Earth Afire

by Orson Scott Card

  Reinhardt initiated the gravlens, and the HERC lifted a few meters into the air. Even after all these months, the silence of the whole operation unnerved Mazer. He had done hundreds of hours in traditional helicopters, and his mind had become accustomed to the roar of the engines and the thump thump thump of rotor blades. To hear nothing but the almost imperceptible purr of the computers felt completely unnatural.

  Then Reinhardt initiated the rear engine, and Mazer got that all-too-familiar sick feeling in his stomach as the HERC shot forward over the tarmac and headed north. Mazer pushed the sensation aside and focused on the intel. "Target is latitude negative thirty-seven degrees, zero minutes, twenty-one point seven seven two two seconds. Longitude one hundred seventy-five degrees, ten minutes, thirty-seven point five one six two seconds."

  "Coordinates confirmed," said Patu.

  "Identify target," said Fatani.

  The HERC shot up another fifteen meters as they approached the tree line, heading up into the hills of the Hunua Ranges and leaving the airfield behind them. Mazer instinctively put a hand on the instrument panel to steady himself. "Target is an AT-90 Copperhead. Crew of two. Both seriously wounded."

  Copperheads were squat assault tanks loaded with enough firepower to level a small city. They were also ridiculously heavy and hard to carry because of their wide, shallow design.

  "Whose turn is it to play medic?" asked Fatani.

  "Yours," said Patu. "And don't ask me to cover for you. I bandaged up the last two rounds of guys."

  "They better not be bleeders," said Fatani. "I hate the bleeders."

  For field tests and war exercises like this one, the NZSAS used rubberized dummies for their casualties. Mazer and his unit were to treat the dummies like real soldiers and administer lifesaving first aid as part of the exercise. The bleeders were the worst. Loaded with red syrupy paint, they added a good two to three hours to cleanup time and put everyone in a bad mood.

  The Copperhead tank would be a dummy as well. Probably a burned-out bus or ATV pulled from the scrap heap and loaded with enough weight to resemble a Copperhead. The Colonel wouldn't use a real one and risk damaging it.

  "So what's the deal, Lieutenant?" asked Reinhardt. "Is this operation a final exam or something? Why all the secrecy?"

  "No idea," said Mazer. "Colonel said to be ready to fly at 0300, and we'd get our orders then."

  "Seems strange to me," said Fatani. "Normally we're the ones designing the field tests. Now all of a sudden the colonel's doing it for us. No briefing. No prep. Just strap in and wait for orders."

  "Combat's no different," said Patu. "Makes perfect sense to me. Brass wants to see how the HERC manages when we're not controlling all the variables. Think about it. Before we run a test, we determine everything. Where it flies, what the weather's like, where the enemy is located, what their capabilities are. But what team in real combat is going to have all that intel?"

  "Pilots would at least know what the weather was like," said Reinhardt. "It's the first thing they teach you in pilot school. When the windshield wipers are on, it's raining outside."

  "You're hilarious," said Patu.

  "All I'm saying," said Fatani, "is that if this is some kind of exam, it would've been nice to have known that ahead of time."

  "Has to be," said Patu. "That's why they didn't let us sleep. They want to know if exhausted pilots flying with limited intel can pull off a HERC mission."

  "If that's the case, they're testing us as much as the HERC," said Fatani.

  "It doesn't matter," said Mazer. "We do what we always do. We scoop up the target and we bring it home."

  The secretive nature of the operation didn't bother Mazer. He was used to sporadic psychological tests like this; it went with the territory in special forces. Someone was always running you to the point of exhaustion and then denying you water and keeping you up for another twenty-four hours. Or they were messing with your head in some other way: isolating you, or dropping you in the middle of nowhere with a blindfold over your eyes and telling you to return to base using only your other senses. Compared to those tests, this surprise mission with the HERC was a cakewalk.

  A message appeared on Mazer's HUD.

  "Hostile territory in three point four kilometers," said Mazer.

  A second later there was a flash and a boom to their right as a flare exploded not ten meters from the cockpit. Flares were used as surface-to-air missiles--or STAs--in war games. It was all show and no shrapnel, but it still startled everyone on board.

  "Whoa!" said Reinhardt, pushing the stick forward and dipping the HERC into a stomach-churning descent.

  "Hey!" said Patu, slamming back into her seat. "Easy on the dips."

  Mazer grabbed the window bar to his right and tried to keep his focus on the data on his HUD.

  "I'd say we got bad intel," said Reinhardt. "We're in hostile territory already." Two more explosions lit up the night sky, one on each side of the aircraft.

  "Fatani!" shouted Mazer.

  "I'm going, I'm going," said Fatani.

  A section of the floor beneath Fatani slid away, exposing the gunnery dome on the underside of the HERC. Fatani worked the joystick on his seat and lowered himself into the dome, seat and all. The thickly forested hills of the Hunua Ranges rushed beneath him, the treetops just visible in the darkness. Fatani made a final adjustment, and the top hook of his seat latched into the swivel mount, suspending him in place and giving him the ability to spin and maneuver in any direction. A small window on Mazer's HUD showed him Fatani's POV, and Mazer watched as the butt of the laser cannon slid into position and locked on to Fatani's chest harness.

  "Locked!" shouted Fatani.

  "Acquiring targets," said Mazer.

  More of the dummy STAs were shooting off around them, and Fatani picked them out of the sky before the flares could explode.

  "Brass is dropping some serious cash on this op," said Reinhardt.

  Mazer was thinking the same thing. These hills had long been the playground for SAS exercises, but Mazer had never heard of a team getting this much heat in a single war game.

  Tracer fire arced into the sky from the northeast. The glowing paint pellets whizzed by the windshield, narrowly missing the HERC. Fatani was on the source a half second later, hitting the tracer gun with the cannon's laser, rendering the ground gun inoperable. Mazer saw the other three tracer guns on his HUD just before their arcing fire erupted upward. He blinked them as targets for Fatani, and the chair in the gunnery box spun and swiveled at a sickening pace as Fatani clicked off several more shots. Reinhardt dipped lower, weaving right and left to avoid the tracers--flying only a few meters above the tree line.

  "Let's not forget I'm down here," said Fatani. "These pines will take my boots off if you go any lower."

  "Relax," said Reinhardt. "If we hit a tree, you'd be a human bag of jelly so fast, you wouldn't feel a thing."

  For three more kilometers they dipped and maneuvered and took out tracers and STAs. Patu kept swearing at Reinhardt for bobbing them around so violently and nearly getting them all killed. Mazer was beginning to agree; the motion-sickness pills could only do so much.

  Then the HERC crested a hill and they saw it--there in a treeless valley--not a scrapyard vehicle pretending to be a Copperhead tank, but an actual Copperhead. Stranger still, it was taking heavy fire from the tree line to the north.

  Patu and Fatani responded without hesitation, laying down cover fire into the trees. The lasers were harmless, nothing more than a game of tag, but everyone took the exercise as seriously as real combat.

  "Put us over the tank," said Mazer.

  A barrage of pellets smacked into and ricocheted off the HERC's armor as Reinhardt got them into position over the tank. Since the gravlens had no effect on anything below the HERC but only on things above it, the tank didn't so much as twitch. Thick bumper bars lowered from the underbelly of the HERC on either side of the gunnery bubble to keep it from being crushed by the payload.
>
  "Bars are down," said Fatani.

  "Initiating load talons," said Mazer. He blinked the command, and the massive talons on either side of the HERC extended outward and unfolded themselves. There were three talons on either side, each a hooked blade with heavy rubber padding along its edges. Mazer extended his hands into the holofield in front of him on the dash. The talons responded to his hand gestures, diving downward and acting as a claw, wrapping around the tank and scooping it off the ground. Reinhardt compensated with the gravlens and suddenly the tank was airborne.

  "Locking payload," said Mazer, blinking out the command. Beneath the tank, opposing talons extended farther until they reached one another and locked in to place.

  The enemy fire from the trees had stopped by now, but Patu continued to lay down cover fire as the HERC banked hard to the south and headed home.

  Fatani and his seat rose up from the floor and returned to their original position. He then snapped the safety harness and cable winch to his vest and unbuckled himself from the seat. Steadying himself against the wall, he punched in the command to retract the bubble. The bubble's sections of glass separated and folded away, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the HERC's floor. The ceiling hatch to the Copperhead was two meters below it. Fatani turned to Patu and yelled over the roar of the wind. "You sure you don't want to take care of the wounded?"

  "Positive. I wouldn't want to deprive you of the opportunity to show off your keen medical skills."

  Fatani sighed. "They better not be bleeders." He positioned himself over the hole and used the winch to lower himself down the hatch.

  Mazer watched the feed from Fatani's helmetcam as Fatani opened the hatch and lowered himself into the tank. There were no bleeders inside. There weren't even dummies. There were two live men, both in safety helmets and heavy padding. Mazer didn't recognize either of them. One was in a business suit, and the other was in a tan uniform Mazer didn't recognize.

  "Sergeant Fatani," said the one in the suit. "So good to see you. I was just telling Captain Shenzu here that you're the finest gunner in the NZSAS."

  To Fatani's credit, he didn't respond with a stunned silence. Rigorous training and a cool head will do that for you. "Are either of you wounded?" he asked.

  The man in the suit laughed and waved a hand. "No, no. We're fine. We had Colonel Napatu put in that bit of intel to get you to come down here and pull us out. Shall we go up? Captain Shenzu would very much like to see the cockpit."

  "Of course," said Fatani, as if this were the most natural of requests in the world.

  In under a minute, Fatani had the recovery straps around each of the men's chests. He then carefully powered up the winch and raised them into the HERC. By then, Mazer was out of the copilot's seat and giving the men a hand, helping them into the cabin.

  "Lieutenant Mazer Rackham," said the man in the suit. "An honor to meet you. I hope our little Hercules has met your expectations."

  His accent was European, but Mazer couldn't place it. "You seem to know all of us, sir. Yet we don't have the honor of knowing you."

  "Where are my manners?" He extended a hand. "Heinrich Burnzel. Global sales. Juke Limited."

  A salesman. This was getting stranger by the moment.

  "And this is Captain Shenzu of the People's Liberation Army," said Burnzel. "A most respected officer of the Chinese military."

  Shenzu bowed slightly and shook Mazer's hand. "Very impressive flying, Lieutenant. We watched the whole approach on Mr. Burnzel's holopad." His English was flawless and completely without an accent.

  Burnzel was all smiles as he held up his holopad as if proof of the claim.

  "Lieutenant Reinhardt is our pilot," said Mazer, "but I'll be sure to pass on your praise. Please, won't you be seated? The safety harnesses are there in the jump seats. We should have a smooth ride in, but we'd appreciate you buckling up as a precaution."

  "Of course," said Burnzel, the smile still plastered across his face. He sat in the jump seat and began buckling the straps. "We were also hoping you could demonstrate to Captain Shenzu how fast the HERC could go with a heavy payload."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Oh you know. Give us a little show, Lieutenant. Zip around the valley for a minute. Impress us. No loop-the-loops, though," he said with a laugh. "Go upside down and we lose antigrav." Then he laughed as if that were the funniest joke in the world.

  Fatani was back inside by now. He and Mazer exchanged glances, and Fatani shrugged. Mazer hit the command to seal the hole in the floor and made his way back to the copilot's seat.

  "You want to tell me what's going on?" Reinhardt said under his breath.

  "I'm finding out," said Mazer. He slid his helmet visor back down into place. "Blue River, Blue River. This is Jackrabbit. Target is secure and airborne, over."

  This time the voice on the radio was Colonel Napatu's. "Jackrabbit this is Blue River. Have you secured the passengers?"

  "Affirmative. They're retrieved and buckled in the cabin, sir."

  "Good. Don't jostle them. Bring her in nice and easy."

  "They're asking that I come in hot, sir. Give them a show."

  "Negative. You bring her in slow. We're not bowing to some corporate jackass any more than we have to."

  *

  "A sales demonstration?" said Reinhardt. He, Patu, Fatani, and Mazer were all standing in Napatu's office, still wearing their flight suits. "The mission was a sales demonstration?"

  "The Chinese are interested in the HERC," said Colonel Napatu. "They wanted to see it in action before they cut any deal with Juke Limited."

  "Since when does the SAS give test-drives to the Chinese?" said Reinhardt. "Look, no offense, sir, but we were taking some heat out there. Nothing but flares, yes, but we all took this op rather seriously. I was flying like a bumblebee to avoid that flack. We could have buried that bird in a hillside. And for what? To show off to a Chinese captain and some suit from sales trying to meet his monthly quota? Pardon me for saying so, sir, but this whole thing strikes me as incredibly negligent."

  Napatu leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his stomach, and cocked his head to the side. "Are you finished, Lieutenant?"

  Reinhardt straightened and retreated a step, his cheeks flushed. He put his hands behind his back in parade-rest position. "Yes, sir. Pardon me for speaking candidly, sir."

  "Since I happen to believe you're justified in being annoyed, I'll forgive that candor, Lieutenant. But I'll kindly remind you that an SAS officer holds his tongue as well as he holds a rifle, especially when addressing a senior officer."

  "Yes, sir. Begging your pardon, sir."

  Colonel Napatu sighed and swiveled in his chair for a moment. "All of you sit down. I don't like you hovering over my desk like that."

  Mazer and the others took a seat in the armchairs and sofa opposite Napatu's desk.

  Napatu put his elbows on his desk and rubbed his eyes, suggesting he was as sleep deprived as the others. "I would love for you all to believe that the SAS is immune to the bureaucratic crap that so plagues the rest of the military," he said. "And I would love for you to believe that I as the CO of this unit have the authority to tell the defense department where they can stick the asinine orders they so often toss in our laps. But since you all tested so highly for intelligence, you know both statements are false."

  He leaned back in his chair. "Fact is, we are a branch of the NZ military, and when we receive orders we follow them. That is our duty. We do not question them. We do not voice our disapproval. We obey. This business with the HERC came straight from General Gresham. He called me himself two days ago. His orders were clear. Give this Chinese captain and his Juke sales rep a real show. The natural assumption was that I would have you fly the HERC around the tarmac a lap or two. Not so, said the general. I was to coordinate a full heavy-vehicle extraction. Lots of noise, lots of daring piloting, and the two guests of honor were to be waiting inside the Copperhead. That was their explicit request. They di
dn't want to observe. They wanted to experience."

  He sighed and rubbed at his eyes again. "As you might expect, I expressed my concerns regarding safety and liability. The last thing this country needs is for a Chinese officer to die under our care. That would read just dandily on the news nets. But my objections were ignored. I was to follow orders to the letter. Nor was I to inform the extraction team of the uniqueness of their mission. While I agree that you all took a lot of heat, I was not for a moment concerned. Reinhardt can dance circles around any other pilot in this unit."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "He's buttering you up so you won't be mad at him," said Patu.

  "I'm ashamed to admit it's working," said Reinhardt.

  "What was this about, sir?" asked Mazer. "Why should the SAS be involved in a sale to the Chinese? If Juke wanted to show off the HERC why not do it at their own facilities? Our HERC isn't the only one in existence. Why bring the Chinese here?"

  "Several reasons. One, Juke pilots aren't nearly as good as you. I'm not buttering you up, that's simply a fact. Juke knew they'd get a much more dramatic presentation here. Second, the Chinese wanted to see soldiers in action. That's who will be flying theirs, and they happen to have a lot of respect for the SAS. That is why, in fact, they wanted all of you sleep deprived. They figure a sleep-deprived SAS officer is equal to a well-rested Chinese one."

  Fatani grunted. "Hardly."

  "You're an exception to any such comparison, Fatani," said Colonel Napatu. "You're equal to four Chinese officers. And I don't mean simply in terms of mass."

  "I can see why the Chinese might like this arrangement," said Mazer, "but why would the defense department agree to it? Why do a favor for the Chinese? I thought we were hoping to keep this tech proprietary."

  "I asked those same questions. First off, we couldn't keep the HERC for ourselves even if we wanted to. Juke will sell the tech to whoever will pay for it. The U.S. military is big enough to make stipulations like that to their contractors, but not us. We're small potatoes. We'll buy a few dozen HERCs at the most, which is barely enough to break a sweat on the Juke assembly line. China is a big buyer. Juke would hang us out to dry and leave us with nothing if it meant snagging a deal with the Chinese. My point? We never had a chance of keeping this proprietary. As to why we agreed to do the show, it turns out the SAS is getting a few HERCs for free for our troubles."