Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (65 page)

Respect for the Samartians rose considerably as people saw for themselves just what conditions they were working in. It made sense of a lot of things about Janai Bennet’s own visit, too – why she’d come through the airlock hatch sideways and fallen over, for a start, why she’d found the light so dazzling and why she’d been so amazed by so much about the Heron.

‘We really do live like gods, compared to them,’ Hali Burdon observed, and got no argument from anyone around her. There was even, Alex was amused to see, a certain amount of wealth-guilt going on, noticeable when Mako was taking the cake trolley around. Alex had asked Simon to bake them a treat for after dinner, if he wasn’t too busy or too tired, himself, and Simon had obliged. He’d made konaberry tarts, using fresh fruit from the biovat and decorating each tart with vanilla cream and a slice of crystallised lemon. They were delicious, and a very well earned treat for all their hard work that day. But still, quite a few people hesitated to take one, just at first.

‘Seems a bit… I dunno…’ said Jonno Trevaga, expressing a feeling that was evident on many faces. He glanced at the comm screen which showed the Samartian contact-ship, still cruising in isolation, and the watchful squadron beyond it. ‘Feels a bit mean to be stuffing our faces with this, when they’re, like, chewing dried meat.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Mako, holding out the cake tray. He had taken on the task of distributing treats when Simon baked them, as part of his role as the interdeck steward, and it was clear to Alex that he and Simon had already had that conversation. ‘We’re not being mean. We’d be gift-boxing them day and night if they’d let us, but they don’t want it, wouldn’t eat it if you paid them. And if
we
don’t eat these, they’ll end up in the garbage, which is practically immoral, wasting good food. So do the decent thing and have a tart.’

That made people laugh and they did accept the treats, but Alex was interested to note that they were feeling a sense of bonding, even of responsibility for the Samartians aboard that ship. And it was, particularly, the contact-ship on which they were focussed. They all understood now that everyone on that ship was a volunteer, pledged to stay outside the border for at least a month with their air and food supplies replenished by a weekly drone, while quarantine facilities were readied for them, back home. Once there, they would be put through all manner of medical tests and intensive observations. They had been told that might take up to a year, even two. Even the two dakaelin were doing the work of skippers, aboard ship, and would be in quarantine just like the rest of them. And still they had volunteered. Given all their previous experience of contact with other species, that was courage the Fourth could only marvel at. It was good, Alex thought, to see his crew building a sense of kinship with their oppos on the other ship.

What the Samartians did next took them all by surprise, though. They were not expecting any public disclosure of their arrival. Such a situation certainly would be kept secret in the League, as the announcement of an alien warship in close proximity to any of their systems, however friendly their intentions were said to be, would kick off panic on a global scale.

The Samartian government, though, apparently had more confidence in the ability of their people to handle high-impact information. They notified the Heron that they were about to release news about their arrival in Samartian space on their news networks, and even provided a copy of that broadcast, sending them hourly news-updates, thereafter, for their information.

The Samartians were not going public with everything they knew all at once – they were starting with the first announcement that a ship of unknown origin had been detected in their space, that it had been challenged, and had complied at once with an order to leave Samartian territory. They had provided the news with first footage of the Heron, pointing out the differences between it and any other ship they’d seen before, with comments on its size, speed and probable armament. That ‘news’ was, by now, more than a month old, but was being broadcast as if it was happening live.

‘They’re running it delayed-release so they can manage the information flow,’ Buzz observed. ‘Not to slam people with too much, all at once. That’s quite something, though, huh? Can you imagine, on our worlds, if the government released footage of an alien ship encounter, apparently happening live?’

Alex
could
imagine, only too easily – he had been obliged to study global panics of that kind as part of his command school training, and those were not images you ever got out of your head. Everyone knew that the Marfikians destroyed cities, so a Marfik-panic involved mass, chaotic fleeing from cities. As transport infrastructure clogged up, evacuation rapidly became rioting. Some people would kill in their desperation to save themselves and their families. Others, convinced that the end of the world was upon them, would commit suicide. The sheer human cost of such panics was on a truly appalling scale. The global economy would take a massive hit, too, so it might be years before a world fully recovered.

‘Don’t!’ Alex said, with a suppressed shudder. If their arrival here caused anything
like
such a panic on Samart, he would never be able to live with himself – and, Alex being Alex, it would never even occur to him that such a decision to broadcast that news was the Samartian government’s and therefore any deaths or disaster arising from it were not his fault.

The Samartian government, however, evidently knew their people. The majority of their population might be glued to their news screens, watching this, but they were too used to being under attack to be frightened by a ship that wasn’t even shooting at them, however strange it might be. They were intrigued, too, by the fact that it was neither shooting at them nor transmitting gobbledygook, as was evident in the news commentary a couple of hours later.

‘This is new, we’ve never seen a ship behave like this.’ The speaker was another of the ruling military junta, a stone-faced Dakael Bleen. ‘They always either fire at us or broadcast gabble. This ship is not attempting to communicate, it’s just complying with our orders. We believe it may be some kind of automated drone, perhaps a survey ship or something of that kind, programmed to turn away if it detects gunfire. We are following at escort range, and assembling squadrons in support. If it continues on its present course it will leave defended space in approximately fourteen hours. We will then, obviously, monitor in case it attempts to return. Currently, however, our assessment is that it presents no immediate threat to the world.’

It was a very odd feeling, seeing that encounter from the Samartian perspective. It really brought home to them that
they
were the aliens, here, and how very small they were, too, just one ship confronting a world of four and a half billion people.

Alex watched a little of that news broadcast, spent another half hour or so working through Tina’s report, and then went to bed. They were in this for the long haul, after all, and it certainly wouldn’t help the situation if he worked to the point of collapse.

As he climbed into his bunk, though, he was wondering how much longer he and his crew
could
sustain this pitch. They had enough supplies to stay here for another eight weeks, yet, and Alex would be prepared to stay longer and go to emergency rations if that was needed to secure an agreement for future meetings, but he was aware of how hard everyone was working, pushing to the limit of endurance. He was conscious of the strain on his own nerves, come to that. He recognised that because he found himself starting to wonder, even, whether all this had been worth it. They’d come so far, and worked so hard, had been flung into combat with a Marfikian attack squad and were having to pick their way through extremely sensitive diplomacy – and for what? They had been hoping that the Samartians had some kind of advanced technology or skills they could teach them, to make their own worlds safer and perhaps even enable them to liberate at least some of the worlds under Marfikian domination.

It was apparent, now, that that was not going to happen. Even Davie had gone very quiet since it became apparent that the Samartian ships were so terrifyingly fragile and hazardous. He was working in the lab, busy at screens with an air of such focussed determination that it seemed almost desperate. Nobody was disturbing him; they just kept food and drink within his reach and gave him his space. He had boasted, once, after seeing a Samartian ship, that if he could get the answers to four questions he would be able to bring similar ships into production in the League. Alex suspected that he had got his answers to those questions, now, and wasn’t liking them at all.

The only edge technology the Samartians
might
offer was their expertise in nano-engineering, which was not beyond the League’s own ability to develop, had they ever seen the need. The secret of how the Samartians had fought off so many attempts at invasion over all these centuries was quite simply that they had sacrificed everything else to that cause.

That would not happen in the League, Alex knew that. There were already, and always, complaints about the ‘excessive’ amount of money spent on the Fleet and on system defences, complaints that got louder the further away from Marfikian borders you were. The suggestion that they might accept austerity measures, even food rationing, in order to prioritise resources to defence … well, it wasn’t something the voting population would consider for a moment.

And, having some idea now of how the Samartians achieved the astonishing speed and agility of their ships, Alex knew, too, that the Fleet would not even consider using such ships, as they were. They were just too dangerous.

Even finding himself asking the question
is it worth it?
, though, told Alex that he really was very tired and feeling the stress. And almost in the same moment that he thought the question, the answer came rebounding back. Of
course
it was worth it. Whatever potential benefits there might be in the future, they had succeeded where nobody else ever had, establishing First Effective Contact with the legendary Samart. First Direct Contact too, now, since they’d visited one another’s ships.

That left only the ultimate diplomatic prize – ultimate at least as far as this mission was concerned, anyway. They had to hang in there and do everything they could to secure an agreement to future meetings.

He would feel more confident about that after a few hours’ sleep, Alex told himself, and with the discipline he had learned long ago, cleared his mind and plunged into sleep like a man falling off a cliff.

Twenty Three

He needed that sleep the following day.

There was another holo-meeting with Jurore and Tell. Alex was hoping that they wanted to arrange for further ship-visits, perhaps even to accept his invitation for them to come to the exo-suite.

Instead, they were calling about a diplomatic issue – a ‘sticky’, in the jargon, raising concerns about whether they wanted to be talking to the Fourth at all.

Alex had been entirely honest with them right from the start, explaining the Fourth as best he could and providing full information about them early on. It seemed to have taken a while, though, for the Samartians to absorb and react to that information, as it was only now that they raised the thorny issue of the Fourth’s status as a rehab unit.

‘To confirm,’ Dakael Tell said, with extreme reserve, ‘there are people on your ship who have been dismissed from your Fleet service – people who have been designated as failing, and people who have committed crimes.’

‘That is correct, yes.’ Alex said, just as impassively.

‘And these are the people sent by the League to represent them?’ Dakael Jurore looked searchingly at him. ‘Is this because your people think we are not worthy of any more honourable ambassadors? Or did they think we would destroy your ship on sight, and send you because you are expendable?’

Even here
, Alex thought, with rather weary resignation. And at the same time, he could practically
feel
Lord Admiral Cerdan Jennar breathing at his shoulder, fulminating
Told you so!

Alex’s Novaterran heritage was a major asset, here, keeping his own expression arctic-formal despite his stomach-churning awareness that they were hovering on the brink of losing this relationship. But then, just as he was about to speak, Davie North shifted, beside him, moving his weight from one foot to the other in a slight but impatient gesture. Alex considered just for a moment then pressed the third and fourth fingers of his left hand together, just as briefly.

This was something they had hammered out during all the many role-plays they had done, over the weeks it had taken to get here. They had a whole raft of signals either could use during encounters. That shift of weight meant
I really need to take this
and Alex’s finger-squeeze answered with assent, and the reminder,
No further than we have agreed
. The pressure of his fingers was almost invisible and was on the edge of Davie’s peripheral vision, but Alex had no doubt that Davie had seen and understood it.