Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

members of my own crew. Among the data I’ve sent you is a video of the alien species. This is not a joke, Mr. Jukes, and I would not be contacting you unless we were in dire need. I am sending you rendezvous coordinates. A WU-HU vessel in the area has agreed to join us in an attack on the ship six days from now. Our hope is that you will add your ship’s strength to ours. The alien ship continues to decelerate, and if we all accelerate and change our course slightly, we can intercept it and save countless lives, perhaps Earth itself. I will give you and your crew three hours to review our data and respond. Please acknowledge message received and intention to respond.”
    Lem didn’t move, trying to keep his face free of any surprise. “Message received. We will respond. Makarhu out.”
    He pulled his face out of the holospace. Chubs’s head appeared almost instantly in front of him. “We got their files. I thought it might be loaded with a virus, but it’s clean. The navigator ran the coordinates she gave us for the ship.”
    “And?”
    Chubs shook his head. “You better get up here, Lem. There’s something out there. Something like I’ve never seen.”
    *   *   *
    Lem and Chubs spent two hours going over all of the data from El Cavador. When they finished, they immediately went looking for Benyawe. They found her down in the engineering room with six other engineers, drawing rudimentary designs on the wall of Lem’s new idea for the glaser.
    Benyawe smiled when Lem entered. “Mr. Jukes, we were just discussing this bola-shaped design of yours. Perhaps you could explain to the engineers what you explained earlier to me?”
    “Some other time,” said Lem. He touched a button, made the drawings disappear, and turned to the gathered engineers. “If you’ll excuse us, we need a moment with Dr. Benyawe in private on an urgent matter.” He gestured to the door. The engineers exchanged glances, startled, then quickly gathered their things and left. Chubs locked the hatch behind them.
    “You’ve got my attention,” said Benyawe, with a look of concern.
    Lem first played the holo message from Concepción. Then he played the vids from El Cavador on the wall. Benyawe watched everything in silence, showing little reaction, like a calculating scientific observer. She didn’t even jump as Lem had when the hormiga showed itself on the surface of the pod. When the vids were over, she asked specific questions, and Chubs answered by putting the rest of the data from El Cavador up on the wall. Benyawe was silent as she read through it, clicking through the various windows, checking the math, rechecking the coordinates.
    When she finished, she turned and faced Lem. “We can’t call them hormigas. That’s Spanish for ‘ant.’ The scientific community would never approve of a living language classification. It needs to be the Latin. Formic. At least that’s my professional recommendation.”
    Lem blinked. “Who the hell cares what we call them? I’ve just showed you a damn alien species, Benyawe. What difference does their name make?”
    “All the difference in the world,” said Benyawe. “This is the greatest scientific discovery in our history, Lem. This changes everything. This answers the most fundamental scientific question out there. Are we alone in the universe? The answer, obviously, is no, we are not. And further, we’re not the most technologically advanced species, either, which will sting every human’s pride, I suspect.”
    “I am not interested in science, Doctor,” said Lem. “Your scientific mind might be tickled pink at this discovery, but my mind, my logical, practical, reasoning mind, is peeing in his mind pants. There is an alien ship out there rocketing toward Earth with unimaginable firepower and likely malicious intent. Now, if there is any chance whatsoever that this is a hoax and Chubs and I are gullible idiots, tell me now.”
    “No,” said Benyawe. “This is legitimate. The evidence is incontrovertible.”
    “No doubt in your mind?” asked Chubs.
    “None. We need to relay this information to Earth immediately.”
    “We can’t,” said Chubs. “Long-range comm is currently shot because of the interference.”
    “Even the laserline?” asked Benyawe.
    “The transmitter’s out,” said Chubs. “El Cavador believes the venting of the alien ship may have damaged external sensors as far away as a million kilometers. We hadn’t tried sending a laserline in a