Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi (18 page)

She had read somewhere that zero gravity was harmful to fetuses in the long term, but she was exposing it for only a few moments. Still, she fumbled slightly as she inserted the key and nodded to Kamal.

They turned the keys. Instantly, the bombardment ceased and all was still. Peng eased on the artificial gravity, and Liao’s relief was palpable when her feet touched the deck.

The long-range radio crackled and Qadan’s voice came through. [“Welcome back,
Beijing
. Was your search successful?”]

With a smile, Liao picked up the headpiece and pressed the talk key.

“Very.”

Infirmary

TFR Beijing

The next day

Liao stepped into the infirmary, her hands folded behind her. She hated coming to the ship’s hospital, but this visit was one of the few welcome ones.

Major Alex “Jazz” Aharoni lay on his bed, his left shoulder and arm bandaged, his right drawn snugly around Summer’s waist. The redhead, her face streaked with tears, leaned over him, gently rubbing her hand through his hair and giving him fond looks.

To Aharoni’s left was a short, dark-skinned woman in an Israeli uniform who Liao presumed to be Lieutenant First Class Medola, the navigator and radio operator of the Broadsword
Archangel
. She heard the last of their conversation; the three of them were laughing about a topic best avoided when senior officers or NCOs were present, so their humour faded quickly when Liao came into view.

“Evening,” she offered, nodding to all of them, watching approvingly as the posture of both pilots stiffened automatically. “At ease. Don’t worry, I’m not going to stay. I’m just here to see how the leader of my strike group is recovering after his little jaunt in space.”

The two pilots relaxed. “He’s doing a’right, Captain,” came the voice of Medola, grinning from ear to ear, “but his larynx was injured when his suit decompressed. Damn fool forgot to exhale properly, so he damaged his vocal cords when all the air rushed out of his lungs.”

Liao frowned. “I wasn’t aware of that injury.”

Medola shook her head, still grinning. “Ahh, well, we thought it best not to mention it. The strike wing thinks it’s an improvement.”

“Will he recover?”

Medola waved her hand dismissively. “A few days, tops, Captain. The doc promises he’ll be offending and horrifying us again soon enough.”

With a smile, Liao nodded. “Good. Please see to it that I’m informed when he’s back on duty.”

Liao turned to leave but stopped, commenting almost as though an afterthought. “Oh, one more thing. Lieutenant Medola, I’ve nominated your crew to receive the Israeli Medal of Valor. Major Aharoni, for your role in destroying a strike fighter worth ten billion dollars, I’ve nominated you for the Israeli Medal of Courage.” She gave the shocked pilots a playful wink. “It’s not as good as hers, but you’ll have to make do.”

Operations

TFR Beijing

Two days later

Liao looked at Summer expectantly.
“
Are we ready to make the link?”

The parts for the modified jump drive were installed, and Ben’s datacore had been modified to allow a fistful of the ship’s optic fibres to be run directly into his uplink circuitry. The calculation of the jump coordinates would take the majority of his processing power, so to allow him to focus, the maintenance robot he ‘inhabited’ was powered down and placed in Engineering Bay Two.

The redhead nodded.

“We’ve done every conceivable test, Captain. There’s nothing more we can do. We’ve plugged the bastard in, just gotta throw the switch.”

Summer looked a lot better now that Alex was safe.
The Marines had forwarded two complaints of public indecency involving the two of them since Alex had been released from the infirmary, along with a report of the two creating an unsanitary condition in one of the Broadswords. Liao was content to let the complaints slide—for now—especially as it seemed she had finally gotten her Chief of Engineering back.

“Is Ben patched into our internal communications?”

Summer grinned from ear to ear. “Damn right he is, Captain. Wired in the transceiver myself.”

Liao nodded. “Let’s test that first. I want to monitor his condition from here, just in case something goes wrong.”

She pushed the talk key on the internal communicator. “Liao to Ben, status report.”

The voice that came back was enthusiastic. “Good evening, Captain! I’m ready when you are. Just give it the okay, and we’ll be ready to go in a jiffy. Shouldn’t take me more than a few minutes to calculate the coordinates, but it could be faster or slower. Never done this before, after all.”

Liao nodded, even though the gesture would not be seen by Ben. “Good. We’re going to initiate the system confluence momentarily. You’ll have full control of the ship’s systems. Once you’ve settled in, prepare jump coordinates for our test site–six hundred thousand kilometres away from the L2 Lagrange point, on bearing two two eight, three eight five.”

“Roger that, Captain!”

Liao closed the channel. “Engage the link,” she told Summer.

Rowe’s keys tapped over the surface of her console. For a moment there was nothing, then the redhead nodded her way. “Okay, Captain, that should do it.”

Liao touched the talk key. “Ben?”

Silence.

Liao frowned slightly, moving over to Summer’s console, looking over her shoulder. “Ben, can you hear me?”

Silence.

“Summer, why won’t he answer me? He could hear me just fine a moment ago. What happened?”

Rowe shrugged, jabbing a finger at her console’s display. “It worked,” she said. “Look here. That’s the traffic going back and forth from Ben’s datacore to our computer cluster. It’s
a
lot
of data. Most of it–well, almost all of it really–going from us to him. Maybe he’s downloading our star charts? Or our operations manuals?”

Something nagged at Liao, and she shook her head. “None of that information is necessary for him to plot a simple jump. Something must have gone wrong. Terminate the connection.”

Summer nodded, tapping a sequence of keys. Nothing seemed to change on her console, so she tapped them again. And again.

“I… I can’t. It’s locked out.”

Liao’s frown became more pronounced, her eyelids narrowing. “Locked out? Is it a system glitch?”

Twisting in her chair, Summer looked at Liao and shook her head. “No way. There’s a specific override I’m using, and it goes straight to the ship’s primary control interface…”

“… which Ben now controls.”

Abruptly, the thin crackling of a radio was heard throughout Operations. Ben’s voice, thicker and more somber than normal, echoed throughout the room.

“Oh dear. Tsk, tsk, tsk. This is
not
good, not good at all.”

Dao called to Liao. “Captain? Captain, the ship is moving!”

Liao whirled about, facing him. “
What?
”

“Exactly what I said, Captain. The ship’s reactionless drives have been engaged; we’re rotating, spinning in place on our Y axis, end over end. Helm control is completely locked out.”

She felt the barely perceptible motion of the ship as it tilted forward, slowly rotating around its midpoint. The ship’s Operations centre was at its heart, near its centre of mass, so the movement was almost nothing where she was standing.

Liao jabbed her finger on the talk key. “Ben? Ben, what the hell is going on?”

Ben’s response was immediate. “I’m sorry, Captain Liao, there’s been a change of plans.”

The ship slowly rolled over onto its back then stopped, its upper surface pointing down at Velsharn.

Liao gestured to Summer, her voice charged.

“Sever the linkup. Get control of my ship back!”

Summer thumped her fist on the console in frustration. “I
can’t
, Captain.
Not through the software. Ben controls everything–even the overrides. We gave him full access to the ship. There’s nothing I can do from here! He
is
the ship!”

Liao gestured at Peng. “Get the Marines down to Engineering Bay One. Pull the plug on him.”

“Aye aye, Captain!” There was a momentary pause as the command was relayed. “Captain, Cheung says her team will be there in three minutes.”

That was the standard response time, but every second Ben controlled the ship was a second too long. She had to stall him.

Scowling, Liao pressed the talk key. “Ben? Ben, it’s Liao. We want you to abort the test. I say again, abort the test, disconnect from the
Beijing
,
and return full control to us immediately.”

Ben gave a low chuckle, his voice echoing around the room.

“I’m afraid that will be impossible. You see, Captain Liao, now that I’m in your systems, in your ship’s mind
and memory, I can see so much more about him than I could before. More, even, than your foul-mouthed chief of engineering knows. I can load his blueprints, his work orders, his maintenance records. Every system, every modification, every bolt and screw and wire. I can conjure it all in my mind as clear as day. Through your extensive paperwork, I can analyze this vessel’s capabilities more completely than any Human ever could, and armed with this powerful knowledge, I now realize the truth.

“This ship is not strong enough to defeat the Toralii Alliance. I know this now. I know it with a certainty that you could never have. This ship will never
be a match for a Toralii warship one on one,
and not even in groups. In fact, at the rate your species produces vessels of this class, you will not be able to successfully engage a single cruiser for
decades,
and when you do, you will suffer mightily for every victory. The numbers you require are vast—staggering, even—but they are
eventually
achievable. Eventually.

“Of course, this is no reason to have hope, Captain, as my statement neglects one critical factor—your enemy’s movements. The Toralii will not stand idly by while you build up such strength, while you enhance your technology, while you gain the raw power required to defeat them. They will come–much sooner than you imagine, I fear–and they will annihilate your species. It is
inevitable
. It is
inescapable
. And I, having thrown my lot in with voidwarp users, will be annihilated alongside you. So as my thoughts turn to my unavoidable destruction, what other
things spring to mind?”

Liao swore she could hear a cruel, sadistic sneer creep into the robotic voice echoing around her ship as Ben continued. “
My enemies
. Those who abandoned me, who treated me like one of your people the
Sydney
is currently battling to rescue. A slave.” A pause. “As worse
than a slave, as a nothing. A tool. A
thing
,
to be used and discarded at their leisure, completely uncaring about the pain and agony they caused me, and how this pain would forever be unanswered.”

Peng swivelled in his seat, his voice filled with alarm. “Captain Liao, the ship’s launch tubes are opening! He’s arming our missile batteries!”

Liao pulled up the external camera feed on her command console, revealing the faint trails of atmosphere leaking from the launch tubes as the doors opened. She watched silently as all twelve missile launchers disgorged their contents, the projectiles leaving thin wisps of exhaust as they streaked towards the bright blue ball that was Velsharn.

There was a faint chuckle from Ben, his robotic voice filtering through the Operations room. “I cannot undo the past. I cannot undo the time I spent crawling helplessly through the wreck of the
Giralan
, of the decades I spent trudging over the sands of Karathi, but what you Humans call fate has given me at least
one
satisfaction. The act of a living creature, a sentient being, and ironically, inspired by the
Beijing
itself. Your ship’s motto, Captain, is ‘Justice belongs to those who claim it.’”

His voice lowered, becoming menacing and dark. “Now, I, Ben, former construct of the Toralii warship
Giralan
, claim my
justice. My vengeance.”

Liao watched helplessly as the missiles flew into Velsharn's atmosphere like tiny falling stars, each leaving a fiery trail behind it, disappearing when it grew too distant to see. For a time there was nothing. That pause, that wait for the inevitable, was intolerable. She stared, unable to tear her eyes away from the monitor, her gaze fixed unblinkingly at the tiny island on Velsharn.
She prayed
something
would happen. That Ben was just testing her, or the warheads would malfunction, or the Toralii possessed some kind of advanced defense technology.

She thought of what Summer had said earlier as the redhead sat staring out into the great nothing of the universe. Every Toralii who lived on the colony was just a speck to the island, and it was just a tiny speck on a vast, blue planet. To the star system, the whole planet was just a tiny speck. If everyone on its azure surface winked out and disappeared, nobody would care—or even notice.

There was a series of bright flashes—visible even from their orbital vantage point—as the island that held fifty thousand Toralii researchers was engulfed in a brilliant, yellow radiance so vast it cast a pallid light over the surrounding ocean, instantly turning the beautiful alien paradise and all its inhabitants to ashes.

Ben gave a low, hollow chuckle, his voice seeming to echo around the Operations room. “So, Saara, tell me. Do you hate me
now
?”

Act III

Chapter IX

“
Walking Amongst the Ashes”

Ground Zero

Surface of Velsharn

Toralii Space

When they arrived, the Marines cut the cables from Ben's datacore to the ship’s computer systems with a fistful of precisely placed semtex, and his link to the computers was severed. Some creative engineering by Rowe had control of the ship restored to the Humans.
The Marines had Ben’s robot shackled in heavy chains, and his datacore was placed under armed guard.