Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (64 page)

‘And their whole culture, everything, is geared entirely to focus on defence – well, obviously, their world has been under pretty much constant attack for the last fourteen hundred years. But psychologically, they’re
so
focussed on that, nothing else matters. Defence isn’t just their top priority, it’s kind of their reason for
being
. It would just be inconceivable to them to waste any time or resources on anything which
didn’t
directly contribute to defending their world. It’s like their lives are stripped down to the absolute minimum. They don’t even have furniture, you know? Not like ours, anyway – metals and plastics are prioritised for defence, they don’t waste them on things like chairs and tables and beds. They use
mats
– small ones to sit on during the day, bigger ones at night to sleep on, no such thing as a separate bedroom. A family lives in one room, with some kind of night-screen for kids to sleep behind, but that’s it, that’s normal life on Samart. They have hardly any possessions – basic clothes, basic
everything
, no fashion or beauty industry, no leisure industry to speak of,
everything
goes to manufacture sensors, ships and ordnance. And that would not be the case, would it, if they had siliplas?’

Alex nodded agreement. Siliplas was so very cheap and easy to manufacture that there would be abundant capacity for domestic use even with all the demand that the defence industry could have. Culturally, of course, it was entirely possible that a society might prefer a minimalist style of living, but experience had shown that when people were provided with siliplas, as a cheap, abundant and extremely versatile material, their levels of consumerism rose exponentially.

‘No – good point,’ he observed. ‘So you think, then, that they may have just not have
thought
of making plastics from silicates?’

‘I’d be amazed if the idea hadn’t occurred to them at some point, surely, it
has
to, even a kid could think of that,’ said Tina, with unconscious arrogance, there, as a child who had herself grown up on starships, absorbing understanding of science and advanced technology from the time she could toddle. ‘I can’t believe that they’ve never even considered the possibility of polymer-bonding silicates, and with their skills in nano-tech it really would be child’s play! But I think – my
guess –
is that they did some experiments on that line, maybe
long
ago, had some problems with it and decided that it wasn’t possible.

‘And that would have been that, see? Even if someone did realise, now, that it’s actually a really easy thing to do, they wouldn’t get any research grant or whatever they do on Samart, because the mainstream, absolute belief is that it isn’t possible. To them, I dunno, it would be like someone applying for a research grant to study…’ she floundered for a moment and laughed a little, waving her hands again, ‘actually, I can’t think of anything far out enough that we
wouldn’t
give someone a research grant for it,’ she said. ‘But the Samartians just don’t
do
speculative research, they were clear about that, research is always prioritised on the basis of how likely and quickly they feel it is to yield useful practical defence outcomes. And there is no private research, no manufacturers carrying out their own R&D, no independent universities or labs, nothing like that. All research resources are under government, and that means military, control. But all I can say is that I am as sure as I can be, skipper, one hundred per cent, that they do not have siliplas production.

‘They don’t have biovat, either. When I told them we produce our food in biovats there was just this
silence
, the most awkward moment in the whole visit, which turned out to be because I was talking about using gene-based manipulation of nutrients and to them that is just absolutely…’ she shook her head. ‘Genetic engineering of any kind is not just illegal, there, it’s a huge cultural taboo. I don’t believe they’d eat biovat food, skipper, they said that they’d consider such food ‘unwholesome’ but they were being polite, there, and I got the definite feeling that what they really meant was ‘an abomination’.’

‘Is that why you pegged them at six on Donavet?’

That question came, surprisingly, from Murg Atwood, though it was asked in such a casual tone that it seemed to be no more than interested conversation.

Tina knew better, just as Alex did, himself, understanding that Murg would have a very good reason for focussing in on that point. She was here as their most talented intelligence analyst, and part of what she was doing was evaluating just how reliable Tina’s information actually was.

‘No, no – well, partly,’ Tina said, and took a moment to gather her thoughts before answering the analyst, ‘No biovat puts them pre-nine, of course, but I
did
explore the possibility that they’d developed alternate sophisticated food production techniques. Pegging at six was founded on multiple indicators – statements and observation that their diet is wholly organic, much of it consumed with only the simplest level of processing – cooking, really – either at factory or domestic level. The absolute for pegging at six, though, is that they consume meat – farmed, domestic and hunted from the wild.’

It was Rangi who reacted most strongly to that, setting down his tea-bowl and staring at her, aghast.

‘It’s all about the protein,’ Tina said, in response to Murg’s look of encouraging enquiry. ‘They rate protein very highly, it’s considered to be like a sin, or unpatriotic, to waste it. They’re given a certain amount of farm-produced meat every week, as a key part of their ration, but they nearly all, from what I could gather, supplement that with domestic livestock. They were talking about their families killing birds for them when they got home, clearly meant as some kind of celebration, and they told me, and showed me pictures. The most common livestock, which they said just about everyone has, are birds, like pigeons, which they keep in cages on the walls underneath their windows. They’re prolific egg layers, I gather, and they’re mostly kept for that, people eat the eggs, but if they stop laying or for special occasions, the Samartians kill and cook them.’

She noticed that Rangi was turning distinctly green around the gills, and glanced at him apologetically. ‘Sorry.’ She looked back at Murg, then at Alex. ‘But I think this is going to be a sticky, further on.’ She meant, as he understood, that this might well be a cultural sticking point, in which both sides regarded the other’s customs as unacceptable.

‘I don’t think there is any kind of protein they won’t eat. It is absolutely normal there to hunt wild animals for food, too, a normal thing to do in your spare time, go and shoot things as they say, for the pot. They also catch fish – that’s regarded, I gather, as something even kids can do to help provide food for the family. And there were all manner of regional delicacies they were keen to tell me about – in one region they have lakes teeming with a particular kind of insect, like a mayfly I think, swarming in clouds. The Samartians catch them in nets, squash them into patties, cook and eat them, fresh.’

Rangi leapt up with a strangled noise and ran for the lavatory. The others watched him go, not without sympathy but with some amusement, too. It was, admittedly, quite funny that Rangi, who wouldn’t turn a hair at all the blood and gore involved in surgery, would be really distressed at someone stamping on a beetle.

Alex, Murg and Tina exchanged the slightly smug grins of people who had all eaten giant spider legs on Ferajo – biovat produce, of course, but generally considered the highest benchmark of how adventurous you were, gastronomically.

‘Yes, I can see that might be a sticky,’ Alex conceded. Spacers were far more open to eating any kind of organic food than most groundsiders, but even they would recoil at the things the Samartians ate. ‘Diplomatic advisory, there,
not
to accept invitations to dinner.’

Tina gave a splutter of laughter.

‘I think I might balk a bit at that one,’ she confessed. But even as she laughed, Alex could see the signs of exhaustion starting to catch up with her. She was slowing down, pausing then to take a gulp of tea, and noticing with some surprise that her hands were trembling. That made her laugh again, wryly. ‘Collywobbles imminent,’ she observed, since she knew very well what to expect. Even now, it was apparent that laughter might very easily become tears.

‘All right,’ Alex grinned back at her, amused but with complete understanding. ‘Debriefing phase
two
,’ he told her. ‘Rest, recover, process.’

‘Sir,’ Tina acknowledged, and did not even attempt to claim that she would be fine and could go ahead with a written report, right now. She looked over at the door to the shower-lavatory which Rangi had dived into, and grinned. ‘Do you think we should check on him?’

That wasn’t necessary, as the door opened while Alex was still laughing. Rangi was pale, and smelt strongly of mouthwash, but he was very much on his dignity and determined to resume looking after his patient. Alex, therefore, allowed himself to be ushered out of sickbay, giving Tina no more than a nod of commendation.

It was several hours later that they began to get the really detailed, intel-analysed report. Tina had Murg’s help with that, not just in helping to organise the information but in using techniques which drew out more information even than Tina was aware of, herself. She had not been able to take any pictures during her visit, but Murg was able to create reconstructions of some of the things Tina had seen, on the same basis as a forensic crime scene reconstruction.

The first image, a holographic walk-through of the ship, was grabbed and marvelled over the moment Alex put it on the notice board.

All of them were tired, by then, but spirits rose noticeably as they got their first look at what it was like aboard a Samartian ship.

The first thing they had to figure out was that the Samartian ship was not, as they had thought, a single deck ship with four pressurised compartments. It was, in fact, technically a four-deck ship, though each ‘deck’ was only a couple of metres wide, and up to fifteen metres high. That would have been ridiculous if the decks had gravity, but it was logical enough on a ship which was in permanent freefall. Airlocks and internal hatches were circular, with most of the equipment and displays oriented vertically as if the nose of the ship was at the top. There were strict rules about moving around, on board, which Tina had been informed about at once – you had to go up through the ship on the port side, and downwards to starboard, and were only allowed to cross from one side to the other at the hatchways.

That made perfect sense as it became apparent just how little room there was for anyone to move about. Tina had told them there was a crew of thirty two aboard. Half of them were on duty, mostly tethered at various stations throughout the ship. Of the remaining sixteen, eight were currently on sleep-time, which meant that they had to stay in their fully enclosed sleeping bags, regardless of whether they wanted to sleep, or not. There wasn’t really anywhere else for them to
be
– the other eight off-duty crew were pretty much squashed into odd little alcoves here and there, waiting for their turn to eat or sleep, and watching holovision.

That was one of the most astonishing revelations, as far as many of the crew were concerned. The Samartians were watching a live holo-channel, carried through the sensor-comms network and time-delayed by however far they were from Samart. It hiccupped, apparently, every time they were a second further away or closer to the broadcast, but was considered perfectly watchable. It was a dedicated channel, broadcast out
to
ships on patrol, providing hourly news updates and a stream of entertainment programmes.

Entertainment by the Samartian definition of it, at least. Virtually all of their ‘entertainment’ output was reality-soaps; filming the everyday lives of people who lived in particular communities. Such filming went on for generations in the same locations, round-the-clock filming in lots of apartments which could be accessed live at any time by viewers on the ground. Aboard ship they only got the highlight programmes, that day’s footage edited into something very like a soap, though no soap would last long in the League using such mundane domestic dramas as these. One of the most popular was called ‘The Towers’, following the fortunes of about fifty families who lived in a block. The current high-drama storyline, in that, was the question of whether one of the kids was going to make it into military school, or not. Incomprehensible as it might seem, Tina had been assured that it was considered very exciting, on Samart, to be ‘on-filming’, and whenever any of the families moved out of a location there would be hundreds of thousands of applications to replace them.

And that was it, as far as on-board leisure provision went. There were no sports, no games, not even sharing of meals. The food aboard ship was similar to the Fleet’s emergency rations, high nutrient bars designed for keeping you alive, not for any kind of pleasure. The Samartian versions were organic, meat-based – Tina said it had looked like they were eating chunks of leather. The crew she’d spoken with had said that it was all right, if you ate it slowly, though they’d admitted to craving what they described as ‘real’ food, by the end of a two week tour of shipboard duty. Each person got their ration bar at the designated time, eating it by themselves. There was no such thing, even, as a companionable mug of tea, since drinks were provided as hydration packs which you had to drink when you were scheduled to do so.

There
was
no social life on a Samartian ship, really. Even conversation was discouraged, chat being forbidden while you were on duty anyway and frowned upon if it was in any way distracting to the watch crew, too. Virtually the only thing they could do when off-duty was watch holovision using the headset-caps they wore all the time, and needed even to be able to speak to someone right next to them.

The noise was, indeed, deafening – an attempt to recreate the noise aboard the ship as Tina had experienced it was blocked by the ship’s safety systems. They wouldn’t play any sound louder than that set by Fleet regs as the safe maximum, so would only play the reproduced sound at sixty two per cent of what Tina said it had been. Even at that it was a cacophony people turned right down, or off, within a minute or two, exclaiming over the head-jarring blast of it. They exclaimed again, too, as it was realised that the slightly blurred quality to many images was not down to Tina’s faulty memory but was a faithful reproduction of what it had been like, there, with tech shuddering, screens blurred and even the air shimmering with constant vibration and even some heat-haze from some of the tech. There was no mistake, either, about how dark it was, aboard – the Samartians used red light on their ships, maximising visibility of screens and backlit readouts, and there was a rosy twilight dimness, deep with shadows.