Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) Read Free

you start cutting there, there’s no turning back.”
    “This is the only place I can cut, Imala. I can’t cut through the hull outside. It’s covered with those plate-sized apertures, any one of which could open while I’m hovering above it and unleash laserized material directly into my handsome face. Cutting out there would be like cutting into the barrel of a loaded gun.”
    “Keep telling yourself your face is handsome and it might come true,” said Imala.
    Victor smiled. She was making light, breaking up the tension like Alejandra used to do.
    Alejandra, his cousin and dearest friend back on his family’s ship, El Cavador. She and Victor had teased each other like this constantly. She, telling him that he was knobby kneed or laughing at him for squeaking like a girl whenever she or Mono had jumped out of a hiding place and startled him. And he, mimicking her whenever he caught her humming while she worked. Hers were pleasant little melodies that seemed to sway back and forth like a swing. “What are you humming about anyway?” he had asked her once. “What’s so pleasant about doing the laundry?”
    “I’m telling myself a story,” she had said.
    “A story? With hums? Stories require words, Janda.”
    “The story is in my head, genius. The humming is … like the soundtrack.”
    “So you’re telling yourself a story and making up the music while you’re washing other people’s clothing. You’re quite the multitasker, Janda. And these stories, let me guess, they’re about a handsome, teenage mechanic who can fix anything and build anything and smells as sweet as roses.”
    She had looked at him with such a start, with such an expression of surprise on her face, that at first he had thought he had offended her. But the look had vanished an instant later, and Janda had returned to smiling and scrubbing the clothes again, with her hands in the dry gloves box where the sudsy water was contained. “Victor Delgado,” she had said. “Don’t you know? If I ever created a story about you, I would make it a true story. You wouldn’t smell like roses, you would smell like farts.” Then she had flung open the dry gloves box and threw a soaked shirt in his face. And the next moment she was roaring with laughter because in his surprise, in his twisting to avoid the soaked fabric, he had farted. Accidently of course, something he would never do in front of her, but there it was.
    And she was still laughing when he finally got his feet anchored to something and grabbed the shirt and flung it back at her. She had dodged it easily, and a heartbeat later he was flying away up the corridor of the ship, humiliated and yet laughing inside as well.
    She had gotten in trouble for that, he remembered. Water had leaked out of the scrubbing box, and it had taken four women a good twenty minutes to collect it from the air and the crevices in the wall.
    He should have seen it then. He should have known that the friendship they shared was something more than that. Why hadn’t he recognized what those feelings truly were?
    Because he had never experienced them before, he told himself. Because they had come on so gradually all his life that by the time he recognized them for what they were, it was too late to stop them.
    It made little difference now. Janda was gone. Just like Father.
    And here he was talking to Imala the same way. Why? Because it was natural? Because he missed that part of himself, the part that could tease a friend? It wasn’t flirtatious. Or at least he hoped it didn’t seem that way. He was eighteen. Imala was … what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? He was a child to her. Did she think him flirtatious?
    Imala’s face appeared in Victor’s HUD, snapping him from his reverie. “If you’re having doubts, Vico, then let’s rethink this.”
    She had mistaken his hesitation for fear. “I’m fine, Imala. I’m just taking a moment to consider how best to do this.”
    He unstrapped the duffel bag from