Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi (7 page)

Liao expected Summer to give some kind of smarmy quip about the replacement ships since the captain knew how closely some pilots bonded with their steeds, but a glance at the redheaded woman showed that she was barely paying attention. She wasn’t even looking at Alex, who wasn’t looking at her either. Liao could sense they were avoiding each other and wondered if that was going to be a problem.

Was that what she and James would have eventually become?

“Excellent work, Major Aharoni. Thank you. Keep me apprised of any developments,” Liao said.

The other departments reported in. Navigation, under Lieutenant Dao, was at full capacity. Jiang had met her replacement and briefed him on the little nuances of the
Beijing
’
s tactical capabilities. Summer was sullen and simply asked people to read her Chief Engineer's report if they wanted to know anything.

When it was all said and done, Liao dismissed the senior staff, letting herself be the last to leave. As she stepped out the door, a familiar voice attached to an unfamiliar face greeted her.

“Captain Liao. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

She tilted her head, looking into the face of a tall, blond Caucasian man with an Australian Navy uniform. She held out her hand. “Captain Knight. We meet in person at last. The pleasure’s all mine.”

Captain Matthew Knight was the commanding officer of the TFR
Sydney
, and someone Liao had known by reputation and had spoken to over the ship’s communications systems many times, but had never actually met face-to-face.

He took her hand, giving it a firm squeeze. “It’s good to finally meet you in person. You’re shorter than the media makes you out to be.”

Liao gave a wry smile and shrugged. “Maybe it’s just that you Australians are too tall, which makes you a bigger target. So that’s useful to us, I suppose.”

He laughed. “I’ll pass that bit of tactical information on
to my crew. I’m sorry I didn’t drop by earlier, but I had thought it best to wait until you were on your feet again.”

She flexed her arm to show it was working. “Believe me, it’s good to be up. The arm’s still a bit stiff, but I think it’ll mend. Just another scar in a series of scars, I guess.”

He smiled, releasing her hand and nodding in agreement. “I’ve got my fair share of battle wounds. See this?” He held up the back of his left hand. A thin, jagged slice ran from his index finger down to his wrist.

“From the battle?”

“Cut my hand while I was surfing last year. Fell onto some rocks. Blood everywhere. Flopped around like a gutted fish until the lifesavers got me.”

She laughed, reaching out and giving his shoulder a playful push. “Yeah, because
that’s
the same.”

The two began walking to the mess hall. Knight smiled good-naturedly, but it slowly faded. “I’m sorry about Captain Grégoire. His absence must be hard on you.”

She’d heard those words from so many lips that they were beginning to lose meaning. Still, she nodded, closing her eyes for a moment. “Thank you. I'm coping with it. I’m still hopeful that at some point we can launch a rescue mission, assuming we can find out where they’ve gone.”

“So do I.”

When he spoke, Liao detected a hint of hesitation and… kindness? As though he were trying to project an optimism that he didn’t really feel.

She stopped, reaching out and grabbing his arm, halting them both in the middle of the corridor.

“He’s not dead, okay?”

“Of course not.”

Liao gripped the man’s arm a little tighter. “I mean it. There wasn’t enough debris for—”

“I know.”

“And there was a flash, like a jump—”

“I
know
.” Knight reached out, cupping her hand with his. “If James is out there, we’ll find him. In due time.”

“He
is
out there. I know
he is.”

Knight gently pried her hand away from his, then faced her. He had an ‘all business’ look on his face. “Commander, he may be, or he may not. The same goes for his crew. Unfortunately…” He closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “I saw the news a few weeks ago. Bose really did a number on you. I’m confident in your command, but it’s clear you’re not impartial enough to deal with any rescue attempt made on the crew of the
Tehran
—if any such possibility exists. Accordingly, I’m going to
strongly
request that you leave any potential rescues to my
crew. The
Beijing
will have missions aplenty. Saving James should not be on your agenda.”

Her fists balled at her sides, then slowly relaxed. She had no logical counterpoint to his suggestion, but she couldn’t bring herself to accept it with words.

Matthew’s voice softened. “Don’t force me to order you, Commander. This is an honourable
way to handle this. A
sane
way, where nobody ends up with a dishonourable discharge. Or losing their ship because they couldn’t make a hard call. Or in a padded cell because they couldn’t accept the truth. Or dead because they took a foolish risk and failed.”

Although
on
her
ship
she
was
addressed
as ‘Captain,’ Liao
was
only
a
commander.
Knight,
a
full
captain,
outranked
her,
and
it
was
clear
he
was
willing
to
pull
rank
to
resolve
the
issue.

Closing her eyes a moment, Liao forced her instincts to quieten. “It is honourable,” she accepted, blowing out her breath in a frustrated sigh, “and I agree it should be you. Wherever possible, I’ll make sure that the
Sydney
takes care of the rescue effort.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “
When
it happens.”

“When it happens,” Knight echoed.

Operations

TFR Beijing

“
Jump complete, Captain. Strike craft are launching and providing a defensive screen.”

Liao put her hands on her hips, taking a deep breath. “Very good, Mister Dao. Tactical, report.”

She glanced over to Jiang’s old console, where a fresh-faced Junior Lieutenant was scrutinizing his console with an intensity Liao found distracting. The man had big boots to fill–after the battle every single one of them were practically household names, even Jiang, whom he was replacing–but she would have rather he
reported
faster than he was so very obviously
trying
to.

Liao valued results, not delays, and she
hated
dramatic pauses.

“Scope is clean, Captain.”

“Very good.”

Kamal leaned closer to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “At least it wasn’t a trap, then. Not yet, anyway.”

She nodded at him, then looked at Lieutenant Dao. “Navigation, what’s out there? Where are we?”

“Looks to be a solar system, Captain. We’ve jumped to the Lagrangian point between a large planet and one of its moons. We appear to be in a binary star system. That would explain these readings, because something's playing havoc with the gravity wells in this location. Jumping into this system must be tricky. These coordinates wouldn’t have lasted much longer before drift made them useless.”

The nature of the coordinates were such that they did not represent a fixed point in space, but the ebb and flow of the gravitational forces around that point. Because of that, jump coordinates had to be recalculated every so often to account for natural drift and imprecision in the measurements.

Liao did not like the sound of that. “How
much
longer? Are we under time pressure?”

Was this the trap? Would the binary star system and its wild, distorted gravity make jumping out almost impossible? She shook her head. That didn’t make sense. The jump coordinates were given to Sheng many months ago. They were still active. Surely they would have some time.

“Difficult to say, Captain, but certainly not for a couple of weeks at least. Probably longer. Up to a month, perhaps.”

Relief came to her, and she smiled her thanks. “Excellent.” She stepped over to Dao’s console, leaning over his shoulder. “What can you tell me about that planet, Lieutenant?”

“The spectroscope shows a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. Extremely low levels of carbon dioxide and argon, indicating that there’s, well, uhh, probably no plant life there. Almost no water vapour, no industrial pollutants. Looks to be barren, Captain.”

“What about the surface temperature?”

“Based on the readings of the thermal cameras, I’d say it’s about forty degrees celsius down there. Hot as Hades, but survivable.”

Liao nodded. “We’ll pack lots of water then. Dispatch one of the Wasps to take an atmospheric sample. Make sure they don’t enter the heliosphere too quickly–those things aren’t rated for hot reentry.”

The popular conception of reentry was a fiery descent into the planet’s atmosphere, but that was only accurate for craft that orbited a planet.
Orbiting required substantial velocity, which created friction as the craft began to encounter the resistance of the uppermost gasses. Although their craft would burn up if pushed through at orbital velocity, at a slower pace they could descend just fine, and the reactionless drives would slowly ease them down onto the planet’s surface without endangering the craft.

That tiny piece of technology allowed them to do so much.

Peng gave a hesitant nod. "I'll make sure they're careful."

“That’s good. Prepare to—”

“Wait. I’m detecting a signal. It’s faint.”

Liao inclined her head. “What kind of signal? Is it an audio transmission?”

Dao twisted around in his seat to look at her. “Negative, Captain.
It’s just a beacon. An automated beeper set on repeat.”

Fortunately, they had a Toralii expert present in Operations. Liao turned, glancing across the room. “Saara?”

The Toralii woman stepped towards her, hands clasped in front of her, a gesture Liao took to be one of quiet respect. [“Yes, Captain?”]

Liao moved out of the way, indicating the navigation console. “What do you think? Is it some kind of navigation beacon, or…?”

Her response was immediate. [“It is a distress call.”] Her eyes widened slightly, and she glanced at the Human woman. [“On the standard Telvan distress frequency.”]

The Telvan—Saara’s people. Moderates who opposed the Toralii Alliance philosophically and occasionally militarily. The idea that Sheng was speaking to a Telvan agent – someone who was more inclined, it seemed, towards diplomacy – gave her great consolation. Perhaps the contact would prove to be helpful after all.

“Well, now,” Liao folded her arms over her chest, wincing as her injured arm gave a slight twinge of pain. “That does change things, doesn’t it?”

Saara looked at her expectantly. [“We are still going to make contact, aren’t we?”]

“Of course. It’s a good thing.” Liao smiled, then reached down to her radio, pressing the talk key. “Captain Liao to Summer Rowe.”

There was a slight delay, and then Summer’s thick Australian accent came crackling through the tiny speaker. “Rowe here.”

“We’ve completed the jump. We’ll be preparing an expedition to the surface. Let Lieutenant Jiang know if you need anything.”

Another pause. “Yes, Captain.”

Liao changed frequencies and called up the strike craft. “Major Aharoni, it’s time to let our newest birds stretch their wings. Organize with Lieutenant Jiang to have a detachment of our new Broadsword gunships transport a landing party to the planet, but we’re going to have the Wasps scout it first. I want to make sure that planet’s hospitable no matter
what
the spectrometer says.” She paused, then added, “Take Summer with you. She could use the fresh air.”

“Aye aye, Captain. I’ll get you eyes and feet on the ground, in that order. What are our destination coordinates?”

“Unknown at this stage, Major, but we’ll have someone fill you in as soon as we can.”

Liao let go of the radio, glancing over to Dao. “Lieutenant, find out where that signal’s coming from. That planet’s a big place.”

“Already have it, Captain. Northern hemisphere, sixteen point five five nine one degrees on the latitude. There’s not many landmarks for longitude, so let’s call the ship longitude zero, and elevation… six hundred metres above sea level. What little sea there is, anyway.”

Impressed, Liao nodded. “Very good, Lieutenant. Forward those coordinates to Jiang, and bring up that planet on external optics.”

She watched as the image of the planet filled her command monitor. Huge and red—like the surface of Mars—with patches of ice at the poles, its rust-coloured surface streaked by colossal white stretches of sand. The atmosphere was thin but breathable, and although they had no indication of the planet’s temperature, judging by the thick atmosphere and proximity to the sun it would be very hot. Bearable, but only just.

“It’s a far cry from Earth,” she remarked, grimacing slightly at the inhospitable ball of iron-tinged sand that floated in space on her monitor. Turning, she beckoned Saara over.

The Toralii woman stepped close, her yellow eyes widening.

[“I recognise this planet!”]

Liao raised an eyebrow. “You do?”

Saara ran a finger along the monitor, tracing the planet’s circumference. [“It is Karathi, a backwards, out of the way planet with minimal resources or strategic value. I only know of it because a Telvan ship, the
Giralan
, crashed here many, many years ago. I researched the incident in the Telvan military academy, as did many others. It was,”] she hesitated, giving Liao a half-cocked smile, [“considered an easy credit to graduate.”]

Liao reached out and put her hand on Saara’s shoulder. “Well, I guess that makes you our official Karathi expert.”

The two of them returned their gaze to the sandy, barren planet, watching as the ship drew closer and closer.

Chapter IV

“
Castaway”

Near the wreckage of the Giralan

Surface of Karathi

“
It’s too fucking
hot
,” Summer Rowe whined, kicking a clump of sand into the air, sweat pouring down her freckled face. “What the
fuck
am I doing here? I’m an
engineer
, not some fucking… fucking…
sand
walking-type person who… walks in
sand! Fuck!”