"El Cavador. El Cavador," Father was saying. "Do you read? Over."
The wreckage was getting smaller below them. They were still flying upward with the force and speed of their launch. They weren't tethered to anything. They had nothing in hand to stop themselves. Father was off to Victor's right, with the distance growing between them by the second. They had launched at slightly different angles, and now they were drifting farther apart. Unless El Cavador retrieved them immediately, they would fly in these directions at these speeds forever.
"El Cavador," Father said again. "Can you read?"
There was a crackle over the line, then Concepcion's voice said, "Segundo. We see you. We're coming for you now."
Victor looked back and saw El Cavador emerge from behind a section of debris.
"Get Vico first," said Father.
"We're getting you both," said Concepcion.
Victor turned his head back to Father, who was a great distance away now, getting smaller by the moment.
"Toron didn't make it," said Father.
"We know," said Concepcion.
The ship moved closer, pulling up beside him. A miner with a lifeline leaped out from the ship and wrapped his arms around Victor's chest, stopping Victor's flight. It was Bahzim.
"Got you, Vico."
Victor clung to him as Bahzim thumbed his propulsion pack and turned them both back toward El Cavador. Down the side of the ship, a distance away, another of the miners was grabbing Father as well. Victor watched until he was certain Father was secured, then he turned his head and looked back at the wreckage now far below, where Toron was lost among the dust and debris.
CHAPTER 15
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.
&nbs
p; "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.
*
Victor worked for two weeks on the quickship in the cargo bay. Building the shields was the hardest part. Since he wouldn't be attempting any atmospheric entry, he could make the shields as heavy as they needed to be, which was good. He worried about cosmic rays penetrating the shields and interacting with the metal to form radioactive neutrons, so the thicker the better. He didn't stop there, however. He also installed water tanks all along the cockpit's interior to create another layer of protection. Then he packed radiation detection equipment and additional shield plates and tools in case he needed to make adjustments en route.
Mono helped of course, doing simple welding and cutting jobs, all while trying to convince Victor that he, Mono, should be allowed to come along. "What if you get hurt?" Mono asked one morning. "What if something happens to your suit? You might need someone to help you."
"I can't think of anyone I'd rather have at my side, Mono," said Victor. "But you can't come. It's too dangerous."
"Why is it too dangerous for me but not too dangerous for you?"
"It is dangerous for me. But I'm bigger. My body can take more of the abuse."
"I'm tough," said Mono, offended. "I can take abuse."
"It has nothing to do with toughness," said Victor. "It's more about body size and structure. You can't help how small you are. You're only nine. And believe me, it's not the kind of trip you'd want to go on anyway. It will be extremely boring. You know how it feels to be grounded to your room for a day?"
"It's cruel and unusual punishment."
"Right. Try doing that for two hundred and twenty days or so. No birthday parties. No Christmas. No playing with friends. No time with your parents. No fun repairs on the ship. No exploring. No desserts or cookies or fun treats. I won't even get to chew my food. I'll have to suck up vitamin mush through a straw in my helmet."