Orson Card - Earth unavare

“Hey Deen, is that your girlfriend?” someone shouted when a particularly nasty alien roared on-screen.

“Couldn’t be Deen’s girl,” someone else shouted, “she’s much uglier.”

More laughter.

“I’m surrounded by comic geniuses,” Deen deadpanned.

When the vids finished, Wit stepped back into the holospace.

“What gives, Captain?” Lobo asked. “We gearing up for some aliens?”

“Maybe,” said Wit.

The room laughed, but when Wit’s expression stayed flat, the laughter quickly died and a confused awkwardness took its place.

“You can’t be serious, Cap,” said Deen. “I’ve seen a hundred of those vids. They’re all bogus.”

“Is that what you do with your free time, Deen?” said Chi-won.

“Hey, what is this? Pick on Deen Day?” said Deen.

“Seriously, Captain,” said Mabuzza. “Haven’t we been seeing alien invasions since, like, the nineteen hundreds?”

“But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen,” said Wit, “and that it won’t be terrible when it does.” He paused and scanned the crowd. “Situation. A hundred aliens drop into this camp and start killing everyone. What do you do?”

There was a silence, then someone said, “Run like hell.”

The men chuckled.

“All right,” said Wit. “New situation. A hundred Remeseh charge into camp and begin killing everyone. What do you do?”

“ Send them to hell,” said Deen, to another round of laughter.

Wit smiled. “I’m glad to see we have a plan for the Remeseh.” He paused again, then in a louder voice asked, “What do we train for?”

The man answered in unison. “Every contingency!”

Wit doubled his volume. “What do we train for?”

“EVERY CONTINGENCY!”

“A contingency is a possible event that cannot be predicted with certainty,” said Wit. “And we cannot with one hundred percent certainty dismiss the validity of this idea. Is it likely? No. It is possible? Yes. Is it absurd? You may think so, but I would rather be trained for the absurd than dead.”

The men said nothing. He had their attention.

“Which militaries in the world are preparing for such an event?” asked Wit. “Answer: none. Which militaries are prepared for tech weapons far beyond our own? Answer: none. Which militaries would be caught with their pants down and completely unprepared for this? Answer: all of them. But not us. What do we train for?”

“EVERY CONTINGENCY!”

“So how do we prepare?” asked Wit.

They answered him with silence.

“You analyze before you act,” said Wit. “You have no idea what you’re up against. Your previous training and tactics may get you killed the instant you attempt them. You can’t assume this enemy will think or fight or react like a human. A terrified human will flee. A terrified pit bull will jump for your jugular. How will an alien respond to fear? Does it experience fear at all? Analyze before you act. Take note of everything. Their movement, weapons, group behavior, anatomy, reactions to the environment, speed, equipment. Even the smallest detail is valuable new intelligence. Analyze before you act.” A few of the men were nodding. “And in all cases,” said Wit, “without exception, you always presume hostile intent. You must presume they want to kill you. That doesn’t mean you shoot first, it just means you never, never, never trust. And when they do show hostility, you do not hesitate to take them down.”

He looked at each of the men in turn. “Situation. A hundred aliens drop into camp. What do we do? Deen?”

“Analyze before we act, sir. Presume hostile intent.”

“Correct. And what do we do if they prove to be hostile?”

“We send them to hell, sir.”

“You bet your ass,” said Wit.

Kleopatra

The beeping alert on Lem’s desk woke him, and he peeled himself out of his hammock. He drifted to the desk and waved his hand through the holospace. Chubs’s head appeared. “The Formics are approaching Kleopatra,” said Chubs.

“Have they vented?” asked Lem.

“No. They’re decelerating. Fast. We did some additional, long-range scans to see why. It looks like a mass of ships has congregated at Kleopatra and positioned themselves directly in the Formics’ path. They’ve essentially built a blockade.”

“How many ships?”

“Twenty-four by our last count. Data from the sky scanner continues to come in, so we may have some more ships pop up as we get closer. We’re still quite a distance behind the Formic ship, but we were closing the gap with the Formics decelerating. I went ahead and ordered the flight crew to match their deceleration and maintain our distance until you could get up here.”

“I’m on my way.”

Lem threw on his uniform and made his way to the helm. He was still buttoning his jacket when he arrived and met Chubs at the holospace. The systems chart had been replaced with a rendering of all the ships positioned in space forming the blockade. There was a bit of distance between each ship, but together they made a giant wall between the Formic ship and Earth.

“Who are they?” asked Lem.

“Corporates and free miners,” said Chubs. “We can tell from their shape and design that there are ships from Juke Limited, WU-HU, MineTek, and several clans of free miners.”

“Then people know about the Formics,” said Lem. “Does everyone know? Does Earth know?”

“Impossible to say,” said Chubs. “But I highly doubt it. We’re still way too far away for the Formic ship to show up on Earth scopes. The ship’s too small and too dim. The only way Earth could know the ship exists is if someone out here told them. And the interference here is as thick as ever. These ships forming the blockade can’t communicate with Earth any more than we can. Just because they know doesn’t mean anyone else knows. Plus notice that they’re all mining ships. No military ships among them. These aren’t ships sent from Earth. They were already out here. My guess is, one of them saw the Formic ship on their sky scanner and alerted the other ships in the immediate vicinity. Transmissions within a few hundred kilometers get through fine, and this is a main flight path. So there’s going to be traffic. Plus the interference would cause ships to cluster together anyway to try to figure out what was going on.”

“When will the Formics reach them?”

“Within a few hours.”

“Those ships have no idea what the Formics are capable of. They’ll try to communicate with them like the Italians did. We’ve got to tell them what we know.”

“We can’t, Lem. We’d have to get close enough to reach them on the radio. That would put us within range of the Formics’ weapons. There’s likely to be a battle, and we would be thrown into the middle of it.”

“We can’t sit back and let them die, Chubs. Some of those ships are our own people.”

Chubs lowered his voice. “May I speak to you in private, Lem?”

Lem was surprised by the question but he obliged. They moved into the conference room adjacent to the helm, and Chubs closed the door behind them.

“We can’t lose sight of our mission, Lem. We’ve got intel to get to Earth.”

“We’re not losing sight of anything,” said Lem. “We’re saving people’s lives. We don’t have to join in the fight. We don’t even have to slow down. We fly in fast and transmit a message to the ships as we pass. We tell them to flee. We send them everything we know, and we get out. We’ve been waiting for the Formics to decelerate so we can pass them and beat them to Earth. This is our chance.”

“It’s too dangerous, Lem. We can’t go anywhere near the Formic ship. It’s set to vent at any moment. If we’re even remotely close to it when it does, we’re ashes. Consider another alternative. We change course now. We get off the ecliptic and move up in a tall parabola, going high over the Formic ship while it’s stopped. Then we come back down toward Luna. That way, even if the ship vents, we’re too far away to suffer any damage.”