"Where is it now? Could we intercept it?"
"It's not along our current trajectory. If we alter our course, we could snag it in about eighteen hours."
"Would that delay our arrival to Luna?" asked Benyawe.
"By twelve days at least," said Chubs.
"Twelve days?" asked Lem.
Chubs shrugged. "That's the math. We'd have to decelerate to intercept the beacon and then accelerate back up to our current speed. Twelve days minimum."
Lem considered a moment. "You think we should go for it?"
"In all honesty, it's probably not worth pursuing," said Chubs. "If it were a free-miner or corporate ship, I might expect intel on Formic defenses or weapons, something useful. But this is a STASA beacon. It's probably a worthless emergency announcement."
"Maybe it's a distress signal," said Benyawe.
"If it is, it was sent from the ship before the ship was destroyed," said Chubs. "There's nothing left from the battle but debris. And even if by some miracle a few people survived in a scrap of wreckage and fired off a beacon, they couldn't have held out this long. Too much time has passed. There's no one out there we can save."
"Maybe it has information about the battle," said Benyawe. "Which ships were engaged, crew manifests. That would allow us to at least document the battle for historical purposes."
"We're not historians," said Chubs. "That's not our mission."
"Even so," said Benyawe, "thousands of people lost their lives. Their families on Earth have a right to know what happened to them. That battle is a testament to human courage."
"And a testament to human inadequacy," said Chubs. "You're not going to boost morale on Earth by pointing out how our new alien friends wiped out dozens of heavily armed ships."
"We're not going to keep it a secret either," said Benyawe. "Earth needs to know what it's up against."
"The Formics will reach Earth long before we do," said Chubs. "By then Earth will know exactly what it's up against."
"I say we go for it," said Lem. "Right now we don't have any critical intel that's going to make any difference in the coming conflict. With that beacon we might. If we show up twelve days late, so be it. It's not like they're expecting us."
Eighteen hours later a crewman extended one of the ship's claws normally used for mineral extraction and snagged the beacon from space. Lem watched from the helm as the claw brought the beacon into a holding bay. There crewmen attached cables to the beacon's data ports. Three seconds later the download was complete.
Lem went to the conference room beside the helm with Benyawe and Chubs and pulled up the beacon's files and projected them in the holofield above the table. There were images of the Formic ship; 3-D models; information about the ship's trajectory, speed, and estimated date of arrival at Earth, but nothing new, nothing Lem didn't know already. No weapons analysis. No identified weakness. Lem waved his hand through the field, pushing files aside and bringing others to the forefront to take a closer look. Worthless, worthless, worthless. It was all old news. His hand moved faster. He was getting impatient.
A man's head appeared. It was a vid. Lem stopped.
The man looked to be in his fifties--old for a space commission, but not that abnormal for high-ranking officers. Lem made the appropriate hand gesture, and the vid began to play.
"I am Captain Dionetti of the Space Trade and Security Authority, commanding officer of The Star Seer. As the evidence in these files shows, an alien vessel is approaching Earth at incredible speed. We have been tracking alongside it for the past three days, and we will continue to match its speed and monitor it until it reaches Earth."
"Don't monitor it, you idiot," said Lem. "Destroy it."
The captain continued uninterrupted. "Two weeks ago, reports circulated among the ships here in the inner Belt that an alien vessel had attacked an unspecified number of ships near Kleopatra. News of this engagement spread quickly among the ships in the area. Several clans and corporate vessels decided to stage an offensive against the alien vessel once it reached our position. I and other STASA officers made repeated attempts to quell such an illegal and unprovoked attack--"
"Unprovoked?" said Lem.
"We reminded miners that attacking any ship is against space trade law established by STASA and ratified by the U.N. Security Council. We do not know this alien ship's intentions, and such aggression might justifiably provoke it to defend itself or retaliate, thus putting all of Earth in jeopardy.
"Sadly, the mining ships ignored our counsel, and a total of sixty-two ships joined in the assault. Our vessel recorded the events from a distance, and the vids of that battle are included amongst these files. I am saddened to report that all sixty-two ships appear to have been destroyed. As you will see from the vids, the alien vessel is fully capable of defending itself if provoked. Therefore, by the authority invested in me by the Space Peace Act and the Space Emergency Response Act, STASA is issuing a cease-fire against the alien vessel. Any mining ship which fires upon or attempts to obstruct the alien vessel will be subject to arrest."
"Cease-fire?" said Lem. "Tell me this is a joke."
"Typical STASA," said Chubs.
"The human race is a peaceful species," continued the captain, "and STASA will do everything in its power to maintain that peace. Rather than provoke our alien visitors and assume malicious intent, we will extend to them the hand of welcome and begin diplomatic efforts to establish a lasting, p