Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) (32 page)

But Julexi had turned it into an art—probably without even realizing she was doing it. Her tears weren’t fake, after all. As far as she was concerned, they were as real and warranted as all others. To suggest otherwise would be an offense.

“I’m sorry this is difficult for you, Julexi,” said Rena. “And I’m sorry, Sabad, if you disagree with the decision Arjuna has made. I suggest you take it up with him. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

She wedged her way between them and launched up the corridor.

But over the course of the day, as she worked in the helm with the navigators, Rena couldn’t help but wonder if Julexi was right. Could they
really
do this? Repairing a broken heat coupler was one thing, installing a mining drill onto a salvage ship was quite another. None of the women had ever attempted such a thing. Segundo and Victor over the years had done all that.

Could Rena? Was she honestly capable of installing a lug processor, for example? Could she calibrate a digging stabilizer? And was the Gagak even structurally sound enough to house the needed equipment? What if it wasn’t? When would they find that out? On their first official dig as the ship ruptures and breaks apart from the vibrations?

Oh Segundo, she thought. Am I doing the right thing? Is this truly what’s best? Am I helping or hurting? You could probably look at this ship and know in an instant if such a thing was possible. I am lost without you,
mi amor.
Lost. Sometimes I feel confident about what we’re doing, but most times I want to simply fly away and be alone. How I wish you were here,
mi vida.
Helping me, guiding me, holding me.

She imagined what it would be like if Segundo
were
here. He and Arjuna would likely be close friends. They were of a similar temperament. She could see the two of them laughing together. And at the end of the day Segundo and Rena would go back to their cabin—and yes, they would have their own cabin!—and the two of them would laugh at how foolish Sabad was being, and Segundo would sashay around the room and shake his chest the way Sabad did, and Rena would laugh and slap him playfully on the arm and tell him he was being mean.

“Rena?”

Rena looked up from the holoscreen she had been staring at.

Edimar, her niece, was floating beside her. Fifteen years old now, and looking more like Lola, her mother, every day. Edimar had been a close friend to Victor. She had been the one to first spot the Formic ship approaching the system using the ship’s motion-detection telescope known as the Eye.

Edimar had always been a little girl in Rena’s mind, isolated up there in the Eye of El Cavador, watching for collision threats and keeping them all safe.

But she was hardly a little girl now. The last year had seen a growth spurt. She was nearly a woman grown—tall, full chested, slender in the arms and legs. Not old enough to marry, of course, but old enough to give boys heart palpitations. It had happened once on the Gagak. One of the Somali boys her age had whistled at her, and Rena had quickly gone to Arjuna to put an end to it.

Rena smiled. “Mar, I’m sorry. I didn’t you see there.”

“Can I speak to you for a moment?”

“Of course.”

They left the helm and went to the bay window at the bow of the ship. The immensity of space was before them. It was not a real window, of course—merely a projection from the cameras outside. But it looked real, and it must have reminded Edimar of the Eye, because Rena always found her here, floating at the window, staring outward, as if looking for something lost. Perhaps her sister Alejandra, Rena thought. Or her father Toron.

Edimar said, “I need you to ask Arjuna something for me.”

“Okay.”

“I know I can technically go to him myself. He’s said as much. Anyone on board can approach him. But I’d rather you do it.”

“All right.”

“Now that we’re on network, I want to get on the Parallax system.”

Rena furrowed her brow. “Should I know what that is?”

“It’s a group of telescopes orbiting the system. Juke set them up years ago. With them, scientists can look way out into deep space.”

“Why have I never heard of this?”

“Because they’re for academics, researchers. We had no use for that kind of data on El Cavador. We were focused on finding nearby asteroids, not on looking into deep space. And besides, we weren’t on the network. It wasn’t available to us anyway.”

“Why do you want to get on Parallax?”

“When I saw the Formic ship coming into system, it was only a few weeks away at that point. But if I had had a stronger scope, and if I had known precisely where to look, I might have seen it long before then.”

“What are you saying?” asked Rena. “You think the Parallax satellites may have seen the Formic ship before we did?”

“I think it’s possible, yes. But I won’t know unless I look at the database from the past two to three years or so.”

“But if the Parallax scopes had seen the Formic ship, wouldn’t they have warned everyone?”

“Remember, these scopes are computers. They only do what we program them to do. Nobody has their eye to a lens, analyzing every little odd thing the scope sees. That would take too long. And it would be an enormous waste of time anyway. Most of the objects out there are harmless. All astronomers are worried about are collision threats. So they programmed the scopes to flag only those light-reflection objects that pose a threat to Earth. Everything else gets ignored. Essentially, if it’s not on a trajectory with Earth, if it’s not following normal parabolic patterns, nobody cares.”

“Okay. Makes sense.”

“It makes sense, yes, but there’s a gaping hole in that practice. It doesn’t account for anomalies. Like when an object decelerates or when it changes from one trajectory to another. The scopes should flag those type of objects, too, but they don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because no one thought it was possible. Objects that behave that way are clearly extraterrestrial. And astronomers gave up on looking for extraterrestrial life way back in the twentieth century. Research in that field became unfashionable. Academics would have been laughed to scorn if they had suggested the scopes look for such things.”

“Well they’re kicking themselves now,” said Rena.

“My point is, it’s very possible that the scopes saw the Formic ship earlier without flagging it for analysis. And if something doesn’t get flagged, it might as well not exist. It goes unseen and unnoticed in the archives.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t astronomers be sifting through that data now?”

“You would think,” said Edimar. “But no one is. I went on the system and checked.”

“Wait. You’ve already been on the system?”

“As a guest,” said Edimar. “I did what any college kid can do. You can log on and see what the current objects for analysis are. But that’s it. You can’t access the archives. And that’s where the answers are.”

“So you need deeper access. Is there a fee involved?”

“Well, yes, but I’m not proposing we pay it. We couldn’t afford it, and they wouldn’t approve us anyway. We’re not a university.”

“Then how do you get access?”

“I set up a bogus username and I piggyback on a university’s current account. It wouldn’t be difficult. And it’s not like anyone polices the system. Why would they? It’s research, not a bank.”

“But it is illegal.”

“Technically. And that’s why I need Arjuna to approve this before I do it. There are people on this ship looking for any reason to make us leave. And I don’t want to be the person to give them a reason.”

Rena smiled. Edimar, so young and yet so wise.

She took Edimar’s hands. “You’re growing up too fast, Mar. Your father would be proud of you. I know I am.”

“So you’ll talk to Arjuna?”

“I’ll talk to him. And he’ll say yes.”

Edimar looked out the window a moment. When she turned back, Rena saw that there were tears in the girl’s eyes. “This will never be home, Aunt Rena. No matter what we do to this ship, no matter how much we modify it or equip it, it will be never be home.”

Rena felt as if her heart would break in two. She gently squeezed Edimar’s hands. “You’re not wrong, Mar. Home was El Cavador. Home was Segundo and your father and Alejandra and everything the way it was. And no matter what we do here, no matter what changes we make, we can never have that home again.” She reached out and put a hand on Edimar’s cheek. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy, Mar. It may not be the happiness we had before, it may feel like a lesser version of it for a time, we may not even feel it some days at all. But we have to believe more will come. We have to hope. You’ve suffered more than most, Mar, and I wish I could fix that. But I can’t. All is I can do is be with you and your mother and the others and try to make something new. Maybe not a home. Maybe that won’t come until later. But I believe it will come, Mar. With your brains in this operation, how could it not?”

Edimar smiled, and the two of them embraced.

A voice shouted from down the corridor. “Ms. Rena.”

Rena turned and looked. One of the crewmen from the helm, Magashi, was calling to her. “You better come to the helm quick, Lady.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You have a message,” said Magashi. “Arjuna said to bring you at once.”

“From the traders?”

“No, no, Lady. From your son.”

FROM: helm%[email protected]

TO: [email protected]

Re: Found at last

Dearest Vico,

My son. I have read your letter five times now. Every time I do, I cry. You would have been proud of me: I have held back tears for a long time now. I have tried to be strong. But to know that your fingers actually typed the words I was reading, to know that you’re alive and safe, I became a slobbery mess. It’s only a matter of time before the crew here starts calling me “nose faucet” or something worse. Somalis love nicknames.

Edimar was with me when your letter came. She sends her love. You wouldn’t recognize her if you saw her, she’s grown so much.

All of the women and children are here as well. I have read them your letter. If I were to include all the messages they asked me to pass along on their behalf, this would take forever to type. Suffice it to say, you’re loved and missed.

In fact, this might be a good time to inform you that you’re the chief of our tribe. It’s a long story, but essentially we need you to approve our partnering with Arjuna and his crew to turn the Gagak into a mining vessel. I’ve convinced myself that being the wife and mother of two brilliant mechanics qualifies me to lead this effort. So far no one has put me in a padded room. Should I self-commit?

In your letter you ask about Mono. It breaks my heart to tell you that he snuck back on to El Cavador before the WU-HU ship had decoupled. I’m so sorry, son. He was on El Cavador when it was lost.

I wish I could be there with you to give you this news. It seems so cold and impersonal to do it this way. I know he was like a brother to you. I hope you find some comfort in knowing that you were always in his thoughts. From the moment you left, you were always the subject of conversation if Mono was around. Vico this and Vico that. His love for you was as pure as any little boy’s can be. Remember him, son. And let his love for you make you stronger.

I’m sorry you learned about your father from Lem Jukes. That angered me more than you know. When I see you next, I will tell you all and we can grieve together. In the meantime, to answer your question, I am fine. Losing your father was like losing myself, but I am holding tight to memories and finding peace wherever I can.

You mentioned that you plan to attack the Formic ship with a team of soldiers. Don’t. I know it’s cruel and selfish of me to ask such a thing, but I’m going to be cruel and selfish. The thought of losing you so soon after finding you is almost unbearable.

Build whatever they need. Design whatever the mission requires. Give them every scrap of brilliance that brain of yours can produce. But don’t give them you.

You need to experience life, Vico. There is so much you haven’t lived. Fall in love. Be loved by someone in return. Have children, as many as your future wife can give you. Love them. Grow old with them. That is a joy you have not yet experienced, and it is the greatest joy of this life.

Maybe it’s this Imala girl. I like her spunk. You don’t mention her age, but if she’s working and out of college, she’s got a few years on you. So what. I was four years older than your father, as you know. And he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Stay alive, son. That’s all I ask.

From the moment you’ve left, I’ve kept you close, and that’s where you will always be.

All my love,
Mom

CHAPTER 16

Holopad

Bingwen set up the doctors’ clinic in an alcove on the lower level of Dragon’s Den. Kim had come through with so many doctors willing to help staff the clinic via holo that Bingwen could have opened a small hospital if he had had that many holopads to work with. But, as it happened, he had only been able to scrounge up six—begging donations from those who owned one and raiding the supply closets when the soldiers weren’t looking. But six holopads amounted to six doctors, and that was more than the people had enjoyed before.

“Tell me where it hurts, Ni Ni,” Bingwen asked the old woman in Chinese.

The woman was stooped and frail, with gnarled hands as wrinkled as raisins. They were seated at a small table, atop of which lay a holopad. Above it, hovering in the air, was the head of a doctor from Fresno, California.

The connection was strong. Bingwen had set up several repeaters from the equipment upstairs, and the resolution of the doctor’s face was so clear, it was almost as if he were there.

There were five identical setups elsewhere in the alcove. Each with a patient, holopad, doctor’s assistant, and doctor. A line of fifteen people waiting to be seen extended out of the alcove and into the main tunnel.

The old woman said, “It would be easier to list off where it doesn’t hurt, little one. Every part of me that bends aches like fire. Knuckles, hips, knees, toes. I’ve got more arthritis than a geriatric ward.” She laughed and showed that half her teeth were missing.