by David Adams
It was a very interesting set of problems. “Maybe we need to start with… with something a little simpler. Toning down our now-antiquated national boundaries. There’s no China anymore. There’s no United States or EU or anything like that. We are all Humans. That’s all.”
“I think that’s a noble ambition. I’m not sure everyone will be on board with it initially.”
“The Chinese will be the hardest,” she said. Might as well get that out there first. “Americans have a strong national identity but it’s one that’s built on an artificial country made from the blood of the world; Chinese culture is heavily influenced by the Han ideal. Every beauty store in China, without fail, stocks skin-whitening cream. White skin is the ideal. There’s even a saying: ‘A woman can be ugly, as long as her skin is white.’ It’s crazy.” A sly grin spread over her face. “I never really agreed with that.”
James grinned back. “You don’t say.”
“Fortunately, you have a lot more going for you than your skin colour.”
He snickered. “Feel free to tell me more about how attractive I am.”
She wanted to. She wanted to tell James how much he meant to her, but the words stuck in her throat. All she could think of were the burns on her face and body and her metal arm. He couldn’t love a half machine, half woman, could he?
James’s expression changed, becoming more reserved. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s just you and me to the end, right?”
“You and me and the railguns,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “That’s how it’s going to be.”
“It is.” James’s sincerity was clear and forceful, but no matter how hard she tried, there were doubts.
A device on James’s belt beeped. He read it, a frown crossing his features. “I should go,” he said. “Work, work.”
She wanted to ask about Scarecrow, but Keller had been clear. “Take care,” she said, suddenly wishing he could stay longer.
“I will.”
And then she was alone again.
She slept, woke, and then slept again—sixteen hours. When she woke again, she had a new visitor, Captain Anderson, his United States Navy uniform clean and well attended, grey hair stained green through the liquid. Despite his hair, Anderson always looked younger than she expected—his tan face had retained a youthful visage that Liao found remarkable—but she could have sworn the months had treated him like years. It was visible around his eyes. Something had been his burden.
He seemed to study her with a quiet intensity that Liao did not understand.
“Good morning,” he said, his quiet American Southern accent seeming to reverberate in the med-bay. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“No apologies are necessary,” she said, strange as it was to be coming back to consciousness on her feet. Waking up while standing was something she had grown accustomed to. “I’ve been waiting to talk to you for some time. I assume there’s a good reason for instructing Keller not to talk to me about the Scarecrow.”
“You asked her, I presume?” He inhaled, letting the breath out slowly. “I’ll be honest, Captain Liao, this had nothing at all to do with you and everything to do with Captain Williams.”
Liao presumed he meant Captain Mike Williams of the TFR Rubens. “I’m listening. What does he have to do with all this?”
“Well, the Rubens under Captain Williams was involved in privateering operations against the Toralii Alliance. Their record was impressive. I haven’t had an opportunity to review the log yet, but my understanding is that they engaged and destroyed over thirty enemy vessels. And one friendly.”
“The Scarecrow,” she surmised. She felt the dark stab in her gut that military personnel frequently felt when discussing fratricide. “These things are bound to happen.”
“Agreed. Captain Williams was operating on a skeleton crew. Most of them are, or were, pilots of various qualifications. They took turns flying CAP. It was Williams’s turn when the Scarecrow appeared, squawking no IFF, and was destroyed as a target of opportunity. It crashed on the surface of a moon we have named Perth. There were no survivors.”
Williams had made a call—the wrong call. She had been in those boots. Command required a decisiveness of action such that every decision was gambling with lives. So far, she had not been faced with a serious mistake of that nature.
So far.
“He okay?” she asked.
“I’ve spoken to Captain Williams about this incident. I’m confident in his operational capacity.”
There was something in his tone that Liao found overly formal, even for Anderson, and she knew. Williams wasn’t okay. Yet… neither was Anderson. She couldn’t put her finger on why.
“Very well,” she said. “So it’s a salvage operation.”
“Correct,” said Anderson. “The craft is a lost cause. It’s what they were carrying that’s valuable—valuable enough for the Toralii to dedicate a pair of cruisers to guard it. At least, they did until the Knight led them away. It took them a while to bite our bait, but they have.”
Liao narrowed her eyes. “We’re not near Velsharn, are we?”
“No.” Anderson folded his hands. “Saeed doesn’t want me telling you this. He thinks you need to rest. Unfortunately, so does he, and while he’s asleep, I’m going to fill you in.” He took a deep breath. “The Alliance cruisers are chasing the Knight. They’ve left Scarecrow undefended. Our window is limited. We need to land, retrieve the cargo, and get the hell out of here. The Washington is escorting the Rubens to her final jump point before they make the attempt. Unfortunately, you’re along for the ride.”
That made no sense. “What could the Scarecrow possibly be carrying that would justify risking so many fleet assets?”
Hesitant, as though sharing the great burden that was upon him, Anderson locked eyes with her. “The end.”
Perhaps she had not heard him correctly. “The… end?”
Penny punched in the commands on her console as Mike—No no, “Captain Williams”—touched a key on the command console and issued the order to prepare for jump.
She had expected the jump process to be dramatic, even spectacular—moving from one whole solar system to another was an incredible feat of engineering power that could only inspire awe—but instead, it was entirely mundane. The ship’s radar was momentarily a field of static, and then as the first pulse went out, everything slowly returned to normal—smooth, subtle, imperceptible, just like the hand of God.
The only thing bothering her was the light—the strange hues flooding the room, an alarm tone fading away as the ship’s systems recovered. Light in the ultraviolet spectrum. Her prosthetic eyes struggled to translate the feedback into a sane format. Processing a new colour was a unique experience—it could not be imagined, only experienced. It was as though she could see the world through a black light. A strange, lurid, out-of-place sheen lit things up in a strange, otherworldly hue. It was opalescence, every spectrum at once, depending on how it was viewed, and every surface shimmered slightly.
She had adjusted quickly—the initial headaches and nausea had faded to a dull roar—but it was still disconcerting. Captain Williams had tried to remove as much of the ultraviolet light as possible, but Toralii used purple and ultraviolet as warning colours, presumably because their blood was purple, in the same way Humans used red as warning.
“Jump complete,” she said.
“Excellent, Ensign.” Williams gave her a just-a-little-more-than-entirely-professional smile. She just-a-little-more-than-entirely-professionally smiled back.
Would this be a problem in the future, them working together? Maybe. She had considered the problem. Would Mike be strong enough to be only ‘Captain Williams’?
Would she?
Shaba spoke up. “Mags, we’re in position. Holding at the Perth-L2 Lagrange point.”
Lieutenant Rachel “Shaba” Kollek. Penny had, for some time, hated her from afar—hated her because she was so lovable. Who wouldn’t l
ove her? She was pretty, smart, trilingual… a gifted pilot and working closely with Captain Williams—intimately, even.
And she had sharp eyesight.
Penny knew pilots were randy individuals, and Captain Williams’s deployment often took him away from her for months at a time. She had accepted, on some level, that Shaba and her husband would have probably shacked up at some point. When Captain Williams had returned from one mission, guilt ridden and depressed, she had expected the worst and steeled herself to receive it.
Her fears, though, were not to be. Her then-boyfriend had instead accidentally shot down a friendly gunship, the Scarecrow—in that very system, no less.
“Launch the CAP,” ordered Captain Williams. “Long-range scout. I want pings to sweep the planetary system. Make sure there’s nothing hiding on the other side of this moon or in the planet’s shadow. Prep the ship for emergency egress if we detect anything Toralii.”
“Aye aye,” said Shaba. “CAP away.”
Over the time of their deployment, Penny had come to love Shaba as a sister and felt intensely guilty whenever she thought of her past suspicions. It wasn’t fair to either of them: they had both been silently accused of something they hadn’t done. She disliked having doubted.
Her console lit up, chasing away the pesky thoughts. She scanned it, drinking in the huge volume of information presented to her. Getting her sight back was truly an odd experience. In the beginning, the world was awash with colour, and everything she saw was blurry, indistinct, and overly saturated by brightness. Nothing made sense as a shape or a face or anything recognisable. Existence was just bright splatterings of light.
Initially, it was thought to be a problem with the eyes and an incompatibility between Toralii and Human biology, but a review of the direct feed showed it was normal. Instead, it was how her brain perceived the image.
She found closing one eye helped. Penny knew that many of the seemingly natural qualities of everyday vision were not innate but instead learnt through experience. She had not always been blind, but so many years of sightlessness had moulded her brain a certain way. Stereo vision—which required the eyes to combine the two slightly different images that they receive into a single, sharp percept—became a foreign concept. When one had fingers for eyes, a shape did not become smaller as it went farther away. This was an entirely rational concept for someone who couldn’t see: a held box did not change “size” when brought close or held at arm’s length.
Adjusting had taken time. Fortunately, a flat console full of lights presented little difficulty to her.
“No communications,” she said. “Nothing on any frequency. Only static.”
“Any sign of the cruisers? Or a Forerunner?”
“Nothing, Mags,” said Shaba. “Though that doesn’t mean shit. Those things have the same thermal profile as a comet and send out signals irregularly. There could be fifty of the bastards here, and we wouldn’t know from this distance.”
Nobody seemed to object to Shaba swearing, nor her referring to Captain Williams by his call sign, which she did from time to time. Penny knew the rest of the fleet wasn’t like that, and given they were married, erring on the side of caution was better. Williams had told her several times he preferred informality in Operations, something that wasn’t common elsewhere, but swearing still made her squirm.
God would forgive her, she reasoned. God would forgive them all. It was just a word.
Time ticked away. The waiting was the worst part for her. Every other member of the crew seemed content with letting time pass, but Penny’s eyes were stuck on the clock, watching time pass impossibly slowly. One hour. Two. Three. The only interruptions were the occasional reports from the Broadswords and Wasps.
“Any sign of contacts?” asked Williams, more often than he usually did.
“No,” said Shaba. Her eyes met Penny’s briefly, subtly communicating this strange, repeated request. Fortunately, Shaba had more guts. “Captain,” she said. “What are waiting for?”
If Shaba was calling him ‘Captain,’ that meant something. Instead of looking at Shaba, though, Captain Williams spoke to Penny.
“I have a contact with the Kel-Voran,” he said. “I dropped her a word. She might be able to help us with this particular problem.”
Shaba groaned audibly. “Hatichat hara mizdayen batachat, surely you don’t mean…”
“I do mean,” he said to her and once again turned to Penny. “Someone we did a favour for a while back—a special mission, delivering her a new husband. She gives us intel every now and then. When Avaran showed up, thinking we had taken Belthas IV… she told us he was on the move. That’s how we knew to come back to Earth.”
“We’re meeting a Kel-Voran?” Penny shuffled in her seat. “I’ve never seen one up close before.”
“If all things go well, you might just get your chance. Otherwise, I guess we’ll have to just do this ourselves.”
“Can we do that?”
“Sure,” said Williams. Penny got the distinct impression she was missing something important. “It’s our technology. The Scarecrow is—was—a Broadsword. Just a regular ship.” He looked down at his console. “It’s what it’s carrying that’s special.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, and despite the probing eyes of the rest of the Operations crew, simply continued staring at his command console.
Time ticked away. Her shift ended, and Penny left to take a few hours’ rest. The ship would have to sail on to the L1 point, and if anyone needed her, they could patch through communications to her quarters. Rest would sharpen her focus. She was used to dealing with very young children and sleeping in shifts, so a nice four-hour block was just perfect.
Still, when she returned to duty, her eyes itched, her back was sore, and her headache—fortunately now a background rumble—returned.
Stress, it seemed, would still aggravate the issues with the implants. She put the discomfort out of her mind. This was her first real mission, and the crew would need her.
Operations was as quiet as when she left. The replacement—a fresh-faced lieutenant transferred from the Madrid—stepped away from her console. He looked in her eyes and then away, too quickly.
It seemed she wasn’t the only one still having to do some adjustment.
“Any word, Lieutenant?” she asked the man.
“None, Ensign. The system is dead quiet.”
That was exactly what she wanted to hear. “Any thing from third parties? Any communications at all?”
“None.” He stood. “I stand relieved, Ensign.”
Penny took her position at the console. The rest of the shift filed back in, some refreshed by a quick nap, others more tired.
“Any contacts, Ensign Williams?” asked Captain Williams, taking the command console. “Especially from our friend?”
She was about to answer no as her console lit up—an incoming jump contact, followed closely by a radio signal. “Incoming transmission,” she said.
“Speak of the devil,” grumbled Captain Williams.
Penny touched a button to open the channel. A voice greeted them, synthetic as though generated by computer, but also rich and feminine, carrying an overdone femme-fatale tone. “Oh Captain Williams, how glad I am to be so close to you again. It warms my body from the tip of my snout to the bottom of my toes. How are you, my darling?”
Captain Williams shifted his weight from foot to foot, fiddling with the transmit key. In the past, his nervousness might have worried her, but she was just amused.
“She has a thing for me,” said Williams over his shoulder. “It’s just a way for us to… remain good friends.”
Penny didn’t say anything, a ghost of a smile on her lips.
“There’s nothing happening,” said Williams. “I promise. She’s a Kel-Voran.”
Penny still continued to say nothing, smile widening. She tapped a key to transfer the call to the command console but, quite deliberately, left i
t open for herself.
Williams sighed and slipped on a headset, focused a moment with his eyes closed, took a deep breath, and forced an overly-wide smile. “Good evening, Matron El’vass Helvhara the Stoic! How lovely to hear your voice, as always.”
“Yours is ambrosia to me,” she said, practically purring into the earpiece, a subtle nuance in tone that whatever synthetic vocal translator she was using had obviously been programmed with. “When can I convince you to come and marry me as well, my dear?”
Quiet snickering echoed around Operations, and Penny joined in.
Williams gritted his teeth although his words remained as sweet as ever. “Oh I would, you gorgeous little thing, but I’m already married.”
“So you keep saying,” said Helvhara, dismissal creeping in. “You say that as though it were not a problem fixable with a payment to your father. Is your bride so poor she cannot afford such a thing? I have many resources. I can arrange to pay for your freedom… on certain conditions, of course.”
No prizes for guessing what those were. Penny snickered quietly. The reaction around Operations was much the same from the rest of the crew.
“Alas,” said Captain Williams, eyes rolling back in his head. “It just won’t be possible today. We do, however, require a little help with something…”
“Work, work, always with work!” Helvhara sighed dramatically over the line. “Why is it always something else for you, my dear? We came to your aid against the Toralii bastards and claimed many heads in the great battle above Velsharn, but why are you not happy? Our ships help protect you, our soldiers help you exterminate the remaining Toralii filth, and our jump inhibitors help protect your systems. You are safe, safe as anyone can be in this galaxy, and yet you continue to slave away for masters who do not appreciate you!” Her tone became sultry again. “Does Commander Liao not appreciate your ‘masculine service’?”
