Lacuna: The Prelude to Eternity (3 page)

The whole chamber listed to one side, and a roar filtered through the water.

“Listen to my voice,” said Saeed. “It’s a breathing tube. You must calm down. We can’t afford to sedate you this time, Commander.”

This time?
Had this happened before? Her body couldn’t process it. She reached up with her right hand, trying to pull the long black tube from her, but stopped as she saw her arm.

The limb was just a stump.

“Shh,” said Saeed. “Melissa, everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to evacuate you once you’re stable… dammit. Okay, hold tight, we’ll have to risk a mild sedative.”

She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see anything. Adrenaline pumped through her veins and fought the invading chemicals. She forced herself to remain still. Doctor Saeed was a trusted friend—he’d never lied to her. He’d kept her secrets and earned her confidence.

She heard the dull thump-roar of weapons impact. The lights in the med-bay flickered. What the hell was going on?

“Good,” Saeed said. “Now, there’s a mask in the tank. Clip it over the breathing tube. It will drain the liquid out of your mouth so you can talk.”

She could see it, a black device similar to a gas mask, clipped onto the hose. She pulled it down over her nose and mouth, and there was a faint gurgle as the green liquid drained away. Soon she could breathe through her mouth and tried to speak.

“Doctor, you need to get me out of here. The Toralii hit the
Beijing
, the worldshatter device went straight through the hull. The reactor’s been breached, and Operations has been damaged. I need to get back there, Kamal is missing, and—”

“Melissa, the attack on Eden was three months ago.” His tone was edged with aggravation. Gone was the calm Saeed she’d expected. “It’s January the twenty-fourth.”

She heard another dull thump. “What’s happening? Where are we?”

“This is the TFR
Rubens
. We’re under attack.”

A combination of drugs and genuine confusion clouded her mind. “But you said the attack was months ago. Wait, no. That doesn’t make sense. It was just—”

“You’ve been sedated for some time.”

She held up her left hand, her remaining hand. It was thin, gaunt, atrophied.

“Where are you?” she asked. Her voice sounded as though it were coming from someone else—distant, distorted. “I can’t see.”

“Wipe the glass with your hand. The inside’s fogged. The systems are damaged.”

She did so. Saeed stood behind one of the Toralii consoles of the
Rubens
, the entire room bathed in purple light. Liao met his gaze, holding it for a moment.

“I know this is difficult for you,” said Saeed. “You’re probably in shock.”

“I don’t feel like I’m in shock.”

“That’s what they all say,” he said. “The feeling of being out of time. I know it’s hard. Believe me, I’d love to say you can take your time, as much as you need, but we don’t have that luxury.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re on the
Rubens
.” The ship rocked, and the soft groan of stressed metal echoed throughout the vessel. “Just try to process things one at a time until we get you out of there.”

“One thing at a time,” Liao echoed. “Right.” She tried to clear her mind of everything: the falling plasma shots; her body on fire; her evacuation to the captured Toralii ship repurposed as a Human warship. “How long has it been?”

The edges of his mouth turned downward. “You already asked me that. Three months ago, or near enough.”

“Okay,” she said, trying to take that in, to store it in her mind so it didn’t escape again. “Three months. What’s happened in the meantime?”

“Right now,” said Saeed, “we are attempting to recover the wreckage of the Broadsword
Scarecrow
.” Right on cue, another wave of weapons fire struck the ship, and the lights whimpered. “I gather it is not going well. Captain Williams has requested additional power to weapons. The recovery chamber takes too much, so we had to wake you up.” Bitterness crept in. “It was less than ideal to wake you, Captain, but having the med-bay exposed to vacuum is also less than ideal.”

She couldn’t contest that. Liao searched her mind for what she knew about
Scarecrow
but came up empty. “Do what you need to,” she said. Being blind to operations in the fleet vexed her. When she had lost command of the
Beijing
, Commodore Vong was placed in charge. He made a point of telling her little. Apparently, her own injuries were currently keeping her blind.

A faint, familiar hum ran through the whole ship. Abruptly, the rocking ceased. Saeed’s whole face seemed to relax, the tension draining out of it. He tapped at his console. “We’ve jumped.”

“I know.” The smaller the ship, the larger the effect. A jump was imperceptible from the inside of the
Beijing
,
but for a smaller ship like the
Rubens
, despite its more advanced Toralii jump drive, she could feel the tremble as the ship was engulfed in light and transported between the stars. Liao had been through enough jumps in Broadswords to identify the vibrations. “To where?”

“I’m not sure Captain Williams cares too much. ‘Not here’ is probably sufficient for him.”

“Probably,” said Liao, the strength draining from her body. “I feel exhausted.”

“Good,” said Saeed. “I’m resuming your naptime, Captain.”

One of the plugs attached to her body jerked as a fluid pumped into it. An ice-cold trickle crept up the vein on her left arm. The world went grey and colourless, even the bright-green water.

“Give them hell for me,” she said, her words barely a murmur. Her eyes fell on the stump of her arm. “Kill them all.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Saeed promised as she slipped back under and energy built up around them, heralding another jump.

The next time Liao dragged herself back to consciousness, the green world was a much calmer place, and Saeed’s pleasant smile had returned. A team of nurses stood around him, monitoring various things. She recognised none of them. Most were Caucasian—imports from the
Washington
, presumably.

“Welcome back,” he said, his voice gentle. “Don’t rush the process. Be calm, easy.”

Liao did so, blinking sluggishly. She did nothing as teams of medical technicians stood around, silently watching things.

They were under attack.

“Wait,” said Liao, her eyes wide. “Wait, the
Beijing
was hit—Kamal is missing, and we’re under attack! Operations has been breached by a worldshatter device!”

“Captain,” said Saeed in a way she found familiar. “It’s February the twelfth. Commander Iraj has been commanding the
Beijing
in your absence, and the repairs are coming along nicely. They’ve patched the hole in four decks now, and the remainder will be done in time.”

She shook her head, trying to drag faint ghosts of a memory to the surface. “Wait… February. Isn’t it January?”

“That was during the attempt to recover
Scarecrow
.”

Scarecrow
. That name triggered memories for her, memories of weapons impacts, of a ship groaning in pain as it was struck.

“How much do you remember?” Saeed asked.

“Not much.”

“Your memory will come back. The drugs will have an effect on your ability to retrieve long-term memories, but that effect will subside in time.”

“I see.” The dull cloud over her mind made it hard to think and store information. “Okay, so… since the attack. What’s happened?”

“A lot.” Saeed’s words came out smoothly and well prepared. “We had to operate on your arm. The burns ran deep. As hard as we fought, the infection and necrosis spread. We were almost forced to amputate the remainder of the arm to the shoulder. Fortunately, we saved it. We lost the muscle, though.”

“Thanks, doc’.” Her gratitude felt hollow. “Not that it matters much.”

“A partial limb is still better than nothing.”

“Hardly.”

“I can’t imagine how you must feel.” Saeed smiled, softly and genuinely. “It’s not all bad. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but we’ve been exploring options for you while you were unconscious. The
Rubens
contains a wealth of Toralii science, including medical information. There are a number of prosthetics available that we might be able to outfit you with.”

“Prosthetics? We have prosthetics aboard?”

“Not quite. They are merely schematics. The Toralii use a standard construction template which the Iilan constructs can read and replicate. They are incredibly advanced. As far as we can tell, they can link directly into your nervous system, provide tactile response through sensors embedded in the surface, and they’re quite strong. Strong compared to Humans, of course. Saara didn’t think much of them, but I think you’ll find it to be a substantial improvement.”

Her head refused to process all this information. It was just a string of words to her. Saara was still here? That was the most standout thing, but the other words would have to come first. “So you’re saying you can fix my arm, and it’ll be mostly the same, right?”

“Similar. I’m more concerned about the psychological effects a prosthetic can have. Phantom limb pain can be crippling, and everyone reacts to it differently. How this kind of alien prosthetic can affect you… well, nobody can say for sure. We completed some preliminary reports, but they’re far from conclusive. I can have them given to you when you’re out of there.”

She gritted her teeth. This was too much, too quickly. Her mind was still clouded by waking up, by so much news all at once. “Can we slow down a bit? I know you’ve been planning this for some time, but it doesn’t seem right to me. This is… this is a lot to take in.”

“Of course, of course.” Saeed didn’t push the subject. “We might consult with the Kel-Voran once you’re out and the prosthetic has been manufactured. They might have some advice for us.”

That was news to her. “There are Kel-Voran on Velsharn?”

“There have been for some time, ever since the battle. Their sensors detected a number of escape pods from the ruined stern of the
Seth’arak
.
They’ve been hard to find because of the debris. We recovered some pods, an interesting fact we didn’t exactly share with our allies. The Kel-Voran want to find them and execute the Toralii inside. We, however, want to keep them alive for their intel. We’ve scoured most of the debris fields, but it’s slow going. The pods are engineered to blend in with debris unless inspected by Toralii rescue vessels, probably due to their various enemies taking the time to hunt them down.”

The Toralii and the Kel-Voran had been at loggerheads for centuries. Warfare on Earth had been shaped by the tactics of the belligerent opponents. Advances in antitank weaponry drove development into harder armour or active countermeasures…

No. She had to stop her mind wandering.

“Go on,” Liao said.

“Personally,” said Saeed, “I suspect the rest have landed—or will shortly land—in one of the nearby island chains. We’re organising a search of the area thoroughly with flyovers and thermal observation from orbit. We haven’t found much yet.” He shook his head. “Try telling that to the Kel-Voran, though. I think they suspect as we do. They want to search the islands by hand, but Captain Anderson is of the opinion—an opinion backed up by our Telvan contacts—that the Kel-Voran ‘search’ will be intensely destructive. Apparently, it’s more of a reconnaissance in force—specifically, by carpet bombing and inspecting the remains.”

That couldn’t be allowed to happen. “This planet is our home now. We need those islands when the time inevitably comes for us to expand.”

Saeed nodded. “Captain Anderson said the same thing.” The mention of his name seemed to jog some memory. He smiled and reached for a manila envelope, slightly faded and covered in a thin layer of dust. “Speaking of the good captain, he left these here for when you woke up.” He upended the folder into his hand—two pips. “It seemed inappropriate for the CO of the flagship to be a lowly commander. Congratulations,
Captain
Liao.”

Captain in rank but no longer in position. She didn’t feel as though she had earned it. She had made too many mistakes, her crew had suffered, her ship broken beyond repair and regulated to functioning as a small city embedded in a sea of tents, demountables, and temporary structures.

Instead of the culmination of a lifetime career, the promotion left her bitter. If the prosthetic could not restore full functionality, she could no longer command the
Beijing
, not that the ship was in any condition to be commanded. Even if they repaired the hole in the hull, as Saeed said they were doing, the
Beijing
bore too many scars of too many engagements: patch jobs and rushed repairs or damage simply ignored as it was not in critical systems.

Her ship had been chipped apart, worn down to exhaustion, then smashed with a hammer from orbit.

“Thank you,” she managed. “Pass along my thanks.”

Saeed hesitated a moment, as though he could sense something of her true feelings, but was wise enough to gently pour the pips back into the envelope and refold the top. “I will, next time I see him.” He smiled again, folding his arms.

“Thank you, Doctor. One more question.” She hesitated. “What is
Scarecrow
?”