The silver fleet the com.., p.72
The Silver Fleet: The Complete Series, page 72
“As long as you’re careful not to promise him anything, fine.”
Jacobs, when he appeared, looked annoyed as if they’d caught him in the middle of something. Completely bald, he nonetheless sported a very impressive set of white sideburns.
“Good day to you, commander. What can I be doing for you?”
“Oh nothing, really. I think you’ve done quite enough already, Captain Jacobs, I just wanted to say thank you for all your help.”
Ardent said, “So far, you’ve helped us to identify twenty-seven escape pods.”
“Six of which we’ve been able to recover.”
“Oh, it’s the least we could do. We owe you people a great deal. Can I just ask: is that you, Governor Ardent?”
She was suddenly uncomfortable. “I’m afraid it’s ex-Governor Ardent now.”
“Hah, it is you,” he signalled to someone off screen. “It was a damned shame what that Draadtrekker Parnashikan did to you: stabbing you in the back like that. That’s no way to deal with people. Not that it did him much good in the end, mind.”
Ardent couldn’t help herself. “Not done him much good?”
“Haven’t you heard? It all fell apart after you left. He set up some kind of lottery system for tickets on the ships that were leaving. Problem was, only the person with the ticket could go. Meant you had to leave your family behind. And that didn’t go down too well - families getting separated and all that. Then it turned out that the execs were jetting off in virtually empty ships. One law for the rich… Anyway, after that things didn’t go so well for him. I bet you’re glad you’re not down there now. Everyone for themselves I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Actually, no,” she said, surprising herself. “That’s exactly where I would like to be - if I felt I could do some good.”
“Well, good for you. I kinda feel the same way myself, if we’re being honest. But no one knows what to do for the best. We’d love to help evacuate the civilians but we’re just not set up for it: no air supply, for a start. It’s frustrating, but what can you do?”
“You’ve done your best, captain,” Farnese said. “I guess you’re just going to have to leave transportation up to the professionals.”
Ardent winced at that. Farnese meant well but he wasn’t going to get very far by patronising people although, from his own reaction, he seemed at least to have realised his mistake.
Ardent cut in. “What the commander is trying to say is that we all have to concentrate on what we’re good at.”
“That’s right,” Farnese nodded.
“Although there might be something you could do.”
Farnese lightly touched her on the arm and said, “I’m not sure this is such a good idea: recruiting civilians, like this. I’m not sure it’s ethical.”
“Let me decide what’s ethical, commander” Jacobs spat. “We’ve spent a lifetime dragging materiel all over the place. If you don’t think that’s dangerous enough then you’ve obviously never worked in the mining industry. It’s plenty dangerous, let me tell you.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that you were…”
Jacobs cut him off before he could say anything else. “You’re talking about some kind of organised resistance, I take it?”
“We’re looking for ways of slowing down the Da’al’s advance. Make it as difficult for them as possible. Give our people some kind of chance, at least.”
“Only there’s no guarantees it’ll even work,” Farnese cautioned.
“We’re not looking for guarantees. We’re just looking for a little payback after what happened to all those folks on The Merry Widow.”
No one said anything for a while. The indiscriminate loss of so many lives made it difficult to talk about.
“I appreciate your concern,” Farnese said, sensing that the conversation was somehow getting away from him. “But I’d like to point out that none of your ships have any armaments of any kind, or even any strategic defences. You’d be going up against an advanced military force which has already demonstrated its destructive capabilities. The best we can hope for at this point is to frustrate them, slow them down at best. We don’t want people throwing their lives away for nothing.”
“Not for nothing. Also, these aliens you’re talking about: we’re as much a mystery to them as they are to us. They have no way of knowing what armaments we might or might not be carrying. If nothing else, it might force them to rethink their approach.”
Farnese was struggling with this. He turned to Ardent, lowering his voice.
“Can you do something to talk him down? We don’t want a massacre on our hands.”
“Of course, commander. Only, you have to admit: he does have a point. The Da’al have no idea what these ships are capable of.”
“Granted. But it won’t take them long to find out.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure.”
She already had an idea in mind that she thought just might work.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There were four of them in the Dardelion’s conference room: Webster, Silva, Markham and Nash.
Webster had wanted Markham there because he was aware that he’d be the one at the sharp end when the Marines went planetside and he didn’t want Nash overcomplicating things. As far as Webster was concerned this was a simple extraction. Get in, locate anyone who was still alive and get them out again.
The second part of the operation involved getting Nash to the crash site in order that he might plant his explosives. Webster’s orders were clear in that regard – all he had to do in order to fulfil his remit was to get Nash on the ground. They didn’t say anything about getting him off again. If Nash refused to play ball or, in some other way, outstayed his welcome then Webster would have no hesitation about leaving without him.
They had sent drones on ahead to view the planet and were currently viewing the feed from one of them.
For long stretches all they could see were long mountain ranges broken up by lots of snow and ice. Every once in a while they would pass over a stretch of forest or a frozen river.
“Looks pretty bleak from up here,” Webster said.
“No worse than similar conditions back on Earth Prime,” Nash pointed out. “Around northern Canada and Siberia. Wouldn’t you agree, sergeant?”
“My troopers have done their cold weather training and we picked up some cold weather gear from the Renheim. We’ll be able to cope so long as we’re talking about a relatively short time span. Anything longer than that and we might start to have problems.”
“That’s what the suits are there for,” Nash said. “If you’ve got one of them on the temperature isn’t going to be an issue. They’ll keep you alive indefinitely.”
Webster had his reservations about that though.
“I’m not so sure we should go with the suits.”
“Why ever not?” Nash said.
“It’s a training issue. All the paperwork I’ve seen concerning these things stresses the importance of at least six months of regular training and we’re lucky if each trooper has had more than ten hours in the VR suite.”
“I disagree,” Nash said bluntly. He wore no rank or insignia tags yet he had no trouble challenging Webster on the slightest detail. He had to be at least a colonel equivalent, Webster decided.
“It’s not like we’re expecting any opposition,” Nash went on. “I spoke with Captain Meyer and Commander Farnese at length on this matter. The first Da’al ships fired on the survey team’s camp but there was no suggestion that they landed any troops there. Trust me, when we do finally get down to the surface, we’re all going to be delighted that we chose to bring these suits.”
But before Webster could respond, Silva cut in.
“We’ll be coming up on the survey team’s camp in just a few moments.”
The drone had just passed over a small mountain range, the area before it looking even bleaker than what they’d observed earlier. Even the trees were more sparsely situated.
Webster experienced his first moment of doubt then. Despite what Nash had said, it did look brutally cold down there. The idea of a deployment in that sort of terrain, even with proper cold weather equipment, seemed especially daunting. Even though the intention was for him to remain onboard, he wouldn’t rule anything out as far as Nash was concerned.
The first sign of the camp was the transmitter aerial which stood out from quite some distance away. Sections of the support wires holding it in place had been damaged in the attack but the aerial was still standing, acting as a reliable beacon.
As the drone approached, they could make out signs of the devastation the area had suffered when the camp had come under direct fire. Just on this approach vector, they could make out any number of blast craters. The place really had taken a pounding.
Some sections of the camp had been completely destroyed – the units weren’t built to withstand direct fire of any kind and it showed. Still, there were a number of autonomous base units which were still standing and that provided them with some hope.
The power producing infrastructure along with the hydroponic sheds had both been directly targeted and there was little still remaining of either, though it was still possible to make out the camp’s basic lay-out. It was an unruly mess, with sections of insulating foam scattered all over the place. Despite all the debris, in the back of his mind, Webster was still thinking that there was a chance that some of the scientists and technicians might have survived. The real question was whether they’d been able to hold out against the cold in the weeks following the attack.
The accommodation blocks were coming into view now on the eastern side of the camp, marked out by the colourful detritus of personal property strewn across a wide area. Webster thought he saw a pink sleeping bag down there but the drone was past it before he could be certain.
And then, just as quickly as it had arrived, the camp was falling away behind them.
Webster looked at the others sitting round the table.
“What do you think? Honest appraisal. Are we likely to find anyone down there?”
Markham made an expansive gesture, “Depends on the kind of people we’re dealing with. If we’re talking about Marines then I’d say, camp of that size, we’re going to be looking at survivors. But most of those people were civilians, so there’s no telling what sort of training they’ve had and whether they’ve got what it takes to come through something like this.”
Webster nodded. He was thinking about the president’s daughter. After all, she was the real reason they were here in the first place. She’d gone to the far ends of the universe to get away from him but now he wanted her to be brought back home - it was the real reason he’d authorised the mission in the first place. Any other survivors they might find would be a bonus. She would take priority over all of them.
No one else, other than Faulkner, knew that she was even there. And with Faulkner gone, the mission might have died with him. And that put Webster in something of a dilemma. With no record that Faulkner had shared his mission parameters with his second-in-command, Webster had some decisions to make.
Firstly, did they have enough time to conduct a thorough search? Secondly, did he share this intelligence with the others sitting around the table – just to reveal her identity would be to potentially put her life at risk. And thirdly, did he ignore all the usual protocols and take control of the search himself?
He tried to think what Faulkner would do in a similar situation and came up blank. In the short time he’d known him, he’d never once been able to predict what his senior officer might do in certain situations. He was too unpredictable, which was probably what made him so unique.
“How long before we enter orbit?” he asked Silva.
“Another six hours.”
He didn’t ask about the whereabouts of the Da’al ships. In some way it shouldn’t really impact on what they were attempting to do and, in another sense, he didn’t really want to know.
“Have we got a fix on where this crashed spaceship of yours is meant to be?”
“I provided the lieutenant with all the co-ordinates,” Nash said smugly.
“The second drone should be passing over the site in less than an hour.”
“No chance we might see it via the first drone?”
“Not really,” Silva said. “You have to consider that there’s a significant distance between the two sites – we’re talking maybe sixty to seventy kilometers.”
Webster looked to Nash. “That is significant. How was it that the science team happened to come across this thing in the first place?”
“There were a number of geological survey teams operating out of the camp. There was some talk initially of them establishing a permanent colony at one point. No reason why they should all stick to the same area.”
Even with details like this, Webster thought, I still don’t trust him.
“That could be good news for us, though,” Silva said.
“What could?”
“These other survey teams,” she looked to Nash. “You said that there were several of them.”
“That’s right,” he said cagily.
“Then isn’t there a chance that some of these teams were away from the base when it was attacked? Perhaps some of those might have survived?”
“I guess so.”
But it was clear Nash wasn’t concerned about finding survivors. That was just an excuse to get him here. All he seemed concerned about was the downed spaceship.
She turned back to Webster. “Then we need to try and contact them.”
Webster was still trying to put the pieces together. “Yes. I suppose we should.”
“And what about our teams, sir?” Markham said. “We still have to make a decision about how they’re to be deployed.”
Webster had been putting the decision off but, with Dardelion fast approaching the planet, he knew that the Marines were going to need as much time as possible to prepare.
“I’m thinking that we split the platoon.”
“Is that a good idea?” Nash said.
Webster ignored him and spoke directly to Markham. “The shuttle can carry thirty men.”
“Can it?” Silva said.
“What I’m proposing is that we drop Sergeant Markham with fifteen men at the site of the main camp to search for survivors, then the shuttle takes Mr Nash and the other fifteen and drops them as close as possible to the crash site.”
“Only one thing wrong with that,” Nash said.
“And what’s that?”
“What happens if the sergeant’s team succeeds? What if they do find survivors? How do you propose to get them off the planet?”
Nash was right. Webster had become obsessed with thinking about only one survivor – the president’s daughter. Chances were good that she was already dead. But what if others had survived? He couldn’t just abandon them.
“Might I suggest something, sir?” Markham said. “If you drop Mr Nash and his team first, then my team will have direct access to the shuttle. If there are survivors we can stabilise them before bringing them back to the ship.”
“But then the shuttle would have to make two trips,” Webster turned to Silva. “Have we got enough fuel for that?”
“It’s at the limits of what she’s capable of but, if we try and conserve fuel, then yes, it should be possible.”
Nash looked pleased with how things had turned out. This way he’d have twice as much time to explore the alien ship as he would have had if they’d organised the drop-offs the other way around.
For all that Webster wanted to spite the man, he had to admit that this set-up suited them all.
If it all went smoothly, that was.
The one thing that everyone was scrupulously ignoring was the fact that the Da’al would be well within range by then and if they chose to, they had the capability to upset all of their plans.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Morton was in charge but she wasn’t enjoying the role.
Considering that the rift between the Empire and the Confederation had originally come about as a result of the Yakutian’s obsession with technological enhancements, it was hardly surprising that the way their various medical facilities had developed was completely different.
She had found herself in charge of six very senior consultants, none of whom seemed convinced by Sunderam’s argument that she was the one with all the answers. But that was hardly surprising when Morton didn’t believe it either.
Since none of the consultants spoke any English, Sunderam had provided her with their equivalent of a junior doctor. A man named Bunayega. He had round, red cheeks which gave the impression that he was constantly flustered. When viewed from the front he looked as though he would have fitted in well in any Confederation medical facility. It was only when he was viewed from the rear that it became apparent that he had a neurological cap attached to the crown of his head.
His role was to act both as a translator and to help resolve any confusion generated by their use of widely differing medical terms, but Morton suspected that he also had another role. He was there to spy on her.
For the time being, Morton was satisfied to let the consultants get on with the process of bringing Yamada’s body temperature up to minus forty degrees because that was where the process started getting tricky.
What was most annoying was that the bulk of the material she most needed access to had been freely available to her on-board the Mantis and yet she’d barely had time to look at it outside of a recent paper on cryogenic regeneration. It was a topic that she had developed an interest in due to her early experiences but it was by no means a specialism. She felt particularly ignorant about how the new machinery worked in practice. Like a lot of doctors, her interest had been in the way that the new technology was applied, not how it worked.
Now she was having to come up to speed, and fast. She had managed to persuade Sunderam to let her adapt one of the existing regeneration chambers for her own ends. The Yakutians used it for the recuperation of injuries but she had other ideas what it might be used for. She was in the process of completing the plans for its re-design when she became aware that she was being watched.
