Lacuna: The Spectre of Oblivion

by David Adams

  “Restoring gravity,” said Jiang, tapping at her keyboard.

  Liao felt gravity return, using the console to steady herself as she floated back down. “Report! Jump drive status?” Her tone conveyed her displeasure, her gaze locked on Rowe, the grip on her console as tight as iron.

  “Cooling, Captain. It got a little heated, but it should be ready to jump again shortly. Eight hundred degrees Kelvin... seven hundred, dropping.” Summer pushed back her seat, giving a loud, relieved sigh. “Whatever happened, it looks like it was just a temporary glitch. It was probably the alien thingy, or maybe the damn thing just wanted to go somewhere, then changed its mind. The Sydney had a similar issue during their shakedown cruise… It could be a glitch in the system that we’re only just now starting to see. Maybe it’s the new jump drive or some manufacturing flaw.”

  Closing her eyes a moment, Liao reached up and dragged her hand down her face. “Find out what the hell happened,” she ordered, straightening her back and folding her arms in front of her chest. “If my ship is going to spontaneously start to jump without my express authorisation, then just as spontaneously stop, I want to know exactly what’s going on. Disassemble the whole jump assembly and examine it piece by piece. Audit the system code line-by-line if you have to. I want answers, and I want them as soon as you can get them to me.”

  Rowe gave a nod. “Aye aye, Captain. We’ll start looking into it immediately.”

  Liao stepped over to Rowe’s engineering workstation, leaning over the woman’s shoulder. The two read the scrolling text on the computer monitor which Liao only understood a fraction of but which Summer seemed to comprehend, nodding occasionally in thought.

  The incident nagged at her. It felt wrong, and she knew—somehow knew—that this was no ordinary system glitch. Jump drives didn’t just spin up, then just as suddenly power down. A million possibilities swirled through her mind. Was it Ben’s influence, or the Iilan, or their strange device, or interference from Majev-tor? Or was it just, as Summer said, some kind of glitch?

  But perhaps that wasn’t it. Yes, the events were suspicious, but that wasn’t it. There was something else that was eating at her, gnawing at the back of her mind, drawing her attention away from the scrolling diagnostic text and forcing her mind to other things. It was like having the name of a song on the tip of her tongue, hearing its melody in her head and reproducing its tune, but being unable to articulate its name.

  Then the question and the answer jumped into her head, fully formed.

  “Allison,” she murmured.

  Summer twisted in her seat, raising a curious eyebrow. “Hmm?”

  Liao smiled down to her chief engineer. “Sorry, just thinking aloud.” She paused. “Do you like that name? Allison?”

  The redhead stared at her as though she were crazy. “Sure, it’s nice I, uhh, I guess... Why?”

  Liao’s smile grew, and she slid one hand to Rowe’s shoulder, the other gently resting by her side, the tips of her fingers playing with the fabric of her uniform. “For my girl,” she answered, “I think I’ve picked out her name. I’ll have to check with James first, of course, but…”

  Rowe shrugged and went back to work while Liao felt her eyes drawn to the external monitoring viewer which displayed an image of the stars outside. She had seen such a view countless times, of course, but for some reason at this particular moment, she felt drawn to it.

  She stared at the view, her warm smile remaining, as though some missing piece of the puzzle that was her life had just slotted into place. The nagging feeling immediately faded away to nothing, leaving her with a sense of completeness and serenity that outstripped any comparable feeling she’d had in her lifetime.

  Allison. She would name her child Allison.

  *****

  Operations

  One hour later

  “We figured out what it was.” Rowe jabbed a finger down at the box. “The device. It emits the same kind of radiation that our jump drive does, but much, much stronger. It’s like shining a floodlight on a shadow puppet show—the device’s radiation blocks the way the jump drive works at a fundamental level that I could explain, but I know you’d just get mad and yell at me if I tried.”

  Liao listened as Rowe spoke. “Correct. How did you discover it was the device?”

  “Basically, we found fluctuations in the jump drive’s power consumption. The closer we brought it to the jump drive, the worse the fluctuations got. So we figure it’s screwing it up.”

  “Okay,” said Liao, “how do we fix it?”

  “We can’t,” Summer replied, “but we can move it to the bow of the ship and stick it in a Faraday cage. That should keep its influence on the jump drive to a minimum.”

  Liao considered. “Do it,” she said, “and make sure we get the jump drive working as soon as possible. The Iilan will be wondering why we haven’t jumped out yet.”

  “Well, that, or they’re chuckling to themselves, knowing that our jump drive will be screwed up.” Rowe tapped her finger on her console. “Guess we know it works though.”

  “Yeah, a little too well if you ask me.” Liao looked to the door. “Go. Fix my ship.”

  Summer grinned and skipped out of Operations, and Liao was left to her command console, left to the huge wall of nothing that ever so slowly grew out to meet them.

  Allison…

  She was aware of Iraj looking over her shoulder, but she didn’t say anything, the two of them staring at the monitor intently.

  *****

  Operations

  TFR Beijing

  A day later

  Everything was ready. The plans were made, the pieces in place. The Beijing hovered in the Mars-Phobos L1 Lagrange point waiting for the very last signal to be given so their operation could begin.

  Liao hadn’t discussed the name with James, so focused was she on the upcoming battle, but she would talk to him the moment they had some free time.

  The Sydney had not reappeared. This fact, now of growing concern to Liao, caused her some degree of worry. They had agreed to wait until the final jump preparations to discount the ship’s presence, a time which had now arrived.

  “Ready to jump the ship. Artificial gravity coming off in three, two, one… mark.”

  Liao gripped the jump console tightly, using it to steady herself as the gravity faded away. She felt her feet float off the floor, the old familiar feeling of sickness in her gut as her body protested the lack of familiar gravity keeping it down. “Mister Hsin, inform the fleet that we’re about to jump and confirm the jump order.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.” Hsin spoke into his headset, making several rapid calls, then turned back to her. “The Tehran confirms that, immediately following our jump, they’re going to be right behind us, so we need to vacate that jump point as quickly as possible. Receiving word from the Kel-Voran; they’re ready for their jump, the Telvan for theirs, and… the Toralii Alliance ships also report that the way is clear. Once we’ve disabled Ben’s ship, the route to Belthas IV will be clear.”

  Liao repositioned herself, using her grip to keep her position as level as possible. “Very good. Let’s do it then.”

  Iraj floated next to her, his own key in hand. He leaned in to speak, his voice quiet so nobody would hear him above the murmur of the Operations crew. “I didn’t get a chance to say so before, but… it’s good to have you back, Captain.”

  She gave him a relieved smile. “It’s good to be back. And… it’s good to have your support, Kamal. Thank you.”

  “You know I’ve got your back, Captain. Besides, in my mind, this is your ship, your first child. Nobody should take it from you.”

  “Thank you.”

  She took a breath, then the two inserted their twin keys into the jump console, a large black board covered in a variety of blue lights. Liao stuck her key in the left hand slot and Kamal inserted his to the right.

  “Executing jump.”

  She turned the key with a satisfying click, and the shi
p leapt across the stars, to war.

  Chapter XI

  “Murphy’s Law”

  *****

  Operations

  TFR Beijing

  Belthas system

  The Beijing appeared in open space at the Belthas IV L1 Lagrange point surrounded by the dust of the Toralii Alliance fleet, the ghosts of so many ships ground up and distributed in an ever-expanding sphere. The dust had mostly dissipated from the jump point, so their arrival was as ghostly and quiet as typical jump arrivals, with no indication from Operations that anything had happened at all.

  Liao’s feet kissed the ground as the gravity was restored. “Report,” she said, glancing to Ling expectedly.

  “Jump complete, Captain. No vessels in our immediate vicinity. Launching strike craft and gunships.”

  “Good,” she said, “now get us the hell out of here. Clear the jump point so the Tehran can come in behind us.”

  Dao was already on it, his fingers working over his console before Liao had finished speaking. Immediately, the ship moved forward, sliding out of the jump point and into the faint dust of the Toralii fleet’s remains.

  Liao watched the waves of the radar system slowly reach out over the planet, its moon, the debris field of the best of the Toralii Alliance which was reduced to powder.

  The radar found nothing bigger than wreckage the size of a car.

  “Captain,” said Ling, “the Tehran has appeared in the jump point. They’re clearing the jump point now. Still no contacts.”

  “Any sign of the Sydney?”

  It was hoped, somewhat fruitlessly, that the Sydney would be waiting for them in the Belthas system.

  “Negative, Captain. No sign of the Sydney in radar range.”

  Liao nodded to Ling. “Very well, looks like we’re doing this one on our own. Keep an eye out for them. If Ben doesn’t want to show his face, I guess we’ll press on to Belthas IV and wait. He’s bound to appear at some point.” Liao tapped her foot impatiently. Where the hell was Ben?

  The radar waves moved beyond the planetary system. Nothing bounced back at them except the Kel-Voran fleet appearing at the L2 Lagrange point, and the Telvan fleet at L4.

  The L5 Lagrange point, where the Toralii Alliance fleet was expected to appear, was completely empty.

  “Mister Ling, confirm that there are no contacts at L5.”

  “Confirming that, Captain. Nothing at all.”

  The worried feeling she had in the pit of her stomach grew stronger. “Well, there goes over half of our attacking force, straight off the bat.”

  Iraj frowned, looking at his monitors. “Maybe they are just delayed.”

  “They were supposed to jump out right after us, what could be keeping them?”

  He shrugged. “We won’t know; let’s just hope they show up.”

  Liao frowned darkly, looking back to her own set of monitors. “We’re doing far too much of that for my liking.”

  The ships journeyed on, and Liao continued to study the long-range radar. After a time, Jiang glanced over her shoulder, catching Liao’s attention.

  “Captain, I was thinking. It’s possible the Giralan’s hiding in the shadow of the planet, or possibly behind the moon.”

  “Then it’s a double blind situation. We can’t see him but he can’t see us.” It was a pretty large assumption, but Humans were a species evolved to find patterns in everything: a tiger in the bush, causes of rain, causes of natural disasters, why the sun rose every day. It was this pattern recognition device that allowed Humans to see patterns in things that were difficult to otherwise spot, but it was a flawed device. The rate of false positives was absurdly high, because the penalty for incorrectly identifying a pattern, such as tiger stripes against bamboo, wasn’t high… but a false negative meant that you died. So there was an incentive to favour false positives over false negatives.

  Liao suddenly remembered what Ben had told her, how he valued this mechanism, the one that allowed Humans to be wrong, to error, and through their mistakes discover something new.

  Was there a pattern she had missed here?

  The Tehran and the Beijing ships moved into formation, side by side, moving across the empty void towards Belthas IV.

  “Mister Hsin, patch me into the strike fleet.”

  A few taps of a keyboard and it was done.

  “This is Captain Liao. Status reports as follows: the Beijing and the Tehran have arrived and are en-route to Belthas IV. No sign of the Sydney as of this time.”

  There as a significant delay as the message was relayed to the L4 Lagrange point and back. [“This is Nalu. Captain, we see no sign of the Toralii Alliance. The L5 is clear.”]

  “Perhaps the Alliance ships misjumped. Can you relay a message to Vrald’s ship, see if they can see them?”

  The Kel-Voranians were out of direct communication with a planet between them. After some time, Vrald snarled into the line. [“More likely those cowards turned tail and ran!”] He bellowed with laughter, the noise loud enough that Liao’s ears hurt. [“Magnificent! More for us!”]

  “Has anyone made contact with Ben’s ship? Our scope is clean.”

  [“We have not,”] said Nalu. [“We thought he may be using the mass of the planet to conceal his presence. But if you cannot see him, it is unlikely he is there.”]

  “Maybe Ben has disabled the L5 jump point and is using it to hide out there. There’s a significant amount of debris in that region from the Toralii Alliance fleet. It’s not much, but it might be enough to throw our long-range radar for a loop.” She glanced to Iraj, releasing the talk key. “We can’t use the device until we see him. If he’s not near Belthas IV, we’ll waste our shot.”

  “Agreed,” he answered, “press on to the planet. Murphy’s Law applies. Besides, no good plan survives contact with the enemy.”

  “Well, we haven’t even seen the enemy yet.”

  Iraj folded his arm. “Yeah, well, Murphy was a grunt. What the hell did he know?”

  The pair of ships sailed towards Belthas IV, enclosing on the planet in three ways, the Humans on one side, the Kel-Voran on the other, and the Telvan coming in on their flank.

  *****

  “I am so bored; you have no idea. None. I feel like I’m being sucked into a boredom black hole, only to be crushed to the size of a boredom atom in a massive outpouring of cosmic boredom energy.”

  Liao didn’t even look at Rowe. “You’ve made your entertainment situation perfectly clear, Miss Rowe. Please just… try to focus on the ship’s systems. We’ll be there in an hour.”

  “An hour is, like, way too long.” Rowe folded her arms and pushed back her chair. “I just wish Ben would show up and kill us. Getting blown to atoms would make a nice change.”

  Liao reached upward, stretching her arms. “Master at Arms?”

  The marine guard stepped forward from the door. “Captain?”

  “If I took my pistol and shot Miss Rowe in the head, would you tell anyone?”

  “Hey!” said Rowe, scowling.

  He snorted slightly. “No, Captain.”

  “Noted. Thank you.”

  Rowe grudgingly turned back to her console. “Yeah, you wouldn’t shoot me.”

  “Probably not,” admitted Liao. “It’d be a waste of a perfectly good bullet. That’s what we have airlocks for.”

  The time passed, and the spectre of Belthas IV loomed larger and larger in their monitors. Their ships, two of the three original Pillars of the Earth, were filled to the brim with the devices of war. The major powers of Earth had all contributed, in some way. They had German special operations units, South Korean marines, American Rangers, soldiers from the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Iran, all fighting together.

  It was a heartening sight, seeing the armies of the world united under one banner, fighting together to preserve their species. National boundaries still existed, and old hatreds still burned strong, but this was a step, one of many tiny steps to try and shift the identity
of people from nationalities and towards a species, to truly become the Human race. Liao felt intensely proud of this moment, even as she worried for the outcome. No sign of Ben, no sign of the Toralii Alliance…

  Finally, the two ship drew close enough to the planet to form up with the rest of the fleet, moving together as a massive wedge in low orbit of Belthas IV’s gravity well. Ling, Dao and Jiang coordinated the fleet’s combined sensor network while Iraj pulled up the tactical overview.

  “Captain, the fleet is commencing long-range scans of the surface.”

  Liao touched her own screen, overlaying the data the Telvan had provided on the planet. “Excellent. Coordinate with the maps we have. See what we can determine are the key areas we need to take.”

  “Very good, Captain.” Iraj gave her a meaningful look. “Still no signs of hostile ships.”

  “I don’t like that either,” Liao said, “but it’s possible he’s just watching us for now, seeing what our plans are before he makes his move. But rest assured, Commander… Ben is out there.”

  They spent a moment examining their maps.

  “This facility,” said Iraj as he pointed to a white hot spot on the thermal camera, “is marked by the Telvan as being the main factory complex. It’s almost certainly where the majority of the drones Ben’s been making have been created. Irrespective of if Ben shows up or not, if we take that facility, there’s no way he can grow his army anymore.”

  “There’s a lot of heat in that area,” Liao observed thoughtfully. “How’s it getting power?”

  “Built in reactor. The Kel-Voranians on the surface indicated that it was still active, working day and night.”

  She nodded. “Good, well, let’s make that our ground force’s primary objective then.”

  With a few taps of her console, Liao transmitted the maps to the marines and soldiers throughout the fleet, including objectives, tactical information and terrain readouts. The new tactical IFF computer was a very useful asset, it seemed. She could send her battlefield plans to the whole fleet in seconds and update them in real time.