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

He was dreading, with a kind of sick horror, the day when the ice touched the dome. He told himself fifty times a day that it was nothing,
nothing
, it would be a little glitter of frost crystals over the dome, if indeed they formed at all. The dome’s insulation was very good, but its outer temperature must surely, he thought, be a
bit
warmer than the surrounding ground. The system interface, though, was unhelpful on this point, since it would only give him the external ground temperature. Perhaps it would be warm enough so that no ice formed on the dome at all, or even for a little way around it – it might move on, leaving the dome in a safe little island of warmth.

Or it might not. And however illogical he knew it was, some part of him was sure, but
sure
, that when the ice began to creep over the dome, those ghostly wisps would form, not just outside, but here, within.

He tried to keep his mind off it. He tried to work, delving into the files he’d brought with him, forcing himself to concentrate. Time seemed to play tricks, though. He would feel as if he had been working for an hour, and look to find that only ten minutes had passed. Sometimes he found himself sitting there reading the same passage over and over again, oblivious to its meaning.

He was losing it, he knew that. He was hysterical, panic-stricken, even becoming delusional. He saw something from the corner of his eye one day – a small, quiet, sliding movement with a soft little sound. He froze rigid, not breathing, his heart beating so hard that he thought he might actually have a cardiac arrest. It was at least ten interminable seconds before he was able to work out that it was just a cushion which had slid off the couch, the one he’d tossed there casually as he’d got up a few minutes ago. Even then, it took him all his willpower to force his head around and look, and he was almost sobbing with relief as he went and picked it up, still hardly wanting to touch it even then.

It was after that that he got as far as opening the medical box. There were, indeed, anti-stress pills in that which would have eased his symptoms. Even as he picked up the packet, though, he knew he wasn’t going to take them. The Diplomatic Corps had firm policies on stress medication for those on front line duties – if you were so stressed that you needed medication to cope, you were not considered to be fit for duty. This often meant that people carried on working in a stressed state when they could have been fine on medication, but the Diplomatic Corps held firm. If he took those pills, doing so would be signing himself off work with a mandatory assessment before he was allowed to return to front-line duties.

So, he put the pills back in the box and tried doing some research instead, looking up what information the dome computer had about coping with this kind of situation. He found a pamphlet on isolation stress, anxiety and bioshock.

It had not occurred to him before that he might have bioshock – that, after all, was a phenomenon he associated with living biospheres, a kind of allergic reaction to finding yourself in an environment so very alien to you that your body did not know how to cope with it. Reading the pamphlet, though, he realised that that might, indeed, be a factor. Though the dome had its own artificial gravity and generated that at a comfortable Chartsey-standard, there were pretty intense gravitational and tidal forces going on, there, with that gas giant filling the sky. He might not be able to sense them consciously, but perhaps there was some kind of infrasound effect that was creating a sense of dread, particularly at planet-rise.

He felt a lot better, with what felt like a far more rational explanation, and managed to be quite calm, then, for several hours, feeling much more in control. He even dozed off after lunch, curled up on the couch.

When he woke, though, it was with the disorientation of brief, shallow sleep, not knowing for a moment where he was or whether it was day or night. It had got dark outside again, confusingly, and he had to blink at the time for a few seconds to figure out that it was actually still the afternoon, that he’d only been asleep for twenty minutes. He felt awful, both sluggish and restless, not knowing what to do with himself. Feeling compelled, as so often, to go and face his fear, he got up and walked over to the window.

Mist was creeping over the ground, moving towards the dome.

He worked out, afterwards, that it was nothing of the sort – merely frost crystals precipitating a few centimetres above the ground, forming at lower altitude as the temperature dropped.

It
looked
like mist, though, and it looked like it was flowing over the ground towards the dome. And in the next moment, Jermane Taerling was back on the couch, hugging a cushion in a foetal position and gasping like a terrified child, ‘
It isn’t real, it isn’t real, it isn’t real…’

He had been in the dome for twenty two days, and the ice was forming just ten metres away, when the miracle happened. He was doing a puzzle with a movie on in the background, forcing himself to concentrate on the logic problem in the hope that forcing logical thought might help keep the demons away. Then, all at once, out of nowhere, the comms screen flicked into life, announcing with a buzz and flashing message that it was receiving signal.

After the moment it took him to realise that that meant there was a ship, Jermane yelled, throwing himself off the couch and hurtling to the comm.

‘Mayday, mayday, mayday!’ he shouted, with an all-channels broadcast, as if shouting might make his signal carry further. ‘Help! I’m here! On the moon! Can you find me? Can anyone hear me? Is anyone there?
Please
?’

‘Yes, we hear you.’ A woman answered, making him yelp with the sheer joy of hearing another voice. ‘Please, breathe,’ she said. ‘We know exactly where you are, and we are on our way. But we need you to tell us who you are, okay? Please, try to be calm, and identify yourself.’

‘Taerling – Jermane Taerling. I’m with the Diplomatic Corps. I was left here to wait for a ship. Is that you? I was told a ship would pick me up, but I have no idea – I’m here on my own, I don’t know anything. Who is that? Please, please, whoever you are,
please
, tell me that you’re going to pick me up, don’t leave me here!’

‘It’s okay, relax, we won’t leave you.’ The woman said soothingly. ‘My name is Shion, okay? I’m in a fighter just a few klicks above you. We will come in and get you, I promise. We just need to follow procedure. Do you have any ID or orders to confirm who you are?’

Jermane floundered for a moment, then remembered. Ambassador Jeynkins had given him the letter, in case it might be needed.

‘I have a letter from the president,’ he offered. ‘But it’s on a secure tape so I can’t upload it.’

‘Okay – just wait there,’ she said, as if he could do anything else. ‘We’re coming in now.’

‘Oh, thank God, thank God!’ he babbled. ‘You’ve no idea, I’ve been here for days, days and days and
days
– oh the ice! Be careful when you come in, there’s ice everywhere. I don’t think it’s safe. There was a place where the shuttle landed when they brought me here but that’s covered with ice now so I don’t know where you’ll be able to land.’

Even in his frantic relief, something was trying to force its way into his awareness.
Shion
.
Fighter
.

He ran to the window and saw a star fighter, a sleek dart, dropping feather light to land nearby. It was bigger than the dome, studded with pyramid guns. It had military grey paintwork and an emblem which displayed
Fourth Fleet Irregulars,
but it also had a nose-emblem, a sparkling ruby insect with the legend
Firefly
.

Jermane’s knees went weak beneath him.

‘It’s you!’ he gasped. ‘Oh my God, it’s you!’ Then he realised how rude that sounded. ‘Your
grace!’

‘Oi,’ said Shion, amused, mock-stern. ‘Pack that in. It’s just Shion, okay? Hi. Give me a wave – I can see you at the window.’

Jermane obeyed, dazedly. Titles were ringing in his head – strange and ancient, with a thrilling resonance of exotic, alien lands.
Chamlorn Lady Ariel Mgwamba et Savurai, Grace of a noble house, purest of blood, Breath of the Karlane.
The only one of her people to emerge from the mysterious Veiled World in living memory. A visitor so important that the League President himself had crossed half the League just to meet her. And here she was, piloting a fighter.

‘Good boy,’ Shion said. ‘Now, take a couple of deep breaths and try to focus, okay? Some of our guys are coming over to you now…’ she heard him catch his breath as a hatch opened on the fighter and silver figures sprang out of it. They wore huge, mirror-bright armour and carried deadly-looking rifles. They clearly meant business, too, as they leapt out two by two in perfect unison, hitting the ground and forming a rapid, close formation. ‘Yes, I know they look a bit scary but they’re not, really,’ Shion told him. ‘They’re coming to help. Have you got a space suit there, Jermane?’

‘Er – yes,’ he said, looking over at the locker where the space suit was kept. ‘But I haven’t tried putting it on. Andi said I should only use it in emergencies.’

‘Don’t worry about it, then, we’ll get you in one of our own suits,’ Shion said, matter of factly. ‘But you may want to pack anything you want to bring with you. Don’t worry about the guys, they’ll let themselves in.’

Even as she spoke, four of the eight figures in combat armour were coming through the outer hatch into the airlock, while the other four held at-the-ready positions. Moments later, the inner hatch opened and the first of the figures clumped in.

‘Hi,’ she said, clearing her visor to reveal that she was a young woman, still a teenager by the look of her, with a look of sturdy common sense and a broad grin. ‘Tina Lucas,’ she introduced herself, and stuck out a massive gauntleted hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

Two

Three months before, and three hundred and forty seven light years away, Cadet Officer Tina Lucas sat in the office of the Chartsey Fleet Academy Commandant.

The commandant stared at her. ‘You want to do
what?
’ she asked, with a shaken note.

Tina gazed back calmly.

‘I wish to file an appeal against my shipboard placement, ma’am,’ she repeated.

There was a moment in which the Academy Commandant was entirely lost for words. Then she recovered the power of speech.

‘But you’ve got the
Falcon
!’ she pointed out, in the tones of one offering the holy grail. Which, indeed, it was. Every year all of the Academies across the Fleet sent their highest rated second year cadet to complete their final year of training in the elite Class of Sixty Four on Chartsey. The highest ranking cadet at the end of the year got a whole bundle of prizes; they were named Top Cadet, gave the valedictorian speech at graduation, were given a signet ring as an honour to wear with dress uniform, and got an automatic place on the Fleet’s fast-track Tagged and Flagged promotion scheme.

They also, as a matter of ancient tradition, got the most prestigious final year shipboard placement available. Which, for the past few years, had been aboard the destroyer Falcon. It was the most modern class of destroyer in service, on exodiplomacy assignment bringing Solaran visitors between Chartsey and the secret X-base where they left their ships to enter League space. Every cadet dreamed of that opportunity.

‘Yes ma’am.’ Cadet Officer Lucas managed to keep the patient note out of her voice, keeping her tone one of formal respect. ‘But I believe I am entitled to a placement on the Heron, ma’am.’

The commandant lost the use of words again and just waved her hands in a desperate gesticulation. Tina waited quietly.

‘But…’ the commandant spluttered, after several seconds, ‘But… you can’t be
serious!
The
Heron!’
The word came out almost as a wail. Hearing her own voice making such a sound, in conversation with a cadet, seemed to pull the commandant up. She drew a breath, composing herself, and managed to speak with more authority. ‘Look, you’re talking about the
Fourth.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ Tina agreed.

The commandant waved her hands again, finding that there was so much she wanted to say, she just didn’t know where to start.

‘But the
Fourth
,’ she managed, then took a breath. ‘Look,’ she said again, with an air of gathering her resolve, ‘you can’t possibly be serious about this; you can’t possibly know what you’re asking. The Fourth is a rehabilitation unit for failing personnel, Ms Lucas. You don’t ask to go there unless you have serious, serious problems!’

Three years in the Fleet had taught Tina not to contradict superiors, so she just sat quietly.

‘Oh, I know, I know,’ the commandant said earnestly, ‘there’s that so-called High Flyer scheme, but that is nothing more than a scheme for malcontents and misfits. Nobody asks to join the Fourth if they are happy and successful in regular Fleet service. Even to apply to them is stating on record that you’re
not
happy in regular Fleet service, and what
is
that but declaring that you’re a malcontent, rejecting everything that is normal, traditional,
respectable!
Look…’ she clasped her hands together tightly on the desk before her as if trying to bring them, and her emotions, under control, ‘you can’t have thought about what you’re saying, Ms Lucas. You’re our Top Cadet, the highest achieving graduate out of all the Academies across the League. Why in heaven would you want to throw in your lot with …’ her hands flew apart and fluttered in the air as she struggled for a word, ‘
them
?’