Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (41 page)

‘Deciding which way to go,’ said Mako. ‘See those green lines on the chart? That’s all the possible routes that we could take, from here.’

Jermane looked.

‘I make it eighteen,’ he said. ‘But they all cut off short, so how are they going to decide which one to take?’

‘They cut off short because that’s as far as the Naos scanner is able to predict,’ Mako explained. ‘As for how they’ll decide, well, I guess they’ll take the one that looks most promising for taking us in the right direction.’

That, though, was easier said than done. By day four they had had to turn around seven times and had made less than one day’s progress on the route to Samart. At that rate, as even the civilians recognised, they might well not reach the critical half-way point in the ten weeks their orders allowed. And if they hadn’t got that far by then, Alex would certainly follow orders, turn the ship around and abort the mission.

On day five, though, they broke through into the canyon Gunny had been aiming for. It was a rough hemisphere in shape, the space between a bulbous outcrop of nebula and neighbouring cloud. It took them in more or less the right direction and it was more than ten light years long.

They named it Happy Valley. Buzz had organised a rota in which every member of the crew, randomly selected, got a turn at naming one of the most significant features they passed each day. That would only appear on highly classified charts issued to skippers of any ships that might be sent out to Samart in the future. It still counted, though, as Gunny himself was recording the route for the Cartographic Service, all the names they gave a matter of official record.

Happy Valley was one of the more orthodox – by the end of week four they had labelled features which included Old Man Alley, Bacon Rift and Fluffy Bottom. By then, though, the novelty of exploring where no other starship had ever been had worn off. Day after day was just the same – a good day if they didn’t have to turn around and a really good day if they made significant progress towards Samart. There was little to see a lot of the time, nothing much they could do aboard ship other than the same old drills. It was even starting to feel a bit oppressive, closed in as they were so often by nebulaic fog.

Day thirty nine provided a distraction. It was Graduation Day for the Class of Sixty Four, back on Chartsey. They graduated, traditionally, three days before the rest of the cadets in Academies across the League, giving them a tiny but significant seniority in service.

They did their best for Tina, on the Heron. She tried to tell them that she really didn’t want any kind of fuss or ceremony, that she would be more than happy with a handshake from the skipper and an issue of doughnuts. Buzz, however, was having none of that.

‘You owe it to the Fleet to graduate with all due dignity,’ he told her, ‘just as we owe it to you. It is one of the most important moments in your life, dear girl, and we will celebrate it accordingly.’

There wasn’t much in the way of celebration, at least not to civilian eyes. There was a great deal of ceremony, though. There was a dress parade, held in the gym, at which officers and crew wore dress uniform and civilians their smartest clothes. They couldn’t rustle up a brass band, but Jonas led his choir in their first public performance, singing the League and Fleet anthems. Then there were speeches. Alex gave a speech which was more notable for its brevity than eloquence. Buzz gave a speech notable for its warmth and humour. Then it was time for the customary VIP guest speech. On Chartsey, that was usually given by the League President. Here, the most important civilian on the ship deputised for him.

‘My family has been dedicated to the service of the League for as long as the League has existed,’ Davie said, having taken his place at the speakers’ podium to polite applause. Alex was trying not to feel nervous. Davie North’s sense of humour was unpredictable, and Alex was not at all sure how seriously he would take such pomp and ritual. ‘I am, myself, the living embodiment of my father’s desire to serve and strengthen that bonding of worlds we call the League. I was created
to
serve, even, if called upon to do so, to speak on the League’s behalf in our dealings with the elder species.

‘So, what is this thing we call the League, this thing we dedicate our lives to serving and protecting? It is more than a group of worlds working together for mutual socio-economic benefit. It is more than a group of worlds which have agreed to subscribe to the same constitution, laws and government. It is a spirit, a sense of identity which unites us, a commitment to the principles of democracy, and it is a community – a community which stands together, defending our worlds from the threat of tyranny.

‘There is no higher service in that cause than in those who take to the stars, leaving homes and families behind, standing ready to lay down their lives in defence of their worlds. Those who undertake a leadership role in that endeavour, those who will have to make decisions affecting not only the lives of their shipmates but the safety of the worlds they protect, carry a heavy responsibility. It is right, therefore, that we honour these young people – this young person - ‘ he amended with a glance at Tina, ‘as she embarks on that fine and noble endeavour.’

As he would admit later, he had boned up on the sort of thing he’d be expected to say by scanning through records of speeches made by the presidents over all the graduations since the forming of the Class of Sixty Four. Tina was maintaining her composure, but there was a distinctly pink tinge around her ears as she took her own place at the podium, called upon to deliver the valedictorian speech. She had meant, right up till that moment, to make light of it, to give a tongue-in-cheek acceptance speech like someone at an awards ceremony.

Faced with the solemnity of the moment, though, with everyone looking at her so expectantly, she took a deep breath and gave it her best shot. She used the word ‘privilege’ five times and thanked all of them for everything that they had taught her in the last three months.

‘I have learned so much,’ she said. ‘From how to make a decent pot of tea…’ a glance at the engineer with that, which raised some grins. As with most starships, there was an ancient tradition in engineering of making tea using a battered old teapot and a steam valve. ‘… to what makes a really outstanding officer; something I am just starting to learn, and will continue to learn, from the example of the finest officers it has ever been my privilege to meet.’

She got a hearty round of applause for her speech, and many handshakes and congratulations in the traditional tea-party that followed it. Everyone was calling her ‘Sub’, to her mingled embarrassment and delight. Her cadet insignia was gone, replaced with the gleaming wonder of the pips identifying her as a Sub-lt, junior grade. They had a dinner in the wardroom that evening, welcoming her as a member
of
the wardroom, no longer there as a guest.

After that, though, she just went back to work, assigned nominally to assist Jonas Sartin with the finances, but undertaking as near to the tasks she would on the tagged and flagged programme as they could contrive. Days went by, and the ship settled back into the same rather dispiriting sense of being stuck in a maze and getting nowhere fast.

Then Simon offered a startling diversion. He and Misha Tregennis asked to see Alex privately. Assuming that this would be something to do with workload or working efficiency, he saw them in his daycabin.

‘So,’ he said, bracing himself for one of Simon’s onslaughts, ‘what’s the problem?’

‘There isn’t one,’ Simon said. ‘We’d like you to marry us.’

Alex blinked at him, then looked from him to Misha and back again.

Misha chuckled.

‘To each other,’ she clarified, indicating Simon just in case there was any confusion. ‘Not to join us in a triad or anything.’

Alex remembered to breathe. ‘Are you
serious
?’ he asked, looking back and forth between them again.

They laughed, but were quick to assure him that they were entirely serious, yes.

It had not escaped notice on the Heron that the medic and the ergonomist were attracted to one another, though they had complied with shipboard rules and kept their relationship friendly.

‘We’re not asking to make a lifelong commitment,’ Simon explained, cheerfully. ‘It’s just that the no-girlfriend thing is getting to me a bit, celibacy turns out to be really
not
my thing. So, since the rules are that only married people get to have that kind of fun around here, the obvious solution is to get married. Misha and I get on great, so why not?’

Alex looked at Misha, who gave a light shrug and grinned agreement. Clearly, Misha considered that marrying Simon Penarth would be fun.

Alex was just about to tell them both that marriage ought to be something taken more seriously than that when he realised he had no right. That was his own Novaterran heritage speaking. On
his
world, marriage was something entered into as a serious, long term commitment. He was aware, though, that that was not the case on other worlds. As the League had formed, absorbing worlds which had evolved very different cultures during Dark Age isolation, respect for cultural difference about marriage had been part of the constitutional bedrock. There were, therefore, as many different forms of marriage recognised within the League as human ingenuity had been able to contrive. On some worlds, Alex was aware, they went in for Lover’s Leap weddings, singles events where you were matched up and married to complete strangers. In comparison, this was relatively sensible. And in any case, he did not have the right or authority to make such judgements on their private lives.
His
only role would be to establish the legality of the marriage contract and make it a matter of legal record by signing it into the log. He could do that here and now – with the necessary forms completed, they could be married in five minutes.

‘We’ve done all the paperwork,’ Simon informed him, passing the completed forms to a screen on Alex’s desk.

Alex looked at them, buying himself a few moments to think. As he got over the surprise, an idea was starting to wriggle up from his hindbrain. He looked up, considering the two of them.

They smiled. Each in their own way was perfectly capable of seeing the thought process working through his mind. Simon was of course a practising psychiatrist; Misha an expert in observing human behaviour.

‘Yes, it
would
be good for morale, wouldn’t it?’ Misha observed, as she saw him come to that realisation himself.

‘Sorry,’ Alex said, feeling a little guilty at the thought of exploiting their private lives for the benefit of his crew.

‘That’s okay, we don’t mind.’ Misha flicked a grin at Simon, who nodded confirmation.

‘We’ll just have a basic wedding in your office, if you like,’ he offered. ‘But we thought it might be good to get everyone involved.’

‘Well, if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind...’ Alex said. He would have hated it, himself, if something as private as his wedding had been turned into a show, even for as good a cause as keeping up morale on his ship. Even as he said it, though, he realised that he was putting his own scruples onto them, unnecessarily. Neither Simon nor Misha was of the type that shunned the limelight. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Thank you. And, uh – congratulations.’

They had the wedding four days later. It was held in the interdeck lounge, specially decorated for the occasion with flowers that Davie had made with the interdeck siliplas extrusion plant. Simon did the catering himself, naturally, including a splendid wedding bread. At Misha’s request, nobody wore uniform to the wedding other than for Alex, who officiated in dress rig. Davie was elegant in a grey suit as he stood groomsman to Simon, while Martine Fishe was maid of honour for Misha. The bride and groom themselves, predictably, had a great time. Simon had borrowed one of Davie’s suits and had a haircut in honour of the occasion, so he looked very smart and quite unlike himself. Misha had contrived, somehow, to find a stylish outfit and was as manicured, made-up and hair-dressed as any bride could desire.

The ceremony itself was simple. They were signing a standard one-year marriage contract. Neither was pretending that this was any ‘great love of our lives’ romance so there were no slushy vows or gazing deeply into one another’s eyes. What there was, instead, was a combination of wedding traditions not just from their own worlds but many suggested by members of the crew. The result was an eclectic but enjoyable hotchpotch of ceremonial which included drinking champagne with their little fingers hooked together, kissing three times when the wedding was pronounced, and handing out siliplas flowers to the guests.

Alex, having done his part with suitable gravitas, retired to the command deck and left them to enjoy the wedding party. Seeing the buzz of wedding preparations which had consumed the ship for the last few days now culminating in all that noisy fun which would go on till the small hours, Alex smiled. Having civilians aboard could be beneficial in all sorts of unexpected ways.

The day after the wedding, Jermane and Mako sat in the interdeck lounge, gazing at the holoscreen with enraptured eyes. Mako was silent, absorbing the spectacle. Jermane, inevitably, was talking.

‘It is just incredible to think that we are the first people ever,
ever
to see this,’ he observed.

They were passing through a cluster of stars, buried deep in the nebula. Gunny had plotted a course that took them close by a binary system of such splendour that the civilians were mesmerised. One of the pair was a neutron star, the other a great red-gold blaze. Plasma was streaming between the two, spiralling around the smaller neutron star in a vast, beautiful swirl of light. The spacers had given it a few minutes of their attention in passing, debating amongst themselves whether it was prettier than other firefall binaries they knew. For Jermane and Mako, though, it was a wonder that had held them spellbound.

‘I just don’t understand how they can be so blasé about it,’ Jermane said, with a gesture at a table where several members of the crew were having a laugh, paying no attention to the scenery at all. ‘I know they’re very goal oriented and this is just a means to an end for them, and yes, okay, they’ve seen things like this before. But how can you look at something that magnificent, knowing you’re the first people ever to see it, and just go, ‘that’s pretty’ and wander off to play cards? Doesn’t it just fill you with a sense of the majesty of the cosmos?’ He adopted his ‘quoting poetry’ voice as he went on, ‘This speck of living dust are we, falling in infinity.’