Soon the path began to clutter with discarded carts, all anchored to the track in a long continuous row on the right side of the shaft, with no harnesses or Formics attached. Victor maneuvered around them, squinting into the blackness ahead of him. He had decided it was too risky to use any artificial light and had thus been relying on the glow bugs for any illumination. The bugs had thinned in number recently, however, and the way before him now was as black as space. He slid his hands along the wall, feeling his way forward.
And then the shaft ended, opening up into a much wider but darker space. Far in the distance was a small circle of light, like the end of a long tunnel. Victor strained to see anything in the room, but he saw little definition in the blackness.
He risked a beam of light from his glove and shined it on the walls just ahead. The room was like a circular cave lined with honeycomb, with each cell as wide as Victor's shoulders and a meter and a half deep. All of the cells near the entrance were empty save for grime and dirt and dung. Between the rows of cells were narrow ladders that extended the length of the room toward the distant light.
"What is this place, Vico?"
"Not sure," Victor said. "Food storage maybe. A hatching site."
"I say we turn back," said Imala. "I don't like surprises."
"This whole ship is a surprise, Imala. I say we push on and get past this as quickly as we can."
He maneuvered to one of the ladders and began to climb, listening for any sounds of movement ahead of him. The rungs were too narrow and close together to fit the toes of his bulky boots, but he was able to pull himself along with his hands.
When the shaft was a distance behind him, he paused to catch his breath and turned to his immediate right, where a Formic's face was inches from his own.
Imala cried out and Victor recoiled, pushing off and kicking away from the ladder, shooting backward, all control lost. He crashed into the honeycomb on the opposite wall behind him, the waxy substance crushing inward on impact. His hand wrenched his gun free and brought it up, ready to fire on the attacking creature.
Only, no Formic came.
He waited, finger on the trigger, heart pounding, but nothing lurched at him from the darkness. Finally he pointed his light and found the Formic across the room where he had left it, still tucked in its cell, unmoved.
"Is it dead?" Imala asked.
Victor looked to his right and left. Around him were other Formics, all in the same state of repose, their large black eyes staring outward. Victor reached out and scanned the nearest one with the sensors in his glove. "It has a heat signature, Imala," he whispered. "It's alive." He shined his light ahead of him and saw that between him and the light at the end of the chamber were dozens of Formics tucked into their cells. "This is a sleep chamber, Imala."
"Get out, Vico. Now."
Calmly, slowly, wincing at every sound he made, Victor freed himself from the damaged honeycomb and made his way to the nearest ladder. Shards of honeycomb floated in the air around the crater he had made in the wall, and Victor saw that by some miracle, he had landed in a cluster of empty cells surrounded by sleeping Formics.
He turned back to the ladder, feeling sick.
He looked ahead of him and behind him, judging the distance to the nearest exit. Instinct told him to flee back to the relative safety of the shaft. That was the quickest way out and the one with the fewest Formics in his path. And yet he found himself putting one hand over the other, continuing his climb toward the unknown, moving quickly now. Imala remained silent, and for that he was grateful. He wanted to be able hear any rustling or movement, however slight, around him. He passed Formics on all sides, their faces near his own, their vacant eyes staring outward. One of them could be awake and he wouldn't even know it, he realized. He pushed the thought away, focusing on the next rung in front of him. And the next. And the next.
Minutes passed and then he was clear, drifting up and out of the chamber, exhaling deep, his arms tingling with exertion. Bright light was ahead of him, and he floated forward, shielding his eyes. He caught himself on a mesh netting in front of him and blinked, letting his eyes adjust. The sight before him made him almost forget the room he had just left. Beyond the netting was a lush, dense garden four times the size of the cargo bay and as wide as the middle of the ship. It was spherical in shape, and the inner wall was lined with thick jungle vegetation growing inward toward the center. The exception was a wide, circular section of wall on one side that glowed like a sun, bathing the garden in a hard white light.
It was like nothing Victor had ever seen. Trees with massive branches twisted and reached outward, their long wispy leaves floating about them like a woman's head of hair. Oddly shaped flowers with petals as broad as Victor's arm span and stems as thick as his legs. Massive pillars of lichen stretched from floor to ceiling at various angles like stalactites and stalagmites that had met in the middle, thick and solid and covered with mosses. Bushes and fernlike plants with leaves that fanned out in every direction. Grasses tall and short. Ivy that twisted around tree trunks and snaked up branches and then extended their reach beyond the treetops to wrap around the pillars or trees on the opposite side, creating a latticework of green and gold that moved slightly with the currents of air, as gentle as a spider's web.
And creatures. The garden was crawling with insects and alien animal life. Large beetles scurried along the lichen pillars, feasting on the mosses. These were followed by crablike creatures that bit at the lichen wherever the moss had been pulled away. On the ground, two-legged animals that looked like the offspring of an ostrich and an iguana clung to roots and extended their necks, nipping at whatever fruit was nearest.
As a boy Victor had dreamed of such places. Many times on his family's mining ship in the Kuiper Belt, he had brought up images of the jungles of Earth and imagined himself standing beneath their thick canopies, breathing in the crisp, pure oxygen, inhaling deep their damp, green smells. Father had been a boy in Venezuela, and as a child Victor would ask him again and again to describe a rainstorm in the Amazon or the sounds and smells of a world thick with life.
"What is this, Vico?" Imala asked. "Their food supply?"
"It's their life support, Imala. It's how they generate oxygen."
There were holes in the garden floor in random places, each covered with mesh netting to allow oxygen to circulate throughout the ship without releasing the animals from the habitat.
Victor watched a pair of lichen eaters chip away at one of the pillars. He was zooming in with his visor to get a better look when a Formic scurried around the pillar, seized one of the lichen eaters, and snapped its neck. Then the Formic stuffed the creature into a pouch strapped to its back and was off again, disappearing beneath the canopy.
"Scavenger Formics," said Victor. "They must feed off the lichen eaters." With his visor still zoomed in he tried tracking the Formic. Instead the binocs found a cluster of Formic corpses gathered at the base of a tree, their bodies mostly decomposed and crawling with insects. "They use their dead to fertilize the plants," said Victor. "Nothing wasted."
To Victor's right and left, outside the garden, a corridor curved around the spherical habitat. "I'm going around it, Imala, see if the helm's on the opposite side." He pushed off and moved to his right, launching from wall to wall to move up the corridor. Once he reached the other side he quickly concealed himself. A handful of scavenger Formics were outside the garden sphere, removing dead lichen eaters from their pouches and pushing them down tubes into giant steaming vats. Pipes extended from the vats that led to a feeding station where a row of spigots were positioned. Dozens of Formics were gathered at the spigots. They each came forward in turn, drank their fill from the spigot, then moved on.
"This is how they feed?" asked Imala. "A liquefied slurry of melted crab creatures from a community spigot? How is this an advanced species?"
"I need to find another way around, Imala. I can't go through here."
He backtracked in the corrid
or until he found a groove in the floor. He followed it into a narrow shaft that bypassed the feeding station. That shaft connected with a much larger one, not unlike the giant shaft he had seen empty into the cargo bay.
The shaft ended shortly thereafter at a room as wide as the ship and shaped like a giant wheel. The center or hub of the wheel had consoles and equipment all around it, presumably for operating the spokes of the wheel, which were massive transparent tubes sixty or seventy meters high that extended all the way up to the hull of the ship on all sides. Each tube was over ten meters wide and had a troop carrier at its bottom, nose pointed upward, ready to launch. Hundreds of Formics were climbing up into the bottom of the tubes and loading into the small ships, with wand sprayers in hand and gas packs on their backs.
"What's happening?" asked Imala.
"They're sending down reinforcements," said Victor. "They're launching more ships and troops. They're retaliating for the gravity attack."
The last of the soldier Formics climbed up into the tubes and sealed the door behind them. The Formics manning the consoles outside the tubes spun giant wheels, and the irises at the end of the tubes opened, exposing the blackness of space beyond.
Without warning or countdown, the launch mechanism shot the troop carriers upward like the contents of a giant pneumatic tube, slinging them out into space with such speed that Victor guessed the Formics inside were feeling five or six Gs. The decking beneath Victor shook from the force, and then all was still again. The Formics at the consoles closed the launch tubes, reset the launch mechanisms, and then exited the room, leaving it unoccupied. Victor waited a few minutes to ensure no one returned and then launched down to the equipment, Imala cursing him the whole way for taking yet another risk.
"A needed risk, Imala. "This is how they replenish their forces. If we can find a way to sabotage the tubes, then we can cut off their line of troops and supplies, we can weaken them by attrition."
He caught himself on the consoles, eager to see the tech. But just like the Formic pod he and Father had boarded in the Kuiper Belt, the console here had no markings whatsoever. "Look at this, Imala. Nothing is labeled. There's no language, no numbers, no symbols of any kind. No instructions whatsoever on how to operate this thing."
"Maybe they don't need symbols. Maybe they know the equipment perfectly."
"Everything has symbols, Imala. Humans would be lost without labels on our buttons. We'd be operating blind. How do they measure anything without numbers? Speed, intake, fuel, weight, navigation. How can they be precise about what they're doing? This is like a keyboard without letters. And look at the setup. It's entirely mechanical. No screens, no readouts. There have to be computer elements to this, but I can't see them."
He flew to one of the tubes and examined the launch mechanism. It took him over an hour to determine how it operated. Imala kept pestering him about time and his oxygen levels and the need to get moving. Finally he heeded her and moved on, taking another passageway behind the hub and launch tubes. He maneuvered through the tunnels for another half hour--doubling back at a few places and taking different routes--before he finally found the helm, positioned as he had expected in the center of the ship. Victor hid himself inside the door and recorded everything with his helmetcam.
The helm was a compact space only big enough to accommodate eight Formic workers, all of them buckled to poles that extended from the floor or ceiling. They hovered before a series of screens showing the blackness of space from various angles. Tiny objects on the screen were drifting, and the computer tracked each one with a dot of light.
"This must be their collision-avoidance system, Imala. This is how they track any approaching ship."
"If they're tracking movement here," said Imala, "they probably open the irises and fire the weapon from here as well."
Victor watched the Formics work, recording their every move. He had hoped to find a leader here, someone giving orders to the crew or, even better, commanding the troops on Earth. A general, a king, a ruler, anything. Victor no longer had the explosive device, but he still had his sidearm. If he killed the leader, the others in the helm would overwhelm him, but wasn't that a sacrifice he should be willing to make? Wasn't that his duty as a human being, to strike a heavy blow even if it cost him his life?
A part of him had worried that once he reached the helm his courage would fail him, that he would freeze again like he had done the first time he saw a Formic. But now that he was here, now that his hand was on his sidearm and the opportunity was before him, the doubt was replaced with a surprisingly steady calm. He was ready to die, he realized. They had killed Alejandra and Concepcion and Toron and Father. They had destroyed his ship, his only home, everything he had ever owned and cared about. Maybe Mother as well.
Yes, he could kill. And gladly.
But as he watched those on the helm, it quickly became apparent that no one was in charge. No one relayed any orders, no one shared any intel, no one sought instructions from a superior. Nor were there any written messages being shared, or gestures, or communication of any kind.
It all became clear to Victor then.
He removed his helmetcam and positioned it up in the corner near the ceiling, giving him a clear view of the console and main instrument panel. Then he backed out of the helm and hid himself in the shaft. "Have you ever been inside the helm of a big ship, Imala? Especially when there's a threat nearby?"
"No."
"It's chaos. People yelling across the room, passing intel, sharing computer readouts. It's loud, fast-paced, and highly collaborative. Everyone is making sure everyone else has all the information they need to do their jobs right."
"And yet the Formics at the helm act like the others don't even exist," said Imala.
"None of them talk at all," said Victor. "It's completely silent. We knew the soldier Formics on Earth were silent, but I had always assumed that was because they were so focused on the business of killing. But these Formics here, they should be in crisis mode. They were just attacked. They would be on high alert. And did you watch them? Did you notice how they did things simultaneously, even when they weren't looking at one another?"
"It was almost as if they were speaking to each other," said Imala.
"Exactly. In fact, I think they are speaking to each other. Only they do it in a way we can't see. Mind to mind."
"You mean telepathy?"
"I know it sounds absurd, Imala, but they respond instantly to stimuli that they can't possibly have known about unless someone told them. And yet no one tells them anything." He crawled out of his hiding place. "I left my helmetcam in the helm. Keep recording everything. I'm coming back your way. We're returning to Luna. I've learned everything I can here."
"Hallelujah. Be careful."
He made his way back, retracing his route, staying in the shadows and avoiding being seen. The wide shaft by the garden went directly to the cargo bay as he had hoped. The flotsam from the human ships had drifted back up into the center of the room. The repair crew was nowhere in sight. Victor made his way to the shaft he had first used and followed it back to where he had cut his way into the ship. He crawled outside, sealed the hole, removed the bubble, and flew back up to where the Formic cannon lay crushed against the side of the hull. There was a hole among the wreckage large enough for him to crawl through, and he wiggled out, free of the ship.
He spotted the shuttle, aimed his body, and pushed off lightly, exerting just enough force to move at a slow drift. It took him over an hour to reach the shuttle at that pace. When he crawled back into the cockpit, he was so happy to see Imala that he extended his arms to embrace her. She made a face and held up a hand, stopping him. "You've got Formic dung and glow-bug juice all over your suit. Don't even think about touching me."
Victor wiped a speck of gunk off his chest and wiggled the soiled finger in front of her.
Imala was not amused. "Any closer and I will break that finger."
He smiled, grabbed the wipes from
their compartment, and began cleaning himself. "I'm alive, Imala. I didn't think I would be, but here I am, kicking and breathing. It's going to take more than your sour grumpiness to dampen this mood."
"We've made a video, Vico. That's it. We haven't ended the war."
"Focus too closely on the goal you haven't accomplished, and you'll fail to notice the victories you achieve along the way."
"Who said that?" Imala asked. "Churchill? Sun Tzu?"
"No," said Victor. "My father."
Imala looked up from the console, smiling. "You're right. This is a victory, isn't it? A big one. Maybe someone will see this vid and know how to destroy the ship."
A wide grin broke across Victor's face. "But Imala, my sweet, that someone is me. I know precisely how to destroy this ship."
She stared at him. "Then why are we leaving?"
"Because we can't do it alone. We need the right crew. When we have them, we'll come back and finish this."
"We're coming back?"
Victor pulled himself into his seat and began buckling up. "Never leave a job unfinished, Imala."
She turned back to the flight controls. "More quotes from your father?"
"No. That one is all me."
CHAPTER 7
Dozers
A pounding on the door woke Mazer with a start. He sat up in bed in the dark, remembering where he was. The hotel room. Lianzhou. A safe place. He checked the time on the wrist pad Shenzu had given him the night before. It was just past three in the morning.
He threw back the sheet and swung out of bed, the images of his dream slowly fading like vapor. He had been with Kim at the salt marshes of Manukau Harbor. They had come to watch the godwits wade in the marshes and jab their long needlelike beaks into the mud searching for food. There had been tens of thousands of the birds, all squawking and chirping and taking to flight like a swarm, moving as one.
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