Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) (11 page)

From here he had a good view of the cargo bay. The inner wall of the bay had taken a beating from the gravity. Whole sections of wall had crumpled inward and broken free, exposing rows of tightly packed pipes underneath. The pipes all seemed to be running in the same direction from the front of the ship toward the rear. There were valves and fasteners on the pipes every few meters, and to Victor’s surprise none of the pipes appeared damaged.

Elsewhere, where the inner wall had held, cart-pulling Formics had gone back to work, pulling their cargo on the tracks as if nothing had happened. A few had stopped at places where the inner wall in front of them had been ripped away, leaving them no more track to walk on. They stood there, stuck, unable to advance.

“What happened, Imala?” Victor asked. “Why did we suddenly have gravity in here?”

“The ships that attacked must have fired a weapon that somehow created gravity inside the ship.”

“How is that possible?”

“No idea,” said Imala. “But all of the cannons on the surface of the Formic ship were crushed against the hull like tinfoil. That’s why you blacked out. You were feeling too many Gs. It’s a miracle your boot magnets held.”

“What happened to the attacking ships?”

“Destroyed as well. Once the cannons were gone, the irises on the hull of the Formic ship opened and unleashed the plasma. The attacking ships were vaporized in an instant. I recorded the whole thing. That’s why you’re weightless again. The gravity weapons were destroyed.”

“Where did these ships come from? Who has a fleet that large?”

“They weren’t ships, Vico. These things were too small to be ships. They were drones.”

“Drones? If Earth had drones, why did we launch manned fighters? Why risk pilots’ lives if you didn’t have to?”

“Because these drones aren’t from Earth,” said Imala. “I just backtracked their flight path. They came from Luna.”

“Luna?”

“And that’s not the worst of it. All of our com lines with Luna went dark right before the attack.”

It all became clear to Victor in an instant. “Lem. That bastard sent a drone fleet to kill us.”

“But why?” said Imala. “He financed our attack, Vico. He gave us the shuttle, our gear.”

“Of course he did,” said Victor. “This was his golden opportunity. We put our heads on the chopping block and placed an ax in his hands. Don’t you see? We went to him for help, and he saw it as an opportunity to silence us. Think, Imala. Lem and Ukko both want us gone. You’re a whistleblower, I’m a witness to a crime Lem committed. What better way to make those two problems go away than to erase us.”

“It doesn’t make sense, Vico. You’re suggesting Lem invested all this money into this operation just to bump us off? There are far less expensive ways to kill people. If he had wanted to silence us he could’ve done that on Luna.”

“Then why did we lose contact with Luna right before the attack?” said Victor. “And no, Lem couldn’t have dealt with us on Luna. There was too much attention on him. He was dogged by the paparazzi. And Ukko wouldn’t take that risk anyway. A scandal like that would topple the company. This is cleaner. No witnesses. No one knows we’re even out here. No one would connect us with Lem.”

“Benyawe could,” said Imala. “She was helping us, Vico. I can’t imagine she would be a part of this.”

“Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she thought Lem was legitimate.”

“But then she and Dublin and the others at the warehouse who all saw us preparing for this would be loose ends. Are you suggesting Lem would silence them as well?”

“I’m suggesting they’re all corporates, Imala, and they’ll do whatever is necessary to protect the corporation.”

“I can’t believe that, Vico. Benyawe and Dublin are good people. They worked hard to help us.”

“Who else would send drones from Luna, Imala? Who else has the capability to build a fleet like this?”

“I’m not saying these aren’t Juke made, Vico. I’m saying we don’t know the circumstances. Maybe Juke sold the drones to the Americans. Or to China, or to NATO.”

“Even if that’s the case, Imala, Lem could’ve told the buyer, ‘Oh, by the way, we have a strike team at the ship at the moment. Be a lamb and don’t blast it to hell just yet, if you don’t mind.’”

Imala said nothing.

“They cut all communication, Imala. They cut us loose. If it wasn’t Jukes, why didn’t they send a warning? The drones came from Luna. They would have seen them long before we did.”

Imala said nothing.

“They knew we were here, Imala. They knew I was inside. So they attacked the ship to destroy it and counted our corpses as a consolation prize. Then they become world heroes, and all their problems go adios. The money Lem put into this is nothing to them, Imala. They were willing to pay twice that just to dump me out in the Belt, remember?”

“But Benyawe—”

“Is one of them,” Victor interrupted. “They may have kept her out of the loop, but you can be sure she’s toeing the line now.”

Imala was silent a moment. “So what do we do now?”

“When we’re done here we go back to Luna and jettison Lem Jukes into space without a helmet. That’s what we do.”

“What do you mean,
when
we’re done here. We
are
done here, Vico. We lost the duffel bag. It’s under a mountain of debris. And even if you could reach it, the bomb and equipment will have been crushed. You’re lucky it didn’t detonate already. We’re through here.”

She was right. The whole plan had been in that duffel bag. Victor peeked over the lip at the wreckage. There was no sign of the bag anywhere, and Victor doubted he could separate any of the pieces that had been crushed together. Plus, if the bomb
was
damaged, it would be dangerous to try to recover it. Still, they couldn’t leave empty-handed.

“I still have my helmetcam, Imala. And Earth still needs information about this ship. I’m going to the helm to gather what intel I can. If anything happens to me, you know what to do.”

He waited for her to object, but she said nothing.

“You’re not going to argue?” he said.

“Why waste my breath?” said Imala. “You’re more bullheaded than I am. You’ll go regardless of what I think.”

He smiled. “Turn off all communication equipment with Benyawe in case they attempt to reconnect with us and confirm we’re dead. Suit biometrics, ship monitoring, cut it all. We go totally black. Let them think we
are
dead. Then redirect all my helmetcam data somewhere else, a private cloud account, maybe. Somewhere Lem can’t access it. Because if he has it, he’ll bury it. The last thing he wants is the world knowing he tried to erase us.”

“There are data satellites I can use,” said Imala. “I’ll program a timer and a fail-safe into the account, with instructions to forward everything to the nets if we don’t log in every twenty-four hours. That way, if something happens to us, the data doesn’t go undiscovered.”

“Good,” said Victor. He repositioned himself and zoomed his visor binocs to a space across the room where the inner wall had fallen and pipes lay exposed. “I want to check those pipes out first. They must carry the plasma to the irises.”

He crawled to the edge of the shaft, made sure no one was looking, aimed his body, and launched. The kick with his left foot sent a stab of pain through him, but he tried to ignore it, soaring across the room, aiming for a spot on the wall to the left of where the pipes were exposed. He twisted his body at the last moment and landed expertly, his ankle blossoming with pain.

He crawled toward the pipes using his hand magnets. When he was within a few meters, alarms on his suit went haywire, screaming in his ears.

Bweep. Bweep. Bweep.

A message flashed on his HUD.
WARNING. RADIATION.

“The pipes,” he said. “They’re radioactive.”

“Get out of there!” shouted Imala.

Victor recoiled and launched again. He landed on the opposite wall, turned and launched a third time, this time aiming for a shaft that led toward the center of the ship. He landed near the shaft entrance and crawled inside.

“Are you all right?” asked Imala.

“I think so,” said Victor.

“Do you feel light-headed at all? Nauseated?”

“I didn’t get radiation poisoning, Imala. I wasn’t exposed long enough. I should have known they’d be radioactive. They’re funneling gamma plasma. The ship has a ramscoop drive. It collects hydrogen atoms as it flies through space and uses the subsequent gamma radiation both for fuel and as a weapon. Did you see the nozzles? Every few feet there are T-shaped nozzles on the back of the pipes that extend up to the hull and the irises. If we had a way to close off those nozzles, the plasma couldn’t fire. We’d render the ship defenseless.”

“There are tens of thousands of irises, Vico. Thus tens of thousands of nozzles. You couldn’t close them all even if you had an army of helpers. And you can’t access most of them anyway. They’re behind the inner wall and run the length of the ship.”

“I didn’t say it was possible, Imala. I’m making an observation.”

Victor froze. A half dozen Formics in heavy, protective suits had just crawled out of a large shaft across the room, pushing two massive carts. The shaft was at least four times the width and height of the shaft Victor was in.

Four of the Formics removed a large sheet of metal from one of the carts and carried it to where a portion of the inner wall had fallen away. They positioned the sheet over the exposed pipes, and the other two Formics sealed the metal plate into place.

“A repair crew,” said Victor. “To cover the pipes. They must know when radiation leaks into the ship.”

“You’ll need to find another way out,” said Imala. “You can’t get back to the original shaft this way without being seen.”

“First the helm,” said Victor.

He turned away from the cargo bay and headed up into the shaft. It was dark and narrow and littered with dung and dust. Victor blinked out a command and his suit began to create a map of his progress. He passed glow bugs and intersections and side passages. At times the shaft widened to accommodate another track, but Victor stayed true to his original course, heading toward what he hoped was the heart of the ship. He had expected to encounter more cart Formics, but he saw none. His ankle had swollen despite the cool pack and increased pressure, and the pain had settled into a dull, throbbing ache.

Soon the path began to clutter with discarded carts, all anchored to the track in a long continuous row on the right side of the shaft, with no harnesses or Formics attached. Victor maneuvered around them, squinting into the blackness ahead of him. He had decided it was too risky to use any artificial light and had thus been relying on the glow bugs for any illumination. The bugs had thinned in number recently, however, and the way before him now was as black as space. He slid his hands along the wall, feeling his way forward.

And then the shaft ended, opening up into a much wider but darker space. Far in the distance was a small circle of light, like the end of a long tunnel. Victor strained to see anything in the room, but he saw little definition in the blackness.

He risked a beam of light from his glove and shined it on the walls just ahead. The room was like a circular cave lined with honeycomb, with each cell as wide as Victor’s shoulders and a meter and a half deep. All of the cells near the entrance were empty save for grime and dirt and dung. Between the rows of cells were narrow ladders that extended the length of the room toward the distant light.

“What is this place, Vico?”

“Not sure,” Victor said. “Food storage maybe. A hatching site.”

“I say we turn back,” said Imala. “I don’t like surprises.”

“This whole ship is a surprise, Imala. I say we push on and get past this as quickly as we can.”

He maneuvered to one of the ladders and began to climb, listening for any sounds of movement ahead of him. The rungs were too narrow and close together to fit the toes of his bulky boots, but he was able to pull himself along with his hands.

When the shaft was a distance behind him, he paused to catch his breath and turned to his immediate right, where a Formic’s face was inches from his own.

Imala cried out and Victor recoiled, pushing off and kicking away from the ladder, shooting backward, all control lost. He crashed into the honeycomb on the opposite wall behind him, the waxy substance crushing inward on impact. His hand wrenched his gun free and brought it up, ready to fire on the attacking creature.

Only, no Formic came.

He waited, finger on the trigger, heart pounding, but nothing lurched at him from the darkness. Finally he pointed his light and found the Formic across the room where he had left it, still tucked in its cell, unmoved.

“Is it dead?” Imala asked.

Victor looked to his right and left. Around him were other Formics, all in the same state of repose, their large black eyes staring outward. Victor reached out and scanned the nearest one with the sensors in his glove. “It has a heat signature, Imala,” he whispered. “It’s alive.” He shined his light ahead of him and saw that between him and the light at the end of the chamber were dozens of Formics tucked into their cells. “This is a sleep chamber, Imala.”

“Get out, Vico. Now.”

Calmly, slowly, wincing at every sound he made, Victor freed himself from the damaged honeycomb and made his way to the nearest ladder. Shards of honeycomb floated in the air around the crater he had made in the wall, and Victor saw that by some miracle, he had landed in a cluster of empty cells surrounded by sleeping Formics.

He turned back to the ladder, feeling sick.

He looked ahead of him and behind him, judging the distance to the nearest exit. Instinct told him to flee back to the relative safety of the shaft. That was the quickest way out and the one with the fewest Formics in his path. And yet he found himself putting one hand over the other, continuing his climb toward the unknown, moving quickly now. Imala remained silent, and for that he was grateful. He wanted to be able hear any rustling or movement, however slight, around him. He passed Formics on all sides, their faces near his own, their vacant eyes staring outward. One of them could be awake and he wouldn’t even know it, he realized. He pushed the thought away, focusing on the next rung in front of him. And the next. And the next.