Alex could sense Davie’s exhausted resignation as he read that report, with a strong sense by then that Davie was just hanging on desperately in the hope that things would get better when they reached the Fourth.
And they were, too, thanks in part to the instant rapport he and Silvie had discovered, and much more to the way she’d responded to Shion.
It was just twenty minutes later that they came out of the wardroom, laughing and talking. Silvie had put on a Fourth’s shipboard rig without insignia, with soft deck shoes and her hair in a neat braid to comply with freefall safety regs.
Alex had no hesitation in using the open comms system to listen to what they were saying, though he could make no sense of it. As before, both were speaking their own languages – unusual amongst humans, as even when people were multi-lingual they normally picked a language to converse in and stayed with it.
Very few people on the ship could understand what they were saying. Some of them, including Alex himself, had made the effort to learn at least a little Pirrellothian in an attempt to make Shion feel more at home, but none of them had got very far. It was an extremely complex language and Shion had assured them it really wasn’t necessary as she was perfectly happy speaking League Standard. Even fewer of them had learned any quarian, though it was a much easier language to master. It shared many commonalities with one of the root languages of Standard, and most people could puzzle out the meaning of at least some of the words given time to read them, written phonetically.
Silvie, however, spoke colloquial quarian, at speed, with just the occasional tantalising hint of a comprehensible word. Even stranger, though, was what showed up when Alex put the discussion through auto-translate and tried to follow the conversation through subtitles. It looked as if the translator had glitched somehow, interpreting the conversation as:-
Silvie: soft fluffy, never before (laughter). Human snuggle.
Shion: cosy neither – no word. Fabric like…’
Silvie: slick smooth. Colours also (laughter). Brain fuzz!
Shion: (laughter) Twisting!
Whatever this was about, clearly, it was comprehensible only to them. They were, Alex guessed, communicating as much with empathic understanding as with spoken words. Later, he would discover that it had been no more than casual chat about the weirdness of the kinds of bedding humans used groundside and aboard ship. But even as Silvie laughed too at the ‘Twisting!’ remark, they were coming onto the command deck.
As Alex looked across and their eyes met, he and Silvie both broke into happy grins.
‘Hi,’ they said, in the same moment. That wasn’t what Alex had intended to say, at all – he was conscious that he still hadn’t welcomed her aboard the ship yet, a serious omission under both diplomatic and Fleet etiquette. But when their eyes met he knew that there was just no need to say that, she knew she was welcome and such formality would just be ridiculous between them.
It made him laugh, though, to see the care with which she waited to be invited to sit down at the command table – she was making an effort to comply with military protocol, as adorably cute as a small child attempting to salute.
She grinned back, and he knew that she felt that he was absurd but charming, too, getting to his feet and offering her a seat with such deferential courtesy when really he was giggling just like she was. It was, she realised, a game – and a game that Shion was in on, too, as she set them off laughing again by making solemn introductions.
They went to shake hands, but then – they didn’t. Instead Silvie held up her hand to him, palm outward, with fingers slightly spread, and without thinking he copied the gesture, touching fingertips lightly. He knew even as he was doing it that this was a customary greeting amongst quarians, but it just felt very natural between them. As physical contact intensified awareness Alex sensed that crystalline shimmer again, though it was nothing like so overwhelming now, just a lovely sense of light and harmony.
‘I’d like to stay,’ she said, and asked the question even though she knew the answer, ‘Can I?’
‘Of course,’ said Alex, ‘But on conditions.’ He smiled and flashed up a set of screens for her, colour coded. ‘You can access these systems freely,’ he told her, indicating the green list. ‘These,’ he indicated the amber, ‘you can only access with the permission of the watch officer, asked for and given at the time. And these,’ he tapped the red list, ‘are systems you can’t access at all under any circumstances. If you can’t stick to that or if you break the rules, sorry, we will have to ask you to leave the ship.’
‘Understood,’ she said, and pulled off a creditable salute. ‘Captain, sir.’
‘Excellency, ma’am,’ he retorted, and they both laughed. ‘We have the exosuite prepared for you, if you…’ Alex began.
‘No, thanks,’ Silvie assured him. ‘I’ll stay with Shion.’
Shion smiled at him as Alex gave her a questioning glance, and then at Buzz.
‘I’d like to have a second bunk put in my cabin, if that’s okay with you.’
Buzz smiled warmly, recognising that this was, in fact, what both of them wanted, and picking up, too, the tiny fine by me from Alex.
‘As you wish,’ he said, and beamed at the quarian, ‘Do, please, make yourself at home, dear girl.’
‘Oh,’ Silvie seemed to take notice of him for the first time, studying him for a moment and then glancing between him and Alex before commenting, ‘So caring – how lovely. And humans hardly ever seem to love one another like that, even family.’
Alex and Buzz looked at one another and both of them grinned as there was a splutter of hilarity across the command deck and right around the ship.
‘He is like a second father to me,’ Alex agreed, and was not at all embarrassed to say so. ‘And yes, he is very caring – he takes great care of all of us.’
‘His nickname in the Fleet is Uncle Buzz,’ Shion informed her, with a look of affection and gratitude for the man who’d done so much to help her feel welcome and truly a member of the wardroom, and Buzz chuckled.
‘Okay,’ he requested, ‘Don’t make me blush. Just let me know if there is anything that I can do to help you, all right?’
Silvie smiled. ‘Thanks.’ She looked back at Alex. ‘I’d like to go to Telathor,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been reading up about it and it looks much nicer than Chartsey.’
Alex was of the opinion that every world in the League, with the possible exception of Carpania, was nicer than Chartsey. Seeing that, Silvie gave a trill of mirth. ‘Oh! You hate it too?’
‘Loathe the place,’ Alex admitted. ‘And I do think you’ll like Telathor – it’s a beautiful world and the culture is very laid back, friendly and hospitable. In fact I think it’s fair to say that you won’t find a more hospitable people in the League.’
‘Shion said that too,’ Silvie looked pleased, but a little perplexed, too, tilting her head with bird-like alertness. ‘So – why don’t you want to go?’
Alex could only laugh.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I do, really – professionally, I am, genuinely, very pleased to be going there, to do whatever I can to make your visit a success and to represent the League in maintaining good relationships with a member world – that’s an honour, you know. And it is a beautiful world I do want to see. It’s only that personally – well, I don’t enjoy public relations events, parades and receptions and all that. I’ll take pride in them, though, even though there isn’t much pleasure.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Duty.’ She looked at him and laughed again, ‘Duty and Responsibility,’ she recognised, ‘encoded in every cell in your body.’
Alex just grinned as hoots of glee erupted all around the ship again – not a member of the crew who wasn’t glued to the command deck feed. Even the crew who were supposed to be asleep, having been on nightwatch, had been woken up by their mates to see this.
‘Something like that,’ he acknowledged. ‘But I don’t think you could do better than to go to Telathor. So
if you’re happy with that…?’
‘Very happy,’ she agreed, and asked, ‘When can we leave?’
‘We can leave now, no problem,’ Alex said. They had been busy overnight taking aboard all the supplies that the station had been holding for them, and both their VIP passengers had come aboard that morning. He knew that the Telathoran presidential transport and the Fleet patrol ship were standing ready to leave, too. ‘Only…’ he looked at her enquiringly. ‘Would you like to see us blow some stuff up?’
The delight on her face was answer enough, and he laughed again, giving a nod.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Give us about half an hour.’
She used that time to go around the ship. Shion took her on the required safety tour, Silvie having commented that she would rather not be shown around by the rather odd man who wanted to be a tree.
There were, of course, as they went around, some Incidents. Alex had warned his crew to expect them and had asked that they do their best to ‘rise above with due dignity’ any comments which Silvie might make. They were to remember, he said, that such comments were made without malice
It was fair to say, though, that just about everyone on the Heron was secretly hoping that there would be some hilarious embarrassments as she went around the ship.
Debates ensued, afterwards, in attempts to rank the incidents in a top ten of Silvie’s first day aboard. Right up there in contention for the top three were her introductions to Lt Commander Sartin, Petty Officer Howard and Able Star Emil Trelawney.
Lt Commander Jonas Sartin was their second Lt and blue watch commander. He was also their resident Internal Affairs officer and the Finance officer – a busy man, but he handled all his various responsibilities as calmly as if he had only one job to do and that a steady, routine one. He even managed somehow to find time to direct the Heron’s choir. Their weekly practice sessions occasionally had to be held on the command deck, but ‘Old Certain’ was nothing if not an expert multitasker.
When Silvie was introduced to him she gazed at him in amazement for a couple of seconds and then gave a whoop and enthusiastic applause.
‘So cool!’ she exclaimed, and told him, ‘Your mind is like…’ she gestured with both hands, making rapid mechanical movements and busy engine noises, ‘click, bzzz, tickaticka ping! And soaring wings – oh, that’s music!’ she gave him a look of delight. ‘Beautiful!’
She left the Lt Commander speechless, with the ‘click, bzzz, tickaticka ping!’ description entering instantly into shipboard legend, an in-joke that would go on for years.
Her reaction to Petty Officer Howard was even funnier. He had joined the ship at Therik as a high-flyer secondee, with them for a year to acquire a range of qualifications denied to him in regular service. He liked to portray himself as a hard man, muscling up in the gym and declaring that he had no time for any kind of ‘touchy feely rubbish’. He was, however, very good at his job, always fair and considerate in practical matters. He was well liked, too, as the Heron’s crew recognised, even if he didn’t realise it himself, that his bullish manner was no more than camouflage to cover his high intelligence and sensitivity.
When he met Silvie he was doing his best to prevent her seeing how he felt by imagining a duralloy bulkhead between them. This only had the effect of drawing her attention to him, as she could see the hammering on that bulkhead from the person who was desperate to get out.
She went straight to him and gave him a hug.
‘It’s all right,’ she comforted. ‘Everything will be fine.’ Then she drew back a little and looked at him with complete, sympathetic understanding. ‘Come on,’ she said, seeing that he really needed to speak. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I write poetry!’ the words blurted out before he could make any conscious decision about it. It was as if these secrets had been coiled up inside him like powerful springs, and now that the pressure was off they boinged out into the open, unstoppable. ‘And I’m scared of birds! Bugs, too, big bugs, anything that flies at you. And,’ the words tore out with an anguished note, ‘I killed a bird! I didn’t mean to! It just flew at me and I hit at it with my gym bag and it just… it haunts me, the way the poor little thing hit the ground and struggled there trying to flap its wings…’ he was close to tears and Silvie moved back in to give him another hug.
‘You didn’t mean it,’ she said, and surrounded him with a sense of warmth and comfort as she deposited the lightest of butterfly kisses on his forehead. ‘Kiss it better,’ she explained.
Petty Officer Howard gazed at her with adoring eyes, then seemed to realise all at once where they were, and that everyone on the ship had just heard what he’d said.
‘Oh,’ he said, and would have said another word too if Fleet training hadn’t held. But then he saw that though people around were grinning, they looked sympathetic, too. And Silvie grinned, able to see what he could not – that he had far more friends there than he’d ever imagined.
She was right, too – though there was, of course, considerable hilarity over it and the ‘I write poetry!’ went straight to the top of the Incident chart, PO Howard got many words of support, a lot of shoulder punches and even some hugs. As the day wore on he would realise not only that he was better liked now than he had been before, but that there had been no loss of respect, either. So he, at least, came out of the encounter with Silvie a winner.
The same might not be said for Able Star Emil Trelawney. He had been with the ship for some months, now; an earnest, hard-working young man with an impeccable record. He was quite shy, generally on the outside of groups and only included in conversations when people remembered to draw him in, but perfectly happy with that.
It was, perhaps, unlucky that at the time when Silvie met him, Sub-lt Field was also present. It wasn’t that much of a coincidence, though – when she wasn’t being the skipper’s bodyguard, Luci Field was in charge of the missile department. A/S Trelawney was a missile tech and was often in the department even when he wasn’t on duty, as he was studying for advanced qualifications which involved a good deal of practical work. Such practicals were routinely supervised by the department head so it was perfectly normal for Emil to schedule his practicals for when Luci Field would be working in the department anyway. Nobody had even suspected for a moment that there was anything more to it than that.
Not till Silvie was shown into the missile room, anyway. She took one look at the crewman and then across at the Sub-lt before looking back at Emil Trelawney with a mystified air.
‘But why don’t you just tell her?’ she marvelled, seeing just as clearly that Luci Field had no idea of the crewman’s feelings. ‘Humans! Why would you hide that you love someone?’
As the others in the missile room saw who Silvie looked at, with that, faces turned to amazement and mischievous delight.
Then, as Luci Field also realised what Silvie was talking about, she turned and looked at Emil just as he looked at her with agonised appeal.
Their eyes met and Silvie cooed with pleasure.
‘That’s it,’ she encouraged them, and was surprised then when Shion took her by the hand and led her out of the missile room before she could say any more. Shion was laughing but removed her very quickly, reminding her as they went that crew of any rank were not allowed to engage in intimate relationships aboard ship, and officers were not supposed to have relationships with crew at all.
‘But that’s cruel,’ Silvie protested.
‘It’s military discipline,’ said Shion, and grinned as she saw on a comscreen that Luci Field and Emil Trelawney were still standing speechless, now both very red in the face.
They left Kavenko as soon as Silvie had finished her tour, which finished back on the command deck.
They certainly left on a high note, followed from the station by virtually every ship which had been in orbit there. Many of them had brought passengers from the station, too, eager for the opportunity to watch the Fourth blowing stuff up. Alex had accepted the offer of th
e starseekers for target practice. He had also issued the necessary documentation to dispose of the Billy Bob.
They were quite a sight as they led the convoy away from the station, the Fourth’s squadron with the Customs ship on station to starboard and the Excorps ship to port. They were being followed by more than a hundred ships, the little media craft whizzing about them to get the best coverage.
A good quarter of an hour away from the station, and well out of any shipping lanes, the Fourth spent a few minutes organising the convoy into a holding circle, promising that they would get an excellent view from there and warning that they would abort the firing if any ship crossed the line into the display zone. Nobody argued, though they had the constitutional right to go wherever they wanted in intersystem space and the Fourth had no right to give such orders at all. It was understood, though, that this was something special, a show the Fourth was putting on for them, so everyone complied.
Then, when everyone was ready, the Heron signalled all ships with a piece of music – the Danyevo recording of Vusper’s Galaxtric Suite, third movement – with a cue to start playing it.
‘On our mark… two, one… mark.’
The squadron put on a breath-taking combat display with close-order manoeuvres which made the spacers gasp and spectacular broadsides which made the civilians yell. Fighters span and danced with balletic grace. That was something which would trickle through the League’s news network and cause mild interest on worlds where the Fourth was a minor item in the ‘And in offworld news…’ category.
It would rip through the Fleet, though, with the force of a shrapnel grenade. This was the kind of thing which divided the Fleet in their opinions of the Fourth. Younger and more progressive members would have nothing but admiration for the sheer artistry and superlative skills in that display. Others would regard the idea of warships performing to music as anathema, appalling, wholly undignified, a disgrace to the Fleet. Alex was well aware that the Old School Fleet would be spitting vitriol over it for months to come, but that was their default state where the Fourth was concerned anyway so he didn’t let it worry him. This – choreographing to music – was something which Shion had introduced, as she’d found it helpful in teaching pilots to find a natural balance and grace in handling the swarms.
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