Earth Unaware (The First Formic War 1)

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.