"So you're telling yourself a story and making up the music while you're washing other people's clothing. You're quite the multitasker, Janda. And these stories, let me guess, they're about a handsome, teenage mechanic who can fix anything and build anything and smells as sweet as roses."
She had looked at him with such a start, with such an expression of surprise on her face, that at first he had thought he had offended her. But the look had vanished an instant later, and Janda had returned to smiling and scrubbing the clothes again, with her hands in the dry gloves box where the sudsy water was contained. "Victor Delgado," she had said. "Don't you know? If I ever created a story about you, I would make it a true story. You wouldn't smell like roses, you would smell like farts." Then she had flung open the dry gloves box and threw a soaked shirt in his face. And the next moment she was roaring with laughter because in his surprise, in his twisting to avoid the soaked fabric, he had farted. Accidently of course, something he would never do in front of her, but there it was.
And she was still laughing when he finally got his feet anchored to something and grabbed the shirt and flung it back at her. She had dodged it easily, and a heartbeat later he was flying away up the corridor of the ship, humiliated and yet laughing inside as well.
She had gotten in trouble for that, he remembered. Water had leaked out of the scrubbing box, and it had taken four women a good twenty minutes to collect it from the air and the crevices in the wall.
He should have seen it then. He should have known that the friendship they shared was something more than that. Why hadn't he recognized what those feelings truly were?
Because he had never experienced them before, he told himself. Because they had come on so gradually all his life that by the time he recognized them for what they were, it was too late to stop them.
It made little difference now. Janda was gone. Just like Father.
And here he was talking to Imala the same way. Why? Because it was natural? Because he missed that part of himself, the part that could tease a friend? It wasn't flirtatious. Or at least he hoped it didn't seem that way. He was eighteen. Imala was ... what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? He was a child to her. Did she think him flirtatious?
Imala's face appeared in Victor's HUD, snapping him from his reverie. "If you're having doubts, Vico, then let's rethink this."
She had mistaken his hesitation for fear. "I'm fine, Imala. I'm just taking a moment to consider how best to do this."
He unstrapped the duffel bag from around his back and pulled out the bubble, an inflatable dome designed to form an airtight seal on the side of the ship. With Victor inside the bubble, he could cut a hole into the ship without exposing it to the vacuum of space.
Victor pulled the ripcord, and the bubble filled with air and assumed its domed shape. He climbed under the dome with his duffel bag of tools and sealed the bubble to the wall. "Whatever happens, Imala, don't stop recording."
They had agreed that Imala would record everything Victor captured with his helmetcam. If he didn't make it back, they needed to share what they had found with whoever would listen. "Don't just give it to Lem," Victor had said. "Upload it on the nets. Broadcast it to the world. If enough people know what's inside that ship, maybe someone will see a way to end this war."
He unzipped the duffel bag and dug around the tools, looking for the laser cutter. His gloved hand found it and pulled it out. Victor set it to a low setting, pressed it against the wall, and waited for the beam to punch through. Father had taught him this technique years ago. The two of them out in the Kuiper Belt had cut into a dozen derelict ships over the years. Most had been grisly scenes: free miners hit by pirates; ships with mechanical failures that had stranded the crew and starved them out. Whoever they were, they were almost always dead by the time El Cavador arrived.
Mother had tried to protect Victor from participating, arguing about it with Father one night when they thought Victor was asleep in his hammock. "Anyone in the family can do that job," Mother had said in a hushed tone. "It doesn't have to be Vico."
"No one uses these tools as often as he and I do," Father had said. "I trust him with a cutter more than anyone. I don't want someone doing this who isn't experienced with the equipment. Anything could go wrong."
"Which is why our son shouldn't be the one to go."
"He's a member of this family, Rena. Everyone has their duty."
"He's just a boy, mi amor. Un nino." A child.
"Cierto," Father had said, falling into Spanish alongside her, the way he always did whenever a disagreement escalated. "Un nino que hace su parte en esa familia, tal como ti y tal como yo." A child who does his part in this family, just like you and just like me.
In the end, they had compromised. Victor would help cut, but he wouldn't go inside the ship and assess the damage. "Leave that to the men of the crew," Mother had said. Father hadn't argued, and so Victor had been spared the worst of it. But not seeing what was inside the ships was perhaps worse than actually seeing them since Victor's mind always painted the worst possible picture.
He wondered then, as he often did, where Mother was now. Lem had said that the women and children on El Cavador had left the ship and boarded a WU-HU vessel, but Lem had no idea where the vessel was or if it had even survived the attack. It had been heading for the Asteroid Belt, so in all likelihood Mother was there now, perhaps at a depot or outpost where other survivors were gathering. She wasn't dead. Victor refused to even consider it. Losing Father had been grief enough. No, Mother was safe somewhere, tending to the women and children, comforting them, strengthening them, protecting them as she had always done on El Cavador. He had to believe that.
The laser punched through.
Victor stopped the beam and checked the readings. "The wall's only four inches thick, Imala. I can cut through this easily."
"Be careful, Vico."
He intensified the laser, set it to the proper depth, and quickly cut out a small hole no bigger than his finger. Then he inserted the snake camera through the hole to see what was on the other side. He couldn't see much. The space was dark and empty, a crawlspace perhaps, or a shaft of some sort. Whatever it was it was clearly big enough for him to climb into. And more importantly, it was free of Formics.
He retracted the snake, cut a hole large enough for his body to pass through, pushed the cut piece into the ship, and shined his light inside.
The shaft was a meter high and four meters wide. It extended to his right and left as far as he could see, sloping downward in either direction, matching the bulbous curvature of the ship. The walls were discolored and unattractive, covered with rust, blemishes, bumps, and imperfections, like scrap metal left to oxidize in a damp place for a few hundred years. It was almost as if the interior of the ship had been built with crude, unrefined ore, creating an ugly canvas of browns and grays and touches of black that felt dingy and ancient and long ignored.
The air in the shaft was no cleaner. Dust motes and clumps of small, misshapen brown matter floated everywhere. Victor looked at his wrist pad and read the sensors. "Air is twenty-four percent oxygen. That's only slightly higher than Earth, Imala. The rest is nitrogen, argon, and a touch of carbon dioxide. I could breathe this if I wanted to."
"I wouldn't," said Imala. "There could be traces of other elements in the air that we can't detect but are lethal, even in small doses."
"I wasn't planning on taking my helmet off, Imala. Not with all this dung in the air."
"Dung?"
He delicately poked a clump of brown matter hovering nearby, pushing it away. "I'm guessing that's not mud."
"Gross. What is this place? A sewer line?"
"Either that or the Formics don't have a good waste-disposal system. Maybe the whole ship's this way." He climbed through the hole and into the shaft, pulling his duffel bag in behind him. Then he grabbed the circle of wall he had cut out and pressed it back into place, using magnets to hold it tight. The hole he had cut for the snake camera was still uncovered, so he capp
ed it with a metal patch from his duffel bag. If someone came along and studied the hole, they would see something was amiss, but the walls were so discolored and random that the magnets and patch were fairly camouflaged.
He stuffed his tools back into his bag and slung the bag back over his shoulder. The lights from his helmet moved around the shaft, taking in his surroundings. "There are grooves in the floor, Imala, like tracks. Maybe two inches deep, running the length of the shaft. I count three of them. The Formics must have equipment that runs on them."
"How do you know which wall is the floor?"
"Educated guess," he said. "The Formics can walk upright, but they're tunnel dwellers. They prefer to crawl and don't require a lot of headroom. So width is more important than height. You could fit four Formics abreast in here. That would allow for several lanes of traffic and tracks for moving equipment."
"So where do you go now?"
Victor looked to his right and left. Neither way gave any hint as to where it might lead. "There are fewer floaties in the air to the right," he said. "I take this as a good sign."
He rotated his body to the right, placed his feet on opposite walls and pushed off, shooting upward. As the shaft curved, he pushed lightly off the walls to course correct himself, keeping his forward momentum, the wall inches from his face.
"It's good you're not claustrophobic," said Imala.
"I was born and raised on a mining ship, Imala. I was a mechanic like my father. He used to send me into HVAC ducts and tight spaces when I was four years old to reach things he couldn't. I've spent half my life crammed into places much narrower than--"
He grabbed the wall and stopped himself; then he blinked out a command and killed his helmet lights.
"What's wrong?" asked Imala.
Victor lowered his voice. "Ahead. I saw light."
It had appeared for only an instant, a faint green dot of light that had zipped from one side of the tunnel to the other before disappearing. Victor hovered there, squinting into the blackness, looking for it. Had he imagined it? A trick of the eye?
No, there it was again, a circle of light no bigger than his thumb twenty meters ahead of him. It shot back across the width of the passage and came to rest on the opposite side, glowing softly.
"What is that?" Imala said. "A firefly?"
Victor zoomed in with his visor and got a better look. The bug was perched on a mud nest built onto the side of the wall, its bulbous belly pulsing with light, filling that section of the shaft with a greenish hue. Its body was small, maybe four centimeters long--yellow and brown flecked with spots of red. Its four legs clung to the nest as it lazily flapped its two sets of wings. The hind wings were transparent and three times as long as its body. They glimmered and shone in the light of its bioluminescence. The forewings were much shorter and shell-like, as if they provided protection to the thorax and abdomen whenever they were pulled in flat across the back.
"I think we just discovered another alien species," said Imala.
"Let's hope it's not as nasty as the Formics," said Victor.
"I don't see any stingers or pincers."
"Even so, I'll give it a wide berth and hope it ignores us." He pushed off the wall and continued forward, steering toward the side of the shaft opposite the bug. When he was level with it, a second glow bug appeared to his right, crawling out of another nest Victor hadn't noticed.
Victor caught himself on the wall again and froze, hoping it would ignore him.
The bug, seemingly oblivious to him, launched from the nest and flew directly to a small clump of Formic dung in the air. It seized the dung with its legs, tucked it tight to its body, and flew back to the nest.
Curious, Victor drifted closer.
The bug pulsed with light as it fed the dung into a hole in the nest where several larvae lay packed together wiggling.
"It's coprophagic," said Imala.
"Meaning what?" said Victor.
"Meaning it eats dung. Or at least its infants do."
"That's disgusting."
"They have to get minerals from somewhere, Vico. This is its habitat. I don't see any other food source."
"There are minerals in dung?"
"You've never heard of fertilizer?"
"For plants maybe. Feeding it to your babies is something else entirely."
"The nests are probably made of the same material," said Imala.
"Poop nests. I'm liking this ship less and less by the minute."
"That's ecology, Vico. That's how species coexist. Every creature making do with what it's given. Maybe the glow bugs and Formics have a symbiotic relationship. The bugs clear the air and provide light for the tunnels. And the Formics provide them dinner."
"Must we call it dinner?"
He pushed off again, continuing upward, the glow from the bugs behind him slowly fading. After another fifty meters, the external mike on his helmet picked up a faint buzzing noise. As he continued, the buzzing grew louder.
Then he saw the light.
Ahead in the distance were hundreds of glow bugs concentrated in the shaft. They zipped back and forth between nests on the wall, harvesting matter from the air, buzzing and darting about in a frantic flurry of activity.
Victor stopped. "Looks like a swarm, Imala."
"You can't get through there without disturbing them," she said. "It's too tight of a space."
Victor moved closer. "Lem said this suit was tough. Even if they attack, they probably won't penetrate it."
Lem had outfitted them with all of their equipment, including new suits developed by Juke Limited that were designed to withstand the rigors of asteroid mining and yet were sensitive enough to measure all their biometrics.
"You can't be sure of the suit's durability," said Imala. "I say we try the other way."
"We're just as likely to find them in the other direction, Imala. And we've already come this far. If I go slow enough, maybe they won't bother--"
A high-pitched scraping sound echoed through the shaft, like an old rusty gate swinging open. The glow bugs all stopped instantly, a hundred dots of light, coming to rest midflight, wings fluttering, listening.
"What was that?" asked Imala.
Another scraping sound, louder this time. The glow bugs zipped to their nests and clung to the sides, filling the shaft with light and leaving a wide open space in the middle.
"That sound has them spooked," said Imala.
"I've got a hole," said Victor. "I'm going for it."
"Vico, wait!"
But he was already moving, shooting forward, trying to take advantage of the opening. He twisted his body as he flew, hoping to squeeze through the space without disturbing the nests.
But he got it wrong. The suit was bulkier and bigger than what he was used to, and some of the nests extended farther out into the middle of the shaft than he had expected. His left shoulder struck a nest, breaking off a chunk and sending a handful of glow bugs scattering and buzzing with agitation. Victor spun away, trying to avoid the bugs, and hit another nest in the process; then a third and a fourth. He couldn't avoid them. They were all packed too tightly together.
He tried spinning to his left to reorient himself, but his forward motion was already carrying him upward, and his twisting only set him farther off course. He reached out with his feet to catch himself and felt the squish of wings and bodies as his boots took out a whole swath of nests below him.
The other bugs leaped from their nests, rushing to him, fluttering all around him, landing on his arms and legs, buzzing in front of his helmet, blocking his view, filling his ears with the collective roar of their wings. He had been wrong: there were not hundreds, there were thousands.
Imala was shouting over the radio. "Get out of there!"
He twisted again, getting his bearings, finding the wall with his feet, and pushed off, shooting away. He couldn't see. His visor was a wall of wings and bioluminescence and tiny, wiggling, frantic legs. The light in his eyes was blinding, like a h
undred lit bulbs thrown in his face.
His body slowed. He pushed off again, crushing more nests. He flew ten more meters. Then twenty. He could feel the pinching and marching of feet all over him, even through the thick layers of his suit. Were they eating their way inside? Were they burning their way through? Would his suit self-seal if they tore a hole? Panic seized him. He shook himself, throwing off his forward momentum. He careened into the wall to his right, crushing glow bugs and nests in the impact. He got his footing, pushed off again, flailing his arms as if they were on fire, knocking glow bugs free and leaving a wake of broken wings and smeared bioluminescence behind him.
Then his arm brushed a wall and he felt solid metal.
No nests. He was clear.
He reached out again and yes, the walls were clean. The nests were behind him. He pushed off again, launching hard. One by one the remaining bugs peeled away, falling from his suit, disappearing from view. He didn't stop, but pushed off again, inspecting himself as he flew, shaking his legs and arms and brushing the remaining glow bugs away.
His attention was so focused on clearing his suit that he didn't see the Formic until it was right in front of him.
CHAPTER 3
Drones
Lem Jukes sat in the living room of his penthouse apartment on Luna, smiling his way through another interview and pretending not to notice the cameras. The reporter sitting opposite was a young Danish woman named Unna, with short pink hair, big silver loop earrings, and a tight-fitting, low-cut white jumpsuit that exposed as much skin as the networks would allow. The producers had sat her only inches away on the loveseat, her knees nearly touching Lem's.
Unna pursed her lips, furrowed her brow, and placed a hand gently atop Lem's own. "You must have been terribly afraid, Lem. What was going through your mind when the Formics poured out of their ship?"
The battle in the Kuiper Belt. It was all the media wanted to talk about: how Lem and the crew of his asteroid-mining ship had gallantly attacked the Formics out beyond Neptune in an attempt to stop them from reaching Earth. Lem, you must have been so afraid. Lem, where did you find the courage? Lem, how did you muster the strength?
Lem had told the story and answered those questions in so many interviews in the last few days that he could put his brain on autopilot and regurgitate every detail without giving it any thought. Yet he knew that if he wanted to come off as sincere, if he wanted the vid to get traction on the nets, his words couldn't come off as rote.