Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

by Orson Scott Card

  Reinhardt set the HERC down between the two buildings on an access road. An old pickup truck, with its hood up, was parked nearby, rusted and dented and tilting to one side, a few leafy vines twisting up the side of it. A dead relic.

  The barn was to the right. It was three-sided, open in the front, with two water buffalo tied up inside beside a few bales of hay. Crude hand tools and farming implements hung on nails along the interior wall.

  Mazer got out and took Bingwen into his arms. Patu ran ahead to the farmhouse and banged on the door. No one answered. The door was unlocked. Mazer carried Bingwen inside. The house was empty. A single room, twenty meters squared, void of any furniture. It smelled of smoke and age and dust. Holes like windows in the far wall offered a sweeping view of the valley.

  Mazer lay Bingwen down on the concrete floor and told him to lie still.

  The grandfather thanked Mazer profusely. Mazer noted how the old man struggled to walk and the bandages wrapped around the man’s chest.

  “You’re hurt.”

  The old man shrugged. “I’m old. The two go together.”

  Mazer went back to the HERC for the Med-Assist. He returned, cut the man’s bandages away, and scanned his chest. “Two cracked ribs.”

  “I could have told you that without the fancy equipment,” said the old man.

  Mazer pulled a handful of pill packets from the kit and offered them to the old man. “Take these for the pain.”

  The old man waved them away. “I’ll be fine.”

  Mazer took the man’s hand and closed the old, weathered fingers around the pill packets. “Your hands are withered with arthritis. Your chest probably burns with every breath. These pills speed the healing and help you rest. Your body needs both. Save your strength to care for Bingwen. Don’t argue. And here, take these.”

  Mazer emptied his pockets of his rations and pulled two emergency water bags from the kit. “This should hold you until the doctors arrive.”

  The old man accepted the items, his eyes wet, and nodded his thanks.

  “Mazer!”

  It was Patu, shouting from the HERC. “We’ve got to move.”

  Mazer hurried outside and climbed aboard. Reinhardt had them up before Mazer was buckled.

  “The lander,” said Patu. “It’s opening.”

  CHAPTER 14

  India

  Captain Wit O’Toole stepped out of the command tent and into the frigid morning air of the Kashmir Valley roughly 350 kilometers west of the Chinese border. To the east the sun was just beginning to rise over the outer Himalayas, casting long shadows across the valley floor and bathing Wit in a golden glow. Soon this would all be snow, a thick blanket of white that would cover the landscape until next summer. But for now it was steep green meadows and thick pine forests and vibrant wildflowers living out their brief existence before the snows came. It was a sight Wit would never tire of seeing. Earth in its purest form. No industry, no buildings, no people. Just mountains and green and a river at the bottom. It was breathtaking and beautiful and worth fighting for.

  Wit looked down again at the images on his wrist pad. Three alien landers in China. He flipped the images away and called up a button, one that when pressed would alert everyone in his unit and call them to assembly. Wit pressed it.

  Around him were twenty two-man tents, clustered together on the hillside. Almost immediately there was movement inside the tents. Seconds later men began to emerge, their hair unkempt, their clothes disheveled. Many of them were barefoot. But they were all alert and eager for news.

  Six hours ago Wit had ordered his men to get some sleep. They would have preferred to stay up and watch the live coverage of the alien ship in space, but they had already been awake for thirty-six hours at that point, and they needed their rest. They were MOPs—or Mobile Operations Police—the most elite special forces unit in the world. Yet even soldiers as skilled and lethal as they were needed sleep.

  The men gathered around Wit, some of them wearing only their long underwear, hugging themselves in the morning chill. They were a diverse group. Forty men from thirty different countries. Europeans, Asians, North and South Americans, Africans, Middle Easterners—all of them handpicked from special forces units in their respective countries. They had all discarded their old ranks and uniforms and agreed to represent their country in an international force in which they were all equal and all devoted to a single cause: stop human suffering, anywhere in the world.

  Wit thought it unfortunate that there were no Chinese soldiers among them. He could use one right about now. He had tried over the years to recruit from China, but the military there had always patently refused his offer. They would stand independent and not insert themselves into international matters. Or so said the official memo Wit had received from China. He would not have access to their soldiers under any circumstances. Period.

  “The aliens have sent three large landing crafts down into China,” said Wit. He removed his holopad from the pouch at his hip and held it in the palm of his hand. He then extended the projection antennas at each of the four corners and turned on the holo. An image of one of the landers appeared in the air. Some of the soldiers in the back strained to look over the heads of those in front of them.

  A supply truck was to Wit’s left. He climbed up onto the back bumper to give everyone a better look.

  “You can’t tell from the holo,” Wit said, “but these landers are massive, many times larger than the world’s biggest sports arena. Each of them could easily hold tens of thousands of troops or hundreds of aircraft or land vehicles. We don’t yet know what’s inside them. At the moment, they’re just sitting there. They landed only a moment ago.”

  “Where in China?” said Calinga. “We’re close to the border.”

  “Nowhere near us,” said Wit. “Southeast China, north of Guangzhou.”

  “When do we deploy?” asked Calinga.

  “I haven’t asked Strategos for orders,” said Wit. “And I won’t be asking them either. In fact, I cut off all communications with Strategos three minutes ago.”

  The men exchanged looks.

  Strategos was the high commander of the Mobile Operations Police. The general, so to speak. Except, instead of being a single person, Strategos was actually thirty people. Twenty-two men and eight women, each from a different nation, and each with a wealth of experience in black ops and peacekeeping operations. Some had been leaders of intelligence agencies. Others were military leaders still in active duty. Together they identified and planned MOPs missions and gave Wit his orders. Sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council, Strategos was a model of international military cooperation, a fraction of the size of NATO and far more effective on small-scale ops. Where NATO was a show of force, MOPs was a lightning strike, hard and fast and out before the enemy knew what hit him.

  “You cut off lines with Strategos?” said Calinga. “Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Captain, but won’t that make it difficult for us to get our deployment orders?”

  “You won’t get deployment orders,” said Wit. “Even if the lines were open. Strategos won’t send us to China. If orders come through it will be for us to stay put and maintain our position.”

  “Why?” said Deen. “The war’s in China.”

  “China is the reason why,” said Wit. “They’re a stable state. Strategos won’t send us in without a referendum from the U.N. Security Council and the blessing of the Chinese government, neither of which will likely happen any time soon, if at all. China won’t ask for help.”

  “Why not?” asked Deen.

  “Because they’re China,” said Wit. “If the landers had set down in Europe or Australia, we’d already be on a plane. China will be less cooperative. They’ll want to handle this alone. Accepting help would be a show of weakness. Their military would take it as an insult. They won’t abide that.”

  “This isn’t solely their problem,” said Calinga. “It’s everybody’s.”

  “China won’t se
e it that way. If anything, they’ll see this as an opportunity to assert their strength. If they rid the world of invading aliens, suddenly they’re the strongest nation on Earth. Everyone would think twice before crossing them.”

  “Who’s stupid enough to mess with China anyway?” said Calinga.

  “The U.S. would have done the same thing,” said Wit. “They don’t want foreign troops on U.S. soil. It feels like a loss of sovereignty. It spooks the civilians and it implies that the nation helping you is stronger than you are. It’s selfish and asinine, but that’s national pride for you. A month from now, after a few million Chinese civilians have died, China may reconsider.”

  “You think it will get that bad?” asked Lobo.

  “Probably worse,” said Wit. “Think about our approach to alien combat.”

  Calinga said, “Analyze before we act and presume hostile intent.”

  “Right,” said Wit. “And hostile intent is now a foregone conclusion. They wiped out a few thousand space miners and they turned a U.N. secretary and a few shuttles of reporters into space dust. We can safely assume they’re not carrying gift baskets in those landers.”

  “So why did you cut communications with Strategos?” asked Calinga.

  “Because I don’t want to disobey a direct order,” said Wit. “I’m going into China. If I never get the order to stay put, then I’m not disobeying it.”

  “You’re obviously not going alone,” said Deen. “We’re coming with you.”

  “I can’t order any of you to do that,” said Wit. “I can only ask for volunteers. Getting across the border will be difficult. Relations between India and China aren’t rosy. The borders are tight. We won’t be able to take weapons. The Chinese would never let us in. We have to cross as civilians. We can acquire new weapons and gear once we’re in the country.”

  “And do what exactly?” asked Deen.

  “What we’ve trained to do,” said Wit. “We’ll be fighting an asymmetrical war. Instead of us being the high-tech masters of the battlefield, we will be the low-tech guerrillas trying to sabotage, interfere, strike at key points. We’ll demoralize the enemy so badly, they’ll want to quit. Like the Viet Cong against the U.S., or Castro against Batista, or the Fedayeen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It will require a much different approach to combat than what we’re used to waging. And we’ll have to make it up and improvise as we go along. We still have no idea what the aliens’ capabilities are.”

  “So forty guys against an alien army?” said Deen. “Don’t get me wrong, I like a good fight, but those aren’t promising odds.”

  “We won’t be alone,” said Wit. “Everything we learn about the enemy, every effective combat tactic we develop, we’ll share with the Chinese military. If they’re smart, they’ll implement them. And we’ll be watching the Chinese as well. If they do something that works, we’ll implement it. The more we help each other, the more effective we both can be.”

  “I thought they didn’t want help,” said Lobo.

  “They can’t ask for help,” said Wit. “They don’t officially want help. But the individual squadrons in the thick of things will be grateful to have us. I hope.”

  “Where will we get supplies?” asked Calinga.

  “Does this mean you’re volunteering?” asked Wit.

  “Hell yes,” said Calinga. He turned to the others, “Anyone here not volunteering?”

  No one raised their hand.

  Calinga turned back and smiled. “Seems unanimous to me. I say we get moving.”

  “Not yet,” said Wit. “I need to be clear about what the consequences of this will be. If we trudge off into China, we’ll likely be labeled deserters and court-martialed.”

  “The consequences of us not going might be the end of the world,” said Lobo.

  “He’s right, Captain,” said Mabuzza. “We go where you go.”

  “So what if they court-martial us,” said Deen. “Beats turning our backs on the people in China. I’d rather have a clear conscience as a deserter than a lifelong guilt trip as a soldier in good standing.”

  The men murmured their consent.

  “All right,” said Wit. “I see you’re all as bullheaded as I am. You’ve got ten minutes to strike camp. Move!”

  They moved.

  Nine minutes later, the vehicles were pulling out, heading down the mountain pass toward Srinagar. Wit and Calinga sat in the cab of the lead truck, with Calinga at the wheel and Wit watching the sat feeds from China on the dashboard monitor. On screen the landers had spun into the ground, digging in. An aircraft was on site, recording it from every angle. Wit opened his holopad. A map of northern India appeared in the air in front of him, a small pin marking their current location.

  “I think our chances are better if we cross into China from Pakistan in the Karakoram Mountains,” said Wit. “Here at Khunjerab Pass.”

  “Pakistan?” said Calinga. “Now we have to cross two borders?”

  “Getting into Pakistan won’t be a problem. It’s still the Kashmir region. And the borders between Pakistan and China are far more lax than those between India and China. Plus Khunjerab Pass is a cargo hub. Lots of commercial traffic. Big trucks. Freight loads. There will be cargo planes on the China side carrying freight east. Short runways. Dangerous flights. We’ll hitch a ride.”

  “What about the vehicles?” asked Calinga.

  “We’ll ditch them in Srinagar,” said Wit. “Roads are bad and fuel is scarce in that part of western China. We’d be abandoning them anyway. Plus it’s hard to pass as civilians when you’re driving military trucks.”

  “What’s the elevation there?”

  “Close to five thousand meters.”

  “You’ve got to be an insane pilot to take a job like that,” said Calinga. “Winds in the mountains. The constant threat of storms. Big cargo planes. That’s asking for a nosedive into a mountainside.”

  “That will work to our advantage,” said Wit.

  Calinga made a face. “How you figure?”

  “A pilot who takes a job like that is interested in one thing only. Money. And money we have.”

  They drove into Srinagar and found a warehouse where they could store their trucks and supplies. Wit had the men lock up everything tight, though he doubted he would ever see any of the equipment again. His men were all in fatigues, which pegged them as soldiers. The trucks were clearly military as well. Which meant they were probably filled with valuable tech. Guns almost certainly. And military weapons on the black market would catch a very good price in Srinagar. Pakistan was only a hop, skip, and a jump away. Afghanistan wasn’t much farther. Ten to one, thought Wit, the owner of this warehouse will have a burglary in the next few days, a burglary he secretly arranges himself for a decent cut of the profits.

  But what could Wit do? If they approached the border as soldiers, they had zero chance of getting through.

  They left the warehouse carrying only personal items in their pockets: holopads, passports, radio communicators, sat receivers. Small items. Inconspicuous.

  They walked to a street market nearby and looked for clothes. Merchants shouted to them, offering their wares and promising incredible prices. Fruit, fish, jewelry, pirated music. Wit walked on, ignoring them.

  They found a merchant selling men’s clothing, but the designs were all wrong. Too small and too festive. The merchant held up a bright, shimmering pair of pants and a multicolored kurta. Wit forced a smile. If he and his men showed up at a Chinese border wearing that, they’d be mistaken for a troupe of acrobats.

  “We need plain clothes,” said Wit.

  The merchant smiled and held up a finger. “Ah. Plain. These are too flashy for you, yes? Perhaps this is more to your liking.” He pulled down a bright yellow kurta that hung down to Wit’s knees and hurt his eyes.

  “Not my style,” said Wit. “Is there a dry cleaners near here?”

  The merchant’s smile vanished—Wit was no longer a potential sale. The merchant cocked a
thumb down the street then turned his attention to someone else. Wit and his men pushed on. As they left the market, people began to stare. Mothers grabbed their children and pulled them out of the street. Pedestrians stopped and watched them with narrow eyes. Old men scowled.

  “Not the friendliest of neighborhoods,” said Calinga.

  “We look like soldiers,” said Wit. “Merchants love us because soldiers have money. Civilians like soldiers as much as they like a hole in the head, which is what soldiers in this region of the world sometimes give.”

  “Why a dry cleaners?” asked Calinga.

  “Clothes obviously,” said Wit. “And more importantly used clothes.”

  “We can’t buy other people’s clothes,” said Calinga.

  “You can buy anything if you’ve got the money for it,” said Wit. “But we might not have to buy other people’s clothes. Cleaners have unclaimed stuff, too. Shirts and pants people forgot they sent there or didn’t pick up. And we’re close to the university. So we’ve got a better chance of finding something functional.”

  They found the dry cleaners two blocks later. The owner was a small man sitting behind the counter, watching a sat feed of the landers in China. He heard the door ring as Wit and the men entered, but he didn’t look up from the monitor. He was riveted.

  Wit waited a moment, then cleared his throat. The man looked up at them, took in their number and size, and his eyes widened in surprise.