Earth Awakens (The First Formic War)

by Orson Scott Card

  “Let’s avoid that,” said ZZ.

  “You’ll be cutting with lasers set to a specific depth,” said Victor. “And you’ll also have scanners that will let you see the pipes beneath the plates so you can cut between pipes whenever possible. This will be the most time consuming and dangerous part of the operation. Not only because we can’t damage the pipes, but also because Formic repair teams will come to fix the plates as soon as we start removing them.”

  “How many Formics are in a team?” asked Wit.

  “The group I saw had four. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be more.”

  “So we’ll need a cutting team and a defense team,” said Mazer. “Where will the Formics be coming from?”

  Victor pointed. “Possibly from this large shaft here. But there are dozens of shafts that feed into the cargo bay. Repair crews could come from any one of them. Or from several at once. We have no way of knowing.”

  “Not a good position to be in,” said Mazer. “The cutting team will be very exposed. There’s some ship wreckage floating inside the cargo bay that could provide some cover, but the cutting crew will still be susceptible to enemy fire. The Formics, on the other hand, will have plenty of cover at the shaft entrances.”

  “What do you suggest?” asked Wit.

  “We booby-trap the shafts,” said Mazer. “It needs to be silent so as not to alert others on the ship. Do you think we could replicate what you did on the goo tower?”

  “You mean electrify the shafts?” said Wit.

  “Maybe just the last five meters of the shaft,” said Mazer. “Maybe we create a mesh netting, like a bag that’s open on both ends, and we lay it flat against the inner wall. The Formics come up, they poke their heads out. And we zap them.”

  “If we had a few weeks to build the nets,” said Lem. “But we’re at the eleventh hour here.”

  Benyawe stepped forward to the holofield and started flipping through files. “We may not need weeks. Juke already has nets like this made of thin metal mesh for securing loads on cargo vessels.”

  A catalog entry of the mesh netting appeared in the field.

  “We could have it flown here from Luna,” said Benyawe. “The team tapes it down along the inner wall of the shaft, being sure not to obstruct the track in the floor, and we’re set. Question is, how to electrify it.”

  “That would be easy,” said Victor. “Couple drive batteries would do it. And a few hundred meters of cable. We set the batteries in the cargo bay rigged to a manual switch.”

  “There are dozens of shafts,” said Lem. “You’re talking about a ton of equipment we don’t have room for. The cocoons are designed to hold a person, his weapon, his tools, the steel, and that’s it. How do we get all of these nets and cables and batteries to the ship?”

  “The cocoons are covered in space junk to camouflage them,” said Victor. “We remove some of that junk and replace it with batteries and spools of cable. We scuff them up and paint them so they still look like debris. If we need more space, we could attach some of the equipment to some of the small pieces of drift debris. The drone pilots then fly those pieces near to where we enter the ship. Then we recover the equipment and we’re set. Or—and this is this least attractive option—we could remove one person from the mission and fill one of the cocoons with the equipment we’ll need.”

  “I’d rather not lose a person,” said Wit. “If we can make it work with the cocoons’ exteriors and the drift debris, we should.”

  “We’ll make it happen,” said Benyawe. “We have members of our engineering team on hand for needs like this. We can get the supplies and start making the modifications to the cocoons immediately. Our drone pilots will use the debris drones to carry anything else that doesn’t fit straight to the cannon. Those will arrive before you do. All you’ll have to do is recover them.”

  “Good,” said Wit. He turned to Victor. “Walk us through the rest of it. We’ve cut away a huge section of wall plates and exposed the pipes. Now what?”

  “Now we rotate all of the exposed nozzles inward so they point toward the middle of the ship. Once that’s done, everyone exits the ship and gathers at this point here.”

  Victor drew a circle on the hull, a distance from the cargo bay.

  “Meanwhile, two people are outside the ship here, directly above the spot where the nozzles have been rotated. Armed with paint guns, they’ll paint a giant square on the ship’s exterior in phosphorescent paint that matches where the plates have been removed inside the cargo bay. Once the crew inside is clear, the paint sprayers will paint a giant ‘X’ in the square. Like so.”

  He demonstrated with his stylus.

  “Then the paint sprayers will attach these glow rods near the paint to make it glow and move here to join the others outside the ship a safe distance away.”

  A small spacecraft appeared in the top left corner of the holofield.

  “A pilot will then fly a small fighter directly above the rotated nozzles, aiming for the ‘X.’ The Formics will see the fighter approach, decide it’s a threat, and order one of the cannons to extend. This will obviously fail as we will have already disabled them. The Formics will then fire the gamma plasma, opening the nozzles where the ‘X’ is located. Those nozzles will be rotated inward, however, so the gamma plasma will blast through the ship and blow a hole out the other side. The radiation from that blast will dissipate throughout the ship and kill most of the Formics inside.”

  “So we trick them into using their own weapon against themselves,” said Deen. “I like that.”

  “Whoever flies that fighter needs to fly as straight as an arrow toward the ‘X,’” said Wit. “The Formics will likely open up other nozzles we haven’t rotated. Beams of gamma plasma will encircle the fighter from all sides. He’ll essentially be flying inside a tunnel of plasma. If he deviates in any way, he’ll fly into the line of fire and be obliterated.”

  “The pilot’s not a he,” said Imala. “It’s a she. I’m doing it.”

  Everyone looked at her.

  Victor was so surprised it took him a moment to find words. “Imala … we agreed that one of the MOPs would do this.”

  “It should be me,” said Mazer. “I have the most flight experience.”

  “Not in space you don’t,” said Imala. “I’m the most qualified pilot here.”

  “I flew an antigrav ship on Earth,” said Mazer. “I’m familiar with flying with minimal gravity.”

  “Minimal gravity is a world away from zero gravity,” said Imala. “You’re used to maintaining an orientation. This fighter has boosters on all sides to maintain a straight course. You’ve never flown that way. None of you have. It has to be me.”

  Several people turned to Wit, deferring to him.

  “If Imala says she can do it, I believe her,” said Wit. “What about radiation, Victor? If she’s flying through a tunnel of gamma plasma, won’t she die of radiation poisoning?”

  It took a second for Victor to gather his thoughts. He was staring at Imala, who was looking back at him, arms folded defiantly, daring him to question her. “We’ve … added several layers of shielding to the fighter,” said Victor. “That should protect her. Also she’ll be wearing a radiation suit like the rest of us.”

  “Why not use a drone?” said Mazer. “Wouldn’t that be safer?”

  “We considered that,” said Victor, “but the radiation from the gamma plasma would interfere with the drone pilot’s connection to the spacecraft. A human pilot inside the vessel is more reliable.”

  “Sooner or later she’s going to fly into the Formic ship,” said Mazer.

  “She’ll be decelerating the whole time,” said Victor. “And we don’t think the Formics will fire the gamma plasma for very long. Once the crew at the helm realizes what’s happening, they’ll shut off the gamma plasma. At that point the vacuum of space will work to our advantage. Any remaining radiation will be sucked out into space. We wait an hour or so to ensure it’s clear, than we go in, mop
up, and seize the helm.”

  Victor made a gesture with his stylus, and the holofield disappeared. “That’s it. The ship will be ours.”

  Everyone waited for Wit to respond. He looked around the room. “All right, people. Let’s shoot holes in this. What are we forgetting?”

  There were several questions. Someone asked about the suits they would wear. Benyawe answered, pulling up the holofield again and showing them the radiation suits her team had designed.

  “How long will we be in these suits?” asked ZZ.

  “The cocoon flight to the ship will take three days,” said Benyawe. “That’s a long time to remain motionless, but you need to drift that slowly. We dare not risk you moving any faster. The suit will stimulate your muscles, and you can access food and water at any time through straws in your suit.”

  “How do we go to the bathroom?” asked Bungy.

  Benyawe pointed to the apparatuses on the suit and explained.

  “Looks painful,” said Deen.

  “Like all things in space,” said Victor. “It takes some getting used to.”

  They talked for another hour, hashing out the details; then Mazer, Shenzu, and the MOPs followed Victor into the cargo bay. Victor had them line up along one wall while holding the handrail. He showed them how to launch, point their bodies, and rotate midflight to land feetfirst on the opposite wall. It was a simple move he was sure they would grasp easily, but when he invited them to try, they were awkward and tentative. “I feel like I’m going to fall,” said Deen, clinging to the handrail. “I know there’s no gravity, but my brain doesn’t want to release the idea of an up and down. It wants to maintain the orientation we had when we came in here.”

  After several attempts, they gradually began to master the mechanics of the movements; although none of them ever felt particularly comfortable doing so. “Flying in the corridor is easier,” said ZZ. “There’s an up and down out there, and the space is confined. When we come into a big room like this, I feel this existential panic.”

  “It’s not easy to rewire the brain,” said Wit. “And that’s essentially what we’re doing here.”

  It struck Victor as strange that anyone would struggle with such an easy movement. It was second nature to him. He had been flying and launching since before he was walking.

  “What’s the trick, space born?” asked Deen. “You make this look easy.”

  Victor shrugged. “No trick. I root myself like each of you. I just do it without a gravity-conditioned mind.”

  “If we weren’t trained paratroopers, we’d be doing much worse,” said Cocktail. “We’ve got landing and rolling down. It’s the leaping and positioning of the body that’s difficult.”

  They practiced for several hours, making gradual improvements. Victor began to wonder if they would have been better off enlisting miners, who were clearly more accustomed to maneuvering in zero-G. But no, once they got the practice weapons out, it became obvious that the MOPs’ soldiering skills were far more critical here. Their individual movements might be imperfect, but they thought as a group, functioned as a team, often without even speaking to one another.

  Next Victor brought out the practice pipes that Benyawe and her team had built. They were similar in design to the pipes and nozzles of the Formic ship. Victor and two of the MOPs set them up on the far wall, and they practiced flying to them and rotating the nozzles.

  They ran the drill over and over again. They practiced cutting thick sheets of metal with the laser cutters. They flew up and down the tight corridors of the Valas. They set up targets in the corridors and practiced hitting those on the move. They split into two teams and battled against each other. They played again with all of them against Wit. Or all of them against a group of three. Shenzu and Mazer held their own against the others. Victor was no soldier, and despite his superior maneuverability, he was almost always the first person tagged.

  When they stopped hours later, they were all soaked in sweat.

  That night no one had trouble sleeping. The Valas continued its slow approach to the Formic ship, and the next day they did all the same drills again, only now while wearing their bulky radiation suits. They were far less graceful in those, but they quickly adapted to the slight decrease in mobility. Benyawe joined them in their exercises. No one objected to her being part of their group, especially when they saw how easily she flew or how deftly she handled the tools and nozzles.

  At day’s end, everyone agreed they were as ready as they were going to be. The MOPs drew straws to see who would go. Wit was a given, as was Victor, Benyawe, and Shenzu. That left eight spaces. The others were all equal in their abilities, so they couldn’t choose based on skill. In the end it was Bungy, ZZ, Cocktail, Deen, Bolshakov, Lobo, Caruso, and Mazer.

  They slept eight hours. By then the Valas was in position and the cocoons were ready, loaded with the batteries and cable. The team ate, dressed in their suits, and climbed into their cocoons. Imala was there to see them off. The technicians from the engineering team sealed them in one by one. Victor was the last to climb inside his cocoon. His helmet was in his hands. Imala floated before him, one foot anchored to the decking.

  “Fly straight,” Victor said.

  “I will.” She brushed a hair out of her face and looked at him, concerned. “Stay close to Mazer and Wit. And don’t do anything stupid.”

  “This whole plan is stupid.”

  “No. It isn’t, Vico. It’s a good plan. Just come back safe, okay?”

  He nodded. “In my family, we would always say, ‘Si somos uno, nada nos puede dañar.’”

  “Which means?”

  “If we’re one, nothing can hurt us.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right, space born.”

  They embraced. It was a clumsy move with him in his radiation suit. After a moment she stepped back. Victor snapped on his helmet and wiggled down into the cocoon. He connected his suit to the muscle stimulators and gave the technicians a thumbs-up. They closed the lid and all went dark. Victor turned on his HUD and watched as Imala and the technicians left the bay and sealed the hatch behind them. In front of him, the giant bay doors slowly opened, revealing the immensity of space and a tiny red dot glinting far in the distance. Then the propulsion system on his cocoon gave a hiss, and he was away.

  CHAPTER 22

  Nozzles

  Mazer touched down so gently on the surface of the Formic ship that he hardly felt the impact at all. The magnets on the cocoon initiated, and a message on his HUD told him that he was sufficiently anchored to get out. He turned the release lever by his head, and the lid above his face came free. The view before him took his breath away. The vastness of space was like a black abyss dotted with a billion pinpricks of light.

  The cocoon was standing on end, anchored at his feet, he realized. He would have to climb up out the top, away from the surface of the ship, and then swing his body downward as he initiated his boot magnets.

  It wasn’t supposed to work that way. The cocoon was supposed to be flat against the hull, so that Mazer was on his back and could crawl out easily. I’m here for two seconds, and already everything’s going wrong, he thought.

  He didn’t want to move. The cocoon—dangerous as it was—felt safer than the nothingness before him. He swiveled his head to the side and saw the red surface of the ship stretching out before him like a vast metal plain. He looked in the other direction, and saw more of the ship that way. It was bigger than he had imagined it, and he suddenly wondered if a hole forty meters square would be big enough to cripple the thing.

  He was alone, he realized. He saw no other cocoons. There were pieces of debris out in space, but they were all so small and so far away that he didn’t know if they were part of the mission or not. They had planned to stagger their arrival, but Mazer was to be one of the last to arrive, not one of the first. Was he the only one who had made it? Had the others been vaporized by the collision avoidance system?

  He gripped the edge of the hole and
pulled himself up, suddenly afraid that he would rock the cocoon and break the magnet’s hold on the ship. Every muscle in his body tensed as he freed his feet and slowly swung downward. When his feet made contact and his boot magnets initiated, he realized he had been holding his breath.

  He bent down, opened the cocoon’s compartment near his feet, and pulled out his shoulder pack filled with tools. He strapped it to his back and checked his HUD. They had agreed to radio silence until they were all inside the ship. It was probably an unnecessary precaution—Victor and Imala had used radio to no ill effect—but Wit wasn’t taking any chances. In the meantime Mazer could sync his HUD with the latest updates from Valas, which was tracking everyone’s position and progress. With the sync, Mazer would be able to see which cannons had been disabled, if any.

  When the sync came through he learned that he was the last to arrive. The person before him had arrived three hours earlier. Cocktail was supposed to be his partner in disabling two of the cannons, but the team hadn’t waited for Mazer. They had disabled the cannons without him and were now moving toward the cargo bay.

  Mazer brought up the map of the ship’s surface in relation to his own position and saw that he had a long walk ahead of him. The cannon where he would enter the ship was several hundred meters away.

  He began walking, taking soft, tentative steps across the hull, being careful to firmly plant one boot magnet before lifting another. It would be just his luck to step too quickly, lose his grip, and slip away. Death by walking.

  After a few minutes he was into a rhythm. His legs were getting quite the workout, though. The magnets were strong, and each step took some effort. He was sweating profusely and breathing heavily when he saw the first cocoon in the distance lying flat, far off to his right. A minute later he saw another one to his left. When he started passing pieces of the drift debris, he knew he was getting close. He stopped and checked one of the pieces, but of course whatever equipment it was carrying had already been retrieved and carried inside.