“Understood.”
Chubs winked out, and the woman’s head appeared in the holospace. She looked exactly as she had months ago: old and commanding and made of steel.
Lem checked his collar then leaned his face into the holospace so that she could see him as well. There would be a time delay in their conversation, and the length of the delay would depend entirely on how close the two ships were.
The old woman spoke first. “Mr. Jukes, I had hoped that our paths would never cross again, but circumstances demand it. I am Concepcion Querales, captain of El Cavador. We are contacting you because we require your assistance. Weigh Station Four has been destroyed. I am sending you all the files I have to prove this fact to you and your crew.”
Lem said nothing. If files were coming, he knew Chubs would immediately start combing through them. But Weigh Station Four destroyed? Impossible. Lem had left there, what, less than a week ago? This was a trick. They were plotting something.
As if Concepcion could read his mind, she said, “Everything I am about to tell you will sound ludicrous to you, and you will no doubt think this some ploy on our part to seek revenge for your attack on our ship. I assure you this is not the case. I am contacting you, Mr. Jukes, because we are desperate for your assistance. An alien ship has entered our solar system. Among the data I have sent you are its trajectory and coordinates. You can look for yourself and see that it’s there. This ship is already responsible for the deaths of an estimated six hundred people, including everyone aboard Weigh Station Four and three members of my own crew. Among the data I’ve sent you is a video of the alien species. This is not a joke, Mr. Jukes, and I would not be contacting you unless we were in dire need. I am sending you rendezvous coordinates. A WU-HU vessel in the area has agreed to join us in an attack on the ship six days from now. Our hope is that you will add your ship’s strength to ours. The alien ship continues to decelerate, and if we all accelerate and change our course slightly, we can intercept it and save countless lives, perhaps Earth itself. I will give you and your crew three hours to review our data and respond. Please acknowledge message received and intention to respond.”
Lem didn’t move, trying to keep his face free of any surprise. “Message received. We will respond. Makarhu out.”
He pulled his face out of the holospace. Chubs’s head appeared almost instantly in front of him. “We got their files. I thought it might be loaded with a virus, but it’s clean. The navigator ran the coordinates she gave us for the ship.”
“And?”
Chubs shook his head. “You better get up here, Lem. There’s something out there. Something like I’ve never seen.”
Lem and Chubs spent two hours going over all of the data from El Cavador. When they finished, they immediately went looking for Benyawe. They found her down in the engineering room with six other engineers, drawing rudimentary designs on the wall of Lem’s new idea for the glaser.
Benyawe smiled when Lem entered. “Mr. Jukes, we were just discussing this bola-shaped design of yours. Perhaps you could explain to the engineers what you explained earlier to me?”
“Some other time,” said Lem. He touched a button, made the drawings disappear, and turned to the gathered engineers. “If you’ll excuse us, we need a moment with Dr. Benyawe in private on an urgent matter.” He gestured to the door. The engineers exchanged glances, startled, then quickly gathered their things and left. Chubs locked the hatch behind them.
“You’ve got my attention,” said Benyawe, with a look of concern.
Lem first played the holo message from Concepcion. Then he played the vids from El Cavador on the wall. Benyawe watched everything in silence, showing little reaction, like a calculating scientific observer. She didn’t even jump as Lem had when the hormiga showed itself on the surface of the pod. When the vids were over, she asked specific questions, and Chubs answered by putting the rest of the data from El Cavador up on the wall. Benyawe was silent as she read through it, clicking through the various windows, checking the math, rechecking the coordinates.
When she finished, she turned and faced Lem. “We can’t call them hormigas. That’s Spanish for ‘ant.’ The scientific community would never approve of a living language classification. It needs to be the Latin. Formic. At least that’s my professional recommendation.”
Lem blinked. “Who the hell cares what we call them? I’ve just showed you a damn alien species, Benyawe. What difference does their name make?”
“All the difference in the world,” said Benyawe. “This is the greatest scientific discovery in our history, Lem. This changes everything. This answers the most fundamental scientific question out there. Are we alone in the universe? The answer, obviously, is no, we are not. And further, we’re not the most technologically advanced species, either, which will sting every human’s pride, I suspect.”
“I am not interested in science, Doctor,” said Lem. “Your scientific mind might be tickled pink at this discovery, but my mind, my logical, practical, reasoning mind, is peeing in his mind pants. There is an alien ship out there rocketing toward Earth with unimaginable firepower and likely malicious intent. Now, if there is any chance whatsoever that this is a hoax and Chubs and I are gullible idiots, tell me now.”
“No,” said Benyawe. “This is legitimate. The evidence is incontrovertible.”
“No doubt in your mind?” asked Chubs.
“None. We need to relay this information to Earth immediately.”
“We can’t,” said Chubs. “Long-range comm is currently shot because of the interference.”
“Even the laserline?” asked Benyawe.
“The transmitter’s out,” said Chubs. “El Cavador believes the venting of the alien ship may have damaged external sensors as far away as a million kilometers. We hadn’t tried sending a laserline in a while or we would have noticed the problem sooner.”
“Now you know what we know,” said Lem. “How do we respond to El Cavador? I’ve already gotten Chubs’s opinion. Now I want yours.”
Benyawe looked surprised by the question. “We tell them we’ll fight, of course. We tell them we’ll be at their side, giving them everything we’ve got. We have to stop that ship, Lem. Destroy it if we can, though I suspect their captain is correct. Crippling it is the best we can hope for. But as for our answer, it must be a resounding and absolute yes. The Makarhu will join the fight.”
Lem nodded gravely. “That’s what I thought you would say.”
“You disagree?” asked Benyawe. “It’s my vote against both of yours?”
“No,” said Lem. “The decision’s unanimous. We attack these bastards.”
CHAPTER 18
Formics
Two heads floated in the holospace in front of Concepcion: Lem Jukes and Captain Doashang of the WU-HU Corporation. Their ships were still several days away from intercepting the Formic ship, but they were now close enough to each other that a three-way conference was possible without much interference. Concepcion, despite feeling exhausted and suffering through a flare-up of arthritis in more places than she cared to count, put her best face forward in the holospace. Let them see my eyes and know that we as a family will not fail them.
There were introductions. Doashang seemed a most capable captain. Lem Jukes had an air of his father about him, which was to say confident in a way that was both alluring and off-putting at the same time. He was in his mid-thirties if Concepcion had to guess. A child, really. Less than half her age. Goodness she was old. She had still been on Earth when she was that age, working in her father’s bodega in Barinitas, Venezuela, convinced that she would be stuck there in the heat and dust for the rest of her life, selling cold bottles of malta to the banana farmers as they came down from the fields.