Orson Card - Earth unavare

“What kind of tech?” asked Lem.

“We don’t know,” said Chubs. “These boxes here could be pebble-killers. Our computers can’t make heads or tails of it. Most of it looks like it’s built from scrap. The computers keep recognizing individual pieces from machines, but since the pieces are all used together in odd combinations, we have no idea what the tech is really for. Whoever these people are, they’re either certifiably insane or genius innovators.”

“I’d rather they be insane,” said Lem.

“Makes two of us,” said Chubs. “I don’t like them having machines we can’t understand. Makes me nervous. And that’s not the worst of it.” He glanced uneasily at Benyawe.

“It’s okay,” said Lem. “She’s here at my invitation.” Lem smiled to Benyawe, appearing nonchalant, though in truth he felt a little panicked. El Cavador looked tougher than he had anticipated. He shouldn’t have brought Benyawe.

Chubs turned to the systems chart and tapped a command. A dozen cables stretching from El Cavador down to the surface of the asteroid suddenly glowed yellow. “Here’s the bad news. They have twelve mooring lines anchoring them to the asteroid. That’s three times more lines than normal.”

“Meaning what?” asked Lem. “They’ve seen us? They’re adding more lines to hunker down?”

“No way,” said Chubs. “You don’t keep that much cable lying around. This has to be how they anchor all the time.”

“Maybe they’ve been bumped before,” said Benyawe. “And now they lay down more lines to discourage anyone from trying again.”

“My assumption as well,” said Chubs. “From the looks of their ship and the number of anchor lines, I’d say these people have seen their share of pirates and claim jumpers.”

“And corporates,” said Benyawe.

Lem shot her a look, but she was facing the holo and didn’t meet his eye.

“The other thing that bothers me is all the activity we’ve detected outside their ship,” said Chubs.

“What kind of activity?” asked Lem.

“Spacewalks. And lots of them. Some to lay down more hull armor. Some to work on their collision-avoidance system. They’ve been very, very active. We haven’t seen more than three or four guys out at a time. But it’s like they know a war is coming.”

“They’ve obviously detected us,” said Lem. “They’re building defenses for our attack.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Chubs. “It’s only three or four guys out there. If they were in prebattle panic mode, they’d have a whole crew out. They’d put every available man behind an effort like that.”

“Maybe that is every available man,” said Benyawe. “Maybe only three or four people are left. Maybe they had an outbreak or something. It’s happened with free miners before.”

“But they do have other people,” said Chubs. “We’ve seen them. While these three guys are strengthening the ship, they’ve got thirty guys working the mine. It’s basically life as usual.”

Lem shrugged. “It’s not that strange if you think about it. They’ve seen us coming, and they’re trying to mine as much as they can before we get there. That’s what I would do.”

“The other possibility,” said Benyawe, “is that they don’t know we’re coming, and strengthening the ship is simply what these three or four guys do. That’s their job. They’re simply going about their business. You could argue that the state of the ship substantiates that idea. It’s well defended. It doesn’t get that way overnight. You can see scorch marks and dents all along their armor, which would suggest that the armor has been there a long time.”

“Maybe,” said Chubs. “It could also mean the armor plates were scorched when they applied them.”

“Not likely,” said Benyawe. “Some of these dents and marks stretch across multiple plates. This is a ship that’s seen action, which brings up another possibility. Maybe they’re not preparing for war with us. Maybe they’ve got a feud with another family, or there’s a ship of thieves in the area.”

“There’s no one else in the area,” said Chubs.

Benyawe shrugged. “So maybe they’re prepping to set out on a six-month journey at the end of which is their enemy. Who knows?”

“I’ve had enough guesswork for one day,” said Lem. “I want answers. How does this affect the bump? Are we a go or not?”

“The mooring cables are the biggest problem,” said Chubs. “That’s a lot of lines. We can’t bump the ship unless every one of those lines is severed. We could cut them with the lasers, but it would be tedious work. It would take way too long. Bumps need to happen fast. Two minutes at the most. Gives them less of a chance to retaliate. I suggest cutting the cables a different way.”

“How?” Lem asked.

Chubs tapped more commands into the system chart, and the holo of El Cavador winked out. A holo of the asteroid took its place, with El Cavador now a small ship moored to the surface. “We’ll land over here,” said Chubs. “On the blind side.”

Lem watched the holo as the Makarhu approached the opposite side of the asteroid and landed at a spot just below what would be El Cavador’s horizon line, hiding the Makarhu from view yet keeping it within striking distance.

“They still haven’t seen us at this point,” said Chubs. “We wait here until four hours into their sleep schedule, when everyone is good and gone to dreamland. Then we send in twelve breakers.”

The breaker bots were small, disc-shaped explosive drones. Corporates used them for mining, sending them down narrow mineshafts to break up large chunks of rock for extraction.

“There’s a ridgeline here,” said Chubs, highlighting the feature on the asteroid. “It runs from our landing site to within a hundred yards of El Cavador. We can take a shuttle out along the ridgeline without them seeing us. The shuttle stops here at the edge of open ground. We throw the breakers from there. Our pilot steers each one to a different mooring line. The bots attach to the lines, then we detonate them all at once. That’s when the attack begins. Once the lines are cut, we come forward with the ship and take out their pebble-killers and their power with our lasers. It’s over at that point. We can brush them aside easy as anything. Ninety seconds tops.”

Lem stared at the holo a moment. “Throwing the breakers? You can send them that far with that much accuracy?”

“The breakers have mini cams. We have a very good pilot. He can steer them pretty much wherever you want them.”

“Won’t El Cavador detect the movement?” asked Lem. “Won’t they see the breakers coming?”

“Their collision-avoidance system doesn’t monitor the surface of the asteroid. It can’t. They’ve got miners walking around the surface all day. Believe me, it’s the last place they would look for an attack.”

Lem didn’t like it. This was supposed to be a clean operation. They would swoop in, zap a few devices on the hull, push the ship aside, and be done with it. Simple. Nothing with breakers. No explosions. No creeping up in a shuttle. This was far more variables than Lem had intended.

One of the crewmen launched from his workstation and landed near Lem.

“They’re rotating away, sir,” said the crewman. “We can accelerate as soon as you’re ready.”

This would be the last push forward. They were close now. They would land on the rock within a few hours. Lem turned to Benyawe. Her face was a mask. She seemed poised, but he knew she was angry. She’d hate this new development more than he did.

“What’s the word, Lem?” said Chubs. “We can cut bait now and scoot away if you’d like. Otherwise we need to punch it. We have a brief window here.”