Quarus

by S J MacDonald

  Shortly after that, Alex returned to the command deck. The inspection findings would not be finalised for another day or two yet, as Admiral Dafour and his team would have to complete their report before certifying the ship as operational. Alex’s happy look as he settled back down on the command deck, though, was interpreted as things having gone well in his meeting with the admiral. They all knew, too, exactly how well they had performed in all of the assessments. On the basis of results alone, Admiral Dafour would have no choice but to award them excellent ratings for all performance drills. It was only his subjective judgements about the culture and morale of the ship, formed in the three day normal operations observations, which might make the difference between an excellent rating across the board, or excellent performance compromised with issues in culture or morale. There was quite a buzz on the ship, now, as people debated what outcome they expected to get. The ultimate, the best outcome an inspector was able to bestow, would be ‘Highly Commended’.

  Ali Jezno, though, was not thinking about the inspection at all. He arrived on the command deck a few minutes after Alex, holding his pocket comp with the air of a man carrying fuse-lit dynamite and with a portentous, excited expression which told Alex what he’d found before he even opened his mouth.

  ‘No!’ Alex exclaimed, seeing him approach with that unmistakeable Got it!

  ‘Yup!’ Ali slid into the guest seat next to the captain, passing files to the screens in front of him as he spoke, ‘I kid you not, skipper. Sound. Not just any sound, general sound levels didn’t correlate, but then I thought of working it backwards and seeing what sounds there were in the machine space when it kicked off, and just look.’

  He put up a comparison graph, something so simple that even a child could see what it showed. The x-axis was a timescale, the five weeks in which the SEP had been operational. It showed incidents of random product generation as a nominal spike, a straight line with vertical pulses showing the fact of a random event with no attempt to indicate its intensity. The other line did show intensity, as it was a record of a particular type of sound, short-pulse oscillating noise at a specified frequency.

  It was immediately obvious that there was a relationship. Every single time the recorded noise passed a certain volume, there was a corresponding spike in the SEP’s random production. There were no such events at any times when the volume was not at the critical level.

  ‘Well I’ll be…’ Alex stared at it, enthralled. ‘How?’ he wondered.

  ‘Dunno, skipper,’ Ali said, as if he really thought that Alex might expect him to be able to explain it. ‘Not a clue. But it’s causal, isn’t it?’

  ‘Evidently,’ Alex agreed, though he had no idea, either, how the sound frequency identified could be affecting the tech used in the SEP. Looking at the sound itself, he saw that it was a very specific set of conditions – pitch, duration and oscillation all very precisely defined. The combination was defined as a natural rather than machine noise, with the top contender on auto-analysis coming up as animal cries. Laughter, Alex remembered. It goes off when people laugh. But not just any laugh, it had to be a laugh pitched exactly right and with a voice oscillating at just the right speed and range. It was a mad finding – impossible, he would have said, if the evidence of it hadn’t been right there in front of him. But there it was, their first breakthrough in figuring out the mystery of the malfunctioning SEP. Alex looked up from the graph with just as much excitement as Ali had, himself. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Well done, Mr Jezno. But do, please…’ he gestured downwards, ‘Take it straight to the lab.’

  ‘Thanks, skipper.’ Ali jumped up, beaming – since it had been Alex who’d asked him to do the analysis, he might have chosen to take those findings to the lab himself. ‘On it,’ he said, and came as near to running off the command deck as safety regs allowed.

  Things did not go quite as he’d hoped, though – about a quarter of an hour later he was back on the command deck, this time with a rather ruffled air and in company with Oti.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alex,’ said Oti, clearly not in the grip of any wild delight at the extraordinary breakthrough, but a little irritated and slightly embarrassed, ‘but Ali is insisting that I ask you – he’s brought us this graph which is obviously a wind up, and while I don’t want to complain and I’m sure we all have a good sense of humour, can we just please confirm that it is a spoof so that we can get back to trying to figure out what’s really going on?’

  Alex understood. Ali Jezno had a reputation on the ship as a story-teller and a prankster. It wasn’t that long ago that he and his friends had created a remarkably convincing Ghost of Cabin Fifteen, complete with very high tech effects and a back-story. For him to turn up in the lab saying that the SEP was set off by people giggling was, on reflection, not something they would be likely to take seriously.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Alex, with an amused look at Ali. ‘And yes, of course, I understand, given Ali’s reputation for pranks and the extremely unlikely nature of the findings, that you’d think it is a wind-up. But actually, it is genuine – we have no idea how it is possible yet but it does appear that this specific sound is causal in triggering random activity.’

  It took some time even for him to convince her, since at first Oti thought he was just in on the joke and pulling her leg. Even when she accepted that the observations were genuine, she had a very long list of reasons why it was not physically possible for such a sound to have any effect whatsoever on the SEP. Alex heard her out and agreed with her, there was no reason it should be happening, or at least, no reason they understood yet.

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that we’d do better to focus on what we do know, rather than what we don’t, and to progress empirically. So I suggest that our first step should be to isolate the SEP in sound baffles and monitor that for a while. Then you can introduce sounds in controlled experiments.’

  ‘All right…’ Oti agreed, with a distinct trace of reluctance; a lingering suspicion that the Fourth was having a laugh at their expense, the absolute certainty that there was just no way a sound could be turning on the SEP and activating random programmes. It didn’t even have voice-operated control function, no microphones which might be misinterpreting external noises. Alex seemed very sure that this was a genuine lead, though, and it wasn’t as if they had anything better to do. ‘I’ll tell the others,’ she said, and went off with no more than a casual apology to Ali for doubting him.

  The sound baffle worked – impossible or not, once they had enclosed the SEP in sound-proof shielding it just sat there on standby and did nothing at all. It would be days, though, before the Filarnex team was convinced of that, and in the meantime the crew had other matters on their minds.

  The ship becoming operational, for a start. That happened the following day with a suitable degree of ceremony, all hands standing to attention while Admiral Dafour informed them of their rating – Highly Commended, the highest rate achievable – and shook hands with the skipper, then Ab Abnedido, in his capacity as most junior rating on the ship, activated the hull emblems which showed them to be operational and the crew gave three cheers. Then Alex went on the PA.

  ‘Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, and added, ‘Desserts are on me at Serenity.’

  This got another cheer, spontaneous this time. Skippers were allowed to reward exceptional achievement with some appropriate treat even in the regular Fleet, though Alex’s choice of treats went beyond the traditional boxes of celebration cakes. In this case, he had discovered that there was a specialist dessert shop at the Serenity base, and had promised to buy them all desserts if they achieved the Highly Commended rating. It wasn’t really a motivation, since there were far more important reasons for them to go for that, but it was a gesture they appreciated, a personal acknowledgement from the skipper for their efforts.

  That, though, was a couple of weeks away and there was far more immediate fun to be had. The fact that they were now operational had not ended their trai
ning but had, in fact, kicked it up a gear as they were now allowed to do full combat exercises. And to the delight of the crew, they had the first of these the very next day, when Alex gave the order, unique to the Fourth, authorising the issue of custard guns.

  Admiral Dafour and his team watched from the safety of the interdeck, which was as always excluded from such exercises. It was a full combat exercise with their own fighters attacking them at the same time that boarding parties came from the airlocks – three boarding parties, in fact, the three teams which they would send aboard hostile ships. They were equipped with the imposing mirror-bright hullwalker suits and fearsome rifles which Buzz had developed for their boarding parties, and they were working just the way he’d trained them, too, each moving as one unit, covering every angle. The boarding party was, in fact, under Buzz’s own command, as it would be if the ship was running real boarding operations.

  It didn’t help much even knowing that the boarding teams were under the command of Uncle Buzz, the kindliest of men, or even that the ferocious looking rifles were actually no more than cases provided by a props company. Buzz had designed them because the standard rifles issued by the Fleet, though effective, looked so much like toys that few people found them intimidating. Buzz’s philosophy was very much that the more you scared people in combat the less likely you were to have to actually shoot them, so the boarding parties were equipped and trained to look as terrifying as Buzz could contrive.

  On this occasion, though, the intimidation factor was somewhat reduced by the fact that the defending crew were equipped with custard weapons. This was something Davie had brought in during similar combat games between the frigate and the Stepeasy. The substance which they fired was not actually custard, but a high tech gel designed for safe use on starships, damaging neither to people nor tech. It was satisfyingly gloopy, though, splatted with a wonderful unctuous mess and was coloured bright yellow. The first time that Davie’s team had used it the Fourth’s invading team had been laughing so helplessly that only Shion’s superhuman abilities and a creative interpretation of the rules had saved the day. These days, there was still a lot of laughter – quite difficult not to laugh with quantities of yellow gloop and pink sparkle grenades flying all over the place – but the competition was fierce. Invaders versus Defenders, with the prize a trophy on the command deck. There was a twenty five minute limit on this particular exercise, so the defenders had only to keep the invaders off the command deck for a quarter of an hour.

  Alex took no part in it, himself. He’d given the conn to Bonny for this exercise and was just sitting back watching, enjoying the show. It wasn’t as if she was only having to contend with Buzz trying to get on the command deck. She was also having to compete against Shion in a very fast dogfight. It was interesting to watch how Bonny juggled the two, directing the defenders whilst giving orders for evasive manoeuvres and firing patterns. Shion was using Marfikian tactics, high speed strafe and run attacks targeting their guns and manoeuvring systems. It was all safe, of course, blank fire from the cannon and simulated missiles, but systems were set to shut down if they would have been damaged by genuine fire, with explosion, fire and blowout VR triggered too if that was what would have actually happened. Casualties notified of the probable extent of their injuries were obliged to play along with that as well, adding medical emergencies to the general chaos.

  Except that, to a trained eye, it was not chaos. True, the ship was spinning and whirling around as if madly out of control amidst a storm of missile and gunfire from which the three fighters came at them again and again from every direction. True, there were major custard battles going on in three locations in addition to mounting tech failures, fires, blowouts and casualties which had people rushing around urgently. But it was urgent, not frantic, no yelled orders or panic, everyone knew what they were doing. To an observer, sitting back, it was like watching an orchestra busily engaged in a rapid and complex arpeggio. Or at least, Alex thought so.

  When the bell went, signifying the end of the exercise, Shion had won her side of it. The Heron had lost the use of more than half of their guns and had their manoeuvring ability reduced by a third, which was more than enough for Shion to claim victory. Bonny, on the other hand, had succeeded in keeping Buzz off the command deck so the prize in that one went to the defenders.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said one of the inspection team, seeing the way that the Fourth gave themselves a cheer, cleared up the gloop and went back to work. ‘Now I see why they looked at me gone out…’ he mimed incredulity, ‘when I said we wouldn’t evaluate combat proficiency.’

  ‘We daren’t,’ Admiral Dafour said. ‘Can you imagine the reaction if that went out as a combat skills assessment setting a standard for other ships to be measured against?’

  There was a long silence while they all thought about that reaction, then one of them started to laugh, and within moments they were all guffawing happily.

  Alex noted that, as it caught his attention on the interdeck feed. Good to see, he thought. An inspection team would normally depart immediately they had handed over their report – on previous occasions, another Fleet ship had accompanied them during their shakedown just so that the inspection team could come aboard when required and leave again immediately afterwards. This team, however, had been obliged to be passengers all the way from Therik and were now passengers again. Clearly, though, they no longer felt it necessary to isolate themselves in their Lair, and the sight of them having a laugh like that reassured Alex that they were just fine.

  Rather more than fine, in fact, as after a twenty-five hour rest period imposed by Rangi, Admiral Dafour asked if he and his team could make themselves useful, sliding in for the remainder of the run to Serenity as temporary supernumerary officers.

  Alex accepted the offer at once and promptly handed his ship over to the admiral, leaving him holding the conn while Alex and Buzz took the watch commanders off to the daycabin for a training session. This was something they had to do from time to time, as not all command school training could be carried out on the command deck. In this case, it was a session on dealing with fatalities, involving case studies, role play and frank discussion. One of the case studies, in fact, was that of Ali Jezno – the decision which Alex had faced, confronted by two medics, one of whom was telling him that Ali was dead while the other said they could save him by radical, experimental surgery on which the law was still somewhat dubious. The fact that Ali was here on the ship made it obvious what decision Alex had made and he stood by it, too, no doubts, no regrets. But discussing what a difficult decision it had been and how afraid he had been during the time between his giving permission and finding out if the surgery had been successful was just not something he would want to do on the command deck, and nor, either, could the others have talked frankly about what decisions they might make themselves in similar circumstances. It was an important aspect of training for command, but certainly no kind of fun – quite painful at times, in fact, touching on personal bereavements. They came out of the session in serious and sombre moods, only to find that the atmosphere on the command deck was one of lively enjoyment. Admiral Dafour had been allowed to take the conn on other ships when he dropped heavy enough hints that he would like to, but there was always a stiff awkwardness to it, with a tendency on the part of the skipper to hover at his elbow. Here, the fact that the skipper had given him the conn and cleared off with all the senior officers was taken as having full confidence in him, and with the rigger bringing him a mug of tea and everyone just getting on with things as usual, Admiral Dafour had been having a lovely time.

  He continued to do so, too, as Alex took full advantage of having another command rank officer aboard, and one so willing to hold the conn, too. By the time they were approaching Serenity, there was even a feeling about the ship that they’d be sorry to see the Admiral and the others go, as they’d been such a help, and so friendly too, now that the inspection was over.

  The same would not be true
, admittedly, of Barney Barnardt. His behaviour had not got any worse but then again it hadn’t got any better, either. He was still holding out on the data from his research and adamant that he would not hand it over even if the Second’s admin officer at Serenity told him to. Even Buzz, attempting a little gentle intervention, had been told that Barney did not want to talk to ‘uniforms’. The rest of the Second would be glad to be rid of him, too. All the other teams had rallied round, sparing a little time from their own research as the incredible finding about the misfiring SEP was confirmed. After days of just sitting there doing nothing, experiments had very quickly established that broadcasting the sound Ali had identified at it was indeed the trigger, since as soon as all those conditions were met, the SEP fired up, selected an apparently random number of items and an apparently random item from the catalogue and set to work producing them. The question of how was mystifying everyone, with some looking at the nature of the sound itself while others worked right through every system on the SEP trying to find anything, anywhere, which might conceivably be sound-sensitive. Everyone else in the lab had at least offered the help of being an intelligent and sympathetic listener, but not Barney.

  ‘Who cares?’ he said, sealing his unpopularity in the lab, if there had had been any doubt over that since they’d discovered his less than ethical approach to funding applications. ‘It’s a plastics printer – if it doesn’t work, just chuck it away.’

  Oti was still inclined to grit her teeth, days later, whenever she thought about that. But even she and the rest of her team stopped working for a little while, as they came up to Serenity.

  It was amazing, even though they had all known what to expect. X-Bases were generally unimpressive places, tiny huddles of domes with a handful of starships in orbit. Serenity looked much more like a young colony. There was a launch and deceleration tunnel, for a start, which was not something normally found anywhere other than inhabited systems. There was a space station, too – small, but modern in design – and a network of satellites defining parking zones and transit lanes as well as providing system-wide comms.