Earth Unaware (First Formic War) (7 page)

Chubs looked hesitant. “Actually, not perfect. Not if you want to blow it up with the glaser.”

“Why?”

“We keep a constant watch of movement around us,” said Chubs. “Our boys here know where all the other mining ships are in the vicinity. Your father was very particular about us conducting these field tests far from the snooping eyes of WU-HU or MineTek or any other competitor. So if somebody is nearby, we make it our business to know about it. And this asteroid, 2002GJ166, is currently occupied.”

“Someone’s mining it?”

Chubs made a few movements with his stylus. The asteroid minimized, and a holo of a mining ship appeared. “A free-miner family. Not a big clan. Just a single ship. It’s called El Cavador. According to the files we have from the Lunar Trade Department, they’re a Venezuelan family. Their captain is a seventy-four-year-old woman named Concepción Querales. And the ship isn’t any younger. It’s probably been patched up so many times over it looks like space junk at this point. It comfortably holds sixty people, but knowing free miners, they probably have closer to eighty or ninety people on board.”

“We can’t conduct the test if they’re there,” said Lem.

“I’m sure they would appreciate not being blown to smithereens,” said Chubs. “But don’t expect them to pack up and leave any time soon. They’ve been at the rock for a few weeks now building mineshafts. They have a lot of time and money invested in this dig site. And it’s paying off for them. They’ve already sent two loads in quickships back to Luna.”

Quickships weren’t really ships at all. They were rocket-propelled projectiles that carried a mining family’s processed metals all the way to Luna. The rockets were for maneuvering, and built-in sponders constantly broadcast the quickship’s location, trajectory, destination, and the name of the family. The family ID was always embedded deep within the quickship so it couldn’t be pirated. But pirates had little chance of catching quickships anyway. They moved incredibly fast, far faster than any manned vessel could match. Once the quickships got close to Luna, they turned themselves over to Lunar Guidance, or LUG, where they got “lugged” into Lunar orbit for pickup and delivery.

“If we
did
wait for them to leave,” said Lem, “about how long are we talking? A week? A year?”

“Impossible to say,” said Chubs. “Juke hasn’t done a lot of scans of rocks out this far. We typically stick to the Asteroid Belt. I have no idea how much metal they’re sitting on. Could be a month. Could be eight months.”

“What’s the next closest asteroid?” asked Lem.

Chubs turned back to the chart and began digging around again. “If you’re in a hurry, you won’t like the answer. The next nearest rock is four months, sixteen days away. And that’s four months in the wrong direction, farther out into deep space. So it would be four months out and four months back, just to return to this spot.”

“Eight months. Way too long.”

Chubs shrugged. “That’s the Kuiper Belt, Lem. Space and more space.”

Lem stared at the chart. They needed to take the closer asteroid. And the sooner the better. Lem didn’t want the miners taking all the metals. The point was to show the Board the economic viability of the glaser. Lem didn’t intend to obliterate the rock. He was going to break it up, collect whatever metals he could, sell the haul, and slap the asset statement onto the center of the boardroom table back on Luna.

But how do you vacate free miners from a profitable mine? He couldn’t pay them, which, as a man of wealth, had always been his default strategy for anything. The free miners were sitting on their source of income, possibly a long-standing source of income. They wouldn’t want to give it up. Which meant the only real option was to take it by force.

“What if we bump them?” asked Lem.

Lem had never witnessed the practice himself, but he knew that it existed. “Bumping” was a corporate technique, though not one you would find documented by any corporation. It was the asteroid version of claim jumping. Corporate ships snuck in on dig sites operated by free miners and chased the free miners away. They were coordinated attacks that required a lot of tech, but they worked. Free miners were rarely strong enough to defend themselves, and if you timed the attack right, the mineshafts would already be dug. So the free miners did most of the work, but the corporates reaped all of the benefits. It was devious, yes, and Lem didn’t relish the thought of doing it, but an eight-month trip to the second-closest asteroid was simply not an option. Besides, if rumors were true, Father had done a good bit of bumping in his early days, which would suggest that he could hardly object if Lem did it, too—as long as it didn’t become public.

Chubs raised an eyebrow. “You serious, Lem? You want to bump them?”

“If you see another option, I’d be thrilled to hear it. I don’t like the idea either, but we can’t ask them to leave. They wouldn’t. And the Makarhu can clearly take them. My concern is the glaser. I don’t want to endanger it in a scuffle. Could we bump them without jarring the glaser?”

“Depends on how you do it,” said Chubs. “They’re moored to the asteroid. If we catch them unawares, cut their moorings, and cripple their power, we can push them away as gentle as a kitten. They’d be completely defenseless at that point. The real danger is their pebble-killers.”

Pebble-killers, slang for “collision-avoidance lasers.”

“We wouldn’t move on them until we took out their power,” said Chubs. “Otherwise they could hit us with their lasers.”

“Wouldn’t that kill them?” asked Lem. “If we cut their power we’d cut their life support.”

“They’ll have auxiliary power for life support,” said Chubs. “That’s not a concern. The real issue is getting close enough to strike them. They might already know we’re here. They’ve got a sky scanner. If we move toward them now, even four days out, they’ll know it. Especially if we rush them. They’ll pick that movement up immediately and still have plenty of time to build a possible defense.”

“You’ve done this before, Chubs. Surely there are tactics for sneaking up on an asteroid.”

Chubs sighed. “There is one approach that usually works if done right. We call it ‘Red Light Green Light.’ You’re familiar with the playground game?”

Lem knew the one, and he could guess at what the name implied. “We sneak up on them when they’re not looking.”

“When they
can’t
look,” said Chubs. “Remember, they’re moored to the asteroid. So they’re rotating with it. We only advance toward them when they’re on the opposite side of the asteroid from our position. When they rotate toward us, we become still as a statue before we get in their line of sight, with all of our lights off. A dead stop. Totally invisible. Then, as soon as they rotate around the asteroid, as soon as their back is to us, so to speak, we punch it and shoot forward. It takes a lot of stopping and starting with the thrusters and retros, and uses up way too much fuel, but it’s doable. Though it will take a lot longer to get there.”

“Set the course,” said Lem. “And prepare everything we need for the bump. If they detect us sooner than we would like, I want to be ready to surge forward and take them.”

Chubs smiled, shaking his head, already tapping commands into his wrist pad. “You surprise me, Lem. I took you for someone who held the moral high ground. Going to war doesn’t seem your style.”

“We’re businessmen, Chubs. The moral high ground is wherever we set it.”

CHAPTER 3

Wit

Captain Wit O’Toole rode up to the front gate at Papakura Military Camp in South Auckland, New Zealand, and presented his American passport to the soldier at the gatehouse. Papakura was home to the New Zealand Special Air Service, or the NZSAS, the kiwi version of the Special Forces. Wit had come to recruit some of the men. As an officer of the Mobile Operations Police—or MOPs, a small, elite international peacekeeping force—Wit was always on the lookout for qualified soldiers to add to his team. If the prospects he had identified here at Papakura were as smart and as skilled as he hoped they were, if they could pass Wit’s unique little test, he would gladly welcome them aboard.

A light rain was falling, misting the windshield. The soldier examining Wit’s passport stood in the rain, tapping at the sheets, clicking through all the data. He found the photo of Wit and compared it to Wit’s likeness. Wit gave the man his friendliest smile. A second soldier with a leashed German shepherd did a loop around the vehicle, letting the dog sniff the vehicle’s trunk and underside.

The men were stalling. Wit had noticed the security cameras mounted above the gatehouse when he had pulled up. The computers were no doubt running their facial-recognition software to determine if Wit was in fact who he said he was. Wit only hoped the cameras had gotten a clear enough shot through the rain-splattered windshield or this could take a while.

The passport showed his full name: DeWitt Clinton O’Toole, named for the governor of New York who was the driving force behind the actual building of the Erie Canal, a distant ancestor of his mother. There were stamps and visas from a dozen countries, though these were by no means a complete record of Wit’s travels. Those represented his “official” visits to foreign soil. Far more numerous were his undocumented insertions into countries all over the world as he and his team struck hard and fast at whomever was harming civilians. The Middle East, Indonesia, Micronesia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central and South America.

The soldier with the passport touched his finger to the communicator in his ear and listened a moment. He then handed Wit back the passport. “You’re free to go through, Mr. O’Toole.”

Wit thanked the man and sat back as the vehicle drove him into the parking lot and pulled into a slot. Wit picked up the envelope off the seat beside him, exited the vehicle, and walked toward the wall that encircled the inner campus. The regimental sergeant major was waiting at the gate with an extra umbrella. He wore fatigues and a tan beret with the crest of the NZSAS embroidered on it: a winged dagger with the words
WHO DARES WINS
.

Wit was in his civvies, but he saluted anyway.

“Welcome, Captain O’Toole. I’m Sergeant Major Manaware.” He handed Wit the extra umbrella. “Bummer your first visit to Auckland’s a wet one.”

“Not at all, Sergeant Major. I am a fan of the rain. It convinces the enemy to stay inside and not come out and kill us.”

Manaware laughed. “Spoken like a true SEAL. Always happy to avoid a fight.”

Wit smiled back. Military trash talk. Our Special Forces can beat up your Special Forces. You guys are bumbling idiots. We’re the real hardened warriors. Soldiers had been talking this way to one another ever since cavemen had picked up a club. Yet Manaware was saying something else as well: The kiwis had done their homework. They had studied Wit’s military record, and, more to the point, they were letting him know it. They were saying, “We’re watching you as closely as you’re watching us, mate.” Which was fine with Wit. He preferred it that way. He hated conversations in which everyone pretended not to know what the others knew. Yet such was the military, especially as you rose up the ranks. There was nothing more cat and mouse than a conversation between two generals in the same army, both of them withholding intel for personal profit. It drove Wit insane. And it was the primary reason why he didn’t hold a place among them. Wit didn’t play that game.

Manaware led Wit into the compound. It was like every other military base Wit had ever seen. Hangars, training facilities, barracks, office buildings. They made their way into a building to the right and shook out their umbrellas in the anteroom. Inside, two SAS soldiers were sweeping the lobby floor with large utility brooms. They snapped to attention when Manaware entered.

“As you were,” said the sergeant major, continuing to the stairs.

The men immediately returned to sweeping. It had always impressed Wit that the SAS instilled in their men the idea that no job was beneath them; no chore was too low for a man serving his country. The running joke was that at the graduation ceremony following their nine months of training, SAS graduates received the coveted tan beret in one hand and a broom in the other.

Manaware led Wit to a door and gave a light tap.

A voice inside bid them enter.

Colonel Napatu’s office was a small space with few adornments. Napatu greeted Wit with a handshake stronger than Wit had expected for a man of Napatu’s age and invited Wit to take a chair beside a coffee table.

“May I offer you any refreshment, Captain O’Toole?” asked Manaware. “Perhaps a fruity tea with lemon?” Manaware smiled. It was one last jab of military trash talk. Isn’t that what you Navy women drink? Fruity tea with lemon?

Wit smiled, conceding defeat. “No thank you, Sergeant Major. You’ve been very kind.”

Manaware gave a wink and left.

Colonel Napatu took a chair opposite Wit. “I heard you lost three men in Mauritania.”

“Yes, sir,” said Wit. “Good men. Our convoy was hit by on IED. The point vehicle took the brunt of it. I was in the second vehicle and thus unharmed.”

“The world is a dangerous place, Captain O’Toole.”

“Improvised exploding device,” said Napatu. “A coward’s weapon. I heard you carried one of the wounded four kilometers to the extraction site.”

“He was a dear friend, sir. He died later in surgery.”

Napatu nodded gravely.

“That is why MOPs exist, sir. War always inflicts its greatest casualties on the innocent. Our job is to put a stop to chaos before more innocent lives are lost.”

“That sounds like textbook talk, O’Toole. You recite that for all the commanding officers?”

“No, sir. It’s simply who we are.”

“At least you’re not like the damn United Nations, who send their boys in only after a war has ended.”

Wit said nothing. He wasn’t here to express political views or criticize other forces. He was here for men.

Napatu got the hint and changed the subject. “You boys must meet a lot of resistance from civil law enforcement.”

“Almost always. But where we go, sir, local law enforcement is often part of the problem.”