Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) (3 page)

“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 capped 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 hundred 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.

Lem nodded thoughtfully, as if no one had ever asked that question before. He angled his face slightly to the side, giving one of the cameras a nice profile. “I
was
afraid, Unna. Terrified.” He paused for dramatic effect. “I had men down on the surface of that ship who were in danger. I felt helpless. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone. Nothing is more painful than to watch your friends die.”

“You call them your friends?”

“A mining ship is very close quarters. I had traveled with these men and women for a year at that point. We knew each other intimately. We were like family.”

“Speaking of families, you started a foundation to support the families of the crewmembers you lost.”

Lem nodded. “I felt the need to honor those men and women, to remember their sacrifice. And I wanted to ensure that the needs of their loved ones would be met. Juke Limited takes care of its own, Unna. Our company feels a responsibility to its people. I’ve always respected my father for his belief in that regard.”

She was asking all the right questions, giving him a chance to make a plug for the company whenever it seemed natural and unscripted. The PR team, who had arranged this interview, would no doubt be grateful. It had been their idea to conduct the interview here in Lem’s apartment. “People want to see where you live, Mr. Jukes, what you eat, where you sleep, the design of your furniture. It’s real, it’s intimate. It will humanize you.”

Meaning what? Lem had wanted to ask. That I’m not human enough already?

But he had kept his quips to himself.

In some respects, Lem found it all exhilarating and familiar. Before leaving for the Kuiper Belt, he had often had a camera shoved in his face, snapping photos and recording vids of him as he stepped out of his skimmer at some red-carpet affair. He was not a celebrity in the traditional sense. He had first gained notoriety as the handsome son of Ukko Jukes, the asteroid-mining tycoon and wealthiest man alive. But later, as Lem had made his own fortune independent of his father, proving he could be just as aggressive an entrepreneur as his father had ever been, Lem’s face had appeared on more reputable, business-oriented sites. Suddenly he was not only known, but also respected.

And now here he was, reinventing himself yet again. Lem Jukes, war hero.

Unna’s questions then went to the Battle of the Belt. “You and your crew found footage of the battle.”

“That’s correct,” said Lem. “We didn’t participate in the attack. It happened away from our position, but we were able to recover a beacon that recorded the events. We brought that footage back to Luna so that Earth would know what sacrifices had been made to protect us. It was the largest coordinated assault that anyone has made against the Formics to date.”