Earth Awakens

Nearly a century before the events of Ender's Game, humans have only just started moving out into the Solar System. A thin web of ships works the two asteroid belts, a few stations hold the middle distance, and a corporate settlement sits on Luna. Nobody has met another space-faring species, and everyone assumes First Contact, if it comes, will happen far off between the stars.

Then a young navigator on a distant mining ship spots an object moving far too fast and heading straight for the sun. The alien ship tears through the Solar System and cuts communications between the scattered mining ships, the supply stations and Earth.

Earth and Luna do not know they have been invaded until the ship enters Earth orbit and starts landing terra-forming crews in China. The response is slow. Politics and pride hold back Earth's governments, while on Luna, corporate power struggles seem more pressing than deaths far away.

A few men and women understand what is happening. This is the second book of the First Formic War, and it turns on whether they can pull Earth together before the planet is lost.