Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

“People on Earth are dying. Do you think they care if their rescuers have a birth certificate?”
    “Look, I don’t make the policy,” said the soldier.
    “No, you just follow it. You’ll let the world be destroyed because of a policy. ”
    “With all due respect, friend, one person can’t stop the world from being destroyed.”
    Victor was on his feet. “With all due respect, friend, you’re wrong.”
    He went through the door and passed the front desk without stopping.
    Outside, Imala and Yanyu instantly saw that it hadn’t gone well. “You okay?” asked Imala.
    All the rage and disappointment in Victor fizzled out, replaced with embarrassment. “I’m not even a second-class citizen, Imala. I’m nobody.”
    “Not true,” said Yanyu. “You are a first-class citizen. First-class friend. Come. I will cook you my turnip cakes. They will make you happy.”
    Cakes made from turnips? The idea didn’t sound promising. But Victor put on his best smile for her sake and followed them toward an available track car.
    *   *   *
     
    Yanyu’s apartment was cramped but well organized, adorned with trinkets and art prints from China. There was plenty of food to go along with the turnip cakes—pan-fried noodles with bean sprouts, congee with dried minced pork, and sweet tea, all of it in sealed containers that magnetized to the table. Victor never would have thought of it as breakfast food, but it was all good nonetheless.
    The turnip cakes, as Yanyu had promised, did in fact make him happy. They were thick, pan-fried, square-shaped rice cakes filled with sausage and Jinhua ham. Victor had eaten four of them before Yanyu explained that they weren’t actually made with turnips.
    “Then why call them turnip cakes?” Victor asked with a mouthful.
    Yanyu shrugged. “Why do Americans call them hamburgers if they’re made from beef and not pork?”
    “She has a point,” said Imala.
    When they had eaten and cleared the dishes, Yanyu asked, “What will you do now?”
    “If an army won’t take us, we’ll form our own,” said Victor. “The three of us.”
    “What can three people do against the Formics?” asked Yanyu.
    “Tell us more about yesterday’s attack on the mothership,” said Victor. “What did the Formics do exactly?”
    “They won,” said Yanyu. “They fired at anything that moved. Some of the shuttles came in slowly and got close, but the Formics vaporized them before they reached the ship. It made humans look foolish.”
    “Do you have any footage from the battle?” asked Victor.
    “We recorded it with the Juke scopes.” She pushed off from the table and moon bounced into the family room, where she pulled up several vid files on the holoscreen. “Help yourself, though you will only find it depressing.”
    Victor took the controls and began studying the footage. The attack was well coordinated. The first wave targeted the shield generators and other defensive targets on the ship’s surface, but the rockets fired by the human ships detonated before they reached the mothership, hitting whatever shielding surrounded the Formics. Laser fire broke through the shielding, however, and this seemed to spur the human shuttles forward. Any hope of victory was dashed a moment later as plasma erupted from the surface of the Formic ship on all sides and decimated the entire human fleet in under a minute.
    “It’s like they’re not even trying,” said Imala. “We give them everything we’ve got, and they shrug us off.”
    Victor replayed the footage. On the second viewing he asked the computer to monitor the human ships’ speeds, their angles of approach, and the number of times each ship fired. On the third viewing he saw the pattern. On the fourth viewing he was sure he was right.
    “Look at this,” he said, starting the vid again and playing it at a slower speed. “The apertures on the surface of the Formic ship open, but look, they target the fastest ships first.”
    “So,” said Yanyu. “That’s what I would do. The fastest ships are the ones that will reach them first and are therefore the most immediate threat.”
    “That’s just it,” said Victor. “Some of these fast ships aren’t even heading toward the Formics. A few of them are moving in an arc, getting into position, preparing to come at the Formics from another direction. So their trajectory is taking them to a spot in space on the other side. A few of them aren’t even firing yet.”
    “What’s your