Mazer faced the others. "All right. Listen up. We make three teams of two. Each team has a fisherman and a hook. The fisherman anchors his boots here at the shaft entrance and holds one end of the rope. The hook ties the other end around his chest and thighs like so." He raised his arms so they could see how he had tied the harness. "Then the hook leaps out and seizes a piece of wreckage. The fisherman reels them both back in, and the team works together to get the wreckage into the cart. If the piece proves too big for the cart, cut it down if the cuts can be made quickly. Otherwise ditch it and grab something else. Target pieces that are smaller than the cart but that have some mass to them. Engines, drive systems. We're making cannon shot here. The denser the better. We keep fishing and loading until these carts are full. Shenzu, you're with me."
They all moved quickly, pairing off and making their harnesses.
Shenzu seized his end of the rope, set his boot magnets to maximum, and signaled to Mazer that he was ready. Mazer launched toward the wreckage and landed on a hunk of fuselage. It spun and twisted from the force of his impact, but Mazer held on. Shenzu quickly pulled in the slack on the rope, and the fuselage steadied. Mazer snapped his hand magnets to it and called back to Shenzu that he was ready. Shenzu pulled him in, and the two of them loaded the fuselage into one of the carts.
After fifteen minutes they had filled five carts. The wreckage was bulky and oddly shaped, so they only fit two to three pieces per cart, but Mazer figured it was enough to arm two launch tubes.
"Everybody take a cart," said Mazer. "If you're wearing a harness, consider wrapping the rope around the cart and pulling it like a horse. You'll be able to see where you're going. We form a line and we move double time. Shenzu you and Benyawe share a cart."
"Because I'm old and feeble?" said Benyawe.
"Because we have five carts and six people," said Mazer. "Because you've turned more nozzles than anyone and because we need you rested." He had noticed her movements were becoming sluggish. He couldn't have her slowing down the line.
"Now let's move!"
They moved. Mazer led them out, pulling his cart behind him like a beast of burden. The load was weightless, but the wheels on the cart were old and rusting and slow to turn. After fifty meters Mazer's legs felt as if they were on fire. He was pouring sweat. His water supply was nearly depleted. He pushed on, setting the pace, hurrying toward the launch tubes. The others followed, lagging slightly behind but hustling nonetheless.
They were still a short distance from the launch tubes, when Victor came over the radio. "Here they come!"
*
Victor had seen the landers on the nets. He knew they were large. He had seen how everything around them seemed small and insignificant in comparison--the aircraft that had attacked them, the jungles or mud slides that had surrounded them, the villages and cities near them. The landers had dwarfed them all. But in each of those images, the landers had been mostly submerged into the ground. Now he was seeing them in their entirety. Massive. Unstoppable. Mountains of mechanical engineering. A swarm of mining ships were firing at the landers, and Victor was relieved to see that the ships were in fact inflicting damage. Not much, but the landers' surfaces were riddled with cuts and gouges and scorch marks. The landers might be big, but they weren't indestructible.
They were coming in a line, Victor saw, one right behind the other. If he was going to destroy them both, he would have to do it quickly. There wouldn't be much time between shots. He needed to destroy one with the gamma plasma and then chase the second one with the plasma beams back into the line of fire of the launch tubes. If the second one didn't retreat from the gamma plasma, great. Victor would destroy it the same way as the first. But Victor didn't suspect that would be the case. "Mazer, what's your status?"
"We just reached the launch tubes with the carts."
"I marked the tubes with paint," said Victor.
"I see them," said Mazer. "We're moving there now. We'll need a few minutes to load the wreckage."
"You've got about four minutes. Maybe five. Then they'll be on top of us."
"We'll load what we can," said Mazer. "Hopefully it will be enough."
Victor blinked a command to connect directly to Deen. "Talk to me, Deen."
"You're going to get one shot at this," said Deen. "They're big, yes. And that means they're easy to hit. But it also means they're resilient. Put the beams right through it, dead center. I say we wait until they're as close as possible, directly above the nozzles so you can't miss."
"Lem," said Victor. "Pull back your ships. Get the miners out."
"Roger," said Lem. "Good luck."
Victor saw the holo model of the ship rotate. His hands were already on the levers and switches he would need. He had watched the vids a dozen times, learning from the Formics at the helm, studying how they handled the controls and moved the ship. He mimicked them now, moving the levers and rotating the ship.
Deen continued to make slight adjustments, and Victor continued to follow him. The minutes passed quickly, and the first lander had grown so large in the window that it seemed like a collision was inevitable.
"More to the left," Deen said. "You're rotating too quickly ... Down four degrees ... Left another degree ... That's it. Keep it coming. Almost. There you go. Now you're tracking. Hold that rotation. You've got him."
"Mazer, are you loaded?" Victor said.
"One of the tubes is loaded," said Mazer. "That's all we had time for."
"That's going to have to do," said Victor.
"The underbelly is coming up," said Deen. "You're still tracking. Hold that rotation. Ten more seconds. Steady. Three. Two. One. FIRE!"
Victor spun the wheel clockwise as hard and fast as he could. On Deen's helmetcam he saw the beams of gamma plasma explode outward, puncturing through the lander as if it were tissue paper. The lander continued moving forward, breaking apart.