"Cut us loose!" Wit shouted. "Fire in the hole!"
A Formic crawled over the lip of the windshield, its hind legs clinging to the HERC with its magnet discs. It looked at Mazer and raised its jar weapon. Light swirled inside it as it prepared to fire.
Mazer blinked the command, and three things happened in quick succession: the talons disengaged, the HERC shot free as if slung from a catapult, and everyone on board was thrown violently to the side.
If they had been spinning before, they were in a vortex now. The Formic was no longer at the windshield. The world outside was a blur. They were falling. Twisting. Rolling. The dash was beeping. The numbers in his HUD from the instruments were spinning or changing or gone completely. The female AI was slowly, methodically, ticking off the reasons why they were about to die.
He had to adjust the grav lens. He had to reorient them, stop them, steady them, save them.
But he couldn't. His head was in a blender, thrown every way imaginable as his orientation shifted, spun, flipped.
He couldn't blink the commands. He couldn't steady his eyes and focus on his HUD. He tried raising his hands to the holofield, but as soon as he moved his arm, the centripetal force threw it elsewhere.
It was happening again. He was killing everyone aboard.
Somewhere far away--below them, above them, Mazer couldn't be sure--three grenades detonated, and a fireball lit up the sky then was gone, ripped from his vision as the HERC continued to spin.
Mazer tightened his grip on the stick and centered himself. Blackness was appearing at the edges of his vision. He was going to pass out. He blinked, fighting back, trying to focus.
Down, up, right, left. None of it was clear to him.
The stone, he reminded himself. I swallowed the stone.
He was tangata whenua, he told himself, person of the land, born of the earth, voice of the earth, made strong by the earth. Air, mountains, insects, all bound by mauri. Only the tangata whenua could control that energy.
Father didn't believe it. Father cursed it all.
But Mother believed it.
And Mother was stronger.
He stopped fighting the centripetal forces. He stopped trying to right himself, to be rigid, to control it. Instead he let go. He closed his eyes. His arms went limp, his mind as well. The ringing and alarms and violent rush of air blowing through the hole where the windshield had been. All of that was somewhere else. That was a different power. A weaker one. He was the son of Papatuanuku. Mother Earth. And all that belonged to her belonged to him. Even gravity itself.
He opened his eyes. The readings on his HUD should have alarmed him. They were dropping too fast, spinning too wildly. The grav lenses were damaged, flashing SYSTEM FAILURE. He wouldn't be able to stop the HERC with the lenses. His heart should have sunk. Despair should have settled in.
But instead he felt a great calm. A gathering of his senses. A focusing of his mind.
He had the rotor blades. If he could stop the spinning, the blades would deploy.
But how to stop the spinning? The jet engines wouldn't help, he had no wings for lift, and engaging them might only sling them faster down to the earth.
The solution came at once. Clear and precise. A definitive course of action. And yet it wasn't born from any previous experience or something he had read or studied on the subject. As far as he knew, it had never been attempted. And yet it was glaringly obvious.
There were emergency chutes of course, but he couldn't deploy them all at once in a spin. They would tangle, collapse, be worthless.
But ... if he deployed them one at a time, in quick succession, each at a moment when the spin was angled in such a way to allow the chute to fully extend and fill with air--even for only a moment. And if he then detached the chute, a second or two later, before the continuing rotation entangled the ropes and made it impossible for the blades to deploy--then maybe, just maybe, each chute could slow the spinning and stabilize the HERC just enough for the blades to deploy.
His hands--shaking and yet somehow steady--reached into the holofield. It was instinct now. Honed by hundreds of simulations, thousands of flight hours, and a lifetime of reading his gut.
Calmly, resolutely, as his body was slung back and forth in his harness, he waited, focusing his equilibrium to a single point in space, sensing the forces around him, seeing a pattern in the randomness of the spins. Then he felt it coming, the right twist, the right angle.
He released the first chute.
There was a pop, a violent jolt as the chute filled, and then Mazer cut it loose. They were still spinning, but slower now.
The second chute deployed, caught, and detached.
Then the third.
A jolt. Detached.
Then the sweetest sound he had ever heard. A bang, like a starter pistol, as the charges blew and the rotor blades that were folded back like cockroach wings snapped forward into place and began to sing.
CHAPTER 8
Secrets
Lem Jukes woke in a bed that was not his own with a woman's arm draped across his chest. Slowly, gently, so as not to wake her, he lifted the arm, set it aside, and slid off the mattress, making as little sound as possible. He tiptoed out of the bedroom a moment later in his T-shirt and boxers and made his way to the kitchen where he had seen a small vid screen the night before. The screen hung beneath the kitchen cabinets. Lem turned it on, put the volume on low, and flipped through the channels until he found a news feed.
He had expected the worst. The coverage would no doubt be about the failed drone attack. Economic pundits would make lofty estimations about how much each drone was worth and how quickly Juke Limited would file for bankruptcy. They would call it the end of the Ukko Jukes era, the beginning of the company's decline. The market would be in a tizzy. Juke stock would drop. The Board would be in a panic. It would be chaos at headquarters.
Well, Father, you dug your own grave. Now you can sleep in it.
But the drone attack wasn't getting any coverage. Instead, a British news anchor in a tight navy suit stood in front of a giant map of southeast China like a miscast meteorologist. With stylus in hand, the anchor tapped the map, leaving blinking red dots behind. "More of the Formic reinforcements were reported to have made landfall in this area here," he said, "gassing the cities of Hezhou, Yangshan, Liannan, and Lianshan." There were blinking red lights everywhere. Southeast China was lit up like a Christmas tree.
The reporter tapped a spot slightly northeast of the others, faced the camera, and put on a grave expression. "Four other transports landed here in Lianzhou, where several thousand Chinese troops had encamped. Sources inform us that this was the camp of General Sima Jinping, who recently destroyed one of the Formic landers with the help of the Mobile Operations Police. The casualty estimates are in the thousands. Our satellites picked up these images. We warn our audience that what you are about to see may not be suitable for children."
Lem's mind was reeling. Reinforcements? He flipped through the channels to another feed and started putting the pieces together. There was mention of a secret attack on the Formic ship, but no one seemed to know what country was responsible. The investigation was ongoing. The Russians were already denying responsibility, as were the Italians, which Lem found laughable. Yes, like anyone even suspected you, Italy.
Despoina shuffled into the kitchen wearing Lem's oxford shirt from the day before and her undergarments. Lem tensed. He was not in the mood for an awkward morning-after conversation. He focused on the screen, while cabinet doors opened behind him and pots were moved around.
A hand briefly rubbed his back. "Good morning," she said groggily.
He turned and faced her, as he knew he must, and she stood on her tiptoes and gave him a brief kiss on the cheek. Then she turned back to the stovetop and started making breakfast. The casualness of it all bothered him, as if his being here was the most natural thing in the world, as if this was how every morning started: with him, focused on the news; and her
, shuffling about, hair unkempt, half dressed, making their breakfast. Just another day in paradise. The thought made him more than a little uneasy. He had not intended things to go this far, and it worried him that she didn't seem to exhibit the least bit of regret.
He couldn't let that distract him, however. He went back to the news feeds, flipping between three different reports, catching snippets here and there. They were calling it the second wave. There were no landers this time, and for that everyone was grateful, but there was little else to be happy about. The Formics had adopted far more aggressive tactics. And the transports that had descended in the second wave were not the only ones suddenly attacking cities. Several transports that had come in the first wave, and whose troops had been gassing uninhabited rural areas, abandoned those places to target populated areas.
It was worse than Lem had imagined. The drones had initiated a counterattack that the Chinese would pay for in blood. Father hadn't just failed in his drone strike, he had kicked the war into overdrive; he had made everything ten times worse.
Lem suddenly felt sick. He could see it in his mind. He could picture a Chinese family, a father, mother, two young children, already fearful of the Formics, worried that their city might be next, huddled in their living room as the mother sings a reassuring song. The father gets up, parts the curtain at the window, and sees a transport alight on his lawn. A rush of Formics disembark, sprayers in hand. The father runs to his family, pushing them toward the back door, which flies open an instant later as the Formics rush in, spraying the gas that will melt the children's faces.
A hand touched Lem's forearm, and he recoiled.
Despoina laughed. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. Here." She held up a mug capped with a lid and straw. "Do you like hot cocoa? It's my mother's recipe. Well actually it's my great-great-great"--she waved a dismissive hand--"well, I don't know many greats--my super-great-grandmother's recipe. But everyone after her has claimed it as her own, so in that sense it's my mother's, too." She held the mug closer to his face, smiling.
Lem took it and forced a smile. "Thanks."
She stood there watching him in anticipation, waiting for him to try it.
He took a sip. It tasted like every other hot cocoa he had ever had. "Wow. That's great."
She brightened. "It's the chocolate bar chunks." She reached to her left and grabbed the wrapper off the counter. "You chop up these chocolate chunks, melt them down, and mix it in. It's from this chocolatier in southern France. My mother buys a box and has it shipped over every Thanksgiving so she can have it in time for her Christmas parties." She turned over the wrapper and looked at the label. "Isn't it crazy to think that people are still chocolatiers?" She broke off one of the remaining squares of chocolate and popped it in her mouth. "I mean, how does someone even decide they want to be a chocolatier?"
There was a pause, and then Lem tore his eyes away from the screen. She had asked him a question. "Chocolatiers? Uh, I'm guessing every kid in the world would want to be one if they knew such a thing was possible."
"Exactly. I know I would have. You wonder though, is there a school for chocolatiers?" She laughed. "My word, can you imagine? I would get so fat." She popped another chocolate square in her mouth. "And the curriculum. What do you minor in? Nuts?" She held up the wrapper to him and turned her head away. "Take this evil away from me. It's too delicious."
Lem had no choice but to take it.
Her hands were suddenly on his chest. "Delicious like you." Her voice was just above a whisper. She closed her eyes, head back, lips puckered.
Lem winced. How had this gone so wrong so quickly? Despoina was the most restrained of Father's secretaries, the most demure. In the office she rarely said a word.
She had been that way when he had shown up at Father's office the day before and asked her out. She was so surprised by his invitation, so taken aback, that she had assumed she had misunderstood.
"Are you saying you want me to reserve dinner for you and your father?" she had said. "Because Simona typically handles his dinner reservations."
Lem had looked at her with mild amusement, standing beside her desk, leaning on the door frame of her glass cubicle. "No. I'm asking you to come have dinner with me. The two of us. Alone. At a restaurant."
She had blinked, not sure how to respond.
Her reaction hadn't surprised him. She was not the kind of woman who drew a man's eye. Simple haircut, modest conservative wardrobe, a small frame that made her seem younger than she probably was. She was not unattractive, really, but she wasn't exactly glamorous either. Which, combined with her shyness, meant she probably wasn't getting a lot of attention from the menfolk.
Lem had come because he had needed a distraction. He had followed Father's advice and cut the communication lines to Victor and Imala's shuttle. The drones were on their way; there was nothing Lem could do.
But as he had flown around in his skimmer, waiting for the inevitable to happen, avoiding going back to the warehouse, where he would have to face Dr. Benyawe and explain his actions, the thought had occurred to him to go to Father's office. There were questions that still needed answering, after all. Why had Father met with someone from the U.S. State Department, for example? Who else was he meeting with? What was he planning?
And who better to have the answers to those questions and the willingness to share them than an ignored young secretary low on male companionship?
"I have a lot of work to do," Despoina had said. "Files to prepare for your father, memos to write." She had blushed. "Besides, it might not be ... you know, appropriate."
Lem laughed. "Not appropriate? Why, because you work for my father and I'm his son?"
"Because you and I both work for the company." She could hardly look at him she was so embarrassed.
"Why does that matter?" Lem had said. "Three-quarters of the people on this rock work for Juke. You think that precludes you from having dinner with any of them?"
"Isn't that against the company policy or something?" she had said. "Not that this is a date or anything, but, you know, the appearance of a date."
This was just sad. "First of all, this is absolutely a date. No question. Full-fledged date. Second, this can't be the first time a coworker has asked you out."
She brushed a speck of dust off her desk. "I stay very busy, Mr. Jukes."
"Mr. Jukes is my father. I'm Lem. Can you say that? Lem. It's not a difficult word. One brief syllable. The first half of 'lemon.' Or 'lemmings.'"
She had smiled at that, looking down at her keyboard, tracing the edge of it with her finger. "I know how to say your name."
"Prove it."
She had laughed awkwardly and shrugged. "Lem."
"You say it like it's a joke. Like it's a punch line. My feelings are hurt."
She had sighed, rolled her eyes, tossed a hand. "Lem."
"Now you say it like I'm an annoyance."
"That's not far from the truth," she said. But she was smiling.
Now he was getting somewhere. "Just say it normal. Like we're friends. Like we've known each other for years, and I've been away, and you're happy to see me."
"This is silly."
"Of course it's silly. It's utterly ridiculous. But that's why we're doing it. You haven't done anything utterly ridiculous, I bet, since you were in diapers. And I'm not leaving until you say it."
"I could call security, you know."
"Yes. That's good. You'd have to say my name. Let's do that." He reached across to hit the call button.
She swatted his hand lightly. "Hey. Nobody touches my buttons but me."
"There you go. A little backbone. I knew you had it in you. Just say my name one more time, and I'll leave you alone. You won't have to go to dinner with me."
"I say it and you'll go away?"
"I'll vanish like a genie. Poof. Chimes will play. Smoke will appear. You'll love it. I do it at parties. But you have to say it right."
She exhaled and settled back in her ch
air, giving in. "Like we're old friends. Like you've been away awhile."
"Which I have been, you know. Two years in the Kuiper Belt."
"Yes. I know."
"Did you miss me while I was gone?"
"I didn't know you. I wasn't working for your father when you left. I'm relatively new."
"But you would have missed me. We're old friends, remember?" He was kneeling at her desk now, his elbows on the desktop, his chin in his hands.
A shy smile. "I suppose."
"You suppose? Des, we're old friends."
"My name's Despoina."
"I know what your name is, Des. I'm using the shortened version. It's snappier. Close friends have shortened versions of each other's names. Like Lem. Do you know what Lem is short for?"
"Lemminkainen."
He raised his eyebrows. "Whoa, you didn't even have to think about that one."
She blushed.
"I usually have to give lots of clues, and people still don't get it. We need to put you on a quiz show. How did you know that?"
She brushed the hair out of her face, shrugged. "I don't know. I've seen you on the nets."
"So we are old friends. Good, you don't have to pretend to be happy to see me. I'm certainly not pretending." He pointed at his smile. "This is one hundred percent genuine, Des-induced glee."
Later, after dinner, as they rode in his skimmer around the surface of Luna, he had learned everything he needed to know about her. She was the daughter of the CEO of a big avionics company based out of San Diego that had a longstanding relationship with Juke Limited. Ukko and her father were friends apparently.
"You can probably fill in the blanks," she had said. "My father calls in a favor. 'Ukko, she's my girl,' he says. 'College degree. Good school. Very smart. She's got job offers, but I'd like someone I trust watching over her.'"
"That's sweet," Lem had said.
"No it isn't. My father's overprotective."
"It's better than overbearing. Trust me, I speak from experience."
"Anyway, your father was kind. I was mortified that my dad even asked. I really didn't have any other job offers. Not good ones anyway. But I didn't want a job as a favor. I was tired of my life being handed to me. Does that make sense?"
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