Carrearranis (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 5)

by S MacDonald

  ‘I, Tanlen Cerle Deit Ganhauser, do declare and assert that I witness this Codicil…’

  He too gave the witness declaration without needing to look at the prompt, essentially certifying that he knew Alex von Strada to be who he said he was, then signed in the appropriate place. Buzz, in his turn, made the same declaration and added the second required signature, and with that, the thing was done.

  ‘Am I understanding this right?’ one of the civilian observers asked Mako, as the ship went back to work with a cheerful buzz. ‘Did he just change the law?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Mako, happily. ‘Well – sort of,’ he qualified, and having thought about it some more, ‘Actually, no.’ He laughed at the confusion he was causing, and did his best to explain. ‘He’s not actually changing the law, the Homo Sapiens Identification Act still stands, as is, not one word of it has changed. A Codicil is like an extra bit tagged on, like an extra clause… like a PS, yes,’ he agreed, as another of the observers suggested that, helpfully. ‘It’s something all system presidents can do, if they feel that something is so important and urgent that it can’t wait for a proposal for amendment to go through the normal Senate processes. It is a big thing, presidents don’t do it lightly, but they can make what is effectively a temporary emergency law on their own authority, which is effective immediately. Only, you see, it then has to be sent straight to the Senate and they then have the right to decide whether to ratify, to accept it, to change it or to reject it entirely. Whatever they decide, then, the president who issued the Codicil has to accept. Because it is so sensitive and you can’t have presidents on different worlds firing off contradictory Codicils, the Diplomatic Corps is always involved and one of the witnesses has to be the League Ambassador. The other, traditionally, is the Speaker of the System Senate. It’s a bit different here, of course, but the skipper has the same powers as if he was a system president and because an envoy is also an ambassador, he just has to have two witnesses of probity and senior standing to swear that he is who he says he is, has the right to sign the codicil and has done so with all due diligence, etc. It is a big thing, obviously, huge, he’s just moved the line which defines what it means to be human, doesn’t get much more fundamental than that. And that is effective right now, and will be until we hear back from the Senate whether they’ve approved it or not.’

  Alex explained this to the Carrearranians, too.

  ‘I can’t change the rules permanently,’ he said. ‘Only the Senate can do that. But I can change them for now and then the Senate will decide. We won’t know that for at least two months. I can’t promise that they will agree. The best that I can do is to tell you that, for now, I have changed the rule to agree that you are human, like us.’

  ‘Do you think they will agree?’ Arak asked, looking closely at him.

  ‘I think so,’ said Alex, who knew very well that they would. He had framed it for the Senate in very simple terms. If they ratified the Codicil, bending the rules a bit to bring the Carrearranians into the homo sapiens fold, then they could proceed on the basis that they were dealing with a human world, with none of the public safety issues or future complications of having to conceal that Carrearranians were a different species. If they refused to ratify it then they would be the ones who had to deal with the ensuing mess. Alex had every faith in the Senators coming down on the side of the easy, workable option. And the fact that it really was a critical issue for the mission, too, with evidence that refusing it would have serious long term consequences for that relationship, would give it the impetus of need. ‘I think they probably will, or I wouldn’t have done this. But I can’t say definitely, you see, it’s…’

  ‘S’cuse.’ Silvie budged into his call this time rather than taking it over, popping herself in on a subscreen. ‘I can,’ she told the Carrearranians. ‘Trust me on this; he’s as certain as he can be – short of them all going mad there, they’ll be grateful to sign this because it solves a lot of problems for them too.’

  ‘Thank you, Silvie,’ Alex said, with significant emphasis. Silvie laughed and gave him a playful salute, but she still had one more thing to say.

  ‘It’s a good solution,’ she told the islanders. ‘And the best, realistically, that you are going to get.’

  She gave them a thumbs up and flicked out of the screen.

  ‘I just wonder how much of their acceptance was due to my explanation,’ Alex said, a little later when the conference call had ended with a consensus that that was fair enough, though they didn’t understand why Alex couldn’t have done that in the first place. ‘And how much down to Silvie.’

  Buzz smiled. ‘Seemed like pretty good teamwork to me.’

  Alex looked rather taken aback, at which Buzz clarified, ‘I know you didn’t ask for her support and wouldn’t have asked her to disclose how you were feeling even if you had asked her to help, but you didn’t actually need to ask, or to discuss it. Silvie knew perfectly well that you wanted her to reassure the Carrearranians that this solves the problem, and she knew you wouldn’t mind her telling them how confident you are about it, too, even though you wouldn’t and couldn’t commit yourself to giving them a guarantee. She did just what you were hoping she would – and I call that good teamwork, myself.’

  Alex conceded the point with a grin – they were talking in the privacy of his cabin, or would not have been talking like that at all. But then, just as he was about to comment that Silvie had been a step ahead of him in her first interruption, an alert went off.

  It was the medical emergency alert, fortunately very rarely heard other than in drills. It took Alex only a moment to look at the screen and see that this emergency was on Carrearranis – Rangi had declared it and was requesting authorisation to launch the snatch pod.

  Alex saw the Category Seven status, the word choking, and hit the authorisation in virtually the same moment. Category seven meant that the patient was dying and would do so without rapid medical intervention. Choking spoke for itself.

  As the converted shuttle spat off the airlock and hurtled at the planet, though, Alex was able to take in what was happening. The patient was a thirty two year old woman from one of the larger islands. It was evening, there, night had just fallen and families would be gathered round their fires to share a meal. She had choked on a fishbone, failed to cough it clear, struggled to breathe and collapsed while they were pounding her on the back. There were at least a hundred people crowded in and around the house, some shouting instructions while others were in tears. The chief had come running and had used his newly-acquired wristcom to call the ship for help.

  Rangi was trying to help, giving calm, clear instructions, but in the dark, overcrowded house, with all the noise and emotion, there was nobody there able to follow the instructions he was giving. The village healer was trying to get people to hold the woman upside down by her ankles, while her husband was clutching her, shouting her name. ‘Meret! Meret!’ An attempt by the patient’s sister to do as Rangi said, to get behind her, put her fist into Meret’s diaphragm and jerk up hard, was misunderstood as a hysterical attempt to drag her away from the healer, so she was promptly pulled away.

  Seeing that the chaos was escalating, Rangi resorted to strong measures. He sounded a horn through the comm which was so loud and so piercing that several people flinched and clapped their hands over their ears. In the ensuing moment of bewildered silence, Rangi took charge.

  ‘All right, quiet, all of you!’ He was, people said later, channelling Simon – certainly he seemed very unlike the dreamy, boyish Rangi they were used to. His voice rapped out, a tone that expected to be obeyed. ‘Sangay, you.’ This was the patient’s sister, currently struggling in the arms of a couple of villagers and protesting ineffectually that Rangi had told her what to do. ‘Timor, hold her up…’ This to the village healer. ‘On her feet,’ Rangi insisted. ‘Not her head.’

  While this was being done, he spoke again to Sangay, telling her again what to do, clearly and in detail, while showing h
er the manoeuvre.

  It took three attempts before she got it right, and Meret certainly wouldn’t be thanking her for the bruises she had, next day, but at the third attempt Meret gave a great heave and coughed out the bone.

  Seeing her take a painful whoop of breath, Rangi let out a quick sigh of relief, himself.

  ‘Abort pod,’ he said, changing the patient’s status to category two, a first aid case. So the shuttle, which had even then been burning through the upper atmosphere, swooped about and dived right back out into space.

  ‘Well done, Dr Tekawa,’ Alex said later, having asked Rangi to come to the command deck.

  ‘Oh – thank you, skipper,’ Rangi returned his handshake with a sunny smile. ‘I was really pleased with the pod response,’ he said, ‘even though it turned out that we didn’t need it, the response was excellent.’ He was not congratulating himself, with that, but the team which had handled the launch and particularly the pilot who’d operated it by remote – not Shion, today, but the fighter-trained pilot who’d been manning the snatch pod controls for that watch. ‘I’d like my appreciation for PO Jerman’s piloting to be noted.’

  ‘So noted, and yes, the pod response was excellent,’ Alex said. ‘But I meant you. What you did there, teaching someone to do a diaphragm jerk on a suffocating patient, that was good. Doing it in those conditions, though, in darkness, yelling and confusion, that was impressive.’ He smiled as Rangi looked first surprised and then abashed. ‘I really think,’ said Alex, ‘that it’s about time you changed those…’ he indicated the Sub-lt’s pips on Rangi’s collar, ‘for a couple of stars.’ He paused for just a moment to let Rangi take that in, and smiled. ‘Lieutenant.’

  Rangi caught his breath. He had a medical officer’s commission and the medical branch of the Fleet had already approved his being promoted to Lt more than a year ago – his holding the post of medic on a frigate while still a Sub was an anomaly in itself and only possible at all because the ship was on irregular service, and the Fleet’s medical corps had been keen to regularise it. Alex, however, had held back the promotion – it wasn’t, he’d told Rangi, any reflection on his ability as a medic, which was top rate, but before he agreed to him holding a lieutenancy he wanted to see the qualities of leadership and command ability appropriate for a Lt. Rangi hadn’t minded. He knew very well that he was a dreamer and better at coaxing than commanding, and it wasn’t as if rank was important to him anyway.

  This though, this meant something, because Rangi had, without even realising it himself, matured into a confident officer who could not only take clear charge in a crisis but not think anything of taking charge in a crisis.

  ‘Thank you, skipper!’ he said, and shook hands again, this time with bone crushing intensity.

  He was still celebrating, going around the ship so that everyone could admire his new insignia, when Tan Ganhauser encountered the ghost.

  Seventeen

  The Ghost of Cabin Fifteen, as it would inevitably come to be called, crept into Tan’s awareness with a gossamer touch.

  It was late evening, heading towards midnight, and Tan was sitting at his desk. He was in the habit of settling himself for the night with a comfortable routine – first, as then, he would spend a few minutes writing his personal journal with some calm music on. Tonight it was Arlberg’s fifth symphony, a complex piece with a pleasing motif which he hummed along with every time it recurred. ‘Ahhheeee eedahee, pom pom…’

  He became aware as he was singing along under his breath that the cabin seemed to be becoming a little chilly – quite a marked drop in temperature, in fact, as if it had dropped several degrees in just moments. Glancing at the environmental settings, though, he saw that it was reading normal.

  Then it happened. A chill brushed the back of his neck, icy as the breath from a glacier.

  Tan was a spacer. He’d spent more time on starships than many serving Fleet officers. He whirled around urgently, feeling himself shiver but focussing all his attention on identifying the source of that air movement. Draughts on a starship were an indicator that something was very wrong, with the potential for explosive blowout.

  There was nothing there. No alarms were sounding, as they certainly would be if even the tiniest failure of pressurisation had been detected. He turned off the music and listened. He could hear his own breathing; no hiss of escaping air.

  Tan waited for a minute, but when nothing else happened he told himself that he must have been imagining things, and went back to his journal.

  When he’d done, he went into his sleeping cabin. The door to this was of the folding kind and set to auto, so it concertinaed out of his way as he approached. Once in his sleeping cabin, showered and changed into his pyjamas, Tan made himself a bedtime drink. This was the one indulgence he had allowed himself even on the courier, taking a supply with him as his luxury item. His nightcap of choice was a malted health drink, packed with nutrients which it claimed would both promote slumber and assist your body in detoxification during sleep. It was, however, sold as a beverage and not as a medicine. The brand Tan favoured went by the rather uninspiring name of Maltodream.

  Tan made it as he always did, placing a tiny Maltodream pellet into his drink maker. It was a one-cup maker, a mug with a cap lid. Adding water to the mug and a pellet into the cap, Tan pressed lightly and waited the few seconds for it to work. The pellet was crushed to fine powder, the water heated to the correct temperature and the two combined, an air-whisk frothing the mixture.

  He was vaguely absorbed in waiting for his drink, anticipating that first taste of what the packet described as Creamy Malty Goodness, when he became aware that the door had opened behind him. It was almost subliminal; a feeling of open space behind him and perhaps a very slight change in the air, a whiff of Rangi’s aromatherapy scents from the daycabin.

  He looked around, wondering who would be coming into his sleeping cabin without the manners to knock. The door was open and remaining open, but there was nobody there. A glance through into the daycabin confirmed it. Nobody there, and himself not in the auto-open range.

  Like all shipboard tech, the door was multi-interface, with optic, audio and tactile controls in addition to the auto settings. Tan used the optic, looking directly at the door close control for the half second it took for that to register a deliberate gaze.

  The door closed.

  Well, glitches did happen, even on the best run starships. If it had been a pressure door, Tan would have reported it immediately. Since it was, though, only a folding screen door, it would wait till the morning.

  Taking the cap from his mug and setting it down to become a grav-safe coaster, he took a long swig of warm frothy Creamy Malty Goodness and gave a satisfied ahhh. Then he got into bed to finish it there. This too was part of the cosy routine, finishing the drink sitting up in bed then sliding himself down to settle. He thought of it as going to sleep in stages, winding down from the active day to the tranquil night.

  He sat, mug cradled in both hands, not allowing his well-trained mind to think of anything more demanding than how comfortable he was and how much he was going to enjoy a long peaceful sleep.

  The door opened again. He saw it open and could see at once that there was nobody there. Repressing a momentary irritation, he used the optic again and this time looked pointedly at the control for lock. The door status on the little panel above it changed to locked, and Tan resumed his winding down routine. Arlberg’s Fifth was quieter now, the player muting it as Tan got into bed. When he settled down, the lights would dim and the music drop to no more than a faint soundtrack to his dreams.

  It did so as he set his empty mug aside and snuggled down into the bunk. Now it was so quiet, though, Tan could hear something else – something like a mouse.

  He turned off the music and could hear it clearly, then, though it was very quiet and the sound seemed oddly remote. It was as if someone was stroking a surface, fingernails catching at it sometimes so there were little scratching sounds.<
br />
  It took him a few seconds to realise that the sound was coming from the door. From the other side of the door.

  That should not be possible. Even folding screen doors had privacy fields, like the panels on bunks themselves which could be set for soundproofing. The default setting on doors was for a level of privacy at which someone would need to touch the override panel to be heard knocking or calling through it, and Tan had not changed that.

  But there it was, the noise was there and there was nothing making it on this side of the door so it must be coming from the other side. Someone must have their hand on the override, scratching lightly at his door, perhaps to see if he was awake without disturbing him if he was already asleep.

  A look at the optics unlocked and opened the door. He was not really surprised to see that there was nobody there. The noise stopped.

  ‘Tuh,’ said Tan, and having closed and locked the door again, settled himself firmly into bed, music resumed, eyes shut.

  He had been there for a few minutes and was in that pleasant state of drifting and dozing when that same icy breath he’d felt on his neck came wafting into his face. The effect of it, jolting him out of his doze in the darkened cabin, was a shock that made his heart beat faster. And then, as he looked to see where that freezing air had come from, he saw it.

  There was a hand on the door. In the door. A hand, pushing through the door itself. It was perfectly clear – a small hand with slender, tapering fingers, spread slightly and angled just as if someone was standing the other side of the door and pushing through the surface. Palm, thumb and fingers were standing out, their edges sharply defined – no bulge as if someone was pushing a hand into an elastic material, but a solid cast.

  Tan stayed absolutely still for several seconds, then made a galvanic movement and stabbed at his wristcom, activating a powerful torch.

  The laser-bright beam focussed on the hand, wobbling a little but very clear and bright. If it had been a hologram, that light would have shown up translucency in it.