Earth Afire

by Orson Scott Card

  He zoomed in with his sight, aimed at the head of the Formic on the far right, and squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle fired and recoiled. The back of the Formic's head exploded in a gray mist. Its legs buckled, and it dropped from Wit's sight.

  Field test was over. Rifle passed. Time to get to work. Wit squeezed off five more quick headshots, one after another, straight down the line, right to left, bam-bam-bam-bam-bam.

  The five remaining Formics dropped one after the other, their wands falling from their hands, their bodies crumpling. Wit watched the wand tips. A moment later, the mist stopped spraying.

  The misty fog was thick around him now. Wit blinked a command to test his suit for leaks. The sensors beeped and indicated the all-clear; the suit was airtight apparently. Shoshang hadn't skimped them. His goods were legit. Miracle of miracles.

  Wit hopped down from the truck and ran ahead through the mist to where the Formics lay. He stood over them, weapon up, ready to plug them with more rounds if they so much as twitched. None of them did.

  Calinga's voice sounded in Wit's helmet. "Emergency personnel aren't coming. We're too far from an urban area. They say they don't have a treatment for the mist anyway, and they're short on people. They've got more calls like ours than they know what to do with."

  "Move the people several hundred meters upwind," said Wit. "Get them away from mist until the air clears."

  Wit squatted down and examined the Formics as Calinga relayed the order and mobilized the men. The Formics weren't wearing any clothing. Nor were they carrying any equipment other than the mist sprayers. No radio transmitters, no receivers, no comms equipment of any kind. Wit turned one over with his boot to be sure he wasn't missing anything. He hated touching the things, even with his boot--he disliked feeling the weight and thickness of them--but he couldn't afford to have any such reservations.

  He noticed slight differences in their insectlike faces. Subtle things. A wider mouth here, larger eyes there. Darker fur on one than the other. At first glance they had all looked exactly alike, but now Wit could see that they were as different from each other as any group of humans.

  He couldn't tell if these were male or female. They had no visible sexual organs. Maybe they were asexual, like parasites.

  Wit snapped several photos with his HUD, first of the whole group, then of an individual headshot wound. Then he blinked a command to take down his dictation. He spoke for five minutes into his helmet microphone, describing the weapon he had used and where he had hit each of the Formics. They had all been headshots, yes, but he was specific about where each bullet had entered. He used medical terminology for the human head as a context, like a doctor describing an ER gunshot victim. Then he stated his conclusions. The Formics could be killed. Their landers were shielded, but their infantry was not. Headshots did the job nicely. He would try other ways in the future.

  Wit then uploaded all the text, photos, and geotags to the nets. He created his own site using a minimalist theme design and the URL StopTheFormics.net and signed it "The Mobile Operations Police." He then ordered the site to translate this entry and all future entries into Chinese, and to place the Chinese text first in the post, followed by the original English. Then he used push software to send the same information to hundreds of social platforms and media venues across the world, including all the forums and sites used by servicemen in the Chinese military.

  The military no doubt already knew that a headshot was fatal, but Wit wasn't going to assume anything. If he had information, he would share it, regardless of how obvious it might seem.

  Wit returned to the Rhinos. Calinga and the rest of the men had moved the crowd upwind. The panic had subsided. Now the people were mourning. Fifty-four people were dead, most of them had been killed by the mist, though a few had died in the rush of the crowd.

  "Now what do we do?" said Calinga. "These people are asking for a ride north to the nearest city. Some of their cars can't be driven anymore. We obviously can't give everyone a lift. The moment we start carrying people north, every other car we passed on the way down here is going to stop us and ask that we do the same for them. And we can't fit all these people anyway, not unless we're going to pile them on top of the Rhinos and take five trips."

  "Tell the crowd everything you've told me," said Wit. "Explain that we're moving south, not north. We're going toward the Formics, not away from them. Tell them they'll move much faster if they help each other. We'll use the Rhinos to clear the wrecked vehicles and open up the highway. Those who have a functioning vehicle should make room for those who don't."

  "What about the bodies?" asked Calinga.

  "We'll dig a massive grave. The survivors can help, but we should lead that effort. We'll record everything, edit it down, and upload it to the site."

  "We have a site now?"

  "I'll explain while we dig."

  They went to work. Soon the air cleared enough for the MOPs to remove their helmets, which made digging and breathing easier. Many of the civilians joined in. Some of them had tools and shovels in their trucks. Wit had sent MOPs out in a wide circle to form a perimeter. Just when the grave was done, the warnings came in over Wit's radio.

  "Incomings!"

  Wit was out of the hole with his helmet on when the skimmers came flying in over the trees. There were three of them: small, single-manned aircraft, moving fast. The lead one fired a burst of laser fire. An explosion to Wit's left knocked him off his feet. Dirt clods and rock rained around him. His ears were ringing.

  All three skimmers were firing now. An explosion hit the crowd of civilians, sending bodies into the air. The others scattered, screaming.

  Wit was on his feet with the grenade loaded two seconds later. The lead skimmer came around for a second pass, and Wit aimed and fired the HEAB at a point in the air ahead of the aircraft.

  It wasn't a direct hit, but it was close enough. The HEAB detonated and blew out a burst of shrapnel that ripped into two of the skimmers flying in close formation. The skimmers jerked violently to one side, lost control, and crashed. No survivors. Not a chance.

  Wit turned and scanned the sky for the third skimmer and saw that a troop transport had landed behind him, near where the six dead Formics lay. The transport doors opened, and Formics poured out. Several of them carried wands and began spraying immediately, unleashing steady streams of mist into the air. A squadron of MOPs hurried toward them, firing their weapons. Other Formics exited the transport and began recovering the Formics Wit had killed, carrying their corpses and equipment back inside the transport.

  Wit turned back to the sky and saw the third skimmer retreating toward the horizon, well out of range. He then ran toward the transport. The new Formics with mist sprayers were going down, taking fire. It was easy pickings; they were right in the open and took no measures to conceal themselves. For a moment it looked like the skirmish would end quickly. Then the transport lifted, rotated, and opened its guns on Wit's men, who were using the cars and trucks as cover.

  Sustained lasers from the transport sliced through the cars and cut through the asphalt, leaving deep, gouged lines in the earth. Globules of a laserized substance then shot forth from side-mounted cannons. The globules seared straight through whatever they hit, leaving gaping holes through engine blocks, people, the highway guard railing. Windshields shattered, parts and shrapnel blew in every direction.

  MOPs went down.

  The doors of the transport were still open. Wit fired in a grenade just as two other MOPs did the same. One grenade went in one side door and out the other, but the other two ricocheted right and stayed inside. The explosions blew fire and smoke out the doors in a deafening boom. The transport rocked to one side, wavered a moment, then dropped from the sky. It hit the ground and stayed upright, spilling out dead Formics.

  MOPs were on it in an instant, unleashing gunfire inside the cockpit to make sure the job was done. Wit ran to where he had seen some of his men go down. The mist rolled through like sm
oke, obscuring his vision. The remnants of four men lay on the decimated blacktop, all of them in pieces. Wit had to resort to body scans to identify them. Toejack, Mangul, Chi-Won, and Averbach. Wit had handpicked each one of them. He had studied their backgrounds, tested them, trained them, shaped them into the soldiers they were. Two of them he had known for years.

  Wit closed off the part of him that allowed him to mourn. There was no time. He spoke fast into his headset.

  "Calinga, we need to get these people out of here. The Formics collect their dead. More might be here at any moment. I want this highway cleared, the bodies buried, and the people on the road immediately."

  Everyone moved quickly. The civilians were in a state. Confused, terrified, panicked. Seven more civilians had died in the attack. Others had run off into the forests and not come back. Calinga found the ones who were coherent and could take orders and put them to work, gathering and calming the others. MOPs fired up the Rhinos and moved the vehicles blocking the road. Other MOPs pulled the bodies into the grave and pushed in the dirt. The most recent deaths were lowered in, some of them piece by piece. It was crude and fast and no way to handle fallen soldiers, but it was better than leaving them out on the road.

  Calinga and his team gathered the surviving civilians and put those who didn't have vehicles with those who did. Once everyone was loaded up, the MOPs directed the traffic and got everyone moving north.

  Wit and his team didn't pause to mourn those they had lost. There was no time. They drove the Rhinos farther off the road, concealing them in the nearest trees. Then they hiked back to the downed troop transport and waited.

  Their containment suits were a bright yellow, probably made for field research, certainly not for combat. But they were tight fitting without being uncomfortable and offered plenty of mobility--perfect for the job at hand, really, except in terms of camouflage, and that could be easily remedied. Yet even with non-chameleonic suits, the MOPs were still able to hide themselves. In moments all of them were invisible, even to Wit. Trees, brush, abandoned vehicles. They melded with the landscape.

  Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. The transports were silent, so Wit watched the sky. Finally he saw them. Two transports, flying low on approach, moving fast. At first Wit thought they wouldn't stop--they showed no sign of slowing. Then they descended quickly to the right and left of the downed transport.

  Doors opened. Formics emerged. Alien hands picked up the fallen Formics.

  Then Wit gave the order and all hell broke loose. He had been clear in his instructions. Do not let the transports in the air. That's where the firepower was. Take out the pilot first. Cripple the ship. Then mop up the others.

  The men moved fast and efficiently. The transports remained grounded. Formics fell. It was over in less than ten seconds.

  When the smoked cleared, Wit stepped up into the transport. There were dead Formics at his feet, their blood on the floor of the ship thick like syrup. Wit took video of everything. The flight controls, the switches and levers. He had no idea what anything did, and he did not experiment. He did the same outside. Every inch of the machine.

  His preference was to get the aircraft into human hands for examination, but that wasn't going to happen. Instead, once they documented as much as they could, they fired two incendiary grenades and burned the vehicles.

  Then they headed south, sticking to secondary roads and avoiding people as much as possible. As they went, Wit updated their site. He explained the new "kill, bait, and ambush" strategy: Take out a few infantry Formics, then lie in wait for the transport to collect them, and hit the corpse-recovery team. He stressed the importance of hitting the pilot first and avoiding the transport fire. He uploaded video, photos, and directions of attack--it was best to rush the transport from behind and slightly to the left or right, giving you a clear shot of the cockpit where the pilot was positioned as soon as possible. Attacking from the front was suicide.

  Wit then checked the site's forum. He already had five different media requests for interviews. They all wanted the same thing: the face behind MOPs, the human-interest story, the juicy details that would set the ratings on fire.

  Wit's typed response was the same for all. "Who we are is irrelevant. Help the effort by broadcasting what we've learned. Show the vids. Share the tactics. Invite others in the fight to share their tactics, too. Focus on saving lives instead of offering useless entertainment."

  Some would honor his request. Most wouldn't. What did they gain by playing the same vids as everyone else? They wanted exclusive content. They wanted exposes on MOPs, bios of its members, photos of loved ones back home.

  Wit programmed the forum to filter any future media request and reply with his rote response.

  Soon there were other posts as well. Anonymous messages from Chinese soldiers. Some expressed gratitude. Others shared information they had gleaned.

  THE FORMICS DON'T SEEM TO USE RADIO. WE CAN'T DETECT ANYTHING. THEY DON'T SEEM TO RECOGNIZE OUR RADIO EITHER. OR IF THEY DO, THEY DON'T SEEM TO CARE.

  THE FORMICS HEARING IS ODD. IT'S NOT ACUTE LIKE OURS. IT SEEMS TO BE BASED MORE ON PERTURBATIONS IN THE AIR, WHICH THEY CAN DETECT. LIKE BATS.

  THE MIST IS LETHAL WITH ANY CONTACT. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BREATHE IT IN. WE'VE LOST MEN IN GAS MASKS. BUT THEIR WRISTS WERE EXPOSED, OR THEIR NECKS. THAT'S ALL IT TOOK.

  Wit posted every tip onto the main site to give it more visibility.

  Then he read the last forum entry. It was a spam post, offering life insurance. There were misspelled words and bad punctuation. It was not unlike the millions of other spam posts out there clogging the nets. Except ... it was different. Subtly so. It took Wit a few minutes to decipher the code. He then entered the code into his browser and waited. The screen went white. Then a command appeared: READ THE POEM ALOUD. A Shakespearean sonnet materialized on screen.

  Voice recognition, Wit figured.

  He began to read the text aloud. He hadn't finished the first stanza, when the poem disappeared and a vid began. Colonel Turley of the U.S. Delta Force--and current member of Strategos--faced the camera. It was a prerecorded message.

  "Since you've cut off all communications with us, Captain, we have no choice but to reach you by other, less-secure means. You should know that a majority of Strategos is calling for your court-martial. Some are calling for your head. You've illegally used MOPs funds. And you've forced our hand. If we admit to the Chinese that we sanctioned your insertion, we'll take a serious beating in the Security Council for ordering an unauthorized, unlawful military act. If we deny that we sanctioned your insertion, then we look dangerously inept and incapable of controlling rogue operatives. We order you to turn yourself in and allow the Chinese to extradite you. Your heart is in the right place, Captain. But your behavior is not conducive to the policies and procedures of the Mobile Operations Police. Please act accordingly."

  The vid winked out. Turley had been reading the statement, Wit noticed. Wit had seen how the man's eyes scrolled right to left. His heart wasn't in it either. A majority of Strategos might be calling for Wit's court-martial, but Turley almost certainly wasn't one of them. He was a hawk if there ever was one.

  What surprised Wit most was that Strategos hadn't figured out the solution. He opened the site's e-mail and sent an encrypted message directly to Turley.

  COLONEL, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, I CANNOT IN GOOD CONSCIENCE ABANDON THIS EFFORT. TODAY WE WERE ABLE TO HELP HUNDREDS OF CIVILIANS AND DEVELOP A TACTICAL MANEUVER THAT INFLICTS HEAVY ENEMY CASUALTIES. YOU CAN SEE EVIDENCE OF EFFORTS AT OUR SITE. TO LEAVE NOW WOULD BE TO ABANDON THE THOUSANDS AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS WE INTEND TO HELP AND PROTECT IN THE FUTURE. FOR THEIR SAKE, I MUST REFUSE YOUR DIRECT ORDER AND SUFFER THE PERSONAL CONSEQUENCES.

  IN THE MEANTIME, MAY I MAKE A SUGGESTION THAT MIGHT SOLVE YOUR DILEMMA? LIE TO THE WORLD. LIE TO THE SECURITY COUNCIL. TELL THEM CHINA REQUESTED OUR INSERTION. TELL THEM THEY ASKED FOR OUR HELP. PRAISE THE CHINESE FOR TAKING SUCH SWIFT ACTION IN THE DEFENSE OF THEIR CITIZ
ENRY. HONOR THEM. SHOWER THEM WITH COMPLIMENTS. USE OUR VIDS AS EVIDENCE. GIVE THE CHINESE BRASS ALL THE CREDIT. THE CHINESE WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO VALIDATE THE CLAIM. TO DENY IT IS TO TURN THEIR BACK ON THEIR PEOPLE AND CONDEMN WHAT HAPPENED TODAY.

  He didn't sign it. He didn't want to use his name in any communications.

  *

  They found an abandoned hotel that night north of Chenzhou. Looters had ransacked the lobby. Wit took keys from behind the front desk and divvied them up among the men.

  It was a nice hotel. There was hot water and soft beds. The air checked out. Calinga and a few others went out and returned with several cans of spray paint. Greens and browns and black and grays. Wit didn't ask where they had gotten them. They all met in the courtyard and camouflaged their containment suits. Then they returned to their rooms, hung their suits, and allowed them to dry.

  Wit checked the news. Strategos had made a public statement praising the Chinese for requesting assistance from MOP troops. The press was directed to the footage of the transport ambush and rescue of Chinese civilians. It wasn't Wit's e-mail exactly, but it was close. The Chinese had wasted no time in responding. They praised MOPs' actions and promised that the government would continue to pursue all avenues to protect its people. It wasn't exactly a corroborative response but, more important, it wasn't a denial either.

  Wit shut down his holopad and lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He had lost four men today, a tenth of his army on his first day of war. He couldn't sustain those losses. His whole unit would be wiped out in a little over a week at that rate. No, likely sooner. The fighting would get worse and more intense the closer they came to the lander. Plus the Formics would wise up to whatever tactics Wit and his men implemented. The enemy would adapt, reevaluate, change their MO. They would come at Wit in ways he hadn't considered.

  Wit pushed all thought of the Formics aside.

  He exhaled deep.

  He let his muscles relax.

  Then he allowed himself to think of those he had lost. He opened that part of him. He pulled from his memories. He brought to mind all the ridiculous moments they had shared. The pratfalls and dumb mistakes. The pranks and slips of the tongue. The dares given and the dares performed. All the moments that only he and they would find remotely amusing.