Earth Afire (The First Formic War) (22 page)

“Take us northeast to the river,” Mazer said. “Fast. We need distance between us and the box.”

The HERC lifted and shot forward in that direction. The base was roughly ten square kilometers, most of it grassy flatland, which wouldn’t provide much cover. The river, however, with its canopy of trees and narrow valley walls would give them some decent concealment.

“Patu,” said Mazer. “Have that sat receiver ready. I want us getting a feed as soon as we’re clear of their jammers.”

“Assuming we
can
get clear of the jammers,” said Fatani. “We’re only guessing at their range.”

“The Chinese aren’t going to invest money and equipment to jam feeds over farmland,” said Mazer. “I think Patu’s right. We go far enough off base, and we’ll pick up something.”

Reinhardt crested a hilltop and descended quickly down into the river valley. It was still full dark, but the night-vision feature inside their helmets gave them a clear view of everything. The HERC dipped down between the trees directly above the river. Using the water like a road, Reinhardt took them north, weaving them back and forth with the curvature of the water. Twice he had to quickly lift them over the trees where the canopy was too thick to squeeze through. Another time he hopped up to avoid a bridge.

“Hey,” said Patu. “How about a little warning on the hops? I’m holding sensitive equipment here.”

Reinhardt gave the stick a little wiggle, wobbling the HERC and jostling Patu in her seat.

“Funny,” said Patu. “Real funny. How would you like my boot, Reinhardt? Up your ass or in your teeth?”

“On a bun with mustard please,” said Reinhardt.

Patu only shook her head.

They moved north through the river valley for another five minutes and then suddenly they were over rice fields. No fence marked the end of the base’s borders, but the difference in landscape couldn’t have been more distinct.

“Anything, Patu?” asked Mazer.

“Not yet.”

“Northeast,” Mazer said to Reinhardt. “Keep your eyes open for a spot with decent elevation and a place to hide the HERC. As soon as Patu gets a clear signal we’ll land.”

Captain Shenzu’s head appeared in the holofield above the dash. “Captain Rackham. You and your team will kindly return to the airfield immediately. You are not authorized to seize government property whenever you choose. Disengaging the tracker box is a serious offense. Please, for your own safety, return to the airfield. If you fail to comply, we will be forced to take action to recover our property. I repeat, we will be forced—”

Mazer shut off the holofield. “Patu?”

“Working on it. Still no signal. But the jamming is weakening the farther we go out. That’s a good sign.”

“Keep on it.”

“So what are we going to do if we
do
get a signal and nothing is happening?” said Reinhardt. “What if that ship is just parked there in space doing nothing? We can’t sit out here and watch it forever.”

“Couple of options,” said Mazer. “Once we run out of rations, we could fly the HERC back to base and face the fury of the Chinese, who, worst-case scenario, arrest us and imprison us for life, or best-case scenario, throw us out of the country.”

“Getting tossed out of China is preferable,” said Reinhardt, “since it gets us home. But, since we’ll also likely be court-martialed, stripped of our rank, and humiliated upon arrival in Auckland, I’m not too keen on that either. Other options?”

“We fly the HERC south until we hit the South China Sea,” said Mazer. “We dump the aircraft somewhere on the coastline where it can be recovered, then we find passage on a freighter back to New Zealand.”

“Where we’ll promptly be court-martialed, stripped of our rank, and humiliated,” said Reinhardt. “Option C?”

“You take Patu as your bride,” said Mazer. “We buy a few rice paddies and live among the peasants. I’ll pass as your handsome, inexplicably old, inexplicably dark-skinned son of two white parents, and Fatani will be your water buffalo, plowing the fields with you in the blazing sun.”

“Do I get to whip Fatani?” asked Reinhardt.

“Naturally,” said Mazer. “But he also gets to bite you and poop wherever he pleases.”

“Why don’t
I
get to marry Patu?” said Fatani.

“Because you’re the
size
of a water buffalo,” said Reinhardt. “We all must play to our types.”

“I’d rather marry a
real
water buffalo than any of you,” said Patu.

Fatani laughed.

“Your words sting me, Patu, queen of the rice lands,” said Reinhardt.

Patu rolled her eyes, and Reinhardt maneuvered them slightly to the east, heading toward a low range of mountains covered in lush tropical forests.

After a moment there was a beep from the backseat.

“I got something,” said Patu. “A visual. Not the best image, but it’s getting clearer by the moment. An American news satellite. There’s no audio though.”

“Patch it to our HUDs,” said Mazer. “Reinhardt, take us a few more kilometers along this mountain, then find a high place to land.”

“You got it,” said Reinhardt.

A fuzzy video feed appeared in Mazer’s HUD. The superimposed text on screen read
LIVE
.

The vid was of space. The alien ship was there in the center, small and distant and unmoving. The satellite wasn’t directly between the ship and Earth, but rather off to the side, at an angle, giving Mazer a slight view of the ship’s profile.

“I see a place to land,” said Reinhardt. “I’m taking her down.”

The HERC descended through a break in the tree canopy. Mazer allowed himself a glance outside. They were on the crest of a wide, lush mountain ridge, almost entirely consumed with dense jungle forest. The air was thick with the scent of flowers and composting vegetation.

The HERC set down gently, and Reinhardt killed the gravlens. There was a slight jolt as normal gravity took over, and the aircraft sunk a centimeter or two into the soft jungle topsoil. No one spoke or moved. They sat there, watching their HUDs.

They waited for half an hour. Nothing happened. They got out of the HERC and stretched. Mazer ordered them to take sleep-shifts. Two would stay awake and two would sleep in two-hour shifts.

A hand shook Mazer awake. It was dawn. Sunlight dappled the ground around them, shining through the tree canopy overhead. Fatani said, “Something’s happening.”

Mazer pulled on his helmet and switched on his HUD. There was the alien ship. Only now the stars around the ship were shimmering, like heat rising off a stretch of asphalt in the summer sun. At first it seemed like a glitch in the broadcast. Then the alien ship began to rotate, turning its nose away from Earth, and Mazer understood. The ship was emitting something, radiation perhaps, or heated particles, using the expulsion of the emissions to change its position.

It turned ninety degrees then stopped, with its profile now facing Earth.

“What’s it doing?” said Fatani.

Slowly the ship began to spin on its axis. At first Mazer didn’t notice; the surface was so smooth. Then a giant ring of light appeared on the side of the ship at the bulbous end, as if the surface of the ship had cracked and was emitting light from inside.

“What is that?” asked Fatani. “What’s that circle?”

The ship continued to rotate. Once. Twice. Three times.

Another circle of light appeared on the bulbous end beside the first one. Then a third circle appeared. The alien ship continued to spin. Around. And around. And around. Then, moving in unison, the three giant circles began to rise upward like columns from the ship.

“I don’t like this,” Fatani said.

Then, in an instant, one of the columns broke free, slung down toward Earth by the spinning motion, leaving a massive recessed hole in the side of the ship.

It’s not a column, Mazer realized. It’s a wheel. Tall and metallic and enormously wide, with flat sides and a turtlelike top that had been part of the skin of the ship. It was shooting straight toward Earth.

“The hell it that?” said Fatani. “A weapon? A bomb?”

As Mazer watched, the second wheel broke away, slung to Earth, chasing the first. Then the third wheel followed, right behind the other two.

“What are they?” said Patu.

“Whatever they are, they’ll burn up as soon as they hit the atmosphere,” said Reinhardt. “They’re huge.”

“They won’t burn,” said Mazer. “They can generate fields. They’ll deflect the heat.” He spoke Chinese then. “Computer, digitize the sat feed into a holo that includes Earth and the three alien projectiles. And do it to scale.”

A construct appeared in the holofield. Crudely made. A white sphere representing Earth and three small wheel-shaped projectiles quickly approaching it.

“Skin the Earth’s surface to match current time zones and the Earth’s rotation in relation to the position of the projectiles.”

The surface of the Earth appeared on the sphere. Oceans, continents, atmosphere, all slowly spinning on an axis.

“Can you determine the speed of the three projectiles based on what we see from the sat feed, perhaps using the starfield as reference?”

“Affirmative.”

“Are they decelerating?”

“Negative. Speed is constant.”

“Vector their trajectory,” said Mazer.

In the holofield, a dotted line extended from the wheels, hitting Earth at a sharp angle, as a reentry vector should.

“I don’t think they’re bombs,” Mazer said in English. “Look at their approach. Coming in at that sharp of an angle. I think they’re landers.”

In Chinese Mazer said, “Computer, can you guess what their deceleration would be as they hit the atmosphere?”

“Insufficient data.”

Mazer figured as much. Fine. He would make do with the information he had.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s assume they decelerate in the atmosphere at a constant rate that puts their speed at zero by the time they make landfall. Can you calculate that?”

“Affirmative.”

“Okay. Then based on that tentative rate of deceleration and the current speed and position of the landers in relation to the speed, tilt, and orbital eccentricity of Earth, can you determine exactly where the first lander will touch down on the surface?”

“Negative. There are too many other variables.”

“Can you approximate?” asked Mazer.

“Affirmative. The landers will likely touch down within this circle.”

A large red transparent dot appeared on the surface of the Earth.

“Enlarge three hundred percent,” said Mazer.

Earth zoomed toward them in the holofield and stopped. The dot was massive. Roughly two thousand kilometers wide. Its center was in the middle of the South China Sea. To the east it covered the northern half of the Philippines. To the west it engulfed most of Vietnam, nearly touching Ho Chi Minh City to the south and Hanoi to the north. Plus the northeastern tip of Cambodia and all of southern Laos. But the largest mass of land was in southern China, including all of Guangdong province.

“We’re in that circle,” said Patu.

“It’s a big area,” said Reinhardt. “They could be going anywhere.”

“It’s eighty percent water,” said Mazer. “They’re not headed for water. And you can probably cross off the Philippines, Vietnam, and Laos as well.”

“Why?” said Fatani.

“Computer,” said Mazer. “Show population density within this circle.”

Hundreds of tiny blue dots appeared, the vast majority of which were in southern China, where the dots were so thick along the coast and a hundred kilometers inland that they had coalesced into a solid blob of blue.

“You think they’re headed for populated areas?” asked Fatani.

“You saw what they did in the Belt,” said Mazer. “Computer, how much time do we have before the projectiles reach Earth?”

“Approximately seventeen minutes.”

Fatani swore.

“Patu, I need a sat uplink to NZSAS immediately,” said Mazer.

“I’ll try,” she said.

“What do we do?” said Reinhardt.

“We warn as many people as we can,” said Mazer. He waved his hand through the holofield, reconnecting with the Chinese base. “Red Dragon, Red Dragon. Acknowledge. This is Captain Mazer Rackham. Do you read? Over.”

A Chinese soldier’s head appeared. Mazer knew the face but not the name. One of the flight controllers.

“Red Dragon acknowledge,” said the soldier. “We’ve been trying to hail you, Captain. You’re in a bit of trouble with the base commander, I’m afraid.”

“Patch me through to him.”

The controller looked surprised. “To Colonel Tuan?”

“Yes, immediately. It’s an emergency.”

“Yes, Captain, but I doubt he’ll answer.” The soldier busied himself, then returned a few seconds later. “I’m sorry, Captain. Colonel Tuan is not available, but Captain Shenzu is here.”

“Put him on.”

Shenzu replaced the controller in the holofield. “We have a situation, Captain Rackham. Return to the base immediately.”

“The landers are headed for us,” said Mazer. “They’ll make landfall in southeast China. I’m almost certain of it.”

“Landers?”

“The giant discs in the sky. Descending to Earth. Are you watching the feeds?”

“We have a broadcast, yes.”

“Vector them. Track them. They’ll make landfall here.”

“How can you know this?”

“We did the math with our AI. You’ve got less than seventeen minutes.”

“Captain, bring the HERC back to base immediately.”

“You’re going to need us in this, Captain. We can help. Your HERC teams aren’t ready. You know that as well as I do.”

“You have violated our trust and stolen government property, Captain Rackham. Return to base.”

From the backseat, Patu said, “I’ve got the NZSAS switchboard.”

“I’ll call you back,” Mazer said to Shenzu, then he waved his hand through the holo to make Shenzu disappear. “Patch the switchboard to the holofield,” he shouted back to Patu.

The same frazzled buck private from hours earlier appeared in the holofield.

“Switchboard. It’s Captain Mazer Rackham. Connect me with Colonel Napatu.”

“He’s inaccessible, sir.”