Lacuna: The Ashes of Humanity (7 page)

"Agreed. Get someone to talk to Doctor Saeed and the medical staff, see what they can do. Maybe there are some civilians who have medical skills. We might have picked up a doctor for all we know." Liao blinked away a moment's fatigue, her brain overloaded. "Right, okay. Make it happen. We have a lot more people to take care of, and you seem to have a good handle on what's required. Deputise who you need."

Cheung stared at her for a moment. "Uh, Captain… all of that was just for the
crew
. Of our ship. Only. Not the civilians as well."

Liao had no answer.

"So, Captain, in order to take care of the civilians, too, we're going to have to—"

She held up her hands. "No, no, no. I get the picture. Okay. Look. Find some civilians to help out. Community leaders. People who'll be trusted. There's one I met already—Shepherd. Alistair Shepherd. Big heavy guy, tall, real strong. Brown hair, balding. He's a former police officer. Get him and give him some kind of title. Community organiser. Mayor. Whatever. Get him a bunch of assistants. Attach them to our logistics division and get them to work together. Get a bunch of our junior enlisted crew to find out any useful skills people have—outdoors type stuff, or mechanics. Engineers. Welders. Carpenters. Park rangers. Anything."

Cheung brought her heels together. "Aye aye, Captain."

Liao nodded to dismiss her, and then she was alone again.

The fuel burned away. Liao shoved the turret back under the cloth, removed the gloves, and wiped down her arms as best she could. Try as she might, her uniform was stained as she put it back on. Unwilling to see more people, Liao wandered into the tree line, away from the people. Away to think.

They were settling in to their new home. There would be troubles, of course, and things wouldn't go smoothly, but they had the best crew they could ask for. Cheung had brought up so many things Liao just wouldn't have thought of. She was confident they could handle it.

The only thing she didn't have confidence in was her ability to lead them.

She returned her gaze to the two moons above them, each covered in deep scars, the stars a strange lurid blue.

Humanity now lived under an alien sky. A borrowed world, one they had won through the most ancient method known to their kind; complete depopulation of those who lived here, followed by settlement.

It was accidental, of course. She had not intended to kill the Toralii who once lived here; quite the contrary, she had found herself making a fast friendship with the friendly, inquisitive, story-loving Telvan.

But European settlers to the United States had largely not intended the smallpox in their blankets to decimate the Native American population, although the historical accuracy of that "fact" was still debated. In the end, though, the intent mattered little. Death was the reward for their hospitality.

The stars formed a beautiful backdrop as another round of Broadswords fell into the atmosphere, the sound of their re-entry like far-away drums, beating a tune she could barely hear.

The sight was beautiful, but she reeked of diesel fuel and shit.

They had all seen better days.

C
HAPTER
III

The Rain

*****

Isle 301, southern Velsharn

36,411
SOULS
.

T
HAT
WAS
ALL
that remained of humanity when the last head-counts were complete.

1,969 over the age of 65. 730 children, nine infants. In total, the sum was 19,100 females, 17,311 males. Roughly a third Asian, third Caucasian, third other.

Broadswords came all night, dropping off new people and supplies from the
Madrid
and the
Washington
high in orbit. It turned out that the Americans possessed in their ship's inventory an array of tents. Huge open-air tents. The settlers had no room to erect them yet, so they were stored in a pile near the hangar bay entrance.

The first night passed with the civilians crammed into the hull of the ship. In space, heat was the enemy, so the
Beijing
was optimised for cooling; its air-conditioning easily drove away the muggy night. The insects proved to be a problem, though, entering the ship through the open hangar doors.

Space was at a premium, but with the hangar bay emptied of strike craft, there was more than enough room to house the civilians that continued to arrive, even if they had nothing to sleep in but their clothes. Eventually the numbers on the
Washington
and
Madrid
became manageable, and no more were sent down.

Liao finally slept some time before dawn, a few hours' reprieve, and then she was up again.

She welcomed the fatigue. The constant distractions.

They kept her from thinking of Allison.

Cheung was as good as her word. Come daylight everything was seen to, from the small to the major. Latrines were dug. Bodies were buried. Fuel was gathered from the surrounding woods and brought in to be burned. Areas of the woods were cleared, providing them more space to work in. The ship's nuclear reactors were kept online, and power cables were run out of the ship. The tents were set up and given to the civilians. The military would continue to operate in the ship, as they were accustomed to doing, and in time the civilians could begin to move away from it.

It was an arrangement that frayed nerves. Shepherd explained to Liao that the heat and insects were affecting them. She was sympathetic but understood the hygiene issues that maintained overcrowding would cause. Anyone who was sick, injured, unwell or overworked could sleep in the air-conditioned hangar bay, but unless there were exceptional circumstances such arrangements were not to be permanent.

Shepherd didn't approve, but Liao's word was final.

The civilians banded together much better than she had anticipated. She had a history of underestimating the Americans, but for all the stereotypes about them, they pulled together in a crisis. The
Beijing
crew, who were bilingual, assisted with the integration and translation for the growing arrival of Chinese from the
Washington
. They too straightened their backs and met the challenge ahead of them.

By the end of the first day, basic infrastructure was set up. The river was divided into segments for drinking, bathing and then waste. Food was cooked in the tents and taken from the ship's stores at an alarming but temporarily sustainable rate. Cheung's plan, so impossible and prophetic to her, was enacted swiftly.

Liao's only material contribution was to burn the latrine.

The second twilight fell. The
Beijing
's external lights shone bright, illuminating the camp as marines patrolled the outskirts. Velsharn was good to them; no predators bothered them in the night, nor were there signs of any land animals at all aside from insects. The woods were teaming with birds, though, and their songs continued well into the night.
 

Liao secretly dreaded the coming of the night. The end of the emergency that consumed them all.

Allison was dead.

The thought wormed its way into her mind, digging in slowly and steadily, eating at her. Her daughter, the one she had suffered so much for, was dead.

That second night was the hardest. Fatigue forced her to sleep. When her rest came, though, it was fitful and weak, fettered with all manner of dark visions. Visions of her failures, of her inadequacies, of her daughter who had burned to a crisp on Earth's surface—the planet she had failed to protect. Rowe, ringing the buzzer on her quarters over and over, awoke her just past midnight.

"Morning, Captain." She seemed far too perky for whatever hour it was. Liao had slept in her uniform and knew that it showed, but Rowe didn't seem to care. "Two Broadswords jumped into the L1 Lagrange point."

Liao stared at her. They had a visitor? "Why didn't you call me sooner?"

"Kamal knew you hadn't had much sleep lately. The first one was ours, and we ID'd the second bird as the
Iron Butterfly
, attached to the
Tehran
. Captain James Grégoire is aboard. They should be landing within the hour."

So their message had gotten through. Liao felt like death warmed up, but she nodded appreciatively.

"Thank you, Rowe. And thank you for telling me in person."

"Oh, there was one more thing," said Rowe. "I was thinking. We have a rather large stockpile of fluorine from the cooling systems. There's always been this thing I wanted to try… we could use that to make some dioxygen difluoride. It's vicious stuff, Captain. They call it Lucifer's Gas. Shit's fucking
insane
. It makes almost any organic compound ignite and explode at temperatures above -184C. Obviously, it has to be stored with some serious refrigeration, but combine it with hydrogen sulphide and it'll not only burn anything we expose to it, but it will dissolve organic tissue on contact. Could be useful."

"Could be," Liao said, "make it happen."

Rowe looked pleased as she walked away. Liao shut the door before anyone could bother her any further.

A glance at the wall clock revealed that her duty shift was supposed to start two hours ago. Iraj had covered her post without her asking about it. That stung.

James was going to be here within an hour. She both wanted to see him more than anything and couldn't face him, all at the same time. She just wanted to sleep until all of this went away.

No such luck. Life was never so simple, not for her or for anyone.

Liao dressed in her usual dress uniform and then left for the hangar bay. She passed civilians on the way; the ship was overflowing with them. They would shake her hand, thank her for saving them, or request things.
 

Some were reasonable. Water. Extra rations. A mosquito net.
 

Others, less so. Drugs. Unobtainable medications. Requests to be returned to Earth.

The temperature dropped as she got closer to the exit, the insects became more prevalent and the air more humid. As she came to the hangar bay, the great mouth of the ship was open to the world, and it was raining outside. Raining like she'd never seen; water poured down at forty-five degrees, and flashes of lightning broke the dark of night.

Velsharn had given them much since they arrived, but the beautiful water planet revealed its temper. It raged impotently at the ship, battering its steel sides with wind and rain, all to no effect.

Liao, though, was not clad in iron. She walked out into the rain, water soaking her through to her skin in seconds. In the sky, through a gap in the clouds, a bright streak of light burned across the night sky, and she knew what that meant.

No more running.

The Broadsword's landing lights made her squint as it descended through the rain, halogen lights flooding the area with white glare. The ground had turned to mud, churned up by landing gear and thousands of booted feet, and the Broadsword squelched as it sank into the grime, the rain drumming off its hull.

The landing ramp dropped, splattering into the earth. A figure, backlit by the ship's internal light, stepped down. Liao recognised James's gait, his shape and then his face. He looked dirty, tired, and his eyes were red and puffy.

"Tell me it's not true," he said, his voice raised to carry over the rain. The tone of his words almost broke her heart.

How could she say it wasn't? She desperately wanted to. She wanted to categorise the Toralii Alliance betrayal as a minor setback, as something that they could recover from. It wasn't the end, just a phase of life that would pass. Something they could overcome together.

The lie was appealing, but Liao had to tell the truth.

"It's true," she said. "Earth is gone."

James moved into the rain with her, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. "The baby? Liao, where's the baby?"

"We couldn't get to her, James. We couldn't. She was with Williams. We didn't know where he was. We didn't—I couldn't have—"

"Shh," said James, holding her close. "It's okay."

It wasn't okay. It was a lot of things right at that very moment, but it was far from okay. Liao buried her face into his shoulder, glad for the roaring storm all around her, sheltering her emotions. "I'm… I'm
so
sorry."

"It wasn't your fault."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault." He said it over and over as the two senior officers stood in the rain, water pouring down around them, the wind whipping at their bodies. "There was nothing you could have done."

The pain was like needles in her limbs. It physically hurt, the guilt, and she blurted out the first things that came to her mind.

"I shouldn't have trusted the Alliance."

"You couldn't have known what they were planning."

"I shouldn't have left our child behind."

"It would have been more dangerous to take her with you."

James was crying. She was crying. They weren't captains of mighty warships facing down danger; they were two parents grieving for the loss of a child, on an alien world, the tattered remnants of their species huddled around their ships for warmth.

"I'm here now," said James, holding her tightly. "Don't worry."

She didn't know how long she stood out there in the rain, but it was long enough to cry all her tears. James took her in from the rain, back under the open gate of the hangar. Civilians watched them while pretending not to look, but she completely ignored them.

"You're going to be okay, yeah?"
 

Liao nodded, numbly. "Yeah," she managed to say.

It was the first time she had really cried, really grieved, and it was a process that would take time. Her whole life, possibly. It was a sobering thought; to feel this emptiness, this loss, this hole in herself for as long as she lived.

When the Toralii attacked Sydney, she had received a wound. The Australian surgeons treated her well, but despite the best of care, a lingering reminder remained. A long, thin scar on her hip. She would bear it for all of her days.

As she would this scar, this one in her heart.