Colonel Li’s voice took over the commlink. “What’s the plan, Mazer?”
Mazer quickly explained his intentions. They would make a few holes in the hullmat, drop in the warheads, and detonate. “If we don’t scuttle this ship now, sir, and kill the crew, it’s going to course-correct as soon as Lieutenant Opperman and her squad run out of fuel and can no longer push it off course. It might even course-correct before then. I don’t know. All the more reason to inflict as much structural damage as we can, as quickly as we can.”
“Captain Sarr is telling me that his armament specialists don’t know how to disassemble the missiles. He just asked them.”
“Then, sir, I need you to get on the ansible and find someone who can,” said Mazer.
There was a pause on the line. When Colonel Li’s voice returned, it was quiet and subdued, almost angry. “Your security clearance doesn’t go that high, Mazer. You’re not authorized to know anything about such a device, much less demand its use.”
“You can discipline me some other time, sir. Right now, we—as in you and me and every living soul at GravCamp—needs a manufacturer or an armament specialist with intricate knowledge of the B45 to coach me. Unless you have a better idea, sir. Bingwen has already unscrewed the nose on one of these. If someone coaches us, we can move quickly.”
By now Mazer had all four remaining missiles out of their tubes and floating in the tight, confined space. It was a miracle that the wreck hadn’t damaged them. But the launch tubes were clearly and wisely designed to be especially resilient.
Finally Colonel Li responded. “The ansible transmits text, not voice. Whatever we receive will have to be read to you. Captain Sarr, move this radio conversation to my private quarters.”
Mazer didn’t wait. There were parts of the casing that he knew how to remove without any coaching. It was a simple matter of removing screws. Bingwen watched him, and then did the same to the others.
Five minutes later Colonel Li was back. “Mazer, whatever you say will be taken as dictation and transmitted instantly. I’m connected with an Officer Bridgewater at CentCom in weapons and armaments. I’ll read back to you whatever she types in response.”
“Cumbersome,” said Mazer. “Is there not a faster way to do this?”
The time delay between each response was only a few seconds, but it infuriated Mazer.
“I’ve got instantaneous communication across the solar system on my end, Mazer,” said Li. “I don’t see how we could be any faster than that.”
Mazer announced that he was ready, and they began. He soon realized that he didn’t need to say much, just a simple confirmation that he had accomplished whatever the tech was ordering him to do. To say more, because of the time delay, would only disrupt Colonel Li’s flow as he read directions. Bridgewater understood the urgency and yet was meticulous. Even if Mazer hadn’t worked with armaments before, he could have done the task easily with such clear and technical instructions. Whoever Bridgewater was, she was the right person for the job. Li did well also, keeping his diction clear and repeating himself often. Mazer never once wondered if he had misheard.
While Mazer worked, Bingwen made a quick call to the control room with his own radio. “What’s our flight status?”
“You’re nine minutes out,” said Captain Sarr. “You’re off course, thanks to the fighters pushing at the nose, but you’ll miss GravCamp by only two thousand kilometers if your current trajectory holds.”
“I don’t know if that’s a safe enough distance,” said Bingwen. “We only took out one of the ship’s guns. Two thousand klicks might still be within range.”
“Two thousand klicks is a decent distance,” said Sarr. “GravCamp is an extremely tiny target at that distance. We’ve been discussing it here in the control room. That’s roughly the distance between Denver, Colorado, and Atlanta, Georgia.”
“That means nothing to me,” said Bingwen. “I’m from southeast China.”
“Means nothing to me, either,” said Sarr. “I’m from Senegal, but it put all the Americans in the room at ease. So I’m relieved. As for the Formic guns, the Tik fighters from what Captain Rackham called A Squad are coming in to engage the guns at any moment. If they can take out a few more, our chances increase dramatically.”
Bingwen ended the transmission and hurried to keep Mazer’s work area clean. Each missile had four main segments, and as Mazer removed them, Bingwen stuffed the unneeded segments back into the tubes to keep them out of the way.
Finally, Mazer said, “Okay, I’ve got the four warhead segments free. Now what?”
Colonel Li continued to read instructions. “You don’t have to remove the warhead from its segment. Don’t try. Keep the warhead in the tube. On the inside of the segment on the top side you should see twelve small electronic contacts. Those contacts connect to the detonator found in the segment above it. You’ll only need one detonator for the job. It’s a green rod. Maybe twelve centimeters long, eight centimeters wide. Gently pull it out of the segment. It should come away relatively easily. It should have wires protruding from it that connect to the electronic contacts on the warhead.”
Bingwen was listening and digging through the segments he had tucked away. He found one of the green detonators and pulled it free.
“I have the detonator,” said Mazer.
Bingwen and Mazer then listened as Li read the instructions for how to set a timer on the detonator that would then be transmitted to the warhead. “Once you touch the warhead to the detonator, the warhead is armed and the countdown has begun.”
“How will I know that it worked?” said Mazer. “How can I be certain that the warhead is armed? Will it flash a light or anything?”
“You won’t know for certain,” said Bridgewater, through Li. “The warhead wasn’t designed for this type of use and so no mechanism was ever designed to give visual confirmation. But believe me, when it blows, you’ll definitely know it.”
Mazer emptied the tool bag and stuffed the four warhead segments into it. Then he put the detonator in his front pouch pocket to keep it from touching and prematurely arming the warheads.
“We’re moving outside,” said Mazer.
Mazer grabbed one of the slaser rifles, gave the other to Bingwen, and moved back toward the hatch. A clustered web of debris and twisted metal blocked his path, so Mazer pulled a few pieces of debris away to make a hole big enough for him and Bingwen to wiggle through. When they reached the hatch, they found the locking wheel bent inward and unmoving. Mazer repositioned himself, anchored his upper body against the wall, and then kicked at the wheel repeatedly until it finally gave and began to turn. When the hatch opened, there was no rush of escaping air. The interior of the fighter was already a vacuum.
Bingwen followed Mazer outside. They gripped the handholds on the exterior of the fighter, and Bingwen took in the damage. The rear of the fighter was severely crumpled inward, with shards of jagged metal protruding in all directions. Deep abrasions covered the hull, with the paint stripped away entirely in some places. Behind it, on the Formic ship, where the fighter had struck it repeatedly and slid across the surface, Bingwen couldn’t see so much as a scratch.
Mazer crawled along the exterior hull of the fighter until he reached the scaffolding to the Formic gun. The alien metal structure loomed over them, a leaning tower of mangled wreckage. The recessed area where the gun was normally housed was a dark black abyss nearly ten meters wide. Bingwen craned his neck to get a better view but couldn’t see the bottom.
Mazer checked the strength of the anchor he had made around the scaffolding by pulling on the cable a few times and checking the locking mechanism. Then he swung the slaser rifle over his head and snapped it onto the back of his suit.
“Paint?” he said, holding out a hand.
“I should come with you,” said Bingwen. “Provide cover.”
Mazer shook his head. “Wouldn’t work. Not the way I’m going.”
“And what way is that?”
“Nak’
s trick from the Kandahar. I jump as far as I can and hope the tether cable holds. I need to get as far back toward the thrusters as possible. Wherever I land, that’s where I drop the first fire in the hole. After I make the hole. Paint.” He gestured urgently with this hand.
Bingwen handed him the bucket of paint, no bigger than a small thermos. “Had I known we’d be doing this, I would have brought a bigger bucket.”
“If the hull reacts the same way the glass did, this will be enough. I also need your wrist pad to initiate the nanobots. Show me how this app works.”
Bingwen showed him. “This is important,” he said. “Once you paint, you’ve got to reholster the brush in the bucket before you initiate the nanobots with your wrist pad. Otherwise all the nanobots will be turned on, including the ones still in the paint can. And if that happens, then you’ll have no more paint to work with and thus no more nanobots to assist you. If you’re doing this four times, holster the brush every time. There’s a dampener inside the paint bucket that keeps them from receiving the wrist pad’s instructions. That way, only the paint on the surface will activate.”
“Smart,” said Mazer. “Whose idea was that?”
“Nak’s. We learned of the need the hard way when we were practicing and making the paint cocktail.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
“Don’t forget to turn off the nanobots once you have a big enough hole. Otherwise they’ll keep unzipping, including the surface of the ship where you’re anchored. It will disintegrate beneath you, and then you’ll have no purchase or ability to launch away or move. You’ll be stuck right where you shouldn’t be when the warhead detonates.”
“Sound advice. Anything else?”
“If you launch in the air, won’t you expose yourself to the other guns?”
“I’ll launch off the scaffolding,” said Mazer, “and fly as close to the surface as I can.”
“That will work only once,” said Bingwen. “After you’ve set the first warhead, you may not have a protrusion to launch from. Your only option may be to jump straight up and let the pendulum swing you.”
“Then let’s hope A Squad takes out the other guns.”
“Is this ship going to break apart beneath us?”
“The nice thing about hullmat,” said Mazer, “is that in this instance it will actually keep the explosion contained in the ship. It will shield us from what happens inside.”
“Assuming the warheads detonate,” said Bingwen.
“Stay here,” said Mazer. “Shoot anything that isn’t human.”
Then he turned around, planted his feet against the scaffolding, bent his body tight like a spring, disengaged his boots, and launched, soaring across the surface of the ship with the slack of the tether cable trailing behind him.
CHAPTER 19
Money
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: dimming asteroid
* * *
Dear Lem,
I have put myself in front of my terminal many times to write you. Sometimes I actually did write a complete email. Other times I wrote only a portion of a message because I would stop halfway through and review what I had written, realize that it sounded childish or unclear or dense, and then despair and abandon the whole enterprise. Other times I noodled with previous drafts I had written only to like them even less once the exercise was through. What I never did, however, was actually send an email.
Why did I agonize over something so simple? Why was it so difficult for me to apologize? I do not know. Part of the reason is obvious. I fear that I set in motion a chain of events that resulted in the company being taken from you. You will almost certainly assure me that this isn’t the case, but I will never be able to accept that I had no hand in you losing what mattered to you most.
It also pains me that I allowed so much time to pass before I mustered the courage to send this. I fear that my silence only added to whatever burden you carried.
There are other reasons why sending you a message was difficult, but they are reasons that I do not understand myself and therefore can’t possibly articulate.
And now I am not even certain if you even use this email address. Since it is linked to the company, and you are no longer there, I worry that I have lost my only means of contacting you. I cannot call you. I am no longer on Luna. I am not at liberty to give my location, but I can say I’m not on Earth, either.
I pray that you do receive this message, however, because we have learned of an irregularity that alarms me and all those who travel with me. Eros, the near-Earth asteroid, has disappeared. Its albedo dimmed for three days, and now it has vanished from scopes entirely. This information is not yet classified but only because the paperwork has not yet been completed. By the time you read this, it may be classified and difficult for you to learn more.
A Juke mining vessel is the nearest vessel to Eros at the moment, and arrangements are being made to invite the vessel to investigate. You have many contacts within the company, of course, who can inform you of what is discovered. I know how closely you watch the war, and how being with the company gave you access to information not available to the public. This is my attempt to keep you informed even now.
For me, this new information, and the link to the Juke vessel, gave me the push I needed to approach my terminal one more time and write an email that I must send.
I pray for your comfort and peace. I pray that this new circumstance of life proves to be the door unopened finally thrust wide, beyond which you see a path untrodden and waiting and full of light.
Wila
* * *
The trees at Armstrong Park in Imbrium were real, having been brought up from Earth years ago as saplings and planted in moon soil mixed with organics and fertilizer. A network of nutrient drips kept them alive. Everything else in the park, however, was fake. Lem sat at a park bench under the shade of a maple and marveled at the fake wind generated by the turbines at the park’s perimeter; the fake sun overhead, projected on the inner dome of the city to give its inhabitants a false sense of day; and most amusing of all, the fake birdsong broadcast from the tiny speakers hidden somewhere up in the trees.
A city of lies, thought Lem. Not just here, but in the people around him, the people he believed were true, the people who had seemed to show loyalty by their words and comportment. But that loyalty had been a false reality, no more real than the wind on his face and the birdsong in his ears.
No. That wasn’t entirely true. One person was real. One person had never given him a false face.
He watched as Noloa Benyawe emerged from her taxi at the park’s edge and approached him. She seemed burdened and tired and trying hard not to show it. She was in casual attire, like something a woman might exercise in: perhaps what she wore on any given Sunday. It surprised Lem because he had never seen her dressed that way. And yet it was obviously what she chose to wear when she was most comfortable, most herself. This was the real her. The unadorned her. The her that Lem had never bothered to get to know. He realized then how little he actually knew about her outside of work. Cold facts were all that came to mind: she had recently remarried, she had three grown children, her first husband was a professor of something at a university somewhere, she was from Nigeria. But … that was it. Lem didn’t really know her, not at the level that friends were supposed to know each other, that people with any sense of loyalty to one another should know each other. Which left him feeling … what? Ashamed? Selfish? He hadn’t cared enough to know her. He had been so wrapped up in his work, in the company, in himself, that he hadn’t shown any real interest in her. Not as a human being, anyway. He had only seen her as an engineer, a builder of ships, a solver of puzzles. Never as a mother or wife or friend.
She reached him and sat beside him on the bench. “You’re staring at me with a strange earnestness. Have you gone cuckoo on me, Lem? Have you cracked?”
Lem sighed and leaned back in th
e bench and let the fake wind blow into his face like a real Earth breeze. “Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. I’m not sure yet. But either way, I think it’s a good thing for me.”
Benyawe raised an eyebrow. “You sound like one of those guys who decides to go backpacking through Europe to ‘find himself.’ You’re too young for a midlife crisis, Lem. It’s not your style. Do I need to slap you out of whatever funk you’re in, because believe me, you wouldn’t have to ask twice.”
He smiled at her. “Eager to slap me, are you?”
Now it was her turn to sigh and lean back into the bench. “There were times. Lord knows there were times. But not today. I’m not feeling particularly slappy. Or would it be slapful?”
“Prone to slap,” said Lem.
She nodded.
“How are things at the company?” said Lem.
“Is that why you asked me to come?” said Benyawe. “To have me report on how lost we are without you, how disastrous the company is without your leadership, how directionless we are without your careful guidance? I can say all that if you want me to.”
“I don’t want you to,” said Lem. “Because I know it isn’t true.”
“No. It isn’t true. Everyone is busy. The gears never stopped turning. The Fleet needs supplies, and we’re the big supplier. We’re as busy now as we’ve ever been. No one has even mentioned you that I’ve heard. That’s terribly heartless of me to admit, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you. The company is doing what it needs to do.” She paused. “Now you’re sorry you asked me to come, aren’t you?”
Lem’s smile widened and he put his hands behind his head. “Not at all. You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that. Not the substance of what you said, but that it’s truth unfiltered. That’s what you always gave me, Benyawe. Truth. I never doubted that.”
“You have gone cuckoo on me.”
“No question,” said Lem. “I’m raving bonkers.”
“So why did you bring me? To hear how I voted as a member of the board? To know if I cast my vote against you?”
The Hive Page 35