Earth Afire (The First Formic War 2)

Bingwen couldn't help it. Tears came then, busting out from deep inside him. He tried to push them back, biting his lower lip to suppress them, but they fought their way out, and in seconds he was sobbing and shaking and only making the pain in his arm worse.

"Are you hurt?" said Grandfather.

"Yes," Bingwen managed to say. "My arm. It's broken, I think."

"I'm going to get you out."

"How? You could barely move before."

"Your grandfather isn't as weak as he looks."

It was a lie, and Bingwen knew it.

"I'm going to get help," said Grandfather.

Grandfather's hand released his, pulled back.

Bingwen scrabbled for it with his good hand. "No! Don't leave me."

Grandfather's hand returned and grabbed Bingwen's again. "I'll be right back, Bingwen. On my father's name I swear it."

The hand tried to pull back again, but Bingwen clutched it tightly this time, not letting go. "Wait. Please. Don't go. I'm ... afraid." He hated himself for saying it, felt the shame of it like a slap. But it was true. He could feel the darkness now, not just see it, like a stranger was just behind him, standing over, ready to strike. He was going to die here, he knew. If he released Grandfather's hand they were both going to die. He would be crushed by the tree and the mud and the darkness.

Grandfather gave Bingwen's hand a reassuring squeeze. "I can make it to the village, Bingwen. I'll come back with your father."

"No." Bingwen's voice was a panic. "You can't. You couldn't walk."

"Then I'll crawl. I won't leave you under this--"

But the rest was cut off because then the deafening roar of a machine tore through the world like a grinding thunderclap and the earth shook like a hundred earthquakes, and Bingwen clutched Grandfather's hand and screamed.

CHAPTER 13

Survivors

The HERC was moving fast, flying at an altitude of four thousand meters toward a billowing cloud of dust far ahead of it in the distance. Mazer zoomed in as far as his HUD would allow, but he still couldn't see the downed lander from here. It was hidden behind several crests of mountains. "Patu, talk to me. What's going on? I need a sat feed on that lander. I need video."

"I'm trying, I'm trying," said Patu. "The whole network is going berserk. Everyone in the world is piggybacking on all the satellites pointed at southern China. I'm only picking up bits of intel here and there. All three landers are down. I know that much. They're roughly three hundred klicks apart and form a line that starts in the southeast corner of Guangdong province and crosses up to the northeast corner of Guangxi province. We're heading toward the second lander. The first one set down east of the Nangao Reservoir in Luhe County, about sixty klicks north of the coast."

"Populated area?"

"Not at the point of impact, no. It's mostly forested mountains. There are several villages nearby. A few towns. But nothing densely populated. We lucked out on that one."

"What's the lander doing?"

"Right now, near as I can tell, it's not doing anything. It's just sitting there."

"What about the second lander?"

"Impact site is in a valley south of a town called Dawanzhen. Mostly rice lands. Several villages are clustered in that area. Again, not densely populated, but certainly more people than where the first lander put down. Casualties are likely."

Mazer turned to the pilot's seat. "Reinhardt, what's our ETA?"

"We'll be on top of that thing in under three minutes," said Reinhardt. "What I want to know is: What do we plan on doing once we get there? We're not packing a lot of heat, Mazer. This thing is a training aircraft, remember? We're not carrying any rockets. We got a few slicers and that's it, no heavy air support. If we get in a fight, we could be in trouble."

"We're not looking for a fight," said Mazer. "Our job is recon and rescue. We help people on the ground and learn as much as we can about the lander. We'll send live feeds back to Auckland and to the Chinese. The more they know, the better they can prepare. Patu, what about the third lander?"

"Not good. It set down right outside a city named Guilin on the west bank of the Li River. Population two-point-seven million."