Assegai Read online

  ‘Ai’m a celebrity,’ she cooed. ‘Ecktually.’ She held out a gracious hand, almost as if she expected him to kiss it. ‘Ai won,’ she eyed him languorously, ‘Celebrity Box.’

  Oh, Simon, Alex thought, but before he could put together an appropriate response, two people came out of the Embassy, very obviously looking for him, and were followed by a third. The first two were competing – hurrying stride for stride and all but elbowing one another out of the way. One was the Director of the Terraforming Unit. The other was one of his officers, a Sub-lt whose current assignment was to keep Alex informed about anything he would want to be told. The rather more discreet person following them was one of the Ambassador’s staff.

  ‘Captain, if we could just have a word about…’ the Director said.

  ‘Just need half a minute, skipper,’ said Sub-lt Tomaas, at the same moment.

  Alex held up a hand to silence them, glancing beyond to where the Ambassador’s PA was standing quietly, offering a sympathetic smile and an enquiring look. The Ambassador, Alex recognised, wanted to know if he was coming back to finish their meeting.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Alex turned back to Simon and his bride. ‘Lovely to meet you,’ he lied, and to Simon, ‘On the run…’

  ‘Hah!’ Simon switched instantly from happy hubby to the vengeful enforcer of health and safety regulations. ‘Watch that workload!’ he looked appraisingly at the captain. ‘And try to take more exercise.’

  Alex walked away, nodding to the PA to say that he was on his way, but with Sub-lt Tomaas swinging in on one side of him and the Director of the Terraforming Unit on the other, both determined to grab his attention in the short walk through to the elevators.

  ‘Othol,’ said Nyge Tomaas, as Alex looked at him first, ‘is fine.’ This was the standard opening for any kind of incident involving the quarians. ‘He was bitten,’ said Nyge, ‘by a sea-slug.’ He indicated the forefinger of his right hand, and Alex looked puzzled for a moment. He was trying to figure out how anyone could be bitten by the very slow moving, coral-munching sea slugs. You’d actually have to hold your hand quite still and watch it fastening its jaws around your finger. Then he understood. Of course, that was exactly what Othol had done, handling the creature, no doubt believing that he could persuade it not to sink its horny teeth into him by empathic suggestion. Clearly, this had not worked. ‘He’s had to be taken to sickbay to have it removed,’ Nyge told him. ‘He didn’t want it to be hurt so he went up with his hand in a bucket of water.’

  Alex nodded thanks, and slowed slightly as they were nearing the elevators which would take him straight up to the ambassadorial office.

  ‘If this,’ he told the Director of the Terraforming Unit, ‘is about giraffes, I really don’t want to know.’ This was indicative of the fact that he and the Director were on the best of terms. He had effectively fired her predecessor for resistance to the bio-enrichment programme and she was very keen to show him her own enthusiasm for it and to involve him in it, too, as much as she could.

  The Director looked amazed.

  ‘Giraffes?’ She queried, standing there as Alex went into the elevator and turned to face him. ‘It’s about the rabbits!’

  ‘Later,’ said Alex, and as the door closed, he heard the two of them – and she and Nyge were also on excellent terms – resuming a debate over whether a man with his hand in a bucket was more important than a thousand rabbits released on the wrong continent.

  Alex grinned a little to himself as the door cut off their discussion. My life, he thought, is bonkers. Bonkers beyond the telling of it.

  And he wouldn’t, he knew, swap it for anything.

  Two

  The Heron left Serenity at the end of a month, taking Silvie with them but leaving the other quarians behind.

  They had stayed twice as long as Alex had hoped, ostensibly to ensure that the quarian visit was going well and everything was settled there before they left.

  In fact, Alex suspected, they had lingered there as long as they did because the Vice President and most of the Senators were doing their utmost to push down to the deep-six level at the encounter zone.

  In this, their official status gave them no advantage when it came to meeting quarians. The glimpse they’d had of Silvie putting her head through the door had been as close as any of them had come to such an encounter. The quarians were busy exploring their new world and didn’t see why they should stop doing that and go meet a bunch of people just because the humans believed they were important.

  So the visitors, of whatever status, were subjected to a visa-analysis of their cultural knowledge and confidence, a test which took only five minutes and could be carried out using any holoscreen. On the outcome of that, they were given a provisional access level at the encounter zone. Regardless of what that might be, though, they were all expected to begin their visit at top-nine, tactfully described as the Arrivals level, and work their way down through the levels, spending at least an hour in each of them. Once they had reached their assigned levels they would find staff there offering training to help them go down another level if they wanted to, until they reached the point where they themselves felt that they would not be comfortable going any further.

  For some of the Senators, this had been humiliating. Senator Twitchell been stuck at top-seven with tourists, unable to bring himself to meet the criteria which would have got him a pass down to top-six. The test for that was to put your hands into a coral-reef aquarium with live fish swimming about in it. Senator Twitchell had not been able to do this at all, let alone with the confidence which would have got him a pass down those guarded stairs.

  Others had done better. The Vice President would boast for the rest of his life at having made it to deep-one, and bore dinner parties rigid, too, with his level-by-level account of how he had done it. And Terese Machet had surprised nobody by moving quietly down to deep-four, where she was quite at ease eating quarian food. She had drawn the line at progressing to deep-five, which required the use of quarian bathrooms – a certain degree of Senatorial dignity, she said, did have to be maintained.

  Other Senators, however, had not wanted to give up, apparently in the belief that if they just stuck at it they could get all the way to deep-six and get the kudos of a goodwill ambassador badge.

  Ultimately, though, they were forced to leave at the end of the maximum time the Senate had allowed for their stay.

  Alex really didn’t want to go, either. He knew what awaited him at Chartsey, and he would be sorry to part from the quarians who were so much a part of his life, now.

  Saying goodbye to them was farcical, though. Quarians didn’t do ‘goodbyes’ in the same way that humans made a ceremony out of parting. They would often walk away without even so much as a word or a wave, though Silvie at least had learned that humans appreciated some kind of signal that you were departing, however daft that seemed to her when your departure in itself surely made that obvious.

  Goodbyes in the emotional sense, though, were still ludicrous even to Silvie. Quarians lived a long life, with very little death either from disease or accident. They moved around a lot, too, parting even from family with the assurance that they could get back together any time.

  Alex knew that, but still he did not feel that he could just go without a final check in on them. All five quarians were on a jungle hike, escorted by one of the Excorps minders. It was a modified form of survival training, showing them how to establish an earthquake-safe camp and construct a shelter from interwoven branches. They were enjoying themselves very much and busy trying to start a fire when Alex arrived.

  ‘We’re off now,’ he told them.

  ‘Yes, we know.’ Salomah had brought some dry leaves to put into the fire-pit, and began arranging them artistically, laying them like fish-scales over the mound of twigs. ‘We’ll see you again,’ she pointed out, ‘when you come back.’

  That might not be for years – if at all – but it was clear from Salomah’s tone and the cheerful
disregard of the others that that meant as little to them as if Alex was going away for a few days. Salomah and Othol had become his closest friends on Quarus. He and Salomah, in particular, had bonded so closely that he thought about her, and cared about her, just as if she was his sibling. But here she was, completely unmoved by his departure, which might separate them for years or even mean they never saw one another again.

  Alex could have been hurt. In fact he was amused. You couldn’t be hurt by quarians being, well, quarian. And it could be seen another way, too – that the bonds of friendship between them were too strong to be eroded even if they never did happen to meet again.

  ‘All right,’ he said, recognising that they were caught up in the adventure they were having, the problems that had to be solved, and would really rather not be distracted.

  All the same, he took a moment to look fondly at them, fixing the scene in his memory.

  They were in a clearing at the top of a hill so that their camp could not be overwhelmed by landslides or flash floods, with no trees which could collapse on them during earthquakes and a very lightweight shelter which could fall on them without harm. They had dug a firepit about a metre across and half a metre deep, in which they were now collecting twigs, leaves and branches. There was a sense of joyful consensus amongst them, a harmony of mind as they worked together to solve the problem of how to make a fire. They were all, like their minder, wearing Excorps’ camouflage suits, gleaming metallic hair tied up under jungle hats. If anything, this incongruity made them look all the more alien – thick, creamy, dolphin-like skin, copper-green scales, Taly’s webbed fingers, and those eyes, so large, so lustrous, with that hypnotic brilliance which could hold humans spellbound.

  ‘Bye,’ said Alex, with a grin and a surge of warmth at seeing them so happy. And with that, he glanced over at their minder – a chilled-out explorer who was sitting on a fallen tree and watching the efforts of the quarians with mild interest. Alex was not entirely sure, himself, that teaching quarians the art of making fire in the forest was an entirely sensible idea. But there would be, he knew, fire and rescue services on standby, and they were certainly having fun.

  ‘See you,’ Othol called, on behalf of them all, seeing that Alex would appreciate a friendly word.

  So he left them there, discussing as he left the relative merits of friction or constructing some kind of solar lens as a means of ignition.

  It evidently took them some time, as it was more than an hour and a half later that Alex was told Othol had needed treatment for smoke inhalation. But by then, the Heron was already heading for launch at nearly two thirds light speed and accelerating hard.

  It wasn’t the exuberant release that spacers normally enjoyed. For most, launching from a system felt like being released from captivity back into their wild, free, natural domain. And for the Fourth, especially, a launch either meant the excitement of an adventure ahead of them or the satisfaction of a job done and the anticipation of going home.

  Not so this time. This time, they were heading for the ordeal of a month-long visit to Chartsey. And this time, they weren’t able to launch out into deep space with no more than the company of a few friends.

  This time, they were travelling in convoy. The League One and its Fleet escort was returning to Chartsey, ‘leading them home in glory’ as one of the Senators had phrased it, regrettably, in a media release. Seventeen other ships were coming too, including two liners and the chartered media ship. Only a couple of hundred of its journalists were actually aboard – most had elected to stay on Serenity and cover the quarian visit – but those who did come were making up in voracity what they lacked in numbers. The ship had hardly finished rattling through launch when they got the first demands for post-launch interviews. And, at the same time, the first invitations to social events, with four competing invitations even for dinner that evening.

  The journey to Chartsey continued under that unrelenting pressure from the media and the officials in company. Moments of relief, for Alex at least, were brief, and had to be grabbed when the opportunity arose.

  There was some good news, though.

  ‘The Assegai will be joining us at Chartsey,’ Dix told him, in a rare chance for the two of them to have lunch together in private.

  ‘Oh.’ Alex’s face lit up with pleasure. The Assegai was the latest of the new Defender class destroyers to leave the Mandram spacedocks. They were fabulous ships, developed at great expense by a company Davie North himself had set up to advance starship engineering.

  And just for once – just this once – the Assegai had been the subject of unanimous agreement from all sides of both the Fleet and Senate politics. It had been decided that the destroyer would be set up as a training ship, providing enhanced training opportunities on just the same basis as the high flyers currently seconded to the Fourth.

  Everyone wanted that. The Fourth’s supporters were keen for their methods to be extended into the regular Fleet, while their opponents were even more keen to demonstrate that the same success could be achieved under regular terms of service and without any of the Fourth’s outrageous goings-on. Dix Harangay himself had been keen to support it, as the demand for training secondments to the Fourth was so immense that there was already a ten year waiting list. And the Senate had been keen to approve it, too, for all their own reasons, not the least of which was that there was also a list of missions they wanted the Fourth to undertake which would take them eight or nine years at the most conservative estimate.

  So, the Assegai, to be run under regular Fleet terms but with a greatly enhanced training budget and the expectation that they would undertake task-force operations in the same way as the Fourth. Third Lord Admiral Cerdan Jennar had said, with venomous satisfaction, that he expected them to put the Fourth out of business within a couple of years at most.

  If Alex felt any threat of competition, however, it certainly wasn’t evident in his response. ‘Interesting,’ he said, and with a note of professional curiosity, ‘I’d love to see it.’

  Dix grinned. The factor that Cerdan Jennar and his cronies had failed to take into account in their belief that they’d done Alex down with the Assegai was that Alex himself had already turned down the offer of that command.

  Of several other commands, in fact. He’d been offered everything from a Raptor class destroyer to a carrier, in attempts to increase the number of secondments available. He had always, however, refused, and Dix had always backed him up in that decision. The way Alex commanded the Fourth required a direct relationship with every member of his crew, which Alex maintained would be impossible on the scale of anything larger than the frigate.

  ‘I’m sure,’ he said, ‘that that can be arranged.’

  Afterwards, Alex was to look back and wonder whether Dix already had the idea that was to have such dramatic consequences. At the time, it never occurred to him that they were discussing anything more than a private visit to have a look around the destroyer.

  ‘They’re having aquadeck facilities fitted,’ Dix told him, ‘for deployment on the Quarus station.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Alex approved, seeing that the Fleet was putting their very best resources into that effort, and smiling at the thought of the adventures ahead of the Assegai’s crew. He knew their skipper in the vague way that most Fleet officers knew one another. Skipper Taylar was a perfect choice for the Assegai command – satisfactory to the Old School Fleet who saw her as embodying all the qualities of dignity, tradition and orthodoxy they valued. At the same time, she was respected even by the most radical Progressives, an innovator in her own quiet, tactful way.

  He would, he thought, love to have the opportunity to spend time with Min Taylar. It would be fascinating to be able to talk command and mission shop with her frankly, off the record. But it was a thought which occurred only to be dismissed at once. He already knew that his schedule at Chartsey would be so tightly planned to every minute of every day that there’d be no time for any such personal indulg
ences. The best he could hope for, he thought, was perhaps half an hour to look around the Assegai, late one night or very early in the morning. Still, even that was something to look forward to… a very small something to look forward to, perhaps, but Alex always did like to look for the positives.

  Three

  He had to look very very hard for any kind of positive in the month they spent at Chartsey.

  It’s only a month, he had to tell himself, more than once, when driven to the point of wishing he could head out into deep space and stay there. And again, more sternly, It isn’t about you, or what you want.

  All the same, it was hell. One of the more hellish factors was President Tyborne, who had evidently decided to overlook Alex’s describing him as an impatient buffoon in the rather more important cause of grabbing as much of Alex’s triumph as he could for himself.

  As far as Alex was concerned, he was welcome to it. The official ticker-tape parade through the streets of Londane had holographic confetti, fireworks and laser displays above the long, long convoy of open-topped vehicles displaying VIPs. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the parade route, shouting enthusiastically, while the many protest groups campaigning even more ferociously against the Fourth were shuffled away into off-camera locations. For most of the participants it was a truly thrilling event, something they’d remember and talk about for the rest of their lives.

  For Alex, it was an hour and a half of dreadful embarrassment. President Tyborne had insisted on the two of them riding in the same vehicle, and just the two of them, to make it clear how close they were and that any credit for the mission to Quarus should be equally shared.

  Even worse – far worse – than the ordeal of sharing a vehicle with Marc Tyborne for an hour and a half, though, was the experience of being yelled at by massive crowds who went berserk just at the sight of him going past in a car.