Earth Awakens (The First Formic War)

by Orson Scott Card

  He got to his feet and picked up the shirt.

  Shenzu winced and gestured to the red, jagged scar across Mazer’s midsection. “That’s a nasty cut, Captain. And recent by the look of it.”

  Mazer pulled the shirt down over his head and covered the scar. “Our HERC was shot down near Dawanzhen by a swarm of Formic fighters. I was the lucky one.”

  Shenzu’s expression softened. “And your crew? Patu, Fatani, and Reinhardt?”

  Shenzu knew their names of course. It was Shenzu who had come to New Zealand before the war and convinced Mazer’s superiors at the New Zealand Special Air Service to conduct a joint training exercise with the Chinese military. And it was Shenzu who had handpicked Mazer and his crew for the task. The deal was simple. Mazer and his team would teach Chinese pilots how to fly the HERC—a new experimental anti-grav aircraft—and the NZSAS would get a few free aircraft for their trouble.

  “My crew died on impact,” said Mazer.

  Shenzu looked genuinely regretful. “You have my condolences, Captain. They were good soldiers.”

  “Thank you,” said Mazer. “And yes, they were.”

  A silence stretched between them until Shenzu said, “I suppose I am partly responsible for their deaths. I brought them to China, after all.”

  “You didn’t know what was coming,” said Mazer. “The Formics killed them, not you. Though you did threaten to shoot us down.”

  Shenzu nodded. “You and your team had stolen a HERC, expensive government property you had no authority to fly off base.”

  “We were helping civilians,” said Mazer.

  “My superiors were afraid your flight path would be seen as an act of aggression against the Formics and instigate a conflict. There are still some officers who believe that’s what happened.”

  “Is that what you think?” Mazer asked.

  Shenzu hesitated then shook his head. “No. The Formics had already killed hundreds of civilians when they landed. Threatening to shoot you down was a mistake.”

  “What about arresting me and Captain O’Toole?” asked Mazer. “Was that a mistake as well? Are you intending to punish us for destroying one of the Formic landers? For helping your people?”

  Shenzu turned his body toward the open tent flap and gestured toward the jeep. “General Sima is the man to answer that question. Shall we?”

  They climbed up into the jeep and drove north through camp, maneuvering through a sea of tents, the bustle of camp all around them. Trucks and four-wheelers slogged through the mud. A team of mechanics huddled around a half-disassembled transport. Medics treated the wounded at a field hospital. Soldiers formed lines at mess halls and latrines. Trucks were being fueled and serviced. Equipment was being checked and rechecked. Loads were being tied down. They even passed a pickup game of baseball, where soldiers swung a broomstick bat at a wadded ball of socks.

  “How many men are here?” asked Mazer.

  “Close to eleven thousand,” said Shenzu. “The camp extends for almost two kilometers west of us, all the way to the Qinglian Expressway.” He pointed to their right. “The easternmost boundary of camp is the Lianjiang River. And just beyond that is the city of Lianzhou, where General Sima has established his command post.”

  It wasn’t much of a city in Mazer’s opinion. There were no high-rises, no industrial complexes, at least not along the western back of the river. Nor were there any people, from what Mazer could see. All the streets and shops along the river were vacant and quiet.

  “Has the city been evacuated?” Mazer asked.

  “The military ordered them north shortly after the invasion,” said Shenzu. “It wasn’t safe for them here, and the city is an important strategic position. The Qinglian Expressway is a supply line from the north. It’s one of the few highways that has been cleared of abandoned vehicles for the army’s use. It takes a lot of vehicles to move an army this size. Plus the city itself is a good source of food, blankets, communication devices, and other supplies. General Sima has crews collecting anything that might be useful as we speak.”

  “He’s plundering the city?”

  “General Sima’s actions are in the best interest of the people,” said Shenzu. “If the military isn’t equipped, it can’t protect the citizenry. And remember, this is China, Captain. Everything belongs to the republic anyway.”

  Ethics aside, it was a smart strategy, Mazer had to admit. Traditional supply lines weren’t an option at the moment. Roads were out. The army was fragmented. Sima couldn’t count on resupply trucks reaching him, particularly if he intended to move south, where the Formics were aggressively gassing cities. Those sites would be quarantined. Everything would be contaminated. Water, food, and supplies found there would be worthless. Stocking up in Lianzhou was necessary.

  Shenzu stopped the jeep outside a tent where four armed guards stood at attention. “Stay here,” he said. He hopped out, approached the guards, and presented his credentials. The lieutenant stepped aside, and Shenzu entered the tent. A moment later he returned with Captain Wit O’Toole, who looked unhurt but in desperate need of a shave.

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

  “That makes two of us,” said Wit. He climbed into the backseat, and Shenzu was off again.

  “General Sima was insistent that we separate you two,” said Shenzu. “I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “Arresting us is what’s inconvenient,” said Wit. “We’re wasting precious time, Captain. We should be attacking the other two landers. Once the Formics figure out how we destroyed the first one, once they realize the underside of the lander is their weak spot, they will take steps to shield it. And if they do, we’re back to square one. We can’t penetrate their shields. They’d be unstoppable.”

  “Duly noted,” said Shenzu. “As for the other two landers, you need not worry. We have drill-sledge teams prepping to attack as we speak.”

  “With nukes?” asked Wit.

  “I don’t know the details of the op,” said Shenzu.

  “The drill sledges won’t be able to drill into the underside of the landers,” said Wit. “The Formics are tunnel dwellers. The area immediately below the landers will be dug out. We had to shoot molten ejecta at the hull and burn our way in. Captain Rackham and I should debrief whoever is leading the op.”

  “General Tang has that duty,” said Shenzu. “And knowing General Tang, he will not want your assistance. Our orders are to take out the Formic death squads gassing cities in the south.”

  Shenzu reached the main road and turned east, heading toward the bridge that traversed the Lianjiang River and led into the city.

  “How is General Sima intending to take down the death squads?” asked Mazer. “Each Formic is armed with a sprayer, and you need not inhale the gas for it to be fatal. If it merely touches your exposed skin you’re dead.”

  “We learned that the hard way,” said Shenzu. “We lost thousands of soldiers at the beginning. Beijing has now given the order that no soldier should engage the Formics without a full biosuit and oxygen. In theory that’s a good policy, but it’s unrealistic. There aren’t enough suits and O2 to go around. Not even close. We can’t even outfit twenty percent of our army. The suits simply don’t exist. That many were never manufactured. No one ever imagined we would need that many.”

  “What about the Formic gas?” asked Mazer. “If we can find a way to neutralize it, we would remove the threat entirely.”

  “We’re working on a counteragent,” said Shenzu. “The military established a level-four containment facility here in Lianzhou. General Sima has a team of bioengineers there studying samples of the gas.”

  “Who are the researchers?” asked Wit. “Military?”

  “Mostly. There are a few civilians as well, specialists brought in from Hong Kong at the Politburo’s insistence.”

  “Where did they get samples of the gas?” asked Mazer.

  “Initially we had bioweapons experts collecting gas in the field,” sai
d Shenzu. “They sucked up pockets of it from the air or wiped up residue that had settled onto surfaces or standing water.” He shook his head. “It didn’t work, though. The collected samples were too dissipated at that point, too mixed with our airborne molecules, making it near impossible to isolate the alien compounds. They needed the gas in a more condensed form, they realized.”

  “You went after the goo guns,” said Mazer. “The sprayers the Formic death squads carry.”

  The weapons were of a simple design. Each consisted of a tube-shaped backpack attached to a long metal wand the Formic swung lazily back and forth, killing everything in its path. It was not unlike the sprayers pest controllers used, a fact Mazer had found morbidly ironic. Now the bugs were spraying us.

  “Taking them hasn’t been easy,” said Shenzu. “The Formics collect their dead. As soon as we kill one, a swarm of them sweep in on skimmers and gather up the corpse and its weapons. It’s almost as if they know instantly when one of their kind falls.”

  “How many goo guns have you collected?” asked Mazer.

  “Not enough,” said Shenzu.

  The jeep reached a checkpoint at the bridge’s entrance, and the soldier on duty waved them through. They crossed the bridge and made their way into Lianzhou. The city was empty and eerily quiet. The people had left in a hurry, abandoning everything. An overturned stroller lay on the sidewalk. A food truck was parked at the corner, its side window open as if ready for business.

  Shenzu ignored the blinking traffic lights and drove four blocks east to the municipal building, a bland, two-story concrete structure. He parked and led them up to the second floor.

  General Sima had commandeered a corner office with windows that afforded him a view of his camp across the river. He stood at a holotable, studying a series of maps projected in front of him. He wiped the map’s contents away as soon as Mazer and the others entered.

  Shenzu approached the table, snapped to attention, saluted, and spoke in Chinese. “General Sima, I present captains Wit O’Toole and Mazer Rackham.”

  Sima came around the table and regarded Wit and Mazer coolly. He was older than Mazer expected. Midsixties perhaps, well past retirement. His eyes were dark and full of suspicion. His brown wool uniform was stiff and unadorned save for a single rank insignia on his right shoulder.

  “The American and the Maori,” said General Sima. He spoke in English with a heavy accent. “I have read your service records. You both have quite the impressive list of accomplishments. Even you, Captain Rackham, whose service has been relatively short.” He turned back to the table, made a hand gesture in the holofield, and Wit’s and Mazer’s records appeared.

  General Sima scanned the documents. “Captain O’Toole, former U.S. Navy SEAL. Highly decorated. More successful ops on your record than most special-ops soldiers have in a lifetime. And you, Captain Rackham. Pilot. Commendations. Test scores off the charts.” He turned back to them. “Soldiers to the core, the both of you. And yet, despite this overwhelming evidence of heightened intelligence, you both seem to believe you can come to my country and do whatever the hell you want.” He flicked his wrist and their records disappeared, replaced with a large photo of a black crater in the earth. It took Mazer a moment to understand what he was looking at—the landscape was so different from how he had seen it last. The Formic lander and adjacent mountain of biomass were obliterated. Nothing remained save for a few scraps and pieces no bigger than Mazer’s hand.

  General Sima faced them. “You both stand accused of detonating a nuclear device on Chinese soil without the consent of this government. A capital offense. How do you plead?”

  “Is this a court-martial?” asked Wit.

  “Of sorts.”

  “Mazer Rackham and I were acting in the best interest of China, sir. The lander was slaughtering your people. Our tactics were extreme, yes, but only because they were necessary. The lander had to be obliterated. It was a base of operations for many of the Formic transports and flyers. It was full of enemy combatants. There was a mountain of rotting corpses beside it. The whole area was an environmental disaster.”

  “You created an environmental disaster,” said Sima, gesturing to the crater.

  “It was a contained nuke, sir,” said Wit. “The structure took most of the blast. There will be minimal fallout. Our hope was that you would mimic our tactics and take out the other two landers.”

  “We will,” said Sima. “We have drill sledge teams prepping as we speak.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Wit. “If we can be of any assistance—”

  General Sima glowered. “Do you think we would use you after you showed such contempt for our government?”

  “Contempt, sir?” said Wit.

  “Did you seek permission from the Politburo or the CMC? No. Did you defer to the military and allow us to conduct our own operations? No. Did you steal a nuclear armament from the PLA? Yes.”

  “We did not steal the nuke, sir. On that point, and others, I must respectfully disagree.”

  “You collaborated with traitors in our military to acquire the nuke. That person or persons stole it from our arsenal and placed it in your hands. That makes you guilty of espionage, theft, handling a weapon of mass destruction with the intent to kill, and about ten other national and international laws. You have spit in the face of the UN Security Council, the People’s Republic of China, and my superiors.”

  “We made our intentions known on the nets,” said Wit. “We were never secret about our plans to take out the lander. That has been our practice from the moment we entered China—”

  “Which you also did illegally,” said Sima.

  “We have always been transparent, sir,” said Wit. “We have constantly shared our tactics in the hope that the military would adopt our tactics that work and avoid the mistakes we’ve made. I am proud to say that many units in your military, including some under your command, have employed our tactics to great success. They in turn have shared their tactics with us, and we have executed their tactics to equal success. This has been a collaboration from the beginning.”

  “An unsanctioned collaboration,” snapped Sima.

  Wit’s voice was calm and even. “Would you rather we had not killed the Formics we have, sir? Would you rather we had not destroyed the lander, with its fighters and skimmers and soldiers inside?”

  General Sima ignored the question. “Who gave you the nuke? I want names.”

  “I can’t give you names,” said Wit. “The people who helped us remained anonymous.”

  “How did they communicate with you?”

  “Through our site. Their messages self-erased after viewing. Their delivery paths were encrypted. Their log-in names were randomly generated. There are no bread crumbs for you to track, sir. These people are invisible.”

  Sima gave Wit an icy stare for a moment. Then he swiped his hand through the holofield, rummaged through a few files and brought up a grainy satellite photo. They were looking down on a small camp near a lush jungle forest. A skimmer was parked nearby. People were gathered together in a group.

  “Someone flew to your camp and delivered the nuke,” said Sima. “We have the sat photos to prove it. Who was it?”

  “I cannot say,” said Wit.

  “Can’t or won’t?” asked Sima.

  “No name was given, sir.”

  “A description perhaps.”

  “There are over four million active personnel in the PLA, sir,” said Wit. “I doubt I can describe one man’s features so clearly that you’ll find him based on that description alone.”

  It was a subtle bit of deception, Mazer knew. The person who had delivered the nuke was actually a woman. Wit was leading the general well off her path.

  “We are allies in this war, General,” said Wit. “Not enemies. You need all hands on this. The civilian casualty reports are in the tens of millions. I’m thrilled to hear there are drill-sledge teams prepped to strike the landers, but even if they succeed, this war
is far from over. MOPs can help. We can offer training, tactical advice, intel on Formic behavior and combat. We know how they attack, retreat, regroup. Their movements may appear random, sir, but Captain Rackham and I have recognized patterns in how they swarm. Let us combine our resources and skills, sir. We will work under your command.”

  “Under my command, you say?” General Sima turned to the holofield and flicked his fingers in a preprogrammed pattern. “According to the news nets, you MOPs have been doing that all along.”

  Several vids began playing: news feeds from around the world. Reporters and anchors of various nationalities were speaking to camera, their voices muted. They showed aerial footage of the black crater where the Formic lander had stood. Then they cut to photos and vids of General Sima.

  Mazer understood at once. “They’re giving you credit for the blast.”

  General Sima flicked his hand and stopped the vids. “Your fellow MOPs issued a communiqué to every major news organization in the world claiming that MOPs have been operating under my command all along. They say I devised every detail of the mission and supplied you with the drill sledges and the nuke. They claim the whole op was my idea.”

  “The MOPs must have learned that Mazer and I were in your custody,” said Wit. “They did what they thought was necessary to ensure our safety.”

  “Your safety was never threatened.”

  “My men didn’t know that,” said Wit. “All they knew was that their commanding officer and fellow soldier had been arrested. By giving you the credit and painting us as allies, they made it impossible for you to harm us.”

  Sima grit his teeth. “They lied to the world and made me look like a fool in front of my men, all of whom know perfectly well that I had nothing to do with the destruction of the lander.”

  “If you’re displeased with the communiqué, sir,” said Wit, “all you need do is deny it. Go on record with the press that it’s false. Call it what it is. A lie. Tell the world you had nothing to do with the lander’s destruction. In fact, were it up to you, the lander would still be standing because you would have arrested every MOP at the border who dared to stick his nose in your country’s business.”