Earth Afire (The First Formic War) (51 page)

They continued on foot, following the highway north for a few hours. They saw more destruction and deserted vehicles. When they heard aircraft, they hid and waited for it to pass.

At midday they found a family with two young children resting in the shade of an overpass. The wife said little, but she offered Bingwen and Mazer soup, which they both gratefully accepted.

“We stayed hidden in an underground storage shed,” said the father. “We had enough food for over a week. We thought we could hold out until help came, but no soldiers ever came for us. We’re moving north now.”

Bingwen was off to the side, playing with the four-year-old boy, tossing wads of rags back and forth to each other like a ball. It was the first time Mazer had ever seen Bingwen laugh.

“Can you take the boy?” Mazer asked.

“Food is scarce,” said the father.

“He’s smart, resourceful. I can’t pay you now, but when the war is over, I will.”

“You may not be alive when the war is over. Or we may not win the war.”

“We’ll win. Take the boy.”

The father considered, then nodded. They made the arrangements, and in no time Mazer was kneeling in front of Bingwen, handing him the sword.

“Here,” said Mazer, “your grandfather would want you to have this.”

Bingwen took it. “I am safer with you at the lander than I am with this family in the north.”

“They’re good people, Bingwen. They’ll feed you. That’s more than I can do.” He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “When this is over, I want you to contact me. I’ll get you enrolled in a school. A good school, where they’ll feed you and take care of you.”

“Like an orphanage.”

“Better than that. A place where smart kids go. Special kids.”

“How do I contact you?”

“Memorize my e-mail and holo address. Can you do that?”

Bingwen nodded. Mazer told him the addresses. “Now recite them back to me.”

Bingwen did. Mazer stood and extended a hand. Bingwen shook it. “How long do I need to keep this cast on my arm?” asked Bingwen.

“Another two weeks. Try not to let any more trees fall on it.”

“Try not to get killed.”

Mazer smiled. “I’ll try.” He paused a beat, not wanting to leave. “No more heroics, all right? Just get north and stay safe.”

Bingwen nodded.

There was nothing more to say. The family was waiting, ready to move on. Mazer smiled one last time then turned on his heels and headed south, not looking back.

He stayed off the highway, moving parallel to it, and made good time. He had been walking slower because of Bingwen, but now he set his own pace. The soup had given him new energy. He found a patch of jungle and slept for a few hours, burying himself among the fallen leaves and staying out of site. When he woke, he got moving again. By now he was dying of thirst. He passed several puddles of rainwater, but he knew better than to drink from them. Late in the afternoon he thought he heard the faint sounds of a battle far west of his position, but he couldn’t see anything.

As dusk approached he heard aircraft. He crouched near some wilting shrubs and watched as a Chinese fighter engaged in a dogfight with a Formic flyer directly overhead. The fighter had more firepower, but the Formic craft was more nimble. It swooped and dove and clipped the wing of the Chinese fighter with a laser burst. The fighter was suddenly consumed in flames, spinning out of control, dropping out of the sky. The pilot ejected a few hundred meters from the ground, coming down fast. His parachute opened. His body was limp. The plane crashed some distance to the south. Mazer heard the explosion. The Formic flyer flew on. Mazer watched the pilot’s parachute descend out of sight, less than a kilometer away. He jumped up and ran in that direction.

It didn’t take him long to find the pilot. The man had landed in the middle of a scorched field, the white, downed parachute billowing in the wind, standing out against the black landscape like a beacon.

Mazer approached the pilot, who wasn’t moving. The man lay on his back, head lolled to the side, his helmet tinted so Mazer couldn’t see his face. The parachute flapped in the wind. It caught a gust, filled with air, and dragged the pilot on his back a few meters through the dirt.

There was a knife strapped to the pilot’s leg. Mazer ran for it, quickly unsheathed it, and cut through the suspension lines. The more he cut, the less pull he felt from the skirt of the chute, until at last it was loose and unable to catch wind anymore. Mazer dropped the knife and knelt beside the pilot. He tapped a sequence on the side of the helmet, and the tint of the visor vanished, revealing the pilot’s face behind the reinforced plastic. The pilot’s eyes were closed, and he didn’t appear to be breathing. Mazer pulled back the chest patch on the man’s flight suit to expose the biometric readout. The pliable screen was cracked but still functioning. The pilot had flatlined. Cause of death was a broken neck and severed spinal column. According to the data, it had happened microseconds after the pilot had ejected.

Mazer sat back on his heels. More death.

He looked upward, scanning the sky. He was out in the middle of a field, exposed. If the Formic should return or others pass by, he’d be an easy target.

He grabbed the pilot by the straps of his chute harness and dragged him backward through the dirt toward some wilting scrub. It wasn’t much cover, but it was better than nothing.

There was a large auxiliary pack strapped to the pilot’s legs, and Mazer loosened it and pulled it free. Inside he found a treasure trove: a sidearm with four clips of ammunition, binoculars, flares, several days worth of MREs, a full canteen plus extra bottles of water, a gas mask, a first-aid kit, a Med-Assist computer, toothbrush, and fresh socks. Mazer quickly opened the canteen and guzzled some of the water. It was cold and clean and so good he wanted to cry. He tore open one of the MREs—a pasta that heated instantly when the air hit it. It had ham and cheese and flecks of sun-dried tomatoes. He didn’t find a utensil, so he poured it straight into his mouth. Then he brushed his teeth, which might have been the sweetest relief of all.

He packed everything back into the pack, including the knife and sheath. Then he stood and considered the pilot. The man was tall for a pilot, though not quite as tall as Mazer would have liked. The flight suit was probably two sizes too small for Mazer. Yet even so, a small flight suit was better than the rags Mazer was wearing. If he made a few strategic cuts in the fabric perhaps he could wear it without any problems. He stripped the pilot of the suit then made careful slits in the armpits and crotch. Then he removed his own boots and clothes, down to his undergarments, and dressed in the flight suit, not bothering with any of the biosensors. The sleeves and pant legs were too short, but he could live with that. He was more concerned about mobility. He did a few tentative squats and knee bends and was relieved to see his movement unhindered. He sat back down and put on a new pair of socks and his old boots. Then he loaded the sidearm, stuffed it into the flight suit’s holster, and placed the gas mask over his head.

It seemed wrong to leave the pilot here unburied, but he had neither the time nor the tools for it. He gathered up the white parachute and rolled the pilot into it, wrapping him tight like a mummy. It wasn’t a proper burial, but it was the best Mazer could do given the circumstances.

He hefted the pack onto his shoulders and headed south again. He hadn’t gone far when he heard someone shouting his name. The cries were faint at first, like distant whispers on the wind—so quiet in fact that he initially dismissed them as his imagination. Then a distinct shout of “Mazer!” cut through the quiet, and there was no mistaking it. Mazer turned and ran east toward the source of the sound. He knew that voice. And he sensed the terror and desperation behind it.

His training had taught him stealth and caution and quiet, but Mazer couldn’t help himself. He tore off the gas mask and shouted back. “Bingwen!”

They continued shouting each other’s names until they found one another moments later. Mazer rounded a ridge and there was Bingwen, running toward him, desperate and dirty, his face streaked with tears. He collapsed into Mazer’s arms, exhausted and terrified and too upset to speak.

Mazer carried him to some shade where they’d be hidden from sight and opened the canteen for him. At first Bingwen’s breathing was so heavy he couldn’t drink, but then he forced himself to calm enough to swallow gulps of water.

“Not too fast,” said Mazer. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

Bingwen lowered the canteen and began to cry anew. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse from shouting for hours on end. “They’re dead. The family. All of them. A transport dropped right in front of us. It didn’t make a sound. One instant it wasn’t there, the next instant it was. Kwong, the father, he shouted for me to run. He and Genji each tried to carry a child, but…” He closed his eyes and shook his head, unable to go on.

Mazer took him into his arms, and Bingwen began to sob, his little body shaking with grief and terror and perhaps a dozen other pent-up emotions all flooding out of him at once.

Mazer held him, his arms wrapped around Bingwen in a protective embrace. He wasn’t going to lie. He wasn’t going to tell Bingwen that he was safe now and that Mazer wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Bingwen was too smart for that. So Mazer let him have his cry and made no effort to stop the tears.

When Bingwen calmed again, Mazer opened one of the MREs and watched as Bingwen ate it. “We’ll rest here until nightfall,” said Mazer. “Then, when it’s full dark, we’ll move north again.”

“No,” Bingwen said quickly. “We’re not going north. We’re going south.”

“I’m not taking you to the lander, Bingwen.”

“Why not? Because I’m a child?”

“Well, yes. It’s dangerous.”

“It’s dangerous everywhere. It was dangerous at the farmhouse. It was dangerous in my village. It’s dangerous in the north. Nowhere is safe. We might as well push on. We’re here. It can’t be much farther.”

Mazer shook his head. “We’ve been over this, Bingwen.”

“Yes, we have. You’re not my father. I’m not your son. That means you can’t command me where to go.”

“If you come with me, you put me in more danger. I’d be watching out for you and not giving the threats around me the full attention they deserve. Plus you’d slow me down.”

“I’m not as helpless as you think,” said Bingwen. “I can help. I’m slower, yes, but two sets of eyes are better than one. I can watch our rear. I can carry supplies. I’m not useless. I’m an asset not a liability.”

“I don’t doubt your abilities, Bingwen, but we’re not going on a day hike here. This is war. I’m a trained soldier. You’re not.”

“I’m just as capable of killing Formics as you are.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really.” He gestured to Mazer’s sidearm. “How much strength does it take it pull that trigger? I think I can manage.”

“Firing a weapon is more involved than that.”

“So teach me how.”

“No. Children don’t fight wars.”

“Really? Says who? Is there some child rulebook I don’t know about, because I’m pretty sure I’ve been fighting wars my whole life.”

“These are killers, Bingwen. Not village bullies.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A world of difference. Village bullies don’t melt your face off.” He regretted saying it as soon as the words had come out. Bingwen had witnessed such things.

Mazer sighed and leaned back against one of the few remaining trees, his voice gentle. “You can’t come because I don’t want anything to happen to you, Bingwen. And because we don’t know what’s in that valley, and because in all likelihood I won’t be able to do much damage anyway.”

“You can do recon. You can learn things, observe things, find weaknesses, see something the airplanes haven’t. Then you can take that information back to people who matter. Right now you don’t want to go back because you feel like you’ve failed. Information is a victory, Mazer. And I can help you get it.”

Mazer said nothing.

“I know this enemy as well as you do. Maybe even better than you do. And I certainly know the land better than you do.”

“There isn’t much land left.”

“No. Nor people either.” He stared at the ground a moment, picking at a rock half buried in the earth. “My parents are in that valley, Mazer. Heaped up with everything else. Maybe Grandfather too. And Hopper and Meilin. And Zihao. And everyone I’ve ever known. My life is in that valley. You’re fighting to save your world. I’m fighting because they’ve already taken my world from me. Yes, I’m young. Yes, I’m a child. No, I’m not a trained soldier. But if I’m old enough to fight to stay alive, I’m old enough to fight the war.”

Mazer said nothing. It amazed him that Bingwen could be so young and so frail in some ways and so old and so unbreakable in others. Children are more capable than we give them credit for, he thought. Yet even so, he knew he shouldn’t take Bingwen with him. Common sense and his training told him it was a tactical mistake. Yet what could he do? Bingwen was right. They’d find danger in the north as well.

Mazer reached into the pack and pulled out a small bedroll. He pushed the button on the side, and the pad inflated. “You’ve been running for most of the day,” said Mazer. “Get some sleep. I’ll take first watch.” He handed him the gas mask. “Put this on first.”

“That’s for an adult.”

“I’ll adjust the straps as far as they’ll go. It should form a seal.”

“How am I supposed to sleep with that on? It will swallow my head.”

“You’ll breath fine. And it will be cleaner air than what’s out here.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll manage.” He slipped the mask over Bingwen’s head and fiddled with the straps until the seal was good.

“How do I look?” Bingwen asked, his voice muffled by the mask.

“As alien as the Formics.”

Bingwen smiled. “Perfect. It’ll be my disguise. We’ll use it to infiltrate. I’ll be the Formic, and you’ll be my weak human hostage. Works every time.”

“Go to sleep, Bingwen.”

Bingwen lay down on the bedroll. “You’ll be here when I get up, right? You’re not going to sneak off while I’m asleep?”