The Swarm (14 page)

Lem zoomed in on the tip of the teardrop, where the shield generators were mounted in a ringed formation. The shield generators were the company's greatest find on the ship. They hadn't sustained any damage in the fight, and Lem's people had successfully reverse-engineered them. That tech alone could keep the company afloat. Every ship being built for the IF was being equipped with Juke proprietary shield generators, which were even stronger and more resilient than the original Formic design.

But the discovery that mattered most was the one that still eluded them. The hull. How do we penetrate the hull?

He wiped a hand through the ship and it disappeared.

“Show me the main lab.”

The column of blue light expanded, growing outward in the holoroom. The holofield enveloped Lem and continued to spread, stopping when it measured five meters square, with Lem at the center. Shapes composed of light flickered into existence around him. Workstations, computer terminals, various bots and lab equipment. The company had installed a holoprojector setup in the lab very much like the one here at company headquarters, albeit smaller. The holos were pixelated and monochromatic, and the time delay of the transmission made it hard to have a normal conversation. But it was good for Lem to have face time with those who were leading the work and living at the Rings.

Dr. Dublin, the chief engineer on the project, stood alone in the lab, waiting for the scheduled transmission to begin. He had not been Lem's first choice to lead the team studying the hulmat—short for “hull material,” the impenetrable alien alloy that covered and protected the ship—but Dublin was capable enough. Like everything else in the lab, he appeared as a life-sized construction of light, partially fuzzy because of the transmission degradation that always happened across great distances.

“Morning, Dublin,” Lem said. “What's the status?”

There was a five-second delay.

Dublin finally heard the question and winced apologetically. “Progress is slow, Lem. We've identified more weapons and chemicals that
don't
penetrate or damage the hulmat, but that's the hardly the report you want to hear.” He shrugged. “Nothing we do inflicts the slightest degree of damage. We can't cut it, burn it, dent it, scratch it. We can't even chip off a tiny piece of it to put under a microscope. It's mocking us at this point.”

“The gamma plasma burned through the hull,” said Lem. “That's how we won the war, by using their own weapon against them. We've established that the hull isn't indestructible.”

Five-second delay.

Dublin nodded. “True. But we don't understand the gamma plasma, either. We're not even sure what the substance was exactly. We've been calling it gamma plasma only because that's the name Victor gave it. Those are the closest words in our vocabulary for what it actually represented. But it wasn't gamma plasma technically. Nor do we know how the plasma was laserized at the nozzles before being fired at a target.”

The nozzles. There were thousands of them on the Formic ship just beneath the hull. Each connected to a system of pipes that carried the gamma plasma from the storage tanks. When the ship was ready to fire, plasma was pushed through the pipes to the nozzles, where the plasma underwent some laserization process that concentrated the plasma into a tight beam. The aperture on the hull would open, and the beam of plasma would shoot outward and incinerate anything in its path.

“I wish we hadn't released all the gamma plasma in the war,” Lem said. “We might've been able to use it as a weapon again.”

Dublin shook his head. “I don't think so. Even if there were gamma plasma still in the tanks, I wouldn't recommend harvesting it. It was far too radioactive. Way too unpredictable. It would cripple our electronics and communication systems. Even if we did have a way to transport it, which we don't, we wouldn't be able to unleash it without severely damaging our own ships. And besides, we have no way of directing it at a target. We don't know how the laserization process worked. It's technically not even laserization since we're not talking about light here. But again, ‘laserization,' ‘gamma plasma,' these are the words we have to work with. Point is, gamma plasma wouldn't have helped us. It's just as well it's all gone.”

“So we've learned nothing,” said Lem.

“We've learned plenty,” Dublin said, “but most of what we've learned hasn't taken us any closer to a military solution, which is what we need.”

“I'm sure I need not stress to you the time crunch we are under, Dublin. You heard about Copernicus. We need a solution as soon as possible. Because we'll need time after you identify this alloy to design a weapon to breach it. That weapon will need to be tested, refined, retested, refined again, mass-produced. And then we'll need to install said weapon on individual ships of the Fleet. That takes time. So you can see why I might feel a flutter of panic here. Our window of opportunity is nearly closed. Most companies would say it already has closed. But since the survival of the human race hangs in the balance, we're not going to give up just yet.”

“We're doing our best, Lem. Most of my team gets less than four hours of sleep. And those are good nights. I'm already pushing them hard.”

“I'm not criticizing, Dublin. You have an impossible task. I'm just sweating right now. Can I send you more people?”

“We could always use more people,” Dublin said. “But I would recommend a different approach, one you're not going to like. Don't hire more people and bring them up to the ship to work in secrecy for the company. Share what we know with the world. Publish everything we've got on the hull. Open our files. Pull back the curtain and ask the whole world to help. Offer a reward to anyone who figures out how to penetrate the hull. If someone finds the answer, it will be worth whatever reward we've promised.”

“If
you
can't figure it out, Dublin, I doubt the average citizen can either.”

“We're not interested in the average citizen,” Dublin said. “And the average citizen won't be interested in participating. This would be way over their heads. Opening the files would target the professionals in similar industries who have unique expertise. If you hire people, you're only going to bring on those who are willing and able to leave their jobs and families and fly out and live on a cramped space station. But if you open it to the world, you'll have thousands of pros or semi-pros working on this after hours. They'll likely even feel a sense of duty. People want to contribute to the war effort, Lem. This would allow them to do so.”

“If I did that,” Lem said, “I'd be sharing proprietary information with our competitors as well. I'd be giving Gungsu Industries the tools it needs to beat us at our own game. What if they used our intel to discover a way to breach the Formic ships and then sold that solution to the IF? We would have equipped our competitors with the very tools they needed to defeat us. That's not smart business.”

“At some point we have to decide what's more important, Lem. Business? Or survival? If we were to give out the intel, and Gungsu were to find a solution, then happy day, as far as I'm concerned. We have a solution. The human race might survive after all. Would giving that victory to Gungsu chip away at our market share? No question. But when this is over, if there is no human race, it won't make much difference what market share we hold.”

Lem considered for a moment. “I'll think about it.”

“Think fast, Lem. Like you said, our window of opportunity is shrinking here.”

Lem thanked him, gave a few encouraging words, and signed off.

The holofield winked out, and Lem stood alone in the white space once more. Three years and he was nowhere closer to finding the enemy's weakness.

I need a miracle, he thought. A show of progress, something to keep a spark of hope alive. The meeting with the executive team had yielded nothing, and Dublin had only made it worse.

He needed to see Benyawe, his chief engineer who ran his Experimental Defense Division. She hadn't attended the executive meeting. She hadn't been to a meeting in a while, now that he thought about it. He had told her that her work in the lab was more important than attending meetings, and she had taken that as an invitation to skip every one.

He took a subway car to her lab. The security sensors at the entrance scanned him, and the door opened to the common room, a space the size of a soccer pitch. Twenty glass pillars were positioned throughout the room. The pillars doubled as small conference rooms, and several groups of engineers were meeting inside them, fussing over holos or equations scribbled on the boards.

To Lem's left, behind giant hangar doors, was the workshop, where the structural engineers built, tested, and modified the specialty ships and experimental spacecrafts being pitched to the International Fleet. Most of those ships would probably never see the light of day. There were a hundred reasons to kill a project, and over the years the IF had used them all. But some of the tech would likely become a reality in some form or another.

Lem found Dr. Noloa Benyawe sitting alone in one of the pillar rooms in the back, her hands inside a holo of a Juke-designed warship. Lem tapped on the glass to get her attention, and she glanced up briefly and waved him to enter.

She was Nigerian and in her early sixties, with more gray hair than Lem remembered. Father had tried to lure her to the Hegemony more than once, but she had always come to Lem when the offers came in. Lem had done whatever was necessary to keep her. She was the one employee he could not afford to lose.

“You missed the executive meeting,” he said.

She didn't look up, but continued to tap at the holo with her stylus and make quick notes. “You told me I could skip those.”

“I told you the work you do here is more important than meetings. But I still occasionally like seeing your face.”

She looked up at him over the rim of her bifocals. He had never seen her wear them before.

“Bad day?” she asked.

“The usual,” Lem said. “We're losing executives, morale is in the toilet, and Dublin and his team have gotten nowhere with the hull.”

“We've long believed the hull was indestructible,” Benyawe said. “Three years of research is proving us right.”

“So you don't have any ideas?” Lem said.

“On how to penetrate it? No, Lem. I don't. The hull is Dublin's project. My mind hasn't been there. I've got my own problems to worry about.”

“Dublin suggests we release everything we know about the hull to the world and offer a reward to anyone who can help us crack it.”

“That's a good idea,” Benyawe said. “You'll get a lot of amateurs offering up terrible ideas based on bad hypotheses and half-baked science, but with a good filtering system in place, you might actually learn something helpful.”

“I was hoping you could simply solve it for me. I'm feeling rather despondent at the moment.”

She didn't look up at him. “I'm your chief engineer, Lem. Not your therapist. If you're looking for carefree happiness, I suggest you buy some beach property and get a mind wipe. You'll be blissfully content until the Formics come.”

“You're in a sour mood today,” he said.

“Ignore me. Problems with the XR-50. I'm grumpy.”

The XR-50 was one of the many Juke warships currently being constructed out in the Belt.

“What problems?” Lem asked.

“Don't worry. I'm taking care of it. We're still on schedule. The crews just sent a holo with questions. We're fine.”

“And
you're
handling it?” Lem asked. “Don't you have people to do that for you?”

She sat up and removed her bifocals. “Yes, I have people to do this for me, Lem. I'm reviewing what my teams have recommended. These are structural integrity issues. I sign off on all of those.”

“And that doesn't slow down the process? Having everything funneled through you, I mean. You're not micromanaging your teams are you?”

“The CEO of the company is hovering over my shoulder, questioning my operational tactics, and he's asking
me
if I micromanage.”

Lem grinned. “Point taken. Whatever you're doing, I'm sure it's right.” He leaned against the glass and folded his arms. “Gungsu Industries won the breach contract with their gravity disruptors.”

“So I heard,” said Benyawe. “A stupid decision. Mazer Rackham was one of the marines testing the tech at WAMRED. Did you know that?”

“Rackham? Really? No, I didn't know that. Who told you?”

“Victor.”

“Victor Delgado?”

“We e-mail,” Benyawe said. “Imala, too. They're engaged now, did you know that?”

“No, I didn't. I guess I don't get included on the buddies-from-the-past e-mail chain. Glad to hear everyone is peachy. Now I'm even more depressed.”

Benyawe grinned, glanced up, and then returned to the holo. “I wouldn't worry about Gungsu Industries,” she said.

“Well I am worried,” said Lem. “We presented six proposals to the IF, Benyawe. Six. All of them practical. Okay, some were more practical than others, but each of them showed promise.”

Benyawe wiped her hand through the holo and it disappeared. “First off, the six proposals we sent to the IF were turned down for good reasons, especially knowing now that the hulmat is stronger than we expected. The IF was right to say no. You know as well as I do that nothing we presented to them was a silver bullet.”

“The piece of craptech from Gungsu Industries isn't either,” said Lem. “And yet the Hegemony throws Gungsu a mountain of cash for it. You want to explain that to me?”

“You're not your father,” Benyawe said.

Lem blinked, taken aback. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means exactly that,” said Benyawe. “Your father, Ukko Jukes, the Hegemon of Earth, had a different management style when he ran this company. He was one man to the public and a very different man behind closed doors. To the public and the press he was a shrewd businessman who had flashes of brilliance and played hardball to win. Behind closed doors, visible to only a few, he was brutal and conniving and cut whole companies down at the knees. Ask your friend Norja Ramdakan. He's one of the few people who knows how your father really operates.”