Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

bad father.”
    “Stop talking,” said Father gently.
    Toron winced again.
    Father handed Victor the shears. “Cut the grappling arm.”
    Victor hesitated. He didn’t want to leave Toron.
    “Do it now, Vico,” said Father.
    Victor moved, crawling across the surface. He pulled the claw of the heat extractor away. The metal was cracked and brittle. Victor turned on the shears, and the second grappling arm snapped away.
    “Don’t stop,” said Father. “Take out one of the needle drills next. No matter what happens, keep going. Break off as much as you can.”
    A second figure emerged from the hatch. Father had the other pair of shears in his hand. He rushed the creature, staying low, jabbing the shears forward. Victor reached the drill. It was narrower than the arm. He snapped the claw around it and waited for the heat extractor to do its work, sucking the heat away. Victor glanced to the side and saw Father fighting the creature. Father kept lunging with the shears, but the creature was easily swatting the attacks aside. If Victor didn’t help, the creature would soon get the upper hand.
    Victor glanced back at the extractor. It was done. Victor quickly removed the claw and snipped with the shears. The drill snapped free, and Victor pushed it away before glancing again at Father. The creature was off the ship, dangling in space at the end of its hose, not moving, its body mangled from the shears. Father crawled forward and snipped the hose, severing the creature from the ship.
    “Are you hurt?” asked Victor.
    Father sounded winded. “No. Keep going.”
    Victor went to the next drill. Froze it. Snipped it. Pushed it away.
    They were approaching El Cavador. Victor could see it far ahead in the distance. Father was at the hatch, looking inside. It was a small hole, too narrow for his shoulders. “There’s another one inside,” he said.
    Father reached in with the shears. There was a struggle. Father’s arms jerked right and left. The creature had incredible strength, and for a moment Victor feared that the magnets anchoring Father to the surface of the ship would break their hold and Father would be slung out into space.
    But the magnets held, and Father continued to lunged downward, fierce and fast.
    Finally the struggling stopped. Father exhaled, coughed, and sounded exhausted. “It’s dead,” he said. He shined a light down into the hole. “I think this is the cockpit. I don’t see any other way to get into this room except through this hatch. No doors. No access points. I think these three were the entire crew.”
    Victor crawled toward him. “We have to stop it if we can. Do you see any controls?”
    “I see a lot of levers and dials. And a few screens, but they only display images. There’s no data. No writing, no symbols, no instructions, nothing that suggests measurement or coordinates or directions. No language marks or symbols. Nothing. I wouldn’t know how to stop it.”
    Victor reached him and looked inside. The creature was snipped in half, floating in the air, limp and oozing liquid. Victor averted his eyes, suddenly hit with a wave of nausea. He shined his light toward the flight console instead, which was a ring around the front window, filled with dozens of levers and switches.
    “We need to widen this hole,” said Victor. “I’ll freeze it with the heat extractor. You cut behind me as I move around the circle.” He reached down and pinched the inner ring of the hatch with the claw of the heat extractor then slowly slid the claw along the inner ring. Father followed behind with the shears, cutting and cracking the metal away. They worked quickly, and when they were done, the hole was more than wide enough for the both of them to float inside. Victor pushed the creature aside with the claw of the heat extractor and flew down to the console. The levers varied in size and shape, but there was nothing to indicate their purpose. No markings, words, numbers, nothing. Some of the levers would no doubt be for the drill and grappling arm while others must be for the engines. But which ones? Victor looked around him, searching for clues. The room was large and filled with equipment. There were long tubes of smoky gases and odd-looking plants. The screens showed images of the Milky Way, the solar system, and a slightly blurry image of a planet.
    “That’s Earth,” said Father.
    Victor thought so, too. “Yet there’s no data,” said Victor. “No labeling, no markings of any