Captain Doashang moved to the communications officer. "Any luck contacting Lem Jukes?"
"No, sir. The Formic ship is putting off all kinds of interference. It's causing a perturbation that randomizes the digital information. I'm getting transmissions, but at a much slower rate. A bit per second instead of a trillion bits per second. Which means what I am getting is basically nothing. It's not enough information to decipher anything. We can't send or receive long-range messages at all. Not as focused laserlines or as blanket spreads."
"That's unacceptable. I need to send a warning to the Asteroid Belt."
"I don't know what to tell you, sir. The only radio communication that works is short-range. And we've deviated from the main thoroughfare to follow the Formic ship, so no other ship is going to come even remotely close to this position. We could accelerate back to the major flight paths and wait until a ship comes close enough to hear our transmission. But that could be a long wait, sir. And there's no way to determine if the interference is still affecting that quadrant. If it is, whomever we contact won't be able to send long transmissions either. The most reliable way to get word to the Belt, sir, may be to go there ourselves."
"That's several months away."
The officer looked helpless. "It's not ideal, sir. But we're short on options."
"Is the Formic ship sending radio? How are their messages getting through?"
"Near as we can tell, the Formics are silent, sir. Even when we were close, I didn't pick up so much as a squawk."
Captain Doashang turned to Wenchin. "Set a course to the nearest station in the Asteroid Belt, moving as fast as our fuel supply will allow."
"What about Lem Jukes?" asked Wenchin.
"He's out of range, and I doubt he cares what happened to us anyway. He abandoned his own men. He won't concern himself with us. He's probably heading for the Belt as well."
Wenchin relayed the order, and the ship quickly accelerated.
Doashang stayed on the helm until Dr. Ji called him to the medical offices several hours later. Ji appeared pale and shaken when Doashang arrived.
"Not the most pleasant postmortem examination you've performed, I'm guessing," said Doashang.
"That's putting it lightly," said Ji.
The two stood at a large window outside a room where a team of technicians was examining and videoing the dissected Formic.
"What are they?" asked Doashang.
"They're semivertebrate," said Ji, "in that they have a single neural column, but clearly they evolved from exoskeletal hexiforms."
"What does that mean?"
"They evolved from creatures very much like ants, but they left ant-hood far behind."
"So they're not insects?"
"Descended from insectlike creatures. Certain evolutionary changes have occurred. They're warm blooded, for instance. They insulate and perspire to regulate body temperature in much the same way we do. They have an endoskeleton covered with muscles and skin and fur. Most of their organs are a mystery to me, although we've documented everything. They have six legs obviously. The middle pair has musculature that suggests they can bear weight, though perhaps not as much as hips or thighs. The joint socket is extraordinarily flexible, even more so than human shoulders. Plus they have highly developed back muscles, which suggests they have enormous strength."
"We've already seen evidence of that. What I want to know is how do we kill them."
"They're not indestructible. They're tough and resilient, but they can be broken. What frightens me more than their physicality, though, is what we saw them do on the vids. They were immediately willing to give their lives to thwart any attack. No hesitation. No attempt to protect themselves. Just unbridled animal ferocity and completely unyielding devotion. These aren't just technologically superior creatures, Captain. This is a species that will never, ever give up until every last one of them is destroyed."
"On that point, Doctor, we will gladly oblige them."
*
Lem stood in the engineering room, which had been converted into a war room of
sorts, and looked at all of the notes on the wall-screens around him. There were anatomical diagrams of a Formic; sketches of the Formic ship with various engineering theories on how the ship operated; photos and analysis of the weapon that had destroyed El Cavador; a systems chart showing the Formic ship's trajectory; as well as numerous other scribbles, lists, ideas, and theories. "We have all this intel," said Lem. "All this critical information that Earth desperately needs, and we can't do a damn thing with any of it." He turned and faced Chubs, Benyawe, and Dr. Dublin, whose hands were still in casts. "Unless we relay this to Earth, it's worthless," said Lem.
"We're at the mercy of our radio," said Chubs. "Until we get through the interference there's not much we can do."
In the weeks since the attack, the interference from the Formic ship had rendered long-range communication impossible. Lem had ordered the radio officers to continually broadcast a looped transmission about the Formics--detailing the ship's coordinates, flight path, dimensions, and speed--but as far as the radio officers could tell, nothing was getting through. Every day hundreds of the transmissions went out and zero transmissions came in. The Makarhu was screaming a warning, but nobody could hear a word.