Everything moved quickly after that. Bahzim ordered them to clip the D-rings of their safety harnesses onto the mooring cable that would be shot down to the surface of the ship. Segundo positioned himself at the front of the line so that he would be the first one on the Formic ship. He knew that many of the younger men were watching him closely, and he suspected it would put them at ease to see him leading out. Concepcion strapped herself into the seat on the winch. She would pull everyone in once the charges were set. Segundo couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her in a suit and helmet.
“Remember,” Concepcion said. “Your suits weren’t designed for spacewalks at this speed. They’ll protect you from collisions with space dust, but anything bigger will rip through you like shrapnel. So the less time you spend outside the better. Bottom line, move fast. Set the explosives, click back on the cable, and I’ll reel you back in. Nothing to it.”
Right, thought Segundo. Nothing to it. Just perform a spacewalk at an insane speed, cling to magnets for dear life, and take down an alien ship fifty times our size. Easy.
He turned on his HUD, and windows of data popped up on his visor. He blinked through a few file folders until he found the family photo he was looking for. A candid shot of him, Rena, and Vico at some family gathering a few years ago. He smiled to see how small Vico was then, still a boy. He had grown to his man height so quickly. Segundo’s smile faded. He wondered where Victor was at the moment, rocketing toward Luna all these months, his health slowly deteriorating.
Video taken from inside Lem Jukes’s helmet popped up on Segundo’s HUD. “We’re in position,” said Lem. “Give the word.”
The Makarhu was approaching the Formic ship on the opposite side, and Lem, like Concepcion, was manning the winch on his ship. The plan was for Lem to fire his cable onto the hull at the same instant El Cavador fired hers. Then both ships would send out their men.
“We’re opening our doors,” said Concepcion.
The large airlock doors opened wide, and Segundo stared in wonder and horror at the size of the ship before them. El Cavador was over a hundred meters from the ship, yet the view of the ship filled the entire airlock doorway. Segundo had seen renderings and models of the ship, but until now he hadn’t grasped the sheer immensity of it. It was larger than any structure he had ever seen, and yet it was so smooth and uniform and singular in its design that it didn’t seem like a structure at all. It didn’t seem like something made. It seemed like a giant drop of red paint falling from heaven to Earth. The color surprised Segundo, though he wasn’t sure why. What had he expected? A menacing black?
These are not ignorant monsters, he realized. They are every child’s worst nightmare. The monster that thinks. The monster that can build and move fast and defy every defense. I’ve been in denial, he realized. He had seen the pod, he had seen their tech, but the obstinate, dominant-species part of his brain had refused to believe that a face so horrific and antlike could be more innovative or intelligent than human beings. Yet here was the proof. Here was a whole kilometer of proof.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” asked Lem. “Are you seeing what we’re seeing?”
“We see it,” said Concepcion. “And I’m more convinced than ever. We cannot let this reach Earth.”
“You’re right,” said Lem. “But I don’t like it.”
Segundo agreed. He wasn’t convinced that they’d be the ones to stop it, but it had to stop.
“Makarhu, are you ready to fire your cable?” asked Concepcion.
“Makarhu ready,” said a man’s voice.
“On my mark,” said Concepcion. “Four. Three. Two. One. Cable away.”
The mooring cable shot forward with a large round magnet at its end. Segundo watched the cable uncoil as it flew toward the ship. It seemed to go forever, and then it struck the surface, holding firm. Concepcion gunned the winch, and pulled in the slack. The cable was taut. Bahzim was shouting, “Go, go, go!”
Segundo launched himself out and thumbed the trigger on his propulsion pack. He shot forward toward the ship, keenly aware that he was also moving in the direction of the ship at one hundred and ten thousand kilometers per hour. The smallest rock chunk would kill him, and the thought prompted him to press the thumb trigger harder. The Formic ship was coming up fast. A beeping message in Segundo’s HUD warned him of an impending collision and urged him to reduce his speed. Segundo ignored it. He needed to get down fast or he’d slow down the line. Thirty meters. Twenty. He hit the second thumb trigger, and retro boosters on his thighs and chest quickly slowed his descent. Two seconds later he was bringing his feet up in front of him.
Touchdown. His boot magnets-thankfully-held to the surface. A disc magnet with a handgrip was already in his left hand. He reached down to the surface and anchored his upper body with the magnet while his right hand released the D-ring from the cable, all in one fluid movement as they had rehearsed.
He scooted to his right, getting clear of the cable, making room. The others arrived behind him. Chepe, Pitoso, Bulo, Nando, and the rest, with Bahzim picking up the rear. Segundo looked ahead of them. Lem Jukes’s crew was coming down a cable from the Juke ship maybe three hundred meters away. Even at a distance Segundo could see that the Juke suits and gear were far superior than anything El Cavador men had.
“Spread out,” said Bahzim. “Be back on the line in twelve minutes.”
Segundo was on his hands and knees, crawling forward, keeping his body low, getting as far away from everyone else as he could. The idea was to disperse and set the explosives far apart to create a wide circle of damage. Segundo’s knee and hand magnets held him securely to the hull, but they were cumbersome and difficult to move. He had to pull hard on each leg to momentarily break the attraction and lift the magnet enough to move it forward. It was agonizing and far more difficult than their rehearsals. After twenty meters, his thighs were burning, and his breathing was heavy.
He could see now that the surface of the ship wasn’t as smooth as it had appeared at a distance. There were thousands of closed apertures in rows running the length of the ship, like planted fields of crop. Each aperture was as big around as Segundo’s helmet, and he knew that if any of them opened it would be to unleash their weapon. He tried not putting any weight on the apertures for fear that the magnet might trigger something and open them. It was like crawling across a minefield.
Finally he stopped and looked around him. The men from both ships were spread all over the surface. Some were laying explosives; others were still crawling forward; several explosives were already set, each with a small blinking green light, indicating the explosive was live. Segundo removed his first explosive from his pouch and set it gently on the surface. He inserted the blasting disc into the slot then set the timer to detonate three hours from now.
They had agreed to radio silence during this phase of the operation so that they could all concentrate on setting the charges without interruptions. But suddenly everyone was yelling. Segundo lifted his head and saw that one of the explosives had gone off prematurely, ripping through the hull and throwing up debris. The voices in his helmet were fast and frantic.
“What happened?”
“Pitoso’s dead!”
“It blew up right under him!”
“What do we do?”
“Get back to the cable. Set your explosives and get back to the line. Move!”
Segundo’s explosive was blinking green, set. He left it and turned toward the mooring cable at least thirty meters away, a good five-minute crawl. They weren’t going to make it, he realized. Even if they got back to the line and up to the ship, they couldn’t fly El Cavador away fast enough. The whole operation relied on them getting in and out and then a safe distance away without being detected, before the Formics could respond. That wasn’t going to happen now. The Formics knew they were here.