Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

rehearsing.
    As a child on board El Cavador , Victor had feared the name Ukko Jukes. Whenever spotters spied a Juke ship in the vicinity, Victor knew it meant trouble and sometimes even violence. As a boy of four or five, Victor had assumed that Ukko captained all those ships himself, shouting orders from the helm like a giant menacing warrior. And even later, when Victor had learned the truth of who Ukko Jukes was, the name still carried an air of dread and danger.
    Yet here was the man now, shorter than Victor had expected, with thinning white hair and a trim white beard and a woman at his side dabbing his cheeks with makeup. It made Victor almost laugh to think that he had ever feared such a man.
    Simona put a finger to her lips and led Victor and the others to the back of the room where a few dozen chairs had been set up in the darkness. Most of the chairs were empty, but a handful were occupied by people who appeared to be helping with the production. Victor took a chair beside Imala and waited. It galled him to sit here and watch these people fret over something so insignificant. Whatever this production was, it was completely meaningless compared to what was coming.
    A woman with a headset and a holopad called for quiet, and Ukko dismissed the makeup lady with a brusque wave of his hand. The lady scurried off as someone in the shadows counted down from ten. At zero, a dozen heads appeared in the holofield in front of Ukko, all of them smiling and courteous. Ukko greeted them warmly, thanked them for their time, then the text of Ukko’s presentation appeared in front of him.
    “Today is a special day in the history of our organization. For the past twenty-five years, Juke Limited has been the leader in space mining, extracting hundreds of millions of tons of minerals a year and growing every economy in the world. Some might say, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But Juke Limited will never stop innovating. We continuously look for ways to make our industry more efficient and more productive. Today I give you proof of that. Today the space-mining industry takes a revolutionary leap forward.”
    A family portrait appeared in the air beside him: a father, mother, and three young children, all sitting under a tree and smiling for the camera. “Ask yourself, what is the one resource we waste the most in space? Is it oxygen? Fuel?… No. It’s time. We waste millions of man-hours prospecting for viable asteroids. Each of our prospecting ships has a crew of ten to twenty men and women, who spend months in space, oftentimes with little or nothing to show for it. That translates into lost time with spouses and little ones. What we need is a smarter, faster, less expensive way to determine an asteroid’s mineral content. Is it full of rich ferromagnetic metals? Or is it a worthless rock? Today, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the solution. The answer to all that wasted time.”
    The family portrait disappeared. Ukko walked to his left, and the holofield and light rig moved with him. He stopped at a large object no bigger than a skimmer covered with a black sheet. Victor hadn’t noticed it before in the darkness. The light rig shot up into the air, and the holofield expanded to five times its original size so that it now included the draped object.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world’s first space-mining drone … the Vanguard!”
    Ukko made a sweeping gesture with his arm, and the black sheet flew backward out of the holofield, unveiling a small, white, seamless vessel that sparkled in the rotating spotlights. “Working as a scout, the Vanguard will seek out mineral-rich asteroids via remote control and preprogrammed flight paths. By firing digger bots no larger than an apple down into the surface of the asteroid from space, the Vanguard can determine the asteroid’s approximate mineral content. That information is then relayed back to Juke. If the mineral content is high enough and the asteroid large enough, a mining crew is dispatched for immediate mineral extraction.”
    The floating heads in the holofield began asking questions. As each one did, Ukko brought the head forward and made it larger than the others. What is its fuel source? How soon will these be operational? How do you safely fly it via remote control if there’s a time lag between it and headquarters? What will happen to all the prospecting crews? Are these people out of a job?
    Ukko answered them all deftly, as if he expected