Earth Afire (The First Formic War) (55 page)

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 China?” 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.

“The shield only goes to the surface,” said Mazer.

“We know,” said Wit. “We saw the tunnels. We counted twenty of them around the lander. We’ll have a hard time using them, though. Transports patrol the area, and the holes have a lot of traffic. Plus they’re too narrow for us. They’re Formic sized.”

“
I
could fit through,” Bingwen offered.

“Those tunnels aren’t the answer,” said Mazer. “But the principle is. What’s the range on this vehicle? Could it get us fifty klicks south of here?”

“Why?” asked Wit. “What’s to the south?”

“Drill sledges. We’re not going to use Formic tunnels. We’re going to dig our own.”

CHAPTER 27

Launch

There was little heat in the shaft and only the standing lights of the construction crews to see by, but Lem was more worried about secrecy than comfort. Father had ears throughout the Juke complex, but he didn’t yet have them here. The shaft had been dug only twelve hours ago. The walls and floor were still barren rock. The dust in the air was still thick and chalky. It seemed the perfect place to meet with Norja Ramdakan, longtime member of the executive board, who now stood opposite Lem, hugging himself in the cold.

“I should have told you to dress warmly,” said Lem.

“You should have told me what this is about,” said Ramdakan.

He was a plump man who cared far too much for fashion and far too little for his own health. Fine fabrics and colorful little boutonnieres didn’t make you any less round in the midsection and thus more attractive to the womenfolk. No doubt Ramdakan’s three ex-wives had told him exactly that as they stormed out of his life with a good chunk of his fortune.

Lem had known it would be this cold, and he could have easily passed the information on to Ramdakan, but he rather liked watching the man squirm.

According to the map on Lem’s holopad, they were standing in solid moon rock, fifty meters from the nearest Juke tunnel and thirty meters below the surface. The tunnel was to be a connector between two of the wings, but since the excavation and construction were far from complete, the company map had not been updated to include it.

“I’m worried about my father,” said Lem. “And I didn’t know who else to talk to but you who know him best.”

Ramdakan had been with Father since the beginning, handling most of the finances in Father’s early mining ventures. He had even spent a few years in the Belt with Father, though Lem could hardly imagine that. Ramdakan recoiled from any discomfort. He must have been a bear to live with aboard a mining vessel.

“Why should you worry about your father?” asked Ramdakan, trying not to look suspicious. He was one of Father’s most trusted lieutenants, but he was also the most transparent. The man couldn’t act to save his life. He had no sense of his own face, no awareness of how to conceal emotion. It made him seem enormously stupid. For an instant Lem tried imagining the man doing King Lear or Prospero, and the idea was more than a little revolting. Falstaff is more to your liking, chubby, except sapped of all wit and humor.

“I think someone in the company may be trying to usurp my father by discrediting him to investors,” said Lem.

Ramdakan laughed. “They’ll have a hard time of that. Your father is loved by investors. They all care about one thing, Lem. Coin. And your father gives them plenty of that.”

“Yes, but Father could quickly fall out of favor. Everything could turn in an instant. You no doubt know about this business with taxes and tariffs, for example.”

“I know we
pay
taxes and tariffs,” Ramdakan said cautiously.

Oh you stupid little man, thought Lem. Is that the best you can do? Is that the face you make when you’re pretending to be innocent? Has that ever once worked with anyone?

Lem’s face of course revealed nothing. Instead, he showed concern. “You haven’t heard then? I thought for sure that you, of all people, with such control of the finances, would know.” He gave Ramdakan the holopad with Imala’s findings already pulled up on the screen. “The LTD recently found billions in unpaid taxes and tariffs,” said Lem. “And worse still, there were people both inside the LTD and in Juke Limited who not only knew about the discrepancies, they also took steps to cover it up.”

It was absurd to call the illegal accounting of billions of credits mere “discrepancies,” but Lem knew that was exactly the term Ramdakan himself had used when the Board was scrambling to keep the news silent. The evidence hadn’t implicated Ramdakan directly—he was too smart for that—yet Lem could see the man’s dirty fingers all over it. Ramdakan had likely done all the up-front work himself. And if not him then at least his weasely finance teams who had taken his explicit direction.

But regardless of who had gotten the ball rolling, it was obviously a vast undertaking that involved far more people than Imala even knew about, with Ramdakan and Father likely right up at the top.

“Ah yes,” said Ramdakan. “I had heard something about this.”

Lem wanted to laugh. Ramdakan was acting as if illegal activity with that much money was mere office chitchat or casual gossip. “That’s a lot of money, Norja,” said Lem. “It takes whole departments of people and no small amount of money to conceal something like this.”