Plan B
*****
Hangerbay
Inside the Giralan
LIAO STEPPED OUT OF THE tiny shuttle into the vast hangar bay and moved over to the airlock. She watched her wrist-mounted oxygen indicator with a wary eye, but the tiny LED glowed a bright green as the last of the air filled the airlock to the hangar bay. She reached up and unclipped her helmet, sliding it off her head.
The air in the tiny shuttle was dry, cool, and surprisingly earthy, even though the soil that dotted the floor of the airlock was more sand than soil. Liao cast a wary eye at some of the patches made on the metal hull, given the ship’s composition, but eventually put her concerns beside her. Ben had been fixing the Giralan for many years and knew his craft well.
She placed the helmet on the floor and wiggled out of her suit, discarding the heavy, bulky protection, except for the boots. She strapped her pistol’s holster to her hip and waited.
The airlock door to the rest of the ship, furnished with a simple square window, had a flashing, red light embedded directly underneath the thick, foggy, smeared glass. It blinked on and off hypnotically, bathing the entire room in a strange crimson glow.
Why did Ben want to see her so badly? Why her, specifically?
The light turned green, and the door opened, presenting a pair of Bevra drones, their chromed bodies glinting in the faint light.
“The master will see you now,” intoned the lead drone, and Liao followed the pair of robots down the long corridor into the dark heart of the ship.
The long, winding corridors seemed endless to her, but the time passed quickly. She remembered Cheung’s blood-splattered suit, suddenly cursing herself for not bringing a medical kit. If Vong was severely wounded, which he undoubtedly was given how much blood was splashed all over Cheung, she had little hope she could save him without specialised equipment.
Tai’s injuries floated to mind, her bare hands trying to keep his blood in his body, all to no avail. She pushed those thoughts out of her head.
The drones led her to the centre of the ship. Liao stepped cautiously down the stairwell, her pistol cupped comfortably in her hands, and the heavy spacesuit boots clunking on each step until she reached the bottom. When she did, her foot slid forward, and only her training, and the fact that she had her finger off the trigger, kept her from firing in surprise. Keeping her footing, Liao lifted her boot, looking for what she’d stepped on.
It was a brass shell casing from a standard QBZ-99.
The vast open area, the equivalent of her operations room, was stretched out before her and was crawling with robots. The thing that drew her immediate attention, though, was the large, dark, rust-coloured smear near the base of the stairwell, stretching out almost two metres long. Nearly a dozen spent brass cartridge casings lay scattered haphazardly over the floor, the entire area smelling of cordite and smoke. Faint drops of blood covered nearby surfaces, and it did not take Liao long to realise exactly what she was looking at.
“So good of you to come, Commander Liao. I’m glad my message was finally communicated accurately.” Ben’s robot body crawled up atop the central dais, his six long legs skittering delicately as he took purchase upon the large computer core. “And so good of you to remove your helmet to prevent further… misunderstandings.”
Liao stared at him coldly. “Where is Commodore Vong?”
“Commodore Vong will not be joining us.”
Liao’s gaze flicked to the rusty stain and back to Ben. “Why have you done this? Why have you attacked this planet?”
“You have questions. I have questions. We are both on a journey of discovery. I eagerly seek answers from you, but I am patient, so I will explain my words first. The sun is, in almost all myths and legends, a source of strength and power to your species. It was Ra to the ancient Egyptians, Apollo to the Greeks of ages past, Tonatiuh for the Aztecs. The sun features prominently in your people’s recorded religions as a god. As your societies evolved and grew beyond superstition, you began to embrace the laws of physics and nature as your guiding principles, but you still do not ask why: why do such things as the forces of nature exist, why do they do the things they do, why does the universe work according to mathematics and numbers?”
“Poetic but meaningless,” said Liao. “Ancient Humans worshipped whatever damn thing they felt was powerful enough to destroy them in hopes of appeasing the supernatural powers, therefore surviving and prospering. As our people grew, we found we no longer needed such things.”
“I agree. I believe this is the biological creature’s gift.” Ben casually extended a claw to give one of his robots a gentle pat on its chromed head. “The ability to be wrong. Powerfully, totally in error. Wrong in conclusion, methods, and assumptions. Wrong in every way that someone can be wrong. But then, you tread down this path of wrongness, embracing it utterly in a way my kind never could.”
“I’m not here to debate philosophy with you.” Liao slipped her pistol into her holster. Ben didn’t appear damaged at all, but Cheung had, seemingly, fired nearly half her magazine. If a high-powered rifle was of no effect, her little peashooter would be even less so. “I just want to know what the hell’s going on here.”
“Do you ever question why the sun sets?” asked Ben. “Do you ask why the moon’s lesser light conjures such mystery and reverence amongst the humans?”
“Mystery and… what?” Liao blinked and shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I just want to know why you’ve attacked these Toralii. Haven’t you quenched your bloodlust with what you did at Velsharn?”
“Velsharn was just the beginning.” Ben clacked his claws together eagerly. “Just the beginning. However, I will admit I regret what I did.”
Liao narrowed her eyes. “You do? When I spoke to you afterwards, you said you had no regrets, you had planned out all the consequences of your actions, and therefore, if you had your time over, you wouldn’t have done anything differently. What’s changed?” Her tone became acidic. “Has the Grinch’s iron heart grown three sizes today?”
“You misunderstand,” Ben said. “I do not feel sorrow as you might. Instead, I merely feel that my course of action was not optimal. It was a waste of resources.”
“Stop speaking in riddles.” Liao’s blood rose. “Just tell me what you’re getting at.”
Ben’s robotic face broadened into a wide smile. “Direct as always, Liao. I like that.” He skittered down, coming face to face with her, his head stooped to be at her level. Liao held her ground. “What I mean is what I said before,” he said, “and that is to say that the reason behind why our universe is the way it is, is now of great interest to me. I intend to answer these questions, but unfortunately, in my current state, I cannot.”
Liao didn’t flinch, looking Ben directly in his giant eyes. “So you intend to… change your state?” She waved a hand at him. “Is this what your new body is meant to represent?”
Ben laughed, bobbing his head as he did so, a gesture Liao found remarkably natural. “No. This form is merely a means to an end. Instead, I intend to introduce errors into my system. I intend to inject chaos, entropy, as your species is gifted with. I intend to become more… human.”
Liao raised an eyebrow, folding her arms. “And how, exactly, do you propose to do that?”
Ben raised his head, moving back from her and retreating up the dais. “It came to me as I was rebuilding the Giralan. A species known as the Iilan developed voidwarp technology and subsequently had its homeworld consumed in Toralii fire. They are masters of biomechanical and genetic engineering. They tinker with their own DNA, those who remain, changing and evolving constantly. I sought out their great spherical ship, and I bartered my knowledge of the Toralii for their secrets.”
“To what end?” Liao asked. “You’re a machine. What possible use would this knowledge be to you? Tools for developing biological weapons?”
“You think in such destructive terms. I plan not to destroy; I plan to create.” Ben waved a claw to the side, and the wall on the far side of the room slowly hissed and slid open. The room was bathed in a bright-green glow from the other side, and Liao could see that the long, thick cable that led into the central dais emerged on the other side of the wall, branching into eight forks. Each fork linked up to a tank full of bubbling liquid, each tank dark and unlit.
In the tanks were forms. Humanoid forms, small and stunted, blurry and indistinct behind the semi-opaque glass.
“Ben,” Liao said, her tone slow and deliberate, “what in God’s name have you done?”
“The Toralii created me,” Ben said. “I am their child. I only want to be more like them. To be like them, I must have children of my own.”
She turned back to the construct, eyes wide. “What does that even mean?”
[“Perhaps it would be better if I explained,”] said a voice beside her, speaking the Toralii tongue. Liao whirled around, emitting an audible gasp.
A grey-furred Toralii male, naked and with thin, sickly limbs, stood on the rusted deck of the Giralan. He had an oddly neutral smile on his face, as though not quite looking at Liao but looking past her. His pale, ghoulishly white skin showed through in patches where his fur had been shaved off, and Liao could see the razor-thin lines of surgical scars, with the occasional glint of metal below.
But that was not what caused Liao to recoil in horror or to instinctively reach for her pistol.
She recognised him. The Toralii was Leader Qadan from the Velsharn research colony. He was someone who had shown her great kindness, but she had seen him baked to a charred crisp by her ship’s nuclear weapons. There was no way this man could be him.
“What the fuck are you?”
The faux-Qadan’s mouth split into a wide, unnatural smile. [“Don’t you recognise me, dear Liao?”]
“I know who you look like, but you aren’t Qadan. That man is dead. I saw his body.”
[“Of course, but his DNA lives on, along with the DNA of every Toralii who lived on that world, in the backups of their computers, which I recovered from the ruins of the colony. I only chose him because he was the one you were most familiar with. I thought it would engender… familiarity.”]
“Go fuck yourself,” she spat, unholstering her pistol and raising it at the clone’s face, the mockery of the living man she’d known. “You’re a monster.”
[“Go ahead; shoot. You should know by now that I can communicate with any of the drones around me. Now, with the help of the bioneural implants, I can even control biological forms. Soon I will perfect the necessary process to upload my consciousness to this form, and then I’ll be just like you.”]
Liao stared at the mindless, remote-controlled Toralii as though it were the living dead. It wasn’t life as she saw it; it was a perversion of life, a twisted and warped mirror of the Toralii she’d known. She backed away, slowly moving up the stairway, unable to look at the horrid creature.
“You’ll never be like us,” Liao spat, “even with flesh and blood. What makes us Human isn’t the structure of our atoms; it’s something more than that, some deeper connection to each other that can’t be quantified. A Human is more than an individual; we’re a collective. We’re a social animal, and it’s how we treat our fellow Humans that makes us what we are.” She stabbed a finger at the dark stain on the deck of the Giralan, taking another step away further up the hexagonal entranceway. “Humans kill, but Humans kill to protect ourselves individually or collectively. We kill those who harm us, threaten us, not men coming to negotiate. It’s not what you do; it’s why you do it.” She sneered slightly, curling back her upper lip. “If you think you’re one of us just because you want to be, I’m afraid you’re tragically mistaken.”
[“This body’s heart beats, and I give it a mind. I fail to see the difference between the Qadan that stands before you and the Qadan you saw on Velsharn. Even his voice is the same, his mannerisms taken from his video logs.”] The Toralii smiled. [“I am just as much Qadan as he was.”]
Her hand trembled. “You’re not,” she said. “You’re a pretender, a ghost, just a corpse that hasn’t lain down and died yet.” Liao lined up the sights on her pistol to Qadan’s forehead. “Lemme help you with that.”
She squeezed the trigger. Her pistol roared in the highly oxygenated atmosphere of the Giralan, the heavy round from her Type 54 blowing out the back of the Qadan clone’s head in a spray of purple blood.
Ben didn’t react as the corpse slumped in a heap. “Interesting,” he said. “Violence is the solution here. That was not what I considered the most likely outcome.”
“What the hell did you think I might do?”
The light snapped on, illuminating the centre tank, the large liquid vat bathed in a strange, light-green glow as though the liquid were luminescent. Inside was a Human female, naked and floating in the tub, a series of metal breathing tubes inserted into her chest and down her throat. Liao stared at the person, horror filling her as she slowly realised who she was looking at.
Herself.
“To be honest,” said Ben, “I expected violence at this revelation.”
Liao turned and ran, the heavy boots of her spacesuit clunking on the rotting metal deck as she sprinted down the unlit corridor, away from the image of herself and the corpse of the Toralii she’d known.
As she ran, she could feel the optics of the construct she had once called her friend watching her with cool indifference.
She ran until her lungs hurt, until she finally collapsed onto her knees in one of the many hexagonal corridors. Her chest heaved as she forced air into her lungs, gasping and panting, forcing her body to recover.
She had recently become a mother. She had created life, just as Ben had done, but that was different. She couldn’t quite quantify exactly how, but something seemed intrinsically wrong with what Ben had done. Even if it wass only creating a clone, bringing a dead man back to life and using his body as a puppet, especially when it was someone Liao had known in life, struck her as terribly wrong. Then there wass the image of her own face, made of flesh and blood but many years younger. She didn’t even want to think about that just yet.
She couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Ben. She couldn’t even stand to be on the same ship as him.
Although her body ached and her uniform was soaked in sweat, Liao wasn’t done yet. The moment her legs would carry her again, she pushed herself back to standing and ran. She liked the pain, liked the burning feeling in her limbs, the protests of a body that had spent nearly a year caring for a baby and eating New York pizza, a body that had spent nearly a year neglecting its fitness.
When she was younger, a junior officer in the service, she had run often, especially during her seagoing time as a navigator on the Chinese navy’s Han-class nuclear attack submarines. She would jog from stem to stern and back again over and over, a perilous obstacle course but one she would relish. It felt good to run: to push one’s body beyond comfort, to improve it, to weaken it so it could grow again, stronger than before.
The hangar bay loomed ahead, light pouring in through the hexagonal entrance to the twin doors leading to the airlock of the vast, open cavern. She stumbled through the first door, gasping for air and peering through the tiny glass window to the hangar bay beyond. The little ship was gone, as she expected, but her discarded spacesuit at her feet remained. She kicked off her boots and stepped into the legs of the suit, pulling it up over her uniform. She squirmed into the suit and reached for the helmet.
A voice from the discarded headset stopped her.
“How far do you think you can run in this place?”
She pulled up the spherical dome, bringing it close to her head and touching the talk key dangling down from the helmet. “I don’t care what you have to say. We’re done. We’re done. What you’re doing is sick. It’s not right, and I don’t want to help you. I don’t want to talk to you. I just want you, your ship, and your experiments to be flaming debris.”
After a brief pause, uncharacteristic for the construct who usually spoke immediately, he said, “I’m not sure I was clear. I’m not looking for the meaning of life or anything more than the simple experience of being alive.”
“Listen, you fucked-up Pinocchio wannabe, you have a lot to learn about us ‘biologicals’ if you really think that by putting a fleshy mask over your datacore you can conceal what you are.”
Another pause. “Do you think of your privileges, Liao? The precious gifts you enjoy as part of your existence—to breathe, to live, to die. How strange it is, don’t you think, to want those things? To want to die if I am, for but a few minutes, deprived of oxygen. To live in one body, one form, with an organic mind, giving away my perfect intellect. To die, eventually, as all biological creatures die.”
“Yeah, well, you know what we have? A conscience.”
“One step at a time, Liao. One step at a time.”
Liao wanted to say more, but another voice came over the line. Kamal Iraj. “Commander Liao, this is TFR Beijing actual. Report status.”
Ben answered, his British-accented tone clipped and annoyed. “The good commander is busy, Commander Iraj.”
She squeezed the transmit key. “Kamal, I want you to lock everything you have on this ship and blow it to atoms. Full spread, maximum yield, rail guns target centre of mass. Fire for effect.” No answer could be heard except a faint hiss over the line. “Kamal?”
Liao turned at the faint sound of metal feet on the deck behind her. Two drones, identical to those that had escorted her to Ben, slowly strode down the corridor towards her, their weapons raised.
“The master will see you now,” the lead drone intoned.
“Tell the master I don’t give a shit what he wants.”
“The master will see you now.”
Liao drew her pistol, lining it up to the spider-like head of the Bevra drone. She squeezed the trigger, the round screaming as it ricocheted off the drone’s metal head and embedded itself against the deck. The finish wasn’t even scratched. She fired again and again, each round having as little effect as the first until the slide locked back and her ammunition was exhausted.
“You will be brought before him by force if you do not comply.”
She ejected the empty magazine and reached for her spare, jamming it into the base of her pistol. “And what if I don’t want to?”
“You will be—”
Liao clicked the slide closed and pressed the weapon to her temple. “And what if I really don’t want to?”
After a tense delay as the robot silently regarded her, the drone spoke with Ben’s voice. “Last time I saw you, your biometric data indicated that you were pregnant. You are no longer pregnant. There was a high probability of that foetus being carried to term, so I can only assume you have a child now. All my data regarding Humans suggests that you treasure your children and that before a child reaches their first decade, they are essentially relying on their parents to sustain them. You will not terminate your life while that child needs you.”
She idly flicked her fingernail over the trigger, dragging it across the plastic. A faint clicking noise echoed around the airlock. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty impulsive right now. Don’t know what I might do. Open the airlock door, Ben.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Liao.”
Liao snorted with sardonic laughter. “Oh, if only Summer were here to hear you say that.” She used her thumb to pull back the hammer, readying the pistol to fire with even the lightest pull of the trigger. “You went to a great deal of trouble to bring me here, to show me these… these things you’ve created, and I really don’t think you’re going to be willing to let me blow my brains out all over this airlock.”
Ben’s tone carried an edge of quiet malice that Liao had never heard in his voice before, a subtle change that carried through the drone’s tiny speaker. “You’d be surprised what I’d be willing to do.”
Liao would not be cowed so easily. “Me, too.”
“Well then, I guess we’re at an impasse,” Ben admitted, “since I control the airlock door and you control the trigger on your pistol. This will end exactly one of two ways. Either you shoot yourself, or I back down.”
“Seems that way. But I’m not as patient as you. Maybe I’ll just get bored and do it right now.”
“Or maybe,” said Ben, “I’ll do what I did to the Toralii fleet—engage this vessel’s voidwarp device and jump to a location within the space currently occupied by the Beijing, displacing an area the volume of my ship at the speed of light, vaporising the majority of the Beijing’s mass instantly. An ignoble end to a vessel that has accomplished so much.”
Liao thought of the expanding debris field. The Toralii had been killed instantly, far too quickly to escape or warn the other ships. “Why do you even want me to stay anyway?”
The drone chuckled in Ben’s voice. “Oh, don’t worry about that, Commander. Besides, I don’t have time to explain it before the Beijing’s marines blow down the door and give you your heroic escape.”
“What?”
A dull, muted explosion vibrated through the metal of the deck. Liao twisted her neck, looking out the thick perspex window to the hangar bay. A Broadsword gunship barrelled into the large open space, landing skids extended as it slid at reckless speed onto the deck. Before it had even stopped, the large mouth of the loading ramp extended, and Liao could see helmeted figures beyond carrying the heavy automatic grenade launcher developed specifically for ship-boarding operations. The Bearded Dragon, they called it.
Liao turned back to the drone. “You knew they were coming the whole time?”
“Of course. I see using the ship’s eyes. My ability to multitask far outpaces your own. I’m performing thousands of tasks at this moment, including monitoring your ship and its useless flailing.”
She imagined the outside of the ship, rotten and covered in weapons. “You could have stopped them at any time. You could have fired on them with your new little toys, or you could have just, as you said, jumped right on them. Yet you let them through.” She took the pistol away from her head, casually clicking on the safety and holstering it. “I’m not going to play your games, Ben.”
Through the window, Liao saw the marines tap a blowtorch against the glass. Liao clipped the helmet on, her suit swelling as air filled it. A high-pitched whine filled the airlock as the marines began to cut through the airlock door.
“Ben,” Liao said, “I’m leaving now.”
“If you say so,” said the drone, its voice muffled by her helmet.
Her radio hissed, and through the heavy static came a voice she recognised.
“Commander Liao, this is Lieutenant Medola of the Broadsword Archangel. Stand by for extraction. Get away from the outside door. The decompression is going to be nasty.”
The inside door silently slid shut, cutting her off from the drones and preventing the whole ship from decompressing. With a roar and a whoosh of air, the hatchway covering the exit to the hangar bay blew out, silently flying across the room and striking the opposite wall. Liao was pulled off her feet by the force of the air vacating the small airlock, but strong arms grabbed her, preventing her from flying out into empty space.
She and the marines made a clumsy, low-gravity run towards the hangar bay, their magnetic boots thunking on the deck as they moved. Together they bundled themselves into the ship. The Broadsword lurched as its pilot wheeled her around and tore out of the hangar bay, the ramp closing as it cleared the mouth of the launch area and flew out into the void, banking towards the Beijing.
The ship’s cargo hold repressurised, and the marines, one by one, pulled off their helmets. Liao’s eyes met Cheung’s, her spacesuit still bloodied, and she nodded appreciatively.
“Thanks for coming back for me.”
“Nobody gets left behind, Commander.” Cheung smiled, crouching in front of her. “Not even officers.”
Liao managed to return the smile. “You’re going to have to stow that attitude now you have your commission, you know.”
“It’s not possible to change my mind now, is it?”
“Considering the effort I went through to give it to you, no. Sorry.”
Cheung laughed and stood. “Okay, let me go check on the Broadsword crew. I’ll have a report for you in ten.”
Liao nodded, watching Cheung depart. The rest of the marines chatted amongst themselves and otherwise ignored her, which suited her fine. She digested what she’d seen, turning the scene over and over in her head and trying to commit as many details as possible to memory. She knew that the Beijing and the rest of the fleet would want answers, and she needed to provide as many as she could.
A daunting task.
As she sat there, her hands shaking slightly from the fading rush of adrenaline and from the memories, Liao’s helmet once again filled with Ben’s voice.
“Goodbye, Commander,” he said. “I’ll see you again soon.”