Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  There was immediate agreement on that, with a rather bright-eyed alertness giving away just how excited the officers were, having evidently come to appreciate just how valuable this wonder-material could be to their world. With that agreed, though, Alex stepped in, explaining that they had a further matter that they wanted to discuss.

  ‘It is of course entirely your decision whether you choose to negotiate only with our government, or whether you open your world to commercial offers. As you develop contact with us and perhaps also with other worlds, though, you will, sooner or later, find ships turning up here with commercial trading offers. Some of those ships may well belong to Mr North. That being the case, with your permission, I have agreed to allowing him to put a commercial trade proposal to you. He is speaking, in that, as an industrialist, not a diplomat – this is a commercial trade proposal being made separately, though alongside the diplomatic exchange. Is that something you are prepared to listen to?’

  They said that they were, a little wary but intrigued, and Davie smiled.

  ‘I own many factories within the League, and one of them makes a type of refinery I believe would suit your needs.’ He put up a picture of a processing station – compact, by refinery standards, about a kilometre long, and much of that struts and pipes between various processing tanks. ‘It is modern, efficient, able to generate or recycle three million tonnes of base-gel, annually. I could provide you with the specs, construction and operation manuals so that you could build one for yourselves. I can give you that right now. Or I could supply a pre-fabricated refinery, either for you to assemble or for us to build for you and teach you how to operate – that would take between one and two years to organise and ship out here. In return, I would be looking for a supply deal on nanochips.’

  He had to explain what that meant – the Samartians had been working for so long on a war-footing basis of all production being state controlled that they had forgotten there was any other way to do things. They had just about got to grips with the notion that Davie had some kind of control over some factories within the League, but the actuality of business practice was as bizarre to them as the Dance of the Lizard. Once it had been established, though, that Davie could supply the refinery in return for an agreed quantity of nanochips, they demonstrated just how quickly they were learning by getting down, immediately, to the nub of it.

  ‘How many chips would you want?’ Tell asked.

  ‘For full specs and manuals,’ Davie said, ‘3.47 kilos. For supplying the refinery, between a hundred and eighty and two hundred and sixty kilos, depending on how big a workforce you want me to send. What I’d suggest is that you buy the specs now, have a look at them over the next year, and decide how much, if any, of the tech and labour you want me to provide.’

  They stared at him.

  ‘3.47 kilos?’ Jurore echoed, incredulously.

  ‘But that is…’ Tell sketched a container in the air, about the size of a shoebox. ‘That’s not even one tub!’

  Nanochips, as they’d already discovered, came packaged in a standard syringe-like container, the microscopic chips suspended in a translucent jelly which also helped to fix them into place when they were dabbed into circuits. Each syringe contained half a Samartian kilo, around six hundred thousand chips, with eight of them packaged in a tub, and eight tubs to a box. The Samartians had already offered a box of chips as part of their own nano-tech bundle.

  ‘It is a fair price,’ Davie assured them. ‘The chips you are providing in the nano-tech package will be distributed by our government, shared out between worlds, universities and research foundations, along with the specs, for R&D. This is separate, this is a commercial trade deal, exchanging refinery tech for a supply of chips which can be used by my companies. I have calculated the costs and benefits on both sides, very carefully and in great detail … here.’ He transferred a file to them which it would take Samartian accountants many weeks to work through.

  ‘This is the important thing in any business proposal,’ he told them, ‘front page – this certifies that the offer meets all the requirements for what we call ‘clean and green’. That means that it has to meet a stringent set of criteria for business ethics and environmental impact. Do yourselves a favour, now and always, and don’t even consider commercial offers from anyone unless they have that authentic clean and green certificate stamped on them, all right? Normally, you can get an independent check on that from a business ombudsman who will verify that proposals do meet the criteria and that the company is fulfilling all the things they’ve said they will, too. As you’re not in a position to do that yourselves, yet, I have had this proposal vetted by Commander Sartin, a forensic accountant, and approved by Captain von Strada.’

  He flashed a sidelong grin at Alex, who remained absolutely expressionless.

  ‘I can tell you that Captain von Strada is famous in the League for his high ethics in professional and business matters,’ Davie said. ‘It has taken me forty two hours of detailed explanation and evidence to satisfy him before he’d put his name to that certificate and allow me to make this offer. It is, I do assure you, absolutely squeaky clean, fair and ethical. Actually the equitable point for ‘on cost’ exchange came in at 3.4689 kilos, but they allowed me rounding that to 3.47 as reasonable practice.’

  ‘But we can’t give you 3.47 kilos of chips, that’s…’ the Samartian word translated as ‘leaf-picking’ but Jermane substituted ‘petty/silly.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Davie. ‘But that is what clean and green business practice means, finding an equitable point which is fair to both parties. It would actually be wrong, unethical of me to accept quantities of chips from you which would make me huge amounts of money. We call that making uber-profit, and in clean and green business it isn’t good. We’re all about fair and sustainable profit and growth. You can’t help it sometimes, of course, if you put a new product out there and other companies just aren’t quick enough to compete, you can sometimes find yourself wiping the market, making uber-profit. But we have a rule, in that, in clean and green, that any profit we make above and beyond what’s fair and reasonable return for shareholders is given to community support, to charities and organisations which work to make life better for our people.’

  Jurore and Tell conferred in undertones for a minute.

  ‘We feel that it would be embarrassing to give you six and a bit syringes,’ Tell said. ‘It has to be at least a box, for dignity. If you use the value of the extra for the benefit of your people, that is satisfactory to us.’

  Davie turned his head and looked at Alex, saying nothing, just waiting.

  Alex paused, making the point that he was considering, and then inclined his head.

  ‘Satisfactory,’ he said. And with that, the Samartians engaged in their first commercial trade deal with another world – quite something, as Davie observed, whooping with delight when the Samartians had gone. It wasn’t about the money, Alex knew that. Two thousand years of Founding Family history were fizzing in Davie’s blood, and to be here, making the same kind of first-trade deals his ancestors had in the founding of the League, was as big a thrill for him as first contact itself.

  They just had to wait, then, however, for the nine days it took the Samartians to finish putting together their diplomatic team, and for all the fine-detail arrangements to be made about that. It was hard to judge where the Samartians were, with that, though from time to time they’d ask a question which gave something of a clue. They asked, for instance, whether it would be possible to organise the exosuite accommodation into two separate living areas, which seemed to suggest that they had definite candidates in mind. But they could only guess what the basis was for separating the quarters – there were no male/female or officer/crew distinctions made aboard their own ships, after all.

  Those few amongst the crew who put their dollar on that split actually being military/civilian turned out to be right.

  The news that the Revellin had offered to take four of their
people back with them had, by then, been made public, as the broadcast news was catching up with what was actually happening. There had been massive, world-wide excitement at the idea of some of their own people actually going out there to the stars, and something like global hysteria at the point where the dakaelin had announced that they were considering the possibility of including civilians.

  In fact, they had already selected them, at least to the point of getting it down to a final shortlist of twenty two volunteers who had already passed the same kind of training as Bavore.

  Information on these twenty two was now given to the media, and it was fair to say that within hours they were amongst the most famous people on the planet. Everyone had an opinion about which of them should be chosen, and there could hardly be many people on the planet who didn’t join in that conversation with family, friends and colleagues at work. There was no kind of vote about it, of course, but there was a kind of feedback, all the same. The dakaelin watched to see what the public mood would be, bearing in mind that the population had risen up in mass protest over the issue of sending exploration ships out with their crews believed to be facing certain death. That didn’t happen here, as the majority of people evidently accepted that while going off on an alien ship was obviously dangerous, it was an opportunity they just could not pass up. The issue of sending civilians was rather more controversial, with widespread objection that it wasn’t fair, or right, to expect civilians to put themselves at such risk.

  Over several days, though, opinion did come round, just as it had amongst the dakaelin themselves, as the point was reiterated that the Revellin were, themselves, a civilian-led society, as weird as that seemed to Samartian eyes, with civilians in important roles even on their ship, and one of the three people they would be leaving here a civilian diplomat, too. It had also been realised that if they wanted to find out as much as they could about the Revellin’s science, they were going to have to send scientists. It was all very well leaving it to the Revellin to provide them with information and bringing it back for their scientists to study, but as they had already discovered, starship officers might not understand the information that was being given, so wouldn’t know what questions to ask.

  The final choice, therefore, was for two military officers and two scientists.

  Three of them were unknown to the Fourth, though all four were already household names on Samart. Their ambassador would be a woman called Sennet, a retired dakael who held an equivalent status to that of a former system president. She was greatly honoured on Samart even by their standards of reverence for the dakaelin.

  The other military officer would be Caldai Genave, the only one they knew, from his meeting with Martine. There was a small, embarrassed admission in his profile that he was, in fact, an intelligence officer, an investigator with the Samartian equivalent of the Fleet’s Internal Affairs.

  The first of the scientists was a doctor, Jebrin, who had been undertaking key role in contact with the Fourth right from the start, unbeknownst to them, as he’d been called in as one of Samart’s leading experts in infectious diseases. He had been advising on quarantine procedures and had been involved at an increasingly important level as first contact had progressed.

  The final member of the team, Citizen Cerale, was also the youngest, at thirty one. She was a shipyard engineer, professionally, working at one of the yards which built and maintained the Samartian fleet. The ‘hobbies and interests’ section of her CV revealed that she was a dedicated amateur astronomer, a very unusual pursuit on Samart, while the range of subjects she’d studied for personal interest ranged from astrophysics to genetics. The Samartians didn’t give her IQ, because they didn’t measure that in the same way the League did, but it seemed probable, from her range of interests, that she was a natural polymath, and quite possibly in the range the League would consider a genius. Simon’s eyes lit up at that, particularly when he saw that she was petite, white-blonde and pretty.

  At a rather more elevated level, however, the Fourth was pleased. They would have done their utmost to make this work, whoever the Samartians had sent, but this was a team Alex might well have selected, himself.

  As they had come to expect with Samartians, once the decision was made and announced, action followed soon. It was just a day and a half later that they carried out the exchange, in itself one of the most important undertakings of the mission.

  This time, it was Misha Tregennis herself in command, with Tina Lucas along to help, and to bring the shuttle back. The Fourth would have preferred to leave the shuttle there, seeing no reason why it couldn’t be parked beside the biodome, but the Samartians were evidently uneasy about the ongoing presence of an alien craft in their system, so Alex had agreed that they would bring the shuttle back to them. Jace Higgs was piloting, and Chief Petty Officer Martins was going with them, too, to help set up the biodome. The Samartians had asked for him specifically, too – to their eyes at least, he was the ‘least human’ looking of the Heron’s crew, with his squat high-grav physique. His bone structure and musculature was so dense that he looked Neanderthal, small eyes dominated by a heavy brow. He got startled looks even from groundsiders on League worlds where the Chiellian genome was rarely seen, and it was apparent that the Samartians found him physically repellent. At the same time, though, they were fascinated by him, amazed by the revelation that his people too had been created by the Olaret. They had decided that this made his people and theirs ‘like cousins’ and Martins had stepped up to doing his bit to foster that relationship.

  Alex tried not to watch the shuttle vanishing off the edge of their scopes. It wasn’t the last time he would see them, after all. One of the first things they would do as they set up the biodome would be to install the interface which had been built especially for them to link up with Samartian comms. Once they had done that, they would be able to send signals right out to the ship, albeit with an hours’ time delay. Alex would be able to see for himself that they were safe, and it had been agreed with the Samartians that they would wait for a further two weeks, Samartian time, before they left. That would give both teams time to settle, and time to pull out, too, if it was found not to be working out for any reason.

  Things got very quiet on the Heron, though, once the shuttle had gone. Just about the only topic of conversation was where the shuttle was now and what they would be doing – their progress was followed on the ops board schedule with as close an interest as if people could actually see them. At the point where it was known that they should be landing, Buzz put a simulation on the notice board, too, so people could visualise what was, or ought to be, happening right now.

  The Samartians had given them a landing zone on the third moon of their eighth planet, right out in the outer reaches of their system. It was a freezing, airless world with no gravity to speak of, and it had no Samartian presence on it whatsoever. They would have it entirely to themselves, as the Samartians’ own exo-quarantine facility was being built, or rather adapted from an existing base, on another moon in orbit around planet six.

  Everything had been planned and agreed, here, in minute detail, right down to the speed of approach and which way the shuttle would be facing when it landed. The Samartians had already left their supplies ready to be collected, though their team would be sent out by their own drone-ship in a couple of days. Once they landed, the Fourth’s team would unload the biodome – a simple enough thing to erect, though spectacular for anyone who hadn’t seen anything like it before. The eight-berth dome was packed into a container not much bigger than a cargo crate. Once placed in the agreed location, rock-bolts would fire into the ground to secure it, then the case would pop open with a small explosive charge, slamming up like an enormous airbag. Floor and walls would inflate from a high pressure canister within the case, achieving structural integrity in something under two and a half seconds.

  It would take rather longer to set up the life support system, but no more than half an hour. This was, after all, a s
urvival dome, designed for use in a crisis. Ease of use and rapid set up were essential, with the life-support unit so simple that even a civilian could figure it out. There were only so many ways you could plug it into the dome’s systems, after all, and even the dumbest civilian might be able to work out that you put the big red tube into the big red hole and the green power cable into the green power socket. Furniture, such as it was, would inflate along with the dome, and it would be the work of minutes to bring in the crate which held all the extra fittings like bunk frames and a galley station. They would bring in the comms link, too, and Tina Lucas would be setting that up while the others installed the fittings and started to bring other supplies over from the shuttle. This would be the longest part of the job, as the Fourth had provided everything that they could think of in quantities to last the three of them for a year and a half, so the shuttle was packed to capacity with food, toiletries and clothes, sports equipment, medical supplies and a comprehensive entertainment pack.

  That would be broadcast live, on Samart – or as near to live as the government was prepared to go. News management had been timed to catch up with actual events at the point where the Fourth’s shuttle came into the system, minus one hour. There would be a one hour delay, always, between what was happening in the dome and what the public saw, giving the authorities time to see what was happening first and, if they felt it to be necessary, stop the footage going out.

  As far as the Samartians were concerned, though, that did count as ‘live’. Their holovision hit new viewing records as people watched the coverage of the shuttle entry, landing and dome-building from one of their own ships filming it from orbit round the moon. The moment they were waiting for, the moment they’d been promised, was to be able to see inside the dome, as soon as the comms link went live.