by Adams, David
Liao tilted her head, caught by something Garn said. “You have constructs aboard your ships? Artificial intelligences?”
Garn frowned in confusion. [“Of course,”] he answered. [“Verily, they are common amongst the spacefaring peoples. Thou dost not employ them?”]
Liao shook her head firmly. “We don’t, no. And after recent events, I expect that will remain so for some time.”
Garn hopped up onto the chair of the navigation console.
[“A shame. The artificial intelligence has proven to be a valuable ally to my people–may I touch this?”]
The Kel-Voran male had his finger over one of the buttons on the console, which would incinerate the day’s garbage and dump the ashes from the rear of the ship.
Liao gave a low chuckle. “It’s our garbage disposal. It’s not a critical system, so as long as you promise not to touch any other buttons, you may.”
With an amount of glee Liao found fascinating, Garn pressed the small red button. It lit up, then after a few seconds blinked and switched off.
[“Amazing.”]
“Is it?”
The Kel-Voranian man, shorter than the consoles, hopped off the chair. [“Verily. We do not use this system of inputs. All our commands art stored in a tree; top to bottom, with each branch becoming more specialized. This doth allow us to give commands to our vessels rapidly and without error.”]
He grinned at her. [“But thy species doth have a good notion, too.”]
Liao smiled. “It’s worked well for us so far, but let’s not get distracted with tours.” She gestured to the hatchway that lead to her office, opening it with a soft groan of metal.
The Kel-Voran laughed, following her inside. [“Then let us get straight to the business of war! I like thy direct attitude; thou art all I’ve been told and more, Captain Liao!”]
She closed the door and sat behind her desk. She let Garn sit, then folded her arms in front of her. “You’re surprisingly calm about all of this,” she observed. “I had heard that the Kel-Voran consider a death in combat to be the most honourable of all, but not even you attack Cenar any more. That your kind, like most species, avoid it.”
Garn laughed, leaping up on top of the chair and standing on it, looking directly into Liao’s eyes. [“We do think that, yes, Captain, and for an age we have avoided Cenar. There is death in combat, yes, but then there is just suicide.”] His visage suddenly twisted, taking on a fierce, primal edge that Liao found mildly disconcerting. [“But oh, Captain, how we’ve longed to spill her blood, to open up that space station and peel back its hull, venting its air to space.”] He snarled, snapping his jaws. [“But it is just too well defended! Eventually, to stop the loss of our ships and personnel, the Council forbade assault on Cenar, and on the Toralii forces as a whole.”]
An eager grin formed on his face. Leaning forward, he put his hands on the edge of her desk, shuffling himself carefully so the chair didn’t slide from underneath him. [“That is, until thou—by chance—appeared before us. The great doombringer, she who makes the impossible trivial.”]
Liao raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t even told you my plan yet,” she said. “You don’t know if it’ll even work.”
Garn lifted waved a hand dismissively. [“Captain, Captain, Captain. Believeth me, whatever plan thou have concocted inside thy fertile mind, I am and remain supremely confident it will work. Thou art the warrior maiden who broke the back of Kor-Vakkar, the steel-hearted killer who burned the Gateway of Eternal Ash to nothing. That system, Captain, used to belong to my people long ago, and the Toralii took it from us. We hath been unable to recapture it for decades, but their defenses were greatly weakened in the wake of thy assault. Eight of our Dreadnoughts appeared a week after thou departed the Gateway’s jump points and now the system doth belong to us again.”]
[“Without their primary resupply and reinforcement point, Toralii systems began falling all over the border sectors. Eight star systems in total, including Kor-Vakkar, have been retaken. We hath almost regained as much territory as we lost in the great war! Thy actions hath conjured great hope amongst my people—hope for a changed tomorrow, for a chance to strike back at the Toralii Alliance who hath verily done us so wrong. We art in thy debt.”]
The Kel-Voranian man flashed her a wild, toothy grin. [“And the Kel-Voran are never debtors for long, Captain. We shall repay thee for thy kindness, even if we must split open our chests in battle by your side, even if we shall burn alive and suffer endlessly to appease you!”]
His bold, wild proclamation was more than Liao was ready to accept. It gave her the impression that–if the man was representative of his species–the Kel-Voran were somewhat more unhinged than she had been led to believe. But she nodded.
“I’m glad to hear that. My people are children when it comes to space exploration. There is so much in our own planet that we still do not truly understand, let alone our own solar system. Fate has given us a chance to reach out towards the stars, even if it came at a great cost to some of our most populated cities, and it is good to have finally met a species who do not want to kill us for simply possessing a piece of technology we did not know was forbidden until we had already developed it.”
[“Agreed. Thou may not be aware of this, but the Kel-Voran have taken an intense interest in your activities. Verily you can see, the stalemate with the Toralii is greatly unpopular among my people. We consider it to be a great insult. The Toralii art the greatest militarily-inclined species we hath ever encountered. They would be our most treasured foe, the most honourable combat, if our Council would but allow us to strike at them. Imagine the glory, Captain, of bombarding the Toralii colonies from orbit, destroying their ships and weapons facilities, wiping their species from the galaxy.”]
A painful clench in her heart reminded Liao of the destruction of Velsharn. The glee Garn painted on his face when unknowingly describing the very act Ben had committed turned her stomach.
Liao was certain genocide was not an appropriate response to the behaviour of the Toralii, and large-scale slaughter was not how she pictured resolving the conflict between their species. She thought of Saara and how treasured a friend she was. If all other Toralii were exterminated from the galaxy, that would leave the Telvan woman alone and childless. Liao thought of the Telvan civilians she had met on Velsharn, such as Qadan, their bodies laying burned beyond recognition on the surface of the planet.
War was a lot less glamorous once you had experienced it.
Worse, she knew Garn’s attitude would find traction on Earth, especially with nations that had been devastated by the Toralii worldshatter devices. After what the aliens, who some still referred to as 'demons,' had done to mankind, reconciliation and peaceful co-existence seemed an impossible dream.
“I would like to think that there is a peace to be had with the Toralii. I think there is enough room in this galaxy for all of us. We just have to find a way to reach that peace amicably.”
Garn gave a dismissive snort, his tone sarcastic and mocking. [“Right, well, verily thou art convinced of the kindness and generosity lurking in the hearts of the Toralii, just waiting for a chance to spring forth and take root in their collective consciousness,”] his visage hardened, [“but truthfully I tell thee, there can be no peace with them. Yes, they gave my people the original voidwarp technology, and they assisted us greatly, but then they interfered. They meddled. They wanted to control what we did with their ‘gift.’ That is not the mark of a civilized society; it is the mark of slavers. That is what they are—slavers. They enslave individual people with chains and electric shock-sticks, and they enslave entire civilizations with gifts of technology hamstrung by impossible conditions. The Toralii, of course, art bound by no restrictions; they use their voidwarp technology freely while denying other species the right to do so. The Toralii possess no great secret to teleportation, Captain. Their devices are no more safe than ours. Or yours.”]
Liao listened, occasionally nodding. “I underst
and. And while that was certainly your experience with them, Humans have discovered that–though initial contact may not be promising between two peoples–eventually a compromise can be worked out.” She gave a low snort. “That, or they annihilate each other.”
Garn’s cyan eyes gleamed at that thought. [“That is what I am talking about—annihilation.”] He gave a slight shrug. [“Never mind.”] He stood back up on his stool, clasping his hands together. [“Truthfully, I doth say, we have enough enemies to share between us. Let us not bicker amongst ourselves over the very distant future, where the situations may well be so fluid we cannot recognise them from this vantage point. Let us set minds to purpose, shall we?”]
Liao nodded, shifting her posture behind her desk. “I agree.” She reached for her notepad and a pen. “I was talking with my XO before I came here–we had a few questions for you, as I’m sure you have many for me.” She tapped her pen on the top of her notepad. “The Dreadnought—your vessel. You said there was a battle, many widows made and so forth. What condition is it in?”
The Kel-Voran gave a low chuckle. [“To be honest with you, Captain, that was merely bluster. The vessel is in pristine condition. We jumped right in the middle of the Toralii assault force. They gave us a chance to surrender, and we knew better than to throw our lives away senselessly. The Kel-Voran love nothing more than an honourable death, Captain, but there is no honour in one-sided slaughter. The scales need not be fairly weighed, but there must be some game in it or we art doing the work of butchers. I wouldn’t be surprised if our ship still has its weapons charged, although they must have separated it into two pieces to jump it.”]
“Separated?”
Garn nodded. [“Yes, Captain. Eighteen hundred Xi–approximately the weight of this ship–is the limit for jump drives. To get around that, our vessel breaks into two halves—each with their own jump drive—which jump separately. The two pieces are reunited on the other side.”]
An interesting approach, one Liao would remember.
“I understand. And you’re certain the ship was impounded in Cenar?”
[“I saw it towed there my own self. The Alliance impound every ship they capture at Cenar—permanently. It will still be there.”]
“And you know where it is?”
[“As precisely as I know where thou art standing, Captain. There is only one dock vast enough to hold a Dreadnought. That is where she’ll be.”]
She nodded. “Then our course is clear. We’ll jump in and dock with the Cenar facility. Once our Marines are inserted, we’ll have one team find your people and fight their way to the Dreadnought. We’ll have the other locate ours and take them back to the Beijing. Then we’ll take both ships and escape at maximum velocity to a distant jump point, then retreat to Earth. Our defensive batteries will cover us from any pursuit.”
Garn bobbed his head as he listened. [“Very well. Thou dost have a sound plan, Captain, but how will you fight your way past the warp point defenses?”]
Liao grinned. “We have an additional attachment to our jump drive—an experimental piece of Toralii technology that will allow us to jump to any place in three dimensional space, regardless of gravimetric interference—and a set of jump coordinates that will take us directly behind the facility. By the time they realize we’re there, we‘ll be well on our way out of range of their defenses and into open space, where we can jump.”
Garn stared at Liao for quite some time. [“Thou dost possess a means to execute the voidwarp device without needing the void points to travel?”]
“In a limited sense, yes, that’s correct. It’s more correct to say that we had this capability. We lost our ability to recalculate jump points that are inside gravity wells, but we aim to regain this ability once we have completed this mission.”
The Kel-Voran nodded thoughtfully. [“And what wilt thou do with this technology once you have it? Wilt thou share it with us? This pilfered technology of yours. Think of it. The means to allow a ship to appear outside the gravity voids. What we could do with that device.”]
Liao hesitated. “I don’t have authorization to do that. Not on my own. It would have to go through Fleet Command before I could authorize anything.”
She had seen enough of the Kel-Voran that she was certain any new technology would be immediately weaponized and turned against the Toralii, and possibly others. That was especially troublesome because the Kel-Voran did not seem to differentiate between the various Toralii factions, such as the moderate Telvan. There was another pressing concern that nagged at the back of her mind.
When the Toralii were exterminated, who would the Kel-Voran turn to next to sate their bloodlust? Who would they then consider their “most mighty foe”?
After all the praise Garn had heaped upon her and humanity, the answer was fairly obvious.
She lowered her notepad. “But I can certainly investigate the prospect.”
Garn, seeming to understand, nodded.
[“Very well, then. When do we begin the operation? I am anxious to retrieve my ship.”]
Liao gave him a tense smile. She suddenly felt uncomfortable being around the Kel-Voranian and resolved to spend as little time as possible with him until the completion of their mission.
“As soon as the Sydney has completed their repairs.”
* * *
Marine Barracks
TFR Beijing
Two days later
Preparations were being made in earnest for their attack, but there was one more thing Liao needed to do before she felt confident assaulting Cenar. She stepped into the Marine barracks, closing the door behind her, then nodded to the Marines who stood at attention.
The closest of them was Lance Corporal Li Tian, the Marine who had been with her when she met Ben on Karathi. Liao nodded to him.
“At ease, Marine. I was just hoping to have a word with Yanmei Cheung if she’s available.”
Tian nodded. “Of course, Captain. I think she’s in Armoury Two, testing out the new weapons we’ve received.”
Giving him a firm nod, Liao walked towards the Marine’s armoury. Moving past the soundproofed blast shield, she was immediately assaulted by the loud, repeated cracking of some kind of intense explosion. She clapped her hands over her ears, watching as Yanmei Cheung test-fired their new field weapon.
The Toralii Marines wore armoured spacesuits that were not only sealed against gasses and decompression, but also hardened against the kinetic weapons—such as firearms—Human forces used. Only their joints and the visor covering their faces seemed to be vulnerable to weapon fire. When the Toralii had boarded the Beijing, the Humans had momentarily gained an upper hand by increasing the gravity on the ship–this was a trick they could only pull on their home turf, however. Liao was concerned their small-arms wouldn’t be sufficient to overcome the Toralii armour. Based on the handful of armoured suits they had captured after the battle, she had requested new weapons be developed and provided to them that could reliably penetrate the Toralii defenses.
The Sydney had jumped back to Earth to retrieve a smattering of parts for their repairs and to check in with Fleet Command, and the ship had returned with a surprise. Cleaning and cycling delays prevented the weapons being issued to them earlier, but they were ready for the operation on Cenar. One Broadsword full of the new firearms had awaited the Sydney at the jump point. Now that Yanmei had them in her eager little hands, Liao was equally eager to see them in action.
Yanmei stopped firing, and Liao gingerly eased her hands away from her ears.
“Loud, aren’t they?” Cheung called, unplugging her earplugs and grinning at her Captain.
Liao nodded.
“Too loud,” she said. “I hope the assault teams will be wearing ear protection.”
“It’s mandatory, as you can imagine. According to R&D in Hong Kong, they’re working on reducing the audio profile of the weapon, but it’s hard when we’re dealing with this kind of firepower. Since we can just put in earplugs, this was triaged so
we could have them on time.”
Liao gestured to the bulky weapon. “And what exactly is it?”
Cheung had a wide, eager grin stamped on her face that reminded Liao of Summer when she was given a new toy to play with. She mused that perhaps the redheaded engineer had more in common with the Marine than either woman would be comfortable admitting.
“They call it the 大胡子龙.”
“The Bearded Dragon,” Liao translated, almost subconsciously. The English-only rule of the Task Force was one that she took very seriously.
“That’s right. An automatic grenade launcher, firing ten-millimetre armour-piercing rounds by default, but it can be loaded with all manner of fun ammunition. Explosive, smoke, gas, non-lethal, signal flare, air-burst—you name it, we have it. Each magazine holds eight shots, each Marine carries five magazines. We’re not certain, but a single shot should be enough firepower to breach the Toralii suits and take one down—assuming it’s a good hit. Recoil’s a bitch, though, despite the hydraulic compensators, and it’s heavy as a rock. And, well, you already noticed how loud it is.”
Liao nodded. “That’s some good news,” she remarked, nodding. “Excellent work. I want the Marines that go into Cenar to have these, but pack submachine guns just in case.”
“Of course, Captain.”
Liao hesitated. She wanted to ask Yanmei more questions, but she couldn’t find the right way to express them.
“Captain?”
“Do you think this will be enough?” Liao pointed at the bulky weapon in Cheung’s grip. “The guns, the advantage of surprise; do you think it will be enough to successfully attack Cenar?”
Cheung shrugged absently, lowering the weapon and placing it on the table in front of her. “Who knows?”
Liao couldn’t help but look at Yanmei’s pitted and scarred arm. She chuckled at her comment, raising an eyebrow. “You don’t know? Doesn’t that worry you, or make you question why you’re doing this?”
