Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘Do, please, sit.’ They had had some difficulty with the verb ‘sit’ as the matrix didn’t seem to be able to find a reliable translation. It kept insisting that the Samartian word meant ‘squat’, with no equivalent at all for ‘sit down’. Buzz, therefore, waved her to a seat and demonstrated by sitting down, himself. Their flight back to the ship would only take a couple of minutes but it was normal to sit while the shuttle was in transit. Telemetry was confirming that Tina was now aboard the Samartian ship, so Buzz nodded to Jace.

  ‘Disengage,’ he said.

  Jace got to work – it would take another minute or two to disengage the airlock, pull the improvised tube back against their own hull and finally release the grapnels that were holding them to the Samartians’ superstructure.

  While he was doing that, though, Buzz was making another discovery. Janai Bennet did not know how to sit in a chair.

  It was something so mind-boggling that it took him a few seconds to realise what the problem was. She was looking frankly bewildered, staring from Buzz, seated in his own chair, to the seat he had indicated for her, and then back again, as if trying to figure it out. Then, with the air of attempting something entirely new and just a little intimidating, she turned around and folded herself into the seat.

  Her awkwardness in that was comical, but nowhere near as funny as her reaction when the seat automatically cradled her in a safety field. As she felt it pull and enfold her she yelped again and scrambled back out of it, only to trip and land up back on her knees.

  ‘It’s good!’ Buzz jumped up hastily and, seeing that she’d been frightened, reassured her, ‘It’s good, it’s fine – it’s just for safety, to keep us safe in the seat if there is any…’ he hesitated, needing to use the translation matrix to find a word, and struggling as ‘turbulence’ refused to translate. ‘If the shuttle makes any quick moves,’ he amended. Having helped her back to her feet with a hand under her elbow, he demonstrated again, sitting down slowly and with exaggerated movements, then demonstrating the field by jerking against it, ‘See? It just keeps us safe. To stop it, put your hand here…’ he indicated the panel on the seat arm, and stood up again as the field released. ‘See?’

  Janai Bennet was clearly a little alarmed, but braced herself and sat down, just yipping a little as the field put gentle pressure on her. Buzz saw her testing the release, and saw her relief, too, as she found that it worked and she really wasn’t being held prisoner in that bizarre contraption. His smile was as warm, and kind, as if he comforted one of his grandchildren after a fright, and as she glanced at him again she ventured on her first, shy smile.

  ‘Toko,’ she said again. The literal translation of that was ‘inevitable’ for which the matrix offered a range of possible idiomatic meanings including ‘Whoops’, ‘I’m an idiot,’ and ‘Oh well, that’s life.’ It was evidently, from context, intended as a rueful, self-deprecatory comment, and Buzz gave her another reassuring smile.

  ‘It’s good,’ he told her, and keeping it simple, repeated, ‘Welcome.’

  She had heard ‘creseo’ at least a couple of hundred times by the end of her visit, as everyone said it at least once and some repeated it several times. She answered it always with ‘predeo’, though with varying degrees of formality according to who she was talking to at the time.

  Her visit was, for sure, a great success. They learned a lot simply by finding what surprised her the most – astounded her, indeed, as was apparent from her reaction, at times, to things they were showing or telling her about.

  It was clear that she found the sheer size of the ship overwhelming, marvelling particularly at all the open space they had aboard, the height of the ceilings, room for people to walk about. She was bewildered by their furniture, too, regarding tables and chairs as if they were incomprehensible alien artefacts. She got so excited when they showed her a bunk that they all ended up laughing.

  ‘For one person?’ She held up one finger to be sure there was no misunderstanding. ‘One?’

  ‘Yes, we all have our own bunk.’ It was Hali Burdon she was speaking to, then. The tour had been arranged so that different people would show her key aspects of life aboard ship, and it had fallen to Hali to show her around Mess Deck One.

  ‘Eight crew could sleep in that,’ Janai Bennet commented, more to herself than to them, and gazed at Hali with frank wonder. ‘Truly, you do live like gods.’

  As the laughter died down, Hali assured her, grinning, that this was perfectly normal for any Fleet ship.

  ‘Our ships make long journeys,’ she explained, ‘we may be on the ship for months, so we have to be reasonably comfortable.’

  ‘Months?’ Janai Bennet queried, and with some use of the matrix, they managed to convey the kind of timescale it had taken them to get here from Therik.

  ‘Oy-yella!’ Janai Bennet said, another colloquialism which evidently meant the equivalent or ‘wow’ or ‘incredible’.

  She said that a lot, too, as there wasn’t much about the ship that she didn’t find incredible. One of her first tech questions was about the gravity, finding that it was constant throughout the ship other than for the zero-gee hatched out zones around ladders. Buzz opened up a deck plate for her to see.

  ‘We use a field generator based on this material,’ he pointed out a thread woven into the underside of the deck plate, ‘it has complicated names but we just call it grav wire. It has the property of generating a gravity field when energy is passed through it. It does take a lot of energy – the gravity system uses about twenty eight per cent of our total energy budget, and we have to turn it off when we need the energy for other things like launch or firing guns. You don’t have artificial gravity on your ships?’

  ‘No – we believe – believed,’ she corrected herself, ‘that it was not possible. It has been one of our laws of physics for many centuries that it is not possible to make gravity fields.’

  ‘Well, you need to have access to the base mineral in order to discover and invent grav-wire,’ Buzz observed. ‘And it is rare, not found in many star systems, so your scientists were right, perhaps, that it is not possible for your people to make this. But this is a technology, and a material, we would be very happy to share.’

  ‘Gratitude,’ she said, though it was already understood that she was not in any position to discuss such issues officially, let alone make decisions about them. She took keen interest in all the technology they gave her access to, though, finding that not all of it was more sophisticated than her own people’s. As they had already realised, the Samartians had gone much further down the road of nano-engineering than had ever been considered worthwhile in the League, with much of their development focussed on making their tech ever smaller and smaller. When they gave her a pinchip to hold and managed to convince her that this really was the base-chip used in circuits throughout the ship, she was amazed. But when they managed to establish just what the computing power of that chip actually was, she cracked up laughing.

  ‘A chip of such power would be…’ she held up the speck-sized chip, ‘a thousand times smaller than this, on my ship.’ She looked at the tech again, fascinated, ‘everything is so huge.’

  It wasn’t only the tech that astonished her, though. One of the hardest things they had to contend with, all visit, was getting her to believe, and understand, that they really did have civilians aboard. That came out when she was shown to the lab, and introduced to Sam Maylard. It took some persistence even to explain that he was a university professor, and what that meant. Even then, she was struggling with the concept.

  ‘But…’ she gave a helpless gesture, looking around at them. ‘There is the service,’ she said, evidently attempting to make sense of this, ‘and there is not the service. If you are not of the service, how can you be on-ship?’

  The term ‘on-ship’ evidently carried cultural reference which was beyond the matrix at its current level of understanding, though the linguistics team had their best guess at it.

  ‘T
o be ‘on-ship’ is more than location, it is a very high status, worked for and earned and only available to the elite of the military service.’ Jermane filed a report on behalf of the team, picking up on Davie’s linguistic intuition and Murg Atwood’s socio-cultural analysis. Jermane had turned out to be very good at this, pulling out important information and conveying it in a way that was readily understood by everyone aboard. He was, indeed, a natural communicator. ‘An equivalent scenario to our eyes would be a culture which allowed work experience kids to do test-piloting.’

  That helped them to understand why the Samartian found it so difficult to comprehend both the presence of civilians and their status as ‘working passengers’. There was even greater confusion, though, when she discovered that two of their passengers were actually married.

  That came out when she was introduced to Simon Penarth and Misha Tregennis, also working in the lab at the time. Simon was rather obviously enraptured with the young Samartian woman and Misha, with some amusement, introduced herself just a little pointedly as his wife.

  ‘On ship?’ Janai Bennet looked quite horrified, just for a moment, before adopting her most formal manner, hesitating, then taking a discreet step backward.

  ‘We don’t allow marriage, or relationships, between people on-ship in the service,’ Buzz told her. ‘But it is allowed, for civilians.’

  ‘Careful, Buzz. Move on.’ Davie signalled Buzz’s ear-piece with a priority override, having seen the micro-signals giving away how Janai Bennet felt about that. ‘Strong moral sensitivity.’

  They found out why, after the embarrassment had faded sufficiently for Buzz to bring up the question of Samartian views about personal relationships. It turned out that not only were their crews forbidden to have relationships aboard ship, they were forbidden to have any romantic relationships, at all, while they were in service.

  ‘The service is the beloved,’ Janai Bennet explained, a little red-faced but doing her best to make it clear to them. ‘For those in service it is all, everything. All our thoughts, our hearts, are in being the best that we can, in hope that we may win the honour of service on-ship. That is how we rise in our service. When there is a place in the next status, only those who have achieved the right number of on-ship service can be considered. To be on-ship is all, everything, the only thing that matters. To be in love, to want to be married, that is…’ she flapped a hand dismissively, ‘immediate, out of service, no more. When we become…’ she used a word which the linguistics team decided meant ‘of flag rank or high command’, ‘that is a choice, that is made, a decision, a choice, that you will not have children.’

  As they stared at her, almost as shocked as she had been, she struggled on, ‘It is because the service is the beloved, the world is our children, our people are the children those in high command must love and protect. And it is, too, to protect from tyranny – we learned a long time ago that if people in high command have children of their own then they make it so that their children follow into high command too; it is the instinct of a parent to want the best for their child, yes? But that is not best for the world, when that becomes a hereditary ruling elite.’ The matrix had no difficulty translating that. ‘That is not our way. We do not want a ruling elite, so those who rise to rule must not have families. It is a choice they make, to serve the world. It is not so with your people?’

  ‘No, not at all the same.’ Buzz said, and attempted to tell her about democracy in terms that she would understand. ‘We choose our rulers by popular vote. Everyone is allowed to say who they want to be the rulers, and those with the most votes win the places in our government, for five years at system level and ten in the Senate.’

  Janai Bennet tried to be polite about it, but it was evident that she thought this was pretty much insane. She gave him a guarded glance. ‘Your people would not try to make us do this democracy, would they?’

  ‘No, we respect the right of other worlds to self-determination,’ said Buzz, and ignored, with that, the cynical hoot that came from Davie through his ear-piece. Historically, it had to be said, the League had not paid any more than lip-service to the sovereignty of other worlds, using a combination of economic pressure and cultural bombardment to bring other worlds into line with their own constitution. The Founding Families had been a major pushing force in that effort, right from day one, and Davie himself would certainly not hesitate to do that here, either. He genuinely believed with all his heart that the League constitution was the best possible system there was, so why would he not strive to bring all its rights, freedoms and benefits to worlds which were labouring under undemocratic and repressive regimes?

  That was not an issue here, though, at least for now. The President had said, too, in his briefing to Alex, that he was empowered to assure the Samartians that there would be full respect for their sovereignty and no attempt to interfere with whatever form of government they had. Only time would tell whether that was an assurance the League would uphold, long term. All Buzz could do right here and now was say it, and hope that it would continue to be true.

  He left it at that, anyway, taking their visitor to see the wardroom, next. That in itself required complex explanations as Janai Bennet found it hard to understand the idea that different ranks on the ship had different kinds and quality of accommodation. When she realised that it was a normal thing in the League for higher status people to live in greater luxury and even to eat better food, she was profoundly shocked.

  ‘That is not our way,’ she said, with a note of rather prim disapproval. ‘All share food, equal – that is what we think is right.’

  They had already worked out from the first-contact pack provided by the Samartians that they didn’t have what the League would recognise as a money-based economy. As Davie had realised back when he’d been considering the economic implications of the level of manufacturing required for their defence systems, Samart had what the League would consider to be a very low standard of living. Food was rationed, handed out from government-controlled centres. When things were flourishing, rations were ample. At times when they had to give more of their effort to producing defences and ships, rations might reduce to a very basic level. But everyone, Janai Bennet declared, felt this to be fair, since it was the same for everyone, the same rations for the highest in government and the lowest of workers.

  ‘As long as it is fair, people do not complain,’ she said, with a touch of fierce pride there, too, ‘it is understood, it is what we have to do to keep our world free, and safe.’

  It was the kind of dig-deep determination to be expected in a people who had been at war for centuries, against such an implacable, terrifying enemy. It would not be surprising, either, given their tremendous sense of duty and dedication, if the Samartians considered the people of the League to be soft-living, even decadent.

  To counter that, they did their best to show her that they did share some values in their military service. And they succeeded in that, though again, Janai Bennet surprised them. She was impressed by the demonstration of boarding-party training that was happening in the main gym. There were ten people there, practising close-order boarding skills in the big, shiny versions of hullwalker rig the Fourth used for combat armour. They gave her a demonstration of noise-maker boarding with heavy stamps of metallic boots and blank, rapid gunfire, at which she beamed with delight. When they showed her the inside of a combat rig and even let her climb inside to have a go at it herself, she was obviously thrilled.

  Their demonstration of combat drills a little later, however, left her politely bored. She was clearly not at all impressed by the speed and agility with which the Fourth’s crew moved in freefall, and not even amazed by the special effects.

  ‘We do that too,’ she commented, but was clearly ready to move on after a couple of minutes, turning her attention away from the dramatic combat drill going on in front of her to ask about the coffee machine.

  She was certainly more embarrassed than delighted when she was introd
uced to Shion. Shion was charming, vivacious and friendly, but it was all too obvious that Janai Bennet was uncomfortable at talking to her.

  ‘It’s as if we were introduced to someone who claimed to be an elf,’ Jermane Taerling clarified, helpfully. ‘She’s way out of her comfort zone, there.’

  Shion, however, had already seen that and backed off, herself, with friendly understanding. Davie, too, gave her only the briefest of greetings and left it to Mako Ireson to show her round the exosuite.

  Mako did an excellent job with that. Davie had set the lounge area up with a display of some of the gifts they had brought with them, each carefully chosen and artistically lit. He had trained Mako to show and talk about the artefacts with as much knowledge as a museum curator, answering whatever questions their visitor might have. She did not ask many, but she did take an interest in a pair of Canelonian duelling swords, commenting that they were the biggest knives she’d ever seen, and beautiful workmanship.

  Jonas Sartin did sterling work too, with the choir. After considerable agonising and running his ideas past Buzz and Alex, he had chosen one of their warm-up songs to perform for Janai Bennet. It was short and simple but classical, richly harmonic and building in a satisfying crescendo.

  ‘That is so beautiful!’ Janai Bennet exclaimed, when the brief performance was over. ‘We sing, too – not on-ship, of course, but on our world. We have a song that is quite like that, I think, about the sound of the sea. What is your song? What does it mean?’

  ‘It is a chorus from a musical tradition we call opera,’ Jonas informed her. ‘It tells the story of towns-people, gathering in the street, becoming more excited as they tell one another the news, the announcement of a wedding. The words mean, ‘It is going to be today’ and ‘Who would have believed?’’