Earth Afire (The First Formic War 2)

"You don't know that," said Victor. "It's a mistake to underestimate them, Imala. They may resemble ants, but they invented near-lightspeed travel. They're far more intelligent than we are. I'm not taking any chances."

Imala shrugged and didn't argue.

The flight back to Luna was long, but Victor stayed busy the whole time. First he disassembled some of the larger junk pieces that were accessible in the cargo bay. Then he took the smaller, disassembled pieces and scanned them in the holofield, making 3-D models of each. He had already built a holographic model of the small recon ship he and Imala had purchased back on Luna. He called it up now in the holofield and began attaching the 3-D models of junk pieces to it, virtually building the camouflage design in the holofield and trying several different approaches. By the time he and Imala reached the Juke warehouse, he had a pretty good idea of how he wanted to attack the project.

Lem had arranged for the engineering staff to be on hand to help unload the shuttle. So when Victor and Imala stepped out of the umbilical and onto the warehouse floor there was a small crowd of people waiting for them. An older woman of African descent with long gray braids and a slight accent greeted Victor and Imala with a smile and handshakes. "Mr. Delgado, Ms. Bootstamp. I'm Noloa Benyawe." She gestured to the man beside her. "This is our chief engineer, Dr. Dublin."

Dublin's face was kindly, and his expression softened even further when he shook Victor's hand. "I am sorry about your family, Victor. Dr. Benyawe and I were there in the battle. Your captain and family were determined to protect Earth. They have my utmost respect."

Victor nodded. "Thank you, Dr. Dublin. That is very kind of you to say so."

"Lem wants to be certain this remains a private endeavor," said Benyawe. "He asked that I emphasize to the staff that this is not a company project. That means we can't help you during normal working hours. Lem's afraid company lawyers could use that as a basis to seize whatever we do. Silly, I know, but he's insistent. But don't worry, I've spoken with everyone here, and we're all happy to help you after hours for as long as you need us."

"Again, that's very kind," said Victor. "I'd appreciate your input."

"Our understanding is that you hope to place a propellant on a few of the debris objects and fly them toward the ship so that the gun doors will open."

"That's correct," said Victor. "That's how I'm hoping to get inside. That may not be the best idea, though. If you have a better approach, I'd be thrilled to hear it. I'm making this up as I go along."

"We think it's a smart tactic," said Benyawe. "And we've taken the liberty of proposing a few mechanisms that might do the job, if you'd allow us to share them with you."

"By all means," said Victor.

They escorted him and Imala to a corner of the warehouse where a holotable projected a narrow cylindrical thruster two meters in length. "These are designed for quick acceleration," said Dr. Dublin. "Each can produce quite a jolt of propulsion, so you'd want to secure them soundly to the surface of the debris. You don't want them snapping off and zipping through space like a deflating balloon. So the anchor structure is as important as the thruster itself." He waved his stylus through the holofield, and an unadorned cube appeared. "Let's assume this is the hunk of debris you want to use." He grabbed the thruster and placed four copies of it on four sides of the cube. "You can place as many of these thrusters as you like on the surface of the debris. You'll obviously want to place them equidistant from each other or as close to equidistant as possible to evenly distribute the thrust. This will likely be a challenge since the shape of the debris chunk won't be uniform. It will be odd shaped and unstable. You'll also want to install the thrusters so that their orientation is the same. That way, when you reach the surface of the ship and ignite the thrusters via remote control, they will all act as one, swiveling in their anchor braces and responding to your flight commands on the remote. If you position yourself near a gun door, you can fly the chunk directly toward you, which would increase the likelihood that the gun nearest you would open."

"This is brilliant," said Victor. "Let's do this, but may I make a suggestion? Let's not attach these thrusters to a debris chunk already floating in space around the Formic ship as I initially proposed. You've shown me that there are too many issues with that. What if I don't secure the anchors well enough? What if the chunk is so unstable that the thrusters rip it apart? Plus there's the challenge of me doing a spacewalk so close to the Formics. That would require a lot of time, and if I slip up, I might inadvertently alert the Formics of my presence before I even reach them, which for the sake of my health, I'd rather not do. So here's what I propose: Let's do exactly as you suggest and use these thrusters, but let's build the chunk of debris here in the warehouse. Let's manufacture it. That will allow us to control the structure. We can place the thrusters equidistant. We can reinforce the anchor braces. We can ensure the whole thing is fortified and won't break apart when I initiate the thrusters. We'd control all the variables, and most important, we can test it here and be sure it flies how we want it to. That way I won't needlessly endanger myself by trying to do all that in space. We can attach this chunk to the shuttle, then I can release it among the other debris, continue on to the Formic ship, and fly it toward me when the time is right."

Benyawe and Dublin exchanged glances.

"That would be ideal, yes," said Benyawe.

"We can use some of the space junk we just recovered," said Victor.

"We certainly brought back enough of it," said Imala.

Victor smiled. "See, Imala. More is always better."

Back at the dump shuttle, Victor used lifters and cranes to unload all the pieces of space junk and place them on the floor of the warehouse in an organized system. Imala kept trying to help, but whenever she put something on the floor, Victor would tell her it didn't go there and move it elsewhere.

"If you tell me how you're organizing it, I won't keep putting stuff in the wrong place," said Imala.

"You're not doing it wrong per se," said Victor.

"Well I'm obviously not doing it right either. Explain what's in your head, Vico, and save us both some time."

He could see she was getting annoyed. "It's hard to explain. I'm separating them by how we're going to use them, either for the recon shuttle or the decoy chunk. Then I'm divvying up those pieces into categories of how ready they are for use. Some of this stuff will need disassembling, some of it will need damaging."

"Damaging?"

"The ship will need to look like it's been blasted," said Victor. "It should be dent up and scorched and beaten."

"Where's that pile?"

They crossed the warehouse floor to a heap of junk stacked as high as they were tall. "All these big pieces here," said Victor.

"How do you plan on damaging them?" asked Imala.

Victor shrugged. "Taking a hammer to them. Beating them senseless. Burning them with a blowtorch. Bending them out of shape."