"Who else would send drones from Luna, Imala? Who else has the capability to build a fleet like this?"
"I'm not saying these aren't Juke made, Vico. I'm saying we don't know the circumstances. Maybe Juke sold the drones to the Americans. Or to China, or to NATO."
"Even if that's the case, Imala, Lem could've told the buyer, 'Oh, by the way, we have a strike team at the ship at the moment. Be a lamb and don't blast it to hell just yet, if you don't mind.'"
Imala said nothing.
"They cut all communication, Imala. They cut us loose. If it wasn't Jukes, why didn't they send a warning? The drones came from Luna. They would have seen them long before we did."
Imala said nothing.
"They knew we were here, Imala. They knew I was inside. So they attacked the ship to destroy it and counted our corpses as a consolation prize. Then they become world heroes, and all their problems go adios. The money Lem put into this is nothing to them, Imala. They were willing to pay twice that just to dump me out in the Belt, remember?"
"But Benyawe--"
"Is one of them," Victor interrupted. "They may have kept her out of the loop, but you can be sure she's toeing the line now."
Imala was silent a moment. "So what do we do now?"
"When we're done here we go back to Luna and jettison Lem Jukes into space without a helmet. That's what we do."
"What do you mean, when we're done here. We are done here, Vico. We lost the duffel bag. It's under a mountain of debris. And even if you could reach it, the bomb and equipment will have been crushed. You're lucky it didn't detonate already. We're through here."
She was right. The whole plan had been in that duffel bag. Victor peeked over the lip at the wreckage. There was no sign of the bag anywhere, and Victor doubted he could separate any of the pieces that had been crushed together. Plus, if the bomb was damaged, it would be dangerous to try to recover it. Still, they couldn't leave empty-handed.
"I still have my helmetcam, Imala. And Earth still needs information about this ship. I'm going to the helm to gather what intel I can. If anything happens to me, you know what to do."
He waited for her to object, but she said nothing.
"You're not going to argue?" he said.
"Why waste my breath?" said Imala. "You're more bullheaded than I am. You'll go regardless of what I think."
He smiled. "Turn off all communication equipment with Benyawe in case they attempt to reconnect with us and confirm we're dead. Suit biometrics, ship monitoring, cut it all. We go totally black. Let them think we are dead. Then redirect all my helmetcam data somewhere else, a private cloud account, maybe. Somewhere Lem can't access it. Because if he has it, he'll bury it. The last thing he wants is the world knowing he tried to erase us."
"There are data satellites I can use," said Imala. "I'll program a timer and a fail-safe into the account, with instructions to forward everything to the nets if we don't log in every twenty-four hours. That way, if something happens to us, the data doesn't go undiscovered."
"Good," said Victor. He repositioned himself and zoomed his visor binocs to a space across the room where the inner wall had fallen and pipes lay exposed. "I want to check those pipes out first. They must carry the plasma to the irises."
He crawled to the edge of the shaft, made sure no one was looking, aimed his body, and launched. The kick with his left foot sent a stab of pain through him, but he tried to ignore it, soaring across the room, aiming for a spot on the wall to the left of where the pipes were exposed. He twisted his body at the last moment and landed expertly, his ankle blossoming with pain.
He crawled toward the pipes using his hand magnets.
When he was within a few meters, alarms on his suit went haywire, screaming in his ears.
Bweep. Bweep. Bweep.
A message flashed on his HUD. WARNING. RADIATION.
"The pipes," he said. "They're radioactive."
"Get out of there!" shouted Imala.
Victor recoiled and launched again. He landed on the opposite wall, turned and launched a third time, this time aiming for a shaft that led toward the center of the ship. He landed near the shaft entrance and crawled inside.
"Are you all right?" asked Imala.
"I think so," said Victor.