Earth Afire (The First Formic War) (18 page)

“It
is
my concern. It most definitely is my concern. Lem killed my uncle.”

“And what are you going to do about it?” asked Imala. “Go to the police? Press charges? There’s a warrant out for your arrest. And even if the police listened to you, which they wouldn’t, do you think you have a legal leg to stand on? You have no corpse. No proof. No other witnesses. Do you think Ukko doesn’t employ the most powerful legal army in the world? Do you think he would stand by while you made these accusations? He owns this city, Victor. He owns all of Luna. Probably judges as well. I’m telling you now, as someone who knows, if you go to war on this, you will lose. It’s that simple.”

“What happened to you, Imala? What happened to the fire? Two weeks ago you were trying to take down the man all by yourself. Now you’re tucking tail and running.”

He could see the words were like a slap to her face, and he regretted them instantly.

Imala’s eyes narrowed. “What happened? An alien ship coming to Earth, that’s what happened. I don’t like this any more than you do, Victor. Believe me, no one despises Ukko more than me, but this is not the way to hurt him. It will fail. The only person who would come out of this a loser would be you.”

“She’s talking sense, Victor,” said Simona.

“Don’t take my side,” said Imala.

“So you knew they wanted to get rid of me?” Victor asked Imala. “You knew this was their motivation? And you agreed to it?”

“Of course I knew. It’s obvious, isn’t it? And I knew you’d figure it out as well. We get what we want, Ukko gets what he wants—”

“And Lem gets away with murder.”

“You didn’t come here seeking vengeance, Victor. You came here to do a job, and that job is done.”

Victor turned to Simona. “If Ukko is doing this solely as a token of gratitude, then he would honor my request to go with a transport.”

“That’s not an option,” said Simona.

Victor smiled sardonically. “Yeah. Didn’t think so.”

*   *   *

They took a skimmer to a small, private spaceport north of Imbrium, well beyond the watchful eye of the Lunar Trade Department. Imala pointed out that she had never heard of the place and didn’t remember seeing it listed in any official registry at the Customs Department. Simona brushed the observation aside and assured them both the port was legal.

The skimmer slid into a slot near the terminal entrance, and Simona led them inside. It was a narrow terminal with a dozen gates, six to a side. Other than a few technicians moving about, preparing shuttles and loading supplies, the terminal was empty.

Simona guided them to their gate and wiped her hand in a holofield beside the gate exit. The door to the umbilical opened, and Simona led them inside.

The shuttle was small, with most of the space dedicated to the cargo bay, which measured ten by twenty meters. Several pallets of wrapped supplies had been tied down in the center.

“Supplies for Midway,” said Simona. “Just leave them on the ship when you turn in the shuttle.” She then showed them where their supplies and hammocks were located and asked Imala if she had any questions with the flight controls. Imala didn’t.

Simona extended a hand. “Then good luck to you both. I hope you find your family, Victor.”

Victor shook her hand. “Thanks. And I hope you wise up and get a new employer.”

Simona winked. “Someday perhaps. The sun to your back, Imala.”

“And to yours,” said Imala.

Simona left them then and sealed the umbilical door behind her.

Imala buckled into the pilot’s seat, entered a few commands into the console, and turned on the virtual windshield.

Victor climbed into the copilot’s seat beside her. “You sure you know how to fly this thing? I thought you were an auditor.”

She threw more switches and punched in more commands. “My father’s a pilot back in Arizona. He did everything he could to convince me to follow in his footsteps. Flying lessons, low-grav flight training. He even took me on an orbiting shuttle cruise when I was a kid and talked the pilot into letting me take the helm for a few minutes. I think he thought I’d have some magical experience that would convince me to pursue piloting. I broke his heart when I told him I wanted to work in tax and tariffs.”

“A far cry from flying.”

“And not the most glamorous of careers either, in his opinion. What can I say? Macroeconomics and financial structures fascinate me. My father called it a ‘cataclysmic mistake.’” She smiled. “You have to know my father. He’s not the most open-minded of men. He even tried to marry me off to another Apache to keep me from coming to Luna. A real tribesman like my father. Pride of the people and all that. Preserving our heritage.

“Despite all that, though, I really liked the guy. If my father hadn’t been the one to introduce us and if he hadn’t been pushing the whole thing, I’m not sure what would have happened. My mother said I broke it off to spite my father, which is probably true. When I left home, it wasn’t a fond farewell. My dad and I both said a few things we probably shouldn’t have.”

“Is that why you’re not going back to Arizona? Is that why you’re coming with me?”

“I’m coming with you, Victor, because you shouldn’t do this alone and because I think the world owes it to you.”

“It’s not your debt to pay, Imala. I got here on my own, remember? I’m not helpless.”

“Yes, but what you seem to forget is that you nearly wasted away to nothing and you’ve failed miserably on your own ever since you arrived. If I hadn’t helped, you’d still be stuck in the recovery hospital awaiting trial, with the world none the wiser about what’s coming.”

Victor put his feet up on the dash and his hands behind his head. “My hero. Whatever would I do without you?”

“Not much,” said Imala.

The anchors detached, and Imala pulled the shuttle up and away from the terminal.

Victor sat up, suddenly serious. “Are you sure about this, Imala? This is a year-long trip. Six months out, six months back.”

“I can do the math, Victor.”

“Yes, but you’re being rushed into this. It’s not too late to change your mind.”

“You’re saying you don’t want the company?”

“No, I’m saying this is a sacrifice you don’t have to make.”

“I can’t stay on Luna, Victor. And I’m not going home. If I go home, I’m useless. Here, I can do something. I may not be able to stop the hormiga ship, but I can contribute in some small way. Will you let me do that please? Will you at least give me that courtesy?”

He smiled and pushed off the seat, weightless now. “On one condition: My family calls me Vico for short. If we’re going to be in this can for six months, we should at least treat each other like family.”

She grinned, testing the sound of the word. “Vico. I’ll see if I can remember that.”

*   *   *

They flew for seven days toward Last Chance, a small supply depot that was the last stop in this quadrant for those traveling to the Belt. From here, crews could anticipate several months and two hundred million kilometers of nothing. Victor and Imala didn’t need supplies, but they were desperate for news. Their shuttle had lost contact with Luna after the first day because of the interference, and they had no idea what preparations Earth and Luna had made since then.

As they approached the depot, still several hours away, Victor said, “You realize of course that in all likelihood the ships docked at this place are going to know less about what’s going on than we do. They won’t have had communication for the same reason we don’t. They’ll be pumping
us
for information, not the other way around.”

“Probably,” agreed Imala. “But our shuttle is hardly the fastest thing out here. Maybe there are ships at the depot that left Luna after us and arrived before us. In which case they might know something we don’t.”

The shuttle’s flight data said that Last Chance had ten docking stations with umbilicals, but when the depot came into view, Victor saw that there were at least four times that many ships clustered around it.

“It’s packed,” said Victor. “No way we’re getting on board.”

“Maybe we don’t have to,” said Imala. “Laserlines work over short distances. If we get close enough, maybe they can feed us news directly to the ship.”

When they were less than a hundred klicks away, Imala used the laserline to hail the station.

The head of a portly woman appeared in the holofield.

“I’d ask for a docking tube,” said Imala, “but it doesn’t look like you have one available.”

“We don’t. You’re welcome to patch in to our news feeds, though.”

“You’re getting broadcasts from Luna?”

“We’re getting text only,” said the woman. “The bandwidth doesn’t handle voice or video.”

“How are you getting even that?” said Imala. “We can’t get anything.”

“We’ve set up a string of ships between us and Luna,” said the woman, “with a ship every million klicks or so. Like a bucket brigade. They’re passing up information via laserline as it becomes available. It’s not a perfect system, mind you. The deterioration you usually get in ten million klicks happens in a hundred thousand now. So in a million klicks you can barely make out a very slow transmission. The ships have to repeat the message three times and make the best guess about some passages, but even so you’re going to get some deterioration and holes in the text. Shall I send you the codes for the uplink?”

“Yes. Please,” said Imala.

“There’s a fee,” said the woman.

“You’re charging me for the news?”

“Keeping relay ships out there isn’t cheap. News wouldn’t get through otherwise.”

“How much?” asked Imala.

The woman told them a ridiculous amount. Imala wanted to argue, but Victor said, “I’ll pay it.” His family had left him money for his education at a university. He could spare some of it here.

Five minutes later text from various news feeds appeared on their monitor. The reports were riddled with holes and sentence fragments, but Victor and Imala got the gist of each report.

Victor had hoped that a fleet had been assembled, but it quickly became evident that such wasn’t the case. STASA was calling for calm and pushing for diplomacy, seeking for ways to communicate with the hormigas when they arrived. The U.N. had conducted an emergency summit as Ukko Jukes had suggested, but all that political circus had accomplished was to appoint the Egyptian ambassador, Kenwe Zubeka, as the secretary of alien affairs, a new position with zero power or influence. Zubeka seemed not to notice how insignificant his position was and kept making asinine statements to the press.

When asked about the destroyed ships in the Belt, Zubeka had said, “We don’t know what kind of misunderstanding or provocation our alien visitors were responding to. As soon as we can talk to them, I’m sure we can have a peaceful conversation that will benefit both our species.”

“Are you kidding me?” said Victor. “A misunderstanding? He’s calling the murder of thousands of people a misunderstanding? When they killed the Italians, it wasn’t a misunderstanding. It was deliberate. They knew what they were doing.”

“It’s typical geopolitics, Vico. Few countries have any military presence in space. Most of the bigger powers have shuttles and cargo vessels that are space-ready and could be weaponized, but to form a fleet, to amass enough ships to stage an assault or form a blockade, we need a coalition. The U.S., Russia, China, India, France. These countries don’t work well together. The Chinese don’t trust the Russians, India doesn’t trust the Chinese, and the U.S. doesn’t trust anybody, except for maybe a few countries in Europe. And no country wants to act on their own. If they go alone they risk crippling their ships and weakening their arsenal. That would make them vulnerable to other powers.”

“So they’re going to do nothing? Why does everyone seem to believe that inaction is the best course of action?”

“Caution is their action, Vico. Or at least that’s their justification. They’re sitting tight to see what happens. Everyone is hoping this will resolve itself. They’re acting like humans always act when war seems inevitable and most of the variables are still unknown. They’re playing the good-guy card and waiting for the other guy to shoot first.”

“The Formics don’t shoot first, Imala. They rip apart. They find life and they destroy it. They’re not interested in diplomacy or gathering around a table and making friends. They’re interested in breaking us wide open and bleeding us dry.”

They read on, but the situation only worsened. Riots were springing up all over the world—people taking to the streets to demand that governments take action. Deaths were reported. Governments continued to call for calm. The media discussed the vids Victor and Imala had uploaded as well. Experts scrutinized every detail, spending far too much time excusing the media for initially ignoring the vids. The vids did, after all, look like so many spookers out there.

When they finished reading, Victor said, “We can’t move on, Imala. We’re not leaving this depot. Not yet. Not until we see how this plays out.”

None of the other ships at the depot moved on either. And over the next few days, the number of ships only grew. Victor and Imala programmed the monitor to alert them whenever a new message came through, regardless of whether they were sleeping or not.

They stayed for days, reading the reports aloud to each other the moment they came in. Sometimes Victor became so frustrated with the idiocy of governments or the press that he would tell Imala to stop reading. Then he would retreat to the back of the shuttle to cool off.

“All that effort,” he told her, “all that time spent in the quickship so that Earth could prepare, so that countries could muster enough resources to take action, and nobody is doing anything.” He wanted to cry. He wanted to reach down through space and shake someone. “How can they be so fundamentally wrong?”

“Because the world doesn’t think like a free-miner family, Vico,” Imala said. “We’re not one people. We’re splintered, too concerned about our own people and agendas and borders. We’re one planet, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at us.”