Orson Card - Earth unavare

And now they were gone.

Father said nothing for a moment. He understood the implication. The corporates had crippled more than the ship; they had crippled the family’s future. How could they mine now? How could they get money for needed supplies or spare parts? How could they exist in the Deep without good drills?

“What else?” asked Father.

“Four of our PKs are gone as well,” said Selmo. “That leaves us with two. Here again, the corporates knew what they were doing. They left us with one PK on either side of the ship, enough for us to fly out of here and defend ourselves against most collision threats, but not enough to retaliate and attack their ship. The only upside here, if there is one, is that they didn’t slice up the PKs. They just cut them loose. I take that to mean they expect us to recover them and repair them elsewhere.”

“How kind of them,” said Father. “Remind me to send flowers. What else?”

“Our other big loss is communication. The laserline transmitter’s gone. We can’t send a distress message even if we wanted to.”

“It also means we can’t warn anyone about the starship,” said Victor.

“True,” said Selmo, “but that’s the least of our problems right now.”

“What about ice?” asked Father. “How are we with air and fuel?”

Selmo smiled. “That’s a ray of sunshine. The holding bay is ninety-five percent full of ice. We harvested as much as we could from the asteroid when we first got here. So we’re fine for fuel and oxygen for a while. That’s more than enough to get us wherever we want to go within, say, five to six months from here.”

Victor felt relieved to hear that, at least. Ice was life. The reactors melted it and separated the hydrogen from the oxygen. The hydrogen they used for fuel. The oxygen they breathed.

Selmo moved his stylus in the holospace and rotated the schematic. “If you’d like more good news, it appears as if the other life-support systems are undamaged. Water purifiers are good. Air pumps are fine. Whoever these corporates are they picked their targets carefully.”

“Leaks?” asked Father.

“None that we can detect,” said Selmo. “We’re running another scan just to be certain, but it looks like we got through without a breach. We were lucky. The impact wasn’t that hard, and their lasers weren’t trying to penetrate. Plus the armor helped.”

“Who are they?” Father asked. “Why didn’t we see this coming?”

Selmo sighed. “That’s my fault. This is the corporate ship we sent the laserline to ten days ago. I should have suspected something when they didn’t show up on the scans anymore. I assumed that they had moved on. I never thought that they were creeping up on us.”

“No one is at fault,” said Concepcion. “They knew our scanning capabilities and they exploited them. End of story.”

“If they got our message, why would they attack us?” Father asked.

“Selmo and I did the math,” said Concepcion. “When we sent out the laserline, they were already coming for us. They never got our message. They missed it. This has nothing to do with the laserline. They wanted the asteroid, pure and simple.”

Dreo came to the holotable. “I’ve got their network. Give the word and we’re a go.”

Father turned to Concepcion. “We launched a snifferstick?” he asked.

Sniffersticks were small hacker satellites launched from one ship to spy on another. To work, they had to be within range of a ship’s network yet far enough away to avoid triggering the ship’s PKs. Fifty meters was about as close as any snifferstick dared. Accessing the ship’s network was the tricky part, especially if it was a corporate ship. Corporates had armies of coders and specialists who did nothing but devise defenses against sniffersticks. Most families wouldn’t dream of even trying to hack a corporate. But most families didn’t have Dreo, either, who could wiggle his way into any network.

“We launched it just before you came to the helm,” said Concepcion. “I want to know who bumped us.”

“What if they detect us nosing around their network?” said Father. “That might instigate another attack.”

“They won’t know,” said Dreo. “I’ve taken every precaution.”

“No offense,” said Father, “but are you sure? We’ve been out here for years. Who knows what other sweeper programs they’ve got running these days? They might have new ways to detect us that we don’t know about. Is this a risk we want to take? They’re corporates. What else do we want to know?”

“They have no reason coming out to the Kuiper Belt when there are so many asteroids in the A Belt, ready for the taking,” said Concepcion. “If they’re moving out here now, the other families will want to know. This will affect all the clans. We’ve lived in relative peace for a long time now. If corporates are beginning to invade our space, that’s intel we need to spread. Dreo assures me we’ll remain invisible.”

“Then why don’t we upload some malware or venomware and damage their systems while we’re in there?” said Victor.

“Because we are not going to attack them at all,” said Concepcion. “I want information, not revenge.”

Victor looked at the faces around the table, and saw that not everyone shared in that opinion.

“Please proceed, Dreo,” said Concepcion. “And bring up their network on the holotable, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Dreo returned to his workstation, and the schematic of the ship in the holospace disappeared, replaced with a series of three-dimensional icons spinning in space: flight log, engineering, laserlines, field trials, Lem, Dr. Benyawe, and others.

“Give me the manifest,” said Concepcion. “Tell me who the captain is.”

Photos and a holovideo of a handsome man in his early thirties appeared. Concepcion selected the window of data beside one of the photos and expanded it.

“Lem Jukes,” she said, reading the name.

“As in the Jukes?” said Father. “Is he related?”

“Ukko’s son,” said Concepcion.

“I’ll be damned,” said Selmo. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Copy as much of this data as we can,” said Concepcion. “I want to know what their intentions are. Then let’s get the severed sensors back in the ship and get out of here before Mr. Lem Jukes decides to take more potshots. I’m going to be with Gabi and Lizbet, and then I’ll head to the fuge to address the family.” She turned to Father. “Don’t waste time and energy working on what we can’t fix. Work with Selmo to identify those things we can repair. Power first, communication second.”

“What about the starship?” asked Victor.

“What about it?” said Concepcion. “Selmo’s right. We’re not in any position to address that right now. Nor can we relay what we’ve found. We’re silent until we get communication back online.”

“We’re not going to be able to recover everything,” said Father. “We’re going to need parts and supplies.”

“The nearest weigh station is four months away,” said Concepcion. “The closest help we have are the Italians. They received our message and are watching the sky. If we hurry, maybe we can reach them before they move on. They’ll have plenty of supplies we could use.”

Victor looked at Father and could tell that he was thinking the same thing Victor was. Going for the Italians was a risk. There was no way to send the Italians a transmission to tell them to stay put and wait. If El Cavador arrived and the Italians had moved on, the ship would be in serious trouble.

Concepcion left the bridge.

Victor turned back to the holospace and looked at Lem Jukes. Some of the photos were ID shots: a straight headshot, a profile shot. But others were more casual photos taken from the ship’s archives: Lem standing with his father, Ukko Jukes, in a ceremonial photo at what must have been the ship’s departure; a more editorial shot of Lem in action at the helm, leaning forward over some holodisplay, pointing at nothing in particular, clearly a staged shot for the press. And then there was the brief holovideo. It was twelve seconds long at the most, running on a loop, playing over and over again. Lem was at a dinner party, sitting at a table after a meal. Empty wineglasses, fancy cutlery, a slice of half-eaten cake on a plate. There was no audio, but Lem was clearly telling a story, using his hands and his charming smile to emphasize his tale. Two beautiful women sat on either side of him, hanging on his every word. The story reached its end, and everyone burst out laughing, including Lem. Then the video began again.