Read Lacuna: The Spectre of Oblivion Online
Authors: David Adams
Lacuna: The Spectre of Oblivion (33 page)
“Our lives of the future will be different from our lives of the past. Collectively. Individually. All of us. The Human race has arranged a treaty with the Toralii Alliance, now permitted to keep our jump technology, and we hope to use this technology sparingly and wisely. I have seen firsthand the consequences of its misuse, and I will advocate that this technological marvel be treated with the gravitas it deserves.
“And we will do this together. Today proved that the Kel-Voran and the Telvan can set aside whatever differences they have and work together for a common goal. I anticipate that there will be many more common goals in the future. There will be times we do not all agree, but I know we can put those disputes aside and always find some common ground. I know we can do this because we have already done it.
“For humans, well, for these reasons and so many more… this is a monumental day for our species, a day we’re going to remember forever, etched into the memory of our species just as surely as our genetic code, as the stories and legends of our past. This day is one for the history books, ladies and gentlemen. You are all, literally, living in what will be one of the most heavily studied, most talked about periods of
all
time. You tread on the pages of the history books of our children.
“I told a peaceful man, once, that I was just like him, that my name is synonymous with the sword, but I would rather it be with the olive branch. I crave not strife, blood and death, and I live for peace. Yet I keep my sword close, and I keep it sharp, and when people ask why I don’t melt that sword down and turn it into a tool, why I keep it as a blade, a thing that kills, I say that I do this so our children don’t have to. War is our generation’s burden to bear, and I intend for it never to be inherited.
“It’s my privilege to stand with you today at what I hope will be the end of war, the end of the dark times, the time we put down our burdens and stand as a species in this galaxy, on our own right. We have a lot of work to go yet, and I know our swords will be needed again, but I hope our children’s hands will remain soft and pure, their eyes innocent and unknowing, never to see these troubles again. This is my dream.”
She released the talk key and took a deep breath, pausing to let her words sink in, then clicked it on again.
“Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
“Earth, As It Will Be”
*****
Belthas L1 Lagrange Point
An hour later
Liao watched the large disturbance on her monitor, the device set to display a black and white image of the magnet spectrum, and felt confused at the strange field’s strength and power, and that it apparently had not reached its apex yet. She resolved to ask the Iilan about it, but her relief, her exhaustion, overtook her. She was simply glad to see the end of the battle.
As the ship approached the jump point, Liao reached into her breast pocket and withdrew the small steel key that would operate the jump drive.
A faint ripple passed over the ship, a barely perceptible murmur of the ship’s hull.
“Captain,” said Ling, “incoming jump in the Belthas L1 Lagrange point.”
“Identify it,” she said. “It figures that the Toralii Alliance would arrive when all the fighting’s done. Typical.” She frowned in aggravation. “They probably just wanted to see who would win.”
Ling shook his head. “No, Captain, this one’s a gunship. ID gives it as the
Paladin
, a Broadsword attached to the
Sydney.”
There was a pause, and Ling’s tone shifted slightly. “Captain, they’re leaking atmosphere.”
She relaxed, relief slowly washing over her. “Glad to hear from them at last. Mister Hsin, find out what the hell happened.” She slipped her headset over her head so she could listen in. “Mister Dao, full stop. Make sure we don’t run them over.”
Hsin reached up and touched his headset. “Broadsword
Paladin
, this is the
Beijing
. Good to see you. Report status.”
A voice, thin and frail, reached her ears. A man, Israeli accent, breathing in laboured gasps. “
Beijing,
the
Sydney
’s been destroyed.”
Complete silence spread out over the entire Operations room. Nobody said a word, and Liao felt her blood freeze in her veins. She touched the talk key. “Broadsword
Paladin
, this is
Beijing
actual. Say again.”
“The
Sydney
’s gone, Captain. The Toralii Alliance ambushed them in the Karathi system, cut them down with the worldshatter device. Their reactors lit up, and that was it. The fucking bastards even destroyed the escape pods. We evaded them by escaping into Karathi’s asteroid belt and pretending to be debris until we could make a run to the L2 point. Break.” Ragged breathing came over the line as though the messenger were struggling to speak. “We have multiple wounded, including myself, and we’ve been on the run for a week… We could use medical attention and a hot meal. Request emergency dock proceedings.”
Liao nodded, even though the gesture would be lost on the crew. “Do it,” she said. “We’ll keep the door open for you.” She cut the line. “Mister Jiang, have a medical team sent to the hangar bay at once.”
“Already on it, Captain.”
She took the headset off, staring at Iraj who looked right back at her, both of them saying nothing.
*****
Mars-Phobos L1 Lagrange Point
Near Cerberus Blockade
One hour later
The
Beijing
appeared in the Lagrange point, and Liao saw the familiar spectre of Mars filling her monitor. The giant red planet was a quarter the size of Earth with a thin atmosphere and weak magnetic field, but home to almost a thousand souls these days.
Her surprise was total, then, when a large hunk of wreckage sailed past the nose of her ship, little more than a single sheet of metal attached to twisted and burned steel girders, the metal exposed and raw. Then another piece, and another.
“Report!”
Ling stared at his radar screen, slowly turning to face Liao, his face ashen. “Captain… we’ve arrived in a debris field.”
She stared in wide-eyed confusion for a moment, crossing the distance between the jump console and the radar operator’s station in a matter of steps.
“What the hell do you mean? Did we jump on top of someone?”
“No, Captain. The debris is coming from…” his voice faded away, then came back, charged with adrenaline. “Captain, it’s the Cerberus station.”
Liao followed his gaze to the forward looking thermal. The station, once a large, blocky collection of armoured plates and weapons turrets, was broken open like an egg: its hull plating peeled back, blown open from the inside. Numerous secondary explosions had created little flowers all over the lower half of the station, and battle damage marked the few visible armoured plates. The three rail gun turrets hung limply in space, slowly turning over and over, detached and smashed by some impossibly strong force. The crushed, mangled hulks of gunships and strike craft floated around the area, silent and inert, although most were debris.
Iraj moved to her side, his mouth agape, staring at the ruins. “
Ya ilahi
… What the hell happened here?”
“Mister Ling,” said Liao, her voice wavering as she spoke, “long-range radar. What’s the status of Earth?”
“We won’t know yet,” said Ling. “The radar waves haven’t reached that far out.”
“Captain?” Jiang twisted a monitor around to show her, the woman’s face aghast. “Captain, the jump points… the gravity mines at the L3 Lagrange point. They’re inactive. The jump point is open. So is the L4… and the Deimos L2, and the Deimos L3… They’re
all
open.”
Liao wheeled to Rowe. “Summer, charge the jump drive. Flush coolant and prepare for an emergency jump. I want us in the Earth-Moon L1 point as soon as you can get us there.”
“Emergency flush confirmed,” said Rowe. “Flushing. Nineteen hundred degrees Kelvin... seventeen hundred, dropping. Dropping. We’re experiencing cracks in the casing, it’s cooling unevenly.”
“Keep flushing,” Liao ordered. “If this ship only has to make one more jump, I want it to be this one.”
“Fourteen hundred, Captain. Thirteen hundred.”
Liao leaned over to Iraj, whispering in his ear. “What the hell is this, Kamal? Why would they open all the jump points?”
“I don’t know,” Kamal said, “but we’ll know when we get to Earth. There should be answers there.”
She moved away. “Summer?”
“Okay, okay. We can jump now. It’s going to be messy, but we can do it.”
Liao grit her teeth, realising she still had the key in her hand. She moved back over to the jump console, jamming her key inside. Iraj did the same, then gravity faded away, and the two of them turned their keys.
Normally the jump process was imperceptible at Operations, the heart of the ship, but this time the ship groaned as though in pain, a long, low moan that seemed almost alive. The jump console flashed warnings, technical cries for help in a language she didn’t speak.
The groaning subsided, and the ship came to rest.
“Report,” she said, her breathing rapid. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest as though it were trying to escape the confines of her body. The rising panic came with the knowledge that Allison was on Earth.
The picture of the planet that came up on the monitor, though, stopped that beating heart dead.
The view of the Earth was not the blue and green marble that she had expected, but a marble of a different sort. The white swirling clouds that blanketed the planet in patches were gone, replaced by a roiling mass of dark, brown vapours. The familiar, warm, yellow glow of the world’s lights from space was gone. In its place were lines of flame, angry and thick and red, streaks of fire against the twilight shadow. Colossal fires, larger than she could imagine, large enough to consume whole cities, raged across the planet’s surface, their red-yellow glow visible even from Liao’s high vantage point. The flames seemed impossibly large, impossibly high, as though the entire planet had been soaked in gasoline and a match thrown on it. The flames burned across the planet’s surface.
The seas were black stains when viewed through the lens of the brown atmosphere, roiled in the massive output of energy, frothing and churning as though it were the death throws of a living creature.
“Captain,” said Ling, “I’m detecting a
huge
spike in global temperature around all inhabited zones. The spectrometer shows that… it shows that the atmosphere is being
consumed
by some unknown force. Oxygen content is down to two thirds normal and dropping like a stone. Thermal imagery shows colossal fires on every continent, at every major inhabited city.”
“My God,” Liao said, her tone barely above a whisper. “What…”
Ling’s voice reached her again, breaking the shocked, horrified silence of Operations. “In low Earth orbit, I’m seeing… fifty Toralii vessels, maybe more. The signatures match the Toralii Alliance vessels that were supposed to jump with us.”
She saw them on her radar, daring to tear her eyes away from the visage of the broken planet Earth, the red dots on the black disc of her radar screen. Toralii warships clustered around the planet, pencil thin lines leading from their noses down to the surface as their energy weapons poured death down on what remained of the planet’s population, little fire pokers of death burning humanity’s cradle, bright, white fingers gripping the planet and crushing the life from it.
At the height of her triumph, at the crown of her hope that humanity would live as one of the spacefaring species in the galaxy, having rightfully claimed their destiny and accomplished a generation’s worth of dreams, the words of Paar the Speaker floated back into her mind.
Perhaps the loss of one's homeworld is the baptism of fire all species must endure, the toll they pay for a life amongst the stars.
The Earth was burning.
To Be Continued in Lacuna: The Ashes of Humanity…
The Lacunaverse
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