Lacuna: The Prelude to Eternity (14 page)

The people had to see it. They had to witness the
Beijing
rising from the ashes and taking flight to protect them. The bombardment had shown humanity that living on Eden, protected by ships above, would not save them. Eden had been a temporary reprieve, nothing more. The planet Velsharn could not remain their home forever.

It was ever thus, for every civilization that had ever existed, on Earth or otherwise. It was not enough to find some quiet, little corner out of the way of everyone else and just hope for a quiet, simple existence where one lived out one’s days going nowhere and doing nothing. Growth was critical. Resources, territory, technology… everything had to grow. A civilization was as much a living, breathing creature as a single Human was a collection of bacteria, cells, and chemical reactions and was governed by the same, simple, unavoidable rule:

Expand or die.

“No time like the present,” said Liao. She reached up to her headset, touching the button that would signal the entire ship. “Attention, all hands. This is Captain Liao. We will shortly be commencing our ascent through the atmosphere. General Quarters. Damage control teams, stand by.”

The Operations room was flooded with red light as General Quarters was sounded throughout the ship. She felt the familiar surge of adrenaline, of excitement and anticipation. “Do it,” she said to the room. “Take us up.”

At once, the crew swung into motion.

[“Giving power to reactionless drives.”] Saara’s large hands moved gracefully over the slightly-too-small-for-her console. [“The ship will be airborne in less than one minute.”]

A faint, familiar hum built below Liao’s feet as the ship gained power and the tiny gravity-altering devices embedded in the floor established themselves, adding their power to the natural gravity of Velsharn. Her new limb felt heavier than it should have, her shoulder aching with the effort of keeping her arms folded, but she endured. The feeling faded as they recalibrated, adjusting themselves to dampen the inertia of the ship’s movement.

Liao always hated it when real gravity fought with artificial gravity. At least in that case, it was all pointing in the same direction.

The faint sound of stressed metal reverberated throughout Operations as the weight of two hundred thousand tonnes pressing on long-compacted dirt grew less and less. The ship’s weight eased, and the structures resumed their normal load-bearing requirements.

The constructs had done good work. The
Triumph
-
class cruisers, of which the
Beijing
was one, were designed to be landed in lunar gravity, not Earth or Velsharn, although they were structurally capable of doing so—a fact they had only tested in simulations and in the calculations of the engineers. It was fortunate that it was possible. The theoretical had been tested, first on Earth as the fires that consumed their homeworld ate up the last of their people, and then later on Velsharn, as the wounded, broken
Beijing
had limped into what many had expected to be its final resting place.

Now the
Beijing
was stronger than ever. Liao hoped that her body, too, would be similarly improved.

“Commencing ascent,” said Jiang. “All systems nominal.” The ship was airborne. It was alive once more. “Altitude ten metres, holding steady.”

Liao’s command console showed various camera feeds from all over the ship. They were higher resolution than the old ones and, somehow, had the thermal and electromagnetic feeds perfectly overlain. The world outside was recognizable but a technicolour mismatch of strange hues and lurid colours. She could see the vibrant faces of people watching the launch, their faces shrinking away as the ship climbed.

All of humanity was trusting her. She felt a surge of euphoria, knowing she and her crew were being entrusted with such an honour. All of their fates were in her hands. That sensation faded as another realisation set in, one much more somber: The last time hadn’t turned out so well.

“Two hundred meters,” said Jiang. “We’ll be crossing the windbreak threshold provided by the nearby mountains. They won’t protect us from wind shear once we clear them.”

“Acknowledged.” That was a known risk, but a ship of that size and height would not be deterred by Velsharn’s mighty winds. “Continue the ascent as planned.”

The wind washed over the ship as a series of subtle vibrations. Turbulence rocked the vessel from end to end, but it soon faded as they rose above the choppy surface air and into the lower atmosphere. Eden disappeared below them, the drab patchwork of tents becoming a tiny dot and then fading completely into the landscape. The vast oceans of Velsharn, comprising most of the planet’s surface area, soon turned the island itself into a dot in the dot-painting that was the southern island chain. Warm, temperate waters sustained them with fish and edible sea plants, shallow waters, and sunny beaches. They could be Earth but for the colour. The predominant shade of the trees and other flora was a deep orange, blue near the shores, painting the tropical landscape in an alien hue.

The ship was performing admirably. Its reactors hummed, its engines responded to all their commands, and as Velsharn’s atmosphere faded away and the dark, inky void of space surrounded them once more, it felt like an old friend, as though the
Beijing
had not been through months of seemingly constant battles, endless patch-job repairs and crippling, deep structural wounds in her bones.

Rejuvenation.

The three surviving Pillars of the Earth, with the two stolen Toralii ships, the
Rubens
and the
Knight
keeping watch, climbed toward the starlight.

“Captain,” said Jiang, her smile reflecting how Liao felt, “we have cleared atmosphere. Maneuvering for low planetary orbit. We’ll be in a stable rotation in minutes.”

“Excellent.” She couldn’t help but smile as well. “Well done, everyone.”

Operations filled with clapping. It seemed a long time since the Operations crew had had something to celebrate. The battle of Belthas IV had been a Pyrrhic victory, Cenar a running retreat, and the devastation of Earth had cast a pallor over the victory against the Toralii fleet that had arrived at Velsharn to finish them off. They had always just-survived, barely scraping through, so it was a genuine victory to accomplish something that didn’t require anyone to die: returning the
Beijing
to the fight.

The blue-green ball of Velsharn spun lazily below them as the ship settled into a low orbit. The
Washington
and the
Tehran
formed up with them, a few hundred kilometres away—within spitting distance for spacecraft—and the
Beijing
took the lead. They floated for just over an hour, testing all their systems and completing a full revolution around the planet.

“Orbital test successful,” said Jiang. “We are once again over the Eden colony.”

Liao nodded her acknowledgement. “Excellent. Bring us out of orbit and into deep space.”

With a tap from Jiang, the preprogrammed course change occurred, a thousand tiny pieces of the ship all working in unison as it maneuvered back, tilting toward open space, and pulled away from Velsharn.

More time passed. Space was unimaginably huge. Life in Operations was long stretches of nothing followed by bursts of activity. Liao fiddled with the pistons on her prosthetic arm, subconsciously scratching them, feeling the texture of the metal. She felt the sensations the prosthetic sent back. Bare metal was like skin, cold but sensitive, as though it were spun from flesh melted down and remoulded into a synthetic form.

The
Beijing
sailed silently through the void until, well clear of Velsharn’s orbit, the three ships decelerated and came to a half, floating in the nothingness.

The ship could sail, but could it fight?

“Commence weapons test,” said Liao. “Deploy drones from the hanger bay. Units one through six, simulate strike craft at close ranges and surround the ship, one at the stern, one at the rear, port and starboard, then above and below. Send six waves. Test our autocannons can cover all our angles. Mister Dao, advise the
Washington
and the
Tehran
so that they are clear of our fire. Advise the
Tehran
to deploy medium- and longer-range drones.”

Her orders were repeated and confirmed. Her console showed the
Beijing
’s sister ships shifting themselves out of the line of fire as six drones—green dots on her screen, representing neutral craft—sailed out from the hanger bay like disturbed bees, smoothly maneuvering through the vacuum to preordained positions, forming up around the
Beijing
at each of its cardinal points. From the other ships, more drones flew out ahead of them, heading toward medium and long ranges.

“Autocannons are standing by,” said Jiang. “Weapons tight.”

“Weapons free,” said Liao. “Fire when ready.”

Operations was too far nestled into the core of the ship to feel even the faintest vibration from the external guns. The only clue Liao had of their firing was her command console. Grey streaks leaped from the central dot of the
Beijing
in all directions, each stream striking the drones and blowing them into chunks.

“Drones destroyed.”

Five more waves of drones dutifully floated to their doom. The later waves “attacked” asymmetrically. They maneuvered, ducking and dodging instead of passively waiting for the slaughter, but the
Beijing
’s guns smoothly and methodically cut them down.

There was little more testing they could do against drones. Time to test the midrange punch. “Load a dummy missile. Verify that the warhead is HE only. No sense wasting one of our nukes on a test.”

“Cross checked, HE warhead. Loaded in tube eight.”

“Fire.”

A larger yellow mark, representing live ordnance, sailed lazily out from the
Beijing
’s missile tubes. Although firing missiles from the magnetic railguns was possible in an emergency—a situation depressingly common during Liao’s command—the missile tubes were the preferred medium-range delivery mechanism.

As it cleared the protective point-defence sphere offered by the
Beijing
’s guns, Ling, their radar operator, spoke up.

“Captain, radar contact: L1 Lagrange point. Strike-craft class.”

She saw it on her command console. Liao glanced to Iraj, but before she could speak, her headset chirped.

“
Piggyback
to TFR
Beijing
,” came a voice she recognised as Lieutenant Kollek. “Priority alert.”

Liao frowned. “Abort test,” she said to Iraj. “Cease fire. End the drill, sound General Quarters throughout the ship, and launch strike craft—this is no longer a test.”

The yellow streak that was their missile exploded as Jiang detonated it. Liao touched her headset as the crew abandoned the pretence of war and adopted an alert footing. Blue dots swarmed out of the
Beijing
, the
Tehran
,
and the
Washington
. The
Rubens
and the
Knight
began manoeuvring, rushing to join them.

Speed-of-light delay would slow everything. Liao phrased her question carefully. “
Piggyback
, this is
Beijing
actual. Priority alert acknowledged—we are engaged in a live-fire exercise in this area. Report.”

“We are returning from our expedition to Earth,” said Kollek. “We encountered the Iilan in the Sol system.”

That made no sense at all. “What were the Iilan doing there? What was their interest in Earth?”

“Trying to find us,” she said. “You, specifically. But they were reluctant to jump directly to Velsharn. They’re badly damaged. They want to be sure they won’t be fired upon if they jump here.”

“Damaged?” Liao gave Iraj a sidelong, worried glance. “Return to Sol. Inform the Iilan that they are most welcome. Tell them to squawk IFF on two four three point zero megahertz.”

“IFF on two four three point zero megahertz,” Kollek repeated. “Roger, Captain. Our jump drive is still cooling. We’ll be ready in five.”

Captain Anderson’s voice came through her headset. “
Beijing
, this is
Washington
actual. Thoughts on this development?”

“The Iilan have long been our friends,” she said but then corrected herself. “Allies. Trading partners. That’s better than people who are shooting at us. Their help always has its price, but frankly, it’s usually reasonable, and I’ll take what we can get. Whatever’s happened to them, they’re not a security issue.”

“As you wish,” said Anderson. “I’ll leave them to you.”

“That would be best,” she said. “But keep the
Washington
on high alert. Captain Grégoire, maintain alert status on the
Tehran
.”

James spoke over the line. “Of course,
Beijing
. We’re ready for anything over here.”

Liao believed it. The
Tehran
had been their constant ally since their very first engagement, the Battle of Jupiter. The
Sydney
, plagued with mechanical issues, had played a minimal role. At present, the
Sydney
was just a ruin, debris orbiting the asteroid belt in the Karathi system. Every so often, Broadswords tasked with salvage brought back recovered technology, weapons, hull fragments, or body parts.

The
Washington
did not have such a history behind it. It had been proven in the space above Belthas IV and later in the evacuation of Earth. The
Rubens
had done its part, but the
Knight
had yet to be truly tested.

Piggyback
, the second Broadsword to bear that name, winked out, disappearing from her radar screen.

They did not have many ships to lose.