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.
Video taken from inside Lem Jukes’s helmet popped up on Segundo’s HUD. “We’re in position,” said Lem. “Give the word.”
The Makarhu was approaching the Formic ship on the opposite side, and Lem, like Concepcion, was manning the winch on his ship. The plan was for Lem to fire his cable onto the hull at the same instant El Cavador fired hers. Then both ships would send out their men.
“We’re opening our doors,” said Concepcion.
The large airlock doors opened wide, and Segundo stared in wonder and horror at the size of the ship before them. El Cavador was over a hundred meters from the ship, yet the view of the ship filled the entire airlock doorway. Segundo had seen renderings and models of the ship, but until now he hadn’t grasped the sheer immensity of it. It was larger than any structure he had ever seen, and yet it was so smooth and uniform and singular in its design that it didn’t seem like a structure at all. It didn’t seem like something made. It seemed like a giant drop of red paint falling from heaven to Earth. The color surprised Segundo, though he wasn’t sure why. What had he expected? A menacing black?
These are not ignorant monsters, he realized. They are every child’s worst nightmare. The monster that thinks. The monster that can build and move fast and defy every defense. I’ve been in denial, he realized. He had seen the pod, he had seen their tech, but the obstinate, dominant-species part of his brain had refused to believe that a face so horrific and antlike could be more innovative or intelligent than human beings. Yet here was the proof. Here was a whole kilometer of proof.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” asked Lem. “Are you seeing what we’re seeing?”
“We see it,” said Concepcion. “And I’m more convinced than ever. We cannot let this reach Earth.”
“You’re right,” said Lem. “But I don’t like it.”
Segundo agreed. He wasn’t convinced that they’d be the ones to stop it, but it had to stop.
“Makarhu, are you ready to fire your cable?” asked Concepcion.
“Makarhu ready,” said a man’s voice.
“On my mark,” said Concepcion. “Four. Three. Two. One. Cable away.”
The mooring cable shot forward with a large round magnet at its end. Segundo watched the cable uncoil as it flew toward the ship. It seemed to go forever, and then it struck the surface, holding firm. Concepcion gunned the winch, and pulled in the slack. The cable was taut. Bahzim was shouting, “Go, go, go!”
Segundo launched himself out and thumbed the trigger on his propulsion pack. He shot forward toward the ship, keenly aware that he was also moving in the direction of the ship at one hundred and ten thousand kilometers per hour. The smallest rock chunk would kill him, and the thought prompted him to press the thumb trigger harder. The Formic ship was coming up fast. A beeping message in Segundo’s HUD warned him of an impending collision and urged him to reduce his speed. Segundo ignored it. He needed to get down fast or he’d slow down the line. Thirty meters. Twenty. He hit the second thumb trigger, and retro boosters on his thighs and chest quickly slowed
