Mazer fumbled for his rifle. He had wrapped the strap around his arm so he wouldn't drop it, but the strap had twisted, and now there wasn't enough slack to swing the rifle forward. He yanked, pulled. The Formic raised the sharp weapon up to deliver a blow.
And its head exploded in a burst of automatic fire.
But not from Mazer's rifle. He looked to his left. Cocktail was holding his rifle up. "Grenades. In the shafts. Move, move!"
Mazer got his feet under him. All around him grenades were being pitched into the shafts like baseballs. They exploded inside. Formics were launching outward from the shafts. Lasers shot across the space, slicing them in two. The mesh nets were holding most of them back, but every Formic in the ship would know they were here now. Mazer unsnapped the concussion grenade from his belt then pushed off the debris. He didn't move as quickly as he would have liked--the debris wasn't anchored. He floated slowly. The shaft in front of him had a handful of Formics tentatively approaching the mesh netting. Mazer threw in the grenade. Its magnet base snapped to the shaft wall. A Formic was inches away from it. It turned its head to look at it just as the grenade detonated.
Mazer reached the wall. Shafts were all around him. A few Formics were stuck on the mesh netting convulsing. Mazer sliced them. The shaft to his right had Formics crawling forward. He reached in and fired his automatic, bullets pinging around the shaft. He chased them with a grenade for good measure. Victor had been wrong about the Formic count. There were more than a hundred on board. Much more.
Several from the cutting crew had left their post to join the fight. Mazer looked back at the pipes. Most of the wall plates were cleared but there were still a lot of nozzles to rotate. They weren't going to make it. They couldn't hold this many Formics coming from this many directions for much longer. They didn't have enough people.
Wit shouted over the radio. "Mazer, you and Cocktail clear the exit shaft. When we're done with the nozzles, we need a clear path out of here."
Of course. If there were Formics in the shaft with the glow bugs, the MOPs would have no way out.
Wit continued shouting orders. He made new assignments to take on the shafts and ordered others who had joined the fight to get back to the pipes and turn the nozzles. "We have to turn them all. If we miss just one, it will vaporize Imala."
Cocktail was suddenly beside Mazer. "We need to hold that shaft. Any ideas?"
"We need one of the wall plates," said Mazer. "Help me."
They flew to retrieve one of the discarded wall plates. There were more grenade explosions and automatic fire all around them.
"Here," said Mazer. "Let's use this one."
"What for?" said Cocktail.
"We're going to make a shield. Help me fly it to the shaft entrance."
They each got on one side of it and, on the count of three, launched with it toward the glow bug shaft. When they arrived, Mazer shined his light in the shaft and saw three Formics scurrying forward. He annihilated them with three quick bursts.
He turned back to Cocktail. "They're coming up the shaft. We've got to clear a path and hold them back. We need to cut this wall plate down so that's it's the shape of the shaft, only smaller. Then we'll get behind it, and ram our way down the shaft."
Cocktail nodded. They slid the wall plate over the shaft and started cutting. Large chunks fell away.
"Snap your magnet grips to it," said Mazer. "We'll use those as handles."
They had hand discs in their tool bags. Mazer removed one and placed it on the wall. Then he gripped the magnet and held the wall plate like a shield.
Something collided with the shield. Formics inside the shaft, trying to get out. A second collision. A third.
Mazer unsnapped a grenade. Cocktail nodded. On three, they moved the shield away for an instant to allow Mazer to drop the grenade in the shaft where three Formics were inches away. Mazer and Cocktail snapped the shield back into place, and the grenade detonated on the other side.
Cocktail made two more cuts on his side, and the shield slid forward into the shaft like a wall.
"Cut a hole for your rifle and sight," said Mazer.
Mazer cut one for himself, and a second hole for his light, which he quickly secured with some metal tape.
"Ready?" asked Mazer.
Cocktail nodded.
They braced their feet against opposite walls and pushed their way up the shaft. The dead Formics clustered at the wall, obstructing their view.
"Rotate the top forward," said Mazer. "Let the corpses pass."
They rotated the shield so it was horizontal. Mazer grabbed the Formics and pulled them to his side to clear the path. The bodies were wet and limp and bleeding. Others were blown into parts. An arm, a torso, a head. Mazer pushed back the instinct to vomit and moved quickly. When it was clear, he and Cocktail snapped the shield back into place and pushed on.
They didn't get far before they encountered more Formics. Mazer shot through the rifle slit. It was hard to miss. The Formics crumpled, bled, died. The glow bugs were in a frenzy, buzzing all around them, their luminescence filling the shaft. The shield had knocked their nests away. They shot back and forth across the shaft, bouncing off the wall.
Mazer and Cocktail pushed on. They could hear the radio chatter from inside the cargo bay. It didn't sound good. Shouts, explosions, quick orders. ZZ was down. Bolshakov, too. Both of them dead. The news washed over Mazer like a wave. There was nothing he could do but clear a path for the others.
Slowly, tediously, they charged up the shaft. Objects started pinging off the shield. Projectiles. Thin small metal needles about half the size of a pencil, fired from a Formic weapon.
"They're armed," said Cocktail.
He and Mazer fired, and those with the needle shooters fell.
"I can't see well," said Cocktail. "Too much obstruction."
Mazer checked the shaft ahead of them. It was clear. "Let's rotate and clear the path."
As soon as they rotated the shield, the glow bugs poured inside like water, shooting back down the shaft toward the cargo bay. Cocktail and Mazer furiously pulled at the dead Formics to get them out of the way.
A glint of light ahead of them in the shaft caught Mazer's eye. He turned in time to see a Formic holding a jar weapon. The light inside was swirling and ready to fire.
"LOWER THE SHIELD!" he shouted.
Too late. A thick glob of mucus slammed into Cocktail's chest, pulsing with light. Cocktail looked down at it, shook violently, and exploded.
Mazer was slammed against the inside of the shaft, stunned, disoriented. A red mist filled the air around him. Blood had splattered across his visor, obstructing his view. Ahead of him, through the haze, he saw a swirling disc of light.
Mazer steadied his arm, squeezed the trigger, and emptied his clip.
CHAPTER 23
Casualties
Lem stood at the helm of the Valas and watched the vids in the holofield with a sinking feeling. The strike team was getting hammered. It was chaos in the cargo bay. ZZ and Bolshakov had flatlined. Cocktail's biometrics had gone completely silent. The remaining helmetcams were projected all in front of him, but the movements were so erratic and fuzzy, it was difficult to tell what was happening.
A technician approached him. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Mr. Jukes, but we're getting strange reports from Earth."
"What type of reports?"
"The Formics, sir. They're all returning to the landers."
Lem followed the technician back to his console.
The tech had a vid on screen. "This is from surveillance cams in the city of Chenzhou." The tech pressed play. A Formic death squad was spraying a crowd of hundreds of people outside a rail station. Gas billowed forth from the Formics' wands, enveloping those trying to escape. Men and women gasped and fell. The Formics advanced in a wide line, meeting no resistance. A time code in the bottom of the feed was counting off the seconds.
"What am I supposed to see?" said Lem.
"Right here,
sir."
The Formics suddenly stopped spraying, turned around in unison, and ran.
"Where are they going?" asked Lem.
"To their transport, sir. They then climb inside and fly southeast."
"So?"
"So every Formic on Earth is doing this. They'll all returning to the landers. I have dozens of vids coming in every minute, all showing the same behavior." Twenty vids began playing on the tech's terminals. Formics in skimmers, foot soldiers, harvesters, transports. As Lem watched, the Formics all abandoned their attack, or turned their harvester, or changed direction midair.
"How do you know they're returning to the landers?" asked Lem.
The vids all disappeared, replaced with two new ones. Each showed one of the remaining Formic landers still entrenched in southeast China. The giant circular structures were half buried in the earth, each larger than the world's biggest athletic stadium. The center of the lander had opened at the top, like the middle of a doughnut, and now every class of Formic ship was flying inside and docking--like a hive sucking in all its bees.
"What are they doing?" asked Lem. "Are they retreating and hunkering down? Why withdraw?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Go back to the first vid you showed me. From Chenzhou. Play that again."
The tech brought that vid forward and hit play. They watched again as the Formics stopped spraying, turned, and ran back to their transport.
"Go back," said Lem, "back to the moment when they stopped spraying."
The tech obeyed and rewound again.
"What time did that happen? Note the time code. Down to the second."
The tech clicked back frame by frame. "About 4:32 p.m. and 53 seconds."
"Now do the same to one of the other feeds you've received," said Lem "I want to know the precise instant when the Formics made for the landers. The exact time."
"Yes, sir."
He watched as the technician worked, choosing one of the other vids at random. There wasn't a time code on this one, but the data was stored in the file. After the tech had bookmarked the instant on the vid, he dug into the file and found the answer. "4:32 p.m. and 53 seconds."
"The same exact moment," said Lem. "It's as if they were all told to return to the landers at precisely the same time. How is that possible? None of them is wearing any communication devices. Did the military intercept any message? A transmission of sorts? A sound in the air? Any communication whatsoever?"
"Not from the Formics, sir. Not that's been reported. No one ever has."
Lem didn't like this. Victor had theorized that the Formics communicated mind to mind, but Lem had dismissed the idea. It was completely unscientific.
And yet he couldn't deny that Formics always seemed to move as one, as if they were communicating.
"Check the other vids," said Lem. "Make sure the time is the same."
But even as the technician went back to work, Lem knew what the answer would be. They had all received a message at the exact same instant.
The notion frightened him. When Victor had said that the Formics communicated mind to mind Lem had assumed he meant two Formics beside each other, in the same room perhaps, sending a message across the short distance between them. Even that had seemed preposterous, but this, this was something else, something wholly inexplicable. The Formics were scattered all across southern China, hundreds of kilometers apart--on the ground, in the air, in valleys, in mountains. And yet the voice they had heard, the voice of authority that had given them a command--and which they had all obeyed without hesitation--was a voice strong enough to reach them all. Instantly.
Lem felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It was as if he had suddenly peeled back a layer of the Formics and discovered something far more sinister underneath. That voice belonged to someone. And Lem got the sense that it was more dangerous and more powerful than anything he had seen so far.
Another one of the technicians leaned back and got his attention. "Mr. Jukes. You better come see this."
Lem joined him at his console.
"Not all of the transports are returning to the landers, sir. Some of them are lifting up into the atmosphere."
"Show me."
Two video feeds appeared on the terminal screen in front of the tech. They were both taken from people's personal cameras. In each, the transports shot up into the clouds.
"You're sure these aren't heading toward the landers?"
"I'm sure, sir. I tracked them. They're moving away from the landers, out over the South China Sea, gaining altitude." More blips appeared on his screen. Three. Four. A dozen. Twenty.
"What's happening?" said Lem.
The technician was busy for a moment before answering. "These are all transports, sir. They're all heading into space."
"Contact Captain Chubs on the Makarhu," said Lem. "That's one of the Juke ships maintaining the shield above Earth. Tell him he's got a few dozen transports heading his way. I want their shatter boxes ready and loaded. Those transports are heading back to the Formic ship. Tell him that under no circumstances is he to let a single one through."
"Yes, sir."
Lem hurried back to the first technician.
"I've checked a few more vids, sir, and you were right. The Formics all respond at the same time."
"Forget that. You have a new job. I want you to pull up the feeds coming from the strike team inside the Formic ship. I want you to tell me exactly the moment when the crew first made contact with a Formic inside. The moment our men were discovered."
The tech rewound feeds and searched and worked.
"Don't give me our time," said Lem. "I want to know what time it was in China. The time zone you mentioned before."
The technician took a moment more. "It's tough to say when that exact moment was, sir. Is it when we first shocked the Formics, when the others attacked later--"
"When we shocked the first one."
"That would be 4:32 p.m. and 48 seconds, China time."
"Five seconds before all the Formics on Earth received their message. That can't be a coincidence."
"What are you thinking, sir? You think the Formics on the ship called the others back to help?"
"What else could it mean?"
"Five seconds isn't enough time, sir. That's barely enough time to form a response, let alone send and receive a transmission to Earth. There should be a time delay."
Lem wasn't going to argue the point. Part of him didn't think it was possible either. But there it was.
"I'm going to my fighter," Lem said. "Send me updates on the strike team. I want to know the instant they disable that ship."
He flew out of the helm and to the back of the ship to the locker rooms. He put on his suit and helmet and flew to the airlock. His fighter was anchored to the hull of the ship outside. He waited for the airlock to give him the all clear, then he opened the hatch. The tube led straight to his cockpit. He flew in, buckled up, and decoupled. His fighter drifted away. He moved slowly toward the rear of the Valas. Then, he put the Valas between him and the Formic ship so the Formics couldn't see his movements, then he punched it and rocketed toward the shield. He had sixteen shatter boxes loaded into his sling. He hadn't trained as much as the other pilots. There hadn't been time. But he had flown all of Benyawe's simulations, and she had dubbed him a decent shot.
He hoped she had been right. If the shield fell, if a fleet of transports reached the Formic ship, all was lost. Wit and Mazer and the others wouldn't last an hour.
*
Imala sat in her fighter several hundred kilometers away from the Formic ship, watching the helmet feeds and feeling completely helpless. She wanted desperately to rush to Victor's aid, to do something, anything, but she couldn't. If she moved, the Formics would fire too soon. She would trigger the pipes and nozzles and unleash the plasma prematurely, while everyone was still inside. She would kill the entire strike team.
She dared not say anything over the radio either. Talking to them
would only distract them from the job at hand. All she could do was sit and wait for her cue: for them to tell her that they were out, that she was a go.
But what if that message never came? What if they were overrun in the shafts? What if they were trapped inside?
"Fly back to the Valas," Victor had said. "If we fail, get safe."
She had nodded at the time, but she had never intended to obey. If they rotated the nozzles, she was going to charge, even if they failed to get out, even if the mission was essentially over. She could still do her part. She could still cripple the ship.
Her console beeped. It had detected the "X" painted on the surface. She pulled up the image and zoomed it. There it was, glowing as promised. Bungy had come through. The "X" was sloppy, but it was enough for the computers to detect and target. ZZ was supposed to have helped paint, but he had been hit in the shaft right at the exit.
Imala closed her eyes and shook her head. Three dead. And so far only Bungy was out.
She gripped the flight stick. Her hands were trembling. Victor wasn't half the solider ZZ had been. Not even close. And if ZZ hadn't made it ...
No. She couldn't think that way. She had to act on facts. And the only fact that mattered right now was that the "X" was painted. The nozzles were turned. All of them. She was going. Whether the crew got out or not she was going.
*
Victor launched up the shaft, breathing hard. He collided with Benyawe, who collided with whoever was ahead of her. They had been moving this way for almost a hundred meters now, advancing up the shaft in a stop-go-stop-go manner. They were all positioned in a line, but you could only advance when the person ahead of you advanced. And the space--which was narrow and tight to begin with--was now cluttered with Formic corpses.
Victor waited for the line to advance. Shenzu was behind him, with Deen bringing up the rear, firing a steady stream of ammo and lasers back down the shaft toward the cargo bay. Dozens of Formics were clamoring up the shaft after them, crawling on top of each other, scrabbling forward, coming up the shaft like water rising in a well.
"Move!" Deen kept yelling. Or, "More clips! More clips!"
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