Earth Afire (The First Formic War 2)

"Please," said Lem.

Chubs nodded and left. Lem watched him go, feeling a pang of guilt for having taken away the man's authority. Chubs deserved to be the captain. He knew the crew. They respected him, followed him.

Lem pushed the thought away. Chubs would have his reward. When the company was Lem's, he would need good men, and if Chubs were willing, Lem would have him at his side.

Lem closed the door and pushed send. Ten minutes later Chubs returned with a container of pasta. "Don't expect much from this. The cafe is no better than the lobby."

Lem offered his thanks and said, "What happened to the free miner? Victor and Imala?"

"They left. Their shuttle took off toward Luna or Earth. I had the ship track them for as long as we could. I figured if you had wanted me to stop them you would have said so in the lobby."

Lem nodded, wondering what Chubs meant exactly by "stop them." Had Chubs killed for Father before? Would he have killed for Lem if Lem had asked?

Lem ate in silence. When he finished, a final message from Father came through.

"I've been talking with the Board. Get to Luna in eight days. That's a Tuesday. Come to the Juke north port at three p.m. Luna time. I'll be waiting for you. I need your help with this Formic situation, son. We've got work to do."

Lem reread the message. Father was actually asking for his help. The great Jukes was actually admitting that Lem had something to contribute, that the two of them would work as a team. He had even called Lem "son."

For half a second Lem believed it was genuine. Then all rational thought returned. Father was intending to use him somehow. That was obvious. How, Lem wasn't sure, but experience had taught Lem to expect the worst and be on guard. He shook his head. You laid it on too thick, Father. Calling me "son"? You're getting sloppy in your old age.

Lem typed. "Understood. Leaving now."

He waited for the message to send, then he logged off. His messages had passed through each of the ships in the bucket brigade as encrypted messages, so he wasn't worried about those. But he had entered them as original text here. The system immediately had encrypted them, but somewhere on the memory drive was the original text. Lem couldn't allow that. He took the surge device from the packet at his hip, plugged it into the system, and pressed the button, melting all the circuits. There were a few harmless sparks, a bit of smoke, and everything shut down.

Lem and Chubs found Felix back in the lobby near the docking airlock.

Felix was all smiles. "Mr. Jukes, I take it you were able to contact Luna?"

"It worked fine, thank you," Lem said, extending his wrist pad. "Here, Mr. Montroose, allow me to pay you more for your troubles."

Felix blinked, surprised. "How kind."

Lem bumped the two wrist pads together, making the transfer, then Montroose read the sum.

"Mr. Jukes! My goodness. Thank you. This is most generous!"

"That's probably two to three times what a new transmitter will cost you," said Lem. "The rest of it you can use to pay some good technicians to install it for you."

Felix was hardly listening now. He was staring at the numbers on his wrist pad.

Lem and Chubs floated into the airlock.

"He doesn't understand," said Chubs. "He doesn't know we just fried his current system."

"He'll find out soon enough," said Lem.

CHAPTER 18

Rescue

Bingwen stared at the place where Mazer's aircraft had fallen below the horizon, willing it to come back up again. He knew it wouldn't happen. He had seen everything. He had watched Mazer's aircraft take the hit. He had seen the antigrav give out. He had witnessed it drop like a bag of rice out of the sky. A cluster of alien crafts had dived after it, firing at it, pounding it downward. Those ships had dipped below the horizon as well. But a moment later, they had come up and flown on. Mazer's hadn't. Instead, a line of black smoke rose, twisting upward like a charmed snake.

Bingwen sprinted back into the farmhouse. "They went down! We've got to help them."

Everyone turned toward him. Grandfather shuffled over, hunched slightly. "Who, Bingwen?"

"The soldiers. The ones who brought us here. A new column of ships rose up out of the big disc. Hundreds of little ships. They're everywhere. They shot down the soldiers. Their plane went down over there, to the south." He pointed. "We need to get over there. They need our help."