Lacuna: The Spectre of Oblivion

by David Adams

  Rowe rolled her eyes in an exaggerated gesture, causing guffaws from Saara.

  Liao made little ‘tsk tsk’ noises at them both. “What, are you two six years old?”

  “Mentally? About fourteen.” Rowe gave a wide, cheesy smile. “Certified, desensitised, disaffected youth.”

  “You’re 28.”

  Summer looked offended. “That’s still young!”

  “Try joining a youth group and see what they say.” Liao gave her a clap on the shoulder. “Anyway. Let’s go see the captains, shall we?”

  Summer gave her a strange look, half concerned, half elated. “You’re acting really weird.”

  Liao blinked in surprise. “What? No I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.” Rowe leaned in towards her, almost accusingly. “You’re… you’re a lot less of a stick-up-your-arse, super-boring captain now. Maybe taking some time off for the first time in your work-a-holic life has done you some good!”

  “I’m the same person I always was, Summer. For what it’s worth, though, you haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Hah, and I hope I never do.” Rowe clapped her hands eagerly. “So, you want a tour of the ship?”

  Liao gave her a sceptical leer. “Why? What have you changed about it?”

  “Oooh, well, wouldn’t you like to know.”

  Liao put her hands on her hips. “Summer, if you’ve fucked with my ship while I was away, I am going to destroy you.”

  [“Aside from the newly installed, networked, tactical IFF computer, nothing of significance has been altered by Summer, Commander Liao. I promise you that.”]

  Rowe stuck out her tongue at Saara. “Spoilsport.”

  *****

  Conference Room

  Cerberus Station

  Presumably because she had no actual ship to command and very little actual work to do, Liao was the first to arrive.

  The conference room, only hours ago packed full of Toralii, marines, guards and observers, was now conspicuously empty. Liao spent a moment studying the seat where Avaran had sat and the occasional strand of fur left behind on the rear of the seat. It seemed impossible to believe that one so mighty had come to this room practically begging for an audience, ready to negotiate a cease fire. For all her victories and hard work, she had not accomplished anything so major in so little time.

  Perhaps they didn’t need her after all.

  She reminded herself that Avaran didn’t even know about the Rubens and either knew nothing of what the other ships had been up to during her time away or didn’t care. Yet the attack on Kor’Vakkar, the destruction of Cenar, even the events at Velsharn, these things were all known to him. Although she had not done these things alone, her ship and her command had been the driving force behind them. Her involvement was intertwined with every part of those events to the point where, if one were to remove her, they would never have taken place at all.

  Perhaps they did need her after all.

  The hatchway swung open with a faint groan. A tall, older Chinese man with surprisingly fair skin and the shadow of a beard and moustache across his face stepped into the room. His epaulets gave his rank as a Commodore, and Liao spent a moment sizing him up.

  “Commodore Vong, I presume?”

  The man extended a hand, respectfully inclining his head. “Commander Liao. It is a pleasure to finally meet you in person.” His tone was polite and formal, but Liao sensed a subtle underlying coldness about it and she doubted the sincerity of his words.

  Still, she gave him a firm handshake. It wouldn’t be the first time her reputation had preceded her. “Likewise. I hope you’re taking good care of the Beijing, sir.”

  Vong moved around to the head of the table, easing himself into a seat. “She’s in good hands, Commander. Don’t worry about that.” He pulled a small notepad out of one of his pockets and snapped off a pen clipped onto the side. “We’ve enjoyed a modest amount of success working alongside the Rubens to harass Toralii shipping lanes and the like.”

  Liao felt a slight pang of annoyance at the use of the word she, but by her own logic, she could not deny the logic behind its use. Liao had claimed, somewhat as a matter of pride, that although tradition dictated that a ship was always a woman, this was only because the captain was married to the job. When it came to the Beijing and its female captain, of course, that would make the ship a man.

  But she was no longer in command, and to argue this fairly minor quibble would be inappropriate. She inclined her head. “Warbringer Avaran indicated that the shipping harassment was of little consequence to him, sir.”

  “Warbringer Avaran is entitled to his opinion, but to be frank, Commander, the opinions of Toralii mean little to me.”

  Liao wondered for a moment if that opinion extended to Saara. “Well, in any event, he didn’t seem to care that we were doing it, sir. Are there any plans to alter the Beijing’s current area of operations?”

  Vong jotted a few notes down on his pad, and Liao tried to read the characters upside down. “After the investigation of Belthas IV has been completed, the Beijing will return to assaulting the Toralii supply network. As the least capable of the four existing Pillars, this is a job well suited for it.”

  Liao had to remind herself that Vong was pressed into this task after retirement and probably was not as attached to the ship as she was. “The least capable, sir? The Beijing is identical to the other Pillars.”

  “Damage sustained in the engagement at Cenar has meant that the port rail gun has been rendered inoperative. It is fixable, but with the more advanced Washington and Madrid now available for combat operations, it is less critical to have all three original ships at maximum capability. Rather than spend months on the Luna dry dock repairing a single embedded system, it is better that the Beijing make itself useful. Even with a single rail gun and sparing use of nuclear devices, the Beijing has sunk considerable tonnage during your absence.”

  She kept her tongue and tried to keep her tone steady. “I understand, sir. And any attack on the Toralii infrastructure is a solid tactic. However, the Toralii Alliance is vast. Saara told me they have over sixty star systems that are directly settled and thousands that have outposts, research stations, or unmanned settlements. Even if the Beijing is destroying two ships a day, the amount of trade that goes on between those systems is significant. I’m sure there are better ways to harm them than destroying a few freighters, sir.”

  “You see, Commander Liao, that’s the difference between you and I.” Commodore Vong clicked his pen closed, then slowly folded both arms onto the table and leaned forward. “I’m quite content for my ship to score safe victories, reliably and evenly, without resorting to personal heroics. Under my command, the Beijing has suffered no significant damage whatsoever. We’ve lost no strike craft, except one which was damaged in a training mishap and returned to service, and our victories have been predictable, clean and comfortable. The worst injury we’ve sustained is the head of the marines pulling a muscle. We’re inflicting steady damage on the Toralii, and we’re doing it every single day of the week. Over the course of my command, we have sunk more estimated tonnage than the Tehran and the Beijing did combined at Kor’Vakkar, and we didn’t have to execute a blind jump on the word of an alien, then cripple two ships and lose the lives of nearly seventy crewmen, to do so. Even setting aside the loss of life, factoring in how long the Beijing alone has spent in repairs, in terms of tonnage sunk per week, the ship is doing better under my command than yours.”

  “I wasn’t aware it was a competition, sir.”

  Vong gave her a cool stare. “War is a game of economics. We have to make it clear to the Toralii that antagonising us will cost them, regularly and consistently. A few spectacular losses don’t frighten economists as much as a steady stream of red in their ledger.”

  Liao didn’t have anything she could contest with Vong’s assertion. It was true that the Beijing had spent most of its operational lifetime being repaired, but the slow harassment of the To
ralii shipping lanes seemed woefully ineffective to her. What was the point of it all if their presence wasn’t even being felt?

  They sat together in uncomfortable silence until the door swung open again. Liao was relieved to see it was James.

  “Captain Grégoire,” she said, keeping her tone distant.

  “Commander Liao.” James gave her a professional smile, but out of the corner of her eye, she could see Vong’s face tighten slightly. Their relationship had been fodder for the tabloids, and it was impossible to think that Vong wouldn’t know of it.

  Right on James’s heels came Captain Knight who took a seat on the other side of the table, giving Liao a friendly nod.

  “Good evening, Captain,” she said.

  “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Commander Liao. I hope your little rascal’s doing well.”

  She smiled. “She’s here, if you want to see her after the briefing.”

  “I’d like that,” he replied, resting his hands on the table and closing his eyes a moment, then blinking a few times.

  “Long night?” Liao asked.

  “Long few months,” he answered, “with more to come.”

  The last two people to arrive, Captain Lale Harandi and Flight Lieutenant Mike Williams, came in together. Liao had to remind herself that, certainly with Commodore Vong present, it would be inappropriate to refer to Williams as “Magnet”.

  “Captain Knight,” said Williams, taking a seat opposite his former commanding officer.

  Liao spent a moment looking at the man she’d heard a fair bit about but had not had the chance to meet personally. He was a tan-skinned Australian with heavy facial scarring, leading to a broken, uneven face that Liao couldn’t even consider ruggedly handsome. That said, she knew he was one of the best pilots in the fleet; she knew, more than anyone, that although people intrinsically trusted attractive people and preferred to be around them, when the chips came down, the one single skill that mattered in war was how effectively a person could kill their enemies.

  Noticing her staring, Williams gave her a curt nod. “Commander Liao, I’ve heard a lot about you, ma’am.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person,” she replied. “Your reputation precedes you. How fares the Rubens?”

  “Very well. It’s a Toralii ship, so we’re not entirely sure we’re sailing her right, but they’ve packed a lot of firepower into a very small space. The fact that she’s got a working Toralii transponder and they don’t appear to have noticed that the ship’s missing has been remarkably useful. We’ve got intel from locations you could only dream of.”

  “Good,” Liao said. In her mind, the Rubens was a far better fit than the Beijing at this task of harassing Toralii shipping lanes; the only thing the Beijing had going for it was its immense strength, but even at the height of its power, with both rail guns intact, it had taken all three Pillars of the Earth to make a solid stand against a single Toralii cruiser. A smaller, faster, repurposed alien vessel was much more likely to slip away unnoticed. “What are the plans for the ship’s future?”

  “Well, a lot of our strength comes from our covert operations. If we do too many of them, we risk blowing our cover, so we’re off for a few months to lay low, rearm, refit, see if we can coax a little more power out of the Toralii systems, and let the Intel guys climb all over them for a while, then we’re right back out there.”

  “What about the command structure?” asked Commodore Vong. “Are there any plans to rotate the crews?”

  Williams shook his head. “None yet. The crew is a volunteer-only outfit taken from all over the fleet. We’re a tight, cohesive unit and we’re, frankly, a little nuts. If we’re caught, it’ll be a lifetime in whatever gulag the Toralii Alliance is using instead of Cenar, or worse. Guerrilla warfare and intelligence work is technically a mixture of spying and terrorism, and if our own cultures are anything to go by, people tend to take a dim view of both.”

  Liao could see he disapproved of the notion but gave Williams a reassuring nod. “I understand completely.”

  Vong cleared his throat. “Let’s turn to business, shall we?”

  Nods around the table.

  “The Toralii have a problem,” Liao began, “two problems, really. The first of them, the occupation of Belthas IV, is short term, but the loss of their fleet’s a lot more substantial. It might be tempting to suggest that their problems are our advantage, but it’s important to realise one thing; the Toralii have been in charge of all they survey for hundreds of years—it’s true—but they’re not the only species with a fleet of ships out there. A dramatic shift in the balance of power is not something that will favour us.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” said Williams. “From what I’ve seen of the Toralii in the field, behind their lines, it’s a very disorganised but very powerful web of planets, all protected by their fleet. If they have lost one third of their naval assets and word of this spreads, strands of that web are going to be stretched. Some are going to be broken. From what we know of the Kel-Voran, they’re certain to take advantage of this. If the Kel-Voran go all out on the Toralii Alliance, given their weakened state, it’s unlikely they’ll care about us.”

  Murmurs of agreement around the table.

  “It seems,” said Liao, “that we have a few courses of action open to us. Although they’re weakened, the Toralii are still the five hundred pound gorilla when it comes to planet spanning empires. The Kel-Voran are probably more numerous, but they’re so factional I doubt they could stop squabbling amongst themselves for the few years it would take to be a genuine threat to the Toralii. So one course of action we can take is to assist the Toralii Alliance if we can, with the help of whomever we can muster, and then hopefully earn amnesty regarding the use of jump technology.

  “Alternatively, we can let whatever will happen play out. Let the Kel-Voran sink their teeth into the Toralii, hope it’s enough to keep them distracted and their attention away from us. There’s a number of advantages to this, most notably that we avoid as much combat as we can. The disadvantage, of course, is that one Toralii cruiser was a sufficient challenge for three of our ships at their prime and in a dedicated defensive posture. Avaran asked for our help; if we spurn that request, it wouldn’t be out of his character to simply send three ships to completely crush us.” Liao looked to Commodore Vong. “What does Fleet Command say?”

  “Fleet Command is of the opinion that the Cerberus outpost gives the solar system an impressive defensive posture. With the defences at Mars being strengthened every day, and a secondary ring of satellites being installed around Earth, they are less concerned with the possibility of attack via the Lagrange points. If an all-out assault against Earth is launched, Fleet Command believes it will be launched by ships appearing at the outer edges of the solar system and travelling slowly inward. It is estimated that this will give Earth a year to prepare which should be sufficient.”

  Liao, having faced a Toralii cruiser and outnumbered it three to one, didn’t feel as confident as Fleet Command appeared to when it came to their ability to fight off a Toralii assault. The Cerberus blockade was powerful, yes, but the Beijing, the Tehran and the Sydney together had stood toe to toe with just one of the alien ships and had only survived because the Tehran had rammed it.

  “I would not be so certain,” Liao said, glancing to Harandi, “of our ability to resist a determined push by the Toralii. Saara has expressed the opinion that our strength will hold, but with full respect to her and her knowledge, and also to Captain Harandi and her station, Saara is only a pilot… and she is Telvan. She may not be aware of all the Alliance’s latest tricks, and there’s a very real risk that our entire blockade is a facade. The Toralii Alliance have made it their business to win, completely and utterly without question, every war they’ve engaged in for the last few hundred years, and they’ve chosen to engage in many. This, if nothing else, should give us significant reason to be concerned.”

  “To be honest,” Harandi said, “I
sometimes wonder about the same thing. The French, after World War I, built the Maginot Line: a supposedly impenetrable wall of defences along the French-German and French-Italian borders to defeat further aggression from the east. The Nazis, however, simply went around it by invading Belgium.”

  “We didn’t see that one coming,” quipped Grégoire. Liao smirked at the Belgian man, then regained her composure.

  Liao studied the faces around the table. “It’s my opinion that if the wrath of the Toralii navy fell upon us, we’d be dogs barking at the lightning, trying to fight something we just couldn’t understand.” She paused for a moment. “But fortunately, we don’t have to decide today. All we promised Avaran was that we would investigate, so I think our first step should be to look into what happened at Belthas IV.”

  “Agreed,” said James.

  “If we send the Sydney, the Tehran and the Beijing,” offered Knight, “this is not only an impressive show of force, but it allows us to keep the Madrid and the Washington in reserve. With a little luck, the Toralii may not know we have two more ships.”

  “And the Rubens,” added Williams.

  Knight nodded. “And the Rubens. With all due respect to Captain Harandi, I think it’s important to remember that wars aren’t won with static defences. We need to reach out and touch the Toralii before they find a map of Belgium and find a way past this impressive, but stationary, blockade.”

  Liao cast a glance to Knight, trying to read his expression. On one hand, a strong show of force would be appropriate, and they couldn’t cower behind the Cerberus station for the rest of eternity. On the other, Vong had a good point. They couldn’t afford to overstretch themselves.

  But how much of Knight’s suggestion to leave the two newest and most advanced ships in the fleet in reserve was based upon the fact that the Madrid and the Washington had not yet seen proper combat, or even had a lengthy shakedown cruise? The Sydney was, of the three original Pillars, the ship most affected by teething issues. Did he fear that the Madrid and the Washington would suffer similar problems?