“Don’t play innocent, Lem. I know you want your father’s position. Everyone knows it. Hell you probably deserve it. But it’s not going to happen. Ever. It’s not good for business.”
Lem blinked. And then quickly recovered, smiling again, appearing blasé. “And pray tell, Norja, why am I bad for business?”
“Because you’re a shadow of your father, Lem. You’re brilliant, don’t get me wrong. You’re savvy, educated, innovative, a real entrepreneur. You’d be a better CEO than most. But you’re not your father.”
“Of course I’m not my father,” Lem said. “No one is my father but him. Are you suggesting only a clone of him can run this company once he’s gone?”
“If you were CEO, Lem, the world wouldn’t give you a fair shake. They wouldn’t see you for the great man that you are. They would see you as a lesser version of your father. That’s all. Why did Lem get that position, they’ll say? Because he earned it? Because he deserved it? No, because of nepotism. Because Daddy dearest is tossing junior a bone. He’s no Ukko Jukes, they’ll say. He’s a child of privilege who only earned his success because his father helped him every step of the way, clearing the path before him.”
It was such an unfair thing to say, such an infuriating notion, such a flat-out lie, that Lem had to grip the table to control himself. If anything, Father had hedged up his way, dropped obstacles in his path, made him scrabble and fight and claw his way to every success. He was a child of privilege, yes, but that didn’t mean he had any privileges. In Father’s school of parenting it meant the opposite.
“I know that’s a hard thing to hear, Lem. I know that sounds cruel. But that’s the heart of it. And it would be unwise for the company to appoint a CEO who creates that kind of impression. It makes the company look weak. Like we’ve taken a step backward. It would be an invitation to our competitors to come at us claws out, fangs bared. You know why we squash MineTek and WU-HU and the others right now? You know why we have the market share we do? Because your father haunts their dreams, that’s why. Because he’s Ukko ‘Iron Balls’ Jukes. Because whatever they’re cooking, they know Ukko is cooking something better. You’re a pretty boy, Lem. It’s not your fault. Your father married well, and you got your mother’s genes. Your face is on the nets. Women swoon over you. Juke Limited can’t have a CEO that makes women weak in the knees. We need a CEO that makes competitors wet their pants.”
“So you want a tyrant?” Lem asked. “A Genghis Khan? That management approach died a long time ago.”
“You’re not hearing what I’m saying,” said Ramdakan. “If you weren’t your father’s son, this wouldn’t be an issue. If your last name wasn’t Jukes, you would probably be on the shortlist. You’ve accomplished great things, Lem. But since you are the son, the world would put you up to greater scrutiny and find you wanting.”
He made a sympathetic face and reached across the table and patted Lem’s hand like a parent comforting a grieving child. Lem almost recoiled at the touch. It was such a condescending thing to do.
“I tell you this because I care about you and your father,” said Ramdakan. “The Board is already doing everything it can to keep you out, Lem, despite your father’s protestations, and they’re not going to stop. In the end they will win.”
“What do you mean, despite my father’s protestations?”
Ramdakan seemed surprised by the question. “Do you think your father wanted to send you to the Kuiper Belt? No. He wanted you here on Luna with the company, close to him, shadowing him. But there were those on the Board who saw you as a threat. They knew Ukko would give you more attention than he would give to them, and they feared they’d eventually lose their seat on the Board to you. So they lobbied that your father send you to the Kuiper Belt for two years. It will give him leadership experience, they said. It will give him a chance at command. They hoped you’d fail, of course. They hoped you’d get whacked with a giant asteroid. And now that you’re back, they lobbied to have you sent to Earth as a partner in one of our failing subsidiaries. A death sentence. They wanted to exile you, Lem. Send you into obscurity. So your father gave you the nothing job you have to simply keep you in the company. He wasn’t going to overrule them and force them to hire you. That would be hell for you. So he protected you by creating an assignment away from them with your own people who knew your value and who would follow your leadership. Whether he did you a favor is still to be seen.”
Ramdakan pushed back the curtain and stepped out of the booth. “I’m sorry I’m the one telling you this, Lem. But you deserve to know the truth. I’ll take your idea to the Board. We’ll build this shield. Who knows? Maybe that will cause some on the Board to warm to you. But don’t hold your breath.”
And with that he was gone.
Lem paid for the meal and left the restaurant in a daze. The magnetic sidewalk outside in the French Quarter was as busy as ever: window-shoppers, couples in arms, street performers and vendors; as if nothing were amiss in the world. Everyone’s living a lie, Lem thought. Including me.
He breezed by the crowds, took the tube to where his skimmer was docked, and then flew west toward the warehouse.
Everything he knew about Father had been flipped on its head. Was it true? Had Father wanted him to stay on Luna? Lem had always assumed that Father had sent him to the Kuiper Belt because Father had felt threatened by him. It had never occurred to Lem that there were other wolves at play here. And yet hadn’t Father spoken to Dublin and Chubs in private and asked them both to protect Lem? Lem had assumed that Father had done so to assert his control over Lem, to diminish Lem in the minds of his crew. But maybe Father had done so because he knew there were those in the company eager to keep the prince from reaching the throne. Maybe he genuinely feared for Lem’s safety.
And his current assignment. Had Father actually done him a favor by keeping him outside of headquarters in a newly created position? Was everyone on the Board that vehemently opposed to Lem, that threatened by him?
He found it hard to believe. He knew all the Board members on a superficial level; he had met them all casually at various events. But other than Norja, who Lem had known all his life, most on the Board had joined the company or risen up from the ranks while Lem was off making his fortune elsewhere. Lem knew their résumés, of course, he knew their skills and education and expertise, but he didn’t know them personally. He didn’t know their hearts. Maybe they were as devious and scheming as Norja had suggested.
But if so, why would Father keep them on? Why tolerate that level of infighting?
Because Father would say a little feverish competition was good for business. He’d say it keeps everyone sharp.
Plus there was the fact that every member of the Board was extremely accomplished and highly valuable. Any CEO would want their counsel. They could have horns and forked tongues and tails out their backsides, and still Lem would be reluctant to let them go. In fact, any one of them could easily be Father’s replacement. No one in the business world would bat an eye if the company were to appoint any one of them to that position.
But would the business world react the same way to me? he wondered. Or would they, as Ramdakan suggested, balk and turn up a nose of scorn? Suddenly Lem was unsure.
He arrived at the warehouse to find Dr. Benyawe and the rest of the engineers hard at work on the prototypes. Benyawe still hadn’t spoken to him since the drone attack. Lem had been back at the warehouse for a few days now, but she continued to avoid him.
Lem was pleased to see that someone had finally hauled away the leftover space junk that Victor and Imala had left unused, thus removing a visual reminder of the events. Not that anyone was likely to forget, of course. Wherever Lem went in the warehouse these days he could feel workers’ eyes boring into him. There goes the man who let Victor and Imala die. There goes the callous snake who cut all communication to the shuttle before the drones attacked.
Lem stepped out onto the warehouse floor and sensed the same scorn from everyo
ne. The room fell quiet, and suddenly the entire staff was intensely focused on their work in front of them.
What do you expect of me? he wanted to ask them. A confession? A mournful cry of regret? You want me to flog myself? Weep and wail and gnash my teeth? Subject myself to sackcloth and ashes? Of course I’m sorry it happened. Of course I hated having to do it. But there was nothing I could do. Not warning them was a kindness, people. A mercy. Can’t you see that?
No, they wouldn’t see that. They only saw that he had deserted two of their own. And yes, that’s how they saw Victor and Imala now. Not as outsiders. But as members of the team. It was ludicrous. Victor and Imala had been among them for only a few days, and yet by the way everyone was acting, you would have thought the two were close personal friends with everyone on staff.
This is how martyrs get their fame, Lem thought. As soon as you die, you’re suddenly a hero.
Benyawe called to him from the center worktable. “Mr. Jukes. Could I have a moment of your time, please?”
Mr. Jukes. She was being formal with him. That would only make things more awkward. But he smiled pleasantly and joined her.
On top of the table were two metal cubes, each a meter square on all sides. A narrow cable ran between them, connecting them like giant bolas. In the middle of the cable was a reel with at least fifty additional meters of cable, suggesting that the two cubes could be stretched apart for quite a distance without severing the connection. It was a modified design of an idea that Lem had pitched to Benyawe almost a year ago, a replacement for the glaser; using the same tech, but safer. She called them shatter boxes.
“We conducted the first test today with a prototype,” said Benyawe. “I thought you might want to see it.” She made a hand gesture above the worktable, and a holovid appeared. In it, a small mining vessel in space approached a second larger ship that had been stripped of parts so severely that only its skeletal structure remained. Benyawe paused the vid. “We’re nowhere near an asteroid big enough to conduct a real test obviously, so we found a decommissioned ship listed for recycling and hauled it a few thousand klicks away from Luna.”
She started the vid again. The smaller ship slung two shatter boxes toward the skeleton ship at high speed. As the shatter boxes spun toward their target, the reel between them unspooled more cable and the distance between the boxes grew. Then suddenly the boxes converged on the ship, attaching themselves to opposite ends. An instant later the skeleton ship was ripped apart, not in a single explosion but in a series of lightning-fast explosions in which every piece broke into smaller and smaller constituent pieces again and again until there was nothing left. No ship, no shatter boxes, just fast-moving dust that was gone an instant later, flying off in every direction into the vacuum of space.
“Quite the disappearing act,” said Lem. He asked them questions after that. How did the sling mechanism work? How easily could the shatter boxes be aimed? Could they hit a moving target traveling at a high velocity? And what about safety, could these be used in near-Earth orbit without endangering the planet?
Benyawe understood why he was asking. “You want to use these against the Formics.”
“You just proved to me what the shatter boxes can do to a ship,” said Lem. “This is far more destructive and effective than our lasers, which are the only weapons our ships have and which were never designed as weapons in the first place. I don’t want to damage the troop transports, Benyawe. I want to obliterate them.”
“Transports?” Benyawe said.
He told her what he had proposed to Ramdakan. The shield. Using Juke ships and crews to stop additional Formic reinforcements. “I want to arm every one of our ships with shatter boxes, Benyawe. I want our crews proficient in their use. That means the sling mechanism must be able to hold several rounds of shatter boxes at once or there must be some system for quickly reloading the sling. I don’t want our ships armed with only one shot. I want them picking targets and taking down as many as they see.”
“We’ve only conducted a single test, Lem.”
She wasn’t calling him “Mr. Jukes” now. That was an improvement. “We don’t have time for lengthy field tests, Benyawe. I see that it works. I’m sold. I want this moved into production now, today, as soon as possible.”
“Today? The Board hasn’t even approved the shield yet, much less this tech.”
“They will,” said Lem. “They’ll approve both. As far as they’re concerned, this is a financial no-brainer.”
“And if you’re wrong? If they don’t approve?”
“We’ll do it anyway. I’ll finance it myself. And you can be sure that Chubs and his crew and plenty of the other ships will join us in the fight, regardless of what the Board decides.”
She considered that and nodded. She knew Chubs as well as he did. All of the workers had gathered now. The mood of the room had shifted. There was an excitement among them. Lem could feel it.
“How do we move this into production?” said Benyawe. “We need facilities, crews, raw materials, bots.”
“We’ll use the drone production facility to build the shatter boxes. They’re not doing anything at the moment. That whole division is a sunken ship. They’ll be eager for the work. Then we move the shatter boxes and drone crews to Kotka and retrofit all the ships there. We’ll need every engineer here as well,” Lem said, looking around the room at their faces. “The ships at Kotka are of various sizes and shapes, with differing drive systems. We’ll have to custom-make the fittings for the sling mechanisms for each ship, placing the sling wherever it will give the crews the most accurate targeting.” He turned back to Benyawe. “So I repeat my final question to you: Do these pose a threat to Earth? We fretted over the glasers misfiring and hitting the planet. Is that a problem here?”
“No,” said Benyawe. “The shatter boxes only emit the tidal forces once they’ve attached to their target and confirmed that their positions are polar opposites. There’s no chance of them firing as they’re rotating through space. I made certain of that. You don’t want them misfiring and hitting the ship that launched them.”
“What if they miss?” asked Lem. “What if one is slung down toward Earth?”
She shrugged. “It will burn up on reentry. It will never get near the surface.”
Lem nodded. “That’s good enough for me. Let’s get busy. And Dr. Benyawe, a word in private please.”
She followed him into his office, a cramped space with bare walls and two old, mismatched office chairs he had found discarded in the warehouse. He motioned Benyawe to one, and he sat opposite. He tapped his wrist pad, and the walls and ceiling went black, dotted with stars and vibrant nebulae, giving Lem and Benyawe the sensation of sitting on a platform in the immensity of space.
“Trying to set a mood?” she asked.
He nestled back into his chair, a musty threadbare thing that smelled like an attic. “It’s funny. I hated every moment of our trip to the Kuiper Belt. The cramped spaces, the food, the inconvenience, the confinement. And yet I do miss this.” He gestured around him. “There is nothing more peaceful than space.”
“Is that what this is?” she asked. “An attempt at peace?”
“Between us?” he said. “I hope so. You’re angry that I severed communications with Victor and Imala. But you have to understand—”
She cut him off. “I know why you made the decision you did, Lem. You don’t have to justify your actions to me. You tried to stop your father. He had his reasons for moving forward. My issue is that you made that decision without consulting me or anyone else on the team.”
“You would have objected,” Lem said. “And if you had, I couldn’t have stopped you from making a transmission. The only way to ensure that no transmission was sent was to keep you in the dark and pull the plug myself. I did this for their sake, Benyawe. As a kindness, a mercy.”
She looked sad. “One day, Lem, you’re going to wake up and realize how arrogant you are and how lonely your world is as a result.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So much for passing the peace pipe. How am I being arrogant here? Please, I’d be fascinated to hear.”
“You assume you’re the only person intelligent enough to make a rational decision.”
“That’s not true. I ask for your counsel all the time.”
“No, you ask that I advise you on how to achieve the decision you’ve already made. You don’t ask what we should be doing in the first place. And what’s ironic is that your father has this same trait and you find it maddening.”
“Is this what this is about, Benyawe? You feeling slighted? You not having enough authority?”
She laughed. “Is that what you think? That I want authority?” She practically spit the word out. “I would have told Victor and Imala that drones were coming, yes. But I also would have done everything in my power to save their lives.”
“There was no way to save them.”
“This is my point. You decided it was hopeless. And if you couldn’t think of a solution, then there must not be one.”
“Are you saying you had a solution?”
“As impossible as that might seem to you, yes. I would have told them both to get as far inside the Formic ship as possible.”
“Inside the target? The thing the drones were sent to destroy? That would’ve been your plan?”
“Yes. And if they had followed it they might have survived. We didn’t know the strength of the hull. There was a good chance it could withstand the glasers. Which it did. So instead of relaying lifesaving instruction to the people under our care, the people we were responsible for, we did nothing.” She stood. “What saddens me most is not that they died, Lem. It’s that they died thinking we abandoned them, thinking we betrayed them. That’s not a kindness. Or a mercy. That’s anything but.” She walked out.
He wanted to throw something. Nothing he did could please this woman. She was worse than Father.
Or was he angry because he knew she was right? He hadn’t thought to have them hide inside the ship. He wouldn’t have thought of that. It seemed absurd. And yet in hindsight it would have worked, maybe. It might have saved them.
Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) Page 18