“Yes, but what are your intentions now?”
She seemed confused. “What do you expect our intentions to be? That we will use your corporate secrets against you, sell them on the black market perhaps, contact one of your competitors?”
“Yes, actually.”
She laughed. “We’re not like you, Lem. As difficult as it might be for you to believe, there are decent people in the universe who don’t scheme or push aside others for profit. I haven’t given your files any consideration since we took them. We’ve been occupied with trying to stay alive. If you would like me to erase them from our system, I will gladly do so. They are of no use to me.”
“Right now?” Lem couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’ll erase them immediately.”
“I’ll give the order, the moment we terminate this call.”
“How do I know you’re not lying? How do I know you won’t keep them or sell them?”
She shook her head, pitying him. “You won’t know, Lem. You’ll have to take my word for it.” She moved as if to end the call, then turned back. “Incidentally, we sent you a laserline before you attacked us, warning you about the Formic ship. But since you had left your position to conduct your unprovoked strike against us, you didn’t receive that message. Which is too bad. If you had received it maybe you wouldn’t have killed my nephew and destroyed our laserline transmitter. Which means we could have warned Weigh Station Four and everyone else a long time ago. If you have an ounce of soul, Lem, I suspect that knowing that-knowing the ramifications of your decision, knowing how damaging your selfishness really is-will keep you up at night far longer than losing your precious corporate files.”
Her face disappeared, ending the transmission.
How dare she, thought Lem. How dare she blame him for the destruction of Weigh Station Four. He pushed away from the desk. Free miners. Dirty little scavengers. He shouldn’t have mentioned the files. Now she’ll suspect they have great value. She’s probably contacting the WU-HU ship to try and sell them right now.
No. He knew that wasn’t true. She was erasing them. She hadn’t been lying.
But had she really sent him a laserline warning him of the Formics? Or was that some ploy to make him feel guilty? What had Father said? “Guilt is the greatest weapon because its cuts rarely heal and it aims for the heart.”
No, Concepcion Querales was nothing like Father. Father might try to burden Lem with guilt for some personal gain, but something told Lem that Concepcion didn’t play that game. Deceit and dominion and the twisted manipulation of human emotion weren’t the old lady’s style.
Mono stood in the cargo bay, twisting his pinkie finger and wishing he were a million klicks away.
“What were you thinking?” said Concepcion. “You disobeyed direct orders and you terrified your mother.”
Mono felt himself shrink a little. All of the men who had stayed behind, along with Concepcion, stood nearby, looking down on him, furious. Even Segundo, who never got angry, now looked as if he was ready to give Mono the spanking of his life. Mono cursed himself. He should have thought his plan through a little better. Of course Mother would eventually figure out that he wasn’t on the WU-HU ship. She would realize Zapa was lying sooner or later. He couldn’t pretend Mono was in the bathroom forever. But Mono hadn’t thought that far ahead. He hadn’t considered what would happen next. Mother had gone to the WU-HU captain in tears, according to Concepcion, and the captain had radioed immediately to El Cavador. After that it was just a matter of Concepcion getting on the ship’s loudspeaker and telling Mono, wherever he was on the ship, to get his butt to the cargo bay immediately.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” asked Concepcion.
“I wanted to help,” said Mono. “I’m good with the small-hand work. Vico said so. You might need that.”
Concepcion rubbed her eyes.
Segundo turned to Concepcion. “What are we going to do? I wouldn’t recommend we dock again. The WU-HU ship hit us hard. We took a little structural damage, nothing to be concerned about, but enough to weaken the area around the docking hatch. I wouldn’t risk another high-speed dock if we don’t have to.”
“You’ve put us in a very difficult position, Mono,” said Concepcion. “I thought Vico had trained you 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.