Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

a face. “Digging vehicle? We’re giving them the world’s first antigrav bird, an aircraft that will revolutionize flight, and they’re giving us a bulldozer? Lame.”
    “Double lame,” Patu agreed.
    “We don’t know it’s a dozer,” said Mazer. “We don’t know anything about it, in fact. There was next to nothing on it in the cube.”
    “A digging machine,” Reinhardt repeated. “Six months away from home to learn how to dig with a fancy Chinese shovel. I hate this mission already.”
    They landed a little over an hour later at a military airfield northeast of Qingyuan. Two lines of Chinese soldiers in full-parade dress faced each other at attention at the end of the plane’s cargo ramp. Captain Shenzu, the Chinese officer from the HERC mission, stood at the bottom of the ramp and saluted. “Welcome to China, Captain Rackham.”
    “You beat us here,” said Mazer.
    “You’ll forgive me for taking more comfortable accommodations. The Chinese government would have granted you the same convenience, but we would much rather have you guarding our precious cargo.”
    Mazer gestured back to the HERCs. “There they are. All dolled up and ready for action. When it’s convenient for you and your commanding officer, I’d like to discuss our training regimen.”
    Captain Shenzu smiled and waved the suggestion aside. “All in good time, Captain. Come.” He motioned to a skimmer parked to their right. “The drill sledges are about to surface. Your timing could not have been better.”
    They flew northeast out of the airfield, cut across open country, and pulled up to an aboveground concrete bunker on the crest of a shallow, barren valley. The valley floor was riddled with deep gaping holes, each big enough to fly the skimmer into. Shenzu parked, hopped out, and escorted them around the bunker to the opposite side overlooking the valley floor.
    “You said ‘drill sledges,’” Mazer said in Chinese. “Are these the drilling machines you’ll train us to operate?”
    “Your pronunciation is quite good,” said Shenzu.
    “We all speak Chinese,” said Mazer. “Part of our training.”
    Shenzu seemed pleased. “China is flattered that you would think our language important enough to learn, Captain.”
    “You are the largest country in the world,” said Reinhardt.
    “The largest, yes,” said Shenzu, “but sadly not the most technologically advanced. The U.S. and a few countries in Europe have us beat on that front. As well as the Russians, though they don’t have the economic stability that we do. It’s only a matter of time before we leave them all behind.”
    “You sound rather confident,” said Mazer.
    Shenzu was looking at something on his holopad. “In three seconds, Captain, I think you’ll see why.”
    Mazer felt slight tremors in the earth beneath him and heard a muffled rumbling noise. He turned and scanned the valley but saw nothing. Then a massive spinning drill bit burst through the surface, slinging dirt and detritus in every direction in a violent shower of debris. The drill shot upward in a blur of motion, and Mazer saw that it was the front half of a massive tunneling vehicle, rocketing upward from the ground. The engines screamed, and red hot ejecta erupted from the rear of the vehicle as it soared three meters in the air and then slammed back down to the surface. The lavalike spew from the rear continued to bubble out and drip to the ground as the engines whined down and the drill began to slow. Smoke rose from the spew, and Mazer heard the sizzling heat of it even from this distance. A felled tree that had caught a shot of the spew crackled and began to burn.
    Mazer opened his mouth to speak just as two more of the tunneling vehicles burst from the ground elsewhere in the valley, one of them getting a little more elevation on its exit than the first one had.
    After the sledges landed and began to quiet, Shenzu smiled and said, “You’ll have to excuse them. They’re showing off. They know they have an audience.”
    “What are they?” asked Patu.
    “We call them self-propelled drill sledges, but they’re tactical earth burrowers. Quite extraordinary, aren’t they?”
    That was putting it lightly, thought Mazer. The HERC might revolutionize flight, but the drill sledge revolutionized warfare, introducing an entirely new landscape to the battlefield. He immediately understood why the Chinese wanted the HERCs. The HERC could carry the sledges behind enemy lines,