Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi (25 page)

“Good effect on target.
Numerous gun batteries disabled, and the hull near the command centre has been breached!”

For once, Liao didn't need her tactical officer's report to know how just how well they'd done. “Excellent work, Mister Jiang. Fire again when ready.”

“Aye aye, Captain. The railgun’s capacitors will be cooled and charged again in twenty seconds!”

Liao turned to Dao, a sudden knot forming in her stomach as James, one objective of their mission–in her mind, the sole objective–leapt back into her head. “Report, Mister Dao.
Have we located the
Tehran
or the Kel-Voran Dreadnought yet?”

“No sign of the
Tehran
yet, Captain, but there is currently one contact within the four hundred
thousand tonnes range. The rest are two hundred
thousand or less, so that must be the Kel-Voran ship.”

Liao nodded. “Have the
Archangel
insert her Marines there, along with Garn. They'll need to secure the ship until the rest of his crew can be rescued and brought to man the ship.”

“Right away, Captain.”

Liao turned back to Jiang. “Status on Broadswords?”

“The
Archangel
is en route to the dreadnought; the
Switchblade
,
Predator
,
and
Paladin
are standing by to insert their Marines once Cenar’s command centre has been disabled.”

“And the railguns? How close are they to being ready?”

“One moment, Captain.” Jiang leant over her console, scrutinizing her readouts. “The railgun capacitors will be charged in three, two, one…”

There was another faint shudder as the railguns fired a second round of shots, the slugs disappearing into the twin holes already punched in Cenar's hull. This time, the effect was even more pronounced; the friction of the shots as they passed through the space station’s atmosphere ignited it, causing a gout of flame to burst from the two impact zones.

Liao watched in grim satisfaction as the whole level ignited, with secondary explosions clearly visible on the ship’s thermal cameras. The parts of the blaze exposed to space were quickly snuffed out, but that was precious little comfort to the Toralii in those sections who were left without air to breathe.

Jiang called over the bustle of the Operations room. “Captain, the railguns have had good effect on the target.
Between the strike craft and our missile barrages, we’ve knocked out a great number of defensive batteries on the station. We’re ready to insert the Marines.”

Liao straightened her back, feeling it crack slightly and realising just how long she’d been hunched over her screen. “Excellent. Put them in, Mister Jiang.”

“Will do, Captain. Stand by.”

The woman turned back to her console, tapping her talk key. “
Beijing
actual
to Marine teams—green light on insertion. Good hunting.”

Good hunting.
The Marines were hunters, and that was something hunters said to each other. Never
good luck
or
be careful
. It was always
good hunting
. To rely entirely on luck was seen as a weakness; real warriors made their own luck through skill, relentless training, and tactical advantages. To rely on luck was not wise, but being overly careful was even worse. Hunters were supposed to treat defensive positions as a stable platform for attack, not a place to hide.

Aggression was necessary in warfare. You couldn’t win with caution. It was as Cheung had told her earlier—everything in warfare had to have a certain level risk to it, or there was no conflict.

The Marines she was ordering into battle knew the risks. It was admirable, in a way, how nonchalantly Cheung had dismissed the dangers of her profession, even when her arm had been scarred in the line of duty. Now she faced the same, and worse, along with all of her soldiers.

Jiang turned in her seat. “Captain, all Broadswords except the
Archangel
report they’ve attached to the hull and begun insertion.
Archangel
reports they’ve dropped their team and are now standing by for Search and Rescue duties.”

Liao folded her arms. “Good. Align railguns to target Cenar’s fighter hangars.
Let’s see if we can clip their wings before they launch too many.”

Jiang chuckled. “Already got the firing solution locked in, Captain. With their hangar doors open, it shouldn't take more than one or two shots to have them nicely roasting in Hell."

Liao gave the woman a slight grin, nodding. “Use your discretion with the railguns, then, but be cautious. Make sure our Marines have their locator beacons on. Watch for friendlies and prisoners.”

“Of course, Captain.”

Liao felt the almost imperceptible shift as the ship rotated, then a third shudder as the railguns fired another barrage.

Dao’s voice caught her attention. “That’s odd,” he said, glancing at his instruments in confusion.

Liao stepped over to his station, resting her hand on the back of his chair. “What is it?”

“The reactionless drive. When I made that course correction, there was a weight on the outer hull. Small, but enough to affect the change.”

Liao frowned. “A weight? On which side?”

“The underside. One moment, I’ll bring up an external camera.”

When he did so, the problem became obvious.

A Toralii boarding ship had attached itself to the underside of the
Beijing
.

Engineering Bay One

TFR Beijing

Ben was good at a lot of things, but one of the things he was
very
good at was passing the time.

Being locked in Engineering was really no different than being stuck in the hull of the
Giralan
, or being left in the vast deserts of Karathi. He amused himself by scanning the entire interior of the engineering bay with his advanced optics, mapping its structure down to the molecular level and analysing every tiny imperfection in its surface. He counted not only how many bolts and welds and joins the room contained, but performed numerous small tasks such as estimating the temperature of the welds, or running the metal through an analysis to find its impurities then trying to to guess its age to the day.

All this was bought to an end by a crashing, burning explosion that tore a two metre hole in the side of the bulkhead. In Ben’s mind it all happened in slow motion; through his audio sensors, he could hear
the faint hiss—undetectable to Human ears—that preceded the detonation of a Toralii breaching charge. He watched as the bulkheads came apart, the metal melting and fragmenting, and studied the trajectories of the semi-liquid metallic shards as they splattered onto the deck.

He saw the Toralii boarders come into the room, anticipating where their armoured feet would fall, studying their featureless visages through the helmet visors. Ben saw the attackers raise their weapons and cut down the startled Marines guarding him like a scythe through a field of wheat.

[“They have a construct,”] one of the Toralii observed, wearing the white armour that denoted a leader, [“chained, and in the stylings of our own. Perhaps it is salvage?”]

The word burned through Ben’s mind like a brand.
Salvage
. These Toralii were of the Alliance, as bad as the Telvan in any way he could measure. He watched as they inspected the Human bodies, barely paying attention to him.

[“That’s correct,”] Ben offered, lying. Fortunately for him, though, he had full control of his vocal chords.
He allowed emotion in only when he chose to, and in this case, discretion would serve him better. [“They bound me, not knowing what I was. But I can help you.”]

The Toralii attacker used his boot to casually turn over one of the Human corpses, verifying it was dead. [“Construct, what do you know of the layout of this ship?”]

[“Everything.”]

Casually, the white-armoured Toralii leader gestured to his red-armoured companions. [“Good. Break his chains.”]

And they did, with the ruthless precision that Ben expected from them. He stretched himself to his full height, gesturing submissively towards the Toralii leader.

[“What is your command?”]

It riled him to offer service, but it was necessary—for now.

[“Show me to this vessel’s voidwarp device so that we may destroy it. We do not know how these aliens arrived this far beyond the jump point, but they cannot be allowed to escape. We need to prevent further translocation so our reinforcements can arrive and crush them.”]

Ben gestured with a claw. [“The device is through that bulkhead, then down one level.”]

A breaching charge was placed on the far wall and detonated. Like this room, its neighbour was occupied, but by engineers; the Toralii boarders made short work of them, cutting the unarmed Human engineers down like insects. Then a charge was placed on the floor.

[“You are certain, construct?”]

Ben affixed his sensors on the lead Toralii. [“My information is accurate, Leader.”]

With a nod, the Toralii blew the charge. A spray of metal flew into the chamber below and they leaped in one after another, Ben taking the rear.

The casing for the jump drive was empty because most of its systems were controlled from Operations.

[“Hold,”] Ben said, watching as the Toralii prepared another breaching charge. [“You will need that one to escape this room.”]

The white-armoured Toralii regarded him with a condescending sneer. [“What?”]

Ben gestured to the roof. [“You blew a hole in the roof, and your armour is too heavy to climb back up through it. You will need at least three charges to get back to that level.”]

The Toralii became agitated, but Ben held up his claws. [“Do not worry. I will tear the forbidden voidwarp device from its mounts and crush it myself. ”]

That idea met with nods of approval, so Ben turned to the casing for the Humans’ jump drive. Attaching his claws to the metal, he steadied his feet and gripped the device with his large clamps. Straining his articulators, he pulled, the metal of the jump drive stressing and groaning before finally tearing free in a cloud of debris.

[“Crush it,”] the Toralii leader commanded, nodding with approval at the gaping hole in the
Beijing
’
s jump drive compartment.

[“As you wish.”]

Ben extended a claw, grasping the shocked Toralii leader by the middle and closing his grip. With the
crack
-
splinter
of stressed metal, the Toralii spacesuit crumpled like an empty can, the violent gesture barely giving the alien
just enough time to shout before his lungs were crushed. Swinging the corpse as a weapon, Ben slammed it into the one of the other Toralii, then casually dropped the one-tonne jump drive onto the forehead of the third. Picking up the device when his grisly work was done, the construct scampered nimbly up the wall to the ceiling, disappearing through the hole the Toralii had made, carrying the
Beijing’s
jump drive with him.

It took him only a few moments to return to his datacore. With the drone’s arms free, reconnecting the cable from the
Beijing
’
s systems to his own took only a matter of moments. He powered up the link, feeling with his mind the ship’s systems, reaching–in an almost telepathic sense–into its computer systems.

Ben knew the Humans had changed their access codes since he was granted access to the ship. With an engineer like Summer Rowe—brilliant, with a splash of paranoia—the change came as no surprise. He knew the code was a number, represented by a series of bits—ones and zeroes. There were 1024 of them.

This was standard, military-grade encryption. Most civilians, he had learned from the huge ream of data he’d extracted from the
Beijing’s
computers, used 256 bits. These bits were capable of forming a number larger than the number of atoms in the observable universe.

Approximately 10^78, give or take. Another way to look at it was five trillion of Earth’s computers working together to solve the key would take 197 years to solve a 256 bit problem. To solve the 1024 bit problem would take those five trillion computers a staggering, exponentially larger amount of time to complete.

But Ben was no ordinary Earth computer.

He was what Human scientists would call a quantum Turing machine. He didn’t even use bits–metaphorical ones and zeroes–instead using a complex notion called qubits. Qubits could be a one, or a zero, or any suspension between the two. A subtle but crucial difference.

In layman’s terms, playing by the rules would mean the level of encryption the
Beijing
used would be impossible to break in any meaningful period of time, but the rules did not apply to Ben. It was akin to a two-dimensional cartoon trying to design a maze. Another two-dimensional cartoon might well be trapped there for days, but a three-dimensional cartoon could step over the 'walls' as though they were nothing.

Ben set his datacore to work, reaching further and further into the ship’s computer cores and stripping away the encryption as though it were a child’s toy. Guessing the key wasn’t necessary; his system worked in a way that didn’t use such limited abstractions.

Soon, he had access to the ship’s entire network. He was careful–read access only, he didn’t want to interfere with the battle–and he could tell they already knew he was there.

Alarms and alerts, subtle changes in the flow of information, like a body’s immune system responding to his presence. He recognised the style–Summer, the redheaded engineer.

But she was made of flesh and could not possibly outwit him. Not on the digital battlefield, in the realm of pure mathematics.

Ben turned off the artificial gravity on the whole ship, powering down the reactionless drives and locking the crew out for a few minutes. His body, the jump drive, and his datacore slowly drifted up from the deck of the ship. With a claw he reached down, taking up one of the combined power and data couplings and placing it into the
Beijing
’
s disembodied jump drive, watching with his many optics as it slowly sprang back to life.