Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

by Orson Scott Card

  It amazed Mazer to think that all of this had been built in the last ten days or so. And by the looks of it, the Formics weren’t finished building. Construction crews were everywhere, adding piping, assembling machines, extending structures. Skimmers carried building materials to the crews. Clawlike cranes held pipes in place as Formic workers welded them to the other structures.

  Yet as vast and impressive a site as it was, Mazer had never seen anything so disorganized and unattractive. There was no order to the construction at all. Everything looked slapped together haphazardly without any regard to uniformity or design. The metals were all red and gray and rough and rusting, as if they had been used a hundred times previously for other purposes and never once cleaned or cared for.

  Nor were the Formics concerned about cleanliness. Filth covered everything. The ground was littered with trash and discarded building materials. And everywhere Mazer looked he saw Formic feces. He knew with certainty what the black substance was because he witnessed a few Formics defecating as they labored, showing no regard for those around them, simply dropping it where they stood. It covered the ground and pipes and the Formics’ feet. The stench was not only from the biomass apparently.

  Mazer pointed the binoculars back at the mist-raining skimmers, zooming in as far as the lenses would go and having the computer take scans and run an analysis. The results didn’t tell him much: The mists were a microbe solution of unknown composition.

  “It’s breaking down the biota,” Bingwen said, who had crawled up beside and watched as he worked. “What are they using it for? Fuel?”

  “That, or food,” said Mazer. “Or maybe both.”

  Bingwen grew quiet, staring at the biomass. His parents are in there somewhere, Mazer thought.

  “Here,” Mazer said, offering Bingwen the binocs and hoping to direct his thoughts elsewhere. “Earn your keep. Check out the lander. Tell me if you see anything interesting.”

  Bingwen took the binocs and pressed the eyepieces against the visor of the gas mask. “This would be a lot easier if I could take this mask off.” He glanced thoughtfully at Mazer. “But considering the green, sickly look on your face, I think I’ll keep it on.”

  “Wise choice.”

  Bingwen adjusted the focus and gazed down at the lander. “For an advanced alien species, they’re not too concerned about housekeeping. The metal is all gross and rusted looking.”

  “And covered in Formic dung, if you haven’t noticed.”

  “Yes, thanks for pointing that out.”

  “At least you’re not smelling it.”

  Bingwen slowly panned the binocs across the lander then stopped when something caught his eye. “Okay, this is interesting. Near the base of the lander there’s a hole in the ground. Maybe a meter in diameter. I just saw a Formic crawl into it. And there’s another hole about four meters away from the first one, closer to the lander. A Formic crawled out of the second hole, and at first I thought it was a different Formic. But it wasn’t. It was the same one. I could tell because it had a limp in one of his legs. He crawled into the first hole, went underground for about four meters, and then came up through the second hole and moved on toward the lander. That’s strange, isn’t it? If he was heading for the lander, why not walk straight to it? Why bother going underground?”

  “Unless he can’t walk straight to it,” Mazer said.

  “Exactly. There must be something there in his way, something invisible, which forces him to crawl under it to get through.”

  “A shield.” Mazer gestured for the binocs, and Bingwen passed them to him. Mazer focused the lenses and looked where Bingwen was pointing.

  “You see that big red metal thing that looks like a water tower?” said Bingwen. “There’s a pipe at its base. Follow that west for about fifty meters, and there’s the hole.”

  “I see it.” Mazer watched the hole. In time, a pair of Formics came carrying a beam of metal between them. They crawled into the hole, dragging the pipe behind them, and disappeared. A moment later, they emerged through the second hole. Once on their feet, they shouldered the beam and moved on toward the lander.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” said Bingwen. “It means the shield doesn’t go underground. It’s only covering what’s above the surface.”

  “Did you see any other holes?”

  “No, but it can’t be the only one. There are hundreds of workers down there. If they sleep in the lander, that one hole would bottleneck at the beginning and end of every shift. There have to be others.”

  Mazer scanned for several minutes. “I’ve counted three other sets of holes, all of them like the set you found. One hole outside the shield, one inside.”

  “And those are just the ones we can see from here,” said Bingwen. “There are probably dozens of these holes all around the lander. This is it. This is the answer. We have to tell the army. They can send in soldiers through the holes to take the lander.”

  “No,” said Mazer. “We’re not going in through the holes. The holes aren’t the answer.”

  “But…” Bingwen’s voice broke off suddenly, and Mazer saw a look of horror on the boy’s face. He was staring at something over Mazer’s head, behind him. Mazer spun onto his back and saw that a troop transport had landed on the hilltop. Formics poured out of it, running in their direction, riflelike weapons in their top sets of arms.

  Mazer was on his feet in an instant, lifting Bingwen and pushing him back the way they had come. “Run!”

  Bingwen ran.

  Mazer rushed forward, dropped to one knee, his gun in his hand, the wrist brace snapping into place with a click-click-click. The Formics were sprinting toward him, thirty meters away. Mazer fired a dozen shots, and five Formics dropped. Seven more kept coming. Mazer turned and was on his feet again, sprinting. He scooped up the pack as he ran past it, throwing it over one shoulder, then another. He dropped the clip from the gun and snapped in the second magazine. He fired a four-round burst behind him as he ran. Another Formic fell.

  Bingwen was ahead of him, running along the ridge of the hill as fast as his legs would carry him, which wasn’t nearly fast enough. Mazer caught up to him almost immediately. To their left was the lander and hundreds of Formics. To their right was the steep muddy slope they had so painstakingly ascended. There was only one thing to do, Mazer realized. They had no cover up here, nowhere to dig in and fight. They couldn’t make a stand. They were completely exposed.

  Mazer scooped up Bingwen into his arms. “Hold on tight!”

  Bingwen wrapped his arms around Mazer’s neck and buried his face into Mazer’s shoulder. No hesitation. Immediate obedience.

  Then Mazer cut hard to the right where an outcrop of rock extended beyond the edge of the hill.

  He ran to the end of it at a full sprint.

  And jumped out into space.

  The hill was steep, and Mazer and Bingwen dropped ten meters before hitting the slope and shooting down the mud on Mazer’s back, using the pack like a luge sled. The ground gave way all around them, sliding off the slope like a sheet pulled from a bed. Mazer could feel the mud gathering around them like a wave, threatening to consume them, swallow them, bury them alive. Mazer kept his legs stiff out in front of him, toes pointed, clinging to Bingwen, trying to maintain as much speed as possible.

  They would have to hit the ground running, he knew. They couldn’t be caught at the base of the hill on Mazer’s back. The mud behind them would cover them in an instant.

  They were nearing the bottom. Mud and grit and dirt sprayed up into Mazer’s face, making it hard to see. He would have to time this right; come up too soon and his feet would sink into the muck at the bottom of the hill. Pop up too late, and he would be too prostrate on the ground with the weight of Bingwen on top of him, unable to climb to his feet in time.

  He pointed his right foot forward, then dug his heel hard into the earth at what he hoped was the right moment. In the same instant he threw his upper body forward, harder than
he thought was necessary since Bingwen was in his arms.

  It worked. He popped up from his semirecumbent position into a somewhat standing position, falling the last meter or so to the level earth. He was on flat ground, but his forward momentum was more than he had anticipated. He stumbled. Bingwen fell from his arms, down to one knee. The mud was sliding all around them like beached surf, and Mazer could hear the rumble of more mud behind them. He high-stepped, lifting his feet up hard with each step, not allowing them to become swallowed up in the pool of mud at his feet. His hand reached down and grabbed the front of Bingwen’s shirt, lifting him up again. They stumbled, fell, rose up again, running forward, moving, surging a microsecond ahead of the wave.

  And then they were free of it, running on level, hard-packed dirt, Mazer’s feet steady and sure-footed beneath him.

  A valley of scorched earth stretched out in front of them. There was no cover here either. No trees. No ditches. No holes to climb into. They were completely in the open, standing out in the full bright of day like two brown dots on a vast black canvas.

  Mazer never stopped running, his heart hammering in his chest, Bingwen clinging to him tightly.

  The troop transport dropped out of the sky twenty meters in front of them. Four Formics jumped out before Mazer had even changed directions or slowed down. The sidearm was still strapped to his wrist—he would have lost it otherwise. He raised it and fired, the shot going wide. It was nearly impossible to carry Bingwen and run in one direction and shoot in another and hope to hit anything.

  They couldn’t keep running. The transport could easily follow them wherever they went. They had to take out the crew. Mazer stopped dead and dropped Bingwen from his arms. “Get behind me!” Mazer spun and lowered himself to one knee again, preparing to take aim, when the net slammed into him, knocking him back onto Bingwen.

  A surge of paralyzing electricity shot through Mazer’s body, constricting all of his muscles at once. The heavy fibrous net had him pinned down on his back, with Bingwen beneath him, the net crackling and hissing and pulsing with energy. Mazer couldn’t move. His body felt as if it were burning up from the inside. His face was contorted in a painful rictus, his jaw clenched shut, his fingers bent and frozen in awkward positions as the energy surged through him. He hoped he was taking the brunt of it; Bingwen’s smaller frame couldn’t handle this. Better Mazer die than the both of them.

  A Formic’s face appeared above him, gazing down at Mazer, its head cocked to the side, regarding him, or mocking him, or both.

  The gun was still strapped to Mazer’s wrist. He had to raise it, aim it, fire it. The Formic was only a meter away, he couldn’t miss. It would be easy. They would kill Bingwen if he didn’t do something. They would spray the mist in his face as they had done to the boy’s parents and to Danwen, and they would toss Bingwen’s body onto the pile of biomass and melt it into sludge.

  Mazer’s mind ordered his arm to move, screamed for it to obey, to animate, to twist a few centimeters, just enough to point the barrel in the right direction, but nothing happened. His hand remained mockingly still.

  A loud crack sounded, and the side of the Formic’s head exploded. Tissue and blood and maybe brain matter blew out in a spray. The Formic crumpled, dropping from Mazer’s view.

  A cacophony of sounds erupted all around Mazer: the roar of an engine, automatic gunfire, shouting, an explosion. All of it happening in rapid succession.

  “Hold on!” someone shouted. “Don’t move.”

  Mazer felt weight placed on the net to his left, pressing the net slightly tighter to his face. Then there was a pop, and the energy surging through him stopped in an instant. He had never felt a sweeter feeling or a greater relief. It was as if his mind had been squeezed in a fist and now the fist had released him. Only … he still couldn’t move his body. He was limp, his fingers and toes tingling. He told his feet to move, but they didn’t listen.

  Gloved hands ripped back the netting, pulling it off him. A man in a mottled black-and-gray body suit and mask—not an inch of his skin exposed—was above him. “Bax, help me get him inside. Calinga, grab the boy.”

  The man in the mask rolled Mazer off of Bingwen and onto his back, then he got his arms under Mazer’s armpits. Another man in a matching suit and mask grabbed Mazer’s ankles. They lifted him. He was dead weight. Mazer’s head lolled to the side, showing him Formics on the ground, bleeding out, dead. Smoke billowed out of their transport. It lay flat on the ground, no longer hovering, burned out. The netting was on the ground too, discarded in a heap. A crude-looking device lay on top of it, something to short-circuit the net, perhaps. The air was thick with smoke and the stench of dead Formics.

  The men carried him into a large vehicle and laid him on the floor, the metal surface cold and hard and unforgiving. A third man in a black suit rushed inside behind them, carrying Bingwen. The instant he was in, another man slammed the door shut and yelled to the driver. “Go go go!”

  Tires spun. The vehicle shot forward, bouncing, rattling, accelerating. The man holding Bingwen—Calinga they had called him—lay Bingwen down on the floor beside Mazer, bunching up a piece of fabric under Bingwen’s head as a pillow. Bingwen appeared limp and frightened, but when he made eye contact with Mazer, a look of relief washed over him. We’re safe, it seemed to say. We’re alive.

  There was a long bench in front of Mazer, where several men sat in mottled gray-and-black containment suits, feverishly working with their holopads. “No movement from the lander,” one of them said. “Sky’s clear.”

  Someone behind Mazer responded. “Keep watching. And keep tracking that transport we saw heading north. If it so much as decelerates to head back this way, I want to know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Air is clear,” said another man. “Ninety-seven percent. We’re good.”

  “Masks off,” said the man behind Mazer.

  The men removed their masks. Mazer didn’t recognize any of them, but he could tell by the way they handled themselves that they were all soldiers, expertly trained. They instantly began caring for their gear, checking their weapons, reloading, readjusting sights, cleaning their masks, getting ready for the next fight as soon as the last one was over. Their movements were quick, disciplined, and automatic. They had done this a hundred times. The dead Formics behind them were already forgotten. They weren’t congratulating themselves or celebrating their victory like amateurs; they were calm and procedural, going about business as usual.

  They’re expert Formic killers, Mazer realized.

  It was only after their weapons were ready again that the soldiers saw to their own needs, taking a drink from a canteen, ripping open an energy pack.

  None of them were Chinese, Mazer noticed. They were as diverse a mix of ethnicities and nationalities as Mazer had ever seen in a small unit. Europeans, Americans, Latinos, Africans. And yet their clothes revealed nothing as to who they were. No uniforms, no insignia, no rank. And yet Mazer knew at once who they were.

  Calinga knelt beside him, preparing a syringe. “The paralysis is temporary. Residual effect of the zappers. This will help.” He stuck the syringe into the meat of Mazer’s arm. Almost at once, Mazer felt the knot in his muscles relax and the jittered shake of his hands subside. He hadn’t even realized he had been trembling until he no longer was.

  Calinga did the same for Bingwen.

  Mazer could feel his fingers and toes again. His wrist responded when he told it to move. “Thank you,” he managed to say.

  “Talking already,” Calinga said, as he packed up the syringes and supplies. “Good sign. Means they didn’t cook your brain. Ten more seconds and you were heading for the gray mountain.” He turned to Bingwen, his expression warm and cheery. “And you, little man, are lucky this guy took the brunt of the net. I know he’s heavy and smelly and covered in mud, but it’s better to be flattened by him than a zapper. Believe me.” He patted Bingwen lightly on the arm.

  “How long have MOPs been in Chin
a?” Mazer asked.

  “Since right after the invasion,” said the voice behind him.

  Mazer knew that voice. He turned and faced Captain Wit O’Toole on the bench behind him.

  “Hello, Mazer,” said Wit. “I’m glad to see you still alive.”

  “So am I,” said Mazer. “I have you to thank for that.”

  “You two know each other?” said Bingwen. He pushed himself up and removed the gas mask. His face was the only part of him not covered in mud.

  “We tested Mazer for our unit,” said Wit. “But instead of incapacitating my men and escaping the test, he endured nearly an hour of torture.”

  “You tortured him?” Bingwen was suddenly angry.

  “Only a little,” said Wit. “It couldn’t have been worse than the zapper. And you are?”

  “Bingwen.”

  “Captain Wit O’Toole. Mobile Operations Police. I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but that would be a lie considering the circumstances.” He turned to Mazer. “You brought a civilian into a hot zone, Mazer. Not smart. And a child, no less.”

  “It’s not his fault,” said Bingwen. “He tried to get rid of me, but I kept coming back.”

  “You must have already been at the lander when you saw us,” said Mazer.

  “We arrived last night,” said Wit. “Observing. Undetected. We blew our cover to save you.”

  “You shouldn’t have,” said Mazer. “Don’t think me ungrateful, but destroying the lander is more important than our lives.”

  “I’m glad to hear you haven’t lost all sense,” said Wit. “Because you’re right. Strategically, it would have been smarter to let the Formics kill you.”

  “Well I for one am glad you didn’t,” said Bingwen.