Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

Eye is giving me is deceleration.”
    “It’s slowing down?” said Victor. “Natural objects in space don’t slow down on their own, Mar.”
    “No, they don’t. And when I say it’s moving fast, Vico, I mean fast . Fifty percent of lightspeed fast. And that’s its speed now, after continuing to decelerate. Interstellar objects don’t go that fast, they don’t bend without a gravity well, and they don’t decelerate. So tell me, am I going to get teased for this?”
    “I don’t think so,” said Victor.
    “I should forget about it?”
    “Edimar, I think we’re looking at a spacecraft.”
    “Nothing goes that fast.”
    “Nothing made by humans.”
    At his words, Edimar visibly relaxed and a silly grin came to her face. “So I’m not crazy to think we’ve got us an alien starship? A near-lightspeed ship coming into our system and slowing down?”
    “Either it’s a lightspeed ship or somebody repealed a whole bunch of laws of physics. And either it’s alien or some corporation or government is experimenting with a technology so advanced it will make them masters of the universe.”
    “So I should call a grown-up.”
    “You should call the Council. Or I will. This isn’t just important, it’s so important that they’ve got to make decisions about it right away.”
    “What’s the hurry?”
    “Because it might very well be headed for Earth.”

 
    CHAPTER 2
    Lem
    The Makarhu wasn’t built to be a science vessel, and it certainly wasn’t built for war. It was a mining ship, property of Juke Limited, the largest space-mining corporation in the solar system. But Lem Jukes—mercifully short for Lemminkainen Joukahainen, heir to the Juke Limited fortune and captain of the ship—was prepared to use the Makarhu for any purpose if it meant turning a failing mission into what the Board of Directors would consider a success.
    It was an hour after sleep-shift had ended, and Lem was floating weightless in the observation room, waiting for an asteroid to explode. The asteroid was a small thing, a “pebble” no bigger than Lem himself, lazily moving through space half a kilometer from the ship. If not for the ship’s laser lights dotting the asteroid’s surface and illuminating it, it would have been completely invisible against the backdrop of space, even with the help of the special scope glasses Lem was wearing.
    Lem lowered the glasses and looked out the window to his right. The cargo bay doors were open, and the gravity laser was in position, pointing out into space at the pebble in the sky. Lem couldn’t see the engineers from his position, but he knew they were down in the lab adjacent to the cargo bay, prepping the laser for the test.
    According to the Juke research team that developed it, the gravity laser—or glaser as they had come to call it—was supposed to be the future of the space-mining industry, a revolutionary way to break surface rock and dig deep through the toughest asteroids. It was designed to shape gravity in much the same way a laser shaped light, though since gravity was not reflective, it worked on very different principles; understanding them was way below Lem’s pay grade. The company had spent billions of credits to build this prototype, and quite a bit more to keep it a secret. Lem’s job was simply to oversee the field tests. A cakewalk of a mission.
    That is, if the gravity laser would ever turn on. It was the first deep-space trial, so Lem expected the delays born of extreme caution. But it was beginning to seem as if something was actually seriously wrong with the device and everyone was afraid to tell him.
    “I’m waiting, Dr. Dublin,” Lem said, keeping his voice pleasant.
    A man’s voice sounded in Lem’s earpiece. “Just a few moments, Mr. Jukes. We’re nearly ready to begin.”
    “You were nearly ready to begin ten minutes ago,” said Lem. “Didn’t anyone print the word ‘on’ beside the right button?”
    “Yes, Mr. Jukes. Sorry for the delay. It shouldn’t be long now.”
    Lem rubbed his forehead just above his eyes, fighting back the beginnings of a migraine. The ship had been in the Kuiper Belt for six weeks now, where failure would have no witnesses and there would be no massive object to be torn apart if the reaction got out of hand. But the engineers, who were supposedly ready before this flight even launched, had produced nothing but delays. Their explanations might have been completely legitimate, or they might have been