Lacuna: Demons of the Void Page 20

  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.

  “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.”