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 mosthonourable way to die, and even theyavoid 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.
Liao and Summer had privately asserted the opinion that it was arrogancethat kept the Toralii information unencrypted. Since they so rarely lost a battle, there were few who would challenge them, so there was no need to think about who might be picking through the bones of the wreckage of their ships.
From what the construct had told Liao, Cenar had been around for nearly two centuries in its current form, although it had undergone a major refit almost a hundred years ago. The station was constantly upgraded, constantly kept to the bleeding edge of technology. It was so heavily armed that, for at least several decades, no unauthorized ship had even approached it.
It wasn’t much, but Liao took some comfort in knowing that if they did attack Cenar, no matter what else they accomplished, thatrecord would be broken. But looking over the schematics Ben had provided, Liao doubted they could do any more than that.
The station was surrounded by gravity mines mixed in with high-yield nuclear warheads that tracked heavy ship hulls and automatically moved towards them, so even
“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 mosthonourable way to die, and even theyavoid 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.
Liao and Summer had privately asserted the opinion that it was arrogancethat kept the Toralii information unencrypted. Since they so rarely lost a battle, there were few who would challenge them, so there was no need to think about who might be picking through the bones of the wreckage of their ships.
From what the construct had told Liao, Cenar had been around for nearly two centuries in its current form, although it had undergone a major refit almost a hundred years ago. The station was constantly upgraded, constantly kept to the bleeding edge of technology. It was so heavily armed that, for at least several decades, no unauthorized ship had even approached it.
It wasn’t much, but Liao took some comfort in knowing that if they did attack Cenar, no matter what else they accomplished, thatrecord would be broken. But looking over the schematics Ben had provided, Liao doubted they could do any more than that.
The station was surrounded by gravity mines mixed in with high-yield nuclear warheads that tracked heavy ship hulls and automatically moved towards them, so even
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