Earth unaware

CHAPTER 6

Marco

Victor was on a spacewalk, outside El Cavador, bolting one of the pebble-killers into place with his hand drill. Mono was beside him, his feet anchored to the hull, holding the PK steady with bracing cables. They had removed the laser a few days ago and taken it into the cargo bay to make modifications. Now, with those completed, they were reinstalling it on the side of the ship.

Victor wasn’t sure if their efforts would make much difference. If the alien starship proved to be aggressive, Victor probably couldn’t do much to stop it. The starship moved at near-lightspeed, which required an almost inconceivable amount of energy and huge leaps in technology, far beyond anything human tech had ever achieved. And if the starship’s builders could do that, there was no telling what their weapons could do.

Victor inserted a bolt into his drill and moved to the next hole, noticing that the hole was slightly off its mark. He looked up and saw that Mono had fallen asleep. The bracing cable drifted lazily away from Mono’s open hands, and his arms floated limply beside him. If not for Mono’s boot magnets, he probably would have drifted away from the ship.

“Mono,” Victor said sharply.

Mono jerked awake, suddenly alert, eyes wide. He grabbed the bracing cable and pulled it taut. “Sorry. I’m awake.”

“No you’re not. You’re exhausted. And I don’t blame you. I’ve pushed you way too hard today.”

“No, no. I’m fine. Really. I’m good now.” Mono blinked his eyes in an exaggerated manner and shook his head to force himself to stay awake.

“Three more bolts,” said Victor. “Then we’ll go inside. It’s already an hour into sleep-shift. You should be zipped up in your hammock.”

“I’m fine,” Mono said, though Victor could tell from the look on his face that if given five more seconds of silence, the boy would be asleep again.

A message from Mother appeared on Victor’s visor. “It’s late, Vico. Bring Mono inside. His mother’s worried.”

Victor and Mono finished the install, collected their things, and hurried to the airlock. Mother greeted them inside with containers of chili and two hot arepas wrapped in a cloth. Victor wiggled out of his pressure suit and sucked the first taste of chili up through the straw. It was hot and spicy with finely minced peppers the way he liked it.

“Perfect as always,” he said.

Mother scowled. “You’re not winning me over with compliments, Vico. You’re in trouble. Mono should have been in a bed an hour ago.”

“I’m not tired,” said Mono, though he was barely keeping his eyes open.

Mother smiled. “No, you’re as perky as a jackrabbit.” She frowned at Victor. “You’re not resting and eating like I told you to, Vico. You need eight hours of sleep a night. As does Mono. He’s nine years old.”

“Nine and three quarters,” said Mono. “My birthday’s coming up.”

“You’re right, Patita,” said Victor. “I’m sorry.

Mother squinted. She always got that suspicious look in her eyes whenever Victor called her by the nickname he had given her as a child, as if he were concealing something. “Did you even go to bed last night, Vico? You weren’t in your hammock this morning.”

Victor bit into the arepa. It was hot and buttery. “I slept a few hours in the workshop.”

Mother sighed and looked at Mono. “And what about you, Monito? Are you learning anything from my son besides rebellion and disobedience?”

Mono’s mouth was full of arepa. He said something, but it was unintelligible.

“He says he sleeps like a baby,” said Victor. “Eight hours a night.”

Mono smiled and nodded to show Mother that the translation had been correct.

“At least one of you minds,” said Mother.

Victor kept quiet. He knew Mother wasn’t really angry. She knew the work they were doing needed to be done. She just didn’t like it.

“Father should be the one getting the tongue lashing,” said Victor. “He’s sleeping less than I am.”

“Oh don’t you worry,” said Mother. “He’s heard plenty from me today already.”

All of them had been working feverishly since the Council meeting, Father more than anyone.

“The Italians should be getting the laserline about now,” said Mother.

Victor nodded. “Still no word from the Juke ship?”

Mother shook her head. “We should have gotten a response by now, at least an acknowledgment of message received. But so far, nothing. Selmo thinks they pulled out before they got the message. They’re not showing up on our scans anymore.”

“Or maybe they got the message and shot back to Luna, fleeing for their lives,” said Mono.

“Then at least we got the message to someone,” Mother said.

“We should have told everyone,” said Victor. “We should have told the whole world ten days ago.”

She nodded and put a hand on his arm. “Just promise me you’ll sleep more.”

“Only if you promise to make this chili more often.”

“Yeah,” said Mono, smacking his lips. “Sabroso.” Delicious.

Victor’s handheld beeped, and Father’s voice came through. “Marco and I could use your help out here, Vico. If you’re done with that pebble-killer, send Mono on to bed and come give us a hand.”

When not working in the mine, Marco had been helping Father in recent days, joining him outside to build the ship’s defenses.

“I’m here with Mother,” said Victor. “She can hear you. She’s giving me the skunk eye.”

“I don’t want to leave this thing half installed overnight,” said Father, “and these new parts of yours are being a little finicky. Tell your mother I need you.”

“Tell your father he’s in big trouble,” said Mother.

“She says she loves you dearly,” said Victor.

Mother rolled her eyes, and Victor knew then that she wasn’t going to argue.

“I’m on my way out,” said Victor.

“Can I come?” said Mono.

“Absolutely not,” said Mother. “I told your mom I’d have you go straight to your hammock, and that’s exactly where you’re going.”

Mono looked ready to object, but a quick look and stern finger from Mother made Mono think better of it. He let his shoulders sag and launched up toward the hatch. When he was gone, Mother put a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “Please be careful, Vico. When we’re tired, we make mistakes. And you can’t make mistakes outside. Even little ones.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Five minutes later he was outside with Father and Marco, his lifeline stretching out behind him to the cargo bay.

“We rebooted,” said Father, gesturing to the newly installed PK. “But it’s still not coming online.”

Using his heads-up display-or HUD-Victor blinked his way into the ship’s computer to pinpoint the problem. He wasn’t a coder, but he had learned enough code to manipulate it when he needed to accommodate modifications. By the time he had uncovered the glitch, tweaked the code, and brought the PK to life, another hour had passed. Marco and Father were nearby, bolting one of the new armored plates onto the hull. The metal had come directly from the dig site, where the smelting machines had been modified to make them. There had been a lot of discussion on the ship about using the metal, with some people insisting that they send the metal directly to Luna with the rest of the minerals to build up more income. In the end, however, Concepcion had sided with Father, and the smelters had been making additional plates ever since.

Victor joined Father and Marco and began helping them secure plates to the hull. He couldn’t hear the drill in his hand, but he knew the vibrations would be making noise inside the ship. Most people were sleeping, so if the sound was loud enough to wake them, Victor was sure he’d get a message in his helmet telling them to stop. After several more hours of work, no message came. Initially, Marco made the time pass quickly by telling old mining stories, some of which were so hilarious that Victor and Father had laughed until their stomachs hurt. It was the first time Victor had felt any sense of normalcy with an adult-other than Mother and Father-since Janda’s departure.

Eventually the stories dried up, however, and the three of them fell into a silence as they worked. They could stop at any moment, of course; Father and Marco had only started installing plates to keep busy while Victor worked on the PK. With that done, there was really no reason for them to be out this late. Victor stood up to suggest that they call it a night, when something in the distance, down on the surface of the asteroid, caught his attention. A flicker of movement, a streak of something out of the corner of his eye. Victor squinted into the darkness, straining to see. He blinked up the magnification feature on his helmet and zoomed his view down to where one of the mooring lines was anchored to the asteroid. It was hard to see much detail in the blackness, but it looked as if something was on the line.

“Father?”

“Yeah?”

“I think there’s something on the-”

There were twelve simultaneous, blinding flashes of light down near the asteroid. Victor instinctively clenched his eyes shut, feeling the ship shift slightly beneath his feet.

“What was that?” asked Marco.

Victor opened his eyes and saw among the dots of brightness still burned into his vision that all twelve mooring lines had been cut. The ship was adrift. Someone had blown the lines.

“It’s an attack!” Father shouted. “Hold on to something!”

The first laser hit the PK not two meters from where Victor was standing, slicing it from its base. A mechanism inside the PK exploded outward, causing the PK to shoot back like a rocket in zero gravity. It struck Marco in the side of the head just as he was bending down, tearing him away from the ship and sending him spinning out into space.

“Victor, get down!” Father cried.

Victor initiated the magnets in his hands and waist belt and quickly lowered himself to the hull on his stomach. The alarm in his HUD was beeping. Father must have initiated it. Everywhere on the ship, the siren would be wailing now, waking everyone.

Two laser blasts hit the hull near where Victor and Father lay, slicing off more sensors and instruments. Another laser cut wide to Victor’s left, and Victor turned his head and watched in horror as the laserline transmitter was hit. In one swift slice, the laser cut away the entire mechanism, leaving only the mounting plate and a few scorched circuits. The severed piece floated there in space, drifting slowly away. The ship’s primary source of long-range communication was gone.

Victor flinched as three more lasers swept across the surface of the ship to his right, not cutting deep into the hull, but slicing away all protruding instrumentations in their paths. Victor closed his eyes, expecting the inevitable, but the lasers didn’t touch him. A moment later his alarm went silent, and his HUD winked out. He had no power. His suit was dead. Had a laser cut his lifeline? No, the surface lights on El Cavador were out as well; the lasers must have hit the main generators. Victor took a breath. He wasn’t getting fresh air. He no longer had heat. He tried to move, and the rotation of his body caused him to drift away from the hull. No power meant no magnets. He realized a moment too late that nothing was anchoring him to the ship. He reached out, clawing at the smooth surface, trying to get purchase, desperate to cling to something. He looked at Father, who was screaming, though Victor could hear nothing. Father had one hand outstretched, the other hand gripping a recessed handhold. Victor grabbed for Father’s hand, but it was more than a meter beyond his reach.

Another laser hit the hull, slicing away another sensor.

Victor turned his head, frantically scanning the sky around him. Was it the starship?

Then he saw it.

At first it was just a black space in the sky where stars should be. Then the ship came closer, and Victor could make out detail. It wasn’t a starship. It was a corporate. A Juke ship.

Floodlights blinded him. Victor raised his arm, shielding his eyes, squinting at the light. The corporate ship had approached in darkness and was now charging in, lights blazing. It wasn’t slowing down. It was going to ram El Cavador.

Victor looked back at Father, who was still screaming for him to reach. Victor flailed, reaching out, straining, stretching, extending his fingers.

The ship struck.

Father moved away fast.

Victor’s body slammed into something hard, the wind rushing out of him in a violent impact to his chest. He felt a flash of pain. The corporates had hit him. He was flat against their ship, and then he wasn’t, spinning away, free again, tumbling, disoriented. He turned his head and saw El Cavador moving away from him, his lifeline stretching out, growing taut. He couldn’t breath. His lungs were screaming for air. He looked at his lifeline and knew that a hard jerk might tear it from his back. He reached back and grabbed the line just as it went taut. The line jerked him hard, but it stayed connected. He held on. He was tumbling again, trailing behind El Cavador like a trolled fish line.

Then in a single, painful inhale of breath, his lungs expanded again. He took in air. His chest burned. His arm hurt. His suit was cold. His head was ringing. The air was stale.

“Father!”

There was no reply. He still had no power.

El Cavador was drifting awkwardly ahead of him, moving abnormally to the side, like a boat turned sideways in an unforgiving current. The twelve severed mooring cables hung loosely below the ship. Two more laser blasts hit sensors on the side of the ship, though Victor couldn’t see what they were. He was still spinning, flying, dazed, limp. Everything was happening too quickly.

Behind him, he saw the corporate ship fire its retros and slow down, coming to a stop right where El Cavador had been. They wanted the rock, Victor realized. The bastards had bumped them for the rock.

Victor rotated his body, trying to control the spinning. El Cavador was still in a dead float, moving away from him. His lifeline was still taut. He was probably forty meters from the ship. He pulled on the lifeline, using the momentum to stop the spinning. His body steadied. The spinning ceased. He could see Father clinging to the ship.

The siren started beeping in his helmet again. His heads-up display flickered to life. He had power. The auxiliary generators had kicked in.

“Victor!” It was Father’s voice.

“I’m here.” He was already hitting the propulsion trigger on his thumb, flying forward, hurrying toward the ship.

“Are you hurt?” Father asked.

Victor could see Father getting to his feet and then jumping from the ship, flying out toward him. Victor rotated his arm. It wasn’t broken. Or at least he didn’t think so. “No. I’m okay.”

El Cavador was still drifting. He and Father were coming at each other fast. Victor let up on his propulsion just as Father did. Even still, they collided, clinging to each other. Father scanned Victor’s helmet, looking for fractures. “You’re not hurt? You’re not leaking?”

“No.” He had never seen Father this rattled before. “You?”

“Fine. It’s Marco. Help me get him inside. He’s not responding.”

Only then did Victor realize that there was a second lifeline trailing behind the ship, albeit farther down the ship from his position. Marco’s line had snagged on one of the mooring braces, and Marco’s body was limp and lifeless. Father oriented himself and hit his propulsion trigger, flying straight toward Marco. Victor followed close behind him.

They reached Marco and anchored themselves to the ship. Marco’s body was limp and nonresponsive. They turned him over. His eyes were closed. His helmet was cracked, though it didn’t appear as if air was leaking.

“I don’t think he’s breathing,” said Father. He looked up, thinking, not sure what to do, then came to a decision. “Go open the hatch to the bay airlock. As soon as Marco and I come through, pull in the slack from our lifelines as fast as you can. Then come in after us and seal the hatch tight. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Father got behind Marco and wrapped one arm around his chest and another around his waist. He was going to fly him in. “Go, Victor.”

Victor launched, pushing the thumb trigger down as far as it would go, hurtling straight to the airlock hatch that led into the cargo bay. The exterior siren lights were spinning, bathing the whole ship in rays of moving red. The damage was everywhere: scorch marks, stumps where equipment had been. Victor reached the hatch, opened it, then moved to the side. Father was coming up fast, carrying Marco’s limp body. Marco’s legs thumped against the frame of the hatch as he came through, but Marco showed no response. Victor followed them inside and began reeling in the slack from their lifelines, pulling hand over hand as fast as he could. Father was beside him now, pulling frantically. Finally it was all in. Victor sealed the hatch, and air immediately began pouring into the airlock to fill the vacuum.

“Help me anchor him to the ground,” said Father.

The lifeline slack was everywhere, floating all around them. Victor pushed as much of it to the side as he could, getting it out of the way. Then he hit the switch on Marco’s waist belt to initiate the magnet. He and Father lowered Marco’s body to the floor. Father grabbed two anchor straps and put one across Marco’s chest and another across his legs, anchoring him flat against the floor. By then the airlock was almost full of air.

“As soon as we get the all-clear,” said Father, “take his helmet off nice and slow. Don’t jerk it. We need to be easy with his neck.”

Victor nodded, and they both got into position.

Father looked at the time counter on the wall and saw that there were twenty seconds before the room was fully pressurized. “Close enough. Go.” Father began taking off his own helmet while Victor delicately unhinged Marco’s. When he finally got it off, the all-clear sounded, and the light above the exit to the cargo bay turned green.

Father felt Marco’s neck for a pulse while Victor fumbled to get his own helmet off.

“Call Isabella on your handheld,” said Father. “Get her here now. Tell her I can’t find a pulse and he’s not breathing.”

Victor’s hands were shaking as he dialed the code on his handheld. Marco was dying. Or maybe already dead. Father tilted Marco’s head slightly back and began giving him rescue breaths. Isabella didn’t respond.

“She’s not answering,” said Victor.

“She’s probably already treating people or moving to the fuge. Find her. Get her here now. Have her bring her kit if she has it with her. Go.”

Victor detached his lifeline and was up and out of the airlock in an instant, launching himself across the cargo bay to the hatch on the far side of the room. The siren was loud inside the ship, and only the emergency lights were on, leaving much of the room in darkness. No one was in the cargo bay, but Victor found plenty of people out in the hall, a main thoroughfare on the ship. Everyone was wearing their emergency air masks and moving down the hall toward the fuge in an orderly fashion as they had been trained. Babies and small children were crying behind their masks, but their parents held them close to their chests and spoke words of comfort. Everyone seemed alarmed, but Victor was pleased to see that no one was panicking. Most people were upright, wearing greaves, but a few like Victor were flying, calmly moving with the crowd.

Victor scanned the faces but didn’t see Isabella. Knowing her, she would be one of the last people to head for the fuge. As a trained nurse, she would stay behind and help anyone who had been injured in the collision, making sure everyone got to the fuge. She was the closest thing El Cavador had to a doctor, and she had even performed a few surgeries over the years, though only in life-threatening situations and always as a last resort.

Victor spotted a familiar face. “Edimar!”

Edimar saw him and pushed her way through the crowd to reach him. Her air mask covered her entire face. “What happened?” she asked. “Why are you in a pressure suit? Were you outside? Where’s your mask?”

“Have you seen Isabella?”

Edimar pointed back up the way she had come. “She was helping Abuelita. Why? Who’s hurt? What happened?”

Victor didn’t wait to answer. He was already away, pushing his way past people, going against traffic, using the handrail to pull himself forward. Edimar called after him, but he didn’t turn back. Several people shouted at him as he brushed past them, but Victor didn’t care. Marco was dying. He wasn’t breathing. Every second counted.

The deeper he went down the hall, the thinner the crowd became. With more room to move around, Victor began launching himself forward, moving faster, covering more ground. He reached Abuelita, his great-grandmother, who was being helped down the hall by two of his uncles. “Where’s Isabella?”

They pointed farther up the hall. Victor shot forward, panicked. There were very few people now. What if Isabella had gone into someone’s room to help them and Victor had passed it? Or what if she had taken another passageway down to the fuge and Victor had missed her?

He saw her. She was ahead in the hall, putting Victor’s cousin Nanita’s arm in a sling.

“Isabella!”

She looked up. Victor grabbed a handhold on the wall, stopped himself, and motioned for her to come. “It’s Marco. He’s not breathing.”

She grabbed her bag and launched toward him. “Where?”

Victor turned his body and launched down the way he had come. “Airlock. Cargo bay.”

“He was outside?”

“We were putting on some plates when the corporates attacked.”

“Corporates?”

He told her what he could as they flew down the corridor. He had to shout over the wail of the alarm. The crowd was thin now. Most people would be in the fuge. They reached the cargo bay. Isabella went through first. They flew down to the airlock. Maybe Marco is fine now, thought Victor. Maybe Father revived him. We’ll get there, and Marco will be up and coughing and sore maybe, but he’ll be alive, and he’ll thank Father and me for helping him, and then we’ll all go down to the fuge together and laugh about what a scare it had been.

But Marco wasn’t fine. Father was still giving him rescue breaths. Nothing had changed. Marco was still lifeless. Father saw them and moved aside for Isabella to take over. Father looked exhausted and afraid and out of breath. “He’s not responding to anything,” he said.

Isabella slid her greaves up to her knees and knelt on the floor beside Marco, opening her bag and moving quickly. “Help me get his suit off so I can get to his chest.” She had scissors in her hand and began cutting away his suit. Victor and Father tore the fabric away as Isabella cut through Marco’s undershirt. Victor watched the chest, willing it to rise on its own, to move, to show a little life. It didn’t.

Isabella slapped sensors onto his chest and slid a tube over Marco’s mouth. The machine started giving him breaths, and Marco’s chest began to rise and fall. It didn’t give Victor any comfort. The machine was doing all the work. Isabella pulled a syringe from her bag, bit off the needle cap, spat it away, and stuck the needle into Marco’s arm. She flipped on a second machine, and Victor heard the sustained beep of a flatline. His heart wasn’t beating. Isabella pressed a disc to Marco’s chest. She squeezed the handle, and Marco’s body twitched. Victor thought for half a second that whatever Isabella had done had revived him; that Marco was coming around and jerking awake. But he wasn’t. His body became still again. Isabella jolted him three more times. Four. Still the flatline persisted.

Isabella looked lost. She removed the disc from Marco’s chest and pushed it away. Her hands went back in her bag. They came out with the bone pad. She placed it on Marco’s chest, and the skeletal structure appeared on the screen. Isabella slowly moved the pad up to Marco’s neck and held it there for a long time, her face just inches from the pad. Finally, she switched off the pad and looked up, defeated.

“His neck is broken. It severed his spinal column. I’m sorry.”

The words felt hollow to Victor, like words from a dream. She was telling them that Marco was dead, that there was nothing more she could do. She was giving up.

No, Marco couldn’t be dead. Victor had been with Marco just moments ago. They had been working together, laughing.

Father was speaking quietly into his handheld, calling someone down to the airlock.

“There has to be something we can do,” said Victor.

“There isn’t, Vico,” said Isabella, removing the tube from Marco’s mouth.

“So we’re just giving up?”

“I can’t fix what’s broken here. He was dead before you brought him in. I’m sorry.”

Victor felt numb. His fingers were tingling. Marco was dead. The word hit him like the Juke ship had. Dead. Why had the corporates attacked them? This wasn’t the Asteroid Belt. This was the Kuiper Belt. The family had left the A Belt for this very reason: to get away from the corporates.

How had they gotten so close without us detecting them?

Victor looked down at Marco. He has a family, Victor told himself. A wife, Gabi, and three girls-one of whom, Chencha, was just a year younger than Victor.

Father disconnected the lifeline from the back of his own suit and moved for the door into the cargo bay. “Let’s go, Vico.”

“We’re leaving?”

“You and I have work to do.”

He meant the ship. Victor had seen some of the damage. The power generator was fried. Sensors were gone. PKs were gone. And the auxiliary generators wouldn’t last forever. If the family was going to survive, Victor and Father needed to make big repairs fast.

Victor nodded to Father and moved toward the hatch.

“Gabi and Lizbet are on their way down now,” Father said to Isabella. “I’d stay, but Concepcion wants us on the helm immediately.”

Lizbet was Marco’s mother. She still doted on her son.

“Go,” said Isabella. “I’ll wait for them here.”

Father was up and flying. Victor launched after him. A moment later they were in the hall, which was empty now. Father turned toward the helm, taking a side passageway. Before following, Victor looked down the hall in the opposite direction, back toward the fuge, and saw two women coming, still a distance away, heading for the cargo bay. Gabi and Lizbet. Wife and mother. Even at a distance, he could see the terror and panic on their faces.

“Vico, let’s go,” said Father.

Victor was moving again, following Father, weaving through the passageways of the ship. They arrived at the helm, and Victor was surprised to see the entire flight crew here, all busily working. Some were running cables and setting up lights. Others were at their workstations, speaking into their headsets or typing in commands. Concepcion saw Father and flew to him immediately. Victor could tell from her expression that she knew about Marco. Father must have called her.

“Gabi and Lizbet are with him now,” said Father.

Concepcion nodded. “Are either of you hurt?”

“The corporate ship hit Victor,” said Father.

“I’m fine,” said Victor.

Concepcion looked concerned. “You sure? I’m going to need you, Victor, like I’ve never needed you before.”

“I’m fine,” he repeated, though he felt anything but fine. Marco was dead. The ship was damaged, perhaps irreparably so.

“Come with me,” said Concepcion, turning and flying back to the holotable.

Selmo was there, looking at a large holo schematic of the ship in the holospace above the table. A dozen blinking red dots on the schematic marked damaged areas. “The electrical generator is out, of course,” he said. “We don’t yet know how badly it’s damaged. That should be our first priority. The backup generators are fine, but they can only output about fifty percent of the power we typically use every day. So we’ll need to ration power and turn off a bunch of lights and all nonessential equipment. Most of the power will need to go to the air ventilators and the heaters. I’d rather work in the dark than freeze to death.”

“Victor and I will handle the main generator,” said Father. “What about the reactors?”

“The reactors are fine,” said Selmo. “So the thrusters are good. The corporates knew what they were doing. They beat us up, but they left us with the ability to run away as fast as we can.”

“Which is exactly what we are going to do,” said Concepcion. “Once we get our bearings and pick our course, we are out of here. We’re no match for a ship that size or that well defended. I know some of you would like to blow them out of the sky right now, but we are in no position to do so. We don’t have the capabilities, and we are not going to endanger anyone else on this ship. That asteroid is not worth dying for. We’re running.”

“No argument,” said Father. “But if we can, we should try to collect as many of the parts and sensors as possible that were cut away from the ship. They’re just out there floating in space right now, and we might be able to salvage some of the parts. Especially the lasers. Some of those components are irreplaceable. I don’t want to push our luck and aggravate the corporates by sticking around, but we should scoop up as much as we can before we rocket out of here.”

“Agreed,” said Concepcion. “Selmo, as soon as we’re done here, work with Segundo and Victor on a plan to quickly collect as much of the severed equipment as we can.”

Selmo nodded. “The miners can help with that. I’ve got thirty men already asking what they can do.”

“What else is damaged?” asked Father.

Selmo sighed. “Both laser drills are gone. The corporates severed them from the ship, and then sliced them to pieces. There’s no way we can repair them. I’ve already pulled video of the attack. The drills are irreparable. See for yourself.” He entered some commands into the holotable, and surveillance video of the exterior of the ship appeared in the holospace. There was the old laser drill, the one with Victor’s stabilizer, illuminated by a pair of the safety lights. Selmo fast-forwarded the video, and Victor and Father watched as lasers sliced the drill the ribbons. The light was so bright and the cuts happened so quickly that Selmo rewound the video and showed it to them again in slow motion. Victor felt sick. All his modifications and improvements to the drill, all of which he had created in his head and rarely written down before building them, were gone. Chopped into worthless scrap. Worse still, the drills were the family’s livelihood, the two most important pieces of equipment, the means by which the family earned money and survived.

And now they were gone.

Father said nothing for a moment. He understood the implication. The corporates had crippled more than the ship; they had crippled the family’s future. How could they mine now? How could they get money for needed supplies or spare parts? How could they exist in the Deep without good drills?

“What else?” asked Father.

“Four of our PKs are gone as well,” said Selmo. “That leaves us with two. Here again, the corporates knew what they were doing. They left us with one PK on either side of the ship, enough for us to fly out of here and defend ourselves against most collision threats, but not enough to retaliate and attack their ship. The only upside here, if there is one, is that they didn’t slice up the PKs. They just cut them loose. I take that to mean they expect us to recover them and repair them elsewhere.”

“How kind of them,” said Father. “Remind me to send flowers. What else?”

“Our other big loss is communication. The laserline transmitter’s gone. We can’t send a distress message even if we wanted to.”

“It also means we can’t warn anyone about the starship,” said Victor.

“True,” said Selmo, “but that’s the least of our problems right now.”

“What about ice?” asked Father. “How are we with air and fuel?”

Selmo smiled. “That’s a ray of sunshine. The holding bay is ninety-five percent full of ice. We harvested as much as we could from the asteroid when we first got here. So we’re fine for fuel and oxygen for a while. That’s more than enough to get us wherever we want to go within, say, five to six months from here.”

Victor felt relieved to hear that, at least. Ice was life. The reactors melted it and separated the hydrogen from the oxygen. The hydrogen they used for fuel. The oxygen they breathed.

Selmo moved his stylus in the holospace and rotated the schematic. “If you’d like more good news, it appears as if the other life-support systems are undamaged. Water purifiers are good. Air pumps are fine. Whoever these corporates are they picked their targets carefully.”

“Leaks?” asked Father.

“None that we can detect,” said Selmo. “We’re running another scan just to be certain, but it looks like we got through without a breach. We were lucky. The impact wasn’t that hard, and their lasers weren’t trying to penetrate. Plus the armor helped.”

“Who are they?” Father asked. “Why didn’t we see this coming?”

Selmo sighed. “That’s my fault. This is the corporate ship we sent the laserline to ten days ago. I should have suspected something when they didn’t show up on the scans anymore. I assumed that they had moved on. I never thought that they were creeping up on us.”

“No one is at fault,” said Concepcion. “They knew our scanning capabilities and they exploited them. End of story.”

“If they got our message, why would they attack us?” Father asked.

“Selmo and I did the math,” said Concepcion. “When we sent out the laserline, they were already coming for us. They never got our message. They missed it. This has nothing to do with the laserline. They wanted the asteroid, pure and simple.”

Dreo came to the holotable. “I’ve got their network. Give the word and we’re a go.”

Father turned to Concepcion. “We launched a snifferstick?” he asked.

Sniffersticks were small hacker satellites launched from one ship to spy on another. To work, they had to be within range of a ship’s network yet far enough away to avoid triggering the ship’s PKs. Fifty meters was about as close as any snifferstick dared. Accessing the ship’s network was the tricky part, especially if it was a corporate ship. Corporates had armies of coders and specialists who did nothing but devise defenses against sniffersticks. Most families wouldn’t dream of even trying to hack a corporate. But most families didn’t have Dreo, either, who could wiggle his way into any network.

“We launched it just before you came to the helm,” said Concepcion. “I want to know who bumped us.”

“What if they detect us nosing around their network?” said Father. “That might instigate another attack.”

“They won’t know,” said Dreo. “I’ve taken every precaution.”

“No offense,” said Father, “but are you sure? We’ve been out here for years. Who knows what other sweeper programs they’ve got running these days? They might have new ways to detect us that we don’t know about. Is this a risk we want to take? They’re corporates. What else do we want to know?”

“They have no reason coming out to the Kuiper Belt when there are so many asteroids in the A Belt, ready for the taking,” said Concepcion. “If they’re moving out here now, the other families will want to know. This will affect all the clans. We’ve lived in relative peace for a long time now. If corporates are beginning to invade our space, that’s intel we need to spread. Dreo assures me we’ll remain invisible.”

“Then why don’t we upload some malware or venomware and damage their systems while we’re in there?” said Victor.

“Because we are not going to attack them at all,” said Concepcion. “I want information, not revenge.”

Victor looked at the faces around the table, and saw that not everyone shared in that opinion.

“Please proceed, Dreo,” said Concepcion. “And bring up their network on the holotable, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Dreo returned to his workstation, and the schematic of the ship in the holospace disappeared, replaced with a series of three-dimensional icons spinning in space: flight log, engineering, laserlines, field trials, Lem, Dr. Benyawe, and others.

“Give me the manifest,” said Concepcion. “Tell me who the captain is.”

Photos and a holovideo of a handsome man in his early thirties appeared. Concepcion selected the window of data beside one of the photos and expanded it.

“Lem Jukes,” she said, reading the name.

“As in the Jukes?” said Father. “Is he related?”

“Ukko’s son,” said Concepcion.

“I’ll be damned,” said Selmo. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Copy as much of this data as we can,” said Concepcion. “I want to know what their intentions are. Then let’s get the severed sensors back in the ship and get out of here before Mr. Lem Jukes decides to take more potshots. I’m going to be with Gabi and Lizbet, and then I’ll head to the fuge to address the family.” She turned to Father. “Don’t waste time and energy working on what we can’t fix. Work with Selmo to identify those things we can repair. Power first, communication second.”

“What about the starship?” asked Victor.

“What about it?” said Concepcion. “Selmo’s right. We’re not in any position to address that right now. Nor can we relay what we’ve found. We’re silent until we get communication back online.”

“We’re not going to be able to recover everything,” said Father. “We’re going to need parts and supplies.”

“The nearest weigh station is four months away,” said Concepcion. “The closest help we have are the Italians. They received our message and are watching the sky. If we hurry, maybe we can reach them before they move on. They’ll have plenty of supplies we could use.”

Victor looked at Father and could tell that he was thinking the same thing Victor was. Going for the Italians was a risk. There was no way to send the Italians a transmission to tell them to stay put and wait. If El Cavador arrived and the Italians had moved on, the ship would be in serious trouble.

Concepcion left the bridge.

Victor turned back to the holospace and looked at Lem Jukes. Some of the photos were ID shots: a straight headshot, a profile shot. But others were more casual photos taken from the ship’s archives: Lem standing with his father, Ukko Jukes, in a ceremonial photo at what must have been the ship’s departure; a more editorial shot of Lem in action at the helm, leaning forward over some holodisplay, pointing at nothing in particular, clearly a staged shot for the press. And then there was the brief holovideo. It was twelve seconds long at the most, running on a loop, playing over and over again. Lem was at a dinner party, sitting at a table after a meal. Empty wineglasses, fancy cutlery, a slice of half-eaten cake on a plate. There was no audio, but Lem was clearly telling a story, using his hands and his charming smile to emphasize his tale. Two beautiful women sat on either side of him, hanging on his every word. The story reached its end, and everyone burst out laughing, including Lem. Then the video began again.

Victor watched it a second time, and this time Victor imagined the words coming out of Lem’s mouth. “So we blow up their mooring cables,” Lem was saying. “And there were these three men out on the hull of their ship. The devil only knows what they were doing out there. So I told my pilot to rush them, to hit them hard and knock that PK right where they were standing. And lo and behold, that thing smacked one of those gravel suckers right between the eyes.”

Laughter from everyone at the table.

Father was talking with Selmo. Victor stared at the laughter in the video.

That man killed Marco, Victor thought. Lem Jukes, son of Ukko Jukes, heir to the fortune of thieves and murderers, killed Marco.

Concepcion wanted them to focus on power and communication. Fine. Victor would do that. But he was also going to rebuild one of the PKs, a special one, strong enough to wipe that stupid grin right off Lem Jukes’s face.