by Adams, David
"I believe," he said, "they're talking about the ship we sent to investigate the Sydney's disappearance. The Broadsword Thunderhawk. They never returned from their mission."
Liao touched the talk key. "The day was ours on Belthas IV. However, Ben's jump device created another singularity in the Belthas IV system. The planet was successfully evacuated, but the device Ben used was, for obvious reasons, not recovered. In the meantime the Toralii Alliance attacked Earth."
No response for a time, and Liao almost had Hsin check that the relay was still working.
"I warned you that they were deceitful." Paar's tone wavered as though he were struggling to hold rage in check. "I warned you. The Alliance is deceitful and remorseless."
"You warned me," said Liao, forcing her voice to remain steady. "I remember. A warning I should have heeded."
"What was the nature of their attack, may I ask?"
"What you see before you is all that is left of a species of billions." She straightened her back, determined to put on a visage of strength to those who had done right by her, had tried to prevent catastrophe. "However, these problems, these burdens, are ours to bear. In spite of our losses, our ships were able to record a wealth of data regarding Ben's jump device, even if we were unable to procure a physical copy. You are, as per our agreement, welcome to all the data we were able to collect. We can transmit it to you at your leisure, but it is quite voluminous. A localised uplink would be faster."
"You are noble to honour your agreement despite your losses, Commander. Forgive my earlier outburst. I, as you know, have no love for the Alliance." The sadness in his words intensified as he went on. "I had such hope for your species. I believed—foolishly, perhaps, but not without reason—that Humans were on their way to becoming a noble, enlightened power in the region, despite your self-proclaimed flaws. I had great expectations for your people. I am sorry to be disappointed."
"Your confidence is reassuring," said Liao, "but we are not gone yet."
"Unless annihilation has sharpened your skills at hiding, or you have other settlements on Velsharn's far side, our sensors show that your people occupy no more than a tiny speck of this Telvan planet. To be reduced from what you were to this… is functionally indistinguishable from being nothing, Commander. I apologise if you disagree."
"Fundamentally," Liao said, and she meant it. "More than once throughout humanity's history, we have been reduced to a small number, and this was at a time when our technology levels and our ability to adapt to our surroundings was significantly less than it is today. We are beaten today, Speaker Paar, but you have my word on this—as a species, as a people, we will recover."
"Unless the Alliance finds you."
The starkness in his tone surprised her. Paar was diplomatic and reasonable but also blunt. It was refreshing to hear such candour.
"This sector is within Telvan space and protected by them. Although we have not received permission to settle here permanently, they will not begrudge us a temporary stay. They are our friends. We have fought alongside them. The Alliance will be reluctant to strike here."
"Is that what you think?" Paar's tone soured. "Then you have learnt nothing, Spear of Earth! Laws, boundaries, promises—these are tools for the Alliance to exploit. They follow them when it suits their purpose and discard them when they do no longer. If the Alliance jumped in a score of ships and blew every last Human to dust, the Telvan response would be diplomatic protest. Possible trade sanctions. That is all your lives are worth to them, Commander. An inconvenience. And they would pay this toll gladly were it to make their vengeance complete."
"I understand. We have yet to petition the Telvan for more practical aid, but—"
"I recommend, Commander, that you make this your next immediate priority."
She couldn't help but agree. "No question of that, Speaker Paar. But to business. Our Broadsword will escort you in; the data, and the device you loaned us, should be waiting for you aboard the Madrid. I will meet you there."
"This is agreeable, Commander Liao. We do have one gift for you, however… your Broadsword and its crew. They have been our guests until now, but I am sure they would appreciate returning home as soon as possible."
She remembered the inside of the Iilan vessel, a sphere filled with a green fluid that possessed all manner of powerful qualities, the same fluid she had seen the copy of her float in on Ben's ship. Spending several hours there had been discomforting enough. She could not imagine sleeping in the stuff.
"I'm sure they'd appreciate that as well," she said. "We'll see you there. Beijing out."
After the data drives were taken from the Beijing's computer systems and loaded onto the Broadsword that would transport her to the Madrid, the ride up into orbit was uneventful. Liao barely paid any attention to the journey, trying to shift her mind to the task at hand. However, moving from the planet's surface to orbit then out to the Madrid gave her plenty of time to think.
This was not a good thing. Her mind was too full of doubts for her to focus properly. She should have brought James along.
Finally, though, the Broadsword sailed towards the open hangar bay of the Madrid. It was her first time getting an up-close look at the ship. It was similar to the Beijing, but her intimate knowledge of her ship allowed her to pick out the differences. Subtle things. The placement of some of the external cameras. Different autocannon configurations. Minor hull alterations.
The Madrid was the second iteration of the Triumph class ships, more modern.
It would also be the last.
What would their long-term future be, if the remaining Pillars were all they had to defend themselves with? They had gone from the Beijing to the Madrid in just a few years, but now all their engineers were dead. All their scientists. They couldn't even build more. What they had now was all they would ever have… and that wouldn't be enough. If the Alliance found them, that was it. They had no gravity mines, no way to lock down this section of space.
Not that gravity mines had prevented the Alliance from attacking Earth.
The Broadsword flew through the hangar bay doors and decelerated, slowly coming to rest on the steel floor of the Madrid. Liao unbuckled herself, waited until the area was pressurised, then walked out and left the hangar bay.
A pair of marines was waiting for her. She thanked them for their attendance but would make her own way towards Operations. They left her to it.
She wound up in Waste Management. It seemed as though the changes were not just skin-deep.
The Madrid had much fewer civilians walking its decks. It appeared that Anderson's assessment about how many the ship was able to rescue was accurate, to the point that few had been sent down to the surface. Compared to the overcrowded Beijing, the Madrid seemed spacious.
Much to her chagrin, she asked one of the passing crew members for directions to Operations, then made her way there at a brisk pace. She did not want Alano to think she was tardy.
That's Commander de Lugo, she reminded herself. Calling him Alano was a bad habit. She'd met the man in officer candidate school and, after the pair of them had gotten themselves quite drunk, had slept with him.
What happened in the past should remain in the past. Now they were just comrades.
She really wished she'd brought James along.
Liao pushed open the steel bulkhead to what she was relieved to discover was, indeed, Operations. De Lugo greeted her warmly as she stepped through the threshold. "Commander, it's a pleasure to have you aboard."
"Thank you, Captain," she said, careful to call him by his proper title. Although only ranked a commander, like herself, the commanding officer of a naval vessel was always addressed as Captain, irrespective of their actual rank. "Very fine ship you have here."
"Thank you. She is as strong and powerful as she is beautiful."
Liao couldn't dispute this claim. "She certainly looks that way. How far away are the Iilan?"
"An hour. Less. Their ship appears to be able to dece
lerate quickly; that or they plan on overshooting us by a significant margin."
"The Iilan possess a lot of advanced technology, and their fluid-ships allow them to do things that we might consider impossible. I wouldn't panic about them just yet, but do be ready to move out of the way if it turns out they can't stop quick enough."
"The reactionless drives are warmed up and standing by. Did you bring the data?"
"Three copies, just to be sure. Your technicians should be able to get the drives from the Broadsword."
"Very good, Captain."
And so they waited. The Iilan ship drew closer, and soon it was visible not only on their radars, but on their external cameras. It was just as she remembered it; a sphere of interlocking gears, all working and clicking together, somehow holding together a ball of fluid.
As the ship came within docking range, Liao walked to the airlock. This time she took the marines with her. It was one thing to get lost on the way to meeting her peer and fellow CO; it was another to do it on the way to an important negotiation.
The box of hard drives was waiting for her there, along with detailed instructions on how to read the data on the disks. Her engineers had taken no chances, it seemed, which pleased her. The last thing she needed was a gaffe such as providing the Iilan information in a format they could not read.
A low thud on the hull signalled the Iilan's docking. The airlocks on the Madrid, unlike the Beijing, did not have windows. She waited until the light turned green before opening the door.
Paar the Speaker was ready for her, floating in the green fluid, a mask in his hand. His wings, stretched out wide, beat slowly in the fluid.
Liao reached into the goo, took the mask as offered, slipped it over her head and then stepped onboard the Iilan vessel. The marines pushed the trolley full of hard drives in after her.
"I am saddened by what you have told me," Paar said when they had floated across to the central body of the ship. "I have spoken to our ship's commanders. They have agreed to assist you beyond the terms of our agreement."
Liao nodded appreciatively. "At the moment, we could use whatever help you could provide. Almost all of our logistics and manufacturing capabilities have been lost, along with the knowledge and skills that our species has acquired over the course of our existence."
"This, precisely, is what we aim to replace." Paar clicked his beak eagerly. "Our analysis of the metalwork on your ships hulls indicated that they are constructed by manual forgework. We have, at our disposal, a type of autonomous construct that is of significant aid to our logistical support. We use them to mine asteroids, but they are equally suited to terrestrial operations."
"A mining robot?"
"Much more than that," said Paar. "It is a self-replicating, autonomous resource acquisition unit. Essentially, you tell it what minerals you wish to extract from the local environment, and it produces ingots of them ready for use."
Instinctively Liao did not trust the presence of a construct serving in her forces. The Rubens, if it still existed, had a nearly full complement of constructs, but that was an isolated case.
Such a thing would be useful, though. They needed all the help they could get.
"They can be considered a gift, but their refusal, given the circumstances, would be entirely reasonable. Alternatively, you can disassemble them for the technology within. We traded for them many years ago, and our extraction techniques have become more refined since that time. These are surplus. Useful surplus, but we will not miss them."
Beggars could not be choosers. "I think," said Liao, "given the circumstances, that these would be a welcome addition to our logistical network. I thank you for the kind gift on behalf of all of us."
"You are welcome," said Paar. From somewhere else in the ship, seven figures floated towards them. Humans.
"Morning, Commander Liao," said one, a major by his uniform. "It's good to see you." Despite the presence of masks partially obscuring their faces, their relief was obvious.
"It's evening planetside," she said. "But it's good to see you too."
Paar clicked his beak, and a trail of bubbles floated away from his mouth towards the centre of the ship. "Their craft is attached to the hull of our vessel, powered down. We will drain the fluid from it and restore its atmosphere, then return it to you. Aboard you should find the five constructs that we are gifting to you. The process will take several hours."
"Thank you."
Behind her, the faint whir and clicking of gears filtered through the liquid. The hull had opened again, joining with the Madrid's airlock.
"No thanks are necessary, Spear of Earth. Take care, and may fate be kind to your remaining people. Kinder than it was to us."
Liao and the Broadsword crew floated out towards the exit, stepping out of the green fluid and back into gravity, then removed their masks. She got a final look at Paar as their airlock door closed. Metal scraped on metal as the Iilan clockwork hull sealed itself back up, returning to a perfect sphere.
The self-replicating, autonomous resource acquisition unit.
A SARA.
She had not seen Saara, the Toralii whom she considered a close friend, since the battle. She had been aboard the Ju'khaali as it broke up and fell into Belthas IV's atmosphere, just before the Giralan had. Some had survived, including Saara, but Liao had not received any reports on the rest of the crew's fate.
Whatever Saara was doing, she was staying out of her way.
Liao shook the hands of the rescued crew, sent them to de Lugo to be debriefed and then walked back to the hangar bay.
She didn't get far, though, before red warning lights filled the corridors and the call to General Quarters came over the ship's intercom.
CHAPTER IV
Debellation
*****
CAP Fatbox 09
Velsharn L2 Lagrange Point
Far side of the moon
"THIS FUCKING SUCKS."
MAJOR ALEX "Jazz" Aharoni slumped back in the cramped cockpit of his SSF-01 Wasp, trying to ease the cramp out of his legs.
A Combat Air Patrol, or CAP, was an exercise in monotony. They would fly a standard seven-point patrol around their origin point and then return. Stellar spaceflight was performed at tremendous speeds. However, with the vast distances involved, patrols still took hours.
"What does?" chattered Predator in his ear. Predator had obtained his nickname because his girlfriend Katy was seventeen at the time they started dating. He was known for being excitable, energetic, and for speaking too fast over comms. This was a bad thing. Pilots were supposed to have only two states: cool and cold.
But that was neither here nor there. Jazz squirmed around, almost bumping the control column with his knee. "Everything. Earth is gone, the fleet's scattered, the Sydney got blown up. Fucking sucks. I had friends on that ship."
"We all had friends on that ship," said Predator. "Not to mention Earth. Katy was there, man."
Around and around went his radar, sweeping the area near the Lagrange point, checking for bogeys. Nothing.
"Yeah, I know. It's possible she escaped. We still don't have a full headcount."
"You know as well as I do that no ship touched down in Israel."
"I know, I know. But still. At least some of the Pegasus crew survived. And the Archangel crew are still out there."
"Six people out of like… a thousand. Break." The faint hiss of static was all he could hear as Predator held the line open. "And we don't know if the Archangel got away. Wherever she is, Medola must be fucking pissed."
"Yeah." Jazz figured that. Everyone figured that. This made him feel particularly guilty, as the Archangel crew had saved his hide back on Karathi. "Getting ordered to abandon the Farsight must have driven her crazy. Her motto—"
"Never leave a man behind. I know. Well, they left a good thirty or forty of them behind in the Farsight. So I guess that's more a theoretical thing now."
"Yeah. Well, whatever. They're probably dead anyway." Jazz ta
pped one of the touchscreens on his cockpit, tuning his radar. The Velsharn system had fewer dust particles per square metre than flight control had anticipated and, with some minor adjustment, his radar could see much further. "If she shows up, I'll buy her some shots when she's off duty. Booze always calms the savage beast."
"You want to fuck her, don't you?"
"Are you kidding me?" Jazz snorted. "Everyone wants to fuck her. I'd give my left arm to get into that g-suit."
"Aren't you fucking Summer, though? That engineer chick?"
He wanted to tell the truth, but something pulled at him, imploring him not to answer. "It's a really long story, man."
"It's because she played too many fucking video games, isn't it? She's always on them."
Summer did love her games, but that wasn't it. "Nah."
"Well, we got four fucking hours left, and I'm shit out of things to talk about. Spill."
Jazz slumped back in his seat, trying to get his thoughts together. "Well, yeah. Anyway. I guess we were doing a thing, and then—"
Predator cut over the top of him. "Contact, single bogey, bearing niner one mark six two. Gunship class."
All thoughts of his discomfort, Summer, and the awkward conversation about to follow vanished out of his head. His radar screen lit up as Predator's ship relayed the contact. Soon his radar showed it as well.
"Confirmed, I see it."
They were on the far side of the moon. They had no direct radar contact, but they could call the other parts of the CAP. Jazz swung the dial on his console.
"Butcher, this is Jazz. We have a bogey in the L2 Lagrange point. Gunship class. Moving to investigate." It would take several seconds for the radio signal to reach their other wing, and longer still for the contact to be relayed and confirmed, but even then, Butcher's response was delayed.
They were slow. They were rattled.
"Jazz, Butcher. Confirmed. Interdicting."
Before he could even issue Predator any orders, another communication came through.
