Earth Afire (The First Formic War) (7 page)

There was a chime, and the female voice of the computer announced, “Chief Officer Patrick Chubs.”

Benyawe smirked. “Shouldn’t that be
Captain
Chubs?”

Lem ignored her. “Enter,” he said.

The door slid open, and Chubs floated into the room. He looked tired and not at all surprised to see Benyawe. “So how do you want to do this exactly?” he asked Lem.

“Do what?” Lem asked.

“Finish this fiasco. We’ve got to see it through. I’ll refuse the captainship and promise never to interfere with your orders again. How do you want to do it? You want me to make an announcement, write a mail message, or do we need to have another scene in front of the crew? Frankly whatever the plan is, I’d like to get it over with.”

Lem felt a pang of guilt then. Benyawe was right. Chubs
had
been dutiful. He didn’t deserve to be vilified. The man was only doing the job Father had hired him to do. Lem unzipped himself from the hammock and floated over to him. “You will always have a place in this company, Chubs. A good place. Your pick of it. I’ll see to that. And should you refuse the captainship and insist that I take it, I would keep you as my chief officer. I’d be foolish not to. You’re the most loyal and capable man on this ship.”

“Is that safe?” asked Benyawe. “A few hours ago, you had the crew ready to string him up.”

“He’d be working with the officers,” said Lem. “They’re completely loyal to Chubs.”

“I wouldn’t say completely,” said Chubs. “Not anymore.”

Again, a twinge of guilt pecked at Lem’s conscience. He hadn’t ruined Chubs per se, but he had severely damaged him, no question. Whatever friendship might have once existed between them was gone now. Lem could see that. There would forever be an awkward formality between them now.

“I’m sorry you felt the memorial service was a scene,” said Lem. “And if you’re choosing to refuse the captainship, you must understand that I cannot interfere with that decision in any way. I can’t tell you how to proceed. That would imply I orchestrated all this, which of course is not true. This must be your own decision. How and when you do it is entirely up to you.”

It was unlikely that Chubs was recording their conversation in an effort to catch Lem in some confession, but it was better to be safe than sorry. They could never have any words between them that implied Lem had forced Chubs’s hand.

Chubs nodded. He understood. Then he excused himself.

When he was gone Benyawe said, “When we return to Luna, I hope we hold another memorial service. One with a little more heart. The dead deserve that.”

She launched off the floor and left without another word.

The holo from Chubs came a half hour later, sent out to all members of the crew. In it, he thanked Lem for thinking him worthy of so great an office, but he couldn’t possibly accept. Nor would he interfere with Lem’s commands. He agreed completely with Lem. Earth came first. If Ukko Jukes fired him for his insubordination, so be it. It was a small price to pay.

It was expertly done. Professional, sincere, and quite touching. Lem even found his eyes misting over, though his relief might have added to the emotion.

He waited an hour before recording his own holo. He humbly thanked Chubs for his selflessness and insisted that Chubs continue as his chief officer. It was a decent take, but he knew he could do better. Might as well get it right before sending it out. On the seventh take he had it. Every pause and breath and word was exactly as it needed to be. He sent it, waited another hour, then returned to the helm.

Chubs was waiting for him at the system chart. “What’s your first unhindered command as captain?”

“Take us closer to the Formics’ trajectory,” said Lem. “Our scanners can’t read much out here. Let’s learn what we can and get back to Luna as soon as possible.”

“You’re the boss,” said Chubs.

Yes, thought Lem. For the first time in two years, I am.

CHAPTER 4

Ukko

The track car sped east through the city of Imbrium, passing dormitories and government buildings and small industrial complexes. Victor sat by the window watching everything zip by, still amazed at the size and immensity of the city. “How do you fill all these domes and connector tunnels with oxygen?” he asked. “Where do you find that much air?”

Yanyu was still sitting opposite him, escorting Victor and Imala to the Juke observatory. “Lunar oxygen mostly comes from excavation,” she said. “Everything you see is what we call the Old City. When people first came to Luna, they built the settlement on the surface. That required them to first build all these airtight domes to contain the oxygen and to protect the settlers from a constant bombardment of space particles. It was very expensive. These days all new construction takes place underground. That’s where most people live now, as a matter of fact.”

“
You
live aboveground,” said Victor.

“Only because I’m on a budget and can’t afford to live in the tunnels,” said Yanyu. “But if I had the money I would. It’s safer. You don’t have to worry about bombardments or collision threats. And since there’s no tectonic activity on the Moon, you don’t have to worry about earthquakes either. Plus it’s much quieter. The real benefit, though, is all the raw materials we extract from the excavated rock. Metals for construction of course, but also oxygen.”

Victor looked surprised. “Oxygen from rocks? Is that possible?”

“You’re breathing it,” said Imala.

Victor sat back and shook his head. “Do you have any idea how useful that tech would be out in the Kuiper Belt? All of our O
₂
came from mining ice. If we didn’t find ice, we were
muerto
. Dead. A lot of families were lost that way.”

“It’s much easier to extract oxygen from ice,” said Imala. “That doesn’t take a lot of equipment. Pulling oxygen and nitrogen from rock, on the other hand, takes massive processing facilities. We don’t build ships big enough to carry that tech out to the Deep. Someday perhaps, but not in our lifetime.”

“What about fuel and energy for the tunnels?” asked Victor. “If the heat of the sun doesn’t reach them, they must be freezing.”

“All power on the moon is electric,” said Imala. “It all comes from high-efficiency batteries powered by solar energy. There are solar arrays all over the surface, with the biggest ones in the equatorial area where the collectors lie flat on the ground. There are big ones at the poles, too, where rotating collectors on towers face the sun twenty-four/seven. Believe me, as long as the sun shines, power and heat aren’t an issue.”

Victor nodded, though he didn’t share Imala’s confidence. Batteries were unreliable. They failed all the time on El Cavador. “So this observatory we’re going to, since it has telescopes, I’m assuming it’s aboveground?”

“Oh no,” said Yanyu. “It’s below the surface. Almost all of the Juke facilities are. In fact, most of the tunnels outside the city belong to Juke Limited, although few people know how vast the company’s tunnels really are. Mr. Jukes has secret R&D efforts in almost every industry, and yet few of those operations or departments appear on any tunnel maps. If I had to guess, I’d say the company’s tunnel system is much bigger than the city itself.”

“But if the observatory is underground, where are the scopes?” asked Victor.

“Far from here,” said Yanyu, “positioned at various points around Luna, away from any light pollution. We tell them where to look, then we process all the images and data in our observation room. Traditional observatories like those on Earth don’t exist on Luna. Up here they’re all cubicles and office space. Not very interesting, I’m afraid.”

The track car dipped suddenly into a tunnel entrance, and for a moment they found themselves in total darkness until the vehicle’s interior lights turned on.

They maintained their speed for several minutes until the car took a fork in the track and began to decelerate. It took a series of turns and then pulled into a docking slot and stopped. Air tubes extended from the wall and encircled the vehicle. Then a chime sounded the all-clear, and the doors slid open. Victor, Imala, and Yanyu stepped out onto the docking platform. Yanyu then led them through a labyrinth of corridors and a series of locked doors. Victor was lost almost immediately.

At each door, a cubical holofield hovered by the doorjamb. Yanyu extended her hand into the holofield and did a series of wrist twists and finger movements that unlocked the door. At first Victor thought the movements were random, but then one of the doors buzzed in the negative and Yanyu had to retract her hand, reinsert it into the field, and begin the dance again. Finally they reached a simple, metal door adorned with the Juke Limited logo and the words:

A
STRONOMICAL
O
BSERVATORY

Yanyu led them into a low-lit observation room with a domed ceiling. Images of star clusters and nebulae and astronomical data were projected onto the ceiling, dissolving in and out like a screensaver. A dozen desks were scattered around the room with lamps and computer terminals and personal items. In the center of the room was a conference table, where a small crowd of researchers stood waiting. Yanyu stopped and gestured to the bearded man near the front. “Victor, Imala, I’d like you to meet Dr. Richard Prescott, the director of the observatory and our lead astrophysicist.”

Prescott stepped forward and shook Imala’s hand. He was younger than Victor had expected, midthirties maybe, with a mop of brown hair and casual street clothes. “Ms. Bootstamp. A privilege. Welcome. And Mr. Delgado, good to have you, as well. I hope you had no problems getting here.”

“I had to sneak Victor out of the recovery hospital where he was being held,” said Imala. “Which broke a few laws and makes both of us fugitives. Other than that, no problems.”

Prescott seem unfazed by this. He put his hands in his pockets and smiled warmly. “Well, you’re safe here.”

Imala cut to the chase. “We need to get an audience with Ukko Jukes. With his backing, we can make a legitimate warning to Earth. Can you make that happen?”

“Probably,” said Prescott. “But first things first.” He gestured to the conference table. “Won’t you sit down?”

“You don’t believe us, do you?” said Victor.

Prescott smiled. “We wouldn’t have brought you here if we didn’t think you might be telling the truth, Victor. We all believe you to some extent. But before any of us act, we want to be absolutely certain. There are people outside this room who will need a lot more convincing than us. If we work together, we might be able to win them over.” He gestured again to the table, and this time Victor and Imala each took a seat.

Prescott sat at the head of the table. “You have to realize, people in our field are even more skeptical of claims of extraterrestrial life than normal people. We have to be. Scientists are bred to doubt and question everything. Plus the prevailing belief has always been that we would
hear
extraterrestrial life before we saw it. We’d pick up their transmissions long before they showed up on our scopes. But so far no one in the science community has heard anything.”

“You
can’t
hear anything,” said Imala. “The interference is crippling communications.”

“True,” said Prescott. “But that makes the whole claim of extraterrestrial life all the more difficult to believe. Impaired communications strike a lot of people as enormously convenient to a charlatan trying to justify the sky’s silence.”

“I’m not a charlatan,” said Victor.

“I’m not saying you are,” said Prescott. “I’m telling you what the chatter is out there. Nobody wants to back you because it’s a claim they can’t independently validate. So they keep quiet and hope someone else will take the risk. No one wants to look like a fool supporting what might be the biggest hoax of the century.”

“The biggest
discovery
of the century,” Victor corrected. “Not to mention the biggest threat to our species.”

Prescott settled back in his chair. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Yanyu has shown us a few observations she’s made. We’ve all seen the vids you and Imala uploaded. We’ve combed through the evidence. We’ve argued about it for hours. Now we want to hear it straight from you. If we believe you, we’ll make things happen. The floor is yours, Victor. Convince us.”

Victor glanced at Imala, who gave him an encouraging nod. Then he looked at the faces of the people gathered around the table, all of them older than him and well educated and experts in their field. Most of their expressions were unreadable, but a few had a hard time hiding their skepticism.

He cleared his throat and began to speak.

For the first hour no one said a word. Then Yanyu would occasionally speak up, throwing in astronomical data that seemed to validate Victor’s story.

When he finished, the questions came fast. How is this ship causing the interference? Where is the ship now? Has anyone attempted to communicate with it, not with radio but by other means? Infrared light perhaps? What are the ship’s intentions?

“I don’t know,” Victor said for the tenth time. “I don’t know where the ship is or what damage it’s caused or what lives it’s taken. I wish I did know. I wish I had answers. I wish I knew my family was safe.”

The mention of his family pricked some well of emotion inside him, and for a moment, he thought he might lose his composure. He swallowed, took a breath, and buried the emotion. “I don’t have the answers. I’m not a navigator. I know basic fight mechanics and trajectory mapping, but that wasn’t my job on my ship. I’m a mechanic. I build things, fix things. My family sent me because I was young and healthy. I had the best chance of withstanding the physical beating the trip would inflict on my body.

“Plus I could repair the quickship if anything went wrong. No one on board had that level of mechanical expertise. It had to be me. I know you’d rather have someone who understands science as much as you do, but I’m not that person. I’m the messenger.” He paused and looked at each of the researchers in turn. “The ship is real and it’s coming. A few days, a few months, I don’t know. But it’s coming. If we could talk to the ships in the Belt, we’d have thousands of people validating my claim. But since we don’t, I recognize that it makes my story all the less believable. But ask yourself, do I look like I could orchestrate all this evidence? Do I seem like the kind of person who would invent all this for laughs? Do I seem like someone who could create vids and mountains of evidence that could withstand this level of scrutiny? I’m a free miner. We’re scraping by out there, flying by the seat of our pants, and sometimes barely putting food in front of us. I’m not looking for money. I have nothing to gain here but saving lives. If you think you can shoot holes in my story, give it your best shot. But I promise you you’ll fail. Every word I’ve said is true.”