Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

knocked the breath out of Rena this time, and she thought she might ricochet off into space. But Lola was faster. She grabbed Rena’s hand and pulled them inside. Abbi was in. Lola slammed the hatch shut. “I got them!”
    The ship vibrated. The engines roared. Rena braced herself, ready for the force of acceleration. But no force came. “We’re not moving,” she told Lola.
    Lola was unwrapping the harness straps and freeing Abbi. “It’s a trick. Help me unwrap her.”
    Rena was confused but she didn’t argue. They pulled the straps free. The airlock was pressurizing, filling with oxygen. Then the lights went out. Rena was panicked a moment. And then they were moving. Rena was nearly thrown backward in the blackness, her hand scrabbling for a handhold. She found one and steadied herself. Then her body adjusted to the acceleration and all was still. The airlock beeped the all-clear, and the interior hatch opened.
    Rena was flooded with personal spotlights. The other women were waiting in the cargo bay, shining their lights in the hatch. They helped Rena and Lola and Abbi into the cargo bay and got their helmets off. By then Abbi was coming to, rousing, her eyes slowing blinking open. Alive.
    Arjuna arrived a moment later with his own light, rushing in from the helm. “We are safe for now.”
    “What just happened?” said Rena.
    “We fired a heat bomb and went black.”
    “I don’t know what that means.”
    “When we leave a site, we go black. We give off no heat signature, no light, nothing that could cause the buzzards to locate us. Buzzards always look—not at the original wreckage—but at the ships leaving the wreckage. So we give a strong signature on a particular straight course, but just as we go black, we jink in a different direction, a sharp move to one side that makes it hard to guess what course we’re actually on.”
    “So they think we went somewhere else.”
    “We give off a false heat signature in another direction. It will show up on Khalid’s instruments as if that were the real direction of the rocket blast, so they’ll search for us in the wrong part of space.”
    “Won’t they detect our jink rocket?”
    “It’s as focused as possible, so it can’t be picked up unless you’re in a very narrow range, while the heat bomb is large. It looks like a rocket firing once and quickly. But actually it makes no change in our trajectory because it’s detached from the ship before it blows.”
    “Clever,” said Rena. “I’m assuming this has worked before.”
    “I’m alive, aren’t I?” He regarded Abbi, who was fully conscious now, the other women crowded around her, consoling her.
    “Now what?” asked Rena.
    “Now the real work begins. Now we sort through everything and get rid of what we don’t want.”
    “We can’t simply jettison things of little value,” said Rena. “That’s dangerous. Other ships will fly into it. Debris like that is the equivalent of a landmine.”
    “I am not like other crows, Lady of El Cavador. Other crews may do this, but not us. We carefully put unwanted items on the surface of asteroids so as not to leave a trail of ship-wrecking debris.”
    She nodded, impressed with him yet again.
    “I did not mean to frighten you back there,” he said. “Khalid came out of nowhere. He must have been following us. He will not follow us now. I am glad you made it back.”
    “Makes two of us,” she said.
    “Are you all right? How do you feel, Lady?”
    Rena’s heart was still pounding in her chest. “Alive,” she said. “I feel alive.”

CHAPTER 23
     
    Camouflage
     
    As soon as their shuttle was close enough to Luna to send and receive transmissions, Victor sent a laserline and contacted Yanyu. It was sleep-shift on Imbrium, and when Yanyu appeared in the holofield above the dash she looked unkempt and half asleep. Then she realized it was Victor and Imala on the other end, and she was awake in an instant. “They told us you were heading to the Belt.”
    “We were,” said Victor. “The situation changed. We turned back at Last Chance. We haven’t had any contact with anyone in seven days. We were hoping you could bring us up to speed. We didn’t know who else to call.”
    “Do you have a place to stay?”
    “Actually no,” said Imala.
    “Then you will stay with me. Where are you docking? I will meet you there.”
    “We don’t want to impose,” said Imala.
    “You must stay here. Where else will you go? Which