The Swarm (24 page)

We clearly have a lot of work to do with our soldiers.

Nardelli tried launching away from the empty cube, but its mass was not that much greater than his, and it drifted away from him with the same degree of force that he had applied. Instead of launching toward Mazer, Nardelli rotated out of control and drifted away, floundering again, flailing his arms and legs, and cursing.

He'd be that way for a minute or two, Mazer figured, which was all the time Mazer needed. He launched down to the exit, grabbed his rucksack, and headed for the hangar.

The shuttle was at the dock waiting for him. Mazer reported to the loadmaster, who scanned Mazer's ID bracelet and welcomed him aboard. Mazer stowed his rucksack and took a seat in the back. He was not the only passenger. About a dozen other soldiers were buckled in, but none of them seemed to pay him any attention, which was a relief.

Mazer watched the door, half expecting Nardelli to fight his way onto the shuttle to finish what he had started, bloody head wound and all. But several minutes passed, and no one else came on board.

Mazer lowered the terminal screen hidden in the seatback in front of him and typed up an e-mail to Kim before the shuttle decoupled and he lost the connection. He was coming home, he told her. He loved her. He was excited to see her.

He did not tell her that his military career was likely over, or that the IF was plagued with nearsighted careerists. Nor did he mention that his hope for a victory was all but extinguished. Kim didn't like depressing e-mails. And anyway, when he saw her again, he wanted to see her smiling. If they only had a little time left together, he wanted every moment to count.

 

CHAPTER 11

Shuttle

It takes a fleet to build a fleet, especially because there wasn't time to wait for mining ships in the Kuiper and Asteroid belts to bring enough raw materials to near-Earth shipyards in the months immediately following the First Formic War. Therefore every Earth-launchable shuttle became a cargo ship, lifting payloads of metal out of Earth's gravity well. Then they unloaded their cargo into space, left it in orbit, and went back down for more.

Cargo ships, tugs, yachts, lunar shuttles, and research vessels were pressed into service to pick up the orbiting cargo and carry it to the warship construction sites. The trouble was that there weren't enough of them. The cargo fleet that the IF needed was already plying routes between Mars, Luna, and the Asteroid Belt, but after seeing all the near-Earth ships commandeered for cargo service, neither the Families nor the corporations would admit that they had more than a few token ships near enough to help, while the free miners set out for deeper space.

They all understood that human survival depended on building warships to defeat the Formics, but they also knew that if the IF seized their ships, they'd never see them again. It would wipe them out, financially. They would end up stranded in some depot or station, begging for sustenance, with no hope of ever recovering from the financial loss.

Desperate for ships, the IF began planning to send expeditions to hunt down and capture the nearest cargo ships. The first Hegemon, Ukko Jukes, put a stop to that. He instead used Hegemony funds to start the Space Vessel Repurchase Program—nicknamed Repup. The Hegemon began by retroactively purchasing all the ships that had already been seized, paying a fair market price. Only then did the Corporations and Families discover that they had far more ships nearby than they had realized. The cost of purchasing the ships was greater than the Hegemony's entire budget, and the record suggests that Juke Limited guaranteed repayment to the banks that lent the money to fund Repup.

Soon there were enough vessels to clear out all the huge depots of warship parts. The original crews of these ships either continued to work them under IF officers, or they took service as shipbuilders with the various corporations contracted by the Fleet to design and build new warships. According to S. P. Mu's meticulous
Index of Cargo Crews,
more than 80 percent of these crews ended up enlisting in the IF before the end of the Second Formic War, and by all reports these space miners and transport crews became the backbone of the IF, training new recruits from Earth and Luna until they “got their space legs” and became accustomed to living and working safely in a zero G life-support environment.

The dependents of the free miners who entered the IF, along with those who refused to remain on vessels commanded by IF officers, were given passage to Luna, the only planetary surface with low-enough gravity that space-dwellers could adapt and survive. The government of Luna was ill-prepared to receive them, though the Hegemony increased Luna's food and water allotments in order to provide for the refugees. Refugee “camps”—adapted tenements and flimsy, hastily erected group shelters—were quickly established in the southern domes of Imbrium, but the delivery of food was insufficient and unreliable, while sanitation services and medical care were intermittent at best.

If not for the efforts of the Children of Earth Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Lem Jukes, which provided newly arrived free-miner families with the necessities of life and worked to incorporate them into Lunar society within months, the Repurchase Program would probably have led to mass desertions (or mutiny) by those free miners who had joined the IF and shipbuilding unions.

Instead, these new recruits were reassured that their families were well taken care of, and they stayed on the job, producing an astonishing number of warships before large combat action began in the Second Formic War. Most of them continued after the war to build warships incorporating new designs, in order to protect Earth with a shield that no future Formic weaponry could penetrate. Even if Lem Jukes had done nothing else but set in motion this vital humanitarian effort, his place as one of the architects of human survival would be secure.

—Demosthenes,
A History of the Formic Wars,
Vol. 3

Bingwen stepped down from the skimmer and onto the tarmac just as the sun was coming up over the Bay of Bengal. In the low light, the surface of the ocean was a dark sparkling amber moving gently toward the shores of Wheeler Island. They were ten kilometers off the coast of eastern India on a small triangular shoal used exclusively by the International Fleet for discreet launches into space. The air smelled clean and briny, and Bingwen could hear off in the distance the faint call of a seabird. He had never seen the ocean before, and photos did not do it justice.

This is why the Formics so desperately want this world, he thought. There is warmth and water and life here. There is food and fuel and land and the chance not just to survive, but to flourish. Bingwen allowed the cool sea breeze to envelop him as Captain Li stepped down beside him and straightened the jacket of his new blue IF uniform.

“Savoring your last moment on terra firma?” Captain Li asked.

“Hopefully not my last,” Bingwen said.

The shuttle that would take them out of Earth's atmosphere to the shuttleport in space stood on the tarmac before them. A handful of crewmen were outside it, busying themselves loading cargo and gear. The scene was a stark contrast to the highly publicized launches of the previous morning, when hundreds of Chinese soldiers sporting new IF uniforms and waving small Chinese flags had boarded shuttles and departed for Luna. They were China's first round of committed troops to the IF, and journalists from all over the world had captured the event. But here, off the mainland, isolated from everyone, there was not a single camera in sight.

“Surely we're not the only passengers,” Bingwen said, as he followed Captain Li toward the shuttle.

Li laughed. “Hardly. This is an all-purpose shuttle, mostly reserved for VIPs. They can arrive minutes before liftoff. You, as a non-VIP, don't have that luxury. You're first on, last off. And since I'm forced to escort you, I must be as well. You'll stay in the back throughout the flight. Don't talk to anyone unless they address you first. Understood?”

“Yes, sir, Captain Li, sir.”

The response was overly formal, but it felt natural to Bingwen's ears by now. Over the years he had learned to comply with Captain Li's particular demands for respect. To ignore them was to invite work detail or other punishments. Better to give the man what he wanted and save the objections for the battles worth fighting.

They took their seats beside each other in the back.

Li rested his elbows on the armrests, steepled his fingers in front of him, and regarded Bingwen. “Did China make the right decision?” Li asked.

It was a test. It was always a test with Li. He was obviously referring to China's decision to give up troops. And like always, there was only one correct answer in Li's mind. An answer Bingwen was expected to know and explain thoroughly.

“Without question,” Bingwen said. Li had taught him not only to give direct answers, but also to give them with absolute certainty. A soldier must always exude strength. He does not waffle in his reports and replies. He responds directly, assuredly, immediately, and with confidence. If he does not know the answer, he says so without shame. Doing so may mark him as uninformed, but it will not mark him as weak.

“Which explanation do you want?” Bingwen asked. “The military reason, the economic reason, or the political reason?”

“All of the above,” said Li.

Bingwen nodded. “Politically, China didn't have much choice. The media in Europe and the West were planting the idea that the loss of Copernicus was China's fault. Up until now the world has given China a free pass. We suffered the most causalities and collateral damage from the war. Our economic infrastructure was on the verge of collapse. Our centers of commerce, our biggest cities, were primary targets and left largely in ruins. Agriculturally we lost millions of hectares of crops, nearly wiping out the rice industry and ending trade agreements we had long maintained with the West. China was in an extremely precarious situation, and the world was sympathetic, allowing us to abstain from troop and other IF commitments as we went through a period of reconstruction. We took the beating for the world, so the world gave us a pass.

“But sympathy can last only so long, particularly in the face of a rising immediate global threat. So they make us the scapegoat for Copernicus and they suggest that all the trillions of credits that poured into our country to help us rebuild comes with a price. It's not a handout, they say. It's a hand up. There is an expectation there for us to step in and offer what assistance we can.

“To suggest that China is responsible for Copernicus is offensive in the extreme, but the idea seemed to be taking root in the global conscience. The world looked at us and said, you take and you take and you take, but you don't give. We could not allow that perception to persist. We would be labeled as selfish. Our ambassadors and dignitaries would be shunned. No politician would want to be seen with the Chinese. We would be excluded from summits and discussions and international efforts. And most damaging, if we didn't act, we would be susceptible to further accusations. Whenever the IF failed, the world would look at us again and say, ‘See? You did this. You're not helping, and we're losing as a result.'”

“And the economic implications?” said Li.

“Very similar,” said Bingwen. “By refusing to help, we invite economic alienation. Western corporations would reconsider their manufacturing efforts in China. And the threat of sanctions would send a lot of foreign companies running for the hills, making deals in less politically charged Asian nations. We have already seen much of our commerce bleed into Indonesia and Vietnam. If sanctions were imposed on China, that trickle would become a flood. We can't afford that. Literally. Even mild economic sanctions would cut us off at the knees. The Hegemon knew that. And so did Beijing. Nor can we afford losing the IF as a customer. Innovation, manufacturing, communication. Much of the nation's economic health depends on our maintaining strong relations with the IF. We are their fifth largest supplier of goods. If they took their business elsewhere, it would throw us into an immediate recession.”

“If that's true,” Li said, “then why didn't the Hegemon play that card before when he has asked for troops?”

“Because he didn't have to,” Bingwen said. “The IF has more than enough troops and recruits already. In fact, it probably has more than it knows what to do with. It recruited heavily from corporate mining crews, it took on free-miner enlistees by the thousands, and it accepted tens of thousands of men and women serving in militaries on Earth. And the IF did this without having any place to put these people. There was no military fleet in space with empty bunks to house them all. No training facilities on Luna. No depots or stations exclusive to the IF. There was nothing. Those that could were put to work building the ships, but for the longest time, the IF had more soldiers than it had bunks. That still may be the case, but the IF certainly isn't going to say so. It's going to claim to desperately need troops.”

“And the military implications?” Li asked.

“The International Fleet is not going away,” Bingwen said. “If we are fortunate enough to win this war, the IF won't simply disband. The whole idea of war has changed for the human race. We can no longer afford to fight each other when there are greater enemies out among the stars. If we want to survive as a species, we must band together and maintain the Fleet, not solely for the Formic threat, but for others that might exist as well. China must have a presence and voice in that organization. The IF will hold incredible power and to deny ourselves participation is to invite our own decline. We can't allow that. We do ourselves a great disservice by standing on the sidelines. China needs to prove itself to the world again. We need war heroes. We need great military commanders who have influence in the IF and who can represent China's strength and maintain our standing in the world. The war was humiliating for China. Our position in the ranking of global powers dropped considerably. We were deemed weak. This despite the fact that no nation on Earth would have had any more success taking on the Formics than we did. Militarily, we had no choice but to commit troops.”