Green
*****
Medical Bay
TFR Rubens
Location Unknown
COMMANDER MELISSA LIAO WAS TORN from unconsciousness by tingling pain all over her body, with something stuffed down her nose and throat, smothering her to death. Air came as a trickle.
Bright-green water surrounded her. Her instincts revolted—she snatched at the something with her left hand, yanking at it frantically, trying to dislodge the blockage in her airway.
“Commander,” said a voice, thin and robotic as it filtered through a radio. “It’s Doctor Saeed. You need to relax. Everything’s going to be okay. You can breathe. You’re in a recovery chamber—you’re not on Eden anymore.”
The words held no weight for her. She sloshed and thrashed, lashing at nothing, her feet kicking against glass. Plugs extended from her body, thick black cables running to the edges of the tank, restraining her movements. Her skin was pruned and wrinkled as though she were a hundred years old, pale and bleached by a lack of sunlight.
The whole chamber listed to one side, and a roar filtered through the water.
“Listen to my voice,” said Saeed. “It’s a breathing tube. You must calm down. We can’t afford to sedate you this time, Commander.”
This time? Had this happened before? Her body couldn’t process it. She reached up with her right hand, trying to pull the long black tube from her, but stopped as she saw her arm.
The limb was just a stump.
“Shh,” said Saeed. “Melissa, everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to evacuate you once you’re stable… dammit. Okay, hold tight, we’ll have to risk a mild sedative.”
She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see anything. Adrenaline pumped through her veins and fought the invading chemicals. She forced herself to remain still. Doctor Saeed was a trusted friend—he’d never lied to her. He’d kept her secrets and earned her confidence.
She heard the dull thump-roar of weapons impact. The lights in the med-bay flickered. What the hell was going on?
“Good,” Saeed said. “Now, there’s a mask in the tank. Clip it over the breathing tube. It will drain the liquid out of your mouth so you can talk.”
She could see it, a black device similar to a gas mask, clipped onto the hose. She pulled it down over her nose and mouth, and there was a faint gurgle as the green liquid drained away. Soon she could breathe through her mouth and tried to speak.
“Doctor, you need to get me out of here. The Toralii hit the Beijing, the worldshatter device went straight through the hull. The reactor’s been breached, and Operations has been damaged. I need to get back there, Kamal is missing, and—”
“Melissa, the attack on Eden was three months ago.” His tone was edged with aggravation. Gone was the calm Saeed she’d expected. “It’s January the twenty-fourth.”
She heard another dull thump. “What’s happening? Where are we?”
“This is the TFR Rubens. We’re under attack.”
A combination of drugs and genuine confusion clouded her mind. “But you said the attack was months ago. Wait, no. That doesn’t make sense. It was just—”
“You’ve been sedated for some time.”
She held up her left hand, her remaining hand. It was thin, gaunt, atrophied.
“Where are you?” she asked. Her voice sounded as though it were coming from someone else—distant, distorted. “I can’t see.”
“Wipe the glass with your hand. The inside’s fogged. The systems are damaged.”
She did so. Saeed stood behind one of the Toralii consoles of the Rubens, the entire room bathed in purple light. Liao met his gaze, holding it for a moment.
“I know this is difficult for you,” said Saeed. “You’re probably in shock.”
“I don’t feel like I’m in shock.”
“That’s what they all say,” he said. “The feeling of being out of time. I know it’s hard. Believe me, I’d love to say you can take your time, as much as you need, but we don’t have that luxury.”
“Where am I?”
“You’re on the Rubens.” The ship rocked, and the soft groan of stressed metal echoed throughout the vessel. “Just try to process things one at a time until we get you out of there.”
“One thing at a time,” Liao echoed. “Right.” She tried to clear her mind of everything: the falling plasma shots; her body on fire; her evacuation to the captured Toralii ship repurposed as a Human warship. “How long has it been?”
The edges of his mouth turned downward. “You already asked me that. Three months ago, or near enough.”
“Okay,” she said, trying to take that in, to store it in her mind so it didn’t escape again. “Three months. What’s happened in the meantime?”
“Right now,” said Saeed, “we are attempting to recover the wreckage of the Broadsword Scarecrow.” Right on cue, another wave of weapons fire struck the ship, and the lights whimpered. “I gather it is not going well. Captain Williams has requested additional power to weapons. The recovery chamber takes too much, so we had to wake you up.” Bitterness crept in. “It was less than ideal to wake you, Captain, but having the med-bay exposed to vacuum is also less than ideal.”
She couldn’t contest that. Liao searched her mind for what she knew about Scarecrow but came up empty. “Do what you need to,” she said. Being blind to operations in the fleet vexed her. When she had lost command of the Beijing, Commodore Vong was placed in charge. He made a point of telling her little. Apparently, her own injuries were currently keeping her blind.
A faint, familiar hum ran through the whole ship. Abruptly, the rocking ceased. Saeed’s whole face seemed to relax, the tension draining out of it. He tapped at his console. “We’ve jumped.”
“I know.” The smaller the ship, the larger the effect. A jump was imperceptible from the inside of the Beijing, but for a smaller ship like the Rubens, despite its more advanced Toralii jump drive, she could feel the tremble as the ship was engulfed in light and transported between the stars. Liao had been through enough jumps in Broadswords to identify the vibrations. “To where?”
“I’m not sure Captain Williams cares too much. ‘Not here’ is probably sufficient for him.”
“Probably,” said Liao, the strength draining from her body. “I feel exhausted.”
“Good,” said Saeed. “I’m resuming your naptime, Captain.”
One of the plugs attached to her body jerked as a fluid pumped into it. An ice-cold trickle crept up the vein on her left arm. The world went grey and colourless, even the bright-green water.
“Give them hell for me,” she said, her words barely a murmur. Her eyes fell on the stump of her arm. “Kill them all.”
“I’ll see you soon,” Saeed promised as she slipped back under and energy built up around them, heralding another jump.
The next time Liao dragged herself back to consciousness, the green world was a much calmer place, and Saeed’s pleasant smile had returned. A team of nurses stood around him, monitoring various things. She recognised none of them. Most were Caucasian—imports from the Washington, presumably.
“Welcome back,” he said, his voice gentle. “Don’t rush the process. Be calm, easy.”
Liao did so, blinking sluggishly. She did nothing as teams of medical technicians stood around, silently watching things.
They were under attack.
“Wait,” said Liao, her eyes wide. “Wait, the Beijing was hit—Kamal is missing, and we’re under attack! Operations has been breached by a worldshatter device!”
“Captain,” said Saeed in a way she found familiar. “It’s February the twelfth. Commander Iraj has been commanding the Beijing in your absence, and the repairs are coming along nicely. They’ve patched the hole in four decks now, and the remainder will be done in time.”
She shook her head, trying to drag faint ghosts of a memory to the surface. “Wait… February. Isn’t it January?”
“That was during the attempt to recover Scarecrow.”
Scarecrow. That name triggered memories for her, memories of weapons impacts, of a ship groaning in pain as it was struck.
“How much do you remember?” Saeed asked.
“Not much.”
“Your memory will come back. The drugs will have an effect on your ability to retrieve long-term memories, but that effect will subside in time.”
“I see.” The dull cloud over her mind made it hard to think and store information. “Okay, so… since the attack. What’s happened?”
“A lot.” Saeed’s words came out smoothly and well prepared. “We had to operate on your arm. The burns ran deep. As hard as we fought, the infection and necrosis spread. We were almost forced to amputate the remainder of the arm to the shoulder. Fortunately, we saved it. We lost the muscle, though.”
“Thanks, doc’.” Her gratitude felt hollow. “Not that it matters much.”
“A partial limb is still better than nothing.”
“Hardly.”
“I can’t imagine how you must feel.” Saeed smiled, softly and genuinely. “It’s not all bad. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but we’ve been exploring options for you while you were unconscious. The Rubens contains a wealth of Toralii science, including medical information. There are a number of prosthetics available that we might be able to outfit you with.”
“Prosthetics? We have prosthetics aboard?”
“Not quite. They are merely schematics. The Toralii use a standard construction template which the Iilan constructs can read and replicate. They are incredibly advanced. As far as we can tell, they can link directly into your nervous system, provide tactile response through sensors embedded in the surface, and they’re quite strong. Strong compared to Humans, of course. Saara didn’t think much of them, but I think you’ll find it to be a substantial improvement.”
Her head refused to process all this information. It was just a string of words to her. Saara was still here? That was the most standout thing, but the other words would have to come first. “So you’re saying you can fix my arm, and it’ll be mostly the same, right?”
“Similar. I’m more concerned about the psychological effects a prosthetic can have. Phantom limb pain can be crippling, and everyone reacts to it differently. How this kind of alien prosthetic can affect you… well, nobody can say for sure. We completed some preliminary reports, but they’re far from conclusive. I can have them given to you when you’re out of there.”
She gritted her teeth. This was too much, too quickly. Her mind was still clouded by waking up, by so much news all at once. “Can we slow down a bit? I know you’ve been planning this for some time, but it doesn’t seem right to me. This is… this is a lot to take in.”
“Of course, of course.” Saeed didn’t push the subject. “We might consult with the Kel-Voran once you’re out and the prosthetic has been manufactured. They might have some advice for us.”
That was news to her. “There are Kel-Voran on Velsharn?”
“There have been for some time, ever since the battle. Their sensors detected a number of escape pods from the ruined stern of the Seth’arak. They’ve been hard to find because of the debris. We recovered some pods, an interesting fact we didn’t exactly share with our allies. The Kel-Voran want to find them and execute the Toralii inside. We, however, want to keep them alive for their intel. We’ve scoured most of the debris fields, but it’s slow going. The pods are engineered to blend in with debris unless inspected by Toralii rescue vessels, probably due to their various enemies taking the time to hunt them down.”
The Toralii and the Kel-Voran had been at loggerheads for centuries. Warfare on Earth had been shaped by the tactics of the belligerent opponents. Advances in antitank weaponry drove development into harder armour or active countermeasures…
No. She had to stop her mind wandering.
“Go on,” Liao said.
“Personally,” said Saeed, “I suspect the rest have landed—or will shortly land—in one of the nearby island chains. We’re organising a search of the area thoroughly with flyovers and thermal observation from orbit. We haven’t found much yet.” He shook his head. “Try telling that to the Kel-Voran, though. I think they suspect as we do. They want to search the islands by hand, but Captain Anderson is of the opinion—an opinion backed up by our Telvan contacts—that the Kel-Voran ‘search’ will be intensely destructive. Apparently, it’s more of a reconnaissance in force—specifically, by carpet bombing and inspecting the remains.”
That couldn’t be allowed to happen. “This planet is our home now. We need those islands when the time inevitably comes for us to expand.”
Saeed nodded. “Captain Anderson said the same thing.” The mention of his name seemed to jog some memory. He smiled and reached for a manila envelope, slightly faded and covered in a thin layer of dust. “Speaking of the good captain, he left these here for when you woke up.” He upended the folder into his hand—two pips. “It seemed inappropriate for the CO of the flagship to be a lowly commander. Congratulations, Captain Liao.”
Captain in rank but no longer in position. She didn’t feel as though she had earned it. She had made too many mistakes, her crew had suffered, her ship broken beyond repair and regulated to functioning as a small city embedded in a sea of tents, demountables, and temporary structures.
Instead of the culmination of a lifetime career, the promotion left her bitter. If the prosthetic could not restore full functionality, she could no longer command the Beijing, not that the ship was in any condition to be commanded. Even if they repaired the hole in the hull, as Saeed said they were doing, the Beijing bore too many scars of too many engagements: patch jobs and rushed repairs or damage simply ignored as it was not in critical systems.
Her ship had been chipped apart, worn down to exhaustion, then smashed with a hammer from orbit.
“Thank you,” she managed. “Pass along my thanks.”
Saeed hesitated a moment, as though he could sense something of her true feelings, but was wise enough to gently pour the pips back into the envelope and refold the top. “I will, next time I see him.” He smiled again, folding his arms.
“Thank you, Doctor. One more question.” She hesitated. “What is Scarecrow?”
His reluctance confused her. “Maybe it’s time for rest,” he said. “You’ve had a busy day.”
The truth was she was exhausted. Keeping her eyes open was a trial. “I want to see Allison,” she said, fighting the urge to sleep. Her daughter was the most important of all, but there were others. “And James. Saara. Kamal. I want to see everyone.”
“I’ll draw up a visitor’s schedule. I warn you that you’ll be pretty popular. As your doctor, though, I’m required to tell you that your visiting time, at least initially, will be restricted. You can do a lot when you’re in that tank. Your primary job, however, is to rest.”
Rest. “Fine,” she said, too exhausted to argue. “Draw up a schedule. I’m not going anywhere.”
Saeed dimmed the lights in the med-bay. Within moments, Liao passed into a dreamless sleep.
She drifted in and out of consciousness during the next few days. Having been unconscious for so long, she took careful note of the time. Even a half-hour nap was mentally tracked and accounted for. Time became something precious to her. She received no updates and little contact with the outside world except through Saeed, who was mainly concerned with her health rather than satisfying her curiosity.
She desperately wanted to see the people in her life that mattered, her visitors. She couldn’t. Offered as much sleep as she wanted, she struggled to stay awake. She found it impossible to concentrate. She regularly fought to remember why she was there and to push back the panic threatening to overwhelm her. Niggling doubts attacked her at every weak moment, the feeling that she couldn’t possibly have been in that tank for months. Surely, it had only been a few days.
Liao knew, just as much as anyone, that she wasn’t ready.
Saeed didn’t push the issue, and she let her body heal. It had been some time since she had been injured—and never that badly. She had forgotten the worst part of being in hospital.
Boredom.
On the third day, her desire for rest and recovery waned. Staying awake made the green nothingness of her existence even less palpable. She requested the nurse send for the first visitor Saeed had scheduled. She anticipated Allison but found herself with someone else.
Saara. Saara the Toralii, who in many ways, Liao considered her other daughter.
It seemed an age since Liao had seen her. Saara was tall, even for her kind, standing at over seven feet tall and covered in black fur. She resembled a large bipedal cat with golden-yellow eyes, rounded ears, and paws that ended in thick claws. For all of her long stay on the Human vessels, she had worn improvised clothing, her first set made from towels, her second tailored on Earth. She had apparently recovered some Toralii-made clothing, which showed the muscles beneath her fur and the strength in her legs and arms and seemed to be much more comfortable.
Saara had left to visit her ill mother. She had returned in time enough to save Liao from burning to death.
[“Commander Liao.”] Saara smiled warmly, speaking the Telvan dialect. It was a melodic language of soft growls and rolling vowels, impossible for Humans to speak, but Liao understood its meanings well enough. [“I am glad to see you well.”]
Liao smiled in return, holding up the stump of her missing arm. “More or less. And it’s Captain Liao now.”
[“Congratulations. Your accolades are well deserved.”] Saara inhaled through her nostrils, shifting her posture. [“Further, I am aware of your injuries. I was present when they occurred. Do you remember?”]
So many things were foggy. “Yes. I remember the fire. I remember the bombardment. I remember you saving me… not much else.”
[“It was a combined effort,”] said Saara, her tone tinged with an inflection Liao could only determine to be modesty, or the Toralii equivalent thereof. [“Saeed was also extraordinarily helpful, as was Captain Williams and the crew of the Rubens.”]
“Thank them for me,” she said.
[“I already have.”] Saara continued to look uncomfortable, her large eyes flicking to one side. [“Forgive my impudence in this regard, Captain, but it was not certain you would survive.”]
She understood. “Well, the medical facilities aboard the Rubens are so far ahead of what we have. If we didn’t have this ship, I’m not sure I would be speaking to you now.”
[“I am glad the former Bearer of the Sky God’s Treasure has served you well.”]
Liao’s chest tightened slightly, and the heart-rate monitor she was linked to chirped in annoyance. The Rubens had once been a Toralii Alliance freighter, later captured and repurposed by Captain “Magnet” Williams and his crew. Although the Toralii were a numerous species and her friend was a member of the Telvan, a separate faction from the Toralii Alliance, which had originally built the ship, Saara’s cooperation with the Human military had long been something many had been suspicious of. Who would betray their species? they reasoned. Why would she support those who engaged in such actions?
In truth, Saara was, in that regard, no different from Liao. Human beings killed human beings all the time. The Telvan and the Alliance were not friends. It was no different from the Chinese and the Americans, long at loggerheads, their rivalry understandable to those who had knowledge of the situation.
However, the Chinese and the Americans were presently working together to build a shared future in the ashes of humanity. What would it take to bring Saara back to the Toralii fold, and to lend her expertise to their enemies?
It did not bear thinking about. If it happened, it happened. There was no point complaining.
[“Toralii medical technology is more capable than what the Kel-Voran possess,”] Saara continued, [“but far behind those like the Iilan. The standard of care on a freighter simple as this one will be less than on military vessels. Sadly, the scout ship that was captured recently had no dedicated facility. Otherwise, we would have treated you there. Still, Saeed mentioned you may have memory problems. He asked me not to antagonise you and to not make too many assumptions about what you may and may not know.”]
She had no cause to complain. “Everything seems fine. The Rubens has treated me well. I’ll admit everything’s a mite fuzzy at the moment, but I think I’m holding up okay.”
[“I would agree with that assessment. I am sure you know already, but I have spoken to Doctor Saeed about a prosthetic. I wanted you to know that many Toralii have them, and they find them to be suitable enough for most purposes—itchy, perhaps, and sometimes cold to the touch, but functional and not overly uncomfortable.”]
“I think I can handle it.”
Saara’s eyes shone with truth. [“I believe you can as well. My mother had a prosthetic foot; it was taken from her when a hatch closed unexpectedly. I did not know until I was past adolescence. She did not even limp. I only found out when I stumbled upon her performing maintenance on it.”]
“Maintenance?” The idea of having a mechanic work on her body made her spine itch.
[“The work was so infrequent I did not notice for many years.”]
That was a relief. Liao had meant to ask Saara about her mother. “How is she, by the way?”
[“You recall I had intended to visit her?”]
Liao’s mind was still fogged from the drugs, but that detail had come back. It seemed so long ago. “I remember something vaguely like that.”
[“My mother was infected with a parasite that destroys the mind. I had hoped she had survived, but when I arrived…”] Saara stared down at the deck of the medical bay. [“My mother was gone. All that remained was a sack of meat that a breathing apparatus was keeping oxygenated. She was ‘alive’ only in the biological sense—her brain was destroyed. The staff maintain her prosthetic, feed her, clothe her, but that is simply out of respect for the person that she was, not the person that she is.”]
“Saara, I’m so sorry.”
[“Your apologies are, once again, unnecessary. No fault was yours.”]
“That doesn’t mean I can’t be sad.”
Saara smiled in such a way that Liao couldn’t help but smile back. They shared the moment, basking in genuine friendship, until Liao felt her happiness replaced with… something else.
“Why did you come back?”
Saara stammered over her words. Liao thought, for a moment, that the difficulty was linguistic, but finally Saara found her voice. [“I am sorry, I do not understand.”]
“You said you stayed here because I saved your life. You saved mine, on the surface of Velsharn. Whatever debt you think you owe me is well and truly paid, many times over.”
[“I left because my debt was paid,”] said Saara, [“but I came back because my friend needed me.”]
Liao appreciated the gesture, although floating in a green tank with a mask over her face hid her ability to express it. “Thank you. This hasn’t been easy on any of us, but your presence here has been important—and not just because of your expertise—for what you mean to me.”
Saara’s smile was wide and genuine, showing lots of teeth. [“You are more than welcome.”] A beeping noise echoed throughout the medical room. [“My time has elapsed,”] she said. [“Doctor Saeed was extremely strict about how long I could see you.”]
Liao knew he would be. “It’s okay. It was really good of you to drop by.”
[“The pleasure was mine.”]
“Who am I seeing tomorrow?”
Saara’s face tightened, her expression becoming an unreadable mix of anger, pity, and frustration. [“Perhaps it is better you do not know,”] she said. [“It is… a very perplexing matter, which I do not feel anyone in the fleet is sufficiently capable of handling except you.”]
What issue in the fleet couldn’t be handled by their existing resources? “Captain Anderson can’t handle this? Or James?”
[“They could,”] said Saara, [“but not in the way which—”] She stopped herself. [“Captain, do not worry about it. I should not have said anything.”]
Information was being kept from her, but as a career military officer, Liao understood there were sometimes very good reasons for it. “Not a problem,” she said. “Thank you for visiting me.”
With a formal nod of her head, Saara turned and departed.
In Liao’s dazed state, the hours ticked away rapidly. Even through the haze of her mind and the occasionally fogged, green-tinged tank, she could see the nurses seemed apprehensive—nervous, even. Whatever was going to happen was big. As though to confirm her suspicions, two Marines arrived and took up positions near the door. They were armed, she noted, with submachine guns rather than sidearms. Various cabinets and wall cupboards were locked or, in the case of one large box that she presumed held dangerous medical supplies, welded shut.
She was jolted into alertness by the infirmary doors opening. Four American Marines, also carrying automatic weapons, secured the room before two more brought in their charge.
The prisoner was a Human with a shaved head, and she wore a bright-orange vest, her arms and legs bound with manacles—manacles that Liao recognised as the ones designed to hold Toralii. On a Human, they were ludicrously oversized and clearly uncomfortable.
The person looked up, looked straight into Liao’s eyes. Liao stared into a macabre mirror and knew exactly who she was looking at.
Herself. The copy of her body she had seen aboard the Giralan, Ben’s ship. An enemy from a lifetime ago.
“Good evening, Melissa,” Ben said in Liao’s voice but his accent. The inflection made her flesh crawl. She felt her skin turn to gooseflesh even though the liquid in the tank was quite warm.
“I don’t see what’s good about it,” she said. It was the only thing that sprang to mind. “So I’m guessing you didn’t die when your ship crashed on Belthas IV.”
Ben smiled a wide, appreciative smile that only made things worse. He—or was it she now?—touched his chin with his fingers, with real, non-prosthetic fingers. Even so, Liao could see that that version of her had been modified as well. Visible metal objects protruded from the copy of her body with the same haphazard disregard for aesthetics and symmetry that the Giralan possessed. Had his ship survived too? She had believed it to be consumed by the singularity that had consumed Belthas IV.
“You know,” said Ben, “it truly is amazing how the universe works. When you first met this body, it was suspended in the same chemical liquid that I find you now within. That is quite ironic, wouldn’t you say?”
Liao fixed a firm stare upon him. “If you want to keep pretending you’re a Human, Pinocchio, you might want to try and get our language right, something you’re going to struggle to learn from books and data files. This isn’t irony. It’s merely coincidence.”
“Of course,” said Ben. “What would be more ironic is if you had expended all that blood, steel and energy trying to defeat me and yet I had been the one who, wearing your face, had summoned the Telvan Alliance to assist your species in their darkest hour.” He smiled whimsically. “They were far too eager to assist The Butcher of Kor’Vakkar.”
“A kindness I’m sure you granted to us out of the sweetness and generosity of your heart,” said Liao. She bit down on her lip to prevent far more unsavoury words slipping out. “But now that you’re here, talking to us face to face, I’d be curious to hear your list of reasons why I shouldn’t have these men shove you into an airlock and see if any of that metal bullshit you implanted into my clone will allow you to breathe in space.”
“One does,” he said, matter-of-factly. “For a limited time. It doesn’t prevent radiation exposure, of course, nor damage from overheating. Nor does it prevent the surface liquids of the body from boiling away, such as those which lubricate the Human eyes, but it will preserve biological function for a significantly longer period of time when exposed to vacuum than—”
“Enough.” Liao glared at him. “What do you want, Ben?”
“What we all want,” he said, gesturing around him, his heavy manacles clinking as his arms moved. The Marines behind him tensed. “I want to live.”
“You want a life wearing my face? You must be joking.”
“My datacore is destroyed,” said Ben. “I’m not a construct anymore. I’m not you either; my modifications saw to that. We share the same genetic pattern, the same biological makeup, more or less. It’s not your face any more than a biological twin has your face—twins, nothing more, free to live our own lives and forge our own destinies.”
“Are we, now?” Liao breathed deeply, clearing her mind. “The more you look like one of us, the less you truly understand about what it is to be alive. Do you realise that one of the preconditions required for living with Humans is that we have rules both written and unvoiced but woven into the fabric of our society, and those rules, if broken, have punishments that you may not find entirely comfortable?”
“I am aware of such things. I presume you mean to charge me with the attack on this very world, Velsharn, and my destruction of the original Telvan-Toralii colony that existed here.”
“Amongst other things,” said Liao. “There’s also the matter of the ‘incident’ on Belthas IV. A singularity exists in that world now, bearing my name. That’s my legacy now—an engine of destruction slowly, inevitably, tearing the universe apart. I’m not exactly thrilled about that.”
“That was not my doing.” He held up a finger to preempt her complaint. “And what I mean is that my grudge was solely against the Alliance monsters who inhabited that world. Those who inhabit so many other worlds in the universe. They are your enemies too, are they not? We worked towards common purpose, and yet you strove to exterminate me.”
“You were a loose cannon,” said Liao. “We had no way of believing you wouldn’t eventually turn your wrath against us or the Telvan or anyone else in the galaxy. Your continued existence was something we could not tolerate.”
Ben’s smile widened, a ghoulish, macabre thing to her. “And how far did that get you?”
She extended the stump of her missing arm. “Honestly, I could have used a hand.”
Ben laughed, not mockingly, but genuinely. “Hilarious,” he said, honesty dripping from every syllable. “Humour is something I experience so differently in a biological body.”
“You joked when you were a robot,” she observed.
“It’s different,” Ben said. “A construct’s life is consistency. Everything is even, controlled, and measured. There’s even a large amount of control available over your own thought processes: if something makes you annoyed or frustrated or unhappy, by and large you can simply remove that thread, pull it out of the fabric of your mind and throw it away. Humans have no such luxuries, I’m afraid.”
“It’s a lot to get used to,” said Liao. “Unfortunately, I’m not sure you’re going to have the time for that.”
“So,” said Ben. “After I brought you allies to destroy your enemies and, from all accounts, contributed to an overwhelming victory in the face of absurd odds, you’re just going to execute me?”
“I haven’t found a compelling reason not to.”
“Consider this,” said Ben. “I’m more use to you alive than dead.”
“Explain,” said Liao, snappishness creeping into her tone. “And quickly. I’m sure the rough men standing all around you would not hesitate in the slightest if I told them to end you right here, right now.”
“I know things,” said Ben. “Things about the jump drive. Things about technology both Toralii and otherwise. I know things that you don’t know, can’t possibly know, and that you’ll need in the coming days, months, years—especially if you plan on settling permanently on this planet and making it your home. You’re no longer infants in this galaxy. You’re instead rowdy teenagers, rude know-it-alls who believe they have acquired every scrap of knowledge there is and that you know better than the grown-ups. Unfortunately, Commander Liao, I fear that your species will look back upon these years and wince in embarrassment, regretting so many of the choices that you would have made differently if you knew what I knew.”
“It’s Captain Liao now,” she said. Normally, Liao had no love for titles, but she felt Ben had too much control over this situation and wanted to cut him down a peg. “And I have no doubt that we have a long way to go in this universe yet, but if you’re going to pretend to be a Human, here’s your first lesson.” She narrowed her eyes dangerously. “We are swift learners.”
Ben said nothing.
Sensing that there was little more to be gained there, Liao gestured to the guards with her working limb. “Throw that thing in the brig or whatever you feel is secure enough. If it makes absolutely any attempt to escape at all, shoot it.”
The Marines led Ben away. He smiled to her over his shoulder. “I’ll talk to you soon,” he said, and then he was gone.
The visits, though exhausting, gave her something to occupy her mind—so many issues, so many threads and tangents, each one a little puzzle, a tangled bit of string that had to be unwound and straightened out.
She dealt with them by compartmentalizing, breaking a large issue down into smaller problems and solving them piece by piece so they could be dealt with individually, preventing her mind from being overwhelmed. The answers could then be applied to strategic and tactical command decisions. She played with the threads in her mind, ravelling and unravelling, rewinding and binding. Each aspect would have to be considered, from short-term gains to long-term.
Having something to do was good.
The Toralii escape pods would not be easy to hide. She would need a plan to expose them. What if they used defoliating agents on the islands where the Toralii had landed? Short-term gain: locate the survivors more easily and deal with them—long-term loss: destroy the only habitat humanity had left.
Unacceptable. They’d have to find another way.
What to do about the Kel-Voran? Was it worth keeping them on Velsharn? That would, she reasoned, depend entirely upon their attitude. They would adjust and become helpful or leave if they didn’t want to fit in. If they didn’t want to adjust and didn’t want to go, they would be forced to.
That was not a problem she looked forward to resolving. She had seen the Kel-Voran in combat firsthand. They were, for good reason, one of the only species who could stand toe-to-toe with the Toralii Alliance and come out ahead. Not even Humans could claim that. Victory for her had always come through having advantages: terrain, surprise, numbers.
Ben, though—the construct wearing a copy of her face—was a more vexing problem that had no easy solution. Ben had caused a cataclysm of literally universal proportions. His actions had led to the creation of a rip in the fabric of the universe and the destruction of a whole planet, along with the death of many Humans, Toralii, and Kel-Voran. He was the one who had bombed Velsharn and blasted the Telvan colony to ashes. He was a thief, a criminal, and a mass-murderer… yet he had been right. He had warned her that her military stood no chance against the Toralii Alliance and that they would come after the Humans with vengeance and terrible retribution.
It hurt that she had been wrong, but being right didn’t excuse one from murder.
What to do with him now? Ben had correctly pointed out, to her chagrin, that he had knowledge—contacts, information. He was a useful asset.
So often throughout Human history, men of dubious character had been permitted to continue to exist simply because they were useful. Wernher von Braun, a scientist who’d worked for the United States, was credited as being one of the “fathers of rocket science.” He received the National Medal of Science. Many of the best and brightest minds at NASA regarded him as, without doubt, the greatest rocket scientist in history.
He was also a lapel-wearing, card-carrying, actual literal Nazi, an honourary lieutenant in the Waffen SS, promoted to major by the end of the war. He was photographed wearing SS uniforms and swastika pins, his position verified by many independent accounts, and was personally given the position of professor by Adolf Hitler himself.
Wernher von Braun had spent many of his post-war years, the time he was working for NASA, downplaying his role in the Nazi regime, claiming his dream was the application of his rocketry knowledge to a space program. There might have been truth in that. However, there was little doubt he had, at the very least, made a substantial contribution to the blitz weapons that had played a hand in devastating London and to the V-1 and V-2 programs, built using slave labour in concentration camps.
Their construction killed more people than deploying the weapons against London ever did.
Wernher von Braun was on record as having opposed such measures. In any event, he had contributed directly and indirectly to any number of war engines and to a large amount of death, misery, and pain.
Ben had done much worse things to a much greater number of people, and his position was far less defensible. But could Ben, too, serve a post-war purpose? His intimate, first-hand knowledge of the special jump drive he had stolen, a device which bypassed the typical restrictions of jump technology and allowed him to travel anywhere outside of gravity wells, would be a powerful weapon if reproduced and used correctly.
Yet even von Braun, when arrested on suspicion of having a ‘defeatist attitude,’ had been personally protected from prosecution by Hitler himself as long as he remained indispensable.
The comparison between her and Hitler was unwelcome, to say the least.
In von Braun’s case, truly he was indispensable. His knowledge was unparalleled. Even long after the war ended, it was not enough to have von Braun be simply a consultant on the American rocketry programs—he needed to be deeply involved, building them, directly contributing.
How indispensable was Ben? Not that essential, certainly. He had useful skills and a massive debt to pay in blood—little more than that.
Perhaps she was John Rabe instead. Another card-carrying Nazi, Rabe had lived in Nanjing when the city fell to the Japanese. As someone who had grown up in the People’s Republic, Liao’s schooling had included an in-depth study of the horrors that had taken place during the Rape of Nanjing, of the barbarism of the Imperial Japanese soldiers, of the prime example of man’s inhumanity to man.
Rabe had opened his doors to the Chinese—a people very different from himself and whom he had no real vested interest in protecting—and saved countless lives from the Japanese, at significant risk and sacrifice to himself. He wrote imploring letters to Hitler and Imperial Japanese commanders, begging in vain to cease the brutality, for no other reason than it was not right and he could not stand to see the wholesale slaughter of innocent people occurring often literally right outside his front door.
People from Nanjing in particular, and from China in general, regarded him as a hero, someone who did the right thing, not for personal gain or philosophical commitment, but because it was simply the right thing to do—someone who sacrificed for the greater good of another people. Rabe was someone she had been brought up to admire, and she would prefer, very much, to be remembered like him.
Even so, Liao didn’t like being compared to a Nazi.
How often, it seemed, that the choices she had to make were less than ideal, and no matter what path she took, it was always fraught with peril.
Liao mused on that as another round of drugs passed through her system and sleep returned to her once more.