Earth Unaware (First Formic War) (37 page)

The single most infuriating moment had been when her aunt Henrika had told her, “It’s all right, Edimar. You can cry.” As if Edimar needed permission from this woman. As if Edimar had been damming back all of her emotion and was just waiting for some grown-up to cue her to open the floodgates. Oh thank you, Aunt. Thank you. How kind of you to grant me the right to cry in front of you and humiliate myself just so I can prove to you and your snotty, gossiping sisters that I am in fact sad. Happy, Auntie? Look, here’s a tear, dropped from my very own eye. Take note. Spread the word. Edimar is
sad
.

It was so hurtful and demeaning and presumptive when her aunt had said it that Edimar almost
had
cried, right then and there in front of everyone in what would have been a burst of immediate tears. She had come so close. She could feel herself there at the precipice, so close to sobbing that the tiniest change in her breathing or the slightest tightening of her throat would have pushed her over the edge into uncontrollable sobs.

Yet fortunately, in some miraculous display of willpower, Edimar had kept her face a mask and not betrayed the horror and shock and pain she felt at Aunt Henrika’s words. How could people, in an effort to be helpful, be so clueless of heart, so thoughtless and cruel?

It was especially infuriating because Edimar
did
cry. Every day. Sometimes for an hour at a time. Always alone in the darkness of the crow’s nest where no one could see or hear her tears.

Yet apparently for the likes of Aunt Henrika, unless you’re crying in front of everyone, unless you wore your grief on your sleeve and paraded your tears for all the world to see, you had no tears to shed.

Edimar turned a corner and pushed off a wall, shooting up the corridor. She knew she shouldn’t be so petulant. No one was feigning sympathy. They all had her best interests in mind. Even Aunt Henrika, in her sad, condescending way. The problem was, the people who should shut up were the ones talking the most. It made Edimar grateful for people like Segundo and Rena and Concepción, people who didn’t baby her or even broach the subject of Father’s and Alejandra’s deaths but who simply asked her about her work and told her about theirs. That’s all Edimar wanted: to be treated like a person who could handle her situation instead of being expected to act like a sad, blubbery sack.

Dreo was waiting for her outside the dining hall. They had agreed to meet here before going on to Concepción’s office to give their report. After Father’s death, Concepción had asked Dreo to assist Edimar with the Eye whenever she needed it, and Dreo, like the eager commander he was, had relished this new authority. Edimar didn’t need his help and certainly didn’t want it, but Dreo still found opportunities to insert himself into her work. For propriety’s sake, Dreo wasn’t to visit Edimar in the crow’s nest without another adult with him, and fortunately this had mostly kept Dreo away. Which was best. He knew next to nothing about how the Eye worked or how to interpret its data. He understood the operating system and nothing more. But just because you know how an oven works doesn’t mean you can bake a soufflé.

“Did you bring your holopad?” Dreo asked.

So he was going to treat her like a child again. She kept her face expressionless and held up the holopad for him to see.

“Good. Is the presentation on it?”

Did he really think her an idiot? Or was Dreo this patronizing with everyone? Aloud she said, “You’re welcome to look at it if you want.”

He waved the idea away. “If there are flaws, I’ll talk through them. Let’s go.” He turned and moved for the helm, expecting her to follow.

How kind of you, thought Edimar. You’ll talk through my “flaws.” What a team player you are, Dreo. Good thing we have your great intellect to rescue us from my flawed presentation.

Edimar sighed. She was being bratty again. So what if Dreo is a pain. So what if he takes all the credit. The world could be coming to an end. There are more important matters than me getting my feelings stung.

They reached Concepción’s office and were invited inside. Concepción wasn’t alone. Segundo, Bahzím, and Selmo were also present as well.

“I’ve asked a few of the Council to join us,” said Concepción. “I want their input on this. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” said Dreo. “We prefer it.”

It annoyed Edimar that Dreo would presume to speak for her. He was right of course; she did prefer more input. But Edimar hadn’t expressed that to him, and she didn’t like him making assumptions about her.

“We now know what the hormiga ship looks like,” said Dreo. “It’s close enough and moving slow enough for the Eye to create an accurate rendering. I’ll let Edimar give the presentation, and I’ll clarify points where necessary.”

Oh, he’ll “let” me give the presentation, thought Edimar. How kind. As if Dreo could give the presentation himself but was merely humoring a child, as if he knew the material better than she did, when in fact it was Edimar who had done ninety-five percent of the work. And he would clarify points? What points exactly? What did he know about the ship that she didn’t?

She didn’t look at him, worried that she might let her annoyance show. Instead she busied herself with the holopad, anchoring it to Concepción’s desk and raising the various antennae. When it was ready, she turned on the holo. A computer-rendered image of the hormiga ship appeared in front of them.

The room went quiet. As Edimar had expected, everyone had the same slightly baffled expression. The ship was unlike anything humans had ever conceived. It was a large, bulgy teardrop shape, seemingly smooth as glass, with its pointy end facing in the direction it was traveling. Near the front was a wide-mouthed opening that faced forward and completely encircled the tip.

“To give you a sense of scale,” said Edimar, “here’s what El Cavador would look like beside it.” A rendering of El Cavador appeared next to the hormiga ship. It was like holding a grape next to a cantaloupe.

“How can a ship that big move that fast?” said Bahzím.

“It doesn’t even look like a ship at all,” said Selmo. “It’s circular. There’s no up or down. It looks more like a satellite.”

“It’s too big to be a satellite,” said Segundo. “Besides, we know the pod came from inside the ship. How it left the ship at such a high speed is anyone’s guess, but it must have. What stumps me is that I can’t see any obvious entrances or exit points.”

“What about this wide opening here at the front?” said Bahzím, pointing.

Segundo shook his head. “If I had to guess, I’d say that was a ram drive. Victor suspected the pod was powered by one, and this looks like a similar design. The ship scoops up hydrogen atoms, which at near-lightspeed would be gamma radiation, then the rockets shoot this gamma plasma out the back for thrust. It would be a brilliant propulsive system because you’d have an infinite amount of fuel, and the faster you move, the more hydrogen you’d pick up and therefore the more acceleration and thrust you’d generate.”

“Scoop-field propulsion,” said Concepción.

“Is that even possible?” asked Bahzím.

“Theoretically,” said Segundo. “It would only work on a ship built in space and intended for interstellar travel, though. You couldn’t use a propulsion system like that to exit a planet or atmosphere. Too much G-force. You’d die instantly. But in a vacuum, you could accelerate quickly, safely. I wouldn’t exactly call it a clean form of propulsion, though. It would be putting out massive amounts of radiation. You wouldn’t want to fly behind it. Even at a great distance. If it’s powered by gamma plasma, the plasma would likely interfere with electronics and sensors as far back as, say, a million kilometers or so. Stay in its propulsion wake too long, and it would cause tearing on the surface of the ship. And at closer distances, you’d probably get a lethal dose of radiation. Be right behind it, and you’d be disintegrated instantly.”

“Lovely,” said Selmo.

“What I don’t understand,” said Bahzím, “is how they can even see where they’re going. I don’t see any windows or visible sensors. The surface is completely smooth.”

“It looks smooth, but it isn’t,” said Edimar. “At close inspection you can detect seams, indentations, and ridges. Like these circles.” She typed a command, and four massive circles appeared on the ship, side by side, around the bulbous end of the teardrop. “We don’t know what these are,” she said. “Doors maybe. Or perhaps smaller ships that detach from the main ship. Whatever they are, they’re massive.”

“The whole thing is massive,” said Bahzím. “Which makes me wonder about defense. How does it protect itself against collision threats? It would get pulverized by asteroids without a good PK system. But look at it. No pebble-killers. No guns. No weapons whatsoever.”

“I couldn’t discern any weapons either,” said Edimar. “But it
does
have a PK system. I’ve seen it. Any object on a collision course is completely obliterated. Asteroids, pebbles, comets. All vaporized by lasers from the surface of the ship.”

“The surface?” said Bahzím. “Where?”

“That’s just it,” said Edimar. “From
any
where on the surface. It can fire from any spot on the ship. It’s like the entire ship is a weapon.”

“How is that possible?” said Bahzím. “Lasers have to come from something.”

Edimar shrugged. “Maybe there’s some system below the surface that unleashes them. Maybe it has thousands of pores all over its hull that open and release the lasers. However it works, it’s more powerful than anything humans have because it can fire as many of these as it wants at once. So instead of firing a single beam from two cannons like we do to hit a collision threat, the hormigas can fire a whole wall of laser fire.”

The room was silent a moment.

“That’s not exactly comforting,” said Concepción.

“Nothing about this is comforting,” said Selmo.

“Do we know what the lasers are composed of?” asked Segundo.

“No,” said Edimar. “But I don’t think it’s photons. Their beams can be up to a meter thick and they act differently than our lasers. If you’re right about the ram drive, if they’re using gamma plasma as propulsion, it’s not far-fetched to suggest that they use coherent gamma rays as their weapons, too. I mean, why not? If they can harness gamma plasma for propulsion, why not harness it and laserize it as a means of defense?”

“Weapons and fuel from the same substance,” said Concepción. “That’s certainly economical.”

“Laserized gamma plasma?” said Selmo “That makes our PKs sound like a joke.”

“They are a joke,” said Bahzím.

“The composition of the lasers is all speculation,” said Dreo. “What we
do
know is that their lasers only target collision threats. The hormigas aren’t blasting everything in sight. They’re conservative with their fire. They follow the same protocol of any other ship in that regard. Unless the object is set to collide with them, they ignore it.”

“That’s good news for us,” said Edimar. “We’re moving in the same direction as it is alongside the starship’s trajectory. We’re not on a collision course. When it passes us, it should ignore us.”

“Unless it’s blasting every ship in sight,” said Bahzím. “Just because it didn’t blow up a bunch of rocks out there, doesn’t mean it won’t gun us. What do we know? Maybe its mission is to destroy every human ship it sees. It didn’t exactly leave the Italians alone, and they weren’t a collision threat, either.”

“We won’t be close to it when it passes,” said Dreo. “We’re moving parallel to its trajectory but at a great distance. It’s never fired on anything remotely close to this range.”

“So it will pass us before we reach Weigh Station Four?” asked Concepción.

“Yes,” said Edimar. “Which obviously means it will pass the weigh station before
we
reach the station, though not by much.”

Concepción turned to Segundo. “Any luck with the radio?”

They had been trying for weeks to contact the weigh station, but without any success.

“Radio’s only working for short distances,” said Segundo. “We’ve been sending out messages to the station, but all we hear back is static. There’s a lot of interference.”

“Maybe the hormigas are scrambling radio,” said Bahzím.

Segundo shrugged. “Who’s to say they even know what radio is? They may have another communication system entirely. Or the problem might be the radiation their ship is emitting. Maybe that’s disrupting transmissions somehow. Even at this distance. I don’t know.”

“So the station still doesn’t know the ship is coming?” asked Bahzím.

“Not unless they’ve detected it themselves,” said Segundo. “Which is possible, but I doubt it. It’s not heading directly for them—it will miss them by a hundred thousand kilometers—so their computers probably won’t alert them. And you know the guys they have manning the control room. They’re overworked dockworkers, picking up overtime. They’re not experts like Toron or Edimar. If it’s not a collision threat, what do they care? If I had to guess, I’d say the station is completely unaware.”

“The upside,” said Dreo, “is that based on the hormiga ship’s prior behavior, it will probably leave the weigh station alone and move right on by. We’ll get there a day later, and we can use their laserline then.”

Concepción leaned forward, staring down at the starship in the holospace. “For the sake of everyone on board that station, I pray to God you’re right.”

*   *   *

Podolski was hiding in a small rented room adjacent to a noodle shop on Weigh Station Four when the authorities found him. They kicked in the door after Podolski didn’t answer it, and he cowered to the back corner of the room. He could tell at once that they weren’t real police officials. They were rough men, dressed like the men Chubs and the ship’s crew had killed at the docking tunnel before rocketing away and leaving Podolski here, stranded.

“Hello there,” said the big man in the front. He had a European accent Podolski couldn’t place. “You’re a tough bird to find, friend. I had to ask three different people before we tracked you down.” He laughed. “That was a joke, friend. Come on now. No need for tears. We just want to ask you a few questions.”