Earth Unaware

Plot

A family of free miners aboard the ship El Cavador is extracting resources from an asteroid in the distant Kuiper Belt when their sensors pick up an alien craft slowing down from nearly the speed of light as it enters the solar system. At the same time, Lem Jukes, the son and heir of the founder of the dominant mining corporation, is conducting secret tests of a gravity laser, or glaser, in the same remote area, away from competitors. On Earth, Captain Wit O'Toole is recruiting from the New Zealand Special Air Service for the elite Mobile Operations Police, or MOPs.

Jukes orders his vessel to collide with El Cavador to force it off the only nearby asteroid suitable for his glaser test. The crash kills one of the free miners. In response, the miners break into the corporate ship's computer system, leaving a message for Jukes and stealing confidential files about the glaser. Worried about a scandal from the miner's death and the possibility that the stolen files could be sold to rivals, Jukes heads to Weigh Station Four, planning to leave a hacker there to erase El Cavador's data.

Because the collision destroyed El Cavador's communication gear, the crew cannot alert another mining clan about the approaching alien. They can only watch as an alien pod annihilates that clan, though they manage to rescue a few survivors. Victor and some others convert a quickship, a vessel normally used to ship refined metals to Luna, into a one-person craft to carry a warning to Earth. When the alien pod attacks El Cavador, the men on the quickship use mining tools to ram and disable it.

During the fight, the aliens emerge, revealing their ant-like, Formic physiology. El Cavador then travels to Weigh Station Four to use its laser transmitter. As a backup, Victor volunteers to fly the quickship to Luna with a datacube containing proof of the aliens' hostile actions. The trip is dangerous, but they feel obligated to complete it.

Meanwhile, Jukes's ship arrives at Weigh Station Four but is attacked by roughnecks who hate corporate crews. Several attackers are killed by Chubs, a man who seems to be a low-level assistant to Lem Jukes but is actually a bodyguard assigned by Ukko Jukes. The corporate team still manages to leave a hacker behind to wipe El Cavador's files, but the plan becomes irrelevant when the Formic ship destroys the entire station.