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  Docking Umbilical

  TFR Beijing

  Three days later

  THE HATCHWAY’S SEAL COMPLETED, THE Beijing’s docking umbilical forming an airtight link with a soft hiss. Liao, Cheung, Rowe, Saeed, and a whole team of marines stood by the doorway, ready to rush across the boarding platform and render whatever assistance they could. It had been a long three-day journey to the Lagrange point the Tehran had arrived at… and Liao had spent most of the time trying to determine what state the Tehran was in and how they could assist.

  And worrying. Liao had done her fair share of that.

  There had still been no word from the Tehran aside from the repeated radar signal. However, as the Beijing had approached their sister ship, their own eyes had seen the story of what had happened better than words could tell.

  The Tehran’s hull was visibly pockmarked with deep gouges and craters, the armoured plates of its hull broken and warped from the pounding of enemy weapons. Many of her cooling fins were holed or broken off entirely, and there were many significant structural breaches, places where the Beijing’s crew, via long-range optics, had observed ominous gaps in the hull. Some were the size of a man’s fist; others were larger than a car.

  Most alarming, however, was the huge amount of damage done to the stern of the vessel. A giant crescent had cut away almost twenty cubic metres of material, like curved scissors through cloth; a huge chunk of the ship was simply scooped away as though by some huge blade. Only the thick titanium beams of her superstructure remained, like the exposed bones of a rotting carcass.

  Aside from the blackened, charred, and partially melted superstructure beams, the cut was fairly clean. The damage was fifty metres from the reactor cores, a fact Liao was extraordinarily thankful for. Whatever had hit the Tehran, if it had been even slightly more on target, there would in all likelihood be nothing left at all.

  The sharp optics on the Beijing revealed more than Liao wanted to know. She knew that the Tehran had suffered extensively in the time before it was able to jump back, but at the same time, her prime, burning question had not been answered.

  Where was Grégoire?

  He had been alive at one point; that much was obvious since the radar was “transmitting” a signal only she could understand. But had this been his dying command? Or perhaps a fail-safe he had entrusted to his first officer, Commander Farah Sabeen?

  Based on Rowe’s analysis of the Tehran’s battle damage, it was anticipated that the ship’s computers, long-range radios, and short-range radios, along with their entire radar system, would be basically fried or, at the very least, operating at dramatically reduced efficiency.

  Given the extensive damage seeming to affect every system, Liao was surprised the ship had been able to jump back at all.

  The airlock swung open. Liao and her marines found themselves staring down the barrels of a dozen exhausted-looking marines from the Tehran who, thankfully, quickly lowered their rifles.

  “Commander Liao, TFR Beijing. Permission to come aboard?” She glanced between the fatigued faces who stared at her from across the gulf of the docking umbilical. She hoped to spot Grégoire’s dark face amongst the Iranians, but it was Commander Sabeen—wounded, her green head-scarf stained with sweat and three-day-old blood—who limped forward, favouring her left leg, and extended her heavily bandaged right hand.

  “Permission granted, Commander. Welcome aboard the Tehran…” The Iranian woman gave a sardonic grin, gesturing at the debris-strewn corridor with her left hand, the right extended towards Liao. “At least, what’s left of her.”

  Liao took Sabeen’s hand and squeezed it very gently, but even this light touch sent a visible wince over her features. “It’s good to be here.”

  Sabeen gave a relieved chuckle, her smile a thousand miles wide. “We’re very glad to see you.”

  Liao ended the handshake and retracted her hand, subtly wiping the blood off on her pants. She turned and nodded to her crew; almost immediately, marines, doctors, and engineers rushed through the cramped docking umbilical. To clear the room and make way for the surge of assistance coming from the Beijing, Liao and Sabeen stepped into the corridor, casually stepping over fallen debris as they did so. The lighting was poor, and Liao had to constantly watch her footing.

  “The feeling is mutual, believe me, Commander Sabeen. When you didn’t jump back with us, we thought you hadn’t made it. What happened?”

  Sabeen glanced towards Liao, casually stepping over a pile of exposed wires, her expression grave. “We almost didn’t. Although things started out well, pretty rapidly the Toralii picked up their game and knocked out our rail guns. Not wanting to push our luck, we recalled our strike fighters and moved out of the jump point to try to evade their fire while we waited for them, but then we received your signal to withdraw. We began moving back into the point, but as we got close—still charging our jump drive, mind you—a Toralii scout ship appeared right in the middle of the point just as we were about to enter it.”

  Liao nodded. “So you couldn’t jump because there was already a ship there.”

  Sabeen grinned crookedly, stepping over a hunk of dislodged bulkhead. “Correct. We nearly smashed right into it, but some clever piloting got us out of the way. When we were clear, we nuked the hell out of it, of course, but the debris was still in one large hunk of metal, so we still couldn’t jump. At that point, we could see way, way too many Toralii long-range missiles coming in, so we knew we were short on time, and we didn’t have many options left.”

  “Sounds dire. What did you do?”

  Sabeen had to stop her story to give some instructions to one of the engineers from the Beijing, and then she and Liao resumed walking. “I ordered the ship to about-face and steam away at sub-light to the nearest jump point… which, as you know, was some distance away. We used the point-defence cannons to shoot down the incoming missiles as best we could, but those bastards are tenacious. No matter how many we hit, they just kept shooting right up until we limped into the Lagrange point.”

  “And then you jumped?”

  Farah shook her head. “We were going to, but the lead ship, the biggest one, let loose with this thing… a wave of light so bright and so hot it overloaded our thermal sensors. The whole ship shook, and engineering tells me they sliced a nice little piece out of my girl’s hide. You probably saw that giant hole on the way in.”

  “We did, yes. One of our engineers, Rowe, had a theory that it was the same weapon that the Toralii used to bombard Earth with.”

  Sabeen flashed a wide grin. “We’ve been thinking the same, actually.” She paused a moment to step over some debris. “So, we very nearly didn’t make it out. The Toralii were pretty far away when they fired that thing. If they’d used it sooner, we would have been toast. We jumped before they got a chance to fire again.”

  Liao was heartened by her use of the term we, figuring the first officer was speaking of James, but quickly realized her turn of phrase was not itself confirmation of his survival. The first officer was referring to the ship and crew as a whole.

  So, steeling herself, Liao took a breath and asked the million-dollar question. “How is J—the captain?”

  A shadow fell across Farah’s face, and Liao felt a clenching in her chest.

  “Well, I honestly can’t say. He received a severe concussion when the Toralii fired their energy weapon at us. The weapon sent a huge shudder through the ship, and he cracked his head on the jump console. Blood everywhere, I’ve never seen anything like it. I had him stretchered out as we were making our run for the jump point. He was admitted three days ago, and to be honest, I just haven’t had time to check in on him. Between the jump, our reactors nearly overloading, severe decompressions scattered across all decks, the irradiation of our food and perishables when reactor four broke containment… we’ve been living from crisis to crisis. I haven’t slept since the battle.”

  Liao nodded. “I know the feeling. We’re here now, t
hough, and we’re going to render whatever assistance we can. And that leads me to my next point.” She straightened her back, giving the other woman a determined look. “With James out of action, the Tehran needs her commanding officer, which at this point is you… and all COs need their rest.” She put a hand on the Persian woman’s shoulder and gave a comradely squeeze. “Our lead engineer will direct the repair teams and take over for your boys, who no doubt will need some rack time as well. There’s nothing more you can do here, so go get some shut-eye before I get my doctor to order you to.”

  Sabeen seemed, for a moment, to be ready to fight Liao's suggestion but then just gave a tired salute, grinning impishly despite it all. “Doctor’s orders, huh? How could I refuse?”

  Liao walked the exhausted woman to the Tehran’s first officer’s quarters, only to find upon arrival that they had been breached during the fighting and had decompressed. A ragged-looking engineer, his face smeared with grease and thick bags under his eyes, informed them that the contents of the room were gone; every possession smaller than a basketball had almost certainly been sucked out of the breach and was at this moment floating in space somewhere near the solar L4 point in the Hades system. That, or being picked over for intelligence by the Toralii survivors.

  So rather than bother the extraordinarily overworked chief of operations for new quarters, Liao simply gave her permission to use Grégoire’s. After all, Liao mused, the man was still in the infirmary, and Liao was not about to let him get back to those quarters any time soon. The moment he was well enough to move, she was going to drag him back to the Beijing to “recover.”

  With the Tehran’s first officer safely tucked into bed, the memories of her last argument with James—and the termination of their “arrangement”—weighed heavily on Liao’s conscience. For a moment, she almost reconsidered even seeing him, but that was a passing weakness; she forced down those thoughts as she walked towards the Tehran’s infirmary. Yes, she had broken it off with him, and yes she was still angry at him for the way he had interfered with her career, interfered with her judgement, and compromised his own tactical reasoning because of her. And she told herself, over and over, that it would take more than one of his infamous post-playtime back rubs to make things completely better in that regard.

  But the thought of losing James permanently significantly outweighed the anger she felt at his noble but misguided gesture. He had merely been attempting to do the right thing by her, and while she despised this kind of interference in her life, she understood why he had done it. After all, in the aftermath of the battle, she had tried to jump back to save James. And while Iraj eventually agreed with her assessment, she knew in her heart that she had done the right thing but for the wrong reasons.

  As her boots clicked along the hallway, she tried over and over to convince herself that this was only a temporary lack of judgement and that she would not make the same mistake again.

  Stopping outside the infirmary, Liao mulled over her course of action. She would have to talk to Grégoire, yes, but she should have a plan. She spent some time playing through the various hypothetical possibilities until she settled on one she found appealing. She decided that she would appear initially professional but a little angry and then, after a small amount of time had passed, would broach the subject of forgiveness… which she would make him earn. Her dignity would be satisfied. Her point, that both she and Grégoire had to keep their professionalism despite everything, would come across loud and clear, and they could resume where they had left off.

  But the moment she stepped into the sickbay and saw James lying flat on a surgical bed, the plan she’d carefully formulated in her mind flew away like a flock of chickens bursting free of an open coop.

  “James?”

  She fought hard to keep her emotions in check, but it was basically useless; already she could feel thin trails of tears spilling down her cheeks, tumbling towards her chin like little raindrops. Unable to keep her fingers from trembling, Melissa reached out for his hand, taking it and squeezing.

  His forehead was bandaged, and it was clear from the dull, dopey look in his eyes that he was heavily medicated. He turned towards her, cracking a smile and blinking groggily.

  “We-e-ell, now… heh. Now I know I’m dead because there’s an angel by my bed poised to take me away.”

  Melissa gave a childish, happy snort, her lips curling up in a relieved smile. She casually dabbed her cheeks with her sleeve to dry them. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t before, but I’m very glad to see you. Regarding the presence or absence of divine beings who may or may not watch over us and protect us, after that last battle, I might change my mind. Only divine intervention could have gotten us out of that mess.”

  She gave a relieved sigh, even managing the beginnings of a playful chuckle despite the tears trickling down her face. “Well, it’s good to see that at least your sense of humour managed to make it back to the jump point with the rest of you.” A light smile formed on her face, and Liao let it play over her lips for a bit. “Additionally, despite any angelic qualities I may possess, and despite the fact that I may, on occasion, have made you shout ‘Oh God!’ I’m no angel.”

  “No angel, huh? Well… I dunno. See, I have a theory that heaven is meant to be a paradise. However, it wouldn’t be a paradise if you weren’t there with me. So, well, no matter what you do, you’re coming along with me when I croak. Although,” the man gestured towards her hip, “I kind of expected a ‘naughty schoolgirl’ uniform, or cheerleader’s outfit, or maybe something in black with a riding crop.”

  “Well, if things aren’t perfect for you, maybe this isn’t a paradise after all. Maybe you’re in hell, and I’m here to torture you.”

  James chuckled, closing his eyes for a moment and slowly shaking his head. “Well, you’d just have a bigger riding crop if that were the case. But to be honest… I’m not sure if that’s as terrible as I make it out to be. Maybe I might like that. Riding crop, huh?”

  She repressed an extremely inappropriate giggle, instead choosing to dab at her cheeks and the corners of her eyes again. “I’ll remember that. Next resupply run, I promise. I’ll slip something into the CO2 scrubbers.”

  There was a long silence broken only by the soft beeping of various machines as the two regarded each other, saying nothing, her hand holding his. The two enjoyed a moment in time where words were mutually, silently, declared unnecessary.

  When finally it ended, Melissa struggled to keep the tremor out of her voice.

  “Dammit, James, I thought you’d gone and gotten yourself killed back there. You fucking dick. Do you know how frightened I was?”

  He smiled warmly, squeezing the woman’s hand. “Oh, don’t worry. I thought I was fucked too, especially when Sabeen had me stretchered away. But it turns out we made it after all. I was wrong.” His smile faded, although the pressure on her hand did not. “I’ve been wrong about a few things lately.”

  She shook her head, firmly and resolutely, her fingers gripping his and returning the squeeze in earnest. “James… don’t. Just don’t say it. You don’t need to—”

  “No, it’s important. It’s important to me. I’m sorry I tried to… interfere with your career. I know, I know… well intentioned and all, but those are the pavings on the road to hell. I mean… I know that… well, at least, I imagine that… that you’ve had it a little rough in the love and romance department. You must have had it up to your neck with people fawning over you, doing you favours… sycophants, suck-ups, and arse-kissers everywhere you turn. I know that the situation in China for pretty, smart, upwardly mobile young women is one part awesome, one part terrifying, but believe me… it was never my intention to hurt you or to offend you in any wa—”

  Melissa leaned down and put her lips to his, closing her eyes and cutting off the words she didn’t need to hear. It was some time before their lips finally parted. When she finally, after some time, brok
e the kiss, she straightened her back and brushed down her uniform. A glance around sickbay revealed a small group of doctors and nurses clustered around their patients or burying their noses in their charts, all trying their best—with limited success—to pretend they hadn’t seen anything.

  “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.”

  She grinned in return. “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 short laugh, and when it faded, silence once again reigned between them, a moment or two of blissful quiet.

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

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

  She 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.”

  She 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.”

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

  Melissa 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. Rowe 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 Liao looked over the reassembled Forerunner. She gave it 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 wherever 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.

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

  “As if 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 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 Rowe 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 Rowe 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, and 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?”

  Rowe shook her head. “Nope. Not without activating its jump drive within a jump point.” She grinned impishly. “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 folded 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 anymore. Besides, there are 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, I have no plans to jump anything from the inside of my ship.”

  Rowe 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 Rowe'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 Rowe 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 they were being used for something scientific rather than the video games she occasionally spotted Rowe playing on them.

  “Saara?”

  The Toralii 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, folding her hands 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 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 belonged to one of the junior engineers, Lieutenant Xi.

  Liao nodded, despite the lieutenant being completely unable to see the action, and then held the key 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 returning to the insanity, the chaos that in her life passed as “normal.”

  Mostly that was Rowe's fault.

  Liao 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 the buck ultimately 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, ideally, putting Rowe's work on the Forerunner to use… that or blowing the device to smithereens if Rowe 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