Segundo Delgado was the head mechanic aboard El Cavador, the husband of Rena Delgado, and the father of Victor Delgado.[1] He was first introduced in Earth Unaware.
History[]
Earth Unaware[]
Segundo was a member of the council on El Cavador. In 87 BX, Concepción Querales, the ship's captain, asked Edimar and Victor to come to a meeting to discuss the discovery of an alien scout ship. After Toron and Edimar presented the evidence, the council had to make a decision. Segundo leaned on the side of warning other ships in the vicinity while Toron argued for not sharing the information till they were more certain, so that they would not incite panic. Ultimately a compromise was reached by only warning a few ships including an Italian mining clan and the Makarhu.[1]
After the meeting, Segundo began working with Victor and Mono to upgrade the ship's defenses in case of an alien attack. They mainly focused on upgrading the Pebble Killers and the shielding. The three of them often stayed up late working on defenses. After Mono had gone inside one night, Marco came out to help. However, later in the evening El Cavador was attacked by Lem Jukes and his ship the Makarhu in order to take possession of the asteroid they were mining. Marco died in the attack and Victor and Segundo had to take Marco's body back into the ship.[1]
After the attack, Segundo, Victor, and Mono became hard pressed for time as they had many repairs to accomplish. The repairs included repairing four damaged PKs, the generator, and the communication laserline. Segundo was only able to repair three of the damaged PKs and was not able to fix the laserline, but he was able to repair radio communication, which could not target specific locations. At this point, Concepción had decided to head for the Italians clan's location, where they would hopefully find the ability to repair. However, an alien pod ship was headed for the Italians' location, so they had to slow down El Cavador in order for Segundo and Victor to reinstall the three repaired PKs in case they needed to defend themselves.[1]
By the time El Cavador reached the Italians, it was too late. All four ships of the clan had been destroyed, so Segundo went on a rescue mission with the miners, Victor, and Toron. During their search for survivors, Segundo and Victor found a group of nine people who were nearly out of air. After realizing they would not be able to cut through the debris in time to reach the survivors, Victor, Toron, and Segundo devised a plan to save the survivors' lives. They decided to plug their own air tube into a valve as a way of increasing the amount of fresh air in their room. The plan saved the survivors' lives.[1]
Eventually, Segundo, Toron, and Victor came to the realization that continuing to put all efforts on saving the one batch of survivors left no time to save anyone else who may be alive, Victor decided to equip a quickship to fly around to check other debris. Segundo and Toron were skeptical, but went along with the plan. After rigging the quickship for searching, they went looking for survivors of the Italian clan elsewhere in the debris, but they were unable to find any more. However, near the end of their search Victor was contacted by Concepción about the return of the alien pod ship. Segundo, Toron, and Victor decided to ambush the pod to dismantle its drills in order to save El Cavador. During the attack Toron was killed, but Segundo and Victor were able to destroy the drills and were eventually picked up by El Cavador.[1]
Segundo later helped Victor rig another quickship, so that Victor could warn Earth about the impending alien invasion. Everyone was skeptical of Victor's plan of going in a quickship to warn Earth, but Segundo and the others realized this was the only sure way of contacting Earth given El Cavador's current resources. Segundo, Rena, and Concepción gathered some money for Victor for when he reached Luna, so he could go to Earth and receive a college education.[1]
Strike on the Formic Ship[]
Soon after, Segundo worked with Concepción on preparing for an attack against the aliens after Weigh Station Four was destroyed by a gamma plasma burst from the ship. For the attack, they contacted a WU-HU Corporate Ship and Lem Jukes, who both decided to help in the attack. Rena, Segundo's wife, went with all the other women and children to the WU-HU ship in case El Cavador was destroyed in the attack. Before their separation, Segundo gave Rena a note for her and a note for Victor. She originally declined the letters, but Segundo sneaked them in her pocket. However, Mono decided to stay behind aboard El Cavador. He would have to stay, as it was impossible to dock with the WU-HU ship at such high speeds again.[1]
During the attack, Segundo went to the surface of the alien ship to help lay explosives. One of the explosives went off prematurely, and Segundo retreated with everyone else; however, as the aliens discovered the humans' plan, they began defending the ship and Segundo fell off the surface with a couple of aliens attached to him. After defending himself against the attached beings, Segundo tried covering the holes in his suit with tape, but too much air had escaped. Segundo died of asphyxiation after sending a message to his wife.[1]
Personality[]
Trivia[]
- "Segundo" means "second" in Spanish. Segundo was named this due to the fact that he was the second born of his family.[1]