Lacuna: The Spectre of Oblivion (28 page)

“Ready to jump the ship. Artificial gravity coming off in three, two, one… mark.”

Liao gripped the jump console tightly, using it to steady herself as the gravity faded away. She felt her feet float off the floor, the old familiar feeling of sickness in her gut as her body protested the lack of familiar gravity keeping it down. “Mister Hsin, inform the fleet that we’re about to jump and confirm the jump order.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Hsin spoke into his headset, making several rapid calls, then turned back to her. “The
Tehran
confirms that, immediately following our jump, they’re going to be right behind us, so we need to vacate that jump point as quickly as possible. Receiving word from the Kel-Voran; they’re ready for their jump, the Telvan for theirs, and… the Toralii Alliance ships also report that the way is clear. Once we’ve disabled Ben’s ship, the route to Belthas IV will be clear.”

Liao repositioned herself, using her grip to keep her position as level as possible. “Very good. Let’s do it then.”

Iraj floated next to her, his own key in hand. He leaned in to speak, his voice quiet so nobody would hear him above the murmur of the Operations crew. “I didn’t get a chance to say so before, but… it’s good to have you back, Captain.”

She gave him a relieved smile. “It’s good to be back. And… it’s good to have your support, Kamal. Thank you.”

“You know I’ve got your back, Captain. Besides, in my mind, this is your ship, your first child. Nobody should take it from you.”

“Thank you.”

She took a breath, then the two inserted their twin keys into the jump console, a large black board covered in a variety of blue lights. Liao stuck her key in the left hand slot and Kamal inserted his to the right.

“Executing jump.”

She turned the key with a satisfying click, and the ship leapt across the stars, to war.

Chapter XI

“Murphy’s Law”

*****

Operations

TFR
Beijing

Belthas system

The
Beijing
appeared in open space at the Belthas IV L1 Lagrange point surrounded by the dust of the Toralii Alliance fleet, the ghosts of so many ships ground up and distributed in an ever-expanding sphere. The dust had mostly dissipated from the jump point, so their arrival was as ghostly and quiet as typical jump arrivals, with no indication from Operations that anything had happened at all.

Liao’s feet kissed the ground as the gravity was restored. “Report,” she said, glancing to Ling expectedly.

“Jump complete, Captain. No vessels in our immediate vicinity. Launching strike craft and gunships.”

“Good,” she said, “now get us the hell out of here. Clear the jump point so the
Tehran
can come in behind us.”

Dao was already on it, his fingers working over his console before Liao had finished speaking. Immediately, the ship moved forward, sliding out of the jump point and into the faint dust of the Toralii fleet’s remains.

Liao watched the waves of the radar system slowly reach out over the planet, its moon, the debris field of the best of the Toralii Alliance which was reduced to powder.

The radar found nothing bigger than wreckage the size of a car.

“Captain,” said Ling, “the
Tehran
has appeared in the jump point. They’re clearing the jump point now. Still no contacts.”

“Any sign of the
Sydney
?”

It was hoped, somewhat fruitlessly, that the
Sydney
would be waiting for them in the Belthas system.

“Negative, Captain. No sign of the
Sydney
in radar range.”

Liao nodded to Ling. “Very well, looks like we’re doing this one on our own. Keep an eye out for them. If Ben doesn’t want to show his face, I guess we’ll press on to Belthas IV and wait. He’s bound to appear at some point.” Liao tapped her foot impatiently. Where the hell was Ben?

The radar waves moved beyond the planetary system. Nothing bounced back at them except the Kel-Voran fleet appearing at the L2 Lagrange point, and the Telvan fleet at L4.

The L5 Lagrange point, where the Toralii Alliance fleet was expected to appear, was completely empty.

“Mister Ling, confirm that there are no contacts at L5.”

“Confirming that, Captain. Nothing at all.”

The worried feeling she had in the pit of her stomach grew stronger. “Well, there goes over half of our attacking force, straight off the bat.”

Iraj frowned, looking at his monitors. “Maybe they are just delayed.”

“They were supposed to jump out right after us, what could be keeping them?”

He shrugged. “We won’t know; let’s just hope they show up.”

Liao frowned darkly, looking back to her own set of monitors. “We’re doing far too much of that for my liking.”

The ships journeyed on, and Liao continued to study the long-range radar. After a time, Jiang glanced over her shoulder, catching Liao’s attention.

“Captain, I was thinking. It’s possible the
Giralan
’s hiding in the shadow of the planet, or possibly behind the moon.”

“Then it’s a double blind situation. We can’t see him but he can’t see us.” It was a pretty large assumption, but Humans were a species evolved to find patterns in everything: a tiger in the bush, causes of rain, causes of natural disasters, why the sun rose every day. It was this pattern recognition device that allowed Humans to see patterns in things that were difficult to otherwise spot, but it was a flawed device. The rate of false positives was absurdly high, because the penalty for incorrectly identifying a pattern, such as tiger stripes against bamboo, wasn’t high… but a false negative meant that you died. So there was an incentive to favour false positives over false negatives.

Liao suddenly remembered what Ben had told her, how he valued this mechanism, the one that allowed Humans to be wrong, to error, and through their mistakes discover something new.

Was there a pattern she had missed here?

The
Tehran
and the
Beijing
ships moved into formation, side by side, moving across the empty void towards Belthas IV.

“Mister Hsin, patch me into the strike fleet.”

A few taps of a keyboard and it was done.

“This is Captain Liao. Status reports as follows: the
Beijing
and the
Tehran
have arrived and are en-route to Belthas IV. No sign of the
Sydney
as of this time.”

There as a significant delay as the message was relayed to the L4 Lagrange point and back. [“This is Nalu. Captain, we see no sign of the Toralii Alliance. The L5 is clear.”]

“Perhaps the Alliance ships misjumped. Can you relay a message to Vrald’s ship, see if they can see them?”

The Kel-Voranians were out of direct communication with a planet between them. After some time, Vrald snarled into the line. [“More likely those cowards turned tail and ran!”] He bellowed with laughter, the noise loud enough that Liao’s ears hurt. [“Magnificent! More for us!”]

“Has anyone made contact with Ben’s ship? Our scope is clean.”

[“We have not,”] said Nalu. [“We thought he may be using the mass of the planet to conceal his presence. But if you cannot see him, it is unlikely he is there.”]

“Maybe Ben has disabled the L5 jump point and is using it to hide out there. There’s a significant amount of debris in that region from the Toralii Alliance fleet. It’s not much, but it
might
be enough to throw our long-range radar for a loop.” She glanced to Iraj, releasing the talk key. “We can’t use the device until we see him. If he’s not near Belthas IV, we’ll waste our shot.”

“Agreed,” he answered, “press on to the planet. Murphy’s Law applies. Besides, no good plan survives contact with the enemy.”

“Well, we haven’t even seen the enemy yet.”

Iraj folded his arm. “Yeah, well, Murphy was a grunt. What the hell did he know?”

The pair of ships sailed towards Belthas IV, enclosing on the planet in three ways, the Humans on one side, the Kel-Voran on the other, and the Telvan coming in on their flank.

*****

“I am so bored; you have
no
idea. None. I feel like I’m being sucked into a boredom black hole, only to be crushed to the size of a boredom atom in a massive outpouring of cosmic boredom energy.”

Liao didn’t even look at Rowe. “You’ve made your entertainment situation perfectly clear, Miss Rowe. Please just…
try
to focus on the ship’s systems. We’ll be there in an hour.”

“An hour is, like, way too long.” Rowe folded her arms and pushed back her chair. “I just wish Ben would show up and kill us. Getting blown to atoms would make a nice change.”

Liao reached upward, stretching her arms. “Master at Arms?”

The marine guard stepped forward from the door. “Captain?”

“If I took my pistol and shot Miss Rowe in the head, would you tell anyone?”

“Hey!” said Rowe, scowling.

He snorted slightly. “No, Captain.”

“Noted. Thank you.”

Rowe grudgingly turned back to her console. “Yeah, you wouldn’t shoot me.”

“Probably not,” admitted Liao. “It’d be a waste of a perfectly good bullet. That’s what we have airlocks for.”

The time passed, and the spectre of Belthas IV loomed larger and larger in their monitors. Their ships, two of the three original Pillars of the Earth, were filled to the brim with the devices of war. The major powers of Earth had all contributed, in some way. They had German special operations units, South Korean marines, American Rangers, soldiers from the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Iran, all fighting together.

It was a heartening sight, seeing the armies of the world united under one banner, fighting together to preserve their species. National boundaries still existed, and old hatreds still burned strong, but this was a step, one of many tiny steps to try and shift the identity of people from nationalities and towards a species, to truly become the Human race. Liao felt intensely proud of this moment, even as she worried for the outcome. No sign of Ben, no sign of the Toralii Alliance…

Finally, the two ship drew close enough to the planet to form up with the rest of the fleet, moving together as a massive wedge in low orbit of Belthas IV’s gravity well. Ling, Dao and Jiang coordinated the fleet’s combined sensor network while Iraj pulled up the tactical overview.

“Captain, the fleet is commencing long-range scans of the surface.”

Liao touched her own screen, overlaying the data the Telvan had provided on the planet. “Excellent. Coordinate with the maps we have. See what we can determine are the key areas we need to take.”

“Very good, Captain.” Iraj gave her a meaningful look. “Still no signs of hostile ships.”

“I don’t like that either,” Liao said, “but it’s possible he’s just watching us for now, seeing what our plans are before he makes his move. But rest assured, Commander… Ben is out there.”

They spent a moment examining their maps.

“This facility,” said Iraj as he pointed to a white hot spot on the thermal camera, “is marked by the Telvan as being the main factory complex. It’s almost certainly where the majority of the drones Ben’s been making have been created. Irrespective of if Ben shows up or not, if we take that facility, there’s no way he can grow his army anymore.”

“There’s a lot of heat in that area,” Liao observed thoughtfully. “How’s it getting power?”

“Built in reactor. The Kel-Voranians on the surface indicated that it was still active, working day and night.”

She nodded. “Good, well, let’s make that our ground force’s primary objective then.”

With a few taps of her console, Liao transmitted the maps to the marines and soldiers throughout the fleet, including objectives, tactical information and terrain readouts. The new tactical IFF computer was a very useful asset, it seemed. She could send her battlefield plans to the whole fleet in seconds and update them in real time.

When it was all done, she reached up and touched her headset, giving the word.

“All units, commence ground operations.”

Like a pack of dogs suddenly cut from their leashes, the
Beijing
’s hangar bay belched forth fighters and gunships packed with men and equipment. From the radar screen, she could see the same happening with the
Tehran
. The Telvan cruisers, seemingly identical to the Toralii Alliance cruisers in outward appearance, opened up their underbellies, unleashing a tide of smaller craft down onto the planet like the yoke of a broken egg.

But it was the five Kel-Voran dreadnought’s approach that was the most interesting to her. The ships completely broke up. Each ship disintegrated into nearly two hundred smaller pieces, each seemingly with their own power. They flowed down towards the surface in a swarm.