The Hive

by Orson Scott Card

  It was pointless training, Bingwen now realized. The sim was nothing compared to this. The fighter weaved and bobbed and rolled so erratically that Bingwen couldn’t get his bearings long enough to put the Formic gun in the center of the targeting square. As soon as the Formic gun appeared, it was whipped from view again.

  “I can’t get a lock,” said Bingwen. “Steady us out.”

  “If I steady us, we die,” said Mazer, banking yet again to dodge another burst of fire.

  Mazer was not just reacting, Bingwen realized. Mazer was keeping their movements erratic intentionally, diving downward toward the gun, juking one direction and then cutting elsewhere to prevent the gun from targeting them.

  But physics was working against them. Every little tap of a retro put them into a new spin, causing them to drift sideways or rotate in the wrong direction, flying out of control like an errant firework.

  They couldn’t do this forever, not only because it made targeting the gun impossible, but also because the propellant on the retros wouldn’t last, not at the rate Mazer was using it, wide open and nearly constantly.

  “Anytime, Bingwen. The closer we get to that gun, the more likely—”

  “I know, I know,” said Bingwen.

  The red glossy hull flew up to meet them. Closer, closer.

  The Formic gun appeared in Bingwen’s targeting square for an instant, and this time he didn’t hesitate. A burst of laserfire erupted from the fighter, but the shots were wide by hundreds of meters. The fighter’s movements were too erratic, too unpredictable, too fast. Bingwen didn’t have a prayer of hitting anything.

  He fired again, hoping for random luck, hoping that the Formic gun would pass in front of the targeting square at precisely that instant, but again the fired slasers were nowhere near the target.

  “I can’t hit it,” said Bingwen.

  The Formic ship was coming up fast, a vast wall of glossy red metal, filling the projected view in front of them.

  Mazer banked hard to the right, pulling away. “We’ll get it from another angle. Opperman, status?”

  “We’re clustered up at the bow,” said Opperman over the radio, “but we’re cooked if that gun on you turns in our direction.”

  “Snuggle up next to the nose,” said Mazer. “Bring the fighters in tight and push the ship off course. Like a tug guiding a tanker into port.”

  “You think the fighters can take that kind of structural abuse?”

  “They’ll hold if you share the burden together,” said Mazer. “Wedge the fighters up in the crevices or you’ll slide off. Then slowly increase your thrust. It won’t take much.”

  “And if the Formics course-correct their ship?”

  “All we need is to push them off course a fraction of a degree,” said Mazer. We have to divert them. A Squad doesn’t have a prayer of stopping this ship. We knock them off course here and now or there is no GravCamp.”

  “And that gun?” said Opperman.

  “Working on it.”

  Bingwen felt as if he were going to vomit. Mazer had not stopped his erratic flight pattern, and the fighter now seemed even more out of control and harder to steer, twisting and rolling and spinning in a random fashion. Except now the fighter was skimming along the surface of the ship, flying just a few meters above it, zeroing in on the Formic gun. Twice the fighter struck the surface of the Formic ship and bounced violently upward, like a crazed airplane that couldn’t decide if it wanted to land or not. Bingwen screamed in alarm. The fighter couldn’t take that kind of abuse. The hullmat beneath them was indestructible. The fighter wasn’t. Knocking the two of them together was like a clod of dried mud striking against a rock. Something was going to give, and it wasn’t the rock.

  Another hard hit.

  And another.

  What was Mazer doing? They would be ripped in half and ejected into space. Bingwen could feel the hull of the fighter bending inward with every impact.

  Another jolt.

  Another.

  Equipment around Bingwen rattled. Something broke off the wall and hit his helmet and flew off in another direction. A small object, Bingwen didn’t know what.

  Alarms wailed inside Bingwen’s helmet, and for a moment he thought his suit had been breached. But no, it was the fighter. The hull had breached somewhere. The ship was breaking apart.

  Bingwen looked around frantically, searching for the breach.

  Another jolt. This one different from the others. Not an impact. Something else.

  Bingwen’s targeting display showed him: breach missiles were soaring away from the fighter. Five of them. Mazer had fired them. Mazer had taken command of the weaponry.

  Bingwen was no longer holding his firing grips, he realized. He was no longer holding anything. His arms were pulled in tight to his body, as if in a fetal position, or as much of a fetal position as his restraints would allow. Instinctual. Fearful. Like a child.

  He had abandoned his guns without even realizing it. He had abandoned everything. For the last few moments, he had done nothing but panic. He could have been targeting the gun, he could have been helping, doing something, anything, but he hadn’t. He had frozen and hadn’t even realized it.

  Mazer had needed him.

  And Bingwen had failed him.

  It was then that Bingwen realized something else as well. The Formic gun was no longer firing at them. It hadn’t fired at all ever since Mazer had come down close to the surface. The gamma plasma was one of the only substances that would cut through hullmat. The Formics were no longer firing because they couldn’t risk missing the fighter and damaging their own ship.

  Mazer had known that. He had brought them close and crashed them into the hullmat to avoid being shot.

  Two of the breach missiles hit the target. Bingwen saw it all on his HUD. The top of the Formic gun exploded and broke apart into a cloud of shrapnel. The second breach missile hit the gun’s scaffolding structure about halfway up. That too broke apart, sending more shrapnel away from the blast.

  But Mazer wasn’t stopping. He didn’t pull the fighter up and away. He stayed the course, soaring toward the remains of the gun tower looming large in front of them.

  Bingwen watched, waiting for Mazer to change course and remove them from an impending impact. But the fighter didn’t deviate. It streaked forward, heading straight for the ruined scaffolding, a giant twisted metal structure, maybe fifteen meters high, with intricately woven bands of metal that looked unyielding. We’re going to hit it, Bingwen realized. Mazer wasn’t trying to avoid the scaffolding. He was targeting it.

  The bottom of the fighter struck the surface of the Formic ship and bounced upward, but Mazer quickly fired the retros and put them back down to the surface again, back on a collision course. Bingwen called out a warning, but the screaming siren in his helmet from the breach was so loud he couldn’t even hear himself.

  A message appeared on Bingwen’s HUD. Three words. From Mazer, right beside him.

  BRACE FOR IMPACT

  Bingwen wanted to scream. He wanted to cry out and grab the stick and change their direction and spin off into oblivion. But everything inside him had cinched up in terror and stopped working at once. He was just a ball of mass now, strapped into his harness. Frozen. Helpless. Hurtling toward the inevitable.

  Then impact.

  The fighter crumpled and spun and buckled and broke as it struck the gun tower. Bingwen felt pulled in a dozen directions at once, as if the cockpit were attacking him from every side and angle, viciously, ferociously. Shrapnel exploded. A large black something—a beam or bar, perhaps—swooped downward and struck Bingwen’s helmet in a microsecond flash of violence, and then all Bingwen saw was …

  The sun. Bright and burning and golden in the sky above the horizon, its rays filling the whole green valley with a golden glow. He was standing in a rice paddy, basking in the light, shirt unbuttoned and open, skin deeply tanned from months of labor, arms outstretched, welcoming the sun. Like a friend returning. Like
a brother come home.

  The mud was cold and thick at his feet, oozing up between his toes. The water up past his shins glimmered in the light, sparkling like diamond dust on the surface, reflecting rays back into Bingwen’s eyes.

  The young rice shoots all around him, in neat, orderly rows, only barely poked up out of the water, each primary leaf barely breaking the surface like a periscope daring to look up out of the deep—or like a tentative toe dipping itself not into water, but out of it and into the world, testing its temperature. They were welcoming the sun too. Every plant, every blade, every cell. Feasting on the light.

  A low rumbling sound to Bingwen’s left. An animal. Mooing. Father was rubbing the water buffalo behind the ear, like some people did with dogs or cats. Father was strange that way. Doting on it, giving it affection. Why didn’t Father ever do that to me? Bingwen wondered. A rub behind the ear. An embrace. A tousle of the hair. Did Father love the water buffalo more than he loved me?

  Don’t be ridiculous, said Mother. She was beside Bingwen now, arms open, straw hat in one hand, hair pulled back, eyes closed, soaking in the sun, welcoming its blanket of warmth. Father loves you, she said. Just as I do.

  But her lips weren’t moving.

  And she wasn’t there. Not really. None of it was there. Because Mother was dead. Father too. And the water buffalo. And the valley. And the rice and the mud and the water and the straw hat and home and everything.

  Was the sun gone too? Did the Formics take the sun as well?

  “Can you hear me?” Mother asked.

  “Bingwen.”

  She was calling to him. Her voice loud but gentle. Not a rebuke, but a word that said so much more than his name. Gentle. Warm. Like the sun’s blanket. She wanted him to come in for dinner, perhaps. Or to start the fire for the evening, perhaps. Or to get Grandfather his tea. Or to wring out the laundry. Why would she shake him? Mother never shook him.

  Bingwen’s eyes snapped open.

  Mazer was above him, still in his helmet and suit, his face tight with concern. “Bingwen!” His expression relaxed slightly. “Can you hear me?”

  It took Bingwen a moment to gather himself. He was still in his harness. The fighter had stopped. The siren had stopped. The spinning had stopped. The harness held him in place, cradling him, holding him.

  “We crashed,” said Bingwen.

  “Had to,” said Mazer. “If we had gone any further across the surface of the ship, we’d have found other guns waiting for us, and we weren’t in any position to outmaneuver them. I lost two of the retros. The Tik became impossible to maneuver. Had a hell of a time keeping it close to the hullmat to avoid being fired upon. Felt like trying to fly a deflating balloon.”

  “How did we stop?” said Bingwen.

  “Part of the fighter is embedded into the scaffolding. I used the launch hook on the back of the fighter to anchor us. It’s not very secure. I don’t think it will hold. That’s why I need to know immediately if you’re hurt. We can’t stay here.”

  Nothing felt broken. Bingwen could see, hear, move. His suit was intact. His helmet visor was clear and uncracked. His body ached where the harness straps were positioned around his chest and waist and legs, but he was in one piece.

  Bingwen shook his head. “No. I got whacked pretty hard. But I’m okay.”

  Mazer pulled a lever to Bingwen’s right, and the harness straps loosened and retracted. Bingwen drifted in place, free, still blinking, uneasy, sore.

  “These suits are stronger than I thought,” said Mazer. “Victor outdid himself.” He moved back to the weapons locker and began lifting a bent beam away from the breach missiles.

  Bingwen rotated his arm and felt a sharp pain in his elbow. “You crashed on purpose?”

  “Maybe a stupid decision,” said Mazer, “but I couldn’t stop our momentum otherwise. We got lucky.”

  “You call this lucky?”

  Mazer’s voice suddenly rose. “No time for snark, Bing. All right? You came on this mission, you act like a soldier.”

  Bingwen stiffened with surprise.

  Mazer exhaled. He stopped pushing on the beam and turned to Bingwen, his shoulders relaxing. “We’re in a bad situation, Bingwen. I’m a little on edge. I need you to focus. Please. Otherwise we both die.”

  The rebuke stung more than the pain in Bingwen’s elbow, and he felt his face grow hot with shame. “I choked with the guns. You needed me, and I messed up.”

  Mazer sighed, looked away, then turned back. “This isn’t over,” he said. “Opperman has bought us some time. She and the other fighters have pushed this thing off course, but it’s only a matter of time before it course-corrects and re-targets GravCamp. You and I have work to do. Help me with this beam.”

  Bingwen nodded and moved to the back of the ship beside Mazer. The rear of the fighter was crunched inward dramatically. They had struck the scaffolding in the rear with such force that Bingwen was surprised that the fighter had held together in one piece. Had they struck the scaffolding head-on, they wouldn’t have been so lucky.

  The beam Mazer was trying to move was as thick as Bingwen’s arm. It appeared to be aluminum and somewhat pliable, though. Bingwen anchored his boots to the floor for leverage and pushed upward on the beam as Mazer did the same. Whatever contribution Bingwen made was minimal, but the beam slowly bent upward and cleared a path to the locker where the tubes holding the breach missiles were housed.

  “We should have ricocheted and bounced off,” said Bingwen. “We should be drifting.”

  “If our ship breaks free, we will,” said Mazer. “But not far. I’ve anchored it to the scaffolding. Here. Buckle this to your suit.” He gave Bingwen a D-clamp attached to a wire tether. “This is a precaution. A secondary tether, in case the one holding the ship breaks.”

  “But if I’m anchored to the ship, and the ship breaks free, what good is that?”

  “You’re not anchored to the ship,” said Mazer. “We’re both tethered to the scaffolding outside. Do you still have the NanoCloud paint? Please tell me you still have the NanoCloud paint.”

  The small bucket of paint and holstered brush were still in Bingwen’s pouch. “I have some,” said Bingwen. “But not much. I wasn’t planning on taking out a huge Formic warship with it.”

  “If I paint it on the hullmat,” said Mazer, “and turn on the nanobots, will the bots unzip the hull forever? Or do they run out of juice? Will they keep going until the entire hull of the ship is gone or do they only work for so long?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bingwen. “I suspect that they keep going, but even if that’s true, it would take forever to unzip this entire hull. I have relatively few nanobots in this paint. I mixed it up to break you out of the brig, not for this.”

  “When you say it will take forever, what does that mean? One hour? One day? One week?”

  “You’re asking for calculations that I can’t possibly make,” said Bingwen. “I don’t know any more about this tech than you do.”

  “Best guess,” said Mazer. “Considering the size of the ship. You’ve played with this stuff. Your guess is better than mine.”

  Bingwen shrugged. “Half a day at least, I’d say. This is a big ship.”

  Mazer frowned. “We don’t have a day.”

  “And even if we unzip the hull, what’s to keep them from putting on pressure suits and flying this thing into GravCamp anyway?”

  “We’re going with plan B,” said Mazer.

  “Which is?”

  “We use the paint to make a few small holes,” said Mazer. “Just big enough to drop in the warheads from the remaining breach missiles. Like a grenade.”

  Bingwen blinked. “You’re going to remove the warhead from a breach missile?”

  “We’re going to remove four warheads from four breach missiles. I think that’s how many we have left.”

  Mazer grabbed a drill and began unscrewing the paneling to reach the launch tubes.

  “Do you even know how to do that?” sai
d Bingwen.

  “It’s not rocket science,” said Mazer, then winked. “That was a joke.”

  “I’m glad you find this humorous. I’d laugh along if I thought it was funny. You’re going to manhandle a missile?”

  The paneling came free. Mazer reached in and opened the first launch tube. It was empty. The next two tubes were empty as well. The fourth tube held a breach missile. Mazer reached in and, with a great deal of grunting and exertion, pulled the missile out of the tube. It was as long as Bingwen and judging by how difficult it was for Mazer to maneuver it in the tight confines of the fighter in zero G, the missile had a lot of mass. The guidance systems at the nose and rear were already blinking.

  “You sure you should be touching that?” said Bingwen.

  Mazer let the missile hover in the air a moment and handed Bingwen the bag of tools. “We tested all kinds of armaments at WAMRED. Even disassembled a few. It was part of our analysis. Marines have to be able to make repairs. I’m no expert, but it’s easier than you think. Each of these segments is self-contained. Like building blocks.”

  “And you can do this without detonating it and blowing us to smithereens?” Bingwen asked.

  Mazer tapped his wrist pad. “I’m not doing this alone. GravCamp, this is Captain Rackham, do you copy, over?”

  The time delay was less now. They were close to the station.

  Captain Sarr’s voice said, “Go ahead, Captain. We read you loud and clear. And we’re glad you’re still alive. After that wreck, we thought—”

  “Shut up and listen,” said Mazer. “I need a spacecraft armament systems specialist on the radio immediately to walk me through a warhead disassembly. I’m not certain I can do it solo.”

  “Warhead disassembly?” said Sarr.

  “I need to remove the warhead from a B45 breach missile and detonate it remotely,” said Mazer. “Find the crew that loads the breach missiles into the Tik fighters.”

  “They load the missiles, Rackham. They don’t build them.”

  “Ask them,” said Mazer.