Earth Awakens (The First Formic War 3)

Victor reoriented himself and took in his surroundings. The shaft was fifteen meters to his right. "Yes. I can make it."

"Then move," said Imala. "You're near the debris, and one of the Formics may have survived the fall."

Victor turned and looked in the direction

he had fallen, shocked to see how close he had come to death. The wreckage from the human ships had scrunched together into a giant mangled heap, only ten meters from his current position. Had he fallen any farther, he would have impaled himself on a jagged piece of metal protruding from the pile.

Imala was wrong, though. If there were Formics in that heap, none of them could have survived.

Even so, he needed to get out of the open. He bent forward, attached his glove magnets to the wall, and began to climb, wincing in pain whenever he pushed off with his left foot. He reached the shaft, climbed inside, and concealed himself in the shadows.

From here he had a good view of the cargo bay. The inner wall of the bay had taken a beating from the gravity. Whole sections of wall had crumpled inward and broken free, exposing rows of tightly packed pipes underneath. The pipes all seemed to be running in the same direction from the front of the ship toward the rear. There were valves and fasteners on the pipes every few meters, and to Victor's surprise none of the pipes appeared damaged.

Elsewhere, where the inner wall had held, cart-pulling Formics had gone back to work, pulling their cargo on the tracks as if nothing had happened. A few had stopped at places where the inner wall in front of them had been ripped away, leaving them no more track to walk on. They stood there, stuck, unable to advance.

"What happened, Imala?" Victor asked. "Why did we suddenly have gravity in here?"

"The ships that attacked must have fired a weapon that somehow created gravity inside the ship."

"How is that possible?"

"No idea," said Imala. "But all of the cannons on the surface of the Formic ship were crushed against the hull like tinfoil. That's why you blacked out. You were feeling too many Gs. It's a miracle your boot magnets held."

"What happened to the attacking ships?"

"Destroyed as well. Once the cannons were gone, the irises on the hull of the Formic ship opened and unleashed the plasma. The attacking ships were vaporized in an instant. I recorded the whole thing. That's why you're weightless again. The gravity weapons were destroyed."

"Where did these ships come from? Who has a fleet that large?"

"They weren't ships, Vico. These things were too small to be ships. They were drones."

"Drones? If Earth had drones, why did we launch manned fighters? Why risk pilots' lives if you didn't have to?"

"Because these drones aren't from Earth," said Imala. "I just backtracked their flight path. They came from Luna."

"Luna?"

"And that's not the worst of it. All of our com lines with Luna went dark right before the attack."

It all became clear to Victor in an instant. "Lem. That bastard sent a drone fleet to kill us."

"But why?" said Imala. "He financed our attack, Vico. He gave us the shuttle, our gear."

"Of course he did," said Victor. "This was his golden opportunity. We put our heads on the chopping block and placed an ax in his hands. Don't you see? We went to him for help, and he saw it as an opportunity to silence us. Think, Imala. Lem and Ukko both want us gone. You're a whistleblower, I'm a witness to a crime Lem committed. What better way to make those two problems go away than to erase us."

"It doesn't make sense, Vico. You're suggesting Lem invested all this money into this operation just to bump us off? There are far less expensive ways to kill people. If he had wanted to silence us he could've done that on Luna."

"Then why did we lose contact with Luna right before the attack?" said Victor. "And no, Lem couldn't have dealt with us on Luna. There was too much attention on him. He was dogged by the paparazzi. And Ukko wouldn't take that risk anyway. A scandal like that would topple the company. This is cleaner. No witnesses. No one knows we're even out here. No one would connect us with Lem."

"Benyawe could," said Imala. "She was helping us, Vico. I can't imagine she would be a part of this."

"Maybe she didn't know. Maybe she thought Lem was legitimate."

"But then she and Dublin and the others at the warehouse who all saw us preparing for this would be loose ends. Are you suggesting Lem would silence them as well?"

"I'm suggesting they're all corporates, Imala, and they'll do whatever is necessary to protect the corporation."

"I can't believe that, Vico. Benyawe and Dublin are good people. They worked hard to help us."