Read Online Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) by Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnston - Free Book Online Page A

just taken root in his mind. “What if a piece of El Cavador is here, Imala? What if part of my family’s ship got caught in that field and pulled to Earth? Or worse, what if some one from El Cavador is here?”
    It was unlikely, he knew, but he couldn’t deny the possibility. Lem had said that during the battle in the Kuiper Belt the Formics had flung the men of El Cavador away from the Formic ship and out into space. That wouldn’t put them behind the ship and anywhere near the magnetic field, but what if the Formics had thrown at least one person in that direction? And what if that one person had been Father?
    No, it wasn’t possible. The Formic ship was moving too quickly. Even if a scrap of El Cavador or someone from the ship had been snagged, course-corrected by the field, and sent toward Earth, that scrap or person would still be in space and moving in this direction, months or years behind the Formics. Plus, the farther away they were when the magnetic field pulled them, the less likely they were to hit Earth. Any deviation in their course, however minute, would send them millions of klicks from here.
    No, Father was not in this wreckage. Nothing from El Cavador was. The free-miner scraps here had to be from ships in the inner Belt. Nothing else would have reached Earth this soon.
    And yet despite that, despite the logic of it, Victor wanted to leap out from his concealed position and rummage through every scrap of wreckage he could find just to prove to himself that he was right.
    The Formics put an end to that notion. There were six of them to his far left clinging to a chunk of debris. Three more were attached to a bigger piece below his position—hammering, cutting, inspecting, disassembling. And those were the ones he could see. There were likely others, hidden among the various pieces.
    “What are they doing?” asked Imala.
    “Salvaging anything useful,” said Victor. “Looking for parts, hunting for metals that they can melt down and forge differently, exactly what humans do when we find a derelict ship.”
    Ahead of him, a large chunk of wreckage rotated, revealing two Formics clinging to the back side. They crawled along it, spinning it in zero-G, until they revealed a small cockpit with a dead human pilot inside.
    “Victor—”
    “I see it.”
    The man was slumped forward in his seat, his helmet obscuring his face. The Formics scurried to the cockpit and began cutting the canopy away using small devices concealed in their grip. When the canopy was free, they cut the man’s straps and restraints and pulled him from the cockpit. The back of the man’s helmet had an oxygen tube tethered to the ship, and one of the Formics severed it with a single swipe of his cutting tool. The other Formic removed the man’s helmet. The pilot was young, with close-cropped hair and a small frame. The Formics removed his flight suit as quickly as someone peeling a fruit, as if they had done this many times before. Next came his inner garment until they had his chest and stomach exposed. Before Victor knew what was happening, the Formics cut the pilot open across his lower abdomen and reached up inside him. Imala gave a sharp intake of breath.
    Globules of blood seeped out and floated in the air. The Formics rooted around for a moment, then removed their bloody hands and pushed the man aside, done with him. They scurried away until they found something else that caught their interest. Then they hunkered down and began cutting again.
    “What just happened?” said Imala.
    Victor watched the limp, eviscerated body of the pilot float away from the wreckage. “They were looking for something,” he said. “When they didn’t find it, they moved on.”
    “Get back to the shuttle, Vico. This is too big for us. It’s too dangerous.”
    “I’m already here, Imala.”
    “You don’t even know where here is.”
    Victor looked to his right. “Those shafts up there, they point toward the center of the ship. If I can