outside.
They attacked Segundo with an unrelenting ferocity, pulling at his hand magnets, pulling at his knees. He kicked and shook and fought, but it was no use. One hand magnet came loose. Then the other one. Then the last knee magnet was disconnected, and Segundo was suddenly floating just above the surface of the ship. The Formics attacking him didn’t let go to save themselves, but instead continued clinging to him, poking, stabbing, striking out. One of the creatures anchored to the surface pushed Segundo away, and that was all it took. He drifted away from the ship, swinging, punching, furiously trying to break the hold the Formics had on him.
Pain exploded in his leg. He looked down. One of the Formics without a helmet had pulled away its own mask and bit through Segundo’s suit and into the meat of his calf. Foam inside the suit inflated around the puncture, sealing off the leak, but Segundo barely felt it over the hot, stabbing agony of the bite. He screamed, half in pain, half in fury, but if anyone could hear him, they didn’t respond.
Lem clung to the side of the cargo bay and watched in horror as his men on the surface of the Formic ship scrambled for the cable. Chubs was beside him at the winch, waiting for the order to pull up the line. Lem zoomed in with his visor. Formics without spacesuits were pouring out of the breached holes and rushing to the men. When they reached someone, they pulled the man’s magnets free and tumbled with him out into space.
“They’re not even bothering with suits,” said Lem. “They’re killing themselves to peel us off the ship. They’re dying and they don’t even care.”
Lem shifted his view to the base of the cable and watched as one of the Juke men clipped his harness onto the line. Just as the man was about to launch away from the ship toward Lem and the safety of the cargo bay, two Formics seized him from behind by the waist and wrestled him down. The man twisted and struggled and fought, but the Formics showed incredible strength and seemed unfazed by the man’s attacks.
Lem extended a hand. “Chubs, give me your gun.”
“You can’t hit anything at this range.”
“Give me your gun.”
Chubs handed it over. It was a small and seemingly insignificant weapon, with its short barrel and tiny dart cartridges. Lem handled it carefully, having seen how lethal it could be back at Weigh Station Four. Tightening his grip around the gun, Lem widened his stance with his boot magnets and extended his arm, aiming at the two Formics struggling with the man at the end of the cable. The fight was fast and violent, however, and Lem quickly saw how dangerous it would be to fire into the melee. Even at close range he wasn’t certain he could hit the Formics and not the man. Lem cursed under his breath and shifted his aim to one of the two holes where Formics continued to emerge in a steady stream. It stunned him to see so many of the creatures rush out into the vacuum of space with a feeble mask as protection-or in the case of a few, with no protection at all. It was suicide. Nothing could survive for more than-how long? — twenty seconds? Maybe not even that long. Didn’t they know they were killing themselves? And if so, what kind of leader demanded and received that degree of loyalty?
Lem squeezed the trigger. A dart discharged. It flew toward the hole but then disappeared from view at a distance when it became too small to track. Lem lowered the gun. Chubs was right; it was pointless.
He returned his attention back to the base of the cable. The two Formics were gone, and the man who had clipped onto the cable looked dead. His body hung limp by the harness, floating in space, bent in an awkward position.
Two more Juke men reached the line. One of them unsnapped the dead man and pushed his corpse away, sending it out into space. As they attached their harnesses onto the line, two more crewmen arrived and buckled on as well. Rather than moving orderly up the cable, the men momentarily fought for position, struggling to be the first up the line. Their infighting would be their undoing, Lem realized, as he spotted three Formics racing toward them and moving fast.
“Pull up the line,” said Lem. Saving four men was better than saving none at all.
Chubs turned off the magnet anchor and switched on the winch. The cable began to move away from the Formic ship, but not before three Formics grabbed at the men’s feet and climbed upward. Now there were seven bodies at the end of the line, all of them lashing out, fighting, kicking, and spinning.
The winch continued to reel in the cable, moving faster now. One of the Formics scrambled past the twisting mass of bodies and was now climbing up the cable directly toward Lem.
Lem fired the gun, but he must have missed as the Formic kept coming, unharmed and unhindered.
“I’m cutting the cable,” said Chubs.
“No,” Lem shouted. “We have men on that line.”
The Formic was moving faster now, scurrying up the cable, eyes locked with Lem’s. Forty meters away. Then thirty.
“It’ll get on the ship,” Chubs said.
“Pull in the line,” Lem said. “That is an order.”
Lem could see the Formic’s mouth now, clenched tight to keep it alive in the vacuum as long as possible. Fall off, Lem thought. Come on. Open your mouth and die.
He fired another dart, and this time the creature was close enough that Lem saw the dart miss. The men on the line were still fighting off the other two Formics, screaming and begging for Lem to pull the line in faster.
The climbing Formic had almost reached Lem. Ten meters. Five.
The cable snapped free from the winch, severed by Chubs, and the cargo bay door swished closed. Lem watched through the glass in the bay door as the Formic’s momentum carried him to the ship. The creature bounced against the closed door and ricocheted away, its hands scratching at the ship for a moment, struggling to find purchase. The men on the cable cried out, begging not to be left behind. Chubs hit the command on his wrist pad to sever the men from the radio frequency.
Lem grabbed him by the front of the suit and slammed him back against the wall. “I gave you an order!”
“And your father gave me another order. Protect you at all costs. His word trumps yours.”
Chubs opened a frequency to the helm. “Get us as far away from the Formic ship as possible. Now!”
“We can’t leave El Cavador,” said Lem.
“If the Formics are willing to send out men without air, they’ll be willing to roast them with lasers if it means taking us down.”
Lem’s expression was hard. “You killed our own men.”
“I saved your life, Lem. That’s two you owe me.”
Mono floated at the crow’s nest window, his face pressed against the glass, his lip trembling. From here he could see everything: men peeling away from the Formic ship; Formics pulling off the explosives; a swarm of Formics coming out of the holes to fight, kick, bite, and attack. They were worse than any monster Mono had imagined, made all the more horrible by the sounds coming from the radio frequency, which Mono had opened on Edimar’s terminal. Frantic shouts. Men screaming. The sounds of a struggle. Concepcion telling everyone to hurry back to the cable. Mono wanted to go to the radio and turn it off, but he was too afraid to move.
He shouldn’t have left Mother. That had been a stupid mistake. This was grown-up business. He shouldn’t be here. He had helped, yes, and played an important part, but right now he didn’t care. He would go back and not play an important part if it meant he could be on the WU-HU ship with Mother.
Why had he lied to her? He loved Mother, and now his last act to her would be a lie. And yes, it would be his last act. He was going to die. He knew that. He had heard everything the men had said over the past few days, even when they thought they were talking quietly enough for him not to hear. If the Formics discovered them, they had no chance.
I’m sorry, Mother.
He felt doubly ashamed because he knew Vico wouldn’t be afraid. Vico wouldn’t flinch at this. He would be down there with the others, fighting. And yet, even the mere thought of Vico gave Mono a touch of courage. He launched across the room to the radio and clicked it off. The room went silent. Mono took a deep breath. He could feel it calm him, so he took another one, a deep calming breath like Mother had taught him to take whenever he had cried so much that his breathing became rapid. “Easy now,” Mother would say, gently taking him into her arms. “You’re going to make yourself sick, Monito. Deep breaths.” And then she would brush her fingers through his hair and hum into his ear until he got himself under control again.
It worked now, here in the crow’s nest. Mono’s lips stopped trembling, and his muscles relaxed. Outside the
