And…?’ he prompted.

  ‘There were a couple of children present,’ Shion admitted. That got gasps in itself, as quarians were more likely to dangle their kids into the mouths of hungry sharks than allow humans to get anywhere near them. The sharks, after all, could be controlled.

  ‘And…’ Alex insisted.

  ‘And,’ Shion looked apologetic, ‘they’ve given me the same rights as a quarian citizen, so I can live there if I want.’

  There was one moment of stunned silence and then uproar. Of course, it was dawning on people even as they cheered and yelled, Shion wasn’t human. They tended to forget that, even when they saw her using superhuman abilities. That was just normal, after all, just Shion. To most of them, the ‘alien princess’ thing really was just a joke, and even the few who’d seen her in full ceremonial role regarded it almost in the light of a performance. And Shion herself was so very much engaged with her life now, working for her lieutenancy and doing just the same work as any other officer, it seemed as if even she had forgotten that old life on the world she would never see again.

  The fact of it was, though, that Shion had been raised an aristocrat on the Veiled World, born and brought up in the highly ritualised status of a revered caste. Her people were of an ancient bloodline. They had known the Olaret and others of the elder races w
iped out by the plague. And though they themselves had lost their advanced technology in that disaster, they had never collapsed into dark age barbarities. Even now, there were records of the time before the catastrophe, and statues of the fallen races were commemorated in the Gardens of Memory.

  Alex was not at all surprised that the quarians had taken to Shion as they had. Silvie had flown into her arms on sight and physically clung to her as a calm focal point amidst the human chaos. Shion had a quality, a poise, which could only be described as grace. Which was, indeed, one of her titles, Grace of a Noble House.

  The quarians, anyway, had welcomed her as if she truly was alien royalty, and with a depth of trust and esteem which humans couldn’t even begin to aim for. It was as if, very much as if, her arrival was quite separate from that of the rest of the Fourth. It was in fact being regarded as a momentous event in quarian history, their first visit from another species with which they could truly bond. The first visit from Solarus Perth to Quarus more than fifty years before had not gone well and had not been repeated. Solarans, the quarians said, were quite probably the most boring species in the universe.

  But now there was Shion, perfectly sane and utterly charming, with the fascinating culture of an ancient race and a lovely, warm and tranquil personality enlivened with little bubbles of fun-loving mischief. If quarians had had any concepts of fan clubs, they would have formed one for Shion from the instant they met her. As it was, they had given her the freedom of their world, effectively making her a citizen.

  The cheering round the ship began with huge delight and admiration and then, within seconds, petered out into a disquieting realisation.

  Was this, after all, the achievement of ‘one of their own’? Shion had been welcomed and treated very differently as a representative of her own people, not of the humans. And the skipper, recognising that, had moved her aside onto a mission progress graph of her own.

  As the cheers died down, Shion glanced at the open comms screen. A few were still excited and pleased by her achievement. Many, though, were looking thoughtful. And the quicker thinkers amongst them were looking perturbed.