Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi (3 page)

[“I am sorry. I told her that I would not speak to you directly about it, but she should not be too hard to find.”]

“Is Alex helping her?”

Saara shifted uncomfortably again. Alex “Jazz” Aharoni–an Israeli fighter pilot and the head of Liao’s strike group–was Summer’s plaything, or vice versa. Possibly. The exact nature of their relationship was not clear to anyone—including each other, apparently—but it involved a lot of sex in strange locations all around the ship.

[“They are no longer together.”]

That was bad news. Liao tapped the datastore in her hand, nodding. “I’ll have a chat with her, see what I can do. Maybe I can use
this
to try to help.”

Giving the Toralii woman another hug–careful not to stress her injured shoulder–Liao tucked the datastore into her pocket and let Saara get back to her work.

Despite what Saara had told her, finding Summer proved to be exceptionally difficult. Liao looked all through engineering, the various sections of the ship under repair, the
Beijing’s
eight nuclear reactors, and the missile silos.

Passing Alex in the corridor, she instinctively reached out with her injured arm, causing her to wince as a sharp spike of pain ran up her shoulder. Turning, she called back to him, and the pilot approached.

“Ma’am?”

Narrowing her eyes somewhat, Liao couldn’t help but notice that the Arab-Israeli man looked fatigued–just like everyone else, Liao mused–which on its own wasn’t a serious concern, but he was less like the cocky pilot he had been before the battle. He just looked like a man who needed a shave, two weeks of sleep,
and a month’s leave.

Ignoring his appearance for the moment, Liao gave him a polite nod. “I’m looking for Rowe. Apparently she’s been making herself scarce these days. I have some salvage I want her to take a look at.”

Alex made almost exactly the same gesture Saara had, which caused Liao to frown even more.

“She usually hangs out in Cargo Bay One. It’s one of the sections in the ship that was decompressed.”

Liao blinked. “She’s sitting in a decompressed area?”

Alex shrugged, nodding. “It’s because of the great big hole in the outer hull there. She puts on a suit, then just
sits
there, staring out into space. She doesn’t see anyone, she doesn’t talk to anyone, God only knows where she’s
sleeping
.”

That news worried Liao more than she cared to admit. She was not a doctor, but it was plain to see that the battle with the
Seth’arak
had shaken the normally fiery and energetic redhead.

Liao gave a nod.

“Thank you, Alex. I’ll make sure I talk to her.”

Aharoni nodded his thanks. Liao watched him depart, standing in the busy corridor absently rubbing at her shoulder. Combat stress reaction was something all good officers were trained to spot, but with Liao being in sickbay, the entire crew working themselves to death to keep the ship functional and Alex hardly being impartial, it was entirely plausible that something could slip under the radar.

With her path clear, a walk down to the cargo hold took only a few minutes. A glance through the hatchway window revealed a lone figure sitting on the edge of a huge hole in the ship, staring out at the black, inky void, her legs dangling out into space—just as Alex had described. It took Liao some time to find a spare spacesuit, since most were occupied by the repair crew, but she located one in an armoury on the upper decks. Due to her injuries, donning the heavy, clumsy suit and removing her arm from the sling was painful and awkward.
Eventually Liao clipped the helmet on with a hiss, went through the airlock procedure, and stepped into the depressurized cargo bay.

Moving beside the seated woman, standing for now, Liao reached up and touched the talk key on the suit’s radio. “You can be a hard woman to find, you know.”

The suited form twisted around.
Looking down, Liao could see Summer’s haunted, gaunt face staring back at her.

Rowe’s gloved hand moved to her own talk key.

“Maybe I don’t want to be found.”

Moving to sit beside her, Liao winced as the movement stretched her wound. “Hiding from the captain on her own ship, especially when there’s so much work to be done. You surprise me, Summer.”

Rowe slowly turned her gaze back to the vast, empty void stretching out to infinity before her. “I’m surprising myself more and more these days.”

Liao’s voice was quiet. “Is that so? Mind telling me what’s on your mind?”

Summer looked down at her gloved hands. “Not sure you wanna hear that right now, Captain.”

Captain
. When Summer had first come aboard the ship it was a struggle to get her to use any form of respect or title for anyone on the ship, but it seemed the woman’s foul-mouthed, machine-gun manner of speech had changed completely. She’d
become quiet and subdued.

Liao tried to keep her tone upbeat and cheerful. “You’re mighty melancholy for someone who just won their first space battle. As a huge science fiction nerd I, figured you would be over the moon right now.”

But Summer's voice was distant and mirthless. “I don’t feel that way at all. It’s a lot different than the stories make it out to be.”

Liao gave a chuckle, nodding inside the spacesuit. “Oh, these things usually are. Have you noticed when you’re watching something on the news and you have firsthand knowledge of the event just how
wrong
the media portray it? It’s the same with stories of war. The reality is never truly captured by fiction, and the more troubling parts are glossed over or omitted entirely. Just like the adult diapers we wear in these space suits—not exactly on the recruiting brochure.”

Liao paused, giving Summer a moment to speak, but she remained silent. Letting the moment pass, Liao put her gloved hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “You want anything? Some water, food from the galley?”

There was a long, pronounced pause as Summer deliberated. “No, thank you. I’m good, Captain. I’m all good.”

Liao gave a low chuckle into the microphone. “Well, if you’re not thirsty, how about some food for your
mind,
like a Toralii datastore? Saara found one in what little wreckage of the
Seth’arak
we recovered, and she gave it to me to give to you. I’d be real appreciative if you could take a look at it. I’m sure you’re just chomping at the bit to pry it open and see what’s inside.”

Liao began fishing it out, something she found surprisingly difficult because the location was hard to see and there was no noise to guide her, but Summer reached out and touched her arm.

“I honestly don’t care.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t care. I don’t care what’s inside it. I don’t care how it might help or what I could learn from it. I don’t care if it’s a stack of Toralii pornography, or if it’s some kind of miraculous technology that’ll solve all our problems. I just.
Don’t.
Care
.”

Liao hesitated a moment, caught between two instincts: the officer’s instinct to kick Rowe’s arse out of her slump, and her friend’s instinct to comfort her in what must be an extremely trying time. In the end, she compromised.

“Why don’t you take a look anyway, Summer? It’ll get your mind off things, and it’ll free up a spacesuit for the repair crews. It’ll also get you out of this half-a-room, which I’m guessing is currently doing one hell of a job turning your brain to mush. I’m guessing you come here to look at the stars and, you know, get a good dose of cosmic radiation.”

Summer shook her head. “I come here because I can stare out at nothing, at that vast, infinite blackness where we wasted a whole fucking shipload of Toralii.” She made a finger-pinching gesture with her forefinger and thumb. “Do you know how
small
we are? I mean… to this ship, a Human is just a speck. But to a planet, this
ship
is just a speck.
To a solar system, a planet is just a speck, and to an arm of a galaxy that whole solar system is – you guessed it – a tiny, insignificant, absolutely invisible speck. If we died,
if all of humanity just fucking
died
in an instant, nobody would notice. Nobody would care. We’re just tiny specks living on a speck surrounded by specks.
We’re not important. We’re not special.
Everyone thinks we are, everyone thinks
they
are, but nobody's special.”

Liao reached into the spacesuit’s buttoned pocket, opening it and withdrawing the small datastore.
She held it in her thickly gloved hand. “We may not be special, but we do possess a unique gift. Something that separates us from the millions of species on our planet; we can
better ourselves
. That’s why we’re here, Summer, so we can one day be a much bigger part of this whole universe of ours—be a much
brighter
speck. And then? Well, from there, who knows. Who knows what great thing we can accomplish once we reach for the stars?”

Summer snorted gently into her microphone. “Hasn’t worked out so great for us so far.”

Liao reached over and pressed the datastore into Summer’s hand. For a moment, it seemed as though she might do something crazy, like toss it out the giant gaping hole in front of them, but to her credit, her fingers closed around it.

“I’ll take a look.”

Chapter II

“
No Rest For The Wicked”

Operations

TFR Beijing

Liao stepped into Operations, her heels clicking on the metal as she moved over to the command console. She had been called to the ship’s armoured command centre deep in the heart of the vessel. It was not unexpected for a naval captain to be summoned to duty at a moment’s notice, but it
was
an inconvenience.

“Mister Dao, status report?”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Dao replied, twisting in his seat, “Mister Hsin received a transmission from Fleet Command.
They have sent a Broadsword carrying a press delegation to meet us before we land. They’re requesting an interview with you, Captain.”

The press. She knew what their visit meant. The questions they asked and the answers she gave would be broadcast to the entire world. A public interview in front of eight billion people.
She would be endlessly quoted and requoted until every scrap of information she could possibly give had been analysed to death.

Liao hated the press.
Not because they didn’t do fine work on occasion, or because she had something to hide, or because she believed people should live in ignorance of what the TFR
Beijing
and its crew were doing with their tax dollars, but because they were a terrible distraction. Rather than tell people about what she had done in the past, she would rather do more things in the future.

“How far away are we from Luna? And how far away from that Broadsword?”

After humanity had become a spacefaring race, referring to Earth’s moon as “
The
Moon” seemed very strange. Sometime before the
Beijing
had even been constructed, some bureaucrat somewhere had settled on the term “Luna” and, surprisingly, it had stuck.

“Three hours from Luna, one hour from the Broadsword. Should I spin up the point defense guns, ma’am?”

Liao gave a low chuckle, rolling her eyes at her navigator. “As much as I’d love for you to ‘accidentally’ frag the entire press delegation, Mister Dao, that seems like it would be a terrible waste of ammunition.” She sighed. “Have some poor petty officer prepare the conference room for a briefing, and for God’s sake make sure the hangar bay is tidy when they arrive. I want to make the best possible impression.”

Conference Room

TFR Beijing

An hour and a half later

“Thank you all for coming.”

Liao grimaced slightly in the bright glare of dozens of cameras pointed directly at her face, glancing down at her notes held in her good hand. She hated press conferences. Normally, James was there to save her from them.

But she faced the ravenous pack alone.

“As you’re all well aware, both the
Sydney
and the
Beijing
have suffered significant damage and the
Tehran
is currently missing. With repairs on both vessels underway on the lunar surface, our attention now turns to recovering the
Tehran
. Accordingly, in coordination with the
Sydney
,
we will be launching an investigation into the
Tehran’s
possible jump destinations—”

“Captain, excuse me. Shreya Bose from IMC-TV. A few questions, please.”

Liao squinted through the glare of the lights. A short, dark-haired, plump woman with an audio recorder thrust towards Liao’s face had interrupted her carefully prepared speech. She recognised her as one of the reporters who had ambushed her on the Lunar colony after the
Beijing’s
first engagement with the Toralii.

“Miss Bose, there’ll be a time for questions af—”

“Do you have any comment on the cost of the Task Force Resolution’s shipbuilding efforts? Numerous nation-state participants are already complaining that the
staggering
cost of Task Force ventures far outweighs the potential gains, which seem so far to be limited to further antagonizing the Toralii. In the United States, the ruling Libertarian party is complaining that the nationalization of hundreds of industries around the globe has created a de-facto socialist government. What do you say to these comments?”

Shuffling uneasily, Liao shook her head. “I don’t set the budgets, Miss Bose. Now—”

“Is it true that the
Tehran
was confirmed destroyed by numerous observers on the
Sydney
and the
Beijing
after they observed it ramming the alien vessel straight on? Is it true an impact like that just simply isn't survivable?”

Liao frowned, lowering the pad containing her notes and glaring across the podium at the reporter. She did not want to consider that an option. James was
not
dead. “There is little evidence to suggest that the
Tehran
was destroyed. The shockwave emitted when they collided is consistent with a jump drive activation. While the two ships
were
outside of a Lagrangian point, and it’s true that their combined mass exceeds two hundred thousand tonnes, it is obvious that the Toralii Alliance possesses the ability to jump more mass farther away from the points than we can.”