Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (80 page)

‘
May
I, Mother?’ He asked Bennet, who’d been very quiet and rather expressionless while watching the demonstration. She smiled then, though, giving a nod, at which Bavore clutched the mug as if it was an olympic trophy. ‘
Thank
you,’ he said, first to her, and then to Mako and Davie. ‘Thank you!’

Within a very few minutes, he and Davie were deep in chemical formulae and processes. They had lost Mako almost instantly – he vaguely recognised the term ‘covalent bond’ but he couldn’t even have begun to explain it, and most of the things they were talking about made no sense to him in
any
language.

It didn’t make any more sense to Bennet, either, come to that, but the two of them sat quietly, watching as Davie convinced Bavore that it was, contrary to received scientific opinion on Samart, entirely possible to polymerise silicate.

When they left, Bavore still clutching his mug, Davie gave Mako a crushing hug and kissed him on the forehead.

‘Way to go, kid!’ he said.

Mako attempted to remember that he was a senior League Prisons Inspector on special assignment to liaison with the Fourth, and should, therefore, conduct himself with appropriate professional dignity. But as the comms opened back up and he heard the laughter and applause from round the ship, he just gave up, spluttered a laughing ‘Gerroff!’ and was left there, chuckling, as Davie gave him a grin and vanished up the nearest hatchway.

Dakaelin Jurore and Tell were back aboard the ship next morning, keen to negotiate a deal on the siliplas. They had actually requested a meeting for what would have been shortly after four in the morning, shipboard time, but Buzz, on Davie’s advice, asked if they could make it a couple of hours later.

‘Are you sure?’ Buzz was doubtful – the relationship was so important to them, it felt wrong to be refusing any request for a meeting, and risky, too, potentially damaging if the Samartians felt that they were being dismissive.

‘Totally,’ Davie said, and met Buzz’s searching look with a steady, professional gaze.

He and Buzz were not friends. They got along just fine but there were limits, in that, tacitly understood by them, and clear to everyone else, too. Buzz had never once called Davie ‘dear boy’, nor had he put so much as a paternal hand on his shoulder. Davie, for his part, called him ‘Mr B’ or ‘Commander’ and never teased or bantered with him. A shrewd observer might have noted that there was just a trace of rivalry in that, at least on Davie’s side. Right back when he’d first made friends with Alex, Davie had joked, ‘Consider me your sidekick.’ And for whatever reason, he had never quite got past a guarded courtesy with the man who actually held that role.

‘And what reason do we give them?’ Buzz asked, with real concern. Alex was currently having
his
six hour sleep, as insisted on by Simon. Buzz could wake him if there was an emergency, but for nothing less, Simon had said, than a Marfikian attack.

‘The truth,’ Davie said.

‘But isn’t that status-lowering, showing weakness?’ Buzz queried.

‘It would have been, early on,’ Davie said. ‘But we’re trying to move
past
the posturing stage, now. Sooner or later, we are going to have to admit to human limits, they
can’t
expect an ambassador to be available for them on demand at all times, there has to be an understanding of reasonable expectation. I believe the time is right, that it would be beneficial, healthy, to set some boundaries.’

It took a few minutes, but he did eventually persuade Buzz to reply to the Samartians with an explanation that Captain von Strada was on a mandatory rest break at the moment and could not be disturbed, so they could offer either Buzz in his place or a meeting at a later time.

Perhaps a little unflatteringly, the answer came back immediately; they would wait and meet with the captain.

The first thing Alex did, once they were settled in the conference room, was to apologise for having kept them waiting.

‘There are rules about how long we are allowed to function without sleep,’ he explained, ‘regardless of how important what we are doing may be.’

The Samartians accepted that, and Jurore commented, revealingly, that it was reassuring to find that they
did
need to sleep. It was apparent, though, that they were keen to get to the purpose of this meeting, and got straight to it. They wanted to know what the Revellin wanted in return for the siliplas technology.

‘In return for what we have already shared, nothing,’ Davie said. With the formulae he had given Bavore, and the sample plastic he had taken with him, the Samartians actually had enough information to figure out siliplas manufacture for themselves. It would take them many years of R&D to bring it even to prototype production, though. ‘That is information freely given, freely available on all the worlds we know – you could look it up on any system datanet. What we can offer, for research and development, is the SEP and recycling plant which we showed Citizen Bavore, yesterday, together with a supply of two hundred kilos of base gel. We will exchange this for the nanotech package.’

There was immediate agreement on that, with a rather bright-eyed alertness giving away just how excited the officers
were
, having evidently come to appreciate just how valuable this wonder-material could be to their world. With that agreed, though, Alex stepped in, explaining that they had a further matter that they wanted to discuss.

‘It is of course entirely your decision whether you choose to negotiate only with our government, or whether you open your world to commercial offers. As you develop contact with us and perhaps also with other worlds, though, you will, sooner or later, find ships turning up here with commercial trading offers. Some of those ships may well belong to Mr North. That being the case, with your permission, I have agreed to allowing him to put a commercial trade proposal to you. He is speaking, in that, as an industrialist, not a diplomat – this is a commercial trade proposal being made separately, though alongside the diplomatic exchange. Is that something you are prepared to listen to?’

They said that they were, a little wary but intrigued, and Davie smiled.

‘I own many factories within the League, and one of them makes a type of refinery I believe would suit your needs.’ He put up a picture of a processing station – compact, by refinery standards, about a kilometre long, and much of that struts and pipes between various processing tanks. ‘It is modern, efficient, able to generate or recycle three million tonnes of base-gel, annually. I could provide you with the specs, construction and operation manuals so that you could build one for yourselves. I can give you that right now. Or I could supply a pre-fabricated refinery, either for you to assemble or for us to build for you and teach you how to operate – that would take between one and two years to organise and ship out here. In return, I would be looking for a supply deal on nanochips.’

He had to explain what that meant – the Samartians had been working for so long on a war-footing basis of all production being state controlled that they had forgotten there was any other way to do things. They had just about got to grips with the notion that Davie had some kind of control over some factories within the League, but the actuality of business practice was as bizarre to them as the Dance of the Lizard. Once it had been established, though, that Davie could supply the refinery in return for an agreed quantity of nanochips, they demonstrated just how quickly they
were
learning by getting down, immediately, to the nub of it.

‘How many chips would you want?’ Tell asked.

‘For full specs and manuals,’ Davie said, ‘3.47 kilos. For supplying the refinery, between a hundred and eighty and two hundred and sixty kilos, depending on how big a workforce you want me to send. What I’d
suggest
is that you buy the specs now, have a look at them over the next year, and decide how much, if any, of the tech and labour you want me to provide.’

They stared at him.

‘3.47
kilos
?’ Jurore echoed, incredulously.

‘But that is…’ Tell sketched a container in the air, about the size of a shoebox. ‘That’s not even one
tub!
’

Nanochips, as they’d already discovered, came packaged in a standard syringe-like container, the microscopic chips suspended in a translucent jelly which also helped to fix them into place when they were dabbed into circuits. Each syringe contained half a Samartian kilo, around six hundred thousand chips, with eight of them packaged in a tub, and eight tubs to a box. The Samartians had already offered a box of chips as part of their own nano-tech bundle.

‘It is a fair price,’ Davie assured them. ‘The chips you are providing in the nano-tech package will be distributed by our government, shared out between worlds, universities and research foundations, along with the specs, for R&D. This is separate, this is a commercial trade deal, exchanging refinery tech for a supply of chips which can be used by my companies. I have calculated the costs and benefits on both sides, very carefully and in great detail … here.’ He transferred a file to them which it would take Samartian accountants many weeks to work through.

‘This is the important thing in any business proposal,’ he told them, ‘front page – this certifies that the offer meets all the requirements for what we call ‘clean and green’. That means that it has to meet a stringent set of criteria for business ethics and environmental impact. Do yourselves a favour, now and always, and don’t even consider commercial offers from anyone unless they have that authentic clean and green certificate stamped on them, all right? Normally, you can get an independent check on that from a business ombudsman who will verify that proposals do meet the criteria
and
that the company is fulfilling all the things they’ve said they will, too. As you’re not in a position to do that yourselves, yet, I have had this proposal vetted by Commander Sartin, a forensic accountant, and approved by Captain von Strada.’

He flashed a sidelong grin at Alex, who remained absolutely expressionless.

‘I can tell you that Captain von Strada is famous in the League for his high ethics in professional and business matters,’ Davie said. ‘It has taken me forty two hours of detailed explanation and evidence to satisfy him before he’d put his name to that certificate and allow me to make this offer. It is, I do assure you, absolutely squeaky clean, fair and ethical. Actually the equitable point for ‘on cost’ exchange came in at 3.4689 kilos, but they allowed me rounding that to 3.47 as reasonable practice.’

‘But we can’t give you 3.47 kilos of chips, that’s…’ the Samartian word translated as ‘leaf-picking’ but Jermane substituted ‘petty/silly.’

‘Yes, I
know
,’ said Davie. ‘But that is what clean and green business practice means, finding an equitable point which is fair to both parties. It would actually be wrong, unethical of me to accept quantities of chips from you which would make me huge amounts of money. We call that making uber-profit, and in clean and green business it
isn’t
good. We’re all about fair and sustainable profit and growth. You can’t help it sometimes, of course, if you put a new product out there and other companies just aren’t quick enough to compete, you can sometimes find yourself wiping the market, making uber-profit. But we have a rule, in that, in clean and green, that any profit we make above and beyond what’s fair and reasonable return for shareholders is given to community support, to charities and organisations which work to make life better for our people.’

Jurore and Tell conferred in undertones for a minute.

‘We feel that it would be embarrassing to give you six and a bit syringes,’ Tell said. ‘It has to be at least a box, for dignity. If you use the value of the extra for the benefit of your people, that is satisfactory to us.’

Davie turned his head and looked at Alex, saying nothing, just waiting.

Alex paused, making the point that he
was
considering, and then inclined his head.

‘Satisfactory,’ he said. And with that, the Samartians engaged in their first commercial trade deal with another world – quite something, as Davie observed, whooping with delight when the Samartians had gone. It wasn’t about the money, Alex knew that. Two thousand years of Founding Family history were fizzing in Davie’s blood, and to be here, making the same kind of first-trade deals his ancestors had in the founding
of
the League, was as big a thrill for him as first contact itself.

They just had to wait, then, however, for the nine days it took the Samartians to finish putting together their diplomatic team, and for all the fine-detail arrangements to be made about that. It was hard to judge where the Samartians were, with that, though from time to time they’d ask a question which gave something of a clue. They asked, for instance, whether it would be possible to organise the exosuite accommodation into two separate living areas, which seemed to suggest that they had definite candidates in mind. But they could only guess what the basis was for separating the quarters – there were no male/female or officer/crew distinctions made aboard their own ships, after all.

Those few amongst the crew who put their dollar on that split actually being military/civilian turned out to be right.

The news that the Revellin had offered to take four of their people back with them had, by then, been made public, as the broadcast news was catching up with what was actually happening. There had been massive, world-wide excitement at the idea of some of their own people actually going out there to the stars, and something like global hysteria at the point where the dakaelin had announced that they were considering the possibility of including civilians.

In fact, they had already selected them, at least to the point of getting it down to a final shortlist of twenty two volunteers who had already passed the same kind of training as Bavore.

Information on these twenty two was now given to the media, and it was fair to say that within hours they were amongst the most famous people on the planet. Everyone had an opinion about which of them should be chosen, and there could hardly be many people on the planet who didn’t join in that conversation with family, friends and colleagues at work. There was no kind of vote about it, of course, but there was a kind of feedback, all the same. The dakaelin watched to see what the public mood would be, bearing in mind that the population had risen up in mass protest over the issue of sending exploration ships out with their crews believed to be facing certain death. That didn’t happen here, as the majority of people evidently accepted that while going off on an alien ship was obviously dangerous, it was an opportunity they just could not pass up. The issue of sending civilians was rather more controversial, with widespread objection that it wasn’t fair, or right, to expect civilians to put themselves at such risk.