Earth Afire (The First Formic War 2)

"I'll do that," said Imala, crossing to a wall of tools and pulling a hammer down. "I feel like pounding something at the moment."

"Be sure to anchor your feet and the piece you're pounding," said Victor. "This is Moon gravity. You'll likely get a lot of recoil on the hammer. And you'll want to wear a face shield in case small pieces break off on impact."

She looked at him with a hint of scorn. "I know how to whack something with a hammer, Vico. I'm not stupid."

"I didn't mean to imply that you were. I was just reminding you that--"

"Forget it. I got this." She yanked one of the pieces down from the pile and let it slowly clatter to the floor. Victor backed off and left her to it. He felt like he should apologize, but for what? He did have a system in place for the junk, and it was hard to explain; it was coming to him as they went along. He couldn't spell it out like she wanted; he hadn't finished defining it all in his head yet. As for the hammering, that was how he and Father had always worked: They talked to each other as they did things; they reminded each other of safety precautions; they watched out for each other. You had to. It was easy to forget things and get sloppy when you were tired, and you couldn't afford to get injured in the K Belt.

Only, we're not in the K Belt, he reminded himself. We're in Imala's world.

Imala was down on her knees, locked to the floor. She began pounding on the piece of metal, and the booming clang of it echoed through the warehouse.

Victor backed off and returned to the crane he had been using. He was surprised to find Lem there waiting for him, a large duffel bag slung over Lem's shoulder.

"You have a unique way with women, Victor. Rather than make them swoon, you make them want to beat you senseless with a hammer. A new approach. You'll have to tell me how that works out for you."

Victor tried to keep the disdain from his voice. "Something I can do for you, Lem?"

"Something you can take fro

m me." He unshouldered the duffel bag, set it gently on the floor, and opened it. There were two large devices inside that Victor didn't recognize and a third smaller device that looked like a detonator.

"This is what you'll carry inside the Formic ship to the helm," said Lem. "That is, assuming you can reach the helm. There's enough explosive here to do quite a bit of damage. I'd prefer you had a tactical nuke, but those are hard to come by. I had to pull off a few small miracles to get this."

"How does it work?" Victor asked. His family had used explosives all the time for mining asteroids, but Victor had always felt uneasy around them, even when they were disassembled like this and completely harmless. Lem showed him how the two pieces clicked together. Then, without doing so, he explained how to arm the explosive and trigger the detonator.

"What's the range on the detonator?" Victor asked. "How far away can I get before I trigger it?"

Lem winced, looking uncomfortable. "That's the tricky part. These things are designed for asteroids. They're made for open space, easy communication between detonator and explosive. You drop them into a dig site, back up your ship, then boom. They weren't designed to be placed deep within the bowels of a ship that's--in all likelihood--intricately tunneled and made with layers upon layers of strange metallic alloys. And if you're right about the helm, if it's at the center of the ship, that's quite a distance from the hull."

"You're saying you don't know the detonator's range," said Victor.

"I'm saying there's no way to tell without knowing what's inside the Formic ship. You might be able to get halfway back to Luna and still be in range. Or you might be out of range the moment you leave the helm. There's no telling."

"What about a timer?" Victor asked.

"That's option B. Plant the explosive where it won't be discovered then set it to detonate twelve hours later or twenty-four or however long you think it will take you to get out. Personally, I'm not a fan of timers. We used those when we attacked the Formics the first time. It didn't work out well."

He says we, thought Victor, and he means him and my family, him and Father. Victor still hadn't gotten used to that image: Lem fighting alongside Concepcion and Father and the other men of the family.

"Thanks," said Victor. "I'll figure it out."

Lem walked over to the recon shuttle that Imala and Victor had purchased. It sat on the floor of the warehouse near the piles of collected space junk. It was a small, boxy two-seater, no bigger than a skimmer. The side door was open. Lem bent his knees and looked inside. It was comfortable and outfitted with all the latest flight controls. "Nice little ship. Seems a shame to trash it."

"We'll only be trashing the exterior," said Victor.

"How are you going to do this?" Lem asked. "There's no airlock in here, and the Formics aren't likely to extend an umbilical. Once you open this door to go outside, you're in a vacuum."

"I'll be in a spacesuit the whole way," said Victor. "I'm carrying all the oxygen I'll need from the moment I leave Luna to the moment I return."

"What about anchoring the ship? How will you keep it from drifting off when you leave it to go inside the mothership? The hull of the Formic ship is as smooth as glass. There's nothing to hook on to. And I don't know that I'd trust a ship to magnets."

"I'll be flying it," said Imala. Victor turned to see Imala approaching. She carried the hammer in one hand and wiped sweat from her brow with the other.

"I'll keep it in position," she said. "I'll make sure it doesn't drift."

"You're not coming with me, Imala," said Victor.