Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

six-month journey at the end of which is their enemy. Who knows?”
    “I’ve had enough guesswork for one day,” said Lem. “I want answers. How does this affect the bump? Are we a go or not?”
    “The mooring cables are the biggest problem,” said Chubs. “That’s a lot of lines. We can’t bump the ship unless every one of those lines is severed. We could cut them with the lasers, but it would be tedious work. It would take way too long. Bumps need to happen fast. Two minutes at the most. Gives them less of a chance to retaliate. I suggest cutting the cables a different way.”
    “How?” Lem asked.
    Chubs tapped more commands into the system chart, and the holo of El Cavador winked out. A holo of the asteroid took its place, with El Cavador now a small ship moored to the surface. “We’ll land over here,” said Chubs. “On the blind side.”
    Lem watched the holo as the Makarhu approached the opposite side of the asteroid and landed at a spot just below what would be El Cavador’s horizon line, hiding the Makarhu from view yet keeping it within striking distance.
    “They still haven’t seen us at this point,” said Chubs. “We wait here until four hours into their sleep schedule, when everyone is good and gone to dreamland. Then we send in twelve breakers.”
    The breaker bots were small, disc-shaped explosive drones. Corporates used them for mining, sending them down narrow mineshafts to break up large chunks of rock for extraction.
    “There’s a ridgeline here,” said Chubs, highlighting the feature on the asteroid. “It runs from our landing site to within a hundred yards of El Cavador. We can take a shuttle out along the ridgeline without them seeing us. The shuttle stops here at the edge of open ground. We throw the breakers from there. Our pilot steers each one to a different mooring line. The bots attach to the lines, then we detonate them all at once. That’s when the attack begins. Once the lines are cut, we come forward with the ship and take out their pebble-killers and their power with our lasers. It’s over at that point. We can brush them aside easy as anything. Ninety seconds tops.”
    Lem stared at the holo a moment. “Throwing the breakers? You can send them that far with that much accuracy?”
    “The breakers have mini cams. We have a very good pilot. He can steer them pretty much wherever you want them.”
    “Won’t El Cavador detect the movement?” asked Lem. “Won’t they see the breakers coming?”
    “Their collision-avoidance system doesn’t monitor the surface of the asteroid. It can’t. They’ve got miners walking around the surface all day. Believe me, it’s the last place they would look for an attack.”
    Lem didn’t like it. This was supposed to be a clean operation. They would swoop in, zap a few devices on the hull, push the ship aside, and be done with it. Simple. Nothing with breakers. No explosions. No creeping up in a shuttle. This was far more variables than Lem had intended.
    One of the crewmen launched from his workstation and landed near Lem.
    “They’re rotating away, sir,” said the crewman. “We can accelerate as soon as you’re ready.”
    This would be the last push forward. They were close now. They would land on the rock within a few hours. Lem turned to Benyawe. Her face was a mask. She seemed poised, but he knew she was angry. She’d hate this new development more than he did.
    “What’s the word, Lem?” said Chubs. “We can cut bait now and scoot away if you’d like. Otherwise we need to punch it. We have a brief window here.”
    Nine days, thought Lem. They had come nine days. The rock was right there in front of them. What would you do, Father? Go off and shoot some more pebbles? Fly eight months to a different asteroid? Or knock these gravel suckers off the rock? Lem could almost feel Father here beside him, looking over his shoulder, shaking his head in disgust, oozing disappointment. “Why do you even have to think this one through, Lem?” Father would say. “Are you a Jukes or are you a child?”
    Lem turned to Chubs. “Put us on the rock.”

 
    CHAPTER 6
    Marco
    Victor was on a spacewalk, outside El Cavador, bolting one of the pebble-killers into place with his hand drill. Mono was beside him, his feet anchored to the hull, holding the PK steady with bracing cables. They had removed the laser a few days ago and taken it into the cargo bay to make modifications. Now, with those completed, they were