go there and wait them out.”
“They’d see the ship,” said Chubs. “They wouldn’t stop. It wouldn’t work.”
“Drop me off,” said Podolski. “Let me stay there, while you go off a ways. I’ll clean their system, they leave, I call you back, you pick me up.”
Chubs shook his head. “Ships like theirs have incredible sky scanners. They’d see us from way out. The only way that would work is if El Cavador believed we were heading back to Luna.”
Podolski paused, staring down at the holotable, his face taut with tension. Finally he looked up. “Then that’s what we do. You drop me off at Weigh Station Four with some gear and money. Then you head back to Luna. I wait them out, clean their system, then buy passage back on a freighter.”
Lem and Chubs looked at one another.
“You know,” said Chubs, “that just might work.”
CHAPTER 14
Pod
Concepcion stood at the holotable at the helm, watching one of the PKs cut through the wreckage of the Italian ship. The miners outside were sending her live video to the holospace in front of her. Everyone who worked at the helm was gathered around Concepcion, their faces taut with worry. For her part, Concepcion did her best to appear poised and in command, though inside she felt tense and helpless. Whittling down the wreckage with a laser was taking an incredible risk. If the wreckage were to shift or rotate unexpectedly while they were cutting, even only slightly, the laser might cut into the room where the survivors were waiting, breaching the airtight walls and killing everyone inside within moments.
Concepcion shuddered at the thought. It would be a cruel death, made all the more horrible because the people trapped inside now believed they were being rescued. Right as we fill their hearts with hope, we screw up and give them a death more terrible and traumatic than what they would have suffered had we never come along.
But no, the wreckage wouldn’t shift, she told herself. The miners were taking every precaution. They had set up mooring cables and two long pylons that extended from El Cavador out to the wreckage, holding the wreckage in place and preventing it from drifting into the ship. It was a precarious procedure, yes, but they were doing everything they could to protect those inside.
The laser finished a cut, and the severed section of wreckage broke free and drifted away. There was an audible sigh of relief from the crew, and a few of them even applauded and embraced one another. Concepcion remained still and unresponsive. The job was nowhere close to being finished, and she had learned through sad experience never to celebrate prematurely. They were not out of danger yet. Whatever had done this to the Italians was still out there.
The laser beam stopped cutting. The miners turned on the winches and pulled on the mooring cables, rotating the wreckage into a different position in preparation for a second cut. Since the wreckage was unstable and had lifelines attached and people inside, the miners didn’t rush the process. They rotated the wreckage slowly, being careful not to jerk any of the lines. It made Concepcion realize how tedious and lengthy a process this would be: cutting and rotating and cutting and rotating until they had whittled down the structure small enough to fit inside the airlock.
It relieved her to know that Victor and Segundo and Toron were out there somewhere continuing the search. The work with the laser drill hadn’t put a full stop on the rescue efforts.
Of course, sending the three out in the quickship didn’t exactly put her mind at ease either. Under any other circumstances she wouldn’t have taken such a risk, especially with the only two mechanics in the crew. If something happened to both of them, who would keep the ship operational? Not Mono. He was too young, too inexperienced. He had barely had enough time to learn the fundamentals, if that. I should have considered that before blessing the mission, she thought. That had been careless. But what could she have done? Only Victor could fly the quickship, and Segundo wouldn’t have let him go without accompanying him.
The laser started cutting again.
Concepcion watched a moment, then her handheld vibrated. She put it to her ear and answered it.
Edimar’s voice was rushed and panicked. “It’s coming back,” she said. “The pod. It’s already close and moving fast. We have about twenty-eight minutes before it reaches the debris cloud.”
Concepcion leaped forward to the holotable and swiped her hand through the holospace. The video feeds disappeared. “Show me,” she said.
The people around her recoiled, sensing her alarm. “What is it?” asked Selmo.
A system chart with dots of light appeared in the holospace. One light was marked EL CAVADOR. Other smaller dots of light immediately around the ship represented debris. Concepcion ignored those and focused instead on a distant dot of light off to the side, alone out in space. As she watched, a computer-rendered line representing the ship’s trajectory extended from the dot across the holospace and landed directly on El Cavador.
The crew stared. They all knew what it meant.
“How much time do we have?” asked Selmo.
“Less than twenty-eight minutes,” said Concepcion.
“Everyone to stations,” said Selmo. “Move!”
Selmo stayed by her side while the crew hurried to their workstations. Dreo entered from the corridor and flew to the holotable, coming in from the crow’s nest. Concepcion spoke into the handheld. “Watch the pod’s progress, Edimar. If it changes speed or its trajectory notify me immediately.” She ended the call and turned to Dreo and Selmo. “What are our options?” she asked.
“Hard to say,” said Selmo. “We don’t know what we’re up against. We know next to nothing about this pod.”
“We know it destroyed the Italians,” said Dreo, “one of the best defended clans in the Belt. We know it’s lethal. We know the Italians’ death wasn’t an accident. The pod destroyed four ships, not just one. You can’t chalk that up as a mistake. It wiped them out. This was an intentional kill.”
“Agreed,” said Selmo. “But we don’t know if it considers us a threat as well.”
“It’s heading straight for us,” said Dreo. “It’s not coming here to play a hand of cards. It likely thinks we’re part of the Italians. And for whatever reason it considered the Italians a threat. We don’t know why, but it’s probably safe to assume that the Italians didn’t provoke it. That would be foolish. The Italians wouldn’t endanger themselves. They’d play it cautiously. Which would suggest that this thing killed them indiscriminately. But in my mind that isn’t even the question we need to answer. The ‘why’ is irrelevant right now. We need to know the ‘how.’ How did it wipe them out? What are its weapons capabilities? Can it attack from long range? Are we already within its reach? Consider the debris. The pieces of wreckage aren’t clean cut. The edges aren’t straight. This doesn’t look like laser work. It looks like explosions, like something ripped the ships apart. How did it do that? And more importantly how do we defend against it?”
“Maybe we can’t,” said Selmo. “Unless the pod attacked and destroyed the Italians incredibly fast, the Italians would have fired back. They would have given the pod everything they had. Yet their weapons, which are much stronger than ours, apparently had little to no effect on this thing. What makes us think we can take it down when the Italians couldn’t?”
“Then what do you suggest?” asked Dreo. “We can’t run. The pod’s too fast. It would catch us easily. Plus running only makes it harder to defend ourselves or to hit it with the lasers.”
“If the pod thinks we’re with the Italians,” said Selmo, “if we’re an enemy by association, then perhaps we should move out of the debris cloud. If we distance ourselves from this place, the pod might disassociate us from the Italians and leave us alone.”
“If we move out of the cloud, we’ll be exposed,” said Concepcion. “The debris is the best defense we have right now. It provides some cover and it likely throws off the pod’s sensors.”
“If it even has sensors,” said Dreo.
“Point taken,” said Concepcion. “We need information about this pod, and the only people who can provide it are the survivors inside the wreckage.” She punched a command into her handheld and called Bahzim, who was
