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 get to one of them--"
"You can't," said Imala. "It's too bright in here. You'll be exposed. There are at least twenty Formics who could see you. You'd never reach the shaft. And even if you did, you have no idea where it leads. Also, they're eviscerating people in there. So, I'd say it's a lost cause."
Victor poked his head out of the shaft and looked down. A few meters below him a Formic pulled a cart to the right, heading toward the distant shafts. "I could hitch a ride, Imala. I could grab on to a cart, use it as a shield, and let the Formic pull me to the shaft. I'm weightless. The Formic wouldn't notice."
"Listen to me, Vico. We did our best here. We got some intel, and now it's time to take it to those who can use it. We've gone as far as we can."
"We've got nothing, Imala. We found some glow bugs and the cargo bay. That's strategically useless. We need intel with military significance, something that a strike team can use to disable the ship."
"I thought we were the strike team."
"We are. But if we fail--"
"We won't fail if we survive. Now turn your butt around and get to the shuttle before you're seen."
He looked below him again. The Formic and its cart were almost past him. His window of opportunity was closing. "I'm going for it, Imala." He muted her audio before she could object, then he scanned the debris in front of him. The Formics were busy at their tasks, not looking in his direction.
Victor took two quick breaths, found his courage, and then crawled out of the shaft and down toward the cart like a spider, clinging to the wall with his toe and glove magnets. For one terrifying moment, the duffel bag on this back caught up with him and shifted his momentum just as he was reaching out with his hand and foot. He instinctively blinked out a command to increase the magnet's power, and his hand and foot slammed into the wall with a deafening clang. He clung there a moment, his heart hammering, not moving, praying that no one had heard. If so, all was lost. He was in plain sight, a sitting duck.
He relaxed the power to the magnets and got moving again, scurrying now, eager for the partial concealment of the cart.
Seconds later he reached it. He grabbed the front of it on the right side and then brought his knees up to his chest in a fetal position to make himself as small as possible. It wasn't enough, though. The cart was only two thirds his size, and his shoulder and buttocks and the top of his helmet were sticking out for all to see. The duffel bag on his back wasn't helping, jutting out behind him like a turtle's shell. If seen from the other side of the cart, he might go unnoticed, but if anyone looked in his direction from a high angle, it was over. They would come for him--cutters out, maws open, hands bloody.
The Formic pulling the cart paused, and for a terrifying heartbeat Victor thought it had detected him. Then it lowered its head and pulled harder, as if adjusting to the nearly imperceptible increase in mass of its cargo.
It was not a fast Formic, Victor soon discovered. Each step was deliberate and labored. Victor's eyes traced the track in front of him, calculating the distance to the shaft far ahead. At this rate, they wouldn't reach it for another ten minutes or more. That was too much time. He wouldn't go unnoticed for that long.