Earth Afire (The First Formic War) Read Online Free PDF

was a quickship, a cargo rocket, a lugger. As soon as I approached Luna, your lunar guidance system took over. It was on autopilot when it entered the warehouse. That’s why the trespassing charge strikes me as unjust. I couldn’t have stopped the ship if I had wanted to.”
    “Yes, but you piloted the quickship to Luna,” said Mungwai. “You brought it here. That makes you responsible.”
    “It would have come here anyway,” said Victor. “That’s what luggers are programmed to do. They carry cylinders of mined minerals from the Kuiper Belt and Asteroid Belt on preprogrammed flight paths.” Victor had actually changed the flight parameters by hacking the ship’s system, but he wasn’t about to point out that fact now. “The quickship would have acted exactly the same once it reached Luna airspace with or without me on board. The only difference is that I was the cargo instead of cylinders. Surely you wouldn’t have arrested cylinders for trespassing.”
    Mungwai raised an eyebrow, and Victor sensed he had gone too far.
    “What I mean,” he said, keeping his voice calm, “is that I could make a very good case that I was not the pilot of the quickship. Which, it stands to reason, would render the charges dismissible.”
    “I’ll determine the validity of the charges, Mr. Delgado. That’s what the taxpaying citizens of Luna pay me for.” She waved her hand through the holospace again, and windows of data appeared in front of her. “You disrupted a restricted radio frequency. Are you going to argue that the quickship made you do that as well?”
    “That was clearly my own doing,” said Victor, “but I had no idea the frequency was restricted. I was being buried in a warehouse by damaged quickships. I was desperate for help. Every frequency I had tried before was silent.”
    “Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it, Mr. Delgado. This isn’t the Kuiper Belt, where it’s every man for himself and laws be damned. This is Luna. We maintain order. We’re civilized.”
    Victor felt his face getting hot. “With all due respect, ma’am, free miners are not lawless barbarians. I’d argue that our society is far more civilized than Luna.”
    Imala cleared her throat, but Victor pretended not to have heard.
    Mungwai looked amused. “Is that so?”
    “In the Kuiper Belt if someone needs help, you help them,” said Victor. “If their ship needs repairs, if they’re low on supplies, if their lives are threatened, you rush to their aid and do whatever you can to keep them alive. And once you’ve helped them, they don’t humiliate you or arrest you or threaten you with lengthy prison terms. They thank you. I find that more civilized than what I’ve experienced here.”
    “You have been given the finest medical attention at no cost to you, Mr. Delgado,” said Mungwai. “Muscle- and bone-building medications. Rigorous physical therapy. Room and board. Your criticism of that treatment strikes me as incredibly ungrateful.”
    Victor exhaled. This wasn’t going well. “I am grateful for the care I have received. But I would rather have a listening ear than a pill. I know what has crippled space communications. I know what’s causing the interference. A near-lightspeed alien ship is heading to Earth. It’s in our solar system already. It has weapons capabilities far beyond anything we’ve seen. It destroyed four ships of free miners and killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of people, including a member of my own family.” He was trembling now but keeping his voice calm. “I saw the bodies. Women, children, all of them dead.”
    Mungwai raised a hand to silence him. “I’ve read your file, Mr. Delgado. I know what you claim to have seen.”
    “I don’t claim anything. I don’t have to. The vids and evidence speak for themselves.”
    “I’ve seen your vid,” said Mungwai. “I also saw four other vids from the scientific community refuting yours as a likely hoax.”
    Victor opened his