Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi (5 page)

“I can't afford to lose any more crew, Saeed.”

The Iranian doctor extended his hand, touching her shoulder across the desk. “I know, but the reality is what it is. Only time will tell.”

She gave a firm nod. “It will. Keep her onboard for now. I want to be here when she wakes up.”

He smiled. “As you wish, Captain.”

Liao wanted to say more, but her radio crackled.

“Captain, it’s Summer. I took a look at the datastore. I can show you what I’ve found if you like.”

Liao pulled the small black radio off her belt and pressed the talk key. “Of course, Summer. When are you available?”

“Now is fine, Captain. I’m in engineering bay one.”

“I’ll be right there. Liao out.”

Clipping her radio back to its holster, Liao nodded to Saeed. “Duty calls, Doctor.”

Saeed, however, did not immediately respond.
He cupped his hands in front of him, appearing deep in thought. “Miss Rowe does not sound her usual self, Captain, and she has not for some time. Not since the last battle.”

Casting her gaze to the man, she just shook her head, unable to refute his words. “I’ve noticed.”

“If she can’t handle the stress of the position, perhaps you could appoint a military engineer to the position. While I have no doubt as to her technical capabilities, Summer
is
a civilian. Perhaps someone more adapted to the stresses of living on a military vessel would be a good choice.”

“Summer is part of my crew.”

She fixed a firm, unyielding stare on the doctor, who matched it with one of his own.

“As you wish, Captain.”

Liao nodded, blowing out a sigh. “She’ll be fine. Rowe’s suffering, but she can work through whatever’s eating at her.” She paused for a moment, her tone softening as she remembered Summer sitting in a decompressed section of the ship. “She just needs a little time.”

He was silent for a moment, then nodded. “I hope you’re right.”

Engineering Bay One

TFR Beijing

Liao turned the handle on the hatchway to engineering bay one, the heavy door swinging out with a soft groan and the faint hiss of a pressure differential. Stepping into the spacious room, her eyes fixed on the the redheaded genius hunched over a laptop, typing furiously at a black console with indecipherable green text scrolling past.

“Rowe, you wanted to see me?”

Summer twisted in her seat, glancing over her shoulder. For a moment, Liao saw the
old
Summer; fiery and energetic, a massive grin stamped on her freckled face as she stabbed a finger at the laptop’s screen.

“
Wrong
, Captain. You fucking wanted to see me.”

Smiling at the redhead’s audacity, the Chinese captain stepped up behind her and laid her good hand over the sitting woman’s shoulder. “Okay, okay. Show me what you’ve got.”

Summer tapped a key and the laptop screen displayed a large image—a garden full of plants, beams of sunlight filtering through the trees. It looked like a stock image from a photography portfolio and, for a second, reminded Liao of home.

“Pretty, but what does this have to do wi—”

“Ah-ah-ah, Captain, don’t interrupt the magician. Watch. I'll remove all but the two least significant bits of each color component, copy them into a separate image, then one subsequent normalization later, and tada!” With a cheeky grin, she tapped a few more keys and the image abruptly changed. There were now lines of text across the screen, slightly slanted, as though the image was of a picture of a letter written by hand.

“It’s stenography. The art of concealing an image within
another image. A fairly old technique, but it’s still quite effective.”

Liao could see that the words were written in Mandarin. She frowned, leaning forward, scanning the characters.

“
I’m glad you were able to receive my latest missive. The three ships are called the
Tehran
, the
Beijing,
and the
Sydney
.They are being constructed on this planet’s moon. The
Tehran
is expected to be launched in three days, and…,”
Liao read aloud.

Her voice fell off. “It’s intelligence. Someone is—or was—communicating with the Toralii.” She turned to Summer, her eyes wide. “A mole! Does the message say who sent it?”

Rowe shook her head. “Nope. Whoever it was, they were very careful to avoid leaving any incriminating evidence. I scanned all the characters and ran them through a baby names dictionary—no matches.
And the structure of the messages doesn’t indicate that they’re being signed with any kind of codename or identifier.”

Liao nodded, placing her good hand on her hip, sucking in a deep breath. “I’ll get a translator to take a look at these and comb over every detail. There might be codewords or aliases hidden in there. Maybe they used a rare character at some point which might indicate—”

“Or, you know, I could just
tell
you who sent it.” Summer had an impish grin stamped on her face, smirking at her captain’s confusion. “Oh, come on, you wouldn’t think I’d let a mystery like this
evade me?”

Liao stared a moment. “Who is it?”

“
Was
. Who was
it. See, there was something interesting about the place I found the images. They were in the Toralii datastore, yeah, but they were not in a location that would indicate they were communications. Instead, they were filed under ‘intelligence,’ which strongly suggested to me that this was something they were investigating as well. Why would they be investigating something if they already knew everything about it, I thought.”

“Okay, so?”

Rowe turned back to her laptop. “So, on a hunch, I decided to see if any of these images were on our own
systems. I ran a hashing algorithm on the files we recovered, then hashed everything on our own systems and compared. Turns out…”

Another stab of the keyboard. The ship’s email system popped up, and Summer pointed at a section of the
Beijing’s
data storage.

“Remember when our email server kept running out of space because Sheng was getting so many images?”

Commander Sheng, Liao’s former XO, whom she shot on the bridge of the
Tehran
for mutiny.

Liao processed that. “Yes, but hang on a second. You’re telling me that while Sheng was on the ship, the Toralii were communicating with him
via
e-mail
?”

Summer shook her head. “Not quite. The images were being relayed to him from a radio telescope observatory in Brazil. As far as I can tell, the observatory was a front for an operation being run by the American CIA to monitor Chinese satellites, and they picked up this signal being relayed from a faraway probe. But it turns out the whole operation was infiltrated by the Chinese government—like most American operations these days—so the messages ended up in the hands of the Chinese Government, then Sheng got hold of them somehow.”

Liao nodded. “Sheng was a military man from a very powerful family—everyone in the service knows the Shengs. Since he was originally earmarked to be Captain of the
Beijing
, I imagine he had a lot of people who supported him.” She pointed at the laptop. “I’ll get a translator on those messages straight away to see what we can find out.”

Summer nodded, then pointed at the screen again. “I ran them through an automated translator. It didn’t give me much, but it did give me one very useful
thing.”

“What was that?”

The redhead grinned like a jackal, cracking her knuckles. “I’ll tell you if you say I’m the smartest woman on this ship.”

Liao stared at her, blinking a few times. “You… what?”

“Say that I’m the smartest woman on the ship. Say that without me this whole place would fall to pieces and you’d be completely lost without me. And give me a bottle of the scotch you keep in your cupboard. Then I’ll tell you.”

Liao raised an eyebrow. “How about I just give you a hundred thousand yuan raise and
not
fire you?”

Summer laughed, reaching out and patting Liao’s side. “Oh, how mercenary of you, Captain! I thought you communists weren’t like that?”

“These days, China is communist in name only.”

“I know, I know. I’ll take the raise. Anyway.” Rowe took a deep breath and tapped a few more keys. A large pair of numbers flashed onto the screen, blinking white characters on a black background. “I’m shithouse at Chinese, but I know a bit. These here, they’re numbers. Whoever was talking to Sheng wanted to meet in person.”

Summer ran her finger along the vertically aligned numbers, grinning. “They’re jump coordinates.”

Chapter III

“
Shadows of the Departed”

Captain Liao’s Office

TFR Beijing

Three Weeks Later

The weeks had been good to Liao. Her morning sickness subsided—mostly—and her arm was eventually removed from its sling, although moving it still felt a little awkward. She sat with her first officer, Commander Iraj, in her office near Operations, reading through the messages Rowe had recovered from the images Sheng had sent.

“He really thought he was going to get the
Beijing
, didn’t he?” Liao remarked, passing over another printout. “I mean, look at this. Right here. ‘
I’ll be certain to take my ship to your location as soon as possible. The Toralii–the Demons, as the other Humans call them–represent a threat too powerful for us to engage on our own. Speaking with their enemies, gathering allies and strengthening our cause, is the only way we’ll survive as a species.’
”
She put down the paper. “He even knew their name, long before we did. What do you make of that? Quite some stones on him, don’t you think?”

“You know what I think, Captain. Sheng was arrogant, ambitious, well-connected, and powerful. Someone who was used to getting his own way.
But he has a point, you know. About us needing allies.”

Liao frowned and Kamal gave a light chuckle. “Not that I agree with his
methods
or anything, nothing like that. I’m just saying. We’ve had some victories against the Toralii Alliance, yes, but how long do you expect our good fortune to hold out? Can we continue to hide in the cradle of our solar system, our mines and missile batteries protecting us forever? You don’t think that they’ll get tired of playing that game?”

“I think it’s entirely possible,” Liao admitted, her hands resting comfortably on the desk. “But from what we’ve learned of our galaxy, there’s a fair number of jump-capable species around, most of whom have some kind of quarrel with the Toralii, and it’s almost exclusively over possession of jump drive capability. The universe is a strange and wondrous place, Commander,
and we’re only just starting to see what’s out there.”

The Iranian nodded, putting down his sheet of paper. “That is why we need allies. To go out into this vast ocean by ourselves, Captain, is folly. We need places where our ships can dock, friends who will resupply us, societies we can trade with. We need to acquire materials, intelligence on the Toralii, technology which we can use to make weapons, armour, medicines. The benefit to humanity, civilian and military, would be
immense
.”

Liao spent a moment pondering the man’s words. “I suppose,” she admitted, “but so far our track record with first contacts hasn’t been that good.”

Kamal chuckled. “Has anyone’s? Look back at the great powers of Earth: the French, English, Portuguese, Americans. Every time they meddled, every time they interfered, it didn’t end well for the people they came across. All we can do is try to learn what we can, living with our eyes on the horizon ahead of us, not on our footsteps behind.”

Liao admired the sentiment. “Let’s do that, then.” She reached for another stack of messages, scanning them briefly. “You know, Sheng really
didn’t
know who he was talking to. This person, whoever he was, never really gave much away. Says they’re in need of assistance, that they’ll help anyone who opposes the Toralii. He promises Sheng technology, information, power. No
wonder
Sheng was miffed when I got command.”

Kamal nodded. “That also explains why he was so opposed to attacking the Toralii scout vessel. It would have meant he wouldn’t have had a chance to reach his contact. And it also goes a long way towards explaining why he tried to take the
Tehran
.”

“It all makes sense now, I suppose,” Liao admitted, sighing. “Strange how these things look so clear in hindsight.”

Iraj glanced to the stack of printouts. “They do.”

Liao inclined her head, pursing her lips. “Well, some things, at least. But these printouts are only part
of the truth. I want to find this unnamed contact myself. I have a lot of questions for him.”

Kamal raised an eyebrow. “You intend to use Summer’s jump coordinates?”

“As soon as the ship’s ready, yes.”

The Iranian winced. “It’s a blind jump. We have no idea where those coordinates go, if it’s a trap, somewhere we can’t jump out of, or…”

“Acceptable risks, I think. This contact of Sheng’s was willing to help him, willing to give him whatever he wanted in exchange for an audience. You don’t beg for assistance from a stranger then attack your rescuer.
To my mind, if he was willing to help Sheng, then he’d be willing to help us.”

“You hope.”

Liao chuckled mirthlessly. “I hope, yes.” She hoped for a lot of things.

“Do you think it’s worth getting in contact with them before we jump straight into it?”

Liao mused for a second, tapping one of the printouts with a finger. “I’ve thought about it, but… no. If it’s a trap, then there’s no sense in letting them know we’re coming. If they really are desperate and in need of help, then they won’t mind a little surprise visit. It seems as though there’s not much to gain by warning them and a lot to lose if this turns out to be a bad lead.”

Kamal paused for a moment, then nodded. “I agree. Let’s make it happen.”

Liao started to speak, but her radio crackled.