Earth Unaware (First Formic War) (45 page)

“They’re not indestructible. They’re tough and resilient, but they can be broken. What frightens me more than their physicality, though, is what we saw them do on the vids. They were immediately willing to give their lives to thwart any attack. No hesitation. No attempt to protect themselves. Just unbridled animal ferocity and completely unyielding devotion. These aren’t just technologically superior creatures, Captain. This is a species that will never, ever give up until every last one of them is destroyed.”

“On that point, Doctor, we will gladly oblige them.”

*   *   *

Lem stood in the engineering room, which had been converted into a war room of sorts, and looked at all of the notes on the wall-screens around him. There were anatomical diagrams of a Formic; sketches of the Formic ship with various engineering theories on how the ship operated; photos and analysis of the weapon that had destroyed El Cavador; a systems chart showing the Formic ship’s trajectory; as well as numerous other scribbles, lists, ideas, and theories. “We have all this intel,” said Lem. “All this critical information that Earth desperately needs, and we can’t do a damn thing with any of it.” He turned and faced Chubs, Benyawe, and Dr. Dublin, whose hands were still in casts. “Unless we relay this to Earth, it’s worthless,” said Lem.

“We’re at the mercy of our radio,” said Chubs. “Until we get through the interference there’s not much we can do.”

In the weeks since the attack, the interference from the Formic ship had rendered long-range communication impossible. Lem had ordered the radio officers to continually broadcast a looped transmission about the Formics—detailing the ship’s coordinates, flight path, dimensions, and speed—but as far as the radio officers could tell, nothing was getting through. Every day hundreds of the transmissions went out and zero transmissions came in. The Makarhu was screaming a warning, but nobody could hear a word.

“Then how do we get around the interference?” asked Lem.

“We don’t know the limits of it,” said Chubs. “Right now we’re four million kilometers away from the Formic ship’s trajectory. We could go farther out, but there’s no telling how far we would need to go. Ten million? Twenty? A hundred? Also, if we distance ourselves any more from the ship, we won’t be able to track it. It’s so far ahead of us already that it disappears from our scanners for days at a time. We’re out of range of its weapons, which is good, but if we deviate any more from our current course or speed, we’ll get so far behind the ship that we’ll lose it completely. We could do that, but it’s a risk. We may not reach the end of the interference before the ship reaches Earth.”

“I don’t want to lose sight of the ship,” said Lem. “But unless we do something to counter this interference, Earth isn’t going to get much of a warning, if any at all. They’ll be completely unprepared for an attack.”

“We don’t actually know if the Formics intend to attack,” said Dublin. “We strongly suspect that, but we can’t be definitive about what they’ll do once they reach Earth.”

“They’re not coming to borrow a cup of sugar,” said Chubs. “You saw what they did to El Cavador.”

Lem cringed inside. El Cavador. He knew it wasn’t his fault that they had been destroyed—they should have gotten out when he did. Still, he couldn’t shake the nagging idea that he should have done more. What, he didn’t know; there was nothing else he could have done, really. There was no saving the men stuck on the Formic ship; they were beyond rescue. El Cavador should have seen that. But no, Concepción had adhered to some foolish, self-destructive notion of “never leave a man behind,” which was stupid. Lem was all for saving people, sure. But once it was clear that further rescue was impossible, what good was it to hang around? In the heat of the moment he had chided Chubs for ordering the ship to leave, but now he saw the wisdom of it. All El Cavador had accomplished by staying behind to rescue its men was its own sad demise.

But that was free miners. He respected their courage. But to ignore self-preservation for the sake of family didn’t feel noble. It felt irresponsible.

There was one more thing, too. One he tried not to think about, since it made him feel shallow and callous. But there was no denying it either: The destruction of El Cavador meant the destruction of their copy of his files. Concepción had said she would erase them, but now he knew without a doubt that it had happened. There was the slim possibility that one of the women had carried a copy onto the WU-HU ship, but that was unlikely. They were worried about protecting their children and surviving. Burning Lem Jukes at the legal stake hadn’t been on their minds. He was in the clear. The files were gone.

“My point is,” Dublin was saying, “we don’t yet know why they’re headed to Earth. What do they want? Our resources? To make contact? To study us?”

“They didn’t come to make contact,” said Lem. “Their pod destroyed the Italian free miners.”

“Yes,” said Dublin, “but only after it had been among them for twelve hours. Maybe it was trying to contact them in all that time.”

Lem shook his head. “Concepción told us everything. The Italians didn’t pick up anything that resembled communication from the pod.”

“Maybe they have a way of communicating that we don’t know about,” said Dublin. “Maybe they were trying to communicate, but humans don’t have the tech to receive their transmissions.”

“They
killed
the Italians,” said Chubs. “If someone doesn’t answer your hello, you don’t waste them.”

“I’m trying to look at this scientifically,” said Dublin.

“It doesn’t matter if they tried to communicate or not,” said Chubs. “They wanted to kill us. Did you watch the vids? Did you see the face of that Formic climbing up the mooring cable? It wasn’t coming to introduce itself. It was coming to rip Lem’s head off.”

Dublin held up two hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not defending them. I’m reminding us that they come from a completely different social structure with completely different behaviors and values.”

“There is one theory we haven’t discussed,” said Benyawe. She walked to the sketch of the Formic ship on the wall, studied it, then faced them. “What if it’s a colony ship?”

“Colony?” said Chubs. “Can’t be. The planet’s taken. We own it. No vacancy.”

“Maybe they don’t care,” said Benyawe. “Maybe they come from a civilization where aliens share planets.”

“Or maybe they intend to take it for themselves,” said Lem. He turned and studied the diagram of the Formic. “We’ve been assuming all this time that they consider us as equals. But what if they don’t? What if they think of us in the same way we think of houseflies or rabbits? If you want to build a house on a lot and you find a family of rabbits living on the land, you don’t think of the land as belonging to the rabbits and build elsewhere. You shoot the rabbits or you scare them off.”

“There are twelve billion people on Earth,” said Chubs. “With cities and industry and tech. That’s more than a family of rabbits.”

“Fine. Pick a different animal. Say, earthworms. How many worms are on the plot of land? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Or what about ants? A million? They have colonies and homes, but what do we care? We level the land and build anyway. My point is, maybe they don’t consider the planet ours. We only happen to live there. Maybe they see it as theirs for the taking.”

“There’s a hole in that theory,” said Dublin. “The interference. If the Formics didn’t consider as us equals or at least near their place on the species hierarchy, why are they working so hard to cloak their approach with the interference? What they’re doing to our radio suggests they fear us and have developed tactics to avoid our detection. It implies they consider us a threat.”

“Only if the interference is deliberate,” said Lem. “But what if it isn’t? What if it’s nothing more than a by-product of their propulsion system? What if they have no idea they’re wrecking our radio? Yes, it’s working to their advantage, but that doesn’t mean they
meant
for it to happen.”

“If that’s true,” said Benyawe, “then Earth is in more danger than we thought. If the Formics aren’t doing anything deliberate to hide their approach, if they don’t care if we notice them or not, then they don’t consider us a threat at all. They’re so confident they can destroy us that it doesn’t matter if we know they’re coming.”

The more they talked, the less Lem liked what we he was hearing. “So what do we do?” he asked. “We can’t communicate with anyone. We can’t surpass the ship and get ahead of it—not at its current speed anyway. It’s moving too fast. We can’t even catch it if we wanted to.”

“Which we most definitely
don’t
want to do,” said Chubs.

“I see two options,” said Benyawe. “We can either deviate and take a gamble that there’s a way out of this interference. Or we can continue to track the ship and gather intelligence and hope that it decelerates enough for us to zip past it and beat it to Earth.”

“Also a gamble,” said Lem.

“There’s no easy answer,” said Benyawe.

“Option B gets my vote,” said Dublin. “That puts us closer to Earth. That’s our destination.”

“I agree,” said Benyawe. “There might be something else we can learn about the Formics, a weakness perhaps. That would be more valuable to Earth than anything. If we lose sight of the ship, we lose that chance.”

“The Formics are leaving a wake of destruction,” said Chubs. “People may need help. I say we stay the course.”

Benyawe said, “An odd philosophy for you, considering you’ve left quite a wake of destruction yourself.”

“Always to protect us,” said Chubs, annoyed.

A navigator from the helm appeared on the wall-screen. “Sir, sensors indicate that the Formic ship has vented again.”

“Decelerate immediately,” said Lem. “I don’t want us flying into the gamma plasma. Bring us to a full stop if necessary.” It was the second time the ship had vented since the battle with El Cavador.

The navigator made a series of hand movements offscreen, then returned. “Deceleration commenced, sir.”

“Were there any ships near the Formics that may have been affected by the plasma?”

“Don’t know, sir. The only reason we can detect the Formic ship at this distance is because of its size. Anything smaller doesn’t show up on the sensors.”

“Keep scanning. Let me know if we find anything that might have been hit by the plasma.”

“Yes, sir.”

The navigator disappeared. Benyawe walked to the systems chart that stretched across one wall. A line representing the Formics’ trajectory cut across space. Benyawe touched various points on the line, leaving blinking red dots. “The first venting happened here, near Weigh Station Four. The next venting was here, roughly six au later. Now we have a third venting that’s approximately six au after that.”

“So they vent every six au,” said Dublin.

“Which means we can approximate where it will likely vent again,” said Benyawe. She tapped her finger down the line every six au and left more dots. As she reached the inner Belt, she placed a dot near an asteroid.

“What asteroid is that?” asked Lem.

Benyawe enlarged it until it filled the screen. Lem thought it looked like a dog bone: thin shaft in the middle, with two knobby lobes at either end. “It’s called Kleopatra,” said Benyawe. “M-class. Measures two hundred and seventeen kilometers across. She moved her fingers on the screen and rotated the asteroid until the opposite side came into view. There, on the surface of one of the lobes, was a small cluster of lights.

“What is that?” asked Lem. “Zoom in.”

Benyawe moved her fingers and zoomed in on the lights, revealing a massive mining complex at least five kilometers across. Buildings, smelting plants, diggers, barracks. A mini industrial city.

“It’s a Juke facility,” said Benyawe.

“One of ours? How come I’ve never heard of it?” asked Lem.

“Your father has over a hundred of these facilities throughout the Belt,” said Chubs. “By building a facility, we’re basically claiming the entire rock. We’re sticking a flag in the ground and telling competitors to back off. Which is smart. That much iron is worth a fortune.”

“If the Formics vent near Kleopatra, even if the plasma hits the opposite side of the asteroid, those people don’t stand a chance,” said Dublin.

“How many people work there?” asked Lem.

Benyawe tapped the complex with her finger, opened a window of data, and began reading. After a moment, she turned to them, troubled.

“How many?” asked Lem.

“Over seven thousand,” said Benyawe.

CHAPTER 20

Solitude

At first Victor thought little of the pain in his back. After five months of traveling in the quickship, unexplained aches and pains had become second nature. His muscles were atrophying, his bones were weakening; dull aches were to be expected. But then the backache worsened and became so excruciating at times that it felt like a knife stabbing and twisting inside him. It came in waves, and no matter how Victor positioned his body in the quickship, the pain continued. Then the pain spread to his side and groin. Then blood appeared in his urine, and he knew he was in trouble.

All symptoms pointed to kidney stones. His bones were becoming osteoporotic and the released calcium was coalescing in the kidneys. Sleep was difficult. He felt anxious and nauseated and worried about being sick in his helmet. He drank lots of water, but it didn’t help. He had brought a few mild pain meds, but he had taken those months ago to get through a few days of migraines. Now he cursed himself. The migraines were a gentle kiss on the cheek compared to this.

After three days, he worried that the stone might be too big to pass, and he wondered what would happen if that were the case. Would he get an infection? Could it kill him? Would Earth never receive warning because of a stupid clump of crystallized calcium?

He passed it on the fourth day, and the pain was so unexpectedly searing and intense that for a moment he thought he
was
dying. When it was over, he fell instantly asleep, exhausted.

He continued to drink a lot of water over the next few weeks, but it didn’t stop him from having stones. He passed four in all. None of them were as painful as the first, but they all left him anxious and restless. He was now keenly aware of the fact that his body was deteriorating, and he constantly worried about a dozen other ailments that might afflict him at any moment. His bone density was his primary concern. Would the weight of his own body break his legs when he stood on Luna? Gravity on Luna was only a fraction of what it was on Earth, but perhaps it would be enough to overstress his weakening bones. Then there was the issue of his appetite. It had greatly diminished recently. Was he malnourished? And what about his heart? It was weakening, too. Would it give out before he reached the Moon? And what about radiation? Was the shield holding? He needed to strengthen it, he realized. He needed to add another plate to the exterior. He was sure he’d get cancer if he didn’t.