Lacuna: The Ashes of Humanity (17 page)

It might also require some manual labour, too. This was good. They needed industry, something for people to do. So far, all their efforts had been spent towards simple survival, trying not to die as they waited for the Alliance to return and finish them all. Despite the constant patrols, everyone lived in a state of perpetual alert.

The people didn't know about the Toralii Alliance scout their CAP had destroyed. The less said about that, the better.

She continued scrolling. A note from Captain Anderson. Apparently a baby had been born. The first Human born off world, but not the last. The daughter of a pregnant woman evacuated on the
Washington
. They called her Wei, although many of the English speaking population called her Eve instead.

Eden. Eve.

Liao forced herself to be strong enough to read every word of the message. There would be many such things in the future, including amongst the civilians who lived on her ship. It was inevitable, and she would one day have to play the same role Anderson had. People looked up for her. They expected her to lead.

But while endless administration, organisation, and delegation filled her days, her nights were full of tears.

She felt vaguely ill. Closing the tablet, she visited the small bathroom in her office. On a random impulse, she stood on the scales.

Liao had lost twenty kilos. She wondered if people had noticed. She had subconsciously tightened her belt and adjusted her sleeves, never concerned with such things. Every day had been the same; an endless series of tasks before her, each completed in a grim, robotic daze.

The pistol underneath the pile of paper on her desk called to her.

She fought the urge and instead went back to the messages. Most were uninteresting. The ship landed on the ground made routine maintenance much more difficult. The mud of the place was swallowing it up. There was talk of having to lift off and reposition the ship so that it could remain aloft or allocating some power to the reactionless drives to reduce its weight. Rowe's report was, of course, overly comprehensive to the point of inanity.

Reading was good, though. It distracted her.

She continued well into the night, and then dragged herself back to her quarters to sleep. This time sheer exhaustion won out. The moment her head hit the pillow, she was asleep, the light in her bedroom left on, insects buzzing around the bulb.

C
HAPTER
VII

Sweet Misery

*****

Eden

Velsharn system

L
IAO
BARELY
REMEMBERED
WAKING
UP
and showering, her body covered in insect bites, but she found herself back in her office—the exact place she didn't want to go. Not with her Type 9 stuffed under all those papers.

It would be okay, though. Although she was still miserable, she didn't have the heart to do it. Not after what had happened. Given the circumstances, Liao considered deleting her report, but it did contain a lot of valuable information. She edited some parts, mostly for curse words and exaggerations, the sense of guilt growing with each edit.

Fortunately, James visited her, interrupting her growing desire to incinerate the whole thing.

"Hey you," he said, smiling as he pushed open her door. "Get much sleep?"

She hadn't, the insects had seen to that, but a white lie would save some face. "A bit," she said, "but not much."

James's disappointment was clear, but he at least tried to hide it. "Okay, well, that's something at least."

Soon
, she promised herself.
Soon I can sleep properly
.

"Hey," said James, reaching up and touching her forehead. "What happened to your hair?"

Liao recoiled away from the touch. She concealed the gesture byadjusting her cap. "I... thought it best to cut it."

"Really?" James smiled. "It doesn't look half bad."

"Thanks," she said, trying to change the subject. "Sorry. I was just working."

"On what?" James craned his neck. "Something for the
Tehran
?"

Liao didn't want to let him see it, not like this, but accepted she had no way to hide it now. She didn't want to tell James that she'd written the whole thing in one go, so stretched the truth. "Just a report I've been working on. It's a… frank introspection of our involvement with the interstellar community, along with a catalogue of the decisions that led us to this point. Written as a stream-of-consciousness, honest, brutal assessment of everything that has happened to us so far."

"I like it," said James. He reached for the document, but Liao put her hand over it.

"It's not finished."

"Well, lemme read it when it's done."

"Of course." Desperate for another change in topic, Liao motioned for James to take a seat. "So, what brings you to my fortress of solitude?"

"Sounds like something Summer would say." He pulled out one of her chairs and eased himself into it. "Eh. I'm just trying to sort out what's going to happen now that the
Tehran
crew has arrived."

"How do you mean?"

James pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing. "Just the little things, really. Like making sure that everything gets done and done on time, and to the proper standards."

Liao frowned. "There's a discipline problem on the
Tehran
?"

"Yes and no. It's complicated. You know how hard it is to operate with an Iranian crew? There's a huge, fundamental difference between Western militaries and Persian militaries. There's an ingrained cultural divide between the officers and the enlisted that borders on a caste system—they don't even talk, really. They do things that we would consider totally abhorrent, that would end in a dishonourable discharge in any western service." James put his elbow on Liao's desk, as though the force of retelling the story might cause him to slump over in aggravation. "Wanna hear something Sabeen told me when these problems started to make themselves known? She told me that when she was in training, they had some exercise out east, near the Afghani border. The wind was blowing really hard, and it was disturbing the officers' meals, so they had their enlisted men lock arms and stand in the way. They literally used their men as windbreaks, Melissa. Fucking Jesus."

James took a breath, shaking his head. "And that's not even it. After they were done, the bus that was supposed to transport them all back to base broke down, so senior officers just called a pair of cabs—on the military's dime—and used them to get themselves home, leaving the enlisted crewmen behind in the desert, hundreds of kilometres away from their base. They had to hitchhike back. There's a reason why military service is usually avoided at all costs, including self-mutilation, but those who end up serving just accept whatever's been dealt to them. They're fatalists. They just accept that whatever happens is the will of Allah, which makes things like safety and maintenance hard. Why bother fixing it when Allah's going to come along and make everything okay in the end anyway?

"My crew's a little better than most of the fuck-ups in the Iranian armed forces, but only because I'm in command, and because they're the best Iran could offer. The prestige of serving in space was a big lure for them. Even so… we're the best that the Iranians have, the elites, but our logistic network is heavily reliant on the EU and the Chinese. That means that when a part goes out, when we need basic services like replacement crew, food, or fuel, we need to talk to the EU and then they talk to the Iranians, who fob it off to the Chinese who rip it off the Americans. Repeat this back along the chain until it gets to us. It's a nightmare. I have no idea how we're going to cope now that whole network is gone. The ship's probably falling apart as we speak."

He looked directly at Liao. "Hey, are you listening?"

Liao didn't know how to answer. "Yeah," she said eventually, "I was listening. I was just… having a lot of trouble processing what you're telling me."

"Are you okay?" James frowned in concern.

"I guess. I just… I was reading a bunch of things before." She gestured to the pile of documents on her desk. "Reports from all over the ship. We have a severe roach infestation in the lower decks of the
Beijing
."

"Roaches? You mean some kind of indigenous life form?"

"Nope, standard Earth roaches."

"How the fuck did roaches get on board?"

"No idea. They must have been here since Earth, just much less prevalent. It seems like the warmer air and humid climate are good to them."

James just chuckled. "Roaches really can survive apocalypse."

"Yeah." There really wasn't much more she could say. "Roaches, huh."

"Yeah."

James and Liao shared an awkward pause and then James coughed. "Oh, there was one thing. I wanted to discuss the new CAP routes with you. I wanted to pull more ships from the
Tehran
to reinforce our numbers. We took down that scout, but it's inevitable that the Toralii are going to come looking for their missing ship. We should consider looking at ways to fortify the system."

Liao had no interest in that at all. "We should consider leaving."

"Leaving?"

"Leaving this planet. Leaving this
system
. Going somewhere the Alliance can't find us, not hiding behind the Telvan. We can't fight the Toralii Alliance. We are a broken species. Combat ineffective. If the Alliance shows up tomorrow, we can offer no meaningful resistance." She let her hands flop down by her sides. "The war is over, James. We lost."

His expression was sombre, and he was seemingly unable to refute what she was telling him. "I know. But while we've got people to protect, we keep fighting. That's the rules." He smiled. "Let me see that report on the roaches. We have a stockpile of nerve gas on the
Tehran
. We might be able to put some of it to good use."

"Sure," she said, but immediately regretted opening her mouth.
 

James reached over and picked up a handful of documents. Liao's handgun slid out, clattering onto her desk.

"Jesus." He picked it up and stared at it. He thumbed the magazine release then pulled back the slide, and a round slid out. "Live round in the chamber, safety's off. Did you just
leave
this here?"

She didn't know what to say. "James, I—"

"No." James gritted his teeth. "You'd never just leave your handgun out, certainly not like this." He turned the weapon over and over in his hands, inspecting every side of it. "This is something you did deliberately, isn't it?"

"James…"

"There are no assassins. No security issues. You don't even have marines posted at your door. There's only one reason that you'd leave a loaded firearm within arm's reach, without even a safety catch to prevent negligent discharges." He glared at her. "Isn't there?"

She struggled to find a good lie, something that might convince James his suspicions were wrong.
 

But she couldn't, so she just took off her cap.

"Mother of God." James reached up to touch the wound. "You did this?"

"It's… hard," she said, her voice cracking. "You don't understand. Out of all of us—Knight, Anderson, de Lugo, you, me—I'm the one that's been the tip of the spear. It's always been the
Beijing
and me at the head of everything. Kor'Vakkar, Cenar, Belthas IV… It was my ship that bore the worst of the fighting, my crew that bled the most. That means I'm the most responsible for what happened to Earth. All those dead people, James. They're
my
fault."

"Is that what you think?"

"Fucking hell, how could I think anything else?"

"What about fleet command and your orders? Do you hold yourself responsible for their commands as well?"

"No," she said, struggling to keep her voice even. "But it's not just them. It's me. I started it… back in the Sol system. Back when the Toralii scout ship, Saara's ship, appeared near Jupiter. I attacked them. I could have let them go. Sheng said—"

"Sheng was wrong."

"Sheng
might
have been right. We don't know. That was a Telvan ship. They wouldn't have taken their knowledge to the Alliance. And even if they did, there might have been time to dismantle the Pillars before they attacked. We could have given up the jump capacity. We could have all lived."

"What kind of life is that?" James thumbed the magazine release, pulled back the slide, and put her pistol down on the table. "What kind of life would that be? Living under the heel of the Toralii, too frightened to do anything in case our benevolent masters decree it to be too much? What other restrictions would they put on us?"

"It couldn't be any worse than the death of our species."

"Or it could have been the same, but with no ships to carry away the survivors." A pleading edge grew in James's voice. "You can't blame yourself for this, Melissa. You can't. It's not fair. You're not blameless—nobody is—but this isn't your fault. The blood of humanity isn't on your hands."

"It is. It is, it's my fault, and—"

"Stop." James held up his hands. "Stop, okay? What do you want me to say? That it is your fault? Great! So you killed everyone. Good job. That's in the
past
. We're in the
present
, Melissa. All we have is how we're going to deal with this."

How would they deal with it? What words could make this better? "I know, but I don't think I can do that."

"How can I help?" Sincerity flowed out of James's every word. "You need it, you get it."

Liao laughed, a long, genuine laugh that came from a place within her she didn't quite understand. The pain had helped her forget her misery; she needed more of that. More immediate dramas to break her out of her apathy. Her lethargy.

"I need to kick someone's arse."