His Majesty's Starship Page 5

  “You’re in a lot of trouble,” Leroux said.

  “So I gathered,” Samad said. “I can count at least three of my basic rights that have been violated so far. Even you wouldn’t go to all that trouble for something trivial.”

  “You ran a query on a highly classified project through your aide,” Leroux said.

  “I was curious.”

  “You know what they say about curiosity.”

  Oh great, Samad thought, now he’s going to talk to me in clichés. “The cat got unlucky,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “So how did you hear about it?” Leroux said. That was the question they kept coming back to.

  “A dicky bird told me.”

  “Right.” Leroux sat down, fingers poised over his aide. “I want the name, rank and number of this dicky bird.”

  Samad had no intention of supplying it. It had been an innocent mistake and Kirton didn’t deserve the treatment he would get. If you’re going to offer a man a job in a top secret project, he thought, you make sure he’s the right man in the first place and you certainly don’t offer it to a head-in-the-clouds Martian likely to share it with all and sundry.

  “I can’t tell you that,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s against my religion.”

  “This is some Islamic thing I don’t know about?”

  “I suspect there are quite a few Islamic things you don’t know about.”

  Leroux thumped his fist down on the table: Samad had been expecting it and didn’t even flinch. Leroux’s interrogation style was a mixture of every set interrogation piece Samad had ever seen in the zines. “Lieutenant-” There was a knock at the door. “What?” he bellowed. Samad looked round casually as it opened, then sat bolt upright as a crestfallen Peter Kirton was ushered in by a Security man.

  “Sorry, Mr Leroux,” said the man, “but this officer insists he has to speak to you ...”

  Gilmore waited with his head in his hands as Samad finished his tale. They were in Gilmore’s apartment and personnel file crystals were still scattered all over the coffee table between them. Eventually Gilmore looked up.

  “So what do you want me to do?” he said.

  “Pull him,” Samad said. “You’ve got that warrant from the king, haven’t you? If you say that we require Peter Kirton for the crew, Leroux can’t do a thing about it.”

  “Supposing I don’t want him for the crew?”

  “You do. You know him from Australasia, you know he can do his job.”

  “I always found him a bit ... stand-offish,” Gilmore said.

  “You’re the captain! Of course he was stand-offish. I always got on with him and I was his direct superior. He shows promise, Mike.”

  “He’s a Martian.”

  “That’s why he shows promise. He left.” Privately, Samad had always admired the Martian puritans and he knew Gilmore felt the same way: anyone who would turn their back on a corrupt, decadent Earth couldn’t be all bad and they had worked wonders in carving out a home on Mars when all other attempts had failed. “Mike, this could scar his record permanently and, well, I owe him. If I’d been thinking, I wouldn’t have run that check on my aide and they’d never have known.”

  “Hmph.” Gilmore was silent for a moment. “How did they get him, anyway?”

  “He ...” Now Samad shook his head – he still couldn’t believe it himself. “He said he heard about me through the AIs on the Security network, and he thought he should turn himself in.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Apparently.”

  Gilmore raised his eyebrows and looked down at the aide again. “Well, he’s honest,” he said. Samad said nothing: Gilmore was moving his head from side to side, ever so slightly, and Samad recognised the signs of a decision forcing its way through the maze of pros and cons to the surface.

  Gilmore looked up. “We’ll take him,” he said. He thumbed the contact panel on his aide. “Leroux, Security Division.”

  *

  “House, record,” Gilmore said. He glanced around for a final look. Bags packed and at the door, with an amboid standing by ready to carry them for him. He stood in the middle of the room and clasped his hands behind his back.

  “Recording,” said the house.

  “Welcome home, Joel,” Gilmore said. “I’m sorry I’m not here – I’d have liked to see you in the flesh again. I really would. Make yourself comfortable and feel free to stay here as long as you need. I’ve given the house all the appropriate permissions.

  “In half an hour I’ll be on the shuttle to the L5 yards to pick up Ark Royal. She’s already had her shaking down and we’ll be taking her over from the builders. We’ll get ourselves installed, then we’ll pick up the prince – who’s far too grand to travel with us for a second longer than necessary, it appears – and then we rendezvous with the rest of the ships.

  “I’ll keep plenty of notes and take plenty of pictures so you’ll know what it was like, and I’ll see you when we get back.” He took a breath. “That’s all,” he said. “End recording.”

  “Ending,” said the house. “Do you wish to edit?”

  Gilmore paused. He was about to say yes, because he usually did but ...

  ... but if this was some trap, or any kind of elaborate scheme of the Rusties’ that was inimical to human good health, that message might be the last Joel saw of his father. Let him see it in its raw form.

  “No,” he said. He left the apartment with the amboid at his heels.

  - 6 -

  10-13 April 2149

  The information pack came to the end of its spiel with the same image it had used to start – the invitation world, the Roving, seen from orbit. Gilmore looked at the image on his aide’s display thoughtfully. Was this what Earth had once looked like? Sparkling, blue and white and green?

  The Roving had two continents. There was one huge one which the pack said on Earth would have stretched from Greece to Antarctica, Senegal to the Philippines; and there was a smaller one to its west with a long, thin strait half the width of the Atlantic between them. This, and assorted islands the size of Australia, was the world the Rusties wanted to share.

  So much room! There were ‘isolated First Breed communities’, the pack had said, but surely there was plenty of space for everyone, and exactly who got what would be ironed out in the negotiations.

  And soon he would be seeing this world with his own eyes. Ark Royal was up in lunar orbit, undergoing final preparation, and he was here on the moon in the landing boat Sharman, waiting to pick up his ship’s Rustie liaison.

  “Sir, there’s a whole crowd of them!” Adrian Nichol called from the cockpit. Gilmore put his aide in his pocket and stepped out of Sharman into one of Armstrong’s cavernous landing bays. His eyes widened at the crowd of Rusties filing in and his heart pounded with a sudden fear that there had been a misunderstanding and Ark Royal was meant to take all – he counted – eight of them.

  But no. The Rusties huddled together, seven of them clustered around the eighth. It seemed to be an intense leave-taking. Then the crowd parted and the Rustie at the centre began to walk over to Gilmore, followed by an amboid carrying a bag. Its friends watched it go, then turned and left.

  “Thank God,” Gilmore muttered, watching the one approaching alien. It had the usual translator unit at its throat, and the harness and decorations, but also a couple of other things that Gilmore hadn’t seen before – what looked like small gas cylinders below the ring of nostrils at the crown of its head and what at first looked like spectacles over its prominent eyes, but clearly were not because there was no glass in the frames.

  “Am I in the correct place for the Ark Royal?” it asked. The voice of its translator unit was bland, without expression. The briefing pack had said, The First Breed are hermaphrodites and may be referred to as ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’ with no offence being taken. Use of the term ‘Rustie’ in their presence is not advised.

  It’s a he, Gilmore dec
ided at once. If it wanted to be a she it would have set its translator to a female voice.

  “You are,” he replied.

  “My appellation translates as Arm Wild.”

  From the briefing pack: Take care always to use a First Breed’s full name. Abbreviation is an insult even between friends.

  “It’s a pleasure, Arm Wild. I’m Commander Michael Gilmore, Captain of the Ark Royal. I’m afraid I have no idea what that translates as.” He held out his hand, as instructed by the pack; the Rusties were apparently happy to imitate some human customs. Arm Wild’s right grasping tentacle slid out of its pocket by the Rustie’s mouth and wrapped around the outstretched hand, to give a slight squeeze. The inside surface of the tentacle was ribbed and quite dry, like the belly of a snake. A Rustie’s graspers, Gilmore had gathered, were what it used instead of hands: they could extend in a blink to a couple of feet in length and were used for feeding, for gesturing, for manipulating.

  “It is unavailing, Captain,” Arm Wild said. “I expect it would be as senseless in my language as my name is in yours.”

  Polite social repartee with an alien seemed surprisingly easy.

  “Is that your bag, Arm Wild?” Gilmore said. “I’ll have it taken on board-”

  He looked round but Nichol was already there. The sub-lieutenant stepped forward smartly and took the bag, which was half his size but quite light.

  “There is not much in it,” Arm Wild said. “The First Breed do not habitually wear clothes. It does nevertheless have some private effects and a spacesuit that I can wear.”

  “A wise precaution, Arm Wild.” Gilmore believed in making eye contact when speaking to anyone but he found he was looking at Arm Wild’s nostrils. A biological cue as a human was to look at the topmost cavities in the head and a Rustie’s four nostrils went above the eyes, spaced around the dome that topped off its wedge-shaped head. He dropped his gaze to the eyes. “Will you step on board?”

  Gilmore stepped aside for the alien and Arm Wild walked past him into the landing boat. Looking at him from the side, Gilmore thought he saw something flashing within the frames around the Rustie’s eyes. Some kind of data display, perhaps? Arranged so that only the Rustie wearing it could read it?

  There was already a Rustie-couch fitted on the boat. Gilmore helped Arm Wild strap in while the whirr of the fuel pumps started up. Like all his kind, the whatever-it-was that covered Arm Wild’s skin made him look as if he was disintegrating from rust and Gilmore had to fight the urge to pluck a flake off, which he suspected would be a diplomatic no-no.

  From the cockpit, Nichol could be heard requesting permission to take off. While that was forthcoming, more polite conversation seemed to be in order.

  “How did you come to be on this mission, Arm Wild?” Gilmore said.

  “My lodge, the Wood Temple, is renowned for its diplomatic skills,” the Rustie said.

  “Lodge?” Gilmore said. A bizarre image of Rusties as masons – aprons, rolled-up trousers, funny handshakes – drifted across his mind.

  “I am sorry, a collection of prides. Of our lodge, the pride to which I belong is the most renowned for its abilities. Therefore, we were chosen for this mission.”

  “I see.” Arm Wild showed no sign of wanting to keep talking so Gilmore pushed his small talk skills to their limits. “I’d heard you only have one nation. Why do you need diplomats?” he said.

  “One nation,” Arm Wild agreed, “several clans, many lodges, thousands of prides. There is need for talk and negotiation amongst us.”

  Another silence. Gilmore plucked his final conversational thread out of the air. Arm Wild had talked about names translating ...

  “Do names have significance to the First Breed, Arm Wild?” he asked.

  “No more than yours, Captain. In our mythologies, as in yours, many people received appellations with meaning which passed into the language as general designations. For example, I believe that the name Michael translates from the Hebrew language as ‘Who is like God?’, and that according to at least one religious belief system, Michael was the archangel who led the winning side in a war in Heaven.”

  “Was he?” Gilmore was impressed. He thought it might be polite, and in the interest of diplomatic relations, to study Rustie mythology in return.

  “As a diplomat, it is wise to study the customs and cultures of those with whom you deal,” Arm Wild said. “With your authorisation, when on board I would like to interview all your crew members at times convenient to them.”

  “Of course.”

  “Countdown begins, sir,” Nichol called back. “Ten, nine-”

  Eight seconds later Sharman was spaceborn.

  *

  His Majesty’s Starship Ark Royal was a long, sleek ferro-polymer spindle three hundred feet long, its lines broken by the engine block at one end and the bulge of the centrifuge ring a third of the way down. At the far front of the ship was the anti-debris laser turret – the only armament that Ark Royal possessed. Aft of the laser was the forward airlock and then a stretch of hull, studded with the sockets that had held cargo containers in the ship’s previous life as a freighter, that swept back to the wide disc of the ring compartment, ribbed by heat-dispersal fins. To Gilmore on the approaching Sharman, with the remaining two thirds of the hull hidden by the centrifuge, Ark Royal looked like a giant metal mushroom. The centrifuge ring held the crew quarters, the wardroom, the gym ...

  The landing boat began to brake and slowly moved along the ship, and the remaining two thirds came into view. First came the boathouse – Sharman would fit snugly into its recess in the hull behind the ring, with only the wings of the arrowhead-shaped vessel protruding out into space. The boat, its reserve fuel tanks and Ark Royal’s engineering section accounted for all of the space between the ring and the engine block.

  Finally came the engines themselves – a triangle of liquid oxygen rockets around the central core of the fusion pulse engine.

  Good girl, Gilmore thought, looking out of the port. Then he remembered his guest. “She must look very quaint to you, Arm Wild,” he said, wondering if the translator would pick up his slightly bitter tone.

  “We still have similar craft, Captain.” Arm Wild sounded quite neutral. “We are not that much ahead of you.”

  “A lot can happen in a century,” Gilmore said. “On our world, steam completely replaced sail, then suddenly even steam was out of date.”

  “Our experience was akin to yours, Captain.”

  Everything that was said to this creature, Gilmore realised, came bouncing back neatly as “we are the same.” Maybe the two races really were similar. Maybe they were destined to act together. Maybe they could, despite all the sceptics, be friends.

  *

  Sharman settled into the boathouse with barely a jar, drawn in by Ark Royal’s docking arm. Gilmore turned to Arm Wild to assist but the alien was already out of its couch.

  Arm Wild’s bodily contortions were eye-watering to watch as he airswam through the airlock and into Ark Royal. He was no longer a stumpy, bulky quadruped; with four limbs, each with three digits, and two grasping tentacles he was perfect for zero-gee. He could reach out at almost any angle and grab a handhold, while a human emulating him would have needed arms and legs dislocated. Once you remembered that this was an alien behaving naturally and not a terrestrial creature undergoing torture, it was almost beautiful to watch.

  Two of the ship’s company were waiting as Gilmore and Arm Wild emerged from the boat: Hannah Dereshev and Ark Royal’s systems officer, Julia Coyne. They saluted. “Welcome on board, sir,” Hannah said formally.

  “Thank you, Number One. May I introduce Arm Wild of the First Breed. Arm Wild, Lieutenant Commander Hannah Dereshev.”

  “Very pleased,” Arm Wild said. “Is that Hannah, as in the mother of the prophet Samuel?”

  Hannah was nonplussed. “Um, yes, that’s right,” she said, with a surprised look at Gilmore, who put on the poker face he only ever wore when trying not to smile
.

  “Show Arm Wild to his cabin, please, Ms Coyne,” he said. “What’s our status, Number One?”

  “Ready to go, sir. The main engine is tested and calibrated; we have provisions to last us all for three months; the tanks are full; watches are posted ... all we need is the prince. Oh, and Peter Kirton brought the prince’s personal AI on board. Apparently you’ve met Plantagenet?”

  “I have,” Gilmore said. He touched the nearest comms panel. “How are you, Plantagenet? Keeping busy?”

  “I am very well, thank you.” The AI sounded calm and unhurried. “Though there is not much for me to do until the Prince of Wales is on board, and I have to say the ship’s network is very cramped compared to UK-1 and there are no other AIs of my class with whom to converse-”

  “Delighted,” Gilmore said and quickly broke contact. He and Hannah looked at each other, and Gilmore hoped Plantagenet hadn’t learned his social mannerisms from anyone close to him.

  *

  With the countdown to leaving L3 in its last half hour, the crew were assembled on the flight deck around the lozenge shaped central console. The main desk and the officer of the watch’s desk were at either end and two auxiliary desks faced each other along the short axis. Space watch was about to start and there would be someone at the main desk every second of the day until the ship reached the Roving.

  “So, here we are,” Gilmore said. He smiled as he looked around them. Hannah and Samad he knew well: the others, though they had all served under him, not so well.

  Peter Kirton: there because Samad had felt he owed the man. And, Gilmore reminded himself, because he was good at his job. When the Martian let his reserve down, Gilmore had noticed people liked him.