Chubs nodded. “I’ll give the order immediately.” He hurried back to the helm.
Lem returned his attention to the holofield where the captain’s head had been. “How could someone be so asinine? An escort? The man watched all those people die and he has the audacity to give the Formics an escort?”
Benyawe shook her head, her voice barely above a whisper. “Sixty-two ships.”
“We thought it might be more than that,” said Lem.
“So many people.”
Lem wiped his hand through the holofield, searching through the files for the vid of the battle. He found it and played it.
A massive cluster of ships appeared in the holofield. In the center was the Formic ship, huge and imposing, like a giant red moon hurtling through space. Dozens of mining ships were matching its speed, buzzing around it like bees at a hive, firing at the Formics with everything they had, which despite their numbers, seemed woefully inadequate.
Even at a distance Lem recognized several ships from his father’s fleet, all of them armored with additional plates crudely welded to their hulls. They had apparently hastily readied themselves for war, but the added armor did nothing for them. One by one, the Formic guns picked off the ships, slinging hundreds of globules of laserized gamma plasma with perfect accuracy, vaporizing whole clusters of ships in flashes that sent debris hurtling in every direction.
Those ships are nothing to them, Lem realized. We’re gnats. Mild annoyances. Easily pushed away, barely worth the effort.
As Lem and Benyawe watched, ship after ship broke apart into nothing, spilling their innards and crew into space. Most of the debris vanished as it moved out in every direction, but some of it continued forward in the direction the ship had been moving, carried by inertia as if it refused to accept it was dead and leave the fight.
Other pieces of debris were caught in an invisible field behind the Formic ship and pulled along, as if a giant magnet at the rear of the Formic ship caused the debris to change course and follow the ship.
The surviving ships pressed on, undeterred, firing relentlessly, pounding away at the Formics with everything in their arsenal. The outcome was always the same. Death, death, death. In moments, the hive of bees was diminishing, thinning out, leaving only a few persistent ships. Don’t you see it’s useless? Lem wanted to scream at them. Don’t you see you’re going to die? You’re not even damaging them. Pull away. Dying accomplishes nothing.
But the ships in the holofield ignored him, firing and hammering away. It was pathetic now. A mere handful of ships remained. And then in a flurry of Formic fire, they were gone, leaving nothing but the Formic ship itself, unscathed and unflinching, silent once again as it bored through space like a bullet toward Earth, dragging a line of wreckage behind it.
The vid stopped.
Benyawe wiped at her eyes.
And to Lem’s surprise, he realized that his own eyes were wet as well. He wiped at them quickly, furious with himself.
Fools, he thought. They had all been fools. Why had they persisted? Why had they wasted it all? Didn’t they see they weren’t making a dent? Didn’t they know their loved ones on Earth would be devastated?
Of course they knew, he realized. It was their loved ones on Earth that had driven them. That’s what had kept them in the fight, a desperation to save those back home.
I could have done the same, he thought. I could’ve stayed in the fight as well when we confronted them. But I didn’t. I ran. I scurried away like a frightened mouse. Does that make me the wise man or the greater fool?
“I need to get word to my father,” he said. “Laserlines aren’t getting through, but we need to send something, anything. And we need to send it repeatedly, nonstop, a continuous broadcast. Maybe we’ll hit a pocket where the interference is thin. Maybe someone will hear us and relay it through. Maybe it won’t work, but we have to try.”
He waited for her to respond, to say something, anything.
Finally when she spoke, her voice was trembling. “What will they do when they reach Earth, Lem?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But they won’t do it for long. I’m going to destroy it. With or without my father’s help, I am going to destroy it.”
CHAPTER 9
Announcement
Victor stepped through the doorway and into the small furnished apartment. It was a company suite, located underground in Juke’s tunnel system and normally reserved for employees from Earth when they visited corporate headquarters. The lights came on, and an image of the Imbrium skyline at night appeared on the wall where a window should be.
“Someone will bring you your meals,” said Simona. “If you get hungry before then, there’s a kitchenette and a fully stocked pantry. Help yourself.”