The nozzles. There were thousands of them on the Formic ship just beneath the hull. Each connected to a system of pipes that carried the gamma plasma from the storage tanks. When the ship was ready to fire, plasma was pushed through the pipes to the nozzles, where the plasma underwent some laserization process that concentrated the plasma into a tight beam. The aperture on the hull would open, and the beam of plasma would shoot outward and incinerate anything in its path.
“I wish we hadn’t released all the gamma plasma in the war,” Lem said. “We might’ve been able to use it as a weapon again.”
Dublin shook his head. “I don’t think so. Even if there were gamma plasma still in the tanks, I wouldn’t recommend harvesting it. It was far too radioactive. Way too unpredictable. It would cripple our electronics and communication systems. Even if we did have a way to transport it, which we don’t, we wouldn’t be able to unleash it without severely damaging our own ships. And besides, we have no way of directing it at a target. We don’t know how the laserization process worked. It’s technically not even laserization since we’re not talking about light here. But again, ‘laserization,’ ‘gamma plasma,’ these are the words we have to work with. Point is, gamma plasma wouldn’t have helped us. It’s just as well it’s all gone.”
“So we’ve learned nothing,” said Lem.
“We’ve learned plenty,” Dublin said, “but most of what we’ve learned hasn’t taken us any closer to a military solution, which is what we need.”
“I’m sure I need not stress to you the time crunch we are under, Dublin. You heard about Copernicus. We need a solution as soon as possible. Because we’ll need time after you identify this alloy to design a weapon to breach it. That weapon will need to be tested, refined, retested, refined again, mass-produced. And then we’ll need to install said weapon on individual ships of the Fleet. That takes time. So you can see why I might feel a flutter of panic here. Our window of opportunity is nearly closed. Most companies would say it already has closed. But since the survival of the human race hangs in the balance, we’re not going to give up just yet.”
“We’re doing our best, Lem. Most of my team gets less than four hours of sleep. And those are good nights. I’m already pushing them hard.”
“I’m not criticizing, Dublin. You have an impossible task. I’m just sweating right now. Can I send you more people?”
“We could always use more people,” Dublin said. “But I would recommend a different approach, one you’re not going to like. Don’t hire more people and bring them up to the ship to work in secrecy for the company. Share what we know with the world. Publish everything we’ve got on the hull. Open our files. Pull back the curtain and ask the whole world to help. Offer a reward to anyone who figures out how to penetrate the hull. If someone finds the answer, it will be worth whatever reward we’ve promised.”
“If you can’t figure it out, Dublin, I doubt the average citizen can either.”
“We’re not interested in the average citizen,” Dublin said. “And the average citizen won’t be interested in participating. This would be way over their heads. Opening the files would target the professionals in similar industries who have unique expertise. If you hire people, you’re only going to bring on those who are willing and able to leave their jobs and families and fly out and live on a cramped space station. But if you open it to the world, you’ll have thousands of pros or semi-pros working on this after hours. They’ll likely even feel a sense of duty. People want to contribute to the war effort, Lem. This would allow them to do so.”
“If I did that,” Lem said, “I’d be sharing proprietary information with our competitors as well. I’d be giving Gungsu Industries the tools it needs to beat us at our own game. What if they used our intel to discover a way to breach the Formic ships and then sold that solution to the IF? We would have equipped our competitors with the very tools they needed to defeat us. That’s not smart business.”
“At some point we have to decide what’s more important, Lem. Business? Or survival? If we were to give out the intel, and Gungsu were to find a solution, then happy day, as far as I’m concerned. We have a solution. The human race might survive after all. Would giving that victory to Gungsu chip away at our market share? No question. But when this is over, if there is no human race, it won’t make much difference what market share we hold.”
Lem considered for a moment. “I’ll think about it.”
“Think fast, Lem. Like you said, our window of opportunity is shrinking here.”
Lem thanked him, gave a few encouraging words, and signed off.
The holofield winked out, and Lem stood alone in the white space once more. Three years and he was nowhere closer to finding the enemy’s weakness.
I need a miracle, he thought. A show of progress, something to keep a spark of hope alive. The meeting with the executive team had yielded nothing, and Dublin had only made it worse.
He needed to see Benyawe, his chief engineer who ran his Experimental Defense Division. She hadn’t attended the executive meeting. She hadn’t been to a meeting in a while, now that he thought about it. He had told her that her work in the lab was more important than attending meetings, and she had taken that as an invitation to skip every one.
He took a subway car to her lab. The security sensors at the entrance scanned him, and the door opened to the common room, a space the size of a soccer pitch. Twenty glass pillars were positioned throughout the room. The pillars doubled as small conference rooms, and several groups of engineers were meeting inside them, fussing over holos or equations scribbled on the boards.
To Lem’s left, behind giant hangar doors, was the workshop, where the structural engineers built, tested, and modified the specialty ships and experimental spacecrafts being pitched to the International Fleet. Most of those ships would probably never see the light of day. There were a hundred reasons to kill a project, and over the years the IF had used them all. But some of the tech would likely become a reality in some form or another.
Lem found Dr. Noloa Benyawe sitting alone in one of the pillar rooms in the back, her hands inside a holo of a Juke-designed warship. Lem tapped on the glass to get her attention, and she glanced up briefly and waved him to enter.
She was Nigerian and in her early sixties, with more gray hair than Lem remembered. Father had tried to lure her to the Hegemony more than once, but she had always come to Lem when the offers came in. Lem had done whatever was necessary to keep her. She was the one employee he could not afford to lose.
“You missed the executive meeting,” he said.
She didn’t look up, but continued to tap at the holo with her stylus and make quick notes. “You told me I could skip those.”
“I told you the work you do here is more important than meetings. But I still occasionally like seeing your face.”
She looked up at him over the rim of her bifocals. He had never seen her wear them before.
“Bad day?” she asked.
“The usual,” Lem said. “We’re losing executives, morale is in the toilet, and Dublin and his team have gotten nowhere with the hull.”
“We’ve long believed the hull was indestructible,” Benyawe said. “Three years of research is proving us right.”
“So you don’t have any ideas?” Lem said.
“On how to penetrate it? No, Lem. I don’t. The hull is Dublin’s project. My mind hasn’t been there. I’ve got my own problems to worry about.”
“Dublin suggests we release everything we know about the hull to the world and offer a reward to anyone who can help us crack it.”
“That’s a good idea,” Benyawe said. “You’ll get a lot of amateurs offering up terrible ideas based on bad hypotheses and half-baked science, but with a good filtering system in place, you might actually learn something helpful.”
“I was hoping you could simply solve it for me. I’m feeling rather despondent at the moment.”
She didn’t look up at him. “I’m your chief e
ngineer, Lem. Not your therapist. If you’re looking for carefree happiness, I suggest you buy some beach property and get a mind wipe. You’ll be blissfully content until the Formics come.”
“You’re in a sour mood today,” he said.
“Ignore me. Problems with the XR-50. I’m grumpy.”
The XR-50 was one of the many Juke warships currently being constructed out in the Belt.
“What problems?” Lem asked.
“Don’t worry. I’m taking care of it. We’re still on schedule. The crews just sent a holo with questions. We’re fine.”
“And you’re handling it?” Lem asked. “Don’t you have people to do that for you?”
She sat up and removed her bifocals. “Yes, I have people to do this for me, Lem. I’m reviewing what my teams have recommended. These are structural integrity issues. I sign off on all of those.”
“And that doesn’t slow down the process? Having everything funneled through you, I mean. You’re not micromanaging your teams are you?”
“The CEO of the company is hovering over my shoulder, questioning my operational tactics, and he’s asking me if I micromanage.”
Lem grinned. “Point taken. Whatever you’re doing, I’m sure it’s right.” He leaned against the glass and folded his arms. “Gungsu Industries won the breach contract with their gravity disruptors.”
“So I heard,” said Benyawe. “A stupid decision. Mazer Rackham was one of the marines testing the tech at WAMRED. Did you know that?”
“Rackham? Really? No, I didn’t know that. Who told you?”
“Victor.”
“Victor Delgado?”
“We e-mail,” Benyawe said. “Imala, too. They’re engaged now, did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t. I guess I don’t get included on the buddies-from-the-past e-mail chain. Glad to hear everyone is peachy. Now I’m even more depressed.”
Benyawe grinned, glanced up, and then returned to the holo. “I wouldn’t worry about Gungsu Industries,” she said.
“Well I am worried,” said Lem. “We presented six proposals to the IF, Benyawe. Six. All of them practical. Okay, some were more practical than others, but each of them showed promise.”
Benyawe wiped her hand through the holo and it disappeared. “First off, the six proposals we sent to the IF were turned down for good reasons, especially knowing now that the hulmat is stronger than we expected. The IF was right to say no. You know as well as I do that nothing we presented to them was a silver bullet.”
“The piece of craptech from Gungsu Industries isn’t either,” said Lem. “And yet the Hegemony throws Gungsu a mountain of cash for it. You want to explain that to me?”
“You’re not your father,” Benyawe said.
Lem blinked, taken aback. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means exactly that,” said Benyawe. “Your father, Ukko Jukes, the Hegemon of Earth, had a different management style when he ran this company. He was one man to the public and a very different man behind closed doors. To the public and the press he was a shrewd businessman who had flashes of brilliance and played hardball to win. Behind closed doors, visible to only a few, he was brutal and conniving and cut whole companies down at the knees. Ask your friend Norja Ramdakan. He’s one of the few people who knows how your father really operates.”
“You make my father sound like a gangster,” Lem said.
“Gangsters are unintelligent apes,” Benyawe said. “That’s not your father. He was always brilliant. But he was also dangerous. If your father were running this company right now, there wouldn’t be a Gungsu Industries. He would have annihilated them before they got any traction and posed any serious threat.”
“Well I appreciate the criticism,” Lem said. “Anything else I’m doing wrong?”
“You misunderstand me, Lem. I didn’t say you were doing anything wrong. I’m merely pointing out that your father had a very different approach, and that’s why Gungsu is alive and kicking, because you allowed them to exist. And since I happen to believe in the free market and its ability to drive innovation, I’m glad Gungsu exists. We wouldn’t have Nan-Ooze without Gungsu. Or any of the other tech they’ve given to the IF. Most of it is good, practical gear. I’m glad the IF has it. Had your father run the show, we wouldn’t have any of that because it never would have been developed.”
Lem shook his head. “I can’t understand you, Benyawe. One second it sounds like you’re insulting me, the next it sounds like you’re on my team.”
“Of course I’m on your team, Lem. I’m still here, aren’t I? My point is, a win to Gungsu shouldn’t demoralize us. It should inspire us. It should kick us in the rear and drive us to make something greater. Besides, your father can’t award us every big contract anyway. It would look like nepotism, for one. And it wouldn’t result in the best tech. We need competition, Lem. We need someone challenging us every single day, threatening to overtake us and wipe us out.”
“I don’t like losing,” said Lem.
“Then stop losing. You’re the CEO. If you want me to make a breach weapon that’s better than Gungsu’s, then get your boss-man face on and tell me to. Don’t mope. Lead.”
Lem stood erect. “All right. Pity party’s over. Gather all your little brainiacs and tell them that their workload just expanded. We need marines to get inside the Formic ships, and the hull they have to get through is indestructible. This is all hands on deck. Nights. Weekends. Whatever it takes.”
Benyawe stood. “I’ll call a meeting right now. Anything else I should tell them? Like, say, there’s a handsome reward for the winning team?”
“They’re employees, Benyawe. I pay them handsomely already.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How quickly do you want results? Remember, a lot of my engineers are convinced we’re going to lose. They’d rather spend weekends with loved ones with whom they believe time is short. Asking them to forfeit that might require an extra incentive.”
“All right,” Lem said. “Tell them I will give five hundred thousand credits to whoever creates a weapon that the IF buys.”
Benyawe smiled. “That will soften the bad news of weekends. Anything else?”
“Yes. Fire anyone who doesn’t believe we can win. If they’re not in this heart and soul, I don’t want them. Call HR if you need more people. I don’t want naysayers.”
“Very well. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to call the press. I’m giving the world everything we know about the hull.”
CHAPTER 6
Wila
The Formics’ biochemical process of ship deconstruction and reconstruction is perhaps the greatest evidence of their advanced bioengineering capabilities. Unlike humans, who rely on tools and machines to build and dismantle our ships, Formics relied on philotically controlled organisms specifically engineered to accomplish these tasks.
The ability of hull eaters to dismantle the hull of the Hive Queen’s mothership, and of hull weavers to turn that material into a fleet of warships, while continuing to move into our solar system at a significant fraction of the speed of light, clearly illustrates the Formics’ scientific superiority in biomechanics. Meanwhile, other specialized organisms were used to build propulsion drives, shields, weapons, and life support systems. Imagine Columbus in 1492 dismantling his carrack and caravels and turning them into fifty seaworthy catamarans and outrigger canoes—in midvoyage, far from land, and without losing any supplies or delaying the voyage in any way—all through the use of semi-intelligent termites and barnacles.
The Hive Queen not only contained the entirety of this technology within her mind, but also, with a bit of help from her sister Hive Queens on other worlds, designed new ships, weapons, and structures that no Formics had needed before. This combination of deep and wide knowledge with astonishing creativity bespeaks a mental superiority over individual Formic workers that explains why she was able to dominate them so completely that they functioned as if they were extensions of
her body, the way our hands and feet are extensions of our own.
—Demosthenes, A History of the Formic Wars, Vol. 3
Wila lifted the hem of her white mae-chee robe and hurried toward the bridge to the old teakwood temple in downtown Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand. It was late in the day, approaching sunset, and Wila encountered no one as she crossed the park and made her way to the lotus pond where the temple stood upon stilts, surrounded by water and turtles and floating lotus flowers with their giant pink petals and yellow pointed stamens. Wila paused in the grass before crossing the bridge and took a few deep meditative breaths. She had contained her emotions on the train ride from the university and beaten back the tears that had welled up inside her. But now the tears were threatening to break through, and this time in earnest.
The dissertation committee had heard her oral defense, but only so that they might collectively deny her her degree. They could have easily rejected her dissertation weeks ago and spared her the humiliation of standing before them as they obliterated her conclusions. But no, she was to be made an example.
Three years of research, Wila thought. Three years of study and writing and refining her theories, and now she would have nothing to show for it. She would never teach.
She gripped the handrail and steadied herself. No, I will not allow my emotions to overtake me. The soul must be free of sadness and shame. It must be pure, at peace, as bright as the sun. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, taking in the sweet, heady fragrance of the lotus flowers standing tall in the pond below her. The plant had likely been there for over a century, Wila knew, sprouting new petals every season and surrounding the temple with its pleasant perfume. So beautiful, she thought, and yet so resilient. Am I not stronger than a flower?
She stood erect, no longer leaning on the handrail, the frustration and humiliation slowly fading. She lifted the hem of her robe once again, kicked off her sandals, and crossed the bridge barefoot. The wood was old and cool, worn smooth by the feet of thousands of monks who had walked these planks before her. Wila paused at the entrance, pressed her palms together, and gave a brief bow of respect. A small gold statue of the Buddha greeted her inside and Wila touched it gently. There was nothing in her order that required her to do so, but the coolness of the metal steeled her even further. I can be as still and strong as this statue, she thought. Unbending. Enduring. Immovable.