Lacuna: The Prelude to Eternity (7 page)

Liao remembered. She had seen the prisoners they had taken. It seemed like a lifetime ago. “What are we doing with it?”

“We’ve moved some crew over from the
Washington
and the
Madrid
. The vessel was lightly damaged in the battle, so it’s not fully operational yet. Repairs are continuing, and we’re preparing to press it into service. We need every ship we can get.”

That made sense. They absolutely did need more ships—taking them from the Toralii seemed as good a way to get them as any. “I thought it was too badly damaged to sail again,” she said. “Something about the reactor?”

“Damaged, but salvageable. Interesting side note: the name. Captain Williams named the
Rubens
after a slain crew member. We’ve christened this new ship the
Knight
.”

“I like it. I didn’t get to spend enough time with Captain Knight before he was killed.” Captain Knight had been the CO of the
Sydney
. More than the other things, his death seemed very recent. She had learnt about it only minutes before discovering Earth had been destroyed. Everything after that had just been a blur until the funeral, held months later. “I hope I’ll come to know his namesake a little better.”

James’s expression faded. He continued to smile, but something changed around his eyes that made his expression more serious. “As do I, but it was our second choice. Originally, after the battle, it was going to be called the
Liao
.”

How close she had come to being made into a ship. “I’m not dead yet. One day there’ll be a TFR
Liao
. Not today.”

Saeed spoke up from across the med-bay. “But for the grace of Allah
subhanahu wa ta’ala
, Captain. He has a purpose for you yet.”

She smiled, but there was no true joy there. “Thank you, but sometimes things happen with no purpose.”

“I know why you would say that, Captain, but you’re still here, aren’t you? Even if the reason why you survived isn’t clear to you just yet, it will be in time.”

Perhaps.
Liao had no real answer to that. A vaguely uncomfortable silence fell over the whole room.

“I’m just going to check in on one of our other patients,” said Saeed, politely excusing himself. “I’ll be back later.”

Then it was just her and James.

“So,” she said, hope tingeing her voice. “How’s Allison?”

“Missing her mother,” said James, in a tone that pulled at her heart. “Penny is still taking care of her, on and off. Olivia, one of the American survivors you pulled off the surface, is helping a lot. The kids take care of each other.”

“Can I see her?” She couldn’t help a little pleading edge creeping into her voice.

“Not yet,” said James. “She doesn’t like being in space. Allison’s doing better on the surface… but Penny’s doing a really good job, trust me. She’s almost walking, which is scary.”

Liao understood the mixture of joy and terror that came with being entrusted with a tiny Human who could move around under her own power, especially in somewhere as child-unfriendly as a space craft. “I want to see her,” she insisted.

“Soon,” James promised, “when you get out of there. We don’t want to frighten or confuse her—and this ship is strange and upsetting for a small child. Next time Penny rotates aboard, we’ll see, but that might be some time. Especially now, a lot of her time is taken up with training.”

All those months Liao had spent grieving for Allison came back. Penny and her husband had saved Allison from the Toralii attack, a fact that only came to light much later. To miss her again hurt—far more than her wounds ever could.

Liao wanted to never be apart from her daughter again. Fortunately, she had learnt to deal with not seeing Allison as often as she would have liked. It was time to draw upon that strength.

Something else caught her attention. “Training?” Liao inclined her head. “What’s Penny up to these days?”

“Well, the
Rubens
is understaffed, and they need a dedicated communications officer now they’re officially part of the fleet. Penny may be blind for now, but Captain Williams believes that the more training they can accomplish now, the easier she’ll adjust when she gets her new eyes.”

“New eyes?”

James tapped on the glass of the tank. “There’s a bit of a queue forming for the use of this thing. Amongst the prosthetics Saeed discovered are prosthetic optics. They’re made for Toralii, of course, which is going to be harder to fit into Human eye sockets, but the technology presents some… interesting opportunities. Toralii can see into the ultraviolet spectrum, something which will be helpful if serving on one of their ships. Williams is going to give her an enlisted crewman’s brevet.”

“Giving your girlfriend a field commission is pretty dodgy,” she said, frowning a little. “Although that raises other problems—the CO married to an enlisted crewman on the same vessel. Better to bring her in as a junior officer. Not that it’s much better.”

“I’m not sure we’re in much of a position to talk about fraternisation guidelines,” James said with a vague smile, “but I actually advised him of the same. It’s going to be difficult to avoid a conflict of interest. No serious navy would ever allow this.”

“He’s going to have to deal with it, and so is everyone else. We don’t exactly have the opportunity to move people around to accommodate an ideal situation. Every ship is hurting for crew, as I hear it.”

“You hear right.”

They spent a moment in quiet reflection. The grimness of their situation cast a dark pall over everything. Her stump itched, her scalp hurt, and although important, none of that talk would help her heal. She tried to lighten the mood. “So,” she said. “How’s it feel having your girlfriend in a fish tank?”

“Pretty good,” he said, smirking. “How is it in there? Need me to drop a little food in the top?”

She laughed.

“How about that breathing tube?” asked James. “Looks pretty uncomfortable.”

“Mmm hmm. You’d be surprised at how strange having a long black thing in my throat felt. You’d imagine I’d be more used to it by now.”

He tittered. “Well, at least you have your sense of humour.”

“Hey, you’re lucky I’m in a good mood—and high on a million different kinds of drugs—because otherwise I’d smash my way out of here and beat you up again.”

“You did a pretty good job last time,” he said, the edges of his mouth climbing. “I was sore for ages.”

“Good.” She enjoyed that memory—even if it had come at a dark time in her life—breaking into the bottom of the
Beijing
with James, just like silly little schoolkids, and having a boxing match in the abandoned, derelict gym in the lower decks.
 

Such a little thing had restored her will to fight.

She couldn’t help but look at the flat stump of her arm. “Don’t think we’ll be able to do it again, though.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said James. “Saeed’s hopeful—”

“Yeah, yeah, the prosthetic.” She suddenly felt a little humourless. “It’ll be clumsy and awkward and the one thing everyone’s dancing around: ugly.” Her voice cracked, her fears returning. “You know, I was always told I was beautiful. It’s kind of a relief—a relief in a strange way—to not be that anymore. Now, people will hopefully just see me as an officer, a military woman, nothing more.”

“Melissa…” James leaned up against the tank. “I’m not going to say you’re as pretty as you ever were. That’s a transparent lie you’d see right through. Instead, I might say this: Parts of you I like are damaged. The part of you that I love isn’t. You’re still alive. That’s enough for me.”

Her heart hurt in her chest. “Is it?”

His answer was emphatic. “Yes.”

She tried hard not to cry, and although it would be difficult for him to know since she was surrounded by green-tinged liquid, she was glad that—at least probably—she succeeded. “Thank you,” she managed, her voice wavering. “I was… worried.”

“Don’t be,” James said. “The best part of you is on the inside. Your heart. You’ll be fine.”

Another polite silence fell over them, a welcome piece of quiet where they shared each other’s company with nothing but the faint whine of machinery and computers in the background.

“Anderson’s doing a good job,” said James. “You know, he’d be getting close to admiral rank now if the military still existed.”

“Well, he threw me some captain’s pips. No idea where he found them. I think we can probably manage to nudge him up a rank at some point.”

“Probably,” he said. “Although… heh.” He gave a rueful smile. “Serving under an American. Lovely.”

“They’re not so bad,” said Liao. “When I was younger, I didn’t like them, but I hadn’t met any at that stage. As I’ve come to be part of Task Force Resolution, I’ve changed my tune. Anderson, Shepherd, Jennifer… they’ve shown me that Americans are a strange, diverse, mixed bunch but they’re all right in the end. Loyal allies and quite inventive, too. Decent folk.”

“I’m inclined to agree. It’s fun to poke although I will preface that agreement with some reservations.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Want to know a secret?”

Liao smiled. “We have a child together. I’m not sure you could say anything that would shock me at this point.”

“People say it’s hard being black. I loved being black… in Europe, when there was a Europe. I mean, blackness had its ups and down, sure, but I felt like I belonged. I wasn’t Kenyan-Belgian—I was
Belgian
.” He ran his hand over his beard. “But when I visited America, it wasn’t like that. I felt like if I lived there, in the US, people wouldn’t consider me American, I’d always be
African
-American. That distinction came not from white people—they were nervous around me, sometimes, but when I spoke clearly and dressed sharply, I was treated as one of them. The issues came not from any institutionalised racism but because of other black people.”

That
did
surprise her. “There aren’t exactly many black women and men in China, I rarely saw them, growing up. A lot of what I know and feel about blacks comes from the media. And you, of course.”

“Well,” said James, a scowl over his face, “there’s a lot the media can tell you—a lot of it useful and helpful, and a lot of it… not so much. I can safely say, as a black man, that blacks as a collective were never going to be successful in the United States, not because of white people, but because of
other black people
. Any time a black person studies, learns, develops an intellectual skill, stays in school, does well at maths, science, literature; suddenly they are race traitors. They are ‘acting white’. There were plenty of exceptions, of course, but by and large if you were not a thug, not into that culture and that side of things, then you were not
truly
black. I felt as though blackness celebrated failure, applauded falling through the gaps of society and becoming less than we can truly be.

“I avoided the worst of it because I’m European, but I had spent enough time in the US to know that when a black man does anything worthy of success—not so much with sporting prowess, but especially in an intellectual capacity—then there’s a pronounced ostracisation that occurs from within their own community. It’s a dark part of the community and the culture there. If you’re arrested, that’s a compliment. They say you have ‘cred.’ What you really have, though, is a criminal record that further isolates you from society. It’s bullshit, frankly, how much American blacks venerate thug culture as something good, and because of it, they all suffer.”

“Interesting,” said Liao. “I don’t know anything about that. I’ve always lived in very homogeneous societies.” She paused. He seemed frustrated, as though despite his protestations, that was something personal for him. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m just worried about this new melting-pot city we’ve created. We have Chinese, we have Brazilians, we have Iranians, we have Americans… we have some South Koreans, a handful of Germans, scattered people from all over the EU, we have a few Australians, we have Israelis. We have so many people, languages, cultures… What are the long-term products of this? What negative cultural kinks are going to express themselves over the coming years, and how can we work on fixing them before they start?”

It was a very interesting set of problems. “Maybe we need to start with… with something a little simpler. Toning down our now-antiquated national boundaries. There’s no China anymore. There’s no United States or EU or anything like that. We are all Humans. That’s all.”

“I think that’s a noble ambition. I’m not sure everyone will be on board with it initially.”

“The Chinese will be the hardest,” she said.
Might as well get that out there first.
“Americans have a strong national identity but it’s one that’s built on an artificial country made from the blood of the world; Chinese culture is heavily influenced by the Han ideal. Every beauty store in China, without fail, stocks skin-whitening cream. White skin is the ideal. There’s even a saying: ‘A woman can be ugly, as long as her skin is white
.
’ It’s crazy.” A sly grin spread over her face. “I never really agreed with that.”

James grinned back. “You don’t say.”

“Fortunately, you have a lot more going for you than your skin colour.”

He snickered. “Feel free to tell me more about how attractive I am.”

She wanted to. She wanted to tell James how much he meant to her, but the words stuck in her throat. All she could think of were the burns on her face and body and her metal arm. He couldn’t love a half machine, half woman, could he?

James’s expression changed, becoming more reserved. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s just you and me to the end, right?”

“You and me and the railguns,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “That’s how it’s going to be.”

“It is.” James’s sincerity was clear and forceful, but no matter how hard she tried, there were doubts.

A device on James’s belt beeped. He read it, a frown crossing his features. “I should go,” he said. “Work, work.”

She wanted to ask about
Scarecrow
,
but Keller had been clear. “Take care,” she said, suddenly wishing he could stay longer.