Lacuna: The Spectre of Oblivion (30 page)

“A bold proclamation, but I’m afraid that’s not an option, Ben. You are beaten. Your jump drive is deactivated, and even now, your ship is surrounded and being bombarded on all sides. You have no hope of escaping. Power down your systems, surrender your jump drive, and I’ll offer you the same thing I offered you after Velsharn: a fair trial.”

“I spit on your trial.” The line cut out with a hiss of static.

Ling called out to her. “Captain, Ben’s gaining altitude.”

“His underside batteries have ceased firing at the landing parties,” said Jiang, “and he’s turning those guns, too, on the fleet.” The woman’s voice faded out. She muttered something Liao didn’t catch, then said, “We are…
not
being targeted. At all.”

The shuddering force of weapons impacts faded away, shrouding the Operations room in a strange quiet, broken only by the chatter of voices and the relaying of orders across the floor.

“Good,” answered Liao. “Rowe, ensure that our hull remains charged. Jiang, weapons free, return fire. Instruct any strike craft not covering ground forces to engage Ben’s ship. Dao, bring us out of orbit. Let’s see if we can lure Ben into open space.”

“Missiles away, Captain. Ben’s higher now, so we can use a greater yield.”

“Good. Keep at him, but be careful of fratricide. Our Broadsword is getting close.”

Dao called to her. “It’s working, Captain. He’s following us.”

Liao’s headset crackled. The voice of Alex Aharoni, the head of her strike group, filled her headset. “
Beijing
actual, this is Jazz. Broadsword
Warsong
took another hit. I’m pulling them out. We need more support down here. The ground elements are fully defensive. We dropped right into an ambush, and we have way too many ground targets for our air elements to engage.”

“Do your best. We’re trying to draw fire from the
Giralan
which should help you guys out some.”

“Much appreciated,
Beijing
.”

“Status report on the
Vulture
?”

Aharoni hesitated momentarily before answering. “They’re all dead, Captain. The whole ship is a fireball. No chutes.”

She bit on her lower lip, then nodded. “Copy. Divert
Archangel
to go pick up wounded ground elements instead. Let’s save the living before we start collecting corpses.”

“Captain,” said Hsin, “the
Tehran
reports that Ben’s ship is targeting them with some kind of directed plasma weapon. Their defensive systems can’t dissipate the incoming energy properly, and it’s cutting their hull to ribbons.”

Liao stepped over to Jiang’s console, resting her hand on the back of her chair and leaning over her shoulder. “How do you mean?”

“The charged hull works by taking incoming directed energy and spreading it over a larger area, decreasing the kilojoules per square metre, but this heat is more sticky. It’s not being transferred far at all, which means they’re burning through the hull.”

“Damn,” said Liao, “he knows this ship, probably better than we do. He’s seen the blueprints… read everything about it. He knows how to hurt us.”

Rowe’s voice cut over the chatter in Operations. “Captain, we gotta problem! Ben’s charging his worldshatter device. He’s targeting Nalu’s flagship!”

Nalu’s ship, where Saara was. Liao felt a sudden, intense spike of fear in her belly that was matched only by the equally fierce feeling of helplessness that swept over her as she stared at the ship on her monitor. “We can’t do anything to help them. Jiang, keep up the fire and target the emitter. See if we can’t knock that weapon offline.”

“He’s firing!”

Liao’s radar display on the command console lit up as the energy wave from the worldshatter device leapt towards Nalu’s ship, the
Ju’khaali
, passing through it and out the other side. The thermal camera lit up, a bright flare of flame leaping from both sides of the ship as the vessel slumped forward, listless and without guidance, its atmosphere spilling out and fuelling the raging conflagration.

She stared in shock at the catastrophic damage. The
Sydney
had suffered a direct hit from the cannon in the battle with the
Seth’arak
which had crippled it, and it was significantly less powerful than a Toralii cruiser. The
Seth’arak
seemed to focus the weapon’s deadly blast on their strike craft, and post-battle analysis of the conflict had lead to heavy speculation that the worldshatter device would have little effect on capitol ships.

But she had just seen the fiery lance of Ben’s worldshatter device not only pierce the hull of a battle-ready Toralii cruiser, but travel through the core of the ship and penetrate the other side. It was an order of magnitude more powerful than previously observed, and it changed the tempo of the battle dramatically.

And Saara was on board the burning, crippled vessel.

“Captain,” said Mister Hsin, “we’re receiving a distress call from Main Engineering on the Telvan flagship
Ju’khaali
. They say their bridge has been destroyed and their primary reactors are offline. They’re evacuating the surviving crew.”

Mentally, Liao compared the layout of the Telvan cruiser with the
Giralan
. The bridge, the Toralii equivalent of Operations and the central core of the ship, would be in the same place. Ben’s targeting had been perfect, a fiery lance straight through the heart, killing the command centre with surgical precision. Nalu would have been there. Where would Saara be during all this? On the bridge, too? Almost certainly.

She put that thought out of her mind for now, focusing on her next course of action.

“Mister Jiang, how long until our marines dock with the
Giralan
?”

“Two minutes, Captain.”

“Good,” said Liao, “coordinate with the
Tehran
. That ship may not be packing life support, but it’s made of metal. Just keep shooting. Dig as deep into that hull as we can. Get them as close to the bridge as possible. Ben’s in there, and we can dig all the way to its rotten core if we have to.”

“Confirmed coordinates, Captain. Executing strike package…”

Liao turned to her command console expecting to see the tiny streaks of flying missiles strike home, but as she watched them, the pencil-thin lines all veered away and tumbled into Belthas IV’s atmosphere. “Mister Jiang? The strike package?”

“I… I executed it, Captain. The ship accepted the command. I don’t know what went wrong.”

Liao twisted, looking over her shoulder. “Summer?”

Rowe tapped furiously on her keyboard. “I don’t get it! The command was lodged successfully. It was executed. Commands were dispatched to the launch tubes and onto the missiles themselves… That volley should have hit! They can’t
all
be duds!”

“Find out what went wrong,” said Liao, “and fix it. Right now.”

Rowe frowned, staring at her screen. “Wait. Wait, that doesn’t make sense!”

Liao stepped over to Rowe’s console. “Talk to me, Summer.”

“Look.” Rowe jabbed a finger at her Engineering console. “Take a look at this. It’s the log of the launch. Something is
really
wrong. The missiles launch code sequence was interrupted.”

“You mean… jammed? How?”

Rowe shook her head, stabbing her finger at the screen, at a scrolling piece of text that went past far too fast for Liao to read. “No, not jammed. Look.
Interrupted
. Very, very quickly, but it left a line in our log. The command came from the IFF targeting computer, using the
Tehran
’s IFF code.”

It didn’t make any sense. “Ben has the
Tehran
’s IFF code?”

“No!” Rowe gave an exasperated growl. “I’m trying to tell you that the
Tehran
is patched into our systems using the shared IFF. Right before we shot that last barrage, our IFF screwed up our missile batteries by flagging Ben’s ship as friendly.”

“Why the hell would they do that?” She scowled. “And why the hell do they have remote access to the IFF computer?” Saara had told her nothing had changed except the new piece of technology, but this was a serious issue.

“Fucked if I know. I can only tell you what the screen says, and it says that the order to deactivate our missile batteries came from the shared targeting computer, which is linked to the
Tehran
’s systems. It’s how we share tactical information.”

“Mister Hsin,” said Liao, “get the
Tehran
on the line and find out just what the fuck is happening.”

Hsin immediately went to work, then gave her a curt nod when the channel was open.

Liao jammed her headset onto her head. “
Tehran,
this is
Beijing
actual. Request priority channel to
Tehran
actual
immediately
.”

James’s voice filled her headset. “
Beijing
, this is the
Tehran
. Send it.”

“James, what the fuck? What are you doing with our systems?”

“Systems? No idea what you’re talking about, Captain.”

Liao glanced at Rowe to confirm it. The redhead nodded in a frenzy, so Liao touched the talk key again.

“Summer tells me the
Tehran
is using our tactical computer to flag hostiles as friendlies.”

“We’re not doing anything of the sort, Captain. Why would we interfere with your ship’s capabilities?”

James’s distance in the heat of battle was off-putting, but Liao tried very hard to keep her composure. “I don’t know,
Captain
. You tell me.”

“Have Summer check them again. We would never interfere with the
Beijing
’s systems. She’s as safe as she ever was.”

She?

Liao narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. “Is she now?”

“Of course, Captain.”

Liao inhaled slightly. “James, can I ask you something?”

“Now might not be the best time, Captain.”

“It’s important.” Liao looked to Kamal, speaking slowly and deliberately. “I’ve been thinking about our apartment in New York. I was thinking of converting the den so that Tai doesn’t have to sleep on the couch anymore.”

“Can’t we discuss it after we’re done, you know, shooting at Ben?”

She grit her teeth, grinding them together so hard it hurt and ignoring the strange looks she was getting from around the room. “James, I just want to make it perfectly clear what I’m asking; when we get back to Earth, is it okay for me to renovate the spare bedroom so that Kang Tai, my bodyguard, can sleep there?”

“Melissa, I don’t care. We’re a little busy over here.” James gave an exasperated sigh down the line. “Yes, you can renovate the room. Goodness knows Tai could use a proper bed every now and then.”

She reached up and clicked the button on her headset to close the line. She stared at the readouts on her command console, watching the exchange of fire between the
Giralan
and the rest of the fleet.

Ben was in their ship.

Chapter XII

“Their Lives, As They Will Be”

*****

Operations

TFR
Beijing

“Captain, that sounds a little nuts.” Iraj moved up beside her. “Are you saying that our sensors are being jammed?”

Liao growled and thumped her fist against the unyielding metal of the console. “No. I’m saying that our systems have been completely compromised from the inside. Ben’s feeding us bad sensor data, bad radio communications. Who knows what else.” She stood up straight, facing Iraj directly. “That wasn’t James on the line.”

Iraj affixed a sceptical, confused stare on her. “It wasn’t? It sounded exactly like him, coming through on the secure frequency…”

“It wasn’t him. Lieutenant Kang Tai is dead. James and I both watched him bleed to death right before we were recalled.”

Kamal raised an eyebrow. “That’s hardly compelling evidence, Captain…”

“And he called the
Beijing
a she.”

He paused for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Guess that settles it. Miss Rowe?”

“Yeah, Commander?”

“We’re going to un-fuck this situation, and we’re going to do it right now. You said that the orders to block the missile launches were coming from the newly installed IFF transponder. Right?”

“Right.”

“How do we disable it?”

Rowe shrugged. “Well, we can just shut it down, but it takes time. If there’s a virus or something in it, there’s no reason to suspect it won’t move to another system, prevent the shutdown, or even trigger the scuttling charges or something.”