“Yes, which would require smelting and reshaping and building,” said Benyawe. “We’re engineers, Lem. We’re not manufacturers. We draw up plans. Someone else makes them.”
“Free miners can build engines with space junk and bonding glue,” said Lem. “Surely we can build a shield for the glaser.”
“I am not a free miner,” said Benyawe. “I wish I had the capabilities you’d like me to have, but I don’t. We can poll the crew and perhaps find people with all the skills required, but again, the glaser is not the answer, even with shielding. In all likelihood, all the glaser would do is alert the Formics of our presence and seal our own doom. We’d accomplish nothing, and they would blow us to dust before we knew what hit us.”
“Well then,” said Lem. “That’s a pessimistic position if ever I heard one.”
“You asked for my scientific opinion,” said Benyawe, “and as an engineer on the very weapon you want to use, I’m giving it to you. You’re the captain, Lem. You’re the one who will decide, not me. I’m merely giving you considerations so that you can make an informed decision.”
Lem sighed. “I know. I’m being a snot. It’s good counsel. I’ll relay to El Cavador that we have explosives.” He excused them then, put his face in the holospace, and called El Cavador. After a short delay, Concepcion’s head appeared.
“We can contribute twenty-five men,” said Lem. “We’re not operating on a full crew, so I’m putting in all the men I can afford. And we have explosives.”
Concepcion showed no emotion. “Thank you.”
He waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. “Now to another matter, Captain,” he said. “When we last met, you downloaded files from my ship.”
“When we last met, you killed one of my crew, crippled my ship, and risked the lives of everyone in my family, including women and children.”
He had to be careful how he responded. She was probably recording this transmission, and he couldn’t make any statement that could be used against him in court. An apology would be an admission of guilt, as would telling her that he hadn’t intended to hurt anyone. But it was best to avoid such statements anyway. Unless he broke down and sobbed like a penitent churchgoer, she’d probably think him insincere. Better to ignore the issue entirely.
“Downloading our files constitutes theft,” he said.
“Killing my nephew constitutes murder.”
Lem resisted the urge to sigh. “Come now, Captain,” he wanted to say. “Must we play this tit for tat game of who is guiltier of the greater crime? Besides, it would be involuntary manslaughter, not murder, and probably a much lesser charge if Juke lawyers jumped into the fray.” But aloud he said, “What are your intentions with this data?”
If she was going to blackmail him, he wanted to be done with it. If she intended to sell it to a competitor, maybe he could convince her otherwise. He was more than willing to dip into his personal fortune to make this go away.
“Our intentions were to find out who the captain of your ship was,” said Concepcion. “We wanted to know who would be cruel enough to do such a thing.”
“Yes, but what are your intentions now?”
She seemed confused. “What do you expect our intentions to be? That we will use your corporate secrets against you, sell them on the black market perhaps, contact one of your competitors?”
“Yes, actually.”
She laughed. “We’re not like you, Lem. As difficult as it might be for you to believe, there are decent people in the universe who don’t scheme or push aside others for profit. I haven’t given your files any consideration since we took them. We’ve been occupied with trying to stay alive. If you would like me to erase them from our system, I will gladly do so. They are of no use to me.”
“Right now?” Lem couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’ll erase them immediately.”
“I’ll give the order, the moment we terminate this call.”
“How do I know you’re not lying? How do I know you won’t keep them or sell them?”
She shook her head, pitying him. “You won’t know, Lem. You’ll have to take my word for it.” She moved as if to end the call, then turned back. “Incidentally, we sent you a laserline before you attacked us, warning you about the Formic ship. But since you had left your position to conduct your unprovoked strike against us, you didn’t receive that message. Which is too bad. If you had received it maybe you wouldn’t have killed my nephew and destroyed our laserline transmitter. Which means we could have warned Weigh Station Four and everyone else a long time ago. If you have an ounce of soul, Lem, I suspect that knowing that-knowing the ramifications of your decision, knowing how damaging your selfishness really is-will keep you up at night far longer than losing your precious corporate files.”
Her face disappeared, ending the transmission.
How dare she, thought Lem. How dare she blame him for the destruction of Weigh Station Four. He pushed away from the desk. Free miners. Dirty little scavengers. He shouldn’t have mentioned the files. Now she’ll suspect they have great value. She’s probably contacting the WU-HU ship to try and sell them right now.
No. He knew that wasn’t true. She was erasing them. She hadn’t been lying.
But had she really sent him a laserline warning him of the Formics? Or was that some ploy to make him feel guilty? What had Father said? “Guilt is the greatest weapon because its cuts rarely heal and it aims for the heart.”
No, Concepcion Querales was nothing like Father. Father might try to burden Lem with guilt for some personal gain, but something told Lem that Concepcion didn’t play that game. Deceit and dominion and the twisted manipulation of human emotion weren’t the old lady’s style.
Mono stood in the cargo bay, twisting his pinkie finger and wishing he were a million klicks away.
“What were you thinking?” said Concepcion. “You disobeyed direct orders and you terrified your mother.”
Mono felt himself shrink a little. All of the men who had stayed behind, along with Concepcion, stood nearby, looking down on him, furious. Even Segundo, who never got angry, now looked as if he was ready to give Mono the spanking of his life. Mono cursed himself. He should have thought his plan through a little better. Of course Mother would eventually figure out that he wasn’t on the WU-HU ship. She would realize Zapa was lying sooner or later. He couldn’t pretend Mono was in the bathroom forever. But Mono hadn’t thought that far ahead. He hadn’t considered what would happen next. Mother had gone to the WU-HU captain in tears, according to Concepcion, and the captain had radioed immediately to El Cavador. After that it was just a matter of Concepcion getting on the ship’s loudspeaker and telling Mono, wherever he was on the ship, to get his butt to the cargo bay immediately.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” asked Concepcion.
“I wanted to help,” said Mono. “I’m good with the small-hand work. Vico said so. You might need that.”
Concepcion rubbed her eyes.
Segundo turned to Concepcion. “What are we going to do? I wouldn’t recommend we dock again. The WU-HU ship hit us hard. We took a little structural damage, nothing to be concerned about, but enough to weaken the area around the docking hatch. I wouldn’t risk another high-speed dock if we don’t have to.”
“You’ve put us in a very difficult position, Mono,” said Concepcion. “I thought Vico had trained you better.”
That did it. He could bear the angry looks of two dozen men; he could tolerate a good tongue-lashing; but to think that this would disappoint Vico, to think that Vico would disapprove, that was too much for Mono to bear. He covered his eyes and began to cry. “Don’t tell Vico. Please. Don’t tell Vico.”
To Mono’s surprise, they responded with silence. No one lashed out. No one told him he couldn’t be an apprentice anymore. They just stood there and watched him cry. Finally Concepcion spoke again, and this time her voice was calm. “From now on Mono, when I give you an order or when your mother gives you an order, y
ou will obey it. Do I make myself clear?”
He nodded.
“I want to hear your answer,” said Concepcion.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I appreciate your willingness to help, Mono, but lying to your mother and getting others to lie for you is not how we operate. We are family.”
He wanted to tell her that it was for the family that he had stayed and for the family that he had lied, but he didn’t think that would help his situation.
She made him stand off to the side while the men checked their equipment. Helmets, suits, propulsion packs, magnets, helmet radios. Mono watched them work, feeling foolish and angry with himself. He had frightened Mother when all he ultimately wanted to do was drive her fear away.
Segundo set up a workbench to assemble the timers and magnet discs to the explosives. The explosives weren’t live. That required a blasting disc, which the men would insert into the mechanism when they set the charges on the Formic ship, so there was no chance of them detonating prematurely. Segundo enlisted four men to help him assemble the timers, but it quickly became clear that the men were out of their element; they could set explosives, but they didn’t know wiring and chip work. Finally, after forty-five minutes, Segundo excused the men and called Mono over.
“Don’t think this means you’re not in trouble,” said Segundo.
Mono kept his face a blank and didn’t say a word. He worried that he might say the wrong thing or smile at the wrong time and anger Segundo and spoil his chance to help.
The timers were a cinch to assemble. He and Vico had done similar work on other things dozens of times. It was just a matter of cutting and rewiring and making a few taps with the soldering gun. The magnet discs were a little trickier, and Mono ended up changing the design Segundo had started. Instead of having the magnets underneath the explosive, which would dampen the explosive’s damaging effect to the hull, Mono used smaller magnets around the rim of the device and increased their attraction with a second battery. It was nothing innovative, really. Mono was merely copying something Victor had done when they had repaired one of the water pumps. But Segundo, who had been watching him silently work, picked up the piece when Mono was finished and nodded. “This is the kind of thing Vico would do.”
It was more praise than Mono could have hoped for, and even though he thought it might get him in trouble, he couldn’t help but smile.
Segundo secured his helmet and stepped into the airlock. They were minutes away from reaching the Formic ship, and a quiet intensity had settled among the men. They had drilled their maneuvers so many times over the past few days-using a wall in the cargo bay as the hull of the Formic ship and setting down dummy explosives over and over again until it was second nature-that Segundo didn’t feel nearly as much anxiety as he thought he would. They could do this.
Once everyone was in the airlock and the door secured, Bahzim had them check and recheck each other’s equipment. Segundo was especially thorough with those around him and found nothing out of order. Concepcion then gathered them in a circle for prayer, asking for protection and mercy and that a heavenly hand watch over the women and children. At the “Amen,” Segundo crossed himself and offered his own silent prayer for Rena and Victor.
Everything moved quickly after that. Bahzim ordered them to clip the D-rings of their safety harnesses onto the mooring cable that would be shot down to the surface of the ship. Segundo positioned himself at the front of the line so that he would be the first one on the Formic ship. He knew that many of the younger men were watching him closely, and he suspected it would put them at ease to see him leading out. Concepcion strapped herself into the seat on the winch. She would pull everyone in once the charges were set. Segundo couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her in a suit and helmet.
“Remember,” Concepcion said. “Your suits weren’t designed for spacewalks at this speed. They’ll protect you from collisions with space dust, but anything bigger will rip through you like shrapnel. So the less time you spend outside the better. Bottom line, move fast. Set the explosives, click back on the cable, and I’ll reel you back in. Nothing to it.”
Right, thought Segundo. Nothing to it. Just perform a spacewalk at an insane speed, cling to magnets for dear life, and take down an alien ship fifty times our size. Easy.
He turned on his HUD, and windows of data popped up on his visor. He blinked through a few file folders until he found the family photo he was looking for. A candid shot of him, Rena, and Vico at some family gathering a few years ago. He smiled to see how small Vico was then, still a boy. He had grown to his man height so quickly. Segundo’s smile faded. He wondered where Victor was at the moment, rocketing toward Luna all these months, his health slowly deteriorating.
Video taken from inside Lem Jukes’s helmet popped up on Segundo’s HUD. “We’re in position,” said Lem. “Give the word.”
The Makarhu was approaching the Formic ship on the opposite side, and Lem, like Concepcion, was manning the winch on his ship. The plan was for Lem to fire his cable onto the hull at the same instant El Cavador fired hers. Then both ships would send out their men.
“We’re opening our doors,” said Concepcion.
The large airlock doors opened wide, and Segundo stared in wonder and horror at the size of the ship before them. El Cavador was over a hundred meters from the ship, yet the view of the ship filled the entire airlock doorway. Segundo had seen renderings and models of the ship, but until now he hadn’t grasped the sheer immensity of it. It was larger than any structure he had ever seen, and yet it was so smooth and uniform and singular in its design that it didn’t seem like a structure at all. It didn’t seem like something made. It seemed like a giant drop of red paint falling from heaven to Earth. The color surprised Segundo, though he wasn’t sure why. What had he expected? A menacing black?
These are not ignorant monsters, he realized. They are every child’s worst nightmare. The monster that thinks. The monster that can build and move fast and defy every defense. I’ve been in denial, he realized. He had seen the pod, he had seen their tech, but the obstinate, dominant-species part of his brain had refused to believe that a face so horrific and antlike could be more innovative or intelligent than human beings. Yet here was the proof. Here was a whole kilometer of proof.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” asked Lem. “Are you seeing what we’re seeing?”
“We see it,” said Concepcion. “And I’m more convinced than ever. We cannot let this reach Earth.”
“You’re right,” said Lem. “But I don’t like it.”
Segundo agreed. He wasn’t convinced that they’d be the ones to stop it, but it had to stop.
“Makarhu, are you ready to fire your cable?” asked Concepcion.
“Makarhu ready,” said a man’s voice.
“On my mark,” said Concepcion. “Four. Three. Two. One. Cable away.”
The mooring cable shot forward with a large round magnet at its end. Segundo watched the cable uncoil as it flew toward the ship. It seemed to go forever, and then it struck the surface, holding firm. Concepcion gunned the winch, and pulled in the slack. The cable was taut. Bahzim was shouting, “Go, go, go!”
Segundo launched himself out and thumbed the trigger on his propulsion pack. He shot forward toward the ship, keenly aware that he was also moving in the direction of the ship at one hundred and ten thousand kilometers per hour. The smallest rock chunk would kill him, and the thought prompted him to press the thumb trigger harder. The Formic ship was coming up fast. A beeping message in Segundo’s HUD warned him of an impending collision and urged him to reduce his speed. Segundo ignored it. He needed to get down fast or he’d slow down the line. Thirty meters. Twenty. He hit the second thumb trigger, and retro boosters on his thighs and chest quickly slowed his descent. Two seconds later he was bringing his feet up in front of him.
Touchdown. His boot magnets-thankfully-held to the surface. A disc magnet with a handgrip was already in his left
hand. He reached down to the surface and anchored his upper body with the magnet while his right hand released the D-ring from the cable, all in one fluid movement as they had rehearsed.
He scooted to his right, getting clear of the cable, making room. The others arrived behind him. Chepe, Pitoso, Bulo, Nando, and the rest, with Bahzim picking up the rear. Segundo looked ahead of them. Lem Jukes’s crew was coming down a cable from the Juke ship maybe three hundred meters away. Even at a distance Segundo could see that the Juke suits and gear were far superior than anything El Cavador men had.
“Spread out,” said Bahzim. “Be back on the line in twelve minutes.”
Segundo was on his hands and knees, crawling forward, keeping his body low, getting as far away from everyone else as he could. The idea was to disperse and set the explosives far apart to create a wide circle of damage. Segundo’s knee and hand magnets held him securely to the hull, but they were cumbersome and difficult to move. He had to pull hard on each leg to momentarily break the attraction and lift the magnet enough to move it forward. It was agonizing and far more difficult than their rehearsals. After twenty meters, his thighs were burning, and his breathing was heavy.
He could see now that the surface of the ship wasn’t as smooth as it had appeared at a distance. There were thousands of closed apertures in rows running the length of the ship, like planted fields of crop. Each aperture was as big around as Segundo’s helmet, and he knew that if any of them opened it would be to unleash their weapon. He tried not putting any weight on the apertures for fear that the magnet might trigger something and open them. It was like crawling across a minefield.
Finally he stopped and looked around him. The men from both ships were spread all over the surface. Some were laying explosives; others were still crawling forward; several explosives were already set, each with a small blinking green light, indicating the explosive was live. Segundo removed his first explosive from his pouch and set it gently on the surface. He inserted the blasting disc into the slot then set the timer to detonate three hours from now.
Earth unavare (the first formic war) Page 33