Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

by Orson Scott Card

  “Clever,” said Rena. “I’m assuming this has worked before.”

  “I’m alive, aren’t I?” He regarded Abbi, who was fully conscious now, the other women crowded around her, consoling her.

  “Now what?” asked Rena.

  “Now the real work begins. Now we sort through everything and get rid of what we don’t want.”

  “We can’t simply jettison things of little value,” said Rena. “That’s dangerous. Other ships will fly into it. Debris like that is the equivalent of a landmine.”

  “I am not like other crows, Lady of El Cavador. Other crews may do this, but not us. We carefully put unwanted items on the surface of asteroids so as not to leave a trail of ship-wrecking debris.”

  She nodded, impressed with him yet again.

  “I did not mean to frighten you back there,” he said. “Khalid came out of nowhere. He must have been following us. He will not follow us now. I am glad you made it back.”

  “Makes two of us,” she said.

  “Are you all right? How do you feel, Lady?”

  Rena’s heart was still pounding in her chest. “Alive,” she said. “I feel alive.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Camouflage

  As soon as their shuttle was close enough to Luna to send and receive transmissions, Victor sent a laserline and contacted Yanyu. It was sleep-shift on Imbrium, and when Yanyu appeared in the holofield above the dash she looked unkempt and half asleep. Then she realized it was Victor and Imala on the other end, and she was awake in an instant. “They told us you were heading to the Belt.”

  “We were,” said Victor. “The situation changed. We turned back at Last Chance. We haven’t had any contact with anyone in seven days. We were hoping you could bring us up to speed. We didn’t know who else to call.”

  “Do you have a place to stay?”

  “Actually no,” said Imala.

  “Then you will stay with me. Where are you docking? I will meet you there.”

  “We don’t want to impose,” said Imala.

  “You must stay here. Where else will you go? Which dock?”

  “Lunar Guidance hasn’t grabbed us yet,” said Imala. “We can go to whichever is nearest you, though we’d rather not go to a Juke dock. We were supposed to take this shuttle to Midway.”

  “There is a public dock south of Old City in Covington Square. Do you know the place?”

  “I know it,” said Imala.

  “Meet me there in one hour,” said Yanyu.

  Imala flew them toward Old City, and Lunar Guidance brought them in the rest of the way. They docked, deboarded, and found Yanyu waiting for them in an all-night café, dressed and presentable. They took a booth in the back away from everyone else.

  “You left without saying good-bye,” said Yanyu.

  “Ukko was eager to get us on our way,” said Victor.

  “That is what we assumed,” said Yanyu. “He would not want you talking about Lem. Lawyers came to Dr. Prescott and me when you left. They made us sign nondisclosure agreements saying that we would never speak of Lem or of any attack his ship may have made.”

  “Is that legally binding?” asked Imala.

  Yanyu shrugged. “We could argue that we signed it while under duress, but it would not matter anyway. It would never get to court.”

  “I’m sorry you got involved,” said Victor. “I didn’t mean to drag you into it.”

  Yanyu shrugged again. “I do not think about it. There are more pressing matters elsewhere.”

  “Tell us about the past seven days,” said Imala.

  Yanyu frowned, grim. “First there was the nuclear strike.”

  Victor and Imala stiffened. “Against the mothership?” asked Imala.

  “Do not get excited,” said Yanyu. “It was a failure. The Formics destroyed the missiles long before they reached the ship. Their guns hit them, and the bombs exploded. The blast of electromagnetic radiation destroyed dozens of satellites and damaged much of the existing communications grid. It is a miracle Luna can still contact Earth. It could have wiped out the whole system.”

  “The Formics weren’t hurt at all?” asked Imala.

  “Not that we could detect,” said Yanyu. “And it gets worse. Yesterday the U.S. and a few other nations launched an assault against the mothership using a fleet of over fifty manned ships. That attempt failed as well. Now debris from the destroyed ships and shuttles is floating around the mothership. Thousands died. It was awful.”

  “Why is the debris collected around the Formic ship?” asked Victor. “The wreckage should have shot off in every direction when the ships broke apart.”

  “The Formic ship has some kind of field around it,” said Yanyu. “Magnetic somehow. It’s not strong enough to catch everything, but it catches the smaller pieces. It’s a mess up there. The debris field is several hundred klicks thick.”

  “Did the Formics sustain any damage?” asked Imala.

  “Not exactly,” said Yanyu. “There are a few scorch marks from laser fire, but no structural damage that we could see. For us, however, it was a massacre. People are calling it the end of any large-scale space-based offensive.”

  “What about China?” asked Imala. “What’s the status on the ground?”

  Here Yanyu became solemn and quiet. “It is terrible. The casualty estimates are now above the two-million mark, and the military has not landed any major victories. The three landers still stand. The air forces have hit them with everything, and every attempt fails. Now the Formics have built mountains of biomass from stripped vegetation, dead animals, human corpses, all thrown together like giant piles of garbage. No one knows why, but there are plenty of gruesome photos on the nets, which I suggest you avoid.”

  “Have you heard from your family?” Imala asked.

  Yanyu nodded. “My mother and father fled Guangzhou on a shipping boat to Vietnam. From there they flew to London. They only got out because they’re wealthy. All of my friends and extended family are still in China. My father is trying to get out as many as he can, but the boats are few and the price for passage grows every day. There are thousands that gather at the shipyards every morning, but only a few ships get out. The crowds have turned violent. Some people literally kill to get passage.”

  “Survival instincts,” said Victor. “Parents will do anything to save their children.”

  “It’s too horrible to think about,” said Yanyu. “That is not the China I remember.”

  “What else have you heard?” asked Imala.

  “Nothing good. I have many friends in China on the nets. They send me images and vids they’ve taken of the destruction. I used to open their attachments. I don’t anymore. I don’t have the stomach for it. I have some net friends who haven’t answered my e-mails or logged on in weeks. I don’t know if they’re dead or alive.” Her eyes misted, but she kept her voice steady. “I feel so helpless here. My country burns, and I can do nothing. I cannot even enlist.” She held up her gimp arm. “I tried, but they would not accept me.”

  “Take me to the recruiting office,” said Victor. “That’s why we came back. So I can join in the fight.”

  Yanyu looked surprised. “But what can you do? You are not Chinese. My country is not letting in other soldiers, and the fight out here is over.”

  “My family’s ship was destroyed,” said Victor. “My father and half my family were killed. The Formics did that. I’m not going to watch them do that to someone else. I’m going to stop them.”

  Yanyu reached across the table and took his hand. “I am sorry for your loss, Victor.”

  It was her touch and the gentleness of her voice that nearly pushed him to tears. For days he had buried all thoughts of Father. It was too much to think about, too painful to dwell on. Father was dead. The most constant person in Victor’s life was gone. Day after day they had spent every waking hour together bouncing around the ship and making repairs, learning together, laughing together, arguing at times yes, but always apologizing and f
eeling stupid together afterward. Always together. Not even Mother spent that much time with Father.

  And now Father was gone.

  Victor wondered how Mother was taking it. A part of him felt guilty for not rushing back and looking for her and the others on the WU-HU ship. Wasn’t that his duty as the last surviving male? Not going back was like abandoning Mother, wasn’t it? She needed him. She would be broken inside without Father.

  And yet Victor also knew that Mother’s spine had more iron than his. If anyone could survive and keep all the women and children together, Mother could. She didn’t need Victor’s help for that. In fact, he would only add to her burden because she would be consoling him, not the other way around.

  That was Mother’s gift. Father fixed broken machines, Mother fixed broken people.

  “Come,” said Yanyu. “I will take you.”

  They took a track car to the center of Old City where the recruiting offices were located. They got out at the NATO building and stood in the artificial sunlight.

  “You want me to come in with you?” asked Imala.

  “No,” said Victor. “I can do this.”

  “We’ll wait here,” said Yanyu. “I’ll take you both back to my place when you’re done. They won’t ship you out for a few days at least.”

  “If they ship me out, you mean.”

  “Think positive,” said Imala. “The world is desperate. They’d be insane not to take someone with your talents.”

  Victor entered the building and told the woman at the counter why he’d come. She directed him to a room where a handful of other men around Victor’s age were waiting. An hour passed as more men trickled in. They were from all nationalities. Some were nicely dressed. Others wore mismatched hand-me-down garments as was the norm among most free-miner families.

  Eventually a uniformed soldier entered and addressed them. “NATO does not take walk-ins,” he said. “We take trained soldiers only. Our forces come from the existing armies of our member countries. So we can’t enlist any of you into our service. However, through that far door we have recruiters from every member country. You can enlist in their army, and once you’ve received training, you can request a transfer to a NATO force. If you are not a citizen of any country, if you don’t have a birth certificate, I’m afraid no country is going to take you. Please exit back this way.” He pointed to the door they had come through. “Give your contact information to the woman at the desk. If our policy changes, we will make an effort to contact you.”

  “How?” said Victor. “How will you contact us? My ship was destroyed, and how would you contact a ship anyway? Most communications are down.”

  “Sorry. That’s what I’ve been asked to say.”

  “You mean that’s what they told you to tell us space borns to make us go away.”

  The room was quiet. The soldier said nothing.

  “What difference does citizenship make anyway?” said Victor. “People on Earth are dying. Do you think they care if their rescuers have a birth certificate?”

  “Look, I don’t make the policy,” said the soldier.

  “No, you just follow it. You’ll let the world be destroyed because of a policy.”

  “With all due respect, friend, one person can’t stop the world from being destroyed.”

  Victor was on his feet. “With all due respect, friend, you’re wrong.”

  He went through the door and passed the front desk without stopping.

  Outside, Imala and Yanyu instantly saw that it hadn’t gone well. “You okay?” asked Imala.

  All the rage and disappointment in Victor fizzled out, replaced with embarrassment. “I’m not even a second-class citizen, Imala. I’m nobody.”

  “Not true,” said Yanyu. “You are a first-class citizen. First-class friend. Come. I will cook you my turnip cakes. They will make you happy.”

  Cakes made from turnips? The idea didn’t sound promising. But Victor put on his best smile for her sake and followed them toward an available track car.

  * * *

  Yanyu’s apartment was cramped but well organized, adorned with trinkets and art prints from China. There was plenty of food to go along with the turnip cakes—pan-fried noodles with bean sprouts, congee with dried minced pork, and sweet tea, all of it in sealed containers that magnetized to the table. Victor never would have thought of it as breakfast food, but it was all good nonetheless.

  The turnip cakes, as Yanyu had promised, did in fact make him happy. They were thick, pan-fried, square-shaped rice cakes filled with sausage and Jinhua ham. Victor had eaten four of them before Yanyu explained that they weren’t actually made with turnips.

  “Then why call them turnip cakes?” Victor asked with a mouthful.

  Yanyu shrugged. “Why do Americans call them hamburgers if they’re made from beef and not pork?”

  “She has a point,” said Imala.

  When they had eaten and cleared the dishes, Yanyu asked, “What will you do now?”

  “If an army won’t take us, we’ll form our own,” said Victor. “The three of us.”

  “What can three people do against the Formics?” asked Yanyu.

  “Tell us more about yesterday’s attack on the mothership,” said Victor. “What did the Formics do exactly?”

  “They won,” said Yanyu. “They fired at anything that moved. Some of the shuttles came in slowly and got close, but the Formics vaporized them before they reached the ship. It made humans look foolish.”

  “Do you have any footage from the battle?” asked Victor.

  “We recorded it with the Juke scopes.” She pushed off from the table and moon bounced into the family room, where she pulled up several vid files on the holoscreen. “Help yourself, though you will only find it depressing.”

  Victor took the controls and began studying the footage. The attack was well coordinated. The first wave targeted the shield generators and other defensive targets on the ship’s surface, but the rockets fired by the human ships detonated before they reached the mothership, hitting whatever shielding surrounded the Formics. Laser fire broke through the shielding, however, and this seemed to spur the human shuttles forward. Any hope of victory was dashed a moment later as plasma erupted from the surface of the Formic ship on all sides and decimated the entire human fleet in under a minute.

  “It’s like they’re not even trying,” said Imala. “We give them everything we’ve got, and they shrug us off.”

  Victor replayed the footage. On the second viewing he asked the computer to monitor the human ships’ speeds, their angles of approach, and the number of times each ship fired. On the third viewing he saw the pattern. On the fourth viewing he was sure he was right.

  “Look at this,” he said, starting the vid again and playing it at a slower speed. “The apertures on the surface of the Formic ship open, but look, they target the fastest ships first.”

  “So,” said Yanyu. “That’s what I would do. The fastest ships are the ones that will reach them first and are therefore the most immediate threat.”

  “That’s just it,” said Victor. “Some of these fast ships aren’t even heading toward the Formics. A few of them are moving in an arc, getting into position, preparing to come at the Formics from another direction. So their trajectory is taking them to a spot in space on the other side. A few of them aren’t even firing yet.”

  “What’s your point?” said Imala.

  “My point is, it doesn’t make tactical sense. Humans would defend themselves differently. We would target those ships that pose the biggest, most immediate threat, right? The ships that were firing. But the Formics don’t. They target the ships that are moving the fastest.”

  “They wiped out every ship,” said Imala. “Does it matter what order they did it in?”

  “It absolutely matters,” said Victor. “Look.” He sped up the vid to the end of the battle. “Watch. The ships that were destroyed last were the ships that were moving the slowest. And yet some of these ships are scorching
the surface of the Formic ship with laser fire. So in some instances, the Formics took out ships that weren’t firing before they took out ships that were.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Imala.

  “Meaning their defense is somehow built on motion detection,” said Victor. “They identified all the ships and destroyed them in the order of how fast they were moving. Which means if a ship was moving slow enough and inconspicuously enough, it might be able to reach the Formic ship.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Imala. “If it’s moving toward the ship, it’s in motion. That would set off the Formic sensors.”

  “Not if it’s moving very, very slowly,” said Victor. “Here, look at the debris around the Formic ship. Most of the debris from the destroyed ships is gone, blasted off and moving away at a constant speed. But you still have hundreds of pieces of debris surrounding the mothership. Now, none of these pieces is completely inert. They’re all spinning or drifting slightly, so they have some motion. And yet the Formics don’t blast them. Why?”

  “Because they’re not ships,” said Imala. “They’re debris. They’re not a threat anymore.”

  “Exactly,” said Victor. “They have some motion but they’re being ignored because they’re debris.”

  “If you’re making another point, Vico,” said Imala, “we’re not seeing it.”

  “This is the answer,” said Victor. “This is how I can reach the Formic ship.”

  “How?” said Imala.

  “By camouflaging a tiny shuttle to look like debris and then piloting it very slowly, as if it were drifting, right up to the surface of the ship. It would blend in with all of the other drifting debris. The Formics would completely ignore it. And if the motion was slow enough, their sensors wouldn’t detect it.”

  “Theoretically,” said Imala. “You don’t know how sensitive their sensors are.”

  “Actually,” said Victor, “we have a pretty good idea. My father and all the men from El Cavador, along with Lem’s men, reached the surface of the ship. How? By having their ships match the Formics’ speed, which meant their ships looked stationary to the Formics. And more importantly, for whatever reason, the men passed through the shield. I can get on that ship, Imala.”