Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

Chubs. “I’ve never seen anything like it, not on a free-miner ship, anyway. They’ve got armored plates welded all over the surface. Plus I’ve never seen this much proprietary tech on a single ship. See these protrusions here, here, and here. That’s tech.”
    “What kind of tech?” asked Lem.
    “We don’t know,” said Chubs. “These boxes here could be pebble-killers. Our computers can’t make heads or tails of it. Most of it looks like it’s built from scrap. The computers keep recognizing individual pieces from machines, but since the pieces are all used together in odd combinations, we have no idea what the tech is really for. Whoever these people are, they’re either certifiably insane or genius innovators.”
    “I’d rather they be insane,” said Lem.
    “Makes two of us,” said Chubs. “I don’t like them having machines we can’t understand. Makes me nervous. And that’s not the worst of it.” He glanced uneasily at Benyawe.
    “It’s okay,” said Lem. “She’s here at my invitation.” Lem smiled to Benyawe, appearing nonchalant, though in truth he felt a little panicked. El Cavador looked tougher than he had anticipated. He shouldn’t have brought Benyawe.
    Chubs turned to the systems chart and tapped a command. A dozen cables stretching from El Cavador down to the surface of the asteroid suddenly glowed yellow. “Here’s the bad news. They have twelve mooring lines anchoring them to the asteroid. That’s three times more lines than normal.”
    “Meaning what?” asked Lem. “They’ve seen us? They’re adding more lines to hunker down?”
    “No way,” said Chubs. “You don’t keep that much cable lying around. This has to be how they anchor all the time.”
    “Maybe they’ve been bumped before,” said Benyawe. “And now they lay down more lines to discourage anyone from trying again.”
    “My assumption as well,” said Chubs. “From the looks of their ship and the number of anchor lines, I’d say these people have seen their share of pirates and claim jumpers.”
    “And corporates,” said Benyawe.
    Lem shot her a look, but she was facing the holo and didn’t meet his eye.
    “The other thing that bothers me is all the activity we’ve detected outside their ship,” said Chubs.
    “What kind of activity?” asked Lem.
    “Spacewalks. And lots of them. Some to lay down more hull armor. Some to work on their collision-avoidance system. They’ve been very, very active. We haven’t seen more than three or four guys out at a time. But it’s like they know a war is coming.”
    “They’ve obviously detected us,” said Lem. “They’re building defenses for our attack.”
    “I’m not so sure,” said Chubs. “It’s only three or four guys out there. If they were in prebattle panic mode, they’d have a whole crew out. They’d put every available man behind an effort like that.”
    “Maybe that is every available man,” said Benyawe. “Maybe only three or four people are left. Maybe they had an outbreak or something. It’s happened with free miners before.”
    “But they do have other people,” said Chubs. “We’ve seen them. While these three guys are strengthening the ship, they’ve got thirty guys working the mine. It’s basically life as usual.”
    Lem shrugged. “It’s not that strange if you think about it. They’ve seen us coming, and they’re trying to mine as much as they can before we get there. That’s what I would do.”
    “The other possibility,” said Benyawe, “is that they don’t know we’re coming, and strengthening the ship is simply what these three or four guys do. That’s their job. They’re simply going about their business. You could argue that the state of the ship substantiates that idea. It’s well defended. It doesn’t get that way overnight. You can see scorch marks and dents all along their armor, which would suggest that the armor has been there a long time.”
    “Maybe,” said Chubs. “It could also mean the armor plates were scorched when they applied them.”
    “Not likely,” said Benyawe. “Some of these dents and marks stretch across multiple plates. This is a ship that’s seen action, which brings up another possibility. Maybe they’re not preparing for war with us. Maybe they’ve got a feud with another family, or there’s a ship of thieves in the area.”
    “There’s no one else in the area,” said Chubs.
    Benyawe shrugged. “So maybe they’re prepping to set out on a