“More baseless speculation.”
“I’m painting a picture here, Benyawe. I’m reminding you that the rules are different out here in the Deep. I don’t like it any more than you do. These free miners have an obligation to their family, yes, but we have an obligation as well.”
Benyawe frowned. “To the Board, you mean? To our stockholders? Seriously, Lem. You can’t compare that to family.”
“Just because these people are related to each other doesn’t make their cause any nobler than ours. They’ve got two quickships of metal from this rock. They’re going to be fine.”
Lem’s holodisplay chimed, and a message-acceptance request appeared. Lem waved his hand through the holospace, and Chubs’s head appeared.
“We’ve got an issue, Lem,” said Chubs. “Bumping this ship is going to be trickier than we thought. Can you come to the helm?”
Lem left his office immediately. He didn’t want Benyawe tagging along, but she either didn’t get the cues from his body language or she chose to ignore them completely. Either way, she followed him down the hall to the push tube. Before climbing inside, Lem faced her. “If you write up a formal objection,” he said, “I will sign it and put it on record in the ship’s computers. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business on the helm.”
“I’d like to come along,” she said.
It was a bad idea. Engineers never came to the helm, and this wasn’t a good time to start, especially knowing how opposed she was to the bump. “This isn’t a matter for the engineers,” said Lem.
“I’m not just an engineer, Lem. I’m the director of Special Operations, an appointment you gave me. I’d say bumping a ship clearly qualifies as a special operation.”
Lem suddenly understood why Father would put a man like Dublin in charge of engineers. The Dublins of the world never questioned you. If they disagreed with superiors, they zipped their lips and towed the line. That didn’t make them better leaders, per se, but it certainly made Lem’s and Father’s jobs easier. Benyawe was another breed entirely. Staying silent was not in her DNA. But wasn’t that why he had promoted her in the first place? He wanted straight counsel.
“You can come,” said Lem. “But I can’t have you arguing with me at the helm.”
“I don’t argue,” said Benyawe.
“You’re arguing with me now.”
“I’m strongly disagreeing. There’s a difference.”
“Fine. Don’t strongly disagree with me then. My point is, on the helm I am the commanding officer. You can ask questions. You can make observations. But if you take issue with anything I say, keep it to yourself until we’re alone.”
“Fair enough.”
Chubs was waiting for them at the systems chart. The map had been replaced with a large holo of El Cavador. It was nothing like the original holo Lem had seen of the ship-that had been a 3-D rendering the computer had on file for the specific make and model of ship. This was the real thing. The Makarhu was now close enough to the asteroid to take high-res scans of the free-miner ship, and Lem couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“It looks like a tank,” he said.
“We’ve been running scans through the computers all morning,” said Chubs. “I’ve never seen anything like it, not on a free-miner ship, anyway. They’ve got armored plates welded all over the surface. Plus I’ve never seen this much proprietary tech on a single ship. See these protrusions here, here, and here. That’s tech.”
“What kind of tech?” asked Lem.
“We don’t know,” said Chubs. “These boxes here could be pebble-killers. Our computers can’t make heads or tails of it. Most of it looks like it’s built from scrap. The computers keep recognizing individual pieces from machines, but since the pieces are all used together in odd combinations, we have no idea what the tech is really for. Whoever these people are, they’re either certifiably insane or genius innovators.”
“I’d rather they be insane,” said Lem.
“Makes two of us,” said Chubs. “I don’t like them having machines we can’t understand. Makes me nervous. And that’s not the worst of it.” He glanced uneasily at Benyawe.
“It’s okay,” said Lem. “She’s here at my invitation.” Lem smiled to Benyawe, appearing nonchalant, though in truth he felt a little panicked. El Cavador looked tougher than he had anticipated. He shouldn’t have brought Benyawe.
Chubs turned to the systems chart and tapped a command. A dozen cables stretching from El Cavador down to the surface of the asteroid suddenly glowed yellow. “Here’s the bad news. They have twelve mooring lines anchoring them to the asteroid. That’s three times more lines than normal.”
“Meaning what?” asked Lem. “They’ve seen us? They’re adding more lines to hunker down?”
“No way,” said Chubs. “You don’t keep that much cable lying around. This has to be how they anchor all the time.”
“Maybe they’ve been bumped before,” said Benyawe. “And now they lay down more lines to discourage anyone from trying again.”
“My assumption as well,” said Chubs. “From the looks of their ship and the number of anchor lines, I’d say these people have seen their share of pirates and claim jumpers.”
“And corporates,” said Benyawe.
Lem shot her a look, but she was facing the holo and didn’t meet his eye.
“The other thing that bothers me is all the activity we’ve detected outside their ship,” said Chubs.
“What kind of activity?” asked Lem.
“Spacewalks. And lots of them. Some to lay down more hull armor. Some to work on their collision-avoidance system. They’ve been very, very active. We haven’t seen more than three or four guys out at a time. But it’s like they know a war is coming.”
“They’ve obviously detected us,” said Lem. “They’re building defenses for our attack.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Chubs. “It’s only three or four guys out there. If they were in prebattle panic mode, they’d have a whole crew out. They’d put every available man behind an effort like that.”
“Maybe that is every available man,” said Benyawe. “Maybe only three or four people are left. Maybe they had an outbreak or something. It’s happened with free miners before.”
“But they do have other people,” said Chubs. “We’ve seen them. While these three guys are strengthening the ship, they’ve got thirty guys working the mine. It’s basically life as usual.”
Lem shrugged. “It’s not that strange if you think about it. They’ve seen us coming, and they’re trying to mine as much as they can before we get there. That’s what I would do.”
“The other possibility,” said Benyawe, “is that they don’t know we’re coming, and strengthening the ship is simply what these three or four guys do. That’s their job. They’re simply going about their business. You could argue that the state of the ship substantiates that idea. It’s well defended. It doesn’t get that way overnight. You can see scorch marks and dents all along their armor, which would suggest that the armor has been there a long time.”
“Maybe,” said Chubs. “It could also mean the armor plates were scorched when they applied them.”
“Not likely,” said Benyawe. “Some of these dents and marks stretch across multiple plates. This is a ship that’s seen action, which brings up another possibility. Maybe they’re not preparing for war with us. Maybe they’ve got a feud with another family, or there’s a ship of thieves in the area.”
“There’s no one else in the area,” said Chubs.
Benyawe shrugged. “So maybe they’re prepping to set out on a six-month journey at the end of which is their enemy. Who knows?”
“I’ve had enough guesswork for one day,” said Lem. “I want answers. How does this affect the bump? Are we a go or not?”
“The mooring cables are the biggest problem,” said Chubs. “That’s a lot of lines. We can’t bump the ship unless every one of those lines is severed. We could cut them with the lasers, but it would be tedious work. It would take way too long. Bumps need to happen fast. Two minutes at the most. Gives them less of a chance to retaliate. I suggest cutting the cables a different way.”