by Adams, David
Their hull shaking from the absorbed impacts, Liao nodded to Kamal and the two of them withdrew the jump drive keys from their breast pockets, inserting them into the dual locks that controlled the jump coordinates. The artificial gravity–a modified reactionless device planted in the deck–was turned off and Liao felt her stomach lurch as she slowly began floating off the deck.
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.
It was impossible to think of what she might do with him. Her first instinct was to just thermite-bomb his datastore and be done with it, but no matter what she thought of Ben–and they were dark thoughts indeed at this juncture–the decision was not one to be made in anger.
Instead, her primary concern was to locate the survivors on the planet’s surface and to help however she and her crew could. Liao had made herself a part of the landing party and took Kamal with her. According to protocol, his place was on the ship while she was not, but she insisted and would brook absolutely no argument from anyone on the matter, not that any was offered.
She told the senior staff that she wanted Kamal with her because she wanted a complete, objective analysis of the impact site. In reality, she took him because she was not sure if she could handle visiting the planet on her own. In case the emotions were too strong, in case the guilt was overwhelming, she needed someone who could give orders while she composed herself, which would be difficult inside the sealed radiation suit.
As the Broadsword had soared over the northern beach–the same beach where she had lain days earlier and considered retirement–she could see the once-pristine golden sand had been blasted to sheets of blackened, scorched glass. Not for generations would anyone dare step foot in that place without being wrapped in a cocoon of lead.
She hoped for survivors. The Toralii buildings were strong, and although the colony had been struck multiple times from high-yield warheads, she was optimistic. The Toralii had an advanced understanding of architecture and construction; the Giralan had held up amazingly over the years. It wasn’t unreasonable to expect their structures to be tougher than the Human equivalents.
But the moment Naval Commander Melissa Liao, clad in full radiation suit with a buzzing Geiger counter in hand, stepped onto the blackened and charred surface of the
Velsharn Research Facility, she knew the horrible truth immediately.
There were no survivors.
She felt hollow, as though a piece of her had been taken and viciously ripped out. The loss of Velsharn hurt her more than James’s disappearance. At least she had hope James was still alive, that she could save him.
She could not save anyone on Velsharn. That battle was already lost.
Numb, she ordered the Marines who came with her to fan out and begin search and rescue operations immediately. As her men clumsily stepped between the rubble that only hours ago had been houses and laboratories, she could see the blurry, indistinct outlines of immolated Toralii—clear silhouettes against the charred walls of buildings, fences, and gardens. They stood mute and unmoving, like the spirits of the dead, all that was left of men, women and children. She imagined their ghostly eyes upon her, watching her every move, judging her. Blaming her.
And she deserved to be blamed. Liao hated herself more and more with every passing moment. With every report from the SAR teams. With every grim discovery her Marines made: collapsed buildings, charred bodies, pockets of increased radiation.
She hated that she had trusted Ben. She hated that she had become so attached to an alien world when her duty lay to her own. She hated that she had turned over control of her ship to someone she barely knew. She hated the trust the Telvan scientists who’d lived here had placed in her.
The flare of anger, white hot and primal, was hard to maintain as she looked at the wasteland around her. She knew her naïveté and incompetence had caused this. She, not Ben, had been the one who had failed to live up to the pure, honest faith the Telvan scientists had placed in her. Liao had only to look around her at the still warm glass that was once beautiful sand to know that judgement of her failure had already been passed.
Together, Liao and Kamal stared quietly at the nuclear wasteland, watching as white ‘snow’–immolated particles turned to clumps of ash–fluttered to the ground all around them. It was an eerie and beautiful sight, but it was unnaturally silent. The island had previously been home to a chorus of bird songs that, although initially annoying, Liao had come to enjoy. The only sounds she could hear were the occasional crackle of her radio as each of the Marines reported in, and the faint hiss of her suit’s internal air supply as it kept the oxygen circulating inside her helmet.