Earth Unaware (First Formic War) (20 page)

“I had some business to attend to in the mining bay,” said Lem. “So I thought I’d slip in here and check a few things. I didn’t know I’d make a stir.”

It wasn’t the best lie, but Lem had delivered it convincingly enough. And it could withstand scrutiny. The mining bay was close to the archive room, and in the days since the bump, the mining crew had been working long hours in the bay getting ready for the field test. It wasn’t implausible to suggest that Lem had been there.

Podolski nodded. “Is there something I can help you find, sir?”

“Very kind, but no. Just finishing up here. Thank you.”

Podolski nodded again, unsure what to do next. An awkward pause followed. “Well, if you need anything, sir, my quarters are right through that hatch over there.”

Lem made a show of straining his neck and looking at the hatch even though he knew exactly where it was. “Thank you. If I need something, I’ll let you know.”

Podolski drifted away, an uncertain look on his face.

Lem waited for the hatch to close, then began erasing files quickly, not even bothering to review them first. Earlier, when Lem had decided to go through with this and erase any record of the bump, he had briefly considered giving the chore to Podolski, who was obviously more familiar with the servers and thus better qualified. But then Lem had realized how unsettled that would have left him: He would have always wondered if Podolski had made his own copy of the files in the hope of blackmailing Lem in the future. Some of Father’s employees had tried such things over the years—their attempts had always ended in their own humiliation and never in Father’s, but Father had found the experiences exhausting nonetheless. Plus, giving the order to Podolski would only raise the man’s suspicions when most people on board, Podolski included, were still unaware of what had happened during the bump. No one but a few trusted senior officers knew of the incident with the free miner, and Lem thought it best to keep it that way.

When Lem finished erasing files, he checked and rechecked the servers and backups to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Then he ran a program that deleted any record of the erasing. The last step was patching up holes. There were now gaps in the video surveillance records, so Lem filled those in with random footage of space already on file. When he was done, every scrap of potentially incriminating evidence was gone.

Lem pocketed his holopad and made his way to the exit. He had hoped that by erasing the files he would also erase the sting of guilt that had been pecking at him ever since the bump, but as he left the archives room, he felt as anxious as he had before. He shouldn’t have watched the video, he realized. If he hadn’t watched the video he could have maintained the possibility in his mind that the man wasn’t seriously injured. He could have led himself to believe that no lasting damage had been done. That wasn’t an option now.

Why had the free miners been outside? It had been sleep-shift. You don’t spacewalk during sleep-shift. That was reckless. In fact, now that Lem thought about it, if the free miner was in fact paralyzed or dead, the free miner deserved more of the blame than Lem did. Well, perhaps not
more
of the blame but certainly a good portion of it. Lem shouldn’t carry
all
the blame.

Besides, it’s not like Lem had hurt anyone intentionally. He hadn’t even known the men were out there. The free miners had been working on the far side of El Cavador, obscured from Lem’s view, when the attack—no, maneuver—began. And by the time the ship
did
detect them, the Makarhu was already moving and the laser-firing sequence was already initiated. Lem couldn’t stop it. Not easily anyway. It was only dumb luck that the first target was the PK near where the three miners were standing.

And if you looked at the facts that way, if you chopped up the blame into portions, then part of the blame went to the free miner, part went to the computer, part went to dumb luck, and only a small part went to Lem. And even that portion shouldn’t be entirely Lem’s. It had been a group effort, after all. The crew was following Lem’s orders, true, but they could have objected, they could have said no.

Someone had, Lem reminded himself. Benyawe. She had filed a formal objection. Had he erased that as well? He must have.

He left the archives room and made his way to the mining bay to give credence to the lie he had told. Lem didn’t expect Podolski to investigate the matter—Podolski had no reason to disbelieve him. But what if Podolski mentioned in casual conversation to someone that Lem had been in the mining bay? No, it was best to play it safe.

The mining bay was a large garage where all the digging and mineral-extraction equipment was housed. Normally a ship this size would employ forty to fifty miners, with twenty to twenty-five WDs—or wearable dozers, the large exoskeleton diggers that most corporate miners wore for cleaning out mineshafts and pulling up lumps. Since this was a research vessel at the moment, the mining crew consisted of only ten men, whose only duties for the trip were to collect rock fragments from the field tests for analysis. The miners had intended to use the scoopers for this, which were long-armed diggers that could extend out from the ship and grab rocks in space. But since the engineers had only conducted a single field test and had not even bothered to collect the rock fragments from said test, the miners were insane with boredom. Lem had alleviated that a week ago when he had gone to them and told them of his intent to pull in as many minerals from the asteroid as the ship could hold. It would require modifications to the equipment, but the men were so hungry for an assignment that they had readily accepted the challenge. Lem could say his visit tonight was to check up on their progress.

To Lem’s relief, five of the miners were working in the bay when he arrived, including their crew chief, who was anchored to one of the scoopers, welding on large metal plates.

“This is a surprise, Mr. Jukes,” said the crew chief, lifting his welding visor and turning off his equipment. “Early for you, isn’t it, sir?”

“Couldn’t sleep. How goes the equipment for the mineral extraction?”

The crew chief smiled and gave the scooper an affectionate slap with his palm. “We’re making good time. We’ve got two scoopers prepped. Two more will be ready by the time we fire the glaser.”

Lem had decided to wait a full week after arriving at the asteroid to fire the glaser. He wanted to give El Cavador enough time to get far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to see the field test take place. Lem could blow up a pebble and not arouse any curiosity, but if anyone saw him annihilate an asteroid this big, they’d know Juke had developed a revolutionary technology—a fact Father would rather keep secret.

“We’ve turned the scoopers into giant magnets, sir,” explained the crew chief. “If what the engineers tell us is true, that glaser will blow the rock to dust. So to separate the detritus from the minerals, all we’ve got to do is wave a magnet through the dust cloud and let the magnet attract the metal fragments. Then we bring the scooper load into the smelter, switch off the magnets, dump the metal, then go back out and do it again. Pretty soon you’ll have metal cylinders all stacked up neat as you please, sir.”

“How long will it take to bring in the metal?”

The crew chief shrugged. “Depends on the size of the dust cloud and the amount of metal we find. Could be as quick as a week. Could be as long as eight. That’s really your decision, sir, we’ll keep making cylinders for as long as you want.”

Lem thanked the man then went back to his room and zipped himself up in his hammock. He had two hours before sleep-shift ended, though he knew he wouldn’t fall asleep; the image of the free miner’s bent neck was too fresh in his mind. He might have erased the files and covered his tracks, but he couldn’t erase the memory of it. Lem lay there in silence. He knew he was deluding himself to think that anyone else bore the responsibility of what had happened. It was his crime, his doing. And no sneaking around in the dark could ever delete that fact.

*   *   *

A week after the bump, Lem was up in the observation room with Benyawe and Dublin, ready to fire the glaser. Lem was looking out the window at the asteroid, now a considerable distance from the ship.

“You’re sure we’re far enough away?” asked Lem.

“No question, Mr. Jukes,” said Dublin. “We’ve been working on the math all week. I went over it myself. The gravity field won’t reach us this far out. We’re already several kilometers farther out than we need to be. I’ve taken every precaution.”

Lem nodded, though he couldn’t help but feel a bit uneasy. When the glaser hit the asteroid, it would create a field of centrifugal gravity inside of which gravity would cease to hold mass together. And the larger the object hit, the larger the field of gravity.

“We can’t be too far away in my opinion,” said Lem. “Can we still hit the asteroid with accuracy if we back up, say, another five kilometers?”

“We should be able to,” said Dublin. “But it’s overkill.”

“I would rather commit overkill than
be
killed,” said Lem. He touched his holopad, and a holo of Chubs’s head appeared. “Back us up five more kilometers, Chubs.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And give me the latest on our area scans. I want to be certain there aren’t any ships close enough to see what we’re about to do here.”

“Rest easy, Lem,” said Chubs. “We’re all by our lonesome. El Cavador was closest, but they’re long gone now. We’re not even picking them up on our scans anymore.”

“Good,” said Lem. “Then let’s get started. Send out the sensors.”

“Sensors away,” said Chubs.

Lem watched out the window as the sensors flew away from the ship in a burst of propulsion, heading toward the asteroid, a long anchor line unspooling behind each one. The sensors, once in position, would record every aspect of the explosion for later analysis.

“Sensors are in place,” said Chubs.

“Fire the glaser,” said Lem.

“Yes, sir.”

Lem clicked off his holopad and waited in silence with Benyawe and Dublin. After a moment it began. The asteroid exploded outward into large chunks, which quickly exploded again into smaller chunks, racing outward in a growing sphere of destruction. The large fragments continued to burst again and again, getting smaller and smaller, the cloud getting thicker, wider, more massive, moving outward with incredible speed. Now four times bigger than the original size of the asteroid. Five times. Six.

“Hmm,” said Dublin.

Eight times.

Benyawe looked confused. “I think perhaps it would be wise to…”

“Jettison the sensors!” Lem yelled into his headset. “Fire retros. Maximum power. Back us up now!”

The sensors were cut away. The ship backed up suddenly. Lem, Dublin, and Benyawe were thrown forward into the observation glass. The sphere kept growing. Lem pushed himself up from the glass and watched as the sphere engulfed the sensors he had jettisoned, which instantly exploded into smaller and smaller pieces. But the cloud didn’t stop there. It grew more, now a massive ball of dust and particles and gravel. It reached the spot where the ship had been positioned, then grew farther still, expanding outward, the dust getting thinner now.

Then finally it stopped. The particles within the field were small enough and far apart enough that the gravity field was too weak to sustain itself and dissipated into nothing. All was quiet. Lem stared out the window, eyes wide, heart racing. Had he not given the order instantly, if he had waited for dithering Dublin to make a decision, the field would have reached the ship and they all would have been torn to pieces.

He whirled around to Dublin, furious. “I thought you said we were in the clear.”

“I … I thought we were,” said Dublin. “Several of us did the math.”

“Well your math is kusi! You almost killed us all!”

“I know. I’m … I’m sorry. I’m not sure how we could’ve gotten that wrong.”

“Benyawe told me we couldn’t predict the gravity field,” said Lem. “I see now I should have listened to her instead of you. You are excused, Dr. Dublin.”

Dublin looked helpless, his face red with embarrassment. Lem watched the man leave then turned to Benyawe. “Is it over? Are we clear?”

She was tapping at her holopad. “It appears to be. Our sensors aren’t as good as those we jettisoned, but it seems as if the field is gone. I’d want to do more analysis before giving a definitive answer, though.” She looked at Lem, her voice shaky. “If you hadn’t reacted so quickly—”

Lem spoke into his headset. “Stop the retros. Bring us to a full stop.”

The ship slowed. Lem pushed himself away from the glass and looked out at the massive cloud of dust that was once an asteroid.

“You can’t blame Dublin for this,” said Benyawe. “Not completely.”

“Oh?”

“If we had done more tests on pebbles as this mission was designed to do, Dublin would have had more data and been more accurate in his calculations.”

“So this is my fault?”

“You went against his counsel and mine and tackled an asteroid a hundred times larger than we were prepared for. It strikes me as hypocritical to point the finger solely at him.”

Lem smiled. “I see now why you’ve lasted so long with my father, Dr. Benyawe. You’re not afraid to speak your mind. My father respects that.”

“No, Lem. I have lasted so long with your father because I am always right.”

*   *   *

Lem slept badly the next few days. In his dreams, the gravity field chewed up everything around him: the furniture, his terminal, his bed, his legs, the man with the broken neck; all of it exploding into rock fragments again and again until only dust remained. Lem took pills to help him sleep, but they couldn’t keep him from dreaming. He had ordered the engineers to analyze the dust cloud to ensure that the gravity field had indeed dissipated—he didn’t want to move into the cloud and begin collecting minerals until he was sure the field was gone and the area safe. On the morning of the fifth day, alone in his room, he got his answer.

“The field is gone,” said Benyawe. Her head was floating in the holospace above Lem’s terminal. “We built a sensor from old parts and sent it into the cloud. It didn’t explode or experience any change in gravity whatsoever. We can begin collecting metal dust whenever you’re ready.”