Victor

Victor didn’t go to the airlock to see Alejandra leave the family forever, to marry into the Italian clan. He didn’t trust himself to say good-bye to his best friend, not without revealing how close he had come to disgracing the family by falling in love with someone in his own asteroid-mining ship.

The Italians were a four-ship operation, and their lead ship, a behemoth of a digger named Vesuvio, had been attached to El Cavador for a week, as the families traded goods and information. Victor liked the Italians. The men sang; the women laughed often; and the food was like nothing he had ever eaten, with colorful spices and creamy sauces and oddly shaped pasta noodles. Victor’s own invention, an HVAC booster that could increase the central heating temperature on the Italians’ ships by as much as eleven degrees, had been an immediate hit with the Italians. “Now we will all wear one sweater instead of three!” one of the Italian miners had said, to huge laughter and thunderous applause. The Italians had been so smitten with Victor’s booster, in fact, that it had brought in more trade goods and prestige than anything else the family had offered. So when Concepcion called Victor in to talk to him just before the Italians decoupled, he assumed she was going to commend him.

“Close the door, Victor,” said Concepcion.

Victor did so.

The captain’s office was a small space adjacent to the helm. Concepcion rarely closed herself in here, preferring instead to be out with the crew, matching or surpassing them in the amount of labor they put in each day. She was in her early seventies, but she had the energy and command of someone half her age.

“Alejandra is going with the Italians, Victor.”

Victor blinked, sure that he had misheard.

“She’s leaving from the airlock in ten minutes. We debated whether it was wise to even tell you beforehand and allow you two to say good-bye to each other, thinking perhaps that it might be easier for you to find out afterward. But I don’t think I could ever forgive myself for that, and I doubt you’d forgive me either.”

Victor’s first thought was that Concepcion was telling him this because Alejandra, whom he called Janda for short, was his dearest friend. They were close. He would obviously be devastated by her departure. But a half second later he understood what was really happening. Janda was sixteen, two years too young to marry. The Italians couldn’t be zogging her. The family was sending her away. And the captain of the ship was telling Victor in private mere minutes before it happened. They were accusing him. They were sending her off because of him.

“But we haven’t done anything wrong,” said Victor.

“You two are second cousins, Victor. We would never be able to trade with the other families if we suddenly developed a reputation for dogging.”

Dogging, from “endogamy”: marrying inside the clan, inbreeding. The word was like a slap. “Dogging? But I would never in a million years marry Alejandra. How could you even suggest that we would do such a thing?” It was vile to even think it; to the belter families, it was on the wrong side of the incest taboo.

Concepcion said, “You and Alejandra have been the closest of friends since your nursery years, Victor. Inseparable. I’ve watched you. We’ve all watched you. In large gatherings, you always seek each other out. You talk to each other constantly. Sometimes you don’t even need to talk. It’s as if you know precisely what the other is thinking and you need share only a passing glance between you to communicate it all.”

“She’s my friend. You’re going to exile her because we communicate well with each other?”

“Your friendship isn’t unique, Victor. I know of several dozen such friendships on this ship. And they are all between a husband and his wife.”

“You’re sending Alejandra away on the basis that she and I have a romantic relationship. When we don’t.”

“It is an innocent relationship, Victor. Everyone knows that.”

“‘Everyone’? Who do you mean exactly? Has there been a Family Meeting about us?”

“Only a Council. I would never make this decision on my own, Victor.”

Not much of a relief. The Council consisted of all the adults over forty. “So my parents agree to this?”

“And Alejandra’s parents as well. This was a difficult decision for all of us, Victor. But it was unanimous.”

Victor pictured the scene: All of the adults gathered together, aunts and uncles and grandparents, people he knew and loved and respected, people whose opinion he valued, people who had always looked upon him fondly and whose respect he had always hoped to maintain. All of them had sat together and discussed him and Janda, discussed a sex life that Victor didn’t even have! It was revolting. And Mother and Father had been there. How embarrassing for them. How could Victor ever face these people again? They would never be able to look at him without thinking of that meeting, without remembering the accusation and shame.

“No one is suggesting that you two have done anything improper, Victor. But that’s why we’re acting now, before your feelings further blossom and you realize you’re in love.”

Another slap. “Love?”

“I know this is difficult, Victor.”

Difficult? No, unfair would be a better word. Completely unfair and unfounded. Not to mention humiliating. They were sending away his closest friend, perhaps his only true friend, all because they thought something would happen between them? As if he and Janda were animals in heat driven by unbridled carnal impulses. Was it too much to imagine that a teenage boy and a teenage girl could simply be friends? Did adults think so little of adolescents that they assumed that any relationship between sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds of the opposite sex had to be motivated by sex? It was infuriating and insulting. Here he was making an adult-sized contribution in the trade with the Italians, bringing in the largest share of income for the family, and they didn’t think him mature enough to act properly with his second cousin. Janda wasn’t in love with him, and he wasn’t in love with her. Why would anyone think otherwise? What had initiated this? Had someone on the Council seen something between them and misinterpreted it as a sign of love?

And then Victor remembered. There was that time when Janda had looked at him strangely, and he had dismissed it as pure imagination. And she had touched his arm a little longer than normal once. It wasn’t sexual at all, but he had liked the physical contact between them. That connection hadn’t repulsed him. He had enjoyed it.

They were right, he realized.

He hadn’t seen it, and they had. He really was on the brink of falling in love with Janda. And she had fallen in love with him, or at least her feelings were moving in that direction.

Everything swelled up inside him at once: anger at being accused; shame at learning that all the older adults on the ship had talked about him behind his back, believing he was moving toward disgraceful behavior; disgust with himself at realizing that perhaps they may have been right; grief at losing the person who meant the most to him in his life. Why couldn’t Concepcion simply have told him her suspicions before now? Why couldn’t she and the Council have said, “Victor, you really need to watch yourself. It looks like you and Alejandra are getting a little close.” They didn’t have to send Janda away. Didn’t they know that he and Janda were mature enough to act appropriately once the family’s fears were voiced? Of course they would comply. Of course he and Janda wanted to adhere to the exogamous code. Victor would never want to do anything to dishonor her or the family. He and Janda hadn’t even realized that their relationship might be headed toward perilous waters. Now that they knew, things would be different.

But arguing would only make him look like a child. And besides, he would be arguing to keep Janda here, close to him. Wasn’t that proof that the family was right? No, Alejandra had to go. It was cruel, yes, but not as cruel as keeping her here in front of him every day. That would be torture. Now that their love-or pre-love or whatever it was-had been so flagrantly pointed out to them, how could he and Janda think of anything else whenever they saw each other? And they would see each other. All the time, every day. At meals, passing in the hall, at exercise. It would be unavoidable. And out of their duty to honor one another and the family, they would become distant and cold to each another. They would overcompensate. They would refrain from any look, any conversation, any touch between them. Yet even as they tried in vain to avoid each other, they would be thinking about the need to avoid each other. They would consume each other’s thoughts, even more so than before. It would be dreadful.

Victor immediately knew that Alejandra would understand this as well. She would be devastated to learn that she was leaving her family, but she would see the wisdom of it as well, just as Victor did. It was one of the many reasons why he respected her so much. Janda could always see the big picture. If a decision had to be made, she would consider every ramification: Who would be affected and when and for how long? And if the decision affected her, she would always consider it dispassionately, with an almost scientific eye, never letting her emotions override any wisdom, always putting the needs of the family above her own. Now, standing here in Concepcion’s office, Victor realized that perhaps it wasn’t respect that he felt for her. It was something else. Something greater.

He looked at Concepcion. “I would suggest that I go with the Italians instead of Alejandra, but that wouldn’t work. The Italians would wonder why we were giving up our best mechanic.” He knew it sounded vain, but they both knew it was true.

Concepcion didn’t argue. “Alejandra is bright and talented and hardworking, but she has yet to choose a specialty. They can adapt her to what they need. You, however, are already specialized. What would they do with their own mechanic? It would put you in competition at once. No, they would not accept the situation, and we could not do without you. But it was generous, if pointless, for you to consider it.”

Victor nodded. It was now a matter of clearing up a few questions. “Alejandra is only sixteen, two years too young to marry. I’m assuming the Italians agree to wait until the appropriate time to formally introduce her to potential suitors from their family. They understand that they can’t possibly be zogging her now.”

“Our arrangement with the Italians is very clear. Alejandra will be bunking with a family with a daughter her age and no sons. I have met the daughter myself and found her most agreeable and kind. I suspect that she and Alejandra will get along very well. And yes, the Italians understand that Alejandra is not to be considered a prospect for marriage until she comes of age. When that time comes, she is not to be coerced into a relationship or choice. She will move at her own pace. The decision of who and when to marry is entirely her own. Knowing Alejandra, I suspect she will have her pick of bachelors.”

Of course Janda would have her pick, Victor thought. Any suitor with an eye for beauty-both physical and in every other respect-would immediately see the life of happiness that awaited him with Janda at his side. Victor had known that for years. Anyone who spent five minutes with Janda would know she would one day make an attractive bride. Everything that men hoped for in a companion was there: a brilliant mind, a kind disposition, an unbreakable devotion to family. And until this moment, Victor hadn’t considered this opinion of her anything other than intelligent observation. Now, however, he could detect another sentiment buried within it. Envy. Envy for the man lucky enough to have her. It was funny, really. The feelings he had harbored all along for Alejandra were like emotions filed away in a mismarked folder. They had always been there. He had just given them a different name. Now the truth of them was glaringly obvious. A long friendship had slowly evolved into something else. It hadn’t fully developed and resulted in any action, but its course was set. It was as if the boundary between friendship and love was so thin and imperceptible that one could cross it without even knowing it was there.

“The Italians can never know the real reason why Alejandra is leaving,” said Victor. “They can’t know that she was moving toward an unacceptable relationship. That would forever taint her and drive off potential suitors. You must have told them some invented reason. Families don’t just send off their sixteen-year-old daughters.”

“The Italians believe that Alejandra is going early so that she may have time to adapt to being away from her family and thus avoid the homesickness that plagues so many zogged brides,” said Concepcion. “Such emotions, however natural, can put a strain on a young marriage, and we have explained to the Italians our desire to avoid it.”

It was a smart cover story. Homesickness happened. Victor had seen it. Sooman, a bride that had come to El Cavador a few years ago to marry Victor’s uncle Lonzo, had spent the first weeks of their marriage crying her eyes out in her room, bemoaning the loss of her Korean family. She had come willingly-no zogging is a forced marriage-but homesickness had crept in, and her constant weeping had really gotten to Victor. It made him feel like an accomplice in a kidnapping or rape. But what could be done? There could be no divorce or annulment. Her family was already millions of klicks away. Eventually she had come around, but the whole experience had been a burden for everyone.

“What assurance do we have that the Italians will abide by these conditions?” Victor asked.

“Alejandra isn’t going alone. Faron is going with her.”

Again, this was wise. Faron had come to the family late in his teens, when the family rescued him and his mother from a derelict mining ship after pirates had stripped it and left them to die. The mother did not live long, and Faron, though he was hardworking and grateful, had never fully become part of the family.

“Faron is a good miner, Victor. He’s been waiting for an opportunity to get on with a bigger clan. He wants to be piloting his own digger someday. He won’t accomplish that here. This is Faron’s choice. He’ll watch over Alejandra and see to it that her needs are met, not as a guardian, but as a protector and counselor. If any suitor tries to approach Alejandra too soon, Faron will remind him of his place.”

Victor had no doubt of that. Faron was big and well muscled. He would defend Janda as his own sister should the occasion ever require it, which it probably never would. The Italians weren’t stupid enough to threaten their own reputation and alienate themselves from other families. Zogging was crucial to mixing up the gene pool. Every family upheld the practice as sacrosanct. To marry well was to preserve the family and build the clan. True, there were belters who dogged and married only within their own clan, but these were considered the lowliest of low class and were alienated from everyone else, rarely able to find families willing to trade goods with them. No, in all likelihood, Janda would be given all the luxury and protection the Italians could afford. Faron was only a formality.

“It’s an ideal situation,” said Concepcion. “It works out well for everyone. Now if you hurry, you can catch her at the airlock. I’m sure she would like to say good-bye.”

Victor was surprised. “But I can’t possibly see her off.”

“But you are the person she will most want to say good-bye to.”

“Which is exactly why I can’t go,” said Victor. “The Italians will be there. They might catch some sign of special emotion at our parting. Alejandra and I never noticed that we were conveying any emotions to each other at all, yet apparently we were or you never would have felt the need to hold a Council. So we might reveal something that we don’t detect but that everyone else does. And the Italians are sharp and suspicious. They made me take the HVAC booster apart three times before they would believe that it works. No, as much as I would love to say good-bye to Alejandra, it would only put her at risk. They can never suspect that there was ever anything between us. I appreciate you coming to me beforehand and trusting me enough to give me the opportunity, but you must understand why I respectfully decline.”

Concepcion smiled sadly. “Your reasoning is clear, Victor, but I also know the pain behind it. And the pain your decision will bring to Alejandra.” She sighed, crossed her arms, and examined him a moment. “You don’t disappoint me, Victor. You’re the man I always hoped you would grow to be. Now I just hope that you will forgive us for what we have done to you and your dear friend.”

“There is nothing to forgive, Concepcion. I’m the one who needs forgiveness. I have lost us Alejandra two years early. I’ve taken her from her parents and family. That wasn’t my intent, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s happened.”

What he didn’t say were his others reasons for not going to the airlock. He simply couldn’t face Janda, for one. Not because of his shame, though he felt plenty of that. It was more the finality of the event. He couldn’t look at her knowing that it would likely be the last time he would ever see her again. He couldn’t bear that; he didn’t trust his emotions enough. He might do something foolish, like cry or stammer or turn red as a beacon light. And he didn’t want the weak side of him to be her final impression of him. Nor was he willing to steel his jaw and square his shoulders and see her off with a cold, stately handshake, as the Council would expect. That would be an affront to their friendship. It would imply-to him, at least-that their relationship had meant nothing to him after all, that it could be ended as dispassionately as two acquaintances parting ways. He couldn’t allow that. He wouldn’t let their final moment be an exercise in pretense and awkwardness.

Besides, not seeing Janda off was best for her. If she did love him, then his abandoning her at her departure would only make it easier for her to forget him. He would be doing her a favor. Then again, Janda knew Victor. She might suspect that he hadn’t come for that very reason, and therefore the plan would backfire. Instead of stamping out their love, it would only endear him more to her.

Or, she might jump to the wrong conclusion entirely. She might think that he had not come because now that true feelings were laid bare, he found her revolting. She might think: He hates me now. He despises me. I’m the one who looked at him with love in my eyes. I’m the one who touched his arm. And now that he knows what my feelings were, he thinks me vile and repulsive.

This thought nearly sent Victor flying from the room and rushing to the airlock to tell Janda that no, he didn’t think any less of her. He never could.

But he did no such thing. He remained exactly where he was.

Concepcion said, “The members of the Council will be perfectly discreet on this matter. Not a hint of gossip will escape any of our lips. As far as we are concerned, we didn’t even meet on the subject.”

She was trying to reassure him, but hearing her stress the confidentiality of the situation only stoked Victor’s shame. It meant that they were so disgusted by him and Janda, so repulsed by it all, that they were going to pretend that nothing had ever happened. They were going to go about their business as if the memory had been wiped from their minds. Which of course was impossible. No one could forget this. They could pretend to have forgotten, yes. They could smile at him and go on as if nothing had ever happened, but their faces would only be masks.

There was nothing else to say. Victor thanked Concepcion and excused himself from her office. The hall that led to the airlock was just ahead, but Victor turned his back to it. He needed to work. He needed to occupy his mind, build something, fix something, disassemble something. He took his handheld from his hip and checked the day’s repair docket. There was a long list of minor repairs that needed his attention, but none of them were a screaming emergency. He could get to them soon enough. A better use of his time might be installing the drill stabilizer he had built recently. He would need permission from the miners before touching the drill, but he might get that if he asked today. The Italians hadn’t pulled out yet, so the miners wouldn’t be ready for the drill for another hour at least. Victor switched screens on his handheld and pulled up the locator. It showed that Mono was down in the workshop.

Victor hit the call button. “Mono, it’s Victor.”

A young boy’s voice answered. “Epale, pana cambur. What’s shaking, Vico?”

“Can you meet me in the cargo bay with the pieces for the drill stabilizer?”

Mono sounded excited. “Are we going outside to install it?”

“If the miners let us. I’m heading there now.”

Mono whistled and hooted.

Victor clicked off, smiling. He could always count on Mono’s enthusiasm to lift his spirits.

At nine years old, Mono was the youngest apprentice on the ship, though he had been following Victor around and watching him make repairs for several years now. Six months ago the Council had agreed that an interest as keen as Mono’s should be encouraged not ignored, and they had made his apprenticeship official. Mono had called it the happiest day of his life.

Mono’s real name was Jose Manuel like his father, Victor’s uncle. But when Mono was a toddler, he had learned to climb up the furniture and cabinets in the nursery before he had learned to walk, and his mother had called him her little mono-“monkey” in Spanish. The name had stuck.

Victor flew down the various corridors and shafts to the cargo bay, launching himself straight as an arrow down every passageway, moving quickly in zero gravity. He passed lots of people. Now that the Italians were pulling out, and the trading and festivities were over, it was back to life as usual, with everyone taking up his or her assigned responsibility. Miners, cooks, laundry workers, machine operators, navigators, all the duties that kept the family operation running smoothly in the Kuiper Belt.

Victor reached the entrance to the cargo bay and found Mono waiting for him, a large satchel floating in the air behind him.

“You got everything?” asked Victor. “All three pieces?”

“Check, check, and check,” said Mono, giving a thumbs-up.

They floated through the hatch into the cargo bay and then over to the equipment lockers, where the miners were busy gathering and preparing their gear for the day’s dig. The ship was currently anchored to an asteroid, but drilling had stopped ever since the Italians had arrived. Now the miners looked eager to get back to work.

Victor scanned the crowd and noticed that many of the men were over forty, which meant they were members of the Council and therefore knew the real reason why Janda was leaving. Victor wondered if they would avert their eyes when they saw him, but none of them did. They were all so busy making their preparations that no one even seemed to notice that he and Mono were there.

Victor found his uncle Marco, the dig-team leader, over by the air compressor, checking the lifeline hoses for any leaks. Miners were extremely protective of their gear, but no piece of equipment was given more care and inspection than the lifeline. The long tube connected into the back of every miner’s spacesuit and served two purposes: It was the miner’s anchor to the ship-operating like a safety cable. And it was the miner’s source of fresh air, power, and heat. As the sign above the lockers read: CUIDA TU MANGUERA. TU MANGUERA ES TU VIDA. “Take care of your line. Your line is your life.”

“Epale, Marco,” said Victor.

“Epa, Vico,” said Marco, looking up from his work and smiling.

He was a member of the Council, but he showed no sign of hiding anything. He appeared to be his normal, happy self. Victor pushed the thought away. He couldn’t live like this, constantly questioning the thoughts of every person over forty on the ship.

“Nice work with that heater doodad you made for the Italians,” said Marco. “We got some good equipment out of that trade.” He gestured to a large metal cage anchored to the floor, filled with slightly used pressure suits, helmets, mineral readers, and other essential equipment. Most of it looked newer than anything miners on El Cavador had ever used, which might work to Victor’s favor-he was about to ask permission to access the drill, and it would help to be in the miners’ good graces.

“What time are you going out this morning?” asked Victor.

Marco raised an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve been working on something,” said Victor, “an enhancement for one of the drills. It’s still a prototype, but I’d like to test it. And since you can’t fire up the drill until the Italians pull out, I thought maybe I could install it before your guys get out there and start digging.”

Marco eyed the satchel.

“It’s a stabilizer for the drill,” said Victor, “for whenever we hit ice pockets. It’s a way to keep the ship from pitching forward and the drill steady.”

Victor could see Marco’s curiosity nibbling at the bait. “Ice pockets, huh?”

Nothing was more annoying to a miner in the Kuiper Belt than ice pockets. Asteroids this far from the sun were dirty snowballs, masses of rock laced with an occasional pocket of frozen water, methane, or ammonia. The laser drill could bore through it all, but it produced a rocketlike reaction. Unless the ship was moored to the rock with the retrorockets firing as a counterforce, the laser would simply knock the asteroid away from the ship.

So as long as the laser was digging through rock-for which all of the retrorockets had been calibrated-the ship held steady and the dig went smoothly. But the moment the laser hit a pocket of ice, the laser would burn right through it, losing the ship’s upward force. The retrorockets were still firing, however, so the whole ship would pitch forward, causing chaos inside for the crew. People fell over, babies couldn’t sleep.

Then, after the laser had seared through the ice and hit rock again, the upward force would return, the two forces would then equalize, and the ship would pitch back again. Everyone called it the ice pocket rodeo.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Victor. “The drill is working. What if my ‘improvement’ damages the drill?”

“The thought crossed my mind,” said Marco. “I don’t like anyone touching the drills unless absolutely necessary.”

“You can watch everything I do,” said Victor. “Step by step. But in truth, the installation isn’t that invasive. The main sensor goes up by the retrorockets. Another piece is wireless and goes down by the blast site on the asteroid. All I’m doing with the drill is installing this third piece, the stabilizer. It makes minor adjustments in the drill’s aim when the ship moves because of an ice dip. It’s designed to keep the laser pointed straight down into the blast site, instead of wavering or shifting mid-drill.” Victor pulled the device from the satchel and handed it to Marco. It was small and intricate, and Marco clearly had no idea what he was looking at-though this was to be expected since nothing like it existed. Victor had built it from junked parts, scrap metal, and polycarbonate plastic.

Marco handed back the stabilizer. “So this will take care of ice dips?”

“Not completely,” said Victor. “But it should minimize them, yes. Assuming it works.”

Victor could see Marco’s mind working. He was considering it. Finally, Marco pointed a finger and said, “If you damage the drill, I’ll have you sucked back into the ship through your lifeline.”

Victor smiled.

Marco looked at his watch. “You got forty-five minutes. We’ll be checking equipment until then.”

“Not a problem,” said Victor.

“And that’s including however long it takes for you to suit up,” said Marco. “Forty-five minutes total, from this moment.”

“Got it,” said Victor.

“And work on the old drill,” said Marco. “Not the new one.”

Victor thanked him, and he and Mono hurried to the lockers. As they changed into their pressure suits, Mono peppered Victor with questions, as Mono was always prone to do. Most of them were mechanical in nature, so Victor was able to answer them without much thought. The rest of his mind was at the airlock. How had Janda looked when she left? Had she acknowledged Victor’s absence or pretended not to notice it? Probably the latter. Janda was too smart to risk revealing her feelings now.

“Hola,” said Mono, waving a hand in front of Victor’s face. “Earth to Vico. We’ve got a green light, and the clock is ticking.”

Victor blinked, snapping out of his reverie. They were in the airlock, sealed and ready to go. The light over the airlock hatch had turned green indicating that they were clear to exit.

Victor entered the command in the keypad. There was a hiss of air, and the exterior hatch slid open. Mono didn’t waste any time. He pulled himself through and pushed hard off the hull, launching himself into space, whooping and hollering as he flew. Victor launched after him, his lifeline unspooling like a single strand of spider’s web behind him. Victor’s thumb found the trigger on his suit, and the gas propulsion kicked in, gradually slowing his forward motion. He rotated his body back toward El Cavador and saw the Italian ship Vesuvio as it was maneuvering away.

Janda was leaving.

The other three ships of the Italian clan-also named after volcanoes in Italy: Strombuli, Mongibello, and Vulture-were a short distance away, waiting for Vesuvio. Soon they would accelerate and disappear.

Victor refused to watch them leave. Better to stay busy. “Let’s go, Mono. No time for flying.”

Victor hit the propulsion trigger and shot forward back to the ship, heading toward the side facing the asteroid, back where the old laser drill was housed. Several thick mooring cables extended from the ship down to their anchors on the asteroid. Victor moved past them, being careful not to entangle his lifeline. When he reached the drill, he stopped, brought up his feet, and turned on his boot magnets. The soles of his boots snapped to the surface, and Victor stood upright.

He and Mono got to work removing the panels on the drill and exposing its inner components. The stabilizer was a quick install. It was just a matter of bolting it in and plugging it in to one of the drill’s mod outlets. Most big machines allotted a certain number of modifications and had built-in power outlets and boards to accommodate them. Victor would have to reboot the drill before it recognized the stabilizer, but his lifeline carried hardware lines to the ship, and he could do it from here using his heads-up display. He blinked and called up the display. The helmet tracked his eyes, and Victor gave the necessary blink commands to reboot the drill. When it came back online, he saw on the display that it recognized the stabilizer. “We’re in business, Mono. Now for the retros.”

They replaced the drill paneling and flew up to the retrorockets. Victor looked to his left as he went. The Italians were gone. A small dot of white in the distance might have been their thrusters, but it could just as easily have been a star. Victor looked away. Back to work.

The installation on the retros was more difficult since their mod inputs were so dated, and Victor had to make an adapter from parts in his tool belt. Mono asked questions every step of the way. Why was Victor doing this or that? Why wouldn’t he try this instead?

“That’s how we do it, Mono. We make do with what we have. Corporate miners have stores of spare parts and resources on their ships. We have nothing. If something needs fixing, we pull out the junked parts and use our imagination. Now let me ask you a few questions.”

It was then that the instruction began. Victor passed the tools and pieces to Mono and asked him questions that didn’t explicitly tell Mono how to finish the installation but that pointed him in the right direction. That way, Mono was discovering the steps himself and seeing the logic behind everything. It was how Father had trained Victor, not only letting him get his hands on the repair, but getting his mind in it as well, teaching Victor how to think his way through a fix.

As Mono worked, Victor allowed himself another look out to space. There wasn’t a trace of thrusters now. Just blackness and stars and silence. Victor wasn’t a navigator, but he knew the big asteroids that were currently in this general vicinity, and he wondered where the Italians might be going. It wouldn’t be anywhere close, of course. In the Kuiper Belt it took several months to travel between asteroids. But even so, maybe Victor could guess.

He closed his eyes. It was pointless. There were thousands of objects in the Kuiper Belt. They could be heading anywhere. And what good did it do to know their destination anyway? That wouldn’t change anything. That wouldn’t bring Janda back. And yes, he wanted her back. He realized that now. He had never been physically affectionate with her in any way that wasn’t innocent. And yet now, when he couldn’t have her, he suddenly longed for her to be close to him.

He loved his cousin. Why hadn’t he seen that before? I’m exactly what the Council feared. Whatever they think of me now, I deserve it.

Mono was asking him a question. Victor returned to the task at hand. They finished the installation and then made their way down to the blast site on the asteroid.

In mining terms, the asteroid was a “lumpy,” or a rock rich in iron, cobalt, nickel, and other ferromagnetic minerals. Miners used scanners to look for concentrations of metal in the stone, which they called “lumps.” The more lumps or seams of metal they found, the higher the metal-to-stone ratio. No lumps meant the rock was a “slagger” or a “dumpy,” a worthless chunk of nothing.

Victor and Mono touched down on the asteroid. Their boot magnets were set to the highest setting, and the minerals in the rock were just enough to hold their feet to the surface. They walked to the lip of the mineshaft and looked down. The laser drill had burned a nice circle into the asteroid, though not with a continuous cutting motion. It actually fired a series of close, single bursts that perforated the rock to a predetermined depth, creating a tight ring of holes. Miners then broke the narrow walls between the holes with the shake-hammers, then pulled out the rock in chunks, building the shaft.

But this shaft wasn’t deep enough. The miners hadn’t yet reached the lump. When they did, they’d bring in the cooker tubes and refine and smelt the metal on-site, shaping it into cylinders that could be floated back up to the ship. It was tedious, hard labor, but if the lump was big enough, it was well worth the effort.

Victor found a spot on the inner wall of the shaft where the steam sensor could be installed, and then called up Marco. “We’re nearly ready to test this thing. Do you have a moment to come help us out?”

“On my way,” said Marco.

Victor thought it best if Marco was the one who installed the steam sensor. It was a simple procedure, and it would allow Marco to feel some ownership for the device. Besides, the miners would be the ones moving the steam sensor every time they moved the drill, so they needed to know how to install it at the blast site. It made sense for Marco, as team leader, to have the first go.

Marco didn’t come alone. Word had spread, and every miner in the family now gathered around the mineshaft, ready to watch.

“When ice melts it produces steam,” said Victor. “This sensor goes down in the shaft and detects steam. The moment the level of steam in the detritus goes up a certain amount, it tells the retros to ease off. Then, when the rock particulate goes up again and steam diminishes, the retros accelerate. Meanwhile, it’s sending adjustments to the drill, to keep it from waffling as the ship moves. So the beam always stays dead center on the blast site.”

“Won’t the heat from the laser burn the steam sensor?” asked Marco.

“That’s what the casing is for,” said Victor. “It’s pretty tough stuff. I’m thinking it will hold.”

“So no more ice dips?” asked one of the miners.

“It won’t rid the ship of all movement entirely,” said Victor. “There would still be some slight shifting since it will take a moment for the sensor to detect the steam, but the movement will be far more gentle, like slight waves instead of sudden, jarring jolts.”

Marco flew down into the hole and drilled the steam sensor into the inner rock wall as Victor suggested. When he returned, he ushered everyone back to a safe distance and had them lower their blast shields over their visors.

“It’s still a prototype,” Victor reminded them. “I can’t guarantee the beam won’t go off center. It’s bound to need some serious adjustments.”

“Shut up and drill,” said Marco.

Victor blinked the commands into his heads-up display, and the laser blasted down into the rock. Within seconds the laser hit ice, and the ship began to dip. The retros adjusted and the drill countered. It wasn’t perfect; the beam still wavered a bit.

“Needs tweaking,” said Victor. He called up the commands on his display. His eyes moved quickly, and he gave the appropriate blink commands, making the needed adjustments. Twenty seconds later the laser hit another pocket of ice. Steam issued from the hole, but the retros responded quickly and smoothly this time. The drill responded perfectly as well, without the slightest waver from side to side.

Everyone cheered. Mono was punching the sky, whistling.

Marco was smiling. “She handles light. Sweet.”

“So I’m on the right track,” said Victor. “Now I can get to work on the real version.”

“Does Concepcion know about this?” asked Marco

“We didn’t want to tell anyone until we knew it worked. Now that it shows some promise, I’ll get my dad involved. He may have some improvements in mind.”

“I’ll take two,” said Marco, smiling. “One for the new drill as well.” He gave Victor an affectionate knuckle tap on the helmet.

When Victor and Mono finally returned to the ship, Mono was on an emotional high. “You’d be rich on Earth, Vico. Stinking rich. All these ideas of yours. They’d pay you millions of credits.”

“I’m seventeen, Mono. I’d be lucky to get an assembly-line job. No one would take me seriously. Out here we can do whatever we want. On Earth it’s different. Besides, you and I did this together. The stabilizer was both of us.”

“I helped with mindless welding and soldering in the workshop. The ideas were yours.”

“Your hands are way steadier than mine. You do the micro work far better than I do. Even Father can’t solder like you.”

Mono beamed.

When they floated out of the decompression chamber and back into the cargo bay, Isabella was waiting for him. She was Chilean, zogged by the family when Victor was just a kid and married to Mother’s second cousin. More importantly, she was very close with Janda.

“I need to speak with Vico in private, Mono,” said Isabella. “Would you give us a moment?”

Mono shrugged. “I got circuits to rebuild in the workshop. See you around, Vico.”

Isabella waited until Mono was gone, then turned to Victor. “I know you’re upset. And I don’t blame you.”

Victor kept his face a blank. Isabella wasn’t quite old enough to be on the Council, so she might not be speaking of Janda.

Isabella rolled her eyes. “Don’t play dumb, Vico. I’m not an idiot. I know what just happened here. They sent Jandita away. And you hid out with the machinery instead of telling her good-bye.”

“Yes, I was a coward,” said Victor.

“No, you weren’t,” said Isabella. “You were trying to make sure nobody on Vesuvio ever accused Jandita of being in love with a cousin. And don’t look surprised. Just because I figured it out doesn’t mean anyone else did. Jandita was a model of composure at the airlock. I don’t think anyone suspected a thing. She actually made the Italians believe she was excited about going.”

“How did you figure it out?”

“Jandita is my niece, Vico. I am her favorite aunt. I know her thoughts better than her own mother perhaps. Plus, I’m observant. I see and hear all.” She gave Victor a wink, and he furrowed his brow. “Relax,” she said. “I never saw anything improper between you two. What I mean is that I know the signs. Jandita is not the first girl to have fallen in love with her cousin, you know.”

Victor read the rueful expression on her face. “You’re confessing?”

“I was eighteen. He was my second cousin as well. I doubt he even knew that I loved him. The year I realized it, I came to this ship and married your uncle Selmo.”

Technically Selmo wasn’t Victor’s uncle. He was his second cousin once removed, but all men on the ship were uncles, more or less.

“Does Selmo know?” asked Victor.

Isabella laughed. “Of course he knows. We laugh about it now. I was young and starry-eyed. I barely knew what I wanted in a husband then.”

“So Alejandra is starry-eyed and naive.”

“Not at all. I suspect she will think of you for the rest of her life. She’s far more mature at sixteen than I was at eighteen. My point is you’re not a villain, Vico. I know you. You’ll beat yourself up over this, and you shouldn’t. She’s your second cousin. Any place on Earth, you could have married, and no one would have batted an eye.”

“Maybe that’s because there are more sick and twisted dirtbags on Earth.”

Isabella laughed. “They’re human, Vico. Just like us. We can’t help it if we hold ourselves to a higher standard.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Promise me you won’t torture yourself over this.”

What did she expect of him? That he could shrug this off and chalk it up as one of those life experiences that everyone has? Isabella meant well. That was clear. She loved him like she loved Janda. But words of comfort couldn’t bring the comfort she wanted to give. He wasn’t going to wake up tomorrow and think: What a valuable life lesson that was. He wasn’t going to move on. Not here, at least. He realized that now. Everywhere he turned he would see Alejandra. Everything would spark a memory of her. She would haunt him here. How could he take a bride onto this ship? Even if the family zogged someone for him in the next year or so, how could he parade a wife through halls that reminded him of someone else? Of course zogging had worked for Isabella. Of course she could move on. She had left that previous life behind her. She had closed that door. Nothing in her new life would remind her of her old one. Victor wouldn’t have that luxury. Not if he stayed here.

I need to get out, he realized. Go to Luna perhaps. Or Earth or Mars. He didn’t know how to make it happen, but he knew in that instant that it must.

He looked at Isabella and gave her the smile she expected. “I will do my best.”

She looked content. “Good. I’ll be watching you. If I sense any self-loathing, I will beat you senseless.”

“I’m sure you could. But honestly, I’ll be fine.”

“No you won’t. But I’m glad you’ll try.”

They parted then. Victor went to the lockers and changed out of his spacesuit. He would have to tell his parents that he was leaving. Mother would argue with him, but Father would see the sense in it. As much as Father would hate to admit it, he would agree with Victor. He couldn’t leave immediately, of course. He didn’t have the means. It would be months before they found another family willing to give Victor a ride in that direction. But he could prepare himself now. He could start today. Luna, Earth, and Mars all had gravities, and Victor’s legs weren’t strong enough to take on the Gs. He needed strength training. He needed the fuge.

The centrifuge was at the heart of the ship. It only stopped spinning twice an hour, to let people in or out, so Victor had to wait a few minutes after he arrived for the hatch to open. Inside there were a dozen people scattered throughout the room, most of them standing on the wall or floor, waiting for the fuge to get back up to speed so they could continue with their exercise. A few of them like Victor had just entered, and these made their way to the wall where all the magnetic greaves were hung. Victor followed them, already feeling the centripetal force pull him to the floor.

He found a pair of greaves that looked to be his size and strapped them around his shins. Soon he was standing upright, the magnets holding his feet firmly to the floor. Greaves weren’t like real gravity. More like one-sixth of a G, or what someone might experience on the surface of Luna. The trick with greaves was you had to work hard to keep your legs under you, constantly pulling your feet forward as you stepped, dragging against the pull of the greaves.

But greaves weren’t enough to condition his legs, especially if he was thinking of Earth or Mars. He needed time on the treadmills as well. He walked toward the center of the room to the hatch that led down to the fuge within a fuge: the track, the room where the treads were kept. He could feel himself getting heavier as the fuge picked up speed. When it got going full tilt, the pull of the magnets combined with the spin would be about half a G.

To his right was the nursery, a long row of glass-paneled rooms where the children under two years old lived. In one room, a toddler was taking a few unsteady steps from the arms of one adult and into the waiting arms of another. Without the simulated gravity of the fuge, toddlers would never develop the muscles necessary for walking, or learn how.

There were some free-miner families who didn’t have fuges or magnetic greaves and who preferred instead to always fly in zero gravity. But bats, as they were called, were completely useless planet-side. Their children couldn’t walk or even stand, their legs thin and atrophied.

Concepcion wouldn’t hear of it. Everyone was required to spend at least two hours a day down here to keep leg muscles from atrophying and bones from becoming brittle. Some people stayed vertical wherever they were on the ship, electing to wear greaves while they worked. It was a matter of leverage and efficiency. Most of the labor on the ship required sure footing. It was far easier to push and pull and lift if your feet were locked down.

Victor reached the hatch and lowered himself into the track. There were fewer people down here than in the main fuge, and all of them were younger than Victor, walking, running, listening to earphones, wearing movie goggles, reading. Yet all of them were vertical. Victor strapped himself into a treadmill and raised the setting to three-quarters of a G. He walked slowly at first, then gradually worked his way up to a light run. After twenty minutes his calves were twitching and his thighs burned. As he lowered the G level and started to cool down, he wondered how much more he would have to train each day to prepare himself to leave.

His handheld began flashing.

Victor stopped the treadmill. The message was from Edimar, Janda’s fourteen-year-old sister. She was an apprentice spotter and watched for movement in space: comets, asteroids, anything

that might pose a collision threat to the ship. The message read: COME TO THE CROW’S NEST. URGENT!!

Victor didn’t hesitate. He left the fuge as soon as it stopped spinning, then moved through the ship quickly, his legs still burning, his shirt damp with sweat.

The crow’s nest was a glass dome atop the upper deck, well above the main body of the ship. Victor flew up the long, narrow tube that led to the room and then pulled himself up through the hole in the floor. The room was dark, and the billions of stars beyond the glass dome shined so clearly and distinctly that Victor felt as if he were outside the ship.

Edimar was floating weightless across the room, wearing her data goggles. The computers were extremely sensitive to light, so spotters wore skintight goggles with interior displays instead of using bright computer monitors.

“Epa, Mar. What’s the emergency?” asked Victor.

Edimar removed her goggles. “You’ve always taken me seriously, Vico. Even when nobody else did. You’ve always treated me like I’m smart.”

“You are smart, Edimar. What’s this about?”

“And Jandita said that if I ever needed help with something I could come to you. She said you’d treat me fair, help me out.”

“Of course, Mar. What is it?”

“I want to show you something. And I want you to be honest with me and tell me what you think it is.”

“Okay.”

She found another pair of goggles and handed them to him. “The Eye saw something that doesn’t make any sense. And I don’t want a bunch of people laughing at me if it’s nothing.”

The Eye was the computer system that kept up a constant scan of the sky in every direction, watching for any incoming objects that might collide with the ship. In terms of safety, it was one of the most important pieces of equipment on board. Even small rocks, if they were moving fast enough, could cripple the ship and prove fatal.

“Have you shown your father?” asked Victor

She looked aghast. “Of course not.”

“Why not? He’s the spotter. He’ll be more of a help interpreting what the Eye sees than I would.”

“My father doesn’t think I can do this job, Vico. He has zero confidence in me. He wanted sons, and he got three girls. The only reason I’m his apprentice and not some boy is because Concepcion made him take me on. I can’t go to him with something that’s a mistake. I’d never hear the end of it. He might go to Concepcion with it as proof that I’m not fit for this job.”

Victor knew Janda’s and Edimar’s father well, and it sounded like a pretty accurate description. Victor knew he shouldn’t ask, but he did anyway. “Why work with your father then, Mar? If it’s so difficult, maybe you’d like doing something else, being around other people.”

She looked angry. “Because I like what I do, Vico. I like working the Eye. And because he’s my father. Why don’t you go work in the laundry or the kitchen, if it’s so easy to switch?”

He held up his hands in a show of surrender. “Sorry. Forget I asked. What did the Eye see?”

She looked irritated and said nothing for a moment, as if considering whether she wanted to involve him after all. Then her face softened, and she relaxed. “Goggles,” she said, sliding on her own.

Victor put on the goggles and stared at the blank screen. “Am I supposed to see something?”

“Not yet. First let me explain. I’ve set the Eye to notify me of any motion outside the ecliptic, even if it doesn’t yet look like a collision. Motion there is more rare, but I’ve got a thing for cold comets. Before the sun heats them up and gives them a tail, I think they’re pretty cool. I figure if I’m the first one to spot a new one, I can get it named after me. It’s silly, I know.”

“Not at all,” said Victor. “Getting a comet named after you sounds pretty chevere.”

He could hear the smile in her voice. “I think so, too.” Then she was back to business. “So the Eye was looking outside the ecliptic, taking in some really clean data.”

Clean data meant there had been relatively little space dust or other particles floating in the Eye’s field of view. It meant the Eye could see way far out.

“Then the Eye detected motion and alerted me,” said Edimar. “I called up a visual and got this.”

An image of space appeared in Victor’s goggles. It looked no different from any other view of space. “Am I supposed to see anything unusual?” he asked.

“The motion was here.” Edimar drew on her tablet with her stylus, and a tiny circle appeared on the image of space. Then Edimar zoomed in until the tiny circle filled the display. Victor strained his eyes. “I still don’t see anything.”

“Neither did I. Which means whatever the Eye saw is in deep space. If it were close, we would be getting better visual resolution. And if it’s way out there and the Eye detected its motion, then it must be moving insanely fast. The problem is, the Eye doesn’t give me enough data to determine the object’s trajectory. All I know is that there’s fast motion. But the velocity decreases over time. It means the object is either changing velocity or direction, one or the other. Either it’s slowing, or it’s turning toward or away from us, making it appear to be slowing relative to us. Only neither one is very likely. I’ve run analyses based on a dozen different distances and possible directions of movement and the only thing that explains the data the Eye is giving me is deceleration.”

“It’s slowing down?” said Victor. “Natural objects in space don’t slow down on their own, Mar.”

“No, they don’t. And when I say it’s moving fast, Vico, I mean fast. Fifty percent of lightspeed fast. And that’s its speed now, after continuing to decelerate. Interstellar objects don’t go that fast, they don’t bend without a gravity well, and they don’t decelerate. So tell me, am I going to get teased for this?”

“I don’t think so,” said Victor.

“I should forget about it?”

“Edimar, I think we’re looking at a spacecraft.”

“Nothing goes that fast.”

“Nothing made by humans.”

At his words, Edimar visibly relaxed and a silly grin came to her face. “So I’m not crazy to think we’ve got us an alien starship? A near-lightspeed ship coming into our system and slowing down?”

“Either it’s a lightspeed ship or somebody repealed a whole bunch of laws of physics. And either it’s alien or some corporation or government is experimenting with a technology so advanced it will make them masters of the universe.”

“So I should call a grown-up.”

“You should call the Council. Or I will. This isn’t just important, it’s so important that they’ve got to make decisions about it right away.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“Because it might very well be headed for Earth.”

Lem

The Makarhu wasn’t built to be a science vessel, and it certainly wasn’t built for war. It was a mining ship, property of Juke Limited, the largest space-mining corporation in the solar system. But Lem Jukes-mercifully short for Lemminkainen Joukahainen, heir to the Juke Limited fortune and captain of the ship-was prepared to use the Makarhu for any purpose if it meant turning a failing mission into what the Board of Directors would consider a success.

It was an hour after sleep-shift had ended, and Lem was floating weightless in the observation room, waiting for an asteroid to explode. The asteroid was a small thing, a “pebble” no bigger than Lem himself, lazily moving through space half a kilometer from the ship. If not for the ship’s laser lights dotting the asteroid’s surface and illuminating it, it would have been completely invisible against the backdrop of space, even with the help of the special scope glasses Lem was wearing.

Lem lowered the glasses and looked out the window to his right. The cargo bay doors were open, and the gravity laser was in position, pointing out into space at the pebble in the sky. Lem couldn’t see the engineers from his position, but he knew they were down in the lab adjacent to the cargo bay, prepping the laser for the test.

According to the Juke research team that developed it, the gravity laser-or glaser as they had come to call it-was supposed to be the future of the space-mining industry, a revolutionary way to break surface rock and dig deep through the toughest asteroids. It was designed to shape gravity in much the same way a laser shaped light, though since gravity was not reflective, it worked on very different principles; understanding them was way below Lem’s pay grade. The company had spent billions of credits to build this prototype, and quite a bit more to keep it a secret. Lem’s job was simply to oversee the field tests. A cakewalk of a mission.

That is, if the gravity laser would ever turn on. It was the first deep-space trial, so Lem expected the delays born of extreme caution. But it was beginning to seem as if something was actually seriously wrong with the device and everyone was afraid to tell him.

“I’m waiting, Dr. Dublin,” Lem said, keeping his voice pleasant.

A man’s voice sounded in Lem’s earpiece. “Just a few moments, Mr. Jukes. We’re nearly ready to begin.”

“You were nearly ready to begin ten minutes ago,” said Lem. “Didn’t anyone print the word ‘on’ beside the right button?”

“Yes, Mr. Jukes. Sorry for the delay. It shouldn’t be long now.”

Lem rubbed his forehead just above his eyes, fighting back the beginnings of a migraine. The ship had been in the Kuiper Belt for six weeks now, where failure would have no witnesses and there would be no massive object to be torn apart if the reaction got out of hand. But the engineers, who were supposedly ready before this flight even launched, had produced nothing but delays. Their explanations might have been completely legitimate, or they might have been sesquipedalian bushwa. Because of the huge time lag in sending and receiving messages to the Board of Directors back on Luna, Lem had no idea what the Board-or his father-were thinking, though he was fairly certain it wasn’t unbridled joy. If Lem wanted to preserve his reputation and return to Luna with any sense of dignity, he needed to shake things up and produce results fast. The longer the wait, the greater the suspense, and the bigger the disappointment if the glaser failed.

Lem sighed. Dublin was the problem. He was a brilliant engineer but a terrible chief engineer. He couldn’t stand the idea of being blamed for any mistake, so he aborted tests at the slightest sign of malfunction. Dublin was so worried about damaging an expensive prototype or pushing it beyond its capacity-and therefore costing the company its investment-that the man was paralyzed with fear.

No, Dublin had to go. He was too cautious, too slow to take risks. At some point you had to make the leap, and Dublin didn’t know how to detect that moment. Lem needed to send positive results to the Board now. Today, if possible. It didn’t have to be much. Just some data that suggested the gravity laser did something like what it was designed to do. That’s all the Board wanted to hear. If it needed further development before it could be used commercially, fine. At least that gave the impression that Lem and the crew were doing something. That isn’t asking too much, Dr. Dublin. Just give me one semisuccessful test. The gravity laser worked in the lab back on Luna, for crying out loud. We didn’t come all the way out here without testing it first. The damn thing worked before we left!

Lem tapped a command into his wrist pad and ordered the drink dispenser to mix him something. He needed a boost, a fruit concoction laced with something to drive off the headache and get his energy up.

He sipped the drink and considered Dublin. Lem couldn’t fire the man. They were in space. You can’t send a man packing when he has nowhere to go-though the idea of jettisoning Dublin into space did put a smile on Lem’s face. No, Lem needed to take less drastic measures. Get a little creative.

Lem tapped his wrist pad again, and the wall to his right lit up. Icons and folders appeared on the wall-screen, and Lem blinked his way through a series of folders, diving deeper into the ship’s files until he found the documents he was looking for. A photo of a Nigerian woman in her late fifties appeared, along with a lengthy dossier. Dr. Noloa Benyawe was one of the engineers on board and had been with Juke Limited for thirty years, or as long as Lem had been alive, which meant she had endured Lem’s father Ukko Jukes, president and CEO, for as long as Lem had. It was like meeting someone who had survived the same grueling military campaign, a sister in suffering.

No, that was too harsh perhaps. Lem didn’t despise his father. Father had done great things, achieved great wealth and power by relentlessly pushing those around him to innovate, excel, and squash any obstacle in their way. Unfortunately, Father had run his family in much the same way.

Is this another of your tests, Father? Did you give me an engineering team led by a butterfly-hearted ditherer to see if I could handle the situation and get a more deserving and reliable person in place? It was just the kind of thing Father would do, laying snares along Lem’s path, creating obstacles for him to overcome. Father had always worked that way, even when Lem was a boy. Not to be cruel, Father would say. “But to teach you, Lem. To toughen, you. To remind you that as a child of privilege, no one is your friend. They will claim to be your friend, they will laugh at your jokes and invite you to their parties, but they do not like you. They like your power, they like what you will become someday.” That was child rearing to Father. Parents shouldn’t coddle their children when bullies pester them at school, for example. Real parents like Father pay a bully to torment their child. That teaches a child the harsh truth of life. That teaches a child how to use subterfuge, how to build allies, how to strike back at those stronger than themselves, not with violence necessarily, but with all the other weapons at a child’s disposal: public humiliation, fear, the scorn of one’s peers, social isolation, everything that cracks a bully and pushes him to tears.

Lem wiped the thought away. Father wasn’t testing him. There was too much at stake for that. No, Lem wasn’t so conceited as to believe that Father would risk the development of the gravity laser simply to teach Lem one of his “life lessons.” This was purely Lem’s problem. And he would deal with it.

“Dr. Dublin,” Lem said into his microphone, “when you said that the test would begin in a few moments, I assumed that you defined a few moments the same way I do, mere minutes at most. But by my clock, nearly fifteen additional minutes have passed. I recognize that the glaser is of utmost importance to this ship, but there are other matters on this vessel that require a captain’s attention. As much as I enjoy staring out into space and pondering the meaning of the universe, frankly I don’t have the time. Are we conducting a test or aren’t we?”

Dr. Dublin’s voice was small and hesitant. “Well, sir, it appears that we may have run into a snag.”

Lem closed his eyes. “And when were you going to inform me of this snag?”

“We were hoping that we could fix it quickly, sir. But that doesn’t seem likely now. We were about to call you.”

I’m sure you were, thought Lem. He pushed his cup into the receptacle. “I’m coming down.”

Lem made his way to the push tube, one of the many narrow shafts that ran through the ship. He pulled himself inside and folded his arms across his chest. The walls, like the floor and sidewalls of the ship, produced an undulating magnetic field. The magnets either attracted or repelled the vambraces Lem wore on his forearms and the greaves he wore on his shins. Lem said, “Fourteen.” At once he was sucked downward. When he arrived, the lab was in such a state that no one noticed him float into the room. Most of the engineers were hovering weightless around the wall-screen that stretched the length of the room. It held countless windows of data, diagrams, blueprints, messages, scribbles, and equations. It hurt Lem’s eyes just to look at it. The engineers were politely arguing over some technical matter Lem didn’t understand. Dr. Dublin and a few assistants were standing on the wall to Lem’s left, looking down on a hologram of the gravity laser that was about one-fifth the size of the real thing. It annoyed Lem when people in a room didn’t maintain the same vertical orientation. Being perpendicular to everyone else was indecorous.

“I do love watching engineers at play,” said Lem, just loud enough for everyone to hear.

The room fell silent. The engineers turned to him. Without looking, Lem tapped his wrist pad, and the eye assault that was the wall-screen dimmed to half-light.

Dublin stepped off the wall to the left and stood upright on Lem’s floor, bending awkwardly as he adjusted his vambraces. Such a brilliant mind, and yet as graceful as a turnip.

“Mr. Jukes,” said Dublin, “thank you for coming. I apologize yet again for this delay. It appears that the source of the problem-”

“I am not an engineer,” said Lem with a cheerful smile. “Explaining the problem won’t hasten its repair. I don’t want to distract you any more than necessary from solving the problem. That would be a much better use of your time, wouldn’t you agree?”

Dublin swallowed and attempted a smile. “Oh, well, yes, that’s very kind. Thank you.” He took a step backward.

Lem looked at their faces. “I want to thank all of you for your tireless efforts,” he said. “I know that many of you are functioning on a few hours of sleep, and I recognize that the glitches and delays we’ve experienced are more frustrating to you than anyone else. So I appreciate your patience and perseverance. My father assured me that he had assembled the best team possible, and I know that he was right.” Lem smiled to show them that he meant it. “So let’s pause for a moment and take a deep breath. I know it’s still morning, but except for the people physically working on the fix, let’s take a two-hour break. A nap, for many of you. A meal for others. Then we’ll come back and tear that asteroid apart like a sneeze in a wet tissue.”

Lem made a point of not looking at Dublin, though he noticed that a few of the engineers did. If the laser wouldn’t be ready within the next two hours, this was Dublin’s chance to have a spine and speak up.

Silence in the room.

“Wonderful,” said Lem. “Two hours.”

Lem launched off the floor and headed toward the push tube. He caught himself at the entrance and turned back, as if struck by an unrelated thought. “Oh, and Dr. Benyawe, would you see me in my office, please?”

Dr. Benyawe nodded. “Yes, Mr. Jukes.”

Five minutes later Dr. Benyawe was standing opposite Lem in his office, anchored to the floor with her greaves.

“You have put me in a delicate situation, Mr. Jukes,” she said.

“Have I?” said Lem.

“Calling me to your office. The other engineers will assume that I’m meeting with you to give you an account of the test’s failure. They’ll think I’ve come here to point fingers and pass blame.”

“I was the one who called this meeting.”

“They’ll assume that I’ve been speaking with you for some time without their knowledge, giving you information behind their backs.”

“So they’re bureaucrats, then, and not engineers at all, is that what you’re saying, Dr. Benyawe?”

“They’re human beings first, Mr. Jukes. Engineers second. They’re worried about their livelihoods.”

“If we don’t return to Luna with anything short of absolute success, Doctor, I think all of our careers are over.”

“That is a fair assumption, yes,” said Benyawe. “But that’s true all the time, isn’t it? Fail, and you’re looking for a job.”

“Just one question, Dr. Benyawe. If you had been in charge, would you have already conducted the test?”

“You want to know if I blame Dr. Dublin for the delay.”

“I want to know if you’re willing to proceed despite some degree of uncertainty. I want to know if you’ve reached the point where you think we’ll learn more from failure or partial success than from further dithering about possibilities.”

“Dr. Dublin found some of the pretest readings unsettling,” said Benyawe. “I appreciate his caution. Had I been in his position, however, I would have continued with the test. The glaser is built to accommodate a margin of error within the readings we found.”

“So if you were in charge of this team, we’d already have our results.”

“The gravity laser, Mr. Jukes, is not a device to be taken lightly. Gravity is the most powerful force in the universe.”

“I thought love was.”

Benyawe smiled. “You’re very different from your father.”

“You’ve worked with my father for a long time.”

“He’s given me a chance to be part of great things. He also turned my hair white by the time I was fifty.”

“So why didn’t my father put you in charge of this team, Doctor? You have far more experience than Dublin. And every bit as much knowledge of the gravity laser.”

“Why aren’t you running your own corporation? You’ve certainly had plenty of opportunities to do so. You helped launch four IPOs before your twentieth birthday, you took nine different divisions and companies from the brink of bankruptcy into the black, and the rumor is that you’ve built a private investment empire that knows few equals. And yet here you are, heading up a testing expedition in the Kuiper Belt. Your father doesn’t always make decisions based on resumes.”

“I took this job, Dr. Benyawe, because I believe in the gravity laser.”

“But this test is dangerous. If it works wrong on a massy object like an asteroid, this ship could simply disappear.”

“I’m willing to take risks. Is Dublin?”

“Maybe Dublin was given strict instructions by your father to make sure you came home alive.”

Suddenly Dublin’s dithering and delays took on an entirely different meaning. “So Father put me in charge but gave instructions for Dublin to take care of me?”

“Your father loves you.”

“But not enough to let me make my own decisions.”

Lem knew he sounded petulant, but he also knew he was right. Father didn’t trust him. After all these years, after everything I’ve done outside of Father’s shadow, all of my achievements, all of the ways I’ve exceeded his expectations, he still thinks me incapable of making decisions, he still thinks me weak. And he won’t ever think otherwise until I take this company. That was the solution. Lem had known that for a long time. Taking Father’s throne was the only achievement that Father couldn’t argue with or question. It was the only way to get Father to see Lem as an equal. That was why Lem wasn’t running his own corporation elsewhere as Benyawe suggested. He could have easily done so. There had been several offers. But Lem had turned them down. Any other corporation wasn’t enough. Father would always look down on it.

No, Lem was going to take Father’s greatest achievement and make it his own, and he was going to do it so convincingly that the whole world and even Father himself would realize that Lem deserved it. No coup. No trickery. What would be the point of that? Father needed to be a willing participant. He needed to know that Lem had earned it without a scrap of help from Father. Otherwise Father would always believe that it was his achievement and not Lem’s. No, taking the company was the only way to end it all. Only then would Father realize that there were no more snares to lay, no more games to play or lessons to teach. School was over.

But what if what Benyawe had said was true? What if Father’s only motivation was love? It was possible, of course, though it felt like such an alien idea to Lem that he couldn’t quite take hold of it. Father was never that transparent. There were always motivations behind motivations, and the deepest ones were usually selfish. Lem didn’t doubt his Father’s love. He doubted the pure, distilled form of it. That was something Lem had never seen.

Lem smiled to himself. See what you do to me, Father? You always keep me guessing. Just when I think I have you figured out, you make me question you all over again.

Lem needed to confront Dublin. If Father had given Dublin instructions regarding Lem, then the delays weren’t Dublin’s fault at all. Lem excused Benyawe and made his way to the lab. He found Dublin in the control room adjacent to the cargo bay. Dublin was moving his stylus through a holo of the glaser. Bots in the cargo bay followed Dublin’s commands and performed tiny adjustments to the glaser. Lem watched from a distance, not wanting to interrupt. It was obviously a delicate procedure. Yet despite the sensitivity of it, Dublin’s hands danced through the holo and the touch commands like a concert pianist. Lem watched in fascination, feeling a new sense of wonder for Dublin. The glaser was second nature to him; every component, every circuit, were as known to him as his own hands. Father hadn’t stuck Dublin here to test Lem. Dublin had the job because he deserved it.

Dublin put aside his stylus, stretched, and noticed Lem. “Mr. Jukes. I didn’t see you come in. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

“I admire what you’ve accomplished with the glaser, Dr. Dublin.”

Dublin shrugged sheepishly. “Six years of my life.”

They were alone. Lem felt comfortable proceeding. “My father placed a lot of trust in you when he asked you to lead this project.”

Dublin smiled. “Your father has been good to me.”

“You don’t have to speak well of him just because I’m his son. I know as well as anyone that he can be a little rough around the edges.”

Dublin laughed. “Oh, he’s not as bad as some say. A tough exterior perhaps, but below the surface a sweet man.”

Lem had to work hard to keep a straight face. Sweet? He had heard all kinds of colorful words to describe father; “sweet” had never been one of them. Yet Dublin seemed sincere. “Did my father ever mention me in relation to this mission before we set out?”

“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.”

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.

The soldier with the passport touched his finger to the communicator in his ear and listened a moment. He then handed Wit back the passport. “You’re free to go through, Mr. O’Toole.”

Wit thanked the man and sat back as the vehicle drove him into the parking lot and pulled into a slot. Wit picked up the envelope off the seat beside him, exited the vehicle, and walked toward the wall that encircled the inner campus. The regimental sergeant major was waiting at the gate with an extra umbrella. He wore fatigues and a tan beret with the crest of the NZSAS embroidered on it: a winged dagger with the words WHO DARES WINS.

Wit was in his civvies, but he saluted anyway.

“Welcome, Captain O’Toole. I’m Sergeant Major Manaware.” He handed Wit the extra umbrella. “Bummer your first visit to Auckland’s a wet one.”

“Not at all, Sergeant Major. I am a fan of the rain. It convinces the enemy to stay inside and not come out and kill us.”

Manaware laughed. “Spoken like a true SEAL. Always happy to avoid a fight.”

Wit smiled back. Military trash talk. Our Special Forces can beat up your Special Forces. You guys are bumbling idiots. We’re the real hardened warriors. Soldiers had been talking this way to one another ever since cavemen had picked up a club. Yet Manaware was saying something else as well: The kiwis had done their homework. They had studied Wit’s military record, and, more to the point, they were letting him know it. They were saying, “We’re watching you as closely as you’re watching us, mate.” Which was fine with Wit. He preferred it that way. He hated conversations in which everyone pretended not to know what the others knew. Yet such was the military, especially as you rose up the ranks. There was nothing more cat and mouse than a conversation between two generals in the same army, both of them withholding intel for personal profit. It drove Wit insane. And it was the primary reason why he didn’t hold a place among them. Wit didn’t play that game.

Manaware led Wit into the compound. It was like every other military base Wit had ever seen. Hangars, training facilities, barracks, office buildings. They made their way into a building to the right and shook out their umbrellas in the anteroom. Inside, two SAS soldiers were sweeping the lobby floor with large utility brooms. They snapped to attention when Manaware entered.

“As you were,” said the sergeant major, continuing to the stairs.

The men immediately returned to sweeping. It had always impressed Wit that the SAS instilled in their men the idea that no job was beneath them; no chore was too low for a man serving his country. The running joke was that at the graduation ceremony following their nine months of training, SAS graduates received the coveted tan beret in one hand and a broom in the other.

Manaware led Wit to a door and gave a light tap.

A voice inside bid them enter.

Colonel Napatu’s office was a small space with few adornments. Napatu greeted Wit with a handshake stronger than Wit had expected for a man of Napatu’s age and invited Wit to take a chair beside a coffee table.

“May I offer you any refreshment, Captain O’Toole?” asked Manaware. “Perhaps a fruity tea with lemon?” Manaware smiled. It was one last jab of military trash talk. Isn’t that what you Navy women drink? Fruity tea with lemon?

Wit smiled, conceding defeat. “No thank you, Sergeant Major. You’ve been very kind.”

Manaware gave a wink and left.

Colonel Napatu took a chair opposite Wit. “I heard you lost three men in Mauritania.”

“Yes, sir,” said Wit. “Good men. Our convoy was hit by on IED. The point vehicle took the brunt of it. I was in the second vehicle and thus unharmed.”

“The world is a dangerous place, Captain O’Toole.”

“Improvised exploding device,” said Napatu. “A coward’s weapon. I heard you carried one of the wounded four kilometers to the extraction site.”

“He was a dear friend, sir. He died later in surgery.”

Napatu nodded gravely.

“That is why MOPs exist, sir. War always inflicts its greatest casualties on the innocent. Our job is to put a stop to chaos before more innocent lives are lost.”

“That sounds like textbook talk, O’Toole. You recite that for all the commanding officers?”

“No, sir. It’s simply who we are.”

“At least you’re not like the damn United Nations, who send their boys in only after a war has ended.”

Wit said nothing. He wasn’t here to express political views or criticize other forces. He was here for men.

Napatu got the hint and changed the subject. “You boys must meet a lot of resistance from civil law enforcement.”

“Almost always. But where we go, sir, local law enforcement is often part of the problem.”

“Corruption?”

“Murder. Drug trafficking. Human trafficking. Local police in these situations are often nothing more than thugs in uniforms. It doesn’t take much to swing power in unstable countries, Colonel. If you’re a tribal warlord, and you off the chief of police, suddenly every police officer has a choice. He can either swear allegiance to you and keep his weapon and badge, or he can watch as you hack his wife and children to pieces. Or, as happens just as often, the warlord executes all the police anyway and populates the police force with his own loyal men.”

Napatu sat back in his chair. “The Chief of Defence Force told me that I’m supposed to give you the liberty to recruit any of my men. Full access to all of our facilities and troops. The highest level of clearance.”

“I have the official letter here,” said Wit, placing the envelope on the table, “signed by the Chief of Defence Force as well as the Minister of Defence.”

Napatu didn’t look at the envelope. “You and I both know, Captain, that these signatures don’t mean squat. I can come up with all kinds of legitimate excuses why you shouldn’t take any of my men, all of which the big boys in suits will agree with. Family issues, health issues, emotional issues. They give you these documents because they have to. It would be political suicide to do otherwise. But they don’t mean a damn thing to me. The only way you’re taking any of my boys is if I agree to it.”

Napatu was right. The signatures were more a formality. Wit was actually relieved to hear that Napatu realized that, too. He preferred that Napatu gave him men because he wanted to and not because someone had forced his hand.

“What makes you think any one of my men will want to give up their position here to join you?” asked Napatu. “Do you have any idea, Captain, how near impossible it is to get into this unit? Do you know what these men have suffered, the grueling torture we put them through for the chance to wear the tan beret?”

“I do, sir. I’ve studied your selection process and training cycle. These men go through hell and back, and only a small fraction of them make the cut.”

“You’ve studied?” said Napatu. “With all due respect, Captain, cracking open a book on our process will hardly give you an accurate perspective of what it means to become an SAS man.”

It can’t have been more difficult than my SEAL training, Wit thought. But he said nothing. No need turning this into a pissing contest.

Colonel Napatu jabbed a finger on the table. “These men take themselves to an inch from death to join us, Captain. We push them until we think they’ll break, then we push twice as far. We cull so many in the training process that it’s a miracle we have any men here at all. But somehow a few make it through. Men who have no quit in them. Men who will endure any physical suffering, make any sacrifice. You don’t become an SAS soldier to impress single girls at pubs, Captain. Your motivation has to be rock solid. You have to want it so bad that even the threat of death won’t take it from you. And once they’re here, once these men have joined our ranks, they become part of a brotherhood so strong that nothing can break it. And you think that you, a total stranger, can waltz in here, and convince them to leave behind everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve just so they can join you? I find that incredibly arrogant.”

It was the token response Wit got every time. Regardless of what language they spoke or what corner of the world they came from, all commanding officers of Special Forces units had the same reaction. They saw their troops as their own sons. And the idea that any of their sons would consider going elsewhere was unthinkable.

But Wit knew soldiers better than Napatu did. He understood the warrior mind. The most elite of soldiers didn’t join Special Forces to be part of a brotherhood or for the prestige. Men joined Special Forces because they wanted action. They didn’t sign up to train for fifty-two weeks a year and sleep in comfortable bunks with downy pillows. They signed up to sleep in the rain with their finger on the trigger.

But Wit had to say this delicately; COs had fragile egos. “Your reservations are warranted, Colonel. Your men are the model of loyalty to their country and their unit. However, MOPs offers these men something more. Action. And lots of it. Since we are so few in numbers, we deploy throughout the world far more often than larger forces like yours, which often requires congressional or parliamentary approval. MOPs is not at the mercy of politicians concerned with self-preservation and what military action will mean for them at the voting booths. We move everywhere, sir.”

“We do covert missions as well, Captain. Surely you don’t think our operations are only what you read about in the press.”

“I am aware of your operations, Colonel. Both your covert actions and the missions that never reach your desk because one of your higher-ups vetoed the operation simply because the operation wasn’t his idea. There are careerists in this military, Colonel, as there are in every military. You are not one of them, but there are plenty above you.”

Colonel Napatu had no response to that. He no doubt knew there were men above him who fit that description. He had been suffering under their command his entire career. What probably rattled him was learning that Wit knew more about the classified operations circling the upper echelons than he did.

“We also offer something else,” said Wit. “You will take this as further arrogance, Colonel, but MOPs is arguably the most elite fighting force in the world. At least on a small scale. We recruit from the best Special Forces groups out there. Russian Alphas, U.S. Delta Force, British SAS, U.S. Navy SEALs, Israel’s Shayetet 13, French Green Berets. These units only take the best of their soldiers, sir, what they call the ‘one percenters.’ But MOPs are the point zero one percenters. We only take the best of their best. To be counted among us is an incredible honor. Our soldiers don’t forfeit their love of country or patriotism when they join us. I would argue that service in our unit is an even higher demonstration of love of country because you are representing your home nation on a global scale. Ask yourself, Colonel, if you were given the opportunity to represent New Zealand, to be one of the few men deemed by your government as your country’s perfect soldier, the ideal warrior, would you not at least be intrigued by the idea?”

“I’ll concede that some may jump at the chance for more action,” said Napatu, “but why would we forfeit our best soldiers to another army outside our own jurisdiction?”

“Because MOPs allows New Zealand to have a hand in global stability without worrying about political ramifications, sir. Send a brigade of New Zealanders into North Africa, and the political fallout could be catastrophic. Suddenly New Zealand is the bully of the world. But send a few New Zealanders who are a part of an international military unit seeking to preserve human rights, and there is little to no fallout. No one can accuse New Zealand of imperialism. Any action taken by MOPs is clearly an act of global goodwill.”

“There are those who say MOPs are the dogs of the West, Captain O’Toole, that you boys are nothing more than grunts for American intelligence. Puppets of the CIA nicely disguised as a mini-international coalition.”

Wit shrugged. “There are also those who say we are soulless child murderers carrying out the personal vendettas of the current U.S. administration. It’s propaganda, Colonel. You and I both know who we are and what we do.”

Napatu was quiet a moment. Wit remained silent, letting the man think it through, though he knew Napatu would come around.

Finally, Napatu said, “Who did you have in mind?”

Wit removed his handheld from his pocket and set the device on the table in front of him. He extended the arms on the sides and the thin bar at the top and turned on the holo. A wall of data with photos and records of five servicemen floated in space above him. Wit turned the device around so it faced Napatu.

“There are five of your men we’d like to screen.”

“Screen?”

“A capabilities test, sir. We want the best and most willing candidates. If all five pass our screening and demonstrate an eagerness to serve, then we will gladly take them all. If none pass, we will thank them and you for your time and not bother you further. It’s that simple.”

Colonel Napatu scanned the names and didn’t show any surprise until he reached the last of the five, the youngest and smallest of the group. He was the most unlikely pick simply because of his inexperience. He deserved to be among the SAS like any other man in the unit, but he wasn’t battled-tested like the other four. He had only been with the SAS for five months and was as green as they came.

“You can have your pick of any of my men,” said Napatu, “some of them proven warriors with flawless service records and the highest marks. And yet you choose this one, a greenie?”

“Yes, sir,” said Wit. “We are very interested in Lieutenant Mazer Rackham.”

Council

The helm on El Cavador was always buzzing with activity, but today the crew seemed especially occupied. Now that the Italians were gone and a week of trading and banqueting was over, the whole ship was in a rushed frenzy to make up for lost time with the dig. There were quickships to prepare, flight paths to program, scans of the rock to take and decipher, machines to operate for the miners below, dozens of plans and decisions and commands all happening at once-with Concepcion at the center of it all, taking questions, interpreting data, issuing orders, and flying from station to station with the nimbleness of a woman half her age.

Victor and Edimar were floating at the hatch entrance, taking it all in, waiting for a break in the chaos to approach Concepcion about the alien spacecraft Edimar had found. From the look of things, it didn’t seem like they were going to get that chance any time soon.

“Maybe we should come back some other time,” said Edimar. “She seems busy.”

“Nothing is more important than this, Mar,” said Victor. “Believe me, she’ll be glad we interrupted.”

Victor turned on his greaves, allowed his feet to descend to the floor, and crossed the room toward Concepcion, who had anchored at the holotable with a group of crewmen.

Dreo, one of the navigators, a big man in his fifties, stepped in front of Victor and lightly put a hand on Victor’s chest, stopping him. “Whoa, whoa. Where you headed, Vico?”

Victor sighed inside. Dreo fancied himself second in command, even though that position was officially held by Victor’s uncle Selmo. Victor gestured back to Edimar, who hadn’t moved from her spot by the hatch. “Edimar and I need to speak with Concepcion immediately. It’s urgent.”

“Concepcion is not to be disturbed,” said Dreo. “We’re almost at the lump.”

“This is more important than the lump,” said Victor.

Dreo smiled sardonically. “Really? What is it?”

“I’d rather speak to Concepcion directly, if you don’t mind. It’s an emergency.” He made a move to go around Dreo, but the man put his hand out again and stopped Victor a second time.

“What kind of emergency? A leak, a fire, a severed limb? Because it better be life-threatening if you’re going to bother the captain right now.”

“Call it a very unique emergency,” said Victor.

“Tell you what,” said Dreo. “You and Edimar go wait in Concepcion’s office while I relay your message to her. She’ll come the moment she can.” Dreo turned back to the system chart on his screen.

Victor didn’t move.

After a moment, Dreo sighed and turned back to him. “You haven’t gone to the office yet, Vico.”

“And I won’t until I see you relay my message or you get out of my way.”

Dreo looked annoyed. “You are all kinds of trouble today, aren’t you?”

He was referring to Janda, of course. As a member of the Council, Dreo would know everything. Victor remained where he was and said nothing.

Dreo grunted, turned away from his charts, and moved to Concepcion. He tapped her on the shoulder, and they spoke in hushed tones. Concepcion made eye contact with Victor then looked toward the hatch at Edimar. She gave Dreo brief instructions that Victor couldn’t hear then returned her attention to the holotable.

Dreo came back with a triumphant smile. “You’re to wait in her office like I told you.”

“Did you tell her it was an emergency?”

“Yes.” Dreo raised a hand, gesturing to the office. “Now go.”

Victor motioned for Edimar, and they both made their way to the office. It was the second time Victor had been ushered into this room today-though the meeting with Concepcion that morning about Janda’s departure already felt like a distant memory.

“What if it turns out to be nothing?” said Edimar. “What if it’s just a glitch in the system? That’s the most likely explanation. That’s far more probable than it being an alien spacecraft or a secret, corporate near-lightspeed ship.”

“You went over the data several times, Edimar. If you’re wrong, and it’s nothing, which it isn’t, then coming to Concepcion was still the right thing to do. She’ll appreciate you bringing it to her attention. You won’t be scolded for doing your job.”

“Not by Concepcion maybe. But my father will be furious.”

“It’s not too late to go to your father first, Mar.”

She shook her head. “No. This is right. Concepcion first.”

They had been over this already. Edimar was convinced that if she went first to Toron, her father, he would either sit on the data to review it later or he would dismiss the whole thing outright. Victor seriously doubted that Toron would be dismissive in the face of so much overwhelming evidence, yet Edimar had been adamant. “You don’t know him, Vico.”

She was wrong on that. Victor did know her father. Toron was Janda’s father as well. But Victor wasn’t going to argue the point.

Going to Concepcion now, Edimar believed, would cause the least friction between her and her father in the long run. If Edimar ended up being right, then the immediacy of the situation could excuse her skipping Toron and going directly to Concepcion. But if Edimar went to Toron first and got rejected, she would then feel a moral obligation to circumvent her father and go to Concepcion anyway. Edimar had talked herself through every scenario until Victor was pink in the face. It was an alien ship, for crying out loud. One that could potentially be headed to Earth. Are we honestly going to worry about hurting Toron’s feelings?

“Concepcion can read the data herself, Mar,” said Victor. “Let her look at it and decide what it means.”

They waited for ten minutes. Finally Selmo, Victor’s uncle and Concepcion’s true second in command, floated into the room. “Concepcion will see you, but she asks that you meet her in the greenhouse.”

Victor thought that odd. The greenhouse was humid and cramped and a terrible place to meet. “Why not in her office?”

Selmo shrugged, but Victor could tell from Selmo’s expression and by the way he glanced at Edimar that he did know, or that at least he suspected. It then dawned on Victor what Selmo must be thinking: Selmo was a member of the Council, and here Victor was with Janda’s younger sister asking to meet with Concepcion mere hours after Janda’s departure. The natural assumption would be that this had something to do with Janda. But what? That Victor and Edimar were demanding her return? That was lunacy. Victor would never reveal his love for Janda to Edimar. That would be unthinkable. He and Edimar could never be allies in that, and Victor would never want to attempt it anyway.

But Selmo didn’t know that. He merely saw a brokenhearted boy and the departed girl’s feisty little sister and jumped to the wrong conclusion. Apparently Concepcion had as well. Meeting in the greenhouse was her way of being cautious. There they would be far from the eyes and ears of everyone else in case this was about Janda.

This is what my life will be like if I stay here, Victor realized. No one on the Council will ever look at me without seeing Janda also.

“The Eye detected something,” said Victor. “That’s why we need to see Concepcion.”

Selmo seemed momentarily relieved until he understood the full implication. He turned to Edimar, concerned. “What is it?”

“We’re not sure,” said Victor. “We’re hoping Concepcion will know. It may be nothing. No cause for alarm. Don’t tell anyone. We just want to be sure. Thanks for your help.” He launched out of the room and made his way down the corridor toward the greenhouse.

Edimar caught up to him, annoyed. “Why’d you go blabbering to Selmo? Now everyone will know I saw something.”

“Selmo will stay quiet. And everyone will know soon enough anyway.”

“Not if Concepcion says it’s nothing! There’s a chance I’m wrong, Vico. And if I am, I could have forgotten the whole thing and nobody would have been the wiser. Now my father will definitely find out.”

Victor caught himself on a bulkhead and stopped to face her. “First, it is something. We’ve established that. Let’s stop questioning it. Second, if you want adults and your father to take you seriously, Mar, you need to put this concern about your father aside and think like an adult. Put the safety of the family above your father’s anticipated reactions and do what you know is your job.” He hadn’t meant it to sound like a rebuke, but it had come out that way.

“You’re right,” said Edimar. “Of course you’re right.”

Victor felt the tiniest pang of guilt then. He had put an end to Selmo’s misconception but by doing so he had made it possible for Toron to find out through the wrong channels. But what could Victor do? The alternative was far worse. Having Selmo or others believe that Edimar was somehow aware of or implicated in Victor and Janda’s taboo relationship would be a devastating blow to Edimar’s reputation on the Council. Victor couldn’t stomach that. He wouldn’t let the shame of him and Janda spread to Edimar.

“I won’t say another word to anyone,” said Victor. “I won’t even go to the greenhouse if you’d prefer. This is your discovery, not mine.”

Her answer was quick. “No, no. I want you there.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

The greenhouse was a long tube four meters wide, with vegetables growing from pipes running the length of the room. The pipes took up every available space on the wall, creating a thick tunnel of green all around you. Tomatoes, okra, cilantro, sprouts, all with their leaves and bodies floating out from the holes in the pipes like seaweed. It was an aeroponic, soilless system, and although the atomized, nutrient-rich mists were sprayed through the pipes onto the root systems only twice an hour, some of the mist always escaped, and the room was always uncomfortably humid. It was also exceptionally bright, and as Victor and Edimar passed through the anteroom and into the actual greenhouse, it took Victor’s eyes a moment to adjust to the vapor lamps. The air was thick with the scent of greenery and cilantro and the nutrient solution.

Concepcion was deep in the room with her feet pointed toward them, her body perpendicular to their orientation, waiting. Victor and Edimar changed their orientation to match hers and launched what was now up, deeper into the greenhouse. Now the greenhouse felt like a silo, and Victor could see why Concepcion would prefer to meet with their bodies positioned this way. They wouldn’t have to stoop to keep their feet and heads out of the plants.

Concepcion was floating beside a long section of sprouts. Here the plants were shorter, so the “tunnel” was wider, giving the three of them more room to face each other. Victor caught himself on one of the handholds and stopped in front of Concepcion.

“I’m sure I need not tell you both how busy we are with the dig,” said Concepcion. “But I also know that neither of you would call something an emergency unless it absolutely was one.”

Victor looked at Edimar and waited.

“The Eye detected something,” said Edimar. “A movement out in deep space. I’ve been over the data dozens of times, and the only explanation that I can see is that it’s some type of spacecraft decelerating from near-lightspeed.”

Concepcion blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I know it doesn’t make any sense,” said Edimar. “I hardly believe it myself, but unless I’m wrong, and I absolutely could be, there is something out there that is moving faster than humanly possible. I even showed it to Victor to see what he thought because it all seemed completely ridiculous to me.”

Victor nodded. “It looks legit.”

“Did you show your father?” asked Concepcion.

“Not yet. I’ve been manning the Eye myself today. Father is helping with the dig. Victor and I thought it best to come straight to you.”

Concepcion looked at each of them before gesturing to Edimar’s goggles. “Is that the data there?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Edimar, handing over the goggles.

Concepcion put them on and tightened the straps. As she blinked her way through the data, Victor and Edimar waited. After five minutes, Concepcion removed the goggles and held them in her hands. “Who else knows about this?”

“No one,” said Edimar.

“I mentioned to Selmo that the Eye had detected something,” said Victor. “But I didn’t say what.”

Concepcion nodded, then faced Edimar. “Can you decipher its trajectory?”

“Not yet,” said Edimar. “Not at this distance. It’s too far out.”

“Assuming its trajectory was headed toward us,” said Concepcion, “could you guess at how long it would take to reach us?”

“Not accurately,” said Edimar. “Best guess, at least a few weeks but no more than a few months. The problem is I don’t know how far away it is. All I know is that it’s moving at near-lightspeed and that we can see the light from it, which is obviously moving at lightspeed. So it could be closer than we think. I don’t know.”

Concepcion pulled her handheld from its place on her hip and starting tapping commands into it. “I’m calling an emergency meeting of the Council. We’ll meet this evening on the helm. I want both of you there.” She pocketed her handheld. “In the meantime, don’t speak of this to anyone. The one exception is Toron. I’d like him to look at this as soon as possible. It’s not that I doubt your interpretation of the data, Edimar. I would have reached the same conclusion myself. But perhaps Toron will see something we don’t. You did the right thing coming to me, but I hope Toron proves us wrong. I don’t like anything that I can’t understand, and I don’t understand this at all.”

Benyawe

Lem was in his office with the lights out, watching a holo simulation of asteroid 2002GJ166 being hit with the glaser. It was a simple holo sim. Only ten seconds long. But the engineers who had put it together had spent three days building it. Every detail of the asteroid had been meticulously re-created. The engineers had even gone so far as to painstakingly re-create the mineshaft the free miners had cut into the rock. In all aspects it was identical to the real thing, albeit a thousand times smaller. At first, nothing happened. Then, as the glaser hit it, the asteroid exploded, sending thousands of rock fragments shooting outward in every direction like a giant growing sphere of gravel. Soon the pieces of the sphere became so far apart that the sphere lost any semblance of shape and all that was left was empty space. The holo sim winked out. Lem turned to Dr. Dublin and Dr. Benyawe, who were standing beside his desk patiently waiting for his reaction. “It’s completely obliterated,” said Lem. “How am I supposed to mine an obliterated asteroid?”

The Makarhu was less than a day away from the real asteroid. Chubs’s “Red Light Green Light” approach had worked flawlessly for nine days. El Cavador was oblivious. The free miners had shown no sign of knowing another ship was approaching their position. No threatening radio messages, no warning shots, nothing. Either they were exceptionally good at playing dumb, or they were in for the surprise of their life.

Now, however, the engineers were telling Lem through a holo sim that it didn’t matter anyway, because the glaser was going to annihilate the asteroid and leave them empty-handed. “This is unacceptable,” said Lem. “There’s nothing left of the asteroid.”

“Our math could be off,” said Dublin. “We’ve never fired the glaser at an object this big before. The simulation only runs the data we give it, and we don’t have a lot of data. Much of this is conjecture.”

“Then what’s the point of building a simulation?” said Lem. “You’re showing me what might happen? I can do that myself. I have a pretty decent imagination. Forgive me for being blunt, Dr. Dublin, but guesswork doesn’t help us here. I need facts. What you’re showing me are half facts. And to be perfectly honest, not the half facts I want to see. The glaser is a mining tool. We’re in the business of extracting minerals. What you’re showing me is skeet shooting. I don’t care if you blow up the asteroid, but sending millions of pieces hurtling away in every direction is not going to work. Miners can’t chase down rock fragments all day. The glaser is supposed to expedite the mining process, not complicate it. I can tolerate this reaction with pebbles, but not with big rocks. That isn’t what the Board had in mind.”

“You don’t want guesswork, Lem,” said Benyawe, “but guesswork is mostly what we have. We haven’t done enough field tests to predict with a high degree of accuracy what exactly is going to happen. That is why the mission was designed the way it was, with us conducting many tests using gradually larger asteroids.”

Lem shook his head. “The original plan is gone. We’re seven weeks behind schedule. We have a new plan now, one we’ve been following for nine days. I agree that our original plan is the ideal, but circumstances have changed.”

“Then all we can show you are possibilities,” said Benyawe, “nothing definitive. We won’t know that until we blast the real thing. We can try to minimize the gravity field more, and that might lessen the explosion, but we cannot predict how far the field will spread.”

Lem rubbed his eyes, exhausted. It hadn’t been a very pleasant nine days. And another round of “data talk” with the engineers wasn’t helping. Part of the problem was the lighting-or rather, the lack thereof. Per Chubs’s instructions, Lem had ordered the ship to “go dark” when they had set out for the asteroid. This meant turning off all exterior and most interior lights in order to remain invisible from El Cavador’s light-sensitive sky scanner. Lem had expected this to be a challenge. Moving around the ship in near darkness would take some getting used to. What he hadn’t anticipated was how the lack of light had put everyone in an irritated, cheerless mood. Normally Lem could move through the halls of the ship and hear laughter and friendly conversation. These days the halls were as silent as they were dark.

Even more annoying was the constant stopping and starting of the ship. To sneak up undetected, the Makarhu remained motionless when they were exposed to El Cavador’s side of the asteroid, then the ship rushed forward whenever El Cavador was on the far side. Stopping. Starting. Stopping. Starting. It made sleep next to impossible, and Lem’s body felt anxious and fatigued because of it.

“You’re right,” said Lem. “I’m asking for the impossible. I’m asking you to tell me what will happen without allowing you to gather the data to formulate an answer. That’s not fair. I realize that. But we are at the eleventh hour, and we have one shot at this. I’m only asking that we do all we can to make that one shot work.”

Dublin began gathering his things. “We’ll see what we can do, Mr. Jukes.”

“I have full confidence in you,” said Lem.

Dublin launched himself toward the exit, but Benyawe stayed behind.

“May I have a word, Lem?” she asked.

“You may have a hundred, Dr. Benyawe. It will keep me awake.”

“I have remained silent on this issue since we set out for this asteroid,” said Benyawe, “but if I don’t say something now, before we get there, I’ll be disappointed in myself.”

Lem knew where this was going. As he had expected, the decision to bump the free miners was unpopular with the engineers. Their world was black or white. An experiment failed or it didn’t. Data was right or it wasn’t. The prototype worked or it didn’t. The idea of a gray area, wherein it was acceptable under certain circumstances to take a dig site by force, was hard for an engineer to swallow. They all knew that Juke Limited was involved in unsavory business practices, but it was much easier to turn a blind eye to such things from the safe and cozy rooms of one’s lab back on Luna. Out here in the deep of space, the hard truth of it stared you in the face.

Lem held up a hand. “If you’re going to tell me you think bumping these free miners is morally wrong, save your breath. I feel the same way.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely. It’s cheating, basically. And bullying. Not to mention extremely dangerous.”

“Then why are we doing it?”

“Because the alternative is an eight-month round-trip. If we go that far, we will seriously deplete our fuel supplies. Plus we have no guarantee that the farther asteroid will be any more vacant than this one. Who’s to say there isn’t a whole fleet of free miners moored to the other asteroid?”

“Those aren’t our only options,” said Benyawe. “We could proceed with the mission as planned. It’s not too late for that. We look for more pebbles of gradually greater size and adjust the glaser as we go along. Free miners don’t touch pebbles. This would be a nonissue.”

“We have to do a big asteroid anyway,” said Lem. “All we’re doing is jumping ahead. It’s unfortunate that we have to vacate the free miners, but that is the world we’re living in now. Chubs assures me that we can do this with minimal structural damage to their ship and without harming any of their crew.”

“It’s not right. We’re taking what’s theirs.”

“Technically, Doctor, it isn’t theirs. They have no deed. No right to ownership. That rock is ours as much as it is theirs. Just ask STASA.”

Lem wasn’t exactly sure he was right. The Space Trade and Security Authority, the international organization that provided oversight for the space-mining industry, might actually side with Benyawe on this one. But if Lem didn’t know the minutiae of such policies, he was fairly confident Benyawe wouldn’t, either. If he sounded sure of himself, she wouldn’t argue.

“But they got there first,” said Benyawe. “That has to account for something.”

“It has accounted for something. They’ve mined two quickships of metal. We’re not leaving them destitute, Doctor. Considering how much they’ve pulled out of their mineshaft, they’re probably at the end of their dig anyway. We’re just sending them off prematurely.”

She smiled reproachfully. “We don’t know if they’re at the end of their dig, Lem. That’s baseless speculation just to help us sleep at night.”

“You’re right,” said Lem. “But that doesn’t change our situation. Unless another large asteroid pops into existence in the next few hours, we’re going through with this.”

“Then I’d like it noted in the ship’s official records that I object to this action.”

That surprised Lem. “You feel that strongly?”

“I do. And I’m not the only one. A lot of the engineers are uneasy about this, not only because it feels like stealing but also because they fear for their lives. What if these free miners are better defended and better equipped than we think? We’re scientists, Lem, not soldiers.”

“I assure you, Doctor, bumping a bunch of pebble eaters is the safest thing in the world.”

“Please don’t use that term. I find it offensive. They’re human beings.”

“Pebble eaters. Rock suckers. Ash trash. Dig dogs. Mine mites. Scavengers. These words exist, Dr. Benyawe, because these kind of people live a less-than-civilized lifestyle. They marry their sisters. They’re completely uneducated. Their children never learn to walk. Their legs are just bone and sinew because they never develop them. It’s as if they’re becoming a different species altogether.”

“You’re talking about isolated incidents. Not all of them are like that. Most of them are quite innovative.”

“Have you watched the exposes, Doctor? Have you seen the documentaries on these people? It’s enough to turn your stomach.”

“Sensationalism, Lem. You know that. The vast majority of free miners are intelligent, hardworking families who love their children and obey space law. By bumping them we’re taking away a family’s livelihood.”

“And ensuring our own. This is the world we live in now, Doctor. We’re not in a lab on Luna anymore. This is the frontier. Out here it’s not all squeaky clean. Do we allow ourselves to fail so that a group of free miners can tap an asteroid for everything it’s got? No, we don’t. We take it. Do I like that option? No, but it’s nothing these free miners haven’t seen before. This is their world. In all likelihood, they bump ships too. Who’s to say they didn’t bump somebody off this rock to take it for themselves?”

“More baseless speculation.”

“I’m painting a picture here, Benyawe. I’m reminding you that the rules are different out here in the Deep. I don’t like it any more than you do. These free miners have an obligation to their family, yes, but we have an obligation as well.”

Benyawe frowned. “To the Board, you mean? To our stockholders? Seriously, Lem. You can’t compare that to family.”

“Just because these people are related to each other doesn’t make their cause any nobler than ours. They’ve got two quickships of metal from this rock. They’re going to be fine.”

Lem’s holodisplay chimed, and a message-acceptance request appeared. Lem waved his hand through the holospace, and Chubs’s head appeared.

“We’ve got an issue, Lem,” said Chubs. “Bumping this ship is going to be trickier than we thought. Can you come to the helm?”

Lem left his office immediately. He didn’t want Benyawe tagging along, but she either didn’t get the cues from his body language or she chose to ignore them completely. Either way, she followed him down the hall to the push tube. Before climbing inside, Lem faced her. “If you write up a formal objection,” he said, “I will sign it and put it on record in the ship’s computers. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business on the helm.”

“I’d like to come along,” she said.

It was a bad idea. Engineers never came to the helm, and this wasn’t a good time to start, especially knowing how opposed she was to the bump. “This isn’t a matter for the engineers,” said Lem.

“I’m not just an engineer, Lem. I’m the director of Special Operations, an appointment you gave me. I’d say bumping a ship clearly qualifies as a special operation.”

Lem suddenly understood why Father would put a man like Dublin in charge of engineers. The Dublins of the world never questioned you. If they disagreed with superiors, they zipped their lips and towed the line. That didn’t make them better leaders, per se, but it certainly made Lem’s and Father’s jobs easier. Benyawe was another breed entirely. Staying silent was not in her DNA. But wasn’t that why he had promoted her in the first place? He wanted straight counsel.

“You can come,” said Lem. “But I can’t have you arguing with me at the helm.”

“I don’t argue,” said Benyawe.

“You’re arguing with me now.”

“I’m strongly disagreeing. There’s a difference.”

“Fine. Don’t strongly disagree with me then. My point is, on the helm I am the commanding officer. You can ask questions. You can make observations. But if you take issue with anything I say, keep it to yourself until we’re alone.”

“Fair enough.”

Chubs was waiting for them at the systems chart. The map had been replaced with a large holo of El Cavador. It was nothing like the original holo Lem had seen of the ship-that had been a 3-D rendering the computer had on file for the specific make and model of ship. This was the real thing. The Makarhu was now close enough to the asteroid to take high-res scans of the free-miner ship, and Lem couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“It looks like a tank,” he said.

“We’ve been running scans through the computers all morning,” said Chubs. “I’ve never seen anything like it, not on a free-miner ship, anyway. They’ve got armored plates welded all over the surface. Plus I’ve never seen this much proprietary tech on a single ship. See these protrusions here, here, and here. That’s tech.”

“What kind of tech?” asked Lem.

“We don’t know,” said Chubs. “These boxes here could be pebble-killers. Our computers can’t make heads or tails of it. Most of it looks like it’s built from scrap. The computers keep recognizing individual pieces from machines, but since the pieces are all used together in odd combinations, we have no idea what the tech is really for. Whoever these people are, they’re either certifiably insane or genius innovators.”

“I’d rather they be insane,” said Lem.

“Makes two of us,” said Chubs. “I don’t like them having machines we can’t understand. Makes me nervous. And that’s not the worst of it.” He glanced uneasily at Benyawe.

“It’s okay,” said Lem. “She’s here at my invitation.” Lem smiled to Benyawe, appearing nonchalant, though in truth he felt a little panicked. El Cavador looked tougher than he had anticipated. He shouldn’t have brought Benyawe.

Chubs turned to the systems chart and tapped a command. A dozen cables stretching from El Cavador down to the surface of the asteroid suddenly glowed yellow. “Here’s the bad news. They have twelve mooring lines anchoring them to the asteroid. That’s three times more lines than normal.”

“Meaning what?” asked Lem. “They’ve seen us? They’re adding more lines to hunker down?”

“No way,” said Chubs. “You don’t keep that much cable lying around. This has to be how they anchor all the time.”

“Maybe they’ve been bumped before,” said Benyawe. “And now they lay down more lines to discourage anyone from trying again.”

“My assumption as well,” said Chubs. “From the looks of their ship and the number of anchor lines, I’d say these people have seen their share of pirates and claim jumpers.”

“And corporates,” said Benyawe.

Lem shot her a look, but she was facing the holo and didn’t meet his eye.

“The other thing that bothers me is all the activity we’ve detected outside their ship,” said Chubs.

“What kind of activity?” asked Lem.

“Spacewalks. And lots of them. Some to lay down more hull armor. Some to work on their collision-avoidance system. They’ve been very, very active. We haven’t seen more than three or four guys out at a time. But it’s like they know a war is coming.”

“They’ve obviously detected us,” said Lem. “They’re building defenses for our attack.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Chubs. “It’s only three or four guys out there. If they were in prebattle panic mode, they’d have a whole crew out. They’d put every available man behind an effort like that.”

“Maybe that is every available man,” said Benyawe. “Maybe only three or four people are left. Maybe they had an outbreak or something. It’s happened with free miners before.”

“But they do have other people,” said Chubs. “We’ve seen them. While these three guys are strengthening the ship, they’ve got thirty guys working the mine. It’s basically life as usual.”

Lem shrugged. “It’s not that strange if you think about it. They’ve seen us coming, and they’re trying to mine as much as they can before we get there. That’s what I would do.”

“The other possibility,” said Benyawe, “is that they don’t know we’re coming, and strengthening the ship is simply what these three or four guys do. That’s their job. They’re simply going about their business. You could argue that the state of the ship substantiates that idea. It’s well defended. It doesn’t get that way overnight. You can see scorch marks and dents all along their armor, which would suggest that the armor has been there a long time.”

“Maybe,” said Chubs. “It could also mean the armor plates were scorched when they applied them.”

“Not likely,” said Benyawe. “Some of these dents and marks stretch across multiple plates. This is a ship that’s seen action, which brings up another possibility. Maybe they’re not preparing for war with us. Maybe they’ve got a feud with another family, or there’s a ship of thieves in the area.”

“There’s no one else in the area,” said Chubs.

Benyawe shrugged. “So maybe they’re prepping to set out on a six-month journey at the end of which is their enemy. Who knows?”

“I’ve had enough guesswork for one day,” said Lem. “I want answers. How does this affect the bump? Are we a go or not?”

“The mooring cables are the biggest problem,” said Chubs. “That’s a lot of lines. We can’t bump the ship unless every one of those lines is severed. We could cut them with the lasers, but it would be tedious work. It would take way too long. Bumps need to happen fast. Two minutes at the most. Gives them less of a chance to retaliate. I suggest cutting the cables a different way.”

“How?” Lem asked.

Chubs tapped more commands into the system chart, and the holo of El Cavador winked out. A holo of the asteroid took its place, with El Cavador now a small ship moored to the surface. “We’ll land over here,” said Chubs. “On the blind side.”

Lem watched the holo as the Makarhu approached the opposite side of the asteroid and landed at a spot just below what would be El Cavador’s horizon line, hiding the Makarhu from view yet keeping it within striking distance.

“They still haven’t seen us at this point,” said Chubs. “We wait here until four hours into their sleep schedule, when everyone is good and gone to dreamland. Then we send in twelve breakers.”

The breaker bots were small, disc-shaped explosive drones. Corporates used them for mining, sending them down narrow mineshafts to break up large chunks of rock for extraction.

“There’s a ridgeline here,” said Chubs, highlighting the feature on the asteroid. “It runs from our landing site to within a hundred yards of El Cavador. We can take a shuttle out along the ridgeline without them seeing us. The shuttle stops here at the edge of open ground. We throw the breakers from there. Our pilot steers each one to a different mooring line. The bots attach to the lines, then we detonate them all at once. That’s when the attack begins. Once the lines are cut, we come forward with the ship and take out their pebble-killers and their power with our lasers. It’s over at that point. We can brush them aside easy as anything. Ninety seconds tops.”

Lem stared at the holo a moment. “Throwing the breakers? You can send them that far with that much accuracy?”

“The breakers have mini cams. We have a very good pilot. He can steer them pretty much wherever you want them.”

“Won’t El Cavador detect the movement?” asked Lem. “Won’t they see the breakers coming?”

“Their collision-avoidance system doesn’t monitor the surface of the asteroid. It can’t. They’ve got miners walking around the surface all day. Believe me, it’s the last place they would look for an attack.”

Lem didn’t like it. This was supposed to be a clean operation. They would swoop in, zap a few devices on the hull, push the ship aside, and be done with it. Simple. Nothing with breakers. No explosions. No creeping up in a shuttle. This was far more variables than Lem had intended.

One of the crewmen launched from his workstation and landed near Lem.

“They’re rotating away, sir,” said the crewman. “We can accelerate as soon as you’re ready.”

This would be the last push forward. They were close now. They would land on the rock within a few hours. Lem turned to Benyawe. Her face was a mask. She seemed poised, but he knew she was angry. She’d hate this new development more than he did.

“What’s the word, Lem?” said Chubs. “We can cut bait now and scoot away if you’d like. Otherwise we need to punch it. We have a brief window here.”

Nine days, thought Lem. They had come nine days. The rock was right there in front of them. What would you do, Father? Go off and shoot some more pebbles? Fly eight months to a different asteroid? Or knock these gravel suckers off the rock? Lem could almost feel Father here beside him, looking over his shoulder, shaking his head in disgust, oozing disappointment. “Why do you even have to think this one through, Lem?” Father would say. “Are you a Jukes or are you a child?”

Lem turned to Chubs. “Put us on the rock.”

Marco

Victor was on a spacewalk, outside El Cavador, bolting one of the pebble-killers into place with his hand drill. Mono was beside him, his feet anchored to the hull, holding the PK steady with bracing cables. They had removed the laser a few days ago and taken it into the cargo bay to make modifications. Now, with those completed, they were reinstalling it on the side of the ship.

Victor wasn’t sure if their efforts would make much difference. If the alien starship proved to be aggressive, Victor probably couldn’t do much to stop it. The starship moved at near-lightspeed, which required an almost inconceivable amount of energy and huge leaps in technology, far beyond anything human tech had ever achieved. And if the starship’s builders could do that, there was no telling what their weapons could do.

Victor inserted a bolt into his drill and moved to the next hole, noticing that the hole was slightly off its mark. He looked up and saw that Mono had fallen asleep. The bracing cable drifted lazily away from Mono’s open hands, and his arms floated limply beside him. If not for Mono’s boot magnets, he probably would have drifted away from the ship.

“Mono,” Victor said sharply.

Mono jerked awake, suddenly alert, eyes wide. He grabbed the bracing cable and pulled it taut. “Sorry. I’m awake.”

“No you’re not. You’re exhausted. And I don’t blame you. I’ve pushed you way too hard today.”

“No, no. I’m fine. Really. I’m good now.” Mono blinked his eyes in an exaggerated manner and shook his head to force himself to stay awake.

“Three more bolts,” said Victor. “Then we’ll go inside. It’s already an hour into sleep-shift. You should be zipped up in your hammock.”

“I’m fine,” Mono said, though Victor could tell from the look on his face that if given five more seconds of silence, the boy would be asleep again.

A message from Mother appeared on Victor’s visor. “It’s late, Vico. Bring Mono inside. His mother’s worried.”

Victor and Mono finished the install, collected their things, and hurried to the airlock. Mother greeted them inside with containers of chili and two hot arepas wrapped in a cloth. Victor wiggled out of his pressure suit and sucked the first taste of chili up through the straw. It was hot and spicy with finely minced peppers the way he liked it.

“Perfect as always,” he said.

Mother scowled. “You’re not winning me over with compliments, Vico. You’re in trouble. Mono should have been in a bed an hour ago.”

“I’m not tired,” said Mono, though he was barely keeping his eyes open.

Mother smiled. “No, you’re as perky as a jackrabbit.” She frowned at Victor. “You’re not resting and eating like I told you to, Vico. You need eight hours of sleep a night. As does Mono. He’s nine years old.”

“Nine and three quarters,” said Mono. “My birthday’s coming up.”

“You’re right, Patita,” said Victor. “I’m sorry.

Mother squinted. She always got that suspicious look in her eyes whenever Victor called her by the nickname he had given her as a child, as if he were concealing something. “Did you even go to bed last night, Vico? You weren’t in your hammock this morning.”

Victor bit into the arepa. It was hot and buttery. “I slept a few hours in the workshop.”

Mother sighed and looked at Mono. “And what about you, Monito? Are you learning anything from my son besides rebellion and disobedience?”

Mono’s mouth was full of arepa. He said something, but it was unintelligible.

“He says he sleeps like a baby,” said Victor. “Eight hours a night.”

Mono smiled and nodded to show Mother that the translation had been correct.

“At least one of you minds,” said Mother.

Victor kept quiet. He knew Mother wasn’t really angry. She knew the work they were doing needed to be done. She just didn’t like it.

“Father should be the one getting the tongue lashing,” said Victor. “He’s sleeping less than I am.”

“Oh don’t you worry,” said Mother. “He’s heard plenty from me today already.”

All of them had been working feverishly since the Council meeting, Father more than anyone.

“The Italians should be getting the laserline about now,” said Mother.

Victor nodded. “Still no word from the Juke ship?”

Mother shook her head. “We should have gotten a response by now, at least an acknowledgment of message received. But so far, nothing. Selmo thinks they pulled out before they got the message. They’re not showing up on our scans anymore.”

“Or maybe they got the message and shot back to Luna, fleeing for their lives,” said Mono.

“Then at least we got the message to someone,” Mother said.

“We should have told everyone,” said Victor. “We should have told the whole world ten days ago.”

She nodded and put a hand on his arm. “Just promise me you’ll sleep more.”

“Only if you promise to make this chili more often.”

“Yeah,” said Mono, smacking his lips. “Sabroso.” Delicious.

Victor’s handheld beeped, and Father’s voice came through. “Marco and I could use your help out here, Vico. If you’re done with that pebble-killer, send Mono on to bed and come give us a hand.”

When not working in the mine, Marco had been helping Father in recent days, joining him outside to build the ship’s defenses.

“I’m here with Mother,” said Victor. “She can hear you. She’s giving me the skunk eye.”

“I don’t want to leave this thing half installed overnight,” said Father, “and these new parts of yours are being a little finicky. Tell your mother I need you.”

“Tell your father he’s in big trouble,” said Mother.

“She says she loves you dearly,” said Victor.

Mother rolled her eyes, and Victor knew then that she wasn’t going to argue.

“I’m on my way out,” said Victor.

“Can I come?” said Mono.

“Absolutely not,” said Mother. “I told your mom I’d have you go straight to your hammock, and that’s exactly where you’re going.”

Mono looked ready to object, but a quick look and stern finger from Mother made Mono think better of it. He let his shoulders sag and launched up toward the hatch. When he was gone, Mother put a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “Please be careful, Vico. When we’re tired, we make mistakes. And you can’t make mistakes outside. Even little ones.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Five minutes later he was outside with Father and Marco, his lifeline stretching out behind him to the cargo bay.

“We rebooted,” said Father, gesturing to the newly installed PK. “But it’s still not coming online.”

Using his heads-up display-or HUD-Victor blinked his way into the ship’s computer to pinpoint the problem. He wasn’t a coder, but he had learned enough code to manipulate it when he needed to accommodate modifications. By the time he had uncovered the glitch, tweaked the code, and brought the PK to life, another hour had passed. Marco and Father were nearby, bolting one of the new armored plates onto the hull. The metal had come directly from the dig site, where the smelting machines had been modified to make them. There had been a lot of discussion on the ship about using the metal, with some people insisting that they send the metal directly to Luna with the rest of the minerals to build up more income. In the end, however, Concepcion had sided with Father, and the smelters had been making additional plates ever since.

Victor joined Father and Marco and began helping them secure plates to the hull. He couldn’t hear the drill in his hand, but he knew the vibrations would be making noise inside the ship. Most people were sleeping, so if the sound was loud enough to wake them, Victor was sure he’d get a message in his helmet telling them to stop. After several more hours of work, no message came. Initially, Marco made the time pass quickly by telling old mining stories, some of which were so hilarious that Victor and Father had laughed until their stomachs hurt. It was the first time Victor had felt any sense of normalcy with an adult-other than Mother and Father-since Janda’s departure.

Eventually the stories dried up, however, and the three of them fell into a silence as they worked. They could stop at any moment, of course; Father and Marco had only started installing plates to keep busy while Victor worked on the PK. With that done, there was really no reason for them to be out this late. Victor stood up to suggest that they call it a night, when something in the distance, down on the surface of the asteroid, caught his attention. A flicker of movement, a streak of something out of the corner of his eye. Victor squinted into the darkness, straining to see. He blinked up the magnification feature on his helmet and zoomed his view down to where one of the mooring lines was anchored to the asteroid. It was hard to see much detail in the blackness, but it looked as if something was on the line.

“Father?”

“Yeah?”

“I think there’s something on the-”

There were twelve simultaneous, blinding flashes of light down near the asteroid. Victor instinctively clenched his eyes shut, feeling the ship shift slightly beneath his feet.

“What was that?” asked Marco.

Victor opened his eyes and saw among the dots of brightness still burned into his vision that all twelve mooring lines had been cut. The ship was adrift. Someone had blown the lines.

“It’s an attack!” Father shouted. “Hold on to something!”

The first laser hit the PK not two meters from where Victor was standing, slicing it from its base. A mechanism inside the PK exploded outward, causing the PK to shoot back like a rocket in zero gravity. It struck Marco in the side of the head just as he was bending down, tearing him away from the ship and sending him spinning out into space.

“Victor, get down!” Father cried.

Victor initiated the magnets in his hands and waist belt and quickly lowered himself to the hull on his stomach. The alarm in his HUD was beeping. Father must have initiated it. Everywhere on the ship, the siren would be wailing now, waking everyone.

Two laser blasts hit the hull near where Victor and Father lay, slicing off more sensors and instruments. Another laser cut wide to Victor’s left, and Victor turned his head and watched in horror as the laserline transmitter was hit. In one swift slice, the laser cut away the entire mechanism, leaving only the mounting plate and a few scorched circuits. The severed piece floated there in space, drifting slowly away. The ship’s primary source of long-range communication was gone.

Victor flinched as three more lasers swept across the surface of the ship to his right, not cutting deep into the hull, but slicing away all protruding instrumentations in their paths. Victor closed his eyes, expecting the inevitable, but the lasers didn’t touch him. A moment later his alarm went silent, and his HUD winked out. He had no power. His suit was dead. Had a laser cut his lifeline? No, the surface lights on El Cavador were out as well; the lasers must have hit the main generators. Victor took a breath. He wasn’t getting fresh air. He no longer had heat. He tried to move, and the rotation of his body caused him to drift away from the hull. No power meant no magnets. He realized a moment too late that nothing was anchoring him to the ship. He reached out, clawing at the smooth surface, trying to get purchase, desperate to cling to something. He looked at Father, who was screaming, though Victor could hear nothing. Father had one hand outstretched, the other hand gripping a recessed handhold. Victor grabbed for Father’s hand, but it was more than a meter beyond his reach.

Another laser hit the hull, slicing away another sensor.

Victor turned his head, frantically scanning the sky around him. Was it the starship?

Then he saw it.

At first it was just a black space in the sky where stars should be. Then the ship came closer, and Victor could make out detail. It wasn’t a starship. It was a corporate. A Juke ship.

Floodlights blinded him. Victor raised his arm, shielding his eyes, squinting at the light. The corporate ship had approached in darkness and was now charging in, lights blazing. It wasn’t slowing down. It was going to ram El Cavador.

Victor looked back at Father, who was still screaming for him to reach. Victor flailed, reaching out, straining, stretching, extending his fingers.

The ship struck.

Father moved away fast.

Victor’s body slammed into something hard, the wind rushing out of him in a violent impact to his chest. He felt a flash of pain. The corporates had hit him. He was flat against their ship, and then he wasn’t, spinning away, free again, tumbling, disoriented. He turned his head and saw El Cavador moving away from him, his lifeline stretching out, growing taut. He couldn’t breath. His lungs were screaming for air. He looked at his lifeline and knew that a hard jerk might tear it from his back. He reached back and grabbed the line just as it went taut. The line jerked him hard, but it stayed connected. He held on. He was tumbling again, trailing behind El Cavador like a trolled fish line.

Then in a single, painful inhale of breath, his lungs expanded again. He took in air. His chest burned. His arm hurt. His suit was cold. His head was ringing. The air was stale.

“Father!”

There was no reply. He still had no power.

El Cavador was drifting awkwardly ahead of him, moving abnormally to the side, like a boat turned sideways in an unforgiving current. The twelve severed mooring cables hung loosely below the ship. Two more laser blasts hit sensors on the side of the ship, though Victor couldn’t see what they were. He was still spinning, flying, dazed, limp. Everything was happening too quickly.

Behind him, he saw the corporate ship fire its retros and slow down, coming to a stop right where El Cavador had been. They wanted the rock, Victor realized. The bastards had bumped them for the rock.

Victor rotated his body, trying to control the spinning. El Cavador was still in a dead float, moving away from him. His lifeline was still taut. He was probably forty meters from the ship. He pulled on the lifeline, using the momentum to stop the spinning. His body steadied. The spinning ceased. He could see Father clinging to the ship.

The siren started beeping in his helmet again. His heads-up display flickered to life. He had power. The auxiliary generators had kicked in.

“Victor!” It was Father’s voice.

“I’m here.” He was already hitting the propulsion trigger on his thumb, flying forward, hurrying toward the ship.

“Are you hurt?” Father asked.

Victor could see Father getting to his feet and then jumping from the ship, flying out toward him. Victor rotated his arm. It wasn’t broken. Or at least he didn’t think so. “No. I’m okay.”

El Cavador was still drifting. He and Father were coming at each other fast. Victor let up on his propulsion just as Father did. Even still, they collided, clinging to each other. Father scanned Victor’s helmet, looking for fractures. “You’re not hurt? You’re not leaking?”

“No.” He had never seen Father this rattled before. “You?”

“Fine. It’s Marco. Help me get him inside. He’s not responding.”

Only then did Victor realize that there was a second lifeline trailing behind the ship, albeit farther down the ship from his position. Marco’s line had snagged on one of the mooring braces, and Marco’s body was limp and lifeless. Father oriented himself and hit his propulsion trigger, flying straight toward Marco. Victor followed close behind him.

They reached Marco and anchored themselves to the ship. Marco’s body was limp and nonresponsive. They turned him over. His eyes were closed. His helmet was cracked, though it didn’t appear as if air was leaking.

“I don’t think he’s breathing,” said Father. He looked up, thinking, not sure what to do, then came to a decision. “Go open the hatch to the bay airlock. As soon as Marco and I come through, pull in the slack from our lifelines as fast as you can. Then come in after us and seal the hatch tight. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Father got behind Marco and wrapped one arm around his chest and another around his waist. He was going to fly him in. “Go, Victor.”

Victor launched, pushing the thumb trigger down as far as it would go, hurtling straight to the airlock hatch that led into the cargo bay. The exterior siren lights were spinning, bathing the whole ship in rays of moving red. The damage was everywhere: scorch marks, stumps where equipment had been. Victor reached the hatch, opened it, then moved to the side. Father was coming up fast, carrying Marco’s limp body. Marco’s legs thumped against the frame of the hatch as he came through, but Marco showed no response. Victor followed them inside and began reeling in the slack from their lifelines, pulling hand over hand as fast as he could. Father was beside him now, pulling frantically. Finally it was all in. Victor sealed the hatch, and air immediately began pouring into the airlock to fill the vacuum.

“Help me anchor him to the ground,” said Father.

The lifeline slack was everywhere, floating all around them. Victor pushed as much of it to the side as he could, getting it out of the way. Then he hit the switch on Marco’s waist belt to initiate the magnet. He and Father lowered Marco’s body to the floor. Father grabbed two anchor straps and put one across Marco’s chest and another across his legs, anchoring him flat against the floor. By then the airlock was almost full of air.

“As soon as we get the all-clear,” said Father, “take his helmet off nice and slow. Don’t jerk it. We need to be easy with his neck.”

Victor nodded, and they both got into position.

Father looked at the time counter on the wall and saw that there were twenty seconds before the room was fully pressurized. “Close enough. Go.” Father began taking off his own helmet while Victor delicately unhinged Marco’s. When he finally got it off, the all-clear sounded, and the light above the exit to the cargo bay turned green.

Father felt Marco’s neck for a pulse while Victor fumbled to get his own helmet off.

“Call Isabella on your handheld,” said Father. “Get her here now. Tell her I can’t find a pulse and he’s not breathing.”

Victor’s hands were shaking as he dialed the code on his handheld. Marco was dying. Or maybe already dead. Father tilted Marco’s head slightly back and began giving him rescue breaths. Isabella didn’t respond.

“She’s not answering,” said Victor.

“She’s probably already treating people or moving to the fuge. Find her. Get her here now. Have her bring her kit if she has it with her. Go.”

Victor detached his lifeline and was up and out of the airlock in an instant, launching himself across the cargo bay to the hatch on the far side of the room. The siren was loud inside the ship, and only the emergency lights were on, leaving much of the room in darkness. No one was in the cargo bay, but Victor found plenty of people out in the hall, a main thoroughfare on the ship. Everyone was wearing their emergency air masks and moving down the hall toward the fuge in an orderly fashion as they had been trained. Babies and small children were crying behind their masks, but their parents held them close to their chests and spoke words of comfort. Everyone seemed alarmed, but Victor was pleased to see that no one was panicking. Most people were upright, wearing greaves, but a few like Victor were flying, calmly moving with the crowd.

Victor scanned the faces but didn’t see Isabella. Knowing her, she would be one of the last people to head for the fuge. As a trained nurse, she would stay behind and help anyone who had been injured in the collision, making sure everyone got to the fuge. She was the closest thing El Cavador had to a doctor, and she had even performed a few surgeries over the years, though only in life-threatening situations and always as a last resort.

Victor spotted a familiar face. “Edimar!”

Edimar saw him and pushed her way through the crowd to reach him. Her air mask covered her entire face. “What happened?” she asked. “Why are you in a pressure suit? Were you outside? Where’s your mask?”

“Have you seen Isabella?”

Edimar pointed back up the way she had come. “She was helping Abuelita. Why? Who’s hurt? What happened?”

Victor didn’t wait to answer. He was already away, pushing his way past people, going against traffic, using the handrail to pull himself forward. Edimar called after him, but he didn’t turn back. Several people shouted at him as he brushed past them, but Victor didn’t care. Marco was dying. He wasn’t breathing. Every second counted.

The deeper he went down the hall, the thinner the crowd became. With more room to move around, Victor began launching himself forward, moving faster, covering more ground. He reached Abuelita, his great-grandmother, who was being helped down the hall by two of his uncles. “Where’s Isabella?”

They pointed farther up the hall. Victor shot forward, panicked. There were very few people now. What if Isabella had gone into someone’s room to help them and Victor had passed it? Or what if she had taken another passageway down to the fuge and Victor had missed her?

He saw her. She was ahead in the hall, putting Victor’s cousin Nanita’s arm in a sling.

“Isabella!”

She looked up. Victor grabbed a handhold on the wall, stopped himself, and motioned for her to come. “It’s Marco. He’s not breathing.”

She grabbed her bag and launched toward him. “Where?”

Victor turned his body and launched down the way he had come. “Airlock. Cargo bay.”

“He was outside?”

“We were putting on some plates when the corporates attacked.”

“Corporates?”

He told her what he could as they flew down the corridor. He had to shout over the wail of the alarm. The crowd was thin now. Most people would be in the fuge. They reached the cargo bay. Isabella went through first. They flew down to the airlock. Maybe Marco is fine now, thought Victor. Maybe Father revived him. We’ll get there, and Marco will be up and coughing and sore maybe, but he’ll be alive, and he’ll thank Father and me for helping him, and then we’ll all go down to the fuge together and laugh about what a scare it had been.

But Marco wasn’t fine. Father was still giving him rescue breaths. Nothing had changed. Marco was still lifeless. Father saw them and moved aside for Isabella to take over. Father looked exhausted and afraid and out of breath. “He’s not responding to anything,” he said.

Isabella slid her greaves up to her knees and knelt on the floor beside Marco, opening her bag and moving quickly. “Help me get his suit off so I can get to his chest.” She had scissors in her hand and began cutting away his suit. Victor and Father tore the fabric away as Isabella cut through Marco’s undershirt. Victor watched the chest, willing it to rise on its own, to move, to show a little life. It didn’t.

Isabella slapped sensors onto his chest and slid a tube over Marco’s mouth. The machine started giving him breaths, and Marco’s chest began to rise and fall. It didn’t give Victor any comfort. The machine was doing all the work. Isabella pulled a syringe from her bag, bit off the needle cap, spat it away, and stuck the needle into Marco’s arm. She flipped on a second machine, and Victor heard the sustained beep of a flatline. His heart wasn’t beating. Isabella pressed a disc to Marco’s chest. She squeezed the handle, and Marco’s body twitched. Victor thought for half a second that whatever Isabella had done had revived him; that Marco was coming around and jerking awake. But he wasn’t. His body became still again. Isabella jolted him three more times. Four. Still the flatline persisted.

Isabella looked lost. She removed the disc from Marco’s chest and pushed it away. Her hands went back in her bag. They came out with the bone pad. She placed it on Marco’s chest, and the skeletal structure appeared on the screen. Isabella slowly moved the pad up to Marco’s neck and held it there for a long time, her face just inches from the pad. Finally, she switched off the pad and looked up, defeated.

“His neck is broken. It severed his spinal column. I’m sorry.”

The words felt hollow to Victor, like words from a dream. She was telling them that Marco was dead, that there was nothing more she could do. She was giving up.

No, Marco couldn’t be dead. Victor had been with Marco just moments ago. They had been working together, laughing.

Father was speaking quietly into his handheld, calling someone down to the airlock.

“There has to be something we can do,” said Victor.

“There isn’t, Vico,” said Isabella, removing the tube from Marco’s mouth.

“So we’re just giving up?”

“I can’t fix what’s broken here. He was dead before you brought him in. I’m sorry.”

Victor felt numb. His fingers were tingling. Marco was dead. The word hit him like the Juke ship had. Dead. Why had the corporates attacked them? This wasn’t the Asteroid Belt. This was the Kuiper Belt. The family had left the A Belt for this very reason: to get away from the corporates.

How had they gotten so close without us detecting them?

Victor looked down at Marco. He has a family, Victor told himself. A wife, Gabi, and three girls-one of whom, Chencha, was just a year younger than Victor.

Father disconnected the lifeline from the back of his own suit and moved for the door into the cargo bay. “Let’s go, Vico.”

“We’re leaving?”

“You and I have work to do.”

He meant the ship. Victor had seen some of the damage. The power generator was fried. Sensors were gone. PKs were gone. And the auxiliary generators wouldn’t last forever. If the family was going to survive, Victor and Father needed to make big repairs fast.

Victor nodded to Father and moved toward the hatch.

“Gabi and Lizbet are on their way down now,” Father said to Isabella. “I’d stay, but Concepcion wants us on the helm immediately.”

Lizbet was Marco’s mother. She still doted on her son.

“Go,” said Isabella. “I’ll wait for them here.”

Father was up and flying. Victor launched after him. A moment later they were in the hall, which was empty now. Father turned toward the helm, taking a side passageway. Before following, Victor looked down the hall in the opposite direction, back toward the fuge, and saw two women coming, still a distance away, heading for the cargo bay. Gabi and Lizbet. Wife and mother. Even at a distance, he could see the terror and panic on their faces.

“Vico, let’s go,” said Father.

Victor was moving again, following Father, weaving through the passageways of the ship. They arrived at the helm, and Victor was surprised to see the entire flight crew here, all busily working. Some were running cables and setting up lights. Others were at their workstations, speaking into their headsets or typing in commands. Concepcion saw Father and flew to him immediately. Victor could tell from her expression that she knew about Marco. Father must have called her.

“Gabi and Lizbet are with him now,” said Father.

Concepcion nodded. “Are either of you hurt?”

“The corporate ship hit Victor,” said Father.

“I’m fine,” said Victor.

Concepcion looked concerned. “You sure? I’m going to need you, Victor, like I’ve never needed you before.”

“I’m fine,” he repeated, though he felt anything but fine. Marco was dead. The ship was damaged, perhaps irreparably so.

“Come with me,” said Concepcion, turning and flying back to the holotable.

Selmo was there, looking at a large holo schematic of the ship in the holospace above the table. A dozen blinking red dots on the schematic marked damaged areas. “The electrical generator is out, of course,” he said. “We don’t yet know how badly it’s damaged. That should be our first priority. The backup generators are fine, but they can only output about fifty percent of the power we typically use every day. So we’ll need to ration power and turn off a bunch of lights and all nonessential equipment. Most of the power will need to go to the air ventilators and the heaters. I’d rather work in the dark than freeze to death.”

“Victor and I will handle the main generator,” said Father. “What about the reactors?”

“The reactors are fine,” said Selmo. “So the thrusters are good. The corporates knew what they were doing. They beat us up, but they left us with the ability to run away as fast as we can.”

“Which is exactly what we are going to do,” said Concepcion. “Once we get our bearings and pick our course, we are out of here. We’re no match for a ship that size or that well defended. I know some of you would like to blow them out of the sky right now, but we are in no position to do so. We don’t have the capabilities, and we are not going to endanger anyone else on this ship. That asteroid is not worth dying for. We’re running.”

“No argument,” said Father. “But if we can, we should try to collect as many of the parts and sensors as possible that were cut away from the ship. They’re just out there floating in space right now, and we might be able to salvage some of the parts. Especially the lasers. Some of those components are irreplaceable. I don’t want to push our luck and aggravate the corporates by sticking around, but we should scoop up as much as we can before we rocket out of here.”

“Agreed,” said Concepcion. “Selmo, as soon as we’re done here, work with Segundo and Victor on a plan to quickly collect as much of the severed equipment as we can.”

Selmo nodded. “The miners can help with that. I’ve got thirty men already asking what they can do.”

“What else is damaged?” asked Father.

Selmo sighed. “Both laser drills are gone. The corporates severed them from the ship, and then sliced them to pieces. There’s no way we can repair them. I’ve already pulled video of the attack. The drills are irreparable. See for yourself.” He entered some commands into the holotable, and surveillance video of the exterior of the ship appeared in the holospace. There was the old laser drill, the one with Victor’s stabilizer, illuminated by a pair of the safety lights. Selmo fast-forwarded the video, and Victor and Father watched as lasers sliced the drill the ribbons. The light was so bright and the cuts happened so quickly that Selmo rewound the video and showed it to them again in slow motion. Victor felt sick. All his modifications and improvements to the drill, all of which he had created in his head and rarely written down before building them, were gone. Chopped into worthless scrap. Worse still, the drills were the family’s livelihood, the two most important pieces of equipment, the means by which the family earned money and survived.

And now they were gone.

Father said nothing for a moment. He understood the implication. The corporates had crippled more than the ship; they had crippled the family’s future. How could they mine now? How could they get money for needed supplies or spare parts? How could they exist in the Deep without good drills?

“What else?” asked Father.

“Four of our PKs are gone as well,” said Selmo. “That leaves us with two. Here again, the corporates knew what they were doing. They left us with one PK on either side of the ship, enough for us to fly out of here and defend ourselves against most collision threats, but not enough to retaliate and attack their ship. The only upside here, if there is one, is that they didn’t slice up the PKs. They just cut them loose. I take that to mean they expect us to recover them and repair them elsewhere.”

“How kind of them,” said Father. “Remind me to send flowers. What else?”

“Our other big loss is communication. The laserline transmitter’s gone. We can’t send a distress message even if we wanted to.”

“It also means we can’t warn anyone about the starship,” said Victor.

“True,” said Selmo, “but that’s the least of our problems right now.”

“What about ice?” asked Father. “How are we with air and fuel?”

Selmo smiled. “That’s a ray of sunshine. The holding bay is ninety-five percent full of ice. We harvested as much as we could from the asteroid when we first got here. So we’re fine for fuel and oxygen for a while. That’s more than enough to get us wherever we want to go within, say, five to six months from here.”

Victor felt relieved to hear that, at least. Ice was life. The reactors melted it and separated the hydrogen from the oxygen. The hydrogen they used for fuel. The oxygen they breathed.

Selmo moved his stylus in the holospace and rotated the schematic. “If you’d like more good news, it appears as if the other life-support systems are undamaged. Water purifiers are good. Air pumps are fine. Whoever these corporates are they picked their targets carefully.”

“Leaks?” asked Father.

“None that we can detect,” said Selmo. “We’re running another scan just to be certain, but it looks like we got through without a breach. We were lucky. The impact wasn’t that hard, and their lasers weren’t trying to penetrate. Plus the armor helped.”

“Who are they?” Father asked. “Why didn’t we see this coming?”

Selmo sighed. “That’s my fault. This is the corporate ship we sent the laserline to ten days ago. I should have suspected something when they didn’t show up on the scans anymore. I assumed that they had moved on. I never thought that they were creeping up on us.”

“No one is at fault,” said Concepcion. “They knew our scanning capabilities and they exploited them. End of story.”

“If they got our message, why would they attack us?” Father asked.

“Selmo and I did the math,” said Concepcion. “When we sent out the laserline, they were already coming for us. They never got our message. They missed it. This has nothing to do with the laserline. They wanted the asteroid, pure and simple.”

Dreo came to the holotable. “I’ve got their network. Give the word and we’re a go.”

Father turned to Concepcion. “We launched a snifferstick?” he asked.

Sniffersticks were small hacker satellites launched from one ship to spy on another. To work, they had to be within range of a ship’s network yet far enough away to avoid triggering the ship’s PKs. Fifty meters was about as close as any snifferstick dared. Accessing the ship’s network was the tricky part, especially if it was a corporate ship. Corporates had armies of coders and specialists who did nothing but devise defenses against sniffersticks. Most families wouldn’t dream of even trying to hack a corporate. But most families didn’t have Dreo, either, who could wiggle his way into any network.

“We launched it just before you came to the helm,” said Concepcion. “I want to know who bumped us.”

“What if they detect us nosing around their network?” said Father. “That might instigate another attack.”

“They won’t know,” said Dreo. “I’ve taken every precaution.”

“No offense,” said Father, “but are you sure? We’ve been out here for years. Who knows what other sweeper programs they’ve got running these days? They might have new ways to detect us that we don’t know about. Is this a risk we want to take? They’re corporates. What else do we want to know?”

“They have no reason coming out to the Kuiper Belt when there are so many asteroids in the A Belt, ready for the taking,” said Concepcion. “If they’re moving out here now, the other families will want to know. This will affect all the clans. We’ve lived in relative peace for a long time now. If corporates are beginning to invade our space, that’s intel we need to spread. Dreo assures me we’ll remain invisible.”

“Then why don’t we upload some malware or venomware and damage their systems while we’re in there?” said Victor.

“Because we are not going to attack them at all,” said Concepcion. “I want information, not revenge.”

Victor looked at the faces around the table, and saw that not everyone shared in that opinion.

“Please proceed, Dreo,” said Concepcion. “And bring up their network on the holotable, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Dreo returned to his workstation, and the schematic of the ship in the holospace disappeared, replaced with a series of three-dimensional icons spinning in space: flight log, engineering, laserlines, field trials, Lem, Dr. Benyawe, and others.

“Give me the manifest,” said Concepcion. “Tell me who the captain is.”

Photos and a holovideo of a handsome man in his early thirties appeared. Concepcion selected the window of data beside one of the photos and expanded it.

“Lem Jukes,” she said, reading the name.

“As in the Jukes?” said Father. “Is he related?”

“Ukko’s son,” said Concepcion.

“I’ll be damned,” said Selmo. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Copy as much of this data as we can,” said Concepcion. “I want to know what their intentions are. Then let’s get the severed sensors back in the ship and get out of here before Mr. Lem Jukes decides to take more potshots. I’m going to be with Gabi and Lizbet, and then I’ll head to the fuge to address the family.” She turned to Father. “Don’t waste time and energy working on what we can’t fix. Work with Selmo to identify those things we can repair. Power first, communication second.”

“What about the starship?” asked Victor.

“What about it?” said Concepcion. “Selmo’s right. We’re not in any position to address that right now. Nor can we relay what we’ve found. We’re silent until we get communication back online.”

“We’re not going to be able to recover everything,” said Father. “We’re going to need parts and supplies.”

“The nearest weigh station is four months away,” said Concepcion. “The closest help we have are the Italians. They received our message and are watching the sky. If we hurry, maybe we can reach them before they move on. They’ll have plenty of supplies we could use.”

Victor looked at Father and could tell that he was thinking the same thing Victor was. Going for the Italians was a risk. There was no way to send the Italians a transmission to tell them to stay put and wait. If El Cavador arrived and the Italians had moved on, the ship would be in serious trouble.

Concepcion left the bridge.

Victor turned back to the holospace and looked at Lem Jukes. Some of the photos were ID shots: a straight headshot, a profile shot. But others were more casual photos taken from the ship’s archives: Lem standing with his father, Ukko Jukes, in a ceremonial photo at what must have been the ship’s departure; a more editorial shot of Lem in action at the helm, leaning forward over some holodisplay, pointing at nothing in particular, clearly a staged shot for the press. And then there was the brief holovideo. It was twelve seconds long at the most, running on a loop, playing over and over again. Lem was at a dinner party, sitting at a table after a meal. Empty wineglasses, fancy cutlery, a slice of half-eaten cake on a plate. There was no audio, but Lem was clearly telling a story, using his hands and his charming smile to emphasize his tale. Two beautiful women sat on either side of him, hanging on his every word. The story reached its end, and everyone burst out laughing, including Lem. Then the video began again.

Victor watched it a second time, and this time Victor imagined the words coming out of Lem’s mouth. “So we blow up their mooring cables,” Lem was saying. “And there were these three men out on the hull of their ship. The devil only knows what they were doing out there. So I told my pilot to rush them, to hit them hard and knock that PK right where they were standing. And lo and behold, that thing smacked one of those gravel suckers right between the eyes.”

Laughter from everyone at the table.

Father was talking with Selmo. Victor stared at the laughter in the video.

That man killed Marco, Victor thought. Lem Jukes, son of Ukko Jukes, heir to the fortune of thieves and murderers, killed Marco.

Concepcion wanted them to focus on power and communication. Fine. Victor would do that. But he was also going to rebuild one of the PKs, a special one, strong enough to wipe that stupid grin right off Lem Jukes’s face.

India

Captain Wit O’Toole sat up front in the cockpit with the pilot until the plane was an hour away from the drop zone. The eight passengers in the cabin were Wit’s newest recruits, soldiers plucked from Special Forces units in New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Russia, and South Korea. In his most optimistic estimations, Wit had counted on finding six men to join MOPs. Coming home with eight was like Christmas come early.

None of the men had ever met one another before this flight, so Wit had intentionally left them alone immediately after the plane had taken off from a private airport in Mumbai. If he had sat with them, they would have deferred to him as their senior officer and waited for him to initiate conversation. But now, as Wit left the cockpit and made his way back to the cabin, he heard laughter and conversation as if the men were the oldest of friends.

Sociability and friendliness were the first traits Wit looked for in possible recruits. There were thousands of soldiers who could shoot with accuracy and fight with ferocity, but there were few who could quickly earn trust among foreigners and strangers. This was especially important in MOPs, whose soldiers often rushed into violent situations where civilians were being brutalized, often by their own militaries and governments. It meant MOPs had the difficult task of earning the trust of those who distrusted anyone in uniform. These men had what it took.

Wit entered the cabin, and the South Korean, a lieutenant named Yoo Chi-won, sprang to his feet, came to attention, and saluted. The others quickly followed his lead and stood up.

“As you were,” said Wit.

The men sat down.

“I appreciate the gesture, gentlemen,” said Wit, “but this is not the South Korean Army or the Russian Army or whatever. This is MOPs. We follow a different protocol. You need only salute me in formal settings, and those are rare anyway. You will show me a much greater respect in the field by immediately following orders. You need not even address me formally, if you wish. I answer to Wit, O’Toole, or Captain. And speaking of rank. As all of you have no doubt noticed from your introductions and insignia on your uniforms, I am not the only captain on this plane. We have several captains and lieutenants and NCOs among us. These ranks were all well earned. You are to be commended for them. But they are ranks from a different army. You are no longer a captain or a lieutenant. You are all equal. Should you choose to address each other formally, you will call each other ‘soldier.’ Soldier Chi-won. Soldier Bogdanovich. Soldier Mabuzza. I hold a rank because I have been doing this for a while and my superiors need someone to blame if something goes wrong.”

The men smiled.

“There are other small matters of protocol, but these we will pick up as we go along. At the moment, we have more pressing matters. Beneath your seats you will find masks with one hundred percent oxygen. I advise you to begin breathing that now.”

All eight men reached under their seats, found their masks, and put them on. Wit put his on as well, speaking through the transmitter at the base of the mask.

“Since all of you are trained in high-altitude jumps, I need not explain the importance of flushing all the nitrogen from your bloodstream prior to the jump.”

The men exchanged glances. Wit had not yet told them where they were going or what they would do when they got there. His instructions had simply been to come to a designated hangar at an airfield in Mumbai with nothing but the uniform they were wearing. A plane would be waiting.

“And yes, we are about to make a high-altitude jump,” said Wit. “Your new home for the next few months is a training facility in the Parvati Valley in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains in northern India. These two cabinets here contain the remainder of your gear. Leave your old uniforms here in a pile. You won’t need them. They represent your old life. You are MOPs men now. I suggest you change quickly.”

The men got up, opened the cabinets, and began distributing the gear. As Wit had suspected, they worked calmly, passing out the equipment and showing as much concern for one another as they did for themselves. They then removed their uniforms and dropped them where Wit had indicated. Wit could have asked them to come in civvies, but the ritualistic shedding of old affiliations helped remind the men where their new devotion lay.

Wit put on a dampening suit, then a jumpsuit, which was thick and heated and laced with the latest biometric sensors. There was other gear as well. Wit had placed a few exotic items in the bags to see how the men would respond. A Korean altimeter, for instance, was completely foreign to everyone but Chi-won. They were the best altimeters in the world, but they were exclusive to the Korean Army. Wit was pleased to see Chi-won quickly show the others how to strap the device to their wrists and plug it into their suits. The APAD-automatic parachute activation device-was a Russian model, and Bogdanovich kindly instructed the others on how it worked and what to expect in their heads-up display just before it activated.

Wit placed his holopad on a table and asked the men to gather. A holo appeared of a large military complex with barracks and training facilities and other buildings, all surrounded by a well-fortified wall.

“This is one of the training camps of the Indian Para Commandos,” said Wit, “one of the most elite Special Forces units in the world. The PCs are tough men, well equipped and expertly trained. At the moment, three hundred and seven of them are stationed here undergoing training. Their commanding officer is Major Khudabadi Ketkar, a good man and skillful soldier. Our assignment is to train with his men for the next seven weeks. To initiate the training, Major Ketkar suggested we make a little wager. A game of Capture the Flag. Thirty MOPs versus three hundred and seven PCs. The loser will clean the latrines and mess hall for the extent of the training. I accepted that wager. Not for the prize-we will clean the latrines and mess hall anyway. I accepted because this is a chance for me to show the other MOPs already on the ground that I have brought them eight men worthy to be counted among them. The nine of us are going to take the flag.”

The men were smiling.

“Now, here’s what we know,” said Wit. “The flag is here in Ketkar’s office.” He touched the holo and left a blinking red dot on one of the buildings, then waved his hand through the holo and zoomed in on the building. Walls disappeared, and the building became a three-dimensional schematic, showing four floors of offices. Twenty soldiers were patrolling the roof. Ten more were patrolling the halls inside. Forty others surrounded the building outside beside a blockade of assault vehicles.

“This is a live feed,” said Wit. “Ketkar has nearly a third of his forces guarding the flag. Each of these men is wearing a dampening suit similar to yours. Their weapons, like yours, are loaded with spider rounds. Hit them, and they freeze up. They’re out. However, the status of each suit is broadcast to every other suit. In other words, they will know the instant one of their men goes down. So they’ll know when and where we’re attacking.” He waved his hand through the holo again and it zoomed out to the entire compound. “There are guard towers here, here, and here. Each with snipers. The front gate is here. There is only a single road leading up to the complex. As you can see, that road is well defended. This here to the south is the Parvati River. It is fast moving, especially now in spring. Winter snowmelt and glacial thaw coming off the mountains raise the water a few feet. Our camp is here three miles to the south. It’s a wide, open meadow with a few tents. Twenty-one MOPs, the rest of our forces, are defending our flag there. From the air it looks like the most poorly defended piece of land in the area, but our boys have prepared a few surprises. They are counting on us to bring them the enemy flag. I have promised them we would do so.” He stood erect and looked at their faces. “Now, we have about twenty-nine minutes before we reach the drop zone. Tell me how we’re going to do this.”

The men understood. There was no plan. They had twenty-nine minutes to devise one. The ideas came quickly, and Wit liked what he heard.

Glaser

The archives room on Makarhu was a dark, claustrophobic space filled with rows of blinking computer systems and humming servers. Lem was floating in the shadows back near a corner with his holopad plugged into one of the server inputs. A video of the attack on El Cavador played in the holospace above his pad. It showed a laser cutting through a pebble-killer on the hull of the free-miner ship. As Lem watched, the severed PK spun away and struck one of the free miners on spacewalk. Lem moved his hand through the holospace to stop the video, then he wiggled his fingers in the right sequence to rewind the video and play it again in slow motion. He couldn’t be certain, but it looked like, as he had feared, he had killed the man.

The bump with El Cavador had been far more violent than Lem had anticipated. It was one thing to talk of lasers cutting through sensors and equipment. It was quite another thing to see it all unfold before your eyes as Lem had done-the entire attack had been recorded by several cameras and projected on the big holospace on the helm.

No, he mustn’t use the word “attack.” That sounded incriminating and prosecutable. “Attack” implied wrongdoing and sparked headlines on the nets like: LEM JUKES ATTACKS FAMILY OF FREE MINERS. Or: HEIR TO JUKE FORTUNE ATTACKS CHILDREN. No, “attack” was far too aggressive a word. It painted a completely inaccurate picture of events. It suggested malicious intent and automatically put people into false categories. Good versus evil. Black versus white. And in truth, there were no good guys and bad guys in this scenario. They were just two parties after the same asteroid, which, let the record show, didn’t legally belong to anyone in the first place. Lem wasn’t taking something from the free miners because it wasn’t theirs to begin with. If they had possessed some deed perhaps or a bill of sale asserting them as the owners of said property, then yes, Lem would be in the wrong. But maneuvering someone away from an asteroid for which they had no right of ownership wasn’t a crime at all.

Maneuvering. Yes, Lem liked that word much better.

The PK in the video spun away from the laser again and struck the man. Lem froze the video at the moment of impact. The man’s neck was bent unnaturally to the side. Lem had never seen a broken neck before, but he was fairly certain that was what he was looking at.

“Mr. Jukes?”

Lem spun around, banging into two of the servers in the process. The archivist, a Belgian named Podolski, was floating at the end of the row of servers in his sleepsuit, looking at Lem with a confused expression. Lem felt panicked, though he worked hard to conceal it. The man should be sleeping. It was hours into sleep-shift.

“You startled me,” said Lem, smiling and switching off his holopad.

The archivist stared, confused. A moment of silence passed.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” said Lem. “I let myself in to review a few files.”

“The system alerts me when anyone accesses the core files without my authorization code,” Podolski said. “It’s a security precaution.”

“Ah,” said Lem. He hadn’t known that, or he would have figured out some way to circumvent the code. Lem chuckled. “How stupid of me. I’m so sorry. If I had known that, I would’ve come to you first during normal hours. I feel awful that I woke you.”

“You do know, sir, that you can access any files we have here in the archives using your personal terminal in your room.”

Of course Lem knew that. He wasn’t an idiot. But he didn’t want the ship to have a record of the files being transferred to his room-or to any other terminal on the ship for that matter. Nor did he want merely to look at the files; he wanted to erase the only copies in existence here on the main servers.

“I had some business to attend to in the mining bay,” said Lem. “So I thought I’d slip in here and check a few things. I didn’t know I’d make a stir.”

It wasn’t the best lie, but Lem had delivered it convincingly enough. And it could withstand scrutiny. The mining bay was close to the archive room, and in the days since the bump, the mining crew had been working long hours in the bay getting ready for the field test. It wasn’t implausible to suggest that Lem had been there.

Podolski nodded. “Is there something I can help you find, sir?”

“Very kind, but no. Just finishing up here. Thank you.”

Podolski nodded again, unsure what to do next. An awkward pause followed. “Well, if you need anything, sir, my quarters are right through that hatch over there.”

Lem made a show of straining his neck and looking at the hatch even though he knew exactly where it was. “Thank you. If I need something, I’ll let you know.”

Podolski drifted away, an uncertain look on his face.

Lem waited for the hatch to close, then began erasing files quickly, not even bothering to review them first. Earlier, when Lem had decided to go through with this and erase any record of the bump, he had briefly considered giving the chore to Podolski, who was obviously more familiar with the servers and thus better qualified. But then Lem had realized how unsettled that would have left him: He would have always wondered if Podolski had made his own copy of the files in the hope of blackmailing Lem in the future. Some of Father’s employees had tried such things over the years-their attempts had always ended in their own humiliation and never in Father’s, but Father had found the experiences exhausting nonetheless. Plus, giving the order to Podolski would only raise the man’s suspicions when most people on board, Podolski included, were still unaware of what had happened during the bump. No one but a few trusted senior officers knew of the incident with the free miner, and Lem thought it best to keep it that way.

When Lem finished erasing files, he checked and rechecked the servers and backups to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Then he ran a program that deleted any record of the erasing. The last step was patching up holes. There were now gaps in the video surveillance records, so Lem filled those in with random footage of space already on file. When he was done, every scrap of potentially incriminating evidence was gone.

Lem pocketed his holopad and made his way to the exit. He had hoped that by erasing the files he would also erase the sting of guilt that had been pecking at him ever since the bump, but as he left the archives room, he felt as anxious as he had before. He shouldn’t have watched the video, he realized. If he hadn’t watched the video he could have maintained the possibility in his mind that the man wasn’t seriously injured. He could have led himself to believe that no lasting damage had been done. That wasn’t an option now.

Why had the free miners been outside? It had been sleep-shift. You don’t spacewalk during sleep-shift. That was reckless. In fact, now that Lem thought about it, if the free miner was in fact paralyzed or dead, the free miner deserved more of the blame than Lem did. Well, perhaps not more of the blame but certainly a good portion of it. Lem shouldn’t carry all the blame.

Besides, it’s not like Lem had hurt anyone intentionally. He hadn’t even known the men were out there. The free miners had been working on the far side of El Cavador, obscured from Lem’s view, when the attack-no, maneuver-began. And by the time the ship did detect them, the Makarhu was already moving and the laser-firing sequence was already initiated. Lem couldn’t stop it. Not easily anyway. It was only dumb luck that the first target was the PK near where the three miners were standing.

And if you looked at the facts that way, if you chopped up the blame into portions, then part of the blame went to the free miner, part went to the computer, part went to dumb luck, and only a small part went to Lem. And even that portion shouldn’t be entirely Lem’s. It had been a group effort, after all. The crew was following Lem’s orders, true, but they could have objected, they could have said no.

Someone had, Lem reminded himself. Benyawe. She had filed a formal objection. Had he erased that as well? He must have.

He left the archives room and made his way to the mining bay to give credence to the lie he had told. Lem didn’t expect Podolski to investigate the matter-Podolski had no reason to disbelieve him. But what if Podolski mentioned in casual conversation to someone that Lem had been in the mining bay? No, it was best to play it safe.

The mining bay was a large garage where all the digging and mineral-extraction equipment was housed. Normally a ship this size would employ forty to fifty miners, with twenty to twenty-five WDs-or wearable dozers, the large exoskeleton diggers that most corporate miners wore for cleaning out mineshafts and pulling up lumps. Since this was a research vessel at the moment, the mining crew consisted of only ten men, whose only duties for the trip were to collect rock fragments from the field tests for analysis. The miners had intended to use the scoopers for this, which were long-armed diggers that could extend out from the ship and grab rocks in space. But since the engineers had only conducted a single field test and had not even bothered to collect the rock fragments from said test, the miners were insane with boredom. Lem had alleviated that a week ago when he had gone to them and told them of his intent to pull in as many minerals from the asteroid as the ship could hold. It would require modifications to the equipment, but the men were so hungry for an assignment that they had readily accepted the challenge. Lem could say his visit tonight was to check up on their progress.

To Lem’s relief, five of the miners were working in the bay when he arrived, including their crew chief, who was anchored to one of the scoopers, welding on large metal plates.

“This is a surprise, Mr. Jukes,” said the crew chief, lifting his welding visor and turning off his equipment. “Early for you, isn’t it, sir?”

“Couldn’t sleep. How goes the equipment for the mineral extraction?”

The crew chief smiled and gave the scooper an affectionate slap with his palm. “We’re making good time. We’ve got two scoopers prepped. Two more will be ready by the time we fire the glaser.”

Lem had decided to wait a full week after arriving at the asteroid to fire the glaser. He wanted to give El Cavador enough time to get far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to see the field test take place. Lem could blow up a pebble and not arouse any curiosity, but if anyone saw him annihilate an asteroid this big, they’d know Juke had developed a revolutionary technology-a fact Father would rather keep secret.

“We’ve turned the scoopers into giant magnets, sir,” explained the crew chief. “If what the engineers tell us is true, that glaser will blow the rock to dust. So to separate the detritus from the minerals, all we’ve got to do is wave a magnet through the dust cloud and let the magnet attract the metal fragments. Then we bring the scooper load into the smelter, switch off the magnets, dump the metal, then go back out and do it again. Pretty soon you’ll have metal cylinders all stacked up neat as you please, sir.”

“How long will it take to bring in the metal?”

The crew chief shrugged. “Depends on the size of the dust cloud and the amount of metal we find. Could be as quick as a week. Could be as long as eight. That’s really your decision, sir, we’ll keep making cylinders for as long as you want.”

Lem thanked the man then went back to his room and zipped himself up in his hammock. He had two hours before sleep-shift ended, though he knew he wouldn’t fall asleep; the image of the free miner’s bent neck was too fresh in his mind. He might have erased the files and covered his tracks, but he couldn’t erase the memory of it. Lem lay there in silence. He knew he was deluding himself to think that anyone else bore the responsibility of what had happened. It was his crime, his doing. And no sneaking around in the dark could ever delete that fact.

Scout

One week after the corporate attack, Victor was in the engine room making needed repairs to the generator when Father came for him. “How close are you to getting this thing back online?” Father asked.

“A day,” said Victor. “Maybe less. Mono’s in the workshop now fixing the last of the circuits. I’m putting in some new rotors. Barring another breakdown, we should be good to go. Why? What’s wrong?”

“You better come with me.”

Father didn’t even wait for Victor to follow. He simply turned and left the engine room. Victor, sensing Father’s urgency, quickly put his tools aside and caught up with him in the corridor. They both were wearing greaves, and they moved down the corridor in long, leaping strides.

“Have we detected the Italians?” Victor guessed. “Is that what this is about?”

The ship was speeding toward the Italians’ position-or rather, what everyone hoped would be the Italians’ position. With communication still down, El Cavador couldn’t send a message ahead to confirm that the Italians were still at the location. There was a good chance they’d get there and find nothing but empty space.

“No idea,” said Father. “But I don’t think it’s good. Concepcion called a few minutes ago to ask if the PKs were ready.”

“Why should that alarm you?” asked Victor. “We’ve got two working PKs out of six. That’s hardly an adequate collision-avoidance system. Maybe we’ve got a debris field ahead. Maybe Concepcion wants to be certain we don’t hit anything.”

“Maybe,” said Father. “But I don’t think so. It was the way she asked. She sounded concerned. Afraid even.”

Afraid? Concepcion? Victor couldn’t imagine it. “Of what? Another corporate? The starship?”

“I don’t think it’s the starship. Toron and Edimar said it was several weeks away at the earliest, and more likely several months away. This is something else.”

After the corporate attack, Victor and Father had divided up the repairs. Victor and Mono were to focus exclusively on the generator, while Father would put all of his efforts into repairing the sensors the corporates had cut away from the ship. The miners had successfully plucked a few of the sensors from space, but many of the most critical instruments, including the laserline transmitter, had never been found.

Father didn’t even knock before entering Concepcion’s office. Inside, Concepcion and Toron were gathered around Concepcion’s desk, studying a mapped quadrant of space floating above the desk in the holospace.

Concepcion only barely looked up when they entered. “Close the door,” she said.

Father did so. Victor glanced at Toron, but the man’s face was unreadable.

“There are ships at the Italians’ position,” said Concepcion. “We’re close enough now for the Eye to detect them. It’s not the cleanest data, and without communication we can’t confirm their identity, but what data we do have suggests that they are in fact the Italians.”

“That’s good news,” said Father. “We desperately need help with repairs.”

“And a new laserline transmitter,” said Victor.

“Even if the Italians don’t have a spare transmitter,” said Concepcion, “we can use theirs to send as many laserlines as we need to, I’m sure. But that is not why I called you in here. Edimar and Toron have made another sighting.”

“A second starship?” Victor asked.

“We don’t know what it is,” said Toron. “But I don’t think it’s a starship.” He maneuvered his stylus in the holospace. A dot appeared in the top corner. “This is the starship, or what we’re all assuming is a starship.” He moved his stylus, and a second dot appeared at the opposite end of the holospace. “This is the Italians.” Toron made another hand gesture, and a third dot appeared between the first two dots, though relatively close to the Italians. “And this thing is a giant question mark. It’s something, but we don’t know what. We know it’s small, at most the size of El Cavador, but probably smaller. Which is why we didn’t see it before now.”

“You think it’s related to the starship?” Victor asked.

“Maybe,” said Toron. “Edimar is more certain than I am, but we’ve been following its trajectory for a few hours, and it looks as if it came from the direction of the starship.”

“That could be a coincidence,” said Father. “It could be a family or clan ship coming in from way out whose angle of approach makes it seem as if they’re coming from the starship. Look at the distance between the two anomalies. That’s a lot of space. Connecting the two is kind of a leap, don’t you think?”

“That was my reaction,” said Concepcion. “But Toron made me think otherwise.”

“It’s way too fast to be human,” said Toron. “We’ve picked it up at a few spots now. It’s moving at fifty times our top speeds, easy.”

Victor was surprised. There were plenty of ships much faster than El Cavador. But fifty times faster? Unheard of.

“Could it be a comet?” Father asked. “Or some other natural object?”

Toron shook his head. “It’s no comet. The Eye recognizes comets easily. This is something else. It’s tech. It has a heat signature.”

“A scout ship,” said Victor. “From the starship. Has to be. Whoever they are, they’ve sent out a scout to scan the area. This is new territory for them, and they’re playing it safe. They’re getting the landscape.”

“That’s a possibility,” said Toron. “But if it’s true, that puts us in a very precarious situation. Let’s assume for a moment that this is in fact a scout ship. If so, why is it heading straight for the Italians?”

“Maybe it can detect life-forms,” said Victor.

“At that range?” said Father. “I doubt it. It’s possible, I suppose. If it can travel at near-lightspeed, who’s to say what it can do? But it’s more likely that it can detect movement in much the same way the Eye does.”

“The Italians aren’t moving,” said Victor. “They’re stationary; have been for at least ten days now. If the scout were attracted to movement, it would come to us instead of them. We’re the ones who are moving. Maybe it picked up the Italians’ radio frequency. Radio is tech. Radio implies intelligent life. If I picked up radio waves in another solar system, I would definitely want to check them out. And the Italians use radio all the time. They have four ships. That’s how they communicate with each other.”

“And our radio is down,” said Father. “Which would explain why it didn’t come to us.”

“How soon could you have our radio up?” asked Concepcion.

“Within the next day or two,” said Father. “I’m working on it now. But again, that’s for blanket transmissions. Not focused ones. We need a laserline for that.”

“Finish the repair,” said Concepcion, “but don’t transmit anything. Not even to test it. We’re silent right now, and we’ll stay silent until we know what we’re dealing with.” She turned to Toron. “How far away are we from the Italians?”

“Three days,” said Toron.

“And when will this scout ship reach them?” asked Concepcion.

“It’s already decelerating,” said Toron. “Best guess: a day and a half, if not sooner. It’ll arrive long before we do.”

Victor suddenly felt sick. A ship, likely an alien ship, was moving toward the Italians. Toward Alejandra.

For the past week, Victor had been trying to ignore the fact that El Cavador was heading toward Janda’s position-she was a closed part of his life now; he had no business thinking of her. Yet, somehow, often without him noticing it happening, his mind kept circling back to her. He would wonder, for example, which Italian ship El Cavador would dock with when they arrived. Would it be Vesuvio, Janda’s ship? That seemed probable; Vesuvio was the largest ship and, therefore, the most likely to store the spare parts El Cavador needed. And, if the two ships did dock, would Janda board El Cavador to see her family? And if so, would she see Victor as well?

Then Victor would realize he was having such thoughts and he’d throw himself even more into the repairs, frustrated with himself for letting his mind wander.

Now here Toron was telling them that Janda might be in danger.

“Given the uncertainty of this situation,” said Toron, “we have to consider the worst-case scenario. This could be an attack on the Italians. We have no evidence to suggest that, but we would be foolish not to consider it. And if that’s the case, what do we do?”

“We get to the Italians as fast as we can is what we do,” said Victor.

“And do what?” asked Toron.

“Help. Fight back. Whatever it takes.”

“With two PKs?” said Toron scornfully. “That’s hardly enough for collision avoidance. We couldn’t possibly defend ourselves.”

“We don’t know that,” said Victor. “We have no idea what that ship’s defenses are. Two PKs might be more than enough to take it down.”

“And they might not,” said Toron. “They might just aggravate it. You want to take that gamble?”

“Absolutely.”

Toron threw his hands up, then turned to Concepcion. “We are in no position to jump into a fight, if it comes to that. Look at us. We don’t even have our main generator up. Everything’s running on the backups, which barely put out enough juice for life support. We’ve got half our lights off to ration power, so we’re all bumbling around in semidarkness. The temperature on board has dropped twenty degrees because the heaters aren’t getting the power they need. We have no communication. We’re one step above a crippled ship. We can’t even help ourselves. And we’re considering fighting? The corporates just wasted us. Did we not learn anything from that experience?”

“That was different,” said Victor. “They took us by surprise.”

Toron scoffed. “Oh, well, I’ll make sure the aliens play by all the rules of chivalrous warfare and treat us ‘fairly’ when they attack.” He turned back to Concepcion. “We can’t defend ourselves, much less anyone else. It might be more sensible to come to a full stop now and read the data that comes off the Eye. Let’s wait and see what happens when this ship reaches the Italians.”

“Do nothing?” said Victor. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Sit here and watch the scout ship attack them?”

“We don’t know if it’s a scout ship,” said Toron. “Nor do we know if it intends to attack. And stopping here is not inaction. It’s intelligence gathering. It’s getting the information we need to choose the safest course of action.”

Victor pointed at the dot in the holospace. “Your daughter is on one of those ships.”

“And my wife and other daughter are on this one,” said Toron. “Do you think I don’t know Alejandra is there? Do you think I’ve forgotten that fact? I’m quite capable of keeping track of my daughter’s whereabouts, thank you.”

“Let’s calm down,” said Concepcion. “These walls aren’t soundproof. We’re all adults here.”

“He isn’t,” said Toron, gesturing to Victor.

Concepcion ignored him. “Toron is proposing a legitimate concern, Victor. There are a lot of unanswered questions here. We have a responsibility to protect our people.”

“Maybe so,” said Father. “But I agree with Vico. We can’t sit back and wait to see what happens. If it were us out there, and the Italians out here, we’d want them with us, supporting us. I say we push on. The Italians might need us in a critical moment.”

“Each of the Italians’ ships is faster and better equipped than ours,” said Toron. “And there are four of them. If we made any contribution to a fight it would be minimal and a day and a half late. Do we really want to risk losing everything for that?”

“We’re better defended than they are,” said Victor. “That accounts for something. Their ships are fast, yes, but we have better armor. That might prove critical.”

“Again,” said Toron, “you’re basing these assumptions on human technology. Who’s to say this scout ship, or whatever it is, doesn’t have a weapon that can’t penetrate any armor.”

“Where was this violent imagination of yours when I wanted to warn everyone?” said Victor. “You were perfectly content to deflect any suggestion that this thing was dangerous before. Now you seemed convinced it’s programmed to kill.”

“I am urging caution,” said Toron, “just as I did before. And I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

“That’s enough,” said Concepcion. “We get nowhere by arguing. The fact is, if this thing can move at fifty times our speed, we’re already in the fight, if there is one. The ship could easily overtake us if it wanted to, even if we turned now and ran. Yes, it’s possible that it doesn’t know we’re here, but I find that unlikely. We’d be wise to assume that it can do anything we can and more.” She turned to Father. “Segundo, you said that some of the PKs are ready to be installed.”

“We’ve fixed three of the four,” said Father. “The last one needs parts we don’t have and can’t jury-rig. We intended to reinstall the three as soon as we reached the Italians. We obviously can’t do a spacewalk now at our current speed.”

Concepcion looked at Victor. “And the generator?”

“I need a day at the most,” said Victor.

Concepcion nodded. “What we do about this scout ship is a decision for the Council. I will call a meeting immediately. Segundo, you are excused to conduct whatever repairs you need to. I will see to it that your views are expressed to the Council. Toron will present what he’s found, and I will make my recommendation, which is that we decelerate and install the repaired PKs now. Then we punch it and get to the Italians as quickly as possible. We are wise to be cautious, but I suggest we prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

Toron didn’t argue; Father nodded in agreement; and Concepcion excused them all. Victor and Father made their way down the corridor, heading back to their respective repairs. “Toron isn’t your enemy, Vico,” said Father. “I know he can seem callous, but he really does love Alejandra. He would do anything for her or this family. But if he has to choose between the two, he will always choose the family, which is the right choice.”

“Then why did you agree with me back there?”

“Because if it were you with the Italians, I wouldn’t hesitate to go get you. I’d go in with no PKs and no generator if I had to, even if that meant endangering everyone aboard. That’s not rational. It’s reckless and irresponsible. But that’s what I would do.”

“Then I’m glad you’re my father and not Toron.”

“Toron isn’t a coward, Vico. His suggestion to stop here and wait may seem like cowardice, but it isn’t. I’ve known Toron a long time. He isn’t motivated by self-preservation. He cares about Edimar and Lola, his wife, and Concepcion and your mother and me and everyone aboard. Even you.”

“I think he’d rather see me tossed from the ship.”

“My point is, he loves Alejandra as much as I love you, son. If Toron could change places with her, he would do so in an instant. His willingness to hand her over to fate to protect the rest of us shows, to me at least, a greater courage than I possess. It’s the smarter choice. The Italians aren’t defenseless. They can hold their own. Keeping our distance and being safe is the rational thing to do. It’s because of people like Toron that this family is still alive, Vico. Were I running things, we all would have died a long time ago.” He smiled and put a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “I fear I’ve made you too much like me, rash and bullheaded. Never for your own sake, but for those you love. That’s a good trait to have. But one day you may run this family, Vico, and if that happens, you’ll need to have some of Toron in you, too.”

Victor wanted to tell him then. All he had to do was open his mouth and say, “I’m leaving Father. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. But I will never lead this family because I can’t stay. I can’t take a wife here. I can’t raise children here. Not when everything I see around me reminds me of Janda.”

But Victor said nothing. How could he? The family needed Victor now more than ever? How could he even think of leaving? It was selfish. It was abandonment. Yet what could he do? Try as he might to seal off that part of his brain where memories of Janda were stored, he couldn’t. She was forever tied to this ship, and no event, not the starship, not the corporate attack, nothing could ever change that. Father left before Victor found the courage to say anything, and Victor removed his greaves and flew back to the engine room. He found Mono there, replacing a few of the burned-out circuits. “We’ve got a day to get this thing online, Mono.”

“Good luck,” said Mono. “It’s a piece of junk. It should have seen a scrapyard four hundred years ago.”

“They didn’t have space flight four hundred years ago. Besides, we don’t have a choice.”

He told Mono about the scout ship. He knew he probably shouldn’t, but the Council would find out soon enough, and then everyone on the ship would know. At first, Victor was worried that the news would frighten Mono. But to his surprise it had the opposite effect, with Mono all the more determined to get the generator up and running.

They worked long into sleep-shift. When they finished, nearly twelve hours later, they were both exhausted and filthy. “Flip the switch, Mono.”

Victor got the fire extinguisher ready, just in case, while Mono went over to the switch box and turned on the power. They had tried to reboot the generator several times over the past few days, but every attempt had failed: knocking sounds, burning components, an array of sparks. On several occasions they had cut the power as quickly as they had turned it on. Now, however, the generator slowly came to life. The readout screen flickered on. The motor whirred and grew stronger. The turbines spun and gained speed. No knocking. No sparks. No screeching of metal.

Ten seconds passed. Then fifteen. The roar of the turbines grew louder. Victor watched the numbers on the readout screen, his heart racing. The turbines were at 60 percent. Then 70. Then 85. The turbines were screaming now, the sound rattling the entire engine room. Then 95 percent. Victor looked at Mono and saw that the boy was laughing. Victor couldn’t hear the laughter over the roar of the generator, but the sight of it-along with the sudden release of all of Victor’s pent-up anxiety-set Victor to laughing, too. Laughs so big and long that tears came out of his eyes.

Wreckage

Victor flew down to the lockers in the cargo bay, moving fast. He landed, threw open his locker, grabbed his pressure suit, and quickly began putting it on. There were miners all around him doing the same, stepping into suits, grabbing rescue equipment: winch hooks, coiled cable, medical pouches, hydraulic spreaders, and shears. Victor’s mind was racing. The Italians were dead. The pod had attacked, and the Italians were dead. Janda. No, he wouldn’t think it. He wouldn’t even consider the idea. She wasn’t dead. They were putting together a search party. They would look for survivors. There were big pieces of wreckage out there. Some would have people inside them. Janda would be one of them. Shaken perhaps, frightened even, an emotional wreck, but alive.

How long ago had the pod left? Eighteen hours? That was too long to go without fresh oxygen. If there were survivors, they would have to have masks, with plenty of spare canisters of oxygen. Most canisters held up to forty-five minutes of air, but maybe the Italians had canisters that held more. It was possible. Plus there would be air in whatever room the survivors had sealed themselves up in. And that’s what survivors would do. They’d seal themselves off in a room somewhere that hadn’t been breached and wait for rescue. The Italians were smart. Surely they had rehearsed for emergencies like this. Surely they had emergency gear throughout the ship. They would be prepared. They would have a stockpile of canisters and masks. Both for adults and for children.

But air wasn’t the only problem, Victor told himself. They would need heat as well. Without battery heaters or warmer blocks or some other emergency heat source to keep out the cold, survivors would freeze to death. It wouldn’t take long. The cold this far out was relentless. It made Victor nervous. That was too many variables. If the survivors had sealed themselves off, and if there were no breaches, and if they had masks and canisters to spare, and if they had a heat source, then maybe they had a shot.

The locker beside Victor opened abruptly, startling him. It was Father, who grabbed his own pressure suit and hurriedly climbed into it.

“What are someone’s chances after eighteen hours?” asked Victor. “Seriously.”

“This could have happened more than eighteen hours ago,” said Father. “The pod was here for twelve hours. It might have attacked when it got here instead of immediately before it left. In which case we’re thirty hours in, not eighteen.”

Victor had considered this, but he said nothing. Thirty hours was too long. That drastically reduced the likelihood of them finding anyone alive, and he wasn’t going to accept that as a possibility. Besides, it didn’t seem likely anyway. Why would the pod stay after it attacked? To scan for life? To make certain the job was done? No, it seemed more plausible that it had tried to communicate or observe or scan. And when those efforts had ended or failed, it had attacked and run.

Father closed his locker and faced Victor. “You sure you’re up for this, Vico?”

Victor understood what he was asking. There would be bodies. Death. Women. Children. It would be awful.

“You’ve never seen something like this,” said Father. “And I would rather you never did. It’s worse than you can imagine.”

“I can help you, Father. In ways none of these miners can.”

Father hesitated then nodded. “If you change your mind, if you need to come back, no one will think less of you.”

“When I come back inside, Father, it will be with you and with survivors.”

Father nodded again.

Bahzim, who had replaced Marco as chief miner, was calmly shouting orders from the airlock entrance. “Have two people check your suit and lifeline inside the airlock. Two. Head to toe. Every seam. Do not rush inspections. The debris outside will be jagged and sharp and will puncture your suit or your line. Keep your line slack to a minimum. Stay with your partner. Segundo, I want you and Vico on saws.”

Father nodded.

Victor went to the equipment cage and took down the rotary saws. They were dangerous tools outside since they could so easily slice suits and lines, but the blades had good guards and Victor and Father had experience using them. Victor carried them to the airlock.

Toron entered from the corridor, flew down to the airlock, and faced Bahzim. “I’m coming with you.”

“This is for experienced walkers only, Toron. I’m sorry.”

“I know how to spacewalk, Bahzim.”

“You don’t have enough hours, Toron. If the sky was clear, I wouldn’t have any issue, but there’s a lot of debris out there. Anything could happen.”

“My daughter is out there.”

Bahzim hesitated.

“There’s one lifeline left,” said Toron. “I just counted. You have room for one more person.”

“He can come with me and Vico,” said Father. “We’ll need someone to hold our lines clear while we work the saws.”

Bahzim looked unsure. “You don’t have a suit, Toron.”

“He can wear Marco’s,” Victor said. “They’re about the same height.”

Bahzim considered this then sighed. “Hurry. I’m closing this hatch in two minutes.”

Toron nodded his thanks to Father and Victor then quickly changed into Marco’s suit.

They hurried into the airlock, and Bahzim sealed the hatch behind them. Everyone unspooled a lifeline from the racks along the wall and attached it to the back of his partner’s suit. Then came the helmets. Bahzim typed in the all-clear, and fresh air and heat filled Victor’s suit. Everyone took a moment to inspect the suits and lifelines of those around them. When all was clear, Bahzim punched in another command, and Victor’s HUD blinked on. Live video of the wreckage outside appeared on Victor’s display, taken from the ship’s cameras. El Cavador’s spotlights cut through the darkness, lighting momentarily on a piece of wreckage, as if considering it, judging by its size and shape if it were a likely candidate for survivors. Apparently it wasn’t. The lights moved on. Victor’s heart sank. There was so much debris. So much destruction. How could he possibly find Janda in all this?

The first bodies appeared shortly thereafter. Two of them. Men. Stiff with death. The spotlights rested on them, but the men were thankfully at such a distance that Victor couldn’t make out their faces. The lights moved on.

A few minutes later the ship came upon a large piece of wreckage. El Cavador’s retrorockets fired, and the ship slowed and then stopped alongside the wreckage.

“Listen up,” said Bahzim. “We’re opening the doors. First ones out are Chepe and Pitoso. They’ll do a quick scan while the rest of us hang tight. If they detect something, the rest of us go in.”

The wide bay doors opened, and what had been video became a reality. The wreckage in front of them was a mangled heap of destruction: bent girders, severed conduit, twisted pipes, torn foam insulation, crunched deck and hull plates. It looked as if it had been ripped from the ship instead of cleanly cut away by a laser. Victor searched for markings on the hull that might identify it as Vesuvio, Janda’s ship, but there were none. Bahzim gave the order, and Chepe and Pitoso were out in an instant, flying down to the wreck and moving fast.

They flew to the hull side of the wreck where the surface was smooth and there were fewer protrusions that might snag or cut their suits. There were several windows, and Chepe went to those first, shining his helmet lights inside. The first few windows were quick looks, but at the fourth window they stopped. “There are people inside,” said Chepe.

Victor’s heart leaped.

“But they’re not moving,” said Chepe. “I don’t think they’re alive. Some are wearing masks, but it looks like they died from anoxia. They must have survived the attack, though. I see emergency heaters set up in the room. We just didn’t get here in time.”

“Is Alejandra with them?” asked Toron. “Do you see Alejandra?”

“It’s hard to see faces through the masks,” said Chepe. “And many of them are turned away from me. Plus the window’s small. I can’t see the whole room, especially around the corners.”

“Maybe they’re not dead,” said Toron. “They could be unconscious. Maybe we could revive them.”

Isabella’s voice came on the line. “Chepe, it’s Isabella. I’m at the helm. Can you send your helmet vid feed over the line?”

The video from Chepe’s helmet appeared on Victor’s HUD. Now everyone saw what Chepe saw. There were bodies drifting in a dark space. The room-what Victor could see of it-looked like barracks, with hammocks and storage compartments for clothes and personal items. Glow rods in the room offered some light, but they had dimmed to almost nothing. Chepe’s helmet lights illuminated a few faces, and Victor saw at once that there was no reviving these people. Some had eyes open, staring into nothing, the look of death forever frozen on their faces. Men. Women. A young child. Victor recognized a few of them from the week the Italians had spent with them. That woman there had been holding an infant back on El Cavador during one of the feasts-Victor distinctly remembered-but she held no infant now. And that man, he had sung with a few other men during that same feast, a song that had left them all laughing.

“Bang on the hatch,” said Isabella. “See if anyone responds. Watch for movement.”

Chepe took a tool from his pouch and banged it hard against the hatch. Victor watched. Chepe’s lights swept the room through the glass, pausing at each person. He banged again. A third time. A fourth. No one moved.

Janda wasn’t among them. Victor was sure of it. Even those who were turned away, whose faces he could not see, he knew the size and shape of her body enough to know she wasn’t here.

“We could put a bubble over the hatch and send in Chepe to run vitals on those people,” said Isabella. “But that’s going to take time, and right now every second counts.”

A bubble was a small inflatable dome that could be hermetically sealed over an external hatch. If Chepe was inside the bubble when it inflated and sealed over the hatch, then he could open the hatch and go inside without exposing the room beyond to the vacuum of space. Bubbles could be dangerous, though, as they required you to momentarily detach your lifeline to climb inside. The lifeline was attached to a valve on the bubble’s exterior. This fed to an extendable lifeline inside the bubble, which restored air and power to the suit wearer. But detaching your lifeline, even momentarily was a risk.

“I’d say it’s highly unlikely we’ll find anyone alive in there,” said Isabella. “I suggest we press on and look for signs of life.”

“Agreed,” said Concepcion. “Return to the ship. Let’s keep moving.”

“We’re just leaving them there?” said Toron.

“There’s nothing we can do for them, Toron,” said Concepcion. “But there may be others we can reach in time.”

Victor felt hopeless then. These people had survived the attack. All the factors that Victor had considered critical for survival had been met. And yet all of them were gone. He pictured them alive, huddled around a heater, clinging to each other, speaking words of comfort. How long had they lasted? Twelve hours? Fifteen? Had they known El Cavador was coming? Had they believed rescue was imminent? Or did they think themselves all alone, waiting out the inevitable?

Victor looked at Toron beside him and saw that Father had a hand on Toron’s shoulder, comforting him. Toron looked pale, even in the low light of the cargo bay.

“They had masks and heaters,” said Father. “That’s a good sign, Toron. It means there’s equipment out there.”

“Little good it did them,” said Toron.

Chepe and Pitoso landed back in the airlock, and the ship moved on. The bay doors remained open as they continued to patrol through the destruction. Twice more they stopped, and twice more Chepe and Pitoso flew out to investigate. One of the wrecks was empty. The other had a massive hole in the back that hadn’t been visible until Chepe and Pitoso went in for a closer look. There were no signs of survivors.

The ship moved on. As they continued patrolling they passed more bodies. Most were men. But there were women, too. And children. One burned terribly. Victor turned away.

Once, a corpse floated uncomfortably close to the open airlock, right there in front of them. It was a man. A boy, really. No more than twenty. He could have been a suitor for Janda if he wasn’t married already. His eyes were-thankfully-closed. The miners nearest the edge could have reached out and touched him, and for a horrific moment Victor thought the body might float inside. But the ship moved on, and the body slipped past.

No one spoke. Several of the miners glanced back at Toron to see how he was taking it, the compassion evident on their faces. Toron never said a word, and as the minutes stretched into an hour, Victor’s hope began to dissolve. There was too much wreckage. They had come too late. Nineteen hours was far too long. Perhaps if they hadn’t stopped to install the pebble-killers or scatter Marco’s ashes, if they had accelerated then instead of de celerating, maybe they could have saved someone; maybe they could have stopped this whole thing from happening.

No, they couldn’t have arrived before the attack. Even if they had pushed themselves and never slowed. And what good would it have done if they had been here? They’d be just as dead as everyone else.

A large piece of wreckage came along the ship. The biggest piece yet. El Cavador’s retros fired, and the ship slowed. Victor couldn’t imagine how anyone could be alive inside. The whole structure was twisted, not just the ends. And none of the sides were smooth with hull plating, suggesting that it had come from somewhere deep inside a ship.

Approaching it would be difficult. Sharp twisted beams and other jagged structural pieces protruded from all sides in a random fashion, like a crushed metal can wrapped in iron thorns. Chepe and Pitoso flew down cautiously, circling the wreckage from a distance. “I see a hatch,” said Chepe. “It’s solid. No windows.”

“Can you get close enough to bang on it?” asked Bahzim.

Victor watched Chepe’s approach via the man’s vid feed. Chepe drifted to the hatch slowly, steering clear of the jagged girders and beams.

“Watch his line, Pitoso,” said Bahzim.

Chepe settled on the hull beside the hatch. “The space around the hatch looks smooth,” he said. “We could get a bubble around it if we needed.” He banged on the hatch, then pressed his hand against the metal. He wouldn’t hear a knock response from anyone inside, but he would feel the vibration of it. Chepe waited a full minute and knocked again. After a pause, “I don’t feel anything.”

The wreckage was drifting and rotating. One of the jagged beams was coming close to Chepe’s lifeline. “Back off,” said Bahzim. “She’s spinning.”

Chepe and Pitoso pushed off from the wreckage and floated a short distance away as the wreckage slowly spun in front of them. The far side of it, which hadn’t been visible before, turned into view of the cargo bay. It was a mess of twisted channel beams and girder framework, bent and mangled together, worse even than the other sides. But through that, beyond the web of distorted metal, was a corridor, maybe ten meters deep, like a shallow cave, with the entrance to it pinched half closed. Victor zoomed in with his visor and strained to see through all the obstructions, trying to see down into the corridor.

Then he saw it.

A flicker of light. A movement. There was a hatch at the end of the corridor with a small circular window in the center. And in that window there was a light. A glow rod. Wiggling in someone’s hand. “There’s somebody inside!” Victor shouted, and before he knew what he was doing, he had pushed his way to the end of the airlock and jumped out into space.

“Vico, wait,” said Bahzim.

But Victor wasn’t waiting. He had seen someone. Alive. “There’s someone down there.” He hit the trigger on his thumb, and the propulsion pushed him toward the corridor entrance. He jinked left, avoiding a protruding beam, then jinked right avoiding another.

“Slow down,” said Father.

Victor rotated his body, got his feet under him, and slowed. He landed expertly atop the bars and metal that bent across and blocked the corridor. He stepped to the side, squatted down, and looked through a hole in the web of metal down into the corridor, as if peering down a well. He could see him clearly now. A man. The circle in the hatch was smaller than the man’s face, but he was clearly alive and looked desperate. He wasn’t wearing a mask, either, meaning he had none, or the canisters had run out. Victor zoomed in, switched on his helmet vid, and blinked out the command to send the feed to everyone else.

The reaction was immediate. Bahzim started giving commands. “All right. Listen up. I want cables on this wreckage. Moor it to us. Lock it down. I don’t want it spinning. Segundo, I want you and Vico cutting away that debris at that entrance. I want the other shears at the hatch Chepe found. We might be able to reach survivors through there. Chepe and Pitoso, circle the wreckage another time and look for another way inside. Nando, I want you with a board and marker down there with Segundo and Vico communicating with whoever’s inside. I want to know how many are alive and what their status is.”

Father and Toron gingerly landed beside Victor, carrying the saws and hydraulic shears.

“He must have heard Chepe knocking,” said Victor. “There might be other people in there.”

“And we’re going to get them out,” said Father, handing a saw to Victor. “Try the saw first. If it gives you problems, go with the shears. Let’s cut these channel beams away first.” He indicated the ones Victor had avoided. “We need a clear path in and out of here.”

Victor wanted to say something to the man at the hatch. “We’re here. We’re going to get you out. You’re going to live.” But no one could reach the hatch yet with all the obstructions in the way, and Victor had no means of communicating with the man anyway. Father took the beam on the left, Victor the one on the right. Victor fired up his saw. The blade spun.

“Clean cuts,” said Father, “as close to the bottom as you can. Don’t rush.”

Victor’s blade cut into the metal. He couldn’t hear it, but the saw vibrated in his hands as it ate through the beam. Nineteen hours. Someone had gone nineteen hours. It looked like a big space. There had to be more people inside. Maybe it was their version of the fuge, the designated place for an emergency. Maybe lots of people had gone there. The saw felt slow in his hands. He pulled the blade free and killed the power. “Toron, give me the shears.”

Toron passed them, and Victor wiggled the pincers into place and started the hydraulics. The shears went much faster, cut-crunching their way through the beam, opening and closing like a ravenous animal, making easy work of the metal.

Bahzim was giving more orders, sending two more miners down with hydraulic spreaders.

The shears bit through the last few inches, and the beam snapped free.

“Easy,” said Father. “Push it away slowly, not by a jagged edge.”

Their gloves had an outer layer of leatherlike material and were built to withstand heavy use and scrapes, but Victor was overly cautious anyway. The beam drifted away. Nando was down near the web of metal covering the corridor entrance, writing on the small light board with a stylus. He wrote, “How many people?” and turned the board around for the man. The man in the hatch placed nine fingers against the glass.

“Nine people,” said Nando.

“Vico,” said Father. “Don’t take your eyes off what you’re doing. Pay attention.”

Victor turned away from the hatch. Father was right. He couldn’t cut and watch Nando or the man at the hatch. He focused on the girder beam he was cutting and guided the shears through the metal. Nine people. So few. The Italians had close to three hundred people.

“He’s writing on the glass with his finger,” said Nando. “One letter at a time. He’s moving slowly. He seems half out of it. Air. He’s saying they need air.”

“I don’t see any other entrance besides the hatch we knocked on,” said Chepe. “We’ve been around the whole thing.”

“Ask him if Alejandra is in there,” said Toron.

“Ask him first if he can reach the outer hatch,” said Bahzim. “We might be able to get a docking tube sealed over it. Then they could open the hatch and fly right up to us.”

Victor continued to cut metal while Nando wrote. Shards of twisted bulkheads and deck plating fell away as Victor’s shears chewed through them.

“He’s shaking his head no,” said Nando. “They can’t reach the hatch.”

“Why not?” asked Bahzim. “Because they sealed off that room or because it’s not accessible from where he’s at?”

“I can’t fit all that on the board,” said Nando.

“Just figure out a way to ask him,” said Bahzim.

Nando wrote. Victor allowed himself a glance down the corridor. The man in the window looked half asleep. His eyes kept drooping. “He’s passing out,” said Victor.

“Keep cutting, Vico,” said Father. “Stay focused.”

Victor returned to his work, cutting furiously, pushing pieces away, trying to clear a path.

“He’s writing again on the glass,” said Nando. “H… U… R…”

“Hurt?” suggested Bahzim.

“Hurry,” said Chepe. “He’s saying hurry. They’re out of air. Now he’s drifting away. We’re losing him.”

“We’ve got to get air in there now!” said Toron.

“Chepe,” said Bahzim. “You and Pitoso get a bubble over that hatch you found. Get nine masks and canisters. I want you to find another way to reach these people and get them air as fast as possible.”

Victor guided the shears through a particularly thick girder. There was still so much to cut away, still so much work to do. We’re not going to make it, he realized. We have nine people just a few feet away, and we’re not going to reach them in time.

Quickship

Victor plugged the lifeline back into Toron before the two of them left the wreckage. Toron didn’t object or play hero. He understood that if they were both going to arrive safely back at the airlock, they needed to share the line. Toron nodded his thanks to Victor, but Victor could tell Toron’s mind was elsewhere. All hope of finding Janda alive here had shattered, and Toron’s face showed only despair.

It almost relieved Victor that he and Toron couldn’t communicate since they were sharing a line. What would Victor say? It’s my fault that Janda’s here? It’s my fault she may be dead? It wouldn’t be untrue. If not for Victor, the Council would never have sent Janda away. She’d be on El Cavador. Safe and alive.

He flew up out of the corridor of the wreckage, leading the way, with Toron behind him. Since Victor couldn’t call for help if he needed it, it made sense for him to be up front where Toron could see him. Most of the jagged protrusions around the entrance to the corridor had been cut away, but it surprised Victor to see that many still remained. It had been dangerous and reckless of him to fly down here as quickly as he had. But he had been thinking of Janda then. He had been clinging to the hope that she was here, inside, alive, ready for rescue. Now he knew she wasn’t.

A hand grabbed Victor’s shoulder. It was Toron, already plugging the lifeline into Victor’s back. Toron seemed agitated. He flew forward in a rush toward the ship, and Victor followed. The chatter in Victor’s helmet continued.

“We don’t have a choice, Toron,” said Bahzim.

“It’s not Toron anymore,” said Victor. “It’s Victor. He just gave me the line. What’s going on?”

“He objects to suspending the search for more survivors to rescue the people trapped inside,” said Father. “He says there might be a hundred people out there who need rescuing.”

“He’s right,” said Victor. “There might be.”

“Unlikely,” said Bahzim.

“But possible,” said Father.

Toron landed back in the airlock. Victor was right behind him. Father and Nando were coming in as well, the two of them sharing a lifeline also. The airlock was busy with activity. A team of miners was working the big winches, pulling in the mooring cables they had already anchored to the wreckage. The intent was to bring the wreck close to a PK to be extremely precise with the cuts.

There was a limited supply of the longer lifelines, but there were several short lines for working here in the airlock. Toron grabbed one from the wall, plugged it into his back, and approached Bahzim.

“I want to go back out there,” he said. “I’m not staying here while we cut these people free. I want to keep looking. Even if I go alone.”

“You can’t, Toron,” said Bahzim. “You can’t leave the ship without a lifeline.”

“I can plug the emergency regulator into my lifeline jack and connect air canisters. It’s been done before. That will give me all the air I need.”

“And what about heat? You’ll freeze to death.”

“I’ll carry one of the battery packs. That’ll give me enough heat and power for a few hours, at least.”

Bahzim shook his head. “I can’t let you do that, Toron.”

“My daughter is out there, Bahzim. Dead probably, but maybe alive. And as long as there is a chance of me finding her alive, as long as that is the slimmest of possibilities, I will not sit here and do nothing. If you want to stay and help these people, fine. That’s your choice. If it were up to me, we’d cut them loose now and look for Alejandra.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t. And if it were your daughter you’d do the same.”

Father stepped over. “Think, Toron. Everyone here loves Alejandra. All of us want to keep looking, but we need to go about it safely. If you rush out there, there’s a good chance you’ll die. Too much can go wrong, and you know it. Think about Lola. She can’t lose a daughter and a husband.”

“Don’t talk like Alejandra is already dead,” said Toron. “We don’t know that.”

“All right,” said Father. “Let’s put family aside and think about this practically. You can’t carry that much equipment. You’d need a dozen canisters of air at least. Plus spare propulsion tanks. Plus the battery pack for power and heat. Plus rescue gear. Spreaders, shears, saws, the bubble. Are you going to carry all that?”

“If I have to.”

“You can’t,” said Father. “It’s too much for one person. It’s too much for five people to carry. But even if it weren’t, what would you do if you found someone? You can’t get them back to the ship.”

“I could keep them alive until you came for us.”

Bahzim sighed. “None of us wants to delay the search, Toron. But we can’t desert these people here. As soon as we cut away the other wreckage and get them inside, we can push on.”

“That will take five to six hours at least,” said Toron. “These people were minutes away from death. We barely reached them in time. If there are more out there, they won’t last five hours.”

Bahzim and Father exchanged glances. There was no arguing that the prospect of finding more survivors grew thinner by the minute.

Father sighed. “It wouldn’t work, Toron. Look at the debris out there. It extends for kilometers in every direction. You can’t cover that much ground in a propulsion pack.”

“He could take one of the quickships,” said Victor.

Everyone turned to Victor, who was standing off to the side, listening to the whole exchange.

“Quickships are cargo carriers, Vico,” said Bahzim. “They’re not made for carrying people.”

“Doesn’t mean a person can’t climb inside,” said Victor. “And there would be plenty of room for rescue gear and air canisters and batteries.”

Bahzim shook his head. “Wouldn’t work. Quickships are programmed to go directly to Luna.”

“Every quickship has two programs,” said Victor. “We only use the one that sends the ship to Luna, the one that operates the rockets, the one for long-range flight. The other one is the LUG program, the one Lunar Guidance uses when the quickship arrives at Luna. It overrides the first program and gently flies the quickship into port using the battery and a light propulsion rig. It doesn’t run on the rockets. We’ve never used it before because we’ve never had any need for it.”

“We’ve never used it,” said Bahzim, “because we can’t access it.”

“I can,” said Victor. “I’ve made repairs to quickships before. I’ve noodled around with the system. I know how to get to it and how to initiate it. We can fly it manually.”

Bahzim shook his head again. “Those batteries don’t carry a lot of juice, Vico. They’re made to fly the ship a short distance into port, not patrol for kilometers on end through a debris cloud. If the battery runs out while you’re cruising along, you won’t be able to fire the retros. You’ll sail on forever into oblivion. Besides, Toron has no idea how to fly one of these things.”

“He doesn’t have to fly it,” said Victor. “I will.”

They all stared at him.

“It wouldn’t be that difficult,” said Victor. “Simple, really. You know I could do it, Father. You’ve seen me tinker with the program. I wouldn’t even have to leave the ship. Toron could wear a cable harness anchored to the ship when he leaves to check out a wreck. That way, he’s not out there floating in nothing. He’s anchored to someone who could fly him back to El Cavador if something goes wrong. And the battery isn’t a problem either. I know how to monitor the power supply to ensure that we don’t use up all the power without leaving us enough juice to stop and return to the ship. I can do this.”

The men looked at one another.

Finally Father said, “I can’t let you go out there, Vico. It’s too dangerous. If anyone is flying that ship it’s me.”

“I know the system better than you do, Father. That’s no fault of yours. You had no reason to study what we don’t use. I did study it. It’s much safer if I fly it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Bahzim. “It’s not that I doubt your abilities, Vico. But we’ve never practiced this. And right now my job is to protect this family.”

“Alejandra is family,” said Victor. “And so is Faron. They may have left with the Italians, but they are still part of us.”

That gave Bahzim pause. He looked at Father, who still seemed unsure.

“At least let him try,” said Toron. “Let him show you he can fly it. Or let Segundo try. There’s nothing more the three of us can do for the survivors we’ve found. It’s in the miners’ hands now. If Victor can prove it’s possible and safe, you can’t deny me the chance to save my daughter.”

“Have you been listening to this, Concepcion?” Bahzim asked.

“Every word,” said Concepcion, who was still at the helm with the flight crew. “I can’t overrule Segundo’s decision,” she said. “Whether he allows Victor to go is his choice. But if there’s a way to find more survivors we should try it.”

There was a long pause as Father considered. “Two conditions,” he said. “Show me you can fly this thing. And I’m coming with you.”

Tech

Captain Wit O’Toole moved through the forest under the cover of night. His footfalls were soft and silent. His P87 assault rifle was at his shoulder. His body was slightly crouched, keeping a low center of gravity. His helmet had no visor or eye slits but covered his face completely with blast-resistant metal. His body armor was lightweight and camouflaged for darkness. Beside him, six MOPs in identical gear, carrying identical weapons, kept pace with him as he advanced up the slope of the Parvati Valley in northern India, weaving through the pine and fir trees as quiet as the wind.

Inside Wit’s helmet, his HUD projected a 180-degree view of the terrain in front of him, as bright as if it were day, allowing him to see every detail of the forest. The computer helped further by flagging any obstacles in his path. A root, a low branch, a patch of uneven ground.

A female computer voice said, “One hundred meters to target.”

“Full stop,” said Wit.

The six MOPs stopped their advance and moved into a tight circle, dropping to one knee with their backs to one another, rifles up, covering their position from every approach. It was a simple tactical move, but it was done swiftly and silently, without hesitation or missteps, as fluid as a practiced dance.

“We’re a hundred meters from the target,” said Wit. “Now what?”

“Threat assessment,” said Bogdanovich.

“How?” asked Wit.

“Satellite feed,” said Lobo, “I’ll patch us in.”

A window popped up on Wit’s HUD showing an overhead view of their position taken from a satellite. Wit blinked out a command, and the satellite image shifted, scrolling upward over the treetops in the direction the team was headed. The tree line ended, and a wide meadow came into view. A concrete two-story building, with an almost bunkerlike appearance, stood in the center of the meadow. The Indian military had built it here for military exercises like this one. Several armed guards patrolled the perimeter.

“What a lovely mountain resort,” said Pinetop.

“The brochure said five stars,” said Lobo.

Tonight’s mission was a rescue operation. Calinga was acting the part of a foreign diplomat being held hostage by Islamist extremists. The extremists were actually fellow MOPs and Indian PCs eager to play the bad guys for once.

It was the tenth field exercise in as many days, and Wit had no intention of letting up.

He had devised all kinds of different scenarios: rescue operations, refugee protection, urban warfare, demolition, counterinsurgency measures-each with its own different cultural consideration, terrain, and enemies. One day he’d tell them they were being dropped into a dry mountain valley in Tadzhikistan. The next day they were being dropped at a beach in New Guinea with nothing but jungle as far as the eye could see. The idea was to train for every contingency and enemy.

“I count five guards around the perimeter,” said Chi-won. “But there are probably others we can’t see with the satellite. I say we go thermal from here on in.”

He meant switching their helmet cams to detect heat signatures. “Agreed,” said Wit. “What else?”

“There are more of the enemy inside,” said Pinetop. “We need a floor plan.”

“Coming up,” said Lobo.

A three-dimensional schematic of the structure appeared on Wit’s display. “If you were holding hostages, where would you keep them?” Wit asked.

“Away from windows,” said Chi-won. “Terrorists prefer to keep hostages close, and they’re terrified of snipers. A centralized room is best, probably on the second floor since there’s no basement or attic. And the stairwell can easily be defended. If they were going to hide a hostage, I’d say they’d do it here.”

A blinking dot appeared on a room on Wit’s floor plan.

“Other ideas?” asked Wit.

The men briefly discussed other possibilities but everyone agreed that Chi-won’s assessment was probably accurate.

“Now what?” asked Wit.

“We could send in a peeker and scope out the interior,” said Pinetop.

Peekers were small, near-silent hover drones that carried a through-wall radar. Land one on a roof or a wall, and its signal processing could detect any movement on the other side.

Wit voiced no objection. Pinetop took a peeker from his backpack and flew it upward through the trees using his HUD. They all watched the vid coming from the peeker as it flew high over the meadow and settled on the building’s roof. Three minutes later, they had confirmed Chi-won’s assumption: The hostage was indeed being held on the second floor in the centrally located room.

“Pinetop, you take point,” said Wit. “From here on in, I’m a grunt. You’re in charge.”

Pinetop responded without hesitation, giving out orders to everyone. His instructions were clear, thorough, and intelligent, as if he had been planning his strategy for months.

They advanced up the slope quickly, fanning out, rifles at the ready, approaching the meadow from multiple angles. Thermal imaging revealed three enemy guards hiding in the forest, but the MOPs took these out easily. Their P87 rifles fired almost silently, and the three enemy guards dropped, their dampening suits stiff.

The MOPs crouched at the tree line in the shadows. The guards in the meadow hadn’t noticed the takedown and continued to patrol the perimeter without any sign of alarm. One of the guards walked within a few feet of their position, and Chi-won leaped out of the underbrush and hit the man with a spider pad. The man’s suit stiffened, and Chi-won dragged him back into the darkness.

Four down.

“There’s too much open ground between us and the building,” said Pinetop. “We’ll sniper the rest.”

They extended the barrels of their rifles and made adjustments to the weapons for longer-range fire. Wit put his rifle to his shoulder and blinked a command in his HUD that caused the arms, shoulders, and upper back of his body armor to stiffen. This minimized the slight movements in his hands and made his upper body as steady as a tripod, greatly enhancing the accuracy of his shots. The computer then highlighted each of the targets on Wit’s display. Seven guards total, one for each of them.

Wit watched his display as, one by one, the targets were marked with the name of the MOP who had selected it for takedown. Wit chose the last unselected target.

Pinetop gave the order. The MOPs all fired, and the seven guards went down.

After that it was a matter of following Pinetop’s instructions. They rushed forward and stormed the building. The enemy combatants were exactly where the computer told them they would be. The peeker, which was still attached to the side of the house, warned them whenever new threats charged toward them from elsewhere in the house, giving Wit and his team plenty of time to seek cover or move into a position to neutralize the enemy.

Wit made every shot count, getting up the stairs just behind the others, stepping over the enemy that had already fallen. Calinga was waiting for them in the room. The last enemy guard, who was taking his role as a terrorist rather seriously, attempted to use Calinga as a human shield. But the advancing MOPs fired in unison, and five spider rounds hit the terrorist’s helmet in nearly the same spot. The man’s suit went stiff, and he released Calinga. He didn’t even bother dropping to the floor as was the rule of the game. It was all over at that point.

“About time you got here,” said Calinga. “It’s no fun being the hostage. I don’t get a weapon, and they wouldn’t even give me something to read.”

When they got outside, Wit ended the exercise. He blinked the command to unfreeze everyone’s suits and had them all gather in the meadow for a debriefing, both MOPs and terrorists alike. The men sat in a wide circle all around him under the moonlight.

“What did we learn?” Wit asked.

“That Calinga makes a terrible hostage,” said Deen, who had played a terrorist. “He wouldn’t stop whining. We almost shot him to shut him up.”

The men laughed.

“I almost shot myself,” said Calinga. “Boring as hell, this crew.”

The men laughed again.

“Here’s what I learned,” said Wit. “Seven MOPs prevailed against twenty-four equally trained commandos. Why? Because we’re better soldiers? Because we’re smarter? Faster? No. We won for two reasons: One, you bad guys were sloppy. You weren’t taking proper cover. We picked you off way too easily.”

“We were giving you the real thing,” said Deen. “Terrorists are always sloppy.”

“Don’t give me the real thing,” said Wit. “Give me you, one of the finest trained, most intelligent soldiers I know. Be merciless. I don’t want realism. I want worse than realism. I want a hundred times more difficult than realism. Do everything in your power to annihilate us. That way, when the bullets are real, when our lives are on the line, we will do our duty with exactness. We will never lose. I should have seen nothing when we approached this compound. You should have been completely invisible to me and the satellite. You should have killed us before we left the trees. Why didn’t you?”

“You were with the new guys,” said Deen. “We thought we’d make it a little easier for them.”

“Do you think they need any hand-holding?” asked Wit. “Do you think that just because they’re new to this unit that they’re not good enough or experienced enough to take you at your best? If so, you’re in for the surprise of your life tomorrow when we do this again. From here on out, we pull no punches. If you lose, it’s because you screwed up and were bested and not because you let someone win.”

“I was actually trying,” said one of the guards. “Chi-won jumped out of the bushes so fast, I nearly pissed myself.”

The men laughed.

“Good,” said Wit. “I’m glad you only nearly pissed yourself. Had you actually done so your suit might have short-circuited and given you quite the shock.”

“Smoked sausage,” said Deen, to another round of laughter.

“From here on out,” said Wit, “you act as if your life is on the line. No more going easy. No more pretending that the enemy is inferior or less intelligent than you. Which brings me to the second reason why you failed. We MOPs had better tech. The enemy had older rifles, no computer assistance, no satellites, no peekers, no thermal vision. This was a tech war, and we won because of our equipment. Pinetop, if I had stripped you of all of your gear, could you have taken the hostage?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I’d be unarmed.”

“So you’re only an effective soldier if I arm you? You’re only good if I give you better equipment?”

Pinetop hesitated. “No, sir. It’s just more difficult. If I had been unarmed, I would have taken down one of the guards and confiscated his weapon. Then I could have picked off the others.”

“And what if you didn’t know how to operate the enemy’s weapon?” said Wit. “What if it was tech you had never seen before?”

“Then I’d be in a pickle, sir.”

“So you would have given up?”

“No, sir. I would just have a harder time of it. I’d need to devise ways to beat my enemy using what little resources were at my disposal.”

“Such as?”

“The forest could supply me with spears, for example.”

Deen laughed. “Spears? Against twenty-four armed men holding a defensive position?”

“Does that seem unlikely to you, Deen?” asked Wit.

Deen saw that no one else was laughing. “Forgive me, sir, but that sounds a touch impossible, doesn’t it?”

Wit stared at him for ten long seconds. “Are you a MOP, Deen?”

“Yes, sir. To the core, sir. Absolutely.”

“Then I expect you to take down twenty-four armed men, using only a spear. I expect you to take down a thousand men with a toothpick. We are not soldiers until we know how to go stark naked against a fully armed enemy and kill him.”

Deen nodded, humbled. “Yes, sir.”

Wit turned to the others. “We have become too reliant on our tech. Who’s to say we will always have the technological advantage? What if there were an enemy with capabilities and weapons far beyond our own? Do we give up?” He waited for a response. “I said, do we give up?”

The men shouted in unison, “No, sir!”

“This is an inevitability, gentlemen. Sooner or later we will face a threat whose tech surpasses our own. Or we will face an enemy who figures out how to completely neutralize our tech. Weapons, communication, GPS, drones, rifles, explosives, everything. Let’s figure out how to fight them no matter what they do and no matter how hard it is.” He paused, coming to a decision. “From here on out, we will also train for missions without tech. Zero. Then we’ll train for missions without gunpowder. Then we’ll train for missions in which the enemy can always see us. Whatever the situation is, we will always be at the severe disadvantage. It’s time we reminded ourselves what makes us PCs and MOPs. It is not the chips inside our rifles. It is the gray matter between our ears. The enemy may outgun us, but they will never outthink us.” He turned to the six MOPs with whom he had taken the compound. “Gentlemen, leave your rifles and tech here. Carry only a pouch of spider pads. These will serve as your spears. Wear only your dampening suits. No helmets. Head into the hills, no farther than three miles. In two hours, twenty-four soldiers equipped with all the tech we possess will come hunt you down and kill you unless you kill them first.”

The six MOPs stood and began removing their gear.

“And Deen,” said Wit, turning to the man. “I’d like you to go with them. You may doubt your own abilities, but I don’t. I will be coming for you personally. Take me down before I find you.”

Deen stood and smiled, pleased for the chance to redeem himself. “Thank you, sir.”

The MOPs ran away from the group at a sprint into the forest. Deen ran after them, hopping over the underbrush at the tree line and disappearing under the cover of trees.

Files

Lem looked through the mining reports in the cargo bay and tried his best to appear pleased. The crew chief was beside him, smiling, waiting for Lem’s praise. By the look of the reports, the man deserved plenty of praise indeed. The numbers were impressive. The scoopers were bringing in so much metal from the dust cloud that the men couldn’t smelt it into cylinders fast enough. Iron-nickel, cobalt, magnesium, all the big-money metals. Thousands of tons of it already. It was more than Lem could have hoped for. Yet Lem’s mind was so plagued at the moment by El Cavador and the files that they had stolen from the ship’s computers that he couldn’t even enjoy the good news.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” said the crew chief. “I’ve been in this business for twenty years, Mr. Jukes, and I’ve never seen anything like this. This is the fastest I’ve ever brought in ferros.”

Ferros, or ferromagnetic metals, the most valuable of minerals extracted from asteroids.

“The scoopers are working well, I take it?” said Lem.

“It’s like trolling for fish, Mr. Jukes. We stick out the magnetized scoopers, move the ship back and forth through the dust cloud, and when we bring the scoopers back in, they’re teeming with ferro particles. My whole career has been digging and scraping and blasting away at rock to get metal up out of a mine, but this glaser turns that whole model on its head. Now we blast the rock to dust, wave some magnets in the cloud, and the minerals come to us.” He laughed and shook his head. “Damndest thing I ever saw.”

“Yes, yes. This is all very impressive.”

“We picked the right asteroid for it, too,” said the crew chief. “It’s no wonder those free miners were camped here. This rock was the mother lode. All kinds of high-value metals, and plenty of them to go around. Most miners see a rock this good once every few years or so. I got to hand it to you, Mr. Jukes, you picked one helluva rock to blow up.”

Lem was only half listening. “Yes, wonderful. Well, keep up the good work. Is there anything you need?”

“More people,” said the crew chief. “This is a research vessel, so we’re shorthanded. Our boys smelting the dust and making the cylinders are already working two shifts.”

“How many do you need?”

“Another ten would work wonders.”

“I’ll have Chubs send some people down.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jukes.” He pulled off his hat and scratched at his head, looking hesitant. “Now, you’re sure you don’t want us to load up a few quickships? We’ll get a much bigger haul if we send some of these cylinders straight on to Luna.”

“No,” said Lem. “I don’t want to send anything back ahead of us. Once we load the cargo bays, we’ll pull out.”

The crew chief shrugged. “Seems a shame to leave the cloud when there’s so much metal here for the taking. We only have four cargo bays on the ship, and we’ll fill those easy. That’s quite a big load, to be sure. But using quickships, we could double that. That’s a lot of money we’re letting slip through our fingers.”

“I appreciate your dedication to the company bottom line,” said Lem. “In any other circumstances, I’d agree with you. But I don’t want my father or the Board to know we have a full load. I’d like it to be a surprise when we arrive.”

The crew chief winked. “Smart thinking, Mr. Jukes. Those suits will be surprised all right. They’ll probably give us all a hearty bonus when this is all over.”

Lem knew the man was fishing, and he obliged. “If they don’t give us a bonus, I’ll give you one myself. You’ve done exceptionally well.”

The man beamed. “Thank you, Mr. Jukes.”

The man looked like he was going to speak further, but Lem didn’t give him the chance. He turned and flew away, heading back to the push tube. The Board would be surprised all right. And when Lem told them that their files had been compromised and that the schematics for the glaser were likely in the hands of free miners, or that the same free miners likely had incriminating video of a Juke vessel killing someone, video that would almost assuredly result in a public-relations nightmare of a lawsuit, they’d be much more than surprised.

Lem could see the Board of Directors now. Fine mission, Lem. Well done. Too bad you killed a man and lost us billions of credits in R amp;D and the very future of this company. Too bad you made a jackass of yourself. Other than that little snafu we’d say the mission was a smashing success. We were warming up this seat here at the board table for you, but you see, we have a strict policy against idiots. We’ll have to give it to this spineless Ivy League bastard instead. So sorry. I’m sure you understand.

Lem climbed into the tube and spoke the order for the helm, shooting away.

These people have stained me, he told himself. These damn free miners have stained me. Thank you, Concepcion Querales. Thank you for taking the last two years of my life and flushing them down the crapper. No, not just the last two years, but my whole life, everything I’ve worked for. This will cancel out all of my previous achievements. My reputation will be ruined. And not only that-now that he thought about it-but his fortune as well. The company wouldn’t just sue him, they’d take him for everything he was worth, which was no small sum. They’d tag the whole ordeal as gross negligence and roast him alive. And Father wouldn’t do anything to stop it. He’d turn a blind eye. He’d chalk it up as another of Lem’s “life lessons.” You got yourself into this mess, Lem. You can get yourself out.

No, he was going to correct this. The Board would never know. By the time they reached Luna, all would be resolved. The free miners might be beyond their reach at the moment, but he was certain there was a solution, even if he had no idea at the moment what it might be.

He reached the helm and pulled Chubs aside into one the conference rooms. Chubs floated near the entrance, but Lem felt like walking. He turned on his greaves and vambraces and paced back and forth in front of the window, beyond which was the murky dust cloud and the dotted black of space.

“We have a situation,” said Lem. “One that I would prefer to keep very quiet.”

“All right,” said Chubs.

“When we bumped the free miners, there were three men on the hull. One of them was struck with one of the sensors we cut away.”

“I remember,” said Chubs. “It looked ugly.”

“Yes, well, ugly is putting it mildly. The man is dead. We killed him.” Lem put a little emphasis on the word “we,” hoping to spread the blame around.

Chubs furrowed his brow. “How can you possibly know that?”

Lem told him about the message from Concepcion.

Chubs whistled. “Podolski know about this?”

“I called him to my room, and he checked the system. You ready for the fun part? They downloaded us. Not only did they hack us and leave us a lovely little message, but they also took our files. Everything.”

Chubs swore under his breath. “Are we sure about this? Podolski confirmed?”

“They used a snifferstick. They poked their little noses in here without us knowing it and they copied us clean. Podolski showed me on the records. They duped us.”

Chubs swore again. “Not good, Lem.”

“No, not good. Schematics of the glaser. All of our research. The engineers’ journals. And my favorite part: all the video of the bump.”

Chubs stopped rubbing his eyes and looked up at Lem.

“Yes,” said Lem. “They have video of us killing one of their crew. Do you know what the press would do with that? What the courts would do with that?”

“It was an accident,” said Chubs. “We weren’t aiming for the guy. We didn’t even know he was out there.”

“Prosecutors won’t care,” said Lem. “Besides, it doesn’t look that way in the video. I reviewed it myself. In slow motion. It looks like we were gunning for him. They’ll call it incontestable. And when they do, corporate will cut us off at the knees. They’ll sue us as well. If we don’t do something about this, you and me and everyone on this ship is malja. Toast. Game over.”

“They stole from us,” said Chubs. “That has to account for something. They stole corporate secrets.”

“That will win us no sympathy. You think people will shed tears for the largest, wealthiest corporation in the world? Oh boo-hoo. Poor Juke Limited. Those fat, greedy corporate executives will only get a hundred billion credits on their yearly bonus this year instead of a hundred and twenty. What a shame. No. No one will care. The media would have a field day with this. The poor and middle class will dance in the streets. They eat this stuff up. They can’t be happy until everyone else is brought down to their level.”

“We can fix this,” said Chubs.

“How? We can’t track them. I already asked the navigator. They’re long gone. We could go looking for them, but there’s no guarantee we’d find them. We probably wouldn’t.”

“We don’t have to find them,” said Chubs. “We just have to know where they’re going and be there first, waiting for them when they arrive.”

“We don’t know where they’re going,” said Lem. “I told you. They didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address.”

“But we do know where they’ll go eventually,” said Chubs. “Weigh Station Four is the only outpost this far out. All the families and clans go there for supplies. El Cavador headed out into the Deep, so they obviously don’t yet know what’s in our files. As soon as they figure out what they have, they’ll rush to Weigh Station Four and try to sell the schematics on the black market. That’s the only place even remotely close to here where they can do that.”

“They could head back into the inner system,” said Lem. “Maybe they won’t go to Weigh Station Four. Maybe they’ll think they’ll get a better price closer to home.”

Chubs shook his head. “Not families. You have to know how these people think. They don’t take risks like that. Most of them came out to the Deep to get away from trouble. When they try to sell, they’ll use a reliable source, someone they trust, someone they use often. That’s more important to them than getting a better price. They wouldn’t fly down to Mars or the Asteroid Belt. A, it’s too far, and B, they’d want to stay as far away from corporates as possible. They took something of ours, and they know we’ll want it back. Believe me, they’ll play it safe. Weigh Station Four is where they’ll go.”

“Fine. But how will we recover the data?”

“The same way they took it from us. We’ll hack their ship and steal it back. And maybe erase their servers in the process, just to be certain.”

“They could have moved the data onto a mobile device, a portable drive or something.”

Chubs shook his head. “Families use handhelds. Old models. If they want to port the information, they’d use those. But the handhelds are rooted to the ship’s main servers. When we wipe the servers, we wipe the handhelds, too.”

“It’s not flawless,” said Lem. “They still could have the data stored somewhere else.”

“Maybe,” said Chubs, “but I doubt it. We’ll never be one hundred percent sure. Hitting their servers is as close as we can get.”

Lem considered this a moment then realized a snag. “It won’t work,” he said. “If we go to Weigh Station Four, they’ll see us. They’ll see the ship. It’s not a very big outpost. They’ll know we’re waiting for them. They’ll turn tail and run.”

“They won’t see us,” said Chubs, “because our ship won’t be there. By the time El Cavador arrives, we’ll be heading back to Luna.”

“Then how will we wipe their system?”

“We’ll leave Podolski. He’s the only one of us that can do this anyway. We drop him off at Weigh Station Four and have him stay there until El Cavador shows up, which, after all, could take months. We can’t hang around that long without arousing a lot of suspicion anyway. But Podolski and a few security guys can blend in. We’ll even dress them up as free miners so they don’t draw attention to themselves. El Cavador arrives. Podolski swipes them. Then he and the security team hop on the next freighter to Luna. Simple.”

“Podolski will never go for this,” said Lem. “We’re essentially banishing him to a dump outpost. He’d make a stink about this with corporate.”

“No. He won’t,” said Chubs. “All we have to do is convince him that this whole thing is completely and utterly his fault. He’s not doing us a favor. We’re doing him a favor.”

Pod

Concepcion stood at the holotable at the helm, watching one of the PKs cut through the wreckage of the Italian ship. The miners outside were sending her live video to the holospace in front of her. Everyone who worked at the helm was gathered around Concepcion, their faces taut with worry. For her part, Concepcion did her best to appear poised and in command, though inside she felt tense and helpless. Whittling down the wreckage with a laser was taking an incredible risk. If the wreckage were to shift or rotate unexpectedly while they were cutting, even only slightly, the laser might cut into the room where the survivors were waiting, breaching the airtight walls and killing everyone inside within moments.

Concepcion shuddered at the thought. It would be a cruel death, made all the more horrible because the people trapped inside now believed they were being rescued. Right as we fill their hearts with hope, we screw up and give them a death more terrible and traumatic than what they would have suffered had we never come along.

But no, the wreckage wouldn’t shift, she told herself. The miners were taking every precaution. They had set up mooring cables and two long pylons that extended from El Cavador out to the wreckage, holding the wreckage in place and preventing it from drifting into the ship. It was a precarious procedure, yes, but they were doing everything they could to protect those inside.

The laser finished a cut, and the severed section of wreckage broke free and drifted away. There was an audible sigh of relief from the crew, and a few of them even applauded and embraced one another. Concepcion remained still and unresponsive. The job was nowhere close to being finished, and she had learned through sad experience never to celebrate prematurely. They were not out of danger yet. Whatever had done this to the Italians was still out there.

The laser beam stopped cutting. The miners turned on the winches and pulled on the mooring cables, rotating the wreckage into a different position in preparation for a second cut. Since the wreckage was unstable and had lifelines attached and people inside, the miners didn’t rush the process. They rotated the wreckage slowly, being careful not to jerk any of the lines. It made Concepcion realize how tedious and lengthy a process this would be: cutting and rotating and cutting and rotating until they had whittled down the structure small enough to fit inside the airlock.

It relieved her to know that Victor and Segundo and Toron were out there somewhere continuing the search. The work with the laser drill hadn’t put a full stop on the rescue efforts.

Of course, sending the three out in the quickship didn’t exactly put her mind at ease either. Under any other circumstances she wouldn’t have taken such a risk, especially with the only two mechanics in the crew. If something happened to both of them, who would keep the ship operational? Not Mono. He was too young, too inexperienced. He had barely had enough time to learn the fundamentals, if that. I should have considered that before blessing the mission, she thought. That had been careless. But what could she have done? Only Victor could fly the quickship, and Segundo wouldn’t have let him go without accompanying him.

The laser started cutting again.

Concepcion watched a moment, then her handheld vibrated. She put it to her ear and answered it.

Edimar’s voice was rushed and panicked. “It’s coming back,” she said. “The pod. It’s already close and moving fast. We have about twenty-eight minutes before it reaches the debris cloud.”

Concepcion leaped forward to the holotable and swiped her hand through the holospace. The video feeds disappeared. “Show me,” she said.

The people around her recoiled, sensing her alarm. “What is it?” asked Selmo.

A system chart with dots of light appeared in the holospace. One light was marked EL CAVADOR. Other smaller dots of light immediately around the ship represented debris. Concepcion ignored those and focused instead on a distant dot of light off to the side, alone out in space. As she watched, a computer-rendered line representing the ship’s trajectory extended from the dot across the holospace and landed directly on El Cavador.

The crew stared. They all knew what it meant.

“How much time do we have?” asked Selmo.

“Less than twenty-eight minutes,” said Concepcion.

“Everyone to stations,” said Selmo. “Move!”

Selmo stayed by her side while the crew hurried to their workstations. Dreo entered from the corridor and flew to the holotable, coming in from the crow’s nest. Concepcion spoke into the handheld. “Watch the pod’s progress, Edimar. If it changes speed or its trajectory notify me immediately.” She ended the call and turned to Dreo and Selmo. “What are our options?” she asked.

“Hard to say,” said Selmo. “We don’t know what we’re up against. We know next to nothing about this pod.”

“We know it destroyed the Italians,” said Dreo, “one of the best defended clans in the Belt. We know it’s lethal. We know the Italians’ death wasn’t an accident. The pod destroyed four ships, not just one. You can’t chalk that up as a mistake. It wiped them out. This was an intentional kill.”

“Agreed,” said Selmo. “But we don’t know if it considers us a threat as well.”

“It’s heading straight for us,” said Dreo. “It’s not coming here to play a hand of cards. It likely thinks we’re part of the Italians. And for whatever reason it considered the Italians a threat. We don’t know why, but it’s probably safe to assume that the Italians didn’t provoke it. That would be foolish. The Italians wouldn’t endanger themselves. They’d play it cautiously. Which would suggest that this thing killed them indiscriminately. But in my mind that isn’t even the question we need to answer. The ‘why’ is irrelevant right now. We need to know the ‘how.’ How did it wipe them out? What are its weapons capabilities? Can it attack from long range? Are we already within its reach? Consider the debris. The pieces of wreckage aren’t clean cut. The edges aren’t straight. This doesn’t look like laser work. It looks like explosions, like something ripped the ships apart. How did it do that? And more importantly how do we defend against it?”

“Maybe we can’t,” said Selmo. “Unless the pod attacked and destroyed the Italians incredibly fast, the Italians would have fired back. They would have given the pod everything they had. Yet their weapons, which are much stronger than ours, apparently had little to no effect on this thing. What makes us think we can take it down when the Italians couldn’t?”

“Then what do you suggest?” asked Dreo. “We can’t run. The pod’s too fast. It would catch us easily. Plus running only makes it harder to defend ourselves or to hit it with the lasers.”

“If the pod thinks we’re with the Italians,” said Selmo, “if we’re an enemy by association, then perhaps we should move out of the debris cloud. If we distance ourselves from this place, the pod might disassociate us from the Italians and leave us alone.”

“If we move out of the cloud, we’ll be exposed,” said Concepcion. “The debris is the best defense we have right now. It provides some cover and it likely throws off the pod’s sensors.”

“If it even has sensors,” said Dreo.

“Point taken,” said Concepcion. “We need information about this pod, and the only people who can provide it are the survivors inside the wreckage.” She punched a command into her handheld and called Bahzim, who was supervising the effort outside. When he answered, she told him the situation and asked if there was any way to speak with the survivors.

“The only way to communicate with them is by light board,” said Bahzim. “We write, and they give simple responses, nodding their head or writing words on the glass of the hatch one letter at a time.”

“We don’t have time for that,” said Dreo. “Look, these survivors are hindering our maneuverability. We won’t be able to move around the debris field quickly if we’re moored to a massive hunk of wreckage. They’re an albatross. I hate to be the one to say this, but we need to consider cutting them loose.”

“Absolutely not,” said Concepcion.

“We could come back and get them when it’s over,” said Dreo.

“They can’t survive without us,” said Selmo. “We’re supplying them with oxygen.”

“Think,” said Dreo. “These are nine total strangers. Are we willing to handicap ourselves and risk everything for people we don’t know?”

“They’re not strangers,” said Concepcion. “The moment we started helping them they became a part of this crew. End of discussion. Selmo, have the miners remove the pylons and pull the wreckage in close with the mooring cables. That will give us more mobility. Dreo, contact the quickship. Get Victor and Segundo and Toron back here immediately.”

Dreo hesitated, as if he would argue further, then went to his workstation.

Concepcion turned to Selmo. “We need a better defensive position. I want us behind a large chunk of debris if there is one. Then put our best men on our five pebble-killers.”

“That may not be enough,” said Selmo.

“It’s going to have to be,” said Concepcion.

Warnings

Victor gathered with the Council in the fuge two days later after a search for more survivors proved unsuccessful. He had hoped to accompany the search party to look for Janda, but Concepcion had asked him and Father to comb through the wreckage for salvageable parts instead. It was a long shot, but if Victor and Father could find enough parts to build a laserline transmitter, they could restore the ship’s long-range communication. Father had said that finding what they needed would be like finding needles in a haystack that had been ripped to shreds and strewn across a county mile, but he agreed to look nonetheless. When he and Victor came up empty-handed, Concepcion convened the Council meeting.

The nine Italian survivors who had been trapped in the wreckage were in attendance. They stood huddled together off to one side, the horror of their ordeal still evident on their faces. None of them had been terribly injured in the pod attack, but they looked like broken people nonetheless. Weeks ago, when the Italians had docked with El Cavador, the Italians had been full of song and laughter and life. Now they were like ghosts of the people they had been, silent and solemn and heavy of heart. For the past two days they had patiently awaited the return of the search party, desperate for news of lost loved ones. But both days had ended in disappointment, and now whatever hope they clung to had to be paper thin.

“I’m ending the search for survivors,” said Concepcion.

Jeppe, an elderly Italian who had become a spokesman for the survivors, objected. “There have to be places we haven’t searched,” he said.

“There aren’t,” said Concepcion. “As painful as I know this must be, we all must accept facts and move forward.”

“What about the bodies?” asked Jeppe. “We can’t leave them out there.”

“We can and we will,” said Concepcion. “The recovery effort could take weeks to conduct safely, and we’ve stayed here too long already. Under other circumstances I would agree, but these are not normal circumstances. We need to move now. I remind you that there are three members of my own family among the dead who have not been recovered. All of us are making sacrifices.”

She meant Toron, Faron, and Janda. The miners never found Janda’s body in their searches, and now that the search was over, no one ever would. Victor felt a pang of guilt as he pictured Toron in his mind, dying there on the pod, pleading for Victor to find his daughter.

Concepcion continued. “Our primary mission now is to warn Earth and Luna and everyone in the Belts that this near-lightspeed ship is coming. The pod is incontrovertible evidence that the ship is alien and that the species flying it has malicious intent. If we had a laserline transmitter, we could send a warning immediately, but at the moment, we have no reliable long-range communication. The radio is working, but without a laserline, I doubt we’ll send a message at this distance with any accuracy. I suggest we set a course for Weigh Station Four and try to hail them as we approach. We can then use their laserline transmitter to send a warning from there.”

“Agreed,” said Dreo. “But sending the warning via laserline isn’t a sure thing. We can’t count on our message getting through. We’re still a long way from Earth. Any message we send in that direction will have to pass through several hands and relay stations along the way before it reaches Earth. If the message isn’t passed on, if it stops somewhere along the chain, it dies there. It happens all the time. You know how these relay stations work. Corporates and paying accounts get top priority. Those are relayed first. The computers do that automatically. We’re free miners, the dregs of space, ignorant roughnecks. The station attendants would push our messages aside only to be sent out when the server space becomes available.”

“We’ll mark the message as an emergency,” said Concepcion. “We’ll tag it as high priority.”

“Of course,” said Dreo. “But that’s overused. Some clans mark all of their messages as emergencies in hopes of getting top placement and being quickly sent through. Believe me, when I worked for corporates, I had to deal with these relay stations all the time. Seventy to eighty percent of the laserlines they get every day are marked as emergencies even though most of them aren’t. ‘Emergency’ means nothing.”

“But we have an overwhelming amount of evidence,” said Father. “The helmet-cam footage shows that the pod had images of Earth. The Eye has given us mountains of data to suggest the ship is moving in that direction. We have eyewitness accounts of the pod attacking without provocation. We even have footage of the hormigas themselves. No one can refute this.”

“Yes,” said Dreo, “but no one will know any of that until they open the message. Which these relay stations won’t do. And even in the remote chance that someone does open the message, they might dismiss what little evidence they look at as either a hoax or simply a mistake of our equipment. And if they think that, they’ll do more than not pass it on, they’ll delete it.”

“You make it sound hopeless,” said Mother.

“I’m being realistic,” said Dreo. “I’m telling you how the system works.”

“We’ll get other clans and families involved,” said Father. “We’ll tell them where to look in deep space, something we should have done a long time ago. We’ll turn everyone’s attention out here to the alien ship. Whoever has a sky scanner as good as our Eye would detect the ship and send a warning message to Earth. Maybe if we build a swell of warnings, if we make enough noise, something will get through.”

“Maybe,” said Dreo. “Probably. But how much time do we have here before it reaches the Kuiper Belt? Six months? A year?”

“I’ve asked Edimar to give us a status,” said Concepcion. “She’ll update us on the ship’s trajectory and position. Edimar?”

The crowd parted, and Edimar stepped forward. It was the first time Victor had seen her since Toron’s death. She looked exhausted and small. Victor’s heart went out to her. She had lost her father and sister in a few short weeks. And now, with Toron gone, she had the overwhelming responsibility of being the family’s only sky scanner. Her face was expressionless, and Victor knew that Edimar was doing what she always did: burying her pain, holding everything in, closing everyone else out.

“As has been mentioned,” she said, “we now know with some degree of certainty that the ship is on a trajectory with Earth. It could change its speed at any moment, but based on its current rate of deceleration, it will arrive at Earth in little over a year.”

There was a murmur of concern among the Council.

“As for when it will reach the Kuiper Belt,” said Edimar, “we obviously have much less time. I’ve run through the data over and over again now and it looks as if the ship will be relatively close to us in less than four months.”

Everyone started talking at once, alarmed. It was loud and chaotic and Concepcion called for order. “Please. Quiet. Let Edimar finish.”

The talking subsided.

“We can’t even reach Weigh Station Four in that time,” said someone in the back.

“You’re probably right,” said Edimar. “I’ve done the math. The starship will likely pass by Weigh Station Four before we get there.”

“Pass by?” said Dreo. “You mean the two will be close?”

“They won’t collide,” said Edimar. “There’s little chance of that. Weigh Station Four will be a hundred thousand kilometers away from the ship’s trajectory. That should be a safe distance.”

“In relative space terms, that’s not all that far,” said Mother. “That’s only a quarter of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. That’s too close for comfort. We have to move now. Immediately. We need to warn the weigh station as soon as possible.”

“We need to be clear about our warning, though,” said Dreo. “We know plenty about the pod, but less about the ship. Such as its size. Do we even know how big it is?”

“Not precisely,” said Edimar. “It’s heading toward us, so we don’t know its length. We can only detect the front of it. But even that is big. At least a kilometer across.”

This time the reaction in the room was a stunned silence.

Victor thought Edimar had misspoken. A kilometer? And that was the ship’s width, not its length. That couldn’t be right. What could possibly be that big?

“Any of you are welcome to check my calculations,” said Edimar. “I hope you can prove me wrong. But you won’t. I didn’t believe it myself until I rechecked it the fifth time. This ship is big.”

And filled with creatures like those that killed Janda and Toron and the Italians, thought Victor. How many could fit in a ship that size? Thousands? Tens of thousands? And what about pods and other weaponized ships? How many pods could squeeze into a ship a kilometer across?

Sending a laserline wasn’t enough, he realized. Dreo was right. A warning might get through, but not as quickly as it needed to, if at all. Any number of things could go wrong, and then Earth would be caught off guard. We need a contingency plan, he told himself. We need a way to get the evidence to Earth and in the right hands as soon as possible. No delays, no middleman holding up or deleting the warning. We need a person on Earth presenting the evidence to people that matter, decision makers, political leaders, government agencies. That was the only way it was going to get noticed.

It all became clear to him then. He understood in that moment what he needed to do.

“A quickship,” said Victor.

Everyone turned to him.

“We need to send a quickship to Luna. The laserline is one approach we should pursue, but it shouldn’t be the only one. If Dreo is right, there’s too much of a chance the message won’t get through. We can’t risk that. There’s too much at stake. We have to have a second means of warning Earth.”

“What are you suggesting?” asked Concepcion. “That we put all of the evidence on a data cube and send the cube on a quickship to Luna?”

“If we just put a data cube on the ship, it probably wouldn’t get noticed,” said Victor. “All of the quickships go directly to the mineral docks. They don’t pass through human hands. And even if someone did notice the cube, we can’t be certain that person would recognize its significance and put it in the right hands. What I’m suggesting is that we send the data cube with an escort. Someone rides in the quickship to Luna with all the evidence and then gets passage to Earth to deliver that evidence to the people who need to see it.”

There was a pause as everyone stared at him.

“You can’t be serious,” said Selmo.

“Victor,” said Concepcion. “Flying a quickship around on a rescue mission with docking propulsion is one thing. Riding in one to Luna is another matter entirely. The quickship isn’t designed to accommodate a passenger.”

“I can fix that,” said Victor. “I can build a seat and cover the cockpit with shields to block out cosmic rays and solar radiation. I can make it safe. The cargo hold is more than big enough for batteries and one of the large air tanks. And the suits are already designed for food intake and waste removal. It’s just a matter of stockpiling the needed supplies.”

“That trip takes six months,” said Selmo. “You’re proposing that someone ride in a quickship for six months?”

“A full cargo of mineral cylinders takes six months,” said Victor. “A quickship with only a passenger and gear will take longer. You wouldn’t want to accelerate and decelerate as quickly with a human inside. Too much G-force. Seven months or so is probably more accurate.”

“You want to strap someone between two deep-space rockets and fire him like a bullet to Luna?” said Selmo. “That’s insane. Who would be crazy enough to do such a thing?”

“I would,” said Victor.

The room was silent. They looked at him. No one moved. To Victor’s surprise, Mother didn’t seem alarmed. Her face, instead of shock or disagreement, displayed a pained acceptance, as if she had been expecting this moment, as if she had known all along that Victor would propose such a thing, even though the whole idea had only just occurred to him. He had said nothing to her about his need to leave, about how his love for Janda had made it impossible for him to stay here. But from the look on her face, Mother somehow already knew.

He would apologize to her later in private for his suggesting to leave without first consulting with her and Father. But he knew, even as he considered this, that if he had conceived the idea beforehand, he wouldn’t have mentioned it to them first. Not because he didn’t respect them or because he thought they might object, but because it would mean admitting to their faces that he was leaving them, which he knew would break their hearts.

But wasn’t it crueler to do it here, in front of everyone, where Mother and Father couldn’t contest the matter as they would in private? No. Because here they could set emotion aside. Here, in the presence of everyone, it was easier to think of the greater need.

“I know it’s dangerous,” said Victor. “I know it sounds next to impossible. But if it can be done, aren’t we morally obligated to do it? We can’t rely on a single method of warning, particularly one as uncertain as an Earth-bound laserline. We need a backup. There are all kinds of considerations, I know. I wouldn’t have greaves or a fuge or simulated gravity. So muscle atrophy is a concern, as is bone density, and blood volume. But if anyone is going to attempt a trip like that and put that much strain on a body it should be me. I’m young. I’m healthy. I’m at my prime. Plus I was born in space. I have an advantage over those of you who are older and were born on Earth and whose bodies have had to adjust. More importantly, I can make repairs. If anything happens to the rockets or the shields, I can fix them. No one knows quickships better than me.”

“We can’t afford to let Vico go,” said Dreo. “He’s too valuable a mechanic.”

“We can’t afford not to let me go,” said Victor. “Everything we know so far about this alien ship suggests that it’s a threat, maybe to the entire human race. This is bigger than El Cavador, bigger than all of us. Father knows more about this ship than I do. If something breaks, he can fix it. You have Mono, too. He’s small, but he’s incredibly capable. We can’t think about what’s best for us anymore. This is about Earth now, about home.”

He had never called Earth home before, not out loud anyway. No one did, even those who had been born there. El Cavador was their home. The Kuiper Belt was home. But no one argued the point. They all agreed that their deeper allegiance lay with Earth.

“He’s right,” said Concepcion. “If Victor can prove that a quickship flight is possible, for the sake of Earth, we should do it. I suggest we set out for Weigh Station Four immediately while Victor prepares one of the quickships. Once it’s ready, we’ll decelerate enough to drop him off and continue on to Weigh Station Four. If there are objections or better ideas, let’s hear them now.”

The crew was silent. Mother remained still, watching Concepcion. Father put a hand on Victor’s shoulder.

“Then let’s move,” said Concepcion.

Weigh Station Four

Lem was on the helm at the window when Weigh Station Four finally came into view. At first it was just a distant dot in space, indistinguishable from the countless stars behind it. But the navigator assured Lem that it was in fact the outpost, and Lem made the announcement to the crew. They answered him with whistles and applause, and a few of the crewmen nearest him gave him a congratulatory slap on the back, as if Lem had built the thing himself.

Lem didn’t mind all the positive attention. He had told the crew months ago that they would be stopping here for supplies and a bit of shore leave before pushing on to Luna, and ever since then the crew had treated him warmly, smiling when they saw him, nodding as he passed. Suddenly he wasn’t the boss’s son. He was one of them.

Granted, supplies and shore leave weren’t Lem’s true motivation for the visit, and he felt a slight stab of guilt at all the celebration. The real reason for coming was to drop off Podolski so he could wipe El Cavador’s computers. But since everyone did in fact deserve a little break, no harm no foul.

“Chubs, turn our scopes on Weigh Station Four and bring it up here in the holospace,” said Lem. “I want to see what amenities await us.”

In the Asteroid Belt, weigh stations were enormous enterprises, with all manner of entertainment for miners desperate to escape the monotony of their ships. Casinos, restaurants, movie houses. One near Jupiter even had a small sports arena for zero-G wrestling matches and other theatrics. So when the image of Weigh Station Four appeared large in the holospace for everyone on the helm to see, Lem knew at once that it was nothing like what everyone was hoping for.

The applause died. The whistling ceased. Everyone stared.

Weigh Station Four was a cluster of old mining vessels and sections of retired space stations connected haphazardly together through a series of tubes and tunnels to form a single massive structure. It had no symmetry, no design, no central space dock. Retired ships had been added to it over the years in a seemingly random fashion, connected to the structure wherever there had been room. It was like someone had rolled up a space junkyard into a sad little ball and decorated it with a few neon lights. It wasn’t a weigh station; it was a dump.

Lem could see disappointment on everyone’s faces.

“Well,” said Lem, clapping his hands once. “I’m not sure which is uglier, a free-miner weigh station or free-miner women.”

It wasn’t particularly funny, but Lem had hoped to elicit at least a polite chuckle. Instead he got silence and blank stares.

Time to change the mood.

“The good news,” said Lem, smiling and trying to stay chipper, “is that your stay at this delightful oasis of the Kuiper Belt is my treat. Drinks and food and entertainment are on me. Consider it an early bonus courtesy of Juke Limited.”

As he expected, this news prompted another round of applause and whistles. Lem smiled. He had been planning to spring this surprise on the crew regardless of the station’s condition, and now he was particularly relieved that he had thought of it beforehand. He would sell a load of cylinders to pay for the expense, but again Podolski was the real motivation here. Lem needed cash to fund Podolski’s stay on the station and subsequent flight home, and he didn’t want to use any corporate account for the expenses. Giving everyone a bonus was an expensive, albeit effective, cover for getting Podolski cash.

Lem ordered the crew to dock the ship near the depository, a massive warehouselike structure nearly as large as the station itself. Here free miners who didn’t use quickships dumped and sold raw minerals or cylinders to the station at below-market value. The weigh station then sent it all to Luna in quickships for a profit. Most established families and clans had their own quickship system and used the weigh station only as a source of supplies. But the newcomers and start-ups without the full array of equipment still sold their mining hauls here.

Lem and Chubs left the airlock of the ship and stepped out into the docking tunnel. The drop master was waiting for them. He was a dirty little man in a jumpsuit and a mismatched pair of greaves on his shins who carried a holopad that looked like he had beaten it against the floor a few times. The air was warm and thick with the scent of rock dust, machine oil, and human sweat.

“Name’s Staggar,” the man said. “I’m the drop master here. You boys are Jukies, eh? Don’t see too much of your type around here. Most corporates stick to the A Belt.”

“We’re testing the waters, so to speak,” said Lem. “There are a lot of rocks out here.”

Staggar laughed-a cackle that showed a train wreck of teeth. “Snowballs are more like it. If you can get through the frozen water and ammonia, you might find something. Otherwise, this is no-man’s-land.”

“You’re out here,” said Lem. “Business must be going well for you.”

“Business doesn’t do well for anybody out here, mister. This place used to be booming, long time ago maybe, but a lot of the clans have left. We scrape by like anybody else.”

“Where do the clans go?” asked Lem. “I thought this was a free miner’s paradise.”

Staggar laughed. “Hardly. Most of the clans scurry back to the inner system, to the A Belt. They can’t take all this space or the cold. I take it this is your first time out in the Deep.”

“It’s not deep space,” said Lem. “It’s only the Kuiper Belt.”

Staggar scoffed. “Only the Kuiper Belt? You make it sound like a vacation spot. Got a summer home out here, do you, Jukie?” He laughed again.

“We’d like to sell some cylinders,” said Lem. “For cash. Whom would we speak with about that?”

“You’d speak to me,” said Staggar. “But I should warn you, you won’t get the same prices here that you’ll get elsewhere. We have to adjust to reflect the greater distance we find ourselves at. This is the outer edge. I’m sure you understand.”

I understand that you’re a crook, Lem thought. But aloud he said, “We’re prepared to negotiate.”

“I’m not promising we’re buying, though,” said Staggar. “Depends on what you’re selling. We get a lot of folks trying to pass off gangue. So if that’s what you’re intending, don’t waste my time. We don’t want any worthless crap. We may look dumb to hoity-toities like yourself, but dumb we ain’t, and you’ll be wise to remember that fact.”

“You strike me as a shrewd businessman,” said Lem. “I wouldn’t dream of conning you. I think you’ll find our cylinders of high quality.”

Lem nodded to Chubs, who had been holding a sample cylinder all this time. Chubs gently floated the cylinder in the air toward Staggar, and the man easily caught it. Staggar limped over to a scanner on the wall-apparently his mismatched greaves had a different polarity and affected his gait-and he slid the cylinder into the designated slot. In a moment the reading came back. Staggar tried to appear unimpressed.

“Your scanner doesn’t lie,” said Lem. “That’s some of the purest iron-nickel I’ll bet you’ve seen in a while.”

Staggar shrugged. “It’s decent. Nothing special, really.”

“So are you interested or not?” asked Lem.

Staggar removed the cylinder from the scanner and turned to them, smiling. “Depends. You see, I got this little tickle in my brain that I can’t seem to scratch. Why would a bunch of Jukies want to sell cylinders here? You boys have your own depository down near Jupiter.”

“Jupiter’s a long way off,” said Lem, “and I’m eager to give my crew a break. All the cash you give us will likely go back into the economy of your weigh station here. So the way I see it, this is a win-win situation for you.”

Staggar studied their faces, his smile broadening. “Well, aren’t you the generous captain.” He turned the cylinder on its side and began expertly spinning it in the air in front of him on the tip of his finger. “You’re doing this out of the kindness of your heart, is that it? Giving the boys and girls on board once last hurrah before setting out for home?”

Lem didn’t like where this was heading. “In so many words, yes.”

Staggar laughed. “I told you I wasn’t dumb, Mr. Hoity-Toit, and I meant it. A, a corporate never says what he means, and B, corporates never do squat for their crews unless there’s something in it for them.”

“You think I have some devious motivation,” said Lem, acting amused. “Did it not occur to you that perhaps I want a break as well?”

Staggar shook his head. “No, it seems to me you boys want this one off the books, am I right? Don’t want old Ukko Jukes to know you’re skimming a little off the top for yourselves. Under-the-table mining, eh? Then you can scoot on home and tell your corporate stuffies that you didn’t quite mine as much as you hoped. And everything you sell here, as far as they’re concerned, never existed, while you drop a load of cash into your private bank accounts.” He laughed. “I wasn’t born on an asteroid, boys. I know a pocket scheme when I see one.”

“Is this how you always do business?” Lem asked. “By insulting your customers first?”

“We ain’t doing business until we understand one another,” said Staggar. “You corporates must have iron balls to show yourself around here. This ain’t the headquarters of the corporate fan club, if you catch my meaning. Lot of people here won’t be particularly happy to see you.”

“We didn’t come to make friends,” said Lem. “We came to sell a few cylinders and have a decent time. I doubt your merchants will mind us giving them our money.”

“My money, you mean,” said Staggar.

“How much per cylinder?” asked Lem.

“Can’t answer that until you have an account,” said Staggar. He began typing on his holopad. “Whose name should I put this in?”

Lem and Chubs exchanged glances.

“We’d rather avoid any record,” said Lem.

“I’m sure you would,” said Staggar, “but I can’t buy without adding it to the inventory. You boys can skimp off your boss, but I can’t skimp off mine. You get an account or no sale.”

“Put in my name,” said Chubs. “Chubs Zimmons.”

Staggar looked at Lem. “Not your name, mister? Fancy clothes like that and from the way you were talking, I figured you for the captain.”

“My name,” said Chubs.

The drop master shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He typed some more. With his eyes still down he asked, “Out of curiosity, where did you boys find this iron-nickel?”

“We’d rather not say,” said Lem. “Trade secrets. I’m sure you understand.”

Staggar smiled. “I figured as much. How much of this do you want to sell?”

“Depends on the price,” said Lem.

“I’ll pay you by the tonnage,” said Staggar, “not by the cylinder.”

“What price?” said Chubs.

Staggar told them.

Chubs was furious. “That’s outrageous. It’s worth twenty times that amount.”

Staggar shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”

Chubs turned to Lem. “He’s trying to rob us.”

“That’s the cash price,” said Staggar. “If you want to trade in food or fuel, I might be able to go a little higher.”

“A little higher?” said Chubs, angry. “You’re crazy if you think we’ll accept that.”

“You came to me,” said Staggar. “I’m telling you my price. You don’t like it, go elsewhere.”

“He’s right,” said Lem. “We should have gone to Jupiter. Come on, Chubs. We’re wasting this man’s time.” Lem turned and moved back toward the ship.

Chubs squinted down at Staggar. “Yes, you seem to have so much business here, why not let a big shipment like ours slip away? It’s not like you need the money.” He looked Staggar up and down, showing his disgust at Staggar’s appearance, then turned away and followed Lem back to the ship.

Lem had his hand on the airlock when Staggar shouted at them.

“Wait. I have another price in case you boys got all stubborn and annoying, which you have.”

“And what price is that?” said Lem.

Staggar told them.

“Double that amount and you’ve got a deal,” said Lem.

“Double!” said Staggar.

“You’ll still make a fortune,” said Lem. “Which, if my calculations are correct, is more than the alternative. Zero.”

Staggar glowered. “You corporates are all the same. Cocky thugs, the whole lot of you.”

“From one thug to another, I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Lem.

Allies

Concepcion called the Council to the helm even though it was the middle of sleep-shift. The adults quickly gathered, groggy and unkempt and alarmed. “Weigh Station Four has been destroyed,” Concepcion said. “We just received the data from the Eye a few moments ago.”

Their faces showed shock, horror, confusion. Those who had been half asleep were now wide awake.

“The hormiga ship unleashed a massive burst of its weapon as it was passing the station,” said Concepcion. “The station subsequently went dark. No light. No power. The main structure is mostly intact, but several pieces have broken off. We don’t have any contact with the station, so we have no way to determine if there are any survivors. We’ve been trying to reach them for some time now, but without success. Segundo believes the weapon could be laserized gamma plasma. If that’s accurate, then it’s likely the station received a fatal dose of radiation.”

“How many people?” asked Rena.

“We don’t know,” said Concepcion. “Several hundred at least.”

One of the Italian survivors began to cry, a woman, Mariana, who had lost her husband and four children. Rena put an arm around her, comforting her. The news was reopening a still-healing wound.

“I thought the hormiga ship was a distance from the station,” said Segundo.

“It was,” said Concepcion. “Which is one of the reasons why we suspect this may not have been a tactical strike.”

“Not a strike?” said Bahzim. “What could it have been? An accident?”

“Edimar will explain,” said Concepcion.

Edimar stepped forward, and a rendering of the hormiga ship appeared behind her in the holospace above the table. “It wasn’t an accident,” she said. “The hormigas deliberately fired their weapon. But based on what we’ve learned from the Eye, it’s not clear if the hormigas were targeting the station.”

“What else could they have been targeting?” said Rena. “If they hit it with a focused burst, it’s too much of a coincidence to suggest they weren’t aiming for it.”

“That’s just it,” said Edimar. “The ship didn’t fire a focused burst. It fired in every direction at once.”

She hit a command on the holotable, and a simulation began. Gamma plasma ejected from all sides of the hormiga ship at once, growing outward, getting larger, until the ship stopped emitting the plasma, and the fast-growing wall of destruction became a giant ring with the hole in the center, continually getting larger as it stretched out in every direction.

“The hormiga ship didn’t fire at the weigh station,” said Edimar. “It fired at everything.”

The simulation was on a loop and began again from the beginning.

“If it fired in all directions at once,” said Rena, “and has a long range, why didn’t we get hit?”

“Because we’re much farther away,” said Concepcion. “Well behind the ship. Over two million kilometers. We’re probably getting some radiation, but it has greatly dissipated by the time it reaches us. Not enough to damage us. Not a lethal dose. We were lucky.”

“Don’t know if I’d call this lucky,” said Rena. “This means the ship’s weapons are far more powerful than we thought.”

“What if they aren’t weapons?” said Segundo. “Or at least, maybe the ship wasn’t using the radiation at that moment as a weapon.”

“What do you mean?” asked Concepcion.

“If it’s sucking up hydrogen atoms at near-lightspeed and taking in all this radiation, it has to expulse it somehow,” said Segundo, “especially when it’s trying to slow down. It doesn’t want to shoot it out the back like it normally does. That would only give it massive thrust. And it doesn’t want to accelerate. It wants to de celerate. So it must be getting rid of the buildup some other way.”

“And if its weapons and fuel are the same substance like we suspect…,” said Concepcion.

“Then its weapons are the means of releasing all that buildup,” finished Segundo. “Notice how the weapons fired in all directions at once at the same amount. That’s logical, because if it released the plasma on just one side or if it released more plasma on one side than on the other, the plasma would generate enough thrust on that side to change the ship’s course, which the ship doesn’t want to do. Its course is set.”

“So Weigh Station Four was destroyed by the ship’s exhaust?” asked Selmo.

“If you want to call it that,” said Segundo. “It’s the one drawback of their weapon. The ship never stops collecting hydrogen. And when they’re decelerating, that’s a problem because they have no other way besides their weapons to dump all the excess. So they blast it out in every direction, and whatever happens to be right outside, tough luck.”

“That’s irresponsible,” said Bahzim. “If you have a system like that, you have to make sure nothing is in the way.”

“Apparently the hormigas don’t care what gets destroyed,” said Segundo.

“So the weigh station was at the wrong place at the wrong time?” said Rena.

“No,” said Concepcion. “The weigh station was destroyed by a careless species with no regard for human life.”

There was a silence among them.

“What are we going to do?” asked Segundo.

“I’ve made a decision,” said Concepcion. “Only because one had to be made immediately. If you think I’m wrong, it’s not too late to change that decision. But I don’t think I’m wrong. I told Selmo not to decelerate. Rather than move for Weigh Station Four, we’re moving to intercept the ship and attack it.”

The reaction was fierce and loud as everyone began speaking and shouting at once. Concepcion raised her arms to quiet them, but the tumult continued.

Segundo’s voice thundered over everyone else’s. “Quiet!”

The voices died.

“Let’s hear her out,” said Segundo.

“Thank you,” said Concepcion. “I know what I’m suggesting is extremely dangerous, but consider our situation. As far as we know, no one else is aware that this ship is headed to Earth. No one else knows it’s killed hundreds of people, or that it has a weapon powerful enough to annihilate anything within a hundred thousand kilometers of it or more; or that its creatures care nothing for human life and will attack without provocation. We’re the only people who know that. And right now we don’t have any means of issuing a warning. Weigh Station Four is gone. We can hope that Victor will reach Luna and warn Earth, but he’s still several months away. The hormigas will cover a lot of space in that time. And if we let them, if we do nothing, more people will die.”

“How can we possibly stop it?” said Dreo. “We can’t compete with its tech and weapons. A whole fleet of warships couldn’t stop it. You thought going up against the pod was impossible? This would be a thousand times worse.”

“We don’t have to destroy it,” said Concepcion. “It might be enough to cripple it. That would give Earth more time to build a defense, or it would give military ships enough time to come and destroy it.”

“And how would we cripple it?” asked Dreo. “We have five PKs. Five. Have we forgotten how big this thing is? We’re a fraction of its size. Five PKs might not inflict any damage.”

“I don’t know how we’d do it,” said Concepcion. “That will require thought. But doing nothing isn’t an option. If we let it go, families will die. Whole clans maybe.”

“No offense,” said Dreo, “but that’s not our problem. We did our part. We destroyed the pod. We saved nine people. We sent Victor to Luna. We lost Toron and Alejandra and Faron. We’ve made our sacrifices. We’ve done our duty. What you’re suggesting will get us all killed. This is out of our hands now. It’s too big for us to solve.”

“I agree with Concepcion,” said Edimar. “If we can make an attempt to stop it, we should.”

“Of course you agree,” said Dreo. “You lost half your family. You’re angry. I, for one, would like to live. Besides, did we not just establish that they have a weapon that can destroy everything around it? How could we even get close enough to attack it?”

“Don’t think of it as a weapon,” said Segundo. “Think of it as exhaust.”

“What difference does it make?” said Dreo. “If it fires it, we’re just as dead.”

“It does make a difference,” said Segundo. “Because if it just unleashed a massive amount of exhaust, then it stands to reason that it won’t release more exhaust for some time. If we’re going to strike it, now is the time.”

“You can’t be serious,” said Dreo. He looked at those around him. “Am I the only one who thinks this is insane? What about our children? Are we willing to risk them, too?”

“We don’t have to do this alone,” said Concepcion. “There are other ships ahead of us. If we can contact them, we can enlist help. Maybe we could load the children onto another ship and keep that ship out of the fray.”

“We’re not a warship,” said Dreo. “This isn’t our fight.”

“It is our fight,” said Concepcion. “It is most definitely our fight. That ship is a threat to every human alive. Now, if all of you tell me I’m wrong, if all of you disagree, then I’ll stop the ship. Otherwise, we’re attacking that ship.”

“How can we enlist help with all this interference?” asked Rena.

“The radio will work for up to a few hundred kilometers,” said Segundo. “It’s the long-distance messages that can’t get through. If we get close enough to another ship, we can get a high-bandwidth message through. Holo to holo.”

“Who would help us?” said Bahzim.

“We’d have to be selective,” said Concepcion. “The only mining ships that could likely intercept the hormigas are ones that are already moving in this direction at a high velocity. There isn’t time for other ships to change their course and accelerate up to our speed. Selmo, what ships ahead of us qualify?”

Selmo wiped his hand through the holospace and busied himself with the data from the Eye. “I’ve got ten ships in front of us, but only two of them are matching our speed and moving in our direction.”

“Two ships?” said Bahzim. “That’s not much of an assault, especially if one of them is going to take the women and children.”

“What are the two ships?” asked Concepcion.

“One’s a WU-HU ship,” said Selmo. “D-class. A drill digger. About half the size of us. Not much of a fighter, really.”

WU-HU was a Chinese mining corporation, a direct competitor of Juke Limited, though they were small potatoes in comparison. Concepcion liked WU-HU. They stayed to themselves and didn’t resort to claim jumps or clan bullying. If anything, they respected free miners. Whoever the captain was, Concepcion was almost certain he or she would help.

“What about the other ship?” asked Concepcion.

Selmo looked at the data and frowned. “It’s certainly a fighter. Well defended. Plenty of guns. Strong hull. But I’ll be damned if we want his help.”

Concepcion knew at once whose ship it must be.

“It’s Lem Jukes,” said Selmo.

Formics

Two heads floated in the holospace in front of Concepcion: Lem Jukes and Captain Doashang of the WU-HU Corporation. Their ships were still several days away from intercepting the Formic ship, but they were now close enough to each other that a three-way conference was possible without much interference. Concepcion, despite feeling exhausted and suffering through a flare-up of arthritis in more places than she cared to count, put her best face forward in the holospace. Let them see my eyes and know that we as a family will not fail them.

There were introductions. Doashang seemed a most capable captain. Lem Jukes had an air of his father about him, which was to say confident in a way that was both alluring and off-putting at the same time. He was in his mid-thirties if Concepcion had to guess. A child, really. Less than half her age. Goodness she was old. She had still been on Earth when she was that age, working in her father’s bodega in Barinitas, Venezuela, convinced that she would be stuck there in the heat and dust for the rest of her life, selling cold bottles of malta to the banana farmers as they came down from the fields.

How wrong she had been.

After the introductions, Lem wasted no time getting into tactics. He had surprised Concepcion by accepting the call to help so readily, and Concepcion had assumed that it was Lem’s conquering spirit-his need to subdue and bully-that had motivated him. But now, as he offered up ideas and showed concern for the safety of the other ships as well as his own, it occurred to Concepcion that perhaps Lem’s compulsion to help might be driven by a genuine desire to protect Earth. That put Concepcion’s mind at ease. Selfish motivations led to abandonment and betrayal in a fight, and if any of them hoped to survive, they would have to trust each other implicitly.

“If the pod took direct hits from the Italians and suffered no visible damage,” Lem said, “we can only assume that the main ship has the same shielding.”

“We won’t win this with lasers,” said Concepcion. “The moment we open fire, the Formics will know we’re there. The instant they’re aware of us, we’re in trouble. They could vent their weapons like they did near Weigh Station Four, and we wouldn’t know what hit us.”

“Then how will we attack them?” asked Doashang.

“The Italians couldn’t damage the pod with laser fire,” said Concepcion, “but a few of my men were able to land on the pod and cripple its sensors and equipment with tools.”

“There are no sensors or equipment on the surface of the Formic ship,” said Lem. “It’s smooth. There’s nothing to attack. Besides, it’s moving at a hundred and ten thousand kilometers per hour. Are you suggesting we put men on the surface of that ship at that speed?”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” said Concepcion. “The only way we know of to penetrate their shielding is to be on the surface, right there on the hull. We know the surface of the pod was magnetic, so there is a high probability that the surface of the main ship will be as well. If our men are equipped with magnets, they could crawl on the surface of the ship and plant explosives. We could set these on a timer with enough of a delay to get our men back to our ships and to move the ships a safe distance away. If we’re lucky, we can get in and out without the Formics even knowing we were there.”

“That avoids a firefight,” said Doashang. “I like that aspect.”

“What if the hull is so strong that explosives don’t damage it?” asked Lem. “We don’t know what material the ship is made of. It could be impervious to attack. It could be ten meters thick.”

“If that’s the case, then nothing we do can stop them,” said Concepcion. “But we won’t know that until we at least try. And if the hull is impenetrable, then we’ve learned something valuable. That’s intelligence that will help whoever fights them next.”

“I’m assuming you have explosives,” said Lem.

“I’m assuming all of us have explosives,” said Concepcion. “Don’t you occasionally use explosives to break up surface rock or open up a shaft?”

“I’ll have to check with our quartermaster,” said Lem.

“Aren’t you outfitted?” asked Concepcion. “You very forcefully took our dig site. I assumed you wanted it for mining purposes. What were you going to do with it if not extract minerals?”

There was an awkward silence. Doashang looked back and forth between them.

“I’ll check with our quartermaster,” Lem repeated.

“You do that,” said Concepcion. “Because the more explosives we plant, the more damage we’ll obviously inflict.”

“How would this work?” asked Doashang. “How do we safely get men onto the surface of the ship after we match its speed?”

“We make ziplines using mooring cables,” said Concepcion. “Then we fire cables with magnetic anchors down to its surface. When the cables are secure, our miners clip onto the line and fly down to the surface with their propulsion packs. They can’t be wearing lifelines because we can’t fly that close to the Formic ship. But they could wear portable oxygen and batteries. They plant the explosives, crawl back to the mooring cable, then they either fly back up or we pull them up with the winch.”

“That’s a lot of moving parts,” said Doashang. “A thousand things could go wrong. What if the magnetic anchor hitting the ship alerts them? Or what if the surface of the ship can detect movement?”

“Possibilities,” said Concepcion. “But unlikely. When we attacked the pod, the Formics only surfaced after we had damaged their equipment. We literally crashed into the side of them and spent several minutes on their hull before they responded.”

She was silent then, letting them mull it over.

Finally Doashang said, “I don’t have a better idea. And I agree that stealth is best. We don’t have a winch on our ship, though. So we’d be no help with the cables.”

“Actually I was going to suggest that your ship stay out of the fight entirely,” said Concepcion.

“Why?” asked Lem.

“One of us needs to stay behind,” said Concepcion. “The intelligence we have is too important to die with us. We sent one of our crewmen to Luna with much of this intel, but we have no way of knowing if he’ll arrive alive or if anyone will take him seriously. If this attack fails, someone needs to communicate everything we know with Earth. I suggest that be your ship, Captain Doashang. You can record everything from a distance. We can load all of the women and children from our ship onto yours prior to the attack in the event that something happens to us.”

“I agree,” said Lem. “Your ship is the smallest and least armored, Captain Doashang. If anyone stays back it should be you.”

Doashang sighed. “I don’t like being an observer. But I agree that everything we know must be relayed to Earth. If I’m to take on your noncombatants and children, we’ll have to dock our ships in flight at high speed, which is dangerous. We can’t decelerate to dock or we’ll never catch the Formic ship.”

“We’ll have to trust our computers and pilots,” said Concepcion. “I’ll have our crew make preparations immediately.”

Interference

Rena listened to the transmission on the helm of the WU-HU ship. Static crackled throughout much of the message, and for several seconds Segundo’s words were lost entirely. Rena got the gist of it, though. She knew Segundo well enough to fill in the blanks.

Captain Doashang apologized that they didn’t get the complete transmission, explaining that the alien emissions interfered with the signal quality. He assured Rena, however, that the ship had decelerated as quickly as it could upon receiving the transmission, but that, sadly, they were unable to locate Segundo or any of the other men. “Thank you for trying,” said Rena. “I appreciate you being considerate enough to play the transmission for me. It means more than you know.”

“We took the liberty of making you a copy,” said Doashang, offering her a small memory disc. “We thought you would want it for your personal records.”

It was that act of kindness that pushed her over the edge. She broke down briefly and cried silent tears, covering her face with her hands. A female member of the crew consoled her with a gentle arm around her shoulders, and it was that touch that steeled Rena again. She stood erect and wiped at her eyes. “Forgive me,” she said to the captain.

“There is nothing to forgive, Mrs. Delgado. You have my most sincere condolences. I will provide grief counselors from my crew for you and those from your ship.”

“That is very kind. Thank you.”

“I have prepared a few statements for your people to explain the events of the battle. I think it necessary to give the families an account of the bravery demonstrated by their husbands and fathers.”

Doashang had politely asked the women and children to stay in their rooms for the duration of the attack so that he and his crew could perform their duties without interruption. Rena, pulled from her room moments ago, was the only person from El Cavador who knew it had been destroyed.

“Everyone is eager to hear news,” said Rena. “Thank you.”

Captain Doashang looked at her with compassion. “I want to be as sensitive as I can with the families, Mrs. Delgado. Now that I’ve met you and heard your husband’s transmission, I wonder if the report of the battle would be better delivered by you.”

“Me?”

“I will accompany you, if you agree. But you know these families best, and I wonder if such news is better delivered by a friend instead of a stranger.”

It took Rena a moment to find her voice. “With all due respect, Captain, I don’t know if I’m in the right emotional state to do that.”

He nodded, blushing. “Of course. It was inconsiderate of me to ask, particularly in your own time of grief. Forgive me.”

But before Rena excused herself, she reconsidered. If she could choose someone to tell her such devastating news, she would want it to be someone she loved, a friend, a fellow sufferer even, someone who could take her in her arms and weep with her.

“On second thought, Captain, I think you may be right. I will meet with the families individually. But first, I must hear the full account myself.”

He showed her everything. She watched the vids and listened to the transmissions. She seethed when Lem Jukes’s ship pulled away and fled. Her heart broke when El Cavador disintegrated before her eyes. Her home, the only world she knew, was gone.

Why hadn’t Concepcion come with her? Rena had insisted that she join them on the WU-HU ship, arguing that by Concepcion’s own orders, all women and children were to leave El Cavador. But Concepcion had laughed this off. “Old, stubborn women are the exception,” she had said.

Now she was gone. They were all gone. Bahzim, Chepe, Pitoso, Mono: cousins, brothers, nephews, uncles. Half of everyone she knew and loved in the world. As well as the man she loved more than them all.

The vids ended. She knew everything she needed to know. Her back was straight. Her eyes were dry. “Come, Captain. You and I have work to do.”

Solitude

At first Victor thought little of the pain in his back. After five months of traveling in the quickship, unexplained aches and pains had become second nature. His muscles were atrophying, his bones were weakening; dull aches were to be expected. But then the backache worsened and became so excruciating at times that it felt like a knife stabbing and twisting inside him. It came in waves, and no matter how Victor positioned his body in the quickship, the pain continued. Then the pain spread to his side and groin. Then blood appeared in his urine, and he knew he was in trouble.

All symptoms pointed to kidney stones. His bones were becoming osteoporotic and the released calcium was coalescing in the kidneys. Sleep was difficult. He felt anxious and nauseated and worried about being sick in his helmet. He drank lots of water, but it didn’t help. He had brought a few mild pain meds, but he had taken those months ago to get through a few days of migraines. Now he cursed himself. The migraines were a gentle kiss on the cheek compared to this.

After three days, he worried that the stone might be too big to pass, and he wondered what would happen if that were the case. Would he get an infection? Could it kill him? Would Earth never receive warning because of a stupid clump of crystallized calcium?

He passed it on the fourth day, and the pain was so unexpectedly searing and intense that for a moment he thought he was dying. When it was over, he fell instantly asleep, exhausted.

He continued to drink a lot of water over the next few weeks, but it didn’t stop him from having stones. He passed four in all. None of them were as painful as the first, but they all left him anxious and restless. He was now keenly aware of the fact that his body was deteriorating, and he constantly worried about a dozen other ailments that might afflict him at any moment. His bone density was his primary concern. Would the weight of his own body break his legs when he stood on Luna? Gravity on Luna was only a fraction of what it was on Earth, but perhaps it would be enough to overstress his weakening bones. Then there was the issue of his appetite. It had greatly diminished recently. Was he malnourished? And what about his heart? It was weakening, too. Would it give out before he reached the Moon? And what about radiation? Was the shield holding? He needed to strengthen it, he realized. He needed to add another plate to the exterior. He was sure he’d get cancer if he didn’t.

Victor entered the commands in his handheld to initiate deceleration. The ship had been moving at a constant, high velocity for months, and if he maintained that speed and went outside, the ship would appear to him as if it wasn’t moving at all since he would be moving at the same velocity. But going outside at a high velocity was risky. He’d expose himself to gamma radiation and the threat of micrometeoroids. Getting hit by a tiny rock particle would likely be fatal. Victor couldn’t take that risk. Not with so much at stake. It would be safer to decelerate and repair the shields at a full stop. He’d add a lot of time to his trip, yes, and he wouldn’t reach Luna as quickly as he had hoped, but he felt the extra shielding and precautions were worth the delay.

It took the ship almost two full days to decelerate. Victor didn’t want to rush the process and put any undue burden on his body, weak as it was, so he had slowed the ship gradually. When it had reached a full stop, he detached his air hose and screwed a canister of oxygen into the back of his suit. Next came his tool belt, which he fastened around his waist. Then he opened the hatch and crawled outside. Using the handholds recessed into the hull, Victor pulled himself toward the back of the ship to check how the rear plates were holding up. His hand slipped from one of the handholds, and Victor instinctively reached for the safety cable fastened to his chest harness to steady himself.

Only the safety cable wasn’t there.

In his haste to come outside he had forgotten to anchor himself to the ship.

Victor clawed at the hull, trying to get purchase, desperate to stop himself, but his body was in motion now, moving toward the rear of the ship, and he had already passed the last handhold. His bulky gloves slipped along the metal surface, stopping on nothing. He was screaming now, his voice hoarse and cracked from lack of use. He was slipping down the side of the ship. There was nothing to grab. He was going to die.

Then he saw it ahead of him. A tube of some sort, a small metal pipe at the back corner of the ship. Beyond it was space. If he missed it, he was gone. He would drift until he ran out of air. He approached the pipe, and just before he reached it he knew he wouldn’t be able to grab it. It was too far away, just beyond the reach of his fingers.

In a single swift movement, his hand whipped to his tool belt and came back with a long wrench that he reached out and hooked around the pipe at the last possible moment, stopping himself. His heart was pounding. His breathing was labored. The wrench’s hold on the pipe was slight and precarious. It could easily slip off. He gently pulled and drew himself back to the ship.

The wrench slipped from the pipe, but he was moving in the right direction now. He slowly drifted toward the cockpit, climbed inside, and fastened the safety cable onto his harness. He cursed himself for being so stupid. He had come all this way, risked his life, with intelligence that the whole world needed to see, and he nearly ruined it all by failing to fasten a single metal ring to his harness. Brilliant, Victor. Real genius.

With the cable secured, he returned outside, checked the plates, found them in order, but then decided to install the spare plates anyway on top of the existing ones. Might as well. The spares weren’t doing any good inside the ship. Besides, he needed the labor. He needed to occupy his mind with work for a little while. He had built and engineered every day of his life since becoming Father’s apprentice, and the past five months had been nothing but mind-numbing idleness.

When he finished the installation, he resealed the seams twice to be sure they would hold. He knew he was stalling. The seals were fine. He simply didn’t want to get back in the ship.

Eventually, he returned to the cockpit. His hand lingered on the hatch for a moment before he closed it, his eyes scanning the expanse of space above him. He was only a few months away from Luna. He could endure this a little longer. He sealed the hatch and began to accelerate. The computer reconfigured his flight path to account for the delay and revised the time of arrival, putting him at Luna three weeks later than originally expected. Victor felt like hitting something. Three weeks. That was much longer than he had anticipated. But it was too late now. What’s done is done, he thought. Sighing, he sat motionless in the flight seat as the quickship picked up speed.

Imala

Imala Bootstamp wasn’t trying to get anyone fired at the Lunar Trade Department, but it sure felt good when she did. The culprit was one of the big uppity-ups, a senior auditor on the fifth floor who had been with the LTD for over thirty years. Imala, a mere junior assistant auditor with the agency, was so far down the totem pole that it took her a month to get anyone with authority to actually look at what she had found.

She had tried going to her immediate boss, a perverted idiot named Pendergrass, whose eyes dropped to her chest whenever she was forced to bring anything to his attention. Pendergrass had only told her, “Get off the warpath, Imala. Put down your little tomahawk and focus on your job. Stop following tracks you shouldn’t be following.”

Oh Pendergrass. You’re so, so clever. How witty of you to make reference to my Apache heritage.

She had thought the world had outgrown racial insults-she certainly had never heard any growing up in Arizona. But then she had never known anyone like Pendergrass, either, who called her cubicle her “wigwam” and who would always make a circle with his mouth and tap it with his fingers whenever she passed him in the break room. She could have gone to HR and filed a complaint a long time ago, but the HR bimbo assigned to their floor was actually sleeping with Pendergrass-a fact Imala found both repulsive and sadly pathetic. Besides, Imala didn’t want anyone fighting her battles for her. When she felt the need to “go on the warpath,” she’d be swinging her own tomahawk, thank you very much.

She couldn’t go to Pendergrass’s boss either. He was a pushover yes-man whose head was so far up his boss’s ass that he wore a kidney for a cap. All she’d get from him was a nice condescending lecture on the importance of following the chain of command. Then Kidney Cap would go to Pendergrass and give him an earful for not keeping his Apache on a short leash. And if that happened, Imala would have hell to pay with Pendergrass.

So she did the slightly unethical yet wholly necessary next best thing: She lied her way into the director’s office.

“Do you have an appointment to see Director Gardona?” asked the secretary, not looking up from her terminal.

“Yes,” said Imala. “Karen O’Hara, Space Finance magazine. Here for the feature interview.”

Imala felt ridiculous with her hair in a bun and dressed in such a fashionable jacket and slacks-which she had rented for the occasion-but she knew she needed to look the part. She wasn’t concerned about the secretary recognizing her. The agency employed hundreds of people, and all the grunts on the second floor where Imala worked never hobnobbed with anyone up here on the fifth. They didn’t even use the same entrances. It was like two neighboring countries whose borders were never crossed.

Imala had tried a week ago to set an appointment with the director as herself, but as soon as the secretary had learned that she was a junior assistant auditor, the secretary referred her to her superiors and hung up on her. Nor could Imala get an e-mail or a call through. All of the director’s messages were screened, and every attempt to contact him had been blocked. It was ridiculous. Who did the man think he was? This was the Lunar Trade Department, not the damn White House.

So here she was, doing the stupidest thing she had ever done in her life, all to get an audience with someone who might take her seriously.

“This way please,” said the secretary, leading Imala through two doors that required holoprint authorization. The secretary waved her hand through the boxy holo by the door, and the locks clicked open.

All the security made Imala nervous, and she was beginning to wonder if this was a good idea. What if the director didn’t think her information important enough to overlook her unorthodox way of getting his attention? Or what if she was wrong about the data? No, she was sure about that. The last door opened, and the secretary ushered her inside. Imala stepped through, and the secretary disappeared the way she had come.

Director Gardona was standing at his workstation moving his stylus through his holospace, zipping through documents so fast, Imala couldn’t imagine how he could possibly be reading anything. She put him in his early sixties, white haired, fit, handsome. The suit he was wearing was probably worth more than three months of Imala’s salary.

“Come in, Ms. Bootstamp,” he said. “I’m most interested to meet you.”

So he knew who she was. Imala wasn’t yet sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

He pocketed his stylus and faced her, smiling. “But tell me first, is Karen O’Hara a real journalist for Space Finance or did you pull that name from a hat?”

“Real, sir. In case you checked her on the nets.”

“As if I have time for such things,” he waved her to a cocoon chair, which resembled an empty sphere with the front quarter sliced off. They were great for minimal gravity, and Imala climbed inside. Gardona took the chair opposite her.

“Why did you agree to meet me, sir, if you knew who I was?”

Gardona spread his hands in an innocent gesture. “Why wouldn’t I want to meet any of my employees? And such a good one, too, I’m told.”

He was either lying or there were people watching her she didn’t know about. Pendergrass and Kidney Cap would rather yank out their fingernails than give her a positive review.

“I apologize for the silly deception, sir, but reaching you by traditional means wasn’t working.”

“I’m a busy man, Imala. My secretary protects my time.”

So he knew how she had tried to reach him as well. Or maybe he was simply assuming she’d gone to the secretary.

He laughed. “Disguising yourself as a journalist. That’s takes guts, Imala. Guts or stupidity, I’m not sure which.”

“Perhaps a bit of both, sir.”

“And under the guise of doing a feature interview, too.” He shook a finger at her. “Appealing to my narcissism, I see.”

“It seemed the most believable story, sir.”

“Well I’m flattered you would think me important enough to warrant a feature interview in such a reputable magazine.” He crossed his legs. “Well, you have my attention, Imala. I’m all ears.”

She got right to it. “I have evidence, sir, that Gregory Seabright, one of our senior auditors, has been ignoring and in many cases concealing false financial records from Juke Limited for the better part of twelve years.”

“I know Greg, Imala. I’ve known him since grad school. That’s a very serious accusation.”

“There’s more, sir. I also have evidence of financial payments to Mr. Seabright from a small subsidiary of Juke Limited in excess of four million credits.”

Gardona was silent a moment. He was still smiling, but there was no longer any life behind it. “If such an allegation were true, Imala, which I doubt, I can’t imagine Greg would be dumb enough to keep such payments on file or make them easily detectable. He’s one of our top auditors. He would cover his tracks.”

“Oh, he covered his tracks, sir. He covered them with so many layers it’s taken me two months to piece it together. I had to snoop and dig in places not normally accessible to me. It’s a very lengthy thread that I had to follow to connect Mr. Seabright with the payments, but if prosecutors are patient enough, I can connect the dots for them.”

“Prosecutors?”

“Obviously. Juke Limited ships have been exceeding weight limits for transshipments to Earth year after year without paying the required fees and fines. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of credits here. Juke has been paying him off to turn a blind eye and foster illegal tax and tariff practices.”

“And you can prove all this?”

She held up a data cube. “Over three thousands documents.”

“I see. And when did you research and compile all this?”

“After hours. I only stumbled on it because I was studying old files, trying to familiarize myself with some of our larger accounts.”

“This is troubling, Imala. Who else knows about this?”

“Just my immediate boss, Richard Pendergrass.”

“I see. Well I will have to look into this immediately. If this proves true, it would be devastating to the reputation of this agency. I would ask that you keep this quiet until we can conduct an internal investigation.”

He started to get up.

“One more thing, Mr. Gardona. Juke Limited is our largest account. To conceal something this big for this long is too much for one person. I can’t prove it beyond the legal definition of doubt, but I have six other names on this cube whom I suspect are aware of and participating in this practice.”

He took the cube. “I hope you’re wrong, Imala. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”

She left his office, and by late afternoon of the following day word was spreading that Gregory Seabright had been terminated. Not suspended. Not given leave. Terminated.

Imala stood at her cubicle-which was smaller than most refrigerators and sometimes just as cold since it was directly below one of the AC vents-and felt better than she had in a long time. She had beaten the Man. She had taken on the giant and slung her rock and hit him dead center in the forehead. Gregory Seabright, dirty money-grubber, was down. And not just Seabright but Ukko Jukes as well, the wealthiest man in the solar system. Or, as Imala knew all too well, one of the most crooked men alive. Yes sir, not even old Ukko Jukes was safe from her justice.

She slapped her desk with the palm of her hand. Now this was auditing. If only her father could see her now. “Auditing?” he had said, when she had told him about her plans for grad school. “Auditing?” He said the word like it left a sour taste in his mouth. “That’s worse than accounting, Imala. You’re not even counting beans. You’re checking to make sure someone else counted beans. That’s the most pointless, fruitless, meaningless career anyone could possibly choose. You’re smarter than that. You can do anything. Don’t waste your life being a bean-counter checker.”

But oh how wrong Father was. Auditing was what made everything work. Without auditing, we’d live in financial barbarism. Markets would collapse. Banks would break. The whole system would crash.

But you couldn’t explain that to Father. He’d throw up his hands at talk like that. But taking a crook, putting a bad guy in prison, that Father could grasp, that was something he could wrap his head around.

Once she saved up enough to send a holo to Earth and once Lunar prosecutors got involved and the media caught wind, she could contact home and say, “See, Father? Your little girl taking on Ukko Jukes. That big enough for you?”

Pendergrass poked his head over the wall of the cubicle. “You heard about Seabright?”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“You have anything to do with that?”

She shrugged.

“Come on, Imala. You told me he was duping. I didn’t think it was possible. I thought you were witch-hunting. You know, fresh out of school and ready to take on the world. All that idealistic crap. We get people like that sometimes.”

Imala said nothing.

“Guess I was wrong,” said Pendergrass. “I should’ve listened to you. My mistake.”

Imala raised an eyebrow. “Are you actually admitting you were wrong?”

“Hey, there’s a first for everything.”

He smiled, and for once he didn’t look at her chest.

“As a peace offering,” said Pendergrass, “I want to buy you lunch.”

Ah, thought Imala. So that’s where this was going.

He must have sensed what she was thinking. “It’s not a date, Imala. Hanixa is meeting us at the restaurant. It would be the three of us.”

Nothing could be less appetizing than to share a table with Pendergrass and his little HR hussy, but Imala wasn’t about to reject an offered olive branch. That would only make things worse. So she grabbed her coat and followed him outside.

The black car waiting at the curb was the first red flag. Pendergrass opened the back passenger door, still as friendly as ever, and Imala was climbing inside even though warning bells were going off in her head.

When the car door closed without Pendergrass joining her, Imala realized what a mistake she had made. A man was sitting across from her, his face hidden in shadow. Imala didn’t need to see his features to know who he was.

“Hello, Imala. My name is Ukko Jukes.”

The car pulled away from the curb and onto the track. Wherever they were going, Ukko had already programmed the destination into the system. Imala considered trying for the door handle and taking her chances jumping from the car. But they accelerated suddenly, and she figured he would probably have the doors locked anyway.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

He surprised her by laughing, a big belly laugh that filled the car. “You don’t mince words, do you, Imala. Rest easy, my dear. I’m not the villain you think I am.”

“Then who’s the villain? Gregory Seabright?”

Ukko frowned. “Director Gardona contacted me this morning and informed me of the investigation. I was as disappointed and shocked as he was. Furious, really. If this proves true, it means there are people in my company who think they can steal from me.”

Imala couldn’t hide the sarcasm in her voice. “So you had no idea this was going on?”

He looked affronted. “Absolutely not. Do you think I would be stupid enough to skimp like that? I’m a businessman, Imala. Some would even say a very savvy businessman. Do you think I would skate around regulations and risk losing shipping licenses that generate billions in monthly revenue? I’m no fool, Imala. Even if I were the three-headed monster you take me for, I’m not moronic enough to risk having my company broken up and dragged through the mud by international prosecutors all for a few hundred million credits.”

“You say that like it’s not a lot of money.”

“Do you know how much I am worth, Imala? Do you have any idea how much money my corporation has generated in the time you and I have been talking?”

“I bet you pick up a lot of women with that line.”

He laughed again. “Believe me, Imala, whatever my people were hiding with Gregory Seabright was a drop in my bucket.”

He was exaggerating. Imala had a pretty good idea what he was worth. She hadn’t seen all the files at the agency, so she couldn’t be completely certain. But she knew enough to suspect that the load Seabright had helped conceal was no chump change. Plus Seabright was only one person. Imala was near certain Jukes was filling pockets all throughout the agency. Seabright was simply the one careless enough to get caught.

“So you kidnapped me to convince me that you’re innocent of any wrongdoing?” asked Imala.

“Kidnapped? Goodness, Imala. You do gravitate toward the dramatic, don’t you? No, I shared this car with you on the way to your lunch appointment so that I may make you a proposition.”

“If you’re going to offer me hush money, don’t bother.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Honestly. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who thinks so little of me. I should have you around more often, Imala, just to keep me humble.”

She folded her arms and said nothing.

“I want to offer you a job, Imala. You’re still young, and you lack experience, so it’s not a senior position. But you obviously have a passion for the work and you’re very good at what you do. You uncovered a mess at the LTD that no one else saw for years.”

“The other auditors look at the totals. I look at all the numbers.”

“Exactly. You look at all the numbers. That’s what I need, Imala. Someone who looks where others don’t. There are people in my company who have cheated me, and I want to know who they are. I don’t know whom to trust. I need someone above reproach who will report directly to me.”

“You don’t need me,” said Imala. “Most of the files I found implicate people on your staff. Anyone on the investigation can follow those threads and give you a list of names.”

“Yes, but how big is this problem? Did you find every file? Did you uncover every concealment? I fear this may be bigger than we think. These people are auditors, Imala. They know how to make their crimes disappear. I want to know who they are.” His face darkened, and she saw a glimpse of the man he was rumored to be. “No one steals from me, Imala. No one.”

Did he honestly not know this was going on? Was he actually innocent? Imala couldn’t deny that it was possible. The man had hundreds of thousands of employees. He couldn’t know the actions of all of them. And none of the evidence she had found implicated Ukko in any way, not directly at least.

Ukko said, “You and I both know that no one in the private sector will even glance at your resume until you’ve done five years at the LTD, Imala. I’m offering you an early out. I know the bureaucracy you’re dealing with. I know you must hate it. And you’ve been there, what, six months?”

Seven months, thirteen days, thought Imala. Enough time to know she loved the work and hated the people. Aloud she said, “It didn’t cross your mind that hiring me would be a conflict of interest considering the pending investigation? I can’t possibly accept, Mr. Jukes.”

“I haven’t even told you the salary.”

“It doesn’t matter. It would taint the investigation. It would look like hush money.”

He told her the salary.

It was a lot of money, though not too much that it looked like a bribe. It was probably comparable to what people with a few more years experience than her were making these days in the private sector. And hadn’t she proved that she was just as capable as they were, if not more so? It was exactly the salary she knew she deserved. For a moment she hesitated. More income meant she could get out of that closet of an apartment she was staying in and start paying off her student loans. Maybe even send money home.

No. What was she thinking? He was buying her off. Just as he had bought off Seabright and Pendergrass. How could she forget Pendergrass? The snake had tossed her into the lion’s den.

“Stop the car,” she said.

“Am I to take this as a no to my offer?”

“You may take it as a hell no and you can shove it up that wrinkly white butt of yours. You’re not buying me off.”

His expression remained impassive. “You’re making a mistake, Imala. I am offering you an opportunity here.”

“You’re removing me from the investigation,” she said. “You’re mopping up. Make me go away, and your stooges in the LTD make the whole investigation go away. Tell me if I’m getting warm here.”

Ukko flicked his wrist, and the car pulled to the curb. Imala’s door opened.

“Enjoy your lunch, Imala. I hope you’ll show more respect the next time someone merely offers you what you deserve.”

She started to get out.

“And one more thing,” said Ukko. “A bit of unsolicited advice. Get to know people before you write them off as black-hearted scoundrels. You’re a quick judge of character, Imala. And you’re not always right.”

She got out. The door closed. The car zipped back into traffic and disappeared.

She looked around her. She was in the French Quarter, an upscale part of town with quaint shops selling chocolates and perfumes and ridiculously priced clothing. Every street in the city was covered with shielded domes that protected against solar radiation and that kept in air and heat, but only in the French Quarter were the dome ceilings painted the light blue color of Earth sky with the occasional white of fluffy clouds. Imala hated it. It was like everyone she worked with at the LTD. Fake and phony.

Across the street was a restaurant. Pendergrass and his dimwit vixen were sitting at a table outside, eating pasta through semi-sealed containers. Imala must have been doing circles with Ukko if Pendergrass had beaten her here. He saw her, smiled, and waved at her to come join them. Imala turned on her heels and began walking back toward the office, ignoring him. If she crossed the street and approached Pendergrass she was fairly certain she’d grab his pasta and smear it in his face.

MOPs

Wit O’Toole sat in the passenger seat of the Air Shark attack helicopter as it flew south from the village of Pakuli in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Below him, dense lowland tropical forests began to mix with shorter, montane trees as the chopper left the river valley and moved up into the foothills. Breaks in the trees revealed small, isolated family farms with simple wooden homes built amid fields of maize or coffee. As the chopper rose in elevation, terraced rice fields came into view, clinging to the slopes of the highlands like a staircase of green climbing up the landscape. If not for the burning villages and corpses rotting in the sun, Wit might think this a paradise.

Indonesia was having two civil wars at once. The government of Sulawesi was fighting an Islamist extremist group known as the Remeseh here in the mountains, while the government of New Guinea was fighting native insurgents on that island. Civilians were stuck in the crosshairs, and the situation was getting bloody enough that the developed world was almost beginning to care. News of the burning church might be exactly the sort of human-interest story to make the media take notice. People’s eyes glazed over headlines about mountain farmers murdered in Indonesia. But tell them that Islamist militants had locked a congregation of Christians in their small mountain chapel and burned the building to the ground with the people inside, and suddenly you’ve got news people care about.

Wit hoped that was true. The people of Indonesia needed help-more help than the MOPs could provide. And if the church incident would turn the world’s eyes to the plight of Sulawesi then perhaps the people burned alive hadn’t died in vain.

Wit turned to Calinga sitting in the pilot’s seat. “Take vids of everything. But be discreet about it, don’t let the people see that we’re taking vids.”

Calinga nodded. He understood.

The cameras on the helmets and suits were small enough and concealed enough that Wit wasn’t too concerned about the villagers taking notice-most of them had probably never seen tech like that anyway. He was more concerned about him and Calinga getting the right kind of shots. The smoldering bodies. The blackened, charred remains of a child’s toy or doll. The weeping women of the village mourning the loss of loved ones. The media was starving for that type of horror, and if Wit could give it to them, then he might be able to begin the sequence of events that might eventually result in aid for the people of Indonesia.

That effort would take months, though. The war on apathy moved much slower than real wars fought on the ground. Enough citizens and human rights groups would have to see the vids and get angry enough and complain to legislators enough that eventually someone with authority would actually take action. It wouldn’t be easy. If the economy took another dive or if some politician or celebrity was caught in a sex scandal, the media would go back to ignoring Indonesia and no aid or protection would come.

Wit wasn’t on a mission to turn public opinion, though. Getting the vids was a tertiary objective. His first order of business was to recover the body of one of his men who had died in the attack. Then he would deal with the Remeseh who had burned the church, either taking them into custody-which was never ideal-or taking them down-which was never pretty.

Wit saw the pillars of smoke long before they reached the village of Toro. The chapel would be little more than a smoldering heap by now, but the terrorists had set other fires, and the wind had likely blown some of the flames into the grasslands.

Calinga set the helicopter down in the village a block south of where the church had burned. Hundreds of villagers were gathered, but they gave the helicopter a wide berth and turned their heads away from the wind of the rotor blades. Wit and Calinga climbed down in full combat gear, and Wit could see the villagers’ faces change from fear to relief. They knew who MOPs were and the protection they provided. Some cheered. Some wept openly, clasping their hands in front of them. Others, especially children, crowded around Wit and Calinga, motioning them to follow them up to the chapel. Everyone was speaking Indonesian at once, and Wit could only pick up bits and pieces. They were telling him his man was dead.

They meant Bogdanovich, one of the MOPs from Wit’s most recent round of recruits. Wit had sent the Russian to the village weeks ago with Averbach, a more senior MOP, to protect the village from strikes the Remeseh were conducting all across the highlands. When a firefight to the south had broken out between the Remeseh and a group of farmers, Wit had ordered Bogdanovich and Averbach to go and offer support.

Bogdanovich, however, had refused to leave the village, fearing the firefight was a distraction for a coordinated strike on the village. Averbach ended up going south alone. When he had returned, the chapel was burning, and Bogdanovich was dead in the street.

Wit arrived at the chapel and found Averbach carrying out bodies. Several of the corpses already lay in the street covered with sheets, and villagers were wailing and crying and raising their arms heavenward as they identified the dead.

There were other bodies, too. About ten men. All riddled with bullets or other wounds, lying in circles of their own blood. Several women and children were throwing rocks at these corpses, spitting and shouting curses and screaming through their tears. Bogdanovich hadn’t gone down without a fight apparently.

An elderly woman was kneeling beside another body, this one wrapped in bloody sheets and sprinkled with flower petals. The villagers and children pointed at the body and told Wit what he already suspected. It was Bogdanovich.

Wit nodded and thanked them, then went directly to Averbach, whose face was covered in soot and sweat, and who had gone back into the chapel to retrieve more of the dead. Wit and Calinga pulled on their latex gloves and fell into step beside him. Without speaking they delicately helped Averbach lift another body from the ashes and onto a sheet, which they then used as a stretcher to carry the body out into the street. It was gruesome, horrific work. The air was thick with the scent of charred human remains, and the timbers and ashes continued to smolder, burning Wit’s eyes with the smoke. It took a great deal of concentration for Wit to control his gag reflex and maintain a reverent composure.

When they finished, twenty-six charred bodies lay in a line, some of them burned beyond recognition. Many of them were children. A block away another fire was burning in the street. Some of the villagers had dragged the dead Remeseh militants into a heap and set the bodies on fire. Bogdanovich remained untouched, and now more of the village’s elderly women kneeled beside him, offering their respect and prayers.

Wit spoke in his broken Indonesian to one of the men, asking if anyone in the village had seen in which direction the surviving Remeseh had fled. As he suspected, no shortage of people came forward. They all pointed to the south.

“I will leave one of my men here with you,” Wit told them in Indonesian. “He will protect you. He is as good a soldier as Bogdanovich, if not better.”

“No one is better,” the crowd cried. “No one is braver. More would have died if not for him.”

Wit got the stretcher down from the chopper, then he and Calinga delicately lifted Bogdanovich into a body bag. They kept him wrapped in the sheets, then loaded the body into the Air Shark. Calinga stayed behind. Wit took the pilot’s seat, and Averbach sat shotgun.

When they were up in the air, Averbach said, “This is my fault. Bog had gone local. He had fallen in love with one of the women in the village. Nothing ever happened between them. They were never alone. But I noticed the furtive looks she gave him. And I noticed that he noticed and didn’t seem to mind. He never said anything to me, but I should have told you. We should have pulled him out. It clouded his judgment.”

“I figured as much,” said Wit. “It wasn’t like Bog to disobey an order.”

“The villagers said Bog would have taken down all the Remeseh if not for the chapel. The woman was inside. When the Remeseh set it on fire and padlocked the door, Bog went for it. He tried to give himself enough cover to reach the door, but it was a trap. They had three snipers waiting. They burned the church, not to kill the people inside but to flush Bog out.” Averbach shook his head. “I should have been with him. I could have taken the snipers.”

“I sent you south,” said Wit. “You obeyed orders. That’s what you should have done.”

They flew south, but saw little through the jungle canopy. After an hour of searching they headed back to Pakuli and delivered Bogdanovich’s body to the medical team who would prepare it for shipment back to Russia.

Another one lost, thought Wit. That was four in Indonesia. Four too many.

He had hoped that the Indians would join in the fight. He could use the PCs; they were excellent trackers. But the Indians were being skittish. The PCs were willing, but the powers that be didn’t want to commit troops.

I need more men, thought Wit. I should have taken that Maori bastard, Mazer Rackham. I could use him about now.

He sent a squad up into the jungle south of Toro village, but he didn’t expect them to find much. The Remeseh were long gone by now-they had likely been long gone before Wit had even reached the village.

He returned to his tent and set up his terminal. Calinga had collected all the video he had taken at the village and sent it to Wit’s inbox. Wit reviewed the footage along with his own and edited a three-minute piece that showed the horror and suffering in Toro. He didn’t censor himself. He showed everything. The bodies. The mourning. The ashes. He added no music. He didn’t need to sensationalize it. The raw video would speak for itself. He titled the file “Victims of the Remeseh,” then added the date and location. He then uploaded it to the nets and waited. The following morning several news organizations had picked up the video, though even these had buried it.

The story getting the most attention on the nets was an unexplained interference of space communications. Scientists on Earth and Luna said it was an increase in cosmic radiation, although no one could determine a source. In fact, the interference seemed to be coming from all directions at once, raising background noise to a shout and making it impossible to communicate in space. A reputable astronomer was doing the rounds on the talk-show circuit prattling on about unexplained gamma bursts, but he offered up no explanation. Many commercial and passenger flights to and from Luna were temporarily suspended, and representatives from the space-mining industry were making official statements to the press, assuring the families of corporate miners that the companies were doing all they could to ensure the safety of their employees and to determine the source of the problem.

Wit’s first thought was terrorists. It was a brilliant way to cripple commerce and devastate the economy, particularly in those countries that had become so dependent on the space trade. But he eventually dismissed this idea. He couldn’t imagine a terrorist group with enough scientific talent and resources to construct a device powerful enough to pull off this level of interference, to say nothing of getting the thing in space.

What’s more, the inference was gradually getting louder: The background noise was increasing in volume, suggesting that the device in space was either increasing in power, or whatever was causing it was getting closer to Earth.

A news site had a related headline stating: NUTTY NETTERS PEG INTERFERENCE ON ALIENS.

Wit selected the link and read the article. The reporter was having a laugh at the hundred or so vids that had popped up on the nets recently, claiming that the interference was caused by aliens. Wit followed the links and watched a number of the vids. Many were talking heads: mostly conspiracy theorists rattling off quasi-science and making vague references to government cover-ups. (Nutty indeed.) Others were quite entertaining. They ranged from the ridiculous to the comical to the sadly pathetic. Poems, songs, even a puppet show, which Wit couldn’t help but laugh at. Most of them had zero production value, but several had been made using every device of movie magic to create creatures and environments so lifelike and so believable that Wit had to watch them two or three times to find the imperfections that disproved their authenticity.

The comments for most of the vids were what he would expect. Hate, mockery, cruel personal attacks. But occasionally, particularly on those vids that had re-created aliens with striking realism, the comments were more congratulatory: Well done! Looked real. You almost had me. Peed my pants!

Wit knew the vids were fake. But he couldn’t help but wonder: What if the radio interference is aliens? What if the conspiracy theorists were right? What if an alien army was approaching Earth at this very moment? It was a far-fetched idea, yes, but it was possible. And if it were true, his troops would be completely unprepared. He couldn’t allow that. He had to train them for such a contingency. They would scoff, yes, laugh at him even, but he had his duty. And yet, how do you train soldiers for an enemy you don’t understand? How do you prepare them for a completely unpredictable situation? Would the aliens be hostile? There was no way to tell for certain until it was too late. No, the only training I can give my men is to analyze before they act in a strange situation, and to presume hostile intent in all cases.

The following morning, Wit gathered all of the MOPs in Indonesia. Many were in the camp in Sulawesi and joined him in the mess hall. The others stationed in nearby villages or in New Guinea joined him via holo.

Wit stood in the holospace facing them. “I have some vids I want you to see,” he said. He played them a few of the alien vids from the nets. Their reaction was not unlike the comments online. They laughed. They scoffed. They mocked. They applauded and whistled at the realistic endeavors.

“Hey Deen, is that your girlfriend?” someone shouted when a particularly nasty alien roared on-screen.

“Couldn’t be Deen’s girl,” someone else shouted, “she’s much uglier.”

More laughter.

“I’m surrounded by comic geniuses,” Deen deadpanned.

When the vids finished, Wit stepped back into the holospace.

“What gives, Captain?” Lobo asked. “We gearing up for some aliens?”

“Maybe,” said Wit.

The room laughed, but when Wit’s expression stayed flat, the laughter quickly died and a confused awkwardness took its place.

“You can’t be serious, Cap,” said Deen. “I’ve seen a hundred of those vids. They’re all bogus.”

“Is that what you do with your free time, Deen?” said Chi-won.

“Hey, what is this? Pick on Deen Day?” said Deen.

“Seriously, Captain,” said Mabuzza. “Haven’t we been seeing alien invasions since, like, the nineteen hundreds?”

“But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen,” said Wit, “and that it won’t be terrible when it does.” He paused and scanned the crowd. “Situation. A hundred aliens drop into this camp and start killing everyone. What do you do?”

There was a silence, then someone said, “Run like hell.”

The men chuckled.

“All right,” said Wit. “New situation. A hundred Remeseh charge into camp and begin killing everyone. What do you do?”

“ Send them to hell,” said Deen, to another round of laughter.

Wit smiled. “I’m glad to see we have a plan for the Remeseh.” He paused again, then in a louder voice asked, “What do we train for?”

The man answered in unison. “Every contingency!”

Wit doubled his volume. “What do we train for?”

“EVERY CONTINGENCY!”

“A contingency is a possible event that cannot be predicted with certainty,” said Wit. “And we cannot with one hundred percent certainty dismiss the validity of this idea. Is it likely? No. It is possible? Yes. Is it absurd? You may think so, but I would rather be trained for the absurd than dead.”

The men said nothing. He had their attention.

“Which militaries in the world are preparing for such an event?” asked Wit. “Answer: none. Which militaries are prepared for tech weapons far beyond our own? Answer: none. Which militaries would be caught with their pants down and completely unprepared for this? Answer: all of them. But not us. What do we train for?”

“EVERY CONTINGENCY!”

“So how do we prepare?” asked Wit.

They answered him with silence.

“You analyze before you act,” said Wit. “You have no idea what you’re up against. Your previous training and tactics may get you killed the instant you attempt them. You can’t assume this enemy will think or fight or react like a human. A terrified human will flee. A terrified pit bull will jump for your jugular. How will an alien respond to fear? Does it experience fear at all? Analyze before you act. Take note of everything. Their movement, weapons, group behavior, anatomy, reactions to the environment, speed, equipment. Even the smallest detail is valuable new intelligence. Analyze before you act.” A few of the men were nodding. “And in all cases,” said Wit, “without exception, you always presume hostile intent. You must presume they want to kill you. That doesn’t mean you shoot first, it just means you never, never, never trust. And when they do show hostility, you do not hesitate to take them down.”

He looked at each of the men in turn. “Situation. A hundred aliens drop into camp. What do we do? Deen?”

“Analyze before we act, sir. Presume hostile intent.”

“Correct. And what do we do if they prove to be hostile?”

“We send them to hell, sir.”

“You bet your ass,” said Wit.

Kleopatra

The beeping alert on Lem’s desk woke him, and he peeled himself out of his hammock. He drifted to the desk and waved his hand through the holospace. Chubs’s head appeared. “The Formics are approaching Kleopatra,” said Chubs.

“Have they vented?” asked Lem.

“No. They’re decelerating. Fast. We did some additional, long-range scans to see why. It looks like a mass of ships has congregated at Kleopatra and positioned themselves directly in the Formics’ path. They’ve essentially built a blockade.”

“How many ships?”

“Twenty-four by our last count. Data from the sky scanner continues to come in, so we may have some more ships pop up as we get closer. We’re still quite a distance behind the Formic ship, but we were closing the gap with the Formics decelerating. I went ahead and ordered the flight crew to match their deceleration and maintain our distance until you could get up here.”

“I’m on my way.”

Lem threw on his uniform and made his way to the helm. He was still buttoning his jacket when he arrived and met Chubs at the holospace. The systems chart had been replaced with a rendering of all the ships positioned in space forming the blockade. There was a bit of distance between each ship, but together they made a giant wall between the Formic ship and Earth.

“Who are they?” asked Lem.

“Corporates and free miners,” said Chubs. “We can tell from their shape and design that there are ships from Juke Limited, WU-HU, MineTek, and several clans of free miners.”

“Then people know about the Formics,” said Lem. “Does everyone know? Does Earth know?”

“Impossible to say,” said Chubs. “But I highly doubt it. We’re still way too far away for the Formic ship to show up on Earth scopes. The ship’s too small and too dim. The only way Earth could know the ship exists is if someone out here told them. And the interference here is as thick as ever. These ships forming the blockade can’t communicate with Earth any more than we can. Just because they know doesn’t mean anyone else knows. Plus notice that they’re all mining ships. No military ships among them. These aren’t ships sent from Earth. They were already out here. My guess is, one of them saw the Formic ship on their sky scanner and alerted the other ships in the immediate vicinity. Transmissions within a few hundred kilometers get through fine, and this is a main flight path. So there’s going to be traffic. Plus the interference would cause ships to cluster together anyway to try to figure out what was going on.”

“When will the Formics reach them?”

“Within a few hours.”

“Those ships have no idea what the Formics are capable of. They’ll try to communicate with them like the Italians did. We’ve got to tell them what we know.”

“We can’t, Lem. We’d have to get close enough to reach them on the radio. That would put us within range of the Formics’ weapons. There’s likely to be a battle, and we would be thrown into the middle of it.”

“We can’t sit back and let them die, Chubs. Some of those ships are our own people.”

Chubs lowered his voice. “May I speak to you in private, Lem?”

Lem was surprised by the question but he obliged. They moved into the conference room adjacent to the helm, and Chubs closed the door behind them.

“We can’t lose sight of our mission, Lem. We’ve got intel to get to Earth.”

“We’re not losing sight of anything,” said Lem. “We’re saving people’s lives. We don’t have to join in the fight. We don’t even have to slow down. We fly in fast and transmit a message to the ships as we pass. We tell them to flee. We send them everything we know, and we get out. We’ve been waiting for the Formics to decelerate so we can pass them and beat them to Earth. This is our chance.”

“It’s too dangerous, Lem. We can’t go anywhere near the Formic ship. It’s set to vent at any moment. If we’re even remotely close to it when it does, we’re ashes. Consider another alternative. We change course now. We get off the ecliptic and move up in a tall parabola, going high over the Formic ship while it’s stopped. Then we come back down toward Luna. That way, even if the ship vents, we’re too far away to suffer any damage.”

“Then everyone on those ships will die,” said Lem. “They’ll stay and fight and they’ll die. Plus we would lose valuable time taking a circuitous route. Look, I’ve heard your counsel. I appreciate it. I acknowledge that what I’m proposing is a risk. But I’m making the call here. We’re not ditching anyone else to save our own necks. I’ve done that too many damn times already. We’re staying the course.” He wiped his hand through the holospace over the conference table in a particular sequence, and the navigator’s head appeared. “Accelerate back to our previous speed,” said Lem.

“Yes, sir.” The navigator looked to his left as he reached for his controls.

“Hold that order,” said Chubs.

The navigator stopped moving. Lem was shocked. Chubs had just challenged Lem’s authority in front of a member of the crew. The navigator didn’t move. He was either so stunned by Chubs’s insubordination that he was too shocked to fulfill Lem’s orders, or he was actually following Chubs’s orders over Lem’s.

Chubs waved his hand through the holospace, and the navigator disappeared. “You can’t do this, Lem.”

“I am the captain of this ship. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“You don’t understand, Lem. I can’t let you do this.”

Chubs’s expression was calm and his tone polite, but the implication was clear. He was claiming to have more authority. He was completely undermining Lem’s position as captain. It was total insubordination, if not outright mutiny. Lem opened the door and waved two crewmen inside. When they entered, he gestured to Chubs. “This man is removed from office. He is to be confined to quarters for the reminder of this flight. I want him off this helm.”

The two crewmen looked sheepish and didn’t move.

“Is there something unclear about those orders?” said Lem. “Place this man under house arrest.”

There was an awkward silence. The two crewmen glanced at one another and then looked at Chubs, as if waiting for him to give them orders.

Lem suddenly understood. He wasn’t actually the person in charge. He had never been in charge. Not for one minute of the expedition. Chubs was the real captain. And everyone knew it but Lem.

“You don’t actually have the authority to remove me, Lem,” Chubs said kindly. “Your father was afraid that we might get in a tough situation, and he gave me the authority to override any decision that might put you in physical danger. And in my judgment, what you’re proposing puts you in danger, so we won’t do it.”

His tone was polite but final.

Lem turned to the two crewmen, who averted their eyes, embarrassed.

Lem laughed inside. This whole trip had been a charade. His entire assignment: serving as captain, overseeing the field tests, safeguarding the glaser. It was all one of Father’s games. Father hadn’t given him any authority. Father hadn’t trusted him. He had merely allowed Lem to foolishly play pretend. All because Father didn’t think Lem intelligent enough to make his own decisions and command his own destiny.

“I’ve been in danger this whole trip,” said Lem. “That never stopped you before.”

“You were never in danger during the bump,” said Chubs. “And Weigh Station Four caught me off guard. I made a mistake by agreeing to join El Cavador. Had I known then what we know now, I never would have allowed it. Your father will have my head for that. I’m not making that mistake again.”

Lem smiled. “Well, I appreciate now knowing the real situation.”

“We’ll take the parabola route,” said Chubs. “And we will issue these orders in your name, so that no one will know that there’s been any interference in your authority. This will be treated as if it were your decision.”

“Thank you,” said Lem, without a hint of sarcasm. “That’s very thoughtful.” He wasn’t going to act like a petulant child. He wasn’t even angry with them. They were merely doing their jobs.

“And for what it’s worth,” said Chubs, “I think your course of action is better than what we’re actually doing. We’ll burn a lot of fuel changing course like this. We have the fuel, yes, but doing this will deplete nearly all of our reserves. We’ll still make it to Luna, but we won’t be able to deviate course again. We’ll be coasting into home. So if it were up to me, we’d plow ahead and take the risk. But it’s not up to me. It’s not my ship.”

“It’s not my ship, either,” said Lem.

Chubs nodded. They understood each other.

Lem excused the men and stayed behind in the conference room, standing at the window. Soon the canvas of stars in front of him rotated slightly as the ship changed course. There would be a fight at Kleopatra, Lem knew. Or a slaughter, more likely. Lem didn’t believe he could have saved all of the ships, but he was certain he could have saved a few. It would have been a simple matter of convincing them to flee-which wouldn’t have been that tough of an argument to make, really. Instead, he was cutting them loose and running away, just as he done to Podolski and El Cavador and his own men.

I am your puppet, Father. Even when you’re billions of klicks away.

He realized then that there was no one on the ship he could trust. In fact, as long as he worked for Father, he could never trust anyone else under Father’s employ. Father would go to any length and use any person to keep Lem under his control. Ah, Father. Such irony. You probably actually think you’re being a loving, protective parent.

Lem looked at his reflection in the glass and straightened his jacket.

This is war, Father. I will never be free of you as long as you own this company and I am under your employ. I am done playing your little life lessons. It’s time I taught you a few of my own.

Data Cube

By now, Victor was convinced that everyone in the rehabilitation center thought he was insane. The nurses and orderlies all treated him kindly, but the moment he started talking about hormigas and aliens and the interference in space, they all put on that false smile that said, “Yes, yes. I’m listening to every word you say, Vico, and I believe you.” Which was a lie. If they believed him, they would do something. They would give him back his belongings and send him to someone who could help: a government official, the press, the military, anyone who would take him seriously and help him get a warning to Earth. Instead, the staff all nodded and smiled and treated him like a head case as they wheeled him to his various physical therapy sessions and shot him with meds that were supposed to help rebuild muscle mass.

So when they told him someone from the Lunar Trade Department was coming to speak with him about his case, Victor allowed himself to hope. Finally. Someone with some authority who can actually help.

Then they wheeled him into the room where the woman was waiting, and all of Victor’s hope went right out the window. She was way too young. Not much older than him, probably. Either an intern or barely out of college. A nobody in the professional sense.

“Hello, Victor. I’m Imala Bootstamp.”

“Who’s your boss?” Victor asked.

The question caught her off guard. “My boss?”

“The person you report to. Your superior. It’s a simple question.”

“Why is that relevant?”

“It’s absolutely relevant because that is the person I need to be talking to. Actually, I need to be speaking to your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. But since you probably don’t have access to that person, I’ll start with your boss and we’ll work our way up.”

She smiled, sat back in her chair, and looked around her. “This seems like a nice facility. They’re taking good care of you?”

“The bed is comfortable, but I’m a prisoner. The two kind of cancel each other out.”

She nodded. “Seems clean at least.”

They were sitting alone in a stark white room with a glass wall and ceiling, affording them a view of the city and the ship traffic high overhead.

“Haven’t you been here before?” asked Victor “You work with the LTD. You’re a caseworker. All injured immigrants come here. Are you telling me you’ve never actually done this job before?”

“Let’s say I’m new,” she said.

He could tell he was annoying her. He didn’t care.

“Incidentally,” Victor said, “do you actually know who your boss is? Because you seemed rather unsure when I asked a second ago.”

“I thought I was supposed to be the one asking the questions.”

“Are you unsure of that, too?”

She forced a smile. “All right, Victor. If we’re going to be perfectly honest with each other, no, I don’t know who my boss is. I got this assignment about twenty minutes ago from someone who doesn’t even work in Customs. So he’s technically not my boss. I haven’t even been to the Customs offices yet. I came directly here from my previous job. So I don’t even have a computer terminal or a desk or a mail account yet. If the door was locked, I couldn’t get in the building because I don’t yet have an access ring. Fair enough? That’s my resume.”

“Wow,” said Victor. “I can’t tell you how much confidence that instills in me to know that my assigned caseworker, the person responsible for getting me out of here, is so deeply experienced in the field. Boy am I going to sleep well tonight.”

“You’re welcome to file an appeal and request a new caseworker, but you should know that there’s a three-week turnaround. Don’t expect a new person to walk in here tomorrow.”

He leaned forward. “Look, Ms. Bootstamp-”

“Call me Imala.”

“Fine. Imala. I’m sure you’re a nice person. And I’m not normally a jerk, but you are not the answer to my problem. You are so far removed from the answer to my problem that you and I shouldn’t even be talking. I wish you well in your new job, but the best way for you to help me is to find out who your boss is and to bring me that person. Make sense?”

She was quiet a moment. Then she smiled again. “You broke the law, Victor. Maybe that hasn’t been explained to you clearly enough, but you entered lunar gravity in a manned spacecraft without clearance or authorization. A rather serious offense. You also illegally disrupted a government flight-control frequency. Another serious offense.”

“I didn’t know it was a restricted frequency. I was trying to-”

“I’m not finished,” she said. “You also have no passport, no birth certificate, no proof of identity, no right whatsoever to be on this moon. You may have broken these laws in ignorance, but the law doesn’t care. My job is to review the law with you and hear your case to see if your situation warrants legal leniency based on extenuating circumstances beyond your control. These are defined as potential loss of life and potential property damage of a ‘significant’ value. You may not like the fact that I’m new and inexperienced. But I am the person assigned to your case. This is my job and I’m going to do it. Now, you obviously think I’m stupid. And apparently you have no social skills because you’re unable to conceal the fact that you think I’m stupid. But here’s the thing, I’m not actually stupid. I know how this world works. You don’t. I know trade and customs law. You don’t. I know what’s necessary to get you freed. You don’t. So you can make demands until you’re purple in the face, but you will never see anyone above me until I say so. And right now I don’t say so. As far as I’m concerned, you have two options: You can submit to my questions and possibly let me help you. Or you can sit in your room until your grace period expires and the judge plops you on a shuttle back to wherever it was you came from. Your choice. When I come back tomorrow, you can give me your answer.”

She got up. And without waiting for him to respond, she was out the door and gone.

Great, thought Victor. It’s not enough that I have a nobody. She has to be a snooty nobody. He sighed. He wasn’t helping the situation. And now another precious day was wasted.

He was waiting for her the following day in the same room.

“I obviously can’t go above you without going through you,” said Victor. “So let’s do this your way. And let me preface this by saying, everything I am about to tell you can be proven. I have evidence. It’s all on my data cube, which the staff locked away with all my other belongings when I got here. Should you want more evidence, I can tell you exactly where to look to verify its veracity for yourself. Fair enough?”

“Works for me,” said Imala.

“You’ve heard about the interference in space scrambling all transmissions?”

“Every day on the news.”

“Well, I know what’s causing that interference. And if you can get my data cube, I’ll show you.”

She was gone for ten minutes. When she returned she had a clear bag with all of Victor’s personal items. He took out the data cube, placed it on the table, and turned it on, creating a holospace in the air above it.

“The interference is being caused by a near-lightspeed alien starship on a direct course to Earth.”

“An alien ship?”

“That’s right.”

“Coming to Earth?”

“That’s what I said.”

“I see.”

“I know that sounds insane to you. I know you think I’m insane. But my family put me on a quickship from the Kuiper Belt. Eight billion klicks from here. I was on that ship for nearly eight months. There was a very good chance that I wouldn’t make it to Luna alive. And if you know anything about free-miner families, you know we simply don’t do that. We protect our own. Family first. And if you don’t know anything about free miners, then why do you have this job?”

“I didn’t say you were insane.”

“You didn’t have to. It was written all over your face. And frankly I can’t afford that. I need you to have an open mind and look at this evidence without having dismissed it beforehand. I don’t care what you think of me. I only care that the information I have gets to everyone on Luna and Earth. That won’t happen if we do this with you trying to disprove it.”

“I told you I would listen, Victor.”

“Listening isn’t enough. You need to have an open mind. If you play bureaucrat and worry about how this will affect your standing with that new boss of yours, you’ll only find excuses to bury it.”

“Remember, I’m not stupid,” said Imala. “I will keep an open mind. You’re simply going to have to trust me.”

He didn’t want to trust her. He wanted to trust the person five or six steps up the org chart, but what choice did he have.

He showed her everything: the charts, the trajectory, wreckage from the Italians, video of him and Father and Toron attacking the pod, the hormigas fiercely fighting back, Toron’s death, interviews with the surviving Italians recounting the pod attacking their ships. There was even footage of Victor modifying the quickship and launching it toward Luna. It took nearly two hours to go over it all, and Imala sat in silence the whole time. When Victor finished, Imala remained quiet for a few moments.

“Play back the part where we see the aliens,” she said.

Victor found the spot and played it.

“Stop right there,” said Imala.

Victor freeze-framed on the hormiga’s face.

Imala stared at it for a full two minutes. Finally she looked at Victor. “Is this a hoax?”

“Yes, it’s big elaborate hoax, Imala. I went out and invented a near-lightspeed ship just so I could prank you.”

“I’m asking, Victor, because it looks completely real to me. Not just the alien, but everything. All the data. The math. The sky scans. It looks authentic, and I believe it.”

“You do?”

“Completely. But if this is a hoax then you need to tell me now because I am prepared to help you as much as I can. And if I help you, and this turns out not to be real, I will lose my job, and you and I will go to prison for a very long time.”

“It’s real. If you can get access to a scope powerful enough to see out to that far, you can see it for yourself.”

She shook her head. “That will take too long. The only scopes that powerful on Luna belong to Ukko Jukes. And believe me, he won’t help us.”

“So you’ll take this to your boss?”

“Of course I’ll take it to my boss. I have to. That’s my job. But not the original data cube. I want that to stay with you. I’ll take a copy. Today. Right after I leave here. But that can’t be all we do, Victor. I’m not putting the fate of the world into the hands of a few bureaucrats in Lunar Customs. I don’t know those people, and even if I did I wouldn’t trust them with something like this. Sad recent experiences have taught me never to trust the people above me. So we’ll follow the proper channels, yes. We’ll start the ball rolling that way. But we also do our own thing. We get the word out our way. Now. Immediately.”

“How? We go to the press?”

“No. Not fast enough. The world isn’t watching the Lunar news. I mean right now, Victor. We upload this video of the alien onto the nets. Right now. We get people all over the world watching this video within the hour.”

“How do we do that?”

She took her holopad from her pouch, set it on the table, and copied the video from Victor’s data cube to her own holospace. Using her stylus, she selected a section of video featuring the alien attacking Victor and his Father and Toron on the pod and set it aside. Then she selected other bits of video to follow. The interior of the Formic pod. The wreckage of the Italian ships. Select, frightening accounts from the Italian survivors. She then created several frames with additional information, including coordinates, trajectory, and other data from Edimar. When she finished, she played it back. It was just over five minutes long.

“We can’t make it too long,” she said. “Or people won’t watch it.”

“It’s good,” said Victor. “It’s just the right length.”

She was moving her stylus in the holospace, bringing up several different windows. “There are about twenty major sites we can upload this to. They all get a lot of traffic. Other sites will see it and pick it up. It’ll go viral.”

“How quickly?”

“No telling. My guess is very fast. Once it gets momentum, it will explode. You want to tell the whole world aliens are coming? Here’s your chance.” She handed him the stylus. The windows in the holospace were all selected. Twenty vid sites on the nets. A large green button in the center of the holo was marked “send.” All he had to do was touch it.

He thought of Father and Mother and Concepcion and Mono and everyone back on El Cavador praying for him to reach this moment. This is what he had come for and nearly died for. This is what Toron had died for. He thought of Janda. He thought of her hand atop his, holding the stylus, too. He thought of the twelve billion people on Earth who were in for the wake-up call of their lives.

“This better work,” said Victor. Then he reached out and pushed the button.