Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (14 page)

They had dinner while on the way to the assigned coordinates. Alex, as was customary in the Fleet, held the conn himself for half an hour with senior petty officers covering other watch duties so that all the officers could have that meal together. Then there was a watch changeover, and as the relieved watch took their turn to eat, Alex went to have his own dinner. This was normally a solitary meal eaten in his cabin, but he had accepted an invitation from the Second’s team to eat with them this evening, his first opportunity to meet with them as a group, or socially. They had delayed their own meal so that he could join them, and had evidently made some effort in honour of the occasion, too, dressing up and putting some holo-candles on the table. They had not, however, been able to do anything about the state of the lab. Their living quarters and the lab were all part of the same space, with a lounge alcove and dining table to one side and lab benches and a datatable to the other, surrounded by doors to their sleeping cabins. Angas Paytel had not been able to persuade them to send many crates back groundside. They had stacked them in every space the passenger liaison officer would allow, even filled the lounge space with them, and every wall and ceiling net was packed to bursting point. They also had several experiments ongoing, with a centrifuge that kept whirring and pinging, any number of screens displaying data and a crate with a yellow flashing warning sign on it, declaring its contents a potential biohazard. It wasn’t the most elegant place for a formal dinner, but they made Alex welcome, urged a glass of non-alcoholic wine upon him, and said hospitably that they hoped he would like the food they had chosen.

It wasn’t long, though, before they were talking about the forthcoming mission. The research teams the Second had sent aboard were not felt to be any clue as to where they might be going. All of them were of the kind the Fourth considered routine, on research projects which could be conducted regardless of where they were sent. Even the Ignite test would require only a few days diverting to a suitable uninhabited system for the missile to be fired. If they
were
to be going to Quarus, the Second’s teams would undoubtedly be taken off the ship before they crossed League borders, as had been the case with the Novamas operations. Even so, the lab teams were just as keen to know where the Fourth was going. Their biggest fear, in that, was that Alex would keep it from them, that he would seal the lab off from the rest of the ship when he told the crew where they were going.

‘I won’t do that,’ he assured them, ‘unless it specifically states in my orders that I have to. You all have the same clearance as any member of the crew, after all.’

‘And you won’t just chuck us off the ship?’ That was Sam Maylard, really anxious. ‘Angas says these coordinates we’re going to are a rendezvous with another ship – they
wouldn’t
just take us off an hour out of port, would they?’

‘I doubt it,’ Alex said. ‘Though Mr Paytel is probably right about it being a rendezvous. The usual procedure with sealed orders is to give the skipper an hour to clear port along a given shipping lane, after which they can open and read them. When it is as specific as this, coordinates specified to eight decimal places, that usually means rendezvous with another ship, yes. It’s highly unlikely that the Admiralty would have put the Second to all the trouble and expense of sending your teams and all your equipment on board, though, just to take you straight off again. It’s far more likely that we’re to take more people aboard, discreetly, or perhaps some additional supplies needed for the mission.’

‘You seem very calm about it, skipper,’ Misha Tregennis observed. She was an expert in ergonomics, here to conduct research into how the Fourth achieved their exceptional efficiency ratings. She had dressed for dinner in a deep red off the shoulder cocktail dress, and leaned forward as she spoke, cradling a wine glass in one hand. Her smile was friendly, ready to become flirtatious if the skipper showed the slightest sign of being willing to respond. Not for the first time, Alex had to remind himself that she was actually a Fleet officer.

The truth was that Alex was just as excited about this as any other member of his crew. Not all his lack of sleep over the past few days had been due to pressure of work.

He would not, however, say so to Misha Tregennis, certainly not with her giving him that look of warm invitation.

‘Well, if being given mission orders was going to send me into a panic, I wouldn’t have got the job,’ he responded, courteous but impersonal.

Sam Maylard came to his rescue, clearly recognising that their guest was not comfortable with Misha’s giving him the eye.

‘I would just love to see that job advertised,’ he remarked, with a grin. ‘Wanted: Mission Commander. Must be able to undertake search and rescue, law enforcement, scientific research, first contact missions and the laying to rest of ancient spirits as required. An ability to work under pressure would be an advantage.’

Alex joined in the laughter, conceding the point with a nod. He would still define himself, if asked, as a frigate skipper, though admittedly a frigate skipper who undertook unusual mission tasks. Even he, though, recognised that the ever-increasing range of the operations they were tasked to, and their ever more extraordinary nature, was due to his own perceived ability.

That could be terrifying for a young skipper who really did not see that he had any extraordinary abilities, himself, beyond that of getting the best out of his crew. He had stepped up every time to whatever was being asked of him, though, and would do so again.

‘It isn’t like that, really,’ he told them. ‘For one thing, it isn’t just me, far from it, our operations are very much a team effort, and I don’t just mean those of us here on the ship. There’s a huge team effort going on, coordinated at a point way above us, at Senate level – that’s what the Sub-Committee does, coordinating operational input from everyone involved – system authorities, Customs, intelligence services, the Diplomatic Corps, just
massive
input from all of them, often across many worlds. And the operations we are tasked to are, or at least have been so far, of a nature that if we succeed, fine, but if we don’t, there’s no great harm done.’

That got an instant clamour of protest, which Sam Maylard managed to dominate.

‘You nearly got
killed
on the Gide operation,’ he said. ‘And you couldn’t know, could you, that throwing your ship at the Firewall that often, for so long, was really safe?’

‘No, not for sure, but it was within the limits of tolerable risk for any Fleet ship on operations,’ Alex smiled. ‘We are, after all, prepared for the risks inherent in combat, prepared to fight in defence of our worlds, if need be. I was satisfied that I wasn’t putting my ship or crew at irresponsible levels of risk. I should have said, perhaps, that there would be no great harm done if we failed, in the wider scheme of things. As with the Gider – worst case scenario, if our attempts to make contact were perceived as hostile or caused offence, the Diplomatic Corps could have apologised while disclaiming our actions, giving them what they call relationship rescue.’

‘You won’t be doing things like that with us still aboard though, will you?’ It was one of the Devast team, an engineer called Jate, who spoke up, cutting in with an anxious tone. ‘I know it said that we had to be prepared to take the risk of the ship being in combat or high risk operations, but if it gets too dangerous, we’ll be able to get off?’ There was a challenging note in her voice, too, as she added, ‘Angas says that you can always put us onto a liner, if we want.’

If Angas had really told them that, as a definite assurance, he had been deliberately misleading them. Alex doubted that, though – Angas Paytel was an extremely conscientious young man and would certainly have been explaining their rights as passengers with painstaking care.

‘If that’s
possible
at the point where you ask to leave the ship, we would certainly do our best to accommodate you,’ Alex said. ‘But I can’t promise you that that would be possible. It depends upon the nature of our orders and where we are at the time.’

‘That’s what Angas said,’ Mack McLaver confirmed, quickly, and gave his colleague a look which combined reassurance and warning. ‘I told you, don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘The Fourth will take excellent care of us, believe me.’

Jate subsided quickly. The Devast team were still acutely embarrassed by the behaviour of Professor Pattello, both during her stay aboard the ship and subsequently. Mack had already offered Alex a personal apology for what she’d done, over and above the formal apology on behalf of Devast Industries and repeated assurance that there would be no, absolutely
no
complaints or anti-social behaviour from the Devast team.

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Jate said, abashed.

Alex gave her a brief, but friendly smile.

‘It’s natural to be a bit jittery,’ he told her, then included the rest of them in that with a glance. ‘We all are, really, even those with operational experience. All I can say is that the agreement we have with the Second is that research teams will be removed from the ship if we’re undertaking high risk operations, yes? And I can’t imagine that Admiral Harangay would issue orders which ran contrary to that. And if you
do
want to leave the ship, at any point, I can at least give you my word that I will do my utmost to arrange that for you as quickly and safely as possible, all right? And I do believe, whatever else we may be tasked to, that the Fleet, and the Second, and the Sub-Committee, are all sincerely committed to the Ignite project. It has come back to us with the highest possible priority.’

As he had intended, this diverted the Devast team into focus on their own project. Mack had already told Alex that he’d been amazed, himself, to be told that the Fleet wanted them to go back to the Fourth immediately for another test fire.

Devast Industries had spent millions developing the Ignite missile to the point of the first prototype firing. After its spectacular failure, they’d expected to have to spend millions more, over several years, to resolve the problems that had seen it explode milliseconds too soon. The Admiralty, however, had astounded them by buying it as seen, on condition that Devast worked with the Second Irregulars and the Fourth to correct the misfire issue.

The Devast team looked polite but dubious. It had turned out that the Admiralty had made that decision on the basis of a report filed by the Fourth themselves, providing their own analysis of what they believed had gone wrong and how it might be solved. This was no more than they would do routinely in any of the R&D projects the Second ran aboard their ship. That kind of active contribution was one of the reasons the Second
was
so keen to use the Heron for field testing, bridging the gulf between the laboratory and deployment aboard ships in regular service.

In this instance, however, it had caused a good deal of consternation at Devast when it was realised that the proposed solution was coming from a leading star rating called Micky Efalto.

Mack and his team had been happy to work with Micky Efalto at the time of the first test fire, satisfied that he had all the expertise required to help them with the pre-fire diagnostics. The Devast board, however, had been rather harder to convince, with an obvious and lingering suspicion that the crewman had bodged something somewhere that had caused the misfire. Mack had done his best to convey to the board just how highly qualified and expert the rating was, but they had seemed unable to get past their own perception that a rating was the equivalent of a mechanic whose notion of fixing stuff was to hit it with a wrench. They certainly did not believe that it could really be fixed as quickly as the Fourth had said. They were expecting to spend months just analysing the data from the misfire. And rightly so, too, as one of the board had said. The Ignite was phenomenally complex cutting edge technology. It was important to progress with methodical, thorough understanding. It wasn’t their style to try things off the cuff and see what would happen, particularly when dealing with something that could blow up a planet. The Admiralty had bought in the missile, though, so here they were.

‘Well, you can rely on us, skipper,’ Mack told him. ‘You will have our full support, best effort.’

Alex refrained from telling him that they did not actually
need
their help – the Devast team, as far as the Fourth was concerned, was here to watch and learn, to go back to Devast fully up to speed on the design fix and able to bring the missile into production. He was tactful enough not to say that, though, but thanked them with due appreciation.

Then, with just a few minutes left before they were due to reach their rendezvous, he thanked them for their hospitality and went back to the command deck. As he took his place, there, in his customary seat at the central datatable, the excited buzz around the ship quietened into a tense, expectant hush.

This was it, now. All theories had been aired, all bets had been placed. It would only be minutes, now, before they knew where they were going.