Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi (19 page)

It was impossible to think of what she might do with him. Her first instinct was to just thermite-bomb his datastore and be done with it, but no matter what she thought of Ben–and they were dark thoughts indeed at this juncture–the decision was not one to be made in anger.

Instead, her primary concern was to locate the survivors on the planet’s surface and to help however she and her crew could. Liao had made herself a part of the landing party and took Kamal with her. According to protocol, his place was on the ship while she was not, but she insisted and would brook absolutely no argument from anyone on the matter, not that any was offered.

She told the senior staff that she wanted Kamal with her because she wanted a complete, objective analysis of the impact site. In reality, she took him because she was not sure if she could handle visiting the planet on her own. In case the emotions were too strong, in case the guilt was overwhelming, she needed someone who could give orders while she composed herself, which would be difficult inside the sealed radiation suit.

As the Broadsword had soared over the northern beach–the same beach where she had lain days earlier and considered retirement–she could see the once-pristine golden sand had been blasted to sheets of blackened, scorched glass. Not for generations would anyone dare step foot in that place without being wrapped in a cocoon of lead.

She hoped for survivors. The Toralii buildings were strong, and although the colony had been struck multiple times from high-yield warheads, she was optimistic. The Toralii had an advanced understanding of architecture and construction; the
Giralan
had held up amazingly over the years.
It wasn’t unreasonable to expect their structures to be tougher than the Human equivalents.

But the moment Naval Commander Melissa Liao, clad in full radiation suit with a buzzing Geiger counter in hand, stepped onto the blackened and charred surface of the Velsharn Research Facility, she knew the horrible truth immediately.

There were no survivors.

She felt hollow, as though a piece of her had been taken and viciously ripped out. The loss of Velsharn hurt her more than James’s disappearance.
At least she had hope
James was still alive, that she could save him.

She could not save anyone on Velsharn. That battle was already lost.

Numb, she ordered the Marines who came with her to fan out and begin search and rescue operations immediately. As her men clumsily stepped between the rubble that only hours ago had been houses and laboratories, she could see the blurry, indistinct outlines of immolated Toralii—clear silhouettes against the charred walls of buildings, fences, and gardens. They stood mute and unmoving, like the spirits of the dead, all that was left of men, women and children. She imagined their ghostly eyes upon her, watching her every move, judging her. Blaming
her.

And she deserved to be blamed. Liao hated herself more and more with every passing moment. With every report from the SAR teams. With every grim discovery her Marines made: collapsed buildings, charred bodies, pockets of increased radiation.

She hated that she had trusted Ben. She hated that she had become so attached to an alien world when her duty lay to her own. She hated that she had turned over control of her ship to someone she barely knew.
She hated the trust the Telvan scientists who’d lived here had placed in her.

The flare of anger, white hot and primal, was hard to maintain as she looked at the wasteland around her. She knew her naïveté and incompetence had caused this. She, not Ben, had been the one who had failed to live up to the pure, honest faith the Telvan scientists had placed in her. Liao had only to look around her at the still warm glass that was once beautiful sand to know that judgement of her failure had already been passed.

Together, Liao and Kamal stared quietly at the nuclear wasteland, watching as white ‘snow’–immolated particles turned to clumps of ash–fluttered to the ground all around them. It was an eerie and beautiful sight, but it was unnaturally silent. The island had previously been home to a chorus of bird songs that, although initially annoying, Liao had come to enjoy. The only sounds she could hear were the occasional crackle of her radio as each of the Marines reported in, and the faint hiss of her suit’s internal air supply as it kept the oxygen circulating inside her helmet.

“Doesn’t look good,” the Iranian remarked.

“No, it doesn’t,” Liao answered, her voice soft, barely above the faint background hiss of the radio.

They were silent for a time.

“I remember,” Kamal began, his tone soft and wounded, “when I was a child, watching an interview with J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the principal minds behind splitting the atom and the creation of the atomic bomb. He was asked what he’d been thinking about when he saw the light of the Trinity explosion for the very first time. What was going through his mind when he and his team split the atom and unleashed atomic fire, brighter than the light of a thousand suns, onto the desert of New Mexico.”

Kamal took a breath. He said,

“
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is
trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says,

‘
Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.

I suppose we all thought that… one way or another.’”

Kamal was silent for a moment, his lead-lined glove gesturing slowly at the ruins of Velsharn and the Marines picking through the rubble. “I never really understood what he meant by that until today.”

Liao, unable to add anything to Kamal’s observations, closed her eyes. She did not want to look at what she had done, but after a moment she forced them open. Forced herself to take in every blasted tree, every scrap of vine, every ruined building and fence and gate and blackened, charred corpse.

It was all her doing.

“I know what you mean,” she answered, a slight tremor in her voice as she surveyed the scene. “We have to decide where to go from here.”

“Agreed. Let's head back. We have a lot to discuss.”

Liao inhaled, glancing around the blackened and charred landscape, the white 'snow' whirling all around. “Give me ten minutes.”

Kamal did not argue and so Liao left, ambling over the ruined island in her bulky radiation suit, searching aimlessly. She knew—subconsciously—what she was looking for, so it should not have come as much surprise to her that she found herself outside Qadan's dwelling.

If there was any hope that her friend had survived the blast, it was quashed when she saw the badly burned body outside his dwelling. The body was crouched over a much smaller one, as though trying to shield the child. Liao moved closer, hoping his effort had not been in vain, but they were both dead.

Instinctively, she reached up to wipe her face, but her hand met only the heavy radiation glass. After a moment, she gathered the strength to look over Qadan’s body. She reached down, finding the string of pearls around his wrist, pinned under the child and apart from some scorching—intact. She unhooked the clasp and slipped them into one of her pockets, then touched her radio's talk key on the side of her helmet.

"Kamal?"

To use his first name was a significant breach of protocol, but he said nothing.

"Yes, Captain?"

“Have the Marines continue search and rescue operations. I’m heading back to the ship." Desparingly, Liao reached down and touched her friend's scorched cheek with her glove, gently stroking it.

"There’s nothing left for me here.”

Engineering Bay One

TFR Beijing

Liao felt hollow as she pushed open the heavy decompression door of the engineering bay, the metal swinging open with a soft groan. Stepping into the room,
she surveyed the scene.
Her eyes immediately fell on the large, heavy datacore her Marines had pulled from the wreck of the
Giralan
, now without power and silent, the maintenance drone shackled nearby with thick chains.

She fixed her eyes on the drone for a time, its fresh coat of paint scratched by the heavy chains, still and unmoving. Although she and the rest of the crew associated the drone with Ben, it was really just a shell–an empty vessel that he’d controlled remotely. She ran her gaze over its shape, taking in its spider-like form with its two forward clamps for arms, Kamal’s words drifting into her mind. His mention of multi-armed Vishnu, the Destroyer of Worlds.

Ben, with his spider-like body, seemed to be a fitting heir to that title.

Unable to keep a slight sneer from her face, she turned to the datacore. Ben’s mind was in that large, hexagonal box with the central light that glowed faintly when it had power. She examined it, narrowing her eyes at the sight of it.

It was difficult to rationalize that in that unassuming metal box was the consciousness of the construct that had survived for decades on Karathi. It was the place where Ben had made the decision to destroy the most beautiful place she had ever seen, all in the name of revenge. Revenge for an action taken nearly half a century ago and exacted upon a group of Toralii who had nothing in common with those who had wronged him except that they lived under the same banner.

Perhaps she should destroy him after all, she mused. Ben had shown no remorse for his actions, actions that had lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of Toralii. It was difficult not to order Cheung to hand over one of the dozens of chunks of thermite kept close at hand and just incinerate the datacore and be done with it.

She couldn’t, though. She considered the construct alive, no less or more sentient than herself, and sane, even though his thought process had lead him down the twisted and bitter path of murder.

What Ben had said as he annihilated Velsharn was true. Revenge was the act of a sentient creature. It was not an act of self-defense, nor was it an act of predation. To Liao, revenge in this instance was harming someone else for no gain, because they had harmed you in the past. It was the kind of thinking far beyond the animalistic and instinctive; a higher order of thought.

Ben was more alive than he gave himself credit for.

Checking the chains and shackles once more, Liao nodded to Cheung.

“Give him power, but be prepared to cut it at any moment. If he does anything, and I mean
anything
,
even slightly aggressive, I want him shut down instantly.”

A nod from Cheung showed she was ready, and Liao pressed the button.

Immediately, Ben’s voice echoed throughout the spacious room.

“Captain Liao.”

Although she was looking at his datacore—his brain—the voice came from the heavily shackled robot.

She turned that way, her arms folded over her chest.

“Ben.”

The heavily shackled robot tried to move but only managed to achieve the clanking of chains. Liao stared directly into his optics; she swore she saw something there. Resignation, perhaps, tinged with anger.

“I suppose you’re here to destroy me.”

For a moment, the temptation to say yes
was almost overwhelming, but she shook her head. “Believe me, I would be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind, and I still might. But for the moment, I just want to understand
you and what you did.”

The robot looked confused. “I’m not sure I follow. I got my revenge. I hurt those who hurt me.
It’s a fairly simple motive, I would think.”

“Well, then,” Liao answered, “Perhaps rather than understanding you, I want to understand myself. Why I trusted you. Why I chose to help you, and what I can do to salvage this mess.”

The robot’s many optics focused on her, moving slightly. It was a strange expression–a reflection of the emotional workings of a synthetic mind–and when he spoke, Ben’s voice was more subdued than normal. “The mind of a computer works differently than a Human mind. Not necessarily worse or better, but… different. You have amazing abilities in terms of your image and pattern recognition.
Your ability to recognize a face, for instance, happens amazingly quickly. Computers are nowhere near as accurate, nor as fast. You can sense
things, like someone hating you, or lying to you, or wanting to have intercourse with you. These take me a long time to determine, if I can at all.
But in terms of mathematics, well, my mind is considerably
faster.”

“So while my decision to destroy the Velsharn Research Colony may seem hasty, even impulsive, it was a carefully thought out, logical decision. I reviewed all of the documentation your systems had on your capabilities, what you knew about the Toralii–secondhand accounts from a mere
pilot
–and ran countless simulations. I anticipated
how long the Toralii would leave you alone as you ran around the galaxy blowing up their installations and attacking their craft, then I cross-referenced this with how long it would take for you to build up adequate countermeasures. The numbers didn’t add up. It was simple mathematics, which need I remind you, I am excellent at.”

Liao was silent for a moment, watching Ben and letting her mind digest what he’d said.

“I think you’re lying.” Liao unfolded her arms, slowly placing them on her hips. “I think you did
analyse our capability to fight the Toralii, and maybe we are screwed in the long term, but I don’t think that’s why you did what you did. I think you were right before. I think this was a simple act of revenge by someone who was hurt and wanted to hurt in return. I think you’ve been looking for a way–any way–to get back at the Telvan who did this, and that’s why you murdered those researchers.”

She leaned in closer, feeling her emotions flare within her. “You wanted to be treated as alive so badly, and for a time, you were. I gave you everything,” she hissed. “I gave you the acknowledgement of sentience that you claim to desire so badly. I gave you a place on my crew, and I defended your status against Saara, who wanted to treat you like a machine. I even gave you control of my ship, and despite all the help I gave you, all the trust I put in you, you betrayed me. You threw away every scrap of belief I had in you and destroyed the only allies we have in this entire galaxy, and now the consequences of this action will be tremendous for my species.”