Here We Stand, page 3




Ingram knew he was right. She also knew they needed an independent analysis of the Jattans’ physical vulnerabilities, if only to benchmark how accurate Fred’s information was.
“That was because her commune was right here, Marc.”
“Look, I’m just covering every angle. I know Fred won’t be happy if we don’t treat Jattans as the enemy, but we don’t need to be on anyone else’s kill list. We’re already persona-non-shitpot with half of Earth and a sizeable chunk of the Mastan.”
Ingram had to think about that. “Mastan? Oh. Yes.”
“Space that the Kugin regard as their turf. This sector. Remember?”
Fred had mentioned it to her just once. “You do have a good memory.”
“I’ve spent hours debriefing Fred. He uses the word a lot.”
“Well, with any luck the medics won’t have started on Gan-Pamas,” Ingram said. “We’ve spent the weekend on the die-back search and all the labs have been closed.”
“We’ll be finished by the end of the day. Just the last few homes in the Ainatio block to do.”
“Okay, I’ll deal with it now.”
“Has Brad said yes to the XO post yet?”
“You do spring easily from topic to topic.”
“Well? Has he?”
“I said he could have a few days to think about it.”
“Okay.” Marc nodded. “And I’m keeping an eye on Bissey. He needs something to occupy him. What other skills has he got? Can he teach anything? Because we need everyone to be able to handle weapons, implement emergency drills, and do basic survival stuff.”
Finding a role for Peter Bissey wasn’t going to be easy. What did you do with your first officer when he decided you were a criminal and resigned? None of the old rules and regulations worked on Opis. There was nowhere to transfer him and nobody was technically serving now anyway. They were all civilians in law, a law which didn’t apply here. On Opis, they were whatever the community agreed they were. It was Bissey’s right to object to the decision to execute Gan-Pamas as a security risk, but if Ingram couldn’t rely on his support over that, she couldn’t be certain he’d do whatever was necessary to defend the base. The last thing she needed was an officer drawing his own red lines and refusing to open fire.
“I don’t want him anywhere he can sow doubt or where his hesitation to act might compromise us,” Ingram said. “And it really hurts to have to say that. He’s served his country well and put his life on the line. He was my friend. We just don’t share a moral compass any more.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure he’ll shoot first and moralise later if the shit really hits the fan,” Marc said.
Ingram would have bet on that too, but that was the problem. “Pretty sure isn’t good enough, Marc,” she said. “I’m not one hundred per cent certain. And I need to be.”
A number of Cabot’s crew had served with her in the Royal Navy and she could count on every one them. Bissey had been her right hand. It was the withdrawal of his loyalty that would do the damage, and not just to her sense of comradeship. The rest of the crew wouldn’t be able to ignore the fact that reliable, sensible Bissey had abandoned her.
But nobody had even mentioned it in her presence. That said it all, at least as far as her former RN crew were concerned. It was an embarrassment and they wanted to forget it.
Marc bent down to tidy a few chunks of stray soil on the grave. “Did you remind Bissey that Gan-Pamas actually shot Dan Trinder?”
“No. We just argued about the decision to execute.”
“Yeah, but in the second or two it took to return fire, nobody knew Dan wasn’t dead or whether Gan-Pamas was going to shoot someone else. Standard response to an attack before anyone else gets hurt.”
“Peter knows that. He still thinks it was wrong because we’d set out to do it.”
“Well, we had. You hedged your bets.” Marc raised an eyebrow, obviously unimpressed, and went over to the church porch to prop the shovels against the wall. “Come on, whatever anyone planned or didn’t plan, nobody shot the bugger on sight. You’d think Bissey might bear that in mind.”
“Is that how you see it? That I didn’t make a firm decision right away?” Ingram was a little hurt by that. “I had to negotiate with you and Chris and Dan because you don’t take orders from me, and I had to keep Peter on side.”
“Did I say I didn’t realise that?” Marc wiped his hands again. “You could have blamed it all on us and you’d still have an XO now.”
“I’ve got one.”
“What if Brad says no?”
“I’ll get another one. Anyway, I’ll be happier when we work out exactly what went on between the Jattan and Fred.” Ingram switched on her comms again and walked back to the main building with Marc. “I’ve heard Fred’s version, but I want to hear Solomon’s. It fits, I suppose. Fred says Jattans are prone to last-stand gestures. That was probably it. I just want to be sure.”
“Very wise.”
“I do regret it, though.”
“What?”
“That we killed Gan-Pamas. Not an exemplary first contact.”
“Would you feel better if you knew all the shit I did?” Marc asked.
Ingram could guess what a special forces operator had needed to do in the years since she’d left Earth, and she was just glad that there were still men like Marc willing to do it. She also wanted to understand him. He could hurt her feelings. Very few people had ever managed that and it told her she had some personal investment in him.
“It wouldn’t change my opinion of you,” she said. “Did your history class tell you everything I did?”
“Sorry, I forgot you were that old.”
“Cheeky bugger.”
“I’m sure our teacher left out the best bits.”
“There comes a point where you think, okay, what happens if I don’t do this extreme thing,” she said, “and shore bombardment becomes the least objectionable course of action.”
“Yep. Been there.”
Ingram was the Butcher of Calais. It said so in Marc’s school textbook, apparently, because their parallel lives were separated by her spending forty-five years in cryo en route to Opis. The schoolboy learning about naval engagements long after the world thought Ingram was dead was now the battle-hardened older man whose timeline had caught up and overtaken hers by a few years. It was only now that the disruption bothered her, not just because of the lost years but because dislocation from the world and the events that Marc and the others had lived through left her unable to truly understand how desperate things had been for them. She could only guess.
“I didn’t just pound Calais,” she said, wanting him to know all there was to know about her. “We hit every Channel port on the Franco-Belgian side that summer. We gave them a week’s notice to evacuate non-combatants, assuming they’d use that time to fortify the docks and mount a counter-attack. But they kept civilians in place as human shields.”
“Did you know that in advance?”
“What did the history book say?”
“Didn’t dwell on it, as I recall.”
“Yes, I knew. And we hit those ports with everything we had when the time was up. We weren’t trying to scare them off. We did it to permanently degrade their ability to reach us. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Marc nodded a few times, head down as he walked, hands in his pockets. “Which is why I still had a country to grow up in,” he said. “If you ever need to do it again, call me. I’ll give you a hand.”
Ingram was thrown for a moment. She’d never been in a position to see a direct connection between the outcome of those terrible years and a specific individual she knew and cared about. It was one thing to be assured what she’d done was for future generations, but it hadn’t sunk in that someone from that generation was right here beside her.
“Well, in that case, I’ll have that curry you threatened me with,” she said, embarrassed. “I’m still waiting.”
“Oh bugger, so you are. Sorry. I’ll do some resource investigation and get back to you.”
“What are you planning?”
“Lamb jalfrezi.” Marc nodded in the direction of the entrance to the main block. They were almost at the front doors now. “Looks like you’ve got a mutinous crew waiting for you. Toss them overboard.”
“Oh dear. “
“Give ‘em hell, Captain. See you later.”
A group of medics and technicians were sitting outside on the low barrier by the flagpoles, cradling steaming drinks and looking generally miserable. When Ingram glanced at her screen to check the schedule, it showed that the medical centre was being scanned for die-back and suspicious objects right then. Trinder was doing everything by the book.
Most of the medical centre personnel were hanging around, but she couldn’t see Logan Haine. His icon wasn’t showing on her base map, either. She could have asked Solomon to find him via the bots wandering around, but a simple question would do.
“Sorry about this,” Ingram said to the medics. “We’re going as fast as we can. Not long to wait. Have you seen Commander Haine?”
“He went for a walk.” Jake Mendoza pointed in the direction of the crop tunnels. “Last time I saw him, he was talking about finding something in bloom for Nina’s grave. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
It wasn’t like Haine to switch off his comms. He regarded himself as permanently on call. Ingram couldn’t remember seeing him at the funeral, either, although it would have been easy to lose him in the crowd. She decided the office could wait for a while and walked over to the transport pool to check out a quad bike.
“If you’re looking for Commander Haine, Captain, he’s in the experimental fruits tunnel,” Solomon said in her earpiece. He could see her on the security cameras and hear all her conversations. There was no real privacy in Nomad Base beyond personal quarters, but sometimes that was a blessing. “I don’t like to intrude, but I think he’s feeling a little stressed.”
Ingram took that to mean hung over. Haine did like his drink. “I’m on my way to see him,” she said. “Don’t worry. This search is going to be over by the end of today, yes?”
“Barring surprises, Captain, yes. And everything’s fine. We’ve found nothing untoward so far.”
“And then I suppose the spying starts.”
“I prefer the term prudent observation,” Solomon said. “We’ve poked the hive and if anything comes flying out, I’ll see it.”
Ingram suspected the only thing flying out of anywhere would be the scientific and technical staff’s goodwill on its way down the drain. But it had to be done. She started the bike.
“I might be a while,” she said. “You know where I am.”
“Fred wanted to talk to you, by the way.”
“I’ll see him later.” It’d be about Nina. Her death seemed to have hit him harder than she expected. “Poor Fred. He’s seen so many funerals and memorial events here that he must think all humans do is bury bodies.”
“I think he wants to talk to you about something else, actually,” Solomon said. “Sharing his FTL expertise with Earth.”
“Damn, I need to explain that we’ve shelved that, don’t I?”
“He knows why we’ve been searching the base, so perhaps he’s worked it out for himself.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll visit him later. I need to see Commander Haine first.”
“I’ll ignore the security feed from the crop tunnel, Captain,” Solomon said. “You need some privacy, I think.”
Solomon obviously knew what was up with Haine, but he rarely pre-empted conversations by briefing Ingram unless he felt she’d be at a serious disadvantage without it. He was obliged to see all and hear all because he managed the whole system, but he never seemed comfortable with it and he drew his lines about what he’d actively monitor. He wanted to be seen not to be eavesdropping because he needed humans to know he understood their need for privacy.
“That bad, then?” Ingram asked.
“I think so.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, Sol.”
Ingram parked the quad bike outside the crop tunnels, went through the biosecurity screen, and found Haine sitting on an upturned crate between two rows of dwarf lemon trees. The tunnel was deserted except for small maintenance bots gliding around the place and pausing to test soil profiles and spray water. It was as good a place as any to unwind. It smelled wonderful.
“Logan, be honest.” She sat down cross-legged on the gravel next to his crate. “You’re not okay, are you?”
“I’m staking my claim for the first lemons to put in Andy Braithwaite’s gin,” he said. “It’s like queueing outside a shop for the opening day of the sales. I might be here some time.”
“You can tell me. Come on. How far back do we go?”
“I think I treated you for a near-terminal hangover when you were totally bladdered after a run ashore.”
“I’d like to say I remember it well, but I was somewhat tired and emotional, I believe.”
“You were. And you inspired me. I was determined to spend my entire naval career in that same state of nirvana. You were the Rembrandt of piss-artistry to which I aspired. And here we are.”
“Logan...“
“Okay, I think I just dropped my guard, to be honest.” Haine raked his hair with his fingers, suddenly serious. “Imagine. After all these years of scab-lifting, I remember I’m squeamish.” He went quiet for a while. No, this wasn’t like him at all. He was the most extrovert, irreverent man she’d ever known. There was no situation he couldn’t turn into a joke and get everyone to laugh along with him. But he looked drained and defeated. “I couldn’t let Jake or any of the others deal with the body. I really couldn’t. I know they’re absolute pros, but they wouldn’t have had to deal with that kind of traumatic injury. I mean, I’ve seen some awful combat wounds and accidents in ships, but... ah, not like that. So I made sure I did it.”
Ingram could fill in the gaps. “It” was dealing with Nina’s body. She was sure that Jake Mendoza was sufficiently experienced not to be overwhelmed by a cadaver in pieces, and he had the emotional distance of an outsider. But knowing Haine, he’d have decided it was his final duty to a shipmate.
“I’m sorry,” Ingram said. “I should have come to see you sooner. I don’t know what I can do to help except listen.”
“I just wanted her to look presentable. My way of erasing it all, I suppose. Send her off intact.”
“I know.”
“I did quite a good job, actually.”
“You always do.”
“At least there was no facial trauma.”
He almost sounded as if he was in shock. Ingram did her best. “You and I need to take a bottle to a quiet corner and get hammered,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Logan. If you want some time off, please, just say. I don’t want to see you broken.”
“I don’t think that would do me any good, Bridgers, but thank you.”
“Well, if you change your mind, just do it.”
“I hope I’m not losing it. I need to function properly. Especially now.”
“You’ll be fine.” Ingram understood his fear. She’d had one moment in her naval career when she was so scared during a missile attack that she wondered if she’d ever be any use on the bridge again. It felt like everything she was sure of about herself had been ripped away. She hadn’t recalled that moment in years, but now it was so vivid she could smell the sweat and hear the few moments of unnatural silence before the impact, and she wondered why it wasn’t on her mind every second of every day. Her tendency to bury the life-changing stuff bewildered her. “It just proves you’re human, Logan. If it hadn’t been someone we all knew, you’d have breezed through it.”
Haine looked as if he was considering that as a reasonable suggestion. “But it’ll always be someone we all know,” he said. “This is the entire world for us now.”
Ingram was reluctant to leave him like this. She sat with him for a while in silence until he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed hard.
“I’ll be fine now, Bridgers.” He’d always called her that. “Let’s have that bottle later. After all, it’s not like I owe my liver anything. What’s it ever done for me?”
She took it as a cue to leave him alone to sort himself out. “You’re on,” she said. “I’ll procure a litre of Andy’s finest paint stripper. The lemons are on you.”
She rode back to the main building, wondering if she’d made a mistake in assuming she could handle command in an isolated colony because it seemed so much like the confined world of a warship. But it was turning out more like a long submarine patrol where half the crew were members of the public who’d been press-ganged and didn’t understand a damn thing.
She couldn’t kid herself that she had the lonely burden of command. She shared it with Marc, Chris, and Trinder, and Alex Gorko cat-herded the Ainatio contingent with impressive skill. She never had to worry about Kill Line, either, because Doug Brandt was an experienced mayor. So she wasn’t alone, and the buck didn’t stop solely with her.
This Nomad, scrambled together in haste in the face of disaster, wasn’t Tad Bednarz’s vision of tens of thousands of carefully selected settlers arriving over a period of years. Its small, random community was the entire seed corn of extrasolar humanity for the foreseeable future. Bednarz had never counted on aliens being here, let alone their very desirable technology, and that was the buggeration factor that caused her most doubt now.
It was relatively straightforward holding a group together in the face of an enemy threat, even when some people were seething about Abbie’s behaviour and Elcano’s passengers being kept in cryo. It was like taking command of a ship with an unhappy crew in the middle of a war: the threat suppressed the smouldering fires for a while. But the alien technology had been the wild card. It demanded hard decisions. Was she helping or hindering Earth if she shared teerik tech with the government? How should she handle the temptation to take the Caisin gate route back to Earth in an instant if the situation deteriorated? Neither would solve Earth’s problems. It might even make them worse.