Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

mother died and he moved us to London. He was not a happy man, Kim. Without my mother, he was a shell of who he was. He tried to stamp out all the Maori culture my mother had ingrained into me as a kid because it reminded him of her and it pained him too much to see it. The songs, the stories, the dances, he outlawed them all. I was to be a proper Englishman like him. An Anglo. As if Mother had never existed. Only, he couldn’t change the color of my skin. That stayed dark no matter how many boarding schools he put me in.”
    He crossed the room and stood behind her.
    “You don’t want your children to have only one parent, Kim. I know that life. I don’t want it for my kids, either.”
    She turned to him. She was crying but her voice was steady. “I’d like to believe that you’re being noble and self-sacrificing, Mazer, but all I’m hearing is that you don’t want a life with me.”
    He didn’t know how to respond. Of course he wanted a life with her. Didn’t she see that? The issue was it wasn’t a life they could have. It would be a life without each other.
    But before he could form a response, she went to her shelf, pulled down a Med-Assist device, and handed it to him. “One of the American versions,” she said. “With my voice. You said you wanted one, so there you are. Something to remember me by.”
    It was a dismissal. Everything they had built between them was brushed aside in that one gesture.
    It was what he had come to do, what he knew he needed to do for her sake, but now that it was done, now that the business was over, a sick empty feeling sank in his gut like a dead weight. He had to explain himself better.
    He didn’t get a chance.
    She walked out and left him there. He waited twenty minutes but she never returned. When employees started showing up and turning on the lights to the offices all around him, he tucked the Med-Assist under his arm and made his way to the lifts.
    It was the right thing to do, he kept telling himself. For her happiness, long-term, it was the right thing to do.

CHAPTER 6
     
    China
     
    Mazer boarded the C-200 moments before takeoff and found five new HERCs strapped down in the cargo bay, each of them adorned with Chinese characters and the red-and-gold starred emblem of the People’s Liberation Army. Apparently he and his team were not only tasked with training the Chinese, but they were also to hand deliver the HERCs as well. It annoyed Mazer. It meant the deal with Juke and the Chinese had been in the works for some time and that the SAS could have told him sooner that he was likely shipping out.
    Not that it would have made much difference, he admitted. He still would have felt the need to cut ties with Kim, and having more time to do so would have only prolonged the inevitable. Either that or his courage would have failed him, and he would have convinced himself yet again that they could make it work. This way was best for her. Harsh and fast and then he was gone and she could get on with her life.
    He moved through the cargo bay and saw that the rest of his team was already aboard, each of them asleep in one of the bunks recessed into the walls. Mazer stowed his bags in one of the lockers and climbed into an empty bunk. His whole body felt heavy and fatigued and ready for sleep, but thoughts of Kim kept him awake long after takeoff. He kept replaying the scene with her in his mind, thinking of all the things he should have said differently. He took out the Med-Assist she had given him and clicked through it randomly until he came upon a tutorial on how to give rescue breaths. He hit play, laid the Med-Assist on his chest, and listened to the sound of her voice.
    He woke six hours later. His team was still asleep. He took the data cube Colonel Napatu had given him and attached it to his wrist pad. The computer read him the entire mission file as he prepared a large pot of chicken pasta in the aircraft’s kitchen area, using ingredients he found in the supply closet.
    When he was done, he woke the others, and they gathered around a table in a small room near the cockpit where the engine noise was less.
    “The mission’s a true JCET,” said Mazer. “Usually it’s just us training the host nation. This time, the Chinese will be training us, as well.”
    “On what?” asked Fatani. “How to use chopsticks?”
    “Oh, you’re real classy,” said Patu.
    “We’ll be trained on a digging vehicle they’ve developed,” said Mazer.
    Reinhardt made