Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘Not at all,’ Alex said, readily. ‘We have no objection to that.’

  ‘Gratitude,’ said Dakael Tell, and glanced at Jurore.

  ‘We must ask…’ Jurore said, and Alex noted the flags which sprang up on the matrix screen, alerting him to the fact that ‘must’ in this context carried a strong connotation of being compelled by a higher authority – Jermane, indeed, rated that so strongly that he was suggesting we have been told to ask, ‘we have questions about your history and that of the Other, those you call Prisosans. We must ask if you would be willing to permit Commander Fishe or an officer of equivalent rank to discuss this matter with our Caldai Genave. We request holo-link at 1327 tomorrow.’ The matrix provided that in shipboard time, since even if the Samartians understood the difference in timekeeping they continued to use their own times in all communications.

  ‘Certainly,’ Alex said. ‘Commander Fishe will be happy to answer whatever questions you have.’

  They ended the hololink with that, Davie breaking into a chuckle almost in the instant that the link was severed.

  ‘Clumsy!’ he observed, as he and Alex headed for the door.

  ‘Be fair,’ Alex said. ‘The whole concept of diplomacy is completely new to them. And you have to admit, they’re learning fast.’

  It was, indeed, entirely obvious to everyone aboard the ship what the Samartians were doing with that request. Alex put it on record in the briefing, though, purely for the benefit of the log.

  ‘It is, of course, a pawn sacrifice manoeuvre,’ he said, and looked at Martine Fishe. ‘Questions they feel are too sensitive to raise with me directly. That’s going to put you front and centre, Ms Fishe, and it has to be noted, too, that this is clearly a critical meeting which will, no doubt, be very closely watched and analysed by the Samartian authorities. They may be highly provocative. So I have to ask, are you happy with the brief, on that basis?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Martine said, also for the benefit of the log since Alex knew very well that she was up for this, a big happy grin on her face. ‘Front and centre it is, skipper.’

  They discussed what she would say, again, purely as a matter of form, since this was something they’d prepared for weeks ago. It was inevitable, after all, if they did make contact, that sooner or later the Samartians would ask the sticky questions about the League, Prisos and the Marfikians.

  The briefing dismissed, Alex went back to the task of attempting to keep up with at least the most important information flooding to his screens. He was deeply immersed, an hour or so later, getting to grips with an analysis of a truly terrifying piece of information.

  The Samartians had included a history file in their data-pack – concise, but so data-rich that it was taking some time to unpick it. This particular item recorded the bare bones of what had happened the last time the Marfikians had attempted to invade – serious attempt to invade, not just the border-harassment the Samartians had got so used to they thought it was normal.

  There had been rumours in the League that the Samartians had fought off a major attack about sixty years before – some League analysts even claimed to have evidence for that in a significant drop in Marfikian activity for several years afterwards.

  Now, Alex saw why. The Marfikians had sent more than eight hundred ships against Samart.

  They had imagined that Marfik was throwing major offensive at them, at times when they saw upwards of a hundred ships raiding in the sector around Cherque, but it was appallingly clear from this that the Marfikians had, in fact, been treating that a minor skirmish while focussing their real forces against Samart. Just the thought of more than eight hundred Thorns surging at a world made Alex feel chilled to the bone.

  Against that, the Samartians had mustered three hundred and ninety two ships. They had lost twenty four of them with the loss of all hands, and serious damage and casualties across their whole fleet – their on-ship casualties were numbered at two thousand and forty seven people killed, in a battle which had lasted for seven and a half hours. The Marfikians had driven deep into their territory – they had blasted their way through the sensor field, destroying millions of sensors, and not just firing at the Samartian ships but unleashing a barrage of missiles which were targeted at the planet itself.

  The main attack force had made it almost half way through the defended zone before the Samartians had driven them off. They had managed to deflect most of the missiles before they reached Samart – most, but not all. Four had made it through to the very last line of defence, being detonated in the upper atmosphere. Blast damage had been limited, said the report. Ground casualties; two hundred and fifty four thousand, six hundred and nine.

  A quarter of a million people had died. And the only reason that it wasn’t more, a lot more, was that the Samartians had resorted to their weapon of last resort. As the Marfikians had crossed the half-way point, the Samartians had commenced what they called ‘heroic manoeuvres’. The analysis team had only just got to grips with what that actually meant. Eleven of the ships which had been lost with all hands had been so because they had hurled themselves into the Marfikian fleet and self-destructed. They hadn’t just blown themselves up, either. Davie had already identified that Samartian ships were effectively four separate vessels being held together by the external skeleton, which was certainly a key factor in their extraordinary agility. It appeared, though, that during ‘heroic manoeuvres’ a ship could jettison its skeleton and break apart into four sections, each of which retained sufficient manoeuvring ability to lock on a target as it dephased. Each one of them had exploded with a force which made the Ignite missile look puny.

  The Marfikians had turned around, leaving at high speed, at the point where they had lost four hundred and six of their Thorns. A further eighty two had been destroyed by the pursuing Samartians before the Marfikians ran clear of their defended space.

  It was no coincidence in that, for sure, that the Marfikians had abandoned their invasion effort at the point where they had lost more than half of their ships but were not yet half way through the defended zone. This had been highlighted as a recurring pattern – right back through Samartian history, every time the Marfikians had attempted to invade them, they had turned back at the point when the Samartians had succeeded in destroying more than half of their attacking forces, before the Marfikians had managed to destroy half of theirs or make it more than half way through their defences.

  They were creatures of logic, of course – no emotion, no morality. If they attacked Samart, it was because they had calculated that they stood an acceptable chance of success. Then, if their casualty rates exceeded an ‘acceptable’ fifty per cent, they’d withdraw.

  ‘Skipper?’ Alex was deep in studying the strategic analysis, but looked up at Jonas Sartin’s speaking to him. ‘Sorry…’ Jonas said, with honest regret because he knew how busy Alex was, ‘Power usage financials.’

  Alex looked at him in eloquent silence and several of the people on the command deck laughed, even Jonas giving a bashful grin.

  ‘Sorry,’ he repeated, ‘but…’

  ‘All right – I know,’ Alex said, resignedly. The fact that they were on front-line exodiplomacy operations did not make the paperwork go away. The power-usage financial report had been sitting on his in-tray all day, and if he didn’t sign off on it before the watch changeover, Jonas would be obliged to log it as a failure to complete required documentation. So he opened the file, tearing himself away from the minor issue of figuring out how this information might help them to protect their worlds.

  In theory at least, dealing with the financial report really should be a very trivial matter. Skippers dealt with a host of such routine matters every day, requiring only that they read key points and signed to say that they had done so. In less complicated times, Alex would not have expected to spend more than fifteen to twenty seconds on signing a routine document like this.

  In recent months, however, it had become quite normal for it to end up taking a quarter
of an hour. He couldn’t even sign off on the thing without reading it – as with all official documents it had an ‘active reading’ sensor which monitored eye focus and tracking, and it was very good at picking up if you were skimming too quickly or only pretending to read. Not that Alex would have done that, anyway – he had to set an example, there, in conscientious, professional standards.

  So he opened the file, prepared to confront the usual hellish tangle of eight different possible ways that the power consumption could be allocated to budgets depending on which particular memo they were supposed to be following. Instead, there was what looked remarkably like an absolutely standard Fleet power-consumption report, just a simple list of codes and figures, already signed by the engineer and by Jonas himself.

  Alex looked up, astonished, and Jonas gave a self-conscious little smile.

  ‘We’ve cracked the algorithm,’ he confirmed. ‘There’s a back-file, if you want to confirm that the calculations are correct…’

  That was evidently meant to be a joke, and Alex laughed. Jonas had been working for weeks, trying to figure out a way to crunch the massive complexity of their financial entanglements back to a clear, straightforward summary format. It wouldn’t actually solve the underlying problem, but it would be an enormous help in timesaving not just for Alex but for all the senior officers who had to wrestle with reports day in, day out.

  ‘No!’ Alex gave the file the required level of attention, signed it, and filed it in the log with a grin of pure delight. ‘More than happy to accept your summary, Mr Sartin, thank you!’ He held out his hand, and shook Jonas’s with warm commendation. ‘Please convey my appreciation to everyone involved.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ Jonas said, rather pink, by then, and abandoning the effort to maintain formal dignity, giving way to a huge grin. ‘Thank you, skipper.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex said again, and as Jonas departed walking noticeably taller, the skipper turned back to the strategic analysis.

  He was interrupted again just a few minutes later, this time by Simon calling to tell him that they were moving Ali Jezno from the life support tank and into a bunk.

  ‘You can pop in and see him in about half an hour,’ Simon told him, and it was apparent that this was not a suggestion.

  ‘All right – thank you,’ Alex said, having long since abandoned any effort to get Simon to comply with Fleet protocols.

  He went to sickbay, too, though there was little he could do in terms of visiting the patient, given that Ali was still unconscious. It was a very different experience, though, seeing him in a bunk after so many days seeing him twitching and dreaming in a life support tank. He had been settled on his side in a natural sleeping position, his eyes no longer flicking behind closed lids now that his brain wasn’t being bombarded with data input. He looked perfectly normal, asleep, not a scar or a mark on him to show the devastating extent of his injuries. Simon, as he would be the first to say, himself, did very good work.

  ‘We’ve done everything we can, now,’ Simon observed, standing with Alex at Ali’s bunk. And he meant just that, as Alex understood, that he had done absolutely everything possible to give Ali the best chance of recovery. ‘Brain scans confirm functioning capacity within normal range, and successful memory engramisation. We won’t know what he remembers, or his actual functional outcome, until he wakes up.’

  He looked at Alex and it was clear that he had something particular to say. They were effectively in private, since Rangi was taking a break and Tina had already gone to bed, closing the privacy panel on her bunk so that she could watch a movie in peace.

  ‘Before he does wake up, though, we need to be clear,’ said Simon, in a manner which reminded Alex of the time he’d woken him at four in the morning ‘for a chat’. ‘I gather from Rangi that there’s some kind of Fleet policy about performance impaired casualties. I find it hard to believe, but he seems to be of the opinion that any significant memory or cognitive loss would mean Ali being discharged from Fleet service, just given a pension, ta very much, goodbye.’

  He didn’t wait for an answer, but looked Alex straight in the eye. ‘You will not do that to Ali Jezno.’ He told the captain. ‘You’re his family, the only home he has, and you will stand by him, regardless of what his recovery outcome is. You will make a place for him, if not aboard ship, then at the base, for as long as he wants to stay with the Fourth. Right?’

  Alex only just managed to stop himself answering, ‘Yes sir.’ Instead, he just nodded.

  ‘Good boy,’ said Simon.

  Alex didn’t grin. He just looked at Ali, acutely aware of his own responsibility, in this. He knew he’d done the right thing. There was just no part of him even prepared to think that it might have been better to have let Ali Jezno die. All the same, he couldn’t help but be apprehensive about how much of Ali would be there, when he woke up.

  ‘Can I be here?’ he asked. ‘When he wakes up?’

  Simon shook his head, decisively.

  ‘No – we’ll keep it very low impact,’ he said, and that was clearly a medical decision. ‘Quiet, dim lights, calm – we won’t tell him any more than that he’s been injured but he’s in recovery. Depending on his levels of awareness, we’ll be able to get some idea of how successful we’ve been, and I’ll let you know, then, when you can see him. He may be drowsy, drifting in and out for a while, but if things have gone as planned he should be recovered enough to talk by mid-morning. And if I know Ali, it won’t be long before he starts asking questions. I’ll fob him off for a while – people always ask what happened way before they’re recovered enough to really cope with the answer, so we’ll just say ‘head injury’ till we get to the point where he’s insisting on being told. So, do you want to do that, or shall I?’

  ‘Me?’ Alex was startled.

  ‘Well, you’re his next of kin, effectively,’ Simon pointed out. ‘And I think it may come better from you – I could, of course, just tell him myself that we’ve had to replace a third of his brain and he’s technically a zombie, but that’s high impact by any standards. He trusts you, and it may be less traumatic for him if that information comes from you, okay? Though I wouldn’t use the zed-word, if you can avoid it.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Alex said, without hesitation, though there was a wry look on his face as he looked back at Ali. ‘There was no module on how to tell people that, in command school.’

  ‘Well, at any time it feels hard,’ Simon said, ‘just consider whether you would rather be doing that, or conducting his funeral.’

  Alex gave him a Look, and Simon grinned.

  ‘Yeah, I know, my bedside manner lacks a certain sensitivity, people are always telling me that. But I get results.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Alex conceded, conscious that much the same might be said about him, with his lamentable performance in public relations. ‘But as you said, let’s be clear… before he wakes up.’ He had to look up into Simon’s eyes, as the medic was a good ten centimetres taller than he was, but he managed, through sheer force of personality, to make it seem as if they were eyeball to eyeball. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and held out his hand. ‘Whatever the outcome, I know, you have done everything humanly possible.’

  ‘Aww, shucks,’ said Simon, though he shook hands, and slapped Alex on the arm, then. ‘Go on, get out of here,’ he told him, pretty much pushing him towards the door. ‘I’ll tell you when you can come back.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Alex, and with that, headed off to get some sleep himself.

  Twenty Four

  He was back on the command deck at four the next morning. He and Buzz were splitting nightwatch, as one or other of them was always on the command deck. They normally enjoyed opportunities to be together on nightwatch – time when they could work on projects undisturbed, play a companionable game of triplink, or just chat. This, though, was different – neither of them had the time for socialising and neither of them had had more than four hours sleep at a stretch for more than a month, now. Buz
z didn’t linger, just gave him a friendly ‘Goodnight, dear boy,’ and headed off to his own bunk.

  Alex exchanged a few pleasantries with the watch team. Very Vergan was holding the conn, with Teabreak Li as the junior officer of the watch. The ship was busier than was normal during nightwatch, though as the weeks went on it had actually become their new normal to be on standby alert day and night. All guns were manned and there were pilots and crews on the fighters, ready to launch at a moment’s notice. The Samartians were keeping guns and missiles targeted on them, they knew that, but their real fear here was that another Marfikian unit might come upon them. Gunny Norsten had worked out that the Marfikians could carry out a complete search or survey of the border zone in just under three weeks. They felt extremely exposed, sitting out there on the border, with a spike of anxiety every time a blip appeared on the edge of scopes. So far it had always been Samartians, but Marfikians could, indeed, turn up at any moment.

  Alex thanked the rigger who brought him a mug of coffee, dark and spiced just as he liked it. Then he settled back to work.

  He scarcely glanced up from screens for the next hour and a half, till a soft exclamation from Very Vergan made him lift his head quickly.

  There were sounds of dismay coming from several others, too. Following the direction of their gaze, Alex saw that they were looking at the screen which showed deck five amidships… the area outside sickbay. Rangi Tekawa was there. And Rangi was crying. He had obviously stepped out of sickbay to cry, just standing there sobbing, fumbling helplessly for a tissue.

  ‘Oh, no…’ Alex’s own heart sank as he saw the medic’s distress. Others were already responding to it. Hali Burdon was Deck CPO tonight, responsible for supervising the nightwatch riggers and standby team. She was already swarming up through a ladderway, going to comfort Rangi. But even as he saw her approaching, Rangi made a tremendous effort to pull himself together.