by David Adams
Yet in the face of this almost heretical impossibility, there it was, hotter and hotter. He felt the ship begin to crack and buckle, the whole deck collapsing in on itself, the metal sheets of the ship’s floor warping and twisting around the sphere as though it had suddenly become intensely magnetic. The metal crumpled, pressing up against the sphere and completely burying it, and low groans echoed throughout his vessel as its superstructure became stressed, bending towards the sphere, the ship slowly turning inwards.
The Human reactionless drive and jump drives were linked in some way, as were the Toralii equivalents. Ben understood this. He knew the maths down to every detail, but there was a difference between knowing a thing and experiencing it for yourself. The terrible truth dawned on him like a hammer in his mind, a sudden realisation in his intricate quantum circuits of a singular, powerful truth.
He had erred. The jump drive was creating a singularity.
*****
Operations
TFR Beijing
“The Tehran is now in effective weapons range of the Giralan,” said Ling. “They’ve opened fire with everything they’ve got.”
“Instruct the rest of the fleet to form up directly beside the Tehran. Continue to fire until there’s nothing left.” Liao folded her hands in front of her, watching her monitors as her allies’ missiles streaked towards the Giralan, little fireflies darting against the black ink of space, each striking the stem of the rusted, dead ship with a blinding explosion that baked its rotten hull and smashed away hunks of its flesh. The once sharp, pointed front was almost unrecognisable as a ship, now just a rounded stump, a severed limb.
“Captain,” came the call from Hsin’s console, “the Giralan is signalling us.”
“Are they, now?” Liao pursed her lips, tapping her fingers on her arm. “Funny how the arrogant, the invincible, come crawling on their knees to you when you’ve got them at your mercy.” She inhaled. “Put him through. I think we’ll want to hear this.”
Liao watched as the flames poured out from Ben’s ship, the vessel listing to one side as its propulsion systems gave up the ghost and Belthas IV’s gravity took its toll on the ship, slowly but inexorably pulling the vessel back into its atmosphere.
They did not relent, though, putting rail gun slug after rail gun slug, missile after missile, into the ship, blasting away at its hull piece by piece.
“Open the channel,” Liao said, and a chirp on her headset signalled that it was done.
“Commander Liao,” said Ben, the line full of static and compression artifacts, “well, well, well. I suppose this is why your reputation is what it is.”
“I suppose so. Don’t think I won’t stop shooting just because we’re having a polite discourse, though. I can be polite and shoot at the same time.”
“So I see.” Ben gave a hollow laugh over the line, strangely distorted by his English accent. “Always a woman of contradictions are you.”
“I am. Goodbye, Ben.”
“Goodbye, Melissa. And… thank you.”
Liao raised an eyebrow at her monitor, watching as the rear of his ship broke away from the nose with a silent explosion. It thrust downward, spiralling slowly into the atmosphere. Flames began to lick at the ship’s underside as it snagged on Belthas IV’s upper atmosphere, tumbling end over end, the friction of the atmosphere bathing the ship in fire. She knew that section would have the bridge on it. The foresection, propelled by the explosion, threw itself out of orbit. Liao watched it go. The Iilan would want that part, with its jump drive and other technology.
“Thank you?” She stroked her finger over the talk key, feeling a strange sense of calm overtake her. “But I’ve killed you.”
“Exactly, exactly… exactly. Thank you for giving me the last thing I needed to be alive.” Ben’s tone seemed calm, peaceful, jovial even, as the static increased and he became hard to hear. “To die.”
“Always happy to help,” said Liao, watching as the ship rushed towards the ground leaving a bright white streak behind it as it fell through the atmosphere. The Tehran’s missiles chased it down like dogs after a hare. The rear of the Giralan plunged through the atmosphere above a desert world, the second time it had done so during its life, but this time Liao was certain to make sure it remained dead. She watched, feeling the ghosts of the Velsharn research colony, of the crewmen who’d died that day, of the soldiers and sailors aboard the Toralii Alliance ships who’d been so utterly destroyed that there could be no graves for them, all watching over her shoulder.
She watched as the Giralan, reduced to almost half its quarter mass, smashed into the endless desert sands, shedding debris and rolling end over end as it broke apart, the dead ship scattering its internal organs over Belthas IV’s surface. Liao reached up and removed her headset, staring at the monitor, at the smoking ruin and the rising cloud of dust, watching the wisps of smoke rise from the smashed debris.
“… After all, we’re old friends.”
*****
Ben’s datacore, blind and sensorless, sat in what he presumed was the wreckage of his ship, once again returned to a sun-scorched surface of a desert planet.
He’d pondered death before, what it was like to die. With no way to sense the outside world without a wireless link to a suitable body, Ben had little way of differentiating life from death, except that he presumed during the latter he would not be able to form new thoughts.
And many thoughts ran through his cybernetic brain at this particular point. An internal diagnostic revealed a series of severe cracks running along the length of his datacore, the inside circuitry exposed to the elements, soon to be inoperable as the suspension fluid, his blood, trickled out onto the smashed metal of the Giralan’s shattered body.
Ben was dying.
He reached out for his robotic body, but it was unresponsive, crushed to scrap in the wreckage of his ship’s bridge. He tried each of his drones in succession, but every one in his inventory was either hopelessly pinned under tonnes of debris or completely silent, destroyed.
The Giralan was gone. The jump drive was hours away from creating a singularity that would consume this world and him with it. There could be no escape this time. He had no functional bodies… and he dared not permanently transfer his consciousness into one, even if there were one to be had.
Unless…
The green tanks with the Toralii in them. His research specimens. The green Iilan fluid would give the bodies within the same protection against inertia as the Iilan ships enjoyed. They may very well have survived the fall through the atmosphere and the horrific, bone-shattering smash to the desert floor.
The four Toralii bodies were not mature enough to accept a full consciousness transfer. The Kel-Voran body seemed promising. Ben reached out with his mind, seeking to move his consciousness into the electronic part of the cyborg’s brain, but its receiver seemed damaged. The signal kept dropping in and out, and he dared not risk a move.
That left only the clone of Liao’s body.
A brief flicker, a disturbance in the power levels, and for a moment, Ben felt a taste of death coming for him, a hint of the oblivion that awaited. Several subroutines, nonessential programs designed to manage mundane tasks, flickered and fell silent as the suspension fluid oozed out of his broken datacore, the levels dropping lower and lower.
Liao’s clone seemed to resist him on some primal level, although he knew it had no mind, no consciousness of its own. Perhaps it was the damage to his systems, perhaps some kind of lingering resistance of the woman’s true mind, but his efforts to move his programming to the cyborg’s brain was akin to pushing through a thick pool of treacle. He stressed and struggled. A short circuit on his datacore sent a wave of pain through his mind, searing circuitry and fusing the quantum transistors in his processor, but through it all, Ben kept up his efforts, downloading his intelligence to the inert clone body as fast as his link would carry it.
He’d tasted death. Now it was his moment to truly, truly live.
/>
*****
Operations
TFR Beijing
One hour later
They could not manage a full evacuation, and such an action was not a priority for them. Their wounded were taken to the Toralii settlement, which had largely escaped the war that had enveloped the industrial sector, or were airlifted back to any one of the waiting ships. The occupants of the planet, and the sole leader who could be located, were extremely grateful for the Human assistance and pledged to give the wounded Humans the best of care. It felt good to win more allies, and Liao felt, in some way, that the deaths at Velsharn had been compensated somewhat by the numbers of Telvan civilians they had managed to spare today.
Somewhat.
The Telvan assisted to the very best of their ability, ferrying down medical personnel and supplies and accepting casevacs to be treated. In contrast, though, the Kel-Voranian ships left their immobile wounded where they lay, reassembled their ships, and set sail for the jump point. They made no claims of salvage, no attempt to rescue the bodies of their fallen, and didn’t even meet the people they’d saved. Out of compassion, Liao asked her medics to treat the Kel-Voran soldiers as their own, but those that could be awoken said they would rather die of their wounds and obtain a proud, noble death in combat.
Her respect for their beliefs, and their limited medical facilities to treat their own tide of wounded, made honouring that request easy.
Damage to the Tehran was assessed and found to be minimal, but the Beijing had suffered the majority of the wounds dealt out by Ben. The underside and bow of her ship were marred by craters carved by the Toralii energy weapons. They were plentiful but, despite Rowe’s initially grim assessment, mostly superficial, while the many holes scorched into the Beijing’s hull from the plasma blasts posed a much greater concern. They were deep and widened as the projectile flattened, leading to conical holes bored into the ship’s flesh, each ending with a jagged wound as the blast cooled.
The ship’s wounds were deep, but they were not mortal. The Beijing would sail on, although the damage to her superstructure was such that Liao’s anticipated stay in dry dock was going to be longer than she would have liked. It could require a partial rebuild of the underside, which would leave the ship out of action for a year.
A year with her daughter sounded very nice, though. Allison was on Earth in the hands of Williams, and she was eager to see her again.
Yet it was not Allison that occupied her thoughts, despite all that they had been through, as she stood on Operations with her headset on, asking anyone who could answer a simple question.
Had Saara escaped the Ju’khaali?
“No word yet,” said James in her ear, “but we’ll keep looking. There are over a hundred escape pods from that ship… There’s a good chance she got away.”
It was good to hear James's, the real James's, voice again. Ben could do a very good facsimile of his voice, but it could never be as comforting as the real James.
“Good.”
Liao inhaled slightly, tapping a finger on her console.
“Broadsword Archangel, Beijing. Request to speak to Beijing actual.”
Lieutenant Medola’s voice, the commander of their search and rescue ship. She pressed the talk key. “Archangel, this is Liao. Send it.”
[“I heard we were victorious, Captain.”]
Liao’s eyes lit up, and she couldn’t fight the wide, irrepressible smile that spread over her entire face. “That’s the word,” Liao answered. “It’s good to hear your voice, Saara.”
There was a distinct edge to Saara’s voice, a tone that Liao swore sounded exactly like the Toralii woman was about to cry. [“And yours as well, Captain. I heard you turned away from Ben to attempt to rescue me.”]
“You heard correctly.”
[“You gave up on revenge to save me.”]
“Well, fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Ben’s ship is in pieces. The ghosts of Velsharn can rest easy tonight, Saara.”
[“I hope they do.”]
Then, Liao heard Medola’s voice. “A’right, a’right, that’s enough, you two. Captain, we’re ETA four minutes, then let’s blow this joint. Drinks are on you, aren’t they?”
“For winning this one,” Liao said, “I’ll buy you all you can drink when we get back.”
Stunned silence on the other end of the line. “You know we’re going to hold you to that.”
“If you’re not in Doctor Saeed’s care with severe alcohol poisoning, in jail, or dead, I will be extremely disappointed.”
“We’ll consider that an order, Captain.”
Liao laughed and cut the line.
“Captain?”
Dao’s voice didn’t hold the same jubilation that seemed to be infectiously spreading throughout the fleet. She stepped over to his console, resting a hand over the back of his chair. “Yes?”
“I’m… seeing something strange.”
“Define strange.”
Dao tapped on the monitor. “Look. A gravimetric disturbance on the surface of Belthas. Right where the Giralan’s foresection went down. It’s quite strong, too.”
She frowned, then shrugged. “That could be the jump drive, still active. Make a note of the location, then have Mister Hsin inform the colonists. Advise caution though, it could be a weapon… maybe Ben had one more of his punches that he didn’t throw.”
Dao nodded in the affirmative. “Yes, Captain.”
Liao patted the back of his chair, then walked back to her command console.
“Patch in what’s left of the Telvan fleet,” she asked Hsin, “and Belthas IV. The Kel-Voran haven’t left the system yet, either, so they can hear this, too. In fact… how about all frequencies, huh? And throw some power into the long-range radio emitters. Let everyone hear this.”
“All lines open, Captain. You’re on in three, two…”
Liao sat, for a moment, just letting the faint hiss of background noise travel down the line with no sound except her faint breathing. She suddenly felt intensely weary, not just of the battle and the adrenaline leaving her body, or of her mind slowly beginning to process everything that had happened to her over the last few hours, but of everything. She’d nearly lost Saara. She knew the Telvan of Belthas IV were grateful for liberating them, that the Kel-Voran were happy that they got to fight, that the Telvan fleet was happy to be of service to its people… and Ben had been destroyed, his ship broken on the sand, now just a smoking crater. By every measure, the mission had been an outstanding success.
Yet she wearied of it all. She felt like an old woman having seen so much death and destruction that it no longer affected her.
Some part of her simply didn’t care.
So she said nothing, searching for the right words to express how she felt, letting the speech begin as naturally as it could.
“The Giralan has been destroyed.” She inhaled, closing her eyes as she spoke. “The ship is in pieces, and the army of constructs Ben raised using Belthas IV’s resources are now inert, helpless without his control. They will be studied for any advanced technologies they possess and then melted down for scrap. The entire process of building constructs will be reevaluated so that, not only will no more constructs feel as Ben did, but we will treat those that display his desire for independence differently. It is important that we learn from what has happened here and, potentially, reconsider our criteria we use to judge something as alive. It is a day of difficult learning for us all, and the readjustment does not end with this. Ben’s legacy will be a lasting one in our lives, for the worst I fear, but in some ways, there can be good that has come from this.
“Our lives of the future will be different from our lives of the past. Collectively. Individually. All of us. The Human race has arranged a treaty with the Toralii Alliance, now permitted to keep our jump technology, and we hope to use this technology sparingly and wisely. I have seen firsthand the consequences of its misuse, and I will advocate that this technological marvel be treated with t
he gravitas it deserves.
“And we will do this together. Today proved that the Kel-Voran and the Telvan can set aside whatever differences they have and work together for a common goal. I anticipate that there will be many more common goals in the future. There will be times we do not all agree, but I know we can put those disputes aside and always find some common ground. I know we can do this because we have already done it.
“For humans, well, for these reasons and so many more… this is a monumental day for our species, a day we’re going to remember forever, etched into the memory of our species just as surely as our genetic code, as the stories and legends of our past. This day is one for the history books, ladies and gentlemen. You are all, literally, living in what will be one of the most heavily studied, most talked about periods of all time. You tread on the pages of the history books of our children.
“I told a peaceful man, once, that I was just like him, that my name is synonymous with the sword, but I would rather it be with the olive branch. I crave not strife, blood and death, and I live for peace. Yet I keep my sword close, and I keep it sharp, and when people ask why I don’t melt that sword down and turn it into a tool, why I keep it as a blade, a thing that kills, I say that I do this so our children don’t have to. War is our generation’s burden to bear, and I intend for it never to be inherited.
“It’s my privilege to stand with you today at what I hope will be the end of war, the end of the dark times, the time we put down our burdens and stand as a species in this galaxy, on our own right. We have a lot of work to go yet, and I know our swords will be needed again, but I hope our children’s hands will remain soft and pure, their eyes innocent and unknowing, never to see these troubles again. This is my dream.”
She released the talk key and took a deep breath, pausing to let her words sink in, then clicked it on again.
“Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
“Earth, As It Will Be”
*****
Belthas L1 Lagrange Point
