by Adams, David
Jiang had taken a turn for the worst in the last few days, and Saeed gave her only a fifty-fifty chance of pulling through. The fever and infection were strong, and her body was struggling to stay alive. The medical facilities on the Beijing were good, but there were limits to how much medical science could do for a person.
Liao very desperately did not want to write the family of this pretty, talented tactical officer a condolence letter.
Rather than dwell on Jiang’s situation—she could do nothing to help, after all—Liao made her way over to Lieutenant Dao’s bed, smiling as she stepped up to her chief navigator. Liao held a certain fondness for navigators, as that had been her role before she had made her way to command.
“Good evening, Captain.”
Liao gave a playful salute. “Evening, sailor. How’s the wound?”
A Toralii boarder had shot Dao through the left lung, barely missing his heart. A few surgeries later, he was making a decent recovery. There was even word that he could return to duty within the next few weeks. Dao was a rarity—an ethnic Han Chinese with blue eyes. It was a rare feature, like being an albino, but not entirely unheard of. His skin was darker, too, than most Chinese, implying some Indian in his heritage. He was Tibetan, after all. Mixed ancestry was not uncommon for those in that region.
“It feels much better,” he admitted, reaching up and rubbing his bandages. “Morphine is fantastic.”
“I know.” Liao had been given morphine after surviving the attacks on Sydney. She knew just how wondrous it was. “It’s good to see you looking better.”
“Yes, well… I couldn’t leave you without the best navigator in the universe, could I?”
Liao smiled. “Second best, you mean. Why, when I was a junior officer navigating Han-class submarines, nobody could hold a candle to me.”
“Hah! Second best, my arse,” and then, sheepishly, “Captain.”
She reached down and patted his thigh, grinning. “Since you’re sick, I’ll let that one fly.”
Dao nodded, and Liao went to move on, but the man stopped her. “Wait, Captain. Before you go… How is Jiang today?”
Liao winced, slowly turning back to her injured crewman. “Much the same,” she answered, and then gave a low, worried sigh. “Worse, really. The infection is spreading. They’ve induced a coma, so she’ll be out for a week or so at least. It’s not looking good for her. I’m very sorry.”
Dao gave a sick, wet cough, nodding. “I know, thank you. She’s strong, though. She’ll pull through.”
“She’s strong,” Liao echoed, nodding along with him. There was more hope than certainty in her voice, but she gave Dao’s thigh another comforting squeeze to try to bolster her words.
She didn’t know how much there was between him and Jiang—rumours said at least flirtation and mutual attraction—so Liao knew the young female officer’s injuries must be weighing on Dao’s mind much more than his own.
“I’ll let you know if her situation changes, Lieutenant.”
Dao nodded and Liao moved away, out of the infirmary and down to the engineering bay. They had recovered a large amount of wreckage from the Toralii vessel. While they could not spare the crew to look it over, there was at least one member of their crew whose expertise in the matter was proving invaluable.
The alien—Saara.
Saara was a Toralii strike-craft pilot whom the Beijing had pulled from the wreckage of a Toralii scout ship they had discovered and destroyed near Jupiter. Initially a prisoner, Saara taught Liao and Lieutenant Yu to speak her language, and they taught her to understand English. Slowly, she became close to Liao… something her first officer, Commander Gaulung Sheng, took very poorly. Eventually, Sheng organized a shipwide coup, intending on beating the last of Saara’s information out of her. Liao, James, and Cheung had intervened, but not before Saara was almost killed.
The Toralii believe that once you save a life, that life belongs to you. Saara was a member of the Telvan, a more moderate Toralii faction who regularly quarreled with the more warlike and vindictive Toralii Alliance. Having precious little loyalty to the Alliance and owing Liao a debt she treated very seriously, the Toralii woman had been an invaluable contributor to their cause.
And now, watching her picking over the modest pile of debris, Liao wondered how she felt about betraying her species.
“Saara?”
The Toralii woman, her black fur ruffling in pleasure, smiled warmly and put down the scorched hunk of Alliance bulkhead she was inspecting. Although Saara understood English very well, the Toralii species could not physically form the sounds of any of Earth’s languages, and the reverse was also true. When they conversed, Liao spoke English and Saara answered in Telvan, the dialect of her people. A deep, guttural language, it had been designed specifically to be as simple to learn as possible. It tended to use compound words rather than original words to describe technological things, so a radio was a windwhisper device, the jump drive was a voidwarp device, and so on. They also tended to avoid contractions and spoke, at least to Liao’s ear, very poetically. From what Liao understood from her conversations with Saara, the Telvan dialect was a lingua franca, a common language between all the Toralii factions.
Saara stepped forward and dragged the Chinese woman into a tight, spine-crushing hug. [“Captain Liao! I am pleased to see you up and about. I thought you would be asleep forever.”]
Groaning and disengaging herself, Liao gave a playful grin. “I’m more surprised to see you up. You took two to the chest and you were back on your feet in a matter of days.”
[“Humans heal slowly. Compared to us, at least.”]
Liao reached out and touched Saara’s fur covered arm. “Well, I’ll count that as a blessing, then. Fleet intelligence believes this explains why the Toralii boarding party tends to pack a little more firepower than our own Marines, and why our weapons didn’t seem to be as effective as I would have liked.” She smiled. “I've said it before, but I think we need bigger guns.”
[“You’ll have to ask Lieutenant Cheung about that, Captain.”]
Liao nodded, then gestured to the debris pile. “Found anything interesting?”
Saara shrugged, a gesture she had adopted from her Human hosts. The Toralii had their own expression for nonchalance. She stepped over to the small ‘keep’ pile and fished out a small black cylinder, about the size of a film canister, capped with a series of blinking lights. [“It is a self-powered datastore from one of the Seth’arak’s computer systems,”] she explained, passing it to Liao. [“It may be a source of intelligence if we can access it.”]
Liao took the device, cupping it in two hands, and shrugged. “How could we do that? We don’t have any Toralii technology that can read it.” A thought occurred to her. “Although Summer did say our two computer systems were similar. Perhaps she might be some help.”
Looking up to her friend, Liao saw that Saara looked distinctly uncomfortable at the mention of Summer.
[“I am not certain speaking to Summer is a wise idea at the present time, Captain.”]
“I know she’s probably busy, but—”
Saara shook her head. [“No, it is not that. Work has never bothered her in the past; it is just that she…”] The Toralii sighed again, rolling her shoulders. [“She has not been at work. She does not show up for shifts, and we are all concerned by how she is acting.”]
Liao inclined her head, frowning slightly. “I haven’t had time to talk to Summer directly since the battle. What happened?”
Summer had been on the bridge when it was boarded by the Toralii. Despite all her bluster about wanting a gun like the rest of the military personnel, when given one and forced to use it, she froze up completely and hadn’t fired a shot. She had been almost immobile, right up until she saved Liao from the last of the Toralii boarders.
[“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?”
[“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.”
&nb
sp; 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.