Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) Read online

  He didn’t really start to get frightened, though, till the next planet-rise. This time he was able to compare what he saw with the holo he had taken earlier, and there was no doubt about it. There was more ice. It was forming lower on the ridge, bringing it closer to the dome. It had, he estimated, increased perhaps three metres, over the last day and a half.

  It didn’t take much working out that if it continued to expand at that rate, given the distance between the dome and the ridge, the ice would reach the dome in about twenty five days.

  Jermane told himself that that didn’t matter. It was only ice, and very thin ice at that, just a tiny scatter of crystals. And there was no way, he told himself, that Andi and the Chanticleer’s crew would have sited the dome here if the ice presented any kind of danger. They would have checked what would happen in seasonal cycles for the time that he would be here… wouldn’t they? He couldn’t remember them saying anything about it, but then, they’d been so casual about the whole thing, and he hadn’t thought to ask, himself. Who’d have thought there could be seasons on a moon, after all? But it was apparent that, with the days getting shorter, a kind of winter was setting in.

  ‘It does not matter at all,’ Jermane told himself, firmly, and out loud. ‘It’s just ice, it’s no big deal.’

  Next day, though, the ice had crept closer. And this time when the planet-light warmed the surface, there was something eerie about the subliming wisps. It was as if they were moving closer to the dome, sneaking up on it during every period of darkness.

  Jermane told himself not to be so stupid. He was getting spooked, that was all. It probably wasn’t a good idea to have a series full of horrific murders playing on the holovision. He changed it to a series of comic pirate flicks, and told himself that he felt better.

  Within a week, though, he was very afraid. He was afraid that he was losing his mind, for one thing, with the fearful ideas that kept springing from an all-too fertile imagination.

  The trouble was, he couldn’t dismiss all his fears as imagination. Jermane knew that humans had, as yet, explored less than one per cent of the worlds even within the Firewall. There were systems within days even of major inhabited worlds which no human had set foot in, yet. It was truly wild, out here, unimaginably vast and strange, just so much they didn’t know or couldn’t understand.

  Spacers believed in ghosts, Jermane knew. Most spacers, anyway, even if they’d deny it. It was something that had always fascinated him. Spacers were, by definition, high tech, hard science people, techs and engineers. Yet they were notoriously superstitious, prone to belief in jinxes, hauntings, banshees and gremlins. There’d been a lot of talk on the Embassy III, lately, about the Fourth’s operations at Novamas, and the strange, beautiful ceremony that had honoured the Alari, a lost race long ago entombed beneath the ice of that world.

  ‘No, don’t think about ice, stop thinking about ice!’ Jermane told himself, severely. ‘You’re getting completely wound up and freaked out about this, it’s just gas, it freezes, it thaws, it freezes again, it’s just gas, it’s not doing anything on purpose.’

  All the same he wished, with increasing desperation, that he could shut out the view of that encroaching ice. They ought, he thought angrily, to have thought of that when they designed this dome, and provided a blank-out function or at least some kind of blind. He even thought about trying to improvise one, perhaps by taping a sleeping bag over the window. But then, when he really thought about that, he realised that not being able to see the ice would not make things any better. On the contrary, he would feel as if it was creeping up on him unseen. He would have, he knew, to keep checking it, lifting the improvised blind to have a look. And besides, if he once gave way to his fears like that, giving them solidity by acting on them, they would only get worse. He might well end up cowering in the shower, driven out of his mind by sheer terror.

  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, m
oving 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 fo
r 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?’

  Tina didn’t smile. Her stolid, rather heavy features remained fixed in an expression of calm courtesy.

  ‘I am entitled, by custom, to the best placement available, ma’am,’ she pointed out. ‘The Heron currently holds fourteen records in drills and performance evaluations, making it the highest achieving warship in service. The High Flyer Secondment Scheme defines a term of service with the Fourth as offering higher opportunity for training and operational experience than is available on any other Fleet ship. Their relationship with the Second also provides opportunity for involvement with research and development projects which are not available on any other Fleet ship. And their operational record, ma’am, speaks for itself.’

  The commandant could not deny any of that. Still, she looked anguished.