"Oh?"
"If we had done more tests on pebbles as this mission was designed to do, Dublin would have had more data and been more accurate in his calculations."
"So this is my fault?"
"You went against his counsel and mine and tackled an asteroid a hundred times larger than we were prepared for. It strikes me as hypocritical to point the finger solely at him."
Lem smiled. "I see now why you've lasted so long with my father, Dr. Benyawe. You're not afraid to speak your mind. My father respects that."
"No, Lem. I have lasted so long with your father because I am always right."
*
Lem slept badly the next few days. In his dreams, the gravity field chewed up everything around him: the furniture, his terminal, his bed, his legs, the man with the broken neck; all of it exploding into rock fragments again and again until only dust remained. Lem took pills to help him sleep, but they couldn't keep him from dreaming. He had ordered the engineers to analyze the dust cloud to ensure that the gravity field had indeed dissipated--he didn't want to move into the cloud and begin collecting minerals until he was sure the field was gone and the area safe. On the morning of the fifth day, alone in his room, he got his answer.
"The field is gone," said Benyawe. Her head was floating in the holospace above Lem's terminal. "We built a sensor from old parts and sent it into the cloud. It didn't explode or experience any change in gravity whatsoever. We can begin collecting metal dust whenever you're ready."
"I want to see the data from the sensor," said Lem.
"I didn't know you could decipher this type of data."
"I can't. But seeing it will make me feel better."
Benyawe shrugged and disappeared. A moment later columns of data appeared on Lem's holodisplay. The numbers meant nothing to him, but he was pleased to see so many of them. Lots of data meant conclusive results. Lem relaxed a little, wiped the data away, and entered a command. The mining crew chief appeared in the holodisplay.
"Morning, Mr. Jukes."
"We've been given the all-clear," said Lem. "We'll be moving into the dust cloud within the hour."
"Excellent. The scoopers are ready. Once we bring in the dust, we'll start making the cylinders."
Lem ended the call and hovered there beside his terminal, at ease for the first time in weeks. He had taken a risk, yes, but now, finally, it was going to pay off. He put his hands behind his head and wondered what type of metal they would find. Iron? Cobalt? Curious, he returned to his terminal and pulled up the going rates for minerals. The prices were at least a month old, but barring some dramatic shift in the market, the rates should be fairly close to accurate. He was about to rotate one of the graphs and more closely study the data when the charts suddenly disappeared.
An old woman's head took their place in the holospace.
"Mr. Jukes," the woman said. "I am Concepcion Querales, captain of El Cavador, which you attacked in an unprovoked assault."
Lem froze. Was this a joke? How was he getting an unprompted message to his personal terminal? Had El Cavador sent them a laserline? Who had authorized this?
"I have programmed this message to play for you long after we're gone," Concepcion said. "I would have preferred to speak to you directly, but your irrational and barbaric behavior suggests that you are not a man with whom I can have any semblance of a normal conversation."
Lem tapped at his keyboard to make the message stop, but the terminal didn't respond.
"You cannot attack us now," said Concepcion. "Nor can you track us. By now we are far beyond your reach. I have taken this risk and left you this message because I wanted you to know that you killed a man."
Lem stopped tapping at the keyboard and stared.
"I doubt you'll care," said Concepcion. "I doubt you'll lose any sleep over this fact. But one of our best men, my nephew, is dead. He was a decent man with children and a loving wife. You, because of your arrogance and obvious disregard for human life, have taken all that away from him." Her voice was quavering, yet there was steel behind it. "I doubt you are a man of faith, Mr. Jukes. Or if you are, you must pray to gods so cruel of heart that I am glad I do not know them. In my faith, I am taught to forgive those who offend me seven times seventy. I fear that you have damned yourself and me as well, Mr. Jukes, because I don't see myself forgiving you in this life or the next."
The holo blinked out, and the mineral pricing charts returned. Lem tapped at his keyboard and saw that he had control again. His mind was racing. They had planted a file in the ship's system. They had penetrated their firewall and planted a file. How the hell had they done that?
He found his headset and called Podolski to his room immediately. The archivist arrived a few minutes later looking wary. Lem had put his greaves on and was pacing the room.
"They accessed us," Lem said. "El Cavador accessed our system. You want to tell me how that happened?"
Podolski looked confused. "Accessed us? I don't think so, sir."
"I just watched a holo on my display from the captain of their ship. Now, unless I am completely losing my mind, which I know I am not, they accessed our system."
"You say you watched a holo, sir?"
"Are you deaf? They planted a damn holo on my personal terminal. Now if this is someone's idea of a joke, I want to know who that someone is, and I want him jettisoned from this ship. You understand?"
Podolski seemed uneasy. "I assure you, Mr. Jukes. No one on this ship can access your personal terminal except for you and me, and I would never play a joke like that, sir."
Lem believed him. It wasn't a joke. It couldn't be a joke. Very few people even knew that someone had been injured in the bump.
"I thought our firewall was impenetrable," said Lem.
"It is, sir. Best design in the company. We're carrying proprietary tech on this vessel, sir. Every layer of security was employed. Nobody can get in here."
"Well they did. And I want to know how."
Podolski moved to Lem's holodisplay. "May I see this file, sir?"
"It played automatically. I don't know where it is."
Podolski tapped at Lem's display. Lem felt a momentary panic. He didn't want Podolski seeing the file. He didn't want anyone seeing the file. It was incriminating.
"I see where there was something," said Podolski, "but it had a track-backer program on it, which means it self-erased after playing."
"You see? They accessed our system."
Podolski squinted at the display and moved very quickly after that, windows opened and closed in quick succession. He entered passwords, accessed screens and icons that Lem had never seen before. He scrolled through long lists of what appeared to be random numbers and code. He worked for several minutes in silence, his eyes racing up and down through the holospace. Lem tried to keep up but couldn't.
Lem's first thought was for the gravity laser. Had the free miners seen it? Had they accessed its schematics? Were they after those files? If so, if they had seen them, if the secrecy of the glaser had been compromised, Lem would be ruined. His father and the Board would never forgive him. It would be devastating to the company. And what about the videos of the bump? The files he had erased. Had El Cavador seen those?
Podolski stopped typing suddenly and stared at the dozens of different windows and lines of code in the holospace. "Oh," he said.
"What?" said Lem. "What does 'oh' mean? What are you oh-ing about?"
"The system does a backup every forty-five minutes, sir. It's procedural. But it looks as if the system did an unscheduled backup recently."
"What does that mean? 'An unscheduled backup.' What are you saying?"
"I can't be certain, sir," said Podolski, turning to Lem, "but I think it means some of our files were copied to a foreign target."
"Foreign target? What? Like a snifferstick? When? When did this happen exactly?"
Podolski tapped the keys again to find the answer. "Exactly twenty-three minutes after we bumped El Cavador, sir."
CHAPTER 9
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."