The Swarm

by Orson Scott Card

  But of course the real questions were metallurgical. What is this alloy? And how was it made? Those questions found their answers in chemistry. And while Wila might not be an engineer, she did know a bit about chemistry and had quite a few theories about how the Hive Queen had built her kingdom.

  She downed the rest of her tea and set the glass aside, feeling a renewed sense of urgency. This was why she had studied. This was what had called her, what all of her research had prepared her for. She paused and offered a prayer: that her mind would be open, that it would see clearly and understand what others had already discovered.

  Then she opened the first holo and began to read.

  CHAPTER 7

  Asteroid

  To: notoccamsrazor@stayanonymous.net; lem.jukes@juke.net

  From: vico.delgado@freebeltmail.net

  Subject: Formics in the Kuiper Belt

  * * *

  Old Soldier and Lem,

  Attached are images of asteroid 2030CT, a relatively small, icy rock here in the Kuiper Belt NOWHERE near Copernicus, which makes the following information all the more alarming. There is a Formic vessel anchored to the asteroid. A small miniship. By the looks of it, it puts out very little heat, which might explain how it was able to enter the system without being detected.

  I can’t say how long it’s been here, but I suspect that it arrived relatively recently. Edimar noticed a drop in the asteroid’s brightness and sent a probe ahead of us to investigate. As the images prove, the rock is reflecting less light because the Formics have covered it with a membranous shell of some kind. Like a balloon or a cocoon. If we’re interpreting these images correctly, the circumference of the shell is greater than the circumference we have on record for the asteroid, meaning that there’s space between the shell and the surface of the asteroid, perhaps as much as twenty meters. I have no idea what the shell is composed of or how it was made, but I think it could be airtight. If that’s true, there might be an oxygenated environment beneath the shell. The water ice on the surface of the asteroid as well as the ice in the porous rock could provide plenty of oxygen and hydrogen in gas, liquid, or solid form, depending on the temperature they maintain inside the shell.

  It is quite possible that the entire surface of the asteroid has been rendered habitable and a number of Formic workers and/or soldiers might be living and working there.

  We are approaching the asteroid now. I will send further information soon. Please relay this to the Hegemon and senior officers of the International Fleet immediately. We do not know if we have sufficient force and firepower to contest possession of this rock or to resist them if they decide to drive us away. We do not know if we’ll be able to insert any observers—human or robotic. We have no ability to conceal our approach or disguise our intentions. Advice is urgently requested.

  Vico

  —Victor Delgado to Mazer Rackham and Lem Jukes, Mazer Rackham: Selected Correspondence, International Fleet Archives, CentCom, Luna

  Mazer floated inside his cramped quarters on WAMRED, reviewing the images Victor had sent him, feeling more unsettled by the moment. He tapped the terminal screen and zoomed in, hoping to get a better sense of what the shell around the asteroid was composed of. No good. The image was too pixelated. He zoomed back out again. From a distance the shell looked like brown, hardened amber with a thick webbing threaded through it to give it structure. Obviously engineered. But how had the Formics built it? And why?

  He tapped at the screen again and logged in to the forum. Victor was wise to send the images to Lem as well, but Mazer couldn’t leave the responsibility of sharing the images solely to Lem. If Mazer could inform the IF he would.

  He typed up a new post and uploaded all the images. Dozens of new threads were created in the forum every day, but as an administrator Mazer could place his post at the top and make it sticky so that everyone who logged in would see it. All he had to do now was push send.

  He raised his finger but then hesitated. Vaganov had ordered him to bring all new intel and information to him directly. If Mazer posted this to the forum without first informing Vaganov, would Vaganov accuse him of violating a lawful order? Would Vaganov have an actual case against Mazer in the court-martial?

  He couldn’t take that risk. He would report it to Vaganov first. The colonel was a careerist. Valuable intel like this could get him noticed. He would probably trip over himself to get the images to CentCom so that he could take credit for it and bask in the commendations that would follow.

  Mazer saved the post but didn’t publish it. If Vaganov ignored the intel, Mazer would take matters into his own hands, and the court-martial be damned.

  The door to his quarters was locked from the outside, so Mazer sent an e-mail to the colonel’s aide. Simply asking to meet with Vaganov would likely be ignored, so Mazer uploaded one of the images of the asteroid and wrote that he had evidence of Formics in the system.

  An MP arrived a few minutes later and ushered Mazer directly into Vaganov’s office.

  Vaganov waved the MP out and then pulled up the asteroid in his holofield.

  “Who sent you this image?” Vaganov asked.

  “Victor Delgado, sir,” said Mazer. “A free miner in the Kuiper Belt.”

  Vaganov looked skeptical. “Victor Delgado? The free miner who warned Earth of the first invasion? Is this a joke?”

  “No, sir. I assure you this is one hundred percent legitimate.”

  Vaganov narrowed his eyes. “Why would Victor Delgado send critical intel to you, a captain? He helped the MOPs win the war. He could send this to anyone in the IF and they would believe him.”

  Mazer hesitated. He had to be delicate. He had been ordered by the Strategos at the end of the war not to divulge Mazer’s involvement in the final battle, which was how his friendship with Victor had developed. So he revealed what he could. “Sir, Victor Delgado and I met via holo during the first war while I was in China. He contacted the Chinese officers at Dragon’s Den where I was serving and offered assistance. We have stayed in contact ever since.”

  Vaganov seemed impressed, but his expression still carried a hint of skepticism. “You do not strike me as a dishonest man, Mazer. A dishonest man would try to fool me into passing false information on to CentCom in an effort to humiliate and discredit me. To get revenge, so to speak. I have arranged to have you court-martialed, the circumstances of which, from your perspective, seem unfair, unjustified, or even cruel. If you were a dishonest man you might even feel justified in staging an elaborate hoax to damage my reputation. But you’re not a dishonest man, are you, Mazer?”

  He thinks I’m like him, Mazer realized. That’s what we do as humans; it’s how we read minds. We assume that other people think like we do. So if we’re nasty and suspicious and conniving we assume that everyone is as nasty and suspicious and conniving as we are.

  “Sir,” said Mazer, “I have nothing to gain by relaying false information. That would be career suicide.”

  “It would be a foolish mistake, yes.”

  “My only intention here is to relay critical intelligence to the senior members of the Fleet,” said Mazer. “You are welcome to corroborate this however you see fit, sir. You don’t need my permission to do so, of course, but I have nothing to hide. I would only encourage you to do so quickly. This is irrefutable evidence that there are Formics already in the solar system. They avoided detection. They have an agenda. They set down on that rock and built a habitat for a reason. If you examine the propulsion system, sir, you will see that it appears to be anchored to the rock. There’s only one reason why they would do that. They intend to move that asteroid. And if they can move an asteroid, sir, they can put it on a collision course with Earth. They can launch it at us like a missile.”

  That gave Vaganov pause. He looked back to the image. “Yes. I suppose that’s true.”

  “There are over ten billion objects in the solar system,” said Mazer. “If the Formics have the capability to turn those objects into w
eapons, it won’t matter how many soldiers or ships we assemble. An asteroid only a few kilometers in diameter would release as much energy as several million nuclear warheads detonating simultaneously. It could wipe out countries, continents. Larger asteroids would be an extinction event. The Formics could end us with a single shot, sir. We must relay this to CentCom immediately. There may be more of these occupied asteroids in the Kuiper Belt that we don’t know about.”

  Vaganov stared at the asteroid, considering.

  “And there’s something else,” said Mazer. “Whatever the Formics are doing at this asteroid, we need to stop them. The IF must form an assault team specializing in asteroid combat. As far as I am aware, there is no such effort currently in development within the Fleet. We never imagined we would need one. But now we do. IF marines must seize or destroy that installation and any others like it. That will take training, weapons, and tactics we have not yet developed.”

  Vaganov didn’t respond for a moment. “This photo could be fake. There is software out there that could generate these images easily. A child could do it. I’m not passing this on to anyone until I independently verify all of this.”

  It’s Victor on Luna all over again, thought Mazer. When Victor tried to warn the world of the first invasion no one would believe him. It was easier not to, to dismiss the intel as fake. Had Imala not come along and given him credence, we would have been wholly unprepared.

  “Sir, I am not trying to deceive you,” said Mazer.

  “No, but someone might be trying to deceive you. This asteroid, 2030CT, is it remote? Would an IF ship or scope be able to corroborate what we see here?”

  “It’s in the Kuiper Belt, sir. Everything is remote. No IF ship or depot is close. I checked.”

  “And this ship—if it avoided detection, I’m not going to find a record of its approach in any of the Parallax databases either, am I?”

  “Again, I doubt it,” said Mazer. “The Formic ship has a very small engine. Not unlike the ship that destroyed Copernicus, which also avoided detection. Victor called them miniships because of their size. They likely put out a very small heat signature. We have to remember, sir, that the Parallax satellites are computers. They only detect what we tell them to detect. If this ship’s heat signature was below set parameters, our satellites would dismiss it.”

  “Well, we have a problem, don’t we?” said Vaganov. “We have potentially critical information that I can’t corroborate. One image isn’t enough.”

  “There are other images,” said Mazer. “Victor sent me several. You’re welcome to study those as well.”

  Vaganov reached into the holofield and called up an IF e-mail login screen. “Sign in to your e-mail. Show me these other images.”

  Mazer didn’t hesitate. He had known that his e-mail account could be reviewed upon request—privacy rights in the military were different than those for civilians—so he had always erased e-mails as soon as he read them. Whatever files or designs he received from Victor were stored elsewhere in a private data bin on the nets. As were his e-mails from Kim. The only e-mail currently in his inbox was the most recent one from Victor. He stepped to the holofield, signed in, and opened the images.

  “Where are the rest of your e-mails?” said Vaganov. His eyes narrowed. “You’re concealing something. Who else are you communicating with? You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”

  Mazer almost laughed. He worries that I’m informing his superiors about his relationship with Gungsu. He thinks I’m throwing him to the wolves. It was both pathetic and infuriating. Here Mazer was, giving him intel that could change the entire dynamic of the war, and Vaganov’s primary concern was his own reputation. Mazer showed no hint of his disgust, but instead kept his face completely impassive. “I assure you, sir. I am not concealing anything.”

  “Then where the hell are the rest of your e-mails?”

  “I erase them after I read them, sir.”

  “Because you don’t want me reading them. You don’t want me discovering who you’ve been talking to and what you’ve been saying about me.”

  “Colonel, I assure you, you are not the subject of my e-mails.”

  “No. And I won’t be. Your net access is revoked. You will not speak to anyone or communicate in any manner with any soldier or civilian until you are shipped off this station for your court-martial. Connection to your quarters is to be severed. Give me your wrist pad.”

  “Without access to the nets, Colonel, I will be unable to communicate with an attorney. With all due respect, sir, according to the Code of Military Justice you cannot violate my right to counsel.”

  Vaganov glared. “Your counsel can contact you once you’re off my station. Now I gave you a direct order. Give me your wrist pad.”

  Mazer removed his wrist pad and handed it over.

  “What is to be done with the information regarding the asteroid?” Mazer asked.

  “I will pursue my own investigation,” said Vaganov. “If this proves true, I will pass it along. You, however, will say nothing of this to anyone.”

  “And if you can’t corroborate the information?” asked Mazer. “What you’re proposing could take weeks or months.”

  “It’s no longer your concern.”

  I shouldn’t have come to Vaganov, Mazer realized. I should have posted the images on the forum immediately. Or figured out a way to send the images directly to the Strategos. The moment we allow the bureaucracy to impede the free sharing of information is the moment we lose this war.

  Mazer reached into the holofield and signed into the forum. He had done it so many times before that his fingers were on autopilot, moving rapidly, dancing through light.

  “What are you doing?” said Vaganov.

  Mazer didn’t stop. He found the unpublished post he had prepared and sent it with a quick flick of his wrist, uploading it in an instant. Then he flicked and spun his wrist in the other direction to close the forum before Vaganov could delete it.

  Vaganov was furious. “What did you just do?”

  “I posted the information on a forum I created on the IF intranet. About two thousand junior officers throughout the Fleet visit it every day. They will see it and share it with the commanding officers. Sooner or later it will make its way to CentCom. Probably within the hour.”

  Vaganov’s eyes darkened. “You defy me to my face?”

  “You still have the images here,” said Mazer. “If you send them immediately to the rear admiral, you will be the first person to do so. You might even get a commendation. If you delay, however, someone else will beat you to it. Either way, the information is shared.”

  Mazer waved his hand through the holofield and closed his inbox.

  Colonel Vaganov straightened his jacket and smiled. “You will find, Captain Rackham, that my tolerance for insubordination is extremely low.” He tapped his wrist pad. “Sergeant Nardelli. Come to my office please.”

  An MP arrived a moment later. Mazer didn’t recognize him. He was at least a head taller than Mazer, with thick arms and a hard expression.

  “Sergeant, please escort Captain Rackham back to his quarters. I want an MP guarding him at all times. His wake shift will now change to third shift. He is to have heavy work details and he is not to communicate with anyone on this station. Not in words, letters, sign language, body language, eye blinks, etcetera. Do I make myself clear?”

  Nardelli nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Vaganov turned back to his holotable, dismissing them. “That will be all.”

  Mazer felt rough hands grab him and pull him toward the door. Sergeant Nardelli wasn’t the delicate type. Colonel Vaganov had requested him by name no doubt for this very reason.

  Vaganov glanced up briefly as Mazer was being escorted out. It was a look of pure indifference, as if Mazer meant nothing, was nothing—the way a cat might regard a mouse before pouncing and sinking teeth into flesh.

  CHAPTER 8

  NanoCloud

  To: ukko.jukes%hegemon@he
g.gov

  From: sorin%ambassador@usa.gov

  Subject: angry bear

  * * *

  Ukko,

  A warning. I am leaving the Earth Security Summit here in Saint Petersburg, where the mood of our last session was particularly prickly, with all of the venom directed at you. Korzhakov, the Russian first deputy prime minister, who wasn’t even scheduled to attend, called the Hegemony “a body of privileged autocrats who are blind to the cries of the underprivileged.” He said the Hegemony taxes the nations of the New Warsaw Pact so relentlessly that families are bled dry of resources. He held up a photo of a child who froze to death in the street. The photo will trend on the nets within the hour, I’m sure.

  Of course Korzhakov staged his theatrics at the end of the last session on the last day, denying anyone a chance to offer a rebuttal. I had approached Norchov, the Russian ambassador, prior to the summit to secure Russia’s support for the tax, and he assured me that Russia stood with us. Yes, yes, we must strengthen the IF, he told me. Build our defense. Russia is with you. I had forgotten the first rule of diplomacy: Russians are never more cooperative than when they are about to betray you.

  The vote passed, but barely. Korzhakov concluded his diatribe by suggesting that the world needed a Hegemon who was both strong on defense and compassionate toward the free citizens of Earth. His intentions could not have been less subtle. Russia finally realized that the office of Hegemon has actual power. They want it. Watch your back.

  David

  —Office of the Hegemony Sealed Archives, Imbrium, Luna, 2118

  Lem entered the offices of the Experimental Defense Division at Juke Limited and was surprised to find the lights still on. It was well past midnight, and yet the entire staff seemed to be on hand, as if Lem had caught them in the middle of their workday. The conference rooms were filled with engineers. Other groups were huddled at tables off to the sides, tapping away at their wrist pads and tablets and speaking in quick urgent tones. A lone engineer in need of a shave was bent forward asleep at a table, hugging his bag like a pillow. More people were asleep in hammocks in a dark corner of the room. Some looked to be in their sixties. Others looked like grad students. Lem made his way toward the back of the main hall, passing a trash receptacle overflowing with take-out boxes and stepping over a man in a sleeping bag.