Quarus (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 6)

by S J MacDonald

  Salomah was pleased, anyway.

  ‘This is kind,’ she said, fully aware of how much work had been involved in creating these quarters just for her. There was an air-breathing lounge with a pool and lots of plants, the pool giving access to a swim tube which went one way into Silvie’s garden and the other to the tank which was now set up as a water-breathing bedroom.

  ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s cramped,’ Alex said. ‘But it is the best that we can do on a frigate.’

  One of the suggestions which had been made was that carriers could be converted to provide the kind of spacious quarters quarians would prefer. The Senate would certainly approve that expense, but only on an agreement that quarians would actually use such ships. And quarians would not say that they would use such facilities before they’d tried them out.

  ‘The space isn’t the main issue,’ Salomah assured him. ‘I can deal with claustrophobia. The question is whether I can cope living with humans and not being able to get away from you.’ She looked at him questioningly. ‘What worries you about that?’

  ‘Well, that you won’t get a fair experience of that just by staying aboard the ship in port,’ Alex said. ‘No starship operates normally in port, even at our own worlds, and things are just so different here, with people coming and going all the time, it isn’t at all the same kind of experience as being in flight. So if you would like as realistic an experience as possible, we could – if you like – take the ship out for a run.’

  Salomah smiled. ‘I’d like that,’ she said, and did not add ‘if it’s not too much trouble’ because she could see already that it wasn’t. ‘But I will,’ she said, ‘join the ship after you’ve launched.’

  She had obviously learned that from Silvie, too, that the launch was an emotional overload even for her and would be seriously traumatic for other quarians. A shuttle or fighter could bring Salomah superlight without all the noise and stress endured by larger vessels, bringing her out to the ship once they’d achieved a superlight orbit.

  ‘Excellent,’ Alex agreed, since that was just what he’d have advised, himself.

  So that was what they did. It took them three days to do their pre-launch strip down because quarians were still coming aboard and taking a very keen interest in it all. They were fascinated not just by the technical work but by the atmosphere of camaraderie which the strip-down generated. When soppo and dogs were served out, their visitors basked in the powerful sense of shared endeavour, history and tradition which surged about the ship. The pre-launch rituals, too, were regarded as a richly emotive performance and very much enjoyed.

  Once they got to a certain point, though, the Fourth was obliged to ask their visitors to leave.

  ‘We’re about to seal the airlocks,’ Alex told them. ‘You’re welcome to stay aboard for the launch if you want, but…’

  They’d heard what launches were like. They left. And when they’d gone, the Heron’s crew settled down to completing pre-launch with an unexpected sense of freedom. It wasn’t that they wanted to be leaving Quarus, as being there was an amazing experience for all of them. But it was a treat to be going back to their own natural environment and so unexpectedly, too, with the additional satisfaction of knowing that they would be back at Quarus quite soon. Just how soon depended on Salomah. If she was coping well then they would be staying out for about a week. They would, though, be casting around in a wide circuit so that if she decided she wanted to go home at any time, they could be back here in under four hours. It was really no more than a very long orbit, with no systems to touch at and nothing interesting to see, but it would make for a pleasant break in routine.

  It did that. If nothing else, too, it showed Alex just how much work they were going to have to do to bring the crew back to normal Fleet operations by the time they were back in League space.

  ‘I think it would be good to show you how we run the ship, normally,’ he told Salomah, when they’d been out for four days and she was coping very well. ‘So we’ll have a twenty-five hour normal watch rotation, all right?’

  This hit the crew so hard, though, that Salomah asked them to stop it.

  ‘People are all confused and uncomfortable,’ she told Alex, to whom this was not news. ‘It’s really making me nervous.’

  She had cause. After months of operating pretty much on their own recognisance, it came hard to everyone aboard the ship to find themselves scheduled for duty again, constrained by a timetable and assigned duties. Officers had suddenly found themselves having to organise and manage people, with some slight friction here and there from crew who felt that they had proven their ability to manage themselves very well and resented the sudden imposition of authority.

  ‘It was easier by far,’ Alex commented to Buzz, ‘to go the other way, moving off-schedule.’

  Buzz chuckled. ‘It is always easier to move towards chaos,’ he replied.

  ‘And discipline is ten times harder to regain, once lost, than it is to achieve if applied from the start,’ Alex said, a mantra learned in his Academy days. ‘I know. But…’ he sighed. ‘Somehow I hoped that the crew would be able to switch back into normal operations rather more easily than this.’

  ‘An unreasonable expectation, dear boy,’ Buzz said, amused but sympathetic. ‘We will have to plan a structured, phased re-entry to everything we’ve abandoned; watch routines, private showers, a firm command hierarchy.’ He needed no empathic ability to spot, from Alex’s rueful grimace, that the skipper was no more enthusiastic about that than the crew would be. It was necessary, of course. They could not continue in such disorderly conduct once the only possible excuse for it, overriding exodiplomacy need, was no longer in force. And it would be important, too, to ease their quarian passengers into being around humans living and working as humans normally did.

  ‘I know,’ said Alex. ‘And we wouldn’t be able to sustain it anyway. It was only possible at all because we were all in it together right from the start, every step of the way right from leaving Therik. We’ll lose at least a third of our crew again when we get home, and it would be entirely unworkable with other crew coming in, even if the Admiralty would allow us to attempt it.’ He considered, briefly, the First Lord’s undoubted response to such a request. ‘Which they won’t.’

  ‘No,’ Buzz agreed. ‘I think we’ll just have to regard this as a kind of holiday from Fleet regulations we were only able to enjoy because of the unique circumstances of this mission. Rather like an extended rumpus.’

  Alex nodded. Then, quite unexpectedly, he started to laugh. At Buzz’s look of enquiry, he explained with a broad grin, ‘I was just wondering what grading Admiral Dafour would give us if we were inspected right now, particularly for the ‘three days normal’.’

  Buzz contemplated the likely reaction of that most orthodox of admirals to the state of affairs aboard the Heron right now, and as he thought about it, he started laughing as well.

  ‘That’s really interesting,’ Salomah observed, appearing on the command deck some minutes later. ‘When you laugh,’ she told them, with a look which included both the skipper and exec, ‘waves of security and contentment wash right through the ship. I’ve never seen humans react like that – is there something special about the two of you laughing?’

  Alex looked at Buzz, silently passing that one to him.

  ‘It tells people that everything is fine,’ Buzz told her. ‘If they can see that the skipper and myself are relaxed and having a laugh, they know that everything is going well and there’s nothing they need to be concerned about. That effect is more marked, I expect, in situations where they’re aware that the skipper and I have been concerned, ourselves, about some aspect of crew performance, as with the recent attempt at a snap return to full standard protocols which surprised us all by how badly that went.’

  Seeing that she was still looking at him with keen interest, he went on, ‘I wouldn’t say that they’ve been worrying about that, at least not consciously, but I daresay there’s been some tens
ion as they watch to see how seriously the skipper is taking that failure and what he intends to do about it.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Salomah looked enlightened, and beamed approvingly at them, with her gaze focussing in on Alex. ‘And you do that on purpose, knowing it will reassure them.’

  ‘Got me,’ Alex admitted.

  ‘And you couldn’t just tell them, ‘Don’t worry about it?’’ Salomah queried.

  ‘I could, and did,’ Alex said. ‘But the crew wants to know how I feel about things, and it really isn’t our way, in the Fleet, for skippers to keep telling their crews how they feel. There are more subtle means of communication, coded behaviours understood by everyone, in which skipper and exec chatting and laughing on the command deck is recognised at once as ‘everything is fine.’’

  ‘Oh – yes, of course.’ Salomah smiled thanks to the rigger who’d brought her a cup of herbal tea. ‘Ritualised behaviour signalling emotions. I must have seen it many times in previous visits but there was so much else going on all the time, so much noise, I didn’t notice it.’ She gave Alex a nod. ‘You were right – the ship is very different out of port. Quieter. And in many ways, more interesting.’ She saw the hope he was trying so hard to keep under control, and smiled. ‘And yes, perfectly bearable.’ She chuckled at the surge of joy in him, and everyone else aboard the ship. ‘I will tell people what it is like,’ she said. ‘And see if anyone else is prepared to come with us.’

  Twenty Six

  In the end, four other quarians agreed to go to Serenity with them. One of them, to Alex’s delight, was Othol, the first friend he’d made on Quarus. It was agreed that all five of them would be based aboard the Heron but would spend as much time as they wished aboard the other ships, entirely free to come and go amongst them as they pleased.

  Actually getting to the point of leaving, however, took some creative problem solving from Alex and Buzz. The difficulty was that the quarians would not leave until the humans were ready to do so… really ready to do so, not just saying that they were. And, like Alex himself, many of the Heron’s crew were loving their time at Quarus so much that they couldn’t honestly say that they were really ready and wanting to go home at this stage.

  ‘If we wait for that to come about naturally,’ Buzz observed, ‘we could be here for another year.’

  ‘Easily,’ Alex agreed. ‘So, we’re going to have to generate a strong and genuine desire to go.’ He considered for a moment or two and looked at Buzz. ‘I’ll do duty,’ he suggested. ‘You take homesickness.’

  Buzz smiled, making a circling gesture between them.

  ‘I’d suggest the other way around, dear boy,’ he said. ‘Far more surprising, and therefore more effective.’

  He was right. Alex knew he was right. The crew would expect firm injunctions to do their duty from the skipper, and appeals to their feelings about home and family from Uncle Buzz. Coming the other way around would give each approach the additional weight of startling novelty.

  ‘All right,’ Alex agreed. So it was Buzz who began, later that day, pointing out to people that they were only half way through their mission, which would not end until they returned to Serenity.

  ‘We do not,’ he said, with unusual severity, ‘want another situation like Telathor.’

  Even the new members of the crew understood that reference. The Fourth had experienced a shocking drop in their performance rating after weeks of visiting Telathor, a world renowned for its laid-back attitude to time and schedules. Remedial action had been taken on all three of their ships to bring them back to operational standards, with virtually every member of the Fourth having to lose the weight they’d gained from Telathoran hospitality, too. It had not been their finest hour.

  At the same time, Alex began to ask people about their plans for the long leave the ship would be entitled to upon their return to Therik. Some of them had their immediate family, partners and children, living at the Fourth’s base. Others had decided to stay on their homeworlds, particularly if their partner was only going to be seconded to the Fourth for a year or so. Even those who had family living at the base were liable to have other family members, parents and siblings, still living on their homeworlds. For them, the decision had to be made whether they were going to travel out to visit those family members or send out travel warrants so that their families could come to Therik and spend their leave with them there. It was always a major talking point on any Fleet ship at the stage when they began to look forward to their three or four months of long leave, and by introducing the subject so often all around the ship Alex was deliberately triggering just that ‘looking forward to leave’ mind-set.

  It took some effort – considerable effort, indeed, from both Alex and Buzz, backed up by other officers as they themselves overcame their own desire to stay here and joined in the effort to persuade others that it was time for them to leave.

  Gradually, though, over the space of a week and a half, that concerted effort did break down the sense of ‘settled and wanting to stay’ into one of feeling that they should be heading back, now, either in a sense of duty to completing their mission or wanting to see families again, or both. Othol, who’d stayed aboard ship throughout that whole period, was fascinated.

  ‘You’re changing the way people feel, and think,’ he said to Alex. ‘Controlling, manipulating them, on purpose. Which would be a horrible and completely unethical thing to do if it wasn’t for the fact that they know you’re doing that and you’ve been completely open about it and they understand it and really don’t mind. Humans are extraordinary.’

  Alex grinned. ‘Well, that’s progress,’ he observed. ‘Extraordinary is a good step up from ‘insane’.’

  Othol chuckled too. ‘We have learned a lot,’ he agreed. ‘Most importantly, that defining anything we didn’t understand as ‘insane’ was not a useful response. ‘We do not understand that, therefore it is beyond comprehension’ is not a helpful attitude, is it?’

  ‘Not really,’ Alex said. ‘Though a natural response even amongst humans, and for quarians, an entirely understandable cultural reaction.’

  Othol nodded. ‘We live in an environment of complete understanding and consensus,’ he observed. ‘We are not used to having to try to understand challenging new things like alien ways of thinking. But it is,’ he said, with just a touch of complacency, ‘worth the effort.’

  ‘Certainly is,’ said Alex, with such absolute conviction that Othol laughed again, amused by the sheer force of the skipper’s feelings. ‘Sorry,’ Alex added at once, recognising that he’d effectively yelled that in the quarian’s face, feeling so strongly himself about how vital it was to make that effort to bridge species divides. ‘Didn’t mean to shout. But this,’ he indicated between himself and his friend, ‘means so much to me.’

  ‘We know,’ Othol looked kindly at him. ‘Your longing to learn about us and be friends with us was obvious from the moment you dropped into our ocean.’ He grinned as he remembered being amongst the first quarians to greet Alex, that day. ‘And so wonderful, extraordinary, that that was all you wanted, nothing like the grabby desperation of the ambassadors. Your people should have sent people like you from the start – like the Excorps people who made first contact with us. They were so much fun, so amazed by everything, like infants, we liked them a lot. But then all these weird ambassadors kept turning up with all their neediness and issues, wanting so much and panicking about everything, we just couldn’t understand or get on with them at all. We certainly don’t want them back here.’

  Alex had already been told that, and had sent a tactfully worded message to Serenity to inform them that the Embassy I could be sent back to Chartsey to be redeployed as required, since the quarians did not want it to return to their world.

  ‘The Harmony and the other Diplomatic Corps ships can come visit,’ Silvie informed Alex, ‘accompanied by raptor class ships like the Eagle, okay?’

  Alex did not misunderstand either her casual manner or the fac
t that they were having that discussion at a picnic. When Silvie used ‘we’ it meant that she was speaking on behalf of her people; an official diplomatic request or condition.

  In this case, he hardly needed to think about it before he agreed. The Diplomatic Corps would be disappointed that the quarians didn’t want the Embassy back even with the offer of entirely new and specially trained personnel. They would be willing to settle, though, for ongoing leadership of diplomacy through the embassy on Serenity and the visits of their ships. The Fleet would jump at the chance for involvement, too, sending their raptor class ships out on rotation. That would be a prestige assignment for the Fleet’s exodiplomacy service even when or if the Solarans returned. As it was, it was a purpose for their exodiplomacy ships which they’d grab at as a lifeline. And they had, in fact, as Silvie was obviously aware, already sent out the Falcon to Serenity in case it might be wanted.

  “And Davie,” Silvie concluded, “will convert some liners to take us to and from Serenity in comfort.”

  Alex smiled. Davie could certainly afford to pay for whole fleets of such ships out of what he considered to be petty cash, the few billions he kept as personal spending money. And this, too, was what Davie had been created and brought up to do, continuing the long tradition of his family in supporting exploration and exodiplomacy. The Senate would certainly welcome an offer from him to donate suitably adapted ships and Alex knew that as well as Silvie did herself.