Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

and the city of Imbrium came into view, Victor gaped in wonder. Factories, smelting plants, huge industrial complexes with so many lights and pipes and buildings that they seemed to be their very own cities. Then Imbrium proper came into view to his right. Buildings and lights and glass-topped walkways. It was more human-built structure than he had ever seen.
    He could feel his body getting heavier. Gravity was seizing him. The quickships around him organized themselves into a line, all of them loaded with huge cargos of cylinders. Victor’s eyes followed the line in front of him, and he saw that the LUG system was taking the quickships to a massive complex beyond the city.
    Then suddenly his quickship deviated from the others and changed course, flying down toward a hangar with a ceiling at least a hundred meters high. The quickship’s engines died. It drifted into the hangar. There were damaged quickships everywhere in various stages of repair, but there were no workers that he could see. Robot arms extended and grabbed the quickship. His forward motion stopped, and Victor was thrown against his restraining harness. The pain took his breath away, and he was certain he had cracked a few ribs. He coughed, trying to get his wind back. The ship rotated ninety degrees, with the nose pointed upward. Victor was on his back. The robot arms lifted him quickly and hooked the ship onto a long rack of quickships hanging by their noses ten meters off the ground. The robot arms released him and went elsewhere.
    All was quiet. The ship swung lightly on the rack, an odd sensation caused by gravity that Victor had never experienced. He waited, but no one came for him. He unharnessed himself, still wincing from the pain in his chest. His body felt heavy. He climbed out of the seat and looked out the window. He was too high off the ground. He didn’t trust the strength of his legs in partial gravity with a drop like that. He scanned the warehouse floor, looking for people. There were none. Everything was automated. A quickship suddenly slid onto the rack in front of him, pushing him farther into the rack, partially blocking his view. The robot arms were packing him in here. He needed to get out.
    He tried the hatch. He couldn’t open it. The other quickship was packed in too tightly. He went to the radio and tried a frequency. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
    Again, the sound of his own voice frightened him. It was hoarse and crackly and barely above a whisper. No one responded. He heard only static. He tried another frequency. Still nothing. Then he tried another and got chatter. Men talking, giving numbers and data; Victor didn’t understand it. He interrupted them. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
    The chatter stopped. There was a pause. “Who is this?”
    “My name is Victor Delgado. I’m a free miner from the Kuiper Belt. I’m stuck in a warehouse of some kind.”
    “Get off this frequency.”
    “Please. I need help. I have information that needs to get to Earth.”
    “Sanjay, I got someone on the frequency who won’t get off.”
    A different voice—deeper, commanding, with an accent Victor didn’t recognize. “I don’t know who you are, mate, but this is a restricted frequency. Now get the hell off before I have you tossed.”
    “Please. I need to speak to someone in charge. All of Earth is in danger.” The words sounded trite, even to him.
    “You’re the one in danger, mate. Marcus, triangulate that signal and find this prankster. I want this ash trash off my frequency.”
    Victor stayed on the frequency, but didn’t say more. Let them triangulate it. Let them find him.
    An hour later a police rover arrived. A single police officer in a suit and helmet got out with a light and began scanning the interior of the warehouse with bored disinterest.
    Victor banged on the side of the ship with a tool to get the man’s attention, but the man couldn’t hear him. Victor lowered himself to the back of the ship, which was now the bottom. He turned on his cutting tool and began slicing through the ship’s wall, showering the inside of the ship with small burning metal embers. He pressed harder, being careful not to damage his suit. The cutter broke through. Hot embers rained down from the ship into the warehouse. The officer saw him.
    It was another hour before someone who could operate the machinery arrived to lower the ship from the rack. When the men lifted him out of the quickship and set him on the ground,