Earth Afire (The First Formic War 2)

"And you are?"

"I'm not asking to be the leader," said Bingwen. "I'm asking for a contingency plan. I'm asking for your expertise in dealing with frightened civilians in a hostile environment. If you don't come back, if help doesn't come, I want to know what we should do."

Mazer smiled. He liked this kid. "Stay here. Help will come." He brought the helmet down over his head and gave Bingwen a thumbs-up.

The HERC flew away, turning to the south. Mazer looked back and saw that Bingwen was still there on the hilltop, standing on the access road, watching them go.

He wants answers I can't give, Mazer thought. He wants something definitive to fall back on. He doesn't know I don't have answers, that there is no contingency plan, that I'm making this up as I go along.

Maybe Shenzu was right, Mazer told himself. What were he and his team accomplishing out here? Saving a few people who very well might have saved themselves? A fully loaded HERC with a combat crew could protect whole villages or cities. Yet here Mazer was, using it as a bus, shuffling people around.

He wasn't thinking big picture. He wasn't thinking about maximizing the resource and saving the greatest number of people. Logic told him to think statistically, to be objective, to abandon this current course and get the HERC back to the Chinese as quickly as possible where they could put it to better use. Yet even as he considered it, he knew he couldn't do it. There was Bingwen. That was one life that hadn't ended because Mazer had been here. Statistics couldn't argue with that.

The lander was in sight now, the top of it still open. A few more Chinese aircraft were circling it. The skimmers and troop carriers had pushed on to places unknown. Mazer looked below them, searching for survivors.

Reinhardt swore.

Mazer looked up. A second column of alien aircraft was shooting up out of the lander, moving as one, twisting and climbing like a swarm. Troop carriers, skimmers. Hundreds of them. A second wave.

"Get us to the ground!"

But even as Mazer gave the order, he knew they wouldn't make it. They were too high, and already the skimmers at the front of the column had reached the column's zenith and were

shooting off in every direction, a cluster of them heading straight for the HERC.

The HERC dropped. Alarms sounded as Reinhardt put them into a fast descent.

The skimmers didn't hesitate this time. They opened fire. The HERC should have been obliterated, but somehow, Reinhardt altered their descent at just the right moment to avoid the blasts, which zipped by and exploded somewhere below. Fatani was at the guns, screaming, opening up. One skimmer took a direct hit, spun off, and slammed into another. The two bounced off each other, damaged, broken out of control. Patu was firing as well. Mazer fumbled with the front guns and fired, missing wide as the HERC spun and dropped. The skimmers were on them now. There was a flash, they were hit. The front windshield exploded, heat and shrapnel rushed into the cockpit. Reinhardt slumped forward. The gravlens was out. They were in a dead drop. Wind, fire, alarms. Mazer reached for the stick, his body was weightless, his helmet visor cracked. He was dazed, disoriented--a ringing in his ear. There was a scream of metal and the fire of an engine. A chop chop chop. The emergency rotor blades were up and going. They continued to fall, spinning, twisting, the blades wouldn't stop them.

Mazer saw a flash of treetops, heard limbs snapping, felt the heat of fire. Then impact, a violent jolt shook the world apart and left only blackness.

*

Mazer coughed, a deep painful cough that squeezed his lungs so tight it felt as if they had shriveled like raisins. He was engulfed in black smoke. He couldn't see. He had passed out. He was pressed in tight from all sides, squeezed in a world of balloons. Then the pain hit him, a searing, white hot explosion of pain in his lower abdomen. He cried out, coughed again. He was blind in the smoke.

"Reinhardt!"

No answer.

"Patu! Fatani!"

He heard the crackle and spark of flames, felt the heat of it near him, all around him. He fumbled with his hands, found his harness, unlatched it, coughing, hacking, desperate for clean air. He pushed at the balloons. They gave a little, deflating slightly. Airbags, he realized. He pushed at them again, scrabbling for the door. He couldn't find it. The smoke was suffocating. His lungs were on fire.

The door came free. He tumbled out, falling to the ground. The pain shot through him like a knife, cutting him in half. He put his hand to his abdomen. It came away red, soaked in blood. He was bleeding in other places, too. No time to see where. He had to get the others out. He pressed a hand to the abdominal wound, and the pain was like a thunderclap. He held it there, his world spinning. He steadied, got one foot underneath him, pushing the pain to some other place, some place deep inside. It felt like a charcoal fire had been built inside his stomach. He fought it, focused his mind.

He got the other foot under him. He could barely stand. He saw Patu. She was slumped in her chair, head to the side. He knew at once that she was dead. There was blood and injuries. Her face was lifeless. He staggered to her, wincing, gritting his teeth, putting one foot in front of the other. The flames were growing. The heat was intense. Mazer ignored them. He grabbed the med kit from under Patu's seat and tossed it out. Then he reached up and unfastened the latch on Patu's harness. She fell forward into him. He wasn't ready for it, didn't have the strength for it. They both fell to the ground.

Mazer came to. He had blacked out again, only for an instant, but he had no time to spare and willed himself to wake. It was the pain. It teetered on the point where it was so unbearable that the body shuts down, like a switch has been flipped. Mazer pushed himself up into a sitting position. He grabbed the fabric of Patu's shirt and dragged her toward him, scooting backward on his buttocks, pulling her away from the flames. She was dead weight, her limbs limp, her head lolled to the side, a trail of blood behind her.

The earth exploded to Mazer's right.

A shower of dirt and rocks and heat rained down on him.

Mazer looked up. A skimmer flew by overhead, having just missed him with a burst of its laser fire. The skimmer flew on for a hundred meters then abruptly turned back, changing its course with unnatural speed. It opened up its gun at a distance, unleashing a barrage of laser fire that tore into the downed HERC and slung shrapnel and burning wreckage in every direction. Hard, hot projectiles struck Mazer in the arm, the shoulder; a heavy, burning piece of metal fell across his leg. He cried out. The pain was immediate and unbearable, the heat intense. Panicked, Mazer pulled at his leg, desperate to free himself. But the fabric of his pant leg was snagged on the metal and held him fast. Screaming, burning, his body coursing with pain and adrenaline, he found the strength to sit up, push the metal off him, and pull his leg free.

The skimmer flew by overhead again, but Mazer didn't track it with his eyes this time. He knew it would be coming back. Patu's assault rifle still hung from her shoulder. He had dragged it out here with her. He crawled to it, pulling himself forward in the dirt. A part of him wanted to lie still and let the inevitable happen, to get it over quickly. Better to die in an instant than to suffer a long lingering death from a gut wound out here in the open. He knew help wasn't coming. He knew he wouldn't survive. His wounds were too serious. He was losing too much blood.

But there was the other part of him as well. The soldier. The warrior. The part that had been shaped by drills and exercises and mottos and principles. The bigger part of him, the stubborn, angry, Maori part of him.