Lacuna: The Spectre of Oblivion Read Online Free Page A

ship would be flying scrap within two weeks?”
    Rowe’s cockiness evaporated and she threw up her hands. “Look, I didn’t literally mean the ship would fall to pieces!”
    “Well then what did you mean?”
    “I just meant that… ugh. The engineers are smart, a’right? And other people can do the job I do—the Sydney and the Tehran are doing just fine after all—but the point is that I do it best!”
    “I’m not contesting that; I’m simply asking you if Liao recognised your value to the fleet and sought to protect that value by passing along your skills to others.”
    Rowe apparently gave up, folding her arms and looking away. “Whatever.”
    Fang turned to the judge. “I’ll take that as a ‘no’. No further questions for this witness, Your Honour.”
    Martin pushed back his chair and approached the witness stand. He didn’t ask anything right away, giving Rowe a chance to compose herself.
    “Miss Rowe, my esteemed colleague Mister Fang drew specific mention to an ‘extravehicular activity’ you performed during a combat involving the Beijing . Can you elaborate further on the circumstances behind this?”
    Rowe, seeming to recover quickly, gave an eager nod. “Oh, sure. Basically, we blew the shit out of this prison station called Cenar, right? But on the way back, Ben, the psychotic robot, ripped out our jump drive and activated it, teleporting him away, which left us without one. Fortunately, the Kel-Voran we’d allied ourselves with—insane bastards that they are—had a spare jump drive. You see, the jump drive can only carry 200,000 tonnes no matter what. It’s because gravity messes with the drive. So normally, they can only work in Lagrange points, which are naturally occurring points of extreme microgravity found near celestial bodies. Once you hit 200,000 tonnes, your own mass is generating enough of a gravity field to throw it off. Anyway, the Kel-Voran ships break in half, so they’re really two parts which jump separately, a really cool—”
    “Thank you,” said Martin, “for this enlightening segue, but please, the battle.”
    “Uh, right. Yeah. Anyway, so Ben took the Beijing ’s jump drive. Fortunately the Kel-Voran had a spare. They gave one half’s jump drive to us while the other half bought us some time. We didn’t have time to carry the jump drive inside, so we just attached it to the hull and jumped away. And by we , I mean I .”
    Martin nodded understandingly. “And nobody else on board had the potential skills to complete this operation, right?”
    Rowe gave a nasally, heaving laugh. “Nup.”
    “Do you think anyone does?”
    “Nah. Maybe the combined teams of the Sydney and the Tehran , but probably not as fast as I could.”
    “So you would say Liao’s decision to keep you on board, to add you to her crew despite your lack of military rank and service, was a wise one? That despite the risk of the loss of your knowledge, your presence provided a unique boon to the crew that could not be replicated through any other means?”
    “Damn straight.”
    “And without you, the Beijing would not have returned from the assault on Cenar?”
    Rowe leaned back in her chair, grinning widely. “Sounds about right.”
    Martin pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Can you describe for me a standard work day?”
    “Well, I tend to not sleep much, so I usually crawl out of bed at 0700-ish to fix whatever broke while I was asleep. I usually check on the reactors first, unless something’s on fire or the problem’s with the jump drive. See, when we have active missiles in the launch tubes, sometimes that causes fluctuations in the jump drive’s power levels. I think it’s because they had idiots doing the wiring. I have no idea. Anyway, it requires manual balancing or the ship can’t jump.” Rowe took a deep breath, then began counting issues on her fingers. “Then there are problems with water supply and air filtration units, CO2 scrubbers going down all the time, the