Orson Card - Earth unavare

No. He knew that wasn’t true. She was erasing them. She hadn’t been lying.

But had she really sent him a laserline warning him of the Formics? Or was that some ploy to make him feel guilty? What had Father said? “Guilt is the greatest weapon because its cuts rarely heal and it aims for the heart.”

No, Concepcion Querales was nothing like Father. Father might try to burden Lem with guilt for some personal gain, but something told Lem that Concepcion didn’t play that game. Deceit and dominion and the twisted manipulation of human emotion weren’t the old lady’s style.

Mono stood in the cargo bay, twisting his pinkie finger and wishing he were a million klicks away.

“What were you thinking?” said Concepcion. “You disobeyed direct orders and you terrified your mother.”

Mono felt himself shrink a little. All of the men who had stayed behind, along with Concepcion, stood nearby, looking down on him, furious. Even Segundo, who never got angry, now looked as if he was ready to give Mono the spanking of his life. Mono cursed himself. He should have thought his plan through a little better. Of course Mother would eventually figure out that he wasn’t on the WU-HU ship. She would realize Zapa was lying sooner or later. He couldn’t pretend Mono was in the bathroom forever. But Mono hadn’t thought that far ahead. He hadn’t considered what would happen next. Mother had gone to the WU-HU captain in tears, according to Concepcion, and the captain had radioed immediately to El Cavador. After that it was just a matter of Concepcion getting on the ship’s loudspeaker and telling Mono, wherever he was on the ship, to get his butt to the cargo bay immediately.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” asked Concepcion.

“I wanted to help,” said Mono. “I’m good with the small-hand work. Vico said so. You might need that.”

Concepcion rubbed her eyes.

Segundo turned to Concepcion. “What are we going to do? I wouldn’t recommend we dock again. The WU-HU ship hit us hard. We took a little structural damage, nothing to be concerned about, but enough to weaken the area around the docking hatch. I wouldn’t risk another high-speed dock if we don’t have to.”

“You’ve put us in a very difficult position, Mono,” said Concepcion. “I thought Vico had trained you better.”

That did it. He could bear the angry looks of two dozen men; he could tolerate a good tongue-lashing; but to think that this would disappoint Vico, to think that Vico would disapprove, that was too much for Mono to bear. He covered his eyes and began to cry. “Don’t tell Vico. Please. Don’t tell Vico.”

To Mono’s surprise, they responded with silence. No one lashed out. No one told him he couldn’t be an apprentice anymore. They just stood there and watched him cry. Finally Concepcion spoke again, and this time her voice was calm. “From now on Mono, when I give you an order or when your mother gives you an order, you will obey it. Do I make myself clear?”

He nodded.

“I want to hear your answer,” said Concepcion.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I appreciate your willingness to help, Mono, but lying to your mother and getting others to lie for you is not how we operate. We are family.”

He wanted to tell her that it was for the family that he had stayed and for the family that he had lied, but he didn’t think that would help his situation.

She made him stand off to the side while the men checked their equipment. Helmets, suits, propulsion packs, magnets, helmet radios. Mono watched them work, feeling foolish and angry with himself. He had frightened Mother when all he ultimately wanted to do was drive her fear away.

Segundo set up a workbench to assemble the timers and magnet discs to the explosives. The explosives weren’t live. That required a blasting disc, which the men would insert into the mechanism when they set the charges on the Formic ship, so there was no chance of them detonating prematurely. Segundo enlisted four men to help him assemble the timers, but it quickly became clear that the men were out of their element; they could set explosives, but they didn’t know wiring and chip work. Finally, after forty-five minutes, Segundo excused the men and called Mono over.

“Don’t think this means you’re not in trouble,” said Segundo.

Mono kept his face a blank and didn’t say a word. He worried that he might say the wrong thing or smile at the wrong time and anger Segundo and spoil his chance to help.

The timers were a cinch to assemble. He and Vico had done similar work on other things dozens of times. It was just a matter of cutting and rewiring and making a few taps with the soldering gun. The magnet discs were a little trickier, and Mono ended up changing the design Segundo had started. Instead of having the magnets underneath the explosive, which would dampen the explosive’s damaging effect to the hull, Mono used smaller magnets around the rim of the device and increased their attraction with a second battery. It was nothing innovative, really. Mono was merely copying something Victor had done when they had repaired one of the water pumps. But Segundo, who had been watching him silently work, picked up the piece when Mono was finished and nodded. “This is the kind of thing Vico would do.”

It was more praise than Mono could have hoped for, and even though he thought it might get him in trouble, he couldn’t help but smile.

Segundo secured his helmet and stepped into the airlock. They were minutes away from reaching the Formic ship, and a quiet intensity had settled among the men. They had drilled their maneuvers so many times over the past few days-using a wall in the cargo bay as the hull of the Formic ship and setting down dummy explosives over and over again until it was second nature-that Segundo didn’t feel nearly as much anxiety as he thought he would. They could do this.

Once everyone was in the airlock and the door secured, Bahzim had them check and recheck each other’s equipment. Segundo was especially thorough with those around him and found nothing out of order. Concepcion then gathered them in a circle for prayer, asking for protection and mercy and that a heavenly hand watch over the women and children. At the “Amen,” Segundo crossed himself and offered his own silent prayer for Rena and Victor.

Everything moved quickly after that. Bahzim ordered them to clip the D-rings of their safety harnesses onto the mooring cable that would be shot down to the surface of the ship. Segundo positioned himself at the front of the line so that he would be the first one on the Formic ship. He knew that many of the younger men were watching him closely, and he suspected it would put them at ease to see him leading out. Concepcion strapped herself into the seat on the winch. She would pull everyone in once the charges were set. Segundo couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her in a suit and helmet.

“Remember,” Concepcion said. “Your suits weren’t designed for spacewalks at this speed. They’ll protect you from collisions with space dust, but anything bigger will rip through you like shrapnel. So the less time you spend outside the better. Bottom line, move fast. Set the explosives, click back on the cable, and I’ll reel you back in. Nothing to it.”

Right, thought Segundo. Nothing to it. Just perform a spacewalk at an insane speed, cling to magnets for dear life, and take down an alien ship fifty times our size. Easy.

He turned on his HUD, and windows of data popped up on his visor. He blinked through a few file folders until he found the family photo he was looking for. A candid shot of him, Rena, and Vico at some family gathering a few years ago. He smiled to see how small Vico was then, still a boy. He had grown to his man height so quickly. Segundo’s smile faded. He wondered where Victor was at the moment, rocketing toward Luna all these months, his health slowly deteriorating.