Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘Oh, did I forget?’ Alex assumed an air of mildly apologetic innocence, taking a classified tape from his pocket and offering it to him with a little flourish. ‘Your orders.’

  Davie’s eyes narrowed, but he took the tape without comment and swiped it onto a screen. Then, after the half second it took him to read the contents, he burst out laughing. This, too, was signed by the president – not orders, in fact, but a request that Mr North, in his role as an accredited goodwill ambassador with the exodiplomacy service, render all possible assistance to the Fourth Fleet Irregulars in their mission. To this end, the president attached a legal exemption, passed by the Senate Sub Committee and also countersigned by Dix Harangay, to the rules requiring Mr North to be treated as a juvenile.

  ‘Yes!’ Davie punched the air gleefully and turned it into a playful salute in one rapid movement. ‘I’m in!’ He was, too – named in the orders as an official diplomatic consultant, with the same rights of access to information and meetings as a ship’s officer.

  Alex grinned. He had no qualms about taking Davie with them on such a mission – this was, after all, quite literally what Davie North Delaney had been born for. Designed for. His father had not bioengineered him on a whim. He had seen a need for humanity to have a representative in relationship building with the far more advanced species beyond the Firewall. His multicognitive off-the-scale intellect and physical attributes had been engineered to create the perfect exo-diplomat.

  They’d got that right, too. Davie had first met Solarans when he was six years old, having proven that he knew both language and culture at least as well as any Diplomatic Corps ambassador. He had raced in, too, when Shion arrived at X-Base Amali, spending months there with her. It was due to him that Shion was so fluent in their language and knew so much about their culture. It had, in fact, been at his suggestion that she’d come to serve with the Fourth.

  Neither the Diplomatic Corps nor the president had been able to understand that – at one point, Davie had been extremely forthright even with the president himself for the way he was trashing the relationship, trying to push Shion into the high powered ambassadorial role they considered more appropriate. Since then, the advantages of letting Davie do things his way had become apparent. Someone, clearly, had realised how much he could help in this situation, too.

  Alex would put money on that someone being none other than President Tyborne himself. Senator Machet had commented once, while travelling with them, that people often underrated Marc Tyborne. True, she said, he was a self-centred, self-serving blimp with a highly overinflated view of his own abilities, but he did have a couple of things going for him. One was credibility, as that loud self-importance played very well as presidential gravitas. The other was that he had an instinctive ability to spot people who would make him look good by getting things done.

  ‘Congratulations, Mr North,’ Alex said, sincerely. This was a major step for Davie, after all – not just allowed to have an active role in exodiplomacy, but asked to officially as diplomatic consultant on a major undertaking.

  ‘Thanks,’ Davie said, and as he was simultaneously reading the briefing that had come with his presidential request, gave a wicked twinkle, ‘Your Excellency.’

  Alex pointed a stern finger at him. ‘Don’t start!’ he warned, though he grinned again as he answered the looks of startled enquiry from Buzz and the other officers. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘I’m a Presidential Envoy again – for the duration, this time.’

  Last time the appointment had been a conditional one, activated only in case of absolute necessity. Alex had held active Presidential Envoy status, in fact, for no more than one hour and twenty seven minutes. It had frightened the daylights out of him at the time and wasn’t something he felt the least bit comfortable with now. It was power way beyond his rank, an appointment that would outrank even admirals or senior ambassadors and require system presidents to give him the same reception as a visiting head of state. ‘It’s only to give me the authority to negotiate, as laid down in orders,’ he explained. ‘And nobody, okay, is to do the ‘Excellency’ thing.’ His gaze travelled from Buzz, around the officers, to rest on Davie again.

  ‘Aye aye, cap’n,’ said Davie, flicking him a grin, still reading. Alex didn’t react. Davie had been teasing him by calling him ‘Captain’ while he’d been a skipper. Now he actually was a captain Davie was trying out other forms of address. He would continue to do so, no doubt, till he found one that was bantering but not really aggravating. Alex, after all, continued to call him ‘Mr North’, keeping a professional distance for all that they were obviously friends. ‘Hah!’ There was no pause, but it was apparent that Davie was reacting, there, to something he was reading. The Diplomatic Corps had provided him with their usual brick-thick briefing. It would be the same one they’d sent for Alex. Davie was skimming pages so fast they were a blur, but Alex knew that he’d be reading every word and would be able to repeat the entire thing verbatim, too. By the look of it he was already about a quarter of the way through the eight hundred page document. ‘What is it with these people?’ Davie wondered, in a long-suffering tone. ‘Don’t they ever learn?’ Then, skimming through the following section, ‘And when has that ever worked?’ He glanced over at Alex. ‘Advice from the Dippies,’ he informed him, sardonically. ‘Set up an encounter space ‘reflecting Samartian culture’ and provide hospitality that ‘fosters a comfort zone.’’ Do I need to tell you why that is a very bad idea?’

  Alex laughed. He too had vivid memories of Shion’s reaction to the Diplomatic Corps’ attempts to create a Hall of Veils encounter zone aboard the president’s ship, and of the dinner they’d hosted for her, too, in an evident attempt to make her feel at home. That could, Davie had told them at the time, be written up in Diplomatic handbooks as an example of how not to undertake exodiplomacy; a crass attempt to imitate a highly sophisticated culture.

  ‘No,’ Alex confirmed. ‘And I will, of course, appreciate your advice on how we should set up encounters. But we will have plenty of time to consider all that sort of thing – it will take us eight weeks even to get to the supply drop, and at least another twelve to get to Samart.’

  ‘I know,’ Davie answered, resignedly. ‘Function at the speed of the team.’ That sounded like something Shion might have told him, perhaps in discussion over how she coped with it herself, working with people who were so very much slower than she was. ‘And I wasn’t advising, just saying.’ He’d reached the appendices by then – attached files which contained all the information they had on Samart. ‘Seriously, that’s it?’ Davie was flicking through files, his manner becoming incredulous. ‘Come on! There’s got to be more!’ He opened another file and incredulity became indignation. ‘That is not a language file! You can not call that a language file!’

  Alex looked at himself and had to agree that it did seem somewhat Spartan. The Prisosans had begun to despair of ever being able to exchange comprehensible comms with the Samartians at all. For the longest time, the only recordings they’d been able to bring back of Samartian broadcasts at them had consisted of indecipherable electronic shrieks. No amount of analysis had found any pattern in it, until some sixteen years before when a League professor had deciphered it. If you played it through an analogue converter in base four, he discovered, it was possible to determine that the signal represented hieroglyphics. He had translated these phonetically, with some reference to ancient languages and a good deal of guesswork, to read ‘kanta jay oris aballen.’ Quite what that meant had been the subject of debate ever since, amongst the rarified community of exo-linguists. From context, given that it was broadcast at ships moments before missiles and guns opened fire, it seemed likely to be something along the lines of ‘turn around immediately or we will destroy you’. Beyond that, such language prediction as there was could only be described as highly speculative.

  ‘Our orders do say,’ Alex pointed out, drawing Davie’s attention to the briefing provided by Dix Harangay, ‘that there
may be something helpful in the information the Gider have passed on at the Embassy III. They’re going to send us that, and a linguist to help with it too, if they can get one.’

  Davie did not look impressed.

  ‘We’re still going in blind,’ he complained, and as Shion too came onto the command deck, addressed her. ‘I hope you know more than this,’ he commented, frankly. ‘How they have the nerve to call this Intelligence Reports is beyond me.’

  ‘Sorry – don’t think I can be much help on this one.’ Shion’s answer was also directed to Alex, and it was him she was looking at as she came to the table. ‘Is there one of those president’s requests for me, too?’

  ‘No,’ Alex reassured her, fully understanding her anxiety in that. ‘You’re a serving officer,’ he pointed out. ‘It is taken as read that you will assist with operations as appropriate to your rank. If you have any information you can contribute, you can do so in briefing just like any other officer. Nobody is expecting, or asking, for you to take on diplomatic role, Shion.’

  ‘Oh, good.’ She sighed with relief. ‘But honestly, skipper, I don’t think I know anything that could be of any help.’

  ‘No matter,’ said Alex, easily, and smiled. ‘We’ll figure it out between us all.’

  They made a good start on that in the command briefing. They spent about an hour going through their orders in detail, Alex laying out a three phase plan. The first part was very easy – all they had to was cruise across the League, staying out of shipping lanes, to pick up their supplies.

  ‘Part of the delivery will be food supplies, giving us a full eight months patrol range. There is a note on that, by the way, from Admiral Harangay, assuring me that they will not forget the coffee.’

  That raised some chuckles – they’d run out of decent coffee on the Gide operation and had to spend weeks drinking the truly awful Fleet issue microtabs.

  ‘Most of the delivery, though, is described as ‘diplomatic goodwill gifts’,’ Alex told them. ‘Which were not sent aboard at Therik, obviously, in case anyone started wondering what possible use we could have for such things. There are some works of art, I gather, and items for a cultural exhibit.’

  ‘Pvvvv!’ said Davie, with eloquent disdain. ‘Well, we could give them that, sure. Or we could just paint a big sign on the ship saying, ‘Hi! We’re total jessies!’ As all the officers looked at him, most with expressions of bewilderment, he told them, with studied patience, ‘One of the very few things we do know about this culture is that it is highly militarised, right? All about the honour and the glory. If we are going to stand any chance of building a relationship with them we will have to win their respect. I do not feel that would be helped by giving them a bunch of pots and paintings.’ He saw Alex’s own patient look being directed at him. ‘Just saying.’

  Alex nodded.

  ‘We will consider that in detail at the proper time,’ he said, which made Davie give a little chuckle and acknowledging play-salute. ‘For now, though, we just need a general outline, a frame of reference to build on as our plans evolve. So – phase one, straightforward, run dark and pick up supplies. At that point we will part company with the Stepeasy. It would not, after all, make the desired impression for us to turn up at Samart along with a civilian yacht – inappropriate, confusing, just not on. I can’t actually stop the Stepeasy following us over the border and into the Ranges, of course, but I can tell you now that if they do so, and refuse to turn back, I would abort the mission.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Davie said, amused. ‘I’ll send them off under whatever orders you want.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex gave him another nod, this time of approval. ‘So, at that point we go into phase two, the Van Damek traverse. This, obviously, is why we have been chosen for this mission – one of the reasons, at least. Some of you may remember how impressed Senator Machet was with the potential of the wave space topography scanner Dr Naos installed, and I for one remember her giving a hmmn when I explained that it would need several years of further field-trials before we’d be allowed to use it for traversing nebula or dirty space. And here we are – the Sub Committee, on Senator Machet’s recommendation, has authorised us using that system operationally, at my discretion. Lt Commander Norsten is with us as an expert on that system, and he will be our astrogator during the Van Damek.’

  He did not need to explain to his officers or crew that the Fleet called any traverse of previously uncharted space a ‘Van Damek’ in honour of the League’s greatest explorer. Nor did he have to tell them that even the Exploration Corps would hesitate to send a ship through the Ranges. The Heron was the first League ship in history to be equipped with a system that made it possible for them to attempt that.

  Gunny Norsten, who had been invited to join them at the briefing, gave a placid smile as people looked at him. If you were going to trust anyone to navigate you through a nebula, it would be Gunny. He had a calm, quietly intelligent confidence that made it clear he knew exactly what he was doing.

  ‘I don’t want to diminish that as a challenge, or dismiss the risks involved,’ Alex said. ‘But those of us who took part in the Van Damek at Tolmer’s Drift will know what to expect. We were skimming the outskirts of nebula rather than traversing within it, but this will be a very similar environment, following canyons on the usual common sense rule that you don’t go down a canyon further than there’s room to turn your ship around and get back out. We’ll be staying as close as we can to this route.’ He indicated the highlighted theoretical route on the star chart of the Ranges nebula. ‘It isn’t the quickest, geographically, but it keeps us buried deep in nebula almost all the way. That’s important in establishing a route that other ships could follow. Marfikian ships do not have the ability to traverse this kind of space, so that gives us an edge, at least for a while.’

  Everyone knew what he meant. The never-ending arms race with the Marfikians followed the same pattern, again and again, of the League developing some edge technology only for the Marfikians to match it, fast.

  ‘The feeling is, evidently,’ said Alex, ‘that we have to make the best possible use of this edge while we have it. Samart is the obvious objective for that, too. We can use the stealth capacity the topographic scanner gives us to slip around Marfikian space. That’s estimated as a twelve week run; in fact it may take us anything from nine to twenty weeks. My orders are that if we’re not half way through at the end of ten weeks, we are to turn back. Assuming we do get through, though, we will emerge into Samartian space, entering phase three.’

  He smiled. ‘Just to clarify, this is not first contact. Officially, first contact with Samart was made eighteen hundred and forty two years ago by an Exploration Corps ship. They were following up green world indicators from deep space observation. It wasn’t a successful encounter – the Excorps ship was intercepted as they approached the system. We don’t have any recordings of that – all the data there was got deleted centuries ago in an archive purge.’

  ‘Idiots,’ said Davie, clearly as annoyed by that as if it had only just happened. The Families, for sure, would never delete historical archives.

  ‘Well, you know – post millennium,’ Alex said, which got a quick, appreciative grin from Davie. It had been Davie himself who’d told Alex about the various ages of the League as it had evolved. There had been a great drive for modernising after they’d celebrated the first thousand years since the Constitution, a widespread feeling that it was time to draw a line under that, now, and build anew. Some historians referred to it as the Vandal era, because of all the ancient buildings that were torn down, artworks discarded, records destroyed. No doubt at the time it would have seemed entirely reasonable to dump a load of old files that nobody ever looked at.

  ‘At any rate,’ Alex continued, ‘all we have are a few accounts from second and third hand sources. They tell us that the Excorps ship was intercepted by a ‘wave of missiles’ – accounts vary between ten and fifty – which they managed to avoid. Taking
this as a pretty definitive indicator that the system was inhabited by a people with space-faring technology, Excorps dropped a wecip and retreated. For those of you unfamiliar with historical exodiplomacy practice,’ he explained, seeing that several of the new officers didn’t know what that meant, ‘that was something they used to do when it was considered too dangerous to approach people directly. It was called a wecip from the abbreviation WCIP, for We Come In Peace – a satellite buoy programmed to broadcast first contact messages and information about us and our worlds – everything from astrogation charts to DNA. Yes, seriously.’ He grinned at one of their new Subs, who was looking appalled. ‘They really were that naive. I would recommend all of you to take the time to read the First Contact Handbook from the Exploration era. In fact, I’ll tag it for operational briefing – much of it is either hilarious or terrifying or both, of course, but it is useful to have that context when evaluating our current first contact procedures. And we did, in fact, use one of their ideas, a signal using square and prime numbers, in making first contact with Gide.’

  That got looks of profound respect from the newcomers. Making first contact with other worlds was The Big One for spacers, the ultimate adventure.

  ‘We will be discussing how best to approach Samart at a later date, once everyone has had time to study the briefing in detail,’ Alex said. ‘Though I can assure you we will not be dropping any wecips. That didn’t work, even back then – the Samartian response was to blow it up. Four of their ships then chased the Excorps ship for the next five days. The Excorps ship only just managed to stay ahead of them, and when they tried slowing down in the hope of opening a dialogue, the Samartians just fired missiles. After five days, for whatever reason, the Samartian ships turned back. Excorps rated them as estimated to be on a technological par with the League, but not ready to form a relationship. It was put on a ‘try again later’ list. Before they got around to it, though, another Excorps ship went to Marfik.’ A sober look. ‘I don’t need to tell you how that went.’