Lacuna: Demons of the Void (29 page)

“Mmm. Hogging all the glory, huh?” She leaned over his bed, casually resting her elbows on his chest. “So that’s what I am – the villainous evil-and-sexy CO, rival to the plucky hero, who lives for snatching rightfully earned triumphs from the crew of the
Tehran
?”

“I don’t know if I’d call myself
plucky
exactly,” James responded, his fingers trailing up Liao’s back, “but you do seem to enjoy cavorting around space doing all the important stuff while the
Sydney
gets mine laying duty…”

“
You
gave the
Sydney
that ‘important mission’, remember,” Liao murmured, stifling a gentle yawn, “and as you said yourself, her systems still aren’t working right. She’ll get her turn, we both know that.” She grinned. “...And
anyway
, what are you whining about? The
Tehran
got a lot more action in the Hades engagement than the
Beijing
did, and almost certainly destroyed a whole lot more enemy tonnage than we got to... It’s like Operation
New Dawn
all over again.”

“We also nearly
died
,” James reminded her, his hand wandering up her body and reaching the back of her head, his fingers running gently through her hair. “…And my ship was heavily damaged.” There was a pause as he considered his next words, but Liao preempted his questions with a gentle sigh.

“The repairs are coming along well,” she answered to his unspoken question, “and there’s some even
better
news. The first detailed engineering analysis is complete… The ship’s superstructure appears mostly intact, except where the strange energy beam hit it. Fortunately they’re clean cuts so it’s simply a case of rebuilding the hull around that area, then adding the hull plates and the internal systems like power, electrical, air… then a little stress-test and she’ll be ready to fight again.”

James nodded thoughtfully. “What about the damaged hull sections? We lost the majority of our forward hull to those damn Toralii weapons…”

Liao nodded, gently kissing his chest, right above the sternum. “The damaged sections have already been unbolted and are currently being replaced. Your girl’s basically stark naked at the moment, Captain…”

James snickered at that. “And your boy is just watching on.” He regarded her, gently rubbing the back of her head again. “You know… I think he might be a bit of a pervert.”

Laughing, Liao slapped his side, which caused him to groan in pain. “Hey, you can make fun of me all you like, but don’t talk shit about my
ship
.” She straightened her back, putting her nose in the air indignantly. “He’s a good boy and he loves his mother... He would never peek.”

“Unlike his Captain.”

“That would depend upon the viewing pleasure presented to her,” Liao retorted, her hands slowly slipping under James’ hospital gown, “and on the number of days she’d been without her special little plaything…”

“Is that what you call it now?” Grégoire squirmed on his bed, closing his eyes as Liao began idly toying with him.

“Oh, I have a few names for it all picked out…”

He chortled. “You’re naming my
penis
?”

Her hand continued its work. “Well, yes, of
course
I am. If something’s going to do all the thinking for you, that thing should, at least, have a
name
...”

“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind filling me in on – mmm – what you were thinking… just so, you know, I can veto anything
particularly
embarrassing... or degrading...”

Liao’s tone was soft and sly. She rubbed her thumb in slow circles. “Ooo, well, something Chinese, perhaps… so that you don’t know the meaning, or so I can make a dirty joke. Something like Kang, or Feng. Or Zhou, or... or
Long
, or-”

“Uhh- Captain Liao?”

With a start Liao yanked her hand out from under James’ hospital gown, pulling both hands against her side and spinning around. The
Tehran
’s chief medical officer – the woman whose name Melissa did not know – stood close by, her hands clutching a clipboard remarkably tight. Her eyes flicked down to Liao’s fingers and Melissa knew that she’d been spotted.

Obviously doing her best to remain professional, Liao regarded the doctor and stiffly folded her hands in front of her.

“Doctor, I... wasn’t expecting you here. I thought your shift was over…”

“It was, but, uhh, I realized that I had left… my notes… back in sickbay.” She held up the clipboard demonstrably. “I can’t organize my life to save… to uh, to save my life, so I write things down – notes to myself, really – on my work clipboard and then review them after my shift is done. It helps, it actually does help, so… um, yes.” An awkward silence hung in the air and the woman floundered. “...A-anyway, uhh, while I’m here I figured I’d also just adjust James’ medication slightly; I’d had planned to yesterday, but things got
out of hand
...” A pause. “I mean, wait, not like that!”

Liao nodded her head. “Right, right. I see. Well… … don’t let me distract you. Proceed.” There was an awkward pause as the
Beijing
’s Captain felt like she was out of place. “...Can I lend you a hand?”

It was only after the words had left her mouth that Liao realized exactly what she’d said. The doctor’s eyes went wide; both of them had not-so-indirectly commented on Liao’s wandering hands without either of them realizing it.

“I-… That is
not
necessary, Commander Liao, believe me, I-“

“-Uhh, no, no, no! Of course not, Doctor-”

“I’m not- I don’t... I’m not interested in women in that way, Captain, so-”

“Oh, I didn’t mean- of course not-”

“-No, absolutely not, no, no… no.”

“...No.”

They stood there awkwardly for a moment, then Liao motioned towards James’ IV. “The, um. The medication, Doctor…”

“Oh! R-Right...”

The woman shuffled forward, checked the levels on the IV, then switched out the active fluid bags with one on standby. With the task complete, she gave James and Liao nothing more than a very quick, very embarrassed glance each and then beat the fastest retreat out of the infirmary that Liao had ever seen.

With a low sigh, Liao put her face into her palm. “Great. Just… just
great
. I blame you for this, just so you know.”

James chuckled. “Okay, so she says, ‘things got out of hand’, and then you offer to ‘lend her a hand’…
Really
? You both
really
just said that by accident?”

“...Apparently so.” She turned back towards him, hands on her hips again. “So, yeah. The sooner you’re discharged, the sooner I can fondle you in private...”

“I couldn’t agree more.” There was a pause as James considered his next words. “So... the arrangement’s still on, then?”

Liao’s smile gave him her answer.

*****

Conference Room Two

TFR
Beijing

A week later

“And so, on the
Tehran
, the final death toll was sixty two casualties, including four strike craft pilots, nineteen engineers, eight marines, one civilian contractor, and thirty crewmen who died when the port railgun chamber exploded.”

The debriefing – conducted for the mutual benefit of both crews – was lead by Captain James Grégoire, who had quietly been discharged from the medical bay a day after Liao’s visit.

While the Captain of the
Tehran
was recovering quite well, particularly under the ministrations of Commander Liao, his ship had not been so lucky. The
Tehran
would require a full month in the lunar drydock to repair all the damage, and there was some speculation that due to the damage to the superstructure, the ship would never be quite the same.

James would not hear of that talk however and stubbornly declared that, instead, the ship would be repaired
better
and
stronger
than it previously was; he ordered the damaged areas reinforced and up-armoured, so that the ship’s obvious weak points would be better protected in future engagements. The engineers on the
Sydney
and the
Beijing
had, somewhat begrudgingly, accepted his conclusion and mimicked the changes on their own ships as best they could.

“This coming Thursday, a non-denominational memorial service will be held for those who perished, and Doctor Mahmud would like to remind everyone that his door is always open for grief and loss counseling. We’ve been through a tough time, as a crew and as a family, and there’s no shame in admitting that.” James gave a reassuring smile to the gathered, combined senior staff of both ships. “I’ll be visiting him
myself
, so I expect all my senior staff to at least make a quick appointment.”

Liao nodded her agreement. “...And for the
Beijing
senior staff and crew I expect the same. Although we mourn the loss of those who have passed, we also look to the future; grief and distraction in the light of so much loss is a normal, expected part of the service… but it must only be a temporary condition. The Toralii are out there, and while the
Sydney
has completed her mission with the last of the high energy gravity mines, we can’t rely on these simple tricks to keep them at bay forever.”

Melissa tapped her remote, scrolling the large monitor to the next screen. “But
before
we discuss our next course of action, I’d like to give everyone here a full debriefing of the
Tehran
’s mission after contact was lost in the Hades system.”

The senior staff of the
Beijing
leaned forward expectantly. No official statement had been made and, accordingly, the rumour mill aboard ship had been spinning in overdrive since the great battle. Every one in the
Beijing
’s crew was clamouring for a recount of what
really
happened. Although the interval between the battle and the briefing had been only two weeks, for the crew it seemed more like two months.

Jointly presented by Liao and Grégoire the debriefing was detailed and complete, reiterating more or less the story Farah had told Melissa earlier, with the senior staff of the
Beijing
hanging on practically every word.

“…Then Commander Sabeen jumped the ship. The rest you all know.”

There was a brief pause as the story was digested. When the silence abated Saara spoke again, and although the majority of the senior staff from both ships had at least
some
experience with her remarkably easy to learn language by now, the repair operation on the
Tehran
had taken up all of their energy and time. Liao did not begrudge their inattentiveness to their studies of Saara’s dialect and nodded as Lieutenant Yu dutifully translated for her.

“Saara wants to remind us that, while the strike on the Hades system was decisive to the Toralii Alliance, they are unlikely to take this obvious aggression lying down. The question is not
if
they will respond in force, but
when
.”

Liao nodded her head in agreement. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.” She clicked her remote, scrolling the floor to ceiling monitor of the conference room across to a new image - one that bore a close-up image of the planet Mars and her moons.

“The strike on the Hades system taught us that we can beat the Toralii Alliance if we attack when we have the advantage. While we may have given them a bloody nose, and also given them cause to stay away from us for the moment, these are temporary measures. We can’t hope to simply mine our system and pray they don’t find a way past it in force.”

Liao pointed to the image of Mars on the monitor. “So, instead, we’re going to make a stand here… near Mars.”

James nodded his agreement. “This comes directly from Fleet Command, ladies and gentlemen. This is the
big
one. Intelligence believes that if we, twice, give the Toralii Alliance something to think about we may be able to find a more permanent solution… either a military one, or a diplomatic one. Here’s hoping for the latter.”

He gave a nod to Liao, who returned it.

“We’ve also received official confirmation that three completely new Pillars of the Earth have begun construction on the moon, in the very same construction berths, no less. Tentatively, these ships are named the
Madrid
, the
Moscow
and the
Tripoli
in keeping with the naming tradition we’ve started.”

There were smiles and approving murmurs between all the staff. “They’re still a few years out,” James cautioned, “but it is heartening to know that there are reinforcements on the horizon. The new ships are packing quite the punch; they’re employing a lot of the new technology we seized from the Toralii and reverse engineered. When these new ships of the line arrive, our ability to project military force will be
substantially
increased.”