Lacuna: Demons of the Void Read Free

head. “Actually, I never read it.”
    James nodded anyway. “Well, I was in command of the F1004 Leopold III . We reported that we’d struck a mine and were disabled, then waited until the aircraft carrier was in range... and rammed it when they arrived to take the crew prisoner.”
    James’s hand motored along to his pinkie and crashed into the side. The hand overturned, pitched upwards, and dramatically sank. “At least we shouted over the megaphone that we’d rammed them. Actually ramming them would be a bit tasteless.”
    Liao blinked. “Wouldn’t that violate…”
    “… all kinds of rules?” James finished, nodding. “Pretty much every ‘good conduct’ rule in the book. The administrators of the war games disallowed our kill and ‘refloated’ the Bush , but in the minds of the crew and I, we sank a 100,000 tonne aircraft carrier for the cost of a 1,500 tonne patrol boat. That’s a huge net gain for our forces.”
    “But you all died ,” Liao pointed out, “And it’s not a move you’d use in real life...”
    The car arrived at their destination, a single story building near Sydney’s centre. It was a nondescript sandstone building. It had no distinguishing features apart from its generic, completely normal appearance which, Liao guessed, was probably deliberate.
    “Correct,” James answered, giving an impish grin. “But isn’t real life just another game, with a different set of rules?”
    The two disembarked, continuing their conversation as they made their way up to the building’s glass doors.
    “Ramming your ship into the enemy’s ship doesn’t sound like a sound interpretation of the rules to me.”
    Grégoire waved a key fob in front of a sensor and the two panes of glass opened. A cool, air-conditioned breeze washed over Liao’s face.
    “Not if you look at it like that ,” he answered, shrugging. “As far as I was concerned, the rules of the game we were playing said, ‘Ramming always works.’ I took an inexpensive ship and rammed a much more expensive ship, sinking the pair of them. That’s a net gain for us. That’s a victory .”
    The two walked inside the structure. Immediately, the atmosphere changed. The inside of the building was a stark contrast to its exterior. This seemed like the inside of a dormitory for a tech college. Technical graphs, diagrams and posters adorned almost every inch of every wall, proudly displaying the technical aspects of devices Liao didn’t even recognise. The floor was covered in a thick, plush, blue carpet.
    “Hey, so you’re the visitors, huh?” came a feminine, nasally voice, thick with an Australian accent. A short, freckled, weedy, twenty-something Caucasian woman with bushy red hair and large, awkward looking glasses leaned casually against a wall in a stance that Liao could only describe as a desperate attempt to look like one of the cool kids in a high school.
    “That’s right. I’m Lieutenant Melissa Liao from the People’s Republic,” Liao offered, extending her hand. “And this is Captain James Grégoire, Belgian Naval Component, EU.”
    The redhead’s bravado almost instantly evaporated and she seemed to hesitate a moment before taking Liao’s white-gloved hand, giving it an awkward shake. She didn’t look her in the eye. She then shook James’ hand and gestured to a room further inside the building.
    “I’m Summer Rowe. I’m lead engineer here. You’re here to see Chekhov’s Armoury, right?”
    James threw Melissa a confused look. “Sorry, what?”
    Rowe gave a nasally snort, pushing up her glasses with her ring finger. “That’s just what we call the toy box – uhh, I mean, all this stuff. It's a literary term... it's, uh- it's kinda the idea that when you introduce something early on, it’s irrelevant at the time, but later becomes really important... and this stuff is going to be really important in a few years.”
    “...oh,” was all Liao could say to that.
    Summer turned and began to walk further