Here we stand, p.44
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Here We Stand, page 44

 

Here We Stand
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  Marc stood up and stretched. “Come on, let’s get it over with. Bring the stuffing.”

  “Fred doesn’t get those jokes, you know,” Ingram said.

  “I’m not bloody joking. This isn’t my first run-in with him for keeping things from me.”

  Marc set off at a brisk pace. Ingram had to speed-march to keep up with him. “Alien, Marc. Just remember he’s an alien.”

  “And you better remember he’s not a child. He’s a crafty little sod. Those who can’t punch their way out of trouble fight with manipulation and blackmail instead.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Ingram said. “I went to an all-girls school.”

  “I know what he’s up to. He wants us to fight his proxy war and hand the Kugin their arses for him. I’m happy to go for overkill if we’re attacked, and I know I was brainstorming pre-emptive strikes, but I think we’re being manoeuvred into starting a war. He’s got form for it. He told Sol his daughter thinks he takes insane risks.”

  Fred’s advice was that Kugin and Jattans only responded to force. Humans needed to be the enemy nobody wanted to take on, he’d said, and had to make other civilisations too scared to approach Opis for fear of what humans would do to them. Bissey wanted no part of that and resigned. Ingram had her own concerns, but they weren’t ethical ones. A dangerously grey area lay between robust deterrence and first strike.

  “Okay, he didn’t consult his commune about making contact with us, or sharing technology either, but he’s not necessarily setting us up to start a war,” Ingram said. “Brad thinks it’s just how he does business. You know, not telling Jattan clients all the details because they’re clueless and just giving them what he thinks they need.”

  “I don’t care why he does it,” Marc said. “It’s still going to drop us in the shit every time. He has to be reined in.”

  “Knowing why he did it is the key to stopping him doing it again.”

  Marc patted his holster. “So’s this.”

  The teeriks’ compound was surrounded by a high security barrier and still closely monitored in case of another Jattan incursion. The grounds were deserted. Even Rikayl wasn’t out yet. The teeriks had security monitors inside the house, so they must have seen Ingram coming, but she still had to knock on the door and wait. Eventually, it opened.

  “Good morning, Fred.”

  “Good morning, Captain. This is unexpected.”

  “May we talk?”

  “Of course.”

  There was a workbench out front with four crates around it for seats, where Jeff sometimes played cards with Rikayl during the day while the adults were at work. Fred settled down at the bench. So they weren’t going indoors, then. Fine, Ingram didn’t want Turisu hanging around and maybe Fred didn’t either. She suspected he hadn’t told the rest of the commune what he’d done, though. She sat facing Fred, and Marc settled at the far end of the bench, looking like he was going to referee the event.

  “I think you know why we’re here,” she said.

  “Ah, Mr Lawson has contacted you.” Fred cocked his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you, but you would have stopped me.”

  “Too bloody right I would,” Marc said. “Have you any idea of what you’ve dropped me in?”

  Ingram cut in. She hadn’t totally given up on persuasion yet. “It’s caused us a lot of problems, Fred. I’m sure you meant well, but now we’ve got to limit the damage as best we can.”

  Fred’s neck feathers fluffed up. Ingram was expecting him to do that little shake like birds did when they were making themselves comfortable, but he just flattened the ruff again. It was a brief anger display. She’d seen the females do it, except their red crest rose as well. It seemed Fred wasn’t apologetic at all.

  “With respect,” he said, “I don’t think you understand the military situation in this sector yet. You’re fewer than two thousand people at the moment, and only two hundred and twenty-one have proper military experience. There are Kugin and Jattan forces totalling almost one million. You need numbers on your side. The sooner you have those numbers, the safer you’ll be.”

  “It’s ten years away.” So much for seeing his viewpoint. Ingram marshalled all her willpower to stop herself from wringing his neck. “We’d be dead long before backup arrived, and that’s assuming it’s backup at all and not a new regime that’ll have a very different agenda, as well as new plans for you.”

  Fred hesitated. He jerked his head, a tell so small that Ingram almost missed it, but she thought she’d sown some doubt.

  “If ten years is a long time to wait for backup, then it’s ample to prepare for the arrival and impose conditions that protect you from that possibility,” he said. “But it can be done in five. The production schedule I sent is based on five Earth years, if they have the materials and skills to follow the instructions.”

  Five years. Well, Fred could write all the production schedules he liked, but if industry couldn’t deliver that fast, it made no difference. Could Ingram find a solution in five years? It was never as much time as it sounded.

  Marc leaned forward a little, elbows on the bench. “Why did you send the data to Britain, Fred? Because you could extract Lawson’s details from the system and you didn’t know where else to start?”

  “No, I believed your nation was the best choice,” Fred said. “I know little or nothing of the others, except that APS is your enemy, but Britain seems both civilised and free from the risk of die-back. I judged it by the British people I’ve met. There are other nice humans here, but some have no country, and others come from countries that would want to shut down this base.”

  “If Britain’s physically capable of a delivering the project, which isn’t a given because Earth’s so low on resources, it’s hard to keep something that big a secret,” Marc said. “A lot of people have to be involved in supply and construction. Spies will notice it. So there’s a good chance the data’s going to leak to APS before we get anything done. If they get the FTL plans, they’ll drop everything to build that ship, and they’ll be starting with more resources than we’ve got.” Marc leaned in a little closer. Ingram couldn’t tell if this was working on Fred or not. “So if APS shows up here first, it means the end of Nomad, and you with it.”

  Ingram took the opportunity to tag-team him. “You should have talked to us first, Fred.”

  Fred fluffed up his ruff again. “But I knew you wouldn’t listen. In the same way I thought it might endanger this base to respond to the Jattan opposition, and I explained why, but you still did it.”

  “You leaked the data against our wishes.”

  “I stopped you from making a big mistake.”

  “Okay, I understand why you want to do this for your commune,” Ingram said. “You want the Kugin cut down to size, and you think we can do that for you. But you might end up subject to an APS empire that’ll take a very different view. And if you’ve done this once, how can we trust you not to do the same with the Caisin gate? We’re putting ourselves on the line for you.”

  “And what are you going to do if Britain can’t build this thing?” Marc asked. “Are you going to hawk it around Earth until you find a country that can?”

  Fred was completely still. He didn’t even blink.

  “I took your concerns fully into account,” he said. “You want to save your species, but you — we — can only transport them, not create an instant refuge. So I have no reason to tell your government about the Caisin gate. It would give them false hope because their survival chances and ours would be slim if they used it. That was the conclusion you reached some time ago, wasn’t it? Giving the most reliable humans the necessary technology is the best compromise, and yes, I do realise that could change at any moment.”

  “What if the unreliable ones show up instead, Fred?”

  “This is our technology and I’m free to do with it as I wish.”

  That hit a nerve. Ingram had used the ownership argument against Bissey as a counter-punch in their fight over who had the moral high ground about Gan-Pamas. He’d said she should have handed over the technology to the MoD. She’d accused him of double standards because it wasn’t hers to give away. Things looked a little different now.

  “But you’re not free to put this base at risk,” she said. She was still talking quietly and calmly but the effort was killing her. “So until I’m sure I can trust you not to go behind my back again, I’m limiting your access to Earth. The situation back there is too volatile to risk missteps, and I hope in time that you’ll understand why.”

  “You’re the one who uses it,” Fred said. “And I’d still strongly advise you not to engage with Jattans of either faction.”

  She thought about mentioning the work to be done on the ships, and whether to say it was a matter for him to decide if he wanted to continue working on them. But that might have sounded like she was begging, and she had her limits. She stood up.

  “Noted, Fred,” she said, and left. Marc stood up to follow her.

  “I’m sorry if I caused you any embarrassment, Marc,” Fred said as they walked away. “But I think you might have done the same.”

  Ingram didn’t hear Marc reply and she didn’t look back to see if he’d acknowledged Fred silently. But Fred was evidently still talking to Marc and not talking to her.

  “Well, that went swimmingly,” Marc said when they were clear of the gates. “It’s only taken us five and a bit months to fall out with the natives.”

  “They’re not the natives.” Ingram strode ahead, trying not to look as if she was storming off. Marc matched her pace. “But I admit that fiasco was my fault. When there’s no scope for meaningful punishment, it just becomes an argument.”

  “Do you think he’s getting worse?”

  Ingram thought of how charming and open Fred used to be. “I liked him better when he spoke pidgin English and said exactly what was on his mind. But he’s really changed recently.”

  “Familiarity breeding contempt, or deterioration? Who knows?”

  “Jeff Aiken,” Ingram said. “He’ll know.”

  “Maybe the meds are the problem.”

  “It’s a thought.” Ingram now had another list of things to fix. “I’m going to tell Devlin not to hold the shuttle if the teeriks don’t turn up for work today. Do we need to convene Joint Command for that?”

  Marc shook his head. “I’d expect Devlin to do that anyway.”

  “May I interrupt?” Solomon asked. “Commander Devlin is indeed aware of that and she won’t wait.”

  “Sorry, Sol, I’m so miffed that I forgot to ask you,” Ingram said.

  “It’s no problem, Captain. This will blow over.”

  Ingram wished she had his confidence. But the other teeriks seemed fine, as Searle had pointed out, so perhaps it was just a case of dealing with an old chap who’d stumbled into a position of leadership with Caisin’s death and was still finding his way in a world where he was free to make big decisions, even bad ones.

  And I might have made a major balls-up by responding to the Jattans. Which he’ll never let me forget.

  “I’m going to come clean and tell people exactly what happened,” she said.

  Marc hmmmed. “Everything?”

  “Everything. I’ll be diplomatic, but I need people to know that Fred gave FTL to Britain for his own reasons, against our wishes.”

  Marc looked like he was thinking it over. “Yeah, but remember some people won’t believe you anyway. I’m Nomad’s Most Wanted already because of the Fiji trip.”

  “I’ll only worry if Kill Line takes it badly,” Ingram said. “Not because I fear them, but because they’re a barometer of common sense.”

  Marc checked his watch, calculating. He still wore his special forces issue timepiece. Every twelve Opis days, Opis time synced up with Earth’s, but the date diverged by another day, and he tracked the divergence in much the same way that he’d known how long ago his sons had been killed, down to the day. Ingram just knew he was going to try to do the same when the base switched over to the new Opis year.

  “Well, remember to run it past the guys first,” he said. “Otherwise they’ll think we’ve staged a coup and they’ll dump our tea in the river. Anyway, it’s pizza night tomorrow. Come round if you like.”

  “Deal,” she said.

  “Actually, you might as well move in, seeing as you’re eating me out of house and home. You can’t live in one room above the shop forever. Unless you think you’re going to get a better offer, of course. Or a better house.”

  It was the kind of invitation she’d have expected to surprise her, but it felt more like being offered a refuge after a long and harrowing journey. She was relieved she didn’t have to wonder where the relationship was going. But that was Marc all over. He never minced his words.

  “I face a limited supply of suitable men, so I suppose I’d better stake my claim before all the best ones are taken,” she said, trying not to be too breathlessly girly about it and ruin her warrior-queen image. “It’s not as if I’ll meet a charming stranger on the bus, is it?”

  “Have you even been on a bus? Didn’t you travel in a sedan chair borne by the local peasantry?”

  “I couldn’t always drive, you know.”

  “Ah, chauffeur’s day off. I get it. Okay, see you later.”

  This was the kind of thing people did in a war before they deployed. Decisions that should have taken weeks or months of careful consideration in peacetime were condensed into days, sometimes even minutes when premature mortality loomed. Ingram had regretted rash choices in the past, but for all the things she didn’t yet know about Marc, she knew everything that truly mattered. He was her only peer within forty light years. He was also the only man she could see herself growing old with rather than growing apart from. They understood each other and the grim necessities required of them, and nothing she’d done would ever shock him.

  What was Howie going to make of all this, though? She’d have to talk to him. The poor little chap’s last memories of being in a family home were the stuff of nightmares. Perhaps he wouldn’t want her hanging around and reminding him of what he’d lost.

  Jeff passed her on the stairs. “How did it go, ma’am?”

  “Fred, you mean?” Ingram shook her head. “We’ve pulled their external comms until I’m sure this won’t happen again.”

  “Oh. That bad.”

  “You know Fred better than anyone, Chief. He’s taking the line that we don’t know what we’re doing and he does. Totally unapologetic. But if it’s anything other than that, I’d like to know.”

  Jeff was very good at divining what she meant. “On it, ma’am.”

  Euphemism failed her when she sat down at her desk. When it came to writing her announcement, it was harder to word than she expected. It sounded exactly what it was, a plea not to be blamed for doing something she’d sworn not to do, because an alien did it and ran away. She tried again.

  ‘Message to: Nomad Base residents.

  Access to terrestrial entertainment was suspended overnight and is now being resumed. I apologise for the inconvenience. But I would rather tell you the embarrassing truth than let rumour inflate the incident, so this is why the link to the Earth relay was shut down. The FTL blueprints that were being held for distribution to selected organisations on Earth when it was safe to do so were sent prematurely and without authorisation to the British government by one of the teeriks. As a result of this, I have restricted the commune’s comms access for the time being to prevent further mistakes of this nature. I want to reassure you that this makes very little difference to the timing of further settlement that has already been discussed, and it doesn’t jeopardise the security of Nomad Base. No other government has received data. I would ask those of you who come into contact with the teeriks to be mindful of the cultural differences in appropriate behaviour and to understand they believed they were helping us.’

  “That’s a rather elegant lie, Captain,” Solomon said in her earpiece. “But it needed to be told.”

  Ingram was still surprised by how she’d come to accept Solomon monitoring everything she did. It had horrified her when she emerged from cryo to find the mission was being run by a banned AI who was fully autonomous and couldn’t be shut down. She wasn’t sure if her acceptance was proof of her pragmatic flexibility or a sign of giving up.

  “It’s a reason that looks like a feeble excuse, Sol, but it beats letting people find out piecemeal and magnifying it into a British plot to take over the galaxy.” She tapped the screen and sent the draft to Chris, Trinder, Searle, and Alex. “Especially as Tim Pham thought that was exactly what was happening.”

  “You were rather gracious about Fred under the circumstances.”

  “I can hardly say I want to wring his neck and use his feathers to stuff a duvet.”

  “It’ll be obvious in private conversation, though.”

  Ingram didn’t have long to wait for the responses from the other members of Joint Command. They were all okay with the message, although Trinder had added a note: “Next time there’s a crisis during silent hours, please wake me.”

  “See, even mild-mannered Dan’s bollocking me now,” she said. “Any good news?”

  “All the teeriks due to work on vessels have turned up as normal.”

  “Really? Well, we still feed them, I suppose, so self-interest prevails. Not Fred, though.”

  “No. But then he’s been working back here for a while anyway.”

  “I’ve asked Jeff to see what can be done about him.”

  “You mustn’t worry about this, Captain. You’ve kept your end of the bargain.”

  “I don’t think that’ll feature in any judgement on me somehow.”

  “Your crew will understand the situation hasn’t changed, and those Ainatio personnel who don’t understand are for me to deal with.”

 
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