Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

cable, all in one fluid movement as they had rehearsed.
    He scooted to his right, getting clear of the cable, making room. The others arrived behind him. Chepe, Pitoso, Bulo, Nando, and the rest, with Bahzím picking up the rear. Segundo looked ahead of them. Lem Jukes’s crew was coming down a cable from the Juke ship maybe three hundred meters away. Even at a distance Segundo could see that the Juke suits and gear were far superior than anything El Cavador men had.
    “Spread out,” said Bahzím. “Be back on the line in twelve minutes.”
    Segundo was on his hands and knees, crawling forward, keeping his body low, getting as far away from everyone else as he could. The idea was to disperse and set the explosives far apart to create a wide circle of damage. Segundo’s knee and hand magnets held him securely to the hull, but they were cumbersome and difficult to move. He had to pull hard on each leg to momentarily break the attraction and lift the magnet enough to move it forward. It was agonizing and far more difficult than their rehearsals. After twenty meters, his thighs were burning, and his breathing was heavy.
    He could see now that the surface of the ship wasn’t as smooth as it had appeared at a distance. There were thousands of closed apertures in rows running the length of the ship, like planted fields of crop. Each aperture was as big around as Segundo’s helmet, and he knew that if any of them opened it would be to unleash their weapon. He tried not putting any weight on the apertures for fear that the magnet might trigger something and open them. It was like crawling across a minefield.
    Finally he stopped and looked around him. The men from both ships were spread all over the surface. Some were laying explosives; others were still crawling forward; several explosives were already set, each with a small blinking green light, indicating the explosive was live. Segundo removed his first explosive from his pouch and set it gently on the surface. He inserted the blasting disc into the slot then set the timer to detonate three hours from now.
    They had agreed to radio silence during this phase of the operation so that they could all concentrate on setting the charges without interruptions. But suddenly everyone was yelling. Segundo lifted his head and saw that one of the explosives had gone off prematurely, ripping through the hull and throwing up debris. The voices in his helmet were fast and frantic.
    “What happened?”
    “Pitoso’s dead!”
    “It blew up right under him!”
    “What do we do?”
    “Get back to the cable. Set your explosives and get back to the line. Move!”
    Segundo’s explosive was blinking green, set. He left it and turned toward the mooring cable at least thirty meters away, a good five-minute crawl. They weren’t going to make it, he realized. Even if they got back to the line and up to the ship, they couldn’t fly El Cavador away fast enough. The whole operation relied on them getting in and out and then a safe distance away without being detected, before the Formics could respond. That wasn’t going to happen now. The Formics knew they were here.
    Segundo crawled faster, not bothering to avoid the apertures this time. His thighs burned. His arms ached. Sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes. The blast site was in front of him, between him and the cable—he would have to go around it. As he drew closer, up the curvature of the ship, the hole from the explosion came into view. It was a meter wide and stretched between two rows of apertures. Segundo looked down inside but saw nothing but darkness and shadows.
    “Let’s go,” Bahzím was shouting. “Move!”
    Segundo pulled out his last two explosives, set them on the ship’s surface beside one another, and quickly slid in the discs. Before setting the timers, he glanced up. Two men had made it to the line. Segundo couldn’t see who they were. He watched as they clipped their D-rings onto the line and launched upward, soaring away from the ship toward El Cavador.
    Segundo returned his attention back to the explosives and began setting the timers. A moment later Chepe was shouting over the radio. “There’s movement here. Something’s coming up out of the hole.”
    Segundo looked up. Chepe had come to the edge of the hole but was now retreating back from it as shapes emerged from the darkness. Two Formics in spacesuits, carrying equipment, crawled out onto the surface quick and insectlike with the patter