"And these satellites are functioning?" said Lem. "They work properly?"
"Very well," said Father.
"Then why didn't they see the Formics coming?"
Father smiled and shook a finger. "An excellent question. The short answer is, the Parallax satellites weren't designed as an alien warning system. They're made for research and for detecting collision threats. And when I say research, I mean they're looking way out there at a specific object or cluster of galaxies, holding a very tight field of view, like a laser dot in the sky, whatever it is that sparks the astrophysicist's fancy. When the satellites aren't doing that, they're flagging light-reflection objects moving in normal parabolic patterns that pose a threat to Earth."
"But the Formic ship is a threat to Earth."
"Yes, we know that now, but it wasn't moving in a way that the Parallax computers recognized. We program it to look for very specific things. Giant alien ships moving in ways no one thought possible was not one of those things. And keep in mind, the space between these satellites is tremendous. Opposing satellites on the same plane could be ten billion kilometers away from each other or more. Nor are they fast moving. For satellites they're extremely slow. So no, they didn't see the Formics coming, and frankly I'm not at all surprised. Space is very big, son."
"This is all very fascinating," said Lem. "And I commend you for building your satellite telescope thingies that didn't actually prove very useful when we needed them to. But I fail to see the relevancy here. We lost the drones, Father. You may not care about the company. But everyone who works for this company does. You need a game plan. You need to prepare a response. Ukko Jukes kicked the hornets' nest. Ukko Jukes aggravated Formics and incited a second wave. The headlines write themselves."
Father frowned. "I'm disappointed, Lem. I thought for sure you would see the possibilities a configuration like the Parallax would provide."
"Really? We're still on this Parallax thing? The future of this company is hanging by a thread, Father. And that thread is suspended over the crapper. So unless these Parallax satellites are also time machines that allow us to go back and have a do-over with the drones, I don't see the point."
Father sighed wearily and tapped his wrist pad. The original screensaver solar system returned, filling the room. "Information, Lem. That's why Parallax matters. The possibilities for useful, profitable information."
Lem scrunched up his shoulders. "Sorry. If we're playing a guessing game here, I fold. What am I not seeing?"
"If the Parallax satellites can carry scopes that look outward, they can also carry scopes that look inward." Father tapped the wrist pad, and hundreds of additional objects appeared in the room, scattered across the solar system within the ecliptic. Lem stood and walked to one near him. He leaned down to get a better look at it. It was a ship, a digger, no larger than his fingertip. He reached out, touched it, and it ballooned in size to be as large as he was. Lem recoiled a step, startled. Windows of data popped up around the ship, identifying it as a MineTek asteroid digger, C-class--a competitor's vessel. There was a list of all the asteroids it had visited and mined from, as well as a complete ship manifest: the captain's name and photo, the full crew, equipment, weapons, drive system; it was all there.
Lem turned and looked back at his father. "You're spying on the solar system?"
"Not spying, Lem. Observing. Gathering information. With the gyroscope we can see everything we need to know to improve our operations. We can avoid the asteroids that are already occupied by a competitor's vessel, for example. Or we can identify new, potentially viable asteroids--"
"Or you can track competitors' trade routes," said Lem. "You can know everything the other guys are doing and then sabotage and obstruct their operations. You can know who to buy off, who to avoid, where the real money is."
"You make it sound devious, Lem," said Father. "But this is how a company operates. I'm not doing anything illegal here."
"Illegal, no. Unethical, maybe."
Father looked annoyed. "This is why we succeed, Lem. This is why we have the market share we do. Every company in the world does this. They gather and use information. We just do it better than anyone else."
"This doesn't reek of privacy issues to you?"
Father laughed. "Privacy? Are you telling me a CEO on Earth can't stand on the roof of his building and look down at the street and count how many of his competitor's trucks drive by?"
"That's different."
"No. It isn't. Scale doesn't matter. Just because we've got a taller building, so to speak, doesn't make it suddenly wrong."
Lem shook his head. "So you knew. As soon as the Formic ship came into system, you knew what it was, and yet you pretended not to."
"No, I didn't know what it was, Lem. The interference from the Formic ship disrupted the Parallax satellites as much as any other. We went dark for several months. The satellites continued to collect images, but they couldn't transmit. Now that the radiation has dissipated, and transmission lines are reopening, we're slowly coming back online. Now the satellites are inundating us with every image they've taken since they transmitted the last time, before the interference."
"This all has a point, I'm sure," said Lem.
"When you attacked the Formic ship in the Kuiper Belt, Lem, who joined you?"
The question was such a non sequitur that it took Lem a moment to respond. "A free-miner ship. El Cavador. Why?"
"There was a third ship," said Father. "One that didn't participate in the actual attack."
"A WU-HU ship," said Lem. "It took all the women and children from El Cavador. We never saw what happened to it. We couldn't radio it. Everything was chaos."
"The ship survived, Lem."