The Swarm (19 page)

The chime the device made now meant it had received a message from an infrequent contact the device deemed of high importance. Lem picked up the device.

The message was from Victor Delgado, which surprised him. An e-mail. With images attached. The screen on Lem's wrist pad was too small to view them properly, so he turned on the skimmer's batteries and turned on the dash's holofield. A round shape appeared in the first image, floating in space. Lem didn't know what to make of it. A small, oddly shaped ball? Or a round sack of some sort. But no, if it was coming from Victor, it had to be Formic in design. But what? A mine? A tiny probe?

He read the e-mail and finally got a sense of the scale. It was not something that would fit in his hand, he realized. It was an asteroid.

He punched in the exit code.

The docking bots lifted the skimmer to the platform, and the platform rose to the surface. Lem lifted off and flew across the pockmarked and powdery lunar landscape, heading toward the city of Imbrium—a series of massive iron domes clustered close together on the sunlit side of the moon. His father would already be asleep, but Lem would wake him. Assuming I can get through security, Lem thought. Most of the city was underground now—protected from the constant bombardment of micrometeorites and solar radiation. The original city, Old Town, still stood above the surface under the domes. After the First Formic War tourism there had come to a grinding halt. It wasn't until Father had established the headquarters of the Hegemony in Old Town that the neighborhood had found new life. Instead of tourists, however, sidewalks now filled with ambassadors, lobbyists, and defense contractors, the suits that made the world, IF, and Hegemony go 'round.

Lem flew up to the gate of North Dome and landed on the transitional pad. The bots maneuvered his skimmer through the airlock and into the oxygenated interior of the dome. Once through, Lem took off again, flying over Old Town. The city's artificial lights were turned off, and most of the borough was asleep.

The Hegemon of Earth had chosen a modest penthouse apartment for his private residence. Ukko Jukes might be one of the wealthiest men on Earth, but he understood that lavish living tended to annoy his constituency. Not that Father had to worry about voters. He had been appointed by the United Nations and ratified by votes from general assemblies throughout Earth.

A voice came over the speaker. “Skimmer 7002, you are approaching restricted airspace. Identify.”

Lem rolled his eyes. “It's Lem. I'm here to see my father. You have my skimmer in your database. You know it's me.” He decelerated and hovered in place a distance from the docking platform above Father's apartment.

“You know the policy, Mr. Jukes. I can't allow you to land without a signed entry pass.”

“Inform my father that I have critical information regarding the Formics.”

“I apologize, Mr. Jukes. The Hegemon is not taking visitors at the moment. He has already retired for the evening.”

“Soldier, you're a smart individual. You would not be manning such an important post otherwise. So I'm sure I need say this only once: I have irrefutable evidence that the Formics have already infiltrated our solar system right under our noses and may be plotting an attack as we speak. If you would like to be the reason why this information is delayed to the Hegemon, Polemarch, and Strategos, then by all means, cling to your insignificant flight-control rule book. Otherwise, wake my father and let me land.”

There was a long pause on the radio. “One moment, please.”

Lem waited for five minutes before the uncertain voice of the soldier returned. “The Hegemon will see you, Mr. Jukes. You are clear to land.”

Lem rolled his eyes again. The Hegemon will see you. Is that what you make them say, Father? As if you're some king or sultan who has granted me the great privilege of basking in your royal presence?

Lem landed the skimmer and moon-hopped up to the security entrance. The scanner lights wiped across his body, and the soldier standing guard waved him through. Father was waiting in the living room, completely dressed and very much awake.

“You're up late,” Lem said, engaging his boot magnets and walking across the carpeted floor. “I guess your security detail was misinformed. You look like death, Father.” It had been months since Lem had seen him last, and the months had not been kind. Father looked weary, exhausted even. His hair seemed grayer. He had lost weight. He was still Father, however. Cool, impatient, and all business.

“What do you have?” Father said.

Lem held up his wrist pad. “Any of these walls projection-ready?”

Father gestured to the wall to Lem's left.

Lem pointed his wrist pad, entered the necessary commands, and the first image appeared large on the wall. The image showed the cocoon encircling the asteroid, with the tail end of the Formic ship protruding from one side.

Father stepped close and studied it for a long moment. “Where is this?” he finally asked.

“Kuiper Belt. Asteroid 2030CT. Quite a distance from where Copernicus was located, which was my first question. Middle of nowhere, really. Far from any military targets. There's no reason for it to be out there.”

“There is a reason,” Father said. “It doesn't want to be noticed. What's this material surrounding it?”

“No idea. But here, look at this second image. You can see the Formic ship anchored to the rock on the other side. It's tiny. No bigger than the craft that took out Copernicus. Which raises the question: Where did the Formics get the material to cover an entire asteroid? They couldn't have brought it with them. The ship doesn't have the cargo space. That rock has a diameter of more than a kilometer at its widest point. I haven't done the math, but I'm roughly guessing it would require over a million square meters of material to cover it. No, actually more than that because the canopy hovers away from the surface, creating a ceiling for the habitat. So that's probably twenty to thirty percent additional surface area. And the material has to be thick enough to withstand a little abuse. Micrometeorites bombarding it occasionally and whatnot. So we're talking about an incredible amount of material. Then there's this filament skeletal structure holding it all together and giving it shape. No way could the Formics have brought that with them either. They must have harvested the materials from the rock. There's no other explanation.”

“Any idea how long it's been there?”

Lem shrugged. “A ship that small would have a minimal crew. Maybe half a dozen Formics at the most. And yet they built this entire canopy structure after harvesting materials. That's a lot of digging and processing and shaping and building for a group of workers that small. I'm guessing it would have taken years.”

“Unless there were more Formics there initially who helped build it and who have since left, leaving only this skeleton crew behind.”

“Possibly,” said Lem. “But I'm guessing any movement of materials or troops would have been done with tiny ships like this one. Anything bigger and there's a good chance we would have seen it.”

“Where did you get these images?” Father asked. “A Juke miner?”

“From Victor Delgado's crew, if you can believe it. Which includes Imala, Edimar, and others. Victor thinks the cocoon is a recent construction, but I don't see how.”

“Are these the only images you have?”

Lem nodded.

“I'll send this to the IF immediately. They'll decide how to address it. You were right to bring it to me.”

It was a dismissal.

“So that's it?” Lem asked.

“What do you want?” Father asked. “Formal recognition? A medal?”

“How about, ‘Lem, how are you? How goes the company I gave you? How have you been getting along ever since I, your father, started stealing so many of your employees?'”

Father sighed. “Don't be petulant, Lem. It's unbecoming of a CEO.”

“Don't you think it's a conflict of interest, Father? The Hegemony, the very organization that awards defense contracts, forms its own defense company? I'm no lawyer, but I think that may bite you in the butt someday.”

“I have not formed a company, Lem. I have hired employees to help develop projects too sensitive for the open market.”

“Too sensitive? I have whole departments of people with the highest level of clearance, Father. This has never been an issue before.”

“Perhaps because what we're developing has never been this sensitive before. I know that must rattle your curiosity to the core, Lem, but you'll just have to trust me.”

“What is it? A weapon? It can't be something to breach the Formic hulls. You gave that contract to Gungsu. Which was a blunder, by the way. Their little gravity disruptor is a joke, and you know it, Father.” A thought struck him. “Unless you
are
developing a hull-breach weapon, but by not awarding the contract to somebody, you would have raised suspicion and showed your hand, so you awarded the contract to Gungsu as cover.”

Though as soon as Lem had said it aloud, he realized how ridiculous the idea sounded.

Father laughed quietly. “Really, Lem. Do you honestly think I would give billions of credits to Gungsu simply to throw people off my trail? They got the contract because they presented the best product. Personally I think it's a relatively weak option considering the strength of the hull, but it was the best we saw—certainly better than anything your team developed.”

“We have the solution now,” Lem said. “Benyawe showed it to me only moments ago. It doesn't breach the hull. It opens the existing access points. Why create a new hole when there are already doors to get inside?”

Father hesitated. “Interesting. A nonviolent approach. How very unmilitarylike. The Strategos will hate it.”

“It's not his decision, Father. It's the Hegemony's. It's yours.”

“This isn't a business meeting, Lem. It's an intelligence meeting. Didn't they teach you that in business school: Never sell to someone who isn't in the mood to buy.”

To Lem's surprise, an IF officer in full uniform opened a door at the back of the room and stepped out of Father's study. He was quick to close the door behind him, as if concealing something inside, and looked somewhat embarrassed. “Excuse me, Mr. Jukes. I hate to interrupt, but they're waiting.”

Father glanced at Lem uneasily and then turned to the officer. “I'll be there in a moment. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

The lieutenant nodded and then disappeared back inside the study.

Who did Father have waiting in his study? Lem wondered. And why was an IF officer on hand? And in the middle of the night, no less. Whoever it was clearly had a great deal of authority to have the nerve to show impatience for the Hegemon of Earth. And if an IF officer was the liaison, it had to be someone within the IF. The lieutenant had been assigned to Father. Otherwise, if Father were meeting with anyone else, it would be a Hegemony employee on hand running the show, one of Father's people.

Yet the lieutenant had said “they” were waiting. So more than one. At least two. People of authority. People to whom this lieutenant reported.

Lem understood at once. There wasn't anyone in Father's study, not physically anyway, other than the lieutenant perhaps. Father was in direct communication with the Strategos and the Polemarch. But how was that possible? Both men were in the Asteroid Belt. Any conversation with them would take hours. The bucket brigade system that existed for communication within the Fleet was painfully slow. It consisted of a series of relay stations set up in a line stretching from Luna to the end of the Kuiper Belt. New transmissions would be sent up and down the chain, from one station to the next until the transmission reached its destination. Having a two-way conversation could take days. And yet whoever was waiting for Father in the study had grown impatient, as if they expected the dialogue to be immediate, as if they were together in the same room, facing one another.

“You've developed faster-than-light communication,” Lem said. “That's your secret project, isn't it? That's what you've been developing. A way to communicate across vast distances instantaneously. Just like the Formics do.”

“That would be convenient, wouldn't it?” Father said. “But no.”

“You're a terrible liar, Father. The Polemarch and the Strategos are waiting for you in that room. That's why you're still up and dressed. You're coinciding with their wake schedule. That lieutenant is some sort of communications officer. What does he do, operate the equipment? Protect it? How is this even possible?”

“Don't press this matter, Lem. And stop speculating. If such tech existed, which it doesn't, it would not be something I would discuss with you.”

“I don't know why I didn't see it earlier,” Lem said. “Of course this would be a military priority. How can we defeat an enemy if their communication system is so much faster and better than our own? They would have the advantage in every battle. But if
we
had the tech as well, our best commanders could be engaged in any fight anywhere at any moment.” Lem laughed. “We sold you on the bucket brigade system. Juke built it and sold it to the Hegemony, and all the while you were developing your own, better system. And you laughed at my suggestion of throwing people off your trail.”

“Leave this alone, Lem. You have a job to do, and I have mine.”

“The Formics wiped out our communications in the last war with the gamma plasma. They crippled nearly every one of our satellites, leaving us blind and disconnected and disorganized. So of course we would need an indestructible communications grid. One apparently that doesn't use satellites at all. How does it work, Father? And how can I get one?”

“You build weapons and ships, Lem. You don't need instant communication for that. But if you go around spreading rumors of faster-than-light communication I will have you arrested and jailed, if not shot.”