Quarus (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 6) Read online

  It had all been a good deal noisier than Alex liked, accomplished with a lot of shouting, some swearing and a couple of over-enthusiastic collisions. The ship went into freefall five seconds after the sounding of the first alert, and judging from the flailing limbs and thudding impacts, not all of the newcomers were as agile in freefall as they might be.

  Even so, it was a good start. The Fleet expected a frigate of this class to be able to come to action stations in one hundred and twenty eight seconds to achieve a satisfactory rating. To make excellent you had to be able to do it in under ninety eight. For real crack ship status, in under ninety five. The Heron’s former crew had got it down to eighty seven – quick, slick and virtually silent.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Alex, which was hardly rapturous praise from a skipper who’d just seen his crew achieve an excellent rating on their first day out of port. ‘Let’s try for a little quieter next time, please – now,’ he was touching controls as he spoke, ‘Full ship exercise.’

  Catastrophe descended on the frigate. They used realistic special effects for their crisis response drills, already set up all around the ship so that fires, explosions, blowouts and other disasters could be simulated at any time. Alex had once been sent to assess a ship which was performing badly, and it hadn’t taken long to see why. A particularly awful training session had stuck in his mind and often popped up at times when he saw his own ship in the throes of full ship exercise. A damage control team had been told that there was a drill for fire response. ‘Imagine there’s a fire,’ the supervising officer had told them, and when the bewildered team had asked what kind of fire, where and how big, the officer had retorted, ‘I said use your imagination, didn’t I?’

  Nobody had to use their imagination on the Heron. Holographic flames burst forth with very convincing sound effects, and they were smart effects, too - would react like the real thing, so if they were tackled in the right way, fine, but if they weren’t, things would escalate and get a whole lot worse. It wasn’t just fires, though – every section of the ship had its own emergency to deal with and they too were randomly generated so nobody knew quite what to expect. Today they had eight fires, four blowouts, a burst pipe, two explosions, five major tech failures and a ghost.

  ‘Really?’ Alex noted the presence of the ghost in the galley section and looked enquiringly around the command table – all the senior officers were there, other than for the engineer and computer officer who remained in their own departments. ‘And who put that in, might I ask?’

  The ghost was a classic dark cowled figure, floating about the galley and uttering blood-curdling shrieks. It was causing more mayhem than any of the genuine crisis drills, as half the people in that section were falling about laughing, several people had grabbed salt and were trying to exorcise it, one person was hiding under a table and the CPO in charge was attempting to whack the ghost with a sauté pan.

  ‘Me.’ Bonny Bonatti raised a hand and gave him a bright, happy beam. ‘You did say you wanted one or two surprises in the mix, skipper.’

  ‘I did,’ Alex admitted, looking back at the screen – salt was flying everywhere and an energetic whack had torn the CPO’s sticky-grip soles from the deck and sent him into an ariel somersault. ‘I did say that, yes.’ All three of the watch commanders had an active role in crisis response training, and Alex had encouraged them to change things, to keep it fresh even for the old hands. His lips twitched as he fought against inappropriate howls of glee. ‘And you feel that invasion by a remarkably unconvincing spectre is something we need to prepare for, do you?’

  ‘I think we should be prepared for anything,’ said Bonny, but before she could say anything else they were interrupted by Hetty Leavam.

  ‘It is necessary to clarify,’ she said, ‘if this is a genuine exercise, and if so, what actions the personnel involved are expected to take in order to achieve satisfactory, good or excellent ratings.’

  ‘They are expected,’ Bonny responded, ‘to keep their heads no matter how out of nowhere crazy things get.’ She surveyed the hysterical confusion in the galley. ‘I’d have to say that is an epic fail.’

  Both of them looked at the skipper.

  ‘Ms Bonatti is right,’ Alex said, looking very calm and even stern. ‘We do throw random situational drills into our response training – admittedly, never quite as random as that.’ He glanced at the galley screen again and saw that, surprisingly, things were getting organised. The exorcism party had evidently won out over the laugh/hit it/hide under the table reactions. They were handing out salt and insisting that everyone there took part in the ritual. There seemed to be some slight confusion over whether they should do the ritual for the exorcism of a banshee – three steps backwards and fling salt over the shoulder – or a haunting – hold salt on both palms and chant. They appeared to be attempting both. ‘But on established precedent,’ said Alex, ‘a satisfactory rating is achieved by keeping calm and asking for orders. Good requires using initiative to use appropriate procedure even in an unfamiliar situation – in this case, they might decide to treat it as a first contact situation and attempt communication.’ Only Novaterran upbringing kept his face straight as he said that. ‘For excellent they have to demonstrate initiative and team-work in finding a solution. Which they are, now, I believe, attempting, although too late to achieve more than a ‘good try’.’

  ‘But is it solvable as an exercise?’ Hetty Leavam just had no sense of humour whatsoever. She was genuinely concerned that the crew involved had been put into a totally unfair and impossible exercise.

  ‘Yes of course it is,’ said Bonny. ‘They could simply ignore it, since the thing is obviously ludicrous. They could call and report a ghost and I would then deactivate it. And it is also, as you see, programmed to respond to the traditional Fleet methods of dealing with supernatural incursions… there, see, gone.’

  The crew in the galley were cheering and whooping, pounding one another on the back and generally celebrating just as much as if they actually had rid the ship of a terrifying jinx.

  ‘But will that, then, be recorded as a failure in crisis response training for those personnel?’ Hetty persisted. ‘Because if so, I will have to protest that that is prejudicial to their interests and unfair in the context of such an unorthodox, unprecedented exercise.’

  ‘Fair point,’ Alex agreed. ‘I will rule this one invalid for record purposes since the crew were not adequately advised that things quite that random might occur. Once they know that there are surprises like that in the mix, though, they will be evaluated just like any other exercise. Ms Bonatti is quite right – being prepared for any kind of out of nowhere crazy events is excellent operational training. Quarus, for sure, will hit us with a lot more startling and bewildering things than a ghost in the galley. If we get used to dealing with crazy stuff now that resilience, I believe, will stand us in good stead. An excellent contribution, Ms Bonatti, thank you.’

  ‘Thank you, skipper.’ Bonny smiled back, and did not so much as glance in the direction of Hetty Leavam. Some shipboard wit had already dubbed the two of them ‘Honey and Lemon’. There was no obvious personal dislike between them, Bonny was pleasant and Hetty was always polite. Crew always knew, though – even on a regular ship, crew always knew when officers really didn’t like one another. And here, you might just as well wear a badge. Alex, too, knew perfectly well that Bonny was licking her finger and scoring a point against Commander Killjoy, while for her part, Hetty Leavam was satisfied at having got Alex to keep that exercise off the record. It wasn’t a problem, and he knew that neither of them would allow it to become one, but it added an interesting dynamic to the command team.

  As he thought that, though, his attention was caught by the gunners attempting their first full rolling broadside. Gunners and fighter crews were going through their own exercise, engaged in a dog-fight with a pirate ship which bore more than a passing resemblance to the Pallamar, a real pirate ship which the Heron had captured.

  Alex
was glad, watching their performance, that he had not allowed them to do this for the system salute. There were three different gunnery teams – who went where and did what was dependent on which watch was on duty at the time of the alert. This was green watch gunnery crew, and by the luck of the draw they had more experienced gunners than the others. This gave them an edge when it was just a case of pounding away at a target, but was no help when it came to swift coordination. A rolling broadside was the most difficult, precise gunnery a ship could attempt. It involved the ship rotating with each gun firing as it was brought to bear. It meant that they could use all their laser cannon, and if the gunners could keep time with the rotation of the ship the fire became one continuous blaze. The tactical advantage to it was that firing like that meant that no single gun was steady and firing long enough for the enemy guns to get a lock on it. When combined with high speed manoeuvres, it made for a very powerful weapon. This ship, those very guns, had used that tactic to fight off three Marfikian attack craft. Looking at this performance, Alex felt, even the Pallamar wouldn’t have much to worry about. The broadside was ragged, some firing too early, some too late, so that laser fire was spitting off in all directions.

  They were very unlikely to have to fire guns on this mission, and hadn’t needed to on the last one, either. But all the same, they were a warship, and Alex couldn’t help but wince a little at the painfully uncoordinated firing.

  He couldn’t have expected much better, he knew that. Few gunners in the Fleet had much training beyond that needed to blast away at targets being held as near to stationary for them as possible. That, after all, was the standard Fleet tactic, to match the target’s flight and whatever evasions they might try so that their guns could get a lock and fire repeatedly. There were only a handful of ships in the Fleet which learned the rolling broadside. Typically of the Fleet, it was not considered an advanced manoeuvre but a non-conventional one, just about tolerated but not really approved.

  The exercise came to an end within twenty minutes – if you were still trying to put out a fire or stop a blowout at that stage, you’d failed. Debriefing was kept to a minimum, with a team score given. There were no individual ratings for this, it was all about the teamwork. As soon as the final section had finished their drill – a particularly complex pipe breach which had involved taking up sections of the deck – Alex stood them down from action stations.

  ‘Gunners requesting permission to re-run the exercise, skipper.’ Lt Allison informed him, speaking with some reserve because he was well aware that the gunnery had fallen at the hurdle of the rolling broadside.

  ‘No,’ Alex said, without needing to think about that one. ‘There’s no need,’ he said, and there wasn’t. Every gunner would get a detailed analysis of their performance and individual simulator training would work on their weaknesses. ‘Rolling broadside is a highly technical manoeuvre, nobody could expect to pull it off first time. We’ll pick it up in training and it will improve, but flogging the exercise won’t help. Stand them down please, Mr Allison.’

  ‘Skipper,’ the Lt did not need to convey this news to the gunners, as they’d been watching on the command deck feed. Any disappointment which they might have felt, or embarrassment at their less than sparkling performance, was quickly erased, though, by the hilarity erupting as news of the galley ghost got around the ship. Within minutes the footage had been clipped to the notice board and replayed multiple times, with great guffaws and shouts on the mess decks. The CPO who’d attempted to deal with the haunting by whacking at it with a sauté pan would never live that down. His explanation, that he’d been attempting to determine whether it was a hologram by passing a metal object through it, only made people laugh even more.

  Alex made a note in her file that Bonny Bonatti had demonstrated command initiative with a creative training exercise which was both operationally beneficial and excellent for team bonding. Unlike Martine, Bonny did want to get to command of her own ship, and intended to use her tour of duty with the Fourth to do her command school training and achieve shipmaster rank. That meant some additional work for Alex and Buzz, finding opportunities for her to carry out the various command school exercises and assessing her performance generally far more intensively than for any other officer. They had both agreed to that happily – it wouldn’t have occurred to them to do anything else – and it was already apparent that Bonny’s contribution was going to more than repay that investment. It was things like this, shared experiences and even more importantly, shared jokes, which brought a crew together. And as the galley ghost incident was tagged on the notice board as the first ‘mission moment’ there were no old hands or newbies, just a crew having a laugh.

  And it was at that point that Silvie called her lecture. It was a good time, practically and emotionally. Other work and training had already been disrupted anyway so it was convenient to call the lecture now, and with everyone so lively and in such a good mood, that would make for an enjoyable atmosphere.

  It did, too, as people piled into the gym as soon as it had been converted to its lecture-theatre mode. Alex was front and centre, in his usual seat in the middle of the front row. He would, in fact, have been happy to sit anywhere, as the rest of the officers did, but his crew had firm ideas about what was right for the skipper. If he tried to sit anywhere else, it would be pointed out that his seat had been left for him. There was even a sense of satisfaction as he took what they considered to be his rightful place, though the sense of anticipation was a lot stronger as they waited for Silvie to start.

  She was already on the podium which was the focus of the tiered seats. She’d asked for a desk rather than a lectern, so a small datatable and chair had been provided, with the usual huge screen behind her. Silvie was sitting on the desk, swinging her feet casually and chatting with some of the people in the front rows.

  Once everyone was in, or watching on screens across the ship, the buzz of conversation fell away and became an expectant silence.

  ‘Oh.’ Silvie realised they were waiting for her and broke off her conversation with a grin. ‘Sorry – okay. So – welcome to Module One of Introductory Quarian Culture.’

  She gestured at the board behind her, which carried the official designation for the training session and Silvie’s own title for this lecture. ‘Why I Poke People,’ she said, and there was a rustle of amusement. Silvie’s finger could jab at a chest or arm so fast the human eye couldn’t even see it. It was never hard enough to bruise, but it was a sharp enough poke to make people jump and usually to give a startled ‘ow!’

  ‘I am not,’ said Silvie, ‘going to tell you about quarians. This session is to show you how quarians will see you, which is essential if you are to understand why we react to humans the way we do. People have often asked what it is like for me, what I see and feel in you, and I’ve tried to make sense of that for you by talking about voices and harmonies, but with some help from Jen – thanks, Jen – I’ve been able to put it into visual terms.’

  Leading Star Jen Jennet felt all the people looking at her, and grinned. There was a time when she would have curled up and wanted to die at being the focus of such attention, but Jen had learned a lot since Silvie had taken her under her wing. That was a euphemistic way to describe the fact that Silvie had actually abducted her within moments of Jen stepping aboard, taking her off to the salon for a makeover and therapy session. The timid, anxiety-ridden mouse who’d been pretty much hauled into the salon had emerged less than half an hour later a strong, confident woman with a glorious mane of hair in flaming colours. Silvie had told her that she was the most sensitive human empath she’d met, which also made her the most powerful human empath she’d met. That had changed Jen’s view of herself completely and for ever. Since then, Silvie had been her empath-instructor, a somewhat experimental matter since no quarian had ever attempted to train a human empath before. They were figuring it out between them as they went along, and so far at least it was going very well.

  ‘I a
m going to use real people for this,’ Silvie said. ‘Simulations, but using real people and real experiences which I’ve had aboard this ship this morning, just to give you guys an idea of what it is like for me being around you. And yes, yes, I know…’ she was looking both at Alex and at Hetty Leavam. ‘You have to ask for volunteers to do the case-study thing in training. So…’ she looked around the theatre and at the screens on the sidewalls showing the people watching around the ship. ‘May I please have volunteers…’

  She laughed as every single member of the crew put up their hands. Everyone knew that this training was preparing them for the infinitely more challenging experiences they would have at Quarus, and that having their most private feelings exposed in public was a reality they would have to face at some point. Most of them put their hands up with real enthusiasm, too, hoping that Silvie would pick them, fascinated to see themselves through her eyes.

  ‘Thanks!’ Silvie said, seeing that the volunteering was unanimous. ‘So, let’s start with the basics – physical appearance. I tell people this quite often but they don’t seem to get it so let’s hope some real examples will help get it across. Let’s start with an easy one, and quite typical, if anything can be said to be typical in humans.’ She activated a holo on the screen, instantly recognisable as Sub-lt Tom Holland. It was a still, evidently taken in the wardroom that morning, as he was turning away from the hot trolley with a plate of breakfast.

  ‘This is how we see Holly,’ said Silvie, ‘and this is how he sees himself.’

  She popped up another image of Tom beside the original – it was smaller, younger, with an exaggeratedly big chin and a greasy frizz of hair.