Podolski, a stranger with all this equipment for robbing people.”
“That’s not what it’s for,” said Podolski.
The man raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Got other plans, do you? Enlighten me.”
Podolski said nothing.
The big man sighed. “You’re not being cooperative, Mr. Podolski. I’m no lawyer, but that makes you look guilty.” He took a step closer. “Now if you have Mr. Staggar’s money, this could all be resolved rather easily.”
“I don’t have his money,” said Podolski. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
The man smiled. “You may not know his name, but you know the man. I’ll refresh your memory. Dead guy. Docking tunnel. Ugly as a rock, probably from getting hit in the face over the years for being obstinate just like you.”
The man’s hand was suddenly around Podolski’s neck, squeezing. Podolski gagged. His windpipe felt crushed. The man’s fingernails dug into Podolski’s skin.
“These aren’t difficult questions, Mr. Podolski. I’m trying to be reasonable, and you’re not meeting me halfway. So I’ll be clearer for your sake. You give me whatever cash you took from Mr. Staggar, and I’ll do a poor job with the paperwork and forget you and I shared words. That strikes me as a reasonable proposition. What do you say?”
Podolski saw spots. His lungs screamed for air. He wanted to assure the man that he didn’t have what he was looking for. He tried to say, “I can’t give you what I don’t have.” But all that came out in a wheezy desperate whisper was, “I can’t.”
The man took it as defiance.
Podolski was flying. The man had thrown him, and Podolski was weightless. Podolski went through the doorway and out into the marketplace, his arm striking the door frame as he passed. He heard something snap. His body spun. People screamed and dodged. He hit something else midflight-he didn’t know what-then struck the shielded glass wall opposite and bounced away. The big man caught him in the air and slammed him back face-first against the glass. Podolski’s arm was broken. He could feel it bent awkwardly behind him. The man was at his ear, saying something, but Podolski couldn’t make it out. Everything sounded muffled and distant.
Beyond the glass was space, black and silent and sprinkled with stars. Podolski wanted to tell the man that he had money for passage to Luna. The man could have that. Podolski didn’t care. But the words wouldn’t form in his mouth. They were buzzing around inside him, but he couldn’t grasp them and get them out.
He is going to kill me, thought Podolski. I am going to die here, alone, eight billion klicks from home.
There was a distant flash of light in space.
Then the sky was no longer black. It was a wall of green, flameless fire rushing forward. And in the microsecond before it consumed everything and burned up the world, Podolski realized that death was coming after all, though not in any way he had expected. Nor was he-it turned out-going to die alone. Wasn’t life full of surprises?
CHAPTER 17
Allies
Concepcion called the Council to the helm even though it was the middle of sleep-shift. The adults quickly gathered, groggy and unkempt and alarmed. “Weigh Station Four has been destroyed,” Concepcion said. “We just received the data from the Eye a few moments ago.”
Their faces showed shock, horror, confusion. Those who had been half asleep were now wide awake.
“The hormiga ship unleashed a massive burst of its weapon as it was passing the station,” said Concepcion. “The station subsequently went dark. No light. No power. The main structure is mostly intact, but several pieces have broken off. We don’t have any contact with the station, so we have no way to determine if there are any survivors. We’ve been trying to reach them for some time now, but without success. Segundo believes the weapon could be laserized gamma plasma. If that’s accurate, then it’s likely the station received a fatal dose of radiation.”
“How many people?” asked Rena.
“We don’t know,” said Concepcion. “Several hundred at least.”
One of the Italian survivors began to cry, a woman, Mariana, who had lost her husband and four children. Rena put an arm around her, comforting her. The news was reopening a still-healing wound.
“I thought the hormiga ship was a distance from the station,” said Segundo.
“It was,” said Concepcion. “Which is one of the reasons why we suspect this may not have been a tactical strike.”
“Not a strike?” said Bahzim. “What could it have been? An accident?”
“Edimar will explain,” said Concepcion.
Edimar stepped forward, and a rendering of the hormiga ship appeared behind her in the holospace above the table. “It wasn’t an accident,” she said. “The hormigas deliberately fired their weapon. But based on what we’ve learned from the Eye, it’s not clear if the hormigas were targeting the station.”
“What else could they have been targeting?” said Rena. “If they hit it with a focused burst, it’s too much of a coincidence to suggest they weren’t aiming for it.”
“That’s just it,” said Edimar. “The ship didn’t fire a focused burst. It fired in every direction at once.”
She hit a command on the holotable, and a simulation began. Gamma plasma ejected from all sides of the hormiga ship at once, growing outward, getting larger, until the ship stopped emitting the plasma, and the fast- growing wall of destruction became a giant ring with the hole in the center, continually getting larger as it stretched out in every direction.
“The hormiga ship didn’t fire at the weigh station,” said Edimar. “It fired at everything.”
The simulation was on a loop and began again from the beginning.
“If it fired in all directions at once,” said Rena, “and has a long range, why didn’t we get hit?”
“Because we’re much farther away,” said Concepcion. “Well behind the ship. Over two million kilometers. We’re probably getting some radiation, but it has greatly dissipated by the time it reaches us. Not enough to damage us. Not a lethal dose. We were lucky.”
“Don’t know if I’d call this lucky,” said Rena. “This means the ship’s weapons are far more powerful than we thought.”
“What if they aren’t weapons?” said Segundo. “Or at least, maybe the ship wasn’t using the radiation at that moment as a weapon.”
“What do you mean?” asked Concepcion.
“If it’s sucking up hydrogen atoms at near-lightspeed and taking in all this radiation, it has to expulse it somehow,” said Segundo, “especially when it’s trying to slow down. It doesn’t want to shoot it out the back like it normally does. That would only give it massive thrust. And it doesn’t want to accelerate. It wants to de celerate. So it must be getting rid of the buildup some other way.”
“And if its weapons and fuel are the same substance like we suspect…,” said Concepcion.
“Then its weapons are the means of releasing all that buildup,” finished Segundo. “Notice how the weapons fired in all directions at once at the same amount. That’s logical, because if it released the plasma on just one side or if it released more plasma on one side than on the other, the plasma would generate enough thrust on that side to change the ship’s course, which the ship doesn’t want to do. Its course is set.”
“So Weigh Station Four was destroyed by the ship’s exhaust?” asked Selmo.
“If you want to call it that,” said Segundo. “It’s the one drawback of their weapon. The ship never stops collecting hydrogen. And when they’re decelerating, that’s a problem because they have no other way besides their weapons to dump all the excess. So they blast it out in every direction, and whatever happens to be right outside, tough luck.”
“That’s irresponsible,” said Bahzim. “If you have a system like that, you have to make sure nothing is in the way.”
“Apparently the hormigas don’t care what gets destroyed,” said Segundo.
“So the weigh station was at the wrong place at the wrong time?” said Rena.
