Above Lem, suspended from the ceiling, was a square light rig holding as many holoprojectors as there were below him.
Three squares in the floor began to rise like towers. They stopped half a meter off the ground, forming three cubes, close together.
"Sit," said Father, gesturing to the cubes.
Lem sat.
Father took the cube opposite, and Simona sat at the third.
"There was a technician here a moment ago," said Lem. "He disappeared."
"There are close to a hundred technicians in this facility, Lem," said Father, "all behind these walls. They come and go through the doors as needed. Simona calls them the elves."
"What do they do exactly? These technicians. What is this?"
"This, son, is the business we are in."
"Holoprojection?"
Father laughed. "No. Information, Lem." He waved a hand at the empty room. "Project Parallax has always been about information. Seeing what no one else can see."
Father tapped his wrist pad, and the room went dark again. A white light appeared in the center of the three cubes, floating in the air between them like a tiny hovering campfire. The light changed, took shape, and became the flat ecliptic plane: the sun, the planets, the solar system. Two dots of light on the plane of the ecliptic beyond the edge of the system and directly opposite each other began to orbit the solar system.
"The Parallax satellites," said Lem. "Simona explained this already."
"I didn't tell you how many satellites there were," said Simona.
As Victor watched, another orbit ring appeared with two more satellites--this plane perpendicular to the ecliptic--the galactic plane. A third orbit ring, at a thirty-degree angle: the galactic celestial plane. Then a fourth ring, at sixty degrees: the galactic equatorial plane. All formed a gyroscope of satellites orbiting the system.
"There are eight satellites," said Father, "all with telescopes looking outward into deep space."
"And these satellites are functioning?" said Lem. "They work properly?"
"Very well," said Father.
"Then why didn't they see the Formics coming?"
Father smiled and shook a finger. "An excellent question. The short answer is, the Parallax satellites weren't designed as an alien warning system. They're made for research and for detecting collision threats. And when I say research, I mean they're looking way out there at a specific object or cluster of galaxies, holding a very tight field of view, like a laser dot in the sky, whatever it is that sparks the astrophysicist's fancy. When the satellites aren't doing that, they're flagging light-reflection objects moving in normal parabolic patterns that pose a threat to Earth."
"But the Formic ship is a threat to Earth."
"Yes, we know that now, but it wasn't moving in a way that the Parallax computers recognized. We program it to look for very specific things. Giant alien ships moving in ways no one thought possible was not one of those things. And keep in mind, the space between these satellites is tremendous. Opposing satellites on the same plane could be ten billion kilometers away from each other or more. Nor are they fast moving. For satellites they're extremely slow. So no, they didn't see the Formics coming, and frankly I'm not at all surprised. Space is very big, son."
"This is all very fascinating," said Lem. "And I commend you for building your satellite telescope thingies that didn't actually prove very useful when we needed them to. But I fail to see the relevancy here. We lost the drones, Father. You may not care about the company. But everyone who works for this company does. You need a game plan. You need to prepare a response. Ukko Jukes kicked the hornets' nest. Ukko Jukes aggravated Formics and incited a second wave. The headlines write themselves."
Father frowned. "I'm disappointed, Lem. I thought for sure you would see the possibilities a configuration like the Parallax would provide."
"Really? We're still on this Parallax thing? The future of this company is hanging by a thread, Father. And that thread is suspended over the crapper. So unless these Parallax satellites are also time machines that allow us to go back and have a do-over with the drones, I don't see the point."
Father sighed wearily and tapped his wrist pad. The original screensaver solar system returned, filling the room. "Information, Lem. That's why Parallax matters. The possibilities for useful, profitable information."
Lem scrunched up his shoulders. "Sorry. If we're playing a guessing game here, I fold. What am I not seeing?"
"If the Parallax satellites can carry scopes that look outward, they can also carry scopes that look inward." Father tapped the wrist pad, and hundreds of additional objects appeared in the room, scattered across the solar system within the ecliptic. Lem stood and walked to one near him. He leaned down to get a better look at it. It was a ship, a digger, no larger than his fingertip. He reached out, touched it, and it ballooned in size to be as large as he was. Lem recoiled a step, startled. Windows of data popped up around the ship, identifying it as a MineTek asteroid digger, C-class--a competitor's vessel. There was a list of all the asteroids it had visited and mined from, as well as a complete ship manifest: the captain's name and photo, the full crew, equipment, weapons, drive system; it was all there.
Lem turned and looked back at his father. "You're spying on the solar system?"
"Not spying, Lem. Observing. Gathering information. With the gyroscope we can see everything we need to know to improve our operations. We can avoid the asteroids that are already occupied by a competitor's vessel, for example. Or we can identify new, potentially viable asteroids--"
"Or you can track competitors' trade routes," said Lem. "You can know everything the other guys are doing and then sabotage and obstruct their operations. You can know who to buy off, who to avoid, where the real money is."
"You make it sound devious, Lem," said Father. "But this is how a company operates. I'm not doing anything illegal here."
"Illegal, no. Unethical, maybe."
Father looked annoyed. "This is why we succeed, Lem. This is why we have the market share we do. Every company in the world does this. They gather and use information. We just do it better than anyone else."
"This doesn't reek of privacy issues to you?"
Father laughed. "Privacy? Are you telling me a CEO on Earth can't stand on the roof of his building and look down at the street and count how many of his competitor's trucks drive by?"
"That's different."
"No. It isn't. Scale doesn't matter. Just because we've got a taller building, so to speak, doesn't make it suddenly wrong."
Lem shook his head. "So you knew. As soon as the Formic ship came into system, you knew what it was, and yet you pretended not to."
"No, I didn't know what it was, Lem. The interference from the Formic ship disrupted the Parallax satellites as much as any other. We went dark for several months. The satellites continued to collect images, but they couldn't transmit. Now that the radiation has dissipated, and transmission lines are reopening, we're slowly coming back online. Now the satellites are inundating us with every image they've taken since they transmitted the last time, before the interference."
"This all has a point, I'm sure," said Lem.
"When you attacked the Formic ship in the Kuiper Belt, Lem, who joined you?"
The question was such a non sequitur that it took Lem a moment to respond. "A free-miner ship. El Cavador. Why?"
"There was a third ship," said Father. "One that didn't participate in the actual attack."
"A WU-HU ship," said Lem. "It took all the women and children from El Cavador. We never saw what happened to it. We couldn't radio it. Everything was chaos."
"The ship survived, Lem."
For a moment, Lem was speechless. "How do you know that?"
Father smiled. "That unethical information is suddenly quite useful, isn't it?"
"These were innocent people, Father. This isn't a game. What happened to them?"
Father tapped his wrist pad, and the solar system disappeared sav
e for a single yellow dot of light, floating in the black expanse. Lem approached it and touched it. The yellow dot ballooned outward until it was a WU-HU outpost two meters across.
"It's in the Asteroid Belt," said Father. "One of several outposts WU-HU has in that sector. This is a computer-generated model based on schematics. The color might be wrong, but this is essentially what it looks like. According to Parallax, this is where your WU-HU ship went. There would be food there, Lem. The captain there is a good woman. If we're reading her profile right, she would have taken them in. Fed them. Sheltered them. I thought you would want to know."
Lem stared at the outpost. Relief welled up inside him like a wave. He didn't know why exactly. These were not his people. They were strangers to him, really. Most of them probably still hated him for bumping their ship off the asteroid in the Kuiper Belt, a move that had gone terribly wrong and resulted in the death of one of their crew.
And yet, it didn't matter if they hated Lem. They were right to hate him. He didn't want their acceptance. He only wanted them to be alive. And now they were. They had suffered, yes. They had lost their husbands and fathers, their livelihood, their home. But at least they still had each other. At least they had someone to lean on in their grief.
Father was behind him, his voice soft. "I've watched these interviews you've done, son. I've seen you tell your story about what happened out there. It had a profound effect on you. I see that now. I thought it might bring you some comfort to know that a few more made it out alive."
Lem turned and faced him. "This is why you brought me here? This is why you showed me Parallax?"
"I should have shown it to you a long time ago. You're my son, Lem. I've kept too many secrets from you for too long. I regret that. I'm not saying this makes me a good father suddenly. I know what I am. But if I can do something to alleviate any pain my son is carrying, then I'm going to do it."
Lem was at a loss. Was Father actually doing something kind? Was he actually giving without an ulterior motive?
"I don't want you doing these interviews anymore," said Father. "You're not to be paraded around. The PR team will object, but I'll tell them to deal with it. I want you focusing on destroying the mothership."
Lem was taken aback.
Father smiled. "Don't look so surprised. I've learned my lesson, Lem. You have good ideas. Your strategies are better than mine. I ruined what you had planned with Victor and Imala. I take full responsibility. Their deaths are on my hands. I don't expect you to forgive me for that. I only expect you to keep going. Your plan worked, or at least as much as I allowed it to. Your team got to the Formic ship. That's more than I've accomplished. Now you need to do it again. And this time, I assure you, I won't get in your way."
CHAPTER 9
Goo Guns
Mazer lay on his back in the mud beneath the fuselage of the HERC, twisting two wires together, trying to make a spark. They had landed in a rice field southwest of Lechang, with the nose of the fuselage resting on an embankment between two paddies. That left a narrow space beneath the HERC at the edge of the embankment where Mazer could crawl in, remove some of the hull plates, and access the main electrical system. The two wires touched, there was a crack of electricity, a small motor whirred to life, then something popped inside the circuit boards and a puff of acrid smoke wafted out into Mazer's face.
"That doesn't sound promising," said Wit. He was kneeling at the bottom of the embankment, bending low to look under the fuselage where Mazer was working.
"I think I just cooked the avionics," Mazer said. "Plus the lenses are inoperative, and I can't reboot the system. The only way this thing is flying again is if we launch it from a giant slingshot."
"I'm not heartbroken," said Wit. "I didn't want to get back in that thing anyway."
It had been a rough landing. The rotor blades had slowed the HERC's descent, but they hadn't stopped it. Mazer had brought it down as best as he knew how, but the landing had rattled everyone on board.
Mazer turned over onto his stomach, commando-crawled out from under the HERC, got to his feet, and squinted at the sun. He was covered in mud, and his wet uniform clung to his body. He had shed the biosuit after they had landed. It wasn't much use at this point; the glass shards from the windshield had left gaping holes in it. As for the cuts, Mazer had come out better than he had expected. Two shards of glass had imbedded into his skin, the worse of which was on the back of his right forearm. It had just missed the ulnar artery. Wit had pulled the shard out using tweezers from the med kit, then he had put a few stitches in the wound and covered the area with a liquid bandage. The paste had dried hard and created a sort of vambrace on Mazer's arm.
Mazer walked up the embankment that separated the paddy from the one adjacent and got one of the water bottles from the emergency kit. He unscrewed the top, took a long drink, then poured water into his hand and cleaned the mud from his face.
"Any sign of Shenzu?" he asked.
Wit put the binoculars to his eyes and looked west toward the mountains. Shenzu had gone in that direction a few hours ago with the antenna to try to get a radio signal. "Here he comes now."
Far in the distance, Shenzu stepped from the jungle and made his way across the field toward them. When he arrived Mazer could see it wasn't good news.
"The dozer got through to Dragon's Den, but it makes no difference. The entire convoy from Lianzhou was destroyed. Most of the camp at Lianzhou as well. A small group got out and have regrouped north of the city, but General Sima's army is essentially annihilated."
"That was eleven thousand men," said Wit.
"It gets worse," said Shenzu. "The transports are more aggressive now than they have been. All of them are targeting populated areas now. And I don't just mean the new transports from the second wave. I mean all of them, including the death squads that were in rural areas spraying rice fields and livestock. They're all targeting cities now."
"Which cities?" asked Wit.
"Every city in southeast China, including the big ones. Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan. Many of these had already been evacuated, but there are millions of people who hadn't left. Other transports are hitting villages and cities as far north as Linwu County. I can't imagine what the casualty estimates might be." He took a water bottle and downed half of it. Then he wiped his mouth and said, "That's not all. I also got word on the attacks Sima coordinated against the landers."
"The drill-sledge teams?" asked Mazer.
"They failed," said Shenzu. "The sledges waited too long. The underside of the landers were shielded when the teams arrived. Formics wiped out the two teams and destroyed the drill sledges."
"So the landers still stand," said Wit. "And the Formic army is larger and more aggressive than it ever was before. Do you have any good news?"
"I wish I did."
Wit sighed and thought for a moment. "If the convoy at Lianzhou was taken out, then the science team is lost. That means no one is working on stopping the gas. That should be our priority."
"We're not scientists," said Shenzu. "We can't develop a counteragent."
"No, but we can take goo guns to scientists who can."
"Who?" said Shenzu. "China had assembled its strongest team. How will we find replacements? The best universities and research facilities are south along the coast where the death squads are attacking. Those people will be scattered."
"We don't look in China," said Wit. "We take the goo guns to New Delhi. There's a bioengineer there. A man named Pavar Gadhavi, the world's leading authority on defining the folding mechanisms of protein structures. MOPs have used him before to counter bioweapons. He knows me. If anyone can decipher the liquid it's Gadhavi."
"You're proposing we take an alien bioweapon across the border into India?" said Shenzu. "China would never allow this. India either."
"We can't bring Gadhavi to us," said Wit. "It's not safe. Even if we had a second Chinese team, I'd suggest moving them out of country. Besides, we don't have the eq
uipment Gadhavi will need. We have to go to him."
"You speak as if the military and government have no say in the matter," said Shenzu.
"They don't," said Wit. "Not as far as I'm concerned. Mazer and I were under General Sima's command. That command structure has broken. If you want to help, I could certainly use it. We need your expertise, but I'm not waiting for the CMC or Politburo to debate the matter. They would never approve it anyway. Are you in or out?"
"How do you propose getting to New Delhi? Even if the HERC could fly, it would never make that distance. New Delhi is over thirty-five hundred kilometers away."
"We'll find another aircraft. Airports will have abandoned planes."
Shenzu scoffed. "So you'll steal one."
"'Commandeer' is a more polite term," said Wit.
"What about fuel?" asked Shenzu.
"This is why I need you," said Wit. "You're already making a list of everything we'll require."
"If you try to cross the border illegally, India will shoot you down. They're extremely protective of the border because of the war."
"They won't shoot us down," said Wit. "That would release the Formic gas into their country."
"They won't know you have Formic gas," said Shenzu.
"They will because I'll tell them. Once I do that, whatever fighters they scramble to shoot us down will be ordered to escort us wherever we need to go."
"You've thought this out, haven't you?"
"Actually no, we're making it up together, but it's a beginning. Is there an airfield near here?"
Shenzu was quiet a moment. "They'll arrest you the moment you land in India."
"We've been arrested before. It didn't stick. And anyway Dr. Gadhavi will vouch for us."
"Oh yes, I'm sure a scientist has enough clout to make the government forget you dragged them into an interstellar war. That's a misdemeanor at most. Easily overlooked."
"India is eager to enter this war," said Wit. "They're as determined to wipe out the Formics as you are. China is eager for a solution to the gas. Having India develop the counteragent without China asking allows China to gain an ally without appearing weak. We didn't go begging to India, China can say. They proactively came to us. We didn't need their help, per se, but we'll gladly take it as a show of goodwill. This could birth a coalition, Shenzu."