Lacuna: Demons of the Void (28 page)

“That part of my life is well behind me.” She grinned impishly. “I’m into my thirties now, James. I’m not exactly
young
any more…”

The man snickered. “You’re only as young as the person you’re
feeling
.”

Liao raised an eyebrow. “You’re
fifty
, so if I’m feeling you that means I’m fifty too. Don’t drag me down with you, old man...”

The two exchanged a laugh, though it was short, and when it faded silence once again reigned between them.

Liao casually wiped her mouth. “You taste like hospital, by the way.
Blech
.”

“And you taste like you just threw up.” He gave an apologetic, sheepish grin. “Sorry, it’s true.”

Liao closed her eyes a moment. “…I know. Um, actually, that’s because I
did
, right before I came on board. I… I thought I’d lost you. And before that... ever since our fight, I’ve been sick with worry.” She paused. “…I mean,
literally
sick, like... I can’t hold down my food, I can’t sleep, I can’t… I can’t get you out of my
head
. You’re stuck in my every thought.”

She opened her eyes again, looking down at him once more. “I was so angry over what happened, but now… now I’m just relieved. I thought that I’d lost you for good, that you might have just
died
over there in that place, or worse – never come back at all… so nobody would know what happened to you… so... so
I’d
never know.”

Liao leaned down and kissed him again, giving a reassuring squeeze of his hand, mildly apathetic about who might be watching. “But enough of this, okay? You just get better...” she lowered her voice to a whisper, just barely loud enough for the two of them alone. “...Because I
really
need to give you a
full body
debriefing…”

He flashed a playful wink. “As soon as I’m able to walk properly, I’ll be sure to let you render
you
unable to walk properly.”

Liao gave his abdomen a playful pat. “That’s the spirit.”

*****

Engineering Bay Two

TFR
Beijing

Two days later

The raid against the Toralii resupply station complete, Liao and the crew moved on to the next part of their mission. The
Tehran
had returned and the two ships were slowly limping back to the lunar drydock. Summer called Liao to the Engineering bay to inspect the progress she had made. Progress towards what Liao was not entirely certain.

It was with a mix of curiosity and confusion that Melissa looked over the reassembled Forerunner. She gave what she
hoped
was a thoughtful, appraising eye but… truth be told, she had absolutely no idea if Rowe’s Engineering team had put the probe back together again correctly or not. At this point she was operating on blind faith - a condition she strongly disapproved of as a command style and one that she sought to avoid where ever possible.

That said, Liao knew that life sometimes force-fed you a shit sandwich. When it did there was nothing you could do but bite down, tell yourself that it tasted great, and hope your stupid friend hadn’t ordered you seconds.

The Chinese woman turned to Summer, her hands on her hips. She did her best to make a critical analysis of the work. “It looks good,” she offered, drawing a derisive and dismissive snort from Rowe.

“Like you could tell,” she pointed out, gesturing towards the fully reassembled probe. “We had all the engineers we could spare – pretty much anyone I could bribe, coerce or tear away from the
Tehran
– piece this fucking thing back together. But I gotta tell you the truth… there’s just no way we’ll know if it’ll just explode, let alone function as intended, when we throw the switch. I mean, we did our best – we tested each piece separately, except for the jump drive of course, but there’s no telling how it’ll go when we stick them all together… or
not
go, which frankly is just as likely. Whole fucking thing could blow like New Year’s Day on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and while that would be totally awesome to watch it’d kinda put a dent in your plan.”

Liao frowned. When they had disassembled the probe to learn its secrets, they had given absolutely no thought to putting it back together again. So when Summer announced that she was going to reassemble it, Liao had anticipated a great deal of problems, and that it would take a great deal of time and effort... and there would be risk.

She knew Rowe had a penchant for the dramatic, so she put her words through the “Summer Filter”. There was a risk that the device wouldn’t function. There was a risk it would explode. Further, due to the fact that they were experimenting with technology literally alien to them, there was not a great deal they could do to mitigate this risk.

Still, the very fact that Summer had been able to do such a complete job on the device, even if it didn’t work as planned, was nothing short of extraordinary. There were no plans, no backups, no prototype; they had no points of reference with which to work. But somehow... it was there. The woman, for all her flaws, for all her arrogance, really
was
a genius.

Now if only the damn thing would work.

“Is there any way we can test it more completely before we have to deploy it?”

Summer shook her head. “Nope. Not without activating its jump drive within a jump point.” She gave an impish grin. “I mean, hey, if you were feeling fucking
suicidal
you could probably position the ship within a jump point, turn off the artificial gravity and then jump the bitch. But... you almost
certainly
won’t want to do that. Originally I thought, ‘well, it
should
be okay.’ I figured that since the mass of the probe is currently displacing a fair amount of air in here, if it jumps that void will want to be filled... but, well, it was only when I started to factor in some other things... displacement of air’s not the problem.”

Liao nodded. “Okay. What
is
the problem then?”

“Well, I don’t know if I mentioned it or not, but the jump drive emits a small concussive wave when it’s activated. Normally, since this is happening in space, it’s just not something we ever really consider... But if we activated it
inside
another ship? Well, hey. You don’t have to be a red-headed sexy super-genius to realize that the contained force of even a small concussive blast appearing right here in the Engineering bay, in a contained space… Well, it would probably tear the whole room to pieces. If we were
lucky
...”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Liao murmured, folding her arms. “I didn’t realize the jump drive had that effect...”

“Well, if I told you everything I knew you wouldn’t need me any more. Besides... there’s a
lot
of side effects and weird technology going on with this junk, and really, there’s just too much to explain in one lifetime. Just trust me when I say it’s a bad idea to test it that way.”

Don’t worry,” offered Liao. “I have no plans to jump
anything
from the inside of my ship.”

Summer nodded. “Great. Fucking
fantastic
. Keep it that way because, you know, if you fuck up the Engineering bay, I’ll be so mad... You have
no
idea. All my best toys are in here.” A pause. “Except for Alex. He’s off spray-painting kill-markers on the hull of his fighter after the last expedition. He got four of them, and he’s so pissed – You need
five
to be an ace...”

Liao rolled her eyes at Summer’s continued rambling. “I’ll
try
to keep that in mind.”

With the necessary information extracted from Rowe, Liao had other things to do. She gave Summer a polite farewell – which was not returned – and walked over to where she saw Saara typing methodically on one of the computer terminals Rowe had set up. Liao was glad to see that they were being used for something scientific, rather than the video games she occasionally spotted Summer playing on them.

“Saara?”

The Toralii woman glanced over her shoulder, giving her friend a firm nod.

[“Good evening, Captain Liao."]

Melissa returned the nod. “Evening. How goes the effort to access the Forerunner’s systems? Got anything useful for us?”

Unexpectedly, Saara nodded her head. [“Actually, Captain, I do. I have successfully accessed the ship’s command log. At your discretion, we can examine this probe’s record of commands and see the last instructions the device would have received from the Toralii Alliance… from the vessel which you spoke to earlier.”]

Liao gave a pleased nod, her hands folding behind her back. “Excellent work, Saara. Please liaise with Rowe and see what you can find out. Give me your report as soon as you’re ready.”

[“Of course, Captain Liao.”]

With the work in the Engineering bay complete, Liao stepped outside and made her way to her quarters. She was just undressing and looking forward to a Captain’s impossible dream – a few hours sleep without any interruptions – when the radio set on her desk crackled, calling her name. With a sigh that held just the tiniest edge of frustration she strode over to it and pressed the talk key.

“Liao here.”

“We’ve completed the last of the work on the Forerunner.” The voice was one of the junior engineers, Lieutenant Xi.

Liao nodded, despite the person on the other end of the device being completely unable to see the action, then held the key and spoke again. “Very well done, Lieutenant; pass along my congratulations to the whole Engineering team. Additionally, please inform the Operations room of your progress and ensure that the
Sydney
and the
Tehran
are completely informed about what we’re doing. We need to make sure that they know what we know.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

With what she hoped would be her final task completed, Captain Liao stripped down to her underwear and fell onto her bed. The stress and worry of the last few weeks had taken its toll; she had found herself sleeping more, her appetite changing and her body experiencing the occasional discomfort. The nausea had come and gone, but with James and his ship returned to her, things were finally beginning to return to the insanity, the chaos that in her life passed as “normal”.

Mostly that was Summer’s fault.

She desperately needed a full night’s sleep, but tonight this treat would be denied to her much as it had been denied to seafaring Captains as long as there were sailing ships. The burdens of command were always high. And although the armed forces of all modern nations had done wonders to streamline the process, the chain of command meant that ultimately the buck stopped with the ship’s Commanding Officer. She was, in a very real sense, never off duty.

The big briefing was tomorrow. They were unveiling their plan... and, hopefully, putting Summer’s work on the Forerunner to use… that or blowing the device to smithereens if Summer had made even one mistake.

It was with these thoughts playing through her head that she eventually fell into a restless, haunted sleep.

Act V

Chapter XIII

“Hearts of Steel”

*****

Infirmary

TFR
Tehran

Two days later

Liao loved how pleased James looked to see her as she stepped up to his bed, reaching out and wrapping her hand around his. He was improving by the day and the
Tehran
’s chief medical officer – a head-scarved woman who had a small scar on her chin – had indicated that there was a possibility James would be discharged within the next day or two, then left the two of them alone. This news had put Liao into an impossibly good mood which, despite the gravity of the operation they were about to embark upon, refused to fade.

She gave his hand an affectionate squeeze, grinning down at the man. “So, old man, I heard you were going to be discharged today.”

“Old man?” James gave a cough, shaking his head, grinning back up at her. “Really? Is that all you came here to do,
torture
a sick Captain by calling him
old
?”

“But you
are
old,” she playfully teased, squeezing his hand again. “It’s just the truth of the matter… There’s no offence intended, of course, but the facts regarding your exact age… or, at least, the age at which you
appear
… can’t be denied.”

“Well,
excuse
me, Commander, but I think you’ll find that being a Captain gives you certain…
privileges
… which give me an edge in this particular situation. More specifically, that the Captain’s age is both whatever I say it is, and also none of anyone’s business… especially not rival Commanding Officers with tight buns and a penchant for hogging all of the glory.”

She felt his dark hand grasp her backside. With a swift glance around the infirmary to make sure that nobody was watching, she shuffled closer and permitted the hand to remain there for the moment.