Carrearranis (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 5) Read online

  ‘I will do that,’ Alex confirmed, and they ended the call with mutual goodwill.

  The Heron didn’t launch, as such, because it was already superlight, as were all the other ships in orbit. They were already fully supplied and did not need to make any preparations for leaving the system. Nor were there any system authorities to carry out traffic control procedures. Leaving, therefore, involved nothing more than adjusting controls so that they moved out of orbit and onto course for Carrearranis.

  Before they left, though, they gave the departure some ceremony by firing a salute. It wasn’t one of their spectacular fighter displays, just a rippling broadside salute fired as a general courtesy. All the other ships, with one exception, responded at once with the brightest display they could manage, sending the Fourth on their way with a blitz of cheers and flashing lights.

  The one exception, naturally, was the Comrade Foretold. The LIA ship assumed a lurking, sullen position right at the edge of their scanners. This, though, was as familiar to the Heron as the presence of the Minnow cruising neatly to starboard and nobody took any notice.

  It was, though, as Buzz observed, strange to be out on their own like this after so long as part of a bigger squadron. The Stepeasy, Davie’s ship, had stayed at Oreol and would be making the trip later along with the patrol ship. The Excorps ship which had been with them for so long had stayed behind as well. It had already been agreed that no civilian ships would come any closer to Carrearranis than Oreol, the newest outpost of League territory. So for now at least it was just the Heron and the Minnow, with the little LIA ship tagging on behind.

  ‘Rather nice, really,’ said Buzz, and thinking of all the civilians they were leaving behind, Alex smiled agreement.

  It took them just eight days to return to the point at which they’d left the comms buoy; the point now defined as the Carrearranian border. Alex had made that decision based upon the point at which the signals begging them to leave at once had broken off. It was right at the limit of the range of the buoy they’d left there. Given open space, their ships could have returned to the comms buoy in just three and a half days. But this was not open space; it was a tangle of multidimensional forces in such violent flux that ‘dirty space’ didn’t begin to describe it. The Fourth’s ships were often obliged to creep through areas of turbulence which shook and jolted them with teeth-jarring force, and to carry out tight, convoluted manoeuvres through vortices which were trying to spin them out of control. It said a great deal about the Fourth that they regarded this navigation as routine, requiring no special level of alert and leaving the ship on autopilot most of the time.

  Instead, they focussed their attention on the data received in the Carrearranian message. By the time they reached the comms drone they all knew the content of the messages in detail and were familiar with all the analytical reports.

  The most interesting of those findings, to Alex at least, were the geology, biosphere and anthropology reports.

  Geology was interesting because it raised more questions than it answered. CPO Martins, their resident geologist on the basis that he’d done some remote-learning courses and been to a summer school, presented his findings with a distinct air of reluctance. This was not because he was shy – Chief Petty Officers on warships were generally not known for being shy – and not because he was awkward on the command deck, either, since he and Alex had known one another for years.

  ‘The thing is, skipper,’ Martins admitted, ‘it just doesn’t look right.’ He’d presented them with a global view of Carrearranis with the ocean stripped away, the greater tectonic plates identified and large-scale rock types colour coded. From this, it was apparent that all the land mass of Carrearranis was in a straight, narrow band around the equator. Almost all of it, in fact, fell between latitudes 224 and 288 on the base-eight Carrearranian coordinates. ‘It is just, I think, theoretically possible,’ Martins said dubiously, ‘planets do go through cycles in which the plates form super-continents and then break up again. It’s just that this… well, it might be a coincidence and just good luck that all the land masses have been so neatly organised into the optimum habitable zone on this planet, but I have to say…’ he broke off, looking appealingly at the captain.

  Alex gave a reassuring look back. Martins was one of the more unusual genomes on the Heron – he was from Chielle, a very high gravity world in terms of human occupation, so his short, bull-shouldered physique was partly due to that. The thick-boned, squashed-looking Neanderthal features, though, were as much down to genetics as environment.

  ‘Go on,’ Alex encouraged.

  ‘Well, you know, I’m not a real geologist,’ Martins said guardedly. ‘A lot more qualified people than me will have to look at this to make sense of it. But speaking just from the little I know, skipper – looking at the volcanism, the island chains which effectively fill up the gaps between the sedimentary land masses, and the absence of any major mountain ranges which you’d expect when plates are colliding in this way, I’d have to say, just as the wildest of wild guesses, that it looks to me to be both deliberate, and recent.’

  Seeing that Alex did not reel back in disbelief at this, he continued in a slightly more confident tone.

  ‘It looks,’ he explained, ‘as if someone has actually moved the tectonic plates around and fitted them together like the pieces of a puzzle, right where they want them, and filled in the gaps with volcanic islands. I have no idea how that is even possible and it’s more than likely that I’ve got it totally wrong and that it is somehow the result of natural processes, but I can only say that that’s what it looks like to me. And given the lack of mountains where there should be mountains if this process had been going on over millions of years, I’d have to say that my guess is that it’s happened very recently, in geological terms – hundreds of thousands of years, maybe even less… if you were to say ten thousand, I wouldn’t argue with that.’ He looked earnestly at Alex. ‘Do you think the Olaret could have done that, skipper?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Alex admitted. ‘There are legends that they could move stars, so it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility. But amazing – thank you, Mr Martins. Well done.’

  He said the same to the biodiversity team, which came to report that there was no biodiversity.

  ‘We’ve identified the same species of trees and other flora in the background of every island,’ said the Sub who was speaking for them, the rest of the team nodding along in support. ‘And it is a remarkably small range – too small, really, and too diverse to be natural… I mean,’ he saw the captain’s questioning look, ‘if you have a very low biodiversity it’s usually because most of the flora belongs to one genetic family, like with slimeworlds, or on Ferajo, where nearly all of the flora belongs to the fern family, even though it presents in a wide variety of forms. Here, we’ve got lots of different families on any given island – every island has a range of fruit and nut trees, fruit and tuber bearing shrubs and a form of cotton plant. Growing together, they provide abundant food throughout the year, and material for fabric, sails, cloth and everything the islanders need for a simple life. If you were putting together a package of flora ideal for an island colony, in fact, I doubt you could come up with anything better. Fauna, too – some insects, vital for pollination. No birds, no reptiles, no sign of mammals or any other land-dwelling creatures. We’ve seen evidence of fish, and fishing, but the fish we’ve seen are all small. And they all have the same, which just isn’t normal, I’d say not even possible, in an evolving biosphere. So our conclusion is, skipper, that it is not a natural biosphere, but terraformed, and that that was done so recently that evolutionary processes have not yet had time to extend and adapt from the original seeding.’

  ‘So,’ said Alex, putting this together with the geological report, ‘it is an Olaret colony.’

  He spoke with rather more than usual interest, in that, because his own homeworld was on the list Shion had provided of worlds which had been colonised by the Olaret. H
is homeworld, though, Novaterre, had a very much richer biodiversity, with evidence of a green world there, with trees and simple sea-life, for tens of millions of years before the human record began. Quarus, on the other hand, which was also known to be an Olaret colony, had been terraformed for the quarians at the same time they were created as a survival genome and given the planet with all the flora and fauna that they needed to thrive. The conclusion drawn by those studying the Olaret was that they had mostly made use of existing living worlds for their colonies, perhaps terraformed for other purposes millions of years before, but that they had occasionally created colonies, as it were, bespoke, from scratch. Carrearranis looked like one of these, and would be fascinating to study in that light, to learn not only about Carrearranis but perhaps something about the Olaret, too.

  Where the anthropology was concerned, the team had so much information to convey that Alex jotted down notes of the points he found of particular interest. They were…

  1.The sashes which the elders wore were embroidered with what had turned out to be the geographical coordinates of their island, in Carrearranian numerals. And these, it was confirmed, were in base eight.

  2.There was a slight gender bias towards the matriarchal; though the gender balance between male and female was about equal in numbers, three hundred and four of the five hundred and ten island chiefs were female. The same degree of bias, though, was not evident amongst the elders in general, as this seemed to be roughly equal.

  3.There was no evidence of any visual arts – no statues, no carvings on rock faces visible in the background, no totems. The only artistic expression they had was flower and vine embroidery on their clothes which had been found to be the same across all the islands. This, it had been noted, was extremely simple; direct representations of real flowers and leaves with no attempt at stylising or artistic interpretation. It was also very simple in its execution, as zooming in had revealed it to be carried out with coarse thread and one kind of stitch, a rudimentary long-stitch.

  4.They did not adorn themselves in any way with face or body paints, tattoos or any other tribal markings. Many of them did wear shell necklaces but they were just pretty shells on threads with no evident tribal significance.

  5.Their way of life – construction of their houses, utensils, even the layout of their village around the central space before the singing stone – was the same on all the islands, no cultural diversity whatsoever.

  6.They did not appear to be a very creative people when it came to names. All of their islands were known by their coordinates and no features, rivers, lakes or mountains, had any names at all. Their planet had two moons, both small, lumpy and undistinguished. They were called Laidani and Pridani, poetic sounding names until it was established that they meant Big Moon and Small Moon.

  6.Their language was confirmed to have root commonality with the same ancient tongue as other known Olaret colonies, but it was of so obscure a dialect that not even Shion or Davie could generate a matrix for it – they were going to have to figure it out as they went along.

  They made a start on doing that, as the ship went back to the comms buoy, by learning as much of the Carrearranian language as they could. The vocabulary they could be sure of at this stage was pretty basic but it would be something even to be able to exchange greetings without the use of computer translation. As people practiced the newly acquired phrases around the ship, it rapidly became the norm to use Carrearranian wherever possible. Within days, it was slipping into common shipboard usage. There was much amusement, indeed, when an abstracted junior officer, busy with reports, greeted the second lieutenant’s arrival on the command deck with, ‘Dornet, shaba.’

  Martine Fishe responded to this with a startled look. The literal translation of what the Sub had said was ‘New day to you, older woman.’

  ‘Shaba?’ Martine queried.

  The Sub looked up from her screens, suddenly aware of what she’d said and of the amusement of the command deck crew.

  ‘Oh – I’m so sorry!’ The Sub flushed with embarrassment. ‘I mean – beg pardon, ma’am.’

  ‘Granted.’ Martine was laughing as she sat down. ‘No offence,’ she assured the younger woman. ‘It’s just that you’re not normally so polite.’

  This sent a ripple of laughter spreading through the ship, as the Sub turned even redder and cracked up laughing herself. It was a trivial incident in itself, and yet seemed to establish by some unspoken agreement that it was acceptable aboard ship for crew to call officers shaba or shabu as an informal form of address.

  ‘Interesting,’ Buzz observed, as he and Alex had coffee one afternoon. ‘It’s as if we’re trying to absorb as much of Carrearranian culture as we can, to empathise and even identify with them. Just look at these figures…’ he indicated a catering report which noted a surprising increase in the quantities of salad and fruit which people were eating. ‘We’re trying so hard to understand them, we’re even starting to eat like they do, or at least, as we imagine they do.’

  Alex, aware of having ordered fish and salad for his own lunch, looked intrigued.

  ‘Good point,’ he observed, and then with an enquiring look, ‘So – a point of concern, do you think?’

  Buzz shook his head. ‘I don’t see any indicators of social closing,’ he assured the captain. ‘Just a very natural intense curiosity. And if it leaves us with some in-group vocabulary and custom, nothing wrong – or new – in that.’

  Alex laughed. It was his responsibility to see to it that the isolated world of the starship didn’t become dangerously insular, with custom and practice creeping in as ‘normal for the ship’ which might be a very long way from normal in reference to Fleet regulations or even normal human behaviour. This was a particular risk in the nature of the secret, often dangerous work the Fourth undertook. Alex had already had several queries from the Admiralty about certain behaviours observed in members of the Fourth. One of them involved the use of a gesture, someone tapping their own shoulders with their fingertips, used on Fourth’s ships to express regret. It was not recognised anywhere else, other than by extremely well informed historians. They had picked that up from Shion, just as she had learned from them the gesture of expressing sincerity by putting her hand where her heart would have been in a human physiology. This, as Alex had assured the Admiralty, was a normal and healthy part of cultural exchange and one of the factors which had made Shion settle so happily with them. He and Buzz would keep a careful eye on the situation, but the fact that the Fourth was embracing Carrearranian culture so enthusiastically was actually an asset to them as they moved towards relationship building.

  Enthusiasm certainly wasn’t lacking – there was delighted cheering even at their return to the comms buoy. The buoy was at the point which Alex had defined as ‘the border’, though it was some considerable distance from the outer limits of the Carrearranian system itself. The League did not acknowledge the right of any world to lay claim to space beyond the outermost physical bodies in orbit around their star, or of any federation of worlds to lay claim to more than the space which lay between their systems. Alex’s decision to acknowledge this as the Carrearranian border was, therefore, diplomatically controversial in itself. But then, if they’d wanted a conventional diplomatic handling, they wouldn’t have appointed Alex von Strada.

  His handling was certainly unorthodox. Upon their return to the buoy he sent off prepared signals which thanked every island community for their greetings and offered a liaison, an officer they could communicate with directly. For himself, he answered Arak’s message with a frank, unscripted message, talking to him just as he would have wanted to if he’d been able to make that call live.

  ‘It’s wonderful to be able to talk to you so much more easily,’ he said, and the matrix translated that to It raises my heart to the skies to be able to speak with you more quickly. ‘We want to learn everything we can about your people and your world. I thought you might like to know something about me.’ A friendly gri
n and he tagged in a map of the League with one of the central worlds highlighted. ‘I was born on a world called Novaterre.’ He added a series of pictures showing views of Novaterran cities and scenery. ‘These are my parents, this the house I grew up in.’ A series of family snaps. ‘When I was old enough I joined the Fleet, the service which protects our worlds as the Guardian protects yours. We sail the stars, as you sail the seas. I have been very fortunate; have seen many worlds, have even been the first of my people ever to visit some.’ The matrix had no equivalent for ‘fortunate’ so substituted ‘happy’ instead. ‘And now, to my joy, I have been honoured with the task of representing my people in building friendship with yours.’

  He finished with the highest priority diplomatic request on a very long list of things they wanted.

  ‘It would give us great pleasure too to be able to communicate directly with the Guardian. We have tried sending messages but have had no response. Do you think you might ask for us if the Guardian will talk to us as well? Much joy to you and your people.’

  The earliest they could expect a response was eleven hours fourteen minutes later. They were receiving signals from Carrearranis itself, as far as they could tell, at or near instantaneous transmission. This in itself was miraculous; to see that signal being powered at them at a speed they could not even begin to understand. Evidently this distance was the edge of range for that planetary broadcast, so it clearly did have limits, but just the idea of being able to broadcast over this distance without time delay had Professor Parrot and his team salivating. Since they were unable to hook into the Carrearranian signal in any way to use it for their replies, the best they could do was a supercharged superlight array which would take eleven hours and fourteen minutes to deliver data packets to the system. It was something, at least, that their signals were being picked up there and conveyed to the singing stones. And as they had hoped, putting the ID of the island they wanted to call at the front of the message did get them through to the right singing stone. It was, as Buzz observed, a very easy system to use, even though they didn’t have a clue how it worked.