Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

moment, but he was certain there was a solution, even if he had no idea at the moment what it might be.
    He reached the helm and pulled Chubs aside into one the conference rooms. Chubs floated near the entrance, but Lem felt like walking. He turned on his greaves and vambraces and paced back and forth in front of the window, beyond which was the murky dust cloud and the dotted black of space.
    “We have a situation,” said Lem. “One that I would prefer to keep very quiet.”
    “All right,” said Chubs.
    “When we bumped the free miners, there were three men on the hull. One of them was struck with one of the sensors we cut away.”
    “I remember,” said Chubs. “It looked ugly.”
    “Yes, well, ugly is putting it mildly. The man is dead. We killed him.” Lem put a little emphasis on the word “we,” hoping to spread the blame around.
    Chubs furrowed his brow. “How can you possibly know that?”
    Lem told him about the message from Concepción.
    Chubs whistled. “Podolski know about this?”
    “I called him to my room, and he checked the system. You ready for the fun part? They downloaded us. Not only did they hack us and leave us a lovely little message, but they also took our files. Everything.”
    Chubs swore under his breath. “Are we sure about this? Podolski confirmed?”
    “They used a snifferstick. They poked their little noses in here without us knowing it and they copied us clean. Podolski showed me on the records. They duped us.”
    Chubs swore again. “Not good, Lem.”
    “No, not good. Schematics of the glaser. All of our research. The engineers’ journals. And my favorite part: all the video of the bump.”
    Chubs stopped rubbing his eyes and looked up at Lem.
    “Yes,” said Lem. “They have video of us killing one of their crew. Do you know what the press would do with that? What the courts would do with that?”
    “It was an accident,” said Chubs. “We weren’t aiming for the guy. We didn’t even know he was out there.”
    “Prosecutors won’t care,” said Lem. “Besides, it doesn’t look that way in the video. I reviewed it myself. In slow motion. It looks like we were gunning for him. They’ll call it incontestable. And when they do, corporate will cut us off at the knees. They’ll sue us as well. If we don’t do something about this, you and me and everyone on this ship is malja. Toast. Game over.”
    “They stole from us,” said Chubs. “That has to account for something. They stole corporate secrets.”
    “That will win us no sympathy. You think people will shed tears for the largest, wealthiest corporation in the world? Oh boo-hoo. Poor Juke Limited. Those fat, greedy corporate executives will only get a hundred billion credits on their yearly bonus this year instead of a hundred and twenty. What a shame. No. No one will care. The media would have a field day with this. The poor and middle class will dance in the streets. They eat this stuff up. They can’t be happy until everyone else is brought down to their level.”
    “We can fix this,” said Chubs.
    “How? We can’t track them. I already asked the navigator. They’re long gone. We could go looking for them, but there’s no guarantee we’d find them. We probably wouldn’t.”
    “We don’t have to find them,” said Chubs. “We just have to know where they’re going and be there first, waiting for them when they arrive.”
    “We don’t know where they’re going,” said Lem. “I told you. They didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address.”
    “But we do know where they’ll go eventually,” said Chubs. “Weigh Station Four is the only outpost this far out. All the families and clans go there for supplies. El Cavador headed out into the Deep, so they obviously don’t yet know what’s in our files. As soon as they figure out what they have, they’ll rush to Weigh Station Four and try to sell the schematics on the black market. That’s the only place even remotely close to here where they can do that.”
    “They could head back into the inner system,” said Lem. “Maybe they won’t go to Weigh Station Four. Maybe they’ll think they’ll get a better price closer to home.”
    Chubs shook his head. “Not families. You have to know how these people think. They don’t take risks like that. Most of them came out to the Deep to get away from trouble. When they try to sell, they’ll use a reliable source, someone they trust, someone they use often. That’s more important to