Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi Read online

  “Yes, I finally read it.”

  Act II

  Chapter V

  “The Howling Wind”

  * * *

  Engineering Bay Two

  TFR Beijing

  It took them four days to do so, but finally Ben’s computer core was cut from the rusted hulk of the Giralan and placed within the Beijing’s engineering bay. Liao finally understood why the Toralii rescue party had complained that the datacore was too heavy to move; it weighed in at almost eleven hundred kilograms, putting the Beijing perilously close to the two hundred thousand tonne limit where the jump drive–seemingly arbitrarily–failed to work. Summer had once tried to explain to Liao exactly why that was, but she didn’t understand.

  Ben seemed very happy. Summer and a few of the other engineers had spent some time brushing the rust from the datacore, then they had given him a thick coat of paint to stop any further deterioration. They spent some time rebuilding his broken legs and replaced the burned out articulators in the maintenance drone’s joints, so all six limbs were now functional. To reduce the weight, they only brought the one drone they had found, which was the most functional, although they kept various parts of four others to use for repairs.

  It was good to have allies, and once they’d brought him on board, Ben was more than happy to tell them anything they wanted to know. Liao had a team lead by Lieutenant Yu following the little scuttling drone around, listening to Ben prattle on. He mostly spouted information they already knew, such as the differences between the Telvan and the Toralii Alliance, but some was quite valuable, even if only in an academic sense: fragments of Toralii history, data on Karathi, speculation regarding troop and ship movements. Liao authorised Summer to dedicate a whole reactor to powering Ben’s datacore, which was a relief for him because he had been without a reliable source of power for so long.

  Liao waited for Ben to return. He had settled in well and her crew had shown him every hospitality. She had questions for him.

  It wasn’t long before the click-clattering of Ben’s claws became audible, followed by his thin, metallic, synthetic voice.

  “… and then, forevermore, possession of the black blade was a sign of the rules of the three kingdoms. Whoever held that blade held with them the throne, and—Captain Liao!”

  Ben, his metal carapace freshly painted a hospital white and claws clicking in excitement, scuttled over to where Liao was standing. “It’s great to see you, Captain! Thank you so much!”

  Liao smiled broadly, reaching up and giving the drone a playful pat on the head. “It’s good to see you too, Ben. How are you settling into life on the Beijing?”

  “Settling in just fine, Captain. This is wonderful! I mean, it’s not nearly as advanced as the Giralan, but it’s a wonderful ship! Very sturdy and. lots of power. So much power, mmm. Rowe fabricated a converter for me. Oh, how nice it is to have to reliable, clean energy. And eight reactors! Redundancy–that’s the ticket. Much better than the sole emergency reactor I had left.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy. Just be aware we need those reactors for the rest of the ship, so one for you, seven for us.”

  “Of course, Captain, of course. I’m just jolly glad to be away from that damn rock, I have to say. I really owe you, big time. I think I was going to go off my rocker if I was stuck there any more.”

  Liao smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” she remarked. “We’re just glad to help.” She stood, gently easing herself into the fold-out chair she’d brought for exactly this purpose. She gestured to the flat piece of cloth she’d set out for Ben to ‘sit’ on, not that she was entirely sure he needed it or how he could even use it. “Now that you’re settled in, I was hoping we could have a little chat about a few things.”

  “Right, right, right. I guess you’ll be wanting answers to your many questions, then, right? Eh?” Ben’s British accent, coming from the thin slit that functioned as his mouth, seemed comically out of place.

  Liao nodded. “We, as a species, are a new people to the spacefaring community. There’s so much we just don’t understand, or even know about, that we need explained. We’ve had Saara in the past, and she’s been a great help, but in terms of raw information, your brain contains so much more that we could know, even if it is many years out of date.”

  “Of course! Your wish is my command, good Captain. Ask away!”

  “You were communicating with Sheng, yes? Were you talking to anyone else?”

  “Oh, well, yes and no—it depends. In the beginning, I was sending out as many signals as I could–I talked to the Alliance, the Kel-Voran, the Telvan.” He clicked his claws together in annoyance. “For all the good talking to the Telvan did to me. Bunch of arrogant, evil psychopaths. But by the end, it was just Sheng.”

  Liao shifted uncomfortably, looking down at the drone. “I see. Well, you should be aware… Saara, one of my crew members and a civilian, is a former member of the Telvan. She’s the only non-Human aboard, though, so don't be alarmed when you see her about.”

  Perhaps it was her imagination, but Liao swore she could see a flash of rage cross over the robot’s remarkably expressive features.

  He drew his claws up against his body, clacking them together.

  “Of course. I’ll try not to be alarmed, no.”

  Liao crossed her hands over her chest, frowning. “Saara has proven herself to be a very capable member of my crew, and she is very welcome here, as are you. I know the Telvan left you behind on that planet, and I know that must be somewhat vexing to you, but on my ship, under my command, we recognize you as a sentient creature and won’t do the same to you.”

  “Oh, no, no, no. That’s not what I worry about at all…” Ben waved his claws in front of him. “I don’t mean you’ll do that.” His tone became nervous. “At least, I hope not. A-a-anyway, the point is, it’s just…”

  As Ben spoke, the nervousness faded and his speech took on a sinister, grim edge. “Her people left me, alone and with no prospects for rescue, on a deserted planet—just left me to rust. But of course, not before taking anything of worth, including vital parts of my systems, primary power generators, and practically all the spare parts. The only thing they left me with was an emergency generator because they couldn’t be bothered cutting it out of the hull, and the long-range communications array, which just happened to be communicating with the Forerunner network.”

  “When I discovered that, I sent out every signal I could, and it took over fifty years to be rescued. Fifty years, Captain, just sitting there with nothing to do but watch as the ship, my ‘body’ I guess you could say, rusted away into nothing. Every day was spent pacing back and forth over places I knew, sending out signals that were not answered, and glancing to a sky that was always empty. I have a photographic memory, Captain. There are only so many times you can walk down a corridor before you could just replay the experience in your mind and not bother.”

  The robot slumped on the cloth, shaking his head. “If you hadn’t come along, I don’t know how much longer I could have held out.”

  Slowly digesting the robot’s story, Liao nodded. “I understand that you would be angry about such a thing–I know I would have been as well–but Saara is an individual in her own right, and she is no longer serving in the Telvan military. She is a part of my crew, and she will adhere to my ethical standards. She’ll treat you as you should be treated.”

  She could swear that Ben was resentful–angry, even–and somewhere in that digital brain of his, the huge datacore working away next to them, she suspected that he was trying to find a way to logically refute her statement.

  “Very well, Captain Liao. You have my word. I'll treat her the same way she treats me.”

  Liao nodded. “Good.”

  A creak from the opening entrance hatchway caused her to twist in her seat. As though right on cue, Saara stepped through the hatchway, giving a nod towards Liao.

  Nothing like that for Ben, though, and Liao could see he noticed.

&nbs
p; The Toralii woman stepped up to Liao, handing over a clipboard with paper attached. [“Captain, the salvage results. Aside from the datacore, which is in poor condition and corroded in some places, there is precious little aside from scrap metal we could realistically salvage from the Giralan. My apologies.”]

  Ben turned to her, his tone acidic. “Salvage, hmm? What about survivors?”

  Saara, looking confused, glanced at him. [“Of course not.”]

  “Well, I’m here and I am not salvage,” Ben hissed, his thin, metallic voice cracking slightly as his fairly simplistic modulator struggled to adequately express the tonal range he was pushing through. “I’m a survivor.”

  Saara turned her body towards him, tail flicking slowly behind her, her face screwed up in confusion. [“I suppose that you are. I don’t know, it just seems so strange and awkward to be saying that.”] She tilted her head towards Liao. [“I mean, look, I’m sure you’re enjoying being mystified by this piece of advanced technology, but I feel as though it’s your, well, your ignorance, that’s really causing that reaction. Humans are a young species in the interstellar community. Advanced devices like this construct are found everywhere, and they are all the same; they are not alive.”]

  Ben’s claws clicked and clattered, and for a moment Liao thought he was going to spring up and clamp hold of Saara’s neck. “I am alive! I am! I am! I’m sentient, I think, I’m not just a machine—”

  [“With all due respect, Captain, the construct isn’t really sentient. Yes, it speaks, but it’s no more alive than your radio. Voices and speech come from that, too, but you don’t consider such devices alive, do you?”]

  Liao gritted her teeth and stood, glancing between the two of them. “I can understand your argument, Saara, but Ben is far more advanced than any artificial intelligence Humans could create, and there is still considerable debate about the ethics surrounding the subject on Earth. However, for the moment, Ben has demonstrated an ability to learn, a desire to grow and change, and he suffers. To me, that’s enough to be considered alive.”

  [“I understand how he appears, Captain, but any animal can be taught tricks. That’s all they are—complex machines. There is no sentience in there, no more than there is in a trained beast.”]

  “That is your people’s opinion, Saara, but I am surprised to hear that it is yours, too.” Liao folded her hands in front of her. “I understand that you don’t see Ben as a sentient life, but it’s important to me that you acknowledge that I do.”

  Saara hesitated, and Liao’s tone softened somewhat. “Humanity can be brutal, Saara, but it can be caring, too. I would have thought that you, more than anyone, would have understood that by now.”

  [“I understand,”] Saara said, glancing towards the still furious-looking robot, [“but to me it seems foolish to show kindness to something that does not truly understand the concept and is merely repeating what its programming told it. This ‘Ben,’ as you call it, is not capable of sentient thought and merely understands commands and composes verbal replies based upon complex heuristics. It is a machine. A complicated and intelligent machine, yes, but not a living thing.”]

  Ben scuttled forward, his claws clicking angrily. “You and your arrogance! You Telvan bastards left me on that planet to rust, and now you don’t even have the moral fortitude to acknowledge you did anything wrong at all!”

  [“You waste your words, construct. Captain Liao has asked that I treat you as any member of her crew, and I shall, but in my mind you will always be just another machine.”]

  With that, Saara gave Liao a curt nod and departed. Ben looked as though he might leap after the Toralii and tear her to pieces with his claws, but Liao sat in her chair and gestured for him to sit as well.

  She was concerned by his behaviour, but she needed Saara and the construct to work together. Human history was full of examples of people working together who would otherwise be at each others’ throats. “Let it go, Ben.”

  “But—”

  “She has so many years of Telvan thinking behind her, opinions shaped from birth that are very hard to change. Humans may not know everything about the galaxy, but we know this–cultural attitudes have a way of sticking around for longer than they’re welcome. Saara means well, and I know her heart is strong and her moral compass well-aligned, but this is one area where she is wrong.”

  Ben slowly returned his gaze to Liao, bobbing his head with a whir-click of his articulators. “I know, but that doesn’t make what she said any less hurtful, and now she gets to just walk away. That’s hardly fair.”

  Liao felt for him, but she didn’t have a way of displaying it without compromising the emotionless wall she had to project as the ship’s captain.

  She leaned forward. “Want to know something else Humans learned over the years?”

  “Mmm?”

  Despite herself, Liao felt a sad smile tug at the corners of her mouth and she folded her arms. “Life isn’t fair.”

  Ben chuckled, a thin, raspy noise coming from the thin slit that functioned as his speaker. “I know that much.”

  “I understand you’re angry about being left on the planet, but I’ve recently had a loss, too. Before we arrived here, Captain James Grégoire, a Human man I—” she hesitated, “have strong feelings for, disappeared during a battle between the Toralii Alliance and humanity’s fleet. His ship collided with the Toralii who came to attack us and, in a great flash, both vessels disappeared.”

  Her voice saddened. “Most believe him to be dead, but I hold out hope that he still breathes—somewhere.”

  Ben reached out gently with a freshly painted claw, resting it on Liao’s knee. His British accent softened a little. “A collision between spaceships is pretty rough business, my friend. Yep. Not good at all. Ships travel at such high speeds and just aren’t built to take that kind of punishment. Nor are the fleshy little meatbags inside. Still, if he’s gone, it would have been quick.”

  That didn’t make Liao feel any better, but she forced herself to smile. “I suppose it would have.”

  Ben nodded, his optics turning to look up at Liao. “Trust me, it’s better than ending up at Cenar. Brr. That place gives me chills.” The robot’s metal framework shuddered slightly, but Liao barely noticed it.

  She fixed him with a curious stare.

  “Cenar?”

  “Yeah, Cenar. The giant prison fortress the Alliance throw their undesirables into, never to be heard from again. Cenar means The Howling Wind, and it’s basically this massive metal structure floating out in the void between solar systems–impossible to find without coordinates–and they defend it with all manner of vicious things: worldshatter devices, energy cannon batteries, mines, ships, fighters, you name it. The Toralii take their prisoners there, and they very rarely leave. Those that do survive, well, let’s just say they don’t recall the place as being particularly pleasant. As in, a lot of torture happens there. A lot. Heh. That’s basically the point of it all. Terrible place.”

  Liao reached out a hand, resting it on Ben’s claw. “You’re saying that if the Toralii ship did jump away, and James did survive the collision, then he’d be at this fortress?”

  “He’s either there, or being transported there right now. For certain.”

  “And you could tell me how to find it?”

  Ben pondered, comically scratching the underside of his ‘chin’ with his other claw. “’Course I could! Everyone who’s had access to the Telvan networks knows where Cenar is, and they also know just how impossible it is to attack. It’s never been successfully assaulted, even though many species have tried. The Kel-Voran–those war-loving bastards–believe death in combat against overwhelming odds is the most honourable way to die, and even they avoid it because attacking Cenar is not combat. It’s just you presenting your arse as a target and letting the Toralii’s biggest and heaviest guns blast it to atoms. It’s suicide.”

  Glancing up at Liao, Ben took in her expression, his optics widening. “Oh, no, no, no,”
he moaned, shaking his head in dismay. “I don’t like the look of that smile.”

  * * *

  Captain Liao’s Office

  TFR Beijing

  Energy filled her, a force of hope so powerful and raw that she felt she could burst.

  If James was alive, he'd be taken to Cenar. At the very least, they'd know where he was.Since the moment Ben had told her about the giant space fortress she had been filled with a wild surge of pure emotion that threatened to overwhelm her; the only way she could control it was to channel those energies into something productive, which turned out to be the rescue effort.

  Drawings and diagrams were coaxed out of a somewhat reluctant Ben. Maps of every level of the massive structure, detailed schematics of every gun, every missile, every energy weapon for the whole defense network. The location of the station’s impound yard, where confiscated ships were taken and studied.

  It was all in Ben’s digital brain—everything. All the information about the Toralii Alliance’s defenses, laid bare and presented to Fleet Intelligence as though it were Christmas.

  Summer had mentioned that the Toralii didn’t appear to encrypt or obfuscate their computers and technology. The datastore they’d found in the Seth’arak’s wreckage wasn’t encrypted or protected, the Forerunner–a kind of Toralii scout they’d captured months ago–was easily reprogrammable, and it seemed, they gave out their military secrets to constructs they left lying around in the desert.

  They had asked Saara about it and she said the concept of data encryption was not entirely alien to her, but the Toralii believed in simplicity and interoperability over data protection. It was a tradeoff. Everything plugged into everything else and worked frequently, with no compatibility issues, and they would usually destroy sensitive information to prevent it falling into enemy hands. Since Ben’s datacore was too massive to destroy completely without high explosives, and nobody was coming looking for them, the Giralan survivors just assumed Ben would rust away in time.