by S MacDonald
They were having this discussion in the wardroom, with several junior officers present. Later, it would have repercussions when the commander discovered that he had been discussed in the wardroom and took strong exception to it, but at the time it was, as it was intended to be, a friendly guidance for some Subs who were rather too inclined to share the crew’s point of view about getting rid of Moaning Mick.
Even so, by the sixth day of his presence amongst them all of them were counting the days till he’d leave.
The next day, though, they were to have far more important problems than an annoying passenger to deal with.
Eight
The day of the catastrophe began just like any other. There were no forebodings, no omens of impending calamity which even the most superstitious could point to afterwards and say they’d known that something awful was going to happen.
It was day one hundred and fourteen of phase three, the time they had spent at the border engaged in direct, continual contact with Carrearranis. Like every other day, it began at 0600 as a clear yellow light rose through the dusky shades of nightwatch.
It amused Alex, as he got up, to be aware that the same clear morning light was dawning on more than a hundred Fleet ships whose skippers had volunteered to be part of a two year trial of the new system. It had been, as far as the Fourth was concerned, a trivial matter, an experiment they’d undertaken merely because they’d been persuaded into it by an expert in underground lighting who’d happened to be travelling with them as a passenger. It was now, Alex knew, causing major friction out there in the Fleet as yet another example of that upstart maverick von Strada overturning centuries of Fleet tradition and forcing ‘modernisation’ on them which many considered to be just change for the sake of it and of no benefit at all. It sometimes seemed to Alex that he couldn’t even toss a pebble into a puddle without causing a tsunami.
Still, as the pleasant morning light flooded his cabin he swung out of bed with a sense of wellbeing. As had become his habit, he read overnight reports while he was in the shower. There was only one item of significance; Marill had gone into labour and was expected to deliver her baby within the next few hours.
They had, by then, long since achieved their objective of speaking individually to everyone on the planet. That had been important, not just as an information gathering exercise but diplomatically, in order to establish a mandate. In the absence of a global authority or any kind of balloting system, it was the best they could do in order to establish whether the people of Carrearranis really did want to engage in contact with them. Some had been shy, a few had been fearful, but the reaction had been overwhelmingly positive, enabling Alex to continue with confidence.
Inevitably, though, as teams had got to know the people in their sector, they’d been drawn in to the everyday dramas of their lives. Problems such as storms or poor fishing worried people on the starships almost more than they did those on the islands, and as people began to confide in them they were caught up in domestic dramas too. Life was no pure idyll on Carrearranis, there were domestic disputes, arguments between neighbours and troublesome kids who wouldn’t listen to their parents. Sometimes the Fourth had been able to offer advice, mostly they could only sympathise.
It was with medical issues, however, that they felt most involved, and at the same time, most helpless. Life was certainly no idyll on Carrearranis in terms of medical care. True, they had no infectious disease, but that did not prevent them developing a whole range of conditions including heart disease, stroke and cancer, for which they had no cures. They had only the most basic treatment for accidents, too, limited to hardly more than stitching wounds and setting bones. They used herbal remedies in which they placed great faith, but death rates from accidents and conditions which would be entirely treatable in the League spoke for themselves. As, for that matter, did a life expectancy in which reaching seventy years old was regarded as an achievement.
Their ship’s medic, Rangi Tekawa, was himself a great advocate of natural remedies and natural healing, but he was just as appalled as any of them by the state of healthcare on Carrearranis and constantly trying to find ways – any way – to improve it. As it was, all he could do was offer what advice was possible when the patient was beyond his reach and communication with the planet took eleven hours.
It was probable, therefore, that Marill would have already had her baby by the time that Rangi’s message of encouragement got to her. This would be the first baby to be born since they had come back to the comms buoy and was something that they’d all become interested in, with varying degrees of excitement and concern. Typically, there was a book running as to exactly when the baby would be born, too, so they were keeping a close eye on the time.
Alex noted it as something that would be part of the buzz on the ship today, got dressed and headed out to the command deck.
‘Good morning,’ he greeted the watch officer and everyone there, and got a chorus of ‘morning skipper’ in return. He had hardly sat down when the duty rigger, not to be outdone by Banno Triesse, put a mug of coffee at his elbow. ‘Thanks.’
Alex took his first sip of the day, savouring the rich, slightly spiced taste, then picked up his pen. Nobody spoke to him while he had his first coffee of the day and dealt with paperwork – this was as much a part of ship’s routine as watch changeovers, understood that the skipper’s first quarter of an hour on the command deck was sacrosanct.
Alex, appreciating that as much as he was the coffee, blitzed through everything he had to sign, chatted for a few minutes with the watch team, then headed out for his usual walk around the ship. This was something he did two or three times a day. It wasn’t any kind of official inspection, but it was more than merely stretching his legs. There were always people he wanted to see, a subtle agenda to the apparently casual stroll.
This morning, that included pausing to give a word of praise to several members of his crew, give some reassurance and support to a couple of others, and deal with a minor mutiny.
‘But I don’t want to go, skipper.’ Jenni Asforth told him, more earnest and imploring than mutinous. ‘Please don’t make me!’ She attempted a pitiful tone, making her eyes very big and looking as young and helpless as she could contrive, ‘It’s like sending me to hell!’
Alex grinned. He had known Jenni Asforth since she’d come aboard his first ship as a feisty sixteen year old ditched from her first posting for being far, far too free with her opinions, particularly those about the intelligence and competence of officers. She was twenty two now, a highly qualified leading star and one of the backbone members of his crew. Pilot, technician and gun captain, she was also proficient in small arms and unarmed combat, trained as a member of the boarding units which had such a reputation for high speed ferocity. Pitiful and helpless she was not.
‘Good try,’ he commended, acknowledging that she had clearly thought out her strategy here, calculating that such an appeal would have more chance of success than stroppy argument. ‘But you know the rules – unless you have a medical exemption…’ he shrugged eloquently, and Jenni sighed.
The ‘rules’ Alex referred to was the health and safety policy which had everyone going to Oreol for a break. Jenni was one of those who’d hung on till the bitter end, managing several times to arrange swaps so that someone else had gone instead. Now it had come to the crunch and she was due to leave the ship that afternoon.
‘Come on,’ said Alex, secure in the knowledge that he had a priority exemption and wouldn’t have to go, ‘It’s an all-expenses paid luxury holiday, hardly like sending you to hell.’
Jenni gave him a look which said everything she wanted to, and Alex chuckled.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But you have to go.’
Jenni sighed. She had already tried an appeal on the grounds that her high media profile meant she’d be considerably more harassed even than other members of the Fourth and that the trip could not, therefore, be considered in any way restful or beneficial to her
health. It was true that she was one of the most well-known members of the Fourth, followed by the media ever since her dramatic appearance on camera in the Karadon mission. Simon, however, had said frankly that even if she was annoyed and miserable the whole time of her visit at Oreol it would still be beneficial to her to get off the ship for a while, to see bigger spaces and different people, to reframe her perspective.
‘And just think,’ said Alex, with a gleam of mischief, ‘how happy you’ll be to come back.’
Jenni looked at him again. ‘Thanks, skipper,’ she said, with heavy irony, but was unable to resist the merriment in his grin, giving a reluctant chuckle. Even then, though, she hadn’t entirely given up hope. ‘Suppose,’ she ventured, ‘that I just refuse to get on the shuttle. Do I get carried aboard in handcuffs, or what?’
It was apparent to Alex that she was seriously asking whether some kind of deal might be possible, in which she traded off disciplinary proceedings for being allowed to stay on board. Even a month in the brig would be preferable to going to Oreol.
‘No,’ Alex said, with some amusement but with a tone which made it clear that this was not open to negotiation. ‘I would just suspend you from all duties and training.’
Jenni brightened. ‘For how long?’ she queried, hopefully.
‘Until such time,’ said Alex, ‘as you’d complied with health and safety regulations and taken your mandatory leave.’ He let that hang for a moment and then smiled again, gently this time. ‘But I know you wouldn’t push it to that,’ he observed. ‘You’re a leading star, and however tough things may be for you personally I know you’ll set a fine example to the more junior members of the ship’s company.’
Jenni gave him a look of deep reproach. ‘That’s low, skipper,’ she reproved, but held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Okay, okay!’ she conceded. ‘I’ll go!’
‘Thank you,’ said Alex, and with a friendly remark or two, continued on his walk and making his way down to the gym for a scheduled session.
This was one of the conditions under which he’d been given an exemption to the requirement for taking leave off the ship. As mission commander, of course, he had an excellent case for operational priorities overriding normal health and safety regs, but he had accepted, too, that spending months aboard ship, particularly in these conditions, might be detrimental to his health. The ship was basically parked, maintaining fixed orbit below the buoy. They could still do on-board drills and did so, of course, but there were none of the manoeuvres and combat exercises that gave the ship a sense of movement and freedom. They were looking at the same starfield day after day, week after week, and the work Alex himself had to do was mostly sedentary; deskwork and meetings. He had, therefore, agreed to have three gym sessions a week supervised by a fitness coach working under medical guidance. It was not something he enjoyed, but it had to be done. So he turned up on time, gave it full effort and tried to be cheerful.
After that, though, was breakfast, a meal eaten conscientiously away from work. He had breakfast with Buzz, chatting about the latest news from home. Buzz had a large family, as he was part of a group marriage with a horde of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Several of them were in the Fleet and others were merchant spacers, while there always seemed to be some members of the family embarking on intersystem trips. There was always a lot of news from home, for Buzz. Alex on the other hand had only his parents, who never did anything more newsworthy than go on gentle river cruises. He too, though, was getting a lot of mail from home. They’d always sent a conscientious monthly letter telling him about the garden and the little doings of their lives, expressing the hope that he was safe and well and making no comment at all on his career. That had been all the more the case after the PR disaster which had catapulted him into public infamy. They had accepted his explanation that the whole furore about the Fourth was a ludicrous misunderstanding, but finding it distressing to see the sorts of things being said about their son in the media, they had taken his advice too and stopped watching it. So assiduous were they in avoiding any news item relating to him that they had no idea what missions he was undertaking, other than what he chose to tell them himself.
Now, though, that had changed. Everything had changed, after a personal message from the League President had assured them that their son was a hero doing great work for the benefit of the League, even though that could not be reported or publicly known. They had started to watch the news about him again after that, finding that they could deal with the upsetting allegations now that they knew beyond any doubt that there was no truth to them, and serene in their knowledge that he was really doing something wonderful, even if he couldn’t tell them what it was.
Their reaction to the news that their son had discovered an inhabited world beyond the League’s borders went far beyond excited. This, finally, was something they could understand, something stupendous, history-making, glorious. They were now watching the news as avidly as they had once avoided it, writing to their son every day or two and pleading for as much as he could tell them about everything that he was doing. He’d received a letter the day before reacting to his having told them that he’d shown pictures of them and their home to the Carrearranians.
‘My Mum,’ he told Buzz, with a grin, ‘screamed out loud, and my Dad says he sat there for twenty minutes not able to say anything at all.’
Buzz laughed.
‘It’s great to see them so involved, and so happy,’ he said, well aware of the difficulties Alex had had in his relationship with his parents over the years.
‘Sure is,’ Alex said, with a glow of contentment. Strangely, he felt closer to his parents now than he’d been when he’d still lived at home. There’d always been such a gulf between them, a fundamental lack of understanding which had made him seriously wonder as a child whether they were actually his parents at all. ‘I have hopes,’ he said, half seriously, ‘that they might even come for a visit when we head back to Therik.’
They finished breakfast joking about that then went to the morning briefing together. This, a routine meeting on the command deck, rarely lasted more than a few minutes. Everyone was expected to keep themselves up to date with everything that was going on, after all, and Alex didn’t encourage lengthy discussions in such meetings. It was merely a brief confirmation that they were all up to speed and coordination of their plans for the day.
It looked like being a good day, thought Alex. Mission-wise, they had several interesting strands of investigation to follow up. Most importantly, they were homing in on how the ‘singing stones’ communication network the Guardian provided actually worked. They were hoping to get a better look at them today, as a group of villagers had been taught how to make a more highly polished mirror than anything they’d ever made before. With that, it was hoped that they’d be able to see a data-rich reflection of what they knew now to be tall pillars, each with a round face through which the villagers could contact other settlements by touching the numbers which identified them. With the interest of that, and the excitement of waiting for news about Marrill’s baby, there would be no need for Alex to worry about keeping up morale and focus today.
So, he settled to what he expected to be a perfectly ordinary, enjoyable day. At 11.67 he was on the command deck, signing off on correspondence Jun Desmoulin had prepared for him, ready for it to be taken on the courier due to depart at midday.
He was signing the fifth courteous response to a system president offering their advice when it happened.
Comms from Carrearranis broke into screaming. Comms from them arrived in discrete packages, each message transmitted in its entirety rather than in continuous stream. The change was shockingly abrupt – a chatty update on how Marill and her new-born daughter were doing one minute, and panic-stricken yelling the next. It lasted for about three seconds, and then…
‘We’ve lost them, skipper.’ Martine, holding the conn, was ashen, showing him the screen which revealed that all signals fr
om Carrearranis had stopped. They’d been cut off suddenly and absolutely, the entire network gone down.
Alex barely had time to take that in before the next thing happened.
Alerts shrieked, action stations competing with a proximity alarm. The junior officer of the watch, to his eternal embarrassment, pointed at the external scanner screens and yelled. A sympathetic observer might have described it as a cry of astonishment. A less than sympathetic one might have said that he screamed like a baby.
Either way, Alex saw at once what had triggered both the alerts and the moment of panic in the Sub-Lt. Right outside the ship, just a hundred thousand kilometres off their starboard bow, a vessel had arrived.
It had just appeared there, not detected by any of their scanners until it seemed to materialise right out of nowhere. It was huge; easily thirty times the mass of the Heron itself, and very obviously not a human ship. It consisted of three curved arms, like three half crescents intersecting in a triangular arc. It was pale grey and entirely smooth, with no external systems or lights. In the starlight, it had a faint and ghostly radiance.
Solaran, Alex recognised at once. He had seen Solaran ships several times at the X-bases maintained outside League borders. There, the Solarans left their ships and travelled to League worlds aboard specially adapted warships or diplomatic vessels. Despite its size, he knew that there would only be three Solarans aboard, as they always travelled and acted in units of three.
Alex was as startled as any member of his crew, but much better at concealing it. Then, throughout the ship, everyone reacted to the insistent shrieking of the action stations alert. However astonished the officers and crew of the Heron might be, they were so well drilled that the sound of action stations would have had them suiting up and securing the ship regardless. Some, admittedly, took a moment to go wow as they saw the Solaran ship on their scopes, but it was only a moment. Within seconds, everyone was scrambling into suits and racing for their stations. Alex himself got into a suit without ever taking his eyes off the screen. He slapped his feet down onto the suit which the duty rigger thrust into his hands, gave an expert wriggle as it swarmed up his body and was double-checking the seal on the helmet even as he sat down again. The transparent suit moulded itself to him, the helmet effectively invisible from within and the sensors within the gloves so sensitive that it felt the same as touching things bare-handed. They were all, anyway, so at home in survival suits that it felt entirely natural.