Quarus

by S J MacDonald

  Salomah smiled. ‘I’m told,’ she said, ‘that tons of cack have landed on you already. But you don’t mind, do you?’ She gave him a look which held frank admiration. ‘Like kelp, you flow with the storm, but hold strong at the roots. That’s reassuring to see…’ she glanced at the screen which showed Quarus, long since merged into the starfield. ‘I’ve lost my own roots, everything I know,’ she looked at him again. ‘But you will hold fast, won’t you, no matter what.’

  ‘Count on it,’ said Alex, wanting so much for her to feel that she was safe aboard the frigate that he was effectively surrounding her in an emotional hug.

  Salomah smiled. She had treated him like a child in her world, but here, it was she and the others who needed care and protection. And it was hard for them, so much harder even than they’d expected, even after the trial cruise around the system. There, Salomah had always known that she could be home in a few hours any time she wanted it to stop. Here, too, the ship would turn around and head back to Quarus any time their passengers changed their minds, even if they were no more than hours from Serenity at the time. But every passing hour did take them further away and the enormous empty space ahead of them was more than daunting for a people who didn’t even travel within their own solar system. The Geminax stream was little help, either, as quarians found video comms as frustrating as muffled, robotic audio, devoid of personality or feeling. Right here and now and for the next couple of months they would be completely dependent on Alex and his crew. So it was a relief to see that he remained confident and good humoured even when the general opinion was that the skipper was being dumped on from all directions.

  And he did remain so, too, even on days when things were not going well on the ship and the pressure was piling up through the Geminax stream. The closest he came to getting irritable was on the eleventh day. They had just taken out the quarian-style bathrooms from the wardroom. The officers had accepted this without argument but there was considerable feeling on the mess decks that they would really like to keep their quarian-style facilities at least until they got back to Serenity. And surely, they said, that could be justified by the fact that they had quarian passengers aboard?

  Alex and the other senior officers had been busy all day dealing with the low-level mutters and grumbles which were bringing down morale. Dealing with such matters, in the Fourth, meant a combination of frank and friendly chats with key members of the crew, discussions on the command deck for everyone to see, and team-building, distracting activities like action stations drills and inter-watch competitions. Alex was fine with that, enjoying the – to him – uncomplicated role of a frigate skipper.

  When more signals arrived in the middle of the afternoon, though, including more than three thousand more hours of media footage and sixty eight memos from the Admiralty, Alex was moved to drop his head for a moment, and groan. They were past Pump Station Brava by then, back in the Gulf with excellent reception.

  ‘I know Geminax is wonderful,’ Alex observed. ‘And when it is perfected it will revolutionise communication with ships, and even between worlds. Which is all good, of course it is. But I have a terrible feeling that skippers throughout the ages will curse the people who made it possible for the Admiralty to send them inventory memos even when they’re out in the deepest of deep space. At least until now we only had to contend with them when we put into port.’

  Othol, to whom this comment had been made, looked at the memo he was indicating, and was mystified.

  ‘I don’t understand what it means,’ he admitted. ‘Is it a different language?’

  ‘You could say that. Admiralty jargon at its most impenetrable,’ Alex confirmed. ‘Basically what they’re drawing to our attention is the fact that we acquired nine cake baking pans on our equipment inventory while we were at Telathor, which were recorded as gifts from a civilian supplier. A lot of these…’ he pointed out the stacked pile of inventory memos, ‘relate to gifts from suppliers at Telathor. It’s a cultural issue, there, they just wouldn’t let us pay for anything. In those circumstances Fleet procedure is that we accept the gifts but assign them nominally to whatever budget we would have used to pay for them if we had had to pay, and the Admiralty then adjusts our budgets accordingly. I honestly thought we’d got that one sorted at Telathor – no disrespect whatsoever to Mr Sartin, here, as our Finance Officer, he completed all paperwork meticulously and it was filed with a thorough and detailed covering report. But as you see, here…’ he drew the quarian’s attention to the opening paragraph of the memo open before him, ‘concerns have been raised that we were obtaining supplies from civilian sources, knowing they would be given as gifts, rather than going through normal requisitioning procedures to get the items we needed from Fleet Supplies. So now we have to justify why we ordered these particular cake-baking pans, which are specialist catering gear and not available on the Fleet inventory, for use in our interdeck galley. That…’ he flipped a derogatory finger at the rest of the stack, ‘and all the rest of the petty, time-wasting nit-picking pedantry which we know very well has nothing to do with any genuine concern that we might have done something wrong and everything to do with the Third Lord of the Admiralty making life as difficult for us as he possibly can.’

  Othol gave a gurgle of mirth. ‘You enjoyed saying that,’ he observed, at which Alex gave a broad answering grin.

  ‘Well, you asked,’ he pointed out, and both of them laughed at the mischief bubbling in him. It had, indeed, been very therapeutic to vent his feelings honestly rather than having to pretend he was fine with it.

  On the whole, though, Alex was very much enjoying the run back to Serenity. He had the challenge of bringing his crew back to a more orthodox state of efficiency to keep him busy, and all the unexpected incidents arising from having quarian passengers aboard to keep him on his toes. Salomah and the others were rarely aboard one ship for more than a few hours at a time; just as Silvie had understood from the start, the ability to move freely between different environments was essential for their wellbeing. They even, at times, helped themselves to shuttles and cruised in company for a while, taking a break from the company of humans.

  ‘So far, so good,’ said Davie, coming over to the Heron for a visit when he knew that Silvie and the other quarians were elsewhere.

  Alex gave him an appraising look. He’d hardly seen anything of Davie while they’d been at Quarus, though they’d been in contact throughout. Davie had loved every minute of it, there was no doubt about that, and no doubt either that he’d been able to communicate with quarians at a far more elevated level than any ordinary human. Alex knew that it was largely down to Davie that the quarians had been able to learn so much, so quickly, in their contact with the Fourth. The rest of the credit for that, of course, had to go to Silvie.

  Davie, though, was looking good on all that effort. Part of that was because he had been eating well. And part of it, for sure, was that he’d been able to fulfil the role he’d been created and raised for. He seemed, Alex thought, calmer somehow… settled and contented.

  ‘So good, so far,’ Alex agreed. Both of them knew that they couldn’t be complacent yet. Their mission would not be complete until they disembarked quarians at Serenity, and a lot could happen on the long haul across the Gulf.

  Both of them knew, though, that things were going as well as they could have hoped. And both of them knew that they would not say so and risk jinxing it. So they just looked at one another for a quiet moment, and smiled. Then Davie, without saying anything, called up the triplink game which they had last been playing on the run in from Brava to Quarus, and made his next move.

  Alex relaxed, and settled to contemplate the board, taking his time to remind himself how things had been left.

  He made a move, and Davie responded with a tricky manoeuvre which left Alex in some danger of losing a significant part of his territory. So he focused, gazing at it, trying to figure out both why he hadn’t seen that one coming and what he was going to do about it.<
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  And then, right out of nowhere, just as he was reaching for the board, a brilliant light dazzled into his eyes and blaring trumpets blasted a triumphant fanfare Ta daa, ta da daaaaa!

  Oh… Alex looked up, squinting and raising a hand instinctively to shield his eyes from the glare. The figure, that figure, was standing on the command deck of his ship. It was only dimly discernible amid the blazing halo, the light that flowed about the figure like robes and shifted like wings behind it. Even as he looked at it, Alex was aware that nobody else on the command deck was reacting to its presence at all, though Davie was looking at him in some surprise, startled by his wince and eye-shielding. As before, it appeared, the figure was visible only to him. But there it was, blindingly bright, with the blasting fanfare going on and on, looking straight at him with a beneficent smile.

  ‘Hi Alex,’ it said, with a friendly little wave. ‘Is now a good time?’