Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

inevitable?
    Victor looked at Toron beside him and saw that Father had a hand on Toron’s shoulder, comforting him. Toron looked pale, even in the low light of the cargo bay.
    “They had masks and heaters,” said Father. “That’s a good sign, Toron. It means there’s equipment out there.”
    “Little good it did them,” said Toron.
    Chepe and Pitoso landed back in the airlock, and the ship moved on. The bay doors remained open as they continued to patrol through the destruction. Twice more they stopped, and twice more Chepe and Pitoso flew out to investigate. One of the wrecks was empty. The other had a massive hole in the back that hadn’t been visible until Chepe and Pitoso went in for a closer look. There were no signs of survivors.
    The ship moved on. As they continued patrolling they passed more bodies. Most were men. But there were women, too. And children. One burned terribly. Victor turned away.
    Once, a corpse floated uncomfortably close to the open airlock, right there in front of them. It was a man. A boy, really. No more than twenty. He could have been a suitor for Janda if he wasn’t married already. His eyes were—thankfully—closed. The miners nearest the edge could have reached out and touched him, and for a horrific moment Victor thought the body might float inside. But the ship moved on, and the body slipped past.
    No one spoke. Several of the miners glanced back at Toron to see how he was taking it, the compassion evident on their faces. Toron never said a word, and as the minutes stretched into an hour, Victor’s hope began to dissolve. There was too much wreckage. They had come too late. Nineteen hours was far too long. Perhaps if they hadn’t stopped to install the pebble-killers or scatter Marco’s ashes, if they had accelerated then instead of de celerating, maybe they could have saved someone; maybe they could have stopped this whole thing from happening.
    No, they couldn’t have arrived before the attack. Even if they had pushed themselves and never slowed. And what good would it have done if they had been here? They’d be just as dead as everyone else.
    A large piece of wreckage came along the ship. The biggest piece yet. El Cavador’s retros fired, and the ship slowed. Victor couldn’t imagine how anyone could be alive inside. The whole structure was twisted, not just the ends. And none of the sides were smooth with hull plating, suggesting that it had come from somewhere deep inside a ship.
    Approaching it would be difficult. Sharp twisted beams and other jagged structural pieces protruded from all sides in a random fashion, like a crushed metal can wrapped in iron thorns. Chepe and Pitoso flew down cautiously, circling the wreckage from a distance. “I see a hatch,” said Chepe. “It’s solid. No windows.”
    “Can you get close enough to bang on it?” asked Bahzím.
    Victor watched Chepe’s approach via the man’s vid feed. Chepe drifted to the hatch slowly, steering clear of the jagged girders and beams.
    “Watch his line, Pitoso,” said Bahzím.
    Chepe settled on the hull beside the hatch. “The space around the hatch looks smooth,” he said. “We could get a bubble around it if we needed.” He banged on the hatch, then pressed his hand against the metal. He wouldn’t hear a knock response from anyone inside, but he would feel the vibration of it. Chepe waited a full minute and knocked again. After a pause, “I don’t feel anything.”
    The wreckage was drifting and rotating. One of the jagged beams was coming close to Chepe’s lifeline. “Back off,” said Bahzím. “She’s spinning.”
    Chepe and Pitoso pushed off from the wreckage and floated a short distance away as the wreckage slowly spun in front of them. The far side of it, which hadn’t been visible before, turned into view of the cargo bay. It was a mess of twisted channel beams and girder framework, bent and mangled together, worse even than the other sides. But through that, beyond the web of distorted metal, was a corridor, maybe ten meters deep, like a shallow cave, with the entrance to it pinched half closed. Victor zoomed in with his visor and strained to see through all the obstructions, trying to see down into the corridor.
    Then he saw it.
    A flicker of light. A movement. There was a hatch at the end of the corridor with a small circular window in the center. And in that window there was a light. A glow rod. Wiggling in someone’s hand. “There’s somebody inside!”