Earth Awakens (The First Formic War 3)

"Are you all right?" Father asked.

"Me?" said Lem.

"They were your friends. I know this can't be easy. This wasn't your fault, son. I bear all the blame."

Damn right it wasn't my fault, thought Lem.

His father's words had struck him, though. Were Victor and Imala his friends? No, theirs had been a working relationship, nothing more. Victor despised Lem. Imala had been warmer, but not by much.

"You've seen the news," said Father. "About China."

"They'll blame you when they learn where the drone attack came from. They'll say you provoked the Formics and cost millions of lives."

"That's ridiculous," said Simona. "Militaries have been attacking the mothership since the beginning. Ukko was trying to protect Earth. Why would they blame him?"

It bothered Lem that Simona had referred to Father by his first name. It was too casual, unlike her.

"Lem's right," said Father. "This is what news programming does, Simona. They vilify people. And nobody's easier to hate than the wealthiest man alive."

"What are you going to do about it?" asked Lem. "The company might not survive this."

"The company, the company. I don't care about the company, Lem. I thought I was clear on that. If the human race goes the way of the dinosaurs, it won't matter if we hit our quarterly earnings goals. Our job is to end this." He put an arm around Lem's shoulder and gestured to the solar system. "So tell me, what do you think of our holofield?"

"Why am I looking at the solar system?"

"Why indeed," said Father. "We call this the Big Room. It's not an original name, I admit, but it's appropriate. This--" he made a sweeping gesture of the space. "This is like a screensaver. It's not to scale obviously. Nothing is actually this close together. But now that you're here, we can get started." He tapped his wrist pad, and the solar system disappeared. Light filled the room, revealing a massive, empty white space half the size of a gymnasium. The floor was transparent, with hundreds of holoprojectors positioned beneath it.

Above Lem, suspended from the ceiling, was a square light rig holding as many holoprojectors as there were below him.

Three squares in the floor began to rise like towers. They stopped half a meter off the ground, forming three cubes, close together.

"Sit," said Father, gesturing to the cubes.

Lem sat.

Father took the cube opposite, and Simona sat at the third.

"There was a technician here a moment ago," said Lem. "He disappeared."

"There are close to a hundred technicians in this facility, Lem," said Father, "all behind these walls. They come and go through the doors as needed. Simona calls them the elves."

"What do they do exactly? These technicians. What is this?"

"This, son, is the business we are in."

"Holoprojection?"

Father laughed. "No. Information, Lem." He waved a hand at the empty room. "Project Parallax has always been about information. Seeing what no one else can see."

Father tapped his wrist pad, and the room went dark again. A white light appeared in the center of the three cubes, floating in the air between them like a tiny hovering campfire. The light changed, took shape, and became the flat ecliptic plane: the sun, the planets, the solar system. Two dots of light on the plane of the ecliptic beyond the edge of the system and directly opposite each other began to orbit the solar system.

"The Parallax satellites," said Lem. "Simona explained this already."

"I didn't tell you how many satellites there were," said Simona.

As Victor watched, another orbit ring appeared with two more satellites--this plane perpendicular to the ecliptic--the galactic plane. A third orbit ring, at a thirty-degree angle: the galactic celestial plane. Then a fourth ring, at sixty degrees: the galactic equatorial plane. All formed a gyroscope of satellites orbiting the system.

"There are eight satellites," said Father, "all with telescopes looking outward into deep space."