Magnet Omnibus I (Lacuna)

by David Adams

  They had. Kakadu National Park, just a few hours journey away by hirecar, had been our honeymoon location. We’d gone swimming, we’d fed crocodiles, and we’d… done stuff. I had to admit I’d missed sex. It was good to finally have some, and it was the best kind. Hilarious, awkward, crazy sex. Silly sex. Sex where everyone was laughing and stumbling and poking each other with their elbows and knees and it was just so stupid it was almost beyond words. Sex in the morning, sex in the evening, sex whenever. Relieved sex. Happy sex. Joyful sex.

  The perfect honeymoon, taken just before Earth was burned to a cinder by a Toralii strike fleet, one we had only hours ago engaged and destroyed. I had so many questions about what had happened. Which ships had escaped? How many survivors there were? What the situation on Earth was and how we could help? This world, Eden, had been populated for some time now, but the Rubens had been in hiding. What had we missed?

  My time to ask questions would come. For now, I still had business here. Scarecrow’s ghost gnawed at me, prodding me to continue.

  “So,” I said, “now you know. Admiral Kane wouldn’t tell me what Scarecrow’s mission was, but Liao might be willing to be more talkative, especially after what’s happened. I need to find out the truth. What was the Scarecrow? Who were they? Why were they there?”

  “Does it matter?” Saeed’s beeper went off. He checked it, then slipped it back on his belt. “They’re dead. Earth is a graveyard. You have a beautiful wife, you have your ship and your crew. You have a lot of work ahead of you, we all do. If you had all the answers to all the questions you could ever ask, would the Scarecrow’s men be less dead?”

  Of course not. Nothing could. I didn’t have faith; despite Penny’s religiosity I wasn’t a man of God. I didn’t have any kind of hope that those people were now in a better place, or whatever. They weren’t. They were charred skeletons on the sun-scorched surface of some alien world that didn’t have a name.

  This wasn’t my first time trying to get answers. After proposing, I had made other enquiries on Earth. Nobody was willing to tell us anything about them; any responses I could get came back exactly as I thought they would. Nothing.

  Now, with Earth a smoking ruin, I’d never know. I didn’t know how I’d find peace unless Liao had the information in her mind somewhere.

  “I guess.” I shifted. “It’s just that Scarecrow is really affecting me. But it’s not just that; it’s everything. The whole mission. The purpose of the Rubens. We were supposed to be pirates. Raiders. We were given autonomy and the best ship in the fleet to run raids on the enemy. And we hit them as hard as we could; we attacked, retreated, attacked again… but for all our caution, for all our care and worry and conservative aggression, we hardly made a dent. The Toralii Alliance have literally tens of thousands of ships, probably up to a hundred thousand, running every single day. Their logistical network is so vast they have trouble keeping track of them all. Between Kel-Voran attacks, misadventure, mechanical problems, whatever, they lose a few ships every day just from natural attrition. We were sinking one freighter every few weeks, and we thought that we were stinging them but we weren’t. We were so afraid, so cautious, always looking over our shoulders for vengeance but the Toralii literally didn’t even notice we were there.”

  “That’s got to be hard on your crew,” he said. “Hard on you. Especially after everything.”

  “Well, it was, but not at the time. We only found out about this after the fact. Out in the field, everything was going great. We thought we were pirate lords and ladies, stabbing our daggers into the back of the Toralii again and again, outwitting them at every turn. Turns out we were just insignificant.”

  “I see. How is Missus Williams adjusting to a life in space?” asked Saeed, an obvious attempt to change the subject to something more positive. He was good, I had to give him that.

  Penny had escaped Earth with me during the attack. We still had the Falcon with us; we had taken it on the honeymoon, and if we hadn’t we would have burned with everyone else. Escaping into orbit had been a matter of dumb luck and finding the Rubens afterwards an even greater serendipity. It had taken us eight days to track down the ship and give them they news. Everyone was still processing that, and the fallout of the destruction of Earth was something that was still going to effect the crew in coming days. I put that squarely in the “problems for later” basket.

  To help improve morale Shaba had christened the Falcon Piggyback II, and it had become a permanent part of the ship. The Captain’s Yacht as it were. Then she’d made me CO again. I was reluctant—I felt as though the crew would judge me because of my absence, because of the shoot-down, but they didn’t. Everyone seemed glad to have me back. That helped a lot.

  “She’s doing okay. She’s having a hard time because the ship is kitted out for sighted people, but we’re working on a few things. We’re still trying to find something for her to do but we’ll find something. There’s a good chance she might be able to man the communication array, or possibly work on the computers.”

  “I can imagine.” Saeed snapped his fingers. “Actually that reminds me, I had something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Me?” I made a stupid face. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, Commander Liao needs a new arm. Earlier, I contacted the Madrid to see if they had a prosthetic on-board because we simply don't have the knowledge to manufacture them. Our ship’s databanks don't have schematics since that kind of thing would be built planet-side. So all we had is what we can invent. A simple hook or claw, maybe. In any event her career in the navy is over.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah. She’ll be CO of a desk if she’s lucky. We need her expertise, but without two arms, she can’t command anything that’s not made of wood.”

  Saeed’s face held a gentle smile. “In a way she and you are not so dissimilar. You are wounded warriors; she has lost her command and does not know it yet, while you... you think you are ruined but your potential has not yet been realised.”

  What could I say to that? I shrugged.

  “But,” said Saeed, “what you have different is important too. You have wounds—hers in the flesh, but yours in your conscience. Fortunately the treatments are similar. Rest. Eden is safe and our species endures, and we have a lot of work ahead of us, but right now we need to process what has happened to us, and steel ourselves for the journey ahead.”

  Rest seemed nice. “Honestly, I’d love to take Penny to the beach. But what does this all stuff about prosthetics have to do with me?”

  Saeed’s strange smile widened. “Okay, well, I was going to make this a surprise, but the Rubens has a lot of advanced medical technology. A few hours ago I was looking through the database, looking for ways to fine-tune the tank’s operation and I stumbled on something that will be of significant interest to Commander Liao when she wakes up, and to your wife as well.” He held up a tablet, an alien looking schematic on its screen. “A full list of Toralii prosthetics. Specifically, hands and eyes. Fully articulated and amazingly advanced.”

  Liao would need a new hand, and a quick glance at the schematics showed it would be much better than a simple hook, but for Penny to have new eyes was an idea that had my immediate attention. I took the tablet, staring at the wire-frame of the paired prosthetics, trying to imagine how they would fit with Penny’s face.

  “They look like they’re too big.”

  Saeed took back the tablet. “Right. They are. They’re still sized for Toralii bodies rather than Human ones. Part of the work is going to be scaling them down so that they fit Humans. When the tank’s free we can look at some test fittings. It should be quick given that Penny already has the surgery for basic implants.”

  “When the tank’s free,” I said, feeling a gentle wave of calm wash over me as I looked at all the flashing lights, the readouts and the dials that showed that Commander Liao was still unconscious.

  I touched my radio.

  “Hey Penny?”

  “Mmm?” Her voice
made me smile, artificial as it was through the tiny speaker. “What’s up, honey?”

  “Wanna come to sickbay for a second? Doctor Saeed’s got something interesting to discuss with us.”

  “Okay,” she said, and I heard a faint squeal in the background. “Is it okay if I bring Allison?”

  I swore that Commander Liao’s readouts settled a little as the noise of the crying baby filtered into the room. She seemed to relax, the pain painted so clearly on her face fading away.

  “That’d be great,” I said, and I waited for her to come up. It would take her some time, but that was okay. I might not ever know what the crew of the Scarecrow were doing, or why they had their transponder off, but I was going to be okay.

  Liao was going to be okay.

  Penny was going to be okay.

  Everything was going to be okay.

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