The Swarm (28 page)

Victor stepped back and lifted his visor, getting a better look. The quickship wasn't built as well as he would have liked, but it didn't need to be. The flight would be brief, and he could tolerate Magoosa's flaws and imperfections as long as the quickship flew straight and kept him and Imala warm and breathing.

“We're three hundred klicks out,” Imala said, as she drifted into the cargo bay and came to rest beside them. “How close are you to finishing the quickship?”

“A few more plates, and we'll be done, Captain,” Magoosa said.

Imala winced. “Please don't call me that.”

“You're the captain,” said Goos. “At least for now.”

Imala looked uneasy. “Just call me Imala, all right?”

Victor slid the welding wand into its tube sheath and turned to her. “Goos is right, Imala. As much as you may dislike the formality of it all, it's important for everyone to remember that you're in charge now. You're not Imala the crewmember. You're the captain. We all have to respect that office or we'll have problems. This is a military mission now.”

“Arjuna didn't make everyone call
him
captain,” said Imala.

“Because his position as such was never in question,” said Victor. “Nor did he answer to a higher military power.”

Imala shook her head in frustration. “It's ridiculous. I'm far less qualified than Arjuna is.”

“Going along with the IF is best for everyone,” said Victor. “They're ordering us to do what we were intending to do anyway, which allows them to feel like they're in charge. And we get handsomely compensated. Arjuna agrees. I think he's somewhat relieved by the situation. Having the IF give you the captainship puts him in a better position with the crew. If the IF were giving
him
orders, it would weaken Arjuna's standing, especially among the men. They would see him in a servile role instead of how they have always seen him, as their absolute leader. Now he doesn't have to lose any credibility since the orders all go to you. Arjuna maintains a strong position, and if anything goes wrong he takes none of the blame.”

“Great,” said Imala. “So I'll take all the blame.”

“Yes, but what do you care?” Victor said. “This isn't your crew. Or at least it won't be for very long. Arjuna will have command restored. That's why he refused when you insisted that he continue as captain.”

After the transmission from the Polemarch, Imala had pulled Arjuna aside and privately tried to convince him to keep his post, despite the IF's orders. Arjuna had refused.

Some of the Somali men didn't like it. The idea of taking orders from a woman unsettled the patriarchal tradition. They could tolerate Rena as a second in command, but never a woman as captain. A few private words from Arjuna had shut them up, and it hadn't been a problem since.

“The IF's in a difficult position,” Victor said. “They have to respond to the asteroid, but we're the only resource at their disposal. I'm sure they would prefer other circumstances as well.”

Imala looked as if she might protest further, but Edimar drifted into the cargo bay, looking concerned. “I think we may have a serious problem.”

She led them over to a worktable, where she anchored her tablet and extended its four antennas, creating a mini holofield. Magoosa came over to watch. Edimar used her stylus to pull up a holo of the solar system, as if viewed from deep space. She drew a small circle high above and to the left of the system. “Here's where the Formic fleet is. Roughly.” She drew a small circle at the fringes of the solar system closest to the Formic fleet. “And this is where Copernicus was located.”

Edimar drew a third circle in the holo, this one in the Kuiper Belt, far to the right of Copernicus, about an eighth of the way around the clock face of the ecliptic. “And this is 2030CT.”

She drew a line from the Formic fleet to the asteroid.

“Assuming the Formic miniship anchored to that asteroid came directly from the enemy fleet and went straight to the asteroid, this is the path it would have taken. Now, considering the distance traveled, it had to have made that flight before Copernicus was destroyed. So the Formics came in clear view of Copernicus, but the satellite never saw them. The IF acts all surprised by this, but they shouldn't be. Copernicus was really only good for spotting the big stuff. Hundreds of smaller objects get by it all the time. Maybe thousands. I know. I've tracked a lot of objects that have come into the system that Copernicus didn't even know existed. So ever since we first discovered the shell around that asteroid, I've been asking myself, Why 2030CT? Why would the Formics pick that rock over the billions of other objects out here?” She gestured back to the line she had drawn from the fleet to the asteroid. “Look at this distance. Why would a Formic ship traverse all that space, bypassing millions of other rocks to come to 2030CT? There's nothing exceptional about that asteroid at all. Boring size, boring orbit, and by all accounts, boring composition. Prospecting probes predict iron, nickel, and some precious metals. It's just an average hunk of rock and ice. There is nothing unique about it in the slightest.”

“So why do the Formics want it?” Imala asked.

“We're thinking about it wrong,” Edimar said. “Because we're only considering what we know. We're looking at a tree when we should be looking at the forest. Consider the Formic miniship at 2030CT. Think about its flight here. In our minds we see it setting out from the fleet all by its lonesome to cross billions of klicks of open space to reach this seemingly insignificant asteroid. And we're asking ourselves why would the Formics give preferential attention to a nothing asteroid in a nothing sector of space way off the beaten path?

“And in those terms, a Formic ship coming here would seem odd. But what if this sector of the Kuiper Belt wasn't getting preferential attention? What if
all
sectors were getting
equal
attention? Maybe the Formics aren't solely targeting this sector. Maybe they're targeting them all.”

Victor and Imala exchanged glances.

“Every mining ship has a spotter like me,” said Edimar. “And we spotters have our own forums on the nets. We all look at the starcharts and make notes of new objects found and possible collision threats. We also track the movement of known pirates and keep each other informed of anomalies. All of that observational data goes into an open database we maintain. But it is by no means an exhaustive database. Movement happens all around us, and if we're not looking for it, chances are we're not going to see or notice it. There's just too much open space to view and too few of us.

“So I asked every spotter I knew to look back through their records. We all use an Eye for tracking movement, but the Eye is just a computer. It only sees what we tell it to look for, and it only alerts us when it finds an object within the parameters we've defined. Most spotters set the parameters pretty narrowly. Otherwise, we'd be getting alerts constantly, mostly for objects that pose no threat. So we tell the Eye to only alert us of objects that come within half a million klicks of us, for example, and to ignore everything else. This means every spotter is operating in a little bubble. We're not looking at the immensity of space around us and processing everything. We're only looking at the space that affects us and our family. Our immediate vicinity.”

“Hence the database,” said Imala. “So you can share what you're seeing.”

“Right,” said Edimar. “But the database isn't a thorough record because it only includes the objects within our collective set parameters. So I told all the spotters to reach back six months into their records and to search for movement under new parameters. One, did their Eye detect any objects coming in from open space above the plane of the ecliptic? And two, could the trajectory of any of those objects intersect with an asteroid? Basically I wanted to know if other Formic ships had parked on rocks. By this morning, I had two dozen responses.”

She made a gesture in the holofield and two dozen red dots appeared in the solar system. Nearly all of them were on the side of the system nearest to the approaching Formics. Most were in the Kuiper Belt, but there were several in the Asteroid Belt as well.

“Now,” said Edimar, “these are only the responses I've received thus far. Most of them are from big clans with big ships that have strong Eyes and hefty laserline capabilities, meaning they can receive new posts and respond back fairly quickly. I have a few responses from small ships like us, but they're all in the Kuiper Belt and within eight months of us, so relatively close. I suspect I'll get more responses from smaller ships as time goes on. What's significant right now is how quickly the responses are coming in. A lot of ships have detected an anomaly over the past six months. And remember, these are only the anomalies that were detected. This obviously doesn't include objects that no one saw or that avoided detection.”

“So these dots,” said Imala, gesturing to the holofield, “while this may look like a lot, this might actually be woefully short of what's really out there.”

Edimar nodded. “I ran a statistical algorithm. I had to fill in some numbers because I don't have all the variables. It's guesswork at this point. But even my conservative estimates will surprise you. Let's assume that only thirty percent of these identified anomalies are Formic ships. I think that's way low considering that all of these objects were heading for asteroids, but for the sake of argument, let's leave it there. And let's also assume that the Formics sent ships to all sectors on this side of the system. Considering the spread of known anomalies here, I don't think that's an unsubstantiated conjecture. And let's also assume that the Formics sent the same number of ships to each sector.” She pointed to a cluster of asteroids in the Kuiper Belt. “Now, the highest number of anomalies was spotted here in this sector. Five. So we'll let that be the number of spotted anomalies per sector. Five. And let's also assume that the known anomalies represent only one-fifth of what's actually there. That's a big supposition I know, but considering that Copernicus didn't detect its own attacker, I don't think that number's inflated. In fact, it's probably higher. Any anomaly we spotted was probably a fortunate accident.”

Imala gestured to the holofield. “So how many Formic ships are we talking about?”

Edimar waved a hand in the holofield, and their side of the solar system filled with red dots. “Well over fifteen hundred.”

The others stared at the holo in disbelief, and for a moment no one spoke.

“It can't be that many,” Imala said finally.

“That's not the worst of it,” Edimar said. “I then went back again to the spotters and asked them to search one last time in their Eye records for any anomalies that had come in from deep space and intersected asteroids, but which had come not from above the ecliptic but from below it.”

“Below the ecliptic?” Imala said. “But the fleet is up here.”

“What was the result?” Victor asked.

“They gave me their numbers. I ran my algorithm. And this happened.” Edimar tapped the solar system and twice as many red dots appeared. “Roughly the same number of objects came from below as from above. We're looking at three thousand Formic ships sitting on asteroids in our solar system. Right now.”

There was a long silence.

“But this is guesswork,” said Magoosa. “You're just making up numbers.”

Victor had been so focused on the holo, and Magoosa had been so quiet off to the side, that Victor had forgotten the boy was there. “It's not guesswork, Goos. It's statistics. One or two objects coming into the system and colliding with an asteroid would be an amazing coincidence. But dozens of objects coming into the system and colliding with asteroids is an invasion.”

“But from below the ecliptic as well?” asked Imala. “You're saying their fleet is coming in from two directions?”

“Their fleet has already divided,” Edimar said. “It divided a long time ago. They're coming in from above and below. I'm one hundred percent certain of this. Because remember this line?” She pointed with her stylus at the line she had drawn from the fleet to the asteroid. “We assumed that the Formic ship at 2030CT came from up here where we've always imagined the fleet to be. But the Formic ship didn't come from that direction.” She erased the line. “I changed the parameters on our own Eye and did a search. The Formic ship right outside, the one parked on 2030CT, came from below the ecliptic.”

 

CHAPTER 13

Luna

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Armor

Victor,

Your armor design is strong. But keep in mind that Formics are tunnelers. They never built any aboveground habitats during the invasion. Instead, they dug a vast tunnel system beneath the landers. I think this is species-typical behavior. They're probably doing the same on asteroids.

If I'm right, we're in trouble. A defensive position like that is almost impossible to seize. The tunnels will be designed for their body shape and movements, not ours. They'll know the layout—including switchbacks, dead ends, and traps. We won't. They also see in the dark and share a hive mind. We don't.

Also, dust. If they're tunneling through the asteroid inside a contained habitat, they're generating a lot of dust that has nowhere to go. When we dig, our dust dissipates into space, but they've sealed themselves off from space. So there may be a toxic amount of dust in the air. Breathing may be difficult. Visibility will be poor. The dust may clog our equipment, or render it useless. Impossible conditions for combat. We need to know if that's the case. Going in without knowing the environment may be suicide.