His Majesty's Starship (6 page)

Gilmore shut his eyes and groaned. He was to leave UK-1 on the eighth.

Joel shuffled, as if uncertain what to say, then suddenly grew more confident. “Um ... I know you’ve always said the RSF is a dead-end line, and believe me it’s not quite what I had in mind, but ... well, like I said, they’re recruiting and I’ve got to start somewhere.” The grin again. “’Course, that’s not what I told recruitment. They think it’s my life’s ambition to work for the Fleet.”

You think, Gilmore thought.

Now the awkwardness was back.

“Um ... ah ... Dad, when I registered, I had to decide what I was going to call myself from now on. Um ... I ... I decided on Gilmore, if you don’t mind.” Joel blinked bashfully at the camera. “So I’m Mr Midshipman Gilmore,” he said, as if he could scarcely believe it himself. “And I’m going to be King Richard’s loyal subject too. Well, um ... I thought I’d let you know I’m coming. I’ll tell you my news when we see each other. If we see each other. I mean, you might be off-station all the time I’m there ... anyway, we’ll catch up, Dad. Bye.”

The image froze and Gilmore stared at it, drinking in the latest picture of his son. Joel’s mother – and his father – had thought she was marrying a dynamic, up-and-coming young spacer. It hadn’t worked. Joel had been a toddler when the inevitable happened and Gilmore hadn’t had the heart to take him away from his mother.

When Gilmore had moved to UK-1, contact had become even rarer.

“House, record reply,” he said. “Audio and video.”

“Recording,” said House. Gilmore cleared his throat.

“Ah ... Joel. Good ... yes, very good to hear from you. Very good indeed. And congratulations, and I’m very pleased you’ve chosen Gilmore, not that the name’s copyright or anything. Um. You’re welcome to put up here when you arrive, but I won’t be seeing you because I’ve got news of my own ...”

*

“You’re being obstructive, Mr Loonat,” said Leroux. They were in a private interview room in the Security offices: just the two of them, Samad couldn’t help noticing, which he suspected was a violation of rights it would probably be futile to try and enforce. Leroux had all the authority of the king behind him.

“You’re being obnoxious, Mr Leroux,” Samad said.

Leroux got to his feet and stared down at him across the desk. It was a ploy that Samad recognised: he had been seven years old when an NVN man, an armed thug of the forces of the Confederation of South-East Asia, had glared down at him in exactly the same way as the Loonat family left their newly appropriated home. There was no way he was going to be intimidated by it coming from an unarmed civilian.

“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 decided 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 ...