Earth unavare (the first formic war) Page 5

  “He told me you were going to be the captain of the ship,” said Dublin. “He called you ‘most capable.’”

  A compliment from Father? A sign of the apocalypse. Of course Father was probably just trying to put Dublin at ease about the crew.

  “Did he advise you to take any precautions on my account?” asked Lem. “Did he in any way suggest that you were to take care of me? Look out for me? Keep an eye on me?”

  Dublin looked confused. “Your father cares for your well-being, Mr. Jukes. You can’t fault him for that.”

  “A yes or no, Dr. Dublin. Did he did give you special instructions regarding me?”

  Dublin was taken aback. He fumbled, searching for the right words, trying to remember. “He said I was to make sure nothing happened to you.”

  So there it was. Undercut by Father again. Didn’t Father realize that this would add another layer of anxiety to Dublin’s decisions? Whether Dublin’s conscious mind realized it or not, it dangled the threat of “something happening to Lem” every time Dublin went to fire the glaser. Of course he would be cautious. Everything he did carried the possibility of inciting the fury and disappointment of the CEO. But more importantly: Didn’t Father realize that instructions like this made Lem seem like a child? “Make sure nothing happens to my boy, Dr. Dublin.” How could Dublin fully respect Lem as the captain of the ship if Dublin had been led to believe that Lem needed a caretaker, that he needed watching? It suggested that Lem couldn’t take care of himself. And yes, Father knew what he was doing. He knew how this would diminish Lem in Dublin’s eyes. That was how Father worked. He makes himself seem like a doting, loving parent with concern only for his son, and yet what he was really doing was chipping away at whatever confidence people had placed in Lem. It was infuriating because no one else saw it. No one knew Father like Lem did. No doubt if Lem revealed his frustration to Dublin or Benyawe, they would tell him he was overreacting and that his father had his best interests in mind. Hell, Father probably believed it himself. But Lem knew better. You’re eight billion klicks away, Father, and you’re still pulling the strings.

  Lem shook his head. And here I allowed myself to believe just for a few moments that Father might have love as his only motivation.

  Dublin had to go. Or at least be stripped of his decision-making powers. Not his fault, but Lem needed to send a clear message to Father: I don’t need a caregiver.

  “I’m promoting Dr. Benyawe,” said Lem. “She’ll be our new director of Special Operations. You will maintain your position as chief engineer, but you will report to her. She will decide whether we proceed with tests or not. Please don’t think of this as a demotion, Dr. Dublin. Your service has been impeccable. But our delays force me to make some change. The Board will expect it.”

  Dublin no doubt understood that he was being stripped of ultimate decision-making authority, but he also was prudent enough to understand that he was a temporary casualty of a power struggle between father and son. Either that or he was even more docile than Lem had supposed. Whatever the reason, he offered no argument.

  Lem next found Benyawe in the lab, took her aside, and told her of her promotion. She was surprised. “Director of Special Operations?” she said. “I’m not familiar with that title.”

  “I just made it up,” said Lem.

  “You’re promoting me because I told you I would have moved forward with the test,” said Benyawe. “But how do you know that my decision to conduct a test when another engineer chooses to refrain from doing so is not brazen recklessness? Dr. Dublin’s caution could very well have saved our lives for all we know. It is a very powerful machine.”

  “I’ve read your papers, Dr. Benyawe, or at least all of those that have been made available internally, which is no small number. Were you an academic and allowed to make your findings public, I suspect you would be one of the most revered researchers in your field.”

  “Dr. Dublin is equally respected, Lem.”

  “Are you turning down the promotion?”

  “Not at all. I’m honored. I just want to make sure you understand my qualifications don’t exceed his.”

  “You take risks when he doesn’t.” And more importantly, your actions haven’t been influenced by Father. “Now, prove to me I’ve made the right decision.”

  The test was over as soon as it began. One second the asteroid was moving through space. The next second it tore itself to smithereens. The largest surviving rock fragment spun away from the blast toward the ship, but the collision-avoidance system sprang into action and blasted the rock fragment to dust long before it reached the ship.

  Lem and Benyawe were watching from the observation room. Lem lowered the scope glasses. “Well that was rather theatrical. Would we call that a success, Dr. Benyawe?”

  Benyawe was already tapping on her data pad, calling up the video of the asteroid implosion and watching the footage again at a slower speed. “We clearly don’t yet know how to control the glaser to the degree we would like,” said Benyawe. “The gravity field was obviously too wide and too powerful. We still have adjustments to make.” She looked at Lem. “Dublin’s hesitations were not without reason, Lem. The glaser creates a field of centrifugal gravity, a field where gravity stops holding mass together because it all aligns with the glaser. It creates a field through the continuity of mass. The field spreads with the explosion of the mass, then it keeps destroying until the mass is so dispersed that it no longer works as a unit of mass. The question we have to answer is, How far does the field persist in relation to the mass? Do bigger asteroids generate a wider field? And would that field stretch far enough to reach the ship? We better hope not, because if it did, the same thing that happened to that pebble would happen to us.”

  “The field seemed contained to me,” said Lem.

  “On a rock this size, yes,” said Benyawe. “But what about a bigger mass? That’s why we need to continue testing, choosing targets that are incrementally larger than the previous test subjects.”

  Lem didn’t want to wait. He wanted to send a very clear message to Father now. One that showed Father how free and clear Lem was from Father’s manipulations. If Father thought he could control Lem with the pebbles, then Lem would go to the opposite extreme. Right to the big leagues.

  “In an ideal world,” Lem said, “yes, we would inch our way up to bigger asteroids. But this test just proved that Dublin was unnecessarily cautious. I say we move directly to a rock a hundred times the size of that pebble.”

  “Your Father wouldn’t agree with that.”

  Which is precisely why we’re going to do it, Lem wanted to say but didn’t. “My father’s assignment to me was to prove that the glaser could be a safe and effective mining tool. He wants to operationalize this as soon as possible. Juke ships will be mining big rocks, not pebbles.”

  Benyawe shrugged. “As long as you know the risks.”

  “You’ve been very clear. I’ll find our next target while you and Dublin prepare a brief yet thorough report for my father and the Board. Text only. Send the video in a subsequent message. I want them to receive the good news as soon as possible.” Lem knew that laserline messages with a lot of memory moved slowly through the company’s data receivers. If he wanted to get a message to Father fast, a brief text message was best.

  Lem climbed into the push tube, adjusted his vambraces, and gave the command for the magnets to propel him to the helm. Of all the rooms on Makarhu, the helm had been the most difficult for Lem to get used to. Shaped like a cylinder, with the flight crew positioned all along the inner circular wall, the helm could be a little dizzying. As you entered the room at one end, there were crewmen all around you-above, below, left and right, all standing at their workstations with their feet held securely to the wall with greaves. In the center of the room was a spherical system chart, a large hologram surrounded by projectors. A small hologram of the ship was at the sphere’s center, and as the ship moved, so did the celestial objects in space around it, keepi
ng the holo of the ship forever in the center. Lem launched himself to the system chart and came to rest beside his chief officer, an American named Chubs.

  “Nice shooting,” said Chubs. “We can officially erase that pebble from the system chart.”

  “We need a new target,” said Lem. “A hundred times the size of that pebble. Preferably close and rich in minerals.”

  Chubs took his stylus from the front pocket of his body suit. “That’s easy.” He selected an asteroid on the system chart down near the ship and enlarged it so it filled the chart. “It’s called 2002GJ166. It’s not Asteroid Belt big, but it’s big for out here.”

  “How far away?” asked Lem.

  “Four days,” said Chubs.

  Considering that this was the Kuiper Belt and that most big objects were usually months apart from each other, that was ridiculously close. “Sounds perfect,” said Lem.

  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 Concepcion 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.