Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (61 page)

‘But…’ she gave a helpless gesture, looking around at them. ‘There is the service,’ she said, evidently attempting to make sense of this, ‘and there is
not
the service. If you are not of the service, how can you be on-ship?’

The term ‘on-ship’ evidently carried cultural reference which was beyond the matrix at its current level of understanding, though the linguistics team had their best guess at it.

‘To be ‘on-ship’ is more than location, it is a very high status, worked for and earned and only available to the elite of the military service.’ Jermane filed a report on behalf of the team, picking up on Davie’s linguistic intuition and Murg Atwood’s socio-cultural analysis. Jermane had turned out to be very good at this, pulling out important information and conveying it in a way that was readily understood by everyone aboard. He was, indeed, a natural communicator. ‘An equivalent scenario to our eyes would be a culture which allowed work experience kids to do test-piloting.’

That helped them to understand why the Samartian found it so difficult to comprehend both the presence of civilians and their status as ‘working passengers’. There was even greater confusion, though, when she discovered that two of their passengers were actually married.

That came out when she was introduced to Simon Penarth and Misha Tregennis, also working in the lab at the time. Simon was rather obviously enraptured with the young Samartian woman and Misha, with some amusement, introduced herself just a little pointedly as his wife.

‘On
ship
?’ Janai Bennet looked quite horrified, just for a moment, before adopting her most formal manner, hesitating, then taking a discreet step backward.

‘We don’t allow marriage, or relationships, between people on-ship in the service,’ Buzz told her. ‘But it is allowed, for civilians.’

‘
Careful, Buzz. Move on.’
Davie signalled Buzz’s ear-piece with a priority override, having seen the micro-signals giving away how Janai Bennet felt about that.
‘Strong moral sensitivity.’

They found out why, after the embarrassment had faded sufficiently for Buzz to bring up the question of Samartian views about personal relationships. It turned out that not only were their crews forbidden to have relationships aboard ship, they were forbidden to have any romantic relationships, at
all
, while they were in service.

‘The service is the beloved,’ Janai Bennet explained, a little red-faced but doing her best to make it clear to them. ‘For those in service it is all, everything. All our thoughts, our hearts, are in being the best that we can, in hope that we may win the honour of service on-ship. That is how we rise in our service. When there is a place in the next status, only those who have achieved the right number of on-ship service can be considered. To be on-ship is all, everything, the only thing that matters. To be in love, to want to be married, that is…’ she flapped a hand dismissively, ‘immediate, out of service, no more. When we become…’ she used a word which the linguistics team decided meant ‘of flag rank or high command’, ‘that is a choice, that is made, a decision, a choice, that you will not have children.’

As they stared at her, almost as shocked as she had been, she struggled on, ‘It is because the service is the beloved, the world is our children, our people are the children those in high command must love and protect. And it is, too, to protect from tyranny – we learned a long time ago that if people in high command have children of their own then they make it so that their children follow into high command too; it is the instinct of a parent to want the best for their child, yes? But that is not best for the world, when that becomes a hereditary ruling elite.’ The matrix had no difficulty translating
that
. ‘That is not our way. We do not want a ruling elite, so those who rise to rule must not have families. It is a choice they make, to serve the world. It is not so with your people?’

‘No, not at all the same.’ Buzz said, and attempted to tell her about democracy in terms that she would understand. ‘We choose our rulers by popular vote. Everyone is allowed to say who they want to be the rulers, and those with the most votes win the places in our government, for five years at system level and ten in the Senate.’

Janai Bennet tried to be polite about it, but it was evident that she thought this was pretty much insane. She gave him a guarded glance. ‘Your people would not try to make us do this democracy, would they?’

‘No, we respect the right of other worlds to self-determination,’ said Buzz, and ignored, with that, the cynical hoot that came from Davie through his ear-piece. Historically, it had to be said, the League had not paid any more than lip-service to the sovereignty of other worlds, using a combination of economic pressure and cultural bombardment to bring other worlds into line with their own constitution. The Founding Families had been a major pushing force in that effort, right from day one, and Davie himself would certainly not hesitate to do that here, either. He genuinely believed with all his heart that the League constitution was the best possible system there was, so why would he
not
strive to bring all its rights, freedoms and benefits to worlds which were labouring under undemocratic and repressive regimes?

That was not an issue here, though, at least for now. The President had said, too, in his briefing to Alex, that he was empowered to assure the Samartians that there would be full respect for their sovereignty and no attempt to interfere with whatever form of government they had. Only time would tell whether that was an assurance the League would uphold, long term. All Buzz could do right here and now was say it, and hope that it would continue to be true.

He left it at that, anyway, taking their visitor to see the wardroom, next. That in itself required complex explanations as Janai Bennet found it hard to understand the idea that different ranks on the ship had different kinds and quality of accommodation. When she realised that it was a normal thing in the League for higher status people to live in greater luxury and even to eat better food, she was profoundly shocked.

‘That is not our way,’ she said, with a note of rather prim disapproval. ‘All share food, equal – that is what we think is right.’

They had already worked out from the first-contact pack provided by the Samartians that they didn’t have what the League would recognise as a money-based economy. As Davie had realised back when he’d been considering the economic implications of the level of manufacturing required for their defence systems, Samart had what the League would consider to be a very low standard of living. Food was rationed, handed out from government-controlled centres. When things were flourishing, rations were ample. At times when they had to give more of their effort to producing defences and ships, rations might reduce to a very basic level. But everyone, Janai Bennet declared, felt this to be fair, since it was the same for everyone, the same rations for the highest in government and the lowest of workers.

‘As long as it is fair, people do not complain,’ she said, with a touch of fierce pride there, too, ‘it is understood, it is what we have to do to keep our world free, and safe.’

It was the kind of dig-deep determination to be expected in a people who had been at war for centuries, against such an implacable, terrifying enemy. It would not be surprising, either, given their tremendous sense of duty and dedication, if the Samartians considered the people of the League to be soft-living, even decadent.

To counter that, they did their best to show her that they did share
some
values in their military service. And they succeeded in that, though again, Janai Bennet surprised them. She was impressed by the demonstration of boarding-party training that was happening in the main gym. There were ten people there, practising close-order boarding skills in the big, shiny versions of hullwalker rig the Fourth used for combat armour. They gave her a demonstration of noise-maker boarding with heavy stamps of metallic boots and blank, rapid gunfire, at which she beamed with delight. When they showed her the inside of a combat rig and even let her climb inside to have a go at it herself, she was obviously thrilled.

Their demonstration of combat drills a little later, however, left her politely bored. She was clearly not at all impressed by the speed and agility with which the Fourth’s crew moved in freefall, and not even amazed by the special effects.

‘We do that too,’ she commented, but was clearly ready to move on after a couple of minutes, turning her attention away from the dramatic combat drill going on in front of her to ask about the coffee machine.

She was certainly more embarrassed than delighted when she was introduced to Shion. Shion was charming, vivacious and friendly, but it was all too obvious that Janai Bennet was uncomfortable at talking to her.

‘It’s as if we were introduced to someone who claimed to be an elf,’ Jermane Taerling clarified, helpfully. ‘She’s
way
out of her comfort zone, there.’

Shion, however, had already seen that and backed off, herself, with friendly understanding. Davie, too, gave her only the briefest of greetings and left it to Mako Ireson to show her round the exosuite.

Mako did an excellent job with that. Davie had set the lounge area up with a display of some of the gifts they had brought with them, each carefully chosen and artistically lit. He had trained Mako to show and talk about the artefacts with as much knowledge as a museum curator, answering whatever questions their visitor might have. She did not ask many, but she did take an interest in a pair of Canelonian duelling swords, commenting that they were the biggest knives she’d ever seen, and beautiful workmanship.

Jonas Sartin did sterling work too, with the choir. After considerable agonising and running his ideas past Buzz and Alex, he had chosen one of their warm-up songs to perform for Janai Bennet. It was short and simple but classical, richly harmonic and building in a satisfying crescendo.

‘That is so beautiful!’ Janai Bennet exclaimed, when the brief performance was over. ‘We sing, too – not on-ship, of course, but on our world. We have a song that is quite like that, I think, about the sound of the sea. What is your song? What does it mean?’

‘It is a chorus from a musical tradition we call opera,’ Jonas informed her. ‘It tells the story of towns-people, gathering in the street, becoming more excited as they tell one another the news, the announcement of a wedding. The words mean, ‘It is going to be today’ and ‘Who would have believed?’’

‘It is beautiful,’ Janai Bennet repeated, and smiled at them all. ‘Gratitude.’

When she’d gone, Jonas had to sit down for a minute, feeling just a little dizzy. Suddenly, all the headaches and grief of attempting to unravel the Fourth’s nightmarish accounts seemed entirely unimportant. He had the odd feeling that everything in his entire life had been building towards those four minutes, perhaps his only opportunity ever to represent his people in such vitally important diplomacy. His own contribution was very small, he knew that. But there was no such thing as a trivial contribution when the prize at stake was alliance with a people who could fight off the Marfikians. There was extensive cultural information in the first-contact pack they’d given the Samartians, naturally, but it might take them months to work through that and real experience right here and now was liable to weigh much more heavily. Who knew how significant it might be for the Samartians, the discovery that the aliens, frightening and incomprehensible as they were in so many ways, sang songs like theirs?

Not everyone got that buzz, the thrill of feeling that they’d managed to make a real cross-cultural connection. The people playing handball in the studio next door had to accept, philosophically, that their effort to establish common ground there was wasted effort. Janai Bennet was mildly perplexed by it – the concept of playing team games for pleasure was evidently not part of the Samartian culture. Fitness training, she explained, was a duty, and their idea of sport was one of individual competition.

She was equally dismissive of the academic aspect of life aboard ship. When they told her how unusual their ship was because of the amount of training and academic studying they carried out, she considered for a moment and then observed, ‘We don’t do that on-ship. But I suppose you have to, since you are on-ship for such very long times.’

She wasn’t interested when they offered to take her to see Lucky, either. The fact that they had a lizard on the ship did not appear to be very important, to her, at least not in comparison with the far crazier thing of allowing civilians to work on the ship.

She was, however, profoundly impressed by being taken to meet the captain. He had been pointed out to her early on in the tour, as Buzz drew her attention to the open comms screens throughout the ship and told her that was Captain von Strada. As recommended by Davie North, Alex had remained on the command deck throughout, watching unobtrusively and conducting himself with full formal, public-manner protocols. There was no joking or laughing from him while she was aboard. Alex understood that he could not afford to lose face by being casual with her. She had already had to cope with the discovery that Buzz, so friendly and relaxed, was actually the second in command aboard ship, or as she put it, second captain.

They knew enough, by then, to understand what she meant by that. One of the things she had told them, as she’d observed a watch changeover, was how different organisation was on Samartian ships.

There was no such thing as a permanent crew on a Samartian ship, for a start. They worked a system under which there were two crews on every ship – two captains, two quite separate crews who alternated in being on watch. One of these was the ‘senior’, but this had nothing to do with the relative experience of the captains. Each crew served a two week assignment – for the first week, they were the junior crew, then there’d be a crew changeover and the crew which had already been aboard for a week would assume seniority till they handed over, in their turn, returning to ground-base for training until they were called up to be on-ship again. When they were called up, they were unlikely to find themselves working with the same captain or shipmates. There was clearly no ethos of forging a united crew or of individual shipboard culture, there. All captains were expected to be the same – calm, impersonal, doing everything strictly by the book.