Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

did she say in her message?” asked Hopper.
    “Only that she had found this vid and that she had to talk to me about it.”
    “Did you message her?”
    “She didn’t respond. It’s sleep time on Luna. Our schedules only cross in the morning.”
    Hopper nodded at the screen. “Play it.”
    Bingwen tapped the keyboard, and the vid began from the beginning.
    On screen a figure emerged from a hatch on the side of a ship. Its pressure suit had an extra set of arms. A tube with plenty of slack extended from the figure’s spacesuit and snaked its way down into the hatch, presumably carrying oxygen and heat and whatever else the creature needed to sustain itself in the cold vacuum of space.
    For a moment the creature didn’t move. It stayed there, sprawled on the side of the ship, stomach down, arms and legs out like an insect clinging to a wall. Then, slowly, it lifted its head and took in its surroundings. Whoever was filming was about twenty meters away, and the front of the creature’s helmet was still in shadow, concealing its face.
    In an instant the calm of the moment broke as the creature rushed toward the camera with a sudden urgency. Hopper jumped just as Bingwen had the first time he saw it. There was a burst of a foreign language on the vid—Spanish perhaps, or maybe Portuguese—and the man with the camera retreated a step. The creature drew closer, its head bobbing from side to side as it shuffle-crawled forward on its arms and legs. Then, when it was a few meters shy of the camera, it stopped and raised its head again. Lights from the camera operator’s helmet fell across the creature’s face, and Bingwen freeze-framed the image.
    “Did you see how the hair and muscles of its face moved?” said Bingwen. “How fluid they were? Hair only moves that way in zero gravity. This had to have been filmed in space.”
    Hopper stared at the screen, saying nothing, mouth slightly agape.
    “You two are asking for trouble,” another voice said.
    Bingwen turned around again. This time Meilin, his cousin, was behind him, arms folded across her chest, her expression one of disapproval. At seven years old, she was a year younger than Bingwen, but since she was so much taller than both him and Hopper, she acted as if she were older and thus in charge.
    “Exams are in two weeks,” she said, “and you two are goofing off.”
    Provincial exams were the only chance the children from rice villages had at getting a formal education. Schools were scarce along the river valley, the closest being north in Dawanzhen or south in Hanguangzhen. Space was limited, but every six months the district admitted a few students from the villages. To be eligible, you had to be at least eight years old and score at least in the ninety-fifth percentile on the exams. Those names were then thrown into a lottery, and the number of names chosen was based on the number of seats available, which was rarely more than three. Chances of getting in were slim, but school was a ticket out of the fields, and every child in the nearby villages, from the moment they turned four years old, spent all their spare time studying here at the library.
    “This is your first chance to take the exam,” said Meilin, “and you’re going to blow it.”
    “Bingwen won’t,” said Hopper. “He aces every practice test. They won’t even put his name in the lottery. They’ll take him immediately.”
    “To ace a test means you get every answer right, mud brain,” said Meilin. “That’s impossible. The test self-adjusts. The more answers you get right, the more difficult the questions become. If you got every answer right, the questions by the end would be so complex nobody could answer them.”
    “Bingwen does.”
    Meilin smirked. “Sure he does.”
    “No, really,” said Hopper. “Tell her, Bingwen.”
    Meilin turned to Bingwen, expecting the joke to end there, but Bingwen shrugged. “I get lucky, I guess.”
    Meilin’s expression changed to one of disbelief. “Every answer? No wonder Mr. Nong gives you extra computer time and treats you like his little pet.”
    Mr. Nong was the head librarian, a kindly man in his seventies whose health was poor and who only came to the library two days of the week now as a result. His assistant, Ms. Yí, who despised children and Bingwen most of all, covered for Mr. Nong on days like today when he was out. “She hates you because she knows you’re smarter than her,” Hopper had once said. “She can’t