Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

self-erased after playing.”
    “You see? They accessed our system.”
    Podolski squinted at the display and moved very quickly after that, windows opened and closed in quick succession. He entered passwords, accessed screens and icons that Lem had never seen before. He scrolled through long lists of what appeared to be random numbers and code. He worked for several minutes in silence, his eyes racing up and down through the holospace. Lem tried to keep up but couldn’t.
    Lem’s first thought was for the gravity laser. Had the free miners seen it? Had they accessed its schematics? Were they after those files? If so, if they had seen them, if the secrecy of the glaser had been compromised, Lem would be ruined. His father and the Board would never forgive him. It would be devastating to the company. And what about the videos of the bump? The files he had erased. Had El Cavador seen those?
    Podolski stopped typing suddenly and stared at the dozens of different windows and lines of code in the holospace. “Oh,” he said.
    “What?” said Lem. “What does ‘oh’ mean? What are you oh-ing about?”
    “The system does a backup every forty-five minutes, sir. It’s procedural. But it looks as if the system did an unscheduled backup recently.”
    “What does that mean? ‘An unscheduled backup.’ What are you saying?”
    “I can’t be certain, sir,” said Podolski, turning to Lem, “but I think it means some of our files were copied to a foreign target.”
    “Foreign target? What? Like a snifferstick? When? When did this happen exactly?”
    Podolski tapped the keys again to find the answer. “Exactly twenty-three minutes after we bumped El Cavador, sir.”

 
    CHAPTER 9
    Scout
    One week after the corporate attack, Victor was in the engine room making needed repairs to the generator when Father came for him. “How close are you to getting this thing back online?” Father asked.
    “A day,” said Victor. “Maybe less. Mono’s in the workshop now fixing the last of the circuits. I’m putting in some new rotors. Barring another breakdown, we should be good to go. Why? What’s wrong?”
    “You better come with me.”
    Father didn’t even wait for Victor to follow. He simply turned and left the engine room. Victor, sensing Father’s urgency, quickly put his tools aside and caught up with him in the corridor. They both were wearing greaves, and they moved down the corridor in long, leaping strides.
    “Have we detected the Italians?” Victor guessed. “Is that what this is about?”
    The ship was speeding toward the Italians’ position—or rather, what everyone hoped would be the Italians’ position. With communication still down, El Cavador couldn’t send a message ahead to confirm that the Italians were still at the location. There was a good chance they’d get there and find nothing but empty space.
    “No idea,” said Father. “But I don’t think it’s good. Concepción called a few minutes ago to ask if the PKs were ready.”
    “Why should that alarm you?” asked Victor. “We’ve got two working PKs out of six. That’s hardly an adequate collision-avoidance system. Maybe we’ve got a debris field ahead. Maybe Concepción wants to be certain we don’t hit anything.”
    “Maybe,” said Father. “But I don’t think so. It was the way she asked. She sounded concerned. Afraid even.”
    Afraid? Concepción? Victor couldn’t imagine it. “Of what? Another corporate? The starship?”
    “I don’t think it’s the starship. Toron and Edimar said it was several weeks away at the earliest, and more likely several months away. This is something else.”
    After the corporate attack, Victor and Father had divided up the repairs. Victor and Mono were to focus exclusively on the generator, while Father would put all of his efforts into repairing the sensors the corporates had cut away from the ship. The miners had successfully plucked a few of the sensors from space, but many of the most critical instruments, including the laserline transmitter, had never been found.
    Father didn’t even knock before entering Concepción’s office. Inside, Concepción and Toron were gathered around Concepción’s desk, studying a mapped quadrant of space floating above the desk in the holospace.
    Concepción only barely looked up when they entered. “Close the door,” she said.
    Father did so. Victor glanced at Toron, but the man’s face was unreadable.
    “There are ships at the Italians’