Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (73 page)

He was right about that – there were several people hovering right outside sickbay, as he left, talking to Simon but obviously waiting for news.

‘How is he, skipper?’

‘Himself,’ Alex said, knowing very well what they were asking, there, and giving a reassuring smile. ‘Absolutely himself.’

‘Well who
else
would he be?’ Simon put in, over the exclamations of relief and pleasure, and fending off a couple of attempts to shake his hand, too. ‘You lot, always working the drama! Get on with you!’ He flapped at them, dismissively. ‘I
told
you he’d be fine. And we don’t need a flash-mob hanging out here, thank you. Go and do some diagnostics or something. And no –
no!’
he raised his voice and addressed the comm system with a pointed finger, ‘
no
visitors today, only Hali, so
stop asking!’

The crew scattered reluctantly and Simon turned to head back into sickbay, giving Alex just the briefest nod and a grin of condescending approval before he breezed off. Alex felt a surge of happiness so intense that he almost wanted to run through the ship, laughing, shaking hands with everyone, telling all of them that Ali was
back
, they’d saved him, they really had.

Since he was the skipper, however, he conveyed his emotion merely by doing a hand-slap turn on the zero-gee ladderway heading back up to the command deck, somersaulting neatly through the hatch and grinning as he stepped back into gravity, walking away as the ship erupted with cheers.

Twenty Five

Ali Jezno’s recovery re-energised the crew. The tension and tiredness Alex had been starting to worry about melted away under the blaze of happy energy, not just in the hours after Ali’s waking up but through the days that followed. By the second day, Ali was taking his first wobbly steps out of sickbay. What he needed now, Rangi said, was to build up his strength with good food, gentle exercise, to see familiar things and talk to people.

It was clear to everyone that his recovery was going to take some time. He might be regaining weight very rapidly with all the snacks people kept pushing on him, and physiotherapy was helping him regain his muscle tone, too. But assimilating his memories would take a lot longer – weeks, months, nobody really knew
how
long, since Simon said that would depend on how well he re-engaged with his life.

Watching Ali begin to do that was just a joy. It was as if he was re-experiencing things, as disconnected dream-like memories were triggered into clear focus.

The first time they saw that happen was with Mako. Ali couldn’t remember Mako’s name at first – he was having some problems putting names to faces, with that frustrating sense of ‘right on the tip of my tongue!’ as he struggled to make the connections. He
knew
that Mako and he had been good friends ever since Mako’s first trip on the Minnow. He had memories of things they’d done together, but to him, it was like remembering a movie he’d seen, something experienced as an observer, not as participant.

Mako managed to hide his upset, finding that he was only half-recognised. Simon had told them all to expect this and how to help with it. So Mako held out his hand and introduced himself just as he had when he’d met Ali for the first time. ‘Inspector Mako Ireson, League Prisons Authority.’

Ali shook hands with him, staring, a tumble of memories sliding into place, and in the next moment, he had burst out laughing.

‘
Oh!’
He guffawed, and overcome with merriment, reminded Mako, ‘
splat
through the crust!
Covered
in slime!’

Mako laughed too, remembering the incident. It had been his first visit to a slimeworld. Ali Jezno had taken him out on a little jaunt to plant some trees and spread seeds for the Terraforming Society.

‘And then I took my mask off,’ Mako lamented, at which Ali laughed so much that he had to catch his breath. He had been very sympathetic at the time, and concerned, too, as he was responsible for looking after the civilian who was now covered in stinking slime and throwing up. Both he and Mako had laughed about it afterwards, though, and did again, then, with as much glee as if it had only just happened. ‘Oh, Mako, man!’ Ali gave him a back-slapping hug, beaming at him as if they hadn’t seen one another for years. ‘
Good
to see you!’

It caused even more hilarity through the ship as Ali put his memories back together with respect to Hali Burdon.

Everyone knew they were mates, of course – Hali had been chosen as his oppo, to help look after him in sickbay and rehab. Hali was the ship’s senior petty officer and master at arms – Alex had headhunted her specifically
for
that role, back when he was first forming a crew for the Minnow. Ali was a petty officer too, working towards the qualifications which would get him promotion to chief. Hali was helping him with that, and it was well known that they were good friends.

Neither of them had ever betrayed any sign, aboard ship, that they were any
more
than that. There had been some gossip, of course, and some teasing – Hali was twenty six, with a sweet heart-shaped face and a smatter of freckles. Ali was twenty four, clean-featured and athletic. Rumour was that they had spent some of their long leave at Therik together. When teasing hadn’t got any response from either of them and they had continued to be no more than ‘good-friend shipmates’ as the Fleet required of personnel aboard ship, the gossip had been dropped.

Now, though, Ali was rediscovering not only his memories of time he’d spent with Hali, but his
feelings
about her. They were having lunch on the mess deck, talking about what Ali would have to do to get his ordinary star rigger certificate, when people noticed that he was looking into her eyes with an all-too obvious stunned-sheep expression. In the next moment, he had taken her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it – re-living a memory, there, of the moment their relationship had moved from that of friends, to lovers.

‘Ali!’ Hali was half laughing, half tearful, but subsuming both under a mock-stern rebuke. ‘
Shipboard!’
She reminded him, pulling her hand away. ‘Behave!’

Ali, however, was lost in rapture.

‘I
love
you,’ he told her, and marvelled, ‘How could I have forgotten that?’

‘It’s a
secret
, you nana!’ Hali scolded, and then, becoming aware of the delighted faces all around, ‘Well, it
was
.’

People on the mess deck started to applaud, and hoot, and as others around the ship picked up on that and looked to see what had happened, hilarity engulfed the ship. It was all the more delicious, that, because Hali, as master at arms, was responsible for ‘interpersonal relationship’ discipline amongst the ratings.

Ali knew that, but he was still so caught up in the revelation and intensity of his feelings that he hardly even noticed the applause.

‘But we…’ he gestured back and forth between them. ‘The beach house. Did we…?’

He was remembering the time they’d spent together at a beach-side castaway lodge, on Therik. Hali had provided her own holo-album from that trip as part of the data Simon had shown Ali while he was in the tank. There were certain things they had
not
filmed, of course, but there were holiday snaps there of the two of them splashing in the sea and walking hand in hand.

Hali turned a rosy pink.

‘Ali, shut
up!’
she said, half commanding and half imploring, and laughing, too, as she got to her feet and took his hand, pulling him to get up, too. ‘Sickbay!’ she told him, and as he looked at her in bewilderment, ‘we can talk about this
privately!’

It was way too late for that, though.

‘I’m really sorry, Buzz.’ Hali came to see the exec later that day, finding that everywhere she went people were grinning and pulling her leg. ‘Totally unprofessional, I know.’

‘My dear girl,’ Buzz said, with an amused look, ‘did you honestly think we didn’t
know
?’

‘Oh.’ She grimaced, and sighed. ‘Ah. But… discreet, off the ship, that’s one thing. This…’ she gestured helplessly.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Buzz told her, kindly. ‘There’s an amnesty, remember? No action to be taken on anything revealed through providing private records for Ali. Yes, I know, everyone’s finding it hilarious at the moment, but you know, rise above it and people will soon find something else to gossip about.’

Hali sighed again.

‘I should have told him,’ she admitted. ‘Privately, in sickbay, before. But I just couldn’t say it, and it was so hard…’ her chin quivered, at that, and her eyes filled with tears. She had had to play the role of ‘good mate’ all the way through dealing with Ali’s injury and surgery, the days he’d been in a coma, sitting by his bunk as he began to recover, and all without betraying the fact that the two of them were in a relationship. ‘I just wanted to kiss him! But I couldn’t!’

Buzz provided a shoulder to lean on, a comforting hug and a tissue.

‘I know. I know, dear girl. But it’s all right now. He’s back, and he
does
still feel the same.’ He understood entirely that one of the fears she had been contending with was the dread that even if Ali
was
still Ali, with most of his memories intact, he wouldn’t love her any more. ‘And as for kissing him … he
is
on stand-down, Hali, long term stand-down, so technically, he is now a passenger.’ He grinned at her astounded, searching look. ‘Obviously, use discretion. Normal interpersonal protocols around the ship, okay? But what happens in sickbay, in private, is your business.’

Hali and Ali spent quite a lot of time in sickbay, after that, which did not go unnoticed by the crew. They had ample time for gossiping, too, as the Samartians weren’t talking to them. Eight days after Martine’s meeting with Caldai Genave, they had received no further signals, not so much even as a flashed transmission giving them a news update.

‘It really doesn’t worry you, at all?’ Jermane had come to the ops meeting on the morning of the ninth day, feeling so anxious that he just
had
to raise the questions. ‘We have no idea what’s going on, what they might be telling the population or how they’re reacting, what they’re discussing or what they might decide. It’s been a
week
, now. I have to say, I think things have stalled, skipper.’

Alex looked a little surprised.

‘Is that how you read it?’ he queried. ‘That’s just not my feeling at all, Mr Taerling – for one thing, it’s just obvious that the issues they raised with us and the information we gave them will need extensive discussion, with major decisions having to be made about the future of their world. I don’t consider that a week is an unreasonable amount of time for them to do that. On the contrary, I’d have been concerned if they
did
flash back at us with a kneejerk reaction. I don’t find the silence uncomfortable – they haven’t pulled back, their contact ship is maintaining comms range with us, just routine ship-swap in the escort squadron, business as usual, no indication of problems. It’s been helpful for us, too, to have time to catch up with processing the information we’ve been getting from them and adapt our plans accordingly. And without in any way jinxing the outcome by making the kind of ‘we’ve got it in the bag’ statements that
do
tend to leap back and bite you, I can say that I am feeling optimistic. We have been able to discuss really serious issues on a full and frank basis, which is an achievement in itself, and I am satisfied that we could not have done any more, either in terms of the answers we gave them, or the way in which we have presented ourselves. Full and frank disclosure, Mr Taerling, enabling them to make a well informed, considered decision on whether they wish to pursue further contact with us. If they don’t, fair enough, we have to respect that, obviously, but we can go home with our heads up, knowing that we gave it our very best shot.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Jermane said, with a touch of despondence. ‘And fretting about it won’t help. But it really
doesn’t
worry you, does it?’ He gestured at a screen which showed the Samartian contact ship, cruising at the agreed distance of four hundred and seventy two thousand kilometres. They were in holding pattern, a precisely matched loop which took them fifty six seconds to complete. Round and round, matching one another like reflections. Jermane had gone cross-eyed, watching the astrogation screens for hours at a time, trying to imagine what was going on over there. ‘It’s not just something you’re putting on to keep up morale,’ Jermane observed. ‘You are actually
enjoying
this.’

He caught the looks that several of the officers around the table gave him, at that, and recognised that he had said something even the easy-going Fourth considered impertinent.

‘No offence intended,’ he said, hastily.

‘None taken,’ Alex said, with a friendly grin. ‘I am, obviously,
fully
aware of how important these negotiations are, with everything that’s riding on them, and I am taking my responsibilities in that very seriously, I do assure you. But at a personal level, yes, I am enjoying this very much.’ He smiled at the linguist. ‘This is a
moment
, you see – a turning point of history. And we’re here, part of it. Take a moment – step back from worrying about all the little things, and just take a moment to look at where we are, and what we’re doing. We are in first direct contact with
Samart
, Mr Taerling. Do you remember what you said, when you first came aboard and we told you we were coming here? You said you’d never thought to see that tried, in your lifetime. But here you are, doing it. You can’t tell me this isn’t the most thrilling thing you’ve ever done.’